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Critical Role Campaign Four

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Critical Role Campaign Four (Web Video)
New STORY. New WORLD. New GAME MASTER.

"It's been 12 years since the end of the Falconer's Rebellion, and the Sundered Houses are stronger than ever, the Revolutionary Council a shadow of its former glory. Why do I say this? To discourage? To frighten? I say it because my grandparents and yours defied the gods and saved their people. What would you do to honor that memory? Would you fight? Would you die? I have no intention of dying tomorrow, but if I do, I'm glad to have gone down fighting. I can still hear the falcon's cry. Can you?"
Thjazi Fang, Official Trailer

Campaign Four of Critical Role is a series of Actual Play web videos, which began airing on October 2, 2025. In a departure from previous campaigns, Matthew Mercer is not the Game Master. Instead, that role goes to Brennan Lee Mulligan, the longtime DM for Dimension 20 and previous DM for Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, Exandria Unlimited: Divergence, and the Downfall arc of Critical Role: Campaign Three. Additionally, several new players join the regular cast alongside the mainstays from the previous three campaigns, and the story takes place in the world of Aramán, a new setting created for the season rather than Exandria as in campaigns 1-3. The game uses the 2024 rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

Taking place seventy years after the Shaper's War which saw the gods of Aramán slain, and twelve years after the failed Falconer's Rebellion in which the common people rose up against the growing tyranny of the noble houses, the story begins with an execution. Thjazi Fang, leader of the Torn Banner and hero of the Falconer's Rebellion, dies despite many efforts to save him, and the ripples caused by his death bring a great many unusual characters to his funeral to mourn, remember, or even curse him. These disparate souls swiftly become tangled up with one another as Thjazi's death proves to be neither the last nor the first in a web of ever-growing intrigue, mystery, and violence, gradually coming together as allies (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) against the forces that threaten them all.

Trailers: Announcement, What is Campaign Four?, Official Trailer

The cast for Campaign Four:

Campaign 4 provides examples of:

