#fearne ex machina?

[sylvanfreckles]

No. 16: Bad Luck

Part 16 of Deck the Hells

Fandom: Critical Role Rating: T Warnings: violence, kidnapping, verbal abuse

Summary: Fresh Cut Grass is very nearly abducted. Good thing they remembered everything they've learned from their friends…including when to ask for help. (Read on AO3)

...

“Well, well. This must be my lucky day.”

Fresh Cut Grass stopped, not wanting to run the orc woman over. “Oh! Uh…smiley day to ya?”

She smiled, gold-capped tusks gleaming in the sunlight. “And who might you be, little one?”

“Why, I’m Fresh Cut Grass. And who are you?” they risked a glance around for any of their friends, but they were all alone at the moment. The others had scattered to different corners of the market.

“Are you just the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen?” the woman asked, crouching down to get a better look at them. “You can call me Bela.”

“Nice to meet you, Bela,” Fresh Cut Grass stuck out a hand, but the orc woman took it to examine instead of shaking it. “Well, I’d better go.”

“Not so soon,” Bela crooned. She tapped the casing on their right arm and flexed the joint. “You’re a marvel, aren’t you? Who was your maker?”

Imogen had taught them about this. Fresh Cut Grass gently pulled their arm out of the woman’s grasp. “I don’t think I’m comfortable with this line of questioning, Ma’am.”

She laughed. “Not comfortable? Don’t be silly. It’s just a simple question.” She reached out again, hands on either side of their face, tilting it this way and that to study. “I really must know more about this design. Who is your master?”

Ashton had taught them about this, too. “I don’t have one,” they declared proudly. “I’m my own being.”

“Really, now?” Bela’s smile deepened. “We both know that can’t be.”

“I’m gonna ask you to remove your hands from my person,” Fresh Cut Grass said, still keeping their voice polite. It wasn’t worth causing a scene here.

“Your person?” the woman laughed again. “You’re not a person, little one. You’re a machine. An object.”

Well, now they really weren’t comfortable with this conversation. Chetney had taught them something about this, but they weren’t ready to choose violence. “Well, you’re welcome to your opinion on that subject. If you’ll excuse me, I really must be off.”

“You just said you didn’t have a master, so where could you be rushing off to?”

“My friends are waiting for me.”

Bela smiled. She was smiling an awful lot, and it didn’t necessarily seem nice. She was showing a lot of teeth when she smiled. “How could something like you have friends?”

Ah, right. Laudna had taught them about this. “Well, to start, I’m a someone not a something.”

“Oh, of course you are.” With a nod, Bela slid a hand behind their shoulders and gently directed them out of the flow of traffic. Fresh Cut Grass went along with the momentum, if only to maintain the conversation.

“And friends are, you know, friends. You make ‘em yourself.”

“You poor thing,” Bela simpered. There was a sparkle to her words that shot right down into their central processer. “You should understand that they’re not your friends. Not really.”

They were pretty sure Dorian had taught them about this. Fresh Cut Grass concentrated, trying to follow the thread of Bela’s words. It was hard, but they managed to shake off the charm that was winding its way deeper into their being.

“That wasn’t very nice,” they said, blinking up at the orc woman. “I really have to go now.”

They tried to wheel away, but she put an arm in front of them, pushing them even further back into a nearby doorway. “You’re not going anywhere,” she whispered. Her voice was smooth and slick, nearly sapping the strength out of their body. “I’m sure you’re worth a lot of money to someone.”

Maybe it was time to try what Fearne had taught them. The flap on their chest popped open, and a gout of Sacred Flame scorched up Bela’s arm. She gave a shout of alarm and jumped back, then her face twisted in anger as she yanked a heavy cudgel off her belt.

“Fine. We do this the hard way,” she growled, shoving Fresh Cut Grass back into the room behind them. The cudgel came down, and though they tried to block the blow with one arm it was still strong enough to knock them over. Bela kicked them over, wrenched an arm behind their back. “You’re worth less as pieces, but a platinum’s a platinum,” she snarled in their ear.

All right. Orym had taught them about this.

Fresh Cut Grass took a deep breath—or at least what passed for breath with their kind. “Help!” they screamed as loud as they could, sending out an accompanying blast of psychic fear. “Somebody help! I’m being kidnapped!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Bela backhanded them, but that seemed to hurt her hand more than their face.

