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The Radford Horrors, Episode 03

The Biz saves the Russian president from a highway ambush at the cost of an eye, while in Radford Andrew reacts badly to rabies treatment and a pinball arcade's night worker is tased and carried off.
Arc The Radford Horrors
Episode 03
Setting Moscow and a wheat field on the road to Oryol Oblast; the Radford ER and the Douglas Pinball Emporium, Radford, Virginia
In-fiction date April 1993; the night of Radford Horrors 02 and the following day
Players present Andre (GM), Ezra, Rita, Dante, Zack
Previous Radford Horrors 02
Next Radford Horrors 04

Synopsis

In Russia, the Biz is woken before dawn to ride with the president to "an unusual aircraft crash." The convoy is ambushed; the Biz drags the unconscious president into a car, loses the pursuit in a wheat field, and kills a gunman with a knife, burning Luck three times and losing the sight of one eye. In Virginia, Andrew Howard dreams that his "dad" warns him "Don't take it," then runs a 104-degree fever after rabies immunoglobulin. Daniel Webster answers to Director Rudy Giuliani for the fence incident. Sheriff Molly Underhill then brings a fresh disappearance: Elizabeth George, taken from the Douglas Pinball Emporium by people who cleaned up after themselves. (Radford Horrors 03)

Plot

Moscow, three in the morning

The Biz, still a little drunk on room-service vodka, wakes to banging on his door. A colonel throws in laundered clothes and gives him five minutes to be ready to ride with the president. In the lobby the president, in a big black coat with a huge thermos of black tea, calls him "Richard" and lowers his voice: there has been "an unusual aircraft crash in Oryol Oblast," and he wants the Biz to look at it. He will not say what is unusual. (Radford Horrors 03)

The convoy is an armored limousine with two cars ahead and one behind. The Biz rides in the squat rear car between two guards with submachine guns, on his first trip without a bag over his head, and falls asleep. (Radford Horrors 03)

The ambush

He wakes with his lip stuck to a guard's lapel as a 1960s Russian car rams the limousine and explodes. His guards bail out. A Read a Bad Situation 10 tells him he is hearing Chechen and Russian voices, that there are several carloads of gunmen, that the limo is damaged but people inside are alive, and that his own driver left the keys in and the engine running. (Radford Horrors 03)

He army-crawls to the limo (Act Under Pressure 11) and finds the president unconscious under a guard who is shielding him. A Manipulate Someone 11 gets the guard to help drag the president "Weekend at Bernie's" style back to the rear car. The next Act Under Pressure comes up 8, and Ezra burns a Luck point to make it a 12: the Biz ducks both men as a bullet passes where their heads were, throws the president in the back and takes the wheel. He reverses half a kilometre under fire, the windshield explodes, and he turns the car around through some fence posts. The guard in the back seat is slumped over the president, bleeding into the footwell, and soon dead. The president is breathing and concussed. (Radford Horrors 03)

A heavy Soviet car with four or five men is gaining and the Biz's engine is leaking. He raises Russian security on the radio, shouts for helicopters, cannot follow the rapid directions he gets back, and tells them, "I'm going into a wheat field. You're gonna have to find me." He kills the lights, which kills the radio too, and swerves off the road. The roll is a 6; a second Luck point turns it into stunt driving that loses the pursuers before the car coasts to a stop. (Radford Horrors 03)

The wheat field

The trunk holds the president's medical cooler on dry ice, with blood bags, biologics and anti-nerve-agent drugs, alongside a grenade launcher and automatic weapons. The Biz's first aid roll is a 3: he wraps dry ice in his jacket for the president's head, notes uneven pupils, and needs several tries to find a vein for injectable ibuprofen. (Radford Horrors 03)

Someone is jogging toward the car along the crushed trail through the wet wheat. The Biz arms himself, props the dead guard by the driver's door, carries the president fifty feet into the crop and hides. A Read a Bad Situation 8 shows a man in mismatched, outdated paramilitary gear; the Biz is about 90% sure he is not Russian security. The man kicks the dead guard's head and peers into the back seat. (Radford Horrors 03)

The Biz circles behind him with the guard's knife in his teeth. His Kick Some Ass comes up 6 and he burns Luck a third time. The man sees a reflection and turns as the Biz lunges; the knife goes in between body armor and helmet, and Ezra chooses to inflict terrible harm, cutting an artery in the neck and the tendons of the gun arm. The man gouges the Biz's eye: 1 harm, and that eye is blind. The Biz wrestles the gun away (10), and the man staggers up, faints from blood loss and cracks his head on the car. A helicopter with a spotlight lands. The Biz drops his weapons, waves it down and leads the crew to the president. He has three Luck left before he is Doomed. (Radford Horrors 03)

The rabies ward

Andrew dreams of shirtless beach volleyball beside a blood-red ocean under a bright blue sun. Across the net are eight men foaming at the mouth and his "dad": gaunt, pale, in jeans and aviator sunglasses, with a Hollywood smile. Andrew gets creamed. A jet-engine roar builds, and Dad mouths, "Don't take it." He wakes in the ER. (Radford Horrors 03)

Kurt hands the doctor the animal, still on the harpoon in a plastic bag. It will go to Roanoke for testing. Immunoglobulin starts at once: by IV for everyone except Webster, who gets about twenty shots around a nipple swollen to the size of a gumball. (Radford Horrors 03)

