Critical Role Recap: Episode 19

Previously on Critical Role, the Mighty Nein dominated the Victory Pit fighting tournament and learned that war with Xhorhas had broken out on the eastern border of the Dwendalian Empire. Soldiers were being mobilized from all around Zadash, and in their absence, the Mighty Nein was called to the King’s Hall by the Lawmaster herself. She asked them to become legionnaires to aid with defending the heartland while the Crownsguard fought their war abroad, but the Mighty Nein demurred. While they considered her offer, Kara—one of the Gentleman’s agents—found them in the streets and told them that her boss also had a job offer for them. When it rains in Zadash, it pours!

Two-Paragraph Summary

The Mighty Nein visited the Gentleman beneath in the Evening Nip. Their dubious patron offered them two jobs, and they accepted both. The contracts would take them north of Zadash, one merely out of the city, the other out of the Empire!

They departed Zadash posthaste, and were suddenly taken by the freedom of the wilderness—when compared to the structured chaos of city life. On the road, they traded with a curmudgeonly orc, fought against ogres and goblins, and saw Yasha unfurl the skeletal wings of a fallen aasimar! Nott revealed that she hates goblinkind and being a goblin, and the party rushed to comfort her. The next morning, they prepared to continue the journey north.

Art by Caio Santos (@BlackSalander)

Full-Length Synopsis

Molly declared that he hated the Lawmaster’s job offer. Even though she offered them a wild sum of 10,000 gold, he had no intention of working with the desperate empire. He suggested “when the table offers you four times as much as you’ve ever seen, you have to walk away while you’re winning.” Instead, they decided to visit the Gentleman. Visit. Perhaps they would take him up on his offer, but the Mighty Nein mistrusted him just as much as they did the empire.

The Gentleman’s Agreement

Beau was delighted to discover that a fighting ring had assembled in the center of the true Evening Nip tavern. Bets were being placed all around; the first fighter was Louis, one of the members of the failed scouting expedition to the research facility. The other was Thed, the halfling that the Mighty Nein had saved from the phase spider’s web in the sewers over a week ago. The fight was savage and Thed fought dirty—and won! In the glorious adrenaline of his victory, Beau and Jester both agreed to fight each other. Honestly, they just started wailing on one another before the crowd had any time to register that another brawl had begun.

Jester struck Beau with a savage inflict wounds, but Caleb cast haste on Beau and she delivered a scorching flurry of blows to her friendly opponent, knocking her to the ground with a scant 1 hit point remaining. Beau claimed victory, and the Gentleman cheered for her and called the Mighty Nein over to his table. With his usual slick charm, he offered them a job up north—so far north that it was beyond the borders of the Dwendalian Empire—on the outskirts of Shady Creek Run. The Gentleman described the town as, “a home to the truly free entrepreneurs of Wildemount.” In other words, a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

A colleague of his, Ophelia Mardun, needed some help untangling herself from an ambiguously sticky situation, and the Gentleman wished to provide her the aid she needed. He requested that the Nein extract her from her mire of complications and return to Zadash. He promised a reward totaling 5,000 gold pieces, with a 10% advance.

He also offered another job, if they were interested in something easier. One of the safehouses of contraband near the marsh town of Barrelbend had gone dark, and some of its shipments of contraband had gone missing. Their contact would be Febron Keyes, at the Keystone Pub in the “Puddles” district of the town—that is, the part of town sinking into the swamp.

The Nein discussed the issue—they all wanted to get out of Zadash, and they also wanted to keep business on the table. They told the Gentleman that they would accept both tasks! He suggested that they take an overland route… they could take the underground rivers, but a 70 mile journey down there would be inadvisable. The Mighty Nein wisely accepted the suggestion. They saddled up their horses, hitched their wagon to them, and prepared to set off north out of Zadash along the Amber Road.

Outside of Zadash, the party felt the strange calmness of the wilderness envelope them. It was different from city life, and they hadn’t noticed how chaotic their lives had become until they had escaped Zadash. By sundown, the Nein found the intersection of the Amber Road and the Bromkiln Byway, the road they would take to get to their next job.

The Long Road North

The Mighty Nein smelled smoke. A mile off the road, a tall black column of it billowed into the air. Half the party split off from the main caravan and followed the smoke until they found a house with a brick chimney. Hides were tanning outside the house, and it seemed to be the abode of a hermit of some sort. They knocked on the door and were greeted coldly by an elderly orc. The party spoke with him and offered to trade, but the surly curmudgeon had little interest in speaking with them.

