INTRODUCTION

The Visit is a four to five-hour adventure for 4th-level characters set within the Asylum map. I’d recommend running it in two sessions, since there are plenty of good break points partway through the adventure.  It’s a dungeon crawl that combines elements of intrigue, investigation, and survival horror, drawing inspiration from Resident Evil, Outlast, and Alien. The characters visit CollingWood Sanitarium for their own individual reasons, described in the Adventure Hooks section, which includes six prewritten backstories. 

The adventure begins in the Sanitarium’s public areas, where the characters find a keycard granting access to restricted sections. As they delve further, they uncover a secret project conducting human trials on CollingWood’s patients. When they reach the deeper parts of the asylum, the horrors of Project AM are unleashed, leaving the characters to survive the monsters the experiment created.

RUNNING THE ADVENTURE

This adventure is ideal for a low-magic setting, where characters rely more on their wits and survival instincts than on magic. Using magic for anything beyond investigation can diminish the story’s horror elements. When creating characters, consider reflavouring fantastical features as grounded, real-world traits, and limit starting equipment to items that can be easily concealed to avoid drawing attention on entry. Such limitations only further immerse the table in the horror genre.

ADVENTURE BACKGROUND

CollingWood Sanitarium is a long-stay psychiatric institution operating as a respectable public facility. It admits patients with unstable cognitive function, provides inpatient care, and permits supervised visitation. Its staff are not uniformly aware of what happens in the lower wards.

Dunlop Labs funds the sanitarium under a private research agreement. In exchange, a selection of patients (those assessed as cognitively compromised and unlikely to be missed) are enrolled in Project AM without consent.

Project Adaptive Merging (AM). Dunlop Labs’ stated objective was neurological restoration: introducing a cultivated biological sample to a degenerative host to repair damaged cognition. Early trials on rats showed measurable improvement in neural function. With increased funding, the subjects shifted to people. The results did not replicate.

The Sample. The cultivated sample bonds to the cerebellum via the nervous system, overwriting rather than restoring cognition. Early-stage hosts appear deranged but passive. Fully bonded hosts are violent. External growths indicate full bonding–toxic to the touch, with an airborne contamination risk within 5ft. The sample was cultivated at 0–5 degrees. Cold temperatures significantly slow bonded hosts.

The Staff. Some are complicit. Some are oblivious. One member, Deborah, is neither–she is covering a shift and has no idea what she walked into.

The Doctors. Dr. Howard led Project AM’s most advanced trials. His signature appears on admission reports throughout the sanitarium. When met, he is fully bonded and hostile. Dr Allan ran patient examinations and signed off on the last assessment before the Safe Room was sealed. His corpse lies in Operation Room 2.

ADVENTURE HOOKS

Here are six prewritten backstories to help players create immersive characters. These six characters did not arrive together by accident. Each received a letter from someone inside CollingWood that stopped mid-sentence before it could be finished. Separately, none of them had enough to act on, but together, they did. They met twice before tonight, in a café far enough from the sanitarium that nobody would recognise them, and in those two meetings they found enough common ground to trust each other with the parts of their reasons they were willing to share. They are not friends. But they have sat across a table from each other, agreed on a plan, and tonight they are the only people in this building on the same side. What each of them hides is their own business. That tension is yours to play when the moment is right.

The Relative

Your sister came to CollingWood six months ago as a Dunlop Labs student, and for the first two months, she wrote every week. Usually, about lecture notes, complaints about the hours, and the same dry humour she has had since childhood. But the letters changed. Shorter. Looser. When you visited last month, she smiled differently, her eyes settling on you a beat too late, like something else was deciding when to look. A letter in a different hand arrived shortly after, describing things happening inside the sanitarium that you could not ignore. You found others who had received the same letter and met twice in a café before tonight, sharing enough of your reasons to agree on a plan. You told them you’re concerned about your sister’s safety, but you may be hiding your concerns about how she has changed.

