Delta Green: Black Books

Is there such a thing as a ASCII version of the NECRONOMICON, translated into plain English, that can melt your brain? Can you simply copy Unaussprechlichen Kulten into a Word file and spam a message board with it and cost everyone who reads it a bunch of SAN points?

The issue of what constitutes a unnatural tome, and what that even means, have come up in my Delta Green games. A lot. 

What constitutes a “unnatural tome" is an interesting question in and of itself. The definition of the effect of the unnatural artifact is simple enough; a book (or piece of art, or sculpture—some artifact) that is damaging to the human mind. But why does it damage the human mind? What causes that damage?

In a world filled with fake CGI videos of alien abductions, swamp monsters and ghosts, it's hard to believe some musty old block print drawn by a 16th Century monk—no matter how shocking—is going to cause too much mental trouble to the average reader. Much less a block of text talking about star angels, a war in heaven, lord moloch, and the seven gates of Irem.

There are mass shootings, executions, bomb attacks, child murders, mass poisonings and more, each and every day. Humanity is far more prolific in its violence than ever before (if not in absolute percentage, than in the depravity and the broadcast of such violence, certainly). Little more in the way of evidence is needed to see we are all well on our way toward becoming as the Great Old Ones. Free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Just look in your Google news feed. 

It is likely that all but the most outré unnatural tomes are relatively harmless as far as raw text and art content goes. To most people they will simply be old books filled with pseudo-religious gibberish. 

So, why would ancient books on the subject seem even a little bit shocking today?

Good question. There are lots of options. 

Is it horror or the violence being depicted in such works that causes the damage? Does your level of education or expertise in a subject matter? (For example, looking at a Mayan Codex if you can't understand Mayan script isn't going to be too horrific, even if there are pictures; after all, those pictures are highly stylized). Very, very rare is the unnatural work that is shocking in a manner which can compete with the horrors of the modern world, so, usually this is a hard no. 

Is it scientific evidence of the unnatural that causes the sanity damage? Do stone carved hieroglyphs purported to be created by rugose plant-beings in the Arctic 500 million years before man make that damage sink in? A glimpse at mankind’s true place in the universe? Sometimes. Especially if the researcher is an expert in such things. But again, in general, seeing Elder Thing glyphs on an ancient stone—even one with attendant pictoglyphs dug from ancient strata—is going to be about as shocking as a leisurely walk through a museum. 

Is there some inherent evil in the unnatural, a cancer of reality tied to the object itself that causes mental degeneration? An impossible angle in a diagram, a picture painted of infinity, a hidden nth-dimensional door to the unworld? Or is it more immaterial? A sanity-radiation-poisoning that rots your mind? If so, is it transferrable in copies of the work? In translations? In my games, many books and works are like this—infected with something that is damaging to the human psyche. Sometimes this is transferrable, but most of the time, it is unique to the work (so, no, no raw ASCII NECRONOMICON or Word Unaussprechlichen Kulten.)

Is it the correlation of contents that causes the damage to sink in? Is it only when multiple fragments of these works are placed together to reveal the horrific pattern at the center of the world—that we are only the vermin that rose to supremacy during an interregnum where the Old Ones sleep—that the damage lands? For many established unnatural books, this has to be at least partially true. After all, many of these works have existed for centuries (or even epochs) where many copies were made, read, traded and studied. And yet, the world has not ended. No one has woken the Great Old Ones. Mankind continues its uneasy primacy over the Earth. 

The answer is: there is not one answer.

In Delta Green, any (or all) of the above can be true. No standard exists. Each unnatural book or object is different. Like the unnatural, no absolute rules can ever be discerned. Just when the Agents think they have a handle on how the unnatural operates, they find something that breaks the established order of rules. That is the point of Lovecraft. We can never, ever, understand. Even when we believe we might. 

My advice to Handlers is: approach each unnatural book or object as unique. Perhaps a code embedded in the text warps the mind, or it contains a strange picture is filled with impossible angles, or an unknown species of mold on the pages attacks the central nervous system. Work hard to establish the rules possibly unique to that work, and stick to them for each unnatural tome. Make each a mystery to be solved — a sanity bomb waiting to go off in the Agents' mind...

All in all, a rogue's gallery of unnatural tomes and artifacts — each with different applications, dangers and problems — will always be more interesting than, “gain +2% Unnatural, lose 1d20 SAN".