Would Die For Every Single Member of the Mighty Nein

The Bright Queen ✨ Haven’t posted this one here yet, like many others ;_; I’m gonna try too catch up in the next few days!

Chapters: 1/12 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, Essek Thelyss & Verin Thelyss, Fjord & Essek Thelyss, The Luxon & Essek Thelyss, Deirta Thelyss & Essek Thelyss, Leylas Kryn | The Bright Queen & Essek Thelyss Characters: Essek Thelyss, Fjord (Critical Role), Verin Thelyss, Caleb Widogast, Deirta Thelyss, Leylas Kryn | The Bright Queen Words: 11,949

Additional Tags: Champion of the Luxon AU, Alternate Universe - Future, Space Opera, Religious Conflict, religious trauma, Violence, Minor Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Dreams vs. Reality, Demisexual Essek Thelyss, Past Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Angst, Fictional Religion & Theology, Implied/Referenced Sex, Mention of Using Sex as Self-Harm, several immortals grapple with loss while trying to save the world, so so many liberties taken with consecution, this wouldn’t be a problem if you’d EXPLAIN matthew mercer, and/or if a certain drow would give literally any straight answers, (I mean he can’t give straight answers when he’s not straight), Background Fjorester (Past)

Summary:

“You seek my nature. It is a lonely endeavor. Would you like to join me on this path?”

“Yes.”

—

After a thousand years, a divine champion awakes in a lightless cave above Port Damali with little memory to speak of and a beacon in his hands.

Even as he struggles to piece the past together and process what he has lost while he slept, the future demands he answer for the crimes of his elders. It offers little in return, but perhaps there are fragments of possibility awaiting him.

@essek-week Day Seven: free // au

five and a half elves

The Favor | Critical Role | Campaign 2, Episode 56

♥ Leylas Kryn/The Bright Queen ♥

The Nein as quotes from Polygon’s Unraveled

Because @hit-it-or-crit-it urged me I totally should get around to doing this after our brief discussion on the Nein and Unraveled after my screencap redraw, here it is—

Beau: “Listen to these quotes: ‘All warfare is based on deception,’ ‘If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him,’ ‘Steal their hats.’”

Caduceus: “And if you have bugs in your house and you make the conscious decision to WANT those bugs in your house, they aren’t pests, they’re pets…s.”

Caleb: “With all the spell-casting and shouting you must do as Dragonborn, who really has time to read all these books? I do. Apparently.”

Fjord: “It’s very hard to cuddle with someone when there’s an inferiority complex between you.”

Jester: “[holding cat] So, here is Zuko, Barbarian class level 63. I love him with all my heart, and he loves me just the same. [gets whacked in the face by cat]”

Molly: “If I can’t be accurate, I sure as hell am gonna be extra.”

Veth: “[exasperated laughter] The Red Bull’s wearing off.”

Yasha: “When I was a kid, my mom thought I had a nutritional deficit because I kept wanting to eat mushrooms so much, like I only ate mushrooms for a whole week.”

Bonus:

Essek: “Why does no one understand the time break except for me, Brian David Gilbert? Why am I the only scholar in time break studies?”

Yeza: “Acid man was meant to be a chemist. What’s he good for, titrations? [beat] That’s a chemistry joke.”

Trent: “Once you’ve got that boy under your possession, time to get real into unethical science.”

The Bright Queen: “You sweet summer child. You babe swaddled in the cashmere blanket of ignorance.”

Dairon: “‘When you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,’ but that’s bullshit. I love what I do, and let me tell you something—I’ve worked some days.”

Yussa: “Come on in. Hope you’re not as big of an asshole as the past few of your friends.”

BEAUTIFUL. I’m really glad that they’re side by side too, because even though on the surface they’re saying the same thing (perpetuating conflict is necessary, in part to protect the self) I think there may be subtle differences in their language?

First, there’s the “if you are not sometimes the first to cut you are the first to receive the blade” vs “when others do not show that same will to understanding.” Trent’s statement is axiomatic, the Bright Queen’s is conditional. To expand–Trent’s statement is a logical if-then statement, presented as an immutable law that applies in all circumstances. If you don’t hurt others first, they WILL hurt you first. Which is why the Bright Queen’s conditional “when” interests me…because it gives room for a circumstance, however implausible, that would change what she “must” do in regards to war and bloodshed. Because standing down is predicated on there not being an equal “will to understanding” that means that IF that understanding is present, a greater measure of peace is possible. 