“Ashton!” Fresh Cut Grass yelled. They managed to wiggle away from Bela, but she tackled them before they could get to the door. “Orym! Anybody! Help me!”

A hard blow to the back of the head stunned them for a moment, and Bela yanked them further back into the room. “If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll dismantle you now.”

If they’d had a heart, it would be pounding. As it was, that little coil of stress inside was winding tighter and tighter and tighter. They were afraid it would snap, and they’d become a monster again, and who knew what kind of damage they’d wreak with no one to stop them. They didn’t want to kill Bela, but they had to stop her before they cracked.

No one had taught them about this. The stress was winding tighter and tighter as Bela fought them. She was so much stronger, and every time they tried to call for help she just hit them. They tried to calm down, but that just seemed to leave an opening for her to hurt them again.

There was nothing they could do.

They closed their eyes in despair…when vines erupted from the ground to wrap around Bela and haul her away.

“FCG?” Fearne catapulted into the room, Mister shrieking on her shoulder. “Oh dear. Are you okay?”

They accepted her hand to be pulled onto their wheel, but she lifted them all the way into her arms to rest against her hip. “I think I’m okay,” they replied in a small voice.

“Well, you don’t look it,” Fearne replied. She was glaring down at Bela, who was still struggling with the vines. “What exactly were you doing to my friend?”

“Friend,” Bela spat. “You don’t make friends with things like that.”

Fearne glared at her, bouncing Fresh Cut Grass against her hip. “Well, that’s just your opinion. And it’s wrong.”

“Listen here, you—”

The faun raised her free hand, flinging a scorching ball of flame into Bela’s chest, knocking her back against the wall. “Do not talk to me or my friend ever again,” she replied.

“You poor thing,” she added, carrying Fresh Cut Grass out into the sunshine. It was much nicer when she said it, they decided. Comforting. Spoken like someone who wanted to take care of them, not just pity them. “Let’s go find Ashton, and we can watch them beat that woman up.”

They might have tried to dissuade her—Bela had probably suffered enough, and Ashton could be ruthless—but it felt nice to know they were surrounded by people who cared so much. “Thanks for saving me back there, Fearne.”

“Oh, anytime,” she replied, hugging them closer. “That’s what friends do.”

[quipxotic]

See I watch Critical Role because I like a good story. Sure there are things I’d like to see, lore I’d like to learn, theories I’d like proven right or wrong, characters I’d like focused on, but all of that is secondary to getting to enjoy a good story. And while I know very little about the Crown Keepers, I am familiar with most of the actors involved and know them to be great storytellers. That earns them a bit of trust and patience from me. So while the second half of c3e92 wasn’t what I came into the episode hoping to see, I am more than willing to wait to see how the story plays out before I decide how good/bad the timing was or whether it improves/detracts from the greater narrative of C3.

That said, I don’t mind people saying that they were disappointed. You come to a C3 episode and you expect to see a whole episode of Bell’s Hells. That’s completely understandable. What I don’t get is people saying the Crown Keepers aren’t a part of this story.

They’re a part of it because Orym and Fearne were members. They’re a part of it because Dorian was and still is a member of Bell’s Hells. Deni$e, Dariax’s (maybe) ex, was a member of Team Issylra and is a friend of Laudna, Ashton, and Orym. They’ve got several members with close connections to the gods, so they’ve got skin in the game of what happens to the pantheon. They’re as much a part of this story as Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein, and that’s on purpose. This is a pan-Exandrian event. Everyone is involved.

[utilitycaster]

Ok I'm probably going to regret reinventing 17th century European religious philosophy here but:

Ludinus's issue with the gods as stated to Imogen and Fearne (and I will state right now that we know he was lying or deliberately misleading at points in that conversation so I don't exactly take him at his word, but let's assume he does mean this) is that they did not prevent the Calamity. I have the following questions.

Does he have any loyalty/feelings about the Titans given that they would have killed all the people in the era of the Schism, ie, the gods averted that Calamity? My guess is no, which means that whole avenue of discussing the Titans was something of a dead end.

How should Calamity have been averted? The Prime Deities during the Age of Arcanum largely let people do what they wanted, which is what led to one of those mortals releasing the Betrayer Gods. Should the gods have struck down Vespin Chloras before he actually did anything, Minority Report style? Can the gods even predict based on the actions of a single individual or small group, because my guess is they can't, particularly since within the current stream of gameplay they absolutely cannot [ie, the reason the Changebringer can't tell FCG to stay or run is because Matt Mercer is the Changebringer and he doesn't know how people will roll; you do need to consider the medium here]. But if they could: so you think they should strike down mortals on the basis of thoughtcrimes? Or control them? In that case, why is Aeor a problem? There's a lot you can argue is justified once you permit the gods to override free will and kill people over mere potential for catastrophe.

