The scenarios collected in A Night at the Opera are individually and collectively amazing, but what I really need is something a bit more tailored to my group. That means both something we can all get our heads round and something which suits the style of this particular group of PCs, which could be summed up as 'prefer shotguns to subtlety'. So I asked the internet for advice; specifically the Good Friends of Jackson Elias discord, where I got a recommendation: Black Winter by Jake "ChiefMcCLane" Cook.
Here's how it went down.
Our team consists of four agents:
'Crusty', a former CIA intelligence analyst of Native American ancestry who was previously posted to the Stargate project.
'Buzz', a conspiracy theorist who claims to have worked on alien spaceships.
'Bones', a historian and anthropologist who's encountered some weird things.
'Avocado', a physical security expert and computer scientist who got called into the wrong crime scene.
Previously the team have worked with a single handler, who calls herself Agent Chung. Right now she's not too fond of them. While their last mission did result in complete success regarding locating and stopping the unnatural incursion, the amount of mess left behind was significant. Having to cover up the brutal murder of a beloved university professor has kept her busy for quite some time. So when an urgent mission came up in Alaska that called for agents with old school tradecraft skills, she was quite happy to let someone else deal with them for a change.
Via the usual subterfuge, the players found themselves flying into Anchorage, where they were met by Agent Pakrati. He gave them a briefing, a selection of somewhat random objects, including a radio transmitter and some unspecified organic material testing kits, then packed them into a Cessna and sent them on their way.
Their destination was the town of Bear Point, normally a town funded by tourism and fishing, but currently under four foot of water due to a burst dam and a damaged sea wall. Their cover as FEMA consultants got them access to pretty much everything they needed. They located the DG friendly - Hernandez - pretty quickly, and kept him around pretty much constantly, his access to a Zodiac and ability to drive it making him invaluable in the flooded town.
They decided to start by following up on the recent attacks. They talked briefly with the victims, and took samples from each of them for testing, then went to visit the scenes of the attacks, where they obtained more suspicious material for testing. Hernandez told them a little about how he'd come into contact with Delta Green - trying to rescue his friend from drowning and ending up in a fight with some kind of fish man. Just as they were leaving the second scene, however, they realised they were being watched.
The news reporter failed to give a particularly good explanation of why he was following them around, but they did manage to learn that he was failing to get anything from the army engineers up at the broken dam. They decided to pay a visit.
Part way through the two hour journey up to the dam, the test kits began to return results. Positive, for whatever it was they were testing for. In accordance with their instructions, Avocado activated the radio transmitter.
They were unable to get much useful information out of the staff at the damn, but did manage to get a look at the blueprints. Buzz, an experienced engineer, was able to identify the cause of the breach. An explosion in the storage area. Some new parts had been delivered recently, but that was routine parts for maintaining the turbines. It looked like sabotage was involved.
Next stop was the Inuit village museum, where they had a look round and admired the remarkable size of the taxidermy crab on display, but ultimately concluded they should go back to the town. By now it was getting dark. The aquarium seemed like a good place to go next, and as an emergency shelter they could spend the night there too.
They were greeted by zookeeper Alice, who was very happy to have them there, and keen to tell them about how great sea otters were, even if they were acting a bit weird at the moment. Attempting to get out and leave was quite normal behaviour for the octopuses, but rather more unusual for the seals and sea otters.
They bedded down for the night - or at least, Buzz, Bones and Avocado did. Crusty wasn't a good sleeper, and it seemed Hernandez wasn't either. Not that the others got restful nights, however, with all three of them dreaming about drowning, and Buzz awakened convinced that there was something terrible in the sea and it was coming for them.
Word quickly arrived that there had been another disappearance, in addition to the three they were already aware of. The reporter.
Hernandez drove them to his house, where they found Deputy Chesterfield already present and conducting an investigation. She explained her theory that a serial killer was using the flood as cover for these sick crimes. However, spotting a door handle that had been oddly crushed, almost as if it had been held in the grip of a giant crab pincer, the team weren't so sure.
There was nothing for it. They were going to have to tool up and go hunting crab people. They drove around until they found a sporting goods shop that wasn't completely underwater and bought some shotguns. They also picked up some explosives (for fishing, according to the shopkeeper) and some night vision goggles.
First Avocado wanted to do a test, to see exactly where it was that the aquarium creatures were trying to get to. He convinced Alice to loan them an octopus. His name was Philip, and he apparently enjoyed taking photographs. He was also keen to escape, but experimentation proved that all he really wanted was to get to the sea.
It seemed like the crab attacks were happening at night, and the fewer people there were around the better, they decided, and spent the rest of the day convincing people to get as far away from the harbour as possible.
Once darkness fell they took up positions by the aquarium. After a while they spotted something floating on the water, which on closer inspection turned out to be two people, both asleep, and wrapped in some kind of slimy material which matched something they'd found in the reporter's house. They took the people into the aquarium, and Bones and Crusty resumed their watch.
And there it was. A monstrous crab man, spindly legged and pincered, climbing out of the water. Shots were fired immediately. Crusty's went wide, but Bones' hit it square in the chest. It attacked, seriously injuring Bones with its massive pincer, but as the others joined the attack, the hail of shot reduced it to crab meat.
And there we had to leave it. We'll pick up again next week for more crab and shotgun action.
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