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isagrimorie · 1 year

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Today Critical Role's development and production company, Metapigeon, has announced the acquisition of the narrative podcast Midst. Midst is a semi-improvised audio drama that already has two seasons under its belt with a third on the way. While Critical Role has expanded multiple times in recent years into their publishing branch Darrington Press, creating board games such as Uk'otoa and Till The Last Gasp, and into animation with the first two seasons of The Legends of Vox Machina available to stream on Amazon Prime this is the first time that Critical Role has purchased an existing entertainment IP and brought it under their umbrella. The first three remastered episodes will release for free via Critical Role's YouTube channel on April 11th, 12th, and 13th.

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I am so intrigued with this direction for Critical Role and the expansion of Metapigeon as a production and distribution channel.

I have been wondering what CR would do for additional content.

It felt like, especially after the pandemic the cast have been exceptionally busy in other projects but also as I was going down the line of CR’s other shows, I felt like it wasn’t sustainable to always rely on the same cast members to always be hosting different shows or playing games.

But also, Critical Role didn’t have to play the same grind and hustle wheelhouse twitch streamers seemed to find themselves trapped in. They already have a dedicated audience, and as Kevin Kelly once wrote sometimes all you need is 1,000 true fans.

At the same time, they do still need to produce videos/content to keep an audience engaged.

This feels like a good direction CR is heading towards, it is in line with their brand, and doubling down on their statement about uplifting indie creators. Something they’ve said before and reiterated during the whole OGL fiasco. Marisha and Matt weren’t just offering lip service to Linda Codega.

I wondered when Worlds Beyond Number was released with its fantastic audio design if Critical Role will also do something similar but re-releasing Midst and producing its season 3 feels like such a good first step in both expanding and also helping indie creators get boosted.

Midst is also on brand because it seems to be a fantastic narrative story with semi-improvisation.

But also, I hope Marisha will talk about the thought process of adding Midst to CR’s stable of content. I loved when Marisha (in Google Talks) discussed how she broke down what made CR popular and created shows towards that.

Adding in another show is also going to give the CR cast members more bandwidth, while also giving fans something new.

I’m looking forward to all the lore and artwork this new show will add!

#i am a new fan of CR #but i am so proud of their moves #critical role #midst (critical role)#new media #thinky thoughts #at midnight #Youtube

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blorbologist · 2 years

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in preparation for tonight's reunion! what are some of your hcs m9 post campaign? and what are you hoping to see in the two shot?

OHHHHHH god I'm so excited, I've got wine on standby! I don’t think my M9 HCs are too far out of the usual ones? Let's see what I can dig up

Not the M9 directly, but Astrid and Eadwulf live in a house a few doors down from Beauyasha. Either they're married or QPP, either way it's hilarious

I subscribe to Plank King Kingsley theory, I love it!

Caleb uses transmutation magic to spay/neuter the Rexxentrum cats because as much as he'd like to he can't take them all in and no cat should be born on the streets :c

I think at one point after a long discussion, Essek gets Transmorgified into some other kind of elf, or at least a very different looking drow, because the risks if he's found out are way too high. Sometime before Caleb dies they change him back. Veth is there for the first casting, given Essek helped develop this spell that got her body back and is now giving him a little more freedom to live his life, too.

As for hopes for the twoshot...

I! WANT! ESSEK! MY BLORBO MY EVIL PHD STUDENT MY GRAPE OF A FLOATING MAN.

I hope it's at least two years in the future, if not happening roughly when C3 is - to allow time for the Nein to be settled into their post-canon lives and healed a bit.

SOMEONE either expecting a kid or adopting one. Laura dropped the 'Vex is pregnant' bomb during Search for Bob so I wouldn't be surprised if she pulled something similar here, but could be someone else's turn. Veth included! Veth having another kid on the way would actually be a riot holy shit

Luc update! I want to know about his magic lessons and his crossbow usage.

