From Dust to Life

A Delta Green Shotgun Scenario

Stage 1: Fresh

Rev. Kyle Boynton leads the New Waters Movement, a neo-Charismatic cult founded on his faith-healing abilities.

Beginning as a grifter, Boynton eventually grew attached to his parish and sought power to truly heal them. He found this power in an old Mythos text, corrupting himself and everyone he healed.

Travelling and recruiting through the eighties and nineties, the NWM settled down on a commune outside Dulac, Louisana, following Hurricane Katrina. The cult's madness, loyalty, and extremism rapidly accelerated as Boynton tried — and failed — to cure himself of cancer on their isolated island in the bayou.

Unfortunately, death did not mark the end for the Reverend.

After being laid to rest by his parish, Boynton’s dark god, Shub-Niggurath, returned him to ‘life’ to serve its will as a monstrous mass of maggots and worms. Since then, Boynton has excised all remaining sanity from his cult members and seeks to ‘bless’ them with his undead immortality.

Those who remain are obsessed with the project — willing to do anything to ensure they join their leader in writhing salvation.

Stage 2: Bloat

Setup

Delta Green becomes aware of a situation in Louisiana following reports of mutilated bodies from the Terrebonne Parish Coroner's Office disappearing. Suspecting a surviving member of the DeMontes Ghoul Clan, Delta Green deploys agents to identify and destroy the potential incursion.

In truth, the New Waters Movement is murdering outsiders while trying to perfect their resurrection ritual. Currently, it causes bodies to decay into impossible creatures. These creatures have been escaping from the coroner’s office and disappearing into the wild.

During the evening of the third day, the NWM will perfect this ritual and commit mass suicide to become Crawling Ones.

Coroner's Office

After a 0600 briefing on the missing bodies, their handler directs Agents to the coroner’s office. Located in suburban Houma, the office is a small building staffed by a half dozen people.

County Coroner Odette Leroy is happy to talk to law enforcement about the bodies and disappearances but insists on keeping the morgue locked down. Agents will need to break in if they wish to examine a body.

Information Leroy offers:

• Over three months, police discovered four bodies with similar causes of death and desecration patterns. Three have since gone missing.
• The body of Dragan Perko, an elderly fisherman living in Dulac, is in the morgue. The other three victims disappeared before identification.
• The victims died from deep cuts along their forearms. After cutting, their assailant filled their wounds and stomachs with soil, herbs, and animal fat as they bled to death.
• Sheriff Léo Johnson is investigating these as serial murders.
• With convincing, Leroy will admit that markings on the bodies suggest multiple assailants.
• Leroy may mention missing person rates have increased over the last year. The concern is that there are over a dozen undiscovered victims.
• Leroy denies her staff having any involvement in the disappearance of the bodies. If Agents insist they are, she will kick them out of her office.

Upon accessing the morgue, Agents can examine the body and connected files. Information points one through five can be learned through Bureaucracy and Medicine checks.

If observing the body for extended periods, Agents may notice that minuscule bugs seem to appear on spots with patchy skin. Examining the ‘bugs’ with a microscope, Agents discover they are skin cells that returned to life as imitations of ticks and gnats.

Shedding the epidermis takes eighteen hours, beginning the deterioration of the body into bloody worm and maggot-like creatures. By the thirty-six-hour mark, the body completely deteriorates. Organs, bones, and sinew form rabbit-sized monsters that move on impossible limbs and consume with mouths that can’t exist.

All creatures attempt to escape the coroner’s office after ‘birth.’ Only medium-sized creatures are inclined to violence.

Leroy thinks the Agents mad if they approach her with this information. Forcing her to know drives her mad.

Dulac

So long as Agents know about Dulac, they can go south for half an hour to continue the investigation. Right in the middle of multiple lakes, canals and bayous, Dulac is a small fishing community that exists to rent boats to fishermen.

Asking about suspicious characters or ritual behaviour will quickly turn up the New Waters Movement. They are mostly known for behaving oddly during supply runs to town, though some older folks (like Perko’s fishing buddies) remember their leader as a respected minister and faith healer.

