Live To Forget

**Title of Run:** Live to Forget
**Run/Event Summary:** The team is sent to the remote town of El Cara to investigate a supposed 'Deity' passing judgment on people - but all they find is a destroyed town and a Russian doctor scrambling people's DNA.


**Predicted Difficulty:** Hard/Very Hard

**Run Description:** The Foundation has received conflicting reports about a remote town just North of the US/Mexico border in Texas. All communications appeared to cut off over the span of a single week, with the last message being an abrupt call for help heard over AM radio frequencies caught by local border patrol. A single car with three patrol officers was sent to investigate the town. The car returned the next day with a single ecstatic man inside, claiming to have attained immortality. The man told the officers that the small town of El Cara had become the home of a just divine being which had healed all his ailments. In turn, however, the man claims that it had killed his family - as well as the patrol officers which had arrived last night.

Another patrol car was sent out and lost. At this point the Foundation had gotten word of the events and had taken full control of the operation.

A small team of 4-5 agents will be sent to El Cara by chopper - through interrogating the survivor the Foundation would have found out that whatever 'deity' is involved had directly changed the very way the bodies of the people in the town worked, so bringing along someone from Delta-4 would be highly suggested. A fly-over will reveal that the town appears to be completely deserted, with the roads entirely blocked off by parked or crashed cars in places. A good perception roll will allow the agents to spot the corpses littering the streets in varying stages of decomposition - a REALLY good perception roll will allow them to see the mutations which had occurred in the corpses and spot The Mediator early, though he would quickly vanish behind a building.

The team would be dropped off south of the town and the chopper would leave to find a good landing spot further away as a safety measure, the team having been given headsets to contact Midas if need be. Another perception roll: With a roll of 8 and above the players can spot that the grass peeking out from the cracks in the sidewalks have all been mutated, some of them made of flesh and others appearing to be covered in carapaces. The roll would be repeated whenever the players go to an area of interest, the DC lowering every time. If the players decide to check one of the corpses, they'd find them mutated as well and at this point note the fucked up plants.

The team could then explore the town - the following sites of interest would be available (Arranged from closest to furthest away).

Grocery store: A small grocery store now completely devoid of anything edible. If the players search through the place, they'd find a trail of blood leading from the behind the counter out through the back and onto the road. They'd also find what appear to be organs strewn about on the shelves, one area in particular full of them - though all of them oddly shaped and unrecognizable. A medical, science or academical roll can be used to determine what they are, exactly - ranging from essentially balls of flesh to intricate organic structures with parts of human organs and animal ones seemingly melded together.

Gun Store: A gun store with all the guns missing. The team would find a locked metal door near the back. If they strike it, try to pick the lock, etc. they'd hear a whimper followed by a plea for the team to leave. If they get inside somehow, they'd find a man huddled up in the corner, cradling a shotgun. The man's leg would be missing and he'd barely be able to communicate. Next to him would be several empty bottles and tins of canned food - as well as several empty syringes and a single full one. He'd only respond to the team with mumbling, but if they try to touch the last syringe he will proceed to try and jump at them, screaming for his life. If the team gets the syringe away from him he'll just collapse, unable to even use the weapons which he had hoarded.

Car Crash: A border patrol car which had crashed into an already existing three-car pileup. The border patrol car would have a single officer still inside, not dead but in a vegetative state - completely unresponsive to stimuli. Said officer would be in the passenger side seat. The back seat would be covered entirely in blood and viscera. The driver seat would be empty, but the steering wheel would be covered in some sort of dried up substance. Science or academics would let them determine that it appears to be something like the slime left from a snail - but that would have had to been one chonky snail.
The other cars in the crash... One of them would have a dead body inside, seemingly entirely normal. The other would have the bodies of a small family - a husband, wife, and a young girl strewn against the front seats, all three bearing some mutations and the girl's jaw missing. The third car would be filled entirely with some sort of pulsating mass of flesh - living, as it would be moving and blood pumping through its veins.

