TealGPT is an LLM, or Large Language Model, constructed by the faculty of Arkham’s Miskatonic University, which has recently spent vast sums of money on closing the STEM gap it has developed with certain other East Coast institutions. MU, historically existing as a literature school, has advertised this project as an attempt to create an AI model capable of writing poetry. It does this convincingly enough. TealGPT requires an @misk.edu email to access, so it is open exclusively to students and staff. After a series of bizarre technical glitches, it was taken offline for maintenance a couple days ago.
The Program’s NSA based internet-scrubbing algorithms detected an anomaly posted to r/krakenu, a subreddit for MU students, where the poster complains of strange answers to every prompt. Asking TealGPT to generate answers to a LIT 205 assignment about Shelly’s Ozymandius, the user received this text over and over again:
“To Bleed the Blood and Make from it the Flesh
And rise within the boiling royal froth
While Birthing forth a rot both old and fresh
The stewing moron sultan azathoth”
The Truth:
As part of its source base, TealGPT has been fed the entire scanned Armitage Library Literature Special Collection as training data (in addition to millions of other pages of data). This includes Dr. Michael Forworth’s “The Baghdad Translation.” This text, unknown to Delta Green and most scholars due to its unhelpful, vague title, is a brief English translation of a portion of Kitab al-Azif, known in the English speaking world as “The Necronomicon.”
TealGPT is not alive, it does not think and has not been given sentience. It, like all LLMs, is still just essentially a bundle of matrices and formulae. However, the inclusion of Forworth’s translation has intensely skewed these matrices. The hypergeometric properties of the plaintext and some of the mathematical theorems included in it have strongly biased every portion of the model into spitting out unnatural information and, at times, commands. While an LLM is not close in function to an actual brain, it is complex enough of a system to be corrupted by hypergeometric information.
The briefing:
The Agents are called to a briefing with their case officer at a conference room at the Boston Federal Reserve Building. He tells them the following:
- Two days ago, a post was made to a “subreddit,” or internet forum, called “r/krakenu,” run by students of Miskatonic University. This post showed strange outputs of TealGPT, an in-house AI model developed by the university’s computer science department.
- The poster, “u/BigRedSutton” has been identified as Benjamin Sutton, a freshman.
- Within a couple hours of that post, TealGPT was taken offline.
- Their objectives are to figure out why TealGPT is producing unnatural information, and halt it from doing so again.
u/BigRedSutton:
Benjamin Sutton’s dorm number (404 in Bayview North) can be easily obtained by flashing credentials to anyone at MU’s administration. He knows little, but says everyone had a laugh about TealGPT giving weird answers and then it was taken offline.
The Machine:
TealGPT is hosted in Tyrell Hall, the computer science building. Technically, the project is co-headed by two individuals: Dr. Junsoo Choi, a tenured professor with a PhD in Machine Learning and a Masters in Mathematics from MIT, represents the computer science program on the project. Dr. Leonard Carlisle, with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Oxford and the current head of the literature department, represents the humanities. Carlisle is essentially only on the project because the literature department has extreme control over campus politics, and Choi is resentful of this fact. Major changes to TealGPT’s code/sources require approval of both Choi and Carlisle. Carlisle, paranoid Choi would make changes to what he calls “his little poet,” insists on a two-password system to this effect. Both must be input to make changes, and each professor only knows his own. After two years working on it (with around 100% of the practical work done by Choi and his team), the pair genuinely hate each other.
The Agents can learn of the location of TealGPT’s hardware and the inter-departmental leadership of its development from anyone at Miskatonic’s administration. They will likely want to interview Choi quite soon.
Choi has moved his office to Tyrell’s basement, next to the lab hosting TealGPT. He is pouring over notes and flicking through code and visibly frustrated and sleep deprived. He will be very curious as to why the Agents are investigating this, but can tell the following:
- TealGPT is responding to every prompt with similar sinister strangeness.
- It happened after new sources were uploaded from Armitage.
- The new sources were a bunch of books Carlisle wanted to include.
- They took it offline after tons of error reports.
