FROM THE GROUND UP PART 3 — THE WRITING IS THE HARDEST PART

Welcome to the third instalment of FROM THE GROUND UP (don't forget to check out FROM THE GROUND UP PART 1 — THE HOOK) and FROM THE GROUND UP PART 2 — GETTING IT ON THE PAGE), a series of articles is to give you, as honestly and thoroughly as possible, a real-time insight into constructing a Delta Green operation, from the raw germ of an idea, all the way through to a fully-realized, play-ready book.

Today, we're delving into THE WRITING IS THE HARDEST PART...actually getting into the writing of the scenario Ab Ovo.

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GETTING INTO IT

The first step, of course, is throwing up the rough outline as seen in the PART 2.

SCENE 1: THE FLIGHT

• The unnatural samples and calling in CORAL NOMAD.
• The Pave Hawk MH-60G helicopter and crew.
• Flying into Nevada (over the mountains, over Walker lake, to Carson Lake).
• Fallon NV, Carson Lake and Site R.
• Landing at the site R field, samples run off by personnel, and meeting Lt. Cameron.

SCENE 2: VESB (Vehicle Storage Building)

• Lt. Cameron is the main interaction here (calm, professional, seen-it-all).
• Into the Vehicle Storage Building.
• See exotic samples moved from the Pave Hawk into the facility.
• Moved through the day to day rooms here — kitchens, bedrooms, rec rooms to the Security Control Center.
• IDs are confirmed through biometrics.
• Testing of the Agents: thermometer, blood swabs, saliva swabs, full body scan, all items taken. Given a March Tech jumpsuit.
• They pass through the BLAST DOOR, a 12 TON PIECE of solid steel, which is open, painted on the inside, is WILE E COYOTE, burned, wagging his finger, the caption reads IF THE DOOR IS SHUT AND YOU CAN READ THIS, I’VE GOT BAD NEWS.
• Down the big elevator to the SECURE STORAGE FACILITY.

SCENE 3: THE "SIF" (SECURE STORAGE FACILITY) AND THE  DEBRIEF

• The Agents are brought through heavy cement rooms deep below the earth.
• There are four BSL 4 labs here with designated hot zones and airlocks.
• Guards stand with firearms at intervals along the main hallway.
• Cameras are everywhere in mirrored globes.
• Lt. Cameron brings them to ROOM 9 and introduces them to Dr. Sidik and Dr. Gray. Dr. Sidik is ARCHINT director for CORAL NOMAD BACKYARD, and Dr. Gray is an associate director of Bioinformatics and Systemic Biology for March Technologies.
• Through a bulletproof window in a Biosafety 4 lab, the Agents are shown items recovered from the operation and are questioned about them — who had them, were they technology? Who recovered them? Etc.
• Dr. Sidik makes extensive notes on a tablet.
• An item is brought up from a tray to be presented, but the person in the BS4 gear suddenly sneezes, and drops it.
• All hell breaks loose as something boils out.

SCENE 4: LOCKDOWN AND DEATH

• The thing cracks all four ivory heads and GROWS as it lashes out, kills and consumes the lab personnel, but not before one can trigger a general lockdown.
• It launches itself at the glass window where the Agents are, spidering it, but not opening it — yet, ravenous.
• SAN loss, of course.
• Gray and Sidik are useless and merely goggle at of this.
• It is up to the Agents to exit using the Dr’s passes.
• If they don’t do anything, it bursts through and attacks a randomly selected target.

SCENE 5: ESCAPE AND SURVIVAL

The rest of the operation is an outlast-the-monster scenario stuck inside a Cold War bunker. Options include:

• Search for exits.
• Try to communicate with the surface.
• Arm yourself.
• Help injured personnel.
• Hide.
• Observe the creature.
• How long does the beast survive?
• What state is it in?
• When does it start hunting the hidden Agents?
• Protect Dr. Gray or Dr. Sidik.
• What happens when the beast finally perishes.
• Clearance and release for survivors.

Very quickly, this looks too complicated to me. I'm hoping this operation will be short and straightforward. I mean there's not a lot of chaff in the outline, but still, it feels like it should be reorganized into three clear sections: a feeling of power, a feeling of security and competence, and then absolute chaos.

That seems better. No real change to the outline, I just choose to stuff the elements there under one of the three new headings: POWER, SECURITY or CHAOS.

So, the first thing I write beyond the outline and Introduction is an OVERVIEW. If often write overviews at the beginning of my operations where I can lay all the secrets clear for the Handler, so they know precisely the goals and mysteries of the operation upfront.

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Overview

This operation is written to deliver a very clear message about the official Delta Green Program. Despite appearances, and the semblance of order, the Program's mandates — which include the secret study and disimmenation of unnatural information — are wholly flawed. Not only does the Program not understand what they are dealing with (though, couched in jargon, they pretend to), they are dangerously spreading unnatural elements around. This operation is built to put the players right in the middle of this ongoing disaster.

