The paranatural¶

The paranatural is the catch-all term for the creatures, technologies and unexplained events that the Paranatural Incident Task Force is sent to investigate. This page surveys what the task force has met in each case, the patterns that recur between cases, how magic works at the table, and how the authorities hide all of it. For the questions that remain open, see Unresolved mysteries.

Overview¶

The campaign never hands the agents a single explanation. Each case has its own threat, and most cases turn out to contain two unrelated things at once. The table noticed the habit itself: Dante listed "a cult and aliens" and "a cult and worms", Ezra said it had been two things every time, and Zack asked whether the gold mine with Yeti hybrids was really just one. (Roulet Estate 02)

Three rules of thumb hold across the campaign:

The strange is physical. Almost everything the team meets bleeds, smells, leaves residue and can be shot, burned or run over. Andrew Howard puts the house view plainly: ghosts are not real because they have no physical body, the "astral body" is a name for kinds of telepathic communication, and the things people call angels are real beings whose bodies nobody comprehends. (Walkers 06)
Not every case is real. By the Georgia case Andre says the task force has handled about ten cases, most of which "washed out" too quickly to be shown. Kurt Larson later says he cannot have "another Kansas City" on his hands, a case that is never described. (Appalachia 04, Appalachia 09)
Human crime runs alongside the monster. In Radford a hypnotized boy did the killing for the creature, and a drug trade ran through the same town. Andre remarked early on, "I think the greatest monster is man." (Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 08)

In the fiction the government tracks such things with the Atolean Paranatural Index, which counts UFO and cryptid sightings per capita. (Radford Horror 01)

The cases¶

The Radford Horror¶

The first case centers on the Radford Moth: a car-sized, telepathic creature resembling a giant Morpho menelaus, first taken for a silent UFO that flared blue when lit. It hypnotizes with the light of its wings, can make a victim act against their will, drains flesh and blood through a proboscis, and is badly hurt by fire. It was raised from a larva by Wilbur Whateley, who was mentally bound to it and felt its pain. It took dogs from yards along the forest (see Radford's missing dogs) and left a chalky white powder and a smell of rot and compost wherever it fed. The moth died in the church fire, and its body was taken away before the team returned. (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 06, Radford Horror 07, Radford Horror 08)

The same case introduces the Spaceman, which proved to be Wilbur in a spacesuit, and Agent Murphy, a man with an NSA badge and a burning flashlight weapon. The scorched papers in his briefcase include the words "Menelaus", "local resources" and "unknown servitor act[ivity]". (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 06)

The Summer Service¶

Marblehead holds two threats. The first is the worms, a parasite spread through the communion wine of the Sons of Adam. Early infection gives vigor and the glow; late infection turns people and animals into bloated worm bags that keep moving after decapitation. Fire, salt and alcohol kill the worms. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 05)

The second is the angel thing, a glowing, ringed creature in the sea whose hum threatens a submarine and which closes on it at 60 to 70 knots. It survives a half-kiloton warhead from the M28 Davy Crockett and dies only when Andrew hits it with the flashlight weapon, sprouting the legs of every kind of animal before burning out in a crater. Drips of volcanic glass on the lighthouse wall (see Melted shoreline) point to something extremely hot on that coast, though no episode says what melted it. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 06)

A third party is also present: the people of the radio contact, whose lost advance team brought the synthetic nerve agent that leaked into the harbor when they were blown up. (Summer Service 06)

The Things in Appalachia¶

The Georgia case splits into a hoax and a real thing. The Bigfoot in the newspapers is Troy Cleaver in a Chewbacca costume (see The Bigfoot Hoax). The pale, immensely strong creatures in the mines are the ape-men: fast-growing hominids kept on ketamine and worked as gold miners by Jan Martense under the Spud Hut plant, each wearing an arm band with a blinking red light. The largest, Big Bob, hunts the party through the tunnels. (Appalachia 03, Appalachia 06, Appalachia 09)

Deep in the mine the team also finds the Crack in the Air, a cut in space lit by rippling light, with a metal pipe coming through it and gas hissing from the pipe. Nothing else in the mine is on that level. The visions of the Covenant, by contrast, come from a hallucinogenic fungus in their peach preserves. (Appalachia 02, Appalachia 09)

The Walkers in Skin¶

The Utah case has the most layers. On the surface is the Sherman Ranch phenomenon: a night hum, electromagnetic spikes, livestock mutilations, the dusk event, the vanishing car, the night event, the beam and the white ring. Around the ranch move upright coyotes and upright horses, animals that act with intent. (Walkers 02, Walkers 05, Walkers 07)

Underneath are the skinwalkers: small brain-like "pilot" organisms that ride in copies of real people and can eat only sugar (see Pilot and host biology, Replication and Sugar clues). They replaced the leaders of Ballard first and stored the originals as plastic-wrapped bodies. They copied Andrew (see Andrew Howard (duplicate)) and Huell Kendrick (see Skinwalker Huell). (Walkers 07, Walkers 08)

