#i just remembered her jrusar/marquet thing

[justalittlebluetiefling]

It’s still way too fucking funny that Emily is still at this table by accident. 

[thisisnotthenerd]

in the vein of my last cr post

i started watching critical role with bells hells. my first live episode was the halloween episode of 2022, so we're coming up on two years. i know i haven’t been here that long, but having seen them grow from their first major death to now, i have some thoughts.

marquet campaign? what marquet campaign

i wish they had more grounding in marquet. one of my favorite things that i’ve found about exandria is that the places feel so lived in. part of what made it so compelling in c1 and c2 was that the characters were so bound to the places and people even when they were adventurers. the players got to invest themselves in making their hometowns fit the characters.

bell’s hells has barely any touchpoints in marquet. laudna, orym, dorian, fearne, chetney, bertrand, fcg, and braius are not native to marquet and have only spent a few years at most there. even in their homes, most of them don’t have strong ties, at least not those we’ve seen.

laudna was a woods witch/phylactery/cryptid in the pale forest.

chetney had ties in wildemount, but many of them have passed, and he spent a lot of time traveling.

fcg woke up a few years ago and then went murderbot a few months ago iirc.

braius was a refugee and then was expelled from his home in zadash.

orym has strong ties in zephrah, but was notably traveling after the death of his father and husband.

fearne has strong ties to morri and ligament manor, but only to them, and minimally to her parents due to them leaving her there.

for those that grew up in marquet: imogen and ashton aren’t really tied to place or people. imogen was notably isolated from gelvaan, and estranged from her father. ashton landed in bassuras without memories and grew up an orphan before relocating to jrusar with the nobodies. neither of them has any particular knowledge of the variances in culture.

they weren’t filling in the gaps in the world that made places like whitestone, nicodranas, and zephrah feel lived in. it’s all narration. not to knock the narration, but it’s harder for the places to have an impact when the characters/players don’t remember them well.

more under the cut because this got long. it has been edited for clarity.

timeline considerations

also, think about the time they spent in each given place. BH has been in campaign for 97 days. 65 were pre-solstice. 40 of the 65 days pre-solstice were spent with at least part of the day in transit. 13 of those 40 days were ground travel, while the remaining 27 was via airship.

overall, they've spent 57/97 days in transit, 40 pre-solstice, 17 post-solstice. on either end, that's more than half of the time. post-solstice travel days isn't even counting the days with teleports, just their ground travel. numbers are a little fuzzy around the party split, since they spent different days traveling and had the time dilation.

in terms of actual time in each place, they've spent:

pre-solstice:

17 days in jrusar

3 days in heartmoor

7 days in bassuras (includes calloway hideout)

1 day in whitestone

3 days in the gloomed jungles of aeshanadoor (included in their ground travel days)

2 days in yios

2 days in the feywild

1 day in gelvaan

1 day at the tishtan excavation site

post-solstice:

2 days in uthodurn (team wildemount)

1 day in molaesmyr (team wildemount)

2 days in hearthdell (team issylra)

1 day in irriam canyon (team issylra) [time dilation wrt team wildemount can stretch this number. they played one day in irriam canyon with hevestro]

2 days in jrusar

2 days in zephrah

1 day in yios

2 days on slival (included in travel time)

2 days on kalutha

3 days in whitestone

4 days in feywild (time dilation days included)

2 days in ria'doin

1 day in razora (ruidus)

2 days in kreviris (ruidus)

1 day in zadash

1 day in aeor

1 day in rexxentrum

3 days in vasselheim

this doesn't precisely add up; they were in some of these places for the majority of the day and left at night, or stayed overnight & left in the morning. there are a few one-offs that i didn't mention for the sake of time. but the point is that they've spent a lot of time moving around. they've spent 70 days out of 97 in marquet (64 pre-solstice), but 39/70 were just transit days that passed quickly. post-solstice, they've spent 5 episodes on marquet, out of 60. they've spent 6 episodes in the feywild post-solstice.

in the post-solstice, they’ve spent a lot of time bouncing from place to place, and tend to have an absurd amount packed into certain days. even pre-solstice this was a tendency. there’s a few i’d point out:

Sydenstar 17: reunion with the Calloways, the Dusk/Yu reveal, Ira fleeing with the Moontide crown, reveal of the divine lattice around Ruidus

Sydenstar 18: FCG goes murderbot, Artana Voe attacks Paragon’s Call and BH try to get Treshi, only to be ambushed by Otohan. Fearne, Orym and Laudna die, and the latter cannot be resurrected with the resources they have available.

