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The Radford Horrors, Episode 04

A half-destroyed survivor of a crashed craft tells Boris Yeltsin his people are "the opposite of aliens," while in Virginia the team finds footage of a paramilitary crew raiding the arcade and Andrew wakes the catatonic Wilbur Whateley.
Arc The Radford Horrors
Episode 04 (the most recent episode)
Setting A hospital and the Oryol crash site, Russia; Radford, Virginia; the Roanoke mental hospital
In-fiction date April 1993; the day after Radford Horrors 03
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita
Previous Radford Horrors 03
Next None yet

Synopsis

The Biz is flown with a bandaged Boris Yeltsin to a triangular craft buried in a Russian farm field, where a bisected survivor answers three questions before passing out. In Radford, Kurt Larson obtains the diner's security tape, which shows a gray van crew removing something non-human from the Douglas Pinball Emporium. The team drives to Roanoke, where Andrew Howard lays a hand on the catatonic Wilbur Whateley and heals him enough to talk about the moth. They end the day camped beside the missing agents' tents, with Daniel Webster quietly adding up everything strange about Andrew. (Radford Horrors 04)

Plot

The opposite of aliens

The Biz wakes locked in a hospital room on an evacuated floor, four guards with machine guns outside. At dawn a guard he knows from the hotel says, "Mr. Baxter, the President would like to see you." Yeltsin, sutured at the head and torso, thanks him and praises the "impressive stunt driving." The Biz explains that driving drunk was "like training with a weight vest on." Russian intelligence thinks the attack was "opportunistic and fairly half-assed." (Radford Horrors 04)

That night a helicopter carries Yeltsin's hospital bed and the Biz to the crash site, and the Biz helps push the bed through an airlock. Under arc lamps, behind double-walled plastic, sits a partly excavated triangular craft a little smaller than the space shuttle, which annihilated a farmhouse when it came down. In the tent are two beds joined by tubes carrying blood, urine and other fluids. One holds a shirtless Russian soldier. The other holds "about 55% of a guy": one arm gone, nothing below the navel, hairless, with the wrong teeth and jaw and eyes set too far apart. The only thing he reminds the Biz of is the subtle change that came over Andrew Howard after he died, "but much more so." (Radford Horrors 04)

Doctors wake him with a syringe, and Yeltsin asks his questions in Russian, then English. Why are you here? "Survey." Why are your people here, the aliens? "Not aliens. The opposite of aliens." What do you want? "Servitors... need resources." He passes out, and the doctors warn that another dose might kill him. In private, the Biz decides against feigning knowledge. These are not the aliens he has dealt with, he says; he has seen resources go through portals, but it "presented differently," and he has never heard of servitors. Yeltsin notes that the survivor accepts O-negative blood, and asks why that would work on an alien. (Radford Horrors 04)

The tape

Kurt volunteers to face the diner waitress, who has a bone to pick about her bathroom. A Manipulate Someone 11, an apology for Huell and the promise of a hundred-dollar tip get him her camera footage. At about 4 or 5 a.m. a gray van pulls up at the emporium. Five men get out, one with a long brown ponytail and the rest with military haircuts. A shadow that is not human moves inside the front window. One man opens the lock, there is a scuffle, three men carry out two bags, others carry equipment, and the van peels away. Kurt's Investigate a Mystery (10) reads them as an organized paramilitary cleanup team, not military, and the ponytailed man as a boss playing soldier. The shadow seemed to be trying to get out as the door opened. (Radford Horrors 04)

The waitress says gray vans began appearing a couple of months ago, around the "right to roam" fuss over the woods and the arrival of the Safe Environment Fund. At the emporium, Kurt's second roll (11) finds the way in: an unlocked, screenless office window on the alley, with a compost smell like the moth's and a second dollop of opalescent slime above it. The Smart-car-sized moth could never have fit. His theory is that a juvenile moth or a thrall got inside, the crew came for it, and Elizabeth George was taken because she saw. (Radford Horrors 04)

