MARISHA: Well hello, and welcome to the official Wrap-Up of
Exandria Unlimited: Calamity. SAM: Hey.
AABRIA: Brrah! MARISHA: That's right,
we'll be exploring all of the luscious lore surrounding
the Ring of Brass, the fall of Avalir,
and even everyone's favorite Aeorian
reporter, Bolo. AABRIA: Don't like her! TRAVIS: NPC.
AABRIA: Don't like her. MARISHA: So many opinions. This will be
a roundish table, there's a rectangle one here, discussion with fan
questions peppered throughout. So sit back, relax,
and enjoy our reflections on the apocalypse we
brought about, but also maybe made just a little
less worse, maybe. So with that in mind,
I think first we should maybe just do a little quick
round of introductions. SAM: There's no intro song
that plays now or something? AABRIA: Make one now.
MARISHA: Go. SAM: Is there a title sequence?
MARISHA: And title sequence, go. SAM: βͺ Ah, we're
all going to die βͺ (laughter) TRAVIS: Ring of ass.
AABRIA: That was so fast. TRAVIS: On the
teleprompter, I saw, "The luscious Ring of Ass." SAM: Oh, that would be good.
TRAVIS: I got real confused. AABRIA: Ah man, sequel.
MARISHA: That should've been our name.
LOU and AABRIA: Yeah. MARISHA: The Ring of Ass.
LUIS: The Ring of Ass. MARISHA: Well, now
that we're back from that amazing
title sequence. (laughter) MARISHA: Yeah, I'm assuming
most people know who we are if they watched 20 hours
of us, but I guess, Luis, maybe let's just go around
and introduce everybody. I'm Marisha Ray,
I played Patia. TRAVIS: Hi, Marisha.
MARISHA: Patia Por'co. MARISHA: Hi. Hi everybody, hello. Luis?
LUIS: I'm Luis Carazo. I played Zerxus Ilerez. (cheering) MARISHA: First Knight.
AABRIA: First Knight. First Knight, first merch.
SAM: I'm not sure which camera to look into. Hi, I'm Sam Riegel. I was the Voice of
the Herald's Tome, Loquatius Seelie. I'm also a talented actor. (laughter) TRAVIS: Wow. LOU: And a fun fact now,
oh, we're adding fun facts? BRENNAN: On the
third instance, we added a new category
of thing to say. MARISHA: Complimenting yourself.
BRENNAN: Yes, yes, yes. MARISHA: Sure, okay. BRENNAN: Hey gang,
I'm Brennan Lee Mulligan, I was everybody else. (laughter) SAM: And fun fact. BRENNAN: Fun fact,
put the camera back. And a fun fact
about me is that I am drinking a nice cup
of joe right now. LUIS: Fun fact.
AABRIA: Was that a fun fact? SAM: I don't know
that it was fun. AABRIA: Yeah. SAM: It was a fact. BRENNAN: It was a fact, yeah. It was <i>a</i> fact. MARISHA: It's also kind of a
constant for you, I feel like. BRENNAN: Yeah, it's true.
AABRIA: Yeah. TRAVIS: Turn it around for
a creative fun fact. LOU: Are we all
fucking done talking? (laughter) SAM: Get focused,
get focused. LOU: Can we get focused? AABRIA: Oh, okay.
BRENNAN: Ooh. SAM: There's a dance?
LOU: Yeah. SAM: What's happening?
AABRIA: Oh my god. Yes! BRENNAN: Yeah! LOU: Hi, I'm Lou Wilson. (laughter) LOU: And for the past
20 plus hours, I played Nydas Okiro, Guildmaster of
the Golden Scythe. LUIS: Oh my goodness. LOU: And a fun fact about me. I've never had
a pizza sashimi. (laughter) SAM: You've never
had a pizza sashimi? LOU: I've never
had a pizza sashimi. (laughter) SAM: A pizza sashimi? LOU: Yes, and
I'm assuming you all have eating pizza sashimi. TRAVIS: No! LOU: I personally have
never had pizza sashimi. BRENNAN: So pizza sashimi is--
LOU: Thank you, Brennan. BRENNAN: -- is raw dough--
MARISHA: Raw pizza. BRENNAN: -- with
slices of tomato, uncooked cheese,
and uncured ham. LOU: It's a classic,
they serve it a lot in Barcelona.
MARISHA: Shitty bruschetta. LOU: Yeah.
BRENNAN: It's real. Hey, it's real. TRAVIS: Nope, it's not real.
AABRIA: That's real. LOU: Hey, Google it.
AABRIA: You guys, that's absolutely real,
what are you talking about? SAM: Back row.
TRAVIS: Are we going to me? Hi, hello, hi. That's not a real food,
right? Okay. I'm Travis Willingham. I played Cerrit Agrupnin,
I survived. AABRIA: Cerritos Groupon.
MARISHA: Final girl. TRAVIS: Cerritos Groupon.
Better known as. LUIS: That was good.
MARISHA: I died. TRAVIS: If you Google Cerrit,
you'll find my real name. Fun fact, I wore
a black t-shirt tonight in an effort not to get food
on myself when I ate dinner. (cheering) TRAVIS: Challenged
the Fates and won. MARISHA: Yep, nailed it.
AABRIA: I'm proud of you. Sweet, hi.
SAM: Wrap it up. AABRIA: I'm here, hey,
I'm Aabria Iyengar. I played Laerryn
Coramar-Seelie, Heirophant Abjura,
Architect Arcane. Fun fact about me,
I don't think I've ever won a game of rock-paper-scissors
ever in my life. MARISHA: Wait, really?
AABRIA: Yeah. TRAVIS: Go hard, ready, go.
AABRIA: Fuck, okay. LUIS: Yeah.
AABRIA: I'm nervous. On shoot?
TRAVIS: Throw on three. AABRIA: No, no one throws on three.
SAM: On three? TRAVIS: Yeah.
AABRIA: That's crazy. SAM: It's on four.
TRAVIS: Throw on four. BRENNAN: It's rock, paper,
scissors, shoot. AABRIA: Rock, paper,
scissors, shoot. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. I won!
(cheering) AABRIA: (yells)
SAM: What a show, guys. MARISHA: Yeah, you know what? I think we should
call it there. AABRIA: I love you. MARISHA: We won't
get any better. That's the
highlight of tonight. AABRIA: I love you. BRENNAN: Kids, if you can
dream it, you can do it. MARISHA and TRAVIS: (laugh) AABRIA: I'm actually
sweating. TRAVIS:
βͺ ("The More You Know") βͺ AABRIA: Oh my god. TRAVIS: Nobody knows
[inaudible]. MARISHA: Well, you guys, let's just jump into
some of this hot goss. SAM: We're just
asking questions. There's no format, right?
MARISHA: Yeah. Not really.
SAM: Okay. MARISHA: But I also am the one
with the IFB in my ear and I have a drive
to move it forward because I have margaritas waiting
for me at the end of this. SAM: All right,
then kick us off. MARISHA: So (laughs). Everybody, knowing that
this was the Calamity, did it change how you normally
build your characters? SAM: Hell yeah, go for it.
AABRIA: Oh yeah, oh man. I normally don't care
about optimized play, but Brennan said we were
probably going to die. So I decided
fuck you, absolutely not, and I worked the hardest
I've ever worked to build
a very cool character that could survive
as long as possible. MARISHA: Yeah, you
min-maxed the fuck-- AABRIA: Oh yeah.
MARISHA: -- out of Laerryn. AABRIA: It was very fun
when I finally saw everyone's characters
in the campaign and I saw the
HP differential between our two wizards and I went, "I've done a good job here. "Yes, that's good." MARISHA: That Tough feat, man.
AABRIA: Yeah. Tough is dope.
BRENNAN: With the Arcane Ward, you more than
doubled Patia, right? AABRIA: Yes.
BRENNAN: Yeah, for sure. AABRIA: I had
175 functional HP. LUIS: That's insane.
LOU: Functional. AABRIA: Yeah, if I ever used
the Arcane Ward on myself. SAM: Wow.
LOU: Got it. AABRIA: Yeah, plus that
little workaround to rebuild the Arcane Ward
with an Eldritch Adept feat. Anyway, it's the nerdiest
I've ever gotten about a build and it
was very fun and good. MARISHA: Did you research that?
AABRIA: Yeah. MARISHA: Did you Google
"How to break wizards?" AABRIA: Yes, lots of people
talk about it all the time, and then I sat down
with my friend Trevor who also is very good
at D&D and I was like, "Okay, here's what
I'm working with so far. "Help me optimize this," and we worked for four hours
and built a little monster. TRAVIS: Damn.
MARISHA: That's sick. SAM: When we were building
out the characters, you said, Brennan, Brennan Lee Mulligan,
GM of EXU: Calamity. AABRIA: The guy who
loves coffee. SAM: You said we
could just have, was there a limit to how
many items we could have? Now I know why
you said this, but you were like "Yeah, just pick
a bunch of magical items." And that scared me,
that frightened me. It made me feel
like I was cheating. So I only picked two
very, very weak items. I think I picked
a Wand of Smiles. MARISHA: You picked
a Wand of Smiles? SAM: Uh-huh, and a plus one
Ring of Protection and I felt guilty doing that. But then I looked
around at y'all. You had--
AABRIA: You! SAM: Everybody had
all this shit. You had a strength of 56. LUIS: Uh-huh, yeah. SAM: You were
all stacking shit. I didn't have anything,
I felt guilty doing it. But now I know why,
you were going to taketh away everything
that you gaveth us. AABRIA: Don't trust
Brennan gifts. Don't do it. MARISHA: The moment that
Luis dropped in our Slack, though, and was like, "Can I take a Holy Avenger?" I was like,
"Well, he asked first." So now I feel like it's
paved the way, free reign. LUIS: Yes. BRENNAN: There's an element of
verisimilitude to that, right? Imagine being like "Yes, "the secret movers
and shakers of Avalir. "Can I borrow $20?
Because I am--" No, these people would
be fucking loaded. They're at the height of a
magical fucking civilization. They would be
strapped with gear. So it was actually
not only a clever ploy. It was not just me
pulling the parenting trick of someone's like,
"I'm running away," and you're like,
"Good, run away." (laughter)
BRENNAN: You're like, "Run away," and you're like
(nervous hum). That was not a
reverse psychology thing to get you guys to
not pick magical items. It was truly from
a place of like-- When I saw Luis go ham
on the magic items, I was like, "Yes!"
because it's just realistic. This is a civilization that's
like, "We don't need an army. "We just need one guy with a
Belt of Storm Giant Strength." LUIS: Storm Giant Strength,
that's why 29 Strength. BRENNAN: Storm Giant
Strength. And when you see
Zerxus fighting, you're like,
"Yeah, believable." SAM: Yeah. BRENNAN: That would
cover it, for sure. MARISHA: Yeah, absolutely.
AABRIA: It's dope. LUIS: So anybody else
want to talk about how they built
their characters? LOU: What, me?
AABRIA: Yeah. LOU: I think the build
I went with wasn't so Calamity-infused. I think I did really
want to show out. I think just being
on Critical Role, I was like, "Well, I can't
show up and be like, 'I'm a bard!'" (laughter) AABRIA: Sam does
that every day. SAM: I was a bard!
LOU: I just couldn't-- MARISHA: Bard shame.
LOU: Hack it and just show up as a bard. But I want to do, you know? Because are you just going
to show up and just be a bard and just be like, "What,
Bardic Inspiration for you?" I mean, come on,
are you kidding? BRENNAN: I love it
because you were both bards and
both multiclass. SAM: That's true.
I multiclassed as warlock because, Brennan, you said
that would be a good idea. (laughter) SAM: No, I think
I came into it. I was like, I've done a bard. I got to do something other than a bard, but
it's also level 14. I don't want to learn
a brand new thing. I don't want to learn
sorcerer or wizard. That's complicated,
so I'll do what I know, I'll be bard.
And you were like, you could flavor it a
little with something else. I think you gave me
a couple options, and warlock sounded okay. BRENNAN: And gave us a
really awesome connection-- SAM: It did.
BRENNAN: -- story-wise, not only for the game
contained within itself but also very timely with
Ashley's character in C3, the connection to the Seelie Court.
SAM: Yeah. MARISHA: The Seelie Court.
BRENNAN: Yeah, absolutely. SAM: Yeah, that was a
well-researched connection that I definitely spent
a lot of time researching-- MARISHA: Oh, really?
SAM: -- and talking to Ashley about. AABRIA: Incredible. SAM: Or maybe it
was Brennan saying, "Hey, who's your
warlock patron?" And me going to the
Critical Role Wiki and just-- (laughter) SAM: -- looking up fey creature, fey characters in
Critical Role lore, and seeing the word Seelie
and being like, "Great, done." AABRIA: Perfect.
TRAVIS: (laughs) MARISHA: So you were a
bard-warlock and you were a bard-- LOU: I was a bard-sorcerer.
MARISHA: Bard-sorcerer, that's right. LOU: Four levels of sorcerer,
10 levels of bard. Because I really wanted-- Splitting spellcasting
classes meant that I couldn't cast
above a 5th-level, but I had those-- Or I
didn't have any spells above 5th-level, but I
had those spell slots. So I used Magical Secrets
to get some sicker shit. AABRIA: Yes.
SAM: What did you get? LOU: That was
the dragon spell, the Summon Dragon Spirit that turned into
Shak and the-- BRENNAN: Cone of Cold, right? LOU: The Cone of Cold I used
one time at the very end because we never
took a rest of any kind. AABRIA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Nope. AABRIA: It was fucked up.
TRAVIS: Should've seen that coming. BRENNAN: All the GMs out
there, fuck a rest, all right? MARISHA: (laughs) BRENNAN: They don't
need them. They don't need them.
AABRIA: There's too many GMs in this room.
