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Is it just me, or is Rowan autistic coded?

I ask this as an autistic person, and I've got to say, if he is, he's wonderful autistic rep

He's just a sweet boy with special interests, but is still good at social situations and is clearly smart and a valued member of the team

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I've been wanting to say my own piece about the repeated calls I keep seeing for Vax to let Keyleth mourn him, either by calling off his ravens or, worse, by breaking his pact with the Matron and dying more fully, beyond the reach of resurrection, so Keyleth can finally accept that he's gone. It both places full blame on Vax for Keyleth's choices, which are in turn rooted in her refusal to afford him any agency in his own choices; and affords no respect for Vax's choice to honour his oath and sacrifice his life for his family, while giving full respect to Keyleth's choice to stay mad about it for thirty years.

I have no problem with Keyleth feeling this way, because she isn't the one calling for Vax to die more comprehensively because his death would be easier for her to deal with than his absence and therefore Vax, the Matron, and all of the dead of Exandria should have to accommodate that, no matter the cost to them. I have full sympathy for the way the nature of Vax's continued existence, his ability to act on the physical world in ways an evil arch-mage can wager his life's work on, makes it exceedingly difficult for her to see through to what is nevertheless true: That Vax is as dead as he needs to be for her to grieve for him and move forward.

Vax is already beyond the reach of resurrection, either because in his celestial form he is not “dead enough” for it to work on him, or because he wouldn't be a “willing creature” even if it did. Just because Keyleth will not accept this does not mean Vax should have to be wiped from existence in order for her to get it through her head that he is not permanently coming back.*

That's not fair to Vax and, above-table, it's wildly unfair to Liam. The idea that he should have to take the ending he so lovingly crafted for his character, out of his own grief at the time, and consign him instead to dust—because Matt sent Keyleth a raven every day, and then Marisha turned it into the reason Keyleth can never get over Vax—is just mind-bendingly awful. I'm fine with Marisha sticking to her guns about Keyleth never getting over Vax. I wish Keyleth would find peace instead—she has such a long life of loss ahead of her, it does not bode well if this is how she takes the first one—but I am not going to knock a firm choice, as long as the player owns it and isn't putting it on someone else. Liam also made a firm choice, hers shouldn't cancel his out.

We all grow new selves around our losses, That is the way of it. Keyleth's current incarnation is a creature of anger, but she seems aware of it, and so far she's weaponised it to fairly noble ends. She will not wear her heart on her sleeve—Matt played her as cagey where Vax was concerned, and Marisha has been careful to distinguish between the front she puts on and what she actually feels—and she seems terrified of her own hope.

Well, I hate to tell her but that hope never leaves you. That Vax exists in a state from which she thinks he could be recovered only amplifies what is there regardless—the wish that the person you lost could still be with you. Vax's unique circumstances did not create it, and that wish will not go away if he ceases to exist (or just stops sending the damn ravens and stays in his lane). All she will have lost is what she did have left of him. And the reminders of him will still come for her, from everywhere, from the simplest, the stupidest, the most unexpected places, and whenever the fuck they want to.

He will always be there.

If that one particular raven stops coming, Vax will become every raven she ever sees, anywhere. And if it isn't a raven, it will be the snowdrops, or a song she hears, a scent she catches, a colour he loved to see on her, the cup he always drank from, some vegetable that was overcooked one time and his rant about it was so unhinged she hears it every time she eats even a perfectly prepared one, a dumb random factoid about pens she only knows because he told her and she can never pick one up without thinking about it, a joke she hears that he would love and the immediate thought that “I have to tell Vax this one!” that reaches her brain before the part of her that knows can head it off. If the Matron frees him and he ceases to exist, that wish will fucking endure. There is no degree of acceptance in the world, no measure of time, that can kill it.

It was there in the light of the Big Moon that Orym sat under on the deck of the skyship when he pulled out his sending stone to talk to Dorian and tell him “I wish you were here,” before turning to Will in the sky and saying, “I miss you, too.” He had died himself only days earlier, with the thought of seeing Will again in his head, and the stone that connects him to Dorian in his hand. Will has been explicitly beyond the reach of resurrection from the beginning, we never knew him, and it still took Orym six years to be comfortable with his feelings for someone else, Will has brushed up against him in his dance with Dorian at every turn. He always will. And that's okay.

