"The beautiful, amazing, stunning creature biting that man's head off is a Laotoan Massacre Serpent, long thought mythical. See how he playfully devours that screaming secretary? They're very fun-loving snakes. Extremely social. How wicked of Yig to expose it to harm like this."
Rachel has been one of the UN's top advisors in the war against Yig, being one of the world's foremost experts in exotic snakes and their associated cults. Tall, slim, dark, and enigmatic, well-dressed and reserved, quick on her feet. Loves her work.
She has been recruited as part of the team sent back in time.
Marion Wheeler was born in 1960 in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. Her early life was unremarkable; Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Class of 1982. Air Force enlistment the following year. The GI Bill and tuition assistance earned her a law degree from Lewis and Clark in 1988, following which she immediately transferred to the JAG corps. A doctorate in criminology followed in 1993.
Her service history during the 1990s is opaque, even to her. It’s known among her colleagues in Delta Green that she came to them as a defector; her work in the JAG corps had run her afoul of the rogue paranatural collaborationist organization Majestic-12, which attempted to recruit, and then to murder, her. She was pivotally involved in the so-called “MJ-12 Wars” that led to the dismantling and destruction of that organization in the early aughts.
The memories of those Delta Green agents, as well as affiliated groups, that participated in the MJ-12 Wars is sketchy at best. Widespread exposure to amnestic drugs and the use of certain paranatural devices have made personal recollection unreliable and physical evidence in some cases nonexistent. 1996 and large portions of 2000 don’t exist for her; there is significant circumstantial evidence that “Wheeler” is her married name, but no hard proof of a husband, and her birth certificate and other early-life records are all copies of nonexistent originals. Other Delta Green agents have testified to her having spearheaded the efforts that destroyed Majestic-12s Anti-Memetic Weaponization Division, but no such records of MJ-12 having such a division exist, and Wheeler herself recalls only conventional investigative and combat service against the “Greys.”
Doctor Wheeler took her half-pay pension in 2003, retiring as a Lieutenant Commander, and went into private sector law enforcement while continuing to serve Delta Green. She has served as an Interpol liaison officer since 2005. This is a real job; she draws a real paycheck and has a real desk and a real file and a real pension, and her colleagues know her and respect her. If you call the headquarters in Lyon, they’ll know who she is. However, this position is useful for her to “smuggle” in Delta Green assets to situations they do not, strictly speaking, belong; while Doctor Wheeler herself is a liaison officer, those of her companions she introduces as being with the FBI, the French National Police, MI-5, etc. whose work with local authorities she is there to facilitate in her capacity AS a liaison officer may have less-than-real credentials.
Her Interpol visa and credentials are also useful in a quasi-official capacity; Interpol has no enforcement or formal investigative authority, being solely an intelligence-sharing and facilitation organization. Most people, however, including many local law enforcement officials, do not know this, and can often be passively let to treat her as if she was a kind of supranational cop with authority she doesn’t actually possess.
Nearing sixty, Wheeler’s work has taken her all over the world in both her official and unofficial capacity, and she retains an enormous network of contacts, fixers, friends, and enemies in most major cities who are capable of assisting her in her ongoing work to police the paranatural. In early 2000, she was assigned by what passes for “the brass” at Delta Green to babysit purported time-displaced individuals from the future there to prevent a paranatural apocalypse scenario dwarfing anything the organization had seen before.
"I can give you a really good deal on this handy-dandy little model! Catches snakes, cleans carpets, and makes a mean banana daiquiri."
Freddie was a door-to-door salesman for the Little Giant Vacuum Cleaner Company from Walla Walla Washington when Yig manifested. At first he didn't pay much attention, but took notice when most of his customers started running off to join snake cults. He was not happy. (Not that people could tell; meeting the world with the pleasant, happy smile that gets one to pull out their credit card is his stock-in-trade.)
Freddie is always coming up with bits and bobs of information from who-knows-where, shrugging it off with a 'See what talking to lots of people gets you?' He also seems to know more than he probably should about forbidden lore of the unnatural, treating it with aplomb on the occasions when its use comes up. More than anything else, though, he's a genius at making just about any bit of equipment sit up and beg. Sometimes literally.
When he found out a team was being recruited to go back in time, he easily talked his way onto it.
