So I rewatched the entire dinner scene instead of sleeping, and hereβs my hot take: I donβt care about Trent. Heβs an asshole abuser, so I will eat up othersβ probably far more insightful meta on THAT topic.
No, I want to talk about Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb.
That scene didnβt go at all like I expected it to. I think I, and everyone else, were expecting the mind games, the subtle threats, the manipulationβ¦
But I wasnβt expecting half of it to be directed towards Astrid and Eodwulf.
In those previous encounters, we kind of got what we thought the two of them would be β confident, duty bound, convicted, a certain sense that they were where they wanted to be, that they knew their environment and had some control. Astrid came from a place of slightly patronising pity for Caleb. Eodwulf didnβt bother talking to the Nein overly.
So we all sat here and made jokes about Calebβs evil ex-friends, donning their scariest wizard robes and staring stonily down the table for the evening. Thatβs what we expected. People who didnβt hesitate. People who, though abused and brainwashed, were committed to the cause, were perpetuating the cycle.
That is not what we got.
They start that way. Annoyed at the Neinβs antics. Stern. Supposedly full of conviction. But there was no righteousness, and they got more and more nervous as the night went on.
Astrid and Eodwulf were afraid. Astrid was not one step away from coldly offing Trent and taking his place. She was leaning away from him, begging Caleb to stop provoking Trent, stop calling attention to her. Eodwulf was reluctant to talk, was worried about how Caleb would react, froze up as soon as things started getting confrontational.
Every moment of their interactions at that table screamed ABUSE.Β
Iβm sure our previous assumptions are true. Iβm sure they kill, torture, and do worse for the Empire. Iβm sure they defend it at every point, have parroted lines they refuse to let go of. Itβs possible that they mean it.
But those werenβt powerful mages whoβd grown up to shoulder the horrors of their youth as just and right without another thought. Those were beaten dogs.
On top of that, those were beaten dogs who know theyβre not allowed to think for themselves. Every time Caleb asked Astrid a difficult question β every single time β she would look over at Ikithon nervously, steel herself, and then mimic him almost exactly.
I didnβt realise until rewatching the scene, but her speech pattern varies GREATLY between speaking in a manner I believe to be honest, and speaking about dicey topics like the Empire, her duty, their actions, and so on. When addressing more vulnerable topics, Astrid spoke softly and looked like this:
Whenever she had to speak about something that she clearly felt she was on thin ice with? She lowered her voice, evened it out, and changed her cadence to match Ikithonβs perfectly, the only difference being that her voice is slightly higher pitched. Itβs so close I sometimes had trouble telling if Caleb was talking to Ikithon or to her.
Astrid straight up told Caleb that whoever is her superior is right, and she and Eodwulf will do as that superior says. Nothing more. No moral judgements of her own. Eodwulf, for his part, never directly defended his actions or their jobs. Whenever he was pressed, he looked to Astrid. Who, in turn, would look to Trent.
Thatβs a pretty obvious sign of whatβs going on, here.
The only times Eodwulf is startled into genuine reactions are when Trent drops the first real bombshell on Caleb, at which point he makes these faces:
And afterwards, when Caduceus parted with a scathing last word to Trent, wherein both he and Astrid looked like this:
Astrid tried to share her hair techniques with Jester. She smiled when the Nein joked about kidnapping her. Eodwulf liked the moniker they gave him. Eodwulf decided he liked Caduceus right after heβd told Trent no one would mourn him.
As soon as that dinner was over, Eodwulf pulled out alcohol, took a swig, passed it to Caleb, who took a swig, and then to Astrid, who took a swig. That quick and unhesitating exchange speaks of long experience. Long experience leaving Trentβs presence and immediately trying to get drunk.
It said a lot about the three of them, I think. That little moment, the ease of it, how normal it seemed, displays a genuine (at least at one point, and maybe still) camaraderie between them, and also a genuine unease in Trentβs presence, even after a decade and a half.
And that leads to the other thing I wasnβt expecting, but maybe should have. Caleb.
Heβd hesitated from condemning Trent. This was the man he had spent most of the campaign running from, the man who had groomed him into killing his family, and yet he was reluctant to speak about violence, even though his friends half begged him to give the okay on it.
I think we were expecting Caleb to hunch his shoulders, to look away, to be eaten up by anxiety. And maybe he would have been shrinkingly cautious through the whole affair. Yβknow, if Trent hadnβt said Calebβs parents would have been okay with him burning them alive. If Astrid and Eodwulf hadnβt desperately tried to blend in with the furniture at every opportunity.
Caleb starts the dinner making these kind of faces:
But slowly, that changes. He stops doing his usual habit of avoiding eye contact and rubbing at his arms. He starts glowering when Trent tries to insist that Calebβs parentsβ deaths were a good thing, were what they wanted, would bring honour to the family he had eradicated, somehow. He likes it less when Trent claims credit for his escape. He really looks pissed when Astrid tries unconvincingly to argue that what they did was okay, obviously signalling her discomfort with the situation.
By the end of the night, Caleb looked Trent in the eye and said he dreamed of murdering him, brutally, with his bare hands. By the end of the night, Caleb had THIS look on his face as he stared at the man whoβs haunted his every moment for as long as heβs been a lucid adult:
This Caleb? This is the Caleb who isnβt paralysed by his own guilt and fear. This is a Caleb who is very, very angry.
So regarding the dynamic between Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb? The script was, in the end, rather flipped. We went in expecting three wizards trying to manipulate an overwhelmed Caleb. Instead, we got one wizard crushing the souls of two others under his heel, with the only one currently outside his direct influence growing more and more furiously bold as the situation became evident.
The fact that Trent was his abuser was never going to bring Caleb to violence on its own. But Caleb called Astrid and Eodwulf βfriends,β present tense, the day before he watched them sit, afraid of saying the wrong thing, through a dinner with their abuser. I donβt think heβs going to be so hesitant about violence towards Trent in the future.
They may have learned very little about Trent and his true intentions. Itβs even possible that everything we saw of Eodwulf and Astrid is some elaborate fiction, though I donβt think so. But whatever else, it did one thing Iβm not sure Trent wanted; it solidified a path forward for Caleb that he wouldnβt commit to before, and I donβt think it involves Trent surviving.
