All eyes are on Lucien in the next Critical Role novel

The 2022 timeline was a major focus for Critical Role. 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 is the place where past and current characters collide. A brand new novel about an unusual character gives the past more space to breathe. The Mighty Nein, The Nine Eyes of Lucien – A Critical Role explores 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. The Mighty Nein buried Mollymauk and they returned to the grave to find Lucien inside his newly resurrected, played now by Matthew Mercer.

Initially Lucien shared elements of Mollymauk’s personality, but it quickly became apparent that he was a different person entirely. His personality was arrogant, brutal, and ruthless. 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 new novelization, Madeleine Roux, is no stranger to adapting Dungeons & Dragons stories, having written the Dungeon Academy novels. Roux, however, was thrilled by Matthew Mercer’s willingness to explore the possibilities with Taliesin Jaffe and her Critical Role team.

“Those are not the kind of words that get thrown around in these meetings — ever,” Roux said in a recent interview with Polygon. “You’re encouraged to be like, Here’s the brand, let’s be safe — let’s keep this as whatever fans need to feel warm and fuzzy!This was how the meeting looked like Ok, so how are we going to make this an insane nightmare situation?”

In bringing Lucien’s story to life, Roux had a unique set of challenges to work with, well beyond the challenges inherent in adapting Mercer’s sprawling world and characters. Specifically, she had to balance the fun elements of Lucien’s character with his role as the villain.

“He’s not a good guy,” Roux said. “That was actually one of the best challenges of the book. It is difficult to get to know this person and give an explanation of their actions without making excuses. What can you do to give him the opportunity to change, do right, and self-reflect so that he might find a new path.

“Showing that there were ways out and showing that it wasn’t just a foregone conclusion that he was going to be a villain, but always making it a choice that he’s making, to do the selfish thing or to do the easier thing,” Roux continued. “That was sort of my approach — we have to keep his sense of humor. His smugness must be maintained. These indelible qualities that made him such a funny villain must be preserved. He is known for his monologuing style and wickedness. They must be kept. But always keep in mind, at the end of the day: I don’t want this to be an apology.”

Jaffe’s tiefling blood hunter Mollymauk Tealeaf emerged as a fan favorite in the early episodes of Campaign 2, thanks to his irreverence and charm — elements that were echoed in Lucien the first time he appeared during a livestream, played by Mercer. Roux said that the interweave between Lucien and Mollymauk was inevitable.

“I don’t think you can do it correctly if you don’t take into account that this person is an amalgamation of these different souls that end up inhabiting this one body,” Roux said. “And what would that do to you, and does that mean that there’s crossover? Try sneaking in little clues here and there. Maybe they’re all meshed together in some sense — or maybe when the spell was cast they were broken apart.” She relied on Jaffe’s performance and Mercer’s improvisation and dialogue to nail down Lucien’s persona. One of the biggest throughlines she identified was Lucien’s reliance on theatricality.

“It’s just performance all the time,” she said, “and how exhausting that is and how draining that is, and how ultimately it’s kind of what leads to his isolation.”

Roux says that the book was influenced by the splintering associated with shared bodies. Roux credits her horror background as the reason Roux was approached.

“It’s pretty rough — we’re gonna scare you a little bit. We’re gonna freak you out,” Roux said. “When we were in those first meetings, they brought up House of Leaves. It was as if I had been like: There are many ways to get there. There’s some pretty weird stuff in this book. It should feel disorienting for me at times as it did for him. He clearly has a fractured body, and his mind is also broken at times. I was trying to show that in the text, visually as well as psychologically.”

By the time most readers arrive at the new novel, they’re almost certainly going to be aware of Lucien’s eventual fate — in the way of Dungeons & Dragons villains, he fights the heroes and loses, his grand schemes crumbling to dust. It is not easy to examine a story that has a well-known ending. EXU: CalamityIt was the Ring of Brass. Not only that, but it means unpacking a villain’s narrative from his own perspective.

The storytelling at Critical Role has been getting delightfully weirder over the years, in the sense that the team has seemingly been willing to take bigger risks — not just in form, but in the depth and complexity of the stories that they tell. Lucien is one great example. His connection with Mollymauk was a key part of the story. This made Lucien’s existence a complicated trap for the Mighty Nein. It was further compounded by his world-shaping ambitions. Aeor was deeply involved with him and the Somnovem’s malevolent influence, something fans are increasingly seeing. EXU: CalamityThe third campaign. Getting to explore his story in a novel meant that Roux got to flesh out Lucien’s connection to the Somnovem and how he became the Nonagon, as well as the sinister impact that those changes have on his psyche and his body.

“What would it feel like, to stumble across something like this that has its own magical sway over you?” Roux said. Also, it meant changing the existing understanding of NPCs that are villainous, such as Cree or the Tombtakers. Cree was the catfolk Lucien appeared to be most close with during the actual play.

Roux acknowledged that crafting a story with a foregone conclusion — a story where beloved protagonists appear in totally reframed roles, and antagonists drive the plot forward — created some interesting tensions as she was writing.

“He didn’t come out of the womb monologuing,” she said. “I think what you’re trying to do is find little nuggets of surprise and revelation that you have along the way, so it doesn’t feel like a retread of what’s on screen. You can’t get away from it, but I wanted to stay away from [that] as much as possible because it’s not a book about the Mighty Nein. These are in some ways the antagonists. Although I would argue that it’s mostly [Lucien] himself, it’s man versus man, man versus internal dialogue.

“But, you know the ending, right? You have to build in surprises,” Roux said. “And not just outside of this new biographical information, which is fun and good. It’s what the people really want to know: How does he tick? How did this happen? What is the secret to our success? Let’s never lose sight of what people want out of this, and what’s interesting. However, I believe that just [biographical]Information isn’t always compelling. I think we need the heart of him and the heart of his relationship with Cree — she’s the most steady presence in his life. And eventually the other Tombtakers as well.”

Between the novel’s form and the team’s willingness to explore all the twisted, strange avenues possible in Lucien’s story, Roux has high hopes for the project’s reception.

“This is a bold statement,” she said. “I’m gonna make it because I’m trying to enter my villain era: I think this is the most experimental and riskiest IP book that has been published to date, that has a brand name on it. I really don’t think a lot of people are doing this stuff, and it’s what makes me respect the Critical Role team so much is that they were willing to do that and willing to say: Nope, let’s break the rules. Let’s not get stuck in this [idea of]An IP book: What does it mean?.”

“I’m excited and nervous to see their responses because I think people go into these sorts of books expecting a very straightforward experience, expecting something very rote, something very predictable,” Roux said. “I think it’s exciting to know that we’re not doing that this time.”

A surprise announcementA few weeks back, Robbie Daymond was confirmed to be the narrator of The Message. The Mighty Nein, The Nine Eyes of Lucien – A Critical Role audiobook — the entire cast will return to voice their respective members of the Mighty Nein as well. Polygon will publish an extract later in the week.

The Mighty Nein, The Nine Eyes of Lucien – A Critical RoleAvailable on November 1, 2022.