critical role campaign 3, episode 21 ‘fight at the museum…’ - in which orym is used as a shotput, imogen channels caleb widogast a little, and the gang escapes the nightmare museum with some juicy loot.
okay! i’m back - took on a little side quest because i decided i REALLY wanted to watch exu prime before getting too far into c3. i enjoyed it! getting an insight into the origins of orym, fearne, and dorian was nice.
not the ‘…’ in the title again agakshajshakhs. aww, no ashley this episode 😭
straight into initiative! and everyone rolls like shiiiit lmao. great start. imogen casts ‘command’, though, meaning the golems have to spend their turn grovelling. SMART. the gang takes this chance to start smacking the shit out of the glass case.
laudna sticks her rock chisel hair accessory into a crack in the glass, and basically gives extra damage when ashton hits it. the glass is actually cracked now! making progress! but unfortunately, as laudna steps back out of the way of the rest of the party, the stone golems get ATTACKS OF OPPORTUNITY. BECAUSE ‘COMMAND’ DOESN’T TAKE EFFECT UNTIL THEIR TURN. 🙃 she is unconscious. fuck! travis: “ashley just wrote ‘um, what.’” 😂
laura is driving fearne, and she heals laudna, thank god. fcg uses ‘sympathetic binding’ and gives her 4 temp hp. i love that they are working together to bolster poor laudna. 🥹
chetney finishes the glass case off! YESSSS. okay, time to grab this shit and RUN. he grabs the earring, stares longingly at the door on the other side of the room that they didn’t open, and hustles out the way they came.
lmaooooo marisha, like travis, REALLY wants to see what’s behind the other door, but she manages to resist the urge lmao.
fearne throws a ‘flaming hands’ as she runs out… but unfortunately, there is a bottleneck at the door, so she is stuck dangerously close to the golems. laura is distinctly unhappy with this outcome:
ooough, this bottleneck is going to be a problem for fcg too - sam is considering opening the other door just to be out of the room, but everyone is like NOOO THERE ARE PROBABLY MORE TRAPS IN THERE! travis is cackling maniacally wgsjagsjsh. they have to be careful exiting the way they came, because there were pressure plate traps right outside, and if they all push out the door together, it could be an issue to dodge them.
FUCK. the golems get up off the ground and go after fearne - laura is ready to FIGHT MATT. thank god he misses on both hits for the first one, and when the second one tries to grab her, marisha (laura was too scared to roll) gets a nat 20 on ashley’s behalf!! LUCKYYYY.
FUUUCK. they get to the door, and the other group have fucking locked it closed with the immovable rod! THOSE BASTARDS. i bet they are just waiting for the party to get the earring and get through the traps for them, then they will try to steal it.
okay! looks like they ARE gonna have to go through that other door! 😅 they all turn around and head back where they came from agaksgaj. they start hauling ass back past the remaining construct.
fearne kills one!! YES QUEEN.
aww, laura has mister teleport laudna away from danger 🥹💜
oooh clever! fcg attaches a magnet to the earring and hides it in their mouth!
OH NOOO. THE GOLEM PICKS ORYM UP AND THROWS HIM AT IMOGEN, KNOCKING HER UNCONSCIOUS. oooh fcg takes half the hp, so she is conscious, but HURT. travis, yelling: “you are UNHINGED TODAY, MATTHEW!”
ashton and imogen get some fucking impressive hits in, and it is finally looking damaged. YESSS. awww imogen uses her telekinesis to move laudna away from the fight even further… she cares so much about her girl. 🥹🥹🥹
orym gets a FANTASTIC hit where liam yells excitedly “max damage, max damage!!” and sounds exactly like an excited kid. SO CUTE lmao everyone giggles. he kills it! YESSSS.
they all immediately go quiet and begin plotting, knowing the other team must have some plan ready to go. imogen suggests they play dead to have the element of surprise. they consider tricking the other team into stealing a decoy earring, and then they can just walk the fuck out lmao.
oh man, fcg suggests they work out how to remotely trigger the pressure traps and wait for the others. THIS GOT DARK. DO WE WANNA KILL THEM??
everyone sets up by the doors as fcg heals them. laudna begins arts-and-crafting a fake lapis earring out of a stolen earring of fearne’s. she rolls SHIT hgkgytt. they put it into a jack in the box ?? and set it on the broken plinth lmao.
imogen can trigger a trap with her telekinesis! CLUTCH. they close the doors and rest, listening carefully, and after a bit, they hear a door open. they hear one of the other team members pointing out the traps, but as soon as they get close… IMOGEN SETS IT OFF. THEY SET THOSE FUCKERS ON FIRE AGSKAGSKAHS.
