Primus claimed he was only after Aranessa and Occtis, but Julien knows very well that 1) his mother and sister are homeless and his sister cursed because Primus was staging an attack on the Golden Orchard at the same time, expecting backup from their shiny new Celestial, and 2) Callowyn Royce was killed by Tachonis forces before the attack on the Orchard. Primus wouldn't need a simultaneous attack on the Orchard if the goal was just to take out House Royce and at some point claim the Golden Orchard, because he already lured the sole surviving Royce to Dol-Makjar. If the Deva Vindicta was supposed to be enough to threaten all the other Sundered Houses into submission, then there should be no rush to attack the Orchard--the Deva Vindicta should have been plenty to bully a few non-sorcerous vassal houses of a dead Sundered House out of the Orchard at Primus' leisure.

He said "Davinos was an improvisation, but wherever the Lady Royce and Occtis first met, I would have been waiting in the shadows, or enough of Lady Aranessa's retainers to speed the Deva's journey to the underworld." To me that implies he's claiming they didn't plan/need to kill all three (Aranessa, Occtis, and House Davinos) and would have settled for either just Aranessa and Occtis (two Sundered House nobles) or just Aranessa and "enough" of her vassals to provide the noble blood for the candle ritual (implying they could substitute multiple "lesser" nobles like the Davinos for one Sundered House noble). But that's just bogus according to what the Seekers discovered: The limitation on the Deva Vindicta ritual wasn't the amount of sacrifice, per House Tachonis's own notes/correspondence; it was needing a member of the priestly houses without sorcerous ability, i.e., Occtis and only Occtis.

Also, if killing House Davinos was unnecessary "improvisation" around killing Aranessa and Occtis, why was Primus downstairs personally hands-on murdering Raimond Davinos while his screw-up middle son did the ritual on Occtis and failed to kill Aranessa? Why wasn't Primus either doing the oh-so-important ritual or killing the sorcerer who was the alleged target? (Honestly, even if killing all the Davinos was the plan, it's still pretty weird that they left Aranessa as a side task for Ethrand and his ghouls when there was another Tachonis sorcerer on-site. From a game perspective, it functions to make this personal for Julien, and maybe that's all it was, but in-universe it implies that either Raimond's death was important or that Primus considered him enough of a threat to need to take him out immediately.)

Petra and Ryah's letter indicate Occtis was the "choice" for the ritual, but Otto didn't show that (half-)letter in the meeting, so even though House Einfasen knows Occtis was selected for the ritual in advance (if not why), from the perspective of the rest of the attendees, Primus presented the plan as "kill Aranessa + generate enough power from killing nobles to make a Deva Vindicta," not as "turn Occtis into Deva Vindicta + generate enough power from killing Aranessa or her vassals."

Letting the preparation pay off.

Azune and a fuckton of Magpies on security detail.

Murray with eyes on the crowd.

Vaelus and Hannan ready at the front row.

Hal and Thaisha locked and loaded in the wings.

Kattigan (unfortunately MIA, RIP) in the Tintazi Wood.

Plus! The surprise cavalry of the fairies!

Brennan looked at this whole layout, looked at the initial plan for a big Halovar fuss to throw a wrench into the works, and scrapped it as soon as Murray led the way to a little pixie prank shooing the Karen-descent Creed out the door with no disruptive violence at all. Because in the face of so much prep, the original planned out scuffle would have been moot bordering on pesteringly inorganic. The Hallowed Round is currently jacked with powerhouses and backup. Even if it was an overabundance of caution just in case something went scary with the paint-blood ritual, it circled back around to being extremely useful in being an already-primed rebel army presence ready to swat any outside enemy from fucking with the show.

Thjazi’s real plan for the Rungjani and the afterlife of the Dying Fields finally getting a bridge out of spectral torment gets to occur in all its grandeur and spiritual release with no interruption!

And all the people who most needed to witness this are witnessing it.

Hal and Thaisha actively forging this miraculous ritual and beholding it at the same time as their people’s souls are freed from the endless pain they died to save their descendants from. The intent of the rite transforming a sacrificial pit into a display of story, a story turning defeat into the stepping stone to victory, art uplifting the spirits of those it was made for, both in metaphor and truth. Thaisha herself is leading them to the Old Path! Hal and his play are holding the door open to the bridge between, knowing now that his brother never betrayed them, but gifted them something precious beyond words, all from beyond the grave!

Vaelus seeing the truth of what the Shapers’ rule was like to those outside their favor, which was so much of the world. Hannan weeps for the display. They clasp hands and lay the groundwork for another what may be another miracle, this one to their people and the Fae.

Murray reveling in the unique joy of being so convinced that something horrific was around the corner, primed with suspicion and worst-case scenarios, only to witness something almost deliriously wondrous in its benevolence and beauty. Sometimes it’s great to be wrong. Sometimes good things get to happen. Sometimes you can trust a rogue, even if the guy left a mountain of questions and gaps in intel behind him. Sometimes you get a damn good show.

Azune, still so steeped in crises of faith in his hero and his own identity, having that ever-heavier weight of doubt grow lighter in seeing what Thjazi Fang truly wanted come to fruition. A complicated man he might have been, perhaps not the best person to all who knew him, but a man striving to deliver the best lives and futures he could to others. And so he has here. Blood to paint, art into a bridge. What a relief, a miracle, a small step out of the mental and emotional quagmire, at least on one front.

I would be reluctant to use fridging in this exact context, because this isn't some imaginary scenario to generate manpain for a white hero, this is a much more common experience of Native American and First Nation people, having their wives and daughters and sisters (in particular, but not exclusively) go missing. And never getting answers, never learning what happened, and not being believed that there's a problem in the first place.

