An Exploration of Tsan-Chan

Introduction

In a bleak and harrowing future, humanity persists against the unremitting horror of the Great Old Ones. The last bastion of humanity, struggling with gritted teeth, is known to its denizens, and those unlucky few who have glimpsed it down the lightless halls of time, as TSAN-CHAN. 

Many believe Tsan-Chan will be ruled by the Kuen-Yuin, the caste of priest-kings of ancient Mu, invoking the hideous and ineffable powers of the Lloigor and Ghatanothoa. Others believe that the priest-kings merely invoke these powers emptily in prayers and in threats, when in truth their patrons have long since left the barren husk of Earth for other realms. The truly deranged claim the Kuen-Yuin have found, even created, new and hideous god-masters that rule Tsan-Chan. 

Tsan-Chan is in a precarious position in more ways than one. Many believe its existence is not compatible with the designs of the Great Race of Yith, who have mandated that humanity must be scoured in a storm of nuclear hellfire. Indeed, the Kuen-Yuin and their cults seem to be the target of frequent sabotage and harassment from the Great Race and its cultists throughout history. 

The Narrow Way Through

Long ago (and long from now), thinkers both in the future of Tsan-Chan and in the present came to a revelation, which they have dubbed "The Narrow Way Through", a narrow path in which humanity both persists which the Yith find compatible with their "Construct". The Narrow Way Through is just that, narrow, and can't be completed in such overt fashion as nuclear wars, plagues, genocides, and cataclysms. It isn't a contradiction or an overhaul of the Yithian construct, but moreso a variation. A alteration that is different but still amicable to the Great Race. They know that such a constuct exists, but achieving it will require extreme caution and precision. 

Some believe that this narrow way ends in the Tsan-Chan glimpsed by those few who have seen it in visions, a complex of vast, black pyramids of metal and machine, housing thousands in a lightless complex, others believe that the narrow way ends with colonies of humanity flung far from the earth into the lightless bounds of space. None can say for certain.

The Long Arms of the Cruel Empire

Four groups enact the will of Tsan-Chan in our time. These four groups can be divided into two sub-groups, Agents and Cults of Tsan-Chan. Agents of Tsan-Chan are those that act directly on behalf of the will of the Cruel Empire: These are the Men in Black and the Kuen-Yuin. Cults of Tsan-Chan are human organizations in our time that, knowingly or otherwise, work to cement the future of Tsan-Chan through their actions: two examples are given here; The secretive Chinese agency known as Huodezu or Acquisitions Group, and the international human trafficking organization, the Collectors of the Long Vaults. 

The Men in Black

In Tsan-Chan, specially-picked "Operators" spend their entire lives in the dimly lit metal chambers and corridors of immense, obsidian-black pyramids. These operators are instructed in the mathematics of hypergeometry and taught how to hone their minds to create "Tulpas", thought-forms, physical, material manifestations borne from pure thought. These operators then cast their tulpas backwards in time, most commonly to the 20th and 21st century, to affect certain changes as instructed by their masters in the future. 

These "Tulpas" are modelled after the mythic Men in Black of UFO mythology (who, in reality, are usually counterintelligence agents of Majestic's NRO DELTA, and the brave men and women of Delta Green). They arrive in the past, normally in the vicinity of some paranormal strangeness, for what reason is unknown, perhaps it is because the usage of hypergeometry in one time and space "softens" it, allowing for easier access to Tsan-Chanese operators, or perhaps the Men in Black know their counterparts in Delta Green are likely in the area. 

These "Men in Black" have been noticed by the likes of Majestic and Delta Green, neither sure whether the strange men in ill-fitting suits who speak stilted english driving outdated cars are agents of the other faction, or if they're from some other faction. Although the tulpas are formed to attempt to resemble the people of the 20th / 21st century, certain details persist, namely a strange dull greyness to the skin, and epicanthic folds on their eyes. This has also led both of the aforementioned factions (Majestic and Delta Green) to suspect the "Men in Black" are the agents of a Chinese operation attempting to subvert the activities of both. 

For their part, the Men in Black are usually attempting to affect change in the past through two means - the first is to inspire / dissuade action in certain figures through the revealing of information or vague threats and allusions, ("I wonder what Mr. Greening meant to do with that.... plane ticket in his pocket, it should still be there, if you wish to... see it... for yourself" or "Those men from the air force will ask you if you saw anything ...the night of the 28th, perhaps it would be best to keep that...private....for the time being"). Strangely, the Men in Black often do one thing knowing that the target will do the opposite out of spite (for example, threatening a person who saw a strange box in the basement of a man who has now been murdered not to tell the agents...only for that person to decide to do so out of a selfless urge to do what's right).

The second task the Men in Black normally do is simple collection of information. Agents may often see the Men in Black in odd places, in fields, on whards, on rooftops just...watching. Or perhaps reading a magazine or a paper, or simply sitting in a cafe eating. Listening to the locals talk. They have an exceptional ability for getting into places they don't belong. Agents may spend weeks attempting to sneak into a secure wing of an office complex to collect pictures of some top-secret mission-critical information only to be greeted by one of the Men in Black stooped over, reading the very document they had come to collect. "You'll be taking this now, I'm done anyways". 

