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The Radford Horror, Episode 06

A night stakeout ends with Huell tackling a spaceman, being carried above the trees by something that smells of rot, and falling; in the Whateley cellar the agents find a mummified boy nailed to the wall.
Arc The Radford Horror
Episode 06
Setting Radford, Virginia and the Alpine Lodge above it
In-fiction date Late May 1992; from dusk on the day of Radford Horror 05 to late the next morning
Players present Andre (Keeper), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita; Kira sat in without a character
Previous Radford Horror 05
Next Radford Horror 07

Synopsis

The team splits for the night: the Biz and Andrew Howard watch from a water tower on the mountain while Kurt Larson and Huell Kendrick cruise the suburbs. From the tower the Biz sees Dr. Lori beaten and bundled into a van. Minutes later a dark shape begins circling behind the Whateley house, and a figure in an astronaut suit jogs into the woods. Huell tackles him and finds a Whateley twin under the helmet; the thing in the sky lifts the boy with Huell clinging to him, and Huell falls and breaks his arm. Searching the house, the agents find a hidden root cellar with a mummified, crucified teenager inside, and Wilbur Whateley, unresponsive for three years, climbs out of his window and vanishes. By morning the kidnapper of Dr. Lori turns out to be Derek Augustine. (Radford Horror 06)

Plot

The water tower

At the Ferry Lodge, rested and free of their exhaustion penalties, the agents take a call from the sheriff. The school has filed enough truancy reports on Dean Lawson to involve the police, his parents cannot be reached, and the sheriff suggests that this would be a pretext for bringing him in. Andrew asks the sheriff's office to do it, first thing in the morning. Andrew also borrows a squad car. He and the Biz take it up the mountain with binoculars; Kurt and Huell keep the sedan, which holds all the gear and which the men tailing them have already marked. (Radford Horror 06)

In the off-season visitor center of the Alpine Lodge they find Matt McCready, in a leather jacket with a paperback. His uncle owns the lodge and has him on night watch against kids with spray paint. He writes a liability waiver in Sharpie and hands over the key to the water tower ladder. He was Amanda's friend. When he asked Dean when he had last seen her, Dean threatened to shoot him or have him killed; Dean has frightening friends, some of them "real methy," and a family cabin about a mile away, which McCready marks on a tourist map. A week ago Amanda seemed to want to tell him something and never did. He adds that while working on the ski lifts he felt something big and silent pass over him, smelling of compost or "an old closet," and that he no longer goes out there without a shotgun. From the tower the Biz can also see a light on at the Lawson cabin. (Radford Horror 06)

The van

After two quiet hours on the tower the Biz sees a U-Haul-branded van stop outside Dr. Lori's office. The driver punches a man repeatedly in the head, drags him into the back and drives off. Kurt and Huell give chase in the sedan with Huell at the wheel. His Act Under Pressure is an 8 and they lose the van in the back streets. The Biz's Investigate a Mystery is double sixes for 14, and he calls its route to the freeway, but Huell's second roll of 7 fails to reacquire it. Andrew phones the kidnapping in to the highway patrol. (Radford Horror 06)

The spaceman

The Biz then notices movement in the sky over the Whateley and Lucky neighborhood, and the ground team turns back. Through the night-vision scope Kurt sees a large dark shape circling fifty or sixty feet above the woods behind the Whateley house, like two round shapes joined in a Venn diagram, as if looking or waiting for something. They watch for ten minutes. Then Huell, with his naked eye, spots a figure at the tree line: someone in an Apollo 11 astronaut suit jogging into the woods. (Radford Horror 06)

Kurt takes his black-painted Super Soaker, loaded with glow-stick fluid, to mark the craft. Huell runs the spaceman down (Act Under Pressure, 10), tackles him in a clearing and pulls off the helmet. Underneath, Huell recognizes one of the Whateley boys. Something enormous descends and blots out the stars. Kurt sprays it (Kick Some Ass, 8): a glowing yellow line splashes across it, it makes a noise, and something "punches him in the brain," blinding him and dealing 2 harm. Huell puts a knife to the boy's face and demands to know what he is doing (Manipulate Someone with Tough, 11). The boy answers calmly, "You don't have to fight this. It's okay," and something above grabs him and lifts him. Huell hugs him and hangs on (Act Under Pressure, 7) and is carried over the tree line into a smell of rotting wood and black mold. The boy looks him in the eye and says, "It's okay. It's worth it," and Huell loses his grip and falls about fifty feet from the clearing (Tough, 6). He breaks his right arm, takes 4 harm and is knocked out. (Radford Horror 06)