This is like how being rescued from a tower by a prince is not particularly empowering or affirming to cis physically able straight thin perisex white women and girls, but can be for basically anybody else. Particularly black girls and women, who do not get a lot of cultural messages that treat them as people who are so valuable and precious, who may not have the strength to save themselves, or may wish that they didn't fucking have to save themselves (and everyone else) all the time.

White men have this story so often happen that we have a trope name specific to one specific and particularly egregious version of this, but you don't often see men who look like Robbie dealing with this type of story in fictional settings, even though it happens for men like Robbie in real life with horrifying frequency.

Mayali Nayar: I would die for my little brother.

Zebani Halovar: I'm ready to kill my little brother.

Shadia Fang: I'm going to be revolutionary with my little sister!

Petra and Ryah Tachonis: We'd prefer to kill our little brother in a controlled setting.

Hal's choice not to fight in the Falconer's Rebellion was a personal choice about prioritizing his own family (and whether he could even leave his two older children with Elodie to go off and fight is not totally certain). But it was, of course, not a choice made in isolation. He argues that even their father decided to hang up his blade at some point, but our understanding of the lot of orcs before the Shaper's War is that that wasn't a choice their father could have made 60 years prior. That under Azgra, Hal would almost certainly have been forced to march to war, never mind his three young children at home. There were clearly orcs who weren't on the front lines, orcs who built the cities and smithed the weapons and provided whatever food the community had, but by and large orcs were made as weapons and used as such. Thjazi's letter referenced turning swords into plowshares. In some ways, Hal's whole life between the War of Axe and Vine and now has been a version of that. The Falconer's Rebellion was a just cause, and it's probable that if more people had been willing to join it, Araman wouldn't be in the mess it's currently in. But Hal's choice to abstain is a very different choice from Aranessa's choice to abstain. The politics of an orc saying "I will not fight" even when the cause is just are far more nuanced. Because isn't this part of the freedom Vokjan Murzat fought and died for? Orcs in nice clothes, with flowers all around, and time to go see beautiful art made by their own people? Orcs who raise children and start businesses and hang up their swords? A life free from war? Finally. We don't know whether Hal was thinking about those politics when he made his choice. I suspect he was "I choose the Rungjani" indicates that to me, but you can easily read the scene another way. Whatever your take on his thought process, the politics of the choice are undeniable. A healthy orc in his early 30s, refusing a call to arms barely 50 years after Azgra's death, means something for the Rungjani.

I'm trying to think about whether I would have preferred it narratively if Brennan and Aabria had saved Thaisha's L5 level up for the scene at the intermission of KoTher'ai and I do think that even knowing this moment was coming down the line I like the placement of the L3-L5 level up.

I think as much as the return of the Rungjani afterlife and the call for them to walk the Path is a climax for Hal and Thjazi's story arcs in this chapter and for the Rungjani as a whole, Thaisha's narrative arc climax is at that moment where she recognized something was wrong with Thjazi's lack of presence on the Path and tapped into a deeper connection with it in order to find him.

Calling the Corners seems like such a cool spell (I would love to get the wording for it and what it does in more detail) and it seems to be a spell Thaisha gets at L4 (since Aabria leveled up to use it before Brennan gave her the option to go to L5 as well) so either way it would have been a spell she had access to for both scenes.

The Path is such a vital center to Thaisha's character arc. She ends the overture trying to lead Occtis back down the Path to Safety even as his father and grandfather are trying to forcefully pull him off of it from their side.

There is a safe path through the woods but there's too many monsters in the trees around to proceed, follow the safe path back!

It is both the right decision but also one that calls into question her role in regards to the Path.

Was it good to call Occtis back? She helped save him yes but he can't walk the Path ever again. And then she's traveling with him and he, even more than before his death, seems to be anathema to her duties to the Path. He freezes over a river in a sacred Druid grove, he is conducting thought experiments about bringing back a god who dominated nature, who had Druids of her own people hunted down and killed.

But then they are in the eternal dark of Tanessar and he is helping them understand his family's plans and fight them. He is committed to helping her find her son. He is recognizing that his family's Path and her's are not opposites or enemies by nature but, because his family have decided that theirs will be the Only Path, they have been made so by circumstances.

Returning to Dol Makjar, through the work that Thaisha, Hal, Thjazi, Shadia and all the Rungjani and their Druids have been able to do she returns to her original duty of shepherding these souls who were originally barred from the Path down it.

In the graveyard she is able to recognize Thjazi's absence and in her quest to understand and search for this spirit of her family, this spirit she read the rites for (she showed him the Path-where has he gone?!) she taps even more deeply into that purpose. Into the call that 19 year old Thaisha with her jewelry business plans had been shutting the door on. It is this scene that answers the question of whether she is in the right place, doing the right thing. And the answer is Yes.

The scene of the rebels coming back is beautiful but it is a continuation of an answer that is established by that scene in the graveyard. Additional evidence to add to her file that this place, this moment needed a Druid.

I missed last episode so i was SO CONFUSED at the start. And I didn't get to draw too much from the play because i was C R Y I N G

and I spent half of the dungeon part HIDING IN MY SHIRT OH GOD THEY IN DANGER

Good news! This has already happened to Julien! After the fight on the bridge in E14, Julien's Haste wears off while they're sprinting away to avoid Petra and Ryah, leaving him incapacitated for a round, so Vaelus just scoops him up and keeps going.

Øks: an axe

Occtis Tachonis has granted a fairy access to the manor grounds Occtis Tachonis has opened the door to the vassal crypts Occtis Tachonis has granted the protection of the family to Thimble of the Golden Orchard Occtis Tachonis has opened the Undercroft door in the vassal crypts Occtis Tachonis has closed the Undercroft door in the vassal crypts

luis carazo is winning at dnd (hugging and kissing his homies goodnight)

bonus: