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The Things in Appalachia, Episode 09

Sealed in the Spud Hut basement, the team learns the whole scheme from an animal handler named Clive, drugs a shift of ape-man miners with ketamine-filled Combos, finds a crack in the air, kills Big Bob and climbs out into the woods, while Jan Martense drives away.
Arc The Things in Appalachia
Episode 09 (the last recorded session of the arc)
Setting Beneath the Spud Hut Georgia Regional Distribution Center and in the Dahlonega gold mines
In-fiction date October 1992, continuing from the last moment of Appalachia 08
Players present Andre (GM), Dante, Ezra, Zack, Rita; Ben listening in
Previous Appalachia 08
Next Appalachia 10 (unrecorded)

Synopsis

With the elevator locked off and Huell Kendrick badly hurt, the team frees Clive, a large-animal handler shut in the kennel office. He explains that Jan Martense has been using ape-men to mine the gold left under Dahlonega. The only way out is through the mines: past a room of gold bars, a crack in the air pumping gas into the tunnels, a working shift of ape-men, and a hunter called Big Bob. (Appalachia 09)

Plot

Trapped

Sheriff Carter Burke is screaming in the middle of the group until Kurt Larson clamps his hands over his head and asks him politely to stop (Manipulate Someone, 11). Andrew Howard lies in gore, unhurt, holding a camera with a shattered lens. The elevator has not come back; its maintenance ladder is behind a grate and a steel shutter, and the power is out. A piece of ape-man jawbone, teeth and all, is pulled out of Huell's buttock. Kurt's Preparedness roll (12) produces cocaine, which he applies to the wound; Huell goes numb and is now high. (Appalachia 09)

Andrew's delight in the creatures makes the sheriff worse. He believes the agents are Men in Black who released the ape-men and spied on the presidential candidate. The Biz uses his Grifter move to learn what would convince him, and on an 8 wins the sheriff's conditional cooperation by sorting the room into "car guy", "poker guy" and "freak guy". (Appalachia 09)

Clive and the operation

A voice calls from down the hall. Past veterinary gear, strapped gurneys, mining equipment and a kennel room, Kurt and Andrew find a man behind a locked wired-glass door, alarmed to hear that "the rejects got out" and insisting that "the shift" must be brought back. Kurt hotwires a forklift (Act Under Pressure 7, then 12 to drive it bent double, with Andrew's attempt to help failing on a 4) and rams the door open. The man returns with a bear-suit top, a face shield and a shotgun, and the team helps itself to more bear suits, shotguns, pepper spray, air horns and hockey masks. (Appalachia 09)

Jan's one condition for the job, the man says, was "don't ask questions about the ape-men." There is a great deal of gold left under Dahlonega, and ape-men dig it because they do not talk. A shift is twenty-five of them. They arrive looking about six years old and are full-grown in two months; they are trained with clickers and kept on ketamine. The operation has run for a year and a half, and Jan "kept getting more". The handler has been underground for two months training the new shift and does not know about the missing children. (Appalachia 09)

The conspiracy, he explains later in the gold room, was five people, "the biggest conspiracy you could possibly keep": Jan, the handler, two bodyguards, and a mercenary who melted the gold down. Kurt tells him about the dead man in the Bigfoot costume with military tattoos, and the handler recognises the scheme at once: "God damn it, he did the Bigfoot thing. Did he use the Chewbacca costume?" The dead man was the mercenary. The fake sightings were meant to discredit real sightings of escaped workers, whom Jan claimed the mercenary had "put down". Kurt assumes Jan killed the mercenary; nobody confirms it. The forklift cannot reach the elevator shutter's release, 25 feet up, so the plan becomes: drug the shift, and leave through the mines. (Appalachia 09)

Gold and the crack in the air

The mine elevator is already at the bottom, empty. In the gold room a kitchen table holds hundreds of pounds of cast bars, and the handler sees that about half of the gold is missing. Everyone takes some under the banner of "civil forfeiture": Huell and the Biz take enough to earn -1 forward on physical rolls, Kurt a reasonable amount "for my wife and kids", Andrew about six bars in his satchel, and the sheriff a few to "figure out the legality later". (Appalachia 09)

In the narrowing tunnels they hear hissing. A side tunnel is lit by rippling light around a hard-edged crack in the air, with a metal pipe passing through it and venting gas. Through it are faint industrial machinery and darkness. The gas makes voices high-pitched; Kurt guesses hydrogen and bans gunfire and sparks. The handler says that as far as he knows Jan does not have a portal. Kurt: "Somebody fucking does." Andrew's camera being broken, the Biz photographs the crack with his spy camera on a timer, his fingers going electric and freezing as he reaches near it. Only after this does the handler give his name: Clive. (Appalachia 09)

The shift

Around a corner, eyes reflect in the dark. The working shift of ape-men, in hi-vis vests and safety helmets, with pickaxes and blinking red tracking armbands, blocks the only exit, and the treats Clive has put down for them are not drugged. Preparedness rolls turn up Corn Nuts and Combos; the team guts the Combos and refills them with ketamine paste. Something growls behind them. Clive says that is Big Bob, and that they must run once they are past. (Appalachia 09)

