A few weeks ago, a friend and I played a game of Microscope. I wanted to use the game to create a faction for Delta Green, a little experiment to see if the formula could week. My friend had never played the game before, but his intuition made up for inexperience, and it wasn't long before we got rolling with a fairly compelling concept for a faction.

I decided I'd take what we started there and extrapolate from it, and make a quick writeup of the faction. So without further delay here's the product of the exercise:

THE ROPES OF HEAVEN

A mythos cult for Delta Green by Fee Fi Fo Fin and Panama.

History

The Ropes of Heaven are a Central American cult of Ixtab, a niche Mayan Goddess of suicide by hanging. The cult remained small in size for many decades, perhaps in centuries, among remote Mayan communities, but when Central and South American drug cartels began using civilian slave labour in the production of Cocaine, the cult became attached to a much more ambitious project with designs of international expansion and trade - like a remora latched to the underbelly of a shark.

Through the cocaine boom of the 70s and 80s, the cult spread outwards into North America and Europe. At first, many of its recruits were narcotraffickers, though as time went on, influential celebrities started being drawn into the cult's sphere of influence.

To the cult, cocaine was a revelation. The cult had long since practiced a form of ritualistic suicide to venerate its goddess. Before, the process of giving a "proper" sacrifice to Ixtab was labour-intensive and often failed; it wasn't good enough to lynch passers-by, the subject had to willingly bring about their own death "with joy in their hearts". This often meant the cult had to brainwash and gaslight a victim into conducting the ritual of their own volition, but this process took months, even years, was highly dangerous and labour-intensive, and rarely satisfied the goddess. Cocaine changed this. Cocaine was fun, and people with a habit for it often induced their own suicides without even realizing it, riding the high all the way into a death by suffocation.

A shaman of Ixtab witnessing a cocaine overdose early in the 60s first had the notion to use an overdose as a ritual sucide, and when the goddess rewarded that Shaman with her boons, that sent a pretty clear message - they had a new tool to create "joyful suicides" that weren't the noose. With a new tool to generate offerings for the goddess, and a network already infiltrated by the Cult, they had a recipe for radical growth.

The Hangman Club

In the 1970s, the Cult's primary node in North America was in New York City. It was a lose network of artists, mainly musicians and comedians, who would throw enourmous parties with plenty of cocaine. Numerous big-name comedians were either members of the Club, who they were its "marks", people that were identified as influential, with habit-forming tendencies who could be goaded into trying the drug, taking it regularly, and finally, overdosing.

The Hangman Club was a brief but important node in the cult's existence in the United States, in 1989, at a party at a member's private residence in Long Island, five of the Club's core membership died and a further two were forced to seek medical attention after they ingested cocaine that was laced with fentanyl, causing lethal overdoses in numerous members. It is unknown if the overdoses were a mistake, a cult ritual, or perhaps a coordinated assassination plot by someone outside the group. It was noted by some group members that their supplies were slower than usual, and that a few joked about having been "harassed" by the FBI.

By the late 1990s, the Club fizzled out. Those few members who survived the 1989 disaster gave up the ghost and either gave up the cult, or pursued their occult interests on their own. In 1997, a prolific comedian with significant connections to the club died shortly after a live television appearance from a lethal mix of cocaine and morphine, an idol of Ixtab was found among their effects in their dressing room.

The Witch

In 1980, a seasoned priestess of Ixtab, Nazarena Pomar, emigrated from Nicaragua to the United States, eventually settling in Miami, Florida. She was well-connected to the Colombian Medellín Cartel whose cocaine had taken Miami by storm, and it was through those contacts she quickly embedded herself in Miami's burgeoning criminal underworld.

Pomar offered her services as a witch to influential members of the Cartel, and its local network of distributors, dealers, and customers in Miami to build a broad base of influence. These were things as basic as healing maladies, minor acts of divination, to more grand acts of magic: condemning a rival to a hideous death, or summoning an alien horror to do a patron's bidding. It was "known" among the Miami underground that Pomar would host great parties with a lot of coke. The coke was high quality, it wasn't pure, but it was just as good as the uncut stuff. The rumour was she "did something" to the snow that gave it a "Kick". That "kick", whatever it was, would get a lot of people killed, it's for that reason Pomar never hosted her parties at her own residence.

