WIDOWMAKERS - Part Three

 Widowmakers

A Delta Green Scenario by Fee Fi Fo Fin

Part 3.

Welcome to Wehring, Connecticut

Wehring, Connecticut, is a small coastal town perched on the shores of the Long Island Sound. It was founded in the 1800s primarily by Irish settlers looking to make a living by fishing the waters of the Sound. Since the 1950s, its population has hovered around 1200-1500. It has a United church and a Catholic church, a couple stores, a post office, a seafood restaurant, a motel, a sports good shop that mostly sells gear for fishing and duck-hunting, and other small-town essentials. The Coast Guard has a station up the coast by 10 miles. 

Agents investigating the history of the town will not find anything extravagant or obviously pertaining to the mythos, no witch-cults or satanic murder sprees or vagrants barging into church hollering about drowned gods. Agents who take lots of time to study the town's history, or who specifically state they're looking for a history with the U.S Military will eventually discover news articles about the construction and later shuttering of Site HA-33. HA-33 was a Nike Missile site deep in the woods about 5 miles to the Northwest of Wehring. It was built in the 1950s and operated with a small crew until the early 70s when the Project NIKE ended and most of its missiles and their sites were decomissioned. Last any newspapers recall, it had been sold to the State government by the Military. Agents who have a History of 50% or higher or succeed at a roll learn that it had been acquired in the late 1980s by Drummond Dynamics, a group that the newspapers of Wehring incorrectly list as a subsidiary of the Lockheed-Martin Corporation.

More recently, in 1993, an alternative health group called Universal Alignment purchased a large tract of property formerly belonging to the Gethsemane Christian Youth Centre. The centre was ran by the New Haven Archdiocese and operated from the 1950s to the 1980s primarily for hosting a local convent and annual Christian youth summer camps. in the early 80s it closed for financial reasons. 

Drummond Dynamics

Drummond Dynamics appears to have a privately owned, government-affiliated research and development corporation. Agents who investigate their history discover they were primarily concerned with the engineering of jet thrusters and other propulsion systems for modern military aircraft. 

Although newspapers detailing the purchase of the Nike Missile Site in the woods beyond Wehring describe Drummond Dynamics as a subisidiary of Lockheed-Martin, this is not the case. Agents with Bureaucracy 50% or higher, or who succeed a roll, learn that in 1985 they were acquired by March Technologies.

Gethsemane Christian Youth Centre

Agents who decide to investigate the property records of the Universal Alignment Campus will learn after some digging that it was formerly known as "Gethsemane Christian Youth Centre" owned and operated by the New Haven Catholic Archdiocese that closed in 1989 due to financial reasons. The summer camp, “Guiding Star Camp”, and its personnel was generally well-liked by the locals and those who came from around the state to visit it. There’s nothing in local papers to suggest child abuse, occult rituals, or worship of Eihort anywhere.

The property was eventually sold to Universal Alignment privately for several hundred-thousand dollars in 1991. Agents with at least 50% in Accounting, or who succeed at a role would notice that there’s no indication where Universal Alignment managed to muster that sort of money, seeing that its leader was a failed graduate student who had only recently been discharged from a psychiatric institute unless he somehow came into possession of a large inheritance. 

Obtaining Universal Alignment’s tax records and scrutinising them will indicate that the funds were gathered from fees collected from classes taught in Baltimore, Washington D.C, and Buffalo, as well as fundraising and private donations. Even so, it is an obscene amount of capital earned from “fundraising” by a basically unknown and obscure new-age alternative-health group. 

The purchase of the facilities, as well as the handling of the insurance and hiring, looks to have been managed by the law firm Marcus, Silverman, and Greene of Washington, D.C. How a PhD student turned hippy from Boston got connected to a relatively exclusive law firm from Washington D.C is anyone’s guess. 

Any agents who spend the time to probe into Universal Alignment’s accounting will gather enough evidence to make the case to the FBI and/or IRS that a fairly significant amount of money must have been laundered in order for Universal Alignment to have acquired their property, grounds for more aggressive investigation in connection to the death of Aaron Spaniard. Once MAJESTIC learns that this is the case, countersurveillance by NRO DELTA will begin, with the objective of discerning if the agents are Delta Green, and if so, to hinder and misdirect their investigation as best as possible while gathering intelligence on their methods and procedures, this will also pull STINGRAY into the mix. 

Local Authorities

The authorities in Wehring know nothing of Majestic's activities in their neck of the woods. In the interest of keeping Project COMBO low-profile, Kroft has cut corners in a few areas to keep costs and profile low, meaning that NRO DELTA has not made active moves to intimidate or bribe local authorities, and thus far, there hasn't been any need for him to be taken for OUTLOOK treatment. They do have contingencies, however. 

