Critical Role Campaign 2, Ep 110: Cad's Speech
I listened to this episode ages ago, but it has stuck with me ever since, and in this post I plan to make it everyone else's problem 😂
Spoilers for C2E110 below the cut.
OK. If you haven't listened to this episode in a while, it's the one where the Mighty Nein have dinner with Trent Ikithon, the wizard who groomed Caleb into becoming a killer and manipulated him into murdering his own parents. Trent waxes poetic about how he had to do all of this to help Caleb realize his full potential. Lots of gross "it hurt you more than it hurt me" type stuff.
And at the end of the dinner, Caduceus the cleric, the gentle firbolg, looks this monster dead in the eye and says:
"May I say, before you go... I think perhaps you are one of the most powerful mages that I've ever had the pleasure to be in the presence of. For this I would offer a gift. I think it has been a long time since anyone has pointed out to you that you're a fool.
"Pain doesn't make people. It's love that makes people. The pain is inconsequential. It's love that saves them. And you would know that, but you have none around you. You said so yourself. You surround yourself with lies and deception, and... I wish for you in the future to find someone who will mourn you when you are gone.
"Respectfully."
Trent's goal in inviting the Nein to dinner is to sow doubt in the group. He wants them to be afraid of Caleb. More than that, he wants them to be afraid of him, of what he might do to them if they stand in the way of his plans for Caleb. And he wants Caleb to feel that, in some twisted way, he owes Trent. That everything he's achieved, everything he's learned, is because of what Trent put him through.
And there, in his own dining room, Caduceus calls him a fool, showing him that they're not scared of him. Cad says that it's love that shapes people, denying Trent any credit for the wizard and man Caleb has become.
I don't think Trent believes Caduceus. I don't think he has a big revelation about the power of love or regrets anything he's done after hearing Cad's speech. But when Caduceus calls him an idiot in his own house, he knows these people aren't scared of him, that he's gone to the effort of bringing them here to mess with their heads and it's failed. He knows the Nein love Caleb, and they're not going anywhere. SUCH good stuff.
