30-something former Grad Student. Semi-professional curly-haired doofus. Excessively verbose, perpetual student, scientist, SCIENCE!-tist. Lover of music, all things nerdy and all things strange. Dice Goblin Extraordinaire.
Dice Sideblog: gobs-o-dice D&D/TTRPG
Characters Based on those dice sideblog: gobs-o-cs
He/Him I got opinions!
[Blogs got hacked and deleted in October. Probably about as fixed as I can do]
Shorter-ish set of Critical Role Campaign 4 Thoughts after seeing last week's episode:
After having met Hero, properly now, I can honestly say that all of Hal's kids seem great.
(We haven't actually met Alogar in-person yet, but the evidence of his good deeds and reasonable nature that the Seekers found while looking for him speaks volumes about who he is).
Actually, in many other campaigns, these young'uns probably would be the PCs proper, themselves (One-shot potential is through the roof with these three, and possibly some other relatives of the Araman party/Mourners).
Hero's a Wizard, obviously. Alogar is probably straight-up Fighter, given that Julien's his mentor. Shadia is possibly some flavour of martially-inclined Bard (College of Dance or Swords, perhaps. Maybe even Valour. I could totally see her as a Skald, y'know?) Failing that, from what we've seen of her background, she'd be some other sort of acrobatic class - Rogue, Ranger, dex-based Fighter. Something like that.
It's also made me realize something - For all the myriad characters I create on a whim, I rarely create D&D characters who are parents. Occasionally, I'll roll up/write up a character who's a parent to a character I'd previously created.
I love creating PCs with large families - Siblings and cousins and such. But few of my characters have children in their backstories. Heck, not even really niblings. I'll readily admit this bias is probably due to my own childfree life, IRL, so the idea of parenthood just isn't one that lingers in my head all that much.
I might have to branch out a bit on that character-creation front, play around with the idea. If nothing else, I should add some more niblings into the mix, with all the siblings and cousins I like to create for my PCs.
Off the top of my head, I think I have one Minotaur character who is a mother. She was retired from her life as a guard/defender/soldier of some sort, but puts her armour back on and picks up an axe in order to defend her family during a time of crisis. I don't think I've really fleshed out her backstory much beyond that, though.
Otherwise, I have the two parents of a Half-Orc [Most of my characters were rolled up in 5e, so I haven't really gone through and updated them for 5.5e] Tempest Cleric I've rolled up - A proud clan leader mother (Barbarian) and a charming scoundrel pirate father (Swashbuckler Rogue). I have more of their backstory figured out, if only because the pirate's lineage ties into a broader story element I was tinkering with to put all of my characters into some sort of shared story/world.
[Basically, he's descended from a bastard lineage of the royal family of one of the major powers in the region - Which becomes a problem when that royal family gets cursed in a way that marks its members. The family, looking to bury the sordid past of the monarch who had *a lot* of bastard children prior to his ascension to the throne, and to snuff out any potential claimants who might one day show up and declare themselves of the bloodline, turn this curse around - They can use it to identify and round up their various illegitimate cousins - Putting the Storm Cleric and her Pirate father both squarely in their sights. Also, part of that nation's backstory is that they're Human-supremacist assholes, so the various not-fully Human people identified as part of their bloodline due to the curse are an even bigger outrage/embarrassment to them]
More Critical Role Campaign 4 thoughts, because my brain is just like that:
(Tagged as spoilers, but the core of this is a few episodes old)
The main thing that's been rolling around in my head here is Occtis' sense of duty towards Dame Gaya. House Seremai as a whole may serve his family, but in the sequence of events leading to her demise, she was serving him personally.
And we've been seeing Occtis doing what a proper liege-lord should be doing for such a loyal/dutiful vassal - He feels that obligation and takes it seriously. Which is more that can be said for a lot of nobles in such positions - Ones who aren't on the run from the rest of their families, and dealing with their own unending series of crises. She fell in battle, protecting him personally. The least he can do is see her remains put in a place of honour and respect.
More to that - House Tachonis was the house responsible for funerary rites and the handling of the dead. That should be their sacred duty towards ALL of Araman. Unlike the rest of his family, who seeks to use the dead as weapons and fuel for their plots, Occtis seems to actually treat them with respect. Even his study of necromancy, from what we've seen, has been less about weaponizing the dead, and more about understanding the nature/mechanics of the magic.
