#lessons in distrust would’ve split the m9 but has the chance to forge the bells hells

[nellasbookplanet]

I just caught up with ep 63 and I'm fucking vibrating. The difference of the Bor'dor reveal and the Dusk reveal! Dusk spending their entire time with the party stirring up drama, once caught out still openly provoking and trying to find an angle to straight up kill Fearne's parents, and the party still struggling to find every reason to let them go, let them live. And Dusk never gave a shit. Why would they! They were a fey assassin! And still the Hells fought and argued for them and let them walk away despite openly remaining a threat.

And then we get Bor'dor, wet paper tissue of a man, tragic backstory up to the gills, genuinely spending time to bond with them, having his little practice session with them being his proudest moment, sharing vulnerabilities. And though he drew first blood, he did it trying to run away, not kill! He did it having seen these people murder his friends and drag their dead bodies out of the hole! He was helpless on the ground, all but begging them to end him because he saw no reason to keep going! There was enough turmoil and doubt in him that he could probably have been deradicalized! He hated them but he loved them too!

And had this been early campaign, in all likelihood they would have let him live. But this is a Bell's Hells who have already been betrayed once by an ally, who lost Eshteross to the Ruby Vanguard, who lost half the fucking party to the Ruby Vanguard, who went on a grueling journey to get Laudna back, who struggled and struggled and still failed to stop Ludinus and ended up separated and scared and not knowing whether the world is about to end or not, whether their friends are alive or not.

And they were done. They did not fight for him. This is war. Were Dusk to show back up now, I doubt they’d survive the encounter.

#cr3 spoilers #critical role #cr3 #bor'dor dog'son #dusk #i talked at one point about how c2 was all about the rewards of trust #about taking risks and being rewarded #c3 feels more like the darker side of trust and risk #sometimes you trust and get stabbed in the back. #sometimes you take a risk and your mentor dies‚ or half your party does‚ or you fail to stop the beginning of the end of the world #and you have to keep on going anyway bc it isn't over yet #i also once said there could’ve been a campaign 2 where matt leaned into the distrust and the paranoia #that it would’ve been interesting but much harder on the characters (beau caleb and fjord especially) #and i feel like that’s where laudna and orym are at right now #but bc they didn’t start out with paranoia and distrust as a core flaw the way many c2 characters did #they have better chances of learning and growing from this without being permanently damaged by it #while caleb/beau/fjord NEEDED to have their trust rewarded to be able to grow and heal #lessons in distrust would’ve split the m9 but has the chance to forge the bells hells #idk i just find it fascinating how different narratives serve different characters without eiter narrative being wrong #nella talks cr