#since the end and the beginning of the whole campaign are defined by the nein’s love for him—

[dent-de-leon]

What if animated Nein gave Molly and Caleb a chance to talk after the forehead kiss?? After Molly telling his Magician, “Come on, let’s go get some sunlight,” and carrying him out of the cave with Beau—

Caleb being kissed for the first time in such a long time—by this colorful, ridiculous stranger who guarded him in battle. This little moment of tenderness and affection after so much pain—

[there-are-things-i-dont-forget]

SPOILERS FOR CRITICAL ROLE CAMPAIGN 2 BELOW

I just wanted to talk about how much the Mighty Nein and Matt and Critical Role have meant to me over the past few months. I started Campaign 2 in January this year, when I moved out for university and was able to live on my own for the first time. They quite literally saved me, because I cared so much for the setting and the characters and the story that Matt wove and how the players interacted with them that I hung on just to see how it would end. 

For me, it was amazing how I could relate the characters to aspects of myself, and how watching them all get their happy endings have made me be able to look forward with a bit more hope.

Let’s start with Beau. I’ll be honest, Marisha’s characters are always the most challenging for me, because of how real they are. Marisha is a stunning actor, incredibly skilled, and Beau was the character I responded to the most as if it was a real person. Everyone else I could enjoy and play into the metagame of watching the players be characters. With Beau and Marisha, it was so real. Moreover, I could see myself reflected in the character (which is probably why I found her so challenging to begin with). Trauma, hurt, being an asshole to other people before they could reject her first. Not the best at compliments, giving in to anger and sarcasm, struggling to connect. And I got to watch her grow, and be accepted, and learn from her mistakes, and be appreciated by who she was, and in the end get vindication on her abusers, and find love and acceptance. Beau’s story is incredibly special to me.

In that same vein is Yasha’s. Manipulated, taken advantage of, forced to do things against her will. Yasha’s story is the one that I can relate to the most, in terms of trauma, and to see her quite literally rip the wings off of her abuser was cathartic in a way that I did not expect, but should have foreseen. And in the end, she also got her happy ending. I’m gonna leave it at that, because any more will make me cry. But I hold her and her character arc so close to my heart.

Liam’s performances are the hardest for me to watch because he feels so much, and I love it. He really gives it all to the scene and it is incredible. Caleb was a character that I overlooked for a bit in the beginning (as Jester had quickly become my favorite), but he quickly climbed as we began to see more of his character and his backstory. Manipulated and groomed by someone he was supposed to be able to trust, forced again to do things against his will, falling in to flashbacks and panic attacks, struggling to rejoin society and interact with others, a love and a passion for learning to a nearly obsessive sense, both for the love of it and for the possibility of gaining the power and strength needed to take back control. Slowly learning to love, to grow, to find friends and see that there can be more to life, that you don’t have to be ruled by your trauma or let it define you, but also still acknowledging it and its effects. But also just how long it takes, and how it can affect you in ways you cannot imagine. He also got his vindication on his abuser, and again, I cried, tears of happiness for him and of grief and hope for me, that one day I might be able to do the same.

Caleb, Yasha, and Beau are the ones I relate to the most because their story is my story, and watching them grow and love means it can happen to me as well. I cannot stress how important and incredible it is for me to realize that. In the more material sense, they all got closure and catharsis against those who hurt them, and they all learned to love again, to open their hearts and let others in again. And that means I can too.

This brings me to the Shadowgast love story. I know this is really controversial for the fandom and I don’t care. For me, their arc was perfectly realistic, and their ending was exactly what I expected for the characters. Finding a kin spirit, learning together, hesitant but trusting in the other’s passion for study at the very least, slowly and naturally growing closer and learning more about each other, revealing more. The betrayal from Essek, the scene on the boat, the slight recoiling on either side, and then learning again, slowly trusting again and teaching each other to forgive themselves, that they were both victims in a sense and that they can take back control and do better, and choose to do better and be better. Slowly healing, and healing together, knowing the worst of each other and choosing to stay but still acknowledging those parts of each other. The scene where they return to the T-Dock and they talk about time travel, and Caleb disintegrates the whole thing? That’s growth, and that’s growing together. And they continue to grow for years, and heal for years, and eventually they end up together, but it takes time. Of course it does. And Essek’s character and this ending really helped me understand some of my own feelings in terms of friendship and romance. Everyone upset that there wasn’t any “on screen” romance or whatever, to me, fundamentally misunderstood the character, especially since his love language does not seem to be physical touch at all (if anything it’s gift giving/acts of service - teleporting the M9 around? Helping Caleb solve the spell? Giving up to dunamis gem to help the M9 get a long rest?). But yeah. Watching characters like that help validate my own experiences in friendship and romance and it was fantastic. 

