[SHORT STORY REVIEW] - Ramsey Campbell's "The Insects from Shaggai"

"The Insects from Shaggai" was written by British horror author Ramsey Campbell c.1961 and published in 1964. A defining entry in his early Lovecraftian ouvre, it can be found in a number of collections, most prominently certain copies of Cold Print (1985). We'll cover the book's other stories (including "Cold Print") some other time, but right now let's talk brain-parasites and witches...

Spoilers beyond the cut.

"Sundered Sky (Left Face)" (M. Klaas, Stockholm, 1946)

[BOOK REVIEW] - RITUAL by David Pinner

There’s probably not much to be added to the story of The Wicker Man but let's take a trip back in time, to the original source – a little novella called Ritual, written by stage-actor David Pinner and published in 1967.

The book that birthed The Wicker Man - kind of... 

If you’re not that interested in the history of the thing, feel free to skip to the synopsis section below…

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Three (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION THREE

"Forget it. This stinks. The whole operation stinks. And I'm gonna find out why..."

Leaving Hatton Garden Police Station, officers Frost, Thornes and a bandaged-handed Spencer pondered what they should do next. The had more than enough clues to go around - the dead shoot-out suspects and its injured survivor (still in ICU), the Kacey woman, the blue stone - but nothing they felt was concrete just yet. Phoning Control, Frost gave a brief and deliberately imprecise run-down on what they'd learned and informed his superiors the team would join up with their colleagues in Team Wenseclas and help with their "rat problem."

At the same time Crackanthorpe and Walker were having their own desires for aid. Drenched by rain, standing in a graveyard full of names, lost out of time, they sneaked out as swiftly as possible. Again they patched their wounds back in their car, Crackanthorpe applying bandages to his blood-soaked belly and switching to a spare shirt. Walker called the other team, requesting they meet up at Brixton Police Station to assist, as Crackanthorpe started the car and headed for an unannounced meeting with Det. Sgt. Styles...

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Two (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION TWO

"From mice to men
And then to rats
But only snakes behave like that..."

Last time we left the PISCES lads and ladettes, Team Wenceslas (Officers Walker and Crackanthorpe) had set up a surveillance post in one of the abandoned flats at the top of the Wyndham Court estate. Hoping to catch a snifter of Old Scratch's existence beyond second-hand stories, they tossed their bedrolls on the dirty, beer-can-and-tin-foil strewn floor and readied for the long haul.

Night falls, electric lights come on. Across the estate people return home to the warmth of their apartments. A bored Crackanthorpe saunters outside to poke his head around the estate after dark. He takes the stairs down to the fifth floor walkway, and as he rounds the corner spots one of those greasy "rat-prints" on a flat window. Inside, the sound of a TV buzzes.

Then something fat and heavy ran across his foot. A black rat. Behind him - tired of waiting, having come down to find him - Walker watched the creature rush past her.

Ahead on the balcony, the electric lights flickered out one by one. A solid darkness advanced...

Swallowing the two PISCES agents in impenetrable gloom.

[DELTA GREEN] - NPC - Chantelle Barrow, the Xenobiologist

The Menagerie (T.P Hu, 1982)

A Texas based exotic animal collector, ex-carnie and zoomaniac designed to push players into the swing of not gunning down every monster they meet, lest poor Chantelle gets upset and leaves them in the lurch.

This one collected the most number of votes at the 3rd annual Night at the Opera contest and won Top Unreliable Ally. I'm a little surprised (far moreso grateful) for people's support; I felt there was potential in there but a lot of stuff got left by the wayside in banging it out. So here's the proper one.

CHANTELLE BARROW
Xenobiologist and xenoanthroplogist (PDF version)

Parris took a drag on the blunt, passed it to McCallister. His breath coiled like gunsmoke into the night air, the stars above still visible despite the thick of the trees and the arc-lamps' glare. Both men were leaning against a black SUV, one of the convoy parked at the side of the woodland road, and they watched the other agents and technicians milling about, moving equipment, checking manifests. On the hillside, one of the search dogs howled. McCallister put his head back and replied. Someone told him to knock it off. He gave them the finger.

