r/fansofcriticalrole

Just got to Sam’s part where Brennan doesn’t make him roll and good lord. That cause a couple weeks of discourse. People wrote articles. People personally attacked Brennan. Sam gives a really good monologue, Whitney adds perfectly to it, and all so many people could focus on was that he didn’t require a roll because a player did a really good job. It’s not like they even REALLY won the interaction, they’re fucked regardless

Not a huge deal, but from a meta game perspective, Hala left to go hangout with Hero according to episode 1, leaving Julien to his private moment with the body.

See Part 1 for story details.

Humanoids:

- Humans: One of the most widespread species on Argahavna, these beings first appeared on the planet from portals leading to an unknown, distant realm. Before becoming a unified empire, the humans who had arrived on Argahavna had done so as a set of small groups on a strange, multi-biome subcontinent in the middle of the ocean, just on the equator. When the empire was first formed, it was done so on the basis of uniting every human on the planet into a single kingdom, in case there were other beings on the planet.

It turns out there were; some of these races, like such beastfolk as the Loxhares, the wargs, and even the dragons, had been treated with respect and understanding by the humans. Unfortunately, this was mostly due to a number of factors that did NOT make such races susceptible to being subjugated by the empire. Eventually, after a series of slave revolts and internal conflicts throughout the planet, the Human Empire was finally dissolved, leading to the once unified empire to diverge into plethoras of different cultures and even skin colours and hair textures.
Important notes:

For one thing, all the humans on Argahavna speak the common tongue with what is considered a South African accent in our real world.
For another, both the species and the empire they founded might be called Human, but despite their omnivorous diet, they are technically dhampirs, as is evident by their preference to the taste of blood(particularly fresh blood). Finally, the flag of the Human Empire is essentially a combination of the British and Ottoman flags(a Union Jack with a white star and crescent moon in the middle of one of the crosses.

- Unari: While even a growing minority of people might consider their own empire to be too arrogant and dictatorial in the long run, an even smaller minority within that one have either forgotten or are to ignorant to realize that at least three different races quite literally owe their very lineage to the machinations of the Human Empire, particularly through its selective breeding programs.

Upon realizing that not only were orcs so stark that just one specimen can hold their own against a adolescent dragon, but also that elves were so nimble that when they ran, they did so at such high speeds they practically looked to have turned invisible. Thus did the various viziers, lords, and even the Emperor himself at the time realize they needed to find a way to use this to their advantage.

Unfortunately, only select numbers of elves and orcs respectively had chosen to at least have talks with the humans, rather than all out war. So, an agreement was made; in exchange for submitting to the empire and sharing territory with each other, these select perish tribes and elven clans would offer assistance the fight against the respective tribes and clans who DID opt for war.

Because of this, the overlap in territories obviously meant that the tribes and clans would frequently commingle bloodlines, leading to a new race of beings: the Unari(combining *una—*the elvish word for one—with *ari—*the orcish word for power). But the Unari were not the only race of slaves created by the empire through crossbreeding so much they overshadowed their parent races to the brink of extinction…not were they the last…

- Gnorves: Upon hearing of the successes of the breeding program that arrange unions between orcs and elves, the rest of the Human empire tried this method yet again. This time, the wealthier castes of the empire sought to outrank each other in terms of oppulent lifestyle.

How could this be achieved? As far as the Emperor’s eldest son, or rather the large number of male gnomes and female dwarves working on palace—and the capital city at large—had become concerned, the solution suddenly became obvious: male gnomes were to marry female dwarves, thus creating the ultimate race of house slaves. There was only one problem with this plan, in the eyes of the other nobles who listened, that is: some of these dwarves and gnomes, respectively, still had spouses and children.

Fortunately for the empire more than either the gnomes and dwarves, respectively, the was suddenly something of a food shortage happening in the capital, and the empire still chose to focus its efforts on expansion and trade.

Thanks to this, and of course the humans’ natural thirst for blood, let’s just say that after some time, more and more male gnomes and female dwarves had little choice but to intermarry continuously. Thus it was, yet another new race was born: Gnorves.

