#naddpod meta

[aelwynrights]

the thing about cran is the thing about how it feels to grow up and drift away from your friends and you see each other again but you’re so different. and you grew up together and learned to fight together and you were in a bag together! and you started together with tiny blunted swords and now you fight next to each other with razor sharp edges and you aren’t practicing anymore, you don’t need to practice any more, you can’t ever think of it as practice anymore because one wrong move will give you another scar down your face - your face, which they once told you was adorable and too cute for the green knights and which they now wince at when they recognize you under the years of wear. and you grow older and you grow up and you grow away from home because you have a new home now and then all of a sudden your old friend is here, but he’s not your old friend because you’re his old friend because he’s still fifteen and he just watched you leave and you can barely remember the first time you two were paired together for a partner activity and you agreed to switch because he wanted to work with erlin and you wanted to work with derlin - derlin, who used to be the butt of the jokes and used to be scared of everything and who you still tease and muss his hair when he says something stupid but also the one person in the world who can understand exactly what you went through and maybe the one person in the world you trust to have your back. and beverly is fifteen, still - almost sixteen, you think, but time is strange again and you can’t be quite sure - and he’s a child and he shouldn’t be fighting but you were a child when you first started and he started before you were but that was thirty years ago and it was thirty weeks ago and it was thirty days ago and it was thirty second ago and you don’t know how long it was, it’s just nice to see a friendly face even if it breaks your heart because you should’ve gotten to grow up together, you should’ve gotten to be green knights in galaderon or he should’ve gotten to be a knight of the summer court or you both should’ve been kept from fighting in the first place but he’s sixteen and you are no longer young and you know him or you used to, at least. and it would’ve been nice to grow up together, or to not grow up at all together, but for now at least you can fight together, and isn’t it nice to be back by his side? isn’t it nice to have the three of you back together, like old times but the scoutmasters are here and beverly stands a little taller and the world is a little heavier on both your shoulders and at least he still has erlin. and you go back to fight, to protect somewhere you once called home, and it’s strange because you can’t remember the streets as well as you used to and you used to be so scared of egwene but now she is a child who doesn’t need protecting but you wish she did and you can’t find your old home and you’re not sure you want to because you don’t know who’s going to be left there. and it is home and it’s not and you’re grown and you’re young and you are a soldier and you never should’ve been and you’re not the little girl in the bag anymore.

[grasslandgirl]

Soldier/ Poet/ King: Beverly/ Hardwon/ Moonshine

Soldier Beverly who spent his whole life as one of a team. Who grew up training and studying with everything he had and everything he was to be a green teen and then a green knight, to grow up and be like his dad and Galad and all the other heroes he knew to protect Galaderon. Beverly who steps away from the path of the green knight for a time but never stops being a soldier, not really, never stops fighting and protecting the people around him and his loved ones and the little guy. Beverly who is a leader through and through, who inspires and drives and rallies the forces around him, not as a general or a leader from afar, but as one of the ranks. Beverly who always keeps going, sword and shield in hand, armor growing dull and worn on his back, fellow soldiers always at his side, because what is a soldier alone? 

Poet Hardwon who almost had the art and the light and the hope driven out of him. Who learned early on that art was weakness to be hidden away, that words were for the fancy elves and the silly halflings and that if Hardwon wanted to really be a dwarf, he would dig and he would dig deep- but only in the earth. Hardwon who heard Beverly’s speeches and rhymes and songs and saw how it bolstered him- bolstered all of them- and how that small joy made them stronger moving forward. Hardwon who saw Moonshine learn how to read, letter by letter, and the power and connection to her history it gave her, the freedom a library gave to the crick. Hardwon who finds his voice at the end of the world, who discovers poetry inside of himself. Hardwon who takes it upon himself to bring something new and beautiful and inspiring into the world, just as it was falling apart. 

