#i would watch the actual cr campaign but

[belovedblabber]

I gotta start on season two of tlovm I miss Percy my unhinged little meow meow

[helimir]

Some top tier Caduceus quotes I've been thinking about in these Downfall times. Something about how so much of Ludinus' position seems to rest on revenge. Showing Bells Hells the squabbling of the gods as they debate what to do about Aeor, and asking 'You can just watch bad people get away with it?'

It doesn't matter if the gods were wrong for their choices. Killing them won't bring back Aeor and it won't stop the violence that Ludinus and the Ruby Vanguard have visited on the world. I just don't see what it's for.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Sometimes I try to write down thoughts about this campaign but I admittedly have not been paying enough attention to feel confident in my character analysis so I write an incoherent text post and then delete it because I don't know if I'm actually making the correct judgments.

[utilitycaster]

I don't begrudge anyone their campaign preferences, and I think there's plenty of valid reasons to like Campaign 3 the best and this is not directed at people who are genuinely having a great time with it, but it feels like virtually all the nostalgia and wishful thinking I see surrounding Campaign 3 is screaming "you guys want Campaign 2." You want more slow travel and downtime and interparty conversations and slow-burn romance? You wish their main focus was fighting governmental corruption? You want a party that only semi-settles down at the end and keeps adventuring and remains very close? You're frustrated by how everpresent and overarching the moon plot is? You miss when they were just fucking around in a city? I genuinely believe you want Campaign 2, or at best you love a specific ship or a character from Campaign 3 but aren't happy about basically anything else, and would vastly prefer the tone and events and plot of Campaign 2. And I don't really care if you watch Campaign 2, or if you think I'm being annoying here; I simply genuinely believe you'd be happier watching Campaign 2 than Campaign 3 and are so deep in a sunk cost fallacy well you can't see it.

[sparring-spirals]

There is a universe in which i was caught up properly on CR whenever what the fuck went down and Imogen verbally and definitively declared that- after everything leading up to this and the back and forth and indecision- that she'd be willing to take down her mom if need be. and i would have been deeply insufferable and writing 20+ separate meta posts and liveblog yelling posts and shitposts. This is not that universe so instead we will put this post here where i can have wildly uninformed (aka 20 eps behind) Emotions about it until someday i actually catch up.

(I know. i accidentally wrote potentially wildly off base/deeply out of date meta again. what can i say. i like shaking the concept of An Imogen (even if it is Outdated Imogen) in a jar. sorry.)

Because i was watching long enough, I think, to see Imogen in the throes of the hope for something better, to understand that Imogen was viewing her mom was a figure and an idea and an answer, that would make things easier. Her mom was- gone, so early. And so her mom, in her mind, was not a person she was an idea, and there was so much hinged on that! Dogged determination and anger at her father and a deep seated dislike of the powers in her hands and head even as they gave her a guilty rush. There were promises there that maybe no one else had made, but Imogen believed. Things built up. Expectations made. Lore crafted, even unconsciously, around someone who was, yes, important to Imogen, but more importantly: Missing. Gone. A blank slate to be filled in. A promise of an answer guide to open questions.

And then she meets her mom, and Liliana Temult goes from a figure to a person- with all the bells and whistles and rough edges. She meets her mom and her mom turns her away. Tells her to run. Tells her she should go. Tells her to leave.

And Imogen doesn't. In the same way she kept visiting libraries, keps asking, kept pushing for answers when it was just about her magic and her headaches and the voices. Imogen always, always wants to know. She keeps digging, she keeps trying, she reaches out, over and over and keeps trying to touch this figure in mist until she's real under her hands, and. Evidence piles up- of deeds gone wrong, blood on her hands, a figure standing next to Otohan (her friends bodies scattered, lifeless, around Otohan). She keeps reaching out, keeps trying, and is rebuffed, over and over. Things get worse and the skies get redder and magic goes dead and she's still- unsure, because what if there's a better reason, what if there's a better way, there has to be a reason, why. There has to be, right- maybe if- maybe. Maybe-

Its just like- a person as an idea. As a symbol. As a promise. One you build yourself up around and towards. One you talk about, not talk to.

And then the fog clears, and they are a human.

(And she's your mom, and she's not what you imagined. She's done you wrong. She's done your loved ones wrong. She's hurt you. She's hurt others. She's going to keep hurting you. She is going to keep hurting everyone. She is too far gone to reason with. She is not listening to you. She is flawed. She is. dangerous. She looks so much like you. You look just like her. You are so similar. You have always known you were similar. You always hoped. You.

Are not her. You are not hers. She is not yours. She is not who you thought she was. She was always someone else. So are you.)

Imogen walks through the bases pretending to be her mother. Liliana is a known face- a powerful one, a figure people fear. A well known silhouette. Imogen slips into the shadows of it, sometimes, when it serves her, but we know- she knows- its all an act. All a lie.

Liliana, after all, is alive, and well, making choices that she believes in and fighting for things with a dogged determination maybe only matched by her daughter.

Imogen knows this. I think. There's a part of her that maybe wishes that wasn't the case.

