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The Roulet Estate, Episode 02

Stranded in the snow, the agents dig two bodies out of the basement, lose their car to the grey figure, and climb a chimney into the hidden attic where someone has been living above the owners for a year.
Arc The Roulet Estate
Episode 02
Setting The Roulet house, 118 Benefit Street, Exeter, Rhode Island; the clown mansion
In-fiction date Inauguration Day (20 January) 1993, into the evening
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Rita, Zack
Previous Roulet Estate 01
Next Roulet Estate 03

Synopsis

Still hungover and without transport, the agents search the house of the missing Margaret Roulet. Kurt Larson digs into a trash pit in the basement, suffers a Vietnam flashback and shoots a buried corpse; the pit holds two bodies, one wearing Margaret's wedding ring. The grey intruder drives off in the agents' car. The team hikes to a neighboring mansion decorated with clowns to phone the FBI, returns, and discovers that every chimney in the house is a climbable passage to a hidden attic lair full of the stolen guns, cash, a peyote slurry and Polaroids of sleeping people. The house's water turns out to be drugged. Local police take over the scene and the monk, revealed as a Finnish Hare Krishna, leaves by taxi for Pawtucket. (Roulet Estate 02)

Plot

Taking stock

Andre's recap fills in why the agents came. Someone from the Keely Network message boards who knew Andrew Howard wrote that their friend Margaret Roulet had been having "visitations" and had then vanished; the sketch enclosed with the letter showed black triangles. On Inauguration Day the agents drunkenly made Diane drive them out, and on the way picked up a hitchhiking monk who wanted to go to Pawtucket, an hour and 21 minutes away by car. Andrew now holds the VSS, which can be wrapped in a garbage bag to protect the prints. (Roulet Estate 02)

Andre puts the Biz as "the closest thing to being in charge." He weighs whether the shooter was a real alien or a man in a suit: its proportions looked unnatural, so at the least it was "a weird guy in a suit." The map puts the nearest significant town about two hours' walk away by the winding dirt road. (Roulet Estate 02)

The trash pit

Looking for something to open the chained barn, Kurt finds chain cutters in the basement, along with cleaning supplies, a huge glass jar of cocoa-butter lotion with a hand-shaped scoop taken out, and a chemical smell none of it explains. His Investigate a Mystery (10) tells him something was poured over a buried trash pile to sterilize it, and that under the chemicals there is rot. He digs with a crowbar. (Roulet Estate 02)

Upstairs, Andrew keeps stepping onto the porch to shout abuse at the Greys and throw up. The third time, eyes in the woods blink several times and vanish. He flips them off. (Roulet Estate 02)

Below, veiny hands burst from the dirt and seize Kurt's wrists. He empties his sidearm into the hole and watches a Vietnamese prison guard's face crumple. He comes to curled beside the pit with Andrew shaking him, and says he was "back in Saigon." In the hole is a withered, sleeved hand, now shot several times. Andrew fetches the wedding photos: the ring matches Margaret's. More digging turns up at least parts of two bodies, long buried, their clothing bleached and dissolved by something caustic poured in to control the smell. Kurt points out that until now the agents were trespassing, and that a body makes it FBI business; Huell Kendrick calls it probable cause. (Roulet Estate 02)

The car, the barn and the clowns

An engine starts outside. The agents reach the front door in time to see a grey alien driving away in their car, the missing battery evidently reinstalled. The monk sprints after it shouting "Pawtucket!" and gives up after about a hundred feet. (Roulet Estate 02)

The barn, opened with the cutters, holds gardening supplies, hundreds of crushed plastic water bottles and a riding lawnmower, the exact model Kurt has at home, with a top speed of about eight miles an hour and wiring chewed by squirrels. Andre rules that only a perfect 12 on a Sharp roll would let the Biz make it go faster without breaking it or hurting himself, and the mower is left behind. Kurt's plan wins: walk within sight of the road rather than on it. They take the wedding photos, the sketches and Andrew's flashlight Polaroids of the corpses, fill bottles with water, and set out in the late afternoon with Diane and the monk as the snow starts again. Andrew, whose new walking pace is 7 to 8 mph, keeps drifting 50 to 60 feet ahead. (Roulet Estate 02)

