Nightmare Fuel / Critical Role: Campaign One

Scary, horrifying, and disturbing moments from the first Critical Role campaign involving Vox Machina.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

---

Pre-Stream

• In their pre-stream adventures, Vox Machina fought the Dread Emperor, a character taken directly from D&D 3.5e's Book of Vile Darkness. A character who has its own entry in the main D&D Nightmare Fuel page, see there for its full horror. This is also the same incident where Keyleth ended up killing a child.

Episode 03: Strange Bedfellows

• Scanlan's (and everyone's) first encounter with a mindflayer. The way Matt describes the first sighting of one is super creepy.

Episode 06: Breaching the Emberhold

• While approaching the duergar fortress of Emberhold, Vex, Vax, and Scanlan come upon a truly horrifying scene of carnage, where several dismembered duergar body parts are found scattered about with blood spattering the ground. They check for tracks, and among them they find human-sized footsteps that look erratic and randomly placed, with strike marks throughout the sand like bodies were dragged very quickly in a localized spot and then stopped; Matt makes it clear that they don't recognize anything like it. They later spy on a duergar scouting party and overhear that something killed and ate an entire scouting party in seconds, implying that this party was the remains they found earlier.
  • Throughout the rest of the arc, they never encounter anything like a creature that did this. It's entirely possible that it's still down there.
• Vox Machina finally find Lady Kima, naked and chained to a rack and covered in scars and fresh wounds, in a chamber filled with hot irons and hooked instruments and blades. She never explicitly enumerates what happened, but it's entirely possible that the duergar also raped her in addition to physically brutalizing her.
  • Her response once she's freed is to politely ask to borrow Pike's mace and then make hamburger meat out of the corpse of the duergar torturer. It's an understandable response, but still unsettling, especially for viewers more familiar with the friendly, boisterous Kima of the later parts of the campaign.

Episode 08: Glass and Bone

• In her argument with Keyleth, Kima describes being Forced to Watch as the people she hired to help her on her quest into the Underdark were executed in front of her, and earlier mentions that the duergar king himself was party to the torture she endured.
• The central fight of this episode is like something out of a horror film. The party comes across this ominous sea of bone fragments in a cavern, and they are so spooked by it that they pile onto a small and thin rock slab that Tiberius levitates forward. Then they find a duergar and a troll, who are killed by something and then pulled by skeletal arms down into the sea of bones. The creature is another stitch monster. It has four acidic tentacles, violent madness, and the ability to move and twist in ways that it really shouldn't.
  • Specifically, its tentacles are stitched to the side of its torso and hold its body aloft...the body of an elf. When Vax cuts its throat, it reveals that the interior of the trachea is covered with teeth. It gets worse after it's finally killed; Vox Machina dissect the body and find that the arms were shoved inside the torso to make room for the tentacles that were attached to it, and there were even more teeth growing in the body's interior.
  • Tiberius detects a magical essence coming from within, and it's coming from the arms, which had Bracers of Archery on them. It's not further elaborated on, but this was almost certainly an adventurer just like Vox Machina who somehow wound up in K'Varn's clutches and was Reforged into a Minion. Killing the thing was ultimately a mercy.

Episode 10: K'Varn Revealed

• The collective Oh, Crap! that Vox Machina has at the discovery that K'Varn is a beholder does a great job of selling how out-of-their-league they feel.
  • Keyleth is scared right out of her vision and is soaked in cold sweat.
  • You can see Laura's eyes shoot open at Keyleth's line as if she herself (not just Vex) is scared.
  • Scanlan asks what a beholder is and Tiberius responds "it's something we don't want to fight".
  • When shown a picture of a beholder and told what it can do, Grog responds, "Oh, so it's the worst case scenario".
  • Percy, calm and rational as ever, describes his strategy for handling the situation. It is based on avoiding K'Varn as much as possible and freeing the mind-flayers so they can fight on Vox Machina's behalf.
  • Pike suggests using Divine Intervention (10% success rate and, if successful, can't be used again for weeks) to see if Sarenrae will personally help them.
  • Lady Kima, who up until this point has been really gung-ho about smiting evil, suggests reconnaissance instead of attacking.

