This game is all new characters playing at a high level. Brennan is known from Dimension20, where he is GM, he also was in the Critical Role Elden Ring one-shot, and is pretty much one of the best GMs in the real play DnD shpere.
@@mgormley7530 CEO Series for CollegeHumor. he is also a former who wants to be a millionaire contestant, who used his winnings to movie to LA to pursue acting.
Brennan likes to take his time introducing every pc, letting them showing off their own life before they meet with the rest of the party which i think makes them even more impactful and a full part of the world instead of just visitors
Luis has done screen acting so you may know his face. Lou is on Jimmy Kimmel. And Aabria does a LOT of D&D stuff all over so you might have seen screenshots or whatnot. edit: Also, it was his dead husband, not his dead brother.
"GM" is short for Game Master, and is sort of a generic term that means dungeon master for a lot of games that aren't Dungeons & Dragons (some games have specific names for it, but they all came from DM). Evandrin was Zerxus's dead husband, not brother, and appeared as a ghostly presence in the palm of the red-skinned giant (one of the betrayer gods, probably Asmodeus), behind Zerxus. Ghor Dranas is ... a name you'll probably hear a few times as you keep watching regular Critical Role. The Age of Arcanum ended about 1000 years before the events of any Critical Role campaign, with an event called The Calamity. This miniseries will explore some of the beginnings of said Calamity. As you'll see, each of the characters of this miniseries are fairly important people in the city, but not the MOST important. They hold high positions and operate in elite social circles. They're all relatively well known in the city and have a lot of responsibilities. Zerxus is basically head of security for the city, Loquacious is a medium to major celebrity, Laerryn appears to be in charge of the magic that keeps the city afloat, etc. Aabria Iyengar has appeared in a few one-shots and miniseries on Critical Role, as player and as guest DM, as well as Dimension 20 (where Brennan is usually GM), and other D&D streams, even the official D&D channel. Her character's full name is given Laerryn Coramar-Seelie.
I love that Aabria reacts to everything and knows as much about the CR lore as Sam, Travis and Marisha (or even more). She's living the whole game and I love that
Brennan Lee Mulligan is the GM, and he is also the GM of Dimension 20, which is another D&D channel that is more comedy focused. He is a masterful GM. Aabria is the GM for the first Exandria Unlimited, and she has been the GM and a player in lots of other D&D shows! She is just as amazing! Lou Wilson is an incredible player for Dimension 20
The red giant wasn't his brother (i don't think he even has a brother, not sure where you got that from), but he showed him a vision of his son and a memory of his dead husband, so maybe that's where you got confused?
Deep in the libraries of the Cobalt Soul historical texts do mention Evandrin and his roommate Zerxus... Lifelong bachelors who raised a son together. 😂
The red entity wasn't his brother, it was one of the betrayer gods. Presumably Asmodeus, lord of the nine hells. And you might know Dranas from campaign 2 "Nicodranas" is the city Jester is from.
@@theanyktos what? If We are talking about Ghor Dranas, it is not where Jester is from it is another city but I do not know how far you people are so it is a spoiler.
@@jonathansolberg5072 nono, that's not what I was saying (also I'm fully caught up except for exu kymal), I just meant that I never noticed that they both have the "dranas" part in common. (slight spoilers for later in this episode) So if Ghor Dranas means "gathering of shadows" then Nicodranas probably means "gathering of ... something" or "something... shadow" or something like that. And I think that's really cool worldbuilding on Matt's part, because short of actually creating all the languages of a setting (which is some next level Tolkien kinda shit) it still shows how much he thought about this world and the way things are named and how sometimes places have similar names for a reason.
@@theanyktos nicodranas is draconic for "gathering of colors," which is pretty fitting kinda strange, though, that they'd use draconic for its name - unless that one theory about our favorite loser wizard is correct?
If you ever get into LA by Night, which was a Vampire the Masquerade RPG show, you'll see a lot of these faces in later seasons of that show as well. I can 100% recommend that show, if you like vampires. The episodes are much shorter than Critical Role.
im very happy you're reacting to this. Perhaps in the future you could react to other one shots or mini campaigns that are disconnected from the main 3 campaigns.
as far as I'm aware the general practice is to not upload any clips/videos etc of the newest cr episode until after the episode is on youtube so I think you should keep that in mind if you watch exu on twitch. also I'm not sure if there are subtitles on twitch or not. they are filming this in the new cr set that they made for c3.
