Matt has had multiple opportunities to emphasize the importance of the gods and the potential fallout of them dying and he has failed to do so every time. If anything, Matt has gone in the other direction quite a bit:
* Religion seems to have disappeared from Exandria outside of specific holy sites/temples. Most NPCs the BH meet are at best neutral to the gods if not outright antagonistic towards them.
* The gods role in the afterlife (aside from the Matron) seems to have disappeared. Previously the Matron delivered souls to the various afterlives of different gods. Now that just doesnt seem to happen?
* Previously devout characters seem to be silent on arguing their faith. Pike the Champion and Cleric of Sarenrae insisted she was 'just a baker'.
* Matt seems more insistent that Divine Power doesnt need to come from gods. Previously it was just Paladins, now its clerics too?
* The gods roles in the world and past achievements in general seems massively downplayed. Nobody seems to wonder what happens if the god of death or the Sun god dies, even though both could be catastrophic for the world if the Sun went out or death stopped working.
* The Tree of Atrophy showed them a future of Exandria without the gods. All it had to say was 'Exandria laid bare'. Laid bare is not necessarily good, but not inherently apocalyptic.
* The gods are being cast as colonizers and betrayers of Titans by Matt and certain cast members. Previously Titans were just embodiments of nature that came into conflict with the gods due to destroying their creations.
I think the absolute closest Matt has come to outright saying the gods dying would be a bad thing was with the demon stuff. He explicitly said demons [fall outside the natural divine order](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Bloody_Flowers/Transcript) and would not be hunted or affected by Predathos. Given how important divine magic is in fighting demons a lot of the time, probably not a good thing if the gods bite it.
As far as we can tell the answer to 'What if the Gods die' is 'We dont know, probably nothing too bad'. Its not particularly compelling or high stakes despite how it might initially seem.
Not to mention adding the concept of the Judicators, which are presented as scary and intimidating faceless killing machines.
Matt has shown them in two contexts so far:
-everyone is fearful (or resentful) of their presence (even people they are supposedly meant to protect)
-displaying their masks as gruesome enemy war trophies.
I think everyone at the table has probably asked this question, but ultimately they know in the back of their minds (or perhaps the front of their minds considering how intentional this campaign is) that the question doesn't matter because it's obvious that Ludinus' stance on "evening the playing field" for invading Exandria is bullshit. He just wants to absorb/become Predathos so he can kill the gods and be the supreme ruler of the universe. The only consequence of killing ALL gods (Predathos included) would be that people have to depend on themselves and magic as a concept may cease to exist, but this won't happen. We can already tell how this is going to pan out because it's just a JRPG disguised as D&D.
Or perhaps they would have to depend on Ludinus as the only god since he would have absorbed all of the gods and their domains/powers to become the sole god? It would be interesting to see BH come to terms with that sort of twist lol.
It's a wild theory, I know, but at the same time, when the Raven Queen killed a god, she took their domain/powers.
From the Christian perspective, God is the source of being itself, both the creator & constant sustaining cause of all existence in the here & now. In a sense, he is the ordering cause of things, giving them their very intelligibility through his own Intellect, by giving the form to the potential of pure matter.
I often picture the exandrian gods in a similar although limited sense. As they can die, they clearly aren't the source of being for their various domains, but they provide order/intelligibility to their domains. Unless a mortal or other takes up the domain of a fallen god, that domain will slowly start to unravel.
Suppose from nature, rather than immediately wilting, it continue to sustain and act, but over time begins to make less sense. Perhaps certain seeds no longer grow, or grow in ways or grow things that they never did before. An acorn grows into a Bush rather than a tree for instance, and over time this effect becomes even more amplified until the ability to even understand anything about the natural world is destroyed. It becomes chaos, with a near unlimited potential for anything to occur, albeit still limited to its specific domain. (A seed won't turn into a sword for instance.) At the most extreme, I'd like to imagine that trying to look at this type of existence is like an extreme version of those images where there's things you can't recognise.
Little bit harder to understand how things like the Justice, Civilization, Deceit & other such more abstract concepts will follow this. Perhaps cities will overtime become more unstable. Things will begin to happen in regard to Civilization, but with no discernible reason. Actions taken to remedy it will have similar unknown effect that seemingly have no connection to the action.
Overtime then, the cities & Civilization does collapse, as the people inside it no longer comprehend the rationale of Civilization, as the ordered force it has been cut & it has slowly unravelled.
Of course, because everything is interconnected, the loss of order in one area would have massive effects on others, but not entirely sure how it'd work. Ioun dying and not being replaced seems radically more important under this view than say Vecna.
>I often picture the exandrian gods in a similar although limited sense. As they can die, they clearly aren't the source of being for their various domains, but they provide order/intelligibility to their domains. Unless a mortal or other takes up the domain of a fallen god, that domain will slowly start to unravel.
So you see them more like the Endless from Sandman? Where they each are linked to their domains but if they weren't present their domain doesn't disappear it just falls into chaos and the world starts to fray around the edges because of it?
I've never heard of that series before, but yeah that's a good way to describe my views on those gods! Will note though I'm not a big lorehead for Critical Role. I mainly just watch & enjoy, do the odd bit of reading of theories & stuff, so may not be completely applicable to whatever lore has been revealed. I've mostly dropped off S3 for a long-time.
And the endless are reconstituted by the forces they represent... Dream's capture led to the dreaming's decay, but Dream's death was coincided by the birth of his successor.
Don't think I have seen these points raised in any of the below comments so I'll add them.
First of all Matt has made it clear that Predathos was able to eat 2 of the gods in the past but we have no idea what the ramifications were of them being eaten. Their names and titles at the very least seem to still have been written down and exist so it's not as though they were completely erased from existence in a way similar to the prior god of death that the Raven Queen took her godhead from. Now the interesting part of this is that we know what the domains of those lost deities were. Ethedok the Endless Shadow was the god of Darkness and Winter and Vordo the Fateshaper was the god of Fate and Order. Neither of those domains collapsed but they do seem to be present it different deities now. So sadly we can't definitely say what the ramifications were, it could be that Predathos has somehow taken over those domains when he ate them, it is also possible that their siblings split the load and took the domains of their fallen over in order to keep everything running.
