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balleater · 7 hours
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Liam understands what the people wants
FANCY PARTY WITH A HEIST
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balleater · 9 hours
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Crimson Mirror is back to doing the spotlight set highlight thing instead of editing and I LOVE IT.
The cuts are making more sense this episode and the whole table is shown more I am happy
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balleater · 3 days
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VM ladies as warm ups
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balleater · 6 days
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also, thinking about Travis wanting to play Ruidusborn and actually, while I'm not sure he's doing the d100 rolls anymore given where we are in the story, an obvious move if anyone dies on the moon is to come back playing a Ruidusborn defector. You can even go the psi knight route a la Otohan to be INT based and a tank for party balance (as would make sense for a Chet replacement).
While I'm thinking about it, the other clear choices as a backup character in this particular scenario are:
An Exandrian sent to the moon either by their deity, by Vasselheim, or otherwise, a la Vezoden. If someone dies on the current missions, it's easy to replace them with a character who could feasibly be part of the group broken out of prison. Good if you want to play paladin or cleric especially, though not limited to those two.
A non-Ruidusborn Vanguard defector. Evon Hytroga hates it here. Imagine watching your Ruidusborn friend you joined with be treated like royalty and they stick you on the shitty supply caravan. Flexible re: classes you can play, too; imagine being a hardworking wizard sympathetic to Ludinus's plans and then being treated like shit compared to the sorcerers.
Someone like Evoroa interested in serving as an Ruidian voice in the plans to defeat the Imperium back on Exandria. Gives the player a chance to take the new Ruidus races for a spin and is also flexible re: classes; probably no divine casters but Ivanas has spells so Ruidus seems to have bards or wizards or something.
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balleater · 6 days
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I’m curious how Matt’s going to handle the off-screen assassination attempt on Liliana. Obviously, if one or more of the PCs had gone on that mission, he would have played it out and let the dice decide her fate. But since they didn’t, it’s entirely up to him if it succeeds or not.
On the one hand, Liliana being alive makes for juicy conflict with Imogen, and it’s sad to see that plot line end. On the other hand, Matt likes to give the player’s choices consequences, and Imogen chose not to warn her mother or make more than a token effort to change Rashinna’s mind. That choice loses some of its weight if Liliana survives the attack anyway.
Whichever way it goes, it was a great twist, and I’m excited to see how this plays out.
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balleater · 6 days
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Adding a little to the "Liliana you had Choices to go home, you just didn't take them" arguments:
Liliana was with the Grim Verity first.
You know, the friendly researchers who Ludinus was having hunted down so they couldn't learn the truths about Ruidus and the Ruidusborn because that knowledge might allow them to ruin his plans. The researchers who did not want to push into dangerous, shaky territory with those powers.
Hondir, the goblin Verity guy working with Ollie and Birdie, said he last saw Liliana 12 years before Bells Hells. And Professor Kadija Sumal said Liliana came to the Grim Verity research project 10-ish years ago. That is at least half of the time Liliana was gone. That is a decade where only Liliana's own travel choices kept her from backtracking to Gelvaan to check on her family. Only her own determination to have answers kept her away.
Because you can't convince me that the Grim Verity, who was being cautious of what they were prodding, wouldn't allow Liliana to walk away to see her family. They let others back out when they became uncomfortable with the research. They let her walk away with Otohan, after all.
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balleater · 7 days
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I was thinking about that post about redemption I just reblogged, and I think it’s worth pointing out just how difficult and time consuming it would to de-radicalize or “redeem” Lilliana. And I think Essek’s redemption in campaign 2 is actually a really good example of what I’m talking about.
First of all, what the Nein did to redeem Essek was not slowly and politely talk him through why what he did was wrong. They didn’t even know he did anything wrong. What they did was continually reach out to him and give him a support system of friends he did not have before. Notably, friends who he could be comfortable sharing his worldview around: he was an atheist* in a theocratic society who had to hide his worldview in order to have any social, academic, or governmental standing. The mighty nein were probably the first people he could be himself around, and creating a change in his personal life is what led to a change in his ideology. Notably, he did most of the actual deconstructing of his ideology on his own, some before the big betrayal reveal and a lot after. The Nein helped with that directly a little, but the main thing they did was offer him a personal connection he had stakes in, and a people in his life with different world views he hadn’t seen up close before.
This is pretty true to life, in the real world, most people who leave radical or bigoted groups leave at least partially because of a change in their personal life. Even if they do leave because of someone directly challenging their worldview, it’s usually someone they care about who challenges them in a non-aggressive way. It’s still personal.