In 2020 a surprise eclipse, visible only in northern Mexico and in the southern United States, shadowed everything under it. It was a strange astronomical phenomenon. During the eclipse and ensuing darkness, Yig—the Father of Serpents—awoke.
Yig started walking and destroying civilization in his wake. His full power led to a psychic disturbance around the world: terrifying dreams of snakes and other reptiles, sudden convulsions when near those animals, and an increase in betrayals among friends all the way up to entire corporations. Secret organizations such as Delta Green, Pisces, the Chimalli Union and the Dark Light Net had contingency plans for Great Old Ones, but never accounted for Yig because he was considered a lesser threat than other Old Ones. They were wrong.
Yig’s power eclipsed anything they had fought in the past. Snakes and snakepeople started appearing around the world, delivering precision strikes against leadership and in major cities. Places that should have been safe due to the amount of urbanization were suddenly invaded with no warning. Yig’s time had arrived and he would reclaim this land.
Among the changes brought by Yig was the sudden increase in venomous snakes. New species started to appear in numbers that contradicted all known data. Their bite was painful and led to a slow and agonizing death. People soon discovered that if they pledged themselves to Yig they would become immune to the venom, if a little scaly. These people became the foot soldiers of Yig. The venom made any attempts at resistance futile as those that fought it could end up as servants of Yig.
These snakes started appearing in cities and population centers in great numbers. Killing one snake made the rest swarm the attacker, killing them. Powerful politicians, business people, stars, and other social elites voluntarily surrendered to Yig to prevent the poison from killing them and were converted to snakepeople. This led to an easy takeover in most parts of the world.
Yig’s power was unmatched and he easily shrugged off most attempts on his life. Strategic attacks against the cultists proved futile as they appeared to be able to move around the world easily, even in regions far away from Yig.
Yig’s influence started to affect the weather. Global warming had already started the work so Yig used this to further increase the temperature. In the first three months after Yig’s arrival, northern and southern regions where snakes are never seen started seeing a sudden increase in tempera- ture. In the next 3 months, jungles started expanding as the temperatures continued to rise. In less than six months Yig was in control of the world and the new snake overlords ruled the Earth. After 9 months almost all the cities near the equator had been devoured and the polar regions became the last refuge of humanity.
The fury with which Yig ascended has led to some theories that there was a hidden motive for his attack. Unfortunately, Yig’s influence continues to grow and soon even the polar regions will become just jungles and deserts for Yig’s children.
Historians have determined the following events to be pivotal in Yig’s ascent to power:
A blood cult formed in the northern desert of Mexico. They operated in the guise of a drug cartel. Using drug money, they expanded and thrived in the region, offering power and riches to their members. This enticed people from the fringes of society to join, in an effort to increase their economic power. The cartel appeared different from the others in the region—they tried to defend the people and rarely clashed with authorities. The cartel managed to remain underground in Mexico by not competing with any other cartels and by offering outsiders help whenever needed. In return for the help, the outsiders secured certain relics and, some- times, captured the cartel’s enemies for them. The captured enemies were sometimes seen again as part of the cartel but most of them just disappeared. Police reports obscured information regarding the cult and the cartels they targeted.
The disappeared enemies were taken to the mountains in the region where Yig first appeared, where they were sacrificed in a blood magic ritual. The rituals were carried out in the name of the blood god Quetzal- coatl—an avatar of Yig—to awaken him. This interpretation of Quetzalcoatl contradicts archeological findings about the god, who had never historically demanded blood sacrifice. Surviving historians have a theory that the purpose of the blood pools was to corrupt Quetzalcoatl’s form into Yig so that Yig could awaken at greater power. They have deduced that without access to these magical blood pools, Yig would not be strong enough to crush his opposition as easily, which could tip the battle in the future. The players’ mission in this event is to find the blood pools that are accumulating magical energy and destroy them. They can collapse the mountain, destroy the cultists or seal access to it. Any option could work to destroy pools. If the theory proves correct, this will stop Yig’s ascent to power and severely limit his influence.
