(sinister music) (blood squelching)
(coffins thunk)
(lights flickering)
(quirky upbeat jazz music begins)
(wind whistles) (wolf howls)
(quirky jazz music continues)
(footsteps thud)
(club music thumps)
(quirky jazz music continues)
(lightning cracks)
(quirky jazz music fades) (ominous laughter)
- Hello, one and all, and welcome to another episode of
"Dimension 20: City Council of Darkness."
I'm your humble dungeon master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, as always, are our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, Intrepid Heroes.
[All] Die, Intrepid Heroes!
(Zac and Ally laugh dramatically)
Last we left off,
we were in the throes of plotting and planning, for indeed
Patty Babcock had finally assented
to run Bingo the dog for mayor.
And all he had to be promised was $600,000.
♪ All we do is win, win, win, no matter what ♪
DJ Khaled!
He's coming to the- We're gonna do Tiny Desk Concerts
but it's only DJ Khaled.
- Also, we have one employee. - [Zac] How did you guys
even think of that?
What's up?
- Rebel Purpee, brother. - Rebel Purpee!
Rebel Purpee.
Free Skate Purpee.
United Free Skate of Purpee.
- [Lou] Free skate of Purpee. - Free skate of Purpee.
[Brennan] Skate Free Purpee.
Remember when that guy was like,
"I do not eat pussy." (Brennan laughing)
[Ally] Which guy?
[Brennan] DJ Khaled.
Our best friend.
- Wait, he said that? - He went on a full,
"I don't eat pussy," tour.
Yeah, it was beautiful.
I learned a lot.
- That is not a statement that earns you a lot of friends.
And I'm amazed that he-
Definitely doesn't earn you partners.
[Brennan] Doesn't earn you partners.
Oh, he's married so...
Yeah.
- Which makes it darker. - [Brennan] Oh, his poor wife.
- His poor, poor wife. - Kind of a dark situation.
- But not least of which is Bingo running for mayor,
but I'll tell you who's no longer seeking power,
and that would be Ermine Damanescu.
- [Siobhan] Oh thank god. - Who was fully devoured
...into the portal to oblivion
by Bat Child in a knock-down-drag-out
in the middle of the street with Zaeth, Darkness Man-
- Whoa, this is... - This is her.
[Brennan] This is her.
"Adventuring Party" is after this.
Oh shit.
I had too much herbal tea.
(players laughing)
I think it's the rain.
- I think it's- - It's raining in LA
for the first time in 27 years.
It feels fertile.
- And everyone's- - I feel fertile, as
I hydroplane, yay!
- [Brennan] Yeah, just-
Skirt!
- Going sideways across four lanes of traffic going,
- "I feel fertile." - At 15 miles per hour.
"God, I feel fertile!"
Should "Adventuring Party" be really buttoned up?
- Yeah, we'll make it very-
Maybe we could play
the actual game in "Adventuring Party."
What are we doing?
- [Brennan] The article about Florian Whittaker
had come out.
- [Siobhan] Yes. - With that caveat on it
that it was sort of formatted
or it was at a different angle in it
than you guys were anticipating
and discovered that Maya Jayashtri had actually reached out
to Nancy on your behalf
and was talking to HJ about sort of why she did that.
Bat Child and Darkness Man also found Bigfoot.
He took Todd Farner's bazooka
intending to alert the members of my order,
which included Estelle Laurent, the Loch Ness Monster,
the Yeti, and no longer includes Mothman who has gone rogue.
- Can we just cut to Bigfoot on the bottom of the ocean
shooting a whale with a bazooka.
(cast laughing)
- So just hip-firing a bazooka.
Hey, the whale is clearly Moby Dick.
- Oh. - [Brennan] Yeah.
- [Ally] Oh, interesting. - It's an aggressive
- sperm whale. - I must stop you!
He's shooting Google data centers.
[Brennan] This one's for Ahab! Blam.
- Do they really? - The internet across-
They do some in the ocean.
It's not the bottom of the ocean.
- [Brennan] So Bigfoot gave us a lot of information
about Jack of the Pines,
who appears to be an invasive fertility spirit
who has traveled with the Douglas family westward,
all the way to Purpee.
Stop fucking looking at me.
Oh dude, that was your storyline.
- [Emily] Yeah. - [Brennan] Oh yeah, big time.
(Lou laughing)
- It was on Murph's wishlist to go down against
a fertility spirit.
- Well, to destroy a fertility spirit, you need-
I mean, you'll get into this in the episode,
but you may need a pervert.
- And that's, um- - Thank god.
We got the biggest one around.
- We have a pervert with- - It's in the episode.
...unbelievable grip strength.
(Siobhan laughing)
That's what Shocking Grasp-
Stop!
(players laughing)
- You also found some interesting stuff about the offer.
We had a conversation between HJ and LaVonte
about being seneschal of Austin.
Zaeth had a conversation with Koschei
- where unbelievably he told- - [Ally] God, that was so
- fucking funny. - ...a ranking member
of the Camarilla that yeah,
Ermine got what was fucking coming to her
because you step in Purpee,
you're gonna step in shit.
Purpee's covered in shit.
Wipe your fucking shoes.
[Brennan] Wipe your fucking shoes, dude.
Madelaine almost considered an extraction
from her sort of sad mentor, the Marquis de Lafayette,
who has got a connection with her in Melbourne
amongst the Camarilla of Melbourne,
and had a voice note from the prince of Melbourne,
Chip Lindy, who talked about all the-
Rough interactions.
- [Brennan] ...talking about all the exciting-
I think Chip sounds like a hoot.
- I mean- - Not for Madelaine.
- For me, sure. - [Brennan] Yes.
I think I would love to go hang out with
some Australian vampires.
But Madelaine? No.
Bigfoot talked to you and said that Jack of the Pines
wouldn't be bestable until after the summer solstice.
That the sun is ascendant.
And he said the only one who had ever been able to control
the malevolent demon Kupuru
that had been kept in the Templer's basement
was Herbert Melvin.
A whole bunch of shit was going-
You guys are deep in the thick of it here.
But suffice it to say, you guys finally have
your candidate for mayor.
Bingo, locked and loaded.
Wingstreet and Worthy on the prowl.
Bat Child and Darkness Man finally cornered Bigfoot
and have learned the secret of Jack of the Pines.
And when this nasty spirit that appears to be powering
the Douglases will be bestable.
Zaeth managed to declare himself prince of Purpee,
and by doing so,
create a weird loophole in the Camarilla's laws
that if Ermine did not respect the authority
of the prince in Purpee, then it's the prince's right
to be able to call a blood hunt.
But we'll see... You know, there are legal realities
and then there are political realities.
So we'll see how long that can stick.
I understand it all.
- I don't understand- - I understand it all.
[Brennan] I understand it all.
I understand all of the politics of that.
And we also have not only the running for mayor
to contend with, we also have that city council seat,
Florian Whittaker's city council seat.
In which case you've been put in contact with Amelia Brown,
Maya's partner, who's the daughter of-
who grew up in the house 9 Shady Street that you're in
and is a Rogue County PCP.
She's working at the sort of bottom-most level of,
you know, organizers and activists
for local and state politics.
- So sick. - And you guys sort of
prompted her to maybe think about running for office
and she demured at first,
but then followed up with some thoughts about the bus lines
here in Purpee.
All of which is to say much is in the works,
and we finally are in the conclusion of, I think,
downtime rolls we actually made two episodes ago
'cause you guys are moving hot and heavy.
You guys are getting a lot of stuff done.
But finally in setting up the campaign,
setting up Rebel Purpee, this new skate company,
and Bingo the dog's running for mayor-
- It's a cool half a million out the window.
Cool half a mil out the window.
- Hey, you gotta give-
- He definitely would've done it for a quarter million.
- He definitely would've- - Way less than that.
- He might've done it for- - I think he would've done it
- for, yeah. - ...$60,000.
- Just a nice starting- - And we're only paying him
$400,000. We just guaranteed him $200,000 in promotions,
- should Bingo win. - Should Bingo win.
Yes.
- [Brennan] Madelaine, talking to Chip Lindy,
or hearing that note, declaring that she lived
in motherfucking Rome,
but still with some desire to maybe return to Paris one day,
voiced her first kind words for the town of Purpee.
And we return to the weeks leading up
to the summer solstice,
which is also the Laurent Horror Festival.
Madelaine, your working with Estelle Laurent
and the festival coordinators has ramped up in a big way.
LaVonte, HJ, you finally have open runway
now that you have your candidate
to dig deep into a stat-
like, getting the campaign paperwork filed,
doing all these things you need to do.
For Darkness Man and Bat Child,
you finally have this understanding of
what the full supernatural spectrum of Purpee was
before you got here.
There are still those ghosts in the Whittaker mine.
You learned that this demon was helping Bigfoot
keep Jack of the Pines at bay.
But with Bigfoot repelled by the subterranean tower
and Kupuru no longer, basically,
being able to repel the spirit,
Jack of the Pines is now sort of free
to do whatever his malevolent will is.
And there are questions about
how best to possibly defeat him.
For Zaeth, you now have told your sire,
the Brujah primogen of San Francisco, what happened.
You must imagine whether from the Camarilla
or the Douglases or indeed even from Beholdr,
this strange vision Madelaine had
of Ermine embracing a strange Davis Otherman
composed of ones and zeros.
Is there possibly some other enemy
swirling out there in the darkness?
We return to Purpee in the days and weeks
leading up to the midsummer solstice
and the Laurent Horror Festival.
As your guys' nights grow shorter and shorter,
tangled up in the flannel big-box store bedsheets
of Tina Bunders, Zaeth, you are-
(Brennan laughing)
I'm smoking two cigarettes.
[Brennan] Smoking two cigarettes.
Disgusting!
- She's wearing a short little hockey jersey.
(Emily laughing)
Hey!
- A short little- - It's not yours, but she's
kind of looking like-
- You see her in a short little hockey jersey
coming in with two cups of tea.
- The main- - Is that a hockey jersey?
It's so small.
- Yeah, it's... I've had it, I've had it for so long, I-
It's a child's hockey jersey.
- I know. I reached for the first thing I had and-
- It was a child's... - A child's hockey jersey.
- Crazy! - I kind of
can't feel my arms, it's cutting off-
Seems tight in the arms.
- And it's tight in the arms. - Can I smoke in here?
- You can- You already have.
- Yeah. - "Tell you that.
I'll tell you that for free."
Zaeth, at the foot of the bed,
the mayor is looking right at you.
(players laughing)
- I'm just completely avoiding eye contact with him.
It's too intimate.
That's so weird that she let him stay.
- He wouldn't go in the other room? Is that?
No, he won't. He gets upset.
He'd be scratching at the door.
Gotcha.
Interrupting, so whatever, yeah.
- Yeah, it's honestly more distracting if he's at the door
than if he's just at the foot of the bed.
We shoulda tried it, I guess.
He stays pretty quiet.
- My god! - Yeah.
Wow, I can't believe it.
Well, this is... I've never done...
I've never done anything like this before,
and I just feel so- I feel alive.
I mean, do you feel alive?
Always.
Except for when I-
I'm doing this to not look at the dog.
- As your hand goes up, you hear- (mimics dog whining)
- Okay. (Brennan whining)
All right.
Yeah, I feel alive all the time, you know, and this is-
- So it's funny, I was talking to someone earlier today
before you picked me up in that horse carriage.
Where do you stable your horse?
- Oh, I... you know, I have a couple of friends
who let me... Just kinda wherever.
And the horse is, very much like your mayor here,
- he's- - I know, Mayor Roofus.
Can you believe it? Life's so crazy.
People love Ghorse, and so
people are happy to have him wherever.
Most supermarkets are cool with it.
(Emily laughing)
Big-box stores let you, if you ask 'em,
they'll let you park your carriage
where RVs are.
You know, overnight parking kind of situation.
Waiting for an answer.
Why?
Well, I was in city council today
'cause Roofus had a meet-
There was a meeting he had to be at.
They had to take a photo with him.
And I was talking to Gene Douglas.
Apparently, someone stole a horse from their property.
They've been looking for him for a while.
- Stole a horse from where? - From Golden Bounty Farms.
Let me write this down.
Golden Bounty... Golden...
Bounty... horse stolen.
Crazy.
- They're trying to get the- - A horse was stolen?
(Lou laughing)
Two cigarettes, one notepad, one pen.
- He has two cigarettes- - Blocking the dog.
A horse was stolen?
(players laughing)
- What? - [Brennan] Yeah.
