Skip to content

The Radford Horror, Episode 02

The task force works the Whateley disappearance, learns of a boy who robbed a Radio Shack in a homemade spacesuit, maps a plague of vanishing dogs, and finds that both missing women were patients of the same psychiatrist.
Arc The Radford Horror
Episode 02
Setting Radford, Virginia
In-fiction date Late May 1992, a weekday; from about 11 a.m. to about 4 p.m. on the team's first full day in Radford
Players present Andre (Keeper), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita; Kira sat in without a character
Previous Radford Horror 01
Next Radford Horror 03

Synopsis

Picking up straight after the interview with Tyler, the agents put the therapist off and follow the sheriff to the Whateley house, where Irene Whateley walked into the woods the night before. They learn the family's history: one twin, Abe, robbed a Radio Shack in a homemade spacesuit three years ago and vanished, and the other, Wilbur, has been unresponsive since a car crash. At the sheriff's station they find a thick file on missing dogs, all taken from houses that back onto the forest. Dr. Lori admits to treating both missing women but denies writing Amanda Lucky's painkiller prescription, and the pharmacist confides that the paper record of it has disappeared. (Radford Horror 02)

Plot

The Whateley house

On the drive, Sheriff Frank Roosevelt gives Kurt Larson the outline: these are the twins Amanda was once involved with, and their mother saw something out of the kitchen window last night and walked into the trees. The house sits in a nicer, cookie-cutter subdivision with a neglected yard. Inside, neighbors fuss around the shell-shocked husband, Yobiah Whateley. (Radford Horror 02)

The Biz walks Irene's route to the tree line fifty feet away (Investigate a Mystery, 8) and finds two sets of footprints of about the same size, one in a heavier shoe, one following the other into the woods until the ground cover swallows the trail after a dozen feet. Yobiah's boots are far too big to match. Kurt interviews him: Irene seemed "surprised," dropped the pan, ignored him and stormed out; he assumed she had gone to scare off a coyote or fighting cats, and waited ten minutes before going to look for her. Since Wilbur's accident she had struggled with depression. (Radford Horror 02)

A neighbor, Meg Gunderson (see minor characters), corners Kurt with gossip. The family was "living the American dream" until their dog went missing, a couple of weeks before Abe's "episode." Abe robbed the store wearing a homemade spacesuit built for a school presentation, and he once dated "that Lucky girl." The table immediately connects this to the spaceman Tyler described. Roosevelt tells Huell Kendrick about Wilbur's crash: fifteen, on a learner's permit, coming down from the mountains in the rain with a high blood-alcohol level. (Radford Horror 02)

Two bedrooms

Abe's room has been kept untouched as a shrine: shuttle poster, UFO painting, shelves of pop science. Andrew Howard, called in as the space buff, finds a hidden book of amateur alien-abduction illustrations. The Biz later finds a receive-only radio on the sill, powers it with batteries from his walkie, and discovers it is tuned to the Art Bell station favored by the Pay n' Stay clerk, whom Yobiah says Abe used to talk to. A roll of 11 on the bookshelf turns up overdue astronomy books, adult ufology texts and a hollowed-out Where the Sidewalk Ends holding about $130, which the Biz leaves in place. Howard concludes that the robbery was probably not about money. (Radford Horror 02)

In the next room Wilbur sits slumped in a wheelchair by the window among pinned butterflies and insects, barely reacting. His father says he has not spoken since the accident and can only carry on an action once someone starts it for him. Both twins' shoes are near the size of the prints. Huell's questioning of Yobiah fills in the day of the robbery (Abe grabbed toast and ran; Wilbur phoned from school to say he never arrived), and the twins' friends: the Nichols girl, the Augustine girl and her brother, and the McCreadys. (Radford Horror 02)

The Biz slips into the parents' bedroom (11, two questions). Nothing is packed and no jewelry is gone, so Irene expected an ordinary night. He also finds Prozac and lithium prescribed by Lawrence Lori, with pills left in the bottles. Outside, Roosevelt says Lori is the only psychiatrist in town and that he is "increasingly thinking you shouldn't go see him." Howard searches the woods for signs of an abduction and misses with a 6. (Radford Horror 02)