The operation demonstrates:

• POWER: The Agents and their unnatural evidence are whisked off in the CORAL NOMAD military helicopters of the official Delta Green Program. The CORAL NOMAD team is highly trained, capable, and well-supplied.
• SECURITY: The Agents are granted entry to a CORAL NOMAD Cold-War era bunker retrofitted into a Biosafety 4 facility to debrief. There, everything looks in-hand and well managed. This eases the Agents into a feeling of comfort in a hyper-secure facility.
• CHAOS: A simple accident leads to something boiling to life and slaughtering personnel before rampaging through the underground facility, which is locked down behind a 12-foot blast door. The Agents must use what they can find in the facility to survive the hunting unnatural creature, which requires fresh meat to remain alive. This, the final rug pull, shows how out-of-control and clueless the Delta Green Program really is.

For ease of play, the operation is broken into three sections: POWER, SECURITY and CHAOS and there are numerous recommendations on how to play up these feelings when the time is right.

The end of the operation is open-ended and it can conclude in many, many ways. The Agents might be consumed by the unnatural creature, they might outlast it and be left to die in the locked-down facility by the Program, or they might...just might...manage to talk their way out.

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Writing the above took me perhaps 5 minutes. Another habit I have is when I'm working on a section, I often read the previous section and the section after it, and rewrite as needed then. This makes the text flow better.

Next up, I choose to just dive into the POWER section using my outline. Specifically:

• The unnatural samples and calling in CORAL NOMAD.
• The Pave Hawk MH-60G helicopter and crew.
• Flying into Nevada (over the mountains, over Walker lake, to Carson Lake).

So, I start with a header POWER and try to summarize it, and in writing, I end up covering the first bullet point. I write it in 10 minutes or so, and it looks like this:

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POWER

This section begins after a Delta Green operation, as the Agents grapple with what to do with the evidence left behind. It should be an operation that's produced unnatural artifacts: alien bodies, archaeological evidence, or even human victims tainted by hypergeometry. If not, imply that an unseen byproduct like radiation, poison, or contamination may pose risk. By default, this operation assumes THE SENTINELS OF TWILIGHT as the previous operation, and the bodies of Brandon McGill, the Moon Children, or the K’n-Yani, are the evidence which must be secured.

If Agents call it in, they are told by their contact in the Conspiracy or the Program that assistance is on the way. If they did not call it in, have their contact call them and inform them that it was called in by a third-party that the Agent wasn't aware of; a park ranger, police officer, or doctor on the sidelines who is also read-in to Delta Green. The contact orders Agents to hold their ground, secure the "evidence," protect it from prying eyes, and wait. Help is incoming from CORAL NOMAD. Within an hour, the Agents hear the tell-tale whup-whup-whup of approaching helicopters.

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Next up, I skip ahead — note, I often do this — to the arrival of CORAL NOMAD. Not for any particular reason, but only because I felt like writing about the team and their methods first, before their vehicle. When I find myself stuck to write something, I jump to another heading in the outline. I find this often helps me overcome what otherwise might be a block. There's always something I want to write about.

I write this in about 10 minutes or so. It looks like this:
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CORAL NOMAD ARRIVES

Three Pave Hawk MH-60G medium lift helicopters put down in an open area as if they know the Agent's precise location. In an urban area, this is likely an empty construction lot, or an open park. In the wilderness (or Yosemite) it's a parking lot or empty grass field.

The noise of these helicopters flying low is enormous, and shakes windows, sets off car alarms, and makes talking all but impossible for those nearby on the ground. Each Pave Hawk has limited markings, and is painted a dull black, but each has a single, white number on the side: 1, 2, 3. When they land, all but one helicopter powers down. Dark figures rush from the still-powered-up helicopter in military precision.

These personnel wear dun color jumpsuits, combat helmets with night-vision rigs, and carry heavy automatic weapons, but have no clear markings just some mission patches. They all-but ignore the Agents, and instead form a perimeter around the Agents and the unnatural samples.

A First Lieutenant approaches carrying a silver squat lockbox by the handle, wearing Air Force pararescue gear, and the name tag CARSON, but he does not offer any niceities. He focuses on who he thinks is in charge and gets a break down of the clean up. How many samples? How large? Anything still moving?

This information is relayed via radio to a second Pave Hawk, which disgorges the "bagged geeks". This team of 5 personnel are outfitted in heavy biosafety 4 protocol gear, looking more like they're out for a walk on the moon rather than a Earthly recovery mission. This team sets about collection, boxing, and securing the artifacts and biological samples. They use gas-powered lifts to move the heavier samples, walking alongside the small, motorized vehicles which are steered by a bulky remote connected by a thick cable.

