TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Four

Over the past few months, I've slowly been running a Delta Green campaign for some friends in an attempt to finally run Iconoclasts. Glancy's new magnum opus suggests running it as a capstone for experienced Agents, and the pregens on offer all have two damaged veteran packages to match. But I thought it'd be more fun to manually put the Agents through the wringer. Plus I wanted to get to know them better so I could make Iconoclasts pop.

The campaign structure is an alternation between scenarios set domestically and ones set overseas, usually in the middle east. I'd already run them through tormsen's Enemy of the Tribes. Our cast consists of

• Jim Coake, an FBI agent focused on artifact smuggling.
• Gabriel Almeida, a very large FBI special agent
• Nelson 'Doc' Taylor, former navy medic, currently pursuing a new career at the CIA
• William 'Big Bill' Chester, a retired SEAL turned CIA Paramilitary Officer and communications expert.

Big Bill and Doc Taylor were already in Pakistan because of their jobs, while Jim and Gabriel were generously flown out on Delta Green's dime. A month ago, a team of Navy SEALs filled Osama Bin Laden with bullets. In the process, an encrypted flash drive containing an exchange between Bin Laden and the local Taliban was discovered. Once cracked, it contained enough hints of something spooky that Delta Green assigned a team to investigate.

At 10:00 AM in the Islamabad US Embassy, the Agents pored over the flash drive. The Tehrik-i-Taliban had found something deep in the rural Pashtun tribal areas. It was full of something everyone referred to as "a shipment of raspberry jam." From context, it wasn't drugs or fissile materials, but it was valuable. The Taliban's best guess was that it was a UFO, so they had some photos and recovered materials sent to a UFOlogist in Peshawar via a courier who went by Abu al-Zahabi.

From there, the team split into two. Some basic research revealed that al-Zahabi operated out of a tea house in the Qissa Khwani Bazaar, so Gabriel and the doc headed there to track him down. Neither of them spoke a lick of Pashto. Fortunately, they looked suitably 'ethnic' to not get pegged as Americans. However, asking around about al-Zahabi in Arabic still attracted attention. They were halfway down an alley when they noticed three men were following them. Then one of the men pulled a gun on them. The alley filled up with sporadic gunfire and shouts in Arabic and Pashto. After switching to English, everyone realized they basically wanted the same thing: to take Taylor and Almeida to Abu al-Zahabi. There was some tension over a refusal on both sides to disarm, but Taylor smoothed it out by treating one of the men for a gunshot wound.

Meanwhile, Chester and Jim decided to pay the UFOlogist, Akhtar Ghazali, a visit. The local UFO society, PUFON or 'Pakistan UFO Network,' was supposed to be meeting at her apartment today. Instead, the members were milling around, waiting for something. Jim decided to pass himself off as a visitor from North Africa while Chester hunkered down in an abandoned hobo's tent to keep an eye on things. Pashto isn't mutually intelligible with Arabic, but Jim did have 80% HUMINT. From this, he was able to gather that everyone had been waiting for an hour for Ghazali to show and that this wasn't normal. Eventually everyone cleared out, disappointed and a little confused. Already inside the building, Jim decided he was going to try to break into Ghazali's apartment. Lacking any locksmithing tools or lockpicks, he fished around with a stick in an attempt to pull on the handle from the inside. When that failed, he forced the door. No one seemed to have noticed. 

Back at the bazaar, Taylor and Almeida were led into a dimly lit back room of The Vermilion tea house. No guns were being pointed, but things were still tense. They explained they were looking into the exchange between the Taliban and the UFOlogist."Of course we can discuss that. However, there is first the matter of...price. Do you have a favored currency?" Taylor glanced at Almeida, "Everyone takes the dollar, right?" Al-Zahabi laughed, "Yes yes, dollars are fine, how about 5K? We can meet tomorrow at the curry place down the street." A wave of relief washed over the Americans both in and out of character. They were able to haggle the price down to $900, as Almeida pointed out the exchange had already happened, and al-Zahabi didn't seem too protective of the information. They shook hands and reentered the hot Pakistani sunlight.

While Jim cautiously poked his head into the apartment, Chester noticed two suited men, one with a mustache, one clean-shaven, sneaking into the apartment building. He texted Jim.

2 MEN HEADED YOUR WAY

Not wanting to trust his 10% in Stealth, Jim closed the door and ducked behind the corner at the end of the hallway. Chester carefully closed the lobby doors behind him, only to be drowned out by the rebounding bang of someone kicking in a door that was already open. Chester crept up the stairs and tackled the clean-shaven man and Jim rushed in to take down the mustachioed one. Chaos ensued. Mustache fired in a panic at Jim, bullets ricocheting off his Kevlar covered back as he rushed the man like a linebacker. Chester and the beardless man wrestled over the stairs, sending his gun scattering down to the lobby. Jim had Mustache backed up against Ghazali's living room wall, but he pushed off it, tackling Jim into her couch. Meanwhile, Chester broke free of the beardless man's grips and shot him enough times to send him toppling down the stairs. He rushed in, dispatched Mustache with another shot and began beating the crap out of him. Only Jim screaming in his ear, handcuffed to the couch, shocked him out of his episode of depersonalization disorder.

We called the session there. Everyone was excited for the next one. I was also happy to finally get a chance to playtest some of my disorder houserules. They worked great. Big Bill's player felt the mechanics were a thematic fit and that they didn't get in the way of combat.