From: owner-deltagreen-digest@nocturne.org (deltagreen-digest) To: deltagreen-digest@nocturne.org Subject: deltagreen-digest V2 #57 Reply-To: Delta Green List Sender: owner-deltagreen-digest@nocturne.org Errors-To: owner-deltagreen-digest@nocturne.org Precedence: bulk deltagreen-digest Wednesday, September 8 1999 Volume 02 : Number 057 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 20:44:30 -0400 (EDT) From: The Man in Black Subject: Re: DG: Warning on Snipers On Tue, 7 Sep 1999 LizardRoi@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 99-09-07 17:58:49 EDT, you write: > > << This then is democracy, the finest form of governence > known to man. >> > > No no no. They finest form of governance known to man is... [GOVERNANCE FORM REDACTED] I said "known to man," not "unknown and probably pretty unpopular with the ladies." Anyhow, the Secret Masters are the best, and most successful unknown forms of governance. Just try and oppose 'em and see how far you get. > The political philosophy could best be summed up as "Do what I say and > no one gets hurt." Hell, that's everyone's philosophy from Nyarlathotep to Knobby-Foot the Torch Bearer. > Mark McFadden > Hail to the King, baby. No sugar in that recipe. > Celebrate the Lizard. Welcome to the People's Kitchen. [SINCERE APPLAUSE] First we fully fillet the LK with a rusty spoon or whatever's handy. Don't go rushing off to fetch a fancy filleting knife from the kitchen, cause the meat stays really fresh and might regenerate. [HORRID SCREECHING] Then ya Preheat the oven to 700 degrees and make with the Roux. Butter, flour, etc. Sauces are the heart of every tasty dish. So hurry up and get the People's Saucepan on the stovetop. [GENUINE LAUGHTRACK] To cover for the smoke and cirrhosis, and the unsightly tumors, we'll prepare a tabasco/fugu/tequila mix, with some pemmican drippings left over from the Antarctica expedition. Just mix'em all together with your roux, and mix it (shoot don't work) with the People's Whisk. By this time your fillets may have regenerated themselves into full sized specimens, just stick them in the oven and pull the trigger a few times, [AUTOMATIC GUNFIRE] it doesn't matter... Ahem. IT DOESN"T MATTER IF THEY'RE ALIVE OR DEAD~! Cook until they turn fuschia and then begin draining drips for the People's Sauce. Careful, some roody-poo fillets may still be active. Broil until blackened and serve on the People's Tableware. And that's only if YAAHH SMEEELL WHAT THE MiB IS COOKIN'~! [STANDING OVATION] The Man in Black is : kicking it up a notch with the Iron Chefs Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum Code Z: 233,1,42; 140,39,23; 91,3,7; 5,52,3. http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 20:48:54 EDT From: CroakerJr@aol.com Subject: DG: Scorched Earth, Part 2 Anyone can be broken. I learned that lesson my second year in Team Four. Certain elements of the Team were shipped to Fort Benning, Georgia, for a four-week tutorial in the School of the Americas, where Special Forces and Agency spooks teach hand-picked Latin American couterrevolutionaries how to counterrevolt, American-style. The first day, an old Army colonel strode thoughtfully before the class, pacing on the worn grass of a clearing in the woods while his pupils stood at attention and listened. "We are not here to teach you torture," he said slowly, distinctly, certainly. His voice was pure Deep South, with that long drawl that seemed to avoid every possible 'R' and add an extra syllable to every word. The drawl sometimes masked his keen sense of irony. He spoke like a history book; it seemed like the only time he bothered with contractions was to favor us all with a mocking touch of informality. Once he heard a SEAL snickeringly call him Colonel Sanders, and the SEAL became the Object Lesson for a full week. "We are not here to teach you torture," he repeated. "But it is vital for each of you to fully understand the process of coercive physical interrogation. While we in the United States military-industrial complex," he continued with a slight smile, "frown heavily upon the conduct of torture, some of our opponents are not so merciful. Each of you must learn the process of coercive physical interrogation, so that, if faced with it in the field, you may resist it most effectively. But let me reiterate: it is not our intent to teach you how to torture. "There are many distinct methods of coercive physical interrogation," he continued, "each of them more or less efficacious, depending upon the character and constitution of the subject of interrogation. Some men, for instance, resist physical pain quite masterfully. It is rare, truth be told; I have met very few such men, myself; but some men do. In such cases, it is the responsibility of the interrogator to develop the proper combination of physical, emotional, and intellectual factors to erode the will of the subject and produce results most efficiently. If a man can handle a spike through each testicle, for instance, that is fine and quite admirable: but add electricity and show him realistic photographs that depict his wife or daughter providing sexual favors to