Bleeding Darkness Part One

BLEEDING DARKNESS 

A scenario by Fee Fi Fo Fin

PART ONE. 

PREFACE

This scenario is based on the short story "Bleeding Darkness" written by Shane Ivey and published on Delta Green's website, based on a game run by Ivey in the 90s. This scenario is based on that short story and Ivey's own elaboration on the scenario's details. Bleeding Darkness was originally announced as one of the scenarios that would be making up Final Passages, a collection of scenarios that tie-in to the factions laid out in John Tynes' "Delta Green: The Labyrinth", but has, in the most recent updates, been struck from the roster, replaced by Caleb Stokes' Rejection. This scenario is a very liberal interpretation on a hook and some vague background elements. Details of this scenario borrow from other official Delta Green scenarios, namely Tynes' The Good Life. Certains rituals and enemies are from The Good Life, however these elements have been altered for this scenario. Please support Arc Dream by purchasing a copy of the Good Life for reference material, and by purchasing the official scenario of Bleeding Darkness, if they ever decide to put that out. 

INTRODUCTION

In the heart of Brooklyn, in the halls of one of its oldest and most trusted institutions, a vileness has taken root. A cult, small but of formidable power, has formed within the ranks of the Catholic Church. The cult has dubbed itself "The Coming Flood". Their members have come in contact with an immense, horrific power which they occasionally summon to the surface to study. They believe this being is a manifestation of the biblical Leviathan.

The being they have encountered is known to occultists and sorcerers as Nyogtha, the Thing That Should Not Be, described in niche, forbidden codices as a potent alien being of deific power. It is often characterized as having been secreted (or excreted) from an even greater god, the Great Old One Tsathoggua. Struggling to fit the revelations their studies have given them to their Christian worldview, the cult has adopted a sort of twisted take on Gnostic beliefs. Identifying Nyogtha as the biblical leviathan, and Tsathoggua (who they have only read of and never yet seen) as the Demiurge, the vindictive god that rules the imperfect material world. 

In their quest for understanding and enlightenment, The Flood has strayed far from the path they once swore themselves to, and have entered into dealings with The Fate for support and protection. Their pursuit of power and knowledge have had a steep human cost, which is about to catch up to them.

When a fellow Priest comes asking probing questions. The cult's leader takes it as a threat. Fearing exposure, he takes swift and brutal action to cover up the trail, the priest is slain in cold blood by one of the cult’s hideous minions, and through contacts in The Fate, the death is covered up as a suicide. Right as they believe the matter is put to rest, Delta Green arrives. 

BRIEFING

On the morning of the 10th of March, 1999, your agents are alerted by their employers that they've been assigned to a secretive FBI task force, and have been ordered to muster to the FBI field office in New York City for a briefing at 1:00pm. When they arrive, they're greeted by their cell leader and by FBI Special Agent Jean Qualls, who they are introduced to as Agent NANCY. Defer to your own discretion whether the agents know NANCY, and if so, how much they know about her. For the most part, NANCY leads the briefing. 

She starts out by introducing the agents to Dr. Mariette Monpierre, showing a xerox of her ID and some of her credentials. She explains that Dr. Monpierre is a coroner with the Chief Medical Examiner's Office in Brooklyn, she's been a personal friend of NANCY for eight years, and has been a Friendly of Delta Green for the last three years. She's had only limited exposure to the unnatural and to Delta Green (she's been led to believe that NANCY's attached to an X-Files style UFO investigation group in the FBI), but is generally well-trusted by Delta Green. Early this morning she notified NANCY of a disturbing incident, A-Cell was notified, and after a cursory review, they decided it merited investigation and activated your cell to investigate. This investigation is classified "Operation STOKER".

On the night of March 9th, Casimir Szary, a Catholic Priest, was discovered dead on the sidewalk by a Department of Sanitation worker during their commute. Police were called and his body was taken to the Chief Medical Examiner's office for autopsy. Dr. Monpierre, working an evening shift, was the one who was conducting the autopsy. During the autopsy, two things happened. The first was that Casimir Szary briefly reanimated. Dr. Monpierre alleges that the body told her to "Hear me [him]" and stirred before going slack, she denies that this was air escaping the lungs or the result of a muscle spasm, it articulated words and its eyes moved to look at her. The second thing that happened came almost immediately after. An NYPD detective entered the morgue and confronted Dr. Monpierre, he told her that the death was to be ruled a suicide, and when she protested, he threatened Dr. Monpierre's family. She was able to recall his badge number, which NANCY has already gone through the trouble of looking up: It comes back as one Nikolas Oliveira, an NYPD Homicide Detective. 

Based on cursory investigation and Dr. Monpierre's testimony, A-Cell's judgements are that:

1. Something unnatural has happened to Father Casimir Szary that is directly connected to his death, and
2. Someone in New York knows about it and is coordinating efforts to cover it up. 

