Driftbone

Agents arrive at a hospital to investigate bodies recovered from across town. These victims have been found and recovered from various public parks. The bodies however, aren’t in the Morgue but an isolated section of the intensive care ward. The victims are still alive… but they no longer have any bones left in them.

## **The Situation**

### **The City:** Portland, Maine (in Autumn)

The agents are called in by Night 4, after the Friendly at Maine Medical: Dr. Tudhope, comes to the terrible discovery that modern medical science can’t explain the injuries and ailments.

### **The Victims:** Found at Maine Medical Center.

* Mary Jameson (Back Cove Park) Night 1
* Brock Lawrence (Edward Payson Park) Night 2
* Greg Mariposa (Mayor Baxter Woods) Night 3
* Max Devons (Dougherty Field) Night 4
* MacGee - Vagrant (Deering Oaks) Night 5 (The Next Attack)

### **The Injuries/Ailments**

* The entire skeletal structure has been removed. This was done with minimal damage or trauma to all physical tissues. Somehow the bodies are still alive and functioning… as best as they can be without the use of a solid skeletal structure.
* There is an exotic bioluminescent moss-like material that can be extracted, in place of the bones, it isn’t known to modern science. It’s seemingly in place to keep the bodies functionally alive and supported.
	+ (**Optional**: An idea check can surmise that the material is a temporary filler, keeping the body stable in its present state but not a proper substitute for the real thing.)
* The only indication of an extraction point is a blotchy burn scar-like line down the person's back from the nape to the rump. It appears as a rash, like those caused by chemical reactions from various plants (poison oak/ ivy).
* There’s also a marking on each body at the nape, above the scar. It is a criss-cross triangle with punctures.

### **Crime Scene Clues**

* Individuals were found separately across town from each other, over consecutive evenings. Usually in out-of-the-way wooded spots.
* Each victim was found splayed on the ground face down, their clothes still on and intact.
* In the Parks of the crime scenes, there are prominent signs of intense overnight vegetative growth even despite the colder Autumn season. A strange kind of orchid is spreading in 40ft blooms. They have similar composition biologically to the mossy substance extracted from the victims.

### **A Trail of Leaves**

* Park Goers or even Homeless folks can be found at the same hospital as the Boneless victims, complaining of a range of rashes and malledies (sprouts of the strange orchid plants are in fact growing just under the skin, poking and prodding).
* If pressed about any sightings, they may begin withdrawing from the conversation as they begin to recollect and start murmuring *“Lampbones, Lampbones, them Lampbones.”* repeatedly.
* They also felt a powerful sense of being watched from above while in the parks.
* Between the boneless victims, the afflicted passerbys, and their locations at various parks within the city, it can be deduced that each affected park location is forming a circle around the city, and each night has seen a victim de-boned at a consecutive park. There is a pattern. An idea check can reveal the next likely attack point: the next park in the circuit.

## **An Eldritch Exhibit**

### **The Art Piece**

* The bones have all been collected, reorganized and reanimated to create this horrid amalgam of bone that moves around.
* It is this columular structure, made from the spines and skeletal arms raised up from a base of skulls and hipbones. It uses multiple support appendages at the base for mobility, made from skeletal legs. The top end of the column has the rib bones fanned out to form a circular span to “cradle the dripping plasmid of a glowing orb, which floats several inches above the whole structure.
* This leaking plasmid material is pulsing and thriving down through the structure, manifesting a mossy vine webbing that keeps things cohesive and puppets the bones to move around. This material is similar to the mossy orchid plants growing in the parks.
* The orb generates a light source akin to a street lamp, but also a radiation within a 20ft radius around it. The radiation promotes notably strange plant growth if stationary for any length of time, that of the orchids in the parks. The afflicted pedestrians at the hospital are those who were exposed to the light while in the parks.
* The Art Piece is capable of teleporting from place to place through trees, in a fashion similar to it’s creator, “The Artist”.

### **The Artist**

* Large and imposing, simian attributes, grown from some kind of tree-like plant organism. Capable of walking on the winds, unnaturally silent and travels through trees from one space to another, seemingly melding into the tree.
* The Artist, using Hypergeometric Horticulture, makes a mark on the nape of the victim's neck with a tubular “flesh-root” like tool (which twitches and writhes on it’s own). This sigil animates the skeleton and allows it to become temporarily incorporeal to separate from the flesh “organically” and with only ”slight” disturbances. The space left behind by the bones is then filled with the iridescent moss material. From there the Artist can control and manipulate each facet of the skeleton, shaping it for it’s masterpiece.
* After the exhibits “display time” of several days, the effects of the Hypergeometric Horticulture will dissipate and return the bones to their owners. However, while physically these people will be back to normal, they may suffer mental trauma as a result of their forced participation. This is assuming the bones are not destroyed or collected by agents.
	+ **(Optional):** Wrong bones or broken bones, depending if the agents tampered with the Art Piece, phase back into the bodies at the end.

