okay so this is going to be very long and someone's probably pointed these things out and made the same conclusion. but. genloss theory
SO. in episode three when Ranboo's in the office space looking for the usb and code. Hetch states that the drones are "doing what the company associates as busywork" but they're just kinda staring at screensavers. That always struck me as odd.
What if Showfall is run by an ai. maybe that's why that line is like that. the ai saw a bunch of office workers, etc. and then made that approximation of an office.
This could also go with the "everyone's saying/doing things without their consent" what if the mind control is a metaphor for ai voices, where they take various celebrities, whatever's voices, and add them to an ai to have that ai recreate the celebrity's voice saying whatever the user wants. i dont know how that works exactly but. you get the point.
and with the ability to make it sound that any celebrity is saying anything, even if the celebrity could get cancelled for saying that or they would never actually say that, that can be seen in what the genloss cast say and do. Ranboo in real life would (probably) never commit malpractice, let alone on his friends, but he still does in episode two.
adding on to the "hetch is a good guy theory" the line "they must have increased security since last time" when he realized that there were four codes, again in the office scene, that might be the ai learning and evolving.
Squiggles could also be an ai of the average twitch chat.
One of my players described Jarlaxle in our game as “[…] fucking terrifying, but candy coated in a way that's very disarming,” and I’ve never been happier with my performance as a DM
I’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s episode because of course I have and my brain loves to come up with “well what if…“
Spoilers for the past couple episodes of Critical Role (pretty much all the City of Dis business - I tried a read more but I’m on mobile so who knows if it works):
What if for whatever reason the fact that Percy was restrained prevented him from plane shifting out of there? Maybe the chain golem's chains have some form of anti-magic properties. So all of Vox Machina bamfs out except him and they all appear in Whitestone except, shit, where’s Percy?
Cut to Percy and Tova going shitshitshit what now? Assuming somehow the two of them can miraculously escape (probably requiring Tova giving Percy the invisibility ring and not attacking anyone herself so she maintains her invisibility and Percy maybe having to invoke both 2nd and 3rd pacts because fuck) they still need a way to return to the material plane (also assuming they somehow find Tova’s friends. An even taller order but would bolster their capabilities as a party).
Well. You know what spell warlocks eventually have access to? Plane shift.
Imagine them scurrying back to Ipkesh who is mildly amused at how quickly the rest of the pacts were invoked and is so pleased with the first pact being completed that he doesn’t even haggle too much when Percy asks if there’s some way he could enable their return to the material plane.
But of course there’s a catch.
A fourth pact. Ipkesh would grant Percy the plane shift spell (and maybe a few others like most importantly counterspell because he needs it given his task, maybe misty step but instead of silver mist it’s more like smoke when he teleports, and eyebite because Percy with inky black eyes terrifying the shit out of someone seems about right and caters to the aesthetic hardcore). Percy would of course have to do something down the line in return for these very powerful gifts.
There’s no reason Ipkesh has to do this at all. He already has claim to Percy’s soul after all, with Percy having invoked the third pact. But there’s a few “small” matters he wouldn’t mind taken care of. And anyone who can survive what Percy just did must be either incredibly skilled or incredibly lucky. Or a bit of both.
Without many options (Percy supposes he could wait for Vox Machina to return and rescue him but he’s not keen on spending too much time in the City with pretty much everyone looking for him and the chances of imprisonment, torture, death, and then eternal imprisonment and torture very high), Percy accepts. He, Tova, and the rest of her party join hands (with varying levels of skepticism - Tova is the only one that saw the rest of VM do something similar) in the upstairs room of Ipkesh’s establishment and bamf back to Whitestone themselves.
They arrive while the rest of Vox Machina is still sleeping: anxiously recharging in preparation for returning to the City of Dis to stage a rescue effort after much panicked anguish and scrambling for plans.
Vox Machina awakes sometime later to be greeted by a drunken breakfast party featuring Tova and her crew, celebrating their unlikely escape. After getting few details from them about the method of their return to the material plane other than “Percy worked some magic,” they hunt down a servant to find his location (his workshop, of course), and hurry downstairs for a reunion and answers.
Many hugs, some kisses, and several tears later, having pulled an exhausted and soot smeared Percy away from the forge, they get down to the how. He reveals, to their horror but not necessarily surprise, he had to invoke the 2 other pacts or die, for he wasn’t going to risk imprisonment and torture, not again, never again.
They quickly begin theorizing ways to subvert the deal - they could of course return and kill Ipkesh but… no one is keen on returning to the City of Dis at the moment.
Over the din of the party’s planning and bickering over options, something still bothers Keyleth.
“Percy, you never explained how you got back here though.”
Traversing planes is only possible by some decently powerful spell casters after all. He just gives that somewhat sad, but more tired and resigned smirk he gets when he’s been cornered for information and admits to the fourth pact. Party panic intensifies.
After all, Ipkesh already has ownership of his soul. What else could he want?
Percy pulls out the rolled up bit of parchment with a long-suffering sigh and an ironic smile and goes:
