fiachairecht | critical role summer wildflower exchange

Hello friend, it is time for Critical Role fic and I am so excited to see what you will write for me! If you want inspiration beyond this letter I am also

kimaracretak, where I have a small but reflective-of-things-I-like set of bookmarks, and kimaracretak on 8tracks if you want #aesthetic musical inspiration.

I love this show for the worldbuilding and mytharcs as well as their characters and relationships, and I am easy to please as long as you stay away from my DNWs (both general and canon-specific), so don't feel like you Have to write any of my specific prompts. Don't read anything into relative lengths of sections, I am equally happy to get something for anything in this letter! Some of these prompts are reused from old letters, and if you have written them for me before, rest assured that I loved your fic, I am simply greedy and would like to see every possible take on my favourite scenarios. A lot of my prompts are very horror-slanted, but if your muse is inclined to things less murderous, feel free! That being said, I'm extremely not into plotless/conflictless fluff or 'soft' takes on these characters/relationships, and would prefer you avoid them.

Likes || Dark Likes || Smut Likes || DNWs || General Notes on Canon || Crossover Ships || Vesh Ships || Cassandra Ships || Keyleth Ships || Campaign 2 Ships

I love everything from short introspection bits to long plotty missionfic to sex scenes as ways to explore character/setting/worldbuilding, and I don't need a lot of romance in my ships: sex for power, manipulation, or just between friends who want to have fun is also great. Please no unrequested ships unless specifically allowed for, but feel free to combine any compatible ones from my requested ones.

Likes

Conflicted loyalties, moral ambiguity, hero/villain and villain/villain relationships, 'I am the only one allowed to hurt you' hero/villain relationships

Conversations in mundane liminal spaces, conversations in liminal spaces on the border between one world and another

Darkfic

Femslash and female friendship in both the foreground and the background

Flirting, domesticity, sensuality, friends-and-lovers

Mentorship and loyalty dynamics, including ladies' suicidal world-saving or world-breaking devotion to other ladies, #unavailable older women in positions of authority

Nature and cities and houses and spacecraft as characters (especially when they would like to eat you because they love you), architectural horror

Vampires, magic, witchcraft, rituals, eldritch things, fey things, eerie things, cosmic horrors

Feelings about embodiment and iconography, body horror (especially flowers growing out of people's bodies)

Epistolary fics, IF, poems for poetry canons, song lyrics for song/album canons

First- and second-person pov, unreliable narrators

Politics, worldbuilding

Philosophical, legal, and academic debates

Relationships negotiated around characters' different vocabularies of trust and care

'I hate you I love you I would like to wear your skin as a sign of my devotion' types of relationships

'Look what I can make you do to me' kinds of emotional manipulation in relationships

'You don't get to save me but you will kill me' types of relationships, especially when the killing doesn't actually happen and they both have to live with that

Getting back together after messy breakups

Reunions with former lovers in general, no matter what they look like - casual/platonic over coffee, ill-advised one-night stands, etc

Desire, women who aren't afraid of desire, women who lean too far into desire, women who desire to kill and eat their gods

Porn as character work.

Time loops with both characters trapped, time loops while one character is trapped and the other is there to help or hinder but can leave whenever they want.

Dark Likes

Accidental apotheosis, non-consensual apotheosis

Arousal from killing, sex in the blood of their enemies

Blood magic, blood kink, blood rituals, blood as art medium

Body horror

Conflicted loyalties, abuse of loyalties, loyalty leading people into really bad decisionmaking

Died and came back wrong, died multiple times and comes back wronger each time

Doomed ships, ghost ships, ships that should be abandoned but aren't, cursed ships (spaceships/airships/sailing ships all good!)