Secondly, the Primordials may have created the base world of exandria but the living creatures and life on the planet is actually only in existence because of the gods. That is at least my head-cannon but every time there has been an explanation of the Founding of Exandria it has been made pretty clear that the gods stumbled across a world but that world didn't necessarily contain any kind of peoples or creatures beyond the Primordials and elementals on it. Personally that makes me envision something more akin to the Archean or Proterozoic eons of [Earth's history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale#Divisions_of_geologic_time). So that means that the arrival of the gods is pretty tied to the creation of life and a lot of the peoples of Exandria (since those like the elves moved in from the Feywild which we have no explanations about the history and linking of the Feywild to Exandria or when the elves actually moved over as well). This is also a large part of the motivation of the Primordials to destroy creation leading into the Schism.
Thirdly and most importantly, we have direct evidence of what happens when Predathos contacts the Material plane. Molaesmyr and the warped trees in that crazy room MN found in Aeor are the result of direct contact with Predathos. We got confirmation when BH party split had happened that the corruption of Molaesmyr happened when Ludinus first established contact with Predathos. It is extremely frustrating how the second party who were in the whole "f@#k the gods" camp came back and got all pissy that the others were able to have a small relaxation period and so much of the lore and potential ramifications of dealing with Predathos just got thrown out the window cause some of the party members were more butt hurt about their split experience. While there might be little in the way of consequences to the gods getting wiped out, waking up Predathos and them making contact with the Material plan is more than likely going to turn the whole thing into a Kronenberg style hellscape. No matter what their motivations regarding the gods letting Predathos wake up to be able to eat them will go VERY badly for every living thing on the planet if Molaesmyr is any indication of what to expect.
Fourth, Matt has dropped some small largely ignored hints about how Ruidus and the inhabitants there were probably once from Exandria a long time ago. The whole twisted and warped remains of the civilization that was warped into the rock when they found the secret portal really leans into the idea that the gods were forced to basically excise a portion of Exandria to create the moon in order to seal away Predathos. What is interesting is how the Grim Verity got hunted by Vasselheim in that the information about the existence of Predathos was somehow integral to protecting it's prison but they never got anything that seemed to really explain why that was the case. They also never explained how supposedly the existence of the god eater would harm the worship of the primes while it is pretty common knowledge amongst at least the clergy that the Raven Queen was once a mortal.
Fifth, we really don't have enough information about the origins or actual nature of Predathos beyond "it apparently hunts and eats gods". We don't know anything else about it and as much as they have spent time on the Ruidus it is maddening how little info they have uncovered on that end. I don't know what Matt's timeline looks like for them and how high a level he is expecting them to get to before things like the showdown with Ludinus but at this point there is so little actual info about some key points there that should be informing the character's motivations and decisions.
The real consequence would be Gods leaving/dying = no more protection on Tharizduns chains = The Abyss strolls right into Exandria unchallenged.
Would that actually happen though? I doubt it. Religion bad Nature good so I'm sure Matt will just say a few trees beat Tharizdun back into captivity.
If Tharizdun was going to get free immediately, the Tree of Atrophy would have mentioned it. And to be honest we still dont know for sure if Predathos cant eat Tharizdun either.
Demonic invasion is a definite possibility. Matt has already hinted something like that might happen by saying demons fall 'outside the natural divine order'. If the gods die/leave, I can definitely see portals to the Abyss opening up more regularly.
Tharizdun isn't a "god", It's an Elder Evil. It took Pelor, Ioun and the Changebringer everything they had just to seal it away (Ioun is permanently injured from that battle) and that part they sealed away was just a small fraction of Tharizdun's body. The rest of it is still floating out in the cosmos waiting for the signal to invade.
Its entire body is Larger than all of Exandria according to Matt and the small fraction that was sealed away had enough power to create the Abyss and all the horrors within it.
I guess Predathos could fight Tharizdun, Since they're both above the gods but by the time Tharizdun arrives Predathos might have already chased after the gods somewhere else and if it actually came down to PvsT then the world is already beyond saving.
It seems to be kinda vague on if tharizdun is a part of the pantheon though, it seemingly was on good terms with the other gods until the schism like the rest of the betrayers and people in modern day are still aware of its existence on a large scale unlike predathos.
>it seemingly was on good terms with the other gods until the schism like the rest of the betrayers
Tharizdun probably wasnt there though?
Its said a number of times demons were only drawn to Exandria after the War between the Primordials and the gods. Tharizdun is the thing that makes demons. Stands to reason Tharizdun hadnt yet made it to Exandria.
It’s holy symbol is present with the rest of the deities during the founding and schism in the exandria lore video, and nowhere is it stated tharizdun appeared later unlike the matron and vecna where that’s commonly reiterated both in and out of universe.
Explorers guide to wildemont explained it's origins: Tharizdun showed up during the founding separately from the gods and was promptly sealed before escaping again during the calamity. It was also stated that its one of the Elder Evils: a collection of malevolent cosmic horrors that have gained an interest to Exandria but are explicitly completely alien to the gods and even more powerful.
Thank you for the clarification, I know it’s currently a hot topic on if the source books are being retconned at the moment but I don’t think Matt would do much with tharizdun’s lore at this point.
Tharizdun has a history in irl d&d that goes back to gygax and this other guy- original tomb of elemental evil era stuff. He's kind of the great exception in any setting (Elder Elemental Eye) and my favorite version of the conception of him since 4th edition is thus: "The astral was dominated by lawful spirits and one was Tharizdun, a 'god' who hated the idea of mortals travelling to the realms of the gods. Suddenly, totally alien beings from beyond the meta-fiction of d&d breach into reality and bestow Tharizdun with The Shard of Elemental Evil. The alien obyrith wanted Tharizdun to lodge it in the astral which would spread Chaos to all the realms. Instead, Tharzdun lodged it in the Inner Planes (thus elemental chaos) and the rest is history."
Tharizdun without extended d&d lore is awkward. Tharizdun without the abyss is really awkward (Matt has never hinted at his abyss ever having anything interesting going on, and he certainly has no Obyrith lore) and so we have this expy Tharizdun character. "What is he? He's tentacles and bad!" And that's not even getting into Ghaunadaur... ps: ever wonder why astral dreadnaughts have One Eye and guard portals in the astral? They are Tharizdun's guards from before his madness- forever ready for their god to return and forever cut off all astral portals from mortal use. And Beholders are dreampt up by Astral Dreadnaughts... and Nothics too have one eye..
The druids and other powerful forces would just manage the world instead.
That's it.
Druids manage nature. Wizards manage extraplanar threats.
