Welcome to Agents Dossier, a Delta Green actual play series brought to you by 12 Sided Stories.
And now your GM, Wes Otis.
Hello and welcome to Agents Dossier episode number 12.
I have an awesome player with me and I'm going to let her introduce herself.
Go for it, Saint.
Hello, I am Saint Spider.
I'm kind of a new cast member and I'm really happy to be here.
I will be playing an agent named Norman Morales.
He is a NSA technician working on the software side, who is also a part of our elusive Delta
Green force.
Kind of like a, you know, good background in keeping secrets and a very, very, I think,
I definitely ran out of adjectives, but I think a cool guy.
That's fine.
We all have run out of adjectives at times in our life.
So you've been working for the NSA and for Delta Green.
Yes.
It has put you in a position of doing a lot of research for movement around of different
resources that Delta Green might need and information on specific targets, especially
cult members and things like that.
People have become so reliant on cell phones and computers and internet and all of that
stuff that the NSA has just been sucking up information for literally years now.
On the Delta Green side, we use that, like I said, to be able to dig up dirt and follow
the money and everything else.
You've been working outside of Charleston because they wanted you nearby Quantico, but
they didn't want you next necessarily directly in a large city.
So they set up an outpost somewhere.
You have to drive 30 minutes to get into Charleston.
If you drove by where you're at, it just looks like a farm.
We always make a joke on Delta Green that it's the 90s action aesthetic.
So kind of the men in black thing where you walk into the old bar and you knock three
times on the third horse stall and the whole stall goes down at once and you get into like
this really everything chromed out in white light hallway and they're making sure that
you're who you say you are and you're doing scans and everything like that.
And that's where you work as NSA.
Now Delta Green itself does not have a central anything, just so you know.
They are decompartmentalized.
There's a word I don't like saying very often.
Basically if one section, like let's say you are part of a group of people, if you all
hit something that is too much for your brains to deal with and there's an incident, you're
not going to infect people with knowledge, knowledge or truth.
And that's what they call it.
The infection of, and that's the way it's been broken down to you is that they don't
want people learning everything because then there's more of a possibility of that kind
of knowing too much and your feeble human brain not being able to handle it.
Yes, indeed.
So what kind of work do you feel like Norman would be doing at his post?
And there's like a hundred people working at this particular facility and what kind
of things do you think that you guys would be doing?
Okay.
So on a day to day, this is the NSA branch, right?
Delta Green will just give you things independently and you will work in those things.
This is your day job and you use your day job to supplement information to Delta Green.
Right.
Okay.
So my day to day task is maintenance of the software network that NSA is using for scraping
cell phone images.
Okay.
Does that, I'm okay with changing that if that doesn't work?
No, no, it's evil as hell and it's fine, but it's just like, oh, I know they're doing that
shit.
Yes, thanks.
So I maintain the, you know, some of the nitty gritty of identifying certain images or working
on, cause it's a massive task.
The algorithm that identifies certain images that we're looking for tweaks it and I have
a boss, so I'm not someone who makes the decisions whether or not to tweak these things, but
I know how these things work and I am involved with the maintenance of keeping this program,
you know, at working at a decent capacity.
It's definitely not perfect.
So you're working with the algorithm on a regular basis and everything else.
Yes.
And also everybody in the NSA deals with a certain amount of security.
You're always looking at all these drives and you have a huge area in your facility
that all it is, is banks and banks and banks of drives, right?
So you're at your computer.
The first thing that I want to do to kind of, you know, just a warming up of some sort
is give me a computer science role as you're working on your algorithm.
This is already very exciting.
I love the setup.
So I'm just, yes.
Okay.
I got five.
Ooh, that's really good.
That's an awesome.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you got a 5% under 60.
So you did really well.
I thought I understood a lot more than I did, but that's fine.
You know what, we're rules light and story heavy, so it's fine.
You're looking at the program for recognizing faces and suddenly one of the drives starts
freaking out and having all of these issues with a 5%, you realize that some picture that
it has loaded into the program is causing it to rewrite code and causing a breakdown
of the program.
And you're not quite sure why, but you know that if you don't disconnect that drive before
it starts to spread out throughout the rest of the chain, you're going to have a hard
time with it.
Oh my goodness.
Okay.
So you have to get downstairs real fast and pull drive 132.
132.
Okay.
Well, so I'm going to leave my desk where I've been monitoring the situation and elevators
or stairs are the, which, what's are available here?
50% you get to pick 50 or under, you get to pick 50 or over.
