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The Radford Horror, Episode 03

A day of split parties and bad rolls ends on a mountain road, where a silent blue-flashing object circles a borrowed car and Kurt runs over a man who says he is from the NSA.
Arc The Radford Horror
Episode 03
Setting Radford, Virginia and the mountain road to the ski lodge
In-fiction date Late May 1992; the same day as Radford Horror 02, from about 3:30 p.m. into the night
Players present Andre (Keeper), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita
Previous Radford Horror 02
Next Radford Horror 04

Synopsis

Listening to the bug in his office, the agents hear Dr. Lori take a heated phone call and rush out. They tail him to a suburban barn where a man is typing a romance novel, and Kurt Larson spends two hours hidden in the hayloft. A white van then tails the team; to turn the tables, Kurt and the Biz commandeer an elderly couple's car at a McDonald's drive-thru and chase the van up the mountain. On the way down, a large silent object shadows their car and flares blue under their flashlights, and at the same moment Kurt hits a man in a black suit who identifies himself as Agent Murphy of the NSA and sets Kurt on fire with a flashlight. Elsewhere on the mountain, Huell Kendrick and Andrew Howard stumble on an armed group in a clearing. The episode ends in a hospital parking lot. (Radford Horror 03)

Plot

The barn

At Arby's, about 3:30 p.m., the team reviews its leads. From the car outside Dr. Lori's office the Biz listens to the bug (Investigate a Mystery, 10) and hears, muffled by the vent, one side of an angry phone call ("You don't know," "I swear to God"), a slammed handset, pacing and a metallic click. Lori hurries to his car. Huell eases the agents' car out of sight (Act Under Pressure, 13) and Kurt tails him (12) to a wide ranch house with a lit barn in the back yard. (Radford Horror 03)

Kurt goes in on foot. Lori storms out of the barn and peels away; a man follows him to the door, smokes, says "Fuck," and goes back inside, where a typewriter starts up. Andrew, tailing Lori for the first time in his career, rolls a 6 and loses him. To identify the house the others try to rip a chained phone book out of a booth; three weak Tough rolls tear the spine off, and they carry back loose pages while a man mowing his lawn stares. The address belongs to Derek and Maybelline Augustine, the parents of Amanda's friend Phoebe. Deputy Molly Underhill says by phone that the family has a son and a daughter, that she has seen them at church, and that they have never come to police attention. (Radford Horror 03)

When the writer goes up to the house, Kurt picks the barn lock (Act Under Pressure, 9), radios "if you don't hear from me at midnight, I'm dead," switches off his radio and climbs into the hayloft. The writer returns, flips a jazz record and types for two hours. When he leaves for dinner Kurt searches the barn. His first Investigate roll is a 4, but he learns that the manuscript is about a thousand pages of "the shittiest romance novel anyone has ever seen." He copies a notepad of plot notes and dates paired with unfamiliar acronyms, notes condoms in the desk, and on a second roll (7) finds a small hair tie with a pink butterfly in the couch cushions. He reports evidence of an affair, possibly with someone underage. (Radford Horror 03)

The failed heist

Meanwhile the others return to Lori's office to recover the bug. Huell fails to find a way through the window (Sharp, 6), then talks his way in with a lost-jacket story. The bug is visible down in the vent. His attempt to distract the receptionist by admiring the window is a 5, the miss that levels him up, and she ushers him out and locks the door. By 5:15 p.m. it is, in Rita's words, a "failed heist." An hour spent cruising the woods for dogs and lights finds nothing. (Radford Horror 03)

The white van

Collecting Kurt, the team is tailed by a white van, which only Kurt notices (Sharp, 10). After debating a gun at a stoplight, a brake check and Kurt's spike strip, they pick a McDonald's whose drive-thru wraps the building. The van parks at the Radio Shack across the street. Kurt and the Biz walk up to the car ahead in line, which holds a very elderly couple, Howard and his wife. Kurt's Manipulate Someone is an 8 and the Biz's Help Out a 4; the couple only get out after Kurt shows his Vietnam scars, and only settle once Andrew and Huell show them FBI badges. They wait in the agents' car with Andrew and Huell, eating the agents' McDonald's order, and Kurt puts on the old man's hat. (Radford Horror 03)