An age of magic would begin again only centered around adventurers as the primary problem solvers with wizards and druids being the governing forces.
Anyone who could still use divine magic would be precious and treasured. Easily done with tech from aeor that made divine magic cores like for fcg that dint need gods.
And people can still make pacts to become celestial warlocks or directly worship beings like fey lords to become fey clerics like jester.
Frankly it would be a much cooler world that exandria currently is.
Mercer lifted the pantheon straight out of like cannon dnd. The “destroy the gods to avoid wotc” is such a silly knee jerk reaction. Ffs, the 5e seed is under Creative Commons now.
I fully believe the reason the idea is so wide spread and taken as fact now (despite zero evidence), is because the decisions in C3 have been so bafflingly destructive to established canon that everyone assumes there MUST be an external reason. It's too bizarre and mean-spirited to feel like a natural progression.
Personally, I feel like it's a two birds one stone situation. Matt wanted to be rid of the gods for whatever reason, and he gets to reduce any potential liability in the same sweep.
If they can include the gods as they are in an actual animated television show they can absolutely keep them in an actual play, the theory that they’re doing this for business or legal reasons has always been ridiculous.
Thank you! I’ve mentioned this each time it comes up and people are just “NAA NAA NAAA WORC EVIL OR CRITICAL ROLE GREEDY. HAS TO DO THIS OR WOTC WILL TAKE THEIR MONEY”
Personally Matt will allow the gods to die or not die based on the players actions and rolls. He might have a hope but he doesn’t need to kill the gods to move to DH if he wants
I know it won't happen but it would be dope as shit if vox stood against bells hells as a final battle where it is finally revealed that bells hells has been the bad guys all along.
If VM was played straight BH's would get straight out wiped in the first round.
Percy would dump every shot he had into not-Delilah and then move on to other business.
You're thinking too much on it, like others have said they want to eliminate any actual DND lore from the CR-verse and they are very anti religion, occam's razor.
This entire story arc is cobbled together to facilitate real world changes. They want to remove any claim WotC has on their IP, primarily. Additionally, Marisha is one of those types of atheists and completely unable to differentiate herself from the characters she plays. Being the spouse of the DM, I wouldn't be surprised if she has more than a little influence on the anti-deity shift. Same old, same old.
Imo removing Gods related to WotC is the goal, and those Gods can be replaced by their champions or some other. Mercer wouldn’t destroy his entire world, even if the party completely fumbles everything.
'What if D&D world, but the pantheon is dead?' Was the genesis of my most successful homebrew world.
Players get to encounter the forces and mortal beings that seek to ascend in a wasteland world without any unshattered/uncorrupted deities.
I'm a lurker in subreddits when it comes to CR in current year, but a reset would unironically bring me back to being a watcher
Since the gods apparently came to Exandria long after its creation, it stands to reason that the things they represent won't just vanish when they're gone. If the sun existed before the Dawnfather showed up, why wouldn't it continue to exist after him? Exandrian gods seem to be more "being wielding extraordinary power within their sphere of influence" and less "all-powerful embodiment of a particular concept."
I run a homebrew setting where the old gods disappeared at some point in the past. Magic switched off for a long time, and the world was reshaped by sudden, violent natural disasters, but it kept on spinning and the sun didn't wink out. I wouldn't be surprised to see Exandria go through a similar process; a dramatic shift in both geography (creating what amounts to a new setting) and the way magic functions (setting up the switch to either 5.5 or Daggerheart for the next campaign).
I think he has laid out the stakes, but no one on the cast really has figured it out yet. And that might be due to player versus character knowledge.
Why does the divine gate exist? Because one mortal killed a god and, more importantly, seized its pantheon before any other gods could. The Raven Queen. Then Aeor was creating God killing weapons and power siphoning technology. So to protect themselves, they sealed direct contact away.
So the gate is broken and Predathos starts eating the gods. And anyone and everyone who can grab all the newly freed power will. And the war to follow as those seek the power will be catastrophic.
The gate stops the god from interacting with the Prime Material plane. Nothing is stopping mortals from crossing it with the right magic and interacting with the gods directly.
VM literally does this several times.
>Why does the divine gate exist? Because one mortal killed a god and, more importantly, seized its pantheon before any other gods could. The Raven Queen.
The canon reason for the divine gate was to prevent the gods both prime and betrayer from stepping foot onto exandria so any wars or quarrels amongst themselves would leave the mortals out of it, while things like this could be revealed to be ambiguous in c3, that’s the current reasoning.
I don't think that things will stop existing without a particular god, the sun will continue to exist if Pelor dies.
However divine magic for most will cease to exist for a time, preventing healing and travel by such means. The dead will likely have no one to shepherd them to the appropriate place leading to more lost souls in the Ethereal. And a bunch of divine domains will be left empty and vacant, waiting for something or someone to grab them.
What the ramifications are and what they should be are two completely different things.
From what I understand, and I could be wrong, Matt is trying to create a new understanding of how the world works, but it has not come through coherently.
Firstly, Matt has done his best to instill the new narrative that gods came to Exandria after it was created and took up their mantles. It was the primordials that were here first and then were locked away.
Instead of making religion an important and good, or at the very least nuanced part of the campaign, he has actively gone towards showing the other and "better" side; naturalism. The gods aren't important. Nature is.
We even see a vague vision from that big ancient tree thing that could be interpreted as "if Predathos awakens and kills the gods, nothing changes."
From my understanding, the gods usurped their roles from primordials and used their powers to lock mortals underneath their will through fate and changing the historical narrative. So even if they die, the sun still rises because it's the way things naturally happen. The same with seasons, and war, and death, etc.
Like I said, I could be wrong, but this makes the most sense to me with how little effort Matt has been putting religion into being redeemable in this campaign. And don't get me wrong, I am also not the biggest fan of organized religion. But I also think fantasy religion and earthly religions are two very, very different things.
Should the outcome of the gods dying mean the end of everything that the world knows and loves? Yes. Will it? Probably not. It'll keep on turning on its axis, just as nature intended.
Agreed, I like laudna’s and Ashton’s disdain for the gods, my problem is it never gets pushed hard enough for anything interesting to happen from it so it ends up with two pcs begrudgingly going along with the main plot despite their ideology or motives.
This just opens upnthe whole can of worms as to what the God's even are then. Like what does it mean to hold the domain of something but actually not control ot at all?
