never gonna get tired of Aabria and Brennan playing dnd together, they know each other so well, they are so fun, they're clearly having so much fun ''does Evan have a grenade??'' ''idk will you let me? :)'', ''you know what I'm gonna ask'' ''yeah I throw myself in front of Sam, absolutely'', ''I'll give it to you, if you detach your shadow'' ''.....(pause, clearly aware that with Aabria as a dm, this will have Consequences) yeah I do it, I want to get all of them'', ''is my shadow back with us?'' ''no :)'' ''okay. (concerning)''

And that's just this episode, but there's so many little moments in all of their campaigns that really read as ''I will fuck you up <3'' ''I know and I am walking into it with open eyes <3'' from both of them, never hold any punches, because they know the other one doesn't want them to, just. Inflicting emotional damage on each other for funsies is a love language I guess?

It's beautiful

I wonder how @quiddie feels about Bolo now...

Favored enemy. 😤

#i'll always have smoke for bolo

Too bad some random god stole your kill. Some Dawnchild.

Random? That's my DAD. 🫡

Rewatching the EXU Calamity wrap up and cracking up if Brennan committed to the Bolo is a dragon bit in this moment 😂

I think my brain has recovered from Downfall Pt 3 and I think I finally have at least one thought:

Selena is the Laerryn who doomed her people but had no chance at redemption. If Laerryn had died in the Arboreal Calyx with no chance of being revived, she would have been Selena.

Laerryn casting Blight is Selena casting Wish. Damning everyone without understanding that that's what they're doing. Without understanding the forces they're playing with.

But Aeor isn't Avalir. There is no 3 hour time between the start of destruction and dawn. By the time Selena casts her spell, Dawn is *here*. She is out of time. And by doing what she thought would be her last act of desperation to save what she believed was the most important part of Aeor - believing her work was the heart of everything Aeor was promising, was capable of - she ensures that every mage in the city will die. Every person in the city will die.

(Bonus tragedy! She might not know that Cognouza has left and teleportation off the city is screwed.)

Man. Brennan just PERFECTLY embodies the hatred Asmodeus feels toward mortals, and in a way that's so disquietingly human. A taxonomy of "those who matter and those who do not" can be held to by anyone self-involved and cruel enough to believe in it.

That undead dragon is Bolo’s grandpa. I’m not taking criticism.

i only recently learned about zemniaz (another flying city from the age of arcanum that crashed in the zemni fields) and here's my pitch: in 2026 we bring back brennan lee mulligan to crash that one too

there's the other fucking shoe, my god

So while Aeor as a political entity wants to destroy the entire pantheon, others within its ranks -- the "circle of primes," who want to help the Prime Deities -- have implemented safeguards and fail-safes to ensure that the factorum malleus can only target the Betrayer Gods, because "we can help you. We can help you win the war... the time has come when we can stand beside you." (There are words there not spoken aloud -- instead of beneath you.)

I didn't think Brennan could top the Vespin Chloras reveal in Calamity, and I'm not entirely sure this is above that, but god damn it is close.

Obviously when Erathis says "every time the gods reach out and touch the world, it is warped, and I fear we are hurting it," she is talking about the long term, the complex web of helping and hurting and intervention and whether the net whole is harmful, but with the whole Calamity on, it's funny it's like "I fear we are hurting it" like no yeah gods are inflicting some serious damage recently lol

Asmodeus is such a smug, bitchy asshole and I love him and I love how Brennan plays him

A fun fact about EXU Calamity-

Working on these had me stressed and overwrought, mostly because I was worried that I wasn’t gonna pull of the Look, and the aesthetic would be shakier because of me.

To deal with that, I made up a character to be the in-universe mosaicist who was designing and crafting these panels of the Ring of Brass. Every time I messed up or my hand slipped and I had to go back a step, I imagined him dropping a tile, muttering a curse, and trying again. His name was Florent, he was a journeyman artist and craftsperson in Avalir, and he was my coworker for about a month.

one of my favorite details of exu: calamity is the contrasting reactions between marisha/sam/travis, who know all the exandrian lore and are pumped by name drops and secrets being revealed but don't know what a gremlin dm brennan is; versus lou, who has no idea what the lore of exandria is but knows exactly what kind of gremlin dm brennan is, and can tell when he's building up to something terrifying and gets the flop sweats about it two minutes before anyone else

Patia Por'co, the Keeper of Scrolls, Archmage of the Librarium Incantatum

The embodiment of Perfection.

brennan: haha, by the power of improv i have made matt do bad russian accents for aeor >:)

matt:

I’ve been trying to decide all day if Suvi would be the perfect library patron or the actual worst.

She would never ask a stupid/redundant question, she knows advanced search strategies (my librarian squee when Aabria mention Boolean operators cannot be overstated), she’s got a genuine interest in many topics and loves books……

But. She absolutely thinks that her wizard masters is worth more than a library science masters, and if this is an academic library Steel is definitely a trustee, so her self-importance is off the charts. She does not see the value in community programs and definitely thinks the collection is inadequate.

I think my conclusion is 90% of the time you don’t know she’s there and 10% of the time she’s driving you crazy.

Okay wait a damn minute -- Suvi's subclass isn't [type of magic] it's [leadership of a complex org that requires rigorous management of systems and processes] and you think she wouldn't respect a library sciences degree? SLANDER. MADNESS. Also, everyone acts like she's allergic to the concept of community like half of her problem isn't a profound but unexamined devotion to her community. Homegirl was a ward of Steel, but absolutely the village's kid. Like, she was put in every goddamn community program in the Erian until she was entered into Billings at 10.

*points at the scarf interaction with Nif* If she found the collection wanting, she would 100% procure the materials herself and then tell the library to keep them when she's done because she doesn't feel like carrying them back to her tower. That's the kind of brat she is, just to be clear. Lol

THIS.

Imagine if your bestie's entire job is cataloguing arcane info in her floating ponderin' orb and you look her dead in the eyes and let all of the knowledge of Avalir's engines and batteries die with you when the Calamity hits because you don't write shit down. Laerryn was a goddamn DEMON. If she remembered to return a book, there's a 90% chance she's added counterpoints or nsfw marginalia.