Rendezvous in Rama or "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder"

## Introduction

Rama is a small town in California next to the Klamath National Forest. It’s a normal small town, but the reports for missing adults in the area, is five times the national average.

Last month, FBI Agent Richard Portland, arrived in the small town investigating the disappearance of an Oregonian teenager. Agent Portland was a member of the Program. Two weeks ago, Agent Portland left a message in the voice mail of a fellow Program agent before disappearing : “*The eyes are everywhere, oh god… I’m going to stop O’Rouke*”.

The Program has been alerted. Your mission:

* Find what happened to Agent Portland (official cover)
* Find more about O’Rouke
* Individuate and stop any unnatural threat

The Agents have asked questions in town and talked with the sheriff. Their investigation pointed them to Peter O’Rouke, a withering old drunk leaving in a mobile home next to the junkyard. When the Agent arrived, they found him on top of a young man trying to pull out one of his eyes with a scalpel. The scenario starts with one of the Agents shooting down O’Rouke. Ask the players who wants to shoot. No matter what the scalpel will make a deep cut on O’Rouke’s victim.

## Operation

The shoot has alerted the neighbors, the police will show up soon.

The Agents can try with a successful **First Aid/Medicine** roll to **Resuscitate** O’Rouke or **Stabilize** his victim, Martin Mendoza, and stop the bleeding. In case they will try to save both:

* if they first go for O’Rouke, Mendoza roll is at -20%
* if they first go for Mendoza, O’Rouke dies

There are several things the Agents can find in the Junkyard:

### Mobile home

It’s a small and clattered place. On the bookshelves there are books about applied optics, theory of vision, and circuit diagrams and drawings **[Craft(Engineering)/Physics 40% or a roll at +20% to notice it’s some kind of CCV system]**. On a successful **Search** roll, the players will find a **series of cassettes** labeled from 1994 to 2014 (if they fail the roll, the police will get the cassette as evidence). If the roll is also a success for **Search -20%**, the will also find a **diary** in a secret compartment (if they fail, the can come back the day after and try an alertness/search roll).

### Array of Fridges

In the middle of the junkyard there are two lines of fridges working and humming. Inside the fridges there are the other victims. All the bodies look well preserved, with mark of strangulation on their necks. The eyes have been removed with great care **[Surgery/Medicine 20%]**. Agent Portland is there, eye sockets empty. Finding the bodies will cost **[SAN 1/1d4 Helpness]**

### Furrows

The Agent with the highest Alertness will find some furrows in the mud leading from the junkyard to the forest nearby. By the time the police arrive, it will be to dark to notice them. The shape of the tracks match O’Rouke old truck.

### The Forest

The vegetation of the forest becomes pretty thick pretty fast forcing the Agents to continue on foot (or to ram down the tries creating a new path).

The trail ends into an open space in the forest. Anyone with **Military Science(Land)/Survival 40%** will notice that this area is unnaturally silent (an **Alertness roll at -20%** does the same). Anyone with Nature based skill at 20% will notice that the color of the vegetation in this area is the wrong shade of green. **[SAN 0/1 Unnatural]**.

On the center of the open space, there is a small **cave** surrounded by a series of poles placed in a semicircle. If the Agents decide to examine the poles, they will find the eyes of the victims, pointed to look at the cave. Studying the eyes further, they will notice one moving to look at them and go back to their original position **[SAN 0/2 , +1% Unnatural]**. Some of the eyes on the poles are starting to decompose. The police will find the cave in 3 days and will remove the eyes, freeing the creature (see **Beauty**).

### Cave

The cave is the size of a small cellar. It’s dark and on the wall opposite to the entrance there are pictograms of spiral eyes like the ones on O’Rouke’s body. Whoever enter the cave roll **Alertness**. The Agent or NPC that succeed the most (or fail the least, if everybody fails) is possessed by **Beauty**.

If an Agent has the **Sacred Eye**, they will be immune to the effect of the creature and only feel a burning sensation on entering.

If the Agent has any form of headgear blocking direct access to the eyes, **Beauty** will fail to possess them.

## Clues

### O’Rouke body

O’Rouke has all over his body a series of self-inflicted scars (**Medicine/Surgery**) made in the shape of eyes with a spiral iris. If the Agents study the scars, the spirals will start twirling **[SAN 1/1d4, +2% Unnatural]**. If the Agents don’t check the body, the sheriff will call them the day after to inform them of the scars.