### **The Exhibit**

* The Art Piece has been travelling about the town, influencing plant growth and shedding horrid light upon unsuspecting citizens as part of some eldritch exhibit. The Artist watches over his work, and may decide to add more of his “medium” to the Piece as it travels from park to park.
* The Artist, like it’s Art Piece is not actively hostile, it is merely putting on an exhibit. Aside from the extraction of their bones, the victims were treated with as much care as the Artist was able to display, given it’s alien perceptions. That said, the root of the horror proposed in this scenario, is that both Artist and Art Piece are causing passive danger and terror simply by operating among an earthly audience.

### **The Cosmic Critics**

* When in proximity to the Artist or Art Piece, Agents will get a strange sense of being watched, that only intensifies the longer they investigate the situation and are exposed to the Art’s radiation. This feeling tugs skyward, where an unfortunately aware eye can discover something is off. The stars are no longer stars or the moon is no longer a moon, atleast to the Agents perception.
* In Fact, it is not that the Agents are being observed… but the “Art Piece” and “Exhibit” which the agents now find themselves a part of, are
* Upon realizing this revelation: (1d4/1d10 Sanity Loss).

* **Optional:** If the agents survive the scenario,The Eldritch Exhibition tags them based on their actions or if they become aware of the Cosmic Critics and can never shake off that feeling of being observed from above. The Exhibit may even begin appearing where the agent travels, post-Operation.

## **STATS**

### **THE ARTIST** (GREATER HORRFROST)

**STR** (18), **CON** (14), **DEX** (13), **INT** (16), **POW** (18), **HP** (25), **WP** (18)

**ARMOR**: 4 points of thick and frozen bark material.

**SKILLS**: Alertness 40% (80% in forest), Athletics 90%, Dodge 40%, Stealth 40% (80% in forest or air), Unnatural 70%

**ATTACKS**: Claws 80%, Dmg 1D10 or grapple. Bite 80%, DMg 1D8

* **WIND WALK**

The Horrfrost can “walk on the winds” on account of their connection to Ithaqua. As a result of this airy heritage, they are eerily silent at all times.

* **UNNATURAL BIOLOGY**

While appearing anthropoid, the Horrfrost physiology baffles any biologist (is it flora? Is it fauna? WHAT?!). Making a called shot for “vitals” or another apparently vulnerable area inflicts normal damage, with no special game effects.

* **TREE TRAVEL**

The Horrfrost touching a tree with bare flesh can instantly vanish, traveling to any tree elsewhere on the planet.

* **CLIMBING, LEAPING AND SWINGING**

As it’s action, with an Athletics roll, like its lesser kin, a Greater Horrfrost can near-instantly shiny to the top of a tree or seven metres up a cliff, leap up to seven meters with a running start (WIND WALK notwithstanding) or swing across a 15-meter gap, swinging on vines or brachiating between tree limbs, they can outpace running humans.

## **RITUALS**

### **SKELETAL HORTICULTURE**

*Complex Ritual, Study Time: Days, 1D10 SAN. Activation: One Turn, 12 WP, 1D6 SAN.*

The Operator uses a sharp needle-like implement and inscribes a puncturing triangular marking into the flesh and nape of the neck of a victim, forcing a CON X5 test or else they suffer the effects: The victim’s skeletal structure phases out of their body while not killing them, through the victim’s back. The skeleton is then malleable to the will of the Operator. The Victim suffers a -40% penalty to ALL tests, as they are a boneless lump of living flesh. (Victim should also roll SAN LOSS).

**SAN LOSS**: 1/D8

**THE ART PIECE** (SKELETOPIARY LAMP)

**STR** (18), **CON** (14), **DEX** (13), **INT** (16), **POW** (18), **HP** (25), **WP** (18)

**ARMOR**: -

**SKILLS**: -

**ATTACKS**:

### **MOTE OF PROGENITOR’S LIGHT**

The large glowing orb of ichor above the skeletopiary generates a strange radiation around it, and perhaps even lets off spores. How else does the type of ravenous vegetation grow from everywhere it’s light touches? Within only a few moments of being within 40ft of the skeletopiary’s light, bountiful plant matter begins bursting from the ground, dirt or concrete, even people flesh. The light also gives off a radioactive signature for geiger counters. If the orb is violently disrupted/destroyed, it will unleash a pulse of it’s radiation leaving a 200ft radius of growth.

**SAN LOSS**: 1/1d6

## Credits

Driftbone was written by Crazon for the 2020  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 © Crazon, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

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