Skip to content

The Things in Appalachia, Episode 07

Over one evening the team gets a secret menu in cipher, a tracking tag pulled out of bloody vomit, a furious call about a presidential candidate, and a wrecked Spud Hut truck full of dirt.
Arc The Things in Appalachia
Episode 07
Setting Dahlonega, Georgia: the Spud Hut, the hotel, the freeway crash site
In-fiction date October 7, 1992, sunset into the night
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita
Previous Appalachia 06
Next Appalachia 08

Recording

This session survives only as a single mixed audio track, so it is not always clear who is speaking. Lines whose speaker is uncertain are marked (?) below.

Synopsis

Dinner at the Spud Hut brings a drunk dealer in dangerous chemistry sets, a secret menu written as a cryptogram, and the Circle Chasers, who have found a blinking tracking device marked "Inventory Control, SHA Tracking". Then the news breaks that state police are accusing the FBI of spying on Bill Clinton in Dahlonega, and Big Bill tears into Andrew Howard by phone. The night ends at a crashed Spud Hut truck whose driver has been taken and whose potato sacks hold dirt. (Appalachia 07)

Plot

Dinner and the secret menu

After a stop at the hotel to sit down and change socks, the team returns to the Spud Hut for the second time that day, partly to recruit the counter man with the remarkable memory. In line they meet Eduardo Hooper, a drunk man in a cowboy hat and bolo tie who sells 1960s chemistry sets with uranium in them and who whispers an order for the "special taco taco spud". Kurt Larson takes his card as an off-the-books source. (Appalachia 07)

The Biz orders the same thing and asks about the rest of the secret menu. The counter man unlocks a briefcase with two keys and hands over a sheet of symbols, explaining, "I designed the cryptogram myself." Huell Kendrick orders margarita spuds, potato skins filled with margarita. Kurt tries to buy one using three IDs in three different names; his Manipulate Someone comes up 9, and the clerk gives way only after Kurt shows photographs of his grown children and Andrew offers his own ID in support. Kurt immediately hands the drink to the Circle Chasers girl who had been refused one for lack of ID. The Biz's taco taco spud turns out to be a superbly cooked octopus. (Appalachia 07)

The Circle Chasers' find

The Circle Chasers' RV bursts into the lot. Harvey knocks Andrew over, and on a roll of 13 Andrew scoops the Great Dane up and cradles it like a baby. Vanessa gasps, "Bear vomit." Huell pays for everyone's dinner out of the cash from the dead man's briefcase. (Appalachia 07)

After closing, under the potato-colored light of the sign, the teenagers take the team into their blacklit RV and produce a Ziploc bag holding a blinking red light. They had gone to look at a reported "squatch" lying among trees, found vomit full of blood with the light in it, and been chased off by a bear "with, like, half a face". Kurt says it was not a bear and warns them to stay away. The Biz, drunk, rolls Investigate a Mystery at -1 for a 9: the device is electronic, on a ragged leather band, and etched "Inventory Control, SHA Tracking, SS994-0851". Kurt dislikes the word "inventory", and the team stores it in an emptied corn-nuts cup as a makeshift Faraday cage. (Appalachia 07)

The Clinton story

As they reach McManley's RV every pager goes off. McManley asks whether they have seen the news: a state police official has told a press conference that the FBI is in Dahlonega surveilling presidential candidate Bill Clinton, and reporters are expected within about five hours. Kurt does not know who Clinton is, and Andre insists that in October 1992 he would. (Appalachia 07)

Andrew phones Big Bill from the hotel lobby. Bill points out that there are only four FBI officers in Georgia and demands a detailed inventory of everything the team has done and every piece of equipment it has used over the last 50 hours; Andrew offers an itinerary. Andrew babbles about bears and potatoes and then blurts out the body count: two children, the exploded man in the cave, the executed man in the Chewbacca costume, and one man missing. Bill tells him not to talk to anybody, says he will go to the President and come down himself, and ends, "Howard, don't fuck this up." The teenage desk clerk, Tully, overhears; asked for a fax machine, Tully offers to call their mother, who has one, and Andrew declines. (Appalachia 07)

Comparing notes, the Biz suggests the story is a fake Watergate-type smear. Kurt wonders whether someone is misusing the contents of their old irradiated car to frame an off-the-books team. Since Andrew is forbidden to speak to townspeople or reporters and looks unmistakably like a policeman, the team sets about disguising him. Kurt's Preparedness roll (12) means his backup escape kit is complete, the original having been irradiated: makeup, prosthetics, wigs and whole outfits. Andrew gets a weight on the back of his neck to make him slouch, platform shoes and a convincing fake mustache, and Kurt hands out Hawaiian shirts all round as "the real urban camo". Andre rolls Andrew's Manipulate Someone (at -1) himself and keeps the result secret. (Appalachia 07)

