that is honestly such a reach. he didnt hunt down tharizdun nor did he slay him. the grey hunt to me just seems like a whitestone tradition of poaching the local wild life for trophies. again. he has a church. filled with clerics and paladins that has devoted themselves to him. pelor picking vex over them is the equivalent of sarenrae picking scanlan over pike.
The Grey Hunt was very explicitly stated to be a religious
ritual under the helm of Pelor to choose a protector of the people and
lands of Whitestone – a place that has a special meaning to him because of what happened to Ioun, so much so that Pelor himself put a tree there.Praying directly to Pelor was required. And resulted in Vex being technically given a vision quest. The connection wasn’t the strongest, but it was also not not there.
Sure, the are
more devout out there, but where were they during, say, the Conclave? VM
has reached a level of ability that most mortals just never do, and for
a god who seems to be very adapt at warfare, it makes sense to settle for a level 17 ranger/rogue with a gigantic laundry list of accomplishments instead of some level 5 paladin somewhere who has given his entire life to Pelor and never done a bad thing in his life.for a god who seems to be very adept at warfare, what makes you think that his strongest warrior is 5th level? VM has been adventuring for 3 years. that’s a ridiculously short amount of time to attain their power. has the rest of the world just been frozen while they moved? you’re basing your entire argument on the assumption that VM is the only people in this entire world who isn’t too stupid to gain experience at a decent rate.
Well, no, half my argument is based on the assumption that this is not an MMORPG in which there are countless people leveling at any moment. The other half is based on exposition given to us during episode 94.
Most people live a life that does not involve adventuring. Some do, sure. We have seen guest stars getting as level 15 with Lionel, who was implied to have basically had a life of fighting. Tova somehow ended up in deep shit that led her to the hells. She was level 14. Kashaw and Zahra spend their days hunting monsters in Vasselheim. They got up to level 13. Matt has also frequently stated that Vox Machina now also outlevel the NPCs established as extremely capable, like Allura and Gilmore.
Kima actually offers great insight into how organized religion operates here. Bahamut is an even more militaristic god than Pelor, and yet Kima actually leaving her temple to do some good in the world was out of the ordinary. She had to hire people to go into the Underdark with her, instead of taking other high-level paladins with her on her vision quest. It fell to Allura to get her out of htere, no one at the temple bothered.
And then when chromatic dragons attack the world, everything Bahamut stands against, the temple can only be bothered to send one guy with VM. That was admittedly implied to be in a level with Kima (so, like, around 13), but it was one guy and one of their best. I’m pretty sure the head priest would be on a higher level, like Groon is pretty much a god-tier monk, but the nature of Groon is also kind of hazy anyhow. I’m pretty sure he is like a literal avatar of Kord or something.
And these are all people from the most ancient temples in Exandria. Their approach to these things is, as long as trouble doesn’t come knocking on our front door, we can’t be bothered. It’s strictly reactionary. And Vecna will not be knocking on anyone’s front door until the godhood thing has been achieved and it is already too late.
So there are two aspects to this: The gods have an interest to keep reality from breaking. To do that, they need champions who are capable and willing. Even with vision quests, or very clear signs that someone’s god’s antithesis is on the run, the willingness we’ve seen has been, you know, not the best.
And the level of capability? VM is a group of individuals who have basically reached demi-god tier. When Keyleth said “we’re gods, it’s fine!” she was proven wrong only by Matt forgetting how fall damage according to game rules works.
Level 17 gives you access to 9th level spells, spells so powerful they can also alter reality. That kind of magic is not common at all. If it were, Kerrek wouldn’t have been so disturbed by the fact that the resurrections worked. Clerics get access to revivify at level 5. They get their first “raise dead that have been dead for longer than a minute” spell at level 9. And yet, we know of a grand total of 3 clerics who have performed resurrections, while former adventurer Kerrek couldn’t find a single one for whatever happened in his backstory.
Another point where we can tell how levels for other people work: In episode 89, not a single one of the Vesrah druids was high-level enough to have access to True Resurrection. Not even the ancient gnome leader who has been “leveling” for a few hundred years. Best they could offer was a level 5 Reincarnation spell, which druids get access to at level 9. Uvenda then also stated that Keyleth had abilities far above her own when she achieved level 17 and her 9th level spells.
And yeah, VM got to where they are in three years. Other characters, even those with a background in adventuring, took at least a decade to achieve the kind of mastery of their skills that VM has right now. But that’s not because they gained experience at a decent pace, it’s because their curriculum has been insane. They killed a total of 7 dragons, devils of every rank, tickled a kraken…
Normal adventurers in this world don’t do that. Clerics and paladins who have to also serve their god, worhsip at temples, do good deeds, and deal with temple hierarchies do that even less – if they ever leave their temples to fight at all, as seen in the Vasselheim examples we got. The chances of there being a cleric or paladin of Pelor – whose main domain is agriculture, I was actually surprised he came off as militaristically minded – who is around the same level as VM, and with the same chances of stopping reality from breaking, is reeaaaally low.
And even if you disagree with that, no one can argue with the fact that VM get results, and they get those results as a team. So a promising team comes knocking on your door and offers to save the world for you, after they’ve already done so before, if only you could land a hand. That hand could very well have been some amazing paladin or cleric of Pelor’s somewhere, and given how not into VM he was, I’m pretty sure if someone as willing and capable existed, he would have simply pointed VM towards them.
But he didn’t. Instead he picked the person who had already prayed to him directly and is protecting the people and lands of Whitestone under his banner. Things are going to get hairy when trying to justify Scanlan and Percy getting the blessings from a god, but this? This made sense and has even been foreshadowed. The Grey Hunt is a lot more than just killing local wildlife for a fancy trophy.
Overdressed & Underappreciated 