Episode 16: Enter Vasselheim

• When Vox Machina and their allies reach the final room of the vault, it is covered in spider webs and Vex senses a horde of phase spiders living here along with several much bigger creatures. The party stealths, sets up a defense, and buffs themselves up, but none of it matters when they discover what else is in the room with them. As soon as they seal the Horn of Orcus, four giant platinum golems activate; the first crushes one of the larger spiders in a single stomp. Matt makes his spookiest voice since Clarota and says, "GET OUT!" The party immediately obeys. Grog doesn't try to fight it, Vex doesn't try to pry any sapphires lose, and Scanlan doesn't make any jokes. They just run as fast as they can. Between the music, Matt's narration, and the Skill Challenge, it is a tense chase scene.

Episode 21: Trial of the Take, Part 4

• The party encounters a pair of phantoms which immediately possess Vax and Keyleth. This leads to several tense rounds where they have to knock their party members unconscious to free them from their ethereal captors without killing them. Keyleth approaches the edge of death.

Episode 22: Aramente to Pyrah

• After unwittingly throwing themselves into the Elemental Plane of Fire, Matt asks for a stealth check. They do so. Then he reveals that a red dragon is soaring over head; an ancient red dragon. These are CR 24. Compared to them, Rimefang, who almost killed both Scanlan and Percy, is an upstart teenager. If Vex hadn't cast Pass Without a Trace just prior to this, it would have seen them. You can see how shocked the cast is and how relieved they are that it didn't notice them. They also give Matt grief after the session ends.
  • Even more horrifying in hindsight: That's not just any ancient red dragon. That's Thordak. If the party had gotten wiped by him then and there, Vox Machina wouldn't have been there to take down the Chroma Conclave.

Episode 24: The Feast

• Vax getting trapped by the Briarwoods, who then say he looks "delicious." Note that this is also the last sentence before the Cliffhanger.

Episode 25: Crimson Diplomacy

• Percy snaps, and goes through every shade of Ax-Crazy from the moment he fights the Briarwoods and on. Perhaps the most chilling part is when he shoots the fingers off a wounded servant. In-universe, these events seem to have deeply shaken Keyleth.

Episode 26: Consequences and Cows

• Desmond's entire recollection of the horrible series of events after the sacking and occupation of Whitestone by the Briarwoods and their employed army of cutthroats and mercenaries, and his subsequent nightmarish experience in the city's castle after being taken in as the Briarwoods' personal coach driver. Brilliantly voice-acted courtesy of Matt Mercer, the boy's tale is enough to chill anyone listening to the bone.

Episode 27: The Path to Whitestone

• Percy's dream at the beginning is him reliving the murders of his family and his flight from Whitestone. It is rather graphic.
  • Later on, Percy is reluctant to involve his friends in his Briarwood trouble given how much it has cost them already. Then he hears a demonic voice in his mind. It whispers Vengeannnnnnce... over and over again. He immediately changes his mind.

Episode 28: The Sun Tree

• The eponymous Sun Tree in Whitestone.
  • There are eight corpses strung up from the tree, painted and dressed to look like Vox Machina. The two worst effigies were an eight-year old child to represent Scanlan, and a poor, random bear for Trinket. In the words of everyone watching, fuck the Briarwoods.
  • Just the manner in which Matt describes it is chilling. The players are all visibly shaken; Taliesin and Marisha at different points say that their characters look away and have had enough, but Matt keeps talking as if no one said anything, his narration matter-of-fact and to the point.
  • This becomes even freakier when the third campaign revealed the one dressed as Vex is none other than Laudna, and that they were horribly tortured before they were hanged.

Episode 29: Whispers

• The Banshee that attacks Percy, Scanlan and Vax in the church. It takes out Percy with a wail (Reduces to 0 if failed) and then attacks him again while he's prone.
• At the altar in Pelor's profaned temple, the party finds alchemical substances and notes from a Briarwood agent. They imply that someone is trying to copy Percy's invention. Vox Machina could soon be faced with enemy gunslingers. This is the "terrible mistake" that Taliesin spoke of in a previous Q&A session.
• Percy kills Sir Kerrion Stonefell, one of the people on The List, and briefly appears to transform into the smoky entity from his nightmares. Grog then rolls a Nat 20 to pull out a prisoner's tongue, Percy brands him with The List, and then Grog tosses him out a window. Then Vox Machina burns the structure down while branding it with the De Rolo family crest. The revolution is off to a dark and bloody start.

