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| 2 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16879312500.44727500 |
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| 5 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/delta_green_crb.jpg]] |
| 6 | [[caption-width-right:350:Welcome to your new job, rookie.]] |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ->''We travel light, we probe deep, and we strike hard. We're Delta Green, and we may be outlaws and cowboys and fools, but we've kept this green ball of shit safe and sound for longer than most people have been alive.'' |
| 9 | --> -- '''Reginald Fairfield''' |
| 10 | |
| 11 | An acclaimed sourcebook for the famous ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' tabletop roleplaying game, which would later become its own standalone game. ''Delta Green'' tells the story of the eponymous organization, a secret United States agency born of the Federal raid on [[TownWithADarkSecret Innsmouth, Massachusetts]] in 1928 and tasked to protect the country from paranormal threats. After an operation gone horribly wrong in Cambodia in 1969, Delta Green was officially shut down -- but its leaders, aware of the things lurking in the cracks of reality, continued the fight illegally, stealing resources from the government, carefully picking new members from the federal agents community, and generally acting like rightfully pissed off {{Cowboy Cop}}s in their battle against the Unnatural. Not until the 1994 assassination of Major General Reginald Fairfield, Delta Green's ''de facto'' leader, would it take up its current incarnation: a deeply hidden conspiracy in the labyrinthine world of the United States federal agencies, structured in semi-independent cells. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | The new Delta Green was released in 2016 and advanced the plot. After a series of operations against the mi-go and TheGreys, Delta Green delivers a huge blow to MAJESTIC-12, coinciding with the total reorganization of the US intelligence community after 9/11 attacks. Delta Green is reactivated, brought back into government fold, given a proper budget, and, using UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror as their new cover, returns as "The Program". Some old members refuse to go official and decide to keep the old group running. Nicknamed "The Outlaws", this group acts more like the old Delta Green, as an illegal and unauthorized conspiracy. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Delta Green is heavily based on classical conspiracy/UFO theories, meshing them with the Franchise/CthulhuMythos milieu: DG themselves are a spin on TheMenInBlack, but there are also other shadow agencies involved, including the now famous Majestic 12 group that deals with TheGreys [[spoiler:(actually mi-go in disguise)]]. Other players are the Karotechia, [[{{Ghostapo}} occultist Nazis serving an "ascended" Hitler]]; the Fate, a criminal organization that makes heavy use of Mythos creatures and spells for fun and profit; [=SaucerWatch=], a naïve yet well-funded UFO research group that may be closer to the truth than they know; and the [[AncientConspiracy Cult of Transcendence]], among others. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | The tone of the book is even [[CrapsackWorld bleaker]] than standard ''[=CoC=]'': where the basic game has investigators struggling against Mythos creatures and the cultists that serve them (and ''DG'' does include its fair share of fighting against these forces), the primary adversaries are evil and/or utterly amoral humans that use (or at least attempt to use) the forces of the Mythos for their own benefit, and are becoming as amoral as them. The Stars are Coming Right, and there may not be anything that Delta Green, or anyone else can do about it... |
| 18 | |
| 19 | [[DefiantToTheEnd But it doesn't mean they have to make things easy for them.]] |
| 20 | |
| 21 | In late 2015, a Website/{{Kickstarter}} was held for a new series of Delta Green sourcebooks. It reached 10 times its expected goal for a total of $300,000 received, and new material has been released since 2016. The creators have released a PDF copy of a quick start guide, ''Need to Know'' for free on their [[http://www.delta-green.com/2016/02/download-delta-green-need-to-know/ official website.]] In 2018 Pelgrane Press of ''TabletopGame/TrailOfCthulhu'', ''TabletopGame/ThirteenthAge'' and ''TabletopGame/TheEsoterrorists'' fame released a prequel named ''The Fall of DELTA GREEN'', using Pelgrane's own TabletopGame/{{GUMSHOE}} system and focused on the TheSixties and UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar up to the fateful operation in Cambodia that lead to [[TitleDrop the fall of DELTA GREEN]]. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | For the ''other'', ''slightly'' less depressing, ''slightly'' funnier Lovecraft-meets-spy-fiction setting, see ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'' and its own RPG, which also uses the Basic Role-Playing system, ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry''. Other spy/Lovecraft settings for ''[=CoC=]'' include ''TabletopGame/AchtungCthulhu'' from Creator/ModiphiusEntertainment and ''TabletopGame/WorldWarCthulhu'' from Creator/Cubicle7. |
| 24 | ---- |
| 25 | !!This game provides examples of: |
| 26 | |
| 27 | * TheNineties: The setting of the original sourcebook. |
| 28 | * ActuallyIAmHim: In the current setting, [[spoiler:Donald Poe, aka Agent CHARLIE, is also Agent ALPHONSE, the leader of the Outlaws, having assumed the mantle of Agent ALPHONSE after the death of the previous ALPHONSE, Joseph Camp. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in that Poe seeks to avoid having to reveal this to anyone; when Poe became ALPHONSE, he was all too aware that he was a "door-kicker" rather than a "master conspirator." He figures that the rank and file of the Outlaws would be more comfortable imagining their leader as a latter-day Professor Moriarty rather than a past-his-prime jarhead sniper. As such, whenever he interacts with Agents, it is as his old code name CHARLIE, presenting himself as the emissary of the never-seen ALPHONSE.]] |
| 29 | * AdaptationDeviation: ''Delta Green'' takes a markedly different approach to Hastur and the King in Yellow from that of Creator/AugustDerleth and ''Call of Cthulhu''. John Scott Tynes suggests that their version of Hastur as a slug god doesn't really do justice to the [[Literature/TheKingInYellow source material]]. Instead, Hastur is reimagined as the sublimely subtle, insidious force of entropy, the cosmic principle which destroys order. Because this destruction happens at every level from the atomic to the cosmic, Hastur has influence at all levels of reality. The King in Yellow is an avatar that manifests where Hastur's field intensity heightens: vice and melancholy, the social entropy disintegrating human order. |
| 30 | * AdaptationNameChange: ''Delta Green'' uses slightly different spellings for some familiar Great Old Ones: Itla-shua (Ithaqua), Qu-Tugkwa (Cthugha), Tleche-Naka (Atlach-Nacha), Giliszta (Glaaki) and A-Abhi (Abhoth). |
| 31 | * AddictiveMagic: Using too much hypergeometry will lead to mental disorders and addiction. [[spoiler:It's one of the plans of the mi-go to enslave mankind.]] |
| 32 | * AffablyEvil: There is something in Joe Kátl's attitude that makes him naturally personable even among humans, something not commonly found among the Deep One hybrids of Black Cod Island. As such, he has found himself in contact with the outside world for many years, acting as liaison for Black Cod business interests on the mainland. |
| 33 | * AgeOfReptiles: The serpent-folk rose in prominence in the Paleozoic era, 500 million years ago. They built a great civilization under the reign of the Great Old Ones, but ended up destroying themselves in a self-generated apocalypse. The very few surviving serpent-folk have tried to infiltrate human society, but luckily they're as likely to kill each other as to kill human beings. |
| 34 | * AlienAbduction: Much of the mi-go's work in their Grey guises involves conducting experiments in human intuition under the cover of UFO abductions. |
| 35 | * AliensInCardiff: The nations that have active anti-occult organizations are the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, and... Canada. Canada's organization is directly stated to predate all the others, dating back to 1903 (a full 10 years before Russia, the next oldest). Granted, their scope is relatively more focused than the others. |
| 36 | * AllMythsAreTrue: Several Great Old Ones might have been the inspiration for real-life mythological deities; for instance Cthulhu may have been worshiped or reviled as Tiamat, Vritra, or Typhon, amongst others. |
| 37 | * AllTherapistsAreMuggles: Agents can go to the therapist after an operation to attempt to recover [[SanityMeter Sanity points]]. There are two choices: Get treatment but lie about the unnatural, which is a more safe option although it gives less SAN points back, or tell the horrible truth to the therapist. However, if you succeed this will be a SubvertedTrope as the therapist will not only believe you, he himself will lose sanity points. |
| 38 | * AmbiguousSituation: |
| 39 | ** The game posits that Nyarlathotep's constant meddling with humans may not be (or even not ''solely'' be) to [[ForTheEvulz ruin their lives for his entertainment]]; he, in fact, may want them to evolve into something greater via his machinations, or at least [[BlueAndOrangeMorality different]]. He may actually be more "benevolent" than the Mi-Go in this regard. |
| 40 | ** Controversy over the Tcho-Tcho being racist YellowPeril caricatures have led to later games to leave the door open as to if they're just another Southeast Asian ethnicity, a completely monstrous and inhuman race that are only vaguely human, the complicit cultists they are normally portrayed as, or even some form of the two, where the Tcho-Tcho who are the Eldritch villains we know and love are simply ethnic Tcho-Tcho turned cultists, no more than a bunch of fishmen in New England would be representative of Americans. |
| 41 | * AmoralAttorney: Martin Kíldaaw was groomed from an early age to become an interface between humans and the Black Cod Deep One hybrids. After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1981, he has become a relentless attorney who uses the humans' laws against themselves and works tirelessly to protect the Black Cod's interests from encroachment. |
| 42 | * AncientConspiracy: |
| 43 | ** Both averted and played straight with the Cult of Transcendence. As the Alta Vendita, they've been around since the Crusades, but they underwent a significant change in leadership and purpose after the First World War showed them how much their attempts at running the world had failed. [[ScamReligion The book giving their background also leaves open the possibility that the entire history of the Cult as laid out is a lie meant to impress new initiates with conspiratorial leanings]]. |
| 44 | ** The Kuen-Yuin are a straight example, being an ancient Chinese conspiracy descended from the Priest-Rulers of the Lloigor empire of Mu, which aims to create the Cruel Empire of Tsan-Chan. |
| 45 | ** The Motion, the servants of the Great Race of Yith, have existed over many points in history. They have been influencing history in specific events to further the Yithians' plans. |
| 46 | * Area51: One of Majestic-12's facilities is in Area 51, although it is not Area 51 itself. True to form, most Mi-Go tech testing, especially the flying saucers (really anti-gravity magic), occured there. |
| 47 | * ArgentinaIsNaziland: The [[{{Ghostapo}} Karotechia]], Hitler's occult division whose remnants are hiding in the Amazon. |
| 48 | * ArtifactCollectionAgency: Delta Green (the organization) [[ZigZaggingTrope zig zags]] this trope. After the Innsmouth raid, the group adopted a "burn everything and dynamite what can't be burned" policy. This led to many Delta Green scientists to leave the group and join the then recently-created MAJESTIC-12 -- who otherwise plays the trope straight and tries to weaponize and exploit anything they find. This attitude became looser after DG was originally disbanded and some agents don't see the problem in collecting material they find relevant and dropping at the "Green Boxes" for future use. |
| 49 | * ArtificialGravity: Within the spacecraft recovered at Roswell is a sigil that seems to project gravity -- with no apparent counter-force -- in a way that human science had not even the slightest idea how to begin to understand. |
| 50 | * ArtificialHybrid: The saurian things created by Jean-François Charrière's experiments are half-human, half-reptile. Parts of the creatures remain human; other parts are entirely lizard. Human mouths grow at the end of lizard snouts; one specimen might have patches of human flesh amid the lizard hide, or a lizard tail that sprouts from a human back. |
| 51 | * AndIMustScream: ''Eyes Only'' has a chapter, ''Machinations of the Mi-Go'', which gives rules to play as someone the mi-go have captured and extracted the brain from. |
| 52 | * AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: ''Through A Glass Darkly'' features a machine that can allow a person to do this. |
| 53 | ** The spell [[spoiler:Consciousness Expansion]]. |
| 54 | * AsLongAsThereIsEvil: [=CptnSnshn=] and the Lonely can be temporarily beaten, but not truly defeated, because in the end there will always be lonely people. Someday, when humanity is nothing but a distant memory of space-time, there will be lonely cockroaches. And there too will be [=CptnSnshn=]. |
| 55 | * AssholeVictim: Among the millions killed and tens of millions imprisoned by Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution were numerous servants of the Kuen-Yuin, forcing them to flee China in 1979. |
| 56 | * BadassBookworm: Joseph Camp: University professor, World War II veteran, UsefulNotes/{{OSS}} spy, second-in-command of the original Delta Green and Agent ALPHONSE. |
| 57 | * BadassNormal: Many [=NPCs=], such as the late Major General Fairfield, Captain Forrest James or MJ-12's Adolph Lepus. The [=PCs=] can also become this. |
| 58 | * BalanceBuff: By and large, creatures in ''Delta Green'' and ''The Fall of DELTA GREEN'' have higher statistics than in vanilla ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' and ''TabletopGame/TrailOfCthulhu'', because the Agents likely have access to heavier weapons than standard investigators. |
| 59 | * BedlamHouse: The Dorchester House in ''Impossible Landscapes''. |
| 60 | * BeenThereShapedHistory: |
| 61 | ** In 1969, Delta Green organizes an unsanctioned raid on Cambodia, where 300 Marines and DELTA GREEN agents paradrop on Cambodia attempting to destroy the Đạo Sẫm and prevent them from summoning a Great Old One. The operation fails spectacularly. When the US and South Vietnam invade Cambodia seven months later, they meet stiff resistance from well-prepared Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge, as the Đạo Sẫm were disguised as North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge units. This serves as the final nail on the coffin for the original Delta Green. |
| 62 | ** Adolph Lepus (future [[TheMenInBlack NRO Delta]] commander) and Donald Poe (future Agent CHARLIE [[spoiler:and later [[LegacyCharacter would take the mantle]] of Agent ALPHONSE]]) participated in Operation OBSIDIAN and ended up as two of the few survivors. They were also the ones that [[spoiler:killed Colonel Satchel Wade and his mistress as a revenge for organizing the mission]]. |
| 63 | ** ''The Fall of DELTA GREEN'' implies that the legendary [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACV-SOG MACV-SOG]] might have been inspired by Delta Green. |