I know that mechanically, it doesn't necessarily gel, but story-wise, I would love the thematic resonance of Occtis taking levels in Cleric to the point that he can specialize into the Grave Domain Cleric subclass. Like, he becomes the only truly dutiful Tachonis through his genuine humanity. But, like, 3 levels is a lot for such a dip, y'know?
Picture it: He breaks into his family's manor at the tannery and quietly goes through the proper consecration rituals. He does proper mortuary preparation of Gaya's body and inters her in a plot, leaving a small marker. Only sometime later (days? weeks?) does anyone from the rest of the family even notice that the equipment's been used. They probably should have noticed the marker Occtis left for Gaya, and the freshly dug grave - But the Tachonis have been so neglectful of their actual duties that they simply don't even pay attention to the cemetery or mortuary all that much anymore.
Honestly, if I hadn't spent the last two campaigns in my own D&D group playing a Grave Cleric, I'd rush out and make a Reborn/Hollow One Grave Cleric for a backup character for the campaign I'm currently playing in. (My Fairy Monk character has been buckets of fun, so I'm not exactly rushing to get to any sort of backup)
I mean, I'm still gonna make that character, obviously. I'm just not going to rush out and have them on-deck as my backup.
The built-in pathos of an undead character whose goal is to provide the proper rites that they were so cruelly denied for themselves is just *chef's kiss*. Especially since Grave Clerics tend to feel compelled to lay undead of any sort to a proper rest. Even the "good" ones. The ones who are okay with what they are, aren't harming anyone else, etc. The natural order must be respected, the dead must rest and move on from this world. With some patron gods/goddesses being a little more forceful on that point. So, there's an inherent tension there.
Especially if the Cleric only has flashes of their traumatic death and part of why they've come back as this revenant of sorts is to figure out who they were in life, sort out their unfinished business regarding that, and possibly see justice done against those who killed them and desecrated their body/whatever the actual incident was.
More Critical Role Campaign 4 thoughts, because my brain is just like that:
(Tagged as spoilers, but the core of this is a few episodes old)
The main thing that's been rolling around in my head here is Occtis' sense of duty towards Dame Gaya. House Seremai as a whole may serve his family, but in the sequence of events leading to her demise, she was serving him personally.
And we've been seeing Occtis doing what a proper liege-lord should be doing for such a loyal/dutiful vassal - He feels that obligation and takes it seriously. Which is more that can be said for a lot of nobles in such positions - Ones who aren't on the run from the rest of their families, and dealing with their own unending series of crises. She fell in battle, protecting him personally. The least he can do is see her remains put in a place of honour and respect.
More to that - House Tachonis was the house responsible for funerary rites and the handling of the dead. That should be their sacred duty towards ALL of Araman. Unlike the rest of his family, who seeks to use the dead as weapons and fuel for their plots, Occtis seems to actually treat them with respect. Even his study of necromancy, from what we've seen, has been less about weaponizing the dead, and more about understanding the nature/mechanics of the magic.
I know that mechanically, it doesn't necessarily gel, but story-wise, I would love the thematic resonance of Occtis taking levels in Cleric to the point that he can specialize into the Grave Domain Cleric subclass. Like, he becomes the only truly dutiful Tachonis through his genuine humanity. But, like, 3 levels is a lot for such a dip, y'know?
Picture it: He breaks into his family's manor at the tannery and quietly goes through the proper consecration rituals. He does proper mortuary preparation of Gaya's body and inters her in a plot, leaving a small marker. Only sometime later (days? weeks?) does anyone from the rest of the family even notice that the equipment's been used. They probably should have noticed the marker Occtis left for Gaya, and the freshly dug grave - But the Tachonis have been so neglectful of their actual duties that they simply don't even pay attention to the cemetery or mortuary all that much anymore.
Honestly, if I hadn't spent the last two campaigns in my own D&D group playing a Grave Cleric, I'd rush out and make a Reborn/Hollow One Grave Cleric for a backup character for the campaign I'm currently playing in. (My Fairy Monk character has been buckets of fun, so I'm not exactly rushing to get to any sort of backup)
I mean, I'm still gonna make that character, obviously. I'm just not going to rush out and have them on-deck as my backup.
The built-in pathos of an undead character whose goal is to provide the proper rites that they were so cruelly denied for themselves is just *chef's kiss*. Especially since Grave Clerics tend to feel compelled to lay undead of any sort to a proper rest. Even the "good" ones. The ones who are okay with what they are, aren't harming anyone else, etc. The natural order must be respected, the dead must rest and move on from this world. With some patron gods/goddesses being a little more forceful on that point. So, there's an inherent tension there.
