© Copyright 1995 - 2003 Eoin Connolly, Rob Brennan and Eric Nolan. All rights reserved.
A game of modern horror set in the world of PHASE I
Published by Wasteland Games
Background Design: Eoin Connolly, Steve Blair.
MAJI: Eoin Connolly, Rob Brennan, Eric Nolan, Steve Blair.
Scenario: Rob Brennan, Eoin Connolly.
Special thanks to: All Wasteland Games staff
First Edition Version 1.02
Dedicated to Commander X, long may his fight continue.
Playtesters: Alan 'Time for more vodka' Dunbar, George 'It's all gone pearshaped' Mc Connon, Ultan 'Peeper' SmallPerson, Chris 'How many RV's are in this game?' MacCormack, Paul 'If you turn on the radio, they'll just be able to get in touch with me' Kavanagh, Brian 'What the hell was that!?' Clelland, John 'Damned if I know' Clavin, Rob 'Hoochie Jing Bats' Brennan, Eric 'Hmm. No to Antarctica.' Nolan, John 'Leave my kneecaps alone!' Bankhead, and everyone else who has participated in mad dog saucer madness.
These scenarios is protected by the Copyright Laws of the Alien Overlords. Any attempts to break or even bend these laws can result in your rights to exist being irrevocably removed. Be careful they don't decide to remove the lot of us. And all because of you.
You are about to discover a world where governments conspire to keep the population ignorant of the most important events in our history. A world where secret agencies operate beyond any control, possessing unlimited power to supress the truth and carry out their illegal duties.
A world fighting a silent war against an Alien enemy of incredible abilities and unfathomable motivations.
A world you know nothing about.
Our world.
The information contained in this booklet is for the referee only. To maintain suspense players should read no further. Here you have all that is needed to run many sessions of game play set in a modern world of AlienGovernment conspiracy. This campaign pack has been written for the STOCS lite system (by Wasteland Games) but it's also possible to use any other suitable rules you have lying about. The information in this booklet is a mixture of background material and some scenario ideas to get you started. All of this information represents just one piece of the jigsaw that is the world of Phase I. This world, cowering beneath Alien invasions and conspiracies, is a background for the STOCS lite RPG. Further releases from Wasteland Games will reveal more.
The breakdown of the booklet is as follows; first we present an introduction to The Lie where the events leading up to Aliengovernment conspiracy are presented. Included in this section is a brief analysis of The Roswell Incident which is vital to understanding the nature of UFO based conspiracy. The following sections deal with the government agencies actively involved in the coverup, the Aliens themselves and the private organisations known collectively as the UFO Underground. Notes on refereeing and possible styles of play are also included. Due to the vast scope of this subject only details really pertinent to gameplay are included. Enjoy.
This is a warning.
This is a game of paranoia. Misinformation is rife. Betrayal is the rule, rather than the exception. Your players may never trust you again.
In this game your players will discover dark secrets kept by powerful agencies. They will discover things that will horrify them. Then they will discover that everything they know is a lie.They should feel that they can trust no one. Only show them small sections of the picture and then let them discover for themselves that it was two different pictures all along. Make them afraid. Make them lose all faith. Then hold out hope again.
In this booklet you will be given the facts as they are. You will also be given a lot of misinformation and mistaken beliefs. Don't be afraid to give you players small sections of the truth. Give them truth and lie with the same breath. A lie, salted with truth makes a much more appetising meal. As they begin to play they should swallow this mixture easily, later they will choke on every mouthful. Always consider the ultimate source of everything you tell them. Their contacts may be sincere and their sources may be unimpeachable. This does not mean that these sources know the whole truth. Don't think that just because someone works for a secret agency they automatically know the truth. They get lied to just as much as normal people, they just get told different lies. If a shadowy figure is telling your players the purpose of a government project you should have decided how they found out. Maybe they are lying, maybe they were lied to or maybe the are merely presenting their theories as facts.
Your players should never be certain of anything. Make them work hard for every nugget of information they get and then ensure that they never trust their information completely.As the referee you know facts that no other human knows. You will be told secrets that no agency could possibly discover. This information is for you to understand the motivations of the various conspiracies. You can give this information to your players, after all we can't stop you, but if they know everything there is no more game, is there?...
In fact there is. You have not yet been trusted with the full truth of Phase I and only one of the major Alien conspiracies is covered in this booklet.
In 1947, the US government obtained proof that we are not alone in the universe. It arrived on the second of July at Roswell, New Mexico. Less than one hundred miles from the Wright Patterson Air Force Base AFB, then known as Wright Field, a crashed Alien saucer was recovered. At first only fragments of this disc were recovered from the vicinity of a local ranch but after an extensive search operation by Army personnel the disc was located. This disc was definitely not from this world. Inside were four small bodies, all identifiably nonhuman. The disc was brought back to WrightPatterson on a lowloader while the earlier fragments had been shipped there in a transport plane. Autopsies were performed on the alien bodies in a vain effort to check if they might possibly be vastly altered human beings. The autopsies were conclusive. The bodies were those of nonhuman extraterrestrial biological entities (EBE's).
Unfortunately through the actions of a freethinking public relations officer, details of the recovery of the crashed disc were released to the press and the Roswell Daily Record ran the story. Immediately America was interested. Was the story true? Was the US government in possession of an alien craft. Were the aliens friendly? Then the disinformation campaign began...
Reporters were brought onto the base and the facts were explained to them as follows: The craft was not in any way an alien space vehicle. It was simply a crashed weather balloon. Reporters were shown fragments of what was obviously a balloon made from lined aluminum foil and balsa wood struts. They were told that the balloon was simply a radar target called a rawin target. The reporters then went to interview Mac Brazel, the rancher who had discovered fragments of the disc on his ranch. He would answer none of the reporters questions, neither confirming nor denying that he had found an alien craft on his ranch. This was not too surprising as Mac Brazel had just spent the last week as an unpaid guest of Wright Patterson AFB, being held in a small room, constantly questioned and harassed until he signed a form saying that he would not talk of the incident to anyone again. He was a patriotic man and despite his harsh treatment at the hands of his government, all he would tell the reporters that if anything ever landed on his ranch again, even if it was an atom bomb, he would just let it lie there and not tell a soul. The reporters went away moderately happy, the public calmed down and the incident was quietly forgotten about.
The disinformation campaign worked and is still working to this day, when the Air Force have released details of Project Mogul to keep modern day busybodies off the scent. This project actually was centred on radar targets like the Rawin, and experts from Mogul sincerely believed the story since the replacement of the disc was one of the first steps taken to disguise the true nature of the incident. Free of the media attention, the Air Force quietly began to work out what they would do. This was bigger than the Air Force and other government agencies were brought in on the details (apart from the FBI as nobody at the time trusted Hoover with the facts). The government set up a group to deal with the find and any others which might occur. This group was known as MAJESTIC 12, otherwise known as MJ12. The original members of MJ12 were: Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Dr. Vannevar Bush, Secretary James Forrestal, General Nathan P. Twining, General Hoyt S. Vandenburg, Dr. Detlev Bronk, Dr. Jerome Hunsaker, Mr. Sidney W. Souers, Mr Gordon Gray, Dr. Donald Menzel, General Robert M. Montague, and Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner. This group contained some of the finest military and scientific minds (that could be trusted) in the country. James Forrestal later destroyed his own body after being committed to a lunatic asylum. Before he jumped out of the 16th story window of the hospital he was secured in, he allegedly had been seen running through the corridors, screaming incoherently that noone was real. This, of course, is probably more disinformation spread by the same organisation that ordered his death when he was no longer sane enough to carry out his duties. His place was taken by General Walter B. Smith.
Majestic's brief was to learn as much as possible about the technology that
they had obtained (possibly with eventual duplication in mind) and also determine
how much of a threat the aliens were to the United States. Examination of
the Roswell crash was to be conducted at Edwards (formerly Muroc) AFB. Majestic
appropriated a sufficiently large black budget and the manpower it needed
to get the job done. The main agencies involved in doing work for Majestic
are as follows:
These organisations were each given a small part of the big picture, with only MJ12 knowing the full story.
Over the next two and a half decades many more discs and Alien bodies were recovered. MJ12 was kept busy clearing crash sites, debunking witnesses and analysing Alien technology. Live Aliens were also captured (although they died in captivity), these formed the basis for an early understanding of Alien physiology and psychology. Captured alien technology directly contributed to the space programme. This work was carried out at top secret bases across the country but particularily at Los Alamos and Edwards AFB. The Aliens did not remain aloof from events and in 1954 they contacted MJ12 and hence the US government offering to trade technology for a protected base on Earth and freedom to act unmolested.
Eventually the Navy started to realise that it was being sidelined by events and as a result of an extensive counterintelligence operation by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the Navy got in on the action. This led to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) being given direct responsibility for some aspects of MJ12's operations. As time progressed, MJ12 and the organisation they controlled grew dangerously large. By 1972, too many people knew the secrets. A reshuffle and reorganisation was called for.
Personnel were selected from each of the groups currently involved in the ongoing situation and given the option of leaving their current government body and joining the new organisation. This was their option. They were allowed to refuse, but within months all those unwilling to join the new organisation were declared insane and placed in state mental institutions for corrective therapy. Those that eventually left these institutions were no danger to national security for many had no real memory of their identities, their families or in fact, anything. Those not selected for the new organisation were instructed in their duties to their country, warned of what would happen if they revealed any of the details of their previous work, given healthy gratuity payments and allowed continue on with other work in their allotted field. One man tried to go public. He crashed his car on the way to the TV station, while his family died in a gas main explosion at his house. These are all lies. One week later, a reporter with no apparent connection died in a hit and run incident when he stepped out of the office to go to lunch.
The new organisation was starting as it intended to continue. Covert murder and bloodshed would be the new way. Gradually the new organisation grew in size, all it's members totally committed to the cause. It was outside congressional and presidential scrutiny. It had a black budget and all details were given a security classification of above Top Secret. It was to be called Department 801.
To preserve total secrecy, Department 801 was split up into Chapters. Each Chapter would have it's own specific role to play and information crossover would be highly restricted. MJ12 and other bureaucratic sections would act as overall coordinators of the entire Department. Certain Chapters and their functions are listed below. Note that all of the chapters of Department 801 have a large amount of disinformation associated with them and many alternate names exist for each chapter.
This was to be the military arm of Department 801. Given access to the latest military hardware (supplied unwittingly by the US Army), Chapter 2 would form the strike force that would deal with sanitising crash sites and neutralising any possible threat from the aliens. Chapter 2 would not deal with the destruction of alien craft. This job was considered too risky and it was left up to the airforce to deal with the interception and tracking of the craft while they were in the air.
