// Delta Green: Moment of Impact

For decades, for seemingly no other reason than dumb chance, one intersection in the projects of Atlanta, Georgia, Barber, and Lewiston,  has earned the infamous title as one of the most dangerous intersections in the United States of America. No one is able to understand why.

The intersection is in Lithgow Heights, an area of the Georgia “projects”, home to thousands of african-Americans who were clumsily shuffled into low-income housing by white realtors eager to keep “non-whites” out of “white neighborhoods”. It is, by all appearances, a normal four-way stop. Thus far, no city planner or architect has been able to understand why this one intersection has claimed more lives than any other intersection in the entire united states, each year, dozens of t-bones, head-on collisions, and multiple-car pile-ups claim lives numbering often in the hundreds. Until now.

it is about to become a problem for the Outlaws to deal with. This is a scenario that takes place in the Summer of 2021. The agents in this scenario are part of the “Outlaws”.

//One-Shot or Campaign

This scenario can be run by the Keeper / Handler either as a one-shot or as a short campaign, depending on their preference. Here are some tips for running them both ways.

Campaign

As it is written, the length of this scenario usually takes two to three sessions to resolve. Session one being the introduction of the agents to the situation, them investigating Green Box #0309, investigating the man in the video until they discover his identity, and then confronting him; session two dealing with the fallout of their confrontation with O’Neal and investigating and confronting Catrina Hahn and her husband, Cohen Byrd; session three tying up loose ends and resolving the scenario.

// The Truth

After years of petitioning from the residents of Lithgow Heights to do something about the intersection, the city of Atlanta has chosen to contract an analyst from the department of transportation, Ambrose O’Neal, to investigate the Intersection and determine how best to fix the issue. O’Neal spent the better part of a month digging into the history of Lithgow Heights, and the design of the entire area, eventually hiring the aide of an old friend, Carey Sestero, a computer scientist, to catalog and analyze the car accidents that consistently occur on the intersection. Sestero developed a program, “BARBER_LEWISTON_SIM.EXE”, that would analyze over 1200 car accidents from 2002-2020. The program would catalog all 1200 accidents and create a graph showing the most common paths of vehicles to determine which was most common and establish a pattern.

O’Neal ran the program, simulating hundreds of car accidents from 2002 to the present. The program would mark the paths of the vehicles, creating a shape showing from what direction they entered the intersection, and where they would travel upon colliding with another vehicle. What he uncovered was that the crashes would form one of four repeating shapes. The shapes seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them: two unrelated accidents involving completely different vehicles entering the intersection at different angles would produce the same shape. O’Neal at first assumed this was some sort of miscalculation, though after examining official reports on the accidents, he was further confused to find it was totally accurate. He became fixated on the shapes, unable to figure out what they mean, then, totally desperate to find some meaning, he took graphs of all four shapes and superimposed them over one another.

When he did this, they formed The Yellow Sign.

Upon doing this, O’Neal instantly became fixated on the Sign and began to scribble it idly on the margins of books, paperwork, and in his journal. He photocopied the original graph created by the computer and began pasting it to the walls of his bedroom along with grisly images from the accidents themselves, scrutinizing them for meaning. He began receiving phone calls from unknown numbers that would give him times and dates and ask him bizarre questions. He eventually received a package in the mail containing machine parts for some sort of clockwork machine with a booklet of instructions to assemble it, as well as a jar of leeches and a pair of tweezers. (SEE “The BULLFIGHTER”). He was then instructed by the voice over the phone to break into an apartment in Old Fourth Ward and steal two weapons, a double-barreled shotgun, and a 19th-century rapier. He then broke into a theatre prop and costumes storage room and stole a harlequin mask and a matador’s costume.  Using the sword, the costume pieces, and the mechanical components from the package, he assembled an automaton that now patrols his home.

Sestero, who wasn’t present for the program’s activation to see the Yellow Sign, became concerned for his friend’s well-being after failing to reply to any follow-up emails or pick or return his calls. Sestero came to O’Neal’s apartment but was turned away by a cigarillo-smoking bald man who told him that O’Neal was “occupied with civil matters”, after finding that O’Neal hadn’t contacted his mother or girlfriend since two days after running the program, Sestero called to have the police check-in on O’Neal, though he has yet to hear back from them.  O’Neal is currently in the process of bartering with Barber. Barber promises to get O’Neal a coveted invitation to the masquerade ball in far Carcosa if O’Neal can complete a very important mission for him – Adam desires to be reconnected with his brother and travel with him to the Yhtill, to this end, he wants O’Neal to kill or capture one of the agents and “prepare” them to be inhabited by the spirit of his brother, Peter. Ambrose isn’t a cold-blooded killer, and so he is stalling.

All the moving pieces in Lithgow Heights – Ambrose, the Barber brothers, Turk, Officer Hahn, and Cohen Byrd, are moving towards a dreadful ritual which will take place three days from when the agents arrive – a horrific, four-car collision will occur at the intersection of Barber and Lewiston that will cause Lithgow Heights to temporarily enter Carcosa, some of it never returning to our reality.

The Court of the King in Yellow

Ambrose O’Neal’s spiral into madness came from the slightest brush against the immense, cosmic force known to Delta Green as “The King in Yellow”, more rarely known as “Hastur”, however, like all of those who fall into the orbit of the King, O’Neal’s case isn’t happening in a vacuum. The King in Yellow’s essence has long stained the neighborhood of Lithgow Heights, it starts with the architect and urban planner who first conceived of the neighborhood, Adam Barber. 

Adam Barber

Barber was a prominent architect in the late 50s, and who created the concept for what would become known as Lithgow Heights in the early 70s as a solution to the growing problem of housing and homelessness in the Atlanta area. Adam was, like many old white men of the time, a racist. Although he wouldn’t dare say it out loud to the public, privately, this was billed to the realtors and property owners of Atlanta as a way to keep African-Americans and other “non-whites” out of “white” neighborhoods. Though the concept was well in place when it came to the actual layout and design of the development. He found himself stuck. Inspiration came to him after the death of his brother, Peter Barber, a professor of English and French literature who died of a stroke in 1969 and who left him many books. One of those books was The King in Yellow.  

