Chapters: 6/? Fandom: Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Julien Davinos & Aranessa Royce, Julien Davinos & Demodus Blix, Julien Davinos & Schemers Table, Julien Davinos & Thaisha Lloy & Occtis Tachonis & Vaelus Characters: Julien Davinos, Demodus Blix, Aranessa Royce, Bolaire Lathalia, Occtis Tachonis, Thaisha Lloy Additional Tags: Campaign 4 Seekers Table (Critical Role), Campaign 4 Schemers Table (Critical Role), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kettle-hobs/grigs, Julien Davinos is part kettle-hob, Fey Julien Davinos, Maya Davinos (discussed) Summary:

“It’s already so bad. They could have said all normal stuff, and the way she touched her face—” Demodus broke off with a horrified gasp. “Oh, shit! The head! I forgot about the head! Where is it?!”

Julien Davinos is part kettle-hob/grig, but his “nice” head has been stuffed in a closet in the Palazzo Davinos since the Falconer’s Rebellion. Now, the Tachonises have taken the Palazzo, and Julien has no idea what they might do to or with his head of blooms. Fortunately, someone else has actually managed to find it first…

Scenes of (mostly) the Seekers and Schemers coping with the ramifications of Julien’s second head. Currently follows the campaign canon as it unfolds with scenes occurring around canonical events or modified canon events, plus some flashbacks to Julien’s backstory.

Ch. 6: The Point of Thorns

Murray (a) agreed and allowed Azune to ask Demodus for help, (b) accepted Demodus’s decision, and (c) went with them to the presentation.

She did it! 🎉

The turmoil is a significant part of developing her character, and people have rightfully pointed out that Murray was making a lot of statements based on unexamined biases, but the result is that she still decided against those instincts. No one forced her to. She made that choice.

Murray wants this to be simpler. She wants to be able to move this resistance forward without involving people like Demodus. She wants there to be a set of people who have to pay the costs and take risks while everyone else gets to be safe. She’s even fine with being part of that set! And she isn’t the only one who wants specific people to be safe! Hal wanted that too, it’s not even unique.

The issue is that’s what Thjazi did, and it failed. You cannot create a class of tainted people who bear the burden of change while the innocent people get to be protected. The Firefly of it all!

And Murray knows that. Marisha said as much that Murray knows that Azune is right. But Murray is wrestling within herself about how to achieve these goals without it spilling onto people who didn’t ask for this. She doesn’t want to be the one to do that. It feels horrible. She even deflected to Azune in the conversation, and it was clearly at a time where the stress overwhelmed her. She’s normally so confident and sure of herself, and we saw what strips that away from her: the fear that she’s sending someone who she believes should be protected to his death.

It makes total sense why she snaps at Azune so many times, and it makes sense why Azune doesn’t snap back. He isn’t sure if it’s what he’s afraid of (she hates me because of where I’m undercover), or if she’s stressed the fuck out (and it’s exploding out of her in moments of vulnerability), or or something else, or a mix. But they’re struggling through it together, and they get to the same place: they ask Demodus for help, he agrees, and the three go together and risk their lives.

The story is that she did it! It felt awful every step of the way, but she did it!

The point of it isn’t that Murray did something wrong: it’s that she was in a position where every preference was pointing her in one direction, she knew that following it would weaken their position and put Azune at greater risk, and in the end made the decision that meant their efforts were most likely to succeed. This could have just as easily gone the other direction: a Nat 1 is precisely as likely as a Nat 20, and Murray doesn’t know there’s dice being rolled, but she implicitly understands the nature of chance. She had portents to use, but they were not necessarily going to help in this instance. Sometimes the universe isn’t in your favor, and for all her power and intelligence, she can’t always force it.

So of course she was afraid. And she did what she told Azune to do: suck it up and do the job.

Grace, haltingly on the keyboard Rocky built for him: Wassup bitches. Fucking jazzed to—

✨Adventures in Gauffering✨

As requested (albeit several months late) I have finally put together a video on my gauffering process!

so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.

romina is a washerwoman. she overhears things and is told gossip by coworkers and has decent memory recall but the stories tend to have gaps because she's in and out of the room and making a concentrated effort to not look like she's listening for her own safety

demodus is a wizard, so he's very good at information recall, so he can pull together almost the whole story with minimal gaps, but in a high stress situation there are bits he missed or didn't understand, and gaps because he didn't realize he should've been paying attention

cyd's been a spy for over a decade. his ability to recall what he heard even after a stressful situation is excellent, because that's been his whole job for thjazi since he moved to dol-makjar. he pretty much gives them the whole picture, is able to note gaps where they didn't mention a specific topic within earshot, and make connections. one conversation makes it very clear why thjazi asked him to spy

not because I somehow think julien ‘self-destructive coping mechanisms galore’ doesn’t do whatever the hell fantasy drugs araman has, because me and other fic writers have been predicting that shit since ep one

but specifically because other characters seem to have forgotten that julien doesn’t live in dol-makjar

is it possible he lived in the city for a while post-falconer’s rebellion and went on a bender that bolaire fueled? sure, why not? but it doesn’t seem likely or reasonable given his attachment to house royce, or the fact that legal proceedings against thjazi were happening at the golden orchard.

and he’s been with the barrowguard for an undetermined amount of time, but long enough that he’s well-known and actually respected for more than just name. he trained alogar, who isn’t a new recruit. when not with the barrowguard, his primary duty seems to be to lady aranessa, who does not appear to have spent much time in the city.

Bolaire's not claiming to be a drug dealer, i.e., someone Julien pays for drugs; instead he's claiming Bolaire and an unspecified co-collaborator financed the "distractions and drugs," and he's talking like Julien would know that. Why? Julien's a rich boy with money to throw around for his own shit--why would Bolaire be financing this and why wouldn't that seem super-suspicious to Julien?

To keep him "away from this" has no obvious "this" to refer to except stuff similar to Tsul'rekshi and her workshop. What would bring Julien into contact with stuff like that if he weren't "distracted" and doing drugs? Not his actual, legitimate jobs (Barrowguard and protecting Aranessa) which he was doing, nor voluntary thrill-seeking, because this whole argument is coming out of the fact that he didn't want to be there and was upset about being dragged into it. So presumably he'd only be here if he were doing something similar to what they're doing now--trying to track down stuff that Thjazi was up to. (Stuff that Bolaire didn't even know about himself until the Schemers started retracing Thjazi's steps.)