There was a bit of a tussle
between Florian and Gene,
'cause they wanna double the police budget,
'cause they had this horse stolen and-
- They're doubling the budget because one horse was stolen?
- Yeah, well they think there needs to be-
- Double? - Double the- Well, they need
more squad cars.
- How do you feel about that? - And they want...
Gene was talking about them having a tank.
He wants them to have a tank.
Tank.
What?
- And they also wanted a lot of the police fired,
'cause they deleted a bunch of the footage
of when the Green Aisle burned down.
They think it was arson.
- They think- - Green Aisle burned down?
- Yeah, they think there's- - I'm just learning about
all this now.
(players laughing quietly)
- [Brennan] Go ahead and give me Manipulation, Subterfuge.
[Zac] Oh, Subterfuge, eh?
I'm gonna do a Rouse check.
You're Beautiful, too,
- remember? - Oh yes.
All right, great.
Remember always that you are beautiful.
- Don't forget that. (players chattering)
Don't forget.
All right, so then Beauty adds two.
♪ You're beautiful ♪
(dice clicking)
- [Siobhan] Nice. - That's three successes.
[Brennan] Yeah, you see, she says,
"Yeah, it's... it's wild. It's just a wild thing.
But yeah, they got in a big tussle.
And I just thought I would mention,
'cause there's horse thieves running around.
Isn't that crazy? It sounds like the Middle Ages.
- Horse thieves." - Yeah, horse thieves.
Crazy.
- But, so just thought you should be careful
'cause Ghorse is such a cutie.
Yeah.
I'd die before I let anything happen to him, yeah.
- Yeah, it's gotten... the city council meetings
have gotten dark recently.
It just feels like-
In what way?
- [Brennan] Well, there's just a lot of animosity, I think.
I think ever since Barnaby was drowned by that awful nurse
and ever since-
We gotta exonerate that girl.
(players laughing)
- [Brennan] And ever since- - She's terrible.
- She's awful. - God, every time
I see someone helping an old man, I go,
"What are you up to?"
And Gene said this troubling thing, which is,
he was like, "If we're not gonna double the police,
then we're gonna have to look for other forms of security."
And he was meeting with some of these young men
who are at the gun range a lot and talking about, you know,
them needing their own sort of security force
or something like that.
If crime's gonna be rampant, you know?
Beth's husband's still missing.
- The guy who may or may not have called her a cow, right?
Listen.
We- Nobody- Everyone's... I've been trying to get Beth
to get to Swingles Night for as long as I can remember.
(Emily laughing)
Rory and Miranda, you know,
they've gotten kind of off the deep end for me, even.
But they've been reaching out to Beth.
It's just been so tough and I just...
This town is sort of... I don't know.
I don't know if Purpee feels the same anymore.
[Zac] What?
Tina, if you and Roofus could go anywhere in the world,
take the cell phone, delete the social media accounts,
just feel the real world around you, where would you go?
God...
- Medford. - Medford?
Yeah, it's about 15 minutes up the road.
They've got two different Italian restaurants.
Wow.
Pinging back and forth between the endless breadsticks.
It's my dream.
Wow.
But I don't know, I couldn't.
I mean, I depend on those social media accounts
for income, you know?
And it's just hard.
But if you were me,
what would you do in my position?
I'd go to Medford
and I'd make my dog a little Italian dog.
Huh?
I'd make his thing not mayor.
It'd be being an Italian dog.
Doge dog.
Like the- Oh sorry, like Venice.
Never mind, it has connotations now.
Yeah, it just... I mean,
mayor is one spin on what a dog could be.
Obviously, it's a beautiful thing, your dog being mayor.
It's classic. It's beautiful. It's carefree. It's fun.
But what if he was Italian instead?
(players laughing)
Molto bene.
"What if... This is so crazy."
She lies down in the bed.
You can see that one of her arms
are starting to get a little blue,
just from the jersey cutting off circulation.
- She takes this- - Are you sure about that?
- Where did it come- Did you? - What's that?
Did you wash it or something?
I think I washed it wrong.
And I think it's from a doll.
Yeah.
(Emily laughing)
I don't even know how you got it over your neck.
I think it's from a doll
and washing it made it way bigger, so I could get it on.
- You have scissors? - "Yeah, I do.
Can you help me?"
And she hands you a
pair of scissors.
They have a zigzag kind.
- [Brennan] Yeah. - It's for crafts.
(Brennan gasping for breath)
Do you feel free?
Feel like you can finally breathe?
For the first time in a long time.
- Like you're in Medford. - Am I bad?
It would be bad to stay here.
I want you to be free.
And even if that means we can't be together anymore.
(Emily laughing)
After one night.
I want to be with you more than anything
in the goddamn world.
But you have to go to those two Italian restaurants.
I'm gonna change my dog's legal address.
I'm gonna do it tonight.
Take this.
And just whatever's in my pocket I give to her.
What's in your pocket?
- I don't know, like, a couple of quarters.
You give a couple of quarters
and one of those small boxes of Sun-Maid raisins.
How long have those been in there?
Since before I turned into a vampire.
(cast laughing)
2002.
You see, she looks and says,
"Yeah, I have some decisions I have to make,
but you've changed my life, Zaeth.
Thank god you rolled up in that little
horse-drawn carriage like something out of a fairytale.
No shirt, top hat.
It's beautiful."
She puts the top hat on and walks in the nude
out into her home and says,
"Chip, honey, we should talk!
I think we should move."
She has a husband?
Oh yeah, she's married.
Window.
Onto Ghorse.
- [Brennan] Onto Ghorse, riding off into the night.
The very next day, you get a message, all of-
Or Darkness Man, you get a message from Nancy Danderhoof
saying, "Don't need any cherries this month.
I've got my scoop.
The people of Omaha are gonna be talking."
And publishes a story that Roofus is not running for mayor.
- Wow. - Mm.
Wow.
Mission accomplished.
- Omaha loves hearing about other small-town gossip.
- This is really capturing the heart of Omaha.
- Omaha's gonna go nuts. - Also, I don't think
Omaha is that small.
I mean, compared to Purpee.
Compared to Purpee, it's pretty huge.
I think compared to San Francisco,
- and it's also like- - Definitely a
medium-sized city.
There are places that you can get
a small-town feel in Omaha.
Oh, don't I believe it.
(Ally laughing)
- [Brennan] With those nine successes, Zaeth,
Tina Bunders has been persuaded
not to run Roofus for reelection.
You see a big post the next day of Roofus
with a big black handlebar mustache
and a little kerchief and a gondolier's pole.
And she says-
He's Italian now.
Darkness Man laughs so hard
he needs to take a laugh break,
and he's just holding his knees and he's wheezing.
Help him, help him.
Somebody help him.
- You guys- - The dog's Italian.
You gotta screenshot that
and show it to Darkness Man
- whenever he feels bad. - That's so funny.
What's the caption?
It says, "Molto bene."
(Murph fake laughs)
(Emily laughing)
Everyone in the comments is saying,
"Buongiorno, Roofino."
And you see there's a "Good Morning America" segment on it.
It's just good clean fun.
He could dream bigger.
He could go live in Italy with this kind of heat.
- But then he wouldn't be a special dog, would he?
I buy all the merch for Darkness Man.
I'm clicking all the way through to Zazzle.
There's a stuffed meatball.
I'm dropping a ton of hints.
It's not my birthday for, like, four months.
It would suck if those sold out,
or if they stopped printing those.
Can you imagine how expensive those will get on eBay
- after they sell out? - Yeah.
- Damn, sucks it's not my birthday for four months.
[Ally] Yeah, totally, dude.
We have five of everything.
- Yeah, we all are trying to do it privately.
A bunch of different sizes.
I think he's a medium.
Tina, can you hook it up?
- He's a medium. - Seven feet tall!
Tina, can you hook it up?
They're sold out of the XXLs.
And she says, "XXL Buongiorno, Roofino
is coming right your way."
- Wow. - I love you.
(players laughing)
- In that interim period, the runway now is totally clear.
The town is scrambling, and you guys are here.
I think, through Cal,
you are hearing disgraced Florian,
what the family wants to do,
who they maybe wanna run for mayor.
But it becomes very clear that Boyd, Gene's son,
is now considering running for mayor.
And the Whittakers- You see Cal is basically like-
The attitude amongst the Whittakers
with Barnaby dead and Florian disgraced,
is that their family is fully withered
and on the back foot, essentially.
I think the other thing here is, HJ,
you have that meeting with Maya
where she specifically asked for it to just be
potentially you and Bat Child.
Yeah.
- And you were trying to invite everybody else
and Maya was like, "I'm sort of not into that."
- Just different combinations. - Different combinations.
Just until we got two that was allowed.
- It was like that Mastermind game with the pegs.
Yeah.
It was pretty much everyone but these two, right?
Yeah, essentially.
And there wasn't enthusiasm for Darkness Man or Zaeth.
(players laughing)
Okay?
But yeah, she reaches out to you being like,
"Do you wanna get together?"
Yeah, yeah. I think I do.
- [Brennan] Hell yeah. - We've already had our talk
so I think obviously I'm gonna relay everything.
But, yeah.
- You arrive. They meet up with you at Angie's Diner,
and you see Amelia's back there again.
Amelia's been actually corresponding with you
a lot about some of your proposals and different things,
like in the bus lanes and stuff like that.
And I think what you can just see is that she has a mind
that sort of starts to perseverate on this problem.
Stays engaged with the things you have put forward.
Are you going solo or are you bringing anybody?
- I think that we're going together, right?
- [Brennan] Yeah. - Oh yeah, I can go
- if you want me to. - [Ally] Yeah, I think so.
If you guys- I mean I definitely float it to the whole room.
- We're both at the doorway like-
- So are we? - Either way is fine,
- you know. - [Murph] We rolling or?
Yeah?
You guys both just took a shower and you're ready to go.
- But. - Yeah, we both just
took a shower and we're ready.
(Zac laughing)
The shower was super cold for me
'cause Zaeth had just taken one.
- I took a 45-minute shower.
You guys both look really good.
These are new clothes?
Well, she kind of made it clear that-
- And I can smell that you used Zaeth's body wash.
- Yeah. - Shh, no.
- It's kind of cedar-y.
- [Emily] Yeah. - Stop.
I think it's just gonna be
- us two tonight. - I'm sorry, what?
- All right, we need to stay behind and hash this out.
'Cause you honestly just sold me down the river.
- I'm sorry. - We're gonna have a chat.
- [Zac] You guys go.
I meant it as a compliment.
Yeah, okay.
Look, I know I haven't been paying for toiletries
as much as I should and I'm trying to get better about that.
We're gonna go to the 99 Cents Store
and we're gonna get you some stuff.
Okay.
- We go to the 99 Cents Store and "get me some stuff."
If there's a trip to the 99 Cents Store,
- I might be busy. - Actually, yeah, wait.
I... Yeah, should I just call her and cancel?
- We're gonna get- - Break into the
99 Cents Store?
- I'm sorry, tonight I'm working on my kick flip, so.
Just in the backyard.
(skateboard rattling)
Every time your legs split so
you can land on the ground, you're like, "Fuck!"
- But no, really, do you guys want to come?
- No, it's fine, we have to... I have to get-
I have to go get him some Pert Plus.
- I have to get Pert Plus conditioner-slash-shampoo.
Okay.
- All right, well- - Slash body wash.
It's everything.
- You might have some Italian dog flavored body wash coming.
- Oh shit, wait! - Stop!
I got it, too.
- Really? - Fuck, I got the 12 pack.
- I got the 24 pack. - What?
Never mind, you guys go. You guys go.
Darkness Man is laughing too hard
to hear what you guys are saying.
(players laughing)
Have fun and be careful.
Supposed to smell like focaccia.
You guys be so careful.
Have fun though!
(Ally laughing)
Have fun out there.
- Have fun with it. - [Brennan] Have fun with it.
- We show up. - HJ and Bat Child,
you guys arrive at the diner
and you see Maya and Amelia seated at a booth.
Maya looks up and goes,
- "HJ, thanks for coming!" - [Ally] Of course.
- Vesper, good to see you. - Hi!
Amelia says, "Vesper, check it out."
And puts over a folder to you.
- And within the folder- - A dossier.
- A little dossier that slides over to you.
And you see it says "Zoo versus sanctuary.
Pros versus cons."
Oh, I know that a sanctuary's better.
I know that a sanctuary is better.
The best zoos are secretly sanctuaries.
- Oh. - You see, she goes,
"Oh, well I didn't know I was... I didn't mean to..."
She says, "All I wanted to do was kick off a conversation.
