#c1 spoilers
So there’s a strange bit of Crit Role/LoVM AU fodder that ambushed me out of nowhere recently. I can’t take credit, because it was born of one of the many reaction videos I’ve been watching of the series (I’ve been watching so many…), and one reactor’s speculations regarding some of the imagery in “A Silver Tongue” in particular put some thoughts in my head…
This is really just a lot of out there “what if” without any real substance, a fun idea for a fanfiction perhaps, but I needed to get it out of my brain.
(Below cut, because spoilers for campaign 1 events…)
Specifically, it was house of k’s reaction to episode 8 that put this idea in my head. He’s got some really good insights in his reactions, he takes notes on things and theorizes and it’s been fun to watch. Check him out maybe if you like reactions.
But there are a few reactors that have commented that the Everlight’s silhouette against the sun-disk looks a bit like an eye, and also a few who have noticed the eye flash when Percy shoots Anders. In house of k’s reaction, he commented on both, but also that the two almost looked like negatives of one another (black-on-fire, fire-on-black), and speculated that the two might be connected, that whatever was going on with Percy might be a sort of dark reflection or counterpart of the Everlight.
Which, sure, those of us who have watched the campaign know that’s not what’s going on. But…but…
The Everlight is the goddess of redemption, and if an inverse existed, wouldn’t it make sense for it to be a god of vengeance?
We know in the setting of Exandria, that godhood can be a bit…fluid. There are gods that have been ousted, killed, forgotten, replaced. New gods can happen. Gods that are gone can come back. The Everlight herself is an example. She was forgotten save by a few followers, and only in recent years as of the first campaign is she making a comeback.
We also know that, at least in typical D&D lore, shadow demons like Orthax, aren’t like most other demons. They aren’t created in the Abyss from damned souls like other demons. Not at first, anyway. They’re what’s left when some bigger, nastier entity is destroyed, and some small part of it survives to recollect itself in the Lower Planes.
And that they typically trade souls to other entities rather than feed off of them directly. But Matt seemed to hint in describing Orthax as being bigger and nastier than the average shadow demon, and by suggesting that it was because the demon had been feeding (presumably on the souls claimed by the List). And that’s definitely what he seems to be doing to Percy after Glintshore.
The idea of Orthax as a forming or remnant god isn’t new, there were a couple of very interesting fics around the concept back in the day, but the idea of a connection to the Everlight could be interesting. The idea of twin gods separated on either side of the divide between the Prime Deities and the Betrayer Gods is interesting (and the parallel motif of twins separated is interesting to think about in general). The idea of twin gods, one nearly forgotten, the other destroyed and lost to mortal memory entirely…
TL;DR - What if Orthax was the remnant of a god of vengeance destroyed in the world’s ancient history, a god that was the Everlight’s twin and opposite? That’d be pretty wild, right?
