THE TWO-MINUTE HORROR: The Child

THE TWO-MINUTE HORROR: The Child

An Unnatural Encounter for Delta Green
©2019 The Delta Green Partnership

[REDACTED]: You saw the kid? You believe me.


BRIEFING AGENT FBI: Yes.
[REDACTED]: The kid was dead, okay? But it wouldn’t stop talking.
—A single-page of an FBI Field Report stuck to a declassified page. 2019.

OPINT: ABOUT THE 2 MINUTE HORROR

Each 2 Minute Horror is a brief, one-off encounter, mystery, or complication to add depth and
strangeness to your Delta Green game. They should be seamlessly integrated into existing
operations as an aside, and — by themselves — constitute a short amount of gameplay. Still,
clever Handlers might use them to point the Agents towards an entirely new investigation, to
reinforce the themes of self-sacrifice and inevitable defeat in Delta Green or to simply show the
Agents that they are not the only ones wrestling with the unnatural.

The Child
The child appears to be approximately 7 years old, 59 pounds, 4’1”, with long, black hair,
brown eyes and perfect, white, teeth. Its skin, covered in grime, dirt and filth is of an
indeterminate color. The child is the same sex as the Agent he or she is remanded into the
custody of. The child is dressed in baggy, teenage-sized sweatpants and a Nike sweatshirt (the
clothing appears new, with the tags still on them), and wears oversized electric blue Crocs. The
child looks as if he or she has been awake for some time, and appears physically exhausted
and filthy.

The Set-Up
How does the Child find its way to the Agent? There are infinite possibilities, but let’s establish
a few specifics below; the child can end up with the Agent in any of the following methods:

∆ SUMMONED TO PICK-UP: A single Agent is called by their superior, cell leader, or

conspiracy acquaintance and asked to take care of an urgent problem. They are given
coordinates to an isolated locale — a rest-stop, a long-haul trucker gas station, an
overpass — at night. The paranoia level should be high. There, they meet their contact and
the child. The contact seems harried, and after taking a brief phone call and saying little,
says only, “wait 72 hours, I’ll ring you.” They leave a duffel bag filled with snacks, clothes,
soap, a brush, and a few toys that are obviously not the appropriate age for the child. Then,
they peel out into the night, leaving the Agent alone with the child.
∆ FOUND IN AN UNNATURAL LOCALE: The Agents find the child in an area or locale linked
to the unnatural: a cult warehouse, the old farm near the standing stones, or tunnels
beneath the train station. While the Agents are neck-deep in another operation they come
upon the child, in the pitch dark, locked in a recently built security fence box in the middle
of a filthy room. It’s clear the child sees them and has been in the box for some time, and it
scrabbles to get out, mouthing words but never really saying anything. Congratulations,
those heartless enough to leave the child in there suffer 1/1D6 SAN helplessness.
∆ DRAWN TO THE UNNATURAL: Any Agent dabbling in the unnatural might find the child
drawn to them, late one night. Particularly those Agents studying unnatural tomes,
operating artifacts or spells, or otherwise deepening their understanding of what lies

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outside of reality. It might be as esoteric as the Agent feels drawn to an isolated locale, only
to find the child, or that the child appears on their doorstep in the middle of the night.

First Impressions
The child is somber and withdrawn and it does not answer to questioning. It will assent to
simple movement commands like “sit,” “go,” and “stay here.”

If there is a television, or a car radio, the child will attempt to turn it on, and turn the music or
sound UP. Painfully loud. If the sound is turned down, and the child is left alone with the
television or radio, they turn it back up when the Agent is not present.

Any Agent spending time with the child for more than an hour may make a HUMINT roll.
Success indicates that they believe the child can speak English fluently, based on their
behavior and reaction to speech.

The child will not interact verbally with anyone until settled into a “safe” locale for more than
2 hours. Any attempt to touch it causes it to skitter away, dodging any human contact (Dodge
60%) and inflicts a -20% penalty on future social interactions with the child from that particular
Agent.

No Human Contact
After several hours of being left alone, the child begins to explore the new surroundings.
Turning on the television or radio (to the highest level) if possible, going through drawers and
looking at books. Any attempt to restrain or touch it causes it to launch into hysterics, pulling,
screaming, and struggling to get free of any human contact (0/1 SAN helplessness to witness)
and inflicts a -40% (total) penalty on future social interactions with the child.

A Persuade or Psychotherapy roll calms them down, otherwise the child screams until
hoarse and finally collapses from exhaustion. Note: in a locale like a hotel or near other people,
this may cause the authorities to be summoned, complicating matters.

Attempts of any type to sedate the child fail. Injections of any size appear to have no effect
(0/1 SAN unnatural for anyone with a Medicine or Pharmacy of 30%+).

Talking
Those Agents that honor the personal space of the child soon find it begins to trust them. After
awhile, it refuses to leave the eye-line of that one, particular Agent, following them from room
to room, silently. Agents in this position may attempt to Persuade the child to do simple things
that do not involve human touch. Eating. Sitting in a particular area. Turning off the television
and radio. Etc.

Those Agents that make a HUMINT roll that pay careful attention to the child when the room
is not consumed with noise from a television or radio notice that it appears to react to unseen
things. Occasionally, if the music or TV is not playing loudly, the child will close its eyes and
cover its ears as if trying to block some horrific, unseen thing from its view.

