#CR theory time!

[centaurianthropology]

New CR Theory Time!

So, this has little basis in fact, and is almost all pretty reach-y extrapolations of what we know already, but I really like the theory, so I’m going to lay it all out for you:

Ashton is Ludinus Da’Leth’s grandson

Hear me out.  Here’s what we know for certain:

·         Ludinus spent a while in Issylra before coming to Molaysmyr

·         He arrived at Molaysmyr as a ‘young man’ (though if he was already deep into magical works, he might have been able to extend his life significantly, which has to be true if he really did survive the Calamity)

·         The Hishari village was located in Issylra (I think?  I can’t actually find the source for this one, but it’s been thrown around a lot, so I’m going with it)

·         It would make sense that Ludinus, still enraged that the mortals so devastatingly lost their war with the gods, would be seeking out other pre-Calamity peoples to work with.  We know the Ashari are an offshoot of a former druidic people, the Drashari.  It seems likely, given the similar etymology, that the Hishari were another offshoot

o   It would also just be a very Taliesin thing to do to make the evil mirror image version of one of the most idyllically good civilizations in Exandria

·         The Ashari would be unlikely to want to start shit with the gods again, but the Hishari might have been more open to it.  While the Ashari seem to be all about balance and living within nature, it seems like the Hishari wanted to control it and gain power from it.  That might have appealed to a young Ludinus.

·         Ashton’s mother was described as ‘saintly’ (and given comments in a 4SD episode, was almost certainly Aasimar) and his father was specifically described as elven. Those were literally the only attributes Matt saw fit to describe in Ashton’s flashback, so it’s very possible that those attributes are important beyond making Ashton originally half-elven with a dash of divinity.

So let’s get into the theory.  Ludinus seems too old to have been Ashton’s father, and was well out of Issylra by the time Ashton was born, unless there was some sort of time fuckery with the Hishari destruction as well as spatial fuckery.  But given the forces they were messing with, it seems less likely that time was also wacky.

So my guess is that Ludinus spent some time with the Hishari before coming to Molaysmyr.  He met another elf there, possibly a druid, and they ended up hooking up.  She got pregnant, and Ludinus likely left her and the baby.  Why?  Because he’s an asshole.

His son was then raised in the Hishari village as one of them, but also inherited his father’s drive for power and control, so he became the spearhead for developing a ritual that would give them incredible control and power over the elements (or maybe just the element of Earth?  Unclear.). He hooked up with an Aasimar woman, possibly arranged specifically for the ritual, and had a child designed from the ground up as the centerpiece of that ritual: a child with divinity in their blood, of pre-Calamity elven stock, and likely with a few attributes no one knows about yet.  They set the ritual into motion, and something went wrong.  Instead of achieving whatever power or control they were aiming for, they created a massive disruption in space and elemental forces, blowing the entire area to kingdom come and dumping one of the few, if only, survivors, said child, through a portal a continent away.  Whatever his old name was got lost, and the child eventually became Ashton Greymoore, punk orphan in Bassuras.  

The timing and the motivations seem to work.  Matt seems to really enjoy tying Taliesin’s backstory into his campaign-spanning narrative, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Taliesin gave him elven father, and Matt tied him back to Ludinus.  

And all of this means that Ashton, gutterpunk, is actually Taliesin’s second noble-in-hiding character. It would make his mocking of Dorian a bit poignant, and make their struggle against Ludinus a bit more personal (Ashton does love hitting parents, and I imagine grandparents work too).  It would also mean that Ludinus has yet to get a really good look at his grandson.  After all, Ashton has been busy both times Ludinus has directly interacted with the party, and he still doesn’t know that his grandson has somehow gotten dosed with the Cerberus Assembly’s own dunamis cocktail directly into his brain, creating a brand new branch of the magic that Ludinus has clearly played with already.  How fascinated would he be to find out about his last living relative, and how much more dangerous would that make him to the party?

Anyway, like I said, all of this is based on speculation, stringing together the very thin facts as I see them, and a lot of wishful thinking.  I think it would be cool, I think that after Caduceus really took a back seat plot-wise last campaign it would be fun to see Taliesin get his turn to be at the nexus of fate, and I would love to see some of the interactions, both interparty and with Ludinus, that would come about because of it.

[arabella-strange]

people in the chat are disputing who Tal's character is, but I do [as of !break] think he is the Wildmother: who has better reason to hate the hubris of wizards who despise and murdered the ashari? And who has better reason to want to bring Aeor crashing back to earth, for their defiance of "nature"? She's the WILD mother, her alignment is not "good" -- it is True Neutral.

[stardustedknuckles]

I wonder if the vanguard hopes to bring the Raven Queen around to their bullshit because she and her champion were once mortal. I wonder if the trap was laid for Vax not because they knew he would defy his duty to come to her side but because they knew she would let him. She was one of them once. It really makes me wonder about all the holy symbols they carried, if there's not a twisted respect for the mortal who struck fear in the gods, if they're not choosing to ignore her divinity in favor of her origins in mortality.

