#hell on planet exandria

[c-kiddo]

looking at all the comparisons of the oldest to newest tmn arts again and honestly so sad that fjords nose got so straightened out like 😐 who gave him a nose job ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#kiddo say #hell on planet exandria #hes just so yassified but not in a way thats fun to me #give him some fat back into his face its so sad </3 #i like th long hair but . the hooked nose + beard with it couldve been so good. but instead he just looks dehydrated #thee post i mentioned in prev ask. it was in my drafts #matching post to me mourning cads hooded eyelids that got deleted in the fancy collectors figure sculpt </3 #but he has monolids in the new art so ^_^ . we stay winning #i wont talk about the newer yasha designs . yous know how i feel lol #i dont want to be mean also bc i think jesters new look is cute and fun but shes also got that league of legends splash art anatomy going o #like the waist and back arch is so extreme her spines just misaligned #it makes me sad . someone help my girl . get her a snack also

[usefulfictions]

on the value of storytelling;

Into the Water - Paula Hawkins // The Nutritionist - Andrea Gibson //  LIFE Magazine 1963 - James Baldwin // Anti-depressants are so not a big deal - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend // Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 2017 - Kazuo Ishiguro // Invisible Planets - Hao Jingfang (tr. Ken Liu) // tumblr user @/poseidonsarmoury // Road to Hell (Reprise) - Hadestown // Letters to Milena - Franz Kafka // The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger // Exandria Unlimited: Calamity - Brennan Lee Mulligan

#digital storytelling #on storytelling #web weaving #web weave #poetry

[utilitycaster]

look, I know polls are silly and fun and so I want you to understand writing this rant is silly and fun for me but EMON? Emon is the Critical Role Entry for Most Place of All Time? I must call bullshit. And so:

Friends, fellow critters, and people who have me blocked but hate read my blog each morning over breakfast: Emon is not even the Most Place on the Material Plane. It is not even the Most Place in Tal'Dorei. Hell, it's not even the Most Place on the fucking Bladeshimmer Shoreline, which includes a destroyed city now overtaken by bandits, and a cave system that hosts both a rift to the Far Realm and a different rock than residuum that can make a different magical drug than suude. Emon is if you took the aggressively mid vibes of Washington, DC and transplanted them to the inconvenient location and city of refuge for flaky people who avoid gluten for non-medical reasons of Los Angeles. The second Percival Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III invents the motorcar that sumbitch is going to have traffic bad enough to summon Tharizdun. Also there's a literal pit of fire that's been burning for 30 years that both hasn't been adequately addressed but also doesn't really seem that interesting. Like oh a bunch of dragons destroyed your city? Big deal. Draconia got so fucked up it doesn't exist anymore, and at least Westruun has some fucking charm. At least Pike and Grog actually lived there, whereas Vox Machina got a house in Emon and proceeded to spend their time literally anywhere else.

Here is a brief list of places on the planet of Exandria in the Material Plane - not even across Critical Role's main campaigns/EXU, which includes such non-Exandrian places as "living city of people who mind-melded and escaped to the Astral Sea during a century-plus-long war of the gods"; "Ligament Manor"; "Ryn's groovy pied-a-feu, man I wonder what made the scorch marks on that furniture, anyway", and "THE MOON THAT IS ACTUALLY AN PRISON FOR A THING THAT EATS GODS AND IS POSSIBLY HATCHING" - that are more of a place than Emon:

Jrusar: 5 spires no waiting, sweet cable car system, city almost entirely destabilized by goo creatures as part of an overly complicated plot to blow up the aforementioned moon

Bassuras: (literally "garbagetown") Run by Mad Max gangs and everyone is cool with it; regular sandstorms; one of those gangs apparently sits atop a hive mind and NO ONE has examined this (except for them)?)

Whitestone: has a tree planted by one god over a buried temple to another god that was corrupted in the name of a third, shittier god; overrun by zombies but it's fine now; streetlights and two bears that are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want.

Yios: The canal system of Venice meets the colleges per capita of Boston meets the orcs from your fantasies, also there's some kind of kitchen-based organized crime ring so intricate it could be its own campaign (so, also like Boston).

