Critical Role regular Alexander Ward made his surprise debut in this week’s episode of Dungeon Masters, the official Dungeons & Dragons actual play series — and he brought back one of the coolest D&D actual play characters in recent memory.
[Ed. note: Spoilers for episode 3 of Dungeon Masters.]
Episode 4, titled “Prison Break,” was released on May 6. In it, the core party of Professor Crem de la Crem (Neal Newbon), his wife Zora Thornska (Devora Wilde), and sellswords Eloin Emberleaf (Christian Navarro) and Wesley (Mayanna Berrin) are tasked with venturing deep into Prison Sorrow to break out a dangerous captive. That captive is none other than Ward’s Tiefling Rogue Lividity, the very same character he played in last year’s D&D official one-shot “Adventures in Faerûn: Tears of Selûne.”
In “Prison Sorrow,” that party discovers various captives seemingly trapped inside magical wax sculptures, forced to endure endless torment. It’s later described by Dungeon Master Jasmine Bhullar as “being melted alive into these sort of sordid memories.” For Lividity, she’s stuck at a moment in time when she lost her right eye to an arrow while encased in this magical wax. After being freed during a battle against the wax creations of the Melder (a sort of Warden who makes and controls the wax), Lividity aids the party in locating the second banshee tied to the campaign’s larger mystery, which makes Ward’s character feel like a lot more than a one-off guest appearance. The episode ends on a cliffhanger in an encounter against the banshee.
Ward first portrayed Lividity during a Forgotten Realms adventure late last year run by DM Aabria Iyengar alongside fellow players Ginny Di, Christian Navarro, and Damien Haas. The morally murky rogue quickly emerged as a scene-stealing favorite thanks to her unsettling relationship with the Dead Three gods — Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul — and Ward’s theatrical performance style.
“I really kind of fell in love with this character more so than I initially intended to,” Ward told Polygon in a video interview about the one-shot at the time. Ward said that he named the character after the purple discoloration a corpse takes after death when blood pools beneath the skin. One of the best moments from that previous one-shot happened when Ward activated Lividity’s Bloodthirst ability to teleport directly behind an enemy cleric so she could stab them through the back.
‘Brutal’ official D&D actual play showcases new Forgotten Realms books
Exclusive: Alexander Ward and Ginny Di on playing a Tears of Selûne one-shot
“You can play somebody who’s not necessarily good and still work with a party,” Ward said. “That dynamic was really important to me.”
Lividity feels just as ruthless in Dungeon Masters — and equally as practical. She may not like the party she’s now traveling with, but at least they got her out of a tight spot. As to how she wound up in Ravenloft, that may remain a mystery. But for now, it’s starting to seem like Wizards of the Coast is leaning into this idea of having cast members reprise their roles as specific characters to add even more depth to its actual play multiverse. That sort of ongoing attachment to characters is prominent in Critical Role, but not really something Wizards has explored extensively until now.
It’s unclear exactly how Lividity will factor into the ongoing story or how long she’ll stick around, but the character’s return instantly gives Dungeon Masters something actual play fans tend to obsess over: continuity. And in D&D, that’s often what transforms a cool one-shot character into a legend.
About the Author