Ghor Dranas is from C2 (Though technically it was mentioned in C1 in a blink and you miss it moment.) So anyone who watched C2 knows exactly what's up.
@@Direwolf181I know I’m a couple years late but I think it’s because He called out to Asmadaus “brother” as a generic and polite acknowledgement and he took it literally.
Jay, you're in for a ride with this one man. The Dawnfather is a god in the world of Exandria (Pike follows Sarenrae: The Everlight), as is the Red Skinned, Horned figure. The Calamity was a war between the gods of Exandria which has been brought up in Campaign 2. Xorhass was one of the battlefields of that war. Zerxus was having a dream of that war. The memory was of his Husband who died, shown to him by The Horned Figure. You're doing a good job keeping up so far. keep it up Jay. :)
This was phenomenal, and I'm so happy you're reacting. To answer: Brennan Lee Mulligan is the GM for CollegeHumor/Dropout's DnD/TTRPG show Dimension20. If you're in the best restaurant in town, and Critical Role is the expensive steak dinner, then D20 is the best burger you've ever had in your life - equally as good, just different and a little more accessible. Highly recommend it. The first few seasons are contained to under 20 episodes, each under 2 hours, and they have a wonderful variety of different stories. Matt Mercer is a PC in a couple of the side quests, and Marisha was in one as well. Lou Wilson is one of the main players from D20's principal campaigns, and one of Brennan's closest friends. They do insanely good work and have amazing chemistry together. You also might see him on Jimmy Kimmel as his new announcer. We're all very proud of our boy. The woman who looks familiar with is Aabria Iyengar. We just had the "Summer of Aabria" where she was in fuckin' everything (and great in everything) TTRPG-wise. She was the DM for the first two series of Exandria Unlimited, and GM'd everyone's most quoted D20 show "Misfits and Magics," which was basically Brennan as a player taking a torch to the Harry Potter franchise.
If you enjoyed Lou and Brennan then you should absolutely check out Dimension 20 which is a D&D actual play by the people that were CollegeHumor and are now Dropout. As opposed to Critical Role where the gag is “nerdy ass voice actors” the premise of Dimension 20 started as bringing improv geniuses together with different levels of experience telling amazing stories. They are also an anthology series with some seasons set in the same worlds. The cast is fantastically hilarious and can bring you to tears in minutes of each other. They have their first season available entirely online as well as some of their “Side Quests” where they bring in guest PCs including Matt, Marisha and Aabria.
This miniseries is set in the floating city of Avalir and all the characters are in Avalir in this episode (idk if they will stay there, gotta wait for more episodes).
About the dream: Zerxus was in Avalir in the dream, but there was chaos all around him, a battle possibly. It's not clear if the slowed down time he experiences is just how he experiences this hectic and traumatic situation, an actual, magical effect slowing down time in certain places or just the weirdness of how perception sometimes works in dreams. He then saw his son how he was when he was five years old, but then he vanishes into this opening in the ground that he was fishing in, that is filled with the stars as they are over Avalir's sister city Cathmoira. He hears a voice whisper something in Draconic: 'Ghor Dranas' among other things. Then a red, horned, giant creature falls/is thrown onto the city (presumably destroying much in the process). That creature shows Zerxus a memory of his dead husband, before a second giant creature with a face that is the sun attacks the first creature and claims that he 'betrayed his kin'. The red creature asks Zerxus that if he looks down and sees stars (like in the opening that his son vanished into), what will he see when he looks up? And when Zerxus does look up he sees the ground, fast approaching. And then he wakes up.
Brennan Lee Mulligan is right up there with Matt Mercer as the DM GOAT. I can't even compare them, I put them both on the same level. Lou Wilson is one of Brennan's regular players over at Dimension 20 since ever. Interesting side note, he's also the new announcer for the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Aabria Isingar DM'd the first EXU limited series, in which Matt was a player and half the characters ended up rolling into CR campaign 3. Luis Carazo I haven't seen before, but he's doing great. Just because the players are all sitting there on your screen doesn't mean their characters are part of the scene being described. The DM will tell them if they are. I have no idea where you got "brother" from. Nobody mentioned any brother during the opening dream sequence. They're all starting at a pretty high level (14 out of 20) so they can be rich AF. Plus, as far as we know everything's about to be destroyed anyways (it ain't called "the Calamity" for nothing) so why not.
