Everything you need to know before DOWNFALL | Critical Role | Luboffin

critical R has announced a brand new series set in the Calamity DMD once again by Brennan Lee Mulligan so if you haven't been keeping up with campaign 3 are brand new to critical role or just need a refresher on all of the juicy lore this video is for you hello my name is Luna your friendly neighborhood law nerd and to understand the context for this miniseries you need to know a bit about exandria history the founding and the Schism long ago the gods arrived exandria and found it to be a tumultuous Wild Land of Elemental energy and Chaos inhabited by primordial Titans the gods were inspired to create life on the planet giving rise to elves dwarves humans furbs and all manners of peoples but life was hard Alexandria as the elemental energies still churned to help their Creations survive the gods gifted them with Divine magic that they could use to protect themselves and to survive but the Titans continued to rise up and destroy the God's creations I mean some would argue that the Titans were there first and the gods were technically colonizers some of the Gods want to destroy the Titans so that they could continue to create on the planet but the others wanted to basically wipe this slate clean destroy everything and leave exandria forever those who wanted to protect their Creations became known as the prime deities and those who wanted to destroy their Creations became known as the betrayer Gods the gods could not agree on what to do and so began the Schism a war between the prime deities and their Creations as well as the betrayer gods and the Titans it was a violent bloody battle with much ruin and destruction but eventually the prime deities were triumphant they locked away the betrayer Gods into their own prison Plaines and sealed the primordial Titans away the age of Arcanum peace fell upon exandria for thousands of years and as life began to spread and grow on the planet the prime deities lived in harmony with exandrian this time period is known as the age of aranam and it was a time of great magical Innovation technological innovation it was the creation of Arcane Magic versus Divine magic as they pushed their magic iCal abilities to the Limit some Mortals began to reach for the levels of power possessed by the gods one mortal managed to achieve this successfully The Raven Queen was a mortal who slew the god of death and took its place she used her Newfound Divinity to wipe all of her mortal Origins from everybody's memory as well as the original name and any worship of the original god of death during this time magical Technologies flourished including the creation of flying cities held a loft by broomstown one such city was called aor and from what we know about this time period it appears to be the most technologically advanced City in exandria of course aor is where downfall is going to be set there the Mages and arcanas worked on Innovative and new Arcane Magics creating sentient automatons which would later be called aor matons genetically manipulating people and creatures and experimenting with time travel as they grew more and more powerful the Mages of aor became disdainful and mistrustful of the Gods and they began working on methods of destroying Divinity they genetically altered creatures and people to hunt Divine Champions and they made a huge machine called the factorum malus which was designed to essentially kill a God the Calamity meanwhile as the age of aranam was drawing to a close not that the people living in it knew that at the time a mortal vesan chlorus sought the patronage of the betrayer gods and was instrumental in releasing them from the magical binds placed on them by the prime dayes the betrayer Gods burst through into exandria and thus began a centuries long War known as the Calamity which resulted in the killing of 2/3 of the population during the Calamity AO attempted to use the factor malas to kill a God but the prime deities and betrayer Gods caught wind of this plan and they temporarily called a truce so that they could join together and send a or crashing from the skies into Alexandria effectively destroying the culture and the people of that City although there were some survivors one notable Survivor was ludus dalith when the Calamity finally came to an end the prime deities once again locked the betrayer gods of away and chose to also lock themselves away behind a Divine gate which is sort of an interlaced weave of protective magic that the gods cannot cross through although they can still give blessings to their clerics and their paladins and such through the gate over the next 1,000 years life cities and civilizations built up again so what does this have to do with aor and campaign 3 and downfall well it has been confirmed Now by ludis himself that he was alive during the Calamity and he witnessed the destruction that was wrought by the war between the gods an experience which left him with a bitter hatred of divinity he spent the next 1,000 years researching the nature of the Divine becoming obsessed with learning who the Raven Queen Once Was and the true nature of ruus the red moon ruus now at some point in exandria history and like we don't know for sure when but we can Hazard a pretty good guess that it was prior to the Schism another being arrived from beyond the stars to exandria a hungry and consuming power now called Pros it hunted the gods and ate or destroyed two of them vordo the Fate shaper and ethod the endless Shadow pros' capability to devour them left the gods panicked and scared and they worked together to carve a chunk of the Earth from exandria and imprison Pros inside it this chunk of exandria was then sent into the Stars where it became the red moon Rus Pros was imprisoned Within by a Divine gate uh another interlocking Divine energy very similar to the one that would later surround xandria but Pros still had some influence over the surface and over where the moon positioned the moon would appear in random places um and life actually started to form on its surface now a few hundred years ago ludus dth reached out and managed to communicate with ruus either with Pros itself or with the people living there ludus realized that the key to the destruction of the Gods was held inside the red moon and he began his quest to free pros from its prison using the knowledge that he has amassed from over a thousand years of life