Congratulations to you both!!!!! What a wonderful memory for that date for multiple reasons

That’s so lovely, sounds like a dream night 🥰

I came to say the same thing ❤❤❤❤

I was laughing so much during that.

Sooo cuttee! 4 legs in the air don't care

MVP of the show. The best boi of all time. ❤

MVP 😅

I would bet money that after the fireplace brouhaha, Travis 100% bought those two a fire extinguisher as a Christmas gift.

Sorry for those that don't know what happened?

They did a stream promoting a book and almost set their home on fire due to a faulty fireplace

A couple years ago, Matt and Marisha were doing a livestream from home. They turned the fireplace on and it got so smoky that the smoke detectors were going off. They tried to soldier on and keep the stream going. It was only when they got a call, live on air, from Travis, presumably going "what the fuck are you doing, put the fire out and vent the house", that they decided to take a break from the stream and fix the problem. It was hilarious to watch, I think it's probably still on the Twitch archives.@@siralabastermccasterthebla7074

@siralabastermccasterthebla7074 They did a promotional stream during lockdown to promote a book, around Christmas time, I think. They turned on the fireplace for atmosphere...and got too much atmosphere due to never really using it before this. Travis even called them while the stream was happening to focus on fixing it rather than the promotion!

Whitestone IS for lovers! How very parisian lol

The De Rolos being French explains so much…

​@@itwasidio1736they have great social coverage?

I was very excited to see the best member of CR would be in this one from the thumbnail. Glad to know I wasn't disappointed. Oh and I guess Matt, Marisha, Taliesin and Travis were there too.

Omar is always Best Boy

Jesus Christ, please yes.

Laura Bailey and Siobhan Thompson as relatives or contemporaries of Ludinus?

Hear me out: GM is Murph, with Matt, Brennan and Aabria ALL at the table

​@@lizablee he'd have to say no so many times! 😂

Please make this happen lol ❤

This absolutely rules

"read a book." gold.

Omar looks like a baby whenever he's being held by Marisha or Matthew.

I 100% knew it was all ingame

it's wild to me that people think the worst and immediately start to catastrophize everytime something slightly dramatic happens, even after years of watching.

Oh Jesus christ. People ranting about how it was Orion 2.0, about how Matt was "boiling", how Travis was about to turn the table over and throttle Taliesin. And you just sit there thinking "What are these fucked up fanfictions you people write in your heads?"

I just saw it as Tal with his main character syndrome reaching for the loot that was obviously meant for him ala the Deathwalker's Ward.

People were mad that Taliesin chose to play a Barbarian? I watch the series but don’t really keep up with the goings-on in the community so forgive me if I’m wrong, I’m just curious.

I was wondering what that was!!! i was looking at my own dog sleeping!!! O:

He's so cute!!

Time stamp?

​@AngelusAngel1100 Somewhere around the 23:00 minute mark, it's most noticeable when marisha is talking.

That's why you shouldn't do the thing Tal did unless you are absolutely sure your table can handle this maturely.

New fans need to understand this too, they jump to the gun and and make rant tweets about the cast, "HOW DARE THEM DO THIS TO (insert x cast member who is their favorite)? I NEED TO HARASS THEM FOR THAT!" when they fucking trust each other and know each other's limits. They are friends for a reason, and have been for years.

@@TealVelvet THIS…. couldn’t agree more. Crit role is not the same as the classic dnd game

Whoever put that in deserves 14 raises

I had to look up what "bricked up" means....

amazing

I came here exactly to look for this tysm

It felt so out of place to me, and I have seen no context in the comments. In researching, the term 'bricked up' can mean either erect or musclebound, but there's plenty of far more suggestive things that they say that don't get editing nods like that. I usually see the vine boom used for the Rock meme, some dramatic reversal, or to punctuate a concussive sound as a punchline. Was there a specific Vine about bricked up that used the sound?

He sleepy :)

dude... I was watching him like "are corgi's even real?"