Episode 31: The Gunpowder Plot

• The scenes of the revolution get pretty gruesome. You have giants crushing barely armed civilian militia and skeletal shock troops emerging from the darkness and fog. More viscerally than that, there is a sense that the revolution is getting out of control. There are already many civilians out attacking the undead giants but Vox Machina isn't ready. They are (not completely but significantly) injured and tapped out spell-wise and want/need to rest. If they do, civilians die and the revolution might collapse. If they don't, they might get overwhelmed.

Episode 33: Reunions

• Is Cassandra a mole? That kind of paranoia makes for tense scenes. On one hand, a Decoy Damsel is very possible given Sylas' Charm ability. On the other hand, Cassandra is between vicious captors and suspicious rescuers who might kill her first.
• Once again, Vox Machina has a close call with ghosts. Three of them possess Vax, Keyleth and Grog. Thus half the party is trying to kill the other. Both sides are badly hurt before its over; Percy is one failed save away from death. Looming over this battle is the possibility that Lord and Lady Briarwood might step in at any time, and finish off the weakened group.

Episode 34: Race to the Ziggurat

• The trap in the Residuum room is very tense. It starts with a pair of walls trapping the party and Lord and Lady Briarwood entering to taunt them. Vax tries to save the group, only to put them in more danger and then get charmed. What follows is a frantic group trying everything they can think of to get out of the death trap. The flying potion Vex took from Ripley was key; if she didn't have it the whole party could have dissolved right then and there.
• The room at the top of the Briarwoods' ziggurat is decorated with "a tapestry of dead bodies", each with their left hand and eye removed. Lady Briarwood also comes within a single hit point of permanently killing Vex and turning her into a zombie. This session was apparently stressful enough to give the players actual nightmares.

Episode 35: Denouement

• Percy's interrogation of Lady Briarwood. When she says everything has already been taken from her, Percy says she still has her sanity and her life. She won't be leaving with the latter, but he might let her keep the former. When she isn't convinced, Taliesan says "I'm going to be an asshole." What does he do? Cast Minor Illusion to make his face look like Lord Briarwood's, screaming in agony and slowly melting. No Mercy Percy indeed.
  Percy: (snarling) That pain you're feeling, I've felt for years. Don't think I haven't imagined every way to hurt you! I could spend years hurting you before you die, in ways you cannot imagine.
• Percy's conversation with Orthax must have been unsettling for his friends. First they see him talking to himself and then pointing his (broken) gun at his own head. They think he's gone crazy; broken from stress and grief. Then the giant shadow demon comes out of him.

Episode 39: Omens

• The ending of the episode. Four ancient chromatic dragons attack Emon. This is an apocalypse level event, and there isn't a damn thing Vox Machina can do about it. The dragons smash a city without breaking a sweat. Gilmore is missing in action and there is no telling if Uriel or any other members of the council survive. Things look grim not only for Vox Machina, but the world.
  • The revelation that Emon's layout in the animated series is based on New York spawns a 9/11-related Does This Remind You of Anything?: flying, foreign enemies attacking a city, bringing down a tower by crashing into its side, causing mass panic, death and destruction, signalling the end of everything familiar and safe for the heroes. Sam Riegel and his wife Quyen Tran are survivors of 9/11, who lived directly across from the South Tower and captured footage of that day (which was used for multiple documentaries).

Episode 42: Dangerous Dealings

• Vax explains how he ended up joining The Clasp. Someone wanted Vex for some unspecified, but definitely creepy, reason, and The Clasp had been hired to take her. Vax made a deal with them to spare her, which involved bringing them a child rapist, who they changed into an exact replica of Vex using a staff made out of human tongues. The worst part about this is that Vax doesn't know what happened after this, meaning that both Vex's stalker and a child rapist who now looks like her might still be out there. In his own words, he didn't tell anyone before because it was too creepy.
  • Making things worse; the aforementioned staff of human tongues? It's a real D&D magical item - a Major Artifact^note the most powerful items in the game, virtually godlike from the Book of Vile Darkness sourcebook for 3rd edition. It's called The Despoiler of Flesh, and changing somebody into the exact physical replica of somebody else is the least of its "fleshcrafting" powers.