From the tower the Biz and Andrew see the glow line, watch Huell drop, and see the shape dive into the Whateley back yard; they throw the key back to McCready and race down the mountain. Kurt finds Huell at the foot of a tree (Investigate a Mystery, 10) and revives him with smelling salts, and the arm is splinted with one of Kurt's stilts. The shape lifts off again without the astronaut, flashing blue under the streetlights, and Kurt tails it by car (11) for two miles along the tree line and back again before it turns into the forest. He marks its last heading on the tourist map. (Radford Horror 06)

The cellar

At the dark Whateley house Kurt finds mud up the wall to an open second-story window, which is not Wilbur's, and the garage door ajar (Investigate a Mystery, 11). At the back of the crammed garage, under a tarp, are rotten cellar doors with a padlock. Nobody answers the front door, so Kurt, calling it hot pursuit, picks the lock; he misses the roll and it takes him ten minutes. Upstairs Yobiah Whateley is alive but insensible on sleeping pills. In the second bedroom the window is open, the radio has been knocked off the sill, and muddy tracks end at the window. In the third, Wilbur lies in bed beside his wheelchair with clean feet and thin legs. Smelling salts draw only a vacant stare and soft crying, and Kurt stops. (Radford Horror 06)

Kurt cuts the padlock with bolt cutters. The cellar is five feet high and hung with ratty tarps. Among them are the discarded pieces of the spacesuit, an old dog skeleton whose bones look as if they had been fed through a paper shredder, papery fibrous shreds, and behind the last tarp a mummified teenager in a NASA T-shirt, nailed to the wall through wrists and ankles with the legs spread, the side of the head stove in. The face is too withered to read; the agents presume it is Abelforth Whateley. The Biz's Investigate roll (10) finds a fibrous root-like growth wrapped around a floor joist, its lower end sawn off, with the same organic smell as the thing in the sky; the body is too dry for the time it has been there. They photograph everything and, after some argument, decide not to tell the sheriff. (Radford Horror 06)

At about 11:30 p.m. the Biz looks in on Wilbur again. The bed is empty; Kurt concludes that he went out of the window as soon as nobody was watching the back yard. Back in the cellar, the Biz hides a live bug behind the loose flag patch of the suit, which turns out to be lovingly handmade. Huell finds a spare length of chain (Sharp, 10) and Kurt relocks the cellar doors with his help, leaving scratches around the padlock. The Biz spends the night in a bush watching the window, and nobody returns. (Radford Horror 06)

Morning

During the night Andrew drives Huell to the ER, where he is seen by the doctor who treated his bedbugs earlier that day; he is healed but keeps a -1 on shooting and arm-strength rolls. About four hours after the kidnapping the highway patrol pages Andrew: the van's occupants were found at a motel, one torturing the other with pliers and a blowtorch. The victim is Lawrence Lori. In the morning the sheriff reports three missing persons, Wilbur, Lori and Derek Augustine, and Yobiah is led from his house near catatonic. Later the sheriff learns that Augustine is the man in custody. He believed Lori had taken Phoebe and was trying to force her whereabouts out of him, and says he got the idea from the agents. (Radford Horror 06)

The team leaves the sheriff's search party to follow the craft's last heading. Plotted on the map, every heading they have recorded crosses in the forest near the river, where they find scatterings of the white powder but, on two rolls of snake eyes, no clearing. Dr. Mauden reports that the blood from the tree matches Amanda's, that both samples contain about five percent unidentifiable foreign matter, and that her blood shows markers of severe malnutrition that her body does not. He adds that Wilbur could probably walk, and could even stand for short periods with help: "It was more just there was nobody home." The agents settle on two next steps: the Lawson cabin, and a plane for aerial photographs. (Radford Horror 06)

Cold open and framing

In the cold open a teenager frantically digs in a dark yard, throws three large Ziploc bags of cash into the hole and shovels the dirt back. Cut to credits. Ezra opens the session by asking, "Is there a cold open again?" The episode ends on a plan rather than a cliffhanger. See The show. (Radford Horror 06)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Organizations

