Tallahassee Turner

Played by: Seth Morrison

First appeared in: Mister Corbitt

An adventurer/author who gained Diamond Skin in New Jerusalem and a horrifying dog-spider monster named "Necronomidog" in Radio Man.

Clearly the main character of the story. Often goes dashing face-first into danger (even when it isn't necessary) with awesome results.

In Mister Corbitt he is a famous explorer and author living on the same Arkham street as Bernard Corbitt, and the host of the neighbors' gatherings. He is the one who spots the first sign that something is wrong with Corbitt, and the investigators' most reckless member.

Season 1: Mister Corbitt

101: It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Tallahassee hosts the Sunday evening gathering at his house. When Corbitt drops one of his packages, Tallahassee and Dr. Simeon both see what looks like a human hand, which starts the investigation. When Corbitt discovers his clothes on the lawn, Tallahassee blames ghosts that steal clothing.

102: Neighborhood Watch

Earlier in the evening he questions the elderly neighbor Mr. Barber about Corbitt and explains the thrown clothes away as "research" for a novel and kleptomania picked up during his travels. During the night surveillance he trips over patio furniture, notices freshly turned soil in the garden and digs up a hard object. He pulls it free as Corbitt's light comes on and throws it over the fence into Simeon's yard, later finding that it is a large, possibly human bone, which costs him a little Sanity.

103: Usual Suspects

Tallahassee intercepts the police, spinning up fast talk as a famous author and neighborhood watchman. At the station he blurts out that he found a strange bone, and that Major Bakersfield broke his camera. The group jokes throughout that he has soiled himself from stress.

104: Attic Window

He develops the photograph taken when Bakersfield dropped his camera from Simeon's roof. The blurry image shows a woman's face in the attic window of Corbitt's house, and it triggers Dom's memories.

105: Radical Medicine

Tallahassee arms himself with a pistol, cavalry saber, rope and hatchet and crosses the street with the photograph to confront Corbitt alone. After exchanging rude gestures with Mr. Barber he accuses Corbitt of hiding a woman in the attic, draws his gun and forces his way in, and Corbitt takes control of him with his chanting. Simeon and Bakersfield later find him wandering down the street naked and cracking his whip. Simeon distracts him with a dance, Bakersfield nets him and he is doused with water until he recovers. All he remembers is a shirtless man in suspenders.

106: The Miskatonic Mangler

While the others go after Randolph Tomaszewski, Tallahassee stays behind watching Corbitt's house, and is then brought up to date and shown the occult book and the purple vial when the others return to Simeon's house.

107: Fates and Retribution

He is one of the three investigators at Simeon's side after Simeon drinks the vial and sees the invisible wounds. He jokes about waking Simeon by urinating on his face, and flirts with Simeon's wife, Mary Beth. The next day he joins the discussion of how to deal with Corbitt.

108: Head of the Beast

Inside Corbitt's house he searches the kitchen and finds a package that is labeled "Human Head" but turns out to be a joke; the long burlap-wrapped package beside it is only a tree branch. When the head-creature attacks Dom, Tallahassee rips it off Dom's chest and tosses it away. He goes through Corbitt's study, finding botany notes, occult books, a snakeskin-bound tome in an unreadable language and a long run of journals from 1911 to 1925. He reads the journals and finds Corbitt's confessions. At the basement door he pushes Dom aside and draws his .38 to shoot the lock, but Dom picks it first.

109: For Whom the Dice Rolls

In the basement Tallahassee fires both a .45 and a .38 at the creature, hitting it with some shots and nearly hitting Bakersfield with another. When the creature dies he stabs Corbitt as Corbitt throws himself onto its body. He stays at the scene to get his story straight with Billy before the police arrive. In the epilogue he goes home to write the wildest, most unbelievable, and truest of his adventure books.

Notable quotes

• "Alright guys Billy's gone, now's our chance to be bad!"

In 203: A Night With No Moon he uses a framed picture as a mirror to spy the dead light searching the hallway of Dr. Webb's cottage, then flees with Billy through a bedroom window. Rather than run from the light under the window, he tries to shoot and photograph it, and the flash blinds him; he slips in the mud, which carries him clear of its strike. He then argues that the silver coffer is the way to stop it, runs back into the house to grab it, passes it to the Major, and stops to read more of the black journal.

