Pre-Show[]
ROBBIE: Hello, everyone. Welcome to tonight's campaign wrap up.
ALL: Woo hoo!
ROBBIE: Where a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors sit down and talk about how they played Dungeons and Dragons.
ALL: (clamoring and praise)
ROBBIE: You can thank my mom. Before we get started tonight, we do have some announcements to get through, starting with our first sponsor, Suikoden. Sam.
SAM: Suikoden. Suikoden I and II HD Remaster is a beautiful remaster of the classic JRPG video game, available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Steam, and Nintendo Switch. Now, the thing is, I don't get to read ads on this set. Usually we're stuck behind a table, so I thought I would use the space and send you out on a scavenger hunt.
LAURA and TALIESIN: Oh.
SAM: The rest of the ad is hidden somewhere on this set. Yes, and you have to follow the clues to find it.
LIAM: I don't want to be sitting next to him anymore.
MARISHA: Sam, yeah, this is live.
SAM: Don't worry. I'm sure our cast will solve my clues in 10 to 20 minutes max.
LAURA: Like an escape room?
MARISHA: No, no, no, we don't have that kind of time. Like the crew will go into OT.
SAM: Then we better get it going. Here's the first clue. Suikoden is a critically acclaimed RPG franchise, and the ad is hidden under another place that has three letters. Anyone?
LAURA: Your butt.
LIAM: Your chair?
SAM: Shit, they actually solved it. I'll just speed through the rest.
LIAM: There's only eight of us.
SAM: It's right here! Well, that ad went really fast.
MATT: Incredible. Well done.
SAM: Suikoden I and II-- Well, because RPG has three letters, and so does Sam.
LAURA: Yeah, yeah, we figured it out.
TALIESIN: I thought it was "ass". That works, too.
ROBBIE: I thought it was "FCG". Oh yeah.
MARISHA: I thought it was "butt" but you spelled it wrong.
SAM: All of these are better than what I had planned. Suikoden I and II HD is out now. Check it out at bitly[dot]com/SuikodenCR. Thank you so much to Konami for sponsoring this episode. And now, Matt, back to you.
ROBBIE: But that's not--
SAM: But that's what I wrote. So that's it.
ROBBIE: Stop throwing it to me because I'm throwing it to you.
MATT: Our next sponsor is Czepeku. If you're looking to bring your tabletop worlds to life, look no further than Czepeku. Known for their stunning imaginative maps, from classic dungeon crawls to wild locations like kobold breweries and giant elder brains and all sorts of fun stuff, Czepeku has the perfect backdrops for your adventures. Now, they're taking things even further with Czepeku tokens, beautifully crafted monsters, NPCs, and player character tokens to enhance your battles with 15 new tokens every week, endless customizations, and a randomizer to create unique foes on the fly-- let me rustle this in front of my mic a little more so you can hear what I'm saying-- your next encounter is only a click away, so subscribe to tokens on Czepeku.com and bring your worlds to life with Czepeku. I'll say it seven more times. Thank you, Czepeku, for sponsoring this episode.
SAM: Matt, back to you.
MATT: Matt--?
SAM: Matt, back to you.
MATT: I've had this nightmare. Robbie, go!
ROBBIE: Wait! Oh, no. I don't want to. Marisha.
MATT: Okay.
MARISHA: I swear there's a wrap up happening in here, but this week, we're actually celebrating our ten year anniversary.
SAM: What?!
LIAM: Oh, man.
MARISHA: In fact, yesterday was our ten year anniversary. It's true.
LAURA: Happy birthday guys.
MARISHA: Happy birthday.
LAURA: I love you all.
MARISHA: Wait. What is the ten year anniversary thing? Is it wood?
TRAVIS: Anniversary?
SAM: Paper?
MARISHA: Paper? No.
TRAVIS: Aluminium.
LIAM: I think it's Czepeku maps.
LAURA: No, it's not.
MATT: Radium.
MARISHA: Uh, anyway, we're planning a big year with merch, off the wall content, and live shows that we can't wait for you all to see. So thank you so much for helping us keep this dream alive for ten years. Ten years? It's been ten years.
MATT: We're only just getting started.
MARISHA: We have a few Beacon exclusives coming up this week as well. On Monday at 7 p.m. Pacific, Nick Williams and George Primavera from the Slayer's Take Club will be joining us for a fireside chat. They're super awesome. Sam's got my back here. They're great.
SAM: Yes, I can attest they are awesome.
MARISHA: They are awesome. On Tuesday at 1 p.m. Pacific, we will host an AMA with the creators of Midst, Third Person, aka Matt Roen, Sarah Wile, and Xen through our Beacon Discord. So once again, get on that. And for everyone who loves the Midst cosmos, on Wednesday, you'll be able to enjoy the Unend season one roundtable, right on the heels of its finale, available on all platforms. And then, Ashley and Taliesin, what do you...?
ASHLEY: Hold on really quick.
TALIESIN: What?
ASHLEY: Okay, it's tin and aluminum.
LAURA: (to Travis) You were right.
ASHLEY: Representing durability and flexibility.
MARISHA: Durability and flexibility.
TALIESIN: I am not flexible, but apparently durable anyway.
ASHLEY: Should we roll for it?
TALIESIN: Yeah. Let's go. (Roshambo)
ASHLEY: So that means you have to do it.
TALIESIN: I do it. We recently-- We just announced our new podcast, Weird Kids, starring Ashley and Tal. Ashley and Taliesin. That's right. Got that one done. Join us next Thursday at 7 p.m. Pacific for a live launch party.
LAURA: We're back again next week, live?
MARISHA: It's in your calendar.
TALIESIN: I can't read. Everyone knows that. We'll share behind the scenes-- I'm making this up, not the teleprompter. We'll share behind the scenes details about the making of the show and take questions from you. And we'll give you all a first look at Weird Kids.
ASHLEY: Hey everyone, we want to celebrate this launch with everyone, so the live stream will be available on Beacon as well as Critical Role's Twitch and YouTube. The full first episode will also be available to everyone on Tuesday, March 25th on all platforms, but afterward, new episodes will release every Tuesday exclusively on Beacon.
MARISHA: Get it on Beacon.
ASHLEY: So get in on it. We have a good time.
LAURA: Your hair looks so pretty, Ashley.
ASHLEY: Thank you so much.
LAURA: The color is so pretty.
ASHLEY: I can't figure out what to do with the color now, you guys, now that Fearne is gone.
LAURA: --Color at the back, but it's so beautiful.
ASHLEY: I dyed it red for Fearne.
MATT: Well, Fearne's not done.
ASHLEY: Hey! Laura!
LAURA: Guess what, guys? Available now in all shops. It's a brand new "me" Dice Bag of Hoarding.
MARISHA: It's too big to cup.
TRAVIS: Is it evil?
LAURA: This is where all of your evil dice-- It's lined. It's pretty, y'all. It's pretty. Pattern art by Savannah Mayer. Inspired by our very favorite critter, Christina Ahrens. Thank you for designing those bags to begin with.
SAM: Our favorite critter?
LAURA: Well, she made a bag for me.
SAM: Okay, okay.
LAURA: Plus, guess what?
ROBBIE: Big words.
LAURA: That was a big word. In all of our shops, we have a free shipping promo going on right now.
SAM: Oh, that's cool.
LAURA: Good deal. And a big sale just this weekend on dice and accessories to help you fill up this awesome dice bag. And for your closet-- Oh, this is cool. Heroes and Villains. Nope. You scrolled too far. They made something. Heroes and Villains just released a new set of Mighty Nine apparel with a grungy, grungy look fit for all our misfits. Okay, look, we got some really cool t shirts. They do such good work.
TALIESIN: Oh, God, they're so pretty.
LAURA: Badass t shirts. There's a really awesome cardigan. You've worn it, a Mighty Nine cardigan. It's so cool. And then there's one that's like a jacket with Jester on the back. It's like super punk. It's super cool.
TRAVIS: I like how they just drew Ash.
LAURA: Anyway, check it out. Heroes and Villains.com.
ROBBIE: I don't know what they're talking about. Scrolling and teleprompters. I'm doing this all impromptu. And with that, let's dive into tonight's wrap up of Critical Role Campaign Three.
♪ Critical ♪
♪ Critical ♪
♪ It's Thursday ♪
♪ It's Thursday night! ♪
ASHLEY: ♪ One-by-one, we climb until we reach the top. ♪
♪ Two-by-two, we fall. ♪
LAURA: ♪ Will we meet our end or meet our destiny? ♪
♪ Hold your breath and roll! ♪
MATT: How do you want to do this?
ALL: ♪ It's Thursday night ♪
♪ All ye Critters, come join us ♪
♪ It's time to continue our plight ♪
♪ There is magic and mystery ♪
♪ Who knows what will happen? ♪
♪ He might! ♪
♪ But one thing's for sure, ♪
♪ We never give up on the fight! ♪
LIAM: ♪ From the healer ♪
♪ To the renegade ♪
MATT: ♪ We all share the same goal ♪
MATT and TALIESIN: ♪ Adding more allies ♪
♪ Taking more chances ♪
SAM: ♪ Hold your breath and roll ♪
MARISHA: You can certainly try.
ALL: ♪ It's Thursday night ♪
♪ All ye Critters, come join us ♪
♪ It's time to continue our plight ♪
♪ It's Thursday night. ♪
♪ There is magic and mystery ♪
♪ From darkness, our friendship will rise ♪
♪ But one thing's for sure: ♪
♪ We never give up on the fight ♪
♪ Oh, get ready, ♪
♪ Get ready, ♪
♪ It's Thursday night! ♪
(flames whooshing)
Part I[]
ROBBIE: And welcome back to the wrap up campaign. I get it now. It's hard. Yeah, it is tough. And the age of reclamation. We're going to begin tonight at the end. We're going to cover the most recent arc first and slowly work our way backwards through Campaign Three. And here in this magical tome-- it's a tablet-- I have some questions for you all written by the amazing Dani Carr.
ALL: Yay!
ASHLEY: Happy anniversary.
ROBBIE: No, no, please. And if you're in the Discord chat right now, feel free to drop Q and we may be able to answer it on the air. Is that really possible?
DANI: That is possible.
ROBBIE: Technology. And so let's begin. Welcome everyone. We have a very first question. And it's not for all of you. It's for one specific person. My favorite of you. I'm just kidding. It's for Sam.
SAM: Oh. Wow. Wow.
ROBBIE: That's how I'm really going to win you guys over in this interview process. I got it. Our first question is, how would FCG have felt about the prospect of the gods taking on someone's name? As in the in the thing on top of the question. So I can't read it. It's okay.
DANI: Mortal form.
ROBBIE: Technology. Their mortal forms and leaving Exandria without divinity for a time.
SAM: Wow. Well, spoilers. FCG is dead. So. So wouldn't feel anything. But hypothetically, I think FCG would ultimately feel like that's the best. The best way to get out of the pickle that we that we were in, which is sort of how I, Sam Riegel also think about it. I liked seeing the gods up on their perch, and I'm going to miss them up there. But I also don't want to see them being chased around the galaxy. So-- what're you just laughing at?
LAURA: It's just...
SAM: Okay, let's get this out of the way. Get this out of the way. Travis shaved his beard.
TALIESIN: We know. We know. We are aware.
TRAVIS: I came in to Critical Role this way. I come out-- It's all because of mocap. I hate it. So does my son. I shaved it down to just a mustache.
LAURA: It was really fun.
TRAVIS: Which was fun. I was like a cop for a day. And then he was like: "I hate it, Daddy." And so I had to shave it for mocap. And every time I come in, he goes, "Ooh! Grow it back." It takes a bit.
MARISHA: Grow it back.
TRAVIS: Nobody wants this, okay?
SAM: I think you look great.
ASHLEY: You look great.
TRAVIS: Thank you, Sam.
MARISHA: It's very circa 2014.
LAURA and SAM: Yeah.
ASHLEY: You're bringing it back around, right?
TRAVIS: Yes. Full circle.
ASHLEY: It's a full circle situation, which is why it's happening again.
TRAVIS: That's right. Thank you.
ASHLEY: I'm all for the mustache coming back.
LAURA: The mustache was great.
ASHLEY: I like the mustache.
LAURA: Yeah, it was really fun.
ASHLEY: I liked it a lot.
TRAVIS: Just the mustache?
MARISHA: Yeah, just the mustache.
TRAVIS: I didn't. It's not good.
MATT: I'm team flavor saver.
TRAVIS: Yeah, it's a little sugar ray on this. Not everybody can be Robbie, okay? Robbie looks like a cologne commercial over there.
ROBBIE: How am I catching strays from this?
TALIESIN: I feel like we're off the rails now. I feel like we're definitely off the rails.
TRAVIS: I know, I know.
MARISHA: I don't think we've finished a single question.
TALIESIN: We should answer the question.
ROBBIE: This thing is full of them.
SAM: I'm super disappointed that FCG didn't get to ever really find out the deal with the gods and the Changebringer, and maybe this would be good news, because now FCG could find the Changebringer and have a lot of different questions answered. So ultimately good news. And also, good luck rushing Sigma Nu.
TRAVIS: Sigma Chi, thank you very much.
MATT: Oh my goodness.
ROBBIE: All right. Our next question is for Matt. Everyone loves loot. Are there any other Relics of the Red Solstice besides Seedling? Does the Ring of Remembrance count?
MATT: Oh, yeah, the Ring of Remembrance. Well, the Ring of Remembrance... Yeah, yeah. The Ring of Remembrance was actually technically crafted during-- No no no no no, that was something-- Sorry. I'm trying to get--
ROBBIE: You're ticking through--
MATT: Ticking through my elements there.
ROBBIE: Yeah, I get it.
TALIESIN: It's hilarious.
MATT: No, that would be one of the Solstice. Yeah. There are plenty of artifacts that were crafted in the era. Like I said, each era has its own artifacts that are distributed or crafted and then given that delineation for that time period. The vestiges were definitely the most prominent because they were required to be on a certain level of power, both from a divine scale and from competing arcana in the wake of the Age of Arcana. And so, yeah, there are others, and maybe we'll get to explore those down the road.
ROBBIE: That was the most thorough and nerdy yes I've ever heard in my life. It was perfect.
MATT: Oh, bro, the night's still young.
ROBBIE: Next question is for Travis.
TRAVIS: Chat said I look like a handsome Squidward. What the fuck does that mean?
LAURA: You don't know?
MATT: You don't know the meme?
TRAVIS: I know who Squidward is! It's a meme?
ROBBIE: You don't know Handsome Squidward?
TRAVIS: I don't know Handsome Squidward.
LIAM: Guys, there should be a lot more weird images in the chat right now.
DANI: We have it turned off.
LIAM: Oh, you do?
DANI: Well, otherwise, we're not gonna be able to see any questions.
TRAVIS: Very true.
DANI: Otherwise it will just be Green Matt jerking off the whole time.
TRAVIS: Which is kind of good.
LIAM: I need this, Dani.
TRAVIS: I'm sorry. Robbie, I'm so sorry.
DANI: Watch it on you own time, O'Brien.
LIAM: I am! Whenever I'm not here!
MATT: Thank you so much for joining us, everybody.
MARISHA: This is going great.
MATT: It's going great.
MARISHA: This is going great.
ROBBIE: The next question is for Travis. There it is!
DANI: Handsome Squidward.
ROBBIE: It's perfect. It is you.
MATT: I love it.
ROBBIE: Travis, why did you decide to shave your beard? I'm just kidding. Did Chetney plan to deliver Ashton to the bright Queen as she requested?
TALIESIN: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Ooh. Ooh ooh ooh. I think he definitely would have considered it only-- Well, for two reasons. One, because it would have been entertaining as shit to watch--
TALIESIN: Fair.
TRAVIS: --and, because I think Ashton could handle themselves very, very well, even in the clutches of the Kryn Dynasty. And I just would want to have seen what would have happened.
TALIESIN: Suck up, but I'll accept it.
TRAVIS: No, no. It's true. If there was somebody that would that I would have felt was less capable then maybe not. But poor them, if you get Ashton on your hands.
ROBBIE: Matt. Matt. Matt.
MATT: Robbie.
ROBBIE: Do you know where the gods are now? Like, do you know where they are--
LAURA: Do you know?
ROBBIE: --in your in your big old brain?
TALIESIN: Are they on the Council?
MARISHA: We need coordinates, we need time and date?
SAM: Are they all the same age? Do they all get instantly reborn as children? As babies? Like, at the same moment?
MATT: These are all great questions that maybe we'll get a chance to explore down the road. Now, I have some inclinations on a handful of them, but also I-- For the moment, I'm kind of leaving it a mystery until the opportunity arises to develop, you know, opportunities to explore that. But--
SAM: --Exandrian content forever?
MATT: Absolutely not.
SAM: Okay, good.
MATT: But no, I-- Part of this, too, is an invitation for those who are playing in Exandria and want to explore a campaign post-solstice and the whole chaos of Predathos and the catatheosis of the pantheon to where now there can be storylines that we can explore and you can explore that involve this new epic and the hunt for where these gods might be coming to consciousness and awareness in the generation to come.
ROBBIE: That's so fun and teasery. I love it. Taliesin, Ashton seemed rather different after he came back to life after having become a living beacon. Are they different?
TALIESIN: Yes, for a number of reasons. One, you can only have, I think, so many brain transplants before you start to question the nature of your sense of self. And they're on brain number three now. That's heady-- pun intended. That, and also they kind of fulfilled their greatest wish in life, which was to be irritatingly heroic in a way that was just inconvenient and obnoxious. So there's kind of a lot of, "Now what?" And getting a sense of something that will actually bring some sense of pleasure. And yeah, it was really, "I think I'm going to go travel and find myself." So yeah. Yeah, they're very different for a number of reasons.
LIAN: I think that Ashton and Kingsley should spend some time together. Both characters have had their snow globe shaken real hard.
TALIESIN: I don't know who would be a bad influence on who.
LIAM: Sure. Yes.
TALIESIN: That's fun. Yes.
MARISHA: Kingsley.
TALIESIN: Kingsley. That's fair. Very bad influence.
ROBBIE: Ashley, what does Fearne think of Ira's warning that the Unseelie Court is searching for her because of Zathuda's death? Is she worried or unconcerned that they might be looking for her?
MARISHA: I didn't think about that.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I...
TRAVIS: Don't worry. Neither did she.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I was about to say, I was like, I feel like I know that's always kind of been going on a little bit in the background, but I don't-- I feel like she's not really that concerned about it. I really do. I feel like-- It just feels more Fearne to just be like, "Well, we'll figure that out. We'll cross that bridge when we get there."
SAM: Yeah, that's Fearne.
TRAVIS: You have a whole kingdom looking for you. "Cool."
ASHLEY: "Oh, okay." Yeah, I think she's kind of unbothered by it. It's like that meme that-- "Unbothered. Moisturized."
DANI: In your lane.
ASHLEY: In your lane. You know, where it's just like a capybara that's just in water hanging out. Let's see if I can find it.
ROBBIE: There are tens of millions of memes. You're good.
ASHLEY: Yeah. Then it would all make sense.
LIAM: I choose to believe that Nana Morri is paying attention to that for Fearne.
ASHLEY: I do too. I do too. I feel like Nana Morri has got a bead on that.
TALIESIN: She's got her shit together.
ROBBIE: Oh, Matt. What will happen to the All-Minds-Burn seed on Ruidus? What's gonna happen?
SAM: You can tell us that. That's a thing that you can reveal.
MATT: Well, I'll reveal elements. I will say, with the destruction of the Weave Mind and the slow re-incorporation of Ruidian culture into Exandria, that alleviates one massive, dangerous power structure on Ruidus. But one unknown entity now forever changed from two coming together as one now begins to weave its way further into the rock and stone of Ruidus. So the All-Minds-Burn and the myceit fungal network of Ruidus independently are no more. Something new has come through that union, and maybe we'll have an opportunity to explore that in the future. So it's going to be an answer to a lot of things here, but I'm intentionally-- there are threads that weren't part of the final dovetail of the main campaign arc, that were things maybe we get a chance to do down the road.
MARISHA: I have a question going off of that. Were we supposed to do that way sooner than when we did?
MATT: That was originally my assumption. And in doing so, it would have altered aspects of the final confrontation and the return to Ruidus.
LAURA: Listen, it was always in our mind to do it. But every time I was gonna, something else happened and I was like, I'm not going to stop the scene just so I can say I'm planting a seed. So you did it so much better.
TALIESIN: No, I mean, yeah, we both did. Yeah, we were both like, now? No. Now? Now? Now?
LAURA: Yeah. And then it just kept like-- And then we were off of the moon and then we were back on the moon.
LIAM: Matt or Dani, remind me how many weeks this story was? Or months? It's not that much.
DANI: Oh, it's like three and a half months. I don't even know if we got to four. I have the timeline somewhere. I'm not gonna search for it right now, but--
ASHLEY: And all that happened?
DANI: Yeah, it's like four months, maybe.
LIAM: Okay.
TRAVIS: Sounds right.
MATT: D&D.
TRAVIS: Action packed adventurous lifestyle.
MARISHA: It's gonna be a little sad if we rescued all these people from one hive mind to just throw another one in there and be, like, deal with that now.
TRAVIS: On brand.
MARISHA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Yeah, they've got experience though. They should be fine. Taliesin. Caduceus asked Bells Hells to be kind when they made their decision regarding Predathos. What does he think of the path they ultimately chose?
TALIESIN: I think he's pleased. I think-- I won't speak for Percy, but at least I can speak for Ashton and Caduceus-- like they were both--
LIAM: But you are Percy.
TALIESIN: Yeah. Percy's answer is different, though. Ashton and Caduceus have the same feeling of like, "This is the perfect outcome because it's kind to everybody. It's kind to the gods. It's kind to even the villainous gods and--" it's kind to everybody, people who wanted the gods, people who wanted the gods gone. Everyone gets a little bit of what they want. And there's nothing more that's so rare in life that it feels like everyone got a gift. Yeah, that would be it. Everyone got a gift. There we are.
ROBBIE: That's a good answer. But finally, the kissy questions I've been waiting for. This is for Marisha and Liam. Is it enough for Keyleth and Vax to meet up every once in a while, or does that just make them miss each other even more?
MARISHA: Oh, well, you know, separation makes the heart grow fonder and all that. Yeah, over 30 years. I imagine, though, you would have an extended reprieve, right?
LIAM: Well, I don't know what it is, and I don't feel the urge to rush to stamp what it is yet. One of the things I liked about the beautiful ending to Campaign One was it was a very poetic, soft, final note, and then it left it up to our imagination and our audience's imagination to wonder what that was like for Keyleth and moving forward from there. And similar to Matt, you saying like, well, who knows what we'll explore in different ways in the future. I don't know what we're going to do for all of Exandria or for these two, but it's definitely an improvement than being dead, but I don't want to-- I would rather you guys and we, at least for right now, leave that up to our imagination.
MARISHA: Yeah, I think. It definitely feels like a very adult relationship. Like it's a working relationship. Like, I'm very busy with my career. You're very busy with your career.
SAM: Dead stuff.
MARISHA: And we're going to navigate that as we go.
TRAVIS: Dead stuff.
SAM: What is your career now?
LAURA: Taking care of the baby.
LIAM: Well, maybe it's like finding the Dalai Lama every several decades. Probably looking for the Matron, and with Morrighan sort of upholding whatever the new version of the Matron's flock is, and getting to know his nieces and nephews and eventually their kids. And I don't know, I don't want to try to predict or carve out what we might see in some form someday.
LAURA: Wait, I forget, do you have a long life like Keyleth now?
LIAM: That...
MATT: That was-- part of the hope and intent for this was he continues to be the Champion, much like how Purvan lived an extended life as part of that station until eventually he was slain in the Calamity. But yeah, in an odd way, this allows them to enjoy more time together, in theory, than they would have otherwise.
LIAM: I also like the idea that in the past people said, well, Vax will show up and shuffle everyone off to the afterlife. I think that's still true, but he'll just be at the bedside beforehand and then off they go.
TRAVIS: At the bedside. (mimes strangling a sleeper)
LAURA: full circle.
TALIESIN: You're going to show up like randomly at our beds at like 3 a.m. going, "It's time." "Oh, God!" "No, just kidding."
TRAVIS: How many times has Vax appeared to Chetney? "Not yet, you fucking bird!"
LIAM: Motherfucker, I'm gonna explode up out of your hot tub at just the right moment.
