The Radford Moth¶

The Radford Moth is a car-sized, telepathic blue morpho-like moth that the task force first meets as a silent, light-blotting "UFO" over Radford, Virginia, and which takes dogs and young women, enthralls Wilbur Whateley, and burns to death in an old church at the end of The Radford Horror.


Type	Monster (giant moth)
Aliases	The moth; the craft; blue butterfly creature; "She"; giant Morpho menelaus; flying creature; UFO; Mothman (Kurt's comparison); the thing in the woods
Abilities	Flight and silent hovering; hypnotic blue light; telepathy; mind control; draining proboscis
Weaknesses	Fire (damage doubled); thin wings; cuttable legs and proboscis; unarmored eyes
Status	Dead, killed in the burning church; body removed by the cleanup crew (as of Radford Horror 08)
First appearance	Radford Horror 01 (cold open, as a blue blur)

Description¶

As a flying object the moth is huge, dark and silent, between an ultralight and a Cessna in size. At about 50 to 60 feet up it looks like two round shapes joined like a Venn diagram. It blots out starlight, produces no light and no glow in night vision, and flares a dazzling, evanescent blue under flashlights or streetlights. Close up it smells of rotting wood, black mold, compost and a musty closet, and it leaves chalky white powder and a "terrarium" smell. Observers glimpse "narrow, jointed, folded, corrugated shapes like bendy straws." (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 06)

Inside the church it is revealed as a car-sized mass (the wings make it larger) with blue butterfly wings, a long curved, razor-sharp chitinous proboscis with rasping leech-like teeth inside, mantis-like clawing forelegs, an abdominal stinger, bullet-deflecting armor plates and segmented bug eyes. Its wing tissue is like wet leaves or rotten fabric and its ichor is warm and yellow. (Radford Horror 07)

Abilities¶

Flight: VTOL-capable; it kept pace with a car at about 50 mph, patrolled the treelines behind houses, and swooped into a yard to take a dog. Its silhouette shrinks when diving and expands when rising. (Radford Horror 04)
Hypnosis: rolling its wings produces blue light that overwhelms minds; the sensation is of sinking into the ocean. Characters resist with Weird. (Radford Horror 07)
Telepathy and mind control: it speaks in the mind ("Changeling", "Save me, child! You know the ones who made me--"), delivers a psychic blast that blinds and hurts (it did 2 harm to Kurt in Radford Horror 06), and made Huell shoot Andrew. (Radford Horror 06, Radford Horror 07)
Draining: its proboscis drains flesh and blood; it filled all seven of Huell's harm boxes. (Radford Horror 07)
Psychic link: Wilbur feels its pain as physical agony without wounds. (Radford Horror 07)

Weaknesses¶

Kurt learns in the fight that it hates fire (damage doubled), that its legs and proboscis are thin and can be folded or cut, that its wings are thin and easily shredded, and that its eyes are unarmored. (Radford Horror 07)

History¶

The Radford Horror¶

The campaign's cold open shows a helicopter shot over Jefferson National Forest in 1992, with something blue darting over the tree line (Radford Horror 01). In Radford Horror 02 the team learns of large dogs vanishing from houses backing onto the national forest, at night, with rising frequency over six to eight months, and of locals reporting UFOs and lights (Radford Horror 02). See Radford's missing dogs.

In Radford Horror 03 a silent craft circles over the team's car, following them specifically and blocking out stars; it flares blue under flashlights, makes a noise nobody has heard, and speeds away. Andrew believes aliens; the Biz suggests birds and then a secret NSA project; Kurt suggests surveillance, a stealth RC aircraft or drones. (Radford Horror 03)

In Radford Horror 04 the team concludes the creature fled the flashlight, took a dog and apparently scooped Phoebe Augustine from a clearing; Kurt toys with a stealth aircraft, and a burned document fragment mentions "Menelaus" and an unknown "servitor" activity. (Radford Horror 04) In Radford Horror 05 what the team has actually seen is still "darks in the sky," and Kurt still favors a stealth drone. (Radford Horror 05) See Murphy's briefcase and documents.

In Radford Horror 06 the team stakes out the Whateley house. The craft descends, Kurt marks it with glow-stick fluid, a "punch in the brain" blinds him, and it lifts the astronaut-suited figure (Wilbur Whateley) away; Huell Kendrick, clinging to the figure, loses his grip and falls, breaking his right arm. The party theory is that the craft may be a living creature rather than a machine. (Radford Horror 06) See The Spaceman.

In Radford Horror 07 the team flies over Radford, finds an old church whose caved-in roof shows a flash of dazzling blue, and enters it at evening. Inside, a woman (Phoebe) is crucified above the pulpit, Wilbur rocks naked and mutters, and the creature waits in the rafters. Wilbur says "it has to breed" and "they're born pregnant." The creature drops on the team, hypnotizes them, takes over Huell and has him shoot Andrew, and slashes Kurt and the Biz. Andrew rolls Everclear across to Kurt, who smashes it on the creature as a Molotov, the roof catches fire, Huell cuts off a leg with bolt cutters, and the Biz gouges out its eyes. The team evacuates; a burning beam pins the creature. Kurt re-padlocks the door and Andrew hears "Save me, child! You know the ones who made me--" dissolving into screaming and silence. (Radford Horror 07) See Old-town church, Crucifixion MO and Andrew's mace for the aftermath.

In Radford Horror 08 the police close the case on Wilbur and "the cartel." Wilbur's journal records a larva found June 3rd, hatching August 15th the year before, the voice in his head, and the moth eating his dog; it was raised in the basement and then in the church. When the team returns to the burned church, its body is gone: Andre confirms that the special forces-style strangers removed it (see The cleanup crew). The team concludes the moth manipulated Wilbur and Huell. Kurt remarks "I always heard Mothman was a tulpa." (Radford Horror 08) See Wilbur's journal and Moth life cycle.

The Radford Horrors¶

In Radford Horrors 01 Andre says of the first case that "there was no man element. It was just moth," and the table identifies Radford as the arc where the UFO turned out to be a giant moth (Radford Horrors 01). In Radford Horrors 02 Kurt calls it "the primary threat," and Andrew worries it bred or left eggs. Pearlescent "caterpillar slurry" with a sourer version of the moth's compost smell is found at the cleaned site (Radford Horrors 02); see Pearlescent goo.

Radford Horrors 04 adds that moths lay 40 to 500 eggs, and Wilbur, healed by Andrew, recalls finding an oversized Morpho menelaus caterpillar in the woods under a white oak. It was pregnant, he says, and "needed hosts, like a parasitic wasp." A smaller moth-smelling shadow in the Pinball Emporium may be a juvenile or a thrall; see Emporium intruder. (Radford Horrors 04)

What remains unknown¶

Why it grew so large, where it came from, whether eggs or offspring exist, whether it caused the disembowelments of Amanda Lucky and Irene Whateley, who the people that removed its body were, and who made it. It told Andrew he knew "the ones who made me." It dies out of sight: its voice dissolves into screaming behind the locked door, and the cleanup crew has taken the body by the time the team returns. In Radford Horror 04 Rutherford, the Pay n' Stay clerk, insists the beings behind such sightings are the Anunnaki, and in Radford Horror 07 Rita (as Andrew) calls it one of the things the Masters had warned the group about. (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 07, Radford Horror 08)