I was at work listening live like a podcast and kept hearing snoring then Marisha says "he's been snoring into the mic" and I just aww'd so precious!

I couldn’t agree more. They’re blowing it out of proportion. It was from his backstory and just made sense narratively in my opinion

Agreed

😂 I guess it just shows how differently people can interpret the same information. The moment there was an in game warning from a magical tree along with the cautionary tale of his father I fully believed Ash+shard= immediate death. But I also tend to shy from risk 😅

​@@simoriahhubbard5261I fully expected that they (Ashton) would have the earth and fire and gold would all mold so that they would be complete, and their pain would have lessened or stopped (likely temporarily) was not expecting the lava rock.

it's no more far-fetched than laudna's own contrived rationalization through compartamentalizing etc as she's been doing this whole campaign, she's just presenting it clearly and endearingly vs our 8 CHA barbarian rock over here

Also proves that putting Carol of the Bells at the end of any song makes it more festive. Lol.

it's such a simple thing that instantly evokes magic and joy.

stop

Yeah, I agree, He got told " Hey, you need both of these active to make your internal power work. " then they went on a long journey to make it work, and then no one wanted to be the second half of that activation. Personally i would have been upset at everyone else at the table at least for a bit, because we just spent all this time getting the macguffin, then no one will help me activate my power. Especially since it was only put forward that ' it's dangerous ' but not impossible, i'd have done the same thing and I would have been far less tolerant of everyone screaming at me ( especially after Laudna went down to the crypt to have a secret meeting with Delilah. ( personally it really irks me that Laudna keeps complaining about people keeping secrets, when she keeps pushing towards Delilah, sure Imogen and now Fearn knows, but she's still sneaking around without others about it. )

@@tommaydag420 I don't like to say that Marisha does X cuz I don't really dislike how she plays or portrays her Characters but I don't know if its a trend of hers or what, Keyleth was mistrusting of Kima but inmediately trusted Klarota, and Beauregard made a huge fuss about Caleb stealing a couple scrolls from the nobleman's house yet she'd tried the same thing at the other house... so yeah, not a first for Marisha to have a character that contradicts itself, maybe she shouldn't push those contradictions to "PvP other party members for the sake of being right" XD

As a DM, this is concerning but I shouldn't be surprised lol

yeah, like ive come to terms this yearwith the fact that traumatized neurodivergent men like my dad are just my type. Like idk what in particular is up with Tal or Ashton, but they are like a magnet for me, everything they do give me feelings.

completely agree!

@@imsoooofunny I feel bad for Taliesin, because it kinda felt like the cast dog piled on him a bit with the "wtf were you thinking, dummy?" talk... Some more than others, won't name names. One of the mottos of CR is "take a chance, roll the dice"... It's not "don't take risks, do what's safe"

I agree. It feels hypocritical. Last 4SD, Matt encouraged doing crazy things. He was there when Tal & Ash were discussing who should take the shard. This 4SD & prev eps is a reverse of that. "Oh you did crazy sht & survived? Doesn't matter. Get rekt & be ok with it." Which I think is what Tal did. Be ok with it. Feels like he got bullied by the other critters, casts & Matt to just accept retcon. This whole campaign 3 had not sat well with me with all the forced narrative & now forced punishment on a DM-wants-another-to-get-powerup-while-using-your-backstory-so-you-get-debuff-for-even-trying (& succeeding.) It started to feel like everything must go the DM's way now than C1 or C2. I like freedom & I thought DnD is about taking chances (dice) & risks you wouldn't normally take in our normal life. So this C3 where players didn't have a narrative choice (before the split) and if they (Ashton+Fearne) did make a choice, it gets retconned anyways until the DM's favored player gives in & gets that narrative item... doesn't sit well at all.

@@xkimichi8064 Watching the 4SD truly reveals that Matt has no idea what some of his players are thinking and cannot improvise. Ashton succeeded, Matt in theory had a full week to plan and the best he could come up with was a soft retcon. My partner and I just feel frustrated that we watched at least 1.5 hours of Critical Role that hardly mattered.

