#c2 eps

[the-kaedageist]

I can't BELIEVE the first time Essek ever saw him, Caleb was covered in dirt and shit from the street in Asarius, dressed in bondage gear, and carrying one of Essek's stolen beacons. Meet-cute of the century

[the-kaedageist]

The first Xhorhas episode of campaign 2 is fascinating because the Mighty Nein are clearly expecting it to be an awful place filled with bad people. Knowing the home they discover within it, this arc is a masterful way of showing the power of dehumanizing propaganda.

They constantly refer to the people they encounter as “the bad guys” even to their faces (especially the Kryn) and barely seem to consider the idea that the people there will be just like people anywhere else. They’re reluctant to help fellow travelers, they hold a lot of ignorant prejudice based on what they heard back in the Empire, and it’s hard not to almost wince at the things they say, knowing the actual culture they’re about to encounter.

This is an experience the audience has alongside them, which also makes it notable. I don’t remember these comments from my first watch; this is insight that I’ve only gained upon rewatching these episodes and realizing exactly how little the Nein understood about the Dynasty, and exactly where all of that information had come from. 

Given where they end up, I had genuinely forgotten that propaganda was all they’d known of the Dynasty before they made the snap decision to go through that tunnel and change the course of the campaign. I’m excited to watch this shift in perspectives happen with the wisdom of hindsight as I continue my rewatch!

[the-kaedageist]

It’s Campaign 2, Episode 47. A random pirate ship starts following the Balleater after Fjord unseals the second seal. They attempt to run, but the ship outpaces them...

Then Caduceus one-shot capsizes it with a Control Water and Matt throws out initiative order.

[the-kaedageist]

I’m on the first happy fun ball episode of my rewatch, and nothing is funnier than the fact that Fjord touches the ruby and vanishes and then the rest of them DICK AROUND in the study and get into a battle with a cabinet. all the while, we know Fjord is about to appear with a dragon and have to wait a gazillion rounds before anyone else in the party shows up

[the-kaedageist]

Reality slowly reasserts itself in Mollymauk’s life.

He’s someplace comfortable. There’s nature, and friendly pink firbolgs who bring him meals and speak to him in friendly tones. Yasha strokes his hair and curls up with him, a reminder that she’s his favorite person on the planet. His other friends come and go as well, making sure there’s always someone with him. There are conversations in the background, but Molly’s mind is so full with relearning the world that he doesn’t quite register what they’re talking about.

Words slowly filter back. Names come first – Yasha. Caleb, the magician, who speaks to him in quiet, accented tones. Sometimes a new name – Essek – joins him, a dark elf man who sits quietly by his side, not saying much. Jester, joy personified, beautiful and lively, who draws him pictures and sits side by side with him under a tree outside and names words for every living creature they see. Beauregard, who curls up with him and Yasha sometimes, Yasha pressing a fond kiss to her hairline.  Yasha has found love, and Molly is happy for her, even if it had to be with someone like Beau. Fjord, who skirts around the edges of the group but remains present, often hanging out with another new name – Caduceus – or Jester.

There’s another new name, but belonging to an old friend – Veth. He knew her as Nott, he realizes as more words come back, and she was once a goblin. Now she’s a halfling, dark and petite, and she tells him stories about her family. He remembers her as a feral alcoholic thief, and it is strange to paste this new person over the memory of the old.

But that is true of the memory of all of his friends, is it not? Yasha is changed, almost completely transformed, her hair different and her face alight with joy. She carries herself with a different weight, a solid happiness within her, and her clear affection for Beauregard is delightful. The Caleb he remembers was still handsome, but barely washed himself, never made eye contact, and stayed to the back of the group. The Caleb that he meets now is confident, clean, and handsome, determined and headstrong. Jester and Fjord are still similar, reflections rather than echoes of the people he remembers, but Fjord stands taller, with a handsome beard and better musculature, and Jester seems to have grown into herself, confident and wise even as she remains her delightful, silly self.

It is a startling thing, to realize that his friends grew on without him. It is even more startling to wonder how he will learn to fit in with them once more.

And so, every day, Molly climbs out from emptiness and rediscovers the world.

[the-kaedageist]

As Essek worked diligently in the garden, repairing the damage that Ikithon’s attack had wrought, Caleb couldn’t tear his eyes away.

He’d only previously seen Essek out of the mantle a handful of times, always in quick moments of transition. For as long as they’d known him, Essek had cloaked his body, hiding the true shape of himself under layers of cloth and floating in the air to give himself more height.

In the Blooming Grove, however, Essek’s metaphorical armor slowly began to vanish in bits and pieces, leaving only the man beneath. And oh, Caleb thought, unable to pull his eyes away, what a man he was.

Underneath the mantle, Essek Thelyss was built delicately. He had the fine bone structure and short stature of the drow, his shoulders slim and the bones of his clavicle barely peeking out from the collar of his loose shirt. Caleb traced Essek’s collarbone with his eyes and was overcome with a deep, visceral urge to press his mouth to that stretch of bare skin.