Eerily pristine abandoned places, ruined castles/fortresses/villages, other eldritch places

Flowers growing out of people's bodies, flowers growing out of people's empty eye sockets

Folk horror

Ghosts

Human sacrifice, ritual scarification, what happens when sacrifices to higher powers aren't accepted

Identity Issues, especially those stemming from close bonds with another person

In-universe regional horror, myths, (urban) legends, and folklore

Killing and eating your gods as a form of worship

Memory loss

Nature that wants to crawl inside you and never come out, nature that wants to eat you, sentient malevolent nature

Necromancy, the unpleasant aftereffects/costs of necromancy

Oneiromancy, dreamsharing, dreams that bleed into reality, cursed dreams, prophetic dreams

Non-fatal and oddly romantic vivisection

One character dressing another up to die

Repeatedly killed and resurrected

Ritual gone wrong

'There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls' trope

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

Unintended consequences of having your future told

Smut Likes

Bathing, washing, bath/shower sex

Biting, marking

Bloodplay, knifeplay, wax play, edgeplay, edgeplay to the edge of death

Bondage, shibari/kinbaku, suspension, honour bondage, blindfolds, gags, D/s dynamics (though not 24/7 bdsm lifestyle setups)

Consent play

Dressing or undressing each other

First time with each other

Fucked with the hilt of a weapon/barrel of a gun

Hair braiding, hair pulling

Jewellery and clothes kink

Mirror sex, identity porn

Mutual masturbation

Needleplay, sewing pretty patterns into people's skin, sewing a partner to the bed

One person in a threesome directing the other two and getting off watching them

One person trying to read, their partner getting more and more distracting until they put their book away

Oral sex

Overstimulation

Painplay, manipulating broken bones, wound fingering

Praise kink, loyalty kink, competency kink

Semi-public sex (especially under-desk cunnilingus), having to stay quiet

Sex for manipulation/political gain/conversion to the other political-military side (success optional)

Somnophilia

Spanking, especially as a show of forgiveness or as penance for fucking up at work

Temperature play

Thigh riding, especially if the one riding her partner is wearing a skirt with her underwear pulled aside.

Do Not Want

Apocalypse/Post-apocalypse fic (exploration of pre-Calamity ruins always fine)

A/B/O, any type of biologically determined heats/'must fuck now' situations including sex pollen

AUs that take place outside Exandria or in a less-magical Exandria

Bodyswap fic, crackfic

Breeding, pregnancy including unconventional forms like fpreg/oviposition, age-regression, ageplay

Characters under 13 unless requested (mentions of childhood happenings are fine), de-aging

Characters magically conjuring themselves dicks/being given dicks/giving other people dicks (sex toys like strap-ons are fine)

Detailed descriptions of injuries to feet, amputated feet (minor/referenced injuries are fine)

Food in/on genitalia or used as sex toys, weight gain/stuffing kink

'I am too old to be loved' angst

Issuefic, non-canonical trans or ace interpretations of characters unless requested, fic focussing on characters' romantic/sexual/gender identities, characters describing themselves with canon-atypical or anachronistic romantic/sexual/gender identity terms

'It was all a dream' sort of endings

'Only one destined true love' AUs like soulmates or hanahaki disease, single-target sexuality where the characters have never been and will never be sexually/romantically attracted to anyone else

Unrequested m/m or m/f ships, unless specified.

Rape/noncon (dubcon is fine)

Permanent death of requested characters.

Safeword/colour checkins, extensive kink/relationship negotiation

Scat, watersports, emetophilia, enemas

Sex involving under-16s.

Keyleth written as asexual

Percy/Vex or Pike/Scanlan as mentioned, past, or background ships (including things like references to 'the de Rolo quarter-Elves' that imply they are or were together)

General Notes on the Canon

Unrequested ships I am happy to see as secondary pairings: Vax/Gilmore, Vax/Allura, Vax/Kash, Keyleth/Kash, Keyleth/Kash/Vax, Keyleth/Vax/Allura, Keyleth/Vax/The Raven Queen, Keyleth/Vax/Vex, Delilah/Sylas.

