Y2K (ll+10)

Run Date: 8 August 2010
World Date: 31 December 2009

Charlotte and Toni, the two survivors of October’s ‘incident’, were contacted via e-mail by Damian of Delta Green, and ‘invited’ to meet with Big Al at a classy restaurant in New York City on the afternoon of New Years Eve.

Once there they were treated to a snazzy lunch, and presented with the facts of the case. An unusual number of individuals had ‘gone missing’ in Manhattan over the past couple of weeks (about twice the normal rate). The number included a number of homeless folks, who were sufficiently perturbed by the events that they were willing to speak with the authorities.  They were given a couple of hours to investigate, then asked to ‘patrol’, and they were given FBI consultant badges.

They had enough time to attempt to contact one woman who had escaped a kidnapping attempt (and been told her kidneys would be harvested) and to interview a homeless activist.  The activist was convinced that the government was behind the dissappearances, and  was belligerant, but arranged for them to interview a homeless man who had encountered strange things in the sewers.  The homeless man was barely coherent, but described little grey men in the sewers, and nearly being trapped  under a manhole cover which had been welded shut.

By then it was time to begin patrolling.  They drove around in a Delta Green supplied rental vehicle until they spied what appeared to be an incipient riot.  A number of disreputable individuals were attempting to tip over a tour bus, accusing the passengers of organ harvesting.  Charlotte and Toni radioed for help, then went to stabilize the situation, but were soon overwhelmed (as someone was shooting into the crowd).

They awoke some unknown time later, in a damp, locked room.  Also present were Sam, Mark, Tom, John, Travis, Sarah, and Betty, who were also waking up, and nearly a dozen mute people, wandering aimlessly about the chamber, one of whom was severely injured but seemed inured to the pain.   After some time of confusion and comparing notes, it was determined that five of them, Charlotte, Toni and Mark (a private investigator), Sam (a paramedic) and Tom (a priest) all came from the same riot at the bus.  The other four, John (a Wall Street banker),  Sarah (a student), Travis (a skate punk) and Betty (a homeless woman) had been snatched from various places in the city during the day.  They were each missing some personal belongings (outerwear, cel phones, and Charlotte, Sam  and Mark were also missing guns).

Charlotte soon picked the lock on the door, and they discovered that they had been locked in a pumping station, and the only exit seemed to be through the storm sewers.  They found that their missing belongings had been stowed in a trash bag and tossed in the sewers.  Things were recovered, but water damaged.  There was another room nearby, but it was locked and would require an electronic key card to enter.

As they began to tromp through the sewers, it soon became clear that things were even worse than that.  They began to develop fevers, and came across passages which had been blocked off and marked with CDC quarantine tape.  There were occasional manhole covers above, but they were universally welded shut.  Things got even worse than that, as it became necessary to swim through part of the sewer, and Father Tom had his arm torn off by a giant albino alligator!  Charlotte and Mark shot the creature (their sidearms weren’t damaged by the water after all) and drove it off.  Sam struggled to help Father Tom with his massive bleeding, finally cauterizing the wound with an improvized charge from the batteries salvaged from Toni’s cel phone and portable radio, but feared that the priest, already suffering from a high fever, was not long for this world.

Eventually the party found itself (apparently) under Times Square, while the sounds of the celebration ranged above.  Their progress was blocked by a grate which cut across the sewer.  Travis volunteered to squeeze through the blockage, and was immediately torn apart by a *something* lurking in the shadows.  Charlotte and Mark both opened fire on the thing, bu it was too late for Travis.  As his body washed up against the grate, they found a note on it describing a reality TV show, in which he was the ‘mole’, tasked with getting his comrades to this point at a particular time.

The survivors decided to make their way back (and be anywhere other than at the ‘right’ place at the ‘right’ time).  On their way back they found the bodies of two security guards, who had apparently broken into the sewers from one of the ‘quarantined’ side passages.  Guns and a key card were recovered from their bodies.

Then they reached the pool where Father Tom had been attacked.  It was filled with body parts from the dazed hospital gown clad people they’d originally woken up with.  Evidently the alligator had eaten well.

They continued on, and eventually got back to the locked door.  It led through a ‘secret passage’ in the back of a janitor’s closet in a laboratory.  Eventually, the horrific secret of Dr. Frank’s research was found, and the truth revealed.  They had been infected with a virus which would leave them as mindless, cannibalistic creatures in a few scant hours unless they could find the possible cure (a different drug being researched in the same lab).  They found the drug, but there were only five doses to split amongst eight of them.  Father Tom and Sam who collapsed first, were given full doses of the drug.  The rest of them each took a half dose.

They awoke to find that John, Mark and Sarah had not survived the ‘cure’.  Charlotte, Father Tom and Sam were back to normal.  Betty and Toni survived, but were strangely changed by their experiences…

Scapel!

Run Date: 25 July 2010
World Date: ?? October (2010?)