This Chapter controls media disinformation and operation coverups. They are the cleanup chapter. They go to work after Chapter 2 has finished. Supplying acceptable reasons for the target's deaths, Chapter 7 work with key figures in the media, supplying bogus information and leads planted to incriminate the targets. Chapter 7 operatives often go undercover, have fictitious identities set up and work on members of the UFO underground, spreading false information in order to ridicule the community. As with all good disinformation campaigns, some of what they say is true. The only problem is that the public have had the wool pulled over their eyes for so long they cannot even accept these as being true. Chapter 7 also recruits members of the Ufo community and offers to give them the full story, piece by piece, over a period of time. These individuals are then set up with spurious facts and eventually discarded. Few of these individuals ever realise they are working for Department 801, all of their contacts appearing to be exmilitary men and women. Chapter 7 is also responsible for fake cattle mutilations in order to disguise the real mutilations. They are also responsible for the adding evidence of human activity to real mutilation sites such as beer cans, scalpel blades and other such detritus.
In an organisation obsessed with secrecy, someone has to make sure that noone crosses the line. Chapter 13 acts as watchdogs for Majestic, policing all the other Departments with licence to act as judge, jury and executioner of any they feel might compromise mission secrecy. They go where they want and examine who they want. Any who stand in their way are judged as traitors to the human race and disposed of accordingly. Their only limitation is that they must only work within the confines of 801. The exceptions to this rule are organisations temporarily attached to 801 such as National Guard or military units but only while they are attached to 801 (with or without their knowledge). QCIC work with extreme discretion when eliminating those not directly working for Department 801, their skills honed by years of practice. Chapter 13 is known to operatives as The Black Chapter.
Performing all lowkey covert operations, Chapter 10 investigates all possible alien incursions into human society. Members of this Chapter receive the least overt help from Department 801 in order to protect their cover. All operate in normal society constantly watching and listening. Controlled by means of dead letter drops and coded messages over the radio waves, Chapter 10 operatives remain separate from 801 for most of their operational lives. This detachment from the organisation has caused many to go rogue, believing that 801 is corrupt or heavily infiltrated by the aliens. QCIC deals with these with a heavy hand.
All members of Chapter 10 are deniable, having no traceable links with department 801. If any are arrested by the police, 801 will engineer an escape if it is possible, or elimination if the operatives are judged to be a security risk. Operatives willing to bide their time will be quietly released from prison when the media fuss has died down. The official paperwork will show that those released were in fact transferred to the Greenwood maximum security holding centre for the criminally insane in Nevada. Greenwood is a front for 801 and discourages visitors, keeping them tied up in paperwork for as long as necessary. The prison is in fact a medical centre for 801 and wounded operatives are sent there to recover, away from the spying eyes of civilian medical staff. The five hundred acre site is surrounded by razor wire, electrified solid fencing, motion sensors and guard towers. Their function is to keep people out, not in. Local police assist Greenwood by warning them of strangers asking too many questions, having been warned that all people wishing to approach the facility could be helping one of the inmates escape. The last thing the local police want is a dangerous sociopath on the loose.
When the Grays turned against 801 in 1979, the Department started investigating those who were suspected of being abducted. Unfortunately for the department, the disinformation campaign waged to make abductions a mockery worked against them as a huge number of people came forward to admit they had been abducted by aliens from outer space. The Department prefers to work from information gained on official channels, rather than chasing down every lunatic and determining if they are telling the truth. Chapter 10 also deals with the location of the Cuckoos, the special children inserted by the Greys into human society. Once located, the children are monitored and as many operatives suspect, quietly executed. The Cuckoos started appearing in 1986, none are assumed to have reached adulthood at this stage.
These are mainly the responsibility of Chapter 2 and as the military arm of Department 801, ICARUS FALLING does not mess around. They come into the field only with full support and backup. During crash retrieval, Chapter 2 will move up to one hundred troops to the site. These are usually transported in a combination of Blackhawk helicopters and military trucks. The troops are transported in the helicopters to set up a primary perimeter around the crash site and keep the area secure until the other squads can arrive with the heavier equipment to allow removal of the craft.
Site security involves linkups to military satellites to keep track of air traffic in the area. Ground traffic is monitored from the air using infrared and thermal imaging systems. Ground toair missiles such as the Stinger and vehicle killers such as the Dragon will be deployed to protect the perimeter.
Vehicles used will depend on the terrain. In mountainous, rough terrain helicopters and foot patrols will be used; in reasonably flat terrain Fast Attack Vehicles, essentially heavilyarmed dune buggies, will be used; in arctic conditions they will use snowmobiles and the ubiquitous helicopters. Only in the worst weather conditions will the helicopters not be present. In hostile areas such as the southern states of the US and the Great Lakes area, Apache helicopters will provide fire support against both ground and air attacks.
If the craft is of alien origin, ICARUS FALLING will give the scientific arm of 801 access to the vehicle. They will attempt to gain as much information as possible before pulling back and waiting for the Grays to retrieve the craft.
Until such time as the craft is recovered, Chapter 2 prevent undesirables getting too close while Chapter 7 prepare the cover story if the media start getting interested. These cover stories usually range from the reasonably honest (retrieving a crashed fighter plane containing top secret equipment) to the simplistic (field exercises) to the frightening (toxic gas or waste material accident with the possibility of contamination). Even in the cases of necessary disinformation, Chapter 7 does its best to make sure that people lose interest in the story very quickly. This is done through their contacts (and blackmail victims) in the media.
While this is going on, Chapter 10 operatives will be introduced to the scene. Their function is to keep an eye on the civilian population (if any exist) near the crash site. They pose as relatively harmless individuals, usually near the site by accident rather than design. Some Chapter 10 operatives are adept at portraying themselves as members of the Underground, feigning a great knowledge of aliens and their activities. In doing this they hope to lure out other members of the Underground and increase their intelligence on their activities.
It is inevitable that player characters will come into contact with Department operatives. What will differ in these meetings will primarily depend on which arm of D801 the characters come into contact with, varying from the seemingly innocuous to the potentially lethal. The Department does not kill without good reason but it will kill to protect its secret.
As can be seen from the description above, the last thing an investigator would wish for is an encounter with ICARUS FALLING. Their ways of dealing with intruders can be swift and brutal if the unwanted guests have seen too much. If those attempting to gain access to Chapter 2 operations have not actually seen anything or obtained any tangible proof, ICARUS FALLING will usually just detain them until the operation is completed. People who accidentally stray onto an operation will be told to remove themselves from the vicinity. Their personal details will be noted down and they will be followed covertly to ensure that they do actually leave the area. Most people have a great respect for the government and the military and will do what they say. This blind obedience makes Chapter 2's job much easier.
Encounters with Chapter 7 (LOKI) or Chapter 10 (CRUCIFIX) operatives are probably going to be the most common as the operatives work inside society itself, infiltrating organisations possibly hostile to the Department. Investigators in this field will undoubtedly meet these operatives and will, for the most part, find them to be reasonably likable individuals. They encourage trust and act as excellent information sources (unfortunately the majority of their information is usually too theoretical to be useful).
These operatives will attempt to gain the investigators trust to find out more about their cell or group. They will often provide a scrap of real information, such as an old crash site location, the address of a Cuckoo or another contact. In general, Chapter 7 operatives appear to be the most believable while Chapter 10 operatives appear to be more trustworthy.
A Chapter 7 operative will approach the investigator, claiming to work inside the military. The investigator will then be fed information on a regular basis. They will be given locations, names, codewords, they will be slowly let in on what appears to be the full truth. But while this information is being delivered, the investigator will always be thinking about when (and not if) they will be betrayed by their contact. The only reason they will be staying in contact with the operative is to extract as much information as possible before the attempted doublecross comes (believing that being forewarned will make them reasonably prepared).
Chapter 10 operatives work differently in that they will appear merely to be flaky Ufo Underground contacts. Their information is not always valuable (or indeed freely forthcoming) but they are less likely to be mistrusted by the investigators. In some cases CRUCIFIX operatives will arrange an incident to foster trust in the investigators. This is done in a similar manner to the operations that undercover drugs officers arrange to win the trust of the important dealers. A potentially dangerous attack will be instigated and the Chapter 10 operative will either save the characters' lives by extracting them from the situation ('I know that guy! He's a government mechanic!')or neutralising the threat with force ('Everybody down!' Cue gunfire). They will usually use blanks in the latter situation but it is also entirely likely that 801 will remove an untrustworthy operative using this method.
Another example of CRUCIFIX operations in the field is their use of operatives to perform what is known in the trade as 'wetwork'. This refers to illegal assassinations, or murders if you prefer, of those individuals whose continued existence would not be in the best interests of the Department. Such killings are often disguised as suicides or accidents and due to the deniability the Department possesses as regards these individuals, these murders are incredibly difficult to trace back to a government origin.
These groups of killers are usually wellarmed and live a handtomouth existence financing themselves independently through the sales of narcotics and firearms as well as oldfashioned robberies. They live on the edges of society and are often wanted by the civilian authorities for a multitude of crimes. Their nomadic lifestyle keeps them safe from undue local law enforcement interest and their limited connections to the Department mean that they do not attract significant attention from the FBI.
The size of these teams is kept to a minimum, usually no more than four men and women. They are well equipped with an assortment of smallarms mostly pistols but machinepistols are common and assault rifles are not unknown. Basically, they are as wellarmed as they can afford. They are fighting both and alien menace and a government which does not understand the true dangers to humanity.
Their communication with 801 is minimal. They communicate their position once a week to a controller using the commercial phone network. Droppoints are announced using code phrases and meetings are arranged in prearranged locations. These meetings with other 801 operatives are used to pass on changes in plans, location of new droppoints, removal of old drops and occasionally they are used to provide specialised equipment, such as explosives or surveillance gear.
CRUCIFIX operatives are wary of these contacts with other operatives. Their deniability and their place in the front line of the covert war makes them useful scapegoats or, worse still, an asset which has ended its operational life. Removal of Chapter 10 teams is the jurisdiction of the Black Chapter. Great care is taken by Chapter 13 when removing CRUCIFIX teams. The entire team must be murdered quickly and cleanly as if any team members survive, their training and knowledge could do great harm to the organisation.
Contact between investigators and these teams will often be confrontational and possibly even violent. They dislike anybody getting in their way when they are on a job and have been known to excise other Department operatives in the course of a mission. It will occur to these teams that the investigators might be 801 personnel but if there is no time to verify this, they will act and take what comes later. This has given them a reputation as a collection of 'loose triggers' among other Department personnel. Despite this, it is acknowledged by Majestic that the the CRUCIFIX strike teams are an integral part of the terror machine that is Department 801. Self financing, efficient and above all, disposable; the teams will operate until all members are eliminated.
