FROM THE GROUND UP PART 2 — GETTING IT ON THE PAGE (Patreon)

Welcome to the second instalment of FROM THE GROUND UP (don't forget to check out FROM THE GROUND UP PART 1 — THE HOOK), a series of articles is to give you, as honestly and thoroughly as possible, a real-time insight into constructing a Delta Green operation, from the raw germ of an idea, all the way through to a fully-realized, play-ready book.

Today, we're delving into GETTING IT ON THE PAGE...research, notes, creating a rough outline and introduction for the scenario Ab Ovo.

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RESEARCH

So, I've worked out that the operation takes place in a Cold War era bunker in Nevada. Lots of fun web and book research followed. I was eager to have it ring true, so I searched for blueprints, photographs, descriptions and books on missile bases, Minuteman missile sites, deep underground bunkers, and other Cold War era facilities like Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center. I collected about two dozen jpegs, maps, and reference snippets to use.

I found a map of a missile launch site that I used as the main inspiration.

The fictional facility in the operation became a hybrid of a missile site, a communications station, and a landing area in the middle of the desert. I call it Carson Lake Site R, and have located it in Carson Nevada. To the Program Site R is called a SSF ("siff", a Secure Storage Facility). Site R is a redistribution site for CORAL NOMAD (Delta Green Handler's Guide p.270). Site R looks much like the map above, but the launch control center is a much more expanded, multi-level facility with labs, dormitories, and secure storage housed within the earth.

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NOTES

Lots for fun notes followed. These mostly arose while I was collecting info on the web or in books. Jotted down in no particular order.

• NAVAL AIR STATION FALLON (FALLON STATION NEVADA)
• NAVAL AVIATION WARFIGHTING DEVELOPMENT COMMAND (NAWDC) 
• SITE R TELECOMMUNICATIONS CENTER AT CARSON LAKE (Under the Army Cyber Command ARCYBER)
• Retired DUMS (Deep Underground Military Site).
• Distance from Yosemite (SENTINELS OF TWILIGHT operation) to Fallon NV, 118 miles, 40 minutes by chopper.
• Cover Story: The high gain antennae here is used to track older classified US and Soviet-era military satellites still in use.This strange hook shaped array on a rise near Carson lake is actively guarded by patrols and trip-sensors (and barbed wire), and no one is permitted close enough to observe it in detail. In actuality, it is a cold-war era relic, slapdash painted every few years to cover the rust. It is hooked up to nothing.
• Actuality: A CORAL NOMAD short-term storage (CORAL NOMAD-BACKYARD), study, and reshipping facility for the American West to CN facility Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

When I write this kind of stuff down, it is completely floaty and undefined, and nothing here consumed much thought. It just kind of spills out, driven by ideas I might have, things I've read, or pictures I saw. Often, I keep a notes file open on another desktop while I write, and plop anything that comes to mind there while I write for later consideration. It is surprising how many of my really cool ideas are found in these notes from various operations. I encourage you when you're writing your own operations to do the same. 

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ROUGH OUTLINE

Once I have the above notes and research, I work out a rough outline of the operation. This is just a bare bones idea of what I might be writing, and often, new sections, cuts, or complete changes occur during the actual writing of the operation. Very little in the way of details follow below. Think of it as the dots in a connect-the-dots puzzle that writing connects up. 

SCENE 1: THE FLIGHT

• The unnatural samples and calling in CORAL NOMAD.
• The Pave Hawk MH-60G helicopter and crew.
• Flying into Nevada (over the mountains, over Walker lake, to Carson Lake).
• Fallon NV, Carson Lake and Site R.
• Landing at the site R field, samples run off by personnel, and meeting Lt. Cameron.

SCENE 2: VESB (Vehicle Storage Building)

• Lt. Cameron is the main interaction here (calm, professional, seen-it-all). 
• Into the Vehicle Storage Building.
• See exotic samples moved from the Pave Hawk into the facility.
• Moved through the day to day rooms here — kitchens, bedrooms, rec rooms to the Security Control Center.
• IDs are confirmed through biometrics.
• Testing of the Agents: thermometer, blood swabs, saliva swabs, full body scan, all items taken. Given a March Tech jumpsuit.
• They pass through the BLAST DOOR, a 12 TON PIECE of solid steel, which is open, painted on the inside, is WILE E COYOTE, burned, wagging his finger, the caption reads IF THE DOOR IS SHUT AND YOU CAN READ THIS, I’VE GOT BAD NEWS.
• Down the big elevator to the SECURE STORAGE FACILITY.