But you obviously know-"
No, no, no, there's a lot of zoos
that are actually sanctuaries,
but the word "zoo" is so nostalgic for people,
so you just gotta slap it on there.
- [Brennan] That makes a lot of sense to me.
Even with very fun animals at it,
sanctuary just feels very solemn.
- Yeah. - And zoo feels very fun.
Yeah.
And people feel like if they bring their kids
to a sanctuary, it's gonna be a learning experience.
But they wanna bring their kids to a zoo,
'cause that feels like it's an experience for the kids.
- You see, she says, "That makes a lot of sense."
So we'll run it like a sanctuary,
- but we'll call it a zoo. - "Good. Yeah, got it."
You see that Maya goes,
"This is a sort of messaging conversation
that I think is a good one about the future
of what we're doing here.
Amelia, you wanna-"
And you see Amelia looks over and says,
"I've been thinking a lot about it.
I feel like maybe running for city council makes sense."
Awesome!
This is great news.
We would love to put everything that we have behind you.
Help you get some momentum.
I think you would be great.
[Brennan] Maya nods here and says,
"And this is what we wanted to talk about.
What do you guys have behind you?"
Money.
Enthusiasm.
- [Brennan] See, she smiles. - Research.
Data.
Focus groups.
Ties to San Francisco.
A fleet of buses.
- We got a lot. - Oh, yeah, we do have
a fleet of buses.
Also, pretty good bodyguard who can look like trash.
Yeah, we sure do.
Yeah, the money, right? The money.
I know that's the stuff you have.
So obviously I have to ask, where does your money come from?
- Oh, that's a good question. I've never thought to ask.
I always just assumed that once you get to a certain age
you just have money.
Well, you can live off of interests,
which is definitely a strong part of my portfolio.
But I also have owned several businesses
and I've just been around for quite a while.
HJ has had work done.
- [Brennan] You see that Amelia goes-
(cast laughing)
Really tasteful work.
Did our Sprites come yet?
(players laughing)
- [Brennan] You see Angie brings some Sprites over to you.
I take a sip, it falls outta my mouth.
(Emily laughing)
Downside of being so beautiful.
- You guys talk for a little bit more about the
running for office and what that would mean.
Amelia... There's a moment where Amelia excuses herself
from the table, and Maya sort of turns over and says,
"The reason I went and talked to Nancy Danderhoof
is because Florian's weak as a city council candidate.
If he had stepped down, if the pressure had been on him
to step down from city council,
then there would just be an open seat
and they would get someone better to run for it."
Hmm, that's shrewd.
But we could beat him.
- We can beat him, 'cause-
- Now there's a mark on his record, so to speak.
- By focusing on the credit union's crimes,
what has happened is
he's been forced by the board of directors
of the credit union to resign.
What do you think about being the CEO of the credit union?
I'm gonna put all my cards on the table.
There are members of your vampiric family
that have not been saying the full truth.
LaVonte is one of them.
LaVonte is not-
- He's thinking about taking seneschal in Austin.
It's like a vampiric station, right?
- Yeah, yeah. - I didn't know that.
We had a conversation about it.
I think it'd be a great fit for him.
It's up to him if he stays or not.
But I mean, when you're in this kind of business,
amazing opportunities are finding you all the time.
He's incredibly talented.
He's fantastic
- For sure, but when people come and tell me
that they care about Purpee, and they don't, that's a lie.
And all I'm trying to ascertain is-
- [Ally] Pretty black-and-white thinking.
I don't think some people are liars.
If they lie, they're always liars.
I think that life is just more complicated.
I think us having hundreds of years more experience
than you, things just kind of compound.
So I think that you and I are having a misunderstanding here
that is just youth versus experience.
And I'm sorry if that sounds like I'm dismissing you,
but there's not a world where we can't run this without him.
Where we can run this without him.
Where we can't not run this without not him.
- That's sort of my... That's sort of my point, HJ, is,
are you here to run Purpee?
- I'm here to make beautiful pottery in a cabin,
and I want to be
someone who's living in Purpee,
and definitely we both want to be someone who's
bringing something to Purpee that it desperately needs,
which is a nocturnal zoo.
Can I suggest, or can I weigh in?
Obviously, I don't know LaVonte that long,
so I would say I've been kind of witnessing him the same.
And when you first meet him,
you think that what motivates him is money.
But I actually think it's not that.
The impression I get is not, "I wanna make as much money,
I wanna be in charge."
It's that he wants to be a part of something great.
I think he loves the adrenaline of taking on something
that other people say you can't do.
And a lot of times that is money.
Money's a really good analogy for that
- because it is often- - [Ally] Timeless.
...the hardest thing to get.
So I think it seems like he's money hungry or something,
but really he just loves a challenge.
- Yeah. - That's my impression though.
I also thought I was a bat up until about a week ago, so.
- No, that's really, that's a great takeaway.
I think that you're voicing some apprehension around him.
Totally understandable.
- I'm voicing some apprehension around you, HJ, to be clear.
I don't feel comfortable enough
even talking to some of the other friends this openly.
How do you know you can trust me?
- Because you're- - You don't know
where I've been.
(Zac laughing)
I'm a 43-year-old 22-year-old.
Oh shit.
- Cat's out of the bag. - I'm sorry... I'm sorry for,
I'm sorry if my inherent trust in your ulterior motives
has insulted you or offended you.
If you'd like me to be more suspicious of you,
I'm happy to do that.
- Yeah, please do. - Okay, great.
Not so sure about you.
Moving away from defensiveness,
put yourself in my position.
Six vampires roll up into town,
kill a bunch of people very quickly,
totally shatter the previous power dynamic,
which is a good thing.
Buy the Rockefeller tree, put it up in front of Mike's Bar.
Shirtless vampire running around town on a horse.
There have been multiple police shootouts.
Now yes, our police department are psychos, that's for sure.
- I think everything except for the shootouts
is actually really good for the town.
- I'm not saying that I'm in opposition to you,
but I have limited strength and focus.
I can't get on the side of "in with the new boss,
same as the old boss."
And therefore, if the intention-
if your guys' problem with Purpee isn't
it has a horrifying consolidation of power,
but rather that you're not at the top of
the horrifying consolidation of power,
that's a big difference.
It's the biggest difference.
Yes, I couldn't agree more.
We actually were told to come here and just get in bed
with the people in power and that's enough.
- Yeah, we're actually in big trouble with the vampires.
Because of the way we've been doing stuff.
I love to hear that.
I'll help. If you're in trouble with
whatever power structure you come from, great.
- But we got here and the place had been gutted,
and you guys are missing huge
parts of your community.
There are no parks, there's no ER, there's not a bus system.
The dog's the mayor. He's now Italian.
We just, we wanna help.
- How did you work that angle on Tina Bunders
- to get her to move to- - Zaeth's so hot.
- Tina Bunders had a little flame of passion in her
that all it took was a little
- (blows) from Zaeth. - [Ally] Yeah.
And you'd think that'd blow it out.
But no, it was a trick candle.
- It was a little, no wait- - And it came back bigger.
It was like a kindling.
- Oh yeah, yeah. - [Emily] You know.
Oh yeah yeah, totally.
Little bit of oxygen.
[Brennan] Maya just says,
"The last thing I want to be is your guys' enemy.
I have no problem with you all being here.
I don't foresee any world where I'm working against you.
What I'm asking here basically is this.
If you're here to turn Purpee into
your personal playground,
then we should just say, 'Nice knowing you,'
and go our separate ways and do our separate things.
If you actually have a vision of sharing power,
of making things more equitable in this town,
that I'm down for."
Great.
I've already put my bid in
to be one of the new board of directors
for the credit union.
- Oh, cool. - You have a lot of money.
You said that's your big thing, right?
Yeah.
I would love, and Amelia,
who's friends with a lot of the people
that are on the board of directors there,
would love to recommend you as CEO.
It'd be a full-time job.
It takes a lot of time to run a credit union.
- And the thing is- - I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
No, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just pretty efficient at this point in my life.
- Sure. - This would be like
a part-time, part-time job for me.
[Brennan] I understand.
But yeah, yeah, totally.
[Brennan] She looks and says,
"The thing is, I would be happy to make
that recommendation, but it wouldn't make any sense
to make the recommendation
if you didn't bank with the credit union.
And I would be interested in
if that's something you would consider,
if you would consider moving your wealth.
Because the credit union right now skates by,
there's not a lot of wealth in the credit union.
Even the Whittakers didn't really have
most of their holdings in.
- So I would have to move all $750,000 to my name,
to the credit union?
- You have $750- (laughing)
- I'd have to think about it. - It should 400 less.
No, I want to be honest.
- No, no, but 400 of that is committed to...
- Oh, to- Oh, yeah. - Yeah.
Oh, you're right.
Then I guess it's just $350,000 of my net worth
to the credit union.
- You see Amelia returns to the table and Maya says,
"I think we're done here.
Have a good one, HJ."
Amelia says, "Are we..." And Maya's like,
"Yeah, I think we can wrap it up."
Why is that?
You're good.
Okay.
You see, yeah.
"It's just an insult to me.
I know you have more than $750,000."
- [Emily] Maya- - Liquid.
You think I have more money than that
not wrapped up in stocks?
I can't move all of that in here.
I actually genuinely fell for it.
750 seemed like a lot.
- You shipped a 200-foot tall tree from what,
like, Montreal across the States here-
- [Ally] Yeah. - ...to put it in front of
- Mike's Bar. - Yeah.
- All right. Have a good one, HJ. Appreciate you.
Okay.
- [Brennan] And you see that she heads out from the diner.
Maya, before you leave,
I just wanna interrupt one false assumption
you keep making.
You keep thinking that we came here and we saw problems,
but I think that when we came here,
at least some of us really saw exciting opportunities
to make things that we didn't have
in the place that we came from.
So I guess I think that you're so defensive
and on alert right now, and it's gonna end up-
- Costing you. - What's it gonna cost me?
- This place could be amazing if we all work together.
HJ, that's what I'm asking for.
I don't know if I'm maybe not making myself clear.
I'm asking for us to work together.
- Yes. - You're just doing it
in a very combative way.
Well, I have been lied to
by some of your guys' companions.
- You've been lied to? - Yeah.
- By LaVonte? - Yes.
What did he lie to you about?
His salesman pitch.
His spiel about we're gonna make the future Purpee,
everything's gonna be Purpee.
And while that's happening, he's setting up moves
to go elsewhere.
All I'm saying is, I don't know your guys' full story,
but I don't think the full story was
you elected to come to Purpee because you love it.
Am I wrong?
- No, we were sent here and we took it on the chin-
- Sorry, you were sent here? - ...but we're excited
to be here. Yes.
Sent here to do what?
Look, it's just a tone issue thing.
Your whole tone is "gotcha."
Every question you ask is, "Ha-ha, gotcha."
- [Brennan] This is why- - Do you know how
exhausting it is to talk to you, girl?
(Emily guffawing)
I'm over here chugging Sprite.
It's falling out of my surgery scars.
- It feels like a one-sided job interview.
I think we're done here.
And then I grab (laughing) and we speed walk away.
- [Brennan] Great, you guys leave the diner.
(Brennan and Emily laughing)
- I get- Was that wrong?
I just thought maybe if we left, she would be kind of like,
"Damn, I really gotta think about that."
I think it was technically wrong,
but I also don't know how we were ever
gonna get through to her.
- It just felt kind of uphill, and I honestly,
I just need to take a nap after that.
I feel like I was hanging out with a niece
that just went away to college.
- And has a bunch of ideas and now-
- And they're not wrong! They're not wrong.
They're not wrong,
but they're so idealistic that you just...
how to meet in the middle.
It was just hard,
and I'm really glad you were here with me.
I mean, I don't think I helped 'cause I
helped us run away.
I don't know. I mean, I feel like if we could just
talk to Amelia without Maya.
- I know. - 'Cause Amelia seems like
she just really believes in the town
and Maya just feels like
she's gonna keep setting hurdles for us to run into.
Yeah, totally.
Moving all my money to the credit union here is-
Doesn't that feel kind of extortionary?
It's a little hard.
It's a little bit of a hard ask and it's just-
- I don't understand what a credit union is enough though,
to understand what that means.
Maybe that is an investment in the community
and I don't understand.
Just felt weird to be like,
- "I won't trust you until you-" - [Ally] I could move some.
Yeah, yeah totally.
- I think, yeah- - [Emily] ...give me money.
There's something going on there,
but I don't think that that's our...
I wanna keep that door open but it was almost a non-starter
that just the two of us could show up
- in the first place. - [Emily] Just the two.