When Essek removed his gardening gloves to join them for meals, Caleb found himself transfixed by the delicate bones of his wrists and hands and his beautiful long fingers. He’d watched Essek work magic with those hands for so long, but usually hidden beneath gloves and layers of obfuscation. As the masks were peeled away, viewing Essek’s true self made Caleb never want to take his eyes off of him.

One night in the Tower, after a long day in the sun, Caleb stumbled across Essek curled up in the salon in an oversized armchair, dozing in a way that suggested sleep instead of trance. Caleb’s eyes caught on Essek’s elegant bare feet, pressed against the arm of the chair with one foot twitching slightly, and something in Caleb’s heart unfurled. Seeing small pieces of a person who had once been so concealed felt like slowly discovering new surprises every day. The sight made his heart ache, and he was far beyond the point of denying why.

As Essek grew more comfortable around the Grove, he stopped floating unless there was a particular advantage to it, a change that took a bit of getting used to. He still floated over the flowerbeds, keeping the dirt from himself as much as possible, but in the Clays’ house and the Tower, his own two feet were firmly on the ground. Caleb registered this when it started, but the implications truly sank in when he was perusing the bookshelves on the third floor of the salon, looking for a book for Beauregard. He rounded the corner of a shelf, only half paying attention, and found himself looking down at Essek.

The space between the shelves was small; there was barely room for both to stand side-by-side, and Caleb was abruptly aware of the charged electricity filling the air as they stared at one another in surprise. What caught him off guard even more than the presence of Essek in his library - a sight Caleb couldn’t deny he wanted to see for the rest of his life - was how, for once, Essek wasn’t taller than him, because Essek wasn’t floating several inches off the ground.

Essek continued to stare, their eyes locked onto one another’s. “Ah,” he said, breaking a silence that had gone on for entirely, entirely too long. “You have an interesting selection of colorful literature on this level.”

Caleb finally pulled his gaze from Essek’s to take in the titles of the books held in his arms. He couldn’t help but give in to delighted laughter at the sight of Essek Thelyss, former Shadowhand of the Bright Queen of the Kryn Dynasty, standing in his library with an armful of trashy smut.

“I, ah, hope you will enjoy reading those,” Caleb said, knowing he was grinning like a fool but unable to help himself. There was a part of him that was utterly entranced with the idea of Essek reading novels that Caleb personally had remembered, created out of his mind. Essek, slowly pulling off his layers in the beautiful room that Caleb had designed for him, crawling under the covers of the simply decadent bed that Caleb had imagined (not with the hope or intent that he’d one day share it, no matter what his traitorous brain had thought). Essek, cracking open one of the smuttiest novels to just the right section…

He was abruptly yanked out of his daydream by a hand on his arm. “Caleb.” The laughter in Essek’s voice suggested that this was not the first time he’d had to say Caleb’s name.

He blinked down into Essek’s violet gaze, a warm flush in his cheeks. From Essek’s small, smug smile, Caleb had no doubt that he knew exactly where his mind had wandered. “Apologies,” he said awkwardly, unable to stop smiling himself, “but my brain seems to have taken a detour. Can I help you find anything?”

Essek grinned, showing a flash of a fang. Caleb was mesmerized by the hint of sharpness at the corner of his mouth, wanting to press his fingers to it, to feel the sensation it would leave against his lips.

Spending several weeks in close proximity to Essek had clearly caused all rationality to flee his brain, leaving his mind empty of anything other than collarbones and lust. He knew that Essek felt it too; he could tell by the way his eyes scanned across Caleb’s form, how he visually traced the patterns of freckles on his arms when they were reading in the salon late at night, how his pupils contracted when Caleb was near.

But the thing between them, untethered and vast, was not some affair to be resolved after a night of passion. They were building something, there, between them. And if they were going to build it with a firm foundation, these two broken men still reassembling the pieces of their own souls were going to have to do it slowly and deliberately with great care, no matter how much Caleb’s entire being screamed out at him to lean down, close those remaining few inches, and capture Essek’s mouth with his own.

“I believe I have found what I need,” Essek said in an arch voice, responding to Caleb’s previous question after far too long a pause. Caleb’s eyes flickered to his mouth again and Essek gave what could only be called a smirk; smug was a good look on him. “You are, however, being very…distracting,” Essek added, looking him up and down.

Caleb looked down at himself, noting the soft, worn-through lounging clothes he was dressed in and his own bare feet, freckled and gangly. He caught Essek’s gaze again and licked his lips, this time catching when Essek’s eyes flickered to his mouth. He had a sudden flash of insight that he probably should start putting distance between them if he didn’t want to abandon all of his determination to take this thing slow. Otherwise he suspected that within the next ten seconds, he would find himself shoved up against a bookshelf so that Essek could kiss him within an inch of his life, armful of smut or no armful of smut.

Caleb dragged his focus back to the books that Essek carried. “I would recommend starting with Feathered Leather,” he suggested, hoping the change of subject would discharge some of the electricity that sparked in the air between them.

