Oysters and Salt Pork
Brief:
Oyster farmer Everett Hart-Mire was arrested during a standard traffic stop in Dorchester County, Maryland. The arresting officer, Carl Martins, claimed that Hart-Mire threatened him even though no weapons were found in the arrestee’s vehicle. Hart-Mire was booked at Dorchester County Detention in Cambridge, and swabs were taken. Hart-Mire’s DNA tripped a Delta Green flag in CODIS — he has the extra DNA strands of a Deep One hybrid. He’s cooling his heels in an interrogation room while waiting for his lawyer.
GM Note:
Run this in-between other adventures, when the Agents are in the DMV area and available.
The Truth:
Everett is a Deep One hybrid and he’s both weird and a mean motherfucker, but not a fanatic. He’s got shit to do; he’s a single dad living running a coastal farm and seafood sales business. The most Unnatural thing Everett keeps is a small ancestral shrine around his wife’s ashes on the mantelpiece in the farmhouse — piles of seashells, a dried brief squid carcass, a decorative net, and candles. While his oyster farm does help clean out the Chesapeake Bay and could potentially make it more hospitable to Unnatural aquatic monstrosities, it also makes it cleaner for literally everything else living there. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
About Everett:
Agents can discover the following about Everett and his “projects” with legwork and the following rolls:
- Opinions about Everett vary from “kinda rough, kinda shy, but salt of the earth” to “he doesn’t take kindly to outsiders”. He’s from an old local family and started an oyster farm decades after the wild harvest collapsed. Outwardly positive opinions of Everett are limited to people who buy his oysters. (HUMINT/Persuade)
- Everett’s hyphenated name comes from his beloved wife, Amara Mire, now deceased. Amara, also a hybrid, moved from Rhode Island. He has two children with her, Flora and Perry, who attend Mace’s Lane Middle School. (Bureaucracy)
- Everett and his wife opened Hart-Mire Shoreline Farms, an oyster-growing operation certified by both MDH and Maryland DNR. He mostly sells to restaurants, though he does run a small oyster bar on his property, and experiments with new cultivars. His work in combined bottom-bed and rack-and-bag cultures have earned him a Chesapeake Oyster Innovation Award. (Accounting + Bureacracy/HUMINT)
- Researching or hacking into Everett’s personal accounts and social media reveals no obvious connection to the supernatural. (Computer Science)
The Arrest:
Looking into the circumstances of the arrest with a reasonable mix of Law, Bureaucracy, and and/or Criminology, the Agents can discover the following:
- Carl Martins is the single biggest earner for Dorchester County when it comes to tickets.
- Martins says he made a pretextual stop based on a strange rattling sound emitting from Hart-Mire’s truck as it idled at a stoplight. Pretextual stops based on immutable characteristics are illegal in Maryland, but otherwise legal.
- Hart-Mire repeatedly refused to answer any questions past handing over his license and registration.
- Hart-Mire did not break eye contact with Martins even when ordered out of the car. Martins had to forcibly turn him around and cuff him to break eye contact.
- Currently, Hart-Mire is being held (and still cuffed) in an interrogation room in Dorchester County Detention and has not been assigned a holding cell. The room has a one-way glass but no cameras and the door can be double-locked (magnetically and physically).
- Everett Hart-Mire does not answer any questions without his lawyer present, even if roughed up.
- The truck has been impounded — it is full of waste shells, busted nets, and assorted tools.
Hart-Mire Shoreline Farms:
Traveling to Everett’s home and business reveals the following:
- Hart-Mire Shoreline Farms is in the unincorporated community of Point Of View, about a 25-minute drive from Dorchester County Detention.
- “Farm” might seem like a misnomer to Agents who are used to wide, rolling fields, amber waves of grain, cows, etc. Hart-Mire Shoreline Farms sits on a little less than an acre of land with a family house, a two-story detached garage/warehouse, and a small raw bar kiosk setup near the road.
- The farmhouse is a two-story colonial on a pile foundation. It’s about as well-kept as a house lived in by a widower and his two pre-teen children can be — there’s plenty of visible fixes and patches. Flora and Perry each have their own rooms, each with handmade curtains and mismatched furniture, and the master bedroom really only seems to be used on the side of the large Amish-made bed closer to the window. A small gun safe in the closet opens with a fingerprint and contains a Ruger 10/22 and ammunition. The circuit box in the kitchen runs a line outside.
The children are not home and are either at school or have been removed by a social worker if it’s after hours.
- The kiosk is built out of a mix of scrap woods, with a butcher block counter and an outdoor hunting freezer. During late spring and summer evenings, sometimes even into the early fall, it’s strung charmingly with fairy lights. Locals frequent the kiosk in-season. The kiosk is powered by a line run from the farmhouse’s circuit breaker, which Everett disconnects out of season.
