The Ring of Brass endures.

Critical Role/EXU: Calamity - Patia Por’co, Keeper of Scrolls

I know everyone.

Been a while since I've done CR fanart, but I'm halfway thru the last episode of  and I just had to draw something. Whiiich ended up being a whole sketchpage of Zerxus Ilerez....>.> (My other Critical Role Fanart) (Find me on Twitter) Uncolored Drawing Below

thinking about how avalir became synonymous with guilt in elvish, likely due to a whole ass lord of hells emerging from it, when in reality it was this city that saved them from certain doom :(

Ten hours later, here’s the thing that gets me.

We knew what we were getting into. We were told, going in, we were told for a long time before it even began. We knew.

And we were given these characters, and we got attached to them and we watched them make decision after decision that slowly brought about the end of the world, and we watched them do it out of hubris, yes, but also out of love, out of ambition, out of a genuine desire to learn and to explore and to reach for more. And it would’ve been easy. It would’ve been so easy to make this a story about despair. About hopelessness. About helplessness. And instead we were given a story about hope. About how even in the face of absolute anihilation there is still a place for love, and kindness, and selflessness, and for doing something that will maybe not save you but it could ensure that others might live.

And we got to see Cerrit save his kids, and keep a promise that was supposed to be a lie. And we got to see Laerryn and Loquatius find their way back to each other even if only for a moment, but it was the moment that mattered the most. We got to see Nydas take a stand and save as many people as he could by using all the resources he had amassed. And we got to see Patia ensure that somehow, somewhere, all the knowledge she had gathered would live on. And we got to see Zerxus have one last chance to see his son and his husband. We got to see them at their worst and we got to see them at their best. And they gave the world a fighting chance.

And even if it’s not for long. Even if it doesn’t last.

It did happen.

And it did matter.

some one should count how many times in EXU: Calamity that a player got so overwhelmed they just got up and left the table to pace the feelings out

From the moment it was revealed that Cerrit had children, I prepared for the worst.

I had images of him finding his children dead or missing, of him not even able to get back to see them or save them, or of what that last, heartbreaking conversation on the sending stone would look like.

And Travis and Brennan turned that all on it’s head.

He gets them out. Their last conversation isn’t him breaking those Runes of Recall in their hands, hoping they got to their mother. His last conversation isn’t over the sending stone, knowing they’re safe but having only empty promises to give them about when they could reunite.

With each of the Ring of Brass’s dying breaths, they give Cerrit all they have to get him home. And it takes a long time, but eventually a good man who might of felt one step behind in this crazy world of magic got to reunite with his family. Who knows how long they lived, who knows what they did, but we all got to breathe a little easier knowing we didn’t witness any of their last moments.

And yes the world as those children knew it was forever changed. But when Brennan said that now so many kids, like the ones on the ships, now had a chance it all shifted into perspective. This wasn’t a story about glorious heroes saving the world from catastrophe. It was about hubris and selfishness and magic unchecked. And it was about what fighting looks like, even when your good intentions are too late. About remembering sacrifice and hoping your legacy lasts forever, but all of us knowing that the names of those at the last stand were wiped to history.

It was about hope, even the shreds of it. About what children mean in a world shattered. Knowing that Cerrit had a chance to explain what happened and that his kids and wife, while now bearing witness to a shattering of their world and reality, have a chance. Because sometimes, that’s all you need.

God, how heart-wrenching and beautiful. Thank you, EXU Calamity.

Yes I knew it was a tragedy show going in. Yes I still saw little bird children and immediately put on my clown shoes.  

Thinking about how Elias was fishing in the stars at the top of episode 1 saying he didn’t know what he’d find, and all along he was reaching towards his father, lost amongst the stars.

Asmodeus out here flirting with Zerxus, but Zerxus thinks of him as his kid. Zerxus honey pls, the man looked like your husband how did you not get this?

There is no god that strides this world that I worship more than I worship your heart.

Evandrin Alterra, Exandria Unlimited: Calamity episode 4

I love how sure I was that the ring of brass were gonna be the cause of the calamity because of their individual hubrises and then the rest of it was gonna be a bunch of personal vignettes where they try to save their ideas or themselves but just have to watch their world burn or whatever and I was completely wrong all the way around

Put “this is still one second” on my tombstone.

i had forgotten it was called exu: calamity for a second and i let myself get excited about the getting-back-together vibes sam and aabria were putting down for laerryn and loquatius

UGH I love zerxus so so much but especially the way luis clearly fully meant for him to be full of love and faith in the world but brutally and completely flawed in his inability to realize that “redemption is possible for every everyone” doesn’t mean “redemption should be brought to everyone by me, every day, no exceptions.” 

It’s a cut above the moral grayness you usually see imo because it’s not “good idea bad path to get to them” it’s “good heart, good basic philosophy that got warped due to Trauma and Convictions which led to occasional good results but also very very bad ones”. zerxus is kind and loving, but the very mindset from which he operated was irreparably flawed because of his hubris and lack of comprehension