Don't Drink the Kool-Aid

## Introduction

The *Real Consciousness Third-Eye Society* is a run-of-the-mill UFO cult of some 30 individuals, based out of a ranch house in the Sacramento suburb of Rio Linda. Their leader is Doctor Navigator Gabriel Reeve (born Royce Pellish), who founded the movement after experiencing a “soul-abduction” by an alien presence that bestowed extraterrestrial knowledge upon him. Reeve is a delusional fraud whose rantings have no actual relationship with the truly unnatural. However, six years ago, during the developmental stages of his cult, Reeve bought a collection of “alien” artefacts off eBay, containing a minor artefact. DG was tracking the item and has had the cult under surveillance ever since. In that time, the cult has done little to set off any alarms. Until today.

At 8:27 PM, a mass shooting by two cult-members a nearby casino resulted in the deaths of 11 people including one of the two gunmen. The gunman in custody claimed to be preparing for the coming of the “Nakotians.” Local authorities have mobilized a SWAT response and strings have been pulled last minute to embed the nearest DG cell into the response team.

## Objective

Assess situation. Recover artefact. Cover up any unnatural activity. Neutralize Threats.

What’s Happened?

The artefact itself merely acted as a focus for another ritual. Reeve never fully comprehended its significance, but through a stroke of cosmic bad luck (or perhaps fate), Reeve pieced something together, with disastrous consequences.

Reeve was in a panic. The old cult moneymaking schemes (blackmail, extortion) were drying up and his mounting alcoholism and gambling addiction were causing debts to mount. In an attempt to cut and run, he decided to lead his disciples in a final ritual that would “transform their minds” and allow them to escape the impending apocalypse by leaving their mortal shells behind. He adapted a ritual from material in his library and spent the last three days directing the cult’s preparations and mentally readying himself for the deed.

The ritual culminated in a mass suicide. After a sermon in the cult’s chapel, Reeve scratched a crude six-pointed star into each of the cult member’s foreheads. Then, in shifts, the group gathered around a makeshift contraption composed of four anaesthesia masks connected to a cylinder with corrugated rubber hoses: a miniaturized gas chamber. Death was painful as the hydrogen cyanide caused seizures and cardiac arrest.

The latent effects of the ritual were more terrible than any of them knew. The chants drained WP and POW from all those present and channelled them toward the victim’s brains, converting grey matter into Desh: vermin from beyond the borders of reality. The ritual normally causes the Desh to unspool from a glowing hole in the victim’s forehead, leaving a brain-dead shell behind. The summoned Desh are still alive, death by gas only delaying the process, and hours after the ritual, the first ones begin to hatch…

## Inside the House

No matter how quickly the agents mobilize, all the cult members are dead by the time they reach the house.

The house is fairly mundane, except all the entrances are key locked from the inside. The ground floor is composed of a meeting parlour, a kitchen, and a dormitory and the Chapel. The second floor has the bathrooms, Reeve’s bedroom, offices, and the storage room.

Reeve himself is in his room upstairs. Having seen the proverbial writing on the wall, he is lying, pants around his ankles, in a pool of blood with his forearms slit from the wrist to the elbow joint. The hobby knife he used (the same one he used to scratch everyone’s heads) is still in his hand.

The main cylinder of the contraption in the chapel hall consists of an airtight container full of hydrochloric acid and an empty hopper that contained pellets of potassium cyanide. A Chemistry or Mechanical Engineering check will show that the device is mundane, though still potentially dangerous.

The corpses of three cult members are lying around the machine. The rest have been moved to the dormitory, where the bunks have pushed to one side to make room for the over twenty corpses that are stacked in a sloppy pattern of two concentric circles.

Reeve’s office/library is locked (the key is in his room) and inside is a chaotic jumble of papers and alien “artefacts”, and an old computer. An Accounting check can confirm that:

* Reeve was in financial trouble,
* Any resemblances to unnatural were superficial; cursory research shows that references to “Nakotians” appear nowhere else in cult writings,

PCs should also notice the new padlock on one of the desk drawers.

## The Collection

The only genuinely unnatural items in the house were contained in the collection that Reeve bought six years prior.

Before it came into his possession, the Collection was curated by Lindsay Quiring, a lawyer from BC. Like Reeve, Quiring thought an alien force had abducted her soul. Unlike Reeve, she had actually suffered a mind exchange with the Yith. After being returned back to her body, she worked feverishly in an attempt understand her ordeal, combining UFO legends and the repressed knowledge gained from Yithian library cities into a sprawling narrative that was rapidly eroding her sanity. Before she could completely finish her work, she was killed in a car crash, and the collection ended up in an estate sale.