"There is no loyalty with this blood." And after all- only living people bleed.

[kingstealer]

aabria going, "as aimee who maybe wants to have a friend sit by you soon" is going to haunt me for the next two weeks. i can already tell.

[finncakes]

having some art block so that means ballpoint pen scribbles

[wayhaughtn7]

It hasn’t even been a full day since I watched the last three episodes of season 3 of The Legend of Vox Machina and I’m already fed up with seeing all the whining about the changes made from Critters. I think the changes they’ve made not only work narratively for the medium but also work at slowly working in story threads for the Mighty Nein show and a possible Bell’s Hells show as well as some sort of adaptation of EXU and EXU: Calamity. There have been no egregious changes and considering how well it’s been received by critics some of the changes might actually work better.

Sure I’m bummed we didn’t get the whole party taking turns to kill Ripley or Keyleth losing her shit on Raishan but I still have those moments and I think the changes made to those moments worked better for the show than the original version would have. What works in a D&D campaign where the roll of a die controls how moments turn out doesn’t always work in a television show format and especially wouldn’t work for folks who don’t watch CR but watch TLOVM.

I can already tell that this fandom is going to be insufferable when the M9 show premiers next year and considering it’s been 3 years of non-stop bitching about C3 and before that EXU that’s saying something.

[shorthaltsjester]

oh temult family i will never not be insane about you. thank you laura bailey for my rights and the good fucking food this ep with imogen messaging both liliana and relvin. i will have more elaborate rot undoubtedly soon but , the love in those messages! the love!!!! the love and the fact that it isn't enough in either of her relationships to her parents (or their relationships to one another).

like. imogen has just come out of the realm of one of the gods that her mother at best really does not like and at worst is happy to slaughter where she chose to trust the image of her mother and got power word stunned and then watched one of her friends kill that same image. and then she sends a message saying "I don’t know where you are or how it’s going, but I love you and I trust you." and the ache of that message being kind, a reminder to her mother that even when she stands at the side of someone imogen has committed to fighting, imogen is also choosing to love and trust her. but the point that imogen not knowing where her mother is or how its going speaks to how little she actually knows of her mother due to liliana's choices -- ones made out of love perhaps, but ones that aren't rectified by the presence of that love. and liliana returns "Imogen, I’m glad you’re okay. I love you, too. I’ve kept him at bay so far and I think he believes me. I think." and between sending's limitations and the improv setting of cr, i'm not resting any arguments or ideas on this occurance, but I Do think it is interesting that liliana spends words saying she's glad imogen is alright but does not return that statement of trust the way she returns the i love you.

and then. much more life ruining to me because of just. less relvin appearances and general . laura bailey sure knows how to make a character that is a daughter to a father reasons. imogen messaging relvin is my superbowl actually. thinking about like 2 episodes ago imogen saying "he's her father, but he's not her daddy" about zathuda, and today, despite all the distance literal and emotional and temporal, imogen starts her message calling relvin daddy.

like i don't know if i can really encapsulate the way that exchance made me feel, just imagine me pointing at the words and gesticulating emphatically but Good God

IMOGEN: Daddy, things are crazy. I love you, no matter what. Thank you for doing your best. RELVIN: Imogen, I think about you a lot. I hope wherever you are, you’re happy. You always were a wanderin’ spirit. Horses miss you as much as I do.

"thank you for doing your best" in a message sent to her father hours after sending a message to her cult-indoctrinated mother who she is choosing to trust is working on her side. who she can't be sure is actually doing her best. do you get it. do you see what i see.

and the fact that one of the first things in the campaign we heard from imogen about her father was that he was probably better off now that she wasn't there, that she figured based on the distance that grew between them, he was probably relieved without her around. and relvin's message tonight rebuting that idea. because he's a reticent man who has probably uttered the words 'i love you' a maximum of 10 times in his life, but he tells her he misses her as much as the horses do, that he hopes she's happy (implies he imagines she is because she was always a wandering spirit -- me choosing not to think about relvin saying he always assumed liliana would leave gelvaan, he just thought he'd go with her) and that he thinks of her often. i can't take it. i can't.

[shaniacsboogara]

...maybe i will 😈

The setting description and the voices Shane was built for this 👏👏

[colealexart]

how did you first get into cr?

i can't remember if i've told this story on here before but here we go: i was really into the last of us, especially part 2. it came out just a couple weeks after my grandad died, so i was using that as a way to process my grief. probably not the best idea given the games themes, but hey.

shannon woodward (who plays dina) started streaming on twitch. i regularly watched her and became an active member of her community (and eventually became a mod) and the people in there would talk about this d&d show with ashley johnson and laura bailey that was on every thursday. i tried watching for ashley and laura, but i just wasn't into it. i couldn't really focus on 4-5 hours of people just sitting around a table playing dungeons and dragons (a game i'd never played before and didn't know the rules for.) the thought of having to watch hundreds of hours to catch up was daunting, even though i really really wanted to. i think i made it to episode 3 of campaign 2 and stopped.

