Bigfoot Underground: Search and Hunt

## INTRODUCTION

A Delta Green agent, Jerome Dyer, made contact desperately seeking extraction. But not for him.

Two years ago, Dyer left his job in Seattle as an Intelligence Analyst during his second Night at the Opera. He joined a group called Bigfoot Underground: Search and Hunt. He started calling himself Jack Zero. He was radio silent until tonight.

Jerome Dyer left a voicemail on an old phone number, thankfully, still under observation by his Handler. The message was hurried and vague. Extraction was needed for *a bigfoot*. That was at 21:40. Thankfully, the Agents are in the PNW. They are meeting in Spokane at 02:00. There's a public park by the highway on the NE side of town with no cameras.

The Handler will be in an old, black Ford pickup truck with a motorcycle in the extended bed. The motorcycle is for the Handler. The truck is for the extraction. In the bed is a tarp and tie-down straps. In the cab is a dart gun, a small case of ballistic syringes filled with anesthetic drugs, and a map to a remote hunting cabin in the wilderness between Colville National Forest and the Idaho border.

## BACKGROUND

In 1988, a twelve year old boy named Michael Nelson went missing while camping with his father in Colville National Forest. His father was the prime suspect in the case, but he committed suicide before charges were filed. Before taking his own life, Michael’s father was insistent the boy had been abducted by a sasquatch. However, something much worse had taken place. Michael Nelson was bitten by an unnatural ectoparasite resembling a hard tick, referred to here as a Macropedixodes.

The Macropedixodes bites, burrows its head into the skin, and begins immediately disrupting the genetic makeup of its host. The host endures indescribable pain for all twelve seconds of the transformation as its bones shatter and reform and its muscles tear and repair, rapidly and repeatedly. The host grows larger and larger, and a hairy scutum covers its entire body. The squamous, external plate can only be seen on the host’s feet, hands, and face - which lack the thick, wiry mane immediately engulfing the unrecognizable, in this case, Michael Nelson.

The goal of this creature is to survive, and it alters the instincts and urges of its host just as swiftly as it warps its physical form. Michael Nelson had been hiding, sustained by the land and the need to exist, for thirty two years. Until he was tracked down by Bigfoot Underground: Search and Hunt.

## BIGFOOT UNDERGROUND: SEARCH AND HUNT

The group’s internet presence mostly consists of their prolific YouTube page, which has an active following of 136 subscribers. The weekly videos are hours long and largely unedited. They feature two men, Ramb0 and Jack Zero, endlessly discussing the strategies and gear necessary to find and kill Bigfoot. Each video includes shaky, night-vision footage from a fruitless hunt that concludes with the two men excitedly boasting about fabricated noises and shadows over the heavy breathing of the camera operator.

Ramb0 is Carl Lambert, a logging crew foreman in his early forties. He lost his left leg below the knee to a workplace accident ten years ago and chose a promotion over a lawsuit. He is obsessed with tactical gear, heavy weaponry, and small explosives. While slightly overweight and severely balding, Ramb0 adamantly wears a dirty tank top and makeshift headband in every B.U.S.H. video. He hasn’t seen any of the Rambo films since his VHS player stopped working in 2006, and his memories of the series have mostly gone.

The heavy breathing behind the shaky camera is Janice Ruth, a ranger in the National Park Service. She keeps her identity hidden from the B.U.S.H. fanbase, who would likely deem her untrustworthy due to working for *The Man*. Ruth considers her Bachelor’s degree in Zoology essentially worthless compared to her countless hours spent learning everything there is to know about Bigfoot ecology, behavior, and migration on YouTube. She is responsible for tracking down Michael Nelson.

Jack Zero is Jerome Dyer, former Intelligence Analyst and current undercover Delta Green operative. When Jerome joined B.U.S.H. toward the end of 2018, Carl Lambert got him a job at the logging company as a data engineer. The two have become unlikely friends, given Lambert’s puerile, oblivious disposition and Dyer’s overwrought neuroticism. Jack Zero is the technologically savvy member of the group. He has used this upperhand to his advantage, stifling the group’s SEO and subtly undermining any momentum garnered by any actually viable science conceived by Janice Ruth.