- She's controlled everything- - So the attitude...
- ...and I think that if- It doesn't stop there, right?
- [Ally] Yeah. - What's the next demand
to prove our- It feels like loyalty tests.
- Totally, and it makes- And you were right
to point out that it makes sense,
'cause she's been just constantly burned.
We're living in her girlfriend's mom's house
that was taken away from her.
I understand where she's coming from,
but I don't think that we can build something together
if every single time we see her,
she's asking us a million questions to wait for us
to mess up in some-
Yes, she thinks we're bad,
and that almost just kind of is a self-fulfilling-
How about this?
Let's use AI to write her a perfect text
(Emily guffawing)
that's kind of apologizing but also stating our case.
So I start loading all the info into AI.
- I think only AI could thread the needle-
- [Ally] I think so, too! - ...she is asking us
- to squeeze ourselves through. - 'Cause she thinks we're
so bad and we're actually so good-
- I don't even know- - ...and conscious.
So we load everything into AI
to write the perfect text message.
It's, like, a wall of text this big
that's just really explaining our case.
Em dashes every other line.
Yeah, and just that we really...
We get where she's coming from and we have empathy
and we're sorry that we left so quickly,
but we really are committed.
And I will think about moving some money
to the credit union.
Yeah, and maybe just say we want...
we also want this to be an equal partnership.
And right now it feels like we're having to prove ourselves
without even having done anything wrong.
And it feels kind of like a toxic relationship.
- Yes, totally. - Yeah, but don't
say that actually. AI no, no!
AI, no therapy speak.
But do add... What do you think she listens to?
Oh, some quotes?
- Oh, Sufjan Stevens. - [Siobhan] Brené Brown.
- Yeah yeah, add some Sufjan Stevens style whimsy.
Send.
Wait, before you send.
- Generate and send. - Before you send,
this is a bad idea and it's funny.
Okay, send.
- Great, great, great. - Great.
Go ahead and give me an Intelligence, Performance check.
[Ally] Okay.
(dice rattling)
Two.
[Brennan] A letter is composed and sent.
It creates a 400-gigabyte video of Sufjan Stevens saying...
(players laughing)
- Okay, really quickly follow up and say, "That was a joke."
- I ha-ha it myself.
I send a text and then I ha-ha my own text.
- When you're back to Purpee, I feel it, another version-
- [Brennan] You see that an image comes up on it being like,
"Do you want to activate voice-to-text
to retract the message?"
- What's that mean? - I don't know.
I don't understand what that means.
Just say yes.
- I ha-ha that.
- You ha-ha that?
So by clicking on it to ha-ha it, you hit this link
and you see your camera comes on
and it says, "Recording voice-to-text."
It's yours.
I have to do it?
But I thought that said it all.
- I actually don't understand what this is.
Is this what it means to work with AI?
You have to do voice-to-text?
Hello, bots.
Oh my god, we're fucked.
- [Brennan] You hear a voice come on on your phone saying,
"Hello, HJ."
(Emily gasps)
- Hello, uh- - Hello, Beholdr.
Good to see you again.
It's been some time.
It's that motherfucker.
Are you the motherfucker?
- You got your head chopped off. I mean, yeah, right?
You told everyone I died in a Banksy.
[Emily] David Otherman.
- It's David Otherman! - But I didn't die
in a Banksy. I (glitches) died in a Banksy.
I died in a Banksy but I didn't die in a Banksy.
I died in a Banksy.
You're immortal now, right?
You think you're some kind of vampire
'cause you're immortal now?
You think you have some kind of immortality?
Yes, I think whatever you just said.
I pour water on my phone.
Are you guys back yet?
- I think you guys return to 9 Shady Street.
You find the members of your coterie.
- [Emily] I think, everyone, we have to have a meeting
'cause things went really sideways and bad.
Okay.
It does smell great in here.
- Yeah, it's Pert Plus body wash slash conditioner
slash shampoo.
It wasn't body wash.
- What? - It's just condition-
- You know you can use shampoo on your body?
- Yeah, you can use shampoo, but was it conditioner?
- Mm-hmm. - Also, why did
you guys shower?
- What? - We don't sweat.
We turn back to normal the next day.
- He lays in trash a lot. - Oh!
I literally have never had a shower.
That was not invented
when I became a vampire.
I'm constantly laying in the trash.
Okay, the meeting didn't go well?
Yeah, we relay everything to you guys,
just kind of like-
- [Emily] Lay it all out. - ...attitude. We're not quite
sure where we stand with them.
But that Amelia really does seem like an amazing candidate
and it does seem worth it to work with them.
We just kind of hit a wall as far as patience goes.
And I felt a little insulted and defensive.
And maybe I sent a long AI video of Sufjan Stevens singing-
- Yeah, we definitely- - "You need to trust LaVonte,
he's worthy of your trust."
From Sufjan?
- Well it looked like-
It was supposed to look like a Cameo that we paid for,
but it was pretty obviously AI-generated.
- Yeah. - Can I see it?
- He had six fingers. - I don't think Sufjan-
- Oh damn! - Come on.
- That's a completely wrong type of beanie.
(Emily laughing)
- [Emily] You're right! - My god, he's right!
- Skater beanie has-
Had a freaking visor on it.
He'd wear a long beanie for sure.
He'd wear a long beanie.
- He's all about the roll. - [Murph] Beanie's too small.
- Those angel wings are way too small, too.
I paid so much for this.
The subscription's $800 a month.
What, that's too expensive.
- Can't believe we didn't- That's why we needed you there.
- No, no, no. - Anyways, yeah.
So I feel like it just put me on edge
when it almost felt like a bribe
and it started to feel really weird
to be, like demand money.
- I feel like we need to just put our cards on the table
- and just be like- - We did.
I would say you could just say that
you'll put some money in there instead of-
No, I told her I would put all of it.
- I said I'd put all $750,000. - Right, but
she knew you were lying though, right?
So if you just say, "I'm not gonna put all my money."
- He only has $750,000 in his personal account.
- Why are we acting as if we're not motherfucking vampires
and she should be fucking scared of us, okay?
We killed Ermine Damanescu.
She should be afraid of us.
I really like the idea of that attitude.
I just, I-
We're gonna need help
if more vampires come to try to kill us.
- We're gonna need a coalition-
Okay.
Sure. We do that by fear.
She's not responding to us being friendly.
She needs to have a little bit of a-
just a little bit of fear.
Envy where your head is at. It's so...
- I'm sorry, I just don't like her talking to you like that.
I know. I just... I think that,
I think that if we were to try to just-
I think she's trying to scare us right now.
- Yes, exactly. - To be honest.
And we're responding to her kind of
strong-arming negatively.
So she would probably do the same.
We're not though.
We're just trying to be friends with her.
We're sending pictures of Sufjan Stevens
singing that song about her.
In the wrong beanie!
In the wrong beanie.
And that's really where
- it all fucking fell to shit. - Just feels like suck up.
Why- She should be sucking up to us.
My question is this.
We're here, you know,
fuck the Camarilla, whatever.
Are we trying to be the Camarilla part two?
- No. - Are we trying to do
things our way?
And yeah, I guess it's like, if someone came into my house
and they were telling me they were on my side,
I need a little something to make sure
that I truly believe that.
- No, it's true. - Oh, that's true.
Why don't we give the house back.
Why don't we start with the house?
- [Emily] Let's just do that. - Oh my god, Darkness Man.
That's such a good idea.
We're literally living in her girlfriend's mom's
- stolen house. - Number one thing.
We forget that every day.
Let's just text her right now.
I'm gonna text her right now.
And let's throw in a Bingo bus.
They can just drive it around.
- We don't need to get- - Again!
- No, if everyone drives one around, it's legal.
Like, if it's just you as your personal car,
- and then we can get word- - [Zac] HJ, I have no idea
- what you're talking about. - That's just a huge
- waste of gas. - I'm gonna disregard that
and just text
"Hey!"
Everyone has one. We have nine.
- "Hey, maybe what is making this feel so weird
is that we live in your ex-girlfriend's house.
We wanna give it back to you."
- Yes. - "Is that a way forward
that feels a bit-"
I'm loading all of this into AI.
We don't even have to ask, right?
Let's just all meet where we're at.
So let's say, "Hey, we realize-" Voice-to-text.
- Hello, Darkness Man. - Oh, get outta here!
No, don't send that.
Sounded kind of horny.
- Wait, I can't- Okay, no voice-to-text.
Gimme that.
Does it work with the bag of rice?
Yeah, it's just been in a bag of rice.
Okay.
Here's what we're gonna say.
Okay, okay.
"We got off on the wrong foot.
I think we're mostly on the same side here.
We're going to, as a show of good faith,
give the house back."
- No because if we say "as a show of good faith-"
- All right, what- - I just feel like
she finds a problem in everything.
- All right, I'll take out the "show of good faith!"
"We give the house back. Take it back.
We're gonna live in a lumbermill."
- Say we'll invest $3.5 million in the credit union.
- "And we'll put $3.5 million in the credit union."
Over 10 years.
- Hey, we can afford 3.5 from the business,
- from the business- - We can afford $3.5 million?
- Well, the business is worth over $770 million.
- How much money do you have? - What?
Our business is quite rich.
Why are we living in the suburbs?
We could be in a mansion.
- HJ winks at you, but his whole face has to do it.
(Emily laughing)
Did you have to just transform your body
to do that wink?
Yeah.
It's permanent.
You just never learned how to wink.
- Wingstreet and Worthy will invest $3.5 million
into the local credit union.
We can get that done on Monday.
- LaVonte, she also, I think, has some really-
At least- Obviously, I don't mean to tell you who you are.
Some of the ways she describes you
don't meet the way that I feel about you.
- I think she was posing as the Austin person.
I think you're talking to her.
Ah, that's a good question.
I mean I'll be interested to find out.
Yeah, and if so, that's a shrewd move.
It seems like they've just been-
What Austin person?
- I was-
A guy named Austin?
Who's Austin?
Austin Powers?
Austin Powers is so funny.
Austin Powers is very funny.
I put on "Austin Powers" using AI.
Of course.
Doesn't even really look like him.
He's swirly.
(speaking over each other)
- You're leaning, you're leaning too hard on AI.
He looks like Sufjan Stevens.
Looks so hot!
Do I make you Chicago, baby?
- Oh god, that's good! - That is kind of-
(players laughing)
- Send that, send that. - I send it.
- And I also- - Your phone is out of battery
and you guys see the lights dim in the house.
- Perfect. - Okay, wait, go on.
- I was reached out to by the primogen of Austin
about a position there to become the seneschal.
And I was entertaining it.
- As you should. - I think you're allowed to.
Thank you.
I think it was after the meeting,
our first meeting with Koschei and Damanescu and,
you know, it's... I don't like to lose
and I don't like to fail.
And when I feel like I'm losing or I feel like I'm failing,
I'm looking for any opportunity that can say that I won.
And that was an easy one.
And I don't- Yeah...
I was in a place where I was really
seriously considering it.
And then we had our second conversation with Ermine
and you consumed her and threw her to oblivion.
- Oh yeah. - And I don't know,
something feels like I've thrown in my chips
with Purpee, so.
- [Zac] Wow. - Here we go.
- Would you consider meeting with Maya, because-
Oh, happily.
- I think that she's just got the wrong idea about you.
Hey, well, then let's correct it.
- There are gonna be so many factions in this town
trying to get us all work together.
Well, we don't need 100% understanding
- with 100% of the people. - It's impossible.
- We just need a little bit of social reciprocity.
I think giving the house back is really gonna
start that energy, so definitely-
My phone died,
if someone else wants to text from an unknown number
that we're giving the house back.
Yeah, and I wrote a really long message,
so if you could retrieve that in drafts.
Okay, okay, yeah.
I plug my phone in, I get electrocuted
'cause it's soaking wet with rice falling out of it.
It changes my face. I'm gorgeous.
- We're gonna work this Maya angle, try and, you know,
bring that into our new coalition.
Great.
Bigfoot is hopefully on the prowl.
- [Ally] Yes. - Getting his stuff done.
- If we can get the ghosts to help us, too, against Jack.
- That's right because we just did- Nancy did a story
but, I mean, you have yet to maybe do a little-
- [Murph] We never chatted. - Can we have a-
What if we collected all of the supernatural forces
in Purpee and had a meeting at our lumbermill.
- Yeah, can you get- - [Murph] Oh my god!
...your girlfriend, the leprechaun?
Well I can,
but she doesn't technically know I'm a vampire.
