Liam O’Brien Talks FCG’s Death On Critical Role & Shocking Candela Obscura Ending

Critical Role’s horror anthology series Candela Obscura closed out the story of The Crimson Mirror with a terrifying end as the circle was broken with some of the members meeting a tragic end. Liam O’Brien served as Game Master, weaving this horrifying tale or mystery and horror with Aimee Carrero, Alexander Ward, Imari Williams, and Taliesin Jaffe starring as their own circle of Candela Obscura investigators. Each chapter of Candeloa Obscura consists of three eipsodes in which the investigators must protect the Fairelands from dangerous magick.

In the final episode of The Cimson Mirror, their investigation and past come to a head as they explore Old Faire. Although they faced impossible odds, the two managed to survive their final fight and keep The Fairelands safe. The entirety of Candela Obscura: The Crimson Mirror is available on Critical Role’s YouTube and Twitch pages now.

Screen Rant interviewed Liam O’Brien about the final episode of Critical Role’s Candela Obscura: Crimson Mirror. He discussed why he’s glad two of the characters survived, even though his goal was to TPK and what he would like to explore in future Candela Obscura adventures. O’Brien also reflected on the death of Sam Riegel’s character, Fresh Cut Grass, in Critical Role.

The Possibility Of Candela Obscura Characters Dying “Was Real”

O’Brien reflected on how this arc of Candela Obscura played out, including how the players subverted his expectations. He joked about how Carrero has Laura Bailey’s force of will to survive impossible odds at the table.

Liam O’Brien: I’ve been very happy with how it’s been received and I had a devilishly good time at the table with them. From the outset in the back of my head, I didn’t tell them this, I told them that they were very much in danger and the possibility of them dying was real, but I intended to take them all out. Despite my best efforts some of them made it out and I will put that up to their unnaturally good luck with rolling… [Aimee’s] a good negotiator. She’s a little bit like Laura Bailey in a way, in that just by force of will is able to snake her way through situations.

O’Brien broke down the preparation that went into this arc, including the fluidity he needed to craft the story around the choices that the players made. He revealed how certain decisions made by the characters and how the players embodied their characters impacted the story he told, including the final battle.

Liam O’Brien: That is true. I think that I had very definitive ideas of places I wanted to go. I definitely knew where I wanted to start. I had some idea of how I wanted to end. I certainly knew the location that I was heading for in the final game, but the center of the story and all the details that my players were going to bring to the table, I had no idea in advance.

So I really decided to stay loose in the center of the story and see where each of the players pushed and pulled things. I did have ideas about where we would go in the back third, in the final act of this story, but a lot of it is different than I ever anticipated.

That’s really just the thrill of playing this game or any game around a table together. If you let yourself be open to it sometimes, and we talked in one of our earlier conversations, with a one-shot there’s not a lot of room for extreme improvisation. Certainly, how you handle the moments thrown at you, that is always different.

If you’re an actor on stage, you have to hit the same marks every time. You know that you’re going to go from here to here, but there is nuance to be found, and it can be different every time you do it. It’s just a little more confined. But with a full-on campaign or with these three games, there’s more room to see where things will take you.

One example of that I’ll say is with Aimee’s character, with Grimoria, her connection to the past and her abilities as a Medium, not a lot of that was gelled in advance. Her connection to Tia Griffia sort of morphed and changed and became far more important into the story that we were all telling together as the game went on.

We didn’t shoot these games in a day. There was space, days often between them. I would go off like a madman into this laboratory and just write, think, and figure out what the previous game meant for what was coming up next. Sometimes it was challenging, but it was very exciting to draw it all together.

You get to the end of a campaign or an end of one of these chapters of Candela and one of the most exciting and rewarding parts of it is creating a story, telling a story, being happy with it, but having discovered it with the people at the table with you. I really love my time with those four players.

The Best Horror Stories Show Survivors Having “To Grapple With Themselves”

O’Brien has shared his love for the world and lore of Candlea Obscura before, especially the mystery surrounding Old Faire. He used the Crimson Mirror as an opportunity to highlight elements of Old Faire by not only having it tie into the Circle of the Crimson Mirror‘s investigation but connecting it to the characters as well.

