Star Ridge Manor is a combined assisted living and memory care facility set on a sprawling old estate atop the local landmark known as Star Ridge. Star Ridge was originally the estate of Dennis Landry, a wealthy local robber baron who occupied it from 1880 until his death in 1925.
The Landry family was plagued with ill luck during their time in the mansion. Both of Landry’s daughters died before 1900, one committed suicide and the other fell into a ravine while sleepwalking and broke her neck. His wife was inflicted with a strange illness and lingered into 1915, attended to by private nurses. Landry himself exhibited excellent health until his last few years, dying at the age of 95.
Three years before his death Landry’s mental faculties began to leave him. He was often seen at night or other strange hours wandering the estate grounds with a shovel and a flashlight. The private nurses who had seen to his wife came back and did their best to confine him to his home. On one occasion he escaped into town and was found wandering naked and delirious on a Sunday morning just as church was letting out. One of his nocturnal trips proved to be his last. He was found in a field at the edge of his grounds, lying face up next to a small freshly dug hole. A shovel still grasped in his hands and a horrified expression staring up at the grey November sky.
The Estate passed into probate and was inherited by a distant relative from Europe who never visited it. It sat abandoned until it passed to the state due to tax forfeiture in the early 50s. The state was unable to find a buyer and the building continue to crumble until 1987 when Metis Holding Corp, a for profit health care company specializing in elderly and memory care, bought it. They refurbished the original mansion as offices, an on sight emergency room, and premium residence suites. They also built several detached buildings as residence wards, exercise buildings, and ward 5, a memory care unit built on the site where Landry was found deceased.
Star Ridge Manor has been a profitable holding for Metis corp, with one disturbing trend. It has the highest percentage of residents who enter the assisted living facility going on to need on site memory care of any of Metis’s properties. The percentage falls well outside national averages for dementia, alzheimer’s, and other memory afflictions. Metis is aware of the statistical anomaly, but since it’s one that fattens their bottom line, they have not taken any steps to look into the cause. It’s unlikely anyone they sent to find out would survive the attempt.
The Truth of Star Ridge Manor
In the dim centuries before recorded time a meteorite fell to earth on the site that would one day become Star Ridge. The local indigenous people gave the rocky hill it’s name, and it stuck after colonization. This was no common meteorite. It contained an alien sentience from beyond the vast gulfs of space and time. A being of energy and thought that resided in the fused rock and metal that had carried it across the light years. This being had no name and no sense of individuality. It lay dormant, an unhatched egg awaiting only the correct circumstances to burst forth.
Those circumstances aligned when Landry built his family home on the grounds. The locals had been wise to avoid the area, but Landry wasn’t a man who paid attention to heathen ghost stories. The human activity stirred the being from it’s long hibernation. Awake, starving, and unaware of where and when it was, it reached out and fed on that which sustained it: The memories and personalities of the creatures around it.
The Anamensis Leech can project it’s awareness out from it’s prison in the buried meteor, detecting intelligent life around it. Once it finds a will it can overcome it begins to feed. Nightly visits result in bad dreams, improper rest, and confusion. Eventually the victim begins to forget minor details and become easily confused. As the feeding progresses the leech siphons off more long term memories and personality until all that’s left is a husk of the person that was.
The Leech fed on Landry’s family, quickly feeding on the daughters and then taking a long time with the wife. When she finally passed, it turned it attention to Landry himself. He had dismissed his families rantings about something in their heads as nonsense until he began to experience it himself. Nightmares and visions convinced him that something lurked on the grounds of his estate, but by the time he began to search for it he was deep in it’s clutches and his nurses didn’t believe him. He’ll never now how close he came to destroying the Leech. He was digging to it’s meteor when it lashed out in self defense and drained him fully. He died in fear as he felt the last of his memory and personality drain from him.
Today the leech’s meteor is buried just beneath the concrete foundation of Ward 5, the Star Ridge memory care ward. The leech has grown strong and well fed over the last thirty years. It is aware of the sort of facility that exists above it. It sorts through the minds of those on the grounds, taking care to focus on the elderly and weak residents and never the staff. As the resident passes through the early stages of feeding, they eventually become so disoriented that they’re placed in ward 5, directly over the leech. It feeds at it’s leisure on the residents there, killing them at a rate of roughly two a month. But it’s ok, there’s an aging population and a society that doesn’t want to deal with the elderly once they cease to be economically productive. So there will always be new memories to feed on.
The Anamensis Leech
Char Roll Average
STR N/A
CON N/A
SIZ Equal to POW 50
DEX (2D6+12)X5 95
INT 4D6X5 70
POW 2D6X5 50
Average Hit Points: N/A
Average Damage Bonus: N/A
Average Build: 0
Average Magic Points: 10
Move: N/A
Combat
Characteristic Drain: If it chooses to, the leech can force a target to make an opposed POW roll. If the leach wins it permanently drains 1d10 POW and INT from the victim as well as cause 1d6 damage. Each point of POW drained increases the Leeche’s POW by 1 up to a max of 50. The victim is aware of a horrible sucking feeling and understands it’s losing it’s memories and personality, but can do nothing to stop it.
Normal Feeding: The leech can project it’s mind anywhere on the grounds of Star Ridge Manor, and is aware of all other sentient beings in it’s range, but cannot read their minds or memories unless it chooses to feed on them. If it does, The victim must make an opposed POW roll to resist the leech forming a psychic connection. If they fail, the victim loses 1d6 magic points and 1d6 sanity a day. For every full month the leech feeds on it’s victim, the victim loses one POW and one INT
Dodge: N/A ( cannot move outside of the meteor )
Skills: N/A
Armor: None. Physical mundane attacks cause no damage to the Leech, but destroying the meteor will deprive it of the physical anchor it needs to exist in this plane and cause it to dissipate.
Spells: none.
Sanity Loss: 0/ 1d4 to encounter the Leech; 1/1D8 Sanity points to realize that the cause of the memory loss anomaly.
Christian lives in Rhode Island where all this started. He thinks people are much more terrifying monsters than any nameless thing from the stars. He’s one of the hosts of the DMsAfterDark rpg stream.
