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The Perfect Spotify (A Tribute)

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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023
  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMtoCritical Role@lemmy.world•[Spoilers C3E106] Unseelie Interrupted – Episode DiscussionEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Last we left off…

    Bell’s Hells, after returning to finding your west encampment (in the middle of the Hellcatch Valley) destroyed, you escaped to Vasselheim, where you encountered not just Keyleth but many of the higher up movers and shakers of Exandria, to discuss how to deal with the coming threat and the looming chaotic pinnacle of the Vanguard’s plot. As part of this discussion, you yourself spoke with some of the familiar faces of which you had built a rapport with since this journey began and figured out a plan in hopes that it would be the one everyone could put themselves behind. You pitched this plan, this multi-pronged attack, utilizing the back door secret portal, the passage to Ruidus that you had discovered.
    Upon beseeching all that had gathered within the Platinum Sanctuary to help, you (and Keyleth, the council, and the numerous other allies you had made to make this mission function) sold your case, and most were convinced. As such, what you had decided upon is now being hatched as the initial plot against Ludinus and the Vanguard (which involves multiple groups of heroes from all across Exandria, some being pulled from retirement, some being pulled from their current decrees, others just being sought after who’ve been missing for a while) until everything is aligned. Within a week, which is hopefully enough time, you are to all descend upon the Malleus Key, the Weave Mind, and the very core of Ruidus at the same time, with Bells Hells to be the key linchpin to head towards the center of that moon.
    After some chance encounters with some other interesting, powerful entities and a reunion with Dorian’s father, you went to rest for the evening and consider what was to be had. After a discussion not too long before that (with Imogen and her mother) you had heard tale that a Simulacrum of Ludinus was travelling with the Sorrowlord Zathuda, to meet up with the Unseelie, who had been conspicuously absent since the destruction of the second Malleus Key.
    You also ran into a superfan of Chetney Pock O’Pea, and discovered or unraveled what appeared to be a community of superfans who have been collecting, cataloging and worshipping the “grandiose, wonderful, craftsman legend” that has walked alongside you. After receiving a tour of his modest collection, you were allowed a room to sleep for the evening. As the rest of you gather your things and hole up within the guest chambers of the home of Scalebearer Waylon Amaredda, the night’s rest is yours.

  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMtoCritical Role@lemmy.world•[Spoilers C3E106] Unseelie Interrupted – Episode DiscussionEnglish
    1·
    17 hours ago

    Bell’s Hells cresting off into the Fey horizon, guided by the memory of Fearne Calloway once absconding off into the various realms of the dark fey and beyond. Ira Wendigoth (who you’ve called from his hiding spot on Ruidus to join you on this side of the realms) and the spectral steeds that were conjured by Nanna Morri to send you on your way, you crest through the clouds. They are moving at a rapid speed. You’re uncertain how soon you’ll get there, but you’re moving at quite a high speed.

