I don’t think we as a fandom really appreciate the extent to which Caduceus Is Baby.
Like, I’m sorry to keep harping on this, but. From the very beginning Taliesin has said that Cad doesn’t know his actual chronological age (could be anywhere from 80 to 120 –I tend to split the difference and place him squarely at a century old, in my headcanons), but in firbolg terms he’s in his early twenties. Early twenties. I see some people calling him 24 or 25 or older –that is not EARLY twenties. That’s mid. Early twenties is 23 at the very latest, and I suspect he is not even that.
Because when they had their zombie-swamp group therapy session, he mentioned that older family members used to go away for months at a time, and that ‘eventually’ he would start doing the same. When he was old enough. Implication: as recently as ten human years ago his family still considered him an adolescent.
(Taliesin also repeatedly refers to Cad leaving home as a rumspringa, which is an adolescent rite of passage –a literal coming of age)
Dude is like. 20 or 21. At most. He is baby but he is very, very good at pretending he isn’t (it helps that he’s 7 feet tall with an extremely deep voice), at least around a bunch of emotionally neutered chucklefucks like the Nein.
This has the following implications, for me:
–He and Jester have so, so much in common. Both clerics; both isolated all their lives; both loved deeply but imperfectly by flawed family members; both more connected to their gods than anyone they know in the flesh; and both, in a strange way, trying to act out the stories they heard growing up, because those stories (romance and adventure for Jester, myths and destiny for Caduceus) are the only frame of reference they have for the outside world.
They even both had their big stupid first crush on the same boy.
It makes emotional sense to me, therefore, that they should be peers in this way. Tied for the youngest members of the Nein. Definitely adults (and want to be seen as such) but still children in the eyes of their parents. Looking out for everyone else, and each other. TEAM CLERIC, man. They give me the feelings.
–Veth is, so far, the only one who has actually noticed He Is Baby. She saw him with his mom (his mom who!! Picked him up and swung him around!! Cute!!) and went, “Oh shit. Mr. Clay is…someone’s youngest son? Oh shit.” And that made her realize how badly she wanted to be there for her son (and pick him up and swing him around, probably). Since then, she’s actually been quite sweet to him? I like it a lot.
–It makes their interactions with Nila much funnier. Caleb and Nott and Beau were all freaking out over this wise, creepy sage they found in the woods and Nila looked at him with him his dyed hair and his ear-gauges and his long skinny body and went “he seems like a nice, normal firbolg?” which I now take to mean, “Haven’t y’all ever seen a college student before?”
–He’s going to be like. 28. When the rest of the Nein dies of old age. Oh no.