Honestly we don't know that much more than you as the Calamity hasn't been explored much. We do know this campaign starts just before the beginning of The Calamity where the Gods and Betrayer Gods fought. It began due to Vesipn trying to ascend to Godhood like the Raven Queen had and also due to the arrogance of many of the people on Exandria- particularly the floating mage cities. Luis' dream appears to be more of an omen for a possible future- predicting The Calamity and fall of The Age of Arcanum. Also in his dream he was talking to his dead husband who is his size and then the giant sized horned figure (people are predicting Asmodeus) and the large sunlight figure (predicted to be Pelor- the Dawnfather) are separate entities.
In addition to all the people has said to you about Brennan he is a master at shorter campaigns, most of the dimension 20 campaigns are about 12 episodes of 2 hour each and every time you feel like in this short amount of time you are so involved in the story that you don’t want it to stop
Watched this campaign purely as a fan of both Brennan and Lou so this was a great reaction also! I hope you do try reacting or even just watching in your own time a Dimension 20 campaign because Brennan is a great world-builder/storyteller. (I highly recommend their second campaign, The Unsleeping City, an urban-fantasy d&d campaign based on a fantastical side of New York City and my favorite d&d campaign to re-watch!!)
Brennen Lee Mulligan is the GM. He is one of the best out there, and one of the few who can do Exandria justice. Aabria, the woman you saw in the center was the GM for the first set of Exandria Unlimited. You might have seen her in thumbnails. She is also great, though her series was a bit more divisive in the fanbase
We were definitely thrown in the deep end with this one. It’s a high level campaign (levels generally max at 20, for reference), so all the players have considerable pasts. Even as someone who has seen C1 and C2 and is caught up on C3, there are a lot of names and details being thrown out with little context. As you might guess from the title being “Calamity” it’s unlikely that too many will have time to become important, so unlike with C2 where it’s valuable to take notes because things can come back up ten or even fifty episodes later, I suspect you’ll be fine just watching and absorbing what you can. That said, watching with you is my third or fourth time watching the episode and I am catching little things that tie the world together. Brennan clearly put a lot of effort into making this city. I would absolutely love to see your reaction to the rest of this episode and the others as they come out. ExU: Calamity will be coming out on Thursday for the next three weeks to form a four-part mini series. A couple of things to clarify from the episode, since everything was happening very quickly: Brennan is acting as the Game Master(GM) for the series. This is the more general term used in games like D&D. The D&D term is Dungeon Master, or DM. Since this is a D&D game, they may use the terms/abbreviations interchangeably based on the preference of the individual. Brennan is well known in D&D circles, I believe he GMs for another D&D show called Dimension 20, but I’m sure others will fill you in on that. He has also appeared on Um, Actually, which you’ve reacted to at least clips of, and is very good at D&D question, like Matt. Aabria was the DM for Exandria Unlimited’s previous mini-campaigns, which is why she wasn’t given a separate introduction. On the Creation Myth stuff, the highlights as I understand them, are a bunch of gods find a world, create various peoples, and oversee them for a while. Then primordial forces of the world rise up and start wrecking the creations, much to the gods’ displeasure. This leads to the Schism. The gods split, some want to protect their creations and give them the ability to defend themselves by allowing them to cast arcane magic, rather than having to always channel divine magic. These are the Prime Deities. Other gods see their creations getting fucked up and decide they just need to start over, so they start trying to wipe out their creations to make room for a new batch. This is not appreciated, so they get locked away and labeled the Betrayer Gods. After the Schism, the Arcane magic that was granted is explored, ushering in the Age of Arcanum, where magic is explored both extensively and, some might say, recklessly. The deal with the Raven Queen that you’ve been hearing about is that there was a mortal woman who, through unknown magic, unseated and took the place of the Prime Deity that oversaw death. As you might imagine, this was a bit of a big deal. It has already come up later in this first episode and will likely be discussed in future episodes, so that’s why attention was drawn to it, but we don’t know much of what happened since all previous mentions before ExU: Calamity have been describing an event many centuries in the past. There are a lot of things, especially names, that we know from previous campaigns were significant to the Calamity. You’ve already picked up on Sam’s reaction to Ghor Dranas and I doubt later reactions will be more subtle. I’ll leave it to you if you want to know what bits of lore we know about the people/places in this time. Such information could probably be provided without spoiling the campaigns, at least in the ways you’ve implied you care about, if you wanted, since something being from the Age of Arcanum or the Calamity time periods have usually been flavor or background information that could be removed from their campaign context without losing the information. That said, if you want to go in without that background, I don’t think you’ll be too lost, since none of the characters know it either, you’ll just have to put up with occasional player overreactions to seemingly random names, which could be its own kind of fun, honestly. As to your reaction, I’m excited to see whatever of it you put out. So you can make informed decisions, the rest of the first half continues with spotlights of each character. After the break they jump to the party that is the way of gathering the PCs together in this game, though they clearly all have established ties in their background. The only specific advice I’d give is watch through until the break starts and pick back up right as break ends, because funny things happen, even when story doesn’t. For similar reason, watch until they cut to fan art at the end, though you’ll probably want to refrain from watching the fan art reel, as you’ve been doing on C2. Loving the channel and looking forward to your reaction to this series!
