Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to continue exploring the second season of Vox Machina, as our intrepid warriors head to Vasselheim in search of new allies. Will they find the reinforcements they seek, and can any force of mere warriors hope to stand up to the might of the Chroma Conclave!? If the laws of satisfying DnD experiences are to be obeyed, then “yes, obviously,” but I’m grateful to Mercer for setting up such a seemingly implacable foe.

Frankly, this season’s dramatic opening sequence is making me feel a little regretful about not destroying my own campaign’s main city, and merely subjecting it to an attack that saw its rulers killed and towers toppled. If my players are going to believe the whole world is in peril, I should at least be willing to destroy one city to prove it, right? But that’s just the sort of insight I love from this show, as it and I grapple with the perpetual negotiations of player satisfaction versus dramatic necessity, agency versus narrative focus, and all the other unresolvable contradictions that make DnD so interesting, so ambiguous and alive. Let’s sally forth to Vasselheim, as we continue to explore The Legend of Vox Machina!

Episode 2

The party emerges from a tree extended far off a cliffside, and immediately begins plummeting towards the ground below. This is always a fun style of conflict shake-up, presenting the party with a seemingly no-win situation that simply requires some ingenuity and skill checks to resolve (much like the acid chamber from the end of the first season). It’s easy to get stuck in a rut of negotiating, fighting, and exploring, so an urgent environmental challenge like this is a nice way to mix up the gameplay balance and offer a dash of that rip-roaring adventure setpiece appeal

Scanlan casts a spell and saves the party with his giant pink butt. Each theoretically standardized DnD spell can always be envisioned in some unique way that echoes the personality of the caster, and Scanlan’s player is a master of ensuring all his castings are horny, rude, and undeniably Scanlan

Taking stock of their surroundings, the party realize they’ve basically made it, and are now standing on a mountain ridge directly across from Vasselheim. A nice distinct design for this city, using the slope of the mountain to create a natural series of rising districts, and uniting the whole through the river that drops from the mountain and rushes down the center of the city. When you’re crafting cities or characters in longform fiction, the devil tends to be in the details, in the nuance you bring to your descriptions or actions. But for something like DnD, shorthand reigns: one iconic concept will stick in your players’ minds far more effectively than a million tiny ones, so “sloping city bisected by waterfall” is a perfect way to define Vasselheim (much like “bleak city beneath massive central tree” defined Whitestone)

Seems we’ve still got the same OP, which isn’t surprising. Matching that sequence would probably have pushed season two’s development time back by months

Teleporting them just outside of the city seems like a smart idea, as the city approach offers a gradual introduction to its features, and the necessity of interacting with the guards allows Mercer to seed in some context regarding the city’s current atmosphere

The Marshalls we seek are apparently at the Platinum Sanctuary

Ooh, nice movement into depth pan as we’re introduced to the city proper. A remarkable number of independently panning layers used to create the illusion of 3D space – I think I count ten separate layers of scenery and townsfolk? Impressive stuff

Keyleth mentions that “almost all the Prime Deities are represented.” As someone who generally considers extensive worldbuilding more of an obstacle than a compliment to decent storytelling, I’ve had to do a lot of gritting my teeth and scowling while writing up the theological background of my own campaign. The relationship between players and gods is baked so deeply into the mechanical structure of DnD that it’s hard not to either embrace the game’s pantheon or invent your own, and considering one of my players knows literally everything about DnD’s interminable lore, the first choice was obviously not an option for me. I don’t really want to write a story about the players being pawns of the gods, but when you’ve got a cleric or a paladin or whatever, it’s kinda hard not to

It’s frankly a little absurd how lopsided my table’s proficiencies are. I’m not the most knowledgeable regarding either DnD’s official lore or mechanical systems, but I’m the best at writing stories and acting them out, so I’m often at the mercy of my players in figuring out how an idea actually works in practice

Pike takes the lead in negotiating with the Marshalls. After an arc that Pike was only present for half of, it makes sense that the following arc would include lots of religious leaders for her to riff with. They even make a winking joke of this changing of the guard, with Pike literally telling Percy that it’s her turn now