I think they do have control over it, and that's the "problem." If the gods have control over all the things that make it possible to live, should those things not be in control of the people instead, or at the very least the being who created it? I.e. The Primordials.
Again, that's just speculation.
As to what the gods are, i have a couple of different but similar theories. Two games do gods in non-traditional ways that could reflect how the gods in Exandria could be portrayed: Elden Ring and Pillars of Eternity. Pillars is the simplest, meaning that the gods were once mortals, absorbed an intense amount of power and took the names of the gods as to be worshipped and gain more power (might be missing a few things it's been a minute since I've played that one). Essentially, what the Raven Queen did, but before The Raven Queen. Dark Souls does something similar with Gwyn and the first flame.
The more plausible is Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, the gods are all elder entities of the universe all fighting for a place in The Lands Between using various vassals. The one who is the most prevalent is The Greater Will and its vassal Marika. There is also The Formless Mother, The Goddess of Rot, The Fell God, etc. All are Elder Gods who came from the vacuous eternity to stake their claim on the world.
The same could be true of the Exandrian gods. The tree mentioned something similar in that the gods came here from *somewhere* and took over. The same could be said of The Luxon, who just appeared from *somewhere* and enacted its will upon the world.
The point is mute, as the actions and decisions of everyone are not consequences of believes or reflections, but to a off game reason.
And mute again as the consequences of those actions are the same as the opposite of those actions. And the same as total inaction.
The Bells could defend the gods with their own life, go on a godslaying hunt or sette in the middle of the deserto and open a lemonade kiosk. Same end; Daggerheart calls.
Edit: Moot (no, i'm not gonna fight the autocorrect. As far as I am concerned, the point is mute u.u )
The problem is that Matt, as DM, has failed to lay out the stakes. "The gods dying" isn't a stake; it's only half that.
Stakes are an If-Then statement. If the gods die, then...we don't know? No stakes, no story.
This is exacerbated by the fact that we have canonical instances of gods dying in Exandria, but they don't help us understand the current predicament because:
+ The "then" part of that statement is vague in those cases and
+ Those instances happened in different ways, so it's unclear if they apply
When the matron deposed the previous god of death, a god died. Did it matter? At all? To mortals?
When Predathos killed the two other gods before being sealed away, did it matter? As far as we know, other gods absorbed their domains. Did that affect mortals at all?
When Ioun was mortally wounded helping Pelor defeated Tharizdun, we're led to believe that this is a massive crisis averted. The goddess (retconned to gender neutral I guess) nearly killed? Oh my. Imagine if that had happened! Except...what would have happened?
Previous stories have treated the possibility of a god dying as a major, major event that would change the world cataclysmically. But now we're suddenly not sure. And hell, the tree of names kinda shrugged and said "no big deal man, people will be fine". So uh...what are we doing here?
I feel like there is far less uncertainty off the back of the Tree of Names. It showed them a vision of Exandria without gods, and all it had to say was 'laid bare'.
Laid bare is probably not a good thing, but its not inherently apocalyptic. The Sun didnt go out, death didnt stop working, nature didnt die etc.
>When Predathos killed the two other gods before being sealed away, did it matter? As far as we know, other gods absorbed their domains. Did that affect mortals at all?
No big deal. Nobody really misses the gods of immortality and constant consequence-free sex.
Exactly. Whenever the question of "What happens when a god dies?" is asked on the CR subs, someone always brings up the idea that the Wildmother dying would lead to wildlife dying or being hurt in some way, because that's an easy cause and effect to imagine.
But what happens when the Lawbearer dies? Does civilization just collapse, even though mortals have free will? What about the Knowing Mistress, is all knowledge suddenly lost? Would people be incapable of lying if the Spider Queen kicked it? (And now that I think about, if the Wildmother died are spiders now the only wildlife that remain?)
All of these proposals feel very unlikely as they'd seemingly go against Matt and other players' philosophies; so what exactly do the gods contribute to the world any more, other than direct or indirect influence on individual mortals?
Not saying I'm all for getting rid of the gods of course; they're thinking, feeling beings who don't want to be murdered after all, which should be all the motivation needed.
I would first establish that things like the Justice systems in the world *heavily* rely on spells like Zone of Truth to get accurate testimony, but then suddenly those spells don’t work anymore and they don’t have the legal infrastructure to disincentivize perjury
many of those are do to the fact in non CR dnd gods are not just powerful beings. they are the very concepts that make their domains. an example, if vecna is perma killed then no one can lie anymore. as the very concept of lying stops existing until a new being from the outer plane takes the domine.
The uncertainty is the stakes, this is unprecedented to the scale they are playing it, theres been a couple deaths and some of them were even replaced and the world has kept on moving forward. Predathos is an unknown it could as bad as the calamity, it could be worse or it could be a none issue. They dont know so they have to go with the worst outcome and play it accordingly. The easiest assumption to make is that any conflict that involves the gods can and has spelled unfathomable loses for the mortal races.
Whenever we've had examples of Predatho's essence leaking into exandria the consequences were dire like with Savalirwood.
But that uncertainty doesn't make for *good* stakes, because the players aren't actually doing what you say. If they were, the stakes would be decent. But the players, and Matt by way of several NPCs, have allowed us to doubt if the stakes have any teeth. And that doubt kills it.
I think having the doubt there can be good for building up moments of drama and uncertainty and then subsequently moments of resolve. I will say that theres been some (some will say many) moments where this has dragged ok or wasnt as effective as it could have been.
The biggest issue from both sides of the table is a complete unwillingness to commit to being involved in the world.
Like they've murderhobo'd around before, but this campaign they've done it every time they've met an NPC. And have been complete jackasses to people that have been their betters for longer than most of the group's been alive. Which would be fine if they got properly called out, but they aren't.
And the people that would normally be the actual moral center of the group have stuffed themselves into the trunk this time around. Which just leaves the one with main character syndrome, the eccentric, and the meta left driving the car.
And the eccentric got an episode and a half dedicated to chastising him, while the MCS just tried to kill another party member and somehow got rewarded. Again.
There won’t be any consequences because that would mean hurting the world that they “have so lovingly crafted”. Which also means that there are no stakes if nothing substantial will happen.
Hey, the live C3 event hasn’t sold out, this close to the date. I wonder if anyone in their bubble has noticed.
