"4-Sided Dive: Independent Witches" (4SDx04) is the fourth episode of 4-Sided Dive, discussing episodes of the third campaign up through "The Hellcatch Valley" (3x24) as well as some of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity with guests Laura Bailey, Aabria Iyengar, Ashley Johnson and Marisha Ray.
Synopsis[]
Provided with permission by Loquacious Quark.[1]
Tonight’s guests: Laura, Ashley, Aabria, and Marisha! I didn’t realize how tall Aabria was until we saw her sitting next to Sam in Calamity, and standing next to Laura and a seated Marisha/Ashley, I am impressed anew at her height. Laura is devastated to land host and immediately butchers the pronunciation of “Laerryn”, which is very funny. Also Omar is here wearing a harness, and he’s beautiful!
What the Fuck is Up With That?
Laura & Marisha are so sad about Imogen & Laudna’s busted friendship. It was heartbreaking in the moment and they both clung to each other after, while also being pleased at the drama. Imogen is baldly jealous of Laudna’s friendship with Dusk. Aabria: “What’s more girlboss than getting a drastic haircut after a bad breakup?”
There’s an inset Omar cam of a crew member (?) playing with Omar, which is ADORABLE.
Everyone laughs at Ashley’s huge reactions and dropped jaw during the Imogen/Laudna fight. They inset the relevant clip! That’s so nice! Laura remembers big reactions to Vax and Keyleth.
Marisha was trying to listen to Matt in this scene as he portrayed Delilah, trying to glean clues through his dialogue, only to still be blindsided by Delilah’s evilness. “You lied” made Aabria’s whole body hurt. Marisha hates friend/friend conflict but is totally onboard with stranger conflict. She could feel that “burning in the back of my head” to fix this immediately. Laura had to fight her natural reaction of, “It’s fine, it’s fine, I know you didn’t mean to!”
Calamity! Aabria loves that everything we know in Tal'Dorei is technically a post-apocalyptic world. Marisha likes that this previously amorphous conflict now has real grounding. Ashley loved how advanced the tech was.
Laura: “Can we talk about Brennan’s jamming?” Aabria: “Can we? That monster.” Lots of praise for style and lamenting from Laura that she didn’t get to play with him.
When they originally sat down to plan Calamity, Laura was going to play a wizard with a very specific place in the city. Due to scheduling conflicts, she wasn’t able to, and Marisha took the concept and ran with it. “Everything after that was you.” Marisha talks about it almost being a Sam/Liam situation where Laura planted her character seed & Marisha made it real. It gave Marisha a good excuse to not get in the weeds with class selection.
Aabria loved that the brief of “you must play a high-status character” conflicted with the common ragtag band of nobodies many D&D groups start with. She decided to be That Engineer who’s responsible for magnificent tech but never gets around to writing down how it’s accomplished, then has that knowledge lost in the apocalypse.
The lore document for Calamity was 8 pages long (not 20) and broken down by category, including important NPCs for each character. Matt apparently does the same thing for the main campaign; Taliesin and Sam have a “beefy doc” for Bassuras.
Marisha also felt that playing these hypercompetent characters compared to low-level shitkickers who have to learn to care gave her a new lens on the rest of her fellow players, who she feels were also playing at the absolute top of their game. She loved watching Aabria’s & Lou’s assertiveness in their strong, driven characters.
Aabria: In a normal campaign, Purvan Suul is the PC & the Calamity Crew are the NPCs you watch make terrible decisions. It’s not that “one bad wizard made a spicy choice and then everything got bad. No, an entire society bred people who reached too far, and here’s some of them. Even in their poor choices they were people and had moments and hesitations, but they never had that turn of faith or eye or thought at the right moment to stop it.”
Aabria treasured the chance to hook into both the past and future with Niirdal-Poc. She tried to focus on the group that could “hunker down” during the Calamity and extrapolate how they survived. She liked the freedom & less-preciousness of only having 16 hours to build a story instead of the 500-hour-stories of the main campaign.
Laura: what kind of apocalypse would everyone thrive in? Zombie, Children of Men… Aabria posits that a baby-less world wouldn’t be so bad. “Have you met a baby?” Laura, sadly: “I’ve met a baby!” Aabria: “The platonic ideal of a baby is a dog, but worse.” Ashley doesn’t want to live in an apocalyptic world where there’s a chance of turning into something else.
We discover part of the reason Aabria is so tall tonight is that she’s also wearing platform heels. Ha!
Tower of Inquiry!
