black buddha

Intel on this target is limited. First contact with a confirmed member of this cult occurred in Singapore in 1955 on Operation SEVEN. Agents were investigating occult connections in the “Order”, a radical offshoot of the People’s Action Party, which seemed to cling to the “old ways” of Taoism and Buddhism, promoting violence and separatist beliefs. Strangely, this group espoused nearly opposing viewpoints to the religions they claimed to follow, intel indicated these associations were only a recruiting tactic.

After the murder of a British consul by a dozen knife-wielding members of the Order, Delta Green was brought in to investigate threats against the American ambassador in Singapore, Franklin Booth.

DG managed to evacuate Booth from his home moments before seven sticks of dynamite detonated, killing one DG agent and four employees of the consulate. DG reinforced its position in the country and redoubled its investigation, bribing locals and law enforcement in a search for viable leads.

The first confrontation between DG and the Order of the Black Buddha occurred on SEP/9/55 at Layang Layang, a small town outside of Singapore proper near midnight. Following tips from several informants, nine heavily armed Delta Green agents arrived to find a full ceremony in progress in an isolated ravine. The Layang Buddha — an ancient monument — had been defaced; it’s stone face had been chipped away, covered in blood and offal, and refit with large, plaster phalluses and representations of sexual organs.

The two-dozen cultists at the site included a local department Minister of Singapore, his daughter, two prominent local businessmen, a wanted English ex-patriot and an American occultist known to the agency last seen in 1941.

Nine people were killed in the confrontation, with heavy gunfire exchanged between both parties. Reports indicate something materialized moments after the death of the Minister, and went on a rampage through the group, killing eight more including the British and American members of the cult.

It was felt that the back of the organization had been broken. Operations in Singapore ceased.

The cult next appeared in South East Asia — Vietnam and Cambodia — beginning in 1966. Reports of a new religion called the “Black Dao” or the “Dark Dao” began to appear in internal Army Intelligence memos. This seemed to be a cadre of indoctrinated fighters in the People’s Army of North Vietnam, as well as a group associate with the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. This was quickly brought to the attention of Delta Green, and investigation revealed the worship of the “Black Buddha”. An absolute connection between Operation SEVEN and the 1966 reports could not be established, but such a connection seemed very likely.

Several encounters with the group occurred throughout the Vietnam conflict, both in and out of Vietnam. This culminated in the disastrous 1969 Operation OBSIDIAN, which cost the lives of nearly one hundred DG operatives in a failed raid on the Black Buddha stronghold at Ban Talat. Something was successfully summoned at the temple at Ban Talat with the cooperation of a Delta Green friendly who was a double-agent.

B-52 carpet bombing of the area seemed to stop the manifestations (SAC Operation MENU).

In 1977, in San Jose California, a rash of attacks on local religious leaders caught the attention of DG operatives. These men had been murdered and their faces removed and replaced by livestock genitals, offal and other assorted filth. Recruitment among the group was disrupted by violent raids on various small strongholds in the San Jose area outside the law. Fourteen members of the group of Vietnamese and Cambodian descent were executed.

Today, the cult exists mostly in heavily Vietnamese-American areas, as well as in prisons, and abroad, in backwater areas not fully acclimatized to western culture. It is believed there is a strong contingent in Myanmar, as well as central Cambodia and northwestern Vietnam.

Beliefs and Methods: The Cult of the Black Buddha, the Dark Dao, or The Black Dao is a known occult organization with access to dangerous extra dimensional ritual. They worship the “Black Buddha”, a humanoid, non human intelligence which can intersect our reality at fixed points in time dependent on cultist ritual. Such ritual involves more than a dozen participants, usually occurs at night (it is unknown if this is due to a hypergeometric requirement, or to conceal the ritual).

Members of the cult espouse a belief in the suffering of man, violence, death, depravity and shame and pain. They are nearly the exact inversion of the religions they have hijacked to recruit new members from. A great belief among them is that hiding ones nature is the greatest gift of the Black Buddha, and that violence is best when the subject fully trusts you. As such, the cult member often appears benign, even to those who have had long associations with them.

Since the raids of the 1950’s and 1960’s, the cult has become insular and far more secretive.

Cult members prefer up-close violence, and as such, favor knives and other cutting implements over firearms (though they often use those as well). The cult’s main ritual is based on human torture, cannibalism and fear as well as self-mutilation. As such, agents should look for ritual violence concealed on a possible cult target beneath the clothing.