Vasselheim: literally no one understands what the fuck its government system is. Old as balls. Temples everywhere! Temples full of trees. Temples full of blood! Temples full of an old guy who will kick your ass. A sphinx that regulates the monster hunter mini-game. Presumably the giant titan full of the ancient cannibal dwarf city is like, still there, as a new fixture, since I don't see how they're moving that.

The arctic: where teleportation doesn't work, there's a river of lava in the middle of the snow, ancient ruins full of snow globes full of actual people, and the Chaos Bisexual Emerald - and that's just a smattering of what Eiselcross has to offer.

Since this is about space and not time we can toss Aeor and Avalir too, since they once were places, and while we're at it whatever the fuck is going on with the Shattered Teeth and its permanent fog cloud and fish dream cult and capitalist shipwrecked merchants.

And, of course, any arbitrary square millimeter of Wildemount, frankly, has more Mostness than the entirety of Emon could muster under absolutely ideal conditions. But for the sake of one place per region, let's hand it to Rosohna (city of eternal night for practical purposes, built over the Evil God Headquarters); Uthodurn (underground! Giant goats! Elves and dwarves, living together, mass hysteria!); Hupperdook (steampunk gnome party city); Nicodranas (Fjord, Jester, Veth, Marion, and Yussa literally all live there at once; plumbing used to be courtesy of an imprisoned marid...but watch out); and Blightshore (Blightshore).

In conclusion: Emon is boring, nominating it was a mistake, there are literally sealed gods in other parts of the world and also way better taverns, good night, and what the fuck.

#critical role #long post

[transfem-octopus]

So I think it’s fairly obvious at this point that the Imperium are planning to invade a colonize Exandria and seek to awaken Predathos in furtherance of their planned colonization of Exandrian.

My Question is how much does Ludinus know? Does he know that his Imperial Allies are pursuing the destruction of Exandria’s Gods so as to weaken its native Empires and make them vulnerable to a military invasion? Is he nothing more than a quisling hoping to curry favor with the Imperium by weakening Exandria.

Or is he completely in the dark about his allies intensions towards his planet. Is he so blinded by his hatred of the gods and his own hubris that he cannot see the forest for the trees? Men often hear what they want and they disregard the rest.

Or does he know what the Imperium is planning but doesn’t care. I’ve said it before I think Ludinus plans not to free Predathos but to consume the God Eater and become greater than the Gods. If that is his plan perhaps he thinks that it is he who is using the Imperium and not vice versa.

Either way there is no way Ludinus plan is not going to blow up spectacularly in his face and Bells Hells are going to have to clean up the mess.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #bells hells #ludinus da'leth #predathos #Kreviris Imperium #Ruby Vanguard

[trimmedbushproductions]

so here's my take on the new planar portal discovered on Ruidus, which I will henceforth refer to as Bell's Backdoor.

first, where does it go? well, we have no idea. probably to another plane of existence. possibly to Exandria (if the telepathic bond can't stretch between Ruidus and Exandria, even though they're on the same plane). possibly to an entirely different, completely unknown realm! but for right now I'm going to assume it's somewhere within the known cosmology of Matt's campaign setting.

and with that assumption, we at least know one place it isn't - the Plane of Water. Fearne emerged into a forest lake, whereas the Plane of Water should be... well, entirely underwater.

that means this water source probably isn't infinite. this place has weather (Matt described the presence of clouds and snow), which means it has a water cycle, which means this lake is being filled by rivers and rainfall and it's draining into an eventual ocean, etc etc.

but now we've got a planar portal in the lake, leading to Ruidus. the water flooding Bell's Backdoor isn't coming back out. it is, at least for the water, a one-way trip.

now, I'm no expert on fluid dynamics (feel free to correct me here if you are) but it seems to me that if you've got a lake draining into a one-way portal, the water should continue to flow until:

the lake runs dry

the cavern fills completely

water pressure equalizes between the two

none of these have happened. water continues to flow from Bell's Backdoor, the lake hasn't gone empty, and the cavern hasn't been flooded yet. this isn't what I'd expect from a portal that's been open for many thousands of years. even if some kind of magic is keeping the lake infinitely full, even if the cave hasn't flooded because of the water soaking into the ground or continuing into some vast underground cave network... it's been thousands of years! you can't pour water into an otherwise closed system for that long without seeing some kind of effect, right? this should have caught someone's attention a long time ago.