- The garage is built from cinder block and divided into two levels. The first level holds a broken skiff on blocks, several piles of crab pots, nets carefully strung on the walls, and a neat rack of fishing poles. Several troughs with flowing water washing through them dominate the space, used for washing and curing catches. There is also a precariously tight spot to park Everett’s truck. A duck boat on a trailer sits just outside. The second floor is primarily cold storage for seafood — not just oysters, but also blue crabs and whatever fish Everett can easily use to supplement his income. A kitchenette and vacuum sealer allow Everett and hired help to break down and pack any non-oyster catches for sale. A large and well-kept gun safe uses Amara Hart-Mire’s birthday (0229) as the code and holds a Benelli Super Black Eagle 3, a Winchester 1897, two youth model Mossberg 500 combos, and a Savage model 110 in.243. Each has appropriate ammunition. A dumbwaiter leading to the first floor makes transporting ready-to-sell catches easier.
- Much of the actual operation of the farm takes place in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, on and around the dock.
- The dock tethers a derelict skiff (Everett hasn’t gotten rid of it yet), a Jon boat for the kids, and a center console skiff with large chests for catches. Sassy, a Chesapeake retriever with lazy, slightly bulbous eyes naps on ratty blankets near the engine. She growls warningly if the Agents get in biting range and will not hesitate to attack if they threaten her. She can be calmed with treats and soothing words and is not supernatural.
- The oyster beds take up roughly five acres of shallow seabed and operate on a manual pulley system built on wooden pylons strung with polypropylene rope. Oysters are seeded into the Chesapeake’s silt, then carefully gathered into loosely-woven bags protected by chicken-wire racks to grow once their shells are properly formed. Some are allowed to grow wild to continue the population. Everett uses this unusual system to grow new cultivars of oysters, including Green-Eyed Ladies (creamy, earthy), New Points Of View (earthy, briny), and Wet Whistles (metallic, salty). Several crab pots are also strung on the rope.
Some Potential Outcomes:
Depending on how the Agents decide to use the information, the following occurs:
- Holding Everett for longer than 6 hours or transporting him to another facility angers the locals; they will converge on the detention center to look out for their own against the feds. They outnumber the Agents at least 2-1.
- Killing Everett results in a local outcry, and the nearby Deep One families will seek vengeance when narratively appropriate — they will go after local cops first before discovering federal involvement.
- Killing or incarcerating Everett means that his Deep One hybrid children will be dropped headfirst into the foster system and deeply traumatized by it, potentially setting them up as antagonists later down the line.
- Getting Everett released, even with good reason, will upset higher-ups and fellow operatives in the Agents’ Delta Green faction. However, doing so may also allow the Agents to take Everett as a Bond depending on how they treated him, and they may be able to shake him down for oysters and use of his boats during vignettes.
- Disturbing the income stream Carl Martins brings to the county will result in a flood of complaints to the Agents’ non-Delta Green superiors — especially if the Agents are state or county, not federal, employees — and may result in career consequences.
——Everett Hart-Mire
Deep One Hybrid
STR 15 CON 15 DEX 14 INT 14 POW 12 CHA 9
HP 15 WP 12 SAN 48 (depression, insomnia)
Armor 1 point of thick skin and muscle
Skills Accounting 30%, Alertness 30%, Athletics 40%, Bureaucracy 20%, Dodge 20%, Drive 20%, Firearms 50%, First Aid 20%, Navigate 40%, Persuade 20%, Pilot 40%, Science (marine biology, food science) 50%, Survival 20%, Swim 75%, Unnatural 10%
Attacks Talons (55%, 1d8), Grapple 55%
Almost Human: Everett is an ugly motherfucker, but ugly within human limits. Meeting his eyes for too long can cause an uncanny valley disgust/discomfort reaction in humans, especially if seeing him triggers SAN loss (GM discretion).
Partially Amphibious: Everett can stay submerged for 1d12 hours at a time, and often does so to engage in oyster farming.
Inhuman Movement: Everett can move up to 25kph on land and 30kph in water, and climb over obstacles that would stop a normal human.
Rituals: None
SAN Loss: 0/1d4
Carl Martins
Deputy Sheriff
STR 16 CON 14 DEX 14 INT 15 POW 10 CHA 11
HP 15 WP 10 SAN 60 (PTSD)
Armor 4 points, reinforced kevlar vest
Skills Alertness 30%, Athletics 40%, Criminology 40%, Drive 50%, Firearms 45%, HUMINT 30%, Law 20%, Persuade 30%, Unarmed Combat 40%
Attacks Grapple 40%, Service pistol 45% (1d10)
Sassy
Chesapeake retriever
STR 12 CON 13 DEX 13 POW 10
HP 12 WP 10
Armor 1 point of fur and thick skin
Skills Alertness 70%, Survival 20%, Track By Smell 80%, Unnatural 1%
Attacks Bite 30% (1d6), Knock Down 50% (roll against target’s STRx5, success renders target prone)
Sense The Unnatural: Sassy was bred by a Deep One hybrid family and is very familiar with their smell. She does not panic when around Unnatural beings, but can point them out if ordered to do so.
Sample Local
STR 16 CON 15 DEX 12 INT 10 POW 10 CHA 10
HP 15 WP 10
Armor None
Skills Craft 40%, Drive 30%, Heavy Machinery 20%, Unarmed Combat 35%
Attacks Unarmed 35% (1d4-1), Grapple 35%
Credits
Oysters and Salt Pork was written by Jacqueline Bryk for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18HouT_BSHo-6vQgL0W_KIGzq4_QTqm-BEUgx7hQdc9A/edit