It will be this way for Keyleth, and that will be okay too.

Destroying Vax only robs him of the chance to fulfil the sacred duty he pledged himself to, the Matron of her Champion, and the rest of the world of the comfort he brings them in death. It does nothing for Keyleth but force her to see something clearly that she should have come to understand anyway, and then she'll realise that, and he will only have been sacrificed to her refusal to see it otherwise.

* Unless, you know, he does come back, and then all those ravens and the occasional drop in for a bit of rescue (from which he ends up needing to be rescued) retroactively become signs that the thread connecting him to her had never been completely severed; and her “inability to get over him” will be reframed as a “refusal to give up on him” that the story has both validated and rewarded. But let's pretend we don't have to think about that.

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Something about Vax saying he "would not have [the Matron] go" that I don't think is sinking in, either for the characters or for a good chunk of the audience: if she was eaten or driven away and if Vax wasn't destroyed or rendered standard-issue dead without the divine power that gives him what influence he still has on the Material Plane, he wouldn't celebrate his newfound freedom. He'd mourn just as Pike would mourn if Predathos took Sarenrae from her.

Perhaps he could, eventually, put himself back together, as he asked the others to do after his own death. But dealing with that on top of the baggage of returning to the Material after thirty years as a celestial would be ROUGH. Could his family provide the support he'd need through that initial grieving and adjustment process? Or would their joy at the demise of that "wretched bitch" rub unbearable amounts of salt into the bleeding wound in his soul? Could he bring himself to be near the people he's spent thirty years longing for, if they remained adamant in refusing to understand why he was hurting? Or would he find himself feeling more kinship with the other newly-deityless angels who'd been left behind to pick up the pieces?

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a not-as-quick-as-originally-intended clarification at least on my personal thoughts re: the Apex War, and this campaign overall:

I agree that it would have been nice for C3 to have been more rooted in Marquet; I have said this frequently and I still hope we get to see Marquet in future stories. However, while I want Apex War lore because it's interesting to me, the fact is, there's no way to fix the fact that we spent this campaign without any strong understanding of the Apex War when it is a core element of the backstory of a significant villain (Otohan) and when Matt is invoking it to underscore the show of unity.

For what it's worth, I think there's two separate "what I wish this campaign could have been" versions and I feel like a lot of people are conflating them.

One is, for lack of a better way to put it, a more Mighty Nein-style campaign that delved into the culture and place and conflicts of Marquet by focusing on the characters first and foremost, the way Campaign 2 delved into Wildemount. I would have loved this very much. This would not have supported the moon plot, however.

Another is one that honors Matt's vision of the nigh-millennium-long-plot Ludinus hatched and the secrets of Ruidus and all of Exandria coming together, and is simply...better. The Apex War should have impacted Imogen and Ashton, growing up in its aftermath, and could have been a part of their backstories. FCG's chassis being found could have been tied to it. This in turn would have set up Otohan in more depth. And that could have been handled with very little extra effort - literally just a call to Laura and Taliesin with a lore dump, and a few more hints in the Bassuras arc.

I think the fact that Bells Hells are a group from across Exandria - representation from all continents but the Shattered Teeth, multiple people with ties to several continents, and even an extraplanar member - is not a bad thing for a story about the world uniting against the threat of Predathos! It's extremely fair to be disappointed and let down (especially if you are from a culture on which Marquet is based and was hoping to see it) but actually I'm here to say the fact that C3 isn't like C2 is not bad, in this case. It's that the Apex War clearly has backstory and lore that would inform the story and certainly informs how Matt is playing it, and literally no one else has access to that information, including the players. I would love to go back and get it because I love the world of Exandria and its lore, but from a narrative perspective the ship already sailed. So my complaint isn't "why wasn't this solely about Marquet" in this case - it's "there was clear setup for this story that would have made it better, and there wasn't an effort to limit what the players played or seed it into the plot so that it would actually come up."

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"When will your time be served? When will your debt be paid?"

Keyleth keeps thinking about Vax being indebted to the Matron. And that makes sense, because it is a way to explain why he left her. If he had no choice, there is no reason to blame him, and instead she can blame the Matron for keeping him away.

Except I don't think Vax is still indebted to the Matron, at least not in the way that Keyleth is implying. Vax wilfully followed his God. He wilfully upheld the things the Matron stands for - one of them accepting death as part of life, even his own.