  • Animal Motif: Birds. Multiple important elements of the story are named or themed after birds, such as the Falconer's Rebellion and the Stone of Nightsong. Actual birds are also present, with the Rookery where Hal lives being full of magpies, crows infesting Caravan Hill where The Mafia make their home, doves regularly flying over the upper class neighborhoods and rock doves (pigeons) absolutely everywhere. So far every episode has had at least one mention of birds in the environment.
  • Anyone Can Die: Brennan has made it clear that this is a very dangerous campaign and mentions that he advised everyone to create backup characters. Thimble is introduced on the verge of dying and Teor is barely in time to save her. Later Teor, after some very bad rolls, is paralysed and in mortal danger, and is only saved because Tyranny and Wicander decided to go and rescue him. Brennan even reveals in a cooldown after Episode 3 that if Murray had continued to antagonise Primus Tachonis and started casting spells, he would have instantly killed her. While Occtis is killed and then brought back as a Hollow One in Episode 4 and it was revealed that Alex Ward always planned to play his character as such, it wasn't a given that said character would be Occtis and he might have been Killed Off for Real if the rolls hadn't gone in the players' favour.
  • Bait-and-Switch: The campaign's initial advertisement made it clear the plot revolves around Thjazi Fang's imprisonment and impending execution, implying the party's goal would be to either clear his name or otherwise help him escape. Indeed, half of the player characters already have some kind of plan to save him before the campaign even starts. The very first scene is Thjazi being successfully hanged.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: The biggest antagonistic forces introduced in the Overture are Photarch Yanessa Halovar, Wick's grandmother and leader of the Candescent Creed who is keeping a Celestial imprisoned, and Primus Tachonis, Occtis' father using shadowy necromancy to make a power grab.
  • Bookends: The Overture begins with Thjazi Fang's unjust execution at the hands of House Tachonis, after a failed attempt to rescue him. It ends with Occtis successfully resurrected after he's murdered by his family.
  • Breaking Old Trends:
    • As stated in the live announcement by Critical Role, this will be the first main campaign of Critical Role where Matt isn't acting as the DM. Instead, Brennan Lee Mulligan takes over the main DM duties; Matt is a player.
    • The game uses the 2024 rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, as said in the "What is Campaign Four?" video. Previous campaigns all used the 2014 rules.
    • The "What is Campaign Four?" video shows that instead of following one party, the characters are split into three rotating parties in a "West Marches"-style campaign.
    • In a dark example, this campaign marks the first time a character is introduced while already making death saving throws — Thimble is introduced unconscious, and has to roll death saves before anything else. She rolls an 11, a 17, and then a Nat 1, for two successes and two failures. Thankfully, Teor gets to Thimble before she can slip through death's door and casts Cure Wounds on Thimble to bring her back to consciousness.
      • Speaking of Thimble, she marks the first time a character starts with both a stat at the bare minimum and a stat at the maximum; as a Pixie, she only has 3 Strength (due to literally only being a few inches tall) but also has 20 Dexterity, the natural max, to compensate.
    • This is the first campaign where Sam is not playing a small character to start.
    • Episode 1 begins with The Teaser, setting up the action with the Public Execution of Thjazi Fang. Previous campaigns all featured some sort of ad read from a show sponsor to begin the episode, even the intro; Campaign 4 jumps straight into the action instead.
    • This is the first campaign where Episode 1 features no combat, though there are still initiative rolls, and Tyranny makes the campaign's first attack roll...against a bird.
    • For the first time, we don't have a base Barbarian in the roster. On the flip side, for the first time we have not just one but TWO base paladins. note 
  • Central Theme: Death, and how we remember and honor the dead. The death of Thjazi Fang kicks off the campaign, the death of the gods has the afterlife in disarray, and the consequences of those deaths drive the campaign's plot. Additionally, the PC's are continually warned about the deadliness of the world and the likelihood that any of them could be killed.
  • Curb-Stomp Cushion: Primus and Ethrand Tachonis far outclass the level 3 player characters when they first fight, and the careful planning they put into their attack leads to the deaths of almost all of Houses Royce, Davinos, and their staff, along with Occtis. However, both Vaelus and Julien manage to land decisive blows against Primus before he leaves (Vaelus finding a damage vulnerability and Julien critting), showing that he can be killed; Lady Aranessa manages to escape the Palazzo Davinos alongside the PCs; and Occtis ultimately comes Back from the Dead, albeit not entirely as he was.
  • Dare to Be Badass: The narration of the official trailer is essentially a whole speech about this from Thjazi Fang, inspiring people to rebel against the current government.
    Why do I say this? To discourage? To frighten? I say it because my grandparents and yours defied the gods and saved their people. What would you do to honor that memory? Would you fight? Would you die? I have no intention of dying tomorrow, but if I do, I'm glad to have gone down fighting. I can still hear the falcon's cry. Can you?
  • The Dark Times: As there were no longer gods able to send the souls of the dead to various afterlives, something called the Ghost Wars occurred, which lasted at least 20 years. Then, with the rise of Druidism, there was another war called 'War of Axe and Vine' which lasted another twenty years and directly lead to a conflict called 'The Falconer's Rebellion'. Basically, the death of the gods seems to have caused more and more wars, which affect Aramán to the modern day.
  • Devil, but No God: Demons existed in Aramán even before the Shapers arrived, originating from a realm called "The Pit", and continue to exert their power after the Shapers' War. Ksha'aravi, the high prince of demonkind, is by now the highest power known in the setting.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Would it even be a Brennan Lee Mulligan campaign without social commentary in fantasy trappings?
    Brennan: [completely unprompted, pointing directly into the camera] You can't prove there's allegory in this!
