Breaking the Ice

It occurred to me recently that if I wanted to be a real member of the TTRPG communtiy. It would probably serve me to start a blog. That way I have somewhere for me to share scenarios, adventures, and after-actionr reports that I write so they can live somewhere and get read by my friends and others.

Most of you reading this will know who I am, but for those who do not. Welcome. My name is Fin. I go by Fee Fi Fo Fin on most platforms these days. He/him. uh. yeah. ttrpg nerd. theatre artist. visual artist. 

I'll use this post to introduce some of the content I'll be posting here starting out. 

BELLI OCCULTA

Belli Occulta, "The Secret War" in mistranslated latin, is a campaign in Delta Green that I've ran for the last year on A Night at the Opera, the discord server of the Delta Green Community Reddit.

Belli Occulta started in May of 2023, the month after my final year of university, with me running a scenario called "Widowmakers". It was my third time running this scenario, with the two most major alterations being a change of setting (originally it was dated in 2016, the newest rendition was moved to 1997) and the introduction of Majestic-12, the primary villains of the Delta Green setting, as the primary antagonists of the scenario. We ran through the scenario, and by the end of the first session I really fell in love with the player group and their characters and pitched it to them that we run more games together. 

As of right now, Belli Occulta's campaign has spanned over four years, with four cells (M, I, V, and Y) working to fight the machinations of the Mythos and the conspiracies that work fruitlessly to harness their power for personal gain and ideology. 13 scenarios have been played as a part of it, listed below in the order that they were played.