On the same chilly night in October five people (Freddie, a repeat ‘alien abductee’,  Fred McFall  a.k.a. ‘Warlock’, a 30-something hacker living in his mother’s basement, Charlotte Weatherford, the not-so-scandalous child of a wealthy family, Charlie McCallister, a professional blogwriter, and Toni Jones, a physical anthropologist) each found themselves falling in and out of consciousness while being cut open by unseen assailants.  Each awoke in their own home, in a bathtub full of ice, with primitive sutures in their abdomen.

Each one separately called for medical assistance, and ended up in the ER.  Each fell once more out of consciousness, and awoke, strapped to gurneys,  in the same ‘recovery room’.  Soon the unconscious ‘Warlock’ was wheeled into the room and Freddie taken out.  They were told that it would be about half an hour, and then Charlotte would be taken for examination.

They were told that they were in the CDC offices in Atlanta, Georgia, because their profiles had tripped a search code.   They were told that, although they’d been found cut open in ice filled bathtubs, there was no sign of any sort of m’tampering’ with their internal organs. The nurses then left along with Dr. Sauvage, after unstrapping the patients, but before giving them any sort of satisfactory idea of why they were there.

A quick search of the room found very little to go on. Charlotte found a scrap of paper under the pillow of her guerney, which had a hospital URL on it.  As they began searching their room a Dr. Marcus came in, claiming to be an endocrinologist and mentioning the ‘Genesis Project’.  Toni, in near hysterics, grilled the man on who he was and what they were doing there, and he turned and fled.

‘Warlock’ picked a lock, and they found an inner office, empty except for planned parenthood pamphlets and a very out of date computer.   Warlock was eventually bring up the URL, a hospital database page describing a patient found in a bathtub, missing a kidney.  At about that time, they overheard Dr. Sauvage ‘debriefing’ the nurses, one of whom demanded an explanation of the entire thing.  They heard some very odd and disturbing noises then, electrical sounds, screams, and something sort of  ‘squishy’.  They heard several one sided phone calls which referred to having to arrange a helicoptor accident to explain the dissappearance of the nurse, and to ‘dealing with’ the ‘subjects’.

They had an idea of how frequently the halls were patrolled, and realized that they had about five minutes before the next one.  They collected everything which could possibly be useful (including pamphlets and pens so Charlie could take notes), then, moving as fast as they could in their weakened and painful state, picked the lock in the external door.  There was a fire door, but sounds from below indicated it would be hard to sneak out that way.

They found themselves in a deserted seeming medical office suite, but soon found Dr. Sauvage, with strange, alien appendages and blissfully closed eyes, gorging himself on the innards of the nurse who had brought Charlotte down.  They hastily, but stealthfully, withdrew.

There was an operating theatre, and another set of fire stairs, but someone was down them as well, and coming up.  They hurridly withdrew to an atrium, and took the rickety, very slow elevator to the only other floor.  It turned out to be a basement, where further horrors awaited.  There were two barrels overflowing with toxic sludge, a boiler room and elevator machinery room, both filled with satchel charges counting down from fourteen, a pile of rotting lumber, a storage closet, and a laboratory.  In this last room, they spied a nurse (not one any of them recognized) and two classic ‘grays’, big headed, tiny bodied aliens, who were vivisecting the unlucky Freddie.

As the terrified patients scrambled around to find some sort of weapons, Charlie tried to brazen it out and convince the aliens that Sauvage had sent him to get them.  His charade ended terribly, but gave both Toni and Charlotte time to run for the elevator.  Warlock tried to rescue him, but ended up shot himself.  As the elevator left, he ran to the machinery room and grabbed a satchel bomb, which he used to try to hold off the human accomplice of the aliens.  He was shot (and the bomb exploded) just as Toni and Charlotte raced from the building.

They awoke in another emergency room, in Atlanta General.  After some time to recover, and contact their respective families, they were approached by the mysterious “Dr. Marcus”, who offered them a chance to join Delta Green and fight against the forces at whose hands they had sufferred.

Urban Jungle

In the morning we returned to the ruins of the ancient city, and spotted what looked to be a hangar.  While we approached it from the air we saw a cloaked figure on a nearby roof watching us descend.  Possibly disfigured, the man or woman was covered from head to foot by a hooded dress, and leaned on a very tall cane (walking stick?)

iPod dropped Max and Roland off to scout the hangar, and took the ship back into the air to observe.  Soon the ground team was swarmed with the infected, and the ship had several leap onto it.  Roland was bitten and mauled.

Max insisted iPod let Max and Roland back into the ship, but quarantined them in the cargo hold.  Max chained Roland to some cargo rigging to keep him restrained, but he didn’t show any signs of infection.  To be honest, with Roland I’m not sure how we could tell…   he’s half feral to begin with. Ivy insisted on breaking quarantine to examine him.   He was covered with blood (not his own) which was crawling towards his wounds.   Ivy and Max resorted to burning the goop off of him.  Afterwards, Max was both restrained and given pain killers.  Ivy said that he would recover… At this point, several hours later, he doesn’t seem to be transformed.  Maybe the disease has mutated? I think we were just very, very lucky.

