Demodus Blix may be a fifth-level illusion wizard working as an archmage, but he still has a busker’s habits and good reason to want Pimley Morn arrested. The gnomish smuggler’s arrival in Sloak with Bolaire, Demodus’s mentor, makes their reunion painful. Why would someone who helped Demodus travel with the man responsible for betraying him?
For Critical Role’s Campaign 4 party, Demodus isn’t simply a missing wizard who needs rescuing. He has ties to the Penteveral, House Tachonis, and King Augustus Valian’s court. Those relationships began well before his current troubles, when his stage was an apple box set on a street corner.
Episode 20, “The Vanishing,” introduces Demodus through a memory of Bolaire’s. In Brennan’s description, he’s a handsome young gnomish man whose features include “darkish brown skin,” an “ice cream swirl of hair,” and translucent eyes that take on the color of whatever stands behind him.
The flashback shows Demodus busking in Penteveral colors, using magic for comedy. His routine includes making a candle flame change color and declining money offered by a wealthy illusory dragon. Both his theatrical confidence and his school pride are apparent. Bolaire enjoys the performance enough to put 5 gold in his hat. In response, Demodus calls his apple-box stage the “Bolaire Center for Performing Arts.” That gift starts a relationship in which Bolaire becomes an informal patron and, eventually, an unofficial mentor.
Demodus also knew two other party members before the campaign began. At the Penteveral, he studied under Murray, played by Marisha Ray. Occtis, played by Alex Ward, studied magic as an older classmate, with much more money available to him thanks to his place in House Tachonis.
From a teaching appointment to an escape from Dol-Makjar
The campaign opens a year after that memory, around the time of Thjazi Fang’s execution. The Chamber of Lords-Advisory subsequently prohibits unregulated marketplace magic, leaving Demodus unable to earn his living by performing. A university appointment appears to solve that problem. The upheaval after Thjazi’s death has left vacancies at the Penteveral, and Bolaire draws on his influence to obtain a teaching job for Demodus, fulfilling his promise.
But Demodus never arrives for his first day of teaching. Dean Kora Keplenvaisreck, newly appointed to lead the Penteveral, treats his absence with contempt and urges Murray not to give him an internship at the Archanade. To Murray and Bolaire, however, it’s worrying. They can’t reconcile his enthusiasm for magic with missing the start of a job he’d effectively wanted his whole life.
Hal’s contacts in theatre and the investigative resources available to Azune as an Arcane Marshall help the Schemers uncover what happened. Dean Kora had employed Demodus on Trimus Tachonis’s behalf to produce an illusion of fey magic. Without realizing it, Demodus was contributing indirectly to the massacre at Palazzo Davinos.
He escaped the Palazzo before House Tachonis’s agents could murder him along with the members of Houses Davinos and Royce. Frightened and intent on getting out of Dol-Makjar, Demodus approached the gnomish smuggler Pimley Morn for a safe route away. Although Pimley first meant to assist him, he instead delivered Demodus to the Crow Keepers, a thieves’ guild based in the undercity.
The Schemers hurried to find Demodus ahead of House Tachonis and discovered him captive in the sewers, where he’d been beaten. Their rescue succeeded, though his noisy, showy spellcasting attracted attention as they escaped. He has valuable magical skills, among them Blix’s Bungling Blitz, a homebrew spell that moves clues around crime scenes. Staying unnoticed, however, isn’t one of his strengths.
Once he was free, the party disagreed about his safety. Azure favored getting him secretly out of the city, whereas Bolaire thought he could remain at his home until the threat subsided. Demodus resisted their treatment of him as a child, going so far as to conjure illusory facial hair to support his objection. Nevertheless, he accepted Bolaire’s offer. Back at the masked curator’s apartment, their heart-to-heart included an introduction to Figment, Demodus’s chameleon familiar.
Still bloodied and battered, and disappointed in the institution he’d hoped to work for, Demodus hid alone in Bolaire’s apartment for days. Meanwhile, Murray and Azune sought a workable way out. Murray secured him employment as King Augustus Valian’s archmage and arranged for him to travel from Dol-Makjar to Timony with the protection of the King’s Caravan.
This was a promising prospect for someone born and raised in Timony who’d depended on street performances to pay his way. Rather than merely providing refuge, the well-paid position would let him serve his own country’s king after his academic plans had abruptly collapsed. A Critical Role video accompanies this portion of his story.
Departure depended on one requirement: first, Azune needed Demodus’s testimony before House Einfasen. With favorable rolls for Azune and a live demonstration of Demodus’s flame-changing trick, the house was persuaded to accept what he said. That cleared the way for him to leave without much further trouble. Murray also marked his departure with a handmade “diploma,” standing in for the Penteveral education he hadn’t been able to finish.
How the reunion with Bolaire becomes painful
With King Gus and his hounds ensuring his safe departure from Dol-Makjar, Demodus joined the Timonish Caravan in the quiet town of Sloak. He remained there offscreen for the following stretch of episodes, until the new Seekers table reached town in episode 35, “Lead the Way.” He still hadn’t learned discretion. Upon the Schemers’ arrival, his exuberant, loud greeting of Occtis by his full name immediately destroyed any hope of keeping their presence quiet.
In other respects, his new life was going well. His wizard level might be modest, but the archmage appointment gave Demodus legitimate, well-paid work suited to his magical abilities. It also allowed him to return to performing: King Gus happily watched the tricks and gags he devised.
Against that backdrop, seeing Pimley accompany Bolaire and the other Seekers is particularly upsetting. Demodus calls on King Gus to arrest the man who delivered him into captivity and a beating. Kattigan’s case for giving Pimley a second chance meets resistance from Demodus. Forgiveness is a personal question for him, not a theoretical one.
Ulbid then inadvertently exposes another truth that Demodus hadn’t known: his mentor is a mask that wears a body, not a person behind a mask. This forces Bolaire to explain how he exists. The explanation begins gently, though with an almost condescending tone, before turning into a fierce philosophical disagreement between mentor and protégé.
For Demodus, the question is whether Bolaire has sufficiently reckoned with what his survival costs: “eating” mortals so that he can maintain a vessel. Despite challenging him on that point, Demodus volunteers his own body for Bolaire to wear. A gentle but definite refusal from Bolaire leaves their conversation at an awkward stopping point.
Then comes a different hurt. Offering “penance” for his betrayal of Demodus, Pimley volunteers to wear Bolaire, and this time Bolaire agrees. Demodus is left watching as Pimley departs Sloak wearing the mask, taking his mentor away with the very man who betrayed him.
Connections to Occtis, Murray, and Bolaire have helped make Demodus a valuable, though somewhat volatile, ally of both the Schemers and the Seekers. Those same relationships now involve hurts that haven’t been resolved. As the player characters continue after House Tachonis, Timony’s new archmage remains offscreen, working through Pimley’s betrayal and what he’s learned about Bolaire. Whether he can trust his mentor again is still an open question.