The Grey Men

Sometimes confused for one another because of their resemblance and stilted English, The Grey Men are not Tulpas, but are genuine operatives of Tsan-Chan in the modern day. The Grey Men are few and far between, as the method that they transport their operatives into the past is very narrow and very energy intensive - N-Space. Discovered by Majestic-12 in their experiments with their Tillinghast Resonator, the achronal N-Space allows for objects that enter it to move through time, and be deposited in another space and time where an N-Space field has opened. Tsan-Chan has used this to deposit operatives in the modern day. They search for N-Space openings that are ripe for them to come through, often the result of rogue scientists building such devices in isolated labs and basements, or in runaway T-Radiation chain reactions, a few unlucky ones manifested in Majestic-12 test chambers and have since been guests of OUTLOOK Group. 

The Grey Men are, as the name implies, Grey, though not all of them are men. Their skin is grey and their eyes very dimly glow yellow or green. They are lithe and fit, some are short and stocky while others are quite tall. They dress heavily, favoring long coats and scarfs and glasses. They do not carry very many weapons or items from Tsan-Chan, beyond perhaps a few scrolls, a bottle of an odd liquid, a knife, a ring. Agents lucky enough to examine these items often find that their modest appearance betrays awesome power. Grey Men often rely on modern equipment and weapons to do their work, as it draws less attention, but many know how to repurpose modern technology into truly horrific weapons and machines. 

Grey Men are often deployed when subtle manipulation by Men in Black proves insufficient. Men in Black are scalpels, Grey Men are bone saws. They are most often deployed to directly intervene in a scenario that threatens the Narrow Way Through, they are often deployed to sabotage the efforts of The Motion, the cult devoted the Great Race of Yith, usually by tipping off Delta Green to its activities, destroying their technology, and killing its members.They are also deployed to protect Lloigor nexus stones from destruction, and to protect Lloigor from banishment. 

The Kuen-Yuin

The Kuen-Yuin are, and will be, the longest-lasting human cult on earth. They began as the priest-caste of Mu, studying the mysteries and performing rites to honor Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, and above all else, Ghatanothoa. They survived the apocalypse that destroyed their homeland, and reigned as lords over its successor nation, Atlantis. 

They have persisted through the harrowing corridors of time in light of catastrophe. They are the closest to gods that any human being has ever gotten, some say that in the strange and beautiful city of legendary Yian-Ho, Kuen-Yuin who have truly risen to that post reside. 

You might forget that by looking at them now. Since time immemorial, China has been the land the Kuen-Yuin have called their homes. When China was consumed by nearly five decades of brutal war, ending in the victory of Mao's revolution and the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Kuen-Yuin found themselves suddenly on the backfoot, their temples bulldozed and their cultists put to death; if not by the Japanese, then the Kuomintang, if not by them, the Communists. The Kuen-Yuin scattered, some chose simply to move to the other side of the Lantau Channel, and settle into British Hong Kong, though their efforts were complicated by the activities of PISCES (in the final decades before they became an entirely domestic organization). Others fled to Korea, Japan, Micronesia, India, even to the America and Europe.

In the decades since their exile, some dared to return to China. Many returned after the death of Mao, and had to change tactics, and readapt from manipulating the politics of the Chinese imperial courts, to the new and strange mechanisms of Socialism. 

By the 1990s, the Kuen-Yuin were more or less operational as they had been before the revolution, though scattered. This has made them weaker, in that individual Kuen-Yuin sorcerers are more vulnerable to assassination than cabals, but has expanded their sphere of influence greatly.

The Kuen-Yuin, through sorcery, control a dizzying network of criminal syndicates, gangs, front companies, and other organizations. The ultimate purpose of these conspiracies is to insulate the Kuen-Yuin against investigation, and for the wealth amassed now to be put to use in private ventures that, if all goes according to plan, will be of help to Tsan-Chan in the future. One such venture are the Collectors of the Long Vaults. 

Acquisitions Group

The Acquisitions Group / Huodezu is more thoroughly detailed here, and is the work of Tormsen which I'm putting my own spin on. 

Agents of the Acquisitions Group in the United States had several encounters with The Men in Black and the Grey Men in America. Unwittingly, these encounters guided the Acquisitions Group to discover three projects undertaken by Majestic-12. The first was Project TELL, a top-secret research program ran from within the confines of March Technologies Facility-19 in Montana. Project TELL researched the science behind the Tillinghast Resonator, a strange device discovered by the Navy during the Second World War, which it then attempted to exploit in a bid for naval stealth technology with disastrous intial results. The Group also encountered Project FORSAL in Stanton, Washington, a branch of Project TELL intent on exploiting the research gleaned from TELL to make advancements in Signals intelligence technology, and lastly, they learned of Project MOON RING, an isolated program situated in rural Bethell, Maryland that used mathematics extrapolated from a secretive document called 'The White Sheet' to explore the "numerality of consciousness" and how consciousness can be "expressed mathematicely". 

