You are a level 14 abjuration wizard with 142 hit points and are responsible for making sure the technology that keeps your floating city in the air works. You are secretly fucking with said technology so you can transport your floating city to other planes. You believe that gods are not special and have said so out loud. Your changeling ex husband is the face of the city’s news and he is insufferable but also you kept his last name and still actively wear perfume that smells like the flowers at your wedding. You also have accidentally almost oneshotted a man with a high level fireball. Every day Laerryn Coramar-Seelie wakes up.
PI had a thought about some of the details in Exandria Unlimited: Calamity recently. When I came upon it, I wanted to post it, and a few other thoughts asked if they could join in. So here you go!
As far as I know, Sam Riegel’s character in the current Bell’s Hells campaign, Fresh Cut Grass, is an Aeormaton. These are stated in-universe to have been constructed in the Pre-Calamity city of Aeor. And when I remembered that, I also remembered a detail about F.C.G. that saw a tiny bit of controversy after it started coming into play.
F.C.G. is a cleric, but he claims that all of his cleric abilities are built in. There aren’t any deities involved.
What brought this to mind? Well, in EXU: Calamity, we are introduced to a contemporary of Aeor: the flying city of Avalir. And in Avalir, the divine is treated with… well, if not an air of contempt, not much respect.
The first character we encounter is Zerxus Ilerez, the first knight of Avalir. Zerxus is a somewhat unorthodox paladin, in that he lacks what is mockingly referred to as an “intermediary,” instead drawing power from the people of Avalir themselves (as per the wiki. I can’t remember where this was stated in-episode). When a champion of the Raven Queen, the future legend Purvan Suul, appears, he is regarded as quaint, and people aren’t exactly impressed. Another player character, Patia Por’co, establishes her dim view of the divine within minutes of appearing onscreen.
Functionally, F.C.G. and Zerxus feel very similar, in that they are both classes commonly associated with the divine, produced in a culture and era without respect for the divine.
After this, we come around to the player characters. These people refer to themselves as the “Circle of Brass,” the people who don’t straight up run the city, but the “movers and shakers” who keep Avalir running. In the leadup to the first episode airing, Zerxus and police detective Cerrit Agrupnin were described as the “moral” members of the group. Indeed, the “greyest” action that Cerrit takes is to try and suppress investigation into something big and scary while he investigates on his own. Zerxus, for all that his relationship with his family is strained, comes across as a pretty stand-up guy.
Then we come around to the other characters.
Media magnate Loquatius Seelie turns on the charm whenever he’s on camera, but off of it he’s a bit of a political manipulator, choosing which officials to back and push towards glory–he even notes that he hopes one of them remembers “who put them” in their position. Beyond that, he’s kind of a jerk, and ditches his plus-one at a party in a situation that she has no idea how to deal with. He even makes fun of Purvan’s name!
(As an aside, I really want to see Bolo from Aeor and Aria the assistant hang out at some point)
The other really obvious bad egg is Nydas Okiro, a powerful merchant who, from the very first, is seen to be not a great person. When he needs to fill out an order for wands that he can’t yet, he draws from the school supplies that he maintains for a magic school. When people want payment for services rendered, he puts it off as long as he can. And ultimately, he’s even selling off excess aether (which appears to be illegal, though I’m not completely sure of the implications).
Remember Patia, from before? She’s in on it. When someone comes digging who it turns out shouldn’t know, she’s furious and goes looking for whoever leaked.
Even Laerryn Coramar-Seelie, Architect Arcane, is doing something behind the scenes. She’s excited for the upcoming Apogee due to what it means for a secret project of hers, and she desperately wants to get her hands on the celestial gold bow that’s a part of Cerrit’s investigation.
Zerxus is probably the only one of these people, who’s completely above-board, and even that’s in question considering how closely he works with them.
I saw someone referring to these guys as something along the lines of… “the villains of another campaign,” and it’s a very apt description.
Finally, I also saw a post talking about how everyone in the Circle of Brass is very knowledgeable about their genres, and they’re about to run into something that they straight up aren’t ready for. In particular, Cerrit is a hard-boiled noir detective, who’s going into a thriller. Except that I remember a movie my dad was watching a long time back, about a police investigation that turns up a more demonic culprit than they were expecting. Cerrit’s investigation involves a particularly dangerous wizard by the name of Vespin Chloris, who has gone missing lately… and who appears to threaten Cerrit from beyond a mirror at the tail-end of the episode.
Sounds like the setup for a horror story, if you ask me.
That’s not including Zerxus’s nightmare from the beginning of the episode–one that presents betrayer god Asmodeus (usually portrayed as a villain in Exandria) getting the snot kicked out of him by a surprisingly sinister Pelor. He’s been having these dreams for a while now, and in this latest one he sides with Asmodeus against the cruel and haughty Pelor. It seems that good and evil may be a little more complicated here than previously imagined…
… except.
We don’t know where the dreams are coming from. And we don’t know if they’re on the level.
And if it’s a portent of things to come? Who says that Zerxus will still be a hero when they do?
Like I know it’s been said already that the Real Villain Of This Brennan-DM’d Campagin Is Late Stage Capitalism Yet Again but I am genuinely BOWLED OVER by how poorly thought out the Astral Leywright Interdimensional Funtimes plan is.