- Giliaths: The last race to be formed from the selective crossbreeding between two races at the behest of the empire came from the giants and the goliaths. Due to both races’ shared qualifications of being larger than the average human and thus strong enough to backhand a small band of soldiers into the air, the emperor at this time—who was the grandson of the emperor from the second crossbreeding program—had listened as his advisors explained: say that the Unari are excellent fighters.

Even they can’t be much of a match against larger enemies, like say, a dragon. And while we’re on the subject, let it not be said that the gnorves are skilled balcksmiths and resilient enough warriors, but as with the Unari, their must come a point wherein we need even more security to assist the Unari, or even more builders to assist the gnorves.

After hearing these complaints, it suddenly became clear what must be done: even more so when’s strange disease swept through the respective giant and goliath communities within the various settlements of the empire. At the orders of the empire, the royal physician had sent word throughout the empire: only male giants with no spouses or children and female goliaths of a similar demographic are to be treated!

The orders, although disobeyed by a few doctors on the principles of a moral high ground, had been carried out with little to no question. In short, let’s just say that in some cases, even doctors can become loyal yes men—and yes women—to absolute power, if given the right incentive. In the end, it worked and with the creation of the giliaths, the empire had become even more powerful—albeit at the cost of its relations with such beings as the beastfolk…

Beastfolk:

- Loxohare: Anthropomorphic hybrid between a bunny rabbit with an elephant, these creatures can come in a variety of sizes, be they as short as a gnorf or as tall as a giliath, they are undoubtedly seen as the smartest and wisest beings, especially by the gnorves and giliaths, respectively.

Although they’d always been on good enough terms with the Human Empire, those relations did not falter until the Great Rebellion(the jointed name for the series of events consisting of slave revolts and internal conflicts happening within the human empire). In fact, the loxohares, in spite of maintaining good relations, had spoken out and criticized the Humans’ obsession with slavery and annihilation of entire races just for not submitting.

Because of their appearance, loxohares not only have rabbit-like hind legs to help them run or make signals by thumping on the ground, but also a nose and mouth similar to those of an elephant—with a prehensile trunk and a large pair of tusks jutting out of their upper jaws.

The rest of their upper head is described as a combination between the two respective animals, even with their ears—with both ears looking like the unfurled sails on a boat or even a ship.

- Shellyworms: If the Loxohares consider all life to be cherished, regardless of how long it lasts, then the shellyworms would be the exact opposite, instead viewing individual lives as a business transaction and life as a general concept to be either a game or a transaction.

Generally speaking, these monsters combine the hard-shelled body of a turtle with the legless body of a snake, creating a race of beings who are generally seen—even by each other—as lazy, opportunistic, or just downright evil.

You wouldn’t be far off at making the last prejudice, for ever since the rise of the Human Empire—and even thousands of years well after its dissolution, shellyworms have always held a specific reputation to maintain: the trading of not only such rare items as body parts from exotic animals, but also of slaves. Ironically enough, no race, even the shellyworms themselves, had any bad blood with the loxohares(let alone to the point of selling them as slaves).

Not only have the shellyworms been such renowned slave traders, but they have also been renowned for their avaricious pursuits of poaching and trophy hunting, so much so that such barbarism has put such species of animals as griffins on the brink of near extinction.

- Apes: On Argahavna, all three species of non human ape—gorillas, orangutans, and chimpobos(which are a hybrid between chimpanzees and bonobos)—are sentient enough to speak the common tongue.

The apes live on a continent with whose biomes they share a wide variety of dinosaurs. Gorillas and Orangutans are the two largest species of apes, but are only the most gentle unless provoked, in which case, they become renowned for being brutal warriors.

Chimpobos, on the other hand, combine the brutal lifestyle of the warrior with the peaceful and…simple pleasures of life, creating the closest thing the apes might’ve had to a rival power for the Human Empire, were it not for each species of ape being so different from one another that to consider all three as the same general species is considered offensive and ignorant.

