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The Things in Appalachia, Episode 03

Andrew wakes in the woods holding a dead man's lighter, the team finds the cave where the man was torn apart, and a search for a boy lost on a gold mine tour ends with a pale creature mauling Kurt in a hidden modern tunnel.
Arc The Things in Appalachia
Episode 03
Setting Dahlonega, Georgia: the Smith Hotel, the woods, the Consolidated Gold Mine
In-fiction date Thursday, October 7, 1992, from about 3 a.m. to about 3 p.m. (the night and day after Appalachia 02)
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita
Previous Appalachia 02
Next Appalachia 04

Synopsis

Andrew Howard sleepwalks miles from the hotel and wakes with a stranger's bloody lighter in his hand. Retracing his trail the next morning, the team finds a blood-splattered cave with a man's face stuck to the wall. When a German boy vanishes on a mine tour, the sheriff enlists the agents; they fall into a hidden modern tunnel beneath the tourist mine, where something pale, furry and enormously strong attacks Kurt Larson and flees. (Appalachia 03)

Plot

The sleepwalk

The team goes to bed at the Smith Hotel; Huell Kendrick and Andrew fall asleep to The Golden Girls. Smash cut: Andrew wakes in the woods in sweat-soaked pajamas, his feet bloody, clutching a bloody steel cigarette lighter he has never seen. The blood on his feet is his own; the blood on the lighter is not. Back in the room, Huell wakes to a banging window and an empty bed, sees no reason for suspicion, and goes back to sleep. (Appalachia 03)

Andrew heads for a bright patch of sky. He crosses his own earlier trail at some broken plants, wraps his feet in his pajama top, falls into a ravine on a 6 (1 harm), and pushes through Russian olive thickets before emerging on a dark street. A Manipulate Someone roll of 9 stops a cab; the driver assumes "girl trouble", lays down a towel and drives him home for nothing. In the hotel hallway a curly-haired blonde woman in a bathrobe asks if he is all right before a suited man with a military haircut steers her back into the next-door room and glares at him. The night clerk says the room is booked under one name, occupied under another and paid for under a third. (Appalachia 03)

The death cave

In the morning Kurt questions Andrew about sleepwalking and drugs and concludes, "This kid's a square." Andrew's Investigate a Mystery (9, at -2 forward) picks up two lines of his own blood, and after an hour and a half the team reaches a crevice in the rock near a road. The Biz is too stocky to fit and stands guard. Inside is a sandy chamber splattered with blood: an old bloody pickaxe, skin, bones, hair, scraps of gray cloth, a cigarette pack, and a man's folded face stuck to the wall, which Andrew bags. Kurt's roll (8) finds no powder marks or chemical smell. The man was shredded and slung against the walls, his bones split open with tooth marks and his muscle, organs and fat gone. (Appalachia 03)

Andrew's trail runs on to a freeway where white Spud Hut box trucks pass in convoy; Kurt reasons he must have been sprinting. On the walk Andrew says his mother once tied him in a sleeping bag for about a week when he "kept lashing out". Kurt holds his face and recites the names of the psychic-spy programs he knows from the CIA, and gets only confusion. Back in town the lighter proves to be stainless steel with "HF" written in Sharpie on the bottom. While stowing the evidence in the mini fridge, Huell glimpses a laughing man in a cowboy hat and dark sunglasses entering the next-door room and finds him familiar for a split second. (Appalachia 03)

At the sheriff's station the department is mobilising: a German boy, Frederick, vanished on a gold mine tour about an hour and a half earlier. Hearing that Kurt has caving experience, the sheriff enlists the team and puts him in charge of their safety. At the Consolidated Gold Mine the sheriff takes the left fork and sends the agents right. They mark the walls with glow-stick arrows and call for Frederick in German. (Appalachia 03)

Kurt's Investigate a Mystery comes up 9 and he takes the full success at a cost: a boarded floor gives way. Kurt (12) and the Biz (11) land unhurt; Andrew (8) and Huell (7) take 1 harm each. They are in a newer, electric-era tunnel with fresh cave-ins at both ends, a work light in the rubble and vehicle tracks. Kurt's answers: a new mineshaft is being concealed, and many people and vehicles went toward the blocked end. (Appalachia 03)

The thing in the tunnel

Andrew squeezes through a gap and helps the rest into a dark tunnel. Far ahead a small red light blinks. Kurt orders lights off and the team advances as a human chain; on point (13) he catches himself at the lip of a pit and gets everyone across. The light pulses, something growls, and the light moves. The team forms a four-man stack and switches on flashlights. A white blur charges. Kurt's Kick Some Ass (8) puts a bullet in it, but it hurls him into Andrew and the wall, tears a long cut up his back and strains his bicep tendon (2 harm), then flees moaning and screaming. All anyone saw was that it was pale, furry, fast and had arms. (Appalachia 03)

