Episode 83: Field Training

June 5, 2025·29 min·2 clips

The CVA's legal team exploited the one thing Appalachian families valued more than their land: their family name.

The excerpt begins with a warning and an appeal. When the story settles in, Vincent Albright comes into focus as a lawyer who has helped the Cumberland Valley Authority grow, one deed and filing at a time. He prefers Vince, and he has earned his reputation. Homesteads and fallow pastures have passed through his hands into the agency's possession, sometimes with more pressure than he liked to admit. The promotion seems close until the next assignment turns classified. Even inside his department, that category is murky. Then the file is held back. Management wants special clearance and field training before Vince can take the job he has been waiting on for years. The building does a lot of quiet work. The former post office at Market and Hill is now the Authority's headquarters, wrapped in East Tennessee marble and polished until it feels both handsome and easy to miss. Inside, the place is all motion. The offices buzz with the confidence of a hive, and morale has hardened into something closer to doctrine. The staff do not feel like ordinary employees. They feel like workers feeding a paper machine. Lawyers move belowground, running between offices and courthouse filings, drafting the documents that turn the Authority's wishes into contracts and claims. Accountants keep the money sorted. Bookkeepers, typists, and administrators keep the paper engine alive, giving the agency a lawful face while it expands. Vince belongs there, which is the uncomfortable part. His ambition looks normal enough, but the road ahead leads into a part of the agency that even insiders barely understand. The dread stays low and steady. Marble, files, zeal, and a stalled promotion make field training feel less like a lesson than an initiation.

As heard by us

A promotion inside the CVA becomes a descent into polished, bureaucratic horror.

Old Gods of Appalachia follows Vincent Albright, a legal department veteran at the Cumberland Valley Authority, as a long-awaited promotion pulls him into classified acquisitions and field training.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a promotion that feels more like conscription than progress.

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