Relief
CW: Depression, Suicide
The Tune
The tune is many things.
IT'S A SONG called "Black Hole" that's doing numbers online.
IT'S A MEMETIC INFECTION spread by a specific arrangement of notes in any key. It only affects people who are already suffering from depression and suicidal ideation. For everyone else, it's just a song.
IT'S A COMMUNION with the darkness, which responds in turn, pulling you deeper. The tune is always stuck in your head. You become even more depressed and suicidal, but you blame that on other stressors. You want to stop living, but you still fear dying.
Now, when you’re alone, you curl up, tuck your limbs and head towards your chest, and sing. Quietly, to yourself. Anytime you have a few minutes of plausible deniability. In the shower. In your parked car. And always at night, for hours, until you fall asleep.
IT'S A SUICIDE that doesn't hurt your body or leave a mess for your loved ones. Because you don't really want to die, you just want to stop existing. It's an important distinction. A tempting one.
Days, weeks, or months later, when you’re ready, you curl up and sing for the last time. You can hear it singing back, in a muffled piping harmony. It's just on the other side. Waiting.
You begin to contort like a gymnast, then you go further. First your knees, then your arms and legs and head, then the rest. All pulled into the black hole in your chest. It’s comfortable there, like being tucked in under a warm blanket. It only takes a minute. Once you get started, it helps pull you along. It's not difficult. It doesn’t hurt. You know what it is?
IT'S A RELIEF.
Intervention
Few things delay a victim’s demise. Talking them through their suicidal thoughts may help, but the darkness will reassert its influence overnight. Keeping the victim around others may force them to avoid singing for fear of public embarrassment, but it also increases the chances of an innocent witnessing them ‘disappear.’
There’s only one guaranteed way to save a victim. If they’re convinced of the tune’s unnatural danger, they will consciously reject it, and the infection will stop. Unfortunately, Delta Green vehemently opposes spreading the truth about the unnatural, and any Agents doing this are liable to get reprimanded, or far worse, by their handler.
‘Disappearing’
Witnessing a ‘disappearance’ costs 0/1D4 SAN to the unnatural. Someone can interrupt this by pulling the body out with a successful STR*5 roll. On a critical failure, their arm gets sucked in as well.
On a success, whatever was submerged comes out bleached white and impossibly stretched out, covered in caustic residue. Their jaw hangs down to their belly. Eyes are vacuous slits three feet long. Limbs are like tentacles, long and spindly with rubber bones. These transformed body parts seek to pull would-be saviors into the black hole, then finish the job with the victim.
The black hole remains open, a 6” diameter endless sucking funnel in the victim’s chest. It howls the tune like brass in overlapping, ever-descending Shepard tones. If the victim’s head was submerged, it screeches in unison. After several minutes of being exposed, it vanishes.
The Truth
The tune was translated from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs into the song “Black Hole” and posted on Reddit. A TikTok cover got 1.2M views. It has now claimed the lives of thousands. The disappearance of the governor’s daughter is the first to receive enough attention and conclusive evidence to draw in Delta Green.
Briefing
Ashley Burring was a young white woman who attended a local university. Security footage shows Burring entering her apartment four days ago. She was reported missing the next day. An extensive search of the dorm found no evidence of murder or an alternate exit. She seemingly disappeared without a trace. As Burring's father is the state governor, this drew a lot of attention.
The Agents are to pose as part of the FBI missing persons investigation. They're given FBI credentials, Burring's address, and a police contact. They must determine if Burring's disappearance is unnatural, and if so, deal with that accordingly.
Escalations
- Reveal another infected person.
- Infect a susceptible Agent.
- Reveal that an Agent’s bond was digitally exposed to the tune.
- Have someone see a ‘disappearance’ and call 911.
- Have their handler task the Agents with observing a victim to see how they ‘disappear.’
The Police Investigation
The police have no leads. Digital forensics found nothing wrong with the security footage, which covers every possible egress from the building. A psychological profile identified Burring as at risk of suicide, but that’s irrelevant without a body. Currently, they're organizing useless volunteer manhunts because they’re good for PR.
Deputy Noah Dunam
A young white man with a patchy brown beard who acts sarcastic and jaded to fit in with the old boys. Delta Green has already established the Agents' credibility to Dunam, so he will cooperate with information requests, but nothing more.
Sheriff Lesley Higgins
A gruff, portly white man humming the tune from his desk. As a widower with PTSD leading this impossible investigation, he was easily infected.
The Dorm
Marks or security immediately buzz in anyone identifying as law enforcement. The apartment is as messy as you'd expect: laundry everywhere except the basket, a filthy bathroom, sparse food, and even sparser furniture.