I consider the campaign guides, artbook, and anything said on Talks Machina nebulously canon at best (and I don't watch Talks) so feel free to ignore them.

I interpret Vax's ending in Campaign 1 as 'became a weird eldritch immortal' rather than 'dead' and prefer that interpretation in fics.

I like fics that take into account mechanical D&D limitations (e.g. characters saying they need to rest before doing any more magic) but DNW characters using the actual real-world terms (e.g. characters saying they're 'out of spell slots').

I'm familiar with pretty much all D&D lore/sourcebooks/mechanics from 3.5e onwards, including 5e's unearthed arcana, if you want inspiration for additional worldbuilding/plotting. That being said I know and love 4E the best, and love fic that merges Matt's Exandria with 4E's Shadowfell/Feywild/Astral Sea/etc.

Speaking of, I adore 4e's epic destinies and would love it if you incorporated relevant ones for the requested characters. Special love for World Tree Guardian!Keyleth, Master of the Eternal Hunt!Vex, and Archspell!Delilah with Finger of Death, but, yknow, go wild!

I have loads of darkfic prompts, many worldbuilding prompts, and a slightly smaller number of marriage prompts for some of these ships in previous requests.

I am always and forever interested in AUs where Ripley succeeded in killing King Dwendal at some point during Campaign One, and how that changes the world of Campaign Two. Let the demon gun lady kill the authoritarian monarch, what could possibly go wrong.

Also always and forever interested in AUs where Vex takes Saundor's deal in the Feywild. More Fey things!

I dropped off watching Campaign 2 after it became clear there would be no resurrection for Vess, so if you want to set fic after that point, feel free to adhere to canon as strictly or loosely as you like.

Request 1 (Crossovers): But What If My Favourite Villain Ladies Didn't Die?

Avantika/Raishan: They did nothing wrong and they're very sexy! I would like to see them together.

Avantika as Raishan's warlock. Whether Raishan is a regular dragon, a dracolich, or at some point has succeeded in becoming a minor god (really, a much better way of getting out of a curse than dying), I'd love to see her as a warlock patron.

Avantika lands in Raishan's lair post-either death. Raishan would give her the pretty new body she deserves.

Who's going to say no to a pirate king with a dragon girlfriend? Absolutely no one. Pirate heists, is what I'm saying.

Avantika & Uvenda: I love the Water Ashari and also pirates, therefore: I would like them together.

You know what's a very good trope? Sad fucked up villains who refuse to believe they did anything wrong or have anything to recover from being gently bullied into recovery whether they like it or not'. Okay yes I maybe made up that trope name to describe this relationship specifically, but also, it's still a really good trope.

I think A Whole Lot about how, despite the danger Uk'otoa posed to the Nicodranas coastline, Avantika's ambitions were ... small. She wanted to be a pirate king and she wanted to live.
Girl has died Way too many times and the M9 were Way too happy letting her corpse get fucked up. Uvenda True Resurrecting her into a new body, and helping Avantika learn to live with it.

Avantika teaming up with the Water Ashari to combat a greater threat from the Elemental Plane of Water.

Avantika finding the Water Ashari before Uk'otoa. What changes? What doesn't?

Delilah & or / Vess: Combining the two requests here, because I truly don't care where on the &-to-/ spectrum they fall. Weird messy in-between relationships also great!

Delilah and Vess in the Assembly together. Fraught mentorships, betrayals, inconvenient loyalty, 'I hate you but I'm still letting you fuck me' - anything!

Delilah seeking out Vess after escaping from Whitestone. What's their reunion like? Does Vess help her? Reject her?

Vess wants to kill a god, and, honestly, I think she should get to. Whether she goes after someone like Pelor that she can convince Delilah to ally with her against, or she goes after Vecna and makes their relationship even more fraught, I'd love to see what their differing relationships to divinity do to their relationship with each other.