ROBBIE: That's how I'd want to go. Marisha and Matt-- is Laudna truly free of Delilah now that she's trapped in her chest? And was it ever possible for the two of them to be completely separate?
MATT: I never want to tell a player no, if ingenuity allows them to outthink the logic. In my mind, the magic that keeps Laudna alive, like present, is tethered to Delilah's presence. So they were more or less one-- One couldn't continue to exist in Exandria without the other at this point. However, it's an interesting question in the wake of your decision at the end of Campaign Three to shuffle off the undead curse, if you will, to join Imogen in her natural life. I'd say before that it would be very, very challenging to do so since they were so irrevocably tethered. Now you're alive, with a crystal, with a necromancer still in your body.
MARISHA: Inside my body. Yeah, she's definitely still there. She's very contained. She's my own little arc reactor.
MATT: As your hands were touching each other, and you got the color back in your skin... (mimes choking) Oh. Heartburn.
MARISHA: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
ROBBIE: Laura, I have a question--
LIAM: Excuse me, I'd like to toss something in real quick.
ROBBIE: Toss.
LIAM: And just say that one of my favorite moments of the final game was you guys deciding to go find Lieve'tel. That was nothing I planned. I didn't even think of that ever. And you just-- and I broke into a panic, too, and I was like, "Oh, Matt's gonna take it now, right? No. Okay, okay. I'm the elf lady again. And just seeing the two of you so heartbroken and longing for something, my brain just started going through all of the math of my character sheet. I'm like, "I'm a level 20 character. Can I do anything?" And it was just one of those accidental magic things. I'm really fond of that moment.
MARISHA: Yeah, that was great. That was great.
ROBBIE: Laura, I want to I want to hear from you. So you got a multi-parter question. Oh, yeah. This one goes deep. You once said-- I'm sure you remember-- on 4-Sided Dive that Imogen saw Liliana as her savior growing up, keeping her safe in her dreams. How does Imogen feel now that the roles are--
DANI: We blacked that out too early. Hang on. Yeah. There we go.
ROBBIE: Now that the roles are reversed and she's quite literally her mother's savior, how is their relationship now?
LAURA: Oh, wow. I think their relationship now is kind of starting from scratch. She had an ideal, an idea of what her mother was when she was growing up, like she was her savior. She's the thing that's-- it's like anybody meeting their heroes, and seeing, "Oh, you're you're human."
ROBBIE: Yeah. Wait, we had this conversation once. There's a moment every child realizes that their parents are just people.
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Do you feel like that occurred through the course of this?
LAURA: Yes, 100%. Yeah. And I think she has to get to know Liliana now for who she actually is and not a concept in her mind.
MATT: From my mind, Liliana post this main narrative really is-- I see her akin to a person coming out of a cult.
LAURA: Yes.
MATT: A person who is brainwashed by perspective, and is so deeply closed-- close to a particular worldview that they are learning how to be themselves divorced from that being put upon them. And probably a lot of guilt about time that she lost in doing what she thought was right. And to your point, like trying to reforge that relationship.
LAURA: Yeah. And probably find out who she is, too.
MATT: A little bit. Yeah.
LAURA: Yeah. It's funny because with Jester, it was like, "I will definitely get them back together. They're going to have the most fabulous fairy tale life, my parents," and Imogen does not feel that way. It's kind of like-- I would be shocked if they find each other again.
SAM: Does your mom still-- can she call you in your dreams?
LAURA: Yeah, we can still-- I can still dream talk to people, so--
SAM: But is it like when your mom calls and you're like, "Oh, hi. Hi. Yeah. No, I'm fine. Fine. I really gotta-- I gotta go."
LAURA: Is that how you're like when your mom calls?
SAM: No, I love my mom. (laughter)
LAURA: Your mom is probably watching.
SAM: I know. I love her.
LIAM: That's a real problem though, because in our world you have to pick up the phone to answer Mom. Who knows what you're doing with Laudna when that call comes in?
LAURA: Well, luckily I'll be dreaming. She can't just like-- Well, I guess she could pop in just like Jester-- Who knows?
ROBBIE: Chat, you have Travis convinced he is Handsome Squidward. Now please stop.
MARISHA: Oh my God.
ROBBIE: Travis, you haven't had enough questions. Did Pop Con happen? And if so, did Chetney go to it as special guest and headline keynote speaker?
MARISHA: Yes, of course he did.
TRAVIS: 100%. Yes. If he survived long enough, he absolutely did. It definitely happened. And people flocked from near and far. The Weavestitcher-- the Fatestitcher is very powerful. And so Pop Con sold out of its VIP badges on its first day. Overflow.
LIAM: Where was the venue?
LAURA: Yeah, where was Pop Con located?
TRAVIS: Oh, shit.
MARISHA: I mean, it's gotta be on Rumblecusp.
MATT: Rumblecusp has become the new convention spot now.
TRAVIS: Yes. Absolutely.
MATT: Since Traveler Con was such a success.
MARISHA: It's like the JoCo Cruise.
ROBBIE: I've heard it's gotten a little too corporate lately. Yeah, yeah yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah, yeah, it's gotten too big. Well, we are no stranger to watching Matthew Mercer do one man shows as multiple NPCs, but with Campaign Three being Critical Role's first major crossover event, the cast also got a taste of what it's like to R.P. opposite yourself. My friends, take a look.
[Montage of clips of the cast playing multiple characters.]
ROBBIE: Everything's going perfectly. Welcome to the next section. It is Downfall questions. The first one is for Matt.
MATT: Okay. If Ludinus had been successful in releasing the events of Downfall to Exandria, how would that have affected things? Thank you, thank you.
MATT: It's interesting because from the perspective of the Ruby Vanguard, specifically Ludinus-- Ludinus's loathing for the gods and the history that they, in his mind, have wrought destruction upon-- He's in that mindset of: "If other people could see this, they'll see my perspective." Many would have, to a certain degree. Many folks just would have been left kind of questioning. Some folks probably wouldn't have believed it. It would have led to a lot of chaos throughout the world but I don't think it would have been a total flip of culture in the way that he had wanted. You know, Ludinus is very caught up in his mind. He's hyper intelligent in a lot of technical ways, but his emotionally driven hatred is one of the few blinding things about him, as well as his sense of ego, which you guys were very good about knocking out from under him and pissing him off. It was great. So yeah, I think it definitely would have caused a lot of social rows, and probably a lot of-- it would have shaken up a lot of the discussion about the history of that era, of the place of the gods in the world, and it would have caused a lasting, rippling effect through a lot of Exandrian culture for a long time surrounding faith and mythology. But I don't think it would have had the profound impact he would have hoped for. That's kind of him being blind from his perspective a little bit.
ROBBIE: How much time would you say after a decision like that is made by a player-- and this is just me making up a question. I have to know because it's what we're talking about, in essence, a hypothetical. How much time do you spend thinking about the way that player choices could affect this world that that you and your cast have created?
MATT: Whenever I'm driving.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Whenever you're in the middle of an existential crisis?
MATT: Yeah, all the time. And whenever I have a quiet moment, like driving on the road is usually when I'm doing campaign thought process and trying to ponder on what player choices might happen and how it might affect the world, so I can have some kind of rough background noise that I can pull from, and then often it's nowhere near enough. And then you guys do crazy shit, and I have to make it up on the spot and follow the logic. So yeah.
ROBBIE: That's awesome. Laura, having played the Matron in Downfall, how do you think she feels about Vex outrunning death so much? And Matt, do you think Vex was also high on the list to be the Raven Queen's champion?
LAURA: Now I want to know that one.
MATT: You first.
LAURA: That's hard because I feel like she doesn't really have a problem with it because the twin is hers, so it's kind of like payment.
MARISHA: The noises you were making.
TRAVIS: I know. Fully committed to this bitch.
LAURA: I just think-- she never turned undead or anything. It was all fair play, you know?
LIAM: That's how I look at it. That the Matron was just doing Vax a solid.
LAURA: Yeah.
LIAM: Steering things slightly away.
MATT: Honestly, in Campaign One when you first arrived at the Sunken Temple with the intent of retrieving the Deathwalker's Ward, I didn't have in mind who that would go to necessarily. There were members of the party that was probably likely going to based on just skill set and abilities, but I had considered it could have gone to Percy. It could have gone to you. No one had really built up a rapport with any of the divine forces in the world, aside from Pike. And Pike was very... maybe I wouldn't say antithetical, but partially wasn't even there for half the campaign because you were in New York. But when you were there, the Everlight and the Matron fill very different roles. So, I didn't expect that to be there. Yeah, I think Vex could very well have been an interesting opportunity for that.
LAURA: Huh.
MATT: But also a champion in a different sense, because at that point in time, there wasn't-- if you had taken the armor upon yourself, it would have been like a chosen more than a champion. Much like everyone else kind of became champions as the campaign went on, but it was more like you were given a boon and you represented some of their will and force in Exandria in this chaos with Vecna. It was truly the fall of Vex, and the deal that Vax made that sealed him as a true champion and a-- you are now tied to the fate of the Matron. And based on how it continued to go in the campaign further and entirely bound your entire future fate to her.
LIAM: Side note: You can binge all the seasons of Blindspot right now.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MATT: Love you.
ASHLEY: I love you.
ROBBIE: Let's keep the spotlight right on you. What do you think happened to Trist's children? Who do you hope they became?
ASHLEY: I hope they became good people. I mean, I wasn't hoping that they would become-- I mean, obviously they would, but at the time, I wasn't thinking that they would be demigods. But I hope they do good in the world. When we played it through and then we sort of got to the end and Trist deciding that she does have to go back with her original family and go with the gods. And I was like, "Why did I why did I choose this as my backstory? Because this is an awful choice that we have to make in this moment." But yeah, I hope they do good. I hope they're doing good in the world. I think they are.
MATT: Also a really strong example of one of the many ways that a celestial bloodline can be forged, that can lead to aasimar celestial ancestry variations as well as just individuals with touches of celestial blood like Pike has in The Legend of Vox Machina. So fun bits.
ROBBIE: Taliesin. Did you enjoy seeing Asha's Wildmother still have influence in Divergence? Was your take on her still Caduceus' Wildmother?
TALIESIN: I will say that tends to be a bit broad because it's Very Bouncy Wildmother versus Famine Wildmother. Nature's got modes. And it was really nice to see that the cruel-- the nature desperately trying to crack its way out of such a terrible environment. It was like, oh, there's my little mice just rooting their way in, just getting a little seed in that crack and shattering that mountain. Oh, here we go. Yeah, it felt really good.
MARISHA: Yeah, that was a nice touch.
TALIESIN: Yeah, that felt fun.
ROBBIE: Hey, Matt. I got a question for you.
MATT: Okay, what's your question?
ROBBIE: Did you and Brennan work together on the original names of the gods? And more. And the other name of the original God of Death.
MATT: Okay. It's interesting. The original discussion for Tengar was to have the gods' names not be legible or recognizable by the audience. That was meant to be like their titles and names were intentionally beyond the concept of a mortal mind to understand. And so as part of that ethereal space of Tengar, the names were more or less whatever Brennan wanted to create because they were going to not matter in the final series. Unfortunately, I think the subtitles kind of undercut that when the episode went up. So in my headcanon, those are the best approximations that a mortal mind can make, but their actual true names of that era themselves are beyond language and really concept, much like how the Matron's true human name has been cast from memory and understanding. So that's that's how I consider it.
MARISHA: That was a moment. Remember when the entire audience thought that that first ten minutes was going to be the entire run?
MATT: Yep.
LAURA: Like, I can't do it.
MARISHA: I was like, I swear, just give it a second. Just wait.
MATT: It was an artistic choice on our standpoint that I still stand by. I think it was really-- But I can see where it would be hard if that was your assumption, was that was the entire--
MARISHA: They were like, "This is it. This is just gonna be weird orbs over people's mouths."
TRAVIS: "I'm a talking ball of light."
MATT: So my apologies.
TALIESIN: "Look out! It's a rhombus."
ROBBIE: What happened to Hallis? The sick little boy that Emhira saved?
MARISHA: Oh, yeah, Hallis. Not--
ALL: Halas?
MATT: No. Halas was in another floating city. It's weird. Over history, people can have similar names. I envision that child-- Yeah, it's weird.
SAM: My next character is gonna be named Jamison.
MARISHA: Please. Someone has to.
MATT: They are legion. They get together every year. They have a big reunion. I think Hallis likely became a figure recovering and helping be a caretaker and protector of survivors through the Calamity. Probably being more focused on the communities on the ground, especially going through that experience in the terrifying cusp of Aeor and those moments. Likely focused on trying to protect the common folk that were more or less the biggest casualties in the middle of that chaos. So that'd be my interpretation.
LAURA: Bullshit. He's Halas.
ROBBIE: Teleprompter is telling me to move on. I'm going to ignore it.
MARISHA: Wait. I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna take a question from Beacon. I know, it's crazy.
SAM: How can someone participate in that sort of Discord?
MARISHA: Well, it's really great. You can subscribe to Beacon.tv right now if you want to participate in the live Discord chat that's happening.
SAM: It's my only job right now.
MARISHA: You're missing out on memes about Travis or people pumping us up.
LIAM: Senior moment.
MARISHA: This one-- I've seen a version of this a few times, but this is from Thatguydylan. It's for you, Sam.
SAM: Okay.
MARISHA: Braius was brought into the campaign, obviously, very late. Would you have wanted to make his character in another campaign because you didn't have a chance to expand on him as much as you would have in another campaign?
SAM: Sorry. Get it together, Dylan.
ROBBIE: It's not so easy, is it?
MATT: Would you have preferred to--
MARISHA: To expand on him in another campaign? I'm sorry.
TRAVIS: Explain it.
MARISHA: They did write the-- Look, I'm trying to get through it.
SAM: Thank you, Dylan, for that question. No, I think I certainly would have loved to do more Braius. I really like Braius as a character, but I don't feel like I missed out. He got a nice little arc, which is all you can really hope for with a character, and he got a big choice at the end, which is all you can really hope for for a character. And he got to woo some people and yeah, do some evil and paint some paintings. And yeah, I would love to see more of him in the future, but I don't regret not having him around for more.
MARISHA: Yeah. I guess to the very wordy question that I was trying to get through--
SAM: I will say this.
MARISHA: You made him as a response for this campaign.
SAM: I did. Yes, yes, we needed some God stuff. We needed some healing. Yeah, we needed some evil. I will say this, though--
MARISHA: We needed some sexy.
SAM: And this is no slight against Matt. I feel like Braius had more questions answered than FCG did.
MATT: FCG was supposed to be a longer journey that got cut short.
SAM: But I have so many questions about FCG.
LAURA: Yeah, and you would have had them answered in Aeor, if you would have fucking made it.
SAM: I'm sorry! I had cancer.
MATT: The whole point was to get him to Aeor. There were so many answers for FCG in Aeor.
ROBBIE: You should be apologizing to us.
TRAVIS: That storyline? Dead. We'll take his head and get it there and charge him up.
ASHLEY: We'll get it there at some point.
ROBBIE: Between Downfall, and the origins of Ruidus, and Chetney totally being Orym's biological father, Campaign Three--
SAM: And Scanlan.
ROBBIE: --was full of Exandria-shaking revelations. Let's take a look at some of the most memorable.
[Montage of clips of surprising revelations from Exandria Unlimited: Calamity and Campaign Three.]
ROBBIE: We're back with the seven founders of Critical Role and Handsome Squidward.
ALL: (cheering)
MATT: And Robbie Daymond.
ROBBIE: Oh, yeah. Whatever.
LAURA: I have a question.
ROBBIE: I have an answer.
LAURA: Are you gonna get any questions?
ROBBIE: I've been skipping them all.
TRAVIS: Motherfucker, you better do one.
ROBBIE: I see one.
MARISHA: I've seen a bunch in, once again, in our Discord, about when you realized you had feelings for Orym. That one's been spammed a few times.
ROBBIE: Who's running this show?
MARISHA: Well. Game recognizes game, motherfucker.
ROBBIE: All right, we'll ask the deep lore after that. When it's Liam O'Brien across the table from you, minute one, baby.
ALL: Ooh.
ROBBIE: That's true, but to be fair, I was eyeing you all.
DANI: Was there anyone else that Dorian had eyes for, because you hinted about it--
SAM: Did Braius have a shot?
DANI: --in the first 4SD.
LAURA: He did look at Chet very quickly. Who was it? Who was it?
ROBBIE: Everybody. I know, that's a cop out answer, but I was like, I'm gonna get one of you.
TALIESIN: It's absolutely not.
ROBBIE: But you can't run from your true love.
LIAM: I wonder if Dorian saw the porn they shot.
TRAVIS: Did he find one of the DVDs?
ROBBIE: Okay, I'll give you a real answer, because I've ducked it for however many years-- and I really did eye you all because you're all...
TRAVIS: Except me.
ROBBIE: Whatever. Well, actually-- you're number one-- there was a moment early in the season when I was princess-carrying Laudna up to look at the top of a roof. And I had this thought. I was like, hmm, is this the moment? Yeah, I thought about it for a second, and then I abandoned it for my for my sweet little boyfriend. I thought about it.
MATT: Complicated.
ROBBIE: I'm not gonna blush on camera.
DANI: You thought your dead girl was gonna be unromanceable. You fool.
ROBBIE: I think you got the better end of that deal.
TALIESIN: --told us anything, you can date anything. Anything.
ASHLEY: Yeah, it is true.
ROBBIE: Back to the real question.
MARISHA: I'm going to fireman carry--
ASHLEY: Oh, baby.
TRAVIS: A big sack of dog.
LIAM: What a baby.
ASHLEY: Yeah, him a big loaf of...
ROBBIE: Matt.
MATT: Yes.
ROBBIE: What would have happened if Imogen had given in to Predathos earlier on or on Ruidus?
MATT: If you had given in, it would have led to direct Predathos communion. It would have been visions of Predathos' past, visions of other entities, the two original gods devoured, and it would have unlocked additional powers for any future combat that you wanted to do. But, Imogen, each use would have brought you closer to more or less leaving with your mother. So it would have been an opportunity for Imogen to eventually get to a point where she leaves the group, and you would have had to make a new character.
LIAM: You're saying that would have transformed her into an NPC.
MATT: Yeah.
LIAM: Technically.
LAURA: I assume that every time-- if I'd have failed one of the wisdom checks, right? And like dived in, delved into Predathos. Then each time that I tried to block it again, it would have been harder and harder.
MATT: Oh yeah. The DC would have gotten higher and higher each time.
LAURA: Yeah.
MATT: The idea being that-- it wouldn't have been an immediate thing. It would have been-- the first time would have been a really intense communion, and that draw would have been there--
LAURA: A really intense communion, you guys.
MATT: But it would have been with each one the draw would have been stronger. The promise of power would have been larger. And each use of the power and each opportunity for you to reconnect would have been a much more intense thing.
LAURA: Damn, I could have nine eyes-ed this shit.
SAM: You blew it.
LAURA: I blew it.
TRAVIS: I told you.
MARISHA: Wait, really?
TRAVIS: Oh, yeah. I wanted her to give in forever ago.
LAURA: He was fully encouraging me--
MATT: Someone in the chat just said, "Is it just me, or does Matt look more tired than normal?"
TRAVIS: We played for ten years, and all of a sudden--
ASHLEY: Give us a break.
MATT: And to answer your question, absolutely. We thought ending Campaign Three would slow my life down. Absolutely not.
MARISHA: I was being very sarcastic when I said the chat is pumping us up earlier, that is not what they are doing.
MATT: Keeping us humble.
MARISHA: They're keeping us humble.
ROBBIE: Speaking of slowly dying on camera, Sam. How do you feel about FCG's end? (laughter) Not the way I meant it.
SAM: I want it to be the way you didn't mean.
TRAVIS: Look at Robbie! He can't breathe!
LIAM: Robbie, that was really insensitive, man. Stay 15 feet back.
ROBBIE: Let me ask the question. Goddammit.
SAM: So you mean when I was undergoing radiation?
ROBBIE: Yes. (cast laughter)
SAM: I love it. Yeah. Don't worry. We'll edit this out. We'll edit this out. No one will see this.
ROBBIE: Listen, the truth is, we're all slowly dying. No one makes it out alive.
TALIESIN: It's true. It's true.
ROBBIE: How do you-- look at me.
SAM: How do I feel about FCG's end?
ROBBIE: I got a full on question.
SAM: Okay.
ROBBIE: How do you feel about FCG's end?
SAM: Yes.
ROBBIE: Were you hoping for a way to save them, or are you happy and wanting them to sacrifice themselves? And would FCG even want to be revived?
SAM: So many questions. First of all, very pleased with my end. It meant something. It made a difference. It was, I thought, a pretty nice moment. I am pissed as a character that I didn't get the answers that I wanted, and I hope that right now, after I'm done talking, Matt answers them for me. I don't think that FCG would want to be resurrected. No, they did their thing and they're done. That's it. I think that's it. Death's okay.
ROBBIE: You had chatted to us or me or whatever about-- I have this vague memory of you being like, "I don't want to be brought back." Right?
SAM: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Like that was that was how you felt when after it happened.
SAM: For sure. For sure. Also, it makes it a little bit more meaningful. But also, I told that story. It had an end. There's no reason to dig it back up again.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MATT: I also love the idea that after searching for the possibility of having a soul and the question of FCG's own--
SAM: Got an answer.
MATT: Got the realest answer which is an afterlife and a purpose beyond that under the path of the Changebringer.
SAM: But is the Changebringer cool or not? You were giving me all these mixed signals.
MATT: The Changebringer changes from moment to moment. No. No, Changebringer's awesome.
SAM: She was being wishy washy intentionally sometimes. Why?
MATT: Because it's one thing to be told the path to walk. It's another to walk the path and then find your way how you're supposed to.
TRAVIS: Fucking A, fucking A.
SAM: And then--
TRAVIS: Dick.
SAM: Tell me this. What would I have learned if I went to see Devexian?
ROBBIE: Well, that is a great segue. You don't even have the questions. What do you think would have happened if FCG had visited Aeor, and had he met up with Devexian?
MATT: Devexian, one, would have had the capability of upgrading elements of FCG--
SAM: (to the chatting Ashley and Marisha) You're missing this!
MATT: --with other--
MARISHA: So I think Omar farted.
ROBBIE: You think?
MARISHA: We haven't confirmed.
SAM: That was me.
TALIESIN: Was it like nose, hand, tongue and...?
TRAVIS: Taliesin!
SAM: Upgraded.
ASHLEY: Sorry, sorry.
SAM: So upgraded like with a tongue and legs or upgraded like laser beams?
MATT: Devexian does not have a tongue. Damn it.
TRAVIS: Has he been gathering other parts?
MATT: Next question.
TRAVIS: What does he do if he finds other Aeormatons?
MATT: Not all Aeormatons that were found were repairable, and so Devexian sometimes cobbles them together, sometimes builds new ones from what can be located. Devexian more or less is trying to restart the Aeormaton people, not locked into the memories of the past in the hopes that they can forge a new future without the weight of Aeor behind them. So Devexian is more or less trying to be a soft messiah for the Aeorian people from the background. You get a little bit of that in Re-Slayer's Take, actually. There's a fun little interaction in that series with Devexian specifically. But with that, Devexian may have given FCG a little more context to what Aeor meant and what their purpose was and the challenges they had in Aeorian society.
SAM: As an assassin robot?
MATT: Yeah. And would have said to go to Aeor to find the true answers, because only there you would have found them, and in Aeor you would have had more memories come up of what you were built for. The Care and the Culling was specifically Aeormatons designed as aid helpers and supportive care workers, and you were a part of a group-- of this particular group designed to be given as gifts to diplomatic allies to Aeor that were more or less sleeper cells that would be signaled to then turn on their gifters.
SAM: Order 66.
MATT: Yeah.
SAM: I love it.
MATT: And so it would have been a lot of dark history where you were-- but a lot of also philosophical ideas of like: You are not bound by a history you had no control over, your destiny is yours to carry forward. A lot of fun--
SAM: Good messages.
LIAM: Is there a place in Aeor buried deep, where there's a whole bank of Fresh Cut Grass models and you're all networked?
TRAVIS: Like wild?
LIAM: And you sent off the memory, like Luda?
SAM: Wow.
LIAM: Maybe we could turn you on somewhere else.
SAM: You can always turn me on somewhere else.
TALIESIN: This heated up.