Andrew puts his bracelet on Kurt and Lays on Hands (8, mixed): Kurt's harm is healed, but Andrew takes it as a massive nosebleed and is left unstable. The creature's blood trail leads to a vertical elevator shaft with no way up; at the bottom lies a single child's tennis shoe. The pit turns out to be a freshly dug shaft, from which Kurt pulls a small gold nugget. Climbing out, Kurt reinjures his elbow, and Huell's first aid (10) stabilises Andrew. As the Biz climbs out last, the tunnel collapses behind him. (Appalachia 03)

Debrief

The team tells the searchers Frederick is probably dead and hands over the shoe; a German woman from the tour group screams in tears. They mention illegal mining but withhold the creature. The tour guide, who owns the mine, doubts anyone could keep such a thing secret; Andrew suggests a cult, and the sheriff's face darkens. On the map, the hidden tunnel's estimated exit lies near both the death cave and the Spud Hut distribution center. (Appalachia 03)

Donald McManley radios that he is arriving with the mobile lab, delighted by "a face in a bag", and relays Big Bill's order: after Ruby Ridge and "that thing in Marblehead", this case goes strictly by the book. The team agrees to leave Andrew's sleepwalking out of the account of how the lighter was found. From the mine's payphone Andrew calls the distribution center, where Stacy confirms that Aaron Richters did not clock out yesterday or come in today, and offers to connect him to Jan, who runs the plant. (Appalachia 03)

Cold open and framing

The cold open follows a mine tour. A bearded guide in suspenders explains that all the town's mines connect to each other and to natural caves. A boy in overalls with a Game Boy hears giggling down a roped-off passage; "camera slowly zooms into the black". The guide finds the rope poles tipped over and the Game Boy still bleeping on the floor. "Cut to credits." Andre narrates camera moves throughout the session ("camera tracks in on Andrew Howard's face", "smash cut"). There is no recap. See the show. (Appalachia 03)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters

  • The pale tunnel creature (see Ape-Men)

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • A man was torn apart and partly eaten in a cave near the freeway; his lighter is marked "HF".
  • Someone is secretly working a modern mine under the tourist mine, with vehicles, work lights and a fresh gold-bearing shaft.
  • The creature is pale, furry, fast and immensely strong, bleeds red, and has a small red light blinking on or near it.
  • Aaron Richters is missing from the Spud Hut plant; his initials do not match the lighter.
  • Andrew's Lay on Hands can heal others at the cost of taking the harm himself.

(Appalachia 03)

Open threads

  • Why Andrew walked to the death cave in his sleep, and how he came to hold the lighter.
  • Who HF is, and whether the dead man is Aaron Richters.
  • Whether Frederick is alive; the shoe suggests he was taken up the elevator shaft.
  • Who built the hidden mine and where it surfaces.
  • Who is staying next door, and why the man in the cowboy hat looked familiar to Huell.
  • Jan, the Covenant and the Bigfoot photographer remain unvisited.

(Appalachia 03)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Say, Andrew, do you think you could sleep with your ankles zip-tied together?" Dante (as Kurt)

Quote

"Normally someone's, like, talking to me or crouching over me or licking my face. Not this time." Rita (as Andrew), on his usual dreams

Quote

"Bigfoot is real, and I'm gonna kill it." Ezra (as the Biz)

Quote

"It's a Yeti, and it's lost its environment due to climate change, and that's how it's ended up in Georgia." Rita (as Andrew)

Quote

"Kid's dead, though. Here's the shoe." Zack (as Huell)

Quote

"Dealing with an actual conspiracy was a huge pain in the ass, so I am just really hopeful that this time it's actually just a huge fuck-up." Ezra (out of character)

(Appalachia 03)

Table notes

  • "It all comes back to Spud Hut": the chain becomes the table's all-purpose suspect, alongside doubts about its shrimp scampi. See running gags.
  • Tampons, recommended to Andrew by Dr. Arthur in Appalachia 01, are used as nose plugs.
  • Andre admitted he was taking joint injuries out on Kurt.
  • Dice: Dante rolled snake eyes on the map cross-reference; Rita rolled steadily through the solo sleepwalk sequence.
  • Dante retroactively added that Kurt had the front rank kneel and that he counted paces on the way back.
  • Andre wanted the boy to have a purple Game Boy, but they did not exist yet.

(Appalachia 03)

Continuity

  • Picks up the same night as the end of Appalachia 02, after the Biz planted his camera in room 111; the guests Andrew and Huell see are the room's occupants. The pickaxe and gray cloth in the cave match that episode's cold open, and Stacy's report that Aaron Richters never clocked out follows up Edward Nick Sr.'s account of his missing co-worker.
  • The tennis shoe is a different shoe from the one found in the field.
  • "That thing in Marblehead" is the end of The Summer Service.
  • Sets up McManley's forensics and the visit to the Covenant in Appalachia 04, and the plant run by Jan, who first appears in person later in the arc.

(Appalachia 03)