It makes me very happy to believe that both Vess and Delilah had extra clones lying around. Extra-extra contingency plans, if you will, and I'd love to see post-C2 meetups.

Request 2: Death And The Maiden, Except Death Raises The Girl Instead Of Capturing Her

Velora Vessar & Vesh: Was 'you don't feel evil, do you?' probably 97% a joke? Yes. Do I want Velora to grow up to have a weird fraught terrimazing relationship with the creature who brought her back to life? Oh ABSOLUTELY yes.

Velora making some kind of deal with Vesh while she's dead. She's growing up a powerful diplomat's daughter in the Feywild, she's got to have some sense of bargains with powerful creatures.

Velora continuing to write to/pray to Vesh over the years. Sure her friends say Vesh is evil, but how evil could someone who saved her be?

Velora grows up to be a ranger. Vesh gifts her her first companion - an owlbear who would like to murder. Velora, now a terrible goth teenager, is into it.

Vesh/Vilya: Use Campaign 2 canon for Vilya or not as you like! More of my prompts don't incorporate it, just because I shipped them for ages before the Viridian reveal, but either is seriously good.

You may have noticed I really like a Vesh that incorporates tempest/storm elements! What if she came from the elemental plane of air? Vilya, pre-Aramante, meeting Vilya on one of her trips through the Zephrah gate and bringing her back.

Alternatively, Siren!Vesh from the Water Plane! I have a lot of affection for the idea of Vesh as the kraken, or a similar creature that Vilya fought and lost to on her Aramante - what does that meeting, fight, aftermath look like?

Potential aftermath: Vilya as some kind of wandering Vesh-prophet, who dimly remembers her home but knows that travelling, bringing Vesh's song to the world, is more important.

Pre-canon, Vesh infiltrates Zephrah (a la Raishan in Pyrah) and ends up marrying Vilya.

Rumblecusp AU where it isn't Vokodo who's causing the cult and the memory loss, it's Vesh - wholly subsumed into the sea around the island and taking the villagers with her one by one.

Vesh/The Raven Queen: These two are my favourite of the divine/semi-divine that we meet in campaign 1, and so I want them together!

I am absolutely in love with the idea of Vesh possibly playing a version of Nerull to this version of the Raven Queen. Did the Raven Queen marry and then displace Vesh? Were they mortal lovers/wives before the ascension to godhood forced them apart (was their marriage originally an attempt by one to save the other, with godhood as an unexpected side effect?) Vesh has a habit of marrying her chosen, and the Raven Queen was and is desperately lonely, I absolutely see her trying to take advantage of that loneliness.

Or, flipped: Vesh as (attempted) usurper of the Raven Queen's domain. They overlap in their connection to death, and I see a lot of the tempest/storm side of winter to Vesh (in contrast to the Raven Queen's stillness/silence side) and it fascinates me.

A Vesh whose connection to the Raven Queen only becomes evident after she ascends - maybe in an AU where she, rather than Vecna, was the main opponent of Campaign 1 and the final battle went differently.

Any of these songs used as inspiration.

One exception to my DNW of outside-Exandria AUs: The two of them as Winter Court leaders in a Changeling: The Lost AU.

Request 3: Cassandra Can Be The Most Terrifying Thing In Whitestone, As A Treat

Cassandra/Allura/Kima: This can fall anywhere on the comfort-horror spectrum and I will love it.

Something in Whitestone during the Conclave arc - older marrieds bringing a third younger partner in to teach/comfort her is a very good trope.

Vampire!Cassandra capturing + turning the two other most powerful people in the city is also a very good option.

Cassandra/Delilah: Cassandra as daughter/sacrifice/future Lady is endlessly fascinating to me. How cruel did she grow under the Briarwoods? Did she even mind?

I'd love to see Delilah slowly introducing Cassandra to magic, to Vecna, to death. I really love the idea that Delilah might have killed and resurrected Cassandra more than once during their years together, all the better to prepare her to be a sacrifice to an Undying King.