Anything about the Apogee Solstice - does anyone in the Nein know about it? Do the entities they're connected to have an interest? Thinking mainly Ludinus Da'leth, Uk'otoa, Artagan, hell Essek might have thoughts on it.

Speaking of: Artagan insights into some Feywild bullshit!

Domestic Fjester! Domestic Beauyasha! Domestic Shadogast? Domestic Brenattos!

I hope we get more insight into Kingsley's personality! I wanna get a good feel for him.

I wanna know why Cad isn't coming, in-universe. Just gimme a reason, no big!

I'd love Jester and Beau to have a moment as besties, because I missed that late C2, though I understand if they don't go for it because of Beaujester drama remnants.

Is Yussa in trouble Again?

I wanna see Uk'otoa. Not just seal him away. Stab him in the eyeball.

Frumpkin sighting?

A very very minor thing, but if there's any Assembly lore tied to Delilah I'll go feral. Caleb. Caleb pull through for me. Gimme the deets on academic scandals.

This goes without saying, but I wanna say it anyways: I want the cast to have fun. I get so much enjoyment from seeing them have a riot - this is fundamentally their game and their characters and their story. My wants mean little to theirs - I hope they get everything they want out of it even if it’s not what the fandom wants and clearly have a blast.

#critical role #c2 #mighty nein #mighty nein reunion #campaign 2 #m9

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captainofthetidesbreath · 2 years

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CR ask meme: 19 and 26!

;Weirdly specific and overly long Critical Role Ask Meme

19. You can swap one subclass (not class) for any one main campaign main cast PC. Which character, and what's their new subclass?

Fjord as a Great Old One warlock, the other suggested subclass for Uk'otoa in EGTW, has long been on my mind. I generally would love to see what Travis would do with these vibes, honestly.

26. You must swap one nat 1 die roll with one nat 20 die roll. They must both be from the main campaigns, but can be cross-campaign. Which are they, and why?

In 2.106, Fjord rolled a nat 1 Persuasion check to ask Kotho who she was looking for when she and her troupe ended up on Rumblecusp, I would love for that to be a nat 20 because I want so MUCH to know. I love random Coast lore.

I would swap the nat 20 Deception check that Caleb rolled against Cree in 2.30 when he lied to her and said Lucien simply had other business to attend to and parted ways. I would've liked to see how that would've played out if Cree clocked there that she was being lied to. I don't think it would've changed anything overall, but I think it would've been an interesting conversation.

#Critical Role things #CR

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all-thestories-aretrue · 2 years

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Fjord lore!!! Fjord lore!!!! Uk'otoa and the eye!!! And the chosen!!!! Fjord lore!!!!! I don't remember the pirate's name!! Avantica?

Also does this lady want to have sex with all of them? Or just Fjord?

#critical role #cr2 #mighty nein #the mighty nein #cr fjord #i love him!!!!!!!!!#and i love how nervous and shy he gets when people flirt with him #makes my day every time

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demenior · 4 years

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Does Fjord know exactly where the 3rd temple is or was he "shown" an area in a vision??

Imagine having to find Vandran now because he might have some answers 👀👀

#FJORD LORE LETS GOOOOOO #we ride Uk'otoa to the moon #cr spoilers #critical role #spoilers #fjord tusktooth

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mechanicsofamess · 4 years

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i mean i’m just gonna say it, i miss our snea snake evil boi

#critical role #i need a conclusion to uk'otoa (uk'otoa)#give me more lore matthew i beg

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orpheusilver · 4 years

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Kerma Steelwood, Champion of Melora: Dwarven Cleric

#ash doodles #dnd dwarf #dnd cleric #before anyone asks: yes that's one of uk'otoa's crystals #the lore for this upcoming game is complicated

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12pt-times-new-roman · 2 years

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two thoughts, now that my facts are in order for the moon lore from Call of the Netherdeep.

First, the fate-touched. We're going way back and a little ways off the path here, so bear with me.