In 2001, as Majestic imploded, the Acquisitions Group made its move. While NRO DELTA was occupied attempting to fend off Delta Green, Chinese operatives were able to gather a copy of the White Sheet and facilitated the defection of an American scientist affiliated with MOON RING. A strange disaster caused the Project FORSAL staff to disappear, and after assuring the area hadn't been contaminated with T-Radiation, several documents and pieces of equipment were pilfered by the Group and shipped covertly back to China. 

In the modern day, Acquisitions Group unwittingly works towards several goals of Tsan-Chan, its experiments with reverse-engineered Tillinghast Resonators has given increasing opportunities for Grey Men to sneak into present-day China, and the MOON RING technology has laid the foundations for the techniques Tsan-Chanese Operators will use in the formation and deployment of their Tulpas (in fact, Operators "returning" to Tsan-Chan after deployment have noticed that their technology has greatly improved while they were "gone", showing that their work has begun to pay dividends). Acquisitions Group counterintelligence has been "guided" towards Delta Green and SV-8 operations in China, to assure that work goes uninterrupted, and the group's agents have even proved viable in eliminating nodes of The Motion that attempted to undo the work of Tsan-Chan.

The Collectors of the Long Vaults

A cabal of necromancers operating in China and S.E.A, controlled by the Kuen-Yuin. The Collectors and groups similar to it are examples of larger efforts by the Kuen-Yuin towards the greater goal of Tsan-Chan. An introduction to the Collectors can be found here.

The Question of The Fate

One thing that should be accounted for is The Fate. The Fate, according to the original 1997 Delta Green writeup, reiterated later in Eyes Only, the most powerful Cult in the world. They're a cult that thrives on dealings with other cults, so at the very least, what their dealings with the agents of Tsan-Chan.

In my campaign, The Fate are close partners to the agents of Tsan-Chan, and its agents can be spied haunting alcoves, booths, and dancefloors at Club Apocalypse. Tsan-Chan's dealings with the Fate are likely done by the Men in Black or agents of the Kuen-Yuin, usually buying or selling services such as smugglings and assassinations to secure their operation. 

But one possibility, which I have also pondered, is the notion of The Fate as a node of Tsan-Chan. It isn't inconceivable that the lower depths of Club Apocalypse, where its true "manager" resides, could taken an agent directly to Yian-Ho, and earn them an audience with Yue-Laou, the Maker of Moons, or even to the lightless pyramids of Tsan-Chan, greeted by the Grey Men. 

Of course, like always, The Fate is a dish best served...ambiguously. 

The Objectives of Tsan-Chan

Tsan-Chan wishes to influence the past by assuring that the measures to build Tsan-Chan, unwittingly or otherwise, begin early, so that when great Cthulhu awakens and the time is nigh, Tsan-Chan is already poised to rise. 

In the eyes of many occult scholars, however, the notion of Tsan-Chan stands in direct contradiction to the machinations of the Great Race of Yith, who mandate a world sterilized of human life as a necessary point in their future. Tsan-Chan disagrees, and seeks to alter the construct in a way that will appease the Great Race, without jeopardizing humanity's place among the Great Old Ones. 

Tsan-Chan carefully chooses when and where to alter the Great Race's plans, and often linger in the margins of the Great Race's endeavours like remoras on a shark. They prune continuity and causality to their liking, much like the Great Race, and seek to violently and totally destroy anything that puts their plans in jeopardy, most notably: the Motion. 

As for objectives. Each prong of the Cruel Empire has a different task they wish to complete: The Men in Black look to manipulate Delta Green and the Acquisitions Group into destroying threats to the Cruel Empire while assuring the Acquisitions Group develops the technologies that will be fundamental to the Empire's activities. The Kuen-Yuin direct a vast criminal empire, assuring no endeavour to stir the Great Old Ones from their slumber ahead of schedule comes to fruitition, and, through the Collectors of the Long Vaults, Tsan-Chan is kept stocked and armed with a vast reserve force of potent psychics to shore up its defenses. 

Enemies of the Cruel Empire

Delta Green

Delta Green is, like many things, seen as a tool for the Great Race to destroy opposition and cultivate The Narrow Way Through. Delta Green doesn't know that, and would deeply resent the implication. Many times, Tsan-Chan has had to return to drawing board because of Delta Green's meddling - Delta Green agents have had violent encounters with all of the branches of Tsan-Chan. They seek to understand and stop the Grey Men's plans on earth, to curb and destroy Chinese infiltration through the Acquisitions Group, to save innocents from the sacrifices and sadistic pleasures of the Kuen-Yuin, and dismantle the human-trafficking and kidnapping rings that comprise the Collectors of the Long Vaults. 