Episode 44: The Sunken Tomb

• Vex's death, and Vax's resulting pact with the Raven Queen. In a horrifying split-second, because of one lapse in judgment, their lives - if not the course of destiny for the entire party and Exandria as a whole - changed dramatically and drastically. This was a pivotal event that not even Matt saw coming. This animatic portrayed the events in real time, hammering the shock in even further.

Episode 47: The Family Business

• Matt continues his trend of horrifying, descriptive nightmares. Vax dreams of falling into a dark web as the Raven Queen addresses him as her champion. Meanwhile, Grog dreams of using Craven Edge to cut down hundreds of foes while blinded... only to find, once his eyesight returns, that he has actually cut down farmers, children, and even Pike. And then he looks up to see Kevdak and his former Herd, who are proud of what he has just done.
• Grog is interrogating his goliath cousin "Horace" and listening to how Kevdak and the the Herd have sworn fealty to the black dragon Umbrasyl and taken Westrun for themselves, forcing the people of the city into servitude, and Horace suggests Grog join them. Grog - and by extension Travis - has spent the whole conversation with a fixed leering grin on his face, and says he has a brought a gift, and so saying draws Craven Edge, asks "Are you hungry?", and an initially confused Horace has just enough time to realise Grog isn't speaking to him before Grog "wishbones" him, opening up Horace's chest with the point of the blade - this causes blood to gush from the stricken goliath's throat and chest, before it is sucked back inside by the hungry cursed blade.
  • The party's reaction, and Grog/Travis' total deadpan, nail this home. Everyone in the party is horrified and grossed out not just by the display but by how casually Grog just murdered on of his own kin, albeit one he didn't like and who was persecuting innocent farmers; the party is beginning to cotton onto the fact that Craven Edge is a lot more dangerous and toxic an influence on Grog than they previously thought.
  • After this happens, Laura-as-Vex puts a hand on Grog's shoulder. He flinches, spins and snarls at her before backing off. Much as Grog insists he would never hurt anyone in the party, it's starting to feel like he may not have a choice.

Episode 49: A Name Is Earned

• The cast remark on how much more intense their encounter with Osisa's mate was than they were expecting. The first thing the androsphinx does is age several of them by a decade.
  • The aging effect starts to add up, with Matt remarking that this would have been very bad for a human like Percy.
  • Grog, Scanlan and Vax are almost stranded in the Elemental Plane of Air. Vax is just barely pulled out before the exit portal closes.
  • In order to escape the Elemental Plane of Air, Grog throws Craven Edge as an anchor and accidentally stabs Pike. This happened when Craven Edge was in its empowered form. Grog is basically stunned for the rest of the round and it gives Laura/Vex flashbacks to Pike's first death.
  • Vex almost dies!

Episode 54: In the Belly of the Beast

• Umbrasyl's first acid breath wrecks much of the Herd of Storms, and by "wrecked", Matt means "dissolving in gruesome agony" while the ground and grass congeal into a "death sludge". It stops five feet short of Keyleth, and she responds by turning into an earth elemental.
• The episode ends with Grog hanging from Umbrasyl like a piñata as it flies back to Gatshadow with Vax and Scanlan trapped inside the dragon's body, and the latter two have no obvious means of escape.

Episode 57: Duskmeadow

• Mitigated somewhat by her being a (mostly) benevolent Goddess, but the process of communion with the Raven Queen is still nightmarish. The follower enters a pool of blood within the temple, so deep that the blood reaches head-height before even nearing the center. They have to submerge their entire body in it and experience drowning for a few moments until eventually they are transported to the Raven Queen's realm. The way Matt describes Vax and especially Percy's drowning sensations makes it worse. Percy panics and tries to swim upward, only to find the blood goes on forever with no surface in sight, and eventually resigns himself to his own death.
• Percy's theory that the gate that Thordak used to escape might have been caused by something worse, with the Cinder King just taking an opportunity. Considering Thordak... let's hope Percy's wrong on that one. (Fortunately, he seems to be; the Fire Ashari close the rift without too much of an issue.)
• At the end of the episode, Vax is given a beautiful robe as a gift by Gilmore, and the two of them go for a walk. Gilmore talks frankly about the pain Va'ildan caused him (presumably by dropping him in favor of Keyleth). "Agony for weeks - months. Pain that I’ve never experienced... it's all I can think about." Then he stabs Vax, and slowly turns into the rakshasha Vax killed during the trial for the Slayer's Take.