"Capture-team to me!" shouted the case officer. He'd been sitting in one of the jeeps, talking on the phone, but now he was out, arms swinging, limbering up like readying to run a marathon. McCallister offered the roach back to Parris, but the other man stubbed it out on the car's wheel-arch. It left an ugly black circle on the shiny paint. The rest of the capture-team were already forming a semi-circle around the case officer, listening. Shaking the cold and the tiredness out, the two men rose and joined them.

This was really just a formality. They'd heard it all already, what they were to do, what reconnaisance had gathered, what to be ready for - or rather, what the March boys told them to be ready for. Local law-enforcement had been pushed out to a three-mile cordon on the main roads, turning back cars. "Federal meth cookhouse hunt" was the official story, and everyone was wearing their DEA raid-jackets. Everyone except Parris, who'd stuck with his ATF duster. The suits in Pasadena had made it plain after the shootout that he was getting the push, any excuse they had - zip, gone, no pension, no goodbye. He had another piss-test tomorrow, if he survived tonight. This would probably be the last time he'd get to wear his jacket. As far as he was concerned, twenty-two years meant he deserved it, no matter what some pencil-pusher in Pasadena might think. If they wanted it back, they could keep the bloodstains.

The case officer was talking and Parris hadn't heard what he'd been saying. Over the way a women stepped down from the command bus; pale and boney and stoney-expressioned. Her  face was sharp as an axe, red hair forming an enormous bushel of unteased knots above her head. Under her federal windbreaker she was wearing a pair of dungarees - steel-toed boots crunching through the gravel and leaves. Blinking in the glare, face blank, her lips curved in a resting-bitch-face that made Parris uncomfortable.

"Team, meet Doolittle -" continued the case officer. He reached out to point at her with his clipboard and she flinched, involuntarily stepping back. Without a word she snatched the clipboard from his hands and began poring over it. "- Our xenobiologist," he finished. On the hillside the dogs rose again in chorus - a long, drawn out series of howls that went on and on, ululating in primitive warning or fear.

"What are the doggies for?" asked Doolittle, without looking up.

"They'll be acting as scouts," said the case officer. "We'll send them in first with cameras to map the tunnels - we've noticed they undergo an interesting psychological reaction when-"

"Oh no. No, no," said Doolittle. She shook her head, frizz of hair flapping like a hairy halo."Oh no. Those things eat dogs. Call the dogs back. I'm not having anything needlessly killed tonight."

Parris heard Odelle curse behind him. Doolittle evidently did too.

"Are these the best people you have?" she asked. Her eyes moved across the capture-team, taking in their faces with all the emotion of surveying a side of beef in a supermarket. Her bottom lip moved noiselessly for a moment as if she was pondering a complex math problem, and then she took a pair of spectacles from her pocket. They sat upon her upturned, freckled nose. The lenses did not reflect the light. The frames, in fact, had no lenses at all.

"This isn't my first Opera," said Odelle. Her combat-vest creaked ominiously as she brushed her hand over her freshly shaved head. The last of the stubble made a scratching noise beneath her fingerless gloves. "Even shaved my head for it. Unlike some people." Her eyes burned themselves at Doolittle's flowing locks. "You ever seen what happens when something gets its claws in your hair and pulls..."

"That's not going to happen," said Doolittle icily. "We're not going to threaten or hurt it so it's not going to hurt us unless we do something stupid. I won't be threatening it or doing something stupid, so I'm in no danger."

She slapped the clipboard into the case officer's chest. "Let's go."

"Uh..." he said. "Well, OK. You heard her: load-up - move out in five."

