Operation ABSOLUTE RARITY

## THE SITUATION

Someone using the alias TOME\_LORD is raising money through a popular crowdfunding website to release a PDF of the Latin Necronomicon. The usual suspects are already salivating on the comments section (“Finally! Miskatonic University wouldn’t let me read it!1!!”), normal folk are treating it as a joke (“LOL is this real? Take my $10 dammit!”) and mainstream media is running it as silly season filler.

In Delta Green HQ, however, it’s sweaty palms time.

Agents are given a faux-Necronomicon PDF on a thumb-drive and told to swap it with the real PDF – something that will not only disappoint TOME\_LORD’s backers but ruin public trust in stretch-goals forever. Deadline to release is 9 hours – it’s already broken the requested $10,000. Agents also need to find where the original is and destroy it.

## THE TRUTH

TOME\_LORD is Todd McCormick, a PhD student finalizing his thesis on Early New England Folklore and Myth Structures at Miskatonic University. Last month, doing low-paid grunt work cataloging the private library of recently deceased millionaire bibliophile, alleged wizard and all-round crotchety old-man, Erik Hohl, McCormick stumbled upon his near perfect Latin Necronomicon. After grappling with his conscience he “borrowed” it, scanned it and returned it to the dead man’s home before the library went into storage.

McCormick isn’t an occultist; he’s just a guy with a lot of student debts. Releasing a rare, out-of-copyright book for cash seemed a good idea at the time. He’s wrong.

## GETTING STARTED

Shutting down the website or DDOSing it will draw unwanted attention, so Agents need to do some legwork through cyberspace to hunt their quarry. Getting TOME\_LORD’s personal details involve either knocking on the crowdfunding company’s head office in New York and waving a fake warrant at them or hacking the company’s website (an opposed test 65%, takes 2 hours)

Deep trawling the Internet for clues (2 hours without **Computer Science**, 30 minutes with a successful roll) provides another entry. TOME\_LORD posted to a public bibliophilia forum a week ago asking how much a Necronomicon was worth (the answer? “Stop lying, it isn’t real”). Checking the email address used to join the forum against public social media accounts finds McMormick’s real name and his home address.

Handlers: if you’re running a beer-and-pretzels game, just give TOME\_LORD’s address up front.

## TOME\_LORD

When not at university, McCormick shares a ratty off-campus house with two other PhD students: Douglas Spink, biochemist, and Sean Wong, law. They all think they know their rights if Agents flash some badges but quickly freak out when things start going sideways. Wong’s daddy is a real lawyer, though, (80% **Law**) and can put a serious crimp in the Agents’ day if they use real names or get caught being naughty.

**HUMINT** deduces McCormick is more fearful of breaking some obscure interstate copyright law than unleashing the End Times. Suitably scary, or intimidatingly bureaucratic, agents can play him like a harp or bribe him. Agents might find him a useful asset if suitably rewarded.

Agents of a sneakier bent might use **Computer Science** to hack McCormack’s laptop over his woefully unprotected Wi-Fi connection, delete his .JPG files of the book and the PDF, then replace them with the more benign version in their possession. The closer to the deadline they do this the less likely McCormack is to notice (like most half-assed students he’s not made proper backups).

## THE BOOK

Agents asking McCormack about that pesky dead-tree Necronomicon are told it’s at Hohl’s big fancy house in the Aylesbury suburbs, among his big library of rare and expensive books. He thinks it’s still there.

In fact, Hohl’s house is empty, his collection sent into storage at a warehouse outside of town. Security there isn’t tight but they’ll need to search through his collection to find the book. Just before they arrive, the case officer suddenly calls, demanding the Necronomicon is recovered for study. He’s ambiguous whether that’s because he wants it to himself or orders have come down from above…

## COMPLICATIONS

**The Journalist**: Maxwell Rodriguez is a writer for edgy sociopolitical news site NODULE (this week’s top articles: “Star Wars Fans Skewed the Democrat Vote – What Next?” and “I Tried an Anarcho-Sex Commune for a Month!”). After spotting the crowdfunder and smelling a story, Rodriguez e-mailed TOME\_LORD for an interview. McCormick agreed to a telephone interview and sealed the deal by sending a “pre-release” of the PDF to prove the book was legit

Everything looks peachy unless the fake PDF is released, whereupon Rodriguez releases a new article: “Necronomi-Gone?! – Who Killed the Book of the Dead?” It comes complete with theories of a cover-up and possibly a few quotes from McCormick about Men In Black on his doorstep.

Unlike McCormick, Rodriguez actually knows his rights, keeps backups and spends most of his time at his New York hipster attic apartment with his two cats. He won’t release the book himself but will take it to some NYU professors to work out its provenance. How Agents handle this is up to the Handler.

