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burningdarkfire · 3 years

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Where is that director's cut of into the desert I've been demanding for so long. Where is it. WHERE IS IT. I was promised 5000 words it better not be any less than that, give me all the content 👀

Hello. Welcome to the extended author’s note/behind the scenes look at into the desert of your pitiless faith. I wrote this for two reasons:

1) I like to show off my hard work, and into the desert taught me more in the writing of it than anything else this year because it was so goddamn difficult. Also, I find these sorts of commentaries interesting to read, so I assume others do as well.

2) You, Sol, personally showed up on my doorstep every Sunday for months to forcefully suggest that I write and share something like this. You probably didn’t expect it to be 5000 words long before I told you, but here it is.

I. A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE

into the desert is a fanfiction using Critical Role characters merged with some key ideas from the book A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - the most prominent being the beacon-machine that is a reskin of Martine’s imago machines. If you’re unfamiliar, here’s the Goodreads summary for AMCE:

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident—or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.

I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to read high sci fi space opera. AMCE is the first book of a duology, but I hadn’t yet read the second book A Desolation Called Peace before I wrote into the desert - which is fortunate and necessary, because the second book is better than the first and successfully addresses the issues I list below.

into the desert is very much a fanfiction for AMCE, despite being exclusive under the CritRole AO3 tag. I had two major lines of thought to explore after reading the book:

1) AMCE is unquestionably about the struggles of existing under an empire/dominant culture, but the demands of the plot and Martine’s own writing style didn’t quite hit the beats that I was looking for.

2) (this is a MAJOR SPOILER WARNING for AMCE): The imago machine that lent itself to my beacon-machines is actually malfunctioning for a large part of the first book, but it is by far the most interesting idea of Martine’s and I wanted to explore what it might be like to actually have one.

I will also shamelessly admit that I read the below passage from AMCE and immediately knew I had to write it for Astrid/Wulf/Caleb:

“Can’t we be done with this, Six Direction,” Nineteen Adze said, and there was an aching, exhausting anguish in her voice. “I want you to live and to hold the throne forever; I will miss you all the days of my life when you are gone, but the sun-spear throne is not a barbarian medical experiment and should not be - look at Mahit, your Brilliance. She has Yskandr in her and she is not Yskandr.”

The Emperor fixed his eyes on Mahit’s. She felt like she was drowning. All the supernatural power she’d imagined a blood ritual to evoke for her was right here, and all it was was reflected limbic system response, a trick of neurology. And yet there was a soapbubble-thin hook behind her sternum, an ache. Six Direction lifted one of his hands - they did not shake, and she had time to wonder at his strength - and cupped her cheek in his hand.

She let Yskandr - the sequence of responses, continuity of memory and its reflection on emotion, on pattern, that used to be Yskandr - lean into that palm. Let him shut her eyes in a deep, slow flutter.

And then took it all back, sat up straight with her eyes wide open, and said, “Your Brilliance, he loved you. I have met you thrice.”

II. EMPIRES AND DYNASTIES CONSUME

I knew from the start that into the desert was going to be slower-paced than most readers would expect or want, but its slow pace is the point: Essek is in a relatively protected position and spends many weeks doing nothing but existing in the City and yet it still changes and challenges him because being Other under a dominant culture is not only about looking different or having less privileges but also about the slow and subtle difference of mannerisms and foods and cultural contexts - not even microaggressions but just the sheer reality of existing differently.

The formal bow and the teeth-smiling are examples lifted directly from AMCE but the focus on sunlight, on food, on clothing are my own.

It’s mentioned in the first chapter that the City is “a planet that actually defines its days by its position around its sun.” Essek and Caleb are “sun-blinded” with “eyes wide open” when they first approach. It’s brought up several more times, usually in conjunction with the Dynasty that keeps its isolation in the dark. The final passage that directly references the sun is this:

He will miss this place, [Essek] thinks. He's been missing it his entire life, even before Caleb, even before knowing. This is the City that is the World. If the Dynasty had sunlight like this - who knows who they might have been?

How to explain this without sounding trite? Is it enough to share that I’m a 1.5-gen immigrant who once heard my father express a longing for some utopic ideal of our home country that has not suffered and I’ve never forgotten it? My parents left by choice, and I didn’t, and now we live somewhere where it gets dark at 4PM every winter, and still we have a brighter future here.