Genasi(the names of three of the four sub races of genasi are inspired by three of the four demon races from Saints: Divine Demons):

- Ifrit: Ifrit, also known as fire genasi, are tied to the elemental plane of fire.

In the colder places of the world, during its heyday, the Human Empire often utilized the djinn as a race of living furnaces, hoping to heat up their homes during the cold winter nights.

According to legend, it was actually the Ifrit who attacked first during the start of the slave revolts, though some sources disagree—debating instead between the Unari and the giliaths.

- Wraiths: Wraiths, also known as air genasi, are tied to the elemental plane of air.

Throughout the history of the Human Empire, wraiths were often used to cool down entire homes throughout the imperial colonies found in much hotter places throughout the world—essentially becoming a living ventilation system.

Some humans, particularly those of a racist mindset, accused the wraiths as a people for causing some of the worst storms in the the Great Rebellion, alongside the Undine.

- Undine: Undine, also known as Water Genasi, are tied to the elemental plane of water.

From when the Human Empire reached its zenith all the way to its dissolution, the Undine were mainly used as garden workers for any ethnic humans who would’ve preferred purebred gnomes over their half-dwarves descendants.

During the Great Rebellion, it was rumored that both the Undine and the Wraiths were jointly responsible for the devastating naval losses that would come during the later half of the war.

- Leprechauns: Leprechauns, also known as Earth Genasi, are tied to the elemental plane of earth.

Ever since the Human Empire as a whole was generalized for the breeding of both gnorves and giliaths, many humans throughout the empire would utilize them over either crossbreed due to the Leprechauns’ innate connection to all the earth elements, but the empire at large seemed recognize this talent well enough that, much like the Undine, the leprechauns would do well to work alongside both gnorves and giliaths.

During the Great Rebellion, and even some time afterwards, well into the modern age, many humans had blamed the leprechauns for causing massive earthquakes and other land-based natural disasters.

List of known Genasi crosses:

- Wraith + Undine = Jotun(snow)

- Ifrit + Leprechaun = Djinn(sand)

- Ifrit + Undine = (steam)

- Wraith + Leprechaun = Leshy(plant)

- Wraith + Ifrit + Undine = Deviya(cloud)

- Ifrit + Undine + Leprechaun = Midaos(gold)

- Leprechaun + Wrath + Undine = Hecate(posion)

Just watched the show and it really bums me out how they threw out a really cool reveal(wich was so major i find out about even while not watching c3) just to have an easter egg, spoiling not just the suntree reveal but the delilah connection for show-onlys(wich at this point i suppose are the majority of watcher due to its popularity and extremely long watchtime required for the original campaign).

Bidet,

I am running a Tal'Dorei Reborn campaign (set around the end of campaign 2 if that makes a difference) and I am planning a side quest about a Aeormaton who left right before the fall of Aeor in a desperate bid to find divine healing for its dying creator, only to fail his self imposed mission because of the whole nasty Calamity business. He somehow managed to wander around until now, in disrepair, selling Aeorian trinkets to get the gold to maintain his body in some sort of working condition. These trinkets should be interesting to collectors and amateur historians, but not powerful or useful enough to attract the attention of any sort of important arcane inclined individuals.

And I thought, where better to find inspiration for the sort of trinkets sold than the fans of the universe? Please share with me your ideas for fun little things an Aeromaton might pawn for gold.

I havent watched the part of Campaign 1, but from what I've read online, Scanlan, at some point closer to the final Vecna battle, becomes the champion of a goddes named Ioun. This, apparently, gave him a lot of abilities and helped to defeat Vecna once and for all. My question is, will they still include this plotline in Season 5 of Vox Machina? I imagine it is pretty important and they would at least do something with it. I mean, Scanlan needs a way to power up for the final battle in my opinion, especially if he will be the one to prevent Vecna from teleporting like he does in the campaign. I really hope they give him his moment to shine and I think this would be a cool way to do it! But again I havent seen the og story firsthand so I'm not sure if this would translate well to the screen or not. What do we think?