Liam O’Brien: Gosh, I would be happy to return to the table to run games in the future, and there’s a lot of untapped fun that is both in the core campaign book. I don’t know if you’ve had time to go through the campaign book and see sort of what the book presents for places you can go down an Old Faire, but they’re trekked down through, they just briefly passed by multiple things that are listed in the book.

So there’s plenty to get into. At one point they passed by just a single building pretty early into their trek down, and that’s a whole location listed in the book, and that’s ripe for any game owner to explore just that building.

There was a lot of that. I think my overall concept and what I wanted them to feel narratively in that third chapter is I wanted the bottom drop. That moment before the break would give them. I wanted them to feel like they had gone down further than anyone had ever been before in Old Faire and then have the rug yank and then have them drop twice that far.

Because I was curious to see what effect that would have on the players and what it would feel like to be like, Oh my gosh, we couldn’t go any deeper than we are and then double it. What do four people pressed in that situation do next? That was the scariest moment of the entire run for me was entering that chamber because it was a bit like me setting up a little cardboard box with a pie under it to try to lure four raccoons into.

I am sure I could have finagled and found a way to get them down there. I’m sure I could have, but I didn’t map out a plan B or C at all. I put all of my focus and force of will into making sure that the raccoon trap worked. My fears were born out to be true because we weren’t in there but a minute and someone at the table’s like, and we got to get out of here, and all of alarms and bells are going off in my head, and I happily was able to just do a little slight of hand look over here for a second just to buy me the time I needed to keep them in there to drop the floor.

But I don’t know if the audience can see it in my eyes. But all the gears were [spinning. The CPU was firing up and the engine was starting to hum in the bottom of my brain, but we got there.

O’Brien explained how he wanted to find ways to surprise his players, especially Jaffe and Ward, who had been playing for years. He discussed the balance between leading the players into the story he wanted to tell, especially the final battle, and giving them the agency to guide the story in the direction they find most enticing.

Liam O’Brien: Well, I could talk on that question from two angles. One is we spend so much time in our other campaigns where we fight all kinds of monsters and creatures, and we’re used to that. I wanted to find a way to put all the players, including Taliesin who’s played hundreds of hours like I have, and Alex, who’s played a ton as well, on their heels a bit. There’s a fairly good chance you’re going to run into a creature or a supernatural force in the world of Candela, but I wanted to put them in a situation where they weren’t really sure how to cope with what was thrown at them.

Which is tricky because you also want them to have agency and be able to see that there are things they can do and choices to make, but I bathed it in a curtain of hallucination and vision. So that was one reason I just wanted to give them something very, very unexpected and see how they swam in that soup. But then also, I have a limited amount of time with my players. They all created rich backstories. I knew some of the places I wanted to go. The masquerade was really invented, born off of the first game.

So I ran off and spun that up. I knew that I wanted to be in the city, and I wanted to give my players, especially Taliesin’s character, who is a socialite,. So I wanted to make sure he could socialize. But I don’t have much time if I’m trying to tell this story that connects back to Old Fair and involves both a very important person that I invented and one of the core characters of ancient history in this setting.

I wanted to explore their legacies and the world of Old Faire. I treat the world of Candela very much as a character. I wanted to make sure that I gave them time with their personal lives and the ending, and that sort of encounter allowed me to pull in further threads of their inner life because they were dealing with an entity, but they were also coping with themselves in that moment. So I knew it would be ripe for them to grapple with their histories and role play in that way.

A lot of the best horror is the people, the survivors, the people that are surviving, they have to grapple with themselves.

Taliesin “Brought His Own Noodling” To Critical Role Table

O’Brien broke down why he as Game Master appreciated the details that Jaffe added not just to his character, but the world. Jaffe is one of the original creators of Candela Obscura and homebrewed his character for the Crimson Mirror. O’Brien also explained why it “delighted” him when Jaffe crafted the letter for Grimoria and how it played out with Leo surviving.

Liam O’Brien: I really loved Taliesin’s time with this chapter of Candela because, I encouraged this, and I love seeing how much Taliesin brought of his own noodling to the table, the design of his apartment, and the fashion in the second game. There was so much creativity and personal flair that Taliesin brought to the story.

Some game runners will be like, I’m the one crafting the narrative, but for me, it’s all gravy, it’s all good. Everything Taliesin brought to the table only made it richer. I did not know that letter existed until the day of that game. So I had it as a possibility. I think I love that Leo survived more than if he passed away because I like players and people who run games.

