- We've also got some very,
very powerful magical artifacts
which you've talked about before.
What are these, and how do
they play into this campaign?
- So the Vestiges of Divergence
are a powerful artifacts
that were constructed
during the battles leading
into the Calamity, which was
the end of the Age of Arcanum,
the age before the one
that currently happens
in the Campaign Guide.
This is a time where the gods walked
on the Prime Material plane.
Great cities of majocracies plotted
against each other and divinity.
This was a time of extremely
high-end magic power
and conflict and warfare
that tore across the surface
of Exandria, and when this
war was finally finished
and the Betrayer Gods were
banished to the distant realms,
there was the realization from the divine
that our presence here is a
threat to all of our creation.
And so they actually
abstained from being part
of the world of man and
all mortals around them,
and that was called the divergence
where they separated from the world
they had helped bring life to.
The vestiges are the
artifacts of their champions
and powerful warriors
of these final battles
that were just lost to time,
and these artifacts embodied an element
of the divinity that
created them or the mages
who had forged them to
fight for their interests.
And as they were lost to time,
they began to lose their power
and eventually go dormant.
A dormant vestige is a
decent magical artifact
in its own right.
The idea is as the person who wields it
who is carrying this
object with them begins
to grow as an adventurer, as
they begin to find themself,
as they begin to be
inspired by the passions
or the vengeance they carry,
they watch this item grow with them,
and the item can awaken
in three different stages.
There's the dormant
stage, the awakened stage,
and there's the exalted stage,
and each time, the item
gets more powerful benefits,
gains additional properties
and essentially becomes
an object that the character
can carry with them
throughout their adventure and becomes one
of kind of their defining characteristics.
This object, this magical
item becomes a character
in its own right as part
of their overall persona.
The thing about the vestiges
is not all of them are made
by good gods, and in fact, in this book,
a lot of the focus is more
on what the Betrayer God
creations were, as well.
So a lotta these artifacts
sit in the realm of Asmodeus
and sit in the realm of Gruumsh
and other darker deities out there.
Previously in other
things in "Critical Role",
we've seen the more player
friendly positive ones.
Here you get to possibly
introduce things either
for villains to use or for
players to wrestle with
and see if they can bend to their will.
- I just wanna play one.
- Well, there's that, too.
(both laughing)
- Let's make it playable race.
- (laughing) Hey, fine!
- I'm sure everyone
will be fine with that.
- Yeah, we'll make a change real fast.
It's already in print.
We'll make it work.
- [Todd] Yeah, I mean, well.
- (laughing) Down the road.
- A leaflet that can fit in the book.
- [Matthew] There you go, perfect!
- Yeah, last minute change.
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