#cr speculation

The Sundered Houses executed the producer-playwright's brother last week

That brother was the leader of a failed revolution against the power of the Sundered Houses

This play is about a failed uprising of the orcs against Azgra, possibly the last one that failed before they were finally successful

Hal finished writing this over a month ago, well before Thjazi was arrested and executed. Dol-Makjar KNEW what this play was about.

Executing Thjazi a week before his brother opened a play about the glory of a failed revolutionary...this is an own goal on the part of the Sundered Houses.

Azune Nayar asked a friend to subtly judge how many of the fired Revolutionary Guard and other hired guards around town would be willing to stand against the Sundered Houses.

Over 350 people somehow heard the call and responded "Yes."

Dol-Makjar is where Azgra ruled. After he fell, it became the seat of the uprising against the Shapers. It is an orcish city.

Shadia, daughter of Halandil Fang and Thaisha Lloy, rehearsed with Pariah Blades disguised with paint. When the blades met, the ringing reverberated in the blood of every orc present, filling them with pride and vitality.

Shadia also painted the backdrops of the set with the paint her uncle sent via Bolaire.

The paint exhibits a very minor enchantment, but that minor enchantment is hiding a much larger magical effect. One that might be triggered by the performance of a play.

A play that is taking place in The Hallowed Round, what was previously known as the Dithyramb of Azgra. Where Azgra demanded worship and worked great scopes of magic. And when Hal casts magic there, in the language of the orcs, it's mostly stagecraft. Mostly.

The way the venue is shaped, sound travels from the stage throughout the city.

A city of orcs

Who will hear the ringing of the Pariah Blades

As an undetermined magical effect is triggered

During a play about the last failed orcish revolt

Written and produced by Halandil Fang

One week after his brother Thjazi was killed

and at least 350 veterans of his rebellion have already heard the Cry

and ethrand is the second

are all of them named / derived from the chemical prefixes for carbon???

ex using alkanes

methane

ethane - ethrand

propane

butane

pentane

hexane

heptane

octane - occtis

Aramán is a world without half-elves.

Well, at least since the last 4,000 years or so.

Because the thing is, I don't think Aramán had mixed ancestry kids, at least in the open, during the Shapers' reign. It would have been a conflict of interest between the Shapers, trying to decide who gets to claim the kid who's half of one's people and half of another's people.

But with groups like the druids who were already in hiding, you get the potential for mixing out of the Shapers' sight. And/or a place to send mixed kids that happen otherwise if you can spirit them away in time.

However, neutered as they were, the elves could not participate in secret mixed children simply because they couldn't beget kids without Sylandri's blessing.

Which, this also makes Hero an interesting case in that she's probably the first mixed ancestry in her bloodlines in a long while. Half-orcs and the like are probably only just starting to happen in bigger numbers now that there's been some generations of mixed cohabitation since the Shapers' fall.

Liam quoted Shakespeare’s King Lear for the Schemers’ art, which is fitting for Halandil

(Act 1, Scene 1, Line 280)

Time will reveal deceit essentially.

Wait

The realm of death is overflowing with souls that can’t go anywhere since the gods died and all of their celestials, psychopomps included, went feral.

Occtis is the eighth son, way down in the succession line. No innate sorcerous magic. Not super important… But he’s been able to make Pin.

And they’re opening him up to put the elven death-rock inside of him that was supposed to help elves skip the underworld and move on to the afterlife.

the sundered houses think of sorcery in terms of bloodlines/direct familial heritage, but to me azune's sorcery is less of a bloodline in the human nobility sense and more like "people" as in a culture. brennan is very particular to says "azune's people" not his family. the people who spoke navika'an, like the dragon of vrosh.

while i would say there's a chance there was also a house that rose to nobility in the obridimian empire associated with dragonkind (as is the case with einfasen and giants and royce and the fae and cormoray and elementals), i don't necessarily think there's a direct line to azune from that specific family, if they existed.

the word azune used, inxolotle, is pulled/modified from nahuatl. nahuatl is an indigenous language family from mexico pre-spanish conquest that is still spoken today though populations using it are in decline. languages that risk being forgotten. this is a very thoughtful thing for luis to do, and it absolutely hints at what the people azune came from represent within this narrative where conquerors from far away broke the world.

the people who spoke navika'an, descended from dragons who have been driven into hiding or killed (likely by the shapers), were probably an indigenous mortal race of aramán. they could have been a tribe (or multiple tribes, more likely, as unique as individual dragons that may have been part of their communities) that existed in aramán long before the shapers and before the empire coalesced humans into a society based around the feudal system the sundered houses operate on and cultures that diverge slightly but are mostly all compatible with each other. (the way a royce lives is not fundamentally different from an einfasen)

azune's experience, where only scattered remnants of their people still exist and they don't quite understand the depth of their heritage because it has been suppressed and driven out of existence by colonizers interested in homogenizing the people they've claimed, is definitely deeply tied into the world being built by this campaign. it feels like it's in conversation with the orcish experience and the druidic experience and the echoes of the real world both of these ideas carried.

Olgud opened the Coffin of Olbalad

Bolaire has Mask of Many Faces

Termina/Cormoray could be anywhere and look like anyone