Writer's Room: Relief, 2024 Shotgun Scenario

This is the second part in a series where I look back on work I've done in the past, pointing out what worked, what didn't, and what I'd change if I did it again.

    See Part 1: Glass Hound in a Glass House...

Relief

This is a Delta Green scenario that I wrote for the 2024 Shotgun Scenario Contest, an annual scenario writing contest with a 1,500-word limit (excluding stat blocks and other supplementary material). It won second place that year, which was crazy. This one is a bit artsy, a bit personal, and was originally a 6,000-word first draft, so there's plenty of talk about summary writing.

For convenience's sake, especially for mobile users, I'm going to reproduce the text of the scenario here in black, and put my commentary in blue. You can find the original scenario here.

The Title

Again, the title carries a lot of weight. If I had called this "Operation Black Hole" or something, I doubt as many people would have bothered to click on it. Something like "The disappearance of Ashley Burring" would have been okay and more clearly communicated the scenario setup. But really, if I had to boil down what makes this worth reading into one thing, it would be the intro. And I like the final line of the intro very much.

CW: Depression, Suicide.

Oh yeah, buckle in. As a shotgun scenario, there is simply no room to talk at length about this subject, but I originally had a whole 240-word primer about how to approach roleplaying people who are severely depressed and suicidal, how to use non-judgemental language when discussing suicide, how to establish lines and veils before the session, etc. This is important, but alas, the word count is God, and it was reduced to 3 words.

The Tune

The tune is many things.

IT'S A SONG called "Black Hole" that's doing numbers online.

IT'S A MEMETIC INFECTION spread by a specific arrangement of notes in any key. It only affects people who are already suffering from depression and suicidal ideation. For everyone else, it's just a song.

IT'S A COMMUNION with the darkness, which responds in turn, pulling you deeper. The tune is always stuck in your head. You become even more depressed and suicidal, but you blame that on other stressors. You want to stop living, but you still fear dying.

Now, when you’re alone, you curl up, tuck your limbs and head towards your chest, and sing. Quietly, to yourself. Anytime you have a few minutes of plausible deniability. In the shower. In your parked car. And always at night, for hours, until you fall asleep.

IT'S A SUICIDE that doesn't hurt your body or leave a mess for your loved ones. Because you don't really want to die, you just want to stop existing. It's an important distinction. A tempting one.

Days, weeks, or months later, when you’re ready, you curl up and sing for the last time. You can hear it singing back, in a muffled piping harmony. It's just on the other side. Waiting.

You begin to contort like a gymnast, then you go further. First your knees, then your arms and legs and head, then the rest. All pulled into the black hole in your chest. It’s comfortable there, like being tucked in under a warm blanket. It only takes a minute. Once you get started, it helps pull you along. It's not difficult. It doesn’t hurt. You know what it is?

IT'S A RELIEF.

This is the first thing I wrote for this scenario, and I'm proud of it. I got the idea by considering what would drive someone to sacrifice themselves for an elder god. Then I realized, shit, I wanted to die when I was younger. If I could have just pressed a button to stop living, I probably would have. That thought terrified me, so I figured it would scare other people, too.

I am great now, by the way. No need to worry about me. The Tune is a lie. But if this is hitting a little too close to home for you, PLEASE tell someone. If not a loved one, then call or text a local hotline. Beyond what help they can give you in the moment, it's important to establish so that you know where to turn if it gets worse later down the line. If nothing else, think of it like setting up an emergency contact, just in case.

...Anyways. Back to the elf games!

Last note about this intro: I love the contortionist shit. It's so much cooler than walking through a portal.

Intervention

Few things delay a victim’s demise. Talking them through their suicidal thoughts may help, but the darkness will reassert its influence overnight. Keeping the victim around others may force them to avoid singing for fear of public embarrassment, but it also increases the chances of an innocent witnessing them ‘disappear.’

There’s only one guaranteed way to save a victim. If they’re convinced of the tune’s unnatural danger, they will consciously reject it, and the infection will stop. Unfortunately, Delta Green vehemently opposes spreading the truth about the unnatural, and any Agents doing this are liable to get reprimanded, or far worse, by their handler.