| 64 | -->DELTA GREEN uses a similar principle, combining operatives from several different agencies and units both civilian and military. The two share so many similarities, including Top Secret classification and deniability, that it’s quite possible that the Pentagon is deliberately attempting to replicate DELTA GREEN in a war-fighting context. |
| 65 | ** In 1993 Delta Green discovered information about what they thought it was a mythos cult in Waco, Texas. The agents organize the ATF and FBI to raid the cult's compound resulting in the now-infamous Waco Siege. [[spoiler:They were wrong, there was nothing particularly unnatural on Waco. 76 people died due to Delta Green's faulty intel.]] |
| 66 | ** During the Katrina hurricane, there were a lot of reports of gunfire shots in New Orleans after the levees broke. Much of those were agents part of Delta Green death squads sent to hunt down and [[VigilanteExecution execute]] Ghouls of the [=DeMonte=] clan. |
| 67 | ** In the scenario ''Khali Gati'' [[spoiler: it is implied that the god-priest that sleeps in the mountain around Khali Gati inspired the pre-islamic Afghan god [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zunbils#Religion Zun]], or [[UnreliableExpositor at least that's what the village elder tells you]]]]. |
| 68 | ** The Kuen-Yuin have manipulated Chinese history since the time of the Yellow Emperor, choosing subsequent imperial dynasties, manipulating court politics in their favor by magic or infiltrated eunuchs, and causing dynastic changes when the imperial family did not favor them. During times of dynastic conflicts and warlord eras, they would cause as much destruction, cruelty and pain as possible. Ironically, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao declared "magic" as superstitious and counter-revolutionary, and purged the Kuen-Yuin, bombing their ancient monasteries, executing their members en masse, and forcing their survivors into exile. |
| 69 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: |
| 70 | ** The semi-historical Yellow Emperor of China, also known as the Yellow Dragon, may refer to some antediluvian immanentisation of a Great Old One. |
| 71 | ** The Genyosha is based on the real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen%27yōsha Black Ocean Society]], Japanese secret society based on ultranationalism. In Delta Green they are an occultist organization that acts as the Japanese Empire's unofficial {{Ghostapo}} and had some encounters with Delta Green during [=WW2=]. |
| 72 | ** The historical Skoptsi were a underground heretical Christian sect in the Russian Empire which preached [[GroinAttack self-castration]] in order to prevent sexual lust, reaching as many as 100,000 members in the early 20th century, but disappearing after heavy persecution from both Tsarist and Soviet governments. In Delta Green however, they are still active and actually worship Shub-Niggurath. |
| 73 | * BenevolentConspiracy: Delta Green is an illegal conspiracy inside the US government that investigate and fights threats from the Franchise/CthulhuMythos and other secret paranormal groups. While DG's goals are certainly benevolent, their methods are [[WellIntentionedExtremist "do what is necessary"]]. |
| 74 | * BestServedCold: Sang Eh-Poh Berg grew up spinning dark fantasies of bloody, intricate revenge against those who slighted him, often delivering his vengeance years after the slight when the opportunity presented itself. |
| 75 | * BigfootSasquatchAndYeti: The yeti is a relict voorii population who have survived in the Himalayas since the Pleistocene. The metoh-kangmi, or abominable snowman, is a mi-go construct based on them. |
| 76 | * TheBigRottenApple: New York used to be considered ''enemy territory'' for Delta Green up until 2001. The Fate controlled NYC's organized crime using sorcery and supernatural powers, The Keepers of the Faith is a clan of Ghouls based in Manhattan that existed since the 17th century (although with an uneasy truce with DG), and The Cult of Transcendence had major activities in New York. There is also many other scenarios set in New York as well. |
| 77 | * BookBurning: |
| 78 | ** In 1943, Delta Green's Operation TARQUIN destroyed the Great Library at Pnakotis to keep knowledge of the future out of enemy hands. A similar fate befell the Yithian library called Thule by the Karotechia teams searching for it. |
| 79 | ** During the first outbreak of ''The King in Yellow'' in 1895, more than two hundred people connected to the play were murdered, committed suicide or vanished, including two members of the French government. Due to these two deaths, the play was given particular scrutiny by the Deuxième Bureau, who directed a crackdown that burned copies of the book, arrested those disseminating it, and erased records of its strangeness from police files. In 1955, Delta Green established the STATIC protocol, which mandates the immediate destruction of any works referencing the Yellow Sign, ''Le Roi en jaune'', ''The King in Yellow'', Hali, Hastur, Carcosa, Yhtill, Cassilda and Camilla. |
| 80 | * BlackHelicopter: Operated by NRO Delta. |
| 81 | * BlackSite: The setting is filled with these. Operated from Majestic-12 to Delta Green. Ranging from secret laboratories, secret prisons to SecretGovernmentWarehouse. |
| 82 | * TheBlank: Marionettes' faces are blank porcelain with empty eyes, but each has some semblance of what they were once in life. One who wore glasses wears fake wire glasses. One with a prominent nose shares it with their marionette. Birthmarks, overbites and hairstyles can be seen by those that know to look. |
| 83 | * BrainFood: Agent NANCY is DG's foremost forensic analyst and autopsy expert. [[spoiler: She is, in fact, a [[ImAHumanitarian ghoul]], and can obtain knowledge from dead bodies by devouring their brains. All ghouls apparently have this ability.]] |
| 84 | ** The Karotechia's Reinhard Galt also has this ability, learned from the Anziques. |
| 85 | * BroadStrokes: According to the official site, nothing in Delta Green is canon. Instead, they encourage players to use whatever works for their game. With regards to the original ''Call of Cthulhu'' RPG which DG was an expansion for, they change some facets of the gods and monsters. Most notably, Hastur is dramatically different from the more Derleth-inspired ''Call of Cthulhu'' version. Overall, Delta Green considers Lovecraft's works "canon", and the stories of other Mythos writers depending on the needs of the plot. |
| 86 | * BurnTheOrphanage: The first part of the God's Teeth campaign. [[spoiler: A cult masquerading as a Russian Orthodox congregation runs an orphanage in rural Maryland. There, the children are subjected to horrific abuse both to indoctrinate them into the cult and to allow for a profit to be made from selling videos of their abuse. The Agents are sent to put an end to this and kill all the adults on site, leading to the campaign's events]] |
| 87 | * CallingTheCopsOnTheFBI: Player characters are ''not'' above the law, and oftentimes have to deliberately break it. As such, they might have to contend with regular law enforcement--who can be anything from in the pocket of the opposition to regular, by-the-book police officers just doing their job. |
| 88 | * CannibalLarder: Serial killer Arvan Chilton's fridge in CONTROLCOPY is an unusual example, [[spoiler: both because the body parts are ensorcelled to look like normal food, and because Arvan isn't a cannibal, he just wants to feed other people human flesh as a sick power play.]] |
| 89 | * CanonDiscontinuity: When the original Convergence was published in 1992 on ''The Unspeakable Oath'', it was followed by a sequel named "Transference", published on the ''TabletopGame/Cyberpunk2020'' fanzine ''Interface''. Featuring Argentinian refugee scientists on Antarctica making a pact with the mi-go, infecting themselves with the protomatter, and creating a MegaCorp, with the players uncovering their dark secrets. The scenario has been completely disregarded in later canon. |
| 90 | * CanonWelding: Between Creator/RobertWChambers' "The Maker of Moons", Creator/ColinWilson's "The Return of the Lloigor", [[https://www.chaosium.com/the-cruel-empire-of-tsan-chan-pdf/ The Cruel Empire of Tsan-Chan]] (a monograph for ''Call of Cthulhu'' which expands on Lovecraft's ''Literature/TheShadowOutOfTime'') and ''Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu''. The Kuen-Yuin, a cabal of Chinese sorcerers from "The Maker of Moons", are described as descendants of the Priest-Kings of Mu servants of the Lloigor (which are equated with the Xin from "The Maker of Moons"), the “deathless ones in the mountains of China” that control the worldwide cult of Cthulhu in "The Call of Cthulhu", and the small cadre of immortal sorcerers who rule over the Cruel Empire of Tsan-Chan (mentioned in a line of "The Shadow Out Of Time"), which will arise 5000 years in the future, after Cthulhu woke and humans went insane ("Dreamers"), finally casting good and evil aside and becoming like the Great Old Ones: shouting and reveling in a holocaust of ecstasy. Some material even suggest this future is incompatible and competing with the Yithian's plan to [[HumanitysWake wipe out mankind]] as seen in "The Shadow Out Of Time". |
| 91 | * ChaosArchitecture: While the outside of the Gallery of Shades maintains its shape and structure, the inside changes continuously. Rooms and balconies contract and expand, or disappear completely when you're not looking. Carpeting becomes oak becomes tile becomes marble. The works do not change in and of themselves, but they are present or absent at random. |
| 92 | * CIAEvilFBIGood: An interesting example of FBI and CIA good... and '''''NRO''''' evil. [[note]]The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office National Reconnaissance Office]] is the US Intelligence Agency responsible for designing and operating SpySatellites. They officially [[NoSuchAgency didn't exist]] and were classified Top Secret from 1962 to 1992.[[/note]] Majestic-12 is partially inside the NRO and uses their assets for their own goals, including "section DELTA", a section of the NRO composed by TheMenInBlack that hide the existence of aliens and the paranormal, they frequently use burglary, bugging, bribery, blackmail, are not afraid to use lethal force (Although they try to avoid as the first option for [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic reasons]]) and even sometimes act as a local support team for the greys. Otherwise, this can be played with in any number of ways: the PlayerCharacters can be both FBI and CIA, either as Delta Green agents themselves or as uninformed agents stumbling into a Delta Green op, and both FBI and CIA are portrayed as either clueless trigger-happy idiots[[note]]Such as in Future/Perfect Part 1, where not only will the FBI likely accidentally shoot the Yithian agent, they'll also likely bungle the containment of the time-travel gate if it starts dumping enough seawater to flood the valley, or in Future/Perfect Part 4, where they WILL cause a massacre at the compound[[/note]], earnestly trying to make sense of what's going on, or unwitting foot soldiers and meatshields for the NRO (or similar conspiracies post-NRO). [[PlayerCharacter Player Characters]] can even be NRO employees, although not the ones in or with access to Majestic-12 operations. |
| 93 | * ChurchOfHappyology: The Enolsis Foundation. In this setting, of course it has a [[DarkSecret horrible secret]]. |
| 94 | * ClarkesThirdLaw: Delta Green calls magic "hypergeometry", due to its frequent association with lines, shapes, numbers, position and mathematics. The game gives example on how a tribal shaman drawing a mandala in sand or a scientist pointing lasers in the sky to invoke something begin similar things with a similar "math", and the rituals are described to be "tapping" in an infinite energy grid beyond the four dimensions. Hypergeometry is implied to be the "technology" used by advanced alien and unearthly species such as the Elder Things, mi-go and the Great Race of Yith, and stated that this knowledge was passed down to humanity by the [[EldritchAbomination Great Old Ones]]. |
| 95 | * ClockworkCreature: The Clockwork Child is composed of brass clockwork, wheels, and the smashed remains of a porcelain doll. It cannot talk, but its mouth clacks open and shut as it wobbles on two uneven wheels. The construction of the Clockwork Child is impossible, and anyone examining its machinery loses 0/1D4 SAN from realising that it is powered by nothing. |
| 96 | * CodeName: Every DG agent has one. Also, there are the MJ-12 projects, and the various classified documents used throughout the game. |
| 97 | * ConspiracyKitchenSink: The original premise of Delta Green was a Conspiracy Kitchen Sink mixed with the Franchise/CthulhuMythos: TheMenInBlack (Majestic-12) have a secret alliance with TheGreys [[spoiler:who are puppets of the mi-go]], [[{{Ghostapo}} Occultist Nazis]] hiding [[ArgentinaIsNaziland in South America]] secretly taking back their power back through the forces of the mythos, TheIlluminati is a cult of Nyarlathotep, the CIA drug traffic program in Southeast Asia and Central America involved the Tcho-Tchos and their own Air America-like covert company "Tiger Transit", the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment Philadeplhia Experiment]] was a failed Delta Green experiment, and the historical [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy Skoptsi]] cult was not an heretical sect of Orthodox Christianity but a pagan cult of Shub-Niggurath. The later editions dropped the "All conspiracy theories are true" as they lost their place in the 21st century zeitgeist and the popular conspiracy theories are... let's just say they are quite controversial and offensive. The new edition instead creates new conspiracies ''based'' on the current zeitgeist but not ''the'' conspiracies from modern zeitgeist. |
| 98 | * ConspiracyTheorist: Entire groups of them that keep appearing in Delta Green operations as they are closer to the truth than they imagine: Saucerwatch, Phenomen-X, the Dream Syndicate and the Human-Extraterrestrial Liberation Project (Or [[FunWithAcronyms H.E.L.P]] for short). [[spoiler:The latter is a Cult of Transcendence cover under the See of Hate; its purpose is to use UFO conspiracy theories to promote paranoia (fear of "Grey" invaders) and racism (worship of "Nordic aliens" as saviors)]]. |
| 99 | * ConvenientlyUnverifiableCoverStory: How The Program maintains its agents' covers. They are designated into mundane counter-terrorist task-forces with open-ended tasks, the only people that have clearance files of these task-forces are inside The Program, this makes possible to group a bunch of agents, give them cover and resources, and make sure that when people ask questions they can just say "It's classified". |
| 100 | * CorporateConspiracy: |
| 101 | ** March Technologies is a corrupt corporation deep inside the US military-industrial complex. They were previously part of MAJESTIC-12 and are deeply involved in the research of alien technology and unnatural powers. |
| 102 | ** New Life Fertility is a company that provides medical treatement for infertile women of the world's elite. The treatments use the powers of Shub-Niggurath, the children born from New Life's treatments are HalfHumanHybrids which can't mate with other humans, are smarter and healthier, and have a natural inclination to worship Shub-Niggurath. |
| 103 | * CorruptCorporateExecutive: The board of March Technologies is partially formed by ex-MAJESTIC leadership. |
| 104 | * TheCorrupter: Too many to count; between bog standard governmental malfeasance, the nihilistic decay of the Cthulhu Mythos, and the interplay of the two. Notably, ''The Labyrinth'' features four potential allies--and the player agents can serve as this for them, causing them all to slide into self-destruction by simply using them and the resources they offer. |
