The Dream Merchants

Somewhere in the North Maine Woods, overlooking a nameless river near the Canadian border, is an abandoned church. There’s a dreamstone meteor beneath. For a week every winter, local temperatures fall below those in the borderworld Leng. Energy leaks between the dreamstone and its entangled counterpart in the Dreamlands. The portal opens. The town of Meteor, Maine comes into existence.

Through the portal come the creatures of the Dreamlands. They peddle alien wares to occultists and criminals. A carnival conducted under a mask of normality, hurrying to complete their transactions before the magic ends. The portal only opens for a week.

Meteor has four buildings: The Hotel, the Diner, the Temple and the Church. There’s a public square at the center. The frozen fountain’s faceless statues drip icicles in the glow of sodium vapor lamps.

## THE HOTEL

The Marble Cliff is the first thing coming into town off the USFS road. A stately stone structure, like something from a fantasy novel. The floors, walls and columns are cut from marble, granite, and onyx. There are always rooms available at modest prices.

The manager, Isid, is eager to please and carries a long dagger in a silk sash. Her staff are competent and speak with an unknown accent.

The second story Whiteout Lounge has an enormous window facing the river. The bar fixes a mean bourbon smash, the baba ganoush is to die for. Looking into the blizzard, there’s a city on the opposite bank, lit by the hideously winking Pole star.

(Isid is a refugee from Sarnath. Most of the year, she works a laundromat in Poughkeepsie. She comes to Meteor in winter with some fellow Sarnath diaspora to live her dream of owning a hotel. She worships Bokrug for Apotropaic reasons.

### ISID - Hotelier

**STR** 12, **CON** 13, **DEX** 11, **INT** 11, **POW** 12, **CHA** 13

**HP** 12, **WP** 12, **SAN** 41, OCD (Must not upset the lizard god)

**SKILLS**: Accounting 50%, Bureaucracy 40%, HUMINT 50%, Law 30%, Melee Weapons 50%, Persuade 50%, Search 50%, Survival 50%, Unarmed Combat 50%

**ATTACKS**: Facon (50%, D6, 3 AP)

Unarmed (50%, D4-1)

**THERE ARE DOORS**: The Marble Cliff is sprung from Isid’s imagination. She can alter its architecture with a thought, adding and removing doors, windows, stairs, hallways and rooms. People who cause trouble in her hotel get dumped outside in the freezing cold. Those who cause serious trouble get oublietted in a windowless, doorless room of polished basalt.

Isid dislikes the monsters who run the portal trade. But without them, there would be no hotel guests)

## THE GUESTS

The guests are here to trade with the Dreamlands creatures. They’ve never met the Agents and are eager to learn why they’re here - if they’re rivals, business partners, or potential marks.

Bryson Fontaine leads three cultists. They wear protective suits and refuse to breathe the polluted air or touch the poison soil of this fallen world. They’re here to buy victims to take back to their compound (really just Bryson’s house) and sacrifice, to summon the cosmic redeemer.

Their car’s a van with CBRN seals. The storage area has restraints and can’t be opened from inside.

Homer O'Donoghue is a biker of the apocalypse. He wears his stahlhelm, aviators and beard everywhere because beneath, most of his skull’s transparent - gift of his lord Nodens, replacing pieces lost in a motorcycle accident. He’s here to sell meth and hunt monsters, and he runs out of meth halfway through his stay.

He drives a tracked motorcycle, capable of traversing snow and ice.

Nora Jejane is a serpent woman disguised as a venture capitalist. A bloodthirsty, lazy hedonist with no memory of the ancient empire, she’s here to buy a new personal assistant. Someone who can’t refuse anything. Any amusing diversions during her visit are icing on the cake.

She drives a lemon yellow Rolls Royce. She replaced the engine with a perpetual motion machine because gasoline hurts her nose. It’s completely silent.

Galina Denisova is a chef with a five star restaurant in New York. She’s built like a heavily scarred Soviet tank, with a powerful, wide body and a vulgar sense of humor. She comes to Meteor to stock up on exotic creatures, which she butchers over the year to create delicious and deadly treats.

She drives a beat-up delivery truck, with crates for animals.

Dario Scanlon is a psychonaut, connoisseur of mind altering substances. His suits are good quality but mismatched. He comes to Meteor to stock up on moonwine and other drugs from the Dreamlands. He’s not wealthy, and always comes out owing people favors, which he performs over the year until his next visit.

His car’s a well-used Westfalia.

Gita O’Doolittle is an M EPIC agent, from Canada’s counter-paranormal intelligence service. She’s undercover as a loveable but clueless tourist. Meteor’s outside her jurisdiction, and the Commission doesn’t have the resources to deal with it, but it’s close to the border and EPIC wants someone on site to gather intelligence.

She drives a 1967 Bombardier snowcat.

## THE DINER

An old school all night diner. The coffee and food are edible and dirt cheap. The waitresses are friendly, speak enough English to take orders, and hide their bruises under skirts and long sleeves. The cooks work behind a curtain. The manager is a large, swollen man, whose fat deposits swim like liquid under his skin, giving him the appearance of a water balloon. The waitresses are for sale or rent, and he’s not shy about offering them to customers.

(The manager is a Moon Beast, with a disguise of rubbery human skin. The cafe is a show floor for slaves from the Dreamlands.