Barber, tired of reading nonfiction and hefty books on architecture, decided to indulge himself in some of his late brother’s collection of fiction – he read Poe, Hemingway, Borges, and finally, the King in Yellow.

The King in Yellow made sense to him in a way that seemed both so obvious yet so profound. He became fascinated – then obsessed – over the play and its contents. The symbol on the playbook’s cover puzzled and captivated him, and before long, although he imagined the play would be relatively obscure – as he had never heard say of it prior to him inheriting it, he seemed to find fanatics of the book everywhere he went, he and they discussed the play with great enthusiasm, fueling his mind with grand ideas. He had the inspiration he needed, and in a single night, he feverishly designed and drafted every building and roadway for Lithgow Heights. 

The King in Yellow’s influence on Lithgow Heights is strong but subtle. The fatalities at the intersection of Barber and Lewiston are the most obvious example, but the residents of the neighborhood have, for years, reported bizarre sightings of men in yellow robes ducking around abandoned lots and music playing from empty storefronts.

Adam Barber spiraled further into eccentricity, culminating in his disappearance in 1976, reportedly having been chased by armed men in bandit masks through the streets of Atlanta, eventually arriving at the intersection and vanishing into thin air – this has since become a matter of urban legend, as his disappearance has long since been attributed to an undiagnosed mental illness that culminated in a psychotic break. The truth is that he had been hunted by Delta Green agents who had discovered that he was in possession of the King in Yellow, after tracing the ownership from his brother. The motor vehicle accidents that constantly occur at the intersection are a symptom of the King in Yellow’s rot, and those who perish are doomed to forever wander the war-torn city of Yhtill and far Carcosa. Currently, Adam Barber lurks between Carcosa and the surface world, feeding information and directions to Ambrose O’Neal. His plan is to guide O’Neal to create conditions that will allow for a gateway to Carcosa to open and consume Lithgow Heights and its residents.

Gary Turk

Others came under the power of the King in Yellow during the development of Lithgow Height. One of them being a wealthy landlord who helped fund the project, Gary Turk, the cigarillo-smoking bald man that Carey Sestero unwittingly encountered at Ambrose O’Neal’s house. Turk came under the influence after being shown the King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign while at a business lunch with Barber. Turk is believed to have killed himself by burning his own house down three years after Barber’s disappearance. In reality, he resides in Carcosa, though he appears in the real world in order to “oversee property acquisitions”. Turk has possession of a hypergeometric item which grants him a limited ability to wield fire (SEE “The Cigar Lighter”). Turk’s corruption was suspected but never confirmed by Delta Green. Turk can appear in any of the other character’s homes if the agents attempt to break in while said character isn’t home.

Peter Barber

Peter Barber was a professor at the University of Maryland in the 1960s and 1970s who specialized mostly in English and French literature. It is not known when or how he came to possess the loathsome playbook of The King in Yellow. But starting in the early 1960s, Barber began to fall under its influence. First in discrete, private ways – scrawling the yellow sign on pieces of paper in the margins of books and items in his home. But then his obsession bled into other aspects of his life. He would sometimes accidentally lend books from his collection to his students who would then vanish months later after reading them. He became fixated with, and murdering, select students – primarily women. The most grievous act of corruption he performed was when, for a period of three months, he began to sign essays handed in to him with the Yellow Sign. His reign of terror was short-lived, as he died of a stroke at in the middle of the winter semester of that year.

Delta Green was only clued into Barber’s corruption six months after the fact, by then, over two dozen of his students had either committed suicide or vanished. Although his copy of the King in Yellow wasn’t located during the initial investigation, it was eventually accounted for in legal records showing it had been willed to his brother with the rest of his literature collection.

Peter’s spirit carries on in a strange unlife, he is unable to influence the material realm like Adam, though he is able to communicate with him, and the two plot to create a vessel for him to inhabit – a costume for him to wear to the masquerade ball, before opening a doorway to the city.

Officer Catrina Hahn

Officer Catrina Hahn and Sgt. Cliff Darrow were the two patrol officers that were sent to respond to Sestero’s concerns and check in on Barber. They arrived at O’Neal’s residence and knocked on the door and were greeted by O’Neal who greeted the both of them and lured them into his house. Only Hahn left. The two were set upon by O’Neal and the newly constructed BULLFIGHTER. Hahn was shown the Yellow Sign and was subjected to mind control by O’Neal. Darrow’s right arm was brutally severed by the BULLFIGHTER who then murdered him in a flurry of slashes. Cliff Darrow’s body was moved to the upstairs bathroom while Hahn was “put on the phone” with Barber who began to read her the King in Yellow. Presently, Catrina Hahn is back on patrol, she’s also receiving directions from Barber and is combing the streets looking for the agents. As for Darrow, he called into work claiming he’s tested positive for coronavirus. In reality, this was Barber, using his phone to disguise his voice. The real Cliff Darrow has been laying, rotting in O’Neal’s bathtub, slowly being consumed by the dozens of leeches O’Neal’s kept in it. Hahn has since returned home and shown her partner, High school teacher Cohen Byrd, the sign.

// Operation Skipping Stone

The agents are summoned to meet with their handler at a “gas n’ sip” north of Atlanta. They meet with Agent Sullivan, their handler, and are briefed on their mission.

Briefing

Green Box #0309 in Atlanta was broken into five days ago, the Outlaws learned of this through a Friendly, who had been instructed to report to his contacts of suspicious activity in and around the property, citing it as a “location of interest” and had been alerted that the home’s burglar alarm had been triggered, despite there being no obvious signs of forced entry. The agents are given a list of items contained at Green Box #0309 and told that they are being sent to investigate it and make sure that all of said items are accounted for, and to locate and return any missing items. Standard protocol remains as normal (determine if an unnatural threat / event is present, and if so, eliminate it). Their contact in the Atlanta PD was able to get himself assigned to investigating the burglary. It will allow the agents to come and go as they please without further police interference.

