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The Report Card – Fantasy High Junior Year Ep 19/20

Blinded By Rage

Welcome back for a final time this year to Fantasy High where we’re covering both parts of the finale in one go!

Last we left off here, the Bad Kids had gotten control of the Hangman post dragon fight on election night and were flying back to a much changed Elmville, sky turned an angry red in the process of becoming the divine domain of rage.

When we return, they’re running out of clouds to ride on and need to pick a place to land. Fabian is concerned about just plopping a chunk of his house randomly in town but time is of the essence so they land at school on the Bloodrush field. It’s 10:20 PM, so they have less than two hours until the polls close at midnight. All the non-Bad Kid students get the hell out of Dodge because they’re useless in a crisis as always and all the brave and competent students (read: The Seven) have graduated.

Brennan rules that, despite how crazy it was, the K2 Divine Intervention was technically buttoned up and allows Kristen to choose a special effect. She wants K2 back to help with spellcasting which Brennan grants (and will live to regret).

Elmville is NOT doing well. It’s like 107 degrees and they can hear sirens and gunshots. There’s some real The Purge energy. Mazey has the duffel bag of votes but says she’s not allowed to count them until midnight so they all take a short rest to get their stuff back. They send Jawbone and Ragh to make sure Lydia is OK. They also strategize and throw on a bunch of buffs. Gorgug drinks his crazy strength potion he got as a present from Riz that takes him to a 25 Str. Adaine casts Rary’s Telepathic Bond so everyone can communicate telepathically plus Fly on Fabian, Gorgug, and herself. Kristen handcuffs the duffel bag of votes to Mazey for safekeeping. Perhaps, most crucially, Kristen has K2 cast Ice Feat which has ascended from a mistake to a bit to a homebrew spell with the following effects:

Every creature targeted by this spell takes a level of exhaustion and 1d12 cold damage.

The targets are cured of all disease and poison.

All creatures targeted by this spell make constitution saving throws with advantage and their hit point maximum and current hit points increase by 2d10.

The targets gain immunity to fire damage and the stunned condition.

Remember that last one for later.

Anyway, there’s a lot more that they do but I’ll mention stuff if they come up in a big way. For now, let’s bust into the gym where Porter plus Jace and the Rat Grinders are trying and failing to do the ritual because they never got the proper name (highlighted by Buddy who in his same blind earnestness from before he was rage star’d thinks Bakarath is the true name and they’re just not believing hard enough).

Porter is furious that he was tricked into using the wrong name and grows to an enormous size, doing the foot stomp stun thing from earlier in the season but Ice Feast gives immunity to the stun condition so with a successful “Loser says what?” from Gorgug, it’s time to roll for initiative!

To set the scene, the gym (and all of Elmville really) is breaking apart. Team Porter has invoked all this energy but can’t do anything with it so it’s kind of like a ticking time bomb ready to explode. The floor of the gym is cracking and there’s bubbling lava underneath–lava that is actually the carcass of Ankarna and the rage domain is spilling into the material plane.

I also want to mention that even though several people have abilities/spells active that allow them to see Invisibility, no one can see Kipperlilly. We learn later it’s because she’d never been truly invisible, she’s just that good at hiding.

As always, I’m gonna just hit highlights for the fight but ooh man, there are some highlights:

Riz on his first turn does a super clutch casting of Slow which gums up the works for the Rat Grinders for a big chunk of the fight.

Just as they planned earlier (both in game and as we learned during the AP, out of game) Oisin is the top priority to deal with. A tag team of Fig and Gorgug gets him off the board in the first round before he can even cast a single spell.

Ivy attacks the Hangman on her turn and Fabian returns the favor by brutally one-shotting her his next turn. Like, *extremely* brutally. He has low key had it out for her since she was mean about Mazey way back at the top of the season. But even Mazey (who is joining the fight because they can’t actually kill her, logistically speaking since she needs to count the votes) is like hmm, don’t know if I *love* that. (For the record, Ivy is killed first but Oisin is attacked first. That’s why I have them in this order).