The others I have a bit less in common with, but there’s still stuff to talk about. Veth having her body changed by someone else, something out of her control, feeling alien in this body and struggling to find a sense of self, then finding friends willing to pour everything into helping her be herself again? Fjord learning he is valuable whether or not he has powers/can serve others, that he has worth just as himself, and that that is enough? Those were stories I needed to hear, to know that something like that is possible.

Caduceus growing out of his comfort zone, exploring, learning, but still being a rock for the others (and for the viewers), and "Pain doesn’t make people. It’s love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential. It’s love that saves them."?  Molly’s loyalty and “leave every place better than you found it”? Even if I couldn’t relate directly to the characters didn’t mean they didn’t have an impact, and these are things that I will carry with me always.

Jester. I have just about nothing in common with Jester, and I loved it. Her optimism, her jokes, and her art (including the dicks), just the absolute light and joy that was her character was exactly what I needed to get through some of the toughest times of my life. Watching her grow from episode one to episode 141 was insane, to mature but not lose her creativity and her fun for life. She was my reminder that there is good and light and hope in the world, even if sometimes you have to create it for yourself, and that is what kept me going sometimes.

And finally, Matt. I cannot give enough thanks to you for choosing to share this amazing world and this story with us. Your storytelling is what prompted me to finally put my ideas into writing, and now I’m working on my own book. Along with Jester, Essek is one of my favorites, and his story arc and characterization was incredibly important to me. I truly have no words for how Critical Role and especially you, with the care and passion and obvious love for storytelling that you have, have changed my life. And I cannot thank you enough.

Am I sad that the campaign ended? Maybe a little. I will miss these characters. But I truly believe that Matt ended the campaign at the perfect point, and I loved the final episode, it made incredible sense for the end of the characters (maybe a teeny bit more Marion/Babenon? But I digress). I’m sure Campaign 3 will be just as astounding.

My love and thanks to the cast and crew of Critical Role. Rest well knowing you did a fantastic job, and I’ll see you in campaign 3.

PS: I know there’s a lot of tags, I want to make sure I cover all my bases so people don’t get spoiled if they have these tags blocked because I have been spoiled too many times by people who tag badly.

[autistic-beshelar]

'm loving everyone venting about Molly! Thanks! And I want to ask you how you imagined the finale was gonna be? I have this whole fanfic in my head about Molly realising he had a four leaf clover stuck in his hair and upon noticing it he would give it to Yasha. Then the M9 would deal with Trent and Molly would finally know how terrible of a person the dude was. And then the M9 would introduce Molly to everyone else they met and visit every place they left better than they found it.

that's so sweet!

it's weird, because while like every other molly fan, i've had thoughts on his resurrection and a fic series i'm working on, but i'd never really... thought about the end of the campaign, or what it might be like?

(ETA this ended up so long im so sorry i have a lot to say apparently and this isn't even all of it)

my biggest and most important thing: they are a family. they belong together. maybe they'll go off on their own for a while, or stay with their families, but the nein belong together.

for fjord... he spent so long trying to be someone else, and while he's learning how to be his own person now, he deserves closure on that part of himself. he deserves a last conversation with vandren, and then to move on, to explore new places, to find new goals for himself. there is so much for him now, the open sea with so much life and promise. he buys a ship, a new ship, all his own, not one borrowed or stolen from another, and jester paints its name, decorates its quarters, makes it a home. he wrangles the nein (yes, even veth, yes, even essek) into joining him, and they set sail, all nine of them, the way it couldn't be the first time. he shows molly the ropes, teaches essek how to navigate, and watches his crew, his friends, his family, learning from him, placing so much trust in him, letting him guide them, and sees how truly happy they are to be here with him. usually, the crew is him, jester, beau, and often molly and yasha, but sometimes he will leave for a time, entrusting the boat to orly. sailing isn't all he has now, there is more to see, to do, there are things for him on land now too, but the sea will always be home to him.

