PROJECT: EMERALD HAMMER

Part Two - The Tapestry

Agent NANCY has been having dreams again. Not the nice kind, nor even the "ordinary" Dreamlands kind, but disturbing communications with a certain ghoul known to her from New York City, a ghoul from a faction that retains contact with those loyal to Stephen Alzis without being part of them. In these dreams, NANCY learns that something big is happening in the Big Apple, something of possibly monumental occult portent. That's about all the ghoul will offer. NANCY arranges to meet with a cell in New York to investigate it (alternatively, she sends the word up to Cell A and they arrange the investigating cell, leaving NANCY out of things unless she gets a tip from her ghoul friend to put the players on the right track). The investigators embark on their investigation, in which seemingly unconnected events form a grim tapestry.

First stop, no doubt, will be the Club Apocalypse, since even DG knows that occult shit in New York starts and stops with the Club. Unfortunately, they have no luck getting past the first level; Alzis and Hubert are inaccessible. An adept gives hints, which may be valid or may be nonsense. Certain black- mascara wearing Goth dancers elicit Carcosan weirdness.

The ghouls get terrified when they meet DG investigating things; the one known to NANCY fades and does not come back to help. An adept, who happened to see the exchange despite the investigators' best efforts at secrecy, seems perturbed that the ghouls are so frightened. He knows nothing of value.

At the same time, a gang of racist skinheads conduct a series of bloody sacrifices in Greenwich Village, drawing them into a sorcerous war with the Goth Yellow Sign-worshippers before the police bust their skulls and drag them to Rikers, where DG can interview them before searching all their apartments. The skinheads have some undefined link to Hubert. They brag that they are going to help Hubert conduct a massive auction, where he's going to gather more power than anyone has ever known. The skinheads don't seem to know anything about Hubert's boss, Stephen Alzis.

The Goths' place delivers more Carcosan weirdness. One of them says the King in Yellow is coming to the Auction. An adept, who just happens to be diddling around the place counting color television sets, says they may be right. Interviewing the Goths and piecing together clues known to the skinheads, the investigators place the Auction at the Cloisters.

The Cloisters is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum that focuses strictly on medieval European art. It is housed in a medieval cloisters, rebuilt in the woods of Fort Tyron Park, in upper NYC just off the Hudson River. At two in the morning the regular security guards are sent home, and a gang of skinheads and bikers do guard duty, arranged by the Mafia for the Network; all of them are also neo-Nazis and genuine bunny-sacrificing Satanists.

Inside is a who's-who of the occult world, all of them gathered by the invitation of Stephen Alzis: Black Pharaoh-worshipping Egyptians mingle with Karotechia white supremacists and Yellow Sign Goths, while witch-cult Masonic Satanists (TM--a group I'll be using the heck out of in the near future) from US business and political groups and certain occult-minded UN functionaries rub elbows with the Fate. The real Fate, this time, not just the Network, though Alzis is at first absent.

Things don't stay social for any longer than is necessary; rites and ceremonies and sacrifices begin in earnest. The Goths invoke Stephen Alzis as the King in Yellow, the witch-cult and the Fate invoke him as the Black Man, the Egyptians call him the brother of the Pharaoh, the Karotechians call him the emissary of the Fu:rher. When Alzis shows up, however, Hubert and the skinheads and bikers and Karotechians murder him, then turn on the others, and all hell breaks loose.

Carcosan weirdness gets huge as the Goths seize the Turner Codex and the Pnakotic Manuscripts from one of the Fate and make off with them; the witch- cultists and Egyptians and the Karotechians and the Network engage in the mother of all spell-fu brawls; then a small army of carefully selected corrupt and viciously brutal cops (tm) roar in to bust everyone (nightstick-fu, shotgun-fu?) on Hubert's behest. DG's usual assets--FBI SWAT teams, army and navy helicopter support, Delta Force commandos, etc--are strangely slow to gather (welcome to New York; the Fate runs everything), leaving the investigators with the task of infiltrating the mess and figuring it out.

When the smoke clears, only the Karotechia and the Fate and the corrupt cops are still standing, and the Fate seem to be under Hubert's thumb as the heir apparent. He announces a plot to gather all the most secret and arcane occult tomes into one great collection under his control. He also keeps Alzis' remains. Their next move takes them directly to England. DG can hear Hubert's plan either by eavesdropping, or by beating it out of one of the corrupt cops afterward. Mostly, though, by this time the Delta Green agents ought to be scared as hell or doing a lot of dying-in-torment, or both.

Shane Ivey