The agents orders for this operation are as follows. 

1. Identify the cause of Father Casimir's death and subsequent "reanimation".
2. Identify who is behind the cover-up effort and their connection to Casimir Szary. 
3. Determine level of threat posed to the public by the person(s) responsible for Szary's death. 
4. Neutralize the threat and all traces of the unnatural with minimal exposure.
5. Save lives.

Agent NANCY has been attached to this operation and is on standby, she will be conducting some of her own cursory investigations in the area, going after some "usual suspects".

Their cover for this operation is a classified investigation with the FBI Organized Crime Task Force into suspected Neo-Nazi activity in New York City. 

BACKGROUND

The situation that the agents are called to investigate is the murder and sudden "reanimation" of Casimir Szary, a Catholic priest. The events that lead to Father Szary's murder go back years, to understand what's happening, its important to know what has lead to it. 

AN EXORCISM IN BROOKLYN

On May 26th, 1980, the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn was contacted by staff from St. Elizabeth's Catholic Girl's Home urgently requesting for the rites of exorcism to be performed on a child that two had moved into the home only two months prior. 

The girl's name was Amber Rowe, an orphan given to the home after the disappearance of her parents from their Brooklyn home. Unknown to anyone, Rowe's parents, Kevin and Frances Rowe were longtime practicioners of witchcraft. They made use of The Gowdie Shape in order to commune with "Sanderis, the Red Reaver", a witch's familiar bound within the shape. They would frequently travel into the shape for days on end to study under Sanderis. This was until they left, and then they never came back. After a week, finally someone noticed, and young Amber was placed into the care of the state and given to a Catholic orphanage, and that's when the real trouble began for Amber. 

Unknown to her, the cause for her parent's disappearance was a failed attempt to resurrect the infamous witch Abigail Prinn. The Rowes moved in the circles of New York occultists and were in the orbit of The Fate, for whom they performed favors and tasks in order to acquire greater occult knowledge and power. For years, the Rowes had worked for The Fate (though they never became members), eventually cashing in on the thing they believed would allow them to ascend to a higher level of sorcery: the corpse of the infamous witch and cultist of Nyogtha, Abigail Prinn, whose remains had come into the possession of The Fate through unknown means. Whatever ritual the Rowes performed, it failed, and only managed to temporarily reanimate Prinn, who promptly murdered them and consumed them, though this failed to maintain her reanimated form and she quickly died before she could muster the strength to escape it. 

However Prinn's consciousness survived in the twisted, blackened mummy of her corpse, and she began to reach out through the Shape to whoever was nearest. This happened to be the Rowe's young daughter, Amber, who wore the bauble on a necklace wherever she went. Prinn's influence worked slowly and manifested as a series of highly disturbing behaviours and the appearance of a strange black "mark" on Amber's back that doctors could not explain. Her caretakers eventually requested an exorcist to resolve the crisis.

The Exorcism was performed by Father Peter Ross of the Brooklyn diocese with the help of a close friend, Father Casimir Szary. During the exorcism, Fathers Ross and Szary were confronted with irrefutable proof of the unnatural, and although the rites of exorcism were totally useless against Prinn, the ordeal attracted the attention of an interested third party that appeared to the priests after they withdrew from Rowe's bedroom after nearly an hour of attempting to exorcise the demon. That third party was a handsome, well-dressed, sardonic Egyptian man. You all know who I'm talking about. 

Stephen Alzis conferred privately with the priests. Alzis explained the matter rather plainly to the priests, the mind of a mighty sorcerer dwelled within the necklace, and that isolating Rowe from it would save her. Szary half-believed Alzis to be the devil and refused to believe him, but Ross, while skeptical, was willing to try. He re-entered the chamber and wrenched the necklace from Rowe, earning a few scratches in the attempt. True to the Egyptian's advice, after briefly lapsing into sleep, Rowe awoke as her old self with only scarce, fevered memories of the last few days. As far as the shape goes, Alzis later told Ross, "Keep it, I don't have any use for it". 

TEMPTATION

Unsure of what else to do with the shape, Ross held onto it, its strange pattern that seemed to defy the eyes, and its curious shape occupying an increasing amount of his curiosity. Later he would dig into Kevin and Frances Rowe and discover their notes. Astounded by what he saw Amber perform under the Gowdie Shape's influence, and the strange and terrible formulae her parents had devised filled him with fear, then curiosity. He fought the curiosity for ten years, never touching the shape, though never revealing to anyone that he possessed it. When he retired from the priesthood in 1989, he took it with him and kept it in a cigar box in his home. 

Then on November 26th, 1990, ten years and six months after the exorcism, Ross retrieved the shape and laid his bare hand against it, and entered into it. A week prior, he had received news that filled him with fear. He had been diagnosed with Parkinsons. He knew what the disease would do to him, he had watched it kill his uncle and his father, and in a moment of weakness turned to the shape. In the impossible room hidden within the Gowdie Shape he encountered Sanderis, and was tempted. 

