A thin folder was found between the wall and a vintage desk dating back to the 50s during the clean up of a metaphysical disaster in 2018 at one of the black buildings on Los Alamos campus.
The first page of the file contains a mimeo of an untranslated, highly encrypted note. There is no need to redact it, because only those with specific ciphers, and a magical decoder artifact that was created for the specific purpose are able to read the text. And the last of those decoders had been destroyed in the 1980s.
My friends
I believe I have located the item we misplaced during our African vacation and it may be in better condition than we originally thought. Please meet one of my “friends” at the coordinates below on May 21, 1951 at 15:00 Zulu. RSVP Requested. Courier will wait
The rest of the file was heavily redacted. Photos are so yellowed with age and exposure as to be impossible to decipher.
This is the tale of the actions and consequences of a small group of soon to be former TAC operatives, their friends and hirelings who went off the books in order to rescue a comrade that was left behind.
More Information
This is a follow on to TAC: Case File Crusade wherein a small group of TAC members, after botching a mission, return to Algiers to rescue a comrade they had to leave behind.
Admission is not limited to those who were in Crusade, but the basics of what happened might be useful there. Admission is NOT limited to TAC members either, this mission is so black it’s ‘off the book’ (or possibly so off the book, it’s black) so there is reason for any number of people in the US, France and Algiers to have become involved.
However only members of the original mission have the ciphers to read the note, anybody else who joins will have been brought on by one of the members of the original mission.
Setting
During the winter of 1950, with the eye of the government on stopping Communism, a small operation of the even smaller Abnormal Occurrence Threat Assessment and Containment branch of the minuscule and highly secret US Department of Abnormal Occurrences headed to North Africa to capture a Nazi asset who was now a member of a secret cult of knights with magical or psychic ties.
Intel proved to be poor and the team inexperienced, so that mission failed, resulting in severe injury to one member and the capture of another.
For political and other reasons only apparent to the top Brass, a rescue mission is not sanctioned. Much to the anger of those forced to leave the operative behind.
Not quite 8 months’ later, one of TAC’s operatives in Algiers hears the right things from the right people and reaches out.
Also in 1951
January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul: Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (they had lost Seoul in the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950).
January 15 – In a court in West Germany, Ilse Koch, The “Witch of Buchenwald”, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment.
January 27 – Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins, with a 1-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat, northwest of Las Vegas.
January 31 – The United States’ last narrow gauge passenger train (the “San Juan Express”) ends service.
February 1 – The United Nations General Assembly declares that China is an aggressor in the Korean War, in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 498.
February 12 – Muhammad Reza Shah (Shah of Iran) marries Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari.
February 27 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.
March 6 - April 5 – The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for conspiracy to commit espionage in the United States resulting in their conviction and death sentence.
March 12 – Hank Ketcham’s best-selling comic strip Dennis the Menace appears in newspapers across the United States for the first time.
April 11 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of his Far Eastern commands.
May 3 - King George VI opens London’s Royal Festival Hall and the Festival of Britain as a patron
May 15 – A military coup occurs in Bolivia.
May 23 – The Tibetan government signs the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, with the People’s Republic of China.
May 25 – The first atomic bomb “boosted” by the inclusion of thermonuclear materials, is tested in the “Item” test on Enewetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands by the United States.
June 14 – UNIVAC I is dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau.[3]
June 15–July 1– In New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, thousands of acres of forests are destroyed in fires.
It is into this world, that you will march, ever forward, until you sleep “the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.” - Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Resources
DAO wiki
with links to all DAO and TAC games and summaries of plots for those who don’t have time to read the whole game.
http://www.scarlettfiles.com
These can be helpful coloring your language with the words of the time.
50’s slang:
https://bestlifeonline.com/1950s-slang-terms/
https://fiftiesweb.com/pop/1950s-slang/
Noire slang: https://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html
Hosted and narrated by:
Miki Tracey (mikitracey)
Started 07/08/19.
Scenes played: 4
License: Community License
