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Unresolved mysteries

Unresolved mysteries collects the questions the campaign has left open as of the latest session, Radford Horrors 04. Each section sets out the evidence from the episodes, the theories the players voiced at the table, and, in a marked box, fan speculation. Speculation is not canon. For the established picture, see The paranatural.

Several sessions were never recorded (see Lost episodes), so a few of these threads may have been answered at the table without leaving a record.

Across the campaign

What are the servitors, and what is "Survey"?

The evidence. In Russia, Boris Yeltsin has doctors wake the survivor of a crashed triangular craft. Asked why it is here, it says "Survey." Asked about its people, the aliens, it answers:

Quote

"Not aliens. The opposite of aliens."

Andre (as the crash survivor) (Radford Horrors 04)

Its last words before passing out are "Servitors... need resources." Yeltsin adds the detail that puzzles him most: the survivor is taking O-negative blood, which should not work on an alien. (Radford Horrors 04)

The word is older than that scene. The burned papers of Agent Murphy in 1992 included the fragments "unknown servitor act[ivity]", "...and the clock survey", "Menelaus", "local resources", "acceptable leakage", "Salem, Colorado", "abstract/annihilation device", "religious ecstasy" and what looked like "Big Bill" (see Murphy's briefcase and documents). (Radford Horror 04)

At the table. In 1992 Kurt Larson said the pages looked like no classified NSA document he had seen, and the Biz described how counterintelligence plants doctored papers to trace leaks; Kurt answered that Murphy had fought too hard for the briefcase for it to be bait. In 1993 Zack's reading of "the opposite of aliens" was "to them, we're the aliens", and Ezra groaned that "the History Channel guy was right". Dante pointed out that the team has seen resources moved through portals before; the Biz passed that on to Yeltsin, with the caution that it "presented differently" and that he had never heard of servitors. (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horrors 04)

Speculation

Murphy's papers put "servitor", "Menelaus" and "local resources" on the same pages a year before anyone said the word aloud. If they were genuine, his employers already classed the Radford Moth as servitor activity. "The opposite of aliens" taking human blood would fit something native to Earth, or made from people.

Who was Agent Murphy, and who carries the flashlights?

The evidence. Murphy stepped into the road in a black suit, showed an NSA badge and told the team they were ruining his operation. His flashlight weapon overheated and he vanished in a pulse of light; the next day the team found the back half of him on a circle of ground melted to glass, with no trace of the device. The same weapon turns up with the cleanup crew at the old church and, as a broken copy taken from a man in dark glasses "like welding glasses", in Yeltsin's hands. A second man with NSA identification was run down at night in Georgia by Jan Martense, who took the ape woman Shelly from him. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 08, Walkers 01, Radford Horrors 01)

After Utah come hazmat teams, black triangular craft and a white powder that wipes about twenty hours of memory. Yeltsin's survivor came from a triangular craft too, though no episode connects the two. (Walkers 09, Roulet Estate 01, Radford Horrors 04)

At the table. In Radford the Biz called it a secret NSA project; Kurt did not believe Murphy was NSA "for a fucking second". Dante joked that the two men hit by cars might be aliens who had never learned to look both ways, and George H. W. Bush half agreed, listing "something else altogether, from somewhere else" among possible enemies and reminding Andrew that "you hit one of them with your car". After the church, Kurt's standing complaint was that nobody knew who the men in heat suits worked for, or how they knew about the moth when the task force did not. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 08, Walkers 01)

Still open. Murphy's real identity and employer; whether the Radford crew of 1992, the Utah crews and the gray van crew of 1993 answer to the same people; and who employs any of them.

Speculation

The ground under Murphy was melted to glass, and so was the Marblehead shore (see Melted shoreline). The flashlight is also the only thing that killed the angel thing. The weapon may have been built with that kind of target in mind.

What is Andrew Howard?

The evidence.

At the table. Rita wondered whether the Aetherius Society knew what Andrew was and showed the world only "the clean side of it". Andre replied that the Society may not be getting the full story from whoever it is in contact with, and that Andrew's humanity had been guiding his powers until now. Kurt's suggestion for the dream father:

Quote

"Well, you know, it could be a tulpa, you know. It might be a dad tulpa. That wouldn't be the first dad tulpa."