How can Vax allow himself to be saved? How can he do that and not revoke anything he has learned to accept through worshipping the Matron?

Keyleth has to accept that it was Vax's choice. That is wasn't the Matron who killed him, but Vecna, and that Vax was not willing to be resurrected.

So she can finally be angry with Vax. So she can finally be angry with the situation. And so she can finally start to heal.

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Sorry just really emotional about Scanlan (Sam) crying because he couldn't save his 9th level spell to save Vax and Scanlan being the one to pull the beacon out of the tower.

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I think it's safe to say now that Vax is completely fine with the situation he finds himself in. He has all but said those exact words to Vox Machina.

"I would rather not have [The Raven Queen] gone"

"Death is a part of life"

And this should put Keyleth blaming The Matron for "taking Vax from her", and Pike "not giving up on Vax" into perspective.

I don't get why we are blaming The Matron time and time again when Vecna is the one who killed Vax. He would not be in this situation if not for Vecna. Meanwhile, The Matron has to look over all life and death.

Matt said it well in the wrap party for TLoVM S3. She's a neutral entity, she's persuing her own goals,regardless of what society, or even her, deems moral and just. She has to protect the sanctity of death. In fact, she's basically said why to Bell's Hells, she needs to prevent stagnation.

If not for The Matron, how could we ever truly stop people like Lorenzo, the Chroma Conclave, Ripley, the Briarwoods, Avantika? And how do you think people would feel if their loved ones were disrespected and brought back as zombies?

How about we look at the materials for spells that defy the matron, things like clone and resurrection spells. Spells that when tied together can gove one functional immortality. But these are also expensive and powerful spells, that require a ton of resources. This can create a world where the rich and powerful, through magic, are immortal, unable to die. While the common folk do not have that luxury. And this is a world that many a cyberpunk story depicts.

Even on a smaller level, it becomes a world where some people have to wonder why their family member, their sibling, their lover, their friend, was not brought back when someone else was. And that is an incredibly unfair world

But, there's also a spiritual component here. To Vax, this is his choice. It was mentioned before that he would not be willing to come back through true resurrection. It was his choice to accept his death, his fate. To take that choice away from him feels wrong on many levels, from a level of personal agency to that of denying someone their faith. The desire to bring him back to life is incredibly selfish on Keyleth's, and the rest of Vox Machina's, part.

And, I think there's a final component here. Vax is not just dead. While none of the books explicitly say as much, his role as a psychopomp means something. To me, as a polytheist, Vax achieved apotheosis, he is a minor god now, like Heraclese and Psyche in greek myth. It is a metamorphosis for him into something else.

One of my friends has been talking a lot about how "people rebel against the gods" is not a compelling reason to say that the system is irreprably broken. And that's because they, frankly, have a raw deal. Erathis and Pelor and Bahamut, as entities of law, are going to constantly piss off the punk types like Ashton by representing law. Corellon and Avandra, as entities of freedom and change, are going to constantly piss off people who see law as a virtue. And while Melora and Kord can be channeled to do good things, nature and storms and war are forces that do not care about good and evil. They will cause blights and disasters because that is what they are.

And the center of this issue is The Raven Queen. The protector of the dead. The one who stands against necromancy. Because it is important that oir rest, when we die, not be disturbed. And because of that, she cannot make exceptions

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Something I found interesting in how they fleshed out Ripley in season 3 of LoVM is that they kinda made her a mini version of Ludanis, one Ludanis caused.

To Ripley, the Cerberus Assembly are what the gods are to Ludanis. They destroyed her home and killed everyone she loved

To Ripley, Orthat and Percy's guns are predathos, an entity with its own motives and power that will even the scales but cause untold destruction.

And I think this helps to show why Ludanis isn't the unsung hero. How can we possibly forgive him when we all agree that Ripley has been nothing but flat out wrong.

And she was just an amoral arms manufacturer. Ludanis is a straight-up terrorist

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"Perhaps you belong here, too. A scared little boy, forced into a pact with the Matron. You must serve her every whim... or she'll punish you with a ghastly future. But I can shield you from your pact. Like Percy, here you could be free, unbound to her authority. Give in to your vengeful heart, champion. For the Matron's fate cannot be changed."