After Ruben hits everyone with a 9th level spell (highest level a spell can be for anyone not familiar) Fig gives up on the dude. Once the 9th level spells get broken out, the time for talking is over. In disguise as Wanda, she rips a very confused Ruben a new one for not being receptive to any of her attempts to coax him onto a redemption arc. She eventually blasts him into hell which sounds brutal until you remember that it’s functionally just her office.

Because the Rat Grinders are clustered together in a very non-strategic way, Adaine is able to hit them all with Synaptic Static which not only does damage but also forces a bunch of their spellcasters to lose Concentration on spells. Everyone but Buddy I believe.

Kipperlilly gets Riz with 8 points of damage but he gets her with 21 damage on his Attack of Opportunity as she escapes which is almost triple. That’s crazy!

And I wanna pause here to make a quick point. The Rat Grinders are kind of bad at this. Like, they have all these high level abilities–and we know Brennan can be brutal in how he runs NPCs cause we’ve seen them in Neverafter and ACOC. But the Rat Grinders are just seriously dropping like flies. And that’s due to a combination of three things. One, the Intrepid Heroes and by extension the Bad Kids are just really good at this. They’ve had a lot of practice and they’ve had time to strategize. They read the rules. They’re making clutch decisions. Of course they’re good at what they’re doing. Secondly, they got some great rolls. For instance, initiative worked out that they had the opportunity to merc Oisin before he could start slinging 9th level wizard spells. And finally, as we learned in the AP, the Rat Grinders had level 20 abilities but they were still very squishy because they didn’t level up properly.

Anyway, back to the fight.

Jace splits himself into 4 copies and finally gets Ankarana’s name with a Detect Thoughts on Fig. That’s not the only road block for the Bad Kids. They’re doing really well considering but also taking some Ls. Fabian drops (as does Fig later) and Adaine gets caught with Flesh to Stone.

Riz tries to find Kipperlilly and, when he can’t, he goes under the gym floorboards, shoots at Porter, and introduces the last big element to this combat: with his last 5 feet of movement, he jumps into the lava to hide. Because, as Emily mouthed to him a few minutes earlier, because of Ice Feast, they’re all immune to Fire Damage. Brennan forgot to account for that. The lava is only a hazard for his NPCs. The Bad Kids are all immune. Kipperlilly is so baffled that she goes, “What the fuck?” and gives away her position.

From this point on, utilizing the combo of Fly and fire immunity to stay out of range of enemies–either in the sky or below the gym floorboards in/near the lava–becomes a major part of their strategy. For instance, Kristen goes under there to do some Mass Healing without being a target.

Porter in this fight is very fearsome. He has Legendary Actions and he can attack so hard that you get hit just from the air moving so fast before his weapon even hits you. Later on in the two-parter, he stops on Gorgug’s skull and gives him two death saves. It’s a whole world of hurt.

But, the Bad Kids also are no-selling him at every single turn. He insults them but they just say he was a shitty teacher. He tries to activate their rage crystals but, guess what? They all avoided taking a rage token all season so it has no effect. He even tries to give them a speech about how the school sucks and they should be on his side but they’re like, my brother in Ankarna, YOU’RE a big part of why the school has been sucking. Adaine and Fig have great back to back lines. Fig accuses him of having no principles, just pride. And Adaine says the school didn’t MAKE them waste their summer on the Night Yorb quest. That was their mistake and they fixed it. He seems a bit surprised and confused that they won’t engage with his philosophy but that’s really on him if he thought THIS would tempt the Bad Kids at all. They’re great at getting mad all on their own. All he’s offering is the destruction of their homes.

Riz on his next turn sets himself up in a purposefully clumsy hiding spot where he will be easily visible to anyone looking for him but they will have to get in melee range to hit him and he readies an action to catch a spell.

On Fig’s turn, she gets away from Porter to get in position but that earns her a nasty attack of opportunity from him that's so powerful it starts carbonizing her blood (which is what happened to Yolanda you'll remember so now we know for sure who killed her). But once she gets away from him, she is safe in the lava (which is also Ankarana’s body). She tells Ankarna that she needs to choose her own path and then does a huge Fireball (which is the actual killing blow on Ruben btw). The Fireball also breaks Buddy’s concentration on the spell he’s been holding all fight which was a Banishment on the ballot box. They now have a way to get the votes delivered!

