THE SITUATION
Someone using the alias TOME_LORD is raising money through a popular crowdfunding website to release a PDF of the Latin Necronomicon. The usual suspects are already salivating on the comments section (“Finally! Miskatonic University wouldn’t let me read it!1!!”), normal folk are treating it as a joke (“LOL is this real? Take my $10 dammit!”) and mainstream media is running it as silly season filler.
In Delta Green HQ, however, it’s sweaty palms time.
Agents are given a faux-Necronomicon PDF on a thumb-drive and told to swap it with the real PDF – something that will not only disappoint TOME_LORD’s backers but ruin public trust in stretch-goals forever. Deadline to release is 9 hours – it’s already broken the requested $10,000. Agents also need to find where the original is and destroy it.
THE TRUTH
TOME_LORD is Todd McCormick, a PhD student finalizing his thesis on Early New England Folklore and Myth Structures at Miskatonic University. Last month, doing low-paid grunt work cataloging the private library of recently deceased millionaire bibliophile, alleged wizard and all-round crotchety old-man, Erik Hohl, McCormick stumbled upon his near perfect Latin Necronomicon. After grappling with his conscience he “borrowed” it, scanned it and returned it to the dead man’s home before the library went into storage.
McCormick isn’t an occultist; he’s just a guy with a lot of student debts. Releasing a rare, out-of-copyright book for cash seemed a good idea at the time. He’s wrong.
GETTING STARTED
Shutting down the website or DDOSing it will draw unwanted attention, so Agents need to do some legwork through cyberspace to hunt their quarry. Getting TOME_LORD’s personal details involve either knocking on the crowdfunding company’s head office in New York and waving a fake warrant at them or hacking the company’s website (an opposed test 65%, takes 2 hours)
Deep trawling the Internet for clues (2 hours without Computer Science, 30 minutes with a successful roll) provides another entry. TOME_LORD posted to a public bibliophilia forum a week ago asking how much a Necronomicon was worth (the answer? “Stop lying, it isn’t real”). Checking the email address used to join the forum against public social media accounts finds McMormick’s real name and his home address.
Handlers: if you’re running a beer-and-pretzels game, just give TOME_LORD’s address up front.
TOME_LORD
When not at university, McCormick shares a ratty off-campus house with two other PhD students: Douglas Spink, biochemist, and Sean Wong, law. They all think they know their rights if Agents flash some badges but quickly freak out when things start going sideways. Wong’s daddy is a real lawyer, though, (80% Law) and can put a serious crimp in the Agents’ day if they use real names or get caught being naughty.
HUMINT deduces McCormick is more fearful of breaking some obscure interstate copyright law than unleashing the End Times. Suitably scary, or intimidatingly bureaucratic, agents can play him like a harp or bribe him. Agents might find him a useful asset if suitably rewarded.
Agents of a sneakier bent might use Computer Science to hack McCormack’s laptop over his woefully unprotected Wi-Fi connection, delete his .JPG files of the book and the PDF, then replace them with the more benign version in their possession. The closer to the deadline they do this the less likely McCormack is to notice (like most half-assed students he’s not made proper backups).
THE BOOK
Agents asking McCormack about that pesky dead-tree Necronomicon are told it’s at Hohl’s big fancy house in the Aylesbury suburbs, among his big library of rare and expensive books. He thinks it’s still there.
In fact, Hohl’s house is empty, his collection sent into storage at a warehouse outside of town. Security there isn’t tight but they’ll need to search through his collection to find the book. Just before they arrive, the case officer suddenly calls, demanding the Necronomicon is recovered for study. He’s ambiguous whether that’s because he wants it to himself or orders have come down from above…
COMPLICATIONS
The Journalist: Maxwell Rodriguez is a writer for edgy sociopolitical news site NODULE (this week’s top articles: “Star Wars Fans Skewed the Democrat Vote – What Next?” and “I Tried an Anarcho-Sex Commune for a Month!”). After spotting the crowdfunder and smelling a story, Rodriguez e-mailed TOME_LORD for an interview. McCormick agreed to a telephone interview and sealed the deal by sending a “pre-release” of the PDF to prove the book was legit
Everything looks peachy unless the fake PDF is released, whereupon Rodriguez releases a new article: “Necronomi-Gone?! – Who Killed the Book of the Dead?” It comes complete with theories of a cover-up and possibly a few quotes from McCormick about Men In Black on his doorstep.
Unlike McCormick, Rodriguez actually knows his rights, keeps backups and spends most of his time at his New York hipster attic apartment with his two cats. He won’t release the book himself but will take it to some NYU professors to work out its provenance. How Agents handle this is up to the Handler.
