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The Things in Appalachia, Episode 01

A few months after Marblehead, the task force is sent to Dahlonega, Georgia, to look into two disappearances and a rash of Bigfoot sightings, while the Biz quietly takes a job from the KGB.
Arc The Things in Appalachia
Episode 01
Setting Washington, D.C.; the drive south; Dahlonega, Georgia
In-fiction date Sunday October 3 to Wednesday October 6, 1992
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita; Kira sitting in
Previous Summer Service 06
Next Appalachia 02

Synopsis

The arc opens with a woman being dragged away in the Georgia woods, then catches up with each agent in the aftermath of Marblehead. Kurt Larson testifies to a House subcommittee, the Biz accepts a secret errand from a KGB front, Huell Kendrick coaxes a shattered Donald McManley back to work, and Andrew Howard asks his church's doctor about the nosebleeds that follow his healing. A new dossier then sends the team to Dahlonega, where they check into the Smith Hotel, meet a trailer full of young Bigfoot hunters, and get the case file from Sheriff Carter Burke. (Appalachia 01)

Plot

After Marblehead

A few months have passed since the end of The Summer Service. The EPA and the NRC have cleaned up the radiological mess left by the sea creature and the Davy Crockett, and have refused to return the team's car and equipment. Three versions of Marblehead now exist: the code-word classified report held by Big Bill, the version given to the rest of the government (an extremist cult with a nerve agent and a rogue ex-Soviet nuclear device botched an attack on the power plant, with the worms played down), and a different version again for the public. The rest of the FBI has stopped bullying the task force; the office is stocked with joke copies and posters of E.T., Alien and Close Encounters, plus a VHS player and a small CRT television. (Appalachia 01)

Four Sunday scenes

On Sunday, October 3, Kurt testifies to a House subcommittee in an old service suit he never broke in, flanked by Big Bill and his CIA boss, a man in a nautilus-print tie. Congressman Bradley asks about the worms in the communion wine and the church leaders who later died of infection. Kurt sidesteps without lying: the team was in town only three days, he was feverish with chicken pox and poisoned by nerve gas, and the cult acted from no conventional motive. Asked where the team's worm cure came from, he offers only speculation. When Bradley raises a gap in the testimony just before the power plant attack, and asks whether Kurt was at a road stop off a highway, Big Bill has both questions struck on national-security grounds and Bradley ends the session. (Appalachia 01)

The Biz receives a sweepstakes invitation he recognises as a KGB front. From a payphone he calls the "Canada maple syrup sweepstakes line" and decodes the numbers with Moby-Dick as the codebook. The message promises information on the "Massachusetts matter" and $10,000 for a favor, and says he will soon be sent to "George I A" (the word Georgia is not in the novel). Distrusting the old dead drop, a loose paving stone under a park bench, he pays a homeless man about $50 to fetch the package. It holds a covert microphone and a compact film camera and flash-paper instructions: plant the camera in room 111 of the Smith Hotel in Dahlonega before midnight in two days, retrieve it 24 hours later, and mail the undeveloped film. He tells nobody. (Appalachia 01)

Huell, haggard after weeks of illness as the dead worms left his body, is sent by Big Bill to check on McManley, who is on leave and close to being fired. McManley answers his cottage door with a shotgun and a cigarette. The house is clean but full of terrariums, with foil on the windows and a fat tegu named Cartwright; in the bathroom Huell finds a second, dusty toothbrush and razor and several bottles of ivermectin. McManley describes what he saw at Marblehead and spirals into an existential crisis. Huell's Manipulate Someone roll, at -1 forward because McManley hates him, comes up 3, and Zack spends a Luck point after the roll to turn it around. Commiserating over Roseanne works: McManley promises to return on Monday, says he should call Keith, and drags his television to the curb. (Appalachia 01)

Andrew visits Dr. Arthur, his childhood doctor and a fellow member of his church, for a blood draw to check for a clotting disorder. He admits he has performed ritual healing twice, with a nosebleed each time. Dr. Arthur explains that higher powers act through the healer, warns him about backlash and about outsiders, offers a meditation seminar, and recommends tampons for the nosebleeds. (Appalachia 01)

The dossier

On Monday the team is watching Close Encounters at the improved PITF office when Diane brings up a dossier: a child missing for about a week, another child who says he saw Bigfoot, a woman missing since the day before, four or five sightings that week, and a Dahlonega Times clipping with a grainy photograph. Huell's Investigate a Mystery (10) finds the photo could be a man in an ape suit. Below the fold, Bill Clinton is due to give a campaign speech in Atlanta. A nearly new 1991 Ford Explorer replaces the impounded car. (Appalachia 01)

The team finishes the film and leaves on Tuesday. Everyone rolls Act Under Pressure to see how late they get away; Andrew's 6 is the lowest, Kurt physically drags him out, and they depart at 8:45 a.m. On the road Andrew lectures on Bigfoot hunting, and on rereading the dossier he notices that the woman vanished in Auraria, a place not on their map, and that an unexplained article about religious vision ceremonies is tucked in the back. (Appalachia 01)