MJ12 has links with other organisations around the world. They have been sharing information with the old Soviet Union's organisation, THREAD 4. Since the dismantling of the Soviet union, Thread4's budget has been drastically reduced and they are rapidly becoming another Chapter in 801. They regularly have operatives working in the UK, liaising with the British organisation DGSO which operates on a much smaller scale to 801. DGSO is spends much of its time collating information regarding saucer sightings and its field operatives usually restrict themselves to interviewing those who have seen a UFO.
It could easily be thought from the above descriptions of the methods of 801 a group of player characters attracting the attentions of 801 would not be long for this world. This is not entirely true. The Department is highly unwilling to eliminate those elements of the saucer community who insist on being outspoken and noticeable.
Their preferred method of dealing with most of the saucer community is disinformation, distraction and debunking. They will use LOKI or CRUCIFIX operative to feed the individuals with a morass of seemingly good information. They will then distract them by pointing them in the wrong direction and debunk them when the distraction has led them into the trap. An example of this procedure would be a LOKI operative feeding a cell with a mixture of good and bad information. After a certain time, they are persuaded that a respectable lawyer's office is a front for 801 and contains castiron proof of the governments dealings with aliens. If the Underground cell actually get interested and attempt to break into the offices, the LOKI operative will have the police ready to roll.
Getting caught breaking and entering while looking for 'saucer secrets' is a damn good way of ensuring you are never taken seriously by the authorities and the public again. The only ones who will believe you are the other members of the Underground and their reputations are already on very shaky ground.
Commenced in 1977 using alien technology, Absolution1 was the US governments clandestine program which encompassed all alterations of the human mind and body using alien technology. Prometheus was a subproject of this program. The idea was simple, a squad of soldiers, seven bodies, one mind. What one saw, they all saw. What one knew they all knew. It was to be the nucleus for the perfect army of the future. The moral implications of wiping and altering a human being's mind was glossed over in the rush to move the project towards operational status. Managed by the newly formed Department 801, Absolution1 was to be a shining example of the application of human ingenuity using alien technology.
To create the perfect soldier, a human specimen was needed. These had to be in excellent physical condition and needed to fit the psychological profile designed by Dept. 801 psychologists. Finding the specimens was easy. Men and women in the armed forces had their deaths faked and were moved to the SADO facility in New Mexico. There were rumours circulating around the base that criminals on death row and American citizens suspected of anit American sentiments were also being used as specimens in the projects but such rumours were quickly quashed. Any who persisted were sent to the atmosphere testing research bases in the Arctic the theory being that anybody telling wild stories on these bases was just assumed to have gone icemad and would be ignored or humoured.
The human specimens had their minds completely wiped and with the help of the Grays (joint operators of the SADO facility) and sorting the subjects into groups of seven, their minds were reactivated as one single group mind. One specimen out of the seven was selected to be the Head of the group and the other seven were to be the Body. The Head controlled the Body and 801 controlled the Head. The effective communication range of the members of the Body was only ten kilometers but the Head could both transmit and receive signals at a distance of a hundred kilometers using amplification equipment. This meant that the Head could be kept safe out of the way while the Body performed all the operational, realworld tasks. The Head guided the squad and provided constant feedback for it's handlers.
One of the initial stumbling blocks was the fact that 90% of the subjects mind's reacted violently to both the brainwiping procedure and a further 60% of subjects could not absorb any of the vast amounts of taskspecific information that was electronically inserted into their minds. The brainwipe dropouts were left psychotically deranged and the secondstage dropouts were left drooling husks endlessly repeating weapon statistics and operating procedure manuals. Over five hundred individuals went through the mincer and all 801 had to show for it were twenty individuals, all partially affected by the insanity of elements within the Hive.
Another sideeffect encountered was the empathy between the various entities in the Hive Mind. If one was injured, all would feel the pain and react accordingly. A unit of four Prometheans were strapped down to beds and one was disected without anaesthetic. The three uninjured squad members screamed every time the scalpel cut flesh. When the test subject finally went into shock and died, the other three went quiet and died four hours later.
Rushed to a demonstration of Prometheus, Dept 801 had an exercise set up involving five Prometheans, the largest existing Mind and Body group. The unarmed Prometheans had to subdue and capture three groups of Green Berets (12 men in all). The setting was a forested military training ground near the Canadian border. It was classed as a failure by some and an outstanding success by others. The failure was caused by the Head being quietly insane and feeding the Generals false information. All 12 Green Berets were killed and skinned and the Prometheans were inside the Control compund before anybody realised. In the last second, one of the Generals pulled out his service automatic and emptied the clip into the brain of the Head.
The success element of the operation was that six 'people' with artificial training had defeated 12 highly trained, experienced Green Berets. The fact that they had ignored their orders with a bloodlust more common in rabid dogs was quietly ignored. Funding was increased and the scientists of Project Prometheus worked at eliminating the Insanity Factor.
Within two years, only 10% of the subjects were failing the first stage and the Insanity Factor had more or less been eliminated. The main change was that the body of each subject was put through massive physiological changes. These changes meant that the body which emerged from the vat at the end of the process contained less than 10% of the original bodies cells. The process removed pigmentation from the hair and eyes an also made massive changes to the skeletal and musculature structure. The individual ribs were replaced with a single carapace like covering, bones were thicker and the muscle structure was changed to give the human form greater strength. At last D801 was in possession of the perfect soldier; one who would unflinchingly obey orders, sacrifice itself without question and carry out missions to the letter.
When the Grays showed took over the underground base at Dulce in 1982, Department 801's brief was changed from coordination of the Grays mission to obstruction. Eleven teams of Prometheans were sent to take back Dulce. None returned and 801 was left in posession of eleven drooling husks that had been the controlling Heads of the teams. All of the Department 801 officers serving in the base were presumed dead, or worse, and their files were closed. Luckily, the attempted takeover at SADO was unsuccessful thanks to emergency procedures which flooded the entire base with nerve gas. Three hundred D801 operatives died and it was six months before SADO was operational again. Project Prometheus was left with thirty five Prometheans after three years of work.
It was 1986 before the D801 scientists managed to get the Project Prometheus machinery operational again. By then the brief had changed. Prometheus was to form the core of the fight against the aliens. By now, the presence the Cuckoos and the Gray drones were known to 801. They needed a completely deniable force which could eliminate these threats. Prometheus was perfect as even the CIA Alpha teams would balk at being asked to execute hundreds of children. This slaughter was to become known as Operation White Noise.
The execution of alien/human hybrids in society. In 1989, the brief of Operation White Noise was expanded to include the execution of politicians asking for the release of saucer information. In 1992, White Noise became an international operation. Black ops were conducted all over the world without the premission of the host countries. By the mid1990's, more than 300 Prometheus personnel were operational worldwide.
Only when Prometheans were used in the field in significant numbers did another fault develop. Although no losses (due to physical injury) occured in the first year, four Prometheans went missing. Group members reported feeling the operatives presence blank out of the Hive and when they searched for the body, it was nowhere to be found. Only one of the four was found in that first year. She turned up in a house in Boston, threatening the lives of a family of four. A SWAT team entered the building, twelve men in flak jackets armed with submachine guns and shotguns. Four were killed by the operative before she set fire to herself and the family. All were killed and D801 had to perform an autopsy on a charred corpse recovered from the smoking wreckage of the residence.
By 1989, thirteen Prometheans had 'woken up' and vanished. Experiments were made with small explosive charges to kill any that had woken up but after an entire team was blown up while being transported in a C130 Hercules, it was given up. From 1990, missing Prometheus personnel were regarded as acceptable losses and followup operations were conducted to locate and destroy any who had broken free of the Hive. In the latter half of 1991, transmitters were inserted into operatives, but these had only a limited range and were soon disabled by the escaped operative. In 1992, the transmitters were dispensed with entirely on the grounds that if we can tell where they are, then so can the enemy. Photographs and fingerprints of the missing operatives were inserted into the FBI files in case any were picked up by law enforcement officers. The files contained a phony history of violent murders and all were marked Extremely Dangerous. Anyone accessing these files raised a flag on the D801 computer and D801 operatives and a Prometheus team as backup were sent out to the source of the enquiry.
In 1994, there were 31 Prometheus personnel on the run.
The Grays are the most widely known and recognised form of alien. Their characteristic, domed heads and cold faces are familiar across the world. Grays earned their name in the 1950's when it was used by MJ12 as a codename for the small alien corpses that were being recovered from the saucer crash sites. The current official term for Grays is Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, or EBE's. This term was first coined by the military lifescientist, Dr. Laurence Kaufmann during his early work with captured Grays in the mid 1950's. Originally the Grays were viewed by the militaryindustrial complex and the government as being peaceful emissaries from a technologically advanced civilisation; more recently, the Grays have earned a sinister reputation as abductors and experimenters.
The Grays' appearance has become widely known because of frequent contact with MJ12 and due to the number of crash witnesses and leaked autopsy reports. Humanoid in form, there are two main varieties of Gray (known as Type I and Type II) which differ significantly, despite having a similar appearance. The real differences between the two types are their relative rarity, the roles they perform and their intellectual abilities.
Both Type I and II Grays follow the conventional humanoid arrangement, having two legs, two arms and a head, but they are of strange proportions. Their heads are bald and unnaturally large, with exaggerated foreheads and skulls. The facial features of the Grays are very distinctive. Their faces are dominated by two huge black, slantedoval eyes set on high cheek bones. These eyes are dark with no pupils or corneas. They either have no nose or it is so slight that it is unnoticeable, and their small slitlike mouth does not move. Below this is a tiny pointed chin. They have no ears. Their bodies are of very slender build, with oddly short legs and long thin arms. Most are pale graywhite in colour and completely hairless. They usually wear no clothing.
Type I Grays are the smaller of the two forms, and the more often encountered. They stand 34 feet in height (100 120cm), and move with swift, abrupt precision. The arms of the Type I are unnaturally long, and end in threefingered hands which join directly to the wrist of the Type I. They often remain motionless for long periods and then lurch into a burst of frantic activity. Even in times of stress, their implacable faces remain stony. This often leads abductees to describe them as emotionless. Autopsy reports indicate that the Gray Type I's anatomy greatly resembles that of a matured human embryo, with a greatly atrophied digestive system and exaggerated brain development. There are suggestions of photosynthesising elements in the Grays' system, and a complete absence of any reproductive organs.
Type II Grays are larger than Type I, being 67 feet tall (approx. 2 metres) and somewhat more human in proportion, although still distinctly "odd" in appearance. The Type II has more fully developed hands than the Type I, possessing three long fingers, a fully developed palm and an opposable thumb. They are also more prone to expressing emotion and this, coupled with their size, makes them seem more human. No Type II Gray has ever been recovered. Consequently, little is known about their internal physiognomy.
All Grays are telepathic and they function as a group, meshing their consciousnesses into one intelligence. This is known as the HiveMind. Through the Hive mind all of these beings are communally aware. This togetherness includes the Type I's and allows the Type II's to direct their actions.
