#Chet Mould

[game-campaign]

hey. name fun and goofs.

[lexmakeshit]

I disagree.

I think what Chet said was kinda out of line and definitely was not the right way to say it given Laudna was not rational in that moment. I think his wording was far too vague and gave Laudna an opening to interpret what he said as referring to all loss which she latched onto. I also think his comment was out of line because not only is it not that black and white that orym has more trauma about the sword than everyone else but it also doesn’t take into account the nature of trauma and how it affects people.

For Laudna the Sword is not only the symbol of her second death it also a symbol of her retraumatisation. While the Sword killed both of them he was brought back almost immediately whereas when Laudna died she was dead for a week and that entire time was forced to relive her existing trauma for what in her perception of reality was a very long time after being killed as a message very much in parallel to her first death and when Laudna was resurrected she woke up in the location of her initial trauma with an army pointing guns at her and then experienced all the grief that came with losing everything in her life again when confronted with the new Whitestone. So while Orym has lost so much to the sword and has his trauma because of it so does Laudna and it is very much a triggering object for her just as it is for him.

Chet comment felt like it was also very dismissive of the way trauma affects people and ignores the trauma of the rest of the group.

Setting aside my thoughts on who has the most trauma around the sword. Even if Orym has the most trauma that doesn’t give him a monopoly on deciding what to do with it because he is not the only one with trauma and just because he has the most doesn’t mean that the other members of the hells’ trauma is any less valid or that they should have no say in how it is handled. The decision of what to do with the sword should have been a group decision made after they had time to process the loss of FCG.

In my opinion Oryms decision in secret to wield the sword with no thought for the way seeing that would affect others was just a selfish as laudnas decision to take it in secret. Neither of them were in the right here in my opinion.

Laudna and Orym’s stories are parallels on two different sides of the same coin. Both of them have deeply traumatic pasts that have led them down a self sacrificial rabbit hole to a point that they believe that they don’t matter and they need to do anything they can to save the people they love even if it destroys them. Neither of them is able to other’s trauma for what it is and they both think that their way is the only way to save the people they love.

Both Laudna and Orym have good reasons for their lack of communication in this situation. Orym has been treated as the Hells moral compass and only stable one in the group and so his unilateral decision makes a lot of sense from his perspective. For Laudna every interaction she has had with the hells so far in relation to Delilah they have continually talked about how horrible Delilah is and have reacted negatively to her existence within Laudna, because of her trauma Laudna perceives Delilah as a part of her because she would quite literally not exist without her so the party’s hatred of Delilah in her mind is a hatred of a part of her this combined with the guilt she feels at having let Delilah back in after they fought to free her and the knowledge that Imogen who is the person she loves most is disgusted by Delilah presence mean that of course she isn’t going to communicate that she is struggling when every time she has done so in the past it has only reinforced her need to hide it.

Delilah has had 30 years alone with Laudna to mould her to her whims and perfect her tactics of manipulation and confrontation only reinforces what Delilah has been saying. Delilah is constantly telling Laudna that everyone will hate her eventually and that Delilah is the only one that truly cares for her. The only she is going to be able to escape is to recognise Delilah’s manipulation for what it is and that is not going to happen with confrontation.

I think the next couple of episodes are going to be crucial for the entire party and they are all going to need to learn the lesson from the shard that Ashton did because otherwise this is going to keep happening because if they don’t learn to communicate they are all gonna end up giving in to corruption in a desperate bid to gain power and save each other by any means necessary.

chet saying that orym had lost more than any of them to laudna was objectively correct in that moment and i feel like ppl are misinterpreting it. this conversation was about ishta, it was specifically about otohan’s sword. laudna’s repeated argument was that the sword had traumatized her and that’s why she felt justified in doing what she did, and that may have been true, but chet was pointing out that when it came to that sword, orym had experienced more loss in connection with it. that sword may have killed laudna, but it killed orym too. and his husband. and his father. if she wants to play the trauma olympics, she has the silver to orym’s gold right now.

in the past, laudna rebuked ashton for saying he knew loneliness better than she did, and she was right to do so then. but this time, orym absolutely has known more trauma in connection with that sword, and chet was right to point that out during that moment. if she doesn’t get challenged like that then she’s never going to be able to break free from delilah’s influence.