a few friends who i gamed with (who are now my best friends) would talk about it constantly, and they eventually convinced me to try again. they told me about the animated recaps and said that the story really kicks off in the 20s so i was like fuck it. i had nothing else to do because we were in the middle of a pandemic, i was still grieving, and i had been looking for a show to put on in the background while i tried to work on my art. (tried being the key word here. i really was ready to give up on my art before i found critical role.)

anyway yeah, i became obsessed. i binged the entirety of campaign 2 in a few months. not only did i find joy in watching them play, but it pulled me out of my grief induced art block and helped me actually like what i was creating again.

i didn't get to watch the finale live, but i did watch it when i'd fully caught up and cried all the way through. i didn't realize just how attached i was to the characters until i didn't have them anymore. in a way, it helped me process my grief for my grandad. if i could say goodbye to them, i could say goodbye to him.

when campaign 3 started, i watched the premiere live but i said that there was no way i could stay up every week to watch it, since it airs at 3am here. i was very wrong lol. getting up at 3am on fridays is my favourite part of the week. and i'm very thankful for finding critical role when i did :)

[utilitycaster]

You have been watching CR so much longer than me, and I'm curious to know your take on TV Show Canon interfering with or replacing Live Play Canon? On the latest 4sd, Sam mentioned that they're sort of in a schrödinger's Canon, where in one instance the show and campaign have two opposing cannons and they get through it by not directly addressing one or the other. The example he gave was Highbearer Vord, who was an old man in campaign 1 and a woman in the show, whom Matt referred to by name or as 'they' in campaign 3.

Personally, I've never been precious about adaptations changing or ommitting things, and I didn't care about the change from the campaign to the show, but for some reason, the show changing the campaign gives me pause. I also personally love the show! Campaign one was my favorite, especially the chroma conclave arc, and I love the tv show just as much, so I don't know why I would be precious about one over the other? I think maybe I'm worried about changes retroactively impacting the campaign because I already saw and loved the campaign as it was and I don't want it to change, whereas the show is currently being created and so any changes or adaptations just feel like their own thing that I get to see unfold.

The change I mentioned is very small and doesn't really impact much, I'm just wondering what your preference would be for this practice in general! I think that the cast mentioned that some changes will be made to the beginning of the Mighty Nein's story for the upcoming show. In a hypithetical future campaign, if someone mentioned the M9, would you prefer it to be in line with the campaign or the tv show, would you prefer if it was vague like Vord, or is it dependent on what the changes are?

For me it would be dependent on the scale of the change and what it is. Honestly, for Vord I don't even find it in conflict in the present campaign (ie, in 843 PD); while obviously Vord's gender is different between the canon of Campaign 1 vs. the Legend of Vox Machina and those are taking place as two versions of the story in the same time, I just assumed that in 843 PD Vord was figuring some shit out re: gender and pronouns. (I'd also add that Vord's description during Campaign 1 itself varied wildly; Matt's changed character pronouns before in the past and I don't know if it's been deliberate or if he forgot but it's not a big deal).

I think if we're talking about scenes that were not visible in the campaign and were expanded upon in TLOVM (eg: getting to see more of the Briarwoods or the Chroma Conclave plotting without Vox Machina present), treating them as canon within Campaign 3 is fine; honestly those probably were canon in Matt's notes anyway, just unseen. Small things that aren't plot critical - changing a character's gender or appearance, for example - are also fine by me.

The issue arises if we get into actual plot conflicts - for example, the party splitting during the Feywild and Westruun arcs in TLOVM vs. Scanlan and Grog being present in the Feywild in canon. In that case, resolving the two is not possible and I don't care for attempts to make it so. I don't generally care for attempts to justify a cast mistake or canon contradiction and make it all lay flat when the answer sometimes is just "this is improv and they forgot", and this feels similar. Like...if Kamaljiori were to show up in Campaign 3, that would be valid, because he doesn't die in Campaign 1 and does in TLOVM, and when we're watching the streaming campaigns we should defer to campaign canon. I don't think it's fair to Campaign 3 to try to play it with an eye to animated adaptation, so any ripples from that can be addressed if an when they come up. But for stuff like Vord's gender, as long as you get the presence and the vibe right, details can be altered. The same, presumably, will be true for mentions of the Mighty Nein if there is an Exandrian-set Campaign 4.

For what it's worth, that is what I expect when the cast mentions changes to the adaptation as well. Like...look, if I'm wrong about this there will be other discussions to be had, but I think the idea that Molly won't die in the Mighty Nein adaptation is a rather desperate and unrealistic one since that sort of derails the entire rest of the campaign both plot-wise and thematically. Fine for AU fanfic, though I'm personally uninterested, but a poor adaptational choice. But changes like splitting the party between the Feywild and Westruun, or Grog becoming weakened, or Vax communing with the Raven Queen a little earlier and at a smaller temple, or Vex facing Saundor alone, all maintain the core vibes and themes while dealing with time constraints and letting Pike be more present. If someone were to ask Vex point-blank "was Scanlan there when you fought the guy who had that cool bow you're carrying" in Campaign 3 I think the answer should be "yes"; but that's not actually important. What's important is that Vex faced a guy who had been consumed by bitterness and grudges for a weapon that she ultimately carved the word for "forgiveness" into as a personal reminder. An adaptation should retain what's actually important to the story, but changing what hangs on the same fundamental fixed skeleton is fine.