Essek juggled the books around until he located the title in question, glancing at the lurid cover featuring a half-elf man dressed in all black with crow-like wings sprouting from his back, his chest bared, staring up at another dark-skinned human man dressed in purple robes that barely concealed his handsome physique. “Ah,” he said. “Yes, this looks as though it will be…educational.”

“Educational,” Caleb heard himself repeat over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. “Ja. I would think so.” His mind couldn’t help but stray once more, thinking of Essek reading the more colorful parts of the novel, of Essek thinking of him while reading said excerpts...

This time, Essek was the one to wet his lips nervously. Their gazes met once again. Completely ignoring his internal monologue, Caleb found himself dipping forward, drawn towards Essek’s smiling mouth with a magnetism that felt impossible to resist. He paused when they were an inch from one another, breathing the same air. Essek’s eyes were wide and very, very dark.

Caleb closed his eyes as his lips brushed Essek’s in the faintest of kisses.

“Hey, nerds!” A voice yelled from downstairs. Essek and Caleb jumped apart from one another, both startled and trading guilty looks as though they’d been caught in the act. “Dinner is served! Stop reading and get your asses to the dining room!”

“Ah,” said Caleb, swallowing hard and trying to reign in his galloping heartbeat. “Beauregard will hardly be patient. We should get going.”

Essek nodded, a pretty flush across his dark cheeks. As though needing to have something to do with his hands, he opened his pocket dimension to quickly stow the books inside. Caleb watched the flick of his bare wrist when casting the spell, the lovely hint of his bone structure peeking through, and wanted.

“Lead the way,” Essek said, gesturing with one hand. Only the wild look in his eyes hinted at what he and Caleb had almost gotten up to.

Time, Caleb reminded himself, smoothing down the front of his shirt and taking a deep breath. These things took time. Trent Ikithon still sat in the Clays’ shed; himself, Astrid, and Eadwulf hadn’t even finished debriefing with Beauregard. Essek still carried his guilt and sadness around like a replacement for his discarded mantle.

Caleb briefly took one of Essek’s elegant hands in his, running his fingertips along the sensitive palm and hearing the hitch in Essek’s breathing. He laced their fingers together and led him out of the salon, watching him with shining eyes, not releasing Essek’s hand until they were right on the threshold to the dining room.

There would be time for all of that, and more. Plenty of time to heal and grow, together.

[the-kaedageist]

Artagan: [shows up] oh, you need help? [files his nails] let’s see what I can do [takes a sip of his cocktail] oh the people who you knew were following you are definitely following you. [pets Capeleb] well I’ve got to run. toodles!

[the-kaedageist]

For the longest time, before we had realized this was the final arc, I was dreading this arc’s ending because I knew Essek couldn’t stay with the Nein for an entire prolonged campaign. It was the same with Molly - when they went to resurrect him that first time, there was no mechanical way to bring him back, keep Caduceus, and continue with a long campaign.

So in some ways, the fact that the campaign is ending now is perfect, because it allows us to continue to follow these characters and their growth without being limited by gameplay mechanics.

Thematically it makes so much sense that Essek would now become permanently incorporated into the Mighty Nein. He’s grown so much, he’s come so far, and he doesn’t really have anything to go back to. His budding romance with Caleb, his “redemption” arc - if this was a normal storytelling medium, he would be part of the group moving forward. But because he’s an NPC, this makes things very difficult for Matt - in terms of gameplay mechanics alone, Essek will never be able to function as an equal member of the party because of all the other responsibilities that Matt carries as DM.

But with the campaign ending now, it gives the cast the freedom to follow that narrative direction without mechanics getting in the way. Matt doesn’t have to ship Essek off to Bazzoxan or get him kidnapped by the Bright Queen or what have you. He can just stay with them, developing his friendships, becoming a full-fledged member of the Nein the way we’ve all wanted him to be. And when they return to one-shots, they can reference his presence, they can tell stories and shared experiences - and they can show the passage of time with Essek present without Matt needing to RP any of it.

And it’s the same with Mollymauk! Playing two characters is difficult, but neither Molly or Caduceus would feel the same without Tal behind them, and being a huge fan of both, I would hate to see a complete Mighty Nein without either of them present. But because the campaign is ending, that pressure is removed from Tal - oh, he may have to play two characters in a couple of one-offs here and there, and definitely for the finale, but in terms of a long, drawn-out campaign, they don’t have to leave Molly somewhere. He can just…join them.

If I had to choose between adventurer!Essek and the campaign going on a bit longer, I’ll choose to have Essek among them every time, and I’m SO glad that we have Mollymauk back without having to pick between him and Caduceus. The Mighty Nein will live on long after this campaign comes to a close in my heart and in my imagination, and to have them complete, to have Essek have his narrative closure, to have him and Caleb have their chance, to see the possibility of redemption for this character that we’ve ALL come to know and love so much - and to see Mollymauk have his chance at life, an opportunity to learn and grow and develop into the person he might have been without his early death?? It all feels very much worth it, as sad as I am to see it end.

Thank you for such an incredible run, Mighty Nein. It’s been such a journey.