Huell phones Donald McManley: "Get down here, we've got goo." McManley asks whether there is a face this time, hears "Not yet," says "Small fucking mercies," and promises to arrive tomorrow in his RV. At Blockbuster Video the clerk Harold lets the team view and copy the tape in the back room. Harold saw a ponytailed man drag a homeless man into a van a month and a half or two months ago. Kurt walks twenty minutes into the woods and hides the copy in a hollow tree. Sheriff Molly Underhill, reached by phone, gives the homeless man a name, Billy Thornton; he cannot be found. (Radford Horrors 04)

Andrew, sweating and light-sensitive, refuses the ibuprofen and steroid syringes from the ER and instead mixes blood into lemon-lime Gatorade in front of Webster ("This is my protein mix... This is meds."). He feels better at once. (Radford Horrors 04)

Giuliani's deadline

Webster reports to Director Rudy Giuliani. He sees no link to "political wetwork," he says, and the team talks openly of "Mothman, Bigfoot, aliens." Giuliani thinks it reckless to run lunatics in the field and wants the missing agents found within 24 hours, dead or alive. Webster passes on what the team suspects: the vans came with the Fund, and the missing people's letters all cite an addiction center in Los Angeles they could not afford. Giuliani already has a man looking at the Fund and assigns a researcher. On a Manipulate Someone 10 he is disappointed but still trusts Webster. (Radford Horrors 04)

Wilbur

The team drives most of the day to Roanoke and reaches the mental hospital an hour before closing. A nurse warns them: no touching. Wilbur Whateley sits in a wheelchair facing the window in a room decorated with his bugs. Kurt's first approach (9, at -2) earns a flicker in the eye. He then holds the goo sample under Wilbur's nose, and Wilbur's muscles stiffen, his eyes go waxy and his fingers clamp the chair. (Radford Horrors 04)

Andrew uses magic and rolls a 13. He senses that Wilbur is not being controlled now, but that his mind is badly damaged from years of being "ridden shotgun" and of faking catatonia. He chooses to heal one harm and puts a hand on Wilbur's shoulder. Wilbur wakes: "Where's my brother?" He recognizes the agents "from the church." He dreamed of "drowning in blue," and says something was "wearing" him. He found an oversized Morpho menelaus caterpillar in the woods, a species that does not belong in Virginia. Kurt's follow-up roll is a 7, and Wilbur begins to panic at what he must not remember: "like the ocean... like a mother... in the basement... It was pregnant. It needed to breathe... it needed hosts, like a parasitic wasp. Those women--". As the nurse ushers them out he adds, "I found it under a white oak." (Radford Horrors 04)

The campsite

Back in Radford with an hour before the shops close, the agents buy tents and food and pitch camp at the Sportsman RV Campground beside the missing team's tents, which they leave undisturbed as evidence. Kurt's tent goes up on a 13; Huell's, on a 9, stands at a twenty-degree tilt with two rods left over. Over hot dogs Kurt tells Webster the story of the Spaceman: townspeople reported a NASA astronaut, and it turned out that Wilbur's space-enthusiast brother had built an accurate astronaut costume in which people were being kidnapped. A real explanation for a crazy report makes Webster feel better. (Radford Horrors 04)

Webster's Sharp 12 then assembles the rest: Andrew's bag produces more than it could hold, Andrew tore barbed wire and snaps branches that should not snap, Webster is increasingly sure he saw him shot, and he keeps drinking blood. Webster says nothing. Andrew asks how many young a moth has; Kurt, on a Sharp 10, recalls from Animal Planet that the answer is 40 to 500 eggs. Kurt settles down to sleep tied into a tree, a habit from Vietnam, and Andrew takes him by the belt and lifts him up there one-handed while Webster watches. (Radford Horrors 04)

Cold open and framing

  • Recap: Andre opened with a "previously on" summary of the fence standoff, the rabies treatment and the arcade disappearance.
  • Cold open: a slow pan across frozen Russian countryside in the dark to work lights, tents and "unmistakably a triangular UFO embedded into the ground where a farmhouse used to be," as the army raises a tent over it. "We cut to credits. D-dim."
  • Title: none was given. Zack suggested "Opposite of Aliens."
  • Closing image: Andrew lifting Kurt into the tree.

