Critical Role Campaign 4, Episode 2: Celestial Horrors and Powerful Houses Emerge as Potential Threats

A recap and review of the latest episode.
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Critical Role's fourth campaign continues on its strong start, with DM Brennan Lee Mulligan and a cast of 13 players weaving through a dense storyline filled with emerging threats to a still disconnected cast of characters. Last week's debut episode introduced audience members to the world of Araman through the death of Thjazi Fang, an adventurer turned criminal hanged on trumped-up charges. Critical Role's cast were introduced one-by-one as bystanders to Thjazi's funeral, all tied to the adventurer's past either as old comrades, family, or foes.

This week's episode began to tackle the question as to why Thjazi died. The opening episode established that Thjazi died on dubious charges, with a failed escape attempt thwarted by someone "on the inside." However, who brought those trumped up charges and who betrayed him remained unclear. While we weren't given explicit answers in this episode, several themes started to emerge that seemed to indicate that Thjazi may have been a victim of loftier political machinations.

Broadly speaking, the episode was divided into three broad storylines. The first follows Thjazi's former comrades (he was the member of the Torn Banner, a mercenary group who fought on the losing side of the Falconer's Rebellion) as they investigate how their escape plan went awry. The plan was supposed to utilize a magical glyph planted on Thjazi's person that he'd use to Misty Step into a nearby cart that would deliver him to safety. However, the glyph was never delivered due to an attack on Thjazi's longtime pixie partner Thimble (Laura Bailey) and was replaced with a decoy meant to trick Azune Nayar (Luis Carazo). Azune, Thimble, and their allies realized that two members of their conspiracy never arrived at their destination - the smuggler Casimir Gavendale and the getaway man Cyd Pridesire. As Casimir was a member of the Crow Keepers and crow feathers were found at Thjazi's ransacked hideaway, the party suspects that Casimir may have betrayed them and stolen the Stone of Nightsong, an elven artifact that Thjazi and Thimble stole from Vaelus (Ashley Johnson). When a group goes to confront the Crow Keepers, hostilities erupt, setting up the first true combat of the campaign in the next episode.

The second storyline involves the machinations of the Sundered Houses, the noble houses of Dol-Makjar. Already major power players within the city, the Sundered Houses are quickly moving to consolidate power and remove potential obstacles in their path. Over the course of the episode, we learn that the Sundered Houses are closing branches of the city guard and replacing them with forces loyal to them and forcing the head of the magical Penteveral college to resign by threatening to revoke their license to practice magic on school grounds. House Tachonis is also actively seeking Occtis Tachonis (Alex Ward) for unknown reasons, with rival House Royce seeking the young necromancer mainly to thwart the powerful House. Sir Julien Davinos (Matt Mercer) is sent on a mission to retrieve Occtis, which seems to at least temporarily align him with the other cast members.

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The final emerging storyline involves the remnants of the gods, killed seventy years before the start of the series. A strange silver box was retrieved by Thaisha Lloy (Aabria Iyengar) at Thjazi's behest prior to his death. When opened at the funeral, a strange fragmented mask inside the box disappears in a swirling mist. Museum curator and Thjazi associate Bolaire (Taliesin Jaffe) takes the box and investigates alongside Murray Mag'Nesson (Marisha Ray). They discover that the box was the coffin for the celestial Olbalad, who served as the Angel of Death for the slain halfling god. Celestials are dangerous in the world of Araman - once the gods were killed, the celestials created by the god went feral and became terrible destructive forces across the land. One such celestial now resides in the bowels of House Halovar, where its blood is harvested to use as Filament for the Candescent Creed's rituals. Wicander Halovar (Sam Riegel), the pure-hearted scion of the house is introduced to this angel at the end of the episode, with his grandmother introducing the creature as Wicander's grandfather.

