ok I haven’t watched Part 3 yet but hear me out

Calamity AU where the Betrayers in their first shots fired destroy the Arboreal Calix in a century-long awaited massive fuck you to the Gau Drashari, suddenly and unintentionally allowing Laerryn enough unfettered arcane energy in the clutch to transport Avalir to another plane using her Leywright, to the chagrin of the limbered-up Primes & Betrayers, thereby saving everyone from impending doom but also making Avalir the “Most Likely to Become an Astral Fleshy Hivemind” of the floating cities.

Like sorry Aeor, you’ve had your timeline. Give me Charlie the Hodmedod in Campaign 2. Give me a very confused sphinx eternally floating and pitching alts on his roar. GIVE ME RING OF BRASS SOMNOVEM, YOU COWARDS

I guess it’s exu calamity meta day because now I’m thinking about the Raven Queen and Vecna and Laerryn and the Tree of Names (spoilers for EXU Calamity and Critical Role Campaign 1).

So, like, we know that Vecna was trying to recreate the Raven Queen’s ritual, and unlike some of the unsuccessful aspirants to godhood he had some insight about her actual method (hence why it worked).  And part of what he was doing was siphoning magic from the world through the anti-magic spheres.  Presumably ascension to godhood takes a lot of energy (especially if you don’t have an apogee solstice to work with).

Then in EXU Calamity, we’re introduced to Avalir, an Age of Arcanum flying city that stockpiles ether by taking magical items and breaking them down, then storing it in batteries to channel it into the ground when it lands.  We meet Laerryn Coramar-Seelie, who is planning on siphoning off a chunk of the city’s power in order to create a ley line to another plane.  We share her frustrations as the Tree of Names (and the Arboreal Calix, which was added to the Tree after the Raven Queen’s ascension), a spell engine placed in the city by the druids they took a mountaintop from, pops up as an obstacle to her goal, constantly trying to pull the energy that she needs.

And we learn that the Raven Queen was from Avalir--or at least had some connections to Avalir’s leadership, given that the granddaughter of the city’s founder has fond memories of spending time with her.

So now I’m thinking, the unnamed mage who became the Raven Queen must have gotten all the energy she needed for her ritual somewhere.  While it’s possible that she went around the world setting up antimagic spheres like Vecna did, I don’t think that’s what happened--she likely had much easier access to the amount of ether she would need right there in Avalir.  How much do you want to bet that the Replenishment after the Raven Queen’s ascension was a little scanty, that a chunk of the ether that should have been there wasn’t?  We see Laerryn pull huge chunks of the city’s power at once to power the Astral Leywright, but I don’t think she was the first to take a swathe of ether for her own purpose.

And of course, it was during that Replenishment that the Gau’Drashari hurriedly updated their agreement with Avalir and installed the Arboreal Calix over the Tree of Names.  At that point, the Tree had already been doing its job of inscribing wards over Exandria, protecting the world from interplanar dangers, so why add the Calix?  Why then, so soon after the Raven Queen’s ascension?  There are a few potential answers to this, and personally, I think it’s a combination of two: To beef up the planar barrier, and as an ether bottleneck.  Like, yes, we see the tree holding the toy boat and maybe possibly also Evandrin, so clearly it’s keeping things from traveling into the Material Plane, but I’m pretty sure it was also involved with how Evandrin got calibrated to the Astral Plane in the first place.  But more interestingly, once Laerryn tries firing up the Leywright, the Calix starts asking for more power--large amounts of power.  While I’m sure that it would be going towards keeping the barrier between planes going (and as the Calamity approached, it probably needed it), I think it was also trying to pull enough power that Laerryn would have to stop what she was doing. 

And of course, blocking off interplanar travel and keeping huge chunks of Avalir’s ether from being used all at once would both serve to keep anyone on the city from reproducing the Raven Queen’s ritual.

watching exu calamity part three has me some type of way

LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD

Does the tree have the names of the gods somewhere, somehow?

sooo many tiny moments in calamity that you only understand on rewatch. in the battle in the square, laerryn receives a sending from callum, telling her that the arboreal calix is requesting 30% of the city's energy and laerryn, no hesitation, shoots back "KILL IT." and callum kills the request and does not let the calix have that energy.

we know, later, what the tree of names, what the calix does. we know what protection it gives avalir. we know what protection it was trying to give, in that moment, as fiends from the nine hells began pushing through into the world. but it order to do its job, the calix needs power.

power laerryn denied it, without even knowing why.

Patia Por'co and the terrible, no good, very bad 0.9 seconds in the Arboreal Calix.

Avalir History

Back when Imyr Por’co wanted to lift the city into the sky, the Gau Drashari druids tended the holy sites of Toramunda.

When the wizards were like, “hey, can we take the top of the mountain for a cool flying city?” The druids said, “No!”

The Replenishment was the concession that caused the druids to agree. The pact between wizards and druids was the Pact of Crowns and Thrones. Avalir is the City of Crowns, Cathmoira is the City of Thrones. Of the magic gathered, a quarter of it is owed to the druids.

The Arboreal Calix holds the druids’ portion of the magic. The Calix is 119 years old, which was when the pact was last updated. Specifically, that was when the Calix was added to the pact of Crowns and Thrones.

It was also the first Replenishment after the Raven Queen’s ascension.

We have the Divine Gate with its telltale latticework, and a similar weaving that appears around Ruidus, and the "city" within.

And then there is the Tree of Names, once in the center of the Arboreal Calix. A tree growing through the leylines, whose purpose was to be a wall, a gate, a pen, to protect Exandra from things beyond. We know the Gau Drashari created the Tree, siphoning off power to keep it whole and intact, to keep at bay those entities who would wield death and destruction, to write their names over and over across its limbs.

