BELLI OCCULTA: Introduction

 One evening in April 2023 I decided to run a game. It would be a month from then, once I had returned from the UK and could run Delta Green again. The scenario was "Widowmakers", a brand-new rendition of the scenario, version 3. The first two didn't satisfy me. The changes I made for version 3 were to wind the clock back to 1997 and include Majestic-12 as the overarching villains for the scenario. 

I ran it with some people I hardly new and by the end of the scenario I was convinced I wanted to run a campaign with them. So we did. We ran "Speak of the Devil" and many, many more. I was interested in going against what was established in the expanded lore of the Delta Green Handler's Guide, and to have the actions of the players influence the outcome of the story, and how things would ultimately shape up. This new setting eventually started including branching storylines, following other cells as they combatted the Skoptsi, the Karotechia, Tadjbegskaya Bratva, The Fate, and more. Eventually, I came up with a title for the setting. I translated a phrase from English to Latin in google translate, then fucked around with it until it sounded cool to me. It was henceforth known as

BELLI OCCULTA

The Secret War. 

Writeups on the new factions and lore developments of Belli Occulta will come out in the near future. For now, I would like to take the time to introduce the big movers and shakers of the game. The player characters and their foes.

Cell 'M'

M-Cell was the first that we played in Belli Occulta. M-Cell started as a freshly reconstructed cell, after most of its original members were killed or driven insane during an encounter with the Greys. MONTY, the junior agent of the Cell, was promoted to its leader on the recommendation of the Cell's previous leader, MONROE. MARCUS and MERLYN were read-in too, MARCUS an FBI Agent and MERLYN an explosives expert with the ATF. MONTY was the only non-federal agent of the Cell, as he was a Sergeant in the New York Army National Guard, and a veteran of the first Gulf War.

Since then, M-Cell has carried out brutal assassinations, daring raids, and narrowly avoided fates worse than death. Their current roster has changed markedly since Widowmakers.

• Cell Leader: Agent MONTY, Sgt. Tom Murphy, U.S Army (ret.), New York Army National Guard (ret.), Founder and owner of Minuteman Guns and Ammunition LLC.
• Agent MARCUS, Special Agent Adrian Walck, FBI
• Agent MARIAM, Sasha Rozenstruik, FBI Directorate of Intelligence
• Agent MORGAN, Catherine Conley, AFOSI.

Thus far, M-Cell has participated in six operations. Listed below.

Operation BRONZE VESSEL. Nov.1997 involved the Cell investigating the bizarre death of an FBI confidental informant who had allegedly been killed in a suicide. Their investigation eventually revealed the culprits as Majestic-12, operating through a front organization known as Universal Alignment, an alternative medecine 'research group' that was used to find suitable human test subjects. The group, and Majesitc-12's research project, were sabotaged by M-Cell, with the help of Bernice Cartfield, an antiquarian con-artist with genuine knowledge of the unnatural, and 'STINGRAY', a double-agent of Majestic-12's counterintelligence branch, NRO SECTION DELTA.

Operation RED PLOWMAN. Feb.1998. M-Cell investigated a tip to the FBI concerning a murdered sex-worker named Scarlet Harrison. The anonymous tip claimed that Harrison's murderers were part of an international human trafficking scheme, and that officers of the Boston police department were purposefully mishandling and neglecting the investigation. Delta Green became involved when photos of the cadaver reached A-Cell, who recognized the killing bite wounds on Harrison's neck, back, and thighs. M-Cell learned that the source of the unnatural is believed to pose a greater threat the more is known about it, and thus were given minimal information to go off of. They eventually discovered it to be the work of the Dorian Grey Society, a wealthy and well-connected human trafficking ring who employed a sorcerer by the name of Percival Bristow as their fixer. Bristow was a self-proclaimed priest of the "Headless Corpse God", which gave him supernatural powers. M-Cell assassinated Bristow before handing over a mountain of damning evidence on the Society over to the FBI, resulting in a flurry of raids and arrests across Boston. 

Operation FLUNG CROWN and ARIADNE. Apr.1998.

