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The Walkers in Skin, Episode 01

The epilogue to the Georgia case: the Biz goes on Late Night with David Letterman, President Bush gives Andrew a private charge, Kurt questions Jan Martense in a CIA black site, and a woman asks the task force to dig up her mother.
Arc The Walkers in Skin
Episode 01 (also the epilogue to The Things in Appalachia)
Setting Washington, DC; New York City; CIA black site "Omaha"
In-fiction date Early November 1992, in the last days before the presidential election
Players present Andre (GM), Rita, Dante, Ezra, Zack; Ben listening in as a guest
Previous Appalachia 10 (unrecorded)
Next Walkers 02

Synopsis

A few days before the 1992 election, the Dahlonega case has become a national scandal. Dick "The Biz" Baxter, now "the most hated cop in America", is ordered onto David Letterman's show with Huell Kendrick in reserve, and burns a Luck point to win the host over. Andrew Howard is told by President George H. W. Bush that he is personally responsible for the survival of the United States. Kurt Larson interviews the captured Jan Martense under the ocean. Back in DC, Alberta Wilmarth knocks on Andrew's door: her mother died in 1990 and has been seen alive since. The trip to Utah is approved. (Walkers 01)

Plot

The Oval Office

Andrew waits an hour and a half outside the Oval Office while the president's secretary glares at him. Digging in his satchel he finds a handful of Yeti fur he forgot to turn in, and drops a still-bloody clump on the carpet as he is called in. Bush, sitting on his desk, quotes the after-action report (a colleague wrote that Andrew was "dribbled like a basketball") and tells him "You're sturdy, son." (Walkers 01)

Bush admits he founded the task force only because his son made him promise to look into such things. Having read the files, he thinks Andrew is its only true believer; the others have a "grudging appreciation". Asked why he believed beforehand, Andrew answers that his mom believes and that he was never proven wrong. (Walkers 01)

Bush expects to lose within days. He regards an ape-man criminal surveilling Bill Clinton in the same Georgia town as his task force as enemy action, meant to break continuity of leadership. The source could be China, Soviet remnants, or "something from somewhere else". He warns of enemy agents inside American organizations and charges Andrew with the nation's survival whatever the next administration says. Andrew replies that this has always been his job and delivers a long lecture on the Aetherius Society, the Masters and the "spiritual battery". Bush's face goes blank in a slow zoom. (Walkers 01)

Black site Omaha

Kurt passes through a naval research base and rides an elevator five stories under the sea to Black Site Omaha, run by the CIA. He pays the desk guard in ordinary cigarettes and is cleared for four hours. Jan is in a gray jumpsuit and plastic cuffs, stitched and bruised where a falling ape broke his skull. The two trade jabs ("Kurtis, you shot me." / "Ah, you shot my leader in the face. Seemed only fair.") and agree to a quid pro quo. Jan complains that prisoners are not allowed playing cards, and Kurt tells him how to make a deck out of napkins or coasters. (Walkers 01)

Jan's story: five years ago, driving drunk in the Georgia countryside, he hit and killed a man in a black suit who was crossing the highway at night. The dead man carried NSA identification. Jan sank the body in a lake in the man's car, and in the man's van found an ape woman strapped to a gurney and drugged. He took her and named her Shelly. She aged fast, and Jan could not go public with her, so he tried to breed her to buy time. When no ape donor worked he fathered her offspring himself by artificial insemination. Only the males lived. These were the ape-men, who mined gold for Jan's conspiracy because they were strong and could recognize it. (Walkers 01)

Jan does not know why the Spud Hut distribution center exploded. Kurt tells him the gas was piped in deliberately from an adjacent cavern, but keeps the portal to himself. The only other insider Jan names is the Spud Hut accountant, Clyde Harvard. Jan also says he bought his ketamine from a local high schooler. Kurt gets the name of the lake and, on the way out, promises to put in a word with the desk guard about anti-suicide playing cards. In the weeks since Georgia he has placed the Spud Hut savant in a CIA job, spent time with his family, and sourced a P90. (Walkers 01)

Late Night

The FBI wanted a PR officer on the talk-show circuit; every show wanted someone actually involved, so the Biz was the concession. In makeup he is told "Stop sweating" and has a deodorant stick rubbed into his scalp. Huell, waiting backstage, is handed a ginger ale he did not ask for and drinks it. Ezra spends two stored level-ups here: the Charlatan move, and advanced Investigate a Mystery and Manipulate Someone. (Walkers 01)

Letterman brings Huell out for support and forgets his surname. The Biz opens with a joke about shooting a Polish person; Huell asks whether the culture has forgotten Rodney King. The audience reaction is "complicated". Asked why they were in Dahlonega, the Biz says he was having an affair with Bill Clinton, then that he can't say. Andre calls for Manipulate Someone at -2. The Biz burns a Luck point to make the result a 12, and picks Letterman, not the audience, as his ally for the rest of the mystery. The host drops his script and simply talks to him. (Walkers 01)

On air the unit is the invented "Foreign Threat Investigation Task Force". The Biz says 90% of its cases are nothing, swears, confirms the illegal gold mine and the same-day explosion, and says nobody knew Clinton was in town. On why Jan was surveilling the governor: "Maybe he's a Republican." The Georgia State Police found the Biz's night-vision goggles in a rose bush; he says they were last in his car trunk and he wants them back. Letterman reveals that the Clinton Polaroids were taken with a Russian camera, which is news to the Biz. He closes with a marked-card trick using his wallet and badge (Act Under Pressure, a 10): more claps than boos. A PA slips him Letterman's personal number. (Walkers 01)