"The red moon of Ruidus watches, twisting the fates of those who have the power to shape the course of history." Throughout Call of the Netherdeep, Ruidus is referred to as a force that twists fate. And from the Tal'dorei Campaign Setting Fate-Touched background: "Many lives and many souls find their ways through the patterns of fate and destiny, their threads following the path meant for them, oblivious and eager to be a part of the woven essence of history meant for them. Some souls, however, glide forth with mysterious influence, their threads bending the weave around them, toward them, unknowingly guiding history itself wherever they walk... there are many communities that regard the status as a terrible omen, treating a confirmed fate-touched with mistrust and fear."

I was rewatching parts of early campaign 2, and something stood out to me in C2E32. When Caleb has another dream/vision about the beacon, he essentially sees a massive field of weaving golden threads, all moving. And sometimes, there are little bursts of light and a thread will change direction, leaving behind little shadow threads at its point of divergence. From this imagery, I personally think that that these are threads of fate, the bursts of light decisions made, and the shadow threads discarded timelines from which certain dunamancy spells draw (i.e. Resonant Echo, which draws "a version of the self from a discarded timeline," as Essek says).

Immediately after this, Caduceus looks at the beacon and very quickly picks up on the details that Caleb took so long to grasp (because Cad has spent so much of his life in meditation, in spaces like that of the beacon). He asks if the beacon "makes him uncomfortable," to which Matt responds, "no. It doesn't feel unnatural — it feels like a look behind the curtain."

Later that episode, we get this when Fjord looks at the beacon: "In that brief moment, you feel this momentary release, like a tether that previously had gone unseen is loosened. And there, in that brief bit of unexpected free-floating freedom amongst the darkness, that warm, gray, centered energy drifts towards you."

I think that what the beacon actually does when it gives people that mote of possibility is that it loosens the threads of fate that had been holding them, makes them malleable. To Caleb, the beacon felt warm and inviting, he had dreams about the beacon, so perhaps his thread was destined to be intwined with it anyway — but for Caduceus, the space felt cold, so even though he was in the presence of the beacon it perhaps wasn't a big part of the path the Wildmother set for him. And for Fjord, who at this time had literally been pulled on a thread towards Uk'otoa, felt a tether loosen, like the beacon has given him a chance to subvert that fate (which, in a way, it literally does by giving him a reroll). And we see this in the way the Kryn talk about the process of rebirth: they believe that the path of the Luxon, the path of consecution, is itself an act of defiance against the fates and destinies that the gods have set out for them (which makes a lot of sense for a society of drow, who were under Lolth's influence and design for so long).

The fate-touched background gives someone one luck point, used in the same way as the feat. The same thing that the beacon does when it grants a mote of possibility. The background also notes that these individuals "glide forth with mysterious influence," and if Ruidus is able to twist these threads of fate like the beacons can, perhaps that's what all this means — the Luxon bends fate towards freedom, while Ruidus bends it towards ill-omen.

and now, the moon's connection to Tharizdun:

From Call of the Netherdeep: "During the Founding, a time when the gods still walked the face of Exandria, the world’s divine creators discovered an unidentifiable power seeping through the fabric of reality. Legends assert that this alien influence was a threat to all life on Exandria, and the gods banded together to banish it... This cancerous incursion of dark power is said to have crystallized into Ruidus, the small, vermilion moon."

From the Critical Role Wiki (pulling from multiple episodes): "Tharizdun is depicted, if at all, as 'a creature of rolling, hungry ink and darkness,' a spreading cloud of lightless destruction. It is endless, black, inky, filled with teeth and malice, laughter and hatred. While the other entities in the Pantheon have different interpretations of how they are depicted in artwork, tapestries, and tomes, every record of Tharizdun is amorphous and without physical manifestation... Tharizdun is not best understood as a god like the others. Its 'mind' is profoundly alien, and does not carefully form complicated plots. It is a primal, subconscious force of annihilation that insidiously corrupts what it can to undermine everything, opportunistically masquerading in the forms of what other minds desire, and seeping in to twist those minds' intent and perspective toward Tharizdun's own destructive ends."

