#All Minds Burn

[sparring-spirals]

Bell's Hells: man we really.need more allies

Ashton, Imogen, the very next episode: more allies you say? No other conditions? Watch this.

[topaz-mutiny]

Some poor fish in the Shattered Teeth is going to get FUCKED by that drugged brownie that got thrown overboard.

[andi-o-geyser]

Matt: Describes All Minds Burn, a blob of mucus, pus, and organic matter full of bones of the people it's absorbed with a desire to expand and meet more minds, which can produce seeds and wants an egg of itself planted on the moon, and continues to have the phrase mentioned: "It's not a threat. Yet."

Me: Oh that's chekov's hive mind cult. Yup. Hive mind cult that's going to try to consume and grow and take over the world. Yeah yeah yeah.

[witheredbloom]

i am torn between "PUT THE ALL MINDS BURN ON THE MOON I WANNA SEE WHAT IT'LL DO" and "DO NOT PUT THE ALL MINDS BURN ON THE MOON YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT'LL DO"

[flowersforvax]

....ngl becoming part of All Minds Burn after your death sounds nicer - or at least more interesting -than becoming one of a million pearls at Saerenrae's beach or doing eternal manual labor in Pelor's fruit garden

[dadrielle]

So it very much mechanically seems like All Minds Burn is an Elder Brain, reskinned in a way not dissimilar to Imogen's subclass. And All Minds Burn doesn't know where it comes from, and there are ecosystems on Ruidus, and the Reilorans are psychic, possibly also a little bit linked up...and AMB sees Ruidus and is keen to go there. I am wondering if maybe when the lost continent was turned into Ruidus, Predathos supplanted the place in the Ruidian ecosystem that something like AMB is meant to hold. I wonder if some of the parts of the Reilorans that we assume are from Predathos' aberration were there all along, and Predathos just adapted them? It seems very very campaign 3 to me for the fucked up and weird thing to not be wrong because of its fucked up weirdness but because its being used by something else.

Whatever the case I am INTERESTED.

[faeruy]

All Minds Burn is just Matt Mercer going "What if the core of Burning Man was an eldritch horror?"

[masterqwertster]

I can't be the only one thinking that All Minds Burn is some sort of spin-off of the mind flayer Elder Brain, right?

Like, that was the whole vibe I got off of it. More fungal in nature, surely, but "the hivemind hub that connects a community" is what both of them are.

I feel like it's not even entirely implausible that All Minds Burn is some sort of experiment to either alter an Elder Brain, or artificially replicate one. Possibly as an attempt to allow more than just mind flayers to become part of the hivemind consciousness. It would definitely fit with it not knowing where it came from if a lab is involved. And its desire to just collect more people, expand its community.

So yeah.

[pocketgalaxies]

[leafmebeeplease]

all i can see when matt was describing all-minds-burn is the nasty machine from cloudy with a chance of meatballs

[quipxotic]

I asked this in the tags of one of my posts, but I'll asked it for the Tumblr CR fandom in general:

What is your favorite Critical Role D-list NPC who you may be the biggest fan of in the fandom and why?

Mine, as I said in the post, is All-Minds-Burn. To quote Marge Simpson:

I just love that funky fungus. I want to know everything about it, its whole history. (I also want to know everything about Justi Pross which, while related, seems like a bit of NPC double-dipping on my own question, so I'll refrain.) Is it what it seems like on the surface (so to speak)? Is it just here to explore life, share good times, and kick the Paragon's Call's ass or is it actually a force for evil that will puppet people around like very chill psychic zombies one day? I want to know!

How about you? What's your favorite D-list NPC?

[sparring-spirals]

incredible plot twists happening as of episode 70

Image id in alt text and under the cut below

[Image description: An edited version of the "Moon's Haunted" tweet. It now says

Bell's Hells: oh hey u guys are back safe

Imogen and Ashton: Moon's not haunted enough

Bell's Hells: what?

Imogen and Ashton: *holding the seed of the All Minds Burn and getting back on the rocket ship* we're going to introduce a new species to the moon

end id]

[topaz-mutiny]

Who wants more Critical Role rambling?

Me. I do. My brain is at full capacity and the thought goblins need somewhere to go.

First off, All Minds Burn.

I implicitly trust All Minds Burn.

One might think, based on previous Matthew Mercer horror show extravaganzas, this is a bad idea. And it very well might be.

But I got a vibe. It's already a terrifying psionic mishmash of mold, slime, and rotted corpses able to (it's smokable!) connect people through a fuzzy buzzy hivemind, but then Matt adds that its mind is completely alien to Imogen. Straight up implying it's even more unfamiliar to her than anything they've seen of Predathos, the Reilora, and the twisted life of Ruidus.

The emotions it shares with Imogen are a facimile. A replication. Observed from those connected to it. It's not actually feeling these emotions, but is choosing to respond with those meanings.

Now, it could still be an elaborate ruse. Or it could still be just plain dangerous to Exandrians (as Matt kept saying "yet"). But consider how Exandrians are as alien to it as it is to them.

And it is deciding to navigate Exandrian life interactions instead of doing whatever would come naturally to it. It is an immense psychic entity and yet is deciding to be polite to Imogen and shies away from Ashton instead of becoming aggressive when Ashton makes it aware that they're not sure if their dunamantic funhouse would hurt to connect to or not. The way Matt describes its mental force is like a hypothetical interaction between a blue whale and a sparrow. The whale has no intention of hurting the sparrow, but any movement it makes is just so massive in comparison that a gentle nudge would rightly feel like an immense weight.

It's a bit of a stretch to call it good, as clearly those connected to it are severely altered in some manner, but it does seem... honorable. For as much as that means between alien creatures. We have yet to see it force entities to become under its will, merely offer the opportunity. And it straight up offered to help, in whatever way it can.

The moon is an interesting choice to seed. It might have an ulterior motive, but the impression I got was that it was interested to see a new dry dusty desert - a biome which it seems to prefer, for surely those connected to it have made it aware of the nearby jungles, cliffs, and caves. Ruidus, despite being cursed and red, is kind of a familiar landscape to an entity that's existed solely in the Hellcatch. And the people there are also psychic, which seems to be preferable to it.

So yeah. Trustworthy hivemind made of nightmares. This episode was fucking bonkers, y'all.

[andi-o-geyser]

Chekov's mind-reading seed-producing pus creature cult, am I right?

[hand-of-devotion]

I’m having sooo many thoughts about The All-Minds-Burn right now for some reason.

Just. An old hivemind creature built up of beings sharing memories from their individually lived global experiences across time. Sharing their love, their loss, their very identities. Connecting to each other on one of the deepest imaginable levels.

Ending up in the belly of a city packed with miserable, traumatized, desperate, lonely people.

Scooping up those with nothing left to lose and a familiar bone-deep urge to be seen.

Learning that there are still more beings out there who feel that same bitter and mournful desire to see, know, experience, and connect with things out of their reach.

Wanting to take root up amongst the stars and share Exandria’s beauty just as much as they wish to know of Ruidus’.

[bloopitynoot]

The All Minds Burn is low key giving me the Last of Us meets Exandria crossover I didn't know I needed. I am absolutely here for this psychic fungal zombie apocalypse on the moon.