TRAVIS: The chat is out for the guys, by the way, because I saw a comment that said, "Laura, your makeup looks so lovely tonight!" Then I saw a follow-up that said, "Liam looks like he's being tortured." (laughter)
LIAM: I haven't changed in 10 years! (laughter)
TRAVIS: I don't know what the guys did, but we're fucking high value targets. (laughter)
SAM: Not to give a little peek behind the curtain. We're all wearing makeup right now. (laughter)
SAM: So we just look extra shitty, so much that it shines through the makeup. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Sam, I really want to stay focused on you.
SAM: Okay, great.
ROBBIE: Well, "Did you intentionally play a minotaur just to break the trend of many years of playing small characters, or were you specifically trying to create a thirst trap for your previous character?"
SAM: That one!
ROBBIE: Yeah, I knew it. (laughter)
ROBBIE: It's the joke. It's all for the joke.
SAM: Yeah.
MARISHA: Of course!
SAM: It's all for the bit. It's all for the bit. I've played larger characters before. Taryon Darrington is a normal-sized--
LIAM: Also a second follow up character.
SAM: That's true, that's true. It's just, I start campaigns as smalls. That's the only rule.
LIAM: He's a grower. (laughter)
TALIESIN: Just going to keep happening.
ROBBIE: Speaking of big hunky guys, Travis-- (oohing)
ROBBIE: "Do you know what happened to Chetney's family?"
TRAVIS: I don't, I don't.
SAM: Can I see some ID, young man, please? (laughter)
TRAVIS: This is no alcohol. Not alcohol. By the way, it says Taliesin isn't catching any hate at all, which I think we just have to recognize. You're just too fine.
TALIESIN: I know where you all live.
TRAVIS: Chetney has no idea where his family is. No. They all fled during the first what was the red dragon's name? Not, before Thordak, it was--
DANI: Errevon? Errevon the Rimelord?
TRAVIS: Yes, the Rimelord, yeah.
LAURA: Wow.
TRAVIS: Yep.
DANI: Bro. That is my job.
MATT: Yeah. So, we're talking the Pools of Wittebak, the area outside of where Kraghammer is. Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Errevon the Rimelord, that was during last year's-- yeah. Not a dragon actually.
TRAVIS: Oh, really?
MATT: Large elemental lord.
TRAVIS: Oh, I might've read that wrong. Whoops.
ASHLEY: Wait, there was a question that said, "What was the deal with Shithead the bird?"
LIAM: That's a great question.
TALIESIN: That is an amazing question.
ASHLEY: I totally forgot about Shithead.
ROBBIE: Of all the questions to pull, that's the one.
ASHLEY: What was the backstory with that?
SAM: The backstory was Fresh Cut Grass, when I designed the character was going to have a pet bird with him named Shithead. But then I realized how hard and how stupid it is to have an animal companion.
MATT: (laughs)
TALIESIN: Wow.
SAM: So, but I had already had the drawing done. I had already had the art made for Shithead. So I just, I told Matt right at the beginning of the campaign, I was like: Hey man, I had this art done. I don't know what to do with it. His name's Shithead the bird. Just have it menace me at some point. (laughter)
MATT: That was it.
SAM: And that was it. And that was up to Matt to make it a harbinger of doom.
MARISHA: Well, because I remember--
SAM: What?
MARISHA: (laughs, then coughs)
ROBBIE: What's happening over there?
MATT: Don't worry about it.
MARISHA: It's them roasting you now. (laughter)
TRAVIS: He's too, too fine. He's too hot.
ROBBIE: Have at ye. (laughter)
MATT: Our handsomest host here.
TRAVIS: Handsome as shit.
MATT: Brought down to our level.
ROBBIE: Cheers for the savagery in the chat.
ASHLEY: This hair, Robbie. This hair. You have such good hair.
ROBBIE: I'm going to immediately throw away from the compliments. From tanker to a flask, then a gas can, and eventually an infernal Stanley Cup, which is just a normal Stanley Cup, no one knows how to cause a ruckus with a cup quite like Sam Riegel.
SAM: We're still talking about me?
ROBBIE: We are. It's all you. It's all you. Here is two and a half minutes of proof.
ASHLEY: Ooh, we get--
TRAVIS: My name is Sir Bertrand Bell. It's a pleasure to meet all of you.
ROBBIE: You're a knight?
MARISHA: Are you a noble?
TRAVIS: Not a noble. A knight is generous. (laughter)
ASHLEY: That is--
LAURA: Oh no.
TALIESIN: I mean, we knew that already.
LAURA: You know, things happen when you come and go from there, you know, years have gone by and it only feels like a couple minutes for you. (chuckles)
ASHLEY: Oh my god.
MATT: It's a pressed, a dark leather. It looks almost like a heavy almost oni brow with horns that curve up.
ASHLEY: Oh, wow.
SAM: I got my mask right here.
TRAVIS: What? What?
LAURA: That is amazing.
SAM: It's my human skin mask.
LAURA: (chuckles)
SAM: First, I'm going to cast Yassify.
LAURA: Oh.
MATT: Oh no. (laughs)
SAM: First I'm going to cast Yassify.
TALIESIN: Oh. I'm already tired of that.
MATT: 26. Oh my fucking god.
LAURA: Oh my.
MATT: Oh, no!
MATT: There are a number of folks rushing around in similar robes that are-- AABRIA: I swear. Okay. Okay.
ASHLEY: Wow. AABRIA: Okay.
SAM: I actually, I finished baking a bundt cake. I can give you guys a bundt cake.
MARISHA: You've been baking bundts?
LAURA: Oh no.
SAM: Oh shit, it fell! (laughter)
SAM: Go ahead and eat it, Emily. AABRIA: Hey, Emily. Hello? (laughter) AABRIA: It's bad here.
SAM: I'm going to do it with my special rolling device. It's also a dice tower.
MARISHA: Dice tower?
LAURA: What?
SAM: Six. (laughter)
SAM: Seeing all of this action. I have to take a sip from my Stanley Cup.
LAURA: Oh.
ALL: Oh!
MATT: What?!
ASHLEY: Ew!
LAURA: Gross. Sam.
MATT: That's amazing.
ROBBIE: Yeah! (laughter)
LAURA: That's like the mushroom.
TALIESIN: You did good.
TALIESIN: I think instead of the flask, I think you now need the fan and need to--
MARISHA: Correct.
ROBBIE: We're back. That was the softest entry. You let me get away with that? Oh, thanks, team. It's time for questions.
TRAVIS: Testicles.
ROBBIE: Oh, better. Yeah. Race to the moon! All of these start with you.
MATT: Why?
ROBBIE: It's just the way it is.
MATT: Okay, let's go.
TALIESIN: You're in my world.
ROBBIE: I do like this question quite a bit. "Was Morri's deal with Orym always meant to be a fake out or did you plan to follow up on it" but they got, plans changed during the game as it progressed?"
MATT: I look that tired? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding! I'm kidding. No.
LIAM: I really like your haircut, Matt.
MATT: Oh, thank you. I wanted to have an end of C3 and Divergence connotation cleansing to the back of when we first started, you know, like a bookend.
ASHLEY: Freshly-shorn boys.
MARISHA: I know, it is a lot of freshly-shorn boys.
MATT: Back to the question at hand!
SAM: I got a colonic. (laughter)
MATT: No, it was funny because I, thinking from the mindset of Morrigan during that time of the Fatestitcher, in those moments, her beloved, you know, adopted granddaughter essentially, and her compatriots were going to be leaving for a dangerous mission that'll have impact on the realms beyond including the Fey Realm in the space where she has interest over fate. You know, Orym comes to her saying, "I request a boon to keep us and your sweet Fearne safe." In which in her mind she's like, "Of course I'll give you a boon." It's like, "And in return, I offer my fealty to you unending." She's like, "Great, I'll take it." And he's like, "However, you must promise that we all come back alive." She's like, "I can't promise that, you're going to the moon. You're going so far beyond my ability to control that. But sure, I was going to give it to you anyway." So, in the moment it was like, "Sure, if you want to make the deal, because if y'all come back alive, I get someone bound to me" at practically no work from her standpoint. But she's not going to tell you that. She's going to let him believe that and, you know, worry about it. Because in my head I was like, "She's willing to make a wheel and deal here if he wants to bring it." And the more it began to form, she's like: This ask is a little beyond my ability on where you're going, but I'm not going to correct anything. In the off chance that everything goes perfectly and I get a free servant out of this, I'm going to let it ride. So when it finally came down to that moment of conflict, it was like, "Yeah, nah, you're good. Your friend died, so technically our contract's broken. Sorry."
LIAM: I bet that one of our players would die. So thank you for eating shit. (laughter)
SAM: I'll always eat shit for you. (laughter)
LIAM: What are you doing after this?
ROBBIE: Follow up. "Did Nana make the C-Poppers or did they exist before Chetney's deal?"
MARISHA: Yes. Yes. I should know this.
ROBBIE: You also don't have to really answer.
MARISHA: No, he does.
LIAM: Did it reconfigure Caleb's upbringing, or did little Bren always, had he always fallen in love with those toys on his scarce trips to Rexxentrum?
MATT: So the best that I could convey this to all of you-- (laughter)
TRAVIS: This is important, this is important.
SAM: There's a multiverse.
TRAVIS: We got to talk about this.
ROBBIE: Whatever you say will be canon.
TRAVIS: This is the glue that pieces it all together.
MATT: These crafted eggs in such fine woodwork has always existed in Exandria, but it's very easy to adjust elements of memory tethered to such things as to who is responsible.
LAURA: You didn't even make the wood eggs, but you have one up your butt?
MATT: Or maybe he did. You don't know.
TALIESIN: Oh.
ASHLEY: Chet?
LAURA: Even Chet thinks he made the wood eggs.
TRAVIS: (hums jazzy tune)
SAM: Tell me this, is Chetney Scanlan's father?
TRAVIS: Yes.
SAM: Is that true?
TRAVIS: Yeah. And Orym's dad.
LIAM: That's not true.
SAM: I believe both of these.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I do too. (laughter)
TRAVIS: They're not the only ones.
SAM: Of course.
MATT: Oh man.
ROBBIE: All right, this one is for Matt and Taliesin.
MARISHA: So many things have been said and I'm so confused.
MATT: Someone's yelling at me to grow my fucking beard back. Y'all need to calm down. I'm a human being. And a deeply--
LIAM: They want you to grow a beard so you can--
MATT: -- tired one.
LIAM: -- donate it to Travis.
MATT: That's true. Yeah.
TALIESIN: Beard donor.
MARISHA: So wait, is he a fraud?
MATT: I'm not confirming anything. I'm just saying in the logistics of it--
TRAVIS: I'm a legit toymaker.
MATT: He's made all kinds of stuff in history.
LAURA: Does he know if he made the eggs or not?
TRAVIS: I made the eggs. Yes, of course, I made all these toys.
SAM: ...is what you remember.
TRAVIS: They suddenly got much, much better, I think.
MARISHA: And much more expensive, am I right?
MATT: To help clarify from my standpoint here, there are some elements of history that are fun for me to answer and confirm. And there are some that are fun to raise more questions about it and leave it there.
TRAVIS: I made a series of eggs along with a litany of other toys after the Nana Morri stuff. The toys got much more intricate, like much more complicated than they previously were. But the originals are still fucking highly sought after. (laughter)
ASHLEY: But wait, so the eggs, all of the eggs you made after?
SAM: No, no.
LAURA: He had made them before.
ASHLEY: You'd made them before. Okay. Okay.
TRAVIS: I only made two after the deal.
LIAM: Did Chetney carve the interrogation chair from Campaign 2?
SAM: Yes, that was in canon, I saw that.
TALIESIN: No wonder it had so much weight to it. It was extremely ominous.
TRAVIS: Just check under the leg.
ASHLEY: Beautiful.
MATT: Someone just said "Matt, what's the reason to give Nana a tiki bar?" I'm pretty sure that was from discussing a little bit with you with what your home was about.
ASHLEY: Yeah. We just discussed it.
TRAVIS: It had to have tiki?
SAM: You were like, "I just want a tiki bar."
MATT: It feels a fun thing to give a hag in the middle of--
ASHLEY: A great, yeah, yeah. Just wanted it to have a fun house.
MARISHA: Who doesn't want a tiki bar?
SAM: You guys have a tiki bar, don't you?
MARISHA: We do have a tiki bar.
LAURA: It's inspired by home life.
ASHLEY: I mean, you instantly know the vibe when you walk in and you see a tiki bar. You're like "All right, we're down."
SAM: You do know a lot about a person if they have a tiki bar in their house.
ASHLEY: You really do. You really do. You know you're going to have a good time.
MATT: Yeah, yeah. (laughter)
LIAM: Yep. They're a mess.
ASHLEY: But you know you're going to have a good drink.
SAM: They probably swing. (laughter)
SAM: Not for sure, but--
ROBBIE: It's going to be sweet. That's all we know.
ASHLEY: It's going to be sweet. It's a good drink.
ROBBIE: Yeah, Ashley, does Fearne have any worries about Teven Klask and the Lord of the Hells, what they have in store for their future? For her future?
ASHLEY: Not at all.
ROBBIE: No. Does not care.
ASHLEY: No, I really think, yeah, I don't, I think she just--
MARISHA: Every Fearne answer is like, "I'unno, just down for the fucking ride."
ASHLEY: I mean, I think if there was worry there, she wouldn't have done it.
MARISHA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: You know, and it's just like, "Well, let's just see what happens."
MARISHA: Yeah.
DANI: She's got Teven wrapped around her finger, according to a certain book. (laughs)
TRAVIS: Burned on her hand.
ASHLEY: I mean, you know, we'll see how that maybe one day pans out, but--
MATT: Oh, I very much have interest in a future Fearne-centric Bells Hells game.
ASHLEY: Really?
MATT: Where a lot of these might come into play.
ASHLEY: Ooh-hoo-hoo!
DANI: So excited.
ROBBIE: Moving on, moving on!
MATT: Too much to then take a sidetrack in the middle of our finale. But definitely something to explore in a post-Catatheosis era.
LAURA: A really hot devil.
ASHLEY: I did have moments during the game where I was like, "Maybe we should go talk to Asmodeus and try to--"
TRAVIS: Buddy up?
ASHLEY: Buddy up or, I don't know. I was like, there was so many possibilities of using that relationship. But I don't think she has a care in the world about it.
MARISHA: Okay.
ASHLEY: I really don't.
MARISHA: I have a pitch. I have a pitch for a future one shot.
ASHLEY: Great.
MARISHA: It's like Fearne, but like "Love Island" or like "The Ultimatum" or something.
ASHLEY: He's fit, man. He's fit.
LIAM: Contestant number two.
MARISHA: Yes, yes!
ROBBIE: Elevator pitch.
SAM: Is she the host or she's the bachelorette?
MARISHA: She's the bachelorette. And you have Ashton, you have Chetney, you have Braius, you have Teven, you have the ghost pirate that you snuggled.
TALIESIN: Yeah! Pirate.
MARISHA: You have all these people--
ASHLEY: Got to figure it out.
SAM: Go on dates with.
MARISHA: Go on dates with, then it's we do it reality show style.
TALIESIN: We can do it like Marvel's "Secret War" where we're all stuck there and we can't leave under threat of death. It is under penalty of death. We have to be there and compete.
LIAM: (like Fearne) If we were to spend three weeks together in the Nine Hells, how hot would it get? (laughter)
ASHLEY: Those kind of questions.
TALIESIN: I love it.
ASHLEY: So, you live in the Nine Hells, what would we do for a first date?
SAM: Welcome to Fearne Gully.
MARISHA: Fearne Gully. (laughter)
TALIESIN: Perfect.
LIAM: Dead pirate, which would be the first bone you would show me? (laughter)
DANI: Hey, dead pirate got a girlfriend.
ASHLEY: Oh, well.
LIAM: Yeah, but I saw the tiki bar on his boat, so. (laughter) (laughter)
MATT: Oh god.
ROBBIE: I wish I had a funny question to ask, but they're all so serious and it's for you. It is for you.
LAURA: Serious?
ROBBIE: Yes. Not too serious.
LAURA: Okay.
ROBBIE: "How did wearing the circlet change Imogen's perspective on the people around her? Does she keep wearing it in her downtime?"
MATT: Hmm.
LAURA: Oh. Gosh, the circlet changed everything for Imogen. She hated being around people before the circlet.
MARISHA: Mm-hmm.
LAURA: And then it was like: Oh, you guys can be, you're my friends. It's the best.
TALIESIN: Aww.
LAURA: Yeah, so I don't-- There were a couple times in the end of the campaign that I ended up taking the circlet off because I had more powerful items that I needed to use. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Wow.
LAURA: But no, and I did keep it in mind. Anytime that I was unattuned to the circlet, I was aware of the fact that it was back. But I feel like as her power grew, her control of that element also grew. So it wasn't as dominating past a certain point. Yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah, it taught you how to guide you to the steps to deal with it in a way?
LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah, that's cool.
LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: I really like that. Yeah, because I remember early on, we would try and find the booth in the far back corner and stuff.
ASHLEY and LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Which was really cool.
LAURA: Yeah, I remember the first time we got out of the city and I was out in nature and I could step away and it was like "Oh my god." (relieved laugh)
MARISHA: Yeah, it was a really fun dynamic.
LAURA: I was just having this conversation a couple days ago about that was a weird choice to make at the beginning of a campaign to choose a character that was tortured to be around people because it was really hard to show her character at the beginning.
MARISHA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's interesting.
LAURA: So yeah.
LIAM: I think it's a real fun complication.
LAURA: It was a fun complication.
ROBBIE: I think also relatable probably for a lot of people.
MARISHA and LAURA: Yeah
MATT: A very different swing from Jester.
LAURA: Yes.
MATT: (laughs)
TRAVIS: You have to answer a question for yourself, Robbie.
TALIESIN: Yeah, Robbie.
ROBBIE: (babbles) There are none on my page. Not a single one.
LAURA: Robbie, I saw one in the Discord.
ROBBIE: Uh-oh.
LAURA: "What is your mother's name?"
ROBBIE: (wheezes)
MARISHA: (laughs)
ROBBIE: You're going to ask me a lore question? My mom's name is Mom.
LAURA: No, what is her name?
ROBBIE: And she's the best Mom--
LAURA: Make it up now if you don't have it.
ROBBIE: -- in the world.
LAURA: Make it up.
ROBBIE: I do have it.
LAURA: You just don't remember it? (laughs)
ROBBIE: Dad's name was-- They're all wind puns, I'm afraid.
MARISHA: (laughs)
ROBBIE: There's a Zephyr in there for sure, which I think was Pops. And Matt's trying to desperately save me.
LIAM: Towering Storm.
MATT: Nephele.
ROBBIE: What is it?
MATT: Nephele.
ROBBIE: That sounds right.
DANI: You found it the same second I did. (laughs)
ROBBIE: Thanks, guys.
TRAVIS: Nice. Nice.
LAURA: That's beautiful.
ROBBIE: See? You need a team to figure out your own lore. (laughs)
MATT: The two Wyvernwinds and their up-and-coming son, Brönte.
DANI: Now I'm going to drop it in chat so that they have the spelling.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah.
SAM: Nice.
ROBBIE: Well yeah, it's one of those things where Cyrus was always the linchpin for moving forward. But as far as Mom and Dad go, it was more about the concept of them than, I didn't have her name running through my head at all times. Yeah, but yeah, if you want to pop it in the chat, yeah.
MATT: I'm glad we got to have those moments at the end of the campaign that--
MARISHA: It was so good.
MATT: It was heartbreaking when he went back to find the Silken Squall outside of Vasselheim.
ROBBIE: Sure.
MATT: And walking in and have her, having heard that you had chosen a different name than the one they gave you and trying to--
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MATT: -- lean into that.
ROBBIE: Oh, and I didn't clock it until we got to RP a little bit.
MATT: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Which was great. I thought that you were calling me that and then I'm like, "Oh no, this is a conscious choice by Matt in this RP moment." And I missed it. Which is interesting for anyone who's chosen to go by any name in the world. You go back home to Mom and Dad and all of the sudden, you potentially become who you used to be. So I thought that was a really fun way for that to unfold and thanks for letting me have that moment because I took it.
MATT: It was is great.
ROBBIE: Which is a scary thing to do in any game.
MATT: That's the best part of these games.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MATT: I fucking love it.
LIAM: I have a Dorian question as well.
ROBBIE: Uh-oh.
LIAM: I thought it was fascinating to see how losing Dorian's brother threw your whole story on its head upside down.
ROBBIE: Sure.
LIAM: What was it like having to reconfigure when that happened that week or those two weeks as you were like, "I'm this! N, well, now I'm this."
ROBBIE: Yeah.
LIAM: What was that like?
ROBBIE: Yeah, well thankfully I created a character that compartmentalized really well. So there was the aspect of well, how do you play this story, but fold yourself into a story that's already been unfolding without: Oh, I want to shine the spotlight on me! And I want to talk about my tragic backstory. But also do service to what happened within the game. So I think there was a real craftsmanship in getting Dorian back into the story where everyone was on the same page and that unfolded between Aabria and Matt. So I feel we were meeting at a time when they had just suffered a great loss and I had suffered a great loss and we could all feel that together without sitting around the campfire going, "Let's talk about our dead friends." So it did make me feel like after being away from the table for so long, that at least the wavelength was the same with the rest of the crew. And then I always felt a little bit unresolved because there was so much to do in the last 30 episodes or so. But having that moment with Mom and the guilt of being the catalyst of losing a family member. Through that scene, being able to give Dorian closure on that and let go of some of that guilt and breathe in the love of his family, that wrapped it up for me in a way that felt okay to where I felt like Dorian could move on. So yeah, it's a different thing. Yeah.
TRAVIS: Can you also tell chat to relax and tell them that you'll be coming back as many times as we ask you for forever and ever?
MARISHA: Yes.
ASHLEY: Yep, yep, yep.
ROBBIE: I'm still waiting for the contracts to come back from the lawyers! You know we have-- (laughter)
ROBBIE: -- some truly incredible battle maps in Campaign 3.
MATT: We're not letting him go.
TRAVIS: Robbie's not going anywhere.
ASHLEY: Yeah, he's not going anywhere
MARISHA: One of us, motherfucker. (laughter)
ROBBIE: With all those sexy new beauty shots our amazing crew has been getting--
ASHLEY: Woo!
ROBBIE: -- we would be remiss if we didn't pay tribute to some of the standout maps of Campaign 3.
TRAVIS: Oh yeah.
ASHLEY: Yes.
ROBBIE: Who doesn't like a good map?
MARISHA: Yas.
TRAVIS: Yes!
ROBBIE: Take a look.
MARISHA: Map Mercer. ♪ (dramatic music) ♪
ROBBIE: Welcome back, everyone.
MARISHA: (laughs)
ROBBIE: Here's the deal, I'm about to say a bunch of names and everyone's name who I say are incredibly talented. This is a shout out to our amazing crew behind our miniatures. Tyler Walpole, Ian Iron Tusk.
MARISHA: Don't cross in front. Go behind.
ROBBIE: Nice! Noxweiler Berf, Jesse Jerdek, Daniel Erly?
TRAVIS: Erly.
ROBBIE: Daniel Erly. Peyton Keo, Lace Ball, Ron Ogden, and Angela Bassett. Yes, that Angela, no. (laughter)
ROBBIE: No, not that Angela Bassett. This one goes by DM_Ophelia on IG but seriously though, could you imagine?
LAURA: Sorry, I did that.
MARISHA: Oh, that's you.
MATT: That'd be pretty amazing.
LAURA: I did that, I don't know what I was thinking.
MARISHA: I thought my mic pack was falling off.
LAURA: No, I just touched your butt with my foot, I'm sorry.
ROBBIE: If I said your name incorrectly.
MATT: We call that character bleed.
ROBBIE: I still love you very, very much. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Team, we got a whole new set of questions about a whole new arc.
TRAVIS: Oh yeah?
ROBBIE: Are you mentally prepared?
LAURA: Down here and I--
SAM: Yes.
TALIESIN: Sure.
ROBBIE: I know I sure am. I'm going to start at the bottom. Just kidding, it's back to you, Matt.
TRAVIS: Yay!
MATT: Okay.
TRAVIS: Give us answers.
ROBBIE: Okay, this is interesting. "What were the personal dynamics among Ludinus and his generals like Otohan, Liliana, and Zathuda?"
MARISHA: Hmm.
MATT: Mm...
ROBBIE: How did they vibe together?
