The Fifth Floor: Break-ins and Bribery
This post is one in a series of Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to start from the beginning, or read the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
The group now has files for the three murder victims on hand, but none of them offer any additional insight. Certainly all three murders are a bit odd. The young woman’s body was left on display in a nearby park. Juniper isn’t exactly known for packs of wild dogs roaming its street, so the case of the senior citizen who died in a “dog attack” seems suspect. And the third victim’s death was particularly brutal. But only the third victim, one Hector McNeil, has any obvious connection to Shady Acres, where he worked as a nurse’s aide. Having happened barely a week ago, it’s also the most recent death of the three.
In fact, McNeil’s death is so recent that the group arrives at his apartment building to discover that the apartment is still behind crime scene tape. But the place seems entirely empty of cops, the apartment is only on the third floor, and McNeil’s apartment has an out-facing window. And so the party decides to investigate McNeil’s home in true Hunter style: by breaking in.
The Fifth Floor: Blowing Over
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
Now that John’s alone, he takes the opportunity to explore the coma ward more thoroughly. Unsurprisingly, he mostly finds old people in comas, including Felix’s new friend Mary Louis. Unlike John’s own grandmother, Mary Louis seems tense, even in a coma. A folder containing her medical charts has been left on a nearby table, and John picks it up and leafs through it. Last updated a month ago, her charts actually show significant brain activity, which spikes every 16-18 months before dropping off.
The Fifth Floor: Man Eating Man
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
After stalling the police outside his house long enough for Shannon and Felix to slip safely out the back door, John heads back to Shady Acres, where his grandmother has been successfully transferred to the centre’s coma ward during all the other excitement. As expected, she seems to be sleeping peacefully when he arrives. John talks to her as he sets up her personal effects, telling her about the incident of astral projection and other associated weirdness at Shady Acres. He adds that he’s got a friend in trouble when his grandmother suddenly sits up in bed.
The Fifth Floor: Evading Pursuit
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
A little while after Agent Greenwood pulls away, Felix wanders back down the hallway. “Is she the woman on TV with the FBI badge? Because she sounds like the woman on TV with the FBI badge.”
“If not,” John says, “she’s a very good impersonator.”
“Well… thanks.”
“But, to fill you in,” John continues, “you need help, and apparently things will go better if you turn yourself in.”
“Okay, thanks. I’m seriously considering it.”
The Fifth Floor: Blood Bank
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
After Felix’s apparent brush with possession in the Shady Acres lobby and the subsequent discovery of Mary Louis’s presence in the coma ward upstairs, the group decides to keep investigating. Over the next several hours, they learn that there have been several odd deaths in the area, although none actually on the premises; that the Phoenician runes decorating the building apparently have something to do with eyesight; and that the place apparently used to be owned by mobsters.
Shannon also finds a relatively credible-seeming source that suggests there are spirits active in the area, even a few incidents similar to what happened to Felix. None of the activity is what one might expect from ancient spirits, and a neighbourhood haunted by little old ladies is starting to look entirely plausible. Felix, on the other hand, finds something entirely more dramatic: according to the sources he’s unearthed, Shady Acres is nothing more than a blood bank for vampires.
The Fifth Floor: Astral Possession
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
Shannon ushers a very confused Felix out the front door. Once they’re out of earshot of security, she turns to him. “Okay, seriously. Are you messing with me?”
“I don’t know,” Felix says. “What did I do?”
Shannon studies him for a moment. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“No!” he protests.
“Okay. So… do you have any idea why you might have thought you were a 94-year-old woman?”
The Fifth Floor: Day One on the Run
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
While John is still at the hospital and Felix is watching people say nasty things about him on the news, Shannon is elbow-deep in research material. She hasn’t head from John or Felix yet, after all, and her studio is still closed in the wake of Bella and Louisa’s deaths, so she takes the opportunity to learn more about the creatures that killed her coworkers.
Eventually, she finds some credible-looking information on creatures called Tuscany Tonguebeasts, who seem to be a match for what we faced, and sends it to John. In reply, John texts her his address and asks if she would mind checking on “Duke” (for the benefit of any listening wiretaps, of course).
The Fifth Floor: Late-Breaking News
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
The party’s quest to stop the tentacle-tongued monsters of Disco Nuit could generously be called a mixed success, but right now there’s nothing anyone can do except go home and hope for the best. Felix, of course, can’t even do that, since “home” is probably the first place the police will look. He accepts John’s offer of a ride and a couch to crash on, at least for now, and the two of them head back to the house that John shares with his grandmother.
After arriving back at his place and making sure that Felix won’t get eaten by his dog, John goes to check on his grandmother. She seems to be sound asleep, but she hasn’t taken her medication, and she doesn’t respond when John tries to wake her up. All her vital signs seem normal when he checks her over, but she still won’t wake, so he calls an ambulance.
Once at the hospital, he’s approached in the waiting room by a man who introduces himself as Dr. Bob Johnson. The prognosis: She’s had a major stroke, and the activity in her brain has dropped off as a result. She doesn’t require life support, and it’s possible she’ll wake from her coma in the future, but right now she needs round-the-clock care.
Disco Nuit: Creepy Wormy Monsters in the Sky
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
While Shannon and Felix were wasting time inside the club, John, who managed to get kicked out of the club before ever getting in, has been monitoring the club’s exit from across the street, looking for people who he can see with his eyes but not with his camera. He’s still doing that when Shannon and Felix finally emerge.
Since bothering the bouncers and schmoozing with the club-goers isn’t working so far, it’s time to adopt a new strategy. The group has no idea when, or even whether, the killer will emerge from the club with another potential victim, but no one is willing to take the chance that he (or she, or it) won’t. Since the fact that the killer doesn’t appear on camera is still the group’s best lead, Shannon and Felix follow John’s example, stationing themselves at various positions around the club in order to monitor the exit.
It takes a couple hours of waiting, but eventually they spot what they’re looking for. Two men, each with his arm around a woman, exit the club. Shannon recognizes one of them as the man who invited her out for drinks earlier. All four seem to be having a very good time. The women are both visible on the groups’ cell phone cameras. The two men, however, are not.
Disco Nuit: Odd Fashion Trap
This post is one of a series in the ongoing Juniper Campaign posts. If you’re new to the blog, you may want to consider starting from the beginning, or reading the summary to get caught up on events up to this point.
Having retrieved the bag that one of the women was carrying when she died, the group reconvenes at Felix’s apartment to go through it. It contains two capes with brightly coloured, shiny interiors; a frilly silk shirt; a black corset; and a gold-plated iron cross. This certainly isn’t the clubbing attire they were wearing in the video, and Shannon’s never seen them wearing anything like it, but it does look like it would fit them. The labels on the two capes sport an elaborately stylized N, which no one in the party recognizes.
What little research the group has time for turns up a laundry list of things that their invisible critters could be, but no real leads; they have no idea whether half of the creatures they’re researching are even real. It’s getting late now, though, and the group is hoping to be back at the club by the time it opens, so they decide to leave their so-far-fruitless research for another time.
Intercontinental Adventures 