Around the world a number of Mesoamerican relics, including an obsidian mirror with a jade base, several stone statues of rattlesnakes, a gold plaque with different glyphs marked on it, and a few codices, have been put on display in museums. When the relics activated they became strong points of Yig’s influence and power and because of their strategic locations, they were instrumental in the fall of the world. These relics summoned all reptiles in the vicinity and transformed any unsuspecting persons into slaves of Yig. The objects also worked as portals for snakepeople and other servants of Yig to move around the world for dealing precision strikes. According to the information historians have managed to put together, the relics were a gift from a private collection to museums around the world. There was no paper trail of their discovery or movements, but testing done on them demonstrated they were genuine. The museums were grateful for the donations and displayed them in special exhibits. Some of the relics were even sent as gifts to politicians, archaeologists, and business leaders in an effort to convince them of the importance of archeology.
The information also shows that a shadowy, unnamed group was trying to reclaim the relics, and get them rehomed to their original regions and not showcased around the world. This group fought legal battles but ultimately disbanded and didn’t manage to get the relics. We know little about the group, except that they had a very strong Latin American funding and used Nahuatl terms.
The players’ mission is to get the relics and put them in a safe place to prevent their power from being used by Yig. If they manage to get information on the group that was seeking the relics they may be able to help the players, as they have similar goals.
Before Yig awakened, the world witnessed an attack on Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula. Chichen Itza was a Mayan city that at its height had 50,000 people. In modern times it is a tourist attraction mainly because of the Kukulkan Pyramid with its massive snake statues around the stairs and illusion of a giant serpent floating down the stairs on the equinoxes. This attack on innocent civilians and tourists involved hundreds of snakes and snakepeople wearing Yig’s mark. Historians have pieced together a timeline of the events from the record of the survivors. The attack was organized several months before, when crates from all over the world were shipped to the region under the guise of filming a “horror movie” in the jungle.
The crates hid snakes and snakepeople and the artifacts they used in the attack. With the help of local cultists, they attacked a special event at the Chichen Itza archaeological site where they appeared with the intent to sacrifice as many people as possible.
Several organizations that battle occult forces had gotten wind of the attack and tried to thwart it - they were not successful, and worse, they got dragged into the light by the media attention they drew, leading to them being publically exposed; it's not clear if they were wiped out entirely, or just weakened by this. These groups included two sets of governmnt agents (US - Delta Green) and (UK - Pisces) and two civilian (the Chimalli Union and the Dark Light Net). They wwere joined by a fifth group, whose identity remained unknown.
However bad the aftermath was, none of these groups seem to have been functional when doom came down.
The mission for the players is to prevent the attack on Chichen Itza, contact these occult organizations, and offer their knowledge of the future to try to stop Yig from awakening.
One of Yig’s main advantages was that the venom his servants used had never been seen before, and there was little for a victim to do once bitten except offer themselves to Yig or die. This was disastrous to the resistance movement as it reduced their numbers while at the same time increasing Yig’s forces.
Advanced research on the venom revealed two different venom strains combined. The strains show similarities to the venom of existing snakes but also contain several unknown components. The first one has biological components similar to rattlesnakes found in the central part of Mexico near mines. The second venom is similar to that of the fer-de-lance snake, also known as Nauyaca, native to the south of Mexico. The latest research suggested that the venom is from a different evolutionary branch of these snakes; the venom is somehow more effective against larger beings, while modern-day snakes have less powerful versions that suit their needs. The venom in its current state is very unstable, degrading quickly outside of the venom glands, but there are rumors of a ritual that can make antivenom for it. The ritual requires samples of the original venom strains; the more powerful mixed version that is used by Yig can’t be used to create antivenom because it kills beings faster than the body can react. Finding a venom sample from these “primordial” snakes is the main objective. This could be a tipping point in the fight against Yig. Research into these regions pinpoints a possible origin point for each strain.
The first place is in the region of San Luis Potosi. In Sierra Potosina a secluded mine has a history of hauntings. The locals tell legends of a giant snake living in the mines that can eat whole humans alive. Fearful, they put traps around to prevent anyone from entering. The warnings around the mine declare that it is too dangerous to explore.
The second place is in the middle of the Lacandona jungle nature reserve. There are legends of mirages and people getting lost, never to return. While the place seems unlikely for a giant snake to inhabit there are many undiscovered ruins in the reserve that could house the primordial snake. The players’ mission is to find these primordial snakes and obtain a venom sample from each for transformation into antivenom. If the infor- mation about giant snakes is true they may need to fight them. The trans- formation ritual can be researched further once the samples are in hand.