### RUPERT THE MOON BEAST - Pudgy amphibian slaver

**STR** 18, **CON** 16, **DEX** 10, **INT** 12, **POW** 10

**HP** 17, **WP** 10

**SKILLS**: Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, HUMINT 40%, Pilot Flying Ship 40%

**ARMOR**: See FLABBY BODY

**ATTACKS**: Claw (40%, D6, 3 AP)

Grab and Eat (50%, see GRAB AND EAT)

**GRAB AND EAT**: A moon beast can grab a target with its Unarmed attack. If the victim being has not struggled free by its next action, the Moon Beast stuffs them into its maw for 10% lethality damage

**FLABBY BODY**: Moon beasts are portly enough that attacks against them are at +20%, but they take minimum damage from bludgeoning weapons, piercing weapons, or firearms with lethality less than 15%. Edged weapons, explosives, fire, electricity, etc do normal damage.

**SAN LOSS**: 1/D6 to see Rupert unmasked)

## THE TEMPLE

A Sikh Gurdwara, with a raised base and fluted octagonal domes. The worshippers wear turbans, but their names are nonsensical, as though picked out of a book. Rather than serving meals, the public langar hall serves as a bazaar.

Mohammed Singh sells moonwine in red crystal bottles - a powerful Dreamlands narcotic, whose effects carry over into the real world. Creative, artistic drinkers can subtly alter reality with their minds. Those troubled by madness or intrusive thoughts see their nightmares become reality.

Jat Kanwar sells scrolls, tablets and tomes. They hold lore, religion and magic from other worlds, largely useless on earth. If bribed by a discerning buyer, Jat points out which texts hold secrets applicable to all realities.

Amtal Signh sells animals. Her stall smells like a zoo, with trumpeting buopoths, red birds of Celephais, and amphorae holding enormous vooniths. A lead casket in back stinks of ketones and aniseed liquor. Inside: a larval Outer God, quiescent in a bath of exotic spirits.

(This is the Men of Leng’s lair. The Sikh facade is a hastily assembled excuse to cover their horns with turbans. In place of the granth sahib, the canopied seat in the worship hall is veiled in yellow silk. The Men of Leng avoid it fearfully.

There are thirteen Men of Leng. They work for the Moon Beast, but have their own side hustles.

### MEN OF LENG - Almost-Human merchants of the Dreamlands

**STR** 12, **CON** 12, **DEX** 10, **INT** 10, **POW** 10

**HP** 12, **WP** 10

**SKILLS**: Alertness 40%, Athletics 40%, HUMINT 50%, Navigate 40%, Survival 40%, Stealth 40%

**ATTACKS**: Curved Sword (40%, D8)

Straight Dagger (40%, D6, 3 AP)

Throwing Knife (40%, D4)

**SAN LOSS**: 0/D4 to see a Man of Leng’s horns and goat feet)

## THE CHURCH

A Gothic revival cathedral, overlooking the river. The owners, Frast and Fia, run a nightclub there. Frast is half Fia’s size, both fidget a lot. The club alternates between Jazz and EDM, forcing the exhausted staff to swap the decor daily. The drinks are overpriced. Cool vapor drifts between the well-stomped floorboards from below. The basement is off limits.

(Frast and Fia are Leng spiders, the staff are their children. They wear paper mache masks and conceal their extra limbs beneath clothing. If you look up, you’ll spot them climbing the walls to the rafters up above. Troublesome customers are paralyzed and hauled up belfry to have eggs laid in them.

### FRAST, FIA AND FAMILY - Leng Spiders and club owners, waitstaff, barkeeps, frycooks et al

**STR** 10, **CON** 10, **DEX** 15, **INT** 10, **POW** 10

**HP** 10, **WP** 10

**SKILLS**: Athletics 90%, Dodge 60%, Stealth 50%

**ATTACKS**: Bite 50%, (D4, 3 AP, PARALYTIC POISON)

**PARALYTIC POISON**: Taking even a single point of damage from a poisonous spider bite paralyzes the victim for D6 rounds, or half with a successful CON save. Being repeatedly bitten has a cumulative effect, and can stun a victim for minutes or hours.

**SAN LOSS**: 1/1D6

The portal is in the unheated basement. Like a pool of black water, suspended over a “floor” of glowing turquoise dreamstone)

## THE OTHER SIDE

The other side of the portal is a vast bone heap, tossed down from a pit miles above, lit by corpse-lanterns on a flying galley berthed among the middens.

US dollars become gems and precious metals on the other side.

The portal is guarded by an enormous worm, made intelligent by eating magical refuse tossed into the pit from the Dreamlands underworld. It exacts a “dhole toll” on the smuggling operation, taking a cut of everything brought through.

Blowing up the dreamstone while the portal is active transports a 1/2km “slice” of the pit to earth.

## DELTA GREEN INVOLVEMENT

Choose one, or come up with your own:

Gita invites Delta Green to meet in Meteor. Something horrible is about to happen, and EPIC can’t handle it. When Agents arrive, there’s a blank wall where her hotel room should be. Nobody says where she went. Nobody shares what she was going to tell them. (Nora is buying the larval God from Amtal. Gita learned about it from Dario. Dario sold Gita out to Rupert to settle a debt. Rupert ate Gita. Isid covered it up).

Delta Green tracks a cultist, sorcerer or criminal to Meteor. Agents must find out what they’re up to and stop it.

Exotic physics detectors identify Meteor as the site of an interdimensional event. Satellites are useless in the winter storm, Agents must manually locate and close the breach.

## Credits

The Dream Merchants was written by mellonbread 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 © mellonbread, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

The Dream Merchants is not available here under CC-BY-SA.