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The Radford Horror, Episode 04

One long night: the agents recover a dead man's scorched papers, find their motel rooms searched, watch something take a dog from a back yard, and are paged at 4:30 a.m. because a second girl has vanished.
Arc The Radford Horror
Episode 04
Setting Radford, Virginia
In-fiction date Late May 1992; from about 11 p.m. on the night of Radford Horror 03 to about 6 a.m. the next morning
Players present Andre (Keeper), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita; Kira sat in without a character
Previous Radford Horror 03
Next Radford Horror 05

Synopsis

After Kurt Larson is patched up at the emergency room, the team returns to the mountain road and follows a blood trail to a circle of glassed earth where coyotes are finishing what is left of Agent Murphy. His briefcase yields fragments of unmarked typewritten documents. Back at the Pay n' Stay the rooms have been searched, and the Biz buys DMT from the night clerk, who finally gives his name as Rutherford. Unable to sleep, the Biz watches a dark shape take a dog from a yard and then burgles Dr. Lori's office. Before dawn Phoebe Augustine runs screaming into the woods, and her blood trail ends in a clearing dusted with white powder. At daybreak Deputy Molly Underhill takes the agents aside: a mutilated body, probably Amanda Lucky's, has been found by the interstate. (Radford Horror 04)

Plot

The emergency room and the clearing

At about 11 p.m. Kurt is debrided and bandaged at the Radford ER, which returns him to 0 harm and produces about $8,000 in bills. Andrew Howard, still bleeding from the nose, is euphoric because his healing worked for the first time ever. In the waiting room the Biz describes the flashlight weapon and the hovering object, and Andrew quizzes him from a mental list of UFO shapes before proposing that the man in black was an abandoned alien in human disguise. The Biz, who lives in Washington, thinks he was "probably a person." (Radford Horror 04)

Around midnight the team returns to the mountain road. With luminol and a black light Kurt follows the faded blood (Investigate a Mystery, a 6 lifted to a 7 by the +1 Andre grants for the luminol) to a clearing where mildly high coyotes scatter from the remains. A circle of ground has melted to glass; only the back of a suit, the back of a skull and a little brain are left, and the briefcase is a melted wad. A second roll (an 11 on the dice) finds a handful of scorched teeth and, at the edge of the clearing, the wallet with the NSA identification he had shown them, holding no other cards and a little cash. There is no trace of the weapon. Kurt photographs the scene and scrapes about two pounds of remains into a bag. Where the man stepped out of the trees, tire tracks lead into the woods and simply stop, with footprints leading back to the road; Kurt's check for engine grease or other traces comes up empty. (Radford Horror 04)

Kurt puts on a welding mask and Andrew forces the briefcase open (Tough, 8). Inside are a melted wireless telegraph with a Morse key, an incinerated notepad, and typewritten pages on plain paper with no letterhead. The legible fragments, posted by Andre as a handout, include "Salem, Colorado," "annihilation de[vice]," "autonomous political assets," "unwanted scrutiny," "Menelaus," "sequence homologue," "religious ecstasy," "...ig Bill" (which Kurt reads as "Big Bill, probably, maybe"), "unknown servitor act[ivity]" and "acceptable leakage." Kurt says they look nothing like classified NSA documents he has seen; the Biz, recalling a canary trap he once ran, warns that they could be a plant. Kurt decides the sheriff will see none of it. The Biz then cleans the roadside of glass and blood (Act Under Pressure with his concealment bonus, 13), and the remains go into a gas-station cooler. (Radford Horror 04)

The Pay n' Stay

At the motel, Read a Bad Situation rolls from Kurt, Huell Kendrick and Andrew agree: the rooms have been searched. Bathroom windows were pried from outside and suitcases opened, nothing was taken, and only glove prints remain. The Biz, who has given up his room and sleeps in his car, talks to the night clerk. Rutherford holds that the visitors are the Anunnaki, spirits who made the universe in order to harvest it, that they take dogs and people to a pain dimension, and that they can be seen with the right substances. On a Manipulate Someone of 10 he sells the Biz $40 of DMT in a Jack Daniel's bottle with a hole melted in it. (Radford Horror 04)

Rutherford also mentions a guest in a big fishing hat, sunglasses and a heavy coat who checked in that afternoon, registered as "Red Dutchford," drove a brown station wagon, and left a couple of hours before the agents got back. Dr. Lori drives a brown station wagon and loosely fits the description. While Andrew keeps the clerk talking about aliens until 2 a.m., Kurt bump-keys the room (Act Under Pressure, 9, raised to a full success by Andrew's Help). It was never slept in and has been wiped, but he lifts a partial print. Huell, who took no precautions, fails a Tough roll and now has bedbugs. (Radford Horror 04)

The Biz's night out

The Biz drives out with his lights off and his night-vision glasses on, meaning to recover his bug. An Investigate roll of 10 shows him a dark shape skimming the treetops behind the houses that border the woods. It does not glow in night vision, it shrinks as it dives and spreads as it rises, and it dips briefly to the ground in one yard. There he finds a doghouse and a snapped leash (see Radford's missing dogs). He pounds on the back door and slips away as the family comes out. (Radford Horror 04)

He then breaks into Lori's office with one of Kurt's stilts as a pry bar, retrieves the bug from the vent, and takes the back off the locked filing cabinet to photograph the files of everyone the team has met. His roll is a 7, so the cabinet will not go back together. To pass it off as a junkie burglary he steals a prescription pad, throws a brick through the window from outside, clogs the toilet and draws on the stall. He is asleep in his car by 4 a.m. (Radford Horror 04)