| 105 | * CosmicHorrorStory: Even without all the human cultists, sorcerers and others dealing with Mythos forces, humanity would be in pretty deep trouble. ''With'' them around, though, they're utterly screwed. |
| 106 | ** Exaggerated in ''Impossible Landscapes''. [[spoiler:Free will, you say? Nope, it's all theater, ''all of it'', and it's not written by you. There is no escaping the play, and the Agents ''will'' play their parts. Whether they want it or not.]] |
| 107 | * CrapsackWorld: The world is full of Lovecraftian darkness. And doomed. |
| 108 | * CrystalBall: Users who lose 8 SAN or more to the Mironov Object can run complete simulations of reality inside the machine. They can delve into the future or past of the world and see events with godlike omnipotence. |
| 109 | * TheDanza: Each book that [=CptnSnshn=] introduces to a potential Lonely is unique and always features a main character with the same first name as the Lonely. When a Lonely writes the manuscript of a second book, they join the Grim.[[invoked]] |
| 110 | * DarkIsNotEvil: Ghouls have a bit of that vibe going on, depending on the particular group or individual. Of course, players shouldn't rely on it too much unless they want to become lunch. |
| 111 | * DarkerAndEdgier: |
| 112 | ** ''Delta Green'' to ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu''. ''Call'' focuses on the the supernatural aspects of the mythos and its unnameable monsters, in fighting horrific [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]] and their deranged cultist followers. ''Delta Green'''s writing on the other hand tends to be more tragic, nihilistic and hopeless. It leans a lot on the human side of it, with the sanity system mixed with the bond system emphasizing the spiral of self-destruction leading to some PersonalHorror. Likewise with the frequent "human" antagonists, with the powers of the Mythos merely enabling the already corrupt humans to do atrocities, and the conflict between the Agents and their employing organization: [[ToBeLawfulOrGood following orders or following their consciences]]? |
| 113 | *** The new edition compared to the old one. The original sourcebooks offered a slightly pulpy, albeit still dark and edgy on their own right, takes on pop culture conspiracies, such as Roswell aliens, the Men-in-Black, Nazi occultism, the Illuminati and so on. The new edition however, has opponents be more real threats based on our modern worries and anxieties; ''The Labyrinth'' for example, has enemies based on right-wing radicalization caused by industrial decline and urban decay (The Sowers), the growing gap between the population and ultra-rich (New Life Fertility), radicalization of socially isolated people through the internet (The Lonely) and cults recruting desperate people by offering miraculous healings (The Prana Sodality). |
| 114 | ** The Gothic translation of the ''Al Azif'', known as ''Dauthsnamjansboka'', was much bleaker and less allusive than other versions. |
| 115 | * DeadlineNews: ''Phenomen-X'', the basic cable conspiracy investigation show, can suffer this. DG is perfectly willing to treat them as canaries in the coal mines to see if the alleged supernatural is actually a threat. |
| 116 | * DeathSeeker: Chun-te Wu, aka Agent ANTON of the Outlaws' A-cell, is implied to have become this after the [[DespairEventHorizon death of his wife and two daughters in a traffic accident]]. With Delta Green being the only meaningful thing left in his life, he has taken to joylessly chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes. Once, when told that every cigarette was another nail in his coffin, Wu is alleged to have said, "That's the fucking point." |
| 117 | * DemotedToExtra: The Cult of Transcendence has very few mentions in the new edition's ''Handler's Guide'', and where they are mentioned, it is revealed that they were destroyed after too much infighting. |
| 118 | * DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: It can be argued that this is the best DG can hope to do. |
| 119 | * DisposingOfABody: Delta Green operations will usually leave bodies behind, and often it's better getting rid of them than explaining to the authorities. The "Tradecraft" chapter on the ''Agent's Handbook'' has a quick guide on the rules for different methods of getting rid out of of bodies, from dissolving in a [[HollywoodAcid polypropylene barrel]] to dumping the body in the water. |
| 120 | * DoesNotLikeMagic: The former commando SS-Oberstürmbannführer Otto Skorzeny served as a link between the last three Karotechia members, but considered the Karotechia to be Heinrich Himmler's occult idiocy and only knew the three as fellow war criminals. |
| 121 | * {{Doorstopper}}: Ibrahim ibn Ali's Chronicle, a diary that begins around 1400 A.D. and has been continued to the present day, literally weighs tons and takes up nearly an entire wing of the Disciples of the Worm's Hacienda. |
| 122 | * DownerEnding: Delta Green fights the fires it sees, but it's all going downhill. Some modern [=CoC=] material hints at possible evacuation to space habitats or the Dreamlands, but nothing positive or canonical. |
| 123 | ** [[spoiler:The Delta Green short story "After Math" details the end of the world through the eyes of an elderly Delta Green agent.]] |
| 124 | ** ''Impossible Landscapes''. See StableTimeLoop below for details. |
| 125 | * DragonWithAnAgenda: On his multiple appearances, Adolph Lepus shows that he has his own agenda that goes beyond the Steering Committee. [[spoiler: He ends up murdering Justin Kroft, MJ-12's director, while attempting a coup against Majestic's leadership after the Greys cease contact.]] |
| 126 | * DreamingOfTimesGoneBy: After flight Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in the Pacific, some people started to have shared dreams inside the airplane; this led the creation of the internet forum "The Dream Syndicate", where people started to report and discuss similar dreams such as daily life of The Romanovs, images inside an underground city [[spoiler:of the Great Race of Yith]] and what might a prehistoric (or post-historic!) woman getting attacked by a large predator. Some of the people who experienced Fight 370 dreams also dream of the aircraft's wreckage [[spoiler:strewn about a great undersea city (presumably [=R'lyeh=]), where they hear unusual words they cannot remember when they wake]]. |
| 127 | * DreamLand: The Dreamlands in Delta Green are an extra-dimensional "inner space", the shared hallucination of a symbolic realm, accessed through psychedelic drugs, occult meditation, or hypergeometric rituals. MAJESTIC has experimented with physically transporting subjects to it, and [[spoiler:The King in Yellow]] is believed to have kidnapped people there. |
| 128 | * DyingTown: The Sowers establish their congregations in dying towns in the Rust Belt, creating self-sustaining agricultural communities. Their central church is located in infamous dying town [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary,_Indiana Gary, Indiana]]. |
| 129 | * ElaborateUndergroundBase: |
| 130 | ** COUNTRY CLUB, the MJ-12 headquarters. A massive underground facility that can only be accessed by air, containing [=MJ12's=] Project AQUARIUS (MJ-1), databases, the conference facilities for the Steering Committee, facilities for communication with the Greys, and the original copy of the The Accord. |
| 131 | ** ICE CAVE, MJ-12's xenobiology research laboratory is a secret vault constructed under the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Constructed as the Atomic Energy Commission's YY-II reserve facility, it was first used by Delta Green to host the Deep One survivors of the Innsmouth raid and later Majestic-12 took control of the facility and used to store the Greys from Roswell. |
| 132 | ** The Prana Sodality owns an old ICBM silo [[spoiler:(used before in MAJESTIC's Project FORSAL)]] where they have built their "Polarity Vortex": a massive electromagnetic energy resonator used in an alternative medicine therapy by the Sodality's clients, supposedly removing their "bad energy" and replacing with "good energy". [[spoiler:The polarity vortex is in the confluence of a Lloigor energy vortex, and the Polarity Vortex's structure and machinery only makes this Lloigor energy more concentrated.]] |
| 133 | * EldritchAbomination: Naturally. The "definition" of Great Old Ones is as follows: |
| 134 | --> "The Great Old Ones came from elsewhere and fought over the Earth billions of years before man, and now sleep in some infernal cycle of time. Life on Earth is the result of biological runoff; a fungus borne of alien shit, that has clung and crawled and evolved as these giants sleep. Their science is our magic, and remnants of their civilizations spring up to infect our world. Soon, they will wake and destroy humanity. NOTHING can stop this." |
| 135 | ** The Handler's guide gives statistics for a wide variety of Mythos beasts. When it comes to discussing the Great Old Ones, the guide encourages keepers to ignore the guidelines it sets forth and although there maybe be ways for particularly lucky investigators to eke out a victory, they are ultimately unbeatable. |
| 136 | --> "Great Old Ones do not have hit points. They are immortal, ultimately invulnerable, and completely beyond human understanding. The correct Handler response to “Can a Great Old One do X?” is “Yes, of course it can. They are focused omnipotence". |
| 137 | * EldritchLocation: |
| 138 | ** The city of Carcosa. When places and people are exposed to the corrupting force of Hastur, it will infect our reality and start pulling it to Carcosa. The city itself looks like a mishmash of multiple cities and civilizations from different time periods (especially Victorian and Edwardian) built on the top of another, with a [[AlienSky white sky with twin-suns and black stars]], while the city is eerie empty and devoid of population. The city operates in AlienGeometries and [[MindScrew dreamlike]] logic, governed by the mysterious figure of The King in Yellow. Once in Carcosa, thoughts, dreams [[note]]It's not the same as the [[DreamLand Dreamlands]] though, Carcosa is a destructive force and result of ultimate decay while the Dreamlands is a fantastical land formed by humanity's collective dreams[[/note]] ideas and feelings start to become real, while humans are enveloped and digested by Carcosa until only their thoughts and perceptions remain, forever an echo in Carcosa. |
| 139 | ** The Vagnoptus Manor, the headquarters of the Cult of Transcendence. From outside it looks like an ordinary abandoned mansion, you can find it on a map located just outside Stockholm with property or tax records. However, the architecture of the manor is formed with AlienGeometries, and walking through the halls of the Manor in the right way will eventually result in ending in the "Nightmare mansion", an alternate version of the mansion ([[MindScrew or it's still is the same mansion, maybe]]) that is ''in orbit of the [[PrimordialChaos court of Azathoth.]]'' |
| 140 | * EliteMooks: |
| 141 | ** "NRO section Delta", the main arm of Majestic's Project GARNET (MJ-2). A secret unit inside the National Reconnaissance Office formed by CIA, NSA, DIA and SOCOM operators which act as Majestic's cleanup, coverup, security, counterintelligence and wetwork division (Although they are intentionally fed layers of misinformation to not discover what Majestic is really working on). MAJESTIC even started a prototype SuperSoldier program with NRO-Delta agents. |
| 142 | ** Operation BLUE FLY, the primary operation of Project MOON DUST (MJ-5). The unit is under the cover of the USAF’s Foreign Technology Recovery Unit and are formed by experienced USAF Pararescue ([=PJs=]) special operators. In practice they serve as MAJESTIC's military division, eliminating extraterrestrial and paranormal threats with extreme prejudice. [[spoiler:When The Program was formed, BLUE FLY became Operation CORAL NOMAD, which act as their "asset recovery" division, flying and transporting unnatural artifacts, technology, and specimens from case officers, or more rarely, from Agents in the field.]] |
| 143 | * ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: The ''Special Operator'' profession. It is considered one of the "core" professions[[note]]along with Federal Agent, Physician, Anthropologist,Historian, Computer Scientist and Engineer[[/note]], while the Soldier/[[SemperFi Marine]] is considered an "additional" profession. FridgeBrilliance kicks in when you realize how much more useful a special forces operator is for a Delta Green team then a normal Soldier/Marine: Not only they can shoot and fight better, but also most of their training includes highly specialized expertise like Unconventional Warfare and Counterterrorism. Some units are trained to covertly act on foreign soil for months without support, such as the Green Berets or the CIA SAD/SOG. The ''Special Operator'' includes members of the [[UsefulNotes/TheModernDayRambo USSOCOM]], [[SWATTeam FBI Hostage Rescue Team]] and [[UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} CIA Paramilitary]]. In ''Fall of DELTA GREEN'', most of those organizations were founded over the course of the decade or not at all yet. Special Forces has lapsed into the Military Service category for this game but gives more bonuses than an active duty Soldier or Marine. |
| 144 | * EndangeringNewsBroadcast: The massive leaks by Manning in 2010 and Snowden in 2013 included communications by agents of the Program. Others wound up online in 2007. The agents who sent them were frozen out of the Program immediately after the leaks, had all ties to other personnel severed, and were warned explicitly to pretend insanity, drug abuse, or some terrible crime if needed to halt an investigation. So far, no investigators or journalists have pieced the data together. If they do, it may fall to some active team to make sure the damage is contained. |
| 145 | * TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: In 1945, with the Reich's strength spent, Hitler's final order to the Karotechia was to summon Azathoth and destroy the victorious Allies with the entire planet. For three months in 1945, Delta Green fought the last battle of the European war against the Karotechia: Operation LUNACY. Aktion GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG was ruined in a series of covert actions that cost the lives of many Agents and even more Karotechia members. |
| 146 | * EnemyCivilWar: |
| 147 | ** MAJESTIC's NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering is divided between two factions: One which seeks to maintain the Accord with the Greys, and another which seeks to expose the Grey's true intentions and end The Accord. The pro-Accord faction starts with a huge political power -- due the Greys providing a report of every single weapon of pro-soviet forces, which basically won the Cold War for America, and also richer due to March Tech selling advanced Grey technology to the Military-Intelligence industry. When Delta Green strikes a series of successful operations against the mi-go and Majestic's operations, the Greys cease contact with [=MJ-12=], NRO Delta commander Adolph Lepus, along with the pro-Accord faction attempts a coup against Director Justin Kroft [[spoiler:(who is killed by Lepus)]], while a counter-coup is launched by the anti-Grey side led by Forrest James [[spoiler:(AKA Agent DARREN)]] with support of Operation BLUE FLY and Delta Green, successfully taking over MAJESTIC-12 and using UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and UsefulNotes/{{NSA}}'s influence to reestablish DELTA GREEN. |
