CORNUCOPIA Raid (cont) - Sat, Feb 3, 2001

• The raid on Cornucopia House is in progress on Saturday, February 3rd around 10pm. The Delta Green team observed the house for a couple hours until the children seemed to be asleep before breaching from the back porch.
• Two targets are already down - a young woman shot near the pickup truck in the front yard and a large adult man killed in the shed behind the house. One young man was spotted in the main room but fled into the house extension. His location is currently unknown.
• The team suspects at least one more adult may be in the nearby cottage.
• Monroe and Cortez are sweeping the house extension while Drummond and McCarter examine the rest of the farmhouse. A large group of children are quietly watching the violence unfold in the main room.
• Drummond had locked the back door after entering and put something underneath to secure it.
• Cortez and Monroe checked what appeared to be a girls’ dormitory, but it was locked and looked unused, with a layer of dust on everything inside.
• Drummond and McCarter cleared the bedrooms - two smaller ones looked periodically used with poorly made beds and discarded men’s and women’s clothing. The largest bedroom was unpleasant, with drug paraphernalia, condoms, porn magazines, camera equipment, and a box of dolls/stuffed animals labeled “punishment”. They had to make Sanity checks upon seeing this disturbing room.
• After thoroughly checking hiding spots, closets, and bathrooms, Drummond and McCarter found no one else in the bedrooms. They returned to the main room where some children were now sitting up and watching them.
• McCarter plans to identify and talk to the oldest child in the room while having Drummond cover him and keep watch. They were told not to let the adults speak but weren’t given orders about the children.
• The agents are unsure if the man shot in the shed is alive or dead. He went down after being shot but his body is no longer visible in the shed.
• Steel Monroe looks out a window and sees the shed door is open. He spots blood drops in the snow leading behind the shed, indicating the man may still be alive.
• The agents find a young boy, around 10 years old, in the house. He seems unusually calm and unafraid given the situation.
• Graham Drummond tries to communicate with the boy, first in English which the boy doesn’t seem to understand. Switching to Russian, the boy responds by whispering “babushka” (grandmother) and pointing to the south end of the house.
• There are two silent TVs on in the house - a larger one playing animal attack footage with headphones attached, and a smaller one in the kitchen.
• While searching a dormitory, Steel finds an aged, folded piece of paper in an air vent. It contains a crayon drawing of four figures, each bearing injuries the agents have suffered in the past 12 hours. The drawing seems to have been done by multiple young children.
• The windows in the dormitory are blacked out with paint, blocking most external light. The boys’ dormitory seems completely unused, while the girls’ dormitory has signs of occupancy like stuffed animals and clothing.
• Cortez investigates the girls’ dormitory and finds it in dismal condition, with items that could have helped the children not being used. This stokes his righteous fury.
• All the windows in both dormitories are blacked out.
• Cortez blasts open the locked door to the boys’ dormitory with his shotgun. McCarter and Drummond hear the blast from elsewhere in the house.
• The boys’ dormitory mirrors the layout of the girls’ side, but with stereotypical boys’ decor like blue comforters, curtains, and posters of sports stars from 10+ years ago like Ken Griffey Jr., Hulk Hogan, and Bo Jackson. The posters are drooping where the sticky tack has given out.
• Cortez and Monroe search the boys’ dorm. They notice part of the baseball-patterned wallpaper peeling off in a spot. Behind it, a shape is drawn in crayon on the sticky side - it matches the shape of Cortez’s distinctive birthmark.
• Further examination reveals the same shape drawn behind the next several baseballs down the wall, in different crayon colors. Cortez makes a Sanity check upon seeing this.
• No people are found hiding in either dormitory. Cortez radios the others suggesting they regroup to breach the metal door together.
• The group tries to determine sight lines to the cottage, but the blocked windows prevent seeing it from inside the house.
• Based on the blood trail in the snow, Drummond determines someone outside the shed is badly injured and bleeding heavily, though he’s unsure how long until they fall unconscious.
• The agents prepare to split up - Monroe and Cortez will check the cottage, while McCarter and Drummond investigate the bleeding person behind the shed.
• As McCarter and Drummond head to the back door, the TV in the main room displays strange, ominous imagery - a crocodile attacking a kangaroo, the Cheshire Cat’s grin from Alice in Wonderland, birds swarming Tippi Hedren. The two agents are weirded out but ignore it to continue their objective.
• Monroe and Cortez come out on the back porch and split up to go around either side of the shed.
• As they get to the end of the hallway, they see what look like child-sized fingernail marks along the walls.
• Monroe and Cortez reach the metal door at the end of the hallway. Monroe has his shotgun ready as Cortez pulls open the door on a count of three.
• Outside, they see snow on the ground in the moonlight. The cottage up the hill is dark.
• There are multiple sets of footprints in the snow traversing a well-worn path that leads up to the cottage.
• As they move to circle around to the shed, Monroe and Cortez spot a dark figure kneeling and aiming a rifle at them from the tree line to the east.
• Monroe breaks line of sight by retreating back around the main house while communicating the shooter’s presence over the radio.
• Cortez also retreats, going back inside through the door they came out of.
• McCarter, on the other side, dives through the open front door of the shed for cover as the shooter fires, missing everyone.
• Inside the shed, McCarter finds typical lawn maintenance equipment, a weight bench, gasoline cans, buckets labeled “Lye Soda”, and a TV setup with multiple VCRs and a basket of VHS tapes playing what looks like a Ravens football game.