SCENE 3: THE "SIF" (SECURE STORAGE FACILITY) AND THE  DEBRIEF 

• The Agents are brought through heavy cement rooms deep below the earth.
• There are four BSL 4 labs here with designated hot zones and airlocks.
• Guards stand with firearms at intervals along the main hallway.
• Cameras are everywhere in mirrored globes.
• Lt. Cameron brings them to ROOM 9 and introduces them to Dr. Sidik and Dr. Gray. Dr. Sidik is ARCHINT director for CORAL NOMAD BACKYARD, and Dr. Gray is an associate director of Bioinformatics and Systemic Biology for March Technologies. 
• Through a bulletproof window in a Biosafety 4 lab, the Agents are shown items recovered from the operation and are questioned about them — who had them, were they technology? Who recovered them? Etc.
• Dr. Sidik makes extensive notes on a tablet.
• An item is brought up from a tray to be presented, but the person in the BS4 gear suddenly sneezes, and drops it.
• All hell breaks loose as something boils out. 

SCENE 4: LOCKDOWN AND DEATH

• The thing cracks all four ivory heads and GROWS as it lashes out, kills and consumes the lab personnel, but not before one can trigger a general lockdown.
• It launches itself at the glass window where the Agents are, spidering it, but not opening it — yet, ravenous.
• SAN loss, of course.
• Gray and Sidik are useless and merely goggle at of this.
• It is up to the Agents to exit using the Dr’s passes. 
• If they don’t do anything, it bursts through and attacks a randomly selected target.

SCENE 5: ESCAPE AND SURVIVAL

The rest of the operation is an outlast-the-monster scenario stuck inside a Cold War bunker. Options include:

• Search for exits.
• Try to communicate with the surface.
• Arm yourself.
• Help injured personnel.
• Hide.
• Observe the creature.
• How long does the beast survive?
• What state is it in?
• When does it start hunting the hidden Agents?
• Protect Dr. Gray or Dr. Sidik.
• What happens when the beast finally perishes.
• Clearance and release for survivors.

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INTRODUCTION

Something I always try to do is put it all out for the Handler on page 1 of the operation. This introduction lays out all the elements of operation, the reason for it, the feeling it hopes to achieve and more.

What happens to unnatural evidence left at the end of a Delta Green operation? Sometimes it is buried, burned, or locked away in nameless storage for long, cold decades.

And sometimes, none of this happens.

There are, of course, two Delta Greens. The illegal Outlaws that hide within the fringes of the Federal Government, and the Program, a code-word clearance secret agency very much inside the U.S. Federal government. Both confront the unnatural, but only the Program has the resources to mount large operations. Between them, though little good-will exists, a quid pro quo arrangement is in place.

When an unnatural crime scene is too big for the Outlaws to take care of, strings are pulled and the Program — and all the resources of the Federal government it can access — are brought in to remove the evidence. The Outlaws, of course, believe the Program is destroying the unnatural artifacts and evidence found there. Sometimes, that is true. But sometimes, the evidence is collected, moved, and studied.

The Program must answer to its paymasters, though compartmentalized as it is, those paymasters have little idea what Delta Green truly is. The Program does so by providing unnatural samples to March Technologies, a publicly traded defense contractor which houses what remains of the once all-powerful MAJESTIC-12, scientists, ex-military and businessmen read-in on the Delta Green program.

Through March Technologies, the scraps of the unnatural deemed "safe" are monetized.

The Program has a division that facilitates this recovery, sorting, and storage or unnatural samples, called CORAL NOMAD. CORAL NOMAD is housed at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Each unit maintains approximately 120 personnel, and multiple aircraft to facilitate recovery. They reder to themselves internally as "Recovery Operations" and wear Air Force uniforms, but maintain a level of secrecy enabled by their code-word clearance.

Besides these three core facilities, CORAL NOMAD maintains a dozen smaller "shuttle" facilities spread across the United States. Here, agents may be debriefed, unnatural evidence catalogued and assessed and then properly secured in airtight cargo containers to be moved to long range aircraft for transport.

Ab Ovo is set in the aftemath of nearly any Delta Green Operation that has left behind a significant amount of unnatural evidence. For whatever reason, the evidence has been deemed for recovery. Why?

The methods and desires of the Program are inscruitable.

The agents involved in the operation, along with the unnatural evidence, are to be evacuated to a secure facility for debriefing. Here, they will witness the Program in its full might and influence. In a Cold War era bunker retrofitted with a Biosafety 4 lab, the agents will be debriefed, tasked with identifying and describing the origins of the unnatural evidence, recounting what they observed it do, and sharing their beliefs about its nature.

There, in a Cold War bunker surrounded by well-equipped, heavily armed personnel, something will go wrong...
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NEXT UP

In Part III we'll tackle THE WRITING IS THE HARDEST PART. This is where the rubber really hits the road...