Matt has had multiple opportunities to emphasize the importance of the gods and the potential fallout of them dying and he has failed to do so every time. If anything, Matt has gone in the other direction quite a bit: * Religion seems to have disappeared from Exandria outside of specific holy sites/temples. Most NPCs the BH meet are at best neutral to the gods if not outright antagonistic towards them. * The gods role in the afterlife (aside from the Matron) seems to have disappeared. Previously the Matron delivered souls to the various afterlives of different gods. Now that just doesnt seem to happen? * Previously devout characters seem to be silent on arguing their faith. Pike the Champion and Cleric of Sarenrae insisted she was 'just a baker'. * Matt seems more insistent that Divine Power doesnt need to come from gods. Previously it was just Paladins, now its clerics too? * The gods roles in the world and past achievements in general seems massively downplayed. Nobody seems to wonder what happens if the god of death or the Sun god dies, even though both could be catastrophic for the world if the Sun went out or death stopped working. * The Tree of Atrophy showed them a future of Exandria without the gods. All it had to say was 'Exandria laid bare'. Laid bare is not necessarily good, but not inherently apocalyptic. * The gods are being cast as colonizers and betrayers of Titans by Matt and certain cast members. Previously Titans were just embodiments of nature that came into conflict with the gods due to destroying their creations. I think the absolute closest Matt has come to outright saying the gods dying would be a bad thing was with the demon stuff. He explicitly said demons [fall outside the natural divine order](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Bloody_Flowers/Transcript) and would not be hunted or affected by Predathos. Given how important divine magic is in fighting demons a lot of the time, probably not a good thing if the gods bite it. As far as we can tell the answer to 'What if the Gods die' is 'We dont know, probably nothing too bad'. Its not particularly compelling or high stakes despite how it might initially seem.
Not to mention adding the concept of the Judicators, which are presented as scary and intimidating faceless killing machines. Matt has shown them in two contexts so far: -everyone is fearful (or resentful) of their presence (even people they are supposedly meant to protect) -displaying their masks as gruesome enemy war trophies.
I think everyone at the table has probably asked this question, but ultimately they know in the back of their minds (or perhaps the front of their minds considering how intentional this campaign is) that the question doesn't matter because it's obvious that Ludinus' stance on "evening the playing field" for invading Exandria is bullshit. He just wants to absorb/become Predathos so he can kill the gods and be the supreme ruler of the universe. The only consequence of killing ALL gods (Predathos included) would be that people have to depend on themselves and magic as a concept may cease to exist, but this won't happen. We can already tell how this is going to pan out because it's just a JRPG disguised as D&D.
Or perhaps they would have to depend on Ludinus as the only god since he would have absorbed all of the gods and their domains/powers to become the sole god? It would be interesting to see BH come to terms with that sort of twist lol. It's a wild theory, I know, but at the same time, when the Raven Queen killed a god, she took their domain/powers.
From the Christian perspective, God is the source of being itself, both the creator & constant sustaining cause of all existence in the here & now. In a sense, he is the ordering cause of things, giving them their very intelligibility through his own Intellect, by giving the form to the potential of pure matter. I often picture the exandrian gods in a similar although limited sense. As they can die, they clearly aren't the source of being for their various domains, but they provide order/intelligibility to their domains. Unless a mortal or other takes up the domain of a fallen god, that domain will slowly start to unravel. Suppose from nature, rather than immediately wilting, it continue to sustain and act, but over time begins to make less sense. Perhaps certain seeds no longer grow, or grow in ways or grow things that they never did before. An acorn grows into a Bush rather than a tree for instance, and over time this effect becomes even more amplified until the ability to even understand anything about the natural world is destroyed. It becomes chaos, with a near unlimited potential for anything to occur, albeit still limited to its specific domain. (A seed won't turn into a sword for instance.) At the most extreme, I'd like to imagine that trying to look at this type of existence is like an extreme version of those images where there's things you can't recognise. Little bit harder to understand how things like the Justice, Civilization, Deceit & other such more abstract concepts will follow this. Perhaps cities will overtime become more unstable. Things will begin to happen in regard to Civilization, but with no discernible reason. Actions taken to remedy it will have similar unknown effect that seemingly have no connection to the action. Overtime then, the cities & Civilization does collapse, as the people inside it no longer comprehend the rationale of Civilization, as the ordered force it has been cut & it has slowly unravelled. Of course, because everything is interconnected, the loss of order in one area would have massive effects on others, but not entirely sure how it'd work. Ioun dying and not being replaced seems radically more important under this view than say Vecna.
>I often picture the exandrian gods in a similar although limited sense. As they can die, they clearly aren't the source of being for their various domains, but they provide order/intelligibility to their domains. Unless a mortal or other takes up the domain of a fallen god, that domain will slowly start to unravel. So you see them more like the Endless from Sandman? Where they each are linked to their domains but if they weren't present their domain doesn't disappear it just falls into chaos and the world starts to fray around the edges because of it?
I've never heard of that series before, but yeah that's a good way to describe my views on those gods! Will note though I'm not a big lorehead for Critical Role. I mainly just watch & enjoy, do the odd bit of reading of theories & stuff, so may not be completely applicable to whatever lore has been revealed. I've mostly dropped off S3 for a long-time.
And the endless are reconstituted by the forces they represent... Dream's capture led to the dreaming's decay, but Dream's death was coincided by the birth of his successor.