Especially if the Cleric only has flashes of their traumatic death and part of why they've come back as this revenant of sorts is to figure out who they were in life, sort out their unfinished business regarding that, and possibly see justice done against those who killed them and desecrated their body/whatever the actual incident was.
Off the top of my head, I think I have one Minotaur character who is a mother. She was retired from her life as a guard/defender/soldier of some sort, but puts her armour back on and picks up an axe in order to defend her family during a time of crisis. I don't think I've really fleshed out her backstory much beyond that, though.
Otherwise, I have the two parents of a Half-Orc [Most of my characters were rolled up in 5e, so I haven't really gone through and updated them for 5.5e] Tempest Cleric I've rolled up - A proud clan leader mother (Barbarian) and a charming scoundrel pirate father (Swashbuckler Rogue). I have more of their backstory figured out, if only because the pirate's lineage ties into a broader story element I was tinkering with to put all of my characters into some sort of shared story/world.
[Basically, he's descended from a bastard lineage of the royal family of one of the major powers in the region - Which becomes a problem when that royal family gets cursed in a way that marks its members. The family, looking to bury the sordid past of the monarch who had *a lot* of bastard children prior to his ascension to the throne, and to snuff out any potential claimants who might one day show up and declare themselves of the bloodline, turn this curse around - They can use it to identify and round up their various illegitimate cousins - Putting the Storm Cleric and her Pirate father both squarely in their sights. Also, part of that nation's backstory is that they're Human-supremacist assholes, so the various not-fully Human people identified as part of their bloodline due to the curse are an even bigger outrage/embarrassment to them]
Shorter-ish set of Critical Role Campaign 4 Thoughts after seeing last week's episode:
After having met Hero, properly now, I can honestly say that all of Hal's kids seem great.
(We haven't actually met Alogar in-person yet, but the evidence of his good deeds and reasonable nature that the Seekers found while looking for him speaks volumes about who he is).
Actually, in many other campaigns, these young'uns probably would be the PCs proper, themselves (One-shot potential is through the roof with these three, and possibly some other relatives of the Araman party/Mourners).
Hero's a Wizard, obviously. Alogar is probably straight-up Fighter, given that Julien's his mentor. Shadia is possibly some flavour of martially-inclined Bard (College of Dance or Swords, perhaps. Maybe even Valour. I could totally see her as a Skald, y'know?) Failing that, from what we've seen of her background, she'd be some other sort of acrobatic class - Rogue, Ranger, dex-based Fighter. Something like that.
It's also made me realize something - For all the myriad characters I create on a whim, I rarely create D&D characters who are parents. Occasionally, I'll roll up/write up a character who's a parent to a character I'd previously created.
I love creating PCs with large families - Siblings and cousins and such. But few of my characters have children in their backstories. Heck, not even really niblings. I'll readily admit this bias is probably due to my own childfree life, IRL, so the idea of parenthood just isn't one that lingers in my head all that much.
I might have to branch out a bit on that character-creation front, play around with the idea. If nothing else, I should add some more niblings into the mix, with all the siblings and cousins I like to create for my PCs.
More Critical Role Campaign 4 thoughts, because my brain is just like that:
(Tagged as spoilers, but the core of this is a few episodes old)
The main thing that's been rolling around in my head here is Occtis' sense of duty towards Dame Gaya. House Seremai as a whole may serve his family, but in the sequence of events leading to her demise, she was serving him personally.
And we've been seeing Occtis doing what a proper liege-lord should be doing for such a loyal/dutiful vassal - He feels that obligation and takes it seriously. Which is more that can be said for a lot of nobles in such positions - Ones who aren't on the run from the rest of their families, and dealing with their own unending series of crises. She fell in battle, protecting him personally. The least he can do is see her remains put in a place of honour and respect.
More to that - House Tachonis was the house responsible for funerary rites and the handling of the dead. That should be their sacred duty towards ALL of Araman. Unlike the rest of his family, who seeks to use the dead as weapons and fuel for their plots, Occtis seems to actually treat them with respect. Even his study of necromancy, from what we've seen, has been less about weaponizing the dead, and more about understanding the nature/mechanics of the magic.
I know that mechanically, it doesn't necessarily gel, but story-wise, I would love the thematic resonance of Occtis taking levels in Cleric to the point that he can specialize into the Grave Domain Cleric subclass. Like, he becomes the only truly dutiful Tachonis through his genuine humanity. But, like, 3 levels is a lot for such a dip, y'know?
