Scenario Outlines from Belli Occulta

Writing scenarios is a time consuming endeavour for me, so I don't usually do it outside of contests. When I come up with scenarios for Belli Occulta, my home game, they're rarely anything more than a web of clues that have two or three methods of figuring out who the bad guy is and about as many ways to kill them. 

Belli Occulta has had a lot of really cool games that I frankly have no inclination to write for two reasons 1. To try to write the scenario and account for every possible way of solving it, including the method the agents used, is time consuming and kind of boring. 2. A lot of the games relied on the player's prior experience in the campaign, which works for me, but them being so contextualized can make them challenging to adapt. 

What I have decided to do is to share the rough outlines of some of my homebrew scenarios, so that anything neat you see here you can just pilfer and use for your own game, or just use to farm inspiration for your own game. So here they are, if you have any questions about these feel free to contact me and I will try my best to sort of fill things in. 

Bear in mind that some of these might seem not very realistic, I have tried to ground my campaign as much as possible but at the end of the day if you want a good story and fun gameplay, you sometimes have to tell verisimilitude to kick rocks. Hope you get some inspiration from this. 

The Thread of Order

Originally ran for M-Cell. This is the third scenario I ever ran in the campaign after Widowmakers and Speak of the Devil. The hook here is that M-Cell got a tip from Stingray (the mole inside NRO DELTA they made contact with in Widowmakers) that a Majestic researcher, Dr. Bruce Jeppson, has come down with something during a Majestic operation. It was initially believed that it was a conventional case of stomach flu, and so he was put on sick leave, but surveillance performed by NRO DELTA  (Stingray, specifically) indicate that this is not the case, and that Dr. Jeppson is dying of something more alien. She's been ordered to terminate the doctor and seize his remains, but is giving M-Cell a narrow window to get some information out of the doctor before he croaks. The information he gave here led directly into Like a String in a Maze, but doesn't need to, and can go lead your agents any which way you want. Initally, I actually planned him to be dying from microscopic amounts of Nyogtha killing him, and that he would lead the agents towards Majestic experimenting with the Cuckoos (from Dennis' patreon), but I ditched this. 

• Hook
• Stingray, an inside agent in NRO DELTA, gives your cell a tip about Dr. Bruce Jeppson, a scientist affiliated with Majestic Project REDLIGHT, and gives them an opportunity to interrogate him at his home in rural Pennsylvania. If your agents haven't already encountered Stingray, then this can either be their first brush with her, or Delta Green has discovered this on its own, and Stingray simply takes advantage of the situation to introduce herself. 
• Threat
• Dr. Jeppson is dying of an alien infection, originally, this was protomatter particulate that he had unknowingly inhaled. But it could be anything:  A Project JOSHUA biological agent, A small amount of Nyogtha, Abhoth, a Shoggoth, or a Slime of Tsathoggua. A very serious threat is that the thing killing him is contagious, and the agents could come down it. This might even be a rare chance for you to show off the effects of T-Radiation.
• If it's Mi-Go related, then perhaps the Mi-Go and their puppets, the Greys, are hiding in the wings, observing him, and will intervene in any attempt on his life to isolate him for further study. 
• Complications
• Mi-Go activity near his house may have attracted the likes of Saucerwatch or any number of other UFO enthusiasts to the rural pennsylvania town he lives in. 

Like a String in a Maze

Originally ran for M-Cell. In the initial run of "The Thread of Order", Jeppson spoke about a Majestic operation investigating the discovery of a derelict alien facility buried under a hill discovered North of Townshend, Vermont. Majestic learned of the facility's existence through a convoluted series of events, very basically, Jeppson happened to take a few classes in Folklore at Miskatonic University, and eventually learned about the ghost lights and other strangeness discovered in Vermont, including some drawings made by the later Dr. Albert Wilmarth of glyphs and figures he spied on the stelae and "machines" allegedly made by these ghost lights. Later, when Wilmarth was brought into Project REDLIGHT, he was shocked to see many of the same glyphs and figures on the interior of Grey spacecraft. 