It's the slowest way.
Okay.
Let's go.
And six.
Wow.
That's great.
I'm okay.
I hope this emulator is a bork, but I'll take it.
I'll take it.
Well, you know, you rolled a 67 earlier, so I think it's fine.
We'll see.
We'll send you guys soon.
I just got to, I'll buy some after my next job.
Yeah.
So which, which one do you want?
I think I'll take turbo or elevators, so I'm assuming I'm not going to be near this.
No, cause it's down.
It's it's further down below.
Yeah.
Let's do turbo elevator.
I don't have horse legs.
Okay, cool.
So you fly down there and you set a timer on your phone.
You had a five minute window and you get down and there's three minutes left.
And so what we're going to do is we're going to roll a decks roll.
Basically you have a 60%.
Okay.
So you want to get under 60%.
Okay.
I got a 96.
Okay.
So it flipped on you.
All right.
It's okay.
So you're running down this long bank of drives.
All of the drives are, have these multiple green lights saying, you know, Hey, I'm cool.
Everything's good.
You're running as fast as you can and it's like 10 bays down and the 26 drive up and
you see the red light as you're getting closer.
And then suddenly there's four drives that get red and then it starts to spread.
And you realize that you're going to have to shut down the entire drives, that particular
bay because there's several base and you swing around the back to it.
You're pretty good at computers, but you don't really do a lot of the computer work or hookup
of these particular drives.
And so there are two massive coils that are, that are plugged in that send information
to all the different tribes.
One sends stuff upstairs and one sends stuff to the different, you know, set, but you don't
know which one is which you've got to pull the correct one or it will jump outside of
the drives that it's already hurt and it will continue to basically work the entire server
system.
Okay.
All right.
So since this is a 50 50 situation, we're just going to go straight up with luck.
Okay.
All right.
Here we go.
I got an eight.
Excellent.
Okay.
Cool.
So I pulled the right one about 200 drives suddenly go offline, but about half of them
were infected with whatever program has gotten through whatever this picture did.
Right then your work cell phone rings.
The only thing that works this far down underground.
So it has, it has a special secure network.
Yeah.
And it's your boss on the other end.
She goes reports that Bay 10 got shut down.
What happened?
Oh man.
Ha.
So there's something, something I'd never seen before work the system.
I have no idea, but there seems to have been a virus that was transmitted through an image
and it actually affected our algorithm.
I had to, I had to just pull the plug on a huge Bay.
Okay.
So pull the drive that the original drive that the pictures on take it to secure a quarantined
system and find out what the hell.
Roger.
Okay.
So you grab the drive, you pull it.
They already have people coming down to start rebooting the system and trying to get those
drives in place.
When you take this one drive over to a quarantine Bay and you pull up these pictures and one
of the pictures is of this face.
It looks like three people melded together into one.
Their clothing is also melded together.
So like they had suits on when this happened.
So you see like fabric coming out of their necks and everything.
And like their eyes are like in different places and it's not like they were standing
right next to each other.
So like a skull kind of starts up here and then a second skull comes out of the side.
It's really horrifying to look at and I need a sand check.
Alrighty.
Okay.
I got a 92.
Okay.
So you just take, you take two points of sand loss.
Okay.
It's just unnatural and disturbing to look at and it just affects your brain.
You kind of get a little bit of a shock, but not to the point where you have a temporary
mental breakdown or anything like that.
Right.
You look at the batch of pictures along with this and it's connected to a place in Portland,
Oregon.
It seems like it was on some kind of like Dropbox or something, some kind of server
like that.
Obviously a civilian that thought they were more secure than they really were.
And some of the pictures are of a city that has been flattened.
Like it looks like there's trees that have been knocked over and explosion and some kind
of building that has sunk down beneath the ground.
And then there's this picture of this creature and there's another picture of another creature
that's similar, but this one only has two faces melded together.
And as you're looking through all of this, you realize that you realize that the program,
the JPEG has extra data hidden within it.
What do you want to do with all this?
Okay.
This is quite a lot.
And I'm wondering if I can, okay, there's images of the melted or coagulated people.
There is the flattened city.
Coagulated people.
There's a flattened city and then there's the extra layer of information on top of the
photos, right?
And that's all I can see.
Some kind of Trojan horse.
Right.
That triggered the whole, the viral attack.
Okay.
That's, okay.
Well, I'm thinking my instinct is one to just report the attack and what I found because
that would be good due diligence.