This is where part 1 ends but we’re rolling this all together for the recap so let’s keep going!

(I also have to note that for part two, everyone but Brennan is dressed in emo gear. Do with that info what you will.)

Fabian pulls out Bakur’s gem and throws him out like a Pokemon. He doesn’t break out right away but Brennan takes the opportunity to intro a new mechanic where portals open and on a high enough roll, the Bad Kids can call allies to help.

Fabian ALSO has the idea to push Jace (well, one of the 4 Jaces) into the lava which, surprise surprise, the fighter/dancer is stronger than the waifish sorcerer. And that’s 18d10 damage so yeah. This fight largely becomes the throwing people into lava challenge. And can you blame them? That’s so much damage!

We get a little bit of elucidation about how the rage crystals work. Porter is a kind of hive queen and he can exert influence over the people with crystals in their chest. We see him do it to Jace and we see crystals leave the chests of Oisin, Ivy, and Ruben (well not his chest cause he’s in hell but from where he was standing). The crystals are parasitic and jump ship to try and find new hosts.

Mazey gets rage star’d. Bad! K2 Banishes Buddy. Good! (Extra good bc K2 is Invisible and can’t be Counterspelled)

Porter chugs some devil’s honey and calls to Ankarna that he’s trying to rez her so he can worship her which we know is a lie cause his real goal is to usurp her. Fig and Kristen treat her like a friend who’s getting back with her shitty ex and are like girl he’s lying to you!

In one of my fave moments of the ep, Kipperlilly falls for the trap Riz laid in part one, going to attack him where he’s awkwardly positioned and not realizing that he was actually forcing her to jump over a pit of lava. The moment she does, he hits her with a Hold Person which stops her in her tracks and causes her to fall straight into the lava. Riz gets in the last word in this one-sided rivalry, “Very good on paper, but no practical application.”

She sinks into the lava and, as she does, we see she doesn’t have a visible rage crystal (only a symbol) because, unlike the others, she is a full willing participant. (Note: She DOES have a crystal to be clear, Brennan mentions that later, it’s just put in a different way).

Mary Ann fully jumps into the lava to attack Fig, tanking the damage and downing a very injured Fig in one hit.

Adaine gets a very clutch move next, whisking all her injured friends to safer parts of the battlefield and drawing a legendary action from Porter even though she’s one of the least tanky members of the group. But with her Mirror Images, she gets off scott free! Adaine, Battle Wizard!

Since Mazey is under rage control, Porter tries to make her disband the school but a Clippy style pop up of Arthur Aguefort shows up to say that mind controlling the class president to make them do stuff doesn’t count, you have to win fair and square. The things that this man plans for vs what he overlooks is baffling.

Not only that but with Kipperlilly dead (and no cleric to heal her since Buddy is banished) their plan is kind of screwed. Even if they can rig the vote, their candidate is dead.

When Jace and Porter are squabbling about plan logistics, Porter says, “Figure it out Stardiamond or I’ll kill you again,” which confirms that Jace got roped into the plan that way. Maybe Porter knew he needed someone with spells?

Gorgug gets a Nat 20 to pop up (from Porter downing him and giving him 2 death saves as I mentioned earlier) and then destroy another Jace clone, again with lava.

Gonna pause again to say that I am really skimming over a lot here. Battle episodes are just not conducive to straight up recaps when they’re this long and involved. I’m gonna steal a trick of Adaine and quickly reposition everyone so you know the state of the battlefield where I’m jumping back in with the plot-forward part of the fight. Bakur has busted out of his gem but isn’t sure which side to join at first. The Bad Kids eventually are able to roll high enough to get some allies on the field–Ragh/Lydia/Sandra Lynn/Jawbone/Gorthalax plus Squeem and Balthazar (but don’t worry too much about them. The most notable things there are Lydia does a sick wheelchair jump assistant by Ragh to get an attack in and Squeem heals everyone with cortados). Mary Ann goes down to lava. Fabian is able to break Mazey out of her rage with The Power Of Getting Your Kisses In and they make it official vis a vis boyfriend/girlfriend titles.

