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  I Have Seen  
  the Yellow Sign 
  A Secret History of the King in Yellow and Delta Green 
  By Dennis Detwiller, © 2015 
   
   
  The infection of thought called the King in Yellow predates the Delta Green organiza-
  tion. Since it came to the Delta Green’s attention in 1951, it has been a particularly 
  sore point in the group’s mandate. While forces of the unnatural remain difficult to 
  contain, most entities are confined or bound to some concept of physics. The King in 
  Yellow exists and thrives in the mind.  
  A Note About Access 
  Many of the facts presented here exist only in the minds of survivors of operations 
  against the horrors of the King in Yellow. They do not speak lightly about what they 
  saw. Their survival was predicated on not letting such insanity settle in their minds—on 
  not letting it use them to transport the “infection”.  
  Official records on the subject were purged at various times in the group’s histo-
  ry, leaving behind only ashes and fragments. Of course there is always the possibility 
  that a war record, a box of papers, or even an entire file cabinet was overlooked and 
  
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  lost in the shuffle of Delta Green leadership; which, once discovered and investigat-
  ed, might start the chain of exposure once more.  
  The First Known Outbreak (1895) 
  The first documented identification of the concepts associated with the King in Yellow 
  occurred in France in the summer of 1895. Over two hundred people were mur-
  dered, committed suicide, or vanished during this time, including two members of 
  the government who fell under its influence.  
  In Paris it rose like a blight in the form of a short, three-act play, The King in Yel-
  low, bound in a small black book that was passed from artist to artist. It infected those 
  who read it with madness and death until the government launched a crackdown. 
  Copies of the book were collected and burned. In that time the work was given 
  special scrutiny by the Deuxième Bureau, a French intelligence group which investi-
  gated the martial maneuvers of France’s enemies. They discovered the work did not, 
  as is widely believed, originate in France at all.  
  Actual Origins 
  American soldiers found Deuxième Bureau records of the Paris crackdown in July 
  1944 in a looted villa called the Mansion des Portes. Delta Green confiscated them 
  from the U.S. general war records in 1951.  
  The records say the play was “translated” into French, indicating it had come from 
  somewhere before. There is no mention of the language it was translated from, or the 
  name of the country or city of origin. A single typewritten copy of the play itself was in 
  this file.  
  
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  There are no confirmed records of earlier outbreaks or of the actual source of the 
  play. The author of the book is always referred to as “X” or “the Author” and his or her 
  country of origin is never indicated. Where the play was before 1895 Paris, no one 
  knows. But parallels between the play and ancient human legends which were no-
  ticed by Delta Green over the following years. 
  Themes in Anthropology 
  The Mohegan Indians have tales of a Hobomack, an evil creature which can “replace” 
  a shaman by tearing off his face and putting it on as a mask to assume his appear-
  ance. When the Hobomack arrives, it is to announce the end of the tribe and its lead-
  ership in a great story, and to bring about chaos, death and destruction in as subtle a 
  way as possible by spreading lies and turning one against another. When confronted 
  or revealed, this entity claims to “wear no mask”. All these elements (the story, the 
  mask) mimic the King In Yellow legend.  
  That was only the first. Delta Green found hundreds of such stories from all 
  around the world that conformed with these elements and seemed to follow the skein 
  of the play The King in Yellow.  
  Delta Green is not certain of the relationship between the play and those ancient 
  legends. Perhaps the play reflects deep-seated human truths which arise no matter 
  the culture, over and over again, like a cancer of thought. It remains there, forever on 
  the edge of erupting into the world from many different cultures, times and ideas. It is 
  never truly gone. 
  Scattered copies of The King in Yellow still exist, hidden throughout the world. 
  Each represents a potential outbreak of murder and suicide.  
  
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  Since the 1890s The King in Yellow has appeared in twenty languages in random, 
  small-print-run limited editions. 
  In 1952 it appeared in English for the first time in the so-called Red Book, a thin, 
  red leather book marked with an odd, undulating symbol that was known, despite the 
  book’s coloring, as the Yellow Sign. The Red Book’s existence was not noticed by the 
  group until 1953. 
  These outbreaks led to the STATIC protocol, with which Delta Green attempted 
  to destroy the work wholesale. 
  Since that general order, which persisted until the dissolution and decentraliza-
  tion of Delta Green in 1970 (and continued in isolated cells of the conspiracy), many 
  copies of The King in Yellow have been located and destroyed. But it seems the work 
  is never done.  
  After all, it is difficult to truly kill a nightmare. 
  The Secret of The Red Book 
  It did not go unnoticed that the first known appearance of the Red Book in America 
  occurred nine months after Delta Green came into possession of the files of the 
  Deuxième Bureau. A secret internal investigation failed to find an agent responsible, 
  though a new level of paranoia settled into the group’s leadership. That led directly 
  to the STATIC protocol. 
   
   
  
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  STATIC (1955) 
  In 1955, Delta Green was involved in an incident in New York City called Operation 
  BRISTOL. It was a disaster with a body count similar to the 1895 Paris outbreak, fo-
  cused around a failed off-Broadway play called Her Grey Song. Nearly nothing re-
  mains on the record, though some survivors linger.  
  From the ruins of this operation, Delta Green’s leaders established the STATIC 
  protocol. 
  The STATIC protocol says: 
  1. Works referencing the Yellow Sign, the King in Yellow, Hali, Carcosa, Hastur, 
  Yhtill, Cassilda, Camilla, the Pallid Mask, etc., are TO BE DESTROYED. 
  2. Those who produce such works are to be eliminated. Those who seem influ-
  enced by the work are to be contained or eliminated at the agent’s discretion. 
  3. An agent’s exposure must be reported to the group, who will then decide up-
  on a response.  
  4. Agents not exposed to such elements on these ops become the point of con-
  tact with the group. They must remain separate from the main investigative 
  arm, acting in a supporting role.  
  5. Agents violating any of these protocols are to be assumed active threats and 
  are to be dealt with appropriately.  
  The second, more secret portion of the STATIC protocol is the so-called “shadow 
  team”. Upon activation of the STATIC protocol, a second group of experienced 
  agents were activated to covertly observe the first Delta Green team. If things got out 
  of hand, the shadow team was there to remove the threat through any means possi-
  ble, destroy all infectious elements, and cover it all up.  
  
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  STATIC Today 
  Ironically, today STATIC only remais as a protocol in a few cells of the illegal conspira-
  cy, handed down from cell to cell after Delta Green’s 1970 dissolution. These few 
  “cowboys” know the basics of STATIC and the destructive nature of the play called 
  The King in Yellow.  
  The official, reauthorized DELTA GREEN special-access program (“the Program”) 
  has no record of the STATIC protocol (it having been purged along with all records of 
  The King In Yellow in 1970 in a “house cleaning”). Some old agents who are involved 
  in the Program may recall STATIC, and might have some inkling of the play and its 
  deleterious effects. But for the most part the Program will look at an outbreak as a 
  problem to be investigated, rooted out, and “cured” just like any other unnatural 
  threat.  
  Due to the infectious nature of The King in Yellow, this will likely prove disastrous. 
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Delta Green [multi]/EXTRAS/Delta Green - I Have Seen the Yellow Sign.pdf