Adapting the Laird Barron Mythos to Delta Green, Part 1

 Laird Barron, the weird fiction and supernatural horror author has crafted a Carnivorous Cosmos with several entities that may be similar to each other, but they all view humanity with various unholy lusts, including love.  In this post I describe some of my thoughts on Barron’s Children of the Old Leech and how the mechanics and mythos of Delta Green could handle them. 

WARNING: Heavy spoilers for Laird Barron’s work, in particular The Croning and on the subject of the Children of the Old Leech. 

I am convinced Barron’s creativity and views on Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror are rich places to mine for horror that would be fresh and new to players of Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green.  In fact, mellonbread submitted two shotgun scenarios to the 2002 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest, inspired by Laird Barron’s works: Saturnalia and BUGS BUGS BUGS.  Saturnalia won the People’s Choice and Second Place awards in the 2002 Delta Green shotgun scenario contest.  I had the opportunity to speak with mellonbread and he told me Saturnalia was based on two of Barron’s stories: Termination Dust from Swift To Chase and Jaws of Saturn, featured in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. BUGS BUGS BUGS was inspired by the story Proboscis in The Imago Sequence, and the X-Files episode Folie a Deux.

Recently I saw a blog post from fellow Delta Green enthusiast, magnificentophat, and part of it inspired me to consider how Barron’s dreadful supernatural aliens the Children of the Old Leech could be generated in a Delta Green context. Barron mentions the Children of the Old Leech in several stories (which I may delineate in a future post) but for today I will focus on Barron’s novella The Croning where the Children are most explicitly described in the climax in the following passages:   

p. 221 "“…behold the portal. To be taken through it is to be carried to the home of the Children of the Old Leech, chief among the Dark Ones who serve vast blind things in the lightless wastes where mortal physics collapse into nonsense.”"

p. 220 "“The Dark Ones don’t procreate as we do.” Rourke said. “Their system of reproduction is via assimilation, absorption, transmogrification.”"

p.131-132 "“Hey,” Mr Dart said, “I’m curious-you ever ask yourself what the connection is between the Wolvertons, Rourkes and Mocks? Other than big fortunes?”

“You gotta include the Redfields too,” Mr. Claxton said. “Although, I don’t know how deep that goes.”"

How deep indeed Mr. Claxton, how deep indeed. 

These passages suggest that there are mortal families that will be “adopted” and transmuted into Children of the Old Leech in a terrifying ritual or procedure. The Children of the Old Leech are the top Servitor race of a group called the Dark Ones, all of whom serve the Old Leech or apparently comparable beings, i.e. “vast blind things in the lightless wastes where mortal physics collapse into nonsense.” And the Children of the Old Leech, they love us, yes they do. 

In The Croning, it is implied the mortals chosen for conversion into the Children are flayed of their skin, changed in some terrible fundamental way, then rewrapped into their own skin and can carry out their human roles, looking none the worse for wear except a long scar somewhere on their body which they explain away as one accident or another.  It may also be possible for the newly inducted/changed Children to slip their mortal skin and reinhabit it later as needed.  

See page 152 "A muddy inscription near the bottom of one canvas read, Fathers and Mothers come as slaves and depart as kin." 

So, is there a current Delta Green mechanism that could explain or describe the horrible transmutation that mortals are forced to undergo to rise as Children of the Old Leech? Yes. Magnificentophat created a variant of the ritual Changeling Feast, that is most often associated with Lovecraftian ghouls, that was inspiring to me.  I’ve quoted the full text from the magnificentophat blog, below:

Changeling Feast

The operator may pay part of the WP cost when they consume the body and the rest when they assume the disguise. The latter cost is reduced, as it must be paid repeatedly. Eg: 6 WP and 1D4 SAN during cannibalism and 1D4 WP (or 1 SAN if they have any) every time they ‘change shape.’ Maybe it takes anywhere from a round to a minute to assume someone else’s form and taking damage disrupts the illusion. A successful Ritual Activation roll could enact a speedy change. Unnatural entities always transform quickly. Some versions ‘only’ involve skinning and tanning the victim’s corpse (1/1D4 SAN from violence) to make a cloak or belt that disguises its wearer. It can’t be disrupted but isn’t as easily put on and taken off as the traditional glamour.

Alternate Names: Consume Semblance, Deathly Glamour, Yig’s Deception

For full comparison and reference, below is the original ritual Changeling Feast from the Delta Green Handler’s Guide page 175.

Changeling Feast

Complex ritual. Study time: days; 1D10 SAN. Activation: days; 12 WP, 1D6 SAN.

This ritual allows the operator to consume a human corpse and later assume the victim’s likeness. The likeness is not deep. It does not change the weight of the operator; bright light casts the operator’s true shadow, not that of the likeness; and it does not emulate the victim’s behavior, personality, or mannerisms.

Consuming a human body costs 1/1D6 SAN for violence. Devouring a human corpse takes days for a human operator. Some inhuman entities can do it in far less time and gain access to a victim’s thoughts and memories. How much of the body must be devoured, and whether a human operator can use this ritual to devour and change into an animal or unnatural entity, are up to the Handler.

