bystander3 replied to your post “Also, one more thought on the subject of Campaign 1, Campaign 2, and...”
Very insightful! I'm not sure about Caduceus never being a prisoner though. We first met him all alone in a graveyard, bound by obligation to never leave, while the forest closed in around him ever tighter, inch by inch, year by year. I think he was as much a prisoner as anyone.
A couple of people have talked about Caduceus as a prisoner of the Blooming Grove and a servant of Melora, and it’s totally true, but I still get this feeling in my gut that there’s something different about the way he interacts with his subservience/”captivity” and the rest of the group.
Caduceus likes being in service to the Wildmother. The cemetery wasn’t a jail he longed to escape so much as it was a home he longed to stay in--a place he deliberately put off leaving until he absolutely couldn’t any more. He doesn’t fear being confined the way the others do. He clutches so hard at the idea that he has a destiny, a job, a mission to fulfil that when Melora herself seems to suggest that maybe there’s a little more free will involved than that, he explicitly does not appreciate the implication.
IDK, I’ve been seeing a handful of posts on my dash lately about how Caduceus still manages to feel a little on the outside of the rest of the group, still ‘the new guy’, and I think this is part of it. Everybody else in the group is running from something, even if they can’t or won’t admit it, even Jester who tells anyone at all about her backstory and loves her mama dearly. Cad is only running to, while the rest of the group is only just starting to be able to admit that maybe a to exists.