MATT: Originally, they vibed well. They were all brought under Ludinus who had a very prominent figure historically and between multiple different cultures and communities of power in Exandria and especially in the wake of the Apex War for Otohan. and especially in the wake of the Apex War for Otohan. In which case, if you are a legendary soldier, it's tough in times of peace. Especially when you're a soldier that loves the violence like she did. And so she was eager to be part of this for the promise of another opportunity to rise to prominence and lean into the cruelty. She's not a good person.
TRAVIS: (chuckles)
MATT: As if you didn't know that. Zathuda, Liliana, they were all brought together under the auspice of Ludinus' plot and when they were all brought there, they already were within a trusted space shown enough to see how much work he had put into this and saw it like more or less a surefire thing. And the more they began to extend these last minute plans that he required them to help with, the more they began to butt heads further and further. And so they got together okay at the beginning, but even with the short time that Ludinus began to relax his grip on his plot and let other people handle things he needed them to do, the more they began to (clack) clash, the more they began to dislike each other and they began to sow these seeds of discontent through the Ruby Vanguard.
SAM: Well, first and foremost, they were friends. Just buds.
LAURA: Just buddies.
SAM: Just best friends.
MATT: Just chill bros.
SAM: Cool.
MATT: You know? I wouldn't consider them friends, but they were definitely compatriots in arms.
LAURA: I can't make my knuckles make a sound when I slam them together. How hard did you hit your knuckles together to make that?
MATT: Not hard. (clack)
ROBBIE: It's like a slap.
LAURA: Oh, you just did it?
MARISHA: Like into your fist?
ROBBIE: It was slap, not a crack.
TRAVIS: No, no you should definitely keep trying until they make a sound.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARISHA: (laughs)
LAURA: I didn't know it was a hand-to-knuckle. I thought it was--
ASHLEY: Did you guys ever play Knucks?
LAURA: Yeah.
MATT: Oh yeah.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah. Oh yeah.
TRAVIS: "You guys ever played Knucks?" (laughter)
TRAVIS: "I was a sick Knucks player."
MARISHA: You know about Quarters?
TRAVIS: "I'll smoke you noobs."
ASHLEY: Oh, Quarters! Quarters. Yes.
MARISHA: Have you ever done Quarters?
TRAVIS: "Nerds."
MARISHA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ASHLEY: It hurts and you're like (growl).
MATT: Ashley's the person I looked out to try and avoid when I was leaving the arcade.
TRAVIS: Oh, yes.
LAURA: 100%.
TRAVIS: Do you want to play Pencil Break? (laughter)
LAURA: Aw.
TALIESIN: Oh, boo.
TRAVIS: (smack)
ASHLEY: Ow.
LAURA: Ugh.
TRAVIS: I sucked at that game.
ROBBIE: Back to the generals really quick. We've all done a ton of panels and answered questions from the audiences and one of the toughest ones to answer is "What's your favorite?" So I'm not going to ask you that. I'm going to ask you who was your favorite of the three generals to play?
TRAVIS: Wow.
LAURA: Ooh.
ASHLEY: Oh, good question.
MATT: Ah, man.
ROBBIE: I know. Pick between your blessed children.
MATT: I like them all for different reasons, that's the thing.
LAURA: Answer it while doing "Just Dance." Lady Gaga's "Applause." (laughter)
MATT: That's a throwback. No, I'm okay.
ASHLEY: ♪ Just dance ♪
MATT: Ah, man.
MARISHA: We could do "Abracadabra" now because it's a full circle and you.
MATT: And I get to sit while I'm doing it.
MARISHA: And you can sit, yes.
MATT: That's true. God, that's so good. No. Man. Otohan was so generally terrifying because of how cruel she was. Of the generals, she was definitely the most fun to scare the players. So if I had to say, I'd say her. Zathuda, for what time we got to see, was more manipulative and conniving. Definitely playing multiple angles, especially manipulation of Fearne and the hope that he had for his daughter as more or less his chip in the game to get one over the other generals. Liliana was just a tragic figure and based on how things went, could have ended up much more tragically. I'm happy that it didn't because it allowed for a softer narrative for you at the end. But yeah, Otohan probably was the most dangerous of them all.
LAURA: But Zathuda, as a flesh tapestry, so much fun, though, right?
MATT: Yeah, honestly--
MARISHA: Oh my god.
MATT: -- what a terrifying end for him, I kind of love it.
TALIESIN: I love it.
LAURA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Flesh tapestry.
ASHLEY: I love how you were acting it out because I feel like I just saw it.
MARISHA and LAURA: Yeah.
MATT: (laughs)
ASHLEY: Then I was thinking of the scenes in "Brazil."
SAM and MATT: Mm-hmm.
ASHLEY: With the pulled skin.
LAURA: Ugh.
TALIESIN: Oh god. Oh yeah.
ASHLEY: Loved it.
MARISHA: Did you throw that out in the moment?
MATT: Yeah.
MARISHA: Because that's what Nana Morri is about?
ASHLEY: Oh, that's right. You did throw it out in the moment because you were always talking about the Loom and then it just happened and you were like, "All right, well, I guess I'll go with it right now."
MATT: Yeah, I knew there was a place in the tree called the Loom but I wasn't particular about what it did. I didn't think we'd ever go there.
ASHLEY: That was a just in the moment thing, Matthew.
MATT: There was a lot of that.
ASHLEY: Your brain is--
MATT: From you guys, too, though.
ASHLEY: Yeah, but your brain--
MATT: Any DM out there also does that shit all the time.
ASHLEY: You know what I mean?
MATT: You know.
TALIESIN: I don't know.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
LIAM: Otohan's the one that's going to haunt me long after all this. I know that the episode where we faced off in front of the Malleus Key and the whole bringing down Vax blew my mind. But before that even, Otohan seemed so terrifying to me with her duplicates on the field and standing over. She's really, really scary every time.
LAURA: I feel like she could've TPK'ed us--
SAM: Oh yeah.
LIAM: Yeah.
LAURA: -- multiple times.
MARISHA: Oh, I thought it was going to happen.
TALIESIN: Every time.
LIAM: I think the circumstance--
MARISHA: I feel like it has to be said to any enemy that can move across a map, anyone who can clear a big distance--
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MARISHA: -- is terrifying.
ASHLEY: Yeah. That was the scariest fight.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
ASHLEY: Where Laudna and Orym. I was like, "This feels awful."
MATT and MARISHA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: That was the hardest fight.
MATT: You wouldn't have beaten her. She might've gotten hurt and fled but she wasn't interested in killing you all. She was interested in trying to get her to exalt. It was very much that--
ASHLEY: That's right.
MATT: -- If I can get her to exalt, she might be useful to me.
ASHLEY: Get her on my side.
MATT: She might be useful to everything.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MATT: At the very least, confuse her mother, who I don't like. So there was a lot of idea of trying to manipulate you, trying to get you to exalt to see if you were capable of that and being useful to her and the overall plot. So it was fun to explore that. But that final battle was meant to be, here's the thing. I've been running these games for you guys for 10 years now.
SAM: Yes.
MATT: There are many dangerous fights that I build up that I thought I'd planned well for and you guys tactically do well and roll well and you steamroll it and I'm like "Okay, that was a little anticlimactic, cool." I was not going to let that happen with her.
SAM: Good, good.
TRAVIS: No, it did not happen.
ASHLEY: We felt it.
TALIESIN: Horrifying.
ASHLEY: Yeah. We felt it.
ROBBIE: Well, you felt it. But when I wasn't at the table, I felt the ripples of what was going on via the internet.
ASHLEY: Yes.
LAURA: Oh yeah.
ROBBIE: That evening when you were in that fight, my phone just started going off because I have my notifs on and I was like: What's going on Oh, they're in trouble.
ASHLEY: Yes.
ROBBIE: Because people were screaming. They were like, "Come help them, everyone's dying!"
ASHLEY: "Dorian, what are you going to do?"
TRAVIS: "Let me just drive over to the studio and help out."
ROBBIE: So when your fantasy world reaches its tendrils into the real world and interrupts my dinner, that's when you know that it connects.
TRAVIS: "Interrupts my dinner."
MARISHA: That's an interesting thing, just a little behind the scenes thing that we've had to be mindful of because I remember when FCG died and Christian Navarro texted me that night and he was like, "So excited to watch the game tonight." And I was like--
SAM: Ugh.
MARISHA: "Did anyone tell him, did we tell him? I need to tell him."
ASHLEY: Oh yeah, that's right.
MARISHA: I was like: Hey, I just want to give you a heads up. Something bad is going to happen and people are going to be @ing you and so--
ASHLEY: (groans)
MARISHA: -- just be in the know. And he was like, "Oh god, what?"
LAURA: (laughs)
MARISHA: So yeah, sometimes if it's bad, we have to give people a heads up. (laughs)
ROBBIE: There are a lot of great questions here, but we don't have that much time. But I do want to give Taliesin a chance to get lost in the weeds for just a second.
TALIESIN: No, never.
ROBBIE: Because this question is so good, it's got to be my golden pick.
TALIESIN: I can make my way through any weeds.
ROBBIE: "Ashton's nature--"
TALIESIN: Yeah.
ROBBIE: "-- was a huge enigma in this campaign. Dunamis explains Ashton's unique abilities but what race was Ashton born and how was he transformed into an earth genasi?"
TALIESIN: Well, as for-- honestly--
LAURA: (like Taliesin) Well.
MARISHA: (laughs)
TALIESIN: They don't really have a lot of memory about what went-- I always assumed they were basically human. Some sort of humanoid and it was going through the portal, the elemental portal that kicked that off and we never really got into it because I don't think Ashton ever smoked the pipe. That is not a euphemism.
ASHLEY: Just the tree did?
TALIESIN: Well, I don't think he ever got--
ASHLEY: That was a weird thing to say.
LAURA: You never did it?
TALIESIN: Your proudest moment. Yeah, I don't think I ever did that.
SAM: You didn't inhale?
TALIESIN: I didn't inhale.
TRAVIS: ♪ Inhale ♪
TALIESIN: Should I save that for possibly endgame or should I just let that one?
MATT: I let that sit with you, sir.
TALIESIN: Yeah. The slow change into their rock form happened when they were younger and when they were in the home under the state's care and it was, like everything, kind of traumatizing. A life of trauma. Yeah.
MARISHA: Well, yeah. So yeah. They were born soft and got hard later.
LAURA: "I wish to be a rock."
MARISHA: Yeah. (laughter)
TALIESIN: I will say, there was a--
LAURA: That's my favorite one.
TALIESIN: There was a deep shit-kicking that was involved.
LAURA: (laughs)
TALIESIN: Yeah, they are.
ROBBIE: Sweet.
LAURA: Aww, that sucks.
TALIESIN: I did it-- Yeah.
ROBBIE: I love how all I said was "sweet" and you immediately turned and looked at me, Liam. This is for you.
LAURA: Aww.
ROBBIE: My sweet little boyfriend.
ASHLEY: My sweet little.
ROBBIE: "Is there any information--"
TRAVIS: Barf.
ROBBIE: "-- about Will's--" (cackles) Shut it, Handsome Squidward. (laughter)
ROBBIE: "Is there any information about Will's sisters that never came up in-game that you'd like to share? For example, does Orym have a favorite triplet?"
LIAM: I don't know if I would say favorite, but I think he has the closest connection to Leeta, who took over for Derrig as Master of Arms for Zephrah because he trained with her. So Will and Leeta and Orym were together for years training under Derrig and preparing themselves for a life of service in Zephrah. So he definitely spent the most time with her than the other sisters. I think that's probably the answer to that, and I also know that as the campaign made its way--
SAM: ♪ Makin' my way ♪
LIAM: I did talk to Matt about my hopes for Leeta taking over for Derrig and how I saw her and the things that I hoped for her for her place in Zephrah. Even as the story, and I don't know what's happening next, I don't, but I really like her as a character and I like her taking over for her father and I like her being a part of Zephrah.
ROBBIE: Here's a completely organic segue. Everyone's got weird habits, am I right?
MARISHA: So weird. (laughter, claps)
ROBBIE: For example, my weird habit would be-- (laughs) (fart noise offscreen)
MARISHA: Yeah, think of something on the fly, Robbie.
TRAVIS: They screwed you, I love it.
SAM: Rough teleprompter read.
ROBBIE: I don't have one!
SAM: That's rough.
TALIESIN: Completely organic segue.
ROBBIE: I don't have one.
TRAVIS: You pick things out of your belly button and eat it.
SAM: Certain weird--
LAURA: No!
ROBBIE: I wish I did, oh man. I'm sure I got one somewhere.
LAURA: Gross.
ROBBIE: Yeah, I know, I'm weird. (laughter)
ROBBIE: But some cast members have habits so regular that you could practically set your watch by them. Roll the clip. (groaning) [raptor scream]
MATT: It looks like it was a heavy hit and it's looking pretty hurt already in one strike. [raptor scream]
ASHLEY: -- of the Feywild.
MATT: Half-undead blood and release the Chill Touch. [raptor scream]
MATT: The two skeleton claws-- [raptor scream]
MATT: The guy up top takes four. [raptor scream]
TRAVIS: Ooh. (laughs) Matt!
SAM: We can divide and conquer, right? [raptor scream]
MARISHA: We're going to run out of time.
LAURA: Yeah, we've got to go.
TALIESIN: You've got to go.
MARISHA: I'll move up towards Ashton 30 feet.
LAURA: What is this? [raptor scream]
MATT: 30.
SAM: This is a new stance.
LAURA: The huddle-perch.
LIAM: Yeah, Marisha has evolved.
TRAVIS: Knees on the desk.
MATT: But whereas once it emanated around you like a cage, now it's the faintest little tickle on the inside and as you begin to push inward towards the darkness, the faint--
LAURA: (snickering quietly)
MATT: (sighs) (Eshteross) "It was indeed confirmed to be sort of an excretion that is utilized by hard tunnels." (laughter)
TRAVIS: Come on.
MATT: I fucking hate you all so much.
TRAVIS: Come on!
MATT: Pause of breath as you roll up your hole, which right now is pretty-- hmm.
LAURA: Uh-huh?
SAM: Yeah.
LAURA: Our hole is what?
MATT: Your hole's pretty filled. (laughter)
MATT: It's at capacity, it's--
TRAVIS: Filled and stanky.
MATT: You are out and about trying to just spread your legs a little bit. Spread your wings.
ASHLEY: I spread them.
MATT: (mumbling)
ASHLEY: I was spreading my legs all over town. (laughter) (wheezing)
ROBBIE: I heard it, right?!
TALIESIN: Take that out of context.
MATT: I was trying to say--
ROBBIE: "Spread my legs a little bit."
TALIESIN: It can't be done, it can't be done.
ROBBIE: Stretch, stretch your legs, spread your wings!
MATT: I know, they both collided.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MATT: If you wanted to grab the mushrooms.
SAM: Let's grab a mushroom and ride it over.
MARISHA: Okay, let's do it.
LAURA: How big is the bush?
TRAVIS: Ride the mushroom over the bush.
LAURA: Can they all fit on the same bush?
MATT: There are multiple sections of, yeah.
SAM: I'm going to steer the head of the mushroom right at the bush.
TRAVIS: Get in the bush before the mushroom gets over there. (laughter)
LAURA: I know. (laughs)
SAM: Oh. Ugh. (laughter)
ASHLEY: Let me see.
ASHLEY: Okay. Cocked.
MARISHA: (laughs)
ASHLEY: Cocked again. Cocked a-fucking again. Oh, with advantage. That's cocked.
LAURA: Cocked.
ASHLEY: That's cocked again.
LAURA: God, your fucking dice.
LIAM: Throw your dice into the parking lot.
ASHLEY: That's cocked again.
LAURA: Ashley.
TALIESIN: Stop it.
ASHLEY: That's cocked. That's cocked again.
MATT: That die.
ASHLEY: I know.
TALIESIN: I hate that die so much.
ASHLEY: That's cocked again.
LAURA: Ashley.
MARISHA: What the fuck?
ASHLEY: Okay, okay. Okay. Shit.
SAM: Jesus.
LIAM: Oh jeez.
ASHLEY: That's cocked.
SAM: Also cocked.
ASHLEY: Okay.
LAURA: Oh, that's better.
MATT: Six dice rolls to get the thing.
ASHLEY: I know, I'm sorry.
LAURA: No.
ASHLEY: That's cocked. That's cocked. I'm really sorry.
LAURA: Ashley.
ASHLEY: That was almost a natural 20, too. Okay. But look how good they're almost. (sputters)
ASHLEY: That was.
LAURA: Armand is a dwarf.
SAM: What the hell?
ASHLEY: Cocked.
SAM: How does it do that?
ASHLEY: [inaudible]
LAURA: What is that? That's a 10.
SAM: I think that's an eight.
LAURA: No, it's a what? What is that?
ASHLEY: I don't know what that is.
LAURA: It's a 10.
ASHLEY: Is that a three?
LAURA: No, that's a 10. No, or is it an eight or is it a three or is it a six?
LIAM: That's a lowercase A.
SAM: (laughs)
LAURA: That's an eight. No, that's a 10?
ASHLEY: It's a three? (laughter)
MARISHA: Those were all--
TRAVIS: Your dice are the worst!
MARISHA: Those are very different numbers.
TRAVIS: The worst! How can you think it's three different numbers?
ROBBIE: Between eight and three, eight and three maybe.
TRAVIS: One of them has two digits! (laughter)
SAM: This dice has no numbers on it. (laughter)
TALIESIN: Starting the carnival.
MARISHA: Zero gravity rage.
LAURA: (humming carnival music)
TALIESIN: Interesting. So let's fucking rage. Let's see what the hell tools I'm playing with. Interesting. Ooh, that's fun. So what do I have built right now? Oh, okay. I'm going to rage.
ASHLEY: Yay.
MATT: All righty.
ASHLEY: Woo. (claps)
TALIESIN: Ooh! Now we're having fun. Start the disco, come on. That'll do.
MATT: Go for it.
TALIESIN: Come on. Give me something fun. I can make that work.
MATT: ♪ Something good ♪
TALIESIN: I'm going to rage and see what the fuck happens. Here we go. Ooh, okay. I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way.
SAM: What does that mean?
TALIESIN: Not looking.
MARISHA: He's not going to look at it.
LIAM: It's good.
LAURA: It's good.
LIAM: It's high.
TALIESIN: Plus eight.
ASHLEY: What is it?
LAURA: 16.
LIAM: 16 plus.
TALIESIN: Plus eight. Never look if you want to win. Never fucking look when you want to win.
LIAM: You shut your mouth.
LAURA: Don't act cocky right now, you ass.
LIAM: I'll kick you in your--
MARISHA: I know.
LIAM: -- ballsack, god damn.
ROBBIE: Shh.
MARISHA: Oh, are we back?
MATT: Oh sorry.
ROBBIE: We're so back. (laughter)
ROBBIE: It's time for the serious portion of the show.
ALL: Oh.
ASHLEY: Whoa.
ROBBIE: The Solstice approaches.
LIAM: (like Sean Connery) Solstice.
MARISHA: Solstice.
ROBBIE: Where the questions get hard-hitting. Taliesin, "What happened during Ashton's pasta adventure?"
MARISHA: Oh yeah.
ASHLEY: Oh yeah. Fish, fish, pasta.
TALIESIN: That's right because I wasn't there. Well, we got into a little bit of it, but basically ended up accidentally stumbling into what was basically an underworld robbery that was going on, got picked up into it, couldn't get out, ended up going to what was basically an Italian restaurant where there was mobsters downstairs having a showdown. Picked a side, hoped it was the right one. There was a mad chase, including helping rob the place, pissing off people that may come back, I don't know. He doesn't really know who they were. He was just going with it because otherwise, you have to do something and eventually made off with what they thought was loot, but instead was just a lot of pasta and sauce. (laughter)
TALIESIN: And figured, you know, could be worse. (laughter)
TALIESIN: And now we've got to get out of town real fast before they figure out that I was part of that.
ROBBIE: These are the answers to the hard-hitting questions you want to know.
TALIESIN: It was a romp.
ROBBIE: Here's one for Matt. Yours was great.
TALIESIN: Thank you.
ROBBIE: But here's one for Matt. (laughter)
ROBBIE: "What were the range of possibilities when the Malleus Key was first activated? Was it possible for Predathos to have been released early in the campaign if the party hadn't managed to damage any of the power supplies or destroyed the Key in the Fey Realm?"
MATT: There was a possibility if they had failed to destroy the Key and did not do any damage to it, it would've begun the process of unleashing Predathos rapidly. There would have been a chance to still race to the core, like how the campaign ended in a way. But the Key would've carved a majority of the path to the actual core of the moon where Predathos was sealed at the Hallowed Cage and so they would've had a chance to then try and race Ludinus and the troop if they'd followed suit or--
LAURA: But we would be way lower level.
MATT: Correct.
LAURA: Ugh.
MATT: Which would've meant then there would've been a forced scenario where the gods would've likely fled or fled to some realm or beyond to try and figure out how to survive this before Predathos actually arrived and I would've figured out at that point if Predathos as an entity, which may have still been within Ludinus as the vessel, would've begun the hunt for the gods and whether they would've been beyond or also into their realm and it would've been a chase at that point towards Ludinus as the vessel. I didn't go too deep into what it would've meant because I have loose ideas for the campaign and I don't want to write too much if it's drastically alterable by player interaction, but I had thoughts of what that could have meant. I probably would've seen which gods stayed behind to take a stand and might not have survived the encounter with Predathos. It would've been chaos, and a part of me did kind of want it to happen, but also I don't want to force a narrative and I want you guys to get the opportunity to do some cool things and prevent it, and it ended up making a really interesting story anyway. But yeah, those were my loose thoughts around what could've happened.
ROBBIE: Nice, all right.
LIAM: How many times did your brain swivel in your skull when Laura rolled the natural 20 at the end? (laughter)
MATT: Bro.
MARISHA: Yeah.
MATT: I swear to fucking god, guys, it's not scripted. It's so frustrating when that shit happens because then it's like: I don't know what to tell you! It was perfect, but also, I don't know, I was looking forward to a pantheon missing a few gods here and there.
LAURA: Yeah. Sorry about that.
MATT: You know?
MATT: Kind of punch some holes into it, you know? I was ready to go with what happened and when you rolled that, I was like, "Okay." (laughter)
MATT: "All right." It's still getting weird, but yeah, it would've been interesting to be like, "And oh, the Matron's gone now."
LAURA: Yeah.
MATT: That'd've been weird.
LAURA: Would you have rolled for which ones left?
MATT: Yeah, I was going to randomly roll for which ones had--
ASHLEY: Dang.
MATT: -- decided to go.
MARISHA: Could you imagine?
ASHLEY: Dang.
MARISHA: What would've happened if the Raven Queen went bye-bye? What would've happened to Vax?
LIAM: Vax would've taken over.
MATT: Huh?
LAURA: Vax would've been--
SAM: Ooh.
MARISHA: Vex or Vax?
SAM: No, Vax.
LIAM: Vax.
LAURA: Vex.
MARISHA: (laughs)
SAM: That would've blown the Keyleth-Vax reunion.
MARISHA: Yeah.
LIAM: Yes.
MARISHA: If the Raven Queen went bye-bye.
LAURA: But Vax would've been the Matron and then, and then--
LIAM: And then?
LAURA: -- she would let Vax go because he's worked hard enough.
MATT: Sure. Next question.
MARISHA: Sorry, Percy.
ROBBIE: My next question is for chat. Chat?
LAURA: He's on his last legs anyway.
ROBBIE: Are you enjoying the compilations and videos? The post team works so hard. They're so cool.
TRAVIS: Yes.
ROBBIE: I want to see.
ALL: Yes. (claps)
ASHLEY: Post team, post team!
ROBBIE: If you are loving the vids.
ASHLEY: Post team!
ROBBIE: I want to see those comments fly and I'm going to fly through these next two questions so we can get to some more. This is for everybody. "Do you regret crashing your airship?"
LIAM: No.
TALIESIN: Hell no.
LIAM: Isn't that what you do with an airship?
MARISHA: Kind of.
ASHLEY: A little bit.
ROBBIE: Oh!
ASHLEY: A little bit.
MARISHA: I'm with her.
LAURA: I feel like it didn't do as much as we wanted.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
TALIESIN: I regret that we didn't get another one.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
TALIESIN: I regret that we didn't go and get another one.
SAM: It was a cool move.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MARISHA: It was a cool move.
LAURA: But it was a cool move.
