#Exandrian Pantheon

[shorthaltsjester]

The Pantheon of Exandria;

"One thing, Dad. [Mortals] don't fear you, they resent you."

No Children by The Mountain Goats // Critical Role: Campaigns 1 and 3, Critical Role's Downfall

[circle-of-wildfire]

arrival of dawn

[skeine]

I love Taliesin for making Asha such a raw and unapologetic portrayal of godhood. She so beautifully embodies the dual aspects of Nature: the loving care and sacrifice for young and family, starkly contrasted against the brutal indifference of survival, the overriding need to do what you have to to live.

Does the tree care about the scores of smaller plants it starves as it blocks out their sunlight with its canopy? Does a honey badger care about the tens of thousands of bees that die as it rips apart their hive? Does the whale care about the hundreds of thousands of krill it kills as it eats? It's the brutal truth of nature: to survive, something else must be preyed upon.

There's something so honest about her philosophy towards humankind: they are our prey, in the end. They feed us. And if we need to kill them to survive, then we will. No fancy moral arguments about intrinsic evil, no set dressing about how it's for their own good, really.

No, just: They are our prey. That's where it begins and ends. And that's Caduceus's Wild Mother.

[cassafrasscr]

Just thinking about Orym watching this and seeing the Prime Deities being forced to choose between protecting their family or saving the people of Aeor.

Having been told several times in the last few months that if any of Bell’s Hells turns against the cause, he'll have to eliminate them. That for the sake of protecting the world, he'll have to kill one of these people he's claimed as his family.

Orym, who has been the target of friendly fire more than probably anyone else in the party. He's been mauled by Chetney multiple times, been directly attacked by murder-mode FCG at least once, and was ambushed in his sleep by Laudna JUST LAST NIGHT. And even when he's angry, he always meets them with compassion and forgiveness.

Orym, who allegedly has contingency plans for each of his friends if they turn, but who always pulls his punches when he does have to fight them.

Orym, whose home was invaded by a hostile force, who lost his father and husband and probably more of his comrades. Not unlike when the original home of the gods was attacked and destroyed.

Every day he has to make the impossible choice: save the world, or protect his family? Even as flawed as they are, and with how much he's been hurt by them, he loves them. He has insisted repeatedly that he won't HAVE to kill his friends, because he trusts them not to betray him. He believes in them wholeheartedly.

And now he's watching the Prime Deities have to grapple with that same choice. Even knowing that the Betrayer Gods didn't die, and the Calamity lasted another 100 years.

I'm so interested to see how Orym reacts, with everyone pressuring him to choose the world over his family. Knowing that, at least on some level, the Prime Deities chose their family over the world. And look what it cost the world.

[californiannostalgia]

the matron of ravens and sarenrae, observing their blorbos: Baby. Bestest child. I want you to have everything.

sarenrae: actually pike should get another blazing pillar of light

raven queen: vax'ildan will appreciate these visions

[24-jay-42]

Ashton is not contradicting himself, in fact he is being incredibly consistent.

Ashton is a punk. Now we all have preconceived and general ideas about punk and what it means, But Taliesin has stated multiple times that punk in Exandra is different then punk in our world as The injustices in Exandra are different to the injustices in our world, at least where it concerns Ashton. Taliesin Has described punk in Exandra as quote:

“Life’s not fair. And either you believe that life’s not fair because life is chaos or you believe life’s not fair because there’s a bunch of interventionist assholes above you who have decided you don’t get to be a winner, for whatever reason.— Is it a world Where there are winners and Losers or is this a world where there are Interventionist gods who are like ‘You.’ ‘Not you’"

This is doubled down with the fact that there is seemingly no clear reasoning as to why the gods choose who they like and don’t choose who they like. At least not in any reasoning common folk know of and understand. 

Ashton also has always somewhat respected the Matron of Ravens, Because she is the only god that always keeps her promises and because she is the only goddess who will have to face every single mortal at some point while the other gods get to play favourites. 

Doesn’t help the fact that despite begging a god for help throughout almost all their life, the only time Ashton has actually witnessed divine intervention was when an angel was sent to smite him and his friends down for removing a colonial unwanted ministry from a Village. Of course that would fuel the perspective that the gods are self-serving and only interested in their own gain. 

Which is fair. Why is one person who cries out in pain granted divine repreval and guidance while someone else experiencing the same pain is left to fend for themselves? Why do the gods get to have it both ways where they can plead non-intervention in some cases but intervening in others when it serves them. 

This isn’t about being ‘Deities Specialist Boy’ This is about "Why do you get to decide who is somebody and who is nobody? Why do you decide who is ‘Special’ and who is not with seemingly no reasoning as to why? (other than self interest)."