I still need to write a whole essay comparing and contrasting Zerxus's deal with Asmodeus with Vax coming back as a revenant, but for now I'll say that I love the added foil aspect of the above summing up Zerxus's probable reasons for throwing his lot in with Vecna, but rather than accepting the offer as Zerxus did, Vax pulls himself out of Orthax's grasp using the thread of fate as an anchor, simultaneously rejecting the interpretation of his deal with the Matron as a form of enslavement that was "forced" upon him and highlighting that Orthax would have been a far crueler master than the god he's claiming he could "free" Vax from, which might well prove to be the case with Vecna and Zerxus.

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As a polytheist (hellenic, norse and hoping to add celtic in the future), I feel like I should adress why Bell's Hells as a storyline, and parts of the community, have been affecting me so much.

I applaud Matt in a recent 4SD saying that he's not trying to make a commentary on actual religion. I applaud Brennan in Downfall taking such a nuanced approach and showing how hard is to be good when you have thay much power (part of the thesis of that miniseries is basically Superman's "world of cardboard speach).

But a lot of that means little when Ludanis and the vanguard are constantly calling on real world antitheist (read: redit aetheist, but I' using a more serious term because I'm talking seriously) rhetoric. There's a lot of blame placed on the gods from the actions of their followers (Ajudicators, Hearthdell, that first vanguard member they read the mind of).

In fact, the argument that the gods control mortals seems to be based on "oh, God has a plan" which is a uniquely christian concept. And this idea most likely only arose in our world as a way to explain why an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibanevolent deity would allow bad things to happen (instead of saying we have free will and are allowed to choose, but I digress). But this doesn't apply in exandria. Half the primes are neural alignment, and the Matron is the only one concerned with fate.

And how are the gods actually preventing mortals from being free? Brennan discussed the destruction of Aeor as "what does it mean that mortals cannot even have the capability to challenge the gods", but that's a shallow reading in my opinion. Because someone, sometime in Aeor would fire the Maleus Factorum, all it takes is one person. These arguments feel hollow given that we have seen of Exandria, and doesn't even match up how people see the cosmology.

I recognize how much religious trauma sucks, and how that affects how you see religion. I understand for some people, faith in a religion is just something you don't need, or you find it doesn't align with how you see the world. But demonizing religion is not freedom.

Let's remember that when FCG started following the changebringer, Ashton kept trying to get them to stop. Let's remember the kid in Hearthdell who was pressured to cinvert back to worshiping the Eidolons. Let's remember how Ludanis and Ashton scoff at how anyone who finds meaning in a relationship with the gods. They don't care if they're taking something important away from people, if they're taking something important away from people.

I've been getting recommended more and more antitheist videos over this last year. People who are, unprompted, trying to debunk Religion as a concept. They deconstruct any meaning it could have for people. They mock it at it's basic components, calling gods "imaginary friends", and people's relationships with them "imaginationships". They talk about how it's irrational.

How is this preaching any different from the evangelists we're all tired of? How is denying and mocking and "debunking" something people find meaning in okay? And, overall, how is it okay to bother people who are quiet and personal about their religion with this? How is me giving faith and tribute to Athena and Odin and the muses a threat to you that needs to be eliminated?

If you are someone who agrees with Ludanis and Ashton solely within the realms of the campaign, and outside of it, you're completely cool with religions, I'm sorry for dragging you into this. But I feel like I need to say this because every time Ludanis opens his mouth, it's the same bullshit I have to deal with in real life. And I'm so tired of it.

Storylines that handle killing gods usually do it better because the god of the story is a metaphor. They're not intentionally or unintentionally commenting on religion. The problem with Bell's Hells is that all of the anti-god arguments feel so much like the tired things that people are saying in real life, that gods and religion are bad.

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I recognize there are many world religions that prohibit alcohol but as someone who belongs to one that extremely doesn't I'm like Matt why can't the Vasselheim clergy get a little toasty sometimes

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I want to get ahead of some members if the community because I know it will have stired up some things

They made death more important in Legend of Vox Machina than it is in d&d

Vax being punished for reviving percy in the animated show makes sense. It's not the raven queen being cruel and a tyrant. The sanctity of death is important. If she lets her champion revive people willy nilly, the rules around death start to break down

Death is important. Things need to die and fall away. In the realm of divine law, Vax got a DUI

Also, It's an elegant way to tie in the revenant of it all in later seasons, since they're making death more impactful.