(Also the “cannot bow down” vs the “first to cut”–the BQ talks of prolonging conflict by failure to surrender, and speaks of reprisal in a “cycle.” Trent speaks openly of initiating bloodshed)

Of course, neither the Bright Queen nor Trent are naive, and both understand that selfishness is an inexorable feature of the world, and selfishness drives conflict. When speaking of that selfishness, there are key differences in their pronoun use. There are “people who want what you have.” There are “those that will do whatever it takes to get one over the man, or woman, or otherwise to their left and right.” Trent structures conflict as Us vs Them with emphasis on the “you” that is being victimized. His “every other person” serves to heighten the threat, and make the selfish enemies (after you, specifically) seem more frightening and insurmountable in the argument. The function of this is easy enough–it’s incendiary language, it inspires fear, it is designed to prime people for violence in the defense of themselves. The Bright Queen, on the other hand, speaks more universally of People vs People, but interestingly excludes herself and her audience from that selfishness/desire to conquer, saying “they” in her more universal speech and avoiding an “our” or “we” that would include herself/the audience. Less incendiary for sure, but has more of a theological thrust–it’s a statement that presupposes that she and her (more enlightened) audience are “above” conflict and bloodshed, superior to the “base designs” that plague the world at large and therefore suitable stewards to “keep it slow” 

The Bright Queen

So, this is something I've wanted to do for a while and why not do it for Matt Mercer's birthday? A little belated but here we are. Happy birthday! I hope you had a good one!

A gathering of voices.

Here's everyone in the picture.

Yeza

Luke

Kiri

Essek

Darion

Pumat

Bright Queen

Avantika

Orly

The Gentleman

Trent

The Ruby of the Sea

The Traveller

I know MANY are missing but these are some of my faves and also some of those most important to the plot.

Do not alter or repost my art anywhere. Reblogs are love.

with one breath, Matthew Mercer gives us immortal soul mate lesbians. with the other, he jeopardizes it

“a closely guarded secret of the highest umavi”

so like... they don’t tell you about the risk of this before they consecute you.  you don’t get to find out until you are a “perfect” soul that, actually, this process isn’t totally safe and effective, sorry!  and apparently it can still happen to you even after you achieve “perfection”... HMMM

And of course the queen is going crazy and it's being covered up, which definitely won't be an issue for the protagonists going forward!

and the fact that Essek wants to research these beacons that his soul has already been sold to --and is not allowed to do so for the dynasty’s religious reasons...... it kinda really puts Essek’s treason, his determination to uncover the secrets of this mysterious power in new light.

side note: given that den thelyss is canonically one of the three main dens, politically-speaking, the leader of their den almost certainly counts as one of “the highest umavi,” and for sure knows about this

so either a) essek knows about it even though he’s not supposed to because his mother told him or (more likely) b) she has concealed this information even from her own son, while simultaneously encouraging him to become consecuted and open himself up to this affliction, fully aware that he might go crazy and be euthanized at some point in the future.

BAD!

yes!!

i've been thinking about this a lot actually bc like.... essek comes from a family where everyone is consecuted, and he stands out as a rarity for being someone in his first life

meaning in all likelihood at some point in his lifetime someone in his family succumbed to this

does he know what happened to them? was he just told that they died mysteriously? a person like essek wouldn't just accept that answer, the whole point of consecution is they don't die, he'd be looking for more info

who does he know who disappeared? (other than his dad, which, i also wonder about since this new revelation, if that has anything to do with it), and what does he believe happened to them?

does he know that consecution isn't forever? has he been told eventually you run out of lives and die? it's a half truth, that they may have told a very curious intelligent young drow

does he know that something happens, and it's related to the luxon? is that part of his reason for studying it?

did they tell him the truth once he earned his place in his own family, already consecuted and too late to turn back?

(though, if essek has any foresight at all, he wouldn't be expecting to be reborn, not after everything he's done. either he escapes and they can't find him, but he's too far from any beacon to be fed into the cycle, or he doesn't escape and they kill him for good anyway)

did he ever believe in the luxon's light? he could have been driven, scientific, and faithless the whole time, but he was brought up in that religion. there's a point in childhood, at least, where you believe it. did learning this (or not learning this, and drawing his own conclusions) lead him to reject the luxon as a god? or had he done so long ago, scouring every bit of knowledge he could looking for more secrets of dunamancy

god everything we learn is so interesting and i have so many questions

with one breath, Matthew Mercer gives us immortal soul mate lesbians. with the other, he jeopardizes it

“a closely guarded secret of the highest umavi”

so like... they don’t tell you about the risk of this before they consecute you.  you don’t get to find out until you are a “perfect” soul that, actually, this process isn’t totally safe and effective, sorry!  and apparently it can still happen to you even after you achieve “perfection”... HMMM

And of course the queen is going crazy and it's being covered up, which definitely won't be an issue for the protagonists going forward!

and the fact that Essek wants to research these beacons that his soul has already been sold to --and is not allowed to do so for the dynasty’s religious reasons...... it kinda really puts Essek’s treason, his determination to uncover the secrets of this mysterious power in new light.