[overnighttosunflowers]

The Lore of Every Thought’s a Possibility, or: What The Fuck Is Up With the Planes? A Really Long Post About All My CR Theories

This post is ostensibly about the lore of every thought’s a possibility, an Imodna fake dating fic I wrote that has a canon-divergent continuation of the campaign’s main plot humming along in the background. BUT, just as LOTR was kind of a vehicle for Tolkien to play with linguistics, this fic was really kind of a vehicle for me to explore lore thoughts I’d been having anyway. (I am not actually comparing myself to Tolkien. A much more apt comparison would be a lore gremlin hiding under the bed to gnaw furiously on a thousand pages of transcripts and then offer a sheepish pile of scraps loosely formed into a heart.)

Basically, this should hopefully be accessible and interesting regardless of whether you’ve read the fic.

So! In building out my fic’s B-plot, I spent a lot of time combing through existing CR lore and synthesizing my thoughts into a single multi-pronged theory. What follows, then, is basically 80% theorizing to a degree I feel is supported by canon, and 20% extrapolating those theories a bit further in a direction that would let me resolve my fic.

I started writing Every Thought after episode 57, right before Team Wildemount entered Ludinus’s tower in Molaesmyr. So, the very first thing I had to do was invent what it was that they found there. I decided that, for my purposes, they’d found a shattered dodecahedron—something they’d seen before once, at the Key during the solstice—as well as Ludinus’s notes indicating that it was called a beacon and had to do with a type of possibility/fate/time magic called dunamancy. 

I went in this direction because I’ve long been convinced that the Luxon has a bigger role to play in this story than we know, for these reasons plus others that I can’t as easily reconstruct:

First, the Luxon, the Primordials, and Predathos are the only beings described as existing outside of Exandria’s standard planes/people/gods construction. The Luxon was said to exist before the Founding, and to have created the Primordials. Predathos was said to have arrived from beyond the known universe after the gods, during the Founding*, and been banished by the gods and Primordials working together. Although perhaps tenuous, this links the two in my mind. 

*(ie the period of history starting with the gods’ arrival in Exandria and ending with the Schism, where the Prime Deities defeated the Primordials and Betrayers)

(I’ve been wondering if perhaps Predathos and the Luxon are a Raava/Vaatu situation, or if perhaps one split off from the other. We already know the Luxon broke itself into pieces (the beacons)—what if Predathos is also a piece of it, containing all the darkest parts?)

In any event, to my mind, there has always been a possibility that Imogen’s storm at the end of episode 33/beginning of episode 34 is related to not just Predathos but also the Luxon. When Imogen is pushed to her breaking point, everything around her goes deep red—and then white. The Hells are each swept up in a storm of previously unaccessed memories and seem to perhaps be somehow shifted out of that space and/or time for the duration of the explosion that follows, being restored unharmed immediately thereafter.

(C3e34)

To me, this very much has flavors of dunamancy—not least because in The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, the Luxon’s original form is described as “a colossal, shapeless body of impossibly bright light.”

The other time a similar white light is described is at the end of episode 51, when the Hells are bamfed to Wildemount and Issylra. The light is described as “familiar,” so presumably similar to the light from episodes 33/34.

The only other unexplained spatial displacement we have seen (beyond the other solstice-powered ones at leyline nexuses) was Ashton’s, during his parents’ Hishari ritual. He had a sense of watching everything tear apart—"wind, and light, and air"—and then they found themself suddenly in the Hellcatch desert. So I decided—half conjecture, half invention—that Ashton was transported by this same white light.

(Perhaps interestingly, the light has appeared 1) when an Exaltant of Predathos was pushed to the brink; 2) when a beacon was used in the Malleus Key, and—in my conjecture—3) during a ritual we later learned involved a shard of a Primordial, legendarily a creation of the Luxon. Could all three be related?)

All the Primordial stuff we learned from episode 58 onwards exists outside the scope of my fic, so I didn’t know about that shard while I was writing, and it isn’t fic-canon to my story. But I was absolutely positive that the Hishari stuff would be coming back in a big way; Matt had been dropping those hints for quite a while.

So, in my fic, Team Issylra (who at the time we didn’t know would land in Issylra—I guessed well!) encountered someone who had, for a time, been romantically involved with a member of the Hishari who had defected. (It had to be someone able to fill the group in on the Hishari without having known Ashton’s parents, because there’s a whole additional layer of emotional weight to that which this fic wasn’t equipped to contend with. As is, this defector’s ex, who I named Jesmaine, is mentioned like once.) Team Issylra learns the following:

The Hishari derive their name not from the Ashari but from the Gau Drashari.

The Gau Drashari were trying to keep Avalir from moving from plane to plane, which would have been dangerous to Exandria.