The records closet

Roosevelt was on paternity leave during the Radio Shack robbery, so he learns the details with the agents at the sheriff's station. With Huell helping (Help Out, 11), the Biz (8) reconstructs it from the file: Abe threw a cinder block through the window, came in wearing the suit, tried and failed to lift the heavier items (leaving the fingerprints that identified him), and left with lightweight modems, a cellular phone and other portable gear in a garbage bag, then bought a bus ticket to Richmond. None of it ever resurfaced. (Radford Horror 02)

Howard, with his bonus for anything written, rolls a 12 on the missing dogs. A thick folder of complaints goes back a couple of years and has spiked in the last six to eight months, annotated by the sheriff: "What the fuck? Why so many dogs? Perverts???" No dog under about forty pounds has been taken and no remains have been found. Huell marks the cases on a tourist map (8): every house borders the national forest, mostly on the Lucky and Whateley side of town. Roosevelt holds to his pervert theory, is horrified by the Biz's idea of using a shelter dog as bait, and mentions UFO call-ins and complaints about light aircraft flying at night out of Roanoke. Kurt asks Diane to check highway-patrol roadkill figures. (Radford Horror 02)

Dr. Lori

At Dr. Lori's office, a brownstone in the middle of town, Kurt chats up the receptionist about his children and tells her he is a consultant, "ex-CIA," and "mostly desk duty now." Lori says Irene began treatment a year and a half ago for night terrors and insomnia and quit six months ago, unable to bear the lithium tremors and the side effects of the Prozac; he never met her sons. He treated Amanda for about three years for anxiety and depressive tendencies, prescribed only Xanax, and flatly denies the painkillers. He speaks of "the mismatch between the expectations she had created for herself and her true id" and refuses to go further without consent. (Radford Horror 02)

The Biz leans on him (Manipulate Someone, 8) while Huell cleans his nails with a knife. Lori holds out until Kurt points out that Amanda has been gone three days and left in her pajamas with nothing, and then gives up one thing: Amanda said her boyfriend, Dean Lawson, was involved in drugs. Kurt's attempt to read Lori's body language comes to a 4, but Huell's Read a Bad Situation (13) marks Lori as buttoned-down but capable of violence if cornered. With Huell's help the Biz plants a bug (Act Under Pressure, 9); it fails to stick under his chair and rolls into a corner vent, where the audio will be poor and retrieval hard. (Radford Horror 02)

The pharmacy and Arby's

At the pharmacy the pharmacist finds a computer record of Vicodin for Amanda under Lori's name, entered about a year ago, some four months after her other medication began, and filled regularly ever since. The other Vicodin patients on his books are mostly seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, and Dean Lawson is not among them. Anyone with the password can alter the computer record; prescriptions are phoned in and written in a paper book first. He goes to find the original, comes back saying he cannot talk, and is persuaded by Kurt (Manipulate Someone, 10) to say off the record that the paper entry is missing, "a big problem." (Radford Horror 02)

Lunch at Arby's is a Tough roll for everyone. Kurt, Howard and Huell get through it (8, 9 and 11); the Biz rolls a 5, takes two bites and spends forty-five minutes in the bathroom. At about 4 p.m. the team lists what comes next: the pharmacy's security tapes (kept for only a month), local hikers who might know how someone could live in the woods, the twins' friends, Matt McCready, and above all Dean Lawson. (Radford Horror 02)

Cold open and framing

The cold open returns to the rooftop watcher: a man with close-cropped light brown hair, sunglasses and a dark suit watches something through binoculars, is startled and swears, keys at a small electronic device from his briefcase, runs down a fire escape and speeds off in a white van. Cut to credits. Andre then recaps the previous session in his own voice rather than as a "previously on," and there is no cliffhanger: the episode ends on a to-do list. See The show. (Radford Horror 02)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Organizations