If you know, you know.

Most of what’s happening with food in the fic is pretty blatant - lots of things are unfamiliar to Essek and he makes a genuine effort to assimilate (and Astrid is fond of displays of power). Darkvision only gives shades of gray, so early in the fic there’s a lot of attention given to the colours of food in particular: The grocery store is an assault, Fjord’s fête is a rainbow. It tones down as Essek gets used to it all.

(Fun fact: all the items that Essek picks up in the grocery store reappear.)

(Another fun fact: it’s mentioned that the Dynasty has no natural large bodies of water. I like the idea that the drow came from elsewhere and eventually settled there. You’ve been missing out on sushi your whole life, Essek.)

The language for colour is always simple, because I imagine someone who grew up without much exposure to colour wouldn’t have the reference points or vocabulary to express them poetically. Some things don’t particularly change: Essek dresses in neutrals and never eats meat after he realizes how it looks raw.

The hamburger scene is one of the last that I wrote and added but served a multitude of purposes at once: give us a little bit of the world and a bit of backstory, present Essek with a food familiar to us but unfamiliar to him, introduce the quiet idea that Essek is unused to seeing colour, and set up the way that Essek responds to any difficulty presented to him (he smiles! he smiles a lot in this fic). I’m quite pleased with this scene.

Another line I ended up liking is the idea that in the Dynasty, they wear robes with long loose sleeves that allows them to grasp their forearms or wrists while standing. This works well with Essek’s jade levitation bracelet, which would easily be hidden in Dynasty robes, and of course canon!Caleb’s scars are also there so he often stands like that too but for different reasons. Essek has some minor difficulty shaking this habit.

General modesty aside, he also only wears high-necked clothes in the City because the beacon-machine is implanted at the back of his neck. He lets Beau see it, once, when she helps button him up.

I don’t think it’s controversial to claim that being Other affects one's relationships with other people at literally all times. AMCE has a lot about love and reverence and meaning-making under empire. into the desert is more about service: doing things for people gets complicated in the sociopolitical frameworks that all people exist in, and the idea of taking individual responsibility for something is complicated and maybe impossible.

Essek is a hypocrite because he teases Beau for always defaulting as a mouthpiece of the Cobalt Soul, but he thinks of himself as someone who has unwittingly made individual terrible decisions that hurt other people. He feels like his hurt is personal, just like Caleb feels his hurt is personal, instead of being part of the machine of the Dynasty/Empire.

I am always writing to myself, so the line at the end of Chapter 14 -

Faith. / Not in Empires or Dynasties. Faith should be reserved for people. But this and that are not so separate.

- is a direct response to this line -

“Faith,” Essek said, pressing a kiss to the top of Caleb’s head, “is best reserved for people – not gods nor dynasties. So yes, Caleb Widogast, I am utterly devoted to you.”

- from take my hand / take my whole life too, a canonverse shadowgast fic that I wrote back in April before the end of Campaign 2. The latter is still one of my goddamn favourite lines I’ve written for this pairing and this fandom. It worked for a fic about a relationship between two people and explained my read on Essek’s moral compass, but it is a mentality that I think is kind of unique to the relationship Essek had with the high pressure chamber of the M9 in canon.

III. THE BEACON-MACHINES

I wrote into the desert from July to September. I read AMCE in June, ADCP in September.

It’s November now, and I’ve had months to think, and if you asked me why I was so obsessed with Martine’s imago machines, I would still have to tell you that I don’t have a good answer.

Love is understanding, love is change, love is sacrifice. Loving another is consuming them and opening yourself for the taking in return. To have a soulmate grafted to your body is relief and violation all in one.

You know those tumblr posts that are a variety of quotes and art pieced together to make a new whole? I give you my understanding of Essek-and-Caleb through the beacon-machines:

We’re shadow puppets. Signifiers. And we signify nothing more than difference - that I am me, and not you. And from this essential difference the possibility of eroticism is born.

I am inside you — I am you / or you are me. Let us say to one another: I am yours— and know finally that we will only ever be as much as we are willing to save of one another.