The Hishari were a modern group that discovered this information and came to believe that the Gau Drashari’s mission had been mistaken; far from keeping the planes separate and protected (a legacy we still see in the Ashari and their elemental rifts), the true mission should have been to reunite the planes, collapsing them all back down into the single plane from which they’d originally sprung.

(Technically they don’t get this much detail, but I’m giving it in full here for context.)

Now, in my fic, we go on to learn that Ludinus was working with the Hishari to help them collapse the planes. The Hells’ understanding, and mine, is that either the Hishari were already on this path and Ludinus realized he could benefit from helping, or—more likely—the group and/or its mission are themselves his own creations, shaped to help him achieve a goal.

We also learn that the Hishari were trying to collapse the planes by supercharging threshold crests with a good old dose of possibility and potential, courtesy of a beacon presumably provided by Ludinus. This mimics the way that Ludinus was using a beacon to charge or power the key.  It also puts keys or threshold crests on all seven of the most “central” planes: canon’s Material, Fey, and Shadow, and my Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.*

*It's interesting to note that, per the Divine Gate article on the CR Wiki, you do not pass through the Divine Gate when traveling to the Fey Realm, the Shadow Realm, the Ethereal Plane, or any of the Elemental Planes. You also don't pass through it when entering the Astral Plane, which itself contains the Divine Gate, but you do pass through it on returning. I omitted the Astral Plane from my plane-collapsing theory for this reason, and omitted the Ethereal Plane because it already overlaps the Material Plane to a much more significant degree than any other. I discounted all the Outer Planes because they are beyond the Divine Gate, and because they mostly seem kind of vestigial from official D&D and Pathfinder lore anyway.

Now, there were a few reasons I’d been thinking that perhaps the planes were going to become more relevant to the lore of Exandria than we’ve seen thus far. First of all, there have been several attacks at the elemental rifts defended by the Ashari: first an attack from the fire plane in ExU Prime, then an attack on Terrah before the Solstice. 

(c3e49)

Now, Keyleth concludes that these were just “false front” distractions, but I’m not so sure.

(c3e66)

Coming from our current lore knowledge, I notice that it’s the earth and fire planes specifically that were targeted—the same as the two Primordial shards that ultimately come to reside in Ashton and Fearne. At the time, though, I didn’t know about the shards, and so I instead thought: could these groups perhaps have been trying to weaken the boundaries between the planes? Could Ashton’s parents’ ritual—the Hishari ritual—have been doing the same?

We also knew that for some reason in order to release Predathos it was essential to have Malleus keys on three separate planes. While Ludinus was able to proceed with the Fey key down, Predathos quite notably hasn’t emerged yet, so it’s entirely possible that having a Fey tether remains in some way essential. I also found it particularly notable that until Fearne was born, Ruidus didn’t show up in the Fey Realm, suggesting that her birth somehow anchored it there—a theory only strengthened by what we’ve since learned about Fearne’s parentage.

The biggest reason I’ve thought the planes would be important, though, is ExU Calamity. Calamity seems to have (likely intentionally) laid a lot of lore groundwork for Campaign 3, and planes—specifically travel between them, specifically as it relates to godhood—were essential to Calamity’s plot. 

Let’s go through the details there, starting with the Tree of Names. In Calamity, we learn that the Tree of Names was inscribing a spell of protection on the world: protection from  “all the things outside it.” We specifically learn that this protective barrier somehow enforced a separation between the planes:

(ExU Calamity episode 3)

The Tree does this through the power of names. Anything whose name it knows, it can guard against. Now, at first glance it seems like it specifically was meant to guard against the Primordials: after all, it was foretold that if the Primordials joined the Calamity, it would mean the end of everything, and it was by learning the names of and banishing the Primordials that the Ring of Brass was able to save a portion of the world. 

But, if the Tree was intended to guard primarily against the Primordials, why would the Arboreal Caelix have been added to protect it right after the Matron of Ravens ascended? 

We don’t know. But we do know that no one remembers the Matron’s name. That, therefore, very probably, the tree doesn’t remember it, either. And, therefore, that probably the Matron was able to evade the tree, giving her access to all the planes. 

From there, I hypothesized that there might be some connection between the Matron’s evasion of the tree and her ascension—between her planar travel abilities and her godhood.

Now, why did I zero in on collapsing the planes?

In Calamity episode 3, we learn that Laerryn had designed the Astral Leywright to “allow the city to travel not only across the face of Exandria, but to realms supernatural, where a city of mortals might walk as equals with the gods themselves.” In episode 4, we learn further that “Aeor opposed the gods and the Matron of Ravens and her ascension, and Laerryn's vision was, from whence do the gods come? By what token do they award themselves that title, and what realms beyond could we explore?” 

In summary: Aeor wanted the gods gone, and no more mortals ascending. Avalir wanted to one-up Aeor: why not make mortals themselves equal to gods? How better to do it than traveling as the gods travel—across the planiverse?*

*I didn't have space to address it in my fic, but I actually think that the most important part of all of this is "from whence do the gods come." The gods, the Luxon, Predathos: all came from somewhere beyond. Whatever and wherever that is, access to it is what truly separates mortals from gods. For the convenience of fic plot, I decided that where they came from is not an entirely separate place, but rather Everywhere All At Once. Put all the planes together and you get a sort of fourth-dimensional place that is simultaneously all of them and none of them.

