So Lorea was originally supposed to die in this episode. Long long ago when I was in the Outline phase of this project, this episode was supposed to be a bloodbath in which I took out half the cast. But when I got to working out the plot beats for this episode, I thought it would be more interesting if she lived… or rather, I didn’t like Brian’s original plan for pulling in all the big name Kindred to harvest them for their blood. I thought it would be more interesting if his vengeance was personal against Aaralyn.

Okay, we start with a flashback to a salon with Samael to show off what Cassandra has lost. (Trivia: When I was working on the Outline, it was originally Elijio who got captured but I quickly reconsidered that as being a Burying Your Gays trope. It had to be Samael because it had to be someone who truly mattered to Cassandra.) The main question of this episode is, will Cassandra be able to save Samael? And the answer is, ultimately, no.

Well, that’s bound to make her a little mad.

Next we have a lovely little scene in which the metamours begin to address losing Samael. Cassandra has plunged off the deep end into grief. Elijio does not attempt to reassure her, only how to manage her grief. He’s been around a while and this isn’t new territory to him. I am proud of the Buddhist/Catholic banter, which is something I wanted to explore in the show more than, alas, is probably in there. Ah well, there’s always Season 2 in which I’ve planned to add an explicitly Buddhist character to challenge Cassandra’s very Western beliefs. Anyhow, this is more poly stuff. When something has happened to someone you’re close to, it’s happened to everyone in the polycule, and I wanted to show poly folks dealing with loss here.

This episode is all about tearing Cassandra’s heart to pieces so we continue the rending with Lorea denying Cassandra their one hostage. Cassandra has to be desperate for the rest of this episode to work so we set her up here to accept any help she can get.

And then there’s Siobhan. My direction to Rachel for this scene was “if you could kill Siobhan, you would.” Alas, Alyrian was only available to record on evenings when Rachel wasn’t available to all their scenes were recorded asynchronously (which is a miracle that the ending of Episode 4 worked as well as it did). But still, Siobhan’s disdain for Cassandra (“I got you help, WTF more did you want?”) comes across well. Anyhow, the main plot beat of this scene is that Cassandra gets the contact for the Naval Liaison. This will become important later.

Following this, Cassandra gets to express her frustration to Esther, who indicates the court has no plans to help out Samael. But Esther is not without sympathy – she is willing to call back Vanishing Girl (who I adore). I love it anytime Cait gets to perform – her Esther performance is truly on fire. Also, the bit in which Cassandra says, “Then teach me to vanish like she does” is a callback to when Samael was talking about actual humans who can do magic (a.k.a. mages). Teaching Cassandra to be a mage is not something remotely interesting to Esther.

And Brian’s back! As mentioned in Episode 3, I was thinking about bringing him back then and thank goodness I didn’t because his re-appearance here is much more surprising instead of him showing up like a bad penny. Anyhow, he continues to be an asshole and Cassandra nonetheless needs him and I love their dynamic. Brian is obviously manipulating her and she is so desperate for allies she could care less. Kudos to Michael for bringing on the smarm. In my other show, Victory Asterisk, he was going to play the sweetest little cream puff, but here, he got to really go full ham. Bravo.

Also I want to give a shoutout to my long-time actor and friend Julia Lunetta, who once again does the news announcer role. She’s been in every audio drama I’ve worked on (except Victory, I think) and it behooves me to mention her favorite show in which she starred, Second Shift podcast. Second Shift beat Mask of Inanna to the release by a year or so, and we were both up for a Parsec award (I won). It’s about a bunch of college kids isekai’d into a fantasy land and having to deal with magic and such, and their website describes it better than I can. Anyway, Julia, there’s your plug.

Well, reluctantly, Cassandra takes Brian home and ponders that she really should have staked him then. And in retrospect, things would have been a lot better if she had. Ah well. There’s so much we don’t know about the future.

Boy, Aaralyn is not happy to hear that Brian has disobeyed a direct order from her never to return. He must have a damned good reason, right? Right? On a technical note, I have Cassandra waiting in the hallway outside Aaralyn’s chambers while Esther goes in to tell her. And Esther comes back a lot faster than she would have in the actual situation. You don’t want to keep the listeners waiting to long – drama needs to happen – so I fudge time like this all the fucking time. Whenever I do leave a long pause it’s for a good reason, and this didn’t warrant a pause or anything.

After a short stop to pick up Brian and the phones, we have another SFX nightmare for me. Writing Alicia always has it out for Editing Alicia. That bitch has me so many complex scenes, I want to throttle her. That said, when it sounds terrific, it makes me very happy to hear the final result – after my brain can distance itself from the editing work. Usually a day or so. Listening to a scene on the same day as I cut it means that I remember what I was thinking when I decided to put that phrase there and that SFX there with that panning effect etc. Anyhow, my greatest regret in this scene is that I didn’t put the mic under Amber when she did her recording. I put it over her, which meant she wasn’t talking directly into it while she was sitting in the studio. So her recording doesn’t sound great. I’m sorry. We’d have to re-record it to fix it and I’m not putting Amber through that performance again. (Her performance is really, really great.) I did what I could with the audio – it sounds okay, I guess.

