#volstrucker

What if you reintroduce me to the concept of tenderness and I understand you the way no one ever has and we were both evil wizards?

Astrid Becke 💚

Just a quick fan art of Astrid, inspired by The Mighty Nein animated series and, of course, Critical Role’s second campaign, which will always be near and dear to my little heart. ❤️‍🩹 Still dealing with massive blackouts here in Kyiv after russia’s horrific attacks on our energy infrastructure - we often get no more than 3 hours of electricity in the daytime, and I’m lucky to have a bit more at night. I basically trained myself to live by these schedules now: trying to draw nearly 100% of the time when electricity is available, and doing everything else, plus resting/sleeping, when it’s gone. Far from ideal, but it’s not like we have a choice. ____________

Owelia outright calls Trent "father" and expresses the kind of jealousy one sees from an angry child that's bitter about their fuck-up sibling being given preferential treatment. And based on the flashbacks, it's clear that Trent is the one pushing that cult-like father/child bond with the Volstrucker (rather than the other way around)

When he's coaching Bren through the residuum insertion, Trent says "your father needs you to be strong." The first layer of meaning is Trent reminding Bren of Leofric. He's reminding Bren that his parents sent him to the Soltryce Academy for a reason, and succumbing to the pain means failing them. But it's equally (and more so) evident that Trent was referring to himself as Bren's "father". It also would not surprise me if we learned he pulled the exact same move on Astrid, Eadwulf, and eventually Owelia, in their respective tests. One has to assume that using childrens' weakened states to plant such an association would be quite effective in ensuring that it's deep-set and goes unnoticed! After all, I'd say it's quite difficult to recognise a violation of healthy boundaries with your teacher when you're in the middle of withstanding literal torture, let alone call the perpetrator out on it

I wonder if Liam always imagined Caleb as being this brutal (comparing the character to "putting on the skin of a serial killer"), and didn't feel that was adequately expressed in the original campaign. Perhaps even the critter audience was too easily forgiving of Caleb for not being at fault? In the animated show there's no apparent Modify Memory spell deployed against Caleb, and he's sent on full lethal missions for the Assembly.

Campaign 2 did allude to things being that way when Trent mentioned the dinner being a “family reunion” but referring to Trent as a ‘father’ was never actually said (as far as I remember, please correct me if i’m wrong). Hearing it said out loud made my blood run cold.

But Owelia seems so convinced that he was the favourite, that Caleb is still the favourite despite him breaking and later escaping. Is that just because Ikithon realized that was a tactic that he could use to manipulate her, that she already saw him as a rival and Ikithon knew to press that sore spot? Did that or her own fixation on Bren make her misinterpret Ikithon’s desire to recapture a loose end as a desire to get his favourite back? Or did ikithon genuinely feel like Bren had the most potential? Did the shadow of Bren and his potential, and his ruinous fall short of succeeding what Ikithon would view as that potential, loom large over not just his former partners but Owelia as well?