The Sound of Sirens

This investigation around a small town should fit into a short session, with plenty of space to pad it with NPCs to winkle information out of.

## The Truth:

After the war, Jimmy hid his souvenirs in his footlocker, buried near one of the transformers he later serviced as a civilian  electrician - including a looted religious relic, a swamp spirit bound into the mummified body of a child.
The whispering spirit had been spreading nightmares across the river delta prior to its incarceration, with the afflicted eventually wasting away as distracted and unhappy insomniacs.

(This can just as easily be a leaky Mi-Go brainbox, or any other consciousness that might be stashed in a Green Box.)

Two years ago the town radio station moved to using a repeater 10 miles North of town. This repeater is situated near the whispering spirit's prison/grave. Live night-time talk radio broadcasts are serving as carrier waves for the spirit's whispers, allowing it to reach the townsfolk of Logansport. The latest chart toppers in rotation just don’t have the same effect.

## The Event:

This is brought to the Program's attention when LOUIS MADDOX, retired Army engineer corpsman, is found dead.
MADDOX apparently committed suicide - he was found at his kitchen table surrounded by knives, screwdrivers and a drill, with multiple wounds indicating he had used them to try to penetrate his skull. It looks like this may have taken multiple hours. He has several firearms on the premises, but chose a .22 to shoot himself, firing at an oblique angle that resulted in his death as much by bad luck as design. Next to him are surgical dressings and a well-sterilised TV aerial.

MADDOX worked with a signals and radio hardware specialism in the Army - he was trying to insert an aerial into his brain, to more clearly hear the voices.

## The Mission:

Find out what caused LOUIS MADDOX to kill himself, establish if it is a threat in need of containment, and take whatever necessary action to make it safe.

## The Whispers:

The Late Night Power Hour is a local no-subject talk radio show broadcast from 23:00-03:00 Mondays through Fridays hosted by PETER LeBEAUX. The rest of the day is autoplay country pop. LNPH has a loyal listener base among night shift workers and older insomniacs. Listening to the show, there is a great deal of talk about rain, trucks, football, cars, humidity... Nothing of import reveals itself.
Analysis of the signal itself shows a slightly fuzzy waveform, conceivably explainable by a poorly maintained repeater.

Regular listeners begin having dreams in which people talk unintelligibly to them. Initially radio hosts, friends, or people from the gas station chattering inanely, the dreams lose detail over a period of months, finally becoming only the susurrus of speech without words. Sleep progresses from unsatisfying to fitful to impossible thanks to the incessant voices, and eventually they start manifesting during waking hours as well. Sufferers become distracted, unable to concentrate on simple tasks, even struggling to string coherent sentences together. All sorts of bizarre methods to stop hearing the voices might be tried. With chronic exhaustion, the afflicted begin suffering blackout, sometimes being found in fugue states walking the planes north of town.

Eventually, a fugue wanderer will find the site of the grave, dig up the vessel, and release the whispering spirit into the world again.

The Investigators are unlikely to become afflicted, unless they plan on buying a house here. Intrusive whispers may be an appropriate short-term affliction if Investigators bait Exhaustion rolls.

## The Repeater:

10 miles North of town, the Repeater sits on a bend in the river, a tall skinny pylon with a transformer at the base, protected by a chainlink fence.
The fences can be circumvented in normal ways, and the Repeater can be disabled with appropriate skill checks or damage (though will be repaired).

Visible from the gate in the fence, a patch of grey dead earth marks the footlocker grave of the Whisper.

Observant Investigators may notice that the Whisper is on the direct line between the Repeater and central Logansport.

The footlocker is deep enough that some Proper Digging must occur, but need not present a significant challenge in uncovering. The Whisper host is the improbably well-preserved mummified body of a boy of around 8. If the Investigators dislodge his ritual dress, they will begin experiencing distracting auditory hallucinations and become disoriented or black out. As they come to, the emaciated boy is staggering away into the sunset - easily catchable, but tough, and it can be difficult to fight between total attention lapses.