Although the amount of information that gets shoveled at both the players and the audience is overwhelming at times, I remain impressed by the steady pace of this campaign. Brennan Lee Mulligan runs a tight ship, keeping scenes moving along while also leaving proper space for his players to roleplay and explore the world. One contrast between his style and Matt Mercer's is that Mulligan will often drop players into various scenes instead of allowing them total freedom to dictate what their characters do or where they travel to. This requires a lot of trust between the players and the DM, but it also makes the show feel much tighter than some of the meandering episodes of Critical Role's past campaigns. I wonder how much of this is a consequence of needing to juggle screen time for 13 players and how much of this will be a natural hallmark of Critical Role's fourth campaign.

Two episodes in and Critical Role's fourth campaign still has me hooked. There are still plenty of pieces that haven't come together and I'm curious as to how the three loosely-defined adventuring groups will eventually come together and what their initial quests will be. This may feel like a slow burn, although we'll apparently gain some clarity over the next two episodes.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

One contrast between his style and Matt Mercer's is that Mulligan will often drop players into various scenes instead of allowing them total freedom to dictate what their characters do or where they travel to. This requires a lot of trust between the players and the DM, but it also makes the show feel much tighter than some of the meandering episodes of Critical Role's past campaigns.

Yeah, I’m noticing this too. I think Mulligan is a lot more willing to start a scene off in media res, and he’s a lot more willing to drop the curtain on a scene too. This has been my chief complaint with CR in the past - too often, the players will hang around to pick a part a scene or interaction until there’s just no blood left. The horse is thoroughly dead when they’re done with scenes. It’s crazy that it took expanding the cast to maybe force them to tighten up the show.
 

Loved this episode. While the previous one saw some critique for being an entire four hours of just people talking at a funeral with only a brief interlude of investigating the ransacked hideout, this one was much more dynamic in terms of number and types of scene. Not mentioned in the summary is the cold open on a flashback to a major battle in the Falconer’s Rebellion, which gave us a small glimpse of Brennan running combat, which I was very impressed with. Brennan seems very good at using narration between player turns to keep the action feeling dynamic and fast-paced despite the turn-based nature of D&D combat. I’ve always felt that combat has really dragged in Critical Role, and combat scenes were usually the culprit for my attention slipping, which if it happened too much would eventually lead to me falling off from watching. Here, I was hooked into the action the whole time. I’m looking forward to seeing next week if Brennan carries this energy through to a combat happening in the campaign’s present, or if it was a product of the flashback that made it work this way.
 

I think I’m out. I’m struggling to get to the end of the episode and finding it very monotonous: one hushed conversation after another conveying a ton of information about stuff that I’m finding it hard to engage with. Plus, my spouse, who is generally benignly indifferent to me listening to CR while I work on miniatures, complained for the first time: “This new campaign is really boring, isn’t it?”

It’s a taste thing, so I’m glad some folks are loving it. I’ll check back in if I hear that things have picked up. In the meantime, my rewatch of Campaign 2 was on episode 30, so that’ll keep me entertained for awhile.
 

I am really enjoying this new campaign. While I love their others, this one has a Witcher-like quality to it. Brennan Lee Mulligan is managing to propel the story forward while bringing in lore, as well as pulling different timelines together. I imagine this is to give us a big picture of how we came to be at the funeral of Tjhazi Fang, hence it's Overature description. I know lore can be a little heavy when you're not invested yet, but I just try and absorb the tidbits and know that soon they are likely to make sense in the bigger narrative. I do miss having Matt as the DM but that is more because he's what I am used to. I wouldn't dare knock Brennan's performance so far. He has just as much depth, intrigue, and levity as I can hope for. I know not everyone loves the new campaign but I really don't get why. I have found no flaws. It's not identical to their previous work, but it is still very good to watch.
 