// Green Box #0309

Green Box #0309 is in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta. It is an unattended, wholly unremarkable building on a quiet street. The rent for the building is paid for each month by Dumars Holdings Ltd., a front company run by Delta Green. The Agents are given the key and keycode for the front door by Agent Sullivan (3026). The concrete basement of the apartment contains a number of items, the agents will need to determine which ones are accounted for and which ones are missing. The items on the list they are given are:

1. A gunlocker that contains:

1. One Benelli M4 Tactical Shotgun with flashlight attachment
2. One Remington Over-Under Shotgun
3. One box of 35 12-gauge buckshot rounds
4. Two Gulf-War era smoke grenades
5. One Sig Sauer P320
6. An RO360 with three magazines and one box of 9mm rounds

2. “The Maryland Dream Study: A Longitudinal Analysis”
3. “AUTOPSY REPORT – PFC Andrew C. Kirk”
4. A 19th Century Spanish rapier.
5. Agents are forbidden from utilizing the rapier under any circumstances.

investigating the basement finds that the gun locker has not been opened, despite this, opening it finds that one of the weapons, the Remington Over-Under, is missing, as is the box of 12-gauge buckshot. Additionally, the rapier is nowhere to be found. Agents can clearly see that someone has scrawled a crude image of a door on the gun locker and on the wall behind the camera. A fine, white powder is on the floor around the wall and the gun locker. 20% in Art (drawing) or (painting) or 40% in forensics can determine that it is chalk powder.

The Camera

The basement has a motion-activated security camera in one corner, positioned in such a way that it gets most of the room in the frame. The camera footage can be uploaded via a USB cord to any computer. The camera has three videos on file. The first is from three months ago of a masked man and woman entering the basement and storing the P320 and the smoke grenades into the gun locker and depositing PFC Andrew Kirk’s Autopsy Report into the filing cabinet before leaving.

The second is of the room, the camera activates but no one is visible inside the room. The sound of chalk scratching can be heard before, out of frame, seemingly from the wall behind the camera, a man climbs into the frame. He is dark-skinned, roughly 5 feet 10 inches tall, skinny, and wearing a business outfit. He turns on a flashlight and scans the room. He collects the rapier and then stands in front of the gun locker. He removes a stick of chalk from his coat pocket and draws a door on the door of the gun locker before opening the drawing of the door, reaching in, and stealing the Remington Over-Under. They then turn and face the camera, whistling to themselves, and climbing up towards and behind the camera. Vanishing from sight. The third video is the camera activating upon detecting the agent’s in the green box.

The Maryland Dream Study: A Longitudinal Analysis

“M. Sirin, P. Ataturk et al

University of Maryland School of Medicine – Psychiatric Research Centre

DRAFT – NOT FOR PUBLICATION”

The study examines a cohort of patients suffering from “unusual sleep disorders”, chronicling their medical histories. Numerous appendices include interviews with patients, EEG readings, brain scans, and experiments to assess claims of extrasensory perception. The transcripts of the subjects’ dreams are as vivid as they are unsettling. Handlers who are running this for an ongoing campaign or recurring playgroup are invited to include a section in the study where a subject describes a dream that bears an eerie similarity to one of the cell’s previous endeavors (or, a crucial clue if they seem to be stuck).

(In English. Study time: 22 hours. HUMINT +1%, Psychotherapy +1%, Unnatural +2%, SAN loss 1d6)

Rituals: Quantum Pseudo Telepathy and Remote Viewing (Clairvoyance), Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect (Speaking Dream), (The Dho-Hna Formula)

PFC Andrew Kirk’s Autopsy Report

A twelve-page autopsy report on PFC Andrew Kirk.

The report details PFC Kirk’s inhuman physiology, including “Anomalous structures found throughout his body. Extra tendons, strange masses in the trapezius muscles and extra bone-anchors, and oddly over-long and massive forearms. When the brain was removed, it was found that it was misshapen and strange. Heavier than the average brain, and with hugely oversized portions of the brain thought to correspond with sight and smell, it held two ganglion-like structures within it which were wholly alien and unknown. The flexible sheath surrounding both Kirk’s neck and his abdomen — while not bullet-proof — were seen to be at least resistant to such trauma. And it was determined that Kirk was only killed because of the last shotgun blast at close range to the face. All the other trauma which had been inflicted upon him (and his body looked as if it had been sent through a wood-chipper) had been all but superficial.”

Researching Andrew Kirk finds articles detailing a violent brawl at the Dupont Street Bar and Grill in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 10th, 1987, that resulted in police being called and the shooting of PFC Andrew Kirk, who was reported to have killed five people during the brawl. Details beyond that are classified and unless the agents are high-ranking members of the armed forces and either have 80% in Bureaucracy or succeed at a roll at -40%, or if they (by chance) have contacts in the Program and have 60% in Persuade, or succeed at a roll at -20%, followed by their contact succeeding a bureaucracy roll, they could get additional details about what became of PFC Kirk and the significance of his autopsy (this will, of course, raise numerous questions from the Program regardless of whether or not their contact succeeds, and could subject the agents and their contacts to scrutiny).

(In English. Study time: 5 hours. Medicine +1% Forensics +1% Unnatural +2% SAN loss: 1d4)

Rituals: None.

// The Man in the Video

The man depicted in the video is Ambrose O’Neal as he used hypergeometric techniques taught to him by Adam and Peter Barber (SEE “The Chalk Door”).

The agents can uncover Ambrose’s identity through a variety of means. They could call upon their contact in the Atlanta PD to try to identify him, this would be a reasonable ask as this is his case. Alternatively, they could go through contacts they have personally at the NSA or FBI if they have Persuade or Bureaucracy 50% or succeed on a roll.