In 204: Night of the Living Dead Light he spends the fight with the dead light reading Dr. Webb's journal inside the cottage, then runs for the front of the house. Back at the diner he reads aloud a second entry dated March 22nd, 1888, describing the ritual for opening the silver coffer, and concludes that someone must have opened it without the ritual. He later searches the kitchen for Mary and, finding no ice cream, settles for potato chips.

In 205: Lights Out he searches Jake's truck and takes a 12-gauge shotgun, which he names Horace, and threatens Mary with it during the standoff in the gas station office. Mary shoots him in the side for four damage, the first real damage he has taken. With his blood used for the ritual symbol, he reads the chant from the black journal as the dead light squeezes under the door.

In 301: No Rest for the Wicked he dreams of charging San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, only to find his friends and Mary among the defenders he has cut down. He wakes in a sweat in Grant Jameson's cabin and claims it is because he is manly. Shaken by Corbitt's warning and by Mary's death, he says he wants to go home and write another book, but after the others talk to him he agrees to go on. He is now indefinitely insane, and the amnesia from his last bout has left him with only a hazy memory of Mary's death. At the ruined campsite he tracks the drag marks and claw prints, fails his Sanity roll, and works out the dead photographer's camera settings so he can develop the film.

Since Mary the Hoebag's death in 205: Lights Out, Tallahassee has become increasingly unhinged, and the Keeper often describes impossible things happening to him, such as running into his old ward Rondo, or Teddy Roosevelt, in the street. In 302: The Huggening he mistakes a young man on the porch of New Salem's general store for his old friend and ward Rondo, who helped him stalk the Shadow Rider. The young man insists that he has never met Tallahassee, but Tallahassee wraps him in a fighting hug that he cannot escape. The young man is actually Levi, and Tallahassee admits he has no idea who he hugged. He fast-talks newsman Jacob Alister into lending him the Shofar's darkroom in exchange for an exclusive interview and photo, and he successfully begins developing the film from the abandoned campsite.

In 303: The Grand Slam he develops the dead photographer's last two photos in the Shofar's darkroom. As the image of a headless, shark-mouthed creature fades in, he fumbles his reality check with a roll of 100, loses 5 Sanity and is found huddled in a corner, hiding his face. A drink back at the tavern calms him, despite his worry about disappointing his best friend Fred Landers. At Mordecai Shep's shack he keeps watch from the roof of the truck and insists that the others search for trapdoors, and Billy duly finds one. The letters hidden there reveal that Bernard Corbitt modeled his laboratory's elaborate locking mechanism on Tallahassee's tales, and Tallahassee declares, "I knew he was a fan."

In 304: Pet, Cemetery he answers Percival Warthrop's question about curses with "I see you've read my book," and he promises to write about the Grand Slam if it is any good. He claims that his wife is legally dead after being killed by Vikings. At the cemetery he keeps watch from the roof of the truck, and as the others call for his help with J.G. Faust's tomb, he spots another vehicle creeping up the road, which stops once he is in sight.

In 305: The Shining... Skin he corrects his report of the retreating car: it was a Packard, not a Model T. He notices that the Latin inscription on J.G. Faust's tomb is embossed and can be pressed in. Before going into the tomb he casts Flesh Ward (which the table nicknames "Diamond Skin"), which gives him 35 points of armor, but the cost to his Sanity leaves him seeing a snake idol of Nefertiti, which he charges with his cavalry saber until Dr. Simeon talks him back to reality. While searching the bodies in the hidden laboratory, he finds a strange dog tag reading "Vernon A. D. Bergenberger."

In 306: Cellar Door he rides up front to the Russell farm rather than "waste" his Flesh Ward on library research. At the farm he spots bullet holes and claw-like gouges around the smashed front door and leads the search of the wrecked farmhouse. He pulls the shovel from the barn's storm cellar doors and goes down first. When a headless, shark-mouthed creature charges out, his madness shows him his old friend Rondo Corto running to hug him, and he opens his arms to it. The creature tackles him and bites his shoulder, but his Flesh Ward absorbs the damage, and Dom Druncard's machete strike snaps him back to reality.

In 307: Smooth Criminal he shows off his unmarked shoulder to a skeptical Percival Warthrop, since his Flesh Ward absorbed the creature's bite. He admits that he emptied his revolver into the creature once he realized it was not Rondo. He argues for searching the farm for survivors and helps go through Corbitt's notes. By the time the group leaves for the sanatorium, his Flesh Ward has 31 of its 35 points left and should last until the next morning.