M-Cell was given a tip by STINGRAY about Dr. Bruce Jeppson, a physicist working with Majestic-12 who had fallen ill after an unexplainable incident at a Majestic blacksite in Vermont. M-Cell managed to question Jeppson in his home, where they learned that Majestic had been excavating ruins of a derelict alien facility beneath the hills there, and that many of their researchers theorize it to be a construction of the Greys from before they made contact with Majestic. M-Cell's investigation led them to Dr. Albert Wilmarth, and his unfinished manuscript titled "The Whisperers" which described a horrific race of alien beings stalking the woods of Vermont. This, paired with an antique audio recording taken by an associate of Wilmarth's led M-Cell to discover that they Greys were likely puppets to the alien race Wilmarth described as "The Whisperers", also known as "The Mi-Go" to the Tibetans. The investigation concluded with M-Cell racing to stop servants of the Mi-Go from engineering a catastrophe to create a distraction so they could infiltrate the alien derelict and deactivate the Gate still active inside it .

Operation RED PLOWMAN II. July.1998.

M-Cell partook in a hybrid operation with the FBI to root out and arrest other members of the Dorian Grey Society. Their investigations led them to The Sugar Farm, a "Playhouse" ran by the Society in the Panamanian jungle. The cell, accompanied by a cadre of Nicaraguan mercenaries, raided the playhouse, killing most of its security members and personnel, before MONTY and MILO discovered a lab beneath the playhouse were a young, mute man was being kept and experimented on. Dr. William Wren, the leader of the Society, was murdered by the Mute before he promptly fled. Documentation refers to the mute man as "The Innocent".

Operation CALUMNY. Aug. 1998.

M-Cell is deployed to Brattleboro, Vermont, to investigate an outbreak of an alien disease potentially caused by the outcome of Operation ARIADNE. They surveil Majestic's attempts to cure the disease through conventional means before turning to the Greys for assistance out of desperation. M-Cell was eventually able to locate a hideout of the Mi-Go nearby, and, with the assistance of contacts in Majestic-12, raided it wtih assistance from Operation BLUE FLY. Irrefutable evidence of the Grey deception, as well as a few mutant servants, were found there and killed.

Cell 'I'

I-Cell came after a few scenarios with M-Cell, I had the idea of running a second storyline with another cell. This was done because it seemed weird for M-Cell to have the themes of its storyline muddied by introducing other groups not pertaining to their ongoing struggles against Majestic-12 and The Fate.

• Cell Leader: Agent IAGO, NAME CLASSIFIED, Department of the Treasury, Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. 
• Agent IMOGEN, Sylvia Pontecorvo, IRS Criminal Investigator
• Agent IRENA, Mary Bryant, FBI Behavioural Analysis Unit
• Agent ISOLDE, Sofia Reed, Forensic Pathologist working for the FBI
  
• Agent ISAAC, Viktor Morozov, Anthropologist
• Agent INDIGO, Sabina Vassatou, Cybercriminal

Operation THROWING DISTANCE. Mar.1997. I-Cell investigates the recovery of strange golden idols and coins from a trap house during a raid by a police narcotics task force of Corpus Christi, TX. They discovered them to be trinkets traded to local drugs dealers by a pair of vagrant twins, Cecil and Viv Fulton. I-Cell, upon arresting the pair, discovered them to be hybirds, half-human, and half-"Deep one" as they heard them described.

Operation BROKERAGE and CRYSTAL CLEAR. July.1997. I-Cell investigates the grisly suicide of Wayne Klinger, a criminal investigator with the IRS. Klinger, a person considered by close friends, colleagues, and family, to be of sound mind and temperament, launched into a psychotic episode, resulting in him stabbing himself in the throat of a shard of broken mirror. I-Cell's contacts in the IRS noted other abonrmalities in his death, namely that a character of an unknown script had been seeared into the flesh of his scalp through unknown means. I-Cell discovered it to be a character of the Oeuth script, a script used in ceremonial purposes by the insular Central Asian people known as the Gath, which is believed by some by some to either by an inspiration for the alleged "Muvian Naacal" of theosophy lore, or to have been inspired by it. I-Cell eventually discovered Klinger's death to be the work of a shadowy brotherhood of the Russian mafia known as the Tadjbegskaya Bratva, who interacted with the denizens of a "parallel plane" known as the Dreamlands. With the help of Delta Green Friendly Dr. Jensen Wu, I-Cell were able to severely sabotage the Bratva's operations, including busting a meeting between the Bratva and an unknown third party for a trade. Later, after members of the third party were shockingly let go on their charges, I-Cell was able to locate a fixer and sorcerer of the Bratva's responsible for psychologically harassing the Federal Court judge presiding over the case and assassinate him, with Agent INDIGO claiming a mysterious, black sword from his person. 