What they find is that their culprit is one Ambrose Quinton O’Neal. Born in 1971 in Peoria, Georgia to Titus O’Neal and Shawna O’Neal. He has his degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he studied for four years. He was the active coordinator in the Black Lives Matter movement in the Atlanta area (Agents getting this information through the FBI learn that he was also put under FBI surveillance). They would find that recently, a friend of O’Neal called 911 and requested someone to come and check in on O’Neal. Using a similar roll or calling on the contact could earn the agents O’Neal and Sestero’s home addresses or can get them the name of the officers that checked in on O’Neal, Cliff Darrow, who is currently isolating due to COVID-19, and Catrina Hahn.

// The O’Neal Residence

Ambrose O’Neal’s residence is 6016 Wiseman Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. It is an average looking, two-story townhouse on a busy street.  The landlord, an elderly Greek man named Vassilios Petrakis, has been receiving his weekly rent payments from O’Neal without issue.

“The BULLFIGHTER ” patrols O’Neal’s home. He’s converted his bathtub into a breeding pool for leeches, which he uses to draw blood to fuel the machine. O’Neal’s house has spiraled into bedlam. He has pasted pages of newspapers, print-outs of the intersection and graphic images of car crashes and their victims on the walls and windows of the house. The gruesome images of bloodied, twisted bodies of innocent people killed in car accidents costs the agents 0/1d4 SAN from Violence. He has painted the Yellow Sign on the ceiling, the walls, behind doors, in his appliances, and inside his clothing. If at any point the newspapers and filth on O’Neals wall is removed, either by being torn off, ripped, shot, or burned off, the drywall underneath will show hundreds of depictions of the Yellow Sign which O’Neal has scrawled on the walls with his fingers, paint brushes, whatever. Seeing the Yellow Sign costs 0/1d4 SAN from helplessness unless the agent has failed a san roll from seeing it before. The agent who loses san from seeing it feels compelled to share it. Additionally, around the house – on the tables, window sills, inside cupboards and his fridge, O’Neal has collected hundreds of jars containing live leeches.

Staking it out

If the agents spend a day staking out O’Neal’s place, then they’ll see him leave his home at around 10:15 AM and return with groceries just before noon. He seems to be carrying bags from a pharmacy, a local grocery store, he also seems to be buying bundles of newspapers, magazines, paint, printer ink, and bolts of cloth. From noon to 7pm, O’Neal doesn’t leave his house. Agents that have placed surveillance devices inside his home or have accessed his computer could hear or see him sewing. It seems to be a costume. He can also be heard/seen building and using papier mache, molding it to his face to make a mask, as well as his arms, legs, and chest.

At 4pm, O’Neal climbs the stairs to the second-floor bathroom and begins applying leeches to his arms. If an agent is watching from his backyard, they could see him handling leeches with a pair of tweezers, applying him to his arm, allowing them to plump, before removing them and placing him into jars. Seeing this induces 0/1 SAN from violence. He then takes the jars and places them around his house.

At 7pm, O’Neal collects what he has built and loads them into his car. He doesn’t return to his house until 9pm, and goes to sleep shortly after coming home.

Following O’Neal

If the agents tail him, they need to make a stealth check contest against O’Neal’s alertness. If they fail, O’Neal senses he’s being followed and speeds up, making a hairpin turn down an alleyway. When the agents round the corner – he’s nowhere to be seen.

In the morning, he drives to the pharmacy and buys various medical goods – bandages, bandaids, disinfectants. He then heads to Walmart and buys various arts and crafts supplies and printer ink. He stops at a magazine vendor and buys a bundle of newspapers and a stack of various magazines. He then goes to a fabric store and buys various fabrics. All of his transactions are in cash. His last is the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through on his way home.

He then spends the rest of his day in his home until 9pm when he loads up his car and drives to a parking lot on the edge of Lithgow Heights. He then takes his creations out of his carry and begins walking through the neighborhood. The path he takes is seemingly nonsensical and meandering, although an agent 50% or higher in HUMINT will notice that he seems to be looking at the manhole covers as he walks, and he’s careful to make sure he steps on each one. Anyone using a GPS or who has a map of the city and is tracking where they’re going will eventually notice that when viewed from above, the paths form a giant Yellow Sign.

Eventually, he will stop at one of the manhole covers, he will calmly place his things on the ground. He kneels down and pulls out a stick of chalk from his coat pocket and writes something above the cover, then uses a crowbar to lift it. Then, he will take them and throw them down the manhole. Someone using listening equipment, or who has special training in reading lips, can tell he seems to be having conversations with someone at the bottom of the manhole. If the agents look down the manhole cover before he finishes, they’ll see one of various locations, a cave, Catrina Hahn’s house, Gary Turk’s ruined house, or Peter Barber’s apartment. This costs them 0/1d4 from the unnatural. After depositing all of his items, he stands up and walks straight back to his car and drives home.

Inside the House

Agents have, as always, many ways to go about entering O’Neal’s residence.

If they knock on the door while he’s home, he’ll answer and be as courteous as ever, though he’ll come as nervous. A successful HUMINT roll will tell that he’s trying not to look nervous. If he learns they’re here about the sword, or if they threaten him in any way or tell him they’re from Law Enforcement, he slams the door and activates the BULLFIGHTER. He will then arm himself with the Remington Over-Under, which he has stowed in the cupboards under the sink, and try to hold out against the agents. He’s crazy, but not careless. He knows the BULLFIGHTER will be more than enough to injure or even kill a few of their number, and he’s hoping that if one of them dies (and the others aren’t in the way) he can nab the body, use the chalk sticks to draw a door, and disappear with it into the night floors. If things look bad, or once the BULLFIGHTER is disabled, he’ll run to the bathroom and use the chalk sticks to draw a door on the wall and escape.