At the bottom is the portal in the cavern, a machine built into a dead grub-angel, through which the skinwalkers were carrying tanks of blood. Black triangular craft and hazmat teams then close the site. (Walkers 09)

The Roulet Estate¶

Rhode Island is the campaign's great fake-out. The grey figure in the woods traces back to the Roulet Intruder, a man in a foam-latex mask who had been living in the attic. The house's water was drugged (see The Drugged Water), which leaves the household's visitations by the Greys and the lights and eyes in the woods impossible to sort into real and imagined. The plainly paranatural element of the arc is Andrew's condition. (Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)

The Radford Horrors¶

The return to Radford opens with the missing FBI task force being killed by the Radford woods predators beneath the hanging figures. The team finds moth-scented pearlescent goo at a scrubbed site, and a small moth-like intruder is carried off by the gray van crew. Wilbur reveals that the moth was pregnant and needed hosts, "like a parasitic wasp" (see Moth life cycle). In Russia, the Biz sees a crashed triangular craft and its survivor, who names the servitors. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 04)

Recurring patterns¶

Few of these links are confirmed in the episodes. Each entry below says what is stated on screen and what is only a resemblance.

Angels¶

Beings called angels appear in three arcs. The Sons of Adam preach that angels are terrifying monsters built by God (Summer Service 01). Andre calls the Marblehead sea creature an angel, and when the team sees the machine in the Utah cavern he tells them the dead creature it is built into is "one of those"; Zack remembers it as "a biblical angel" (Summer Service 06, Walkers 09). This is the one link between cases that the game master states outright.

The anonymous note left for Andrew in Ballard says its writer knows he is not one of the replaced because "you have angels"; Andrew replies that he has no angels, only something people call by that name (Walkers 06). Boris Yeltsin later says Soviet detectors recorded a cosmic microwave background surge whose source coincided with the nuclear incident at Marblehead (Radford Horrors 01).

The flashlight weapons and their owners¶

The flashlight weapon gives a blinding blue-purple flash with an electric clacking sound, sets clothing and trees alight, and can overheat and destroy itself. Kurt refuses to believe the NSA has a beam weapon the CIA lacked. (Radford Horror 03)

Seen	Holder	Source
Radford mountain road	Agent Murphy. His device overheats and he vanishes in a pulse of light; the team finds his half-burned remains the next day on a circle of ground melted to glass	(Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04)
Old-town church	The cleanup crew. The team takes one from a searcher who also wears the shadow poncho	(Radford Horror 07, Radford Horror 08)
Marblehead	The team, against a worm-ridden dog and then the angel thing	(Summer Service 05, Summer Service 06)
Utah	Kurt's flame light, used on the killdozer's boarders; in the cavern it glows and melts itself	(Walkers 09)
Russia	A broken, half-melted copy held by Yeltsin, taken from a man in very dark glasses "like welding glasses"	(Radford Horrors 01)

Two men carrying NSA identification were struck by cars while crossing a road at night in black suits: Murphy in Virginia, and, in Georgia, the man from whom Jan Martense took the ape woman Shelly. Dante's reaction at the table: "Maybe they're aliens and they're unaware of Earth customs, like look both ways." No episode says the two men served the same employer. (Walkers 01)

Cleanup crews¶

Most of the real cases end with strangers arriving to remove the evidence.

Radford, 1992: soldiers without insignia and men in metal "volcanologist" suits with flamethrowers clean out the burned church and remove the moth's body. Kurt's complaint afterward is that nobody knows who they work for or how they knew about the moth when the task force did not. (Radford Horror 07, Radford Horror 08)
Marblehead: the mystery covert group behind the radio contact supplies a poison for the worms, and the contact says plainly that all the infected will have to be killed. (Summer Service 06)
Dahlonega: the plant explodes shortly after Jan flees. Kurt tells Jan that some other force filled the mines with explosive gas. The explosion itself happened in an unrecorded session and is known only from Walkers 01. (Walkers 01)
Utah: black triangles, hazmat teams and a white powder that falls from the sky, a mild amnesiac that costs most of the soldiers present about twenty hours of memory (see Utah cleanup crew). (Walkers 09, Roulet Estate 01)
Radford, 1993: the gray van crew and the Safe Environment Fund, with bleach, fences and lawyers. (Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 03)

It is never established whether any of these groups are the same organization.

Portals and resources¶

When the team sees the Utah portal, the players ask whether it is like the Georgia crack. Andre answers that it has similar qualities but does not open onto the same place (Walkers 09). Both move material: gas into the mine, tanks of blood out of the cavern. After the Russian crash survivor says that servitors "need resources", Dante points out that the team has seen resources going through portals before, and the Biz tells Yeltsin as much, adding that it "presented differently" (Radford Horrors 04). Kurt holds that the portal and the scale of the Utah operation imply "some greater intelligence" behind the skinwalkers, who individually were good mimics and poor strategists (Radford Horrors 01).