I also wonder if Ludinus knows her name, but that's unlikely. Just. If anyone was going to.

[cringefaecompilation]

scanlan was orym's teenage celebrity crush, it's canon. he had a poster of him he kissed every night. he would probably die if keyleth told him that they were in the same adventuring party.

[ravendruid]

My friend and I were screaming about Critical Role (as we do), and I just started thinking about the possibility of Bells Hells watching Downfall happen and deciding that if the Gods took matter into their own hands once to destroy a threat against them once, they would likely do it again.

Here's my crack theory:

Bells Hells somehow find a way to rebuild a Malleus Key or they redirect the one in Marquet to take down the Divine Gate and let the Gods out so they can fight against Predathos.

I know it's unlikely to happen, but still. How cool would it be?

[afragmentcastadrift]

In the aftermath of episode 91, theories and possibilities are being bandied about. Could they bring F.C.G. back? Would they want to return? Did that little unit with a soul find some sort of afterlife? Could the Changebringer return them back to their friends in some spirit form, on loan until the larger threat to the world, the universe, all existence as they know it, is vanquished?

I have no insight into what Sam or Matt may want for the story they're sharing with us. Aand all the respect to them for the decisions they'll make, but to entertain the notion of bringing F.C.G. back into the game, the Reincarnate spell is an interesting ploy. The spell requires that "You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid…" - which brings up questions about the nature of Aoermatons. They're "artificial," they're constructs. But we know that F.C.G. had a soul, and that they were more beautiful than a simple binary answer. Every time I think about Aeormatons though, I remember that in Dragon Age: Origins, players discover that golems were created using mortals. "…to create a golem, a life had to be taken elsewhere to power it." Aeor being a city, among many Age of Arcanum cities, of both magic and science, invention and the arcane, couldn't there have been some method by which to take a mortal's soul from a vessel of blood and bone and fuse it into a body of metal and wire? Was it possible that the essence of the soul - the ability to self-identify, to develop feelings and thoughts, to cherish and remember - all of those aspects of life could be retained within a construct, magically captured in carved filagree and/or a crystal core, but made new, a blank slate upon which a purpose could be written, a mission could be programmed? And upon being activated, upon awakening, that "clean" soul might be searching for new experiences.

So what if Fresh Cut Grass, that dear Faithful Care Giver, was already reincarnated from someone, sometime long ago? That they were once a mortal of flesh and blood, reformed and forged into a metal being. Would it be possible to reincarnate them again, should the soul be available and willing? How many times can a soul travel from body to body before becoming weary?

Pinnochio in reverse and back again, vying for the dream of being real, when they were all along.

[fandombymanynames]

I know the prevailing theory is that Otohan is on Ruidus with Da’leth and Lilliana...but I don’t think she is.

I think she’s the guard dog.

Assuming the malleus key is the gateway that allows travel up to Ruidus, I think it’d be incredibly foolish to leave it unguarded. You want that shit on lock so that *no one* follows you.

So you leave behind what’s left of your cult to guard the site, and you put them under the authority of someone competent. Someone high up in your own ranks. Someone’s who’s respected and accomplished. Who’s a fucking nationally renowned war general.

Otohan Thull.

And even from a meta perspective, it’s perfect. The hell’s know Thulls’ weak point now. Orym damn near destroyed the backpack last time, and without it well... Matt said Otohan wasn’t an unwinnable fight for them when they first encountered her. At level 6 (I think).

They are level 10 now.

She was the first real villian the Hell’s had. She killed three of them in that first encounter. And it would be pure poetry for her to be the first to fall as they fight their way towards Da’leth.

[porterprophet]

The Crush? 3 centuries ago? Quick! When did Molaesmyr get nuked?

[essektheylyss]

What's dunamis, in your words? For the uninitiated

So, with apologies for watering down an already watered down scientific metaphor, there's an anecdote that comes up a lot if you read any sort of pop science books on quantum theory or physics, wherein a professor burns a sheet of paper and tells a class, "All of the information on the paper still exists in the ashes," because in theory, quantum information cannot be destroyed. This analogy is super metaphorical, generally referring to the idea that, for example, anything that gets pulled into a black hole is not in fact lost, it's just beyond our reach, with the understanding that "information" is a highly broad term applied to many, many things and in this realm of physics it has a very particular meaning that most people do not consider when they hear the word 'information,' but this isn't a semiotics lecture.

Anyway, as such, it gets completely misconstrued as the idea of quite literally being able to reconstruct whatever notes or ideas were recorded on that paper, which is not accurate in real world physics. Information as ideas and concepts are not recorded in subatomic particles, at least not in anyway we can access or reconstruct.

However... it could be true in an arcane system, if you wanted it to, cuz why not! And given dunamis's impact on probability, and pulling from alternate timelines and potential, as well as the fact that consecution suggests souls are held within a beacon and then put back into a newly-born body, I'm essentially of the mind that dunamis could take the place of those subatomic particles and, when manipulated in the arcane sense, can be used to essentially reconstruct conceptual information of the universe. (That's the very basic idea, anyway, and I'm just using this for fic fodder, but if you are interested in wading through a very introspective chunk of fic for more, it's mostly in here.)