If they attempt to break in while he isn’t home or while he’s asleep, they find a home that is in total squalor (as described above). The BULLFIGHTER is in O’Neal’s office. It will activate if:

1. The activation phrase is recited: “No more. I have had my fill.”. Those who have read The King in Yellow recognize it as an excerpt of Cassilda’s speech in the finale.
2. If spilled blood touches any wooden surface in the house.
3. If an agent approaches with a meter of it.
4. If any of the leeches are killed or if their jars are shattered.

The Upstairs Bath

Going into the upstairs bath reveals a room with dozens, maybe hundreds of air fresheners dangling from the ceiling. Going to the tub reveals the bloated, rotten corpse of Cliff Darrow, slowly being consumed by leeches. This costs 1/1d6 from Violence.

O’Neal’s Office

The Office is presently the epicenter of corruption in Lithgow Heights. Glued and taped to every wall are printouts of the Graph depicting the Yellow Sign.

His laptop is password protected and breaking into it will require a Computer Science of 60% or a successful roll. Going onto his computer reveals a trove of gruesome information about his spiral into madness.  Agents who attempt to look through the programming on his computer (or the car crash simulation) take 0/1d4 SAN from the unnatural as they realize that the coding has been replaced by hundreds of lines from the King in Yellow, despite this, the computer seems to function perfectly.

Going through his email details his work up until uncovering the Yellow Sign. It also reveals an email in the drafts folder to Sestero of the King in Yellow as a PDF and a written confession to the murder of Cliff Darrow that was sent an hour before the agents arrived he has attached pictures of Cliff Darrow’s dismembered arm, which will any agent looking at it 0/1d4 SAN from Violence. He has emailed his superiors an email saying that he will need to postpone his presentation to the committee next week as he’s attending to “urgent family matters’ ‘. An agent with 40% SIGINT or who makes a successful roll notices that the first letters of every sentence in the email to his superiors spell ” I-N C-A-R-C-O-S-A”.

Going through his browser history reveals that shortly after encountering the Yellow Sign. He’s been frequenting a forum for geocache finders and conversing with several members about their experiences with the Yellow Sign. One conversation that catches the agents’ attention is one with a user named “F1rstT1meCa11er”. F1rstT1meCa11er is the one that initiated the conversation, claiming “Adam told me you were curious about us?”. They discuss a group of people who have seen “The Sign” in their day-to-day lives and have convened to discuss and investigate it. F1rstT1meCa11er has sent him a selfie (seemingly) of himself and two other people, a short, black-haired woman in her mid-40s and a tall black man with a bald head. The man holding the camera is a slightly overweight man with squinty eyes and glasses with a chin-strap beard and a buzzcut. All of them are smiling. One of the agents notices that they seem to be standing on the front porch of Green Box #0309. This will cost them 0/1 San from helplessness.

In his desk drawer is a Hilroy notebook, the lettering on its cover has shifted to “PHANTOM OF TRUTH” costing 0/1 point of SAN loss from the unnatural. O’Neal has written “TRAVEL NOTES” on its cover in permanent marker (SEE “Travel Notes”). O’Neal’s “Travel Notes” contains the ritual “Enter the Chalk Maze”. On his desk rests a yellow rotary telephone, in permanent marker, he has written “Barber” on it, if the agents put it to their ear, they hear what sounds like a wind blowing through a cave, before a voice calmly says “I don’t believe it’s yet your cue” before hanging up. Inside his desk drawer are half-a-hundred sticks of white chalk. The leads from this office should lead the agents to Sestero and Catrina Hahn.

// Catrina Hahn and Cohen Byrd

Shortly after the altercation with O’Neal and being corrupted by the Yellow Sign, Catrina Hahn went home and showed her boyfriend, Cohen Byrd, the symbol. In the days after, the two have gone about turning their suburban home into a house of nightmares. Cohen has been busy – he has called in sick to work, claiming he is isolating due to COVID. He’s taken a spade and a pickaxe and has begun digging underneath the house. Catrina’s been hard at work too. She’s begun to patrol the streets, searching for targets. She’s been arresting people at random traffic stops, tasering them once they’re in the backseat of her cruiser, then she drives them to her house and hands them over to Cohen, who then bludgeons them to death with a pickaxe and stores their bodies. They’re then taken to the basement and dressed in golden robes and with pillowcases over their heads emblazoned with the Yellow Sign. They will be important for the Ritual.^[1]

She has, as of when the Agents arrive in Atlanta, killed five people this way. No one has noticed yet. The cars mysteriously end up parked at their owner’s house – the keys are in their pockets.

Catrina is rarely home anymore, she’s been patrolling the streets, looking for targets. She’s been told to keep an eye out for people matching a rough physical description of the agents. If any of the agents are alone on the streets, they’ll need to make a Luck roll or else she’ll see them and begin tailing them. She’ll try to get them to submit to a frisking, though if they refuse, she’ll try to make them submit with use of force, she’ll beat them and taser and rifle through their belongings before climbing into her car and speeding away.

// The Byrd-Hahn Residence

The Byrd-Hahn Residence is in Cascade Heights, Atlanta. It’s a two-floor house with a basement currently lived in by Atlanta Police Officer Catrina Hahn and her longtime boyfriend, Cohen Byrd, a high school English teacher.

The Ground Floor

• The front door to the house opens into the Great Room. None of the lights are on in the house, and forensics roll and tell that there’s concrete dust on some of the surfaces. It opens into the Kitchen and there are two glass doors that open to the Lanai.
• In the Kitchen, a cardboard box with various, unreadable instructions for assembling some manner of device are scattered about the floor. A trail of blood leads from the laundry room to the bedroom. 
• The laundry room floor is filthy, with smears of blood wall-to-wall across the floor, skull fragments and chunks of brain matter littering the floor. A forensics roll would notice cracks in the floor tiles and determine that several people have been brought into the room and executed by being bludgeoned to death based on the varying levels of dryness of the blood, how the blood is pooled and smeared, and the cracks in the floor tiles. There is also unwashed laundry in the laundry machine covered in blood, sweat, and concrete dust.
• The downstairs Bedroom is filthy, piles of sweaty, dirty clothes litter the floor. Underneath the bed. The door to the Crawlspace is in the closet.