The Investigator

Dunlop Labs sent you in clean. No institutional ID, no paper trail, a cover story about independent research that nobody thought to question. Your job is to identify who has been talking, locate anything that names the project, and report back before it reaches the wrong hands. When a fragmented letter began circulating, your handlers helped you insert yourself into the group that formed around it. Two meetings in a café. Enough shared purpose to get through a door together. You know more about what happens in this building than anyone else in the group, and you have told them none of it. What you are beginning to understand, walking these corridors at night, is that the corporation that sent you will disavow you the moment your name appears on anything.

The Thief

You have a buyer, a price, and a plan that looked straightforward three hours ago. Research like this does not stay secret forever, but the first institution to replicate it does not have to wait. Your buyer is not asking questions about provenance. When a fragmented letter began circulating about CollingWood, you followed the paper trail and found the group forming around it. Two meetings in a café. You told them you were owed money by a former employer, which was close enough that nobody pushed back. What you have not shared is that the buyer is a rival institution, and if the others connected those dots, you would become the first suspect the moment anything went missing.

The Ex-Employee

You worked here two years as a junior clinician and left eighteen months ago under terms you signed away the right to discuss. When a fragmented letter reached you describing things you had spent eighteen months trying to forget, you knew you could not act alone. You made quiet contact with those you thought you could trust, met twice in a café, and agreed on a plan. You came back because they needed a guide and because some part of you has always known you would end up here again. What you have not told them is that you were not simply asked to leave. You learned something you shouldn’t have, and were handed a document that made your silence a condition of your freedom. You have spent eighteen months telling yourself it was nothing. You have never quite believed it.

The Journalist

Eight months of work. Seventeen sources. Four of them no longer reachable. You have partial records, a project name, and a letter from someone inside CollingWood that stopped mid-sentence last month. When fragments of that same letter began reaching others, you found the group forming around it and recognised an opportunity. Two meetings in a café. Enough shared purpose to move through the building together. Tonight you need documentation that names names—not sample numbers, not redacted reports, but signatures on paper that can be published and verified.

The Bereaved

Your brother worked the night shift here for three years and called every Sunday without fail, until he missed one dinner, then two, then stopped answering letters entirely. The sanitarium told you he had transferred upstate, but when you wrote to that facility, they had no record of him. When a fragmented letter arrived describing things happening inside CollingWood, you could not dismiss it. You found others who had received the same letter and met twice in a café before tonight, sharing enough of your reasons to agree on a plan. You came back with people who had their own reasons to be here, because you know you cannot get through a building like this alone. You are not here for a story or for money. You are here for your brother. You have not allowed yourself to consider what it means that the transfer records do not exist.

KEY NPCs

Deborah Winters

Role: Night-shift receptionist, CollingWood Sanitarium.

Appearance: Woman in her mid-fifties: white nurse’s uniform, reading glasses hanging from a chain, a half-finished handover note in her hand. She looks more like someone’s aunt than someone in danger.

Personality: Warm, procedural, and slightly harried, she’s covering tonight as a favour and has already mapped out her trip home in her mind.

Motivation: Get through the shift. Lock up. Leave.

Deborah has no idea what Project AM is. She knows the building, and she remembers the names of staff she hasn’t seen since their shifts changed. Now, her handover note and the voicemail she left become the players’ first source of exposition—the last normal voice in the building.

Dennis Parker

Role: Night janitor, CollingWood Sanitarium.

Appearance: Man in his late forties, heavyset, in dark overalls. His thinning hair and jaw clenched too tightly give him a permanently tense look. Yellowed fingernails stay buried in his pockets, as if he’s ashamed of them. He moves like a man carrying a headache he can’t quite locate.

Personality: Quiet and Cooperative, to a point. Lapses mid-sentence in ways he can’t explain

Motivation: Finish his rounds. He keeps coming back to the morgue, but he doesn’t know why.

Dennis has been cleaning the lower ward for three weeks. Early-stage exposure has begun: nail discolouration, jaw stiffness, occasional cognitive gaps he papers over with routine, but he is not violent yet. He carries the Level 2 keycard. Play him as someone trying very hard to seem normal. He foreshadows every patient the players will face later in the Sanitarium.

Dr. Howard

Role: Lead practitioner, Project AM.

Appearance: Identifiable only by his coat and his name tag.

Personality: Methodical and dedicated to research.

Motivation: Believes the work is worth losing oneself to.