Ashton literally said himself, to paraphrase: “The gods never chose me so i am not going to choose them. I will Listen which is more than They ever did”

Which he’s been true to. He’s listened to both the Arch Heart and the Raven Queen. The gods that approached him and the rest of the bells Hell and directly to ask for their help.

Which moves onto my next point: The Gods have No checks and Balances. So the gods are free to do whatever they like with no one able to stop them.

As we saw in downfall, and to quote Brennan Lee Mulligan “The Lord of the Hells and the Dawnfather have more love between them then either of them has for [Mortals]” and if you’re a mortal that is horrifying. Because no matter how much suffering they cause, no matter how much love the primes have for mortality, the Prime deities will never put a permanent end to the betrayer gods. They will always live another day to cause misery because the primes don’t have the heart to stop them.

And no one can do anything about that fact.

The Last beings that dared challenge the Gods, the Primordial Titans who were Exandra's original inhabitants and had much of a right to be there and have a say in what’s happening as the primes, Got smited into oblivion. There are no living Primordial Titans anymore. And why is that? Because When the primordials took issue with the gods giving the mortals that inhabited their planet magic and tried to do something about it and take back what was originally theirs, the primes buried them. 

Is there more nuance to it than that? Absolutely. But that is not a stretch of a viewpoint to come to. 

Of course Ashton is going to be attracted to these grand powers that are separate from the Gods, that the gods fear. The Primordials, The Luxon. Because these are the few things that might be able to keep the gods in check, because they sure as hell aren’t doing it themselves. 

And just to address one more thing before I Finish this post. I’ve seen a few post along the lines of “The Gods don’t owe Anyone anything/Don’t have to do anything for anyone”...

Then What’s the Point of having them?

[mayapapaya33]

I feel like all of the "Ludinus is Right the Gods are bad" brigade are conveniently forgetting the dude who released Asmodeus and started off the Calamity was a mortal who fucked up big time trying to ascend like the Matron. Vespin Chloras is to blame for the Calamity kicking off. Not the Prime Deities. The Betrayers were sealed away, and he staged a prison break. That's a mortal failing. Not the God's fault.

Sure, their slug fest destroyed giant swathes of the world, but they wouldn't BE fighting if he hadn't done that. The fight was done, they were sealed. The Primes are fighting with the Betrayers over their desire to kill all the mortals. That's their disagreement. "Us" being alive. Everyone saying "oh clearly the Gods just don't care because of X, Y, and Z" are just flat out not paying attention. If they didn't care, everyone would already be dead, and the family would be back together. Why would they be fighting each other if they didn't care?

(Also, Luda is a big hypocrite, when the Gods destroy a city, one that threatened their very existence, they're monsters, but when he does it for much less good reasons imho it's totally fine/ a necessary evil... ok, sure dude).

[venator-signum]

shoutout to haylie and topher, the two half-firbolg kids who are quite possibly the only exandrian demigods to ever exist

[transfem-octopus]

Part of what makes the fall of Aeor such a tragedy is that it didn’t need to happen this was not an inevitability. This didn’t need to happen the people of Aeor could have been saved and the gods came so close to saving them. As with all tragedies it was almost averted you can so easily see how things could have been different. Had the Somnoven not abandoned their people; had Selena not seeded the knowledge of how to build the Mallus Factorum in her people; had the Mageoceacy of Aeor never built the Mallus Factorum at all...

So many times people suffer because of the actions of their leaders and their rulers. The rich start the wars and the poor do the fighting and the dying. The wizards of Aeor thought they could rival the power of the gods and their people paid the ultimate price for their hubris.

The gods of Exandria have often been criticized as if they are socially constructed ruling class. But they’re not; the power of the gods stems from the fact that they are beings from a higher plane of existence who descended to Exandria to flee from Predathos. The gods are not a socially constructed ruling class but higher beings that must coexist with mortals. At once infinite beings beyond the power of mere mortals and people with hopes and dreams and fears and the weakness and fallibility that cones with personhood.

[quipxotic]

Downfall is the story of a lot of things:

The hubris of mages.

The devotion of the followers of the Primes Deities in Aeor, even after all the events of the Calamity and the constant threat of death and pain they faced at the hands of the officials of the city they also loved.

The capacity of mortals to misunderstand the gods.

The fall of the last great floating city of Exandria and the Age of Arcanum.

The end of the ruling mage elite of Aeor, who saw themselves as superior to both the gods and their fellow mortals, and who were committing so many acts of cruelty and inhumanity to make sure it stayed that way.

