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The McElroy family revealed the new names, personalities and accents of their Ethersea characters in the most recent episode of The Adventure Zone.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Adventure Zone: Ethersea — Episode 1, available now.
The new season of the hit actual play Dungeons & Dragons podcast The Adventure Zone has finally introduced listeners to the new player characters. While the McElroy family has been playing a version of Avery Alder’s The Quiet Year for the past month to help build the world that they’ll be playing in, the season proper returns them to the rules of D&D in this unique homebrew setting.
Ethersea takes place entirely under the sea in the city of Founder’s Wake, a refuge from a world blighted by the overuse of magic and famous for its fish sticks and goulash. The season begins in the traditional D&D opening method of bringing adventurers together for a job, though this meeting takes place in the office of Bluespan broker Ravi Montrell instead of a tavern. In what amounts to a job interview, the McElroy family introduces their new player characters to Ravi as they make their bids for employment.
Devo Lemagne
Travis McElroy is playing Devo Lemagne, an orator who has been cloistered his entire life with the Benevolent Parish until he chose to leave and branch out. Devo is described as “very pretty,” as well as fairly young at only 23. As someone experiencing much of the world for the first time, Devo is a great audience surrogate, asking questions about the way fantasy items work in this world and even questioning his family’s jokes.
Devo’s standout characteristic, however, is his French accent. Travis has committed to not just a character voice, but also an incredibly thick accent, which he claims to have practiced for a long time. Devo’s Francophone heritage also means his speech is peppered with “Mon Dieu”s and “zut alors.” Devo puts his French-influenced speech to good work as a Bard whose instrument of choice is spoken word, where he uses his charm and charisma despite not often knowing how to play a situation given his cloistered upbringing.
Zoox
Zoox — pronounced “Zooks” — is Clint McElroy’s single-named character for this season. A member of the Brinarr, Zoox is the soul of one of the departed Einarr race who took up residence in a constructed body. Using D&D‘s Warforged race as a basis, Clint has crafted a very Ethersea-appropriate construct made of coral, giving a brininess to the underlying Einarr soul. Clint specifies brain coral for his head, giving Zoox an eerie sea face, but the rest of his character is a hodgepodged “goulash” of coral types.
As a Ranger, Zoox offers different fighting options, allowing Clint to lean into the close combat of his last character Argo or to play as a distance fighter like his first character Merle. Zoox seems eager to explore and face the unknown, though he admits to not knowing how to operate a boat.
Amber Gris
Amber Gris lives up to Justin McElroy’s reputation for crafting memorable and rich characters. Amber is a Finner, a member of a group trained to fight against the vicious blink sharks created in Ethersea‘s prologue. Her name is a reference to the historically prized marine substance ambergris as well as the Forgotten Realms character Ambergris.
Amber’s punch-first-talk-later attitude has already led to some interesting interactions and drama. In this sense, Amber is also leaning into her Monk-nature, a D&D class notorious for punching skill. Not only does her Southern accent seem natural for West Virginia’s own Justin McElroy, but it feels like a nod to some of Justin’s best previous characters like Duck Newton or Pepsi Liberty. She also uses a number of slang terms, including a fictional Finner language that Justin seems comfortable with, as well as a very derogatory use of the word “guppy.”
With three big personalities and a couple of wild accents, the new player characters of The Adventure Zone: Ethersea promise to bring the brand of humor and chaos that the show has become famous for. The reveal of these new characters also suggests that the animations for the season’s trailer were actually depicting the PCs, with a coral construct and a character raising some Monk-ish fists, despite claiming that their characters had not yet been created with the trailer was released. Perhaps this is life — or D&D — imitating art.
The Adventure Zone: Ethersea stars Clint, Griffin, Justin and Travis McElroy. New episodes of the podcast are released every other Thursday.
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