In briefer summary: travel from plane to plane is the last thing separating mortals from gods. 

Now, one might immediately note that Plane Shift is a spell that exists, so this would have to be some kind of more complex planar travel. Calamity episode 4 enlightens us a bit on this: “[Laerryn’s] vision was not the simple magic of the threshold crests, not a quick move, not a one-way trip, not a single destination, but truly to take a leyline off of the face of Exandria and chart it to the stars, that we could go wherever we wished and be whatever we wished. [But] we didn’t know the spell the tree was writing.” 

So. The kind of planar travel Laerryn seeks—the kind that brings humans level with gods, the kind the Matron would’ve been able to execute as part of her ascension ritual—isn’t to a single destination. 

Could that mean that it’s to every plane at once? That part of what makes a god a god is the ability to exist on every plane simultaneously?

The Ritual of Seeding page on the CR Wiki offers some evidence to support this theory. Itself citing ExU Calamity, it tells us that one of the things that happens during an apogee solstice is that the walls between planes thin and the leylines move around. It also tells us that this was part of the Matron’s ritual of ascension:

(CR Wiki - Ritual of Seeding)

(I’ll note that I dropped the leylines lore from my fic for reasons of simplicity, choosing to focus on the adjacent planar lore. I avoided delving into Matron stuff for the same reason—the Hells haven’t learned a ton about her, so I would have had to do a lot of legwork to introduce and support theories about her. I was trying to operate within the realm of what we already know. I will note, though, that The Nine Eyes of Lucien tells us that the Matron of Ravens, as the goddess of fate, is very interested in Fate-Touched individuals; that the Fate-Touched feat closely mimics the effect of the dunamantic spell Fortune’s Favor, which can also be obtained from staring into a beacon; and that Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn alludes to the Fate-Touched feat being somehow connected to Ruidus… very interesting, is all I’m saying.)

Okay, so now we’re set up to move into the endgame of my fic plot: Artana Voe showing up to tell the Hells that the deaths of the gods Ethedok and Vordo created the Fey and Shadow planes. This theory originally comes from Rach @dadrielle (as do fragments of everything in here, because I developed 90% of this directly into her DMs, but I know that I got this one 100% from her; whether she got any pieces of it elsewhere I’m not sure).

I believe the first seed of this idea came from Ethedok and Vordo’s domains. Ethedok was the god of darkness and winter, and Vordo was the god of fate and order. The former calls to mind the Shadow Realm, while the latter calls to mind the Fey Realm (albeit in a more topsy-turvy kind of way). This was fueled by the vibes of a largely unrelated post about Spelljammer, which mentions that in that canon, the Astral Sea is full of the corpses of dead gods, some of which form entire cities. (Absurdly cool Spelljammer campaign idea there if you click through, by the way.) Of course, this has nothing to do with Exandria, but it did get us simmering on the idea of the deaths of gods creating locations, and Rach had the thought that perhaps planes could grow from the corpses of the gods in the astral sea.

Anyway, I hadn’t committed to using this in my fic—that aspect of its lore solidified rather late in the game—and then episode 68 rolled around in mid-August, and Keyleth casually dropped that the deaths of the Primordials caused the creation of the elemental planes:

Which, while not confirmation of anything about the Fey or Shadow planes, definitely made the Ethedok-and-Vordo’s-deaths-made-those-planes theory feel a lot more plausible. So I made it fic-canon!

I decided that the Grim Verity would’ve discovered this information, and used Artana Voe* to relay it to the Hells.

*In my earliest drafts, Artana Voe was going to relay information about the anti-resurrection poison being derived from a distortion of the Luxon--eliminating all potential worlds where someone came back to life--as well as the discovery that Potions of Possibility could therefore protect against it, and might even be able to someday reverse it. But this felt less consequential in a world where Revivify is offline anyway, and less thematically relevant than I wanted my finale lore drop to be, and by the time canon got to Keyleth's magical healing flowers, I'd more or less decided to scrap it and come up with something else.

It seemed entirely plausible that the Verity would make this discovery. They already know about Ethedok and Vordo, about them being eaten by Predathos, about Ruidus being formed to imprison Predathos afterwards—and they also know that something is brewing with the planes, per Campaign 2 Episode 129 when the Mighty Nein find Planerider Ryn’s notes:

So (and we are fully past theories into the realm of Fic Canon at this point), the Hells have learned that part of the ritual to create godhood is existing on every plane at once, and that Ludinus is aiming to achieve this by collapsing the planes. All that’s left is to put together that it’s not that he’s trying to ascend to godhood himself, it’s that he’s trying to feed the god-eater inside the moon by ascending that moon itself to godhood—bringing it to every plane at once by collapsing them, and topping it off with a dose of the Luxon’s infinite potential and (likely very significantly, although I wasn’t able to explicitly address it in the fic) the “sliver of divinity” itself that is Vax’ilorb. And that by releasing Predathos and killing the gods, he will create an entirely new set of planes to replace the ones he’s destroyed, giving him a whole new universe to rule over. 