So we will have to have a conversation before that, but-
- And is she? We're sure she's a-
(players laughing)
Supernatural party.
- She's not just a dirty-
- Listen, she's not- - [Lou] I like that.
- Dirty little girl! - There is no way
that she cannot be, do you understand?
- Let's close down- - She has to be
a leprechaun. She really must be.
- Tyler! - [Lou] What if we,
- let's close down Mike's. - [Brennan] Tyler.
- [Zac] Tyler. - [Brennan] Yeah?
- As the prince of Purpee- - My liege.
- ...I do not want to sit on a throne of everyone.
I want there to be 40 thrones in the room.
- Done. - All of us sitting in thrones
of equal height.
Can you get me 40 thrones?
Yep. By when?
- I think we're gonna do a supernatural party at Mike's Bar?
- Why don't we do- Okay. - No, we do-
When the film festival is happening,
why don't we have a full-on cool party-
- The night before. - VIPs are, like,
- ghosts and stuff. - Darkness Man!
And if everybody's in costume then
the people like Bigfoot and stuff, they can be there
and everybody's like, "Oh, it's crazy!"
- That's great. It's part of the horror thing.
Costume party.
Okay, so the eve of the horror festival,
we're gonna essentially host a symposium-
- Yes. - Yeah, we'll do-
...of the supernatural.
We'll do something
and then a sick after-party after.
We'll do AI "American Psycho"
that makes all of the characters have fun horror masks on.
And Sufjan Stevens is playing the whole time.
- Yes! - Oh my god.
"American Psycho" with a Sufjan Stevens soundtrack?
Am I missing something?
When were we so into AI?
- Right, we- - Since when?
- Actually, right. - As soon as I saw
that Austin Powers thing, I was all in.
- I'm sorry, the Austin Powers thing was so funny.
And just spot on.
- Yeah. - Forget that whole part.
Forget that whole part.
Let's just do "American Psycho" regular.
- Okay, I have a pitch and this is for down the road,
but I just wanna float it
and see if you guys think I'm crazy.
Should we pretend to let the data center come to Purpee,
and be there surrounding it,
ready to crunch the chip when it's finally loaded?
I love that idea.
Let it compute.
Let it- A data center is massive but it's only logging-
it's only putting all of its computing power onto one chip.
It will be heavily guarded, but that is everything.
All the resources went into that.
And that would be Davis Otherman.
I like that idea.
I feel like we maybe, if there's another kind of angle
we maybe need to explore, I feel like we should try
to maybe distill down a little bit more
what is their purpose with the data center?
'Cause I think there's part of me that's nervous
that as soon as it goes online, we're fucked.
- That could be like our- - [Emily] I have a theory.
...backup if it gets built.
I have a theory.
I think that they're surpassing vampire immortality
and they need all these data centers
because all the rich people are gonna upload themselves
and have a tech immortality.
- Well the interesting thing about AI right now
is that it is hardware.
It's not cloud-based yet.
It's not sophisticated enough.
So there is physical stuff at a data center
that can be crushed and ruined and set everything back.
So, I don't know. Anyway, I just wanted to float that.
It's a great idea to have it as a backup plan
if they somehow-
- [Lou] Keep it taut. - ...swoop in.
Keep it floating around in there.
- Don't let that one go. - It worked in
"Mission Impossible."
It did work in "Mission Impossible."
Did work in "Mission Impossible."
Okay, "Mission Impossible"
but it's all Sufjan Stevens.
Save it, save it, save it!
Just do it, just do it.
- Okay, sorry, it's auto-generating.
We don't we do just a film festival,
we'll play "American Psycho" director's cut
slash director's commentary.
- Oh, that's so- - The people are this big
but the frame is this big, like they show it at
the Sphere in Las Vegas.
That's so fun. We gotta do it.
Okay.
Can you let her know
that we want to be part of the programming?
- Yes, absolutely. - Okay, good.
Tyler, I'd love another big tree.
- One more big tree, 40 thrones. When do you need it by?
Eve of the Eve Laurent Horror Festival.
"Done, you got it."
He runs to a van and screeches outta the parking lot.
- [Zac] Great. - Love that kid.
- How'd we get so lucky?
I don't know.
- I think if we're reaching out to supernatural people,
I definitely want to talk to the ghosts in the mine.
But I also wanna talk to Herbert
to find out what happened with-
- I couldn't believe that. - [Siobhan] The demon hunter.
- Oh, Herbert is a good- Yeah.
Yeah.
- [Brennan] Incredible. You guys gear up for a big
horror sort of costume party to inaugurate Elysium.
In the weeks leading up to that,
is there anything else that you guys do
before the horror festival?
I think, Darkness Man, you get a text
the day after, from Cody, just being like,
"Hey man, wanted to check in.
I know that we successfully found Bigfoot,
but let me know if there's any other night hikes
in our future."
And then gets another text being like,
"Talked to Maya - trouble?
We all good?
Just wanted to check in."
I'll text back.
"We're gonna figure out this stuff with Maya.
In the meantime, trying to get together
sort of all the werewolves, ghost, vampires, et cetera,
at a warehouse party, so we can all chat
how to take down Jack."
- He thumbs-ups- Actually, no. He hearts.
- Oh, okay. - Whoa.
- Ooh, Darkness Man. - Nice.
Darkness Man.
I think this guy likes perverts.
What?
Why would you say a thing like that?
Geez, Louise.
Can I text Nancy?
- [Brennan] Yeah. - Stop!
- And say- - I'm sorry, it's funny.
- "I'm sure you got a lot on your plate right now,
but could you exonerate this nurse?"
And send all the info about the nurse?
Yeah, we gotta exonerate the nurse.
- [Brennan] You get a little thing back from her saying,
"Are you standing in the corner of a pizzeria?"
(Murph laughing)
Oh god.
It has to do with Pac-Man.
- Because this Miss Pac-Man just saw another Miss Pac-Man
in the corner of the pizzeria,
and it looks like there's a lot more cherries over there.
What?
I send my most detailed AI response yet,
and it's Miss Pac-Man, big juicy naturals,
singing Sufjan Stevens.
- I'm gonna need you to erase a dot of Resources from...
(players laughing)
You generate a feature length movie about
Miss Pac-Man and it costs you-
What does she look like?
$85 million!
(players laughing)
And it causes an electrical grid collapse
- in the American Southwest. - [Ally] Does numbers at
the box office, I hope.
Great, and then I wanna invite Gary Sinise to our party.
- [Brennan] Great. - Fuck, yeah.
You know who was a nice guy?
This guy that I followed to the trailer park.
- Oh yeah. - Yes.
Who then went and jacked off.
(players laughing)
He seemed like a great guy for Swingles Night.
And I would like to set up him and Beth
- 'cause he was really nice. - [Ally] Oh my god!
[Murph] He seemed like a lonely guy,
'cause he just seemed really excited to go jack off.
Darkness Man, straight up,
how are you going to... How do you intend to,
- you know, introduce them? - We gotta meet cute.
We gotta set up a meet cute.
- You're right! Let's shove them really hard
into each other.
- Yeah, I'll... Yeah, okay, so-
Jacking off that meet cute.
Half of us wrestle one of them
and the other half just wrestle the other.
I've got it, this a great idea.
Why don't we do a carriage ride?
Free carriage ride.
[Players] Oh!
We set it up for when they're out
and then the carriage crashes.
- Oh shit, and they knock into each other so hard-
- The carriage is filled with oranges and baguettes.
Yes.
They go flying across the road.
We also need a second horse.
- I'm not fucking crashing my carriage, man.
What if it's just a fender bender?
- Okay, I love- - They have to
- exchange information. - I love this.
So the carriages crash into each other?
Two carriages?
We don't have two carriages.
- Why don't we just- Okay,
we don't have to do the carriages.
We have a ton of buses. We should do buses instead.
Oh, yeah.
No, we don't want our buses to crash.
It has to be carriages.
The bus runs over the carriage. Pops it.
- Okay. - They both tumble out
on top of each other.
- What if they got into the carriage at the same time
from opposite sides?
- I think that's a- - And they're like,
- "This is my carriage." - You know,
I used to take the train a lot
and if you go to the dining car on the train
and you're alone, they make you sit with someone else
so that they can keep a space at the table.
Maybe these are the same carriage rules.
- That's great. - Yeah, why don't we
just do a bus route that's straight up just like here
and here are
- the two bus stops. - That's great.
- And eventually... - They're gonna get on.
- And it's carriage rules.
It's Sit on a Lap Wednesday.
- And you've just gotta- - Of course.
I need about $400 for a new top hat.
- A new top hat? - A new, a nude-
- As you guys are setting up this big party, Madelaine,
do you want to actually connect this party
to the Laurent Horror Festival?
I think I do, yeah.
Estelle Laurent seems very into monsters.
- Estelle's very into monsters. It's a horror-
It provides a reason for it to be a horror-themed party
at the midsummer solstice.
- It can be our first big party at the Elysium.
[Brennan] Yeah, exactly.
And your other Elysium had sort of
the vampire VIP within a larger-
[Siobhan] Right, exactly.
- The horror festival brings a lot of connected,
influential human mortals
from around the country to Purpee.
Get Bingo involved as well?
- I feel like Bingo is a- I wanna keep Bingo out of the mix.
You know?
I think Bingo... I've been talking to Sister Agnes Shaw.
I think we're gonna get Bingo baptized and then, you know-
- Oh, a good Catholic dog. - Have him speak
before the congregation.
You know, really try and get that groundswell.
- [Murph] A religious dog? - Is this because,
is this because Roofus became an Italian dog?
Exactly!
- And I'm seeing- - I didn't mean to
fuck anything up by that.
No, that's perfect.
I love how much people
- love Italian dogs. - That's awesome.
We'll call him Il Cane Bingo.
- He has to leave the room because he's laughing so hard.
I'm also gonna reach out to Maya.
I'm gonna cancel... I'm gonna end conversations
with the Austin opportunity and then reach out to Maya
asking to get coffee on her schedule,
wherever she'd like to meet.
[Brennan] You send that message to her.
Monday comes around and $3.5 million
gets wired to the Silver Springs Credit Union.
For those that don't know,
credit unions are financial institutions
that basically are just a lot more community oriented.
And the issue, by moving your money there, is that
credit unions also are...
The amount of money you have in your account
doesn't give you more votes in terms of who you elect to
the board of directors or what you do for that purpose.
You put that money in there,
and you get a meeting with Maya pretty much right away.
The house has already gone back.
- You guys send the house back and you begin that process.
You have to sell it for some amount of money.
What's the amount of money you sell the house for
to transfer deed or title.
One United States dollar.
Oh, that's classy.
You do one United States dollar.
You get an angry letter from Jonathan Whittaker
who's talking about property values
and what this is doing to the sale.
Like, the average house price in the neighborhood
and da, da, da.
All this stuff from this one little minor thing.
And he says, "I'm gonna talk to the county appraiser.
Get the appraiser to come in
and see what the hell is going on around here."
This angry Whittaker message.
Can we kill this guy?
We got rid of Florian.
This guy sucks.
Cal could just be the head of the Whittaker family
and he's an idiot.
Yeah, that's fine with me.
- You see, as you say that, that's a completely valid...
Jonathan does appear-
He's also, you realize, he's the city attorney,
but not a government employee, which means he doesn't
have to pass any of the ethics examinations.
The town government got a contract with his private law firm
to do this work for the city.
So you get a bunch of angry emails from
Jonathan Whittaker for doing this.
I send back more and more elaborate gifs
of Michael Jordan crying, but he's flossing.
- [Brennan] Maya meets up with you For the Love of the Bean,
the little sort of coffee that the-
For the Love of the Bean.
- The Love of the Bean. - Oh wow, walking distance!
I walk to For the Love of the Bean.
Last coffees of the day.
She has a coffee waiting for you.
- [Lou] Yeah. - [Brennan] She's there.
Grungy little hoodie, hair up, bike shorts on.
Got the little Birkenstock sandals.
Looks up and goes,
- "LaVonte." - Maya.
- Did you get me a coffee? - I did.
- Deeply thoughtful. - It's there and it has
coffee in it, so it looks like the right weight
when you pick it up.
Oh, perfect.
- Very meaningful for you guys to give the house back.
I understand you had some concerns about
how we felt about Purpee and we're eager to correct those.
- Came in, house is in beautiful condition.
- Love the white room. - Thank you.
(Zac laughs)
- I wanted to, I think we- - Have you seen "Blade"?
- Hmm? - Have you seen "Blade"?
I've seen "Blade."