for jester... she deserves her happy fairytale ending. i think for a while she stays with her family, seeing her parents happily together, finally properly introducing her boyfriend, and just spending time with her mum in a way that she didn't get to so much when she was young. and then i think she travels, just for the sake of exploring, with no defined goal other than to sow the seeds of joy and chaos everywhere she walks. and as she travels, she begins to write. stories were homes to her as a child, and they're homes even now, for someone with such a powerful imagination. she writes of her adventures, of her friends, she writes of mystical and fantastical things, half of them real. she writes and writes, words and illustrations filling so many books, she gives them to beau, to yasha, passes them off as silly little things, as though they aren't brilliant works of art. all of the nein read her stories - yasha out loud to molly as she plays with his hair, caduceus and calliope in the quiet of their garden, caleb and essek by the light of their bedside table. and in time the stories reach others, scattered journals are copied and bound into books, and one day jester wanders a quiet, nameless town, and in the window of a bookshop she's never seen, embossed on the cover of a novel, there is a brilliant green door.

for caleb... oh man, he is a teacher. that is so perfect for him, and i've been thinking about it ever since his talk with luc. i think there's something so powerful about being the person he deserved when he was younger, about stepping into that position of power and authority and being so kind with it. he's so passionate about magic, and i think it's beautiful to see him come so far - from someone burned and traumatised and so convinced he was irredeemable, to someone who can take comfort in soft things, someone who some days, almost, almost believes he can be good. i think out of everyone, except perhaps veth, he stays home the most. he still adventures with the nein of course, and if there is ever a whisper of artefacts or hidden knowledge or some expedition or other, the nein are with him in an instant to investigate it. but more often than not he is home, making the empire a better place, keeping the fire warm for them.

for veth... i want her to learn that she is enough as she is. i want her to learn that she doesn't have to choose between wife, adventurer, mother. she is all of these things. i want her to accept that her transformation was not a return to her old self but becoming someone new. i think she goes home, as she promised, and i do think she stays there for a long while, a few years perhaps, making up for lost time. and she'll pretend that she's fine with that life, with staying home, with being a wife and a mother. but that isn't all she is, and eventually, with yeza's help, with the nein's help, she will accept that. she'll no longer see it as two lives, two identities. she'll be able to kill fearsome beasts and explore strange new lands with her friends without guilt or fear, and at the end of the day she'll go home and regale her husband and son with extraordinary tales of her and her friends' heroics (that may or may not be exaggerated).

for yasha... i want her to be happy and loved. she's come SO far, from someone running from her past, drowning in guilt and so unsure of herself, to someone strong and bold. i love that ashley said she would do little odd jobs - i think she would do that, go around helping people as they explore. like most of the others, i don't think she would truly settle down. i like to imagine she does have a house somewhere - maybe inspired by the clays, she has a home somewhere green, surrounded by flowers, somewhere quiet and calm and peaceful. a little cottage maybe, for her and beau, just somewhere to return to and feel safe, somewhere she can rest. but i think most of her time would be spent travelling, seeing all the wonderful beautiful things the world has to offer, being with her friends who love her for exactly who she is, who showed her that she was someone worthy of being loved, who taught her that it's possible for her to love herself.

for caduceus... i think, for a time, he rests. he's tired. not done, far from done, but tired. i think he stays with his family at the grove, tending to all the things that are now so vibrant and alive, feeling the walls he was so sure would crumble. but after a time, he would feel that he is supposed to leave. the grove is wonderful, and will always be his home, somewhere he will always return to, and i think throughout his life - throughout the nein's life, and of course they will come to rest there, after everything - he will come home, to tend to the garden, to watch over the temple while his siblings roam. i think he travels, too, but not so much to adventure. after everything he's been through i think he deserves some peace, and quiet. he travels all the lonely winding roads, all the quiet humming spaces, sees all the life in all the hidden corners. while several members of the nein travel with him, it's yasha that walks with him the most, happy to go at his pace, eager to share in that peace and wonder.

for molly... there is so much for him now. he is no longer covered in eyes, no longer has that weight on him, even if he does hold memories of it, in darker moments. he is him but brand new, able to forge himself into whoever he wants to be, and the nein give him so much space and so much time for that. i think he stays with the clays for a little while - while the others deal with trent, yasha, so so scared to lose him again, places all her trust in caduceus to take care of him. and when they return (to find him with freshly cut hair the same colours as his coat, and a particularly proud looking clarabelle), they just spend time with him, all the time they missed and more. fjord tells him of their journey, jester showing him her journal, giving him meaning for it all, and all the time yasha holds his hand, unwilling to ever let him go. it's hard, being gone for so long, and while he is so, so (embarrassingly) proud of his friends for all that they've gone through, and how much they've grown, it's also glaringly obvious that he can't keep up. he almost has it in mind to leave - he doesn't want to hold them back, and he can't help but wonder if he's really the molly they want - it's hard to live up to a memory, after all. and there is so much he's missed. they tell him he's a moron, obviously. he is their friend, and there is nothing they won't do for friends, and waiting, staying, is such a small thing to ask. beau trains him, at his insistence - she thinks it's a joke at first, tells him that she'd be a terrible teacher, just as she was a terrible student. she's wrong, of course, and molly grows stronger by the day. he has so many adventures with them, sailing the seas on fjord's ship, sowing chaos with jester, fighting side by side with beau. there is not a single day that he isn't with his friends, yasha most of all. they are with him through everything, though good days, so many good days, and through bad ones too. molly has so much time - time the nein have given him, as he once gave to them - to live, to love, to wander, to form new memories and experiences. to be everything he never had the chance to the first time, and so much more.

