There's no sign of Sarah Paulson's Coven character, Cordelia Foxx, just yet, but we do meet Ms. Wilhemina Venable. She's the cold, emotionally distant leader of Outpost Three, an underground structure built by a shadowy organization called The Cooperative that's impervious to radiation and used to be "an exclusive boys' school." (An all-male coven, perhaps?) She notes that there's enough food to last them around 18 months, although the "food" in question is actually small chunks of bland, nutritious blocks (think: super tofu).
The rules in Outpost Three are strict: no one is allowed to leave the building, there is to be no copulation (LOL), and everyone must dress according to their status in the outpost (people are either "Purples" or "Grays"). It's also revealed that Ms. Venable and her coleader, Ms. Miriam Mead (Kathy Bates), are going a bit rogue from The Cooperative's rules by creating their own.
For instance, when they get bored, they decide to punish one of the survivors (RIP, Stu) by pretending he has radiation poisoning. They take him into a shower and viciously scrub his naked body, but when a radiation testing device still beeps when waved near him, Ms. Mead shoots him in the head. Later, they serve him to the other survivors, leading to an instantly iconic American Horror Story line: "The stew is Stuuuuuuu!"