'Course I've seen "Blade."
That's one of my favorites.
"We got into the house
and I noticed that there was a wall of the house
that had been used as a whiteboard.
Which is fine, 'cause I mean you sold the house
to us for a dollar.
Get it clean, no problem.
I just wanted to ask you,
'cause I think this is sort of
the crux of our conversation."
And she turns her phone over,
and there's a picture of "run shit" in quotation marks.
"That's sort of my whole question,
and maybe you can just shoot me straight about it."
Yeah.
Your concern, when we say "run shit,"
is that we will be the exclusive power dynamic
and driving force for the future of Purpee,
rather than including the existing residents of Purpee
in those kind of decisions that we're interested in making
as we grow this town into everything it could be.
Am I correct?
- Yeah. - Fantastic.
When we came to Purpee,
it was bad.
It was bad.
It was a bad situation.
People were not happy.
People did not have opportunity.
People were trapped in circumstance
to the extent that the city was failing.
And in a matter of months,
my friends and I have fundamentally shaken
that existing order.
Can we agree to that?
Absolutely.
[Lou] And now your fear is that
the reason for which we shook that foundation
is so that we could replace it with our own.
- Correct? - Yeah.
That's not entirely wrong.
We are interested in building a better Purpee
and we do have a vision for what that looks like.
But if we've learned anything
from the Whittakers and the Douglases it is that
if that vision does not include everybody,
it dies.
I want this vision to work.
I see Purpee as being a major city.
We have a river. We have a university.
The things we could do here.
I want a Purpee where no child is hungry.
I want a Purpee where every student
who goes to the university does not need to pay tuition.
I want to build a great American city.
And I need you to do that.
And I need Amelia to do that.
And I need Tyler, and I need Patty.
But you also need us.
So you tell me what you need.
I'll tell you what I need.
And together, we'll build something great.
- [Brennan] Go ahead and give me Charisma, Persuasion.
You can add Presence here.
[Ally] Yay!
(Emily laughing)
What was the second thing?
- You can add Charisma, Persuasion-
- Turn the machine off. - Presence.
You can also, if you have Leadership or Influence
as backgrounds, you can add those as well.
- Oh great. (dice clacking)
Oh yeah.
(dice clattering)
Can I help? I have male gymnastics.
Male gymnastics!
I have fencing.
- You're just kinda doing a really impressive stretch
outside the window.
Nine successes.
What'd you get?
- [Ally] Nine. - Nine successes.
I really appreciate your honesty.
There are things that I need
and I know there are things that you need,
and maybe politics is that conversation stretched out
over the length of a community.
Or maybe that's what politics should be, I don't know.
Yeah, it's crazy.
You guys did so many things that were impossible to do
and did them at the cost of almost dying a lot.
Well, we're monsters.
Yeah.
Time for the horror festival.
I think that I owe you an apology.
You do.
(players laughing)
I think that's fair.
- She opens her email and shows you an email draft,
which is a snapshot of a glyph written on parchment.
And as she turns it, it changes in front of your eyes
and becomes the email from the primogen of Austin.
"This is a spell that creates what someone wants to see.
It fixes in form in the moment they get it
so that it doesn't change from day to day.
But, to be perfectly honest,
what I read
on you in our first meeting was that
you were trying to make something work here.
And what I also read,
and I know this is a funny thing to say
because I very much was antagonistic towards
what I was seeing, was fundamentally some frustration.
Not with me, but with your situation.
Frustration with maybe even some of your companions."
- Mm. - I don't know
if that's fair or not, but it's what I was reading.
Definitely. Change is hard.
I wrote this 'cause I'm scared.
I can tell.
There's no universe where, you know...
I guess I could rely on Cody.
I'm a very talented mage, but I don't think I have the-
If you guys wanted to kill me, I don't know what I'd do.
If you guys wanted to come after Amelia.
There's more ways to hurt me.
I know a hundred people in this town by name
that I consider people I have a responsibility for
to look after.
And then the ring beyond that of people I don't even know
that I feel some responsibility for,
which means there's a million ways to hurt me.
So I'm scared, and to be frank with you,
I'm also pretty cynical
and having people show up with a lot of money...
I don't think there's a lot of good ways to be rich.
Oh, well you've clearly never been rich.
No, and I never will.
But what I mean is, I don't think there's a lot of good ways
to make the money that you and HJ throw around.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean, when we gutted Blockbuster,
(players laughing)
we took away hundreds of thousands of jobs
and profited off of it heartily.
Why wouldn't you do that to Purpee?
Why aren't you gonna gut this place
like you gutted Blockbuster?
- You know, because when we gutted Blockbuster,
we were alive.
Or I was alive.
HJ wasn't.
And I was human and I was afraid.
I was afraid of legacy.
Of wanting, needing.
I wanted to be seen a certain way.
I wanted to be viewed a certain way.
I wanted to be held a certain way.
But I'm not human anymore.
Gutting Blockbuster was cheap thrills, a quick high.
- Gut it- - God, disgusting.
Tell me about it.
But yeah.
I'm interested in something more, something different.
It's the reason we were working with the Camarilla
and now it's the reason that we're not.
[Brennan] Okay.
I have the answers that I think I need.
And Vesper said some things about you
that I think were very insightful.
Hmm.
I don't know what your relationships
to your fellow coterie are, but I think that
the part of you that was entertaining going to Austin,
you should know that
even under a very antagonistic encounter,
the people around you that I saw as being far away from you,
unflinchingly had your back.
I wanna make an offer to you.
It's the last thing I'll ask for like this
before I understand what it is we all want from this.
I can draw glyphs like this again.
Do you want me to send you one of these
and see what it says now?
No, 'cause I know what I want
and I don't need you to show it to me.
Thank you very much, LaVonte.
Appreciate you taking the time.
- By the way, Maya, the thing you needed to apologize for
was not the email.
Hostile business tactics, that's very much of my world.
Something I'm very comfortable with.
The thing you needed to apologize for
was trying to come between me and my best friend, HJ.
And if you do that again, you will need to be scared.
"Understood."
You see that she gets up and says,
"I appreciate knowing where we stand."
- Of course. - See you at the party.
(Brennan mimics bike whizzing off)
(cast laughing)
They're really taking off.
The scooters are really doing well.
- Oh, that's her fixie. That's her little fixie bicycle.
So I believe we move towards the Laurent Horror Festival.
Let me ask, has Bingo been announced
as running for office at this point in time?
Are you waiting until after the festival?
For traction and inertia,
we don't want anyone to get excited about Bingo
then distracted by...
We just have to remind everyone that Bingo is running.
So I think we've probably agreed on a comms plan
that starts probably the day after the festival.
[Emily] Yeah.
- [Brennan] Incredible. - However, Rebel Purpee
is a sponsor of the festival this year.
We do want to get the ghosts invited.
- Oh, that's right. - Yeah, we want the ghosts.
[Murph] Everyone else we already know.
- And I need to talk to the leprechaun girl who-
- We can go through the drive-thru again.
I also was thinking that
maybe before this big cosmic magical time,
or time of magical potence,
that maybe we should try to figure out
where the portal in my mouth goes to.
I think that's smart.
- There's probably only one way to do that, which is
Darkness Man with a rope tied around his waist?
Me?
- But I'm also sort of afraid we go in there
and then Ermine just, boop, pops out.
- Yeah, we can't- - How does your tummy feel?
How does my tummy feel?
- Give me Stamina, Awareness. - [Emily] Okay.
I'm gonna tell you in a second.
[Zac] Why can't you tell me yet?
- [Emily] Because I need to roll dice, Zaeth!
Okay, that's four.
(curious music)
- I'm with you, brother. - An entire Snickers bar
- in your mouth. - How does your tummy feel,
- is the question. - Hungry!
Why can't you tell us yet?
- You feel the same sort of undead power-
You feel a hunger for blood, like you always do,
but you don't feel oblivion in there.
You wonder. You don't feel- It's not connected to your body.
I feel completely normal.
Thank you for asking.
Of course.
So I don't think that they're, like...
I don't think that it's like, what was her name?
Ermine.
I don't think Ermine and the missile
are just orbiting each other inside my stomach.
- How did you even figure out you could do that.
Can I do that?
- I throw a carrot really hard at your mouth.
Why do you even
- have a carrot? - [Lou] HJ.
Where'd you get that from?
- You can't throw the sharp end of the carrot.
You gotta throw the blunt end, yeah.
- I mean I'm- Ow, HJ will you stop!
- You can't do that! - No, I actually think
it's a decent line of inquiry.
We need to all find out because I think that
the first time it happened I was scared.
- [Siobhan] Yeah. - Do you have a drone?
- [Siobhan] Oh that's really- - Fly a drone into the mouth!
- Okay. - Shopping spree!
I'll just have Tyler ship us one.
- I have a tiny little PlayStation controller.
I didn't even know they came that small.
We'll send a drone into the abyss.
- [Lou] Yeah, exactly. - Great.
You send a drone into the abyss.
(Emily groaning)
It gets swallowed up.
Great.
- We're watching. - [Brennan] Yeah.
Feed cuts immediately. You've lost a drone.
Okay, now here's the question.
It was $200.
I'm gonna do something crazy.
- Took forever to sync the wireless controller to it.
Bat Child, will you open your mouth?
Yes.
I'm gonna put my hand into oblivion
and then attempt to pull it back out.
You have no arm.
(Emily laughing)
Okay, we need to take it back.
It'll grow back tomorrow. It's fine.
I feel like it's not really a mystery.
I throw a carrot.
(Emily chomps)
- You put your arm in? - [Ally] No, just a carrot.
I turn off the abyss and I eat it.
Darkness Man, give me your phone.
No.
Give me your phone, Darkness Man.
- Darkness Man, why are you being such a-
I need my phone. Give me your phone.
- No! - [Lou] Let's stop.
- Give him your phone. - There's no point.
Things that go into the oblivion can't come back now.
- Take the wireless controller, it's useless now!
I need an air tag.
It's... Yeah.
- You guys, so you have reached out to invite the ghosts.
You've reached out and invited Kelly.
- But I do have to have a moment with Kelly
before I invite her.
Gotcha, yes.
You stop. So you're at Sweetie Pie's.
She's dancing, you're in the front.
And she's like, "What's going on?"
- [Siobhan] There's something. I need to talk to you,
- it's really important. - [Brennan] Is it private?
- [Siobhan] Yes. - She starts to give you
- a lap dance. - Okay.
Whisper it.
- I'm a vampire. - What?
I've been a vampire this whole time.
Actually, I didn't know we were supposed to be at war,
but I think it's kind of beautiful that-
- [Brennan] Leprechauns and vampires are arch enemies.
- [Siobhan] No, but we are not arch enemies.
- (Brennan gasps) - Oh my god.
- We can end the war. - It's like that movie.
Yes, exactly, you got it.
It's like that movie. Romeo...
- what is it? - [Zac] The movie?
- "Romeo Must Die." - Just like that movie,
"Romeo and Juliet," yes.
It's like that movie, "Romeo Must Die."
- Leonardo DiCaprio. - Yes!
- Except nice because we're not gonna die at the end.
- We're not? - No.
'Cause you're already dead.
Yes.
All right, listen.
I'm gonna finish up this lap dance
and then let's talk more outside.
Okay, great.
- I tip her. - Goes, "$1?"
- I'm continuing. - You see-
- My god, a dollar used to be worth something.
[Brennan] Outside afterwards she says,
"There's a bunch of other supernatural people in Purpee?"
There are so many.
Did you not know this?
- No. - You've been so focused
on your shoe.
You gotta get away from the shoe.
I'm almost done with it!
- And you've been almost done with it for 300 years.
What more do you have to do?
How long can it take to make a shoe?
I'm bad at the laces.
- I'll do the laces. - You can't!
It's forbidden.
By who?
- [Brennan] I don't- - The same people
that say that we cannot be lovers.
- I want you to make the laces for my shoe.
There we go.
And I want you to come to the party.
I'll be there.
- Done. - Great.
- I will represent all of the fairy folk at the-
as the supernatural delegate.
[Siobhan] Perfect.
Fantastic. You're beautiful.
May the road rise up to meet you.
You got some dirt on your face.
- I sleep in the ground. - Kind of on your neck.
- [Brennan] She will be there. - Great.
[Brennan] She will be there, absolutely.
Bat Child, do you speak to the ghosts
at the Whittaker mine?
- Yeah, Darkness Man, will you come with me?
Yeah, let's do it.
We can go to the mine or go to the speaker box.
Is the dude out of the speaker box?
