Timeline

The timeline is the chronology of in-fiction events in PITF, from the backstory of its towns and characters to the latest recorded session, Radford Horrors 04. The campaign runs from May 1992 to April 1993 in an alternate history of the United States.

Exact dates, such as 24 May 1992, were stated at the table. Dates marked "about" are worked out from statements such as "three years ago", and entries labelled "that night" or "the next day" give only the order of events. Where two episodes give dates that cannot both be right, the entry uses the better-supported one and the disagreement is listed under Date conflicts. The non-canon one-shot Philosopher's Fist 3.J/2: Unchainable takes place in another world and has no dates of its own; its only place on this timeline is as a program on a hotel television in October 1992.

Before the campaign

Distant past

• Colonial era. Radford's original settlement, the "old town" by the river, is destroyed by a flood. Only its stone church and a few other stone buildings survive. (Radford Horror 08)
• 1800s. The Georgia gold rush founds Dahlonega. Cherokee land is seized, and the mass eviction becomes the Trail of Tears. Auraria is left a ghost town. The theory of Lemuria also dates from this century. (Appalachia 01, Summer Service 01)
• Atomic bomb era. The Radford Arsenal makes guncotton for the atom bomb. Locals later say this cursed the town. (Radford Horror 01)

1950s to 1980s

• 2 November 1957. The Levelland, Texas case (stalled vehicles and a reported UFO), which Andrew Howard later cites as a precedent in Utah. (Walkers 03, Walkers 04)
• 1960s. The Roulets marry; their wedding photos appear to have been taken in Arizona. (Roulet Estate 01)
• 1962. The Vorkuta Corrective Labor Camp is abandoned. (Roulet Estate 03)
• Vietnam War and after. Kurt Larson serves in Vietnam and then in UTAW, a CIA branch. He works with the fixer Carter for about five years and once saves his life. Iran-Contra, which was Carter's idea, ends both careers. (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 04, Roulet Estate 02)
• Before the campaign, year not given. Daniel Webster, then at the State Department, handles US-side logistics for the rescue of Ross Perot's employees from Iran. (Radford Horrors 02)
• About 1982. The Covenant takes over Auraria ("about 10 years ago"). (Appalachia 01)
• Summer 1986. Walt Murphy spends six months trying to get people to call him "Coyote". (Walkers 02)
• About 1987. Jan Martense, drunk on a Georgia back road, hits and kills a man in a black suit who carries NSA identification. In the man's van he finds an ape woman strapped to a gurney. He names her Shelly and sinks the body and car in a lake. He tells Kurt this was five years before his arrest. (Walkers 01)
• June to August, about 1988. Wilbur Whateley finds a larva by the old-town church on 3 June and keeps it in the basement. It hatches on 15 August. (Radford Horror 08)
• About April 1989. In Radford, thirteen-year-old Abelforth Whateley robs the Radio Shack in a homemade spacesuit (the Radio Shack spacesuit robbery) and is believed to have run away. Wilbur's journal for 16 to 18 April records what really happened to him. After his twin's disappearance Wilbur has a breakdown, crashes a car and is left in a vegetative state. (Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 08)

Wilbur's journal

The journal entries carry a day and month but no year. Andre confirms that 17 April lines up with the date Abelforth went missing, which the sheriff's office puts "three years ago" in May 1992. (Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 08)

1990 to spring 1992

• Winter 1990. Shelly Wilmarth dies on the family ranch in Utah, according to her obituary. (Walkers 01)
• About November 1990. Irene Whateley begins treatment with Dr. Lawrence Lori ("a year and a half ago"). She stops about a year later. (Radford Horror 02)
• About spring 1991. Jan Martense's gold-mining operation with the ape-men begins; in October 1992 he says he has been at it "a year and a half". (Appalachia 09)
• May 1991 to September 1992. The Roulets record their "visitations" on labelled tapes. Someone lives hidden in their attic for at least a year. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)
• About autumn 1991. "Corporate goons" arrive at Auraria with paperwork claiming the Covenant's land (the land dispute). (Appalachia 04)
• About February 1992. A Chewbacca costume vanishes from a Dahlonega dry cleaner, eight months before it turns up on a corpse. (Appalachia 06)
• Early May 1992. With the Soviet Union gone, President George H. W. Bush authorizes a paranormal task force, keeping a promise to his son. Andrew, Kurt, Dick "The Biz" Baxter and Huell Kendrick are reassigned to it a couple of weeks before their first case. (Radford Horror 01, Walkers 01)