What Zerxus is dreaming about is the future battle between Asmodeus(Lord of the Nine Hells) and Pelor(The Dawnfather). Asmodeus is considered a Betrayer God, and I find it very interesting how Brennen paints him in a sympathetic light! The whole intro is so facinating on so many levels
lol I have no Idea where you got that the giant red horned being in the dream at the beginning was Zerxes' brother. Sometimes you just pull shit from outta nowhere my guy lol. The two beings as tall as mountains were gods, one of whom was the Dawnfather, one was unknown at this time but probably Asmodeus. Then Zerxes ALSO had a vision of his son and his dead husband, so maybe you confused than somewhere in there.
This is why you should watch things in order, because you're not going to get the benefit of the Sheer Weight of the "Watching people dance on the deck of the Titanic/ The Roaring 20's right before the Great Depression" vibes that are so incredible strong with this show. If you know all the lore it's so incredibly painful to watch and deeply depressing, but also inspires a delicious schadenfreude type feeling.
I think you need to get used to characters having husbands in these games, this is the second time you thought it was a different familial relationship lmao
The giant entities were two Gods of Exandria. The red, horned guy is, at least what we believe, to be Asmodeus the King of the Nine Hells and one of the Betrayer Gods, and the big, golden figure is Pelor the Dawnfather, Prime Deity and god who planted the Sun Tree in Whitestone not Pike's god who is Sarenrae the Everlight. Ghor Dranas is a name that comes up more as you watch Campaign 2 so you'll find out lol. This miniseries is definitely one of those series that if you haven't seen previous CR stuff, especially the ending-ish of Campaign 2, you're gonna be alittle lost. Lots of details about a time that history forgot with little to no context for people who aren't familiar with Exandria and its history. This series will mention have some callbacks to previous campaigns and the current campaign that if you've watched/been watching you'll recognize. It's okay to be lost as you're not entirely caught up yet. The Calamity, which this series will cover the beginning of, was the final conflict before the Gods, Betrayer and Prime, left Exandria alone from unchecked divinity. It wiped the population of Exandria by two thirds. Edit: Campaign 2 started at level 2 vs Calamity that starts at level 14. In D&D, the game world expands as you level up. Level 2 characters start small cause the characters are small-time heroes helping farmers kill goblins to protect their farms while level 14 characters are "save the world" level so they have much much more to know about the world around them.
![เจ็บที่ยังฮัก - ม่อน วรวิทย์ [ Official Mv ] จอนนี่มิวสิค](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KALIGSRSjFs/mqdefault.jpg)
This game is all new characters playing at a high level.
Brennan is known from Dimension20, where he is GM, he also was in the Critical Role Elden Ring one-shot, and is pretty much one of the best GMs in the real play DnD shpere.
He's also known for his College Humor stuff outside of the D&D sphere!
@@mgormley7530 CEO Series for CollegeHumor. he is also a former who wants to be a millionaire contestant, who used his winnings to movie to LA to pursue acting.
Brennan likes to take his time introducing every pc, letting them showing off their own life before they meet with the rest of the party which i think makes them even more impactful and a full part of the world instead of just visitors
Luis has done screen acting so you may know his face. Lou is on Jimmy Kimmel. And Aabria does a LOT of D&D stuff all over so you might have seen screenshots or whatnot.
edit: Also, it was his dead husband, not his dead brother.