(please enjoy the mental image of Predathos whining about its flooded basement in the Weave Mind #vent channel)

so, I'm thinking that this portal only opened up when the Vanguard broke the seal on Ruidus. it may even have been a dormant portal that just re-opened; it was found in what seems like a magically-preserved ruin, so I wouldn't be surprised if the original inhabitants either constructed this area around a naturally-occurring rift or used magic to create their own, permanent one.

in any case, the portal is an incredible boon for the Hells and their allies. if they can find a way to reliably get an army through it - really stretch out Bell's Backdoor, let's say - they'll have a huge tactical advantage against the Vanguard.

BUT, if I'm right and the portal is new, they're also going to have to be very careful about using it. because if its existence is tied to the broken seal on Ruidus and the tether provided by the Bloody Bridge, it might close if the Bridge is destroyed. better hope nobody gets stuck on the wrong planet when that happens!

#Critical Role #Critical Role spoilers #Ruidus #Predathos #CR spoilers

[samcarter34]

Well I personally don’t think that Orym’s hypocritical or morally bankrupt or whatever for being okay with the death of a guy who 12 seconds prior threw acid in face.

But on a less snarky note, I think Bor’dor was a great example of the fact that yes, on an individual level members of the Vanguard can be decent and kind, but they’re still members of the Vanguard. They’re still members of a doomsday cult.

Like, the proudest moment of Bor’dor’s life was practicing magic with Team Issylra. Not meeting the Vanguard, not being accepted into their ranks, not even watching Ludinus enact what was supposed to be the Vanguard’s great victory. It was casting a cantrip with some people he met a few days ago. He connected with them enough that they were his proudest moment. And he still threw acid at them in a last ditch attempt to kill them after he got got. That’s what the Hells are up against.

Everything Ludinus has ever touched he has made worse, and now he’s trying to do that to all of Exandria, and the Vanguard are willing to do whatever it takes to see his vision fulfilled. So yeah, the Hells can grieve the tragedy of these people, they can feel anger at Ludinus for preying on these people’s pain to indoctrinate them, but if their response to hearing that the Hells are trying to stop an evil man from enacting his vision across the entire planet is to try to kill them, then no, it’s not morally wrong for the Hells to fight back. Tragic motive, still murder and all that.

So no, I don’t think the Hells were wrong for killing him, and I don’t think Orym’s ‘going dark’ for deciding to focus on what they’re doing instead of what happened to them in the past.

P.S. Really curious to see what effect, if any, this has vis a vis team Issylra’s opinion regarding Imogen’s mom.

P.P.S not to weigh in on the god debate, but despite everything Bor’dor did, specifically joining a cult dedicated to kill gods, Bor’dor was still reunited with his family in the afterlife. Just saying.

#critical role #long post #bor’dor dog’son #Bor’dor’s ‘I can vitriolic sphere’ vs Arkhan’s ‘I steal the hand of Vecna’ fight! #hint: Bor’dor wins #also because I am forever haunted by c2 bullshit takes #getting a lot of same vibes from people saying the Orym’s going dark that I got from ‘Caleb was wrong to kill the Sanitarium guards’

[villainihavedonethymotheronao3]

It would be very them if Bells Hells manage to sort out the deiphagic moon/the robot uprising/the neopagan Hishari posers/evil lady in your head disease; and as they’re wiping the sweat from their brows, all Exandria’s remaining cohesive governments approach to politely ask them to get the hell off this plane of existence.

They’re very nice about it! They’ve found a neutral bit of the Feywild close to a stable gateway, or alternately there’s a lovely bit of the Shadowfell—the real estate market is in an upturn there. It’s just that the husk of Delilah Briarwood, Liliana Temult’s godeater spawn, two fragments of Titans (housed in an Unseelie experiment gone rogue and a survivor of a splinter sect that famously perished meddling with forces beyond their reckoning), an aeormaton given to accidental heresies and homicides, and an alarmingly influential toymaker are the sort of lightning rods for trouble you don’t want in your post-global turmoil political environment. Even Orym’s different and won’t say why.