Anyhow, originally, Cassandra was going to do some “ignore all previous instructions” shit on the T2M, or at least convince it that Brian was a fictional character like Lestat from its training material. Both of these were dumb and I’m glad I settled on making Brian unrecognizable to the T2M. (Way to go Aaralyn!) Another bit of artifice in this scene is that the blood being ripped from the Kindred’s bodies goes on way too long – they don’t have that much blood in them, but we needed to have that SFX going in the background to indicate that the T2M wasn’t finished killing Aaralyn yet. This is just how things go when you’re making a fictional show. As I’ve probably said before, sound effects are all about being so natural that the listener doesn’t hear them. That is, that they seem natural and fade into the background, and the listener would notice if they weren’t there.

So Brian does his villain speech, fills his bucket, gets killed, etc. etc. And then Cassandra gets to completely fall apart from her trauma. Which Rachel loved to do. She’s endured all that murder and her response is not to not-process it, but to go full speed ahead into it. She goes ballistic. She talks to Brian’s corpse because it’s amusing to her and she finally doesn’t have to hold her feelings back. She also recognizes her one chance to pit computer against computer and heads off to the Anarchs.

By the way, I do try to keep in mind when a Kindred dusts and when they don’t… retroactively after I’ve recorded the dialogue, but still, I try. Brian wouldn’t dust because he’s so young. Aaralyn definitely dusts and I have that SFX in there. And I cut the line about the Anarchs wanting to check out her body. There. Discrepancy solved. At the Anarchs, Lorea makes the huge mistake of letting Cassandra in to see the TAM after Cassandra has made it clear how much she hates it. Bad call. But this show is all about bad calls and wonderful drama that ensues.

In the battle of the computers, a lot of the influence for this scene came from a friend of mine who I’ve been writing with for a couple years now. (I’m unsure which of their myriad names they want me to use so I’ll just call them Coyote++.) Coyote++ said that the scene should have some technical grounding. It shouldn’t be a wizard’s duel, so I have the TAM and T2M look for exploits in each other’s code and try to corrupt each other’s volumes until both are unusable. Also Coyote++ came up with the term “BLOODOS” (a.k.a. Blood Disk Operating System (DOS)) so credit where credit is due. Trunk Slamchest did a great job voicing both computers and I enjoyed overlaying their voices over each other as they continue their attacks.

Now, as my advice to future writers, if your character has come to a space, have multiple plot beats happen in that space. So Lorea discovers what’s happened to Mandy and informs Cassandra. I distinctly remember this scene when I was working on the outline – seeing Mandy dead, her face pointed upwards with mushrooms sprouting from her mouth. Judith wasn’t content with killing her – she wanted the Anarchs to know who got by their defenses to do it. She’s still sore from getting beaten up all those decades ago.

As well, one of the major themes of this episode is “Kindred don’t change.” And this scene gives Cassandra some space to lament this. “You fight and you fight and you fight and you kill. And what does it get you? You could live forever. You told MANDY she could live forever. What is the fucking point of any of you?” And the answers suck. We’re just too human for our own good, with all our fears and patterns.

Back at Camarilla HQ, things are bad. Dee delivers a fantastic “There is currently no Camarilla!” Esther is appointed interim-Prince. And everyone blames Cassandra… but not enough to immediately kill her. Judith makes it clear that that may come later. I love Cassandra’s little tête-à-tête with Judith. Despite Judith being the one with the real power, Cassandra still accosts her like an equal. And it is very clear that they hate each other now. Good set-up, Writing Me! Also I love that Judith expresses regret for having saved Cassandra but come on, she’d have never guessed Cassandra would be in the position she’s in now.

Next up is the Great Breakup with Lorea. Damn, Katherine delivered again. She’s furious at Cassandra or having broken her trust and destroyed her deterrent. So many people who want Cassandra dead make the mistake of letting her speak first. She’s going to kill Judith. I came to this decision late in the scripting process, that is, it’s not in the outline. When I was putting together the plot beats for Episode 6, that’s when I realized she would want to kill Judith. I checked the outline, didn’t see anything that absolutely required Judith to live, and well, that was that. And it’s good enough for Lorea to give Cassandra a stay of execution.

I also love Cassandra’s admission that “I want to be in Samael’s death grip. Allowed to live.” Being in that perpetual state of active submission and fear is fucking hot and now that’s gone. What’s left for her? She can’t leave the Kindred world. And we’ll explore more of that next episode.

Then Elijio comes back, poor Kindred. He gets a moment with Cassandra where they continue lamenting their loss of their loved one. I especially like the depth of his line, “The most horrid of deities. Those who dwell in the blackest of existences. Unnamed and scorned. Who, of all God’s creatures, know best how to laugh.” Because laughter is best and most genuine when pointed upwards. Also, I love Cassandra’s distinction between Elijio being Camarilla and being Samael’s. We all have to choose between our work and our loved ones at some point and there’s often consequences, but fuck those. We know what’s more important.

We take a quiet moment where Cassandra speaks with Vanishing Girl. I directed Cassandra to speak very casually, almost monotone, to show how burned out and eaten away inside she is. She both hopes and understands that she will receive no hope. She pledges her support to whoever is in charge. It doesn’t really matter to her now.

Next, Cassandra baits the trap, getting Amanda to deliver the summons to Judith instead of bringing it to Judith herself. Judith is always suspicious and no reason not to play into her fears.

And at last, Cassandra disposes of both the Army Kindred and Judith in one fell swoop. Dee had a fabulous time dying twice (for each take). Rachel also had a great time performing as Cassandra taunting her.

My, there are a lot of SFX in this scene.

As far as repercussions go, killing Judith wasn’t just for Cassandra’s own benefit. She was doing the Ventrue a favor, as you’ll see next episode. Thanks for listening.