for beau... she is so, so scared at first. they saved the world. they stopped trent. they've done... everything they've set out to do. what's left? what's keeping them together? when molly tries to run it reminds her so much of how she felt before, how she thought to run, to leave them before they could leave her. he returns the favour, reminds her that they are family, reminds her that she has worth, and the nein want her to stay, that they keep her, just as they kept him. (she almost believes him, and definitely doesn't cry). she does so many things - she goes home with yasha once in a while, somewhere tranquil, somewhere to study and research, she travels with caduceus, learning to appreciate a slower pace and all the quiet contemplation and companionship it can offer, she travels with fjord, his first mate, his best mate, allowing someone she trusts to take the helm and lead her on adventures. and she studies - long gone are the days of pretending to turn her nose up at books - she is one of professor widogast's best (and most irritating) students, learning magic not to weave it herself but just to understand it, just learning for the sake of learning. when she confronts her father, fjord and caleb are there as they should be - fjord to talk, to use his words and his charm to help, caleb in quiet solidarity, a hand on her shoulder, just standing with her as she tears down her mentor, her abuser, and comes out stronger for it, just as she had been there for him. finally, she can put that behind her, and she stays with the soul, as their greatest expositor (though maybe one who never does their paperwork), rooting out corruption, seeking the truth, exploring new horizons.

for essek... he spends a long time waiting for the past to catch up to him. it doesn't. it already has, in a way, if only in his own mind, the once unfamiliar guilt that weighs heavily on his shoulders. it never goes away, not entirely, but time heals, and so does the presence of the rest of the nein, always in his life, for as long as they can be. though he and caleb have different goals, they overlap so neatly, and though essek has a place in his own homeland, he spends far, far more time living with caleb. he continues with his research, caleb and beau poring over his notes, sharing his excitement and passion. he doesn't go on adventures near as much as the others, preferring to stay home, but he visits them, in all their different homes scattered across the land - jester in nicodranas, the clays at the blooming grove, veth and her family on the outskirts of zadash, beau and yasha's cottage in a little forest near felderwin. he has homes scattered across the land, so many places he is always welcome, and while guilt never entirely leaves, nor does the knowledge that one day, of course, all this will end, he finds peace.

i guess the reason i've never thought about the campaign ending is because for me.. it doesn't, not really. the mighty nein are family, chosen family. they stay together, they find homes in each other, and they leave every place better than they found it.

[c-is-for-circinate]

An M9 major arc breakdown: part 1

Arc 1: Who the fuck are you? (I think we might be mercenaries??): episodes 1-25

I was going to do a nice gloss over what I see as the four major arcs of the Mighty Nein story so far in one post, and then I realized that I am (*ahem*) long-winded, we’ll say.  And there’s a lot to be said!

Instead, a separate post for each arc, why not.  [I will stick links to parts 2-4 here when they’re written and posted!]

So: arc 1.  Covering 24 episodes and, according to critrole stats, about 35 in-game days, this arc manages to be both one of the longest and one of the shortest.  It covers levels 2-5, and everything from the first meeting in Trostenwald all the way through leaving Hupperdook.  It’s a lot!  And I thought a lot about trying to split it up, but the more I looked for a breaking point in these episodes, the more every possible division felt really arbitrary, and reinforced the idea that this chunk of episodes has the same theme at the center all the way through.

The arc of these episodes is specifically the progression of the Mighty Nein from not being a thing at all to maybe, sort of, somehow being a thing.  It’s full of great character moments, and lays the groundwork for, I suspect, pretty much every important thing to happen throughout the entire campaign, (with the possible exception of some of Caduceus’s stuff, but even then, I have suspicions), because Matt is Good At His Shit.  It’s also super interesting in terms of the entire show, because even though it establishes everything, the unsteady conclusion it seems to reach about who the M9 might be or might become gets almost completely (seemingly) thrown out the window by the very next arc--but more about that in the next arc’s post.