Dante (as Kurt) (Radford Horrors 03)

Related: the next Master. Mr. King tells Andrew that the next of the Masters is coming, "maybe next year, maybe in three or four, but not ten", and that the church must fight "the forces of silence". Who the Master is, who the forces of silence are, and whether Mr. King's deadline is tied to anything the task force has met are all unanswered. (Radford Horror 01)

Speculation

The gray-skinned dream visitor of Marblehead also kissed Andrew, said "I wish I wasn't dead" and asked him to "give your mom a hug for me". He and the smiling dream father may be the same figure. If the Masters are whoever the Society is "in contact with", Andrew may be what they made him, which would explain why the moth thought he knew its makers.

What are the angels?

The evidence. The angel thing shrugged off a nuclear warhead and died to a flashlight, sprouting the limbs of every kind of animal as it went. Earlier a dream visitor had warned Andrew to stay away from the water: "I think they damaged it. It can't cool itself anymore... It's not like the bug thing. I don't think you can hurt it." He suggested a nuclear strike and said that getting close would kill Andrew "or change you". The radio contact signs off with "Sorry about this, by the way. We didn't mean for it to get out." In Utah a long-dead creature of the same kind is wired into the portal machine; Andre confirms it is "one of those". (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 06, Walkers 09)

Yeltsin says Soviet instruments recorded a cosmic microwave background surge that coincided with the Marblehead incident, and that Russia has intelligence about another organism there besides the worms. (Radford Horrors 01)

At the table. Andrew first guessed an alien submarine. Kurt wondered whether the nerve agent and "the glowy thing" belonged to a rival faction trying to contain the worms. Andrew holds that angels are physical beings whose bodies nobody comprehends. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 05, Walkers 06)

Still open. Who "they" were and how they damaged it; who the dead dream visitor was and how he knew about "the bug thing" in Radford; what melted the Marblehead shore; what moved in the sea cave in the opening shot of the arc; and why a dead angel can power a portal. (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03, Walkers 09)

Who built the portals?

The evidence. The Crack in the Air under Dahlonega had a metal pipe through it hissing gas into the mine. The plant then exploded; Kurt told Jan Martense that "some other force" had filled the mines with gas, and the only person Jan could name with a grudge and the knowledge was the accountant Clyde Harvard. The Utah portal, by Andre's ruling, had similar qualities but opened somewhere else. Nobody learns who built the machine in the cavern. (Appalachia 09, Walkers 01, Walkers 09)

At the table.

Quote

"That's such a jackass redneck solution with such space-age technology."

Dante, on the pipe (Appalachia 09)

Rita (as Andrew) asked whether extraterrestrial ape-men would have portal technology. After Utah, Kurt argued that the portal and the size of the operation imply "some greater intelligence" than the skinwalkers themselves, and the Biz agreed that something intelligent is behind the scenes. (Appalachia 09, Radford Horrors 01)

Speculation

The crack in Georgia is lit by rippling light "like the caustics on the bottom of a pool", the same light that plays on Andrew's ceiling when the dream visitor comes in Marblehead. The visitor may have arrived the way the pipe did.

Radford

Who made the Radford Moth, and did it breed?

The evidence. Wilbur Whateley said in 1992 that the moth had to breed and that its kind are born pregnant. A year later he says it "needed hosts, like a parasitic wasp. Those women—", that he found it under a white oak, and something about "the basement". His own journal describes finding a giant larva in the woods by the old church. A moth lays 40 to 500 eggs. (Radford Horror 07, Radford Horror 08, Radford Horrors 04)

Both Amanda Lucky and Irene Whateley were found disemboweled, and about five percent of Amanda's blood volume was foreign matter the coroner could not identify. In 1993 the team finds pearlescent goo with the moth's smell at the Safe Environment Fund fenced site, and a small moth-scented intruder enters the Douglas Pinball Emporium before the gray van crew takes it away. (Radford Horror 06, Radford Horror 08, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 04)

At the table. In 1992 the players split on the disembowelments: Dante thought Amanda had been killed to keep her quiet, Zack thought the Whateley boy did it, and others thought the moth ate them. On returning, Andrew admits the team "never went looking for the kids or eggs", and Kurt thinks the gray van crew came for a juvenile moth or a thrall. See Moth life cycle and Crucifixion MO. (Radford Horror 08, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 04)

Still open. Who "the ones who made" the moth are; whether any young survived the church fire; where the cleanup crew took the body; and who physically nailed up the victims and supplied the sedatives.