Go fuck yourself. (laughter) BRENNAN: Wait, I have a
question for the multiclasses. SAM: This was the first time
I've ever multiclassed. It was really fun.
AABRIA: Really? SAM: Yeah, I got access to all
sorts of other cool stuff. I also used Magical Secrets
to get some cool things. It was great. It was fun. BRENNAN: This is something
interesting when I think about multiclass characters. What class do you think your characters started
at at 1st-level? LOU: Ooh. I picked sorcerer for that. I was like, "Oh, Nydas "is a magical person "who didn't really
tap into that side "and so didn't
grow much more, "didn't just
think about himself "as being magical
and work with that. "He instead used what
little magic he had "and navigated it through
the lifestyle he lived." So I went starting
four levels of sorcerer, finishing 10 levels of bard. SAM: I think similarly,
Loquatius started as a warlock for,
I think it was only three levels of warlock and then 11 levels of bard
when he found his calling, found his true path
and what could bring him fame and the
adoration of many. AABRIA: Aww. Not me, bitch was busy.
SAM: Nope. (laughter) AABRIA: Hey quick, Marisha.
MARISHA: Yeah? AABRIA: Before I forget.
What was Patia's-- LUIS: Oh yeah. School?
AABRIA: School of magic? MARISHA: Enchantment. AABRIA: There we go. Yeah.
MARISHA: It was enchantment. Yeah, she was a full on-- LUIS: Wiping memories. MARISHA: -- pure, all the
way enchantment wizard. Because the enchantment
wizard's perks and abilities is that you can
split your enchantment spells and do multiple targets
on single enchantment spells. But it just didn't really
become super relevant with what we were doing.
AABRIA: Yeah. MARISHA: By the time
we were fighting, I wasn't going to be like
well, "Hang on, let's talk." (laughter) So it just didn't really
become super relevant. But my thing with Brennan, the way that I just broke
the class and just made her powerful because I
wanted to have her be super knowledge-based and have
this orb that she had where she just stored
everything and being the leader of the library,
I was basically like, "Can I just take, like,
all the spells? "I know there's a limit. "Can I just add, like,
10 more spells, though, "so I just have a lot?" And you were like "Yeah, "theoretically, you
could just pull from--" TRAVIS: You're like, "It won't fucking matter."
MARISHA: You could just Google it in the middle, yeah. AABRIA: You're not going
to take a nap. Go ahead. MARISHA: Yeah, fine, exactly.
TRAVIS: Sure. MARISHA: Pretty much.
LUIS: Wow. BRENNAN: This is a bizarre
tangent, but literally to what Travis is
saying about like, "Yeah sure, go for it," there was that attitude of-- Because I think GMs and
DMs can be stingy with stuff that they don't actually
need to be stingy with. You know what I mean? Your character is the Keeper
of Scrolls for an entire city. You would have an
infinite spellbook. You would have
all the spells, every spell
that's ever been. It would be bizarre
for you not to, and I think that you need to
be generous with that stuff. There was a kid at
my old summer camp who was a young adventurer
who was obsessed with elves. He was an eight year
old boy. He was like, "In the game, can I be an elf? "I want to be an elf wawwior." MARISHA: Elf wawwior.
BRENNAN: So cute. He came up to me
and he kept asking, "Can I have a wazer gun
that only elves can use?" I had to be like,
"Well, that might not--" Then he came up to
me and was like, "Can I have the power to
walk on snow like Wegolas?" There's that
instinct you get, there's an instinct you
get where you want to say no to requests. But then I
looked around and I was like, it's the middle of
July and I was like, "You can walk on all
the snow you want. "Any snow you find,
walk all over it. "You're a snow
walking master." (laughter) BRENNAN: Finding those things
that it's like, yeah, that's not game-breaking
to give someone access to all those
spells in that way. MARISHA: Yeah. Yeah. It was cool stuff. AABRIA: We need to talk
about this bird, though. How did you walk
into the Age of Arcanum and be like,
"Absolutely no magic"? (laughter)
MARISHA: I know. TRAVIS: Well, the
character creation part informed all of it
because they were like, "Come with some ideas, come
with some partial builds." I didn't do any of that shit. I just showed up my
lazy ass to the table and then everybody was spitting
fire and had great ideas. All of a sudden, the shape
of what this could look like started to take shape,
but I was the last one to go. I just happened to be on the
end of the table as we were going counterclockwise, and everybody else
had killer magic. You all were super
powerful with magic. I was like, "Well, you got
to have the one guy "that's like, 'Sharp pointy
things only,' right?" Then I asked
Brennan, I was like, "What's a really
good investigator? "What would be really good
at finding out details "and trying to keep a check on
all this magic run amok?" He was like,
"Inquisitor rogue." So the more you
build that out, the more you realize
you're really good at being slippery
and not getting hit but if you do get a hit, it's
one really good stank one. Which was nice. AABRIA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Which was nice. So one thing I do when
I build characters is I start with an
item. I don't know why. AABRIA: Ooh, okay.
TRAVIS: When I built Fjord... What's the store on Magnolia
here that has the old wardrobe departments,
like drop off? SAM: Oh, Take Two.
MARISHA: It's a Wrap. SAM and TRAVIS: It's a Wrap.
SAM: That's right. TRAVIS: We went there for
Halloween one year and they had Dracula Untold had put
all these clothes there and I found these dope greaves
that were these silver, folded greaves, bought
them on sale or whatever, and that was how
I built Fjord, was he started with these
forearm bracer greaves and then everything
came off of that. So when it was
inquisitor rogue time, I was like, "Okay, it's got
to be an awesome weapon. "It can't just be some
normal shit. What is there?" There's this Navy Seal
named Jack Carr that has these hawks,
these Winkler RnD hawks that look like the craziest
things you've ever seen. I looked them up and they're
part of this Sayoc Kali fighting system in
the Philippines which led to the Philippine Eagle.
And so it just like rolled and rolled and rolled and
that's just how that started. But the Eyes of Avalir
and being the Sightwarden, all that stuff just
came together so beautifully and it was just nice
to have one non-magic person that's just trying
to make it work. MARISHA: Yeah, absolutely.
SAM: Good balance. TRAVIS: Yeah.
AABRIA: Yay! MARISHA: It definitely felt
like a little of this "Who watches the Watchmen?"
type of element of let's have this one person who's
a little bit more grounded. TRAVIS: I felt so out of it, which was probably
perfect because, we were talking about this
before we actually started. We probably
should've saved it. But when the first
episode started, you guys were just in it. You were talking
about your magic shit. You were in the city, and I felt like there was
a rapport amongst some of you, and I felt like I had missed
a meeting or something because you guys
were just comfy and talking about
the city and how it works and I was just
taking notes furiously and trying not to get lost. Turns out, some of you bitches--
MARISHA: We did. AABRIA: I have no idea
what you're talking about, and I wasn't scared of
you the entire time. TRAVIS: Oh my god. AABRIA: I had a completely
normal relationship with Cerrit. SAM: For those who missed
our Twitter Spaces thing. MARISHA: Yes.
AABRIA: Oh yeah. SAM: Which is everybody. (laughter) SAM: There was
a secret meeting. There was a secret meeting. And who was at this secret meeting?
AABRIA: Woop. MARISHA: We had a few
secret meetings, right? But I think.
AABRIA: Let's go. SAM: And what did
you guys discuss? AABRIA: Why we were better than you.
LOU: Just how awful we were. (laughter) AABRIA: Truly.
LOU: Honestly-- MARISHA: That one's true.
LOU: -- that was mostly the topic of discussion, which was
like, "How nasty are you?" It was fun to be-- I
had gone and been like, "All right, I'm going
to be a little nasty." Then when we were
talking and immediately, Aabria and Marisha were
like, "We're nasty." And I was like, "Oh, okay.
Oh, okay, we're nasty." Then we turned out
to be really nasty, nastier than even I
planned, so much nastier, but yeah, most of
the meeting was agreeing how we were nasty and how
long we'd been nasty for, and the many ways we had
been nasty together. AABRIA: That's very good.
BRENNAN: I'm trying to think of the nastiest stuff that
came up in that meeting, because basically I was like, "Hey, the Replenishment, this
is what's supposed to happen. "25% of the city's ether
is supposed to "go to the Gau Drashari, "the other 75% supposed
to go into the ground, "and replenish, the
Replenishment, all of Domunas. "Is that really happening, or
what's happening to that other, "what's happening to
that city's energy?" MARISHA: We were all like, "Yes."
AABRIA: Yeah. BRENNAN: (trills) Just
this flurry of the stuff, I think there was one
point where it was like, I was like, "Okay, you tell
me when I go too far. "People extending their lives, "maybe there's a Magister
who hasn't shown up "in a little while, "maybe he's maybe a lich
and not telling anybody," and that didn't even
raise an eyebrow. AABRIA: Yeah!
BRENNAN: You were all like, "That's fine."
AABRIA: A good beginning. Keep thinking, Brennan.
BRENNAN: That's fine, yeah, all good. So it was very, but it was
very-- the whole network of someone intercepting
with the Septarion and the whole idea
of behind Patia of someone who had
found a job, like a Senate
parliamentarian, and found this job
and been like, "Oh, people <i>think</i>
this is not important. "It's about to be
incredibly important, "and I'm going to
flip this on its head." Interfacing with the
entire wealth of the city and someone who saw the vision
for what Avalir could be and was like, yeah, no amount
of-- if you have a cause, no amount of backroom dealing is ever going to make you
question what that cause is. Then the entire
technological-- the leywright, the whole point of
the secret project. Of we're going to
take the city-- This is how we beat Aeor. This is how we win the
Arcanum space race of like, okay, you guys
hate the gods, other people,
we look down on them, Ascension, we are going to
become an interplanar city. We're going to become
a city that trades with every other realm
outside of Exandria. TRAVIS: Ambition.
BRENNAN: Yeah. AABRIA: There's nothing
wrong with that. I think it was great, and
it worked out super well. LOU: It was going to.
It was super going to. AABRIA: It was super good. MARISHA: Yeah,
theoretically, it worked. AABRIA: Yeah!
BRENNAN: But it's very funny to hear everyone talk about how the secrets were--
Because you guys-- Because this meeting,
of course, was very fun and
scheme-y and great, and I was also like-- Because also, I didn't
want to have that-- I said it in the
Twitter Spaces thing, but I didn't want it to be like Christmas where it's like, "Everyone gets
the same amount of presents." You know what I mean,
where it's sort of like: No! There's some
people in this Brass Ring that are up to an asymmetrical
amount of shady shit and that's realistic and
that's going to create fun dynamics--
MARISHA: Tension. BRENNAN: -- which, lo and
behold, it fucking did. But it's very good to
hear about the meeting because while the
meeting was happening, I also was aware of the other
secrets that were coming up. So it's like, you guys
are having a meeting and you're like,
"We're nasty." Then I'm emailing with Luis
every day and he's like, "Yeah, my character's<i>
not doing good</i>." (laughter) BRENNAN: "He really
thinks about "Betrayer Gods every day." LUIS: All the time.
(laughter) BRENNAN: So you guys
are like, "We're corrupt
city officials." This guy's like,
"It could all burn. "Maybe it burns today?
Tomorrow? "Who knows when it burns." (laughter) AABRIA: Delightful.
LUIS: Yeah, yeah. MARISHA: But that's just--
That feels like you were just on such another level
of-- you saw through it all, which made sense. It's a different
level of bullshit. (laughter)
LUIS: I mean I, so jeez... It's weird to try to
have an objective take on the character that
you had been sitting in for so long,
for four sessions. But I know that
I wanted to play a redemption paladin
right away. I thought maybe a cleric,
but then I was like, "Nah, man, I want to play a
redemption paladin "to the extreme." I wanted to just challenge
myself in a way, too, to just really
commit to that. Our exchanges were
just getting to what makes-- what runs-- just offering and getting
some sounding board stuff on what runs Zerxus,
and I tried to-- I wanted to make
a parallel between what he was experiencing
as the First Knight and what maybe his idea of
the Betrayer Gods were, the First Knight
being in this tower in a <i>really lonely</i>
experience that he never really asked
for, but was put on him. So in a way, he was in his
own sort of isolation, and so I wanted
to create something that would make him connect to the experiences
of the Betrayer Gods and then really crazy
extreme redemption paladin. I don't know. I mean, I guess he
had secrets, for sure, but he didn't have
longstanding secrets. The dream really happened the day of--
AABRIA: Really? Did you ever tell us? LUIS: No, but it--
AABRIA: About? Yeah. LUIS: Two, there were two--
there were two moments. AABRIA: Oath of Deflection
paladin. LUIS: Two-- (laughs)
MARISHA: Oath of Deflection! AABRIA: Never answered
a question, dropped the whole Zone
of Truth and was like, "And let me not
tell you about that." LUIS: So let me tell you--
MARISHA: 100% true. AABRIA: That motherfucker.
LUIS: The two moments that I was like, "I think I'm going to lay
it all out on the table," was in the second session,
why I was looking for Nydas is because I wanted-- that was
my oldest friend and I was, I would've if I had
found you, I would've-- I would've told you.
LOU: Where was I? LUIS: You were chasing
your thing deal. BRENNAN: No, when you walked
out in the second session you had been in the bathroom
with the cracked mirror. LOU: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Then you came out, but that's when
Akami Rowe got murdered, because I could see
in your eyes that you wanted to
spill the beans. I was like--
SAM: You stopped it?! AABRIA: Yes.
(shouting) LUIS: That was
the second time. The first time was right
after we spoke to Purvan. To Purvan.
SAM: Purvan. LUIS: Yes, that was--
and then I wanted to-- instead of going back
to meeting everybody, I wanted to go find <i>you</i> and
then I couldn't find you, and then the second time
was the Zone of Truth. But then you, you said no, and I was like, okay.
