ways that shock the wisest and most accomplished experts. The threat of Islamic extremism that reshaped America has resurged, consolidated, and congealed
out of the wreckage of Iraq into a self-proclaimed caliphate that murders thousands every year. The authoritarianism in America’s reactions to 9/11 began with emergency measures. They have stabilized into the ordinary way of things, despite the vocal outrage of millions, but with the support of millions more. Authoritarian appeals to populism, bolstered by out- landish conspiracy theories and foreign disinforma- tion, drove the U.S. presidential election of 2016 and put a fringe candidate in the White House. America’s best-kept secrets reach the public every week.
Agents of the Program and the Outlaws alike see themselves in ways many authoritarians and conspira- cy theorists would recognize: not as vigilantes, but as patriots required to act beyond the restrictions of law and the Constitution. Only they know what’s at stake and what needs to be done. The rising authoritari- anism in American public policy only opens oppor- tunities for both versions of Delta Green, which rely on the secrecy, authority, and violence of the estab- lishment to pursue their crusade. The leaders of the Program and the Outlaws, isolated and ruthless, seize every weapon they can reach.
Agents face increasing and unpredictable risks. However diligently they confront and suppresses threats, they cannot contain every sign of the reality of the unnatural. They must rely on most being mocked as hoaxes and conspiracy theories, or ignored as insane ravings. Sometimes, they fail. Every so often, some connection to the unnatural makes its way into a research lab and changes the human understanding of reality. Revelation by revelation, we come closer to awesome truths that will destroy us.
Citizen journalists like the vloggers of the PX Penumbra struggle to undo Delta Green’s ruthless cover-ups, to make people see the truth before it’s too late to confront the threat. They may be the most persistent and admirable enemy of the Program and the Outlaws alike. They can never be told that it has always been too late.
Meanwhile, Delta Green agents must keep their heads down and conduct their operations, more every year. They cover up terrible crimes and commit many more. They suffer and they take their traumas home, where their families and friends can never know the truth. They die in terror, and their deaths are called accidents and overdoses and suicides.
Case officers and cell leaders try to reassure their agents that the mission is worth it. That humani- ty is worth it.
All too often, humanity seems determined to prove them wrong.
» 9 MAY 2017: President Trump dismisses James Comey as FBI director.
Comey associates say it comes after Comey declined to commit to per- sonal loyalty to the president; some FBI sources say it is meant to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of the president’s links to the Russian government.
» 17 MAY 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former
FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel for the investigation of the White House’s ties to Russia.
» 17 MAY 2017: Chelsea Manning is released from prison, after President
Obama commuted her sentence on 17 JAN 2017.
» 22 MAY 2017: Conspiracy-theory website Infowars, which called the
142
// The Unnatural //
// Delta Green: Handler’s Guide //
No Delta Green agent from either the Outlaws or the Program understands all the secrets presented here. At best, the most informed, still sane member understands only a tiny fraction. Much of what is known is wildly inaccurate, or at the very least, misinformed. Even with mankind’s technological ascent, and the advent of the Information Age, this lack of clarity about our place in the universe has not changed. If anything, we have become more confused.
As far as agents know, Delta Green has no “Ghoul Elimination Manual,” just as it maintains no
known repositories of artifacts or spells. Since 1955, Delta Green has understood the deleterious effects these realities have on the human psyche, and has compartmentalized information not just for the sake of secrecy, but also sanity. Unnatural books, artifacts, and entities act as a destructive force on the mind. They change those exposed into something less than human, and eventually into servants of the darkness. No one is immune, and it is near impossible to tell who will crack, or when.
Fewer than 3,000 people across the United States comprehend something approaching the truth of the unnatural. Most of those in the know understand only that a force exists outside of accepted reality, and is as much a threat to sanity as it is to physical well-being.
Still, shadows of the true universe have poked through the cocoon of scientific comfort humanity has spun. Names like Cthulhu and Azathoth appear in the discredited fringes of anthropology and occultism, and sometimes even in the scientific record. Only a select few understand that a dreadful truth lies behind them.