Whitestone as a semi-sentient city torn between two masters.

Alternate takes on the Grey Hunt, especially versions where Cassandra (or any-seventh-de-Rolo) is meant to be the quarry.

Anything involving vampire!Cassandra, Cassandra learning to manipulate her manipulator.

AUs where Cassandra chooses the Briarwoods for real during the ziggurat battle.

AUs where Whitestone was never retaken, and Delilah and Cassandra rule together.

Re: my sex-involving-under-16s DNW, I'm happy for you to just not mention Cassandra's age if you want to write smut. I like the disconnect between Delilah seeing her as a daughter but Cass seeing her more as a mentor/queen, and can see powerplay and D/s dynamics going either way.

Feel free to OT3 them with Vex, Raishan, or Ripley if that's where your muse goes.

Cassandra/Raishan: Who's manipulating who? Who considers who a pet? Honestly, probably both/either.

Dark Queen Cassandra regnant in Whitestone with Raishan as her trusted advisor.

Raishan proving she can be a better mother/lady than Delilah.

Cassandra allying with Raishan because it feels right to finally say yes to something like this, and Raishan understands how possessive she feels towards Whitestone.

Raishan making a new lair in the forests by Whitestone and Cassandra stumbling upon her sometime post-canon.

Raishan seduces/manipulates/convinces Vox Machina!Cassandra away from her friends and the two of them become villain queens.

OT3ing them with Delilah in any situation.

Cassandra/Vex'ahlia: I love them! I was going to say something about the dynamic between them that I like but I like so many!

I would love Vampire!Cass/Fey!Vex AUs of any sort, especially if it's the case that Vex accepts Saundor's deal in the Feywild and only then truly understands what Cassandra is.

Lady of Whitestone Cassandra and her loyal huntmistress Vex is a super great dynamic (praise kink + throne sex yes pls).

Stories of alternate Grey Hunts - I thought it turned out to be rather dull in canon, and twists that make it as fey and WEIRD as Whitestone has the potential to be are super loved (special love for Cassandra being Vex's quarry, and the two of them marrying to avert/fulfill some kind of historic de Rolo curse).

Resurrection rituals! Death loves Vex and Cassandra knows death intimately, there is no bad way to do resurrection rituals, especially if you go with a multiply-killed-and-revived backstory for Cass.

Political marriages to seal some kind of Syngorn-Whitestone alliance would be great - I love seeing Vex-stayed-in-Syngorn AUs.
Other miscellaneous things I love: Vex distracting Cass from paperwork, Whitestone history and what it means for Vex to build a home there, something about the horror of Fenthras turning corpses into trees, fey woodland creature Vex happens upon Cassandra sometime during the Whitestone occupation and they plan to overthrow the Briarwoods together, Cassandra joins Vox Machina instead of Percy AUs, Vex giving Cassandra archery lessons.

Request 4: Keyleth Deserves The World, Maybe Several Worlds In Fact

Keyleth/Anna Ripley: I love dark Keyleth and slowly-turning darker Keyleth and slowly made darker Keyleth and I love disinterested scientist Ripley who's all the more horrifying because she's a disinterested scientist.

Keyleth and Ripley end up in the Shadowfell after the ziggurat fight and have to work together to survive.

Keyleth succumbs to Whitestone's corruption instead of Percy (especially intriguing given her 'guys we're too violent' tendencies immediately before that).

In a world where Percy dies permanently at Glintshore, Keyleth takes Ripley off alone and forces her to continue Percy's legacy.

Keyleth/Delilah: There's so many murdered lovers between them that you know it's fair they get the chance to be each other's lover and/or attempted murderer!

I am highkey in denial about Delilah's last death and would love for Keyleth to find another of her clones, anywhere from a year to several hundred years in the future.

I am also forever weak for stories about them stranded in the Shadowfell for reasons and stories where Delilah succeeds in turning Vex into her undead servant and Keyleth becomes Delilah's lover to watch over her friend.

