The souls of Cognouza have one final message as they drift off into the forever that has been denied them for centuries.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A tumult of them, shooting out and away from the sparks of the living, the ones who freed them.
Somewhere, the spark of the lavender-skinned tiefling with many names and identities is among them. The body is sundered, damaged, hacked to pieces by those who now gather around it.
Molly. Mollymauk Tealeaf.
The cry comes from the living, a powerful one that causes the fleeing sparks to heed and hold. Is that their name? No, whisper most of them, shooting onwards.
Molly. The cry comes again. Three, four times, each time with increasing magic behind us. Our friend. Come back.
One spark hesitates. Pulled both forward and back. Molly, part of it recognizes. Lucien, the Nonagon, the other part insists. And so it is not enough for the fragment to return, despite the strength of the cries.
Then, another whisper. Put it back. A divine breeze creates a space; a divine wave pushes one part away while it washes the other back towards Cognouza. The body is healed, whole, ready to be inhabited.
I can’t. I finished the episode four hours ago and I’m still screaming inside my head and intermittently at other people about everything that went down.
What’s basically the first canon Caleb/Essek moment right before Jester dies. Caleb yeets her over to Caduceus. Marine Layer keeping her, Caduceus, and Veth from serious harm. Path to the Grave combining with the classic Guiding Bolt (Up The Butt) to finish off Lucien with Jester screaming about how Lucien didn’t deserve Molly.
And then all the denouement. Caleb being brought BACK through Artagan’s actions. Giving up his Transmuter’s stone to try to get Molly back. Yasha, Jester, and Beau just wanting their friend back. The Natural 1.
Then Caduceus Fucking Clay with the successful Divine Intervention and this time it’s a 12. Molly is back. It would have been fitting if the Nat 1 was the end but this is fitting too. He might be confused but he knows the rest of the Nein. The rest will come with time.
All the story parallels between this and the ending of C1. Taliesin bringing Taliesin’s character back to life. After this episode I’m actually glad they’re wrapping up the campaign because where do you go from here? How do you continue a campaign with these characters at this point?
You don’t. You close the chapter and start telling new stories.
I am probably going to be emotionally shaken from this for a while. The other time I really felt like this was after playing Bastion for the first time. If you’ve played that game you’ll understand.
The storytelling. The dice. The poetry. What a session of D&D. The kind of session you want to experience for yourself at least once.
(NO REALLY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN C2E107 STOP READING NOW)
Vilya is almost unable to cast Transport Via Plants, her hands are shaking so much. Perhaps it’s only the fact that she’s cast this spell once per day for the last five days that lets her do it, the words and gestures coming to her in a grace much more fluid than usual.
A portal opens, and her breath catches in her throat as she sees her home. Not the village of Vo on Rumblecusp, but Zephrah.The sunset above the wind-swept cliffs, the amphitheater where the Voice of the Tempest addresses her people.
And the Voice is there now - a woman, her exact age hard to pin down like many powerful druids; the multicolored mantle of the Tempest laying comfortably across her shoulders. Curving antlers resting atop a long mane of bright red hair.
Vilya takes a shaky step forward. As much as she wants to stand there and admire the scene and let the details wash over her, she has exactly six seconds to step through or wait another day. And there is no way that she can wait another day. There is no way that she can wait another second.
The Voice’s face has the weathery look of someone who spends most of her time outdoors, freckles dotting her cheeks and bright green eyes widening at the sigh before her. Vilya’s first thought is she looks so much like her father. A hair’s breadth behind that thought - She looks so much like me.
She is running, and Vilya is running, and she can’t see through the tears. It doesn’t matter. She knows exactly where her daughter is. Vilya’s arms close around Keyleth’s shoulders and she squeezes, tight, tighter, never letting go, never leaving again.
“Mom,” Keyleth says through tears, her head buried against Vilya’s shoulder. “Mom. You’re home.”
“I’m so sorry,” Vilya says, knowing that she’s holding Keyleth too tightly, and not caring. She doesn’t think Keyleth cares either. “I’m sorry it took me this long. I’m sorry I left you alone.” Vilya kisses the top of Keyleth’s head, resting her chin there like she did when Keyleth was a child. Oh, my girl. My little girl, all grown up.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I - it’s a long story. I’m sosorry, Keyleth. I never meant to do this. I never meant-”
Keyleth takes a shuddering breath. “I know. I know, Mom. I’m just - I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I can hardly believe it myself,” Vilya admits. She, too, takes a deep shuddering breath, fear and anxiety threatening to creep back in. “Your father - is he -”
“Vilya.”