The truck

The sheriff radios about a truck accident with a great deal of blood. At the scene, cruisers block the freeway and Spud Hut trucks queue behind them. The truck, marked SHGRDC with an SHA logo matching the tracking device, lies on its side at the bottom of a hill. The cab is bloody on every surface, with no body, eight gunshots through the cabin, a rear window broken inward and a windshield broken outward. On top, the vinyl roof is ripped as if by fingers. Kurt reasons that something came in through the back window, mauled the driver and left through the front with what remained. (Appalachia 07)

In the spilled trailer, the sheriff slits a sack labelled "Potatoes" and dirt pours out. Another holds a whole octopus floating in liquid. Huell asks McManley to analyse the dirt. The sheriff passes on gossip from a friend in the state police: the Secret Service tipped them off, and the prints on a piece of surveillance equipment matched an employee in the FBI database. The sheriff proposes visiting the Spud Hut plant first thing in the morning. Andrew's itinerary for Big Bill is to be faxed from the sheriff's station, and Kurt sends the cryptogram to the NSA, the "Puzzle Palace", without telling them it is a menu. (Appalachia 07)

Cold open and framing

A heavyset Spud Hut driver in a gray jumpsuit drives at sunset to "Radar Love", a mustard-stained photograph taped to the dash. He hears a clang and ripping from behind the cab, then breaking glass and a growl. He reaches for the Glock under his seat and misses. The truck swerves through a barricade amid screams and gunshots and stops among trees with the song still playing quietly. Cut to credits. Andre then asks the table to recall where they left off. See the show. (Appalachia 07)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The dead man in the Chewbacca costume is Troy Cleaver; Andre gives the name in the opening recap.
  • Spud Hut tags something as "inventory": the tracking device and the truck both carry the SHA mark.
  • Spud Hut trucks are hauling dirt in sacks labelled as potatoes.
  • Whatever took the driver climbs, tears vinyl with its hands, and carried the body away.
  • State police say surveillance equipment found in Dahlonega carries the fingerprints of an FBI employee.
  • Kurt is happily married with three grown children: Benji Walther, Peggy Browning and Melanie Colt Larson.

(Appalachia 07)

Open threads

  • What the "half-faced bear" is and what was wearing the tag.
  • Where the dirt comes from and what the Spud Hut plant is hiding.
  • How the cryptogram decodes.
  • Big Bill's arrival, the reporters expected within hours, and how the Clinton story came to point at the team.
  • The driver's body.

(Appalachia 07)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"We're not surveilling Bill Clinton. We're surveilling dead Chewbacca." Rita (as Andrew), to Big Bill

Quote

"Howard, I do not care about the bears." Andre (as Big Bill)

Quote

"Sure, we found ten grand in a garbage can. Fuck it, it's on me, boys." Zack (?) (as Huell)

Quote

"Weirdly meticulous for what a mess it was." Dante (as Kurt), on the truck cab

Quote

"I'm a forensic scientist, not a fucking wizard, but I'll see what I can do." Andre (as McManley)

Quote

"I hope they do manage to crack it after, like, a thousand hours, only to find out it's a fucking menu." Zack

(Appalachia 07)

Table notes

  • The Spud Hut menu keeps growing: margarita spuds, the octopus, a burger spud with a patty of crumbled bacon. The team's count of Spud Hut visits is now an embarrassment for the itinerary. See running gags.
  • Andrew's satchel is described as magical storage whose contents he forgets; the verdict at the table was "Howard basically has magical dementia."
  • Zack called "nose goes" on who was spying on Clinton; Andrew, who does not know the game, lost.
  • Andre scolded the table for forgetting that it is October 1992 and an election is about to happen: not knowing Clinton "would be like not knowing who Kamala Harris is".
  • Dice: Andrew 13 to catch the dog, Kurt 9 on Manipulate Someone and 12 on Preparedness, the Biz 9 on a drunk Investigate a Mystery, and a hidden Manipulate Someone roll for Andrew's disguise.
  • The table notes that Spud Hut Corporate has been talked about for three months of real time without a visit.

(Appalachia 07)

Continuity

  • Follows the dumpster search of Appalachia 06.
  • The surveillance equipment in the news story follows from the night-vision headset that state police bagged for the Secret Service in the cold open of Appalachia 06. Nobody at the table makes the connection aloud in this episode.
  • The tracking device accounts for the blinking red light seen on the creature in the tunnel in Appalachia 03.
  • Andre says here that the team arrived on October 4 and that it is now the 7th. In Appalachia 01 the team was still at the office in Washington on Monday, October 4, and the date had become the 5th by the time they were in Georgia.
  • Sets up the plant visit in Appalachia 08.

(Appalachia 07)