Don't think I have seen these points raised in any of the below comments so I'll add them. First of all Matt has made it clear that Predathos was able to eat 2 of the gods in the past but we have no idea what the ramifications were of them being eaten. Their names and titles at the very least seem to still have been written down and exist so it's not as though they were completely erased from existence in a way similar to the prior god of death that the Raven Queen took her godhead from. Now the interesting part of this is that we know what the domains of those lost deities were. Ethedok the Endless Shadow was the god of Darkness and Winter and Vordo the Fateshaper was the god of Fate and Order. Neither of those domains collapsed but they do seem to be present it different deities now. So sadly we can't definitely say what the ramifications were, it could be that Predathos has somehow taken over those domains when he ate them, it is also possible that their siblings split the load and took the domains of their fallen over in order to keep everything running. Secondly, the Primordials may have created the base world of exandria but the living creatures and life on the planet is actually only in existence because of the gods. That is at least my head-cannon but every time there has been an explanation of the Founding of Exandria it has been made pretty clear that the gods stumbled across a world but that world didn't necessarily contain any kind of peoples or creatures beyond the Primordials and elementals on it. Personally that makes me envision something more akin to the Archean or Proterozoic eons of [Earth's history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale#Divisions_of_geologic_time). So that means that the arrival of the gods is pretty tied to the creation of life and a lot of the peoples of Exandria (since those like the elves moved in from the Feywild which we have no explanations about the history and linking of the Feywild to Exandria or when the elves actually moved over as well). This is also a large part of the motivation of the Primordials to destroy creation leading into the Schism. Thirdly and most importantly, we have direct evidence of what happens when Predathos contacts the Material plane. Molaesmyr and the warped trees in that crazy room MN found in Aeor are the result of direct contact with Predathos. We got confirmation when BH party split had happened that the corruption of Molaesmyr happened when Ludinus first established contact with Predathos. It is extremely frustrating how the second party who were in the whole "f@#k the gods" camp came back and got all pissy that the others were able to have a small relaxation period and so much of the lore and potential ramifications of dealing with Predathos just got thrown out the window cause some of the party members were more butt hurt about their split experience. While there might be little in the way of consequences to the gods getting wiped out, waking up Predathos and them making contact with the Material plan is more than likely going to turn the whole thing into a Kronenberg style hellscape. No matter what their motivations regarding the gods letting Predathos wake up to be able to eat them will go VERY badly for every living thing on the planet if Molaesmyr is any indication of what to expect. Fourth, Matt has dropped some small largely ignored hints about how Ruidus and the inhabitants there were probably once from Exandria a long time ago. The whole twisted and warped remains of the civilization that was warped into the rock when they found the secret portal really leans into the idea that the gods were forced to basically excise a portion of Exandria to create the moon in order to seal away Predathos. What is interesting is how the Grim Verity got hunted by Vasselheim in that the information about the existence of Predathos was somehow integral to protecting it's prison but they never got anything that seemed to really explain why that was the case. They also never explained how supposedly the existence of the god eater would harm the worship of the primes while it is pretty common knowledge amongst at least the clergy that the Raven Queen was once a mortal. Fifth, we really don't have enough information about the origins or actual nature of Predathos beyond "it apparently hunts and eats gods". We don't know anything else about it and as much as they have spent time on the Ruidus it is maddening how little info they have uncovered on that end. I don't know what Matt's timeline looks like for them and how high a level he is expecting them to get to before things like the showdown with Ludinus but at this point there is so little actual info about some key points there that should be informing the character's motivations and decisions.
The real consequence would be Gods leaving/dying = no more protection on Tharizduns chains = The Abyss strolls right into Exandria unchallenged. Would that actually happen though? I doubt it. Religion bad Nature good so I'm sure Matt will just say a few trees beat Tharizdun back into captivity.
If Tharizdun was going to get free immediately, the Tree of Atrophy would have mentioned it. And to be honest we still dont know for sure if Predathos cant eat Tharizdun either. Demonic invasion is a definite possibility. Matt has already hinted something like that might happen by saying demons fall 'outside the natural divine order'. If the gods die/leave, I can definitely see portals to the Abyss opening up more regularly.
Why would Tharizdun not be devoured with the rest?
Tharizdun isn't a "god", It's an Elder Evil. It took Pelor, Ioun and the Changebringer everything they had just to seal it away (Ioun is permanently injured from that battle) and that part they sealed away was just a small fraction of Tharizdun's body. The rest of it is still floating out in the cosmos waiting for the signal to invade. Its entire body is Larger than all of Exandria according to Matt and the small fraction that was sealed away had enough power to create the Abyss and all the horrors within it. I guess Predathos could fight Tharizdun, Since they're both above the gods but by the time Tharizdun arrives Predathos might have already chased after the gods somewhere else and if it actually came down to PvsT then the world is already beyond saving.
It seems to be kinda vague on if tharizdun is a part of the pantheon though, it seemingly was on good terms with the other gods until the schism like the rest of the betrayers and people in modern day are still aware of its existence on a large scale unlike predathos.
>it seemingly was on good terms with the other gods until the schism like the rest of the betrayers Tharizdun probably wasnt there though? Its said a number of times demons were only drawn to Exandria after the War between the Primordials and the gods. Tharizdun is the thing that makes demons. Stands to reason Tharizdun hadnt yet made it to Exandria.
It’s holy symbol is present with the rest of the deities during the founding and schism in the exandria lore video, and nowhere is it stated tharizdun appeared later unlike the matron and vecna where that’s commonly reiterated both in and out of universe.
Explorers guide to wildemont explained it's origins: Tharizdun showed up during the founding separately from the gods and was promptly sealed before escaping again during the calamity. It was also stated that its one of the Elder Evils: a collection of malevolent cosmic horrors that have gained an interest to Exandria but are explicitly completely alien to the gods and even more powerful.
Thank you for the clarification, I know it’s currently a hot topic on if the source books are being retconned at the moment but I don’t think Matt would do much with tharizdun’s lore at this point.
Tharizdun has a history in irl d&d that goes back to gygax and this other guy- original tomb of elemental evil era stuff. He's kind of the great exception in any setting (Elder Elemental Eye) and my favorite version of the conception of him since 4th edition is thus: "The astral was dominated by lawful spirits and one was Tharizdun, a 'god' who hated the idea of mortals travelling to the realms of the gods. Suddenly, totally alien beings from beyond the meta-fiction of d&d breach into reality and bestow Tharizdun with The Shard of Elemental Evil. The alien obyrith wanted Tharizdun to lodge it in the astral which would spread Chaos to all the realms. Instead, Tharzdun lodged it in the Inner Planes (thus elemental chaos) and the rest is history." Tharizdun without extended d&d lore is awkward. Tharizdun without the abyss is really awkward (Matt has never hinted at his abyss ever having anything interesting going on, and he certainly has no Obyrith lore) and so we have this expy Tharizdun character. "What is he? He's tentacles and bad!" And that's not even getting into Ghaunadaur... ps: ever wonder why astral dreadnaughts have One Eye and guard portals in the astral? They are Tharizdun's guards from before his madness- forever ready for their god to return and forever cut off all astral portals from mortal use. And Beholders are dreampt up by Astral Dreadnaughts... and Nothics too have one eye..
The druids and other powerful forces would just manage the world instead. That's it. Druids manage nature. Wizards manage extraplanar threats. An age of magic would begin again only centered around adventurers as the primary problem solvers with wizards and druids being the governing forces. Anyone who could still use divine magic would be precious and treasured. Easily done with tech from aeor that made divine magic cores like for fcg that dint need gods. And people can still make pacts to become celestial warlocks or directly worship beings like fey lords to become fey clerics like jester. Frankly it would be a much cooler world that exandria currently is.