Howard’s signature appears on every major admission report in the sanitarium. His notes portray a man who, step by step, persuaded himself that the results justified the methods. Now he is fully bonded and hostile. Howard’s bonding produced a different outcome from that of standard hosts. Extended exposure at the highest recorded trial dosage has preserved partial cognition; he recognises his environment and perceives the characters as prospective hosts rather than threats to eliminate. He is not mindless. He is deliberate. GMs should play him as a hunter rather than a monster.

Dr. Allan

Role: Examining physician, Clinic 2.

Appearance: Neat. Unremarkable. Last seen in a white coat with his name tag still pinned to the lapel. By the time the characters find him in Operation Room 2, he is face down on the floor, one hand extended toward the door, the crown of his skull detached and his brain missing.

Personality: Signed off on everything Howard asked without asking why.

Motivation: He stopped asking questions a long time ago.

Allan’s name appears on Patient #27’s examination report–the final assessment before the Safe Room was sealed. His sign-off is chilling in retrospect: Motor functions still responsive. Active. He did not survive what came after. His body tells half the story. The other half is in the Lecture Room.

The parasite that bonded to Allan mutated and outgrew its host. What remains of his brain found a new one–a chimp being tested in Operation Room 2. By the time the characters reach the Lecture Room, Allan is the one at the front of the class. GMs who want to foreshadow this should carefully describe the chimp hair and fruit in Operation Room 2.

The Infected

Hosts present differently depending on their bonding stage. Use this as a quick reference at the table.

Early stage. Patients in gowns move slowly, with external growths appearing only on the neck and jaw, and they remain passive unless cornered. Dennis Parker presents with similar symptoms.

Mid stage. Growths are spreading across the torso and arms. Cognitive function is absent, but motor function remains strong. These patients move with apparent purpose and respond to auditory stimuli. Close combat carries a risk of airborne contamination within a 5-foot radius.

Late stage. External growths have fully bonded and have spread extensively across the surface. They are fragile, highly toxic to the touch and prone to bursting on impact.

DUNGEON OVERVIEW

The sanatorium is divided into three zones. The characters begin in the public zone, where visitors may access all areas without a keycard. Level 1 Keycards provide access to Level 1 areas: inpatient wards, staff facilities, and the security room. Two Level 2 Keycards are in the building. Dennis Parker’s Employee Pass grants access to staff areas: the Staff Room, Security, Visitation Room, and Prescription Room. Serin Captor’s Student Pass opens the research wing: the Wash and Laundry, Safe Room, Operation Rooms, Clinical Storage, and Lecture Room.

General Features

Green Lockers. Standard CollingWood issue, found throughout the building. A character who climbs inside and pulls the door closed is considered Hidden. They have limited visibility from inside but cannot be seen by anyone entering the room. A locker can fit one Medium creature.

Lighting. The building runs on ageing electrical infrastructure. Lights in the public zone are steady. In the Level 1 areas, fluorescent strips flicker without warning, particularly in the Morgue and the Staff Room corridor. And in the Level 2 areas, several fixtures have failed entirely.

Sound. The building is not silent. The boiler runs in irregular cycles, sending heat through pipes that knock and settle in the walls. Distant sounds like a footstep, something that might be a voice, are part of the building’s ambient character.

Smell. The public zone smells of institutional cleaning fluid and old upholstery. The Level 1 areas carry a faintly biological smell, difficult to place. The Level 2 area does not smell clean at all.

Public Zone Locations

Reception and Main Hall

The hub of the building. Deborah Winters (Commoner) is at the desk when players arrive, finishing her handover note, not expecting anyone. The visitor log sits open beside the telephone. The answerphone light is blinking.

The doors to the north and east are opened using a Level 1 Keycard. The doors to the west are open. 

Handover Note. Deborah’s note details the evening’s routine: new students on the ward, limited security, and a reminder to lock the east corridor. It mentions Dennis Parker and the rat problem in the garden.  

Deborah‘s Note. A sticky note on the corner of the log reads: Left Door Fix Moved to tomorrow–Debs x. A maintenance request for a door in the building was deferred to the following day. The door in question is the north door of the Reception Hall. It does not latch correctly from the inside. Deb also holds a Level 1 keycard in her pocket. 

