Critical Role Campaign 3 Episode 1 is here, and we have a whole new party full of characters!
We start Critical Role Campaign 3 Episode 1 off by Matt clearing the table, and are taken into a cable car riding the wires between spires of the city of Jrusar. On their way to Aerie Spire and the Starpoint Conservatory, seeking access to the library for research purposes, two women converse with each other.
*Obviously, Campaign 3 Episode 1 Spoilers ahead.
Imogen Temult, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Laura Bailey.
Imogen is a young, shy sorcerer with a southern belle type personality, and accent. Imogen is very shy yet very curious. She seeks knowledge from the Universities in Jrusar so she can better understand her magical abilities…or so she says.
In Campaign 3 Episode 1, Imgoen uses the spell “Detect Thoughts” a few times throughout the premiere, and may very well be an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer – as she telepathically speaks to Bertrand Bell later in the episode (which Telepathic Speech is a 1st level feature of).
Imogen reminded me a little bit of Sookie Stackhouse from the True Blood HBO series and Southern Vampire Mysteries novels.
The main character, Sookie, is a young, southern telepath who can hear the thoughts of all the humans around her. Her mind is exhausted from hearing thoughts about herself, and even feels emotions of others in her vicinity. When vampires are revealed to the world, she finds that she cannot hear their thoughts; a surprised welcome.
I love Imogen so far. She has a great personality and intrigue to herself. I think telepathy and the burden of it will come to play throughout campaign 1 and it may even be the reason for Imogen’s research.
Imogen, at level 3 has high Charisma, Dex; with decent Constitution and Wisdom.
The dynamic between Imogen and her friend, our next character, is phenomenal.
Laudna, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Marisha Ray.
Laudna (no surname, yet), is that friend A youngish woman with black hair that has a shock of white running through. A pale, gaunt, thin, woman in scraggly cloth, and large, dark, bulbous eyes.
She carries on her belt: tools, odds and ends, and a homemade…dead rat with bird skull swapped in.
I immediately thought of the Bride of Frankenstein, especially the white hair part. And this may be where Marisha got her inspiration from, as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein used the medication Laudanum for chronic nephritis, and in a suicide attempt.
Laudna is scary; Self-proclaimed as “Fun-Scary” but, in reality, “Scary-Scary, but in a good way” according to Imogen.
Laudna is fantastically portrayed be Marisha – I can see Laudna clearly on Marisha’s face when she speaks.
Laudna is weird, quirky, and ghoulish. It will be quite entertaining throughout the campaign seeing how NPC’s simply, react to her presence.
I love Laudna. She has this happy, whimsical, witch vibe; think — goth Jack Sparrow. She has no idea how terrifying she actually is.
She is presented to us as a Warlock Sorcerer. We see her use eldritch blast, bane and most interestingly, form of dread where Laudna’s form transforms during battle; her body stretches, a dark vale comes over her face and black tears from her eyes; revealing that she is most likely an undead warlock. Not being necessarily undead herself, but her patron is of the undead variety.
The appearance of your form of dread reflects some aspect of your patron – hence the body stretching and dark vale.
DnD Wiki
Maybe we have some sort of undead female slenderman?
The dynamic between Laudna, and Imogen, as I mentioned earlier, is one of my favorite parts of Episode 1. They play off each other perfectly, almost like the goth older sister and younger, shy bookworm. I’m very interested in their backstory and can’t wait to learn more.
Laudna’s starting stats are very similar to those of her friend Imogen’s.
Ashton Greymoore, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Taliesin Jaffe.
Next we’re introduced to Ashton Greymoore who is waking up in crokehouse(spelling?), his current home that resides in the Fownsee Hollow neighborhood inside the Core Spire; an area that light doesn’t reach — and one that reminds me of the slums from Final Fantasy VII.
Ashton is a Earth Genasi barbarian who goes by he/they. Ashton, has a big ass hole in his head, filled with slag glass and an opalescent brain. The cracks run through most of the left side of their body. He has Green stone skin and crystal purple hair, and is a shorter person wearing old leather. The back of Ashton’s jacket has the words “Just Don’t” and his giant glass hammer that he carry’s around has “fuck off” on the base.
Ashton is quite literally a “punk rock”.
Ashton is a homebrew barbarian who uses Primal Path (an unknown homebrew subclass) and has gravity powers.
Ashton, is amazing. He has an amazing belly-laugh and seems to always down for a good time and drinking, as he literally takes his beer outside the tavern before our party’s first encounter and has some for breakfast.
I’m extremely excited to learn more about Ashton. I never latched on, or really liked Mollymauk that much, but I already love Ashton. He seems to be the embodiment of Devil May Care.
Ashton has some pretty good looking stats other than that 6 for Charisma.
Ashton was hired to investigate a party of missing adventures, where he discovers a single survivor, who he befriends. Our next party member.
Fresh Cut Grass (F.C.G.) the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Sam Riegel.
Fresh Cut Grass (F.C.G.) or “Letters” (nickmane). a…robot automaton cleric. A little yellow he/they dude who gets around on a single wheel, wears a cute little backpack, eats metal for sustenance. Yeah, we have a literal heal-bot in this party.
