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The Agents are on route to Robert Graham Memorial Hospital. The organization is responding to a report from a reputable friendly, Lela Moore. She has been helpful with several operations in the past, but the Program thinks she’s off base with this one.
The Friendly
Lela Moore - Administrative Assistant
A short, stout woman with wire framed glasses and frizzy hair, Lela is a valuable DG friendly. They’ve used her from time to time in various ways for both her access and reputation in the medical community, and in this specific hospital to coordinate the patching up of agents in the area.
Lela thinks there’s a vampire in the hospital, but is afraid to admit it before the agents have seen the evidence, or are also looking in that direction. She wants to show them the bodies as soon as possible, and if they seem inclined, will reveal her list of three suspects that she’s compiled. She thinks these people are vampires.
The Victims
Lela wants to show the agents the bodies as soon as possible. In the morgue, there are two bodies, both former residents of the hospital’s coma ward.
Jay Hart was brought to the hospital over a year ago, after he was hospitalized after a car crash.
Rosaria Griffin was a more recent addition to the ward, hospitalized after a domestic assault.
The bodies were both found without a trace of blood, and there is what appears to be an injection site in their necks.
The Suspects
Dr. Rosie Stephens - Resident Doctor
Dr. Rosie Stephens is a tall, strong woman that’s gained a lot of weight recently, she’s polite and proper, and loves to talk about her husband and their farm, but only because she’s overcompensating about their failing relationship.
Edward Williams II - I.T. Director
Edward is a gaunt, sickly man that is secretive and rude. He won’t want to interact with the agents in any way, especially if they present themselves as law enforcement, but this is more due to his disturbing porn habit and questionable internet security practices than any relation to the case.
Shawn Hughes - Nurse
Shawn Hughes is a nurse, that’s incredibly proud of his job and wants to get back to it, but if the agents present themselves professionally or hint that they’ll pass his name along to higher ups, he’ll be happy to work with them. He’s particularly tidy and particular, and would notice small details easily.
All of the suspects work late nights, are pale, and Lela has never seen them in the sun. If the agents investigate, they will find that they were also all there on the nights in question.
However, all of these suspects are very much red herrings. Vampires aren’t real, and none of these individuals are unnatural in any way. However, they do all work nights, and may have information that can help point your agents towards Herrera.
The Perpetrator
Calvin Herrera - Doctor (Fellow)
Calvin Herrera has glasses, and he’s very tan, hispanic, and muscular. Nothing about him would lead someone to suspect him of being a vampire, and it’s even likely that he would talk to the investigators out in the sun as soon as they arrive, immediately ruling him out and introducing him. He is incredibly suspicious and bordering insanity over the events of the last few days.
He is keeping a low profile, because he doesn’t want to arouse the suspicion of the creatures, but also because he isn’t supposed to be at the hospital at all. He’s been placed on leave for a week after a public fight with his girlfriend, a nurse at the hospital, recently.
Herrera has The Weapon in a locked trunk in his office, and the spooled, extracted wire safely stored away in his house. His girlfriend, Sophia Collins, is missing. She’s texted Lela to let her know that she is calling in sick for the last 3 days.
++What Happened
Vampires aren’t real. The victims were actually the start of an alien contagion. They recruited Herrera’s girlfriend, Sophia Collins, because of her access to Robert Graham, a hospital known for its large coma ward. They promised her power and wealth, and demonstrated their hypergeometric effects to her, making her a fanatic.
She became distant from Herrera, and began obsessively researching the coma patients to choose the right targets, eventually choosing three and implanting the creatures inside them, one per night. Herrera, noticing this and following her, started a public fight about it that got both of them suspended from the hospital for a time.
Back at their house, Herrera confronted her again, leading to a violent alteraction where she attempted to bond with the last creature that was given to her. Herrera only barely managed to stop this, killing Sophia. He captured the creature and investigated it, losing sanity in the process, and decided to extract these horrors from the coma patients.
He started visiting the hospital at night, identified Jay Hart as being infected, and then attempted to extract the wire creature from him. It reacted violently, leading to him creating The Weapon.
After a day or two of trial and error, he completed construction of this device, bound Jay’s hands and feet, and extracted the creature from him. He left the body where it lie, leading to it being discovered by hospital staff, and stored the wire in his house. He later repeated the process with Rosaria Griffin, about a day before the agents arrive.
At the time the scenario begins, he is attempting to identify and extract the last creature.
The creatures need some time to acclimate and grow inside their subjects, which is both why they are starting by targeting people who cannot react, and why Herrera was so easily able to capture the creature Sophia attempted to use on herself, and extract the fledgling creatures from the first two coma patients. However, the final coma patient, Grace Burns, has had enough time to finish the process, and will soon awake.
The creatures’ true form is unknown, but they appear as spools of copperish wire that force themselves into their victim’s veins and replicate by converting their blood. They’re able to manipulate the bodies of their hosts like puppets, and can contort them in a manner that humans couldn’t normally move. The wires will split and stitch the bodies on the fly to keep them in one piece if this movement or an outside force damages them in some way.
The wires will also extend from the fingers, mouth and really any opening, either natural or created by the wires, or a wound, and can be used to attack, becoming razor sharp.
The Weapon
Calvin, something of a hobbyist engineer, found that even in coma patients, the unnatural wire inside will react violently when attempting to extract it. He constructed a sort of “gun” in order to do the work more efficiently.
It is a long tube with a detachable needle at the end, with an arm that sticks through the tube and out the end. The needle shoots out when you pull the trigger, attached to the gun with a hollow, flexible tube. When the arm is wrenched, the tube retracts and the wire comes along with it, eventually spooling the wire inside the tube. It takes 3 rounds of continuous effort to complete this, and the creature reacts wildly and violently. This is why Herrera has bound the two coma patients before starting the extraction.
Clues
- The victims were bound, this is difficult to notice due to the lack of blood in the bodies when this was performed
- There are small cuts under their fingernails, and their tongues are split down the middle
- Scratch marks can be found in Jay Hart’s room from the trial and error leading to the creation of the weapon
- Herrera has been seen leaving coma patient rooms during a time he’s supposed to be suspended
- Some staff may remember Herrera and Collins fighting about her being distant, her obsession with the coma patients, etc
- There are blueprints, engineering textbooks, and the actual weapon (in a locked trunk) in Herrera’s office
- All three victims have been unnaturally stable in the last few days, and their blood pressure has been increasing
Outcome
Herrera will eventually return to his office and retrieve the gun, and then attempt to extract the creature from Grace Burns. This will likely end in disaster, as the creature is fully grown and will attack. Once it deals with Herrera, the victim will infect as many other patients as it can, and then leave the hospital, returning to the rest of its kind to continue its work.
Instead of killing any of the people (such as Herrera) that intend to destroy it, the creature may infect them by stabbing the wires into them and leaving part of itself behind. The creature will then incapacitate them and leave them to gestate.
Wire Creature
STR 17 CON 20 DEX 20 INT 13
HP 20
ARMOR: 2 points of metal endoskeleton
HEALING: The wires stitch up the host for 1d6 HP per round
ATTACKS:
Wire Slashing 70%, 2d6 damage, multiple targets
Wire Injecting 60%, pins the target, 1d6 damage, target requires a CON x 5 check to not be infected.
SAN LOSS: 1/1D6
Credits
This was an entry to the 2020 shotgun scenario contest. Written by Drake Rhone.