A compound on the prairie under a red and black sky

Weird.Delivery presents · a play-by-mail game

The
Department

October 1977. North Dakota.

A requisition for a specimen that cannot be located. ■A helicopter landing where no flight was scheduled. ■A sheriff asking why company trucks were parked beside a dead steer. ■Two maps of the same campus that do not agree about Building 7. ■A scientist who transferred out of state. The facility has never heard of her. ■A technician's locker, sealed in July. ■A town forty miles west with a church, a cemetery, and fourteen residents. ■A photograph under your door. On the back: They're not worshipping it. ■A requisition for a specimen that cannot be located. ■A helicopter landing where no flight was scheduled. ■A sheriff asking why company trucks were parked beside a dead steer. ■Two maps of the same campus that do not agree about Building 7. ■A scientist who transferred out of state. The facility has never heard of her. ■A technician's locker, sealed in July. ■A town forty miles west with a church, a cemetery, and fourteen residents. ■A photograph under your door. On the back: They're not worshipping it. ■

How it plays

One letter
a day.

09:00

The morning dispatch

Every morning a letter arrives in your inbox: yesterday's results, new memos, a note from a colleague, sometimes from someone who is not on the directory.

All day

Correspondence

You write. To your department head, to the sheriff, to the rancher, to the stranger who wrote first. Alliances, bargains, threats, votes. Talking is free.

20:00

Orders lock

What you have actually committed to is read at eight o'clock Eastern. Overnight the world resolves. Fourteen days make an episode. Twelve episodes make a season.

No app·No login·Your mail client is the board·Roots in play-by-mail, 1970s postal games

The company

Royce
Industries

A privately owned research and development company on six hundred acres of prairie, forty miles from the missile fields. The compensation is excellent. The benefits are unusually generous. Your relocation expenses have been paid in full.

Some divisions produce no marketable products. Certain projects receive equipment far beyond their stated budgets. Restricted buildings have their own power supplies. There is a night flight operation and no aviation department.

You are not hired to investigate this. You are hired to work there.

Company confidential

Aerial view of a white and red research campus on bare ground — STATION R · aerial survey, 1972

A research building on the prairie — Building 7. Your map may not show it.

The country

The ground is
not empty here.

Minot Air Force Base and its Minuteman fields. Cattle found cut in ways ranchers cannot explain. Unmarked helicopters at night. A near-abandoned railroad town called Tagus with a church, a cemetery, and a story about a stairway. All of it in the newspapers. None of it explained.

A missile installation under a red sky — Minuteman field, Ward County

A herd of cattle on snow, one animal apart — Vane Cattle Co. · north pasture

A dark helicopter against a red sky — Prairie Meridian Aviation · 'calibration run'

A small prairie town in snow with two figures walking — Tagus, N.D. · pop. 14

A white church on the prairie, half the sky painted red — St. Olaf · the bell was removed in 1961

A long staircase descending into a dark pit on the plains — Halvorsen parcel · do not descend alone

FROMPersonnel & Administration, Royce IndustriesTOThe newly hired employeeDATEOctober 10, 1977SUBJECTOrientation and Shared Duty

Your acceptance is recorded. Report to Building 1, Room 104, at 0800 hours.

— D. Armitage, Director

Season one · twelve episodes · six months

The High Country
Program

IOrientation
IIThe Harvest
IIIThe Devil Cult
IVThe Church at Tagus
VThe Unfinished Descent
VIThe Sons of Sam
VIISENTINEL
VIIIThe Minot Winter
IXThe Omega Hypothesis
XDrawing 68-24
XIThe Threshold
XIIThe Opening

A red car on a black road across snowy plains — Relocation expenses paid in full.

A staircase descending into the earth — Episode V. If authorized.

The first cohort plays Episodes I–III as a six-week pilot. Fourteen daily rounds per episode. What you find, whom you tell, and what the Board decides are permanent. The game ends when it ends; nobody has told us either.

Form RI-1

Apply for
employment.

Employees are hired in cohorts. Leave an address. When a cohort is convened you will receive your offer letter, your department, and your first instructions from thedepartment@weird.delivery.

The Department is a correspondence game by Weird.Delivery. Mail you send to the game is processed by software, including AI models, to run the simulation, and is never shared with other players except as the game's rules allow. Out-of-game personal information is not used in play. You can leave at any time by writing RESIGN.

TheDepartment

One lettera day.

The morning dispatch

Correspondence

Orders lock

RoyceIndustries

The ground isnot empty here.

Everyone you write tois playing too.

Correspondence

Committees

Invitations

Evidence

The High CountryProgram

Apply foremployment.

The
Department

One letter
a day.

Royce
Industries

The ground is
not empty here.

Everyone you write to
is playing too.

The High Country
Program

Apply for
employment.