It’s so fun when expectation is subverted. Yes, we can all imagine the version of that where only Grimoria survived and found that letter. But it was so endearing and surprising to have him exhausted from everything they’ve been eight feet away from her, passed out on that chaise and her to find that letter. To discover that gesture, and then we can all imagine that that enriched and informed their relationship for the rest of their days. It was lovely, really lovely touch.

O’Brien explained how the connection between Grimoria and Atia’s bond evolved in part because of how Carrero brought her own flare to the Medium class. He also shared how this connection became a pivotal part of the final battle and connective tissue throughout all three episodes.

Liam O’Brien: Aimee really inspired me with her take on those abilities that she had. We sort of evolved them or funded them towards her own specific flavor. It’s a little different than I think it was listed on the page. And rather than go like, Oh, that’s a problem, or, Oh, that’s not what I was expecting. I ran with it.

Another story beat in the three games was in the second game. Grimoria had a vision of Atiya’s on a hill thousands of years ago and breaking some sort of artifact on her knee and the Grimoria’s vision going white. A lot of the connective tissue between that woman who lived so long ago and Emperor Kalanis and this creature, a lot of that was amorphous or did not exist. It was Aimee’s role playing as Grimoria of inhabiting the memories and the knowledge of these figures from the past that kind of helped me create the webbing that you talked about, how each game felt like its own individual story, but that there was an arc connecting it.

I just saw it as a really interesting way to sort of send tendrils out from between the three games from the start to the finish. Some of that was planned, but a lot of it, Aimee and the other players in the story, the story exists between the game runner and the player. It’s not here and it’s not on them only, it’s in the space between, and that story told me what needed to be done.

Liam O’Brien Discusses Aimee Carrero’s “Desire To Find Meaning In The Dead”

Although O’Brien had been planning to have all the characters die, Grimoria and Leo survived. He shared why he loved this unexpected ending, including why it felt right for the story. O’Brien also discussed how Carrero continues to surprise him with her choices as a player and how her desire to find meaning in death became a core element of Grimoria’s arc.

Liam O’Brien: I think as far as people surviving this, that was the treat for me. The surprise for them is the amusement park exploration they get to do and all the possibilities, people, and places, as I planned. But for me setting out from the beginning at every step of the way, I got to wonder what’s going to happen? What are these people going to do? Will they survive?

So I didn’t really have any preconceived notions about an optimal scenario. I was going in thinking, I don’t care. This is a hard place. These characters can all die. And that’ll just be, and we haven’t had that happen on Candela yet. I thought maybe this is the time, and I’m perfectly willing to go there.

I love where it landed though, because they worked so hard and they sacrificed so much in the course of the three games that, as an audience member of myself at the table, and I’m guessing for our audience watching, it felt right for there to be something gained for all the sacrifice that happened.

I think Matt has talked about this in past discussions of game running, the life of players throughout their lives. When you first start playing TTRPGs to when you finish. Early on, I think you’re less familiar with rules and you make wild swings and strong choices. The more you play, you learn, especially if you’re with one system for a long time. But I think it crosses systems. You’re like, Well, there’s a way that these things go and I should do X, y, and Z. But there’s more. It feels like there’s even broader possibility when you’re first starting out.

And Aimee, while she has played with us more often, is still on the earlier range of that spectrum. I could see her desire to find meaning in the dead and I took swipes at her in that final fight, no question, she just rolled really well. And I’m not sure if it’s retrospect alone or maybe even my thoughts at the table, but it felt right as it was happening that she was clawing her way through.

A lot of it was accidental in the best way possible, but her desire as a character to shepherd souls and what we sort of invented on the way to the ending, I thought was really, really lovely. I’m, in hindsight, glad that Grimoria made it.

O’Brien also discussed how the outcome of the final battle played out for each of the characters. He also speculated on how Grimoria’s future could play out after these events.

Liam O’Brien: I like what it tells about each individual, and again, I would probably say this no matter how the chips fell, but the way they did fall, I can imagine her decades later being the most badass Light Keeper born out of that painful origin story and Leo being a second to her and an older advisor and long time friend.

I love that Imari as Malcolm came in wanting to be a hero who would put his life on the line for friends. That ended up very much being the case and he did that from start to finish. He leaped off a boat. I feel like he was on our show, our first Action Hero in Candela. I gave Alex’s character a very gruesome grisly end, but I also know Alex pretty well, and that’s what he’s at the table for.

