RECURSION
It’s Summer ‘99 and Agents arriving to a welfare check on an old Program friendly leads to a temporal anomaly. Maybe the Agents can handle a time-looping madman, but can they handle when they see themselves arrive again?
THE SET-UP:
Doug Wallace is a retired software engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and long-time Delta Green friendly. He hasn’t been used in nearly a decade, but the Program still keeps tabs on him via deep spyware on his PC and good old fashioned surveillance. Recently, his behavior pinged the tracking system as potentially concerning so a small team is being sent to check in on Doug at his home. He lives in a cookie-cutter McMansion at 484 Klein Loop in a dismally monotonous suburban development called Mussurana Estates, where every street and house are nearly identical in their beige banality.
THE TRUTH:
Doug Wallace prides himself on always being the smartest man in the room, but now Doug has brain cancer. His ego and desperation mean not only has he kept this hidden from his deeply and frustratingly spiritual wife Lorraine, but has decided Doug knows best and to go against traditional medicine in search of something else. It was fairly easy for him to burglarize an old Green Box he’d previously maintained and acquire from it an old manuscript penned in Aimaqi, a language with which he was wholly unfamiliar. This didn’t stop Doug, who, thinking he’d found a cure from antiquity, set about attempting to perform a rite described therein. Doug was not only incorrect about what he’d found, he failed miserably in the execution and has trapped himself in an endlessly repeating loop of time. Seconds at first, and only within the area inscribed in his attic floor where he attempted the rite, but the loops grew to minutes, then hours, and the area enveloped has expanded from the ritual site, to the room, to the house.
His wife returned from a visit to a local bookstore to find a nude, raving Doug in the living room brandishing a gun. He promptly shot her in the head. Every loop, Doug is driven more and more mad as a temporal entity worms its way into his brain like a second cancer. Only his death will stop the entity taking a permanent hold on this reality.
Shortly after this, the first Agents arrive.
The Agents are the second iteration of their group to go check on Doug. The first team arrived and met the same Doug that Lorraine had. He immediately opened fire and a fight ensued. During this, another Lorraine arrived and attacked the Agents with a folding knife from her purse before being killed.. Doug, however, managed to kill the remaining team members leaving their corpses strewn about the house before the loop reset and he was again in the attic.
THE STREET: The Agents will be issued an official vehicle for this operation and will arrive at the house to see two nearly identical blue sedans as well as another nearly identical version of their vehicle already out front. The official vehicle is unmarked and non-descript, but any agent investigating it will notice that the plate numbers are identical, and searching inside will reveal anything that is currently in the new Agents vehicles, minus weapons whatever they are taking with them from the vehicle. The same applies to the sedans: matching plate numbers, and almost identical generic items in each vehicle. Agents who examine the vehicles and realize they aren’t merely similar, but identical, take 0/1 SAN loss from Unnatural.
Once the Agents are here, they’re trapped. Heading down any street will lead them to this street. Opening any doors on any other houses only leads them back into this house. From this point until Doug is killed, there is no escape. Trying any of these tactics and discovering the result inflicts 1/1d6 SAN loss from Unnatural
THE HOUSE:
Entering the unlocked front door reveals a large, if plain, living room. Just inside the doorway is the corpse of Lorraine, with an obvious gunshot wound just above the left eye. There is evidence of a struggle immediately obvious, but any Agent with Forensics 40% or higher or who passes a roll at +20% can tell that the damage indicates several people were all fighting here. There’s more blood than just what would come from Lorraine being shot. The rest of the house (besides the CORPSES and ATTIC) is incredibly nondescript and bland, to the point of being notably boring. Nothing about the house implies anything Unnatural aside from the corpses. The Handler should reinforce the plainness of the house at this stage.
THE CORPSES:
As the Agents explore the house, they will stumble upon their own corpses. Each will either be shot several times, stabbed, or a combination. Each was killed either by gunshots from Doug or stabbed by a maddened Lorraine. Upon first seeing another Agents corpse, the Agents take 0/1d4 SAN from Violence (only once), and upon an Agent seeing their own corpse, an additional 1/1d8 SAN from Unnatural.
LORRAINE:
Shortly after the corpses are found, a third blue sedan pulls up out front. Lorraine arrives a third time and approaches the house distressed. Upon entering the house or encountering the Agents, she snaps. Unless she can be talked down, she’ll go for her knife and attack the Agents. If she is talked down or subdued she can eventually be persuaded to talk about Doug, stating that he’s been obsessed with something in the attic for weeks and would get aggressive about her not entering that space.
Lorraine can re-arrive as much as the handler wants, though if two living Lorraines see each other, both will go indefinitely insane.
THE ATTIC:
Doug has transformed their cluttered attic into a ritual space, drawing elaborate signs and sigils on the floor. He stands, whispering his failed incantation several minutes after each loop, before getting nude, grabbing a pistol, and descending the stairs into the home. If the Agents wait too long before investigating, Doug will emerge in a rage, attacking the Agents on sight.
Doug has a lingering temporal aura that can affect Agents who attack him. Agents attacking Doug in any way must make a POWx5 roll. On a failure, the Agent will appear to freeze and rewind to a point just before making the attack. On a critical failure, the Agent loops back to a point outside the house where they first arrived. Witnessing an Agent loop or looping themselves causes 1/1d4 SAN loss from Unnatural.
A successful Search roll in the attic will uncover the manuscript hidden in a box or old Christmas ornaments. Translation and study of the manuscript takes a week or more and reveals a funerary text with methods intended to prepare a soul for reincarnation. It’s unclear how Doug managed to cause what he did from any accurate reading of the text.
THE AGENTS:
After Doug is killed, a final, fragmented loop begins. The Agents official vehicle will arrive on the street outside with another group of the Agents themselves emerging. Their approach may be similar to the original team, or more dramatic based on how many vehicles or bodies are visible from the street. Any player whose Agent was killed should play themselves in this new iteration.
The new team will likely be hostile to the players team and combat is expected, using the Agents stats and skills for the new teams rolls. Careful Agents should be rewarded for finding ways to reason with themselves to avoid bloodshed. Delta Green however, will not look kindly on multiple copies of Agents running around.
THE AFTERMATH:
The house and street will likely have several identical vehicles and bodies lying about. The anomaly trapping the Agents here slowly breaks down after Doug dies, but the remnants of the events all remain. It takes about 2 hours for the house to rejoin the rest of the time stream and for potential witnesses to appear, though simply leaving then and there will allow an escape as the streets no longer lead back to the house.
Any hint to the Handler of living copies of Agents leads to a hit squad being assembled to make sure only one of any Agent remains.
STATSDOUG:
STR 11 CON 14 DEX 12 INT 16 POW 15
HP 16 WP 6
SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Athletics 30%, Dodge 40%
ATTACKS: 9mm Pistol (Firearms 40%, 1d8 dmg), Unarmed 30% 1d3 dmg
LORRAINE:
STR 10 CON 10 DEX 14 INT 11 POW 12
HP 12 WP 10
SKILLS: Alertness 30%, Athletics 40%, Dodge 50%
ATTACKS: Folding Knife (Melee Weapons 45%, 1d6 dmg), Unarmed 25% 1d3 dmg
Credits
Recursion was written by Matt Edon for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rganovb4FVZt4j-b43wbt_q8gYX2IysLxj5ZDzSPznI/edit