The Great Race of Yith / The Motion

As much as Tsan-Chan tries to skirt around agents of the great race, the Yithians sometimes decide to resolve any "issues" caused by the Cruel Empire's agents. This occasionally results in the violent deaths of Tsan-Chan's operatives, though in particularly dire scenarios, Tsan-Chan will sometimes attempt to avoid the altercation by sending a message or a Man in Black to warn of the attack. 

Acquisitions Group

One drawback to Tsan-Chan manipulating the Acquisitions Group, rather than directly controlling it, is that the group occasionally bucks against Tsan-Chan's agents, forcing them to resort to alternative means to curate their future. The Acquisitions Group doesn't regard the Men in Black or Grey Men as allies, and in fact, both have come to blows many, many times. They also would seek to root out and exterminate any Kuen-Yuin enterprises, especially the Collectors. 

Naya Prayasa

Naya Prayasa, which will be getting its own writeup in the near future, is an organization created by Nathan Harmati, who once reigned as the Bishop of Fear in the Cult of Transcendence. Naya Prayasa serves a tool for Harmati to indulge in his ultimate obsession - war. The cult uses both sorcerous and conventional means to spread fear, anger, paranoia, and hate, in order to create conflict everywhere against the earth. From the middle east, to middle America, from the heart of Africa to Europe. 

Harmati's nuclear apocalypse wet-dream threatens Tsan-Chan's designs for a future of relative tranquility shattered by the rise of Great Cthulhu. If the world is a smouldering heap of radioactive slag, then Tsan-Chan will never flourish. A few Tsan-Chanese operators have begun to suspect that Naya Prayasa may even be a new tool for the Great Race, albeit one lacking any of the subtlety they've come to expect from operatives of the Great Race. 

Important Characters

The Men in Black

Statblocks for these creeps on the Ghost.io and Dennis' Patreon.

Qthogqwo

Qthogqwo was raised in the black pyramids of Tsan-Chan, her and others like her had their genetics altered when they were young, so that certain traits would develop as she got older, namely, strange cartilage structures around the innards, throat, and face. Strange, new structures were implanted to her brain and spine that would allow her to sense, absorb, purge, and control T-Radiation as it entered her body.

Her mission involves a group of Grey Men, some of the first, who were sent into the past, only to appear in the middle of a March Technologies Project WELLS test chamber in 2012, where they were promptly captured. From what the Empire has divined, they haven't (and never will) crack under torture by Majestic, but as long as they remain prisoners, they cannot complete their mission. Qthogqwo was sent to assure this never comes to past, and was transported to 1997, arriving through a miniscule fissure in N-Space created by an improperly degaussed piece of Project TELL lab equipment in transit. 

QTHOGQWO

Grey Man in a Black Time

STR 16 CON 16 DEX 14 INT 18 POW 11 CHA 8

HP 16 WP 11 SAN BREAKING POINT

MOTIVATIONS & DISORDERS: Anxiety 

SKILLS: Alertness 60%, Athletics 70%, Bureaucracy 10%, Anthropology 50%, Craft (microelectronics) 90%, Craft (electrician) 90%, Criminology 20%, Demolitions 20%, Dodge 60%, Firearms 40%, History 40%, Melee Weapons 70%, Persuade 40%, Science (Tillinghast Radiation) 80%, Science (Nuclear Physics) 60%, Science (Chemistry) 60%, Search 60%, Stealth 60%, Survival 60%, Unarmed Combat 60%, Unnatural 25%

ARMOR: 4 points of ultra-durable cartilage

ATTACKS: Black Metal Kukri 70% 1D8+ Special damage (See BLACK KUKRI)

Browning Hi-Power medium pistol 40% 1D10

Unarmed 60% 1d4+1

STRANGE PHYSIOLOGY: The internal organs of the Grey Men would baffle and intrigue any physiologist, such as sheathes of ultra-durable cartilage over major internal organs. Grey Men are immune to called shots from anything less than a firearm and are immune to stun effects. A full examination of a Grey Man's internals would take years to glean a complete understanding of them, and would earn 1/1D8 SAN from the unnatural. 

T-RADIATION REGULATION: Grey Men are bred from a certain genetic stock of humans that possess traits given to them by the K'n-Yani that allow for them to regulate the "charge" of T-Radiation their body has absorbed, and can even use their bioelectricity to purge their charge. Grey Men can absorb the T-Radiation charge of other people through physical touch and purge it internally. 

T-RADIATION MASTERY: Grey Men are akin to astronauts in their encyclopedic understanding of T-Radiation and its effects. Each Grey Man is capable of assembling a fully functional Tillinghast Resonator from modern components and operating it. The version they create is often built to be single-use, and is only active long enough to create a gap in N-Space for them to enter. 