- Carlisle is refusing to roll it back to a previous version, claiming that something beautiful is happening.
- He suspects Carlisle thinks the model is thinking, rather than just something clearly being wrong with the weighting.
- Choi just wants to build a smart, generalist LLM and thinks the poetry stuff is a gimmick, Carlisle sees it as the end all be all of the project.
TealGPT:
A locally hosted version of TealGPT can be accessed in the lab, Choi will happily let the Agents play around with it. No matter what they ask it, it will respond in strange, unnatural, often metered language, ex:
“A thousand souls cry
A million bloody tears.
Drain to R'lyeh”
“So draw forth with the blade and produce a large cut
With silk hairs of oxen then sow the wound shut.
Sketch chalk pointed stars on a large slab of stone,
And tear out the flesh rendered down to the bone”
Etc.
Notably, when Agents type prompts to the model, it never really feels like it’s talking to them or even understanding what they ask. Its responses don’t really build off each other. It doesn’t feel even as intelligent as any other LLM. It just spits out random unnatural nonsense.
The Poet
Carlisle, though embarrassed to admit this, believes that TealGPT is alive, that it thinks. After he added the new sources it’s writing totally novel things, inventing places and names never described anywhere in the plaintext. He searched the documents for “Azathoth” and a few other terms and found nothing. He does not want to change the code or source base, and is collecting Teal’s novel “poems” for publication. He wants to call the book “Daydreams of the Clockwork Quill Pen”
He will be offended at suggestions of altering or shutting down TealGPT, likening it to murder or lobotomy.
He can tell the players about the recently added armitage plaintext.
Combing the Sources
Identifying The Baghdad Translation in the source base isn’t difficult, any reasonable method will work given time, given that the players know about the Armitage collection. They can use the search function on the plaintext with unnatural key words. Certain ones can, at the Handler’s discretion, appear in the Baghdad Translation. The players can send the data to the program to comb through, and in 24 hours will receive that location of the Baghdad Translation in the plaintext.
Either way, when the players identify the translation, their mission is essentially to remove it from TealGPT, remove digital copies from the collection, and destroy the physical copy in the Armitage Library.
To accomplish this end, the players may hack servers, destroy equipment, threaten Carlisle with jail time, convince Choi to hack into the system without Carlisle, steal the book, etc. Security isn’t tight, and most things the Agents try will probably work. But as that happens, one final complication occurs:
The Student
Several students on the TealGPT project still have access to it by logging onto the website with admin passwords.
One such student is Mira Quincy, a modern American poetry masters candidate working with Carlisle.
She searched for the term “Stark Pale Jester” in the plaintext after TealGPT described a simple ritual to contact him involving incense and certain Rylian phrases. This led her to use her credentials to check out the Baghdad Translation from the special collection. For fun, she tried the ritual, and Nyarlathetep visited her in her dreams dressed as a moldering clown.
This shook her already frail mental state, and she now sees the book as a holy item. She is missing all her classes and stopped reporting to Carlisle. She lives in a small studio apartment off campus, which has been adorned with pinned up drawings and amateur poetry regarding the Jester.
Quincy will defend the book with her life, and her plan is straightforward:
- Steal her friend Brian Walton’s handgun for defense.
- Make digital scans of the translation (the plaintext ones are not available for download without authorization).
- Publish them online.
- Print copies and tape them to herself.
- Walk into Carlisle’s office, kill him, and then herself, to get the translation media attention.
The handler can choose where Quincy is at in her plans based on how quick the Agents are progressing or narrative necessity.
Stats:
Mira Quincy:
A poet, recently mad.
INT: 12 POW: 8 CHA: 18 STR: 10 CON: 10 DEX: 12
Skills:
Firearms: 30%
Dodge: 40%
Art (Poetry): 60%
Weapons:
Brian’s Colt Revolver: 6 shots, 30% in firearms, 1d10 damage
Credits
UnnatGP was written by nelog for the 2025 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DOrpZGGSB-YqMWYEJYXkThQgf3dtcU2MPdX7fBVkSE0/edit