Title: City Council of Darkness
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Players: Emily Axford (she/her) as Vesper Childers (she/her). Zac Oyama (he/him) as Zaeth Bondana (he/him). Siobhan Thompson (she/her) as La Contesse Madelaine (she/her). Lou Wilson (he/him) as LaVonte Worthy (he/him). Ally Beardsley (they/them) as HJ Wingstreet (he/him). Brian Murphy (he/him) as Mitch Frederick(he/him).
Streaming Service: Dropout

Our Intrepid Heroes have a plan, and in this week’s episode of City Council of Darkness, they’re determined to lay the foundation for their return to power. On last week’s episode, MuTru mentioned that this season leaned more manic than usual, and the beginning of this episode absolutely supported that. The players’ attention spans are nearly non-existent, and while Ally definitely leans toward their more serious play style, they lost themselves to the bit with Lou. My earlier concern that the neatness of the pairings would pull us in too many directions ramped up in this episode’s first half hour despite the whole group being together. However, while the chaos remained, the group did shift, allowing for the party to feel less segmented.

HJ and LaVonte immediately make a business move. They had debated Mike’s last episode, but clearly, a strip club comes out on top. The pair starts out strong, but as the rest of the group vibes into the conversation, things quickly dissolve. Part of this is likely due to this being their first time playing this particular system, which I’m definitely still working to grasp. However, while the quantity of dice involved in each roll feels like it increases the random factor, I feel we’ve had more chaotic systems included the explosion dice roll system which debuted in Never Stop Blowing Up.

Vesper and Madelaine take the lead in hunting down a ghost, finding Nathaniel Hoggins trapped at a fast-food restaurant. Nathaniel was one of the miners, and from his ramblings, the group concludes that the mine was flooded. HJ, Vesper, and Madelaine proceed to torture the ghost. LaVonte stops them. Putting things back on track after being castigated by his friend, HJ helps guide the spirit and discovers that the miners are furious. Nathaniel was the only one with sanity as he didn’t realize the truth. Now that he knows the flooding of the mine wasn’t an accident, he loses his physical form and returns into the mine.

Mitch stalks a man, Jeff, from the strip club. Jeff reveals that there was a public works project which some kids joked about being tunnels beneath the mountains. To everyone’s surprise, Jeff clearly is jazzed about meeting a superhero despite the less-than-ideal circumstances.

After a good day’s rest, our crew wakes to find out there’s someone who bothered Tevin during the day in an attempt to find our if the house was an Airbnb. Across the whole of Purpee, there turns out to be a surprising number of Airbnbs. The two main super hosts are Ana Lopez and Rachel Whittaker. Additionally, there’s a popular hiking trail; however, during May, Purpee hosts a horror festival. This festival came from a famous author and professor at the local university.

While Madelaine and Vesper go to check out the university, Zaeth and Mitch head to the mountains to look for the entrance to the tunnels. They find an entrance under Angie’s Diner. They find an airplane hangar-sized subterrain place over eleven stories underground. They find a key pulsing radiation. Turning it off, an entity moves to return. That tied with the footprint makes me think Big Foot, but considering his friendly reputation among cryptozoologists, I’m interested to see why this is a bad thing. We’ll have to wait until next time to find out.

Highlights

I know Brennan’s markers are just to denote places of interest, but am I the only one suspicious that a symbol is going to form on the board?

Right now, it’s like a goose head or a dropped ice cream cone, but I’m suspicious. Maybe not all of them are important, and if we can identify the ones related to the Whittakers, then another shape will form. Either way, I’m watching it.

And yes, this is missing Mama Angie’s because they cut away too fast, but it’s right next to another pin, so the shape still stands. The Mines, added in the Adventuring Party, pulls it out to be more like a mermaid tail potentially, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Final Score (4 out of 5 Stars)

Everyone has a chaos limit, and this episode definitely pushed mine. The first half had a lot of starts and stops with questionable pacing that stayed too long on certain bits that it ground them a bit raw in my book. Progress is almost painfully slow. We’ve maybe gotten four main bits of information this episode, but the quickness of the dialogue around the table and the bits of NPC side bits came around rapid fire.

Brennan did note in the Adventuring Party for this episode that this is an extremely playful season that is a bit less serious than prior ones. If they continue this route, it’ll likely wear thin as has happened around episodes mid-season in the last couple series. Then again, when the crew feeds the GM 4-5 naked Snickers bars, how can we expect anything but pure chaos?

Let us know what you thought in comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Dimension 20

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