    • 01:48:20 Marisha’s buff neck crack
    • 01:48:42 Sam’s mug reveal is a yellow carousel horse meme from the film We Live in Time.
    • 01:50:40 Spectral Steed names: Mochi, Wagyu, Udon, Edamame, Pocky, Shishido, Angela Lansbury and Shabu Shabu/Marzipan
    • 01:52:42 Just trying to spread your legs a little bit.
      Potential New Shirt:“Spread Your Legs and Fly!”
    • 01:56:14 Upon spotting their destination. BH bring the steeds below the treeline “Speeder Style” (Star Wars RotJ reference)
    • 01:57:56 Travis:“Wanna know how I got these scars?” (Dark Knight Joker)
    • 02:02:14 Liam:“Orym’s threat radar is up.”
      Sam:“Throat radar?”
      Liam:"Threat. You’re our Throat Radar.
      Ashley:(grunts)
      Marisha breaks
    • 02:03:50 Ira shares legends about the fate of the town having cursed ground and having it’s punishment tied to a defiance of the Arch Heart.
    • 02:09:05 Fancy Central Spire
    • 02:15:29 Liam’s tater talk is a Slingblade reference.
    • 02:20:30 Ashton catches Fearne
    • 02:22:28 Pretty houses
    • 02:25:00 Grim Psychometry shows Chetney a vision in reverse highlighting poison in the water of a teakettle
    • 02:30:52 Pâté the scout
    • 02:36:06 Ashton:“I believe in our 80% dead rat.”
    • 02:36:31 Nice burp Sam!
    • 02:39:00 Dorian goes invisible and spots the stealthed enemies
    • 02:44:39 “They’re in the trees!”
    • 02:44:48 Travis does not miss an opportunity to make a fart noise.
    • 02:47:12 Gloamglut spotted
    • 02:49:00 Ludinus’ Simulacrum and Zathuda spotted.
    • 02:54:00 3 additional Unseelie spotted inside.
    • 02:57:57 Ira WendiGANK
    • 02:59:25 Travis:“We have a Braius.”
    • 03:00:00 Fluffy fukboi
    • 03:04:10 Two Nat 20s!
    • 03:06:30 Chetters eviscerates an enemy in silence.
    • 03:08:50 Dorian sets the enemy hound free
    • 03:10:51 Marisha, Robbie and Ashley:(gibbering)
    • 03:14:00 Laudna crits on a Chill Touch
    • 03:20:28 Laura finds out she used Pass Without a Trace incorrectly the entire first campaign
    • 03:24:01 IDubz:“Now’s the time to make your move.”
    • 03:36:20 Raised voices (of disagreement) are heard inside
    • 03:38:03 Ludinus:“…I know Sammanar to be far too clever to withhold without several good selfish reasons.”
    • 03:48:05 Inner Temple Map!
    • 03:51:30 Dorian:“All that the three factions think right now is that they are under attack. They don’t know by who (could still be each other) but the minute they see one of us we give away the goose. We have a chance to still fucking set them at odds somehow if we use our thinkers but I don’t know.”
    • 03:54:15 Pillar down. Fearne makes for the exit. Gloamglut spots her.
    COOLDOWN
    • 02:24 Laura’s guess is Ludinus promised less divine oversight for the Seelie and Unseelie Courts.
    • 02:39 Sammanar ('sah-ma-nahr) is the head of the Unseelie Court
    • 04:52 IDubz is here just to fuck up Sorrowlord Zathuda
    • 05:20 Muppets - Manna Manna
    • 08:11 Ashley:“We gotta make a Hell army.”
      Sam:“I wouldn’t mind that…”
    • 9:58 Taliesin:“We donut have a minute.”
    • 10:58 Sir Mix-A-Lot - Baby Got Back
    • 11:03 David Bowie - Rebel Rebel
  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMtoCritical Role@lemmy.world•[Spoilers C3E106] Unseelie Interrupted – Episode DiscussionEnglish
    1·
    19 hours ago