The best time to stop a doomsday situation is before it starts! So if they could just take this treasure, everyone’s thanks and best wishes, maybe bring their friend with a Betrayer God’s relic on her head with them, and skedaddle for a few decades. Go visit family. Your contributions will be remembered, your sacrifices are appreciated. Leave before you acquire any more ancient powers predating the planet itself.

#critical role spoilers #bells hells

[letsnotandsaywewantedto]

I appreciate that the e68 Hells seemed to have accepted that their goal should be to keep Predathos locked up or to re-cage It if necessary. I don't think a single member of the Bell's Hell mentioned killing in relation to Predathos at all. A+, huge improvement!

Next issue: what does Liliana think will happen if Ludinous succeeds? If her problem is with the powers she gets from Predathos, how will letting Predathos eat some gods fix her problem? If she's trying to protect her daughter, how does freeing Predathos make Imogen safer? Assume that Ludinous is 100% correct about releasing the Big P and that there are no unfortunate, unintended consequences (i.e., the consumption of Exandria itself), how does having an unrestrained Predathos benefit Liliana and Imogen?

Liliana keeps telling Imogen to run. Run where, mother dear? Best case scenario: the entire planet is ravaged by divine war between the gods and the sacrophage, clerics & paladins lose their abilities, and then? Step 3, profit?

In what way is a world in which Ludinous is both correct and successful better for your daughter, Liliana?

#c3e68 #liliana temult #predathos #ludinus da'leth #cr3 spoilers #critical role spoilers #cr3 #critical role

[amplexadversary]

Okay before I watch episode 86 I want to say I'm going to be so sad if Bells Hells don't stop, rest, and find some way to touch base with their allies on Exandria.

They are underground in a bunch of untouched ruins, no one knows where they are, and there is a portal back to the planet.

Best case scenario they could get the Air Ashari set up there, start moving people in, and get another wind walk spell from Keyleth, all without the pursuers this time.

#Critical Role #CR3 #CR3-85 #Critical Role spoilers #also they fucking need that long rest holy shit

[12pt-times-new-roman]

Now that we know the solstice is perpetual (seemingly for as long as the malleus key remains active), I've had a thought. I think it might be useful to think of the malleus key less as a physical key or a bomb and more like a cypher key.

If we treat the lattice around Ruidus as a firewall of sorts, Ruidus' connections to Exandria (via the Ruidusborn) as a security flaw, and the malleus key a program trying to break through it, then a couple of things suddenly make sense:

The creator hammer: Personally, I think that the factorum malleus was the code-name for the project that was creating the malleus key, for no other reason than the fact that in cybersecurity, a "row hammer" is a program that exploits a physical flaw in a system to gain unrestricted access to that system. I don't know the fine details, but it operates on a hardware level, and it requires a lot of computational power.

The timing: If we say that the lattice around Ruidus is not a flat wall that needs to be broken through but a series of encryptions and security measures that need to be decoded and exploited, then we can more easily rationalize why it's not happening immediately. I don't know how long row hammer programs typically take to work, but IIRC they can take hours to break traditional firewalls, so a barrier put in place by magic and literal gods could take weeks or months to break.

The other keys: If the malleus key is running these arcane programs and equations to try and break the firewall around Ruidus, it's going to need a lot of power. The Feywild and Shadowfell keys were more or less confirmed to be funnels, drawing power from the leylines of those other planes (which we know exist to some degree) and feeding it to the central key. This way, everyone's sabotage on those keys and the arcane batteries may not have stopped the key from working entirely, and instead may have significantly slowed it down. Without that extra power, it would take more time to break the lattice.

If the central key isn't getting enough power from those other keys, then it may be trying to draw more power from the leylines than they are supposed to put out, resulting in magic elsewhere being disrupted — essentially overclocking the leylines. And the thing with overclocking is that, unless you do it very wrong or way too often, it won't necessarily break whatever's being overclocked — instead, the computer will blue screen and shut down until the CPU cools down enough. So because of the sabotage, Ludinus himself might be on a timer — he has to get the key to break the firewall before the leylines "shut down."