chet and ashton hold the door closed, and imogen sets off the trap again agakshak at this point it feels cruel 😂😂😂 one of them is down, hopefully not dead! they hear them (probably, hopefully?) drag the unconscious guy out. travis, deviously: “HIT THEM AGAIN.” 😂 jeeeesus! she does!!
they hear nothing. 💀 orym opens the door, which is now burned to SHIT and falls out of the frame. there is nobody in there, which is a good sign that they didn’t all fucking DIE at least lmao.
new plan is to just fucking boost it out of there past the injured party and hope for the best fjfikghj. orym sneaks through and peeks around, and sees sooty drag marks out of the very charred room. they all cautiously leave, and in the next room come across two unconscious members of the other party and the firbolg, who is up. OH BOY. ashton is like ‘ohhhkay let’s stabilise them’. 😂💀
fcg casts ‘spare the dying’, so at least they won’t die lmao. ashton immediately decides he wants to steal some shit from this museum, which??? feels unwise?? given the fact that this guy knows who they are agsjahsjsh.
OOOOOH they notice two of the others are hiding with crossbows, but when they see fcg helping, they seem to think better of trying anything. SHIT. lucky they went the merciful route lmao - if you could call it that after they almost killed 2 of them 💀😂 fearne casts ‘cure wounds’ on the dragonborn while orym retrieves their immovable rod.
laudna, seemingly inspired by ashton, scoots over to the journal to look at it. she finds a trap, and asks for help with it. ARE THEY REALLY STEALING SHIT?? oh this feels like a baaaad idea…
laura has been working on her fearne voice this whole episode, and she is beginning to absolutely nail it now ahakahkash i love hearing that high, breathy voice out of her, so good!
the dragonborn asks if they found the earring, and laudna lies, then rolls a good deception check. they don’t know ANYTHING. heh heh heh.
chetney successfully gets the journal from the trapped case, and they hightail it out of there. the other group stole chetney’s ever-smoking bottle, much to his dismay, but fair enough agskshs i don’t think anybody would have left that behind. at least they got the rod back!
ashton takes the helmet from the hishari armor, which he was really drawn to when they passed by earlier. orym (with a good history check) knows the hishari were a kind of elemental cult that were found decimated a few decades ago, though nobody knows who killed them. hmmmmmm… matt describes them as kinda like dark ashari.
before they exit the house, they pause to have a little squabble - orym and imogen seem unsure that stealing shit is a good idea, but ashton is resolute, saying this place was trying to kill them, and almost did, which was NOT part of the deal. they are holding a grudge now lmao. matt also reminds them that jiana hexum specifically said there was a bonus for embarrassing this dude, sooo… everyone is immediately like ‘LET’S LOOK THROUGH THE SHIT IN HIS BEDROOM’. 😂
they troop up the stairs and have a nose around the office, which has been tossed already - tal rolls a nat 20 to pick a lock on an untouched drawer, and matt is like ‘hooo boy - the reason this one drawer hasn’t been opened is because the lock was so complex, they gave up’. WHAT A MOMENT FOR A NAT 20. they find a stack of papers and letters, and pocket all of them. also some glasses, which surely must be magical. oh HELL yeah. OOH i wonder if the papers have hidden messages you can only see with the glasses???
they stealth their way back down to the back kitchen door fearne found, and with ‘pass without trace’, manage to sneak past the guards, unseen. HEIST SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED! they stole what they were meant to PLUS a bunch of bonus stuff. incredible.
they spot hytroga sitting and waiting, and chetney jokes that they should take out his guards for 100% completion 😂 before anybody can get too invested in this idea, fcg steps (wheels?) forward and greets him lmao. after some gross gagging, he removes the earring and hands it over. hytroga is surprised they succeeded! he jokes about having the guards take them, and when ashton looks ready to plow into him, he hastily tells them he’s kidding. 😂 orym: “ooh, be careful who you try that joke on.” ashton: “yeah, i dunno man, i am very jumpy.” 😂
they tell hytroga that his traps did serious damage to the museum and almost killed them, and he seems… very chill about it. agajshs this fucking guy… he wants them to come back and pay admission to find out what the earring even is. bastard.
marisha: “fearne says-” everyone: *noises of surprise and confusion* sgakshsksh i think ashley messaged her to ask if they got a prize. 😂 he leads them into the mansion, and magically changes a painting to be them standing in front of the museum, telling them their prize is ‘immortality’. BRUH. at least they get something worthwhile from hexum, because wow.
they leave, and are like LET’S GTFO OF TOWN 😂😂😂 they decide there is probably more to see, but don’t want to be easily found, so they head out of town to camp for the night. or the day, i guess, since it is now almost dawn.