Fig and Kristen try to tag team to tell Ankarna that Porter is lying to her but they don’t make the Dispel Magic roll to get rid of the Devil’s Honey. You know who does though? With a crit? As she farts and days Blimey?

Yeah, I told you Brennan was going to live to regret letting her live. Zac takes over again and Brennan just says, “No,” and leaves for a bit while everyone else howls with laughter.

Brennan is so over it that he rules that, after this fight, K2 will be granted true life (Pinnochio style) and then banished to real life actual England. (Which seems dangerous considering Unsleeping City takes place irl but dig your own grave man).

ANYWAY, All Of That aside, the Dispel Magic does work and Bakur is able to see the lies despite the Devil’s Honey. He joins the fight on the BK’s side.

Also the bird cop shows up to shoot the last Jace. Don’t worry about it.

OK, so going into the endgame of this fight, All the Rat Grinders are dead except for Buddy who is Banished. Bakur is there, and fighting with our heroes. Some of their allies have arrived. Mazey and Fabian and both down. All but one Jace (the one who got shot) is fully off the board. And they still have to convince Ankarna that Porter is a big liar.

OK, pieces repositioned, let’s finish this fight up.

Having just been brought up by Sandra Lynn (like I said, I skimmed a LOT), it’s Adaine’s turn and she decides to do something uncharacteristic for a wizard. She takes a leap of faith. She uses her earworm present from Fabian to cast Detect Thoughts on all of her friends in range (Kristen and Fig) plus Bakur and Porter.

According to the wording of the card (which I assume has been partially homebrewed for the setting bc it’s a bit different than the one in the official book), using the earworm to cast Detect Thoughts sends the information gleaned to the nearest extraplanar creature. Which in this case is Ankarna.

The Devil’s Honey is dispelled now so it’s just up to if Porter makes his save or not (Adaine tells her friends to fail on purpose). He makes it, but Gorgug throws one of his inventions–a flashbang grenade–at him with another great line. He goes out of his rage and says, “Hey. Don’t be blinded by rage.” FLASH! The grenade goes off and he’s distracted enough to fail the save. His thoughts get broadcasted right to Ankarna.

Adaine says, "Is this justice? Is this a new dawn?"

In this moment, Brennan lets everyone roll as a cleric of Ankarna for Divine Intervention. I cannot BELIEVE he lets K2 roll but, thankfully, she doesn’t actually get it. It’s Fabian, unconscious and appropriately in a kind of liminal state that’s able to do it (Note: Mazey is supposed to be down at this point so I don’t know how this next thing happens–whether it’s just a continuity blip or in his head or whatever but I’m just reporting what happened at the table, OK?). In his unconscious state, Mazey is really emotional about Fabian going down. She says that he's a really great and caring person even outside all of the things that make him traditionally cool and she wishes they could have lost their V Cards together. Ankarna, goddess of justice, will NOT let such an injustice stand. That’s enough to make her emerge from the lava, fully formed (and Fig, who has the keys to her domain, of course lets her in). She pops up and immediately slices Porter in half with a huge ass god sword. Sayonara Porter! Maybe you can be a boat in hell with Goldenhoard.

Things start to calm, but it’s still all weird and liminal as Ankarna’s domain is being reestablished. Everyone is separated and Brennan asks them all for a moment of something unfair that they regret accepting. What follows is a bit similar to the American Dream sequence in Unsleeping City where Ankarna offers each of them a chance for vengeance/justice but is turned down.

Gorgug thinks of Porter unfairly writing him off. Kristen thinks of her bio family. Adaine sees her parents pitting her against her sister who she could have been loving this whole time. Riz sees how hard it was to connect with people but also how he pushed Fig and Kristen this year and sees a bit of Kipperlilly in himself. Fig sees all of her internal conflict from the past year from not being able to make a pact with herself to not being able to act for help. Fabian sees the burden of living up to his father's legacy. Ankarna heals everyone of their wounds but then sadly sends them to a Twilight Forest (presumably Cass’s domain) when they politely say that they appreciate the offer but don’t need vengeance.

