#a lot of corruption
So somebody reblogged the last ‘yes I need to talk about Jrusar’s Secret Government’ post with thoughts/questions about the Tal'dorei council, and it made me want to get in here and actually write the damn holy shit Matthew Mercer your city is run entirely by a SECRET SHADOW GOVERNMENT WHAT THE FUCK post, so here we go.
(I wrote a whole essay, and somehow I didn’t even get into the rampant corruption, because there’s so much to say even outside of that, but: minor spoilers for general worldbuilding throughout C1, C2, and C3, extremely minor plot spoilers I think for C1 and maybe C3 before episode 3.09? Mostly this is about worldbuilding.)
Wow, this is a fantastic essay. I’ve been feeling from day 1 there are levels of classism and class struggle in C3 that I didn’t even see in C2 when they were dirt poor for the better part of like 40 episodes, and constantly scraping for even Uncommon Magical Items (someone pointed out how wild it was that getting that chest full of 12 Uncommon pendants to prevent scrying required them to break into one of the most secure facilities in the Empire, when the C1 crew could have probably bought those from Gilmore with ease). But yes, that’s the difference between exploring a semi-fascist state in C2, and digging into a class system that has become so radically stratified that a few people have all the resources and everyone else is barely getting by.
One thing I’d love to see explored is how money works in these places, too. Because I did notice that in C2 they were getting silver for the longest time, and gold was barely seen, let alone platinum, and yet we’ve got Chetney lifting a ton of platinum just in the most recent episode. At level 4. And they’ve had gold flung at them left and right by Eshteross. They are swimming in money, and yet it doesn’t seem like it’s good for much, because they don’t have access to anyone to bribe. In spite of the frankly ridiculous amounts of gold they have, they can’t save Cyrus, they can’t get out from under the guards, they can’t talk to anyone in power without Eshteross writing them a letter to get them in the door first.
I wrote my own essay on Eshteross’ classism and who he deems the ‘good’ people of Jrusar, but I am also fascinated that this is the setting in which Mercer has decided to introduce a proper D&D patron. They sort of had one in Allura in C1, but we didn’t see them at low levels, and the themes there were much more optimistic and those in power were often good or overthrown quickly.
But because the themes here are not the high-fantasy themes of C1–they are class warfare, and Ashton and their friends getting constantly treated like criminal scum, and everyone having to let out a spare room, and everyone knowing that the Wilders aren’t there to help, and people who ‘won’t be missed’ being taken from the steps by people in power–I’m waiting for that to blow up in their faces. I’m waiting for Eshteross to die or for him to turn on them. I’m waiting for the roiling mess of economic unrest and class tensions to explode and turn this relatively happy-go-lucky party of doofuses into some goddamned heroes fit for their setting.
And I think this party is in an interesting position to do that. These characters have class worked into their backstories in many instances, perhaps not moreso than the previous campaigns, but in ways I think will have greater ramifications here than they had in previous campaigns. Ashton, as I mentioned before, is lower class in Jrusar, and knows better than any of the others what that looks like and what that feels like. He has a distrust of Eshteross and anyone in power far stronger than the others, born of life experience. Imogen seems to come from something of a middle class background, but seems constantly confused with how things work in Jrusar where, as OP pointed out, middle class barely seems to exist, and things she could do easily before are nearly impossible. Laudna was a farmer’s child, and saw the abuses people in power could inflict upon those under that power without any repercussions. Chetney is scraping and desperate for a job after he lost his lifetime’s work of woodworking, and seems willing to throw in his lot with this group mostly because he can’t seem to get a position as a master craftsman without a recommendation. Orym comes from a C1 background, from a city governed by Keyleth, and with a background of equality and peace and high-fantasy ideals, so he seems even more confused than Imogen sometimes by how corrupt and how opaque this world is. Dorian was born into incredible wealth and privilege, and is both ignorant to the corruption and danger of Jrusar, while still understanding how to throw his weight and his gold around in a way that gets things done because it mirrors how the wealthy of the city work. Fearne and FCG are really the only characters who don’t seem to have backstory that interacts with class, but we see constantly with FCG the ramifications of it, how they are treated like an object rather than a person by most people who meet them, and how the only person who consistently asserts their personhood and independence is Ashton.
There are so many economic themes in C3, and I am loving the amount of deep-dive essays into what that means in a thematic sense, in a plot sense, in a character sense, and what it could mean going forward. Having this urban environment really lets them dig into themes of money and power in a way that feels unique from the previous two campaigns, and I can’t wait to see what Mercer and his players do with these themes.