By the late 1980s, Pomar's powerbase in Miami was enough that she was seen as a major player in the cocaine trafficking business, and not without some bitterness from Medellin and its rivals. Pomar protected her powerbase viciously, and by the late 1990s, she remained a major player in Miami's cocaine trafficking ring. All the while, the DEA never suspected it was really her pulling the strings. The blissful suicides from cocaine continue to spread across Miami at epidemic levels, each death appeasing Pomar's goddess just a little more. It was around then that A-Cell has its interest piqued.

USING THE ROPES OF HEAVEN

The Ropes are a good minor threat your agents should be able to tackle in a few scenarios, or which can be a good recurring, secondary threat to keep them busy. In America, the cult's figurehead is Nazarena Pomar, pulling the strings of the cult of suicide from her penthouse apartment in Miami, protected by Cartel hitmen. The remnants of the Hangman Club scattered across the United States make for a good threat to crop up from anywhere, perhaps summoned by Pomar to help deflect some of the attention away from her.

The Ropes can perhaps make for a good part of the vast trafficking conspiracy Tiger Transit, a minor occult power for Cho Chu-Tsao to court as a partner, or as occult allies to sorcerers of the Disciples of the Worm.

IMPORTANT CHARACTERS

DAVID SIERACKI

David Sieracki's a funny guy. He got his start doing the Borscht Belt in New York, eventually working his way into doing the clubs in Manhattan and Brooklyn. He's even managed to get on TV. He's studied the craft, and rubbed elbows with some of the greats. Chris Farley, Norm MacDonald, Sam Kinison. He liked them because in them, he saw masters of the craft. They liked him because he knew where to get the best snow.

Sieracki's connection to the Ropes of Heaven got him strong cocaine and places for him to throw parties for people to use it. Sieracki thought the Ropes were a weird artsy group of artists that were useful for their cocaine, then he got invited to help summon Ixtab herself for an offering. Seeing the goddess in the pale and clammy flesh really helped solidify his belief.

The night of the 1989 disaster, Sieracki did the best set of his career. Something moved through him, an eccentric comedic genius that had the crowd rolling. Of course, the police investigation was quick to rain on his parade - his fingerprints were on a few of the baggies that were littered among the bloody, convulsing dead. Sieracki managed to beat the case without took much bad press.

But since that night, he's never been able to capture the same success. He's still managed to make a living off the club circuit, now out in California, but it's still not like it used to be, and every night he feels he loses it a little more. He hasn't managed to capture that same electricity he did onstage that night in 1989. Standing less than a hundred feet from the room where some of New York's best comedic and musical talent was dying. Maybe he just needs that again. Maybe the Goddess just needs another offering.

David Sieracki is a lean white man of about 50 years. He's horseshoe-bald, with his golden brown hair graying at the temples. His standup comedy is good, but not great, and he generally tends away from doing crowdwork. If you ask around the clubs, especially in New York, some of the old timers will get a faraway look in their eye, and wax about how Sieracki could have done SNL if he really wanted. Funny, because that really is all he ever wanted.

DAVID SIERACKI

Tongue of Ixtab

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

HP 8 WP 12 SAN 36 BP 24

MOTIVATIONS / DISORDERS Addiction (Cocaine)

Addiction (Alcoholism)

Anything for a Laugh

Anything's Funny If You Give It the Right Spin

SKILLS Art (Comedy) 50%, Dodge 35%, Drive 35%, HUMINT 50%, Melee Weapons 30%, Persuade 40%, Pharmacy 60%, Unarmed 50%

ATTACKS Knife Damage 1D8 Armor Piercing 3 30%

Unarmed Combat 1D4-1 50%

RITUALS Call Forth Those from Beyond (Ixtab), Whispers of the Dead (Ixtab)

TONGUE OF IXTAB Sieracki's blessed with a way with words - if he can appease the Goddess. Every suicide that David oversees in Ixtab's name increases his Charisma by 1 to a maximum of 18, and his persuade and Art (Comedy) by 10% to a maximum of 90%. For every year that goes by without him offering a sacrifice, he loses 1 point of Charisma and 10% of his persuade and Art (Comedy) until they reset to his natural (current) score.