The Collection is mostly mundane UFOlogical artefacts: a telescope, annotated paperbacks, an album of fake alien photos, etc. There are three items of note, now spread around the cult house.

* A phonetic transcription of “Enochian” chants that have been annotated and corrected by Quiring. They are actually the verbal component of the desh summoning ritual, written in Tsath-Yo. The originals are on a lectern in the chapel, and several photocopies are scattered around the chapel room. The originals seem to have been torn from a larger group of papers.
* The chants are part of a larger package of notes locked in Reeve’s desk. These constitute a messy set of anthropological texts on spirit possession, accompanied by Quiring’s copious notes interpreting these texts from a mythos-inflected extraterrestrial perspective. All of the notes are in Quiring’s cramped handwriting, except for an article near the end of the stack. This article republishes the transcript of an interview with a Nigerian preacher who claimed that he had worked with a sorcerer that could birth “Angels” from the heads of his enemies, who would die or be permanently incapacitated by the experience. Reeve’s heavy scrawl makes note of sections mentioning brains and the specifics of the ritual.
* The Artefact that got DG involved is currently located on the dresser in Reeve’s second floor bedroom, above the cult chapel. It is a ~15cmx15cm lopsided pyramid of a mottled, dull coppery colour. Any attempts to identify the material fail and further specifics are up to the handler.

## The Desh

Due to the expurgated text, the ritual had a low chance of working. However since the ritual affected each of the thirty cultists, four of the cultists were hit with an effective spell. There’s a 50% chance that a successful ritual will birth a greater desh, and a 50% chance it will result in 2D6 lesser desh.

The desh will begin to explode out from their host’s skulls at the time the handler deems dramatically appropriate. Unless dealt with, they will begin to move about the property and the surround area.

## Obstacles for investigators

* The Artefact is attuned to unnatural magics and acted as a conduit that contributed to the ritual’s success. This caused it to exude a highly caustic and slightly radioactive greasy coating that will complicate efforts to extract it.
* One cultist is still alive. Anthony MacNiell was one of the last to do the ritual and balked. When the investigators arrive, he’s softly gibbering in the kitchen pantry, having already hit his breaking point as a result of the cult – his whole life and only support system – coming crashing down around him. If he sees a desh, or worse, sees one hatch, he will go completely mad.
* Crumpled in between the pages of the notes is a printed email notifying Lindsay Quiring that the preliminary title of her new book is: Walkers Between Stars: Strange Accounts of Extra Terrestial [sic] Contacts. The address is from a Michigan-based vanity publishing company. This lead will have to be followed up.

## Stats

### Desh (Greater)

**STR** 17 **CON** 10 **DEX** 7

**INT** 7 **POW** 12

**HP** 9

**ARMOR:** None

**ATTACKS:** Bite 55%, damage 1d10, Restrain 45%

**PHASING:** Whenever an investigator makes a successful hit against a greater desh, damage is rolled normally then multiplied by five. The result is the percentage chance that the creature is destroyed outright. Roll 1d100. If the result is less than the calculated number, the desh disappears in a bright star-shaped wink of light. If the roll is higher than the number calculated, then the attack has no effect.

**FLOATING:** Desh are buoyant, able to make long graceful leaps through the air. Although they appear to be slow moving, they are actually very fast, capable of covering hundreds of feet in a few seconds.

**SANITY LOSS:** 1/1d4+1

### Desh (Lesser)

**STR** 8 **CON** 4 **DEX** 12

**INT** 2 **POW** 2

**HP** 3

**ARMOR:** None

**ATTACKS:** Grab 35%, see special.

**TRIP:** Grabbed targets must roll DEX x3 or less on 1d100 or they fall.

**FLOATING:** Desh are buoyant, able to make long graceful leaps through the air. Although they appear to be slow moving, they are actually very fast, capable of covering hundreds of feet in a few seconds.

**SANITY LOSS:** 0/1d3

### Anthony MacNiell\*

**STR** 10 **CON** 12 **DEX** 13

**INT** 10 **POW** 8 **CHA** 8

**HP** 11 **WP** 9 **SAN** 22/11

**BREAKING POINT:** 13/2

**SKILLS:** Alertness 40%, Athletics 35%, Dodge 25%, Occult 25%, Unnatural 10%/20%

**ATTACKS:** Kitchen Knife 30% (Damage 1D6)

* Altered skills and stats represent before and after being exposed to a desh.

## Credits

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid was written by William James 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 © William James, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid is not available here under CC-BY-SA.