Picture it: He breaks into his family's manor at the tannery and quietly goes through the proper consecration rituals. He does proper mortuary preparation of Gaya's body and inters her in a plot, leaving a small marker. Only sometime later (days? weeks?) does anyone from the rest of the family even notice that the equipment's been used. They probably should have noticed the marker Occtis left for Gaya, and the freshly dug grave - But the Tachonis have been so neglectful of their actual duties that they simply don't even pay attention to the cemetery or mortuary all that much anymore.
Honestly, if I hadn't spent the last two campaigns in my own D&D group playing a Grave Cleric, I'd rush out and make a Reborn/Hollow One Grave Cleric for a backup character for the campaign I'm currently playing in. (My Fairy Monk character has been buckets of fun, so I'm not exactly rushing to get to any sort of backup)
I mean, I'm still gonna make that character, obviously. I'm just not going to rush out and have them on-deck as my backup.
The built-in pathos of an undead character whose goal is to provide the proper rites that they were so cruelly denied for themselves is just *chef's kiss*. Especially since Grave Clerics tend to feel compelled to lay undead of any sort to a proper rest. Even the "good" ones. The ones who are okay with what they are, aren't harming anyone else, etc. The natural order must be respected, the dead must rest and move on from this world. With some patron gods/goddesses being a little more forceful on that point. So, there's an inherent tension there.
Especially if the Cleric only has flashes of their traumatic death and part of why they've come back as this revenant of sorts is to figure out who they were in life, sort out their unfinished business regarding that, and possibly see justice done against those who killed them and desecrated their body/whatever the actual incident was.
I know it's been a bit but the scene where Brennan introduced Maya Davinos still sticks with me. Her conversation with Julien and brief interactions with the rest of the Seekers are great, of course, but the one thing that keeps rattling around in my brain is his response to the insight checks to get a vibe on her.
Just the simple, repeated line:
"She'll kill ya"
It reminds me of like, Borderlands-style character title cards that pop-up on the freeze-and-zoom that happens when you meet a character for the first time:
Okay, so I haven't seen last night's newest episode but I did catch up on Monday's YouTube episode, so this wild speculation may have already been proven false, but...
Wild speculation:
TL;DR - It's possible that Aranessa and Thjazi weren't as childless as everyone was led to believe. Keeping any kids of theirs secret would have been critical to keeping those kids alive and safe. For many reasons.
It's also possible that Brennan wants players/the audience to consider whether keeping a noble family's lineage going even matters all that much.
After thinking a bit about Lady Davinos' concerns about family lines ending, I can't help but wonder if Lady Aranessa and Thjazi might have had a child/children in secret.
Once she ascended to head of House Royce, she'd have some leeway to cover her comings and goings. And the Golden Orchard was a pocket dimension full of people utterly loyal to her.
Why keep them secret? Well, that's obvious - Thjazi was a marked man. Leader of the Falconer's Rebellion against the Sundered Houses and their systems.
Even if in the aftermath of that conflict, some resolution had been reached that allowed him to live freely (though perhaps not necessarily openly), he certainly wasn't popular with the Sundered Houses - Possibly even House Royce outside of Aranessa.
After all, while we don't have full details on the period between the Rebellion and Thjazi's execution, it seemed pretty clear that it wasn't *officially* for his role in the Rebellion, but his post-Rebellion recent activities. People, including Thjazi himself, Wick, and others, seemed genuinely surprised that after all this time the Houses were actually going to execute him, knowing the hit they'd suffer to their standing in the eyes of the public.
So, in addition to the usual inter-house skullduggery, any heirs to Thjazi himself could prove to be thorns in their sides. Loose ends that need to be tied up, lest they become rebels like their father.
And let's not discount that inter-house skullduggery either. House Royce was the weakest/most vulnerable of the Sundered Houses. If it was truly just Lady Aranessa and her brother left, Tachonis and Halovar would absolutely be licking their chops for the opportunity to take them out and divvy up their holdings for themselves (and even if Einfasen and Cormoray had been longtime allies, it's clear that they're both more than willing to capitalize on such opportunities/sell out the Royces to save/further themselves).
We also don't fully know how Half-Orcish heirs in-general would have been treated by the Houses, without even considering the Thjazi factor.