• Hook
• Delta Green learns about an "exercise" organized by the Air Force that has cordoned off a large section of woods in Vermont, in an area known for high Grey activity.
• Investigation
• Majestic's cordone is, for all intents and purposes, impenetrable. All roadways have been blocked and the perimeter is being guarded by the military with orders to detain any trespassers and to kill those that resist. That isn't even to mention the interference being ran by NRO DELTA agents in nearby towns, and the heavy BLUE FLY helicopter traffic overhead. Delta Green's best opportunity is to question locals and rely on human intelligence to get a rough picture of what's going on without blowing their cover.
• The U.S Army have been manning the cordone, with soldiers being rotated out and allowed to take leave in the nearby town. They've been fed misinformation about the exercise by NRO DELTA, and believe its wargame exercise, simulating a scenario involving the recovery of a downed satellite on the border with an enemy country. A-Cell sees an opportunity when an Army serviceman gets into a violent altercation at a bar, and inserts the agents either as Army CID or FBI investigating the incident. 
• A surviving P-4 file in A-Cell's archives make vague reference to an incomplete text being written by Dr. Albert Wilmarth about strange, alien activity in the hills of Vermont (in Townshend, actually). A-Cell instructs the agents to seek it out and capture it. 
• Threats
• As stated before, NRO DELTA and BLUE FLY are on the scene, not to mention the Army conrdone. Agents need to exercise best practice and keep up on their tradecraft if they want to avoid detection. 
• The knowledge of the Mi-Go derelict outside of Townshend was erased by the Mi-Go as useless information. Though when they learn Majestic has found something, they quickly identify it as one of theirs. They quickly activate agents from the old Mi-Go cult in a bid to distract Majestic and deactivate the Gate still inside the derelict. Among the Mi-Go's agents are a former cutlist of the True Love Study Group, Deborah Larsen, and perhaps even the resurrected remains of Dr. Jeppson (if the previous scenario was played), though you can add others too. They'll seek to distract Majestic with an alien incursion to draw their attention away while a single Mi-Go enter the derelict and destroys the Gate before vanishing. 
• In the original playthrough, their "distraction" was a ritual that summoned a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, which shattered the U.S Army Corps of Engineers dam north of Townshend and caused a flood. 

Taken by the Hand

Originally ran for M-Cell. This was the follow-up to Speak of the Devil. There's a lot that's introduced here that is meant to be expanded on / fulfilled later. When we ran this, we played it more or less like one big scenario, but it definitely makes more sense split into two parts. 

Part One: Baltimore.

• Hook
• A previous Delta Green operation resulted in the arrests of about a dozen men involved ina  high-profile human trafficking ring known as the Dorian Grey Society. Although the FBI at large are involved, only Delta Green knows that the Society's leadership have access to supernatural technology that makes that an excpetional and unique threat that needs immediate intervention. The original team is being cycled out and your team is brought on to analyze physical evidence and question prisoners to uncover the larger network. 
• Assets
• An ONI admiral with connections in the private sector is intent on proving the ONI's capabilities in joint operations with other agencies, including law enforcement. He offers the use of ONI's naval intelligence apparatus, as well as the services of a private security contractor he owns major shares in, "Hurricane Group".
• Investigations
• Offering lucratice plea deals and clever interrogation tactics earns the agents a name: Raymond Kolby, the owner of a chain of technology stores who was the Society's pornographer. Raiding Kolby's collection of tapes earns a massive trove of illegal pornography, among it are a few tapes that show the Dorian Grey Society's experiments with a young man referred to in documentation as "The Innocent". Disturbingly, the Innocent seems to be in possession of telekinetic powers similar to those seen in proto-avatar of Y'Golonac. One of the videos shows him killing a pair of soldiers, expert in military science (or who served there) would recognize their gear as belonging to the Panamanian military under Manuel Noriega.
• Hunting down Yair Teixeira earns his attention, he will first attempt to barter with the agents, arguing that the Society's intelligence has saved unnumerable American lives. He isn't above selling them out, but will drive a hard bargain. He's also not above siccing his mercenaries on the agents should it look like they're not interested in bargaining. 
• The FBI notice that Massey is missing, and once the word gets out, reports make it back that he's been spotted en route to Miami, Florida. The FBI attempts to arrest him, but as the agents scramble to get to Miami, grisly reports are making their way back. What results is a desperate manhunt, as the agents struggled to locate and kill a Proto-Avatar of Y'Golonac.
• Threats
• The Dorian Grey Society are intent on making sure that no one talks. To this end, they've employed a trusted asset, Yair Teixeira, a high-ranking CIA case officer with connections to the Society. Teixeira, whose career has been accelerated thanks to blackmail and intelligence supplied by the Society, capitulates, and has a dispatched a covert team of killers to silence incarcerated members of the Society and to derail the investigation.
• One member of the Society, Thomas Massey, an attorney for Baltimore County, didn't get roped in in the initial wave of arrests, but is intent on fleeing the country. Moreover, he has learned the secret name of Y'Golonac, the god that the Highest Members worship, and as already started his transcendence into an avatar of Y'Golonac.