25:00 the ghost is his husband. The giant is one of the betrayer gods.
"GM" is short for Game Master, and is sort of a generic term that means dungeon master for a lot of games that aren't Dungeons & Dragons (some games have specific names for it, but they all came from DM).
Evandrin was Zerxus's dead husband, not brother, and appeared as a ghostly presence in the palm of the red-skinned giant (one of the betrayer gods, probably Asmodeus), behind Zerxus.
Ghor Dranas is ... a name you'll probably hear a few times as you keep watching regular Critical Role.
The Age of Arcanum ended about 1000 years before the events of any Critical Role campaign, with an event called The Calamity. This miniseries will explore some of the beginnings of said Calamity.
As you'll see, each of the characters of this miniseries are fairly important people in the city, but not the MOST important. They hold high positions and operate in elite social circles. They're all relatively well known in the city and have a lot of responsibilities. Zerxus is basically head of security for the city, Loquacious is a medium to major celebrity, Laerryn appears to be in charge of the magic that keeps the city afloat, etc.
Aabria Iyengar has appeared in a few one-shots and miniseries on Critical Role, as player and as guest DM, as well as Dimension 20 (where Brennan is usually GM), and other D&D streams, even the official D&D channel. Her character's full name is given Laerryn Coramar-Seelie.
Brennan was firing on all cylinders for this one man I was blown away
Best DM performance I've seen from him in a single episode, he really brought his A game.
I love that Aabria reacts to everything and knows as much about the CR lore as Sam, Travis and Marisha (or even more). She's living the whole game and I love that
Brennan Lee Mulligan is the GM, and he is also the GM of Dimension 20, which is another D&D channel that is more comedy focused. He is a masterful GM.
Aabria is the GM for the first Exandria Unlimited, and she has been the GM and a player in lots of other D&D shows! She is just as amazing!
Lou Wilson is an incredible player for Dimension 20
The red giant wasn't his brother (i don't think he even has a brother, not sure where you got that from), but he showed him a vision of his son and a memory of his dead husband, so maybe that's where you got confused?
Deep in the libraries of the Cobalt Soul historical texts do mention Evandrin and his roommate Zerxus... Lifelong bachelors who raised a son together. 😂
@@LyrictheFilthyCasual Ah yes, of course. And they were _roommates!_
The red entity wasn't his brother, it was one of the betrayer gods. Presumably Asmodeus, lord of the nine hells. And you might know Dranas from campaign 2 "Nicodranas" is the city Jester is from.
Also, aside from Asmodeus, he was seeing the memory of his dead husband - not his brother
@@bethasteph omg. I never clocked the linguistic connection between Ghor Dranas and Nicodranas. That's some next level worldbuilding.
@@theanyktos what? If We are talking about Ghor Dranas, it is not where Jester is from it is another city but I do not know how far you people are so it is a spoiler.
@@jonathansolberg5072 nono, that's not what I was saying (also I'm fully caught up except for exu kymal), I just meant that I never noticed that they both have the "dranas" part in common.
(slight spoilers for later in this episode)
So if Ghor Dranas means "gathering of shadows" then Nicodranas probably means "gathering of ... something" or "something... shadow" or something like that. And I think that's really cool worldbuilding on Matt's part, because short of actually creating all the languages of a setting (which is some next level Tolkien kinda shit) it still shows how much he thought about this world and the way things are named and how sometimes places have similar names for a reason.
@@theanyktos
nicodranas is draconic for "gathering of colors," which is pretty fitting
kinda strange, though, that they'd use draconic for its name - unless that one theory about our favorite loser wizard is correct?
If you ever get into LA by Night, which was a Vampire the Masquerade RPG show, you'll see a lot of these faces in later seasons of that show as well. I can 100% recommend that show, if you like vampires. The episodes are much shorter than Critical Role.
im very happy you're reacting to this. Perhaps in the future you could react to other one shots or mini campaigns that are disconnected from the main 3 campaigns.
as far as I'm aware the general practice is to not upload any clips/videos etc of the newest cr episode until after the episode is on youtube so I think you should keep that in mind if you watch exu on twitch. also I'm not sure if there are subtitles on twitch or not. they are filming this in the new cr set that they made for c3.
Ghor Dranas is from C2 (Though technically it was mentioned in C1 in a blink and you miss it moment.)