King Moonshine who left the crick because she hated the pressure of being the next Meemaw on her shoulders. Moonshine who embraced a new family where she was one of many, not the next Meemaw, not a leader, not the precious future. Moonshine who connects with larger and larger networks of spores and mushrooms, giving part of herself to all of them, and taking part of them with her everywhere. Moonshine who connects with the ugly and the rotten and the dying and regrowing parts of nature, who chooses that as her domain. Moonshine who connects the two sides of elf kind, her two lineages. Moonshine who wears the thinking cap and protects elves of all kinds and brings them all together both with her mind and with her hands. Moonshine who carves out a new home for high elves and crick elves alike. Moonshine who is willing to cut herself off from everything she knows and loves to take a crown (the one thing she never wanted) in hell because she knows it’s her responsibility. Because she can’t imagine letting anyone else take that burden but her. Moonshine who embraces a new legacy, a new kind of motherhood in fostering and growing dragons and their new legacy on Bahumia, who finds in herself the ability and the freedom to be a mother and a king and discovers a new way to define what that means for herself. Moonshine who learns that motherhood and kinghood aren’t about leadership, they’re about protecting and bringing people together; the two things Moonshine loves more than anything.

[gideonthefirst]

Okay here’s the post. NADDPod is a show about agency and what it means - the villains are Thiala, who wants to force everyone to fit into her view of “good”, and Akarot, who has taken control of Ilsed’s body and history and done terrible, terrible things in his name. Every single romantic relationship within the show reflects that in the context of the other thing the show is about, which is breaking the cycle and being better than those that came before you.

All the romantic relationships in the past that we know about are tragedies. Lydia/Elias is a tragedy, Gemma/Hardwon is a tragedy, Cobb/Marabelle is a tragedy. If you look at relationships that aren’t explicitly romantic but have enough subtext to be reasonably read that way, Thialanis and Telaine/Melora are also deep, world-breaking tragedies.

And the canon relationships are all the same tragedy. Lydia and Elias is a relationship that only exists because of how long Lydia was robbed of individuality and agency growing up with the Chosen, and it ends because of the people who stole her agency - Galad specifically, which isn’t a coincidence when you look at how he imprisons her and she only gets her happy ending when she kills him - killing Elias. Probably Lydia and Elias wouldn’t have lasted forever, anyway, but they didn’t get the chance to try. It’s a tragedy of could-have-been and we’ll-never-know rather than a tragedy of “they would have stayed in love forever”.

And the same is true for Cobb/Marabelle and Hardwon/Gemma - they’re both relationships that there’s no way of knowing if they would have worked out, given natural time to do so (and in fact you could make a very reasonable argument that they wouldn’t have) but whether or not they would have ends up being irrelevant in the context that they didn’t get to try, because Marabelle got forced into a devil deal and Gemma was forced to end things with Hardwon by her dad. In these cases, not only did Gemma and Marabelle having their agency stolen from them result in these relationships falling into the abyss of could-have-been, but it also results in them both dying easily avoidable deaths.

So, through these relationships, we end up with this commentary about how the thing that is evil and the thing that destroys people’s relationships with each other and capacity to bond is when people are robbed of choice and self-determination and agency. That theft is the peak evil, but also seems to be almost inevitable - it even happens to Lucanus and Jolene, not through any great evil, but through the selfishness of a friend. 

UNTIL.

Hardwon and Moonshine. I don’t necessarily mean romantically, because I don’t really see them as romantic, personally, but their relationship is a deep, personal, complicated, undefinable relationship between two people who have both been directly touched by the suffering of the previously discussed relationships. But they’re different. Moonshine and Hardwon don’t end in tragedy - arguably, they don’t end at all, because even when Hardwon dies, he’ll just be a Plane Shift away. And that’s because their whole relationship is about letting the other be themself, it’s about enabling each other to make choices for themself, it’s about “it doesn’t matter how I feel about Moonshine ‘cause she’s gonna do whatever the hell she wants anyway, and that’s one of the reasons why I fuckin’ worship her” and it’s about “are you scared?” and it’s about Hardwon asking if he could be part of the Crick and not putting himself there without knowing Moonshine’s okay with it.