**The Wannabes**: the agents aren’t the first book-hounds to spot TOME\_LORD’s forum post; this quintet of out-of-town wannabe hex-slingers have worked out where McCormick lives and come to nab the book and stop him releasing it online (they fear it’d just sour the magickal market by giving everyone cool powers). If the agents have been slow and methodical these guys may even have a head-start.

Luckily, for the Agents, these greenhorns are more Coen Brothers than Natural Born Killers. While tooled up, they have no real combat experience and aren’t expecting to get shot by professionals. Nevertheless they’re un-squeamish when it comes to, say, tracking down the original book’s location by pulling McCormick or his friends’ fingernails out.

**Erik Hohl**: having spent 50 years compiling his own personal Book-of-the-Dead, it shouldn’t come as a surprise this self-respecting wizard made a pact with darkness and has dug himself from his grave (or swapped bodies with a younger relative or metastasized into an 8-foot-tall blood-beast or whatever).

Hohl’s goal is to get his book back. He also desires a safe place to hide away and continue his studies. He starts hunting down the idiots who had the audacity to copy, steal and/or burn his book. He’s cruel, methodical, inhuman and immensely rich because his human form “inherited” his finances under a fake name upon his “death”. Pick a monster from the Handler Guide – go on, he can become that at will now. Have fun.

**The Rivals**: a three-man Outlaw cell (or Program team) is on the way to save the day. Better armed, better trained and a heck of a lot more heavy-handed than the players, their goal is to burn the book and sanitize potential vectors. Use the Expert Special Operator stats from the Handler’s Guide. And no, they won’t team up with the agents, though they’re not too keen to initiate a shoot-out either.

## CONCLUSION

Were the agents forced to shoot McCormick or another innocent in the head? 1/1D0 SAN loss each. Destroying Hohl is +1D3 SAN; burning his cut-and-paste Necronomicon is another +2 SAN. Blocking the PDF’s release is +2 SAN and whiskeys all round.

## STATISTICS

### HOHL’S NECRONOMICON

Hohl spent more than 50-years, a few million dollars and dozens of “broken-up” Latin Necronicomicons to create this Frankenstein’s monster of a tome. In book-collector jargon a thrown-together but otherwise complete bundle of pages like this is known as a “fake-up.” Most of the book’s pages are handwritten, with some razored out of printed copies and a few Xeroxes or photographs pasted to blank leaves. Expertly bound in untitled green linen buckram, its stats are per Handler’s Guide.

### TODD McCORMICK

**STR** 10 **CON** 10 **DEX** 10 **INT** 14 **POW** 12 **CHA** 11

**HP** 10 **WP** 12 **SAN** 60

**SKILLS:** Alertness 30%, Athletics 35%, Anthropology 70%, Bureaucracy 30%, Computer Science 10%, Firearms 25%, History 75%, Law 05%, Occult 70%, Stealth 25%

**ATTACKS:** Unarmed 40%, damage 1D4-1

### WANNABE MAGICIANS (x5)

*Robin Rutowski, Trayvon Freeman, Doug Watkins, Sandy Venghaus, Paul Spengler*

**STR** 10 **CON** 11 **DEX** 11 **INT** 11 **POW** 13 **CHA** 10

**HP** 11 **WP** 13 **SAN** 45

**SKILLS:** Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, Criminology 10%, Dodge 30%, Occult 30%, Search 35%, Stealth 30%, Unnatural 3%

**ARMOR:** Kevlar vest, 3 points

**ATTACKS:** Unarmed 45%, damage 1D4-1

Knife 45%, damage 1D6

Beretta 92 .40 S&W 35%, damage 1D10

AR-15 Rifle (Semi-auto) 40%, damage 1D12

**MAGIC:** whatever the Handler thinks appropriate, but they’re not good at it

### ERIK HOHL (HUMAN FORM)

**STR** 22 **CON** 24 **DEX** 15 **INT** 15 **POW** 14 **CHA** 09

**HP** 23 **WP** 14

**SKILLS:** Alertness 70%, Athletics 70%, Dodge 45%, Firearms 45%, Foreign Languages (Arabic 60%, German 50%, Hebrew 80%, Latin 60%, Polish 55%, Turkish 30%), Melee Weapons 45%, Search 40%, Stealth 75%, Track 55%, Unnatural 35%, everything else as Handler Guide.

**ARMOR:** 4 points

**ATTACKS:** Unarmed 45%, damage 1D8

**RITUALS:** Exchange Personalities, Changeling Feast, Infallible Suggestion, Wither, whatever the Handler feels appropriate

**SAN LOSS:** If he’s some kind of monster, whatever the Guide says

## Credits

Operation ABSOLUTE RARITY was written by Agent Obtuse for the 2019  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 © Agent Obtuse, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Operation ABSOLUTE RARITY is not available here under CC-BY-SA.