MATT: Yep.
MARISHA: I think I-- yeah. Maybe, I don't know. When he held up his hand and it shattered into a bajillion pieces.
LAURA: Yeah, I was like: Ah, you.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MARISHA: And then a bunch of other people just died.
TALIESIN: That was some good Thanos shit, though.
ASHLEY: Yeah, it was.
MATT: An extremely powerful wizard--
LAURA: I know.
MATT: -- isn't going to be like, "Uh-oh, a boat's coming at me! Guess I'm done."
SAM: (laughs)
MARISHA: Yeah, that's fair.
LIAM: He's a thousand year old arch-mage.
MATT: Wall of Force. (impact) That was what it was. But it still took out a bunch of the Vanguard that were surrounding the Malleus Key. So it had a benefit.
MARISHA: Yeah, it was cool. It was a cool move.
MATT: But I couldn't in right conscience be like, "Ope, Ludinus is getting merc'ed by a boat." (laughter)
TRAVIS: Merc'ed? (laughter)
DANI: Fucking wrecked.
MATT: Wrecked. (laughter)
ASHLEY: Wrecked.
MATT: Shipwrecked.
TRAVIS: We were so low-level and that's one of the strongest things we could do.
MATT: Oh, no, it wasn't a bad idea at all.
TRAVIS: Yeah.
MATT: It was a great idea and like I said, it still had benefits to it, but yeah, that's just how it worked out.
ASHLEY: It was great.
SAM: Robbie.
TALIESIN: I thought it was awesome.
SAM: YouTube thinks that you look like Domingo from "Saturday Night Live."
LIAM: Ah.
ROBBIE: I'm not familiar with the reference, but that's good.
SAM: It's good, it's a compliment.
TRAVIS: Somebody was asking what Bertrand Bell's fighter subclass was.
SAM: Oh.
TRAVIS: He was a Duelist and a Champion, I think. I don't know.
MARISHA: Oh, that's cool.
TRAVIS: He was only level five in the end, the old bastard.
ASHLEY: Ah, the old bastard.
MARISHA: Level five?
TRAVIS: Yep.
LAURA: He leveled down.
MATT: Yep.
ASHLEY: Oh boy.
ROBBIE: It is a simple question that Matt has asked all of us. "How do you like my new vest?" (laughter)
ROBBIE: The answer is always, "That's a new one?" (laughter)
ROBBIE: I wouldn't have been so mean to you. But there's another question that Matt-- (laughter)
ROBBIE: I'm not ripping on you, I promise! But there's another question that Matt likes to ask us and the answer is always incredible and somewhat violent. So let's take a look at some of the top "How do you want to do this-es" from Campaign 3.
ASHLEY: This-es-es-es.
MATT: How do you want to do this? (yelling)
MATT: How do you want to do this? (yelling)
MATT: How do you want to do this? (yelling)
MATT: How do you want to do this?
SAM: Maybe the audience should say it.
MATT: How do I want to do this? [cheering]
ASHLEY: Hey, bitches. Should we take this one out? (laughter)
LAURA: Can each of us, as it blasts from our hands--
SAM: So badass.
LAURA: -- it shoots out and (sizzling) (laughter)
ASHLEY: So it braids.
LAURA: Yeah, so it braids.
MATT: Yeah.
ASHLEY: Braiding! It's braiding because we have three!
SAM: Like a ponytail!
MARISHA and TALIESIN: Aw. (laughter)
LAURA: In your head, you hear: Um, I've been swallowed!
ASHLEY: That makes me very angry. So I am going to just (buzzes) the top of it.
MATT: (laughs) Just laser hands through it.
ASHLEY: Just laser hand it.
MATT: (laughs)
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MATT: Sure.
AABRIA: As a free reaction, can I yell: Give her bangs!
ASHLEY: Ooh!
MATT: (laughs)
SAM: I will swing away with my weapon.
LIAM: (laughs)
SAM: And strike several times. As I'm doing so--
MATT: (impacting)
SAM: -- the black ichor that's flying off the weapon is making a splatter behind.
MATT: (splattering)
SAM: You see that the splatter is forming a pattern, and it's the symbol of Asmodeus.
ASHLEY: Oh yeah! (laughter)
MARISHA: Oh my god! I hate this!
UTKARSH: I deserve it.
MARISHA: No!
UTKARSH: I brought it on myself.
MARISHA: But I love you. (whimpers)
UTKARSH: It was very fun.
MARISHA: Ugh. For like, I don't know, she just gives into the darkness.
MATT: A beautiful circle of life surrounds the two of them. You watch the troubled life of Bor'Dor Dog'Son reduced to ash and memory.
LAURA: I'm going to Lightning Bolt the tree trunk and I'm going to aim it right at the center of the trunk so I can split it straight down the middle and make the two halves crash down.
MATT: (magic whooshing) The bolt impacts. You watch as it hits the wood. (cracking) You hear Delilah screech, "No!" (whooshing) Into white.
TRAVIS: No!
LAURA: I'm going to make eye contact with Predathos. You're mine.
MATT: (whooshing) (impacting) As the dust slowly begins to settle and the broken shattered glass head of Predathos itself is crumbled and motionless. I'm going to ask you an interesting question. How do you want to do this?
SAM: I do have 56 hit points.
MATT: Oh, I'm looking at the wrong one. (laughter) (groaning)
ROBBIE: It's time for "Sand and Shadows."
MARISHA: Ooh!
TALIESIN: Woo!
SAM: What does that mean?
LAURA: I don't know what it means, but.
ROBBIE: The intros are going to keep getting worse and worse.
LAURA: It sounds like a romance novel.
ROBBIE: It might be!
DANI: These are the names of the arcs! I named all the arcs.
SAM: Oh!
ASHLEY: Yeah!
ROBBIE: You're fantastic!
LAURA: And you also--
ROBBIE: I wasn't sure if I--
LAURA: -- like romance novels.
ROBBIE: -- should be reading them or not.
DANI: I do!
MARISHA: It's true.
DANI: And I definitely made it sound like a romance novel. (laughter)
DANI: You're welcome, Laura Bailey!
ASHLEY: (laughs)
MATT: Yes.
ROBBIE: "Sand and Shadows" sounds like it would chafe. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Matt.
MATT: Some people are into that. Yep?
ROBBIE: "What happened to Yu Suffiad after they failed their mission for the Unseelie?"
MATT: Oh, Dusk. Yeah.
SAM: Dusk!
MATT: So in my mind,
SAM: Chat, you can stop now. (laughter)
MATT: Dusk, they essentially, as an upper-ranked assassin for the Unseelie Court, more or less volunteered for the specific mission in the hope of, you know, an honorable return, and failed in their mission. And failed, not out of an attempt to try, but out of genuinely dropping the auspice of killing their target. Which is unforgivable given the context of their work in the Unseelie. So likely, they were unable to return for the time being. And are probably laying low, either to find a way to clear their name or find a way to convince the Unseelie to allow them to restore the honor of their name, or perhaps start a new life on Exandria and spend the rest of their existence, much like their target, ducking the Unseelie's interest and sight. That's my interpretation, but I mean, you'd have to ask Erika.
SAM: Mm.
MATT: (laughs)
ROBBIE: "Hey, what was that Gnarlrock shard? What was it doing to Imogen, and what would've happened if she'd have kept it?"
LIAM: Gnarlrock.
MATT: The Gnarlrock. Yes.
SAM: Gnarlrock.
LAURA: Right?
ROBBIE: Gnarlrawrk.
MATT: Nar-rar?
ALL: (Nawring)
MATT: It is a point of very strong corruptive magic in the Fey. And if Imogen kept it for a longer period of time, she would've seen more or less changes. Put it this way. Imogen as Predathos was pretty terrifying. Imogen, slowly over time through the campaign, looking more and more like Ira Wendagoth would've been a very interesting--
LAURA and MARISHA: (gasp)
MATT: -- twist as well.
TRAVIS: Ooh!
LAURA: Those are so many opportunities to become the villain!
ASHLEY: Cool!
TRAVIS: Whoa!
ROBBIE: Yeah--
MARISHA: That's so true!
MATT: It was like, well, whoever had gotten the stone. Whoever got the Gnarlrock and held onto it, it would've slowly changed them over time.
SAM: Cool!
TALIESIN: Ugh!
DANI: Into Ira?
MATT: Or into more of that look.
MARISHA: Like a twisted Fey look?
LAURA: But hot.
ASHLEY: Cool!
ROBBIE: Speaking of Ira--
ASHLEY: Hot Gnarl.
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: "What did Ira do to the minds of the Calloways? Did they ever try to escape? What did Ira remove from their memory?"
MATT: Oh, they tried to escape, but more or less, Ira's a complicated character--
MARISHA: I love him!
TALIESIN: I like Ira!
MARISHA: I love Ira!
MATT: He's not a good person.
TALIESIN: I know.
MATT: (laughs) He was useful in ways, and you had aligned goals at times, but is not a good person, and--
MARISHA: So?
TRAVIS: (coughs) Essek.
MATT: No, I get it.
MARISHA: Yeah, exactly!
LAURA: We just needed to be friends with him!
MATT: Oh, Essek is much better than Ira! But no, Ira, more or less, just Swiss cheesed their memory.
MARISHA: After we gave him soup!
MATT: Whenever they'd try and flee, would bring them back and then punch a hole into their mind of recollecting them trying to escape and placing memories of more positive interactions to replace them. And so basically, had constructed, over time, a false dynamic between them to how they were when they first interacted. So yeah, it was not great. It was not great.
TALIESIN: That's-- He's such a scamp!
ROBBIE: Ashley.
LAURA: Ira's such a scamp!
ROBBIE: Ashley, Matt, tag team if you want.
ROBBIE: Fearne--
MARISHA: Fight! "Fearne's afterlife looked very concerning."
ASHLEY: Yes!
ROBBIE: Why was her afterlife so different from Orym's and what would've happened to her if FCG hadn't resurrected her?
MARISHA: Oh!
ASHLEY: There was a little bit of that that took me by surprise. because when I saw that I was like, "Wait. Am I a bad person?" (laughs) Because clearly, that wasn't a good place where she was going. Which I like because I think it makes sense for--
MARISHA: Because then you can be with Teven.
ASHLEY: Because then I can be with Teven! And then I can, you know. I actually would like to know the answer to this.
MATT: In my mind. the Unseelie, the dark Fey tether within your bloodline, specifically the intent of Zathuda's creation of you and what your goal was with the Ruby Vanguard, there is a deep thread of shadow that is inherently in your essence that we've seen you tap into here and there.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MATT: And puts you in this weird place of many oaths. (laughs)
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MATT: So that was a glance at a pact for your spirit that was sealed without your knowledge. Meaning, upon birth, you were promised.
LAURA: Wow!
ASHLEY: Woo!
DANI: Now that's a romance novel!
ASHLEY: Woo!
MARISHA: Yeah.
MATT: So yeah. So Fearne's spiritual essence still sits under a contract she's unaware of.
LAURA: Ugh!
ASHLEY: Ooh! (laughter)
TRAVIS: She's not bothered by it. She's not bothered by it.
LAURA: Fearne was Rumpelstiltskined!
ASHLEY: Yeah! I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. I wondered that. That's really funny to know.
MATT: Like I said, I'm very interested in a possible Fearne one-shot. Because, much like how Mr. Burns is only alive because all the diseases are in him and they're all fighting to kill him at once and cancel each other out, Fearne Calloway exists because everyone at some point has some sort of contracted ownership over her or some vested interest and they're all pushing at the same time and can't get to her. (laughter)
MATT: It's kind of what it feels like now.
ASHLEY: Well, I have to finish this deal, I have to finish this deal, we have to do this.
MATT: (laughs)
ASHLEY: Yeah.
TALIESIN: It's going to be in court forever when you finally go. It's going to be nonstop.
MATT: A lot of red tape.
ASHLEY: A lot of red tape.
DANI: It's going to be "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot," the play, but it's just Fearne's soul. (laughs)
ASHLEY: Yeah. (chuckles)
ROBBIE: Sam.
DANI: That's a theater joke. For everybody.
SAM: Robert?
ROBBIE: Sam Riegel.
SAM: Yes, Robert?
ROBBIE: Sam Riegel's sponsored ad reads have always been unapologetic--
MATT: Oh no!
ASHLEY: No!
ROBBIE: -- fever dreams!
ASHLEY: Great segue!
SAM: Oh boy!
ROBBIE: But they went to some weird and never before seen places in Campaign 3. Take a look.
TALIESIN: Why do we let him do this?
ASHLEY: Yes!
MARISHA: Da-ga-da-ga- da-ga-da-ga!
MATT: Welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons.
ALL: (muffled) We play Dungeons & Dragons! (excited plastic shuffling)
MATT: Okay.
SAM: Let me shift into first person view! Whoa!
LAURA: (laughs)
TRAVIS: Is that the shift? Is that--
SAM: This is so cool! Unless I finish this commercial, I'm never going to make it, and you'll never respect me. ♪ (jazzy music) ♪
SAM: Black Willow motherfucking 69 at AOL dot motherfucking com! (splatting) (splatting)
SAM: It's me, Ludo McGillicutty! (racing squeals) (racing squeals)
SAM: Now I have a HUD, which is a Heads Up Display?
LAURA: Uh-huh.
SAM: It's asking me do I want to read the next part of the copy, or give that part to Marisha? I choose Marisha.
LIAM: (laughs)
LAURA: Yes!
MARISHA: Why? Why me?
TRAVIS: (shouts)
MARISHA: Aww! What?
SAM: That's a net!
MARISHA: Oh!
SAM: That's a net!
LIAM: (shouts) (laughter)
MARISHA: What? What? That's illegal!
TRAVIS: Oh yeah?
MARISHA: Palm Pilot? KIRBY: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you release me from the ghostly curse that binds my soul, and let me escape this eternal hell?
SAM: You know what? (static) You're breaking up. (laughter)
SAM: (static) It's a bad connection! (static) I got to go! Bye! KIRBY: Wait! No! It's been decades!
SAM: Okay, and aw! (laughter)
SAM: It's my dog! Do nothing if it's really your--
TRAVIS: Dad?
SAM: Your dad. (laughter)
SAM: See? It's me. (laughter)
SAM: We really got to hurry. Oh! (pants) [crashing]
SAM: I'm up. I'm okay. It's okay. It's okay. Hi, I'm Sam. Did we meet before? I feel like-- No? Hi! Sam-- No?
SAM: We're on. We're on camera.
ASHLEY: Wait, wait! (laughter)
MATT: We're on!
ASHLEY: (laughs)
ROBBIE: "Destiny's Call!" (laughter)
MARISHA: Please?
ROBBIE: It's time. It's time for "Destiny's Call." Matt, we're always going to throw it to you to start.
MATT: Oh boy!
ROBBIE: I know! I know. This is your world, you've got to live in it. Wha-- Ooh! (wheezes) (laughter)
ROBBIE: Why is your finger so thick? (laughter)
MATT: That wasn't a finger.
LIAM: That wasn't a finger.
ROBBIE: Oh!
ASHLEY: Whoa! (laughter)
ROBBIE: Ta da! (laughter)
TALIESIN: Big Fingers Willingham.
ROBBIE: A lot of amazing dream sequences in this entire thing. "Matt, why did Imogen see people in her dreams after their deaths?"
MATT: For me, her burgeoning Exaltant status made her very psychically connected to figures that were either themselves Exaltant or had a recent close connection. So deaths that were close to her that she either wasn't present to witness directly, or perhaps was in that in-between, heavily-infused psychic state, there was a vision of that spirit transference, their essence, more or less, passing beyond. And it was a fun narrative device for me to frame some of these moments as they occurred in the game. But that was mainly the inspiration behind it, was just showing that burgeoning psychic resonance and the fact that there was a much stronger power within Imogen beyond what she understood.
TALIESIN: Mm!
LIAM: Yeah, like the thumbprint of their psychic soul before it--
MATT: It faded.
LIAM: -- scattered away, yeah.
MATT: Yeah.
TALIESIN: Mm-hmm.
ROBBIE: "What was the story behind the theft of Jiana Hexum's golem?"
MATT: Oh, that was a whole side quest that never happened!
LIAM: (gasps) (laughter)
LIAM: (groans)
MATT: I had like four pages.
ROBBIE: Oh no! Really?
MATT: Four pages of a full jungle excursion and--
ROBBIE: (groans)
MATT: That's how it goes, though. That's how D&D works.
ROBBIE: Man, so funny!
MATT: Yeah, it was a whole side quest that was going to lead you to this other group of smugglers that were working near Jrusar and returning the golem. It was going to be another way to get in with Jiana and to learn more about her dealings with the Cerberus Assembly and set up some of the elements that would come to play over in Bassuras. And then it just never happened. So that's what that was supposed to be!
ROBBIE: (laughs)
SAM: Darn it!
MATT: It's all good!
TALIESIN: Gosh darn it!
MATT: We got there eventually. (laughs)
ROBBIE: I have super fond memories of early, early Campaign 3 because it was such a wild-- But I really gravitated toward your character of Lord Eshteross.
MATT: Oh, Eshteross!
ROBBIE: I just thought it's a really great character. "What can you tell us about their past as a mercenary, and what was the nature of their relationship with Mistress Prudaj?"
MATT: Oh yeah. So for Eshteross, I envisioned somebody who made their name at a young age as a very dependably dangerous soldier of fortune, and likely had been for hire to the highest bidder in times of the Apex War likely more on the side of Aeshanadoor, and probably had clashed previously with a younger Otohan during that conflict.
ROBBIE: Wow.
MATT: So in my head, while I didn't really get a chance to express it as much because the story wasn't quite open at that point in time, but when Otohan did end up assassinating Eshteross early in the campaign, that was a blood feud. They had fought before, and that was her more or less closing the loop with now Exaltant capabilities that she didn't have previously. But yeah, so--
MARISHA: There's so much with this Apex War that I kind of understand, and I lot that I don't get.
MATT: We didn't get to go into it as deeply as I wanted to in the campaign. We swerved and went in a different direction. The Apex War more or less was a massive geopolitical conflict between the Stratos Throne and Aeshanadoor, which are the two southernmost regions of Marquet. It was a number of years of conflict between the two that eventually led to a stalemate. Both sides were expending so much resources and so much money and neither really was gaining any sort of benefit over time, so they eventually decided, after much influence from Ank'Harel and Jrusar and many of the other powers around, like the Panagrip Sands, and they all went: Guys, no one's winning this, and it's really wrecking the region and wrecking both of you. So they eventually agreed to a ceasefire, and there was no victor of the war, and it's been a period of recovery ever since. There's still some tensions there, but mostly they keep to their own, aside from necessary trade. But the warriors that were using that war as a way to rise to prominence, like Otohan, were not happy that there wasn't a victory, that there wasn't a place for them to become a historical champion that won this cause, and that was around-- After some time of that, it made her a very easy target for Ludinus to bring under his banner. But Eshteross, through some of that conflict, was on the side of Aeshanadoor and just-- It disillusioned him to war. He spent his life fighting for others and others' causes for money, and through the process of seeing both the terrible impact it has, but also the lack of impact that it does. It is not a way, in his mind, to solve conflict on that scale, and so one of his great patrons and a friend that he made over time, Prudaj, more or less, she passed and left everything to him. They had, I will say, an unresolved romance in my mind. For lack of a better term, they never actually got together, but there was a deep affection and profound respect, and--
SAM: Did they do hand stuff? (laughter)
MATT: Over the pants stuff.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah. OTPHJ, for sure.
ASHLEY: Over the clothes.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah.
LIAM: It's not nothing.
MATT: But yeah. (laughter)
TALIESIN: Keep it there for the animated series.
MATT: I think a lot of his dealing with and coming to terms with that was a lot of their discussion and her helping him through that, and as they bonded over it. He didn't have much, especially as a soldier before. You know, his contract did not complete, as the war was not won. Sorry, I can wax poetic about this for a long time. But yeah, that's the general concept for Eshteross, and instead him wanting to take others under his wing and see other people not fall on that path that he did.
MARISHA: A few people in Discord have said ExU: Apex Wars.
SAM: Ooh.
MARISHA: Which could be sick.
MATT: That could be sick.
ASHLEY: That's kind of cool.
ROBBIE: Well, just listening to you talk about--
DANI: It's the perfect novel.
ROBBIE: What?
DANI: Big old novel.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MARISHA: Oh, a big old novel.
ROBBIE: Listening to you talk about Eshteross' backstory I think really affected the way that they were played, because obviously everyone in chat, there's a lot of shared love for that character. So I think it's obviously so fleshed out in your mind that it came across onscreen, and people gravitated toward it, so yeah.
MATT: I hope so. I'm glad you guys liked him.
ROBBIE: Speaking of fan favorites, Liam.
LIAM: Oh!
ROBBIE: "Is Pretty related to Buddy?"
ASHLEY: Oh!
MARISHA: That's a good question.
ROBBIE: Son, nephew, cousin.
ASHLEY: That is a good question.
ROBBIE: It says please.
LIAM: I'll leave that to you to decide. I just assumed on that--
MARISHA: No, make a choice. Make a choice right now.
LIAM: Me?
SAM: Yeah, it's your guy.
TALIESIN: Make a choice, actor.
LAURA: But Buddy was--
LIAM: But Buddy didn't know nothing about nothing.
MATT: Obviously all ogres know each other, right?
LIAM: Yeah. (laughter)
SAM: But they have the same--
ROBBIE: I didn't write the question, by the way, just so you know.
TRAVIS: Definitely Robbie's question.
LIAM: I have a semi-related question. Was Pretty the ogre an on the fly creation, or something you had waiting in that town?
MATT: No, I think Pretty was on the fly. I'd fleshed out that particular tavern, that inn, I'd fleshed out that particular tavern, that inn, but I think Pretty was just an on the fly creation in that space.
ASHLEY: Pretty.
LIAM: I think I snuck into the subconscious noodles of your mind and grabbed.
SAM: They're cousins.
LIAM: They're cousins?
SAM: For sure.
LIAM: What if they're second cousins?
SAM: Why not first cousins? Because you want them to get together? Is that why? And that's illegal? Is that why?
LIAM: I mean, we don't know what's going to happen with Exandria moving forward.
ROBBIE: You did just call yourself a noodle grabber, basically is what you said. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Hey, how about a question you can answer? "Orym always has a green sash in his character design. What is the meaning behind it?"
LIAM: That is a super simple basic answer. I thought of it as a Zephran design that he never wanted to let go of and it reminded him of home.
ROBBIE: Oh, nice.
LIAM: I never said that out loud, but that's what it was.
ROBBIE: I like simple answers. Let's finish them all. "Matt, what happened to the Shade Mother?"
MATT: Oh, I mean, she's still infesting Jrusar, just in different tunnels.
TRAVIS: Amazing. Amazing.
ROBBIE: "Laura, what kind of horse is Flora?"
LAURA: Just a horse.
ROBBIE: What does she look like? (laughter)
TRAVIS: Chestnut?
SAM: You know all the breeds of horses.
LAURA: Yeah, I know all the breeds of horses.
ASHLEY: A painter?
LAURA: No. Flora was a-- I don't know the breeds of horses.
MATT and MARISHA: (laugh)
LAURA: But I can tell you the color.
ROBBIE: Just say quarter horse.
TRAVIS: You liked horses, but you didn't look it up before the campaign?
MARISHA: Where have we heard that before?
LAURA: Listen. Shut up, listen.
MATT: She was roleplaying a horse girl.
LAURA: He didn't know his mom's name! Shut up!
ROBBIE: You asked me! You set me up. Revenge!
LAURA: Listen, I looked it up at the time.
SAM: I think calico is one. Is calico a thing?
LAURA: Shut up, it's not calico.
ROBBIE: Name your top five horses.
LIAM: Hightail. Hightail.
LAURA: Listen.
ASHLEY: What did it look like?
MARISHA: Top five--
LAURA: I looked it up back then, but I don't remember it now. It's a soft, light tan with a white mane. I know that's a type of horse.
ROBBIE: That answers the second half of the question, what does it look like.
MATT: Epona.
ROBBIE: Very good.
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Everyone, lightning round. "What area of Marquet was your favorite to explore? Is there any location you wish you could return to in the future?"
SAM: The one with the crazy car race.
MATT, ASHLEY, and MARISHA: Bassuras?
SAM: Yeah.
MATT: That was fun.
ASHLEY: Yeah, Bassuras was fun.
SAM: That was awesome.