The next morning, he called for his friend and successor in the church, Father Mark Satariano. Satariano served as Deacon under Ross, and took his place when Ross retired. He spoke to Satariano, who told him the entire tale in the throes of cold sweats and tremors. Ross demanded that Satariano destroy the shape, or at least take it as far from him as he could. But the promise of when Satariano tried to take the shape from Ross, Ross leapt up and, despite having begged Satariano just moments before to rid him on it, fought him to keep it. In the struggle Ross suffered a heart attack, dying on the floor of his apartment. Satariano held onto the Shape. He often thought of what Father Ross has told him, of the miracles and powers within the shape, it would be less than a week before temptation overtook Satariano and he entered the shape to confer with Sanderis. 

COVENANT

What Satariano learned inside the shape amazed and terrified him, and over the next five years, he would revisit the Shape and continue to speak with Sanderis. 

Over those five years Satariano came to learn about the Salem Witch Cult, Abigail Prinn (whose corpse remained within the Shape), and their patron, Nyogtha, the Thing That Should Not Be. 

The things that Satariano learned appalled and horrified him, but after a few months, or a year, he'd return. Less convinced each time of his faith in God, or at least as he once understood it, and less convinced that Sanderis was a demon. The more things Sanderis demonstrated to him and taught him, the more Satariano's worldview began to become more akin to medieval Gnosticism than Catholicism. He eventually rationalized that Nyogtha was a product of a greater god, that and that it was the true being referred to as Leviathan in the old testament, and that Nyogtha's "Progenitor", Tsathoggua, was perhaps an older, truer name for what the Gnostics ascribed as The Demiurge, the cruel and imperfect deity that governed the material world. Indeed, Satariano does not "worship" Nyogtha or its creator, but believes that through study and contemplation of them, he will learn the great truths that will allow him to transcend beyond this imperfect world. 

It quickly became apparent to Satariano that he was not alone, and that he needed allies. He was quick to curry the favor of The Network and its masters in The Fate, though he keeps them at an arm's length, and he has begun to recruit other members of the priesthood to his cult. Since 1995 he has attracted three recruits, first attempting to persuade them of his theological worldview, then through demonstrations of his (and Nyogtha's) awesome powers as proof of said worldview. He's selective about who he introduces, and so far has kept it to old friends from when he studied at Georgetown University. Together they've formed a secret society they've dubbed "The Coming Flood".

THRALLS

The thing that Satariano desires most of all is to include the rumoured "Dho-Hna Formula", a ritual said to reveal a desired location and, with enough power, enable its caster to travel there with a thought. Satariano wants to use this spell to plum the depths of the earth and the stars, to bear witness to Tsathoggua and eventually transcend this imperfect world. Abigail Prinn knew the formula off by heart, and Satariano has communed with her consciousness a handful of times to try to unlock it, only to learn that the old witch is unwilling to part with it unless "the transfer is complete". For the longest time, Satariano didn't have the foggiest clue what Prinn meant by this. 

Satariano's efforts to bait the secret of the formula out of Prinn has proven time consuming, and Satariano quickly realized that it isn't enough to hole himself away and study. New York's occult underground is a crowded place, and its ran by The Network, who run a sorcerous racket. Satariano was told in no uncertain terms that he'd be expected to pay his dues to The Network to keep his operation afloat, or else he could take his studies elsewhere. Satariano negotiated with Alzis, and while Alzis' initial price appalled him, he eventually rationalized to himself that The Fate were not to be crossed, and that if he didn't pay his keep, all his study would be for naught. 

Alzis told him of a ritual used by sorcerers of Nyogtha in the past that involved the planting of a small polyp of the Thing That Should Not Be into the corpse of a dead man that would transform into a deathless, obedient servant. Alzis recommende Satariano make one for his own protection, and indicated that once he's had the practice, he could sell them to The Network. One would cover his "upkeep" for a year, and each could be bartered for occult manuscripts, secrets, favours, anything they needed. 

Initially resistant, the gravity of his position eventually compelled Satariano to raise a Thrall of Nyogtha from a deceased homeless man who he had given his last rites. Three nights later, Satariano awoke to find the man in his room awaiting an order. He guided him to Club Apocalypse that night and pawned the mute servitor to Alzis. That night, Satariano knew he had crossed a line he could never go back from. He resolved that he would transcend this world for the next, or burn in hell for all eternity. 

By 1999, Each of the Coming Flood's four members have a personal thrall, and they've sold six more to The Fate. The process of raising a thrall involves tainting a body with a trace of Nyogtha, waiting for three days, then collecting it. The Coming Flood have gotten into the practice of gathering over the grave and issuing a chant to Nyogtha to "beckon" the Thrall from the earth. These rituals, and the mess they leave behind, has begun to raise some questions. 