On the topic of the permanent enchantments breaking, I think it comes down to that overclocking. All the power is being drawn to Marquet, so places like Uthodurn that are on the other side of the planet would be the most likely to lose power — if that's how it's actually working. But either way, because of the static, I've been thinking of it like radio signals: the permanent enchantments are receivers for the signals (power) produced by leylines, but if there's too much static, those signals are interrupted.

And lastly, there are the narrative implications. If the key and lattice are like a row hammer and a firewall, then it may be possible for the Bells Hells (and everyone else) to reinforce the lattice from where they are, without having to travel to the key itself. So it suddenly creates a narrative in which the Bells Hells have ample time to do things, are working in tandem with higher-level people (like Kiki, Caleb, and Beau), and are actively trying to stop a world-ending event without ever having to put themselves in situations they're underleveled for. It maintains the stakes, but doesn't raise them too high, and allows for character moments and backstory explorations in the meantime — kind of like eps. 70-86 of C2.

#critical role #critical role c3 #critical role campaign 3 #critical role spoilers #critical role meta #note watches c3 #I've had this on my mind for a while but knowing that the solstice is perpetual definitely reinforced it #giant live-blogging posts are out #giant theory posts are in

[quipxotic]

Look I get it, Ludinus’s plan as we know it is flawed. Anyone with time and a little knowledge of Exandria can poke holes in it and give a long list of reasons why it won’t work or will cause such catastrophic consequences as to make any benefits pointless. But Matt keeps saying Ludinus is one of the smartest people on the planet. Do smart people do stupid things? Sometimes, particularly when they’ve endless amounts of arrogance, which we know is one of Ludinus’s character traits. But THIS stupid? I don’t know...I have my doubts.

So maybe his goal is something we don’t know about yet? Maybe he’s just playing on the fears, anxieties, and prejudices of the peoples of Exandria to win followers to do his bidding, serve as cannon fodder, and cause enough chaos to keep the other powers of Exandria too busy to look into what he’s really doing? 

Maybe Bell’s Hells really, REALLY need to investigate Ashton’s backstory? Maybe there’s information there, in that failed magical ritual, that could shed light on what’s really going on?

#Critical Role #Bells Hells #Ludinus Da'leth #fan theories #I think we'll know more once they get done healing Keyleth #quipxotic stuff #If she sends them on a mission to Issylra close to where the Hishari were known to live instead of the dig site we'll know...

[amihyperfixatingagain]

Lots of Campaign 3 Thoughts

There’s a lot here, and a lot of it probably doesn’t make sense, but I wanted to vomit out these ideas and see which ones stick. 

I keep thinking about how Ludinus isn’t dumb and would be well aware of the insane risk it’d be to release Predathos. I think he’s trying to siphon power from Predathos instead (like he did the Luxon beacons) and kill the gods that way. Mortals can pass through the divine gate. Why not build the “Creator Hammer” and sneak in to kill them without actually releasing the god eater from its prison?

Plus if Predathos (according to the Vasselheim texts) consumes gods and leaves behind twisted creations, letting it out to eat the gods would in theory only result in twisted versions of said gods. Also Tharizdun has to be some kind of sick alien creation of Predathos right? It’s motives and imagery, even where it comes from, is nothing like the rest of the pantheon and fits the bill perfectly. Is Tharizdun a twisted version of a god from another planet? And it just followed Predathos and the rest of the Pantheon to Exandria? Could it be restored to a non-corrupted version of itself?

Judicators = god weapons? Could Ruidus Born folks also be god weapons? At least the “Exalted” ones? In the same way the Vestiges of Divergence and the Arms of the Betrayers can become exalted, are mortals capable of such a state too? Or at least some have been imbued with that ability? i.e. Imogen, Otohan, Lilliana, the Judicators and who knows how many more. 

I had this thought pop into my head the other day, that the Bell’s Hells are all going to ascend into godhood by the end of this campaign. Could this be because the entire Pantheon might be destroyed by the end of the campaign? idk why my brain thought it, but I can’t stop thinking it. 