TALIESIN: Could spend more time there.
MARISHA: I liked Jrusar.
LAURA: I did like Jrusar. There's so much I want to see of Jrusar.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I feel like Jrusar--
LIAM: Yeah, Jrusar.
LAURA: You know what I saw--
LIAM: It was so beautiful.
LAURA: -- a long time ago that somebody suggested for our group name and I saw it after we already named our group and I really loved it. It was the Silver Reach, because in Jrusar, every single fucking ride we took was a silver each.
MATT: (laughs)
MARISHA and ASHLEY: Oh!
LAURA: The Silver Reach was such a good name.
MARISHA: And because we're all taking Centrum Silvers now.
ASHLEY: Oh no!
ROBBIE: (laughs)
LIAM: Wow!
ROBBIE: I like a good joke.
TALIESIN: Wow.
ROBBIE: That's a good joke.
MARISHA: Thank you.
ROBBIE: Speaking of old people about to die, Chetney!
TRAVIS: Oh, yes!
ROBBIE: I want to give-- This isn't in the script. Not in the script. I want to give you, because chat is begging for it, one last opportunity to kill your player character.
TRAVIS: A quick death.
MARISHA: Let's go, let's go!
MATT and ROBBIE: Let's do it.
ROBBIE: Let's do it.
TRAVIS: We have three pairs of d100 pairings.
MARISHA: This is the one!
SAM: So you're going to roll three times?
TRAVIS: Yeah, three times.
ROBBIE: Three times.
TRAVIS: It won't matter. We've done this--
LAURA: It'll happen on the first one. He's going to die.
MATT: One for each campaign.
ROBBIE: Do it anyway. They want it.
TRAVIS: 64. No, 46.
MATT: 46, 46.
TALIESIN: Nice.
ROBBIE: Come on.
TRAVIS: Number two. Come on, die, you old bastard.
ROBBIE: Come on!
LAURA: All zeroes.
TRAVIS: 37.
ROBBIE: Oh, come on!
TRAVIS: Come on, Uk'otoa die.
SAM: Isn't that the answer to life?
MATT: This would be the one.
TALIESIN: 42.
LAURA: That's 42, yeah.
TRAVIS: Die! (laughs)
ASHLEY: 42?
TALIESIN: Yeah.
TRAVIS: (gasps) 42.
TALIESIN: Hey!
ROBBIE: Well folks.
MARISHA: You got 42 twice.
TALIESIN: Look at that, it worked.
TRAVIS: He lives another day. Isn't that the meaning of life?
LAURA: Yeah, it's the meaning of life!
DANI: Yes, the answer.
LAURA: That's crazy.
ROBBIE: That is about it for the Campaign 3 portion of this wrap up. When we come back from break, we'll be joined by Brennan Lee Mulligan.
ASHLEY: Hey!
ROBBIE: It's going to be a free-for-all for all Exandria related questions. Calamity, Divergence, Campaigns 1 through 3, that really cool and totally canon guest battle royale we did that one time. It's all up for discussion. Oh yeah, you know the one. (laughter)
ROBBIE: But before that, a loving sendoff to Campaign 3 and all the amazing memories it made. (awwing)
MATT: Having the privilege of being able to tell these stories with this group of people that I care so immensely about, it's hard not to think of it as the greatest honor of my life. I'm very grateful. Keyleth smiles and nods at the rest of you. "Lady Fearne Calloway, Fey Scion of the Ancient Flame. Laudna, Veil Mistress of the Shadow Tree."
MARISHA: (gasps)
LAURA: Oh shit.
MATT: "Ashton the Reforged, Hammer of Paradox."
LAURA and SAM: Oh!
ASHLEY: Ooh! Ooh!
MATT: "Chetney Pock O'Pea, High Hunter and Lupine Paragon." (whooping)
TALIESIN: What?
MATT: "Dorian Storm, Master Muse and Son of the Wind."
ASHLEY: Ooh!
TRAVIS: Oh!
MATT: "Imogen Temult, Exaltant Hope of the Red Storm."
ASHLEY: Ooh!
ROBBIE: Wow!
MATT: "Orym of the Air Ashari, Savior Blade of the Tempest," she says with a smile. (impressed oohs)
ASHLEY: Playing this game specifically with the people that I love and care about and have made my found family over the past 10 years, and I can't get enough of this game.
BRENNAN: Why do we tell stories? To try to make sense of a world that can be terrifying and enormous. In Exandria, I don't know that your story will long be known. I don't know who will remain to tell it. But it did happen, and it did matter. And though Calamity is here, because of you, it will not be here forever.
LIAM: Our real lives, for me, are really intertwined with the ones that we've lived in Exandria. So there's no aspect of it that doesn't feel precious.
ASHLEY: I'm going to go to Laudna, push her hair to the side. We'll find a way back for you, I promise. Oh, I don't like how this is making me feel! (deep breath) Okay. I'll go to Orym. Can you please come back because I'm getting a little scared.
SAM: The stress being so high, and it is so intense, but for the first time, I realize that I am made of metal and wires, but I am alive. I'm alive for the first time, and I am alive not because I was made by D or Dancer, and I am alive not because I was made by D or Dancer, or even the Changebringer. I'm alive because they made me alive, and it's the connections that I made with all of them, and it's a feeling of joy. I'm happy to do this, because they saved my life, and I'll save theirs. [cheering]
LAURA: It's amazing and heartbreaking and wonderful and exciting, and it's every emotion. I don't even have the words for it.
MATT: You immediately recognize the silhouettes of Laudna, Orym, Ashton, and another.
MARISHA: Imogen!
LAURA: Laudna! You guys!
MARISHA: I skitter over.
LAURA: You're alive.
MARISHA: You're alive!
LAURA: Where's Orym?
LIAM: There's a rapid patter of feet along the wooden floor and then Orym flies through the air and latches around Fearne's neck.
ASHLEY: Well, I'm still a raccoon dog. (laughter)
LIAM: I lift her up. (laughter)
MARISHA: You did it. Good boy!
CHRISTIAN: I like you, FCG.
SAM: I like you, FRIDA. Oh boy.
CHRISTIAN: Faithful Caregiver. It suits you.
SAM: Guess so.
CHRISTIAN: I lean in and kiss, and you hear the clink. AABRIA: Yes!
SAM: Oh! AABRIA: Ow!
TALIESIN: Actually the amazing thing is, despite how uncomfortable it is--
LIAM: I haven't been honest with you. I have feelings for you. I think almost from the day I met you.
ROBBIE: I feel like the worlds have kept us apart ever since I've been back, and I've wanted the tiniest moment with you, and I couldn't sleep either. You are the reason I'm here. You've always been the reason I'm here.
LIAM: Yeah, just another day where we're getting our makeup ready. Just another day.
MARISHA: (laughs)
SAM: Oh, hi.
MARISHA: You don't have to listen in to get my thoughts. I'll always share them willingly. You could just ask.
LAURA: Can I kiss you? I can't tell if it's all right or not anymore.
MARISHA: All right.
LAURA: All right, so I will. I do, I do. I kiss her. (laughter)
SAM: Describe it.
MATT: No!
SAM: Describe, this is what you do.
MATT: Use your imagination!
MARISHA: I mean, you are roleplaying across from BAFTA award winning Laura Bailey. It's always so surreal when you're doing this, and everyone is so good at giving and taking. That's why we all cry all the time, because it's so damn real.
LAURA: I'm going to stand behind her head and brush her forehead. I'm not going to tell you to come back. I'm not going to try to compel you to come back, because that choice, Laudna, is yours now. No one gets to control you anymore, all right? Just know that I love you.
ASHLEY: Oh man, it's so many feelings. It's sort of the end of an era.
SAM: I think the last things I see are Bertrand and Dorian and FRIDA, and I feel connected to everybody. Some connections are made with wires, and some are made with blood, and some are made with bone, and some are made with wood, but they all matter. Even in this dark, dark cave, they make every day a smiley day. So, I just sign off and go.
Break[]
(triumphant music) Suikoden is a JRPG series that tells its story through more than 100 unique characters. The two original titles have been united for the latest consoles as Suikoden I&II HD Remaster. (page rustles) (triumphant music) Suikoden I: Gate Rune War is where it all started. The empire is in chaos due to a violent tyrant, once a renowned hero. Our hero stands up as the leader of the Liberation Army and gathers allies to fight against the oppressive rule. Ideals, honor, friendship, loyalty, love, ambition. Various ideas swirl under two different flags, the Liberation Army and the Imperial Army. (page rustles) (triumphant music) Suikoden II: Dunan Unification War is the direct sequel. The main characters, three childhood friends, find themselves tossed into a great whirlpool of destiny between the kingdom and the city states. The hero and his childhood friend, Jowy of the kingdom's army, are ambushed by the city states amidst a truce. In a world where the sparks of conflict are smoldering once again, the heroes come to acknowledge their own justice. (page rustles) (lively music) "Suikoden" features more than 108 characters. Players travel around the world, form and expand on their relationships as they meet new friends. The number of allies that join your army will lead to leveling up your home base. As it expands, various facilities are added to increase convenience and your journey continues. (page rustles) (dramatic music) Suikoden follows a turn-based command battle. Powerful skills and co-op with allies are used to battle powerful enemies. In addition, auto-battle and double-speed mode have been implemented. With sped up battles, players can deeply immerse themselves in the story. (page rustles) (dramatic music) War, where the player's army fights the enemy army, and Duel, in which the player fights one-on-one. Both special fights add a new layer of tension and excitement to the battles. (page rustles) (adventurous music) New features such as auto save, mini map, convo log, and swapping equipment between characters have been implemented to boost practicality. The field has been completely redesigned with HD background graphics and updated character illustrations. An epic story spun anew after 30 years. Suikoden I&II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification War.
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ASHLEY: Oh, hello! You're here to learn about Beacon? Not only the extraordinary home for everything Critical Role, but also the best way to support the very important work that we do here.
LIAM: Can someone zip me up?
ASHLEY: I know what you're thinking, "What's in it for me?" What do members get?" Exclusive early access to tickets for live events. Access to our members-only Discord server. Instant video on demand and podcast access right after each episode drop. 10% discount on all merch in all five international online shops. With your support, more content is possible. [metal clanking]
TRAVIS: No, I've--
TALIESIN: Shh. It's just some immersion therapy. Keep your eyes open.
TRAVIS: (screams)
ASHLEY: We've got Beacon exclusive series like "Critical Role Cooldown" where you get to sit around the table right after an episode ends, and "Fireside Chat" our community Q&A powered by the Beacon Discord and questions from members like you.
LAURA: Hey, Ashley?
ASHLEY: Yeah.
LAURA: Do you want me to get you a new Mister plushy? Because this guy is rough.
ASHLEY: No.
MATT: We're on in five.
LAURA: I'm just going to wash him, then.
ASHLEY: And if that isn't enough, we've got series like "Critical Role Abridged," "Re-Slayer's Take," and "Midst." Above all, Beacon is the best way to directly support Critical Role, our staff and everyone who helped shape our company into what it is today.
DIRECTOR: I'm coming to you in three, two...
TRAVIS: (excited noises)
MARISHA: (excited noises)
MATT: Hello, everyone, and welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role.
ASHLEY: Welcome to "Weird Kids." (upbeat music)
TALIESIN: You look like the person at a funeral where I would wonder if you had something to do with it.
ASHLEY: Thank you so much.
TALIESIN: You're welcome. I have achieved the 21st century dream of being on a podcast. (laughing)
ASHLEY: We finally did it. Oh, hello everyone.
TALIESIN: Hi there.
ASHLEY: Or some of you, whoever's listening, maybe nobody. What a week.
TALIESIN: And I don't even know what day it is.
ASHLEY: Who knows? I guess it doesn't matter to people who are listening.
TALIESIN: Certainly not in here. This is kind of a liminal space.
ASHLEY: Like I read Highlights for Children. This is way better.
TALIESIN: Highlights was for dentist's office.
ASHLEY: I have my California Science Center mug.
TALIESIN: Hmm.
ASHLEY: Which is one of my favorites.
TALIESIN: Where'd you get that?
ASHLEY: I got at the California Science Center.
TALIESIN: I know, I just wanted to hear you say it again.
ASHLEY: Okay. Look at her. I wanna be her. 2025 has really just been a real banger so far.
TALIESIN: Thank God it's over.
ASHLEY: This might not be very exciting to listen to or watch for that matter.
TALIESIN: I can keep talking. Our audience wants to murder you right now.
ASHLEY: And I peed on the stage 'cause I was nervous.
TALIESIN: What question did they ask?
ASHLEY: Wait. Lemme smell it again.
TALIESIN: Okay. This is great podcast right now. (laughing)
ASHLEY: My grandpa gave me this, by the way. Not to brag. I'm on YouTube a lot. Not to brag. I was Miss Junior Michigan. Not to brag. God, that's a good mug. I'm a winner, baby.
TALIESIN: (laughs) Let's hit a weird landing. Let's jostle everybody's luggage.
ASHLEY: Why are we doing this?
TALIESIN: I don't meet a lot of people who have a similar level of damage.
ASHLEY: (laughs) Yes!
(upbeat music) (mysterious music)
Poogs still restrained by the marionette tendril is unable to get to his feet. Still racked with pain, he manages to grab his sling, slipping a stone into it, (sling whooshing) (Poogs grunts) and rolls a natural one on his attack. Missing wide, disheartened, he goes limp and fails his constitution save to shirk Heldwell's spell. Poogs, just stays still, okay? Just stay still. It is as if Poogs cannot hear Timpani over the roar of pain. Ah, this is a beautiful scene.
LAURA: Hey Critters! Laura Bailey here to guide you through what's new in the Critical Role shop. Roll an investigation if you want, it's basically perfect. (gasp) Could anything be more perfect? I mean The Traveller always says impulse purchases are a good decision Style should never be a dump stat, darling. You need this? You probably need this. Look at this. Isn't it fashion? So much fashion happening here. The cuteness! It's overpowering. This is, this is a lot of stuff you guys we have like so many cool things right now. And hey if you want, you could head over to the Critical Role shop right now.
KLAUS: In play, it felt so good. MOHAMAD: Everybody's engaged at the same time. ALISON: The Hope and the Fear mechanics are a wild role-playing ride. MATT: The game is called Daggerheart, our own fantasy tabletop RPG we've been developing. It's a unique 2d12 dice rolling system that ensures that every roll of the game has some sort of impact on the game itself. DANI: It really fosters that collaborative role-play aspect. DARIUSH: Character building lets you do your own thing and organically be like, "Actually, I'll take a little of this, a little of that." CAI: You can be an unlikely combination of things. The Hope and Fear mechanics to me really feel more like the score of a good film. NATE: Mounting fear, just added a different layer of tension to the game. HANNA: The tactileness is really exciting for me. I just feel very represented in this game. EVAN: I would absolutely play again. TRAVIS: Daggerheart is fun as hell to play. RICH: I absolutely love Daggerheart. MATT: It's going to be something real special and it's just the beginning.
(epic music) (mischievous music) (typewriter clacking) (peaceful music)
LAURA: (VO) Do you find yourself dealing with low energy, drowsiness, or boredom?
MARISHA: You may have made a pact with an infernal demon, or you may be suffering from Low CR.
LAURA: (VO) Low CR is a common condition that affects between most and nearly all adult humans. Low CR, or Low Critical Role, occurs when human people don't have enough nerdy voice actors in their lives. But now, there's a cure!
MARISHA: I don't let Low CR control my life anymore.
LAURA: (VO) Beacon is a non-invasive subscription that provides 24 hours exclusive content each day.
MARISHA: This was when we decided it should look like a gender reveal party.
LAURA: (VO) Early access to event tickets, members-only Discord, 10% off merchandise, and more. Do not take Beacon if you are allergic to Beacon. Consult your familiar if you think Beacon could work for you.
MARISHA: Side effects may include excessive enjoyment, overexcitement, and diarrhea.
LAURA: (VO) Critical Role is in no way a treatment, medication, or anything other than a bunch of nerdy voice actors. Do not watch Critical Role unless you enjoy it. [smoke alarm beeping]
LAURA: (VO) We repeat. We are absolutely not any sort of help... anything. To learn more, visit beacon.tv, or find it on your App Store.
MARISHA: Tomorrow feels a little brighter now that I have Beacon. (loud crunching)
Part II[]
ABUBAKAR: Hello, you beautiful people. I'm talking to the audience, not the cast. I want to wish you a happy 10-year anniversary. 10 years, that's insane. Yeah, I think truly, I know I speak for many people, but the Crit Role team, what you guys have done, what it is, the community you've built, is life-changing. The fact that you even got me to DM for the first time ever in my life is an achievement and an incredible confidence boost. So yeah, happy 10-year anniversary.
ERICA: Hello, critters. Erica Lindbeck here. I wanted to congratulate everyone on a wonderful 10 years of Critical Role. I hope you guys do it for another 100. It has been one of my greatest joys to sit down at the table as Morrighan and join the team. I remember when I first came in for Kymal, I was so nervous, and everyone made me feel right at home. I don't know why I thought I had anything to worry about. By the end of that first little series, I was ready to play all night long. But yeah, I love you guys. I think you're incredible entertainers. But more importantly, you are some of the most magical and kindest people I've ever met. And it is an honor to breathe the same air as you. So yeah, love you guys. (smooches)
LUIS: Hey, Critical Role family, this is Luis Carazo, and I wanted to say really quickly, congratulations to everybody on their 10-year anniversary and wrapping up their third campaign. It was a truly incredible experience to be able to play Zerxus in ExU: Calamity, and if I had to choose a favorite moment at the table, it would have to be (inhales) giving the Lord of Hells a sponge bath. Nothing quite like that. At least in my top three. But honestly, my favorite thing about doing this was being able to share the table with such incredible storytellers and being able to be a part of this incredible, awesome community. And I want to say thank you, everybody. Can't wait to see what comes next, and I will see you all around. Congratulations, much love. Mwah!
NICK: Hey, Critical Role and Critters out there. Just wanted to say congratulations on 10 years. Pretty epic. Happy birthday. Getting to join Downfall and play Ayden the Dawnchild, my sweet, sweet Ayden, was such a gift. And I love y'all. It was a blast getting to try and bring a broken family back together. And may the sun shine upon you all every day. Love you. (smooches)
ANJALI: What's up, Critters? It's Anjali Bhimani. Well, if there is one thing that I have learned from these several years of getting to hang out with all of you thanks to the dear, dear, dear humans over at Critical Role, it is that Critters show up, in the world, for each other. You guys are utterly amazing. Thank you so much for letting me be just a small part of this beautiful community that you've created. You are living proof of what Fy'ra Rai once said, "Not all family is blood. Much family is chosen." So here is to 10 years of Critical Role and to many, many more years of love and light and creativity and not just the tiniest little bit of ridiculousness. And of course, to many more years of found family. Now, I've got to get back to some reading I was doing. Excuse me.
NOSHIR: 10 years? Oh, this is madness. I don't know how you do it, Critical Role fam. You are amazing and I love each and every one of you. Some of the best storytelling I have ever witnessed and that I've ever been a part of have been in Critical Role. And I think a big reason for that is because anytime that magic happens at the table, it doesn't matter how outlandish, how big the characters are. It's the actors bringing their genuine self to the moment. So to all the Critters out there, I hope you will take that to heart and remember that celebrating your unique, beautiful, and genuine self will always be where the best adventures lie, and where all the magic happens. I love you, Critical Role. Thank you. Happy anniversary.
ROBBIE: (trilling) Welcome back! (laughter and cheering) To the wrap-up of Critical Role's Campaign 3.
MARISHA: Oh my goodness.
LAURA: That was awesome.
ROBBIE: And the Age of Reclamation.
LAURA: Were you planning that the whole break?
ROBBIE: What?
LAURA: Nothing.
ROBBIE: I just thought of it in the moment. I planned nothing for the show.
MARISHA: Wow.
ASHLEY: It was really cool.
MARISHA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Now that we've gone through Campaign 3, it's time to open up the discussion to a bit of Exandria overall. And who better to add to that topic than the man who gave Calamity a beginning, a middle, and an end? Brennan Lee Mulligan! Get your ass out here, baby! (cheering)
MARISHA: Omar, get out of the way!
TALIESIN: Hey!
BRENNAN: Omar! Aw!
SAM: What if you just walked in here and kicked a dog?
BRENNAN: Bam! (laughter)
ASHLEY: Boof!
BRENNAN: Calamity!
ASHLEY: Oh god! Now he's sitting.
BRENNAN: Hi, buddy.
ROBBIE: Aw, that's good stuff. We're going to give you all the hype. You're the second act opener. This had better be good, baby.
MARISHA: Yeah. (laughs)
BRENNAN: And it will be. Hello, I'm Brennan Lee Mulligan! It's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
MATT: Thanks for coming, buddy! (cheering)
BRENNAN: Yay!
MARISHA: Thanks for sitting in the lobby while we dicked around and made fun of Travis.
BRENNAN: It was great, I had a lovely pesto sandwich and I got some emails done. Hi, buddy!
MARISHA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: Aw.
MATT: He's like, "I'm not done!"
BRENNAN: I'm not done. More pets.
ASHLEY: Give me more.
ROBBIE: You know, strangely enough, you were not on the top of the call sheet for who I should ask a question to first, but I feel like it should be you.
SAM: Yeah, for sure.
ROBBIE: Yeah, you're here. Yeah, it's got to be you.
LAURA: Are you reading that tiny, tiny little font?
ROBBIE: I am.
TRAVIS: That's why his eyes are watering.
MARISHA: You can--
ASHLEY: You can spread it.
MARISHA: Yeah, you can spread it.
LAURA: You can spread it, Robbie.
TRAVIS: Spread it with your fingers.
ROBBIE: Right here on camera?
LIAM: Spread it with your fingers.
ASHLEY: Spread it, make it a little wider.
ROBBIE: I can't, I can't. Brennan--
MARISHA: Spread your legs and stretch your wings, baby.
LIAM: You have my attention.
ASHLEY: Spread your legs. (laughter)
SAM: Ah, buh, buh!
MATT: I will never live that down.
SAM: Give the focus to Robbie Draymond.
ROBBIE: Hey, I don't want to take this moment from you. You two are bonding on a deep level.
BRENNAN: ♪ You're just too good to be true ♪ (laughter)
TRAVIS: ♪ Buh buh bum ♪
ROBBIE: "What's it like to play around in Matt's map building room?" What's it like in there?
BRENNAN: That map building room is so fucking sick. You have no idea. Because not only is it lovingly tended to, beautifully painted, rendered-- Okay, all of that. Exquisitely organized. Dare I say it, intuitively. Intuitively organized. So you end up having these wonderful: Oh, the dungeon tiles are where the dungeon tiles should be, and here are the humanoids. But it is very funny to look at them and be like: Humanoids 1. Humanoids 2. You're like, what gets you in Humanoids 2, and are they jealous that they're not in Humanoids 1? (laughter)
BRENNAN: Are they sad?
ROBBIE: Yeah. These are the hard hitting questions I've been looking for all night long.
BRENNAN: Who are you calling a humanoid? Yeah.
TRAVIS: Next year I'm going to end up in Humanoids 1.
BRENNAN: I can taste it! ♪ Someday ♪ Yeah, 100%.
MATT: Keep trying, friend.
ASHLEY: It's like "Toy Story" at night?
ROBBIE: So you felt like you could get to work right away. You felt like you were in the space and it was there for you to be taken.
BRENNAN: There was a really funny thing, actually, building the Torm's Hill battle set for Divergence where I was-- I got to work in there and it was like, okay, Torm's Hill, let's start. I was like: Oh, you know, it's been so long since I've built a map by hand. Even when I was playing growing up, it was cabochon, Mancala beads, and a dry erase map.
MATT: Yeah.
BRENNAN: I'm like: All right, we don't have to overthink it or go overboard. It's a small little town, it's a little camp. I was like: But these trees are nice. Ooh, a well! Then suddenly you're like-- Then it's 90 minutes and you're like: (gasps) A fully rendered town!
MATT: You understand!
BRENNAN: You understand. It is a flow state you wouldn't-- It's "Matrix" line code. Oh my god, everything, the world at your fingertips. It's intoxicating.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: It's lovely.
ROBBIE: "So okay, in ExU: Divergence, when did you get the idea to have some of the party members be gods? Specifically for Matt to be to All-Hammer?"