Maybe it’s just my personal preferences, but I really feel like the story and characters just meshed a lot better and felt very organic and alive and complimentary. Beau - Caleb - Nott is a fantastic trio especially, and Fjord makes for a good grounding rod for all of them.

By comparison Vox Machina felt a little more forced together sometimes, and the storyline almost felt overwhelming for them. Maybe it was just me though. I wouldn’t call campaign 1 bad after all, not by any means. Campaign 2 just felt like it meshed so much better.

What does everyone else think?

As a voracious consumer of fantasy media for the past 30 years, I cannot understand people's critiques.

Most of my favorite manga and webtoons release episodes sporadically every few months. Most of my favorite podcasts (including other famous actual plays) just have sporadic drop dates every few weeks. They usually take months long breaks between arks. We are getting 6 weeks of new high quality content from Matt during this break, and people STILL have the gall to be made at it. I seriously need you guys to take a break and touch grass. A 1.5 month break from 14 of the best voice actors/creatives in the world who all have their own projects is more than reasonable. Not to mention, this is effectively the end of "season 1," and I think it will be good for viewers to take a break to build excitement for season 2. Im excited to have some free time to catch up on other content.

4-5 hours of content every week for free is a remarkably good deal. Compare that to tv shows in the 2000s that took 3-4 summer breaks of reruns, anime where every other episode is low-quality filler, or (far worse) streaming tv shows that produce 8 episodes every 2 years.

If you are mad about paying for beacon.. cancel and start paying again later. your problem is solved. Why do you all feel entitled to weekly content of C4? They didnt switch to prerecording to guarantee C4 is published every week--just to make their lives easier. Ya'll are acting like some contract was broken. Beacon pays for weekly critical role production, not always C4.

I keep seeing theories about the Tachonis and the Sea of Lacris, but what most are forgetting is we know what they are sailing toward, we just don’t know why. They are traveling to that temple for beings not of the shapers creation and what to do with their afterlife.

I'm really struggling with the Seekers, specifically Thaisha. The character just seems really inconsistent with her behavior, and almost feels like a bully. I know this is the last episode before the Schemers, but does she tone it down a bit moving forward?

The character is annoying. He plays like he knows everything. He doesn’t get along with anybody because he plays like he’s 10 steps ahead of everyone but in reality he’s on the same page and it’s just Tal pretending.

The idea was cool, but the actual play was lame.

Not sure if it isva spoiler ofbany kind sinnce we are 30 eps in, so gonna just run it.

We know that all sentient races of Arsman were created by shapers (Fair Folk and deamons aint from Araman). Now we know that soils if those dead get stuck in the Tenebral Reaches, and can't get out. So the question then: where new souls of sentent races come from? Since there is no more shapers to create new souls, no access to those in Reaches snd afterlifes, and to walk the Path you need a druid, who can not be available in all cases, it seems logical to assume that the overall quantity of souls in the world is decreasing. And i don't think that souls just appear from nowhere, since the law of conservation of energy exists. So does Araman slowly dying?

So I’m gonna be a massive defender for a moment, and I know this conversation has been had so many times, but at this point, I’m kind of fed up as a Black person in this fandom every week regarding the treatment and words used towards Aabria. It would be 1 thing if it was just the character Taisha, but when people say Aabria shouldn’t be at the table that is a micro aggression but it also really irks me and shows that people don’t understand her character, the many Black themes in her character, and the way she acts and just throws it off as she’s mean, interrupting, taking up space, or is acting high and mighty. And at this point, it’s like some people are actively watching with their eyes closed, so let me rant for a moment.

