probably-a-fae

[probably-a-fae]

"The mountains and peaks shaped by the loving hands of the All-Hammer. What a world he made…"

Brennan said this story was meant to be a love letter to Matt and it truly feels like it. Here is my little ode to Exandria and its maker.

10 years of Critical Role, 10 years of this story, shaped by many loving hands. What a journey it all is -- and I'm so happy to be a small part of it to this day!

Also Divergence truly destroyed me. The hope, the struggle, the power of the many in the face of evil. The meaning in creation, creativity, and hard work... a a a aa

[probably-a-fae]

Crafter of worlds, forger of a new dawn

[probably-a-fae]

Headcannoning that in the outskirts of Stilben, a fine dwarven made stone gate that sits in an old, overgrown farmer's field, after centuries of use and wear, finally toppled to the ground on the day when the Gods broke the divine gate to finally descend and live as mortals.

[probably-a-fae]

The Fool, upright: new beginnings, blind faith and hope for a better future...

This scene was just breathtaking and the visual immediately came to me so clearly. Together with the meaning, it was meant to be!

[probably-a-fae]

The progression of our characters in Divergence has just been so fun to watch.

Like episode 1, they were largely victims of their circumstances. They did their best to act in ways they could, but it takes everything to just scrape by.

Episode 2 they make it to Torm's Hill and actually start finding ways to act themselves. Nia helping heal, Garden finding food and building the wall. Then their ability to act is put to the test when the soldiers show up. They choose to fight and they win. Circumstances no longer push them around, they have the power to cause change.

Now we get to Episode 3. Our characters are still squishy, but are gaining mastery over their fates. Their choices granted them classes and wisdom, and they decide to take what they have to push forward. Moving not because they need to survive, but because they want to. They want to reunite Nia, who saved many of them, with her sister. Then, as a reward for their efforts, they are given new tools, vestiges and items, and a powerful connection with Nia to her sister and God.

Like, the journey of their abilities to act and to change the world shows some fantastic growth. I can't help but feel inspired and wondering about how the show's themes of hope apply to the character's ability to act and cause change.

At first hope is fragile, all they can do is act to survive. Then hope begins to be kindled and is tested in a fight, and our efforts are rewarded with a gathering of strength. Now with a hope burning in us, we push forward and are able to gather tools and connections to further our goals. Like, Hope is something hard to have at first, but the more work you do, the more you act, the more you are able to gain things to help you. A positive feedback loop.

[probably-a-fae]

Brennan justifying his love of almond snacks by giving his PCs healing potion nuts.

[probably-a-fae]

Oh... Was Nia's sister... a mortal life of the Moonweaver?

[probably-a-fae]

You know. Last episode BLeeM said something along the lines of "we gave a bunch of 1/8 cr NPCs a vestage of Divergence!"

To which I was like. A bunch? You only gave one of them a vestage.

Seems like Brennan knew he was gonna give out a bunch more.

[probably-a-fae]

"She knows Starmian made the rain."

aka I have instantly become obsessed with EXU Divergence.

[probably-a-fae]

I'm wondering if Garen's class is going to relate to like ancestors or spirits somehow? Twice he has had a happy vision of other dwarves in the past, then at the tail end of the vision heard voices that are more distressed. I wonder if he's hearing the regrets of spirits or is connecting to his ancestors somehow? Like depending how they flavor it that could mean many different classes or subclasses... Hmm.

Weirdly vibing with some sort of stone druid for him? Somehow hearing the voices in the stone? The craft of others carrying lingering bits of their souls?

[probably-a-fae]

"Are you afraid?"

[probably-a-fae]

'EXU: Divergence' is the Series I Didn't Know I Needed Right Now

I’ve now watched ‘Exandria Unlimited: Divergence’ fully through twice, plus the cooldown multiple times, and from the beginning to the end of the first episode it hit me like a sledgehammer. It's probably the most brutal EXU to date, and it is also somehow the most uplifting.