In 308: Infestation he confronts one of Goodman Gray's henchmen outside the Motley Hill Sanatorium. He intimidates the man and draws his .45 when the henchman reaches for a gun, then presses Gray about his organization. When screams break out inside, he runs down the basement stairs to cover Percival Warthrop's escape. On the way out he fumbles an attempt to kick Major Bakersfield's dropped dynamite down the stairs and spends Luck to avoid disaster. He nearly falls toward the creatures before Percival pulls him to safety.

In 309: Boom Goes the Dynamite he watches from the back of the truck and reports that the creatures are not pursuing. He admits that he panicked on the sanatorium stairs despite his diamond skin. He then proposes luring the creatures into a tunnel and blowing up both ends.

In 310: Salem's Lot he plants dynamite with long fuses around the approach to Denny's.

In 311: Beefing the Defenses he finishes rigging dynamite around the vehicles in front of Denny's, then hears the creatures coming from the burning west side of town and runs inside to raise the alarm.

In 312: Edge of Sharkness he sees two squirrels seem to explode and feels his mind slipping, then finishes his traps and runs the fuses into Denny's so they can be lit from inside.

In 313: The Arrival he lights the fuse on the first booby trap, blowing several creatures to pieces, and later rallies the defenders of Denny's to open fire as the creatures surround the building.

In 314: The Siege he reveals that he hid the dead light outside and releases it with a rope pulled from inside Denny's Tavern, then watches it burn through the creatures. Holding the back door, he shoots one creature and slashes another with his cavalry saber while his Flesh Ward stops a bite.

In 315: Legends Never Die he fights on at the back door of Denny's Tavern while hallucinating that he is in a cult temple and then in the Satsuma Rebellion. He charges upstairs to defend Ezra Denny and is dragged out a window into the street by a creature.

In 316: The Last Stand he grabs a lit stick of dynamite and charges alone into the last pack of creatures behind Denny's Tavern. He walks out of the explosion with shredded clothes, a long cut down his cheek and skin left nearly unmarked by his Flesh Ward.

In 401: Static Prevails he describes himself as the "invincible" hero of New Jerusalem, with a new book about to be published, The Fall of New Jerusalem. At the Riverview Apartments the group finds a stack of his adventure books and an empty bottle of caffeine pills near a dead man's chair, and he searches the bedroom, which holds only more radios. He mentions that he has a book signing later that day.

In 402: Criminal Energy he drives the getaway car for the break-in at the Pawn and Prawns, driving erratically and too fast on his first getaway. After breakfast he goes alone to confront a staring boater outside the diner, asking whether he knows the ferryman. The man hugs him, pins his arms and whispers that the boat man is here and is going to take him, and then cold hands close around Tallahassee's throat and everything goes black.

In 403: I Will Steal You Back he is unconscious for almost the entire episode. Ezra Denny says he was wrestling with a hobo outside the diner before Ezra chased the man off. Dr. Simeon's Command spells and smelling salts do nothing for him, and the medical examiner says he looks like the other "boaters," people who are alive but cannot be woken. When Billy's Command succeeds at the end, he is walking a barren landscape under an alien sky and hears the word echo from far away. His reply is "Now I'm good, thanks."

In 404: Episode IV he is in a barren, crystal-strewn world under red lightning, where he loses a point of Sanity, meets Runch and hears first Billy's Command and then Dr. Simeon's from the sky. He casts Sign of Power, a somatic spell, forces a crack in the place open and wakes on the back seat of a car with Runch still haunting him. He tells the others that the hobo outside the diner hugged him, whispered about the ferryman and gave him a cold chill, and that the time he spent there felt like half a day, while the others say it was an hour or two.

In 405: Be Sensible he goes with Billy and Dr. Simeon to the Arkham police station, doing finger guns at the detectives and flicking out his trench coat as he walks across the work floor. After a hard success on Spot Hidden he catches a dark figure at the edge of his vision that is gone when he looks again, and tells the others it is not the first time. He sneaks in through a side entrance and offers the records clerk, Sarah Beatrice, an autographed book to help Billy's Persuade, and helps search the records with a hard success on Library Use.