### Diary (Time: 3 days, Unnatural +3%, Science(Physics) +5%, SAN loss 1d6)

The diary contains information about the creature, the handler can pace them over time. In also contains the **Sacred eye ritual**. Whoever read the diary will know that performing the ritual on an infected is a bad idea, anyone skimming will notice the diary doesn’t say anything explicitly. Deliver the following information during the scenario as the Agents study the diary (2-3 per day if they are studying the diary half-time, 3-4 if they are studying it full time):

* The creature is physical
* The diary has been written by multiple people (**Forensics**)
* The creature can be affected by polarized light (Lasers)
* It is too fast for the human eye
* She can be kept at bay by active observation (the eyes or the CCV schematics in the mobile home)
* It seems to suck the will to live from her victims

*If the Agents have Unnatural 20% or if they finish reading the diary they will understand that the creature is a floater in the eye of the infected.*

### Cassettes (Time: 20hrs recording, Unnatural +2%, SAN loss 1d4)

Like with the diary, delivery the information during the scenario (2-3 clues every 5hrs of listening).

* The cassettes contains information about the creature and O’Rouke:
* Before being a drunk O’Rouke was an optical Engineer
* His wife was killed by Beauty
* The creature can be kept at bay by direct observation
* He’s not the first one to defend the town from the creature
* Polarized light affects Beauty
* All the victims died in 3 days
* The scars are protecting him from possession

## The Ritual (Sacred Eye)

Learning the ritual cost **1d6 SAN**. The Agent needs to carve the eye with the spiral iris on his own body or on the body of a **willing participant** (**receiver**). Activate the ritual cost 1D4 HP from the **receiver** and **6WP**. The **receiver** roll **CON×5** for activating the ritual instead of SAN (**at -20% if the performed had only skimmed the diary**). If the roll fails, the **receiver** can spend **1CON** to activate it.

The scar protects the **receiver** from **Beauty**. The **receiver** fells the scar moving in the direction of **Beauty** and getting hotter the closest they get to the creature.

If someone with the sacred eye **hit their BP**, they get the compulsion of **carving the eye on other people**.

## The Monster (Beauty)

Beauty is a eye floater. When she first infects a victim, she appears at the edge of their field of vision as a lumpy white creature with empty darkness for eyes causing **[SAN 1d4/1d6, +2% Unnatural]**, when the victim look in her direction, she will disappear.

She continue to appear to the victims when they are alone on a successful **Alertness** roll, on a failure… the victim will feel the sensation of being stalked. Any apparition cost either **1SAN** or **1WP**. When the **victim reaches 0WP**, the creature will leave the body killing them. While infected, the **only way to recover WP** is using **motivation**.

The **first night the infected goes to sleep**, Beauty appears on their dreams **[SAN 1/1d4 Unnatural]** grasping and leaving bruises on their body. This experience makes the victim **exhausted** for the following day.

If the **Sacred Eye** ritual is performed on someone infected, the creature burst out of their eye destroying it (permanent injury), and dealing **10% Lethality**. There are several ways the players can come up to deal with **Beauty**, other are left to the imagination of Agents and Handlers:

### Capturing her:

* Trap her inside a physical body and quarantine
* Using human eyes on poles
* Building the CCV system designed by O’Rouke
* Remove the infected eye and put it in an opaque container (**Surgery**)
* Trap it between two lenses

### Killing her:

* Any weapon with lethality 20%+ **and** killing radius (explosion) can kill her (roll without +20% bonus for killing radius)
* Trap her inside a living human body and burn it.
* With **Chemistry/Surgery/Physics 60%**, the player can have access to an optical tweezer (Nobel in Physics 2016) to hold the floater in place inside someone's eye, and burn it using a laser **(DEX×5 at -20% or a Surgery roll)**

## Rewards

* **Saving O’Rouke last victim:** +1SAN
* **Destroy the Cassettes or steal them from the police:** +2SAN
* **Stop Beauty/Kill Beauty:** +1d6/1d10 SAN

## Credits

Rendezvous in Rama was written by Marco Menarini for the 2018  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 © Marco Menarini, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Rendezvous in Rama is not available here under CC-BY-SA.