Answerphone. The message is from Deborah herself, left earlier that evening–warm, routine, slightly harried. She mentions the new students, the limited security, and that she will do the last round of checks before locking up.

Waiting Lobby

Upholstered chairs line the walls in faded rows. A notice board holds outdated pamphlets and a visiting hours schedule that hasn’t been updated in years.Notice Board. A character who takes a moment to look at the notice board finds a patient welfare leaflet from three years prior. The contact number on the back has been disconnected.

Social and Family Rec Room

Board games on a shelf, half a deck of cards on the table, a patient letter left face-down on a chair. The room has the specific stillness of a place that was recently in use.

Personal Object. A small personal item like a watch or a set of keys, sits on the windowsill. It has no name on it, but a character may recognise it. This is a good clue to attach to the characters with The Bereaved, The Relative or Ex-Employee backstory.

Kitchen

A half-prepared meal tray sits on the counter, abandoned mid-task. A staff rota is pinned to the wall beside the service window, covering the current month. A Swarm of Rats nibbling at the remaining crumbs and a few rat caracasses. The rats are in the late stage of infection and are hostile to the characters.

Staff Rota. The rota lists night shift assignments by name. One name–the Bereaved’s brother–appears regularly until two months ago, then stops without explanation.

Baths

The room is empty and cold. Five porcelain tubs sit unused against the far wall, drains open, a faint mineral smell rising from them. 

The Drains. A character who checks the drains notices a residue around the drain consistent with the cold solution used in the Morgue. The two rooms share a drainage system.

Garden

The garden is overgrown and too quiet. Beds that should be tended sit thick with weeds, and the smell is faintly sweet beneath the soil. A potting shelf along the east wall holds tools, seed packets, and a handwritten order form. A cold draught billows from the open doors leading to the morgue. 

Rat Repellent Order. The order form on the shelf is made out to Dennis Parker, dated three weeks ago. It lists industrial-grade repellent in a quantity inconsistent with a garden this size.

Level 1 Area Locations

Morgue

The room is cold enough that your breath fogs the air. A steel examination table stands in the centre, a shrouded body lying upon it.  Along the west wall sit two deep preservation baths filled with a clear solution used for standard cold storage, maintained at 0–3 degrees. A temperature log is mounted to the wall beside them. Dennis Parker is here, mopping the same section of floor he has mopped three times tonight.

Dennis Parker. Dennis carries a Level 2 Employee Pass on his belt, granting access to staff areas. He will not willingly hand it over. A character who succeeds on a DC 13 Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check can talk him into leaving the room briefly. The pass can also be taken with a successful DC 14 Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check while he is distracted.

Preservation Baths. The baths are maintained at 0–3 degrees. A character who examines the temperature log notes that the baths have been running continuously for fourteen months. Well beyond standard use. Characters who submerge or douse a bonded host in the solution find that cold temperatures significantly slow the infection.

The Body. The covered body on the examination table has a tag listing cause of death as cardiac failure. A character with medical knowledge determines that the listed cause is inconsistent with the physical findings. Patrick’s Pass. The body on the examination table carries a blood-stained Level 1 Security Pass on a lanyard around its neck. The name on the pass reads Mr Patrick. The cause of death listed on the tag is cardiac failure. The Level 1 pass grants access to all Level 1 areas. Key: Level 1 pass.

Toilets

Functional and unremarkable. One green locker is mounted to the wall beside the hand basins.

Green Locker. See General Features.

Staff Room

Mugs on the table, a half-read newspaper, a staff diary left open on today’s date. Personal lockers line the far wall, each labelled with a name.

Staff Diary. The diary records shift notes across the past three months. Entries become shorter and more administrative over time. The last entry trails off mid-sentence.

The Lockers. Most lockers are locked. One labelled with the Bereaved’s brother’s name is unlocked. The contents are undisturbed. Whoever owned it did not expect to stop coming back.

Green Locker. See General Features.

Security

Banks of monitor screens line the far wall, showing camera feeds across the building. Several screens display static. A door control panel is mounted beside the desk.