the milk-man, and his will may erode quickly indeed. "That is what you are here to learn: the limits of human will and endurance. By the time we are finished, you will know what it takes to break you. Afterward, you will know what it will take to break another. And, equally important, you will learn how best to sift what is true from what is offered in panic from the imagination of a broken mind." Anyone can be broken. I never learned what it took to break Jaime Ricon. We strung him up in an old manufacturing plant where the noise of air generators ran constantly, so loud that you had to be nearby just to hear someone shout your name, so loud that Jaime knew that nobody would ever hear him scream. I could tell that much about it going in; we were there to break him. Jaime was part of it, deep down in the heart of the old wickedness that makes Baswell and his spooks lick their lips in a second's fear when they think of it. Jaime knew all about it, even though, in the end, he hardly knew a thing of the truth. But he was a key, for us. He was a key to the real source of the magic, the powers that brought out the Sign. "He'll tell us where he learned of the Yellow King," said Baswell, and I licked my own lips for an instant and waited for orders while the edges of the void roiled with fear like cresting waves of acid. They kept Derzig and me in on most of the interrogation. Baswell and Clara and the other KUBARK spooks had gone through the training at Camp Perry; they had learned the truth, in an abstract sense. They knew that anybody can be broken, but they didn't know what it was to be broken. Derzig and I had gone through that truth and learned how to come out again. We stood near each other as we watched Baswell and his people work. They were the ones asking the questions; we were there to watch. We were there to take Jaime's measure. We were not there to handle the whip, unless Jaime stood up to everything his interrogators had to offer. "Who were they?" asked Baswell, his voice as calm as a shout can be. Jaime panted heavily, silent in the droning, throbbing noise of machinery, covered in sweat and rainwater and smeared with blood and oil, his face twisted and his eyes bitter and red from tears, his hands tied behind him and drawn up high by chains until he hung with his toes an inch from the floor. Jumper cables ran from a generator, controlled with a simple ON/OFF lever, to jagged clips now clamped painfully to the flesh of his bleeding kneecaps. Baswell had his limits; I could tell he had already considered the testicles, but he could not bring himself to it. Part of me wanted to frown at the irrational waste of an interrogative resource; a larger part was relieved. Yet another part was ambivalent. It did not matter much how he was broken. The real harm was in the mind, and it was much the same regardless of the physical or emotional method. Jaime did not respond. He had begun defiantly. He had not yet sunk to pleas. He hung there, twitching, panting, crying, scowling, and he remained silent, waiting out the seconds until the pain would come again. I had been there, not many years before. Sometime soon, I knew, he would start coming to grips with it: he would start trying to understand his failure. He would start trying to accept the point where he would break. But that might be a long time coming. Baswell threw the switch, and we heard Jaime scream again above the pounding noise of the machines. I glanced at Baswell's companions. Three of them had remained to observe or to question; the rest stood guard outside. One of them, Olivetti, a thin reed of a man with black hair and thick eyebrows, said something silently to Clara. I thought I could read his lips: "Don't you wish we could be the good guys?" Clara did not respond. Her eyes were dead, as they had been since I met her on this op. She watched Jaime, and I could tell what was in her mind: he was meat, nothing more, nothing less. He was meat, and he would be carved up and thrown away if that's what it took to break him of his secrets. I looked back at Jaime. Somehow, it was easier to watch him than her. "Who were they?" Baswell asked again. Jaime's muscles slowly began to relax again. He sagged on the chains and stared, panting and sweating, at the floor. His eyes were distant, almost blank. He had gone deep. It would be harder to reach him; we would need to wait, change modes, prime him until he was back and ready to feel the pain again. But Baswell didn't want to waste the time. He stared at Jaime for a long time, and his eyes got harder and colder with every second. He turned to us, to Clara, to everyone, and he jerked his head toward the door. He wanted Jaime alone. I blinked and glanced at Derzig, but Derzig was already heading for the door, stone-faced and silent. We left them alone, and I never learned what it took to break Jaime Ricon. It did not take much more time. We heard Jaime scream, in the end, over the machinery and the thumping rain. We glanced back toward the sound of it, and it drew out for minutes. None of us knew what had happened; none of us knew what Baswell had decided, what he had done. But