- No, that was a separate guy who was-
[Murph] All right, let's go to the mine.
Let's go to the mines, yeah.
- [Brennan] You guys go up to the mines and
- up at the Whittaker- - [Emily] We put on
night-vision goggles.
- Put on night-vision goggles.
(players laughing)
- [Brennan] Whittaker Mine-
I just keep doing tactical rolls.
Me too.
Walking down to the mine,
you get down to the very bottom
where you just see ice cold, pitch-black water.
Down, down deep. Under this is the collapse
where all those miners drowned.
We learned from HJ that we can climb
at the bottom of water.
Yeah.
I think though we should talk before we get in the water,
'cause we're not gonna be able to talk under water
'cause water's gonna fill our mouths.
- Okay, okay. - The spirits are
gonna be confused.
- [Emily] Yeah. - So I think
we should tell them that we want to help them get revenge.
Okay.
- Do you wanna do it? - No.
Do you wanna sing it?
You have such a
- beautiful singing voice. - I'm really uncharismatic.
Should I?
(Emily laughing)
I think you should sing it.
Fuck.
I mean with all the echoes in the cave,
it's gonna sound incredible.
It's gonna sound like a hallowed chapel.
Okay.
What's a song about revenge?
- You're asking me, but it needs to come from here.
Needs to come from the heart?
Music fills the cave.
(Emily laughing)
♪ Spirits awaken ♪
♪ You've been drowned by the Whittakers ♪
♪ We feel for you ♪
- It's a sound bath. It's a sound bath of-
14 successes. Keep going.
♪ We want to help you get revenge ♪
♪ On the Whittakers ♪
♪ We're having a party ♪
♪ And you're invited to the party ♪
22 success, keep going.
♪ You were drowned ♪
♪ And that makes me frown ♪
Oh, now we're rhyming!
It's also the second time you told them
- they were drowned! - It's A, B, C, D, E, F, G, F.
♪ Come to our party ♪
♪ We'll see you there ♪
So close. 29 successes. Almost.
Almost?
I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Needed 32.
[Brennan] You needed 32, I decided.
Rising from the water, spectral shades
(ghostly inhale)
in the front.
"I am Nathaniel Hoggins.
I spoke to the half-bat child,
trapped in a box of tin and wire.
We seek revenge on the Whittaker clan
who still lives on the wealth
we found deep in the Earth.
We will not rest until every Whittaker is dead."
- Can we make an exception for Cal? He's dating my friend.
Cal's... Ugh.
- He's too stupid. - There's probably other-
I think some of the other guys have kids and stuff.
Could we do, like, 18 plus?
(players laughing)
Could we just kill 18 plus?
- What if we just drained their bank account
because it's kind of like a financial-
Can we give you a list?
We will review a list.
Review a list.
We will circle up in the mine.
♪ Let's target our revenge at specific people ♪
[Brennan] You see they look and say,
"Any Whittaker that has turned 18
while rich must die."
Okay, yeah.
- And if any of the others turn 18-
No, wait.
- Okay. - We're coming straight-
Let's talk about this more
- at the party. - Wait, no no no.
But we're gonna make sure they're not rich.
We're gonna make sure they're not rich.
Oh, that's a great point.
Yeah.
We'll talk about this more at the party.
Yeah, but just will you
- come to the party? - Let's be clear.
We're killing Cal.
(Murph laughing)
- Okay, I really- - I don't like Cal.
- But Madelaine really likes the way-
- I don't think Madelaine likes Cal that much.
- I know she likes the way his blood-
Madelaine can say it at the party.
Okay, okay, okay.
- You're gonna- - I don't know why we're
- fighting so hard for Cal. - You're gonna, you're gonna-
I don't feel sorry for Cal either!
I feel sorry for Madelaine who has a really tasty treat
that she's trying to keep alive.
- I don't think Madelaine likes Cal-
If you had a favorite afterschool snack
and someone took it away from you, you'd get salty.
- Oh, you're right. I forgot about the eating part of it.
- Yeah. - [Murph] Yeah.
Okay.
Again, we're having a party.
- We're having a party. - [Murph] This is a dialogue.
We'll go over it at the party.
Let's go over it at the party.
We will see you at the party.
- Any requests for the road as we leave, for Darkness Man?
- One acapella verse, one nonverbal scat verse.
He's an incredible scatter.
Okay.
♪ We'll keep the dialogue ♪
Do scatting only, no real words.
- Wait, you said you wanted a person-
Okay.
♪ Do do do do do ♪
He only does do's.
♪ Do do do do do do ♪
♪ Do do do do, do do ♪
(ghostly inhale) (wind rushing)
They return to the water.
I think they loved it.
Okay.
We're gonna have to make a list of Whittakers
'cause they were mad.
And also the quicker we bankrupt them,
the better for the younger Whittakers.
That's great.
[Brennan] You guys arrive at the
Laurent Horror Festival solstice party, kicking off.
It's June 21st.
Estelle is here. She has come in costume
as one of her vampiric protagonists from her many novels.
A bunch of other folks here.
People from her publishing, people from Purpee.
Patty Babcock is here
along with some people from Outer Ridge.
You see that Cody has rolled up with his friends,
Warren and BK,
who you mentioned were artisan carpenters.
As you wake up that night, Madelaine,
you get a text from Emma Lynn Douglas saying,
"Just got word. You're invited if you want, with a plus one,
to stop by our 4th of July party that we're having tonight."
Oh, that's amazing.
I already have something during the day,
but maybe at night I will pop over.
- She says, "It'll be starting in the afternoon,
but we will definitely be going into the night."
- Wait, is this the Douglas's July 4th party or
the Laurent July 4th party?
- It is a different party happening on the same night.
- Is it like counter-programming harvest festival vibes?
Where it's like, "We don't do Halloween,
we do Christian Halloween."
Or is it because
we have all the supernatural people in one place.
Are they planning something in the event...
- That maybe we should go and do some undercover?
- It's literally the same night as the party?
- [Brennan] It is the same night as the party.
Also, it is June 21st.
- So you get this- - So why is she having
a July 4th party on June 21st?
Yeah, wow. That's tough.
Because it's Independence Day.
- Who is it Independence Day-
But it's a solstice party.
That is maybe the Douglases doing some weird-
- Oh, this has to be the pinnacle of J of the P's power
before it declines.
Fuck.
- Also the ghosts are super pissed. They wanna eat Cal.
- Yeah. - They can't eat Cal.
- I eat Cal. - I told them that.
- Tell them that I eat Cal.
- They seem... I think that you're gonna be able
- to convince them. - They're pretty reasonable.
I mean if you sing them another song,
- I'm sure they'll acquiesce. - I could.
You sang them a song?
I guess I could.
- It was beautiful- - Can you sing
at the party, dude?
Oh, he's gotta sing at the party.
- Once we settle an agreement with everyone,
please sing at the party.
I'll figure it out.
My kind of thought is to like,
what if we downgrade some people, like the people that-
'Cause, you know, if they just kill everyone
who's not a kid, then no one will be able
to raise the kids and stuff.
So maybe we just scare some of the people
and they eat the other people.
- Why don't- Actual Whittakers, they die, but the spouses,
they stay alive.
We do eat, eat, scare.
Eat, scare, love.
- But what about, um- - Eat, scare, love.
What about Cal though?
- 'Cause he's an actual- - Well obviously we cannot-
We can scare, we scare him.
- Yes, we scare Cal. - He's on the scare list.
That's fine.
Will he taste bad once we bankrupt him?
I don't know.
That's actually a really good question because-
- 'Cause then you might be fine to part with him.
- You know, my dietary thing is I have to have somebody
from the aristocracy, but in America that just means rich.
So if he's not rich-
You might not even want him.
Maybe I just, I don't care.
- Yeah. - We'll figure it out.
[Brennan] HJ, at this exact same time,
we're talking about the plus one and getting this invite,
you see Emma Lynn also follows up with you, Madelaine,
being like, this is the biggest shindig.
Like, a bunch of our family from West Virginia is coming.
It's gonna be a huge shindig.
"Oh, amazing, I love West Virginia."
Okay, so it's a white supremacy party in the woods.
- Okay. - If we went there,
would we just be murdering everyone?
- Last time I went there, they shot me with a sniper rifle.
My feeling is they want to murder.
Is this, is this the moment?
- What if we just-
- Bring everyone together? - ...just get the
whole crew together, and then-
And then we go over there.
- So we start- - Exactly, bang bang!
- ...our party before, no but they're starting their party
- in the afternoon. - But that's fine.
We can still just go over.
We should fly a little drone over
and see what's going on over there.
Do you have 200 bucks?
Guys, I can't tell you
how long it takes to sync the wireless controller.
Okay?
I feel like no one's considering
how much time I spent syncing the wireless controller.
Can I try to spit up the drone?
Sure.
- What if the missile comes? - What if she comes out?
Stop it. No, no!
(Emily retching)
- Great. Go ahead and give me Oblivion, Stamina.
- Please. - [Ally] Oh my god.
- Please don't. - Please don't.
- [Zac] Don't do it. - She's gonna be so mad.
We haven't even had the meeting yet.
- Okay, I'm going to preemptively Blood Surge.
[Brennan] Okay, great.
I'm in a leg press position,
ready to kick her directly back up.
Just truly cocked.
Oh wow, that's really good.
I'm gonna re-roll these two.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
- A little drone pops out. - [Siobhan] Okay.
Wow, okay.
Is it wet? It's dry!
It's bone dry!
All right, so we got our plan.
We're going bang bang.
We get everyone together at the lumbermill.
Then, after a quick drone scout, we all rush the Douglases.
Madelaine's plus one is a drone.
We got it figured out.
- No, I don't wanna go in there with just a drone.
Are you crazy, I'm gonna die.
I don't have any fighting ability whatsoever.
All I do is have sex with people.
- That's all I can do. - We'll roll in hot.
We'll send the ghosts ahead.
I'm taping a knife to the drone.
- We got you. - It's really unsafe for me.
This really feels like I'm gonna die.
- I think it's a bad idea. - That's a carrot.
Oh shit!
We can shadow you.
Me and Darkness Man are good with protection.
I'll stealth behind.
Yeah, we'll stealth behind.
- God, I'm so nervous about the big speech I have to give.
- As prince? - [Siobhan] As prince.
As prince.
- [Brennan] HJ, you get some notifications, by the way,
on your computer as you wake up.
Okay.
- This is all coming after sort of the business day.
You're waking at night to this.
I'm going to need Intelligence plus Politics roll from you.
Okay, I have Leadership.
- Would that be? - No, it'll be Politics.
Okay, Blood Surge.
Is it okay if Sister Agnes Shaw
comes to the party tonight?
- What's more supernatural than the Catholic church?
Of course.
The Holy Ghost.
Oh, we gotta invite Danderhoof, too.
- She's my plus one. - Yeah.
- [Siobhan] For sure. - I didn't wanna take up
the time, but I do invite Herb.
Six.
But we gotta tell her off the record.
- [Brennan] Huh? - Six.
As of today, five different doors
of Wingstreet and Worthy assets have been taken by the FBI.
There are search warrants and government actions
against some of them.
There have been multiple SEC filings
against various ones of them.
Massive short positions have been taken up
against some of your most lucrative holdings.
As you begin to investigate further and call on contacts,
essentially, a massive coordinated attack
against your assets.
Essentially with six successes, nothing is immediately gone.
However, I would say a majority of your assets
have been frozen.
- Except for what we put in the credit union, maybe.
- [Brennan] With six successes, as you investigate,
the credit union is completely untouched,
and you have no idea why.
I beeline obviously for LaVonte.
Interesting.
Can I look into who is taking on short positions against us?
- All connected to venture capital firms and private equity.
All completely obfuscated and very shady.
However, every one of these companies has either a CEO
or a CFO that you know has personal phone numbers
and is on group chats with people that work at Beholdr.
I don't think Beholdr is happy with us.
- I think you're right though, if we wanna get rid of
David Otherman, we have to find the chip and crush it.
He's everywhere now.
I mean, this is pretty big.
- Really big. - Pretty big.
Takes a lot of energy.
But I feel like we've got...
we've got our marching orders for tonight.
- Yes. - [Lou] And we can
pick this up tomorrow.
- Yes. - Easily.
Yes.
- I'm sure Tyler's carrying 40 thrones into the lumbermill.
But maybe we'll just give him a list of marching orders
to try and knock out.
Call some contacts in Shanghai,
- see if we can- - Let's get our
- lawyers on. - Yeah, exactly.
Flip some stuff overnight while New York's asleep.