  Hotis: It's all I can think about.

Episode 61: Denizens of the Moonbrush

• The Last Campsite of Sorudun the Happy. Nothing but some floating magical musical instruments around a campfire playing a jaunty tune... that doesn't get any quieter even if you plug your ears. Anyone who gets too close is forced to dance until they die of sheer exhaustion. An elf and a lycan were already there at the time and both seem near their limit from the way Matt describes it, and Vax and Scanlan end up falling victim to it and are only saved by the group's quick thinking. Matt's description of Vax dancing is extremely creepy, explaining that his smile slowly becomes Joker Venom-esque, all the while stating how Vex notices that the campsite is full of scattered bones, obviously from previous victims. Matt also describes how Scanlan loses his sense of self entirely and is concerned with nothing but the dance. And Vox Machina didn't even figure out how to STOP the enchantment, only managing to pull Scanlan and Vax away, so it could claim more victims in the future.
• The massacre of the Wisher Pixie village is frightful to imagine. Yes, they are jerks who petrify people and use them as lawn ornaments, sometimes for petty reasons, but their home is wiped out and so are all of them. Think about it. It is a typical day in your life and then suddenly your home looks like a burned out wreck. You discover this is an illusion and your leader goes out to find the ones responsible for casting it; false alarm everyone. Then it actually happens.
  • Think of the Fendir who committed the massacre. It is a purge - no survivors, no one allowed to flee. Every pixie is hunted down, slain and eaten. Yes, the Fendir have legitimate grievances against the Wisher Pixies, but Vox Machina never got the pixie's side of the story. The party just might have sided with the greater of two evils, and allowed that evil to escape.

Episode 63: The Echo Tree

• While Saundor himself is pretty spooky, being a haggard elf-like creature spewing black bile while dangling from vines in a cancerous tree, what is really scary is the emotional threat he poses to Vex. He knows a lot about her, and her past. He tries to use this knowledge to worm his way into her confidence and convince her to form a "bond" with him. Thanks to Laura's stellar role-play, Vex appears tempted to accept his offer. When she ultimately refuses, he is furious. He focuses on her to the exclusion of the rest of the party until she is unconscious, and attacks her again when Scanlan heals her, and again when she drinks a healing potion. It is implied that his goal is to trap her soul in his tree somehow, like a yandere.
  • When Saundor reveals how capable he is in combat, Vex and/or Laura starts regretting her decision. The corrupted arch fey dons armor, equips Fenthras (the vestige she was looking for), summons treants, and uses Legendary and Lair actions along with Legendary Resistances, "like a dragon".

Episode 64: The Frigid Doom

• The flyby of the dragons and the desperate evacuation of the residents of Whitestone, especially the argument between Keyleth and Percy about the best way to warn the residents^note Keyleth wants to use Skywrite to spread word quickly at risk of alerting the dragons, while Percy wants to warn everyone more slowly on foot to avoid drawing attention at the risk of more casualties if the dragons are there to attack rather than simply flying past.

Episode 68: Cloak and Dagger

• Near the end, Percy is tragically killed by his archrival, Anna Ripley. Scanlan is able to contain her with a clutch Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, and what follows is quite possibly the most terrifying display of brutality ever exhibited by Vox Machina, as they proceed to slowly surround Anna before literally tearing her apart in a fit of grieving rage as soon as Scanlan drops the Sphere. It is all described in such loving detail, too. The party and the players are quite possibly at the lowest point they've ever been, and it's both incredibly unnerving and heartbreaking to see.

Episode 69: Passed Through Fire

• Matt's description of Orthax "hungrily feasting" on Percy's soul during his death. Even worse is the knowledge that he's been in that situation for an entire day - and once Percy comes back, he implies that it felt much longer.
• The reveal at the end of the episode is pretty scary in retrospect. What we all, player and viewer, thought was Seeker Assum was actually Raishan in disguise. The Chroma Conclave's green member has known about their Home Base for a while now, and has had free reign of it for just as long. When Raishan's ruse is spotted, she buys time for herself by invoking If I Wanted You Dead..., and she isn't kidding.

Episode 77: Clash at Daxio

• The description of Thordak can be considered truly nightmarish in itself. And then there's the reveal of his actual physical form in Episodes 78 and 79, along with the description (and portrayal) of his sheer insanity.