LOU: Don't put this on me. (laughter) LOU: Don't you dare act
like I said no. TRAVIS: (laughs)
LUIS: You said no. And I was like, okay. LOU: But it's because, I
only turned on you because-- LUIS: This feels like therapy
now, for some reason. MARISHA: Yeah.
(laughter) LOU: (shouts) I wouldn't
have turned on you! (laughter) LOU: (shouts) I never
would've turned on you! No! No! I'm tired of this!
No, I'm tired of this. SAM: Are you hearing
what he's saying to you? LUIS: I'm trying my best. LOU: All right,
you know what? Fine. TRAVIS: This is how
it makes me feel. LOU: (deep breathing) Okay.
LUIS: You've always done this! LOU: I am receiving
this information. I am receiving the idea
that because I scolded you, which I felt terrible about,
in the Zone of Truth moment that you did not reveal, but to be fair, that
was seconds after you-- other people had been like, I don't want to do
the Zone of Truth. You had been like, (shouts)
"What are you hiding?" LUIS: Yes! LOU: I had to be like,
"Okay, bro." LUIS: Yeah, it was so cool.
TRAVIS: Don't come at me like this! LUIS: I loved it so
much because it was-- I love it when
there's a scene, an exchange between you and
another person at the table where they completely
set you off course and into another direction because they've done a
thing that changes you and I was going to
dig my heels in, but then I was--
but I don't know, it really affected me
to have the guy that's known me
the longest call me out. I was like, "Okay."
It was fucking cool. TRAVIS: (menacing laughter) BRENNAN: It was so good.
Well, for people to know, too, in the emails that I had
with Luis, it was just, and this is my first
time playing with you. We had coffee before the
game and it was just-- I was like, "Oh, this guy
feels about storytelling "all the ways I feel
about storytelling." Because you at the table got<i>
totally</i> lost in the character. People watching
you could be like, "Is Luis gone?
It's only Zerxus now." But people need to
know in the emails, Luis was fully sending me.
I was getting emails like, "Here's what my guy thinks. "He could be totally
fucking wrong." Everything from Luis was
as a collaborator like, "Hey man, I am making a man
who is strongly convicted. "These are his convictions.
This is what a paladin is." One of the smartest
things I feel like 5e as a system did,
when it moved paladins from being wisdom casters
to charisma casters, you know what I mean?
MARISHA and AABRIA: Yeah. BRENNAN: Because it
made me realize why you don't want
to base morality in charisma.
MARISHA: Charisma. BRENNAN: Right,
because you're like, "The only thing the world
needs is redemption, "and I'm going to
do it every day! "No matter how many
people get hurt, "or how badly it goes, "or how many times the
world tries to tell me "it's not working." MARISHA: Wouldn't call that wisdom.
BRENNAN: Yeah. SAM: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Having that insight skill ratcheted
up can be helpful. Everyone is redeemable. You, are <i>you</i> the right
guy for the job, right? Are you this person who can
do this thing in this moment? It felt like there
was such a thing with Zerxus where he took
this universal truth about everyone can be saved, and didn't see the bridge
to, "I can save anybody." LUIS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
MARISHA: Yeah. BRENNAN: That never
occurred to him of like, "Am I the guy for the job?" I thought that was
so beautifully done. LUIS: I-- thanks. I had a conversation with, and I don't think every
redemption paladin needs to be played this way, but again, I wanted to
play one to the extreme and that was part of the flaw
that I had embedded in it. I was like, "This is an
incredibly toxic trait." It's the-- I mean, it is that <i>I</i> am going to change you, but from such a well-meaning
heartfelt place. That wasn't the
only layer to him because I also wanted
to play someone whose flame of hope
will never extinguish. That those two can be
synthesized together, but they don't
have to coexist. So, yeah, I guess
from the get go, I wasn't really plotting the
nastiness, but I was like, "Let me embed it in
to this blind spot "and have this person who
is the most well meaning, "the goodest person
in his own heart, "and let's give him this
flaw and this blind spot." MARISHA: Yeah, and you
talking about the flaws, because even us sitting
around the table, me, Lou, and Aabria
and being like, "Mm, we're going
to get nasty." In the same way of you being very cognizant
of Zerxus' flaws, we were in the same mindset with like, "We know we are
being shady and shifty "but our characters, at
the end of the day, "are like, 'This is justified "'and we are doing it for
the good of the city "'and the greater good.'" That was-- I mean, speaking
of incredibly poignant, incredible life lessons, something that Brennan
talked about on that day which was not to
tell your story, but ending in
the lesson being: Never trust a
motherfucker with a cause. It felt like so much
was really rooted in that about how you-- really so much of
the the flaws of-- For Patia especially,
and Laerryn and Nydas was that being blinded
by their ambition. And it's not to say
that they weren't evil, and I honestly think
trying to play a evil on the spectrum
character is boring and dumb because there is no
black and white spectrum and to try and play that calculated, manipulative, but you're doing it because
you know in the end, you're going to win and
you're going to be right, and everyone will
fucking love you for it. Trying to be on that
level of awareness, I mean, that was some
damn mental gymnastics. LUIS: Yeah.
AABRIA: (laughs) MARISHA: These were
some pretty deep and complicated
characters, considering. SAM: Yeah, because,
as a player, you know what you're
doing is wrong, but you also know,
my person-- MARISHA: Speak for yourself.
SAM: -- thinks that it would be right. MARISHA: Yeah. SAM: There's a reason
why I'm being, I'm doing bad things
to get good results. MARISHA: Yes. SAM: Yeah, it was fun to
watch you all do that. I think for--
(laughter) SAM: I think for
my character, my guy was--
AABRIA: Had secrets. SAM: -- was almost the-- Yeah,
was almost the opposite. My character-- TRAVIS: Was perfect
in every way? SAM: Well, no. He was
a liar all the time. TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.
AABRIA: Yeah. SAM: That was his
surface level was like, "Yeah, I always lie,
I'm always stretching "and bending the truth
to do what I want." So that's not
really a surprise. But the weird secret
was that he that, or the flaw, I guess,
to Loquatius, which I sort of figured
out as we were playing was not that he was an
easy liar, or a good liar, but was that he was
lying to himself more than anything, more than anyone else.
Because he put on this outward appearance
of knowing everything, being super confident,
being beloved by all, but all he wanted
was very simple things and he couldn't admit
that to himself. He just wanted a lady and to and to be happy
and to be truthful. He didn't like
what he was doing as the the Herald
of Avalir either, because it meant bending
and stretching the truth. What he wanted to do was just
be a gritty indie reporter-- MARISHA: Aw. SAM: -- for the LA Weekly-- AABRIA and LUIS: (laugh)
MARISHA: Oh my god. Go gonzo! SAM: -- covering rock
shows or whatever. MARISHA: Yeah.
SAM: He needed to admit that to himself. You know, he
doesn't really want all of this pizazz and stuff, he just wants
to be a good guy. I think that was his weird opposite flaw from
the rest of you. MARISHA: Mm. Yeah. SAM: Meanwhile, Cerritos Groupon over
here had no flaws. (laughter) LOU: He was a bad dad. SAM: Well, was he, though?
AABRIA: No! SAM: He was so sweet. AABRIA: No.
TRAVIS: In the end, right? But that's just catching
him on that day. So that day he had
a good day as a dad. I think the years prior to
that were severely less. SAM: What happened
to the wife? Do we know what
happened to the wife? TRAVIS: Yeah, so--
LOU: Didn't you guys have a weird thing?
LUIS: What'd you do to her? LOU: Were you guys divorced? TRAVIS: I just didn't pay
any attention to her. LOU: Oh. BRENNAN: The implication
that was there was that Wrayne and Cerrit
were not doing great. LOU: Got it.
SAM: And were split up? TRAVIS: We were split.
LOU: Yeah, was she at her sister's or what? TRAVIS: Yeah, she was. It was one of those things where he was obsessed
with his work, he had a high station
in the city, but while he had his
eyes on everything else literally everything
outside of their house, it wasn't on her and
it wasn't on the children. AABRIA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: She was like, I need-- This is my idea of
her. She was like, "I need more. I
need more purpose. "I'm going to go find
that elsewhere. "And until there's something
for me here, I won't be here." I'm sure he was like, "Okay,"
and just went back to work. AABRIA: Oof.
TRAVIS: Right? Just totally blind--
LOU: Yes, Wrayne. Yes, Wrayne. TRAVIS: -- in all that stuff, So I feel like
there's always-- I think it's always
interesting to try and put a little part of
yourself into characters. So as a new dad,
one of the things I'm always fearful of
is just working so much that you'll miss
parts of your life, and I definitely pay
attention to my wife, but you worry about-- AABRIA: Way to get
that in there on tape. MARISHA: Yeah.
(laughter) TRAVIS: Love you,
babe. I see you. SAM: I love my wife.
TRAVIS: Heart emoji. (laughter) TRAVIS: Oh shit. (laughter) SAM: I take care of my kid! TRAVIS: Uh-huh,
just being like-- You don't want to miss
any of that stuff. So I think in that last day, it wasn't about
who he'd been. It was like, "Who can you be "if you get one
last chance," right? The old question if you had one
day left, what would you do? BRENNAN: I think also
with Cerrit, there's a part of me that really loved his
presence in the group, because there were
shady people, and if Travis--
And when you said, you pitched your character
as I want to be Jor-El, I want to be the guy that
gets his kids out of there. And I want be tapped
into Vespin Chloras. There were a couple
of different-- Everyone made a choice that
helped lift the story up. Being like, "I'm into
the Betrayer Gods." I was like, "Well,
they're pretty important "in this time period,
that's very helpful." For you being like, "I'm
on Vespin Chloras' trail." TRAVIS: I was. Yeah.
BRENNAN: Where it was, I was like, "Thank god." I was like, "Great. That's how
we tie Vespin into this thing." But what I loved in terms
of, if you had also been a shady motherfucker, right, then we'd have
a group of people that are doing shady things. Even Loquatius, his
very first scene, he's influencing an election. He's not involved
with the ether scheme, but this guy
is shady as hell. He's incredibly corrupt, Having one person who-- If you had also been corrupt, people watching at home
would get to go like, "Oh, that's what happens
when everyone's bad. "Not like me, who's good." TRAVIS and LUIS: Yeah.
BRENNAN: And you were good, and also didn't
stop Calamity. TRAVIS: Right.
BRENNAN: It was really important for me to have one character who's like, "Yeah, he's
not back dealing ether, "he's not influencing
an election, "but his attention's
not in the right place, "and at the end of days,
that matters just as much." TRAVIS: It was interesting because I wasn't privy
to the Council of Three. (laughter) AABRIA: Trouble troika, fuck you.
MARISHA: Trifecta. SAM: The Nasty Triplets. TRAVIS: I was experiencing
everyone's secrets as they were happening, but whether we were
in the Herald's Tome you were being
deceitful and deceptive and other things
were happening. I found in that moment, not wanting to press
my friend on the thing that you were
clearly lying about. SAM: Uh-huh.
TRAVIS: Which was just so fucking telling also about if your job is to
do the right thing in the end of days, and even though you know
all that extra shit, I still wasn't
pushing you on it. SAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BRENNAN: (laughs) TRAVIS: So it was just interesting.
MARISHA: Yeah. That's fascinating. TRAVIS: It was
interesting like that. AABRIA: I will say
my favorite part was learning that your
wife was also a scientist, because again, I was like, "Cerrit's going to come
for Laerryn at some point." That was my one
emotional needle. "Oh, you couldn't figure
out shit with your wife, "so you're coming
after me now?" TRAVIS: (laughs)
AABRIA: I was just waiting for that and it never came
up, which was great. But god, what an
interesting character. You know that there's
something big here. TRAVIS: Uh-huh.
AABRIA: And you have to go, "I'm going to pay attention "to this other
thing and hope that "that somehow allows
me to sidestep "what I know is bad in
my own front yard." TRAVIS: That's
so interesting. AABRIA: Oh, that's
heartbreaking. TRAVIS: I think he also
has a crazy respect for the arcane wielders. So I think also it was-- I think on the inside he knew it wasn't something
he could mess with unless he was able to get
right up close to you. AABRIA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: And then maybe turn or push the button. AABRIA: Yeah. Oh, it's so good.
TRAVIS: Yeah. MARISHA: Jumping off of what we
were talking about the dads, we have a question from
@The_Katie_M on Twitter. "Travis and Luis, what
inspired your decisions "to make characters who
had children despite knowing "that you were telling
an apocalyptic story? "Did you think the fact
that your characters "were both dads affected
your gameplay and caused you "to make different decisions
to the other characters?" Because yeah, I agree
with Katie here. Fucking bold move. AABRIA: It hurt our feelings.
MARISHA: Holy fuck. LOU: When the kids were cute,
it was incredibly fucked up. AABRIA: Oh, yeah.
LOU: When they were fun and delightful and
not even just blank-- TRAVIS: Brennan is brutal.
LOU: -- slate kids. TRAVIS: Brutal. With the little Talon 2. I melted in my fucking chair.
LUIS: I know. TRAVIS: I was dying. I want to hear what Luis'
take was, but for me, usually it seems like
in adventure campaigns, a group of adventurers
go to the threat, battle it, and maybe
if they're lucky, somebody will hear that they
either succeeded or failed, but it's like collateral
damage is minimized and it's out there. This took place in the city. It's in your home and
everybody else's home, and of course that means
there are families and women and children
and everything else, hopes and dreams
and everything. So I felt like
we had to do that-- because it makes it
far more fucking complicated. LOU: Yeah. LUIS: I want to ask because you
were already talking about it. Between the two of us,
you have your own kid and did that ever,
giving your character a child in the Calamity
didn't make you go, oh? You were saying how
you related to that-- TRAVIS: Very much so.
