The Summer Service, Episode 02¶

The second session of The Summer Service was played but never recorded; it covered the team's second day in Marblehead, including a dive in an experimental submarine to a sunken stealth vessel and the first sighting of the thing later called the angel.


Arc	The Summer Service
Episode	02 (unrecorded)
Setting	Marblehead, Massachusetts, and the sea floor off the shelf
In-fiction date	June 1992; the day after Summer Service 01
Previous	Summer Service 01
Next	Summer Service 03

Unrecorded session

This session was played but never recorded. No quotes or roll results survive. Everything below is what later episodes establish about it, chiefly Summer Service 03, which opens the same night with "you guys had just come back to the hotel after your adventures for the day".

What later episodes establish¶

The dive¶

Andrew Howard and Kurt Larson describe the dive to Big Bill by phone the next morning. (Summer Service 03)

The team "went down in an experimental submarine with some college kids". One of them, a young woman, had found a dead body on the sea floor during her research and took the agents over the shelf to see it. Asked whether it was one of the missing researchers, Andrew answers, "Don't know. Body was gone when we got down there."
The body had been lying under a sunken vessel. Kurt describes a hull built to minimize its radar signature, with no 90-degree angles and a sawtooth shape on its flat parts, carrying an unusual turret with big capacitors. He reads the turret as a directed-energy weapon or a rail gun, and Big Bill is reminded of Reagan's Star Wars proposals.
The wreck had "a chunk taken out of it. Like, it got eaten." The missing section was the part that had covered the body.
While the team was at the wreck a second vessel arrived, fully underwater, "covered in lights" and shaped like a gyroscope. It hummed at a pitch that threatened to break their submarine apart. The sub lost power; the team left everything switched off and was not found. The thing moved as though it were searching for something and then went elsewhere. This is the first appearance of the angel thing, which Kurt calls "that glowy ring fuck thing that scared the shit out of me underwater" and "the spinning death wheel under the water that eats ships for dinner".

(Summer Service 03)

Illness and exposure¶

Kurt was poisoned by the nerve agent in the water. He later tells Ma Gramoire, "I just got my hands wet." The Biz was not poisoned. Lab results on "whatever got you guys" reach the team through Diane the next morning.
Kurt also has adult chicken pox, which he says his kids gave him. He "took some steps" to look after himself during the session, for which Andre gives him +1 forward on his first roll of the next one.
Huell Kendrick, who drank a full cup of communion wine in Summer Service 01, had been awake for 48 hours by the end of the day.

(Summer Service 03)

Other developments¶

By the next episode the whole team knows that the crystal marbles are diamonds. In Summer Service 01 the Biz had hidden his marble from the others; Andre confirms that "Ezra told you guys the marbles are diamonds".
Donald McManley, expected "in the morning" at the end of Summer Service 01, is in town with his mobile lab when Summer Service 03 begins.
Big Bill says he and Kurt "talked very briefly last night", and reckons the team has been in town "day and a half? Two days?"
The session ended with the team back at the hotel and going to bed.

(Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03)

Later references¶

In the finale, the voice on the radio asks whether the agents know about his side's "advanced team". Andrew asks if it was "dead in the bottom of the ocean", and Kurt identifies it as "the boat with a bite taken out of it". (Summer Service 06)
The encounter with the ring is why Kurt phones an old contact for something big enough to kill it. What arrives is the M28 Davy Crockett. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 04)
Andrew's report of the wreck leads Big Bill to have a Los Angeles-class attack submarine retasked to the area. (Summer Service 04)

Never established¶

Which of the four agents were aboard the submarine. Andrew and Kurt describe the dive first-hand.
Who the college researchers were and how the team met them.
What became of the severed arm from Summer Service 01, and whether the Cartwrights or Denver O'Donnell were ever interviewed. None of them comes up again.

Featured characters¶

Player characters: Kurt Larson, Andrew Howard, Huell Kendrick, Dick "The Biz" Baxter.

NPCs: the college submarine researchers (minor characters); Big Bill, by phone.

Monsters: the angel thing.

Continuity¶

Follows the church service and the rooftop confrontation of Summer Service 01.
Sets up most of Summer Service 03: Kurt's sickness, Huell's sleeplessness, the lab results, Big Bill's escalation toward the Oval Office and Kurt's call to his weapons contact.
See Lost episodes for the campaign's other unrecorded sessions.