Camera Feeds. The active feeds cover only the public zone and Level 1 Zones. A character who reviews the monitors can confirm which rooms are currently occupied. If Dennis is still alive, the feed shows him stumble and collapse into the garden before rising into the late stage of infection and searching for the characters. If he enters the reception hall while Deborah is present, he attacks her.

A character who examines the access log beside the security terminal finds a list of Level 2 authorised personnel. One entry is logged under a name that matches the Investigator’s cover identity, and it is timestamped from earlier that evening. The Investigator did not make that entry.

The Level 2 areas do not appear–except one feed. A single camera labelled Safe Room is still transmitting. The grey footage shows a dark, padded room where a hulking, shadowy figure wearing a comedy-theatre mask squats at its centre. As a character notices the mask, it turns to face the camera, as if noticing the viewer. 

Security Log. The log notes that the camera system was installed and is maintained exclusively by Dunlop Labs and that the door control system is due for a service. A second entry, added in a different hand and underlined twice, reads: Do not open the Safe Room under any circumstances.

Door Control Panel. Using the door control panel requires both a Level 1 and Serin’s Level 2 Keycard and a DC 10 Intelligence check. Success allows a character using this panel to open or close any door in CollingWood Sanitarium. Failure malfunctions the door control, opening the Safe Room and Operating Room 1 while locking down the north door of the Reception Hall, as the panel bursts into sparks, rendering it useless until a character rewires the panel with a DC 15 Intelligence (Sleight of Hand) check. By the time the characters look back at the camera feed, the Safe Room is empty. 

Green Locker. See General Features.

Visitation Room

A monitored room divided by a low partition. Chairs on either side, a sign-in sheet on a clipboard by the door. The room smells of institutional cleaning fluid and something underneath it. Three infected patients sit idly here. If disturbed, they attack using the Zombie statblock. Sign-In Sheet. Patient visits are logged by number, not name. A character who cross-references these numbers with the prescription labels in the Prescription Room can begin to build a picture of which patients were being seen and which stopped receiving visitors.

Prescription Room

Shelves of labelled medication behind a service window. A dispensing log sits open on the counter, featuring entries made in two different hands. It suggests a changeover that happened six weeks ago without explanation.

Dispensing Log. Patient numbers appear throughout. A character who succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) check notices that several patient numbers stopped receiving prescriptions abruptly, without a discharge entry.

Prescription Labels. Labels carrying patient numbers match those in the Visitation Room sign-in sheet. The same numbers appear on the examination reports found deeper in the building.

Library

Shelves of medical texts, bound journals, and student materials. A study table runs the length of the room. On the table, a class schedule notebook sits open, a Dunlop Labs lanyard tucked between its pages, and a student asleep with their head on the table. 

The Student. The student seems fast asleep, but a look at their arms reveals symptoms of mid-stage infection.

The Notebook. The class schedule belongs to a Dunlop Labs student. Lecture notes fill the first half and are sparse toward the back. Serin Captor’s Level 2 Student Pass lanyard is tucked inside the back cover. This pass opens the research wing–the Wash and Laundry, Safe Room, Operation Rooms, Clinical Storage, and Lecture Room. The class schedule’s inside cover lists Dunlop Labs personnel cleared to access the research wing. One name on the list matches the Investigator’s cover identity exactly. A character who cross-references this against the Security Room access log finds the same name appears twice–once as an authorised researcher, and once as an active entry from tonight.

A character who takes the Search action and succeeds on a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check finds the lanyard without incident. On a failure, the infected student (Ghoul) awakens and attacks the characters, rolling their initiative with advantage.

In-Patient Room 1

The bed frame has restraint marks worn into the rails accumulated over time. Polaroid photographs are scattered across the floor, face down. The room smells of disinfectant over something that disinfectant did not fully cover. A late-stage infected patient (Ghoul) lies restrained in a cot as two mid-stage infected doctors (Zombies) repeatedly jab the patient with needles as they lose cognitive function.

The Polaroids. The photographs show close-up clinical images of external growths at various stages, from the neck, forearm, jaw. They are numbered and dated. The earliest is fourteen months ago. 

Restraint Marks. A character who succeeds on a DC 11 Wisdom (Medicine) check determines the marks are consistent with prolonged, repeated restraint.