    • House Halovar is what prompted the above quote, an organization that does its best to enforce ideals that its leaders don't follow because the only way to benefit from breaking the rules is to be the only one breaking them. The potential comparisons are endless, but given his past body of heavily anti-capitalist work the clearest comparison is to people rich enough to be immune to legal consequences while using those same laws (and the legal teams they can afford) against everyone else. It also has strong parallels with corrupt religious institutions and leaders throughout history.
    • The story is set in a nation born from a rebellion, only for its current leaders to sink into the same corruption it stood against, with Thjazi's speech encouraging the people to remember what their ancestors fought for. This all seems evocative of mid-2020's America.
    • The efforts of the Sundered Houses to defund government organizations to privatize their roles is very similar to the efforts of Elon Musk earlier that year to do the same to organizations like the postal service and the Federal Aviation Administration, someone Brennan's opinions on are well documented.
  • Downer Beginning: Episode 1 begins with Thjazi Fang being hanged from the gallows, with his brother Halandil watching in the crowd. It appears as if he has some sort of plan of escape, only for the lever to be pulled and Thjazi Fang falling through the platform as the rope goes taut, ending up Killed Mid-Sentence when he tries to tell Halandil one last thing through the Message cantrip. The rest of Episode 1 is spent mostly on Thjazi's friends and family at his funeral at Hal's house, with the mood naturally being very somber and depressing. Meanwhile, Thimble almost dies as soon as she's introduced.
  • Dramatic Irony: Because the players are divided into three sub-tables, and because there are many instances where only only one or two characters are 'on stage' while the others players are waiting in the wings for their turn, both the audience and the players are aware of several revelations that various characters aren't; such as House Halover keeping a celestial imprisoned under the city and Wicander being said celestial's grandson, or Bolaire actually being a sentient Puppeter Parasite mask who was created to kill one of the Shapers.
  • Driving Question: Several are introduced over the course of the Overture, setting up the overall goals the three groups split up to investigate.
    • What did Thjazi Fang see in the sky before his execution, that made him suddenly realise the plan to rescue him would fail and he actually was about to die?
    • With all the various people invested in rescuing such a beloved hero, how and why did all of their efforts fail and his execution proceed uninterrupted?
    • What was the various plans and objectives that Thjazi had in the works in the lead-up to his death, some of which were important enough that he tried to use his last moments of life to direct his brother Hal on what to do to succeed without his oversight?
    • What are the goals and objectives of the various shadowy organisations connected to Thjazi's death, and how did his execution aid them?
  • Fallen Angel: After the death of the gods, all celestials went feral and became ravenous killing machines. A celestial on the loose was essentially a death sentence for that entire region.
  • False Reassurance: When Wicander asks if the Filament is actually his angel grandfather's blood, Yanessa is quick to assure him that no, it isn't... because he doesn't have blood, per se, but yes, it does come from his body.
  • First-Episode Twist: As noted under Bait-and-Switch, the initial hook of trying to stop Thjazi Fang's execution is immediately turned on its head when he's successfully hanged in the very first scene. From there, the focus of the campaign turns towards not only picking up the pieces in the aftermath, but also attempting to discover who was behind all the interferences in the plans to save him.
  • Four Is Death:
    • Campaign 4 appropriately starts with the biggest Downer Beginning of any main Critical Role season, with Thjazi Fang dying in the very first scene. The rest of the cast meet at his funeral, with the party collectively dubbed The Mourners.
    • Episode 4 features the massacre of everyone at Palazzo Davinos, save Lady Aranessa, Julian, Thaisha, and Vaelus. This includes Occtis, who winds up the first character death of the campaign when his own brother holds him down and guts him like a fish. While he manages to come back at the end of the episode, albeit as a Hollow One, it was very close to a Killed Off for Real situation had Murray not rolled a Nat 20 when trying to reconnect his soul to his body.
  • The "Fun" in "Funeral": Though the general mood of his funeral is somber, Thjazi's friends and family have some chuckles drinking his favorite liquor, which tastes like piss and makes them wonder if he had a tongue injury in the Falconer's Rebellion.
  • Full-Circle Revolution: Those who overthrew the tyranny of the gods replaced it with "tyranny of their own making" within a few generations, according to Brennan's description in Episode 2. This led to another revolution, the Falconer's Rebellion, which doesn't seem to have succeeded.
  • God Is Dead: Seventy years before the events of Campaign Four begin, the Shapers (the pantheon of this world) were slain. They had put their own interests and loyalties to each other ahead of the welfare of mortals, and many mortals responded by banding together and starting a terrible revolutionary war against the gods and those who stayed loyal to them. Ultimately, the gods were defeated, but their deaths have had significant consequences.
  • Have You Seen My God?: As discussed in the Fireside Chat with Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matt Mercer, the campaign is set in a realm where gods, as are usually known, no longer exist. This has significant ramifications on the nature of faith and divinity as codified by a typical D&D setting. In particular, Clerics can't answer to literal deities anymore and must instead derive their power from more abstracted interpretations of their figures of worship, itself a fractious approach prone to increasing crises of faith (which has conversely led to Druidic schools of thought and "old magic" coming back into fashion).
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Brennan prefaces the fight against Primus and the House Tachonis ghouls that Aramán is a living, breathing world, and as such not every fight that can be picked is one that is fair or balanced. Given that Alex always wanted his character to be a Hollow One and Brennan decided to have his murder and resurrection be a part of the campaign's actual story, the fight was heavily stacked towards Occtis dying, with him starting combat separated from the party, caught in a room under the Silence effect with a higher-level spellcaster and six enemies capable of inflicting Paralysis with every hit..