A long driveway leads to a second Victorian, the clown mansion, with ivy-covered stone clown statues, a clown-head door knocker and a parked Cadillac. The Biz's Manipulate Someone, rolled to look professional and sober, comes up 8, a mixed success, and the oldest man the agents have ever seen opens the door a crack to say "We don't want any." Asking what would convince him, the Biz learns the man, Bruce, is senile and running on routine, so he flashes his badge very forcefully. A much younger woman in a silk bathrobe covered in clown print shows them to the kitchen phone. (Roulet Estate 02)

Andrew calls Big Bill, who is "supposed to be fired sometime today," and gets no answer. The Biz calls the FBI's DC office as Special Agent Dick Baxter and reports two bodies at 118 Benefit Street, Exeter, shots fired by "entities unknown" and a stolen vehicle. The operator has him in the system but is "not familiar" with the task force, and there is no case on file; she promises local officers, delayed a couple of hours by the snow. Kurt orders a taxi to Pawtucket for the monk out of his own pocket, with a three-hour wait, and sends it to the Roulet house. Huell checks the mansion's crawl space for "probable cause" and finds nothing. (Roulet Estate 02)

Up the chimney

Back at the house Kurt breaks up furniture and lights a fire, which pours smoke into the room. With a mirror and a flashlight he finds a gap in the side of the flue and climbing notches. Every chimney in the house has been altered the same way, invisibly from outside, with a weather flap on top that traps smoke but lifts as an exit. (Roulet Estate 02)

Kurt and Andrew squeeze up through a gap of about five by six bricks; the Biz and Huell cannot fit. The attic holds the stolen guns, money and valuables, a half-packed briefcase of cash, a cot, a card table with cards and MRE containers, cigarettes, and Polaroids of sleeping people on the walls. Kurt's Investigate a Mystery (12) tells him someone has lived here for at least a year, probably unknown to the owners, entering every major room by chimney even after the owners put locks on the inside of their bedroom doors. The photos show the owners and, in older prints, other people. A cooler holds beta blockers in a tube with the label scraped off and a jar of green slurry with an eyedropper. Andrew's roll (9) finds a butterfly knife crusted with months-old blood in an ornate case by a boarded vent; from his earlier work on FBI serial-killer cases, everything reads as textbook. (Roulet Estate 02)

Kurt sniffs the slurry and the walls close in. A Sharp roll of 8 identifies it as very concentrated and probably containing peyote, and he hands Andrew his sidearm until it passes. The guns include a Kalashnikov and Russian WWII-era pistols, which suggests Mr. Roulet was a collector and that the VSS came from the house, which, as Kurt and the Biz agree, makes a KGB assassin less likely. After photographing everything, the two lower the guns, money, valuables and slurry down the chimney. On the way down Andrew sees the bricks turn into rolling muscle that swallows him; he drops three feet onto Kurt, who talks him down. (Roulet Estate 02)

The water, the monk and the police

Andrew realizes the toilet-tank water tastes strange, and the water heater's tastes the same. The house's water has been dosed with a hallucinogen, and they stop drinking it. Andrew mimes the danger to the monk and rolls a natural 12 on Manipulate Someone, 11 after his penalty; the monk drops his bottle in disgust and mutters, and Andre rewards the 12 by letting Andrew finally place the language as Finnish. (Roulet Estate 02)

A chubby local officer, who complains he is supposed to be on holiday break, checks badges and the basement: "Yep, that's two corpses." The agents explain that they came to check on a friend of a friend. Asked for a description for the APB on the car, Andrew hedges with shirtless, pale and bald, then realizes the figure he saw had nipples, which contradicts what he believes about Greys, and shouts it to a passing officer, who gives a slow thumbs-up. The taxi arrives; Kurt gives the monk the team's card and a wad of cash, and the monk shouts something incomprehensible from the cab as it leaves. (Roulet Estate 02)

Cold open and framing

The cold open is a single dimly lit shot: a nude man with an unnaturally shaped head, a bed sheet around his shoulders against the cold, sits in a dark dusty space with thin light trickling in from overhead. With long spindly fingers he loads shells into a shotgun one by one, "and we cut to credits." Andre and the players then recap the previous episode aloud. The episode ends on the taxi leaving. (Roulet Estate 02) See also The show.