Yeah it's all pretty sad. Ashton was shown to feel inadequate, he feels like he's broken and a liability for the Nobodies and now BH. He learns there's a shard of a titan within him, that is dormant and must be activated with another shard. He jumps into lava for the other shard, risking his life for it and gets praised for succeeding. He keeps saying he feels he's finally doing something right and he's encouraged further. He learns he would become "something unprecedented" if he absorbs the shard, meanwhile the rest of the party suddenly says it's too dangerous and that it should be given to Fearne. He talks to Fearne, she says she doesn't want to absorb the shard. Ashton decides he would do it. He heard it would make him whole, he heard it would give him unprecedented power, he was encouraged once to risk his life for the shard.. and he gets shit on by the entire party, Laudna saying they should kill him, Fearne hitting him with his hammer, for literally protecting her. Everyone goes "you don't care about us, why are you hurting us?" like he isn't protecting Fearne from the others coercing her into something she said she doesn't want and doing all of this just to be able to protect his friends better. Fast forward two episodes: -Laudna decides the woman who slaughtered thousands (her included) and actively took steps to destroy her friendships in the past might be worth trusting, -Imogen takes off the item blocking her from reading minds which causes her pain and stress, just so she can always prevent people from making decisions she doesn't like -Fearne must apologize to everyone for having her own opinion and is again guilt-tripped into taking the shard -DM decides Ashton shouldn't succeed, even though he did everything that the DM said is required, so he makes the entire hour long scene for nothing, the gem is just spit back out which is all met with a "damn, we're gonna be so powerful, witched be bitches am I right? also fuck you Ash you piece of shit". I know it is their characters and campaign but holy fuck this feels like character assassination, we're taking 3 steps back on every arc that involved these characters. And listening to this 4SD is also difficult, like "oh, we have no beef with you as a person, but we decided the shard should behave differently than Matt described, that's why your choices as a player and the choices of your character (both discussed with the other player/character involved) are meaningless". Taliesin doesn't seem to mind, but at any other table this would be a DnD Horror Story.

Also, as an aside the person who is selecting questions for the tower of inquiry has been doing a real good job. The questions this episode were really good for that section, loving the more introspective questions being thrown in the mix! And the games in the last two 4sd have also been really really good in the sense that they are still working in a sense to allow casts to answer questions while they provide people with a sense of the “cast hanging out together”

Agree with this! Am never a fam of the 'if you're character was a chocolate bar what would they be' type questions, so getting to do more questions that really delve into the game makes me so happy. It's what I'm here for 🎉

Right! The only bit of advice I'd wished they had added after that is 'Because you can't always see or know when you've crossed the line, until it's been crossed- be forgiving if other people do it too.' We all mess up, misread sitations, things happen and you didn't realize it'd go that bad. So long as it's not a regular occurence, it's best to try and be forgiving.

This happened in campaign one. I don’t want to give spoilers just in case but Percy did something “three times” and when they came back from break it was just once and Matt suddenly had a solve for it.

@@amyshaw6825 Tunnel vision is so, so real lol I struggle to read people IRL so I'm used to that cold flush "oh shit that was too far" feeling but I've seen people at a few tables make a really wild choice that's upset people get hit with that and like... it happens? It's totally fine, it's like picking a bad choice in an RPG that didn't go where you thought and you just gotta roll with it and make it part of the story - but sometimes the game made you believe it would go somewhere totally different and if you feel it's not a fair choice then yeah. Load that quicksave and change it

It depends. We know she ascended before the calamity. So it depends on how long she had been a god at that point. We dont know how long that had been. EDIT at least as far as I know. I dunno if they revealed that at some point I would be curious. Since time can be a weird soup, how long "recent" was to pre calamity societies.

@@padraig548 At the very least the Matron was still mortal while Marisha's character from EXU: Calamity was a child. I'm not sure how old her character was by the time of Calamity, nor do I know how long Evontra'vir lived as a mortal/what their race was. So it's still possible.