Episode 82: Deadly Echoes

• The reverse gravity chasm trap. It was bad enough that the gravity in the chasm was inverted. It was even worse when bodies starting falling upward and the ceiling was a massive amount of bodies bound together in the shape of a human skull. And then they find out all those bodies are undead, and they are hungry.

Episode 86: Daring Days

• It's more on a personal level, but there's something unnerving in what we know about Taryon Darrington's father. Taryon initially says he's a real estate agent, before admitting he doesn't know what he actually does. But the way he values strength and, in Taryon's own words, "a cut-throat attitude", is fine with his daughter constantly picking up on his son and completely disrespects him for not being strong and ruthless (Taryon might be arrogant and a bit spoiled, but he does have some impressive skills, considering he is at the very least capable of building constructs, but that means nothing to his father), and the sheer vagueness about the details of how he got and kept his fortune, with his own son knowing nothing except that he has a huge influence in many places and that Taryon is convinced that he would have no problem having the whole of Vox Machina killed, makes it a far darker picture.

Episode 87: Onward to Vesrah

• Percy reveals just how bad it was to have his soul consumed by Orthax.

Episode 88: Tangled Depths

• The episode is an exercise first in paranoia as Vox Machina tries to find the requisite three lodestones in the water plane while avoiding the Kraken, and then in endurance and helplessness when the Kraken takes notice of them, as characters are grappled and freed, swallowed and spit up, and knocked unconscious and revived over and over again over the course of hours of gameplay, while the group has to fight the monster off without killing it.
• Then there's the usual fears inherent in being in an eternal plane of water with limited visibility and enormous sea-life - Taliesin says it's literal nightmare fuel for him as a ichthyophobe.
• In the episode of Talks Machina following this episode, Matt revealed that even had Vox Machina passed all their stealth checks and quickly found the lodestones, the Kraken would still have made its presence known in some way, and that it had probably been watching them the whole time.
• The Kraken is terrifying enough on its own, but what makes it even more disturbing is just how limited Vox Machina's mobility is underwater. Vox Machina could fight the beholders, vampires and dragons they tangled with in previous arcs on relatively equal footing, since they could move and fight without hindrance. But on the Water Plane, the heroes can barely move, much less fight at full capacity. The Kraken, meanwhile, isn't hindered at all and is more than happy to exploit its advantage.

Episode 89: Curious Tides

• The second thing to occur, following a brief meeting between Vax and the Raven Queen, is the Kraken trying to force its way through the portal between the Water Plane and the Material Plane. When the guards manage to repel the tentacle and beak, it turns to face the portal, its eye taking up the entire space. When Grog hits the eye with his hammer, it promises Grog that this isn't the last Grog has seen of it before retreating.
• After returning to Greyskull Keep from Vesrah, Vox Machina decides to crack open one of the books they collected after defeating Raishan. It's the journal of a man named Opash, describing in detail his experiments with the soul, necromancy, torture, lichdom, and dracolichdom. Opash's account abruptly ends, and the book continues with Thordak's writings, trying to piece together an unknown equation. Vex, who had been reading the book, nearly falls victim to a presence from the book reaching out into her mind before she shakes it off and shuts the thing.

Episode 91: Vox Machina Go to Hell

• Keyleth and Taryon both accidentally consume souls. Even worse, Percy does so knowingly, and discovers the sensation is familiar - while possessed by Orthax, he tasted souls from his pepperbox kills.
• Really the entire City of Dis counts. Matt's horrifying descriptions of the city even cause some of the players to shiver. While there had been a sense that there were at least some human like entities in the City of Brass, the group is hard pressed to find anything that looks human here, save for the occasional Tiefling or heavily abused slave. Among the things they see include: alien geometry; tortured souls twisted into horrifying masses of flesh, chained as servants to greater demons, some of which are casually impaled on the sides of buildings; terrifying winged creatures that stalk the city and shriek eerily; a form of guard that is nothing but a twisted pile of bones with insectoid-like wings and a scorpion tail; and, at one point, a large orb containing the screaming souls of some unfortunates. And through it all, the ominous iron tower sits on the horizon, shifting into a person's view no matter where they look. The players quickly began to question the wisdom of their decision to journey to this awful place. Travis even lampshades it well by saying "It's like something out of Silent Hill".