Player characters

Non-player characters

Monsters and entities

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The letter came from a Keely Network member who knew Andrew and was worried about Margaret Roulet. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Margaret, identified by her ring, and a second person are buried in the basement, doused with something caustic. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Someone lived in the attic for at least a year, moving through the chimneys and photographing people as they slept. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The looted guns and valuables never left the house, and the VSS probably came from Mr. Roulet's collection. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The house's water is drugged, which accounts for Kurt's flashback and Andrew's chimney vision and may account for the owners' "visitations." (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The figure in the woods had nipples. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The monk is a Finnish Hare Krishna. (Roulet Estate 02)

Open threads

  • Whether the intruder is a Grey, a human serial killer, or both. Andre noted that as cops the agents would be suspicious of there being "two things." Several agents saw the alien, which Kurt calls a "weirdly consistent hallucination."
  • Whether he is the man loading the shotgun in the cold open.
  • Who the people in the older Polaroids are, and whether the second body is Mr. Roulet.
  • What the slurry and the beta blockers are for, and how the water was dosed.
  • Why the battery was taken and then put back, and where the car went.
  • The blinking eyes and streaks of light in the woods.
  • The task force's standing: Big Bill does not answer and the DC office does not know the unit exists.

(Roulet Estate 02)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"No, I think I'm tripping balls down here. Something is a— I am seeing shit, my man. I was back in Saigon there for a second."

Dante (as Kurt Larson)

Quote

"In my defense, I thought it was the VC."

Dante (as Kurt Larson), on shooting the buried hand

Quote

"Probable cause. That's probable cause."

Zack (as Huell Kendrick)

Quote

"The VSS is nobody's everyday carry, right?"

Andre, during the recap

Quote

"It's like I'm being swallowed by my dad. This is terrible."

Rita (as Andrew Howard), in the chimney

Quote

"Look, what I wouldn't give to just investigate a regular serial killer right now."

Ezra (as the Biz)

Table notes

  • The whole table recoiled from the clown mansion: "Nose goes" at the clown knocker, and Kurt declined to ask the residents anything. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The monk became a running bit. Dante asked for a taxi "so we don't have to keep kidnapping this monk"; Rita answered, "We're gonna keep kidnapping this man." (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Nipples ran from Andre's aside that the alien "might have jump-started it with its nipples" to Andrew's late realization. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Zack nicknamed Andrew "Half-Gallon Howard," and his new speed drew "white Usain Bolt." (Roulet Estate 02)
  • "Two things every time": the table listed cult and aliens, cult and worms, and a gold mine with Yeti hybrids as proof that their cases always have two causes. Zack disputed the last. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Tangents covered UFO taxonomy (Zeta Reticuli Greys, Nordics), and what a Rhode Island accent sounds like for the police officer's voice. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Dice: Dante's 12 in the attic and 10 in the basement; Ezra's 8 at the clown door, with +1 from Andre for the Biz's practice at hiding a hangover (Zack proposed +2 for the Boston accent); Rita's natural 12 for the language reveal. (Roulet Estate 02)

Continuity

  • Continues directly from Roulet Estate 01, on the same day.
  • The recap adds detail to Roulet Estate 01 rather than contradicting it. There the sketch was "a hand-drawn pencil sketch of some trees" and the shooter's trail "seems to end" at a river; here Andre says the black triangles were on the sketch and that the shooter dived into the river.
  • The recap has the agents setting out drunk on Inauguration Day, where Roulet Estate 01 puts its Inauguration Day card over the waking and has Andrew remember the drinking as "right before Inauguration Day." The episodes agree that Big Bill's firing falls on the day the agents spend at the house.
  • Andrew says "I don't know who is or isn't a Master these days," a reference to the Masters. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The Biz calls himself "the guy who everyone blames the Bill Clinton thing on," a callback to the Clinton surveillance scandal. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Kurt wishes for his claymores, last used in Georgia in The Things in Appalachia. When Andre remembers a never-resolved loose end about tainted water, Rita says "That's UTAW's problem," naming Kurt's old unit, UTAW. (Roulet Estate 02)
  • Ezra predicted this arc would follow "the opposite arc of the last one," with less official capacity and more "Scooby and the Gang." (Roulet Estate 02)
  • The beta blockers, the looted guns and the stolen car are all picked up in Roulet Estate 03.

Trivia

  • Andre first says the owner's name as "Margaret Roulette… or Roulet." (Roulet Estate 02)