Episode guide¶
This is the guide to every session of PITF, in the order the sessions were played: six case arcs and one non-canon one-shot. Thirty-seven canon sessions and the one-shot were recorded. Five more sessions were played but never recorded; they are listed in place, marked unrecorded, and are known only from what later episodes say about them (see Lost episodes). For the television framing of the campaign, see The show; for dates, see the Timeline.
| Arc | Setting | In-fiction date | Sessions |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Radford Horror | Radford, Virginia | May to June 1992 | 8 |
| The Summer Service | Marblehead, Massachusetts | June 1992 | 5 recorded, 2 unrecorded |
| The Things in Appalachia | Dahlonega, Georgia | October 1992 | 8 recorded, 2 unrecorded |
| Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable | Another world | Non-canon one-shot, played between Appalachia 01 and 02 | 1 |
| The Walkers in Skin | Ballard and Roosevelt, Utah | Late October to November 1992 | 9 recorded, 1 unrecorded |
| The Roulet Estate | Exeter, Rhode Island | January 1993 | 3 |
| The Radford Horrors | Radford, Virginia, and Russia | April 1993 | 4 so far |
The Radford Horror¶
In May 1992 four mismatched agents are assigned to the new Paranatural Incident Task Force and sent to Radford, Virginia, where a teenager has vanished from a locked bedroom and a child says a spaceman took her. The case widens into missing women, missing dogs, a crooked psychiatrist and something blue that flies over the woods. It ends in a burning church with the Radford Moth, a cover story, and armed strangers who clean up behind the team.
Arc page: The Radford Horror
| Episode | Summary |
|---|---|
| Radford Horror 01 | The task force forms in a former D.C. barbershop and drives to Radford to look for Amanda Lucky, last seen by a four-year-old who blames a "spaceman." |
| Radford Horror 02 | A second woman has walked into the woods; the team digs into the Whateley family's tragedies, the town's vanishing dogs and Dr. Lori's prescriptions. |
| Radford Horror 03 | A day of stakeouts and a tailing white van ends with a blue flying object, armed "campers" and an NSA man whose flashlight sets Kurt on fire. |
| Radford Horror 04 | Overnight the team recovers the NSA man's burned remains, the Biz burgles Dr. Lori's office, Phoebe Augustine vanishes, and a body turns up by the interstate. |
| Radford Horror 05 | Amanda's autopsy shows she was crucified, sedated and partly eaten; the team works the crime scene, the patient files and a town meeting. |
| Radford Horror 06 | A night stakeout brings a kidnapping, Huell carried into the air, a mummified body in the Whateley root cellar, and Wilbur Whateley gone from his bed. |
| Radford Horror 07 | Heroin at the Lawson cabin, a chartered plane, and a ruined church where the team nearly dies fighting a car-sized psychic moth. |
| Radford Horror 08 | The team escapes the cleanup crew with a stolen poncho and flashlight weapon, closes Radford on a cover story, and is sent to Marblehead. |
The Summer Service¶
In June 1992 the team goes to Marblehead, Massachusetts, to find an EPA and USGS field team that disappeared after an explosion out at sea. They find a town run by the Sons of Adam, a church whose communion wine is full of worms, and a glowing creature offshore that the faithful take for an angel. The case ends at a nuclear power plant with a tactical nuclear weapon and a story about terrorists. The case opens in the last part of Radford Horror 08.