In-Patient Room 2

The room is in disarray. The bed has been pushed against the wall. An operation record is folded on the mattress, partially obscured by the sheet. The window is cracked.

Operation Record–Sample 024B. The record details oral insertion trial thirteen. The patient was restrained during the procedure. Cognition signals stabilised with minimal brain cell collapse. Post-op status reads Vitals Stable, crossed out, replaced with Deceased in a different hand.

The Window. The crack runs from the lower corner to the centre of the pane. It was not broken from the outside.

Level 2 Area Locations

Wash and Laundry

Industrial washing machines line the far wall, several mid-cycle when they stopped. A disposal log hangs on a clipboard by the door, recording what was laundered, in what quantities, and how often. The frequency has increased sharply over the past four months.

Dirty Laundry. Steam obfuscates the interior of one warm washing machine. Characters who draw near this machine hear something move within, as if bundled up in the laundry and trying to escape. A sample of the parasite wasn’t properly cleaned off some clothes and, in a warm and wet environment, has attached itself to the fabric. The first time a character tries to peer through the window, the washing machine door breaks open and the parasite attacks. Use the Animated Rug of Smothering statblock. 

Disposal Log. The log records linen, surgical gowns, and restraint bindings. A character who succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) check notes that the volume of restraint bindings being laundered tripled four months ago. This is consistent with the escalation visible in the operation records. 

Green Locker. See General Features.

Safe Room

The room is padded, windowless, and dark. At its centre, a hulking figure squats with its back to the door. It wears a comedy-theatre mask, portraying a smiling, pale visage. As the door opens, it is already facing them. It does not move. It does not speak. The mask shows a wide, painted smile. Somewhere behind it, something moans.

Patient #27. It’s unknown how the parasite mutated a patient into this dangerous creature. When it is released, it uses its Right Behind You bonus action to appear behind the characters to attack them. 

The Clipboard. A Project AM Examination Testing Report is attached to the outside of the door. Patient #27. The last line reads: Motor functions still responsive. Active.

Operation Room 1

The primary surgical theatre. Two operating tables dominate the centre, both modified with reinforced, retrofitted restraint fittings, not standard issue. An X-ray lightbox is mounted to the wall, a scan still clipped to it. The scan shows the cerebellum and what has grown inside it.

X-ray Scan. The scan is labelled Sample 024B. Branching structures extend from the cerebellum through the surrounding tissue. A character who succeeds on a DC 11 Wisdom (Medicine) check identifies the structures as biological rather than radiographic artefacts. They are not supposed to be there.

Restraint Fittings. The modifications are recent. A character who succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) check determines the original fittings were replaced within the last six months after the standard ward restraints proved insufficient.

Operation Room 2

The room is in disarray and smells of musk. A surgical tray has been upended, and instruments have been scattered across the floor. Dr. Allan’s corpse is face down, coat still on, one hand still extended toward the door and the crown of his skull detached, with his brain missing. 

The Recent Patient. Any Search action in this room finds an abundance of hair and fruit. A character who succeeds on a DC 14 Intelligence (Nature) check determines that the hair belongs to a non-human primate.

Dr. Allan. There are signs of growth on his body, but it seems he was killed by something else. A character who looks at his injuries would think that the injuries are consistent with blunt trauma from something with significant mass. But a successful DC 17 Wisdom (Medicine) check determines that something from inside his head had burst out of his skull.

Operation Room 3

The most advanced work happened here. Sepia photographs are pinned across the wall in a grid of close-up clinical images of late-stage bonding, boil outbreak, and the moment of turning. A personal journal sits open on the desk, the handwriting increasingly erratic across its pages. Dr. Howard is here. He was the last person to write in it.

Dr. Howard. The doctor is in the late stage of infection, but his bonding has done something different. He is the most advanced host in the building, with extensive external growths, strong motor function, and altered cognition. He recognises the room he is in and sees the characters as more hosts for the parasite. The parasite has made Dr. Howard’s anatomy to change, growing horn-like protrusions from his forehead. Use the Chain Devil statblock for Dr. Howard, and reflavour the chains as parasitic tendrils. 