On that note, Laerryn both was an unwitting architect of the Calamity (shorted on energy and then killed the Tree of Names, which served as a core planar defense system) but also averted the worst of it. Did the lives she saved by preventing the rise of Rau'shan and Ka'Mort outweigh the lives she took by destroying the Tree of Names? How should the gods have reacted?

Should, perhaps, the gods have all sealed themselves away earlier - perhaps post-Schism? If so, then the issue isn't the Divine Gate, now is it? Should the gods intervene or not intervene? Should they remove themselves or no? It feels like the issue isn't that they distanced themselves so that they can do less in the world, particularly if you wish to kill them, but that you really want to fucking kill them and they made that somewhat more difficult.

How do we know the gods (for example) didn't save Laudna? She was hanged and she's still alive; Morri would probably count this as saving her and I don't see the same desire to wipe out all Archfey. [real talk I find most discussion of Laudna specifically to be...incomprehensibly ignorant in its refusal to acknowledge that everything about it is player agency related, whether it's the story that the cast played out for Vox Machina or the decisions Marisha specifically made in creating the character, ie, do you think Matt should have said "well you can't play a Hollow One because that would mean the gods didn't save you" not to mention the fact that again, we are playing this within a game system where the existence Deus Ex Machina would in fact fucking suck ass; but even setting aside those reasons why this argument is stupid, it's still stupid. It's like a layer cake of stupid.] Again: do you want more intervention or less? Killing them guarantees less.

I'm assuming the problem with the Calamity is the vast loss of life, in which case, what's the math on how many people have been killed by the Vanguard or Imperium in the pursuit of unleashing Predathos? How many more will die?

If the release of Predathos doesn't result in the immediate demise of all the gods, and the Divine Gate is down, why isn't this a recipe for Calamity 2? What was the motivation for killing the gods again?

Should we kill mortal diviners who do not do all within their power to stop terrible things that may come to pass? If the issue is that some people have power without working for it, why haven't we killed all the sorcerers?

Should we be listening to a single word from someone who consumes random fey to live longer, and that's just the start of the CVS receipt of atrocities?

Is there a point where one's deeply held beliefs due to one's own personal trauma become invalidated due to one's actions as a result of that trauma? If so, why is the limit for Orym "is okay with killing people who are trying, directly, to kill you (which, frankly, isn't even a trauma response, that's just called not wanting to die, which I highly recommend as a personal philosophy), and gets upset when people defend those knowingly collaborating with his family's murderers" and the limit for Vanguard generals "family abandonment/just. buckets of murder of innocents./child soldier recruitment in multiple different contexts/eating fey as biohacking/destroying an entire city and the surrounding forest for hundreds of years (ongoing)/imperialism in multiple different contexts/I was going to make a gallows humor joke about how while neither exist in-world they've violated the Geneva Convention AND the IRB for testing on human subjects multiple times over but actually those both are in fact written in a lot of the same blood/probably some others that I'm forgetting"

[lheautontimoroumenos]

ok so I might be drawing parallels where there are none but I'm rewatching c1 because of tlovm so.

when they're in the Feywild looking for Fenthras they find a hag's house in a giant tree that has a bit of a glow to it (in ep 62 Uninviting Waters). Pike and Scanlan go investigate on Vex's broom, and they roll shit, so we don't get much, but I'm thinking it might be Nana's house?

the episode transcript for the description is this :

MATT Okay. You don't pick up a lot of detail, but as you come up over the top, looking on the inside, it looks to be rather comfortable, surprisingly. It's a small home. There's a table, and there's a small hearth. There appears to be what looks to be a shelf of some kind, ramshackle, maybe, but still functional, with books pressed into it. You can see a number of small baskets hanging from the ceiling, containing various roots and other pieces of plant matter that are gathered and bundled together. You can see there is a fireplace by the hearth. There is also a series of drying animal carcasses hung in the corner that are all stripped, and they're being aired out in that space. You also see what looks to be a large chair that is facing the hearth, slightly away from you, and a small end table next to it that contains a little teacup and a little tea set.

TALIESIN What size person is the chair for?