A dead woman in Utah

The next day at the office Andrew, healed in half the expected time, is finishing the Georgia paperwork alone. Diane gives Huell pogs and asks what to do about the "crazy people" dropping by, including a woman whose dead mother is haunting her. Andrew: "Ghosts aren't real." They agree on a tip box. A nuisance called Chester is "getting really aggressive"; Huell has been using Kurt's shovel on him. (Walkers 01)

That evening Alberta Wilmarth arrives at Andrew's apartment with a box of documents and tapes and one request: "I need you to force the Mormon church to exhume my mom." Shelly Wilmarth died of a heart attack in winter 1990, alone with the cattle. Yet she appears in local news footage of a community-center protest, and the tenant of the family ranch, "the space guy" (Robert Bigelow), has seen her walking the property line at night. Alberta calls the ranch cursed: boiled cattle, missing pets, lights in the sky, Navy men measuring radiation. Andrew rules out a twin, puts "doppelganger" back on the list, feeds her leftovers and keeps the box. (Walkers 01)

He phones Huell, who is playing Ms. Pac-Man in a bar, to ask whether Mormons can come back from the dead. The next morning, the day before the election, a stressed Big Bill approves the trip and the airfare. Andrew asks the team who wants to exhume a dead woman. Ross Perot is polling above 45%. (Walkers 01)

Cold open and framing

The episode opens on a wood-paneled tube TV on the floor of an empty, decaying room, water-light rippling on peeling green wallpaper. The set clunks on, zooms through the solar system to New York, and plays the Late Night intro (Gary Oldman on Dracula, musical guest Patti Smith, and "the most hated cop in America"). Someone breathes heavily behind the camera. Credits follow. The session intercuts three storylines, with a flashback "about an hour earlier" to the makeup chairs, and ends on a title card for the new arc; the players identify the destination as Skinwalker Ranch, and Andre confirms only "It's in Utah." See The show. (Walkers 01)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The task force exists because Bush's son asked for it. (Walkers 01)
  • The ape woman came from the van of a man with NSA identification, killed on a road at night five years earlier. The players link him to the earlier man in black with the flame flashlight, also hit by a car. (Walkers 01)
  • The Spud Hut explosion was deliberate: someone piped gas in and knew the timing. (Walkers 01)
  • The Polaroids in the Clinton surveillance scandal were taken with a Russian camera. (Walkers 01)
  • The Biz tells the audience he is "already estranged from my wife"; Andre sums up what the public learned about him as "he's divorced". (Walkers 01)

Open threads

Memorable quotes

Quote

"There is coincidence, there is miracle, and there is enemy action." (Andre, as Bush)

Quote

"I mean, sir, that's been my responsibility my entire life. You didn't have to ask." (Rita, as Andrew)

Quote

"I didn't know that shooting a Polish person could make you the most hated man in America." (Ezra, as the Biz)

Quote

"Yes, yes, ape woman. I called her Shelly. So, I was drunk." (Andre, as Jan)

Quote

"She's just alive again." (Andre, as Alberta)

Quote

"Who wants to exhume a dead woman?" (Rita, as Andrew)

Table notes

  • "Ghosts aren't real" is Andrew's catchphrase. Zack calls it a long-running gag and "a callback to our last campaign". (Walkers 01)
  • The Luck trade: Manipulate Someone at -2 became a 12, and Ezra judged it "worth the luck point". See Game mechanics. (Walkers 01)
  • Dante, out of character: "I want a fucking P90." (Walkers 01)
  • Zack fact-checks Bush's real approval rating and the date of Netscape; Ezra looks up the price of a PVS-7 monocular (about $4,500). (Walkers 01)
  • Andre forgot the background music for an hour, and says the Jan interview runs "quick for dramatic purposes, not for in-universe purposes". (Walkers 01)

Continuity

Unrecorded session

The Appalachia finale was never recorded. This episode does not recap it; what is known of how that case ended comes from passing dialogue here. See Appalachia 10 and Lost episodes.

  • What the dialogue establishes about the unrecorded finale: Kurt shot Jan; Jan shot Andrew in the face ("you shot my leader in the face"); a falling ape broke Jan's skull; Andrew was thrown around the mine by the foot; the Biz shot a Polish man in the woods with a shotgun; Jan tried to have his animal handler killed. (Walkers 01)
  • The man in the black suit hit on a road at night echoes Agent Murphy, the NSA man the team themselves ran down in Radford Horror 03. Dante makes the connection at the table. (Walkers 01)
  • Andre dates the Letterman interview to November 1, 1992. The office scene is "the following day" and the briefing is the morning after that, which Andre calls "the day before the election"; the real election was on November 3, so the episode's days do not quite add up. (Walkers 01)
  • Alberta says her mother died two years ago, and the obituary gives winter 1990. Walkers 05 contradicts this. (Walkers 01)
  • Sets up the whole Utah arc: the ranch, the "space guy", the Navy investigators and the exhumation. Letterman remains the Biz's ally. (Walkers 01)