BRENNAN: Right away! (laughter)
BRENNAN: I had the idea right away. No, because it felt like a-- I love Matt with all my heart, and of Matt's many virtues, generosity of spirit is key among them, by which I mean, you have to fucking overpower this guy to give him his flowers. And you have to force the compliment. So I did it through trickery, and it was really lovely. But it was just, too, the idea of knowing Matt's connection to dwarves and also the idea of Divergence being this period of the gods leaving. And specifically, too, because we've had mortal gods in Downfall and that idea of catatheosis and embodying mortal form. It felt like a beautiful way to have a story that was so much about mortals picking up the pieces that even the gods were like, "Oh, if we're going to help, we have to be people." Right? To me, that was the moral of Divergence, was that it was about mortals saving their own world and even the gods that want to help go, "The best way for us to help is to be mortal."
ROBBIE: I'm going to throw out this and ask a question in my own brain. When you're starting off the process of crafting a story, do you like to come at it from a plot-driven, or are you looking to impart a thematic idea first? What drops into your head first? Because your work is full of, obviously, themes and ideas that you want to impart, obviously from the question that you just answered. So would you say you start with an idea, or would you say you start with character and story?
BRENNAN: It's really funny to-- Forgive a really (chuckles) nerdy answer. But it's like talking about space and time, and they can't coexist without each other. So plot and character or plot and character and theme, if you move any slider to zero, they all disappear, right? So there's a sort of-- But what's interesting is, all of these were love letters to different parts of Exandrian lore. It depends on the series we're talking about. So with Calamity, the initial thing was, what we know in the lore is the Calamity was started by a guy called Vespin Chloras, and the very first fun creative challenge is, we know that we're going to have six players at the table. How do you make all of them responsible for something that a guy named Vespin Chloras did? How do you make all of them share the sin of the Age of Arcanum, which is hubris? So you go: Oh, that's the first step, is thinking about six people experiencing hubris and how Vespin's error was compounded over a cascading disaster. So that's how you start it with Calamity. Then moving to Downfall, it was just, in the destruction of that, what's the most painful part of that? Yeah, I guess pain directs me. I'm driven by pain. I'll unpack that later. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Yeah. But it was like: Oh, well, the Prime Deities' experience of that has to be the most painful part, so getting to a personal, first person experience of the Prime Deities destroying a mortal civilization and the crisis of self caused by that. Then for Divergence, it was like, time for the little guys! And really wanting to show that the thing that moves Exandria out of the Calamity is actually not something as acute. The start of Calamity is the most acute, and the end of it is the most diffused. The era ends, and now every single person shares an equal slice of responsibility for building the world again.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Well, you touched on it a little bit, the connectivity, which is a good segue into this question. "How much of the trilogy of ExU, Calamity, Downfall, and Divergence, was planned beforehand?" Did you know where you would continue, where to connect next series to series, or was it more like a stepping stone that you discovered along the way?
BRENNAN: Over the past several years, I've been falling down the hill of my own life at top speed. None of this is planned. (laughter)
MARISHA: Wow.
TRAVIS: "Falling down the hill of my own life."
TALIESIN: Painted a picture.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah.
MARISHA: "At top speed." Very relatable.
TRAVIS: (thudding)
BRENNAN: Just pans, and my wallet, and my shoes are off.
TRAVIS: "Princess Bride" fall.
LIAM: Don't eat shit, don't eat shit, don't eat shit, don't eat shit!
TRAVIS: As you wish!
MARISHA: Too many limes.
BRENNAN: So to answer the question as honestly as possible, every single one of these miniseries, I have approached with total focus on that and that alone. So there was no thought of what was to come after. It all grew organically, which is the intoxicating and mesmerizing part of this art form.
MARISHA: To do something with you. We had already been toying around the idea of thinking of wanting to do something in Calamity. Aabria, of course, had come in and done the first ExU arc, and I remember being like: Man, I think Brennan would crush like a Calamity miniseries, but if he wants to do something funny or something like "Pirates of Rumblecusp," that's something cool, too. Then Brennan came in for a pitch meeting and he was like: Look, I could do something funny like "Pirates," or-- (laughter)
MARISHA: Or I could do Calamity. I was like: Thank god. Yes, do that.
SAM: "We got him."
BRENNAN: It was like a lunch with Matt and Travis specifically where, I think it was--
SAM: At Sizzler.
BRENNAN: At Sizzler--
SAM: Oh yeah.
MARISHA: Where all good things happen.
LIAM: All you can eat.
BRENNAN: "Eat fresh." What is it, what do they say at Sizzler?
ROBBIE and SAM: Not much.
MARISHA: That's Subway. (laughter)
TRAVIS: "I'll see you later."
BRENNAN: "Pizza, pizza."
ASHLEY: (laughs)
BRENNAN: Because Matt had mentioned like, Hey--
MARISHA: Sizzler.
BRENNAN: -- as we open the sandbox up and we want to play with our friends and have people come in and share stories, it really was this moment-- I don't know if, Matt, you intended this, but you were like: We could do anything. It's like we could, you know, there's Wildemount, there's Marquet, and then we could even play with time. You could even do The Age of Arcanum. That's how underlined it felt to me when you said it. (laughter)
BRENNAN: I was like, ooh, Matt likes that. Of course it immediately made me, it immediately made me go like, and then I went and reread the lore and looked at it and I think you guys had already made the video that was the Schism through Calamity explainer video at that point in time.
MARISHA: Yes.
BRENNAN: Which is a beautifully-made video, you can go check it out. It was-- I looked at that and I was like: Oh man, you could do a sick disaster movie--
MARISHA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Of these mages in their fucking towers and everything's fucked.
MARISHA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: And we did it.
ROBBIE: That's a sick log line, too: "Everything's fucked."
ASHLEY: Everything's fucked; everybody go through.
MATT: Yeah, it's true. I saw one question there, someone asking about what happened to Patia's orb.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah, that's actually a question on here, too.
MATT: Oh, there we go.
ROBBIE: So it must be a good question.
MATT: Look at that.
MARISHA: You should watch Divergence.
MATT: You should watch Divergence because it explains part of that. But you're here for a spoiler, so I'm going to talk about it anyway. Well, no, because it was the end of Calamity with the entire sequence of Patia's orb and the release of it that immediately, even watching it happen when we were filming it, it was like, what an interesting jumping-off point for the Cobalt Soul.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
MATT: The idea of an entire, you know, collection of minds through history that are about to be collection and safety of dangerous knowledge, and disseminating and protecting that for an entire age. So once that happened, it was like: Well, that is going to be the spark. But we kept that in the heads until the opportunity came for that being a book or something else, and instead, you got to actually work it into Divergence.
BRENNAN: Which was awesome, and you know, like, again, the fact that Marisha launched an orb filled with all knowledge through space and time to be caught by her beforehand, but centuries later--
MARISHA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: It was so fucking sick. It was awesome, it was so cool.
MATT: Yeah, in my mind, currently it exists deeply sealed somewhere on Exandria in the deepest of vaults beneath the most carefully-guarded monastery of the Cobalt Soul, in a library subterranean vault that no one has probably stepped foot in for hundreds of years.
TRAVIS: The one with Chetney's ass eggs.
LIAM: With a stone statue of a swole dragonborn sitting in lotus position above it.
MATT: Yeah. Hell yeah.
TALIESIN: It's also an incense burner, though.
LIAM: Yeah.
LAURA: I smell a heist one-shot.
MATT: Yeah!
MARISHA: Oh god, oh god.
ROBBIE: "Liam, how exactly did Brennan go about recruiting you for his sneaky Divergence plans?"
LIAM: Oh man, well, it was a great session zero and came with like two or three loose ideas. But my favorite one, the one that I was like: I could do any of these, whatever works with the chemistry of what we figure out here today. But I could, I've been thinking about a dragonborn who is a lone wanderer on the road. Like we're in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." I remember saying "Gold Dragonborn" out loud and in the middle of that meeting, Brennan's like, "Let's talk about that later." So I accidentally walked in, ready to conspire before I even knew it.
ROBBIE: For-- go ahead, yeah.
BRENNAN: I was going to say that it was such a huge layup and again, because like, the-- I don't know, there was a lot of confluence. Like, there was very little trap-laying on my part. The shapes all took place, and especially because I feel like the Platinum Dragon and the All-Hammer were not gods that we had necessarily seen the most of or had dedicated PCs for, but also are dedicated to things that are very like-- What's the word I'm looking for? That feel very heroic. There are a lot of gods that have domain, like the Stormlord's domain is fucking enormous and of the natural world, but you have like, honor, justice, craft, creation as being really things that are in the domain of what mortals do. So it felt very fitting for those two to be like: No, we're 0th level. We're trying to make the world better. We have this one last task and then the gate is built.
MATT: I just wanted to make an old dwarf.
BRENNAN: And baby, you made the oldest. (laughter)
MATT: God fucking damn it.
LIAM: I want to know what the early conversations were, because I knew that he "Inception"-ed you toward that outcome. But with the early conversation, like, did you float a couple of ideas or was always like: This is my chance to play the quintessential dwarf, or how did it go in the beginning?
MATT: I mean, it's hard to think back, but like, I love dwarf PCs. I love dwarves in general. They've always been one of my favorite races in the fantasy genre. I love what they represent. I love their sense of family and craft and, you know, legacy through building and art and construction. I just-- no one barely plays dwarves in our games. Like, you're the only person who's dipped toes into it with the Darrington Brigade. I was like, I'm going to bring another dwarf. I don't care, I don't get to play a PC very often, I'm doing the dwarf. But I also love the idea of playing a character that is at the very end of their life, especially a very hard life, and having that opportunity in their final days to make a difference. I feel like they, you know, left the world better than they found it. I was truly like, fully invested in the idea of the bookend of Divergence, letting him be the theme of the end of the age is also the end of, you know, this poor torn dwarf's existence and finally leaving something meaningful in the world and then just fading into stone and dust. And you're like: Yeah, about that, instead, I'm going to punch you in the soul for the rest of your life. So, cool, thanks.
BRENNAN: (grunts)
TRAVIS: Gotcha.
ROBBIE: "In the C3 finale," though, we're talking about creating and crafting, the Divine Gate is destroyed by all the gods together. Was the All-Hammer wrong about the gods not being able to destroy it? Or was he just saying it meant that only one god can destroy it, but all of them together can? Or was it destroyed in some other not exactly godly way?" This could be for either of you, of course, so.
MATT: I mean, yeah, if you want to go ahead.
SAM: I'll take this one, I'll take this one. (laughter)
BRENNAN: I defer to Matt.
MATT: Well, in modern-day Exandria, the Divine Gate, after it was finally placed and constructed, it could not be deconstructed unless there was a complete agreement. If there was, you know, all those that were responsible for its construction. And all gods, to a certain degree, all lent to the creation of the Divine Gate, the Primes at least. It could not be dissolved unless all the Primes were in agreement to it to prevent an inner corruption from causing this terrible cataclysm. So that was the initial design. But in those early, early development stages of actually building it, there's a whole bunch of weird, fun, kooky things that could come up, which I thought was a fun question that got brought up in Divergence.
BRENNAN: Yeah, I took it very much as the All-Hammer thwarting an attempt for a single god to bypass the gate--
MATT: Yeah.
BRENNAN: -- on their own, right? That essentially it's like: This is how we get around, because you know, especially beyond Exandria, the gods are like, and I think we've talked about this before, almost even more omnipotent as they get that one step past, you know, they're even more vast. So the idea of like: I've decided I'm done with this, ping! And the gate flies open, that there would be, yeah, that there's a big difference between unanimity and some god being sneaky and being like, "Oh, I left my keys, I'm going back." (laughter)
ROBBIE: If you're talking about crossing that threshold, "What would've happened if the kid crossed the threshold and was taken by the Lord of Lies? Like, would we know that Asmodeus ends up beyond the Divine Gate?"
TRAVIS: ♪ Asmodeus ♪
ROBBIE: So if (giggles) so if his plan worked, how would you have dealt with that?
BRENNAN: That's not my problem, that's the PCs' problem. I don't have to--
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: I'm not here to have solutions in mind. I'm here to throw sticks at bicycle wheels. I do that and then they fix it. I would say the kid would escape, you know, the Lord of the Hells would be like, "Quickly, away to my vast chambers that I might quickly speed-run puberty and then--" (laughter)
BRENNAN: "Then take this world by storm," and then they'd have to find the kid and exorcize him, you know, I can imagine--
SAM: Crazy montage.
BRENNAN: Crazy montage. (laughter)
MATT: The Divine Gate, you know, they cannot cross the threshold back into Exandria, but there is precedent for gods being shunted through the Divine Gate and beyond. That's how Vecna was sealed with the Divine Trammels at the end of Campaign 1. So there could have been an arc in which Asmodeus--
LAURA: ♪ Asmodeus ♪
MATT: -- was locking the other side and there would've been probably a narrative in the future to explore in some way in which how they finally managed to exorcize and punt him back beyond the gate and seal him once more.
ROBBIE: So you're giving your players tools and responsibilities and things that could hurt them or help them. "How did you decide what Vestiges to hand to your players? Were there any Vestiges in Divergence that we didn't see that you maybe would've liked to add, or--?"
BRENNAN: Oh my god, well, I got to hand over some of my favorite ones. Like, there are a bunch of amazing ones that, some of which we haven't gotten to see on stream yet, which were, I believe, the Stormgirdle, which was so fun, Condemner. Now, one of them I lied a little bit about, which was that Infiltrator's Key--
MARISHA: The key.
BRENNAN: It was a souped-up, modified Infiltrator's Key that had that little soul ruby in the middle.
MATT: I literally, like, when that happened, I was like: Huh, what an interesting take on that key.
BRENNAN: Well, because there's no-- In the text of the Infiltrator's Key, it's like, "Made from the blood of 12 master thieves." I was like: That sounds like some devil shit to me! (laughter)
BRENNAN: In the absence of text, I was looking at the source book and I was like: Just like you, Asmodeus, to not reference yourself in the text of your own magic item. (laughter)
BRENNAN: You left it all out, haven't you?
MATT: Yeah.
DANI: But why would the Cobalt Soul know that?
BRENNAN: Why would they know that? Yeah, but that's not-- It's one of those things where if I was there and someone was like, "A vestige, the blood of 12 master thieves," and I'd be like: Should I have this? That sounds awful!
SAM: That sounds gross. (laughter)
TALIESIN: Just do as you're told.
TRAVIS: Just do as you're told.
TALIESIN: Just do as you're told.
ROBBIE: Well, these answers are incredibly astute and so fun to listen to, but I think there's one that is burning in everyone's mind. "What happened to 'Grubbling?' Did he make it to Torm's Hill and join the Roach Gang?"
BRENNAN: Did Gubbling?
ROBBIE: Gubbling.
BRENNAN: Yes, sorry, yes, Gubbling did. In my head, he did. I think that he went to go join the Roach Gang and then they explained what they did and he went, "That sounds frightening," and then-- (laughter)
BRENNAN: And then just became a farmer.
ROBBIE: Good. (laughter)
ROBBIE: That's the happiest ending, to just become a farmer.
BRENNAN: Yeah. 100%.
TRAVIS: "Agriculture sounds good." (laughter)
BRENNAN: "This was never presented as an option for me before."
DANI: "I just want a spade." (laughter)
BRENNAN: Yeah.
ROBBIE: "For Matt and Liam, did experiencing ExU: Divergence make you really think differently about certain characters who lived through it, like Ludinus? Or did it solidify in your mind the reasons why those characters are so hardened by the life they endured?"
LIAM: I mean, every human being, every mortal reacts to the stimulus around them in different ways, right? I don't know, I would love to get a look at Ludinus' life in those days to see what knocked him around.
MATT: Yeah, in my mind, Ludinus lost a lot, you know, as a young man coming into the worst days of the Calamity. And probably raised in a very loving environment and then watching each person he cared about torn from him in horrible ways. Often, from his vantage point, and with no reason to believe otherwise, as a direct consequence of these conflicts. Then to watch them all disappear.
MARISHA: Yeah.
MATT: To watch them all go away and to feel abandoned, destroyed, and left with this knowledge that what was the purpose, what was the reason? You know, he's someone that I can empathize with what he's been through and despise who he's let it turn him into. Yeah, people have an opportunity to explore that in depth in some other way, I don't know.
TALIESIN: I love that we didn't see him in the game, too.
MATT: Hm?
TALIESIN: Like, I love that we never saw him in the game. Like it felt good that he was as inconsequential to us as humanly possible.
MARISHA: Did you almost fall off the chair?
TALIESIN: Yeah, no, I just almost broke it, that's a-- (laughter)
TALIESIN: There's a difference. I would've stayed in it, except the chair would've gone down.
MATT: Fair. (laughter)
LIAM: I'll add in that I like that Erro's mortal life was an antithesis for Ludinus because he-- So he dove after his brother knowing he was going to lose his memory. I think that the way I think of it is he aimed himself at two of his most faithful and even-keeled followers, which were Erro's parents, a priest, and a paladin of the Platinum Dragon, to get him raised right and get him in and to reinforce who he already was as a deity. Then the idea of having him travel across half the planet and lose so much was-- you know, he's the god of justice. So his end result, his decision is, we really have to get out of here. It's not just what we are doing to these people. So the way to like drive that into the bones of this mortal, who doesn't remember he's a god, is to make him lose horribly. So he lost his father fleeing, crossing the sea. He got over here, I imagined a Roanoke situation where survivors got here, some of them went off to look, they came back, those people were gone. Some sort of a-- They found a settlement, lived there for a little bit, disease, his mother died. He had an adoptive father, like an associate or a friend of his parents. Then that guy died and then he kept traveling alone. He'd kind of gotten bitter. Then he found a woman who made him find joy and love again and had that ripped away. So like, I wanted him to get hit hard so that when he remembered who he was, and this is me above the table as deputy DM, when he remembered who he was, he could look back at the life he'd had and be like: What we've done here is not right and it's time to go.
BRENNAN: My favorite thing about that, too, was that it would be so easy to be like: Oh, Erro disproves something about Ludinus, I think that's maybe overly simplified.
LIAM: Simplified, yeah.
BRENNAN: Because Erro had the soul of a god--
LIAM: Yeah.
BRENNAN: -- and lost faith. So the Calamity was pretty fucking bad. You know, like, Calamity was pretty bad. Someone who's literally got divinity in him-- Well, that was my favorite thing, too. And Celia, who played Nia so beautifully.
MARISHA: Yeah, love you, Celia.
BRENNAN: Shout out to Celia.
LIAM: Great table.
BRENNAN: So brilliant.
ASHLEY: (clapping)
MARISHA: Yeah, great table.
BRENNAN: I love that there was a dynamic that Celia was not aware of where she was going like, "I know the gods won't let us down." And two gods were like, "They might." (laughter)
BRENNAN: Whatever faith you have, let me be clear, it would be gross if I had that faith in myself, like, have some fucking humility, but also like, "I don't know, man, I'm tired." (laughter)
BRENNAN: I loved that, it was a perfect dynamic. I loved it so much.
ROBBIE: All right, we're going to open it up into general Exandria questions.
MATT: I deserve it.
ROBBIE: Wait, what happened?
LAURA: I just kicked him.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Kick him again. (laughter)
SAM: Robbie, I saw one from chat. It was by a user named Vespin Clitoris.
ROBBIE: Oh.
LAURA: Great name.
TALIESIN: Solid one.
BRENNAN: Woo!
ASHLEY: Solid name.
SAM: They had asked, is the Nordverse part of Exandria?
MARISHA: No.
ROBBIE: Oh.
SAM: And I think, yes.
MARISHA: No.
ROBBIE: Yes.
SAM: I think the Nordverse is in Exandria somewhere.
MARISHA: No.
TALIESIN: It's in a snow globe.
MARISHA: It's in a snow globe.
MATT: The greater cosmos.
TALIESIN: Yeah, it's in a snow globe.
LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah.
DANI: Yes and no. (laughter)
MATT: It's what was left when Tengar was destroyed. Just the Nordverse.
ASHLEY: Oh man.
MATT: I saw a question earlier that somebody mentioned that when the Matron did the ritual of Catatheosis, someone asked why she knew about the beacon, does she understand the nature of the Luxon? I was like: The gods do not fully understand the nature of the Luxon. The Luxon is still a large mystery that they have their suspicions and a more or less a subconscious understanding or theorem of what its cosmic essence would be. But the Matron, more than any other god, is very familiar with the power of dunamis and the beacons because they are specifically one of the things that breaks the cycle of death that she looks over, the passage of the soul into the afterlife was the structure that gods created when they came to Exandria. The consecution process of the Kryn Dynasty that the beacons can maintain, essentially breaks that cycle and tears those spirits away from the entire realm that she oversees. So she is very familiar with it. In fact, even utilizing it in that final ritual was a very conflicting point for her, but was another one of those examples of doing what was best for the greater good of her and her brethren using something that up from that point, she largely despised.
MARISHA: Yeah, that's interesting.
DANI: There's this one city in Exandria that keeps giving her the finger.
MATT: More or less. Yeah.
ROBBIE: "So the gods are mortal or about to be. So what does that mean for beings like Galdric and Uk'otoa, now that they're gone?" I know I messed it up. It's okay.
MATT: No, it's all right.
ROBBIE: Oh, didn't I mess it up?
DANI: No, you did great.
ROBBIE: Did I do it right?
DANI: Perfect.
ROBBIE: Really?
MATT: I'm so proud of you. (claps)
ROBBIE: Oh man. I'll learn my lore someday. With the gods gone, can they rise to greater prominence?
MATT: When the cats are away, baby.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Deaths go up.
MATT: Divinity is gone for a while and in some cases, might be gone for extended periods. So lesser idols and beings of great interest and ambition. There's a power vacuum. There's a time for them to do their best to claim what space they can. This new age is likely going to be a very tumultuous one. There will be a rise of demagogues and cults of personality and many entities that have been lying in wait and in the shadows under the watchful eye of the Primes. And now that they're away, this is an opportunity for them to seize. So yeah, it's going to get real interesting in Exandria.
ROBBIE: So power vacuum might be bad? (laughter)
MATT: It'll be interesting.
ROBBIE: Okay.
LIAM: For the make-believe people, but for the people playing or watching, it's great.
LAURA: Can we totally change subject for just one second?
ROBBIE: Yeah.
LAURA: Have you ever thought about singing "It's Hard to Be The Bard?" Have you ever heard that song?
TALIESIN: I love that song.
SAM: What is that?
LAURA: Isn't it so good?
TALIESIN: It's so great.
LAURA: I was like, the whole time you were talking, I'm envisioning you singing it. You'd be so good at it.
MARISHA: What song is this?
MATT: Thank you, Laura. You've now imparted the internet's drive to force me to sing that at some point.
TALIESIN: It'll be great karaoke--
LAURA: Has anybody already said it before?
MATT: No.
LAURA: Oh.
MATT: But now it will follow me to every event and convention.
LAURA: Oh my god. It'll be so good.
LIAM: Luckily, you're an excellent singer.
MATT: I thought she was about to apologize. She's like, "No, it's perfect." (laughter)
LIAM: Oh, eat shit, eat shit. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Quick, Laura, what was Imogen's grandmother's first name? I'm kidding. (laughter)
ROBBIE: "You said in the past that Imogen could have gone evil."
LAURA: Obviously.
MARISHA: Like 12 different ways.
LAURA: Yeah. Yeah.
ROBBIE: "So what events" of those 12 different ways in particular do you think could have pushed her over the edge?"
LAURA: Oh, personally, outside of exploring Predathos' body.
MARISHA: Oh!
LAURA: If Laudna had died. If Laudna had died-died.
MARISHA: Yeah.
LAURA: I don't think Imogen would've stayed good and happy. And if Laudna-- Not only if Laudna would've died-died, but if Laudna would've given over to Delilah.
MARISHA: I would've broken bad with you.
LAURA: I know.
MARISHA: We got close.
LAURA: We did.
MARISHA: We got close to breaking bad.
LAURA: Yeah. Then when it came down to it, I was like: No!
MARISHA: I know. Yeah.
LAURA: I chickened.
MARISHA: You did.
SAM: That's so scary.
LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Oh, I think I said this-- Have you seen that fail video of the two girls jumping off the cliff?
LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: And one chickens out on the other, the last minute and it causes the other girl to slip, eat shit, falls down the cliff?
SAM: Yeah.
LAURA: Yeah, I let you fall down the cliff.
MARISHA: Yeah.
LIAM: Well, also, though, if you break bad, you're handing your character away and sometimes it's hard to let go.