The Ruby Vanguard and Thull are intent on ensuring that "the event” coinciding with the apogee solstice comes to fruition - freeing Predathos from its crimson prison, the release of a hound to chase and consume divine prey.

And Orym asked: What does Zephrah have to do with any of this?

The Ashari hail from the Gau Drashari, Druids who somehow, someway, were able to "tend to the work of the Wildmother and the Dawnfather, to seal [the] Primordials away." Knowledge has been lost over centuries and eons, but secrets that are kept have a way of surviving, being whispered to become legends and lore, guarded still by leaders and sages. So perhaps, just perhaps, the Ashari, the guardians of the portals to the Elemental Planes, might know still how to secure and seal away primordial darkness.

If there exist those who might hold fast the secrets of how to weave that golden mesh, how to scribe names into rites and spells, how to draw forth magic and make it into what could potentially leash a god-hungry hound, then why wouldn't the Ruby Vanguard seek to undermine the most revered and powerful of those tribes? Let loose the monster, but only after bringing ruin to the ones who just might be able to prevent its rampage.

Ancient arcane knowledge might be the only thing that can recapture and wound something from beyond the stars. An understanding of the ley lines, and how they can be manipulated. And somewhere, perhaps, if there are indeed descendants of Maya Agrupin, there may be other secrets held dear - secrets that swirled within a gifted orb, and hold truths of a past forgotten.

Absolutely losing my mind over Patia Por’co right now and just the depth that Marisha gave her through such small moments and deeds. Like Patia’s obviously the most reticent of the Ring of Brass and keeps her emotions close to her chest. We don’t really see that veneer start to crack until near the end of part 3 when she plays back Cerrit’s “selfish choices” over and over.

Fast forward into part 4 past everything in the Arboreal Calix and her resurrection and we find Patia back at her grandfather’s statue. The man who defined so much of her life. And she talks about how she dedicated her whole life to Avalir and the legacy of the Por’cos. A legacy that her parents failed to live up to. And then, seeing all the damage that keeping secrets and being selfish has caused, she chooses to let that legacy go.

“You can hold all the knowledge in the world. But if it dies with you, it doesn’t matter”

It’s the Librarian Incantatum that Patia takes from the model of Avalir, where she worked so diligently to preserve and hoard the knowledge of this age. And it’s that knowledge that she passes on to Maya Agrupnin.

“I think there’s nothing else I need to know. I think I know it all already”.

Patia never gives a rousing speech or an important proclamation or a last declaration of love but Marisha managed to convey so much of her character and what was important to her.

Anyway I have so many thoughts on Patia Por’co and love her so much.

Brennan, casually introducing lore elements like Cerrit's ring and the Arboreal Calix at the beginning of the campaign:

Killing the power to the Arboreal Calix that they only just learned is the Tree of Names that they still have no idea what that really means…. Yeah that decision won’t come back to bite them in the butt, nope not at all

As soon as the Arboreal Calix took all that energy, Laerryn’s vendetta was realized. 

i AM thinking about tempus and about how his teleportation abilities and connections to the astral sea seemingly only unlocked after the arboreal calix was destroyed and the barriers between the planes were weakened, meaning that zerxus always had a way back to evandrin and didnt know it--couldnt know it--until it was too late to use that knowledge

Ok something I wanted to point out as a botanist that I haven't seen yet!

The Arboreal Calix gets its name from "calyx," which is the protective layer of sepals (think of them as green petals) around a flower bud.

Of course it was protecting Exandria...

I’m not sure exactly how to word this post, and maybe this is saying the obvious, but...I don’t think any of the Ring of Brass had a significant hand in causing the Calamity.

“But Martin,” you say, “Zerxus pulled Asmodeus into Exandria! Laerryn shot off the Blight that destroyed the Arboreal Calix and allowed him through! Their choices were literally shown to directly cause the Calamity!”

Except. Except. We were shown over and over that the corruption in the city ran deep, that Vespin and other twisted clerics of Asmodeus and dozens of devils were already in the city moving things along when the Ring of Brass even started to uncover the plot and get sucked along and start pushing over dominoes accidentally. It’s a lot to assume that if Laerryn hadn’t destroyed the Tree, Asmodeus’s whole plan would have failed. There were backups upon backups upon pawns upon pawns, and someone would have destroyed the tree.

In fact, because the Ring was there, because Patia got the full names of the Primordials from the Tree (even though that also caused the Tree to lash out which provoked Laerryn into sending the Blight), they were able to prevent the release of Rau’shan and Ka’mort, which would have destroyed Exandria entirely.

And I think Asmodeus enjoyed corrupting himself a champion out of Zerxus, and maybe Zerxus smoothed the path into Exandria for him, but if any one man allowed the Lord of the Hells to come out of his cage, it was Vespin Chloras, whose bold hubris (not his cruelty, which we now know) broke the bars. Zerxus’s helping hand was an afterthought.

Brennan said, “And though the Calamity is here because of you, it will not be here forever,” but I don’t think it was their faults. They made mistakes, they were selfish and arrogant and flawed and they set events in motion, yes, but nothing that wouldn’t have been set in motion anyway--except for the ways in which they made things better.

Which is to say, because Laerryn cast Blight, because the apocalypse officially started because of an act of love and not an act of hate, the entire world was saved.

It’s all because of love. All of it. Every single moment of the Exandria we’ve seen was possible because of the Ring of Brass and the love they had for the city, for each other, for their families, for the world. Love.