Hello

[paws3352]

I have so many feelings about this paint.

Thjazi found the blood of his people, held captive by Azgra even years after he was gone, and he was told he had to change form to set them free. So he made it into paint to give his older brother so it could be used in service of the new Rungjani culture and art movement. In the final moments of their captivity, these imprisoned souls will see their descendants putting on a show that says, "We remember how tragic it is to be shaped by Azgra. And while we are shaped by war and cruelty, we are not defined by it." Thjazi -the man who spear headed a rebellion in the name of freedom- in his final hour said, "My people shall be free from tyrants."

"For Hal, with all my love."

Love for his people. Love for his brother. Love for magic and freedom.

With ALL my love.

Hal carries Thjazi's sword in more ways than one.

[alliepretends]

There is something potentially interesting in Teor's silence in the most recent episode. While I suspect what Travis was going for was "there's 13 people at this table I don't need to also talk" (and I appreciate it very much), and then "this demon conversation doesn't have much to do with my story so far," I think it does also work on a character level beyond "the 13 INT Soldiers let everyone else do the talking."

At Thjazi's funeral, Loza hands Teor the symbolic Torn Banner she has preserved since the company disbanded. He asks who she wants him to give it to, and to his shock, she says she wants him to have it. She then goes on to imply that Teor should have a big, probably leadership, role if the time ever comes to raise that banner again. She's partly alluding to his magic, but seems to also be partly alluding to his character and ability to take charge. She's entrusting him with both a legacy and a future. He's grateful, but caught off guard. None of the 14 people in that room are foot soldiers (and definitely not our 13 PCs, we know how narratives work), simply by virtue of being here at the start of this newly fomenting rebellion, they are taking on a larger role in it. But his shock at receiving that crucial symbol from Loza, even if he accepts it, suggests there is some distance for him to travel before he sees himself as anything other than the right-hand of the person really in charge. Maybe not a far distance, but a distance nonetheless. And keeping his comments to a minimum in this group of people speaking with a lot of authority can be easily read as feeding into that aspect of his arc

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

It's interesting that once Tyranny got the chance to have a proper conversation with Araq, which was after she'd heard Tsul'rekshi chastising her for her true belief in the Candescent Creed and herself committed a dimming in front of her (speaking to Tsul'rekshi in Demonic), she played along with Araq's perceptions of her. She pretended she had been saved by the Creed as an Aspirant and tried to give Araq the advice she asked for on how she might do the same, even as Tyranny herself knows the Creed is fake and using her sisters as a way to control people and firmly believes that as a demon she is incapable of being saved herself.

And what makes this so interesting to me is this isn't dissimilar to how she interacts with Wick. Like with Araq, she plays along with Wick's sincere belief in something she knows isn't real, to the point that she attempted to let him down gently when she learned his family were going to tell the truth to him. She makes a show for him of trying to learn and embody the Shining Tenets even as she knows it's meaningless lies meant to control people that will do nothing to save her from the Pit. She speaks the words and platitudes of the Creed without believing them herself because she knows it makes him happy for her to play along and let him think he's saving her.

It makes sense that this is also the playbook she uses speaking with Araq, because this is the only way she's ever known to interact with someone who is a true believer in the Creed: play along and let them keep their illusion. Notably she's been doing this much less with Wick now that he knows the Creed is fake, the illusion is broken with him so she doesn't have to work to maintain it anymore. But she does with Araq, even though she just as easily could have let her in on the ruse as a fellow sister of the Pit. But she doesn't, and I wonder if part of why is that there is a part of her that wants to believe as Araq does, to have full and sincere faith a demon can be saved. Because that's part of why she sticks with Wick and is helping him defy his family, as much as she knows he can't, she deeply admires Wick for trying to save her and believing that he can. There's a part of her that wants to believe she isn't doomed for being what she is, even if she thinks that part of her is foolish. So for a demon who fully thinks she can be saved, she plays the part and lets her keep believing.

[pawthorn]

Truly, the level of reclamation and the build-up of Hal’s play is giving me chills.

The Pariah blades are no longer hidden away in a museum. They’ve been soaked in the freed blood and spirit of the people who forged and wielded them.

They are in the hands of Rungjani, clanging in the streets of Dol-Makjar, calling the people to witness a story.