Now, do I think that this will wind up being true in the campaign? Not in so many words, no. I’ve taken my hypotheses and theories, shaved them down a little bit to fit more tidily into the space of a romance fic’s B plot, and then extrapolated them outwards slightly past what I’d otherwise be comfortable conjecturing if this were purely a lore post. But the result is, I hope, both logically sound and consistent with stuff we know to be true of canon thus far. I’m pretty damn proud of it, and if any tiny glimmers of this end up coming true? Well, then I’ll be even damn prouder.

Some additional miscellaneous information that I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with, but sure felt relevant:

Regarding Ludinus and the Luxon:  Team Wildemount learns in episode 58 (i.e. after my fic diverges from canon) that Ludinus used a crystal found under Molaesmyr to open a “channel of consciousness” with Ruidus during a celestial solstice. The crystal was believed to have fallen from an ancient flying city… which tracks with the fact that we know from C2 that Aeor was experimenting with dunamancy. The cast hypothesized that the crystal under Molaesmyr was indeed a beacon.

Regarding the Astral Plane, which contains the Divine Gate: Per a map found in the Happy Fun Ball in C2, Ruidus—or some kind of “ruby circle” that seems likely to be Ruidus—existed in the Astral Sea before the time of the Calamity, ie at a time before the Divine Gate went up (maybe disappearing because of that gate?): https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/u24lzj/spoilers_c3e19_ruidus_mention_in_the_happy_fun/. Unlike everything else on the map, it is not tethered to anything.

The Happy Fun Ball is now owned by Yussa, who is a friend of Ryn’s and therefore may be affiliated with the Grim Verity.

The Astral Sea was the Somnovem’s destination of choice when they planeshifted the Cognouza Ward away from the crashing Aeor.

(c2e45)

Regarding the planes collapsing: Per The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount (p134), “The extremely rare double eclipse, when the moons Catha and Ruidus overlap before the sun . . . [is linked to the fact that] seers and oracles warn of portents that speak of an uncontrollable planar crossover, where multiple planes might briefly collide.

Regarding the origins of Ruidus: The Tishtan ruins, where the Malleus Key is located, date back to around the time of the Schism, i.e. shortly after the imprisonment of Predathos. Tishtan culture vanished with no explanation prior to the Age of Arcanum. Could the Tishtans have somehow ended up on the newly created Ruidus and become Reilora? We know that the Tishtans built ritual sites around Exandria, and it seems reasonable to hypothesize that those sites were at leyline nexuses. Were they attempting some kind of early version of Ludinus’s ritual to communicate with the godeater inside the young red moon?

Regarding the “beyond” from which the gods initially came: Deanna describes the afterlife as something that “existed before [the Matron of Ravens] and that will exist after her . . . It’s like being a little kid, and you think that your parents are gods . . . and then you get old enough to start asking who made your parents, you know?”

The Matron of Ravens is responsible for death, but if what happens after you die is beyond the purview of the gods entirely, what implications might that have about godhood? 

[mollywall-e]

Was there a specific reason that you fell out of the CR fandom? I can't put my finger on what it was for myself, but I'm feeling the same. Kinda wish i could pinpoint what it was just so it would mean that everything else is fine

C3 burnout is real.

For me, I think it’s a couple of things!

I’m really struggling with connecting to the story. I’m much more of a character driven person, and I feel like lately the campaign has been very mission/task focused with less time for character development/moments.

This makes things difficult because we’ve known “the big bad” for so long, it’s lost its sense of mystery.

Tuning in week after week when I’m not dying to know what’s happening next is hard! Especially since their content is SO LONG. I work full time and can’t watch live. Once I get behind, it’s really hard to catch up!

I’ve fallen out of C3 for long stretches before, until something major happened and I’d get inspired to pick it up again! I’m hopeful that I’ll get back into it at some point, but I’m not gonna stress myself out about it.

C2 got me through COVID and C3 got me involved in the fandom in a way that I’m so thankful for! I’ve loved writing fic and making friends in discord servers. But right now, following the show doesn’t spark joy and that’s okay. Rather than cling to CR with a white knuckled grip, I’m allowing myself to set it aside and follow the dopamine. It’ll still be there when I’m ready to come back to it.

Interests come and go, intensity fades. There’s nothing wrong with that.

On a more personal and homosexual note, I’ve also found myself falling into a new hyperfixation that’s consuming 95% of my brain’s CPU.

If any other struggling critters are looking for a new show, I can’t recommend The Loyal Pin enough. It’s a Thai GL on YouTube. The show is centered around their relationship, and it’s so beautiful. Period drama, friends to lovers, well-written, well-acted, stunning cinematography. Think Bridgerton, but actually gay. Yes, it’s as steamy as Bridgerton and the chemistry between the actresses is unreal, unmatched. Plus there’s a lot of focus on the Thai culture and history, which I find super fascinating!