Episode 93: Bats Out of Hell

• After the battle with Utugash, the group is intentionally and willingly arrested in The Nine Hells. This was all part of their plan, but they did come awfully close to torture at the hands of a chain devil. Matt's description of the prison is utterly horrifying in its detail, and the group is left in a less-than-ideal position bound to a wall with their gear just out of reach.
• Due to not getting a chance to heal between fighting Utugash and the prison escape, Keyleth falls unconscious against a bone devil and fails two death saving throws... while the prison was on high alert and the party was about to be swarmed by guards. She was also the only one with Plane Shift, which was essentially the party's only possible escape at that point. It's very, very likely Vox Machina was one roll away from a horribly gruesome Total Party Kill at the hands of devils in hell if she had died.

Episode 97: Taryon My Wayward Son

• The event itself is Played for Laughs as the cast all laugh their asses off out of character at Keyleth's lapses in judgment causing her untimely death. However, in-universe, it was probably horrifying for Vex: all she saw was Keyleth yelling "we're gods!" and jumping off a cliff, before having to retrieve her mutilated body. When she returns to the party, Keyleth was covered in enough blood to make another Kiki. Vax's reaction is appropriately distraught and relieved; if she had died, unlike with Vex, Vax wouldn't have been there to save her. Even the prim-and-proper Percy lets loose with a horrified "Oh, sweet Pelor!" as he was the first to notice Vex and Keyleth return.

Episode 99: Masquerade

• Matt's depiction of Howaardt Darrington's fury when he discovers that Tary has refused his offer and given away most of the family's property to clear their debt is hauntingly similar to a real-life abusive parent. The reactions of the rest of the family were terrifyingly realistic as well.

Episode 100: Unfinished Business

• After over 60 episodes, ancient dragons, the deaths of nearly every member of the party, and the destruction and rebuilding of a nation, we discover that Lady Briarwood is still alive, and the ritual that failed? It didn't fail the second time. The look on Taliesin's face is one of utter shock and despair.

Episode 101: Thar Amphala

• The descriptions of the cultist corpses going through the siphon are quite disturbing. The party then decides to go to the Shadowfell through the siphon beneath Whitestone. Fortunately they put on the amulet before crossing through, or else the damage suffered would've been a lot worse.
• The Shadowfell itself. Just like with the Nine Hells, Matt brings the plane of death and despair to life in his narration.
• The fact that Delilah Briarwood is already in the process of completing her ritual for Vecna's ascension. The party is torn between two bad options: rush in to stop her without knowing what they're up against and at less-tha-full-strength, or scout and rest while Delilah finishes her ritual.

Episode 102: Race to the Tower

• Vecna, the Whispered One, the Undying King, rises. His arrival is as great and terrible as befits this storied character. And he lives through the episode. Vox Machina almost doesn't.
• Vecna uses one of the worst 9th level spells: Power Word: Kill. No roll to hit. No saving throw. If you don't have enough hit points, you are dead. The players' reactions show how horrible it is to be on the wrong end of such a spell.
  • A.O.E Hold Person, Finger of Death, Power Word Kill, Disintegration, Banishment to a plane that is very much not harmless. Matt-as-Vecna-and-Deliliah isn't pulling any punches. Four members of Vox Machina are almost prema-killed. When the party freaks out and attempts to flee to the Feywild, Vecna tries to counterspell it. Grog facing a Bolivian Army Ending is particularly scary.

Episode 103: The Fate-Touched

• Keyleth points out that, as she used Foresight on Vax in Episode 101, he more than likely had forewarning of his own death by disintegration in the previous episode but, being paralyzed, was completely unable to do anything about it.
• Percy's cold and logical reaction to seeing Vax return, firmly insisting that Pike use Turn Undead on him and that they insure he is not undead or a trick by Vecna to undermine the group before returning his equipment or letting Vex or Keyleth too close to him, makes more sense given his experience with Cassandra and the Briarwoods. Whilst apologetic for being suspicious, he insists that if this is a trick and Vax is used to betray them somehow, Vex and Keyleth would never recover from it. Vax, understanding, doesn't resist.
• The eyeball the party takes from Delilah Briarwood's corpse. It looks around of its own accord. When Scanlan picks it up, it compels him to try and gouge his own eye out. Pike knocks it from his hand, and it burrows into the ground. Yeesh. Even after Pike cures him and supposedly breaks the eye's hold on him, he insists on safe-keeping it for the group. It's very much a One Ring sort of vibe.