LUIS: -- aspect of it. TRAVIS: So I brought up before
that-- So I'll back up. My favorite superhero, it's not very interesting, is
Superman since I was a kid just because he's a guy
that could do anything and chooses to do good and
so I loved that growing up. But I've always been
fascinated by Jor-El who was also very influential
in Krypton and did the right thing and got his
kid off the exploding planet. But if I had to critique it, I'd be like, "If you were
so smart, motherfucker, "why didn't you make a rocket
for the three of you? "Then you could all go up
instead of just your kid!" So part of that was also
you can be the baddest, most focused warrior,
mage, whatever, and when shit hits the fan,
there has to be a priority. If one is shutting
down the threat, then number two, inherently,
is your family. AABRIA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: So you've put something above your family. As a new dad, I don't
know how to do that. You might hear it,
but when people say becoming a parent is
literally someone taking your heart out of your chest,
taking it out of your body, giving it legs and it
starts walking around for the rest of your life
and all you can do is stare at it and the things that
are around it and try and protect it and hope that
nothing bad happens to it. That's the craziest notion. So when I knew that
a Calamity was coming, I thought it would be
interesting as a player, depending on
where it went down and what was
going to be happening, if he was torn between
the thing that he's been trained to
do his entire life, and knowing that maybe
there is something more important than
that in this moment, even though he holds
this high position. So that pull was
what I wanted. I just didn't know
I wanted it like that. (laughter) LUIS: Yeah, yeah. TRAVIS: It was real dirty. LUIS: You said something
that I'm fascinated by new parents because
I don't have kids and I don't know
if I want kids, but I don't think they're
gross or anything. (laughter) TRAVIS: They are. LUIS: They do gross things. MARISHA: No one assumed that until you started
justifying it. (laughter) TRAVIS: Sam, when we
just had Ronin, he was like "You're going to
get poop on yourself." I was like, "Oh, okay, cool." LUIS: I have nieces
and nephews and they don't live far away. But that's not the same
as having your own kid, but I am fascinated by
what you described, which is that your
heart is now outside of you and now out in the
world and whenever friends of mine have
their first kid, I interview them
and I'm like "So, "is all this stuff true
that people say?" Then just to get
them to talk about-- it's just endlessly
fascinating to me and that's one of the
reasons why I like to play a parent because
it's me playing pretend. SAM: Yeah.
LUIS: And trying to access something that I feel like I get a sense of
through my imagination, but I can only
imagine in real life. There's nothing to compare
it to in real life. But I'm endlessly
fascinated by that, and so it just made sense
for me to have-- and I wanted to have a
kid that wasn't mine. I wanted to have, again, to parallel the relationship
between the gods. I think I had told Brennan,
I said, "I see the story "as a story of fathers
and sons in a sense." So seeing the Betrayers as our
fathers and mothers in a way So seeing the Betrayers as our
fathers and mothers in a way and then I have a kid who's
not mine, but is mine and I've never explored that,
so it was cool and I'm glad that you said
what you said because next time I play a dad,
I'm going to literally imagine my heart leaping
out of my body and then taking form as a kid and that's going
to be fucking cool. It's very powerful and
to hear you say that, you can feel it. MARISHA: Even the dichotomy,
too, that you had a complicated relationship
with your son and playing that
estranged father role. LUIS: Yeah. MARISHA: Because your kid
was staying with-- LUIS: Yes.
AABRIA: Yeah, your family. MARISHA: Your family.
LUIS: With my family. MARISHA: Right?
TRAVIS: It was so good. MARISHA: And we only really
got a little bit of that. LOU: Just a kiss, you know?
MARISHA: Yeah. (laughs) LOU: Yeah, that was something
we talked about. That was something I
threw out I think because I knew Nydas wouldn't
have an actual family. But I liked the idea-- I liked it as a representation
of how close we were at one point in our lives. That it's the three of us,
we're some kind of triumvirate to the point where
you were like, "Yeah, "he's part of
our extended family." LUIS: Yeah, it cemented, I
think, my relationship to you and I think that's
why it was, in the moment, so easy
to give in to you and if this were a longer
campaign with more of those moments, I can
imagine always doing that because I don't know
how you stop feeling indebted to someone
who's taking your kid. TRAVIS: Yeah. LUIS: Like how you and
your family did, so yeah. SAM: Aabria and I
briefly discussed-- AABRIA: Yeah. SAM: -- whether we had kids, and we quickly said "Nah." MARISHA: (laughs)
SAM: Because there's something slightly hilarious about exes who fucking
hate each other, and there's something that's
not hilarious at all about exes with a kid
who hate each other. MARISHA: Oh yeah.
AABRIA: Oh no, that's terrible. SAM: True.
AABRIA: Speaking of that. LUIS: Yes?
AABRIA: We also when we got coffee-- yeah.
LUIS: Yes, I was going to say! AABRIA: There was early talks about--
TRAVIS: You did with? him!? AABRIA: Yeah.
SAM: Jesus. What were you doing, Travis? TRAVIS: Sitting with our
thumbs up our ass. I guess next time, find
Aabria as fast as you can. AABRIA: That's the
game, baby. MARISHA: (laughs)
AABRIA: We never talked about who Elias' mom was. LUIS: Nope, never. AABRIA: And there were
early talks about like-- SAM: Wait, like you?
AABRIA: Yeah. LUIS: Maybe.
AABRIA: Laerryn being Elias' mom. LUIS: I think I said
you decide that because I don't think I would've known.
AABRIA: I didn't want to take away from-- LUIS: I think it would've
been pretty cool. It would've been something interesting.
AABRIA: I was excited about it. It stepped in on
a very powerful thing about the family
that you choose that aren't necessarily
born to you and I think it would've
been this weird step away because then there's that
sense of claiming of-- yeah. But I remember us
talking about it and I was very excited
about like oh man, I always think about fighting everyone in the
group, I guess. I'm just PVP-minded. (laughter) LUIS: Aabria almost killed me
in something else we did. AABRIA: Yeah, that's right!
Oh my god. Well, I'm just an asshole, so I'm going to stop telling
that story, that's fine. Never mind. TRAVIS: Aabria's just coming
to collect heads. AABRIA: I am, I'm here
to just ring bells. Yeah, the idea that if we
ever got into it and talked about Elias potentially being
orphaned, it'd be like: No, he still has his mother.
And make that the big reveal. TRAVIS: Whoa. AABRIA: But it never
came to that. SAM: No.
TRAVIS: Oh boy. BRENNAN: Just
thinking about-- I love the gestalt space
that was rendered even by the stuff
you guys didn't talk about in your
characters' backstory. Thinking about Zerxus
and it's like: Okay, so this is a guy who
came aboard the city while his husband, an eldritch
knight, was First Knight, so he could study his
weird paladin-oracle stuff that seemed
to be unique. His husband died, and then the backstory that
didn't come out on camera, but the city put a lot
of pressure on Zerxus to become
First Knight because there wasn't a great candidate
after Evandrin was gone. So him leaving Elias in
CathmoΓra was something that there was a lot of political
pressure on him to do, of people being like, "If it's not you, it's going
to be fucking Kevin." (laughter) TRAVIS: "Fucking Kevin." BRENNAN: You know?
So we can't-- MARISHA: "Do you want to
doom Avalir to Kevin?" LUIS: Nope. Give it to this guy. BRENNAN: "Hey, you know
this grief-stricken, "completely alone knight
up in the tower "who keeps talking about
dreams of Betrayer Gods? "Should anyone
check in on him?" "Nah, he's probably fine.
His kid's a continent away." LUIS: "He's so strong." (laughter)
AABRIA: He'll work it out. TRAVIS: (laughs) "So strong!" LUIS: I want to ask
what it was like for you to play our kids? I don't know,
I'm just curious. BRENNAN: Love it because there's a convenience-- There's a convenience to
orphans, which is why from fairy tales and
fantasy immemorial, just convenient, right? I have no attachments,
so an adventure makes more sense.
MARISHA: Makes sense. BRENNAN: When does
Luke leave Tatooine? When his aunt and uncle
are dead, right? AABRIA: Spoilers! BRENNAN: Spoilers for-- Sorry! But you know what I mean? I think there's
something to the idea of in a thing that's all
about stakes and loss, I think it's really necessary
and I love doing any familial relationships,
siblings, parents, children because I think that
there are people-- People are like gems, right? They have facets to them
and some of them only get exposed within
certain relationships. TRAVIS: Totally.
BRENNAN: So you need certain things to see
certain sides of people. Again, I feel
like even in just the blush of everything
around that, even people that did
try to avoid those or not try to avoid, but
people that were distant with like Patia
and her grandfather and Nydas and his brother and
things that never get said. But by the fourth episode, I'm like Eaedalus
is Nydas' older brother and he never did
make it to Avalir, and how does Nydas
feel about that? The fact that
his older brother got married and became
the Mayor of CathmoΓra and you, unmarried,
are like, "No, "I did become the Dragon,"
and all that stuff just becomes implication
in the background. I just loved it, I think all that family stuff
makes it so rich. Actually, I feel
like we've been away from questions
for a second. AABRIA: They keep scrolling.
BRENNAN: Lou. LOU: Yeah?
BRENNAN: Nydas was a pirate who became
the key to-- SAM and LUIS: So natural. SAM: Yeah, it's very natural. BRENNAN: I'm so good
at intros and outros and segues.
SAM: You're the best. BRENNAN: Nydas was
a pirate who became the key to
Avalir's resources. Does he feel as
though his dreams were realized even
though the city fell? LOU: Great question, Brennan. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Thank you. LOU: Really good. I don't think so. I based the character
a lot in terms of his thought process on a mix
of John Hammond from Jurassic Park in
the book and in the movie. AABRIA: Ooh. Yes! LOU: In the book,
he's a real monster, and in the movie,
he's a real sweetie. I do think in the
Jurassic Park sense, the goal is not just to make
the city great. The goal and the dangerous
part is that the goal is to make the city great
and then show it to the world and prove it every day for
the rest of our lives and have everyone come up
and kneel before me and say "Great job, you really
made something amazing." Like just bringing dinosaurs
back, I could give a shit. Or just making Avalir great
and making it this hub of commerce where
everyone can live, and where there is no strife, and hodmedods
do everything you want, and you only experience
weather once a week. Nah, that's-- Fuck that. We need to go to
the Celestial Plane. That is when
things will matter and that's when
people will care. So I don't think
his dream is realized, but I think in the moment
where you killed us. (laughter) BRENNAN: I just want
to say something. AABRIA: No.
BRENNAN: Matt Mercer made up the Calamity, okay? Matt Mercer made it up-- MARISHA: You're trying to pass this off?!
BRENNAN: -- and I'm over here bad-copping it, okay? SAM: So you gave birth to us, and Matt killed us,
is what you're saying. BRENNAN: In a way. I'm in
the delivery room. LOU: I specifically mean when
you killed us with the tree. BRENNAN: Oh yeah. LOU: Which is you. (laughter)
AABRIA: Yeah! LOU: The tree didn't
have to be that wild. The tree could have
just split open, you know? Like, it seemed like
it was going to, and then in
the fourth episode, for the first second,
AKA two hours, you murdered us ruthlessly.
That was you. AABRIA: We didn't all die.
LOU: That's you. BRENNAN: All I'm saying is
everyone loves it when Matt says two-thirds
of Exandria is gone, but when it actually
starts to happen and we're making saving throws
for an hour of game time-- (laughter) BRENNAN: -- all of a sudden,
people got some shit to say. That's all I'm saying.
(laughter) LOU: But in that moment, I do
think that's Nydas' moment of being like, "Okay,
the ambition is too much, "and right now there
is something to lose, "which is just what Avalir is, "which is a community of
people doing great things "and that must be preserved." LUIS: I actually earlier
wanted to ask, because what you're talking
about is the change, the realization that you had
and the arc that you went on. When we're talking
about the secrets and all the nasty stuff,
but the moment-- I think a lot of
the characters realize and have had a moment
of really looking at themselves
in a mirror and that's where
it started for you? LOU: Yeah, I think-- It's not until Laerryn is trying to blow up
the tree that this fucked up prophecy I got
told me might be important. That's the first time it's
like, "Wait, wait, wait." TRAVIS: So good.
MARISHA: So good. LOU: "If this is it,
if this is us "enacting this thing
that this person "has told me is the
inevitable end of Avalir, "then actually
we need to stop. "Now, I know I've
been shoveling coal "into this engine, but can
we please hit the brakes? "Can we please, in this
moment, hit the brakes?" And the answer is: We can't. (laughter) AABRIA: Tell the prodigy
that you had enabled for decades "no" for the
first time, and thought that was going to
go a different way. LOU: What's up, dude?
AABRIA: (laughs) LOU: I can dream. BRENNAN: I know--
LOU: I can dream. BRENNAN: I know that you
have the commitment to take a character that's
supposed to be bad and make them bad. Which is why Nydas' sudden third act shift into
the moral core of-- AABRIA: That was amazing.
BRENNAN: It felt so earned. What was that like? Because
I feel like you must have surprised yourself
following that. LOU: I think I got
caught off guard when you were like, "I'm
going to cast Blight on it." I was like, "Wait, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait." It was that moment
where you were like, and you were very kind in
that you did it very slowly. You were like, "I raise
my hand to cast Blight." You don't go, "I cast Blight." So in that moment,
I was like, "Oh shit." TRAVIS and AABRIA: (laugh) TRAVIS: Yes.
LOU: Wait. TRAVIS: Yes.
LOU: "Wait, wait, wait. "Okay, guys, I have to
explain something to you "that I've kind of been sitting on."
AABRIA: No one explained anything. LOU: "I don't know. I think we
might be fucking up real bad." (laughter) LOU: I know people were
rolling insight checks to figure out if I was
telling the truth or not and you could tell I was
lying and you didn't ask about it.
