Heurist

Note: Session is best split into multiple small bits between ops, where convenient.

## Briefing

U-cell have become suddenly and inexplicably unavailable, and now the Players are to take over operation SPIRAL, which consists of visiting the small town of Burwell, Nebraska on November 17th and “containing whatever happens there”.

## What's going on

A creature is trying to assimilate itself into our spacetime from somewhere very much outside.

Rather than tearing a gaping non-Euclidian hole however, it is" picking the lock" and making tentative attempts to integrate with our universe.  With each iteration it has subjected the victims of its experiments to laws of physics halfway between it's world and ours, and there's doesn't appear to be any way to stop it.

Fortunately though, it is aligning with our spacetime asymptotically, so it's arrival is at least predictable.

The players will be given access to a Green Box in town that contains a cement mixer, lots of gasoline, a little C4, a powerful telescope and an ongoing dossier on the events in the town so far (see below).  Putting weird crap in Greenboxes is one of the greatest joys of the game imo, so I invite Handlers to populate it further themselves.

This small safehouse sits in a DG owned "nature preserve" that was once the Purvis family Farm.

## The Dossier

"RECORD AND DATE EVERY INCIDENT" is written in tipex on the cardboard cover.

In the dossier:

1797 - spontaneous combustion

1936 - Farmer fell in half (Experimenting with non-contiguous space?)

1987 - Woman looped in time

2006 -Glowing entity, originally thought to be related to operation RAINBOW RUIN is in fact a Cow made of nothing but light.  Now safely buried under a large mound to the southeast of town.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lovecraft/comments/32q6mo/visualizing\_noneuclidean\_geometry\_thought/

2013 – Vertex anomaly.

2016 -persistent shadow (accompanied by flash drive containing video file)

## Panic

Burwell is a small town of barely 1,200 people, and the 3 disappearances prior to the investigator's arrivals are still pretty fresh in everyone's memory.  By the time the players have encountered a supernatural event or two, most people they meet will be pretty spooked, and increasingly distrustful of any strangers in their midst.

If the Agents don't introduce themselves as federal agents at the Burwell Police Department, the sheriff's reaction to coincidental visitors may be more extreme than just suspicion.

## Science!

At this point, I recommend having players roll to notice that the frequency of events is increasing roughly exponentially.  Likewise,  the location of each event is has spiraled around a spot just to the southwest of the middle of town, moving by about 400m each time, deviating only by enough to include a sizeable living creature in the pattern.

The time and approximate place of all events should be predictable beforehand to any agents with training in physics or mathematics.  However, any agent trained in Physics should have their SAN damage doubled throughout, as each victim describes the utter alienness off the entity's origin.

\*Alternatively, you may wish to skip the rolls, and prompt the players directly with a call from A-Cell whenever an incursion is imminent, to reinforce the Group's mysterious omniscience.

## Proximity

If the players calculate the time and location of the next incursion and decide to go there, there's a strong possibility that they'll be the next victim.  On a failed luck check, the agent will take the place of a civilian casualty for that Event.  If they steer clear, all should be safe.

If on the other hand no agents are sufficiently versed in mathematics or astrophysics to know where or when the next surprise will come, there is still a chance that they will stray into the target area.  A crit fail on luck whilst in town would be very unfortunate indeed.

Placing livestock in the path of the pattern will save the civilians, but make the cover-up even tougher.

## Incursions

The following events can either be spread out fairly regularly over the course of several months between missions, or with increasing frequency within a single week-long stay in the region at the Handler's discretion.

**Event 1**: Luminferous aether.  In the early hours of the morning local nurse Marsha Kirkall will be rwill  through the roof of her home at a little under 600mph.  The only witnesses will be a USAF defence satellite and a post-doc at the Pine Mountain observatory, but the agents will need a cover story to prevent an investigation from spiraling beyond control.

**Event 2**: Dimensionally mis-linked (https://www.reddit.com/r/Lovecraft/comments/32iqld/visualizing\_noneuclidean\_geometry\_thought/).  During his lunch at  the local gas station, Walt Eddings will experience physical translation roughly orthogonal to normal matter.  Initially struggling with a lack of coordination, he will try to get out of his chair, "fall over" and twist upwards to float awkwardly in the middle of breakroom, supported there by the tensile strength of his own organs.  Within a few minutes he'll die of asphyxiation and fall to the floor.  Provided that the agents don't cause anyone to witness his death, only the coroner's report will testify that anything unnatural happened.

**Event 3**: Steeper spacetime curvature

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lovecraft/comments/33ft6v/visualizing\_noneuclidean\_geometry\_thought/

When collecting his car for the commute home local librarian Louis Connor will cease to map linearly with normal space-time.  This won't have an obvious effect at first, but as he travels further from the Incursion he will stretch in the X and Y dimensions until he can no longer fit in his car. At this point he is due for a freakout.  If the agents can convince him to return to the library, his dimensions will return to normal but he'll be trapped permanently in the center of town, and A-cell will eventually want him put down.  If he flees further from the Incursion point then he'll stretch out into something lightning-quick, vast and 2-dimensional that will be very tough to cover up, eventually combusting due to atmospheric friction, leaving a mile-wide hemisphere of fine ash.

**Event 4**: Carbon is tricky.

Just before bed, Richard Marsh will transform into a perfect statue of flawless diamond, with a puddle of viscous brown sludge at the base.  Get it to a Greenbox and it could fund the Group for some considerable time.

**Event 5**: Manifest!

The final victim, Emma Frostwell will fold into a silvery knot in space, a series of interconnected fleshy orbs spring from nothing and plop to earth, forming a gun-like appendage or spewing fire if attacked, to defend itself in kind. Having mostly solved this corner of the universe, it will not take the effort to re-manifest if killed.  However, if any of the investigators have anything indicative of hypergeometry or especially a cult of Azathoth within the radius,  it will reform a more human body (possibly even a complete mimic of one of the agents) and attempt to acquire it for study.

Credit: The reddit links attached are worthy of a scenario each; this is mostly an attempt to greedily cram as many as possible into one session. :p

## Credits

Heurist was written by Nicholas Brown for the 2016  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 © Nicholas Brown, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Heurist is not available here under CC-BY-SA.