In this arc I think we need to take just a moment to get meta in terms of players vs characters, because this is the one part of the story so far where that division is actually, actively important.  There’s two big reasons for that.  One, the players are still learning who their own characters are, even as the characters are learning each other.  Two, there is one single, central, and encompassingly important fact that the players all know that the characters don’t, and resolving that disconnect shapes the tone of this entire arc.

The members of the Mighty Nein are going to be together for a very long and very epic journey.  It’s a fact.  Even if individual characters die or choose to leave, the group itself is destined for something big, because everybody at that table has every intention of playing straight through to level 20 all over again.  What’s more, everybody at that table is already family in nearly every real-life way that matters.  The audience knows that this group is going to be something special, expects them to become family in their own right before they’ve even met.  The DM knows.  The world itself probably knows, in-game--a group of strangers meet in Trostenwald and somewhere on her celestial plane, the Raven Queen is probably watching a bunch of fate-threads tangle together and make a mess of her pretty fate tapestry all over again.  The only people who don’t know how meaningful this group is going to be, to the world or to its own members, are the characters themselves.

And that leads to a fascinating dynamic, where these characters run into each other in Trostenwald, and then stay together for reasons even they can’t necessarily fully explain.  They never sit down and say, “okay, let’s be mercenaries together”--they get kicked out of Trostenwald and say, “I guess let’s go to Zadash together, maybe?”, and then they just...never break up.  The number one question for the whole first chunk of this arc is, “Why am I even with these assholes?”  Sure, the easy answer is, “because the players have decided the characters are going to be,” but that’s boring and kind of besides the point.  Yes the players have decided that the characters are going to be together--and that creates a story where the characters and the players both have to figure out why as they go along.

.

The way this plays out is different for each character, but there are some commonalities:

Caleb and Nott both have long-term goals, and even though neither of them knows it at first, they both have the same long-term goal: somehow get back to the way the world used to be.   The trouble is, this is a really distant goal for both of them, something that requires the kind of intense magic they don’t understand and barely even believe in.  Their short-term goals are a much more basic ‘survive and also keep this other person alive long enough to figure out how to achieve that long-term goal’, and that’s what they say they’ve signed up with the rest of the group for.  It’s a relatively simple answer that ends up getting ever more complicated in reality.

Caleb and Nott’s relationships with the group actually parallel each other a lot at this early stage, and it isn’t just because they come as a prepackaged duo.  Both of their long-term goals have an undercurrent of desperate loneliness that they’ve each been living with since their lives fell apart.  In theory, getting what they’re after will help fix that one way or another--but in the mean time, suddenly they’re surrounded by people, and they can’t help but care.  They just also don’t trust the rest of the group, because how do you trust people at all, ever?  Nobody’s been particularly kind to either of them since everything went to shit, and if the universe had any kindness to begin with it never would’ve happened in the first place.  But there’s this undercurrent of...maybe, if they learned to love and trust this group, they’d find out they don’t need what they’re trying to get to begin with, because they’ve already got the secure love and acceptance they’re really craving.  Maybe.  Certainly neither of them have started to figure that out yet.  They can barely admit to liking their compatriots at all.

What’s even more tricky is that neither of them actually have much of a plan for getting from their short-term survival goals towards their long-term goals.  Nott literally doesn’t know how Caleb could turn her back into a halfling--she just has faith that he can, if he gets powerful enough, and it leads to things like the stolen letter for an academy Caleb would not set foot in again for all the love or money in the world.  Caleb is so bad at bridging the gap between what’s in front of him in this world right now, and the big nebulous world-shattering Thing he wants to eventually achieve.  After all, what’s in front of Caleb right now doesn’t matter, or it won’t once he twists the whole world into a new shape anyway--except that it is in front of him right now, and needs to be survived and dealt with, somehow, and that’s distracting in its own right.  So the whole first arc is full of moments like Caleb trying to take the spell scroll and Nott trying to steal Fjord’s letter, where they’re grabbing at an apparent immediate step towards their long-term goals at the expense of the people around them, and maybe even to the detriment of those ultimate aims.

