November 7th 2021 – Last Things Last (Part 1)
Character Sheets:
- Name: Alba Ballest (she, her)
Occupation: Investment trader
Anchor: Sue Blackman (programmer friend)
- Name: Mike Nebadon (he, him)
Occupation: Security professional, building contractor
Anchor: Jan bet Zebadya (she worked with Mike on a number of building construction jobs)
- Name: Harry Kowalski (he, him)
Occupation: Criminal (a “undercriminal” that specializes in online crime – low-level internet scams)
Anchor: George Walsh (connection to the underworld, vouches for me and keeps me connected)
Prelude:
– Alba Ballest (investment trader), Harry Kowalski (a criminal), and Mike Nevadan (security professional and building contractor) are members of M-Cell, and have been granted a safehouse near New York City. They are all friendlies.
– Mike Nebadon and Jan bet Zebadya helped in the construction of the M-Cell Safehouse. Mike brought personnel, while Jan got the construction materials.
– The safehouse in question is Green Box 30, a nice looking suburban home – in the middle of a forest (the Fahenstock State Park). (Full details of the Green Box is available at this link.)
– The M-Cell Safehouse has Internet access and encoded email traffic, to allow people to work together. Harry Kowaiski has a “Home Office” here.
First Mission:
– Alba Ballest, Harry Kowalski, and Mike Nebadon received a message from Agent Marcus. He wants them to visit the apartment of Clyde Baughman, a member of Delta Green, and clear out all evidence of his involvement in Delta Green. In Harry’s home office, the team found a document that detailed Clyde’s service to Delta Green and a key to allow the team to enter into Clyde’s apartment.
– Mike Nebadon produced fake documents that suggested that they were there to inspect the building on behalf of the property owner. The documents claimed that the owner was thinking about turning the apartment into a condo. The documents looked persuasive.
– The party were spotted by a woman walking her dog. The woman introduced herself as Emily Vassago. Emily was suspicious of the team’s intentions. At one point, when the team was searching through Clyde’s apartment, she knocked on the door of the apartment, in an attempt to “scare” intruders. Alba confronted Emily, and she managed to back off, allowing the team to continue searching the room. Emily did not attempt to interfere with the operation after that.
– In the apartment, the team found:
– Vials of medication from March Technologies, that must be injected into an individual. The medication as intended for reduction of appetite and dealing with augmentation-related issues.
– Two pictures that had hidden cameras, secretly recording activity (feed could not be traced though). The first picture was hand-drawn by Cassie, and the second picture was a photograph of a man and a woman being right next to each other.
– A letter from a person named “Glen”.
– Coordinates to a cabin in the woods.
– Cassie’s report cards (Hidden in a cache that was only found when decoding Cassie’s drawing with two aligned stars. Cassie is the granddaughter of Clyde; perhaps the report cards carried important information).
– The team then quickly left the apartment, while Emily Vassago watched them. They report back to Agent Marcus. Mission was declared a success.
– At the safehouse, Harry tried out March Technologies’ medication and found that they reduce appetite and boost supernatural immunity; since there was no supernatural threat within Harry’s body, it causes a mild autoimmune reaction.
Second Mission:
– Agent Marcus gave them a new mission – check out Clyde’s cabin, and figure out who was spying on Clyde.
– Mike Nebadon looked up obituaries to figure out how Clyde died – he apparently died of a drug overdose.
– Alba Ballest investigated March Technologies, finding them to be a privately-owned firm controlled by Ade Olamide, the CEO. Ade worked in the US government and interacted with the Migo. He developed several patents by adapting Migo technologies for human use, and he ultimately left the US government to go into the private industry. Today he generally lives in Montana.
– Alba also looked up patents that Ade owned.
– One patent (sucking out a person’s brain and putting them in a jar) is generally used for space travel – use is rare, but generally limited to rich people and NASA.
– A second patent is for Protomatter, an alien parasite that boosts combat abilities, but it increases appetite and may try to take over your body. The medication exist to reduce the side-effects. Protomatter is intended for use by the military, and civilians are not allowed to use it.
– Harry used his anchor (George Walsh) to find the morgue where Clyde’s body is currently at, claiming that he needs this knowledge for a “score”. George thinks that Harry may be out of his depth, as Harry is only good at online crime, not physical crimes. Neverthless, George helped Harry out, due to their strong business relationship.
