TO THE WINDOW, TO THE QUOLL
Written for the 2021 Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Contest.
No animals were harmed in the testing of this shotgun.
Reports of a pack of people dressed up as cavemen, or perhaps a weird band of homeless people, are rampaging through the town or city the Agents are located in, or are passing through after completing another scenario. Normally, this wouldn’t be their problem, but while they’re driving through the city or walking down the block, the cavemen run into the Agents’ path chasing a small animal. When one of them dives to try and catch the animal, a window to another time and place opens before them, and in the chaos the animal, the cavemen, and the Agents fall through, opening their eyes in a different time and place.
WHAT I WANNA KNOW IS; WHERE’S THE CAVEMAN?
The cavemen chasing the small animal are Grugs from Moss Covered Arrowhead on the hunt for a quoll that has stranded them in time and space. When the quoll gets scared or cornered, it opens a window to another time and jumps through. The window remains open for a few seconds after the quoll jumps, which allows others to pursue it. The Grugs, and now the Agents, are lost in another time. Getting home requires utilizing the quoll’s odd power. The Agents may not be equipped to hunt and track a small mammal through alien terrain, which is where the Grugs come in. At least one of them is a Rockbanger with good tracking abilities and can find the quoll if the Agents are stumped.
This is intended to be a high velocity chase sequence through time that ends when the quoll dies or runs out of POW. Shooting the quoll won’t solve the problem, which somehow, the Grugs know. Killing the quoll ends the effect of whatever spell it’s under, but doing so prevents any new portals from opening, which would leave both parties stranded. If the Agents try to harm the quoll, one of the Grugs will interfere. They won’t immediately escalate to violence, preferring instead to shove the Agents away. The Grugs seem to already have some familiarity with modern firearms, at least enough to know that getting shot kills people.
THE WINDOW
The window is an opaque sheet of time that slices open like a nictitating membrane sliding back across an eye, revealing the world in greater clarity where before it had been blurry, but safe. The window is a two-dimensional construct: it always appears to be flat and “facing” the viewer, no matter what direction it is seen from. The window is permeable; air passes freely through it, as do objects both living and nonliving.
Windows & Destinations
When the quoll opens a window, roll a D8 to determine what location it jumps to. Or pick your favorite, or write in your own answer; I’m not a cop.
- The Grugs’ home time. The air is cold, and the ground is slick with rime from a nearby rushing river. The Grugs point at what appear to be trail markers and carved signs; they know this place.
- The Grugs will abandon pursuit of the quoll if a window opens to their home time period. If the Agents have been at all helpful to the Grugs, the Grugs stay on the case to try and help the Agents find the quoll while remaining in the cold past.
- The earth is loose and dusty beneath the Agents’ feet, like walking through ash. In the distance, a ruined city looms, skyline unrecognizable. A striped mammal with a canine appearance stares at the Agents from a good way off before wandering away across the empty plains.
- The quoll runs towards the other mammal, which will stop to watch it approach. Once the Agents or the Grugs are nearby, having helpfully flanked the quoll, the big striped dog-thing lunges at the quoll. The quoll panics, and a new window opens.
- The window opens to a torrent of seawater that quickly floods the surrounding area. Something that looks like a miniature seal with a strangely pointed face falls out of the window and begins to flop around on vestigial limbs that haven’t quite yet become flippers.
- The deluge startles the quoll, which backpedals, then immediately opens a second window.
- The two sides of the window seem identical, except for the season and the fact that subtly different versions of the Agents, Grugs, and quoll face the Agents from across the window. The Agents, the Grugs, and the quoll all stare at one another for a moment before the window blinks again, and the two parties switch positions before the window blinks closed.
- Seeing the dopplegangers costs 1/1D4 SAN.
- This side of the window isn’t more than a year away from the Agents’ starting point.
- Jagged stones and strange pillars surround the Agents like a forest. This is not a place of honor.
- For entering the forest, the Agents take 1 HP damage each.
- On a cold dry plain, a giant bird snaps a large rodent in half with the curve in its beak before swallowing each piece in turn.
- The teratorn will be unwilling to engage a group of prey, but moving towards it in a threatening manner will cause it to strike before flying away. An attack from the teratorn’s beak or wing deals 1D4 HP damage.
- A harsh, cold wind tears at the Agents. In the distance, they hear the sound of something almost like an elephant. A small, luxuriously furry rodent peeks at the Agents out of the snow before vanishing into a small crack in the terrain.
- The Agents have returned home, exactly when and where they started. A possum skitters out of a trash can that fell over during the initial collision that sent the group into the window to begin with.
- The quoll will try to run into that same trashcan, perhaps not understanding it can now be easily trapped by the Agents righting the can. Once it realizes it’s trapped however, the quoll will attempt to open another window.
THE QUOLL
The quoll is an ancient marsupial mammal that persists relatively unchanged to this day. They’re cute, fuzzy, and liable to devour their own young. This quoll in particular is affected by some curse or spell that has caused it to come unstuck in time as it bounces around its own genomic history in search of safety. When frightened or trapped, the quoll instinctively tries to warp to the next geographically closest mammal with which it shares significant genetic markers, even if that other marsupial exists in a vastly different historical epoch than the one the quoll is currently in.
To take the science down a notch; scare the quoll, and you’re going to Pleistocene Park.
The window opens whenever the quoll is frightened or cornered, but opening the window costs POW. The quoll starts with 8 POW and burns 1 every time it opens the window. When the quoll reaches 0 POW, it is no longer able to teleport. At the Handler’s discretion, one of three things happens when the quoll makes its last trip through the window:
- The quoll dies.
- Having burnt out all its POW, the quoll is no longer in a state compatible with life. The Agents are trapped in whatever time period they were in when the quoll died.
- The quoll goes into a coma.
- If the Agents can figure out how to restore POW to the animal, or perhaps simply care for it well enough, it is possible for the quoll to wake and jump again, enabling the Agents to potentially get home if trapped somewhere undesirable.
- The quoll lives.
- The quoll is alive and awake, but has no POW. It is exhausted from the pursuit by endurance predators. It would be laughably easy for one of the Agents to lift the tired, exhausted animal, as long as they didn’t mind being weakly bitten by and likely pissed on by a terrified rodent.
- If given time, the quoll will regain POW at a rate of 1 POW per 3 months. The quoll’s maximum POW score is 10. If the Agents are able to bond with the animal and convince it that they are not a threat during that time period, they could well end up with a time-traveling pet as a companion.
- Putting a collar with a permanent version of the Yellow Sign on the quoll would make it incapable of opening more windows.
SAN COSTS & REWARDS
- Seeing the window open for the first time costs 0/1 SAN.
- Seeing something interact with the window for the first time costs 0/1 SAN.
- Going through the window costs 1/1D4 SAN.
- Being trapped in the wrong time period costs 1/1D10 SAN.
- Realizing that the Grugs are much nearer in the human genetic lineage than they should be costs 0/1 SAN.
- Sending the Grugs home rewards 1 SAN.
Final word count: 1492 words.
Credits
To the Window, To the Quoll was written by Bird Bailey for the 2021 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-fY6r2cmLXg7tPfujs6BBLdHy3ZbmW0UXg8XPxCcHEM/edit