Basically, for Caleb and Nott, being with this group is supposed to be a means to an end--but they don’t really know how being with this group is going to help them achieve that end, they’re just...pretty sure it will.  Somehow.  They’re definitely eating better now, and maybe if Caleb gets into that library it’ll help, or something, maybe, he hopes.  The unspoken question for Caleb and Nott both, as Arc 1 progresses, is--do they actually think being with the group is going to help them achieve those all-important goals, or do they just like being here?  Nott will follow Caleb anywhere, because he’s her way out of this goblin life, but she doesn’t encourage him to leave to progress somewhere else.  Caleb argues with himself when he’s alone, but he always stays in the end.  Is it practicality?  Is there a plan?  Or did they just accidentally fall in with a group of people they actually like, and the group’s constant shenanigans are a useful distraction from having to admit what they're apparently willing to sacrifice for the sake of being here rather than alone?

Fjord and Jester, meanwhile, both claim to have long-term goals, but they sure don’t show any indication that they care about pursuing them.  Which makes sense, because Jester and Fjord show up in Trostenwald with personal quests that are devoted to a very nebulous, hypothetical sort of belonging (contrast with Caleb and Nott, who want to belong in very specific ways, in places they once already lived).  Their worlds have both fallen apart, too, but far more recently and a little less dramatically.  They’re not looking to get back to what they once had, they’re looking to replace it.

Or, to be more specific: Fjord’s entire adult life thus far has been defined by his job.  Being a sailor wasn’t just his profession, it was his identity.  It’s what he did; it’s where he lived; it’s where he found the only person who ever really cared about him or called him family; it’s where he found his self-worth and his social worth, the first and only place he ever felt valuable to anyone else in the community or the world at large.  Heading up to the Soltryce Academy to figure out what’s up with this sword is about finding a whole new self, with a new purpose, a new job, a new person who can tell him what he’s good at and good for and where he belongs now.

Jester’s entire life has been defined by her mom.  Marion is her entire world.  Jester literally doesn’t know anybody outside the Lavish Chateau, and aside from the Traveller, the few people who do know she exists at all are servants or coworkers of her mother.  Jester’s world is tiny, with Marion at the center of it.  If Fjord’s self-worth is caught up in his job and what he does, Jester’s is entirely determined by making people joyful and happy, and the only two people she’s ever really had the chance to please in that way are her mother and the Traveler.  So she’s looking for her other parent, to replace the one thing she’s always had right there.

In many ways, the particulars of what Fjord and Jester are pursuing don’t actually matter that much.  Fjord doesn’t need the Soltryce to give him a job or a purpose.  He jumps headfirst into the mercenary business almost overnight; they’ve been in Zadash less than a week before he’s chatting with the Gentleman about professional networking like a man who’s about to pull out his company business cards.  Jester doesn’t need a dad, she just needs people to love her and be delighted by her presence.  It turns out that this team of people just so happens to address that core need for both of them, and that’s enough for Jester and Fjord.  They’re in this head first.

The thing about Fjord and Jester is, though, neither of them are asking any questions about the long term either.  Because rolling with the Mighty Nein is hitting all the right buttons to get at the root of what they need, they’re both super blase about letting certain details go without question.  Why does Fjord have these new powers he’s now starting to understand?  What kind of relationship does Jester actually want with a parent?  And where does the rest of the group see this whole situation going in the next weeks, months, years?  Jester and Fjord aren’t asking--and that makes sense too, because if they’re not asking, then they don’t have to face the answers.  If Fjord doesn’t ever make it to Soltryce, nobody can tell him he’s not good enough, and if Jester never quite gets around to meeting her father, she doesn’t have to find out why he never came back.  If they don’t ask questions about the group, maybe nobody will ever remember to leave.

Beau and Molly would be so pissed at being grouped together here, which is not actually why I did it, but is a nice additional nuance.  (Part of why they hate each other so much is because they’ve got a lot in common deep down--they both care very deeply and project an image of not caring very much at all, and it pisses both of them off constantly.)  The truth is, Beau and Molly are both with the Mighty Nein because they literally have nowhere else to go.   Caleb and Nott are trying to regain their old lives; Fjord and Jester are trying to replace their old lives; but Molly and Beau don’t really have lives besides this, or at least not lives they’d admit to.

These two are the closest thing to Professional Criminals in the group when it all gets started--Nott and Caleb might steal and con to survive, but for Beau and Molly it’s been an actual job, with coworkers and workplace etiquette, and bigger heists with full crews arguably similar to the M9 in the past.  The circus was Molly’s everything and it got smashed to bits within the first four episodes, but the core Mollymauk of it all means that his life fundamentally doesn’t change with its loss.  He is still on the road skipping from place to place, living out of bedrolls and carts and inns if there’s good luck; he’s still slinging bullshit and the odd con, doing a good turn when he can and keeping an eye out for coin; he’s still messing around with a couple of swords, trying not to get beat up or thrown in jail or run out of town, killing a bit when necessary; he’s still embedded in the middle of a group of walking disaster weirdos full of Issues and interpersonal conflict who somehow have to live together and rely on each other with all their broken bits and strangeness.  Beau played local contact for every reasonably-sized crew of criminals to come through Kamordah, and not a one of them ever kept her around for the long haul, but she knows seedy underbellies and she knows how to punch people for pay and she knows about honor among thieves and she knows how to trust fundamentally untrustworthy people just exactly as far as she can throw them.