| 148 | ** The serpent-folk empire ended when they turned upon one another and perished in some self-generated apocalypse. Even today, they are as likely to kill each other as to kill humans. |
| 149 | ** The Cult of Transcendence had the prerequisites for this: the Transcendent Masters are utterly disconnected from human affairs, the four Bishops (and their Acolytes) who control the four Sees are fighting among each other and engaged in "petty" empire building, and the four Sees themselves are formed by a patchwork of numerous sub-groups that have little in common. By 2012, after one of the Bishops mysteriously disappeared in a ritual of communion with Azathoth, the remaining ones are at each others throats. The cult eventually shatters, and the individual elements all scatter and become independent from the central leadership. |
| 150 | * EnemyMine: |
| 151 | ** In a singular moment of cooperation, on 24 August 2001, elements of MAJESTIC, Delta Green and GRU SV-8 coordinated operations to uproot and destroy the Karotechia, from its South American headquarters to its sorcerers and reanimated officers active around the world. |
| 152 | ** In Operation SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS, to destroy SMERSH's experiments to continue Karotechia's "resurrected casualties" program and prolong Stalin's lifespan, the strike team was suddenly helped by GRU SV-8, who helped them by smuggling the strike team into the island where the facilities were and finished off the survivors after DG was done, as they wanted to destroy their political enemy SMERSH and end the experiments which they deemed a threat to the Soviet Union. |
| 153 | * EnfantTerrible: Since before birth, all second-generation New Life children have heard the call of Shub-Niggurath. While they are not yet old enough to evince consistent personality traits (the oldest of them, Marcus Andersson, is only 6), for game purposes they are considered permanently insane from birth. One who meets the dark young Caprus will run to it with open arms and the happy burbling cries of a child who is reunited with its mother. |
| 154 | * EvilInc: New Life Fertility is a private company that provides very expensive but completely infallible fertility services to the global elite—with the helping hand of Lac Maternum, or the milk of Shub-Niggurath. The highest leaders, and the oldest New Life children, are devout worshippers of Shub-Niggurath. |
| 155 | * TheExile: In 1555, a community of Deep One hybrids fled their village of Cha'atl in Haida Gwaii when other tribes descended upon them to destroy their evil influence, and came to Black Cod Island looking for sanctuary. They never lost sight of the reason they had been banished to Black Cod Island, and the lesson of the Cha'atl massacre remains clear in their minds. |
| 156 | * FaceStealer: Multiple examples. Ghouls are particularly inclined to do this. |
| 157 | ** [[spoiler: The [=PCs=] can become this if they learn the spell ''Changeling Feast'', the problem is that [[ImAHumanitarian you first have to eat]] the person you are impersonating.]] |
| 158 | * FantasticDrug: |
| 159 | ** The Tcho-Tcho have the Liao, or "Black Lotus", a flower similar to opium poppy with supernatural effects used in some Tcho-Tcho religious rituals, there's also a diluted and refined version of the Liao called "Reverb", sold as a street drug. Finally, the Tcho-Tchos also make "Coca Loca", cocaine mixed with [[{{Squick}} the milk of Shub-Niggurath]]. |
| 160 | ** Melonia is an unnatural plant that grows only in the Night World and Carcosa. When eaten, sniffed or injected, it induces euphoria and grants a relevant vision of some element of the Night World or Carcosa. |
| 161 | * FireKeepsItDead: If reduced to 0 Health, a shoggoth collapses into inert, hardened, desiccated bits of organic matter. However, it is not dead unless this desiccated matter is burned or subjected to other destructive forces. |
| 162 | * FlingALightIntoTheFuture: As bleak as Delta Green is, one rulebook states that it 'is'' possible for humanity to survive mostly happily: time travelers report a still-thriving human civilization thousands of years into the future, and additionally report humanity lasting long enough to near the death of the Sun, worshipping a Elder God who has some semblance of honor and benevolence. |
| 163 | * FlyingSaucer: Some mi-go spacecraft are constructed saucers meant to lure MAJESTIC into further excesses. |
| 164 | * FormulaicMagic: Hypergeometry is this mixed with GeometricMagic. Magic at its very core is the mathematic and geometrical manipulation of reality. Since humans from different cultures add their own biases to the rituals to perform magic, two widely different cultures can have a ritual with the same effects since their "core" is the same. As hypergeometry is strongly linked to math, some spells require the user to have a high level of skill in mathematics. Many "sorcerers" are employed by the UsefulNotes/{{NSA}} since the organization is the world's largest employer of mathematicians. |
| 165 | * ForTheEvulz: The primary motivation of the Cult of Transcendence is to "uplift" humanity in order to transform it into a Mythos race. They do this by creating numerous cults and secret societies in order to corrupt society to destroy it morally, spiritually, and physically. |
| 166 | * FourthReich: Karotechia's main objective is to use occultism, dark magic and the powers of the mythos to set the Fourth Reich. |
| 167 | * TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: ''Impossible Landscapes'', a book about a reality-unraveling InfectiousInsanity that uses works of art as vectors of infection, featuring a campaign [[spoiler:that can end with the Agents escaping [[EldritchLocation Carcosa]] only if [[StableTimeLoop they take part in the creation of the play/vector ultimately responsible for their presence there]]]], has this fiendishly subtle gem of an example ''in a [[GameMaster GM]]-only section'': |
| 168 | --> Few persist in the Night World. Fewer make it to the shores of Carcosa. Fewer still ever meet the King. |
| 169 | --> [[spoiler:[[WhamLine Only one of us has ever left the [royal court's] party.]]]] |
| 170 | * FriendOrFoe: ''Countdown'' has an in-universe incident where British SAS commandos equipped for an anti-terrorist operation in British cities were seen to be attacking the outskirts of the American Embassy. When the firefight died down, [[FramingTheGuiltyParty the PIRA was made the patsy]]. Subsequent investigation by DG shows that they've become more aware of the Shan controlling aspects of PISCES and British government, military and intelligence. Their risk assessment suggests to avoid making further contact unless necessary in order to avoid having their rank and file being infiltrated by the same alien species. |
| 171 | * FromCamouflageToCriminal: |
| 172 | ** Spider J in ''Reverberations'' is a former U.S Army soldier and [[PrivateMilitaryContractors Academi]] contractor turned [[FantasticDrug Reverb]] dealer. |
| 173 | ** The real-life Los Zetas cartel serves as a secondary antagonist in a chapter of ''Targets of Opportunity'' detailing the Children of the Worm Cult. The criminal organization began when a group of Mexican Special Forces defected to serve as cartel muscle--an NPC in the scenario is one such member. |
| 174 | * GainaxEnding: In ''Impossible Landscapes'' if the players are unable to escape the masquerade [[spoiler:the King In Yellow will be unmasked revealing the truth of the universe. The party's attendants will then rush the Agents, strip them naked and dress them in stage clothing and make-up; they will be taken to a stage. As the curtain opens it will reveal every PC and NPC encountered during the campaign and they will clap; the Agents will then realise they are wearing the same clothes they had in 1995 when they first met investigating the disappearance of Abigail Wright, and the back curtain will open to reveal the set: Abigail's room in the [=MacCalister=] building, where the Agents were 20 years ago and the start of the campaign. Moseby, one of the central [=NPCs=] will mouth the lines of the play, which are the same which the agents said long ago. The Agents are now forever part of the play they created, doomed to repeat it forever. The Handler finishes by reciting a poem, and then the curtain closes.]] |
| 175 | * GenericEthnicCrimeGang: Tong Shukoran, the Tcho-Tcho mafia, based on TheTriadsAndTheTongs. |
| 176 | * GeometricMagic: Delta Green's magic system is called "hypergeometry" due to its frequent association with lines, shapes, numbers, position and mathematics. "Magic" is the mathematical and geometrical manipulation of reality and other dimensions. |
| 177 | * GenericDoomsdayVillain: The Cult of Transcendence come close to this trope. Their basic goal is to 'uplift' humanity into a proper Mythos race, an existence without concern for order, compassion, pain or pleasure. They do this by subtly sabotaging human society and corrupting people anyway they can. They're oddly philosophical about it, too. Deconstruction or Reconstruction? Either way, their entry lampshades the fact that their basic lack of humanity means they act like this trope, and do not care if they win or lose, which is what makes them so dangerous. |
| 178 | ** In the original incarnation of ''The Hastur Mythos'', the King in Yellow is portrayed as this--it's a harbinger of Carcosa, a world of chaos and madness, but whether it has any plan or even sapience of its own is left unclear. |
| 179 | * GenreMashup: |
| 180 | ** ''The Fall of DELTA GREEN'' is a conspiracy thriller, Vietnam war story, and cosmic horror mashup. |
| 181 | ** Anything involving Carcosa mashes together conspiracy thriller, spy fiction, ''and'' {{Surreal Horror}}. |
| 182 | * {{Ghostapo}}: |
| 183 | ** The Karotechia is a special department in the Nazi Party answerable only to the Reichsführer-SS, founded by Heinrich Himmler to research and exploit the occult for military purposes. What remains of it is an elderly worshipper of Yog-Sothoth, an undead MadScientist {{Necromancer}} mixing the legacies of both [[Literature/HerbertWestReanimator Herbert West]] and Dr Muñoz from ''Literature/CoolAir'', a [[ImAHumanitarian humanitarian]] übermensch who gets immortality and invincibility in the bargain, and the "ascended" spirit of Adolf Hitler (at least, they ''think'' it's Hitler...) The real Hitler ordered the former Karotechia to summon Azathoth, in an attempted TakingYouWithMe against the entire world. |
| 184 | ** The Genyosha, the Japanese counterpart of the Karotechia, is a mix between political party, secret society, and also an unofficial espionage arm of the Japanese military. |
| 185 | * GoMadFromTheRevelation: Let's just say that the suicide rate in Delta Green is above average. With Delta Green's mechanics, it's easy for agents to utterly snap at anything from realizing that time travel exists to dealing with magic to catching the sight of a Great Old One. |
| 186 | * TheGovernment: |
| 187 | ** Many real-life US Federal agencies are provided for [=PCs=] to be part of, from familiar ones like the FBI and the DEA to the more obscure like [=FinCEN=] or the National Security Council. ''Countdown'' extends the roster to a number of foreign agencies. |
| 188 | ** ''The Complex'' introduces the largest and notable private contractors for the US government, which became very common in the years after 9/11, some include: [[PrivateMilitaryContractors The Costellis Group]], Booz-Allen-Hamilton, the CACI, [[ResearchInc RAND Corporation and Lockheed-Martin]]. |
| 189 | * GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: From DG and MJ-12 to equivalents in other countries, like the British PISCES or the Russian UsefulNotes/{{GRU}} SV-8. |
| 190 | * GovernmentConspiracy: Majestic 12. Delta Green itself used to be this. |
| 191 | ** Alternatively, if you believe one Delta Green Agent: "We're the government conspiracy. Those guys are just the government". |
| 192 | ** PISCES can be considered a variation as well [[spoiler:considering that it's been taken over wholesale by the Shan.]] |
| 193 | * GreaterScopeVillain: [[GodOfEvil Nyarlathotep]] inspired and guided the creations of the Cult of Transcendence, the Fate, the Sowers and Karotechia, but mostly stays in the background and leaves the affairs of the cults to his subordinates. |
| 194 | * TheGreys: The high-tech aliens cutting secret deals with MJ-12 for fun and profit. Of course, [[spoiler:they are not what they seem: they are, in essence, vehicles of the Mi-Go to interact with and understand, as closely as Mi-Go can understand, human perception, reality, and thought.]] |
| 195 | * GroinAttack: The Skoptsi sect in Russia does this to themselves -- all members of the cult must undergo castration. |
| 196 | * GroundhogDayLoop: In Carcosa-related material, Repeaters are caught in repeating patterns of their former life. An author might write and drink and never leave their room unless prodded by someone else. A bellhop might man a front desk for eternity. Until someone comes in contact with them, it is likely they perform the same actions over and over again. To them, time has ceased counting. |
| 197 | * GutFeeling: The reason the mi-go are so interested in humans is our unnerving (to them) capability to extrapolate accurate answers with little information and no clear logical chain of thought. |
| 198 | * HalfHumanHybrid: |
| 199 | ** Delta Green puts its own spin on the classic Lovecraftian Deep One hybrids, ghoul changelings, and the spawn of Yog-Sothoth. |
| 200 | ** The [[InterspeciesRomance peculiar ancestry]] of the Jermyn family in Great Britain drew the attention of the Karotechia, whose Project PARSIFAL searched for its origins [[DarkestAfrica somewhere]] in the Belgian Congo and legends of a lost city of [[FrazettaMan "white apes"]] there. Since then, reports have emerged of their appearances on battlefields in Angola, Biafra, Congo, Rhodesia, and various African conflicts. |
| 201 | ** The New Life Fertility company uses [[DesignerBabies in vitro fertilization treatments]] as a cover for genetically engineering spawn of Shub-Niggurath. New Life children are of unnaturally healthy stock but [[TrueBreedingHybrid can only interbreed]]—producing offspring with [[HellishPupils distinctive]] [[FamilyEyeResemblance familial eyes]]. |
| 202 | * TheHandler: So common that Delta Green's version of YouAllMeetInAnInn is "You are all called into the briefing by a handler". |
| 203 | ** Intelligence Case Officer is one of the professions for the [=PCs=], you are the Handler of someone else. |
| 204 | * HauntedHouse: The scenario ''Music from a Darkened Room'' features one. |
| 205 | * HeKnowsTooMuch: |
| 206 | ** Soon after Axel and Rudella Dasinger had private genetic testing done and discovered how different the New Life children (including their own descendants) were, during a vacation to the Bahamas, both slipped on a steep slope and fell to their deaths. At least, that was what Mary Dasinger and her siblings reported to the authorities. |
| 207 | * HiddenElfVillage: |
| 208 | ** The K'n-Yani are committed to total paranoid isolation, and Delta Green has not risked altering that attitude. |
| 209 | ** Carcosa inhabitants are treated as such as well, either content to remain in their decaying delusions forever, such as some K'n-yani, to trying to hunt down those who want to return to something resembling reality. |
| 210 | * HiddenInPlainSight: The oldest and most significant Deep One colony in North America was founded in 1555 by an infected offshoot of the Haida of the Pacific Northwest. It remains hidden on Black Cod Island, Alaska, in plain sight, as a model 'American-Indian' settlement. |
| 211 | * HiveCasteSystem: The mi-gos are divided into three castes: warriors, workers, and scientists. |