External differences aside, the greatest difference between Type II's and the smaller Type I's is the fact that Type II's are pseudoindividuals, capable of instructing the Type I Grays to carry out the instructions of the Network. Type II Grays have an indefinite lifespan, which which will end only when they are no longer needed by the main Gray intelligence. Type I Grays are an artificially created, shortlived life form, grown in nutrientrich vats sometimes referred to as "spawning pools". They are essentially biological automatons controlled by the Hivemind of the Gray's intelligence. This fact is not obvious and has eluded government agencies that have had long contact with these "visitors". When this fact is known it is easy to understand why most sightings of Grays only involve Type I's, these creatures are the drones and workers of the Gray's society. Due to the operation of the psionic Hivemind, Type I's can act both as individuals or as groups, but always operate under instructions from the Type II's.
Type II Grays are individuals. They can tap into the HiveMind to give and take information but they are not an inherent part of it. They make the decisions and decide policy for the HiveMind.
These creatures are rarely encountered, being the masters of many devious plots, they minimise involvement through use of their artificial servants the Type I Grays. ("And God fashioned Man in his image") Type II Grays may communicate by thought projection or telepathy. Type I Grays are incapable of communicating outside of the HiveMind, any apparent communication with the Type I's is merely a Type II communicating using the drone as a conduit.
When the Grays returned to our system to establish a permanent base, they abducted men and women and took samples of genetic material, including embryos. Using this material they engineered beings which would act as their contact with humanity. These life forms were constructed specifically to fulfil the Grays' agenda for humanity. The main Gray intelligences have not been within 30 light years of earth in 17,000 years. As humanity developed the Gray races also changed.
At the present time the Gray presence in and around Earth consists of the two artificially constructed life forms. They do not have any normal means for reproduction or survival. The Type I grays are the most commonly encountered. They carry out the activities dictated by the Type II's. They have a group consciousness which allows them to communicate everything they see and think to the rest of the Grays. This consciousness is known as the HiveMind to MJ12. If an individual Type I is separated from the HiveMind it is unable to function and will quickly die.
The Grays travel around freely in craft, known colloquially as saucers, generally being between 20 and 180 metres in diameter. Much, much larger vehicles have been observed. These saucers are invisible to radar and capable of extraordinary manoeuvres. Generally, the saucers below 100 metres in size originate from mother ships either in orbit or near one of the underground bases.
Typical Gray behaviour consists of being sighted hovering or moving slowly in unpopulated areas, occasionally landing and allowing the Grays themselves to move about close to the saucer. Sometimes lowflying saucers will pursue vehicles or aircraft briefly, occasionally causing accidents. The craft have the ability to turn electrical and mechanical devices on and off at will using antitechnology rays. Cars will stall; lights flicker and go out; radios fall silent or only give out unintelligible gibberish. If attacked, the saucers either leave immediately or utterly destroy their attackers.
When the Grays established contact in the late 50's, offering to trade technology for a protected base on earth and freedom to act unmolested; the military agreed and provided them with over 20 underground secret bases in the US alone. The Grays now exclusively control these bases, having removed the human presence there completely in 1979. The Dept. has lost control of the underground bases, and fight a secret war to recover them, whilst still aiding the Grays elsewhere.
The military is unable to go anywhere near these bases and airspace is completely controlled over them by saucers and Gray antitechnology beams. In addition, the military itself is forced to protect these EBE bases from foreign powers and civilians, in order to preserve their secrecy, whilst at the same time attempting to take them back. The Grays remain as large an enigma now as they have ever been. Much of the technology given to earth has been useless or non applicable to earth science.
The world's governments are largely unaware of the silent invasion of earth outside of the Grays presence on earth. Keeping silent on UFO's and other phenomena has become so ingrained to MJ12 that now it is impossible to escape. Instead, the secret service and national defence agencies spend all of their time debunking and ridiculing invasion evidence. To admit the existence of the invasion would be to admit to years of lies and silence.
The Grays have by now established an excellent knowledge of human anatomy and behaviour, aided by millennia of human experimentation, abduction and observation. This knowledge has been used by them to plan the forced evolution of man into his ultimate form, one similar to that of the Grays themselves; the HiveMind.
The seemingly random abduction of tens of thousands of humans each year is aimed at facilitating the next step in this process. By abducting and impregnating certain human subjects, and then returning to remove the required genetic material (typically an embryo) the Grays are developing the forerunners of the earthly HiveMind, individuals known as the Genii or the Cuckoos. Similar to naturally occurring evolutionary throwforwards such as idiot savants and some mentallyill criminals, Cuckoos have little personal and social skills; no real personality at all, being one tiny part of a much larger whole.
Personality, the individual, has no meaning to the HiveMind; all will be subsumed into the greater intellect. Mankind will continue to exist, but not in any form recognisable to us now. Everything will change, as the entire world society, including man's very genetic structure is altered beyond recognition. Man will be forced into an accelerated process of evolution and evolve a millions years worth in less than a century.
The HiveMind, once created, will become linked to the secret masters of the Grays, forming a grand union of the intelligence. Mankind, as we know it, will be no more.
These are the hybrid lifeforms created by the Grays, the intermediary step between the current form of humanity and the new humanity. They were first introduced in 1986, the first step of the culmination of over 15,000 years of experimentation on humanity.
At this time, none of the Cuckoos have reached puberty. All are intelligent, introverted, young children of both sexes who regularly show a special aptitude in mathematics or languages. Normally, Cuckoos to be able to read and write at the age of two, although as they get older they learn to hide their brilliance in order to blend into normal society.
The most common trait reported by 801 operatives is that of a cold intelligence lurking behind the eyes of a child, the feeling that they control all those around them like a behavioural scientist manipulating the actions of a laboratory rat.
The parents of Cuckoos have been regularly abducted and examined in the years preceding the introduction of the hybrid. In some cases the abductions have been carried out on grandparents and other close family members. This repeated abduction and implantation of the surrounding family ensures a safe and protected environment for the Cuckoo.
At the first sign of any danger, the Cuckoo sends out a signal which is received by those in the immediate area. Those called will immediately rush to the aid of the threatened Cuckoo. Such activity would not be considered abnormal; many family members claim to know when close relatives are in danger and the actions of those protecting a small child, however violent, would seem to be perfectly within the bounds of normal behaviour. This has always been a problem for the 801 teams who main function has been the elimination of the Cuckoos.
When liaising with Department 801 during their onceregular meetings, the Grays used a biological entity known as a drone. Basically, a drone looks like a characterless human being. They all look alike and are hairless and sexless with smooth, unblemished skin. They move like the Grays with the same precise movements and are controlled by the Hive Mind. The Grays currently speak through these artificial beings when talking to members of 801, although meetings with actual Grays happened regularly in the 1950's. The drones are never seen outside of the Gray underground bases. To date, 801 has not been able to obtain any drones for examination.
During the abduction and examination process, the Grays will implant small devices known as Returns into the abductees. Returns are typically inserted into the nasal cavity, but the ear cavity or tear ducts below the eyes are also common. These devices are tiny (less than 1mm in size), and often decay rapidly if removed from the host.
The implanted Return acts as both a tracer device, sending out a signal to be picked up by the Grays revealing the exact location of the victim, and as a transmitter, monitoring and transmitting sounds and conversations nearby.
Using these methods the Grays can keep a very close watch over the abductee, effectively listening in on all his conversations, although it is possible to block or confuse the signals. This is most easily done temporarily by electrical or magnetic interference, or by placing a reflective metal substance (such as aluminium foil) around the Return.
A more sinister function of the Return is its ability to control the actions of the abductee. This ability is mainly used to bring the abductee to a favourable site for additional examination for the Grays, although more than capable of abducting from the centre of a big city, prefer a quieter, more isolated location to perform the abduction. The ability of the Return to control its host is seldom used to accomplish shortterm goals. The Grays find it difficult to think in the short term and one of their weaknesses is their inability to comprehend the difference individuals can make.
Abductions of human beings appears to be the most visible and tangible evidence of alien activity here on Earth. The 1947 deal between the newly formed MJ12 and the Grays involved the exchange of human subjects for technology. The deal fell through when neither a complete list of those abducted nor adequate examples of functioning technology were produced by the Grays. To this day the full scale of the problem is not known to MJ12. Estimates of the number of US citizens abducted over a fifty year period vary from a conservative two million to a worst case scenario of 5% of the population over ten million people.
True alien abductions are a real and terrifying phenomenon. They are carried out by the Grays as part of their hybridization program. While every abduction case has individual differences, all will have certain elements in common. These include signs of the abduction, both mental and physical, as well as the method of abduction and subsequent examination.
Most abductions occur in isolated locations; while driving down an empty highway or deserted countryside. The person involved will sometimes notice a light 'tracking' them, appearing and disappearing in the clouds, or more disconcertingly, seeming to vanish in a completely clear sky. They will watch the light, wondering idly whether it is a helicopter, passenger plane, hot air balloon or perhaps even a UFO (most rational people would discard this possibility with a wry smile). The light which has been following then goes away and is not seen again. They continue their journey, arriving at their destination slightly fatigued, perhaps with a mild headache the result of a long drive. The next day, the memory of even the light in the sky is vague and tinged with a dreamlike quality. They decide not to mention it after all nothing really happened. But it did. They have been abducted.
Objectively this is what happened. The person in the vehicle notices a light in the sky. To even be able to see the craft means that they are in grave danger. The Grays activate what the Underground call their AntiTechnology rays. The car engine, radio and all other mechanical and electrical devices cease to work. At the same time the people inside the car are 'turned off'. They cease to receive input from any of their senses. The car is released from the pull of the Earth, preventing it from crashing and is brought inside the craft.
The person the Grays are interested in is carried to a chamber, seemingly with little effort despite the apparent frailty of the small Grays. The chamber is filled with a white light, seeming to come from everywhere at once and so powerful that nothing in the room is visible. The slab the person is put onto makes the human seem to float in the air. Now the horror begins.
The person is turned back on. They are totally aware of their surroundings but are also completely incapable of movement, a scream echoing through their minds as the examination begins. Glistening, sterile, metal probes descend from above. The probes enter every bodily orifice while long needles extract samples from bones, eyes, internal organs and the brain. As this excruciatingly painful operation is carried out, the Grays watch, their dark eyes showing no emotion, their only movements being to move the body to allow the probes to reach certain locations more easily.
If the abductee is a woman of childbearing age, ova are removed for future manipulation or a foetus is implanted into the uterus. If the abductee is a male, needles enter the testicles and extract sperm samples for later use. The last step, performed with every new abductee, is the insertion of a small device known as a Return, usually into the nasal cavity. This will ensure that the person will be in the right place when the Grays need to examine them again.