THE KILLING OF A PRIEST

Rumours of desecrated and vandalized graves, and of bizarre and obscene occult rituals being done in Brooklyn graveyards by night made their way to the ears of Casimir Szary. Szary was questioned briefly by NYPD officers investigating what they wrote off as simple vandalism. The rumours among the hobos that linger near these graveyards struck a chord when one told Szary he remembered the men hollaring "Nye-Ogg-Tha" in the dark. The word, which he had not heard tell of since the Exorcism of Amber Rowe, shook Szary. He tracked down Rowe and spoke with her, though she remembered little of her exorcism and knew nothing about the desecrations. 

Szary then investigated the dead whose graves had been desecrated. He discovered them to be among Brooklyn's gay community, some had died of exposure from homelessness, other from drug-use or suicide. The selection seemed intentional, and he began asking questions to their friends and relations, eventually earning the attention and later cooperation of Gabrielle Gleeson, a gay and trans rights activist who suspected that the graves were being defaced by Neo-Nazis. 

The lack of leads prompted Szary to speak to Father Satariano and confide his fears to him. He revealed all he knew to Satariano, unwittingly exposing himself to the man he was pursuing. He requested that Satariano allow him to read Ross' notes and see what became of the Gowdie Shape.

Satariano, paranoid and afraid of exposure, agreed to show Szary the notes that night, then laid a trap for him. As Szary arrived at his church, waiting to be allowed in, Satariano, who had deployed one of his thralls beneath a nearby parked car, entered into his thrall and used it to kill Szary by impaling him through the back. 

This brutal killing did not plug the leak as well as Satariano thought it might. One thing that Szary failed to mention was that he did not drive a car, and that his ally, Amber Rowe, would be driving him. Rowe watched in horror as the shapeshifting, tar-black horror unfurled itself and murdered the priest. She waited for an hour, hiding in her car, until she built up the courage to drive away. 

REANIMATION

Szary was discovered early that morning by a department of sanitation worker on their commute. It was investigated by police, then taken to the Queens County Medical Examiner's office for autopsy, where it wound up in the hands of Dr. Mariette Monpierre, a Delta Green friendly. Worried about what the examiner might find, Father Satariano made a last minute request of The Network to get someone to make a call to Dr. Monpierre and persuade her not to look too closely into the death. 

Unknown to everyone though, the killing of Father Szary is having an unintended side effect: Szary was impaled through the chest by a tendril of Nyogtha, which left some residue in his now empty chest cavity. This has accidentally fulfilled the conditions to turn the priest into a Thrall, and slowly, bit by bit, Nyogtha is spreading through the priest's body, recombining and reanimating dead tissue and raising him back to hideous unlife. 

At the medical examiner's office, two things happened that spooked Monpierre: the first was Father Szary briefly reanimating on the slab, the second was an NYPD detective arriving at threatening Monpierre and her daughter's life if she didn't rule the death a suicide. Dr. Monpierre wasn't so easily threatened, and notified her contact in Delta Green: Agent NANCY. A-Cell had your players' cell en route by lunch. 

WHERE THINGS STAND NOW

Alright, so lets lay out all the pieces on the board for this scenario, because there's a lot of them. 

• THE COMING FLOOD: The Coming Flood are convinced that the threat of exposure, while done ungracefully, has been put down for now, and they are refocusing their efforts on unlocking the secrets of Abigail Prinn's mind. 
• During their meeting, Father Casimir Szary revealed his fears about Amber Rowe, and told Satariano the details of the exorcism. This bit of information made Satariano realize "the transfer" referred to entering into the body of Amber Rowe. It appears that Prinn has developed an obsession with completing the ritual Amber's parents tried back in the 80s and to inhabit the body of the girl as her new vessel on earth. The Flood are now beginning to refocus their efforts on locating Rowe and luring her into the Gowdie Shape so Abigail Prinn can possess her. 
• NYPD DETECTIVE NIKOLAS OLIVEIRA: Oliveira watches Dr. Monpierre occasionally, making sure she behaves. It isn't around the clock or nothing, but he checks in momentarily to make sure she isn't up to anything she shouldn't be. If he sees someting he doesn't like, or gets notified by an ally that the agents are involved, then he'll find Monpierre's daughter on her way home from school and shoot her in the chest with a snub nose Smith and Wesson with a hollowpoint round and drive away. 
• DR. MARIETTE MONPIERRE: Dr. Monpierre has been laying low since her meeting with Detective Oliveira. Although she's been putting on a brave face, she's terrified of something horrible happening to her little girl and her family and is desperate for Delta Green to do something to help her. 
• CASIMIR SZARY: Father Szary is currently on a slab at the Queens' County Medical Examiner's office in a freezer-locker. No one has touched it since Monpierre looked at it. Slowly, more and more each night, the Nyogtha residue in Szary is consuming and reforming him. At night, he briefly regains consciousness, though he is confused. The night of his death, he was awake for only seconds. The next night, it will be for two minutes. The night after, it will be for twenty minutes. The night after that, two hours. Three nights after his death, he will fully rise from the dead. Szary, confused, will try to break into Satariano's church and find Ross' files, he will then try to find Rowe and perform the Rite of Exorcism on her. What's more likely to happen is that he'll lead Satariano right to her. 
• GABRIELLE GLEESON AND AMBER ROWE: Father Szary's two allies, Gleeson and Rowe, are hiding out at Gleeson's apartment in Bedford-Stuyvessant laying low. Neither are certain what to do, and only Gleeson leaves the apartment to buy groceries and check the news. 