    ♪Episode Song References♪

    ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ

    Highlights

    • 00:12:40 Chetney and Dorian make some gear upgrades while Imogen sends a message to Ira Wendigoth
    • 00:13:19 Chetney:“Okay, everybody that doesn’t want to sleep with the Nightmare King can weigh in, okay?”
    • 00:15:04 “Are you pooping?” medley
    • 00:15:26 Ira Wendigoth IDubz:“Ah. Glad to see you’re still alive. I’ve been keeping a low profile on Kreviris. But if you want me to join, let me know where I’m most useful.”
    • 00:16:52 Fearne:“It’s Pravienire, Chet.” (Travis calls it Dan Povenmire of Gravity Falls fame)
    • 00:17:18 Ashley breaks Matt with a story of hearing romantic noise between Ira and Nanna Morri
    • 00:18:00 And Braius
    • 00:19:11 Braius:“That sounds like a lovely dichotomy.”
      Ashton:“New kid has taste. Unlike some people.”
    • 00:19:55 IDubz:"Ligament Manor, huh? It has been some time.
    • 00:21:33 Fearne:“I have sixty-nine gold pieces.”
      Waylon:“Nice.”
    • 00:25:05 Ashley:“Look how good they are, almost.”
    • 00:26:45 Fearne:“I am so sorry. I was gonna try to just take it.”
    • 00:27:15 Fan Art Moment Dark Waylon approaching a trapped Fearne
    • 00:28:13 Waylon:“Rest well, he’s always watching.”
    • 00:29:35 Laura:“Do you think any of us will ever find the egg in your butt.” (Goop reference?)
      Travis:“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    • 00:32:13 Chetney gives Waylon Amaredda the nickname Senor Amaretto
    • 00:33:40 Chetney:“I’m gonna make a cult.”
      Sam looks over to make eye contact (he had a cult side plan with FCG)
    • 00:34:55 Waylon rats out Fearne
    • 00:35:10 Chetney:“I got lieged!”
    • 00:38:27 When a fandom turns on you.
    • 00:39:39 Back to Kiki:“Whatever part the Unseelie has had to play, or will, please bring that information back…That is one blind spot that makes me anxious.”
    • 00:42:56 Orym gets PAID
      Chetney:“Want me to hold onto it? I’ll give you a fair 4.4% yield. You don’t wanna open a CD?”
    • 00:43:37 Fearne:“This Potion of Invulnerability, did somebody want this?”
      What?
    • 00:44:30 “Why not both?” ¿Por que no los dos?
    • 00:45:15 Laudna:“Do they even communicate? Could you walk the line, and they would never know? It’s not like their talking, like they have a shared thread…of scrying.”
      Dorian:“A sort of web of communication.”
    • 00:46:04 Robbie:“Are you looking to multi-god?”
      Liam:(automated assistant voice)“Hi! It looks like you’re trying to contact another god.”
    • 00:46:19 A rare sighting of the Californian Jumping Pen
    • 00:47:12 Matt:“Poly-theism is in…Tengar was a crazy place, y’all.”
    • 00:49:35 Matt:“Allura has strong spinster professor vibes…Well, Kima drags her into some shit.”
    • 00:50:45 Super swampy spot in the Fey Realm
    • 00:52:45 Chetters seeks the Fey Wood
    • 00:53:50 Dorian has goosebumps just being here
    • 00:55:16 Dorian’s allergies return?
    • 00:58:35 Dorian connects to the Fey Realm through his music
    • 00:59:52 The Ligament Manor An incredibly tall and multi-tiered tree house. You see the trunk of this tree knot and spiral upward into multiple floors that rise up as branches extend onward, each one seeming to cradle a chamber that is decorated and lit with its own coloration and theme. A faint sound of music (sourceless, different from your own that you’ve been playing) seems to mingle and drift throughout the interior. You can see numerous pairs of glowing eyes from creatures that sit just beyond the visible light, watching you all as you enter.
    • 01:01:09 Nanna Morri:“Let me put away my machine.”
