#a love letter to Exandria and the world Matt built

[dungeons-n-draw]

Crafter of worlds, forger of a new dawn

[grayintogreen]

Is it bad that the first thing I thought about when I saw you new theme was that children’s hospital meme? lol Now for my real question. Do you have any thoughts on Lucien's childhood dream? Cause I can only imagine him as a 5yo saying "I'm gonna be a GOD" to which someone said "You can't do that-" so of course he replied with "no I'm gonna" and then he did just that.

When you have Blood Hunters and Blood Clerics on staff, it's easy to promote color theory!

OKAY SO. OH BOY. DO I HAVE THOUGHTS. BUCKLE UP.

I don't think Lucien developed his God Complex (TM) until the Claret Orders, so put a pin in that for now. We'll get to that.

So here's the thing about Luci, Lulu, Lulubelle, Luci-my-love, Luci-not-a-Satan-allegory-en, sweet boy who did nothing wrong ever (citation needed). Matt doesn't SAY he had a traumatic past, but he also heavily implies it through Lucien refusing to talk about it, getting angry when anyone tries to make him, and being extremely defensive about his upbringing. Add that to almost EVERY CHARACTER from Shadycreek Run being miserable in one way or another, and you can probably guess he is a trauma-laden little bitch.

Since Lucien is (1. very intelligent for someone who came out of the Run (2. highly imaginative and (3. seems to be fond of books, I tend to skew him being self-taught and an avid reader. I like the idea of him stealing Exandria equivalent pulp paperbacks wherever he can, and those kind of stories are usually pretty formulaic. In a fantasy world, I'm sure they even trend more towards Chosen One narratives, because that's the kind of immersion fantasy ALL AGES are into, because in this sort of world those things are happening everywhere. People are plucked from their lives and set on grand adventures.

And baby Lucien was probably fascinated by that! The idea that these humble people who led miserable lives could one day meet the right people or the right wizard or get visited by a god and then suddenly become IMPORTANT and respected. Here is this kid who can already tell he's different- he's set apart by being a tiefling in a place that is really not kind to them and he's smarter than the people around him, which gives him his "gifted kid" superiority complex. Of course, he'd look at these stories, see he has all the hallmarks of a "main character" and think OKAY MY TIME WILL COME.

So from a young age, you have this kid dealing with trauma after trauma and effectively just waiting for a cute anime mascot character to come along and tell him how important he is, because through being a kid in a dangerous place who can't really escape his situation, he doesn't really have any other choice but to dream impossibly.

And then he finds other kids. He finds his little troupe of equally tragic people that he can lead. Still no great destiny, but then he finds the Claret Orders and now surely THIS will be what lets him find his dream.

But the Claret Orders are a unified front of BUNCHES of people with cool powers they got by poisoning themselves and committing to a cause that Lucien probably doesn't believe in at best and will become disgusted by eventually at worst. Not only that, but Bloodhunters are all intelligent, so Lucien, Gifted Kid of Shadycreek Run, has gone from being unique to a cog in a wheel.

And no one is coming to offer him a destiny.

And then he hears about the Raven Queen. (Remove that pin, we're here.)

This is what gets me, because the Raven Queen is the patron goddess of the Claret Orders. She INVENTED Bloodhunters. The Blood Domain was HERS before other gods co-opted it for their portfolios. So there's no way that however many years Lucien spent in the Orders he wasn't constantly hearing about her ascension, about how she was a Champion once who overtook a cruel deity and replaced him and people revere her for that! And then her methods were sealed away and every soul that's tried to do what she did was struck down. That's strange. And a bit unfair. But what if there was a way to do what she did and be just as revered as her?

So here's where Lucien's god complex kicked in, likely as a sixteen-year-old, so still very much a baby. When he couldn't get handed a destiny the way his baby brain expected him to be as a traumatized kid seeking hope and comfort, he decided his dream would be to make one for himself. He'd become so powerful he could change the shape of the world, exactly as the Raven Queen did. So he left the Orders and their hypocrisy and their dedication to an usurper goddess and just became a mercenary with his posse, hunting for treasure and trying to unlock the secrets of the world using the abilities that the Orders gave him.

So when you throw this all together, the Somnovem came for his life HARD. They branded him the Nonagon, their herald, their chosen. They had a disdain for the gods and a desire to overtake them. They were judged and condemned dreamers. All of this made him completely unable to see ANY of the red flags involved and drove him full-tilt into madness, because it was everything he wanted for YEARS just handed to him exactly as he wanted it. So of course he built a script that he expected to be followed to the letter, of course his best friends went from found family to a cult (this is what Lucien always said he deserved, after all, and if he got it then this means holy shit he IS special and chosen by a higher power and we'd be stupid not to be his disciples and get in on the ground floor of that power trip).

And then when even the Somnovem betrayed his trust in them, he went "well if the Raven Queen can turn on her god and take his power, then so can I" and came back to the material plane with a new script, three times as broken as he started out as, because even if he didn't want to admit it, all the stories had been wrong and being the Chosen One can absolutely suck, and he'd sooner go fully insane and rewrite the world the way he wanted it to be (a dream made real where he is the sole dreamer) than admit that there was never going to be an ending to this story that satisfied him.