The cast for the first chapter of the series (from left to right): Matthew Mercer, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Anjali Bhimani, Robbie Daymond, & Laura Bailey.
"Whatever they told you at the OUP, you're not the first to encounter such strange phenomenon. But what you saw tonight is only a glimpse of the terrible truths that lie beyond most mundane understanding."
— Lightkeeper Alexandra Elise O'Neill, The Cold Embrace
Candela Obscura is a monthly Actual Play by the team of Critical Role using a system created by Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall. It premiered on Twitch on the 25 May 2023 and has since aired on the last Thursday of every month. The series currently contains four chapters, each presenting a different cast of players and characters.
Produced by Taliesin Jaffe and Chris Lockey, its devlopment began back in 2018 when Taliesin worked on the Call of Cthulhu one-shot for the channel. The game is thus heavily based on Lovecraftian Horror rather than the Heroic Fantasy that Critical Role is used to.
The series airs on Critical Role Twitch.tv channel
or YouTube channel on the last Thursday of each month and as with the main Critical Role campaigns, archived VODs are available on their YouTube channel.
The series provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anyone Can Die: Due to the game system being quite unforgiving, all players may very easily lose their character with a few bad decisions and unlucky rolls. The Circle of the Vassal and the Veil is the only Circle to end their campaign with all members still alive, and they arguably owe their survival to Matt Mercer's generous DM ruling in the final encounter of their campaign.
- The Blank: Victims of the Snatcher in the final session of the first campaign are left alive but with blank, featureless faces. Arlo and Howard both end up like this in the last encounter, but fortunately, either tearing the stolen face out of the creature's body or destroying the Snatcher restores all of the faces it stole.
- Body Horror: Without even mentioning the monsters that appear in the series, the Scars system encourages players to describe how their supernatural injuries affected them and it often leads to that trope.
- Cold Open: Matt, Spenser, and Aabria all open sessions with brief scenes showing NPCs running afoul of the Monster of the Week.
- Canon Immigrant: Alexandra Elise O'Neill, the Lightkeeper of the Circle of the Vassal and the Veil was Marisha's character during Taliesin's Call of Cthulhu One-shot.
- The City: Newfair certainly is this. With monsters roaming in the dark corners of every street and secret organizations fighting in the shadows to control the supernatural incursions of the Flare, there is no need for an investigator to travel far to satisfy their curiosity.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Enforced by the game system in chapter 2. While a single shapeshifter was enough of a threat to inflict a scar on multiple characters on its own, the cinematic nature of Spencer's storytelling means that Nathaniel can easily fight off several off them by himself without rolling dice during the climax.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: The Circle of the Vassal and the Veil is formed during the course of the first session, and its members are - with the exception of Naïve Newcomer Auggie - fairly genteel intellectuals who approach their missions with a lot of attempts to gather information by talking to involved persons. They also have a good relationship with Candela and their Lightkeeper Alexandra, enough so that they're concerned when Alexandra isn't available to give them their third assignment. The Circle of Needle and Thread, by comparison, are already used to working together at the start of their first session, which actually picks up in the middle of a mission. They're a much more action-oriented group which includes several former soldiers, and are noticeably less trusting and more critical of Candela's methods than the previous Circle.
- Darker and Edgier: Par for the course, Candela Obscura being a horror tabletop game, but the contrast with Critical Role's usual content is noticeable.
- Face Stealer: Session 3 of the first campaign features a creature known as a Snatcher. They're described as compulsive collectors of all manner of things, but the one that appears in the episode specifically steals faces.
- Gaslamp Fantasy: The setting is somewhere between this and Tesla Tech Timeline.
- Guns Are Worthless: Though they take care to arm themselves with firearms for their second and third missions, the Circle of the Vassal and the Veil almost never actually encounter anything that gunfire will actually harm during their adventures. The Circle of Needle and Thread has somewhat better luck in this regard.
- In Medias Res: Unlike with the first chapter's rather slow beginning, chapter 2 starts with an Action Prologue putting the members of the Circle of the Needle and Thread in the middle of a Traintop Battle.
- Kill and Replace: The Flare creatures in the second campaign are shapeshifters with a tendency to impersonate people they have killed.
- Kill It with Fire:
- The Circle of the Vassal and the Veil end up relying on fire to distract the cold spirits in their first assignment, and as their primary weapon against the Snatcher in their third mission. This causes some confusion in the latter case when Auggie yells "Fire! Fire!" (as in, "use fire!") and the nearby Red Hand goons - who have been peppering the Snatcher unsuccessfully with bullets - protest that they are firing.
- The Circle of Needle and Thread also rely on this tactic, especially Nathaniel, who sets the Bleed-soaked corpse of their Lightkeeper ablaze to try to prevent the contamination from spreading and sets a shapeshifter on fire with a cigarette lighter.
- Monster of the Week: Each episode of Chapter 1 covers a single assignment of the circle, with a confrontation with some sort of monster during the climax. Chapter 2 upends the format beginning in its second session by confirming that the monster of the previous week remains a threat; the third session technically doesn't involve an official assignment, since by that point their Lightkeeper is dead and there's nobody to assign one to them.
- The Order: Candela is a secretive group with very ancients roots.
- Orifice Invasion: In session two of the second campaign, a shape-shifting Flare monster tries to force itself into Auntie Bee through her mouth.
- Shout-Out: In the second session of the Circle of Needle and Thread, Sean (played by Brennan Lee Mulligan) takes a moment to assess if a Bleed creature grappling Nathaniel is "weaker at the shoulder or the elbow" before cutting its arm off with a sword. Travis, Marisha, and Luis all immediately react to this reference to Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, in which Brennan (as the DM) asked Marisha if her character Patia was weaker at the shoulder or the elbownote .
- Spotting the Thread. In chapter 2 episode 2, several of the players grow suspicious of the way Lightkeeper Draven Kingsley is behaving. Noticing that the character's distinctive scar is not the right shape tips them off that he's a shapeshifter in disguise.
- Trust Password: The Circle of Needle and Thread, finding themselves up against shapeshifters with a penchant for the Kill and Replace, arrange a code word among themselves so they can be sure of who they're talking to. The code they agree upon is "petunia," a reference to Marion's favorite flower, the starry sky petunia.
