#CR C3 E80

[ilargilore]

Delilah skill issue

[deramin2]

Orym and the Hag

I made a compilation to clips about where Orym's head was at going into that deal with Morri. They really hit harder for me seeing them back to back.

Clips:

E77 Orym and Fearne the morning after the girls' night Whitestone Underground Tour. Later that day Ashton absorbed the shard.

E79 Orym talks to Ashton for the first time after the shard incident.

E79 Morrigan lays out the rules of the Honesty trial.

E79 Orym tells his two truths in the Honesty trial.

E80 Bell's Hells decompress after the trial. Everyone has powder keg issues to work on, even Orym.

E81 Orym makes a self-sacrificing deal with Mori.

[bvnnyface]

Usually i stick to my cowboy mog but this was too much i love them

[fjorests-of-wildemount]

Fearne didn't *need* the shard. She was curious about it and terrified of becoming Dark Fearne but there was no part of her or her story that needed it. She was badass and unique already; she may have been engineered as a Ruidusborn but this was unrelated to anything put in her path by that.

*Ashton* needed someone to take the shard, and frankly, it didn't matter who. The part of the Empress that lived in them needed its counterpart; the situation thrust on Ashton by their parents brought them here.

For Fearne the shard was foreign, this object and power she'd never considered, and yeah, she immediately thought she didn't want that. She doesn't have Imogen's ambition or Laudna's trauma, both of whom were the loudest voices pushing her to take the shard. And to be clear, if Fearne really didn't want it, she still could've said no. But some little part of her was what Fearne always is: *curious*. And so she took it, embraced it, endured all of that to see what happens.

For Ashton, it could've been any of the others who took it, that didn't matter. The fact that they happened to have a fire druid bestie whose existing powers would mesh well with the Fire to his Empress Earth was coincidence. He was forced into this as a child against his will, wrong and broken and feeling like a part was missing. The missing part wasn't Rau'shan, not really, but the dormant shard of Ka'mort within them. Fearne didn't complete them, Ashton completed themself.

I'm interested to see where this goes with them because I don't think it's as straightforward as it seems. And I'm especially intrigued to see what happens when two primordial essences get close to the imprisoned Predathos.

[awaytobeunshaken]

The More They Stay the Same

Orym is still sitting in the garden long after the rest of them have scattered. He still wishes Fearne had said something to him. He’s not sure if she really wanted it, or she just felt like she had no choice, but either way, it was over now. And she seemed satisfied, seemed to be bonding now, with Ashton, in their shared elemental powers. Good for them.

It did almost make him wish he’d taken up more of the druidic practices of the Ashari. He’d never really had much interest in it, or aptitude to be honest, and deep down he doesn’t really think he’d be as comfortable with that life, but he’s feeling more alone than he has since he started traveling with the old crew, and that's never bred anything in him but regret.

His ears perk up at the sound of footsteps crunching across burnt leaves, and he swivels his head around to see Ashton crossing the platform. Not the Ashton that walked away an hour or so ago; they’ve still got the lava rock arm, but apart from that it’s the same genasi form that Orym first met.

“Hey.” And he could swear his voice sounds smaller than it used to. “You’re back.”

Ashton seems to grasp his meaning, taking a long look at his arm before answering, “Yeah.” He sits beside Orym, bicep not quite touching his shoulder but close enough for him to rest against, if he wanted. He doesn’t, though, keeping his gaze off into the wilderness. “You know this doesn’t change anything between us, right? Between any of us.”

Orym shrugs. “What’s there to change?”

“Just, like, stuff like this, being able to check in with each other… Look, I’m not gonna go off and hook up with Fearne just because everyone seems to think we should.” Orym draws his knees in, hunching over them. “Hey, I mean it. We just both figured out some cool shit we can do, that’s all. I’m not stealing your best friend away from you.”

“I never even realized she was having reservations about it before. She never said anything about it to me. Maybe I’m not as good a friend as I thought.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“I would’ve taken the shard myself, if I’d known. I was ready to take it today, if she hadn’t changed her mind.”

“Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to tell you. You, ah, don’t always show the highest concern for your own skin. And yes, I realize what a massive hypocrite I am to tell you that. Still, I’m not gonna lie, that would’ve been pretty cool.” He reaches over to tousle Orym’s hair, in an attempt to approximate Fearne’s fiery mane as best he could with the short strands. “We could’ve been, like, brothers. Or maybe not… fuck, I dunno. This is crazy.” They shake their head like they’re trying to knock something loose. “But I guess a lot of crazy shit has happened today.”

They turn towards Orym, and place their right hand on his cheek, and the stone is rough and dry and yet somehow it feels so alive as it guides his face toward Ashton’s. And Ashton’s lips are cool, and not rough at all, and they settle against Orym’s like they belong there, just for a moment before pulling away.

They’d come to the Feywild in an attempt to slow down time for a moment, but now it seems to have stopped entirely, Orym’s entire world resting between one heartbeat and the next. But as reality reasserts itself around him, he recalls what Fearne told him about what happened on the ziggurat. “So. You’re just giving those out to everyone, now?”