Arc page: The Summer Service
| Episode | Summary |
|---|---|
| Summer Service 01 | The team learns of the offshore blast and dying fish, finds a severed arm in the surf, and drinks Amos Shaw's fishy communion wine. |
| Summer Service 02 | Unrecorded. Known from later episodes: a dive in an experimental submarine to a stealth wreck, the first sight of the humming ring-shaped thing, and Kurt's nerve-agent exposure. |
| Summer Service 03 | Huell finds a blood-soaked house, the wine proves to be full of worms, and the lighthouse yields an interrogation site and the scientists' field journal. |
| Summer Service 04 | The team sends for Ivermectin, acquires a Davy Crockett through Kurt's old CIA contact, and faces a Board of Selectmen that meets under the seal of the Sons of Adam. |
| Summer Service 05 | Arnold Weathers and his dog are found as worm-filled hosts and destroyed; police and church members besiege the hotel and the team escapes by a bathroom window. |
| Summer Service 05.5 | Unrecorded. Known from remarks in Summer Service 06: the scientists are found alive, the team steals a car, and the creature comes ashore behind a cult convoy. |
| Summer Service 06 | With a mysterious radio contact, the team kills the angel thing at the nuclear plant: Huell fires the nuke and Andrew finishes it with the flashlight weapon. |
The Things in Appalachia¶
In October 1992, with the Marblehead fallout still before Congress, the team is sent to Dahlonega, Georgia, over two disappearances and a run of Bigfoot sightings. The trail runs past a river cult and a hoaxer in a Chewbacca costume to the Spud Hut plant, where ape-men are mining gold underground. Meanwhile the Biz's side job for the KGB turns into a national scandal about the FBI spying on Bill Clinton. The finale was never recorded. The non-canon one-shot Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable was played between the first and second sessions of this arc and is listed at that point.
Arc page: The Things in Appalachia
| Episode | Summary |
|---|---|
| Appalachia 01 | Solo scenes cover the Marblehead aftermath and the Biz's new KGB job, then the team drives to Dahlonega and meets the Circle Chasers and Sheriff Burke. |
| Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable | Non-canon one-shot. A 72-year-old mentor and her dim alien ward save a werewolf president from an ex-champion, and the ward ends up lost in Wisukonshin. |
| Appalachia 02 | Interviews, a boy's shoe and a gutted rabbit high in the trees, and faked Bigfoot prints; that night the Biz plants a camera in room 111. |
| Appalachia 03 | Andrew sleepwalks to a cave of human remains, a German boy vanishes on a mine tour, and a pale creature mauls Kurt in a hidden tunnel. |
| Appalachia 04 | McManley arrives, the mothers are interviewed, and the team visits the Covenant in Auraria, which drinks from a river below the Spud Hut plant. |
| Appalachia 05 | Unrecorded. Known from later episodes: a Spud Hut auditor approaches the team, the blood sample comes back as an ape and human hybrid, and the Biz has a bad night. |
| Appalachia 06 | Frotter Comstock's "dead Bigfoot" is an executed mercenary in a stolen Chewbacca costume, traced to his motel and his discarded kit. |
| Appalachia 07 | A secret menu, an SHA tracking device, the breaking Clinton surveillance scandal, and a wrecked Spud Hut truck full of dirt. |
| Appalachia 08 | Jan Martense leads the team below the plant and leaves them outside a "break room" of ape-men; Kurt ends the fight with a Claymore. |
| Appalachia 09 | Trapped underground, the team crosses the gold mines, finds a crack in the air pumping gas, kills Big Bob and climbs out as Jan flees. |
| Appalachia 10 | Unrecorded. Known from Walkers 01: the team catches Jan in the woods, Andrew is shot in the face, Jan is crushed by a falling ape, and the plant explodes. |
Non-canon one-shot
Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable uses a different game system, with Rita and Dante as new characters, and is not part of the campaign's story. In the recap that opens Appalachia 02, Andre decided retroactively that it was an OVA on the Smith Hotel's cable television, which Andrew half remembers from turning the set on to fall asleep.
The Walkers in Skin¶
In the days before the 1992 election the team follows a report of a dead woman seen alive to Sherman Ranch in Utah. The ranch's lights, vanishing cars and upright coyotes give way to something worse in the towns nearby: people are being replaced by skinwalkers. Andrew Howard is among those replaced. The arc ends with the National Guard, a portal under a community center, and Ross Perot winning the presidency.
