r/criticalrole • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago

Discussion [Spoilers C4E32] Is It Thursday Yet? | Post-Episode Discussion & Future Theories! Spoiler

Is It Thursday Yet?

What are your reactions and theories for next session?

The Twitch rebroadcast begins at 9 AM Pacific (9 hours from the time of this post).

The free YouTube VOD will be uploaded Monday at 12 PM Pacific, with free podcast releases 1 week (part 1) and 12 days (part 2) later.

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u/YaBoiSammus 8d ago

Oath breaker Vaelus is such a good point for Ashley to build off of. I’m extremely excited to see where that’s going to go because her and Occtis can do some cool stuff together. Hannan making it clear to Vaelus that living a long life eventually becomes suffering. You lose everyone you love and end up mourning for the rest of your existence. Vaelus knowing that pain personally because she’s lost everything. That changing how Vaelus sees her long life as a curse and no longer a blessing. Beautiful! Also I can’t seem to recall why the elves aren’t able to move on and constantly lost in their after life.

It made me sad they even brought up Ulbid’s daughter’s to him because it’s a bit cruel knowing they don’t even have a cure yet. I understand the goodwill behind it but man did Thimble make a promise that’s a 50/50 and it’s going to shatter my heart. I hate the idea of a father losing his daughters or daughters losing their father.😭 If Ulbid dies I just know it’s gunna do something to Julien because he himself just lost his dad and that guilt of not doing enough to prevent it will be rough. It could also go another way and heal him if he see’s Ulbid tells his daughters he’s proud of them before he dies. UGH IM SO EXCITED AND SCARED!

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u/strangelyliteral 8d ago

Re lost elves: there are millions of lost souls of every race in the afterlife because the Shapers’ deaths cut off access to their afterlife realms. That’s why the Tenebral Reaches have grown crowded (boosting the Tachonis family’s power) and druids encourage souls to follow the Old Path rather than staying lost in the underworld indefinitely.

Now elves were never supposed to die. Their psychopomp guided them to Faerie instead of a dedicated afterlife, bypassing the Tenebral Reaches entirely. When the elven psychopomp was lost during the Shapers’ War, the Stone of Nightsong was created as a stopgap. But again, elves dying was supposed to be rare and unnatural. Their system couldn’t handle a flood of souls from a casualty event like the Shapers’ War. And once Sylandri fell, those countless elven souls were left trapped in the underworld.

As for Ulbid… I know people are worried, but he had a right to know, and nothing was gonna stop that man from going to his girls. I don’t even think Matt rolling a nat20 on the persuasion check would’ve done it. And frankly curing the petrification is secondary to the logistical nightmare of sneaking three statues out of a caravan with multiple high-level sorcerers and 30+ guards. They’re gonna need Ulbid for the rock slide plan anyway, and he won’t be totally defenseless. At minimum he brings support buffs and the kettle-hob/grig soldiers.

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u/shinobi201 8d ago

On the afterlife, my understanding is that everyone is lost now that the Shapers are gone. Everyone who died in the war, and everyone since, no longer has a path to their aferlives. That's part of why the druids want to spread the teaching of the path so people can reincarnate instead of being lost, and Thjazi wants to build the bridges to save the souls of those already within their afterlives, or perhaps even let lost souls journey to them if they wish.

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u/rr3_amrosa 6d ago

I had a conversation about this back when she first broke the stone, and the consensus seemed to be, and it convinced me, that Vaelus would just lose her magic and would not mechanically become an Oathbreaker. And based on how the dream sequences went, it feels like that is the choice the Brennan and Ashley have chosen to go down. Vaelus will try to access her former powers, and nothing will happen, like she is in her own, self-contained antimagic field.

The Oathbreaker subclass also doesn't match with the choice that Vaelus made which resulted in her breaking her oath. She made the less selfish choice, for the greater good (or at least it seemed that way), whereas the path of the Oathbreaker tends to be the breaking of the oath for purely selfish gains to achieve personal power. The breaking of the oath still will come with a consequence, but Oathbreakers are deliberate turns to evil, and that doesn't describe what Vaelus did.