If Only In My Dreams

## The Big Idea

MAJESTIC-12 Subproject LEPANTO has raised multiple children with psychic abilities. This program collects test subjects by presenting staff as infertile couples looking to adopt from unwed mothers. Marie Halloran gave her newborn to one such couple, then spent eleven years trying to forget. But her first hit of Reverb opened a psychic channel with her lost daughter, now LEPANTO’s Subject Dolly, allowing them to communicate through shared dreams. Dolly is determined to reunite with her mother in Chicago.

But Halloran doesn't know these dreams are real. She believes Dolly is a hallucination brought on by the Reverb. A beautiful, cathartic hallucination that gets her to spend every dollar she has on more Reverb, but that’s all. When Dolly arrives at her apartment, it will be a confusing, terrifying moment for them both, and then the men in black will show up…

This scenario is intended for one to three players. It is set during the holiday season, in the hottest years of the MAJESTIC War.

## Subject Dolly

Subject Dolly was born to seventeen-year-old Marie Halloran in 1989. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t live in LEPANTO’s laboratory and, until recently, thought she was born there. She told her caretaker, Dr. Dana Shepherd, about the dreams she shares with her mother and asked for help getting to Chicago. Shepherd agreed to help without any intention of doing so, instead planning to use Dolly to escape from MAJESTIC-12. Unfortunately, Dolly is impatient, doesn’t compromise well, and reacts to stress with telekinetic force. This doesn’t make her evil; considering the circumstances, players who befriend her should find her disarmingly normal. There’s simply no way to discipline a child with her abilities.

**STR** 8 **CON** 8 **DEX** 9

**INT** 8 **POW** 18 **CHA** 9

**HP** 8 **WP** 18

**Skills**: Alertness 40%, Athletics 50%, Persuade 40%, Stealth 30%

**Attacks**: Telekinesis 60% (STRx5, see Telekinesis)

**Cerebral Hemorrhage**: If Dolly falls to 0 WP, she will die without immediate medical attention.

**Deep Sleeper**: Dolly regains 2D6 WP from a good night’s sleep, and 1D6 WP from a brief nap.

**Psychic Tantrum:** Dolly can spend 8 WP to bombard the senses of everyone around her, stunning players and NPCs alike until they make a successful POW test.

**Telekinesis**: Dolly can move objects with her mind. Moving an object heavier than 20 lbs requires a STR test, and throwing such an object inflicts 1D6 damage on the target. Every 1 WP she spends on the STR test gives her +1 STR and +1 damage.

**Weirdly Talented**: When Dolly passes a skill or attribute roll, she can spend 4 WP to turn her success into a critical success; or if she fumbles a roll, to turn it into a less-severe failure.

## Involving the Players

The players slip away from their loved ones and the holiday cheer to meet with Dr. Dana Shepherd outside Cairo, IL. Her name is on multiple papers that revolutionized particle physics, including the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab. She currently works at Cairo National Laboratory, about which little is known. She has offered to defect and give Delta Green access to the Greys’ technology; A Cell wants the players to asses her legitimacy.

Initially Dr. Shepherd doesn’t seem to appreciate how dangerous this meeting is, but the players should quickly realize her offer is genuine: she’s simply too arrogant to think A Cell will refuse it. She tells them about Subproject LEPANTO, its nurseries, its experiments. She has reports that describe phenomena outside the known limits of physics and human biology, as well as the institutionalized child abuse that made it all possible. Finally, she offers to introduce the players to a live test subject hidden nearby. In exchange she wants protection for her and her family.

When the players are ready to leave, Shepherd receives a call on her cell phone. Alert players can barely hear Shepherd’s husband trying to speak over screaming in the background: he says Dolly is demanding the family take her to Chicago. Dolly’s voice rises in pitch until an explosion can be heard and the line goes dead. Shepherd begs the players for help. She faked Dolly's death to get her out of the lab. If MAJESTIC-12 learns the truth, they’ll kill her and her family.

This is a good time to call A Cell. The players are told that with the test subject on the lam, the players need to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Shepherd. Their new mission is to neutralize Dolly before she makes headlines. A Cell doesn’t explicitly order the players to kill her. It doesn’t refute that interpretation either.

## Shepherd Household

Of course, the players may defy A Cell and try to help the Shepherd family. The house looks like it exploded outward, yet there are no signs of a bomb or gas leak. Firefighters poke about the scene for an explanation. Police are taking a statement from Shepherd’s husband while a neighbor comforts their two young daughters. One has a broken arm, and an ambulance is expected any minute now. It’s a busy scene with lots of eyes watching, but the players may be able to use the confusion to their advantage. Otherwise the ambulance arrives, and Shepherd’s husband volunteers to ride with their injured daughter to the hospital. Then two FBI agents suddenly take over the scene.