NAZARENA POMAR

Nazarena Pomar is an enigma. No one really remembers when they first met her, only that she's always had powerful friends and lots of them. She throws these insane parties at mansions across the city. They're really the mansions of her friends, but they treat her like she's the host - the guest of honour. The parties are always a lot of fun.

But they have a cost.

Almost everytime, the EMTs have had to show up and drag someone out of a room with a bunch of scared college kids who've just watched someone die for the very first time. But no one's really thought much of it. They're using cocaine. You gotta be careful with that shit. Everyone knows this. But it's interesting its always one person, each time, every time. It's also interesting that although she says nothing, Pomar's always been in the room when the overdose happened.

A lot of the older immigrants in Miami are scared shitless of her. She's a witch, some of them say. Some say she's cursed people with something stronger than just normal South American folk magic. People have died who've fallen under her gaze. Some people laugh about her witchy practices, some don't.

Pomar is about 40 in the 1990s. She has a natural beauty that grabs people's attention, and a high-caliber taste for clothes and makeup that accelerate her charm by just that much. Her fashion is very American, and very Miami. Around her neck is a small, smooth charm made of jade. On close inspection, it depicts Ixtab. Also around her neck is a faded ring of scarring, often concealed by makeup. At first glance, you might mistake it for a scar from a slash. If you look closely, its really from a noose. "Funny story how I got that", she'd say to you. "Perhaps I'll tell you after a few drinks?".

NAZARENA POMAR

The Bruja of Miami

STR 12 CON 12 DEX 12 INT 13 POW 16 CHA 16

HP 12 WP 16 SAN 42 BP 16

MOTIVATIONS / DISORDERS Addiction (Cocaine)

Totemic Compulsion (Charm of Ixtab)

I'm Nobody's Victim

SKILLS Athletics 45%, Computer Science 20%, Criminology 30%, First Aid 30%, HUMINT 40%, Melee Weapons 60%, Occult 50%, Persuade 75%, Stealth 25%, Unnatural 15%

ATTACKS Knife Damage 1D8 Armor Piercing 3 30%

Unarmed Combat 1D4-1 50%

RITUALS Call Forth Those from Beyond (Ixtab, Hunting Horror, Feaster from the Stars, Dimensional Shambler), Closing of the Breach (Ixtab, Hunting Horror), Whispers of the Dead (Ixtab), Healing Balm, Clairvoyance, Cynosure, Wrath of Sekhmet, Blessing of Ixtab

BLESSING OF IXTAB This spell, which takes minutes to cast and costs 5 WP and 1 SAN, enables Pomar to imbue a blessing from the God of Suicide onto food, drink, or medicine (including cocaine). Ingesting anything blessed by Ixtab gives the consumer vivid, bizarrely pleasant hallucinations of the God of Suicide. This costs 1D6 SAN from unnatural. It was customary that food blessed by Ixtab would be fed to victims before they offered themselves to the goddess, but it's now primarily used on cocaine about to be ingested so that their death might feed Ixtab. If someone hits a breaking point or goes temporarily insane from the Blessing, they attempt to join Ixtab in her realm by committing suicide however possible for 1D10 minutes.

WHAT IS IXTAB?

Up to you. We never decided on it. Panama specifically didn't want it to be a mask of Nyarlathotep, but if that's what works for your campaign, go for it.

Ixtab could be a manifestation of the King in Yellow. After all, suicide is a semi-prevalent theme of the Hastur Mythos.

It could also be simply a name applied by the mesoamericans to the Lloigor energy nexus.

Or something new entirely, a rogue godling feeding on human energies in some lightless corner of the earth. It's dealer's choice.

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