Another part of me though is curious to examine this a bit more before I report, even though
that could be a bit risky.
And I'm thinking about all the skills I have and well, one thing I wonder is, is it possible
that there's anything familiar about the images?
Could I possibly roll from that based off my previous experience?
Like whether or not they are something that you've seen in occult studies or anything?
Yes.
No, but I will say that it definitely speaks your DNA interest.
You know, how were their DNA rewritten to melt them together?
Yes.
Give me a computer science role.
Okay.
All right.
Under 60, right?
Yup.
All right.
I got a 37.
Excellent.
So you do a little bit of digging and you find out that the images that you're looking
at are satellite images from the CIA.
Okay.
Which is really weird that this person would have CIA pictures on their drive.
They're of this place called Edna Bay.
It was a fishery.
Something happened that sunk it below the island.
Edna Bay is in the southern part of Alaska, one of the little islands that trail down
the Canadian coast.
You've been following genetics for a while.
You know about CRISPR and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
There is a new nanotechnology.
It's this chemical that they've developed that is not known to the public and isn't
necessarily all that legal.
It uses small robots.
It's not like advanced nanotechnology though.
It's not like they're a swarm or anything like that, but it's basic systems in a green
goo.
There seems to be quite a lot of it going to Edna Bay, at least until about two years
ago.
And then it stopped.
And now you're seeing a large portion of that going to Charleston.
And what's weird about the Charleston thing is that it's going to a tire factory.
Hmm.
So the first place was an old fishery.
Now it's going to a tire factory all the way on the other side of the country.
Hmm.
Okay.
I want to know if I can find anything out about the tire factory before I go to my higher
ups with a report.
Because they definitely know something happened.
I have to tell them something.
Well, the tire factory closed down in the 70s.
A lot of this happened during the 70s where a lot of businesses started to go overseas
to different countries for cheaper labor.
So they closed down, but the facility itself has been used as a address of sorts, I guess.
If you look at the postal service records, they're still getting mail.
Hmm.
And someone's still picking up mail there.
Oh my gosh.
So even though it's been 40 years since the place closed down and it really started heating
up about two years ago after the fishery disappeared.
Okay.
Pardon me then, as I am in government, I'm thinking, well, this could also just be another
branch that they neglected to tell us about at the dear old NSA.
It happens.
Yes.
Especially if things are kind of spread out, but also for something to, for me not to already
know about it, especially with how intrusive my position is, that strikes a big chord.
That strikes a big chord.
Okay.
I'm thinking I'll bring this info.
Do you want to bring it to the NSA or do you want to get rid of it because it's got a cults
stuff to it?
Yeah.
Maybe, is there a way that I can separate the virus from the image and present that
to my higher ups?
Just the virus?
Yeah.
Which in real life, I know that you can do that.
You can.
Yeah, absolutely.
Do that.
Well, let's see.
You're going to be doing a lot of this computer science stuff.
So give me a role.
All right.
Let's see.
I'm trying to conceal the occult image, but keep my job and reveal enough that whatever
I have to.
I rolled a two.
Yeah, you're fine.
You get it out really easily.
You can cover your tracks really easily so that they can't find you, which is a trick
in the NSA because everybody's watching everybody all the time.
Indeed.
Then you're able to come up with a nice report and just maybe you attach it to a more benign
picture, maybe connected to some kind of domestic terrorist organization that you don't like
to bring on heat on them.
Because if you say CIA, then all of a sudden the federal alphabet soup gets thrown in and
it becomes an issue.
But you have all of the pictures from the drive that are occult and you have them on
a stick drive.
So what is your next move then?
All right.
It's certainly piqued my interest.
I'm either going to let my Delta green handlers handle.
Yeah.
I have a person I report to.
Okay.
So I, my instinct as Norman is, you never want to be handling this stuff alone, especially
when it has to do with DNA being altered.
Right.
Absolutely.
My instinct is to let my handlers know what's going on that I found something very interesting
happening in Portland and it got caught in the NSA's radar.
All right.
Well, as soon as you send that information in, you get this reply from this agent Russ.
He's part of the FBI.
He's not your handler, but he is a local agent for Charlotte.
And he asked to meet you to talk about a case that he's working on that he thinks that these
pictures might be a part of.
Hmm.
Okay.
I know I can trust him.
Yeah.
But as much as trust is you give anybody in any situation.
So yes, no.
Yes, no.
All right.
You trust you, you, you will give him the meeting, but you will be prepared to get out
as quick as possible if things go sideways.
Go right.
