TLDR; soloed Dunwich Legacy (on easy mode) with Jenny Barnes and snagged a victory after a series of brutal scenarios.
Jenny was confronted by an old acquaintance, one doctor Armitage, concerning a couple missing colleagues of his, professor Rice and doctor Morgan. Knowing that Jenny was back in town searching for her sister, Isabelle, Armitage had called upon her in hopes that the cases weren't related, but in fear that they may be. Armitage informed Jenny of the last suspected locations of his two friends and Jenny set out into the twilight lit streets of Arkham.
Knowing that the university would be closing soon, and suspecting that professor Rice wouldn't stay on campus long thereafter, Jenny crossed the Miskatonic to the toll of the evening bells.
The campus had a low hum but was quieter than Jenny had expected it to be - at least, initially. After inquiring among a few students as to where she could find the humanities building, she began to feel eyes on her, following her every step. She quickened her pace, seeing shapes in every shadow. It wasn't long before her fears were manifested, and a great cacophony arose from the science building; a crash of materials, the breaking of glass, and the screams of students as some large mass tore through the building. Jenny narrowly avoided the creature, which was horrible to look upon, and made her way into the faculty offices, led by "Jazz" Mulligan, a janitor on campus who had professed to having seen the professor in his office. The pair rushed through the offices and found the professor even as the screams of students poured through the windows. Jenny and prof. Rice left the building to the sight of a ruined dormitory and fled back to downtown.
Fearing that events may be connected, Jenny and the professor had a hard time asking for the location of the Clover Club around town, likely due to Rice's presence, Jenny suspected, but, they eventually found a drunkard willingly to part with the information, and soon they were standing in front of La Bella Luna, a quaint little Italian restaurant next to the theatre, which was currently absolutely covered in posters for an upcoming play, The King in Yellow, all the way from Europe.
Jenny and Rice greased a few palms, and they were in. Jenny felt very much in her element in the establishment, and made the rounds of the bar, craps tables, and lounge, before finally being invited into the VIP area, where had begun to suspect the doctor might be present.
Although the patrons were friendly and forthcoming, the hired muscle stationed around the club had been giving Jenny the eye all evening, and as she made her way through the VIP areas in search of the doctor, they turned positively hostile, harassing her and barring her passage at every turn. The atmosphere changed, and as Jenny was beginning to fear that she wouldn't find the doctor here after all, a violent commotion arose from the restaurant facade, and she knew that whatever creature had torn through the dormitories at Miskatonic had found its way here as well, and she and the professor ran for the backdoor, escaping into the midnight air and returning to Armitage's house.
Jenny found Armitage pacing in his study, and countenance lifted immediately upon seeing Rice, but fell again when Dr. Morgan didn't soon follow. The two of them began the long tale of their adventures only a few months past, and how, after the events of the night, they suspected their past deeds may be coming back to haunt them. They were cryptic with some of the details, and wanted Jenny to retrieve an old tome, one Jenny had heard whispers of in her search for Izzie, a translation of the Necronomicon, that they had given to the museum for safe keeping. Fearing that whatever forces were behind the recent events may get their hands on the tome, Jenny was sent out to attempt to retrieve it first.
The museum was, of course, closed for the night, and, while debating picking the locks to the door, Jenny saw a light moving through the windows. It was most a most fortunate turn of events, but Jenny found that the light came from a security guard's lantern, rather than some ignoble being. Jenny and the professors were able to get the guard's attention, and he let them in, confused though he was. Her streak of luck continued, and the guard let them search the facility upon being informed of Armitage's name and prior donations.
The trio made their way through the darkened halls, but the dark forces that were spreading through Arkham soon found them, and they fled before this new, dark force could catch up to them.
The three returned to Armitage's house and, after little debate, decided that the state of Dunwich needed to be investigated, as all signs now pointed to some evil returning there. Jenny stayed in the guest room and gathered her things from her apartment in the morning before heading to the train station. Once settled into her seat, the previous night's events caught up to her, and Jenny relaxed momentarily.
Jenny was snapped back to reality as the train halted to a stop while crossing a bridge, still some distance from the station near Dunwich. Jenny looked out the window and saw a great tear in the sky near the back of the train and watched as luggage and loose gravel fell upward into the sky, and disappeared into the tear, and soon the back car started to follow.
Knowing that they needed to get the train running again in order to escape catastrophe, Jenny woke her elder travelling companions and started making her way through the passenger cars towards the engine car, hoping that whatever had stopped their progress could be overcome. Her progress was slowed, however, by masked people and a run of poor luck that seemed to have a will of it's own and was too obvious to be coincidence. Jenny hadn’t only packed clothes for the trip, however, and the mortal followers of whatever evil was happening all around her soon found themselves face to face with her trusty .45’s, and, soon enough, she had led her companions to the front of the car. Just in time, as it turned out, as the rear cars of the train were beginning to disappear into the hole in the sky.
Back on schedule, the train arrived at the station where the investigators met with Zebulon Whateley and Earl Sawyer, the remaining two people involved in the mystery some months back. It was getting late, and the others convinced Jenny that the mystery was best left for the morrow, and they turned the car to the outskirts of town towards Zebulon’s house. Jenny faded out on the long drive and awoke in the morning to find she was alone in the house.
She headed into town to try and find what had happened to her new acquaintances but was quickly waylaid in the general store by one of O’Bannon’s thugs from the Clover Club, who had somehow tracked her here from Arkham. A long shoot-out followed, during which Jenny sustained heavy injury and was forced to flee.