| 212 | * HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: During the 1960s in Vietnam the CIA had the idea of arming the Tcho-Tcho to fight the communists, not unlike the Hmong, the Yao or the Montagnards. Despite the Tcho-Tchos' rabid hatred of the communists, Delta Green and the Green Berets advised the CIA against arming the despicable, sadistic cannibals. Their warning was ignored. The CIA never admitted it had made a mistake with the Tcho-Tchos, even after it became obvious that the tribesmen were more interested in killing and eating their Hmong, Yao and Montagnard neighbours than they were in fighting the communists. In 1969, the Tcho-Tcho begin to turn on the Americans, luring them into ambushes and stew pots. |
| 213 | * HumanSacrifice: Karotechia Project SCHWARZES WASSER involves sacrificing 'test subjects' from Auschwitz and Treblinka to make alliance with the Deep Ones. |
| 214 | * HumansAreBastards: One of the major themes that contribute to be DarkerAndEdgier than most TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu supplements. Delta Green does not only fight monsters, it has also to deal with utterly amoral and evil humans that harvest the powers of the unnatural for their own sake, while Delta Green itself has to do horrible things to make humanity safe. |
| 215 | * HumansAreSpecial: An interesting example [[CosmicHorrorStory considering the genre]], but the humans are the only species that the mi-go discovered that has a "Epistemically Diploid" mind, that is, it's both rational and irrational, allowing to humans make guesses that do not fit a logical extrapolation from theoretical models, and often is that those irrational leaps of logics are '''''correct''''', and this is utterly ''unnerving'' to the mi-go. Of course, [[CosmicHorrorStory considering the genre]], this means that the mi-go will create a large network to brutally study and experiment humans including [[AndIMustScream extracting their brains while they are kept alive]]. |
| 216 | * HumanSubspecies: The ghostly, subterranean K'n-Yani seem to be an offshoot or ancestor of humanity. The Tcho-Tchos appear to be a branch of humanity genetically corrupted by the unnatural. New Life children, created using the milk of Shub-Niggurath, are effectively a new species, as their DNA is no longer compatible with human DNA for purposes of procreation. |
| 217 | * HungryJungle: The second half of Operation ALONSO is set in the Rừng Sác, an immense mangrove swamp southeast of Saigon. The crust breaks under your boots, churning up liquid mud. Spindly trees stretch above head height; groves of bamboo suddenly block movement and sunlight. Everywhere, dead or alive, carries the stench of rot and salt. Slime covers the tree trunks. Mosquitoes and flies whine in great clouds; red ants and scorpions fester in logs and puddles or drop from trees overhead. Occasionally a king cobra rears its hood, or a crocodile grunts and splashes. |
| 218 | * IAteWhat: The antagonist of CONTROLCOPY will actively attempt to trick the [=PCs=] into eating human flesh, potentially leading to this reaction. |
| 219 | * IDidWhatIHadToDo: When the world falls away and the moment comes for violence, Delta Green agents can't afford to hesitate. Emergencies require split-second calls of questionable morality that may haunt agents for the rest of their lives. Sacrificing one innocent life for the survival of humanity might be an easier transaction for some than for others. |
| 220 | * TheIlluminati: The Cult of Transcendence is Delta Green's version of the Illuminati. A powerful conspiracy formed by wealthy and powerful individuals that worship Nyarlathotep and attempt to transform humanity into a proper mythos race by corrupting human society. Subverted in that historically, their attempts at running the world from the shadows failed miserably (described by one of the writers as being "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight"), and in the present they collapse under their own weight due to the leaders being utterly divorced from concern over humanity, and everyone else having severe ChronicBackstabbingDisorder. |
| 221 | * ImmortalityInducer: As long as a worm inhabits a Disciple of the Worm, the host will not age a single day and will exhibit extraordinary powers of healing and resistance to shock and trauma. |
| 222 | * TheImmune: While Russian diseases decimated the Aleut and Tlingit peoples, it had no effect on the inhuman Black Cod. By the time America gained possession of Alaska in the 1860s, the Black Cod were the only tribe in the area that had not been decimated by disease, slavery or violence. No one except the Black Cod themselves know for certain why they were spared the horrors which ravaged Native American cultures. |
| 223 | * InfectiousInsanity: |
| 224 | ** One of the plots of MJ-12's Project OUTLOOK is to create a "psychological virus", a way of causing a cascading spiral of riots and unrest through manipulation of the media. |
| 225 | ** [[spoiler:Hastur. Unlike vanilla ''Call of Cthulhu'', Hastur is not a God or Old One, but an infectious and pervasive force of decay. Knowing about Hastur or its related mythos trappings allows such decay to happen on a person's psyche, and "infected" people will become a vector in spreading Hastur's influence. Even worse is that it can infect ''places'' too, which also become [[AlienGeometries "insane" in their own way]]. Both places and people can infect each other and vice-versa, until they are affected enough and get pulled to Carcosa. In ''Impossible Landscapes'' it's reflected by the Corruption mechanic.]] |
| 226 | * InstitutionalAllegianceConcealment: |
| 227 | ** Technically Delta Green agents aren't employed by Delta Green proper but they work for the FBI, CIA, DEA, CDC and other agencies, the real question is if they are Delta Green agents undercover in the government, or government agents that secretly work for Delta Green. But sometimes Delta Green can provide them cover of another agency if deemed necessary.[[note]]Some ops recommend (according to notes) to be careful when masquerading as agents/officers from other law enforcement forces since one wrong move can break their cover.[[/note]] |
| 228 | ** NRO Delta agents are employees of the National Reconnaissance Office as a cover, but since the NRO [[NoSuchAgency doesn't officially exist]], they are [[TheSpook institutionally invisible]] and have double cover to hide their allegiance to MJ-12. |
| 229 | ** In some DG (or other agencies like PISCES or [=SV8=]) missions, one of the many ways to infiltrate a place to get evidence of Mythos involvement with criminals, terrorists and other shady persons is to use the cover of a law enforcement/government investigation or use pro-DG assets to help them get close to a target. |
| 230 | * InterfaceScrew: The ''Impossible Landscapes'' campaign book starts as any other, but as you progress things start getting... strange. In the first few chapters you start to see strange annotations, words circled to form an anagram and ominous notes for the reader. As you go through the chapters, you start to see more deranged art, certain words have their font changed, anything related to the King in Yellow features a completely surrealist layout compared to mundane scenes with the standard layout, and by later chapters the book gets positively colorful and harder to read. |
| 231 | ** The stat block for [=CptnSnShn=] in ''The Labyrinth'' is another, with their numerical states replaced by words. [[spoiler: Fittingly enough, [=CptnSnShn=] is a Phantom of Truth, and her stats are taken from the climactic revelation of ''The King In Yellow'']] |
| 232 | * InterserviceRivalry: All the time between the various real-world agencies. Delta Green and MJ-12 used to have this in the short period where both officially worked for the US government. The 2016 edition features ''two'' Delta Greens; the Special Access Program, a reactivated, officially sanctioned version, and "the Cowboys", DG Agents who refused to come in from the cold and thus operate as vigilantes. The 2016 edition allows players using Cowboys to treat the Program as Delta Green did the NRO. |
| 233 | * InvadingRefugees: The Greys are these. [[spoiler: They are actually not, this is a InvokedTrope by the mi-go. They deliberately made the Greys hide the fact they are InvadingRefugees so when MAJESTIC or Delta Green discovered that deception, they wouldn't look for the real one: That the Greys are disguises of the mi-go, who have their own agenda.]] |
| 234 | * IstanbulNotConstantinople: Warren Island in Alaska, which has no permanent resident population in real life, is renamed Black Cod Island and depicted as home to a secret community of Deep One hybrids. |
| 235 | * JudgeJuryAndExecutioner: The Star Council intervenes in a case where DG-aligned units are investigated either to assess responsibility for something that went wrong or to assign responsibility in case a DG operation goes bad. In some instances, they can recommend to liquidate the unit or to execute its personnel to ensure that there are no double agents or alien/paranormal infiltrators. The players ''are'' the council in the scenario ''The Star Chamber''. |
| 236 | * JustBeforeTheEnd: On some level, everyone knows that there is not much time left for humanity. [[spoiler:This is why the mi-go created the Grey deception: to extract as much information as possible from humans before our time runs out.]] |
| 237 | * KeepingTheEnemyClose: The Program and March Industries have this dynamic. March is formed by ex-Majestic personnel, researchers, technology and even some old members from MJ-12's steering committee. They are the only one that can provide high-level research for Delta Green and cannot be disbanded without blowing their own cover, and at the same time March abuse that position to slowly regain their lost power. Both organizations keep each other at bay. |
| 238 | * KeystoneArmy: |
| 239 | ** The Fate collapses when Stephen Alzis vanished, collapsing into infighting and being targeted by Delta Green once they showed cracks in their apparent invincibility. |
| 240 | ** The Deep Ones of Black Cod Island will abandon land entirely if the Player manages to kill their progenitor and leader, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast He-Who-Swims-With-Corpses]], a [[Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth Dagon]] expy. |
| 241 | * KillAndReplace: Unknown to everyone except perhaps Stephen Alzis, Robert Hubert is actually a former Karotechia member, SS-Hauptscharführer Dieter Scheel, who drowned and replaced the real Hubert in 1960. |
| 242 | * KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: On 22 May 1948, Secretary of Defense (and high-ranking member of MAJESTIC) James Forrestal committed suicide by jumping from the 16th-story window of his room at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In reality, Forrestal was assassinated because he was planning to go public with what he knew about the Roswell crash. |
| 243 | * KillerCop: Mark K'amahl, the police chief of the Deep One hybrid colony of Black Cod Island, has a completely schizophrenic relationship with the law, capable of reciting the law chapter and verse while simultaneously violating it. A zealous follower of the inhuman God of the Black Cod people, he takes pleasure in every manner of atrocity serving that dedication: rape, murder and cannibalism. |
| 244 | * KnightInSourArmor: Delta Green and its agents are this, the [[CrapsackWorld world absolutes sucks]], HumansAreBastards, the apocalypse is unstoppable and they have to do terrible things in their war against the Unnatural. Doesn't prevent Delta Green from trying. |
| 245 | * KnightTemplar: Delta Green agents used to go too far in their quest to both protect the American populace from the supernatural and keep the existence of the latter (and itself) a secret, particularly in the Fairfield era. Some still do. In the words of one DG agent, "we do the horrific to prevent the apocalyptic". Later in that story, the same agent deliberately, and (we are led to believe) needfully, shoots a baby. |
| 246 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: |
| 247 | ** The Deep Ones. In the original sourcebook, it's noted that DG invested much of its efforts from its founding in the wake of Innsmouth until after World War II to hunting down Deep One colonies. As such, the vast majority of them have determined the surface world is now more trouble than it's worth, and only very isolated enclaves remain on the surface. |
| 248 | ** [[spoiler: The creators have alluded to this being the fate of the mi-go; they, through the Greys, stopped working with Majestic-12 around the turn of the millennium.]] |
| 249 | * LegacyCharacter: |
| 250 | ** [[spoiler: Agent ALPHONSE. Originally that was the role of Joseph Camp, organizer of the Delta Green conspiracy. After his death, Donald Poe, a.k.a Agent CHARLIE found the A-Cell's data and resources and assumed the mantle of Agent ALPHONSE. He is still Agent CHARLIE as well, presenting himself in person as CHARLIE and creating the illusion of a never-seen ALPHONSE. The name "Alphonse" is also an homage to Captain Alphonse Dumars, one of the few officers of the ONI's Parapsychology, Paranormal, and Psychic Phenomena Desk before the Innsmouth raid, writer of the PUZZLEBOX after-action report and early Delta Green leader.]] |
| 251 | ** There will always be a [=CptnSnshn=]; if the current one is killed, the newest to be induced into the Lonely suddenly starts acting as if they always were [=CptnSnshn=], and within a few days they absorb and learn all the knowledge of previous [=CptnSnshn=] and the cycle will begin anew. While the connection with Carcosa can be temporarily severed, it's only temporary, as ''lonely people will always exist''. The Lonely, and [=CptnSnshn=], can't be beaten. |
| 252 | * LifeDrinker: Each year, Mary Dasinger performs the Ageless Banquet ritual, which involves sacrificing and consuming a human victim. As a result, Mary has stopped aging and will remain 27 years old as long as she continues using the ritual annually. |
| 253 | * LonersAreFreaks: The Lonely, a collection of unaffiliated loners and incels who are organized through the internet by a mysterious figure known as "[=CptnSnshn=]" (Captain Sunshine). [=CptnSnshn=] has an uncanny ability to find isolated people in nearly any subculture and reinforce and amplify their loneliness and resentment, and their abilities have only grown stronger with the rise of the internet. [[spoiler:The many persons that become [=CptnSnshn=] are actually a Phantom of Truth: an avatar of the King in Yellow, representing the entropy and destruction of social relations.]] As [=CptnSnshn=] keeps corrupting them more and more, they tend to either disappear out of existence or become [[MadBomber mad bombers]] or [[SpreeKiller mass shooters]]. The adventure even posits ''why'' those who are about to become The Lonely (or ''are'' already Lonely) are due to some special kind of freakiness that causes most normal humans to shun and belittle them. |
| 254 | * LovecraftLite: Considering the [=PCs=] are law enforcement, special forces or intelligence agents, and Delta Green is a secret organization dedicated to fighting the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos, this can go either way depending on the [[GameMaster Handler]]: the world is either inevitably doomed no matter what our Agents do and the Eldritch Gods will enslave humanity, and all Delta Green can do is delay the inevitable, or Delta Green can, and will, ensure humanity survives through the eons to fill prophecies of them lasting into the far future. |
| 255 | * TheMafia: The Fate is New York City's magic-using organized crime cartel. |
| 256 | * TheMafiya: The Tadjbegskye Bratva, a Russian mafia ''bratva'' created by veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war who accidentally discovered Leng during an operation. |