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To me, this last episode, particularly Ashton's talk with the titan, highlights where the nuance is failing.

Matt is attempting to show every possible possible outcome as equally viable, without giving it any downsides.

We don't get an exploration of the pro-god perspective because then we'd feel the consequences of the gods being eaten by Predathos

We don't see how the gods harm mortals because then saving the gods keeps us in that eternal cycle.

There are other forces keeping sealed evils at bay, and other sources of divine magic, so we don't need to rely on the gods here

Maybe the world hasn't had enough chaos, and getting rid of the gods would be good. But maybe there was too much chaos before the gods came.

And all of this really feels like when people say "question the man", but don't follow through on it. The questioning is little more than attitude and defiance because "the man", "the authority", "the throne," exists. This is Ashton.

This being in contrast to chesterton's fence (which I briefly mentioned in a previous post on this topic). It's the concept that before in a previous post, but to go more in depth, Chesterton's fence says you should understand why a law, tradition, or structure is in place before removing it. And this is Imagen's perspective.

Overall, the only feedback we're getting is "here's the benefits of this course of action", woth none of the downsides presented. And that's why Bells Hells has been so indecisive. Imogen and Orym can talk all they want about the good things the gods do, but it's abstract and not present for Ashton and Dorian. Ashton and Dorian can talk about how the gods hurt people, but Imogen and Orym don't have the proof that it outweighs the good they do.

We need to see trade offs here

Keep the gods around, they still do good, but here's the too much control they have that you can see for your own eyes

Kill the gods and enact freedom, maybe predathos destroys a bunch of shit, and the gods aren't here to keep many demons and natural disasters at bay

Chase most of the gods away, keep the demons and natural disasters at bay, but Asmodeus (and almost assuradly Vecna) will circle back

These are the kinds of options we need, that are viable not because they're all net positives, but because we have to weigh the positives and the negatives. Rather than "do what you want, the world will keep spinning"

Bells Hells are desperately searching for answers of what effects their actions will have, and Matt keeps giving them an "I dunno"

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Thank you to everyone who got me to 250 likes!

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Exactly

When Ludanis was trying to convince Bells Hells to join him after the downfall recording, all I could think was, "So you're mad at vasselheim".

I fully imagine that hearthdell was just an example of the dawnfather telling his followers he needed the site, and not elaborating because he's super busy. And the Angel is there to defend the temple that they're attacking.

(Which, not to mention that I, as a polytheist, felt super uncomfortable when the loam and the leaf made the one kid convert back)

The problem with the narrative that the gods don't allow mortal freedom is that we have not, in any part of CR, seen any evidence of this until campaign 3.

Vox Machina had to seek out the gods they dealt with to defeat Vecna.

Mighty Nein had an amazing representation of a faithful character with Caduceus.

The god stuff in EXU was with relics and places as conduits.

And while Calamity showed us the betrayers waiting to destroy mortals, they are literally the evil gods whose role it is to hate mortals

The fact that this narrative is being told to us over and over again, by Ludanis, the unseelie, Ashton, The archheart. But we're never shown it.

So, in the end, this concept feels abstract, and like lipservice to say that this story is nuanced. We're never given a reason to believe these claims are true

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Advice of writing pantheons, from a polytheist

There's quite a few tropes I've noticed that pop up fairly often when fantasy tries to represent polytheistic religions, and I need to get it off my chest as a polytheist. And I bring them up because there's so many misconceptions that I want to challenge.

This is my god, the one that I worship

A lot of fantasy falls into a trope of basically becoming a bunch of monotheistic religions. This is most common in trrpgs, like d&d, where players are even less experienced at representing these things than professional writers.

But, to explain the trope, this is when a character denounces the worship of other gods, besides the one they worship. And in a polytheistic framework, this is frankly stupid. To put it simply, one should think of the gods being built around the religion rather than the other way around. Each one has a purpose in the religion, and the world.