Jenny laid low for the next several days, and, using what little information she had gathered around Dunwich, was able to put together that a man named Seth Bishop may be behind the events, or, at least, may be the next piece in the puzzle. Her investigation was cut short when the people of Dunwich called on her in a panic, proclaiming that some great beast was destroying the town. Jenny calmed the crowd and learned that there may be more than one such beast ravaging the country town. Jenny gathered up her things and companions and set off to investigate the ruins of Whateley’s house.
The chirping of the whippoorwills filled the mid-morning air as Jenny drove Zebulon’s track around the outer reaches of Dunwich, the remaining professors crammed in next to her, and her old friend Leo de Lucca keeping an eye out from the truck bed. They found the first creature quickly, but it was a monstrous thing, and only grew and it chased the truck around the country side, and soon a second one joined the first. The abominations seemed to lose interest, and, though Jenny and her companions were able to set traps in the northeast regions of the countryside, the monsters continued to wander, seemingly at random, around the southern Glen, growing larger all the while.
Finally, a third, smaller creature emerged, and the group, determined to save the town from at least one of the monsters, lured the beast into a bog and, performing a ritual derived from some esoteric formula, returned the creature to whatever ****-scaped madness it had crawled out of. In the meantime, the first two creatures had grown much to large to deal with, and so the investigators turned the truck back towards Zebulon’s house to try and hide out the night.
There was little rest to be had, however, as the morning brought a screeching as the sky was torn open over the Sentinel Hill, a landmark within view of Dunwich. The team packed up their things and followed the signs of danger, hoping that this time they might finally bring an end to the horror of Dunwich.
The hill was riddled with paths leading this way and that and crawling in members of the cult responsible for the monstrous abominations that had ravaged Arkham and Dunwich. After dispatching some cultists and narrowly escaping from lesser monstrosities, the trio finally made it to the peak where the tear in sky swirled menacingly.
Jenny searched the area desperately for some means of closing the gate but was interrupted when Seth Bishop finally made his appearance. Without time to handle Seth, or the means to close the gate from the outside, Jenny grabbed her compatriots and fled through the gate, hoping that some means of closing it from the far side would present itself.
Jenny felt herself and being stretched and torn across space, intermittently viewing herself from behind her own eyes and, seemingly, from the eyes of her companions. After a millennia of twisting, distorting, and being pulled across space, Jenny finally landed in something resembling normal ground and found herself amongst whom she took to be a stranger until she recognized the man as Leo de Lucca. She vaguely recalled another couple of older gentlemen who she had once travelled with, but they were nowhere to be found.
Jenny and Leo felt as though they were crawling through the alien landscape, constantly stumbling on new vistas, equal parts beautiful and horrifying. Finally, the duo found a path along a rainbow waterfall, and could see a vast emptiness ahead. Their progress quickened, and the two made their way to the edge of a vast abyss, one that they knew, though they had no way of knowing, went on for eternity.
At the very edge of existence, defeat seemed inevitable, if it hadn’t happened already. While wandering the periphery of space itself, Jenny found herself taking one step at the abyss and the next back in the mysterious landing spot where she had initially arrived in this strange landscape. A sense of urgency filled her, and she rushed back through the nearly familiar terrain and found that the path that had once led her to the edge of space now came upon a portal, or maybe a series of portals, that each felt as though they opened into a different place, and a different time.
She felt a presence then, and a great conglomeration of spheres lashed out at her. With the help of Leo, she was able to slip past the strange creature, and pressed on to the very edge of time, where she could but close her eyes and envision the various pasts, presents, and possible futures on the other side. As she searched for the one that might take her home, some vile force found her, and she was flung back to the entrance again.
The space around her was beginning to crumble, and she knew that if she lost her way now then finding her way home before falling prey to the creatures or nature of this alien place would be impossible in all likelihood. She rushed through the cascading waterfall, which was quickly eroding and seemingly fractured, another, identical bridgeway reflecting in the chromatic surface, and gave the spherical creature the slip, distracting it by tossing away some tools that were otherwise now useless, and raced back to the multi-faceted tear in time.
Finally finding a window to the clearing atop Sentinel Peak, Jenny jumped through the portal, closing it behind her and finding herself in a dark tunnel. No flashlight to guide her, Jenny followed the wall until she finally stepped out into the night air, no alien sky above her, but instead a more familiar nightscape.
She pressed on.
And on.
Treading over cement.
And gravel.
And steel.
Then grass, as the world shifted and changed until finally settling on the world she knew, though she was too tired to appreciate it.
She collapsed.
And was awoken by some residents of Dunwich who, she found during the journey back, had wandered up the hill to see what all the hubbub was about. They had known something was wrong the past few days, but they were unwilling, or unable, to acknowledge what they had seen, and the event passed quietly into history.
Jenny still dreamed about the events that had transpired in Dunwich, and could see vividly the creatures and wonderous sights she had seen through the portal merely by closing her eyes, but her struggle wasn’t over, and, fatigued and permanently haunted by the events as she was, she slowly resumed her endeavor to find her missing sister, but it wouldn’t be long before she would find herself sucked into the occult again. Just a few weeks after reestablishing her investigation, she received a summons from an old acquaintance at the Miskatonic University, who was offering a job that could utilize some of my skills. The job was to take place in Mexico, of all places.
Edited by Jackelking