When the van leaves, Kurt and the Biz follow in the couple's old diesel (Act Under Pressure, 13) up the road to the ski lodge. The van accelerates, the diesel tops out at seventy, and they lose it, keeping only the plate. Reading the road afterwards (the Biz, 8), they can tell only that there are places where the trees are thin enough for a van to have pulled off. Several minutes behind, Andrew and Huell see Dean Lawson's red Miata pull out of the woods where there is no road, and turn to follow it. (Radford Horror 03)

The clearing

The Miata turns onto a dirt road midway down the mountain. Huell goes in on foot with the Biz's night-vision scope and finds an idling vehicle in a clearing and tense voices speaking Spanish. He snaps a twig, and five or six people with flashlights, one with a shotgun, spread out to look (see Armed group in the woods). Read a Bad Situation (11) and Act Under Pressure (11) get him away. Two of the group reach Andrew at the car with the elderly couple in the back: a muscular teenager in a letterman jacket, who says they are camping, and a thin, twitchy man the teen calls "my uncle Trevor," who reaches into his coat and stops. Andrew bluffs that he is driving his parents down from the lodge (Manipulate Someone, 7), senses he will be shot if he stays, drives around a bend and waits. (Radford Horror 03)

The object and Agent Murphy

At dusk above the lodge, Kurt notices stars going out. A large dark object is circling over the diesel. His Investigate roll (9) establishes that it is silent, powered, somewhere between an ultralight and a Cessna in size, complicated in outline, under a couple of hundred feet up, and following them specifically. The Biz tears off the rearview mirror to look up, and both men lean out with flashlights. On the Biz's Act Under Pressure of 12 the object flares a dazzling blue, makes a noise neither has heard before, shows folded, compact shapes, and zips over the tree line. (Radford Horror 03)

In the same instant a man in a black suit, with short dark hair and sunglasses hanging at his neck, steps out of the woods into the road and stares at the car like a deer in the headlights. Andre offers Kurt a choice between swerving while leaning out of the window and simply hitting him, and Kurt hits him at about fifty miles an hour. To Kurt he looks a little like the man who had been following the team, though he cannot be sure. The man cracks the windshield, rolls over the car, and is found alive, vomiting blood and clutching a flashlight and a briefcase. He refuses a hospital, claims to be camping, and finally shows a badge: "I'm Agent Murphy. I'm NSA. You are fucking this up for me. Get back in your car and drive away." When Kurt grabs him (Kick Some Ass, 8, for no harm because Kurt is unarmed), Murphy points the flashlight. There is a blue-purple flash and a rapid electric clacking; Kurt's shirt ignites for 3 harm and both agents are blinded for most of a minute. Kurt bites open a hollow molar and spits a dose of LSD into Murphy's mouth (Act Under Pressure, 10). Murphy runs. The Biz chases him through the woods (Act Under Pressure, 8) while Murphy fires wildly over his shoulder and trees burst into flame; the Biz shouts a warning, fires a warning shot, then shoots to hit and misses with a 4. Murphy drops off a ledge and is gone. In a cutaway the agents do not see, Murphy, with a fractured skull and foaming at the mouth, fires at birds in the trees until the device overheats and he vanishes in a pulse of light. (Radford Horror 03)

Kurt has circles of charred tissue on his chest. The team regroups at the roadside, where old Howard wraps his jacket around Kurt and insists the burns need a hospital at once. The agents return the dented car to its owners with Diane's number for reimbursement, and heads for the hospital. In the car Andrew performs a healing rite (Lay On Hands, 9), healing 2 of Kurt's harm at the cost of a persistent nosebleed, and Huell's first aid (8) heals 2 more. Andrew will not stop talking about spiritual frequencies, and Huell turns up "Baby Got Back" to drown him out. (Radford Horror 03)

