Operation AZTEC FORWARD

This scenario deals with an ex-Majestic 12 scientist utilizing proto-matter left over from the shady organization's heyday. A doctor with a fabricated paper trail is running a homeopathic cancer clinic known as the New Life Wellness Clinic in the town of Marfa, Texas. A few reports have come forward from patients of the New Life Wellness Spa claiming total remission of a wide spectrum of cancers after regular use of specialized foods and supplements alongside guided meditation at the clinic. The truth of the situation is that the doctor has been running clinical trials of proto-matter infused foodstuffs on select patients to combat and reverse the symptoms. The success stories, factored in with existing records of the Majestic 12 diaspora, have tripped alarms within Program servers.

## The Truth

The owner of the New Life Wellness Spa is Dr. Lucille Dougherty (a cover identity, real name Ellen Thornwood), biology PhD holder from Columbia, class of '93. She is also an ex-MAJESTIC 12 scientist who had done extensive research on proto-matter and its effects on combating disease in humans. When the organization was scattered to the wind in 2000, she managed to escape with a sizeable quantity of leftover proto-matter and has been studying it and its potential uses since. The Program has recently been alerted to her whereabouts due to a number of discrepancies in the Spa's tax-exemption documentation. While the organization is legally considered a religious organization, profits from sales of the foodstuffs have gone undocumented, garnering IRS attention and leading to Thornwood's identity being revealed (she has started paying some of her own credit card bills with the offshore accounts). When her name began showing up on multiple search queries within the bureau, the Program's NSA wiretaps were pinged. The Program is sending a small group of Agents (no more than three) with falsified IRS Criminal Investigation Division documentation under the guise of a follow-up investigation into the Spa's revenue streams. A beige 2004 Crown Victoria is on hold for the Agents at the Marfa Municipal Airport.

## Duffel bag in trunk of car

Badge #1: Jared Glover, Forensic Accounting Specialist, IRS-CID

Badge #2: Nathaniel Wright, Data Entry Technician, IRS-CID

Badge #3: Emelia Mason, Asset Protection, IRS-CID.

Factory-new MacBook Air with encrypted WiFi card

9mm with spare clip registered to Asset Protection badge

Five doses of Neotissue Stain (spray bottle) DGRPG p.460

## NPCS

### Lucille Dougherty (Ellen Thornwood):

Ellen is extremely paranoid of anyone poking around her business. She keeps the proto-matter in an offsite climate-controlled storage unit (Twin Peaks Self Storage, unit 43) and is the only one besides the business' staff with access to it. If she catches the Agents poking around the clinic, she will do her best to avoid running into them, going so far as to miss office hours and stay in a hotel in town. It is essential to the tone of the scenario that Ellen's story play out in a tragic fashion. She genuinely believes her work with the proto-matter is a net gain for medicine, despite being fully aware of the failed experiments in the MJ12 days. She started the tests to make money from patents, but seeing the effects of her work brought about an earnest change of heart. The misplaced funds which alerted the Program have been going to pay her patient's existing medical debt down under the assumption that their money will go towards paying for the tainted foodstuffs. Additional funds were also used to pay for the quiet installation of a proper laboratory to the spa's large basement space, totaling around $500,000.

### Maria Estrada, head RN of the clinic

Maria has only some idea of what the doctor's methods entail, knowing that certain patients are receiving "special" supplies of foodstuffs unbeknownst to them. She is also aware of the hermetically-sealed laboratory downstairs, though she does not have any way of accessing it.

### Marcus Anderson, 57, kidney cancer

Widower. His adult son, Daniel, rarely visits, though he is paying for his father's treatment. Marcus is usually sullen and will not likely want to talk to the Agents. Has a penchant for Old Crow whiskey, and can be more easily persuaded to talk if under the influence. Will report feeling much more energetic lately, if pried. Also remembers the lab being built; will remark about the expensive-looking equipment being carefully smuggled downstairs in the small hours of the night.

### Rita Scherer, 65, lung cancer

Rita is a pleasant, grandmotherly type who will gladly talk to the Agents, if they visit her at her home outside town. Her granddaughter Janine drives her to therapy at the spa on Wednesday afternoons, where also she buys her supply of foodstuffs. She will also report feeling better, proudly mentioning her two-mile morning walks she has recently begun. Knows nothing about the illicit money.

### Harriet Dawson, 88, terminal spinal sarcoma

Harriet is, among the three patients currently eating the tainted foodstuffs, under the closest scrutiny by the doctor. Her life expectancy was less than six months when diagnosed, but that was nearly a year ago. The proto-matter has thoroughly infused her body, combating the spread of cancer from her spine into her entire nervous system. While still wheelchair-bound, Harriet is extremely energetic and talkative, willing to discuss in detail her experiences at the clinic if she can be separated from her ever-present attending nurses.

## Investigation

An Accounting of 40 or successful check uncovers the digital records detailing the transfer of large sums of money from sales into various offshore accounts in Luxembourg and Argentina. This information could very easily be turned over to authorities, leading to her arrest. However, this will not account for the patients infused with the proto-matter, and no further investigation will result in those patients suffering horrific mutations which lead to their loss of self control and, likely, murderous violence.

If the Agents can get access to Thornwood's PC, a Computer skill of 60 or successful check uncovers her research notes on the proto-matter she has been incorporating into certain patients' food.

"The alpha phase of the clinical trials have been a nearly unqualified success. In particular, the trial runs on Marcus and Rita showed almost complete regression of the cancer cell's growth, and as of yesterday Harriet has shown signs of full remission. I can't tell her the news yet, though. Need to keep her longer to continue observation."