| 257 | * MageSpecies: Deep Ones are adept at what some call hypergeometric principles, and by human standards they are powerful spellcasters. To them, magic is used like man uses speed, strength, agility or any inherent biological trait. It is a genetic tool like any other. |
| 258 | * MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Victims captured and sacrificed by the Deep One hybrids of Black Cod Island are always tourists, someone snatched from a hunting trip, misplaced in a walk in the woods, or snatched from open rainforests. Since deaths from exposure are common, and often no remains are found for as much as a decade or more, these disappearances are not considered at all unusual and have never aroused local suspicion. |
| 259 | * MalevolentMutilation: |
| 260 | ** The Đạo Sẫm believe that the truth of the world is suffering, death, shame and pain: their Phật Sẫm (Black Buddha) strips away lies by revealing this truth. Betrayal, torture, ritual flensing and self-mutilation are acts of worship. |
| 261 | ** Cultists of the Skotpsi sect undergo a process of castration. Ouch. |
| 262 | * TheManBehindTheMan: Majestic-12 is begin manipulated by the Greys to do their bidding [[spoiler:which in turn are remote-controlled disguises of the mi-go]]. |
| 263 | ** Many of Delta Green's cult enemies are directed in some way by [[spoiler: Nyarlathotep. The Karotechia's "ascended Hitler", the Fate's leader Stephen Alzis, and the Sower's Azazel are all avatars of Nyarlathotep. The Cult of Transcendence has multiple Nyarlathotep avatars that various branches believe in. It is unclear that even the avatars themselves are aware of the others' activities or are acting in concert, and the cults themselves certainly do not get along.]] |
| 264 | * MarionetteMotion: Marionettes are life-sized, human-shaped marionettes, hung from strings that move their limbs in a herky-jerky gait. |
| 265 | * TheMasquerade: |
| 266 | ** Delta Green fights to keep the existence of the paranormal a secret from the public at large, why? Because the unnatural is ''real'' and it ''kills''. The 2016 edition states that part of the job is already done, even in the world of the internet and smartphones: Most manifestations are very rare to begin with, occur in private or isolated places, and have the tendency to kill most if not all potential witnesses; society is naturally skeptic about anything supernatural and Delta Green itself suppress the rest, even if involves [[HeKnowsTooMuch ''neutralizing'' innocents.]] |
| 267 | ** The ghouls also have their own reasons to maintain the Masquerade. While they can disguise among humans and have mastery of hypergeometry, they are outnumbered by far. The [=DeMonte=] clan, based in New Orleans, was almost wiped out by Delta Green when they were discovered. |
| 268 | ** PISCES (as MI-13) initially maintained the masquerade so their enemies couldn't figure out about the paranormal techniques used against them, later [[spoiler:that they were taken over by the [[PuppeteerParasite Shan]] which control key parts of the PISCES, the UK Intelligence Community and the British Military-Industrial complex. The Shan want self-preservation first and foremost, maintaining a Masquerade prevents from people looking deeper into the unnatural world and discovering about them.]] |
| 269 | ** The mi-go want to harvest and study the human brain's special abilities, but they don't want humanity to become aware of their schemings. [[spoiler:That's why they created the Greys; they knew Delta Green or Majestic-12 would suppress their existence from the public, so they have an extra layer to disguise their operations.]] |
| 270 | * MasterOfIllusion: Arvan Chilton, the antagonist of CONTROLCOPY, is a hedonistic and impulsive serial killer who uses a mythos ritual to control the appearances of people and objects, disguising his weapons and crimes. |
| 271 | * MeaningfulName: The Black Cod people are named after ''Anoplopoma fimbria'', a species of fish sometimes called ''black cod'' or ''butterfish'' in the US and Canada. Many of the fish's traits are similar to the Black Cod people: it is an opportunistic feeder, preys on its fellow fish, is extremely long-lived, and can survive at great depths. |
| 272 | * TheMenInBlack: Delta Green used to be this until it was disbanded by the government. NRO Delta is MAJESTIC's Men in Black division, suppressing the knowledge of aliens and paranormal, as well fighting MJ-12’s enemies. Add to the list some international counterparts in the form of PISCES and [[UsefulNotes/{{GRU}} GRU SV-8]]. At times, the setting gets crowded with Men In Black trying to intimidate each other. |
| 273 | * MindScrew: The Hastur Mythos and its adventures, combining with SurrealHorror. Its adventures take on a much more surrealistic flavour compared to 'mainline' Delta Green: instead of fighting R'lyeh cultists and Mi-Go horrors, you're fighting time-looped ghosts speaking gibberish, hollowed-out marionettes, and trying to stop a surrealistic nightmare vision of New York that is made of billions of skyscrapers falling into Carcosa and collapsing under its own weight as insane creatures from multiple dimensions fight, fuck, and flee in countless spontaneous plays. |
| 274 | -->It’s horrific when an unnatural tome reveals the secrets of the universe; it’s surreal horror when that book written in 1611 contains a description of you down to the smallest details, including the fact that you’re reading that book right now. |
| 275 | * TheMole: [[spoiler:The Outlaw agent James Derringer is one, having his body begin taken over by a Yithian.]] |
| 276 | * MoleInCharge: |
| 277 | ** [[spoiler:Gavin Ross, the director of Project GARNET (MJ-2), MJ-12's counterintelligence division, recruits Forrest James, a.k.a Agent DARREN, to take down Majestic-12 from inside during the events of the novel ''Through A Glass Darkly''. After some interesting series of events Gavin Ross secretly ends up as Agent ADAM of Delta Green after he's killed in a Karotechia ambush accidentally staged by Forrest and later Forrest James becomes the Director of Majestic-12 itself. This makes it easier to unite both organizations into the Program.]] |
| 278 | * MonsterClown: There's a mysterious child-sized figure wearing a clown mask in ''Impossible Landscapes''. [[spoiler:It represents the King in Yellow.]] |
| 279 | * MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: |
| 280 | ** "Dr." Olaf Bittereich of the Karotechia. He is not even a real doctor, but a con man pretending to be "medium" who was recruited into the Karotechia to help with research. He accidentally stumbled into a spell to contact "those beyond", on the activation he was contacted by the spirits of great German heroes and finally the Führer himself, now ascended as one of the [[UsefulNotes/HelenaBlavatsky Enlightened Masters]]. He commanded Bittereich to use the remnants of the Karotechia to start the FourthReich and elevate the aryans into an "ascended" race. |
| 281 | ** Dr. Gunter Frank is a legit scientist and doctor compared to Bittereich, but no less evil. He is a technological necromancer, behind the Karotechia's "Resuscitated Casualties" program. He transferred his consciousness to new body in order to cheat death, but made him sensitive to high temperatures, similarly to [[Literature/CoolAir Dr. Muñoz]], staying in a cold refrigerated laboratory doing terrible and cruel experiments. |
| 282 | * MotiveDecay: What leads to Majestic-12's demise; some elements inside it started to see that MJ-12 degenerated into a quasi-CargoCult that worshipped Grey technology for its own sake. Eventually those who thought like that worked to take down Majestic from the inside (such as Gavin Ross) with the help of Delta Green and turned into The Program. |
| 283 | * MultipleIdentityIDs: There are some rules on how to acquire or forge passports and other [=IDs=]. |
| 284 | * MysteriousInformant: The Director of Phenomen-X, Frank Carincola, is frequently contacted by a mysterious informant from what he believes is "The Group", a secret US Government agency that hides the paranormal from the public, which points the crew into the direction of the supernatural. [[spoiler:In fact, the informant is actually from Majestic-12 ''and'' Delta Green. MJ-12 sets Phenomen-X against Delta Green in attempts to expose DG and difficult their operations, while Delta Green uses Phenomen-X as a CanaryInACoalMine.]] |
| 285 | * MysteriousStranger: The Handler is recommended to make Stephen Alzis be this, sometimes appearing in StealthHiBye and giving the [=PCs=] some advice or support while keeping the reasons for it mysterious. |
| 286 | ** The King in Yellow in Carcosa. |
| 287 | * NaziHunter: Any Agent in an operation against the Karotechia will be this. One particular example in the backstory is Operation SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY, where Delta Green went to South America track down and assassinate former Karotechia members, UsefulNotes/{{Mossad}} style. |
| 288 | * NightOfTheLivingMooks: On 21 December 1944, the Karotechia perfected a method for reviving the dead, and subsequently drove truckloads of 'resuscitated casualties' to the Eastern Front. |
| 289 | * NoSuchAgency: |
| 290 | ** Delta Green started off as an official one. Now it exists in two forms; as a highly classified and secret interservice program, and as an unauthorized, unofficial conspiracy. The 2016 brought Delta Green back as an "official" organization nicknamed "The Program". |
| 291 | ** MAJESTIC-12 is a bit more "official" then DG, with proper government recognition, although no oversight. |
| 292 | ** The original sourcebook classifies the real-life intelligence agency [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office National Reconnaissance Office]] as one, at the time of the writing (1996) the US government neither denied or confirmed the existence of the NRO and most of the operations that the NRO were off the books, because of that the NRO runs the "NRO section DELTA", a black ops assassination group used by MAJESTIC-12 as their cleanup, coverup and wetwork division. As HistoryMarchesOn, most details about NRO were declassified and revealed, this became a DiscreditedTrope and in the 2017 edition the NRO was DemotedToExtra. |
| 293 | ** Some other foreign organizations similar to Delta Green include: M-EPIC of Canada, PISCES of the United Kingdom and GRU SV-8. |
| 294 | * NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: |
| 295 | ** The Cult of Transcendence, for all its power and resources, falls prey into this: the Masters are beyond human sanity and can't even properly communicate, while the Bishops and Acolytes are suffering from ChronicBackstabbingDisorder--according to the creators the Cult is essentially "Mythos Ponzi Scheme" without a real unified goal. In the new edition of the game, the Cult imploded on its own weight as those internal problems became too big to manage. |
| 296 | ** Majestic's Steering Committee had always a few internal divisions over whether the accord with the Greys was beneficial or not. These divisions became extremely prevalent during the Delta Green-[=MJ12=] secret war. It took one rogue element ([[spoiler:counterintelligence director Gavin Ross]]) and a bit of luck (with the 9/11 attacks) to take Majestic down. |
| 297 | * NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist: Some members of Majestic-12 (and later March Industries) are just there to get Grey technology, dumb it down for human use and sell for major intelligence and defense community contracts. |
| 298 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: It is easy to assume there is something mentally wrong with Black Cod people at first glance. To most whites unfamiliar with the them, they appear mildly retarded. This is a dangerous misapprehension: these Deep One hybrids are stronger, smarter and faster than the human norm, and capable of incredible feats of language, math and science. |
| 299 | * OddlySmallOrganization: |
| 300 | ** The Cowboy and Outlaw incarnations of Delta Green are divided in cells going from A to Z, each one with 3 agents each (With their codenames starting their Cell's letter), this means they have 78 full-time members active all the times. However, A-Cell understand this, as they employ "friendlies" which are contacts that know about the unnatural and help Delta Green, most of the time they are contacted when the conspiracy needs them and some are ''de facto'' agents members of a cell. |
| 301 | ** Karotechia itself is formed by three men; however, they managed to covertly achieve control of ODESSA (a secret organization of escaped nazis) and to employ neo-Nazis, white supremacists, anti-zionist terrorists, mercenary, and criminal groups, collectively referred as the ''Bauern'' ([[{{Mooks}} Pawns]]), to work for them. They also have ''Die Untoten'' ("The Living Dead"), old deceased Nazis and war criminals back to life to join their ranks. |
| 302 | ** While The Program is much bigger, more organized and well-funded, its still comparatively small compared to other U.S agencies or even to fictional counterparts. They do try to make themselves look they are bigger then they are for their enemies and their own agents: |
| 303 | --> "A new Agent, on the other hand, may think the Program is at least as substantial as the DEA or the U.S. Marshals Service, only to realize, gradually, that it’s a fraction of their size." |
| 304 | * OlderThanTheyLook: The 134-year-old Arthur J. Macready appears to be only in his mid-sixties, covered in filth and sputtering expletives and odd, guttural chants. |
| 305 | * TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness: The setting is filled with these: |
| 306 | ** A-Cell is this for cowboy Delta Green. |
| 307 | ** The 9895 [=ExComm=] (Executive Committee), the leadership of Delta Green from 1947 to 1970, many of them still kept active after Delta Green was disbanded, such as Major General Fairfield and Dr. Joseph Camp (future Agent ALPHONSE). |
| 308 | ** Majestic-12's Steering Committee, formed by 12 people each one a director of the 12 sub-projects. |
| 309 | ** The Transcended Masters, leaders of the Cult of Transcendence and aswering only to Nyarlathotep itself. |
| 310 | ** The Program's Board of Directors. |
| 311 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: While Parapsychology, Paranormal, and Psychic Phenomena Desk remained its official designation, soon its members began to refer to it by its UsefulNotes/{{OSS}} codename: DELTA GREEN. |
| 312 | * OurDemonsAreDifferent: The demons of the ''Literature/ArsGoetia'' appear as people with lives, families, history and entirely mundane existences (except when summoned by the Preliminary Invocation of Primeumaton). They may act strange, have access to unnatural information and do supernatural things, but these things are entirely normal to them. They simply stitch them in and out of their daily lives. If they are incarcerated or killed, someone else takes their role with identical effect. |
| 313 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: Xin (better known as Lloigor) manipulate local matter, often along pre-existing psychic blueprints, to create bodily shells. In China, Wales and elsewhere, the shell most often takes the form of a dragon or enormous serpent, the lung-xin. |
| 314 | * OurZombiesAreDifferent: Many unnatural formulae can restore a corpse to a semblance of life. All are called zombies but may have very different features. |
| 315 | * ParanormalInvestigation: The whole point of the game and the organization. WordOfGod is that one of the initial objectives of the setting was a way to justify why a bunch of different individuals in a game of ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' would band together to investigate the unnatural when they should be [[GenreSavvy running away]]. |