Burring has prescription Prozac in the bathroom medicine cabinet.
The Bedroom
Behind police tape, Burring's room is a mess, left untouched for crime scene investigators.
Burring’s phone lays on the bed alongside an empty AirPods case. "Black Hole" by Rachel Chau is active on the media player. Unlocking it (Marks and Dunam know the password) reveals texts brushing off her mom’s wellness checks and canceling on weekend plans.
A nightstand holds a journal, in which Burring wrote about her struggle with insomnia, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. Sporadic entries became nightly for the last few weeks, at the same time that the lyrics to “Black Hole” started appearing in the margins.
Melody Marks
A young black woman in university-branded sweats, whose smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s overly compliant with law enforcement, and otherwise dispassionately hums the tune from another room.
While Burring was always unhappy, she withdrew even more over the past month, canceling plans and skipping classes. When Marks heard Burring humming in her room four days ago, she thought that meant things were getting better.
Marks was susceptible to infection due to school stress, grieving Burring’s disappearance, and repeated police interrogations.
Black Hole
This TikTok shows Chau dramatically singing in her bedroom while playing the acoustic guitar. The performance is haunting. It was posted 4 weeks ago, and has 1.2M views. The lyrics go:
Pulling my arms in
Bringing me to rest
Pulling my head into
The black hole in my chest
Chau has made similar posts for years now, but none were ever this popular, and she hasn't posted since. The top comment is Farley accusing Chau of ripping off his song.
Rachel Chau
A pretty Vietnamese woman from Montana, a history major, and a shift manager at Macy's. She lived alone and had limited contact with her strict parents. Chau’s store manager reported her missing three weeks ago.
Sam Callaway
Chau’s coworker. A young, heavily pierced Puerto Rican man with bipolar disorder. He heard her singing the song at work, and was recently infected after blowing his husband’s savings during a manic episode.
The Origin
Farley is a history grad student who’s using advanced forensic technology to recreate and then translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. His professor found the tune in a tomb full of empty sarcophagi. In the Reddit post, he explains how he roughly translated it, then set the "notes" to a common Pentatonic scale. It includes a recording of him amateurishly singing “Black Hole.”
Dominic Farley
A lanky white guy with curly blonde hair who likes to play devil’s advocate. Farley will delete the post if directed to by his supervisor or convincingly threatened, but not before complaining about it online.
Conclusion
The Agents should quickly discover a connection between the song and the ‘disappearances.’ They can scrub the song from the internet and investigate the infection, ideally witnessing a ‘disappearance’ themselves.
Beyond that is the Sisyphean task of tracking millions of vectors for an infection that’s harmless to most, but lethal to about 2-4% of people, vastly more deadly than suicide. Although it leaves no unnatural footprint, that many missing people won’t go unnoticed. Much like suicide, the tune cannot be stopped completely, but it can be mitigated.
Conclude with the Agents debriefing with their handler. Their recommendations will color how Delta Green deals with the infection going forward. Agents lose 1/1D8 SAN to helplessness for suggesting that they sweep it under the rug, or 0/1D4 SAN for recommending reasonable proactive solutions. Agents who personally combat it instead lose 1D4 from a bond for overextending themselves, and gain 1D6 minus 1D6 SAN for their efforts.
Stat Block
Black Hole Spawn
“A suicide that doesn’t hurt your body”
| STR 12 | CON 12 | DEX 12 | INT 10 | POW 10 |
| HP 6 per limb / head |
ATTACKS: Tentacle 40%, 1 damage from caustic residue and the target is pinned (see LIMBS).
Two-Foot-Long Teeth 40%, damage 1D6. This attack is contingent on the Spawn’s head being transformed, and the target being within a couple feet of the body.
LIMBS: The Spawn begins with four tentacles, one for each limb submerged, which can each attack separately. If multiple tentacles attack the same target at once, roll once and add +20% to the attack roll for each additional tentacle.
If this attack is successful against a target that’s already pinned, the target has one of their limbs sucked into the black hole. If it’s successful a third time, the target is consumed.
SANITY LOSS: 1/1D8 from the unnatural.
Saving someone from transforming earns an Agent 1 SAN.
If their head wasn’t submerged, the victim loses 1D6/1D20 SAN to the unnatural as their transformed body acts against their will. Amputation is their only chance for survival.
Credits
Relief was written by NathanKlas for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CHiEKHVx5TfSFk8eHFy3IFGhYRvxEl-ofwLZurWvnJM/edit