41: what kind of plant would your characters be? Laerryn: “I have a pretty fiercely anti-plant agenda,” but settles on one of those futuristic LED plants. Laudna: Venus flytrap/pitcher plant. Imogen: a violet, little and purple and dies easily if treated wrong. Ashley: pilea peperomioides, Fearne: oleander, belladonna, nightshade. Patia: orchid. Ashley & Marisha discuss the difficulty of caring for orchids, and Marisha tells a story of her Kentucky dad rubbing mayo on her dying orchid’s leaves to save it. Ha!
Marisha pulls another block. 37: character’s go-to karaoke song. Laerryn: Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Fearne: “Kiss From a Rose.” Imogen: Eurythmics’s “Sweet Dreams.” Laudna: Fleetwood Mac’s “Sorcerer,” which she takes back immediately for “Break the Chain.” Aabria suggests “Bring Me to Life,” heh. Ashley complains that “evergreen” is the new “synergy.” Laura challenges us all to listen for it in our Zoom meetings.
The Deep Dive!
Dani can’t pass out the tankards because Omar is fully asleep on her feet. It’s so stinking cute.
The skyship was cool for Imogen. “Gee willikers. I mean, it sure was pretty and the sky was nice, and she was not scared once it took off ‘cause then it was a smooth ride.”
Laerryn’s final moments? There was no better way for her arc to resolve than to avert the worst possible scenario and die in the arms of her husband and help Cerrit get out. That was the last possible victory. The entire dynamic between Loquatius (personal note, that name was very funny to listen to for four episodes) and Laerryn was entirely Sam’s idea. He’s been wanting to play a divorced character for years. Aabria was super nervous going into that dynamic in the character jam session since she didn’t know everyone else that well. Marisha liked that they were both right and both wrong & still had chemistry.
Marisha didn’t think she was really really dead the first time Patia died, but then “three hours in, I was like, ‘maybe I am really dead,’“ but then she wasn’t! She was proud to dedicate her final moments to the legacy of Avalir, Cerrit, and his daughter Maya. It was a good group moment of making sure one person survived.
Nana Morri Calloway, Fearne’s grandmother, was heavily inspired by Ashley’s mom, who’s very innocently mischievous. Ashley thought that was a good kernel for a fey-type character. Her mom is an amazing cook: prime rib, custards, cakes, pancakes, fried catfish, cookies–she tried to bring this in with Nana Morri’s pies and cooking. She’s the kind of grandma who paints masterpieces and doesn’t go to bed until 3:00AM.
Imogen feels okay about chasing Armand instead of learning about her powers; too much at once is already overwhelming. Laura doesn’t want to dive too deeply just yet.
Patia and Laerryn always had the dream of outshining the other cities, so the idea of interplanar travel was going to change the world to improve the city. Yes, she’d do it again. It was worth it. “There were gonna be Betrayers. It could have been worse! The Primordials seemed bad, and I stopped them, so you’re welcome, and if I could go back and do it again, I’d be even better at it. Laerryn’s learned nothing from this experience.”
Laudna does know that her patron is the same person who put her on the tree. She thinks of her almost like a ghost who can’t hurt her or do anything, just gives her her powers. Laudna’s been like this for thirty years and has grown flippant about it over the years. Aabria: “Is there a part of Laudna who likes what happened to her because it made her special?” Marisha, gasping: “Ooh, I don’t know! Maybe Laudna hasn’t even processed that yet. What the fuck, Aabria?” Laudna has accepted herself and gets a kick out of being weird.
Fearne’s chaos comes from Ashley’s mom & a love of practical jokes. She enjoys being able to do the first thing in her mind like Grog & Jester.
Omar joins us on the couch, then as the centerpiece to an endtable. What a cute pup.
Everyone loved Imogen’s reveal of the Fly spell. It was a very narrative introduction to a new spell.
In re: blighting the tree: nothing is more terrible than realizing as a player that This is Your Red Button that you have to smash to serve the story. “I’d kill it again.”
Laudna’s traveled on skyships before; that was fine. Marisha got emotional as a child learning about the loss of the Library of Alexandria, and that was her inspiration for preserving all her knowledge in the orb & sending it to Maya. “I sent the Library of Alexandria to a fourteen-year-old. It’s in your hands now. Hope this is fine.” Matt refuses to tell her what happened to it in the world.
Ashley picked the Wildfire class for Fearne because it made sense for the character, though she thinks Keyleth’s Circle of the Moon class is the best.