• Monroe takes aim at the shooter in the field with his hunting rifle and fires, seeing the figure slump over in the snow.
• Cortez moves through the house to come out on the back porch again. McCarter emerges from the shed and he and Monroe confirm the man from the shed headed out into the field and is down.
• The group decides to head to the cottage next, assuming at least two people are likely there.
• As they approach, Drummond uses his tracking skills to note that one set of tracks belongs to someone who ran straight to the cottage without diverting.
• Reaching the cottage, they see the curtains are not drawn.
• The agents approach the dark cabin, unable to see if anyone is inside aiming at them through the windows. There is nowhere to hide on the open approach.
• The GM takes a short break to deal with a child waking up.
• During the break, the players discuss sound effects, music tracks for a podcast, and Delta Green RPG asset packs one player purchased.
• Resuming the game, Cortez and Monroe approach the front porch. It’s an enclosed porch with metal folding chairs, a space heater, and a TV stand with ashtrays. The windows are frosted over, obscuring the view inside, but a warm light glows from within.
• Monroe takes position next to the front door while they wait to hear from the other two agents.
• Drummond and McCarter move around to the back of the house, finding no entrances on the back side, just more frosted windows. McCarter touches a window and feels it is warmer than the outside, with the frosting seemingly on the inside, looking like unmoving fog.
• They discuss breaching, with Drummond suggesting shooting out the back window as a distraction before the others enter through the front.
• Drummond shoots the back window. Making a Sanity check, he sees only gray fog through the hole he made.
• As Cortez opens the front door, he, Monroe and McCarter must make POW checks. Monroe and McCarter fail.
• Monroe and McCarter enter, finding the cottage warm and inviting, smelling of cinnamon and gingerbread. They feel at peace as a friendly elderly woman offers them tea and gingerbread.
• Cortez sees the place as a ruin, with a grotesque nude elderly woman lurking, her chest covered in tumescent breasts seeping black ichor. He makes a Sanity check.
• The woman drains the black liquid into teacups to give to Monroe and McCarter. Cortez opens fire but misses in a panic. The woman snarls at him.
• Drummond enters through the fog-filled back doorway. Making his POW check, he sees McCarter in a daze. Drummond puts a hand on McCarter’s shoulder.
• Cortez focuses on McCarter first, trying to shake him and get his attention to figure out what’s going on.
• Cortez takes a blaster from the horrible creature. Her lips move and she whispers “shoot, shoot, shoot” while glaring at Cortez.
• Drummond hears Cortez yelling “shoot, shoot, shoot” over the radio. Drummond shoves McCarter out of the way.
• Drummond makes a Sanity check and fails, losing 2 Sanity points. He then shoots the creature with a shotgun, doing 8 damage with 3 armor piercing.
• The creature shrieks and both of Cortez’s front arms shrivel up. The shotgun turns into a snake. Cortez takes 10 hit points of damage and collapses in agonizing pain, saying “Don’t hold back. You gotta kill me.”
• The other two people with the creature are still acting normally, as if having tea time.
• The creature turns and lifts her hand towards Cortez, who flashes a look of agony, says “my balls”, and falls to the ground. She then pivots towards Drummond.
• Drummond shoots her again, rolling a 38. The shot does 10 damage total, blowing open her chest and spraying black ichor everywhere.
• McCarter and Monroe are sprayed with the black ichor. They make Sanity checks - Monroe gets a critical success and McCarter a regular success. They lose no Sanity points.
• The storybook cottage decays into blackness around them. They realize nothing will be the same after witnessing these impossible horrors.
• They see the dead bloated corpse with naked breasts leaking black liquid, Drummond ejecting a shell, and Cortez collapsed on the ground.
• McCarter tends to Cortez, making a First Aid check but finding no obvious wounds. Pulling down his trousers, he sees Cortez’s genitalia have withered away to dust.
• Drummond spots a figure emerging from a nearby doorway with a kitchen knife, running at them. Drummond warns the others, brings his gun up and shoots, doing 4 damage.
• The attacker hurls himself at Drummond with the knife but misses. Drummond steps back, brings the gun up point blank and blows the attacker’s head off. Drummond loses 1 Sanity point.
• Monroe puts ice from the kitchen on Cortez’s blasted genitals. Drummond and McCarter search the cottage but find no one else.
• Drummond finds a padded, soundproofed bedroom that was clearly a prison, with chains, a metal bucket, dirty dolls and papers with crayons. He makes a Sanity check and succeeds.
• Drummond puts a pillow over the creature’s head and shoots it again to ensure it’s dead.
• McCarter investigates a filthy master bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom is arranged with bones and body parts in an occult pattern. He makes a Sanity check and succeeds.
• McCarter finds a desk with papers written in Cyrillic. A pile of dead rats is in the corner, one emerging alive with a blood-smeared face to stare at him.
• McCarter says over the intercom that they need to destroy the place. He collects up the papers to try to make sense of what happened.
• Drummond steps outside, seeing no one else around. They can still faintly hear the hair dryers.
• Monroe injects Cortez with morphine to wake him. Cortez jokes the creature gave him a “back alley vasectomy”.
• The agents find no living adults in the house. They decide to dig graves to bury the bodies, considering using the kids to help dig.

In summary, the agents survived a deadly supernatural confrontation in the cottage, but not without physical and mental damage, especially to Cortez. They now face the grim task of cleaning up the horrific scene and trying to piece together the occult secrets of what occurred there.