Apartment Complex: The further up the agents would go, the more bodies they would find. Some of them simply collapsed on the stairs, others smeared against the wall. One near the top floor would have fallen as he was about to leave his apartment, curled up clutching his chest - his mouth having changed to a vaguely canine one. Inside the apartment, if the team would go in, they'd find the body of a dog nearly split in half as its midriff had turned to something not quite resembling flesh, much too fragile and soft - its front half had tried to drag itself to the body of its owner before its eternal organs failed.
On the very top floor they'd be greeted by a frantic man in a labcoat, asking why the team had come here and pleading for them to flee while they can. He'd then pause and ask for the time - upon hearing it, his eyes would widen and he'd run into his apartment in a panic, shouting for the team to follow if they didn't want to end up like the rest. He'd have the team inject themselves with a small dosage of something he'd refer to as 'Blocker'. To convince them, he'd inject himself first then hand the team separate syringes. The team would also notice a series or rat cages lining the sides of the room - all the cages with living rats (Non-mutated ones, at that) would have their water dispensers filled with a smoky brown substance much like what would be in the syringe. The other cages would either lie empty or have dead, bloated, eviscerated, mutated and decapitated specimens inside.

If the players do inject themselves, they'd feel slightly woozy for a brief moment, but be fine after a few minutes - the man would let out a sigh of relief.

If they REFUSE, however, I'll let them get lucky. The following five mutations can occur:

1) The agent would find it harder to breathe as their throat filled with too much saliva and their nose with too much mucus. This effect would persist throughout the run, giving a -2 to all perception and stealth rolls. It would be relatively easily fixed my Foundation medics as it would just be a problem with their mucous glands.

2) No immediate effect, but the subject would start growing hair all over their body at an accelerated pace. Can be countered by the Foundation as well.

3) Extreme nausea and vomiting as the person's stomach is tampered with and replaced with a slightly smaller one - the initial sickness passes, but 2 PHealth damage is dealt and the effect is technically permanent.

4) A splitting headache and brief flashes of memory - working in a lab in Russia, coming to America by boat, establishing a doctor's practice. The effects pass but if the agent didn't know Russian they now know some very basic phrases - also -2 MHealth.

5) Person's nails - both on their feet and arms - grow exponentially and form decently sized claws. Tears through clothing and can cause pain if it does so. Can be fixed by the foundation.

Whether the agents follow the doctor's orders or not, he'd sit back exasperated and explain what he knows about what's happened in El Cara.
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His name is doctor Ivan Arseneev - he and a small team of scientists had recently fled the Soviet Union after a failed experiment had come to light. Fearing they might become targets for the KGB the team traveled to America in hopes of starting anew - by chance, they came across a shadowy organization which was willing to help them get settled in exchange for aiding in various research projects. With few other options the team accepted and arrived in El Cara just a year ago.

They were seen with suspicion at first - foreigners and Russians of all people. But they soon established themselves in the clinic as certified medical professionals - first as consultants, then doctors. They continued to work on different small projects on the side for this organization, but nothing too incredible.

One of the doctors, Oleg Karpanov, however, had become more secretive - even towards his wife, the only person to come along with them that wasn't a part of the research team. He was supposedly working on some new project, or so he claimed, and refused to discuss it. Only later would they find out he had instead gone back to the project which had failed in the Soviet Union.

They were geneticists, tasked with finding a way to change a person's genes in an instant. They had failed at the time and created horrid abominations which they had burned alive. Oleg had been leading the project at the time, and had been the one who had insisted they keep the creations alive and continue their work.

People started getting sick - coughing up blood, suffering from nausea, headaches, diarrhea, going blind. The first to go was Oleg's wife. Then one night, communications to the outside world cut off - and in an instant, everyone in El Cara suffered from the effects of their most successful experiment. Their DNA was shuffled and exchanged on a whim, but with so many conflicting genes and living things affected few could survive. Those that did fell victim to Karpanov's more deliberate creations, which now guarded him in the clinic.

Arseneev had been spending this entire time trying to find a cure. By sheer luck, he had not been killed by the initial burst, allowing him to lock himself in and dig up the blockers which he had saved from their Soviet experiments as well as set up his lab to create more. His attempts to distribute it to the survivors were fruitless, though - they were goners. And so he had remained in his apartment, trying to develop a permanent cure to what Karpanov had created - he knew he could not get into the clinic and live, after all. But he had failed.
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If the players choose to walk past the apartment building, Arseneev would run out and attract their attention, pleading them first to run, but upon finding out the time hurrying them inside to administer the blockers.


The Clinic: Awaiting them at the end of the road is the clinic itself. Small and surrounded by makeshift barricades, parked cars, bloated corpses of people and animals alike, it is hardly welcoming. The players will spot movement - someplace slow moving blobs, someplace just a blur - in the windows. They will be able to approach the place both stealthily and guns blazing.

