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The Summer Service, Episode 06

In the arc finale, a cheerful voice on the radio helps the team plan a nuclear strike, Jester gets his reckoning, Huell fires the Davy Crockett at the angel thing, and a flashlight finishes what the bomb could not.
Arc The Summer Service
Episode 06 (arc finale)
Setting The flooded freeway and marsh outside Marblehead, Massachusetts; the nuclear power plant; the National Guard checkpoint
In-fiction date Summer 1992, during the tropical storm; mid to late afternoon into evening
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita; Kira and Ben (guests) at the table without characters
Previous Summer Service 05.5 (unrecorded)
Next Appalachia 01

Synopsis

On a flooded freeway behind a convoy of the infected, the team is contacted by an unnamed radio operator whose own people died on the stealth wreck and who has a poison for the worms but no way to kill the creature. Kurt offers the Davy Crockett. On the way to a firing position the agents retake their stolen car from Jester and kill him. The convoy is cut down at the plant fence, the angel thing rises from the sea, and Huell hits it with the warhead. It survives and comes for them. Andrew burns it down with the flashlight weapon twenty feet from the car. The agents hand a canister of anti-worm agent to the National Guard, and Big Bill orders the story told as terrorism. (Summer Service 06)

Plot

The voice on the radio

The episode opens mid-chase, following the unrecorded Summer Service 05.5. The glowing creature, which has been trenching the ground toward the team's car, freezes, lets out a long fluting cry and turns back to the sea. The radio crackles and a stranger's voice asks whether the earlier explosion was theirs. It was the claymore the team set off on a truck. "Well, you pissed it off," he says. (Summer Service 06)

Asked who he is, the voice says some things have to remain a mystery, apologizes for his commanding officer's rudeness, and explains that he is only allowed to tell them things they already know. Kurt summarizes the worms and the glowing thing, to the man's delight. His side has an agent for the worms and a "Casaba", a weapon that cannot be fired from the ground and cannot be flown in the storm. Kurt asks, "Can you keep a secret?" and reveals the Davy Crockett. The contact does not know the name ("It might be different where I'm from") but is overjoyed. (Summer Service 06)

The plan: the creature is heading for the nuclear power plant. Let the convoy hit the plant's defenses, wait for the creature to come out, and take a long shot. The contact will call out its position; at the moment it is chasing an American submarine. His anti-worm agent is a liquid poison developed from worm samples; some of it can be dumped in the ocean to deal with the contaminated fish, but he does not see how to get it into the townspeople, and says without embarrassment that "we're gonna have to kill all these people." When Andrew asks whether the "advanced team" was lying dead at the bottom of the ocean, in what Kurt calls "the boat with a bite taken out of it", the contact confirms it and apologizes for the nerve agent: "We had to bring something broad-spectrum because we weren't sure what it was gonna make. And then, you know, we got blown up, so it leaked everywhere." He warns that the convoy has about eight worm bags and that the team should not engage until the plant's defenses have worn it down. (Summer Service 06)

Toothbrush Man

The Biz (Sharp, 10) spots the team's own stolen FBI car near the back of the convoy during a lightning flash. A National Guard sergeant, who gives his name as both Jefferson and Johnson, broadcasts that the Guard has taken command at Marblehead and wants a consult from the FBI agents; Kurt answers, but the team's radios are too weak to be heard. (Summer Service 06)

Lying in the back seat at -1 to everything, Kurt teaches the others to fire the launcher (Act Under Pressure, 10). The Biz "kinda gets it" on a 9; Andrew panics on a 6. Huell's deworming takes hold: he loses his luster, gets a pounding headache and feels four sleepless days at once, and Zack removes the worm bonus from his sheet. (Summer Service 06)