- Patrick Rothfuss, “The Wise Man’s Fear”

So we're all understandably conflicted over how to feel about Ludinus Da'leth, he's clearly on their side in some respects and very not in others.

Everyone seems to be ignoring the most important piece of information, though, the one Nott pointed out in the episode, which is that they have proof Ludinus was part of the experiments the Cerberus was forcing Yeza to run on the beacon in Felderwin.

The main experiments were being run by Vess DeRogna, who hired Yeza several months before the Kryn attack, and had him work alongside several other cerberus mages (both arcane magic and divine), in an attempt to distill dunamancy into a liquid that could be imbibed. But they saw Ludinus in Felderwin, that day, alongside Vess DeRogna, cleaning up anything left behind by their experiments, he definitely knew about it.

The little they found of DeRogna's notes sheds a bit more light on the situation, here so everyone remembers:

Note One:

As we continue to invoke the beacon with extremely focused energy of different spectrums and sources, the effects unleashed are curious and reach far beyond this laboratory. The dunamis field slightly encompassed an entire portion of the town, with locals complaining of ill, sluggish sensation, being dragged down. Others at different experiments rumoured of witnessing people and livestock moving at noticeably faster or slower rates within entire sections of the city in proximity to the laboratory - rumours we squashed by spreading a batch of moulded fruit crop.

Based on our previous experiments and extracted techniques from captured Kryn operatives, the abilities of dunamis and dunamancy within Xhorhas appear to focus around the manipulation of gravity, entropy, and time. Yet, the basis of what dunamancy origin glyphs we were able to acquire show it to exist outside of established schools of magic. This magic, by my theory, is deeply rooted in ancient history of some arcana we take for granted. If these beacons are just the surface, what eons old rituals have been lurking beneath the citadel in Ghor Dranas? [Rosohna]

I'm beginning to believe it goes deeper. Between the fragments of power we've only begun to unlock within these beacons, and the capabilities of the Kryn on the battlefield, I surmise they have been learning to bend and break the threads of destiny for hundreds of years. Be this truth, I cannot imagine the Raven Queen looks down on them favorably either, though the thought brings a laugh to my lips.

Note Two:

[burned] extremely difficult to work with, attempts to isolate a substance capable of containing and sustaining the dunamantic energies within a casing has proven both time consuming and costly. In these past weeks, we have successfully distilled a single vial, that should enable a temporary influx of dunamis to even an untrained soldier.

Once I can remove the beacon itself from this process, I hope to have the alchemist produce a number of batches over the next 12-16 months, refining the method with each step, until we can certify its use in combat. Word has found me of Trent finding a few of his protégées have a knack for early dunamancy, [burned] I am eager to look over their findings and perhaps fold those skills into my own.

Imagine [burned] could be accomplished by the Assembly should we learn to further command these [burned] existence. The dreams are already thrilling.

It's been a little over thirteen weeks since they got to Felderwin (thanks critrolestats!), a good two weeks at least before that that the Felderwin attack occured, and that was the end of their experiments there. The use of the phrase "time consuming and costly" suggests they were going at it for a while before that (Yeza confirms it was at least a few months) - definitely not recent.

Ironically, Trent may be the most honest one here when it comes to how long they've had the beacon, it looks like he's only been experimenting on it recently, his past experiments were specifically on his students and their ability to learn dunamancy from studying the Kryn, not extracting dunamantic magic from a beacon. But he's potentially had access to it since DeRogna packed up in Felderwin, a good 3-4 months ago. And given everything we know already, I think it's probably very likely at least half of the Cerberus are all in on this together, the Martinet included.

Ultimately, the Mighty Nein know Ludinus is lying, so they're not going to take anything he says at face value, which is to their benefit here. But for the sake of getting more truth on the table, I think Ludinus is very, very good at feigning ignorance of things he definitely knows about, to cover his own ass if shit goes wrong.

Like Trent's abuse of his students.

Or the exact inner workings of the Sanatorium.

Or, very possibly, the fact that his right hand man was instrumental in the cult of the Angel of Irons opening portals across the continent.

Just food for thought.

A few more things to clarify too tho.

-Caduceus stated that Trent stepped around outright lying. I'm of the opinion that that must be true, considering the context of said meeting.

-A Krynn soldier escaped the Zauberspire attack with the Beacon in hand, and the group acquired it from the Crownsguard after that Krynn operative was killed by the guards. It was Ikithon and Oremid Hass that was tracking the pair of Krynn soldiers originally. The Nein followed the one operative that managed to escape Hass and Ikithon into the Sewers. That was over 7 months ago in game (roughly).