Negotiation and Questioning

After some time with the child, and with some simple verbal contact, an Agent might be able to
goad some information from it.

Each successful Persuade roll (made with whatever penalty may have been made due to
previous actions, -20 or -40% maximum) might reveal one of the following things:

∆ “I talk to the things that sleep.”

∆ “The things say they don’t like you.”

∆ “The things say you [Handler describes some specific and mundane thing the Agent did
before they met the child].”

∆ “The man put a bottle in my chest and it talks to me.”

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Specific questions may be directed at the child while it is cooperative. It appears to have
knowledge of certain things it could not possibly know. The more related to the unnatural the
subject of the question is, the more likely it has some useful information about it. This message
is always “transmitted” to the child through the “things” that only it appears to hear.

The answers to each such question remain up to the Handler to determine, but the more
startling and accurate statements might trigger a 0/1 SAN unnatural roll. Sometimes the source
of this information appears to be lying to or mocking the Agents and it will always eagerly point
the way to dangerous, unnatural, things.

Examination
Agents that manage to either persuade or subdue the child discover several things in rapid
succession.

∆ The front of the child’s torso is split by a post-mortem Y-stitch, completely concealed
beneath the sweatshirt (1/1D6 SAN unnatural).

∆ The child has no pulse and no heartbeat (0/1 SAN unnatural).

∆ Cuts to the child do not yield blood, and the child does not need to breathe (0/1 SAN
unnatural).

∆ Listening at its chest with a stethoscope reveals occasional, strange tinkling sound in
lieu of a heartbeat. This sound — which sounds like glass — appears to occur only
when the child claims to hear the “things” speaking.

∆ The child has strange branded marks on its tongue, left hand palm and right base of the
foot — these runes are from an obscure language (sometimes thought entirely
contrived) called Aklo. Anyone with Forensics that makes a successful roll notes the
sigils were burned into the flesh post-mortem (0/1 SAN unnatural).

∆ Still, the child moves, screams, reacts and acts as if it were alive, though it is clearly
not.

∆ The glass bauble in the chest of the child, if removed, immediately renders the child
inert. The bauble is a sphere of grey-blue glass, approximately the size of tennis ball.
Though nothing can be seen through the glass, shaking it causes a tinkling noise to
issue from it, as if it contained a small, organic element.

Clean-Up
Several resolutions are possible:

∆ DESTROY IT: No matter what Agents know, it is still, somehow a child — at least as far as
the human psyche is concerned. Any way you cut it, “destroying” it is a matter of 1/1D10
SAN violence to any Agent participating, or permitting the child to be destroyed.

∆ DEMAND DELTA GREEN REMOVE IT: Agents need to stir up a hornet’s nest to get the
group to even consider taking the child back. As far as the cell or organization leader is
concerned “the kid is your problem.” Only pulling off something significant — getting a cell
leader implicated in the crime, pulling many strings, or making it the problem of someone
with something to lose in the group should move this needle; and it should be a pain in the
ass to pull it off.

∆ LET IT GO: Agents that know about the horrors of the child that let it go or abandon it
suffer only 1/1D4 SAN helplessness instead of the 1/1D10 SAN violence for destroying it.
Of course, that is until animals, and then people begin turning up disemboweled in the area
(0/1D4 SAN helplessness).

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THE THING IN THE GLASS BAUBLE

“…an Araybe method of olde, to place within the sheyl of a man that which livith and
thrive on the outside of ye sphere of matter and form and there, bind it in, and rule it,
and through it, glean ye oldest of the secrets…”
—From the notes of Joseph Curwen, 1768.

In 1768, Joseph Curwen, that aged and accomplished sorcerer from colonial America,
managed to call down and trap within a glass ward a consciousness from outside our
dimensions and matter. The process (gleaned from the “the most horrific and cursed
pages of ye Araybe…”) concerned embedding such a glass inside a corpse, and in
doing so, granting that corpse a semblance of life as an intermediary with the alien
consciousness. The reanimated body retained its mind and memories, but did not eat,
breathe, age, or die normally and the alien consciousness in the bauble could speak to
it.

Someone has called such a thing down and trapped it inside the child.

ATTACKS:
∆ Clutch 50%, damage 1D6.
∆ Rend 50%, damage 1D4-1.
∆ Smash 40%, Lethality 10%.
ETERNAL: The thing trapped inside the glass bauble is immortal and beyond physical
violence. While the glass it is contained within can be easily shattered (releasing back
to its own dimension) this does no harm to the being, which boils out in a cloud of
negative matter filled with eyes, open maws and terrible, impossible limbs.

DISSOLUTE: If the glass bauble is smashed, roll a 1D6 — that’s how big the being is in
meters, how many turns the thing in the bauble can persist in our world after its prison
is destroyed, as well as how many attacks it may inflict per turn. Each turn that passes
causes it to wither and fade from our world, shrink, inflict less attacks. At the end, it
disappears into smoke which vanishes on the wind, shrieking in a chorus of inhuman
voices.

HUNGRY: Every turn it exists free from its glass prison, it may lash out and attack with
its various alien limbs and mouths equal to the number rolled on the initial 1D6. For
example, if it rolled a 6, on the first turn, it can attack 6 times. 5 times on the next turn.
4 times. Until it hits 0, whereupon it vanishes.

SAN LOSS 1D4/1D6 unnatural.