## The Walkers:

If the Investigators are not looking into the radio, or at any point that you want to push the plot along, a townsperson calls the Investigators to report someone walking through the fields North of town.
One of the afflicted has hiked out to near the Repeater, and is now walking around seemingly at random - searching for the Whisper. They are dressed for hiking, but have no supplies. The person will not remember who they are, but will not seem particularly concerned by the fact, or have any idea why they are out here specifically, other than to look for something. If taken back to town, they will regain their personality after sleeping that night, but will remember nothing.

DR STAR has seen this happen twice before, but can't give more information except that they were roughly in the same area.

Further searching, or a second event, will reveal more walkers closer to the REPEATER. If heavy-handedness is required, ISAAC could show up, lucid, also searching near the Repeater.

## The Cleanup:

Ideally, having identified the Repeater as the source and found a way to declare it unuseable, the problem will disappear.

If the Investigators steal a dead child, the town's problem will also cease.

If the investigators fight and destroy the host, it is left to the Case Officer to destroy or release the spirit.

In any case, badly afflicted townsfolk are likely to suffer lifelong sleep disruption, and it may take years at best to return to anything approaching normality.

## The Cast:

DR WILLIAM STAR, first point of contact and Logansport's town doctor, has recently seen skyrocketing incidence of interrupted sleep, headaches, fugue states and blackouts. Some have needed help after self-harming to 'fix' their tinnitus - pouring bleach into their ears, plugging with candle wax etc.
STAR will put the Investigators in contact with ISAAC STONE and other afflicted, after a minimum of cajoling.

LOUIS MADDOX was one of Dr STAR's earlier patients, experiencing difficulty adapting to civilian life that showed up as anxiety and persistent insomnia. He displayed all of the worst symptoms mentioned, but was unwilling to accept treatment, fearing an official psych diagnosis. He lived alone on the town outskirts and kept to himself.

ISAAC STONE, gas station night clerk, reports the typical progression of symptoms culminating in a car crash three weeks ago leaving him with a severe concussion - but apparently 'curing' him.

ISAAC recounts roughly six months of declining mental health, bad sleep escalating into full-blown insomnia with constant whispering rustling tinnitus, "as if someone just said something behind you when you have headphones on, but all the time". At first he would drift off and stare into space, or lose time. Later, he would constantly be twitching to look for the person that just spoke, bothered by sounds no-one else heard, and a few times he woke up walking around north of town. ISAAC thinks the car crash must have been during a blackout, but he has no memory of that day.

Since the crash he hasn't slept much better. ISAAC's new dreams are instead focused on claustrophobia, suffocating, tasting mud, being buried alive and similar sensations - he is experiencing being the Whisper's host.

There are dozens of people with varying symptoms, all of whom work late shift jobs or have a reason for being awake half the night. They will have no idea why they are afflicted, but will say they spend most of their time doing innocuous activities and listening to the radio. If prompted, they will discuss their trouble sleeping and the talking dreams, and all include PETER LeBEAUX's voice among those they hear while dreaming. The worst-afflicted will say they fall asleep to the radio most nights.

PETER LeBEAUX is the host of the Late Night Power Hour. LeBEAUX knows nothing about any of this, and is only involved as the voice transmitted via the repeater.

BECKY LYNN, local representative of the radio station/newspaper/public access TV station, will be able to provide details about the changes in broadcast/transmission, including the site of the new repeater. The change in transmitter was an unfortunate financial one (high-power transmitter licensing), but she's not able to comment further. She is unwilling to provide contact details for her superiors at the various distribution networks, but only because it would be professionally embarrassing, and will do so ungraciously if pressed. They have little useful information.

## Credits

The Sound of Sirens was written by MyNephew for the 2022  Shotgun Scenario contest. Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ueQxrsd8M3zCe6gglBGdlr65xSMuX-7NfapFE2yDLJE/edit.

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 © MyNephew, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

The Sound of Sirens is not available here under CC-BY-SA.

For preservation purposes, an exported PDF of the original submission can be found here.