Yes.
Okay.
All right then.
Did you take any firearms?
I did not.
I have drive heavy machinery, which I guess could apply to a weapon.
Well, I guess, yeah, something I can make a wrench is a wrench is a weapon.
It's dodge ball.
You can dodge a wrench.
Indeed.
Yeah, I didn't take a, that's fine.
Didn't take it.
Yeah.
So we'll see how this goes.
So you meet up with agent Russ and he's with another agent Wells.
Russ is an older gentleman, probably in his fifties.
Agent Wells is a older woman, African American.
Both of them are in, you know, these suits, very fed looking.
And they go, Roberts, who is your handler, reached out to us and relayed that you had
found some information about a, some kind of connection between Edna Bay here and Charleston.
Yes.
It looks like something very chaotic happened up in Portland and maybe it could have been
considered a disaster.
There is a blatant connection to a lovely little tire factory out here that should have
been closed about 40, 40 years ago, or maybe a little more.
We've been excavating what we think is some kind of possibly alien artifact, not far from
here.
And there is a connection with Edna Bay.
We found out recently, we have a team together of agents that are looking into it.
And I think with your knowledge and everything else, you would be a good add on for this
particular project.
Oh, does my handler know about this job offer?
Oh, of course.
Okay.
We cleared it through them.
Obviously we wouldn't just poach you, but yeah, we've had too many coincidences.
Does that make sense?
Too many things kind of lining up.
Yes.
And so most of the people on this detail, they're part of the project, which is Delta
Green, but they are not part of the federal structure.
We need somebody like you that is, that can kind of keep an eye on things and keep things
a secret as it were, as we move forward.
We're not sure what we're going to do with this particular artifact we found.
We're still digging it up.
We have good people working on it, but we're worried about the effects it's going to have.
And if there's something going on with the tire factory, we'd rather have a crew of you
working together, looking into it than just one or two agents.
That seems very sound.
I guess one question I have before I give you my answer is, what's with the connection
to nanotechnology?
We don't know, if I'm being quite honest.
We're not sure what that connection is.
We do know the chemical.
We don't know how the chemical works.
So you know, as the NSA, there are black ops agencies that are off the books that are completely
like funded on a different level than all this other stuff.
And they don't talk with each other.
Of course.
So the idea is that there's possibly a black ops organization working within the United
States government that is not communicating what they're doing to everyone else.
And that's why the NSA comes in handy because of the amount of data that you guys are pulling.
You know, it's a little easier to find stuff.
But I have to be honest, I don't know where any of this technology or what the goop is.
It just, Edna Bay had an accident that happened a couple of years ago.
And now all of a sudden, that stuff is showing up in Charleston.
And Edna Bay was small.
There was probably maybe two to 300 people there.
And most of them perished because of the incident.
Charleston's a lot bigger.
And so we can't afford the same kind of situation to happen here and lose, you know, 10 times
as many people.
And that'd be one hell of a cleanup.
Yeah, it would be catastrophic, basically.
To say the least.
Yeah.
We would like you to join the team if you're willing.
I have to say I'm interested and I'm worried.
So I'm definitely signing on.
Okay.
So you're going to meet with the rest of the team tomorrow morning.
We'll come up with some reason why you're away from the NSA and give that to them through
FBI channels and welcome aboard.
They shake your hand and, you know, you guys kind of go your separate ways.
You actually live in Charleston, I would imagine, because it's close.
I mean, it's a 30 minute drive.
Yeah.
You know, and it's a 30 minute drive on back country roads.
So if you want to make it a 15 minute drive, you can, depending on how fast you're willing
to go.
So that is where we're going to end it.
Your little intro to our agents dossier game.
Thank you everybody for listening and thank you, Saint, for being a part of the game.
Thank you.
Being Patreon people, you know where to find us, but where do you find Saint?
Oh, you know, Saint's been a real recluse lately.
If you want to find me, I'm on Twitter at SaintSpiderTV.
That's S-A-I-N-T-S-P-I-D-E-R-T-V.
It's all one word.
Thank you.
Excellent.
And you can find me at Plate Mail Games and you know where the podcast is, obviously because
you're a wonderful supporter and you're helping us with the show and we appreciate that.
We will talk at you real soon.
Bye.
Thank you.
I'll see you here in another Upon a
Tch Pleasure, friends comprehend.
Oh, I'm looking forward to it when you joined me.
You get to travel a lot.
Thank you for everything.
wenlaughs
Oh, I'm looking forward to it.