The Marshalls thank Vox Machina for their visit, but they ain’t helping. It seems Grog’s player has decided his new thing is mispronouncing “g’day” as “bidet.” They do a good job of inserting the right amount of comic relief Grog material in the show, so I wonder if his player possesses the same understanding of how less is more when it comes to this stuff

Vax once again spies his shadowy figure on the roof of a nearby temple

One council member suggests they check with the “Slayer’s Take,” a group of hunters for hire. The twins apparently have some history with them. Percy and the twins are such valuable resources – all three of their players seem willing to go the extra mile and plot out their characters’ whole backstories, essentially co-directing the sequences where we explore their histories

And then Grog’s sword states that it’s hungry. Like last episode, we’re receiving just the necessary sword interjections to keep it on our minds

At the Slayer’s Take lodge, we swiftly learn that Vax and Vex have bounties on their heads. Meanwhile, Grog grabs a meal and wanders into a temple

He is met by Earthbreaker Groon, who states “anyone entering the Stormlord’s Ring seeks something.” This is basically the far end of player-DM storytelling relative to the Vex and Vax stuff; while their players are happy to help flesh out the backend and act out the connections they allegedly already possess with Mercer’s world, Grog wanders into a temple randomly and is directly assigned a quest by a stranger. It’s not really “bad” design, but it reflects the limits of storytelling inherent when you’re playing a full-on gag character, and how challenges specifically for such characters will tend to be more mechanical and gamified than narrative-focused, in keeping with how they are comfortable contributing to the campaign

“The answers you seek are earned, not given. In the field of combat.” See? Grog just keeps cracking one-liners, so it’s basically up to Mercer to soldier through with his speech until we get to something Grog’s player will earnestly commit to, like fighting

We at last meet Vex’s “friend” Zahra, a tiefling

Apparently the twins betrayed and poached a monster from the Take at some point in the past. I really like this – part of the twins’ arc from season one was coming to actually embrace Vox Machina as true allies, rather than expendable coworkers, so it feels like a natural payoff for their earlier transgressions to come back to haunt them

Negotiations inevitably break down, a necessary player failure that’s here smoothed by Mercer and Vex’s player both knowing exactly how this has to end. Obviously you don’t want to pre-script everything with your players even if they’re willing, as spontaneity is a great part of DnD’s appeal, but light touches like this do help keep a story coherent

The party is dropped into a pit where they meet the Slayers’ patron, a sphinx named Osysa. A variation on that “key places and characters need a defining shorthand detail” point – the patron being an actual sphinx definitely qualifies, and adds an inherent spice of danger to this interaction

We’ve finally hit enough characterization to justify a big ol’ “face your fears” contest, which Osysa is happy to provide

Meanwhile, Grog has been sufficiently chastened to at least answer “where does your strength come from” with “my heart,” though this only gets him elbowed into a wall again

“Would you sacrifice your life just to prove a point?” Through both sides of this episode’s challenge, Mercer appears to be insisting the characters approach this new quest with the seriousness it deserves, essentially setting the tone for this new act of the adventure

We’re on a quest for The Vestiges of Divergence, magical god-fighting weapons that will presumably force Vox Machina to tramp all over the continent

And for our last narrative seed of Vasselheim, we learn Ripley was in town just one week earlier

And Done

And so the party is assigned a new quest, and tasked with wandering all over the continent in search of magical doohickeys! It’s an old and reliable framework, and after the general chaos of that first episode, it was nice to see this one start to clarify the key players for this next adventure. With Percy and Keyleth having gotten so much material last season, it seems we’re now letting Pike and the twins lead the way, alongside an unexpected quest just for the big man Grog himself. The contrast between how Grog and the others were assigned these tasks felt like a case study in how DnD narratives must be tailored to their relevant players, and the show’s layouts and background art seem stronger than ever. We’ve had plenty of dragons already this season, so let’s get on with the quest and bring on the dungeons!

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