It's such a departure from the other Calamity-era EXU series in the best possible way, and I wish we could have an entire longform campaign with this cast in this time and place.

Spoilers for episode 1 of EXU: Divergence below the cut.

‘Calamity’ was a tragedy in the most classic sense: powerful people at the height of their strength who damn the world in their hubris. ‘Downfall’ was also a tragedy in a different way, a family of gods coming together briefly to save themselves, but at what cost?

But ‘Divergence’ is a story about ordinary people. As the gods play their family games, and the powerful vie for even more power than they could ever use, and hoard wealth and resources beyond what they would ever need, these are just five people trying to get enough food and water and rest. Trying to survive in a world that acts first as an oppressive prison and then in indifferent chaos as the gods fight above them.

They're not even Level 1 adventurers. These are level 0 nobodies. NPC stat blocks. They don’t have classes; they have jobs. And in each of these people, we see the true heart of what good people can do in desperate and damning times.

I want to talk about all these characters, because I love them so much. I love the story they and their rolls are telling.

Nia isn’t a cleric with magical healing; she’s a nurse with some herbs and bandages and a little knowledge. Hell, in a world where misery is endlessly and pointlessly perpetuated by the games of the powerful, she’s not even a healer. She’s a repairer of bodies. She keeps feeding them back as grist in the mill, because what else can she do?

She can hope. She can believe that change is coming. But more than believing in it, she can act toward it. She can enact tiny acts of rebellion and kindness. Because maybe she is just repairing bodies, but she will desperately overreach and overplay her hand to try to buy them a little more time, a little more comfort, a little more light in the darkness.

She's young and naive, but her hope is still chosen at every terrible moment. Even when she falls into exhaustion, having prayed over her sister's locket and received nothing in return, Nia still chooses to act. She chooses to get up and, if water isn't coming to her, to go looking for it instead. She is doing better than the others, even if she's not doing well. And so she goes. She looks. She sees a friend die, wishing with his dying breath to see the rain.

And it rains. Not, to her mind, because a god walks across the world before her. Even if she sees the god, she's not looking there. She knows that Starmian made the rain. She sees the acts of people good and bad. She sees the power in hope.

Garen isn’t a fighter or a druid; he’s a stonemason with one arm and a hammer. And he’s a man who has spent so long under the boot of oppression, so long being ground down into nothing that he’s learned never to hope except when exhaustion takes him so fully that he forgets not to hope. That's when he can still see the faces of his family, instead of the prison he's lived in for so long he built most of it.

He is a character we meet in complete despair, but he's also the first to move past it. As soon as the opportunity for action arises, as soon as there are people in need, Garen takes his old and tired body and makes it work for people he’s never met, simply because an injustice is being done to them. Because he’s been waiting for longer than he can remember to stand back up after being beaten down. When he brings his hammer down on a guard’s head, when he breaks through a wall to save a bunch of dragonborn he’s never met, when he insists that they will not leave children to die. This is a man remembering what it is to stand up.

He wants to save everyone, well beyond what he's currently capable of, because once hope is rekindled he clings to it. He believes firmly that if people who can help others don’t do so, then what is the point?

Fiedra isn’t a rogue; she’s a gang leader with the ability to talk her way out of trouble. She also isn’t nearly the altruist that Garen and Nia are. She acts out of self-interest because that was how she’s survived as long as she has. She has a roach tattooed on her arm. She is a survivor, someone who can worm her way into a position of slight privilege even in the worst prison imaginable. And when she’s starting to feel the effects of exhaustion from their march north, she sneaks a meal from their dwindling food stocks that no one else gets. Because that is what a survivor does, even if it hurts others.

But she's also not so simple. She only eats the cheese after she checks to make sure her friend isn’t becoming exhausted as well. Because as much as she knows how dangerous it is, Fiedra cares. She shows it again and again in her interactions with Crokas, how she drops everything including her position of privilege and relative comfort in the prison to try to break him free.