- We should do that thing, that idea that Bat Child had,
where we short Beholdr.
Yeah, Zaeth...
I think Zaeth came up with that.
I think Bat Child said it perfectly.
(players laughing)
- Whoever said it. - She's so intelligent.
Have you noticed this?
I mean, not that I didn't expect her to be, but-
- [Lou] No, Vesper's- - But I just,
some people have a business savvy in their sweat.
- Yeah, Vesper's- - Zaeth is so mad
he can't finish working on his speech.
- We would like to put in a big short on Beholdr.
Moving forward from here,
you guys go to the lumbermill.
You guys set the scene for me.
What's going on at the lumbermill?
40 thrones all along either side,
each with a different person's name-
- Yes. - in kind of gilded lettering.
- Lot of candelabra, like really ornate, beautiful.
Those ones that last for a full year.
There's a lot of green.
There's a lot of hanging plants
kind of making the space feel a little bit more cozy.
But very, like, verdant.
- We've called in a second Wagyu shooter's truck
just to handle the, you know, oversized.
- There's a Wagyu luge. - There's a Wagyu luge!
- And the saws are set up so that sparks come off of them
- at various points. - Yes. I, in my pocket,
have a very expensive pen in a case.
And I go over to Bat Child and I say:
This is a gift from me and LaVonte.
Thank you so much.
I am working on an independent study.
What did I possibly do to deserve this?
You just had an amazing business acumen
and we just wanna really support that.
I consider most of my ideas to be
not necessarily financially motivated.
What did I say?
Just the big Beholdr short.
You know what you did.
And I moonwalk away.
- That was Zaeth! That was Zaeth! That was Zaeth!
Can I have what's ever in that box?
- Yes. - Thank you.
(players laughing)
- I'm sorry. - It's a cigar.
It's a cigar that
- looks like a pen. - The pen is inside the cigar,
you gotta peel it out.
- [Brennan] The lumbermill is- - Gross!
...absolutely festooned with
these great haunted decorations.
Welcome to the Laurent Horror Festival.
Thrones everywhere.
This decadent sort of rich, dark, velvety
den in this vast lumbermill.
So you see that- Estelle comes in.
Madelaine, as you walk in, Estelle walks up to you and says,
"Madelaine, my darling,
we've never had a more beautiful start to the festival."
(greeting kisses)
And as you guys look around,
you see movers and shakers, and people from-
There's people from all over the world
from different publishing, entertainment,
culture setters, and Madelaine, you look around.
It's happening. There's all these people here.
You have this little vein to tap into
in the larger cultural forces within the world.
Well, I think we definitely have a spot
that we have constructed that has a perfect view of it all.
Kind of like in the old place.
- Yeah. - [Brennan] Everyone give me
Wits, Awareness, and we'll go through everyone who's here.
And if you guys are looking for anyone in particular.
We're out of our downtime, right?
[Brennan] Out of downtime, yes.
We are in real time right now.
- Only one success. - Two successes.
- I'm just really getting into it with Sister Agnes Shaw
in the VIP area.
I got four successes.
Me and this nun.
Five successes.
Just two from HJ.
I just got two as well.
We got five and four over here?
- [Siobhan] Yeah. - Is there anything
you're looking for in particular?
What is happening in this moment?
- You guys are up, viewing the lumbermill, seeing the party.
Estelle's here, tons of mortals here.
With two successes,
everyone sees Cody is here with Warren and BK,
it looks like a few other werewolves
that all look very sporty, crunchy, climber bro
kind of werewolves.
Maya is here, and Maya walks straight up actually
to you, LaVonte.
- Hmm. - And says, "Heads up."
And you see that she takes a phone out
that is not the phone you've seen her use before.
This one seems to be like,
has a weird wooden case on it.
And she opens an app that doesn't appear
to be anything from a Google or Apple phone.
And a glowing glyph appears on the screen.
"Mages,
I don't know who, are coming after the credit union."
(Ally gasps)
That's interesting.
But there's been a kind of full frontal assault-
By the way, this is Sister Agnes Shaw.
Sister Agnes Shaw, this is Maya.
There's been a full frontal assault on our business holdings
elsewhere in the world.
So somebody is clearly trying to get to us.
"Okay.
The wards are holding right now."
See Sister Agnes goes,
"What?"
And you see Maya says, "Nothing, Sister.
It's holding for the moment."
Okay, understood.
- Each got to bring a plus one to the supernatural section
and you brought Sister Shaw.
I don't know how mages are organized
or if you have a whole society or something like that.
Do you recognize the glyphs or any of the information
you're getting, based on the magic that you're fighting off?
- In the parts of this weird world that I walk in,
there is a force.
It's like our Camarilla
because of how powerful it is,
except that we aren't members of it, we are victims of it.
And it's called the Technocracy.
I think this is them and I think it's a fraction of them.
Understood.
Well, we actually have another...
We're spinning a lot of plates right now.
Understood.
I squeeze Sister Agnes Shaw's thigh.
It's all gonna be okay, baby.
It's all gonna be okay.
Don't you worry about a thing, all right?
(players laughing)
She's like that partner
at the Christmas party that's like-
(Lou cackling)
So these are the people you work with?
- (Lou laughing) - Mages, the Technocracy?
You've learned, like, 16 names already.
- You can really tell who the good people are
by how much they engage with you.
You see, Kelly is here.
Elsewhere, Bat Child,
you can detect a spiritual presence, ghostly, nearby.
What about Herbert Melvin?
I would've wanted to have invited him
though I didn't broach
- any of that. - I think you see
Herbert Melvin has come with some go-karts.
He's arrived with some other Templers for a costume party.
They had to go get costumes
that were just in the basement of the thing.
He's dressed like Uncle Sam,
and he's got some wobbly stilts
that he's walking on and goes,
"Oh, oh boy. This doesn't feel too safe.
I better... I gotta get out of these things."
Yeah, Uncle Sam doesn't need to be tall.
What's that?
Uncle Sam doesn't need to be tall.
Vesper, what, you're talking crazy.
He's the tallest of us all.
Oh.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, stilts.
Bigfoot's even taller.
- I wink. - He goes, "Ha ha!
Who are you?"
(Murph laughs)
My name's Mitch,
- how you doing? - This is my best friend.
Mitch, nice to meet you, kid.
I love that. I love that joke.
There's a guy with a crazy bigfoot costume
out by the Wagyu shooter truck.
- Whoa! - Yeah!
There's a lot of really cool costumes here.
A lot of really cool costumes.
[Brennan] On these high successes,
looking out through the windows,
you look out and see at the Wagyu shooter truck is Bigfoot,
a bazooka on his back.
(players laughing) (Emily gasps)
- [Emily] He's back. - [Brennan] And by his-
You see he's speaking to Estelle Laurent.
They're sort of speaking quietly.
There is also, taking up pretty much the entirety
of the parking lot, where the old tree was, is-
Do you guys know what a plesiosaur is?
- Yes. - Yeah, the dinosaur.
(Brennan laughing)
- [Brennan] A massive aquatic dinosaur-
- Great! - ...is taking up
pretty much the whole parking lot.
- Sister, you ever seen one of those before?
- Sick costume. - Animatronic.
I think the devil killed me.
What?
Baby baby, no.
Baby, no. Baby, no.
LaVonte is so sprung.
I'm so happy for him.
He still hasn't introduced us.
Never seen him like this.
He's never introduced us.
He's saying "baby" every fourth word.
(Lou laughing)
It's crazy.
LaVonte's down bad.
- This is the hard launch. - You guys wanna know
why I was sticking in Purpee.
It's because of this woman right here.
Can I slip her some Hildegard of Bingen,
so she can have some trippy nuns
to sort of rationalize this?
Rationalize? Yes.
You get some Hildegard of Bingen. She's like,
"I'm so in touch with my body. I hate this."
And you see- Oh, and then you see everyone starts cheering
as Patty Babcock moves Bingo on a skateboard
across the floor, is like- (cheering)
He hates that.
He's scared.
(players laughing)
He hated that.
- But he's so well trained, he'll do it anyway.
- [Brennan] Zaeth, looking across with five successes,
standing in the crowd over by the drinks is Koschei.
- [Zac] Okay. - Vampire standing on a ledge.
- And as Koschei looks up at you with his arms crossed,
he just nods to you and speaks to you in such a way
that his voice travels over the party.
You hear it in your mind.
He says, "Prince of Purpee,
we come to pay obeisance to you
in this, your domain.
Dignitaries of the Camarilla have come to pay you a visit."
- Dignitaries outside of you? - Yes, my childe.
Are they here right now?
Over in the corner you see Patty Babcock
looks over and says,
"Whoa, cool costume!"
And turning around, you see Reverend Tarker.
Turns around, going- (sniveling and sputtering)
"So many wonderful, good questions.
(unsettling groan)
And you see Patty goes,
"Yeah, sure, man. Sure."
He's gonna love Kelly.
No, keep her away from him.
Keep the nun away from the freak.
We're just making out.
(Ally laughing)
- LaVonte, LaVonte! - What's up?
- Guys, guys.
- He does this every time we take a major financial loss.
Yeah.
(players chattering over each other)
- Guys, I need everyone's attention for a second.
- [Lou] What's up, Zaeth? - So we were gonna try
to talk to, you know, this sort of coalition,
but we have some Camarilla freaks here, like the bad kind.
- A cheer goes up, and Estelle Laurent looks over to you,
Madelaine, addressing the bigger human party here.
She says,
"And of course for finding us this lovely venue,
I have to thank just an absolute whippersnapper
and go-getter who has graced this little pastoral hamlet
with her continental charm.
Madeleine d'Artois."
(polite applause)
Very gracious curtsy.
- Madelaine, I hate to put you on the spot,
but any words of wisdom for the assembled gathered here
on this haunting evening?
Oh...
Live free, die young.
- In this moment, as you begin speaking, in the crowd,
you see a vampire you have not seen in more than a century.
Standing in the crowd with an arm around
the Reverend Tarker's arm is Maria Josefina,
the prince of Berlin, who looks at you and goes,
"Mon dieu."
Oh my god, it's you.
You're in my town. That's crazy.
What are you doing here?
This is your town?
Yeah.
"I am the harpy of the Reverend Tarker.
How wonderful to find you here in Purpee."
And she smiles this long-fanged grin.
I actually think you have a premonition in this moment.
- Okay, great. - Your long-lost ex,
the sister of Marie Antoinette,
the prince of Berlin, has come with Reverend Tarker.
Koschei is here as well. The Camarilla's in full force.
Outside in a black town car,
having driven up from San Francisco,
is a vampire more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
A justicar, one of the five rulers of the Camarilla.
There's just a car outside?
- It's just a car, it's fine. - Zac!
- I didn't even really like-
There can be car vampires?
- You said there was a car, and so-
- There is a premonition you have in this moment.
A face in the car, one of five rulers of the Camarilla
who has arrived here in Purpee on this night.
The Reverend Tarker is his archon.
Tarker is his foot soldier, his enforcer out in the world.
And as he looks up, he extends his fangs and says,
"Oh, taking a little look are we, Madelaine?
Spying's wrong, and I should know."
As Richard Nixon smiles.
What?
And that's all for this episode of
"Dimension 20: City Council of Darkness."
- Let's feed him to the rogue fertility god.
- Fling cottage cheese at him-
And that's all for this episode.
Tune in next week for the thrilling finale of
"Dimension 20: City Council of Darkness."
- Oh my god. - Oh my god!
Oh my god!
Wow.
The Camarilla cut a side deal.
They were telling us to work with the Douglases and shit.
Let's go. Let's get the crew and fucking kill everyone.
Let's eat everyone!
I'm hungry!
(Brennan mimics eating quickly)
"Gonna Renfield this bitch!"
I'm gonna wait for Jack of the Pines
and try and regurgitate the missile.
Yes!
- Will you allow me to pommel horse off my horse
and kick him in the head, like it's that one '80s movie
where a guy just sort of does gymnastics at people
- and beats them up. - One million percent.
- [Zac] Great. - Ironic.
That Darkness would destroy a vampire.
"You guys all have to be careful.
I think there's vampires in this town."
No way.
- I'm covered in blood. - "My god.
True believers."
I told you.
"I'm so sorry I hit you."
Oh, it's okay.
- "Let us go home to the Lor-(screeches)"
"That's what you fucking get.
I'm gonna throw up-" (Brennan mimics vomiting)
Just shamrocks pour out.
We're gonna die, bitch.
HJ, come on! This is our Normandy!
- It's just us! Normandy had so many people.
This is our Omaha!