Part Two: Panama

• Hook
• All roads lead to Panama. A helicopter that was intended to receive Massey at Miami was sent from a vessel that is bound to pass through the Panama Canal in a week. Financial intelligence and other clues indicate that the Society's biggest holdings are somewhere in Panama.
• Investigations
• Yair Teixeira, and perhaps even other members of the Society (or their memories, if Nancy snacks on their brains) indicate that the Society played a role in the toppling of Manuel Noriega's regime in the 1980s, which had come under the influence of another group, known in English as "The Lamplighters". The last living Lamplighter in Panama has been institutionalized for years, a man named Alonso Encarnacion, who somehow was expecting to see the agents...
• Interrogated agents of the Society, and other seized financial records, indicate that shortly after the fall of the Noriega regime, Society members acquired one of the Noriega's mansions deep in the Panamanian rainforest, dubbing it "The Sugar Farm", no doubt one of the Society's playhouses. Additional digging reveals that a fortune was paid to have an underground "addition" made to the house, more akin to a nuclear bunker than a pleasure palace. 
• Threats
• The Dorian Grey Society are dug-in in Panama, with connections in high levels of the military and law enforcement. The agents will be followed and harassed by their agents while in-country.
• The Innocent, the young man the Society has raised in total isolation without so much as language in a padded chamber below the Sugar Farm, has inexplicably burgeoned into a potent psychic. When the agents raid the facility, he's liable to test those powers out on the Society's henchmen and the agents. 
• The Dorian Grey Society vessel coming into the port of Panama holds Dr. William Wren, one of the two current Acolytes of Flesh, and a member of the Cult of Transcendence. 

Zoonosis

Originally ran for M-Cell. You'll start to notice that a lot of the Belli Occulta scenarios are just follow-ups on previous operations. This is how I think a long-form delta green campaign should be structured. I can talk more on that later. Zoonosis was a follow-up to "The Thread of Order" and "Like a String in a Maze" and is the first in that trilogy not named after a quote from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. This one is probably one of the tougher ones to adapt, because as I ran it and came up with it, it suuuuper involves your agents failig to stop the Mi-Go agents from summoning a Dark Young. Alternatively, you could just run it on its own and let the agents discover a flubbed Majestic or Delta Green operation that ended with a Dark Young swimming in the river. Come to think of it, this wouldn't make such a bad follow up to A Night on Owlshead Mountain. Just explain that rain runoff tainted with Dark Young material entered a major waterway, boom, scenario. 

• Hook
• The Brattleboro Flu has been making headlines since the flood caused by the destruction of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers dam upriver near the town of Townshend, Vermont. FEMA and the CDC claim the "Flu" is really cholera, caused by sewage entering the West River that was released from septic tanks that were ruptured during the flood. Isolated reports, including potentially a leak to Delta Green or Phenomen-X or some other source indicate that cholera is the least of Brattleboro's worries, and that something else is also affecting the residents, making them very, very sick. Agents are being inserted as "specialists" with FEMA and/or the CDC.  
• Investigation
• Investigation indicates that the Air Force are aiding in the relief effort, and have commandeered a psychiatric institution near the north of Brattleboro to be made into their base of operations. The Air Force / USAMRIID specialists are insisting on increasingly more control over the operation. FEMA and the CDC are started to feel like they're being butted out, but why? Certainly smacks of Majestic. 
• Analyzing one of the samples taken to test for cholera (a stool sample) would indicate that each culture of cholera, that is, the cholera bacterium infesting each infected gastrointestinal tract, is wildly unique from each other culture. A vaccine will be very nearly impossible. Something seems to be interacting with the cholera in the water and mutating it. 
• Saucerwatch has been hanging around in the margins, ghost lights and UFOs have been spotted North of Brattleboro. I suppose where there's smoke, there's fire. 
• The unknown pathogen in the water seems to affecting people, changing them. The greatest concentrations of it are in a pond north of Brattleboro, and a tract of flooded farmland upriver in Townshend. Sometimes, when they sleepwalk, they walk in the direction of those two places
• Threats
• The Mi-Go, through the Greys, begin abducting people from the surrounding area to get a better understanding of how the alien pathogen is interacting with them. Majestic is there, ready to cover up any reports of alien activity. 
• Drinking the tap water in Brattleboro is playing with fire, stick to the bottled water that the CDC give you, and stay the fuck away from people who don't, not just because of the cholera. The people who are infected with the alien pathogen change, they get violent, hallucinate. In the later stages they get lethargic and lie down for hours or days at a time. After a while, they start to meld together.
• Reports of sickness at a motel outside the quarantine area may attract the agents, as they'll recall that's where those clowns from Saucerwatch and Phenomen-X were lodging. Looks like they drank the water...
• Checking out the pond, or that flooded farm upriver, tells your agents exactly where the alien pathogen is coming from. in both places, something is growing, agents who've seen a Dark Young will vaguely recognize certain characteristics. Its carapace is pourous, and the pathogen leeches off it like blood in water. 

