Dr. Harold Rathborne has been locked away in an asylum. Otherwise a prominent medical examiner for the police department, Rathborne lost his mind after examining the corpses from a recent train wreck. In related news, someone removed an as-yet unidentified corpse from the morgue in which Rathborne worked the night he went mad. Police are investigating the case, but the real evidence is in Rathborne’s private journal, not his work one.
The new examiner has learned that many of the victims were dead prior to the crash. The police have suddenly stopped sharing information.
Possibilities
1 The Fungi from Yuggoth have stolen back the corpse of the Reginald Bernby whom they impregnated with eggs prior to the train’s departure. Controlled by the Fungi to travel to a specific location, he boarded the train. When he began to germinate in the train car he flipped out and started attacking people with whatever weapons were on hand insisting he be killed. The Fungi, realizing their eggs were suddenly in danger, swept in and caused the chaos that led to the wreck.
Rathborne examined poor Reginald Bernby and discovered the eggs in his abdomen, ready to hatch. Rathborne went mad and later Bernby continued on his quest to the hatching grounds, easily discovered by plotting out the path of the wrecked train.
2 Rathborne’s notes reveal the source of his insanity. One of the bodies he examined (the one that has gone missing) had crawled off the examining table using its skin - not unlike a slug. Rathborne went mad, but not before he concluded that the body was host to an inexplicable organism whose plastic nature seems, to those that know, much like that of a shoggoth.
As it happens, train wreck victim Alexander Marcus shares his body with a shoggoth. The shoggoth gives him unusual strength and durability, enough strength in fact to have ripped an axle off of the train car he was on, and enough supernatural constitution to have regenerated his body sufficiently to walk out of the morgue. His goal was the scientist on board the train who had learned of his unique condition. Rathborne will be next.
3 After seeing one too many bodies broken apart in this horrible wreck doctor Harold Rathborne went stark raving mad. In the comfort of his asylum cell he hears the screams of the dozens of mutilated passengers and the whispers of one victim in particular, a powerful wizard seeking a new, working body.
© Jim Sliney Jr
The new examiner has learned that many of the victims were dead prior to the crash. The police have suddenly stopped sharing information.
Possibilities
Rathborne examined poor Reginald Bernby and discovered the eggs in his abdomen, ready to hatch. Rathborne went mad and later Bernby continued on his quest to the hatching grounds, easily discovered by plotting out the path of the wrecked train.
2 Rathborne’s notes reveal the source of his insanity. One of the bodies he examined (the one that has gone missing) had crawled off the examining table using its skin - not unlike a slug. Rathborne went mad, but not before he concluded that the body was host to an inexplicable organism whose plastic nature seems, to those that know, much like that of a shoggoth.
As it happens, train wreck victim Alexander Marcus shares his body with a shoggoth. The shoggoth gives him unusual strength and durability, enough strength in fact to have ripped an axle off of the train car he was on, and enough supernatural constitution to have regenerated his body sufficiently to walk out of the morgue. His goal was the scientist on board the train who had learned of his unique condition. Rathborne will be next.
3 After seeing one too many bodies broken apart in this horrible wreck doctor Harold Rathborne went stark raving mad. In the comfort of his asylum cell he hears the screams of the dozens of mutilated passengers and the whispers of one victim in particular, a powerful wizard seeking a new, working body.
© Jim Sliney Jr