Dahlonega

They reach Dahlonega around 7 p.m. and choose the stately Smith Hotel over the de-branded Express & Suites. A dental oncologists' conference has left only rooms 109 and 110, next to the Biz's target. The desk clerk describes the hotel's stable and mineshaft exhibit and the religious community that took over the Auraria ghost town about ten years ago: long dresses, tents, no electricity, morning glories everywhere, talk of the end of the world. He advises against staying there after dark and mentions that he turned away some teenage "UFO people" with a trailer and a dog. (Appalachia 01)

Dinner is at the local McDonald's, where the counter kid, Eric, recommends Stigley's Pub and the original Spud Hut. Kurt sweeps his room for bugs and finds none. At breakfast Huell's Read a Bad Situation (8) catches a dental oncologist digging through the scrambled eggs with his bare hands; the Auraria peach preserves are rich and slightly fermented. (Appalachia 01)

Hunters and the sheriff

On the way to the sheriff's station the team stops at a silver trailer painted with a crop circle. The young Bigfoot hunters (Sloth, Eddie, Vanessa, Delilah and the dog Harvey) have triangulated the sightings: recent ones in town, older ones near Auraria around the time the boy vanished, and a search zone in between. Kurt takes their BBS card, gives them his pager number and marks the zone on his map. (Appalachia 01)

Sheriff Burke emerges after about twenty minutes in the restroom and treats Andrew as the lead. The manhunt for the boy found little, and Burke thinks the woman simply left her community. He supplies the names: missing woman Willow Greengrass, her sister Primenthol Greengrass (an ex-member turned podiatrist, back in town about a month), missing boy Gene Cartwright, aged seven, and five-year-old witness Edward Nick. The only evidence in Willow's case is a bag of peaches found in the woods. Outside, the team decides to bring McManley down to examine it. (Appalachia 01)

Cold open and framing

The episode opens in the show's television style, with an on-screen caption: "Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, 70 miles north of Atlanta". A young woman in an ankle-length dress hauls a sack of peaches through the trees; something hairy scuttles nearby, she picks up a rock, and a growl behind her drags her off-screen screaming. Hard cut to credits. The first act is then a run of solo "cut to" scenes, one per agent. The Biz's KGB call was played with the other players briefly removed from the call, so that Ezra received the message privately. The session stops partway through the morning of October 6 for lack of time. (Appalachia 01)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters

  • The cold-open creature (see Ape-Men)

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • Marblehead has three official versions; the worms' existence is public but their nature is classified.
  • Andrew's healing is, according to Dr. Arthur, higher powers acting through the healer, and it carries bodily backlash.
  • The KGB holds information on the "Massachusetts matter" and wants room 111 of the Smith Hotel filmed.
  • Willow Greengrass vanished in Auraria, not Dahlonega, and the dossier blurs this.
  • The newspaper Bigfoot photo could be a man in a suit; Burke thinks the recent sightings look fake, while older ones near Auraria coincide with Gene's disappearance.

(Appalachia 01)

Open threads

  • What took the woman in the cold open, and where Willow and Gene are.
  • Why the KGB wants room 111 watched; on arrival Andre tells Ezra the Biz has 24 hours left to plant the camera, and the episode ends with the job still to do.
  • Bradley's struck questions about the testimony gap and the highway road stop.
  • Andrew's blood test results and the offered meditation seminar.
  • Why the dossier contains an article on vision ceremonies.
  • The peaches still need forensic examination, and neither Primenthol nor Edward Nick has been interviewed.

(Appalachia 01)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"All right, men, they want us to kill Bigfoot." Dante (as Kurt), reading the dossier

Quote

"What do we do if the universe turns out to just be full of the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard in my life?" Andre (as McManley)

Quote

"I'm not that big into getting wicker-manned." Andre (as the desk clerk), on Auraria

Quote

"I will take the Bigfoot stuff over the gold stuff." Andre (as Sheriff Burke)

Quote

"A weirdo in an ape costume stealing a kid is not the craziest thing that's come across my desk." Dante (as Kurt)

(Appalachia 01)

Table notes

  • The dental oncologists filling the hotel become an instant object of suspicion, capped by the bare-handed scrambled eggs. See running gags.
  • The team ends up at a McDonald's again, with jokes about sponsorship.
  • Harvey the dog answers "Woof" after every claim made about him.
  • Andre confirmed that Luck can be spent after a roll, which rescued Huell's 3 with McManley. See game mechanics.
  • The table tracks 1992 details as they go: Sinead O'Connor on SNL, Howard Stern's national debut, Crystal Pepsi, Tiny Toons Happy Meals.
  • Andre had to clarify that Spud Hut is not a real chain.

(Appalachia 01)

Continuity

  • Follows directly from the fallout of Summer Service 06: the radiological cleanup, the impounded car, Huell's worm infection, Kurt's chicken pox and nerve-gas poisoning, and McManley's trauma.
  • Huell calls Marblehead his second "bug mission"; the first was the moth-winged dog of The Radford Horror.
  • Sets up McManley's arrival in Georgia, the visit to Auraria, the Biz's room 111 job, and the Spud Hut plant outside town.
  • The dates are stated at the table: the solo scenes fall on Sunday, October 3, 1992; the briefing on Monday, October 4; the drive and the 7 p.m. arrival in Dahlonega on Tuesday, October 5; and the meetings with the hunters and the sheriff on the morning of Wednesday, October 6. The dossier read on October 4 says the woman disappeared "yesterday".

(Appalachia 01)