"Survey" and the servitors¶

Quote

"Not aliens. The opposite of aliens."

Andre (as the crash survivor), to Yeltsin (Radford Horrors 04)

Asked why it is here, the survivor answers "Survey." The word "servitor" had already appeared a year earlier in Murphy's burned papers, alongside "Menelaus", the species name of the moth, and a fragment Kurt read as "...and the clock survey". Kurt said the pages looked like no classified NSA document he had seen, and the Biz wondered whether they were planted to trace a leak. The Biz tells Yeltsin he has not heard of servitors. (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horrors 04)

Hosts and riders¶

Three unrelated threats work by occupying a body: the moth held Wilbur as a thrall and needed human hosts to breed, the worms hollow out people and animals, and the skinwalker pilots drive copied bodies. In Utah a fourth rider leaves the naked intruder when Andrew casts it out. No episode connects the four. (Radford Horrors 04, Summer Service 03, Walkers 07, Walkers 08)

The Masters and Andrew¶

Andrew belongs to the Aetherius Society, which teaches that the Masters, ascended extraterrestrials, guide humanity and that Jesus was one. The church issues him equipment that works: the church mace and later pepper spray that project an erasing "nothing", a pendant that turns aside blows, and a satchel that holds more than it should. His superior Mr. King tells him he is not wholly of this world. The moth calls him "Changeling" and, dying, cries that he knows the ones who made it. After he dies in Utah and returns (see Andrew Howard (the Monstrous)), he is faster, harder to kill and craves blood. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 07, Walkers 08, Roulet Estate 03)

Hoaxes and misdirection¶

The campaign repeatedly dresses ordinary people as monsters: the Spaceman, the Chewbacca-suited Bigfoot, and the masked "Grey" of Rhode Island. In each case a real paranatural thing sits beside the fake. (Radford Horror 08, Appalachia 06, Roulet Estate 03)

How magic works at this table¶

The campaign uses Monster of the Week; see Game mechanics for the rules in full. Magic is rare, costly and almost entirely Andrew's.

Healing. Andrew's laying on of hands works because higher powers act through the healer, and the healer pays: he takes part of the harm himself, shown as worsening nosebleeds. When Andrew returns from death as the Monstrous, Rita gives up laying on of hands and Cast Out Evil, reasoning that the change has cut him off from their source; Andre suggests that his humanity had been guiding his powers, and that with less of it they come out nastier. (Radford Horror 03, Appalachia 01, Walkers 08)
Cast Out Evil drives a possessing thing out of a body. The emptied body dies within hours. (Walkers 07)
What I Need When I Need It lets Andrew draw any small object he could plausibly own from a space only he can reach (see the What I Need When I Need It bag). Rita keeps the move through the change of playbook. (Walkers 07, Walkers 08)
Use Magic is rolled with Weird and picks from a fixed list of effects, such as healing one harm, banishing a spirit, barring a place or portal, or speaking with something that shares no language. Andrew uses it to reach Wilbur's mind. (Radford Horrors 04)
Resisting. Hypnosis and mental attack are resisted with Weird. (Radford Horror 07)
Dread is a house mechanic borrowed from Lovecraft-style games: a Sharp or Weird roll to process horror. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 05)

Kurt supplies the secular side. UTAW ran psychic exercises, and tulpas are a recurring half-joke: he thinks he may once have taken part in summoning one, "always heard Mothman was a tulpa", and admits "we never successfully summoned a tulpa". (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 08, Appalachia 06, Radford Horrors 03)

How the authorities cover things up¶

The task force's reports are classified under the code word SKYHOOK. It sits under the Foreign Influence Task Force of Big Bill Nelson, on the reasoning that alien visitations are foreign by definition. (Summer Service 03)

The agents do not see cover stories as their job. Big Bill handles them; under Ross Perot, Rudy Giuliani orders the team to establish an acceptable fact pattern for the first Radford case. (Roulet Estate 01, Radford Horrors 01)

Case	Official story	Source
Radford, 1992	A drug cartel, a church shootout and a fire	(Radford Horror 08, Radford Horrors 02)
Marblehead	A nerve-agent cult and a rogue Soviet nuclear weapon; see Terrorist cover story	(Summer Service 06, Appalachia 01)
Utah	A cult compound under the community center whose members "went full Jonestown" and killed most of the town	(Roulet Estate 01)
Radford, 1993	The missing are in treatment in Los Angeles; see LA treatment cover story	(Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 03)

The team keeps secrets of its own. It agrees to deny firing the Marblehead warhead, leaves Andrew's sleepwalking out of its reports, and keeps the Georgia portal to itself. (Summer Service 06, Appalachia 03, Walkers 01)

Outside the canon¶

The one-shot Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable has its own aliens, ki users and a werewolf president. It is non-canon and none of it applies here.