Speculation

Wilbur's "those women" reads as an answer to the oldest puzzle of the first case: the women were disemboweled because something came out of them. The foreign matter in Amanda's blood would then be the moth's, and the creatures of 1993 would be the brood.

What killed Perot's task force?

The evidence. The cold open of the current arc shows the missing FBI task force dying in the Radford woods: something flying picks agents off from above, and naked, emaciated men with swollen, rippling bellies hang from the trees by their punctured hands (see Radford woods predators and Hanging figures). (Radford Horrors 01)

The site marked on the missing agents' map has since been fenced, bleached and dug over. The Safe Environment Fund guards it with armed men and lawyers, and townspeople who vanish, including Elizabeth George, are said to be in treatment in Los Angeles (see LA treatment cover story). (Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 04)

At the table. Daniel Webster arrived believing the old team was Bush's political dirty-work unit and that the alien material was cover. Billy Thornton's tale of a van full of chimpanzees left Zack suspecting that "the space chimpanzees weren't actually chimpanzees". On why President Perot rejected the original reports, Dante thinks he "doesn't like reading that it's fucking aliens"; Ezra thinks the report was a cover story. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)

Still open. Whether the hanging men are victims or hosts; who is behind the Safe Environment Fund; and where the missing people really are.

Speculation

Punctured hands and rippling bellies look like the crucifixions and the hosting of 1992 combined. Wilbur spoke of women as hosts, and the hanging figures are men, so the new generation may be less particular.

Marblehead

Who was on the radio?

The evidence. The radio contact knows about the worms, has a poison for them, and says the nerve agent leaked because his advance team "got blown up". He explains that they brought something broad-spectrum "because we weren't sure what it was gonna make". He says he is only allowed to tell the team what they already know, and that he has done this before. When Kurt names the M28 Davy Crockett:

Quote

"I don't recognize the model name. It might be different where I'm from."

Andre (as the radio contact) (Summer Service 06)

The session before the finale was not recorded, so how the team first reached him is not known. A cold open months earlier showed four men in dark camouflage on a steel boat, aiming a huge oval-barreled gun at something that "has a human with it". (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 06)

Still open. Who he works for and where he is from; whether the boat crew were his advance team (see Mystery covert group); and which vessel Big Bill meant when he said "we lost one of our submarines too".

Speculation

"Where I'm from" could mean another country or service. Set beside the portals found later, another world, or another version of this one with differently named weapons, is also possible. The rule about only confirming what the team already knows suggests someone worried about changing events.

Did the Sons of Adam know what was in the wine?

The evidence. The worms reached Marblehead through the communion wine of the Sons of Adam, but the episodes never establish whether the congregation spread them knowingly or was itself infected and led by them, or where the worms came from. The body found in Amos Shaw's house is not Shaw's and is never identified. Nobody says who chained up Arnold Weathers, or whose severed arm, in a black sleeve and glove, washed up among the dead fish, or what the unscratchable crystal marbles are. (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03, Summer Service 05)

At the table. The Biz declared the marbles diamonds. Kurt's "factional dispute" theory (above) has someone else using the nerve agent to contain the worms before the team ever arrived. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 05)

Speculation

The radio contact's "we weren't sure what it was gonna make" sounds as though the worms, or the angel thing, produce other creatures, and that his people had seen it happen before.

Georgia

Where did the ape-men come from?

The evidence. Clive knew only that the ape-men arrived looking about six years old and were full-grown in two months. After Jan's capture the team learns the line began with Shelly, taken from a man with NSA identification whom Jan killed with his car. Why that man had her is unknown. (Appalachia 09, Walkers 01)

At the table. Zack (as Huell) "figured there was a population in the wild" that Jan wanted to protect; Andrew proposed an extraterrestrial origin. When the answer came, Rita admitted she had expected to be disappointed. (Appalachia 09, Walkers 01)

Still open. Where Shelly came from; what attacked the Spud Hut truck; what became of Willow Greengrass; whether the man baptizing a salesman into the red mud was Elijah Ray, and where the salesman went; and who the client is behind the lawyers pressing the Covenant for its land (see The Land Dispute). The arc's finale was not recorded. (Appalachia 04, Appalachia 07)

Was the Clinton scandal enemy action?