TIMELINE

This scenario moves along a timeline as the days pass on. Note that this timeline only represents what happens if the agents don't interrupt it, and represents a worst-case scenario outcome for this scenario. For example, if Father Szary is kept from leading the Coming Flood to Gabrielle Glesson, they probably won't find her and Amber Rowe, at least not for another few days, and if the agents get Amber Rowe out of the city before the Flood realize it, it'll be weeks before they catch a hint. Of course, the trick to making the scenario feel alive isn't to just have the characters suddenly do nothing once the timeline's been interrupted like a broken toy, but instead have them react. If a member of the Coming Flood gets arrested, for example, they might figure that Dr. Monpierre blabbed and order Oliveira to kill her and her daughter. Keeping things liquid and reactive helps bring the danger of these scenarios to life. 

• 26 MAY 1980: Amber Rowe, the orphaned daughter of the occultists Kevin and Frances Rowe, has an exorcism performed on her by two Catholic priests Peter Ross and Casimir Szary. After a failed attempt to perform the rite, Stephen Alzis appears to Ross and tells him that the Gowdie Shape is to blame. Ross steals the Gowdie Shape and keeps it to himself. 
• 26 NOVEMBER 1990: Tempted finally by the Shape's power after ten years, Ross takes it out of the cigar box he kept it in and enters the hyperdimensional space within it. The next morning he summons his close friend and successor, Father Satariano, and pleads with him to destroy the Shape. As Father Satariano attempts to take it from him, Ross flies into a jealous rage, demanding it back and nearly killing Satariano before dying of a heart attack. 
• 1 DECEMBER 1990: Mark Satariano enters the Gowdie Shape for the first time and communes with its tenant, the Witch's Familiar Sanderis the Read Reaver. 
• 1990-1995: Mark Satariano continues to try to forswear the Shape only to be tempted again by its secrets. He slowly begins to accrue occult knowledge about the universe, Magic, Nyogtha and its "father" Tsathoggua. He slowly begins to warp his Catholic beliefs to fit the horrific truths he learns, eventually subscribing to his own weird version of Gnosticism. By 1995, Satariano begins to visit the Shape regularly and is dedicated to pursuing the secrets of the occult.
• 1995-1998: Mark Satariano makes his first meeting with The Network at Club Apocalypse and begins to form the secret society he needs to complete his mission, which he calls "The Coming Flood". He recruits old friends from Georgetown University to his cause. To pay for protection and resources from The Network, and to protect themselves from competitors, they begin using fragments of Nyogtha to create Thralls of Nyogtha. 
• Summer, 1998: Father Casimir Szary learns about the defaced graves (actually the result of the Coming Flood beckoning out Thralls from the earth) and hears rumours that lead him to suspect witchcraft related to the 1980 exorcism. He begins to lead his own investigation, reconnecting with Amber Rowe and making a new ally in Gabrielle Glesson. 
• 9 MARCH 1999: Tuesday. Father Szary visits Father Satariano and shares details from his investigation, asking to see Father Ross' notes on the 1980 Rowe exorcism. Satariano agrees and invites Szary to come later that night when he'll have the files prepared. That night, Satariano uses his Thrall to murder Szary on the sidewalk outside his church by impaling him through the chest. Amber Rowe witnesses the murder and bugs out, staying with Gabrielle Gleeson. An hour after his death, a sanitation worker on their commute reports Szary's death. The body arrives at the coroner's office around 1:00 AM for autopsy. 
• 10 MARCH 1999: Wednesday. While under examination by the coroner, Dr. Mariette Monpierre, Father Szary reanimates briefly on the table (Night 0). Moments later, her family is threatened by an NYPD detective. She reaches out to her contact in Delta Green, Jean Qualls aka Agent NANCY. By lunchtime, A-Cell has activated your cell and has assigned them to Operation STOKER to find answers. THE SCENARIO BEGINS.
• 11 MARCH 1999: Thursday. Casimir Szary reanimates for twenty minutes (Night 1). The Coming Flood convene within the Gowdie Shape. 
• 12 MARCH 1999: Friday. Casimir Szary reanimates for two hours (Night 2). The Coming Flood use their thralls to burglarize Amber Rowe's apartment. They find it empty. Looking to escape New York City but terrified of leaving Gleeson's apartment, Rowe convinces Gleeson to use her credit card to buy Greyhound bus tickets bound for Buffalo, New York. Gleeson buys the earliest that are available, which is for Sunday morning. 
• 13 MARCH 1999: Saturday. Casimir Szary fully reanimates (Night 3). He burglarizes Saint Augustine Roman Catholic church searching for Father Ross' files. He then tries to locate Amber Rowe by going to her apartment but finds it abandoned. He then calls Gabrielle Gleeson who, baffled, hangs up on him. He then goes to Gabrielle Gleeson's apartment. The Coming Flood follow him there and use their magic to take control of him. One of the sorcerers enters Szary's body and uses him to murder Gleeson and kidnap Rowe, forcing her into the Gowdie Shape and taking her (and the shape) back to St. Augustine. Gleeson tries to shoot Szary before she's killed, and police will respond to reports of a shooting and find Gleeson dead and signs of a struggle, but no blood or sign of the intruder. 
• 14 MARCH 1999: Sunday. The Coming Flood enter the Gowdie Shape to oversee the ritual that will implant Abigail Prinn's mind into Amber Rowe's body. Insane, Abigail Prinn will murder the entire cult and feeds their bodies to Sanderis. She then escapes the shape and begins to prey on the homeless of New York City, looking to gather sacrifices to Summon Nyogtha in his full glory to New York. 
• If the agents prevent Szary from revealing Rowe's location to the Flood, then on Sunday morning, she leaves New York City on a Greyhound bus headed to Buffalo. 