So just the basic everyday operation of being part of the Mighty Nein, the important job skills and general lifestyle, is more in line with what Beau and Molly have already been doing than it is for anyone else in the group.  There’s also less conflict with their overarching long-term life goals.  Neither of them have any, besides ‘keep doing this as long as I can’.  I don’t think either Molly or Beau have any real vision of what a future even looks like, Beau because she’s young and too busy rebelling against to think about building towards, Molly because with no real past he barely even has a concept of change or becoming anything other than what he is.  The most either of them can really picture would be a life they don’t want: the Proper Lionett Daughter or Lucien Whoever-The-Fuck.  Those are nightmare scenario lives that belong to other people, and Beau and Molly will run from them literally as far and as fast as they can.

While Caleb and Nott are avoiding the question of “is this group really going to help me get what I want?” (because the answer might mean they should leave, and they want to stay); and Fjord and Jester are avoiding the question of “should I actually try to find the thing I came looking for in the first place?” (because real answers are so much scarier than unsolved questions); Beau and Molly are determinedly avoiding the high school guidance counselor question question of “where do you see yourself in five years?”.  They have no long-term plans, and neither of them want any.  What they’ve got going on right here is good.  They don’t have to be alone (which Beau has been all her life, and Molly has never been once, and they both want so badly to avoid).  They get to stay in constant motion, running and fighting and drinking and earning money and occasionally experimenting with illegal ethereal-plane-enhancing substances, and that’s just fine.

Yasha doesn’t quite fit in with anyone else because Yasha is gone so damn much, but also because she doesn’t quite match any of the categories.  Her whole life fell apart, just like practically everyone else’s, but she’s not trying to get it back, and she’s not trying to replace it.  And Yasha does have somewhere else to be, a path she thinks maybe she ought to be following if she could just figure out where it is.  She keeps coming back because Molly is the closest thing she has to family; she keeps coming back because fate keeps bumping her into the group and saying she should; she keeps coming back because it’s good coin and easy killing-things work and they’ll have her; she keeps coming back because she likes them, because Caleb is awkward with people but lends her his cat, because Jester is bright and smiling and also loves flowers, because Beau fights next to her and Fjord respects her and Nott gave her flowers once, and that matters.

.

As Arc 1 progresses, as the players get to know their characters better and the characters get to know each other, they begin to collectively answer “Why am I with this group?” with another question: “Just what is this group, anyway?”.  It’s a little out of order and a little bit of a mess, just like the party itself, just like life, but the truth is that the members of the Nein find themselves more or less attached to this merry little band before they’ve even really defined what said band is.  The characters become a group by accident, by fate, by will of the players, because they’re all desperate for things and avoiding things and because why not.  Many decisions about what kind of group they become, though, are a lot more deliberate.  

‘Mercenary’ is the first thing they pick up, and they specifically don’t choose it for themselves.  (It’s also the first thing they lose when the next arc starts, or maybe at the very end of this one.)  They roll into Allfield in the middle of a gnoll attack, and Bryce offers cash for gnoll ears before they can even ask ‘what’s in it for us?’.  They already had weapons in hand to deal with the threat--it’s impossible to say what the team would’ve done without that offer, and they were all broke as fuck and badly in need of money anyway--but they didn’t present themselves as swords-for-hire until someone was already asking to hire them.

Allfield teaches them that they can be mercenaries (and gives them an excuse to stay as a group), while Zadash begins to teach them what kind of mercenaries they want to be.  It becomes very clear very quickly that this group does not like institutions of power (something I’ve already written about at length).  They do a single job for the crownsguard and then immediately turn around and start working with back-tavern insurgents and underground smugglers.  While their individual opinions may vary, collectively they do Not Like The Empire.

They also establish themselves as a group that does not trust in general, either the outside world or each other--and furthermore, a group that will push and investigate and uncover answers every time a mystery pops up.  They don’t take the Knights of Requital at face value, they investigate around the back end; they track down the Gentleman just because he’s there.  They demand answers from each other, from Molly baiting a trap to catch Nott stealing from Fjord to the whole group teaming up to demand ‘Lucien’ explain himself.  Caleb doesn’t trust Callie, and Beau doesn’t trust Caleb, and nobody trusts Fjord’s stone-swallowing, and there’s no resolution, only more questions.

