- The Starkweather Foundation
- Setting Information for
Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green
From: James Knevitt (psipsina@iprimus.com.au)
Date: Saturday, December 20th , 2003
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- The Starkweather Foundation was established
in late 1934 by the survivors of the
ill-fated Starkweather-Moore expedition that investigated the
God Trap and the City in the range known as the Mountains of
Madness. Officially, it was established to assist disadvantaged
and struggling students who wished to conduct studies in the
Polar Regions. To this end, it granted scholarships, conducted
field trips and funded scientific research in glaciology and
related fields.
It claimed to be funded by anonymous philanthropic benefactors.
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- Unofficially, the Foundation conducted all
of the above activities, but also recruited postgraduate students
and academics from appropriate fields (especially polar studies
and biology) to transport brains, nervous systems and occasionally
living subjects to be used in the Construct of the Elder Things.
These secret acts revealed the resurgent Elder Things to the
individuals that were being recruited, and once both sides worked
out what was going on, a sort of silent truce was established
- the humans delivered the 'supplies' and the Elder Things maintained
the Construct. A few Foundation members stayed behind to assist
in repair and maintenance, and became vital to translation and
interaction with the Elder Things.
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- The singular forerunner to Delta Green, the
Treasury Department's P Division, discovered the truth when an
expedition member tried to publish his findings and discoveries
on the ice. He was ridiculed and his academic career ruined,
but P Division sat up and took notice. After being told the truth
by Starkweather Foundation members 'in the know', P Division
made the decision that the Antarctic Issue was vitally important
and agreed to support the Foundation. The presence of Nazi scientists
on the ice at the time of the Starkweather-Moore expedition was
also of vital interest (most of these scientists, originally
from the Barsmeier-Falken Expedition, went on to become part
of the Karotechia). Secretly funding the Foundation, P Division
managed to ensure the Starkweather Foundation's survival until
1942, when P Division was merged with the OSS.
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- After P Division's conversion to the DELTA
GREEN clearance of the OSS, the discovery was made that the Nazis,
namely their occult division known as the Karotechia, had been
extensively exploring the ice and were dangerously close to disrupting
the God Trap. The Nazi presence on the ice was known to the Germans
as Aktion Eischloss (Operation ICE PALACE), with their primary
camp situated near a location known only as Point 103. Point
103, the Germans discovered, was one of the many geothermal tunnels
built by the Elder Things. Karotechia expedition after expedition
was sent down the tunnels, many never to return. DELTA GREEN
decided something had to be done. Operation VALHALLA was to take
World War II to the ice. Guerilla warfare between the two sides
raged for months, with both the Americans and the Germans secretly
ferrying supplies to their men in the Antarctic. When Nazi Germany
was shattered in 1945, many Karotechia researchers and SS personnel
fled to the Antarctic, where the final, clandestine battle of
World War II was desperately fought on the nights of the 3rd,
4th and 5th of January, 1946 - three months after the OSS and
DELTA GREEN were officially disbanded. Not all of the Nazi researchers
and personnel were located and killed, and the exact location
of Point 103 was never discovered. Speculation remains to this
day.
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- The period of time between Delta Green's
official reinstatement in 1947 and its
deactivation in 1970 was a time of change and development for
the organisation as a whole. The developments at Roswell in 1947
and the subsequent split between former OSS officers into Delta
Green and MAJESTIC-12 camps meant that knowledge of the Construct
filtered through to both organizations. For Delta Green's ties
with the Starkweather Foundation, however, nothing much had changed.
Old members left or died, and new ones came to fill their place.
Soon enough, Delta Green was often recruiting from the Starkweather
Foundation, and vice versa. The opening up of the Antarctic interior
and developments in transport technology, most notably the helicopter,
meant that the newfound accessibility to the Construct site was
at once a blessing and a curse. Thankfully the Elder Things at
this stage had managed to repair the Construct to such an extent
that the Construct, their City and the mountain range could all
be hidden from the eyes of man. Only those that had been to the
site before and were known to the Elder
Things could see through the veil that had been erected. As for
MAJESTIC-12, knowledge of the Construct and all trace of the
Elder Things was relegated to the YY-II facility in New Mexico,
ironically better known as the ICE CAVE. No current member of
the MAJESTIC-12 Steering Committee knows of the Construct or
the Elder Things.
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- The Starkweather Foundation suffered greatly
after the deactivation of Delta Green in 1970. Funding became
almost non-existent and new members were not coming fast enough
to replace those leaving the Foundation. Agents of the now-defunct
Delta Green aided where they could, but for a dark time in the
mid-1970s, there was an underlying current of fear and despair
as both Delta Green and the Starkweather Foundation felt that
the Construct could not be supplied with fresh human tissue at
the rate it was consuming it. Time was running out, and there
was no solution. Things were looking bleak.
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- In 1977, the Starkweather Foundation gambled
everything they had on one last roll of the dice. They knew that
without monetary support, they could not assist the Elder Things
and the Construct would fail. The consequences would be unimaginable.
So, in June 1977, the Starkweather Foundation (no a respected
and well-known institution), in an adress to the United Nations,
declared that unless the current level of funding was increased,
the scientific fields of glaciology and polar studies would become
extinct. A number of petrochemical companies were highly interested
in theoretical prospecting for fossil fuels in the Antarctic
at that stage, and a number of sponsorship contracts were signed,
which sustained the Foundation for the next 20 years.
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- Throughout the 1980s, the Starkweather Foundation
experienced a form of Renaissance. A surge of new members meant
that the older ones could retire peacefully, and the Construct
was saved from complete collapse. A number of Foundation members
lost their lives in repairing the Construct, but overall the
new burst of life was a step in the right direction. Things were
looking good, but Delta Green and the Foundation knew that they
could not be complacent. More funds than ever were secretly embezzled
from government departments, and much of it was stashed away
in offshore bank accounts to act as a backup in case the current
monetary flow should slow or cease.
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- In 1994, following the assassination of Major
General Reginald Fairfield and the
reconstruction of Delta Green, the Starkweather Foundation petitioned
the new Delta Green for a permanent liaison consisting of a Delta
Green cell made up of Foundation Members, outside of the normal
scheme of things. This cell would be comprised of five members,
not three, and its main aim would be to assist in investigation
of matters concerning the Construct and the Elder Things. Each
member would be at least familiar with Elder Thing culture and
the Construct itself, as well as the Karotechia. At least one
member, often the cell leader, would be able to communicate with
the Elder Things with confidence and accuracy. The clearance
level for this new cell would be POLAR FROST.
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- POLAR FROST actively engaged in sixteen separate
operations between 1994 and 2001, most of them investigating
the Karotechia and Aktion Eischloss. Five Karotechia projects
and 18 Karotechia researchers were terminated, signaling a return
to the days of Operations LUNACY and SUMMER BREEZE of the World
War 2 era. Action is ongoing.
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- The Starkweather Foundation maintains its
headquarters in New York, NY. It has major field offices in Montreal,
Geneva, Oslo, Moscow, Copenhagen, Reykjavik and Melbourne. It
has schooling facilities and programs with host organisations
in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Finland,
Russia, Greenland, Iceland and Australia. It is associated with
a number of humanitarian organisations, and is one of the few
organisations to be an honorary member of the United Nations.
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