Fresh Cut grass is a homebrewed cleric who was part of a group tasked with clearing out a mine in Bassuras. Encountering monsters, the party exited the mine and camped outside to rest for the night. Upon waking up from status (sleep), F.C.G. found all his party members to be dead. Some of those members were other automatons; FCG has the ability to use their parts so he grabbed his “friends’” sawblade, bolt thrower and hammer tool.
Speaking with a slight southern accent, whimsical charm, and named after one one of his creator’s (Dancer’s) favorite smells…along with: oatmeal, apple pie, and…pussy.
FCG well is very much Sam Riegel. I’m confident that we will be entertained by our, most likely, Claptrap murder-robot, throughout campaign 3.
Part of the homebrewed class abilities include, Sympathetic Binding, where, as a reaction, Fresh Cut Grass transfers half of the damage dealt to a nearby creature (party member) onto itself, instead.
FCG’s states include high Constitution and Wisdom.
Now for a couple of major surprises. Our next group enters from Exandria Unlimited:
Orym, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Liam O’Brien.
Orym is a halfling fighter from “overseas in Taldore” and is a member of the Air Ashari. He is tasked by the Voice of the Tempest (Keylith) to take care of a task and is to bring 2 of his ExU party members along with him.
Orym is possibly on a task to find two people: Oshad Breshio or “The Anger” as he asks Bertrand he knows of either of those names.
Orym is a 3 footish, acrobatic battle master who is very serious and level-headed. He is a bit of a babysitter to his friends and is a very good natured.
I found Orym to be very serious and honestly, a bit boring in Exandria Unlimited. But, in Campaign 3 Episode 1, he seems more likeable, while still remaining stoic. He seems to have had a bit of his friends rub off on him a bit, as he makes a few jokes in Episode 1.
Orym’s stats remain the same from the end of Exandria Unlimited — High Dex followed by Constitution. The three ExU characters were given the option of rerolling their character stats under the same rules as the rest of the characters, but it seams as if Liam decided to leave Orym as is, as their character sheets stats are the same as it was at level 3 in ExU.
Fearne Calloway, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Ashley Johnson.
Along with Orym comes Fearne Calloway, a faun Circle of Wildfire druid.
Fearne is six foot , with large eyes and furry ears. She is covered in poisonous flowers and has a little monkey wildfire spirit, Little Mister, with her.
Fearne is the definition of chaotic neutral. She gets into insanely hilarious situations, and doesn’t really know any better (or know what is going on). I thought Fearne was okay in Exandria Unlimited, but this first episode of Campaign 3 she had me in tears! It shows that Ashley really worked on her as a character, and I can’t wait to see more Fearne’s shenanigans.
Fearne’s stats include high wisdom followed by charisma, constitution and Dex leaving her a bit different from her Exandria Unlimited counterpart.
Dorian Storm, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Robbie Daymond.
Our Last Exandria Unlimited party member is Dorian Storm an Air Genasi bard.
Dorian is blue skinned, and a bit eccentric. He carries a lute and a handaxe that is also a flute. He is well spoken and charismatic, always looking to play some music, or lighten the mood.
Interestingly, he is labelled as a guest character – so who knows how long he will remain with the party. My guess is he makes multiple appearances throughout the campaign.
I like Dorian well enough. He’s likeable and fun. Now, I’m not sure if this makes sense, but I love Robbie more than Dorian. Robbie, is a newer player to Dungeons & Dragons, but you can see roleplay acting ability, and he just oozes joy. I’m excited to see what he does with Dorian and how playing in Exandria Unlimited helped him to expand a bit on his character.
Dorian’s stats were re-rolled from ExU and he has a pretty significant change. He has way more Strenght jumping from 14 to 17, Dex going from 14 to 16 and charisma going from 15 to 16.
Sir Bertrand Bell, the Campaign 3 Character Portrayed by Travis Willingham.
Bertrand is an senile old baffoon. And I love everything about him.
Meeting the group when they all converge together to fight the animated objects in Episode One’s first encounter, Bertrand, seeing the group’s skill, asks if they would be interested in gaining clout and coin, by introducing them to Lord Eshteross for potential work.
Bertrand is amazing comic relief and is part of many of my favorite moments in Episode 1. He doesn’t really seem to have a filter, or the ability to stay awake.
Bertrand is actually level 5, which the rest of the group is 3. He carries a magical sword – the gambler’s blade rapier, giving Bertrand a bonus to attack and damage rolls at the expense of an equal negative penalty to his death saving throws.
This, i believe means that Bertrand is not going to be Travis’ main character, but a sort of NPC played by a PC. My guess is that Travis worked with Matt to play Bertrand because his character made more sense to appear a little later in the adventure. We saw this in Exandria Unlimited with a character known as Fy’ra Rai, who clearly was brought in to help guide the party, and had knowledge from the GM, Aabria Iyengar, that the rest of the party did not have.
We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out, but for now, I’m loving Bertrand.
Bertrand has high strength intelligence and dex.
And we have our Critical Role Campaign 3 starting party! I’m very excited to see these characters at the table every Thursday night! Check out my C3R3 post where I Recap, React, & Review Campaign 3 Episode 1 or my C3R3 for Episode 2!
My full Campaign 3 Episode 1 Written Review is up! Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for tons of Critical Role content!
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