#CR!ACTIVITY

[artistic-cocoon]

Saw someone on twt say they wanted to see Percy drawn like Yusuf Dikec and I couldn't help myself

[forgetriestowrite]

wait imagine M9 get back from absolutely decimating the evil oligarchical hive mind on Ruidus and they're a team of middle-aged badasses including that obscure weird human duo that's been running around Wildemount solving conspiracies and government corruptions for the past 6 years

and everyone who was in that room in Vassalheim is just like "How have we NEVER heard of you before???? You're like the least subtle people ever??? And you're insanely powerful??? How the FUCK did this slip under our radar???"

[vethbrenatto]

Since I’ve seen a lot of Vax discussion today, here’s my chime in of something that’s been on my mind: There’s a lot of critique about how his resurrection cheapens and retrospectively nullifies the significance of C1. And I absolutely agree.

What feels particularly egregious on that front is that C1 is a story they are currently retelling. CR wants its audience to tune into The Legend of Vox Machina to experience the highs of Campaign 1 all over again- and you know I am! In fact, since I stopped keeping up with C3, TLOVM is the only CR media I’ve kept up to date with.

And it feels insane that we’re all going to re-experience the ending of C1 and just know that when Vax dies and Scanlan cries and Vex sobs and every day the raven comes to visit onscreen- that hey, that guy is actually alive haha. Isn’t that kind of wild? I don’t know how they expect it to have the same emotional impact for people who are up to date on the canon and context.

[axolotlesque]

look okay okay. obviously matt is a hugely talented dm. but airing divergence immediately after campaign three is really putting into stark relief things it sorely needed. these characters all have clear reasons to be engaging with the world; they have motivations that keep them moving forward to solid goals; they've obviously been well-informed beforehand about the state of the world they're living in and feel like a part of it; they've been given reasons to all work together and cooperate and be involved; they have a defined context they all built their characters around that they fit cleanly in.

i respect matt's desire to let his players explore the world he built and be generous with their freedoms, and brennan knows he's working within much tighter constraints. but this is really laying some of campaign three's issues bare.

[ryctone]

Holly and Goldy knew eachother before they met the other Heroes... I'm gonna cRY-

[sisyphusrequiem]

AFFOGATO COOKIE ANALYSIS! +some art

Affogato cookie, my favourite in the game and one of the most underrated… and hated, for decent reason.

He also stands as one of the most mysterious, with little to nothing being given regarding his core motivations or past. As a result, this is my psychoanalysis of Affogato Cookie, and what his past may look like!

Starting off with evidence we can draw from the main quest, we can easily surmise that:

- Affogato is intelligent, cunning and manipulative. He knows what to say to sway people to his side, and make their opinions into his. He holds a subtle disdain for Dark Cacao through his dialogue when conversing with and about him, as if he has to force himself to say the words ‘My Lord’ and such.

- He shows an apathy towards the people of the kingdom, and yet also shows respect. He is quick to turn away villages desperately seeking need, but quick to reward those who follow him. Despite his cruelty regarding everything, he states his wish as a ruler is to “Make all cookies in this Kingdom able to spend their days happy and free.”

- Regarding his past he says, “Most of my life I was down on my knees. Even the moments I was allowed to sit in a chair, none of them were spent in comfort.”

- And, when sharing delicacies, he seems to favour the priests most.

Evidence outside of main quest:

- His description says: Affogato Cookie spent restless years without a place to belong until he came up with a simple solution: to create a land of his own once and for all! He appeared out of nowhere on a frigid night in the Dark Cacao Kingdom and has been busy earning the trust and favour of the locals with the help of his strange concoctions and mysterious chants.

- One of his ascension quotes is: "The Coffee Village? I barely remember my time there... "

- And his loading screen trivia reads: "After leaving his home, Affogato Cookie wandered the land and learned a lot about magic and witchcraft."

With all this evidence compiled, this is my theory for his past and motives!

It can be believed he grew up in the coffee village, spending his childhood years there. Since, however, he hardly remembers his time there, it can be assumed it was destroyed long ago, from a rough timeline of Affo’s pre-teens to young adult years. The description for its place on the map says ‘the only known home location has been left abandoned and in disarray.’ This means the villagers must have left in a hurry, so it can be theorised that something must have attacked, possibly some wild animals, especially since something similar happened to the Milk Tribes village.

He said he spent his time without a place to belong, suggesting he was travelling alone. Because of how destroyed the coffee village was, and how little we’ve seen of other coffee tribe residents, we can make the assumption Affogato cookies parents, caretakers, and/or other family died in the attack, if they weren’t already dead prior to the destruction of the village.

