The Slab

Someone fucked up. A small network of green boxes — storage units rented on a perpetual basis by Delta Green to store tools of their trade, dispose of evidence, or sequester dangerous artefacts — have become security risks, as the fraudulent credit cards used to pay for the units have been maxed out or cancelled. Now, the contents of the green boxes need to be retrieved before they can expose Delta Green or threaten civilian life.

The same bad record-keeping that led to this problem is also slowing down the solution. All that Delta Green can provide the agents tasked with rehousing this material is the location of the expiring Green Box. The contents are unknown.

## Involving the Investigators

The Agents get an urgent message through whatever normal protocols Delta Green has arranged. Before the start of business hours tomorrow, they need to:

1. Travel to the green box at Eagle Storage Solutions in Akron, OH.
2. Gain access to the green box (unit #212) using whatever means are necessary.
3. Remove the contents of the green box, as intact as possible. Normal DG protocols apply to anyunnatural items.
4. Transport the contents to a new, secure green box the Agents set up in another city. It’s up to the Agents to decide where, as long as it’s not in Akron (and, preferably, not in Ohio).

If the Agents ask for more information, it takes 1D6 hours for a response, and Delta Green has no further specifics to offer. Afterwards, a successful HUMINT roll tells the Agents that this isn’t the only crisis they’re trying to deal with right now.

## Getting In

Eagle Storage Solutions is a drab, multi-storey facility, beige within and without. The storage units are inside, accessible through a lobby in the front and an interior loading area from the back. Office hours are 9 am to 6 pm. After the office closes, customers may use electronic key cards to gain entrance to the facility until 11 pm, at which point no one is allowed in.

The day staff are friendly, firm and professional. None of them were present when the green box was established, including the current owner, Jerry Traherne (white male, 58). Jerry is a pushover with jocular white men (+20% to Persuade by anyone who fits that description), but is rarely (25%) in the office. Luisa Ocampo (hispanic female, 36), the site manager, takes no shit from anyone, and won’t budge on the requirement to cover the missed storage unit payments.

The night staff consists of Luisa’s cousin Benedicto (hispanic male, 24), John Wójcik (white male, 22) and Marcario Ruiz (hispanic male, 21). John and Marcario are likely (75%) to have smoked up before their shift. They all have an unconscious aversion to the area the green box is in, and avoid lingering there.

The name and details of the false identity the unit was rented under (Norman Gray, male, DOB July 3rd, 1950) is lost to Delta Green, but not the storage unit staff’s records.

Conning another customer into letting them into the building is simple with even a rudimentary ruse (+20% bonus to Persuade, +40% if they think up something clever).

Conning the staff requires a plausible set of explanations for why they haven’t been responding to the storage company’s attempts to call or email until now, as well as hiding that they don’t know the name on the rental unit’s records. (If you want to be generous, a successful Luck roll has a staff member call an Agent ‘Norman’ — assuming any of them look like a ‘Norman’.) They don’t respond to bribery of less than a Major expense. Intimidating them with convincing threats of violence will get them out of the building, but also gets them on the phone to the cops as soon as possible. Buffaloing them with badges or threats of prosecution depends on the credibility of the ruse (-20% to Persuade or CHA x 5 rolls without a clear explanation; +20% with an excellent story) but anything less than a critical success has a staff member on the phone with the relevant law enforcement organization within the hour to ask about legal or financial details relevant to the Agents’ story.

Breaking and entering is covered on page 168 of the Agent’s Handbook.

## Contains: One Slab

Unit 212 is a 12’ by 12’ space accessed via a roll-up door secured by two padlocks. The only thing inside is a rough-hewn solid slab of stone, about seven feet long, six feet across, and a foot and a half thick, triple-wrapped in a tarp. The stone is barely visible under the dirty, almost opaque tarp plastic.

At first glance, the there seems to be darker stains — like dried blood — on the upper surface of the Slab. They are not apparent at a second look (1 SAN).

Specific skills reveal more about the slab:

* Science (Geology) 10%: The slab appears to be gneiss, and probably weighs between five and six tons (around 4500 to 5500 kg).
* Drive 30% or Heavy Machinery 10%: This is going to need a Class 3 truck or better to go anywhere.
* Occult or Archaeology 30%: It looks like a sacrificial altar, or the capstone of a dolmen or trilithon.

Agents with a POW of 15 or higher feel a subliminal hum in the presence of the stone, like that of an electrical transformer in a drizzle (1 SAN).

Once the Agents are in the presence of the Slab it wakes up. When Agents are first alone with it, they experience the initial sensory hallucinations (see below). Keep track of the total SAN and WP lost by anyone because of the Slab’s influence.

Anyone touching the Slab with their bare skin loses 1 WP immediately, then another 1 WP per minute of contact.

### Initial Hallucinations

1 SAN: Distant humming or indecipherable muttering in a ritualistic cadence. Blood seeping through the folds of the tarp. Living trapped inside the tarp. Someone suddenly approaching them in a rearview or side mirror.

1D4 SAN: A body on the stone, barely visible under the tarp, bleeding out from multiple stab wounds or gory bites. Words carved into the Slab, weeping blood. Distant sobbing or screams. Sounds of crying and scratching from the Slab itself.

After about an hour in the Slab’s presence, it begins to tune into their psyches, and sends imagery specific to the Agents experiencing them. You need to tailor these visions to the Agents receiving them, but the Slab is trying, through these visions, to suggest it can help restore their Bonds or Motivations, reveal mysteries behind past investigations, and resurrect the dead or otherwise rewrite reality to fix an Agent’s past mistakes.

These visions come as momentary flashes of past personal scenes, imagery or sounds of potential futures, or surreal sensory impressions with emotional relevance to what the Slab promises. It cannot communicate except by these flawed methods, but as long as at least one Agent is near it it will keep trying, in the hope that at least one Agent will get the message and sacrifice to it.

These visions are less overtly supernatural, more like unusual daydreams or insights, but their emotional force might still call for SAN tests.

## Transportation

The Agents will need a truck or trailer capable of hauling around 12 000 pounds (5 500 kg) to take the Slab anywhere. Before that, they have to get it off the floor. That’s up to them.

Securing it inside a vehicle or on a trailer needs an INT x 5 roll or relevant other skill (+20%) to secure it correctly, or the thing slides around or off the back during transit, possibly causing a major accident. (If this happens, the slab is mysteriously unharmed.)

Passers-by who can see the Slab will be subject to the same initial hallucinations as the Agents — a body tied to it under the tarp, blood dripping off it and splattering on windshields, or voices crying out for help.

## The Truth

The Slab has no actual power to do anything it ‘promises.’ The stone is inhabited by an ‘astral parasite,’ attracted to or congealed within it as the energies of sacrifice were focused through it for age upon age. This ethereal tapeworm has no consciousness more than an instinct to goad people into offering it blood and Willpower.

The Slab stores WP for its own use, starting at 0 when the scenario begins. It gains WP from:

* Draining it from people touching it.
* Any SAN lost because of the Slab (gaining WP equal to the total SAN, divided by 5), or any WP spent to project those SAN losses onto Bonds.
* WP equal to the HP of a human sacrifice spilling blood up it.

If the Slab has accrued 10 WP, it casts Infallible Suggestion with a POW of 15 in an attempt to compel someone to perform a sacrifice.

It is up to the Handler if the Slab (or parasite) can be destroyed.

## Credits

The Slab was written by Chris Huth 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 © Chris Huth, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

The Slab is not available here under CC-BY-SA.