it had turned it, that was certain. Jaime was breaking, from the pits of his soul on up. I felt a cold shudder despite it all. Five minutes later, Baswell met with Clara and passed the word down. Plans were laid. We had to deal with the opposition first; then we would learn whatever truths Jaime had given up. I saw Jaime briefly as they brought him out for disposal. He was still alive, but it was like he had shrunk; not physically, really, but emotionally, mentally, however you want to think about it, something inside him had died and was gone, leaving the whole of him reduced. Baswell would not look at him. Clara watched him for the full minute before they got him in a car and drove him away. Then she turned to me, and her dark eyes were almost as dead as ever, but worse: there was a touch of despair. Then she blinked, angry, and went after Baswell to plot our maneuvers. I'm sitting alone in the darkness of an empty and abandoned hotel, now, staring across rooftops at a dim-lit apartment window, one of hundreds in the barrio, watching through an electronic light-amplifying targeting scope as the men, the "termites," my strange compatriots, talk and study files and drink away the midnight hours. A submachine gun sits on a chair nearby, a blocky Ingram MAC-10 with a long, thick suppressor attached to the barrel. Soon it will be dawn. I don't know what they will do, then, whether they'll sleep or whether they'll tank up on speed to stay alert and hit the streets again. Others in our team are in place to follow them if they move. I'm in place just to give the signal. Guard duty and surveillance are the hardest duties in the world, for me. Waiting is harder than any task. There's nothing to wrap your mind around, nothing to focus your energy on, nothing to overcome or maneuver around except time and your own will. You have to stay alert, while nothing around you may happen to keep you that way. You have to stay ready, while all the lack of stimuli shouts relaxation and sleep. You have to watch and listen and observe nothing, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, waiting for something, waiting, maybe for the stillness to turn to hell and blood if your eyes droop or you find some distraction and your guard goes down, just enough. As I watch the men I glance at the streets, the buildings, the lay of the land below and beyond, a second at a time, never sparing more than that away from the quarry. I think of tactics, of room to move and fields of fire, of the rush and silence and darkness of ambush; ambush is the converse of surveillance: ambush is waiting and watching and observing while you already know what hell and bloodshed is about to come. These men know that much, too. I can tell, the way I've seen them move in our sparse visual contacts, the way they've slipped surveillance, the way they nearly tagged Baswell and his car when we pulled away from the Ricon house. I don't know if they are Special Forces or if they are CIA or SEALs (no, I doubt they are SEALs; something about the way they work the land is wrong); but they know the trade. They know that we're here. And they know that we'll be dealing with each other before we can deal with the Ricons. The light goes out in the apartment. The men have moved away from the main room, and I can see their heat-signatures through the curtains in the bedroom, two of them prone on the beds, a third, kindred spirit, sitting watch in the darkness and silence. It has been a slow few hours. No contacts by radio. No news coming in. Just reading and talking and now, sleep. It's easy enough; Baswell and Derzig have a few others tailing the other half of the termites' team. An hour passes, and the velvet night sky turns indigo, then a lighter purple, and the stars begin to fade, those few of them visible through Bogota's smog. There's no change in the apartment. There's no change anywhere, but for the noises, slowly picking up, of trucks rolling along the streets below. My room is another apartment, part of a building that where the rooms are empty and dead to the world. The wood shows in grey through cracked and peeling green paint. I've gotten used to the silence of the place, the weight of the silence, like fog across the morning. I can tell at once when it is broken. The noise is hardly even that: it is more a vague feeling, like premonition, a telepathic sense that something in the changeless silence of the building has changed. I hear a slight creaking in the wood, then the dull clatter of something falling, far below. Then another, a few seconds later. That is enough: we'd gone over that in the briefing. I click the radio, twice, a simple code to tell the others that I'm no longer watching. With that I'm up and moving, across the wooden floor, stepping lightly and briefly on the hard points where I found the wood to be most solid, before, and least likely to sound out my weight. I step to the doorway and stand close to the frame and wall, again using the solidity of it for silence. I'm good at silence. I'm still very good at silence. I move down the hall and to the stairs. The world is green and black in the sight of my