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| Gla'aki by Davide L Marescotti |
The operator must stand at the edge of a natural body of freshwater, chest bared to the elements, after the sun has gone down. The operator thrusts a dagger into their chest and kneels in prostration to their new god. The surface of the water ripples as if disturbed by something large underwater before becoming eerily still. When the waters return to normal, the operator rises and removes the dagger from their chest, revealing a small bloodless hole.
The Conspiracy is a new book from Arc Dream which updates the original Delta Green sourcebook to the new standalone RPG rules. But you probably knew that already. In the appendix, there are some 'new rituals,' though technically they're conversions of old DG-relevant spells from CoC that didn't make it into the Handler's Guide. This continues my project of writing crits and fumbles for rituals from official published DG materials.
I think the rules for asphyxiation and holding your breath in the
Agent’s Handbook are kind of weird. So I wrote this set of house rules
to replace them.
If an Agent has time to take a deep breath, they can survive unharmed for turns equal to their CON plus their current HP. If they engage in strenuous activity, they must make a CON or Swim test or lose an extra turn of air.
If an Agent doesn’t have time to inhale, or runs out of air, they must roll CONx5 or Swim
each turn as they asphyxiate. On a success, they lose 1 hit point, or
1D6 on a failure. This continues until they can breathe again or someone
clears their airway with a First Aid test.
Any HP lost to suffocation is restored with a successful First Aid test1. The +20% bonus from first aid kits still applies. If an Agent’s airway is blocked, the test to clear it also restores their HP. If the airway-clearing test fails, their medic can always try again on the next turn. They can either keep using First Aid, or change tactics and attempt a tracheotomy with Surgery.
Reattempting a failed test with the same skill inflicts 1 damage on the
patient. This damage persists after their airway is cleared and the HP lost to asphyxiation is healed.
If an Agent wants to get a Special Training in holding their breath like professional divers, they get a +20% bonus to all CON or Swim tests to hold their breath.
With these rules, the average person with 10 CON and 10 HP will last ~18 turns underwater. If we assume that a combat round is 6 seconds long on average (individual ones may be longer or shorter as the narrative demands), this is about 2 minutes, the standard figure for how long humans can go without air before falling unconscious and risking death.
In the ideal circumstance (18 CON, 18 HP, and the special training) someone can last for 5 or 6 minutes without air. This might sound nuts, but compare it to the Bajau sea nomads in Southeast Asia who famously can remain underwater for 13 minutes at depths of up to 70 meters. Admittedly, they do this by puncturing their eardrums to equalize water pressure and by benefiting from a few genetic mutations that help them manage blood-oxygen levels.
1 Since the damage is technically temporary, being revived from 2 HP or lower may not require a CONx5 test for permanent injury. Though it definitely should if the Agent is left unattended for more than CON minutes or if the First Aid test fails. ↩After writing the original post, I considered doing the same thing for every other 'official ritual,' but put it off for a while. As of now, I've written up enough of them to show off. Obviously, spoilers for scenarios and campaigns follow, though I tried my best to put them in the order of when they were released. That way the more recent stuff is harder to accidentally read.
Currently, I have material written for Night Visions1 from Control Group, Hourglass2, Impossible Landscapes3, Iconoclasts4, and Presence5. I'll try to keep this list updated as new things are published, but it'll take a while. I can't read everything the second it comes out and others I'll be holding off on because I want to play in them. You can just scroll down the page to read them in the order they're listed, or use the footnotes to jump back and forth.
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| cthulhu C by Francois Launet |
It can be performed anywhere. The operator only needs a special drink, chalk, some of their own blood, and time. The drink must be prepared before the chalk is even touched. There is no one specific recipe, it just has to be thick, foul, and psychoactive; for example: a mixture of honey, vinegar, coffee, and nutmeg spiced rum. The operator then uses the chalk to draw a complicated diagram of squares, circles, and lines. Once they begin, they cannot step outside the allotted area. It usually takes up 5 or 10 square meters, though operators skilled in Art or Science (Mathematics) can make do with smaller diagrams. Those with high ratings in both skills can get it down to a single square meter.
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| pixel art by Brian "ink" T |
The exact nature of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra's existence is unclear. Some say they're a pair of alien gods, some say they're just extremely powerful Deep Ones. Others claim this distinction is meaningless. The two leading theories are that they're either the ancient progenitors of the Deep One 'species,' or an aspirational future goal, when the children of the ocean become just like the Old Ones.
Likewise, the ritual can be performed in two modes: communing with Dagon and Hydra as if they were Deep Ones of immense power or as if they were Great Old Ones in their own right. The only difference seems to be the operator's perspective on the matter and how willing they are to push through the boundaries of reality. If contacted as Deep Ones, the ritual costs 9 WP and 1D6 SAN. The operator gains an overarching sense of the Deep Ones' plans. Without a high or critical activation roll, the visions are mostly limited to wherever the operator performs the ritual, or the locale of whatever tradition they learned the ritual from. If they spend 1 POW, the operator contacts the pair as Great Old Ones and loses 1D8 SAN. They are overwhelmed with visions of the Deep Ones' past, present, and future.
Last month, I ran a short scenario centered around an unnatural artifact. The scenario leaves the exact mechanics up to the Handler, so I thought I'd write them up, plus some spot rules for Raise From Essential Saltes. I recommend making Potemkin an archeologist of some sort and having journals from the dig he recovered the ankh at. They contain sketches and descriptions of the ankh enough for an Agent to guess at the later clues, but not draw any solid conclusions.
When an Agent wears the amulet for the first time, they lose 0/1D4 SAN from a brief moment of dissociation as they feel a wave of dry heat. Ask the the player if they want to shut it out (ie: project onto a Bond). What they learn from the vision depends on the amount of SAN lost after projection, if any.
It must be conducted under the sky on a starry night. Attempting it on a rooftop in a city clogged with light pollution imposes a -10% penalty to the activation roll. The operator plays an atonal melody on a wind instrument, though no Art skill is needed. It's like a musical form of automatic writing. Most versions of the ritual include sheet music or instructions for writing your own. Part of learning the ritual is understanding that while great skill is required manipulate Azathoth's dreams, it is also completely irrelevant, as everything is destroyed as it comes in contact with His maelstrom of creation.