within aor using some kind of recording device ludus is now intending to show the destruction of aor with the hopes of swaying Belle's Hells which is the party of campaign 3 to his cause downfall is essentially the recording of these events a time which so far we've only really seen glimpses and fragments of we've seen a fair amount of the beginning of the Calamity in exu Calamity but even then that was only like a couple of days Theory time well with all of that background out of the way let's speculate a little about what we might see in this series and I also asked all of you on my Community page for your theories and predictions as well in a promo video released shortly after downfalls announcement Brennan said we are going to be following six Divine figures and witness the role that they played in the destruction of aor while some including myself have speculated that the players will be playing the gods themselves I think it's actually much more likely that they will be playing champions of the Divine powerful Mortals working for the gods given that this moment in time is when famously the prime deities and betrayer Gods called a truth I think it's a really good bet that the party will be split with some betrayed God Champions and some prime deity Champions a party makeup which I think is just going to be so so interesting one Critter also commented that they may be wielding vestages which are these powerful weapons created by the gods during the Calamity specifically to fight for their cause so far in modern day exandria we've only seen a handful of these so it would be really really cool to see like a whole party wielding them I also predict that we are going to get a lot more insight into the Gods and it's really going to drive home I think the themes that critical role have been playing with for a long time now that the gods are not necessarily like all good and all evil that there isn't necessarily a straight line you know between good and evil why yes there certainly is a lot of outright you know good and evil there are also spaces that exist in between that and if you look at the Gods in humans mythology like you know the Greek gods for example a lot of the time they were extremely chaotic and we're not like necessarily you know good and bad so I am predicting that we are going to see that explored as a theme and I think seeing the actual why and how of the truth between them is going to really shift the way that we view the exandrian pantheon as a whole I am really excited to see the population of aor because um as Brennan talked about in a recent interview with uh comicbook.com I've put a link in the description uh it's always the physical stately relics of places that are preserved and not the you know actual people he talked about how since this series is taking place a century into the Calamity that aor is essentially a refuge for many Mortals and how that this is going to impact the sociological makeup of the city I'm also just on the edge of my seat for more descriptions of the city itself because as a recent art released by critical role shows it's a much more brutalist image of the city than other more sort of high Fantasy Art Deco images that we have from the age of arcum it sort of puts in my mind the Stations of the expanse which is one of my it's my favorite TV show like these overcrowded cities made up of people from all over the Galaxy you know just trying to survive my prediction for the setup of the story is that it's going to have a heist feel but like without the plunky happy gol lucky music of otions 11 I think it's going to be pretty dark we know from an image scene in campaign 3 that the gods forces infiltrated AR and didn't just like fire buom it from above so I think we will see some of that infiltration process okay let's talk about the luxen briefly because I also have an inkling that it will play a role somehow the luxen is another God or Divine figure that is worshipped in the kren dynasty which is a region of exandria and there doesn't appear to be any sign of the luxin actually existing anymore necessarily it's a much more sort of abstract God or Divine figure than the other ones which like we have seen actually communicating with players I think that thexan was one of the gods that was eaten voo or ethod do on exandria there are these relics of delen which are beacons um they allow a soul to be reincarnated but they also can allow the user to impose some control over space and time light is also a huge theme with theen and the fact that penan chose to begin the sort of introduction of this minseries with light I don't think that that's a coin Ence Brennan also said that we'll be seeing aons in the city and my pet theory that I desperately hope is true is that I believe the aians found a beacon which was just like chalk full of souls ready for reincarnation and they worked out how to put those Souls into the automatons granting them sentience and life I'm hoping that my theory will either be confirmed or that we at least get some more information about the luxen one question on many people's mind will we see bolo this bag is giving me a hard time bolo was an NPC from a that we met briefly in exu Calamity and she quickly became a fan favorite even getting a mentioned in the book nine eyes of Lucien personally I hope that we don't see bolo her short existence in exu Calamity was absolute perfection to me and I think it's kind of just what makes her so iconic and lastly there is one prediction that we can bet on with almost absolute certainty we'll all cry thanks so much for watching as always I would love to know what you think in the comments what are your predictions for the show what are the things that you are really really hoping to see and a huge thank you to my patrons if you enjoy these videos I hope that you will consider becoming a patron as well you can do so for as little as $2 a month and it really really does help if you would like to learn even more about AO you can check out this in-depth video I did about the city itself right here wait no it's here I never get it right bye

Channel: Luboffin

Views: 19,933

Keywords: critical role, Crit role, critrole, criticalrole, bellshells, bells hells, bell's hells, campaign 3, campaign three, c3, season 3, dnd, dungeons and dragons, D&D, breakdown, break down, recap, reaction, deep dive

Id: bE6YqRqFlUg

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2024