The FBI car has dropped behind the convoy, stuck in a water-filled dip, and its lone driver gets out to hunt through the trunk for something to put under the wheels. Andrew: "Look, they carjacked us. That's a carjacker. We're a law enforcement. Let's kill a guy." Kurt: "We'll kill a guy. We're the cops." As the team pulls up behind him, the man turns out to be Jester. Huell's shot with the flashlight weapon goes wide on a 5 and sets one of the FBI car's tires alight. Jester screams "It's you, Toothbrush Man!", dives through the window and sinks his teeth into Huell's neck. Andrew swerves toward the stuck car to scrape him off (9, mixed), Huell leans out on a Help Out of 13, and Jester is slammed against the other car's windshield and dragged off. Andrew parks on him and backs over him; he is left spewing blood, bile and worms. Andrew vomits on him, and burns the escaping worms with the flashlight as the team leaves. Huell reaches level four. The team recovers Kurt's gear, and the Biz's welding goggles and earplugs. (Summer Service 06)

The shot

Andrew bogs the car on a 6, and Huell frees it with Kurt's steel plate (Act Under Pressure, 9), which takes a while. By then the convoy is massing at the fence, a mile from shore across the marsh. Kurt asks who wants to cause a nuclear incident. Huell and the Biz settle it by rock-paper-scissors, sent privately to Andre: paper beats rock. (Summer Service 06)

The convoy rams the fence. The ground beyond drops six inches and bursts dozens of tires, and pop-up machine guns shred the vehicles. A handful of howling infected run through the fire into the facility. A light rises out of the ocean. Kurt bites down on his amphetamine tooth to clear his penalty and coaches Huell's stance for +1. Huell rolls 6, plus 1 for 7, a mixed result, and Zack burns a Luck point to make it a success. Huell slips, remembers the advice, and puts the W54 into the light. (Summer Service 06)

The flash is blinding even through goggles. Distant trees ignite, the shockwave flattens everyone, the fence falls and the guns go silent. A pillar of fire rises, and the creature screams, survives, and comes straight for them, brighter than before. (Summer Service 06)

The flashlight

Andrew rolls a 4 and sticks the car at once, with about twenty seconds left. The team piles into an abandoned convoy car as the creature strips a molten line through the first one and circles. Paint blisters, tires burst and the upholstery catches. Andrew leans out with the flashlight (Kick Some Ass, 8): a solid hit that burns his hand and starts to melt the weapon's case. The creature charges, spirals into the earth twenty feet away, sprouts the legs of every kind of animal, and dies as a white-hot pillar of flame in a crater. (Summer Service 06)

Kurt declines to collect samples. His Sharp 11 catches the Geiger counter in the abandoned trunk going wild: the radiation spiked when the creature died, not when the bomb went off. The contact whoops, tells them to get away and find iodine, and promises "a little present on the road"; the rest of the agent will go into the ocean. He signs off with "Sorry about this, by the way. We didn't mean for it to get out, you know." The present is a big metal spray canister full of liquid, left in the middle of the freeway. The team leaves its contaminated gear and drives off in a lifted Ford Pinto with painted flames. Kurt and Huell pass out; Huell visibly loses the muscle and hair the worms gave him and runs a high fever. Andrew hangs his head out of the window. The Biz drives. (Summer Service 06)

Terrorists

At the Guard checkpoint the agents hand the canister to an older officer, who sends it to a chemist. Andrew phones Big Bill, who is fifteen miles away behind four feet of water, waiting for a boat. Big Bill has heard that the attack on the plant is under control and that a submarine was lost. He orders that the task force's real purpose stay out of it: the story is terrorists. (Summer Service 06)

Andrew and Kurt tell the officer about a religious terrorist group that seeded a parasite through the local food supply and attacked the plant. The officer reports strange murals at the town hall, a few guards killed, medics seeing "profoundly wild things", and deworming medicine going out; some people will not pull through. On his way out he mentions that someone used a tactical nuke. The team feigns surprise. Huell vomits dying worms, and he and Kurt fall asleep over chicken soup in the medical tent. (Summer Service 06)