The Hallowed Round is also covered in the liberated blood of Rungjani. Blood held captive for centuries now shapes the forms and faces of Rungjani, captives who strove and died, but did not fail, because their rebellion was a step forward on the path toward freedom.

The play is going forward, with no influence from the Creed. Everyone in the city will see it in its true form— a story of rebellion.

It makes me think of the Falconer’s Rebellion, another failed rebellion. Two rebellions that failed with the fall of a single great man.

But there were nine blades used in the Rebellion that succeeded. Decades later, the Lloy name is held in highest honor as the creators of the Blades, not the wielders.

It makes me think of Uli saying, “I know now that those who sang songs in this place, even if the words were meant to soothe [Azgra’s] wrath and keep our lives in propitiating his fury; the melody, the dance, the fury and the passion, that was always for us.”

It makes me think of Demodus, saying that things have to start as an illusion first.

It makes me think of Thaisha, speaking a Rungjani blessing, blessing the Conqueror, “for in his appetite, he saw Aramán forever changed from what it was to what it might be. A blessing to him, then, that the Rungjani reject peace in favor of a dream.”

Why do we tell stories?

I think I know. And I’m very excited for opening night.

[alliepretends]

of all the cr4 pcs, whose narrative arc are you most looking forward to/think has the most potential and whose arc are you least looking forward to/are hesitant about where it could end up?

Realistically, I went blorbo-brained for Hal when he spent the whole first episode playing gracious host at his little brother's funeral. So I'm most excited about his arc. And I do also, from a more analytical space, find the potential really appealing. There's a lot going on there with ideas about the power of art, parenting, what it means to build a fruitful life after liberation, the trauma of war, what it means to provide a safe space, how to build strong communities, grief, and the sacrifices required to fight oppression. I don't think it's totally clear yet which of these themes Liam intends to lead into hardest (so far it's been sacrifices required and the power of art), and he could try to meaningfully address all of them. But there are a lot of ways for Hal's story to go, and I'm excited by most of them! (I will admit, I think I would find it a detriment to my personal enjoyment of Hal's story if he were to leave Dol-Makjar at this point. Not just a favorite character, favorite table thing, but I think most of what makes Hal most interesting (his art, his community, his interactions with his children) lives in Dol-Makjar. I'm not saying I don't see ways for his story to remain compelling if he leaves, but I do think it's a harder path for allowing the maximum exploration of his character.)

Setting aside the blorbo-brain, I am deeply impressed and intrigued by the work Marisha and Robbie are doing. I think they have both grabbed onto thematic ideas that go together in interesting ways. I wrote a whole post about how ideas of the future/destiny interact with ideas of class and hope in Murray. Kattigan is a character who Robbie seems to have discovered through play is deeply moral and has sharp insight into human behavior. However, Kattigan is also hugely uncomfortable with other people and with being asked to contribute in a more concrete way. He deserted a fight he believed in for a life that seems to have blown up in his face. There's a clear contrast between who Kattigan could be and who he is now that feels really fun. He feels like a character that could, and maybe should, live at the moral center of the story. But he is not currently capable of doing so. Which is fascinating!

Special shout-out to Vaelus, I think she has the most exciting potential character arc based on character concept. I've run pretty hot and cold on the execution so far. But we're only on episode 27, there's lots of time for that to turn around.

In terms of who I'm least excited about. Rich assholes with daddy issues have never been my type when it comes to characters. I really don't see the appeal of Julien. I was more open to him at the end of the overture because I love a true redemption arc where someone seriously grapples with what they've done wrong and resolves to live a better life. (There are many rich assholes with daddy issues that I do love because they have a great redemption arc - Emma Frost, my absolute beloved, but also MCU Tony Stark way back when.) I found the sort of aimless drift toward allyship that happened in the Seeker arc to be pretty detrimental to a potential redemption arc (it still could happen, but I'm not holding my breath), and it's left me pretty unenthusiastic about him. Themes of revenge and honor aren't that compelling to me.