During the Founding, "the Primordials' slaughter of the mortal races the creator gods had formed drew the attention of the demons of the Abyss, who poured into the world to feast on the carrion. In the battles that followed, the Prime Deities locked Tharizdun away." That sounds a whole lot like "an unidentifiable power seeping through the fabric of reality" — unidentifiable because Tharizdun had literally just created it. They banished it by imprisoning Tharizdun, but they couldn't fully get rid of it, and so what remained of the power crystalized into Ruidus. Both that unknown power and Tharizdun are described as "alien, unidentifiable, threatening to all life, dark influences."

However, when Tharizdun was imprisoned during the Founding, it was imprisoned beneath Gatshadow Mountain in Tal'dorei. It was imprisoned in the same place after its release during the Calamity, and today, six divine shackles hold Tharizdun at the bottom of the Abyss. It isn't from the Abyss, it's believed by some to be older than Exandria itself (like the Far Realm), and it actually dreams the Abyss and its demons into existence. It created the Abyss. The Abyss is a prison of Tharizdun's own making, just like the Apotheon's Heart of Despair.

Tharizdun, above all else, seeks freedom. It wants to be released from its prison so that it can impose destruction upon the world. The Apotheon, the most powerful being we know of that has been touched by Ruidus (and therefore, in this hypothetical, Tharizdun), seeks the same thing: freedom from the prison that he dreamed into existence around himself. At the end of Call of the Netherdeep, if the Apotheon is released without being reconciled, he will "bring ruin to Exandria" by the light of Ruidus, which would remain full for "one year and one day," manifesting over the world as an inky, black cloud that would rain destruction upon entire swaths of continents at once.

The Apotheon was touched by Ruidus' magic, but its curse and corruption was something that twisted the Apotheon's own magic (which he got from the gods), using his emotional turmoil and need for freedom to change it into something corrupting and imprisoning. And if Ruidus' magic is, in fact, a crystalized form of Tharizdun's own magic, then suddenly all of those parallels — the prison of his own making, the yearning for freedom, the endless rage and roiling emotion, the corruption of ruidium — make sense.

The other powerful entities that we know were touched by Tharizdun itself are the Somnovem. It was Tharizdun's influence that shaped what Cognouza would become once it encountered the astral storm, and like the Apotheon, the Somnovem sought freedom from endless emotional torment, were able to dream things into existence, and — like Tharizdun's influence caused throughout campaign two — were hungry. Cognouza itself was a ravenous body separate from the tormented minds, somewhat like the Apotheon's duality of his body being a storm of roiling emotions while his mind was trapped helplessly within it. When Cognouza died and the Somnovem were released, Kingsley Tealeaf had a dream of the city surrounded in twisting black chains, that shattered as the city died with the sound of Tharizdun's primal scream echoing across the planes — representing Tharizdun's lost hold on the city.

From Call of the Netherdeep: "The gods agreed to create a tale about Ruidus to conceal its alien origin from the mortals of the world, informing them that it was a moon of ill omen, and its magical influence was always to be avoided. This tale concocted by the gods was not a lie, for Ruidus’s alien magic twists the fate of those who are born or embark on ventures while bathed in its vermilion light."

and my crack theory for the connection between the two:

No, I don't think that the Luxon is actually Tharizdun in disguise like the Angel of Irons was. Matt has presented the Luxon in a way that, to me, makes this very unlikely. However.

Tharizdun is... unknowable. It is a being, and yet it is a world. It is unfathomable darkness, hatred, hunger, and malice. It seeks to destroy and consume, to enslave and annihilate, to unleash chaos. It seeks to twist souls and fate, to manipulate and take and transform, so that those souls may release it from its imprisonment beneath Gatshadow.