No one knows where in the bayou they live but will point Agents to one of their boats in the marina.

Three cultists leave town at 1600 on the first and second day, or earlier if they learn law enforcement is asking about them. They will not return on day two if they flee on day one. Agents have until they leave to gather information about the cult and prepare to attack.

Notably, researching the NWM and Boynton reveals a long history of him impossibly healing people and confirms his death ten months before the investigation takes place.

If Agents miss the cultists entirely, they can make Navigate, Pilot: Small Boat, and Survival checks to find inhabitable islands. See Bayou for the things they’ll run into while trying.

Stage 3: Decay

For agents to follow the NWM back to their compound unnoticed on the open, underpopulated waterways, they need to make a combined Stealth/Pilot: Small Boat at -40%. If successful, skip to Dry.

If it fails, continue.

Bayou

Noticing their tail, the cultists dock at a boathouse attached to an island where they sacrifice people and study the results. Having stored a getaway vehicle on the island, the cultists head inland to lose the Agents. They’ll need to follow on foot to keep track of them.

Alongside Survival and Stealth checks to track the cultists through the wetlands, Agents have to contend with the wildlife.

Wildlife includes flesh creatures, alongside animals like snakes, hogs, and alligators. In addition to the creatures mentioned in Coroner’s Office, this island is host to wolf-sized monsters made from large torso chunks and whole limbs.

Depending on how stealthy the Agents are, they will be ambushed — or able to ambush — the cultists at their getaway vehicle. Either way, the boat has a guide to the compound and generator fuel among the supplies, allowing the beginning of the end.

Stage 4: Dry

The Arc

Arriving at the cult’s home, it looks innocuous. Boynton’s private residence, an old two-story boathouse, juts out from the wooded island in unremarkable isolation.

Heading onto land, Agents find the cult operating out of a shanty town. The cult lives out of makeshift buildings constructed from wood, shipping containers, and tarpaulin, while a perfectly maintained church sits upon the island's highest point.

The New Water’s Church is a quaint, one-room white panel church on the outside with a shed attached to the back. Inside that shed is the water tank and pump for the manually operated irrigation sprinklers inside the church. The cult's generator fuel can be hooked up to the system to fill the church with gasoline in preparation to burn it and everyone inside down.

Observing the cult reveals nine active members (dozens more are catatonic from witnessing Boynton), five with guns. If the Agents successfully stalked the supply run back to base, those numbers go up to twelve and seven — but the cult is relaxed. If they never returned, the cult is on high alert.

Cultists attack anyone they find on the island without hesitation. They will attempt to main the Agent(s) and bring them to Boynton but don’t mind killing.

Agents can leave and navigate back to the island if they wish to rearm or acquire backup, but remember, mass suicide is rapidly approaching.

The Church

Whether through stealth, violence or being kidnapped, the Agents gain access to the church.

Despite its outward appearance, the inside is a den of decay.

Wood warps from the cult’s water cleansing rituals. Blood and fat mix with the soil rising through the sinking floor. The stench of death clings to the throat of all who enter. Two maddened kidnapping victims wail in cages as imperfect creatures thrash at them from theirs.

And upon the pulpit is Rev. Kyle Boynton, a seven-foot mass of reeking worms and maggots coalesced around distorted bones.

It stands before the church like a preacher in service, a spell book in one hand and ritual tools in the other. Its experimentation seems almost delirious — making, stuffing, and closing wounds with a mania a corpse should never possess.

Experimenting it does to an Agent if one was kidnapped.

Upon noticing intruders, the thing will attack to kill, and once violence begins in their holy site, any remaining cultists rush in to defend Boynton.

By fight or flame, this is the Agents’ final test. Make it bloody, make it righteous, and most of all, make it gross.

…and if the mass suicide has happened, pray for your parish.

STAT BLOCKS

Kyle Boynton, The Reverend Maggot Wizard

STR 8 CON 17 DEX 7 INT 13 POW 20

HP 13 WP 20.

