Buyer Beware / Thompson’s Terrific Transmogrifying Tincture!

A new fitness supplement has been having a strange side effect on its users, in the form of altered DNA, growth beyond human norms, and additional limbs.

## **The Setup**

A Marsh Industries subsidiary is harvesting and tweaking the Milk of Shub-Niggurath for fun and profit. Unauthorized human experimentation on diluting and controlling the mutative abilities by funneling them to back-alley clinics and doctors.

## **The Hook**

Cowboys: A “ ’Roid Rage” video from a third-rate bodybuilding competition shows a contestant displaying highly unusual strength and a secondary mouth in their abdomen to attack and consume a rival.

Program: A police call is flagged when the panicked caller describes the inhuman attack, and the Program moves in to contain and sanitize.

## **People involved**

* All persons are left nameless and faceless to allow for insertion into the worlds you have presented with characters your Agents may or may not have encountered already.
* **Clinic manager –** The only contact with the business side of Marsh Industries. Knows who the people are one or two levels above him inside the organization, can lead to further investigations. Knows everything about the workings below him. Not a cultist, also not NOT a cultist.
* **Lead Researcher –** A doctor specializing in epigenetics and oncology. Shub-Niggurath cultist. Devised the process to stabilize the Milk and worked out dosing. Has been dosing himself with Milk, but through supplications to Shub-Niggurath has been able to control his mutations into entirely beneficial ones. Has enhanced strength, regeneration, hardened bones and bone plates under his skin protecting his abdomen, secondary brains below his lungs in said abdomen (leading to actually having two minds, both his, thinking and processing, sometimes arguing in his head), and any others you choose. These mutations have made him taller than he was. X-Rays, MRIs, and full medical workups of him are in with the medical records with the patients. If he’s convinced there is no escape and he is about to die, can down an emergency dose of Milk and be transformed into a full Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Woe to the Agents who witness this painful transformation.
* **Researchers –** Two doctors studying the Milk and monitoring the in-house patients. Not cultists, but are unethical in allowing human experimentation even though the patients had full awareness/consent and were desperate enough to try it. They do not administer the Milk, the patients administer it to themselves. They have suspicions that the lead researcher may be self-medicating.
* **In-house patients:** Six people mutated by the Milk. A mix of ages and genders, they have random mutations including an arm has bifurcated into two tentacles, scales and gills replacing skin, painful bone growths as every bone had their growth plates regenerated and is growing again (EVERY bone), sucking mouths all along their body. All mostly insane. Reviewing their medical history, two had stage 4 cancer, one had Lou Gherig’s disease, one had late-stage Parkinson’s, one had late-stage AIDS, etc., all of which are wiped out and no longer detectable. All are grateful to be alive, but now can the side effects be cured?
* **Pain clinic doctors:** These are a handful of doctors out in the world with drug-seeking patients who pass along highly diluted forms of the Milk and record the results. The one with the bodybuilder for a client sold it to him as uber-steroids, and the bodybuilder took too much. The doctors who are cultists should be connected to Lead Researcher via a fraternity at the Medical College they all went to. All are unethical, running “pill mills”, contributing to the opiod epidemic gripping America.
* **Bodybuilder:** Killed by other contenders when he went Incredible Hulk and partially ate one of them by his abdomen opening like a giant mouth and his stomach reaching out and enveloping the other contender. They crushed his skull with the barbells available at the competition, using them like lethal American Gladiators.

## **Locations**

* **Bodybuilding competition:** This place has the remains of the attack and witnesses to interview. One of the contestants is also being supervised by the doctor and is taking the “steroid”. Agents may or may not have to sanitize the scene and the witnesses.
* **Pain clinic:** This is where the contestant’s doctor is working out of. The other patients in the lobby might have some very minor mutations that can be dismissed as being dirty, scared, homeless, addicted to pain medications, etc. Notes by the doctor document the contestant’s “progress”, as well as notes on other people getting the “steroid” and “new opiod to treat all manner of ailments”.
* **Research clinic:** Has a facility housing the six in-house patients. Has full medical records on-site with off-site backup. Surveillance logs and medical records can condemn the researchers for Crimes Against Humanity, while e-mail communications can tie the entire clinic to Marsh Industries. Marsh Industries is primary stockholder, but is mostly just funding the place. Has on-site security both to prevent incursions and to put down any fleeing patients. Depending on the story you want to run, the on-site security, hired by Marsh Industries, is suspiciously well-trained and well-armed, with no qualms about shooting people with government agencies in big letters on their vests.
* **“Milking” room:** Attached to the research clinic is a warehouse with banks of computers along one end, and dozens of robotic arms surrounding an open area about 60’ in diameter. The walls and floor of the area are stained with all manner of colorful biological liquids, most unknown to human science.  The Lead Researcher will flee here if threatened, even abandoning his patients and medical records. If he escapes to here while the Agents are assaulting the clinic, he will use the equipment for their purpose: Summoning Shub-Niggurath. Instead of activating the restraining wards and milking arms, he will simply point the way towards the Agents and assault team. Shub-Niggurath’s reaction will depend on the whims of the Storyteller.

## **What if the Agents Do Nothing?**

If the Agents either fail to find the research clinic or allow it to continue in some fashion, eventually a new performance enhancing drug is talked about in the news and then disappears from the news cycle. Militaries and mercenaries around the world start to have supersoldiers, destabilizing the balance of power and driving the world further towards chaos. Any Agents who finagle a financial stake in the outfit become wealthier than they ever expected to be.

## **What if the Agents Drink the Milk?**

Samples of the Milk are available throughout the research clinic. If an Agent drinks one, the Storyteller is free to work that into the story however they wish. Sanity rolls are a given. It is recommended not to remove the Agent from play or turn them into an NPC. Let the player deal with the ramifications of their actions.

## Credits

Buyer Beware / Thompson’s Terrific Transmogrifying Tincture! was written by Sammy Bravo, AKA, Agent EpicPartyGuy for the 2020  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 © Sammy Bravo, AKA, Agent EpicPartyGuy, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Buyer Beware / Thompson’s Terrific Transmogrifying Tincture! is not available here under CC-BY-SA.