Operation BLUE ISTHMUS. Feb.1998. I-Cell learned that the man who treated with the Tadjbegskaya Bratva was Fedor Berezhkov, a defected agent of the infamous NKVD, and on IAGO's orders, followed him to his home in Moscow-on-the-Chespeake, an unincorporated community near Chesapeake City, Maryland. They discovered that Berezhkov had become an agent of a strange and insular cult known as the Skoptsi, and was cooperating with other criminal syndicates, including the russian mafia and Tiger Transit, in order to assemble a collection of obscene Russian orthodox icons. They discovered that the Skoptsi possessed a bowl of black metal, which INDIGO identified as one of the "Black Tools of Dza-Ngar Phan", a collection of artifacts that her black sword was also a part of. Unable to pilfer it themselves, they learned it was being taken by henchmen of the Skoptsi to Tomas Drennon of Colorado to be traded. After INDIGO and IMOGEN narrowly thwarted an attempt by the Skoptsi to kidnap them after having "burned", I-Cell was ordered to withdraw. 

Operation HOLLOW HILL. May.1998. I-Cell travels to Las Animas, Colorado, under the assumed identities as agents of the U.S Customs Service in order to apprehend Tomas Drennon and question him on his dealings with the Skoptsi. They arrive in time to find his home the site of an arson and the bowl missing. They quickly realize that Halimah Jassim, an acquaintance of Drennon's, is responsible, having fallen under the power of an alien intelligence channeled through the bowl. They pursue Halimah across state lines, eventually confronting her at a farm in Midland, South Dakota, where, with some effort, they are able to "exorcise" the being from her. They are forced to make a hasty withdrawal, as they learn that rivals of Delta Green have closed in. 

Operation MIGHTY MOUSE. Sept.1998. I-Cell is briefed on Delta Green's enemies in Majestic-12 before they're given their newest assignment: the acquire Coney Island Carpets as an asset for Delta Green. Coney Island Carpets was a mundane outfit of criminal "cleaners" that had been on contract to the Tadjbegskaya Bratva, and were wrapped during their investigation in Operation BROKERAGE. They successful in negotiating with the group, but are quickly reassigned to handle their own nody disposal job for a Friendly / asset of IAGO's. 

Operation OBSIDIAN FLAKES. Jan.1999. I-Cell returns to Maryland to confront the Skoptsi once again. 

Cell 'V'

V-Cell is the newest cell, and has played the fewest games. Their operations have primarily focused on the Karotechia.

• Agent VICTOR, Lt. Avery Fields, U.S Army ISA, JTF-6
• Agent VEGA, Isidore LeClerc, DEA
• Agent VOLTAIRE, Carl McCoy, Freelance Journalist
• Agent VERDANCE, Emerson Copeland, FBI
• Agent VIPER, Charlotte Gaultier, FBI

Operation DEVILFISH. Jul.1995.

V-Cell, before they became members of Delta Green, work on a task force led by the FBI and the U.S Army to undermine and combat the rise of white supremacists and racists in the U.S. They are brought to the home of a powerful organizer among the KKK-offshoots and Neo-Nazi gangs of Arkansas and Louisiana named Spencer Wainwood. Wainwood drugs them and forces them to witness him summoning Deep Ones, who violently attack them, resulting in a desperate fight to escape. They eventually are able to flee the Wainwood property, being intercepted by D-Cell. Later they are read in as members of Delta Green and organized under V-Cell.

Cell 'Y'

Y-Cell were orginally a group of players from a playtest for campaign I was writing for a contest that I never wound up submitting, but I happened to like the player group enough that I decided to fold them into the storyline. 

• Agent YERSINIA, Sabrina Lasch, FBI International Operations
• Agent YVONNE, Victoria Ho An Na, CIA Program Manager
• Agent YURI, Anton Davis, U.S Army ISA

Operation EARL GREY. Jul.1999. Y-Cell travels to England to get in contact with PISCES, old allies of Delta Green from the second world war. They are successful in doing so, but realize months later the extreme mistake this was, as they discover that senior members of the agency have been compromised by a race of alien insects that are able to control the minds of others. 

AARs on their future operations will be shared here in the future, as well as posts about the making of their scenarios. :)

ART CREDITS

1. Unknown piece title by Dennis Detwiller

2. THE LOSS OF AGENT BRANDT by Dennis Detwiller

3. KEY07 by Gary Sanchez

4. Unknown photographer

5. Airport by Faraz Shanyar.