Skip to content

The Things in Appalachia, Episode 02

The team spends a long Wednesday on the Dahlonega disappearances, finding a child's shoe and a gutted rabbit hung high in trees, evidence of a Bigfoot hoaxer, and a hotel room staged for somebody else's scandal.
Arc The Things in Appalachia
Episode 02
Setting Dahlonega, Georgia; Auraria and the woods nearby
In-fiction date Wednesday, October 6, 1992, morning to night
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita
Previous Appalachia 01
Next Appalachia 03

Synopsis

After a cold open in which a Spud Hut plant worker is lured into a cave, the agents interview five-year-old witness Edward Nick and search the field where Gene Cartwright was taken, recovering his shoe from a treetop with pale hair in the laces. They hear the story of the Covenant from Primenthol Greengrass, eat at the original Spud Hut, meet a bootlegger and the Circle Chasers in the woods near Auraria, and find both faked giant footprints and a real kill. That night the Biz plants his camera in room 111. (Appalachia 02)

Plot

The witness

It is Wednesday morning outside the sheriff's office, and Andrew has just called Donald McManley from the payphone. The team decides to question the child witness first. At trailer 513 of the trailer park, Edward's mother lets them in after Kurt Larson announces "We're with the Federales." Edward watches Looney Tunes without turning round, but gives Andrew Howard a Transformers toy, a juice box and a scribbled drawing of a crouched hairy figure. He says "He was fast" and pantomimes something scrabbling on all fours. His mother blames a Bigfoot book from an aunt for the "Bigfoot nonsense" and points the agents to the bent tree at the wood line, where Gene was when the screaming started. (Appalachia 02)

The shoe in the tree

In the field Kurt orders an inverted-wedge search. The manhunt has trampled the scene, so Investigate a Mystery is at -1; Ezra's roll, restored to 11 by Dante's assist, earns two questions. The first leads the Biz to notice something dangling from a high branch. Huell Kendrick climbs on a mixed Act Under Pressure result (9), chooses to risk the sketchy limb, scrambles back as it cracks, and brings down a child's shoe with a tuft of pale, soft hair, roots intact, caught in the laces. Kurt and Huell conclude the boy is dead. Sheriff Burke later confirms by phone that Gene's shoes were red with white soles and admits his deputies should have looked up. (Appalachia 02)

Over tuna green bean casserole, Edward's father comes home in gray Spud Hut coveralls, exhausted. A co-worker, Aaron, stepped out for a smoke break in the middle of the shift and never came back. Kurt asks him to call if Aaron does not turn up. (Appalachia 02)

Prim and the Covenant

The team finds Prim Greengrass in room 11 of the bedbug-prone Hotel and Suites, the hotel the team passed over. Her mother joined the Covenant when the sisters were small and both were renamed. Prim left, graduated, and came back about a month ago to coax Willow out, bringing her six-foot party subs against malnutrition. She describes the leader, Elijah Ray, who moved the congregation to Auraria after a prophetic dream and a television report of a shooting star, the red-clay baptisms, and the vision-quest peach drink, and warns the agents never to take a vision quest. Willow had no enemies, suitors, money or outside friends, and Prim is sure she would have come to her. Prim also takes Andrew into the bathroom to learn his embarrassing middle name, which is never revealed at the table. (Appalachia 02)

The original Spud Hut

At the original Spud Hut, a hut under a huge neon potato, the counter worker recites about a hundred specials from memory while the line behind nearly riots. Kurt drops a handful of matchsticks and the worker instantly says there are 43. Told to get out and use his gift, he answers that the Spud Hut changed his life. The food arrives within a minute. Afterwards he locks up and walks across the lot into the woods. (Appalachia 02)

The woods near Auraria

Auraria is a ghost town with one pre-Civil War church, glowing white tents, robed members who ignore the agents, and closed morning glories everywhere. The team leaves the members alone and takes the trail toward the Circle Chasers' search area. They meet Frotter Comstock, a bootlegger hauling chemistry gear, who services the Covenant's still and keeps methanol out of their ritual drink. A couple of weeks ago something skulked around his ridge homestead; he saw only a pair of eyes. (Appalachia 02)

Further on, the Biz's Investigate a Mystery earns one question, "What is being concealed here?", and turns up a pair of suspiciously clean giant footprints, twice the size of a human foot, with the edge of a sneaker print and a cigarette butt beside them. Kurt photographs them and leans toward a hoax. An unearthly howl scatters the birds, and the Circle Chasers arrive; Harvey leaps on Andrew and licks his face. They show a three-second clip in which a gray, man-sized blur snatches a rabbit from the trail. Kurt notes their footwear to rule them out as the fakers. About a hundred feet from the snatch site, blood drips onto Andrew from a tree. Huell climbs again with a boost from Andrew, slips, catches himself under both arms and takes 1 harm, and comes down with a white rabbit's pelt, stringy meat still stuck inside and its internals gone. The answer to "Where did it go?" is that the creature is very comfortable moving vertically. Plotted on the map, the sightings make a line that points toward town. On the way back to the road, about forty Spud Hut trucks roll past. (Appalachia 02)

