The Adventure Zone: Amnesty - Episode 13

Synopsis
Full transcript available here.

''The holidays have descended upon Kepler, West Virginia. While the town prepares for its annual festivities, the Pine Guard prepares for the coming Abomination. Ned gets under the hood. Aubrey does some risky sleight of hand. Duck gets two fateful phone calls.''

Rick Dannon, the Monongahela Forest Service's chief arborist, is killed in an unnatural snowstorm on his way home from work. Meanwhile, Duck Newton is having a vision of floating among some bright, almost fake-looking stars for several minutes. He sees a meteor diving towards him, about to crash into him - but before it can, he is woken by a phone call from Juno Divine, informing him of Rick's grisly demise.

That afternoon, Mama calls everyone to the Lodge; they talk about their holiday plans for a bit, and - seeing Stern sitting in the dining area attacking a copy of the Lamplighter with a red marker, gathering information for his own monster hunt - they go down to the cellar. Barclay is down there, giving some food to Thacker. Mama tells them all that Thacker hasn't been lucid for a while, so he's a dead end when it comes to research. It's getting close to the full moon, and they need to start keeping their eyes out for more abominations.

Duck mentions that his sort-of friend Rick Dannon died that night, and while it's a possibility that it wasn't an abomination-related death, he's still skeptical. Mama thinks it would be a good idea to check it out, since they're running short on leads. After giving permission to Aubrey to go to Sylvain, Mama lets the three of them go--along with Jake Coolice, who Aubrey enlisted because of his knowledge of winter terrain.

On their way out, they notice a fancy-looking card sitting in front of the door, with a red paw surrounded by a red circle stamped in the bottom right corner. On the card are written three items, which are Heathcliff's bounties:
 * A lawkeeper's symbol,
 * A seer's spectacles,
 * and a victorious seed.

[Money Zone]

The three main characters (plus Jake) arrive at the crash site. Deputy Dewey is there monitoring the crash site; he reveals to Duck, after some prompting (from Justin), that he likes to LARP sometimes with friends. Before Dewey heads back to his car, Duck asks Dewey what he thinks really happened at the crash site. Dewey shares his unprofessional, non-forensic opinion: Rick drove through the guardrail and crashed into a tree, dying on impact. The only strange thing was that there were no skid marks, as if Rick was trying to dodge out of the way of something or slow down, and the brake lines were intact. While this is happening, Aubrey asks Jake about the area, to see if he's noticed anything weird. Jake notices that the snow isn't caked and flat like it would be if it was fresh; it's covered in tiny pockmarks.

Ned heads over to check the van itself, after prompting from Duck. Dewey tries to stop them from disturbing the crime scene, but Aubrey distracts him; Ned and Duck sneak around to check the van, while Aubrey performs a vanishing trick on his badge, hoping to keep it and fulfill the "lawkeeper's symbol" part of Heathcliff's bounty list. Ned sees that everything is basically fine, except for one thing: on the passenger's side floor, there's a Gatorade bottle that looks like it got crushed by the van's brake pedal. Duck looks through the window and sees that all of Rick's arborist equipment is gone. In the meantime, Aubrey has pocketed the badge, and is making plans to steal Sheriff Zeke's badge and give it to Dewey.

While all this has been happening, a figure on a snowmobile has been watching everyone investigate this crime scene; as they all drive off in Ned's Lincoln, the figure gets on the snowmobile and drives off.

In the Lincoln, they are swallowed by a sudden extremely strong snowstorm; through the flakes, they see a figure that Aubrey thinks is the Krampus.During the storm, Ned's car sputters, turns off, and rolls to a stop. When the storm clears, they see that they are essentially in the middle of town, surrounded by several local businesses. Aubrey gets out and sees several hoofprints in the ground, about where the figure they'd seen was standing.

As they're looking at the footprints, a nearby pay phone starts to ring. Aubrey picks it up, and a "pleasant, sort of lilting voice" answers.Duck takes the phone.

Featured NPCs

 * Agent Stern
 * Barclay
 * Deputy Dewey
 * Indrid Cold (voice only)
 * Jake Coolice
 * Mama
 * Thacker

Featured Locations

 * Kepler
 * Amnesty Lodge