The events of Calamity happend on an apogee solstice, as far as i can remember the Matron ascended on the last apogee solstice, so about 106 (?) years earlier. An Archdruids lifespan is defenitly long enough.

@@elsnatorprivate_videos9229 you are probably right. I need to rewatch calamity, is basically my take away. Damn. Such an imposition! Whatever shall I do. Welp time to queue those up for work background noise

​@@padraig548during Calamity it was said that the Matron ascended at the previous applebee solstice. Patia was her student, but can't remember her face or name.

Brennan is cackling from his throne in BiggetyBurg

His decision made sense. It's irritating how the group got so mad at him. As if they all aren't doing ridiculously stupid things every 2-3 minutes. We've got a halfling who does weapons training on cliff edges without a crash helmet. A dead lady possessed by a witch. A witch astral projecting behind enemy lines and talking to someone helping end the world. A kleptomaniac who will steal everything not bolted down. And a carpenter who occasionally bites people. I love all of them! But it doesn't make sense that they've picked Ashton to get mad at. Never go full Telenovela.

@@christophersanders3252 They saw their friend do something they weren't expecting, and nearly dying right in front of them as a result while they were all powerless to stop it. The characters (separate from the players) were having an intense emotional reaction, and acted like it.

I was hoping some felt this way. I truly don't understand how people saw Fearne as the answer! Why would Fearne take the power that could turn her evil!?

@@flaminyawn But their reactions were highly self- centered, toxic and narcicistic. He almost died. By accident by the way- He had no way of knowing things would go so wrong- Matt wasn't as clear as they are saying. I don't remember a warning in the episode. It is not right to react to someone's near death by being angry with them. It shows you are making their trial about yourself instead of comforting your friend- which is what actually matters. And the way Marisha is preaching to Taliesin in the Deep Dive is insufferable. To be clear, I very much enjoy Marisha normally, but at the moment I think she needs to be a better friend to Taliesin both in and out of game. They all do. Because their characters all do crazy stupid stuff constantly.

​@christophersanders3252 when they were talking to the tree before going to the volcano, the tree said that a single vessel is not meant to contain both shards.

It makes sense sometimes in real life because we obviously have to be able to maintain harmonious relationships with the people that we care about but at the table? The more extreme reactions are going to be so much more fun when you have a table of people that you trust because it's going to not only create drama but give the other players more to actually play off than the softer response.

im glad someone acknowledged it

NO FR I LOL'D

It's like, the only reason they have their options being Ashton or Fearne is obvious; Ashton is primordial of blood, he's titan blooded, so he has a chance of getting something out of this even with the expressed risk involved, while Fearne is a wildfire druid. It was literally something that was for Ashton, and everyone assumed Fearne would get it because she uses fire. Not once did they stop to have a legitimate conversation about this piece and figure out what to do with it, and not once did they think Ashton was gonna ignore the tree's warning and use it for himself. And YET! Somehow! Him taking the shard and trying to use it, and suddenly, he's betraying the group? He's not trustworthy? He could have hurt Fearne? Okay, was it a betrayal? Okay, yes, I can see how they could think that, so i will grant that view. He's not trustworthy? Bro has been straight about who he is and what he wants the entire campaign, you cant get any more trustworthy than that, with someone actively telling you what they wanna do or try or say every time they can put in some input. He could have hurt Fearne? Aside from Orym, and personally I think Ashton as well cause although accidental, i dont ever seeing him actively trying to hurt anyone, especially her, everyone else could hurt her! FCG just needs to get stressed enough and he would fillet her, Laudna could listen to that dark little voice in the back of her head and waste her like she did Bordor, Imogen could lose control of her powers and nuke her along with half a city block again, and Chet could hurt her any time he goes out on a moonlit stroll. And yet, Ashton is the big bad guy here. lmao

From this side of the table, it felt a little like a bait and switch - but from Matt's reaction, it's clear he thought he was leaving the door open for anyone EXCEPT Ashton. We are used to the kind of hero's journey where the protagonist is told something is impossible but pulls it off anyway, against the odds. Plenty of us thought Matt was teeing that up for Ashton. What he was actually trying to do was warn him, but a combination of the personality Talesin described and potentially behind-the-table discussions (not including Matt) led to what we saw. Nobody is in the wrong here - if anything I think it makes the story even better!