– The team went to the morgue, pretending to represent the next of kin, and looked at Clyde’s body. They learned that Clyde was trying to take his medication one day, but it wasn’t working, so he was continually bumping up his dosage until his death.
– Alba also found a scar with a greenish discoloration; that shows where the Protomatter was injected. There is no way to conceal this scar, except maybe body paint and tattoos…but if you know how it looks, you can easily see past concealment attempts.
– Mike determined that Clyde’s brain was still in his body, so it was not sucked up and put into a jar.
– The team then produced fake press credentials from the Albuquerque News Herald and scheduled an interview with a PR specialist from March Technologies, to learn more about the nature of the Migo. They met the PR specialist in an office in Washington, D.C.
– The Migo are studying humans to figure out how their intuition works. March Technologies do not know how their research is going. Off-the-record, the PR specialist suspect that when the research is complete, the Migo will turn on humanity.
– March Technologies claim that they recruit volunteers for the Migo experiments. Alba deduced that they were lying.
– The Migo could take over humanity if they wanted to, but find that doing so would disrupt their research, so they instead give out useful items to the United States in return for their cooperation. These items are then adapted for military and civilian uses.
– A lot of the technologies the Migo have is “military” in nature – though the Migo may come in peace, there are other alien species out there who the Migo must fight against.
– The Protomatter parasite was used in combat in several US wars and was seen as pretty effective, though medication must be prescribed to curb the parasite’s appetite and to stop it from trying to take over the host. The PR specialist is insistent on calling the parasite an “organism” though.
– Protomatter does not seem to be intelligent, but is able to influence a host’s behavior much like “mundane” parasites like Toxoplasmosis. The protomatter is also psionically linked to the Migo, and they don’t know how to turn it off, but the link helps the Protomatter be effective in combat matters.
– Which means that the Protomatter is just a receiver for the Migo, allowing Migo to take over hosts directly.
– When Mike pointed out that the Migo themselves may not know how the Protomatter parasite works, the PR specialist uttered an 4-letter expletive.
– After the interview with the PR specialist, Alba concluded that the Migo are using Protomatter to control people…that’s bad enough to track down the people involved with the experiments…or fight against the Migo.
– She looked through the documents that they previously collected to see if they included Clyde’s medical records. They did. Clyde was attending a doctor who worked for March Technologies, and started taking the anti-Protomatter medication since 2012. This means that Clyde was compromised since 2012, but his work prior to that is not suspect.
– Alba expressed alarm about Agent Marcus – the party has never met him at all, only communicating via email. “Clyde was possibly a puppet for an alien species/future overlord…how do we know that you’re not?” Alba sets up an in-person meeting with Agent Marcus at a New York City beach, to examine his arms and back for signs of Protomatter infection. Agent Marcus accepts the meeting request, because he’s also paranoid as well and want to make sure the party hasn’t also been infected by the Protomatter.
– At the beach, the party meets up with Agent Marcus and verifies that he hasn’t been infected. Agent Marcus also does verification as well to ensure the party hasn’t been infected. Alba then asks about Migo’s possible invasion plans. If they wanted to, they could invade and conquer humanity, and ensure an unlimited supply of humans to test on. But why don’t they? Or are they already invading right now?
– Agent Marcus reveals that the Migo could easily take over humanity…if it was left unprotected. But the Migo are afraid of a monster. If they attack humanity, they will attract the attention of this monster, and the war between the Migo and the monster will lead to the destruction of humanity – which would prevent the Migo from doing their experiments.
– The monster’s name is The King In Yellow, a 1890’s play performed in France that was banned for inspiring antisocial, “insightful” activities – all copies of the play were burned. Since then, any attempts to recreate the play is brutally suppressed, and Delta Green has murdered people who tried to write this play.
– Agent Marcus want to do more research about Clyde Baughman and clean up “loose ends”. He suggest looking at the cabin and finding out more about Cassie’s private school education (specifically who owns it and who is paying for Cassie’s education). Marcus also admits that, contray to the biography he gave to the team, Clyde had continued working for Delta Green all the way up to his untimely death.
– Alba discovered that Cassie is going to a private school that is funded by March Technologies, one that is focused on STEM. The school has classes on xenobiology. Cassie was given a scholarship to attend that school.
– Alba suggest that the next course of action is to investigate the private school and see if it’s a breeding ground for alien soldiers. She suggest coming up with a plan, since it seems Delta Green is outmatched when dealing with this threat.