Are you surprised?
Their campaigns are ages long. It’s taken me over a year to get here. Regardless, we’re going to be brief this week.
SPOILERS!
Where Am I?
At the time of writing I have finished watching Campaign 1 Episode 107: “Scaldseat”, which after all the fanciful plains and literally finding gods and asking them for favours these past few episodes felt more normal.
Now, it’s D&D, normality, generally, is chaotic.
It was in the sense that, when the past few episodes have been trials of the gods, and chasing them down and etc… there’s something kind of simple about an episode that essentially amounted to a dungeon crawl. A dungeon crawl underwater for the anvil of a god, but still, a dungeon crawl.
It was nice, it was chaotic, and it ended on a cliffhanger that I’m sure won’t involve any of them getting drastically injured whatsoever.
One of it’s few angsty moments, which I have to say are the reasons I watch. Heroic feats of bravery are all well and good (and awesome as hell) but I adore the heartfelt, sentimental conversations of their roleplaying… and occasionally the buffoonery that comes from that as well. Regardless, in this episode, one of the few moments was Keyleth and Vax finally having the talk. Long overdue it feels, because it’s been many episodes since he came back, but I think it’s been like at most 36 hours for the characters.
Vax says ‘few days’ I believe, but I don’t actually think they’ve slept since he came back. Unless they slept before they went to see Sprigg and I missed it. Just feels as though they’ve been jumping from one plain of existence to another where time is relative and the day/night cycle is irrelevant and/or nonexistent. Suppose one does not think about sleeping when there’s a god with a face like a sun gazing upon you.
Point is, Keyleth and Vax were in deep need of this conversation and it’s good it finally happened. I think he sort of already got around to it with Vex last episode, and it was very nice to see them have that sort of conversation as well, with him also congratulating her on her marriage. With Keyleth and Vax there’s a lot of… almost sad irony… with their situation. She was hesitant to start anything with him because of her AraMente (and the game mechanics of a Druid) she was destined to live for so much longer than all of them, and that is infinitely sad. To know that she will watch them all die, and she knew this and was already grappling with it. Losing Vox Machina eventually, and then she’s supposed to give her heart to one of them?
She does, of course, she stopped fearing that loss, and just dove in… and now it’s come so much quicker than either of them could possibly have predicted. So much so, that Vax not only recognised that their situation had become the epitome of Keyleth’s fears, but regretted that she had to keep looking at him, knowing that he was going to die… while of course the both of them, being nevertheless grateful for every last minute they’ll get. While Vax regrets what he has indirectly put Keyleth through, in wanting to fighting for her, and everyone else’s futures, she regrets nothing. Not her decision to overcome her fears and take a chance, she’s glad she did.
And this is IMPROV.
I have my reasons for loving the whole cast quite so and nothing exasperates that more than the masterful story they manage to tell while planning at best minimally. In D&D you can plan anything, and still the dice will change it for you. Need we forget that it took Liam several weeks to process the fact that Vax was still alive when he made his deal for Vex never mind everything else that was to come.
Yes, there will be some planning, especially on Matt’s end, and maybe they think about what they want their character to become and hope the game plays in their favour for that. There’s some of their moments that can be so heartfelt and lovely, and you can tell that maybe they rehearsed some of it in their head first, or at least planned what they wanted to say and hoped they got the chance to. We’ve heard them talk about planning when they’re in going into boss fights. Even Matt’s plans have been foiled by dice and player actions on more than one occasion. In D&D you can plan, but you must simply hope that it will ever become anything.
The End is Nigh
Less than ten episodes from the end and I am truly shocked that I got here at all. It’s been over a year, I do believe, since I started watching at the very least Critical Role, as we’ve discussed I started with a few episodes of M9, but possibly also since I started Campaign 1. Now, assuming I keep to schedule, I’ll be done within the next two weeks.
I can’t believe I’ve watched over a hundred episodes of Vox Machina alone at this point. That’s a lot of hours!
This last arc is bound to wreck me, and with Vax’s disintegration and death sentence it already has, and I’m sure there’s more still to come.
I’m glad Scanlan’s back, it’s proving once again just how clutch he is in a fight. Everyone has come so far, and done so much. It’ll be sad to see their Campaign end, but for the majority of them, that won’t be the end of their story, and that’s what I’m comforting myself with. They may be fictional characters but so long as the internet exists they continue to live forever.
I should state, that Vax’s death, that I know very much is coming, I have known since day one… and some screenshots from what I can only presume to be the finale haunt my dreams.
In short: I am not ready.
We’ll watch it anyway. Maybe cry like a lot. It’ll be fun.
To Conclude
Sometimes I sit down to write a brief one and it ends up not as brief as I expected… still this one is a decent length, and I’ve definitely done longer.
I’m going to be on the Critical Role train for awhile, so buckle up.
Nevertheless, thanks for reading if you did, and I hope you’ll join us for the next one.
On to the next!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to Critical Role and all other relevant parties.