LAURA: I know, I know. Honestly, that seems kind of fun.
TRAVIS: That's so much better.
MARISHA: (laughs)
BRENNAN: I have a really silly question for people, if I can. I've realizing, I've gotten to play with everyone here in one time in the past. I got three people. I got Travis, Sam, and Marisha in Calamity. I got Ashley, Laura, and Taliesin in Downfall, Matt and Liam in Divergence. Which of your prime core of the present Exandrian characters would've been the worst fit for your prequel?
SAM: Oh.
MATT: (laughs) That's a question.
BRENNAN: If you had to swap out your prequel story character with one of your core Exandrian characters?
MARISHA: Beau would've been horrible.
BRENNAN: (laughs) Beau placed into the Ring of Brass.
MARISHA: She'd be like: I hate hate this. She'd be like: I'm going to fucking bring this whole city down myself. Vespin who? Fucking Beauregard, motherfucker.
BRENNAN: Lord of the Hells opens the tree up like: Hello? Oh, it's burning already, shit.
MARISHA: Yeah. (laughter)
TRAVIS: I think Chetney would've probably been a pretty decent Eye of Avalir, but Grog would've been-- (laughter)
ASHLEY: Woof.
TRAVIS: -- just crime run amok. No wonder that city fell. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Dumb motherfucker.
MATT: Ring of Brass gathers, and the doors open and Grog walks in, the rest of them go (sighs).
MARISHA: Oh fucking.
TRAVIS: (Grog) It's all right. I'm here. The Ring of Brass perdurs. (laughter)
MARISHA: This is the new guy? This nepo baby? (laughter)
LAURA: I think it's pretty obvious, Jester would've been horrible.
BRENNAN: For secret-- for "Mission Impossible" god style.
LAURA: Yeah.
MATT: Oh no.
LAURA: Horrendous. She would've had too much power as a god, number one, to wreak havoc. But also she would've really tried to make Asmodeus come to the good side. She really would've thought she could've helped.
BRENNAN: Wow. Zerxus round two. Zerxus 2.0.
LAURA: 100%.
TALIESIN: The Jester-Ashton combo would've been great up there. I feel like it would've gone great.
LAURA: Oh my gosh. They need to hang out.
TALIESIN: I know. I'm really excited any time we finally get to do that. That looks breakable. You want to hit that? Yeah!
LAURA: Okay.
TALIESIN: I wonder what that button does.
LAURA: Oh my gosh.
LIAM: I think that Bren Aldric Ermendrud would've died of dysentery at age seven. (laughter)
LIAM: But Vax probably would've helped Fiedra start the Roach Gang.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
MATT: Yeah.
LIAM: He'd have been fine.
BRENNAN: Totally, totally.
MATT: What about you guys?
SAM: I mean, if Taryon Darrington were a broadcaster--
LAURA: Oh my god.
SAM: It might work for a while, but I think he would be so overwhelmed with all the attention that he would be like--
MARISHA: He'd crack.
SAM: I think he would love it and he would be like: I'll do whatever you want if you get me on TV more. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Screw these druids. (laughter)
SAM: Let's do bad shit. Just put me on TV. (laughter)
LIAM: The 75th annual Hunger Games begin. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Pompadour.
MATT: Ashley?
ASHLEY: I'm going with Fearne because I feel like it could go either way.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
ASHLEY: It could go either way.
BRENNAN: Yeah, following that track down where it's like: One of our companions has alerted the Magisterium that this is all happening. Oh no! Like the degree of chaos that would've unfolded from that would've been--
ASHLEY: I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to-- I'm so sorry.
TALIESIN: I don't know. (laughter)
TALIESIN: Am I supposed to lie?
ASHLEY: I just misunderstood.
LAURA: Taliesin said Ashton.
TALIESIN: Oh, Ashton definitely.
MARISHA: Oh, for sure.
TALIESIN: Especially if Fearne and Jester, too. That that trio would be a fucking chaos.
LAURA: Oh, it would be a mess.
TALIESIN: Fucking chaos.
BRENNAN: Fearne, Jester, and Ashton infiltrating Aeor surreptitiously. That's great.
MATT: I want to see it now.
ASHLEY: We're here.
BRENNAN: How about NPCs for you, Matt? Yeah, who would your--
MATT: Oh my goodness.
BRENNAN: I mean, you have a broad palette.
MATT: Oh, Artagan. (laughter)
MATT: Artagan entirely. Just playing all sides.
ASHLEY: Gaz.
MARISHA: Oh my god.
ASHLEY: Gaz.
MATT: Gaz Tomo. He's like, "All right, let's get this. Let's rebuild this hill town here. It's great." (laughter)
MATT: Oh my god. They're asking for the song now, Laura. Thank you.
MARISHA: Of course they are.
MATT: But hey, I am singing on April 4th!
MARISHA: Oh yeah, that's right.
ASHLEY: Yeah, you are!
MATT: For Creator Karaoke at the Vermont Theater in LA. Get tickets. They're on my Instagram. Me and Freddie Wong and Caldwell Tanner. I am now because they're asking about karaoke stuff.
MARISHA: Yeah, it's true.
MATT: We need to move tickets because it's fun.
MARISHA: Well, I think-- Oh, what were you saying?
LIAM: Well, I have two questions from @VoiceofOBrien.
MARISHA: Okay.
LIAM: The first is for Brennan. One is: Why the Lord of Hells? What is it about the Lord of Hells that you love so, so, so much? Is it something inside of you? Is it rich fertile territory to mine?
BRENNAN: I don't know. Because the Betrayers, I was told that if I came and ran miniseries for Critical Role, I could take my own Betrayer home. (laughter)
MARISHA: Basically.
BRENNAN: They have bags at the door.
LIAM: Comes with the Happy Meal.
BRENNAN: If you-- Well, I think, look, so, I went to school, I went to SUNY Ulster and I studied with an incredible professor there who's a philosophy professor. I've been obsessed with ethics, the formal study of ethics for a long time.
SAM: It's pronounced "Essek," actually. (laughter)
ASHLEY: Etteks.
DANI: Half our audience. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Ethics and Essek. And there's something about--
LIAM: Those are opposites.
BRENNAN: There's a line from Calamity where I've talked about and especially, too, because I feel like I've talked with Matt about the Chained Oblivion and how special a position the Chained Oblivion holds and the evil of that being so alien and so monstrous. And it's the evil of looking at outer space and feeling like there's something out there, it just doesn't know what I am. I don't even register on its wavelength as something living. It's like, that is a type of evil that is so frightening. I think the other side of that coin is the intimacy of something so human because trickery as a domain is not alien, right? It's deeply fucking human. There's a line in Calamity where it's like: The Lord of the Hells hates you because he knows-- So it's like he hates you because he knows you and he needs you to know that you deserve it. That idea of punishment, of like: Oh, you're bad because I'm bad and you're here to punish me. That is so frightening. I think it's a type of evil that is really freaky, but captivating to watch and to perform because it's personal. He doesn't hate you dispassionately. He really sees you and fucking hates you.
ROBBIE: Why are you pointing at me?
BRENNAN: I'm giving you the-- (laughter)
ROBBIE: It's really uncomfortable. It's the green chair.
MARISHA: Well, that's the thing with Brennan, because you are one of the kindest, most standup guy. You are an arbiter for all that is good. You are a fighter for humanity and human rights. Seeing the way you play the Lord of the Hells and some of the other bad guys. I'm like: I thank god you wake up and you choose that every day, that you choose to be good because it is fucking terrifying.
LAURA: To be real good at being bad.
MARISHA: You being so good at being bad.
BRENNAN: Thanks, guys. (laughter)
BRENNAN: I would.
LIAM: He's got us primed to murder us all now.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
LIAM: @VoiceofOBrien's second question is for Matt, and that is in Campaign 2, there was moon stuff.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
LIAM: So when were you cooking Ludinus in your mind for the top of the pyramid in Campaign 3. Mid Campaign 2? Prior to Campaign 2 even starting?
MATT: So I wanted to eventually get to Ruidus-centric lore by the end of Campaign 1. I decided if we got to a third campaign, I want that to be Ruidus involved. In Campaign 2, I began to consider how that lore would tie into a future event of Exandria. I already had the idea for Predathos in my head and where that fit into the history, but I didn't want to show the hand too early. So I began to drop little hints throughout Campaign 2, just little ones. And Ludinus, when I first created Ludinus, was, I hadn't thought about his whole backstory. So the two weren't immediately tethered. I just had these two disparate ideas. And the more that the Cerberus Assembly came to reality in the early third of Campaign 2, I thought Ludinus is exactly the person in a position of power, of longevity, and political influence to set up something on the scale that I would hope to unveil in Campaign 3. Then I began to, through Campaign 2, develop in my head the history of Ludinus and how that would tie into through Ruidian chaos and the Apogee Solstice in Campaign 3. So that's the timeline, best I can recall.
LIAM: Okay. Satisfied.
MATT: (laughs)
SAM: It's the long game.
ROBBIE: Travis.
TRAVIS: Oh!
ROBBIE: You love werewolves. (laughter)
ROBBIE: So I was shooting for the worst transition ever. "Why did you choose to have a mechanic of the d100 where you could randomly kill your character and take away your sweet precious werewolf at any moment? Why? Why'd you do it?"
TRAVIS: Look, Chetney was just supposed to be fun. His old ass was supposed to die, but he wouldn't die in the fights. Then I was like: Okay, wait. Wait, wait, wait. What do old people do? They die in their sleep.
MARISHA and TALIESIN: "What do old people do?"
LIAM: If they're lucky.
ROBBIE: That's my favorite children's book, yeah.
TRAVIS: 400 plus years old. He's got to be on the cusp of that thing. But then I've got to make a mechanic for this. I even told Matt, I was like: If I roll trip zeroes, can I die in my sleep? He goes: If you want to. I was like: Can I have it grow so that with each level that I grow, the number gets larger and larger? He goes: I think that's pushing it a little bit. I regret it now because he's still alive.
MARISHA: Oh my god.
DANI: Why did you want him to die so badly?
TRAVIS: Because it's never happened in the game before, because you would have to wake up after succeeding or failing and being, as we do, all stuck in one budget room, and somebody's laying next to the dead guy! That would be amazing! And also tragic. And (fake crying)
MARISHA: One budget room!
LIAM: All right, tomorrow, we take on the Malleus Key. Chetney, are you ready?
LAURA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Yes!
LIAM: Chetney.
TRAVIS: Yes!
TALIESIN: Chetney?
TRAVIS: And he smells weird, and shit's happening, yes!
TALIESIN: Why does he smell weird?
DANI: Put him in the hole.
TRAVIS: Yes, there would be sad stuff, but fuck, that would've been great! Then I would bring something new in.
MARISHA: I sat next to Travis, and I swear to you guys, he got close a lot.
TRAVIS: I did, I did.
MARISHA: You got close, and no cigar.
TRAVIS: Just edged a couple times.
MARISHA: You did, you did.
TRAVIS: 99!
ROBBIE: Now, this is a transition I like. Speaking of edging.
MARISHA: Yeah, there we go.
TRAVIS: Softball. Softball.
ROBBIE: "Is Chetney Orym and/or Scanlan's father?"
MARISHA: Oh jeez.
LAURA: Oh, We already did--
TRAVIS: Yes, yes. Absolutely.
ROBBIE: We locked it in for sure.
MARISHA: He keeps saying yes.
ROBBIE: For sure. You agree to this?
LIAM: I don't know my father, so it's out of my hands.
TRAVIS: He doesn't really have a say in it. There are franchises all over Exandria.
LIAM: Oh, fantastic.
MARISHA: Franchises?
DANI: That's going to be a Matt question.
TRAVIS: He was very busy, he traveled a lot, and a lot of people liked his toys.
BRENNAN: Wait, sorry, did you just refer to children as franchises?
TRAVIS: 100%, 100%.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Region to region, for sure.
TRAVIS: 100%, yeah.
TALIESIN: He does this in real life, too.
MATT: That is the most Chetney thing.
ROBBIE: I'm stuck on Chet right now--
BRENNAN: The branding is strong. (laughter)
LIAM: What do you think happened in America in the 1800s, Brennan?
ROBBIE: "Were there any toys that you made that you didn't get to distribute?"
TRAVIS: Yeah, yeah.
LAURA: Oh yeah.
TRAVIS: There were two or three. I started writing down, after the Nana Morri pact, a bunch of designs, this that would unfurl or fold or crawl or unwind. There was a tumbling Orym that he made. There was, what's the Russian egg that has smaller--
BRENNAN: Matryoshka.
TRAVIS: Thank you, yeah. One of those that was each of the characters, and inside was one of the eggs. Yeah, yeah, a small one. Don't tell Fearne. There was a whole bunch of stuff. I was also trying to drop toys for Predathos, and Matt's like: That's fucking cute. Pick that shit up. (laughter)
MARISHA: Trying to distract him with your Russian eggs.
TRAVIS: Oh, it was Ludinus. He tried to drop it for Ludinus.
MATT: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ROBBIE: Ashley, we all know you want to steal Chetney's eggs, but you did steal a lot of stuff.
ASHLEY: I did.
ROBBIE: "Is there anything you wish you would've stolen?"
ASHLEY: The beacon.
BRENNAN: (gasps)
SAM: You tried.
ASHLEY: Easy peasy.
MARISHA: Wow.
ASHLEY: It was just so shiny.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
ASHLEY: It's a shiny, I mean, I want it.
MARISHA: What a wild mirror that would've been to Caleb handing over the beacon a campaign ago and you being like, yoink!
ASHLEY: What is--
MARISHA: Taking that back.
ASHLEY: This is so pretty. I want it.
ROBBIE: You do have the Skein of Fate now.
ASHLEY: I do.
ROBBIE: "Do you think that Fearne would ever consider playing with the strings of her friends?"
ASHLEY: Yes.
MARISHA: (gasps)
ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely.
MARISHA: For good, right?
ASHLEY: Just a little. You know, nothing crazy.
TRAVIS: What? Why not?
ASHLEY: Just, not a big pluck.
TRAVIS: Little?
ASHLEY: Just maybe a flick.
LAURA: But I feel like with Fearne, it'd be like, you'd flick it and then be like, that wasn't big enough, I want to see something cooler.
ASHLEY: Yeah, let me see if, you know--
TRAVIS: There you go, yeah.
ASHLEY: You know, just--
TRAVIS: Strum that banjo.
ASHLEY: Yeah, yeah.
LAURA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Hang on, I have a question.
ASHLEY: Absolutely.
LAURA: Fuck us all up.
MARISHA: @Marisha_Ray has a question.
TRAVIS: Wow, yes.
MARISHA: Speaking of the beacon and the beacons.
MATT: Yes?
MARISHA: Where were they during the Calamity, during the Age of Arcanum?
LAURA: Good question. I want to know this, too.
MATT: They were undiscovered.
MARISHA: They were still undiscovered?
MATT: Yeah.
DANI: Except for one.
MATT: Yep, the first one was discovered towards the end of the Calamity by the Bright Queen, yeah.
DANI: Aeor.
LAURA: She found it?
DANI: Well, there was also the one that the Aeor gods had, Prime Artifact.
MATT: So there would've been two. So no, so there was one that was uncovered in Aeor, you're right, and was being experimented on. Correct, I was thinking of the actual canonical lore.
DANI: You and I were thinking of two different beacons.
MATT: Two different lore points, yeah. No, Aeor did uncover a beacon and was in the process of studying it, and there was the one that the Bright Queen uncovered and began the Kryn Dynasty after they had gotten out from under the Spider Queen and then came to the surface and started in the ruins of Xhorhas and built the city of Rosohna.
MARISHA: So the Bright Queen has been around for as long as Ludinus has.
MATT: Correct.
DANI: She's about 1,000 years old, yeah.
MARISHA: Whoa.
TALIESIN: Very "2001: A Space Odyssey."
MARISHA: Whoa.
MATT: But also, she's lived through many lives.
MARISHA: Yeah.
MATT: You know, and that has its challenges.
LIAM: More about it in her Dark Horse comic.
MATT: Indeed, indeed.
TRAVIS: He uses that bong on fey creatures to stay alive.
MATT: Yes.
MARISHA: Oh yeah.
MATT: But yeah, in the lore of the Luxon, which you actually get to see some cool representations of it in the Bright Queen comic, is a precursor to any other life on Exandria. It's early, early creation. Myth, maybe not myth. But yeah, all the beacons, the fragments of the Luxon, have been there from the very beginning and have laid dormant, undiscovered until then.
TRAVIS: Sick.
MARISHA: Dang. Was Aeor trying to use the beacon that they had uncovered for the Malleus?
MATT: They had just begun to research it.
MARISHA: Okay, okay, so it wasn't about that.
MATT: It was one of things where it was like: We got this strange thing here. It seems to have some strange properties.
DANI: They were using it to-- It's what y'all were finding whenever y'all were going through Aeor as the Mighty Nein. They were using it to do the long rest tubes. It's why Fjord got his hair back.
MATT: Yeah, the bursts of time in a short--
DANI: And why y'all were able to have a long rest for--
LIAM: But they were like, look at this rod of uranium.
LAURA: That's right.
DANI: Yes, exactly. That's what they were-- And they were studying time travel with it. That's what Caleb disintegrated. Not a beacon, but their research.
MATT: Yeah, it was more or less like: There's something to this! With enough study, we'll be able to-- What's that klaxon? (explosion)
LIAM: Are we allowed to know where it came from?
MARISHA: Matt will never tell us.
MATT: No!
LIAM: Okay.
ASHLEY: ♪ I'll never tell ♪
MATT: The story's not over, y'all!
SAM: It is! It's over!
TRAVIS: We're never doing it ever again!
MATT: Sam, you're the only one who got fired. Everyone else is staying.
SAM: I cleaned out my locker!
ROBBIE: Speaking of which, there are about a billion deep lore questions that we could spend the next several hours on, but the night grows long. We've got to wrap this baby up. Is there anything, thoughts that you have in your mind, things that you wanted to say during the show you didn't get a chance to, closing thoughts from anyone and any--
SAM: I feel like we should give a shout out to all of the guest players who played with us for this campaign.
MATT: Oh yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah, so many.
SAM: Utkarsh, Aabria, Erika.
ASHLEY: Aimee.
MARISHA: Aimee.
MATT: Emily.
MARISHA: Emily.
LAURA: Christian.
MATT: Christian.
LIAM: We will forget somebody.
MATT: Christian.
MARISHA: Christian, of course.
LAURA: Why'd you start naming individually? We're going to forget someone.
MARISHA: Noshir.
SAM: You're going to forget. I already said three. You didn't say any.
ASHLEY: Emily.
MARISHA: We have Emily. Noshir. Oh my god, Alex Ward.
LAURA: Abu.
MARISHA: Abubakar, oh my gosh.
MATT: Definitely. And fucking Nick Marini.
MARISHA: Nick Marini, yeah.
BRENNAN: Lou Wilson.
MARISHA: Lou Wilson!
LAURA: Jasmine.
ROBBIE: Erica.
MATT: Yeah, and Lindbeck coming in, kicking ass.
MARISHA: Yes, Jasmine. Lindbeck.
LIAM: Jennifer Lopez.
MARISHA: Anjali Bhimani.
SAM: Jennifer Lopez.
ASHLEY: Bhimani.
MATT: God, so many incredible people. I'm so grateful. Fuck, you guys keep talking. I'm going to get emotional.
MARISHA: Yeah.
MATT: Keep going.
MARISHA: Luis.
BRENNAN: Luis Carazo!
LAURA: Luis! Luis, oh my gosh. Yeah.
MATT: Who's Luis?
LIAM: Too many people. Too many great people.
MARISHA: I think it is worth talking about, you know, look, you guys do this at the end of every campaign where you're like, there's so much to wrap up. There's still so many lingering plot threads. The answer is, yeah. That's true. Because hopefully, 10 years isn't the end of this.
LIAM: We're just getting started.
MARISHA: Just getting started!
SAM: Are we going to do more Exandrian content?
MATT: Yes. Christ.
MARISHA: We are going to do more Exandrian content. In fact, do you want to know who is dungeon mastering the next bit of Exandrian content?
SAM: Who, Marisha?
MARISHA: It's you, Sam Riegel.
SAM: Holy shit.
ROBBIE: What?!
ASHLEY: What?
ROBBIE: What a perfect time for a pitch.
DANI: Utkarsh. Thanks, Utkarsh.
LAURA: We said Utkarsh.
MARISHA: We film next week, so if you could come up with an idea and put it on my desk by end of day tomorrow, that'd be great.
SAM: Sure, sure.
ASHLEY: Awesome.
SAM: Yeah, yeah. I might have to borrow you for some--
BRENNAN: Well, I'm always happy to lend a hand. (laughter)
LAURA: Don't trust him, Sam!
MARISHA: There's obviously going to be so much more to do. Obviously, I know there's been a ton of people being like, it feels like there should be repercussions from Bells Hells' actions. Yeah!
TALIESIN: No.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
MARISHA: (laughs)
DANI: It's been 20 minutes.
MARISHA: Yes, man.
MATT: Yeah, yeah, if I'm going to be honest, we had a very long finale and there are so many things that I could've put in there and then decided we'll get to later. Otherwise, it would've been so much longer, and the way this year began, I think also, it was best to not touch on some of the more intense, darker moments as well because I think after the fires and many other reasons in our political sphere, best to not touch on that. Let's keep it happy and-- But indeed, there are many ramifications to the events at the end of C3 and Bells Hells, and maybe we'll get to touch on those in future stories, which will be fun.
MARISHA: Future stories. Future live shows. We have Australia coming up.
MATT: Yeah.
MARISHA: Wink, wink. Hint, hint.
TRAVIS: Chicago. Indianapolis.
MARISHA: Chicago.
SAM: Why is that a wink, wink? What are you trying to hint at?
MARISHA: I'm hinting at the live shows that everyone already knows about. (laughter)
SAM: Hint, hint!
MARISHA: Hint, hint. You know those live shows?
SAM: Get your tickets; they're already sold out. (laughter)
ROBBIE: All right, last chance for romance. Any more plugs? (laughter)
SAM: Robbie, you did so good tonight.
ROBBIE: Aw, thanks, baby.
MARISHA: You did!
ROBBIE: That's so nice of you.
ASHLEY: Yay! Just a natural.
SAM: Can we keep him, guys?
ASHLEY: (laughs)
MARISHA: He already said his contracts are with the lawyers.
LIAM: Contract negotiations.
TRAVIS: Gotta go.
ROBBIE: It's easy when the company's good. Folks, it's been fun, but it's late, and we are all talked out.
MATT: I have one more thing to say.
ROBBIE: Hmm?
MATT: If that's okay, just because we're at the end of Campaign 3 after 10 years.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
MATT: Celebration here.
ROBBIE: Yes.
MATT: I've gotten my emotions together a little bit here. This is the wildest, stupidest journey these past 10 years, and 12 1/2 for us since our home game, and that family has expanded in so many wonderful ways with so many wonderful people. The fact that we get to collaborate and build and tell stories in ways that mean so much to us, and that also means so much to you folks, as well, through all of its wonderful, messy, (laughs) chaotic swings here and there dice rolls and emotions, this is the greatest thing in my life, and all of you are the greatest people in it, and I'm very grateful, and I'm excited for all the great things to come. Still feels like we're just getting started.
MARISHA: Just getting started.
LIAM: Well, guess what? I'm going to say something, too. At the end of Divergence, when I was standing behind a curtain listening, trying to hear what was going on with everybody, I was so nervous, probably the most nervous I've been in years, because I wanted to thank you fully and properly for everything that you have done for everyone in this room for a decade. You have kept us on the edge of our seats, and kept us guessing, and made us laugh, and laughed at yourself, and make us cry, and the amount of sleepless nights and effort that you put into telling stories for this group, it has not gone unappreciated. Far from it. Quite the opposite. And thank you for setting me up for success to thank you so fully and properly. We love you, and thanks for 10 years, Matt.
MATT: Love you guys.
MARISHA: Mm! As Brennan said, it was the greatest love letter to you.
BRENNAN: None of you are safe around me. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Stay on your fucking toes. Understand? (laughter)
MATT: I think that's the perfect segue.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. We got so much in store for you this year and beyond, so stick around, follow us on our socials, and be on the lookout for our next State of the Role. I've been Robbie Daymond. Who knows what I'll be later.
BRENNAN: What happened?
ROBBIE: And is it Thursday yet? (cheering)