(Just want to say you are allowed to dislike the character of Taisha that’s completely fine and reasonable that some characters you simply will not like this is just for some of the weird people who throw around that she’s inconsistent and that aabria should not be at the table)

To start off, the view that Taisha is a mother and was described as motherly so she should be nice and accepting is such a narrow-minded way to view matriarchs and the idea of motherhood. And I notice many people are viewing it through a white-only lens and not taking into account how a culture and upbringing can affect mothers. There are multiple ways to be motherly. I see so many aspects of how Taisha takes no shit and how when someone raises their voice at her or comes at her, she bites back in my own mother and is it healthy or good? No, but that’s a character flaw, and it’s like everyone at the table especially Julien and bolaire are allowed to have 1 flaw but her. I’m also glad this other critique died down, but when the campaign first started, i had seen so many people call Taisha a horrible mother for abandoning Hal and her children when we know that wasn’t the case. We know they were old enough to know why she went on this path, shadia was teenager and alogar was an adult, so this just isn’t the case, and I feel like people for a weird reason wouldn’t accept that. Not to mention that aabria herself had to go on her tumblr account and post about how she found it extremely weirds people’s narrow minded view of motherhood and Taisha and how people kept assuming she just up and left her family

Another complaint I see that irks me so much because it’s filled with so many bad faith takes is that Aabria is playing Taisha to be abrasive and mean towards other pc and getting no pushback from NPCs when she does it to them. When Taisha was established as hard-edged but also kind to those she cherishes, we got that in episode one during the funeral, but that doesn’t mean characters’ feelings and emotions don’t change and evolve, and it’s obvious many don’t see the obvious real-world inspiration of Black struggles and slavery in the Orcs who were subjugated and the Old Path Faithful who were hunted and is now being directly threatened. She should not be this nice and calm motherly figure; there is not one way to be a matriarch and community leader; there are many, and I’m not saying you have to like it, but I’ve seen so many write it off as Aabria being annoying and just trying to create conflict and not playing the character right, but apparently, Julien is allowed to be mean, create character conflict, and have interesting flaws but Taisha can’t be mean to Occtis during the Seeker arc even though it made complete sense for the character; she just basically committed an unholy rite that goes against her order and why she left her family behind, and she’s confused but also angry because Occtis, while not at fault, was an anathema to her, and she needed to go against the order/community she holds dear all for him, and he showed that power to the circles briefly when defending Valeus, which would of course make her go, “Oh shit, I made the wrong decision.” But no it’s just aabria being annoying and trying to make Taisha a main character or steal the spotlight when we’ve seen her give spotlight to characters like Julien with the Thjazi corpse scene (even though she does forget this in episode 31 which is reasonable they’re over 30 hours into a dnd campaign I can go back through every critical role campaign and see every single time someone at the table forgot information that changed a scene or retconned something)

The last thing I’ll say is to the parasocial people who said that she wouldn’t let matt role play and he was put off during the seekers arc and that she’s too loud and to the people saying you don’t want the only black person there at the table or she should go realize your micro aggressions and yes that’s what it is

Thinking on it,Thaisha was very much trying to be the moral guide to Occtis,with her gone thete is a possibility that Occtis will have to do morally bad actions in order to fight the Tachonis.

There has been multiple indications that Occtis has a darker side and that he has internalised some of his father's teachings.

What do you think of Occtis's arc and do you think he could turn a bit more morally grey?

I feel like the last episode really put into context how abusive and cruel Primus can be to members of his own family, and we’ve already seen him and his goals being criticized by the other Tachonis siblings(The twins and Koral) so do you guys think this could lead to a possible redemption arc for any of the characters?

I know it kinda conflicts with Julien‘s arc, and pretty much everyone at the table wants to kill Tachonis’s but like I just don’t believe that none of Occtis’s siblings have no shred of good in them even though they were abused and raised to be psychos by Primus. Besides Occtis has to have nieces or nephews that may have some hope for good. So I guess follow up question do you think all the Tachonis will be dead by the end campaign?

I'm just wondering if its a statistical improbability, the staff giving prompting, or its in line and observer bias? It feels like there's one every 4th roll. Genuinely curious if its been mathed out. I'm also aware that Brennan gives out advantage frequently, it still seems like a lot though.

With the recent episodes, what type of class (or subclass) do you think [spoiler] will play?

I’m curious to see your theories!

Personally,while i was not the biggest fan of the Seekers - the bridge fight probalby remains my favourite of the campaign so far mostly because of the sheer absurdity of how badly the Demon Sisters were doing as well a the fight between Juilen and Fronz.

What is your favourite?