Sydenstar 24: After Imogen & FCG go into Ashton’s head the preceding night, they meet with Keyleth, go to Whitestone, have an audience with Percy, resurrect Laudna / defeat Delilah, and Imogen dreams of Eshteross dying

Fessuran 8: They start the day getting attacked by Shithead, go to Ebenold Kai’s house, only to go to the Fire Plane and get the Predathos reveal, then return with Planerider Ryn’s aid, get attacked by the Ruby Vanguard and investigate Tuldus, meet with Ashton at the Seminary, meet Kadija Sumal only for her to be Feebleminded by Ludinus, and then they Planeshift to the Feywild, where they trek out to get to Ligament Manor.

Fessuran 20: The Battle of the Red Center / Apogee Solstice. I don’t think I need to explain this one.

Quen’pillar 4: The parties reunite in Jrusar, then split, with the guests going to the Starpoint, and BH headed to Zephrah. They further split, with Imodna going canon and seeing the Ludinus projections, FCG and Ashton find Milo, and Chet, Fearne, and Orym have an encounter with a bounty hunter and then have a vision in the Duskmaven temple. FCG scrys on Liliana and finds her on the moon.

Quen’pillar 8: BH teleports to Yios to find Dancer and get attacked by Shithead. They teleport to Bassuras where they attack and kill Ratanish to save Imahara Joe. They then make a deal with the All-Minds-Butn to plant it on Ruidus. Then they transport to Slival for the night.

Quen’pillar 9: they meet the Dolabos and Jirana, who gives them the compass. They then interrogate Ratanish and summon the Crimson Abyss, after fighting their way aboard, they liaise with the crew and Fearne gets her boon.

Quen’pillar 12: they hike to the center of Kalutha and go spelunking. they find Evontra’vir and get answers. Then they go into the Chynes Maw where Ashton and Fearne get the shard of Rau’shan out. Ludinus simulacrum & Reilora fight. they then teleport to Whitestone where they get the harness back and agree to scout out the moon.

Quen’pillar 14: in the wake of Shardgate, they decide to go to Morri’s house. they go to the Feywild and undergo all three trust trials, and then plane shift back to the same day. They meet at the encampment and decide on the plan. they sneak through the Malleus Key and get through the Bloody Bridge. they go to Razora and meet Dono and Barthie. they fight Willmaster Edmuda. FCG and Fearne run into Otohan. they travel towards Kreviris, and on the way find the rift leading to Ria’Doin.

Quen’pillar 16: day of the Volition’s sabotage attacks. they succeed in their missions and start leaving. they meet the Weave Mind and Liliana in quick succession. Final Otohan attack. FCG sacrifice. they make it the Bloody Bridge and get back to the Malleus Key encampment.

Quen’pillar 17: Fearne meets Zathuda and is attacked by her shadow forms. They meet Essek and go to Zadash where they interrogate Astrid. they shop for clothes and magic items and meet Pumat Sol. Swordgate.

Quen’pillar 18: Failed Teleports to Aeor. find Ruby Vanguard members who died to Dominox. Call Teven and meet Braius. battle with Dominox and Ludinus. Occultus Thalamus shows Downfall. Delilah is triggered, fought, and ritually sealed in the soul anchor.

Quen’pillar 21: They plane shift to the Feywild and go to the Manor. the cross the Amethyst Gulch Sierras and ambush the Unseelie party there. Party meets the Arch Heart. They kill Zathuda and take him back to the Manor where Morri turns him into a tapestry that they then interrogate. Fearne tames Gloamglut.

while they’ve been more frequent in the late campaign, it was still common for them to be passing days in travel and then suddenly do a lot of fighting. it’s the nature of the game, but i find that bell’s hells really dealt with this issue in particular. they’re literally having the same conversations every day even if they’re episodes apart.

they spent the longest in jrusar, where they were mostly doing low-level jobs and engaging with various patrons (bertrand, eshteross, jiana hexum). it's not really home to any of them, unless you count laudna and imogen staying with zhudanna, which i don't really. 2nd by time is bassuras, which is where ashton grew up, but it was mostly a basis for them to track treshi, meet with the calloways, and get killed by otohan. 3rd by time is the feywild.