Once the examination is completed, the person is turned off once more and their memories of their time inside the craft, as well as the pain of the examination, are suppressed. They are released back to the place from which they were initially taken and are allowed to continue their journey, completely unaware of what has happened. That is how an abduction is carried out. The Grays do not give you the chance to react or resist. You are targeted, turned off, abducted, examined and released completely unaware of what has happened. Once the process has started, you have as much chance of escaping as a cow has of breaking out of an abattoir. In the example above, the victim was in a car travelling down a quiet road. They could just as easily been at home, quietly sleeping while the Grays enter, moving freely through the house turning people 'on' or 'off' at will. They might wake up, sensing something as wrong. They shake the person beside them but get no response. They are then turned off themselves, awakening in the chamber as the needle descends towards their open eyes.
Often people abducted will have disturbing dreams and experience flashbacks of their abduction. They will feel drained, exhausted, their bodies and bones aching. Those women implanted with strange embryos, although possibly unaware that they are pregnant, will feel the symptoms of pregnancy. Some time later, usually less than eight weeks, the Grays will cause them to return to a suitable abduction site. The foetus will be removed, leaving no traces of the pregnancy. These are called Phantom Pregnancies and are one of the many signs of abduction.
There are other signs which can alert those abducted. They might have scars which they cannot account for, such as indented circles of smooth flesh. Nightmares involving medical examinations are also possible, as the suppressed memory struggles to float to the surface. Toothaches and sinus troubles such as recurring nosebleeds are also common, resulting from implanted Returns disturbing the flesh as they burrow for concealment.
Another trace of an abduction is the phenomenon known as Missing Time. This can sometimes be very difficult to verify but a one hour car journey taking four or five hours is enough to give most people cause for concern. Missing time while you sleep is almost impossible to account for, but watches worn during the abduction will lose time as they are stopped by the Grays during the abduction. Those who are turned off to prevent them seeing too much might notice that time has elapsed which they cannot account for. But, realistically speaking, not many people are going to notice missing five minutes or less from their lives.
One other method of gaining the full truth of an abduction is regressive hypnosis. This can be used to remove the block placed by the Grays, allowing the full memory of the encounter to come to the surface. Often this can be a traumatic experience for the victim but it is a very useful tool for investigators in this field. One danger is the possibility of the accounts delivered by the person under hypnosis coming from expected experiences due to knowledge of the subject. They know, usually through media coverage of the phenomenon, what should happen and give an appropriate response to any questions asked. Correlation between experiences and markings on the body along with crossreferencing with family members' testimonies or site examination should then be used to ascertain the veracity of the abductee's claims.
In general, abductions are random acts. Investigators into the actions of the Grays are unlikely to be abducted because 'they know too much'. What is possible, however, is that they might accidentally, or otherwise, stray into a Ufocal (an area of intense alien activity) and become an easy target for the abductors. It is also possible for an investigator to be led to an abduction site by a previous abductee acting on the instructions of their Return. Once at the site, they will be abducted along with their companion and subjected to the horrors of the examination chamber.
It must be remembered that the Grays' plan is a long term one. They are practically incapable of thinking in the immediate short term. As far as they're concerned, individuals are of no real concern. They believe that only if the majority of the people on the planet realise their intentions will their plans possibly fail.
The real danger to investigators come from the human agencies which are intent on keeping the Grays' presence on Earth hidden from the public. These people are aware of the dangers of a few determined individuals and will take any steps necessary to prevent any useful information being released to the public. The Grays do not make murders look like suicides or accidents. They don't care enough about people to do so. But the agencies care. They care a lot.
One of the more graphic pieces of evidence of the apparent existence of extraterrestrials on Earth is the disturbing wave of animal mutilations which have occurred over the last thirty years. While the majority have occurred in the southern regions of the United States, mutilation sites have been found as far afield as the UK and Japan. Mutilations peaked in 1975 and 1976 and have declined steadily ever since.
A typical mutilation site will involve less than six animals. Due to the prevalence of cattle in the southern regions of the US, these incidents have become known as cattle mutilations although sheep and wild animals such as foxes have also been mutilated.
Typically, flesh and skin will be stripped away from selected portions of the animal (usually the head and reproductive organs); cylinders of flesh bored out; eyes and ears surgically plucked out and the brains removed. There is a distinct lack of blood, either surrounding the wounds or on the ground beside the animal and there is never any sign of a struggle. The wounds inflicted on the animals seem to be be carried out with precisioncutting equipment as there is no additional tissue damage around the wound area. The carcasses are then left lying at random, occasionally with strange burned or marked areas on the ground around them. Over the last thirty years, tens of thousands of animals have been mutilated in this manner. An FBI Special Committee was set up to investigate these bizarre killings, but no conclusions were reached.
In 1983 Dept. 801 initiated Operation Broken Circle. Mutilations were carried out using Department personnel in an attempt to confuse the issue and facilitate disinformation at a later date. These mutilations left some obvious signs of human involvement such as scalpel blades, surgical gloves and syringes. As the operatives became accustomed to their new role as mutilators of herd animals, they became reasonably adept at replicating the coring and cutting of the animals, using helicopters to leave minimal traces.
In the short, but bloody, history of the mutilation phenomenon, attacks have not been restricted to wild or domesticated animals. In 1987, US Air Force sergeant Phillip Lyle was discovered in the desert ten kilometers from White Sands Missile Test Range. The skin had been removed from his face and hands; his rectum had been cored out; his brain and internal organs were missing along with one eye, one ear and the tongue. The strap of the man's watch was found two feet from the corpse.
In 1988, mutilated corpses were found in Brazil. Items of technology carried by the victims were found disassembled with the internal components missing. In 1989 the mutilations ceased as mysteriously as they had started. Operation Broken Circle continued to hide this fact. The 1986 report commissioned by MJ12 found that the mutilations were carried out by 'forces unknown'. At no time were the Grays implicated in the cattle mutilation cases.
The world is not completly unaware of the Alien menace and some elements of society have both knowledge of the coverup and seek to illuminate the rest of us. This group is collectivly refered to as The UFO Underground but is in fact a factious, looselyaligned collection of individuals and groups. The UFO Underground can serve as a support organisation for groups of Player Characters or a source of information (some of it very dubious) for uninvolved PCs. Typically the underground is split into "cells". It is impossible to give any precise details for underground cells but a number of generalisations may be made.
Cells are usually only a local entity, confined to one city or county, normally numbering between 2 and 20 people. Disagreements between cells are widespread as each cell usually thinks that it's own knowledge and practices are the only way to defeat the invaders. Some groups may even condone the Gray's tampering in human affairs, while others actively disrupt the activities of other cells. Paranoia is rampant amongst the members of the UFO underground and trust of outsiders is rare. Each cell is usually convinced that other cells are variously infiltrated by the government, the aliens or lunatics. These fears, coupled with the terrible knowledge that they possess and the general public's apathy, tend to make the members of the movement appear quirky, eccentric or at the most extreme, sociopathic.
Due to the variety of individual cells it is possible for multiple cells to exist in some areas, this is more likely near large cities. Cells may have links with other cells in their area or across both national and international boundaries. The press presents a view that these people are a bunch of crackpots and in some cases this is correct. No group has full knowledge or even definitive proof of EBE involvement on earth but many claim either or both of these. Cells are typically made up of one or two charismatic individuals that have some inkling of what's going on and are strong enough to motivate others to the cause. There may be additionally an "inner circle" of loyal or knowledgeable followers. Most of the cell is made up of hangerson who have no real devotion to "the cause" i.e. they are unwilling to perform illegal acts or jeopardise their careers for their beliefs. It can be useful to think of these people as a bunch of trainspotters that instead collect UFO paraphenalia. Because of the active silencing campaign pursued by the government and MJ12, the views expressed publicly by these groups are usually deliberately incorrect to convince the authorities that they are not a threat. Another approach to this problem is to keep the group secret or adopt an innocuous front to keep their activities secret.
It is suggested that the players could form part of a UFO underground cell if the referee wants to provide them with a degree of support and easy sources of information (or disinformation). This approach can be particularly effective when dealing with players that have a signifigant amount of UFO knowledge themselves or if the referee wishes to run a more structured style of game.
These include both player and nonplayer characters. The list below of suitable archetypes for MAJI is aimed squarely at player characters, although all are suitable characters for this background (although some might be a bit too gungho for the style of game you want to run).
Some time ago, perhaps in your childhood, something happened. During the day you were just a quiet, introverted kid but at night, when the darkness fell the nightmares began. You saw the faceless takeaway men walking through the house, through the walls looking for you. You always hid but they always found you and took you away. When you were sixteen you were institutionalized after a spate of suicide attempts. In the institution, the dreams and nosebleeds stopped and you felt safe again. One day, men came from the government and asked about the takeaway men. They took xrays and bloodsamples and were never seen again. You were released back into the 'real world' after four years of peace. It's been twelve years now, you hold down a respectable job and the nightmares have not returned. Six months ago, you saw a talk show where people talked about being abducted by aliens. At the start you laughed but by the end your life finally made sense. You started looking...
You served in the military, perhaps as part of some shadowy special forces outfit, concerned with protecting the safety of your own country at the expense of other, developing nations. Perhaps it was on some deniable mission into a green, sweaty hellhole where you realised that your government and superior officers had not been telling the full truth. Acting as backup to a team of scientists and shadowwarriors, you saw just enough to know that the craft embedded in the jungle floor was no hightech jet. You left the military and started looking for the truth.
You were a military or civilian pilot. On a routine flight, your radar showed an object trailing the plane, always keeping a safe distance away. Then your radar died, your instruments started spinning and the radio emitted white noise. When you tried to contact the ground, you thought you could ear a voice in among the static saying, "All I can see is white water, the instruments are going crazy." Then a light filled the sky in front of the cockpit and you looked into the face of God. A second later, everything was back to normal, the radar showed nothing abnormal and the skies were clear. When you reached the ground, you were debriefed by three men in suits who told you to say nothing. One week later a friend told you that the plane had vanished from radar for over two minutes. You haven't been able to fly since that day. You took up a desk job and eventually quit. Unconvinced by the government's attitude to UFO's, you began to search for the truth yourself.
You had spent ten years building up a practice filled with overworked business types and rich people desperate to hear the sound of their own voices. To keep your mind active you started to write a book on regressive hypnosis and the dangers of false memory syndrome. The research took you out of your normal circle of clients and colleagues began to send you clients to help your research. Three of these clients claimed to have been abducted by flying saucers and experimented upon in outer space. You didn't take them seriously, but you listened and tried to find the source of the psychosis. As time went on, your interest in the abduction phenomenon grew and you started writing about abductions, your early intentions forgotten. As time went on, you built up a healthy client list of abductees and were receiving details of others from colleagues. After one year of research, you came back to the simple fact time and time again. The abduction accounts were all scarily similar. Abductees from all over the country recounted the same events, drew the same weird hyroglyphiclike symbols and nearly all complained of nosebleeds or possessed similar scars they could not account for. As you delved deeper into this mystery you started meeting characters who told of an alien liaison between the government and the aliens. You started searching for more information on this denigrated phenomenon. Many of your colleagues now ignore you, believing you to be involved with fringe science of the very worst kind. You ignore them also and continue your search for information.