While the worship of a single deity out of the pantheon is a thing, known as henoism, it is my no means the normal for religions with multiple deities. This concept likely confuses henoism for tutelary deities, the deities that are in your life the most. These include gods related to your profession, passions, any that you just like the vibe of, or gods related to the area you live in. As such, people living in a polytheistic tradition would likely have multiple gods they hold as Tutelaries, which isn't even to mention spirits that would be honored. Additionally, one would worship deities outside the Tutelaries. Just because you don't regularly worship a deity doesn't diminish their importance in the working of the world

On top of that, most cultures historically did not deny the existence of the gods of other cultures. At most, they would do something called syncretism or equating gods together. For example, one greek myth had the olympians turn into animals, in an attempt to explain the strange animal gods Egypt had.

Overall, the idea that a religious person is constantly denying other gods, inside and outside their religion, is not polytheism. It's a completely Christian (and abrahamic, but I'll use christian as a shorthand) behavior. Someone living in a world where the gods are proven real and have a physical impact on the world would not insist that their god is the only "real" one. And that's why this is a good point to start the discussion off with, because that will become a theme.

The evil god's cult

Now, this trope is a little more nuanced. Of course, in a fantasy world, some entities with power might not have the best interests of mortals at heart. And, of course, some ill-advised cults to powerful, malicious entities may form. But it's important to remember why religions came about. The world is scary, with many things that can kill you. It's why ancient people put their faith in spirits and deities, to try and represent and curry favor with some aspect of the world.

In ancient Egypt, the regular flooding of the nile was crucual for their culture to survive. The aztecs told stories of the world being made of a giant monster that they had to feed to stop earthquakes. Religion is a way for us to feel connected to the world, to ask someone out there for help.

Death gods also disproportionately get represented as evil when they're just trying to do their jobs. Sure, there was not as much household worship of death gods, as well as other intense things like war or revenge. But this is because death or war, or revenge, are powerful and scary. You don't want them in your personal life to be used against you.

So, if you have an evil god in your story, why are they there. What purpose do they have? What keeps people coming to them?

The gods are jerks

In the same vein, many people come at writing religions with the gods as either uncaring and distant or as malicious. While the above point is important to this discussion, we also need to address where this comes from.

The idea that gods are uncaring or actively malicious comes from two places. The first is the rationalization Christianity has had to do. If *G*od is all powerful, all knowing, and absolute good, then why is there bad in the world? Because there's a plan!

Except many religions don't have to deal with this problem. The theoi, vættir and tuatha de dannan are not all powerful, or absolute good in the human sense (that second one is a more complex discussion I am nkt equipped for). They don't need that same explanation.

The other place is an uncritical reading of the existing stories. We all know the joke that Zeus tried to bang anything that moved. But it's important to remember that these were stories that a culture was telling about the entities they worshipped. Why would they protray their gods that way?

On top of that, a phrase floating around is " the god in the story is not the god in the temple." These stories were metaphorical and fictional, ways to explain phenomena or traditions

Weird themes

Along with other themes, it's weird to me that many games associate divinity with light primarily, as it's not something many gods would engage with on a regular basis. Healing and banishing evil spirits are understandable, but light is something that specific deities would have in their repotuoir.

Along with this, there's an often theme of copy-pasting christian priestly structure. Calling priests brither, sister, father and mother superior. Using an organized religion. The simple matter is that, for a lot of polytheism, priests would act mostly as experts in the worship and interaction with the gods, where temples would be liek the god's home.

Finally, I want to touch on how prayer works for many non-christian religions. Being, it's not always praying for something. Yes, a lot of prayer is asking the god to help you in their field of expertise, such as asking an agriculture god for a good harvest. But fiction does not represent devotional prayers nearly enough, prayers that are done fully in the honor of a god. This can be to a Tutelary deity, or on a festival day.

I hope this helps someone out there, and I hope it inspires people to look into things themselves.

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The problem with the narrative that the gods don't allow mortal freedom is that we have not, in any part of CR, seen any evidence of this until campaign 3.

Vox Machina had to seek out the gods they dealt with to defeat Vecna.

Mighty Nein had an amazing representation of a faithful character with Caduceus.

The god stuff in EXU was with relics and places as conduits.

And while Calamity showed us the betrayers waiting to destroy mortals, they are literally the evil gods whose role it is to hate mortals

The fact that this narrative is being told to us over and over again, by Ludanis, the unseelie, Ashton, The archheart. But we're never shown it.

So, in the end, this concept feels abstract, and like lipservice to say that this story is nuanced. We're never given a reason to believe these claims are true