#ive got like So Many competing thoughts about narrative and fairness and m9 and the bells and their brittle optimism and imogen and LAUDNA-

[sparring-spirals]

What are your thoughts about Laudna coming back, I’m curious because this seems different from the Molly situation, the group seems incredibly determined

Oh boy, what a question.

Okay to set up for the first bit, I'm gonna address the second part of the q first:

Yeah, I think this is different. I think this is very different. I think its different in all the ways that the Bells and the M9 are so drastically different and the ways that they are two very distinct camapigns. But also in the more obvious ways- when the M9 lost Molly, they were lower leveled. They didn't have a cleric with revivify, they didn't have half their party. They didn't have anyone to turn to.

I'm trying to avoid this turning into a meta about the M9 but I think that last detail is just- so important. The Bell's have Eshteross, they have random shop owners to ask, they have distant but powerful figures who might help. The M9- did not. It was part of how they operated. More than once in early campaign they went from being mistrusted to marginally trusted and they would just- leave. Authorities were so rarely friendly. They were accusing people more than they weren't.

When Molly went down, on a snowy hill at the sword of someone who wanted to send a message- there was so, so little they could do.

And so we look at the Bells and- they've got more options. They had half their party killed but they got two of them back up and, in theory, left the battle on their own terms.

They're also, like you said. Incredibly determined.

readmore bc this got long im so sorry

Its both incredible and a little sad, honestly. I said this somewhere already, but by the end of the episode- they aren't quite grieving yet. They're hurt, they're aching from the loss, they're sad, but they haven't started grieving yet and part of that is because they are still acting. There are still things to do, avenues to exhaust. They aren't grieving Laudna yet. They can still get her back. They will, they have to. They're taking the time to sit and check in with each other and ask questions and comfort, where they can, but. Very little of that comfort has even entertained the notion of this loss being permanent. About Laudna being gone, not just lost.

(Except maybe for Orym, who is looking at Imogen and thinking of losing a loved one, having that absence be a fixture instead of an aberration. Thinking of a warm embrace, and "Not yet.")

And Imogen-

Imogen, more than the others, is probably painfully aware of Laudna's absence. A silence in her mind, an empty space at her side.

i'm not sure she can even consider the possibility of that absence becoming permanent, right now.

Im not sure any of them really can.

So... uh. on Laudna coming back: I don't know, right now. I don't think it will be too easy, but I think the Bells are going to be fighting for it, hard, for the foreseeable future. And whether it fails or succeeds in the longer term, i think (I'd hope?) itll have pretty long lasting effects.

I've deleted like an additional five paragraphs of my ~thoughts~ on it for the purposes of length and keeping it as 1 meta instead of two tacked together but:

- Some of my thoughts on Laudna's death can be found here.

- Story wise, narratively, campaign-as-a-whole/ externally, is a whole separate conversation, and one that plays a lot into personal preferences and wants and likes and... probably shouldn't go into this post.

- I think there's a lot of the ways this can go and still be done "well", by a subjective metric.

- I'd like for Laudna to come back. I also can see a world where she doesn't, and narratively thats juicy as hell, and also devastating. (edit: like full honesty, devastating and also chock full of potential, yknow?)

- No matter the specifics- Laudna mattered, and will continue to matter, and I think that's the main thoroughline I'm looking for.

- edit: and- alongside that- id want her death to matter too- whatever that might look like.