I am really enjoying this new campaign. While I love their others, this one has a Witcher-like quality to it. Brennan Lee Mulligan is managing to propel the story forward while bringing in lore, as well as pulling different timelines together. I imagine this is to give us a big picture of how we came to be at the funeral of Tjhazi Fang, hence its Overature description. I know lore can be a little heavy when you're not invested yet, but I just try and absorb the tidbits and know that soon they are likely to make sense in the bigger narrative. I do miss having Matt as the DM but that is more because he's what I am used to. I wouldn't dare knock Brennan's performance so far. He has just as much depth, intrigue, and levity as I can hope for. I know not everyone loves the new campaign but I really don't get why. I have found no flaws. It's not identical to their previous work, but it is still very good to watch.
I’ve only seen clips from other APs Brennan DMs, I’ve never really watched him before, but so far I already like his approach MUCH more than Matt Mercer’s. Matt puts on a good show with his incredible voice work, entertaining characters, and world building, but as a dungeon master, his style isn’t really aligned with my preferences. He does what he does very well, but I’m happier as a passive audience than I think I would be as a player in the game. Brennan, on the other hand, seems to be much more my style. I was particularly impressed with how he ran the small snippet of combat in the beginning of this episode, if he can keep the combat scenes that engaging through the whole campaign I’ll be absolutely thrilled.
 

I love it! This could be the first CR campaign I will actually watch every week - although I said the same about CR2 and CR3 and than they lost me at some point. But I know Brennans style a lot from Dimension 20, which I watch religiously.

I think it shows that Brennan has tons of experience as impro actor and trainer. He knows so well how to setup a scene or how to close it if it drags. It feels much more cinematic.


I’m struggling to get to the end of the episode and finding it very monotonous: one hushed conversation after another conveying a ton of information about stuff that I’m finding it hard to engage with.
With all the praise above I can understand though where you're coming from. As much as I love Brennans style I find the whole setup a bit slow and boring plot-wise. Brennan and the players are all doing their best and at the end of ep 2 there are some mysteries I am quite intrigued by but I cannot wait until the action finally starts. Knowing Brennan gives me trust, I know that it WILL start and we will get a lot dramatic action, but the start is truly slow. Lots of exposition, lots of characters sniffing at each other. It only works because they are professional actors. If you would start an amateur game like that it would be probably very dull and boring to the players.
 

I think I’m out. I’m struggling to get to the end of the episode and finding it very monotonous: one hushed conversation after another conveying a ton of information about stuff that I’m finding it hard to engage with. Plus, my spouse, who is generally benignly indifferent to me listening to CR while I work on miniatures, complained for the first time: “This new campaign is really boring, isn’t it?”

It’s a taste thing, so I’m glad some folks are loving it. I’ll check back in if I hear that things have picked up. In the meantime, my rewatch of Campaign 2 was on episode 30, so that’ll keep me entertained for awhile.
Yeah, I think I'm in the same boat. It's been such a tedious start that I realised I was disengaged part way through the first episode. It was just an exposition dump about a bunch of characters, places, and things that I don't care about (yet!) so I didn't feel engaged in the story. These sorts of things appeal to me more when they're naturally introduced and built up, like a good Sanderson novel.

I think I get what they were going for, and it's obviously going to be hard with a large cast, so I think they wanted to get the lore-dump out of the way early to get into the story, but as it stands I'm not invested, and I would really struggle to recommend this as a good jumping off point for new people. I thought they were going to try and get more fans with a new setting, DM, etc. but right now I can't see that happening.

Like Clint, I'm happy people are enjoying it, it's just not for me. I think it will appeal to the existing fandom.

Also, I'm not sure if this was just me, but the audio felt really off for the first episode. At first I thought this might be YouTube doing something weird, but the podcast was the same when I tried it there. I'm wondering if they've done some aggressive treatment to stop background noise from the people milling around(?) It made listening to an already whispered exposition session very tricky.
 


My gaming group (five people with me included) have always been aware of Critical Role but have never really sat down and watched any episodes. Sure, we caught some youtube clips here and there, but never the full experience.

We are now fully invested in Season 4 (well, four out of five of us are) and can't stop talking about what's happening and making up all sorts of theories. Do we feel that there's not enough action? Not really, we're pretty enthralled with how things are going as is. Most of us mention that we're having so much fun with it that we barely notice the time passing, which is, obviously, a good thing given the length of the episodes. :)

Is it Thursday yet!!?? :)
 

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