I stan Purvon actually. Fuck those old ass mages who want ascending to godhood to be public knowledge. There are already catastrophically bad attempts at it and we do not need more. Let’s go champion of the Raven Queen. Shut them down!
I haven’t watched Critical Role in a while, but since ExU: Calamity is going to be a shorter campaign, I thought I’d try get back in the swing. So. Um. Impressions.
Ilike Brennan’s style. Very fast moving, very intense. Let’s open straight on the apocalypse, yessir!
I also really, really like Zerxus. Like. This poor paladin gets immediately shoved in the deep end, visions of the end days, his dead husband, his child-as-was fishing in the void, and then a skyscraper tall devil god falls at his feet and he tries to help it. Just. Instinctively? And, I know, Asmodeus is likely playing with him, luring him in with visions of lost loves and playing the victim, but I still love that, even for a devil, Zerxus instinctively tries to protect him. From a god. Like, if this paladin falls out of kindness, that’s … going to be something. And if he proves kindness worth the risk, even more so.
Also, though, we’re all of ten minutes in and this poor guy already needs to be bundled in blankets and taken care of, holy shit.
And then … everybody else. Oh my god. They’re all assholes. Absolutely amazing assholes. I love it.
Laerryn is … my platonic ideal wizard. Favourite. Immediately. The whole … I am the chief engineer of this goddamn starship, and none of you even know what I do, but without me you would all be pancakes, so shut up and get to the point already. Move this along, I don’t have time. I love her. And she is going to do something incredibly foolish with this apogee solstice thing, tuning to the celestial plane, this is going to go … oh yeah, but I’m here for it. And how petty … She uses hastejust to get down a stairs fast, the kids will get off the landing gear or they won’t, what kind of hairstyle check do you need from me … I just love her. Favourite cosmic wrench-wench, absolutely idiot mad scientist, Girl Genius sort of vibes. Perfect.
I honestly love how they’re all assholes. And they playit. To the hilt. They’re all so casually hoity-toity, better-than-you, listen, listen, we all know who’s the important one here. They’re going to fall so hard. They’re going to fall so hard. It’s gonna be amazing.
Laerryn and Loquatious are just amazing. Their whole dynamic. Both the incredible pettiness, the bitterness, the jealousy, but also the fact that they still work together, they still function perfectly well among their team, that whole tiny moment with the inspiration … Poor Travis not being safe on this side of the table, it’s amazing.
Speaking of Travis … He is a noir bird detective in an apocalypse movie, and it’s actually perfect, because this is Cthulhu style apocalypse, eldritch entities and the end of the world, and of course the detective is the one who finds the weird cultist corpses and the obliterated summoning circle and the one who gets jump-scared by the baddie in the closing minutes of the episode.
(I also absolutely adored his little ‘I think I’m in the wrong class’ after our apocalypse opening, both for the hilarity but also … you’re playing the rogue detective in an apocalypse campaign. You came into a horror campaign playing the pointman class. ‘I think I’m in the wrong class’, honey, you did this on purpose)
(His and Aabria’s reactions to everything are incredible, and I love that they’re sitting next to each other)
I just … I keep coming back to this, I love everyone’s arrogance. Cerrit and Zerxus are the mildest of them that way, they’re keeping it broadly professional, but every magic user in this party is topping the arrogance charts professionally. Between Loquatious throwing himself into everything like the world’s most obnoxious studio host/marketing director, to Patia’s casual ‘divinity seems such a hollow title’, to Nydas being all ‘how dare such a lowly peon approach me in person’, to Laerryn just not having time for literally anyone. They are such dicks. But, and this is the key thing, such competent dicks. Amazingly competent assholes. Who are likely just competent enough, at exactly the wrong moment in time, to bollocks the universe up entirely.
There’s also an interesting intra-party vibe going too. That whole last half, at the party, you can see how they all come together, but also how they all separate apart as well. There’s levels of involvement on different fields going on, and when the shit hits the fan you can see the layers start to separate slightly. Laerryn is completely locked on to her own thing, her apogee solstice, she’s the epitome of the mad scientist wizard I’m gonna do the thing. Nydas and Patia are playing a much more political game, him working up and Patia working down. Loquatious weirdly seems a little pathetic towards the end, just because of the shape of the investigation and the way it didn’t directly involve him and how he skated lightly around it. Weirdly for the bard of the group, the social animal, he seems oddly out of the loop. Him and Zerxus immediately chase down the outsider for information, because they’re also slightly outside. There feels a little bit like circles in circles: Patia, Nydas and Laerryn on the inner circle, Patia holding the court, Nydas holding the field, Laerryn holding the raw magical power, and then an outer circle, Cerrit, Zerxus and Loquatious, being relied on for information but not quite the direct power movers the other three are. Politically, anyway. I don’t know, it could just be the way the events themselves directly went down, but there felt like there was a slight separation there.
But they’re all also interestingly connected to each other. Nydas and Zerxus having that almost brotherly connection, Nydas’ family taking care of Zerxus’ kid, the way Zerxus clearly does trust the group enough to reveal … apocalyptic visions to them. Obviously Laerryn and Loquatious, divorced and petty and bitter, but still working together and almost instinctively giving each other little moments. Patia and Nydas’ political sympatico, despite the fact that she’s the highest of the high and he’s an ex-pirate who happens to be stupidly wealthy. Everyone just leaning on the fact that Cerrit is rock solid and will give them the heads up they need, and will scope out their potential enemies for them. It’s such an interesting story, this group of movers and shakers who gravitated together because they work together, they function so well together, to the point that people are starting to take noteandinfiltrate them, because they are good at what they do and this is a cut-throat mage city where you need to be. That guy from the Circle of Silver noting their little unofficial name for themselves, the Circle of Brass, the way they’ve been noticed, because they are so well positioned to hold the actual physical, political, informational that they do.
And then, because of idiot mages poking betrayer gods in ill-advised rituals, perfectly positioned to be stuck right in the middle of an apocalypse.
(I’m assuming, and I have not kept up on lore for Exandria at all, but I’m assuming Vespin Chloras was trying to get a betrayer god out of its prison before killing it and taking over its domain. Because a) you have to get them out to reach them to kill them, and b) you have to get them out so that when you kill-and-replace them you don’t get promptly stuck in their prison in their place)
Also, this whole episode, the pacing was amazing. Brennan as DM, it’s really just hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. Open, wham bam, apocalyptic visions, but then he just guides us on this whistle stop tour of the party and the city, hits the lore in every stop possible (helped by things like Cerrit’s ridiculous rolls), and it’s all moving. Technically, nothing much happened. We met everyone and we went to a party, and then some stuff sort of went down, but it was all seeded in from the get go, and there was so much … intensity and interaction along the way. Also, he does portentous very well. “If you look down and see the stars, what will you see when you look up?”
Um. In summary? I am enjoying this. I’m looking forward to see where (and how badly) this goes. Definitely.
And even if she wrecks the entire universe in one move … Laerryn is still the wizard I would want to be. Platonic wizard ideal. Absolutely.
