#Exandrian Pantheon

[circle-of-wildfire]

arrival of dawn

[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

[californiannostalgia]

Do you realize how revolutionary this is? Vox Machina is possibly the world's most powerful adventuring party in terms of raw skill and social status, and the Prime Deities still used them as so much tools. The Mighty Nein were endlessly poked and prodded by Betrayer gods.

Miracles granted, then taken away. Powers given, then retracted. Prove your worth. Prove you are worthy to be blessed. Prove, prove, prove.

Bells Hells are saying no more to that. No more of temples deciding who lives and who dies, no more of gods deciding who is allowed to be saved and who is too dangerous to let live.

So many people wanted to kill Imogen so fucking badly. They never stopped talking about what a "potential danger" she was. Well, she heard your numerous and consistent threats and chose to protect herself and her loved ones. What the fuck did you expect?

(oh wow, powerful entities(countries, billionaires) determining not-yet-threats as enemies/resources/things and taking taking taking until someone puts their foot down to become an Actual Threat, where have we seen that before)

[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.

[possible-burger]

Much like Selena secured the fall of Aeor with her wish spell to disseminate the knowledge of the weapon, Ludinus all but guaranteed a second calamity.

Almost all of Exandria now knows that there is something up with Ruidus that the pantheon at least fears.

Y'all really think the Gods weren't gonna crack open that divine gate like a goddamn egg the second Predathos got buckled back up into his moon car seat, and take away that knowledge again?

I think they would have been conflicted about it, some would have put up more of a fight than others, but at the end of the day the thing they are most loyal to, is their continued existence.

Bells Hells have now taken away the opportunity for the Gods to etch-a-sketch erase Exandria like they did Aeor, but instead of just dooming them, have invited them in for negotiations. Seems pretty fucking reasonable to me.

[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.

[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.

[arclundarchivist]

Era’s End

Spoilers for C3E121

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Keyleth knows she will live to see the entire breadth of the age to follow.

She is thankful, at least, that not all of it will be alone.

And while Percy is not wrong that he is nowhere near as long for the world as she is, there is hope that his frowning countenance will continue to see her through the days to come.

She can see him now, resting in his study, Gwen at his side, as she tells him of his latest adventure, a smile on his wane lips.

She thinks he is thankful she convinced him to let the bright girl find her own path.

She… kept it all from them, or well, she tried.

Even as her friends and the other heroes she had made spread across the face of Exandria and beyond, some even beyond her sight, she wondered if any would actively come across the scattered divinities.

The love of her life had searched long and far.

The Prince of the Winds and the Twice Crowned Hunt Rumors of another every chance they can.

Their goals… are quite different.

Pike simply waits, and she is rewarded first.

Keyleth hears, but she does not say.

But Pike and her ever-burning and hopeful faith find their way to a child with a radiant smile and a propensity for helping sick animals.

She can see the Sons of Sea Salt and Clay doing her work as best suits them and sees both of their heads turn as they, too, hear a wail upon the winds.

Another reborn.

That her savior blade vanishes for a handful of days not long after is not lost on her, nor is it when he returns sans his Seedling, wistful in mein, but she keeps her peace.

It becomes almost a habit for her, for she is one, if not the most powerful natural guardian this world has any longer, as she weaves her way through the roots and breadths of Exandria, minding wards and healing tainted wilds, seeking to thread the life of Ruidus and her home together coherently, but a habit of listening.

She seeks no intervention, for that is not her place.

But she watches, and she listens, and she learns.

She sees so much.

The heroes of the Red Solstice age and change, some becoming more akin to threats, others remaining as heroic as ever even as they fade.

New heroes, villains, and monsters emerge, guided by the legacy before them or drawn from the workings of the old. Some are directly inspired, others simply know stories.

Amongst them, she gives wafting witness to the newborn gods.

She can not judge these newborns for what they once were, but when one with a cunning smile and silver tongue crafts his first law, she feels her hackles rise.

She feels the sobs of a mother in Xhorhas, as being hunted by those she would call friends skitters to life in the soul of her daughter.