I also had this thought that Ludinus is actually from Aeor, and was in one of those weird stasis bubbles when Aeor crashed. Maybe he was just a child at the time, and that’s how he still grew up in Molaesmyr?  What if thats why destroying the gods is his goal? He’s trying to finish the job that the Mages he grew up around failed to do. Idk but it’s an interesting thought that really has no canon support.

ooo another wild thought. What if the Luxon Beacons already had mortal souls in them and they crashed on Exandria like meteors before the gods ever arrived? In the Genesis Ward in Aeor, Caleb found a book debating if the gods are a creation of mortal minds and imagination rather than the other way around. What if mortals appeared on Exandria via the Luxon and created the gods? Are Predathos and the Luxon the “true gods” of this universe and act as a sort of yin and yang? Did Predathos follow the beacons to balance out the imagination of mortals? If all of the Beacons are found and put near each other would the Luxon be revealed? Released? Maybe the Luxon is in a prison somewhere else, in the same way Predathos is here in Exandria, and used the beacons as a cry for help, or power, or to gain believers. Wow this thought is a rabbit hole. 

If I have more wild and wacky thoughts pop into my brain, I’ll add them here. 

#critical role #critical role theory #critical role spoilers #critical role thoughts #critical role campaign 3 #campaign 3 #bells hells #predathos #ludinus da'leth #the luxon #ruidus born #tharizdun

[utilitycaster]

You know what's interesting to me? For all people keep claiming at every juncture that perhaps Bells Hells will come around on the gods and see the harm they do (which, as discussed extensively, is, half the time, simply not intervening) not only have they never done so, but also they never quite cross the line into saying the party should join the Ruby Vanguard or aid them - and indeed, they defend against it - so what does this achieve? It feels like they're asking for a story in which the party stands idly by, which isn't much of a story nor, if I may connect this briefly to the real world, a political stance anyone should be proud of.

That's honestly the frustration with the gods and the "what if the Vanguard has a point" conversations in-game. What do we do then? Do we allow the organization that will murder anyone for pretty much any reason that loosely ties into their goals run rampant? The group that (perhaps unwittingly, but then again, Otohan's blades had that poison) disrupted magic world-wide, and caused people who had the misfortune to live at nexus points to be teleported (most, as commoners, without means of return). While also fomenting worldwide unrest?

Those were the arguments before the trip to Ruidus; with the reveal of the Vanguard's goals to invade Exandria, the situation becomes even more dire. Do you let the Imperium take over the planet?

And do the arguments against the gods even hold up? If Ludinus is so angry at them for the Calamity, what does it say that he destroyed Western Wildemount's first post-Calamity society for entirely selfish means? (What does it say about the validity of vengeance as a motivator?) What does it say that Laudna told Imogen she could always just live in a cottage quietly without issue before the solstice even happened? (Would this still be true if the Imperium controls the world?) What does it say that when faced with a furious, grieving party and the daughter she keeps telling herself was her reason for all of this, Liliana can't provide an answer to the question of what the gods have done other than that their followers will retaliate...for, you know, the Vanguard's endless list of murders. (That is how the Vanguard and Imperium tend to think, huh? "How dare your face get in the way of my boot; how dare you hit me back when I strike you.") She can't even provide a positive answer - why is Predathos better - other than "I feel it", even though Imogen and Fearne know firsthand that Predathos can provide artificial feelings of elation. Given all the harm Ludinus has done in pursuit, why isn't the conclusion "the gods should have crashed Aeor in such a way that the tech was unrecoverable?"

Even as early as the first real discussion on what the party should do, the fandom always stopped short of saying "no, Imogen's right, they should join up with the people who killed half the party," it was always "no, she didn't really mean it, she just was trying to connect with her mother." Well, she's connected with her mother, and at this point the party doesn't even care about the gods particularly (their only divinely-connected party member having died to prevent the Vanguard from killing all of them). So they will stop the Vanguard; as Ashton says, the means are unforgiveable. As Laudna says, it's not safe to bet on Predathos's apathy. As Imogen says, she's done running; the voice that she used to think of as a lifeline belongs to someone she doesn't trust. So I guess my question is: if they're stopping the people who are trying to kill the gods (and defense of the gods isn't remotely their personal motivation)...do you think the next phase of the campaign is Bells Hells personally killing the gods? Reconstructing the Aeor tech and hoping none of their allies notice? How does this end? Does your ideology ever get enacted? Or is this entirely moot and pointless and the story ends with Bells Hells saying "well, I'm really glad we stopped the people who [insert list of Vanguard atrocities from above]; none of us follow the gods or plan to, but honestly, the status quo we return to is preferable to whatever nightmare Ludinus had concocted in his violent quest for power and revenge"?

