- The Bog-Man, fugitive Deep One with a
Secret
- Scenerio Seed for Call
of Cthulhu/Delta Green
From: Morrigan (aj_hide11@hotmail.com)
Date: Saturday, December 20th , 2003
-
-
- Description: The
Bog-Man looks like a huskier Deep One, approximately seven feet
tall and around four hundred and fifty pounds. His predominant
color is a sort of olive green, shading to black-green along
his spinal ridges and almost white on his belly and inner thighs.
The Bog-Man appears to be slightly dryer than the average Deep
One, with less of their characteristic slimy appearance. The
Bog-Man is also slightly more humanoid than the average Deep
One, his appearance less suggestive of a fish than theirs. For
one thing, he seems more at home walking on two legs, and he
plods more than hops. He bears the typical vast, fishy eyes of
a Deep One, but the Bog-Man's are surrounded by protective horny
ridges, lending him a scheming, malevolent caste. His gill slits
have a similarly armored appearance.
-
- Lewis Bogart was born to entirely normal
parents - Clement Bogart and Rosemary Babson-Bogart - in an entirely
normal suburb of Columbus, Ohio, in 1957. In a milieu of national
pride, Lewis enlisted in the Army and served for a time in Vietnam,
as an assistant to the commander in Saigon. Although not involved
personally, Lewis became aware of some odd things by reading
the reports that came across his desk, and, in no time at all,
really, had amassed a frighteningly accurate picture of a secret
war being fought in Vietnam, against enemies ominously termed
"of pre-human age". More out of a desire to be "in
on something" than out of actual benevolence, although that
was certainly part of his motivation, Lewis did whatever small
things he could do to facilitate this conflict. He lost reports
or delayed their filing, finessed requisitions for funding, troops,
and materials, and once even arranged for a cargo shipment to
be delayed for five hours in a forward area so that the ammunition
it carried could be employed against the "pre-human"
foe.
-
- Lewis returned home from Vietnam in 1978,
some time after the cessation of hostilities, having done contract
work to roll up many of the proprietary organizations that had
been set up to run the official war in Vietnam. Lewis had gotten
a taste of a deeper struggle, and wasn't content to return to
a normal life in the United States. Contacts he'd made in Vietnam
won him a job with General Dynamics, and he swiftly found himself
on a steady, if slow, track to an executive position, all the
time cursing the mundaneness of his life. Lewis experimented
with various drugs and experiences in the mid-80s, to shake of
his humdrum.
-
- Then he decided to try to make contact with
the people still fighting the shadowy struggle he had been a
tiny part of in Vietnam. His contacts as an upper-mid-level manager
for General Dynamics meant that he knew people who knew people,
and he was able to piece together something of a story that shocked
him to the core. Apparently, the people he had helped, or thought
he helped, in Vietnam had been outlaws, extracting their own
brand of rough and ready justice without official sanction. When
Lewis had thought he was helping these people cut through bureaucratic
red tape, he was, in fact, abetting an illegal conspiracy. What
he had perceived of as hard work had in fact been criminal activities.
He knew things had not exactly been on the up-and-up, but he
was far from prepared for outright illegality.
-
- In this void in his life stepped another
agency, one that assured Lewis that is was legitimate and always
had been. The representatives of this agency,which scrupulously
refused to give him its name or any other means to identify it
in their initial communications, offered Lewis the chance to
be "in on something" again. Lewis, feeling like he
was drowning in ordinariness, leapt at the chance, and plunged
into the variety tasks his new benefactors offered him. Lewis
would remain employed by General Dynamics, but his work would
be for this new group. Things progressed well for Lewis, and
his double life brought him nothing but happiness. Sure, he grew
a little estranged from his wife and children, but they weren't
always able to see how important his work was. Lewis found the
bombastic Air Force Lieutenant General Bell he met on rare occasions
throughly likeable, and also found common ground with a furtive
psychologist he encountered from time to time named Gavin Ross.
-
- On April 14th, 1997, Lewis undertook a routine
assignment from this shadowy group, which he'd inferred was some
sort of secretive ad hoc aerospace think tank, the delivery of
documents to a small town in Montana, Troy, a place that the
thin, black haired man with three gold teeth who had delivered
the papers to Lewis had said "really BOUNCED". Lewis
didn't understand the reference but set about making travel plans.
The delivery made, Lewis was driving back to the Kalispel airport
when a deer darted across the highway before his rental car.
Swerving to miss it, Lewis plunged a short distance off the highway,
into a utility pole.
-
- Lewis lay unconscious behind the wheel for
a few hours before emergency services found him. In that time,
he had strange visions of a soundless helicopter and some sort
of operation or medical procedure, very much like the stereotypical
alien abduction scenario, save that Lewis required no regressive
hypnosis to recall it. Lewis returned to his life and tried to
put his Montana car crash behind him. However, something had
happened to him, or started to happen to him. He felt irrationally
attracted to water, and the open sea. He felt distant from humanity,
a distance that sometimes boiled over into outright hostility
and blinding hatred. His voice began to grow more and more hoarse,
and he soon found he preferred not to speak at all.
-
- Lewis also noted that he seemed to be gaining
weight. He was developing odd calluses on his back and face,
and his teeth seemed to be constantly breaking, until he was
left with a mouth full of pointed shards. Then, on June 3rd,
1999, Lewis and Caroline Bogart had sexual intercourse for the
last time, or tried to. They had to give up when Lewis' genitals
fell off. Distraught, Lewis left Caroline and their three children
in Detroit, where he worked, and began drifting the country.
Lewis always managed to send Christmas presents home, but lived
the life of a peculiar derelict for the rest of the 1990s. Lewis'
appearance continued to change. He became more and more calloused.