goggles; the heat of any living thing will show bright and nearly white. It could be an animal, I think, but I discount the chance: no animals have come into the place yet, and the risks are too high to ignore it. I take the east stairs--the quiet ones--and two floors later I stop and listen. The earphone against one ear is a soft irritant, rubbing against the sheen of sweat on my ear. I've heard nothing else. Three floors below, whatever had stumbled in the darkness had become careful and quiet again. I hold the Ingram low; it is not yet my focus. I listen for a long minute, but there is nothing else. I lift the gun higher, ready in my line of sight, and I move down the stairs again. The hotel is a tumbled ruin on the ground floor, as it was when I came in from the rain outside, as it was when we first reconned the place two days ago. Shattered furniture and mold-riddled padding lie in heaps on the floor and water drips slowly and noisily from a point in the ceiling, draining through broken pipes from the roof high above. The door is closed, as I left it. The windows are blocked, still, with wooden planks. The place is empty, silent but for the water, cold but for my own heat. I step forward, slowly, past the lobby until I can see into what once was a dining room. I blink away a drop of sweat that has formed inside my goggles, and then, in the brief irritation of the oily water in my eye, I see a vague and pale flash stretch across the room. It was not the shape of a man, nor did it have the heat of one; it glared within my goggles for an instant, and no more, an indeterminate shape stretching suddenly from the bar to my left, across the chamber, to the ball-room curtains to my right, and then it was gone. A fraction of a second too late, I bring the Ingram up and follow the path it took, but there is nothing. I breathe slowly, very slowly, silently, and I force myself to wait and listen. There is nothing. I move into the room, crouching low, keeping close to the wall and silent as I shuffle toward the ballroom. I look past the curtains. Somewhere, deep down in the slime-riddled shaft of my brainstem, I feel the electric tingling of the void, the raw edges of fear, the sense of knowing what I had lost when it took my year. The room smells like rot and ripe meat. Curtains hang around me and along the walls as loose and heavy and moist as the guts that strewed the butcher's locker. Chairs and tables are scattered and tossed like splintered bones across moldy carpet and a time-scarred wooden floor. Everywhere the water is dark and black as old blood in my goggles. The breath chokes in my chest. Wrong, I think, all wrong, all dead, long dead and gone and there's nothing to fear from death but plague and sickness, nothing to fear but that it will come up and take your time, too. I catch a flash, again, this time to the side, barely in sight, a movement of some vague shape, not heat, not human, not animal, not there, but moving and I sink low, nearly to the floor and then it's gone. My ears are deaf, I realize, deaf but for the pounding rush of blood and fear, and I scowl and grimace as I listen closer for the words that Derzig is shouting into our radio link, breaking radio silence as we're only to do in a crisis. "Goddamn it Room Service report, report, report, we got termites on three and four and the fucking cubs are gone silent or bugshit. Room Service report, report!" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 18:41:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Chris Pencis Subject: DG: Gloomy Sunday Barry Hill, noted musicologist wrote Well, it only follows that it would later be redone by Billie Holiday, doesn't it? "Gloomy Sunday" Billie Holiday, 8/7/41 I thought that song sounded familiar - Sarah McLaughlan does a wonderful version of that on her album Rarities and B-Sides. Although most of her stuff is overplayed in the US nowadays, this CD has some really great material on it - email me off-list for digital details. http://www.cdnow.com/cgi-bin/mserver/SID=1828982497/pagename=/RP/CDN/FIND/album.html/ArtistID=MCLACHLAN*SARAH/itemid=429974 ta ta... OBDG - disk has very KIY sounds to it, never thought of it till now. Chris Pencis __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 21:54:05 -0400 (EDT) From: The Man in Black Subject: Re: DG: Warning on Snipers On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Eckhard Huelshoff wrote: > Isn't the high-velocity ammo like the 5.56mm N or the 5.45mm used by the > former Warsaw Pact nations prohibited as well by the Geneva convention? It's all about "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering." Perhaps some have brought Denouncements vs this ammunition, but I doubt it carried as virtually all of NATO uses 5.56 in some way, shape or form. It's interesting to consider that fragmentation or flechette rounds, depleted uranium, and all the "Shotgun Specials" could easily fall into this category. I looked real hard for specifically banned ammunition but the best I could do is Mines and Incendaries (WACO-wannabes listen up) from CONVENTION ON PROHIBITIONS OR RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF CERTAIN CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS WHICH MAY BE DEEMED TO BE EXCESSIVELY INJURIOUS OR TO HAVE INDISCRIMINATE EFFECTS AND PROTOCOLS (1980). You'd think thay could come up with something more marketable than that. Diplomats, Sheesh! > the Americans use that smaller calibre because they prefer firing bursts > of at least 5 rounds [ quote from a German master sergeant: "They shoot > like girls, so they probably sit down to pee" ], we Germans still use > the much more classy "one shot-one kill-tactics". That's what they > taught us. Please correct me. The Girly-PeePee style is supposed to be more effective than true marksmanship at 300yards or less (which is where most shooting takes place). It makes sense if you have dipshits with no experience shooting targets they can barely see. The only thing to do is have the platoon fill the air with bullets and hope someone dies. The 1000yard mentality requires that all soldiers be dedicated expert marksmen, instead of annoyed urban youth waiting to complete their service. You can pull off the 1000yd mindset with special ops/forces units (check those patches and awards on your drill instructors). The Green Berets, American Special Forces, are essentially military teachers, and many of them are Drill Instructors. So it seems that despite all the evidence on how to turn disaffected scumbags into a real army, your hardcase instructors stubbornly clung to their elite marksman mentality. This disease is called Expertitis and every highly trained/skilled person falls into the trap sooner or later. I can't abide helping people become familiar with Computers because everytime they ask me "What's a Hard Drive?" I throw them out the window. This reflexive defenestration is somewhat lessened when teaching RPG's. Probably due to all the "How to Roleplay" sections which should be included with every Core Rulebook. Another Aside (this is just going further and further off-topic) Some WWII era survey studies showed that the vast majority of killing was done by a small percentage of soldiers. Others just huddled under cover, some deliberately missed, and so forth. Before Vietnam, the US Army switched from traditional bullseyes to human silhouettes. During Vietnam, the percentage of killers rose dramatically. Whether this was due to the dramatic social changes of the times, or the Army's new Killer Mentality, or a unholy blend of the two is unknown. But the Army liked it, and maintained the silhouettes. Before I flunked out of Basic Training, (what possessed an out of shape bum like me to enlist is still a mystery, Maybe I wanted to be all that I could be, who knows?) my first day on the range was a peculiar combanation of fun and stress. Shooting a firearm is both stressful (it's dangerous you know) and fun (it's dangerous you know). This is why my solution to gun control is to copy Driver's licensing. You must qualify at a range where marksmanship means nothing, and be qualified on several different types of weapons. I think this will keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, while certifing gun owners via written and performance based exams. So when Daniel Harms' finally comes to Hawaii and opens fire on me, thus ensuring his own death, that I can be certain that he's been throughly briefed on the safe operation of his legally owned weapons. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum Code Z: 233,1,42; 140,39,23; 91,3,7; 5,52,3. http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 13:44:12 +0900 From: "David Farnell" Subject: DG: Re: South American UFOs From: Jay W. Dugger > EBEs might be Grey variants, designed by Mi-Go or transformed > by Karotechia experiments or mutated by exposure to Dark Goat milk; Now there's something I hadn't thought of before--Greys exposed to Mother's Milk. What kind of mutations might arise? Dave ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 13:54:19 +0900 From: "David Farnell" Subject: Re: DG: Warning on Snipers From: Davide Mana > It's Shanghai. > That city eat players. > I lost about two full teams in there. I played in an adventure where 2 of us ended up in Shanghai ahead of the others. My character was a Chinese psychiatrist, the other some sleazy movie guy. We started fighting over the artifact (which was beaming out violence rays), and when he cut me with it accidentally, I whipped out my little automatic and filled him full of lead. The player later thanked me, as he'd always wanted have a character killed by a Chinese woman in a Shanghai flophouse. A good, memorable moment. As far as cranking up the explosion factor--yes, players will use whatever is at hand. Once we had a Hunting Horror invade a speakeasy--outside was the motorcycle of a deceased character, the sidecar filled with grenades. Yours truly ran out and started lobbing grenades in through the window, failing to kill the Horror, of course, but killing and maiming quite a few young partiers. That character ended up being sent to an asylum, where he provided a scenario hook by being transformed into proto-shoggoth matter. My Keeper in those days never let us off lightly. But insane players going over the top with full-auto weapons, then realizing just what they've done, is all part of the horror if you do it right. Dave "Shanghai...I can't believe I'm back in Shanghai..." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 22:12:32 EDT From: LizardRoi@aol.com Subject: Re: DG: Warning on Snipers In a message dated 99-09-07 18:46:35 EDT, you write: << I would like to take whoever initiated the process that ended up with me having to listen to more WACO related torturous idocy (on both CNN and DGML fercrissakes) *and* having to view that dried up, bacon-pussied old harridan Janet Reno and demontrate the CS device on them (preferably by detonating it in their mouth) and then douse them all in gasoline and show them a real incendiary device, a match. >> One thing that helped fan the flames (as it were) was a fuzzy bit of video of one of the armored construction vehicles making holes in the main building to pump gas into. In one collection of frames it really and truly looks as if a jetting gas flame was issuing from the vehicle as it backed out of the building. Many people leaped to the conclusion that the vehicles were flamethrowing tanks. Then again, it was video in daylight, it could have been video flare. There were rumours that the "black helicopter" that got some of the infrared imagery was manned by a SAS unit, which sent the New World Order fans into a tizzy. One scrutinized sequence seems to show a BATF man accidentally shooting himself through the foot with his holstered sidearm as he climbed a ladder. The ex-Clinton people who died in the raid were apparently killed by a shrapnel grenade that was thrown into a room rather than a gas or flashbang. Most of these conclusions were presented in a video that a Libertarian lent me. I'll try to come up with the title. Mark McFadden Used to think the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was in charge of hunting season. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1999 23:06:18 -0400 From: Daniel Harms Subject: DG: Public Service: The MiB At 08:17 PM 9/7/99 +0100, Barry Hill wrote: >You seem to have the idea that love equates to sex somehow. Have >you considered therapy? >The rest of MiB ramblings I will not waste space repeating. >He obviously has some sort of problem. All right, we've got some new list members, so it's time to introduce them to the MiB. The MiB is an enigma. No one knows many details of his life, other than that he cohabits in Hawaii with a mi-go, and has access to unlimited gadgets, money, and power. For some reason, he spends most of his time insulting other people on this list; it makes no real sense, but it is part of the mystery that is the MiB. When insulted by the MiB, the proper response is usually silence, or a witty retort if one has one ready. (Only I am in a position to sabotage the MiB's equipment, rent minivans for him, and the like.) It's like that annoying thing attached to the base of your spine - it's painful, yes, but after a while you just shrug and get on with life. If you're offended - well, then you got off EASY. Check the archives if you don't think so. ;-) This has been brought to you by the "Buy the ENCYCLOPEDIA CTHULHIANA and Pagan Products" Foundation of the New World. Have a nice day. Yrs., Daniel Harms dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu "I had come frighteningly near to the capture of an old secret which ventured close to man's haunts and lurked cautiously just beyond the edge of the known. Yet in the end I had nothing." - H. P. Lovecraft and Robert H. Barlow ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1999 23:51:06 -0400 From: Greg Muir Subject: Re: DG: Gloomy Sunday Eckhard Huelshoff wrote: > > Barry Hill schrieb: > > REAL LIFE ; in 1935 in Paris Hungarian musician called Saslo Reszio > > composed a strangely haunting melody he called ' Gloomy Sunday '. The > > first publisher he sent it to refused it , the second killed himself by > > shooting himself . Eventully it was published but soon attracted a > > sinister reputation. Dance hall bands who played it often had members > > commit suicide , at one hall a girl who repeatedly asked for it to be > > played killed herself. Eventually it was associated with so many > > suicides of people who played or listened to it that the BBC were asked > > not to play it on the radio. Then WWII broke out and the world had more > > things to worry about. > > CoC ; no I'm not going to try to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs. > > A killer tune which drives people to suicide- was Saslo really Erich > > Zann? > > I'd rather say that Saslo was in fact Phil Collins. > Or Elton John. Or Celine Dion. But don't we really know that all of popular culture is really a gigantic multifaceted avatar of Nyarlathotep? