from “The Black Island” by August Derleth, Delta Green material by Adam Scott Glancy with John Tynes,
The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana by Daniel Harms, “Deepnet” by David Langford,
“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft, The Transition of Titus Crow by Brian Lumley,
and Escape from Innsmouth by Kevin Ross
The town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts was founded in 1643 at the mouth of the Manuxet River. Its large harbor helped it grow into a thriving seaport and a major center of commerce on the Atlantic coast. Goods from around the world were brought back on its many sailing vessels.
During the War of 1812, the captains of Innsmouth became privateers preying upon the British fleet. The war cost Innsmouth at least half of its sailors, putting a nail in the coffin of the town’s early prosperity. Captain Obed Marsh continued to achieve success with trading ventures in the Indies. This, coupled with mills built upon the banks of the Manuxet, became Innsmouth’s primary source of revenue.
In 1838, Marsh found his Polynesian trading partners slaughtered by their neighbors and lost this source of gold. The town’s economy continued its downward spiral. Marsh founded the Esoteric Order of Dagon, combining Holy Scripture, Middle-Eastern fertility worship, and Polynesian rites.
In 1846, a strange disease wracked Innsmouth. When villagers from nearby communities investigated, they found half of the town’s people dead, and Obed Marsh and his Order in complete control. The town’s fortunes continued to decline, despite newfound wealth in fishing and gold refining.
Degenerative traits began to surface in the children of Innsmouth, blamed on the plague. These deformities kept Innsmouth from meeting its quota of draftees in the Civil War. The truth was that these deformities were caused by interbreeding with the nearby colony of Deep Ones, as dictated by Marsh’s Order. The town became shunned by the surrounding villages, and the Marsh family maintained its deathgrip.
In the winter of 1927-1928, a team of U.S. Treasury Department agents under the command of Special Agent Wade of the Secret Service conducted an investigation of the townsfolk of Innsmouth, Massachussetts. The investigation prompted President Calvin Coolidge to authorize a raid on the town under the code name Project COVENANT. The Department of the Navy, in the form of Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) agents, U.S. Marines, and U.S. Coast Guard troops, provided both firepower and manpower for the raid. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, under director J. Edgar Hoover, was brought on board for its legal authority to seize “suspected aliens and seditionists” for deportation.
ONI captured approximately 200 Deep One hybrids; a copy of the log of the Sumatra Queen, the ship of Innsmouth’s most prominent merchant-captain and founder of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, Obed Marsh; a Marsh family history dated 1862; two copies (one badly burnt) of the Ponape Scripture; five conical stone tablets inscribed with glyphs (weighing about fifty pounds each); and incomplete translation notes for the strange glyphs, compiled over many years by Robert Marsh, who was killed by Marines while resisting arrest.
Rumors persist that a submarine fired torpedoes off of Devil’s Reef at an unknown target. Located at 42° 44'N 71° 16'W, just outside the harbor, Devil's Reef was named by Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, during his explorations in April of 1614, the reef was visited many times by Obed Marsh under the pretense of hunting for hidden pirate treasure. His Esoteric Order of Dagon would later use the reef in their rituals, sometimes using secret paths to the Deep One city of Y'ha-nthlei. Despite the actions of Project COVENANT, local fishermen still refuse to sail near the reef, and the U.S. Navy requires its vessels to report any unusual activity in the area. It is believed that the threat posed by the city and its dread inhabitants has been neutralized, but only time will tell.
Accounts of Innsmouth after Project COVENANT describe it principally as a ghost town, but it may have become home to a software company poised to take the industry by storm.
Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is ™ and © the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this document are ©Raymond H. Rich, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property and those attributed to the sources listed above.