And everyone secretly wants to collaborate with the enemy, to construct a truer version of the self. How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?

To eat fruit is to welcome into oneself a fair living object, which is alien to us but is nourished and protected like us by earth; it is to consume a sacrifice wherein we sustain ourselves at the expense of things.

To think a flower is to see and smell it, / And to eat a fruit is to know its meaning.

Birds / eat their words, we eat / each other’s, words, hearts, / what’s / the difference?

“Who’s the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who’s horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?”

I fear not knowing who I am / I've never known myself as well as I know myself when I'm with him.

You are not alone in this abyssal darkness. I am here, and we shall face the chasm as brothers.

I love you, and I am conscious of you all the time.

a picture of someone stranded in the desert, in frozen tundra, in the ocean, an empty room. they’re alone but they’re seen. It’s god, it’s a spirit, it’s me.

I am walking into the light. / One way to put off loneliness is to interpose God.

I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything…I want to tell you this story without having to be in it.

what fragments of him surviving can be glimpsed, when someone asks (Pause.) whose body is this

What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn't know it's dead.

what is the heart / but a haunting

You can die for it — an idea, or the world. People have done so, brilliantly, letting their small bodies be bound to the stake, creating an unforgettable fury of light.

even if you make it back / there is nothing for you

a burnt child loves the fire

Writing the merging of two characters was such a unique challenge that I really enjoyed.

I’ve written before that despite their numerical ages, Essek is the equivalent of a 20-something year old who can’t imagine surviving past the age of 30, and Caleb is the one who teaches him to live. At the end of Campaign 2, Caleb is concluding his character arc and Essek is still just starting.

Accordingly, Essek is about 22 in into the desert and Caleb-in-his-head is about 28, though the “real Caleb” would be about 35 when the fic takes place. It suited to have Essek be the one changing, and Caleb the one doing the changing - it is not as simple as that, but one of them has a name and a body, and the other is a memory in a machine.

The entire turning point of the fic was the mirroring of Caleb betraying the Empire by returning the beacon-machine and Essek betraying the Dynasty by giving over the beacon-machine. In canon, they make these choices independently; in into the desert, it’s more complicated. Their compatibility levels are brought up multiple times throughout the fic but compatibility isn’t necessarily about the similar choices they make as distinct entities, but instead about how able they are to grow towards each other once they’re no longer so distinct.

Would Essek have given the beacon-machine to the Empire without Caleb? I don’t know, the same way that I don’t know if canon!Essek would have “redeemed” himself without Caleb (and Jester, because she deserves so much credit).

I had into the desert beta-read, which is already an admission to how difficult I found writing the fic. One of the major points my beta brought up which didn’t land for her was the scene in which Essek-and-Caleb first meet Astrid; she thought that Caleb wouldn’t react that way.

I had to think about it for a long time but ultimately I agreed with her - if Caleb was entirely himself, he would’ve had the same emotional reaction but been able to keep it entirely internalized. It’s actually Essek who isn’t ready for it and doesn’t filter the reaction properly because he’s never felt anything like that before. It’s a failure between the two of them that neither of them would’ve failed by themselves.

I did wonder for a while if I could tag as Essek/Caleb when their relationship is about becoming one person, but ultimately I figured most people looking for shadowgast would be OK with this fic turning up.

IV. THE CHARACTERS

When I get stuck or lost (often, with this fic), I like to sit down and summarize what I think the characters/plot/atmosphere/etc. are trying to be about in my writing. Here are the blurbs for Essek and Caleb:

Essek has been pushed by his mother and his mentor, the Bright Queen, into excellence. He grew up around adults and defaults to a quiet politeness to impress and/or not cause trouble. He was raised under great pressure and is used to feeling quite alone. He still has some stubborn curiosity, but he feels very much like his life is not his own.

Caleb, on the other hand, has some stubborn cynicism - he violently uprooted his own life when he defected and likely never felt any true measure of peace again. He was treated very much as an outsider in the Dynasty (which Essek fails to realize in CH6), and lacked any true connections to others after leaving the City. Despite everything, some part of him is happy to see Rexxentrum again, but it must be hard to be a guide to a place that they both know will never be kind.

(As an aside, I’ve always liked to touch on the question of whether or not Caleb’s parents are innocent, but also whether or not it matters.)

