#marienna vale

[trailertrashgrog]

it now makes perfect sense that teor kept the real reason kattigan left to himself. imagine telling thjazi fang that someone else left the rebellion to be with the woman they loved

[no-atheists-in-fckstles]

Primus deals death to nobility and commoners alike with nary a shift in expression ("I bear your house no ill will." "She's annoyed me.") He also doesn't seem to enjoy having blood on himself. He delegated Occtis's surgery to Ethrand. He held the back of the cab driver's head while Wick slashed her throat. He pulled Raimond's skull out from behind with incorporeal fingers, leaving the gore. He wiped his chin and flicked his hands clean after Julien cut him.

Yet Primus emerged from his attack on Marienna and Esme with a blood-spattered face and a smile so wide Brennan mentioned it twice. Which could mean nothing.

[nayarazune]

this is basically that one cold open right???

(as per @trailertrashgrog’s suggestion vol 3)

[real-kit-walker]

While I do believe that "battle buddies" for sure has spicier undertones, the more deeply romantic notes of the relationship seem painfully unrequited on Teor's end given the way the knife was making active parallels between the way Teor sees Kattigan and the way Kattigan saw Marienna

[lich-slap]

I'm not sure if I buy into the theory that Marienna is Occtis' mom precisely because Primus spared Kattigan. If this was truly motivated by her leaving him, he would want to get rid of the man she left him for. So I don't think it was a personally motivated murder at all. My personal theory right now is that she, like Azune, might have been part of the lost lineages of the Obradimian sorcerer houses – so this is why he killed both her and her heir, but left Kattigan alone.

[see-arcane]

So, what's the deal with Marienna Vale and her child? What made her so important that Primus Tachonis himself had to track her down solo to kill her and little Esme off?

A) She was part of the Cloak. She had connections to Thjazi or others in the group without telling Kattigan, employing the 'don't tell them anything to keep them safe' rule.

B) Marienna knew something she shouldn't. Perhaps something she and Esme witnessed. Loose threads in need of trimming.

C) Remember that talk about how the Deva Vindicta was attempted on Halovars, only for the process to fail? If Marienna and Esme were of the Halovar family tree, we can guess why no bodies were left behind. Perhaps they weren't even dead yet. Not until they were delivered to Tannesar.

D) Primus just felt like it that night. Did it just because he could.

[therosecleric]

Occtis' mother is not Marienna Vale

I know we want a fun and juicy twist, but this theory is automatically bunk because Kattigan would have crashed out from Occtis' theoretical resemblance to her by now.

But there's much more about the storyline and the lore making this theory impossible, both in-game and out-of-game. Some of these are rehashing points others have made in their own debunking posts, but I expand upon them under the cut.

Petra & Ryah are in their late 30's. If they and Occtis share a mother, she'd be too old to be Marienna because Kattigan is 40-something. They have never been mentioned as half-siblings, either.

(Though for the sake of the theory, let's say they ARE half siblings.)

Primus would never marry or have children with a non-noble, non-sorceror given how the family operates. Primus made a whole speech about how he looks down on commoners. The Sundered Houses only marry within vassal houses or other Sundered Houses so they can have powerful warriors or sorcerers in the bloodline. Marienna would have had to have been a noble sorcerer of some sort and a member of one of these houses.

Teor knows Kattigan, after being injured, left in the middle of battle to go on "a new adventure" with Marienna - that adventure likely being to settle down with her given the timeline of when she had Esme - which means Kattigan knew Marienna prior to the Rebellion. He probably chose her over the Rebellion because he didn't want to die.

If Marienna isn't a commoner, Marienna would have to have run away from House Tachonis BEFORE the Rebellion, at least a year before so Kattigan and her would have had time to have fallen in love. This would be roughly 8 years before Primus killed her - possibly more. If Primus were a vengeful husband upset that his wife left him for a commoner - why wouldn't Primus have hunted her and brought her back or killed her then? With the huge stink The Sundered Houses made about Aranessa and Thjazi, if Marienna had left Primus to be with Kattigan, Primus would have flipped Araman upside down to retrieve her. We already know how powerful he is and how quickly it took for him to find Occtis.