## Men in Black

When Shepherd’s house blows up, her superiors immediately realize what she’s done. NRO Delta issues a missing child report in Missouri for a girl matching Dolly's description, then sends two special operators with FBI credentials to “follow a lead” to the Shepherds’ home in Illinois. These operators identify themselves as Special Agents Harold King and Otto King, no relation. Their objectives are to eliminate Dolly, recover her body, and silence any witnesses to her superhuman abilities.

At the start of this scenario, Agents King and King don’t know about Delta Green’s involvement. They will learn about the players from other NPCs, or if the players’ clumsiness exposes them. Whether or not the players help the Shepherds, every slip-up should carry the risk of their sudden appearance.

**STR** 16 **CON** 15 **DEX** 15

**INT** 15 **POW** 16 **CHA** 10

**HP** 16 **WP** 16

**Armor**: Concealed kevlar vest (Armor 3)

**Skills**: Alertness 65%, Athletics 65%, Craft: Locksmith 45%, Dodge 50%, Drive 60%, Stealth 65%

**Attacks**: Glock Model 18 Auto 70% (1D10 or Lethality 10%), Unarmed 50% (1D4+1)

## Bus Terminal

Dolly’s most likely path to Chicago is via bus on I-57 North. The terminal is packed with holiday travelers. Some of them remember a young girl asking for directions to “the Star Lounge, where my mom's doctor Gator Gap lives.” Everyone condemns the girl's mother for being irresponsible. None of them offered to help her. The players have an opportunity to find Dolly before she gets away, but just how much long they have depends on whether or not they came directly from the meeting with Shepherd.

Shortly after Dolly’s bus leaves (whether or not she’s on it), further departures are delayed indefinitely until law enforcement can search the building for “a missing girl from Missouri.” It’s dangerous for the players to stay much longer, especially if someone sees Dolly with them. Reaching Chicago before Dolly's bus is possible but difficult with the holiday traffic.

## Star Lounge

The Star Lounge is a seedy nightclub with a line out the door. Inside is “Gator Gap,” real name Lac Sinh Giap, a drug dealer with the White Shadows gang. His personality changes like the weather on Lake Michigan: if he thinks the players are buyers, he’s their new best friend; if he thinks they’re cops, he’s a model citizen; otherwise he’s a piece of shit. He brags about exploiting people, feeding on their misery, and he gets bolder if the players seem upset by it.

Thanks to a very bad Reverb trip, Gator Gap knows that Dolly is looking for him and will tear him apart when she finds him. He won’t answer questions about Dolly or her mother, insisting the players take Reverb themselves instead. Those who accept can somehow see his memories of Dolly’s mother, Marie Halloran: meeting her at the club, selling her more and more Reverb, eventually visiting her apartment. Through it all they hear Dolly screaming over the club’s music, and over the screams, a tuneless piping that makes coherent thought impossible.

Alternatively, the players can pummel him for this information, or for the satisfaction of doing so, but his fellow White Shadows will back him up.

Of course, this assumes the players stop Dolly from storming inside. Otherwise there’s a stampede onto the sidewalk as people run for their lives. Inside, the White Shadows have been messily killed, and the many pieces of Gator Gap are barely alive. He taunts the players with his dying breaths: he tells them that he can see them both alive in front of him and dead at Halloran’s apartment. Just like Dolly. Just like Halloran. Just like the men in black.

## Family Reunion

The longer it takes the players to arrive at Halloran’s apartment, the uglier things will get. The fastest players have a chance to get everyone to safety before NRO Delta moves in. This is what happens without their intervention:

Dolly arrives at Halloran’s apartment. Exhausted from traveling through the night, she sleeps for hours. Mother and daughter decorate the apartment for Christmas when she wakes. Agents King and King break in during the night. They offer to let Halloran live if she hands over Dolly. Halloran hesitates, breaking Dolly's heart. Dolly lashes out, killing the intruders, then her mother. She suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and dies as well.

## SAN Rewards

+1 for saving the Shepherd family.

+1 for shutting up Gator Gap.

+1 for saving Subject Dolly and Marie Halloran.

## Credits

If Only In My Dreams was written by Thomas DiPaolo 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 © Thomas DiPaolo, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

If Only In My Dreams is not available here under CC-BY-SA.