Oh wow I am not used to the 1 AM thing any more, I got so used to actually sleeping, wow.
Okay just rattling some thoughts off, here we go:
I love all four of our new characters so much? Like, so much that I almost regret the returning characters we also have, not because I don't also love them but because what if we had more of this. (But soon they'll all be this together, whatever this turns out to be.)
I am so serious about class as a major theme of this campaign. Like, obviously it's only episode one! who knows! But I'm feeling something-something-solidarity-something out of our new characters, and Bertrand Bell intersects with that in some really interesting ways, and I think I really want it?
Because right, you could tell from episode one of the last campaign that this was an outsider narrative! This overarching, constant theme that we carried through for a hundred and twenty-odd episodes was that this was a motley group of people who don't fit anywhere. The goblin in the mask, the cleric of a forbidden god, the traveling carnival that nobody trusts which can only stay so long and not longer -- it was about social isolation, about being alone, and having the chance to find a handful of other people to be weird outsiders with. (And yes, of course the final big bad at the end of the campaign was assimilation. Of course it was.)
And the thing is: that's not what we have, here.
(oh no, episode one meta got long, Read More after the cut)
Our characters starting out here -- and I'm leaving the EXU trio to the side for a moment, I'll get to them later -- are poor. And they're poor in a different way than newbie adventurers often are. They're not just temporarily strapped for cash until they take the next easy-to-come-by job that will set them up for life. They are poor in lifestyle, in resources, in connections, in socioeconomic power, and in a way that suggests this is and has been and, were it not for today's events, would continue to be a long-term thing.
And also: They are not wealthy, they are not important, they are not respected. But they are also, even outside their own party, not alone.
I love Imogen and Laudna so fucking much, already. Everything about their vibe speaks to long comfortable companionship, not of the 'we rely on each other for codependent survival' way (which, face it, is as much pre-game Vax and Vex as it is pre-game Nott and Caleb), but in a 'we know and share each other's problems' sort of way, a comfortable sort of way. They're not busy trying to caretake one another or step in front of each other's bullets, they're just on the same page about goals and steps to reach them.
They're not set up in opposition to the world. They're very much part of the world. They buy groceries for their landlady, they do her dishes, she knits them socks! They try so hard to go through official channels for these university resources. And yes, they're different, they're not from around here, they're a little weird, Imogen hears thoughts and Laudna looks like death, but. "We've done well for ourselves here," they say, and they mean it. And what that means to them is, we have a warm and comfortable place to call home, and a person who welcomes us there and doesn't charge more for rent than we can afford. We have enough to live on and we haven't been chased out of town on a rail.
And like, just that, just with that, we're already making class statements. We're already setting up a situation where these two ladies, who don't have money, who don't have influence or relations, who aren't important, can't get access to a resource they need (for whatever reason). (Which--it sure seems like the resource they're looking for is knowledge about their own magical powers, which, y'know, fun magic bonuses aside, sure seem to work a lot like disabilities for them in at least a couple of ways. Socioeconomic gatekeeping access to disability resources? In my fantasy fiction? It's more likely than you think.)
And then we get Ashton and FCG, and the fucking queer punk group house that is inhabited by too many people with not quite enough money to pay the cheap-ass rent that doesn't quite cover repair work for the holes in the walls, not really enough of anything to go around, but also someone found a half-broken robot in a pile of dead bodies and brought it home and now we have one more roommate because sure, why not, right? Ashton's all surface cynicism and sour bite, but they know people. They network! They live gig-economy style, one payday to the next, and they know who to talk to for the possibility of work, dozens of people know Ashton by name and general skill set. Ashton knows them all by name right back. And for all their cynicism and pretense of not caring, they've adopted FCG entirely: here, this is my new robot friend, this is the new guy, this is what they can do, this is what they're looking for. Here, let me show you around town, let me tell you what to expect, you're cool, I like you. (And right, part of this is Taliesin, who is literally incapable of creating a character that doesn't have a place and a community, family or otherwise, broken or otherwise, to belong to. But Percy's family was dead and Caduceus's family was gone, and Molly's circus broke and shattered and left him. Ashton's community is an entire neighborhood, is businesses and individuals and fundamental socioeconomics. He may have to leave it for a while, but it's going to still be there, unless the entire neighborhood burns. In which case we really are looking at total class warfare.)