The Radford Horror (May–June 1992)

• 22 May 1992. Amanda Lucky, 17, vanishes from her third-story bedroom in Radford, Virginia. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 02)
• 24 May 1992. The Paranatural Incident Task Force assembles at its barbershop office at about 7 a.m., receives the Radford file, and drives four hours to the Pay n' Stay. (Radford Horror 01)
• 25 May. In the morning Irene Whateley sees something from her kitchen window and walks into the woods. The team meets Sheriff Frank Roosevelt, searches the Lucky and Whateley houses and interviews Dr. Lori. After dark a white van tails them, a blue object flies over the mountain road, and Agent Murphy burns Kurt with a flashlight weapon before dying in an explosion. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 03)
• That night. Kurt is treated at the ER. The Biz sees the flying thing take a dog and photographs Lori's files. At 4:30 a.m. the agents' pagers go off. Phoebe Augustine has vanished in the night, and that morning Amanda's body is found by the interstate. (Radford Horror 04)
• 26 May. Autopsy, the highway scene at about 11 a.m., and a town safety meeting in the evening. That night the team stakes out the town. Huell is carried into the air, a mummified body is found nailed up in the Whateley cellar, and Derek Augustine kidnaps Lori. The team waits out the night in the car; by morning Wilbur has vanished from his bed. (Radford Horror 05, Radford Horror 06)
• The next day. The team finds cash and heroin at the Lawson cabin, charters a plane, and at dusk fights the Radford Moth in the old-town church, rescuing Phoebe and Wilbur. A cleanup crew with flamethrowers closes in. The team takes a shadow poncho and a flashlight weapon from one of its men and is flown out by helicopter. Andre gives this day as 29 May (see Date conflicts). (Radford Horror 07, Radford Horror 08)
• Early June. In hospital the team agrees a cover story. Lori and Derek Augustine confess to abusing Amanda, and the killings are pinned on Wilbur. The burned church has been stripped of evidence. (Radford Horror 08)

The Summer Service (June 1992)

• Early June. An unexplained explosion off Marblehead, Massachusetts blows out windows and sickens residents. An EPA/USGS survey team sent to investigate is not heard from after its first couple of days in town. (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 01)
• 15 June 1992. The Marblehead file reaches the office, where the air conditioning is broken. The team sets out and stops for the night in Jersey City, near Hoboken. (Radford Horror 08)
• 16 June. Arrival at the Ram and Arms Inn. The survey team's field notes describe residents who fell ill after the explosion. (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 01)
• The first day in town. A severed arm washes up, the Biz steals a crystal sphere from Jester, and the team attends Amos Shaw's evening service and drinks his communion wine. (Summer Service 01)

Unrecorded session

Summer Service 02 was never recorded. Its events are known only from later episodes: the team dived in an experimental submarine, found a sunken stealth vessel with a piece cut out of it, hid from a humming, light-covered vessel, and were exposed to the nerve agent in the water. (Summer Service 03)

• That night and the next day. Huell finds Shaw's blood-soaked house. The wine proves to be full of worms. Big Bill escalates the case toward the White House. At the lighthouse the team finds an interrogation site and the scientists' field journal. A tropical depression moves in. (Summer Service 03)
• Storm day. The team sends for Ivermectin, obtains a Davy Crockett nuclear device through Carter, and faces the Board of Selectmen in the evening. The Biz decodes a message from Russian intelligence. (Summer Service 04)
• That night. At his island house the team destroys Arnold Weathers and his dog Puddles, both far gone with worms. Before dawn police and church members besiege the hotel and the team escapes with Donald McManley. Tropical Storm Andrew 2 cuts off the town. (Summer Service 05)