The Journal. Entries start off clinical and precise, then they become more rational and subsequently brief. The final entry is a single line. Notably, the journal also references the locations associated with other sites involved in the private research agreement established by Dunlop Labs; these include a private school and an aged care home.

Sepia Photographs. The grid documents the outbreak chronologically; the first boil, the spread, the attack.

Clinical Storage

Shelving units hold sample containers, Dunlop Labs-branded documentation, and equipment in varying states of use. A containment unit occupies the far corner, sealed, temperature-controlled, and humming.

The Containment Unit. The unit is sealed and locked. A label on the exterior reads a patient number. A character can cross-reference this number against the examination reports to identify the patient, but for The Bereaved, it is unmistakably their brother. The unit is temperature-controlled, maintained at 0–3 degrees, and uses the same solution as the Morgue preservation baths. The cold has slowed his bonding to mid-stage. He is alive. He is not yet fully violent. He does not recognise the Bereaved. Opening the unit will accelerate the infection rapidly as his body returns to ambient temperature.

Sample Containers. Active contamination risk. Any character who handles an unsealed container without protection must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or suffer the effects of early-stage exposure.

Dunlop Labs Documentation. Project AM branding throughout. Internal correspondence referencing the sanitarium as a testing facility. A character who reads the documentation gains full context for Project AM’s objectives and its failure.

Lecture Room

Rows of chairs face a chalkboard covered in diagrams: nervous system pathways, bonding stage illustrations, sample cultivation notes. Several students are seated on the chairs. Most of them erratically write in notebooks, taking notes from their lecturer–a chimp whose brain is exposed and twitching with growths. 

The Lecturer. The lecturer is, in fact, Dr Allan (Ape stablock but with an Intelligence score of 15). Or at least what remains of his brain. The parasite that found an original host in Dr Allan had mutated and outgrown his head. So it found a new host in a chimp being tested in Operation Room 2. When the characters enter, Dr Allan knuckle-walks over to them and welcomes them to the class–he is teaching everyone how to find the perfect host. The remaining class consists of 4 infected students (Ghouls).

Student Notebooks. A character who reads through the notebooks finds that the deterioration mirrors the bonding stages documented in the operation records. One notebook belongs to the Relative’s sister. Her handwriting follows the same pattern as the others: precise in the early entries, then smaller, then gone. The last page is blank except for a single unfinished sentence.

The Chalkboard. The diagrams are detailed enough to function as a clinical reference. A character who studies them gains advantage on Medicine checks made to identify the bonding stage in living hosts for the remainder of the session. The Ex-Employee recognises these diagrams. They were shown the same ones the night they were asked to leave.

The Sister. The Relative’s sister is in the furthest chair from the door, bound by the same restraints found throughout the sanitarium. She is alive, with growths that have reached her jaw and collarbone, but still fully cognitive. A character who succeeds on a DC 15 Intelligence (Medicine) check determines that her physiology appears to be resisting full bonding. The growths have not progressed beyond the early stage despite months of exposure. She seems immune.

Conclusion

The characters leave through the Reception Hall. What happened inside will not stay inside. Whatever they carry out–documents, samples, the sister, each other–someone else will want it, and Dunlop Labs will want it back.

The sanitarium will be quietly decommissioned within the week. No official inquiry will follow. The staff will be reassured. The patients will be transferred, on paper, to a facility upstate.

Howard’s journal names two other Dunlop Labs testing sites. A private school. An aged care home. Neither knows what is coming.

Somewhere in the building the characters just left, a door that should stay closed is open. The lights are still on. The preservation baths are still running.

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Credits

Ian Arguilles
What do Ian, a hydra, and a hat rack have in common? They all wear many hats. Ian freelances across copywriting, short fiction, and RPG design. If you’d rather just hear him ramble about telling better stories at the table, look for Unfound Fables on Instagram.

Kelly-Louise Roake
London based Animation Vis Dev artist. Currently a full-time Map and Concept artist for 2MT! A huge video game enthusiast mainly enjoying new indie ideas. I’m a passionate cat mum and probably diving into a new hobby right now!

Davy
Hi, I’m Davy, an illustrator from Seattle. I love drawing characters and telling stories, and I hope my work will bring life and laughs to your Tabletop!

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