You used to work for one of the big three CIA, FBI or DIA. You liked your work, felt you were making a difference. You always felt that if the government lied, they did it to protect the people. Then you read a file outside your security classification. It told of a security organisation, operating outside of the control of the elected authorities. You investigated this secret organisation, asking friends working for the NSA and the CIA. None of them had even heard of this organisation. You dug a little further, following the trail of that file. You found out about bases that looked and acted like military bases but were not controlled by the military. You found one person who was willing to talk. In a diner, over chicken and fries, she looked around nervously and told you of an organisation which could murder with impunity and whose main goal was the silencing and debunking of those concerned with UFO's. She warned you to stay away, that your status as an agent of a world power meant nothing to them. Her last words as she left were, "If you can kill the President of the United States, you can kill anybody." She was dead within the week. You were asked to resign some months later. Your superiors felt your work was slipping due to your 'outside interests'. You left, but your investigation into the mysterious organisation continues...
Five years ago, your partner went missing. Their car was found by the side of the road, every electrical system burnt out. People living nearby claimed to see lights in the sky at the time the broken carclock displayed. You believe that they were abducted by UFO's and are searching for the truth in an attempt to get them back.
From an early age, you have been interested in the weird and the paranormal. Three years ago, you began studying UFO's and, as time passed, they gradually became the main focus for your attention. As your obsession grew, you found that you could no longer function in society. You left your day job and began driving around the country following the saucer incidents. You began to amass the tools of the trade; a van, sophisticated radio scanning equipment and a liking for the kind of junk food that dyes your insides a strange colour. You met up with other fanatics at saucer meets up and down the country, swapping information on saucer sightings and mutilations and warning each other about government attempts to infiltrate the saucer watching fraternity. Although still not totally trusted by the more paranoid members, you are beginning to get some choice information at last. There are hints dropped of government contacts with the truth to sell. The next step for you is to get a source on the inside and start to hear it all.
You were a detective on a murder case. The victim was carrying ten thousand dollars in cash and had a hand grenade in his jacket pocket. He looked like a businessman and had a recently healed bullet wound on his thigh. Assuming he was organised crime, a search for his prints on the federal computer yielded a locked file. A search of his car yielded a computer disk marked TOP SECRET/MAJESTIC. The next day, two federal agents came in and took your case out from under you. The case was buried, the body removed from the morgue to location unknown and the police records of the killing went missing. When you contacted the FBI, the two federal agents you had met did not fit the description of those working for the FBI. Two days later, an unmarked envelope was slipped under the door of your apartment. Inside was a sheet of paper; written on it were the words, 'ROSWELL, 801, MAJESTIC12 THE FUTURE IS NO LONGER OURS'. You started to search and wound up watching the skies.
You've always suspected the government have been helping the aliens. You got your first glimpse of the truth inside an airforce base's computer system. Gradually, you made contacts among the other freaks interested in UFO's and continued to break the system from within.
You provide help to those that have been abducted. You give counselling and hypnosis sessions to exorcise the trauma. You also help prevent additional abductions by negating the Return's ability to transmit. When you started this, it was just a joke, a con. But now, you have seen and heard things which are too hard to explain away. You now honestly believe that abductions are very real and do your best to help those who have been abducted. Your work has brought you into contact with other people operating in this field. You feel that a greater understanding of abductions and the actions of the Grays can only benefit mankind.
Stats Aptitude 8, DL 3, DB 2
Skills Electronics and Gray knowledege 14
Tag "Listen... can you hear them?"
Captain Brent Hicks USAF (Retd.) is a slob. He lives in a tiny oneroom apartment above an allnight grocery store. He is suspicious of visitors, especially if they want to talk to him about aliens. He will adopt a 'little green men talk to me' attitude with such people and if they respond in kind, he will evict them from his apartment. On the other hand if the people approaching him show any sort of serious understanding of the real events taking place he will talk to them.
His apartment is rank with the odour of rotting food and covered with the remains of hundreds of junkfood cartons and soft drink cans. Brent himself has become extremely obese due to his lack of exercise and a constant diet of fastfood. He bitterly resents anyone trying to tidy up.
In 1984 he witnessed a midair collision between a saucer and his wingman during a night flying exercise in Nevada. After this incident he 'became strange' and was retired for health reasons. He used his cash settlement to finish the repayments on his apartment and buy a huge 'Alien Detector Dish' which he installed on the roof of his apartment building. He listens to them at night and has become convinced that he can hear coded conversations in the static that flows through the speakers of his detector system. Buried within the debris of fastfood wrappers in his room he has serveral thousand dollars worth of electronic equipment.
At night he lies naked in the centre of the mess with the speakers at maximum volume. Amidst the screaming static and white noise he can hear the whispering of the Hive Mind. Noone else can hear this, no matter how hard they listen. The reason for this is that soon after his retirement, Hicks was abducted. During his examination the Grays found him unsuitable. He was returned unharmed, useless to the Hive Mind and equipped with a misaligned Return. It is the Return that feeds Gray communications directly to his conscious self.
Hicks could be a useful ally for the players as he is a living eavesdropper on Gray activity. He is also extremely suspicious and it may take several meetings before he trusts the player characters completely. Moving him at all will always be a trial and purchasing a set of duplicate equipment may be mandatory as "disturbing the setup could break it".
He will insist that it is due to his electronic gear that he can understand the messages and only at night. He is also completly addicted to comfort foods eaten in his youth, a night out eavesdropping with him will typically involve at least three separate trips for burgers and donuts. Perhaps therapy could alleviate these delusions but removal of the constant stimulus of his madness would probably be necessary first.
Stats Aptitude 16, DL 6, DB +6
Skills Interpersonal 20
Quirk Still knows what's going on in the outside world.
Tag "These bars are to keep you out, not keep me in."
Ethan Barlow was born in the southern city of New Orleans. He was a lawyer working for a topnotch law firm. In 1981, while driving home from the office, a man calmly stepped out in front of his car. Barlow slammed on the brakes but was too late and the man bounced off the windscreen and landed in a heap behind the car. Ethan got out of the car and staggered over to the body on the street, kneeling down to see if he was still alive. The driver in the car behind Barlow's saw the man on the ground lift a bleeding hand and grab hold of Barlow's face. The man smiled through broken teeth and died. Ethan spent the night in hospital and was still disorientated by the night's events when he went home the next day.
He was given two weeks sick leave. In that time, he systematically destroyed the contents of his apartment, went to Chicago and began what the tabloids would call 'a sickening spree of homicidal mania'. Within four weeks of the accident Barlow had killed eighteen people. Five entire families. Each of the victims were cut up into sections and attached to the walls of their homes, their right arms reaching skyward. He was caught leaving the home of the fifth family. He killed two police officers with his bare hands and was taken into custody bleeding from eight gunshot wounds. He survived and went to trial one year later. He was declared insane and committed to the Riversdale Maximum Security Institution for the Criminally Insane. He is allowed no entertainment; books, newspapers, films, TV or visitors. He was to stew in a prison of his own mind. He has killed three orderlies since his incarceration.
Barlow's appearance has changed drastically since his days as a quiet lawyer. He is a powerful looking man of average height and build with a shaved head. One ear has been partially removed by a bullet and one cheek is covered by a blue finelattice work tattoo. He is the embodiment of quiet restrained power and speaks with a strong New Orleans accent.
Barlow is an excellent source of information regarding saucers, UFO's and Department 801. Unfortunately, he dislikes giving out complete chunks of information and will dispense red herrings and cryptic clues. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject and (somewhat disturbingly) can quote newspaper articles including page and column numbers from any time in the last fifty years. He is thoroughly familiar with the personnel of Department 801 and most of their procedures. His knowledge of their working is unknown to the Department. He also has over twenty people throughout the United States who work indirectly for Barlow. How Barlow passes his desires and information to these people is not known. Many have no idea who they are working for. Others know the identity of The Speaker but merely receive information from others in the organisation. These people will kill for Barlow, many are skilled at breaking and entering and surveillance.
Officially, Barlow is allowed no visitors (he is a dangerous nutter after all). Unofficially, Barlow receives perhaps one visitor every year. These are usually academics studying him for their books or criminal psychologists wanting to try and get inside his head. Barlow receives these pests happily and none ever visit him twice. Barlow can also unofficially request audiences with people. Basically, anyone wanting to meet Barlow that he wants to see will be allowed in to visit him. The staff at the asylum seem to turn a blind eye to these desires of Barlow.
Anyone visiting Barlow will be asked to place the contents of their pockets into a marked bag. They will not be allowed any writing implements, recording equipment, loose change, firearms, drugs or knives. Only mental notes can be taken in Barlow's presence. Characters will be led down a white corridor, passing through two keycombination locked doors. Perceptive characters will notice that the orderly is carrying a taser on his belt. The last door leads into a small room lit with fluorescent tubing. Two plastic chairs are fixed to the floor in the centre of the room. Inset into one wall is a 2 metre by 1 metre perspex window. Inside the window, Barlow sits securely fastened with a strait jacket and canvas straps. They will have no more than ten minutes with Barlow. One of the visitors will be given a handheld emergency button to press if they feel their lives are in danger. The orderly will wait on the other side of the steel reinforced, locked door.
One of the things that Barlow likes to get across is the fact that appearances are deceptive, "If you think that I am just a powerless prisoner, you are very much mistaken. I can reach out from behind these bars and touch anyone I want." During the meetings, he alternates between calm politeness and screaming, incoherent, frothing lunacy. He can start these uncontrollable fits at any time. They can come and go in seconds or can last for minutes. During the longer fits, he will strain to break free from his bonds and occasionally, they crack and start to give. As soon as this starts to happen, orderlies will rush in to restrain him, usually using the taser.
Stats Aptitude 14, DL 6, DB +4
Skills Combat 16, Physical 18, Criminal 16
Tag "My name is Lorna Grant. It has always been Lorna Grant."
Lorna Grant's is a twenty seven year old black woman whose first memory is of being on a roof top in New York city. In her hands she had a SteyrAug rifle equipped with a silencer and scope. She has no memories before that moment. Inside Five minutes, she had killed three people. Other members of her Prometheus team although she had no way of knowing that at the time. She went on the run and was been in hiding for the last four years.