Unrecorded session

A session known as "05.5" was never recorded. Its events are known only from references in the finale: the team found the missing researchers alive, fought worm bags, set off a claymore on a truck and was contacted by radio by an unidentified military group. (Summer Service 06)

• Finale. In the rain the angel thing comes ashore at the nuclear power plant. Huell fires the Davy Crockett and Andrew finishes the creature with the flashlight weapon. The National Guard takes control of Marblehead under a terrorist cover story. Andrew says the team has been in town "less than a week"; Kurt later tells Congress it was "about three or four days". (Summer Service 06, Appalachia 01)
• Aftermath. Soviet detectors record a surge in the cosmic microwave background and trace it to Marblehead. The EPA and NRC clean up and impound the team's car. (Radford Horrors 01, Appalachia 01)

The Things in Appalachia (October 1992)

• Late September. Gene Cartwright, 7, is taken from a field behind a Dahlonega trailer park, about a week before the case is assigned. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02)
• Sunday 3 October 1992. Kurt testifies to a House subcommittee about Marblehead. The Biz accepts a job from his KGB contacts by book cipher. Huell visits a shaken McManley. Andrew sees his church's doctor. Willow Greengrass goes missing near Auraria. (Appalachia 01)
• Monday 4 October. The Dahlonega file arrives: two disappearances and a run of Bigfoot sightings. (Appalachia 01)
• Tuesday 5 October. The team leaves at 8:45 a.m. and reaches the Smith Hotel at about 7 p.m. Huell falls asleep to an OVA on the hotel cable, which is how the one-shot Philosopher's Fist fits into the fiction. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02)
• Wednesday 6 October. The team meets the Circle Chasers and Sheriff Carter Burke, interviews the families, eats at the Spud Hut and finds faked Bigfoot prints. That night the Biz plants his camera and microphone in room 111. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02)
• Thursday 7 October. Andrew sleepwalks into the woods and wakes before dawn holding a bloody lighter. The team finds the death cave. A German boy, Frederick, vanishes on a gold mine tour, and a pale creature mauls Kurt in a hidden tunnel. In the afternoon the team hands evidence to McManley and visits the Covenant, where a salesman is to be baptized that evening. (Appalachia 03, Appalachia 04)

Unrecorded session

Appalachia 05 was never recorded. Its events are known only from the next session's recap: the Biz spent a night away on business of his own and came back with a badly twisted ankle, and the hotel door next to the team's was broken down. (Appalachia 06)

• Friday 8 October. In the morning state police find a night-vision headset in the bushes outside the hotel. Frotter Comstock's "dead Bigfoot" is Troy Cleaver, shot in the back of the head in the stolen Chewbacca costume. That evening the Clinton surveillance scandal breaks at a state police press conference. A Spud Hut truck is found wrecked, its cab bloody and its cargo dirt. (Appalachia 06, Appalachia 07)
• The following day. At the Spud Hut distribution center, Jan Martense leaves the team in the Special Projects level with a pack of ape-men. The team crosses the gold mines, finds the crack in the air, kills Big Bob and climbs out into the woods. (Appalachia 08, Appalachia 09)

Unrecorded session

Appalachia 10, the finale, was never recorded. Its events are known only from references in the next arc: Kurt shot Jan, Jan shot Andrew in the face, a falling ape broke Jan's skull, the Biz shot a man in the woods and had a heart attack, and the plant exploded the same day. Jan was taken to Black Site Omaha. (Walkers 01)

The Walkers in Skin (October–November 1992)

Election Day, 3 November 1992, is the fixed point of this arc. The Utah dates below are counted back from it; the Washington scenes of Walkers 01 are dated later than that count allows (see Date conflicts).