Carson then orders the Agents to Pave Hawk 2. They've been called in for debrief at BACKYARD — whatever that is. These is no option given here. The Agents are surrounded by a perimeter of 12 heavily armed personnel. Carson holds out Faraday bag for the Agents' communication devices, and opens the lockbox for their firearms with a key he keeps around his neck under his jumpsuit. Anything bigger than a pistol is remanded to a PJ and brought to one of the helicopters. Carson is implacable. Any stalling and he shouts over the rotors, matter-of-factly, "are we going to have a problem?!"
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Still, this doesn't seem to cover enough eventualities for the seriousness of the situation. I think about this for some time while rereading what I've written and making small tweaks here and there. After about 15 minutes, I decide to add an IN THE FIELD section to outline just what to do with players who refuse to allow their Agents to comply. This takes me about 5 minutes to write (I did a bit of thinking on it before I started writing, so it was easier). It looks like this:
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IN THE FIELD: RETICENCE AND RECTIFICATION

Though this should not happen if the Agents are actually taking the game seriously, there is always one player who is eager to push the limits of an operation. Here's what happens if an Agent refuses Carson's command.

Those that refuse to comply find themselves surrounded by four PJs armed with cattle-prod tasers. Each is permitted a 50% taser attack, leaving the Agent stunned (they must make a CONx5 test to recover an act normally next turn). If stunned, the Agent is trussed up in stainless steel zip ties and unceremoniously dumped in the cargo hold of Pave Hawk 2 for the ride.

When they land at Site R, Carson asks them condescendingly "are you going to behave?" If they do, he clips the zip-ties from their bloodied wrists and says, "here, if you pull that shit, hot-shot, they just shoot you." Those foolish enough to continue to resist are not given second chances.

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Wrapping up this writing session, I choose to dive into the CORAL NOMAD Pave Hawk helicopter. This writing takes a bit longer — closer to 40 minutes — along with some brief text chats with Shane, to write. Mostly because it requires a lot of digging on the web for specs for the Pave Hawk. Still, it's fun to get down on paper. It looks like this:
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DISINFORMATION: THE PAVE HAWK MH-60G-1/1 and 1/1-S

A modified version of the Pave Hawk MH-60G is the main vehicle used by CORAL NOMAD. With a crew of 4, and carrying up to 12 additional personnel, the Pave Hawk is a large helicopter. It is referred to by CORAL NOMAD crew as the "One One." The standard Pave Hawk has an operational range of 600 kilometers, extendable via mid-air refueling, so it can reach remote operation sites with ease, while the 1/1 model flown by CORAL NOMAD can achieve almost 750 kilometers on a similar fuel load with the proper preparations (see below).

There is a single variation on the 1/1, called the 1/1-S (science), which has been even more extensively modified so that the rear cabin is mostly secure storage for specialty containters, deployable gas-powered lifts and equipment, sealed behind an airtight pressurized door. In a narrow corridor across the aircraft, five jump seats line the fire-wall to the pilot cabin, which hold the science crew in-flight.

The standard Pave Hawk and the 1/1 are both equipped with Precision Avionics Vectoring Equipment. (PAVE), forward Looking Infrared (FLIR), a refueling probe, and defensive and electronic countermeasures, but the 1/1 and 1/1-S have two significant technologies onboard which would floor any aviation expert.

CORAL NOMAD Pave Hawks have been modified from the standard Pave Hawk, updated by March Technologies to incorporate several advantageous MAJESTIC technologies. These modifications are subtle enough that anything short of a full overhaul won't reveal them (and access to these vehicles is tightly controlled with code-word access).

The first is the stealth baffle made possible by ceramic rotor blades formed of tens of thousands of irregular non-repeating tessellations. A flip of a switch and a slight tilt of the blades makes the Pave Hawk MH-60G 1/1 fall almost silent to those on the ground, unless it is directly overhead (where it produces a quiet but distinctive whine that sounds nothing like a helicopter). This ceramic tesselations are also highly resistant to ice. Still, this baffle mode reduces range, lift and maneuverability, so it is used only as necesarry.

The second technology is disguised as an AN/APR-39 (z) radar warning reciever (called the "z box"), which is not a radar warning receiver at all, but a specialty device perfected by MAJESTIC scientists in the 1990s called a gravimeter counterbalance. Using a complex electromagnetic field generator, this box permits the vehicle to exceed the standard Pave Hawk's maneuverability, lift, and speed, through passive reduction of the overall gravity of the vehicle by approximately 20%. While this effect is startling to pilots controlling it — allowing high maneuverability not possible in a standard Pave Hawk (even when burdened with cargo) it would be all but unnoticable to those not familiar with such aircraft. Still, the device is a power-hog, and tends to drain the batteries flat in a few hours. When used properly this unit might allow a pilot might extend the range of a 1/1 to about 750 kilometers with a full load of fuel.

Last but not least, at the flip of a switch, CORAL NOMAD Pave Hawk MH-60G 1/1s are set to incinerate with demolition charges, and CORAL NOMAD pilots are trained to destroy them in case discovery by unread personnel seems likely.
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At the end of this writing session, I've finished about 2,500 words of what I *think* will be about 6,000 words. So, not too bad. I hope this gives you a bit of an insight into the hopscotch-like progress I make on these operations, filling in headings, reading, and rewriting again and again until it's done.

Next up in PART 4 — MAKE ME PRETTY we'll look at maps, design and art.