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

We dive back in right after Barnaby Whittaker has died. Having broken the protection on the Whittaker family, Vesper uncovers that bodies of water have become significantly more dangerous. Her and Mitch hurry back to inform the others of the death. Madelaine earns an invite to the English department’s New Year’s Eve party. As she’s with Ana and Cal, she hears about the death there.

LaVonte and HJ have a heart to heart. Reeling from the rejection, LaVonte questions the viability of their mission. When HJ comforts him, LaVonte rails against his partner, demanding fury and high adrenaline reactions to which he’s become accustomed. HJ’s desire to drink SSRI-rich blood has calmed him. Recognizing that LaVonte needs the old him, HJ reassures him, promising to deliver for his companion.

The pair go to the Food Co-op. While HJ absolutely thrills at the environment, LaVonte’s attitude only grows more dour. Due to his frustration, he notices a chalk symbol marking the place as either own or frequented by a witch if not an entire coven. LaVonte keeps his armor up so to speak. HJ immediately starts talking and learns that Maya’s partner is the Amelia Brown who grew up in the house they recently purchased. Maya mistakes the pair as romantic partners, which only sends LaVonte off all the more.

They end up taking her to the house to show her the busses. Seeing that they weren’t joking, she offers the Co-op’s parking lot as the location of the bus depot. This includes potentially starting a couple bus lines in and out of Purpee to encourage more money into the area. With all things going on the up-and-up, Maya confirms what the group has suspected. She ends up revealing an overly aggressive parking officer named Todd. Take bets now on who will get the privilege of killing him. I’m betting Zaeth will do it impulsively.

On that note, Zaeth stalks Tyler. The two have a bit of a one-sided stand-off. Yet again, Zaeth continues to be the group saboteur. He literally targets the most efficient resource that the team has right now. There’s a clear and slightly awkward flirtation going on here that I’m sure somebody has written about before: chaos gremlin x Type A hard worker. One coasting on life with rich benefactors and a financially struggling, world-on-his-shoulders type who has no idea what’s happen and why he’s been dragged into this whole situation.

LaVonte and HJ schedule a meeting Marisol, the one non-rich member of City Council. She currently works two nursing jobs in addition to her position on the City Council. Though she dances around the resource drain from the Whittaker and the Douglas families, she makes her stance against their actions rather clear. Three applications have gone in, and two belong to the wealthy families with Florian being the top candidate, leading to Marisol feeling rather defeated. Of course, LaVonte persuades her to stand up and fight with them.

With a good chance of a special election, the group sets their eyes on finding their candidate. After buying multiple bottles, the group approach Helena LaTour, offering support for her to run. Their interest in having a working bus system wins her over. Helena clearly doesn’t trust them until she can reasonably pinpoint what they want. While Mitch and Vesper prove extremely helpful, LaVonte brings it home, but we’ll have to wait to see how well he’s done in next week’s episode.

Highlights

“Why should I have to disrupt my life to make a difference?” – this line, which came from Madelaine’s insight into Helena’s thoughts, absolutely slapped me across the face. It so succinctly sums up comments I’ve heard over my life whenever anyone decided that the hard choice wasn’t worth it even if it was the kinder choice or even the choice that would serve them better long-term. On a granular level, it’s what I’ve said to myself whenever I think I want to learn something new or take up a new hobby but ultimately don’t want to put in the effort, the time, the money to get it done.

I love quotes, and Brennan’s always been a great source for them. So much so that I have two listicles that you can check out (here and here). He’s easily quotable, but I honestly wish I had waited for the second one just to have that line in it. Also wish they had come up with a just as concise comeback, but in truly realistic move, the response had to be personal to the situation. The formula is clear thought, so I’m going to be going back to the drawing board and trying to answer the smaller questions: 1) Why here? 2) Why now? 3) Why me?

Final Score (5 out of 5 Stars)

Lou Wilson carried things this week. He’s been storming ahead on his own, keeping our chaotic coterie on track for much of this season with the others, except Zac, swanning in and out between helpfulness and destruction, so it felt cathartic to see LaVonte have it out with HJ. While the finance bro mentality is anything but healthy, it is a feature of his vampire line, and watching his business partner turn away from everything they know even temporarily clearly has LaVonte up in arms. His defensiveness about their partnership being non-romantic and restlessness in the face of HJ’s SSRI-induced calm hit every mark for me, smacking every complaint I’ve had about the series.

The group is definitely making moves. They’re pushing ahead, but it’s still a rather slow march toward the finish line, and despite us only being on episode 7, the feeling remains that our vamps should be further alone. Most of the blame falls on Zaeth in my opinion, but outside of LaVonte, no one else has been pushing full steam ahead until Madelaine’s cards came up just right with the Ana Lopez and Cal Whittaker pull. Hopefully, the group can keep this momentum going moving forward.

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

Featured Image: Dimension 20

The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network

The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord. 

New episodes of The Boss Rush Podcast release every Monday morning on YouTube and all major podcast applications like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Patreon supporters gain one week early access. 

Listen on your favorite podcast application or watch on YouTube!
Anchor | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Twitch | Overcast | Pocket Casts |

Follow The Boss Rush Podcast on Social Media:
Twitter | Discord | Instagram | Twitch | YouTube | Facebook Group | Facebook