She wears contact lenses and wears an assortment of wigs which both hide her white hair and help disguise her appearance. She was brought to an emergency room in 1993 with a gunshot wound. It was there that she learnt of her physiological differences and she barely escaped from the hospital after two FBI officers and four police officers came to arrest her.
At first, she suspected that she was the subject of some hideous government experiment. In 1994 she was told by a member of the Underground about the Grays and their alleged links with the US government. Two months later she underwent regressive hypnosis at the hands of a psychologist working for a Los Angeles cell of the underground. later, the psychologist played the tape. On the recording, ahe could answer no questions about her her past except the phrase 'little red shoes'. When probed deeper, she began listing the statistics of commercial airliners, power plants and oil refineries, complete with the best methods for the destruction of these items. The tape was destroyed.
She refuses to believe that she is the product of alien technology. She wants to believe, needs to believe that she is still human and is actively trying to find out more about the government's links with the aliens.
She is a deeply paranoid and extremely serious person and it will be hard for the characters to gain her trust. Once they have earned her trust, she is an excellent means of locating the Underground cells as her roving existence has brought her into contact with many members of the Underground. She will not allow herself to be used as hired muscle, despite her 'talents' in that area. She has no intention of dying needlessly or attracting more attention than is absolutely necessary. She would of course be indebted to characters who could give her any information regarding her background. She has located several fronts for Department 801 in many cities and can pass this information on to the player characters. What use they make of it is not her concern. She is unfortunately a great believer in the returning of favours and might help the characters in order to get them to perform a task that she is unwilling or unable to perform.
Stats Aptitude 10, DL 4, DB +0
Skills Research 12, Public Speaking 14
Tag "They're all in it together. You have to believe me."
William is an exnaval intelligence officer now making his living by touring the lecture circuit of the UFO conventions. He stands out as an authority in the field due to his access to some TOP SECRET/MAJIC classification documents while still in the US Navy. He popularised his claims by electronic distribution of documents through the Internet in 1989. He now claims that he has the authorities where he wants them as if he disappeared then all of the material he released would be validated. Doubtless he has achived some noteriety in MJ12's circles but his obsession with George Bush's supposed involvement in the international drugs trade and constant specualtion on the Kennedy assassination brand him as a dedicated conspiracy theorist and as such he will never be taken seriously by the public at large.
Stats Aptitude 12, DL 5, DB +2
Skills Surveillance 15, Hacking 16
Tag "Cattle mutilations up last month. Take a look at this corn circle
five klicks from the mutilation site. Cool pattern."
Argyle Walters is a saucer nut. he lives, eats and breathes conspiracy theories and aliens. He likes nothing better than to drive around the country in a Recreational Vehicle filled with scanning and computer equipment.
In appearance, he's not much to look at wiry, small with a shock of red hair and a nervous habit of shifting from one foot to the other. When he talks, it's in quick staccato bursts as he tries to get as much information over in as quick a time as possible.
Argyle's main problem is that he trusts too easily. He is a saucer enthusiast par excellence. He has many enthusiastic but amateur friends in the saucerwatching community, many of whom also have RV's filled with electronics. Argyle is highly unwilling to carry out any illegal physical acts. When it comes into the realm of computer crime, he's completely amenable. He regularly links into military satellites and loves bouncing phone calls around the world. Right after saucers, he's a hacking and phreaking maniac, usually happy to take up any challenge. Argyle's activities are known to 801 as some of his contacts work for the Department. He is considered a harmless disseminator of useless information. 801 do not know that Argyle is an unwitting employee of The Speaker.
In MAJI, we have given no statistics for the Grays, there is no mention of the Grays' INTs, DBs or DLs. The reason for this is simple. If the characters get into a situation where they are in a position to fight the Grays using boot, knife and gun, then something has gone wrong. The Grays should never be an overt, obvious presence. They should permeate everything, be everywhere and yet never be seen. The players' main dealings will be with the human elements of the background: the Underground, MJ12, Department 801 and its subsections.
MAJI should be a subtle game of investigation, paranoia and conspiracy. The characters should be constantly searching for proof, for some way of getting the truth to the public without seeming insane. It should not be a violent game but violence is inherent in the way 801 works. This should mean that characters whose only function is to kill should prove to be limiting and not very useful. Characters should at least be capable of taking care of themselves as there will meet a fair number of dodgy characters while investigating this phenomenon. People in this field are suspicious, paranoid and some are borderline psychotics.
As the player characters progress deeper into the mysteries of the aliens' involvement with earth, they should begin to wonder if they are being watched, being followed. How much of their actions are known to the government. It should take them a while to discover that 801 is not directly linked to the US policymaking machine but is a separate entity, it's tendrils extending into government, controlling it whenever the need arises. The existence of the Cuckoos could come quickly or slowly. If the characters know the true nature of the hybrids, what will their actions be? Should they attempt to remove Cuckoos whenever they notice them, turning themselves into childmurderers or should they let them continue to grow, until finally homo sapiens ceases to exist?
Unwanted attention from 801 and the attempts of the organisation to remove the group's credibility should be another factor in the game. There is no source of information that they can trust. Listening to the wrong person could get them killed or institutionalised. Their colleagues and friends will grow distant as their 'unhealthy' interest in an obviously ridiculous topic increases. Eventually it will take over their lives and will exist on the fringes of society, where the different are taken for granted and the strange feel that they can speak about what they have seen.
Due to the nature of MAJI, it is necessary to introduce some new skills. These are particularly relevant to the UFOhunting genre and many characters might find it beneficial to possess these skills at the beginning of character generation or slowly accrue them with experience.
Arts (UFO Knowledge) This skill allows players with no knowledge of UFOs to play a character with an extensive knowledge of the subject. Whenever they encounter something that they as a player knows nothing about, the referee can ask them to make an Arts(UFO Knowledge) roll at an appropriate difficulty to see if their character is aware of it. It can also be used in the case of a player who has extensive knowledge of the subject but whose character is blissfully ignorant. This skill does not necessarily give the character knowledge of the machinations of Department 801 and the true purpose of the Grays, but instead allows a character to be aware of the details of abductions, UFOs and some of the more widely known conspiracy theories. At a later stage of the game, the referee can allow that this skill does give some knowledge of the more indepth details of the MAJI background, but only if the players themselves are aware of it. This stops the player characters having to feign ignorance of something their players are all too aware of.
Regressive Hypnosis This skill can be a specialisation of any of the academic general skills (Arts, Sciences or Medicine). Regressive hypnosis is a form of hypnosis where the subject is gradually moved back into their own past. The hypnotist then concentrates on a particular incident, such as an abduction, and asks the subconscious mind questions about the incident. This technique is quite effective at negating the Grays' memory blocks (but only when the subject is hypnotised). It can take up to ten sessions, each lasting around an hour, before a full account of the incident comes to light. The dangers of regressive hypnosis is that the hypnotist can plant suggestions accidentally into the subject's mind which then get recounted as if they actually happened.
Contacts This is a new general skill. Its specialisations are the areas of expertise in which you have your contacts. A high skill level can either mean a highpowered contact which might do you a favour (provided it's returned) or a lowpowered contact who is willing to do anything for you.
This scenario starts off with a hunt for a missing person. It is set during the winter and the characters are assumed to be Americans, living in the Eastern United States. Transferring the location of the PC's to other parts of the United States should not be too difficult but it will mean that they must be willing to travel.
Clifford Worthy, a 37 year old insurance salesman vanished from his home after finishing work for the week. After two days, his wife back in touch with the police who assumed that his disappearance was the result of a domestic quarrel and have done nothing to locate him.
One or more of the characters could know the wife, Arlene Worthy and be asked by her to find her husband. If any of the characters are private detectives then they could be brought into the case in a professional capacity.
Finding out where Clifford might have gone should not be too difficult. Each summer, he goes up to a cabin near the town of Granite, Colorado with some friends and spends the summer fishing and getting away from pressures at work. The wife has tried to contact the cabin but all phones are down in the area after some severe storms. After a bit of checking with the airport, they will find that Clifford did take a flight to Colorado. The characters will probably hop on the next flight and drive from the nearest airport to Granite, braving the harsh weather in their hunt for the flaky Clifford.
Granite is a small town which expands to three times its normal size during the skiing season. When the characters arrive it is the middle of the season and the town is filled with people in bright clothes carrying skis and wearing bobble hats. It will be difficult for them to get more than one room but the next day they can head out to the cabin which is 30 kilometres out of town.
The town itself could be another way of introducing other player characters. A meteor crashed two days before the characters arrived by plane and there are some RV's filled with electronics starting to work their way up to the town. One saucer watcher is already in residence, Argyle Walters, living in his RV, freezing during the day and coming close to hypothermia at night. He is investigating the meteor crash, which he believes is a downed UFO. He spends his time nosing in and out of the hotels, drinking coffee and listening to what people are saying. Any mention of disappearances or missing people will get his attention. He is a likeable sort but he will hide his interest in saucers (as best he can) from people who might be wary of nutters.
Another character of note is Henry Williams. Williams has come to Granite because the voices in his head told him to come. Henry's main hobby is meeting people and getting to know them. Once he has enough knowledge of their mind, he kills them quickly and quietly, looking into their eyes as they die. Williams is incredibly strong, (Aptitude 16) and never strikes unless he is sure of a clean kill. He uses poisons to incapacitate his victims before killing them. If the characters are unlucky enough to befriend Williams, there is a chance that one of them will not be coming back from Granite.
Clifford's cabin is the last building at the end of a winding dirt track. It is a simple onestory building with an interior toilet and a diesel generator outside the cabin providing electrical power. A rental offroad vehicle, complete with snow chains, is parked outside the cabin. It is covered with snow, indicating that it hasn't been moved in several days. The inside of the cabin is tidy and a rucksack filled with personal belongings indicates that Clifford has been here. None of the bunks have been slept in. The closest building to the cabin is two kilometres away.
The small lake which Clifford used to use for fishing is a twenty minute walk away from the cabin. It is completely frozen over at this time of year. The drive up to the cabin is incredibly tortuous and slow and the characters are likely to get there as the daylight ends and the night starts to draw in.
In the middle of the night, the characters will wake up to hear someone banging on the door. A freezing cold Argyle stands outside.
He admits to coming up looking for the missing body and asks to be let in (his RV is stalled two klicks from the cabin and the walk back might kill him). Once inside he will drag out a map. On the map is the cabin (circled), the lake (circled) and another site ten kilometers away the cabin and two kilometers from the nearest road (marked with an 'x').
His point is simple. They are looking for somebody and Argyle knows where to find him. He points to the lake and says that they like to use water as it doesn't leave any traces. He will not discuss the point any more and insists that Clifford Worthy is somewhere near the lake. He will insist that time is short and they must go out as soon as possible.
