Last summer I got a subscription to Dropout’s streaming service. They’re the people that once formed CollegeHumor and then started Dropout a while ago. I mainly know about them through Brennan Lee Mulligan, who I know of as being a fantastic storyteller. I talked about his Worlds Beyond Number project on this blog before. Dropout has a ton of content, including fantastic panel shows like Um Actually, Gamechanger and Make some noise. They also have their own D&D show called Dimension 20. Split up into many different seasons with very different stories, this show tells all sorts of strange and interesting stories. They have seasons with drag queens, they bring on guests from everywhere but they also have several longer seasons with their main cast. I’m currently watching their season with the main cast called “The Unsleeping City” and I’d like to use this show as an excuse to talk about story setting for a bit.
Let me first introduce you to the cast, characters and storyline. The aforementioned Brennan Lee Mulligan is the dungeon master for this story and there are six players at the table. Lou Wilson – who is also on Worlds Beyond Number with Brennan – plays the charismatic nurse Kingston Brown. He is also the Vox Populi and takes care of the people of New York. Ally Beardsley plays Pete the plug, a drug dealer that becomes entangled with dream magic and turns out to be the Vox Fantasma. Yes I spelled it wrong, if you know, you know. Zac Oyama plays the charismatic firefighter Ricky Matsui who as a character thrives on Zac’s dry humor and deadpan delivery. Emily Axford plays Sofia Lee, a recently divorced soon to become magical monk. Siobhan Thompson plays the broadway star Misty Moore and finally Brian “Murph” Murphy plays the rat man that is Kugrash. Don’t worry, his backstory is obviously going to be a fun ride. These characters are dealing with some problems in New York where the unsleeping city is the magical side to this wonderful city of dreams that is filled with actual dreams, magic and monsters.
Now historically, I am a fantasy purist. It’s not that I think having a mix of fantasy and reality is a bad thing, it’s just that for the longest time that wasn’t my cup of tea. I didn’t really like most of the science fiction stories I saw or read and any fantasy stories that mixed more modern themes into them quickly made me lose interest. I think part of it came from the big desire to escape into a world that doesn’t have anything resembling ours. Just wizards, knights and dragons, things we simply do not have at all and aren’t going to be invented anytime soon. I think. I did start getting interested in more urban fantasy as time went on. I think the anime Durarara is probably the first time I found myself really invested in a setting like that. Having mythical creatures and strange powers in the middle of busy Ikebukuro felt magical in its own right. As time went on I started getting more and more interested in this genre and when I saw the theme for The Unsleeping City I got very excited. Let’s dive into the world a bit and talk about what it does that I like. I have only seen up to episode 13 when I’m writing this post, so I will only discuss events that happened up until then. With that said, there will be some spoilers from here on out.
The Unsleeping City takes place in an alternative version of New York. There are 5 boroughs in New York but there is secretly a sixth borough that is like an upside down version of the real world and is the borough of dreams. It is also called the land of Nod, and it’s ruled by a grey child of the same name. Pete the plug has close ties with this sixth borough due to his newfound magical powers as the Vox Phantasm. At first he thinks he’s just having a very strange trip, but it turns out he now has magic powers. There is something called the Umbral Arcana which prevents normal people from seeing the magical side of New York. A crashed Santa’s sled just looks like a crashed car to them and many other strange things happening will appear like they are covered in glamour so regular people don’t catch on. It reminds me a little bit of the Telltale game “the wolf among us”. A ragtag group of people meet up and start having to deal with the theft of Santa’s naughty list and a longtime villain that has been changing New York and turning it into his own home turf at the expense of the people living there. What’s so striking about this setting is how Brennan and the cast manage to make a story that could feel very disjointed in how chaotic and silly it can be at times still feel grounded in reality. I’m going to take Kugrash’ backstory as an example for this.
Kugrash – formerly Bruce Kugrich – is a two foot tall talking rat. He has spent the last 20 years taking care of the homeless and other unfortunate people in New York, even causing his estranged son Wally to refer to him as rat jesus. What Wally and his brother David don’t know is that this talking rat was once their father, who was a ruthless businessman and was cursed to be an actual rat. Living like this has changed the man over time and he realizes what a piece of shit (his words) he was. As if this isn’t sad enough, we also get to see him go through the process of trying to reconnect with his children which has very different results. Wally embraces his father with open arms, being glad to just have his dad back. Wally is a kind and simple man. He works the underground and is definitely less intelligent than the average person but makes up for this a hundredfold in his kindness and forgiveness. Accepting his father back into his life after he essentially abandoned him for twenty or more years is a sign of this. I absolutely love Wally and characters like him. David on the other hand takes more after his father in some ways and when he finally finds out that Kugrash is actually Bruce turned into a rat he doesn’t have the same forgiveness in his heart. He calls him a rat bastard and leaves, causing Wally to sob due to them fighting. Protect this man at any cost. This sort of strange story with former businessmen, homeless people, railway workers and rats could never work in a classic fantasy setting but works perfectly in the urban setting of New York.
There are a million great stories told in this series, but I want to hone in on Sofie Lee for a little bit before I end this blogpost. Sofie has recently been divorced by her husband Dale, who ran off with Isabella Infierno. Still broken up about all of this, she goes out drinking and ends up coming a little bit too close to the sleeping city before being dragged into the chaos as well. She has some martial art practice and her skills seem to only bloom once she opens her eyes to the other side of New York. Emily Axford as a player is one of the most creative D&D players I have ever seen and she’s great at using her abilities to their fullest so once she starts gaining a few levels in Warlock we start seeing what she’s really capable of. How did she get those levels in Warlock? Great question. During one of the early fights – which involves a bunch of bugs who have escaped from the dreamworld due to Pete’s mismanagement of his abilities – they end up in a bodega on fire. The owner and some others are wrapped up in spiderwebs and are freed as the fight continues. One of the wrapped up creatures is the bodega cat. Every bodega needs to have a bodega cat, and these are of course magical creatures with immense power. It only makes sense. With La Gran Gata as her new warlock patron, Sofie unlocks a whole new host of powers. Not only that, she starts getting involved with the concrete fist school, a martial arts school that is part of the unsleeping city and teaches her more powerful skills.
This complex mix of magic, angels, demons, fairies, dreams and New York makes for a very interesting setting that somehow still manages to feel grounded in its silliness. Although I don’t think it’s the sort of setting I could successfully write about myself, through watching a show like this I’ve gained a new appreciation for the more creative settings out there. Quickly adding that I’ve also been reading through the Hitch-Hikers guide to the galaxy which is another story with a curious setting. I’m broadening my horizons as they say. I’ve been thinking up some fun ideas for other stories as well, and some new settings to work with too. They’re very different from either of the ones I mentioned, but I have that itch to write about something else. The Hesitant Hero still has my love, but I have been thinking about the world almost non-stop for like four or five years now. Maybe I need to take a month or two at some point this year to focus on other stories. But first I need to get further ahead of schedule. As of right now I will run out of content in a week or two. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this little look at an interesting setting and it’s given you some inspiration to write or consume different stories than you normally do. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 