TRAVIS: The rolling realization. LOU: But now I want
to talk about it. (laughter) LOU: It was a weird thing
of being like all right, but then also quietly
knowing in my head that even just me saying
it is not enough and then it came to blows
and it was like: Oh, okay. But it was the first
hitch of you being like, "I'm going to kill it,"
was me going, "Wait, wait, "I have to tell everybody this
thing and what this means." Then when everyone
else didn't back down, when that didn't work.
LUIS: Yeah. LOU: I was like, "Oh. "Oh okay, well, I have
to try and stop this "and this is now on me. "You gave me this
prophecy and now "I'm the only one who can
do anything about it." BRENNAN: Without a saving
throw, to watch a prophecy actually drive someone to
panic, you know what I mean? actually drive someone to
panic, you know what I mean? It happened in real time of
like the proph-- the thing. I don't know, I just
love these characters. I love all of your
characters so fucking much and I love that of the shady,
of the Trouble Troika. MARISHA and SAM: The Trouble Troika!
BRENNAN: Of the Trouble Troika, what I love about it is--
AABRIA: I said that! BRENNAN: Nydas' story--
AABRIA: What?! BRENNAN: -- all of
the three of you in your present time--
AABRIA: Wild. BRENNAN: -- are so well-
matched with each other. But there's
a fucking difference because you're both elves
and you're from the sky, and this dude, I feel
like there was just something in Nydas of,
"Yes, I'm supporting it. "The Leywright, the Ether.
Let's do shady deals. "Let's do stuff," and then
there's a sudden moment where you hear this prophecy,
and a kid who had to fight on blood-soaked docks.
TRAVIS: Yes, sir. BRENNAN: Goes, "Wait, guys,
it can actually get bad." TRAVIS: Yeah, yeah.
AABRIA: Yeah. TRAVIS: The real world
is coming through. BRENNAN: The real world
is coming. I'm telling you
things can get bad. It felt so-- It was just
such a cool transformation. MARISHA: Yeah, we're
coming from privilege. We're like "Bad?"
AABRIA: Yeah, 100%. BRENNAN: Yeah.
AABRIA: What is bad? MARISHA: Bad is when the water
heater broke. AABRIA: We'll talk about
this when I'm done with this tree real quick. TRAVIS: That Blight casting, I felt like I was four
seconds behind everything everybody was doing in
terms of all of that stuff. When you said, "Blight," I was like, "Wait, no,
that'll-- I'm not here." (laughter) MARISHA: Oh my god! You were gone for all of that!
TRAVIS: Well, I was out. I was out. AABRIA: Having Blight
was the luckiest guess. I was like, "I kind
of like this spell. "Maybe I'll get to use it." (gasps) Oh, a bad tree?
TRAVIS: Oh. AABRIA: Cool.
(laughter) AABRIA: Christmas. BRENNAN: I will say,
in the pantheon of pulling the heart through
and Blighting the tree, one of those very nice things that was very sweet
about the show, puts Cerrit's decision
to leave up there in that. AABRIA: If you
would've been there, it wouldn't have happened.
SAM: That would have been a totally different fight
if you were there. You could've stopped a lot
of shit from happening. LOU: You leaving was-- I remember you leaving, and I was kind of like,
"We'll get him later." (laughter) It was actually like,
"It's fine." LUIS: It was. It was bad.
LOU: "Hey, what's up? "If something really bad's going
to happen, he'll come back. "All right, come on, guys."
MARISHA: Yeah. (laughs) LOU: Then to have it be
that we're fighting, it's like, "Oh shit,
he should be here." Why am <i>I</i> the only person? SAM: Travis, if you had
walked in at that moment-- TRAVIS: Yeah. SAM: With your pizza box
and the fire going. AABRIA: Full
Donald Glover, yeah. SAM: Well, knowing what
you knew at the moment, and your suspicions
of everyone, but especially
missus over here. MARISHA: (laughs) SAM: Who would
you have stopped? What side would
you have taken? Who would've those hot hawks
have gone straight into? TRAVIS: I mean, it would've
depended on what he walked into, but Patia and Laerryn
were one and two, because I just
assumed that Zerxus-- AABRIA: That's you, bae!
MARISHA: I'm number one! AABRIA: Yay!
SAM: One and two meaning the people you love
and trust the most? TRAVIS: No, that
I would try and take down the fastest.
SAM: Oh, okay. AABRIA: Oh, amazing!
(laughter) TRAVIS: Yeah, and
Zerxus would be three, but I would assume that he wasn't trying to fucking
befriend a Betrayer God! But I also knew that Nydas,
with all that bard shit that I haven't seen yet,
because we hadn't really, we hadn't rolled,
I didn't know what was capable
of coming out. There was a chance that it
was just going to go bad. What was so interesting was
that I made the choice, just on an RP thing,
to go after the kids, and stretch the story that
way that as soon as I left, I was like, "Oh, "I'm going to let them
fuck each other up first--" AABRIA and MARISHA: Yeah!
TRAVIS: "-- and "come in when they're tired!" AABRIA: That's very good,
actually. TRAVIS: That's way better!
LOU: Yep. (laughter) LUIS: Oh my god. SAM: We have a fan
question, you guys. MARISHA: Ooh!
SAM: Yes, yes. MARISHA: We do!
SAM: Hot off the presses from Γndrea or AndrΔa.
AABRIA: A fan. SAM: It's to Aabria.
AABRIA: Oh, hey. SAM: Or Γh-bria. (laughter) AABRIA: Technically
both correct. SAM: "Was Laerryn's urgency
to get the Astral Leywright "done before the next
a Apogee Solstice only "so that she could fix
or focus on her relationship "with Loquatius before
he was gone?" Question mark? AABRIA: Buh?
SAM: "Or was there something "she was hoping to do on other
planes she was working towards "that involved him,"
slash me, "as well?" AABRIA: It's you, aw, babe. SAM: So, what were you up to? AABRIA: Sweet. I think the drive
to get it done in this one was suddenly realizing,
her introduction was, hey, this is not only going
to be your best shot, but it's even better than you were hoping for
to pull this off. So, everyone has
over-indexed for how focused she was
in that moment, but if you get the
best news that you have your best
chance of success at pulling off something
that you've worked for more than a
decade on, of course that's the thing you
care about the most. She wanted it done
and taken care of because, yeah, in that sort
of type-A personality, on the flow chart, she was,
get the Leywright done, fix your marriage, or at least
repair that relationship so that it can be as
good as it can be again, because she knew that she
still had feelings for him. SAM: But the
Leywright came up. AABRIA: But the Leywright came
first because it needed to-- SAM: Came due.
AABRIA: It needed to get done. It was a time bounded thing. SAM: Yeah.
AABRIA: I think everything past the planes-- There was no, "I want to send
him home to the Feywild." That was just
the little dream in the back of her mind was once this is done,
we can go visit your home plane together.
SAM: Yeah, yeah. AABRIA: Won't it be a lovely--
SAM: There was a lot of that with a lot of our characters. Once we get this, we can focus on the real stuff.
LUIS: We can begin. MARISHA: Yeah.
AABRIA: Exactly. TRAVIS: Just the
one last thing. AABRIA: This one
last thing. Yeah. SAM and AABRIA: Yeah. MARISHA: I can
rest after this. SAM: Then went, "Huh?" AABRIA: There's nothing more fun--
SAM: That's how it is in real life, too. MARISHA: Uh-huh. AABRIA: Knowing you're
playing a game that's going to stop
at the Calamity, there's nothing more tragic than telegraphing
future plans of all the things
you'll get to. SAM: Speaking of plans,
another question was, "How much of the
Laerryn-Loquatius "relationship was planned
before the game?" AABRIA: Ooh, okay.
MARISHA: Yeah, let's talk about this--
AABRIA: Yeah, okay. MARISHA: -- because holy shit.
SAM: I got our text thread. AABRIA: Oh god, it's--
LUIS: You do? AABRIA: -- shorter than it should be.
SAM: I got the text thread up where Aabria says--
TRAVIS: There's some scrolling. AABRIA: There's some scrolling.
SAM: It's a long thread. AABRIA: Okay.
SAM: It says, "Lorwyn is her first name." AABRIA: Oh, I changed it.
That's right. SAM: "Haven't decided on a
surname. Thoughts on yours?" AABRIA: (laughs) Are you
just going to read it? SAM: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
(laughter) AABRIA: This is bad. BRENNAN: "Thoughts on yours," has a funny
double meaning there. I haven't thought of a
surname, could I have yours? (laughter) MARISHA: Yeah.
(laughter) SAM: "I said, my current name
is Loquatius Hambrick-Zucker." (laughter)
MARISHA: Hambrick-Zucker. TRAVIS: Hambrick-Zucker? BRENNAN: You robbed us! You absolutely robbed us. We could've had Loquatius Hambrick-Zucker.
SAM: Hambrick-Zucker. LOU: Like a ham brick? BRENNAN: And now
we'll never have it. (laughter)
AABRIA: Yeah. LOU: Wow, that's a
different character. TRAVIS: What?
(laughter) LOU: Hambrick-Zucker? TRAVIS: What?
MARISHA: Yeah. I hate him. AABRIA: Yeah! MARISHA: Whoever he is.
AABRIA: I was like, I don't want to be married to
that, thank you. Thank you. MARISHA: Yes! SAM: We made some
better choices. AABRIA: That's a no out the
gate from your girl, Laerryn, who was Lorwyn.
BRENNAN: That's just two words, ham, brick. LOU: Just Hambrick-Zucker is a
name with a charisma of six, and a constitution of 22. MARISHA: Yeah.
(laughter) MARISHA: Hambrick-Zucker
is definitely-- AABRIA: He's taken a lot of
of hits in his youth. MARISHA: -- creating his
own cryptocurrency. BRENNAN: Think of a
brick shaped into a ham, and how durable
that would be. SAM: My very next text
on the thread is, "Maybe I should simplify
my stupid-ass last name "to something much more fey,
since that's where I'm from. "How about Loquatius Seelie, "implying that I'm from the
Seelie Court, like Elmenore? "Wasn't that something you
did with Fearne on ExU?" AABRIA: That's very kind.
I was like, "Oh, he watched!" TRAVIS: Hey! AABRIA: Okay, okay!
(laughter) SAM: But to answer the
original question is, how much of the
relationship was planned? We figured out a timeline.
AABRIA: Yeah. SAM: How many years
we were married, how many years we
were not married. We figured out loosely
why we had split. AABRIA: Yes. SAM: This one here
was like, "Hey, "is it okay if I
was the reason?" AABRIA: Yeah. Look, we had already met in
our little nasty gal meeting, and I was like, "I want
to be the bad one." TRAVIS: Yeah.
SAM: Yeah. AABRIA: Yeah, I'll do it.
I did it. What'd I do? (laughter) SAM: I was like, "Well, no.
Can't we both be at fault?" AABRIA: Yeah.
SAM: Yeah, so we were. LOU: Aw.
MARISHA: That's good. AABRIA: Look, I'm just
mad because I came away from our text
conversation going, "What a fun bit
this will be." Then you proceeded to
fucking knock me out with an emotion
every 20 minutes. Whenever I covered my
full face with my hands, it was because I was
fully actually crying. "What is he doing? "These are feelings."
SAM: That was a discovery. AABRIA: Ugh!
SAM: Honestly, It was planned as a bit. We were just going to be
sniping at each other. I think we talked, I talked to
Brennan at least about how, hey, it would be really
great if over the course of these four episodes, he could discover things about
himself that are... He could be more
honest with himself about what he's become, and maybe he doesn't
like what he's become. Maybe that would affect
us in some way, and maybe by the end of it, we could reconcile
or something. But that's not up to you
to decide, obviously. BRENNAN: No, and
that was honestly, the parts of the story that
I probably had my hands off the most for were
your guys' scenes. There was a whole
scene in, I think, at the beginning of episode
three or something like that, where it's just you guys
in the Meridian Labyrinth while the fight is raging, and it's just you guys
having a heart to heart. The scene in episode one, when we're doing all
the intro vignettes where you guys and you alone
had a vignette where you met. But I remembered, because
we had talked about it, and you had said this
vision of Loquatius that his life changed in a bad
way with the Elena Tuvaris, with the covering
up of that secret. Because before then,
you had actually been an honest reporter.
SAM: Mm-hmm. BRENNAN: That was the
beginning of you being, "Okay, I'm going
to acquiesce, "and the Herald's Tome is
going to become propaganda, "and it is gong to
be power pushing." But it was also clearly
bad for Loquatius. SAM: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Right? In that first scene where
you were talking to Laerryn, where you go, you
have the fun sniping, it's super fun,
the jokes are flying. Then you're like,
"Let's try to not "hate each other
for a month." It was so real, and I was
like, "They're locked in." I was like, "I don't
know where we end up "by the end of episode four." The fucking speech. The
speech in episode four. MARISHA: The speech!
AABRIA: Can we talk about that ding dang speech.
BRENNAN: Yeah. TRAVIS: Bro.
BRENNAN: First of all, I don't know if I
even want to know, but whether that quaver in
your voice when you say, "And to Laerryn,
the Architect Arcane, "the most beautiful
woman in the world," it makes me almost cry
every time I've watched it, of the hundred times
I've watched it. It makes me almost
want to cry. It's so profoundly beautiful. Whether that was honest
emotion or performance, it's equally
magical either way. SAM: It was
definitely honest. AABRIA: (gasps) Stop.
SAM: I am not a very good actor, as opposed to what I said earlier.
AABRIA: I love you. SAM: But yeah, I fell in love
with her during the game, it was amazing.
AABRIA: Same. BRENNAN: That's beautiful.
MARISHA: Okay, let me brag on Sam for a minute, because we had a conversation
a really long time ago. I don't know, five
to six years, and we were still in Campaign 1.
