I regret a little leaving the "there is a version of cr4 where an eviler thjazi works" bit in the tags of my discourse post. Because I am sympathetic to the logic of people who think Thjazi having been objectively horrible to Bolaire makes him a more nuanced and realistic character. Lots of real life great revolutionary leaders where pretty terrible to people around them (and often quite misogynistic). The problem isn't with that idea, it's with that idea in this campaign. And I'd like to try to articulate why.
It's been said before and I'm sure it'll be said again, Brennan isn't a subtle storyteller. I don't necessarily know if I think he's incapable of it, but I do think he's not interested in it. There's a reason he keeps looking at the camera and saying "you can't prove this is an allegory!," he tells stories with a moral POV, often centering on class, and he likes it when the audience picks up on that. Which isn't to say he isn't capable of infusing moral nuance into his stories. He definitely is! But it is to say that 31 episodes in, we know what kinds of moral nuance he wants CR4 to be exploring through its NPCs. And I believe we've got four categories of it:
Why don't people act against oppressive systems? We've got a couple different forms of this. There's the people that are comfortable in the status quo and unwilling to recognize the problems with it or summon the will to dive into discomfort. Our "nice" nobility falls into this category, but so do people like Azune's Captain Fazir. There's the people that are too afraid to act in a significant way like Bolaire's fellow curator Makmaz. And then there's people like the various unnamed Magpies, who simply have more immediate concerns, such as feeding themselves and their families.
When do the ends justify the means? What terrible things are we willing to do/accept in order to do a greater good? This is Thjazi! This a major part of Thjazi's role in the narrative and what he symbolizes! This is also Mara, and the fairies in the Hollow. I also think the druids and their historic neutrality fall more into this category than the first one. If the Bolaire-Thjazi conflict is executed well, this is where it will live. And I still have a lot of hope that it will be executed well. I know there've been some concerns about Taliesin's play and bts statements, and I share some of those. But I do think this train is still very much on the tracks and Taliesin, with some assistance from Brennan and Laura, probably, can still very easily bring it safely to the station. For my money, the most likely scenario is "how could Thjazi justify to himself collaborating with a mask that had declared itself judge, jury, and executioner of petty criminals and was gleefully torturing them to build a comfortable life for himself." I think that's already been set up a little with Thimble's "have you considered he might have been afraid of you." But if we want a darker read on Thjazi, it could also be that he knew Bolaire would have to be sacrificed to restore the halfling afterlife and was doing everything he could to create emotional distance for himself about it.
Related to 2, but I want to class it separately because it's contained less in what the NPCs do and more in the options they present to the PCs: When do you align yourself with a lesser evil to defeat a greater one? This is mostly the Einfassens, but it could also be Termina.
How does one reconcile the good an institution can do with the corruption involved in running it? Candescent Creed is a big one here. So are the lingering worshipers of the Shapers. The Penteveral also plays around this idea.
Those are the moral ambiguities Brennan is exploring in this campaign as a DM. The good guys and bad guys are very clear. The abusers in the story look like Primus, Yanessa, Azgra, and Sylandri. There's no ambiguity there. Thjazi is a good man with questionable methods. Nothing about the story Brennan is telling is interested in asking "but what if he were also a bad guy too?" And if it did try to ask that question after more than 31 episodes, it would feel weird and out of place. Brennan would have to suddenly develop a much gentler touch to handle it gracefully, and it would change the entire tenor of the story.
That doesn't mean there's no room for other kinds of moral ambiguity. Julien, Occtis, Bolaire himself is the biggest one. But it's all coming from the PCs. I just reblogged a post that mentioned how we probably won't get to see Ethrand Tachonis grow beyond his abuse the way Occtis probably will by virtue of Occtis being a PC, and yeah, that sums it up. We get to spend a different kind of time with PCs that allows for deeper dives into moral nuance than NPCs do. They are also piloted by different people. Brennan has made clear what moral ambiguities he's interested in exploring with this story, but he's not the only one telling it, and he's happy to facilitate what others want to explore within their own PCs psyche and relationship to the world.
Going back to Brennan's style with this campaign, I've talked before about the fact that symbolism is pretty hard to do in Actual Play because you need player buy-in for it to really work. Which is why all the symbolism Brennan is doing has been with flashing neon signs (think bird hell). And flashing neon signs don't have a ton of nuance. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about Thjazi as a symbol. Brennan set up everything Thjazi was symbolically in the opening scene in as heavy-handed a way as he possibly could. A criminal, accused of theft and murder alongside his more bullshit charges, apologizing for keeping his distance from a friend, being executed under the guardian wall, calling out about the Falcon's Cry. And it has allowed the players to run with him as a symbol. Most recently and beautifully in Liam's ending to Kothar'ai.
There's also a reason not related to Brennan's storytelling style. This is a less important reason because we don't actually know what conversations happened behind the scenes and even if the Bolaire-Thjazi conflict execution goes terribly for the narrative, that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't set-up correctly for the other players at the table. But I do think it's a reason worth mentioning. Thjazi isn't just a character from Bolaire's backstory. Hal, Thimble, Azune, Thaisha, Teor, Kattigan, and Occtis all feature a largely positive relationship with Thjazi as a fundamental part of their character's backstory and motivations. For Bolaire to be right about Thjazi would be for Taliesin to turn Bolaire's backstory into a kind of sink hole, forcing Liam, Laura, Luis, Aabria, (not Travis anymore sadly), Robbie, and Alex to adjust their relationship with the backstories they wrote for their characters in order to accommodate Taliesin's character backstory. Again, a thing that could be ok with session 0 discussion, so possibly not a problem. But worth mentioning as a part of why I think eviler Thjazi doesn't work in this story
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