And ok, let's talk about class warfare for a minute. Let's talk Bertrand Bell.
I am so fucking fascinated by the choice to revive Bertrand Bell, of all characters, for this campaign. And I love the role he's playing here.
Bertrand Bell is a con man. He's a charlatan. He once got dragged through literal Pandemonium and back because he bragged too much and got called out on it. He has always pretended to know more than he really knows, to be able to do more than he really can, getting by on bluff and swagger and a very impressive sword. But now? Well, he's older, now. He's not level 18 any more. He's a level 5 fighter. He's got to work to stay up with the lifestyle to which he's accustomed, let alone grind towards the lifestyle to which he's always aspired to become accustomed.
So he drops names, he makes deals, he tries so damn hard to ingratiate himself to the upper class, the people he wants to be with. And they don't respect him at all, because of course they don't, because they're elderly in secure luxury and he's elderly but still on that hustle, because he doesn't have the resources to put it down. And his solution to his dilemma, very pertinently, is to prey on people with even fewer resources than himself.
I absolutely believe the aspersions cast on 'did Bertrand Bell set up the whole animated-objects debacle to try and lure some promising adventurers'. One hundred percent, I believe it. He jumped on them the instant the fight was over. He was obviously desperate, given his reception at Lord E's manor. It is painfully transparent how much he thinks he needs this, and it doesn't even seem to be a case of blackmail or gambling debts or threats hanging over him or any of that. Lord E would've been happy enough to never see him again. The only bad thing that happens to Bertrand Bell if he doesn't summon up this group of baby adventurers to sacrifice on the altar of upward mobility is that...he doesn't get what he wants. Doesn't get the resources he thinks he needs, the money, the clout, the status, the attention.
And that's an interesting story! That's a really interesting force to be putting up alongside a team of people who, for the most part, largely just seem to be trying to get by. I can't wait to see where they go with it.
I did promise to come back around to our EXU trio, too, so let's get into that. They've got a lot of interesting potential here, maybe especially Dorian, though we'll see how long he's sticking around for. (He's a born-and-raised very rich kid, from this general region of the globe, who left his family for Complicated Reasons and clearly has unresolved feelings about the wealth he came from. Interesting.) Mostly, though, what we see from Fearne and Orym is an outsider perspective on the entire system. Fearne and Orym aren't part of the class structure of this city. They're tourists. Foreigners. Adventurers, and if we've seen anything over on Tal'dorei, it's that "adventurer" is its own socioeconomic class entirely. (The details of which I think are due when it's not two in the morning.)
Adventurers don't worry about the day-to-day basic economics of survival -- there's always another monster to kill if you need cash, or a wealthy patron to spot you an airship or an inn, or a vault to loot, or something. Fearne steals a man's earring for fun and shinies, not money. An adventurer doesn't have to rely on the goodwill of one city's community just to live in, because they can travel anywhere. They bring their own community in the form of their party, and never leave home without it.
Orym and Fearne especially don't come from socioeconomic backgrounds that look anything like this city even before they became adventurers. Druid communes or feywild villages don't have a lot in common with urban class stratification! Which means that they're going to be learning a lot of this stuff for the very first time, seeing some of it reflecting on their fellow party members, and building their relationships with it anew. How do tourists fit in with a local socioeconomic system? Either they fund it from the outside with their presence, or they assimilate.
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Anyway. Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe none of these themes or ideas will ever come back again. But I'm feeling very 2021 right now, with all that entails, and it's making me think that maybe-just-maybe this story's feeling it too. Why not tell a story about eating the rich before the rich can devour the poor? I'd be up for that. I'd be up for watching CR do that.
(Of course, given that it's a quarter after two in the morning and I still care enough to finish this post, I'd be up for watching CR do a lot of things. Still. The point stands.)
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