My belief is this event made him want to become ruler of the kingdom, so he could prevent it from ever happening again, and could protect all other tribes and villages in the area. I also believe that as time went on, this belief became distorted, until he began to prioritise his own role as leader as the most important thing. I still do believe he desired prosperity within the kingdom, but we’ll discuss that later!

Following his travels we know he learned many things about magic, witchcraft, and manipulation tactics. However, there aren’t many other specifics to fill this large gap of time in his life. From comments such as “Most of my life I was down on my knees”, his knowledge of ‘mysterious chants’, his favour of the priests, and even his decor, where he burns incense and prays, it can be surmised he was a priest or at least performed religious rites. Whether or not this is something he did as a kid, and then continued to do as a way to make money or simply devoted himself to such a thing, or if it’s something he picked up along his travels and then decided to utilise is unclear, but we know it’s a talent he picked up. It also suggests his ‘strange concoctions’ may be a form of apothecary, and that this may also be a job he picked up or pursued, perhaps even both at the same time to make ends meet and further his skills?

Finally, his lovely entrance into the Dark Cacao Kingdom itself! It says he appeared on a frigid night, quite possibly using a vulnerable day as a way to make himself appear as a sort of angel, helping them at their most desperate, and earning their trust. He probably started as a helper, earning the affection and approval of the locals (which was probably easy even without manipulation, because he had first-hand experience of the difficulty of surviving without security!), before working his way up as an apothecary, priest, (these are both implied in: ‘busy earning the trust and favour of the locals with the help of his strange concoctions and mysterious chants’) and finally becoming the king's right hand man. Then it continues on with the events we already know from the main story.

From my theory of his past, these are what I surmise as his motivations: Following the destruction of his village, he wished he could become ruler so other villages could stay protected and be safe forever. Along his journey of furthering his skills, he began to lose sight of this goal and instead wished to become ruler of the land and have everyone under his rule. However! My belief is when he became ruler, he looked back on his previous wish of safety, and thought while safety is important, comfort should be valued above all. Spending his life on his knees and in discomfort, he wishes for everyone who went through similar things to no longer have to suffer the way they always have. He begins to slow the security of the walls surrounding the kingdom because he prioritises his subjects happinesses before their security, the complete opposite of Dark Cacao.

Dark Cacao and Affogato parallel each other in a way no one else seems to realise, with Affo growing up in harsh environments and wishing for no one else to experience the same, sacrificing their security to do so, and Dark Cacao, following the dark flour war, became so terrified of losing his citizens that he put all his focus into security, sacrificing their happiness to do so.

It’s sort of tragic, two people who at their core want what’s best for the kingdom, but can’t seem to find a mix between protection and comfort like they should. I genuinely think if they worked together they could make the kingdom as great as it could— (gets dragged off stage) “”HEY HEY!!!! I WASN'T GOING TO RANT ABOUT AFFOCAO— DON'T BOO ME????””

Regardless, I really hope they do expand on Affo’s character!! If you have any alternate theories or headcanons you wanna add on feel free to hit up my inbox or add your own tags to the post!

[utilitycaster]

re the anti-resurrection poison though like. what the fuck was up with that. Like, I can, as a mediocre DM myself and an avid listener to NADDPod D&D Court understand where it came from: you needed a reason why Will and Derrig were still dead despite Keyleth being there, because that was Orym's backstory, which in turn dated back to Liam's concept for a backup character for Vax, ie, someone who had also lost a partner and would be sent to help Keyleth in the wake of a similar loss. So you come up with the anti-resurrection poison. And this also happens to work out nicely for the climactic solstice battle, because it explains why Keyleth can't just rally after Vax intervenes. It also makes sense as a thing the Ruby Vanguard would have, because of the anti-divine magic and the way that the Weave Mind have similar anti-healing powers.

The problem is, of course, that you've introduced this concept - which is, again, actually very good and elegant and fits in seamlessly - but it's out there and you have to either use it or come up with an excuse not to use it. And you can, I think, legitimately make a case for it not being in play in the Seat of Disdain fight because that came up very suddenly. But then it gets pretty weird that when Bells Hells become a consistent thorn in the Vanguard's side, and Otohan moves from "I need to keep the Ruidusborn alive but fuck everyone else" to "I'm just going to kill them all" and clearly knows they have considerable resurrection resources and access to the rare antidote given Keyleth's return to the stage that she doesn't just coat all weapons with it and nerf all healing to drain their resources.