His skin darkened and got scaly. His fingers got longer and webbed.
Horrified by what he had turned into, Lewis plunged into the
Honey Island Swamp, which is part of the Bogue Chito National
Wildlife Refuge, where he has remained ever since, creating,
adding to, and confusing the legend of the "Louisiana Wookie"
said to dwell there.
-
- In the swamp, Lewis found an abandoned shack,
which he has made his home. When not fishing or hunting, Lewis
roams the swamp, contemplating his fate. Lewis mistrusts the
shadowy group that sent him to Troy, Montana, feeling that they
did so with the expressed purpose of experimenting on him somehow,
and that his car crash was somehow contrived for that purpose.
Lewis knows that this shadowy group is somehow in possession
of an advanced type of technology, which it is testing in highly
secret locations like the one he delivered documents to in Troy.
Sometimes, those tests are conducted on human beings, of which
he is convinced he is one. Lewis also knows that the equally
shadowy group he aided in Vietnam is somehow in competition with
the "ad hoc aerospace think tank" he last worked for.
-
- As for Lewis' transformation into the Bog-Man,
that is his mother's fault. Lewis thinks that the group that
sent him to Troy experimented on him, and somehow caused him
to transform into "something out of a horror movie",
but it is the genetic of his mother that he has to blame for
his predicament. Rosemary Babson was a teenage girl in Innsmouth,
Massachusetts, in 1928. When Treasury agents and marines raided
the town, scattering and imprisoning the populace, Rosemary was
placed in foster care in Columbus, Ohio, carrying the taint of
the Deep Ones to the mid-west.
-
- STATS
|
|
|
|
- STR
|
21 |
EDU |
14 |
DEX |
12 |
POW |
13 |
CON |
15 |
SAN |
11 |
APP |
4 |
HIT POINTS |
17 |
SIZ |
19 |
|
|
INT |
16 |
|
|
-
-
- Move: 8/ 10
swimming
-
- "Water Freedom": Lewis is perfectly adapted to be an amphibious being,
equally at home on land and in the water. He suffers no movement
penalties in either. In fact, his Deep One strength, evolved
to deal with an aqueous environment, makes him quite nimble on
dry land.
-
- Low Light Vision: Lewis'
goggling fish eyes afford him excellent vision under any conditions
save total darkness. Lewis never sustains a penalty to hit or
succeed at any action from poor lighting unless it is pitch black.
Just mundane night time won't do it. Conversely, those great
big goggle eyes are sensitive to light, and Lewis can be blinded
by a flashlight or other source of directed radiance deliberately
directed into his eyes, giving him a - 10% chance to hit or succeed
at any action requiring sight.
-
- Damage Bonus:
+ 1d6
-
- Armor: 1 point
of skin and scales
-
- Attacks:
- Claw 25%, 2d6 (can impale due to claws)
- Bite 25%, 1d6 + 1d4 (can impale)
- Blunt attack with paw or foot 25%, 2d6
-
- Spells: Lewis
found an old Cajun grimoire, moldy, half-legible, and probably
best left alone, in the shack he made his home. 1d4 hours of
study of its water damaged pages will allow Lewis to cast one
of the following spells: Alter Weather, Attract Fish, Create
Mist of Releh, Enchant Spear (see below), Raise Night
Fog, and Wave of Oblivion.
-
- Magic Items: Along
with the water-damaged Cajun grimoire, Lewis found an enchanted
spear in the shack. It is now his hunting spear. Lewis knows
how to keep it enchanted, and routinely does so. It never misses
its intended target, does 1d10 points of damage, and can harm
creatures unharmed by mundane weaponry.
-
- Sanity: 0/
1d6 to see the Bog-Man; Lewis is a trifle more horrifying than
the average Deep One because the observer can see a pathetic
human being
behind the scales and slime.
-
- Hooks:
-
- 1. The obvious use for Lewis Bogart, the
Bog-Man, is as a way to put PCs on the trail of Majestic 12.
Lewis knows names, locations, and just enough juicy bits to either
start or prolong an investigation.
-
- 2. Although he doesn't know its name, Lewis
also knows that there is a rival organization to Majestic 12,
opposed to it in some way. He has contacts in the military-industrial-intelligence
complex that could put him in touch with Delta Green. Lewis could
then plead with them for help, offer his information on Majestic
12 in exchange for favors (Lewis genuinely loves his wife and
children, and might use such favors to safeguard them), or try
to get back in MJ 12's good graces by offering up Delta Green.
-
- 3. Although Lewis doesn't know it, Gavin
Ross is perfectly aware of Lewis' predicament, and Lewis may
find himself a pawn when Ross finally moves to seize control
of the MJ 12 steering committee. Lewis would make a fine deniable
assassin for Ross.
-
- 4. Lewis can also be used as the distinguished
opposition in a one-off game, since he is a fine, low-powered
opponent for newly minted PCs, especially if the campaign has
something of a Fortean or "X-Files" flavor. That said,
Keepers are always welcome to "gas" Lewis up if a more
worthy adversary is desired.
-
- 5. Lewis is also a tie to the creation of
Delta Green. Both the Bog-Man and Delta Green draw their origins
from the same events. Investigation into how Delta Green came
to be can also lead to the Bog-Man, and a slugfest with the Bog-Man
could be a nice bit of action to cap a mostly investigatory game.
-
- 6. Finally, Lewis could be a complication
thrown into any investigation of Majestic 12, since he seeks
many of the same answers that PCs are likely to. Fleeting glimpses
of some horror movie monster with a spear raiding the same files
as the PCs could amp up the paranoia or weirdness factor.
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