Exandria Unlimited: Calamity Wrap Up

Exandria Unlimited: Calamity Wrap Up
The thumbnail for "Exandria Unlimited: Calamity Wrap Up" (Sx70), featuring Marisha Ray, Aabria Iyengar, Travis Willingham, Luis Carazo, Sam Riegel, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Lou Wilson.
Episode	Specials,​ Episode 70 (C3E26b)
Airdate	2022-07-12 19:00 PDT
Running time	1:50:17
Episode link	VOD
Podcast link	Podcast
Transcript	Transcript
Starring
Luis Carazo – Himself Aabria Iyengar – Herself Brennan Lee Mulligan – Himself Marisha Ray – Herself Sam Riegel – Himself Travis Willingham – Himself Lou Wilson – Himself
Order
Previous	"Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable" (Sx69)
Next	"San Diego Comic-Con 2022 - Critical Role Q&A Panel" (Sx71)
Airdate Order
Previous	"Hidden Truths" (3x26)
Next	"A Race for the Prize" (3x27)

"Exandria Unlimited: Calamity Wrap Up" (Sx70) is a special episode produced by Critical Role. The entire cast of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity wraps up and reminisces about the making of the show.

Synopsis

Everybody: Knowing that this was the Calamity, did it change how you normally build your characters?

• Aabria Iyengar usually does not fully optimize the technical aspects of her characters. However, knowing that the Ring of Brass would most likely not survive the Calamity, she min-maxed Laerryn Coramar-Seelie to live as long as possible.
• Players were not limited by Brennan Lee Mulligan on the quality or the quantity of their magical items. Feeling like this opportunity could be unstoppably abused, Sam Riegel picked only two weak items: the Wand of Smiles and a ring of protection (+1).
• Both Lou Wilson and Sam were initially planning to be solely bards but later flavored their characters with multiclass options. The warlock multiclass for Loquatius Seelie fit nicely with the Seelie Court connection and Fearne Calloway's backstory. It was the first time Sam has multiclassed.
  • Nydas Okiro started out with four levels of sorcery and later became a bard. Loquacious began with warlock class levels.
• Since she possessed an orb with unlimited amounts of knowledge, Brennan let Patia Por'co learn 10 more spells above normal, since she could always retrieve the necessary information from her orb.
  • Brennan: "Your character is the Keeper of Scrolls for an entire city. You would have an infinite spellbook. You would have all the spells, every spell that's ever been."
• Travis Willingham did not made any preparations before the session zero. Once Travis looked around the table and saw all the various powerful magic users, he picked a class to contrast with these powers. Then he asked for a class suited for an investigator who "would be really good at finding out details and trying to keep a check on all this magic run amok."
  • Travis frequently starts a backstory with an item. The story of Fjord began when he bought silver, folded greaves, and the forearm greaves inspired Fjord's character. Jack Carr's Winkler RnD hawks was the initial inspiration for Cerrit Agrupnin. These hawks are a common part of the Sayoc Kali fighting system in the Philippines which in turn led to Cerrit's appearance as a Philippine Eagle.
• Lou, Aabria, and Marisha Ray arranged a few secret meetings before the stream, discussing "how they were nasty, how long they'd been nasty for, and the many ways they had been nasty together".
• Luis Carazo wanted right away to play a redemption paladin and plant something in his backstory that would connect with the Betrayer Gods.
  • After the dream sequence in "Excelsior" (E3x01), Zerxus Ilerez had only two secrets, but he wanted to lay them out to Nydas, his oldest friend, as soon as possible.
• Although Loquatius constantly bent the truth working as the Herald of Avalir, his main flaw was that he was lying to himself. Although his exterior was super-confident, "all he wanted was very simple things and he couldn't admit that to himself. He just wanted a lady and to and to be happy and to be truthful."
• Cerrit and Wrayne's relationship was not good during the events of the show, and they had split up. His perception and great deduction skills were hyper-focused on his work, not on the children and Wrayne. She was moving on with her life elsewhere.

@The_Katie_M on Twitter for Travis and Luis: What inspired your decisions to make characters who had children despite knowing that you were telling an apocalyptic story? Did you think the fact that your characters were both dads affected your gameplay and caused you to make different decisions to the other characters?