SAM: Oh. MARISHA: We were talking
about how we role play. I was kind of-- I don't even remember how it
came about in conversation, but was asking how are
you access your things, and you call back to things,
and where you were influenced from your
character's decisions. You said, "I just
always try to remember "what came before, "everything in
these formative "rungs of a ladder. "So I just always
try to think about "what has already happened,
and that's what--" Which sounds really basic when you say it out there, but I think it is
something that people-- It's easy to forget, especially when you're
in the moment. That's always stuck with me, and I think that
speech that you wrote was like a master class--
LUIS: Yeah. MARISHA: -- in just
being 100% informed from everything that
had already happened. AABRIA: Yeah.
MARISHA: Because it's easy to make shit up, and you could've made
something up about Avalir, or where it's going,
and whatever. But everything was
referenced from something that had previously happened. It was just incredible.
TRAVIS: Chicken scratch-- AABRIA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: -- on a legal pad. LOU: Yeah.
TRAVIS: That only you really could read. SAM: I have shit handwriting.
TRAVIS: Done in the shadows in a matter of minutes while you were standing
next to all of us being dumbasses on a break. MARISHA: Yeah, yeah.
TRAVIS: And you came back with that. BRENNAN: Yeah, I don't
say this lightly. From that beautiful moment
of Laerryn where you're like, "Oh my god, this is
someone who's literally "grappling in the moment with
the fact that moments ago "he made the decision to die. "Made the decision to
go down with the ship." MARISHA: Yes. BRENNAN: And is speaking
about the reason that he chose to do that. Then the moment after that, "And remember the
Market of Wonders." (laughter)
AABRIA: Yes! BRENNAN: I just need
to say, that is-- I've been lucky enough to see
a couple of them in my life, that is a perfect joke. AABRIA: Yes.
(laughter) BRENNAN: It is
a perfect joke, because to do
something that funny, that comes at a moment--
Do you know what I'm saying? This is a Campbell quote, but he literally says
something about comedy. Campbell says something
about comedy, where he says: Comedy completes the
realization that drama begins. ALL: Mm.
BRENNAN: Right? Where there's something
where it's like, oh, I have not contradicted
the depth of my sorrow, I have not contradicted the
meaningfulness of my sadness, but I have introduced
something profoundly absurd, and wonderfully silly, and I am not uncommitted
in the moment of doing it. In the moment of doing it, this is exactly what I would
do, and it's hysterical, and it also makes
it even more sad! It makes the sad even worse.
You're just like, "And remember
the Market of Wonders." (laughter) LUIS: So amazing.
BRENNAN: It's so fucking good! Oh, fuck.
AABRIA: I want to say one bragging thing. As I was talking to a bunch
of friends, and we were, they're also RPG people,
and they were like, "What's your favorite decision
you ever made in a game?" My answer, and it
remains to this day, was when we were in
our character gen, and you came in, you're like, "I kind of want to be
divorced, who wants to do it?" Best decision I ever made was being like,
"Me, me, me, pick me!" SAM and LUIS: Yeah.
AABRIA: Because this was the most fun.
SAM: It was fast and loud. AABRIA: Yeah, I had--
SAM: You were like, "Me!" AABRIA: -- no chill
about that. I was like, "I will
lunge for Laura. Don't. "Stop, let me have this."
MARISHA: Yeah. (laughs) AABRIA: I don't want to
fight you, but I will. SAM: It was great--
AABRIA: Thank you for-- SAM: -- great pair up,
a great combo. MARISHA: Well, it really
was so incredible to watch, because I think you
guys really hit on what any type of a
couple goes through, where, and especially
when you're a third party watching a couple
bicker, where you're like, "Mm."
SAM: Mm. MARISHA: "Mm, they're
both right, "and they're both wrong." (laughter)
MARISHA: Uh-oh, and this is where. TRAVIS: But that was--
He got her back. MARISHA: Yeah, yeah, and
then you're just like, wow, you can see just
these sediment layers of damage, and trauma-- SAM: Yeah.
MARISHA: -- enacted on both sides. That was incredible to watch. LOU: Hey Marisha, I've always
had a question for you. AABRIA: Ooh. That was great! LOU: How does Patia
feel about the deal her grandfather struck with the Gau Drashari? MARISHA: I can tell you've
been sitting on that one for a long time. LOU: Yeah, you know
what's funny? MARISHA: Yeah.
LOU: Me and the boys, we've been talking, and we've been wondering.
SAM: Me and the boys. LOU: What are Patia's opinions
about her grandfather and her family name? (laughter) MARISHA: Wow, yeah, you know, excellent question, Lou.
LOU: Thank you. AABRIA: (laughs) MARISHA: Man, I don't even
know where to begin with this. Ultimately, super high level, when I started
thinking about Patia, and I went to Brennan,
and I was like, "I think I want to make
her like a Kennedy." I want her to be--
TRAVIS: Oh. SAM: That's a great pull.
MARISHA: Yeah. Just someone who
is so deeply entrenched in the
history of Avalir, and the political
structure of Avalir. I've talked a little
bit about this as well that Laura was originally
supposed to play. So, she built the very bare structure of what this
character was going to be, and she was like, "Politics!" And I was like, "Fuck!" (laughter) MARISHA: Oh man, fucking,
I got to do politics? Okay. Especially because a
lot of times in D&D, or role playing, like what
you were talking about, like the orphan trope. It's easy to go
for the scrappy, work your way up from
nothing, especially when you're going from
low level to high level. But since we were starting
at such a high level, and entrenched in everything
to do with Avalir, it was just this
perfect opportunity to build someone
from the start who was super high society, incredible lineage
in the city. We talked so much. It was why it was so
wild when you were like, "What about her
parents?" in the game. And I was like. BRENNAN: It was one
of those things-- MARISHA: I don't know.
BRENNAN: Because you're never quite done world
building, right? MARISHA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: There's lots of family relationships
that we didn't explore. I don't necessarily know who
Laerryn's parents are, right? AABRIA: Yeah. In the
city, they died. (laughter) SAM: Flow charted! AABRIA: Flow charted!
(laughter) BRENNAN: Yeah, flow charted. Incredible. But with Patia,
it was just this thing where in the middle
of that episode, you so beautifully
book ended it with "Happy Replenishment,
Grandfather." It was so beautiful. Really, there was something
so heartbreaking about Patia. LUIS: Yes.
BRENNAN: Oh, I got hit with emotion just saying it. AABRIA: Ooh, a feeling!
BRENNAN: I got hit a little bit. You are all so
fucking good at this, and it's not an accident that
in the middle of the fight, Patia looks at Laerryn and
says, "You're my best friend." AABRIA: Ah.
BRENNAN: Because Patia's alone, and it's really fucking sad.
MARISHA: Yeah, yeah. BRENNAN: It just became clear
in how you were playing Patia, that we got to the middle of
episode four, and I was like, "This person was not
treated well by this." Yes, incredible wealth,
all of this power, but looking at who Imyr was. By the way, everything
I said in the beginning, Imyr was an asshole
from the jump. From the first scene,
what does he say to do? Avalir goes from
here to here, it's going to be
beneath my eyes, right? I want the city
to be underneath me. I am looking down
so that the people down there can see
my face, right? Immediately, I was like, this
is not a good guy, right? MARISHA: Yeah, yeah. BRENNAN: When we
got to that point in that final episode, I just realized
how alone Patia was, how much of herself
she had given up to the service
of this vision. Now that it was also
being away from her. And especially
as everyone was-- Zerxus had gone to CathmoΓra, Cerrit had gone
to get his kids out. Loquatius and Laerryn
were finding each other. Even Nydas fucking
had Alessander. LUIS: Yeah. BRENNAN: There was this thing
with Patia where it was just, who does she have?
LUIS: The statue. TRAVIS: Standing in
front of the fucking statue. MARISHA: That's it, yeah.
TRAVIS: Alone. BRENNAN: I just looked
at it, and I was like, the fact that
we've never talked about your character's
parents' contribution, it sort of just came
to me in the moment, and we had to communicate it
while the cameras were rolling. MARISHA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: But I was like, your parents are gone.
MARISHA: Yeah. BRENNAN: And gone
from your memory, because the most horrifying
thing of someone-- It's the hammer
and nail, right? If you have a hammer,
everything looks like a nail. The idea of you're
memory erasing everybody, you've done it to yourself,
or it's happened to you. MARISHA: It's happened.
BRENNAN: Yeah. MARISHA: What's
the likelihood? Pretty fucking high. BRENNAN: So that moment of
just your parents failed and in so failing, in some way
or another, your grandfather was like, "You're going to
succeed where they failed." MARISHA: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. TRAVIS: So I have a question. So your grandfather
was up to some shit. AABRIA: But very hot. TRAVIS: Brennan,
the Gau Drashari. BRENNAN: Yes. AABRIA and MARISHA: Yeah. TRAVIS: What was it
like (laughs) unraveling that for the
first time to all of us and the audience
and everything else? SAM: Did you consult
with Matt? TRAVIS: Yeah. BRENNAN: Nah, I fucking
winged it, dude. I said, "This is where
the Ashari come from." Of course
I consulted with Matt! LOU: This is where they come. BRENNAN: Honestly, Matt
can attest to it. I was blowing up
his phone nonstop. I was like, "Could this be
true about some Druids?" Just truly trying to check in as much as possible
and obviously the guy's doing the entirety
of planning for C3. So I was trying to make it as
short and concise as possible. But essentially, I was
like: Okay, for this-- I think it started
with the Primordials. I was like the
Primordials are sealed because I was
trying to be like I want there to be
apocalyptic stakes here, but we know our Betrayer Gods
are focused on Vasselheim. So they're not
rocking up to Avalir. Avalir's not their priority. So how do we make
there be some stakes here in this moment? I was like: Oh, there's
some Primordials sealed under the
mountain and there's another prophecy about
da, da, da, da, da, and so there was just
a sesh where I was talking to Matt and I was
like something with these old Druids that used
to be there in the mountain and Matt was like, and
I think Matt fully pitched all of the stuff
surrounding-- First of all, the name Gau Drashari is
a Matt Mercer original. MARISHA: Ooh, cool. TRAVIS: When you said it,
I was like, Gau Drashari? Like Ashari? BRENNAN: He pulled it off
the dome so fast. It was fucked up. I was
like, "What about the Druids?" He was like,
"The Gau Drashari." I went, "Fuck, that
was just right there." (laughter) BRENNAN: We watched it happen.
TRAVIS: Matt Mercer. BRENNAN: There it is.
TRAVIS and AABRIA: Matt Mercer. BRENNAN: Matt Mercer,
what the fuck? Then I had been
talking about like-- it was a perfect marriage
I feel like of-- because I was coming in with these
story beat things, right? Because for me, especially
doing short run seasons, it's like, "Okay, here's
the beats we have to hit," and then going to the
fucking creator of Exandria, this master world builder
and being like, "It would be great if
Vespin had released "the Betrayer Gods from their
prison, but there was some "other stumbling block that we
can focus on in this story. "If there's something
from these Druids "that they put in the city
that the wizards "don't give a shit
about anymore, right?" So you can even hear it
in how I'm saying it of like, "Here's a fucking
fuzzy little thing "I need for a
story thing to happen," and Matt goes like, "Okay," and just immediately
on the call spins this whole thing about
the Gau Drashari and the fact that
the Primordials, there's an analogy
to the Elemental Gates of the Ashari and
the Elemental Rifts. The idea of there's always been
this connection to elementalism through
the Primordials and other stuff like that
and then the Tree of Names being this thing that was
itself crafting a druidic protection over the world was
also a Matt Mercer original. SAM: I mean, you guys.
MARISHA: So sick. SAM: Obviously, we know that
both of you are super talented, but the way that you guys
did this together is just, it's astounding.
MARISHA: I know. SAM: It's astounding. BRENNAN: I'm doing
this to camera, but also Matt's
literally right there. MARISHA: Hi, babe.
LUIS: Hi, Matt. BRENNAN: Hi, Matt. SAM: No, it was so cool. It was also so cool for
me as a player because I've only ever really
played in one-shots or three-year-long
epic campaigns. MARISHA: Yeah. SAM: So it was cool to
come into a shortish, I guess short-medium story
and just to see how you approached it
and how you approached gently pushing and prodding us
into character creation that would serve
a shorter form of story and keeping us always
on task with: Okay, you don't have a short term and medium term
and a long term goal. You really just
have this one. This is the one that we get. We got to keep
you focused on it and it was just
so cool to watch you balance the needs of
this short form story with the demands of Matt's gigantically
huge world and that in and
of itself is a feat and you should be
congratulated for it. BRENNAN: Thanks, man.
TRAVIS: You suck, Brennan. (laughter) BRENNAN: Oh, I should've brought--
AABRIA: I can't tell if it helps if it's to clap.
LOU: Well done, Brennan.
BRENNAN: Oh shit! AABRIA: You did a good job!