ARTIFACTS OF THE FUTURE: Grey Men often carry strange items and artifacts chosen specifically to aid their mission. Some examples of such artifacts include:

• BLACK KUKRI: Qthogqwo carries a knife resembling a kukri made from a black metal that appears wet, even when its completely dry. The knife deals 1D8 damage, and ignores the armour of unnatural creatures, and can touch "transcendent" creatures. 
• WARRIOR'S RING: Qthogqwo carries a ring hewn from human bone on a leather necklace that she dons if he is anticipating action. It is similar to the one worn by Reinhard Galt of the Karotechia, though Qthogqwo's has been refined such that she is not plagued with cannibalistic urges every day and when she puts it on, but rather only feels them if the ring has absorbed damage that day. 
• DESSICATION MATRIX: Inlaid in a complex sequence of sigils inside Qthogqwo's coat is a hypergeometric protocol that will activate if she is severely injured or killed. The coat will automatically dessicate Qthogqwo's corpse into Essential Saltes. 
• YIAN-HO SCROLLS: These scrolls sometimes contain ritual instructions, or aren't meant to be read, and simply contain hypergeometric figures and sigils that protect the wielder against certain effects, such as the petrifying gaze of Ghatanothoa, or curses.
• T-RADIATION EMITTER: This weapon emits high amounts of T-Radiation in a beam, and is intended not to immediately kill a target, but to give them such a massive dose that death will be imminent unless they cooperate with the Grey Men, who can purge the charge.

Shau-Kesheggi

The men that one would day be known as Shau-Kesheggi rose to become a Sorcerer the Kuen-Yuin in the Winter of 1662, having served loyally as an agent of the Kuen-Yuin's interests in the Ming Dynasty court, and playing an influential, but wholly unseen role in its collapse. He then travelled to the mythical city of Yian-Ho, where he remained, meditating and studying for one hundred and fifty years. He emerged, taking the name "Shau-Kesheggi G'Tantla-Nkoornga", a name that very roughly means "Auspicious Haruspex of the Greater Temple of the Daemon-God G'Tantla (Ghatanothoa)", though his full name is known only to his peers in the Kuen-Yuin. 

Shau-Kesheggi was known for his shrewdness in manipulating the courtly politics of China, though was quick to expand into the manipulation of the private enterprises and European businesses that flocked to China during the latter half of the Qing Dynasty, seeing great potential for the expansion of the Kuen-Yuin's influence beyond China. His designs were abruptly spoiled by the invasion of China by the Empire of Japan, and the decades-long civil war that accompanied it. It was Kesheggi's foreign resources that helped many of the Kuen-Yuin escape the war and flee to the rest of Asia, South America, and elsewhere. Shau-Kesheggi took to living in British India during most of the Second World War, though he would eventually return to Hong Kong in the late 1940s. It was in Hong Kong that a revelation came, or rather was delivered, to Shau. in 1968, While meditating upon the Golden Orb that the Kuen-Yuin use for telepathic communication, Shau was greeted by a vision of a stranger. The stranger identified himself as Shau-Kesheggi, dressed in strange robes, and changed in ways that made him nigh unrecognizable. The elder Shau communed with his younger self, explaining that he was a ruler of a far off empire known as Tsan-Chan, that would rule the earth in the time after the Great Old Ones stir from their slumber, ruling alongside their inhuman master, Ghatanothoa, and his servitor, the Lloigor.

The elder Shau explained to his younger self that the Cruel Empire of Tsan-Chan required servants of great power to augment their ranks in the endless defense of the Empire against outsiders, and for its efforts in cementing its very existence in the past, the Elder Shau did not bother instructing his younger self on how this was to be done in the past - he knew he would arrive at the conclusion on his own. After much deliberation and meditation, he had. 

Shau reconnected with the scattered Kuen-Yuin, explaining his vision and the importance of his mission. Many had similar visions like Shau’s, and agreed to cooperate. It was devised that the Kuen-Yuin would use hypergeometry to create “Long Vaults” in the Asian interior, in which the remains of psychics and sorcerers - whose remains had been reduced to “Essential Salts”, would be stored so that they might be exhumed in the future and reanimated. 

To this end, the Kuen-Yuin set about reconnecting their servants across Asia, and creating new networks of cultists across the globe. By the mid 1970s, the Collectors of the Long Vaults had begun their work. Since then, it has become a well-oiled machine, a criminal conspiracy that spans the earth, finding, investigating, killing, and reducing the bodies of potential psychics into essential salts, before cramming them into metal cylinders and lowering them into lightless pits. 

Shau continues to command the Collectors of the Long Vaults from China, initially solely from Hong Kong, though since the hand-over to the PRC, he has moved occasionally back-and-forth between Hong Kong and neighboring Shenzhen. He appears, at a glance, to be an average-looking, stocky Chinese man in his 40s or 50s, up-close, however, it becomes increasingly apparent that Shau is not human. His eyes glow a dull, sickened green, his muscles moved in weird ways, not to mention the pseudopods and feeders that can unfold from his abdomen, or the sheathes, or the extra eyes that open on the sides of his head. Because of these mutations, he inhabits different bodies in public. One is of Cai Zhizhao, a wealthy Chinese shipping magnate and loyal cultist of the Kuen-Yuin. When dealing with the Collectors of the Long Vaults, he often adopts different bodies, identified through codewords as “messengers” of The Collectors’ true leader

Shau-Kesheggi

Kuen-Yuin Sorcerer

STR 12 CON 9 DEX 10 INT 19 POW 13 CHA 13

HP 11 WP 13 SAN 0 BREAKING POINT None.

