Look upon my birds ye mighty and despair

Crit Role Sideblog | likes/follows/replies from atalana | Art Blog (Spoilers tagged for a week after the episode comes out, and maybe longer if it's in the queue)

[your-turn-to-role]

How many will you sacrifice?

[your-turn-to-role]

@dreams-of-ravens i'm kinda hoping for, not good necessarily, but also to have at least one who didn't approve of occtis' murder (whether they spoke up about it or not)

bc yeah, all of them either bullied or ignored occtis when he was a kid or both, he has no good memories with any of them

but it's a lot easier to distance himself from his family if all of them are just straight up cartoon evil, and he just happens to be different to them

alex definitely wants to play the side of occtis isn't a perfect angel because that's not how people work, you can't grow up in a fucked up house without getting at least a little fucked up yourself

i think it would be really interesting to see that side of, this is a kid who grew up accepted by the house (to the degree that any of them were), and yeah that means probably did vent a lot of the stress and abuse from their father onto occtis like all of them did, because it's a lot easier to feel accepted by the in-group by enforcing the out-group, but they're not innately more evil than occtis himself, just. scared and angry

(and while that could in theory apply to any of them, so far all the siblings we've met have been so far gone as to be unequivocally an antagonist, a middle ground that we're invited to actually explore could be fun)

(and poor occtis has been leaping at any scrap of evidence he can find of someone on his side, someone julien won't be justified in killing - maybe frons is just following orders, petra and ryah questioned the logistics which means they hesitated, koral was locked up, maybe it was for defending me, anything, and he's gotten the same disappointment every single time. between 4, 7, and maybe his mother, we've got three opportunities left to hopefully shake that up!)

[dreams-of-ravens]

The All Work No Play episode popped up into my YouTube feed again, so I made a little compilation that includes: some wild Alex lore, a clip to show that he is the photo they use when you look up "gangly" in the dictionary, some monster movement, and... well, one of his special skills. ‼️ Volume warning!

‼️‼️ No seriously, VOLUME WARNING towards the end. There's a little context explanation beforehand; you'll recognize it.

[screechfoxes]

CRITICAL ROLE 4.28 Chasing Shadows

[your-turn-to-role]

How many will you sacrifice?

[your-turn-to-role]

How many will you sacrifice?

[metapigion]

The appeal of Perc'ahlia is that they are both the naked/sexily-dressed woman and man in suit/vest-with-shirt-sleeves-rolled- up which is objectively the hottest anyone can be, not to even mention those two things together.

[your-turn-to-role]

How many will you sacrifice?

[your-turn-to-role]

okay now that i've given this a bit of time to sink in as a serious piece - you guys wanna see the ridiculous part of this drawing?

i actually used a ruler here, petra ryah and occtis we have canon heights for, so those three are exactly as tall as they're supposed to be, i filled the others in to be mostly somewhere in the middle bc as you can see that looked the most natural

this line is how tall alex ward is

[your-turn-to-role]

How many will you sacrifice?

[your-turn-to-role]

just had the mildly horrifying realisation that had occtis died to the stone being shattered, that would have been the fifth time thimble unintentionally turned her back on a friend only for them to immediately get murdered (thjazi, occtis, teor, cyd, occtis again)

what is thimble's fucking curse

[vasira96]

i'm always thinking about pins & needles reunion

[alliepretends]

How Hal builds community feels hugely important to his role in the larger party (and why I was very resistant to theories about him leaving Dol-Makjar during Convergence). We've seen him do it in three major ways: providing art for people to experience together (I actually think it's hugely important that he's a playwright, actor, and musician, not a painter or novelist, I know that's basically a given for bard as a class, but also, he specifically makes art intended to be experienced in groups), providing comfort to people in emotional distress, and providing spaces for people to gather. (We also know he does some politicking, but we haven't really seen that in action beyond glimpses yet. Fingers crossed for the next schemers arc.)

Those last two, but especially providing spaces to gather, is what I really want to talk about. Hal is the maintainer of home and hearth. He stays home and raises the children while his brother and lover go to seek a better world. And he is the safe resting place they return to when they can. Pre-campaign, this is true for Thjazi,

for Thaisha,

for Azune (at least in the past),

presumably for Alogar, and to a certain extent for Thimble (she says this about Hal's house in episode 3) .

