dungeons and dicks

sorcerers are just a fact of the setting. they're not evil because they're sorcerers and they're not sorcerers because they're evil. sorcerers exist because of ancient pacts or boons or a chance of biology or simply being born in proximity to magical places, and that's clear in all of the sundered house mythos. i think speculating that the ancient versions of the sundered houses got their magic nefariously is falling into the "some things are Just Evil." we can't assume that because the human sorcerers of modern aramán are engaging in class warfare, their ancestors were wicked.

there are sundered houses who took the heroic position of defying the shapers during the shapers war. the priestly houses are rotten not because sorcerers are rotten but because wealth and resource hoarding and the dismissive carelessness they treat mortal life with is evil. otto einfasen isn't evil because he's an einfasen, he's evil because he took a commoner girl's head off with a hammer. and there's endless nuance to be found here: the einfasens are nominally allied with the protagonists, but it doesn't render them heroic, they're still canonically authoritarians. the royces are complicit in every evil done by the sundered houses for the last 70 years, but they are inexorably tied to the heroes in a positive way and are making active efforts to break away from the evil system.

additionally: assuming that the primordials were bad because they wed the shapers is a big leap. the shapers murdered them. thaisha saw the desecration of tehana's shrine in favor of trozhna as wrong and insulting. if it were one evil covering another, it would not have been impactful to notice the desecration. the primordials might have been a neutral or evil force on the world, we don't actually know, but they are a part of the foundation of the world, so it's more likely that forces of nature are simply a neutral concept.

aramán is a setting where evil consistently is shown to be an active choice. even the shapers. there is no indication that they were just born bad. they chose to come to aramán, kill the primordials and repress the population, turning them into playthings in their sibling squabbles as they bent the world to their will. those are the reasons they are evil, not because they come from Evil Land.

First, Brennan uses Hannan as an antagonistic force toward the Seekers; he unifies them by standing against both Occtis and Vaelus. He also provides contrast to the more measured and peaceful Druids we've seen thus far. He provides a counterpoint to Vaelus, the only other Elf we've seen in the campaign, and forces her to reveal more about her position regarding the Shaper's War by defending it.

As his relationship with Vaelus develops, we get more nuanced glimpses of what Elvish life is actually like, the full weight of Sylandri's hold of her creations, and Vaelus admits who she actual has been missing and grieving all these years; not Sylandri, but her family. Admitting this lets us understand the sacrifice she makes when she chooses to put her family aside, to break the Stone of Nightsong and help the Rungjani dead find peace.

And of course, when Hannan learns of Mara's capture he flies to Obrimus Manor to help her. There, he does not barge in to search, instead he starts to counter the Undead. This is extremely important support for Thimble. The magical darkness dissipates, her search difficulty decreases significantly, and the undead threat is lessened greatly. I feel confident in saying that Thimble would not have succeeded without this intervention, but critically, he supports Thimble's success without swooping in to make it his own.

With this support, she is able to finish off the Undead Monstrosity that was Raimond Davinos. Now Teor's death is not in vain because she heroically finished the work he had started. Together, they rid the world of a great evil while freeing Raimond's spirit and recovering his blade.

Thimble is able to recover the Pridesires. Their spirits and bodies cannot be harnessed by the Tachonises. She recovers the Royce Bracers and the Einfassen ax, which could have complicated things had they been discovered in the crypt. She also finds valuable information throughout her search, learning where the Gnomish statues were taken and information on the tenebral ship. Hannan facilitates all of this as he holds the darkness and the dead at bay.

The last important thing Hannan does is to die.

And this is very important, narratively.

Primus Tachonis has been bested by the work of the Magpies. We've seen him threatened by the Einfasen and condescended to by Yanessa Halovar. Why should we be threatened by him? Maybe he's just prideful and sloppy. Maybe he's careless and stupid. Maybe he's actually not that frightening.

And then he kills Hannan without a second thought, and we see the truth that Brennan has been nudging us toward since the beginning.

Primus is not stupid or short-sighted, he is panicking.

He knows things we do not. He knows something is coming, and the full wrath of the Druids that may come in a handful of months doesn't matter, because there are larger forces at play. So yes, the Einfasen and the Cormorays are deeply powerful and the Halovar's have power and influence as well as cunning and poise the others seem to lack.

Even so, Primus Tachonis is the most dangerous threat right now, because he is desperate. In his mind, he has nothing to lose. The murder of Hannan proves this.

