Sinister Seed - The Billionaire

The following NPC was submitted to the Sinister Seed Jam, which Agent Obtuse ran on the Night at the Opera Discord. For this jam people could submit locations, NPCs, artifacts, or plots that are useful for a Delta Green game. However, each entry should list three possible backgrounds, a mundane one, a Mythos-related one, and an "occult" one. In this case, occult means supernatural, but not related to the Mythos or DG lore. I submitted Harrison Russel, a tech billionaire.

Harrison Russel

The Billionaire

Harrison Russel, a 52-year-old multi-billionaire, made his fortune as the founder and CEO of Samsara Technologies. Known as SamTech, this New York-based hedge fund is renowned for trading based on sophisticated statistical models and computer simulations. Since its inception in 2003, their flagship fund has outperformed the S&P 500 every single year.

Russel often claims to be a self-made billionaire, but he has been playing life on easy mode. He comes from a wealthy family, which has cushioned his fall every time one of his business ventures has failed. It took him several attempts before he finally struck gold with Samsara Technologies. 

Russel uses his fortune to indulge in his eccentricities. He has no permanent address; instead, he travels around the world in his private jet. Every few months, he changes locations, from a luxurious hotel suite in New York to a rented castle in rural France, to a private island in the Caribbean.

He fears death and old age, so he invests large sums of money into research and projects that aim to prolong his life or somehow enable life after death. This includes research into cryonics, telomere extension, artificial organs, brain-computer interfaces, etc. He also adheres to a strict plant-based diet and pays top plastic surgeons to eliminate any signs of aging.

Agents investigating Russel might find themselves confronted with multiple obstacles. Russel employs only the best (and most expensive) lawyers, has a top-notch security team, and maintains friendships in high places. His connections could turn the professional and private lives of any Agent into a living hell.

Nevertheless, the Agents might need to investigate Russel because recently, employees of SamTech and individuals in Russel’s personal circle have been dying gruesome deaths. Here are three possible causes for these events:

Unnatural: SamTech’s success in modeling the financial markets stems from their access to a supercomputer that utilizes Mi-go technology. Russel obtained this machine when he bought a March Technologies subsidiary as part of his earlier business ventures. Due to a clerical error by March Technologies, the supercomputer was included among the assets sold to Russel.

For twenty years, the computer worked fine and enabled SamTech to simulate the financial markets with remarkable accuracy. But something changed recently, and the computer started sending signals to Yuggoth. Now the Mi-go are back on Earth, searching for the valuable technology they left behind. They extract the living brains of SamTech employees and place them into containers, hoping one of these prisoners can help them find the supercomputer's location. When Delta Green hears of brainless bodies being discovered, they send the Agents to investigate.

Occult: Russel’s and SamTech’s biggest secret is that their statistical models are not actually the reason for their extraordinary performance. Rather, it is due to Russel's being a clairvoyant. His intermittent visions of the future have allowed Russel to execute risky trades with guaranteed success. But recently, the visions have changed. Now, all that Russel sees is himself succumbing to a neurodegenerative disease, and his biggest nightmare is coming true. To avert this terrible fate, Russel approaches some of the fringe scientists he has been funding. The scientists promise they can heal Russel, but they need compatible neural tissue that can be grafted into Russel’s brain. Russel introduces mandatory medical screening for all employees in his company, supposedly to improve their health, but in reality, he uses the program to find involuntary brain donors. 

Russel has hired a group of Russian mobsters to kill any possible matches and harvest their brain tissue. Delta Green Agents investigating the mutilated bodies that surface have their work cut out for them: they are up against a billionaire with partial knowledge of the future.

Mundane: Due to advancements in AI and cloud computing, it's easier than ever for other hedge funds to compete with Samsara Technologies. SamTech’s statistical models are losing their edge, and for the first time, it seems like their fund might perform worse than a run-of-the-mill broad market index fund. This is something Russel wants to prevent with drastic measures. He is manipulating financial numbers to make SamTech’s returns look better than they are, initiating risky trades, and planning to use part of his fortune to manipulate the market in his favor. These moves don't go unnoticed within SamTech, and several employees are threatening to contact the SEC and law enforcement.

In his desperation, Russel hires a Russian mobster to eliminate these would-be whistleblowers. Unfortunately, Russel’s hitman is a deeply spiritual man who leaves behind an icon at the scene of his killings. The religious imagery, combined with the brutality of the killings, alarms Delta Green, and they send the Agents to investigate.