• Travis wanted to develop family relationship drama, because, in an unusual way, the story of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity took place at home, where the protagonists have kids, spouses, hopes and dreams. This decision made the story more complicated and forced Cerrit to work on two fronts during the rapidly expanding chaos of the Calamity: his duties as a Sightwarden and his children.
• Luis doesn't have kids but he's fascinated by the parent/child relationship and loves to imagine himself being a parent. In a similar way, his character, Zerxus Ilerez (who with Evandrin Alterra adopted Elias), and the Betrayer Gods imagined having children of their own who were not entirely theirs.
• Aabria and Sam discussed whether they would have children, but quickly abandoned the idea.
• Aabria and Luis considered the possibility that Laerryn could have been the mother of Elias. If she had outlived Zerxus in "Fire and Ruin" (E3x04), Aabria would have made this reveal.
• According to Brennan, when Evandrin died and vacated his occupation as the First Knight of Avalir, Zerxus was pressured to succeed him, being the only suitable option for the position. This was the main reason why he left Cathmoíra and his son Elias for Avalir.
• Loosely recounting Brennan's thoughts, the tale of the orphaned adventurer is too convenient. They have no attachments and thus can freely explore the outer world, when all of the Ring of Brass members, even including Patia Por'co, were enriched with family matters and the exploration of their inner selves.

Nydas was a pirate who became the key to Avalir's resources. Does he feel as though his dreams were realized even though the city fell?

• Nydas's "goal was to make the city great and then show it to the world and prove it every day for the rest of our lives and have everyone come up and kneel before him and say "Great job, you really made something amazing"". However, in the end, he saw this ambition was too much and that there was much to lose in the devastating fall of Avalir as a "community of people doing great things". When Laerryn cast Blight on the Tree of Names, it made him realize the importance of the prophecy he had heard.

Andrea for Aabria: Was Laerryn's urgency to get the Astral Leywright done before the next Apogee Solstice only so that she could fix or focus on her relationship with Loquatius before he was gone? Or was there something she was hoping to do on other planes she was working towards that involved him?

• This particular solstice was Laerryn's best chance to succeed in the work she zealously had been doing for over a decade, putting this first in her list of priorities. Repairing or dealing with her relationship to Loqatius was a close second, as she still had warm feelings for him.

How much of the Laerryn-Loquatius relationship was planned before the game?

• Initially, Aabria wanted to name her character Lorwyn and Sam considered calling his character Loquatius Hambrick-Zucker.
• Loquatius's decision to cover up Elena Tuvaris's story, covering up for Laerryn, started the propaganda push in the Herald's Tome.

How does Patia feel about the deal her grandfather struck with the Gau Drashari?

• Por'co had an "incredible lineage" in Avalir. However, when working on Patia's backstory, Marisha forgot to develop her parents and had not worked on their stories with Brennan before the stream. With the beginning of the series, Brennan realized Patia's parents were gone, as well as their memory, and Imyr, disillusioned by their failure, had put all of his expectations on Patia. She gave her life for grandfather's dream, which left her completely alone until the very end. During "Fire and Ruin" (E3x04), all of the Ring of Brass members had a living family they tried to reconnect with. Patia met with a statue of Imyr Por'co, saying to him as her last goodbyes: "Happy Replenishment, grandfather".
• Brennan: "I think Matthew Mercer fully pitched" the background surrounding the Gau Drashari and he also came up with the name. Brennan knew that he couldn't get the Betrayer gods to destroy Avalir because most of them were focused on Vasselheim. In order to establish high stakes for the players without the gods' threat, he created two Primordials that would have roamed the Exandria during the Calamity, if not for the decisions of the Ring of Brass.
  • The process behind the creation of the Exandria Unlimited: Calamity was an intense cooperation between Matt and Brennan. In the instance of the Tree of Names, Brennan wanted to add an additional barrier for the Betrayer Gods, placed by the druids in Avalir, but forgotten by wizards. The rest was Matt.

Travis for Luis: How did it feel to start with the Lord of the Hells kicking off the whole thing?

• Luis and Lou and a conversation before it started about how Brennan will approach things for a character. Luis had no idea until partway through the description and was surprised in the moment. Luis did asked to Brennan for an encounter with a Betrayer God, because he didn't know where in The Calamity this was going to take place. Redemption paladin to the extreme. Although, Luis didn't know it was going to happen like that, in a really intimate way, and also, he didn't know it was going to be Asmodeus.

Marisha for Brennan: Did you have any contingency plans, should the end of the world not come about as expected?

• A whole lot! Brennan had an event plot with the Septarion coming after the Ring of Brass if they had attempted to alert them, sowing chaos.
• The library of Alexandria partially inspired Patia's backstory, Marisha's wondering of "what if we had a record of all of this knowledge that hadn't been lost?"

For Brennan Is Bolo okay? What happened to Bolo from Aeor?

• Bolo's dead or she dies 12 hours later because she gets hit by a wagon. Or, Bolo is an incredibly dangerous Aorian spy who goes into Avalir during the chaos and finds a piece arcanotech for Aeor's later work (Treshold crest or the Factorum Malleus). Or, there's also a world where maybe Bolo was a polymorphed dragon and she just flew away.

References

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