All eyes are on Lucien in the next Critical Role novel

polygon.com:

For Critical Role, 2022 has been about breaking the timeline. Exandria, Matthew Mercer’s campaign setting, has gained new life this year. Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, which kicked off in May, tells a story about the end of that world, thousands of years before Vox Machina ever wandered Tal’Dorei. Campaign 3, on the other hand, is where past and present characters have begun to collide. Now the past is getting even more room to breathe thanks to a brand-new novel about a rather surprising character. Critical Role: The Mighty Nein — The Nine Eyes of Lucienexplores the life of Lucien, one of Critical Role’s most memorable antagonists.

[Ed note: This article spoils key elements of Critical Role’s second campaign, which concluded in June 2021.]

Unlike the somewhat cut-and-dried villainy of earlier Critical Role villains like Vecna, Lucien posed a particular problem for the party during his tenure, which officially began in episode 111, “New Homes and Old Friends.” His body had previously hosted a player character, Mollymauk Tealeaf, played by Taliesin Jaffe. Even before Mollymauk’s death early in the campaign, multiple non-player characters in the game world mistook Jaffe’s character for Lucien. After the Mighty Nein buried Mollymauk, they returned to his grave only to find Lucien in residence inside the newly resurrected body, now played by Matthew Mercer as an NPC.

Initially Lucien shared elements of Mollymauk’s personality, but it quickly became apparent that he was a different person entirely. He was ruthless, cruel, and arrogant. The player characters’ interactions with him were accordingly fraught, as they were forced to weigh the atrocity of Lucien’s actions against the preciousness of his body.

The author of the