Episode 105: The Fear of Isolation

• Vecna finds Vox Machina as they track down an old gnome named Sprigg that will be useful in defeating him, and somehow has assassins arrive in the blink of an eye. The worst part? We have no clue how he knew or did any of this.

Episode 106: The Endless Atheneeum

• Even though Scanlan succeeds in becoming the champion of Ioun, there's a pause in the celebration as Ioun... sees something. And then, to the horror of cast and chat, we learn the truth - Vecna has succeeded into ascending to godhood. In only two days. Despite Vox Machina successfully gaining the favor of two gods, aside from the Raven Queen, it might all be for nothing now.
  • Even worse is the setting out-of-universe. The crew is silent, there's no music playing, and the only noise is Matt's voice as he describes it.
• Delilah Briarwood is alive yet again. As if that wasn't enough, as Keyleth is scrying on her, Vecna speaks directly into her mind, taunting her all the while.
  Vecna: Like what you see?

Episode 111: Shadows of Thomara

• Pike's attempt to Speak With Dead fails horrifically, inflicting 31 damage to her because it was nothing but laughter.
• Scanlan's first attempt at taking control of the Sphere of Annihilation results in him losing half of his face.

Episode 112: Dark Dealings

• The mansion is destroyed with Dispel Magic. The good: everyone lives. The bad: Delilah Briarwood, Sylas Briarwood, and a necrodragon await right outside. The ugly: Delilah's all ready with a Counterspell to anticipate Keyleth's clutch Plane Shift. The relief: Delilah's spell failed.
• The description of Vax being strangled to death by a morbidly curious Artagan creeps everyone out, especially Marisha (who complains that she has to go home with Matt).

Episode 113: The Final Ascent

• After killing Delilah, Arkhan reanimates her corpse and binds it to his will. However, since Vex killed her with Fenthras, we get the mental image of the shambling, reanimated corpse of Delilah Briarwood following the party while a tree rapidly grows out of her body.
• The big one: Vex and Vax kill Kaylie and Cassandra, with Arkhan nearly doing so to Gilmore (as he said, luckiest natural 1 ever). Sure, they didn't know they were doing so, but the cast noted how seriously fucked-up Matt was (compared to the previous episode, even) to come up with such a thing that exploited their playstyles for such a horror.
  • The way Gilmore was taken provides some good Paranoia Fuel too: He was just in his workshop when he was grabbed and made into a Remnant.
  • Sam/Scanlan's wide, nervous, rictus-like grin.

Episode 114: Vecna, the Ascended

• You thought Kaylie, Cassandra, and Gilmore's abduction from last episode was bad? Vox Machina arrives at the top of Entropis to find that not only is Vecna stories tall, but he has Velora Vessar imprisoned inside his chest. A Sunburst from Keyleth frees her and she's ejected from Vecna's chest, but when Vex flies down and catches her, she realizes that the attack killed Velora.
• Zahra and Kashaw show up in the middle of the battle, riding in on wyverns. Hooray! They each manage to get a single action in before Vecna casts Hold Monster on them...and their mounts, sending them plummeting. They can't even scream, just fall silently, helpless to save themselves.
  • Worse, the party realizes Zahra's pregnant just as they watch her plunge out of view.
• Speaking of frozen and helpless, as soon as J'mon Sa Ord joined the battle in their Devo'ssa form, Vecna trapped them inside of a mid-air Force Cage, which couldn't be dispelled and remained in place for an hour.
• Vecna is just full of delightful tricks. As soon as he discovers the threat that Grog is, attuned to the Sword of Kas, he casts the spell Maze on Grog, banishing him to another plane where he's trapped in an endless maze.
• Vox Machina came within ten hit points of destroying Vecna's avatar completely, which would have allowed Vecna to retreat to a reliquary and come right back again. This could have dragged the fight against Vecna on even longer, and Vasselheim might have been completely destroyed.

Episode 115: The Chapter Closes

• Vecna has been defeated, the world is at peace... So in the safety of Whitestone, Grog pulls a card from the Deck of Many Things. The result? The Void—Grog's soul is sucked from his body into a small red gem safeguarded in the Halls of Pandemonium. Pike, who had been in the forest, arrived just in time to witness it, unable to do anything to stop it.