Beverly and Erlin. Erlin choosing to walk away. Them choosing to be together at the end of the world when they may never see each other again. Beverly not rescuing Erlin but freeing him so that he can save them all. Them both choosing to be different than what they grew up as and different than they were when they fell in love with each other but being in love with each other anyway, because the love is in the change, in the growth, in the freedom.

And so it all comes down to breaking the cycle, as all of NADDPod does, but it specifically comes down to breaking the cycle by fostering community that supports agency and being able to make choices for yourself and helping others to be able to make choices for themselves and it comes down to letting people have the space to make their own mistakes because sometimes mistakes have to be made and you can’t prevent every misstep but you can take the time to allow people to grow instead of robbing them of the chance to try. And I Just Think That’s Neat

[eramidsummery]

NADDPod ramblings - Akarot stats

If anyone is interested in my NADDPod ramblings that are more of a DMs/analytical look at the podcast , I’m maybe going to make some posts about it - I don’t know how much of this will be useful, cause maybe a lot of this was revealed on Patreon or is already available at NADDPod wiki, but I’m gonna do it anyway! probably this just will be a singular post, but who knows?

I don’t know if this is interesting for anyone as maybe they’ve released Akarots stats on Patreon, so don’t @ me 😛 if this is pointless, cause i don’t have access to Monster Of The Month thingy :)

I’m sure that Murph used flavoured death knight from The Monster Manual to represent Akarot, probably with some changes.

But otherwise I’m pretty sure about it, cause he said “death knight” to describe him, his actions* in Mage Madness fit and Murph had stated in Short Rest that Akarot challenge rating was 17 and that fits death knight’s CR.

*Parry, Hellfire Orb, banishment, staggering smite, destructive wave, searing smite, he is resistant to necrotic damage;

Murph has likely made some changes, like

giving Akarot legendary actions

making him able to make hollow bodies (although it’s not so much of a change, cause MM says that “death knight (...) attracts and commands lesser undead”)

making him more devil/infernal(?), as he is a prince of hell; although Death Knight also fits Akarots backstory, cause Ilsed was and is a necromancer (so Death Knight being undead fits) and some death knights might “serve powerful fiends”

he either made Akarot more powerful than aregular death knight, or made the other knights that fought with him during the wizard tournament weaker; I don’t even know if BoB and the royal Gladeholm team would be able to take on three CR 17 monsters after three other encounters and a fight with the goat fiend, so I suppose Murph made the other knights weaker HP-wise or he took away some of the more powerful spells from them

theoretically, death knights are chaotic evil, but I’d say that Akarot was either lawful evil or maybe neutral evil; although, I think that set alignments are more of a suggestion, so I’m not surprised that this was changed; after all, it was death knight that was changed to be Akarot, not the other way around

Akarot was resistant to necrotic damage, meaning that probably really was undead (like a regular death knight); and if that isn’t just flavour or just a statistic thing, it makes it quite interesting, seeing as he was Ilseds son.

Ilsed was a high elf and now we know he doesn’t have a divine heart and spend a lot of time in hell, so he had probably transformed into a fiend, but still in a way bound to mortality. Akarot is at least part elf, even if hell and arcane experimentation took toll on him, making him a devil or fiend, just as it may have changed his father.

Ilsed was a necromancer and that fits into the undead-Akarot thing, but this poses interesting questions: was Akarot born undead? Is Ilsed undead then? Or is Akarot some kind of fiend undead? Was his mother undead or a fiend or both? Or is him being undead a result of being a son of a powerful necromancer that is also a fiend? Or was Alarot killed and brought back in the past?

I think that by giving Akarot legendary actions his CR increased, making him even tougher than 17 CR;

[ I also don’t know if Murph gives his monsters short rests and hit dice - if not, Akarot had already been very hurt by the time they began the final encounter with him. It also might be likely that Murph has given Akarot more hit points to make him stronger. ]

And obviously, the death knight lore is not important here, as Akarot probably wasn’t a real paladin at any moment in his life.