      Fan Art Moment Nanna Morri (The Fate Stitcher) working away at some ‘Threads of Fate’ and having Tummy holding pins in their mouth just because.
    • 01:02:18 Nanna Morri You see this massive, hill-like, humanoid shape begin to step to the top of the landing of these natural winding stairs. You see a female shape, shoulders wide and extended, a barrel-like torso, itself wrapped in a thick shawl or a purple-dyed, sack cloth, thick material, tied and drifting off with tassels that seem to drag on the ground and have darkened with gathered muck through travel. Where you see the shawl and coat held in these thin, long arms that extend from the shoulder joints that are longer than they should be and don’t match the proportions of the thick, wide torso. From the shoulders, this head looks towards you, and it is extended beyond the shoulders and neck by a good solid two, three feet (like a giraffe) that has a horse mane of whitish hair that drifts off to one side. You see a female noseless grin, extended pointed chin filled with teeth, sparse amongst blackened gums, and a big toothy smile. These vacuous holes where eyes seem to be receded into darkness except for two little points of light that find you as she smiles.
    • 01:04:19 Dorian:“You are beautiful…grandma kisses are always wet.”
    • 01:05:12 When Dorian arrived, the reaction was “Oh, who’s this cute boy you brought over?” this reaction is “Who is this Man?”
    • 01:06:24 Nanna Morri:“Do you like Amaretto? Where are you from? You smell like shadow and bad choices.”
    • 01:08:04 Nanna Morri:“Oh, and how’s The Legend doing?”
    • 01:10:32 Imogen:“Fearne doesn’t have another face down in her cooch, if that’s what yer wonderin’.”
      Sam:“Cahooch.”
      Fearne:“As far as you know. You have no idea what’s in this marsupial pouch.”
    • 01:13:27 Nanna Morri:“You all don’t mind things that taste a bit nutty do you?”
      Liam:“No. I love the taste of nuts.”
      Braius:“Love nuts in my mouth.”
    • 01:14:24 Imogen breaks the news of the imminent arrival of Ira Wendigoth
      Tummy:“What did he say?!”
    • 01:18:45 Laudna asks if Nanna Morri has knowledge of FCG’s status in the afterlife and is told it is “beyond my purview unless I have them written into my specific periphery.”
    • 01:19:09 Nanna Morri:“Bwuh?”
    • 01:22:05 Iiiiit’s Ira!
    • 01:23:18 Nanna throwin’ shade
    • 01:24:55 Liam:(news voice)“We’ve crafted this ancient man into a useable chair!”
      Ashley:“A La-Z-boy!”
    • 01:28:28 Braius inserts himself as a challenger for Morrighan’s affections against Ira.
      What?
    • 01:31:24 Fan Art Moment “Dolled Up” Nanna Morri
    • 01:32:35 Nanna Morri:“The Boy the Wind Has Tossed.”
      Looks like Orym is off the hook for his debt because of the loss of F.C.G.
    • 01:33:46 Nanna Morri:“Your daughter is in fact quite an important piece in this chess game.”
    • 01:37:05 Fan Art Moment Nanna Morri conjures up nine spectral horses (with six legs and extra long necks), which Imogen seems to enjoy.
    • 01:39:00 NM:“You can see possibilities, but that’s where the weave of the fate’s threads is important. I don’t weave them, that lies in the Matron’s domain. I just tend to sneak in and tug a little here and there.”
    • 01:41:18 Marisha tries not to say “Makin’-her-way”
    • 01:41:26 NM:“This domain lies more under the Moonweaver and the Arch Heart. This is the Arch Heart’s domain after all…[The Unseelie and Seelie Courts] are more bound to the rules of their tenets and their divine relationships than us more free fey.”
    • 01:43:26 Ashton:“Lets go Bedknobs and Broomsticks this shit.”
    • 01:44:35 Ira knows the way to Pravienir in the Amethyst Gulch Sierras