The meeting was strange, but they simply bought some hide armor and left. It would seem that this was little more than a chance encounter on the road. They traveled for some time again. Yasha wandered off for a while, but returned with wildflowers. Some of her fellows adorned their hair or clothing with the blooms, to her delight, and began to make camp. They took turns taking watch as usual, but none were prepared for an ambush!

Goblins in the Dark

Poisoned arrows caught Caleb unawares, and tiny forms skittered in the shadows of the campfire. The sound of snarling beasts surrounded the fire-lit camp, and two pairs of thundering footsteps echoed in the still night air. It was a group of goblins and wolves, led by a pair of ogres!

Those on watch raised the alarm and roused their allies to fend off the goblins and wolves. The Mighty Nein’s strongest characters fought back against the dumb, hulking ogres—and in the midst of combat, Yasha flew into a rage that revealed a pair of fearsome wings! Her hair and eyes turned jet black, and skeletal, bat-like wings burst from her back as her fallen aasimar heritage manifested itself.

The combat raged until Yasha and Fjord cut down the two ogres. With their leaders slain, the cowardly, opportunistic goblins fled in fear. Caleb chased some down, but several still escaped into the night. All attention turned to Yasha and her marvelous wings. Caleb even asked her a question in the Celestial tongue.

“Are you an angel?” he asked.

Yasha looked back in surprise, and replied to him Celestial, “Of sorts, I guess.”

Their fellow party members began to grow restless at the conversation they couldn’t understand being carried on right on front of them, and Beau even (perhaps jokingly) shouted that she Caleb was probably flirting with her.

Nott’s Sorrow

After the battle, Beau asked Nott why she seemed to hate goblins.

“You seem to hate your kind an awful lot,” she said.

Nott grew visibly uncomfortable. She stammered and deflected. “You want to talk about Yasha’s wings instead?”

After she was pressured by her teammates to share, however, she relented.

“I’ve just never felt comfortable in… in… in my skin as long as I could remember. I just feel like, I don’t know, I don’t fit in with them. [The goblins]. This,” she gestured at her entire being. “Feels wrong. Like I should be in a different way. The way [goblins] act, the way they are, it’s just not me. They do horrible things to people, and they seem fine with it. I don’t know, I never felt the same as them.

“It’s not that I don’t like myself or anything, I just don’t like how I feel when I see my hands or my feet. They just feel wrong.

“I didn’t feel comfortable [doing any of the horrible jobs in goblin society] so they stuck me with the torturer.” She paused, and saw the horrified expressions on the her friends’ faces. “I wasn’t the torturer!” she yelped, raising her hands reassuringly. “But I was the torturer’s assistant. There was a halfling village some ways away, and they captured someone from the village. They wanted to kill him, but instead I was kind to him, and he started talking. And my fellow gobbies didn’t like that, but they allowed it because I was getting valuable information about where the halflings kept their food and where they went to harvest and where they could attack them. But I became friends with him. He was nice.”

Jester asked what happened to the halfling. Nott shook her head.

“Well, I hope he got away.” That was all she could say.

“Did you leave before he did?”

“We left together.”

Beau butted in. “What was his name?”

“It’s not important,” Nott said, evading the question. “He was just a nice man.”

“Did you love him?” Jester said, her characteristic romanticism showing.

“I don’t know,” Nott mumbled. “He taught me about… he was a chemist, so he taught me about alchemy and potions and things. He taught me his language, and when he had taught me everything he could, they said to kill him. But I didn’t want to, so I got reeeaaal drunk and I created a distraction, and I hope he got away.”

Nott’s friends asked her if she had ever tried to go to his village, but she shook her head. They would stone her if she ever went, and they would be right to: she was a goblin. They were terrible, monstrous creatures, and they deserved every evil that came to them. The party assured Nott that she was truly their companion, and her being a goblin wouldn’t change that. She possessed a good heart.

Rain assailed the Mighty Nein’s camp that night. Molly slept underneath the cart and Nott joined him. Yasha stood outside in the rain and stared into the storm, as she always did on such nights. The night passed, the rain quieted to a drizzle, and the Mighty Nein looked at the road ahead. It was a long road, one filled with dangers and surprises but together the Mighty Nein could weather any storm.

What lies in wait for the Mighty Nein in the far north of Wildemount? Find out next time... on Critical Role! Is it Thursday yet?

Unless otherwise credited, all photos in this article are courtesy of Geek & Sundry.

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He loves watching Critical Role and wants everyone he knows to get into it, too. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and his very own Frumpkins, Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.