Which is just slightly to the left (and essentially could be a next possible conjecture) of what Caleb described.

[wenamedthedogkylo]

I just realized that Bor'Dor is what could have happened to Essek if not for his privileged upbringing.

Essek came from a wealthy, important family in a society that appreciated his magic. He railed against the leading faith and secretly worked against it, even becoming an outright traitor to his nation, but he was never in danger of being hauled off by a temple for being a dangerous magic user. He never had to watch his family get slaughtered in front of his eyes.

The Mighty Nein were able to truly befriend Essek, and he was in just enough of a healthy position to where that friendship really mattered. They helped him see that what he was doing was not only wrong but unnecessary, and that there was a better way. It really and truly changed him. It's a beautiful and uplifting story.

But sometimes, the story isn't going to end happily.

Sometimes, people are far, far too hurt and in too much pain—and have been for too long—for genuine kindness and friendship to save them.

Sometimes, people need to be primed for kindness in order to receive it well. They need to have other things to live for, in order to believe it when newfound friends tell them that life can be better and they deserve to see it.

Sometimes, opening up your heart to someone just isn't enough.

The Hells accepted Bor'Dor. They encouraged him, protected him, reached out to him, helped him when he faltered and when he seemed at his weakest. They were the first people to make him feel like he actually belonged somewhere. But it wasn't enough to cut through all the pain, the fear, the misery, the loneliness, the abject suffering he'd endured his entire life. It seemed like he was almost there, like maybe he was on the edge of a true change of heart. But one wrong moment of mistrust... and that fragile possibility shattered.

Sometimes, love and friendship just aren't enough to pull someone back from the brink.

Sometimes, what people really need is peace and an end to all the pain.

[antlereed]

i really think that the hells have taken trust to mean something that it really isnt, and are all conveniently forgetting each others histories in order to push their preferred brand of "trust" without really trying to explain themselves

[railraptor]

Do we know for sure that it's all the gods that Ludinus is targeting? Because he seems to have a major beef for the Matron of Ravens.

During his speech he mentioned something about the gods fearing mortals after one of them was killed and replaced BY a mortal. This whole sloppy speil was designed to attract Keyleth so that she could be bait for Vax/CotRQ-without that Vax-bead-lens thingie was his contraption even functional?

And before that people who didn't actually care were running around wearing her holy symbol. To make sure the MoR would notice?

How old IS Lidinus exactly? What connection does he have with the Raven Queen? Is it possible that this is just about the goddess of death? Maybe that's what people will be free of? Do I just need to go to sleep and stop thinking about this? I feel like even if this was an attack on one god the other's would be interested in trying to stop it, and I guess Vassleheim has been trying to get involved, but .....

I just have so many questions and Thursday is so far away....

[whatkindofnameisella]

i love how early mighty nein was like wow. we have this amazing espionage cat. he will do everything for us. he is our eyes and ears. go espionage cat, go!!!!! and then every time without fail he rolls like shit. they do this approximately 30 times before they realize how useless frumpkin is.

[beltsourcookie]

humans in cr universe + theory

fucking insane that devsis actually chose to be explicit about the existence of humans in cookie run lore not a lot of franchises do this (looking at you nintendo games) because of fear that comes from projection that comes from humans

BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT COOKIES ARE

2 groups of magical humans loved cookies dearly because they could project themselves on cookies

1 group projected science and perfection and precision and cherished their creation by not eating it, but refused to accept failures and even made laws to discard failures and ultimately project human hierarchy onto their creations

1 group projected identity and wonder and even rebellion for their cookies, but they do not cherish and instead, devour their creation because theyre not perfect cookies, theyre just a fun magic recipe that can be manipulated from creativity

honestly have a theory that there are humans beyond magic, but more for lab scientists and other groups on humans judging by the fact that ovenbreak has different categories for cookies

lemon being created in a lab due to his high acidity and being given electrical powers and scientists want to study the limits of cookies

musterd and wasabi being cookies of the savoury variety because a group of humans decided they wanted nonsweet cookies

the entire creme republic being a religious land because their creators wanted to project beliefs onto them and be traditional sweets

[forgotn1]

Oh my god. What if it takes a couple weeks for the other group to show up because they got sent forward in time and haven't landed yet. It could explain the static. Hard to send a message to someone who is dislodged from time.

[playerkingsley]

One thing I am curious about is how much of Kingsley was part of the character's initial conception for campaign 2. We know from one of their talks (might have been a panel? i'm not 100% sure) that a memory/personality wipe upon resurrection was planned from the beginning, but how much, if at all, were the new iteration's cues presupposed, or entirely dependent on where the rest of the nein were at that point? Or mixture thereof.

Drawing from the conversation between Beau, Yasha, and Kingsley, it's just so interesting to consider that Molly as a character & device in the narrative was always meant to be reactive to the progression of the party, if resurrection had been in the cards.