Isn't that just a fun, terrible twist that works perfectly with Delta Green?

‘Disappearing’

Witnessing a ‘disappearance’ costs 0/1D4 SAN to the unnatural. Someone can interrupt this by pulling the body out with a successful STR*5 roll. On a critical failure, their arm gets sucked in as well.

On a success, whatever was submerged comes out bleached white and impossibly stretched out, covered in caustic residue. Their jaw hangs down to their belly. Eyes are vacuous slits three feet long. Limbs are like tentacles, long and spindly with rubber bones. These transformed body parts seek to pull would-be saviors into the black hole, then finish the job with the victim.

The black hole remains open, a 6” diameter endless sucking funnel in the victim’s chest. It howls the tune like brass in overlapping, ever-descending Shepard tones. If the victim’s head was submerged, it screeches in unison. After several minutes of being exposed, it vanishes.

I had a few options for what could happen when you interrupt the 'disappearance', which serves dual purposes as the end of the metaphor and the action scene end of the scenario.

People could come out fine but horrified, which sort of delivers a message of hope. But it leads to a potentially 'optimal' strategy where you let victims almost die before interfering so that they never try again, which is not the metaphor I want to convey. It also means that Delta Green will have to monitor if not kill every civilian who was exposed this way to the unnatural, and making you kill the people you just saved is terribly nihilistic and unsatisfying. Lastly, it's just not a very exciting conclusion.

People could come out fine, but a nightgaunt or something flies through the hold in their chest to try to pull people in. This has all the problems of the previous approach, but at least it adds some action. It's also a way to communicate which Great Old One is responsible for the tone by having their servants arrive, but I was specifically trying to avoid tying it into any existing Cthulhu Mythos.

People could come out fine, but the hole doesn't go away. That option is somewhat interesting as a metaphor for depression never fully going away, and it's a fucking sick visual image. Shining a light in there to see how far it goes. Exploring with a little drone or RC car or something. In that case, it would be quiet and at most give off like a cool breeze. Alas, it is not a cool action conclusion. It would be more fitting perhaps for the start of a campaign.

The conclusion I ended up with A) freaked me out to think about, B) provides a fun, unexpected action conclusion, and C) finishes the metaphor by clearly communicating that the tune is a lie. This isn't some blissful, harmless death. You are getting mutilated and changed for an entirely unknown agenda. It is not giving you what you wanted. It just looks that way from the outside.

Also, I want to highlight the phrase "it howls the tune like brass in overlapping, ever-descending Shepard tones." Shepard tones are a musical illusion to make a song sound like it's perpetually getting higher or lower, like the endless stairs in Super Mario 64. I can almost hear this sound in my head, and I wish I got to emphasize it more in the scenario, but such is life.

The Truth

The tune was translated from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs into the song “Black Hole” and posted on Reddit. A TikTok cover got 1.2M views. It has now claimed the lives of thousands. The disappearance of the governor’s daughter is the first to receive enough attention and conclusive evidence to draw in Delta Green.

Briefing

Ashley Burring was a young white woman who attended a local university. Security footage shows Burring entering her apartment four days ago. She was reported missing the next day. An extensive search of the dorm found no evidence of murder or an alternate exit. She seemingly disappeared without a trace. As Burring's father is the state governor, this drew a lot of attention.

I've seen people not be fully convinced by this hook, and I don't fully disagree with them. I think it can work, you just need to clearly emphasize how impossible her disappearance is, how it's being reported about at a national scale as the governor weaponizes his power, how Delta Green is worried that they might have missed something big, etc.

The Agents are to pose as part of the FBI missing persons investigation. They're given FBI credentials, Burring's address, and a police contact. They must determine if Burring's disappearance is unnatural, and if so, deal with that accordingly.

Escalations

• Reveal another infected person.
• Infect a susceptible Agent.
• Reveal that an Agent’s bond was digitally exposed to the tune.
• Have someone see a ‘disappearance’ and call 911.
• Have their handler task the Agents with observing a victim to see how they ‘disappear.’