• Late October. With the election a few days away, the Biz appears on Late Night with David Letterman as "the most hated cop in America". President Bush tells Andrew he suspects enemy action, and Kurt interviews Jan at Omaha. The next day Alberta Wilmarth asks Andrew to have her dead mother exhumed. (Walkers 01)
• About 31 October. The team lands in Salt Lake City at about noon and drives to Sherman Ranch near Ballard, Utah, meeting Robert Bigelow. (Walkers 02)
• The dusk event. At sunset an electrical event kills and moves the rental car. The team starts the exhumation request. (Walkers 03)
• That night. On patrol with Walt, the team sees an upright coyote. In the small hours the rental car vanishes upward; it is found the next morning fused into a street in Roosevelt. (Walkers 04)
• The night after. The night event hits the guest house: shared hallucinations, levitation, and a ring of light that Bigelow calls the Black Sun. The next morning radar shows a huge cavern under the ranch. (Walkers 05)
• 2 November. Ballard is emptying. Sheriff McDermish flees the state, Huell is bitten, and Andrew gets an anonymous note calling him to the school gym. At the ranch a beam hurls sheet metal toward Roosevelt. Late that night a naked intruder breaks into the guest house. (Walkers 06, Walkers 07)
• 3 November 1992, Election Day. After midnight, in the Ballard High School gym, Andrew is overpowered by his own double, and the replica leaves in his place. (Walkers 07)
• Later that day. The phones are down. The team finds Roosevelt cut off and its police station massacred. McManley brings the first election news: the count is unfinished and Perot has taken Ohio. An autopsy shows some townspeople are engineered bodies with a non-human pilot. In the Roosevelt morgue the real Andrew returns to life as something else. (Walkers 08)

Unrecorded session

A session known as "08.5" was never recorded. Its events are known only from Andre's recap in the finale: the team rode horses around the roadblock, carried a generator to a radio station, called in the National Guard, fought through the bridge blockade and cleared the police station. (Walkers 09)

• About 5 November. A Guard convoy attacks the community center. The real Andrew, missing for about two days, reappears and the replica is exposed. In the cavern below, the team wrecks the portal machine and the building collapses. Hazmat teams and black triangular craft move in. The radio reports that Ross Perot has won the election. (Walkers 09)
• Aftermath. In a medical tent at the edge of Roosevelt the team learns that 300 to 400 people are dead across the two towns. Big Bill builds a cover story of a cult compound and a Jonestown-style killing. (Roulet Estate 01)

The Roulet Estate (December 1992–spring 1993)

• 24 December 1992. After fifty-three days of paperwork Andrew types his last Utah report. Big Bill tells the team that the President-elect has asked him to resign and will disband the task force on Inauguration Day, and hands Andrew a foil-wrapped letter. (Roulet Estate 01)
• The eve of Inauguration Day, January 1993. Officials come to take the team's files. The agents get drunk in a dive bar and have Diane drive them about seven hours to Rhode Island, picking up a hitchhiking monk. (Roulet Estate 01)
• Inauguration Day, 1993. The agents wake in mid-afternoon in the abandoned Roulet house. A figure like a Grey, the Roulet Intruder, shoots Huell in the shin and Andrew in the face with a VSS rifle. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)
• The Roulet house. The team finds the body of Margaret Roulet and a second body in the basement, the intruder steals their car, and they discover the attic lair and the drugged water. Big Bill is due to be fired the same day. (Roulet Estate 02)
• The pharmacy siege. With police searching for the stolen car, the intruder takes hostages at a Brooks Pharmacy. The agents end the siege; he is a man in a mask. The Biz and Huell are badly shot. Andrew's healing fails and he feels a craving for blood (Andrew's condition). (Roulet Estate 03)
• January 1993. The Biz is taken from his hospital bed by Russians and held at Vorkuta. (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)
• March 1993. Huell is on workers' compensation in a wheelchair. (Roulet Estate 03)
• Spring 1993. Kurt, back from an assignment in Sri Lanka, lectures to agents at Quantico. The Biz is flown to Moscow, where Boris Yeltsin questions him. Andrew, working on the World Trade Center bombing investigation in New York, takes a call from President Perot: "Something's happened in Virginia." (Roulet Estate 03)