| 316 | * PersonalHorror: The Bond and Sanity mechanics bring this, as Agents will start slowly burning their sanity and becoming stressed as they lose relations with the external world and isolate themselves from friends and family as their lives fall apart. |
| 317 | * PintsizedPowerhouse: Old Mary appears ancient and small, but is far from frail. Her body, which was wracked with various genetic changes during UsefulNotes/JohnAdams' Presidency, is far along the spectrum to pure Deep One. Beneath her cassock, her body is a scaled and abscess-covered monstrosity capable of great feats of strength. |
| 318 | * PlaceBeyondTime: The Construct, realm of the Great Race of Yith, is described as an edifice of trembling boulders, which contains all of spacetime inside it. All actions and processes are shifts and cracks in the Construct. All living things, civilisations, biomes, life and order, stars and planets, all objects in the observable universe, are merely expressions and changes in these 'stones'. |
| 319 | * PoliceBrutality: |
| 320 | ** If the officers in the Chicago Police Department's 11th District think that you are not fully cooperating with them, you receive a 'fair trial' in the basement: beatings with phone books and truncheons, the water cure for poor memory, and a car battery to spark civic pride. You can 'appeal' to the rats in the cellar; manacled wrongdoers often make a full confession to them. Inside the tunnels is the 'court of final appeal' – the hyperdimensional realm of Nyogtha. |
| 321 | ** Headed (until 6 May 1968) by the implacably anti-Communist General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the Republic of Vietnam National Police (also called 'Võ Tánh Gang') show flashes of excellence and steady cruelty. |
| 322 | * PostModernism: ''Impossible Landscapes'' is half-SurrealHorror half-this: [[spoiler:the [[PlayerCharacter Agents]] are unwitting actors in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_(role-playing_games) cosmic play]] directed by [[GameMaster a force beyond their comprehension]], featuring several people who are [[NonPlayerCharacter little more than fixed patterns of behaviour except while interacting with said Agents]]. And [[NoticingTheFourthWall they can learn this horrible truth.]] Horror roleplaying meets ''Theatre/RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead'', in a nutshell.]] |
| 323 | * PretentiousLatinMotto: Delta Green's in-universe unofficial motto that shows in their logo is ''Scientia mors est'', [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow "Knowledge is death"]]. Meanwhile, NRO Delta's is ''Supra et Ultra'', "Above and Beyond". |
| 324 | * PrivateMilitaryContractors: ''The Complex'' sourcebook offers the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Canopy Constellis Group]]'', a real-life conglomerate which includes [=PMC=] subsidiaries such as Academi (Former Blackwater) and Triple Canopy, as possible employer for the [=PCs=]. However, since the writers [[ShownTheirWork did their research]], they are a more realistic and accurate version of this trope. |
| 325 | ** The sourcebook also offers [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_intelligence_agency Private Intelligence Agencies]] such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CACI Consolidated Analysis Center]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton Booz Allen Hamilton]] (the same which employed infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden). |
| 326 | * ProperlyParanoid: By 1789, with France engulfed in revolutionary chaos, the [=DeMonte=] clan saw that the perfect storm was brewing in Saint-Domingue, and a second slave rebellion like François Mackandal's would be a bloodbath; Saint-Domingue's independence from France would spell the end of the colony. The other whites gleefully bought out the [=DeMontes'=] holdings, seeing them as too cowardly to fight the 'sub-human' blacks. On 22 August 1792, two years after the last [=DeMonte=] left for New Orleans, the great slave rebellion broke out. After twelve years, the white colonists of Saint-Domingue were destroyed, and the [=DeMontes=] had the last laugh. |
| 327 | * PsychicPowers: There are a few optional rules for those; PISCES is the most knowledgeable about the subject. |
| 328 | * PsychoForHire: Adolph Lepus. |
| 329 | * PunchClockVillain: Most of the non-medical staff employed by New Life Fertility know nothing of the company's true nature as a cult of Shub-Niggurath and are not initiates into the cult. A few of them would be outraged if they knew the truth about their employers. |
| 330 | * PuppeteerParasite: The Shan, of course. |
| 331 | ** The mi-go can assert mental control over anyone infected with protomatter; however, ''Convergence'' notes they tend not to use this ability. |
| 332 | * PyrrhicVictory: This is the absolute, insanely-optimistic, ridiculously-unlikely ''best'' outcome of humanity's struggle. The more likely outcomes [[ApocalypseHow are]] [[EarthShatteringKaboom much]] [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt worse]]. |
| 333 | * RailRoading: Something of an InUniverse example in ''Impossible Landscapes'': [[spoiler:the Agents are essentially being railroaded by the King in Yellow. This is very clear in the third part of the campaign where not matter where you run or hide, it will ''always'' lead to Hotel Brodalbin.]] |
| 334 | * RashomonStyle: The scenario ''The Star Chamber'' involves the players interviewing (and playing!) another cast of [=PCs=] with the objective of deciding who was at the fault for causing the failure of an operation. The book even states: ''"It’s Film/{{Rashomon}} with anti-gods and automatic weapons."'' |
| 335 | * RealityIsOutToLunch: Hastur's entropic influence breaks down human perception of reality, and on a quantum level reorganises (or disorganises) the reality around them. Reality becomes relative to the observer: buildings shift, paintings change, lights flicker, statues mutate and time flows differently in the presence of those touched by Hastur. |
| 336 | * RealityWarper: The King in Yellow appears to bend, warp, and reshape reality at its whim. At the King's greatest potency, reality seems to shudder and slide away from it. Anything observed is under the control of this entity, warping and changing at its will. When the King is near, nothing is impossible. There is effectively no limit to what or how this ability may affect reality except observation. |
| 337 | * ReallyGetsAround: Joe Kátl's weakness is human women. He spends tens of thousands of dollars on whores from all over Alaska, even flying some in for his pleasure. So far this has remained outside the view of the Black Cod elders, but his luck is rapidly dwindling. Eventually, he will impregnate one of these Xaat'aa (humans) and produce something monstrous. |
| 338 | * ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: The Transcendent masters since they are barely human anymore and more like a unnatural creature. One of them is actually really 700 years old. |
| 339 | * RedRightHand: Second-generation New Life children are human-like, and only their eyes, with horizontal slits for pupils, betray their monstrous origins. |
| 340 | * RenegadeSplinterFaction: Following their disbandment, Delta Green for the U.S. government. However, their ruthless actions are partly justified. |
| 341 | ** In the new setting, after 2001, Delta Green successfully dismantled MAJESTIC-12 and its remnants were fused into a new, unified and official Delta Green. Some old members of DG weren't very happy with this and decided to form its own faction, that also calls itself Delta Green. The "official" Delta Green is called "The Program" and the "renegade" is called "The Outlaws". |
| 342 | * ReptilianConspiracy: A [[SnakePeople serpent-man]] that eats a corpse can take the appearance of the devoured human. Many Valusian sorcerers can transform rapidly between their native form and any of a dozen previously consumed human forms. They have masqueraded undetected as humans for long periods of time, even interacting with humans in the modern age, and are one of the most insidious threats to Delta Green. |
| 343 | * ResearchInc: March Technologies, Inc. Originally started as a front company for MAJESTIC for advanced research, but after their collapse many ex-MAJESTIC personnel went to work at March (Including four former members of the Steering Committee). The Program can't shut down March since it's a major part of the Military-Industrial Complex and has rely on March for research. |
| 344 | ** The real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation RAND Corporation]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin Lockheed Martin]] appear as possible options of employers for player characters. |
| 345 | * LaResistance: |
| 346 | ** The Army of The Third Eye, against the Shan and their puppets [[spoiler:PISCES]]. |
| 347 | ** A real-life example in ''Iconoclasts'' is the Mosul Battalions against ISIS. The players can choose to use them as an asset but certain circumstances can led them to become hostile as well. |
| 348 | * RippedFromTheHeadlines: |
| 349 | ** ''Khali Gati'' was first written in 2015 as a playtest scenario for the new edition's combat rules, is set in the withdraw of American troops from Afghanistan, which started in the end of 2014. |
| 350 | ** ''Iconoclasts'' is set in 2016 in the Battle of Mosul, Northern Iraq during the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The campaign was released in 2021 but the writing started in 2017. |
| 351 | * RockMeAsmodeus: Charnel Dreams is one of the most popular bands in New York City. Their lead singer is the head assassin for the Fate, worships Nyarlathotep, and works Cthulhu Mythos spells into the lyrics of his songs. |
| 352 | * RoswellThatEndsWell: Appears in the background as how MAJESTIC was founded. |
| 353 | * SacrificialLamb: "Friendlies" are those people that support DG's cause but are not fully inducted into the conspiracy. Delta Green maintains a database with full information on each and every one, so that they can be properly "taken care of" if the need arises. |
| 354 | * SanityMeter: Naturally as a TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu game. ''Delta Green'' offers an interesting variation: The 2016 standalone adds ''bonds'' for every agents. Every Agent starts with points in each bond, and can project on their bonds to lower the SAN loss at the coast of the relationship with the bonds. |
| 355 | * SealedEvilInACan: Several examples. Most notable is the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Father of War]], a sentient storm of razor-sharp obsidian shards sealed in an urn... and inadvertently freed by ISIS militants looking for artifacts to loot or destroy. |
| 356 | * SecretGovernmentWarehouse: The ''Green Boxes'' used by Delta Green are this, they can range from self-storage, warehouses, rental lockers to safe houses. The [[http://www.palinola.com/projects/lab/greenbox// Green Box generator]] is an old tool based on this concept. |
| 357 | ** Majestic-12 has a lot of those, dedicated to researching Grey technology, but they are usually within larger U.S Military, CIA, NSA, NRO and March Industries facilities. One of their facilities is located in Main/Area51 (Although not Area 51 itself). |
| 358 | * SecretIdentity: Every Delta Green agent spends most of his or her time working a 'real' job. Many are FBI, CIA or military, but nearly any profession can be found in Delta Green's ranks. |
| 359 | * SecretKeeper: Allen Argasta is the sole human who has been exposed to the terrible true nature of the Black Cod people and has lived, which might lead to a secret exposure of the horrors perpetrated by these Deep One hybrids. |
| 360 | * SecretWar: Between Delta Green and Majestic-12, it (un)officially started in 1994 when General Fairfield uncovered Majestic's Accord with the Greys, he was so disgusted that he threatened to go public with his revelations, he was then murdered by NRO operatives which caused to Delta Green to reorganize into the cell-structure to strike Majestic, at the same time they had a second front with the Karotechia, the Fate and a myriad of Mythos cults. |
| 361 | * SelfMadeOrphan: New Life children have begun to take the reins of wealth and power from their parents, sometimes violently. Seventy-five families with mature New Life children and second-generation offspring have seen one or both parents murdered due to their hostile reaction to their grandchildren's eyes, which betray their inhuman nature. |
| 362 | * SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Part 4 of the Future Perfect scenario can lead into DG agents working to ensure that Hunt (now possessed by the serpent-man) is wiped out to ensure that their presence in the future is no longer a worldwide threat. This, however, requires them to work with a Yithian who's willing to help them out and get them back to the current timeline. |
| 363 | * ShootTheBuilder: All prisoners involved in the construction of the secret room beneath Wewelsburg castle were executed inside the cell in the end. No witnesses remain. |
| 364 | * ShownTheirWork: The bibliography shows a respectable collection of material regarding world history, UFO folklore, and the praxis of the US intelligence community. |
| 365 | * TheSleepless: Michael Keravuori has not slept since the day of his last mission for Delta Green: Operation SKUNKED in Colombia, 1956. Something happened in the jungle that he can't recall no matter how hard he tries. |
| 366 | * SlobsVersusSnobs: |
| 367 | ** ''Fall of Delta Green'' suggests to use this as the relationship between Delta Green and Majestic-12 before the disbandment of Delta Green and Majestic's Accord with the Greys. |
| 368 | -->MAJESTIC sees DELTA GREEN as knuckle-dragging cowboys whose response to the greatest potential advance for humanity since fire is to set it on fire. DELTA GREEN sees MAJESTIC as pointy-headed intellectuals who won’t admit they don’t understand the unnatural until they’ve accidentally blown up a mountain with it, or a city. But only a minority of each group really thinks of the other as anti-American, much less as evil. |
| 369 | ** This is generally how post-reactivation Delta Green depicts the Program vs. the Outlaws - the Program (usually) has full funding and resources, while the Outlaws get by one what they can out of distrust for anyone not an Agent. |
| 370 | * TheSociopath: Adolph Lepus, literally, as he has an antisocial personality disorder. |
| 371 | * SovietSuperscience: GRU SV-8 used to have a number of advanced super-projects, and their ''SMERSH'' rivals had a hypergeometrical machine to make Josef Stalin immortal. |
| 372 | * SpaceIsolationHorror: The whole theme of the scenario ''BLACKSAT''. |
| 373 | * SplitPersonality: It's possible for the Player Characters to develop Dissociative Identity Disorder due excessive trauma from where they feel too much helplessness or from the unnatural. |
| 374 | * TheSpook: Stephan Alzis, NRO Delta agents, Forrest James, Gavin Ross, and potentially the player characters. |
| 375 | * SpyFiction: Stale beer flavored. Players are (at their most legit) agents of an inter-agency task group that survives mainly by hiding within the byzantine confluence of the United States's military, law enforcement, and intelligence arms; obligated to violate the law but without protection from consequences for doing so; and subjected to fights against inhuman foes, corrupt corporate or governmental interests, and insane cultists with the very best outcome being a string of pyrrhic victories. The 2015 edition includes gameplay mechanics to play out the dissolution of the agent's family and strongest interpersonal relationships. |