BRENNAN: Shit. What an incredible joy
and I feel like so much of the fun
of stepping in here for the story was
that thing of almost like an operator of
a switchboard, right? Is you have all
this beautiful material, and you're like,
"Okay, Vespin Chloras--" All of it, I was going
back over it like-- It's like why was
Asmodeus the Betrayer God? You're like in
the lore of Exandria pre-established by Matt,
the rumor is that Vespin Chloras is at
the right hand of Asmodeus. And you read that
and you go, "Well, "if this motherfucker
released every Betrayer God, "why is he at the right hand
of just this one guy?" MARISHA: Yeah. BRENNAN: All of a sudden,
just the ideas start coming and
it's very like, "Okay," and you plug that in
there and you go, "Okay, "so Vespin does that,
but the Age of Arcanum "also was just shitty
wizards everywhere." So I don't want it to be
like, "These guys were "fucking just like, 'We never
did anything wrong and just "'Vespin Chloras ruined fucking
everything for all of us!'" It's like, "No, you're all
fucking culpable, baby." Vespin is symptomatic
of the larger age, right? You all share some
blame in this, right? Then establishing,
but why does Vespin Chloras have
the unique station that he does in the
consciousness of Exandria? Well, number one, Avalir
was so destroyed that what fucking stories
came out of it, right? As opposed to Vasselheim,
which we know does get successfully defended
by the Prime Deities and Vespin Chloras' crimes
were known in the city. So his story has a way better chance of surviving,
historically. In addition to the
deal he made with the fucking Lord of the Hells
to never be forgotten. TRAVIS: Can we also
just like-- I'm going to barf compliments
on Luis for a second. AABRIA: Yeah! TRAVIS: Because--
SAM: Wow. TRAVIS: -- my first time
playing with you. It's at our table. Surely Brennan will pick on someone else to
start the story. LUIS: That's what I thought. TRAVIS: He threw you into
the labyrinthian trench. It was churning waters
and madness and I was like, "Well,
that's one way to have "someone never come back
and play with us again." (laughter) SAM: 100%.
TRAVIS: You just smashed it. AABRIA: Yeah. TRAVIS: How did it feel
to start with the Lord of the Hells
kicking off the whole thing? LUIS: Oh my god.
AABRIA: What was that like? TRAVIS: How'd that go?
LUIS: I don't even know how-- SAM: You could have
fucked up so bad. MARISHA: Yeah!
(laughter) SAM: It was such high stakes.
TRAVIS: For sure. SAM: It was the beginning of a four-part thing.
AABRIA: That's insane. SAM: You could have
fucked up the whole thing. LUIS: I could have?
AABRIA: Like this. LUIS: I didn't?
TRAVIS: Yeah, that's like the old movie line
where you're like, "Well, that's one way to go." (laughter) SAM: But you didn't, you rose
to the challenge immensely. It was amazing. TRAVIS: I didn't want to
be in his position. AABRIA: That's crazy.
TRAVIS: Crazy. LUIS: Before we started,
I think I just went to Lou and I was like, "So we're
about to start, right?" Then you had said,
"Oh, Brennan usually "starts off with vignettes,
a spotlight "on each character"
and I was like, "Ah, okay. "Well, he's not going
to start with me." (laughter) LUIS: I had no idea
until partway through and I think you see
my face go (surprised noise), do something, and I was
like, "Oh okay, we're here." But I think I had said this
in the Twitter thing, too, that one of the things that
I had asked Brennan for was I wanted to have an
encounter with a Betrayer God. Because I didn't know
where in the Calamity this was going to take place.
SAM: What a weird request. LUIS: I know. But I wanted to see what would happen.
BRENNAN: Wish granted, baby. LUIS: Redemption paladin
to the extreme with confronting
a Betrayer God, but I thought it was
going to happen-- I didn't know it was going
to happen like this at all, in a more intimate way. I just thought I would
see a Betrayer God in the distance
eventually approaching and I would have to go
and confront them and then that would be how
my character probably dies and then it was
here's this dream, and this really intimate-- I didn't know I was
going to care for them. I didn't know what Betrayer
God we were going to meet, and I didn't know I was
going to care for them the way that that unfolded and one of the things, to talk a little bit more
about Zerxus for a moment. There's one hidden thing
that I had incorporated into the way he sees the world
in that he establishes attachments fast,
which I was surprised that it wasn't
a red flag to people because he falls in love
with Evandrin immediately and then he meets this kid and he's like,
"You're my son," immediately. So he creates
intense attachments fast and then here we are having a meeting with the Betrayer God
in this really intimate way and I was like, "Okay,
attachment created." AABRIA: That's really good. TRAVIS: But also we
couldn't see him. We didn't see any
of that happening. We were at the table
watching it when you were like,
"I'm going to redeem him." We were like
that's definitely not what I thought we would do.
LUIS: Why would you do that? TRAVIS: But I'm so glad
you're doing it. AABRIA: Shout out to
the reaction corner just being like "What?!" TRAVIS: We were losing our shit.
LOU: When you came out of the thing and we were leaving and
it was just huh, I guess we got to all meet up
to go fight Lacrytia. (laughter) LOU: That was that
like PC versus-- AABRIA: That's right, you said it.
LOU: -- actual meme moment of being like, "Hey dog,
are you going to tell me "that crazy thing that
just happened in there?" Then time just kept going on and it was like,
"I guess he's not." He's not going to tell me that he was cuddling
a Betrayer God. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Cuddling! LOU: While I was just
standing outside the door being like
"Shit, man, we got to go." (laughter) LUIS: I would still
say the instinct behind it predominantly
was paternal. But I can see how it
can become all kinds. I mean Elias and Evandrin-- Elias grown up
looks like Evandrin and so it was super fucking
confusing to be like you're so tender and
caring and also receptive of any intimacy
that comes from me. MARISHA: Oh, dude.
LUIS: Whether it's paternal or somewhat confused romantic.
SAM: It was so cool. MARISHA: It was wild. SAM: It was wild
to watch because those choices
are unexpected, unusual. At one point, I feel like
in the first game, at one point I was like, "Wait, maybe Luis
didn't hear him. "Maybe he didn't hear
Brennan that this is--" MARISHA: That this is
the Lord of Hells. SAM: Yeah, it's a red guy
with big horns. TRAVIS: Big horns. Big horns! SAM: I don't know,
maybe he's hard of hearing or something,
maybe he missed it. BRENNAN: Hey, listen. I just need to say, for real, in terms of everyone, everyone's character
was so truthful to the thing they
had said at the outset. In terms of plot, Blighting that fucking tree and pulling that devil
through the fucking portal. TRAVIS: Oh my god.
BRENNAN: As all the bad guys, thank you because,
truly, from a storytelling perspective,
I needed it. TRAVIS: Yeah, you almost licked
your lips when he did it. He was like, "I'm going
to pull him through," and I saw you go--
LUIS: Yeah. (laughter) TRAVIS: "That's all
I needed." LOU: I had trouble
with that as a person of being like, "Luis, "what the fuck
are you doing?" BRENNAN: Y'all are dead. LOU: Do whatever fucking
mental loopholes you need to jump through to get on
fucking Team Save the World. Like, what is this shit? AABRIA: I would say my
favorite part was watching, because that
second the portal, when you were being an oracle meeting with
the Lord of Hells, watching Brennan start
that super neutrally and the moment you
fed him compassion, there's nothing more fun than watching a DM dial in,
like, "Got it." Then you watch the
entire encounter change to feed you the thing
that Zerxus was already-- There's something
so beautiful about the way you
stated everything, which was never asking
anything of him or insighting or doubting it. You were feeding him
what he wanted him to tell you.
LUIS: Yeah. AABRIA: All he had to do was
bounce it back at you, and it was just the most heart-
breaking thing I've ever seen because I was like, "Oh,
I understand exactly "why a person like
Zerxus, in this moment, "would do that
and get that back," and it's just this
horrifying feedback loop. MARISHA: 100%. LUIS: Why it would
never occur to him to try to challenge that by doing, mechanically,
an insight check or didn't do
a Zone of Truth there. Not that it would've worked on the Lord of Hells.
AABRIA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. LUIS: But he tried to
do a bunch of things, Remove Curse, a bunch of
stuff that I knew would fail, but he was going
to try to do. AABRIA: Yeah.
SAM: I love that commitment. BRENNAN: But I
think it's also-- I mean, the
Lord of the Hells, (shudders) it's like the most evil,
the evilest, right? And what is more evil? In terms of being a liar,
the God of Lies, trickery is one
of his domains is like: No, I don't flimflam a person with
a steel resolve. I do what real evil
is, which is I find somebody who already
wants to believe. LUIS: There it is.
BRENNAN: You find somebody who already wants it.
LUIS: Yep. BRENNAN: You go,
"Is there something "that you'd really
like to be true?" How much does the devil even
lie in those couple scenes? Mostly you say stuff,
you're like, "The Prime Deities,
they did this to you." And homeboy's like,
"Yeah, sure, man." LUIS: Yep.
BRENNAN: You know? "Yeah, that works for me."
TRAVIS: It was so-- AABRIA: So good. BRENNAN: It's so much
him just letting you walk to where he
wants you to walk. TRAVIS: It was such
a chilling take to hear you do the devil,
going like, "I never know what I'm
going to look like to people." Just nonchalant,
chills up my back. SAM: Yeah. TRAVIS: Doesn't want to do
this, doesn't want to be here. Is over it.
SAM: I'm sorry. TRAVIS: Not conniving, not arch.
AABRIA: Yeah. SAM: Sorry about my
bad breath, guys. TRAVIS: Oh god. MARISHA: You did a lot
of terrifying things this entire campaign, but that was
the most terrifying, and I'd be lying
if I didn't say there was a part of me
that was like: I just saw something that
Brennan is capable of. AABRIA: Yeah!
TRAVIS: Yes. AABRIA: That's a
red flag, baby! LUIS: About the person?
TRAVIS: Respect earned. MARISHA: I'm glad
that Brennan is-- TRAVIS: Threat level: Elevated. MARISHA: -- an incredibly good
and moral person to his core. AABRIA: Yes.
MARISHA: Because you're very intelligent
and I'm like: Oh, he can tap into this
weird manipulation aspect that is horrifying.
AABRIA: Horrifying! BRENNAN: Of course.
LUIS: It's the Lord of lies. BRENNAN: That's the thing
is that that type of-- What's so scary
about manipulators is that they actually
have-- there's a whole article that talked about
the neurology of it. But they literally said for
that manipulative behavior, it's like high
cognitive empathy, low emotion-- emotion's
not the right word, but in other words,
you don't feel it when you hurt people, but you
know what will hurt people. TRAVIS: Right.
MARISHA: Yes. BRENNAN: Those type of people
have profound understanding, The idea of, "No, no,
I really get you "and I know what
I need to say to." There was so much stuff we
didn't have time to get to, even in all the hours
of that long finale. But I spent a lot of
time thinking about the Lord of the Hells and
what he thought about stuff. SAM: Oh yeah. BRENNAN: There was a thing
of if it ever had been a longer conversation
after his turning on you of you being like, "What was
a lie and what was the truth?" Very little that
he said was a lie. There were some
lies in there, but when he showed up
to you wounded, that's the manipulation, of him showing up
injured because-- and I remember the line I had
for him was going to be, "Yeah, I've appeared
to you injured "because you guys love it
when people are hurting." LUIS: Well, a savior
needs somebody to save. BRENNAN: You know, "You love
it when people hurt, "and if I had shown up
to you in my full power, "you would've hated me "because you hate when
things stand tall." SAM and AABRIA: Ooh!
BRENNAN: And just really having that
thing of him being like, "No, you guys are the ones
who are fucked up." He's wrong and evil, but it was like finding what
he hates about mortals was very fun, and
if I scared anyone-- LUIS and BRENNAN: Good.
AABRIA: Dude, the fact that you did that with like--
you dropped affectation. Your voices and mannerisms
are great for NPCs. The fact that you played
the Lord of the Hells and dropped all of
that, I was like, "That's just
Brennan talking." MARISHA: Brennan, I know,
it fucks with your head. AABRIA: Yeah.
LUIS: I love it, I loved it. It was so fun. MARISHA: We've been talking
for a little bit and as everyone can see, our mic packs are
starting to all, the batteries are
starting to eat it. LUIS: Did mine die? MARISHA: A few more questions
before we wrap it up. But I do desperately
want to know. Brennan, did you have
any contingency plans, should the end of the world
not come about as expected. BRENNAN: I had <i>so many</i>
contingency plans! There was a whole plot about the Septarion
coming after you guys. (surprised noises) TRAVIS: The wizards-- AABRIA: You could've had so
many guys to kill! BRENNAN: We only
had four episodes so there was
a ton of planning. I had all-- People talk about,
in terms of rails, there were a bunch
of railroads you guys could've gone on. Those rails just we
won't ever get to. But in a world where you guys
see shit starting to go wrong, and not even all of you,
but just one of you, goes to the Septarion
or someone goes and says, "Hey, we should alert
da, da, da, da, other thing." Or especially in a case where
you all go to the Septarion and say something wrong
is happening here, and try to get the
city on your side. They were going to declare
you guys fugitives. There was going
to be a whole thing of them coming after you. TRAVIS: I thought about
it for a second because there was someone that the
Senior Sightwarden reports to, and I was like, "Nah, if I don't
trust these people, "I certainly don't trust
that list of people." AABRIA: You didn't trust us?
TRAVIS: Somebody the Wise, Somebody the Beard,
somebody the-- AABRIA: "Somebody the Beard." BRENNAN: In terms of
the various contingencies, yeah, there were a ton. In terms of you guys
averting the Calamity, those contingencies
are the most boring ones. In the ones where you
don't blight the tree, or you don't pull the
Lord of the Hells in. Then it's like-- Yeah, Vespin rolls up
and the Taxmen go evil, and then it's
a fight at the tree. Or if you don't pull the
Lord of the Hells through, then only Vespin
can come through, but he pulls in some devils
and they kill Zerxus. Most of the contingencies for "You guys are less responsible
for the Calamity," is brute force,
something comes in, they use the artifacts
from Orwyn's office. They use the blood they
got from you, da, da, da. Some other thing happens. You guys manage to somehow
jury-rig the Helm You guys manage to somehow
jury-rig the Helm and stop the city, but then
the sun rises and you turn. So there's all this
stuff, right. Weirdly, the
contingencies for that were some of
the most simple ones. Other contingencies-- So there were a
bunch of contingencies also for that
final combat, right, that was very interesting. For example,
there were a bunch of-- You guys holding the Taxmen in that first round at
the door changed a lot, that was huge. That last battle, everyone
was so fucking good. The inspiration going
to Cerrit. We got to talk about that. Wait a minute, yeah, the
last thing I'll say is. Actually, the contingency
I had for Laerryn. There was that
moment at the end with Vespin and the insane
Nat 20 that got him down. I actually had contingencies
for what happened if Laerryn died. ALL: Ooh! BRENNAN: Yeah, I was
totally prepared for Laerryn to go down in
that last final flight. Which was essentially that
someone was going to have to make a unreal,
impossible DC arcana check to make a unreal,
impossible DC arcana check with disadvantage. SAM: To figure out her work. BRENNAN: To try to complete
the last couple. That probably would've
been Loquatius, which would've
been very cinematic. AABRIA: Oh, that would've
been so good! I should've died, I'm sorry. SAM: You should have died.
