Who Do You Think You Are!? I am!

(Acknowledgements and apologies to Pete Weber,  John Carpenter, and whoever made Among Us)

## **Background**

A research station on Antarctica has gone dark.  As the continent is an international scientific preserve, whichever nation(s) can dispatch a team to spend a night in the spooky haunted research station will inherit it.  The Vincent Price Protocols.

Delta Green, posing as a PMC, has contracted with a Norwegian/US syndicate to claim the base.  This represents a unique opportunity to make an ‘honest’ buck on an aboveboard operation while getting first look at what is likely an unnatural event.

## **The Mission**

Escape the Ice Base; in so doing, try not to doom humanity.

## **Stages:**

* **Briefing**.  Handler will provide the agents with Background, and introduce their two guides, Harrison and Nils.  They worked at the station, dispatched to the coast on a supply run just before it went dark.  The state of the base is unknown, ‘Night’ is only a few hours this time of year but still brutal, so agents will need significant survival supplies.  To ensure against claim jumpers, an advance team of 2 or less will go in a helicopter piloted by Nils.  Supplies for the team proper will be towed by a Snowcat, piloted by Harrison.  This vehicle will take 24 hours to arrive.
* **Journey**.  Simple mishaps should befall Cat Team.  Supply sledge breaks through a crevasse, an agent rappels down with Harrison to pull it up.  Cat throws a tread during the night, Harrison and an agent get out and address the issue.  What is important is that *Harrison will engineer things such that he can spend 5 minutes or more, alone, with a single PC,* a few times during the journey.
* **Discovery**.  Nils and his PCs scout the base.  Massive violence, vehicles overturned, doors smashed, generators damaged, buildings and documents burnt.  No bodies.  Nils demands they stop searching, wait for backup, and carves a dugout to camp in away from the base.  However Chopper Team responds, during the night *Nils will not sleep.*  Spending an Antarctic night in a hole in the ground under a tarp requires a SAN roll, 0/1d4.  Sleeping in the dead, ruined base carries the same SAN penalty plus, ignoring the guide requires a CON or Survival roll to avoid 1d4 damage from frostbite.
* **Reunion**.  Cat Team arrives by morning.  As the team investigates, they’ll hear noises in an undamaged outbuilding.  Locked in a closet, they’ll find… Nils.  This double shows signs of hypothermia and frostbite and is nearly incoherent, ranting mostly in Norwegian.  He won’t allow himself to be touched, and will pull a Molotov and lighter from his parka if he sees your Nils, and attempt to throw it at him.  Your Nils will freeze in fear but make no hostile action.  If hurt, your Nils will melt and flee, if not killed outright.

Simultaneously, a number of figures approach the base.  As they near, they resolve into doubles of every PC.  Each one tells a tale of betrayal on the ice - Harrison morphing into a monster as they dangled from ropes or worked behind the cat, Nils attacking them in the night as they slept.  All claim to have escaped unhurt, fled to the ice, and there regrouped.  They came to the base because the alternative is to freeze to death.  At least one NPC in Ice Team should realize and flatly state aloud the purpose of Ice Team was to herd escaped humans back, and that if one them is human then one PC in Chopper or Cat Team must be a clone.

* **Escape** - driven almost entirely by the players.  The previous scene-setting should take no more than an hour.

### **What’s Going On?**

#### SECRET HITLER!

The research station was excavating an anomaly (a millenia-old flash frozen Shoggoth) in the ice using highly amplified microwave heaters.  Fortunately, only a few hundred pounds of protoplasm were thawed before things broke bad, in the process destroying the heaters.  The majority of it remains on ice, across about 20 hectares, a mile from the base.  Witnessing this is a 1d2/1d10 SAN loss.

The reduced shoggoth attempted a direct frontal assault on the puny animals that released it.  There were no human survivors, but it was severely damaged in the carnage, and is trying a new tactic.

Nils and Harrison are clones, sent to lure prey back in small numbers as to minimize risk.  During The Journey and The Discovery, they *did* attempt to consume at least one DG agent, and the agent(s) *did*, escape.  DM’s choice as to whom.  A replacement for that PC, with no idea of its origin, was then budded off of Nils and/or Harrison and the party continued.  The Shoggoth at the base budded clones to locate and retrieve the escaped agent, earning their trust with tales of similar experiences, in the bargain discrediting them and confusing the party by the number of identical tales.  It cloned the second Nils to provide a sympathetic NPC.
If the players return to civilization with a shoggoth clone, game over for the human race.
There’s a few ways to go from Reunion:

* Come up with alibis for each Ice Team NPC.  The clones should have a flaw in the alibi, the real character(s) should be airtight, allowing identification of the NPC clones and by extension the false PC.
* The base is severely damaged, and night is coming on.  There is no time to do everything that needs doing sequentially, the party must split and work in parallel to survive the night. The clones will maintain the ruse and help, only attacking if they have numerical superiority in their subgroup.

