![[Spoilers EXU: Prime] Sixth Episode Discussion](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/574f613c-fd8c-4d55-95f7-d7f38ec5c5bf.jpeg){kind=link}
EXU: Prime, originally called simply Exandria Unlimited, is a miniseries following the Crown Keepers (The Odd Lot? Hot Cross Buns? Glitter Shitters?), a group of adventurers from Tal’Dorei, in 842 PD - close to 30 years after the Chroma Conclave’s attack on the city and six years after the end of Campaign Two.
Watch the entire series on YouTube or Twitch
Runtime Break start 4h 45m 1h 37m
Episode 6: The Gift Among the Green
The six of you have spent weeks traversing the jungles of the Rifenmist Peninsula.
You’ve had dreams and experiences and bits of temptation along the way, but you’ve come through it.
And you reached what very well could’ve been your goal.
You found some of that runic writing, a ruin in the jungle, but you were pushed, asked, begged by the Wild Mother herself to keep going forward to seek some deeper truth.
And now more time has passed.
♪Episode Song References♪
ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ
Highlights
Anjali:“Always makes me think of My Big Fat Greek Wedding… ‘It was…her twin’”
Aimee:“They found teeth and a spinal cord, it was my twin.”
Aabria:“This is power gaming for me. You didn’t want your hair to get wet and it didn’t! Yeah!”
And you are inside the ancient stronghold of Niirdal-Poc and the fog is inside this place too, but it’s sort of-- It’s lighter and wispier and permutates everything and there’re lanterns all over and they all glow with the same greenish-goldish-grayish light that doesn’t quite burn.
Doesn’t make sense.
And you pass through on this very well cobbled, well-maintained city path and you pass these massive buildings of that same gray-green. It’s not cobblestone. It’s covered over with a concrete in this strange color that your eye slips by naturally.
And all these buildings are multistory with little carved terraces and you see tiny gardens and people tending them and the people inside it, you see lots of humans and half-elves, yes, but also gnomes and halflings and even more interesting races. You see hobgoblins, and goblins, and people with the faces of cats and elephants and birds. This place is wild and different, and everyone walks through the mists silently, but very serenely.
And they give you a little look and a little nod as to acknowledge, yes, you are new and we know everyone here, but the city is massive.
15,000 people moving about their daily life.
It is ancient. However, the architecture is extraordinarily different. Most of Tal’Dorei is very medieval, Western European-coded, and this has a lot of curves to it and arches. And it’s that strangeness of the lack of cobblestone and visible stone-age, that everything is covered over and smoothed over with this gray-green concrete.
So there is something distinctly old about it, because you see there’s something in its simplicity that feels ancient, but it’s very distinct and unique from Tal’Dorei or at large, farther north.
Anjali:“Yes, it is.”
Aabria:“What?!”
Liam:“Correct, correct.”
But the Qoniira, we have four leaders, tetrarchs. One at each of the cities on the peripheral and they would come here whenever they needed to make group decisions. Everything else was held by one of them. But they’re all here now because we’re all that’s left.”
Standing at the center of it is this massive, 40-foot high statue of a feline humanoid with a really serene face looking into her own clutched hand, holding that gray gold light that seems to be diffused out and everywhere. And there’s this shattered halo of light around it. And from her back springs four large feathery wings.
You recognize this as a statue of The Observer…
(To Matt) You feel suddenly-- not sickened, but dizzy and overwhelmed and both of you close your eyes in unison trying to calm your mind. Dariax as you lean over, eyes turn to you and you see that, that pendant that you wear, that compass is glowing with the same gray gold light.
INTERMISSION (continued)
We’re back, and you made it, finally, to the truth, that the ruins that you were seeking was actually the city of Niirdal-Poc, buried, hidden, secret, within the center of the Rifenmist Peninsula. You made your way through, you found a friend, and now the six of you stand in front of a massive statue known as The Observer, as Dariax has a bit of a moment.
You feel yourself swoon, but you’re able to hold your consciousness within you. As you look up and you cannot help but see this face, staring at the light within its hands, tilts down, ever so slightly, and regards you.
Her hand opens, releasing that light, and you see that shattered halo-- one of (the rest of) you see this-- fill itself back in valences of light, the same thing replicated on the pendant that you wear around your neck.
And you see this massive edifice, once again of that same smooth, gray-green concrete, like a massive snifter of brandy, standing, bulbous, in the town plaza. In front of it are two massive, purple, porphyry statues of four-legged creatures that look like a panther on steroids, with three faces, one looking up, one looking down, and one looking out and away from the doors and over the top, that same runic writing…
Tetrarch Thrascuur:“Then I do have a request. If something is coming, if this place is meant for change, growth, destruction, discovery, whatever it is, please remember it, carry it with you. I don’t want, after all this time, for this to end here and now, forgotten. You, so long-lived, please carry us with you. That’s all I would ask. I’m going to look at the stars for myself for the future and the past, I observe and I remember. You may stay with me. You may move on, out, up, away. It is you who must decide what happens next but I will treasure the time I have spent with you for as long as I have.”
And they move towards that device, reseat the mirror back into place and begin gazing down into it and quickly lose themselves to gazing upward at the stars."
Matt:“That’s my opening to any confrontation going forward. I’m just giving you a moment to self-actualize before I knock you the fuck out.”
Aabria:“Guess we’ll find out.”
Robbie:“Fuck!”
[rolls]“No, we won’t. Ten.”Anyway, we can talk about gender and what Wild Shape is at literally any other time, but the rest of you that are just beginning to take off, you’re still in this central plaza.
And then all of a sudden, you hear a low rumble and a creak. And you look over, and the remnants of a magical spell being cast glimmer purple as they wash over those two massive porphyry statues of the three headed meat beast, call it a Bandersnatch, as they slowly begin to come to life under an Animate Object spell, as someone else in this fight who defies being seen right now has taken their action.
And there are now two more combatants in the fray.
Aabria:“Yeah. Your pants are gone for some reason, but you’re wearing a button-down.”
(⌐■_■)
Robbie:“Thunderclap that booty?”
Aabria:“There it is! Inspiration for a little nonsense.”
I am here to tell you, it is never better to be alone.
Stay with your family. Not all family is blood. Much family is chosen. I cannot protect you again. Only you can do it this time. Stay in the light, yes?”
They were chosen, but so were you, and this isn’t the end of your time with them. And you know, more than anything else, with the wisdom that is dawning on you, that gives you a sense of perspective, almost like you’re looking down from the skies, that this next part, they must do alone. And then, when the time is right again, you’ll return, come back together for some great and terrible purpose, and in that knowledge, you slink back through the fog, and are quickly lost to darkness, out of Niirdal-Poc, through the jungles, and towards her, your sister, alive and waiting.
A place between places where she has been alone for so long, waiting for that little bit of glimmering light that is her sister. And yet she hears the echo’s footfalls, impossibly loud, slow, methodical, approach her and swirling into her field of vision, a woman wreathed with purple energy, smiling, grinning, baring her teeth at her.
“I’ve been looking for you for so long. And I’m so close, and I will burn the world apart to have you.”
And Ted screams
Matt’s mouthful of ice.
What’s he got a handful of, though?
What?
Show your hands!
I don’t know guys, he might’ve snuck a squeeze.