The Radford Horrors (spring 1993)

• About October 1992. The Douglas Pinball Emporium opens in Radford, about six months before the team's return. (Radford Horrors 03)
• About February 1993. Gray vans appear in Radford, and Billy Thornton is dragged into one. (Radford Horrors 04)
• Late March 1993. A five-agent FBI task force picked by Perot, sent to look into Radford's missing people, makes its last radio report about a week before the old team is called in. It is attacked from above in snowy woods and goes silent. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)
• Early April 1993. The Biz, now a guest at the Hotel Metropol, joins Yeltsin at the opera. In Washington the others search the Biz's apartment and find his bug-out briefcase. Perot fires FBI Director William Sessions and installs Rudy Giuliani, who puts the team under Daniel Webster and asks for an acceptable fact pattern. It is "a little less than a year" since the first Radford case. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)
• Return to Radford. In one afternoon and night the team walks into an IRS raid at the Ferry Lodge, finds the missing agents' camp, and trades fire with guards at the Safe Environment Fund site. During the night a rabid mouse bites Webster. (Radford Horrors 02)
• Meanwhile in Russia. In the middle of the night attackers ambush Yeltsin's convoy on the way to a crash site in Oryol Oblast. The Biz carries him to safety. (Radford Horrors 03)
• The next day. Molly Underhill, now sheriff, reports that Elizabeth George has vanished from the Pinball Emporium. (Radford Horrors 03)
• Latest events. At the Oryol crash site a survivor of a triangular craft tells the Biz it is "not aliens, the opposite of aliens". In Virginia the team learns a gray van crew took something from the emporium. Andrew heals Wilbur Whateley at a Roanoke hospital, and Wilbur describes the moth's life cycle. The team camps beside the missing agents' site to wait for McManley. (Radford Horrors 04)

Date conflicts

• The Radford church fight. Radford Horror 01 dates the team's arrival to 24 May, and Radford Horror 02 to 07 follow them through three nights, which puts the church fight on 27 May. In Radford Horror 08 Andre says, "I think it's May 29th now." (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 08)
• The Marblehead explosion. The briefing in Radford Horror 08 puts it "about a month" before 15 June. In Summer Service 01 two townspeople place it "about a week and a half ago". (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 01)
• Arrival in Dahlonega. Appalachia 01 and 02 have the team drive down on Tuesday 5 October and start work on Wednesday the 6th, which makes the press conference of Appalachia 07 fall on the 8th. In Appalachia 04, a day later than Appalachia 02, Andre still calls it Wednesday, and in Appalachia 07 he says "we got here on the 4th of October" and that it is now the 7th. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02, Appalachia 04, Appalachia 07)
• The Utah case. In Walkers 01 Andre dates the Letterman taping to "November first" and Alberta Wilmarth's visit to "the day before the election", before the team has left Washington. Walkers 02 to 07 then show three nights in Utah before midnight brings Election Day, 3 November, and in Walkers 03 Ezra looks up the sunset for 30 October. (Walkers 01, Walkers 03, Walkers 07)
• Shelly Wilmarth's death. In Walkers 01 her obituary gives winter 1990 and her daughter says "two years ago". In Walkers 05 Andre says she died "about two months ago". (Walkers 01, Walkers 05)
• The Roulet captions. Roulet Estate 01 counts back from "Inauguration Day, 1993": "Twenty-five days ago" for the scene Andre sets on Christmas Eve, and "78 days ago" for the Roosevelt medical tent. Seventy-eight days before 20 January is Election Day itself, although Walkers 07 to 09 put the end of the Utah case at least two days after it. Later in Roulet Estate 01 Andre also calls the present "early January". (Roulet Estate 01, Walkers 09)