Brennan: “Here in the bustling city of Avalir, Tempus is but one of many wonders, and as you behold from your balcony the Spire of Avalir, the City of Crowns, a new morning comes, friends.”
Aabria: “Stop being cool, like we don’t remember what just happened.”
[Everybody laughs.]
Lou: “The sky was—the ground was there and coming here, fast! You said fast!”
Travis: “‘If you look up, you see stars!’ ‘What happens if you look down?’”
Afour-part miniseries beginning May 26th and continuing every Thursday until June 16th, EXU: Calamity will be led by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the DM for players Marisha,Sam,Travis,Aabria Iyengar, and Critical Role newbies Lou WilsonandLuis Carazo!
I love a good tragedy. This group in EXU: Calamity do not prevent the Calamity. We know this. They are locked into this fate of being the ones who fail to stop an event that destroys history itself and kills two-thirds of Exandria.
But, also, the thought that this might be failing to stop the Calamity but making damn sure the war happens. That is, ensuring that what is coming is something fought against rather than just an unmitigated annihilation that just happens.
In the end, the Calamity wasn’t an apocalypse that just overtook everything and everyone, it was a war and a struggle and a fight, and one that the Prime Deities won eventually.
I really hope, tragedy and all, that maybe it’s not about stopping something that cannot be stopped but, in the end, it’s about securing a fighting chance in the face of the awful inevitable. Maybe, I hope, this is about realizing it is too late to stop tragedy but it is enough to ensure a dawn in time, in a time you will never see but that we the audience know is coming eventually.
i was just thinking yesterday about how in d&d actual play a lot of the times the heroes are simply going to win. like there’s no other option. obviously it’s a journey to get there and sometimes there can be losses along the way (ex: molly), but the heroes are kind of on a very pre-destined path of victory. the path tovictory isn’t pre-determined, which is what makes it interesting to watch, but still. it’s just very, very unlikely in the kind of broadcasted actual plays that i watch/listen to that a DM would ever go through with a TPK. which i am very happy with because on the whole i don’t think i want to see a TPK play out in my actual plays. BUT. the idea of a calamity campaign has me so excited because of the sort of counterpart idea of all these characters being destined to fail and destined to perish. the calamity was a long, long time ago and it can’t be stopped. i really love the idea that we’re going back in time within the world as observers, happy to see a new story, but without much of a way to change the ending. i’m so hyped for this.
I do hope Brennan rattles off the date in his intro, per previous intros, because it’ll be some completely foreign calendar while everyone has to do the “can’t call it ‘pre-Divergence’ if you don’t know about the Divergence yet” processing.
Also because I personally want to know how long the Age of Arcanum lasted.
I heard that some people are assuming a some sort of a connection between Avalir and Savalirwood or assuming that the Savalirwood is somehow descended in some way from Avalir. But, the Savalirwood was known as the Veluthil Forest from the Calamity until about 858 when Molaesmyr fell and it’s called “savalir” from the elvish word for “guilt”. So, unless “Avalir” became the basis for the word for “guilt” (which would be really fun), the assumption isn’t actually all that apparent.
I love being right that the connection would specifically linguistical in nature and alone, though I wish I was far more clear in the original that I was refuting an apparent geographicalorsocial connection in favor of “it’s a purely linguistical reference”. But, anyway:
ALT