Blue Isthmus

Originally ran for I-Cell. Honestly, this scenario was just ran with the Skoptsi chapter from Delta Green: Countdown and a lot of improv. You can read my writeup on the Skoptsi for some more juice if you want to feature them in your campaign. 

Hollow Hill

Originally ran for I-Cell. This was a highly altered variant of the playtest version of Caleb Stokes' cancelled Labyrinth tie-in scenario "Language of the Stars", which is available on his patreon. 

I made four main changes to the scenario: 

1. In the original scenario, Tomas Drennon volunteered with the YPG to fight ISIS in Syria, and took the demon bowl (the main artifact of the scenario) while he was there. In my version, Tomas' father, U.S Army Major Germaine Drennon, had a hand in covering up the looting of artifacts committed by people under his command, and profited from it himself. He traded in archaeological artifacts, mostly to launder the ones he had stolen, and in the shuffle he wound up with one of the Black Icons of the Skoptsi. Tomas, who became an officer in the U.S Army like his father, also inherited his father's antiques, but had a much stronger interest in them, specifically, some occulty persian antiques pertaining to "Keshthuga" and the Ifrit. 
2. I connected it to Skoptsi, which was what I-Cell was going after at the time. The connection is distant, but was just there to string the along for cohesively. The connection is that the Skoptsi learned about Drennon's fascination with the myths of Keshthuga and the ifrit, and through their black market connections acquired the Demon Bowl (a relic of the cult of Kesh/Keshthuga) and sold it to Drennon in exchange for the Black Icon. This is how it lands in his hands, and how later it winds up in Halimah Jassim's hands. 
3. My players came up with an interesting idea about the mechanics of Kesh that I found were neat, so I humored them. The basic idea is that it is possible to "banish" Kesh from Halimah if you are able to starve it. This is exceptionally difficult because Halimah is able to feed on the electrical / bio-electrical charge of anything around her: pagers, radios, telephone lines, car batteries, people. So if you want to starve it out of her without killing her, you have to immobilize her without killing her, and yes, tasers will just make it worse. A few notes
1. If this seems too easy, but you still want to give an avenue for your players to peacefully resolve the scenario, allow them to find a variant of the Exorcism or Closing of the Breach ritual that will work on Kesh when it's low on energy. Maybe the agents don't know it, but Alphonse or Agent Matthew or some other NPC does know it, and you have to hold down the fort until they get there. 
2. The way my players did this in my playthrough was by having David Baker (Halimah's ex boytoy from college) give Halimah a bottle of water when she showed up at the farm. The bottle was spiked with ketamine and this put her to sleep. I could have been cruel and have Kesh feed on David and teleport the sleeping Halimah's body away, which still could have been interesting anways, but I chose to give my players a break there. I rationalized it to my players that Kesh sees David as necessary to the ritual it's trying to perform, so it won't just kill him. Still, that meant that David was the only person allowed near Halimah. 
4. I added a Majestic option, which I invoked at the end of the scenario. The idea is that Majestic satellites pick up Halimah teleporting around the great plains, and once the Greys deny their involvement, Majestic activates "Operation EIGHTY AZTEC" and makes moves to take authority over the investigation. Project MOON DUST commands the operation from the Cheyenne Mountain Complex outside of Colorado Springs, Operation BLUE FLY has been scrambled, forming two teams, codenamed AZTEC DAGGER, from Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, and AZTEC EAGLE, flying out of Edwards AFB in California. Project GARNET is already running disinformation, while a team of NRO DELTA, posing as AFOSI, take authority over the official investigation. It shouldn't pick up steam until late into the second day of the operation. In my scenario, the agents were tipped off to it when a sheriff who they had given their pager number to contacted them and let them know that the Air Force showed up to the Drennon house with forms stating they had authority over the investigation, and were interested in debriefing the agents on the situation. This can light a fire under the agent's ass to clear out in a hurry, or can add another layer of intrigue as Halimah and David race across the country. One setpiece I never got to use was one of the BLUE FLY teams attempting to apprehend Halimah on the interstate, only for her to release an EMP blast that would crash their helicopter. 

