#Arkhan the Cruel

[unhookedchalk48]

[essayofthoughts]

I will not explain further

(Based on @gallusrostromegalus' template from Here)

[manueltorresart]

Arkhan, the red dragonborn paladin who helped Vox Machina in their final confrontation against the big bad. He is a guest character played by Joe Manganiello on @criticalrole.

[dailymarisharay]

[tiamat-zx]

Kudos to CBR for a solid list of the Top Ten Most Powerful CR PCs.

Especially placing Beau at #9 because we all know that she's extremely hard to kill.

And Keyleth will always be #1.

[brenhotapplepies]

With Opal getting “dark” or whatever, and the latest reveal of Dorian and Dariax looking… concerned and beat up, I’m worried that the betrayer gods are gonna use this bs to their advantage. Not to mention a follower of Tiamat had the Hand of Vecna last we saw.

[myut0eve]

DnD March 2 Day 12: Arkhan

[keefechambers]

Grog Strongjaw & Arkhan the Cruel in C1E114-115 & Jocks Machina

Vex: You seem to like him a lot. Are you sure you want to kill him and not just try and get -

[hawkogurl]

Love Joe Manganiello. Love smiting people with the knowledge that Flash Thompson and Arkhan the Cruel are the same guy.

[nevertrustanoracle]

I bought Descent into Avernus yesterday for Baldur’s Gate info.

Reading through some parts today and I may have shrieked when I saw Arkhan the Cruel in it. I’d forgotten that he’s like a fully canon, recurring character for D&D now.

[ihaveatypeanditstrickstergods]

If you're thinking about Arkhan when you vote Tiamat, remember: Arkhan follows the Forgotten Realms' version of Tiamat, not the Exandrian version. He shows back up in Descent into Avernus trying to free her using the Hand of Vecna he got from Exandria.

We as a fandom talk a lot about the Prime Deities lately, and for all the god shop talk, we haven't given a whole lot of attention to the Betrayer Gods. So, here's a poll for funsies. Remember, that this is about these gods as depicted in Exandrian lore specifically.

No 'show results' option because you gotta commit to having a favorite awful child.

[otterlyart]

Anyone one else get the vibe that Zerxus was introduced to later fill Arkhan the Cruel's role in the Vecna Arc? Just me?

[burr-ell]

Hey, I find your takes on the current cr god discourse really interesting. Did you have anymore where that comes from?

Mostly that I'm tired of the smugness of certain fans. Even the people who aren't immediately telling Orym to get over his dead husband already have a tone of like, "well of course the poor dear can't look at it objectively, but let's not worry; it'll be so hard for him, but he'll see things our way soon enough and hate the gods too".

(And seriously, no one has any examples of why Pelor needs to be "humbled" in a way the other gods don't. What'd he do, other than not suck off your blorbo?)

On a more serious gripe: as others have said, no one who brings up the "b-but the gods ARE colonizers!" rhetoric has any kind of real solution to it. Do Kima, Vex, Scanlan, Pike, Wilhand, Fjord, Caduceus, FCG, and Deanna all need to be brought to court for aiding and abetting "colonizers"? The Ashari are the legacy of the Gau Drashari, who were tasked with keeping out the Primordials, and the guarding of the elemental rifts serves a similar function; are Keyleth, Korrin, Cerkonos, and Orym going to atone for the druids also perpetuating "colonialism"? Do we need to retroactively condemn the Ring of Brass, seeing as how they actually destroyed two Primordials in an effort to keep them from returning to the world?

What does justice look like here, exactly? Returning Exandria to the Primordials and elementals by unleashing Predathos on the gods? Except Predathos wants to eat Primordials too, so that'll end in a hurry, and if this is accomplished without Predathos, the Primordials destroy all the mortals like they've wanted to for eons and Critical Role ends with all our favorite characters dead and the company itself barely viable anymore. Get rid of the gods without returning the world to the Primordials? Well, now not only are you still perpetuating "colonialism", you've also got thousands if not millions of people (see above and et cetera) who will lose connections to beings that they love that helped them and brought them spiritual fulfillment—and there will be quite a few people serving gods who aren't nearly as good-natured as the Dawnfather or the Platinum Dragon who aren't going to be pleased at their passing and are absolutely going to find someone to take it out on. (Arkhan "stole the hand of Vecna" the Cruel was a pretty loyal servant of Tiamat, after all.) You're also losing access to quite a bit of medical care, since clerics are the ones who do most of that work, and while druids and bards could fill some of the gaps, I don't think we're exactly short on real-life examples of what happens when a society overextends its healthcare capacity. What's anyone in this scenario supposed to do?

Like, if the metaphor isn't actionable, it's a stupid fuckin' metaphor.

[utilitycaster]

Delilah Briarwood: That is, uh, an extremely personal question for wandering through the mind of your dead friend, but I'm Delilah Briarwood, Woman About Darkstone, and I don't mind disclosing to you everything that's happened to me. You see, Delilah Briarwood— that's me— I was lost in the mind of this weird rat girl. For thirty years! [deep sigh] My last body was shot by Vex'ahlia DeRolo and had a tree grow out of her tits and was animated as a zombie by Arkhan the Cruel, and I was lost in Laudna's brain. For thirty years. And for thirty years, I lived in a sort of twilight. Laudna didn't seem interested in pursuing this pact or finding any magical items, so I couldn't fully come to life, but because of the way I had entwined myself with her soul, I was half alive. For thirty years. In the darkness? Yeah. But this happens, right? This is life. Anyway-- [deep sigh]-- Anyway, now I'm just a tree-loving shadow of my former self, because of my torso. Let's roll initiative!

[wvrlock]

BD/SM test under the cut

// fallahan's switchness is so much fun to write because he can be so versatile but you MUST be paying him absolute attention. That's his only requirement.

[locuas642]

In Baldur's Gate 3, an often mention "incident" that happened shortly before the events of the game is "Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus"

In this adventure, the adventuring party is tasked with actually solving the disappearance of Elturel, which eventually leads them to travel the first fllor of the Nine Hells, known as Avernus (duh), and confronting the leader of Avernus, the archdevil Zariel, pictured above.

However, one of the ways in which one can rescue the city of Elturel is by making a deal with the Dragon Goddess Tiamat

She is both prisoner and guest of Hell and a wildcard who is not Zariel's ally nor under her command and, like all evil gods, has her own little agenda.

And one of Tiamat's servants the player can encounter is the first appearence in official DND material of the Paladin Arkhan The Cruel

whom critters MIGHT recognize as the same Arkhan who had appeared earlier as joining forces with Vox Machina at the end of the first campaign of Critical Role in the battle against Vecna (Arkhan had been introduced even earlier than that in Force Grey)

and Arkhan as introduced in Descent into Avernus heavily implies the events of Vox Machina are canon to him.

thus making a connection between Baldur's Gate 3 and Critical Role through official DnD material