Now the ritual for conversion of an appropriate human into a Child of the Old Leech is described, either literally or metaphorically, in the following passage from The Croning, page 163:

“The passage in question was accompanied by an elaborate woodblock illustration inscribed, The Croning (fig. i); a depiction of thirteen naked, apparently middle-aged women encircling a massive boulder.  A buxom figure lay supine, draped across the face of the stone, shackled or bound in some manner.  Don instantly recognized this piece as the subject of Michelle’s sketches.

The drawing was exceedingly baroque, freighted with peripheral figures: winged gargoyles; demonic beasts that resembled kangaroos with tusks (these latter feasted upon the carcasses of men in Conquistadors’ distinctive armor); cherubs; flautists, and peeking from the roots of a mighty oak tree, shadowy woodland sprites, imp faces twisted in dark merriment.  Its overall effect was singularly disturbing, like a Bosche simplified and shrunk to minuscule dimensions. Michelle had scratched in a list of initials and alchemical symbols; she’d even gone so far as to make a charcoal sketch of the original on a piece of textured art paper.“

I will be referring to this ritual as The Croning (ritual). The Croning (ritual) may require up to 13 cultist participants, require the presence of an elder or non-human Child of the Old Leech, a human victim (the converted-to-be), an occult location of power devoted to the Old Leech and an auspicious calendar time at night.  In the process of The Croning (ritual), the victim is transformed into a Child of the Old Leech by an unspeakable process that involves flaying the victim’s skin, modifying the victim with biological and physiological processes that are so advanced they appear supernatural, forcing the victim to consume their human parts that are no longer necessary according to the Children, and literally re-wrapping the victim now Child of the Old Leech in their original human skin.  

The idea of “forcing the victim to consume their human parts that are no longer necessary according to the Children” is inspired by the Children of the Old Leech’s predation upon human beings, and I think it is fitting because The Croning (ritual) process can then be linked, in part, to the Delta Green established ritual Changeling Feast.   

I don’t have a full idea of how to mechanically define The Croning (ritual), but inspired by magnificentophat’s version of Changeling Feast, Children of the Old Leech should be able to impersonate themselves when wearing their own human skin.  It is also suggested in Barron’s The Siphon from The Beautiful Thing that Awaits Us All, that the Children of the Old Leech can take on the forms of those humans they have consumed, assuming they have flayed the human victims first.  I am assuming that the supernatural beings described in The Siphon are Children of the Old Leech. 

I suggest the following new magical ritual that Children of the Old Leech would know upon conversion by The Croning (ritual):

Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech):

This ritual allows the operator to consume parts of their own body or a complete human corpse and later assume the victim’s likeness, assuming the operator has access to the near complete flayed skin of the victim (themselves or another). The likeness of a Child of the Old Leech’s personal human form is complete and fully convincing, with the exception that there is a long scar somewhere on the Child’s human body. This scar is the location where the Child can “unzip” their skin and regain their true monstrous form.

In the case where the Child wishes to impersonate the likeness of a complete human corpse that they have consumed, the Child may pay part of the WP cost when they consume the body and the rest when they assume the disguise. To be clear, the Child inhabiting the flayed skin of a victim is wearing a disguise and not an illusion. The Child can shed their skinsuit and emerge as their true form in a round. It takes a minute and requires a dark location for a Child to wear a flayed skin and disguise themselves in it. 

I’m not sure whether, like the original Changeling Feast ritual, the inhuman operator does gain access to a victim’s thoughts and memories. I will have to do additional rereads of Barron’s corpus to come up with a ruling that is accurate based on the source material. 

I will note however, that the operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) does not automatically emulate the victim’s behavior, personality, or mannerisms.  That is up to the Child to do through their stats and skills, not the ritual. 

The operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) may be detected by the abhorrent taste or scent of their skinsuit. For example, The Siphon describes the following:

“The group dispersed, shuffling off to their respective rooms, and Landcaster shook the hands of the men and kissed the hands of the ladies – Kara’s skin tasted of liquor, and Mrs. Cook’s was clammy and scaly and bitter. He glanced at her face, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, her thick mouth upturned with matronly satisfaction at his discomfort.” 

“He remembered kissing Mrs. Cook’s hand the previous evening, its repellent flavor of sweet, rotting fruit and underlying acridness.”

In addition, the operator of Changeling Feast (Child of the Old Leech) may force a San check from observers by allowing their monstrous nature to bleed through their disguise for a round. This may generate a 0/1 or 1/1d4 San loss once and only once per observer as determined by the operator.  Note I have yet to define what the San loss would be upon seeing a Child in their full monstrous form. At the moment, I suggest at least 1d6 San loss from a failure or perhaps 1d8. 

Anyway, more to come on this subject and others as I continue to mine the Barron Mythos for nuggets of pure undiluted horror with advice from friends.