He was our tragic loss.

Grimoria became the center of the Crimson Mirror story arc. When asked about whether he would like to continue Grimoria’s story or explore a new Candela Obscura circle in the future, he reflected on both possibilities.

Liam O’Brien: I can see advantages to both of those, positives to both of those. I would love to check in with Grimoria later. She would be starting a little dinged up already. I don’t know. I think it would be fun to maybe revisit her many years later and see where she is at that point. But I also have ideas for places I’d like to go on and off the map and different kinds of stories to tell. So I’d honestly be down for either or both.

Liam O’Brien Reflects On The Death Of FCG: “Nobody Does It Quite Like Sam Riegel”

The Bells Hells suffered a terrible loss in a recent episode of Critical Role when Fresh Cut Grass sacrificed himself in order to save his friends. This gave the rest of the Bells Hells an opportunity to escape. During the episode, the cast had a very guttural reaction to Riegel’s choice. The choice, while heartbreaking, was a noble and in many ways perfect end for Fresh Cut Grass.

Liam O’Brien: Nobody does it quite like Sam Riegel, right? He bides his time and picks just the exact right moment sometimes to do the exact right thing. And it’s not anything that I was anticipating or imagining. I think that’s one of the closest in the history of our show, on Critical Role, where either most of or all of the party wiped.

I think there’ve been two or three times, and this is probably the closest it’s ever gotten. We all know how creative and intelligent Sam is. It also just goes to show how much heart he has. The intention behind that, I believe, was he didn’t want his friend’s story to end. So he said goodbye to a character that he loves so that the rest of the characters in the story at the table could keep going. It was a very giving moment, too.

O’Brien explained how he believes the sacrifice of Fresh Cut Grass will impact the Bells Hells moving forward. While they have been struggling with questions about the Gods and whether they are good for the people of Exandria this death will bring a more personal cost to the battle.

Liam O’Brien: We’re getting closer to the highest stakes of the story. I think, if anything, it has hammered home. Every life lost in the situation that the world finds itself in now in this story is one too many. But Fresh Cut Grass is one of their circle seemingly gone forever at this moment.

I think that just makes what they’re doing infinitely more personal and felt in the bones. I think that maybe some of the questions about the Gods and their place in the world. Are we better with them? Would we better be better without them? I think a lot of that becomes muted by the immediate and personal cost that the circle, the family, the group is now feeling. Nothing abstract about that. It’s right in front of you and it’s your friend gone forever.

Orym’s fight has always been personal as he grapples with the loss of his husband at the hands of the very people Bells Hells are fighting against. However, O’Brien explained how this goes “beyond even that for me.” Orym has a larger more macro view of how this fight impacts the people of Exandria.

Liam O’Brien: . We’ve established that he’s sort of an amateur history buff, and he’s read about people doing things like this, and for anybody’s pretty words, there is no guarantee that ordinary people, the world around will be okay with whatever comes next.

He does not see that as any kind of risk worth taking for everyday people around the world. Of course, it’s personal for him, but it is global and it is like a humanitarian for him. People’s politics or religion or philosophy, steamrolling everyday people, that’s what he’s concerned with most of the moment.

About Critical Role: Candela Obscura

The fight against the otherworldly evils plaguing the Fairelands continues with Candela Obscura: Circle of the Crimson Mirror, a new three-episode arc featuring a new circle, a new game master, and a whole new set of horrific threats. Episode 1 finds our investigators voyaging home with the remains of an ancient and powerful alchemist.. Can our investigators work together to confront their past deeds, traumas, and relationships in an effort to return to Newfaire safely? This circle of Candela Obscura includes investigators Aimee Carrero, Imari Williams, Alexander Ward, and Taliesin Jaffe alongside our Gamemaster, Liam O’Brien.

Check out our other Critical Role Candela Obscura interviews:

• Liam O’Brien on episode 2 of Candela Obscura: Crimson Mirror
• Aimee Carrero, Imari Williams, and Alex Ward
• Aabira Iyengar & Liam O’Brien
• Spenser Starke & Rowan Hall
• Marisha Ray
• Brennan Lee Mulligan
• Laura Bailey
• Robbie Daymond

Source: Screen Rant Plus