The deaths of so many people, many of whom had nothing to do with the threat to the gods or the power structures of Aeor that made all of its worse atrocities possible.

The creation and destruction of the aeormatons, the moral-made miracles, who had lives and souls and freewill. Beauty and magic made manifest in metal and wires.

The supposed truce between the Betrayers and the Prime Deities that, due to a betrayal, turned out to be just another offensive in the ongoing war of the Calamity.

The period of time when the gods of Exandria walked the world as mortals.

An argument between members of a family who desperately love and hate their siblings, unable to either let the them go and put an end to the fight or reconcile.

The beginning of realization among the Prime Deities that they were a threat to the home and creations they loved. That if they were going to remain in this second home and not have it end up a barren wasteland, they would have to willingly imprison themselves behind the Divine Gate.

But I think my favorite aspect is how it tells of when the Matron of Ravens, who was once mortal and killed a god to take his place, was finally accepted into her new adopted family despite that.

[deramin2]

The most important thing to me about Critical Role: Downfall is that it did not actually give an authorial intent answer to "Are the gods good or evil?" Or "Did Aeor deserve to be destroyed?" The audience is certainly giving their opinions, but the story itself is not, which really allowed Bell's Hells' opinion to be organic.

The gods are at their core intelligent creatures uncomfortably thrust into reality through traumatic origins and are trying to survive along with their family.

The Aeorans are at their core intelligent creatures uncomfortably thrust into reality through traumatic origins and are trying to survive along with their family.

They both do incredibly destructive and horrific things to keep surviving at all costs. They are fundamentally not that different. Even those among gods and mortals that operate from a place of compassion do horrible things through that compassion in the name of protection.

The main difference between the gods and mortals is the scale they operate on. How long they live, how expansive their beings are, how much power they can access, etc. This is the same difference a human and an ant have. Should humans die for violently repelling ant infestations because it's a genocide from the perspective of the ants?

Are the gods helpful or harmful? Is a wildfire helpful or harmful? They simply are. They are beings that exist and through existing shape the world, and sometimes that's very helpful and sometimes it's very harmful and often whether it's helpful or harmful depends on perspective.

If you try to live without the destruction of fire in a fire ecology, you mostly end up with core native species struggling to survive (because fires aren't clearing debris, sprouting seeds, and controlling populations) plus bigger and more destructive fires. Exandria as mortals know it are a god-based ecology. Even the Primordials before the Pantheon were basically god ecology. There is no definitive answer to what Exandria would be like without the gods. It would simply be different.

[flowersforvax]

I think we'd all be happier if we stopped thinking of exandrian gods in a christian god way and started thinking about them like whatever the ancient greeks had going on with their pantheon

they're not perfect infallible all-knowing beings - they're just a really powerful embodiment of their domain and also? just Some Guy.

[virgodev]

As a hardcore Corellon Larethian fan from the moment I read the deity’s canon 5e lore, I admit to have always been disappointed by how underrated they are.

Corellon is prideful, egotistic, cocky, simultaneously the deity with domains of Magic, Music, Arts, Crafts, Warfare, Poetry, Trickery and Knowledge. Their battles with Grumsh and his ex-wife Lolth are legendary. They have an organization called “Fellowship of the Forgotten Flower” which just realm hops to recover elven relics.

Seeing their representation in CR Downfall brings me so much joy! I understand that the Exandrian version of Corellon has differences with the canon 5e version of the Elven Prime Deity, but honestly just seeing them on my screen fills me with joy.

Abubakar does such an incredible job! I hope my elven prime deity daddy (genderfluid) starts getting more recognition now!

[topaz-mutiny]

So, after Downfall, have I been convinced to hate all of the gods?

No.

But I have been convinced of one thing.

Asmodeus in particular is the only one that sucks. Fuck that guy in particular, fuck him forever and always. He can go ironically die in a fire for being the eternal shit-stirrer. Whatever he was as Imir the light being is just completely and irrecovably twisted.

[cassafrasscr]

Was a little surprised that Ashton wanted to talk to the Arch Heart. Kinda thought he'd want to talk to the Changebringer. But then, he might not want anything to do with her after everything with FCG.

I actually think Dorian would really benefit from communing with the Arch Heart. Since they're the god of art, beauty, and arcane magic, it feels like a good fit for Dorian as a bard. Especially since Corellon is the sworn enemy of the Spider Queen. I feel like they could come to some sort of an arrangement about helping Dorian save Opal post-Predathos.

[californiannostalgia]

super fucked up, vax and keyleth paralleling the raven queen and her predecessor

fate-touched, destined, cornerstone of the world, estranged and devoted to the end of time