#also the raven queen is painfully lawful neutral but she's not evil

[your-turn-to-role]

fascinated every time i see vax meta that describes his death as the raven queen cashing in the deal he made to save vex

like this isn't a post criticising those writers, don't get me wrong, write whatever poetry works, but like, that's not what happened

maybe enough people just haven't seen the end of c1 or don't remember it well enough that this is what circulates in the fandom consciousness? or maybe the opinions of vex and percy and keyleth that the raven queen is evil speaks louder than vax's opinion that she only ever acted fairly

but like. vax's first deal, to resurrect vex, the raven queen never demanded his life for that. or, she did, but not in the sense of "you will die"

i said a while ago i should do a meta about the raven queen and her perspective and maybe this is it but, the raven queen never demands death of mortals. why would she? she doesn't need to. everyone will visit her eventually, and she's a very patient woman

the only thing she hates is when people go against her. not with a resurrection, she has no problem with resurrection spells, especially if the death in question interferes with that person's destiny (she's the keeper of fate, as well). no, she despises the undead and the immortal, people who plan to never return to her, people who have warped their own destiny to survive long after their thread ended.

and vax called on her first. he invoked her name in a temple made to worship her, next to the body of her former champion, and said "take me instead". that was his offer, to shift fate just enough for the resurrection spell to work, and in a place so full of her power she couldn't ignore it (and this is, by word of matt, why there were no problems with kashaw calling on vesh to resurrect vex, or why vax's soul deal with the hag never went anywhere - the raven queen has the power here, and part of her side of this deal was keeping them away). but killing vax would just be pointless. what she needed was a new champion on exandria, someone she could act through from behind the divine gate to rid the world of the undead and immortal, those who spited her deliberately

and then she called on vax to meet with her. the first time in the blood pool, they talked, and they hashed this deal out properly. she resurrected vex. he would be her champion. and together they would keep the web of fate in order

there were no additional clauses to that deal. vax may have worried often that he was going to die, for a variety of reasons (mostly dragons), but the raven queen never intended to "call it in", because there was nothing to call in. both sides of the deal were fulfilled as soon as vax multiclassed into paladin

all the more clear when vax got killed by the kraken, and the raven queen had no problem letting him return. it was not his fate to die there, so he didn't

but then came vecna, the raven queen's arch nemesis, who had already flouted every rule she had

and a disintegrate spell

and disintegrate is a particularly evil form of murdering someone, because resurrection spells don't work on disintegrate. there's no body to give life into, no place for a soul to return. not even the raven queen can undo a disintegrate, not fully

vecna killed vax, not the raven queen

and yes, there is one solution in game for disintegrate. because 9th level spells can be power beyond even gods, there's a reason scanlan was saving a wish. but true resurrection lets you simply speak the name of anyone who's died in the past 200 years and they will appear before you, alive and whole again. the raven queen is okay with resurrection spells, but, in matt's own words, that crosses the line. she doesn't have that power, not like that, and if she allowed mortals to use it without punishment, there would be absolute anarchy, the web of fate would be destroyed

and vax also knew this. according to liam, he wouldn't have gone along with a true res anyway, because it would go against everything the raven queen stands for, everything he'd spent the last year and a half protecting

but he couldn't just leave his friends to die

so vax made a second deal. this man is enemy to both of us. let me help defeat him. and when it's done, i'll do what i promised, and keep you company here for as long as you need me.

(and this was something else vax saw, the raven queen isn't like the other gods, she murdered her way into the pantheon and the other gods don't trust her. there are no souls in her domain, she's not allowed to keep them, she just collects them and moves them on to their final destination. and she's been so lonely for so long)

so she did what she could. she couldn't restore him, but she could give him an avatar made of her power, something that would help him defeat vecna, for everyone's sake. but it couldn't be sustained indefinitely. that would be an act against her own domain. and it's a tragedy that vax couldn't stay with his family for longer. it's not an ending any party involved would have chosen, the raven queen included

but it's a lot more complicated than "vax gave his life for his sister". he gave it for all of his family, which by the end, the raven queen was part of

#you could say vax gave up everything for his family both times his family just expanded a lot between the first deal and the second #but yeah there's a lot more nuance to this situation than is often presented #also the raven queen is painfully lawful neutral but she's not evil #cr1 #vax'ildan #the raven queen #cr thoughts #text #meta

[eponymous-rose]

There's been some interesting talk about character alignments in the tag and I was wondering what you thought?

Oh gosh, it was neat to see that discussion! Keeping in mind that the whole idea of character alignments is intended to be a loose descriptor to aid with character-building (especially in 5e, where many of the alignment-based restrictions in gameplay from earlier editions have been peeled away) and can be extremely limiting and actively get in the way of a super RP-heavy game, and that this is just me goofin’ and isn’t intended to reflect the truth of the characters or whatever, here are my thoughts!

Look, I gotta start with Grog. Grog’s officially chaotic neutral, but I think an argument could be made that he’s been making a slow turn toward chaotic good since the Westruun arc–which shouldn’t be too surprising, since his entire character arc hinges on the one moment in which he sacrificed himself to protect an innocent. He definitely embodies chaos (Travis has talked about how Grog is just him with absolutely no filter, and he frequently does the first thing that pops into his head), but the underlying motivations behind what he does are generally based on the notion of protecting others, even if he doesn’t know them well, and even if it means he might fall in the process. There’s not a whole lot of pragmatism with Grog, is what I’m saying, and more and more often he’s been the one jumping into something because it’s gonna be a super fun bloodbath… and grudgingly admitting that it’s also just maybe the right thing to do. He might not be there yet–when he does the right thing, it’s often for the wrong reasons–but it seems to me that he’s certainly carving his way in that general direction.

