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[bravenot]

Full map of Exandria, 2025 update!

Hi again everyone! It's been another year, and with Campaign 4 taking us to another world, I thought it was time to release another update to my definitive map of Exandria!

Linked below is a download file, which includes both high and standard resolution .pngs and well as the low res .jpeg that you see in this post. Also includes the Wonderdraft map file, for anyone who wants to take this map and modify it for themselves!

High-resolution map images and Wonderdraft file download:

Pay What You Want Ko-fi link [HERE]

Only a few changes have been made to my map in the last year, summarized below:

Added Seedfeld from The Re-Slayer's Take to Demithore Valley.

Added Port Callivon and Gremidash mentioned by Raishan in The Legend of Vox Machina to Mornset Countryside.

Added Torm's Hill and Snowgrave pass from ExU: Divergence to Mornset Countryside; added unofficial roads connecting Torm's Hill to Bronbog.

Added Seagate from ExU: Divergence to Othanzia.

Added village of Lichenvel from Vox Machina: Stories Untold to Menagerie Coast

Added village of Vashlow mentioned by K'ryyn in Critical Role Campaign 1 to Menagerie Coast

Added island of Evaterena and the village of Yutazo from Tag Team at the Teeth to the Shattered Teeth.

Once again I want to give special thanks to Don Farland for his original fan map of Exandria, created all the way before the release of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, upon which I originally based my map of the Shattered Teeth, to Niko Vanhala for his fan-made maps of Marquet and Issylra, upon which I have loosely based my maps of those continents. And of course another thank you to Andy Law and Deven Rue for the official cartography of Exandria!

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this is my attempt at doodling caduceus (second try)

heavily inspired by @c-kiddo 's work

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Find a protest near you here: X, X, X, X & X

Donate or join Palestine action here: PALESTINE ACTION

A collections of GoFundMe links: https://gazafunds.com/all

Donate eSIMS cards: X, X

Donate to food disputers: X, X, X, X, X, X & X

[bravenot]

all of the dream....... how does it mean ??? 🕺🪩🎶

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the prison abolitionist theory leaving my body when i think about essek thelyss’ war crimes

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Thinking about this kid again. Emo teen Luc Brenatto you will always be famous to me.

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there's this early talks (maybe in an after dark part) where they're talking about very early C2 ships and Travis just goes ">;) I like Caleb and Nott." which has led to my headcanon that Fjord spent all of C2 thinking Caleb and Veth were a couple, which wasn't at all changed by finding out Veth was married to Yeza because as a sailor, he's probably deeply normalized the concept of location-based polyamory.

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Oh, you're...together? Sure.

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the prison abolitionist theory leaving my body when i think about essek thelyss’ war crimes

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she would literally love labubus

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I've been watching Takes Unrolled (highly recommended, if anyone reading is considering it) and one thing I really like about it is how grounded in the community of Alma and their connections to each other the main party is. Something which has thrown to sharp relief how individualistic the ethos of Critical Role Campaign 3 ended up being.

Despite the stakes of the campaign being setting-reshaping, the main party was insular to the point that they never took the time to consider what everyone else in the world would want as an outcome for the gods, and when they had an idea of what the consensus of the peoples of the world was, via the plan created by the Exandrian Accord, they ultimately betrayed them for their own whims. They also never seriously considered what would be the most fair outcome for the Ruidians at the end of it all (indeed, when the time came to advocate for them, Bells Hells complained about having to do it), despite lamenting their lot after scouting the Red Moon. The party also never meaningfully built alliances or relationships outside their own ranks; of their major allies in the endgame, only one -Ira Wendagoth- was not a part of any character's backstory. And this was not for lack of options, Bells Hells could have built tighter connections with the Volition, or the Grim Verity, or any of the numerous other factions that had a stake in this, they simply did not.

Bells Hells, and indeed the narrative as a whole, also had an issue with conflating the individual with the systemic, something others have noted. Notably, the attempted takeover of the town of Hearthdell by worshipers on the Dawnfather from Vasselheim ultimately given less weight in the endless debates of whether or not the gods are worth saving than the gods not giving Imogen or Ashton everything they asked for the moment they asked for it. Indeed the meat of those debates themselves never touched on what the people of the world, worshipers of the gods or not, would want, and no effort was ever expended on the part of Bells Hells to ask. On the level of the narrative, there is no evidence in the text of the campaign of systemic religious abuses by the gods or their championing institutions beyond the single example of Hearthdell. While both Tuldus and Bor'dor experienced religiously motivated violence that drove them into the Vanguard, neither's experience points to systemic issues, rather they indiciate a family using religion as a means of abuse (Tuldus) or religion was ultimately ancillary to what was more an issue of social class (Bor'dor). The Exandrian Accord gives equal weight to the voices of those who follow the Exandrian Pantheon and those who don't; Keyleth's speech to the Accord before the final attack on the Malleus Key is just as important as the High Hierophant's. Despite gestures towards the idea that Ruidusborn may be persecuted by the religious, Fearne and Imogen are at worst distrusted, and in Imogen's case that has less to do with being Ruidusborn as it is being the daughter of one of Ludinus Da'leth's right hand women. And in this absence of portrayed systemic issues, the individual poor experiences of Tuldus or Bor'dor or Imogen and Ashton or even Ludinus himself in end, wind up being held up as examples of systemic problems when they simply are not.