THE GOWDIE SHAPE

Originally written up in ARCHINT (Page 12), the Gowdie Shape is a potent and ancient unnatural artifact which is of great importance to this scenario. 

The Gowdie Shape is a small pendant, originally gifted to the Scottish witch Isabelle Gowdie by the Dark Man in the 1660s. The Shape is laden with strange unnatural power, its form seems to confound the senses, and can drive people to obsess over it's design and trying to comprehend it. More importantly, the Shape folds time and space in such a way that the interior of the shape is significantly larger than its interior. Inside the small, silver bauble, is a secret room (20 feet x 35 feet). As of the modern day, the shape has only one permanent inhabitant: Sanderis, the "Read" (Red) Reaver, a Witch's Familiar that comes in the form of a hulking crow with piercing human eyes and human hands in place of talons. 

This scenario takes some liberties with this story and supposes that somewhere along the way, that ring winds up in the United States in the possession of some New York occultists (and more importantly) carrying around the mind of Abigail Prinn inside it. How'd it get there? That's outside the scope of this scenario, but the Shape's been around since the 1600s. It's been passing weird hands for nearly 400 years, a lot can happen in that time. 

In this scenario, the Shape wound up in the possession of two New York occultists, Kevin and Francis Rowe, who botched a ritual to resurrect Prinn by shunting her mind into the body of their daughter, Amber. The ritual ended in their deaths, and after Prinn failed in a desperate attempt to seize the body of Amber through tyranny of will, it wound up in the hands of a Catholic priest. Ten years later, the priest was tempted by the shape's influence but was driven mad by it, and after his death, it fell into the hands of his apprentice, Mark Satariano. Satariano, intrigued by its mystery and seduced by its power, has become a burgeoning occultist, and has founded his own occult conspiracy within the church to further research and master this power called "The Coming Flood".

The Gowdie Shape, which is worn on a pendant under Satariano's clothes, has become the secret lair for the Flood. When they need to conduct occult rituals, consult Sanderis for knowledge, or confer in secrecy, they go into the archives room of St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church. There, the Shape is rested on a lectern and the four members of the Flood place their hands on it at once and transport themselves into the Secret Room. When they do this, they often unfurl and deploy all four of their Thralls to linger in the archives room to act as watchdogs, with the simple direction to alert the cult of any intruders and capture them. They use blunt weapons and their fists to incapacitate intruders, and to alert their masters, they let out a freakish bellowing that fills the entire church (for this reason, meetings are only held at night when the church is mostly empty). 

THE COMING FLOOD

The Coming Flood is a small and secretive sorcerer cult of only four members including its leader and most senior member, Mark Satariano. All of its members are fellow priests who Satariano knew from his time at Georgetown and who were convinced to Satariano's theological theories by acts of awe-inspiring and terrifying hypergeometry. 

It's four members are Mark Satariano, Kenneth Sikorsky, Paul Doyle, and Vaughn Schafer. Each member is a Catholic priest ministering in Brooklyn. Satariano ministers at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Park Slope. 

DOCTRINE

The Flood's "beliefs" are best described as quasi-gnostic. They believe that Nyogtha is a servitor of Tsathoggua, who they identify as the demiurge. They do not worship or venerate these beings, but wish to study them for their power and to understand the universe better so that they might transcend beyond it. 