BONDS None.

DISORDERS Megalomania (doesn't believe he can die)
Obsession (The Rise of Tsan-Chan)

Paranoia
Addiction (Sadism)

Addiction (Necromancy)

ATTACKS QSZ-92 Medium Pistol, 1D10 Damage

Necromancer’s Dagger, 1D8 Damage

RITUALS KNOWN Raise from Essential Saltes, Create Stone Gate, Speaking Dream, The Elder Sign, the Dho-Hna Formula, Hunger of Ammit, Song of Power, Pentagram of Power, Petrification, Transmutation, Call Forth Those From Outside (Flying Servitor, Ifrit, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, Slime of Tsathoggua), Whispers of the Dead (Tsathoggua, Cthulhu, Ghatanothoa), Withering, Wrath of Sekhmet

NECROMANCER’S DAGGER: This dagger is inlaid with special glyphs that expedite the process of reducing (and later raising) a human being from essential salts. Reducing a person to essential salts if they were slain with the dagger costs half the usual WP cost (22 WP normally, reduced to 11). Likewise, if the dagger is used for bloodletting in the ritual to raise a human from essential salts, it only costs the caster 1 WP. 

CIRCLET OF THE WHISTLING ONE: Shau-Kesheggi possesses a heavy, gold circlet inlaid with jade and tourmaline which he wears around his neck. If he is attacked, he can activate the circlet for 1D3 WP. The Circlet begins an automatic hypergeometric sequence that summons a Flying Servitor with instructions to kill Shau-Kesheggi’s assailant. If Shau-Kesheggi is killed before he can activate the Circlet manually, the agent who dealt the killing blow has to succeed a Luck Roll to avoid it automatically summoning the Servitor. 

CHILD OF YIAN-HO: Shau-Kesheggi isn’t truly human anymore. His biology would baffle any researcher examining it. Despite his advanced years, he is capable of human feats of agility, on land and in water, in combat, if he hasn’t been hit in a whole turn, he can spend his turn to regenerate 1D8 HP. Despite his inhuman biology, he is not affected by the Elder Sign.

Paul Stern

Paul Stern is was the son of British subjects born in Hong Kong in 1958. He also died of a congenital heart defect in 1959. Willem Lavallee was born in Newport News, Virginia in 1958, and at the age of 43, he did what few american would even dream of doing: he defected to the People's Republic of China, and took on a new identity, that of Paul Stern. 

Dr. Lavallee was an up-and-comer in the field of theoretical physics when he received (what seemed at the time) a lucrative deal from the air force. A handsome, six-figure salary, eight-figure budget, and the opportuntiy of a lifetime: to study what truly was the cutting edge of mathematics. He jumped at the opportunity, and since 1986 had been employed by the United States Air Force as the Head Researcher for a top-secret program called MOON RING. It wasn't until eight years later that he even learned the name of his true employers, Majestic-12. 

Things were thrilling at first, but more and more, Lavallee came to feel trapped by his appointment. He had almost no freedom, was under almost constant watch by NRO DELTA. The offers to be "erased" were always turned down, but each time felt less and less like an offer. He wondered if they'd even let him retire, or if they'd just put a bullet in his head and sending him bobbing down the Chesapeake Bay. He was pleased for one thing, they didn't mind his sexuality, and he found solace in a boyfriend, a local man from the town he ran MOON RING out of named Barry Waites. Waites' therapist, who owned a private practice in Baltimore, was an intelligence asset for the Huodezu. She "befriended" Barry and offered him free consultations, and Barry began seeing her fairly regularly. Eventually, Waites was flipped and was being used to open his boyfriend up to notion of leaving his suffocating position with the Air Force and moving to China. 

The operation took years, one of the most delicate affairs the Huodezu ever pulled off, but finally, it worked. Majestic fell into total chaos and the NRO DELTA that watched Willem was recalled for less than four hours to respond to an incident in another part of the state. In those four hours, Dr. Willem Lavallee vanished, as did Barry Waites and his therapist. Two days later, he was in a comfortable room in Shanghai, where he was debriefed for three whole months. At the end of the affair, he was approached by General Liang Jingyi, General Jingyi thanked Lavallee for his service, and gave him a new offer. He was going to be offered a new identity to live under in China indefinitely, what the General offered was to do that - and continue the work he did for Majestic. Although initially hesitant, the promise of a more permissive lifestyle and a larger salary convinced Lavallee. After two years, he had recreated most of the equipment from his lab in rural Delaware and was able to recreate his work from back in America, relearning to find the thrill in pushing the boundaries of human science. 