| 376 | * SpySpeak: Considering it's a SpyFiction, there's a lot of this. "A Night at the Opera" is a call for an operation, a "Green Box" is a place to stash equipment and artifacts, "ARCHINT" is "Archeological intelligence" (Similar to HUMINT or SIGINT), that deals with archeological artifacts, tomes, and their practical interpretations to fight the unnatural, [[AteHisGun "9mm Retirement Plan"]] for agents who are DrivenToSuicide, "The Unnatural" for the genuine supernatural and "Blacker than Black", used by DG agents to refer anything to do with Delta Green. |
| 377 | * StableTimeLoop: |
| 378 | ** An important plot point of two scenarios ([[spoiler:''Artifact Zero'' and ''Observer Effect'']]) and which the players can personally experience. |
| 379 | ** Also a ''very'' important plot point of the ''Impossible Landscapes'' campaign. [[spoiler:Turns out that the closest thing to victory, which is escaping Carcosa relatively unharmed, can only be achieved by the Agents unwittingly facilitating the creation of the cursed play behind it all. And the lost woman they had tried to find and save? Not only can she not be saved, she is now the willing accomplice of the King in Yellow in making the loop possible.]] |
| 380 | * StalkerWithoutACrush: In real life, the Grim stalk those who seem to be living the happier life that is denied them, first online and then in person. They do not break laws or become violent, but they take the torment they feel and invert it against their chosen enemies. |
| 381 | * TheStarscream: Through the centuries, Antoinette [=DeMonte=] has strung her cousin Claudette along with assurances that she is her heir apparent, second in command and closest confidant. Claudette hasn't believed these assurances for over two centuries, and has been seeking to unseat Antoinette and gain control of the [=DeMonte=] Clan. If she ever discovers a member of Delta Green, she would offer to be their informant, directing them against Antoinette. Once the Marquise is out of the way, Claudette will step forward to assert her claim to the Clan's leadership. |
| 382 | * StealthHiBye: Stephen Alzis is fond of this. |
| 383 | * SurrealHorror: The Hastur Mythos' bread and butter. Like other Lovecraftian monsters, the King in Yellow's monsters are beyond human comprehension, but are also somehow borne of the human mind, and so are much more devastating, personal and bizarre. The theme of the Hastur Mythos is the borderline between creation and insanity. |
| 384 | * TarotMotifs: The "The King in Yellow" Tarot Deck in ''Countdown''. As the name implies, it is a tarot set after the King in Yellow and Hastur. Featuring unique descriptions for the art of both Major and Minor Arcanas cryptically themed after the Hastur Mythos. The most major change is that card IV (The Emperor) has become card XXI and is instead named ''[[GratuitousFrench Le Roi en Jaune]]''. The book gives tips on how the Handler can [[InvokedTrope invoke]] this trope and use the King in Yellow tarot in the games. |
| 385 | * ThemedTarotDeck: The "The King in Yellow" Tarot Deck has been {{defictionalized}}, drawn by Kurt Komoda with a artstyle pastiche to the Rider–Waite set. |
| 386 | * TheThemeParkVersion: In 1989, in order to lessen local suspicion following the deaths of two Deep One hybrids of Black Cod Island, the 'Black Cod way of life', or at least a facsimile thereof, was opened to tourists and graduate students from the Department of Anthropology in the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In truth, all an outsider ever sees is lifted directly from an anthropology textbook, and their stories are boringly tame. Twenty years of research has compiled the illusion of a Haida-like culture, and it is generally accepted that the Black Cod are a Haida offshoot. The oddities in their language and culture (particularly their worship of the sea) have been noted as nothing more than a curiosity. |
| 387 | * TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: One of the past experience options is explicitly called "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know". It gives 10 points in Unnatural and 20 in occult but deals a huge blow in Sanity and Willpower points. |
| 388 | * ThisIsMyNameOnForeign: When the Croat Luko Ranjima transformed into a ghoul and joined the [=DeMonte=] clan, he changed his name to Luc [=DeMonte=]. |
| 389 | * TimeTravel: Certain places can grant access to Carcosa, the unnatural place beyond time and space which connects everything under the King in Yellow's influence. In these unique locations, Agents might be able to effectively jump before or after their current locations, or send or retrieve information to and from other places and times. |
| 390 | * TimeTravelersAreSpies: The [[Literature/TheShadowOutOfTime Great Race of Yith]] can time-travel by [[GrandTheftMe mind-snatching]] their victims in the past or future; they usually do this to study a certain time or to further their plans. [[spoiler:They have infiltrated The Outlaws by mind-snatching agent James Derringer; the Yithian using his body is attempting to investigate further into March Industries or trying to weaken The Program.]] |
| 391 | * TimeTravelersDinosaur: Spoilers for Future/Perfect: [[spoiler:the cause of the serial killer in Part 1 is due to a Serpent Man time gate activating and dragging in a Monolophosaurus to the present.]] |
| 392 | * TomatoInTheMirror: In ''Impossible Landscapes'', in the Dorchester House players meet a mental patient named "Sunshine" aged around 80 with androginous characteristics and strange similarity to the agents; they are completely mute but becomes excited and desperately attempts to communicate when they see the agents. But all Sunshine says and writes is gibberish. [[spoiler:At the end of the Masquerade, the King in Yellow can envelop an Agent in its cape and they will find themselves in front of an audience in 1930's New York. The Agent will soon discover anything they say or write is gibberish; soon they are taken to a mental asylum where the nurses nickname them "Sunshine".]] |
| 393 | * ToServeMan: Since 1968, the saltwater crocodiles in the Rừng Sác have developed quite the taste for human flesh. While they don't usually feel like attacking a group of angry humans, a group of humans flailing around in the water is another matter. |
| 394 | * TownWithADarkSecret: To the public, the people of Black Cod Island appear to be a friendly community with ancient traditions, their industry and self-sufficiency admired by all. But the Black Cod people are not Haida. They are not even human. In secret, these Deep One hybrids abduct lone travellers in the Alaska wilderness for sacrifice to their dark lord, a huge, primal Deep One called He-Who-Swims-With-Corpses. |
| 395 | * TraumaInducedAmnesia: A very common response to the unnatural is to forget, due to the sheer trauma and the brain's inability to understand what can never be understandable. |
| 396 | * TheTunguskaEvent: Might have been caused by someone summoning Azathoth gone wrong, the devastation caused by the Karotechia trying to summon Azathoth at Naudabaum castle is likened to Tunguska. |
| 397 | * UnderNewManagement: In the updated setting, "The Program" was born out of a takeover of MAJESTIC by Delta Green agents. |
| 398 | * UnstuckInTime: People and places infected by Carcosa and drawn into the Night World can exist in places beyond time and space, and appear everywhere or nowhere. The causality of such things is impossible to understand, but they still retain recognisable elements, and some even tell a conventional story with a beginning, middle and end. |
| 399 | * UnwittingPawn: Those who serve the King in Yellow often don't even know that they serve. |
| 400 | * UnusuallyUninterestingName: |
| 401 | ** After Delta Green was officially reactivated in 2002, it held the official codename "DELTA GREEN" for two months before switching to the deliberately bland and uninformative "Security Studies Group", which was then switched to much more generic codenames like "Yellow Combine", "Petrel Hill", "Threshold Curve" or "Silver See", changing every few months or years to muddle the paper trail. Insiders eventually just nicknamed it "The Program". |
| 402 | * VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: |
| 403 | ** The Haida's Fish-Wife legend is a mutation of the facts of the 1555 raid on the Deep One hybrid village of Cha'atl. The people of Black Cod Island, descendants of the survivors of Cha'atl, claim not to know this story; to them, it is history, and a secret one at that. The Haida tribes do not know the true history of the Black Cod, but their elders remember tales of the Devil-Fish people. If the Agents talk seriously about half-men, half-fish people, one or two elders may become very grave, wondering if they have really been living near their ancestral enemy all this time. If confronted with proof of the Black Cod's dark origins, any Haida would recognise them instantly as descendants of the Fish-Wife. |
| 404 | ** The highest-ranking members of the Sowers, a hyper-conservative Christian sect founded in the [=21st=] century, believe they can absolve their sins by ritualistically murdering the demon Azazel, [[ResurrectiveImmortality who comes back to die again]] as a scapegoat. [[spoiler:Azazel's character description immediately deflates this, as he is really yet another mask of Nyarlathotep. Whether he appeared in the guise of Azazel throughout time, or if he's only started to manifest to manipulate the Sowers is left open.]] |
| 405 | * VigilanteMan: After its official disbandment, DELTA GREEN operatives continue to operate within the government as a secret conspiracy, without official sanction. When the Program was reactivated, a stubborn core of Delta Green agents rejected the compromises that the Program promised in exchange for legitimacy and did their best to drop out of view, but maintained their mission. |
| 406 | * VillainousIncest: The inherent attraction between New Life children ignores familial boundaries. There has been a few incidents of New Life children sexually abusing younger New Life siblings, unable to overcome the reproductive drive encoded in their DNA. |
| 407 | * VillainProtagonist: The ''Handler's Guide'' comes with tips on how to run a campaign as members of the Fate or Majestic-12. In part 1 of the campaign ''Iconoclasts'', players are required to play as ''ISIS foreign fighters''. Since this is Delta Green, [[AlwaysABiggerFish they aren't the big fish]]. |
| 408 | * VillainWithGoodPublicity: |
| 409 | ** New Life Fertility is a publicly known company, famous for their completely infallible, if extremely expensive treatment, and also for their non-profit NGO New Life foundation, which sponsors a number of social works. The clientele of New Life includes millionaires, celebrities and royalty, and if the agents go after New Life they'll have to fight their large network of supporters, connections, law firms, PR companies and hired thugs. |
| 410 | ** The Sowers are publicly known as a small and reserved ultra-fundamentalist Christian sect [[spoiler:[[HiddenInPlainSight who hide in plain sight]] due to the "metaphysical innocence" from ritualistic sacrificing Azazel, which makes them invisible from the eyes of the public]]. If the agents go after the Sowers, they'll first start using their own resources and personnel; if the agents persist, they'll escalate and hire a law firm to harass and bully the agents (if identified) and a PR firm to call the attention of the national -- and often conservative -- media. Reporters will visit the Sowers' compounds, where they will be sold on their image of an innocent church who are focused on farming, self-sufficiency, and recovering local communities and who are being unjustly persecuted by the federal government. |
| 411 | * TheVirus: |
| 412 | ** Greater Deep Ones reproduce asexually, injecting a parasitic gene complex into the host. This complex mutates the human into a Deep One hybrid, and a carrier of the Deep One gene complex in their own chromosomes. Thus the Deep One taint spreads through humanity much like a sexually transmitted disease. This is what happened in all Deep One hybrid colonies, including Innsmouth. |
| 413 | ** The King in Yellow begins to manifest from a single vector, infects a victim, inflicts symptoms, and then, when it grows strong enough, spreads. Usually, a victim is infected by reading the play ''The King in Yellow'', or by seeing the strange symbol of the King called the Yellow Sign. This exposure awakens a mindset in the victim through which the forces of the King in Yellow can enter and operate in our world. Victims often attempt to spread the infection to colleagues, friends and family, providing copies of the play or the symbol to relieve themselves of the horrors. |
| 414 | * WelcomedToTheMasquerade: Delta Green's recruitment process is to set people with exposure to the Unnatural (especially government agents) as "friendlies", if they are shown to be of value for DG, they are fully recruited as an agent. |
| 415 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: The Army of the Third Eye are mostly crazed fanatics, but what they fight against is much worse. Delta Green itself can come off as this at times. |
| 416 | ** Majestic-12 sees itself as this. They made the accord with the Greys because they were the only friendly alien species to contact mankind and see in them the only way that humanity can acquire enough technology to be ready to fight other more powerful species. Some parts of MJ-12's leadership massively distrust the Greys and seek to discover their true intentions. In the end, what certain elements of MJ-12 saw as a MotiveDecay of the organization is what leads to Majestic's demise. |
| 417 | * WhatTheHellPlayer: The Lloigor are a type of sapient energy vortex of pain and misery, growing strong through their metaphorical and literal cancerous infiltration of humanity in an effort to pinch off the better futures available to mankind and bring about the Cruel Empire of Tsan-Chan on the ruined ash-heap of human history. If the [=PCs'=] go-to course of action for every situation is callous, heartless violence, congratulations! They are already [[UnwittingPawn part of the Lloigor Pattern]], and are helping to bring about the downfall of everything they first decided to ShootTheDog for. |
| 418 | * WhoYouGonnaCall: The whole point of the setting was to add an organization that hunted and suppressed the creature from the Cthulhu mythos that the players could be part of. |
| 419 | * WickedCultured: Ghouls of the [=DeMonte=] clan maintain an unusual level of gentility. They eat from fine china plates, drink from crystal glasses, do not devour corpses with their teeth and claws, but rather carve their food and eat it by the forkful, and even create recipes for their corpses. |
| 420 | * WorldOfChaos: Carcosa, the land "governed" by the King in Yellow, is a surreal place where reality remains stable only when you turn to look at it. As soon as you stop looking at something, reality is free to change as it pleases, simply because you cannot perceive it. As one area of reality is modified, everything around it changes in response. This causes the original area to shift in response to that, and so on. The net effect of this is that Carcosa is completely remade every few hours, never the same thing twice. Needless to say, this makes navigation incredibly difficult for the doomed fools who travel there. |
| 421 | * TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed: Delta Green's unofficial mission is to "delay the inevitable for ''a few more years''" (emphasis ours). They've been at it for the better part of a century. |
| 422 | * YearOutsideHourInside: The passage of time in the Higher Plane is far slower than in our world. The rate of passage is something close to a minute in the Higher Plane to every day outside. |
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