the built up places

the only places that have had the lived-in aspect to them have been ligament manor, with ashley-as-fearne’s influence, zephrah, informed by liam-as-orym and marisha-as-keyleth previously, whitestone, with taliesin-as-percy & laura-as-vex's influence, and honestly uthodurn, having deanna and frida and chetney. four places, across the campaign, and none of them in marquet. i feel like we’d get the vibe from the silken squall with how robbie has filled in some of the gaps, but c3 hasn’t had reason to go there.

the above examples excepted, bell’s hells doesn’t have homes to go back to. many of them have found their sole companionship with the group and their part time allies. they are almost entirely internally focused, and it’s led to a lot of repetitive debate and retracing of patterns.

it also means they don’t tend reach out to their short-term allies or try and get different perspectives on their views. they've contacted keyleth multiple times, but they never tried to contact deanna, frida, and prism again, even though they were explicitly doing research with the cobalt soul. how hard would it have been to send a message once they were functional again.

i know the vibe was npcs at character creation. but at least npcs have a sense of connection to the spaces they inhabit. and the people they interact with.

personal opinions

some tweaks i’d make that i don’t think would irreparably change c3

probably go wizard laudna as i’ve previously talked about. i’d make her a student/researcher at the starpoint conservatory, and give her both a grounding in arcane research and a base knowledge of the major factions and powers of marquet as a result of her time there. you could do it while maintaining delilah; have her encounter vex earlier on in her time in whitestone, and have vex encourage her to live her life and harness her power by learning about it. the lady of whitestone is generous. i bet she’d do it for the woman who was sacrificed in her image. i’d make at a point where it’s not obvious that laudna is dead and that delilah’s living in her head—it makes going to whitestone to resurrect her just that much more angsty. the added bonus is that she’d probably have higher int, which would fix a lot of my personal issues with the campaign not having people who know anything. late campaign it would be laudna and chetney sniffing out things to look at, but getting multiple perspectives instead of just visions and identify spells and items going in the harness. travis and marisha’s bread and butter.

have fcg start with a little bit more divine connection. ngl i loved their journey, and i cried so much when they died, but having that anchor earlier would have given a little more divine influence to this campaign in a way that i think would have made the god debates a little less frequent. honestly i think it would have been cool to see them go polytheist cleric. avandra for the path ahead, moradin as patron of the mechanical and created, erathis as the lady of law and civilization guiding their hand in learning about the world, etc. it would be a different take on a cleric and faith, and as evidenced by braius, sam can play a faithful character with split ties. admittedly i’m biased because of my own religious inclinations, but in a world with many gods, wouldn’t it make sense for a little aeormaton who was created without their influence to explore many different aspects of divinity in exandria? and it would fit for marquet, which has a lot of indian influence.

have imogen be aware of the apex war and otohan’s role in it, as a child growing up in the taloned highlands. tie liliana leaving to the war and whispers about the ruidusborn causing destruction as part of the war. make it clear that she wasn’t just a hot deadly set piece, but a person of faith, who came from a mercenary background to make big swings during the war, and in the aftermath have suspicion of them ramp up, especially with their disappearance. maybe a missed opportunity; otohan passed through gelvaan and met liliana early and imogen heard about it.

have dusk/yu know about fearne being zathuda’s bio daughter and have the moontide crown be a ruse to grab her and birdie (if possible) for zathuda. maybe not a full reveal, but enough to plant suspicions early and make the fey key sabotage a little more fraught.

maybe not give them a cycle of patrons. they went from eshteross's employ to hexum's, then were basically sent out by keyleth. during the party split, they got support to got to molaesmyr from the king & queen of uthodurn and also abbadina and hevestro. the most time they spent pursuing their own ends was when they went to yios and stopped in aeshanadoor on their way. i think this contributed to a lack of independence that took away from their decision making capabilities. if it wasn't a patron, it was based on individual interests and less group decisions. now they're continually circling because they have the same arguments over and over.

alter the teleportation/communication/resurrection magic breakdown. just personal preference. i get the purpose that it served, but it just meant that they weren't communicating as they went through teleportation mishaps with the staff. also idk why imogen didn't just take teleport at level 13. it would have freed up the attunement slot with the staff and dealt with the psychic damage issue. she hit 13 post-quen'pillar 4, which is when they got transportation via plants working again, so it wouldn't have been a huge change.

[tarydarrington]

It’s easiest if Orym sleeps in the middle.

For one thing, it keeps him from getting inadvertently shoved to the floor; Dorian is still not quite accustomed to keeping his arms tucked in, and Fearne has a tendency to kick in her sleep. For another, the first time Dorian had woken with his face on Fearne’s… bosom, he had spent half the day unable to look her in the eye. Besides, Orym says it’s warm - and neither of them minds keeping him comfortable.