He will not be too excited at the prospects of going out at first light, but if it is all he can get, he will take it. He will not go out on his own as he is afraid of breaking an ankle and freezing to death. He will not say why time is short but he believes that 801 are looking for the downed craft. He now thinks that his chances of obtaining some physical evidence at the site or from Clifford's corpse are better than his chances of getting near the crash site.
The skies are clear the next day and the walk to the lake should be fairly easy work. The lake is only one hundred metres long and fifty wide. One the way, Argyle will produce a geiger counter and start to check the background radiation. Once on the lake, the counter shows three times normal background radiation.
Argyle begins running out onto the lake and pushing the thin layer of surface snow aside to look at the ice. The runs from place to place, pushing snow away from the ice, demanding that the others do the same. Characters doing so will notice that the ice in the centre of the lake is pitted with shallow 1cm wide holes. The holes are not present on the outskirts of the lake. If the characters have enough patience to continue checking the surface, a pattern emerges. A 30 metre wide, circular area in the centre of the lake is pitted with the holes. Argyle is triumphant. A saucer has been here. Characters might be a little suspicious of this claim but they should admit that it is a little odd.
The body of Clifford Worthy is huddled, frozen on the far side of the lake. He had broken his ankle and, in a aze of pain, he had crawled the wrong way towards the cabin. He died on the edge of the lake and is frozen in place. Finding the body is not too difficult if the characters walk around the entire lake, but if they are doing it at night, have them make Hard Perception rolls to spot the body. Once the body is back in the cabin, the trouble starts...
Argyle wants to cut open the face of the dead man to find something he calls a 'Return'. Tis would be an extremely messy job as the corpse is practically frozen solid. Even finding the Return would be difficult due to its small size and the fact that every piece of flesh cut out from the face would have to be sifted carefully. Anyone in their right mind will not let him do it. Argyle is adamant about getting at the face and will not leave until he has cut it open or will be allowed to do so at a later date.
As the characters are lifting the body into their rental vehicle, preparing to bring it back into Granite, figures will emerge from the treeline around the cabin. They are wearing white camouflage fatigues and their faces are covered by the American hoodstyle gas mask, painted white. They are carrying G3's and will demand that the characters lie down on the ground. They will search each of the characters and examine any identification. If they are asked who they are, they will state that they are US military (not ICARUS FALLING of course). They will usher the characters back into the cabin at gunpoint and hold them prisoner while they search the character's vehicle. A Blackhawk helicopter with no markings will arrive and hover while the body is winched up. The characters will be told to wait for half an hour before leaving. The soldiers in the white camouflage will leave the area.
At the end of this scenario, the players will have made some contacts. They will have met, and hopefully befriended Argyle. Argyle in turn can introduce them to Barlow (The Speaker), although Argyle does not know the Speaker's real identity. Barlow is excellent as a plothook creating machine, the only thing that is necessary is that the characters are willing to investigate other strange happenings.
This curiosity is crucial to an ongoing campaign. If the characters do not feel the need to investigate UFO's, then have the phenomenon come to them.
15,000BC First arrival of Grays on earth. They tamper genetically and culturally with primitive man. As a result of this the New Stone age begins. As recognised by experts today, this was a bigger development, with further reaching consequences than the Industrial Revolution. Cave paintings still remain as a record of the visits.
5,000BC Grey's return to monitor progress of Man. They establish a permanent base on the far side of the moon. They inititiate an ongoing program, under which they prompt the development of technology and society.
1896 Public awareness raised by sightings of "airships" all over the world.
1908 Tunguska craft crashes.
1937 A Gray disk crashes in Germany (as a result of Anakim disruption of its Hive Mind). Technological development within the Reich speeds up and experimental aircraft (such as the Gotha) are tested.
1941 Germans test SchrieverHabermohl Model I prototype flying disk.
1947 A disk crashes at Roswell, New Mexico. The Roswell incident gives conclusive proof to US military of the Alien presence. Project SIGN was started at Wright Patterson to investigate UFOs.
1948 Project SIGN prepares 'Estimate of Situation'. Vandenburg orders all copies destroyed. This project was immediately shut down and replaced in 1948 by Project GRUDGE. The purpose of this project was to collect all information of alien activity. MAJESTIC12 established by Truman, its purpose was to oversee, control and coordinate all UFO related activity.
1952 Project BLUE BOOK started by USAF as a public front to conceal their real investigations. This replaced Project GRUDGE. Presidentelect Eisenhower given access to knowledge of MAJESTIC12.
1954 Gray's approach US government offering to trade technology for a protected bases on Earth and freedom to act unmolested; the military agreed, and actively supported the aliens on Earth. MJ12 coordinate suppresion of all media investigation of 'unexplained phenomenom'.
1963 Kennedy issues ultimatum to MJ12 and says he release all UFO information to the public. US completes first operational disk based on alien and vanguard tech nology. Kennedy murdered; MJ12's man, Lyndon Johnson, becomes President.
1964 Treaty renewed between aliens and MJ12 at Holloman AFB, NM (_PLATO).
1968 MJ12 plan to gradually inform all members of society about the Gray's presence over the next 20 years. Operation MAJORITY initiated to diseminate information and promote acceptance of alien presence.
1969 Project BLUE BOOK closed, with no signifigant findings. Independant experts describe its content as "alarmingly unscientific" and "completely superficial". Nevertheless it served it's purpose, to conceal the real investigation, Project GRUDGE, from the general public.
1971 First US government saucer flights.
1973 Autopsies of three Grays proceed at 29 Palms, underground base.
1976 Soontobe President Jimmy Carter admitted having seen a UFO in 1969 and pledged "to make all information regarding this phenomen public" upon election. Needless to say this was blocked by MJ12 when he actually attained the oval office. Skull and Bones member, George Bush becomes director of the CIA. Dulce, NM area, begins to experience intense animal mutilations. Dept. 801 operations moved from Groom Lake to new facility, codenamed SADO in New Mexico.
197883 MJ12 start to become aware of Gray deception. Gray activity is in fact vastly more common than they had been led to believe. Worker at Dulce takes photos/ videos/notes and flees, making 6 copies of everything before he goes into hiding. Grays remove all human control from Dulce.
1979 Attempted recapture of Dulce Gray Base resulted in slaughter of Prometheans and loss of joint control.
1984 MJ12 decides to abandon plans for revelation of Gray presence on Earth and begins to actively obstruct Gray activities, utilising Alien technology and developments.
1986 Cuckoo children start to appear. MJ12 becomes aware of the Anakim and actively begins to contact and destroy or operate with individual loners.
1992 MJ12 becomes aware of new threat from the "enemy within" as the first Vardukar agents are discovered.
1996 Now. The fight continues...
ALIEN BASES exist in the four corners area of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. Six bases exist in this area, all on Indian reservations and all in the four corners area. The base near Dulce is one of them.
EBE ExtraTerrestrial Biological Entity. Another name for a Gray, but can be used to describe any alien life form (never to be called ALF).
EDWARDS AFB (Formerly Muroc) Air Force Base in Mojabe, California, another AFB reputed to be an alien technology storehouse.
EXCALIBUR A weapon to destroy the alien underground bases. It is a missile capable of penetrating 1000 meters of Tufa/hard packed soil such as that found in New Mexico with no operational damage. Missile apogee not to exceed 30,000 feet AGL and impact must not deviate in excess of 50 meters from designated target. The device carries a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. It is reaching operational status.
GROOM LAKE Top Secret installation in Nevada which once housed 801's saucer program. Now it is home, among other things to the Aurora project, an experimental highspeed interceptor jet.
GRUDGE Contains 16 volumes of documented information collected from the beginning of the United States investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects and Identified Alien Crafts (IAC). The purpose of project GRUDGE was to collect all scientific, technological, medical and intelligence information from UFO/IAC sightings and contacts with alien life forms.
KRLL OR KRLLL OR CRLL OR CRLLL pronounced Crill or Krill was the hostage left with MJ12 at the first Holloman landing as a pledge that the aliens would carry out their part of the agreement. After KRLL died, its information was disseminated under the pseudonym O.H. Cril or Crill.
LENTICULAR CLOUDS A harmless natural phenomena, that produces discshaped clouds with bands on them which can look like UFOs.
MAJI The upper echelons of MJ12 are known as the MAJI.
MIC MilitaryIndustrial Complex is a term for the entire politicoeconomic heart of any modern nation. It holds the implication that no real power is held by (elected) government and that society is really totally controled by selfish interests above the law (mainly the military and big business).
MJ12 The name of the secret controlling council of Department 801. President Truman commissioned them to sift through all the facts, evidence, technology, lies and deception and find the truth of the alien question. The society was made up of 32 most prominent men in the country, the top 12 members were designated MJ12. MJ12 has total control of Department 801 and answer to noone. A secret meeting place was built for MJ12 in Maryland and it was described as only accessible by air. It contains full living, recreational, and other facilities for MJ12. It is code named THE COUNTRY CLUB. Only those with TOP SECRET/MAJIC clearance are allowed to go there.
PLATO The project responsible for diplomatic relations with the aliens. This project secured a formal treaty (illegal under the Constitution) with the aliens. The terms were that the aliens would give us technology. In return we agreed to keep their presence on earth a secret, not to interfere in any way thier actions, and to allow them to abduct humans and animals. The aliens agreed to furnish MJ12 with a list of abductees on a periodic basis. MAJIC is a security classification and clearance of all alien connected material, projects, and information. MAJIC means MAJI controlled.
PROJECT BLUE BOOK The name of the US air force's official investigation into UFOs it was closed down in 1969. Dr J. Allen Hynek, a professional astronomer was engaged by the Air Force to lead this project and debunk UFO claims but became convinced of the reality of UFo sightings. He died in 1986. Independent scientists that have reviewed the work of project blue book have descibed it's investigation as very superficial.
REDLIGHT The project to test fly recovered alien craft. It was conducted at AREA 51 (Dreamland) in Nevada until 1976 when it was moved in its entirety to the SADO facility.
RETURN The device implanted into human beings during the postabduction examination.
SADO The codename for 801's underground research and testing facility.
SCI Security Compartmentalalised Information. An additional security measure when dealing with Top Secret information. An example is TOP SECRET/MAJIC. Those with Top Secret clearance can normally view Top Secret documents. Due to the compartmentalisation, only those with the additional MAJIC clearance are allowed access to these files.
UFOCAL An area which tends to be a focus for UFO sightings and encounters. Examples are: Gulf Breeze in Florida, USA where varied sightings have been reported since 1987. Washington DC in 1952, Warminister in Wiltshire, UK during the 1960's.
WRIGHT PATTERSON Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio is reputed to be where all UFOs are sent and stored, particularily in "Hanger 18". UFO artifacts are allegedly kept in the "Blue Room" at the base.
YYII An alien detention centre/laboratory at Los Alamos NRC in New Mexico.