Speaking of which, I do love Thimble. She's remained consistently in my top 4 for characters I enjoy seeing on screen. But revenge arcs don't hold a ton of appeal for me narratively. And I'm not totally sure how they fit into the wider story of CR4 either (there's a parallel to Yanessa as a little girl who lost her world during the Shaper's War, I suppose, but it feels hard to do a lot with). Which doesn't mean they don't fit into the wider story, just that I'm not compelled enough to see the vision. I'm optimistic that we will move away from revenge eventually in Thimble's arc and focus more on grief, identity/personhood, loyalty, and other ideas that feel implicit in her relationship with Thjazi and her identity as a fairy. But we're not there yet, which puts her on the lower rung of arcs I'm looking forward to even though I love her.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of Bolaire at this point. There are ideas of arcs in him that I find interesting (the conflict between his self-righteousness and his parasitic nature, his tendency to confuse reality and fiction, the moral ambiguity inherent in his existence, his newness to personhood, his existence functioning as another echoing impact of the Shaper's War). But if Taliesin is aiming for any of them, I'm not sure I see the angle he's coming from. And given that his improv style has proven to be not to my taste so far, I'm a little nervous about how it will unfold. His is the arc that I feel like has the most risk of damaging the story for me overall, instead of just being an individual character I don't enjoy/don't think is on an interesting journey. I don't think that will happpen; but the risk is there.

Thank you so much for this question! It was so fun to answer and really brightened my morning!

[charliecornwalls]

Meeting Tsul'reksh was probably the best thing to happen to tyranny thus far in her journey in regards to truly setting up her arc. Her and her sisters were created with the specific purpose to serve the creed, and, we can assume she's had no other interacts with demons apart from them. The sisters have more human names. They're still obviously demons, but they also have more appealing/palatable bodies. They were brought into this environment that is forcing them into a specific mold, and yeah, Tyranny might be aware that the creed is bullshit (she was in on it after all) but she still subscribes to their belief that demons are inherently corrupt creatures with no chance of being "saved". She was never given the chance to understand what she truly is outside of the propaganda that's surrounded her from day one.

And Tsul'reksh knows the creed is full of crap too. She also knows what she is and who she is. When she tells Tyranny that her/the knife's purpose is to hurt others, it's not said out of malice, but understanding. Because she's had the years of experience when it comes to battling with her own nature. It's not something to be afraid of, but rather something to work with. She knows what it's like to have to navigate this plane, when to conform and when to not. In a way, this is almost like a glimpse into what Tyranny's future could look like - one where she let's go of her fear and embraces what she is. Because she simply just is.

(and then on the other side of things, Araq sort of acts like this extreme mirror to where Tyranny is at right now. Desperate and in pain and yearning the freedom that the "Light" offers.)

[alliepretends]

To be ridiculously nerdy for a second, I love Brennan saying "we're recording this" in the last episode. It just lampshades the way everything that is on camera is being presented as part of the medium, if not the actual narrative. I've said before (I think on this blog?) that one of the things I find so exciting about Actual Play is that you aren't just watching/listening to a story being told. You are also engaged with the process of telling it. Watching the players and GM navigate responses to each other, and the dice rolls in order to bring together something coherent, is a significant aspect of what you are engaging with. (This is somewhat true of any long-form improv, but the dice add an element of randomness that makes it harder for everyone to lean on what just feels natural. A character built for survival in the wilderness might roll middling to terrible survival checks multiple episodes in a row, and that's something the player has to deal with.) It's so interesting and so cool (and sometimes so frustrating, not to keep whining, but you don't really get characters inexplicable misunderstanding the story they are a part of in other mediums). And I don't know that Brennan was necessarily trying to lampshade that fact. But him going "I'm asking you these hard questions/bringing up these sad facts because we're telling a story for the camera" still leans into it in such a wonderful way

[alliepretends]

After everything that happened with Demodus, Murray immediately calls Occtis a "good kid" when faced with Primus in episode 3 hits so much harder. She's so protective of her students! She doesn't know the details of his and Primus's relationship, it might be a shot in the dark to piss him off, but she could have easily gone the other way with a noble and try to piss him off by talking about how much she thinks he sucks. But of course she doesn't. Because even if she doesn't like Occtis, she's going to err on the side of defending her student from his creepy parent

[alliepretends]