Kurt walks out, eats a spiked Combo, mimes ecstasy and gets genuinely high. On a Manipulate Someone of 11 the ape-men lunge, see his face relax, and understand. They spoon ketamine into their mouths; one hugs him and another hands him a jackhammer. The team squeezes past and runs. (Appalachia 09)

Big Bob

Something fast is twenty feet behind and gaining. Kurt calls a shotgun volley on three. Nobody rolls a full success, and Andre's rolls for the sheriff (6) and Clive (7) are no better. Andrew, who has dropped to the rear to shield Huell, is swung by the ankle into a wall for 4 harm, cracking his helmet and dislocating his knee; Big Bob then throws Kurt into the Biz. In the second round Kurt rolls 11 and puts a shot into its chest that should be fatal, but it keeps coming on adrenaline, cracks one of Kurt's ribs and lifts and crushes Huell. Andrew rolls Kick Some Ass for 10 and uses the "absence" of his pepper spray to sever the arm. Big Bob looks at the stump and topples over dead. Andrew keeps the hand. (Appalachia 09)

Four corners later, Clive brings them to a ladder under a tarp. Andrew and Huell each climb on an 8 and cannot walk afterwards. They emerge in the woods outside the plant. The unguarded ladder explains the escapes: the handlers relied on the ape-men's fear of dark tunnels. Kurt worries that the gas will blow the mine. The sheriff hugs a tree and sways. (Appalachia 09)

Cold open and framing

The cold open follows Jan. He steps out of an elevator, snaps "Not now, Marlene" at his secretary when she mentions the waiting reporters, and goes through to the parking garage. He unlocks a service lift, drags out a large animal crate on a dolly, loads it into a red pickup, and drives out the back onto the highway. "And we cut to credits." There is no "previously on"; Zack asks Andre for a recap. Ben joined the call to listen and asked one rules question. See the show. (Appalachia 09)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters

  • Ape-Men: the working shift, and the "rejects"
  • Big Bob
  • An unseen ape-man kept in a room Clive was never allowed to enter

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • Jan Martense ran an illegal gold mine under Dahlonega with ape-man labor. Clive says Jan insisted on at least a hundred million dollars; Clive would have settled for one or two.
  • The ape-men mature in about two months, are kept on ketamine, and are contained mainly by their fear of unlit tunnels.
  • The man in the Chewbacca costume was the conspiracy's mercenary, and the Bigfoot hoax was cover for real escapes through an unguarded ladder.
  • Someone with technology far beyond Spud Hut's has opened a rift into the mine and is piping gas through it.
  • The ape-men have an adrenaline gland "about twice the size of your fist", which is how Big Bob kept going.
  • Clive was never allowed into one room, which held an ape-man he knew of only from the food sent to it.

(Appalachia 09)

Open threads

  • Where Jan went and what is in the crate.
  • The hidden ape-man in Jan's private room.
  • Where the ape-men come from.
  • Who made the crack in the air and what the gas is for.
  • Who shot the mercenary.
  • The drugged shift of twenty-five and the loose rejects.
  • The remaining gold, the "civil forfeiture", and what becomes of Clive.

(Appalachia 09)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Not now, Marlene." Andre (as Jan)

Quote

"Apes mine gold. Tell nobody, 'cause ape." Dante, summing up the operation for Zack

Quote

"Again, I'm not a moral philosopher." Andre (as Clive), asked whether it is okay to hurt ape-men

Quote

"Mmm, mmm, mmm, fellas, you have gotta try this stuff. Oh my god. [...] Oh, that is some good ketamine." Dante (as Kurt), to the ape-men

Quote

"This is the greatest day of my life." Rita (as Andrew)

Quote

"This is a remarkably easy slave mine to escape from." Ezra (as the Biz)

(Appalachia 09)

Table notes

  • The jawbone in Huell's backside, and his worry about becoming a were-ape. See running gags.
  • Andre points out that the "break room" of Appalachia 08 "was never a break room. It was just a door", and the Claymore has blown the door away; Dante calls it "a broke room".
  • The Biz's missing night-vision goggles come up again; he plans to buy a new pair with gold.
  • Dante predicted Clive's plan had "too many steps", and was right.
  • Dice: Dante rolled 11 at each moment that mattered (quieting the sheriff, the ketamine pantomime, the shot that killed Big Bob); Rita's Help Out on the forklift failed on a 4. See game mechanics.
  • Andre called Big Bob "Big Bill" once and corrected himself. Nobody asked the handler's name until after the portal; until then Andre called him "the man with no name".
  • Dante complained that Jan's name kept changing between "Jan" and "Yan"; Andre's answer was that people in town do not say it correctly.

(Appalachia 09)

Continuity

  • Continues directly from the cliffhanger of Appalachia 08.
  • The Claymore's toll changes between episodes. At the end of Appalachia 08 Andre counted one creature dead and at least two badly injured. In this episode his recap says the mine "evaporated two", and the team tells Clive that two of the five rejects are dead.
  • Clive's account of the mercenary explains the body in Appalachia 06 and the Chewbacca figure Monica Cartwright described in Appalachia 04.
  • The Biz cannot find his night-vision goggles, last seen in the hands of the state police in the cold open of Appalachia 06.
  • The shift's blinking armbands match the tracking device the Circle Chasers found in Appalachia 07.
  • The arc's finale, Appalachia 10, was never recorded. The recorded story stops with the team injured in the woods and Jan at large.

(Appalachia 09)