Likewise, they are not trustworthy.  While they take jobs and generally deliver on what they pay for, they also ad-lib and change direction for their own benefit, and their loyalty to their employers is debatable at best.  The argument over the spell scrolls in the High Richter’s house is a major division at the time, but by the time they’re clearing out necromancy for the Gentleman, nobody really sides against stealing the journal or Yasha’s sword.  They just come up with a plan together to cheat the Gentleman effectively.  When they clear out the merrow in his safehouse in the swamp, they have no problem taking as much of his stuff as they can.  They are out for themselves, and the jobs they take are a means to their own ends, not particularly important in and of themselves.

The M9 feel very small, as a group, in the face of a world that’s very big, and we see that tie back in with the past two points over and over again.  So much of the Zadash part of the arc involves the stirrings and edges of the war with Xhorhas, and the Nein’s almost instant response of, okay, we want to stay as FAR FROM THAT AS POSSIBLE.  The major powers of the world are big enough to crush them, and they are afraid of that--but, the attitude seems to go, the major powers of the world are also big enough to miss noticing them, and that matters too.  They steal the dodecahedron and disappear off into the shadows because they know it means something huge, and that’s scary, and therefore grabbing this piece of it might somehow protect them or the world in the long run.  They’re able to do it because they’re small, because in this clash of international titans they’re still nobody.

Lastly, this group desperately wants to be doing something moral, they just don’t necessarily know how.  They debate over whether the Knights of Requital are good guys, over whether they should help the crown, over the right thing to do with the Krynn assassin.  They are so much more comfortable working for the Gentleman, who’s a criminal right there on the surface but doesn’t appear to be actively hurting anybody, than assisting the local law.  Even when it’s not a job, or maybe even more when it’s not a job, they find themselves going out of their way to be good people: rescuing Kiri, helping Callie, finding ways to help Horace and Dolan after the attack on the spire explodes everything.  For a group of self-proclaimed mercenaries, there’s a constant undercurrent of...should we be doing this?  Is this the right thing to do?  Should we totally betray our employers because that’s the right thing to do?  They’re not loyal to anybody in particular, except maybe each other, but they’re struggling to find some kind of ideal or guiding principle to be loyal to.

All of this culminates in Hupperdook.  The group is finally unbending a little, coming to trust each other that little bit more.  Beau talks about her childhood, and Caleb says Astrid’s name, and Nott says Yeza’s, and Fjord talks about the orphanage where he grew up.  They go down into a prison to fight a whirling death-robot, and it’s sort of because Rissa’s dad promised them a reward but also sort of because Rissa is Theirs Now, and more than anything it’s to save the parents of a bunch of penniless near-orphans.  It’s a way to say fuck you! to the Imperial system; it’s a way to combine two jobs at once for their own purposes.  It is above all a very new-feeling exploration of the idea that, small or not, they can in fact actually make a meaningful difference in the world.  They have power, and that power can be used for good.  

It’s by far the least mercenary-like job they’ve taken.  Between the bail money they pay for the Schuesters and the additional cash they leave with them to take care of Kiri, they probably spend half as much on the whole endeavor as that new fancy crossbow was worth to begin with.  They did something good, and it feels better and more right than all their fumbling maybes.

Aside from Trostenwald, where crisis came to them and the whole story was about getting themselves out of trouble, Allfield and Hupperdook very much bookend this arc, and that makes a lot of sense, because there’s a very similar feeling to both jobs.  They’ve done something dangerous, and saved lives, and helped people--regular, good people who hadn’t hurt anyone to get into the situations they were in.  They made some profit doing it.  Those things are not mutually exclusive, and maybe, maybe they can build something of a career path out of finding the places where they intersect.

This first arc doesn’t exactly conclude--because with an ongoing show like this, nothing ever quite concludes--so much as it reaches a point where many of its primary themes and issues begin to look as though they could, in theory, someday be resolved.  There’s a visible path ahead that combines altruism and self-interest.  The group members are talking to each other, slowly and carefully.  There are still a lot of unanswered questions about who everyone is and what they want, but it seems like the group might just be heading in a direction towards those questions at least eventually getting asked.

It’s maybe the most optimistic place the group’s been in so far, which is of course why this is the point where everything in the whole world comes crashing down--but that’s for the next arc.