There is something about Essek bringing him to home-the-place and Caleb showing him how sometimes it can be home-the-people.

Funnily enough, the character I spent weeks untangling for this fic wasn’t Essek or Caleb (both of whose canon selves were well-worn and familiar to me) but Beauregard.

I’ve written about it before but the TL;DR is that I fundamentally dislike Caleb and Beau’s canon endings for the same reasons (they end the game as servants of the Empire, but Beau more so), and I found myself often pitting Beau and Caleb against each other in my fics because I don’t change Beau but I do change Caleb because he is my preferred focal point. This isn’t inherently a problem because they often challenge each other in canon anyway, it’s a good part of their relationship, and it serves my stories well to highlight how my Caleb is different.

That was my original plan for into the desert - Beau had an antagonistic relationship with Essek and actively fought or worked against him at multiple points as an agent of the Cobalt Soul. I was imagining her as we knew her at the end of the campaign. into the desert as it is now is nearly domestic, into the desert as it started was much more political thriller.

But I felt bad. Beau is still one of my favourite characters because I see so much of myself in her, and sacrificing her constantly to her canonical fate that I don’t even like was doing her a disservice (and also, I kind of suck at writing political thrillers).

So I cancelled the whole thing 8k words in and started over with a different Beau. I went with a Beau who had never been sold, who had already fought and grown and learned during her time in Nicodranas before the fic. She still comes off as brash, because her default is an awkward earnestness that she hasn’t mastered, but she is so much more chill - she’s in the City trying to make a meaningful life for herself on purpose. She’s still hungry and she wants to prove herself, but she’s finding the “office life” pretty dull, until she gets assigned to Essek.

Now she knows what it’s like to be young and lost in a new city, and she’s immediately more sympathetic towards Essek. Essek doesn’t realize that, and is still only barely realizing what that means by the end of into the desert - but Beau is his first and only friend, so I don’t really blame him. I didn’t explore it much but I do imagine that Beau is very different with Essek than with anyone else, because she adjusts so much to him (for example, in Chapter 2, she calls the ball a bore in an effort to bond with Essek, not put down the job, and he misunderstands. aborted motions of touch, etc.), and I think he has complicated thoughts about that once he realizes.

Fun fact: Beau’s mission from the Cobalt Soul in into the desert is specifically to secure the beacon-machine. The actual implication is to safeguard it from the Cerberus Assembly, but Beau generously translates it in her mind to protecting Essek.

Extra fun fact: There is a Fjord ↔ Jester ↔ Beau relationship chevron lovingly constructed in my head. This ended up mattering very little to the fic, but here are some of my “headcanons” for this Nicodranas trio:

Fjord is a good 10-20 years older than Beau and Jester and took them under his wing several years before this fic begins.

Fjord and Beau are platonic brjeaus. He knows what it is like to spend your teens living in the streets of Nicodranas, doing what you need to to get by, getting into fights every week because you have a giant chip on your shoulder, and still feeling like life is better than it was before you got there.

Jester is a high-end escort, as is her mother, though her career never quite takes off because she meets Astrid when she is 18 and Astrid is 32 and she is then banished from Nicodranas after pranking and embarrassing Astrid.

Jester is genuinely Fjord’s official consort - this was partly to protect her from Astrid, and generally to make her life easier for all things bureaucratic and political. It’s common for consort relationships to be open anyway, but it works well for them because in this AU Fjord is asexual and sex-neutral (what are AUs for if not to stick completely random pet headcanons into) and though he and Jester also have romantic feelings for each other, they’re in different stages of life and don’t feel any need to be serious and/or exclusive.

Beau and Jes are in a romantic and sexual relationship. I like to imagine Beau running wild in the streets of Nicodranas trying to impress the pretty prostitute who keeps smiling at her from her rooftop even though she definitely can’t afford her.

V. ESSEK’S GRAVITURGY

into the desert explains Essek’s expertise on dunamancy as an adaptation of the Resonant Echo spell that Essek creates in canon:

As an action, the caster can make a shadowy clone of themselves, referred to as an “echo”. They can use the echo to cast one spell, after which the echo vanishes. The echo has a limited number of hit points.