    INTERMISSION

  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMtoCritical Role@lemmy.world•Excerpt Available for New Book: What Doesn't BreakEnglish
    2·
    8 days ago

    Excerpted from Critical Role: Bells Hells–What Doesn’t Break by Cassandra Khaw and Critical Role. Copyright © 2024 by Cassandra Khaw. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

    Chapter 1

    It woke not in pain, per se, but in considerable discomfort, as its body weight was supported entirely by a noose around its throat. This was its first revelation. The next was that it was suspended by said noose from the boughs of a colossal tree. The third, and perhaps the most important, epiphany was that it was surrounded by corpses, some fresher than others. Something about the sight of those bodies, bluish-­purple skin tinted green in the last light of a dying day, brought it tremendous solace.

    No, it thought to itself, even as it processed the fact that it was a thinking entity, capable of rationalization, even something as dangerous as imagination. It wasn’t the dangling cadavers that comforted it but the knowledge that something—­it wasn’t entirely sure what exactly—­was missing from that rotting tableau. That was why she—­She?

    That sounded correct. She seemed an accurate summation of that aspect of her identity, but of course that impression could be revised later. It—­she had only just arrived upon the knowledge that gender was even an applicable variable, after all. More discoveries surely awaited.

    Like her name.

    Surely, she had a name once. Just as surely as the continued knowledge of it was waiting for her in the derelict and still-unexplored corners of her mind, of which she suspected there were many. An entire warren of memories to excavate until she could recover her essence, whatever it was that once made her singularly her, from the lightless nothing. Right now, she wasn’t so much a person as an agglomeration of parts: bones, sluggishly circulating fluids, fractured cartilage, a mouth and its bitten tongue, a neck bruised to numbness, ears that ached in time with her lethargic heartbeat but only along their very tips.

    These were all indispensable constituents of a physical body, but without the context of answers to very specific questions, they were just cold meat and puddling humors. As her awareness of the noose grew further pronounced, she decided what she really wanted was someone to tell her why she’d been hung—­

    She began to weep. This surprised her. Though she couldn’t articulate a reason for this, a part of her, some dim and remote hemisphere of her revivifying brain not yet on speaking terms with language, had expected something more primordial than the brokenhearted sobs wracking her: a scream, yes, that word seemed right, something louder, something like loss made into sound, like waking up and understanding everything you’d ever loved was gone with no hope of restoration.

    She hated the rope then. She hated it for its inadequacy. Had it been better made, thicker, thinner, tied differently, she’d be dead of a broken neck and safe from this grief convulsing through her. If it had done its goddamned job, she would be with her parents. She would—­

    Oh, she thought, the word parents as illuminating as it was incendiary, a flame set to oil-drenched skin. The amniotic fugue sloughed away, and suddenly she remembered everything.

    Every detail. Every exquisite spill of shadow along the panes of her mother’s body, contorted as it was, hunched into itself in a pointless attempt at self-­preservation. Every slick of light along the naked bones of her father’s face, lending them a sacramental quality: He looked like a relic, the only thing holy in that room of nightmares. Delilah’s face. Delilah’s laughter as she brought her back just for the delight of seeing her die again on the noose. She screamed then, a shrill and desperate keening that brought no catharsis—­not with the noose still there, squeezing—­but it was loud enough at least to frighten her memories back into repression and to take her attention from the bite of the rope. As both air and memory fled, her consciousness tumbled away again, the dark rushing up to grasp her like a mother’s arms.

    There was a bird on her head.

    Specifically, it was a grackle, iridescent-­throated, its plumage almost black when it turned its head one way and a glossy patinated bronze when it turned its head the other. It was staring upside down from its perch on her skull, several strands of her hair clutched in its beak, its expression peculiarly aggrieved, as if it had been interrupted during a vital errand and was now forced to waste time it never had.

    She studied it with some embarrassment. It occurred to her that the grackle might have thought of her as a rich trove of material and meat, a once-­in-­a-­lifetime surfeit of everything its instincts ever coveted. Up until the point at which she had the audacity to wake up and stare at the bird, bleary-­eyed, impudently un-­dead.

    Or undead, as the case was.

    Her thoughts were a gray slurry not unlike filthy bathwater. Through the murk, she could see the vague silhouette of her memories, occulted for the moment, but theoretically accessible. Theoretically because for some ineffable reason, even the thought of exploring those recollections made her want to die as many times as was necessary to escape them permanently. Regardless, she was sure of one thing: She was neither all the way dead nor anywhere approaching respectably alive. (A small part of her wondered then if she could spare the grackle the feast of an eyeball, but she laid such musings down immediately after a sudden panic burbled up in her. Whoever she was before, she’d been a person subjected to repeated, unwanted sacrifice.)

    But how had she become undead—­

    No, no, no. She tamped down her curiosity, the initial panic beginning to metastasize into a phobic reaction. Whatever had happened before, whatever had killed her, that needed to live elsewhere, preferably six feet under her immediate awareness.