Sometimes the cost of a great story is the loss of a great character.

it's been a while

Detect Evil and Good

It's been said before and I'm sure it'll be said again, Brennan isn't a subtle storyteller. I don't necessarily know if I think he's incapable of it, but I do think he's not interested in it. There's a reason he keeps looking at the camera and saying "you can't prove this is an allegory!," he tells stories with a moral POV, often centering on class, and he likes it when the audience picks up on that. Which isn't to say he isn't capable of infusing moral nuance into his stories. He definitely is! But it is to say that 31 episodes in, we know what kinds of moral nuance he wants CR4 to be exploring through its NPCs. And I believe we've got four categories of it:

Why don't people act against oppressive systems? We've got a couple different forms of this. There's the people that are comfortable in the status quo and unwilling to recognize the problems with it or summon the will to dive into discomfort. Our "nice" nobility falls into this category, but so do people like Azune's Captain Fazir. There's the people that are too afraid to act in a significant way like Bolaire's fellow curator Makmaz. And then there's people like the various unnamed Magpies, who simply have more immediate concerns, such as feeding themselves and their families.

When do the ends justify the means? What terrible things are we willing to do/accept in order to do a greater good? This is Thjazi! This a major part of Thjazi's role in the narrative and what he symbolizes! This is also Mara, and the fairies in the Hollow. I also think the druids and their historic neutrality fall more into this category than the first one. If the Bolaire-Thjazi conflict is executed well, this is where it will live. And I still have a lot of hope that it will be executed well. I know there've been some concerns about Taliesin's play and bts statements, and I share some of those. But I do think this train is still very much on the tracks and Taliesin, with some assistance from Brennan and Laura, probably, can still very easily bring it safely to the station. For my money, the most likely scenario is "how could Thjazi justify to himself collaborating with a mask that had declared itself judge, jury, and executioner of petty criminals and was gleefully torturing them to build a comfortable life for himself." I think that's already been set up a little with Thimble's "have you considered he might have been afraid of you." But if we want a darker read on Thjazi, it could also be that he knew Bolaire would have to be sacrificed to restore the halfling afterlife and was doing everything he could to create emotional distance for himself about it.

Related to 2, but I want to class it separately because it's contained less in what the NPCs do and more in the options they present to the PCs: When do you align yourself with a lesser evil to defeat a greater one? This is mostly the Einfassens, but it could also be Termina.

How does one reconcile the good an institution can do with the corruption involved in running it? Candescent Creed is a big one here. So are the lingering worshipers of the Shapers. The Penteveral also plays around this idea.

Those are the moral ambiguities Brennan is exploring in this campaign as a DM. The good guys and bad guys are very clear. The abusers in the story look like Primus, Yanessa, Azgra, and Sylandri. There's no ambiguity there. Thjazi is a good man with questionable methods. Nothing about the story Brennan is telling is interested in asking "but what if he were also a bad guy too?" And if it did try to ask that question after more than 31 episodes, it would feel weird and out of place. Brennan would have to suddenly develop a much gentler touch to handle it gracefully, and it would change the entire tenor of the story.

That doesn't mean there's no room for other kinds of moral ambiguity. Julien, Occtis, Bolaire himself is the biggest one. But it's all coming from the PCs. I just reblogged a post that mentioned how we probably won't get to see Ethrand Tachonis grow beyond his abuse the way Occtis probably will by virtue of Occtis being a PC, and yeah, that sums it up. We get to spend a different kind of time with PCs that allows for deeper dives into moral nuance than NPCs do. They are also piloted by different people. Brennan has made clear what moral ambiguities he's interested in exploring with this story, but he's not the only one telling it, and he's happy to facilitate what others want to explore within their own PCs psyche and relationship to the world.

Going back to Brennan's style with this campaign, I've talked before about the fact that symbolism is pretty hard to do in Actual Play because you need player buy-in for it to really work. Which is why all the symbolism Brennan is doing has been with flashing neon signs (think bird hell). And flashing neon signs don't have a ton of nuance. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about Thjazi as a symbol. Brennan set up everything Thjazi was symbolically in the opening scene in as heavy-handed a way as he possibly could. A criminal, accused of theft and murder alongside his more bullshit charges, apologizing for keeping his distance from a friend, being executed under the guardian wall, calling out about the Falcon's Cry. And it has allowed the players to run with him as a symbol. Most recently and beautifully in Liam's ending to Kothar'ai.

[ID: A digital illustration of Thimble and Occtis Tachonis from Critical Role. Thimble is the size of a human and grinning as she hugs Occtis, lifting him slightly off the ground so his feet dangle just above the floor. Occtis is hugging Thimble back and looking very surprised to be in the air. End description.]

thimble: julien? 🥺 thank you 🥺

julien:

Thaisha: Julien what if I told you saved the soul of Thjazi Fang