I do want to address something that has come up a number of times of late, which is that folks have pointed out that at many junctions, it is clearly a deliberate choice that Essek is not particularly present in Nein live shows content, whether that's being excluded (along with Kingsley, which will be relevant momentarily) from combat at the wedding, or considered largely absent from shows with concepts that otherwise would suggest a larger involvement, like Echoes of the Solstice (though I would argue, and I have, that this is a poor understanding of his narrative role) or, most recently, Projekt Funball (though allegations of his absence were, quite frankly, vastly overrated). And when it comes up there is often a sense, both explicitly and as an underlying implication when not stated outright, that this is because the cast don't care about him or that Matt doesn't like playing him, with a resentment that suggests his fans feel personally snubbed by his absence.
To begin with, this is blatantly false and easily disproved. For one thing, if he was not enjoyed as a character among the cast and Matt didn't care to play him, the animated show would not be structured as it is, to give him such a prominent and interesting role. On top of this, he would not have made as much of an appearance in campaign 3 as he did, wherein he acted as a familiar guide and trusted ally for both the Hells and Vox Machina, something that is only possible because the cast themselves know to trust him, as their other parties would have no context for who he is or why they should take his word. (He's come quite a long way from his original role for the Nein as Official Unreliable NPC!) Even in the finale, when the cast had no idea what else to do in the moment after expending all of the resources their various characters had, they end up turning to Essek, despite the fact that up until that point he hadn't even been present in the scene. Clearly he is a character in Exandria that they enjoy having around and consider an important resource, mechanically and narratively, and during both campaigns 2 and 3, he shows up when it makes sense that he would and even sometimes when it almost doesn't.
In contrast, his presence is minimal in live shows featuring the Nein in particular. I thought about this in the wake of Projekt Funball, in which it almost strains narrative belief that he doesn't venture with the party—obviously there is a reason given, but it would be just as easy to simply not introduce this requirement in the first place, which suggests that there is a different, non-narrative reason for this element to keep him outside. So let's think about why, shall we?
Evidence points to a very simple logistical reason, one that I present in a manner that is only somewhat tongue in cheek: time. (Realistically better described as mechanically efficient, but that's not as funny in context.) Consider that he's present in the first half of the wedding one-shot, and is, quite frankly, freely (and hilariously) chatty, but is not included in the effect that Isharnai uses to drag them into her domain, along with Kingsley. The reason Kingsley is not included is easy to surmise, which is because the complexity of Taliesin having to manage two characters would be fairly time-consuming and mechanically complex, particularly when you add in the fact that the Nein's high-level combats have to be extremely intricate and arcane to pose a challenge—and crucially, during live shows, there is a very hard time limit.
Having attended two live shows with level 20 Nein combat, they are exceedingly long. In general, live shows do tend to run up against their out time, to the point that a common refrain I have heard is that it's a bummer the wrap-up at the end often feels rushed. I suspect that this is also why they've pivoted more toward puzzles and games than extended combat, as well, which are much easier to estimate time for when building the show and simpler to wrap if they do go on too long—and you can see in this cooldown that that's true, because the initial challenge with the intelligence checks was altered on the fly to get them through to the next encounter. And it's worth noting that there simply is not a good way to integrate an allied NPC into those kinds of things, puzzles in particular, because unlike with the unpredictability of combat, puzzles are predicated around the idea that the GM knows the answer, and the players have to be clever enough to find it. (Here it would've been exceedingly silly, quite frankly, to have him more directly involved in the first half.) Even in combat, the intricacies of creating a challenging encounter for the Nein at level 20 that absolutely must be completed in what is usually about two hours is already difficult enough without introducing another turn into the initiative order, and even in this show that was clear, given the hit point threshold was pretty low, but the combat was made more complex by trying to eliminate various members of the Nein from the board rather than landing hits on them. I do not think it's a stretch to say that this is a major factor in what is and isn't included in live shows while trying not to run afoul of venue fines for overtime use.
Essek is both an important person to the party and the players, and also he is still an NPC, and must be considered mechanically as such, and as I've argued many, many times over the years, that is literally fine. Honestly, I'm primarily writing this because I had to push back on similar ideas during the latter half of campaign 2, and they had largely fallen off, but the uptick of this again has been disheartening. At the same time, much like during the same period of campaign 2, it has also felt like there's been an uptick among other fans using these occurrences to either diminish his relevance to the party and cast allusions in the same vein—that he's not really important to the characters or the players, that his presence isn't wanted or valued, usually in an effort to either ignore or erase key themes of the Nein as a party and their campaign, or the themes of individual character arcs that some have soured on or feel, perhaps unconsciously, aren't compatible with the narrative that those fans want to posit about the Nein or another party—and the evidence in the text(s) and around it all point to these perspectives being wrong. Nevertheless, I also understand the frustration some feel when it seems that other fans are consistently hyping up their own faves using this status as fodder, but I do not think it worth my or anyone else's time to cast aspersions on the cast over something that is blatantly untrue.
My point is ultimately that it seems as though discourse has regressed to some of the more unfounded elements of its campaign 2 iterations with, quite frankly, an abundance of evidence to contradict the complaints, both explicit and implicit, in that discourse, in ways that turn fandom discussion from a generative conversation into not a conversation at all but a zero-sum game. Squabbling for perceived scraps of attention makes us all poorer in the end.
