Alteration

*A curveball to throw a rather nasty complication into an existing operation, and to prevent a dead agent from truly leaving.*

One of your Agents is dead as a result of normal gameplay. The body is mostly intact and has not been disposed of.

The Agent sees everything go black. No heartbeat, no pulse. Dead.

Hours later,

The deceased Agent is awoken by a blast of warm water to the face. They are on their back, wet, naked, and lying in a bathtub. Despite the hot water, they are shivering. They feel cold, colder than they have ever felt. If they raise a hand to attempt to block the water, or try to get up, it does not seem to work, like the water is passing through, or their legs simply aren’t responding.

As the Agent gathers their bearings, they find their arms and legs are missing from their torso at the shoulder and hip, and a dark substance oozing from a sutured wound they know was fatal.

The Agent’s limbs dangle from meat hooks above them, twitching, grasping and attempting to move them as if still connected. The Agent feels nothing through those limbs... but still they move.

Witnessing and experiencing this costs the Agent 1d10/1d20 **SAN**. (SEE OPTIONAL SAN LOSS for alternate values). If they reach permanent insanity, allow the Player with the “deceased” Agent to create a new character.

Once the Agent begins making noise, within a minute, a skinny young man with glasses rushes into the bathroom and opens the tub’s sliding glass door. They look shocked and rush out of view, returning with a needle of clear fluid. They then inject it into the Agent, knocking them unconscious.

The young man is Randall A. Baxter, an obsessive med student from a local college, who is the newest in a long line of students to fiddle with Herbert West’s reanimation serum. Baxter stole the Agent’s body and brought it back to their motel room. Baxter has finally succeeded, but is unsure of what that means.

## FINDING THE AGENT

The rest of the Agent’s Team soon discovers the deceased Agent’s body has gone missing (from the nearby morgue, crime scene, etc). The team should not have too much trouble tracking Baxter down via camera footage, tire tracks, or witnesses. Baxter is not a criminal. His theft was an act of opportunity, and not premeditated. As such he has done little to cover his tracks, and what little he has done often draws more attention.

If you wish to speed up tracking him down, Baxter may have left his cellphone with google maps data showing the motel nearby.

**Baxter’s Breadcrumbs:**

* Security Cam Footage of Baxter taking the corpse out of a back exit and to his car.
* Boot prints left which can easily be tracked back via digital purchases or local shoe stores.
* A witness describes seeing a man in khaki pants (Baxter) dragging something away from the site.
* A motel patron calls the police, having heard screaming from one of the motel rooms. When called back, the patron says the screaming has turned into talking, so “false alarm”.

## Baxter’s Interview

Hours later, the dead Agent wakes up propped up in a wooden chair, wearing a stained white bathrobe. Their limbs have been quickly and lazily sutured back onto their body. During their conversation, the shoulder and hips of the Agent's bathrobe slowly stain a dark red.

The Agent is sitting in what appears to be a dirty motel room.

The scene should be tense. In front of them on the bed sits Baxter, full of nervous energy. At least one of the Agent's limbs is rotated slightly wrong. If pointed out to Baxter he thanks them and says he will fix it later. If they try to scream for help, Baxter uses the syringe and will try again later.

Baxter plans to interview the Agent about their “status” “how it felt” etc. In truth he does not know where he is going with this but is very excited. Baxter advises not trying to stand up or to take the robe off, and will likely begin with softball questions like “How are you feeling?” “Do you have any pain?”, writing the answers into a laptop beside him on the bed. The Agent may eventually flip the questioning onto Baxter. Baxter has no idea what he has gotten himself into. He dreams of fame, awards, and wealth for being the one to reverse death. If the Agent attempts to stand up or take any action involving their legs before their limbs have been better attached, the Agent makes a Luck roll. If the roll fails, the stitches tear, dealing 1d4 damage and detaching the limb from their body.

Answers that can be gained from Baxter, by any of the Agents:

* The limbs were hacked off to test the formula individually on each limb before the Torso.
* He had never successfully tested the formula on a human before and did not think it would work.
* The formula was gained by going through and reverse engineering the notes of a disgraced scientist. (He will not name Herbert West unless threatened with violence or tortured.)
* Baxter stole the body to test the formula. He has no other motive and stole the body as it was opportune as fresh bodies are hard to come by.
* All of his prior “experiments” on animals have been disposed of.
* They do not know who the deceased Agent is. Or what Delta Green is.
* He does not have a gun.

If the dead Agent manages to successfully threaten Baxter, or fails to convince them that letting them go is the best way to survive, Baxter decides that disposing of the Agent’s body is the best way to resolve the situation, and to flee to try again later. Baxter possesses no real weapons. In the motel room there is a shovel, a laptop computer, surgical tools (including a bone saw), and a small field chemistry set with a burner.

Everything else is typical to a crappy motel.

## CONFRONTING BAXTER

The difficulty is getting to Baxter before he decides to “dispose” of the Agent.

Baxter may be captured easily if cornered or injured, and will not fight to the death. Turned over to The Program, he may be a good bargaining chip for keeping their fellow Agent and may be encountered again later as a March Tech scientist. It costs 1/1d8 **SAN** to witness the resurrected agent if they knew them. 1/1d6 **SAN** Otherwise.

The Program encourages turning over the dead Agent (to March Technologies), but will settle for keeping the Agent in the field in exchange for the reanimation serum, or Baxter. Outlaws may insist on destruction.

Delta Green acknowledges that there is no way to cover this up and let the dead Agent return to their normal life. A funeral will be planned, and an obituary posted.

All of the dead Agent’s bonds are set to Zero. Contacting their family is strongly discouraged.

## THE REANIMATED AGENT:

The Agent’s health is reset to maximum, and their stats change as follows: [**STR** is increased by 5, **CON** +5, **INT** -3, **CHA** -5 (or -1d10), **POW** -2, **DEX** -3]

After the motel, their limbs can be reattached, either by the Program, or an Agent with a relevant craft or medical skill.

## BEING DEAD

Your heart does not beat. You feel no urges. Every time you look in a mirror you see a corpse. Sexual arousal is now impossible as is any hope of a normal life. You had to snap the neck of the last EMT who tried to check your pulse.

Welcome to being dead.

All physical skills are at a -20% Penalty. Social skills are at a permanent -40% penalty. Many months of physical therapy are required for the Agent to recover “normal” control of their body and remove the physical penalty.

The Dead Agent does not require food or sleep, but will lose 1 point of **Willpower** each time they go without either. Every day they are on an Operation, they lose 0/1 **SAN** for being “alive”. The Dead Agent does not heal naturally. Only surgery or “maintenance” will heal wounds. Any healing received is reduced by half of the die (ex 1d4-2, 1d8-4). Going to a hospital isn’t an option, for obvious reasons. Severing of the head will not kill them, and any disconnected body parts continue to function. All lethality rolls automatically fail against the dead Agent. Critical hits against the Agent deal normal damage. The Agent no longer becomes unconscious upon reaching 1-2 HP.

If reduced to 0 HP, all movement in the Agent’s body ceases and the Agent remains “dead''. They cannot be resurrected again, even with Hypergeometry.

**DECAY:** Over time, the Agent’s body will begin to decay. The serum delays this, but the Agent will lose 1 **STR** and 1 **CON** every six months without an injection of the reanimation Serum, which MARCH TECHNOLOGIES may provide.

## STATS

### Randall A Baxter, Nervous Med Student

**STR** 11 **CON** 8 **DEX** 13 **INT** 16 **POW** 14 **CHA** 9

**HP** 10 **WP** 14 **SAN** 45 Disorder: Obsession (Curing Death)

Skills: Medicine (65%), First Aid (52%), Pharmacy (65%), Dodge (50%), Persuade (30%), Melee (35%), Sneak (25%), Science:Chemistry (75%), Unnatural (5%)

**Attacks:** Knock-out Syringe (70%) -40% CON to resist.

Stun-Gun (65%)

Scalpel 1d4+1 (35%)

## APPENDIX:

Optional SAN LOSS for Bathtub Scene:

* Realizing they should be dead 2/1d12 Unnatural
* Seeing their Limbs on Meat hooks 2/1d8 Violence
* Witnessing the state of their body.. 2/1d10 Helplessness

## Credits

Alteration was written by Christopher DiBella for the 2021  shotgun scenario contest.

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 © Christopher DiBella, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Alteration is not available here under CC-BY-SA.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/169hXd9b07dfd4pYuBmVMsYrQ8\_UHm\_wzEztBc5TcLV0/edit#

1. ↑ Apply SAN Loss before POW Loss