"4-Sided Dive: Liam Laudna-Hands" (4SDx06) is the sixth episode of 4-Sided Dive, discussing episodes of the third campaign up through "A Stage Set" (3x32) with guests Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, and Sam Riegel, and get competitive over a game of Crawl.
Synopsis[]
Provided with permission by Loquacious Quark.[1]
Tonight on 4-Sided Dive we open with Liam telling everyone about super creepy short story The Jaunt. Ashley Johnson lands host with a natural 20 and is joined by Liam, Marisha, and Sam. Ashley’s opening host shtick involves her pretending to answer a phone and talk about the guests, and she makes herself laugh more than once.
What the Fuck is Up With That?
The mini Divine Gate around the moon is very weird. Marisha is convinced it was a prototype because it existed pre-Calamity (the two missing gods were already missing by that time). Dani (and Sam?!) remind us that there are 12ish Prime Deities and nine Betrayer Gods (previously eight before Vecna’s ascension). Sam is convinced the moon gods are Betrayer gods and that those studying them are attempting to release them.
Liam says since the city on the moon existed prior to the Calamity, it could be super advanced. “It could be like San Francisco in 1880! It could be Hoboken in New Jersey. Orlando!” Sam posits that perhaps the people come from a floating city swiped up during the Calamity, but Liam claims the moon was locked away prior to this. Sam shakes his head violently. “No! What the buh buh? Didn’t The Divergence happen after the Calamity? Yeah. Dani’s nodding. I’m right!”
Dani: The texts say the gods were banished before the Age of Arcanum, when the cities rose. Ruidus was already around during Avalir and any gods trapped there were already forgotten. However, we still haven’t seen the texts ourselves, so we’re hearing the information through the lens of third- and fourth-hand accounts.
Marisha thinks the flares are the people of the city trying to reach out to people to accrue followers and increase the gods’ powers. Sam wonders if it’s like an NK city where it’s beautifully built up and no one lives. She wonders if the Shadowfell is involved.
Marisha also wonders if everyone Imogen sees in her dreams are people astral projecting to the moon. Liam wonders if they’re in fact trying to keep the moon a secret and are murdering anyone who discovers the moon’s power.
Marisha also points out that the two banished gods were banished even before the distinction was drawn between Prime Deities and Betrayer gods; there were no good or bad gods at that time. Is being Ruidusborn literal?
Everyone agrees Ira just wants to sow chaos. They talk about killing the other Ira in C2 and agree this is a different Ira. Marisha texts Matt to ask what his deal with that name.
FCG! What the heck! Liam always gives Sam one layer when he creates the characters, but he was surprised multiple times with this one. Liam and Sam both know the mechanics of the murderbot switch, but FCG does not. It’s a similar mechanic to Caleb’s issues with killing humanoids with fire in C2. FCG was one point away from the stress point threshold during the Deathwish Run. Sam did NOT know FCG was an Aeormaton. He guessed that perhaps Dancer wasn’t his true maker, but left gaps in the story for Matt. He has NO clue who the “D” is who sold FCG to Dancer.
Ashley didn’t know the time discrepancy existed between Fearne & Birdie/Ollie. However, Ashley did know her parents were perhaps not everything Fearne thought they’d be, as Ashley wanted to explore the dynamic of not having great parents for Fearne when she herself (Ashley) has wonderful parents. She does think Morri genuinely loves Fearne, and envisioned Morri creating the postcards for Fearne out of love. Ashley told Aabria that she didn’t think the postcards were from the parents.
Sam loves the T1000. Ashley likes Hal. Roy from Blade Runner is Liam’s favorite bad robot.
The Tower of Inquiry!
Morning coffee cup slogans? For Laudna (from Sam): World’s Best Dead. Fearne: It’s not stealing, it’s borrowing. FCG is his own coffee cup. Orym: Sun’s out, guns out.
The Deep Dive!
Orym thinks Imogen is intelligent and wise, but he’s seen her give in to the dark side. He sees shades of Dorian and Opal in her and wants to encourage her to stay on course. Marisha thinks Imogen is the one most likely to be susceptible to her emotions. They wonder about what will happen with Imogen gets in front of Otohan, which they think will be soon. ;_;
FCG finds great joy in being therapeutic. However, the revelation that anything good he does was a Trojan Horse for assassination was crushing. Sam doesn’t know if he believes FCG has a soul; is the glowing thing a heart, a soul, a battery? They dive deep into organic electrical signals and the nature of life and being alive.
Matt responds to Marisha’s text. “What do you mean? I do not. Are people upset that sometimes people share a name in the history of the world? I am far from the only Matt.” Everyone helps Marisha draft a comforting reply.
Lauda has a bit of arrested development when it comes to her dolls. Laudna genuinely thinks the dolls might be a bit alive since they saw marionettes come to life; it speaks to her childhood & her gullibility. It’s hard to play a warlock and have them not be a little impressionable.