Depending on how the fight goes for the humans...

* If the shoggoth kills enough humans to tilt the odds, or if humans kill enough clones to put Shoggoth’s back against a wall, all remaining clones merge and attack.  You can also skip right to this once all the humans have been herded back to base, but there’s not a whole lot for the players to do.  DM’s discretion what to do for the player with the unwitting clone PC.

#### **Clues**

* Shoggoths do not sneak, especially not against puny humans.  The first inhabitants taught it an expensive lesson, and managed to put up a respectable last stand, even if they had to learn how to fight it as the battle progressed.  It was a **big fight.** There should be evidence of fires, chemical bombs, explosives used throughout the facility.  There may be signs of gunfire from the initial contact, conspicuously fewer towards the final barricades.
* The players need to know the rules and stakes, so lay it on THICK.  Scrawled graffiti and scientific notes all referring to evil doubles, protoplasmic aliens in the ice, methods of fighting the beast.  Turning on a computer should boot straight into Dr. Blair’s program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qSbYEbtfoY

## **Characters**

* **Shoggoth** Technically, the only NPC in this game.  Hateful and hungry.

## **AFTERMATH**

If players escape with no shoggoths in tow, the consortium will be presented with readings consistent with a volcanic caldera under the base.  Personnel were lost due to poisonous gasses, their bodies sunk below temporarily melted ice. It is therefore recommended the base be abandoned and a ‘survey team’ from a major power, US, China or Russia is dispatched to ‘map out’ the caldera.  (Unless DG in your universe has the resources to fly to Antarctica and covertly contain or destroy a shoggoth)

* Survivors get 2d6 SAN bonus for escaping.
* Having fought and lived to tell (on a strictly need to know basis) about a major mythos creature gives all surviving investigators 2d6 Unnatural.  3d6 if they witnessed the full extent of it under the ice.
* Sussing out a clone’s identity using logic or argumentation to see through an alibi should get a player 1d6 HUMINT.  Establishing a logical, workable humanity test, whether one described here or not, grants 2d6 Forensics.
* If the players can prove they spent 24 hours on site, DG fulfilled the terms of its contract. A cut of the take will be paid as a performance bonus to the PCs.  No consequences for bugging out early.

### *A mechanical note:*

The clone player means at least one player-controlled character must be purged, and one NPC saved.

Clones know only what the Shoggoth wants them to.  The unknowing clone played by one PCs is *unaware* that it is not a real person.

From an RP perspective, it is fine for this player to contribute to plans to expose clones or to assist in attacking clones.  Sacrificing 10kg of mass is worth it if it earns enough trust for a helicopter ride.

If the DM determines the Player Clone logically must attack, that player should choose if they want their human ‘NPC’ back or tp continue play as the Shoggoth

If a player is RP-committed enough to try to murder their own party, and/or a good enough liar the party won’t cotton on, ABSOLUTELY let the player who is a Secret Shoggoth know!

## **STATS**

### **The Clones**

To split its limited mass into so many clones, they are hollow shells, made of about 15kg of protoplasm apiece.  Weighing the clones is a foolproof test.  Picking one up is a great way to get enveloped.

The clones, being literal ‘hollow men’ made of protoplasm, without any internal structure or skeleton, are weak and fragile.  They will try to avoid or excuse themselves from strenuous physical activity, as their low weight would make moving heavy objects noticeably awkward.  While it is difficult to damage their *protoplasm* with physical attacks, their false forms are vulnerable to physical stress.  The swing of a bat would collapse a clone, while a gunshot or cut deeper than an inch would show there’s nothing beneath.  A swift punch to the nose might even do the trick, it would also be a great way to get enveloped.  Needless to say, a real human would strongly object to ‘testing’ of this nature as well.

The instant their form is compromised, clones will initiate combat, closing distance as either a humanoid or melting into a motile puddle and attempting to contact and then envelop a target.

STR 15 (1D6)

CON 15 (1D6)

SIZ 10 (1D6) (Being mostly surface area, they look much more massive than they are)

DEX 50 (3D6)

INT 30 (2D6)

POW 50 (3D6)

CHA 50 (3D6)

HP: 3

Not vulnerable to kinetic weapons (though a snow shovel or pushbroom could keep one at bay indefinitely).  Fully vulnerable to flame, acids, bases, poisons or explosive concussion.  Prolonged exposure to arctic cold will put them in stasis, reviving without harm when thawed.  *Cryogenic* cold, such as liquid nitrogen, will cause damage.  (All these should be available in labs, kitchens, supply closets, generators and vehicles and among the supplies on the Cat.)