Much has also been discussed about how the narrative of C3 had to warp itself in order to push Bells Hells through it in the role of the main characters, given their constant refusal to make decisions and constant attempts to abdicate their responsibilities. One thing that resulted from this is the narrative saying: These are the main characters because they are Special Individuals. The party gets to go to Ruidus because Imogen and Fearne are Ruidusborn and one is needed for this mission, likewise this is why they are ultimately sent after Ludinus. Rather then being sent because they are the best people for the job or because they are particularly passionate about it, they're simply Special and therefore get to do this big important thing. Again, others have noted how apt the title "Complicated Chosen" ended up being for them, and one aspect of that is it reflects how their role in the Red Solstice was dictated far more by who they were rather than what they did.

The result of all of the above is narrative that centres the individual person, who they are and what they want and what they have experienced, far beyond the wider community and how individual fits within it and contributes to it. And for a story with such world-shaking stakes and such a setting-altering outcome as Catatheosis, being so individual was ultimately to its detriment, because it ended up feeling like the protagonists imposing their will on the world, rather than doing what they did in service to it.

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i would never, but i did.

[bravenot]

wanted to play with a new watercolor and some of my ink pens, ended up sketching a little Caleb. i referenced the pose from an in-game screenshot but otherwise free-handed the thing, and it was really fun to figure out how i'd like to go about the shading right in the moment. wanna try drawing an Essek next, see if the process comes more naturally now that i've had some practice 🙂‍↕️

tip jar

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personally i think travis willingham is far too comfortable saying the word bitch and i know most of the other male cr cast members do it too but when he says it it grates on me the most

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hey, i’m a big fan of yours! love your art and how much you love cad (from a fellow cad enjoyer).

as per your recent post, i was wondering what you thought of essek as a character. i know so many people love him (including me lol) but id love to hear your thoughts on it, since you don’t really post about him much and i think ranked him low at some point (?might be misremembering).

just to make it clear this is not in any way a hate ask!! i’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts. thanks!

hey :-p thank u !! lets go cadnation

rest of answer below cut bc its too long

this is interesting, now i have to have proper thoughts bc usually people are just rude to me about this when i express not particularly liking him . i will try. as a villain i do find him compelling, particularly pre-reveal and during rewatch, like watching him ask tmn to retrieve the beacons from ikithon knowing full-well the assembly would absolutely kill tmn if they were caught was rly slimy in a way i thinks good for a villain. ill not go into the adeen stuff bc i just did in prev post. basically ye think he's a good villain but that the covid hiatus meant that tmn reckoning with the reveal of him betraying their trust and everything else he'd done got kind of forgotten. not that it wasnt touched on but i noticed it in my rewatch bc obvs not months of gaps between this time . sort of like when nott accidentally killed cad but taliesin was sick the next week so they said they'd talk about it later but never did, it just happens sometimes. but generally, my dislike of him i think just comes from straight up i do not like his character type and its made worse by the fandom babying him and calling him little baby nicknames etc. guy who does terrible things and then acts kind of pathetically about it is not a character i fw (also i find it frustrating that he will say these self-deprecating things that are like true, he did do something horrific, and then jester has to comfort him about it . like essek stand up stop asking for this womans emotional labour you hurt her!!!!!!!!!! i feel bad for jester bc she obviously rly thought of him as their friend). also again a thing that is good for a villain but i personally find so frustrating and anger-inducing (again, good character i just hate his ass) is his distance from people he hurts. he lives in a gated neighbourhood and is extremely wealthy and powerful with huge influence in their government and servants he doesnt have to ever get his hands dirty even literally, he doesnt even touch the floor. which like htis is realistic, it is staring us right in the face, the people who start wars are the ones who wont be hurt and my anger at these people irl carries over. not nearly in the same extent but its not ignorable to me, the parallels, its a realistic type of person to exist. like when he starts whining about feeling bad i just end up rolling my eyes like get UPPP do the work and do something!!!!! but instead he runs from it forever. theres also this from the dnd book guide to exandria which is crazy:

like thats inexcusable to me. thats horrific idk what to say haha . and i see discourse of like if characters deserve redemption arcs and this isnt about 'deserve' bc idc about that im just saying that i hate his ass personally like just out of my own personal taste and man i just dont care if he likes soup either. he does begin to change yes but only when directly confronted with hurting tmn , not with when he was hurting adeen (he said it felt 'freeing' when the dynasty gave adeen to the empire to presumably be tortured and killed so thats like. um.) not when his actions caused him to work with people he knew were evil and hurting people and not when he heard news of the farming communities and working class people and conscripted young soldiers who were murdered in the war he knew he would start and was even excited about for his research. its like this indescribable amount of privilege that none of tmn will ever have in their lives. (some of them (veth) have been very directly effected by what he did, so thats an interesting dynamic thats not super touched on) so yes, interesting character who i just dont personally like the personality of (i dont connect with the ambition thing of 'wizard hubris' or 'former gifted kid' buzzwords people like to throw around about him so like whaddever man he's 100 yrs old get it together essek), and am curious what they will do about in the animated show now they can make more concrete adaptive choices :p

this may or may not make sense but it is long so i will not be rereading lol it is what it is 🧘 #mylongpost

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New profile pic/logo design on all CR Socials.

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I like tom cardy in this liveshow he’s funny and surprisingly good at d&d