-A month ago, before the Heirloom Sphere mini-arc, Dairon confirmed-when the group briefly returned to Rosohna to recuperate from their second defeat by Obann(e80), that her suspicions had been correct. We learn in e71, that the Cobalt Soul Expositors had intercepted messages/letters between the Crown and the Cereberus Assembly inquiring about the Beacons' properties and coordinating the movement of said Beacons around the Empire. Dairen had been looking for a connection to how the Assembly had first gained access to the Beacons (because of the information revealed in the letters the Expositors had intercepted) and she had theorized that a Dynasty operative working for the Assembly was the connection that had led to the Beacons first *sparking* the conflict. Dairen states in ep80 that she had indeed found records of a Dynasty operative that had handed over at least one Beacon and that this had occurred at the very least, a year ago (in game-time).

-So we can theorize that perhaps that Beacon is the one that the Nein may have returned, since their Beacon was the one taken back in Zadash moooonths ago.

-As you stated, Yeza had worked for moooonths, potentially, with yet another Beacon. Simply because of timing, the Felderwin Beacon cannot be the same as the Zadash one, but the Felderwin/Derogna notes states that they (the Assembly) have experimented with Beacons (plural).

-If Trent was skirting around the truth, then it can be assumed, for now, that a third Beacon *was* actually uncovered at Pride's Call. It should be noted that a demonic incursion happened there recently, as stated by Yussa when the Nein inquired as to if he'd heard of anything like what they were dealing with. It should also be noted that in one scry the Nein did of Yasha as they were traveling from Nicodranas to Zadash in ep78, that Yasha, Obann, and the Laughing Hand were by the Cyrios Mountains near the Bromkiln Hills, not too far away from Pride's Call. And this would have been the scry the same day the Nein learned of the incursion, but prooobably also the same timing as the Beacon being revealed, as Da'leth and Ikithon refer to in the most recent episode, (e88).

-There's too much contextual evidence, to not believe that there's a Zadash Beacon, a Felderwin one, and a Pride's Call one.

-With all the timing, and the coincidence of the incursion, I think I could bet money on the connection actually being Vence Nuthayleus, Da'leth's annex. It's Vence that could have had access both to the cult business/demonic incursions, and the knowledge of the Assembly experimenting with Beacons. Why wouldn't they have sent out an Annex as a runner to investigate if one had been unearthed at Pride's Call? And wouldn't it have been smart to meet up with Obann while there, to plan for the Rexxentrum attack that would happen weeks later?? (as the scry and the Rexxentrum attack did in fact happen a mere 43 days apart).

-This also doesn't even touch on Nogvurot, which people have being theorizing about since e57 revealed what it did about the Beacons and connected to the stolen children that are referenced in e17 and were partially confirmed in this past episode by Da'leth.

-Final thoughts: FFS, GO TO PRIDE'S CALL MIGHTY NEIN!! Or try to track down Vence or Vess Derogna. Don't trust Da'leth OR King Dwendal. This corruption in the Empire *does* actually go all the way to the top. There's no way Da'leth doesn't already know this.

all important additions

and yeah, i'm positive there's three beacons too, the empire's got something of a bait and switch going on here

we have:

beacon one - zadash beacon. stolen by the empire from the kryn a long time ago, guarded as a relic in zadash. a kryn soldier attempted to steal it back, at which point trent ikithon and oremid hass went after them, but the mighty nein intercepted it and kept it for themselves, to eventually hand over to the bright queen. has many xhorhasian souls bound to it. currently in rosohna.

beacon two - felderwin beacon. stolen from the kryn more recently and experimented on by vess derogna, under the guidance of ludinus da'leth. has many xhorhasian souls bound to it. was eventually packed up and sent back to rexxentrum, and is assumed to be held in the vergessen sanatorium, though its whereabouts are potentially unknown.

beacon three - pride's call beacon. uncovered by the empire very recently, sent to rexxentrum. has never been used in a consecution ritual, and has no connection to the kryn, other than their religion. potentially the beacon we saw in the sanatorium, though it's definite whereabouts are unknown.

they're going to hand off one beacon and keep the other, if peace talks even get that far. but the bright queen will know the difference between the two, so if they hand off beacon three there's going to be some questions

caleb’s “I am a child of the empire, but I am no friend of the empire” to the bright queen vs. his “I’m a child of the empire” to ludinus

I really want to see that conversation between Allura and the Bright Queen and the moment Allura brought up the Mighty Nein.

Another work in progress. whomp whomp.