In 406: Pain he is with Billy and Dr. Simeon in the police records room when they find the fingerprint match, and the Keeper sends him and Simeon out through the side door past the records clerk. He arrives at Pizza Dragons with Billy and Simeon, and when the group splits up he goes with Dom and the Major to O'Malley's, while Billy and Dr. Simeon go to the hospital. He has no lines confidently tagged to him this episode.

In 407: Coffee & Cigarettes he goes with Dom and the Major to O'Malley's cafe, where the table's running gag has him throw a Kantstandyerbitz brick through the door before the Keeper has him settle his fedora and step in. He tells the barista Sheamus O'Malley that they only want to ask a few questions about Harman Vance, and Sheamus recognizes him from the paper when he calls himself a famous author-explorer. He gives the pitch about hunting down the killer and rolls Charm with a bonus die, which gets Sheamus to pour shots, and he succeeds on a Psychology roll with the Major to see that Sheamus is telling the truth. Later, Billy recalls that Tallahassee confessed to seeing the shadowy figure at Pizza Dragons, which the Keeper confirms.

In 408: In the Same Room he goes with Dom and the Major to the house on East Water Street, suggests splitting up with the Major sneaking around the back, and goes to the front door with Dom, holding his gun down behind his leg. Inside, he keeps watch at the front window, peeking out from the side of the curtain, and gets a hard success on Spot Hidden. He sees two figures on the street, a disheveled man who stops near the yard to fumble with his pockets and another heading for the house, and tells Dom and the Major that he is keeping an eye on a couple of shady characters out front.

In 409: Pass the Baby he watches the street from the front window and stands by the door while Dom phones Ricky Dubois. The Keeper says a shimmer then runs over his skin, and he tells the others that he was casting a spell and that there are about ten people outside, though the Keeper describes five. When Dom says that this case will take real investigation, Tallahassee says that you can just run into the fray and blow them all up. He steps out the front door, points his gun at the men and tells them to stop, and asks "Montgomery is that you?" as their leader says they are clearing up problems for the ferryman. He fires once at a gunman and misses. His Flesh Ward ("Diamond Skin") takes 4 damage from a knife thrust at his side and 6 more from a bullet in the back, and he shoots the knife man at point blank. He helps Dom hobble toward the back, fires three more shots at a gunman in the doorway, grazing him once, and sprints for the pier. On the boat he meets Captain Carl Runch, tells him to let him know if he ever needs anything and says that the stories in his books are all true.

In 410: Just Watch the Fireworks he tells the Major "Bakersfield, patch him up," then asks Simeon and Billy "Didn't you hear us knocking?" He admits to the Keeper that he rolled only half the dice on his Flesh Ward ("Diamond Skin"), and says that finishing the roll he "ended up with 38," or 28 after the 10 points he took. He later tells the others that a hobo hugged him before he ended up in Soyland, but that he felt cold hands around the back of his neck and so does not think the hobo put him there. He says he cast his Sign of Power while he was in Soyland and is not sure whether it warded off evil and broke the dream world or boosted another spell that was trying to bring him back. The Keeper says that he spent all of his magic points on Flesh Ward but has probably regained one, and the group considers using it on a Sign of Power to help wake Simeon's wife.

Appearances

• 101: It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• 102: Neighborhood Watch
• 103: Usual Suspects
• 104: Attic Window
• 105: Radical Medicine
• 106: The Miskatonic Mangler
• 107: Fates and Retribution
• 108: Head of the Beast
• 109: For Whom the Dice Rolls
• 201: Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
• 202: The Good Doctor
• 203: A Night With No Moon
• 204: Night of the Living Dead Light
• 205: Lights Out
• 301: No Rest for the Wicked
• 302: The Huggening
• 303: The Grand Slam
• 304: Pet, Cemetery
• 305: The Shining... Skin
• 306: Cellar Door
• 307: Smooth Criminal
• 308: Infestation
• 309: Boom Goes the Dynamite
• 310: Salem's Lot
• 311: Beefing the Defenses
• 312: Edge of Sharkness
• 313: The Arrival
• 314: The Siege
• 315: Legends Never Die
• 316: The Last Stand
• 401: Static Prevails
• 402: Criminal Energy
• 403: I Will Steal You Back
• 404: Episode IV
• 405: Be Sensible
• 406: Pain
• 407: Coffee & Cigarettes
• 408: In the Same Room
• 409: Pass the Baby
• 410: Just Watch the Fireworks