That… she points towards, not directly, but enough for the hunters to take notice.

But there are so many others.

A moon-faced girl howling at the night on a distant moor.

A keen little farmer with old, old eyes, picking up a staff marked by stars and moons.

A little one turning a blue coin over in her hands plucked from the crystalline bones of her incidental savior vanished into obscurity.

A boy with red eyes gleefully claps as he knocks over his first stack of blocks.

So many could-bes and unknowns and possibilities, even as the youngest catches her gaze, such a sneer for one so young, with an eye of piercing green.

But through it all… she can't find her.

The Matron… can not be found.

But her love never stops searching, and so she does as well, silent as she observes him and his bubbly compatriot set out again and again, chasing rumor or hope or belief.

She does see more miracles than she believes possible in this age after the gods.

Angels rise, demons fall, and former heralds test their bounds.

The Chains Hold.

And in a tiny cottage far from anything of merit, except their mothers, a child of golden mein is born, and Vax remarks that the threads respond so curiously at her arrival… but that is not his Lady.

So… now, Keyleth stares down at her raven-haired daughter, clutched so tightly in her arms. She is not certain, not yet, but there is something so familiar about her as a wintery wind seeps through the windows where none should be.

Her family encroaches at this moment, exalted at her rather abrupt arrival in this world. It is a different and shifted family, formed by the legacy she has lived alongside for so long.

"Waited long enough, huh?" Keyleth murmurs, pressing her lips to the babe's head, and she swears she sees a smirk.

She laughs to herself as her love, the father of her child, bursts through the window, the Remnant Raven and his Harrowing Hare companion a step behind, a wide smile on her face.

"Thank you," she whispers to her baby girl, and so much goes into those two words. She's not certain yet if she reckons truth, mistake, or delirium.

The girl smiles toothlessly, and Vax is there, clutching to her side, with tears on his cheeks and such hope in his eyes.

"Hello, darling," he breathes, and Keyleth allows herself to simply be in a single moment for the first time in an age.

And so closes an Era, with a new one to commence sometime soon, but first, we travel back to the beginning—a Divergence.

[helimir]

imagine the chaos when a bunch of teenage god-mortals who have either been living like celebrities or fleeing for their lives for a while show up on the bright queen’s doorstep like ‘please let us get consecuted 🥺 we know you don’t worship any of us and you despise one of us (we won’t tell you who 😘) but we really really want to keep living. we won’t steal your beacons or do anything blasphemous we pwomise 🥺🥺🥺’

[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.

[shorthaltsjester]

obsessed with the fact that bell's hells won that fight explicitly because of their reliance on the gods. imogen and laudna both vocally saying 'thank you matron' at the beginnings of that combat as they use new skills or spells they've refreshed, orym wielding his sword, braius wielding his divine power, the entire party instilled with a hero's feast prepared by a cleric of the wildmother, imogen using power granted by the arch heart to bring down predathos -- an entity that has been described as welcoming her home, offering a womb she has longed to return to, her as its kin -- in imagery evoking the moment where the gods too decided to turn their backs on their home when faced with the monstrosity they were tied to, that they'd help bring about (something something, the arch heart gave mortals magic and imogen gave predathos its vessel). and the fact that bell's hells has slowly grown more reliant on the idea that predathos does not hunger for mortals -- something they in fact scoffed at when it came from liliana and ludinus' mouths -- predathos took several of them in his maw and tried to consume them.

viewing the story as one of a group of people predominantly blinded to the reality of their situations by the fog of their traumatized feelings -- as i've chosen to do for the sake of my sanity listening to them go on and on about gods that never gave them a lick in the same breath that they complain that the gods have too much power -- it is so extremely poetic that orym cut down ludinus with a sword blessed by the wild mother only for bell's hells to retread the path ludinus set up for himself. it is extremely ironic for a group of people who have implicitly raised complaints about the inherent manipulation that comes with the god's existence to come up with a plan that is explicit manipulation, demanding the gods become mortal or die [which to be clear, extremely interesting plan with interesting consequences that would be compelling to see! absolutely dogshit reasoning skills and moral assessment. but it is continually ASTOUNDING to me that a campaign that gets treated by some as the height of critical role's sociopolitical philosophical exploration features so many PCs who struggle (and not in the fruitful, developmental way but in the head-in-hands, can this student talk to the prof during office hours so I don't have to feel the second hand embarrassment of them making it obvious they haven't ever attended a previous lecture or done the class readings way) with ideas found in any first year philosophy course].