1. Widowmakers, Wehring, Connecticut, 1997. The newly reconstructed Cell 'M' embarks on its first mission as a cell. The corpse of a confidential informant of the FBI is brought to its FBI field office for autopsy, which reveals that although his death seemed to have been suicide by hanging, it does not account for his practically liquefied innards, or the immense keloid on his chest. Cell M discovers the informant died after joining an alternative medicine think-tank called Universal Alignment, which they then discover is a front by Majestic-12 to facilitate human experimentation.  Cell 'M' meets a woman operating under the pseudonym 'STINGRAY' , a counterintelligence officer with Majestic who has become disillusioned with its mission, and Bernice Cartfield, a sorcerous con-artist.
2. Speak of the Devil, Boston, Massachussetts, 1998. Cell 'M' investigates a tip to the FBI indicating that the investigation into the murder of a prostitute is being intentionally mishandled by local police due to corruption (brought to Delta Green's attention when A-Cell recognizes the bite wounds on the Jane Doe has being connected with a high-level unnatural threat. M-Cell discovers the perpetrator to be 'Percival Bristow', a sorcerer and "Avatar" of Y'Golonac, working as a fixer for a network of ultra-rich human traffickers known as the Dorian Grey Society. They investigate the network, undermine its sorcerous resources, and assassinate Bristow. During this operation, they come into contact with Ginette Wirtz, a Sorceress of The Fate.
3. The Thread of Order, Ribbons, Pennsylvania, 1998. M-Cell responds to a tip by Stingray about a psychologically unbalanced Majestic researcher who came into close contact with the mythos. They approach the man, obviously unwell from an unknown fungal infection, and learn of Majestic's operations in Townshend, Vermont, uncovering what they believe to be a derelict alien spacecraft or base. 
4. Like a String in a Maze, Townshend, Vermont, 1998. M-Cell follows up on the intelligence gathered from Ribbons and investigates Majestic's activities in Townshend, Vermont, and their fascination with a Dr. Albert Wilmarth. M-Cell manages to find an incomplete manuscript and audio recording collected by Dr. Wilmarth, and piece together that they Greys are really puppets of a far stranger alien race that Wilmarth knew as "The Whisperers", known in Tibetan lore as the Mi-Go. They fail to prevent a servant of the Whisperers from summoning a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath in a gambit to disrupt Majestic's investigation. 
5. Reach for the Powder, Corpus Christi, Texas, 1997. A 'prologue' scenario for I-Cell. Agents are dispatched to investigate the recovery of strange golden coins and sundries from a drug bust in Corpus Christi. They discover the artifacts were pawned away by a pair of twins, who are human-aliene hybrids of a race known as the "Deep Ones". IMOGEN, an IRS investigator with a brief history with the Deep Ones, suspects that a secret fraternity of plutocrats known as the 'Exalted Circle' are behind the raising of the twins and the private eye that watches them.
6. Suzerain of the Earth, Brooklyn, New York, 1997. I-Cell investigates the death of Wayne Klinger, an IRS Investigator who randomly committed a brutal suicide. They discover that Klinger had run afoul of a brotherhood of the Russian mafia known as the Tadjbegskaya Bratva, who telepathically harassed Klinger and drove him to suicide. They disrupt the Bratva's activities, including a deal with another, unknown organization, and destroy the network of gates to the Dreamlands the Bratva operates beneath Brooklyn.
7. And it Doth Appear, Various locations, 1998. M-Cell undertakes a hybrid operation rooting out other nodes of the Dorian Grey Society. Their investigation results in them chasing Michael O'Gorman, a defrocked attorney with connections to the Society, in a failed attempt to flee the country, and eventually leads them to Panama, where the Society maintains an illustrious retreat known as the 'Sugar Farm' which doubles as their headquarters. M-Cell, with the help of Nicaraguan mercenaries, raids the Sugar Farm, discovering a laboratory underneath containing the leader of the Society's perverse experiment in human development, known in documentation as "The Innocent". The Innocent uses obscene sorcery to kill the Society's leader and escape, waltzing past the horrified M-Cell.
8. Earl Grey, London, England, 1999. The "latest" operation at the time of writing. Y-Cell undertakes Earl Grey, an operation meant to draw out an old ally of Delta Green known as PISCES by launching an investigation of a cult it busted known as the Army of the Third Eye, with the intention of establishing communication and brokering an alliance. Y-Cell is able to establish contact with their old war-time sister organization, but realize months later that the alien parasites that the Army of the Third Eye feverishly maintained were nesting in members of the British military were real, and had corrupted major members of PISCES.
9. Iconostasis, Brooklyn, 1997. I-Cell follows up on the aftermath of their prior operation in Brooklyn. They manage to outwit, hunt down, and kill Kostya Bekhterev, a member of the Tadjbegkskaya Bratva. They make allies with two masked, russian-speaking dreamlands warriors along the way, who claim to have a history with Delta Green.
10. Zoonosis, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1997. M-Cell investigates an outbreak of a mysterious disease along the West River in Vermont. They quickly learn that it is caused by bacterium that flaked off of the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath summoned during the climax of "Like  a String in a Maze". They manage to disern Majestic-12's intentions to quell the outbreak, and learn of a nearby Mi-Go hideout. They raid the hideout with intentions of documenting their findings to prove the Mi-Go's deception to Majestic-12. In the process, they kill an unaging cultist of the Mi-Go known as Noyes.
11. Devilfish, Arkansas, 1995. The "earliest" operation thus far. Devilfish followed a team of FBI investigators and special operators brought in for Operation PATCON during the mid-90s in a mission to infiltrate a neo-nazi occultist group known as the Knights of Mu. The agents learn that the FBI's attempts to infiltate and undermine nazi activity in America has gone very poorly, and that it seems American Neo-Nazis have learned counterintelligence measures they have no right to know. The agents are brought to the home of Wainwood, an occultist, who drugs and kidnaps them and forces them to witness the summoning of "The Stewards of Atlantis". A fight ensues, during which the agents narrowly escaped the Stewards and are received by D-Cell of Delta Green. Months later, they are brought into the fold as agents of V-Cell.
12. Death to Spies, Moscow-on-the-Chesapeake, Maryland. 1998. I-Cell investigates the community of Moscow-on-the-Chesapeake and one of its residents, Vasili Karpov also known as Fedor Berezhkov, a defector of SMERSH, who seems to have found a new purpose, serving an obscene castration cult rather than Lavrentiy Beria. I-Cell maps out the activities of the cult, identifying them as "The Skoptsi" and narrowly escapes an ambush by their cultists. 
13. Language of the Stars, Las Animas, Colorado. 1998. I-Cell investigates Tomas Drennon, an amateur occultist who they believe had dealings with the Skoptsi. They arrive to seize an aritfact bought off the Skoptsi only to find Drennon's house (and Drennon) the victims of a bizarre fire. Their investigation quickly leads them to believe that Halimah Jassim, a fellow occultist and history student from Chicago and possible lover, has become possessed by something that was unleashed by the artifact. 

AKAMOROS

Akamoros is a product of my time spent with Pathfinder, and is one of my earliest RPG projects to date. It is a homebrew setting that I've ran three campaigns in, and plan to run more shorter-length adventures in in the near-future. 

At present, I am finishing a two-year-long campaign set in Akamoros which I've dubbed "Act of Devotion", about a group of adventurers working to stop a sorcerer who, in a misguided attempt to gain the upper-hand in a decades-long abolitionist insurgency, unwittingly unleashed a powerful Demon that has driven him to destroy cities and consume thousands of lives. 

The impact of Act of Devotion will be shown in some follow-up adventures I plan to write and run soon, namely "The Isle of Cedars", "The Smouldering City", and  "Tithetakers and Taxmen".