Morrigan being Fearne’s grandmother was Ashley’s idea. Her mom started building birdhouses from scrap during COVID, one of which was very fairy, creepy, hag-house-ish; “Morri” the name was also originally a 35-pound cat she used to have, so there’s bits of that cat and her mom’s birdhouse in Fearne’s backstory along with horrifying Scandinavian folk tales, etc. Her mom has only seen a few episodes and doesn’t really understand the show, aww.
FCG doesn’t want to return to Dancer, but does want her approval. He wants the group to fix him so he can be friends with Dancer again.
Laudna is trying so hard to get away from Delilah, but Delilah is getting bolder and Matt is serving up more “juice.” Marisha originally intended to go into more sorcerer levels, but feels with everything with Delilah it’s truer to take warlock levels now.
Fearne was tempted to go back to the Feywild with Yu. At another time, she might have said “yes.”
Liam has to balance his love for past characters with keeping the Bells Hells in their own story. He thinks Keyleth was actually closer to Derrig than Orym.
Tower of Inquiry, Redux!
While pulling, Sam reveals his first name is actually Samuel Brent (his mom wanted to call him Brent) and his middle name is Oscar. This could be a joke, but he seems quite genuine. Part of his family still calls him Brent, ha!
Ashley has lost the notebooks with all their inventory. Oh, Ash. Favorite magical items? Portable hole, immovable rod, that love potion they used one time, Wand of Smiles, Deck of Many Things. For his home game, Sam made up some super nerdy glasses that raises your INT score by one for a few minutes.
Marisha pulls another Jenga block. The tower is quite trembly by this point. Everyone loves playing so carefully and meticulously around Fearne’s chaos; Ashley’s favorite thing is saying something and hearing everyone else go, “No, no!”
Liam goes up to pull a block AND DELIBERATELY PUNCHES OVER THE TOWER. Our editors give us a slow-mo triple replay and photoshop laser red eyes over his own. Gasp! First, the question: in a slasher movie, Orym would be the final girl & Laudna (or Chetney) would be first blood. Tower-toppling consequences: Liam must wear Laudna’s hands for the rest of the show.
Marisha loved the conversation with Ashton about their fears. It was funny to have him confront her for being scared and then immediately admit to being afraid.
Crawl!
This game is new to me, but they apparently played it on the show about four years ago.
Liam loves hearing about the characters from past campaigns. It’s like hearing about all the cool things your aunts and uncles did.
Laudna is happy because Marisha was trying to make someone not defined by her trauma. She likes that she’s moved past it in a lot of ways.
Sam loves the flat earth thing. He also decides in this moment that FCG also thinks the Chroma Conclave was an inside job. No one saw those dragons!
Holy smokes, I’ve hit a character limit for these bullets. Did you know there’s a 4096-text-characters-per-block limit on tumblr? I sure didn’t until now!
The moon has always been a thing of happiness for Orym for years, so to hear it’s a secret ominous god-prison now has really messed with him. He had no idea the moon was going to be the center of the campaign when he created the tattoos. Aww!
Liam creeps up on Sam with his long spooky fingers and genuinely frightens Sam, which is HILARIOUS.
Laudna doesn’t really doubt she was alive; she meant that in a more philosophical sense. She fears she’s never been in control of her own life and has always been a pawn in someone else’s schemes. OUCH.
Sam has been writing down quotes since the beginning of the game. He thought FCG would note them down as things he perceived to make you tick.
FCG getting opened up felt weird, but he liked getting answers.
Marisha wonders if she needs to do a sage ritual for her dice. It’s fine, even though they’re not rolling well. Ouch, ouch, OUCH.
Fearne’s father’s vision is just a bad dream to her. It’s not real, so she doesn’t need to worry about it.
Sam reveals the Flat Earth Society legitimately asked him if he wanted to be a member?! What!! He replied and told them that he didn’t genuinely believe the earth was flat, so they wrote back and asked if they could send a membership card to FCG instead of him. Oh my gosh! This is so weirdly sweet and unsettling, ha! He hasn’t replied back yet to the second request.
Liam fully expects to tangle with Artana Voe soon. Prescient!
Fearne gave the gnarlrock shards to Imogen & Laudna because if she gave them both rocks, it would strengthen their friendship.
FCG is a cleric with no obvious divinity. He doesn’t know where his powers come from. Sam doesn’t know much about the Changebringer, but he likes exploring things in characters he hasn’t done in his own life, so he’s wondering if FCG should perhaps turn to faith in this time of great tumult. Sam is also excited to get to high-level cleric spells that are not easy to reflavor as robot tech like summoning angels and talking to your god.
Ashley loves jazz and listens to a lot of her dad’s old albums. She likes Brubeck, Miles Davis, etc.
Infinite money ad read: Sam jumps out of an airplane and reads the copy before he lands.
We end the episode with random-draw costume ideas to be worn on the next 4SD episode. Disco dinosaur, art school demon, garbage robot, laser werewolf, 90s mermaid. It’s nearly spooky season, oooh!
And that’s a wrap. Is it Thursday yet?
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- ↑ Originally posted at https://tmblr.co/ZQDoXwcg6Mi04u00.
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