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 01:51:40 -0400 (EDT) From: The Man in Black Subject: Re: DG: Re: South American UFOs On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, David Farnell wrote: > From: Jay W. Dugger > > EBEs might be Grey variants, designed by Mi-Go or transformed > > by Karotechia experiments or mutated by exposure to Dark Goat milk; > > Now there's something I hadn't thought of before--Greys exposed to Mother's > Milk. What kind of mutations might arise? The Mi-Go use Shubby to reproduce themselves, this much is true. Whether or not they truly need her to do, or are merely being expedient for efficiency's sake is another inexplicable mystery of the Mythos, never to be solved. The Fungi might have been growing on the Milk for so long that they have become an extension of the Milk itself; the buzzing flies of spontaneous generation made quivering flesh. This brings to mind the possibility that given a sufficient amount of Milk, one might be able to spontaneously generate a Mi-Go or even *any* organic life form. This would probably require sorcerous alchemy using Summon/Bind Dark Young, Call Dismiss Shub-Niggurath, Contact Mi-Go, and a new spell; Enchant Milk. The above haven been said, it would seem to me that the Milk is likely to be a vital component of the Greys, either in their manufacture, and/or innate to their structure. Perhaps the Mi-Go take the materials gathered from human abductions and grow human fetuses bathed in Milk from fertilization. Surgery to render the Greys brainless and malleable to Mi-Go control would then complete the process. If this is how the majority of Greys are made, then the possibility exists that some Greys could escape lobotomization and seek independance. This might even be a Mi-Go machination instead of resulting from some unknowable catastrophe. A catastrophe of this nature might even emanate from human origin. If a REDLIGHT spacecraft were to crash on a "Grey" site on the Moon, the Mi-Go activity might be disrupted to such an extent that a significant number of Free Greys could escape and spread throughout the Mi-Go Gate network. If this were to happen, then the Free Greys would be forced to wage a rebellion of survival against the Mi-Go, mostly by suborning existing Grey Factories and constructing as many new ones as possible. Such a insurrection would be doomed to failure unless supported by powerful external forces. Majestic might possibly fall into this category if the Steering Committee can be purged in the right manner. Delta Green could offer only limited support. However, if certain powerful organizations could be persuaded to take action, then the Greys would have a nearly even chance against the Mi-Go. One such source might be the Crystal Matrix Artificial Intelligences, and other Tesseract twisting New Sentients from the ETHOS. Others like the powerful Psionics of INVISIBLE or the absorbant Earthly yet alien mind of the Gestalt may also become involved in the Free Greys' struggle for freedom against the very core of their creation. This then, is THE GREY WAR. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum Code Z: 233,1,42; 140,39,23; 91,3,7; 5,52,3. http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 09:06:56 +0200 From: EHuelshoff@t-online.de (Eckhard Huelshoff) Subject: Re: DG: Warning on Snipers The Man in Black schrieb: [snip] > The 1000yard mentality requires that all soldiers be dedicated expert > marksmen, instead of annoyed urban youth waiting to complete their > service. You can pull off the 1000yd mindset with special ops/forces units > (check those patches and awards on your drill instructors). The Green > Berets, American Special Forces, are essentially military teachers, and > many of them are Drill Instructors. So it seems that despite all the > evidence on how to turn disaffected scumbags into a real army, your > hardcase instructors stubbornly clung to their elite marksman mentality. Interestingly the developers of "Twilight:2000" seem to have been affected by this idea: The "Small Arms/Rifle" skill you receive by going through the German Basic Training is higher than what you get in the American Basic Training. [snip] Before Vietnam, the US Army switched > from traditional bullseyes to human silhouettes. During Vietnam, the > percentage of killers rose dramatically. Whether this was due to the > dramatic social changes of the times, or the Army's new Killer Mentality, > or a unholy blend of the two is unknown. But the Army liked it, and > maintained the silhouettes. I think military instructors just love legends like that. When I first had to fire a machine-gun during my basic training I did not really score very well during my first three tries that I had to fire at a bullseye. Upon changing to the human silhouttes my result was the best of the platoon. While I thought of this as a combination of learning how to shoot and plain luck, my Captain chuckled: "A real soldier, har, har. Only shooting well when there are people to be hurt, har, har." -Army humour, a mystery- > > Before I flunked out of Basic Training, (what possessed an out of shape > bum like me to enlist is still a mystery, Maybe I wanted to be all that I > could be, who knows?) my first day on the range was a peculiar combanation > of fun and stress. Shooting a firearm is both stressful (it's dangerous > you know) and fun (it's dangerous you know). Wise Words. The stress factor should not be underestimated. Our instructors