One of the most active members of the B.U.S.H. fanbase is Dr. Anne Falsom, a primatologist at Washington State University. She believes wholeheartedly in the group’s efforts. Multiple comment threads assert she would be first on the call list to confirm hard evidence of a bigfoot to break the news to the world. Dr. Falsom may be openly derided by her colleagues and peers, but she lives her life with such confidence in her own beliefs it’s hard not to admire.

## THE KILL

Around 21:00, the trio of Bigfoot Underground: Search and Hunt tracked down Michael Nelson. In a trigger-happy panic, Ramb0 fired multiple twelve gauge slugs into the transformed man. Nelson died slowly as he departed the scene. The group tracked and collected their trophy, the first ever bigfoot carcass, and brought it back to their remote hunting cabin.

At the cabin, the group put the dead bigfoot body on the dining room table, where the lighting was best. They snapped pictures, both scientific and humorous, before messaging Dr. Anne Falsom. She was on her way. Jerome Dyer was torn. He had grown to love and trust his compatriots, but he knew he couldn’t let this knowledge of The Unnatural leak into the public arena. He had been waiting two years for this moment, and he got the message to his Handler as quickly as possible.

## THE SITUATION

When the Agents arrive, Janice Ruth is waiting in her National Park Service SUV at the gated entrance of the remote hunting cabin’s quarter mile driveway to greet Dr. Anne Falsom. In the cabin, Jack Zero is doing his best to prolong the process of editing and uploading any videos or images taken of the bigfoot carcass. Ramb0 is so hyped he can barely function. He is oscillating between walking in circles around the table while talking in circles about their future as television stars, taking selfies with the body, and standing motionless while his eyes well up with tears.

If the Agents approach the gated entrance, Ruth will call for backup when she realizes they are not with Dr. Anne Falsom. If the Agents take a more stealthy approach, Dr. Anne Falsom will arrive, and the two men of B.U.S.H. will come outside the cabin to meet her, on camera of course. Either way, the remote hunting cabin will be empty when the Macropedixodes unburrows from the body of Michael Nelson, leaving behind the shattered, wrinkled corpse of a twelve year old boy covered in dark purple bruises and riddled with holes from twelve gauge slugs. The Macropedixodes will escape back into the wilderness. This is not a bug hunt.

## THE CLEAN UP

If pictures of the hirsute, brawny body of the transformed Michael Nelson are scrutinized closely to find differences between it and the broken boy corpse, keen eyes will notice something about the red rash in the form of a bull’s-eye. In the pictures, there is a big, black dot in the center. On the corpse, there is no black dot, only a small divot in the skin. The wound is fresh.

If the Agents cross-reference a list of missing boys around twelve years old with the area’s missing persons cases without specifying a timeframe, they can identify Michael Nelson’s body.

No matter what story the Agents come up with, it will be hard to convince Carl Lambert, Janice Ruth, and Dr. Anne Falsom of anything other than the existence of The Unnatural. How the Agents deal with that will likely vary wildly from group to group.

If everything is somehow going well, perhaps one of the PCs notices a common western black-legged tick on one of the NPCs.

## THE BUG HUNT

Alternatively, this scenario can be an absolute bloodbath by having the Macropedixodes bite one of the NPCs. If they kill the transformed person, the Macropedixodes simply bites another. And another. And another. If they try to remove the creature while it is on a transformed body, the head will burrow in deeper. The headless Macropedixodes will grow new capitulum so it can infect a second host. The Macropedixodes can be killed by being drowned in a solution of water and rubbing alcohol, covered in uncalcinated diatomaceous earth, sprayed with certain essential oils (rosemary, peppermint, or lemongrass), or lit on fire.

## Credits

Bigfoot Underground: Search and Hunt was written by PretendingToBeZac 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 © PretendingToBeZac, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Bigfoot Underground: Search and Hunt is not available here under CC-BY-SA.