We decided to scout the suburbs for other possible repair facilities.   Actually, Turlich insisted that we scout around, and was determined to go alone.  iPod released Max from quarantine to join him, since he still hasn’t shown any signs of infection despite his exposure to Roland. The first one we found seemed to be the home of a small troop of creatures, bizarre things which made the most terrible noise and weren’t frightened of us.   Ivy identified them as ‘Howler Monkies’, and suggested that they were too dangerous to work around.

We moved to another location and found the ruins of another ancient garage.  iPod feels that the equipment we need is there, and workable, but it will take  several hours to load it onto the Bettie Page.  We will be working steadily until sunset…

An Eventful Night

Recap from other players game missed on 12.November.  Normal text was translated from the Portuguese, italicized text from the Spanish.

iPod felt that the safest way to spend the night would be to take the Bettie out beyond easy swimming range from shore.  Soon after sundown we heard hideous shrieking and moaning from the land.  Shortly after midnight we felt banging on the hull….  iPod submerged the ship, and the ‘survivors’ who had swam after us continued their pursuit until they drowned themselves.

One of them managed to swim into the engine intake is that the right word? and jam a metal rod into the engine.  The ship was still mobile, but much slower than it should be.  Note: now the ship cannot submerge to any depth, and is very slow to move.  Finding a way to repair the ship was now our first priority.

Ivy took samples from the body in the engine while iPod checked on the engines.  The body was mutated? infected? ___  by some sort of strange organism.  It’s blood seemed to be alive, aware of us, and hungry or something else? We finally contained the contamination in Ivy’s chest of scientific equipment and burned the rest.

Phillip, the boy we rescued from the ruins of a ship, is conscious and about, but seems to be confused and distant.  He seems to have a grasp of the geography, says his parents taught him about it, and believes that there is some important information about the plague to be found in a city called Glasgow, which is in a place called Scotland.  He gave iPod a rough idea of where that is.

…now we’re nearly out of scientific equipment and low on medical supplies.

The Journey Begins

[Normal text is translated from the Portuguese.  Italicized text is translated from the Spanish.]

Waited on the sub while Max and Roland went off to get supplies. They ran into some trouble, and we were observed leaving. The ship took some minor damage from torpedoes.

I expected us to be ‘expendable’ but I’m beginning to wonder if we’re considered ‘disposable’ as well. How much does Mr. Brookes want/expect to get this report back?

Made the dive easily enough, but there was some damage to the porthole due to pressure. We came up on the other side of the wall. Once across we spotted a derelict on the inside… Roland scaled the wall and retrieved a survivor, a drifter known to iPod as Phillip, who had survived amidst the wreckage. Badly injured, barely conscious, cyborg, judging from his mass.

The wall extends about 30 feet above the water line. Wide enough to walk on. Train tracks run along it, and some sort of trolly line/guide wire is suspended above it without visible supports. (Mag suspension? Ultra thin supports too far away to see against the sky?)

All together we spent about five days at sea. Starting journal dated from landfall.

Day one

The beach was barren, no sign of people visible, but we heard a scream. Followed sound above the dunes and saw four men on horse running down two unarmed people… Unsure if any of them were truely human. The victims may or may not have been diseased. The horsemen were almost robotic. None of them used language.

We caused a distraction, but didn’t manage to stop the slaughter. They obviously heard me when I spoke to them, but didn’t understand, or have any interest, when I tried to speak to them. They didn’t attack either. We broke off and ran when the ground began to shake.

The shaking was cause by a huge (vessel? City? both?) city which was several miles across, which (rolled? hovered? something else?) across the ground towards the beach. It settled by the water, and several people exited it and put together a (path? board? ) and fed huge tubes from the city to the ocean. The itself and the armor the horsemen were wearing was made of some sort of odd material. The architecture of the city was alien exotic. Lots of towers and strangely shaped roofs. The workers wore clothes which seemed to be made of less exotic material, but each wore a single color from head to foot… the colors didn’t seem to indicate rank or position.

Couldn’t come up with sensible plan to infiltrate the city. Not sure how they communicate, and our clothes won’t let us blend in. We followed the path of destruction the city had left behind it. The ground was churned and radioactive where it had passed (according to Ivy). Everything it crossed must have been (ground up and?) sucked inside the city. (Power? Raw materials for something else?) The land it hadn’t passed over was arid and nearly lifeless as well. No signs of habitation, but if the (peasants? diseased?) had lived along the path there wouldn’t be.

The path led back to the ruins of an ancient city. Max, Turlich and I took a look around. A few signs and scraps of newspaper survived, but they weren’t written in any language I’d ever seen before. The letters themself looked almost normal, but there were some odd letters which looked like

ø å æ

but the architecture was fairly normal. There was even a building which must have been a McDonalds, down to the golden arches.

There were surprisingly few vermin, given that the city had been abandoned since the infection.  We saw one wild dog, who fled from us (so we knew that humans were familiar to it).  We did spot one survivor, but couldn’t tell if he was a real person, or infected, or a mutant.   The building he fled to was one of the tallest ones in the block, and we had no way of telling how many others it might hold.  By ths time it was getting dark, so we went back to the Betty Page and went out to sea for the night.