(Radford Horrors 04)

Player characters

Non-player characters

Monsters and entities

Groups

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The beings behind the crashed craft call themselves "the opposite of aliens," are here on "survey," and say servitors need resources. Their survivor can take human O-negative blood. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • The survivor resembles a stronger version of whatever changed Andrew after his death. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • A paramilitary crew in gray vans is collecting moth-related creatures and cleaning up after them. The same ponytailed man abducted Billy Thornton, which supports his story. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Wilbur was the moth's thrall, not a killer by choice. The moth was pregnant, used women as hosts "like a parasitic wasp," and began as a caterpillar Wilbur found under a white oak. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • A moth can lay hundreds of eggs. Andrew: "We're gonna be doing this for the rest of our careers." (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Webster now suspects Andrew is something other than human. (Radford Horrors 04)

Open threads

  • What servitors are, what resources they need, and what Yeltsin will do with the Biz.
  • Who employs the gray van crew, and whether it is the Safe Environment Fund.
  • Where Elizabeth George, Phoebe Augustine and the other missing people are, and what the Los Angeles letters conceal.
  • The missing FBI agents and Giuliani's 24-hour deadline.
  • McManley's analysis of the two goo samples.
  • The white oak, "the basement," and how many of the moth's young are alive.
  • Whether Wilbur's recovery lasts.
  • Andrew's condition under rabies treatment.

(Radford Horrors 04)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Not aliens. The opposite of aliens."

Andre (as the crash survivor)

Quote

"Listen, you wake up to spears once, never again."

Dante (as Kurt Larson), on sleeping in trees

Quote

"Hey, is there a face this time?"

Andre (as Donald McManley)

Quote

"I found it under a white oak."

Andre (as Wilbur Whateley)

Quote

"I'm trying to put together a story that isn't weird, and I'm coming up extremely short. It's just weird."

Ezra (as Daniel Webster), to Giuliani

Quote

"Yeah, faith healing Wilbur Whateley was not on my bingo card."

Dante, out of character

Table notes

  • Dante read from Kurt's notebook: "Homeless man claims kidnapped by chimps and molested by John Travolta. There were ladies present." Travolta resurfaced with Harold's customer who rents Saturday Night Fever daily and never rewinds it. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • "Half Gallon Howard" continued ("Yeah, that's why we call you Half Gallon Howard"), revised to "quarter gallon tops right now." (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Andre remarked that Yeltsin would not have lived had the Biz chosen differently in the ambush. Dante's advice: "Burn fewer Luck points." (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Rita's Use Magic was a 10 on the dice with +3 Weird. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Andre used a flat roll as a luck check for shopping; an 11 stocked the camping store well. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Andre produced a 1993 Taco Bell menu to settle what the team could order on the road. While Rita weighed her Use Magic options, Zack lobbied for "Summon the monster!" (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Kurt called Wilbur "Gilbert" once, and Ezra admitted he had forgotten his new character's name. (Radford Horrors 04)

Continuity

  • Wilbur's account revisits the finale of The Radford Horror: the church fire, the moth that "wore" him, and the kidnappings carried out in a homemade spacesuit.
  • McManley's "face" refers to the folded face of The Things in Appalachia, a case that makes Webster see his career flash before his eyes.
  • The survivor's "Survey" and the Biz's mention of resources going through portals are followed up at The paranatural.
  • Andrew's death and replacement in Utah is recalled as "Dummy Andrew"; see Andrew Howard (duplicate).
  • This is the most recent episode. Open questions are collected at Unresolved mysteries.
  • In the opening recap Dante remembers Andrew being shot "in, like, the face or something" at the fence, and Andre agrees. In Radford Horrors 02 the bullet stopped an inch from his chest. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Andre's recap calls the missing arcade worker Lisbeth George; Douglas introduced her as Elizabeth George in Radford Horrors 03. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • Andre says Wilbur spent "like, five years" being ridden by the moth and pretending to be catatonic, which reaches back well before the first Radford case; Kurt afterwards puts the coma at "a couple years." Andre also confirms that Wilbur is "the spaceman kid" and not his space-obsessed brother. (Radford Horrors 04)
  • The syringes Andrew turns down are the ibuprofen and corticosteroids the ER issued to Kurt in Radford Horrors 03. (Radford Horrors 04)