professional hater

- Caleb will be vulnerable to ‘corruption’ bc he’s so nervous about Essek being discovered by the bright Queen at the end of C3, Liam himself said Caleb was spiraling after that insight check

- a small but not insignificant part of Essek “noo stoppp don’t hurt me :)” Thelyss will be having the time of its life

- in an inversion of the tower, each member of the nein is going to have a room specifically designed to trap them, whether it’s playing on the things they want most or their greatest fears (probably dependent on how compliant they are w Caleb’s manipulations, which knowing the mighty nein it’ll almost certainly turn into the latter pretty expeditiously lmao)

- if there’s a room specific to each of the mighty nein, how much do you wanna bet there’s gonna be an angsty self-punishment room designed for Caleb much like the 8th floor of his tower?

- Caduceus will be there, Kingsley will be off in darktow causing the trouble that will lead to the Edinburgh live show

- Luc will be there, not Veth. As much as I know folks want to see her pregnant/the baby I can’t think of a single good in character reason for her to be there without it feeling like character regression. If she said no to Caleb when his greatest abuser escaped so she could stay and protect her campers I don’t foresee her risking her baby’s life to fish Caleb out of wizard shenanigans he got into purely recreationally. Veth and Caleb still love each other very much but their relationship could get very blurry and lopsided at times and veth setting clear boundaries and not always running to help Caleb at the drop of a hat was good and healthy for her. And as much as it would be great to have his closest friend there for what’s shaping up to be a character study for Caleb, I can easily see Luc being there and having some jealousy/insecurity regarding the new baby to work out so it’s not like Sam won’t have some emotional conflict to chew on if veth sits this one out, and it’s not like the ins and outs of Caleb and veths relationship haven’t already been thoroughly explored

- Along the same vein, I think this will be largely shadowgast centric. How much the mighty nein mean to Caleb and how instrumental they’re going to be to breaking him out of this can’t be understated, but we’ve had the entire 141 episode campaign at 4+ hours an episode to establish their relationships and importance to each other. As beloved as shadowgast is we really have seen very little of their dynamic properly “together” played out in the live format, they ended campaign 2 on a situationship note with a lot left to iron out individually and together and then we saw them briefly in campaign 3 common law married a decade later. I DESPERATELY want to crack into Essek’s head and their dynamic, esp in the wake of how we left things in C3 with his cover blown and the added context of his backstory in season 1 of the animated series

- MATTHEW MERCER!!! USE CONVERGENT FUTURE IN A LIVE PLAY!!!! AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!!!!!!!!!! But no seriously it’s such a crazy ability and the exhaustion points it incurs are ANGSTTTTTTT potential especially if Essek keeps using it in increasingly desperate attempts to save Caleb or keep Caleb from doing something he’ll regret and pushes and pushes until he himself drops….. oh yes…….. YESSSSSS