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • Two people of similar shoe size walked into the woods from the Whateley kitchen door; neither was Yobiah, and both twins' shoes are close to the size.
  • Abe Whateley owned a homemade spacesuit, stole communications equipment rather than money, and had been talking to the Pay n' Stay clerk and listening to the same station.
  • Large dogs have been vanishing from houses along the forest for a couple of years, at an accelerating rate, with no remains found. The Whateleys' dog was an early case.
  • Irene Whateley and Amanda Lucky were both Dr. Lori's patients.
  • Amanda's painkiller prescription exists in the pharmacy computer under Lori's name, but its paper original is missing and Lori denies writing it.
  • Lori names Dean Lawson as involved in drugs.

(Radford Horror 02)

Open threads

  • Where Irene, Amanda and Abe are, and what Irene saw.
  • Who entered the prescription and who removed the paper record; the security tapes are kept for only a month.
  • The man in the white van.
  • The Pay n' Stay clerk's connection to Abe; the UFO caller list; the night flights from Roanoke.
  • The bug in the vent, Diane's roadkill check, and the proposed night stakeout in the woods.
  • What became of the stolen Radio Shack equipment after Richmond.

(Radford Horror 02)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"It's not fishing. It's perverts. You don't go fishing for perverts."

Andre (as Sheriff Roosevelt), on the bait-dog idea

Quote

"Using an animal in an op almost never works out. They're unpredictable, they're unprofessional."

Dante (as Kurt)

Quote

"Sir, I work for the FBI. It is. Hundred percent."

Ezra (as the Biz), when Yobiah says Usenet "also seems like probably perverts"

Quote

"Supposing I wanted to fraudulently fill a prescription, how might I go about doing that?"

Zack (as Huell), to the pharmacist

Quote

"Two spacemen, what are the odds?"

Zack, out of character

Quote

"I think the greatest monster is man."

Andre, when Zack asks "What sort of creature is it?" about Dr. Lori's waiting room

(Radford Horror 02)

Table notes

  • Andre opens by reminding everyone to mark experience on a roll of 6 or less and by explaining Help Out, which Huell then uses twice with his +3 Cool ("I'm so fucking cool"). See game mechanics.
  • Each agent's extra move comes up: Kurt gets +1 for intimidating with the truth, the Biz +1 when hiding evidence of a crime, Huell +1 on a first interrogation of an uncooperative subject, and Howard +1 on anything involving text.
  • "Perverts" becomes the sheriff's catch-all explanation and a running gag.
  • Dante reveals out of character that Kurt's wife is a former Viet Cong who once tortured him, and that her phone call in the first episode ended with "Come back in honor or not at all, American pig dog."
  • Andre checks anachronisms as he goes (HIPAA, OxyContin, Pokémon) and remarks, during a long stretch of note-taking, "Gotta love a D&D campaign with homework."
  • Ezra shares his theory (Abe living in the woods and eating dogs) while Andre has his headphones off so that he cannot react.
  • Failed rolls that earned experience: Rita's 6 in the woods, Dante's miss reading Lori, and Ezra's 5 at Arby's.

(Radford Horror 02)

Continuity

  • Mr. Whateley's first name wavers: the sheriff calls him Yobiah on arrival, Meg Gunderson calls him Josiah, and Andre closes the session by confirming Yobiah.
  • Amanda's hidden painkiller was oxycodone in Radford Horror 01. Partway through this session the table questions whether that fits 1992, and Andre changes it to Vicodin ("because that was '78"); it is Vicodin from here on.
  • The Luckys said in Radford Horror 01 that Amanda had been seeing Dr. Lori for about a year; Lori himself says about three.
  • Roosevelt is only ever "the sheriff" in this session.
  • Lori first says Irene came to him "about a year ago," and Andre immediately corrects this to a start a year and a half ago and an end six months ago.
  • Sets up the interview with Dean Lawson and the search for the twins' friends in Radford Horror 03, and plants the bug that pays off later in the arc.

(Radford Horror 02)