Inside they would have to make their way up to the top floor while avoiding our fighting their way through Karpanov's creations. In total they would encounter three Flesh Buds, two Abominations and one Screener.

At the top they would find Karpanov looking out onto the road where the men had just come from. At this point he'd reveal his motives and regrets - and allow himself to be killed by the team. If they do not do so, he will jump out of the window and impale himself on one of the barricades. Any living mutations would fall and die, and a certain sense of dread will be lifted as the anomaly becomes inert inside of Karpanov's body.
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If at any point one of the agents is separated from the rest - possibly by following the blood in the grocery store, being posted outside somewhere, wandering off or running from mutants - they will encounter The Mediator. This encounter will put them out of harm's way and make both them and The Mediator invisible to the others.

The Mediator is an apparent male about 180 cm in height, though he floats slightly off of the ground. Wears a suit, but his head is fully covered by a modern gas mask - the design of the mask changing each encounter. The Mediator is a reality bender, who claims to have been following Karpanov as a means of entertaining himself, but he figures that it won't last for much longer. As such, he offers the agent a deal - in exchange for keeping things 'interesting to the outside viewer', he will follow them and make sure that they don't perish without reason.

The Mediator won't do much in this run, but is involved in future runs - specifically Anchor World ones, though he is not tied to the Anchor World itself.

Note: If the agent agrees to The Mediator's offer, they will receive him as a contact which they can call upon in any run/event GM'd by yours truly (Or others if I'm around and the GMs are okay with it I guess). The Mediator can do quite a bit, such as lowering the damage from an incoming attack or making it miss, or bringing in allies/reinforcements early if the team is getting pummeled. The catch, however, is that the agent must do something balls-to-the-wall insane to call upon The Mediator: Perhaps attacking a giant monster in hand-to-hand combat, maybe yeeting themselves off a cliff. Whatever works.




**Name:** Flesh Bud
**Purpose:** Basic enemy
**Nature:** Slow but determined to cause harm. Mindless.
**Description/History:** A misshapen fleshblob with legs and various appendages coming out from its malformed body. Bulging eyes, lacks a mouth and is covered in ooze.
**Other:** Gross.

+++++ Health

* **Physical Health:** 6

Rolls 4 for attacks and 3 for defense. Weak.

**Attacks**
*Slap/Punch/Shove: 1d3

**Engagement Style:** Shuffles at the players and tries to corner them if it can.




**Name:** Abomination
**Purpose:** Tougher enemy
**Nature:** Mindless but more dangerous as it seems to have more control over its movements and abilities.
**Description/History:** Still vaguely human, with remnants of their clothes stuck to their disproportional forms. One of them would be a large bald man in a lab coat, his mouth filled with jagged teeth - some of which would be stabbing through his own flesh - and his arms and legs would be covered in open sores. The other would be a man in a border patrol uniform, his face having 'slid' down his skull, his eyeballs gone and his hands limply hanging by his sides, nothing more than half-rotten slime-covered globs.
**Other:** Gross.

+++++ Health

* **Physical Health:** 14

Rolls 6 for attacks and 5 for defense. Stronger.

**Attacks**
*Lunge/Swing/Bite: 2d3

**Engagement Style:** Shuffles at the players as well, but is faster and more aggressive - can't be outpaced so easily.

**Name:** Screener
**Purpose:** Mini Boss
**Nature:** Not entirely mindless - perhaps directly controlled by Karpanov.
**Description/History:** Hard to tell whether this was initially a canine or a human, as it is now somewhere in the halfway point with bits of plant and beetle mixed in - a long body covered in a carapace, a fleshy mound with a canine mouth for a head, a pair of long, lanky arms ending in claws and two pair of legs, one of them small and vestigial. The creature is surprisingly fast, but blind.
**Other:** Gross. Won't attack agents unless they make a noise.

+++++ Health

* **Physical Health:** 18

Rolls 8 for attacks and 6 for defense. Strong.

**Attacks**
*Bite/Slash/Pounce: 1d5

**Engagement Style:** Waits for noises to be made, but can be distracted. Attacks with wide swings, scurries along walls and jumps around.






**Outcome:** Karpanov dies and the anomaly goes with him. Arseneev agrees to be taken into custody - only one other survivor is found in the gun shop (Unless the players took his syringe. If they did, he is found dead of a brain hemorrhage.) and the team is taken back via chopper.