[ image used in this post is provided as a commentary; i do not own it, it is a property of Wizards Of The Coast

image source: The Monster Manual - main projectant - Christopher Perkins; statistics by Chris Sims, Rhodney Thompson and Peter Lee; plot elements by Robert J. Schwalb, Matt Serneyy, Stever Townshend and James Wyatt ]

[gideonthefirst]

gonna just. go insane about zirk and fia as foils i think. about how. int casters with healing but neither of them are what you’d call a good healer about the only magic they have being magic they learned even though. zirk learned young that any sort of miracle cure was a lie and fia learned young that magic would get you killed they both still. chose to learn it. because you have to have something you have to hold onto something you have to be able to do something but like.

zirk is a doctor. zirk grew up with a mother who promised miracle cures that never works and he helped her. and how many people died because of those miracle cures not working. beyond the village they poisoned, how many people waste away and suffered and died because they thought they were cured. and then a whole town poisoned. a yelled promise that he’d be back. and like. yeah it was mostly his mother but he was an adult. he was there he was helping he was complicit. and then he became a doctor and he’s not even very good at it really. too easily distracted. but he tries so hard. and it doesn’t like. on the one hand it matters so much, right, because any life saved is invaluable and any life improved is important but it’s also. like. how many people can he help in comparison to the hundreds and hundreds that he’s hurt or indirectly killed. how can he ever believe that he’s really helping when he’s seen what happens to people who are promised a cure. how can he EVER be good enough

and fia who almost got herself killed trying to save someone else and whose witch left her and she thinks she’s somehow responsible and just. the parallels there. the contrasts. the EVERYTHING of it all

[grasslandgirl]

last time we the levels were said the eldermourne characters were lvl 9, however this episode the endoterra crew leveled up to 10 so it's possible the same is true for the third mate. fia has one level in war domain cleric, 8 or 9 levels of chronurgy wizard and the tough feat. zirk is a level 9 or 10 alchemist artificer and hank is a level 9 or 10 echo knight fighter (possibly with the great weapon master feat? I can't remember). if I remember correctly emily said on a short rest that Billy had 3 levels of arcane trickster rogue and 6 levels of battlesmith artificer, and since they're lvl 10 she now has an additional level in one of those classes. run down Johnny is a lvl 10 soul knife rogue with the magic initiate feat so he has some cleric stuff. chrissy has five levels of mastermind rogue, five levels of battle master fighter, the squat nimbleness feat, and possibly also the actor feat (I can't remember for sure). I might have missed some feats and stuff but this is the builds off the top of my head (I also sent that last ask I'm not sure why it was sent as an anon lmao)

oh thank you so much!!!!!! this is genuinely so helpful I love reading abt classes and character construction and the mechanics behind pc builds even if I don’t have a lot of practical knowledge and experience with that side of dnd- it’s so cool to see how much work and thought players put into the mechanical side of their PCs 💖💖

[gideonthefirst]

Why do you think Jaina doesn’t have a beard?

WELL THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ASKING

I don’t know what the intent is but it comes across as a gender nonconformity thing! Hardwon constantly talks about how beautiful Gemma’s beard is, and it’s a big part of what he’s attracted to in dwarven women, and then Gemma is portrayed as this beautiful, feminine, dwarven woman, who is doing what her father wants (even if she’s not happy about it) and is going to successfully marry out and escape. And every other dwarf we meet has beards and so it ends up framing her as being representative of...not quite conforming, but at least of doing what she’s supposed to do and being able to fit in.

Meanwhile, Jaina is the oldest daughter who doesn’t do what the oldest daughter should do (becoming a knight instead of marrying to improve the Bronzebeard station), she’s the knight who failed in her duties (protecting Gemma), and she’s specifically “masculine”: short hair, men’s armor, even in the way she courts and pursues people romantically. And she doesn’t have a beard. And in contrast with Gemma, that ends up being a signal of gender nonconformity on one level and, on a deeper level, of a greater failure to Be What She’s Supposed To Be. It’s cool as hell

[gideonthefirst]

A Farewell to Bahumia

I am a writer with a lot of emotions and a lot of love for this show and so in order to process I have...written something. Sort of a thank you, sort of an homage, probably more pretentious than anyone needs or wants to read. Below the cut, the closest I think I’ll get to processing.