[onyxbird]

I recently posted my first Critical Role fanfic, and I could envision some potential hiccups associated with posting in a very popular fandom with so much canon that I'm only partway through, but I'm now discovering one I never anticipated.

The fic was a crackfic spinning off of Vax nearly getting his foot burned off in lava and (unlikely) consequences of Pike's healing process, and a commenter just mentioned something about how they'd love to read about Vax actually getting his foot half-burnt off... And I genuinely, 100% have no clue whether what they meant is that they liked the character-POV fic taking place during (near-)canon scenes and would like more or whether they think that was part of the fic and do not realize that part is 100% canon. 😳

Campaign 1 alone has hundreds of hours of content, and the lava incident was during a portion that many people advise new viewers to skip, so either way would be understandable, but I didn't expect to facing "will readers know about this canon event?" this early in my ficcing!

(For those who did skip the first 27-ish episodes of Campaign 1 per internet recommendations: Vax canonically got his foot severely damaged by lava "on-screen" and it was an ongoing issue for multiple episodes, because it was deemed to give disadvantage on stealth and not be curable by a normal long rest and/or one-time healing process. Pike had to keep working on it for a while before he even got all his toes back, and I'm sure anyone who's watched CR can imagine how traumatic it was for Vax to have disadvantage on stealth.)

[elahogn]

Top of my head reaction while watching CR3E89 below, there's some discussion about the gods and the world, contain some SPOILERS so here's a warning.

Also contain some discussion and spoilers about the gods and world building of the 2 podcasts Legend Lark (Dames and Dragons) and Spout Lore. They are both very good and coming to an end of a long campaign, so check them out if you want to feast on some delicious delicious world buidling.

This whole discussion of whether the gods are necessary for the world to function comes up ever so often in this world of Critical Role and once again in c3e89. True to what Travis said, I think there're tons of missing links here. The only written record of what the gods done to Exandria is definitely by the followers of the gods, given it is by Vasselheim or by the Colbalt Soul (they are the followers of goddess Ioun, regardless of how neutral she is, still one of the gods). That's so obviously unavoidable bias to the gods! No one knows what was going on before the gods arrived. What was called chaos can be orders, just to a different standard. As an aware-but-not-religious person, I'm so deeply related to Ashton (Taliesin)'s sceptical pov on the gods, especially in this world! It's complicated in this fantasy world because the gods are somehow present and physical, and some people actually meet and talk to them. It's true that some people have special power connecting with the gods, it's true that the belief keep the world in order and there's some impact from the gods to keep other realms away from the material plane. But also because they are believed to be bringing orders and peace that there's no way to know what would be without them? It's true that the gods grow stronger with worship and followers. It's also true that they only look out for their own followers. So it's even more questionable whether they would even care if the world is destroyed if not for the dent in their own power.

In Legend Lark (Dames and Dragons) podcast, they also fight gods. The gods in this world are somehow enormous, intangible forces but also so human and selfish. The main big bad, Torva - the Conquerer, is one of the strongest gods, who is known to be the main cause of several destructions of civilizations. His motivation is so selfish, but so true to the chaotic nature of his domain and the grey moral of being one of the strongest gods that live so close to the mortal realm. In short, he wants to destroy the world and deconstruct the pantheon, dethrone the primordial forces to free his love from the cycle, a goddess who ascended from mortal who, in every lifetime, has to reborn herself and dedicate everything to care for her people (I'm not saying she's a selfless entity tho). An amazing thing is that throughout the campaign, it comes to light how humanity doesn't really need the gods to continue as a society. They are aware of the gods' existence, and some receive the blessing and power from the gods. Much at all, in the world history, the gods are recorded as the main force of destruction than anything.

Spout Lore podcast also has a very interesting take on the gods and the world. Interestingly, the world of Spout Lore has 3 realms, the material, the spirit, and the fairy. In which the gods, fundamentally, embodie forces of nature that walk across the three realms but bring the most destruction to the material realm. But somehow, the world survives, and the people live without much attention to the gods at all. The campaign is still going on at this point, but much to my understanding, the big bad, the Gibbous man, was a powerful god, still quite a god, but punished by other gods to be entangled with the human world. He is trying to free himself from the punishment while entangling himself stronger into his own chain. And the force of evil in the world materialised as demons, stem from his power, plague the world with greed, violence, and destruction.

On another note, back to CR, what even is Predathos? There's still so little information about this main reason that this whole campaign even has any plot at this point! Why is it called The Gods Eater? What did it do? What is it doing right now with the flares and the connections with the Ruidus borns? Somehow, this lack of explanation about the main force of the plot makes this campaign feel little like a drag sometimes. I know a lot of people saying that Bells Hells keep trying to avoid the main mission. But also, I feel now that they are on the main mission, all these moments of role-playing character development feel like roundabouts (!?). I don't know if it is a good choice to have the big final boss looming in the distance so early on the campaign with no return like this. Or is it better to establish the characters and story and as the story progressing, buidling up to the reveal of the villain?