fcg casts ‘remove curse’ on imogen, who i had FORGOTTEN WAS BLUE, and it works. well that’s good to know agakshs fcg can fix any errant wild magic effect if needed. OOOH fcg uses this moment to sneakily cast ‘detect thoughts’, because they think imogen has been acting ‘funky’ and want to see if they can find anything. DEVIOUS! however, imogen rolls a very good save, and her mind closes like a steel trap. she is like ‘thanks for the concern, but never do that again without my permission’. OUGHHHH. she does glance down at her pocket though, and fcg notices. THAT FUCKASS CRYSTAL…
fcg identifies the stolen glasses as ‘eyes of charming’, which ALLOW THE WEARER TO CHARM WHOEVER THEY ARE LOOKING AT. oh fuck, that sounds dangerous, but my first thought was ‘thank GOD these never fell into the hands of the mighty nein’ shakshskshjshs.
ah shit, the papers they stole have nothing visible on them… they must be enchanted. ashton tries to tear the corner of a page, and it doesn’t rip, which confirms these must be enchanted. OOOOOH.
imogen messages lady hexum to tell her they won, and is VERY efficient with her words, which everyone clearly finds a bizarre experience after the legendary jester messages. she is pleased, and tells her to pass on that ashton is ‘a good boy’. 😳 i swear half of this game is just matthew mercer finding new ways to flirt with his best friends, and THANK GOD.
chetney is excitedly leafing through the journal, but HORROR OF HORRORS - it gets very repetitive and ends with ‘...’. IT’S FUCKING FAKE. THAT BASTARD WROTE THIS THING HIMSELF. chetney, disgusted, throws it away, but laudna retrieves it, certain it could come in handy.
they stealth back into town - mostly to grab their horses, but also because chetney REALLY wants to visit the toy store that imogen told him about sgskagskah.
everyone decides, without ashley there, that fearne canonically has a marsupial pouch 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
chetney is, predictably, in love with the toy store, and buys a little wooden wyvern from the dwarven proprietor, who tells him she learned her craft in uthodurn (which is where chet is originally from, i think???). chetney asks if she knew someone called ultgar, and she freezes. they have a moment of standoff, and chetney reaches for his chisel??? chetney says he has no love for ultgar, but she doesn’t seem to believe him, since this is a weird coincidence. what the fuck??? 😂 orym is like WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING.
they leave, with this weird tension, and she says to tell ultgar she still keeps a knife because of him. orym leads chetney away, and is like ???? what and why??? chetney explains that ultgar was his mentor, but that he was the worst kind of person, he turned on their craft. is this the re-skinned santa from chetney’s first campaign appearance sgdkshskdh??? incredible. orym seems very concerned, and guides chetney back to the others lmao.
as they walk, orym brings up the way chetney attacked him during the heist (when he lost control of the wolf), and chet apologises, which orym accepts but says they need to discuss it with the group.
they notice estani leaving the inn they had stayed in, seemingly looking for them - orym tells him they are heading out, and thanks him for everything. he says he has been thinking on their meeting, and walks with them to the stables. he tells them there is a group called the grim verity, which consists of scholars, an old club that had investigated strange theories, but has recently become more unified. the twins had just become members! hmmmmm. that cannot be a coincidence.
estani tells them that this group is not dangerous, but that the nature of their investigative pursuits could get them into trouble with other entities that do NOT want people sticking their noses into their business. estani thinks the twins’ interest in the omen archive had been spurred by their involvement with the grim verity. he tells them that, if they plan to head to yios and check out the omen archive, they should find someone called ebenold kai - a professor friend of his - and gives them a letter to pass on to her. EXCELLENT.
everyone meets up at the stables, and they get the fuck outta dodge. matt fast-tracks the travel back, BUT we do pause for a bit for fcg to cast ‘identify’ on one of the papers - the writing is charmed to be hidden unless exposed to extreme cold! OOOOH. laudna casts 'ray of frost’, revealing ink writing. it lasts for 15 minutes! the papers appear to be letters and agreements between hytroga and dealers across exandria. a lot of them are labelled ‘sp.y.sh-n’. now what in the holy fuck could that mean.
orym rolls a great history check, and knows ‘sp’ likely stands for ‘spireling’ and ‘sh-n’ reminds him of ‘someone who almost made a deal with his leader’. spireling shenn? whomst?? should i remember that name?? seems to be someone from the early days of c1 - trippy!
another letter is about hexum, and tracks her dealings - she seems to be receiving small boxes, and passing them off to someone unknown. ashton remembers seeing a crate like that, right before all hell broke loose on their theft, and they can’t remember anything after opening the crate. HMMMM. what kinda dodgy shit is she into…
a few other pages are fucking INVOICES FOR A FEW OF THE FAKE ARTIFACTS. INCLUDING THE BIT OF BEACON. wowwwww he really is a scammer lmao. hexum will be very pleased. ashton pulls the spy report about hexum’s crates out of the paperwork, and asks imogen to keep it apart from the others.
they return to jrusar successful and WITH ALIVE HORSES, YAY!