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The spaceman is a Whateley twin in a handmade suit, and he goes to the thing in the sky willingly.
  • The flying thing lifts people bodily, strikes at the mind when attacked, and smells of rot, mold and compost. The agents begin to think it is alive rather than built.
  • A teenager, presumed to be Abelforth, has been dead and crucified in a hidden cellar under the Whateley garage for what looks like years. His parents appear not to know.
  • Wilbur can walk. Dr. Mauden says his body was always capable of it.
  • Amanda's blood carried about five percent unidentified foreign matter and signs of starvation.
  • Dr. Lori's kidnapper was Derek Augustine, acting on his own suspicion.
  • The craft's headings converge on the forest by the river.

(Radford Horror 06)

Open threads

  • Which twin was in the suit. With a body in the cellar, Kurt reasons that it was "probably the other kid," Wilbur; Radford Horror 07 and Radford Horror 08 bear this out.
  • How Abelforth's fingerprints came to be on the Lucky roof days ago if he has been dead for years.
  • Whether Wilbur is controlled, possessed or has been feigning.
  • Who buried the cash in the cold open (answered in Radford Horror 07: Dean Lawson, in the yard of his family's cabin).
  • The Lawson cabin, with its light on, and Dean's truancy pickup.
  • Whether the scratched cellar lock and the hidden bug will expose the agents' search.
  • Where the thing lands.

(Radford Horror 06)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"It's okay. It's worth it."

Andre (as the Whateley boy in the spacesuit), as Huell is carried upward

Quote

"It's just an airplane. What the fuck are you talking about?"

Zack (as Huell), with the craft overhead

Quote

"Target is marked, water tower, blue team report. Target is marked, maintain visual, track where it goes. [...] It's got the Whateley boy."

Dante (as Kurt), on the radio

Quote

"Huell, twice in a day, you are not having a good life, my friend."

Andre (as the ER doctor)

Quote

"I didn't believe in aliens, and now I'm racist against them."

Dante, speaking for Huell after his close encounter

Quote

"He went kidnapping, which is the opposite of going missing."

Dante, on Derek Augustine

(Radford Horror 06)

Table notes

  • Ezra rolls double sixes to track the van. In the woods the next morning both Dante and Ezra roll snake eyes on the same search. Dante gets a 6 on each of his two lockpicking rolls. After a run of 7s and 8s, Huell's fall is the only one of Zack's rolls low enough to earn experience.
  • Huell uses his new move for the first time, rolling Tough in place of Charm when threatening violence. Zack calls it his "Hoodlum ability," and later in the session wonders aloud whether he was allowed to take it.
  • The tower team's ability to see anything at all is credited to "hand wave binoculars," then "CIA binoculars."
  • Ezra gives the Biz a Columbo voice on the radio.
  • Kira urges the party, repeatedly, to eat the root.
  • The twins' names are mixed up all session ("Albert," "Walter"), Yobiah becomes "Yobi," and Amanda Lucky is once again "Amanda Palmer."
  • When Andre mentions the McDonald's where Kurt "carjacked" the elderly couple, Dante objects that this is "not the preferred nomenclature."
  • Andre's music cues include Psycho, "Tubular Bells" and Laura Palmer's theme.

See running gags and game mechanics. (Radford Horror 06)

Continuity

  • Matt McCready says here that his uncle owns the lodge. Radford Horror 01 calls him "Ed McCready's boy," and Radford Horror 02 has him working at "his folks' place."
  • The mountain ski lodge is named for the first time, as the Alpine Lodge, on McCready's waiver. The team's hotel has been the Ferry Lodge since Radford Horror 01.
  • McCready's account of something big and silent with a compost smell matches what Huell smells when he is carried off.
  • The Radio Shack robbery, the spaceman sketch and the roof fingerprints all converge on the Whateley house.
  • The crucifixion in the cellar matches Amanda's wounds from Radford Horror 05; see Crucifixion MO.
  • Derek Augustine's attack on Lori grows out of Kurt's questions about Lori in Radford Horror 05.
  • The cold open and McCready's map set up the visit to the Lawson cabin in Radford Horror 07.

(Radford Horror 06)