Grumbling, Parris and the rest stocked up at the weapon-buffet the techs had laid out for them on a couple tables. He slid two Glocks into his cross-holsters, grabbed an AR-15 and spare ammo. Gas-mask too. Out the corner of his eye he saw Doolittle beside him, bending over the table, scouring the objects on offer. He was going to ask if she needed help when she picked up a SIG, racked the slide to check the chamber was clear. Two spare magazines, a couple of tear-gas grenades. She must have seen him staring, because she looked him square in the eye, as if willing him to say something.

"Just didn't think you'd be needing a gun," he said. "Seeing as you were saying there was no chance you were going to make those things living up there ornery at you."

She looked away. "I also said that no one's going to get needlessly killed tonight. So if one of those things does decide to go for me..."

She dry-fired the pistol.

Parris grinned and turned to Odelle: "Y'know, this one might not be so bad after all."

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Two Prep

NEWS AND PUBLIC SOURCE INFO

BNC 24: Police are appealing for anyone with footage of the gun-battle and car-chase in central London yesterday to come forward. The incident, which left a tourist and two alleged attackers dead, saw Waterloo Station and surrounding roads closed. Four men, including two police officers, are being treated in hospital for injuries.

Star News: At a presser this evening, Commander Harry Singh of London Counter-terrorism Command stated that the Strand shoot-out was not a "terror incident" but organized crime, with investigations remaining under the Metropolitan Police's Organized Crime Division. Information on those killed and injured will be released at "an appropriate time, when families have been informed" he added.

The Daily Crucible: English police forces' heavy-handed tactics in breaking up "rave culture" are damaging public trust, say community figures. Last month's dispersal of crowds at an illegal rave in Essex, which left six officers injured and led to the arrest of thirty-four people, has come under scrutiny following evidence that officers failed to present noise abatement writs to the rave's organizers prior to sending in riot police.

London Mail: Three boats carrying 43 migrants were caught in the English Channel yesterday, bringing this month's tally to more than 500. Numbers have surged since the bulldozing of the "Amazon" refugee camp outside Calais, a popular congregating site for those looking to escape to Britain. While Minister for Immigration Jason Woolpit-Coates has vowed to dismantle the organized smuggling gangs that prey on such individuals, the London Mail can report none of those who made it to the UK in the last year have yet been deported...

WATERCOOLER TALK

Gary in D-Section says the chiefs are in a flap over yesterday's debacle - and our friends in SIS have been on the phone, shouting all night. Everyone involved, and I mean everyone who breathed the same air, is being called to the carpet for a 2pm debrief and wall-to-wall bollocking. Do NOT be late.

Rumor from the armorers is pistols will be signed-out on a "will permit" basis. Still no license-to-kill with it though, so unless you found a 00 designation in your cornflakes this morning, weigh your options before taking it up. You pays your money, you takes your chances, as my old man used to say.

Our lad in the Met says someone's pushing hard - really hard - to make sure this doesn't get marked as a terror incident. According to them, Organized Crime's been told to back off too, which means someone's running interference. As to why, who knows? You didn't hear it from me, mind.

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session One (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION ONE

A drab gray day in London. From the 23rd floor of the Severn Aerospace Building it was hard to tell if the Thames reflected the gunbolt hue of the sky or vice-versa. Sipping coffee, doodling on notepads, chit-chatting about the Gunners, the officers waited for today's Control - a middle-aged, tweed-jacketed type with a personality far too hip for his years - to brief them. "The Gods have spoken," he said. "The Sorting Hat chosen its candidates." He pinned photographs and papers to the whiteboard on the wall. Two issues had come up requiring the Section's involvement...

Team Shadwell: Heathrow Airport flagged Chuck Hauser (or rather his passport, AKA Milton Waters), an American citizen, entering the country via Schiphol, Amsterdam. He's booked into the Strand Hotel near Covent Garden. The Gods want him surveilled. No reasons given.

Team Wenceslas: One of PISCES' prognosticators dreamed a dream of doom. Onto the board goes his child-like etching of a ziggurat and stick-figures, drowning in a river of blood, overlooked by the lidless eye of the moon. The actuaries often send in their nightmares, scrawled in crayon; like Nostradamus they think they have meaning.