Phoebe

At 4:30 a.m. every pager goes off. Andrew recognizes the number as the sheriff's station (Sharp, 11) and calls back from the payphone, and Underhill tells him that Phoebe Augustine has been missing from her bed for about an hour. At the Augustine house, where Kurt hid in the barn the day before, police and neighbors are combing the woods. Fatigue rolls leave the Biz and Andrew at -1 for the day. An elderly neighbor heard a scream "like someone seeing something horrible" and saw Phoebe, barefoot in a long T-shirt, run into the dark without answering. (Radford Horror 04)

Kurt tracks her blood with luminol (9) to a clearing about forty feet by thirty, twenty feet short of the river, where the trail stops. Andrew's Investigate roll of 12 finds a dusty, earthy, unhealthy "terrarium" smell and a faint chalky white powder concentrated exactly where the trail ends, and he takes samples. Asking what sort of creature did this, he is reminded of the "Angel of Death" photograph of wing marks in snow: something physically lifted her. More blood at the tree line shows it carried her off to the right, toward the other house the team had visited earlier rather than toward the place where Murphy died. The Biz adds what he saw at 3 a.m. Kurt reasons that the dog was opportunistic but that Phoebe was lured or driven out. (Radford Horror 04)

"Y'all were right"

The Biz confesses the DMT and the burglary ("Great initiative," says Kurt), and Kurt's Preparedness roll (7) arranges for a contact, Ralphie, to deliver film-developing gear the next day. Then Underhill takes them aside. A young girl's body, probably Amanda's, has been found by the interstate, with much of the face gone and organs eaten. It is going to Dr. Mauden, the town doctor and medical examiner, who delivered her, and the agents are invited to the autopsy. (Radford Horror 04)

Cold open and framing

The cold open shows the woods beside burning trees: a slumped, smoldering figure, the man who called himself NSA, is approached by a coyote, which begins to eat him. Cut to credits. Play then continues directly from the previous session with no recap. Andre ends on a deliberate cliffhanger ("I have an opportunity to end on a cliffhanger, so I'm gonna do it"), and the players supply Law & Order stings. See The show. (Radford Horror 04)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Organizations

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The man who called himself NSA is dead, in a ring of glassed earth, and his weapon is gone.
  • His papers, if genuine, speak of servitors, "Menelaus," "autonomous political assets," "acceptable leakage" and someone whose name ends "...ig Bill."
  • The thing in the sky is not a tractor-beam craft. It swoops and physically lifts its prey, takes dogs from yards along the forest, and leaves a chalky white powder and a terrarium smell.
  • Phoebe ran into the woods on her own feet and was then lifted and carried away.
  • Someone searched the agents' rooms, and a guest under a false name with a car like Dr. Lori's rented a room for the afternoon.
  • A body believed to be Amanda Lucky's has been found.

(Radford Horror 04)

Open threads

  • Whether the documents are real, and what Salem, Colorado and Menelaus refer to.
  • Whether "...ig Bill" is the task force's own Big Bill. The first letters are burned away, and Kurt can only guess.
  • The partial print from Dutchford's room; the van's plates; the Ferry Lodge's security cameras.
  • The film of Lori's files, the powder samples and the cooler of remains all await analysis.
  • Whether Phoebe was also Lori's patient, and why Lori visited her father's barn.
  • The Biz's unsmoked DMT; Huell's deferred level-up; Kurt's plan to verify the NSA identity through his Dark Past.

(Radford Horror 04)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Once immolated, twice shy, let me tell ya."

Dante (as Kurt), putting on a welding mask

Quote

"I live and work in Washington, DC, and believe me, whatever that person was is not even close to the least convincing person disguise I've encountered."

Ezra (as the Biz)

Quote

"Well, boys, we don't have a traditional alien abduction on our hands, and that's kinda disappointing. Really was hoping for, like, a tractor beam."

Rita (as Andrew)

Quote

"It's like a roller coaster, except you talk to God."

Andre (as Rutherford), selling DMT

Quote

"I've tried. I talked to God until I was in my thirties and nothing ever happened. Maybe this will do something."

Ezra (as the Biz)

Quote

"I was skeptical, but y'all were right. Whatever's going on here is fucked up."

Andre (as Molly Underhill)

(Radford Horror 04)

Table notes

  • Level-ups are settled at the start: the Biz takes +1 Cool ("he's learning to loosen up a little bit") and Zack defers Huell's. Andre asks that this be done up front in future. See game mechanics.
  • Andre observes that the Biz's bonus for concealing evidence of a crime "by far gets the most use."
  • Rutherford's name came from a random name generator mid-scene.
  • Kurt's miss on the engine-grease check (a 4 on the dice) prompts Dante's "What, that's a level-up now."
  • Andre draws a map of the neighborhood, and Zack enjoys that one of its rectangles is labeled "dog." Rita's list of UFO shapes delights him.
  • Sleep deprivation is ruled as -1 to "any roll that requires use of your brain," which the table takes as Sharp rolls, for the day.
  • Andre says he wrote the 4:30 a.m. pager scene before the players chose their night excursions.
  • Kurt complains that his old unit put bombs on bats, dolphins, dogs, gerbils, rats, cats, frisbees and boomerangs, but never had a heat ray.

See also running gags. (Radford Horror 04)

Continuity

  • Continues directly from Radford Horror 03: the hit-and-run, the burns, the LSD, Andrew's healing.
  • Andrew sets out his belief in the Masters, ascended extraterrestrials among whom he counts Jesus; the Biz, a lapsed but loyal Catholic, calls it blasphemy.
  • The Pay n' Stay clerk of Radford Horror 01 gets a name, and repeats his warning from that episode in a new form: the aliens are here to punish a civilization that has "known sin" since the atomic bomb.
  • The blood trail behind the Augustine house points toward "the other house that you went to earlier," not toward the place where Murphy died.
  • Sets up the autopsy and the interview with the Augustines in Radford Horror 05.

(Radford Horror 04)