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The Radford Horror, Episode 01

The series premiere: four reassigned agents are thrown together in a derelict Washington barbershop, handed a missing-cheerleader case in Radford, Virginia, and told that the only witness is a four-year-old who saw a spaceman.
Arc The Radford Horror
Episode 01 (first session of the campaign)
Setting Washington, D.C.; the road south; Radford, Virginia
In-fiction date Spring 1992; the task force assembles on May 24th, 1992, and the episode ends the following morning
Players present Andre (Keeper), Rita, Dante, Ezra, Zack
Previous None
Next Radford Horror 02

Synopsis

In the post-Soviet reshuffle of spring 1992, Andrew Howard, Kurt Larson, Dick "The Biz" Baxter and Huell Kendrick are each moved onto a new presidential task force that most of the FBI regards as make-work. They set up in a run-down barbershop, discover an arsenal in its basement, and receive their first case: Amanda Lucky, 17, vanished from a locked third-story bedroom in Radford. After a miserable night in a bedbug-ridden motel they meet the wary local sheriff, learn of a second disappearance, and work the Lucky house. By the end of the session the evidence says Amanda climbed out of her window and up to the roof of her own accord, with help, and somebody on the post office roof has been watching the agents through binoculars. (Radford Horror 01)

Plot

Four reassignments

Andrew Howard's boss, sitting on his desk like a cool substitute teacher, warns him that leading the task force "has boondoggle written all over it" and advises him to be "the most normal thing in your environment." In a flashback, Andrew's mentor Mr. King tells him that he serves a higher purpose, that "the next master is coming," perhaps next year and perhaps in three or four, and that their organization must open secular minds to "his truth and his laws" against "the forces of silence" (see The Masters). On his way out Andrew learns that colleagues call him "Andrew the Alien," and decides the nickname is rad. (Radford Horror 01)

Kurt Larson, a CIA man on loan to the FBI Counterterrorism Task Force, is downsized by a boss fond of a crocodile-versus-German-Shepherd analogy, and is given a "sweetheart" gig hunting ghosts and little green men for the president until his contract ends. Dick Baxter of Counterintelligence is paged out of the canteen mid-corn-dog and laterally transferred to a unit described to him as handling "technological threats to national security"; his boss recites the chain of command as Andrew Howard, then Big Bill Nelson, then the deputy director, then Bush Sr. Huell Kendrick, in the middle of a divorce, is told that he is not fired and that charges will not be pressed, but that he is off his investigation and his team and bound for a "make-work task force." Dick's coworker Toby, his successor Donner and the other office figures are listed under minor characters. (Radford Horror 01)

The barbershop

On May 24th, 1992, at about 7 a.m., Andrew finds the task force's address: a derelict former Capitol Police building, a barbershop full of document boxes, with a ticket-covered 1961 Lincoln Continental parked in the fire lane as the unit's loan car. Inside is the secretary, Diane, chain-smoking and spinning in a barber chair, as baffled by the posting as anyone. A Tough roll of 7 leaves Andrew desperate for a bathroom that is full of boxes, and he uses a barber sink while Diane retreats upstairs singing "Natural Woman." Dick, who has been staking out the building from across the street for hours, sees it happen. (Radford Horror 01)

The rest of the team arrives around 9 a.m. Clearing the bathroom, Huell (Investigate a Mystery, rolled on Cool and ruled a complete success) finds a medicine cabinet hidden behind the plumbing holding two mason jars labelled "Ephedrine" and "Mandrax," which Diane calls old "stakeout candy." Kurt's opinions on expired Mandrax bring up his past in UTAW. Asked what the unit does, Andrew answers, "We're hunting aliens." Kurt then turns to the keypad-locked steel door to the basement: after a hopeful 0-0-0 fails, he fetches Luminol and a blacklight from his minivan, sees 0, 1, 4 and 5 glowing, and works through combinations until the three-digit code turns out to be 4-5-1. He cartwheels down the stairs gun in hand (Act Under Pressure, a 10 on the dice plus 2 Cool) into a steel-walled panic room stocked with Vietnam-era arms: M16s, a napalm launcher, a box of hand grenades, what Kurt takes for an RPG, and a couple of landmines. When Diane notices a landmine, Andrew gives her a speech about benevolent aliens guiding humanity, and she resolves to trust "the institution and you personally." (Radford Horror 01)

A courier delivers the first case file. Radford is a hotspot on the Atolean Paranatural Index, which ranks places by UFO and cryptid sightings and disappearances per capita, and Amanda Lucky vanished two days earlier from a third-story bedroom locked from the inside. An insomniac four-year-old says a spaceman took her, and an artist's sketch is attached. (Radford Horror 01)

