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honourablejester · 2 years

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I haven’t watched Critical Role in a while, but since ExU: Calamity is going to be a shorter campaign, I thought I’d try get back in the swing. So. Um. Impressions.

I like Brennan’s style. Very fast moving, very intense. Let’s open straight on the apocalypse, yessir!

I also really, really like Zerxus. Like. This poor paladin gets immediately shoved in the deep end, visions of the end days, his dead husband, his child-as-was fishing in the void, and then a skyscraper tall devil god falls at his feet and he tries to help it. Just. Instinctively? And, I know, Asmodeus is likely playing with him, luring him in with visions of lost loves and playing the victim, but I still love that, even for a devil, Zerxus instinctively tries to protect him. From a god. Like, if this paladin falls out of kindness, that’s … going to be something. And if he proves kindness worth the risk, even more so.

Also, though, we’re all of ten minutes in and this poor guy already needs to be bundled in blankets and taken care of, holy shit.

And then … everybody else. Oh my god. They’re all assholes. Absolutely amazing assholes. I love it.

Laerryn is … my platonic ideal wizard. Favourite. Immediately. The whole … I am the chief engineer of this goddamn starship, and none of you even know what I do, but without me you would all be pancakes, so shut up and get to the point already. Move this along, I don’t have time. I love her. And she is going to do something incredibly foolish with this apogee solstice thing, tuning to the celestial plane, this is going to go … oh yeah, but I’m here for it. And how petty … She uses haste just to get down a stairs fast, the kids will get off the landing gear or they won’t, what kind of hairstyle check do you need from me … I just love her. Favourite cosmic wrench-wench, absolutely idiot mad scientist, Girl Genius sort of vibes. Perfect.

I honestly love how they’re all assholes. And they play it. To the hilt. They’re all so casually hoity-toity, better-than-you, listen, listen, we all know who’s the important one here. They’re going to fall so hard. They’re going to fall so hard. It’s gonna be amazing.

Laerryn and Loquatious are just amazing. Their whole dynamic. Both the incredible pettiness, the bitterness, the jealousy, but also the fact that they still work together, they still function perfectly well among their team, that whole tiny moment with the inspiration … Poor Travis not being safe on this side of the table, it’s amazing.

Speaking of Travis … He is a noir bird detective in an apocalypse movie, and it’s actually perfect, because this is Cthulhu style apocalypse, eldritch entities and the end of the world, and of course the detective is the one who finds the weird cultist corpses and the obliterated summoning circle and the one who gets jump-scared by the baddie in the closing minutes of the episode.

(I also absolutely adored his little ‘I think I’m in the wrong class’ after our apocalypse opening, both for the hilarity but also … you’re playing the rogue detective in an apocalypse campaign. You came into a horror campaign playing the pointman class. ‘I think I’m in the wrong class’, honey, you did this on purpose)

(His and Aabria’s reactions to everything are incredible, and I love that they’re sitting next to each other)

I just … I keep coming back to this, I love everyone’s arrogance. Cerrit and Zerxus are the mildest of them that way, they’re keeping it broadly professional, but every magic user in this party is topping the arrogance charts professionally. Between Loquatious throwing himself into everything like the world’s most obnoxious studio host/marketing director, to Patia’s casual ‘divinity seems such a hollow title’, to Nydas being all ‘how dare such a lowly peon approach me in person’, to Laerryn just not having time for literally anyone. They are such dicks. But, and this is the key thing, such competent dicks. Amazingly competent assholes. Who are likely just competent enough, at exactly the wrong moment in time, to bollocks the universe up entirely.

There’s also an interesting intra-party vibe going too. That whole last half, at the party, you can see how they all come together, but also how they all separate apart as well. There’s levels of involvement on different fields going on, and when the shit hits the fan you can see the layers start to separate slightly. Laerryn is completely locked on to her own thing, her apogee solstice, she’s the epitome of the mad scientist wizard I’m gonna do the thing. Nydas and Patia are playing a much more political game, him working up and Patia working down. Loquatious weirdly seems a little pathetic towards the end, just because of the shape of the investigation and the way it didn’t directly involve him and how he skated lightly around it. Weirdly for the bard of the group, the social animal, he seems oddly out of the loop. Him and Zerxus immediately chase down the outsider for information, because they’re also slightly outside. There feels a little bit like circles in circles: Patia, Nydas and Laerryn on the inner circle, Patia holding the court, Nydas holding the field, Laerryn holding the raw magical power, and then an outer circle, Cerrit, Zerxus and Loquatious, being relied on for information but not quite the direct power movers the other three are. Politically, anyway. I don’t know, it could just be the way the events themselves directly went down, but there felt like there was a slight separation there.