    The grackle saved her from further philosophizing by removing, with considerable ceremony, another strand of her hair.

    “Ow,” she croaked.

    In answer, the grackle spat out a truly unlovely noise, a sound like disintegrating machinery, strangled and rusted, like hinges tearing loose; a din so peculiar, so cacophonous that it surprised a laugh from her. Not a loud one. She didn’t yet have the capacity for such. But it was laughter, and it was unencumbered by hurt, and while it wasn’t an instantaneous cure-­all, it felt like a reminder that so long as consciousness persisted, there was hope for . . . well, she wasn’t sure what, but something, for sure.

    So now she had hope, even if it was a frail and rudderless hope, and a bird astride her head. Given the circumstances, this was absolutely an improvement.

    The grackle bugled metallically at her again, an atonal medley of whistles and energetic readleaks, still unimpressed, dancing an impatient jig in her hair. Perhaps it had the right idea. The bird, in its gorgeous weirdness, seemed wholly unhaunted: at peace with itself, content to do nothing but croak and mutter and do bird things. If she were to follow its example, she might learn that ease too.

    First, though. First, she needed to sit up.

    Which she did with surprising quickness, only to topple over into a jumble of decayed and still-decaying limbs. Someone had placed her at the very top of a neatly stacked pyramid of bodies. Unfortunately for the organizer, the momentum of her collapse resulted in a chain reaction: corpses sliding out of place, dragging their peers down, bones and body parts akimbo, with the occasional excretion of some stodgy and unmentionable fluid whenever a stray elbow or knee palpated a festering organ the wrong way. It became a veritable stew, pouring recklessly out of the back of the overlarge wagon. Curtains of black flies hung indignantly in the air. The grackle left with an exasperated shriek.

    When the chaos ended, she was worked into the middle of that putrid tangle, half of her upper torso jutting out from the mass, a leg pinned by an utter goliath of a man, his bare torso brambled with crude stitches; he’d been sewn together, she realized, from at least a half dozen people, if she were to go by skin tone alone. His—­their?—­face was angled away, and she recognized that as a mercy. Something about the thought of gazing onto its countenance frightened her grotesquely, although she’d be hard put to explain why. She knew only that she was afraid and that she needed—­why?—­nonetheless to look—­I can’t, please, no—­onto its face, regardless of what came after. There was an obligation here, a profound duty she could not shirk. It might even be the reason why she was conscious now. She did not know. All she knew was that she owed—­no, no, no, please, no—­that hideous carcass the terrible kindness of being acknowledged.

    Worming loose, she crawled over to it on her hands and knees. She took the thing’s head in her hands, gently rotating its skull until she looked fully on its visage.

    Except the sight wouldn’t take.

  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMtoCritical Role@lemmy.world•Programming Schedule: Week of August 26th, 2024English
    1·
    10 days ago

    Events

    Critical Role Presents: A Daggerheart Critmas Story LIVE

    Saturday, December 7th 2024 at 7:30 PM EASTERN
    Presale for Beacon members starts Thursday, September 5th at 8:00 AM PACIFIC
    General Tickets available Friday, September 6th at 8:00 AM PACIFIC

    Watch Daggerheart played LIVE for a special Critmas one-shot at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden, NJ on December 7th – just across the bridge from downtown Philadelphia!

    Game Master Matthew Mercer will lead players Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, and Marisha Ray through an exciting live actual play of Daggerheart with the spectacular Lenore Riegel (aka Momlan) serving as our Master of Ceremonies.

    Matt Mercer at Dutch Comic Con

    The one and only Matthew Mercer is heading to The Netherlands for Heroes Dutch Comic Con on November 23rd & 24th!

    Matthew Mercer is making his way to Utrecht to see all you wonderful critters across the pond and he’ll even be taking the main stage to answer some of your burning questions!

    Autographs and Photographs will also be available so please come say hello!

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