Fabian does have a moment come from this however as Gorthalax and Bakur tag team to bring Bill in for a little heart to heart with Fabian where he says that he’d love his son even if he wasn’t a Maximum Legend and he’d give up his legacy for one more day to spend with Fabian.

(Also, Lydia and Bakur are cool now. They talked it out off screen.)

With all of that, everyone is now together and Cass is holding Ankarna who is badly injured. Ankarna kind of has the attitude that Cass had at the end of last season where it was like, it doesn’t seem like anyone really needs me and all I’ve done is cause trouble so maybe I shouldn’t be here. The Bad Kids reassure her that she’s more than just her usefulness and that contrary to her declaration that she has no followers, she has at least six in the six of them. Ankarna cries happy tears.

Cass and Ankarna are about to leave to have a well deserved reunion but Kristen holds them up to ask about where the hell Kalina is. Ankarna gets all agitated because she’s NEVER trusted that cat and she’s damn near about to go on a crusade to find her as soon as Kristen brings up her suspicions. Before they leave, they have some business to attend to.

They raise Rat Grinders (sans Kipperlilly since she was a willing participant) and Ankarna takes her name off of Lucy and Yolanda’s bodies so they can be raised. Then, Cass takes a selfie with Kristen and Ankarna and drafts a social media post to send to Craig to post because Kristen may be great in a foxhole, but she’s not the most organized person in Spyre.

With this all wrapped up, Aguefort (and Ayda!) finally show up but the Bad Kids absolutely refuse to let him take credit for their victory. Mazey counts the votes. Adaine gets Aguefort to remove the bit in the bylaws about drugs being illegal (he calls it “narc shit).

Riz pulls Kristen aside to make sure she actually wants to be president and that she’s not just doing it for his sake and she says yeah, (though she later says she wants him to be VP with her which he is very down for).

Bobby Dawn tries to leave town (without even taking his grandkid!) but Fabian is chasing his ass down for all of his bullshit against his friends.

Lucy is brought back and confirms that her friends killed her but also says that Ruben was one of her best friends before this started, implying that he was fully personality changed by the rage stars (unlike Kipperlilly who was maybe made more extreme but was rageful from the start). We see this in action when Ruben is brought back, basically tabula rasa. He has no memories of his emo persona and is really stressed to have lost his puka shell necklace. Ivy and Oisin seem like they have more memories and are ashamed of what they did but there’s not an explanation given of why the difference in effect.

Mary Ann is basically the same and has a very abrupt conversation with Gorgug where she asks him if he has a girlfriend, much to everyone’s delight. Gorgug is so baffled and frustrated but finally lands on, “She’s so hot,” to everyone's further delight.

Time for epilogues y’all!

Kristen decides to be a cleric for not just Cass but Ankarna too. She even talks to Tracker (who is on a break from both Nara and Nara's money) about maybe poaching Galacaea from Sol’s pantheon. She also drops Gertie for the possibility of getting into a situationship with Tracker, earning herself a nemesis.

Riz decides to try and chill out a little and switch from coffee to tea. He still thinks change can be scary but he recognizes that without change, he never would have met his friends.

Aelwyn delivers a letter from the Court of Stars to Adaine which they open over ice cream sundaes at Basrar’s. Apparently, some wizard is starting shit in Sylvere–their mother. They’re both ready to plan a road trip to go kill that bitch, but before their sister murder quest (a normal thing for sisters to do) Aelwyn says that she hopes she and Adaine can eat ice cream and do magic together forever, and that if the price to have Adaine was suffering their shitty parents, it was a worthy trade. Adaine happily agrees.

Fabian gets the Tornado to put his house back and rolls for his first time with Mazey. The dice are not on his side but luckily Mazey likes him for his personality, lol. His mom and Gilear show up and announce that they’re expecting…a dog…to guard the new baby. Also Telemaine is moving in. Fabian is distraught, even moreso when he gets a ping on Nemesis Alert. The unborn baby has already declared themselves his nemesis. At least Cathilda is also back!