Marienna also would have abandoned Occtis as a child. If she thought the Tachonis terrible and wanted to run away, why not take Occtis WITH her? Why would she abandon her child in favor of running away and starting another family?

This would also mean Kattigan either a) knew about this, but somehow suddenly forgot that his wife used to be married to a powerful sorcerer named Primus Tachonis or b) didn't know anything about Marienna prior to getting married to her.

Perhaps Marienna could have deceived Kattigan, but why would she have kept this knowledge from him? Especially since Primus is a powerful sorcerer? Especially since Kattigan was part of the Rebellion, and she could have informed the Torn Banner of how the Tachonis work? Wouldn't her goal be to take down the Tachonis, if she defected from them? Even if she wanted Kattigan to abstain from the war, surely she would have shared some vital information with the Torn Banner?

Let's say she did share this information. If Kattigan knew about about this, THE TRAIL WOULDN'T HAVE GONE COLD! He would have thought to go after Primus after seeing that his wife was killed by a powerful sorcerer. Additionally, he would have had more significant of a reaction after meeting Occtis for the first time.

Finally, Brennan having Kattigan’s wife secretly be Occtis mom would have to have been talked about behind the scenes, or Alex and Robbie would have planned it to be that way. Critical Role has mentioned Occtigan in the official ads + Robbie & Alex talking about romancing each other prior to the campaign + Kocctis being frequently mentioned, there's no way anyone would be comfortable with that if they had agreed to the connection that Kattigan is Occtis' stepfather. Considering Kattigan has slapped Occtis on the ass in Episode 3, it would make the interaction deeply uncomfortable in retrospect.

Primus didn't recognize Kattigan when he was revealed, meaning he didn't care much about Kattigan in the first place. Primus needed Marienna & Esme's dead bodies for something - but this doesn't mean she had to be a former Tachonis specifically. Marienna could very likely be from the same homeland that Azune is from, if we wanted to run the theory that Marienna and Esme were "special" and Kattigan wasn't.

They weren't 'important' and they were only seen as subjects to use to expand their Undead Empire. Commoners are disposable to the wealthy, and that's the whole point Brennan was trying to make.

As for Occtis' mother - Alex did not share about her because it was something he wanted us to find out as the campaign developed. We already know nobody cared for him until Thaisha did, so we can already glean that Occtis' mother was either dead OR not a mother to him, nor was his mother a good person considering Occtis doesn't have a good moral compass after being raised around his family.

If Marienna was that awful of a person, why would Kattigan fall in love with her?

My personal theory is that Occtis' mother - especially given how many other kids she gave birth to and given that he is the last - died during childbirth.

[masterqwertster]

I do wonder if "killing" (no body, not dead? though almost certainly dragged off into the Tenebral Reaches) Marienna and her and Kattigan's kid was even about Kattigan.

I don't know that there's any reason for Primus Tachonis (or possibly an undead spirit allowed to pilot him? the wild expression described at the time makes me feel like mind-fuckery was possibly laid on the sorcerer) to even know who Kattigan was. Primus certainly didn't show any signs of recognizing Kattigan in the now.

So alternatively, the killing might have specifically been about Marienna and a child of her blood. Not necessarily anything to do with a Falconer who stepped out before the war ended. Otherwise, why not kill Kattigan too upon his rush home?

If Marienna was a member of a vassal house, her running off to live a happy life, have a kid, with a Falconer could have been the kind of betrayal to warrant getting hunted down and killed/disappeared.

Or, it's possible Marienna was of a (sorcerous?) bloodline that Primus wanted to see wiped out. So that meant her kid had to go too, but the father didn't matter enough to stick around to kill.