Cold open and framing

Two intercut scenes with on-screen captions. "A few hours ago": a phone rings in a dark bedroom, and Big Bill tells his wife, "I have to go into work. The Protestants are trying to kill my detectives." "A few seconds from now": aboard the USS Oklahoma City, sonar operator Davy reports that the bogey went on land, then a small explosion, then "the craziest sound I've ever heard". It comes back at 60 to 70 knots. The captain orders full about and everything conventional fired. The last word before the credits is the sonar operator's whisper: "80 knots". (Summer Service 06)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The stealth wreck's dead crew were the contact's "advanced team", and the nerve agent in the water was theirs.
  • The contact's side knew about the worms, has a poison for them, and expects to kill the infected.
  • The contact's parting apology, "We didn't mean for it to get out", implies that his side is responsible for the outbreak.
  • The angel thing survived a nuclear warhead and was killed by the flashlight. Its death, not the bomb, caused the radiation spike.
  • Infected townspeople got inside the plant.
  • The dewormer strips Huell of everything the worms gave him.
  • Officially, Marblehead was a terrorist attack.

(Summer Service 06)

Open threads

  • Who the radio contact and his commanding officer are, and what "where I'm from" means.
  • Where the creature and the worms came from, and what it was that "got out".
  • What powers the flashlight and how many shots it has left.
  • How many of the infected survive deworming.
  • What happened to the lab techs left with the RV.
  • Which submarine was lost. The cold open ends with the Oklahoma City under attack, and Big Bill says only that "we lost one of our submarines"; the boat he means is never named.
  • Who will be blamed for a tactical nuclear detonation that cannot be kept out of the news.
  • What Big Bill meant by "the Protestants".

(Summer Service 06)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"I have to go into work. The Protestants are trying to kill my detectives." Andre (as Big Bill), cold open.

Quote

"I don't recognize the model name. It might be different where I'm from." Andre (as the radio contact).

Quote

"It's you, Toothbrush Man!" Andre (as Jester).

Quote

"You motherfucker, you had toothbrushes." Zack (as Huell).

Quote

"All right, boys, raise your hand. Who wants to cause a nuclear incident?" Dante (as Kurt).

Quote

"That was awesome! Get the fuck away from there." Andre (as the radio contact).

(Summer Service 06)

Table notes

  • The toothbrush grudge from the first session pays off in Jester's last words and Huell's one-liners. Ezra names the result "Pretzel Man".
  • Rock-paper-scissors for the right to fire a nuclear weapon, submitted secretly to the GM.
  • Zack burns a Luck point on the shot and describes Huell sneezing at the right moment. Dante reveals Kurt's amphetamine tooth, refilled "between missions". Rita rolls a 6 and a 4 on driving and bogs the car twice.
  • Zack, on the creature's death: "Anyone see the panda? That was cool."
  • Andre turns off his noise cancellation to perform the creature's cry; the software also eats Zack's Geiger-counter noises.
  • Kurt gives the unofficial motto of UTAW, "anything done in defense of the American people is legal"; Andre first hears it as "Utah's motto".
  • Andre ends early, saying the finale "went way, way faster than I thought it would" because the players committed to the nuke and did not go into the facility.

(Summer Service 06)

Continuity

  • Andre gives the warhead's yield as "half a kiloton" here; the manual in Summer Service 04 says 0.2 kilotons.

  • The contact's "advanced team" explains the wreck seen in the unrecorded Summer Service 02 and the poisonings investigated since Radford Horror 08.

  • The gray man's question in Summer Service 03, whether Andrew could order a nuclear strike, is answered here.
  • Jester's "bed-and-toothbrush" line and the stolen marble are from Summer Service 01; Huell tells him, "Guess what? We took your marble."
  • The flashlight weapon came from The Radford Horror. In Summer Service 05 it is Kurt's; here Andrew carries it.
  • The aftermath is picked up a few months later: the radiological cleanup, the impounded car, the official story of a cult with a rogue nuclear device, and a congressional hearing. (Appalachia 01)