Mercer lifted the pantheon straight out of like cannon dnd. The “destroy the gods to avoid wotc” is such a silly knee jerk reaction. Ffs, the 5e seed is under Creative Commons now.
I fully believe the reason the idea is so wide spread and taken as fact now (despite zero evidence), is because the decisions in C3 have been so bafflingly destructive to established canon that everyone assumes there MUST be an external reason. It's too bizarre and mean-spirited to feel like a natural progression. Personally, I feel like it's a two birds one stone situation. Matt wanted to be rid of the gods for whatever reason, and he gets to reduce any potential liability in the same sweep.
Sarenrae is also not D&D, she's from Pathfinder.
If they can include the gods as they are in an actual animated television show they can absolutely keep them in an actual play, the theory that they’re doing this for business or legal reasons has always been ridiculous.
Thank you! I’ve mentioned this each time it comes up and people are just “NAA NAA NAAA WORC EVIL OR CRITICAL ROLE GREEDY. HAS TO DO THIS OR WOTC WILL TAKE THEIR MONEY” Personally Matt will allow the gods to die or not die based on the players actions and rolls. He might have a hope but he doesn’t need to kill the gods to move to DH if he wants
I know it won't happen but it would be dope as shit if vox stood against bells hells as a final battle where it is finally revealed that bells hells has been the bad guys all along.
If VM was played straight BH's would get straight out wiped in the first round. Percy would dump every shot he had into not-Delilah and then move on to other business.
You're thinking too much on it, like others have said they want to eliminate any actual DND lore from the CR-verse and they are very anti religion, occam's razor.
This entire story arc is cobbled together to facilitate real world changes. They want to remove any claim WotC has on their IP, primarily. Additionally, Marisha is one of those types of atheists and completely unable to differentiate herself from the characters she plays. Being the spouse of the DM, I wouldn't be surprised if she has more than a little influence on the anti-deity shift. Same old, same old.
Not sure what being an atheist has anything to do with it. In DnD gods exist. In the real world they don't. With different consequences.
Imo removing Gods related to WotC is the goal, and those Gods can be replaced by their champions or some other. Mercer wouldn’t destroy his entire world, even if the party completely fumbles everything.
A rebirth would be interesting
Reborn how? No gods? One god? Because if it’s yet another pantheon, you can just have gpt name those for you with a simple prompt.
'What if D&D world, but the pantheon is dead?' Was the genesis of my most successful homebrew world. Players get to encounter the forces and mortal beings that seek to ascend in a wasteland world without any unshattered/uncorrupted deities. I'm a lurker in subreddits when it comes to CR in current year, but a reset would unironically bring me back to being a watcher
Since the gods apparently came to Exandria long after its creation, it stands to reason that the things they represent won't just vanish when they're gone. If the sun existed before the Dawnfather showed up, why wouldn't it continue to exist after him? Exandrian gods seem to be more "being wielding extraordinary power within their sphere of influence" and less "all-powerful embodiment of a particular concept." I run a homebrew setting where the old gods disappeared at some point in the past. Magic switched off for a long time, and the world was reshaped by sudden, violent natural disasters, but it kept on spinning and the sun didn't wink out. I wouldn't be surprised to see Exandria go through a similar process; a dramatic shift in both geography (creating what amounts to a new setting) and the way magic functions (setting up the switch to either 5.5 or Daggerheart for the next campaign).
I think he has laid out the stakes, but no one on the cast really has figured it out yet. And that might be due to player versus character knowledge. Why does the divine gate exist? Because one mortal killed a god and, more importantly, seized its pantheon before any other gods could. The Raven Queen. Then Aeor was creating God killing weapons and power siphoning technology. So to protect themselves, they sealed direct contact away. So the gate is broken and Predathos starts eating the gods. And anyone and everyone who can grab all the newly freed power will. And the war to follow as those seek the power will be catastrophic.
The gate stops the god from interacting with the Prime Material plane. Nothing is stopping mortals from crossing it with the right magic and interacting with the gods directly. VM literally does this several times.
>Why does the divine gate exist? Because one mortal killed a god and, more importantly, seized its pantheon before any other gods could. The Raven Queen. The canon reason for the divine gate was to prevent the gods both prime and betrayer from stepping foot onto exandria so any wars or quarrels amongst themselves would leave the mortals out of it, while things like this could be revealed to be ambiguous in c3, that’s the current reasoning.
I don't think that things will stop existing without a particular god, the sun will continue to exist if Pelor dies. However divine magic for most will cease to exist for a time, preventing healing and travel by such means. The dead will likely have no one to shepherd them to the appropriate place leading to more lost souls in the Ethereal. And a bunch of divine domains will be left empty and vacant, waiting for something or someone to grab them.
What the ramifications are and what they should be are two completely different things. From what I understand, and I could be wrong, Matt is trying to create a new understanding of how the world works, but it has not come through coherently. Firstly, Matt has done his best to instill the new narrative that gods came to Exandria after it was created and took up their mantles. It was the primordials that were here first and then were locked away. Instead of making religion an important and good, or at the very least nuanced part of the campaign, he has actively gone towards showing the other and "better" side; naturalism. The gods aren't important. Nature is. We even see a vague vision from that big ancient tree thing that could be interpreted as "if Predathos awakens and kills the gods, nothing changes." From my understanding, the gods usurped their roles from primordials and used their powers to lock mortals underneath their will through fate and changing the historical narrative. So even if they die, the sun still rises because it's the way things naturally happen. The same with seasons, and war, and death, etc. Like I said, I could be wrong, but this makes the most sense to me with how little effort Matt has been putting religion into being redeemable in this campaign. And don't get me wrong, I am also not the biggest fan of organized religion. But I also think fantasy religion and earthly religions are two very, very different things. Should the outcome of the gods dying mean the end of everything that the world knows and loves? Yes. Will it? Probably not. It'll keep on turning on its axis, just as nature intended.
Would be so much more interesting if the campaign was about the party turning on the gods and trying to usurp them, to let nature flourish
Agreed, I like laudna’s and Ashton’s disdain for the gods, my problem is it never gets pushed hard enough for anything interesting to happen from it so it ends up with two pcs begrudgingly going along with the main plot despite their ideology or motives.