Tower of Inquiry, Redux
21: Laerynn’s favorite part of Avalir is the idea of constantly reaching further. Aabria loves that they live above weather, which is hilarious. Marisha likes that Exandria is endless, and she loves how it’s grown with other DMs. It’s only more as time goes on. She’s been playing in Exandria for ten years and loves that she’s not tired of it. Laura loves that anything is possible in this world. Imogen’s favorite thing in the world: “Laudna.” Oh, my heart. Ashley loves Jrusar with the spires and bridges and Windowed Wall. Fearne is loving getting away from her glen. Marisha reveals the AC went out in the studio today. As someone who lost her own AC earlier this summer, God bless.
Laura picks 47: character cures for insomnia. Aabria: “Laerryn and Loquatius fuck but as our friends, just going through the Ring of Brass. They bang weird.” Marisha, cackling, fully out of the chair: “Oh my God! Changeling roleplay!” Imogen dives into other people’s dreams. Fearne messes up other people’s sleep out of curiosity. Laudna plays with dolls. Ashley LOVES Pâté. Pâté de Rolo the name came from a play on Percy de Rolo, but funnier because “dead” and “liver.” Sashimi & Escargot also came out of just the idea of naming something a very fancy word for a dead thing. There’s a very funny outro here where they don’t realize the cameras are still going and the producer offscreen has to cut them off for the break. Ha!
Cup of Questions
Beer pong with questions. It’s Laura’s first time ever playing, and Marisha laughs that this should be interesting since she’s super competitive.
Laura doesn’t remember her worst hair day ever, but she laments her Rachel hair cut in high school, which featured in her senior photo along with a red, white, and blue bustier. Ashley sometimes gets lost in Laura’s hair under the table spotlights, hahaha.
Laura is the kind of person to look at other people’s medicine cabinets. She would read people’s minds all the time if she could.
If Grey Griffin (the voice of Delilah in LoVM) was Laudna’s patron instead of Delilah, Marisha hopes she’d be granted with her amazing singing ability.
Ashley & Aabria are really destroying Laura & Marisha in this, haha. Omar & Pâté would have a lovely date in Malibu, with Pâté riding Omar’s back like a GoPro. They have to be home by 10pm because that’s coyote time.
Laura lucid dreams a lot.
Laura finally sinks one. If Chetney hadn’t overslept, “Fearne would have had a very good time with Chetney.”
Aabria would love to take her squad to the Feywild to party. If she could have one selfish machine, it would make her hair shiny like Laura’s.
If Laerynn & Patia were Thelma & Louiseing around the world, they’d go to Dubai, Singapore, Japan. A luxury tour. Patia would have them go visit Ashley in her stolen rainforest (see below).
Laura had no concept for Patia and loved what Marisha did with her. Her initial art concept (unnamed) had strawberry-blonde curls and lots of floating jewelry in her hair.
Brennan told the group he was going to kill them, and Aabria said he had to at least try. “One of my feats was Tough, and that gives you double your level in HP, so that was an extra 28 HP on top. And then I took Eldritch Initiate to grab Armor of Shadows, which gives you at-will Mage Armor. Mage Armor is an Abjuration spell, which means I can spam cast it without spending a spell slot to refill my Arcane Ward, so that was an extra 33 HP on top of that. Laerryn had effectively 175 HP. I built a brick shithouse wizard. Caleb, get good. Ahh!”
If Ashley could steal anything in the world, she’d pick a house by Frank Lloyd Wright or Rick Joy or Peter Zumthor, or a JMW painting. And then a rainforest to protect it.
Laudna is genuinely aware that she’s on borrowed time, because the worst thing has already happened to her. She’s living each day to its fullest.
Laerryn and Loquatius had a huge wedding & Quay invited everyone he’d ever met. It rained during their wedding and she had them leave it, since it never rains on Avalir.
Fearne’s “rats of the Feywild” was just Ashley trying to run contrary to her own opinions on fairies.
Laura gives an off-the-cuff eulogy for Bertrand as Vex. “Bertrand…what can one say about Bertrand. He was… Percy?”
Ashley wins beer pong for her team by cleanly sinking the last shot. GGs all around.
Marisha’s first crush was Josh Hartnett.
Ashley would cast Chris Pratt to voice Mister.
And on that note, Laura outros us out by sweeping up sadly the remnants of the 4th of July Party. A new song plays over the outro; is this a new theme song? It’s catchy!
That’s it! Is it Thursday yet?
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