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The Roulet Estate

The Roulet Estate is the fifth canon arc of PITF, a three-episode story in which the about-to-be-disbanded task force wakes up stranded at a murdered UFO believer's house in Rhode Island and is hunted by what looks like a grey alien.
Setting The Roulet house, 118 Benefit Street, Exeter, Rhode Island; a Brooks Pharmacy 25 miles away; epilogue in Washington, Quantico, New York, Vorkuta and Moscow
Episodes 3
In-fiction dates Flashbacks to November and Christmas Eve 1992; main story on Inauguration Day, January 1993; epilogue in spring 1993
Main threat The Roulet Intruder
Preceded by The Walkers in Skin
Followed by The Radford Horrors

Overview

The arc opens in the wreckage of the Utah case. Big Bill covers the deaths of 300 to 400 people in Roosevelt and Ballard with a story about a cult compound and a Jonestown-style killing, and the agents spend 53 days on paperwork. On Christmas Eve 1992 Bill brings the news that President-elect Ross Perot believes the Paranatural Incident Task Force is a Bush-era political weapon and will disband it on Inauguration Day. The same evening Andrew Howard receives an anonymous foil-wrapped letter. (Roulet Estate 01)

The letter, from a member of the Keely Network message boards who knew Andrew, says that their friend Margaret Roulet, a UFO enthusiast, had been experiencing "visitations" and then vanished. With it is a pencil sketch of trees and black triangles. After their files are taken away the agents get drunk, decide to find proof of aliens for Perot, and make Diane drive them seven hours to Rhode Island, collecting a hitchhiking monk on the way. They wake with no memory of any of it in a freezing Victorian house with no power, no water and, soon, no car. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)

What follows is the campaign's smallest and least official case. The agents have no jurisdiction, no backup and no working phone, and the FBI operator they finally reach has never heard of their unit. A naked, spindly figure with a grey alien's face shoots Huell Kendrick in the shin with a Soviet rifle, escapes into a river and later steals their car. In the basement are two bodies; in the chimneys are climbing notches leading to a hidden attic where someone lived for at least a year, photographing the owners as they slept. The house's water is drugged, which casts doubt on everything the agents and the Roulets saw. (Roulet Estate 02)

The finale is a hostage siege at a pharmacy, ending with the alien unmasked as a man in a foam-latex mask. As far as the agents can tell, the monster of this case is entirely human. The paranatural thread runs instead through Andrew, who survives a rifle shot to the face, loses his healing power and discovers a hunger for human blood. An extended epilogue then scatters the team, and Perot's phone call to Andrew sets up the return to Radford. (Roulet Estate 03)

At the table, Ezra predicted the arc would be the "opposite" of the one before it, with less official capacity and more "Scooby and the Gang," and Dante greeted the mask seam with "Old Man Jenkins!" (Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)

Episodes

Episode Summary
Roulet Estate 01 After Utah and a Christmas Eve Secret Santa, the disbanded agents wake hungover in an abandoned Rhode Island house and are shot at by a grey-faced sniper.
Roulet Estate 02 Two bodies in the basement, a stolen car, a mansion full of clowns, and a chimney that leads to a stalker's attic.
Roulet Estate 03 The pharmacy siege unmasks the alien; the task force is disbanded and each agent gets an epilogue, ending with a call from the President.

Principal cast

Player characters

Non-player characters

Monsters and entities

Key locations

How it ended

Huell tackled the gunman in the pharmacy and Kurt tied his hands. The Biz was shot through the thigh and Huell through the foot; the young officer who drove the agents there was killed, and a pharmacist and another hostage were wounded. Police pulled the mask off a gaunt drug user who needed beta blockers, the same drug found in the attic lair. He was arrested, and his name was never given. (Roulet Estate 03)

The task force was then disbanded. Big Bill was fired. Huell went on workers' comp, Kurt went to Sri Lanka and then to teach at Quantico, Andrew was put on desk duty in New York with a weekly supply of blood mailed by his doctor, and Diane moved to the FBI's records department. The Biz vanished from the hospital and surfaced in a Russian cell at Vorkuta, from which he was flown to Moscow, where Boris Yeltsin asked him about "the humanists." The arc closes with President Perot telling Andrew, "Something's happened in Virginia." (Roulet Estate 03)

What it left unresolved

  • The Roulet case itself is never explained on screen. The gunman's identity and motive, whether he killed the Roulets, and whether the second body is Mr. Roulet are all unconfirmed. (Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)
  • The older Polaroids in the attic show sleeping people who were never identified. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The streaking light, the blinking eyes and Kurt's lost minute may be the drugged water or may not. Several agents saw the "alien" at once before anyone knew it was a mask. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)
  • Whether the house's UFO sightings really matched the craft seen in Utah, as the drunk agents believed. (Roulet Estate 01)
  • The unknown number on Andrew's pager and the phone call at the bar. (Roulet Estate 01)
  • The "Mystery Government Files" floppy the Biz gave Kurt is never read on screen. (Roulet Estate 01)
  • What Andrew has become, and what his doctor and church are withholding. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Who "the humanists" are. (Roulet Estate 03)
  • Kurt's belief that a force "on the other end of a portal" is influencing America. (Roulet Estate 03)

Trivia

  • The owners go unnamed in Roulet Estate 01. Andre first gives the name in the recap of Roulet Estate 02, as "Margaret Roulette… or Roulet."
  • Roulet Estate 01 puts its "Inauguration Day, 1993" card over the agents waking at the house, while the recap in Roulet Estate 02 has them setting out drunk on Inauguration Day. Both episodes have Big Bill losing his job on the day the agents spend at the house.
  • In Roulet Estate 03 the other agents bury the Biz's share of the gold in a park near his home; Radford Horrors 01 finds all of his share under a floorboard in his apartment.