Ape-Men¶
The Ape-Men are pale, fast-maturing, ketamine-addicted hominids bred by Jan Martense to mine gold under Dahlonega, Georgia; the escapees are the "Bigfoot" and "Yeti" that terrorized the town in The Things in Appalachia.
| Type | Monster / bred hybrid |
| Aliases | Yetis; the shift; hybrids; chimp-men; troglodytes; cave yeti; OmniChimp; mineshaft creature; Appalachian predator; Bigfoot; Sasquatch |
| Abilities | Great strength and speed, climbing, voice mimicry (Shelly), recognizing gold |
| Weaknesses | Fear of dark tunnels, loud high-pitched noise, dependence on ketamine |
| Affiliation | Jan's Conspiracy |
| Status | Survivors left in the mines (as of Appalachia 09); fate after the unrecorded finale unknown |
| First appearance | Appalachia 01 (cold open, as "Bigfoot") |
Description¶
The creatures are large, pale, furry and chimp-like, "not that different from chimps" according to the handler Clive, but much stronger. In the Spud Hut basement the team saw five of them: pale, hairy, hunched, with long sharp fingernails, reflective eyes and partly human features. The players read them as cave-dwelling troglodytes rather than former people; Kurt compared the feeling to meeting a family of black bears on a trail (Appalachia 08). The working shift wears hi-vis vests and safety helmets, carries pickaxes and has armbands with blinking red lights (Appalachia 09).
Abilities¶
- Strength and speed. In the first mine encounter a white blur charged the team, hurled Kurt into Andrew and a wall, and tore a long cut up his back; the team described it as pale, furry, fast and armed (Appalachia 03). In the basement one picked Andrew up and threw him through a drop ceiling and repeatedly "juggled" him, and another punched a dog whistle into Kurt's throat (Appalachia 08).
- Climbing and hunting. The creature in the early cases lured prey with a baby-like cry, moved on all fours, and was very comfortable moving vertically through trees. It ripped a rabbit apart and hung a child's shoe high in a tree (Appalachia 02). The team assumed that the early sightings and disappearances were these same creatures escaping from the mines; Clive, who had been underground for two months, knew of escapes only through Jan's assurance that he had "taken care of" them (Appalachia 09).
- Rapid growth. Ape-men arrive looking about six and are full-grown in about two months. A dissected specimen had an adrenaline gland about twice the size of a fist (Appalachia 09).
- Trainability. They respond to clickers, reinforcement and imitation, and mine in shifts of 25. Kurt summed up the operation: "Apes mine gold. Tell nobody, 'cause ape." (Appalachia 09)
Weaknesses¶
The handlers' only containment is the creatures' fear of dark tunnels; they lit only the routes they wanted the shift to use. The ape-men dislike loud noises and hunger, and without ketamine they fight, wreck enclosures and cannot focus. Kurt got past the shift by eating ketamine-packed Combos in front of them, putting on a show of enjoying them (Appalachia 09). A Claymore mine killed one and drove off the rest in the basement (Appalachia 08), and Andrew's pepper-spray "absence" beam severed the arm of Big Bob.
History¶
Early sightings¶
The arc opens with a woman dragged off by something hairy in the woods (Appalachia 01). The team later found a child's shoe with pale, soft, body-like hair in the laces, and a rabbit pelt with the insides gone (Appalachia 02). In the Consolidated Gold Mine the team met the "cave yeti" in a hidden modern tunnel, shot it, and followed its blood to an old elevator shaft where they found a German boy's shoe. A small red light was blinking on or near it (Appalachia 03). Kurt argued the light was inorganic, a recorder or tracker, which meant people were involved (Appalachia 04). The tracker matched the SHA tag found in a bear's vomit (see SHA Tracking Device) (Appalachia 07).
Meanwhile fake Bigfoots confused the picture: a man in a Chewbacca costume was found shot, and faked prints turned up near Auraria (see The Bigfoot Hoax). Kurt kept the two separate, believing a real ape-man hybrid exists alongside the hoax and asking McManley to compare Frotter Comstock's gore smear against hybrid tissue he already held (Appalachia 06).
The Special Projects level¶
Beneath the Spud Hut corporate plant, on a floor marked "Special Projects", the cold open of Appalachia 08 shows a dozen eyes turning toward the camera in a dark room of rattling cages. Jan Martense led the team down and left them in a "break room" (code 441). The creatures behind the door ambushed the team; by Andre's count at the end of the session one was killed and at least two more were badly injured (one shot through the neck by Huell), and the survivors fled (Appalachia 08). See Break Room. Andre's adjudication in Appalachia 08 has one ape-man killed by the Claymore, but the recap that opens Appalachia 09 says two were "evaporated", and the team tells Clive that two of the five rejects are dead.
The shift and the mines¶
Clive explained the operation: a lot of gold remained under Dahlonega and ape-men dig it because they do not talk. The operation had run a year and a half, Jan "kept getting more", and a 25-strong shift needed to be led back and fed. Five ape-men were "rejects" whose temperament did not take to training; two died in the basement blast. The tunnels' unguarded ladder explained the escapes, and the missing children, truck driver and Spud Hut workers were tied to those escapes. Kurt won over the shift with the ketamine Combos, and Big Bob, a huge ape-man, hunted the party until it was killed (Appalachia 09).
Origin¶
The finale was never recorded, so the origin is known only from Jan's account to Kurt at Black Site Omaha in the epilogue. Five years before, Jan hit and killed a man in a black suit with NSA ID on a Georgia road, and found an ape woman strapped to a gurney in his van. He named her Shelly and kept her to make money. She aged fast, and Jan tried every kind of ape semen, then used his own by artificial insemination. The offspring aged even faster; only males survived. A lab told him the chromosome numbers did not line up. Jan considered Shelly "a bright chimp", very strong and good at voice mimicry, nothing supernatural (Walkers 01). See Shelly (ape woman).
Unrecorded session
The climax in the Dahlonega gold mines happened in Appalachia 10, which was never recorded. The epilogue says a falling ape broke Jan's skull and that Andrew was thrown and juggled in the caves, but gives no further detail.
Later references¶
In Walkers 05, McManley is still insisting that the earlier ape-men should have been "basically chimpanzees" (Walkers 05).
What remains unknown¶
- Where the ape-men truly come from and why they grow so fast. Andrew wondered about an extraterrestrial origin and Kurt said "Somebody fucking does" have portals, tying them to The Crack in the Air, but Jan denied any portals (Appalachia 09).
- What happened to the drugged shift of ape-men when the Spud Hut facility exploded.