The Top Floor

• The second-floor Bedroom / Office has paper, some rotten and waterlogged, scattered across the floor. On the desk is a computer, going through it reveals that Cohen and Catrina are expecting to gather at the intersection at and a copy of the King in Yellow handwritten and pasted together with paper from high school textbooks, flyers, and newspapers. The opening is written on the back of Byrd’s university degree in literature.
• The storage room contains a yellow sign written in blood on the opposite wall.

The Crawlspace

• The Bagmen (the bludgeoned corpses of the people kidnapped by Catrina Hahn dressed in yellow garbs and wearing blood-stained pillow cases over their heads) are here. They lie on their backs unless disturbed. If at any point the agents leave them unattended, they vanish. A chalk door under or above where they were remains.

// Sudden Collision

The information gleaned from the Hahn-Byrd and O’Neal Residences should point the agents toward the intersection of Barber and Lewiston, two days from now.

The evening before the ritual. The agents are assaulted by the Bag Men (if Gary Turk hasn’t been “slain” by the agents yet, then he too appears). The purpose of this is to incapacitate the agents and to steal their car. Turk and the Bag Men will try to kidnap them and bring them to the intersection, so they can be killed during the Car Crash Ceremony and brought to Carcosa, though this isn’t their top priority. This assault can take any form the handler sees fit, though two possible scenarios could be that the agents are subjected to the “carjacking” event (SEE “Carjacking” on page 7), or they are assaulted at wherever they’re staying, with the Bag Men attempting to kidnap them and steal their vehicle.

If they’re pulled from the car, Turk will confront them and tell them that their time will come, and that for now it would be best for them to go and rest. If they resist, he will use the Cigar Lighter and try to burn them to death.

The Bagmen, Catrina Hahn, Cohen Byrd, and Ambrose O’Neal have positioned themselves on the roads leading to the Lewiston and Barber intersection. At sunset, they will speed towards the intersection at top speeds and crash into one another. This will instantly mulch all four of them and create a massive fireball that will burn agents standing closer than 15m to the crash. The blood of the mulched corpses will pool onto the concrete between the burning wrecks and from the blood will spew a sickly yellow mist. The mist will cover the entire intersection. The sounds of lapping waves, distant artillery, and trumpet music will be heard. The surroundings of the Barber & Lewiston will suddenly morph into something more Edwardian and Baroque. Passing through this tear in our reality, a Byakhee will emerge and begin attacking the agents.

After the Byakhee is dead, the mists persist for another ten minutes, at the end of that ten minutes, it dissipates, the corpse of the Byakhee is revealed to just be scraps of moldy, waterlogged paper, broken glass, and rebar. The burning wrecks are gone.

//Closing

The next morning, no news ever speaks of the fiery car crash or of gun battles in the streets of Atlanta. The intersection remains, and within another two weeks, another crash occurs.

If the agents mention the King in Yellow, Hastur, or the Yellow Sign to their superiors, then what happens next is up to the Handler. Whether or not your version of the Outlaws abide by STATIC Protocol or a version of it is up to you.

The intersection remains a complicated issue for the party to deal with. It isn’t a painting or a book that can be stolen or burned – it’s a piece of urban infrastructure. Detonating explosives underneath the intersection will cause a sinkhole that will stop incidents for about three or four months, and that will draw a lot of attention, however.

Alternatively, one of the agents could use computer science to access the city council’s computers and falsify a movement to demolish the intersection and replace it with a roundabout. This could also be done if any of the agents are lawyers or have connections in the bureaucracy of Atlanta. A roundabout would alter the shape of the Yellow Sign enough to dilute its power, and although accidents will happen ever so slightly more often than normal, it won’t be like the old intersection.

They can complete their home scenes, and for the time being, that will be all.

// Entities and Artefacts

The Bullfighter

The automaton built by Ambrose O’Neal that guards his home. It appears as a skeletal frame of metal with a shell of porcelain and papier mache. It wields a long, beautiful Spanish rapier in one six-fingered hand and wields a Muleta in the other. Its face is a bloodstained, yellow Venetian Mask with a mischievous grin. It doesn’t appear to have any power source, and instead, a glass jar containing about a dozen swirling leeches sits in the center of its chest.

STR 13 CON 20 DEX 16 INT 6 POW 6 HP 16 WP 6

ARMOUR: See METAL AND PORCELAIN.

ATTACKS: Rapier 65% (see BRAND) 1d8 Armour Piercing 1

IMPOSSIBLE GEARS: The construction of the Bullfighter is

impossible. Anyone examining its machinery loses

0/1D4 SAN from the unnatural as they realize it is

powered by nothing. Those with Craft (Mechanics) 30%

or better, or those who make a roll at +20%, automatically

fail the SAN roll and gain +1 Corruption. It should not

be able to move at all.

METAL AND PAPER: The Bullfighter is made of metal and porcelain. An attack on it that rolls an odd amount of damage or with an odd-numbered Lethality roll inflicts only 1 damage. There is an endless army of marionettes to replace any that might be destroyed.

PERFORMANCE FIGHTER: As an action in combat, the Bullfighter can call upon its otherworldly powers of swordsmanship and martial combat to viciously assault its victims. Doing this expends a point of WP.