#i've got a lot to do today so I think I'm done posting but #cr spoilers #i called that this particular cohort of fans had empathy only for those like them and were terrified of player agency like. 18 mos ago #and i have never been proven wrong. zero analysis just a constant demand that everyone coddle their feelings and confirm their biases #literally will straight up fabricate lore and cry you're disrespecting a pretend person for not including it in your considerations #absolutely SHIT understanding of actual lore. utter incapacity to follow a logical throughline to its conclusion #it's like. wow. wonder why you're so focused on hypocrisy and you overreact to the word selfish #the reason they hate or fear orym (they say they don't...but that just means they want him to go to a reeducation camp instead of die) #is bc i think they are truly terrified of the idea that people can not just hold opinions that are against theirs but stand fast by them #easier to stan the villain because then they die and you can feel wronged and betrayed and wallow in a sense of continual victimhood #than to like a character who might last long enough to call you the idiot and asshole that you are #but it's also funny bc literally if orym weren't there in the latest convo the conclusion is the same. #ashton's had the same opinion of the vanguard the whole time (and it's not positive) but that's not under scrutiny #probably bc it doesn't allow people to be ghoulish in the most cringeworthy way possible

[misfitprose]

It's like a good chunk of the CR fandumb hasn't heard of "extremists" or "power vacuums".

Now, I am one of the most anti-religious people you could ever meet, but even I can see that removing all of the belief systems in your world is going to fuck. Shit. UP!

"Don't blindly follow gods...blindly follow this ONE GUY instead!" Okay, so you don't want people to put their faith into gods who don't care about them. Instead, you want them to put their faith into Ludinus who doesn't care about them? Or Predathos, who doesn't care about them? You can't tell me that a god eater is concerned for the welfare of little old Joe Halfling that he/she/it's never met.

What happens when a god eater runs out of gods to eat?

When you eat all the meat in your refrigerator, do you just...never eat again, ever? Or do you look around for something else to eat that's within arms' reach? There are a lot of gods in Exandria, sure, but there's only a finite amount - and that amount is paltry compared to all the mortals and other creatures that worship them. Someone's gonna need a midnight snack. Either Ludinus hasn't considered this - meaning he's an idiot - or he plans to supply Predathos with morsels of his choosing. Additionally, the idea that one man can control something powerful enough to eat gods is just ridiculous. Ludinus would have to have godlike power himself, which would make him seem mighty tasty to a god-eater, wouldn't it? And how is totalitarianism better than organized religions? You're as subject to Ludinus' whims as you are The Dawnfather's or the Wildmother's. Acting like Bell's Hells are "hypocrites" because "oh, they killed people" is a stupid ass take, too. No one said they didn't! They haven't killed EVERYONE ON EXANDRIA, however! They don't think they're going to keep a 500,000 pound junkyard dog on a $5 leash from Walmart, either. Everyone is likely going to die to Predathos. "Everyone" includes Bell's Hells themselves, The Crown Keepers, the Nameless ones, Vox Machina, The Mighty Nein, Ukatoa, Essek, Pumat and his Sols... every character who every existed is likely to be swallowed by Predathos. Why does it seem like there are so few people who understand the scope of what Ludinus is trying to do? Also? A select few people considered better than the others, who are going to survive the apocalypse under the leadership of one man? Liliana, honey, your boss has a real-life parallel.

In roughly five billion years, the Sun is going to swell into a Red Giant and take out the terrestrial planets; Mercury, Venus, and Earth. This includes you, no matter who you vote for as President of the United States. Even if you were underground, being that close to a star of that magnitude spells death. Fortunately, this isn't going to happen during your lifetime. We haven't figured out how to live nearly that long. Now imagine someone comes along claiming he's going to survive not only the event, but the five billion year waiting period. You could, too, if you were like him. He'll be cherry-picking worthy people to come with him. He's not worried about temperatures in the trillions. His strength of will is going to keep him cool. Don't listen to the naysayers, they're just jealous because they're unworthy.

