Warning: There will be spoilers for Critical Role Campaign 1. Be cautious if you are not caught up!
Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus, the new adventure module from Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons & Dragons 5e, will be making events that played out on Critical Role canon in the D&D Mulitverse.
The cause? Joe Manganiello (Magic Mike, True Blood). On top of running a weekly home game of D&D for a bunch of people in the entertainment industry, he started his own D&D-based apparel company called Death Saves last year. He has also been writing parts of the new campaign book — which serves as a prequel to coming Baldur’s Gate 3 — and of course he had to leave his mark.
Which he did by placing one of his own characters in the campaign as a non-playable character (NPC). Depending on where you go as you try to save the city of Baldur’s Gate, you can end up bumping into Arkhan the Cruel, Manganiello’s Dragonborn Oathbreaker Paladin. Arkhan can be found with his own party of other NPCs, trying to free his goddess of worship, Tiamat, from her prison in the Nine Hells.
In the module, Arkhan is weilding the hand of Vecna — which he obtained in Vecna, the Ascended, episode 114 of Critical Role. Though it is not the first time Critical Role Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer has been referenced in an official book, this makes the connection between Mercer’s world of Exandria, where Critical Role takes place, and the D&D Multiverse complete. The chances of ever seeing either Vox Machina — the party from campaign one — or the campaign two party the Mighty Nein make a full cameo are pretty slim, but this is a very cool easter egg.
Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus will be out September 17. Will you be bumping into Arkhan the Cruel?