Suitably for Verin, the Echo Knight fighter subclass has a similar ability.

But into the desert never explicitly explains Essek’s expertise on graviturgy, so I’ll offer you the following clips:

There are multiple small grav-machines in Essek’s Rosohna study that would make [squishing a hamburger] look like child’s play [...]

[...] he chooses a sheer one for this occasion, the flowing fabric barely visible except to guide a layer of sparkling dark gems over top the shoulders of his blouse [...]

[...] taking off his elaborate mantelpiece, checking that each of the heavy dark jewels remain in place, wiping off his makeup [...]

Caleb understands that it is still possible to be loved as a tool, as a weapon.

[...] many of the jewels twinkle and hum under even the faintest hint of light, like familiar dark stars in his closet.

[...] the graviturgy lent itself to many applications, though Essek’s work was largely done for the field [...]

He takes the largest jewel and rips it off, placing it in his suit pocket, and he is mollified by the weight. It’s not necessary – he has more than enough accessories all glittering with the same deep purple gems, all humming with a familiar power and feeling – but it feels good, in a brutish way.

There is the weight of the Dynasty jewel in his pocket still, heavy as a dark star; there is still Dairon and Beauregard next to him – Beau, his first friend.

And here is the description for 8th-level dunamancy spell Dark Star:

Cast on a point within 150 feet, the spell creates a sphere with a radius of up to 40 feet filled with magical darkness and crushing gravitational force. For the duration, the spell's area is difficult terrain which neither darkvision nor non-magical light illuminates, and no sound can be created within or pass through the area. A creature or object entirely inside the sphere is immune to thunder damage and deafened. It is impossible to cast a spell with a verbal component.

Any creature that enters the spell's area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn takes 8d10 force damage on a failed Constitution saving throw, and half as much damage on a successful one. A creature reduced to 0 hit points by this damage is disintegrated.

VI. MISC COMMENTS

Stories are about meaning-making. Here are a bunch of miscellaneous notes I've made in response to comments and discussion on my fic (for which I am always and entirely thankful).

AMCE is incredibly jargon-heavy, and I stripped so much world-building away to make into the desert more palatable. Why does Beau do dishes in a world where they have interstellar space travel? Just to keep the roommate situation familiar.

I got several comments confused about the cloudhooks, which is entirely my bad. I initially wrote them as passcards equivalent to the ones we have IRL but changed them to Martine’s cloudhooks last minute and then utterly failed to explain them. I honestly don’t even remember how Martine describes them either. If you were confused, here was my response to one comment:

people would choose the style they prefer, naturally, so some people might wear a monocle, others might want one that doesn't have a frame, per se, but broadcasts the info right in front of the eye, others might go for wrap around glasses. their purpose is the very stereotypical scifi one of essentially providing an overlay of info onto the world as an advanced version of our smartphones and they also serve as ID, etc. you could also get one implanted directly into skin. i imagine beau's as, hm, like half a pair of rectangular glasses essentially? so she could fold it back so it isn't actually in front of her eye.

Consecution was purposefully left a bit mystical. The Luxon priests are the ones who learn to install the actual beacon-machines. I think Martine does describe the imago machines in AMCE, but in my imagination they look like small gems set similarly to a piece of jewelry but visibly embedded into the skin at the back of the neck/base of skull.

I didn’t delve into the physicality of the beacon-machines in the fic, but it has always been interesting to me. You could literally rip Caleb out of Essek, but Essek wouldn't survive - it's literally embedded in his brain. But you could! (It does also amuse me to think of the beacon-machine/Caleb as Essek’s weak spot if he was a boss monster.)

It is crazy to me to imagine a society where everyone knows they will grow into the annihilation of themselves - this applies to the CritRole canon as well. I always imagine my Esseks as someone who struggles a lot for control and giving himself up after spending so many years making himself would never feel right to him. Even though Caleb is his perfect match in many ways, it’s still absolutely a tragedy for Essek that he concedes to taking the beacon-machine at all. His fear of losing control is still smaller than his fear of being alone, so far from home.

Given his fears, it’s unsurprising he has a complicated relationship with Verin. Essek spends his entire childhood wishing Verin was different and then suddenly realizing he does not actually want that at all because, what? Would he wish Verin was the same as him, underwent the same things as him? Of course not. Verin deserves better. Let him be happy.

