#they've had like 10 days total that they spent in a place without engaging in activities

[thisisnotthenerd]

in the vein of my last cr post

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

marquet campaign? what marquet campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

timeline considerations

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

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

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

pre-solstice:

17 days in jrusar

3 days in heartmoor

7 days in bassuras (includes calloway hideout)

1 day in whitestone

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

2 days in yios

2 days in the feywild

1 day in gelvaan

1 day at the tishtan excavation site

post-solstice:

2 days in uthodurn (team wildemount)

1 day in molaesmyr (team wildemount)

2 days in hearthdell (team issylra)

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

2 days in jrusar

2 days in zephrah

1 day in yios

2 days on slival (included in travel time)

2 days on kalutha

3 days in whitestone

4 days in feywild (time dilation days included)

2 days in ria'doin

1 day in razora (ruidus)

2 days in kreviris (ruidus)

1 day in zadash

1 day in aeor

1 day in rexxentrum

3 days in vasselheim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the built up places

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

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

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

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

personal opinions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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