Armour: See, Piecemeal.

SKILLS: Alertness 40%, Dodge 30%, Stealth 60%, Unnatural 40%

ATTACKS:

Unarmed 40%, 1d4 damage

Righteous Revolver 55%, 1d12 damage

PIECEMEAL: Due to the piecemeal nature of the creature, normal weapons duel minimal damage to it. Lethality rolls against the creature always fail, and the creature takes no more than one HP of damage from most attacks. Shotgun pellets and shrapnel deal their minimum damage. Fire & Hypergeometry deal damage normally.

SPELLS:

• Healing Balm: Handler’s Guide, p.g. 180
• Swarm: Handler’s Guide, p.g. 186
• Swarm (Flesh Creatures): as Swarm, but with the Flesh Creatures
• New Waters’ Resurrection, Incomplete (From Dust to Life, p.g. 10-11)
• If enough time passes: New Waters’ Resurrection, Complete (From Dust to Life, p.g. 10-11)
• Additional spells at the Handler’s discretion.

SAN LOSS: 1d4/1d10 Unnatural

Fibroblast, Body Chunk Creature

STR 8 CON 8 DEX 7 POW 4

HP 8 WP 4.

Armour: See, Rotting Resilience

SKILLS: Alertness 55%, Stealth 50%

ATTACKS:

Bite 35%, 1d6 damage

ADAPTABLE MOVEMENT: A fibroblast may possess LEAPER, SPIDER-LIKE or SUBTERRANEAN (Handler’s Guide p.g. 255) depending on physiology.

FEEDING: Each time a human victim takes damage from a fibroblast’s bite, the fibroblast regains 1 lost HP as it devours flesh and blood.

ROTTING RESILIENCE: A fibroblast takes half HP damage from all non-hypergeometric or fire attacks. A fibroblast reduced to 0 HP (for example, by a successful Lethality roll) may still not be fully destroyed, only so badly mauled that it no longer poses a threat.

SAN LOSS: 0/1d4 Unnatural

Fibrocartilage, Organs & Bone Creature

STR 4 CON 4 DEX 5 POW 3

HP 4 WP 3.

Armour: See, Rotting Resilience

SKILLS: Alertness 55%, Stealth 60%

ATTACKS:

Bite 35%, 1d4 damage

ADAPTABLE MOVEMENT: A fibrocartilage may possess LEAPER, SPIDER-LIKE or SUBTERRANEAN (Handler’s Guide p.g. 255) depending on physiology.

FEEDING: Each time a human victim takes damage from a fibrocartilage bite, the fibrocartilage regains 1 lost HP as it devours flesh and blood.

ROTTING RESILIENCE: A fibrocartilage takes half HP damage from all non-hypergeometric or fire attacks. A fibrocartilage reduced to 0 HP (for example, by a successful Lethality roll) may still not be fully destroyed, only so badly mauled that it no longer poses a threat.

SAN LOSS: 0/1d4 Unnatural

Fibrocyte, Muscles & Fat Creature

STR 2 CON 2 DEX 3 POW 2

HP 2 WP 2.

Armour: See, Rotting Resilience

SKILLS: Alertness 55%, Stealth 70%

ATTACKS:

Bite 35%, 1d3 damage

ADAPTABLE MOVEMENT: A fibrocyte may possess LEAPER, SPIDER-LIKE or SUBTERRANEAN (Handler’s Guide p.g. 255) depending on physiology.

FEEDING: Each time a human victim takes damage from a fibrocyte’s bite, the fibrocyte regains 1 lost HP as it devours flesh and blood.

ROTTING RESILIENCE: A fibrocyte takes half HP damage from all non-hypergeometric or fire attacks. A fibrocyte reduced to 0 HP (for example, by a successful Lethality roll) may still not be fully destroyed, only so badly mauled that it no longer poses a threat.

SAN LOSS: 0/1d4 Unnatural

Mesenchyme, Skin Cell Bug

STR 1 CON 1 DEX 17 POW 1

HP 1 WP 1.