Arc page: The Walkers in Skin
| Episode | Summary |
|---|---|
| Walkers 01 | An epilogue to Georgia: Bush briefs Andrew, Kurt questions the captured Jan, the Biz goes on Letterman, and Alberta Wilmarth brings a new case. |
| Walkers 02 | The team settles into a double-wide on the ranch and meets Alberta, Walt, Robert Bigelow and the people of Ballard. |
| Walkers 03 | A dusk electrical event kills and moves the car; the team starts the exhumation request and visits the grave, the substation and the community center site. |
| Walkers 04 | On night patrol a coyote walks upright and the rental car vanishes straight up, to be found fused into a street in Roosevelt. |
| Walkers 05 | A night event brings shared hallucinations, levitation and a ring of light Bigelow calls the Black Sun; radar finds a vast cavern under the ranch. |
| Walkers 06 | Ballard is emptying out, the sheriff flees the state, Huell is bitten, and Andrew gets a note summoning him alone to the school gym. |
| Walkers 07 | A naked intruder storms the double-wide, and at the gym Andrew meets his double; the Andrew who walks out of the fire is a replica. |
| Walkers 08 | Roosevelt is cut off and its police station massacred, an autopsy finds a "pilot" in place of a brain, and the real Andrew wakes in the morgue. |
| Walkers 08.5 | Unrecorded. Known from the recap in Walkers 09: horses around the roadblock, a radio call to the National Guard, the barricade fight, and the police station cleared. |
| Walkers 09 | The Guard assaults the community center, the false Howard is exposed and killed, the portal machine is destroyed, and Perot wins the election. |
The Roulet Estate¶
On Inauguration Day 1993, with President Perot about to disband the task force, the team wakes hungover and without memories in an abandoned house in Rhode Island, alongside Diane and a monk they seem to have kidnapped. Something that looks like a Grey is shooting at them with a Soviet rifle. The answer is more human than expected, and the arc closes with the team scattered and the Biz in Russian hands.
Arc page: The Roulet Estate
| Episode | Summary |
|---|---|
| Roulet Estate 01 | After flashbacks to Utah and Christmas Eve, the team wakes stranded at 118 Benefit Street, where a grey figure with a sniper rifle wounds Huell. |
| Roulet Estate 02 | Two bodies, a stolen car, a hidden attic lair occupied for a year or more, and the discovery that the house's water is drugged. |
| Roulet Estate 03 | A hostage siege at a pharmacy unmasks the "alien" as a man in a latex mask; months later the team is disbanded and Perot phones Andrew. |
The Radford Horrors¶
In April 1993 Perot calls the former task force back as consultants under a by-the-book new agent, Daniel Webster, to find an FBI team that vanished in Radford. The town has new disappearances, a fenced site owned by the Safe Environment Fund, and traces of more moths. In Russia the Biz is the guest and prisoner of Boris Yeltsin. This is the latest arc, and its story is unfinished as of episode 04.
Arc page: The Radford Horrors
| Episode | Summary |
|---|---|
| Radford Horrors 01 | The Biz is questioned by Yeltsin in Moscow while the others search his apartment and are placed under Webster by the new FBI director, Giuliani. |
| Radford Horrors 02 | Back in Radford: an IRS raid, the missing agents' tents, a clash at the Safe Environment Fund fence in which Andrew is shot, and a rabid mouse. |
| Radford Horrors 03 | The Biz saves Yeltsin from a convoy ambush; in Radford the team takes rabies shots and investigates an abduction at the Pinball Emporium. |
| Radford Horrors 04 | A survivor of a crashed triangular craft says "not aliens, the opposite of aliens"; Andrew wakes Wilbur Whateley, who says the moth was pregnant. |
Notes on numbering and dates¶
- Episode numbers follow each arc's own count, so the unrecorded sessions keep their slots: Summer Service 02, Appalachia 05 and Appalachia 10. Two more fell between numbered sessions and are listed as Summer Service 05.5 and Walkers 08.5.
- The Marblehead case is handed to the team at the end of Radford Horror 08, and Walkers 01 is mostly the epilogue of the Georgia case.
- The one-shot has no episode number and sits outside every arc.
- Andre dates the opening of The Radford Horrors to "early April '93." (Radford Horrors 01)