Secondly, this took a lot of time. I can’t remember exactly how long they spent in the Dynasty, but they befriended Essek over a really long period of in game and out of game time. The cast spent actual real world hours talking pretty much one on one with Essek, and the party spent weeks, maybe even months slowly getting to know him and bringing this support structure into his life. Essek spent even longer actually thinking through and deconstructing on his own. The change in his worldview between the ship and the outpost really shows this, he did a lot of the thinking that led him to change by himself over a lot of time we weren’t there for. They could not have gotten him to actually change his mindset, fully realize what he did was wrong of his own free will, in anything approaching a short amount of time. This was a time consuming process.
All this to say: this is the kind of effort it would take to legitimately de-radicalize Lilliana. She has been in the Vanguard for ~25 years, she most likely joined when she was in her early to mid 20s, and she gave up all personal connections, even her daughter and her husband to join. Not only has her entire ideology been built around this being the right thing to do, her entire personal life is contained within the Vanguard. It’s most likely where she gets any housing or money or really anything from. It is her whole life, and she believes wholeheartedly in it. The level of time and effort it took to get Essek to organically change his mind is most likely the level it would take to get Lilliana to change hers, if not more.
And they don’t have that time. Lilliana is actively doing harm now, she is helping the Vanguard release Predathos right now, they simply do not have the time to redeem her. It sucks, but pragmatically speaking, it is simply not worth the time and effort. Essek gave away the beacons in the past, but also, the Nein did not know he did that for their early friendship. If the Nein had known, they probably would not have put in all the work it took to get him to change. They probably couldn’t have. Lilliana might be able to be redeemed in theory, but so can a lot of people who do very bad things. Focusing on that redemption process is prioritizing Imogen’s complicated feelings over the harsh reality that this is a war, and Lilliana is a key figure in that war doing a great deal of harm. It sucks, but I do think it’s time to move on, and I think Imogen is now leaning that way.
*atheist is a loose term here, it’s hard to be an atheist in a world where gods are proven to exist, but it gets the point across
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balleater · 7 days
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I feel like we as a fandom had a lot of this conversation during Campaign 2 but redemption, however you may interpret it, is a process. It is not a binary of redeemed and not redeemed. And in the world of a D&D actual play, a lot of the hard decisions really come down to "is the harm this person did actively ongoing, or is it a past action with ongoing ramifications" and "will they stop doing this continued harm quickly enough for it to matter." It sounds cold to say that it's a risk-benefit analysis, but on some level, it has to be be. I think Bor'Dor was likely redeemable in some abstract sense, but could Team Issylra do it with the time and resources they had without risking their own lives? Probably not. I think the same is true with Liliana: if they had months in which to do this - and they have been contacting her on and off for a couple months, and every effort failed - maybe, but the clock's run out.
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balleater · 7 days
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"For the next 8 hours or until he decides otherwise" Ira terms and conditions
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balleater · 7 days
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oh to reach into the dunamussy and pull out a delightful figurine of essek thelyss
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balleater · 7 days
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this episode has really had some fucking banger moments im loving this
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balleater · 7 days
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"it's not perspective, it's propaganda" is SUCH a great line
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balleater · 7 days
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"maybe it's your turn to run" is SUCH a great line but also i am SO afraid about whether or not that will tip her off to what's going on LMAO
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balleater · 7 days
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Once again, many shitty, shitty parents do love their kids in some way. Very very few parents actually go “I am going to be a Bad Person” in fact very very few people do that period. Lilliana can absolutely still love her daughter while fucking her over and causing massive amounts of harm to everyone else. She can still love her daughter and prioritize this mission over her. She can still be manipulating Imogen and love her. That chance of redemption does not mean it’s likely or even helpful to devote all the resources it would take towards. At some point there has to be a line in the sand, you can’t just keep erasing it, by doing so you will fuck over people like this rebellion.
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balleater · 7 days
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“An estranged parent is just a stranger who can make you believe any bullshit” DAMN Ashton. Thank you.
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balleater · 7 days
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Doesn't what Imogen's doing like... alert people like Lilianna and Otohan to her location. Is the Volition gonna need to pack it up in the morning lmao.
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balleater · 7 days
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god i have a lot of thoughts about liliana and redemption and everything and its so much because, in theory, i Do think redemption and everything should be allowed for everyone but also. they are on a limited time frame here and liliana is, like they were talking about, decades deep in this and she has been one of the people at the top of So much destruction that it is such a complicated matter but also. yeah, they Are lending her too much credit with her willingness to actually change. it's such a great point of conflict tbh
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