#cr essek thelyss

[kitty-0verl0rd]

i made essek thelyss from critical role in animal crossing: pocket camp ⭐

[quietsphere]

✨Critical Role is a makeover show ✨

[yudol-skorbi]

worst tv marathon ever

[ariadne-mouse]

Liam O'Brien: People have asked me where Essek's room is in Caleb's tower. Caleb's room is Essek's room. There is no separate room for Essek.

[oddthesungod]

Essek: I want to study you Ashton: haha, like... carnally? ;)

[undead-knick-knack]

[arrdenthart]

Smoochin’ their way through Aeor

[edelgarfield]

m9 meeting essek: ooooh, he's so cool and mysterious, he's pretty and he floats, he's so capable and powerful, we owe him a ton of favors bc of all the times he's helped us, he refuses to hang out with us but we love him anyway

bh meeting essek: this man led us to a smut shop where he & an assembly archmage bitched at each other for 5 minutes, he's a fugitive, he failed at teleporting us 4 times in a row and had to take a nap in between, he won't shut the fuck up about his boyfriend, one time he turned into a fish.

[counterspelling]

Endless Bells Hells

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

somewhere in zadash's premium smut shop:

meanwhile, caleb celebrating fjorester's engagement in nicodranas:

[tarydarrington]

"and genuine hot boi!"

[klimtsonian]

endless possibility 🔮

[quietsphere]

What's this? It's Essek Thelyss with a steel chair.

[essektheylyss]

I understand the impulse to clown on Essek for walking around in Vasselheim with his recognizable voice with the Bright Queen's spearhead commander, and of course we could turn to the metatextual elements (the necessity of signposting the world for players on the part of the GM, the ease of using a familiar ally to introduce a relevant NPC and new point of contact) to dismiss this if we wanted, but I think it's more interesting—and funnier, as you'll see—to imagine this as simply an extension of the laws and logic that dictate the Mighty Nein as a narrative entity.

Fundamentally, the Mighty Nein within their campaign pursue personal and collective agency, often at the expense or in denial of political power. Where they do interact with more political forms of power, they evade its grasp upon them, most notably in their interactions with the war, but also while they engage with the Cerberus Assembly, the Cobalt Soul, and even the Revelry. The way they pursue agency, on the other hand, has far more to do with their own support of one another and their own individual power, especially where there is magic involved, and manifests in having the freedom to move and act as they wish in the world.

The culmination of this, as we know, is the mechanical ability in their final battle against Lucien and the Somnovem to manipulate the terrain of the battle map to their advantage with only imagination. At the same time, Jester and Caduceus can both call in free favors from their gods, one of whom is unlimited by the Divine Gate and in fact is far more governed by fey logic. Fjord has made three different divine pacts and is virtually unrestricted by any of them. Caleb's hallmark is an almost infinitely malleable home that almost literally seems to operate as a hammerspace, with a pinnacle dedicated to the potentiality of the universe, the application of which is one of his signature spells—against all odds successful in his initial goal, no longer fueled by guilt and grief, of bending reality to his will. It's narratively and thematically cogent that this be the calling card of the party as a whole.

The Mighty Nein are, in effect, dictated by Looney Tunes logic, and nothing else. They have been so successful in their pursuit of their own freedom that they no longer abide by the cosmic laws of Exandria, let alone the laws of physics or sense. So yes, from an external point of view, it does look exceedingly foolish for Essek to be traipsing around in Vasselheim under the Bright Queen's nose, but it's far more entertaining to argue that being a member of the Mighty Nein in fact simply confers the capability of ignoring the laws of reality without consequence when it's narratively convenient, characteristically interesting—or just really fucking funny.

[ariadne-mouse]

Essek Thelyss realizing just who is the perpetrator of all the dick graffiti in Braius's backstory

[oddthesungod]

Everything's fine! 😇