I mean
Leaving off the fact that we the audience know the apocalypse is kicking off in like two hours, just imagineif Vespin Chloras and the Calamity hadn’t/weren’t going to happen and this unhinged scheme actually got to play out.
It’s bad enough that the “heroes” of this miniseries are a literal oligarchy of six privileged dickheads running an entire government with no public oversight or accountability, but this plan was cooked up by literally threeof them. Three people! On their own! Have decided it’s a great idea to shift their entire city-state to other planes of reality!
I know they said the purpose of Avalir was exploration and research and knowledge but! This is not a research station! This is a city! You know! A place where civilians and kids live! Even if the world wasn’t about to end, what were they going to do when people started objecting to relocating their kids and families to other dimensions that may or may not even be HOSPITABLE to life from the Prime Material Plane!
They have no idea what’s out there! They’re doing this BECAUSE they have no idea what’s out there! And they’re just going to shift their floating mountain city-state full of kids and civilians into literal parts unknown!
It’s like if the Royal Society circa 1800 pointed to the city of London and said “guess what everybody, every single one of you is relocating to an exotic foreign locale! which exotic foreign locale? fuck if i know, we just spun a globe and picked at random! here’s hoping we don’t wind up at the bottom of the ocean!”
Jesus H fucking Christ the hubris on these people is glorious and even without Betrayer Gods gunning for humanity’s ass it’s still so clear that this could only ever end in tragedy.
I’m crying. I’m laughing. These people are fundamentally awful and selfish. i love them so much. I’m going to fiddle while they burn.
You are a level 14 abjuration wizard with 142 hit points and are responsible for making sure the technology that keeps your floating city in the air works. You are secretly fucking with said technology so you can transport your floating city to other planes. You believe that gods are not special and have said so out loud. Your changeling ex husband is the face of the city’s news and he is insufferable but also you kept his last name and still actively wear perfume that smells like the flowers at your wedding. You also have accidentally almost oneshotted a man with a high level fireball. Every day Laerryn Coramar-Seelie wakes up.
Just on the subject of Laerryn and her life’s work and her now having the last thing she needed for it, I’m just putting some pieces together. Things she has:
Her life’s work, a flying city’s massive battery engines, which appear to hoover up and store masses of magical energy over a seven year circuit around the world (?) and that are currently pretty much at capacity, main and auxillary
A seven-year ritual called the Replenishment which seems to involve earthing a huge chunk, if not most, of that energy back into the ley lines, either in one shot or over the course of a month, which typically results in a surge of energy through the leys, enough to cause continental crop abundance and a wave of sorcerous kids to be born
An apogee solstice, a once-in-an-elven-lifetime moment where the planes are in alignment, the leys are coursing with energy, it is entirely possible to reshape the ley lines and possibly the material plane, and the barriers between planes are paper thin
And, now, a tuning fork of celestial gold tied to the celestial planes, in the form of a solar’s bow, which was the last thing she needed
So, to sum up from that, she has a flying city’s worth of magical energy that she’s spent her life designing an engine to collect, she has a ritual location and time where she can pour all that energy into a continent sized power grid in a single surge, she has a cosmic event to supercharge said power grid and provide her with a once-in-a-lifetime window of opportunity to access beyond the material plane, and now she has basically a targeting mechanism.
… Vespin Chloras who? Laerryn. Honey. What are you doing?
On top of this, according to Patia’s history check on Ghor Dranas, the location of the Replenishment, the mountain that became Avalir and Cathmoira, is sitting directly on top of the prison of two of the primordials from the Schism. I don’t know if that’s also going to have an effect, but at the very least their location has likely always been supercharged to some extent.
Adding on some more things: Vespin Chloras, or whatever is directing Vespin Chloras, specifically wanted to be on Avalir. I don’t think it’s an accident that it picked Avalir during the Replenishment to get picked up by. Because, I’m just guessing, Avalir’s been pumping bigger and bigger surges due to Laerryn’s engines, but if it’s been doing the Replenishment since it first took to the skies under Patia’s grandfather, then it’s been essentially power-cycling the continent’s ley lines every seven years for centuries. Which, I’m just guessing, might have weakened some things? Like, maybe, locks on prisons?
I’m just wondering, is all, if Avalir as a concept was maybe influenced at all. There’s a whole theme going on about the Age of Arcanum and the hubris of wizards and the fatal arrogance of thinking you’re better and beyond the influence of gods. Everyone wants to become a god, like the Raven Queen, or they’re trying to prove that they’re beyond that (hi Patia), and it’s just …
And I’m wondering too if the Raven Queen is the one who’s picking up on things, noticing Vespin Chloras and the possible link to the betrayer gods, not just because she’s the goddess of death and there’s a big potential death looming, but also because she is still ‘one of us’ and of all the gods she has the best sense to tell when mortal hubris is about to bring the universe clattering down on their heads. Her own hubris lead to her becoming a god and immediately destabilising things, and she noticed and about-faced, and maybe that means she’s better at noticing when, for example, a city-sized battery is about to plug itself directly into the world’s magical mainframe and do something. Possibly under the influence of a betrayer god.
And Laerryn’s just gone running into the heart of Avalir with her targeting mechanism and four potentially possessed constructs.
ALT
