Fee Fi Fo Fin

The second half of this post is a copy of the short story "Bleeding Darkness" by Shane Ivey from the old Delta Green website. As he washes his hands, the sound rushes to him unbidden until he screws his eyes shut and places his palms against them. He is a man of four-and-forty years, he has been a catholic priest for twenty-four of them, and even now the business of exorcism frightens him. In the darkness behind his eyelids - in the strange, imaginary dancing dendroids and bismuth crystals, which he knows are only illusions, he is aware of a subtle steady mechanism at work in his mind: his entire life-experience reconfiguring itself to accommodate a new truth, as if his whole life were pictures hung on the wall, and he were forced to take them down and swap their frames, and in doing so he changes the images slightly, discovering a new and disturbing perspective of their content. It was as if maybe the picture-frames hid some detail, a figure in the margins; a vague shape kno...

When his feet began to burn and lungs began to ache, he'd find an pine with an adequately high canopy that he would crawl beneath. Then he would kneel below it as if in prayer, undoing his rucksack and drinking his water, then he'd sit. The hood of his poncho pulled over his head so as not to get sap in his hair.  He'd sit and listen, inspecting the sounds of the woods, breathing slowly through his nose, not smiling and not thinking, and occasionally, sleep would come to him. He found it funny how it sneaks up on him. No one ever sees sleep coming until its done.  In his daydreams, as he sat awake below the canopy, and in his sleep, he would revisit the college years. He would remember sitting in dim dormitories at midnight with people who, even now, he considered his closest friends; two parts drunk and speaking earnestly about love and fear and uncertainty, conversations he would never dream of broaching with his chums from grade school. He remembered the things that made...

YELENA’S NOTES A disorganized jumble of papers contains the journals, experiment logs, enemy lists, and recipes of Yelena Kalamatiano. These documents represent a lifetime’s work of pursuing the mysteries of The Magna Mater. Though I-Cell has come to know it by other names, The Black Goat of the Woods, Sheela Na-Gig, Shub-Niggurath. Whatever it is.  The documents provide a basic outline of the Skoptsi theological and cosmological beliefs, and some of the routine operations undertaken by them in Moscow-on-the-Chesapeake.  The intelligence of this book will prove invaluable to I-Cell efforts in destroying the Skoptsi.  Below are some of the spells invented and learned by Kalamatiano in her many, many years.  BECKON THE ARCHANGEL OF THE MAGNA MATER Elaborate Ritual. Study Time, WEEKS ; 1d10 SAN, +1 Unnatural, Casting Time: HOURS, 1D6 SAN, 12 WP This ritual beckons for an “Archangel of the Magna Mater”, an enormous and horrific creature resembling a tree, an alligator, a...

The Skoptsi are one of my favorite factions in Delta Green, and in my home game, I featured them as the primary villain for a brief storyline featuring one of my cells. The reports on their investigations can be found in previous posts. In the interest of sharing my opinions, and perhaps encouraging other handlers to feature them in their 90s / 2000s Delta Green game, I decided it would be worth it to share my experiences with the Skoptsi, how I flavor them, how I roleplay them, and some missions / setpieces I've featured in my home game's efforts against the vile Cult of the Magna Mater. Roleplaying the Skoptsi A HAND AT ANYTHING: As described in Countdown, many of the Skoptsi have gotten themselves into skilled trades, and use these skills to make revenue and to shore up the Skoptsi's operations and defenses. The primary example given is that many of them are carpenters and contractors, and use this to expertly build the winding network of escape hatches and tunnels benea...

The Occultist Agents thumbing through the 1990 TABLE DANCER report will no doubt raise an eyebrow at the mention of a certain occultist that the original Delta Green team had dog-eared as a potential asset in their investigation. An occultist and antiquarian running a small antiques shop in the Dorchester neighborhood by the name of Bernice Cartfield.  Preliminary investigation into Cartfield reveals that she's originally a Floridian, and studied fine arts in Tallahassee before moving North in the late 1980s. Her business is well-regarded and has encountered very little in the way of legal trouble. Inquiries made through Boston law enforcement about Cartfield reveal that she is thought to be cordial and cooperative by the Sheriff's department, with whom she had offered her consultation regarding a rash of voodoo-themed gang violence in 1993.  Any inquiries to A-Cell reveal that beyond the TABLE DANCER's mention in the 1990 report, A-Cell knows essentially nothing about Cart...