But they’re all also interestingly connected to each other. Nydas and Zerxus having that almost brotherly connection, Nydas’ family taking care of Zerxus’ kid, the way Zerxus clearly does trust the group enough to reveal … apocalyptic visions to them. Obviously Laerryn and Loquatious, divorced and petty and bitter, but still working together and almost instinctively giving each other little moments. Patia and Nydas’ political sympatico, despite the fact that she’s the highest of the high and he’s an ex-pirate who happens to be stupidly wealthy. Everyone just leaning on the fact that Cerrit is rock solid and will give them the heads up they need, and will scope out their potential enemies for them. It’s such an interesting story, this group of movers and shakers who gravitated together because they work together, they function so well together, to the point that people are starting to take note and infiltrate them, because they are good at what they do and this is a cut-throat mage city where you need to be. That guy from the Circle of Silver noting their little unofficial name for themselves, the Circle of Brass, the way they’ve been noticed, because they are so well positioned to hold the actual physical, political, informational that they do.

And then, because of idiot mages poking betrayer gods in ill-advised rituals, perfectly positioned to be stuck right in the middle of an apocalypse.

(I’m assuming, and I have not kept up on lore for Exandria at all, but I’m assuming Vespin Chloras was trying to get a betrayer god out of its prison before killing it and taking over its domain. Because a) you have to get them out to reach them to kill them, and b) you have to get them out so that when you kill-and-replace them you don’t get promptly stuck in their prison in their place)

Also, this whole episode, the pacing was amazing. Brennan as DM, it’s really just hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. Open, wham bam, apocalyptic visions, but then he just guides us on this whistle stop tour of the party and the city, hits the lore in every stop possible (helped by things like Cerrit’s ridiculous rolls), and it’s all moving. Technically, nothing much happened. We met everyone and we went to a party, and then some stuff sort of went down, but it was all seeded in from the get go, and there was so much … intensity and interaction along the way. Also, he does portentous very well. “If you look down and see the stars, what will you see when you look up?”

Um. In summary? I am enjoying this. I’m looking forward to see where (and how badly) this goes. Definitely.

And even if she wrecks the entire universe in one move … Laerryn is still the wizard I would want to be. Platonic wizard ideal. Absolutely.

#exandria calamity #exu calamity #exandria unlimited #reaction #spoilers #well that was a trip and a half #in just the first ten minutes even

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thought-42 · 2 years

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Fictober Days 8-9: “do you remember?” / “That sounds like a you problem.”

Critical Role, 1025 words, Laerryn, Evandrin, Patia

“Do you remember that reporter?” Laerryn asks, deliberately casual, twisting so that she can hang her head over the back of her chair and watch Evandrin chop vegetables.

“Yes, Laerryn,” he says, resignedly. “You’ve only brought him up eight times a day for the last three weeks.”

“That’s a gross exaggeration,” she says, clinging determinedly to her dignity. “I’ve been reading about changelings.”

“Oh no,” he says.

“What?”

“Absolutely nothing. Go on.”

“Their veins and arteries are essentially tiny fucking Ley lines, Evandrin,” she bursts out, waving her hands around in glee. “There are teeny tiny ley lines just! Under his skin!”

“I’ll give you that,” he says. “That’s a little wild. How do you feel about ginger this week?”

“Bad,” she says, absently. “That’s how the physical alterations happen so seamlessly. It’s a cellular level change.”

“How do his bones change, though? We know he can change his height.”

Laerryn, who had stood three feet away from Loquatius Seelie while he looked her directly in the eyes and grew two inches, making himself exactly a quarter inch taller than her, growls under her breath. Neither of them had said anything. She still doesn’t know what he was trying to communicate by this, but it still leaves her incoherent with rage. She wants to... do something to his face. It’s a very pretty face, especially when he’s not putting on any masks.