Like Riz, Gorgug also takes some time to relax since he's no longer taking 4 classes at once. He hangs with his parents and gets some presents for Fig since she was such a big help to him this year. He also makes things official with Mary Ann. Aguefort asks if he's considered being a teacher after he graduates and Ayda boasts that she always knew he was special. Aguefort also stops just short of saying he might be the bad guy next year and disappears into a flock of birds when questioned. Maddening as always.

Fig gets some time with Sandra Lynn who is very supportive of her (which is saying a lot considering Fig has Porter’s literal balls on a chain, do not even ask). She decides school isn’t for her and drops out which she is a little concerned Ayda might judge her for since she’s so studious but Ayda says that learning isn’t confined to a classroom and starts a spell to link Leviathan to her domain in hell. Ageufort is also OK with her dropping out personally, but he does warn her that attack robots WILL be tracking her down for dropping out. Insane, but she’s not too worried about that. She just wants some alone time with Ayda.

And finally, two bits of unfinished business. Unseen to the Bad Kids, Buddy pops out of his Banishment, still a true believer in Bakarath. He believes SO HARD that a baby god comes into existence. Then, out of the shadows KALINA appears and says, "Buddy, we gotta get the fuck out of here. They are coming for us. Your grandfather is not gonna fucking believe this."

And that’s it! End of season. Class dismissed!

Plot Post Mortem

OK y’all there was a LOT going on this season and not everything was neatly wrapped up but I’m gonna take a little bit of time to try and put together what we do know.

We know that Porter was the ultimate puppetmaster of his plot and everyone else was an underling of his to some degree. Jace had a visible rage star in him so it seems that he was forcibly drafted rather than being a fully willing participant.

The Rat Grinders formed a party (at that time called the High Five Heroes) Freshman Year. They went to the Mountains of Chaos for Spring Break. Near the end of Sophomore Year, all of her friends killed her.

The Rat Grinders are on record as just grinding rats which seems to be a half lie because we know from talking to rats that they WERE doing that for a time but eventually Porter recruited them and started farming XP for them.

And we know that Kipperlilly was a willing participant of the plan but the other Rat Grinders were forced.

So my best guess for the series of events here are as follows. In Freshman Year or so, Porter forced Jace into having a crystal so he can have a minion with spells (again, Porter does explicitly say he killed Jace). He spends the year scouting for a good candidate for his plan and finds an already naturally aggro Kipperlilly.

He starts showing an interest in her and lets her in on his plan. She’s super down because she’s already bitter about the perceived injustice of the system. He feeds her unhealthy thought processes. This is why she starts having more rage outburst in Sophomore Year.

Now it’s never made clear when the other Rat Grinders join the plan and how that goes down. The popular theory is that they all died in the Mountains of Chaos but that doesn’t quite make sense. The only way that works is if everyone died except for Lucy. Why would she leave Lucy alive though? Because she was the closest to her? Was it just happenstance? Another possibility is that once they got there, Kipperlilly was the only one willing to get rage star’d and everyone else got cold feet. So, once they got home, she started putting the pressure on everyone else and eventually started killing them one by one to forcibly recruit them, ending with the dogpile on Lucy. This is all speculation of course, I’m just trying to square the info we know to be true with the bits of lore we have. Kipperlilly expected Lucy to come back like the others and they didn’t. With her dead, they needed a new cleric for the plan which is why Buddy Dawn was drafted.

Kipperlilly DID have a rage star–it just wasn’t put into her by force. She chose to take it on. It’s not entirely clear how much it affected her–or anyone’s–actions or personality. Emo Ruben still spoke fondly of Lucy and seemed sad about her death. Kipperlilly was more unhinged in Junior Year but it’s not like she was super hinged before.

It’s also not clear how much autonomy you have when you’re rage star’d. It seems to me that the rage star doesn’t really mind control you so much as play up the rageful thoughts you already have–for instance Adaine when she almost gets rage star’d saying that if she was consumed by rage she’d destroy Falinel and Sylvaire looking for her mom. It CAN mind control you if Porter uses an action to control you but most of the time you’re just an angry version of yourself (though Ruben’s complete personality swap raises questions).

Anyway, that’s the best I can figure. No need to keep spinning wheels now that the season is done.