The evidence. Polaroids of Bill Clinton in a Dahlonega hotel room, reportedly taken with a Russian camera, sank his campaign (see Clinton Surveillance Scandal). The Biz had planted a camera and microphone in room 111 of the same hotel for the KGB, which sent him coded instructions (see Moby-Dick book cipher). No one at the table ever says aloud that his camera took the pictures. President Bush saw design in it:

Quote

"There is coincidence, there is miracle, and there is enemy action. That is enemy action."

Andre (as George H. W. Bush) (Walkers 01)

Bush believed some power wanted him out of office to break the continuity of the government's response, and warned of agents inside American organizations (see Enemy Action). (Appalachia 01, Walkers 01)

Still open. Whether the Biz's handlers were simply the KGB or a front for someone else, and what the fragment the team decoded in his apartment, "instructions to cause soon submarine lost near", refers to. (Radford Horrors 01)

Speculation

A submarine was lost at Marblehead on the night of the finale. If the decoded fragment refers to it, the Biz's correspondents knew about that night, or caused it.

Utah

Where did the skinwalkers go?

The evidence. Before the portal failed, skinwalkers were carrying tanks of blood with creatures in them through it, and fifty or sixty were still in the cavern. Among them was the false mayor, Wilford Hiram, whose fate is not shown. Nobody learned who makes the host bodies or what lies on the other side. (Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

On the night Andrew was replaced, someone with keys also emptied Robert Bigelow's ranch of every tape and drive and took three of his staff (see Bigelow's recordings). The same night Andrew cast something out of a naked intruder, who died hours later. (Walkers 07)

Yeltsin calls them "the people who were not people", asks how convincing they were, and says Russia is developing a test. (Radford Horrors 01)

At the table. The Biz's verdict to Yeltsin: good mimics, poor strategists. Kurt's: someone smarter is directing them. (Radford Horrors 01)

Still open. Who wrote the note that lured Andrew to the gym, and whether its "list" existed; who robbed Bigelow; and what was inside the intruder.

What drives the Sherman Ranch phenomenon?

The evidence. The ranch phenomenon lifted a car, heated a sheet of metal and launched it toward Roosevelt, and ended in the white ring. No episode explains it or says whether it has anything to do with the skinwalkers. The grave of Shelly Wilmarth, who appears in local news footage shot after her death, was never opened in a recorded session (see Exhumation of Shelly Wilmarth). (Walkers 01, Walkers 07, Walkers 09)

At the table. Walt offered ball lightning for the burned crow and, in a moment of "sanity time", a cargo plane and skyhook for the car. Robert Bigelow offered the Black Sun. (Walkers 04, Walkers 05)

Speculation

Given what the skinwalkers were, the Shelly on the news footage was most likely a copy, which would make her one of the earliest replacements.

Rhode Island

What happened at the Roulet house?

The evidence. The Roulet Intruder was unmasked as a human, but his name and motive were never learned. The episodes never say who killed the Roulets or confirm that the second body in the basement pit is Mr. Roulet. Also unexplained: the older subjects of the attic Polaroids; what drug was in the water (see The Drugged Water); the lights and eyes in the woods and Kurt's lost minute; who sent the foil-wrapped letter that started the case; and what is on the visitation tapes Kurt carried off and nobody watched. The Roulets' sketches of black triangles match the craft the team saw over Utah. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)

At the table. Andre noted that, as cops, the agents ought to be suspicious of "two things" at once, a serial killer and an alien; Ezra answered that it has been two things every time. Dante allowed that it might be a regular serial killer "and we're all just tripping balls off of toilet water".

Quote

"Look, what I wouldn't give to just investigate a regular serial killer right now."

Ezra (Roulet Estate 02)

Speculation

The matching triangles are the one detail the drugged water cannot explain away. The Roulets may have been watching something real before the man in the attic arrived.

Russia

Who are "the humanists"?

The evidence. One line. Yeltsin opens his questioning of the captured Biz with:

Quote

"Tell me everything you know about the humanists."

Andre (as Boris Yeltsin) (Roulet Estate 03)

The later Russian scenes turn to skinwalkers and the crash, and the word does not come up again. (Radford Horrors 01)

Speculation

Next to "the opposite of aliens", "humanists" may be a Russian name for the servitors' masters, or for a human faction working with them.

Smaller loose ends