Crokas is her family; her gang was her community, and she cared for them fiercely. And now all she has is Crokas (because the dice tell an amazing story, and those terrible rolls were incredible for her character development). So she looks after him. She jumps to his defense when it’s revealed that his breath weapon doesn’t work. She talks him up, tells everyone how great he is, explains things to him when he doesn't understand.

She’s not to the point where she’s capable of expanding that compassion out beyond the two of them (“The best I can do, kid” was a hell of a line). But she’s making steps in that direction. She survived a hellish march with these people. When she and Crokas found Starmian’s body she was the one who immediately asked where Nia and Erro were. Sometimes, when the shit hits the fan, all you can do is care for yourself and those you love. Learning to care for more than that tiny sphere is part of part of reclaiming the best of one’s personhood in the worst of times, and part of finally building a future instead of just surviving now.

Crokas isn’t a barbarian; he’s a massive bodyguard in way over his head. He has no idea what’s going on most of the time. He has an intelligence stat of 6, and he’s stuck in a world that keeps upending itself on him. Maybe he understood how life worked in a city with his gang and with Fiedra guiding him. Even in Rybad Kol, the worst prison imaginable, a man as massive and imposing as Crokas probably did all right, especially with Fiedra talking the Roaches’ way into running the Slop.

And then every dragonborn in the prison was taken to be carted off to die for a goddess he’d never heard of, purely because they were dragonborn. He can barely even understand that he’s part of a singled-out minority group, and certainly can't grasp the machinations of gods.

But he can see that, in the cart with him, there are children. And when they escape he might not understand how this happened. But he understands that this long march toward some hope for a future is currently killing them. They don't have food or water. Their feet are damaged for the rest of their lives by this endless walk north. It is SO BAD.

But he notices when those children start to become exhausted, so he walks like a monitor lizard with them riding on his back.

Because that's what strength is for.

Not to rule. Not to hurt. To lift up those who can’t stand, and carry them. Crokas may not understand what’s going on, but he understands what needs to be done, and what he can do. And the fact that he starts carrying those children, taking penalties against his constitution saving throws at the end of every bad day on the road, right after Fiedra ate that cheese in secret? The look on her face says it all.

Erro is not a ranger or a druid; he's a mapmaker who has survived for far too many years seeing far too many horrors. He is clearly almost as old as Garen, and is far more stubbornly jaded. Their lives have both been destroyed, but all of Erro’s travels, everything he’s done has ground him down to basic survival. He is practical, but still not cruel. Liam said in the cooldown that he’s been on a teeter-totter between simply surviving to live another day, and the thought he could even hope for a better world.

He’s not there yet. He’s more like Fiedra in his fatalism, even if he's not as openly cynical. And yet he still follows Nia when she goes out with Starmian to find water. He still looks after her, just like Fiedra looks after Crokas. And like Fiedra, he sees in Nia the hope he tries to smother in himself. Starmian dies, as Erro knew he would, because he’s seen dozens of Starmians.

But then the rains come. The gods give and take and take and take and give and take. The world is a cruel place, but he still watches a younger, more hopeful person fall to her knees with the rain in her hands as she cries in thanks.

I am immediately and completely enamored with these ordinary people living through extraordinary times. I can’t wait to see what becomes of them, how the world shapes them and breaks them and how they might lift one another and a community up out of the rubble.

I didn’t know how much I needed this right now. Because it’s SO BAD, but the very first word in the very first episode is hope. And more than hope, these people are embodying acting in tiny ways to build a better future. I know that myself and a lot of people have been watching the enshittification of the world around us and feel like ants under the feet of uncaring, cruel tyrants and gods. Like their games always lead to suffering, and they either don’t care or actively enjoy that part of it. And it's so easy to give in to despair, to become convinced that there is absolutely nothing that can be done.

But we are all level 0 ordinary people too. And we can still hope. We can still take acts of defiance and kindness, great and small. We can stand up again when we’re knocked down, even when it hurts. We can help those we love to live day to day, even while we can take what steps we can to build and lift up a larger community. We can live through hell, because even in that hell there will be moments of exquisite beauty and joy.