The Luxon is... unknowable. It is a being, and yet it is the endless expanse, the world, within the beacons. It is unfathomable light, burning, blinding, the strength of a star. It seeks to know, to question, to free and to break the chains of fate. It seeks to make souls better, more knowledgable, so that they may release it from its slumber in the core of the world.

There is not light without darkness, nor darkness without light.

I think that Tharizdun, the Chained Oblivion, is to the Luxon as Tiamat is to Bahamut. Both massive, unknowable beings that themselves are not beings but worlds.

So, following this line, what if Tharizdun has its own version of the beacons? Beacons that are very similar to the Luxon, yet are twisted, ravaging, alien, just like Tharizdun itself is to the Luxon. What if that's the thing that Imogen is holding — something so much like a beacon, but not? And what if Ruidus is a massive fucking beacon of Tharizdun that sometimes rains meteors that themselves become smaller beacons, that has enough power emanating from it to twist the fates of those who are born beneath its full light?

#critical role #critical role campaign 2 #critical role campaign 3 #mighty nein #bell's hells #critical role spoilers #Caleb widogast #fjord #caduceus clay #imogen temult #call of the netherdeep #call of the netherdeep spoilers #ruidus #crack theory #I've connected the dots #I've connected them #this makes sense in my head #if it makes no sense in text feel free to send an ask

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eyemonsters · 3 years

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Posting this here because i need to put it somewhere and i have nowhere better to put it:

I've been thinking a lot about campaign 2 ending and why it may be ending now, in the context of the campaign being an almost entirely character-driven narrative. In other words, the campaign runs as long as the Mighty Nein exist and adventure together, and i think we're reaching a point where they have run out of reasons for the latter.

At this point, all of the Nein with objectives in mind have accomplished what they originally set out to do: Jester has found her dad and reunited her parents, Caduceus has found and is fulfilling his divine purpose, Veth has her body back. Fjord and Caleb haven't technically, but have grown and developed in ways that mean that the things they initially wanted are no longer relevant. Beau and Yasha didn't really have specific goals, but both of them have found a family and a calling that honor and love them. We even have closure on Molly's lore. Additionally, two characters (Caduceus and Veth) have indicated an explicit interest in hanging up the hat.

In essence, the reasons that brought the Nein together no longer apply, and many characters simply have no organic reason to carry on. So the campaign end is less because every issue in the world has been resolved and more that the Nein's adventuring days as a group have drawn to a close, and the characters are ready to move on to another stage in life.

And i think that this is where the loose ends* become relevant. Maybe the loose ends are what they are not because the cast has lost interest or become so burnt out that they've decided to shut down the entire production, but because the loose ends play an important role in how the individual characters they affect. Maybe Fjord spends the rest of his life guarding the last Cloven Crystal and ensuring that Uk'otoa's cult doesn't rise again. (I don't think that killing Uk'otoa outright is necessarily possible for Fjord, given that not even the gods could do it.) Maybe Caleb devotes the rest of his life to combating corruption in the Empire to atone for his past sins. And maybe those are good ends for them, because this campaign has centered so heavily on the Nein finding purpose and direction for themselves, and that's their purpose. And maybe it's ok that the Nein don't collectively join them in those causes, because not all of them want to become sailors or have attachments to the Empire.

I don't really have a clean conclusion to this, but that's my two cents.

*I'm only considering Uk'otoa and Trent as loose ends, and honestly, I think that there will be some resolution to the Trent arc before the campaign officially wraps. I don't consider stuff like Tharizdun a loose end because I don't really think...it's that important? Like, the goal of the Tharizdun cult arc wasn't as much making sure it wasn't freed as it was about saving Yasha. But that's just my opinion

#Critical role #Critical role spoilers #Maintagging so people will actually see it but feel free to disregard #This is just my opinion and you can disagree #But just know that i will not see it bc i am again logging off indefinitely

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