Cold open and framing

The cold open is set in the woods: a pile of composting leaves and sticks, a heap of dog collars, approaching footsteps, and one more collar thrown on the pile (see Radford's missing dogs). Andre then cuts to credits. The episode has no stated cliffhanger, but closes on the car pulling into the emergency room lot with a burned Kurt in the back seat. See The show. (Radford Horror 03)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

  • The silent flying object, later identified as the Radford Moth

Organizations

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • Dr. Lori is under pressure from someone, and has an angry relationship with the man who writes in the Augustine barn.
  • The barn holds condoms, a girl's hair tie and a notepad of dates paired with acronyms.
  • Something large, silent and powered is flying over the mountain; it followed the agents' car and flashed blue when lit.
  • A man calling himself Agent Murphy of the NSA is operating in the woods with a man-portable beam weapon. Kurt knows of CIA and DARPA beam projects, but those need a car full of batteries.
  • An armed, Spanish-speaking group meets in a clearing off the mountain road, and Dean Lawson's Miata came from the same woods.

(Radford Horror 03)

Open threads

  • Who Murphy really is and what happened to him. Kurt does not believe he is NSA; the Biz decides that the object is a secret government project.
  • Whether Murphy is the man who has been watching the team since the first morning. Andre says only that he "looks a little bit like the guy who was following you earlier."
  • Who is in the white van; the team has its plate.
  • What the armed group is doing, and how Dean Lawson is involved.
  • Whose hair tie was in the barn.
  • The bug is still in the vent; the team now talks of a warrant.
  • Matt McCready, Laura Nichols and Phoebe Augustine have still not been interviewed.

(Radford Horror 03)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"I'm Agent Murphy. I'm NSA. You are fucking this up for me."

Andre (as Agent Murphy), after being hit by the car

Quote

"Goddamn it, I hate hitting somebody in a borrowed car, you know."

Dante (as Kurt)

Quote

"I got shot in the exact same place, twice, in Vietnam, five years apart. Now, that's a sacrifice."

Dante (as Kurt), winning over the elderly couple

Quote

"My working theory is now that this is some kind of NSA secret project we've stumbled across, and aliens are back off the menu. So, you know, sorry, Andrew Howard."

Ezra, on the Biz's view of the night

Quote

"Failed heist. Yeah, calling it a heist is generous. ... Like, the Ocean's Eleven montage would be sad."

Andre, after the attempt to recover the bug

Quote

"Hey, Howard, you ever been shot?"

Zack (as Huell), to the old man

(Radford Horror 03)

Table notes

  • Andre calls it "a roll-heavy episode" in which "we're all having to do things we're bad at." The party splits two, three and at one point four ways.
  • Experience piles up: everyone marks it at the phone booth, Zack levels up on the failed window gambit, and Ezra's track overflows. Ezra rolls double sixes on the flashlight moment.
  • The contents of the car trunk are read out from a shared inventory: stilts, didgeridoos, a jug labelled "Wolf Urine," rollerblades, lawn darts, a black-painted Super Soaker and much more. "Why do you have that?" "Why wouldn't I?"
  • Kurt's LSD tooth is one of four hollow molars, each with a different drug.
  • There are two Howards in one car: Andrew Howard and the old man.
  • The Biz's nuggets come back to him cold at the end of the night. Andre maintains that Arby's is the worst chain in America.
  • When Kurt studies the object overhead, Andre remarks that this is "literally what this is for, for the first time in this campaign": Investigate a Mystery used on an actual paranormal phenomenon.

See running gags and game mechanics. (Radford Horror 03)

Continuity

  • Pays off the bug planted in Radford Horror 02, though not by recovering it.
  • The white van from the cold open of Radford Horror 02 reappears as a tail.
  • Kurt mentions "the Tulpa thing" as the one time ritual work may have succeeded for him.
  • Kurt ends the episode burned and Andrew with a nosebleed; both carry into Radford Horror 04, as does the question of what is left at the burned roadside.

(Radford Horror 03)