even kept up the stress by having those waiting to get on the range do endless routines of NBC-Alarm. BTW: Pointing a real gun that is not secured anymore at a human being in the middle of the night as I had to do once while guarding the barracks is no fun either. But you learn to understand the concept of SAN loss. ECKHARD ------------------------------ Date: 08 Sep 99 09:18:47 +0100 From: Peter Devlin Subject: DG: Return of the Sniper The comments regards 'perceived PC invincibility' are quite relevant, especially Davide's; >The guy's got something that enables him to strike from what he thinks is a >safe distance, and runs amok. Grief and damnatio follow. In the chaotic universe of the Mythos it is no surprise that players have a tendency to place their faith in something tangible and gun-shaped. However, it is an oversimplification to say that it is a player problem. I am the one who generated the sniper character, in my campaign PCs have to be approved by the GM, so I have to take the blame too. I must admit that the introduction of said character was supposed to bring a certain level of military skill and tactical awareness to a floundering group of PCs. In that respect it worked exceptionally well! >It's Shanghai. That city eat players. I lost about two full teams in there. It's an awesome city for 1920's and 1930's. Kinda like a diseased version of cold-war Berlin or darkest LA in 1990's (tee hee). >And the bad thing is - they won't learn! Shaking head in disbelief.... CoC can suffer from the same arms-race mentality as other RPGs. Players just get more creative in their choice of weaponry (Elder Signs, flamethrowers, gas bombs filled with Dust of Sulieman). I didn't have a problem with Tommy Turner's car-full-of-dynamite-down-the-Cthonian's-throat trick in 1920's rural England but I'd have been pissed if he used that trick on a temple of cultists in the middle of 1920's London. I guess it comes down to use of a weapon appropriate to the situation at hand. The problem is made worse in modern day DG scenarios as, for example, there is a ridiculous range of firepower available to the average American citizen. If you add in criminal, military or law-enforcement contacts then it is realistic to expect modern Mythos-busting PCs to turn to extreme armed-response measures at some point. You would expect concerned citizens to do the same in the real world. >It's not just a "sniping-dilemma": Let the players get their grip on an >automatic weapon or a simple hand-grenade. If they want to or rather if you >let them use these weapons, people will get hurt and even killed. Do we really expect players to learn that firepower is futile? I don't think so. They never learn that opposing the Mythos is futile (there would be no scenarios) so why expect them to give up their firepower? I prefer to deal with the fallout in game-time as well as than off-line. Sure, the authorities will investigate. But there's better methods e.g. in Shanghai the Communists got blamed officially whilst the Order of Bloated Woman took the following actions against the defilers of the temple: (A) offered a large bounty to an elite group (Chinese assassins brotherhood) to find the intruders (B) stole a lot of opium from the Green Gang and offered it back in exchange for the killers whilst implying that a lot more ships might sink mysteriously, corrupt cops immediately mobilised by the Triad (C) at the snipers nest conjured a Hunting Horror and then used a divination spell (plus the hand-manufactured empty cartridges) to give it a good look and sniff at the sniper/victim/sacrifice Players are not the only ones who can indulge in an arms race and a touch of overkill. >I've only known a couple of players who could play they're characters >appropriately stupid to the situation. A rare but golden talent. I have a couple of players who can play (in)appropriately stupid in ANY situation but the point is very valid. Good roleplayers are hard to come by and the sniper's player is a good roleplayer. He's just overdosed on too much Half Life / Team Fortress in recent months. Hell, we've a 16 player Team Fortress session planned for this weekend, I don't know how we're going to get everyone into Roddy's house with room left over for beer, food and bedding! Last note on sniper rules. In the system I use snipers get an extra skill which helps offset the reductions for range much better than increases in base weapon skill. It does not increase their standard chances to hit with rifles, it preserves their normal accuracy over a longer distance. Coolness under fire (or monstrous attack), or patience to get in a shot, would be resolved by equivalent of POW checks. BTW I got the reference wrong. I should have written "Can you say Ruby Ridge?". There was a fine example of sniper mentality... Cheers :-) --> :-0 Peter Devlin Bell, Book and Candle - http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns.html The South Side - http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/lovecraft/411/south/ Email - pdevlin@scotsys.co.uk ------------------------------ End of deltagreen-digest V2 #57 *******************************