So anyone who watched C2 knows exactly what's up.
his dead husband, not his dead brother.
Yeah not sure how he got brother when Brennan right out Said husband
@@Direwolf181I know I’m a couple years late but I think it’s because He called out to Asmadaus “brother” as a generic and polite acknowledgement and he took it literally.
Jay, you're in for a ride with this one man. The Dawnfather is a god in the world of Exandria (Pike follows Sarenrae: The Everlight), as is the Red Skinned, Horned figure. The Calamity was a war between the gods of Exandria which has been brought up in Campaign 2. Xorhass was one of the battlefields of that war. Zerxus was having a dream of that war. The memory was of his Husband who died, shown to him by The Horned Figure. You're doing a good job keeping up so far. keep it up Jay. :)
This was phenomenal, and I'm so happy you're reacting. To answer: Brennan Lee Mulligan is the GM for CollegeHumor/Dropout's DnD/TTRPG show Dimension20. If you're in the best restaurant in town, and Critical Role is the expensive steak dinner, then D20 is the best burger you've ever had in your life - equally as good, just different and a little more accessible. Highly recommend it.
The first few seasons are contained to under 20 episodes, each under 2 hours, and they have a wonderful variety of different stories. Matt Mercer is a PC in a couple of the side quests, and Marisha was in one as well.
Lou Wilson is one of the main players from D20's principal campaigns, and one of Brennan's closest friends. They do insanely good work and have amazing chemistry together. You also might see him on Jimmy Kimmel as his new announcer. We're all very proud of our boy.
The woman who looks familiar with is Aabria Iyengar. We just had the "Summer of Aabria" where she was in fuckin' everything (and great in everything) TTRPG-wise. She was the DM for the first two series of Exandria Unlimited, and GM'd everyone's most quoted D20 show "Misfits and Magics," which was basically Brennan as a player taking a torch to the Harry Potter franchise.
If you enjoyed Lou and Brennan then you should absolutely check out Dimension 20 which is a D&D actual play by the people that were CollegeHumor and are now Dropout. As opposed to Critical Role where the gag is “nerdy ass voice actors” the premise of Dimension 20 started as bringing improv geniuses together with different levels of experience telling amazing stories. They are also an anthology series with some seasons set in the same worlds. The cast is fantastically hilarious and can bring you to tears in minutes of each other. They have their first season available entirely online as well as some of their “Side Quests” where they bring in guest PCs including Matt, Marisha and Aabria.
This miniseries is set in the floating city of Avalir and all the characters are in Avalir in this episode (idk if they will stay there, gotta wait for more episodes).
About the dream:
Zerxus was in Avalir in the dream, but there was chaos all around him, a battle possibly. It's not clear if the slowed down time he experiences is just how he experiences this hectic and traumatic situation, an actual, magical effect slowing down time in certain places or just the weirdness of how perception sometimes works in dreams. He then saw his son how he was when he was five years old, but then he vanishes into this opening in the ground that he was fishing in, that is filled with the stars as they are over Avalir's sister city Cathmoira. He hears a voice whisper something in Draconic: 'Ghor Dranas' among other things. Then a red, horned, giant creature falls/is thrown onto the city (presumably destroying much in the process). That creature shows Zerxus a memory of his dead husband, before a second giant creature with a face that is the sun attacks the first creature and claims that he 'betrayed his kin'. The red creature asks Zerxus that if he looks down and sees stars (like in the opening that his son vanished into), what will he see when he looks up? And when Zerxus does look up he sees the ground, fast approaching. And then he wakes up.
Brennan Lee Mulligan is right up there with Matt Mercer as the DM GOAT. I can't even compare them, I put them both on the same level.
Lou Wilson is one of Brennan's regular players over at Dimension 20 since ever. Interesting side note, he's also the new announcer for the Jimmy Kimmel Show.
Aabria Isingar DM'd the first EXU limited series, in which Matt was a player and half the characters ended up rolling into CR campaign 3.
Luis Carazo I haven't seen before, but he's doing great.
Just because the players are all sitting there on your screen doesn't mean their characters are part of the scene being described. The DM will tell them if they are.
I have no idea where you got "brother" from. Nobody mentioned any brother during the opening dream sequence.