Webster is paged and calls from the hallway phone while the others eavesdrop. Giuliani wants to know about "the thing with the fence." A Bivens lawsuit is expected, the FBI is obtaining a retroactive warrant, counsel will decide whether the probable-cause claim holds, and a formal reprimand is possible. The guard who tasered Webster has been fired and says he is hearing impaired and did not believe FBI agents would carry a spear gun. Kurt Larson insists it is sporting goods equipment. Giuliani asks whether Webster has worked out his team's "angle." Webster says he sees nothing of political importance here. "Keep an eye out," says the Director. Four hours with FBI counsel follow. (Radford Horrors 03)

When the vaccine arrives, everyone gets a painful injection in the stomach. Andrew, chilled and sweating since the immunoglobulin, whispers the dream to Kurt: "If I die from this vaccine, just send me to California. They'll figure it out." Kurt, drawing on UTAW's psychic dream exercises, suggests the dad might be a tulpa. A Sharp 10 shows him Andrew is pale, yellow-eyed and worse off than Webster. The fever is 104. The doctor blames an immune reaction and wants six more hours of observation; Andrew, afraid of what the doctors might find, leaves with the team, and Kurt is given a cooler of loaded syringes to manage him. (Radford Horrors 03)

The Douglas Pinball Emporium

Molly Underhill arrives with coffee, jokes that they got "Pay n' Stayed," offers her unused mother-in-law suite, and drives them to a possible new case. Douglas Douglas, who greets the team "minus the sports-coat guy," explains that the lawsuit the agents pointed him toward last year paid for his arcade. His overnight security and maintenance worker, Elizabeth George, who has been with him for about six months, was gone at opening. A letter on her door says she is in inpatient psychiatric treatment in Los Angeles. The Flash Gordon machine is open mid-repair, there is blood in the parking lot, and the staff bathroom's hand towels are missing. Kurt recognizes the Los Angeles story from the other disappearances. (Radford Horrors 03)

Kurt's first Investigate a Mystery (10), with luminol under the arcade's black lights, finds a broken Taser tine with blood in the neon carpet, a smear and a single hair on the corner of a machine, a missing first aid kit, no fingerprints and a faint smell of bleach. The porch camera's tape has been swapped for a partly overwritten one from another day. A second roll (8) covers the back lot, which has no camera: a section of fence was cut, a vehicle driven in and out, and the fence reattached. The diner across the street has cameras. (Radford Horrors 03)

Cold open and framing

A long pan down a dark aisle of chiming pinball machines: a muffled struggle, the crack of a Taser, a woman's limp, twitching arm, and a man in a black balaclava carrying her out. "We cut to credits." Andre cut between Russia and Virginia with TV-style "cut away there" transitions. (Radford Horrors 03)

Player characters

Non-player characters

Monsters and entities

Groups

Locations

Items

  • Kurt's spear gun
  • Triangular craft, known here only as an "unusual aircraft crash"
  • The president's medical cooler, the convoy weapons, Kurt's field medical kit, the Taser tine, the swapped security tape and the letter on Elizabeth's door (minor items)

Revelations

  • Something crashed in Oryol Oblast that the Russian president wanted an American who has seen aliens to look at. (Radford Horrors 03)
  • The Biz is blind in one eye and down to three Luck. (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Andrew's body reacts badly to rabies immunoglobulin, and his dream figure warned him beforehand. (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Giuliani has asked Webster to watch his own team. (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Elizabeth George was abducted by people with a Taser, gloves, bleach, a spare videotape and the means to cut and rejoin a fence, and a Los Angeles letter was left to explain her absence. (Radford Horrors 03)

Open threads

  • Who attacked the convoy, who the man in mismatched gear was, and what crashed in Oryol.
  • Who or what Andrew's "dad" is, and whether "Don't take it" meant the immunoglobulin or the vaccine.
  • The test result on the animal, and the weekly vaccine schedule.
  • The Bivens suit, the possible reprimand and whether to charge the guard.
  • The missing FBI team, still unfound.
  • The diner's camera footage.

(Radford Horrors 03)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Richard, there has been an unusual aircraft crash in Oryol Oblast. I need you to come take a look at it with me and tell me what you see."

Andre (as Boris Yeltsin)

Quote

"I'm going into a wheat field. You're gonna have to find me."

Ezra (as the Biz), on the radio

Quote

"And he's just really fucking up the feng shui, frankly."

Ezra, on the dead guard in the back seat

Quote

"If I die from this vaccine, just send me to California. They'll figure it out."

Rita (as Andrew Howard)

Quote

"I had a piece of sporting goods equipment on me. Not a weapon: sporting goods equipment, purchased from a sporting goods store."

Dante, on what Kurt will say if asked about the spear gun

Quote

"Could people stop going missing?"

Ezra

Table notes

  • The dice bot was still broken, so Andre rolled for everyone while the players read off modifiers. (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Ezra burned three Luck in one action sequence: "I don't want a mixed success. I want a real success on this one, please," and later, "I don't know what Doomed means." Dante: "The Biz is just aging, like, 20 fucking years in one night." (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Ezra, on doing his own knife work: "Normally I have a team of competent people, in particular Kurtis, to do this part of the job for me." (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Ezra checked whether Tasers existed in 1993; Andre joked that the name stands for "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle." (Radford Horrors 03)
  • Dante coined "load-bearing rabies" for Andrew's condition. (Radford Horrors 03)
  • The session ended early at Ezra's and Zack's request, with the arcade search compressed into two rolls. (Radford Horrors 03)

Continuity