Honor Roll

Adaine Abernant for Some Unorthodox Wizardry

I am biased towards Adaine but I think she deserves her props this episode.

A Wizard putting themselves in a position where they have to tank damage is so risky, but she cares about her friends enough to Scatter them to safety and hope her Mirror Images do their job.

A Wizard getting in melee range with a Pally/Barb seems like a recipe for disaster but Adaine was able to parry Porter with her sword.

And having faith isn’t really in a Wizard’s wheelhouse but she has enough faith in her friends to try a big swing in reaching out to Ankarna.

(Big Honorable Mentions to Riz trapping KP and Gorgug using his grenade on Porter in the climax).

Detention

Kipperlilly for Being a Bad Rogue

I’m not even giving her this spot for being a bad guy. I’m giving her this spot for being a ROGUE and not HIDING when the plan hinged on her SURVIVING TO THE END. Girl, what were you doing in melee range??? You have a crossbow, bitch, use it! Frankly she shouldn’t have even been on the battlefield, but I know for story reasons she had to be. But if she had to be there she could have played it waaaaaay smarter.

Random Thoughts

Oisin was rage star’d but I have to assume his grandma wasn’t, right? I mean she was buddies with Kalvaxus so she probably just is OK with pillaging and evil. From her POV was it just like oh thank Helio my nerdy-ass grandson finally got cool.

The way that gods work in this world always kind of trips me up. Because gods have been established to not be autonomous individuals in the way that people are. Saying, “Choose your own path” is nice, but it doesn’t really make sense when your personality is literally decided by your followers. They’re more mirrors than they are people. Same thing with morality. If it’s not Ankarna’s fault that she was made into a rageful conqueror, it’s also not Helio’s fault that he’s a fratty college boy (allegedly, I still think that’s more what Kristen felt than what was textually there). Unless we’re saying that each god has a “true self” and anything that pulls them from that is anomalous, then it’s hard to have conversations about gods while viewing them as people with direct agency.

What was up with the vision Adaine kept having? Was that a trick to get them to have that party? Because they probably wouldn’t have done that without her visions. Who did that? Was it a Dream spell like Fig was doing to Ruben?

I didn’t mention it but it was very funny for Adaine to pull a Brer Rabbit: Ohhhh noooo. Please don’t throw me in the laaavaaaaaa.

Who was watching Fig/Wanda “die” in the window, Brennan????? You never told us!!!!

I thought it was sweet when Kristen was like I do wish I had a sister and Adaine was like, I’m your sister :)

I’ll prob make a longer post on this later but I really do not understand why the Ankarna plot is what was picked for this season when it’s so similar to the Cass plot from last season: Goddess of a concept that can be good but people find scary/are skeptical about is changed by the actions of their followers into something monstrous that is being manipulated by bad actors in the current day who the Bad Kids win over to their side and one of them becomes the prophet/champion of. It even has the beat of the goddess, post-rezzing, being like, “Idk if you really need me.” They’re even married! I don’t have a problem with Ankarna the character but she does feel a bit like a rehash of Cass’s storybeats, just in orange instead of purple.

I still have some thoughts but they’ll get answered over the next week as I go through the remaining asks in my ask box and I’ve been working on this for hours so I’m gonna cut this short. As a whole, I thought this season was so much fun! Plot-wise it was probably the muddiest of all the Spyre seasons and I would def have changed stuff but it didn’t hinder my week-to-week enjoyment and it’s always a good time hanging out with the Bad Kids. (Also you all know that the #1 thing I’m here for is Abernant Sisters content and I was extremely catered to in this regard, lol).

Thanks for following these recaps this season! I really appreciate everyone hopping into the tags or asks to talk and theorize and stuff.

If you wanna engage with more of my writing, you can check out my podcast: Absolutely No Adventures or my visual novels on itch.io. It would mean a lot!

#Dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #d20 #d20 spoilers #fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #spoilers #the report card #ahhhh my unpaid part time job is over!#lol nah I do enjoy doing these #they just are very time consuming #so I am very ready for a break #(though anyone hiring plz know that I will absolutely write you long recaps/media analysis that are better proofread than these lol)

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