Mighty Mouse

Originally ran for I-Cell. The first half of Mighty Mouse wasn't really a scenario per se, more so just an extended home scene. Long story short is that the agents pulled some strings to have Taras Dzubenko and the surviving staff of Coney Island Carpets placed on parole, even allowed to reopen and operate their old business, with the implicit understanding that the agents, posing as a covert but official government anti-terrorism task force, could call on C.I.C for "bio-cleanup". 

The second half of the scenario involved a very simple setup, the agents are sent an emergency summons to a hotel room where a man hurriedly references them a document on the bed and points them to their problem, a bound and gagged man in the hotel bathtub with his throat slit and covered in his own blood...and yet still alive. I made the guy a "cuckoo" from Dennis' patreon. Fun stuff. 

Obsidian Flakes

Originally ran for I-Cell. Same story as "Blue Isthmus", though I made use of Go Forth from God's Teeth, as Obsidian Flakes ended with the agents raiding Families Without Frontiers and liberating the Skoptsi kids. 

Working for the Man

Originally ran for I-Cell. Weird job for the Fate, Great Race of Yith, Tsan-Chan.

PLATEBREAKER

Originally ran for I-Cell. The agents are sent to Moscow to oversee an SV-8 sting operation against the owner of the final Black Icons.

• Hook
• A while ago, Delta Green discovered the possessor of a few of the Black Icons, the religious artifacts the Skoptsi are searching for in a bid to summon their god. The owner's name is Earl Wolmark, an American-born Israeli antiques collector. After months of back-and-forth with Israeli authorities attempting to wressle custody of the Black Icons out of Wolmark's hands to no avail, SV-8, who have been coordinating with Delta Green secretly in their efforts against the Skoptsi, have come through with a major breakthrough. Wolmark, who has been courting SV-8 fictitious "Occult bookselling retired KGB General" persona, has agreed to come to Moscow to make a trade, the Black Icons for a copy of the Pnakotica. A-Cell wants your cell to be in Moscow to oversee SV-8's sting and to receive the Black Icons from them and then go home to the states. The meeting is scheduled for the 3rd of September, 1999. 
• Investigation
• In the days leading up to the sting, A-Cell will order the agents to help SV-8 assure that Wolmark arrives in Moscow with the Icons and arrives at the Sting unmolested. They have lots of opportunities to learn about the mysterious collector, as well as potentially meet agents of SV-8 in the field. 
• Canny agents would know to be on the lookout for the Skoptsi's hired Spestnaz assassins prowling about Moscow. 
• Threats
• Wolmark is an unknown quantity to SV-8 and the players. He could be a naive antiques collector who's gotten way in over his head. He could be a cut-out sent by Mellonbread's Samson Option on a mission to claim the Pnakotica, in which case, be on the lookout for agents of Mossad following him to assure his safety. He could be an agent of The Motion armed with a lightning gun or simply protected by total and complete knowledge of every event that will happen in Moscow for the duration of his stay there, or a Watchman of the Exalted Circle, protected by a small amulet on his neck, or inlaid in a ring: a tiny, unremarkable trinket that will scream and boil its way into reality at the slightest taste of blood, unfolding impossibly into a degenerate shoggoth. The possibilities are endless.
• The Skoptsi knew that Wolmark was in possession of the final Black Icons. His abrupt trip to Russia (with the icons in toe) has caused equal glee and frustration. On one hand, all those months of preparing for a heist just went down the drain, on the other, he's in the Mafiya's territory at an exceptionally lawless time for the Russian federation. It'll be like stealing candy from a baby. 
• The Russian FSB and American CIA would be very curious to learn about a small cadre of federal agents milling about Moscow, their curiosity turns to obsession if they catch the agents meeting with SV-8 operatives, or getting into firefights with the mafiya over some religious artifacts in the streets of Moscow.
• Beginning on September 4th, the day after the Sting operation, the Russian apartment bombings will begin, regardless of whether your agents are anywhere near the bombings, it lights a definite fire under their ass to get out of Russia. Of course, there's the possibility they see something they shouldn't, like FSB agents preparing demolition charges in the apartment complex they had designated as a fall-back point.