Now, it is becoming true for the whole party. There's a post I reblogged back somewhere about how interesting it is to have a male character fill this role: the one left waiting in hope, ready to provide comfort and a space to rest. Which is true. But it's also just an interesting role to have a PC play in general. D&D is a game geared toward traveling adventure. Yes, you can quite successfully play a whole game in one city, but it was created with the idea of adventurers going out exploring. And yet Hal has historically been, and so far remains, not an adventurer on a quest but a safe harbor for everyone to land in. The Schemers have deliberately not operated out of Hal's home for security reasons, but as soon as the Seekers and Soldiers returned, Hal's home is where everyone went. And now, it is where Teor and Cyd's bodies lay, despite them being people Hal only knew in passing. The Hallowed Round is a space Hal has provided for the free people of Dol-Makjar to gather and find community and inspiration in. Hal's House is a place he is providing for the people fighting to keep Dol-Makjar free to gather and discuss the future and lick their wounds. And providing these spaces, he is building community on both a grand and small scale. It doesn't matter that he barely knows Julien or Kattigan. They both know that they can enter Hal's home freely and safely after their missions because it is the space this community gathers. And Hal, even as he has been forced to join the fight, is also still keeping the home fire burning for everyone to rest around.

And I do actually think this is critical to the story CR4 is telling. Not just a fun idea Liam has decided to explore with his character. CR4 is not a story of found family. Found family might happen because of the nature of D&D parties and playing with your friends, but it is a story about resisting tyranny. And one of the most basic, fundamental aspects of resisting tyranny is building resilient (and non-isolationist) communities. It doesn't actually matter if Thimble and Julien ever like each other. It does matter that they can and do share a community and a purpose. And Hal, by virtue of providing a space for said community to gather, is doing a ton of the work necessary to make that possible

[nosnexus]

The ring of brass endures

[your-turn-to-role]

thinking about how c4 seems to have the oldest pcs so far, and then got curious about age distribution among the pcs, so for anyone else who wants to look at it, have another chart from yours truly!

due to various timelines and crossovers, characters are placed at the age they were around the start of their story (in most cases, this is the start of the campaign they were in, though there's a couple weird ones - and bertrand bell was impossible to decide so i put him at his search for grog age)

a star on the character portrait means we only have an approximate age for this character, so my best guess may be a couple years off. i also haven't watched c3, so apologies for any mistakes there, i am using the wiki!

conclusions i can draw from this:

c4 has the most middle aged characters

but c3 has the eldest distribution overall

27 is apparently the ideal age to start adventuring

wick is older than most of vox machina

[your-turn-to-role]

also because i'm loving the reactions of everyone Learning Some Things on this post, here's another fun one for the c4 crowd - shadia fang is the same age as veth

[your-turn-to-role]

@walterthemelon yeah, hal and thaisha's kids are all adventuring age themselves, alogar is also in that 27-28 pile, shadia's 25, and hero (while not thaisha's kid) is 18

both thaisha and veth were around 20 when they had their first kid, but then veth started going through The Horrors a lot sooner than thaisha did!

[your-turn-to-role]

thinking about how c4 seems to have the oldest pcs so far, and then got curious about age distribution among the pcs, so for anyone else who wants to look at it, have another chart from yours truly!

due to various timelines and crossovers, characters are placed at the age they were around the start of their story (in most cases, this is the start of the campaign they were in, though there's a couple weird ones - and bertrand bell was impossible to decide so i put him at his search for grog age)

a star on the character portrait means we only have an approximate age for this character, so my best guess may be a couple years off. i also haven't watched c3, so apologies for any mistakes there, i am using the wiki!

conclusions i can draw from this:

c4 has the most middle aged characters

but c3 has the eldest distribution overall

27 is apparently the ideal age to start adventuring

wick is older than most of vox machina

[your-turn-to-role]

also because i'm loving the reactions of everyone Learning Some Things on this post, here's another fun one for the c4 crowd - shadia fang is the same age as veth

[enbybees]

Can someone please cast speak with animals and/or speak with dead on pin. I need to know his thoughts on the situation

[grayintogreen]

Primus: I KNOW MY DAUGHTERS ARE WEIRDLY INCESTUAL. I KNOW THEY KILLED THEIR FIANCÉS (they’re banned from marriage now). AND I KNOW YOU’RE MORMON. NEVER TALK TO ME ABOUT FUCKING MY DAUGHTERS AGAIN.

[your-turn-to-role]

thinking about how c4 seems to have the oldest pcs so far, and then got curious about age distribution among the pcs, so for anyone else who wants to look at it, have another chart from yours truly!

due to various timelines and crossovers, characters are placed at the age they were around the start of their story (in most cases, this is the start of the campaign they were in, though there's a couple weird ones - and bertrand bell was impossible to decide so i put him at his search for grog age)

a star on the character portrait means we only have an approximate age for this character, so my best guess may be a couple years off. i also haven't watched c3, so apologies for any mistakes there, i am using the wiki!

conclusions i can draw from this:

c4 has the most middle aged characters

but c3 has the eldest distribution overall

27 is apparently the ideal age to start adventuring

wick is older than most of vox machina

[your-turn-to-role]

@occidentalavian estimated yasha to be around 28, which i think has a solid reasoning behind it, so i actually am gonna update this slightly! just bc it's so funny to add even more clutter to the late 20s pile

[your-turn-to-role]

@lowercass the trick to understanding this one is that fjord Had A Job for years before joining the m9 and julien was a child soldier