But Lavallee has doubts. Some part of him knows he's just as trapped in Inner China as he was in Delaware. He knows the people that worked with him worry about him, or even hate him for betraying his country. What's more, the work haunts him. MOON RING has discovered things about the human conscioussness that push the boundaries of conventional science, approaching the metaphysical. He has recreated a device he made in Bethell he called "The Chicken Box", a device that allows him to speak to disembodied consciousness, so-called "S-Brane Entities", perhaps the real phenomenon behind the myths of the poltergeist. What the S-Brane Entities tell him disturb him, and the few times their threats or predictions come to fruition, Lavallee is forced to leave the lab and go home, where he spends the rest of the day fighting down a panic attack. 

He hopes this doubts aren't being noticed by the General, and that if they are, it doesn't put him in any sort of danger. Lavallee sometimes stands at the limits of the government facility he's been working since for the last twenty years and thinks about his options. He knows he has nowhere left to go. 

Dr. Willem Lavallee, aka Paul Stern

Majestic Defector, Huodezu Researcher

STR 10 CON 11 DEX 11 INT 18 POW 11 CHA 12

HP 10 WP 11 SAN 40 BREAKING POINT 33

BONDS Barry Waites (Boyfriend), 8

DISORDERS Acute Anxiety Disorder

Adapted to Helplessness

Explore the outer reaches of Mathematics

Understand the S-Brane Entities

Prove his worthiness to the General

Live Freely

SKILLS: Alertness 20%, Art (Painting) 50%, Athletics 50%, Bureaucracy 40%, Computer Science 60%, Craft (Microelectronics) 70%, Craft (Electronics) 60%, History 30%, HUMINT 30%, Occult 50%, Persuade 40%, Pilot (Small Boat) 40%, Psychotherapy 30%, Science (Quantum Physics) 85%, Science (Mathematics) 70%, Science (Particle Physics) 70%, Swim 50%, Unarmed 40%, Unnatural 13%

ARMOR None.

ATTACKS None.

RITUALS KNOWN None.

SPECIAL TRAINING “Chicken Box” construction and maintenance (Craft Microelectronics)

General Jia Bao

The man that would come to lead the Huodezu in the 21st century was a Military Intelligence Officer poached from the Third Department of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Headquarters, where had been serving for seven years. Jia, then a First Lieutenant, was approached with an offer to work in a supremely secretive branch of Chinese intelligence focused on the "acquisition" of foreign technologies, to which he was intrigued, and accepted. Through the 1980s and early 90s, Jia coordinated limited Huodezu operations in the United State, though many of these turned out to be disasters, it some agents would return to their handlers not remembering their missions and, as they would learn later, having evidently been brainwashed by the Acquisition Group’s rivals in the United States: “Majestic”. 

But there were successes: Acquisitions Group was able to learn considerable amounts of information about Majestic’s “brainwashers” in the OUTLOOK Group and even got far enough to create mental “techniques” that would allow an agent, suspecting they or another had been brainwashed, to identify signs of brainwashing and even reverse it. Bao’s greatest achievements were near the turn of the millennia, when Acquisitions Group agents were able to convince a Majestic researcher to defect to China and extricate him before his employers were able to notice, and earlier when they were able to exploit a “disaster” at a Majestic facility, allowing them to pilfer it of research and technology. The former earned them an experienced researcher and a copy of the legendary White Sheet, the latter earned them a trove of secrets on Majestic’s operations, primarily its experiments involving “Tillinghast Radiation”. 

The dual successes were a tremendous boon to Jia’s career, putting him firmly on the path to promotion. When the extrication of Willem Lavallee and the seizing of Majestic’s T-Radiation research was achieved, Bao served as a Major. By the mid-2010s, after successive promotions, he found himself appointed to the directorship of the Acquisitions Group as a General.

But Bao has been cautious not to let success get to his head. Acquisitions Group was only able to secure breadcrumbs of Majestic’s greater research, and his experiences before and since that success indicated to him that there was a much larger picture, of which the Group has only encountered a fraction. The mathematics of the White Sheet have opened the door to feats of science that border on the sorcerous and occult. The secrets of Dr. Lavallee’s work has hinted at unnerving truths of mortality and life, something he does his best not to contemplate, but which he’s certain has worn on the doctor’s sanity. His own researchers and field operatives in China have encountered things from the likes of “living energy vortices” in the gobi desert, to “fish-men” lurking in the depths of the South China Sea, to alleged “corpse-eating dog men” near the border of North Korea. His mile-a-minute career, and the quickly expanding resources, intelligence, and power of the Huodezu, are things he should celebrate, though he can’t shake the feeling he and his organization, perhaps all of China, is barrelling headlong into some disaster he just can’t see yet. 