• PARRY / RIPOSTE: The Bullfighter can expend a point of WP to disarm an enemy as a “fight back” reaction, and it can expend another point to attack them.
• FEINT: The Bullfighter can expend a point of WP to “feint” a target out. This is a melee attack opposed by the Agent’s Alertness. If the Agent succeeds, the Bullfighter makes a normal attack roll. If the Agent critically succeeds, the Bullfighter makes the attack roll at -20%. If the Agent fails, the Bullfighter feints them out and makes their attack roll at +20%, and if the agent critically fails, the Bullfighter makes their attack roll at +20% and deals max damage.
• VANISH: The Bullfighter heaves the Muleta and disappears behind it (the Muleta itself seems to vanish beyond the borders of the agent’s vision. The Bullfighter can teleport to any unoccupied room or container in the O’Neal house (ex: the bathroom, the kitchen, the shower, the fridge).
• BRAND:  Once per turn as part of their attack action The Bullfighter can expend a point of wp to carve the Yellow Sign onto the flesh of any target that it has struck with its sword, this costs 0/1d4 from Helplessness, including the cost from seeing the Yellow Sign from the first time.

SANITY LOSS: 1/1D6 SAN from the unnatural

The Cherub

The automaton built by O’Neal that patrols the Hahn-Byrd Household

STR 13 CON 13 DEX 11 INT 8 POW 8 HP 13

ARMOUR (see METAL and SMALL AND FAST)

SKILLS Alertness 50%, Athletics 30%, Dodge 50%, Melee Weapons 60%, Stealth 55%

ATTACKS Butcher Knife 60% 1d6 Armour Piercing 3.

IMPOSSIBLE GEARS: The construction of the Cherub is

impossible. Anyone examining its machinery loses

0/1D4 SAN from the unnatural as they realise it is

powered by nothing. Those with Craft (Mechanics) 30%

or better, or who make a roll at +20%, automatically

fail the SAN roll and gain +1 Corruption. It should not

be able to move at all.

METAL: The Cherub is constructed from industrial metal

and solid cast bronze. Every attack that hits and rolls

an odd number as its damage result inflicts only 1

damage. Even an odd Lethality roll inflicts 1 damage,

whether it succeeds or fails. The Cherub is completely

immune to flames.

SMALL AND FAST: Any ranged attack against the Cherub

is at −20% due to its speed and small size. At point blank range, if it is engaged in melee combat, any attack that misses the Cherub inflicts half damage on its

melee opponent instead.

SANITY LOSS: 1/1D6 SAN from the unnatural

The Cigar Lighter

Gary Turk carries around a finely made, gold and nickel-plated cigar lighter. The lighter, which Turk took with him on his travels to Carcosa, has been imbued with strange powers from its exposure to Hastur’s influence. The lighter allow the user limited control over fire, which can manifest in two ways:

• COMBUST: An object or person the agent is looking at bursts into flame, dealing 2d6 damage every turn for 1d6 turns. Seeing a person burn to death costs the agents 1/1d6 from Violence.
• SMOTHER: A burning object or person the agent is looking at immediately stops burning, as the fires instantly shrink and snuff out. Whether this affects chemical weapons (such as White Phosphorus) or unnatural fire (such as the flames of a Djinn or an Ahmo Motta) is up to the Handler’s discretion.
• FIREBREAK: The agent is able to part flames to create a path safe to walk through ahead of them for 1d4 turns. Agents that wish to extend the effect’s duration may expend a point of WP to extend for an additional turn.

These abilities can only be utilised once every seven days. Using any of these abilities takes a turn and costs the user 2 WP and 1d4 SAN from the Unnatural. If the operator of the Cigar Lighter gains a disorder while in possession of the lighter, they gain Pyromania as their disorder.

Ambrose O’Neal’s “Travel Notes”

The garbled notes of the maddened Ambrose O’Neal written inside of a 200-page Hilroy notebook. The official text on the notebook’s cover is corrupted and reads as text from the King in Yellow.

The first three pages are notes from his initial investigation into the Barber-and-Lewiston intersection, though after that the text becomes a disjointed mess of writing. Some pages contain hand-written transcripts of conversations with O’Neal and Adam Barber, others contain lines from The King in Yellow. Towards the end of the notebook, O’Neal has written instructions to use the Enter the Chalk Maze ritual.

( In English. Study time: 2 Hours. Unnatural +2%, Accounting +1%, San loss 1d6. Rituals: Enter the Chalk Maze )

Peter Barber’s Sword

Peter Barber’s sword is a finely crafted Spanish rapier that looks to be about from the mid-19th century. It is dark with gold and copper filigree, obviously very expensive. Underneath the hit, the Yellow Sign has been imprinted.

An agent that falls asleep in possession of the sword (or, the last agent that has touched it with bare skin and is asleep in the same room as it) has terrifying dreams about brutally murdering a bond with the sword, dismembering them and skewering their limbs with it. They lose 1/1d6 from helplessness upon waking up, and find that the sword is in his arms. An agent that goes beyond their breaking point because of this, or because of violence inflicted onto them by the sword, develops an anxiety disorder or a phobia of bladed weapons. If an agent used the sword to harm someone, they do not experience these dreams, but become liable to develop a totemic compulsion to the sword if they hit their breaking point while in its possession.

Ambrose O’Neal

STR 10 CON 11 DEX 12 INT 15 POW 12 CHA 10

WP 12 HP 10 SAN 0 Breaking Point: N/A

ARMOUR: None

MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS:

Procuring an invitation to the masquerade ball

Reaching Carcosa

Obsession (Understanding the Yellow Sign)

Avoiding persecution

SKILLS: Accounting 50%, Alertness 40%, Athletics 23%, Art (textiles) 35%, Bureaucracy 40%, Computer Science 45%, Craft (Mechanics) 50%, Criminology 50%, Dodge 50%, Drive 50%, Firearms 20%, First Aid 20%, History 20%, HUMINT 30%, Law 40%, Melee Weapons 40%, Navigate 40%, Occult 20%, Persuade 41%, Search 40%, Swim 40%, Unarmed Combat 48%, Unnatural 10%

ATTACKS: Unarmed 40%, 1d4-1; Remington Over-Under 40%, 2d8, 50m^[2]