AABRIA: My bad. (laughter) SAM: Give me my moment.
BRENNAN: Yeah, 100%. TRAVIS: (rewinding noises)
AABRIA: Yeah, take it back! BRENNAN: Wait, that final
was-- wait, hold on. That final roll,
that final roll. TRAVIS: The 31.
BRENNAN: The 31. TRAVIS: They wouldn't
have been done without the inspiration,
without the buff. I mean. MARISHA: That's right.
We were all just throwing everything we had to
just get Cerrit it out. AABRIA: Oh my goodness. TRAVIS: I mean,
it was just so good. At least just from my chair, because he had done all
the things he needed to do for his kids. He had atoned in that way,
let all that stuff go, focused on the thing,
killed the thing, but it wasn't done. Like, could he
get out and leave? It only would've happened. It only could've happened
because of the Ring of Brass. He couldn't do it by himself. So that was just
so fucking perfect. SAM: Yeah, one little
spark of hope. TRAVIS: One of
those things where it takes the whole table. AABRIA: It mattered
that we were friends. LUIS: That's that
wasn't in the-- BRENNAN: Without that eight?
TRAVIS: Yep. SAM: For sure.
BRENNAN: Yeah, without that eight, there's
no world where that. TRAVIS: Nope.
SAM: Impossible. TRAVIS: He goes down
with everybody else. MARISHA: I mean,
realistically, too, we still don't
really have any idea. Like, did Cerrit make
it back to his kids? Where are kids?
BRENNAN: Gwessar. That's all he knows.
MARISHA: Gwessar, yeah. BRENNAN: I mean, he is the
world's greatest detective. But--
MARISHA: Sure. TRAVIS: You sent the
library to his daughter who's at the university
of arcade wizard-- Like, you know-- MARISHA: Travis,
when you texted me, you texted me
and you were like, "What did you just
do to my daughter?" TRAVIS: Just for a moment
there, you were like, "And I send it to--" because I hadn't picked up
on what you had done. I didn't know that
the little miniature was the culmination of
knowledge of Avalir that you sent it to her. I was like, "This is bitch is
fucking with my daughter! "There's no limit
to her evil!" Wait, it's way, way
better than that. MARISHA: But I mean, to be
fair, like, I don't know, because in part of my
inspiration for Patia was like what if we hadn't lost
the library of Alexandria? What if we had a record
of all of that and all of this knowledge
that hadn't been lost? I've asked Matt
since then as well. I'm like, "Where's my orb? "Is the orb still
around, where is it?" BRENNAN: There is something
that me and Aabria are the only-- at the time of this moment, the only people in the world
who have the experience of which is that camera stops rolling, and suddenly canon leaves you.
AABRIA: Yeah! BRENNAN: I immediately
wanted to run and find Matt and be like,
"Is the orb okay?" (laughter) BRENNAN: I am not-- I don't
have any say anymore. It goes back to you now. Is it fine? The little
library, where is it at? AABRIA: You'll get the moment,
Brennan, at some point, something will pop up in C3, and you'll just be
there and be like, "(tearily) It happened
and it mattered." LUIS: It happened
and it mattered! AABRIA: (tearfully)
Why do we tell stories? MARISHA: I saw
this fan theory, that is 100%
just a fan theory, but I kind of like it. Did you see those one?
That like-- Once again:
all fan, not canon. But that the library going to the daughter of a master detective, and then getting all of
this library information was the origin of
the Cobalt Reserve. This was like--
TRAVIS: That harbors knowledge. MARISHA: Yes, that harbors knowledge.
SAM: It's too perfect! MARISHA: I know! TRAVIS: Keeps an eye on
other powerful content-- MARISHA: Structures and-- TRAVIS: Neutral, but-- SAM: If that ends up
being true, we came up with that idea. (laughter) SAM: Fans did not do it.
AABRIA: That was the plan. Always.
BRENNAN: No, I love that. If ever there
was a world where I would jump-- There was someone else
running something later in the Calamity,
be coming back and playing either Kir
or Maya as an adult, would be so fucking-- AABRIA: Someone write
that down. BRENNAN: Adult Kir,
in my mind, is jacked. Just fucking huge,
dude, fucking huge, man. TRAVIS: Kir, is that you? (deeply) "Yeah, I found
protein shakes." (laughter) LOU: Talon 2, now
I'm Talon fucking 6. TRAVIS: Yeah.
SAM: A lot of acne. AABRIA: Yeah, just like that. BRENNAN: There was something
we were talking about in terms of how everyone
here bookended everything, everything got
bookended so well. The 31 investigation
for Vespin, the 31 investigation to
get back to your family. LUIS: That's crazy.
BRENNAN: So fucking good. Also, I wanted to talk about
two things really quick that were just important
to me to do as a DM, and also as a storyteller for the
kinds of stories we tell. In a short story,
it's always-- There are certain things that
come through that feel like, "Because the story said this, "the story is saying
this is always true." Right? And the story
is making a claim about how the world works. So it was something in the terms of the
bookending of it all, it was really
significant to me that Laerryn used her
Leywright to save Exandria. MARISHA: Yeah! BRENNAN: And that
Zerxus used his cleansing redemption power to get Vespin
back for a moment. Because I didn't want
the story to say, "Science is bad
and innovation is bad." MARISHA and BRENNAN: And
compassion is bad. BRENNAN: It was like,
I wanted the story to be say something
more nuanced of like, it was bad in, or "bad." It didn't work in this
instance for these reasons. It didn't work in this
instance for these reasons. Rather than making
this big thing. The fact that
both of you guys after blighting the tree, after pulling the
Lord of the Hells through, got to say,
"Here is a chance to show "what I mean by this,"
was very cool. Just like, ah, I loved it. SAM: Yeah, that was great. MARISHA: So much poetry. SAM: Speaking of poetry,
should we end on the burning question
that was submitted by-- LOU: You know, why people
have been watching? SAM: Literally.
AABRIA: The entire time. MARISHA: 100%. TRAVIS: The thing we've
texted about ourselves. MARISHA: Yeah. Fan favorite, standout
NPC, stole the show. Brennan, is Bolo okay? What happened to
Bolo from Aeor? AABRIA: I don't like
her. I don't like her. BRENNAN: You know, sometimes
a PC will gift you with an NPC. (laughter) BRENNAN: Sometimes a PC will
gift another PC with an NPC. Sometimes Aabria will say,
"Did you have a plus one?" And Sam will go, "That absolutely makes sense."
SAM: Sure. BRENNAN: Then what
happens is-- TRAVIS: I said that'd
be no problem. (laughter) BRENNAN: Then what
happens is that PC will name that NPC. Sometimes, they'll just
reach down into the top hat and see if
a rabbit comes out, and a rabbit
doesn't come out. What comes out is Bolo. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Named Bolo. Then what you get to do
is conscript Matt Mercer into doing Slavic accents
for any Aeorians. AABRIA: Yes!
(laughter) SAM: From now on. BRENNAN: I don't know
why in that moment, but we were improvising
it and there you go. And that's Bolo. Bolo's dead. AABRIA: Yes! Yes, I love you, thank you!
TRAVIS: No! ALL: No!
AABRIA: Yes! Cut the feed! Yes! BRENNAN: Or! Or! SAM: But not the
way you think. BRENNAN: Or not the
way you think. She dies 12 hours later because she gets
hit by a wagon. LUIS: Wow.
AABRIA: Yeah! BRENNAN: No, no, no, no, no. TRAVIS: She literally
made it out and then-- BRENNAN: She teleports--
LOU: Which one is it? BRENNAN: Which one is it? No. Or Bolo is an incredibly
dangerous Aeorian spy who goes into Avalir
during the chaos and finds a necessary
piece of arcanotech for Aeor's later work with all the shady things
that we know that they were working on. AABRIA: Absolutely,
the threshold crests. BRENNAN: Threshold crest,
Godhammer. You know, anything, right? Or there's also
a world where maybe Bolo was a polymorphed dragon
and she just flew away. (laughter)
MARISHA: What! TRAVIS: What?! MARISHA: Who was this bitch? BRENNAN: (as Bolo) She is Bolo
and she want to be a reporter. Eventually. AABRIA: "This your house?" Is
the most important sentence. BRENNAN: This your house? AABRIA: Not a question, not
a statement, just words. LOU: She can't be
a polymorphed dragon. BRENNAN: Why not?
LOU: She couldn't be. BRENNAN: Why not?
LOU: She doesn't know how to-- She doesn't know how to get
a beer from a hodmedod. BRENNAN: How many beers are
dragons out here grabbing?! LOU: I don't know. Hundreds? BRENNAN: Dragons just
roll up to the bar. "Excuse me, might I
have a pint of ale?" No! Everything, if
you actually think about it, the dragon theory
makes a lot of sense. There's a part of it that
makes a lot of sense, if you really start
to think about it. You know what I'm saying? Because she doesn't
know how to get drinks. She wants to be
a reporter eventually. Those are all the things
we know about Bolo. SAM: That's pretty much it.
AABRIA: Cerritos Groupon! SAM: She has an accent...
AABRIA: Was she a dragon?! LOU: Yeah, didn't
Cerritos Groupon make an insight check
on Bolo? Didn't you follow her
to the drinks? TRAVIS: I think
I was so stunned by Bolo's inherent beauty
and strange personality that I didn't use my one feat that would've seen any
illusions present. (laughter) AABRIA: Was a dragon. MARISHA: Sam, you were
fucking a dragon. That's what this means. AABRIA: I will happily allow
that. You're fucking a dragon? We can put that on the wall. BRENNAN: These draconic sorcerers
have to come from somewhere, you know what I mean?
At the end of the day. SAM: That's how the
dragonborn race was born. BRENNAN: Yeah, there you go.
AABRIA: Oh god! Bleh! BRENNAN: We remember back
our progenitor, Bolo. (laughter) LOU: Jesus.
AABRIA: Oh my god. LUIS: Oh my god. (laughter) MARISHA: Well--
(laughter) BRENNAN: Dragon fucking!
Thanks, folks. MARISHA: Yeah,
long live Bolo. AABRIA: No.
MARISHA: Long may she reign. Thank you guys so much
for doing this. This was truly
the most special. I also want to give
a quick shout out to our production crew: Producer Kyle, who
spear-headed this one. TRAVIS: Kyle Shire!
(cheering) MARISHA: There were so many
amazing little points of genius that I hope people
have pointed out on from everything
from the graphics. AABRIA: The overlay, oh my god.
MARISHA: The overlay. Yeah, I saw a few
people notice it. LOU: Wild detail. MARISHA: Yeah, over time, the
overlay was slowly degrading and cracking and
little easter eggs, all the incredible art
that we had done across the board,
wanted to shout out from everyone from
top to bottom, it really felt
like everyone was on their A-game, you know? Not just the people
who are sitting here in front of the camera, but all the people behind
the camera as well. So it was
absolutely incredible. Yeah, we could say
this is the end, but is it? AABRIA: Yeah, we died. TRAVIS: It doesn't
really feel-- BRENNAN: It's not--
TRAVIS: -- like we're done. BRENNAN: It's not, I
don't think it's the end because again,
hope returns, right? TRAVIS: Did Patia's parents
know the Matron of Ravens? I have so many
other questions. BRENNAN: The Calamity is here.
TRAVIS: There's so much more to explore. BRENNAN: The Calamity is
not here forever. MARISHA: No.
AABRIA: So we all live through it? We're fine?
LOU: Yeah, is that-- BRENNAN: Okay, so five
of you are fucking dead. And that's what the dice said.
(laughter) LOU: Bolo is alive. BRENNAN: Bolo is 100% alive, unless... She was dead the whole time.
She's undead! MARISHA: Fucking necromancers,
always so dramatic. AABRIA: So dramatic. MARISHA: Thank you
guys so much. Thank you to everyone
watching at home. We love you, and
is it Thursday yet? (cheering)
I'm a simple man. I see Lou Wilson. I up vote.
And Aabria! Sheβs in the family too
I'm watching it right now!
Also, hello new friends! I'm a long-time Critical Role fan who is finally branching out. I started watching D20 (Misfits, Fantasy High 1) a little bit before Calamity came out, but Calamity definitely drove home how much I LOVE Brennan as DM and Lou as a player! OBSESSED. So now I'm burning my way through the rest of the D20 back catalog, and I'm super glad to find this subreddit and read all your two-year-old threads. Thanks for being a cool community!
Is Aabria's shirt a reference to the horses from The Seven?
This was genuinely delightful and they all have such good chemistry for a new party / limited series. Lou and Luisβ βtherapy sessionβ had my crying laughing.
One of my favorite moments of the entire 20-hour campaign was when Nydasβ right-hand man stabs him in the back and Brennan drops the chilling line about how βThere will ALWAYS be more people.β
Travis turns to Aabria and says, βYo, what the fuck is wrong with Brennan?β
Travis Willingham need to show up on a side quest soon I love the his energy and how he just loved the game
I now want to see Sam and Travis in next season after Coffin Run. Hell, i'll be happy if Laura is in there too. A party that has Emily, Sam, and Laura in it would be chaotic and i would love to see it.
Travis's horror at their side convos is so, so funny.