More to your point, the harness was used by Ludinus to absorb the life force of fey - nature based creature just like Fearne, Nana Mori or Fearne's parent. Everyone in the party is so eager to use it, I can of hope the harness legacy of horror come into play now that they are at Nana Mori's place.

To be fair Ash and Fearne were the only two to enter the lava to retrieve the shard. So it felt like first dibs should go to either of them. And thematically Fearne fit well with this shard without multiple warnings of death and destruction. I don't blame Tal for reading it as a challenge but I also think it was fair for others to read Fearne as a good fit for the shard.

⁠​⁠@@tylerchurch1152to preface this, I love Ashton and I love that he took this story route. We all knew he was going to do it, and we all knew fearne was too scared of her own dark side to want to take the shard herself. Honestly I see the party's reactions as pretty reasonable just based on what we know of them so far. Ashton took the shard without letting the rest of the group in on him wanting to try it. He didn't trust them enough to not try and stop him so instead he lied. Then they see Ashton shatter, a person they considered family shattered into a billion little pieces and only survived because he had the ring of temporal salvation. Fearne was clearly more upset with herself than with Ashton, laudna has been known to react badly to being lied to, and a lot of that comes with dying and having Delilah manipulating you every chance she can, FCG watches Ash take risk after risk and would have the reaction that Ashton doesn't care about himself , Imogen was clearly angry it happened but was more concerned about where Laudna had disappeared too, and Chet was trying to provoke ash to see if he would own his mistake or run. I think the toxic critters have been having a field day with attacking Tal and Ashton and it's real stupid imo, but i don't think Ashton as a character is blame free. He fucked up and that's okay. Now we get to watch the party rebuild their strength.

I feel the same. My impression has been up until this point was that Mat's signaling on the shard was incredibly vague. Probably intentionally so. So I vaguely sensed we were getting a "high risk, high reward path" or a "low risk, low reward path". Like, every time the group sought council in knowledgeable people nobody ever said the words "This is a bad idea." or "You will definitely die from this." It was always "This has never been done before." or "Nobody knows what will happen and is probably extremely risky." Go ahead and as a DM tell your players "This is risky and has never been done before." and see what they do. Of course they are going to do the thing. People are here to have an adventure and those are 'adventurin' words.'

I truly feel the same. After watching the episode after and this show, it's clear that not everyone was on the same page as us. I viewed it like it's just a game, but they are living in the characters and reacting as if it were real, aka acting. I get it, but I have never taken a character as seriously as them. Maybe I'm missing out? Idk. Point is, this was their narrative decision to make. They obviously talked about it in between sessions, as they should've. And they decided to run the narrative this way. At my table? Ashton would've got a huge reward because none of my players take things that seriously. I would double check to be sure everyone was ok emotionally, but I'm pretty confident everyone would be stoked to see his new powers and be fine with it. Now, we get to choose whether we want to see where CR goes with it. I want to even though I disagree.

Yes absolutely, I'm kinda stunned that Matt didn't think about the hobby-wide fact that when a DM says "this is incredibly dangerous but technically doable," all a good player hears is "if you survive this it's gonna be awesome." When Matt had the shard reject Ashton even after all those rolls I was so annoyed, like Ashton DID the damn thing, at this point it just feels like a narrative punishment for being "selfish" or "reckless" in a situatuon that felt like it was clearly broadcasting "This is YOUR big gamble to make if you want it."