Room 111

Back at the Smith Hotel, the Biz is considering the lock of room 111 when the desk clerk reports the room as suspicious: booked under one name, paid with a card in another, with a $100 bribe for silence from an armed, rude, military-looking Midwesterner. He lends the Biz the master key. Inside is a delivered basket of wine and chocolates. The Biz hides the camera beside the VCR, facing the bed, sticks the microphone to the bedside drawer, and leaves no prints (Act Under Pressure 10). He concludes it is a setup, though not one aimed at him. The rabbit pelt goes in the mini fridge and the team turns in. (Appalachia 02)

Cold open and framing

Andre forgot to start the recording, so the file opens in the middle of his recap. The cold open has no player characters: a worker at the Spud Hut distribution center is locked out on a smoke break, follows baby-like sobbing into a rocky fissure, finds an ancient pickaxe in the sand, and is attacked by a glinting-eyed figure perched in the crevice. Andre calls for a "slow Hitchcock zoom" and then "we cut to credits". At the top of the session the non-canon one-shot Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable is declared an OVA that Huell watched on the hotel's cable television while falling asleep. The room 111 scene was played with the other players out of the call. See the show. (Appalachia 02)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters

  • The unseen predator (see Ape-Men)

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • Whatever took Gene climbs: his shoe was hung high in a tree with pale hair in the laces, and the rabbit was ripped apart and left in a treetop.
  • Edward's sighting was three days ago, and the thing he saw moved fast on all fours.
  • Someone is staging Bigfoot evidence: clean giant prints beside a sneaker print and a cigarette butt.
  • The Covenant's peach drink gives visions; it contains a hallucinogenic fungus and risks methanol contamination. See Covenant beliefs.
  • Room 111 is staged for a sexual encounter and was booked by an armed, military-looking man.

(Appalachia 02)

Open threads

  • The fates of Gene, Willow and Aaron. The cold-open worker and Aaron both vanish on a smoke break from the plant, but the episode does not name the cold-open victim.
  • Who booked room 111, and who the camera is meant to catch.
  • "Charlie" Briggs, credited with the Dahlonega Times Bigfoot photo.
  • McManley's analysis of the shoe, hair, pelt and peaches.
  • A daytime visit to the Covenant, the Cartwright family, and the gold-mine tour Andrew wants to take.
  • Huell is one harm from dying.

(Appalachia 02)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"I don't mean to be blunt, but shoe in a tree, that kid is dead." Dante (as Kurt)

Quote

"Every time we go to a town, the hotel full up with dentists, every single time. It's like a curse or something." Dante (as Kurt)

Quote

"Sir, sir, I am an officer. Do not touch me. I am listening to the menu." Zack (as Huell), in the Spud Hut line

Quote

"I think it's a werewolf." Rita (as Andrew)

Quote

"I've got kind of a bad feeling about this whole thing, but— this is a setup. But I don't necessarily think it's a setup for me." Ezra (as the Biz)

Quote

"You don't know how long this menu goes on, motherfucker. Don't commit to things you don't understand." Andre (out of character), to Dante

(Appalachia 02)

Table notes

  • Andre read out the whole list of about a hundred Spud Hut specials, and the table refused to stop him. He said the list was AI-generated with human tuning. Rita rolled a d100 to choose Andrew's order (chicken Parmesan, number 29).
  • The dental oncologists gag continues; Kurt now thinks they follow the team from town to town. See running gags.
  • Andrew's unrevealed middle name, and Prim's remarks on his looks, had the table piling on.
  • Dice: Zack rolled mixed 9s on both climbs and took harm on the second; his harm from the previous arc had never been reset.
  • Anachronism checks: Beast Wars, keycard hotel locks, Air Jordans.
  • Andre briefly called the room 119 before correcting it to 111.

(Appalachia 02)

Continuity

  • Picks up outside the sheriff's station where Appalachia 01 ended.
  • Kurt recalls the earlier case of a child who saw a spaceman, a reference to The Radford Horror; "last time religion was worms" refers to The Summer Service.
  • Appalachia 01 describes the town's other hotel, the "Express & Suites", as a former Holiday Inn; here Andre calls it the "Hotel and Suites" and a former Best Western.
  • The Biz plants the camera he was given by the KGB front in Appalachia 01, on the night of his deadline. His instructions were to retrieve it 24 hours later and mail the film.
  • Sets up McManley's arrival, the cave behind the Spud Hut plant, and the Bigfoot hoaxer.

(Appalachia 02)