“There’s a whole cultural thing, too, about trying to blend in or not. Patia had to dig deep in her archives, and the text was pretty old, so, you know, probably shitty about respecting them, but it’s still an interesting question from a theoretical standpoint. Did you know the Keeper of Scrolls has no obligation to open the library to the press, even that within the city? Patia says it’s-- she likes that but she’s Patia. Oh god, they'd probably demand a registry if there were enough changelings in the city.”

He sets down the knife so he can tick off points on his fingers. “1. I’m not an idiot, I just have a hard time conceptualizing bones just fucking.. Stretching. 2. That seems exceedingly reasonable to me, I agree with Patia. And 3. I hate that you thought of that and I hate that you’re right.”

“I hate his face,” she says. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“We’ve all noticed.”

“I have not been that bad,” says Laerryn, who is fully aware she has, in fact, been that bad. Evandrin tips the cutting board into the pan on the stove and Laerryn, helpfully, flicks a spark toward the ignition to light it.

“You have a crush. It’s cute.”

Laerryn sits straight up in her chair, and then, when that doesn’t appropriately convey her indignance, stands up and places both palms on the breakfast bar. “How the fuck dare you?”

Evandrin laughs so hard he’s bent double, clutching the edge of the stovetop and pointing wordlessly at her.

“Are you done?” she asks.

“N--” he wheezes. “Oh wow. Oh. Oh no. You didn’t even know. You are gone on this poor man, Coramar, I hate to inform you.”

“That,” says Laerryn, “is some bullshit. I just think he’s neat. And I hate his face.”

“Patia,” says Laerryn. “Patia. Patia. Patia pay attention to me, I want to get your opinion on something.”

“No,” says Patia, stamping another letter and tossing it into the fireplace with a murmured incantation.

Laerryn paces back across the parlour, absently gulping the rest of her wine. “It’s about the freedom of the press.”

“I know,” says Patia.

“I have opinions!’ Laerryn snaps. “I didn’t know about all of this before!”

“That sounds like a you problem,” Patia says, mildly, and slides a new sheet of paper off the stack on her desk before leaning back and closing her eyes as silvery ink streams from her orb, forming words on the stationary.

“It’s an everyone problem,” Laerryn objects hotly. “You should be angry about some of the things I’ve learned about Avalir.”

“And you should keep those things to yourself in mixed company,” Patia says, and there’s a real warning under her bored tone.

“Avalir used to have eight newspapers,” Laerryn barrels on. “Now we have five. And two of them are owned by the City.”

“These things come and go,” Patia says, still writing.

“They don’t, though,” says Laerryn. “Avalir hasn’t had this few news sources since its inception as an independent municipality.”

“Mmhm,” says Patia. Laerryn stares at the delicate display of glass flowers orbiting the water feature on the shelf by the door and does not throw them against the wall.

“I’ve been talking to a journalist--” she begins, and Patia sets her wine glass down on the desk hard enough to make a sound. Laerryn snaps her mouth shut.

“I’m aware,” Patia says, and Laerryn can catch the slightest slump of her thin shoulders beneath her robes before she straightens back up. “We’re all horribly, painfully, interminably aware.”

“He’s very interesting,” Laerryn objects. “Did you know he’s from the Feywild?”

“You’ve mentioned,” says Patia. “He does rather well for himself, as I understand. But really, Laerryn, I never thought of you as one to fall prey to a celebrity crush.”

Laerryn knows her jaw is hanging open, there’s just nothing she can do about it. She stands frozen, every molecule in her body vibrating on the knife blade of burning fury. She does not even have words for what she is feeling. Every thought in her mind has gone silent.

Patia smiles very slightly, and picks up her wine again, surveying Laerryn from over the edge of the glass. “That’s what I thought,” she says, lightly. “Now do let me get back to work. And you can get back to... well, whatever it is you do with your days now in this new phase of your life.”

Laerryn needs to leave, because Laerryn needs to scream, and there is nowhere in Patia’s massive and silent home where that is permissible.

She does make sure that a week later all of her research on changeling dicks winds up on Patia’s desk. Including her direct observations. ----- Credit where credit is due, the celebrity crush line is courtesy of @humanbeanisnotamused and has lived in my brain rent free for weeks

#fictober22 #critical role #laerryn coramar seelie #evandrin alterra #patia por'co #cr exu tag #tumblrfic tag

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