What I wish I had spelled out was the actual structure of the operation. Agents start by visiting the police and the dorm, and follow that to the original post which they can shut down. Along the way, they see a bunch of people who are infected, and the escalations are used to make the situation seem dynamic and push Agents to investigate a disappearance. Once they've seen that and know how widespread the problem is, they skip to debating what to do about it in the conclusion. This is sort of spelled out in the conclusion, but it could've been better explained here.

These escalations also do my favorite thing in a scenario, which is to make it personal. Finding someone who's infected is cool. Finding out that your cellmate, let alone your daughter, has been singing this creepy fucking song for weeks whenever they think they're alone? That's way cooler. What I cut and wish I hadn't is this short section, titled 'Bringing it Home:'

Lastly, work with your players to determine which of the Agents and their bonds are at risk of infection by the tune. There’s no mechanics for this, just a frank discussion to get everyone on the same page before you use this against them.

The Police Investigation

The police have no leads. Digital forensics found nothing wrong with the security footage, which covers every possible egress from the building. A psychological profile identified Burring as at risk of suicide, but that’s irrelevant without a body. Currently, they're organizing useless volunteer manhunts because they’re good for PR.

Deputy Noah Dunam

A young white man with a patchy brown beard who acts sarcastic and jaded to fit in with the old boys. Delta Green has already established the Agents' credibility to Dunam, so he will cooperate with information requests, but nothing more.

Sheriff Lesley Higgins

A gruff, portly white man humming the tune from his desk. As a widower with PTSD leading this impossible investigation, he was easily infected.

This section went from 600 words to 120 words in the final draft. Very little was actually removed, just a lot of elaboration. An if/then statement for if Agents make the police mad or suspicious. A script for Dunam to tell the Agents where they're at, which would certainly help a stranger run the piece. But the leaner sentences I think help with that already, just in a different way.

The Dorm

Marks or security immediately buzz in anyone identifying as law enforcement. The apartment is as messy as you'd expect: laundry everywhere except the basket, a filthy bathroom, sparse food, and even sparser furniture.

Burring has prescription Prozac in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

This little section was 300 words! Not much of a loss to cut Clark Seymore, the pushover security officer. Also not a lot of drama to be had in getting to the crime scene.

The Bedroom

Behind police tape, Burring's room is a mess, left untouched for crime scene investigators.

Buring’s phone lays on the bed alongside an empty AirPods case. "Black Hole" by Rachel Chau is active on the media player. Unlocking it (Marks and Dunam know the password) reveals texts brushing off her mom’s wellness checks and canceling on weekend plans.

A nightstand holds a journal, in which Burring wrote about her struggle with insomnia, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. Sporadic entries became nightly for the last few weeks, at the same time that the lyrics to “Black Hole” started appearing in the margins.

Again, big cuts! From 300 words to 100.

Melody Marks

A young black woman in university-branded sweats, whose smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s overly compliant with law enforcement, and otherwise dispassionately hums the tune from another room.

While Burring was always unhappy, she withdrew even more over the past month, canceling plans and skipping classes. When Marks heard Burring humming in her room four days ago, she thought that meant things were getting better.

Marks was susceptible to infection due to school stress, grieving Burring’s disappearance, and repeated police interrogations.

RIP Marks, she was a good one. This section was cut dramatically, from 500 words to 80. And if I'm being honest, there's basically no unique information that was actually cut. Now, if you're reading it for the first time, those 500 words go a long way to clarifying each statement, calling back to previous sections, and making you care about Marks. But if you're mid-operation and trying to run Marks for the first time, fuck is 500 words a lot to navigate.

Black Hole

This TikTok shows Chau dramatically singing in her bedroom while playing the acoustic guitar. The performance is haunting. It was posted 4 weeks ago, and has 1.2M views. The lyrics go:

Pulling my arms in

Bringing me to rest

Pulling my head into

The black hole in my chest

Chau has made similar posts for years now, but none were ever this popular, and she hasn't posted since. The top comment is Farley accusing Chau of ripping off his song.