HOW THE FLOOD USE THRALLS

Thralls of Nyogtha are interesting as servitors. The primary strengths the Thralls have is that they're actually formless - they can reduce themselves to a tarry sludge that can fit through almost any passageway and can compress themselves to fit in small containers - and that they are virtually invincible. The drawbacks are that they reek of death and that the process of Thralldom basically annihilates any powers of cognition or "higher reasoning" the person may have had in life. So they're bulletproof supersoldiers but they're as dumb as a bag of hammers. 

The Coming Flood solves this second problem through hypergeometry. When they need something specific or complicated done, but don't want to risk their own skin, they'll deploy their thrall and then use exchange personalities to enter the Thrall and pilot them remotely. There is the small drawback that doing this shunts the Thrall's "personality" into the priests's body, leaving them as a childlike, drooling idiot that is still very vulnerable to harm.

The Thralls are carried around by the Priests when they suspect they'll need it in a large briefcase that contains the Thrall in its compressed sludge-form, a plastic bag containing a change of clothes, and a small collection of hammers and knives. Given the strengths of the Thralls, and their inexperience with firearms, the Flood eschews firearms in favor of melee weapons when doing their work, as melee weapons are silent, and they don't need to worry about getting shot before they can close the distance because the Thralls are basically imune to conventional weapons. 

LOCATIONS OF INTEREST

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner - Brooklyn Office

599 Winthrop St, Brooklyn, NY 11203, United States

This is the workplace of Dr. Mariette Monpierre, and where the remains of Casimir Szary are being stored as of the beginning of the scenario. If the agents want to contact Dr. Monpierre, she would prefer it be that the agents turn up during the working hours, which start in the early evening, and she prefers that they convene in the morgue to talk.

The medical examiner's office is a grim place as one might imagine, and in the hallway leading to the morgue are trolleys lined up with the dead resting atop them covered by thin sheets. They're quite backed up on autopsies. This isn't the result fo negligence or malpractice on Mr. Monpierre's part - this is just the demand they have for her services. At night, an NYPD officer mans the front desk reading Daredevil comics and drinking coffee, another sits in an office in the back watching the cameras and occasionally doing rounds of the building. Dr. Monpierre knows the two of them - Officers Foster and Twain - by name and they know her. They're no NRO DELTA, but they take their jobs seriously and aren't one for funny business. 

In the morgue, Dr. Monpierre can show the agents the remains of Father Casimir Szary and give them the details of his death as according to her. It appears that the priest was impaled, and died perhaps only seconds after from massive blood loss and multiple organ failure due to trauma. She notes that the priest's body is decomposing strangely, that is, that there appears to be parts of the body that begin to necrotize, but which suddenly reverse and go back to normal - dead - tissue. This has led to a weird "ring" pattern across much of the body, namely around the mouth, eyes, hands, and the impaling wound itself. 

If the agents want to see Father Szary come back to life, Dr. Monpierre tells them she has no idea when it'll happen again, but recalls that last time it happened around 1:00 AM. If the agents stick around until midnight, they get to see Father Szary stir to unlife. 

If Szary is allowed to reanimate fully, he hauls himself out of his locker and escapes the morgue. If Monpierre is there, he pleads with her to help him, though in a panic she's more like to either faint or run out of the office barely holding in a scream. He'll then steal a coat from the break room and escape by running through the front door of the office - to the confusion and horror of Foster and Twain.

Our Lady of Częstochowa-St. Casimir Parish

224 24th St, Brooklyn, NY 11232, United States

This parish is where Father Szary ministered until his death. Agents that visit can see a vigil that has been erected on the sidewalk for him, as well as cards and candles lit near the entrance on the church itself. 

For days after his death, Father Szary's church will be visited by his mournful congregation, offering their prayers and mourning their priests' death. Agents that ask around among the congregation can learn a little bit about his community outreach (and with some luck, his efforts to look into the grave defacings he had become obsessed with). 

Occasionally, Gabrielle Gleeson will be there. Agents might notice her - she sticks out quite a bit from the rest of the congregation - placing a card and lighting a candle for him. Her card reads "This isn't over. I'm sorry. - G.G". Also present will be Father Satariano and the other members of the Coming Flood. Agents that ask can learn that Father Sikorsky is slated to deliver his homily later that day. For his part, Sikorsky's homily is quite heartfelt, though agents with strong HUMINT note something weird in his delivery when he says he wishes "he knew" (about Szary's supposed feelings of suicidal despair).

Agents can also discover that Szary was the exorcist for the Diocese of Brooklyn, a role he rarely had to fulfill. He inherited the role from his old friend and mentor in the faith, Father Peter Ross. Although some are skeptical about the practice of exorcism (including other members of the church, even other exorcists), Szary reportedly insisted privately and publicly that the devil was real and he had seen a real possession.

Saint Augustine Roman Catholic Church

116 6th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217, United States

Saint Augustine Roman Catholic Church is where Father Peter Ross ministered until his retirement, and is where his successor, Father Satariano ministers presently. 