and to be clear this is not me devaluing the role of bell's hells in actually fighting the fight -- but all they've done is the same thing the gods were already doing, keeping predathos sealed, except now its in a volatile-at-best mortal who is on borrowed time re: being lost once again to its power. the only suggestion the hells have that this might be a justified and right course of action is the support of two gods -- one who has proven themself to be okay with the idea of death until it actually arrives before and the other one who is the only being on record who actually chose to be a deity -- out of a much larger pantheon, and their personal inclinations to agree with the ideology of a man who they have claimed to ardently disagree with but it turns out that was just because of his methods, I guess. scattershotting catalysts for change and hoping that change results in a Better World just. on its own (almost like. idk. fate) that you haven't even suggested practical (I'd even take theoretical ones atp) methods to achieve beyond Get Rid of a bunch of beings who are involved in actually extreme amounts of metaphysical and magical infrastructure isn't actually a course of action, its a course of chaos, and that is in fact worse than things staying the way they are if 'the way things are' that you keep referring to has only been shown to, currently, be that you and your friends feel sad and a little miffed that the gods you haven't offered anything to are only willing to do things for you when you serve them. unlike you, a group notorious for the way you do things for people you don't know without asking anything in return (this is sarcasm, if that wasn't clear).

anyway, I will continue to be frustrated by the lack of grounding for either (a) bell's hells having actually incisive and contextualized criticisms of the gods (either their own or from the actual mouths of the 'little guys' they are allegedly fighting for) or (b) more engagement with the fact that bell's hells as a party are not interested in making the morally right choice, they are at Best looking for a morally neutral choice. that said, if I ignore the actual story c3 has portrayed, the last few episodes have been a great wrap-up to a story about how singleminded trauma can make you and how that can lead you to place where there's no longer any Good choices to make, only potentially satisfying ones, where the question of who to satisfy takes the reigns over what is best.

[californiannostalgia]

Opal has seen carnage and violence and she has perpetuated that carnage and violence, and she didn't mind it that much.

Opal: She was very small. She asked me to come find her. I said yes. For Cyrus.

A part of Dorian knows. For a moment, the two of them are dialed in on some unspeakable idea.

[skeine]

not gonna lie i am stoked for this third option of the gods tasting what it's like to be a mortal for the first time, without the comfortable escape chute back to divinity of their last jaunt.

one of the many tragedies downfall unearthed was understanding the horror of what entering reality did to the gods: crystallizing these beings of limitless possibilty in the singular moment of their greatest agony, be it pain or rage or love, and trapping them there for all eternity. even worse was seeing ayden watching trist and father milo circle each other with such resignation and realizing—oh. they are so very aware of exactly how trapped they are. what must it be like to stare down eternity with this terrible understanding? no wonder asmodeus is so desperate for escape he'll try to murder his own family. can he even see it as anything but a mercy?

but now, they finally have the chance to become something more than what that first tragedy made of them. returning to that limitless possibilty they were born with.

it's a brilliant choice, so much that i'll bet at least some of the gods were chewing it over even before imogen ever brought it up. not to mention the narrative side: the stories this opens up of glory and ruin committed by these fledgling divine mortals learning how to navigate their new mortality and the world they're joining. finally living as one of their children, instead of above them.

[cassafrasscr]

I know a lot of folks are unhappy with Bell’s Hells asking the pantheon to give up their godhood, but I can't help thinking of Orym in their first conversation with the Matron:

"Do you ever miss being mortal? Living a life... it's pretty great."