The Wannabes: the agents aren’t the first book-hounds to spot TOME_LORD’s forum post; this quintet of out-of-town wannabe hex-slingers have worked out where McCormick lives and come to nab the book and stop him releasing it online (they fear it’d just sour the magickal market by giving everyone cool powers). If the agents have been slow and methodical these guys may even have a head-start.
Luckily, for the Agents, these greenhorns are more Coen Brothers than Natural Born Killers. While tooled up, they have no real combat experience and aren’t expecting to get shot by professionals. Nevertheless they’re un-squeamish when it comes to, say, tracking down the original book’s location by pulling McCormick or his friends’ fingernails out.
Erik Hohl: having spent 50 years compiling his own personal Book-of-the-Dead, it shouldn’t come as a surprise this self-respecting wizard made a pact with darkness and has dug himself from his grave (or swapped bodies with a younger relative or metastasized into an 8-foot-tall blood-beast or whatever).
Hohl’s goal is to get his book back. He also desires a safe place to hide away and continue his studies. He starts hunting down the idiots who had the audacity to copy, steal and/or burn his book. He’s cruel, methodical, inhuman and immensely rich because his human form “inherited” his finances under a fake name upon his “death”. Pick a monster from the Handler Guide – go on, he can become that at will now. Have fun.
The Rivals: a three-man Outlaw cell (or Program team) is on the way to save the day. Better armed, better trained and a heck of a lot more heavy-handed than the players, their goal is to burn the book and sanitize potential vectors. Use the Expert Special Operator stats from the Handler’s Guide. And no, they won’t team up with the agents, though they’re not too keen to initiate a shoot-out either.
CONCLUSION
Were the agents forced to shoot McCormick or another innocent in the head? 1/1D0 SAN loss each. Destroying Hohl is +1D3 SAN; burning his cut-and-paste Necronomicon is another +2 SAN. Blocking the PDF’s release is +2 SAN and whiskeys all round.
STATISTICS
HOHL’S NECRONOMICON
Hohl spent more than 50-years, a few million dollars and dozens of “broken-up” Latin Necronicomicons to create this Frankenstein’s monster of a tome. In book-collector jargon a thrown-together but otherwise complete bundle of pages like this is known as a “fake-up.” Most of the book’s pages are handwritten, with some razored out of printed copies and a few Xeroxes or photographs pasted to blank leaves. Expertly bound in untitled green linen buckram, its stats are per Handler’s Guide.
TODD McCORMICK
STR 10 CON 10 DEX 10
INT 14 POW 12 CHA 11
HP 10 WP 12 SAN 60
SKILLS: Alertness 30%, Athletics 35%, Anthropology 70%, Bureaucracy 30%, Computer Science 10%, Firearms 25%, History 75%, Law 05%, Occult 70%, Stealth 25%
ATTACKS: Unarmed 40%, damage 1D4-1
WANNABE MAGICIANS (x5)
Robin Rutowski, Trayvon Freeman, Doug Watkins, Sandy Venghaus, Paul Spengler
STR 10 CON 11 DEX 11
INT 11 POW 13 CHA 10
HP 11 WP 13 SAN 45
SKILLS: Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, Criminology 10%, Dodge 30%, Occult 30%, Search 35%, Stealth 30%, Unnatural 3%
ARMOR: Kevlar vest, 3 points
ATTACKS: Unarmed 45%, damage 1D4-1
Knife 45%, damage 1D6
Beretta 92 .40 S&W 35%, damage 1D10
AR-15 Rifle (Semi-auto) 40%, damage 1D12
MAGIC: whatever the Handler thinks appropriate, but they’re not good at it
ERIK HOHL (HUMAN FORM)
STR 22 CON 24 DEX 15
INT 15 POW 14 CHA 09
HP 23 WP 14
SKILLS: Alertness 70%, Athletics 70%, Dodge 45%, Firearms 45%, Foreign Languages (Arabic 60%, German 50%, Hebrew 80%, Latin 60%, Polish 55%, Turkish 30%), Melee Weapons 45%, Search 40%, Stealth 75%, Track 55%, Unnatural 35%, everything else as Handler Guide.
ARMOR: 4 points
ATTACKS: Unarmed 45%, damage 1D8
RITUALS: Exchange Personalities, Changeling Feast, Infallible Suggestion, Wither, whatever the Handler feels appropriate
SAN LOSS: If he’s some kind of monster, whatever the Guide says
Credits
This was an entry to the 2019 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest, written by Agent Obtuse.