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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