The church has a relatively extensive archives room accessible through a stairway that feeds off the hallway leading to Satariano's office. In the back of the room is an old lectern that Satariano places Gowdie Shape on when the Coming Flood convenes within it. As stated earlier, when they do this, all four of the Flood's occultists leave their Thralls to lurk in the darkness of the archives and watch out for intruders.

Agents who find themselves in the archive room can find a notepad on a coffee table near the lectern that has pencil-drawn doodles of a strange, geometric shape. These are Schafer's notes from obsessively puzzling out the "dimensions" of the Gowdie Shape. The records includes newspaper clippings detailing the 1980 exorcism performed by Szary and Ross on Amber Rowe, though Rowe's name is not included in the report. If they spend a lot of time there and succeed some difficult Search rolls, they can actually find Peter Ross' notes from the exorcism, including his meeting with Stephen Alzis and Amber Rowe's name. 

It was outsid of St. Augustine that Father Szary was found, and agents who ask around to the congregation and people in the neighborhood can learn that Father Szary was seen earlier that day conferring privately with Father Satariano. One or two people might offhandedly mention Szary's friendship with Satariano's late mentor, Father Ross.

Amber Rowe's Apartment

1059 Union St, Brooklyn, NY 11225, United States. 

Amber Rowe's apartment is in a large apartment complex in Crown Heights. Hers is on the second store just the "Goldtooth Caribbean Restaurant". People in the neighborhood don't really know her very well and can't offer very much. As of the beginning of the scenario, she is not at her apartment and will not return to it. 

Agents that ask her nextdoor neighbors in the building can meet Jacinda Hall, a nurse at New York Presbyterian-Methodist Hospital, and Vlad Waters, a groundskeeper with the New York Department of Parks and Recreation. They say that Amber was a fit girl who kept to herself and was out of the apartment most of the time. Vlad will say that he remembers seeing a priest with her a few months before, which surprised him as he didn't really think she was "religious". Jacinda came home from work around midnight on the 10th, and recalls hearing Amber in her apartment cursing to hereself and "maybe crying". She figured it was a private matter like a death or a breakup and didn't want to impose, and so she ignored it and went to sleep. She hasn't seen or heard from Amber since then. 

Rowe's apartment is small and relatively tidy. She lives alone, and the most expensive things she owns are a new combo tv-vcr and her bicycle, a Trek hybrid bike that's had a lot of alterations and customizations done to it. 

Agents that take a look around and make a few key judgements. 

• Rowe hasn't been here since the night of the 9th. She came in likely in the early morning hours of the 10th to collect her things and leave.
• If the agents check it out before the Coming Flood burglarize the place: It's evident she packed and left in a hurry. Some drawers are still ajar and clothes and other affairs torn onto the floor. It isn't such a thorough tossing that it looks like the place has been ransacked. Whatever made her decide to relocate, it probably scared the hell out of her and she wanted to get out QUICK. 
• If the agents check it out after the Coming Flood burglarize it, then its obvious. The place looks like a tornado went through it. Whoever came through was an amateur, probably learned how to toss a room from watching TV. It doesn't seem they were searching for anything hidden (couch cushions haven't been cut open, appliances haven't been disassembled, etc.). Observant agents can deduce that they probably came here looking for her, and when they didn't find her, they tried looking for leads that would point to her. 
• If the agents do some serious forensics work, they can find that the burglar was likely an underweight man wearing oversized boots. They can also get fingerprints from some of the surfaces. If the fingerprints are ran through FBI databases, they come back as Brian Caron, a gay man who died of complications related to wound botulism contracted from sharing heroin needles. He died eight months ago, and notably, is grave was apparently defaced only a few nights after he was buried. Looking into Caron's case can lead the agents to Gabrielle Gleeson. 

Gabrielle Gleeson's Apartment

230 Van Buren St, Brooklyn, NY 11221, United States. 

Gabrielle Gleeson rents a two-bedroom apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. It's small and moderately well kept, though living solo in her two-bedroom has lead to her developing some bad cleaning habits. She was in the middle of turning the second bedroom into an office.

After witnessing Szary's murder, Rowe drove her car to Gleeson's and has been crashing in her second bedroom. She's terrified of going outside and has given Gleeson her credit card to buy food and essentials for her. Panic and fear are clouding her judgement, and so far her only plan is get out of New York by getting Gleeson to buy her a bus ticket out. 

On Saturday, Casimir Szary will reanimate and escape the morgue and begin trying to find Rowe. His search will eventually lead him to Gleeson's apartment. Unbeknownst to him, he's being followed by The Flood who will then possess him and use him to kidnap Rowe once they realize she's in Gleesons' apartment. During the scuffle, the possessed Szary will beat and strangle Gleeson, who will (ineffectually) shoot him in the face with her glock pistol. The shooting is reported and police arrive within five minutes.