ATTACKS

Attacks per round: 1

Fighting 50% (25/10), enveloping on contact.

Envelop: The clones attempt to kill humans by enveloping them.  If they make contact, 1d4 damage is done as the creature surges over their limb, digesting as it goes. If the creature (or the limb) is not removed by the next turn, the player is fully enveloped in a thin membrane of Shoggoth protoplasm.  Death will come about by asphyxiation in 3 turns without any intervention. They also take damage from digestive fluids, 1d6 per turn once fully enveloped, increasing by a flat +1 each turn thereafter.  Each turn the clone spends fully enveloping and digesting, it gains 1 HP.  Enveloped players can still act, but will be in extreme pain, and nearly blind and deaf.  -20 for all rolls.

Non-enveloped players can pull protoplasm away from engulfed players’ mouth/nose, taking 1d2 damage each time.  This resets the asphyxiation timer (and allows that player to communicate with the party) but does not help with digestion damage.

Damaging the clone, even non-fatally, will cause it to release and retreat.  Given their vulnerabilities, hurting a shoggoth once it has enveloped someone will be highly dangerous to the enveloped.

SKILLS

The Shoggoth gains the knowledge and skills of those it has consumed, specifically, ‘Nils’ and ‘Harrison’ are expert helicopter pilots, mechanics, and cold-weather survivalists, as they were while alive.

It hasn’t eaten your players, though.  Yet.

To save time generating sheets, copy the PC’s sheets for the clone.  Any skills a Player Character is specialized in, a clone should suffer a -20 penalty.  The DM does not need to make this penalty known, or explain to the players why an otherwise successful roll failed.  Forcing a PC and his doppelganger into a contest of skill would be a good test, if it could be arranged.  Given their frailties, Clone’s combat skills are irrelevant.  Firing a heavy caliber weapon would tear their hands off at the wrist.  They will attack as shoggoths, not as humans.

### **The Shoggoth**

*Shoggoths are among the most horrible and loathsome of Mythos monsters. Mighty sacks of protoplasm, roughly 15-feet in diameter, these amphibious creatures are able to form limbs, eyes, and other appendages at will, imitate other life forms, and perform great feats of strength. They communicate in whatever manner their master race wishes, forming special organs for the purpose.*

*Often found as servants of deep ones and other races, they are surly at best, ever becoming more intelligent, more rebellious, and more imitative. Their creators, the ancient elder things, found to their cost the true nature of their servants in a rebellion that virtually destroyed their civilization.*
This particular Shoggoth is in *massively* diminished circumstances.  Forced to get more creative than usual, by the time Ice Team arrives, it has fully divested its entire liquid mass across all the clones.  There *is* no shoggoth unless and until the clones merge.

If necessary, for instance if the party determines a conclusive clone/human test, it will merge the bulk of all remaining clones for one last ditch attack.  While it could take any form, the most simple version would be a pillar 3m tall, 1.5m thick, weigh 150kg and have a 3m reach with a pseudopod or tentacle.  The more damage it (or the clones) sustain, the proportionately lower its bulk.
STR 70 (4D6) (-5 for each killed clone)
CON 50 (3D6) (-5 for each killed clone)

SIZ 55 (3D6) (-5 for each killed clone)

DEX 15 (1D6)

INT 35 (2D6)

POW 50 (3D6)

CHA 0

HP: 24 (-3 for each killed clone)

Move: 8 rolling

ATTACKS

Attacks per round: 1

Fighting attacks: able to produce tentacles, claws, or any manner of appendages at will with which to perform an attack.  Those unfortunate enough to be hit by a shoggoth attack may also be enveloped.

Envelop: The shoggoth divests itself of mass, losing stats equal to having a clone killed, and the attack proceeds as described above for clones.  If the mass is reabsorbed, the stats are restored plus any HP gained from digestion.  If the enveloping mass is damaged, when it retreats to the main bulk, any net HP loss it sustained is deducted from the bulk’s total.

Fighting 60% (30/12), 1d4+1 or it can choose to engulf the target (see above)

Dodge: 40% (20/8)

Armor: None, but resistant to damage in the same way clones are.

A shoggoth regenerates 1 hit points per round spent digesting a human, if it can reabsorb the mass.

Sanity Loss: 1D3/1D10 Sanity points to see a (mini) shoggoth.

## Credits

Who Do You Think You Are!? I am! was written by John W Cambell III for the 2021  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 © John W Cambell III, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Who Do You Think You Are!? I am! is not available here under CC-BY-SA.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ueGwpNP5nUqaNTUMR\_5pFz\_3pbjwtyaMDV90hZcCWH4/edit