“Not this time.” Ashton’s eyes lose focus, his gaze drifting toward the background. “But, like I said, today’s been weird, so if you wanna just forget…”

They don’t get a chance to finish as Orym stands and leans in for another kiss.

ao3

[fjorests-of-wildemount]

Oh no, now I'm worried that part of what Ludinus needs is the awakened essences of primordials.

And now they're bringing him two.

Are the Hells going to get to Ruidus and have to stop Ludinus from siphoning the essences out of Ashton and Fearne??

The Hells have been playing into Ludinus's hands all along, what if they're walking the key right to the lock?

[deramin2]

It feels like people were wanting the trust exercises in Critical Role c3 E79 and E80 to be research-supported therapy from a licensed practitioner where they all work together to get a good grade in therapy, a thing that's normal to want and possible to achieve.

Not A HAG fucking with them per her nature feeding off juicy drama and cringe who wants to shake them around until all their secrets come out for her to watch and realize that they're so scared of failure they're locking into the sort of inaction that will actually make them fail. (I love Nana Mori. She was exactly the sort of fucked up punk rock street wise woman they needed.)

It's BORING if they just talk about all their problems. It's BORING if they just jump to trusting each other (when the exercise was started that they can't trust each other). It's BORING if they're like "actually that power that's been set in front of me could possibly have a bad effect so I'm just going to keep ignoring it. It's BORING to be safe. Go back to your coffee shop AUs if you want everything to be soft and safe. That's not the point of the source material.

The CR cast have REPEATEDLY said they have more fun pushing the big red button than playing it safe because you spend all of real life trying to avoid the consequences of risky decisions and it's FUN to get to explore what can go wrong.

Bell's Hells succeeded because they concluded they are in a moment were inaction and hesitation will get everyone killed and they just need to push all the big red buttons and take the risks because it's now or never. They need to check in enough to keep each other in line, but they also need to imagine a scenario where none of them are traitors. (Like they had to restrain FCG from murder-bot mode, but they risked getting to murder-bot mode because the benefit outweighed the personal risk.)

This party is not OSHA approved. They literally couldn't do the job if they were. People like Allura and Keyleth are relying on them to take monumentally stupid risks while holding on by their fingernails so that other people can be safe.

Fearne came to the conclusion that she wasn't taking the shard because she was afraid of Dark!Fearne. But her friends will pull her out of that if she drifts. She also wasn't taking it because she thought Ashton was supposed to have it and that didn't work out well. If she'd put her hoof down her friends would probably have accepted her decision even if they disagreed with it. (It's actually like normal and healthy to disagree with your friends choices and not yes-man them all the time.) But she decided with her own free will that she was just being scared and actually she did want to try. (But also if they hadn't gone through the shard hurting and rejecting Ashton, Fearne might have thought her taking damage meant she wasn't supposed to have it, not just part of the trial of absorbing it.)

There's no binary where pressuring your friends is always bad. Sometimes your friends pressure you into doing things they believe will benefit you that you're reluctant to do and then you do it and are like "no actually that was the right call and I needed that." Or you conclude "No actually that was bad and I wish I didn't listen." There's actually no way to know ahead of time. My relationship with one of my best friends of like 20 years consists heavily of us battling each other's depression by pressuring each other into things we don't want to do but need to and that's healthy for us. But also other people in our lives pressured us into things we didn't want to do and should not have done and it turned out bad. It turns out that life is made up of shades of grey and not hard and fast rules. There's no way of knowing if you're fucking up ahead of time.

Imogen admitted in the Truth or Die session that she was upset that Fearne didn't take the shard. She probably would not have told Fearne that in normal circumstances. And she was probably feeling that way because part of her was upset at herself for not giving into the Predothos powers. Admitting that to Fearne gave her the courage to talk about the possibility of doing that. Which like, could be a terrible idea. But also this is a D&D game with predetermined character class powers that grow as you level and there has to be an in-game justification for getting powers like Revelation in Flesh at 14th level. Like, either she leans into these powers or they're forced on her or she stops leveling and goes home. Leaning in is way more fun. Don't you want to see what batshit thing Matt has planned for that? That's FUN. Ignoring the dark powers is boring.

Like first and foremost this is A GAME that involves yes-anding and taking risks. It's about characters who have spent their entire lives burying and ignoring their problems and getting worse because of it. It isn't REAL for them to have one revelation and be like, "Whelp I'm fixed now and will fall into none of my old patterns and just bare my soul to everyone forever now." People aren't actually like that and if that's what they need to do to be measurably better for you you'll have a lifetime of disappointments. This is an adult story for adults about how adults really behave.

Anyway I can't wait for them to schlep all their baggage and new fucked up powers to the moon with them where they're make irresponsible decisions based on a martyr complex while their friends yell at them to stop being stupid and selfish and let them help. It's going to be a disaster but hopefully they snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (or defeat from the jaws of victory) and tell an entertaining story about the fuckups who tried to stop the next Calamity. Maybe they will and they get to be heroes. Maybe it comes at a terrible cost. Maybe they totally fuck it up and it's a Ring of Brass situation. But it'll be FUN.