Except, of course, that there's nothing Essek can do to guarantee someone else's happiness.

I think a lot about siblings, both of blood and of choice. Caleb and Beau often do have a sibling-ish relationship but it’s different coming into that as adults vs. “I was literally born knowing you” as Essek and Verin are. I think this is one of the few notable points where Essek and Caleb fail to truly understand each other.

On some level, into the desert is truly about Essek and Beau. This man needed an entire personality graft to be able to make one (1) friend but it’s worth it all, isn’t it? I joke that Essek finally calling her “Beau” is the true emotional climax of the fic.

So many comments mentioned how bittersweet or how immensely full of grief the fic is. Two years ago, at the start of Covid, one of my close friends who is white said that he could understand why parents were petitioning to have Chinese kids removed from the classroom. It’s the grief of thinking you know or can trust “a good one” and then being betrayed anyway. Beau being Essek’s first friend in into the desert and being able to see how the Empire treats him and being able to change herself and go to bat for him is literally one of the best and happiest endings I could’ve given him. This fic is so much about Beau, and about Beau and Essek.

@road-rhythm mentioned how Essek and Caleb in into the desert reads like love stories with ghosts do, and oh, how I hold that tenderly. I’ve mentioned previously in this document that I’ve understood Caleb’s existence as a haunting; I’ve considered how this fic is quietly about their canonical lifespan difference, but I’ve never made the leap to it being a ghost story. Victorian ghost stories centred on technology were one of my favourites things to study during my literature degree and so close to being the topic of my thesis - it makes me so happy to imagine I may have written one accidentally.

As a final fun fact, it’s been a minor thread in several of my fics that Caleb keeps finding Undercommon poetry books that belong to Essek but he’s never sure if Essek actually likes them or if they’re more for pretentious decoration (they’re usually displayed in common areas, not private spaces). In into the desert, Caleb does actually find out what Essek feels about poetry. These are truly the small details that come from writing for myself. I do entertain me and that's what matters.

VII. TIMELINES

These are copied nearly verbatim from my notes.

The short-term timeline of the fic:

Pre-Fic The Empire sets up a base on the Ashkeepers.

Week 1 arrival, meeting beau, essek eats a hamburger.

Week 2 mail, grocery shopping, buying clothes

Week 3 captain fjord's fête

Week 4 vaguely exploring the city, beau takes essek to the lavish chateau

Week 5 vaguely exploring the city + drinking

Week 6 vaguely exploring the city + drinking

Week 7 cutting of ribbon, poetry reading, poetry studying

Week 8 poetry studying, essek starts floating, essek gets his passcard

Week 9 hacked passcard

Week 10 dance hall

Week 11 first invite from astrid & wulf, dinner, essek finds out about the ashkeepers

Week 12 letter writing, jester, second invite from astrid & wulf

Week 13 meeting the king and crown

The longer-term timeline of the backstory:

25 years ago: the last Kryn ambassador to the Empire returned home

10 years ago: War of Ash and Light. A few months of general tensions between the Empire and the Dynasty. Skirmishes that never evolved into full warfare when an Empire agent defected to the Dynasty. The only beacon the Empire had ever studied was thus returned to the Dynasty after having been in their grasp for only a few months.

7 years ago: Caleb Widogast is consecuted.

5 years ago: Essek, at the age of 16, refuses to be consecrated.

5 years ago: Beau runs away from home

5 years ago: Caleb Widogast disappears.

3 years ago: Beau goes to the City and becomes a student at the Hall of Erudition

3 years ago: Jester (18) sleeps with Astrid (32) right before Astrid kills Trent. She is exiled from Nicodranas at some point afterwards.

2 years ago: When Essek is 19 and Verin 16, Verin is consecuted and sent to the Ashkeepers as a soldier/Taskhand

Current: The Empire once again requests the presence of a Kryn Ambassador. The Bright Queen voluntells Essek, who ends up agreeing to being consecuted before departing. He gets a beacon-machine with the soul of Caleb Widogast.

#critical role #shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek thelyss #beauregard lionett #fanfiction #campaign 2 #my posts

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