The road to Radford

The team drives four hours and sixteen minutes in the Lincoln, which has no air conditioning and a radio that drifts to static. Kurt drives and serves cucumber sandwiches and juice boxes packed by his wife; Dick and Huell play War and drink in the back. At a gas stop in Harrisonburg, Dick's Act Under Pressure roll of 7 offers him a hard choice in the toilet (he can finish, but something will tear), which he declines, beginning the campaign's longest-running bodily saga. (Radford Horror 01)

Radford proves "offensively quaint": population 16,000, colonial revival kitsch, a river and train tracks. The Ferry Lodge is booked solid by an oral surgeons' convention, so the agents take four rooms at $26 each, cash only, at the Pay n' Stay across the street. Its clerk, an Art Bell listener surrounded by UFO posters, warns of missing people, lights in the sky and "people walking around who haven't even been born," and says his father thought the town was cursed because the local armory (the Radford Arsenal) made the guncotton for the atom bomb. Kurt phones the sheriff's office, where Deputy Molly Underhill fetches Sheriff Frank Roosevelt, who sets a 9 a.m. meeting and recommends aluminum foil under the bed feet. Nobody trusts the beds. Dick lies on the shower curtain, rolls a 6 and does not sleep at all; Kurt, in a wetsuit with foil under the bed feet, rolls a 9 and sleeps passably; Huell wakes with a rash across his back; and Andrew, curled up in the tub, sleeps soundly. By 7 a.m. Andrew has spent an hour debating good and bad aliens with the clerk. (Radford Horror 01)

The diner and the watcher

At the Lonely Mountain Diner the waitress Sheila serves breakfast and a superb blackcurrant pie, and blames Radford's disappearances on careless hikers and bears. Stepping out to a payphone, Kurt spots a man in black with binoculars on the post office roof and about forty missing-dog posters. Underhill tells him the sheriff is running late and that she knows of no surveillance operation; Kurt memorizes the plates in the post office lot (Sharp, 13, enough to recognize the cars if he sees them again) and quietly warns the others. A red Miata with a cut muffler roars past, and Sheila names the driver as Dean Lawson, a high-school football player whose parents bought him the car. (Radford Horror 01)

Roosevelt arrives late, sends Underhill to a payphone to verify the agents' credentials with the FBI (Kurt has only his CIA case officer papers, which Underhill takes down too), and asks for no "cowboy bullshit." Dick tries to win him over by calling the case make-work and misses on Manipulate Someone (6, even with +2 Charm). The sheriff's delay has a cause: the evening before, Mrs. Whateley, whose family knows the Luckys and lives a couple of miles from them, stared out of her kitchen window while making dinner, put down her pan and walked off into the night as her husband watched; the woods have been searched since. Roosevelt adds that he recently saw Amanda with a biker who is not her boyfriend, Matt McCready, and at the house he lists her boyfriend Dean Lawson and the Whateley twins as the other young men in her life. (Radford Horror 01)

The Lucky house and the witness

Amanda's third-story bedroom at the Lucky house overhangs a carport, with a two-story drop and no impact marks; the door was locked from inside. Dick's roll of 6 gets nothing useful from the distraught parents, but Huell (an 11 on the dice for a total of 14, hold 2) interviews Liam Lucky alone and establishes that the parents are innocent and that Liam does classified work at the Arsenal. Kurt (Investigate, 13) finds the window unlocked, the drainpipe above it knocked loose, and a hollow bedpost hiding Xanax and Vicodin prescribed by Dr. Lawrence Lori, the town's only therapist, whom Amanda had been seeing for about a year and whom the Luckys believed was helping with her grades and study habits. Andrew (Investigate, 9 plus 1) finds Amanda's diary with every page removed. Kurt climbs the ivy trellis to the roof and finds a bent, scratched metal smokestack where a rope could have been tied. The conclusion is that Amanda left willingly, upward. The parents blame Matt McCready, who lives with his father Ed at a tourist ski lodge in the mountains. (Radford Horror 01)

Across the road, four-year-old Tyler is woken over his mother's objections. Dick gives him an FBI sticker and Kurt a "Viet Cong tooth." Tyler describes a bright light and a spaceman all in white with a helmet, up above the Lucky house, who "kind of just went down"; his parents sent him back to bed, and when he looked again the figure was gone. Roosevelt thinks he dreamed it; Kurt suggests a man in a motorcycle suit. The Luckys confirm that nothing is missing from the room, not even money or a toothbrush, and are surprised to see the diary gutted. The session ends there. (Radford Horror 01)

Cold open and framing

This is the episode that establishes the campaign as a television show ("If this were a TV show, which let's say it is"). The cold open is a helicopter shot over Jefferson National Forest, stamped "Jefferson National Forest, Virginia, 1992," in which something blue darts over the tree line before a cut to credits. The intro theme plays over double-exposed faces of the agents looking serious in suits, urban decay and cult imagery, and a white-on-black sans-serif title card reads "The Radford Horror." Scenes are introduced with "cut to" and "fade out," and Andre cues music throughout, including music from The Thing in Amanda's bedroom. There is no recap, commercial break or cliffhanger. (Radford Horror 01)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Organizations

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • Amanda almost certainly left voluntarily: the window was unlocked, the drainpipe was knocked loose, the roof smokestack is bent and scratched, and the door was locked from inside. Someone on the roof is suspected of helping.
  • Amanda was hiding Xanax and Vicodin (called oxycodone in this episode, and corrected in Radford Horror 02) prescribed by Dr. Lori, whom her parents believed had prescribed nothing.
  • Her diary has been gutted, and her parents did not know. Nothing else is missing from the room.
  • Liam Lucky works on something classified at the Arsenal.
  • An unidentified man in black, who Kurt thinks may be ex-military, is watching the agents, and the sheriff's office says it is not theirs.
  • Mrs. Whateley's disappearance looks different in kind: she saw something from her window and walked away.

(Radford Horror 01)

Open threads

  • Where Amanda Lucky and Mrs. Whateley are, and whether the two cases are linked.
  • Who the rooftop watcher is; Kurt holds the plates from the post office lot.
  • What Dr. Lori was treating Amanda for.
  • Matt McCready, Dean Lawson and the Whateley twins as suspects; prints from the trellis and roof are pending.
  • What the spaceman was.
  • Who Mr. King's organization and the "forces of silence" are, and what the "next master" means for Andrew.
  • Why some forty dogs are missing.

(Radford Horror 01)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Jesus and the Buddha were not wholly of this world, and neither are you. Remember that."

Andre (as Mr. King), to Andrew in the flashback

Quote

"What I needed was a German Shepherd and what I got was a crocodile."

Andre (as Kurt's boss), downsizing Kurt

Quote

"We get dental. This is about to be the bleeding edge for my liver."

Ezra (as Dick), on hearing the unit called "bleeding edge"

Quote

"Not your average spook. I think of myself as more of a Casper."

Dante (as Kurt), to Deputy Underhill

Quote

"When they're sending UFOs, they aren't sending their best."

Andre (as the Pay n' Stay clerk), in the alien debate

Quote

"My life has gotten a lot more surreal since about 6 this morning."

Andre (as Diane), after spotting a landmine

(Radford Horror 01)

Table notes

  • The table is new to Monster of the Week: Ezra and Dante ask how rolls work, and Andre reads out the question lists for each move. See game mechanics.
  • During the intro music the table wonders whether Chevy Chase is a guest star, and Andre has them roll for it (a mixed success).
  • Dick rolls three 6s (questioning the Luckys, Manipulate Someone on the sheriff, and his sleep roll), and his digestion becomes a running gag from the Harrisonburg gas station onward.
  • Period dramatic irony is everywhere: Huell decorates his desk with postcards of the World Trade Center and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Kurt says the towers "will stand for a thousand years," and Huell keeps praising O.J. Simpson as a running back.
  • Andrew's use of the barber sink is brought up repeatedly; Kurt solemnly asks whether it indicates a break-in.
  • The bedbug saga: shower curtain, aluminum foil, wetsuit, rash. The oral surgeons become "tooth botherers."
  • The recording is a single mixed audio track with a good deal of crosstalk, so it is not always clear who is speaking.

(Radford Horror 01)

Continuity

  • This is the series premiere; the characters' histories come out through the reassignment scenes.
  • The dates are consistent: the case file, read on May 24th, says Amanda vanished "two days ago," and Roosevelt, speaking the next morning, says three days. Roosevelt begins his account of Mrs. Whateley with "this morning" but goes on to say she was making dinner and that the woods have been searched "since last night."
  • The task force's name is never spoken in this episode; Huell's boss says it was wanted by "the president's idiot brother."
  • Dante expands UTAW as the "unorthodox tactics and weapons division."
  • Kurt introduces Andrew to the sheriff as "my supervisor, Arnold," and Andrew has to correct the sheriff.
  • Sets up the visits to Dr. Lori, the Whateley house and the McCreadys in Radford Horror 02, and the long-running questions of the rooftop watcher, the missing dogs and Mr. King's prophecy.

(Radford Horror 01)