And if Dorian takes a little comfort in knowing Orym doesn’t mind being so close while he’s vulnerable, well, he can keep that to himself.

He doesn’t wear very much, when he sleeps. Just the breeches. Must be a halfling thing, or maybe a Zephrah thing.

“Oh,” says Fearne when he brings it up. “Maybe he usually sleeps naked, but he’s too polite to do it when we’re all in the same bed.”

Dorian gets the impression there may be some projecting going on. In any case, it’s a perfectly fine arrangement. Even when they finally reach the heat and humidity of Marquet, it’s easier for all of them if they continue to share.

There are other, trickier aspects to Marquet, of course. Dorian does his best not to think of them too much, but a constant buzz of anxiety settles too easily back into his chest. There’s no reason anyone in the family should be out and about in Jrusar. He has nothing to worry about.

Aside from the fact that one of their powerful new friends can read minds, of course - but this wouldn’t be the first time he’s forcibly shoved thoughts of the Wyvernwinds out of the spotlight.

Of course, after she leaves for the night, that gets him thinking about a smaller version of himself, panicked over a broken vase, caught in the center of a Zone of Truth. So of course, after spending the evening trying to ignore it, the scene turns up again in his dreams.

Dorian wakes with a start, blinking into the dark with a racing heart. He’s not home. Well, he is, but– not there. He’s in the Spire by Fire, with his friends. With Fearne and–

“You okay?”

Dorian startles again. The dead of night it may be, but it isn’t completely dark - the torchlight filtering in through the window catches on Orym’s open eyes staring up at him with concern.

“Just fine,” he says. “Just a nightmare.”

Too late, as Orym’s brow furrows, he realizes their particular history with nightmares.

“Not one of those, though?” Orym asks.

For a moment, that familiar shame is back churning in his stomach. Of course Orym still doesn’t believe he’s thrown off the Spider Queen’s influence. Orym had never believed he could do it in the first place. And if it wasn’t so well-deserved, Dorian would be angry – and maybe he’s angry after all, regardless of whether he deserves to be.

Then he takes a breath, remembers where he is, and forces himself to see that the only worry in Orym’s face is for his own sake.

There’s no mistrust, anymore. Only care.

The shame in his stomach takes on a different flavor. Of course Orym trusts him.

“No,” he answers quietly. He forces a smile. “I was up on stage in front of a huge audience, and all of them were laughing. I didn’t understand why until I looked down and realized I wasn’t wearing any clothes at all.” He laughs in a way he hopes sounds casual. “How embarrassing.”

Orym watches him quietly for a moment, the look on his face unreadable.

“Sounds pretty lousy,” he says at last, and Dorian gets the feeling that isn’t anywhere close to what he wants to say. “You okay to go back to sleep?”

Dorian nods. “Yes. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

He shoots Orym one last tight smile, then settles back down facing the room. For a long moment, Orym doesn’t move.

“No trouble,” he murmurs eventually, and resumes his position as well.

The next few days are a whirlwind. One moment he’s sharing drinks and song with Bertrand Bell, and the next Bertrand is dead in an alley. Imogen pries into his head more often than he’d like, and the others… well, he likes them, but there’s a gulf of difference between like and trust. The undercurrent of anxiety doesn’t help one bit.

And then he turns up. Cyrus turns up, and Cyrus is in danger, and Cyrus has… met his friends? If the bar weren’t so high, Dorian would say he had never had a stranger week.

But at least they’re all on the same page now, more or less. For a while, as they speak first in the alley and then in the tavern, Dorian thinks the look on Orym’s face might be something like hurt. But he’s back to defending Dorian in the blink of an eye, and the others seem just fine. It must be nothing. Just the stress of the day.

He walks Cyrus back to the Corsairs, hands him his Sending Stone, and returns to the Spire to find that his friends have already gone to bed.

It isn’t so much that he would have liked to talk about it; the opposite, really - the walk back had been filled with anxious what-ifs and theories on how to dodge any possible prying questions. But for some reason, it stings a bit that none of them were even the least bit curious.

He shakes off the feeling as best he can as he climbs the stairs and counts the doors to the room he shares with Fearne and Orym. It’s already dark inside. Dorian pulls the door shut hastily behind him and fumbles around for his sleep clothes.