And anyway this is a consistent problem, of like, there actually was the full setup for the story C3 intended to tell in C1 and C2 and early C3, but to make these entirely unrelated characters actually fit into a pretty specific narrative, you had to add in a bunch of complicated additions. And while some of those were a mess, some were actually really well done, like the initial introduction of the anti-resurrection poison and the gray assassins, and then none of it mattered because they were always just additions to make the core plot fit and there were too many balls in the air so they got dropped without exploration, and anyone paying attention was like "hey you dropped this" and it's like you could have juggled 3 or even 4 or 5 balls adequately, but you had to add in 4 extra balls and ultimately some of them landed on the ground and so the act of barely keeping 3 in the air in the end is undercut by the number you dropped.

[pocketgalaxies]

jester: *shows everyone her bedroom where the walls are covered with drawings, messier and more childlike at the bottom but improving as they get higher on the wall*

yasha: as you got taller, you got better.

jester: you know, i think talent comes with height!

yasha: i must be extremely talented, then?

jester: you are, yasha :)

[ariadne-mouse]

CHETNEY GOING TO USE THE NOTES TO TELL THE FEY THAT LUDINUS HAS BEEN SLURPING THEM UP incredible brain 10/10 travis

[aq2003]

i think it is very silly to react to dropout's response like "why were people mad, you know the cast and crew are pro palestine" yeah exactly and if they weren't i don't think attempting to push a petition/boycott to them about this would do anything. the result of them acknowledging this was a net good. twenty thousand dollars

[misssimp3]

Which one do you prefer? The cold truth or a white lie?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Starting the year with a quick Shadow Milk drawing?? Count me in!!

Hhhh I need his lore NOW. PRE-CORRUPTED SHADOW MILK 🙏

15/19 days left.

[wardensantoineandevka]

y'know, most of us are saying this or that about "Bells Hells choosing to release Predathos to remove the gods from Exandria," but — and admittedly my memory might be shaky on this one due to East Coast time — Bells Hells hasn't even gotten that far yet, as far as I remember

like, at minimum it seems that people are FEELING that the Hells haven't even made a decision about whether they even want to let Predathos out or not, or what they want to do about the gods. they were in the process of trying to ask Predathos what it wanted to do and whether it was possible to convince it to go back where it came from without bothering anyone at all. the current situation is more at "Predathos is trying to grab you and use you as a host, what are you doing" without making a clear choice about the implications of the results of resisting or not resisting

we're still in a bit of a not having made a choice yet either way about Predathos's intent to escape or what that would mean for the gods or the state of Exandria, we're not even at the moment of unfolding in text whether Imogen intends for this to be a way to control Predathos to guide it toward another end, whether she is making this as an active choice to try to contain it and prevent it from escaping, whether she is making this as an active choice to aid it, whether she is simply giving in as a resignation to what she feels is inevitable fate

a choice has been made to not resist being taken up by Predathos, but there... hasn't been a clear choice at all so far about the actual narrative question of what to do with Predathos and the gods, like, that's still something that remains undecided on by the party, they hadn't even made a decision yet when the reaching and grabbing happened, so like, yeah

[thatsleepyartist]

A little fake cutscene between Activated Charcoal Cookie and Custard Cookie III

[essektheylyss]

Does no one else find it odd that magic that had been inhibited by the Malleus Key keeps being slowly and quietly returned with seemingly no changes to the key itself? Is the Solstice still stuck or is it simply progressing very slowly? Is anyone working on this in Exandria? Can we get some answers about this?

[pyroguesstuff]

hi i have no excuse for this, i just wanted to draw laudna with flowers in her hair. enjoy her ig

[martyr-mayhem]

Please call your Representatives and Senators TODAY to let them know that you are looking to them to vote NO on the Republican budget proposal, and that you will stand behind them for standing strong, even if a government shutdown results.

Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass anything, but instead of negotiating in good faith, they’re pushing a MAGA budget disaster. On Saturday, House Republicans introduced a new continuing resolution (CR) that would run through the end of the 2025 fiscal year.

Their proposed long-term CR would slash essential programs, attack basic rights, and – worst of all – hand unchecked power over federal spending to Trump, Elon Musk, and their billionaire allies.

Democrats must not fold. They must stand firm and publicly demand a government funding deal that:

1. Guarantees there won’t be any extreme funding cuts in essential programs and any MAGA poison pills attacking abortion rights, LGBTQ+ protections, and immigrant communities

2. Guarantees real, ironclad protections to stop Trump and Musk from hijacking federal spending. The lawlessness must end.

We need to communicate to our Members of Congress our insistence that they vote AGAINST the Republican CR. They need to hear from us because they’re undoubtedly feeling pressure to vote for it. They know that Republicans and some of the media will try to pin the blame for a government shutdown on Democrats if the CR doesn’t pass. We need to let our MOCs know that we will stand behind them for their vote against that CR, even if that means a temporary government shutdown.