The files also contain a list of patients whose food and supplements have been infused with the proto-matter (there are 57 patients on record, only three of which are currently being given tainted products). Many of these patients live at the spa in nursing home-style accomodations and are willing to speak with Agents, though their knowledge of important events are perfunctory at best. Some may be aware of Dr. Dougherty's paying for their stay, and depending on a Luck roll may have receipts to that effect, further cementing a case against her.

The storage unit itself is filled with proto-matter in containers of alien construction and will only be destroyed by burning the exposed material. The Handler is encouraged to include other artifacts from the MJ12 conspiracy as potential scenario seeds for overly-curious Agents.

If the Agents do not deal with the patients but take in the doctor, eventually the three incorporated with proto-matter will undergo a horrific series of mutations witnessed by dozens of people, and begin to wreak havoc in the town. Stat blocks for transformed patients are provided below.

The investigation, as my playtest went, is intended to end with the Agents dealing with Thornwood and her three infected patients, as well as the reserve of proto-matter in her storage unit. Threat of physical harm to Agents is intentionally low in this scenario, so the Handler should play up the moral dilemma of a doctor with a "legitimate" cure for cancer and being forced to kill the unknowing recipients of her ministrations. A Helplessness SAN loss (1/1d6) should be applied to every execution, giving rise to possible adaptation. Agents who successfully neutralize all existing proto-matter may regain 1d6 SAN if they manage to verify the fact.

## Stats:

***STAT BLOCK for Ellen Thornwood:***

**Skills:** Accounting 40%, Alertness 60%, Bureaucracy 50%, First Aid 75%, Forensics 35%, HUMINT 25%, Medicine 90%, Occult 35%, Persuade 25%, Pharmacy 85%, Science (biology) 90%, Surgery 25%

***STAT BLOCK for proto-Shoggoth:***

**STR** 25 **CON** 12 **DEX** 3

**INT** 2 **POW** 3

**HP** 18 **WP** 3

**ARMOR**: SEE PLASTIC

**ATTACKS:** Crush 23% Lethality 5%, Smash 8%, Lethality 7% Strike 6%, damage 1d4+2

**CRUSH:** A target grappled by a shoggoth, even if the target has already acted in that turn, may attempt a single, unopposed DEX test to struggle free. Failure means the victim is engulfed and crushed for 15% Lethality damage. The victim must then make a Luck roll once per turn to be spat back out. Failure means the victim is consumed, ground up into nutrients: the victim loses 1D8 HP and the shoggoth gains an equivalent amount.

**FURY:** A shoggoth has intelligence on the same scale as humanity, but its modes of thought are utterly, incomprehensibly alien. In most encounters, a shoggoth acts with seemingly mindless, destructive wrath. But it may have inscrutable goals, newly conceived or developed over billions of years, to be served by that destruction.

**LOCOMOTION:** A shoggoth can roll along the ground, disperse its density to rise lighter than air, or pull water or air through itself like a jet. No one has survived an encounter long enough to measure a shoggoth’s maximum speed, but some victims have escaped shoggoths by speeding away in automobile, boat, or airplane.

**PLASTIC:** Shoggoths can ooze, grow, shift or change their plastic form to fit through almost any gap. If air can pass through an opening, a shoggoth can as well. Any attack against a shoggoth inflicts 1 HP damage, except one using hypergeometry or a weapon with Lethality of 40% or more. Conventional weapons with Lethality over 40% automatically fail their Lethality roll and instead inflict 2D10 points of damage.

**RAW POWER:** A shoggoth’s STR test is a critical success on any roll except 100. Its CON test succeeds on any roll except 100, and is a critical success on matching dice or any roll of 50 or lower.

**RESILIENCE:** A shoggoth that has at least 2 HP heals 1D10 HP every turn that it neither moves nor attacks. A shoggoth can survive comfortably in vacuum, in any depth of water, in freezing temperatures, and in catastrophic heat. Radiation which would cause cell-death in mammals is quite harmless to a shoggoth. A shoggoth suffers no ill effects from aging. Presumably a shoggoth must feed, but they have been known to sit in torpor for years—or centuries, or millennia, or eons; who can say?—with no apparent harm. The limits of a shoggoth's endurance are unknown.

**SENTRY**: Shoggoths are encased in a thousand shifting eyes that can see in every portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. All Stealth attempts against them are at -40%.

**SMASH:** Gathering up a dozen huge limbs, a shoggoth can smash a target with a Lethality rating of 30%. An attempt to Dodge this attack is at +20%.

**STRIKE**: The shoggoth suddenly extrudes a thin tentacle tipped with a bone-talon, impaling a target and inflicting 1D10+2 HP damage. Each HP inflicted on the target is added to the shoggoth’s own HP as it absorbs nutrients.

**TEKELI-LI:** Shoggoths were bred to communicate, and to imitate the sounds of their former masters. As such, they are incredible mimics. Few know how long it would take a shoggoth to use this facility for actual communication, but they certainly can imitate any sound they hear.

**UNSTOPPABLE**: If reduced to 0 HP, a shoggoth collapses into inert, hardened, desiccated bits of organic matter. However, it is not dead. If left in this state in an environment with access to oxygen and water, even trace water in the air, it reconstitutes to half strength in 2D20 hours. If this desiccated matter is burned or subjected to other destructive forces (even ones which would not usually affect the shoggoth), the shoggoth is permanently destroyed.

**SAN LOSS** 1d6/1d20

## Credits

Operation AZTEC FORWARD was written by Christopher Watson for the 2017  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 Watson, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Operation AZTEC FORWARD is not available here under CC-BY-SA.