They're all starting at a pretty high level (14 out of 20) so they can be rich AF. Plus, as far as we know everything's about to be destroyed anyways (it ain't called "the Calamity" for nothing) so why not.
aabria's last name is iyengar, not isingar ^^
Honestly we don't know that much more than you as the Calamity hasn't been explored much. We do know this campaign starts just before the beginning of The Calamity where the Gods and Betrayer Gods fought. It began due to Vesipn trying to ascend to Godhood like the Raven Queen had and also due to the arrogance of many of the people on Exandria- particularly the floating mage cities.
Luis' dream appears to be more of an omen for a possible future- predicting The Calamity and fall of The Age of Arcanum. Also in his dream he was talking to his dead husband who is his size and then the giant sized horned figure (people are predicting Asmodeus) and the large sunlight figure (predicted to be Pelor- the Dawnfather) are separate entities.
In addition to all the people has said to you about Brennan he is a master at shorter campaigns, most of the dimension 20 campaigns are about 12 episodes of 2 hour each and every time you feel like in this short amount of time you are so involved in the story that you don’t want it to stop
I feel like you would enjoy Dimension 20: A Crown of Candy
Watched this campaign purely as a fan of both Brennan and Lou so this was a great reaction also! I hope you do try reacting or even just watching in your own time a Dimension 20 campaign because Brennan is a great world-builder/storyteller. (I highly recommend their second campaign, The Unsleeping City, an urban-fantasy d&d campaign based on a fantastical side of New York City and my favorite d&d campaign to re-watch!!)
There filming in the new set for season 3
Brennen Lee Mulligan is the GM. He is one of the best out there, and one of the few who can do Exandria justice.
Aabria, the woman you saw in the center was the GM for the first set of Exandria Unlimited. You might have seen her in thumbnails. She is also great, though her series was a bit more divisive in the fanbase
I love it when you say "I dont like taking notes because its an excuse to not remember" and then fuck up the name of EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE XD
We were definitely thrown in the deep end with this one. It’s a high level campaign (levels generally max at 20, for reference), so all the players have considerable pasts. Even as someone who has seen C1 and C2 and is caught up on C3, there are a lot of names and details being thrown out with little context. As you might guess from the title being “Calamity” it’s unlikely that too many will have time to become important, so unlike with C2 where it’s valuable to take notes because things can come back up ten or even fifty episodes later, I suspect you’ll be fine just watching and absorbing what you can. That said, watching with you is my third or fourth time watching the episode and I am catching little things that tie the world together. Brennan clearly put a lot of effort into making this city.
I would absolutely love to see your reaction to the rest of this episode and the others as they come out. ExU: Calamity will be coming out on Thursday for the next three weeks to form a four-part mini series.
A couple of things to clarify from the episode, since everything was happening very quickly:
Brennan is acting as the Game Master(GM) for the series. This is the more general term used in games like D&D. The D&D term is Dungeon Master, or DM. Since this is a D&D game, they may use the terms/abbreviations interchangeably based on the preference of the individual.
Brennan is well known in D&D circles, I believe he GMs for another D&D show called Dimension 20, but I’m sure others will fill you in on that. He has also appeared on Um, Actually, which you’ve reacted to at least clips of, and is very good at D&D question, like Matt.
Aabria was the DM for Exandria Unlimited’s previous mini-campaigns, which is why she wasn’t given a separate introduction.
On the Creation Myth stuff, the highlights as I understand them, are a bunch of gods find a world, create various peoples, and oversee them for a while. Then primordial forces of the world rise up and start wrecking the creations, much to the gods’ displeasure. This leads to the Schism. The gods split, some want to protect their creations and give them the ability to defend themselves by allowing them to cast arcane magic, rather than having to always channel divine magic. These are the Prime Deities. Other gods see their creations getting fucked up and decide they just need to start over, so they start trying to wipe out their creations to make room for a new batch. This is not appreciated, so they get locked away and labeled the Betrayer Gods. After the Schism, the Arcane magic that was granted is explored, ushering in the Age of Arcanum, where magic is explored both extensively and, some might say, recklessly.
The deal with the Raven Queen that you’ve been hearing about is that there was a mortal woman who, through unknown magic, unseated and took the place of the Prime Deity that oversaw death. As you might imagine, this was a bit of a big deal. It has already come up later in this first episode and will likely be discussed in future episodes, so that’s why attention was drawn to it, but we don’t know much of what happened since all previous mentions before ExU: Calamity have been describing an event many centuries in the past.