Do you believe him?

#cr discourse #pulling my own hair out #because why would ANYONE happily root for the bad guys? #I'm rambling but it's because I had so many things I wanted to say #scope is not just a mouthwash please realize this

[masterqwertster]

Sometimes my brain does weird crossover things that I never write down for fic. But I want to share this one:

Crossing Critical Role/Exandria with pretty much any Space Opera or sci-fi would be weird. Not because of mixing magic and sci-fi, but because Exandria has around thirty (not counting subraces individually) civilization-level intelligent races native to it, while pretty much every other planet has two native intelligent races at most, maybe three.

Can you imagine how confusing it would be for these intergalactic powers to find Exandria and meet its people? They're looking at this backwater(?) world with an absolute hodgepodge of races and wondering how the hell it happened. Was this place reached by (many) others trying to colonize beforehand and just lost all contact and history? Were other civilizations sneaking their people here and the "real" natives just assimilated them?

Because they can see that some of these races occurring on the same planet make sense. Like (most) elves and humans are really only easily differentiated by the ears upon casual observation. ...And then they find out the elves have lifespans that are over five times longer than the humans. Or halflings and gnomes both look like miniature humans. ...But both have longer lifespans than a human, the gnomes significantly so. (Also, what in the world are the physical appearance tells between a gnome and halfling? Is it a general body shape thing? I know TLoVM crew said they do halflings a little bigger than gnomes if they've got both in the same scene, but...)

But then there's the races that the intergalactic powers can't really understand happening on the same world. Like there are lizardfolk, tortle, dragonborn, and kobold who are all reptilian living with the many mammalian races and even a couple of avian races (aarakocra/eisfuura, kenku). And that's not even getting into the elemental oddness that is the genasi.

And then there's the races that can just happen: the teiflings and assimar. Those science aliens are probably trying to justify dormant lineages or something, but "Nah," the Exandrians say. "Sometimes it just happens. And sometimes parents get involved in shit."

This is when the science aliens broach the subject of evolution... and find out about Exandria's gods and their very documented and historically traceable presence there. And maybe the "superior lifeforms" make the racial diversity make sense (Oh! It's a genetic experiment testing ground!), but those higher lifeforms are (probably) still out there. ...That's a terrifying thought/threat.

...And all of this isn't even touching on the superpowers of magic and enchanting (even basic "don't let the magic items break without extreme damage or magic neutralization" enchanting can be a gamechanger if abused correctly).

So yeah. If you want an interesting writing exercise, take CR (or general D&D) and toss it into a sci-fi universe. You can make some really interesting results off the cultural/world-building differences.

#critical role #critical role exandria #sci fi #crossover #writing prompts #world building #MQ blathers

[samwellwinchesterthebrave]

I don't know if anyone has commented on this or not but I've been thinking so here we go.

I've been thinking about the vision Liliana showed Imogen. Specifically, the emotions behind it and why I think that vision is both a lie and the truth.

First off, a lie. I mean, come on. Giant god-eating being who's been locked away for centuries is just gonna eat the gods and fuck off? Right, if you believe that, I've got beachside property in Arizona to sell you. I don't believe there is any way in all the hells that Predathos leaves Exandria alone. Sure, the thing eats gods. But who's to say it doesn't consider lower beings tasty little hor d'oeurves? I think it's a planet eater too. It gets out and bye bye life.

Now, I think the vision was also true. While watching Imogen be given the vision, my attention was snagged by one single word. Freedom. What is one thing that someone who's been locked in a cage wants? They want to get out, they want to be free. They're also gonna promise anything and everything to anyone who can help them escape, even if they have no intention of following through. That sense of freedom and being free to choose your own path, free of the gods? That's Predathos' emotion, its feelings about eventual freedom. It's a promise but not the one Liliana and the others think it is.

Sneaky, clever god eater who is terrifying af

#sam rambles #critical role #critical role theories