Now for the big reveal: I wrote those lyrics when I was a depressed 14 year old, and was unreasonably excited to fit them into a scenario. As for quality, they're fine for a kid but a little cringe as an adult, which I think makes sense in-game and is a lot of fun to let Agents complain about.

Rachel Chau 

A pretty Vietnamese woman from Montana, a history major, and a shift manager at Macy's. She lived alone and had limited contact with her strict parents. Chau’s store manager reported her missing three weeks ago.

Sam Callaway

Chau’s coworker. A young, heavily pierced Puerto Rican man with bipolar disorder. He heard her singing the song at work, and was recently infected after blowing his husband’s savings during a manic episode.

The Origin

Farley is a history grad student who’s using advanced forensic technology to recreate and then translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. His professor found the tune in a tomb full of empty sarcophagi. In the Reddit post, he explains how he roughly translated it, then set the "notes" to a common Pentatonic scale. It includes a recording of him amateurishly singing “Black Hole.”

Oh man. Here is where I cut stuff that I really wish I hadn't. And in retrospect, I could have fit it into the appendixes as a ritual or something, maybe. It's not necessary to complete the scenario, I know, but it's cool and without it readers have no way of knowing that you can actually play the tune yourself, like, on a keyboard. And the whole weird origin of finding the song in an empty tomb goes tragically unexplored too. And the term 'breast hole.' Anyways, here is the original passage:

As explained in the post, Farley was translating hieroglyphs in a tomb that mysteriously had no bodies buried in its dozens of sarcophagi when he found a song, or a ritual. It appears that the tomb was dedicated to Anubis. The original translates roughly to:

Put legs into breast hole      1 1 1 1 2 2 - -

Put head into breast hole     2 2 2 2 3 3 - -

Put arms into breast hole     3 3 2 1 - 2 - 

Put breast into                      3 - 2 - 1 - 2 3

breast hole      - 3 2 - 1 - - -

After translating it over several weeks at school, Farley set the "notes" to a common Pentatonic scale starting with C, and wrote lyrics that roughly translate the meaning into something that makes sense and rhymes in English. Here is the English version:

Pulling my arms in C C C C B B - -

Bringing me to rest B B B B A A - -

Pulling my head into A A B C - B - 

The black hole  A - B - C - B A

In my chest          - A B - C - - -

The post is primarily text explaining his process to other history buffs, with a link at the end to a sound recording of him singing the lyrics and playing those keys on the piano. It's a lot more amateurish than Chau's cover, but the sound file isn't the primary purpose of the post.

If only I had the balls to record that amateurish cover of the song... But I probably would have lost votes with that. 

Dominic Farley

A lanky white guy with curly blonde hair who likes to play devil’s advocate. Farley will delete the post if directed to by his supervisor or convincingly threatened, but not before complaining about it online.

Conclusion

The Agents should quickly discover a connection between the song and the ‘disappearances.’ They can scrub the song from the internet and investigate the infection, ideally witnessing a ‘disappearance’ themselves.

Beyond that is the Sisyphean task of tracking millions of vectors for an infection that’s harmless to most, but lethal to about 2-4% of people, vastly more deadly than suicide. Although it leaves no unnatural footprint, that many missing people won’t go unnoticed. Much like suicide, the tune cannot be stopped completely, but it can be mitigated.

Conclude with the Agents debriefing with their handler. Their recommendations will color how Delta Green deals with the infection going forward. Agents lose 1/1D8 SAN to helplessness for suggesting that they sweep it under the rug, or 0/1D4 SAN for recommending reasonable proactive solutions. Agents who personally combat it instead lose 1D4 from a bond for overextending themselves, and gain 1D6 minus 1D6 SAN for their efforts.

This ending is intentionally quite depressing. I could have made it a limited infection with 12 views on reddit that Agents could reasonably contain, but if this is a metaphor for depression and suicide, then that is unsatisfying. The real-life gut-wrenching horror about suicide is that you cannot stop people from doing it. People work hard every day to save lives, and they succeed, but success is a matter of statistics. This is not a war you can win, or even lose. But you can still make a difference. And in the end, is that not a perfect description of what it means to work for Delta Green?