Because maybe all of us can find the rain.

[probably-a-fae]

kord: you will need to stand and lift up those who cannot lift themselves. our time of doing so is at an end.

crokas:

[probably-a-fae]

Experimental exu divergence art because I felt like switching it up

Can’t decide if I like it and don’t have enough brain cells to figure it out so I’m just gonna post it

Brennan hurt my feelings ):

[probably-a-fae]

I think what is frustrating me about all the talk about the gods place in Exandria is that while it can be good to discuss the gods and their relationship to people- exploring and even criticizing them- the thought line eventually ends at "should the gods die," every time. But the gods dying doesn't give people more freedom to make choices where to put their faith, it in fact lessens the number of choices people can make, it forces people into a box. Removing choices sounds exactly like the opposite of freedom to me.

Faith isn't just one defined thing. It's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To some it is hope and inspiration in some higher thing, to others it's community or connection to loved ones, others its the belief in the goodness of humanity, apathy, annoyance, survival, and to others faith is something to despise. Now Ludinous had one experience with faith- a bad one- and consequently decided that all other experiences with faith were invalid and the gods should die. To refuse that other people can have nuanced or opposite experiences from you and that their experiences are just as valid, are the actions of a child upset that things don't fit neatly into their boxes.

[probably-a-fae]

I already know I’m gonna be in the minority who thinks it makes sense that the gods would take back their gifts given to their followers if they refuse to fight Predathos.

This is not earth. It’s a world with actual gods and being a follower is a willing contract. This willingness goes both ways. If, in a life or death situation, a follower doesn’t get the result they want and decide to stop worshipping their god, why can’t the gods do the same if their followers just watch them die?

The followers won’t drop dead or whatever, the gifts like healing or holy attacks won’t be available to them anymore. They’ll be just like all the people who don’t have them anyway.

And the ‘faith’ part does make sense. It’s like how at the end of a movie, a character holds out their hand and asks “do you trust me?”. And you either do or you don’t. The story is ending. There’s no time for logical arguments and you’ve already gone on a journey with this person to know them. This question isn’t coming from some void of mindless, baseless, thoughtless trust. It’s a question asking for faith built on something.

So, if the gods are asking for trust from their followers? Then yeah. After all, majority probably don’t even know what’s happening or what that streak of red breaking the sky is. Can’t even see it perhaps. Just know that something happened, and now the gods are asking for trust that this is a Bad Thing and must be fought. Without delay, without question. Time’s running out.

[probably-a-fae]

Honestly? The gods in Exandria are so fascinating, especially after what happened in the most recent episode. That was probably the first time we've had a proper interaction aside from surface-level coin flips and Pike's resurrection. And of course, because the pantheon is one of the most intriguing aspects to me of Exandria's worldbuilding, it got me thinking.

Ludinus sought to humanise the gods. To prove them as equal to (or even less than) mortals like him. Essentially, he saw their morality, their love, their infighting and their will to live - and he saw mortals. The same mortals that he oh so enjoys subjugating. That is something that I think is vastly different from how I see it.

I'm definitely not qualified enough to speculate on the PCs and their individual views of the matter, so I'm speaking purely from my own personal standpoint. I agree that the Exandrian gods are more like mortals than they want to admit. And like Ludinus, I see their morality, their love, their infighting, and their will to live too. But where characters like him see that as weakness, and I see that as strength.

If the gods (or at least, the Prime Deities) could see the mortals for all the evil and good they were capable of and choose to defend them; then it stands to reason that one could apply that logic to the gods too. The gods sought to survive, to live and love, and hurt each other in all the same ways we do. So? Let them. Let them fight for their survival. Let them reach out to their creations for help in the same way that the mortals reach out to their creators.

The Ruby Vanguard sees these flawed deities as not worthy of their love - but their flaws make them even more worthy of defending.