Like, okay, yes - All of the Sundered Houses link some non-Human element to their bloodlines, but those are all super-special, magical non-Humans. Not the upstart "brutish"/"rabble" Orcs - Children of the cruel war god. The ones who messed up the status quo that had kept the Houses comfy and in power in olden times (I honestly thought House Einfasen was out-and-out Goliaths and with learning that House Comoray's powers originate from Genies, they might have been Genasi - But it seems that both houses are counted as Human, with the sorcerers in their bloodlines having strong traits of those races, but not outright being them).
And it is clear that the old nobility system, and what remains of it, positioned Humans above other races, at least in this part of the world. Maybe there were non-Human important noble houses prior to the Shapers' War. Maybe in other parts of the world, there are noble houses of Dwarves, Gnomes, etc. on-par with the power levels of the 5 Sundered houses, but here in Dol-Makjar and the surrounding territories, it's Humans in charge everywhere you look.
Notably, though this was formerly a major city of Azgra - the War God and Shaper of Orcs (I'm not 100% if it was his capital or like, *The* definite-article city of Azgra, but it was a major city under his control at least).
There are no Orcish noble houses here.
Maybe, any sort of high-ranking Orcish nobles that had been present sided with Azgra and were killed in the Shapers' War.
But you'd think some of the heroes responsible for the successes of the overthrow would have been elevated in status for it, to take their places, wouldn't you?
The Lloy family, for instance, is noted to be well-regarded, honored even. But they're not considered a Noble House.
Maybe the Orcs had a distaste for noble lords after the whole business with Azgra. Maybe the greater Shapers' War meant that they were too busy helping fight the other Shapers to properly re-organize their own government before the deaths of the other Shapers created huge swaths of hazardous terrain, right in the middle of the former seats of their power - Displacing many, many people. People who fled to the now ironic flourishing paradise in Azgra's former realm. People who brought their own pre-established systems of governing with them and just sort of settled right in and took control of Dol-Makjar, graciously allowing the local Orc population to "integrate" with them.
ANYWAY, coming back in from that tangent - That's the context on why Aranessa and Thjazi might hide the mere existence of any child of theirs, from all but their absolutely-closest confidants.
If anyone knows, it'd be Hal and/or Thimble. And those are both pretty big ifs.
For Hal, I considered the possibility that one of his kids might be secretly Thjazi's, sent to the relative safety of Hal, away from the spotlight that followed both Thjazi and Aranessa.
But, honestly, I don't see it.
Of the three, Hero would be the most likely, as she's the only Half-Orcish one out of the bunch - I know that mechanically, Half-Human hybrids are generally treated as the same as non-hybrids in 5.5e, but appearance-wise, we're not necessarily sure how the mix of physical traits shakes out. I would imagine though, it's much like Half-Orcs had been portrayed previously - A skin tone that at least somewhat blends the Orcish green and Human shades-of-brown, slightly smaller size, and reduced tusk-size, for instance. But we've met Hero's mother - If even only briefly. She's an important mover-and-shaker in Dol-Makjar herself, and there's no indication that Hero isn't her daughter with Hal, at all.
As for whether either Thimble or Hal would have been told about hidden children of Aranessa and Thjazi's, potentially hidden-away in the Golden Orchard or some other secret location - Well, Thjazi's no dummy and he seems to have a pretty solid grasp on OpSec. He knows that he and Thimble are constant doing risky shit that could get them captured by people who'd do whatever they could to hurt them. He knows that Hal, while ostensibly a neutral-party, is nevertheless in danger just by being related to Thjazi. Enemies could use Hal as ransom/leverage against Thjazi. They could try to torture any information on Thjazi out of him. Read his mind to steal secrets. The less Hal knows, the better, for everyone's safety. That's why Hal's busy playing catch-up now, trying to piece together what Thjazi was up to.
If there are secret children, Thimble might be the only one who would plausibly know, out of any named characters. Chances are, it's a close circle overall, and the number of servants/nannies/etc. who know would be incredibly small.
OpSec aside, Thimble is ride-or-die for Thjazi (and presumably Aranessa to a secondary extent). Undoubtedly, this would extend to any kids of theirs. She'd absolutely die before betraying them, so the only risk then would be mind-reading - Which is a concern in this world, after all.
That all being said - Brennan's been playing around with a lot of tropes. It's entirely possible his angle in all this will be "So. House Royce is dead. So what?"
Perhaps the overall message will be "There's no reason for distinction between normal people and aristocrats. Even the "good" aristocrats don't need to be positioned above anyone else."
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