It’s only when he reaches the bed to settle down that he realizes something is off. His side of the mattress feels narrower than usual - and with a sickly pang, he knows why.

Orym is on the other side. Fearne is in the middle.

Dorian swallows around the sudden lump in his throat, averting his eyes from the pair of them as he climbs in carefully. It hasn’t been long since the others left - for all he knows, Imogen is still within range. He slams the door shut on any thoughts chasing their tails around his head, chokes down the guilt and the hurt, and shuts his eyes.

This time, he dreams of Cyrus’s head on an executioner’s block.

He wakes in a cold sweat, gasping in a breath of the humid air, heart racing. There are benefits to sleeping on the edge even when they’re not in the usual arrangement; Dorian’s feet are on the floor before the image has left his mind’s eye. Quietly as he can manage, he shoves the window open and ducks his head outside.

The night is cooler outside. This late, the streets are largely empty. Dorian pulls his hands down his face. This dark tangle of alleyways is what Bertrand saw in his last moments. Another life lost because Dorian failed to protect him.

“Hey.”

Dorian lets his face fall the rest of the way into his hands, scrubbing at his eyes before leaning back into the room. Of course, it’s Orym. He’s followed Dorian to the window, quiet as a mouse, and is watching him with both arms crossed over his chest. Dorian expects him to say something. Ask if he’s all right, maybe, or demand answers about– well, about anything. The shame settles back in.

But Orym doesn’t say a word, just peers up at him with those uncertain eyes, more guarded than he used to be.

Dorian takes a long breath, letting it out slowly. “You should get some more sleep, Orym.”

Orym makes that face of his that reminds Dorian so much of having disappointed his father. “Yeah, you too.”

Neither of them moves. Somewhere outside, a bird trills.

With a sigh, Dorian pulls the window shut. “I’m sorry.”

Orym’s eyebrows raise, but before he can reply, Dorian holds up his hands.

“I am. I am sorry. This… my family is very complicated. I didn’t want…” He didn’t want his new family getting mixed up in his old mess. “I just wanted to start over.”

The optimistic part of Dorian thinks that, maybe, something about Orym’s expression has softened. He grabs onto the notion with both hands.

“I do want to talk about it,” he says, and finds that it’s only partly a lie. “Just… not now. Is that all right?”

A moment passes with his heart in his throat, and then Orym nods. And, just a little, the tension in the room eases.

“C’mon.” Orym nods toward the bed. “Let’s get you some more rest.”

Dorian follows without argument. Fearne has managed to splay her limbs out across the entire breadth of the mattress in their absence, and has begun snoring soundly. Orym shoots him a look of conspiratorial amusement, and Dorian’s heart gets a little lighter as he smiles back.

“Hey, Fearne,” Orym murmurs soothingly, “let’s just get you back to this side of the bed, okay?”

He gives her torso a tug. She doesn’t stir one bit. Fondly, Dorian braces his hands on her back and gives Orym a look.

“Ready?”

Together, they manage to haul their friend back to her own fair share of the bed. She’s still snoring when she settles down - and even more amazingly, Orym is smiling at him.

“Mind if I get in, first?” he asks with a gesture to the center.

“Oh.” Dorian bites back the smile that comes with the full-body wash of relief. “Not at all.”

[12pt-times-new-roman]

u p d a t e s

All of Fearne's postcards were written by the same person, hand-painted, and they're all essentially the same age even though they arrived at various different times. They are all in mint condition even though the oldest was recieved ~90 years ago, and even though Fearne has been taking them out to look at them often.

FCG most definitely gained a couple more of those "stress points" after the reveals last episode. Their memory is getting jumbled, and they are having difficulty recalling things -- but they specifically remembered that Dancer was a light-furred firbolg (covered in fur, tall, with floppy ears) and "she had blood on her -- blood on her... hand." That's an awfully specific thing to remember, especially since the "blades of grass" on their chestplate look an awful lot like fingers.

Laudna and Imogen made up, and Imogen gave her the ring <3

Fearne has a little green gem that Morri gave to her so that "if I found my parents ever, this was a very important gem I had to give them if I saw them because it would help them save the world." It plays with the light in an odd way-- some shadows flatten when looking through it, and there are runes carved into it. Sounds like the Moontide Crown to me!

Dancer actually has dark black hair, olive skin, "fuzz fur on the edges," and a tattoo of a star on her right cheek. She's a "complicated person, but in comparison to this place [Bassuras], shining."