MATT Actually, the chair is pretty large. It's tall. The tea set is small. And as you're making a look, you see one large crooked hand reach out from behind the chair with impossibly long fingers with hooked nails reach over. You can see what looks like dried wrappings hanging from parts of its wrist and elbow as it reaches over and wraps its gnarled fingers around this tiny teacup and pull it back behind the chair.

so I'm thinking either the hag/Morri just has a small tea set, or it's for a young Fearne or even for her second mouth on her stomach.

also the description loosely fits the one Matt gives of Nana's house in C3E45

MATT There, you're greeted by a low-lit, cozy entryway, a flat expanse at the base of where the split is. You can see it's decorated in knitted dolls, placed on little naturally warped tables. You can see animal skeletons that have been posed in dancing positions with each other that are placed up on little shelves and along the sides of the entryway. You can see alien-looking potted plants that seem to be taking root on their side of the room and guarding it fiercely. More of the staircases and rope bridges you can see begin to splinter off from here and lead higher and higher up through the tree.

[...]

The wide shoulders are thin. They come out like pointed, skeletal shoulders, the sleeves extending these long, thin arms. You see, around the top of the dress from where these shoulders are, they're obscured by a bunch of dark linen and chiffon that creates a mantle around it.

The tree's description isn't quite the same, but that part of the Feywild was weird(er than usual) because of Saundor, so it could have changed a lot between Vox Machina and Fearne bringing Bell's Hells to visit.

so we have this in C1E62 for the tree

MATT You see the tree, while it is thicker, it is not as high as the other trees. In fact, where there would be a top of a tree, it looks to be instead a tangled mass of branches that have been matted over and tied down to the top of where this tree ends.

and this in C3E45

MATT You step within the tree, and you can see the actual trunk of this structure, and you can see the actual trunk of this structure. This is probably the largest tree you've seen aside from the Sun Tree. It's comparable in its thickness. You can tell, about 30 feet up, it splits into two separate trunks that then wrap around each other in a corkscrew upward.

Now, none of those are 100% like the others, and I'm very likely reaching, but! I think it would be funny because it would make Nana Morri Artagan's ex :)

(as per C1E63: "She's many things, but she's not a hag. She's an ex.")

TLDR: I think Nana Morri might be the hag Vox Machina crossed paths with in the Feywild when they were looking for Fenthras which would make her Artagan's ex

[afalkart]

Even if there isn’t a complete retcon ex machina, FCG could revivify Fearne and Fearne coming back up could revivify Orym bc if I recall they have more than just the one diamond. And I refuse to believe that Laudna will die again

[quel-bon-idee]

I know I literally have never really posted about cr, but I’m about to do a lukewarm take! Narrative sadness doesn’t need to always come at the expense of a characters life. In a world where we have the ability to tell stories of tales beyond the human experience, why choose to create stories like this? If both Fearne and Orym die next Thursday I will stop watching the campaign. I have autism and characters being replaced, but then being played by the same person upsets me to the point where I’ve suffered severe mental breakdowns due to this happening in campaign 1 (Scanlan) & 2 (Molly). Not to slight Matt, but also I will (he’s fucking rich and famous calm down). As a personal critique, this fight was a railroaded tpk essentially. I know the feeling of having your players on the brink of tpk when really you just wanted a difficult fight for the stress and it sucks, but truly they were not given any options after 1. making really great choices during the siege, and 2. only given the "submit ex machina" after Matt chose to have the character specifically take repeated attacks to make sure the pc’s died despite mechanically not really understanding that an unconscious person is different than dead. It’s mainly just a question of why? Already having narrative issues at the beginning with the slow pace of staying in a town too long, and then Bassuras and the anime side quest of it all. Plus bringing Dusk in to push narrative threads, but overloading the viewer with information instead. So why? Why make a fight that is quite honestly hard to watch. There’s no back and forth and it just feels like a dm wailing on their pc’s for fun and that fucking sucks (which honestly, Matt has a habit of doing and maybe I’m just autismo and reading it wrong but I get the vibe that it’s a lot of player vs dm sometimes idk. Maybe it’s me). I understand it’s improv, but if you can stick that high of a challenge rating boss on the party because you want to, you clearly have the power to railroad the other shit to make it enjoyable. The fact of the matter is they are not really "playing dnd" anymore. They’ve risen to a level of success where they have resources no home game ever will. They are storytelling through this medium. They have an audience to impress. Hell, they fucking have a writers team. They are telling a story simply through the medium of dnd. This means that you should take liberties to try and craft a story that is compelling and satisfying. In real dnd games you don’t need to do this, but if you’re fucking critical role? With a tv show and merch store? You gotta put in the effort

[utilitycaster]

I was wondering if you had thoughts on potential consequences of going to Keyleth (story wise or game play wise). I've personally been bouncing back and forth with story wise it makes sense, game play wise this almost feels like cheating, and content wise I'm not sure I like where this could potentially go down the road and while I want to stay open minded about it, it just feels like a mistake.