RITUALS KNOWN: Enter the Chalk Maze

Officer Catrina Hahn

STR 11 CON 11 DEX 10 INT 10 POW 11 CHA 10

HP 11 WP 11 SAN 0 Breaking Point N/A

ARMOUR: Reinforced kevlar vest, Armour 4

MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS:

Psychopathy

Reaching Carcosa

SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Athletics 50%, Bureaucracy 30%, Criminology 30%, Driving 40%, Firearms 40%, HUMINT 40%, Law 40%, Melee Combat 50%, Persuade 50%, Search 40%, Stealth 30%, Unarmed Combat 50%

ATTACKS: .40 Pistol 40%, Damage 1d10;

AR-15 Carbine (in trunk of police cruiser) 40%, Damage 1d12, Armour Piercing 3;

Baton 50%, Damage 1d6

Stun Gun 50%, Target Stunned

Unarmed 50%, Damage 1d4-1

Cohen Byrd

Once an unremarkable, suburban high school teacher. Exposure to the Yellow Sign and the forces of Hastur have sent Cohen spiraling into the furthest depths of insanity. He now stalks his home, naked and caked in blood. He occasionally climbs into the basement and digs into the concrete, trying to reach the Chalk Maze. When Catrina brings home a new victim, she gives them over to him, and he gleefully bludgeons their heads in before dressing them up and dragging them to the basement for storage.

STR 12 CON 10 DEX 10 INT 13 POW 10 CHA 11

HP 11 WP 10 SAN 0 Breaking Point N/A

ARMOUR: NONE

MOTIVATIONS AND DISORDERS:

Obsession (The Yellow Sign)
Obsession (Creating Bag Men)
Psychopathy

Serving the King in Yellow

SKILLS: Alertness 40%, Athletics 30%, Art (sculpture) 20%, Bureaucracy 40%, Computer Science 20%, Craft (mechanics) 50%, Criminology 20%, Dodge 40%, Drive 30%, Firearms 35%, First Aid 20%, Forensics 50%, History 40%, HUMINT 30%, Law 40%, Melee Weapons 50%, Navigate 40%, Persuade 30%, Search 40%, Unarmed Combat 48%, Unnatural 5%

ATTACKS:

Butcher Knife 50%, damage 1d6, Armour Piercing 3

Gary Turk

An apparition of Gary Turk haunts Lithgow Heights, inspecting areas and buildings as potential “property acquisitions”. Turk’s appearance is unchanging, no matter the weather. He is a balding white man in his mid-5os that wears thick-rimmed glasses, a beige raincoat over a dark brown business suit. He frequently smokes cigarillos and reeks of tobacco. He carries with him his prized, golden cigar lighter as well as a blocky satellite phone which he uses to speak with Peter and Adam Barber. Gary is not supposed to appear at any point in the operation, but he can appear anywhere.

STR 10 CON 9 DEX 9 INT 14 POW 11 CHA 12

HP 9 WP 11

ARMOUR: NONE

SKILLS: Accounting 25%, Alertness 44%, Bureaucracy 55%, History 80%, HUMINT 65%, Navigate 30%, Occult 55%, Pharmacy 40%, Ride 30%, Search 40%, Stealth 40%, Unarmed Combat 40%, Unnatural 21%

ATTACKS:

The Cigar Lighter (SEE “The Cigar Lighter” on page 22)

RITUALS KNOWN: Enter the Chalk Maze.

The Bag Men

The Bag Men are the corpses of those kidnapped and murdered by Catrina Hahn and her husband, Cohen Byrd, they’re mostly males in their late-teenage to mid-adult years. They’ve had their heads caved in with a shovel, sledgehammer, or pickaxe and have had a bizarre clockwork mechanism (built by Ambrose) inserted into their mouths, though this is concealed by the pillowcase thrown over their heads. Each wears a bloodstained pillowcase mask and wears saffron robes sewn by Ambrose O’Neal. A bizarre noise, like winding gears or clockwork, can be heard from under their hoods as they approach.

STR 14 CON 14 DEX 5 INT – POW 2

HP 14 WP 2

ARMOUR: none

SKILLS: Alertness 30%, Unarmed 30%

ATTACKS: Impale 35%, 1d8, Armour Piercing 2 (see SPIKE)
ENDLESS EXITS: Servants of the King in Yellow are impossible to trap. Placing one in a room or a box or even burying it underground fails to contain it. The moment it is unobserved, it returns to Carcosa to continue its work.
SPIKE: Ambrose has built a bizarre clockwork weapon that the Bag Men hold inside their mouths. The Bag Men will only use it after they’ve successfully grappled an agent for an entire round. When it is sprung, a metallic spike will spring out of its mouth with a sickening crunch, poking through the bag and stabbing the agent.

SAN 0/1d4 from the unnatural. 1/1d6 from violence upon seeing its mangled, bloodied head and the clockwork deathtrap forcefully built into its mouth.

Byakhee

The Damned of Aldebaran
STR 20 CON 20 DEX 15 INT 6 POW 8 HP 20 WP 8
ARMOUR: See EVER-SHIFTING.
SKILLS: Alertness 50%, Dodge 40%, Flight 40%, Unarmed Combat 40%.
ATTACKS: 

Clawed wingtip 40%, damage 1D6 and pin. Bite 20%, damage 1D12.

OTHERWORLDLY FLIGHT: The Byakhee can “fly” in any environment, flapping its membranous wings as if against some unseen current, even underwater.
UNNATURAL BIOLOGY: The Byakhee’s physiology would baffle any biologist. Making a called shot for “vitals” or another apparently vulnerable area inflicts normal damage, with no special game effect.
EVER-SHIFTING: Any attack on a Byakhee that rolls an even number for damage inflicts only 1 damage. Any other result inflicts normal damage. This includes Lethality attacks.

SANITY LOSS: 1/1D6 from the unnatural

---

[1] These are the Bagmen.

[2] Full Damage up to 10m, 1d10 up to 20m, 1d6 beyond 20m