Sometimes - as in this case - they do.

[DELTA GREEN] - PISCES - A Fictive Background (Locales and Factions)

Another chapter in my unofficial and non-canonical take on modern-day PISCES, Delta Green RPG's British anti-occult agency. A bunch of fractitious groups and locales, with potential seeds and ideas.

PISCES LOCATIONS

+ Severn Aerospace Building, London: in use since the late-1980s, most of this 25-storey office-block in Southwark, south of the Thames, is rented to multinational corporations. Only the top six floors (and roof helicopter pad) are still retained by PISCES, whose somewhat dilapidated collection of open-plan offices, private rooms and operation centers oversee British occult security. New recruits are often surprised by its lack of windows. There is no office for “R.” 

+ Regional Divisionals: the Section operates six regional offices (RDs) in key cities outside London, specifically Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham, York and Edinburgh. Listed as on-the-books  MI5 or National Crime Agency buildings, RDs have offices, vehicles, equipment and materiel for work across the country. RD-Belfast is unique, being located aboard the leaky, decommissioned submarine-tender HMS Celene, currently laid-up on the city’s waterfront.

[DELTA GREEN] - PISCES - A Fictive Background

This is a non-canonical, unofficial interpretation of 21st century PISCES, the British intelligence agency that polices the Empire of ghosties, ghoulies and non-Euclidean beasties in Delta Green the RPG. Thanks must go to mellonbread, whose scenarios focused on the group's collapse into factions has served as the grist for my own setting's somewhat different mill. Which produces Obtusebread.

If you don't know the secret history of PISCES and actually care, you probably shouldn't read this...

PISCES – the Paranormal Intelligence Section for Counter-Intelligence, Espionage and Sabotage – was born in the dark days of 1940, when the German juggernaut seemed all-powerful. Nicknamed the Section and disguised as a division of MI5, PISCES has continued to protect Britain and (unofficially) the Commonwealth from occult threats, be they foreign, alien and domestic.

But there is another more terrible truth. In 1968 an apparently successful operation to clear out the depraved village of Goatswood opened PISCES to alien infiltration. Parasitic alien puritans, trapped on Earth and known as the Shan, subverted PISCES command structure, turning the agency into a tool to destroy worshipers of other gods and find some means of escape from our dying world.

This remained the case until three years ago, when PISCES rank-and-file finally uncovered the rot within their organization. A new conspiracy grew, as field-officers and support staff slowly banded together in readiness for a civil-war. Whoever green-lit what would later become known as the “Unpleasantness” is either dead or extraordinarily tight-lipped, but on a brisk Summer day, as PISCES’ department heads met in supposed secrecy and security, someone gave the order for action.

Many Shan died that day. No few humans too. And as the purge swept through PISCES offices and safe-houses, men and women held down their screaming, begging colleagues, as power-tools bit into their skulls to let the sunlight in. No few old grudges or personal hatreds ended that day too, with a trepanation or a bullet, followed by the claim the unfortunate victim wasn’t truly human.

Having seized power and shown their fellows what lingered in the shadows, over the next few weeks the Section's non-Shan hosts led a great witch-hunt - a period of detentions, interrogations and arbitrary arrests. With the power of the state behind it, PISCES had little to fear from the public finding out. Those who did thought it was an intelligence shake-up, a mole-hunt like back in the 1980s.

No Shan is believed to have survived the purge.

PISCES did survive.

Barely.

My Delta Green Scenarios

Delta Green is an RPG of occult conspiracy horror, where players protect humanity from the cold darkness of the universe and the things that share it with them. It's also an excuse to shoot monsters and burn down buildings.

For my unofficial Delta Green scenarios and other free-to-use mods, odds and sods click to see behind the cut below...

"What rough beast slouches toward Bedlam to be born?" (A.P. Hewn, 1963)