Armour: None

SKILLS: Dodge 90%, Fly 75%

ATTACKS: n/a

SAN LOSS: 0/1 Unnatural if the viewer discovers they are resurrected and reconstructed human cells, otherwise 0.

Cultists, Generic

STR 10+1d4 CON 10+1d4 DEX 8+1d6 INT 8+1d6 POW 2+1d3 CHA 3+1d8

HP Derived WP Derived.

Armour: None

SKILLS: Alertness 60%, Navigate 60%, Survival 60%, Dodge 45%, Pilot: Small Boat 20%

ATTACKS, each cultist only has one of these weapons+unarmed:

Rifle 35%, 1d12 damage

Shotgun 35%, 2d8 damage

Handgun 35%, 1d10 damage

Machete 45%, 1d8 (+STR bonus) damage

Unarmed 35%, 1d4-1 (+ STR bonus) damage

Cultists, Post-wormification

STR 16 CON 16 DEX Human DEX-5 INT 5 POW 5

HP 16 WP 5.

Armour: See, Piecemeal.

SKILLS: Alertness 60%, Dodge 30%, Stealth 35%

ATTACKS, cultists can still use their weapon+unarmed:

Rifle 35%, 1d12 damage

Shotgun 35%, 2d8 damage

Handgun 35%, 1d10 damage

Machete 45%, 1d8+1 damage

Unarmed 40%, 1d6 damage

PIECEMEAL: Due to the piecemeal nature of the creature, normal weapons deal minimal damage to it. Lethality rolls against the creature always fail, and the creature takes no more than one HP of damage from most attacks. Shotgun pellets and shrapnel deal their minimum damage. Fire & Hypergeometry deal damage normally.

SPELLS:

• New Waters’ Resurrection, Incomplete (From Dust to Life, p.g. 10-11)
• If enough time passes: New Waters’ Resurrection, Complete (see below)

SAN LOSS: 1d4/1d10 Unnatural

Bayou Animals

Notable Animals in the Bayou include the American Aligator (Crocodile, Handler’s Guide p.g. 353), Wild Pigs (Boar, Hander’s Guide p.g. 353), and Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake (Venomous Snake, Handler’s Guide p.g. 356).

Kyle Boynton’s Scriptures on Healing Waters

In English, Louisiana Creole, and French. Study time: weeks or months. Occult +6, Unnatural +2, SAN loss 1d8.

Recommended Rituals: Healing Balm, Swarm, Swarm (All Flesh Creatures), New Waters Resurrection (Incomplete), New Waters Resurrection (Complete, assuming finished)

New Waters’ Resurrection (Incomplete)

Elaborate ritual. Study time: weeks; +1 Unnatural;

1D12 SAN. Activation: one hour; 6 WP, 1D12 SAN.

The New Waters’ Resurrection ritual is performed through the ritual mutilation of a living person and the invoking of Shub-Niggurath. As the victim is cut, their injuries immediately need to be filled with local soil, herbs, flowers, and animal fat. Once the victim’s body reaches the decay stage, human decay is replaced with the birth of the creatures.

New Waters’ Resurrection (Complete)

Elaborate ritual. Study time: months; +1 Unnatural;

2D8 SAN. Activation: one hour; 16 WP, 2D8 SAN.

The completed resurrection ritual is identical to the incomplete, with one crucial addition. During the ritual mutilation, every wounds on the body must be filled and immediately sealed by Healing Balm, marking them as belonging to Shub-Niggurath. When the victim dies — either from the shock of ritual torture or other means — and is in contact with soil, maggots and worms will come to devour the human and turn them into a Crawling One.

At the Handler’s discretion, someone who is already enthralled by Shub-Niggurath (like the cult members) and is ritually sacrificed can resurrect without the healing part of the completed ritual.

Credits

From Dust to Life was written by Abigale Isley for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E8vwTfLM05kzIp7nLB7c0j0oBqCrbXTuUPUNmUgg7Yo/edit