💯 he didn’t betray anyone, at all. And acting like he did, even threatening to kill him, was way overboard. I don’t like that they’re acting like it’s justified. Women, man 😅

i agree to an extent - im more of the opinion that if Matt said the shard could kill Ashton (with the implication that yeah he gon fuckin die), then Matt should commit and kill the character without giving him an opportunity to succeed but as said, because Matt maybe felt that he didnt signal the lethality of this decision big enough (an oopsie), then Matt giving Ashton the chance to succeed feels fair and likewise by giving Ashton the chance to succeed, then if Ashton does succeed - he should succeed all the way like Matt walking back that success to "oh yeah I let you live" felt clumsily handled because it draws attention back to the point where he made a little oopsie by not signalling big enough to Taleisin so his character could truly consider Death is what he would find if Ashton fucked around apparently according to Taleisin, he didnt realize how much Death was on the table until he had to start rolling which is hours too late

Correct.

We don’t know what he’s received from the interaction yet, I’m sure it will be worth the -2 con.

To your point about Ashton diving into lava, he chose to do that on his own. Matt didn’t give any hints or say that Ashton needed to be the one to dive. In fact if you go back and watch, Matt makes a point to talk about HOW CLOSE FEARNE FELT once she jumped in. She’s the one who has a fire resistance spell, is born from fire, and got her wildfire spirit in a similar way in the past. Ashton and a lot of fans misconstrued the signs as being for them when in reality they weren’t. Matt was setting it up for Fearne. Also he has every right to punish Ashton. He gave multiple warnings from characters to NOT combine the 2 shards & basically one of them was a a prophecy. Ashton (in character) decided to hide it from the group, which is a VERY unsafe thing to do, and did it without checking with them. The fact he survived is wild.

@@biiconic6348 Sure, I understand those are your opinions. But I disagree completely with that perspective / points.

Have your feelings changed since Ashton's shard has been activated?

But it is also a group game. Pulling shit out at the table and guilting your friends into being ok with it is not ok.

​​@@martinjrgensen8234didnt sound like they were guilting them, instead just explained this was planned with the DM and they arent turning on the party or anything like that.... yet

@@martinjrgensen8234 this was part of the character from the start, brought up many times in game and out of. I didn't spring anything on anyone... it is legit part of the plot of the larger game. The DM even warned the group prior that the session was major for my character. People just wanted to prove they could take out a vampire lord rather than respect the planned character progression that if we had kept would have legit made my character leave the group. Which honestly would have ruined a game I have been playing for half year. But here is the point at the end of the day, we worked it out at my table where everyone is happy and now excited for this change and it genuinely hurts no other characters because we sat down and talked.

You're the real MVP!

Hear him quietly at 24:00 as Marisha is talking too

Thank you!

Hey no worries man, you absolutely do what you need to do to survive.

you must add 52:08

It’s all good, if you don’t mind me asking, what did you use to make your profile pic

THIS EXACTLY. After the last episode I was mad, not really at the players because they're intentionally playing flawed people, but at the characters. Now, I'm just astonished that Matt and all the players just genuinely interpreted the situation differently from Taliesin, and were geunuinely confused by his behavior. I'm not mad, but I am astonished because I understood the situation exactly how Taliesin did and in his place I also would have taken the shard for myself (just maybe with less subterfuge, but only because I wouldn't expect opposition. I actually thought Ashton taking the shard was totally on the table until the moment he sent everyone down the ziggurat where they couldn't see, and then I realized he was hiding because he thouht they'd stop him).

As Taliesin said at the end of that episode, "Percy was right there. What did you expect?"

@@josiahtaylor2246 The thing is though that Matt pretty much explicitly said "This likely cannot exist in the same body with another shard". You have to understand that as meaning that the choice to use the shard is at least DEADLY, if not outright immediately lethal.

@@piquantement maybe I misheard? I remember hearing something like "may sunder the vessel." I don't remember "likely," but I could be totally wrong.

@@piquantement What I really don't get is that he passed the CON saves and lived, but still rejected the shard? Even if it was always unlikely, it was certainly never said to be impossible.