Hi anon,

I agree pretty much entirely. I have been pretty openly wary of the connections to major campaign 1 characters from the beginning and I am hoping my concerns will remain unfounded, but the current developments have not been great.

I truly think that Orym's connection to Keyleth should have, hands down, been vetoed during character creation. (I also think Laudna's specific connection to Delilah should have been refused, to the point that when Fearne was revivified and both Orym and Laudna were down I was like, you know, it's sad...but this would resolve some things).

It's not that you can't have references to earlier campaigns - indeed, both FCG and Jester are characters who would not have existed without the previous campaigns but engage with that material in a much better way, and we're getting no shortage of references to Campaign 2 in-game right now that are much more skillfully woven into the plot. But once you have a character who has the ability to call up Vox Machina with minimal barriers? That's a problem. It's not even comparable to the capacity to call on someone moderately powerful for a favor, because it's built into the backstory that Orym knows Keyleth, she's his leader, his father-in-law and husband died protecting her. It's not like Eshteross, who is both very kind and understanding and accommodating, but is, ultimately, an employer without a longstanding relationship. Nor is it like previous powerful allies like Essek, Yussa, or The Bright Queen, (or even Gilmore and Allura and Uriel in C1) who all had their own agendas and interests and limits to what the party could ask of them, in that, again, Orym's agenda is, to an extent, inherently aligned with Keyleth's agenda.

It's also an issue, in my opinion, because it's a former PC whose abilities we know. I have no issue with Matt playing Keyleth - I had no issue with him writing a letter on behalf of Vex - but Vox Machina are level 20 heroes. Canonically, Keyleth is nigh immortal with access to multiple resurrection spells, and Pike can just ask her god to do whatever once a week. It does not feel comparable to just any high-level NPC because of this; again, Eshteross is relatively high level and quite wealthy, but he is, ultimately, a powerful fighter with a certain amount of cachet, not someone who can provide a miracle on demand. Like...it's ok to have Vox Machina as people they can call upon for a few resources (as the Nein did with Allura), but here, it's like...we're shutting down more interesting avenues, like this cool group of urban planners in Jrusar, or striking a deal with Jiana, and instead we just, pun unintended but unavoidable, have this deus ex machina on call. We really are at a point where the question becomes "we know who the problem is and Keyleth can scry and is a level 20 druid who could quite literally destroy the entire seat of disdain without breaking a sweat...why doesn't SHE deal with Otohan?"

And of course there's just a lack of potential with former PCs. We KNOW we're unlikely to get any sort of twist or betrayal, nor them getting killed off, because like, why would Matt do that with Keyleth? So there's none of the interesting dynamics. Like, again going to Eshteross, but: I genuinely worry he might die at Otohan's hand! And I'll be sad, because I love him as a character, but that's also an incredible story! For Keyleth (or any member of Vox Machina) there's this odd case that the scope of their capabilities is massive, but the scope of what can be done to them within the story is incredibly narrow. Through no fault of their own, they just kind of suck the story into a black hole because of who they are.

I feel like I've been referencing Brian Murphy of Naddpod a lot lately, but he is really good at talking about the gears and wires of D&D planning and is willing to be fairly critical, which I appreciate, and the way he puts this is that some people come to the table and then try to avoid playing D&D. Calling in a level 20 druid to fix your problem feels like that - and I don't think that's the intention, and you're absolutely right that it makes sense because of that set up in the story - which is why I really think that setup was, fundamentally, a mistake.

So, as I said, my hope is that the resurrection fails, the way that Will and Derrig's apparently did (which would make complete sense in-story, since it was the same assailants), though I am still kind of a fan of Laudna from 32 years ago being brought back in that I think Bells Hells will perceive it as not entirely successful. I think that would neither show as any slight on Keyleth or her abilities since it's already canonical, but would lead Bells Hells to perhaps focus on other options and be reluctant to call upon her.