As a failsafe, should Delta Green show up and demand assistance, or if the sherriff or any of his deputies decide to get nosy, NRO DELTA has procured a tape to be dangled over the Sherriff's head as blackmail. The tape is of an actor - convingly disguised as the Sherriff, have rough sex with a Baltimore prostitute. By the time that the agents are showing up to Wehring, the sherriff's election is three months away. If they rely too much on the Sherriff's department for local support, Delta Green agents will quickly find them uncooperative and hesitant to help, as the Sherriff will have been shown the tape and warned against lending any further assistance.

They Sherriff knows essentially nothing about the deaths and does not suspect them too much. For in-depth questions about the deaths, he defers to Dr. Brian Cooper. 

The Coroner, Dr. Brian Cooper

Dr. Brian Cooper is the coroner for Wehring and its surrounding towns. He is an experienced coroner with over two decades of experience under his belt, he takes his job very seriously and performs it well. Cooper has had suspicions of Universal Alignment for a long while, and has performed autopsies on those affiliated with the cult who've crossed his examination room. 

Cooper has noted the bizarre states of the victims of the suicides from Universal Alignment and has documented his findings in a report that contains his compiled findings and additional research by Cooper to contextualize and support his claims: that Universal Alignment is engaging in satanic, occult activities including dangerous rituals involving psychedelics and starvation. Cooper attempted to report his findings to the FBI once back in 1995, but the copies of his report were intercepted and destroyed by NRO DELTA, who then put Cooper under extensive surveillance.

When agents go to speak with him, he is helpful and forthcoming about what he knows. He will claim that he had sent a report to the FBI back in 1995 about his concerns, and that he hadn't heard back since. Agents checking in with the FBI will discover that no such report was ever received. He does have a master copy of the report that he keeps in a hidden safe in the office. 

The Wehring Suicides Report

In English. Study Time: Hours. Science (Biology) +2%, Forensics +3%, Occult +3%, Unnatural +1%, SAN loss 1D4.

This report, compiled by Dr. Brian Cooper, contains several autopsy reports of the ten suicides connected to Universal Alignment, completed with pictures. The report makes the case that Universal Alignment is experimenting with an unidentified parasite or fungus  alongside psychoactive substances in an attempt to “break down” or “brainwash” its members. He makes the case that these experiments are wildly dangerous, and that the “suicides” are really accidental deaths as a result of this poisoning. The report contains a snippet of a document describing the activity of a cult in the United Kingdom devoted to an unnamed god with similar practices. The snippet is credited as being an excerpt from “The Sixth Volume of the Revelations of Glaaki”, belonging to one “Fr. Lavrentis Taramasalitis”.

Rituals Contained: None.

If asked about the snippet, Cooper explained that he reached out to his old colleagues and instructors at the University of Maryland to study the psychology of cults and cult activities, his inquiries into the use of psychoactive drugs in cult indoctrination eventually led him towards Taramasalitis, who was a scholar of Abrahamic mysticism and occultism, as well as an expert on 19th and 20th century mystery cults. He has a business card with the priest’s postal code and street address in Baltimore.

Compromised

As described above, the coroner's office is under heavy surveillance. The phones of his office and home are tapped and there are bugs in his office. If agents sweep for bugs while the Doctor is absent, they will find them under desks and in light fixtures. If the master copy is discussed without the agents either moving the conversation to another room, or doing something to disrupt the listening devices, then NRO DELTA will become aware of this breach in information security and will move to plug the leak. If the agents take the report from the doctor then and there, then NRO DELTA will stalk their lodgings, waiting for the perfect time to enter and swipe the report. If the agents coordinate a later meeting with him either at his office after-hours, or at home. The doctor does not make his meeting and is not at work the next day, his secretary claiming he left a note that he was making an emergency trip south for a family emergency.  In reality, he is in a cell at OUTLOOK Group's facility in Maryland being psychologically tortured and "programmed". After a week, he will return, remembering nothing of his investigation in Universal Alignment or ever having dealings with the agents. Anytime the agents meet with him, that night, he will enter a fugue and make a phone call to his NRO DELTA handlers and describe the contents of the meeting with the agents.

As for the Cooper Report, if the agents didn't get a chance to study it before it was taken from their apartment, or NRO DELTA snatched it with the doctor before they had a chance to see it, then hope is not all lost. Should your agents find themselves "stuck" without the clues provided, then at their first meeting with STINGRAY, she presents it to them as a token of her cooperation.