Critical Role Campaign 4 has introduced complex, interwoven stories with three tables set off on different stories. However, they are connected by one death, the execution of Thjazi Fang. The initial arcs for all three tables have concluded with them reuniting May 21. The Schemers Table, which was the final table to wrap up their arc, included Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Liam O’Brien, and Luis Carazo, with Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Game Master.
Carazo is no stranger to complicated characters, having crafted Marion Collodi for “Candela Obscura” and Zerxus Ilerez for “EXU: Calamity.” Azune is a complicated character with tragedy and trauma ingrained in him from a young age. His relationships with Thjazi Fang shaped him from a young age and continue to steer his life. Some of the themes from these characters were brought into his creation process when crafting Azune.
In an exclusive interview with Temple of Geek, Carazo shares details about crafting Azune for “Critical Role.” He explained how at the table Azune’s name and the different pronunciations became a key part of the character. Carazo also breaks down some of the themes, questions, and ideas he wanted to explore with Azune.
“Anything That Happens Can Be Folded Into A Discovery About The Story”
Temple of Geek: Luis, when someone asked about Azune’s pronunciation, you said that it’s never been corrected. And there is a reason for that. Is that tied to that question of identity but also memory because it’s so muddled because he was taken at such a young age?
Luis Carazo:
It is that and so much more. I think that a lot of it is his; he really is fixated on, “I will be whoever I need to be depending on who I’m in the presence of.” And there’s certain things that I think are easy to compromise. There’s certain battles that he is not going to have because they’re not productive. And something like correcting someone’s pronunciation was an accident. I just noticed it in the beginning of our playing, people were pronouncing it differently.
To me, one of my philosophies at this thing that we do is that there’s no such thing as mistakes ever. Anything that happens, something like that, can be folded into a discovery about the story. A discovery about a relationship or a character. I just, in that moment, absorbed that, and I thought, “You know what? I love this. I’m not going to correct this in anyway.” Because I don’t think he would. He wouldn’t correct anybody, and who knows how many other ways his name has been mispronounced?
And maybe he knows exactly how his parents and grandparents would pronounce his name. It hasn’t come up. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe that’s been eroding. But one thing that I do know for sure, because we’ve witnessed it, is he’s not once corrected anybody’s mispronunciation. We don’t even actually know which version is the right version. Because he’s not said so.
Luis Carazo Inspired By Past Characters When Building Azune For Critical Role
Temple of Geek: Luis, one of the things I think was very cool is the world you were able to create with “Tales Unrolled” and how you’re able to bring your own culture and heritage into that. Was that something you wanted to roll over into character creation when you were creating Azune?
Luis Carazo:
I mean, to an extent yes. I think that there’s certain things that I’ve explored that I feel hasn’t satiated my appetite for that particular thing. To be honest, I can even go back to like Candela and Marion. There’s certain aspects of Marion that I was like, I’m not done exploring this angle of this element in these three episodes. It wasn’t enough for me to dig into it in a way that’s satisfying. Plus there’s little elements trickling into this thing that may have appeared in other stories at some point.
In “Tales Unrolled” there is a significance of remembrance. There is a different relationship to culture and history, and what that means, and how that ties together. But there’s definitely some ingredients that are repeating here for sure. Besides the fact that this is also the name of an NPC that I put in “Tales Unrolled” because I thought the name was really cool. I think memory, time, and how we remember things, and how we misremember things. How other forces cause us to erase things or misremember things including ourselves. I’m not done exploring that.
The Schemers Table arc wrapped up on “Critical Role” on May 7, 2026. New episodes of “Critical Role” debut on Beacon, Twitch, and YouTube on May 21 with all three tables reuniting for the first time since the initial Campaign 4 overture.
