**Spoilers For Campaign 2**

Critical Role has built out an endlessly impressive universe, developing Exandria over the course of more than ten years of storytelling. Over the course of this decade, Exandria’s story has spanned across platforms. Beyond the campaigns and mini campaigns, this includes novels, comics, and animated series. While the touchstone for lore is always the main campaigns, these other mediums have influenced the lore in huge ways.

“Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Stories Untold” is a perfect example of this with “Delicious” by Kiri Callaghan. The short story examines the aftermath of Jester’s iconic trickery as she deceives Isharnai with the dust of deliciousness. This story is told from Isharnai’s perspective as she grapples with not only this experience but also the feelings it brings up as well. An element introduced in the story is Isharnai’s coven, which was first introduced in the Fjord and Jester wedding at Radio City Music Hall.

In an exclusive interview with Temple of Geek, Callaghan reveals that “Delicious” was actually written before the live show. She reflects on how it felt to see Matthew Mercer bring her characters to life. She also explains her inspiration for the two members of Isharnai’s coven.

“Delicious” Shapes Elements Of Critical Role’s Radio City Music Hall Live Show

Temple of Geek: You wrote this before the one-shot?

Kiri Callaghan:

I did. So they pitched this to me back, because that’s how they did it, which was lovely. They reached out to me for it, which was very flattering, with a very simple log line. Of just like, “We’d love you to do Isharnai after the cupcake incident and essentially meditating on what it means to feed on misery.” That was all they gave me. And I was like, “Interesting. Okay.” Because I love that moment. I mean, I play D&D, obviously, as many of us do. And my favorite moments in any game are when something goes so different from what the GM planned because the role-play moment just worked.

And that was just so juicy. And they’re like, “We’d love you to do this if you’re interested.” I’m like, “Yes! I mean, sure, that sounds great. Whatever.” So yeah, that was very flattering because they were just. I got an email, or my agent got an email, from Penguin being like, “Hey, both us and the team at Critical Role are fans of Kiri’s work. We’d love for her to do this.” And I’m like, “What? Okay. What?” Because I’d sent them stuff, they were looking for IP for potential other worlds to play in. And so my agent had sent my stuff. And I know Matt [Mercer] and Marisha [Ray] because they are friends with friends of mine. So we see each other at events, and it was like, “Oh, hey.” So that was kind of a cool moment.

Temple of Geek: So when they send you a logline, are you breaking down the whole story and then sending that back to them? Or do you send the first draft and then get notes?

Kiri Callaghan:

So at least the way Penguin does it, at least the way they did it for this with the anthology, was they sent me a logline of, heck, I think it was essentially Isharnai slowly realizes she was had by Jester in the now infamous interaction. And in recognizing something is amiss, begins to recall past bargains about Veth and the bargain with Beau’s father and meditating on what it means to be a creature of misery.

So that was my logline. And then they explained it’s going to be in an anthology of side characters, both foes and friends of people that the Mighty Nein meet. And from there, they’re like, “Okay, cool. Can you give us a rough outline by this date?” And my version of a rough outline when I can is usually almost like I don’t do rough outlines. I was like, “Here, let me give you a beat-for-beat what I’m thinking, including some dialogue.” But with this, it was interesting because they gave me that and I was like, “Cool, cool, cool.” And I immediately went into research mode because I’m like, okay, I haven’t seen this for a while. It’s been some time. It’s a very infamous scene. It sticks with you. I knew it immediately, but I was like, let’s go re-watch the scene. Let’s go do this.

And then I thank God for the fan Wiki because that helped me find any time she was even briefly mentioned, which included, and I am so grateful for this, one of the after conversations. And Matt, in one of those conversations, just sort of, I remember it being a very brief mention of that he had a whole plan for a fight if that hadn’t happened with Isharnai’s coven. And I was like, “Interesting. Let’s talk more about that.” So I locked in on that because I was like, “Ooh, I’d love to play with that idea of what part of…” Because I didn’t know what he was going to do with it. What part of that story have you not been able to tell? Can I give little sprinkles so that when you get to do it later, you’ve got this lovely base and I want to honor that. So I sent them maybe, it was eight, nine questions of, “Hey, what about this? What about this? What about this?” After I had done a bunch of research, including reading the two origin comics.

For both Veth and Beau, even though Beau’s didn’t really touch too much on her father’s arrangement, but I just wanted to make sure if there’s any hint of that and let’s really figure out what that interaction might be like and how it’s affected that family since I’ll have to talk about it. So I sent these questions, and a lot of them were. He mentioned that there was a coven. Can I do something with that? If I can, do you have character sheets or anything? Do they have names, or what they’re like? Can I do that? And they sent back like, “Yeah, go for it. Here’s all we have.” It was not a ton. He had names for me, and essentially I want one to maybe be more druidic and one to be more like necromancy death. And I’m like, “Brilliant, life and death, let’s go.” Oh, and they wanted Isharnai to be the only hag.

Wrote this whole outline, sent it back. They were like, “Great, we love it. Go run with it.” And then I had a due date for my first draft, and they let me run rampant and free with the weird fae sh-t. I’d like to think it’s because the stuff we sent them from my book series that came out last year was essentially like, “Huh, Kiri does a lot of weird fae sh-t. Let’s give her the weird fae sh-t.” And be like, “Yes, thank you for letting me do this.” So yeah, that was kind of the process.

“That Was Just A Highlight”

Temple of Geek: So your version of The Coven influenced what we saw in the Radio City show. How’d that feel?

Kiri Callaghan:

That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I used to do a story staff for a LARP here in Los Angeles, and that was always pretty cool. But that was that feeling times a thousand of just going, “Oh, cool, they’re doing a thing.” I was like, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute! Oh my God!” And realizing, because at that point I had turned in that first draft, and there is very little difference between my first draft and the final draft, which I think the final one went in October. But the only difference was let’s tweak a few words. The heart of it was there. So much of what I put into Matt took and ran with, and that felt so cool. I’d be like, “Oh sh-t, hell yeah.”

Temple of Geek: Because I could feel that when I was reading it. Looking at it time-wise, I was like, “This had to have been written first, I think. And it really feels like the characters were taken from the page into the show.” So I was like, “Holy crap.”

Kiri Callaghan:

Yeah, it felt so cool. I’m not going to lie. That was just a highlight of like, “Oh, all right, let’s go!”

“Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Stories Untold” is available now. The book includes stories written by Betsy Aoki, Kiri Callaghan, Dani Carr, Mae Catt, Mike Chen, Rin Chupeco, Nino Cipri, Nadia El-Fassi, and Chase K with a foreword penned by Taliesin Jaffe.