There are a lot of things, especially names, that we know from previous campaigns were significant to the Calamity. You’ve already picked up on Sam’s reaction to Ghor Dranas and I doubt later reactions will be more subtle. I’ll leave it to you if you want to know what bits of lore we know about the people/places in this time. Such information could probably be provided without spoiling the campaigns, at least in the ways you’ve implied you care about, if you wanted, since something being from the Age of Arcanum or the Calamity time periods have usually been flavor or background information that could be removed from their campaign context without losing the information. That said, if you want to go in without that background, I don’t think you’ll be too lost, since none of the characters know it either, you’ll just have to put up with occasional player overreactions to seemingly random names, which could be its own kind of fun, honestly.
As to your reaction, I’m excited to see whatever of it you put out. So you can make informed decisions, the rest of the first half continues with spotlights of each character. After the break they jump to the party that is the way of gathering the PCs together in this game, though they clearly all have established ties in their background. The only specific advice I’d give is watch through until the break starts and pick back up right as break ends, because funny things happen, even when story doesn’t. For similar reason, watch until they cut to fan art at the end, though you’ll probably want to refrain from watching the fan art reel, as you’ve been doing on C2.
Loving the channel and looking forward to your reaction to this series!
What Zerxus is dreaming about is the future battle between Asmodeus(Lord of the Nine Hells) and Pelor(The Dawnfather). Asmodeus is considered a Betrayer God, and I find it very interesting how Brennen paints him in a sympathetic light! The whole intro is so facinating on so many levels
lol I have no Idea where you got that the giant red horned being in the dream at the beginning was Zerxes' brother. Sometimes you just pull shit from outta nowhere my guy lol.
The two beings as tall as mountains were gods, one of whom was the Dawnfather, one was unknown at this time but probably Asmodeus. Then Zerxes ALSO had a vision of his son and his dead husband, so maybe you confused than somewhere in there.
This guy struggles very very hard on basic context clues.
“My god, this guy is on fire!”
Brennan: “Fire…”
Lou Wilson was in the movie The King of Staten Island
go with the flow its all new
About the only thing i would say is that Avalir is one of the great magical/arcane floating/flying cities. That's it. :-) Is it Thursday Yet?
I love this, please keep up the good work
"Who is this gentleman"
immediately after he says Hello I'm Brennan lee mulligan I am the GM.
This is why you should watch things in order, because you're not going to get the benefit of the Sheer Weight of the "Watching people dance on the deck of the Titanic/ The Roaring 20's right before the Great Depression" vibes that are so incredible strong with this show. If you know all the lore it's so incredibly painful to watch and deeply depressing, but also inspires a delicious schadenfreude type feeling.
I think you need to get used to characters having husbands in these games, this is the second time you thought it was a different familial relationship lmao
I don't think this guy used to anything queer cause he randomly genders stuff all the time
The giant entities were two Gods of Exandria. The red, horned guy is, at least what we believe, to be Asmodeus the King of the Nine Hells and one of the Betrayer Gods, and the big, golden figure is Pelor the Dawnfather, Prime Deity and god who planted the Sun Tree in Whitestone not Pike's god who is Sarenrae the Everlight.
Ghor Dranas is a name that comes up more as you watch Campaign 2 so you'll find out lol.
This miniseries is definitely one of those series that if you haven't seen previous CR stuff, especially the ending-ish of Campaign 2, you're gonna be alittle lost. Lots of details about a time that history forgot with little to no context for people who aren't familiar with Exandria and its history. This series will mention have some callbacks to previous campaigns and the current campaign that if you've watched/been watching you'll recognize. It's okay to be lost as you're not entirely caught up yet.
The Calamity, which this series will cover the beginning of, was the final conflict before the Gods, Betrayer and Prime, left Exandria alone from unchecked divinity. It wiped the population of Exandria by two thirds.
Edit: Campaign 2 started at level 2 vs Calamity that starts at level 14. In D&D, the game world expands as you level up. Level 2 characters start small cause the characters are small-time heroes helping farmers kill goblins to protect their farms while level 14 characters are "save the world" level so they have much much more to know about the world around them.
Well done.
Poor Brennan he has to deal with Sam
Lmao brennen has the deal with Izzy on D20 he’s gonna be ok
Oh he had Emily in his normal game... he will be fine!