Dark!Keyleth in stories where she's the one who succumbs to the Whitestone corruption effect. Some plant-based body horror stemming from her connection to the Sun Tree? Delilah killing her and turning her into a vampire?

Keyleth/Melora/Raishan: Weird fucked-up relationships with divinity and nature! I honestly don't have super specific prompts for them, but between Melora's power cursing Raishan, Raishan's desire to take Melora's place/power, and Keyleth's grudging - yet wildly different - respect for them both. I just want more of them!

Keyleth/Raishan/Allura: Best beloved witches! This is an excellent OT3 for exploring worldbuilding around spellcraft and godhood, and I encourage that even if it means shippiness takes a backseat. Apotheosis, accidental or not. Dark!Keyleth and Dark!Allura (and fics where either/both of them slowly turn darker over the course of the story) are great.

Raishan was obsessed with Keyleth and Allura during the fight in Opash's lair - Allura was unconscious twice and a lot of Allura's support was directly to Keyleth - and I would die for the AU where she succeeds in capturing them and having them to help her with whatever ritual she was planning, especially if it involves Keyleth and Allura comfort!sex with voyeur!Raishan.

I love alternate-meeting ideas: Allura falling in with Raishan while looking for ways to raise her friends who died fighting Thordak, Raishan picking Keyleth up early in her Aramente and Allura fighting to get her protege back. Keyleth being torn between two mentors, Raishan being obsessed with Allura's hoard of knowledge and Keyleth's life.

Anything that gets into how gloriously fucked-up Raishan in search of godhood with two of the most godless characters in the show as her means of ascension is, because, fuck, I love.

Keyleth/The Raven Queen: Hey so Keyleth is a thousand years of life and the Raven Queen is the very specific moment of death and I HAVE FEELINGS. Keyleth/Vax as a co-existing ship is very good for this request.

AU where Keyleth is the one to offer herself to the Raven Queen in the Sunken Tomb, before Vax gets there.

Post-canon, Keyleth visits Vax in the Shadowfell and slowly falls in love with his Lady as well as him.

Violent summer storm Keyleth who does not overmuch love the stillness of winter's snow but who nevertheless loves gods through their work and their champions above all, sitting by the blood pool in the Raven's Crest and realising what it means to build a love consciously. I am not sure if that's a prompt or a vibe but there you go.

Optional song prompts, if you are into that sort of thing! The Birthday Massacre, 'The Other Side' (in summer i drowned you / in winter i found you) or Cellar Darling, 'Redemption' (take me there to the moor, to the end / will i be innocent again?)

Request 5: Campaign 2 Ladies Who Aren't Dead, Thanks

Avantika & Uk'otoa: In NO universe was 'pirate queen witch of a drowned god' not going to be my PRECISE THING and oh man more of them please.

Any wonderful creepy dreams like Fjord had. Did she start having them before she knew what Uk'otoa was? After?

Plank King Avantika converting others to Uk'otoa worship, whether he's already been freed or not.

Previous adventures to find crystals, and how Avantika collected her crew.

Avantika/Vess: Ladies who should not have died! Plank King Avantika negotiating with Vess, Vess hiring Avantika's crew to take her to Aeor, AUs where Avantika ends up captured by the M9 instead of killed by orcas and she tries to bond with/manipulate Vess.

Jourrael & Leylas: I love a good murderghost and Jourrael is the most specific sort of greymoral murderghost who is designed to appeal directly to everything I love. Leylas is easily old enough to've been around (in a previous life) while Jourrael was, and all of the tension between the Most Chosen of Lolth and the leader of the Drow who reject Lolth (even if that was still in Leylas' future)? Beautiful perfect tell me ALL those stories. I am, not gonna lie, way more interested in pre-Calamity/pre-Jourrael's Sundering fic for them, but if you want to do reunionfic, go for it.