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: The Crow Keepers pretty much entirely remove themselves from the plot after Vaelus, who's a being of myth, kills their guildmaster in one blow using magic more potent than any of them can muster. One of their number tells her flat out that none of them will have the Crow Keepers come after them after this, which is true... but they're experienced enough to use the systems of power to sic the actual law enforcement on her after.
  • The Plan: Halandil and Thimble both independently hatched plans to rescue Thjazi from his execution and get him out of town. Both efforts failed, so now the co-conspirators need to figure out exactly what went wrong.
  • Plot-Triggering Death: Episode 1 begins with the Public Execution of Thjazi Fang as he's hanged from the gallows. He appears to have a plan to escape, but something in the sky makes him realize that it's not going to work. He spends his last moments alive trying to communicate with his brother Halandil before Thjazi is Killed Mid-Sentence. Most of the Player Characters meet by coming to Thjazi's funeral at Hal's home.
  • Public Execution: The Inciting Incident of the story is the public hanging of Thjazi Fang. Some of his loved ones try to save his life with a complex scheme, but are ultimately unsuccessful.
  • Rewatch Bonus: Bolaire's rather freaked out reaction to Thaisha being attacked by a mask that formed in the coffin of Olbalad in Episode 2 takes on a new layer when Episode 4 reveals he is a similar magical mask. His story about his Expressive Mask having been bound to his face because he did a similar blunder by examining it without precautions also takes on a different context when you realize he's basically relaying how countless poor schmucks have become his "suits" over the years.
  • Rule of Cool: Characters occasionally pull off feats for free that mechanically should take some sort of spell or class resource, such as Thaisha making vines bar Wick and Tyranny from the Fang estate, or Bolaire conjuring weapons from thin air. Such feats are, however, pretty damn cool (and thus far, haven't actually done anything to skew mechanical game balance), so no one's in a hurry to argue that they're against the rules.
  • Serial Escalation: Played With. After the first three campaigns had seven permanent players throughout all of them, this campaign nearly doubles the roster to thirteen players, including the Dungeon Master from the previous campaigns. However, this is mitigated by the players being in rotating groups of four or five at a time, so there are usually fewer people at the table.
  • The Teaser: Episode 1 begins with Azune setting up a plan to help Thjazi Fang escape from his execution. Before it goes off, Thjazi realizes that something has gone critically wrong and he spends his last moments desperately giving Halandil instructions before he is hanged. Only then does the episode cut to the ad read.
  • Three Approach System: The three sub-tables the player characters are divided into all tackle the Campaign's questions from different angles. Which table a character is at depends on their current goals and the interest of their player, with the hope that everyone will try each table by campaign's end.
    • The Soldiers are focused on direct confrontation and combat. Their current goal is to locate Casimir, and exact revenge for his betrayal.
    • The Seekers are focused on world lore and larger cosmological questions.
    • The Schemers are focused on political machinations and NPC interactions.
  • Unequal Rites: The differences and conflicts between different spellcasting traditions is a major point of conflict in the story.
    • The influence of the Shapers made divine magic the dominant form of spellcasting in Aramán for centuries. Since their death, divine magic has greatly waned, but has mostly endured through House Halovar's new religion serving "the light," divine power unrestrained by an actual god and chanelled through the filament they use in their rites and tattoos. In actuality it's a front to consolidate power and the Halovars used a captured celestial to create their own sorcerous bloodline. Meanwhile clerics of the dead Shapers can still cast spells, but their magic is distinctly necrotic after seventy years.
    • Druidism was almost stamped out under the Shapers, but saw a massive resurgence during and after the Shaper's War as a way to reclaim magic without needing the gods' permission and playing a role in killing them.
    • Sorcery, as an inherited power, has largely consolidated into noble houses that now uphold it as a form of elitism. Houses Tachonis, Royce, and Cormoray all have innate sorcerous magic and look down upon other forms of spellcasting.
    • Wizardry is considered the magic of the people as the only form of magic that doesn't require permission from a greater power or being born with it, only the willingness to put in the time and the effort to learn. Unfortunately this means the Sundered Houses now have a vested interest in stamping it out to maintain their exclusive access to magical power, and they've begun making it illegal in public places, installed their own puppet to run the Penteveral as the only magical academy in the city, and are taking steps to bolster the arcane marshals who crack down on unauthorized magic.
    • Other magic does exist, like Hal's bardic magic, but it's as of yet unclear exactly how it fits in. Two player characters are also warlocks, but it's unclear if they actually get their magic from patrons within the lore of the world.
  • War Is Hell: The Cold Open of episode two gives us a snapshot of the Falconer's Rebellion. It's not pretty.
  • Wham Episode: Episode 4 is a real doozy; House Davinos is wiped out in an absolute massacre by House Tachonis, Bolaire is revealed to actually be a sentient mask that wears different people that was made in order to kill one of the Gods, and, most notably, Occtis dies after being gutted by one of his own brothers. It is only a Nat 20 from Murray that prevents him from being Killed Off for Real, and even then he's revived as a Hollow One.
  • Wham Line: The end of Episode 2 is already a bit of a Wham Shot; Wick is "promoted" and is shown his family's innermost secrets. Namely, that the holy liquid they use in their rituals is actually the blood of an insane celestial locked in an iron maiden. And if that wasn't bad enough, his Grandmother then casually says this.
    Wiccy, I'd like you to meet your grandfather.

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