I have said, many times, that NADDPod is the best story in the world. It seems redundant to say it again and reductive, too; the story is so much more than a story, and so much better than the best. But there are limited words and my words especially, while I try to process the idea that the next time I hear Murph DM it will not be for Beverly, Moonshine, and Hardwon, are not serving me in the ways that I need them to in order to express the love that the finale filled me with. So, what I can write is the best I can do, but not the best this show deserves.

NADDPod presents itself as a story about gray morality. A story about how good and evil are unclear and hard choices have to be made. And it sticks to that – hard choices do have to be made, and good and evil are unclear. But never for a second does it believe that good and evil don’t exist. Never for a second does it make a concession, or think that there’s no point, or give up the fight. NADDPod says: make the hard choice. Keep making it. Over and over again, make the choice to be good. It says good and evil are not things that anyone, inherently, is, they are the decisions we choose to make and the love we give to others and the love we keep for ourselves. NADDPod says there is good, and we are the ones who make it.

And, thank g-d, NADDPod says that there can be a happy ending. That the world is hard and can be cruel and we have all lost too much but, nevertheless, there will be joy and there will be hope. I am so, so grateful for happy endings. I am so, so grateful for Moonshine getting to live out her life under the light of the sun, and not having to make another sacrifice and wear a crown too heavy for any head to bear. For Hardwon winning an arm wrestle against his dad, and living in a stump next to Ol’ Cobb. For Beverly bringing back the sunlight of his childhood. And for Balnor, finally strong enough and having done his duty, going back to save people who he’d thought couldn’t be saved. The world is dark, but the future is bright.

Thank you to Hardwon for finding love and family beyond what he was given. Thank you to Hardwon for learning, slowly, slowly, to let his walls down, even if his friends would never force him. Thank you to Hardwon for dying over and over to protect what he loved and believed in, and for being kind and just the right kind of steady. I am not very much like Hardwon, but there are pieces of him that are part of me now, moments of understanding that to love is to love with all of you, and the walls just get in the way. Thank you, Jake Hurwitz, for Hardwon Surefoot.

Thank you to Beverly for starting out good and learning to be better. For briefly wondering if Thiala might be right and then fighting her anyway, because our doubts cannot override what we know needs to be done. For being a kid in an impossible situation and staying a kid, singing and goofing and making impossible choices. For being a gay kid who gets to kill god and have a beautiful, sweeping love-story and never has to suffer in the same ways that gay kids do in the real world. There is something so specifically personal about listening to a gay teenager make the choice to be himself (a hero) and not just his father’s son and I loved it with every fiber of my being. Thank you to Bev for choosing to be a hero. And thank you, Caldwell Tanner, for Beverly Toegold V.

Thank you to Moonshine for loving with every piece of herself and connecting everyone she came in touch with and caring for those who need to be cared for the most and still not wanting children. Thank you to Moonshine for being the healer and the lover but also being scared, and angry, and loud, and unashamed, and covered in fungus. Especially thank you to Moonshine for being willing to sacrifice herself, over and over, and then learning, as slowly as a garden grows, that it’s okay to be selfish, sometimes. That she deserves to be heard. There has never been a character like Moonshine before, and I doubt there ever will be again – some characters are once in a Timeless Body lifetime. Thank you, Emily Axford, for Moonshine Cybin.

And thank you Murph for a world where good can prevail, and love is important, and new wildflowers can grow in a garden that’s been pruned. There is beauty in mercy. There is joy in failure. Your actions have consequences, but that applies to the good as well as the bad, to your fungal network as well as to the three nat 1s on taming a dragon. We are responsible for our own mistakes, and the mistakes of others, too, if they won’t clean up their own messes. All that can be done is to be better than those that came before.

Everything ends where it began. But better, this time, and filled with kindness.