Laudna was indeed named after laudnum, which is a tinture of about 10% opium that was primarily used as pain medication but was also sold without a prescription for many different ailments.

From the mind that brought you catchphrases like "life needs things to live" and "help, it's again" comes the phrase "I had a fuckin' knew it!"

Every member of the Paragon's Call seems to wear a pendant of the Duskmaven, aka the Raven Queen.

C'mon, let the leader of the Paragon's Call be Dancer, do it (timestamp 12:33 EST)

WHAT

HUH??????

Leader of the Paragon's Call has piercing eyes, dark tanned skin, form-fit leather armor, and a flop of gray hair that goes off to the left -- aka the same person who Imogen saw in her dream

NAT 20 HISTORY CHECK

Otohan Thuul -- rumored that they've been involved with the Call for five or so years, and are responsible for its expansion. The reason they had a rep was because they were a famed warrior in the previous Apex War between the Stratos Throne and Ashanadoor -- they were considered one of the greatest warriors under the throne as a general, tactician, and strategist, but also because when the war was done, they just vanished for a while and popped up in Bassuras five years ago. She also apparently had an arcane-powered jetpack on her back.

The Apex War happened in 823 PD, and it never truly ended -- there was a truce that left both sides "exhausted and without victory," and the war is responsible for the destruction of every skyport in Marquet except for Jrusar and Ank'harel.

But.

This draws a whole bunch of connections to a hell of a lot of things.

First of all, the Omen Archive and the Grim Verity -- which the Lumas twins were involved in -- were, IIRC, both based in Yios, which is in Ashanedoor. So if this woman was a general of the Stratos Throne, she would have a motive to attack the twins other than their research into Ruidus, presuming that there is still a shadow war going on underneath the truce.

Interjection at 12:51 EST: goddamn the rolls in this section have been crazy.

Next, and IMO most importantly. This connects the Paragon's Call directly to Ruidus. It implies that the leader of the Paragon's Call is the person who had all those other people behind her, that she's training up all these people for a specific purpose, and that she is in some way connected either to Ruidus itself or to Imogen specifically. It also means that she will recognize Imogen the moment she sees her. Maybe she's using the Call as a front to find and train a very specific skillset, hence all of the figures being similar in stature?

Hey wait a fucking second. If the Paragon's Call is connected to Ruidus, and they also worship the Raven Queen, then what the fuck does that say about the connection between Ruidus and the Matron of Ravens? The leader of the Call presumably dictates their official deity, so what's the connection there? Ruidus is pre-Calamity, we know that, but what if it has something to do with the Raven Queen's ascension (118 years before the start of the Calamity)?

Otothan was "nightmare fuel" for the children of Bassuras.

"You don't judge somebody's worth by seeing how they do in a fair fight, you judge it by seeing how they do in an unfair one." Man, I didn't think that Ashton could say anything that better encapsulated Bassuras, but here we are

I can see the almost-full moon out my window throughout this entire thing and it's very pretty and thematic.

"There's no 'someones' here." I am fascinated by the All-Minds-Burn (how do you spell it?).

Also, I'm so, so appreciative of Laudna's relationship with sex in particular. "I haven't used that part of my brain... ever." "I've never been somebody's muse." "This has never really happened to me before" (referring to Dusk asking her out). Wanting sex and physical intimacy is something that's treated as such a taboo in American culture, especially casual or spur-of-the-moment or friends-with-benefits sex. And we've seen demonstrated that Exandria is not a place that is a heteronormative, cisnormative, or mononormative society -- queer people, trans-inclusive worldbuilding, and poly relationships are not only present but not systemically looked down upon within Exandria. And what we're seeing in the C3 party so far -- this open, flirtatious, casual, "normalizing" (this is not the word I'm looking for but I'll come back to it later) attitude towards sex -- is something we haven't seen yet on-screen before and I am honestly living for this sex positivity. Someone remind me to expand on this when I'm not tipsy.

Oh god Laudna's taking drugs

She's not taking drugs yet, but the All-Minds-Burn has taken a liking to her, and Ashton has apparently introduced Laudna to the idea that taking drugs would make Delilah unhappy, which I do not think bodes well for Laudna the next time our favorite Briarwood starts being an asshole again. (However, I am absolutely here for a narrative that includes the supervized use of recreational drugs as a perfectly viable method of working through issues.)

Imahara saying "I take care of my team" made me a little emotional ;-;

This plan could go so poorly and I fucking love it, I just really hope they're smart enough to not have FCG fly over the track, lmao