 

General Jia Bao (Major Jia Bao in the 90s)

Huodezu General Director (Director of Operations in the 1990s and 2000s)

STR 10 CON 12 DEX 12 INT 14 POW 13 CHA 15

HP 11 WP 13 SAN 51 BREAKING POINT 39

BONDS Yao Dai (Secretary) 10, The Huodezu 10

DISORDERS Depersonalization Disorder

Setting the standard for leadership

A complete appraisal of threats to China

Alien Technology will cement China’s place on the world stage

Curbing his Overconfidence

SKILLS Accounting 50%, Alertness 50%, Athletics 50%, Bureaucracy 60%, Criminology 70%, Disguise 50%, Dodge 50%, Drive 20%, Firearms 40%, HUMINT 80%, Law 30%, Melee Weapons 40%, Military Science (Land) 30% Persuade 80%, Search 60%, Sigint 40%, Stealth 50%, Unarmed 80%, Unnatural 5%

ARMOR None.

ATTACKS Unarmed 80%,
Silenced Makarov 40% 1d8 Damage

RITUALS KNOWN None.

SPECIAL TRAINING Interrogation (HUMINT), Espionage Mission Planning (Criminology), Parachute (Athletics), Hand Grenades (Athletics)

Declan Barrett

Although many would mistake him for an Australian, Declan Barrett’s birth certificate reads that he was born in Bangkok, Thailand. Barrett’s father was a career criminal, living in hiding from the Australian authorities for his involvement in heroin smuggling from Thailand to Australia, and for his connection to the murder of a teenage prostitute and her pimp in Melbourne two years prior to Declan’s birth. 

Declan was eight when his father was arrested by Thai authorities, eleven when he received word that his father had been stabbed to death in a Thai prison, taking the news without shedding a tear. He was raised by an associate of his father’s, a woman who managed a number of clubs, bars, and restaurants where the trafficking of drugs and people was common. His mother worked in her employ. He never met her. He recalls little from his time in general. 

As an adult, Declan made his attempt as a boxer, then became a trainer, fixing fights on the side for cash. He doesn’t remember the first time he killed someone, when he got into human trafficking. What mattered was the money. He occasionally received jobs from a Chinese customer he only knew as “The Hong Konger”, who requested very specific people be kidnapped and brought to Hong Kong alive. The Hong Konger eventually reached out to Declan, offering to involve him more directly in his business. Barrett agreed and arrived in Hong Kong to discuss the deal. 

That was when he saw a man reduced to grains of salt, then brought to life. The Hong Konger put the blade in his hand and directed him in the killing and the following ritual. Ritualized killings  were known fear tactics to Declan, it was when the man rose from the dead that gave him pause. In that evening, Declan caught a narrow glimpse of the evil he served, he was terrified, he was intrigued. He was hooked. 

He returned to Thailand, and since then has been criss-crossing the South Pacific and South Asia, from Pakistan to New Zealand. He’s often the last pair of hands the Hong Konger’s targets enter into before they meet their fate. He knows there’s a network beyond him, he’s met a few like him, he recognizes the look in their fear, madness and fear masked with grit. 

Declan Barrett
Collector of the Long Vaults

STR 14 CON 13 DEX 11 INT 9 POW 12 CHA 8

HP 14 WP 12 SAN 30 BREAKING POINT 24

BONDS Thai Sex Workers 8, The Collectors 8

DISORDERS Adapted to Violence & Helplessness

Addiction (Amphetamines)

Addiction (Necromancy)

Stay in the Hong Konger’s good graces

Avoid the cops

Always have a plan to get out of a bind. 

SKILLS: Accounting 20%, Alertness 40%, Athletics 60%, Computer Science 30%, Criminology 70%, Driving 40%, Firearms 50%, Foreign Language (Thai), 80%, Foreign Language (Malay) 20%, Foreign Language (Mandarin) 40%, HUMINT 50%, Melee Weapons 50%, Law 30%, Persuade 50%, Search 50%, Unarmed Combat 50%

ARMOR None.

ATTACKS Unarmed 50%, 1D4 Damage

Necromancer’s Dagger 50% 1D8 Damage (See NECROMANCER’S DAGGER)

Medium Pistol 50% 1D10 Damage

Shotgun (firing shot) 70% 2D8 Damage

RITUALS KNOWN: Raise From Essential Saltes, Speaking Dream (See DREAM CANDLE)

NECROMANCER’S DAGGER This dagger is inlaid with special glyphs that expedite the process of reducing (and later raising) a human being from essential salts. Reducing a person to essential salts if they were slain with the dagger costs half the usual WP cost (22 WP normally, reduced to 11). Likewise, if the dagger is used for bloodletting in the ritual to raise a human from essential salts, it only costs the caster 1 WP. 

DREAM CANDLE This implement resembles a shiny, black candle, though close inspection reveals the “wax” to actually be obsidian glass. The wick can be lit conventionally, and burns consistently though the candle never seems to get shorter. This artifact enables Barrett to use the ritual Speaking Dream. He does not know how to use the ritual without the candle. 

Post-Scriptum

Thank you for your time and for reading this. I want to quickly give credit, this project is only partially my own creation, the real big creators here are Dennis Detwiller, for creating the S-Brane Entities and Men in Black (and in part Delta Green), and Tormsen for creating the Collectors of the Long Vaults and Huodezu. 

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this document are ©FeeFiFoFin, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.