Rewatching episode 3, and the degree to which Yanessa seems to still be fighting The Shaper's War really is fascinating. She isn't just angry about the revolution and the loss of her house's particular power. She sees it as a fundamental failure in truly pivotal ways. This is all explicit in that speech, but I'd forgotten the intensity of it. And in the wake of her comments about blasphemy at Bolaire's gala and Filonious's reaction to Thaisha, it takes on a different weight for me. She also feels paralleled to Vaelus in a way that I hadn't considered at the time (as Brennan said about Vaelus and Hannan in episode 14 "The Shapers' War is still happening. It's happening right here in this moment"). Not in denial about her god's death, or even that it might have been a necessary death, but desperately trying to claw back all that was lost with it

[ariadne-mouse]

loving the throughlines on transformation and dynamism of means. Necromancy can give you an undead conquering army or maybe you can use it to secure a peaceful afterlife for thousands of captured souls. A demon's penchant for destruction may mean they thirst to cause suffering but can also mean they will gleefully undermine a fascist oligarchy. A Shaper's tool of oppression can be deconstructed into a rebel's tool of liberation. A site of forced worship can be reclaimed into a theatre to tell the people's truth. The world can be changed

[tanoraqui]

what cheeses me most about Yanessa’s (attempted) last-minute insertion of the Light into Hal’s play is her excuse that it’s necessary to prevent the tragedy about a failed rebellion against Azgra from just being a tragedy. Bitch (magnificent), the tragedy is subverted by the fact that they’re putting on the play, as a triumphant and prosperous people 70 years after killing Azgra! The rebels will die, Azgra will give a gloating speech, maybe an ancestral Lloy will bow to him while glancing directly at the fourth wall, and then the actors will all get up and take their bows! You think Halandil Fang would open his much-sought-after theater with a simple tragedy about a failed rebellion against the god whose conceptual corpse he is treading upon these boards? Halandil Fang, brother of a legendary rebel, lover of a Lloy druid of the Old Path? (Yanessa doesn’t, of course; it’s just an excuse.) I’d even bet the play Kother’ai pre-dates the Shapers War in some form—Azgra seems like the sort of guy who’d enjoy forcing his slaves to perform pantomimes of his victories against them—and Hal rewrote it, or at least used it as a recognizable template. Because orcs make art, now, their own art! That’s the triumph from the tragedy!

[alliepretends]

Ok, now that I'm (somewhat) more awake, I'm going to try to lay out more eloquently what I find exciting in what's going on with Murray thematically.

By nature of being a divination wizard, Murray deals in concepts related to destiny. Not so much destiny as imposed by a will outside oneself, but in the idea that there is some degree of knowability to the future because some paths are inevitable. The future is changeable to Murray because it is touchable to her. That's not to say that the existence of a divination wizard = the existence of destiny, the depiction of Murray as "seeing the grid" leans more into the "future as changable" idea than the "future as knowable" one. But by the nature of her character build, she is going to interact with ideas about what is "meant" to happen (and either align to or deviate from them).

Everything about how Marisha has set up Murray, from her self-presentation to her role at the Penteveral, is designed to talk about class. Murray's primary goal is fighting the injustice faced by her vulnerable young students who don't have the means to access education without her help. She sees the Sundered Houses as a threat because of the way their greed seeks to cut others off from access to education, art, freedom, and prosperity. And, while the Mag'nesson's apparently had money at one point (possibly during her lifetime), she very strongly sees her own financial hardships as a core part of her identity, describing herself as a "squatter dwarf" to Ellipides. This is a very cool theme to build a divination wizard around because, as King Gus points out in this episode, in some ways, class is the most obvious version of destiny. The luck of the draw at birth defines so much of how people live in and experience the world, especially in a highly stratified society.

Hope really starts to come in for Murray thematically (in an explicit way, at least) during Thjazi's funeral. She says: "that's something I've been wrestling with, a sense of betrayal and not hoping, and not being an optimist, even though I was right. But I think Thjazi had hope, not in his own fate. I think deep down inside, he knew. He knew that his past was going to catch up to him one way or another. But he had hope in us and hope in his nieces and nephew, he had hope in the people around him. And that's a damn good legacy to leave into this world. And I only hope that maybe, maybe I-I can live up to that." Part of what I understand her to be pledging in this speech is to live up to his hope and optimism, not just to live up to his faith in her. But to try to have hope and optimism of her own. So for her, in this episode, to tie destiny to hope, to tie her engagement with the future to hope, is also to tie her engagement with class to hope. To make explicit that Murray's investment in shaping the destinies of those born with less, first through the Penteveral, now through actively fighting The Sundered Houses, is an act of hope

[alliepretends]

I cannot deny that I've found the (in my eyes, pretty nonsensical) idea that anything Thjazi was doing was in service of what The Sundered Houses want quite annoying and exhausting to watch (in fact, I've complained about it before). I do not understand why the PCs latched onto it. I don't think their reasoning is particularly compelling based on the evidence they have, and I don't think it makes any sense on a metanarrative level. So I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we finally got a full explanation for the paints. Only for them to still be saying "what if the Tachonis want the play to happen" in the cooldown

[alliepretends]

I'm too tired to make a real post. But explicitly tying together destiny and hope in this episode after Murray's eulogy for Thjazi is so fucking cool! And I'm so excited! Class, destiny (-ish, engagement with the inevitabilities and possibilities of the future via divination), and hope being three of the major emerging themes for Murray as a character is such rich opportunity for storytelling!

[trailertrashgrog]

"thjazi was bad actually" discourse kicking off every week is something because there's a key component of this that i haven't seen unpacked. and it's genuinely one of the most interesting pieces of the puzzle

thjazi died. and he didn't die because the plan got betrayed or the glyph got swapped. thjazi made the choice to hang. he didn't even try to break the glyph. whatever seeing mara in the distance meant, thjazi chose to die. thimble, thaisha, occtis & azune do not know mara (and it remains to be seen if cyd does). she wasn't part of the plan, so seeing her wasn't an indication that the escape plan was going wrong, it was something else entirely, and he gave up on trying to escape.

so when you hear people saying that thjazi would sacrifice people for his goals and his outcomes, the fact is that it's simply not true. the only person we've seen thjazi sacrifice for his goals is himself.

over and over again, to the death, thjazi gave up things for the sake of the rebellion and then for the sake of whatever it was he was trying to accomplish. he gave up his wife, he gave up his relationship to his brother, he gave up being close to his surrogate son and his best friend. and when he saw mara (who was not close enough to send a message, meaning the mere sight of her was enough) he decided to give up his life.

so when you're talking about thjazi, you're talking about someone who has carved away every bit of his own life for a cause. we just don't know the what and why yet.

[alliepretends]

This is almost pure speculation (though the description of Broken Wing affirms it a bit), but in rewatching episode two, I was reminded of Loza's comments about the Revolutionary Council failing to come to the aid of the Falconer's Rebellion. And it just strikes me how much expectation of success there must of been in the rebellion effort. The Shaper's war was barely just over 50 years in the rearview. There were probably soldiers born during the era of the Shaper's still on the battlefield. There was an expectation that post-Shaper's governments - set up explicitly against the tyranny of the Shaper's era - would come to their aid. Thjazi may have been throwing away his marriage and comfortable life to join this rebellion, but there was a real reason to believe the cause he was throwing it away for would succeed

[alliepretends]

ive been starved for analysis of cr4 and your blog is an oasis in a desert. i agree with your seekers post but id like to ask how you feel about vaelus admitting, quite emotionally, that 'maybe i could bring back sylandri' when she is asked why she is even tagging along. part of me feels that the issue isnt that she hasnt developed but that the pressure of the group kind of caused this really odd moment where her (admittedly obvious on an audience level) confession jumped her to the end of an arc far too early, then everyone just went 'thats weird. i knew you were suspicious.' and are now just hanging out. feels like the group opened that narrative door way too early and just had to awkwardly creak it closed again and now vaelus is on such awkward narrative ground.

Thank you! That's very kind of you to say!

I started and deleted a reply because I think you're actually more right than I initially realized. I do think it wasn't just obvious to the audience that this is what Vaelus wanted. Thaisha said "there it is" in response to Vaelus's confession, and generally, most people Vaelus has met have understood what the mourning garb means. However, I think you're right that it feels too early to have dragged an explicit confession out of her if the other characters weren't ready to have the ramifications of that confession play a bigger role in how the characters interacted with her. So in that sense, I maybe disagree that it was too early in the arc of Vaelus as a standalone character, but agree that it was too early in the arc of Vaelus developing relationships within the party. And I think you've hit on the perfect metaphor when you describe them as "awkwardly creaking that door closed again" ever since