Call of Chicago: The Summer of DELTA GREEN

Many of us ride winter and summer, but the ultimate thing for us would be to have an endless summer. The only way to do this is to travel around the world.

— Narrator, Endless Summer (1966)

When older DELTA GREEN agents reminisce – when the painkillers and the bourbon hit at the same time, or when they pass the row of unmarked black tiles near the Reflecting Pool entrance to Wing Five of the Munitions Building – they might talk about the War, sure. Or they might talk about the Raid, although even these grizzled veterans don’t remember that far back. But what they want to talk about is what they want to remember: the time when God and Eisenhower protected the right, when a man with a brush cut and a U.S. diplomatic passport could overthrow a kingdom, when the program had Nazis to hunt and Deep Ones on ice. They were in their element then, the survivors and the cowboys. DELTA GREEN may be falling now, they will tell you, but in the Fifties, it was summertime all year round.

The Fall of DELTA GREEN corebook mentions eight operations carried out by the program in this decade: SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY, SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS, SEVEN, LANCASTER, BRISTOL, ADVANCE MAN, SKUNKED, and MALLORY. Here are eight more missions for your grizzled veterans to look back on with pride and horror.

1950: Operation AUDITOR

Part of SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY, this operation tasks the Agents with the capture – alive – of Francois Genoud, Swiss financier of the ODESSA rat lines, and perhaps of the remaining Karotechia. When they track him down, he is trading in artifacts in Beirut: including idols and tablets pertaining to Dagon, al-Abhi, Nirgal, and other unnatural entities. His cultist customers are the real threat, even more than his Nazi partners in crime. This might be a straight-up snatch job, or more of a long con, depending on the Agents’ skill set.

1951: Operation FLORIDA

The Olaegodae (“very old”) mountain tribes around Hwasun in southwestern Korea held out after the main North Korean elements were pushed back in October 1950. Desperation led them to return to old habits of worship: the Hwasun miners’ communes called down the “North Emperor,” Gugwang. In February 1951, DELTA GREEN inserts two companies of occult counter-insurgents to capture and destroy the Olaegodae black stone monolith in the mountains.

Keep watching the skies!

1952: Operation ORSON

Following multiple UFO sightings over Washington, D.C. by military pilots, civilians, and radar technicians on 19-20 July 1952, President Truman orders MAJESTIC-12 to come up with two explanations: a real one, and one suitable for a press conference on 29 July. The program gets swept up in this “all hands on deck” moment as an even bigger Grey armada buzzes the capital on 26-27 July. For one week, nobody at MAJESTIC is paying attention, and the Agents can push things as far as they dare.

 

1952: Operation STITCHER

On 12 September 1952, five boys and a West Virginia National Guardsman saw a cone-shaped, round-headed, tentacled monster near Flatwoods, West Virginia while investigating strange lights. The next day, MJ-3 and DELTA GREEN send a BLUE BOOK team to investigate and cover up this possible Yithian sighting; the Agents discover that MJ-3 might be more interested in harnessing this fold in time to the Triassic than in shutting it down. Meanwhile, the eyewitnesses report mysterious ailments: prehistoric contagion, Yithian possession, or unnatural toxicity?

1953: Operation HAWKEYE

DELTA GREEN sends the Agents to examine Lomarian ruins uncovered by the extension of the runway at Barter Island, Alaska during construction of a radar station for the Distant Early Warning line. While they are there, the station emits a pulse that awakens Arnos, a lich of primordial Lomar. He sends his consciousness into the USAF personnel there, and then into the DELTA GREEN team, until they cannot tell who is human and who is some kind of thing from another time.

1954: Operation HIPPOLYTA

During the chaos around the CIA’s Operation SUCCESS in Guatemala, archaeologist Karla Lawrence disappears on 21 June 1954 near the suspected Deep One hybrid colony at Laguna Negra. The program scrambles a rescue mission, not least because Lawrence is a former OSS agent and DELTA GREEN friendly. Things get complicated when examination of Lawrence’s effects indicates she knew about the Deep One presence, and perhaps arranged her own kidnapping as a way to find out what the immortal beings know about the ancient Maya.

1956: Operation EPHESUS

On 5 February 1956, many of the citizens of Blue Hill, New Mexico oversleep and cannot be wakened until nightfall. At night, they paint graffiti on walls, move rocks, and bury water tanks in certain spots. Because Blue Hill is a residential community for the White Sands missile range, the program tasks the Agents to investigate a possible unnatural threat. A cult of Tamash in the Dreamlands city of Ilarnek has begun dreaming itself into the waking world, intending to overthrow the god Bokrug by shifting him into New Mexico to be killed by the Army. There may be some psychic backlash to the residents of Blue Hill, or of New Mexico – but it’s worth it in their eyes to rid Ilarnek of their hideous lizard tyrant. How exactly the Agents respond to this invasion of the Bokrug switchers – and how they’ll find them all amongst the innocent townsfolk — is up to them.

1957: Operation MULE TRAIN

Interest in Antarctica rises during the International Geophysical Year, and the program has picked up on Soviet plans to investigate the ruins of Kadath uncovered by the Lake expedition in 1930. The Soviet occult operatives (possibly GRU-SV8) have been inserted into the Second Soviet Antarctic Expedition; in December DELTA GREEN inserts the Agents into the Navy’s Operation DEEP FREEZE III. Their mission: shadow the Soviets, find out what they find out, and leave Kadath untampered with in its cold waste. Whatever they find out may trigger the Antarctic Ocean “nuclear tests” on 27 August through 6 September 1958, code named Operation ARGUS.

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