She’d know that voice anywhere. Korrin, Korrin, Wildmother bless me, he’s still alive, and she turns, hands still clutching Keyleth’s arms in case this is somehow an illusion -
But it isn’t. He’s there, and his face holds the same incandescent joy and disbelief that was on Keyleth’s.
Vilya flings herself into her husband’s arms and starts crying all over again. A moment later, Keyleth presses herself against Vilya’s back, so that she is thoroughly squished between her husband and her daughter. She doesn’t mind in the least.
She doesn’t know how long the three of them stand there together, but it can’t possibly be long enough to make up for all the years she was gone. But after a time, she feels her legs start to buckle under all of the emotion, and she has to pull away and sit down on one of the nearby benches.
Korrin takes one side of her, and Keyleth the other. They each take one of her hands. Vilya is home. At long last, she is home.
Vilya steps into the dome that the wizard has made and looks up at the images - a collage of lives and moments that lead these people to find her on Rumblecusp, so many years after she vanished from the world.
Things are coming back in dribs and drabs and a part of her wants to find a way to force them all out, right now - but what she has remembered is almost too much.
Korrin. Keyleth. They surely thought she was dead. Lost to the Kraken in the Water Elemental Plane. She can’t stop herself from imagining the sorrow on their faces and in their hearts when they got the news. She has to swallow back tears, but she doesn’t think any of the others noticed. They’re too caught up in their own pasts.
Once upon a time, Vilya had thought that the worst outcome of her Aramenté would be that she would fail and return home in disgrace, having to endure the disappointment of the Air Ashari for the rest of her life. Feeling like she would have let Korrin and Keyleth down.
But this is worse. She left behind a little girl. If Keyleth is still alive - no, she has to be, she HAS to be - she’s an adult now. Vilya looks at the images again and starts imagining Keyleth there, exploring, fighting monsters. She wants to believe that her little girl found her own group of friends and set out on her own Aramenté.
Vilya closes her eyes, swallowing hard, this time failing to hold back the tears. She pictures her dear ones as she’d last seen them, when she scried on them before going into the Elemental Plane of Water. Korrin, his long hair gone mostly silver. Keyleth, spindly and awkward, much like Vilya had been at that age. They had been standing on one of Zephrah’s many wind-swept cliffs, Korrin looking off in the distance as he explained something to their daughter.
Be strong. For her. Vilya opens her eyes again, and sees that Caleb has added an image of her to those of himself and his companions. “There is a strong feeling of companionship here,” she says, amazed that she can make her voice so calm. “Can you do me a favor, add a man walking next to her with light hair, half elf, and a young girl about fourteen with red hair?”
Lol I know I just said im trying to resist posting an update every 5 seconds but its my B-day and I wanna show it off. This will be my last update post until its done done.
Astrid: “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what I’ve done.”
Jester: “Well I know some of what you’ve done. And I know Caleb loves you very deeply, so you can’t be all bad.”
*Astrid doesn’t respond*
Astrid, you made the FIRST critical mistake, of engaging with Jester Lavorre. You can’t escape it now. You already love her and you can’t do anything about it. Welcome to the club.
Sometimes you and your best friend are too goofy to take actual serious shippy photos but you’re also so goofy that your photos can accidentally look shippy but in the like sickeningly sweet kind of way. And sometimes the camera is acting weird and a few photos are. out of focus but that’s okay because you’re still happy to have such awesome and talented friends who take pictures with/of you for fun. And sometimes you spend 100s of hours on a cosplay for a character you love only for his plot line to abruptly go south around 2 dozen episodes in right as you finish embroidering that stupid coat and then have to indulge yourself in fluff. Don’t judge me.
happy birthday to the shadowhand! hope he’s staying safe out there…
[ID: Digital art of Essek Thelyss, an NPC from Critical Role campaign 2. Essek is a drow with short, silvery hair, purple eyes, and handsome features. He’s dressed in a dark grey cloak with a fur hood and lining, held in place by silver, looping string. Similar loops of silver dangle from his ears. He looks over his shoulder, determined and focused, as a he conjures a black hole between his hands. Wisps of shadow stylized as black triangles peel off of the black hole and drift past his face. The entire portrait is done in a limited color palette of purple, pink, blue, and black.]
in 2020 i tagged my mighty nein cuddle pile fanart “it’s been two years since my last critrole cuddle pile art maybe i’ll have another in 2022″
i genuinely could not pass up a chance to prove past me right, so: here i am, with an updated cuddle pile. when is it in the timeline? i don’t know, i don’t care.
So, I started sketching that one Caleb and Essek animatic. I had to learn how to work with Blender Greasepencil but it makes it so much easier to have a draft!! Who knows when I’ll go on