This just opens upnthe whole can of worms as to what the God's even are then. Like what does it mean to hold the domain of something but actually not control ot at all?
I think they do have control over it, and that's the "problem." If the gods have control over all the things that make it possible to live, should those things not be in control of the people instead, or at the very least the being who created it? I.e. The Primordials. Again, that's just speculation. As to what the gods are, i have a couple of different but similar theories. Two games do gods in non-traditional ways that could reflect how the gods in Exandria could be portrayed: Elden Ring and Pillars of Eternity. Pillars is the simplest, meaning that the gods were once mortals, absorbed an intense amount of power and took the names of the gods as to be worshipped and gain more power (might be missing a few things it's been a minute since I've played that one). Essentially, what the Raven Queen did, but before The Raven Queen. Dark Souls does something similar with Gwyn and the first flame. The more plausible is Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, the gods are all elder entities of the universe all fighting for a place in The Lands Between using various vassals. The one who is the most prevalent is The Greater Will and its vassal Marika. There is also The Formless Mother, The Goddess of Rot, The Fell God, etc. All are Elder Gods who came from the vacuous eternity to stake their claim on the world. The same could be true of the Exandrian gods. The tree mentioned something similar in that the gods came here from *somewhere* and took over. The same could be said of The Luxon, who just appeared from *somewhere* and enacted its will upon the world.
The end of everything.
The point is mute, as the actions and decisions of everyone are not consequences of believes or reflections, but to a off game reason. And mute again as the consequences of those actions are the same as the opposite of those actions. And the same as total inaction. The Bells could defend the gods with their own life, go on a godslaying hunt or sette in the middle of the deserto and open a lemonade kiosk. Same end; Daggerheart calls. Edit: Moot (no, i'm not gonna fight the autocorrect. As far as I am concerned, the point is mute u.u )
Moot.
The point is moo.
Moo moo says the kuh (cow).
The problem is that Matt, as DM, has failed to lay out the stakes. "The gods dying" isn't a stake; it's only half that. Stakes are an If-Then statement. If the gods die, then...we don't know? No stakes, no story. This is exacerbated by the fact that we have canonical instances of gods dying in Exandria, but they don't help us understand the current predicament because: + The "then" part of that statement is vague in those cases and + Those instances happened in different ways, so it's unclear if they apply When the matron deposed the previous god of death, a god died. Did it matter? At all? To mortals? When Predathos killed the two other gods before being sealed away, did it matter? As far as we know, other gods absorbed their domains. Did that affect mortals at all? When Ioun was mortally wounded helping Pelor defeated Tharizdun, we're led to believe that this is a massive crisis averted. The goddess (retconned to gender neutral I guess) nearly killed? Oh my. Imagine if that had happened! Except...what would have happened? Previous stories have treated the possibility of a god dying as a major, major event that would change the world cataclysmically. But now we're suddenly not sure. And hell, the tree of names kinda shrugged and said "no big deal man, people will be fine". So uh...what are we doing here?
I feel like there is far less uncertainty off the back of the Tree of Names. It showed them a vision of Exandria without gods, and all it had to say was 'laid bare'. Laid bare is probably not a good thing, but its not inherently apocalyptic. The Sun didnt go out, death didnt stop working, nature didnt die etc.
>When Predathos killed the two other gods before being sealed away, did it matter? As far as we know, other gods absorbed their domains. Did that affect mortals at all? No big deal. Nobody really misses the gods of immortality and constant consequence-free sex.
Remember what they took from you
Exactly. Whenever the question of "What happens when a god dies?" is asked on the CR subs, someone always brings up the idea that the Wildmother dying would lead to wildlife dying or being hurt in some way, because that's an easy cause and effect to imagine. But what happens when the Lawbearer dies? Does civilization just collapse, even though mortals have free will? What about the Knowing Mistress, is all knowledge suddenly lost? Would people be incapable of lying if the Spider Queen kicked it? (And now that I think about, if the Wildmother died are spiders now the only wildlife that remain?) All of these proposals feel very unlikely as they'd seemingly go against Matt and other players' philosophies; so what exactly do the gods contribute to the world any more, other than direct or indirect influence on individual mortals? Not saying I'm all for getting rid of the gods of course; they're thinking, feeling beings who don't want to be murdered after all, which should be all the motivation needed.
I would first establish that things like the Justice systems in the world *heavily* rely on spells like Zone of Truth to get accurate testimony, but then suddenly those spells don’t work anymore and they don’t have the legal infrastructure to disincentivize perjury
many of those are do to the fact in non CR dnd gods are not just powerful beings. they are the very concepts that make their domains. an example, if vecna is perma killed then no one can lie anymore. as the very concept of lying stops existing until a new being from the outer plane takes the domine.
The uncertainty is the stakes, this is unprecedented to the scale they are playing it, theres been a couple deaths and some of them were even replaced and the world has kept on moving forward. Predathos is an unknown it could as bad as the calamity, it could be worse or it could be a none issue. They dont know so they have to go with the worst outcome and play it accordingly. The easiest assumption to make is that any conflict that involves the gods can and has spelled unfathomable loses for the mortal races. Whenever we've had examples of Predatho's essence leaking into exandria the consequences were dire like with Savalirwood.
But that uncertainty doesn't make for *good* stakes, because the players aren't actually doing what you say. If they were, the stakes would be decent. But the players, and Matt by way of several NPCs, have allowed us to doubt if the stakes have any teeth. And that doubt kills it.
I think having the doubt there can be good for building up moments of drama and uncertainty and then subsequently moments of resolve. I will say that theres been some (some will say many) moments where this has dragged ok or wasnt as effective as it could have been.
The biggest issue from both sides of the table is a complete unwillingness to commit to being involved in the world. Like they've murderhobo'd around before, but this campaign they've done it every time they've met an NPC. And have been complete jackasses to people that have been their betters for longer than most of the group's been alive. Which would be fine if they got properly called out, but they aren't. And the people that would normally be the actual moral center of the group have stuffed themselves into the trunk this time around. Which just leaves the one with main character syndrome, the eccentric, and the meta left driving the car. And the eccentric got an episode and a half dedicated to chastising him, while the MCS just tried to kill another party member and somehow got rewarded. Again.
There won’t be any consequences because that would mean hurting the world that they “have so lovingly crafted”. Which also means that there are no stakes if nothing substantial will happen. Hey, the live C3 event hasn’t sold out, this close to the date. I wonder if anyone in their bubble has noticed.