Scanlan is a really prime example of chaotic good, which is his official alignment. He generally is working to do good things, but his priorities are also more aligned with protecting those closest to them than with any nebulous idea of “good for good’s own sake” (killing an innocent in order to keep from hurting Vax, backing away from an injured Pike in order to keep his promise to Kaylie). He’ll do bad things, sometimes, to protect the people he cares about most. And here’s one way the alignment chart kind of falls down: it generally treats self-sacrifice as a purely altruistic act pushing someone closer to the good side of the axis, but Scanlan’s avoiding self-sacrifice is arguably more “good” than the alternative.

I think it makes sense for Vex to have returned to chaotic good–I’ve argued in the past that a lot of the conflict that led up to her chaotic neutral shift was because she as a character hadn’t had a chance yet to push into Act II of her character development. Although Laura has from the very beginning talked about how Vex’s “greed” is a direct result of her poverty and frustration growing up, early in the show her haggling was still being done more for laughs than for any sort of deep character reason (kind of like Pike’s occasional moments of brutality early on), which really embodied the “good and evil are secondary to my concerns” attitude of chaotic neutral. Matt tends to use things like alignment shifts (or, in Pike’s case, a shattered holy symbol) as a reminder to the player that gags taken too far will actually shift their character, just to keep everyone on the same page emotionally and to make sure everyone’s taking the same parts of the game seriously. Now that Vex has finally been able to take the spotlight with the Feywild arc and get some solid character development, it seems completely natural that she’d shift back to chaotic good; fundamentally, her character’s always been about doing right in the world, even if her methods are sometimes a little bit unorthodox, and even if her personal traumas sometimes keep her from being able to act on those good intentions.

Keyleth’s a really interesting case, because on the one hand she’s generally the one (along with Vax) reining the group in from their more bloodthirsty impulses, but on the other, she’s aggressively suspicious and mistrusting of authority. For that reason, I think it’s bang-on that she’s neutral good as opposed to chaotic or lawful. The entire situation with Raishan is why I think alignment charts are so limiting: her vows for revenge and willingness to sacrifice herself (and possibly even allies) if necessary aren’t quite in keeping with neutral good on paper, but it’s painfully obvious that there’s a good in-character reason for that attitude, and it seems really goofy to try and put an alignment shift on that when she’s making the effort to seek counsel (from Grog of all people!) about how to keep her rage in check. Neutral good seems about right, with a possible meander towards chaotic good lately.

Vax, I think, is starting to veer more into lawful good territory than his official chaotic good alignment. He’s begun following an extremely strict self-imposed code that does prioritize his found family, but in a very codified sort of way. He sees himself as an instrument, a weapon, to be wielded by his sister, by Keyleth, and by the Raven Queen, in more-or-less that order. After each major battle since episode 44, whenever time has permitted, he’s made a point of tending to the dead, because while the Raven Queen may only reign over the moment of their passing, her followers (like the Bastions in Vasselheim) have been shown to feel a certain responsibility towards the earthly remains. There’s still a clear break between Vax-the-rogue and Vax-the-paladin, however, in that Vax spent his entire early life pushing back against anything organized or restrictive and has always valued personal freedom. A lot of his character’s conflict comes from that forced see-sawing between lawful and chaotic depending on the gravity of the situation and the weights other people (or deities) have placed on either end of that see-saw.

I’m one of the folks who’s vaguely astounded that Percy’s official alignment is neutral good. To be fair, I think it’s valid to base someone’s alignment on what they desperately want to be, and Percy, if he were to honestly fill out a character sheet for “where I want to see myself in five years”, would absolutely mark “neutral good”. But he gets distracted from his pursuit of goodness very, very, very easily. I’m not talking about the corruption during the Whitestone arc, I’m not talking No Mercy Percy, I’m talking about all the little things Percy does, the “I’ve had a terrible thought”s, handing Grog Craven Edge, stabbing Raishan. Taliesin has talked a lot about how he enjoys playing characters who appear to have one alignment and actually follow another, and has said repeatedly that Percy is convinced he’s the only adult in the room, which leads on occasion to a strange sort of self-loathing confidence; he has terrible thoughts and recognizes them as such, but he’s also fully convinced they’re correct and even justified, which is so interesting. His willingness to experiment because “it’ll be funny”, and his fascination with the darker side of his own nature (which has been held back a bit lately for obvious reasons), I think, pushes him into neutral territory despite his best efforts. His love of lawful order is difficult to gauge, because so much of the words he says about nobility and tradition have a certain amount of self-effacing mockery to them. I think it could be argued that Taliesin’s playing him as a chaotic neutral character who usually (but not always) remembers that he’s trying to be neutral good and sometimes goes lawful out of long-forgotten reflex.

This is already super long, and Pike hasn’t had nearly the level of character development of the others lately, so I’ll just say that I think her official alignment of chaotic good is so, so, so right for her. Sarenrae is neutral good, but Pike has been through a lot, and her influence on Grog hasn’t been entirely one-way.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #long text post #critical role meta #Anonymous #i love em all so muuuuch