Last month, comedian and Late Show host Stephen Colbert took part in a one-shot session of Dungeons & Dragons, run by voice actor Matthew Mercer alongside of the Critical Role crew, to raise money for the Red Nose Day charity. Over the course of this session, a short fantasy adventure with epic battles, clever trickery, fiendish cults, and treacherous imps, Colbert showed off his collection of Lord of the Rings movie swords while also making references to another infamous fantasy series - the Eternal Champion saga written by New Wave fantasy author Michael Moorcock, famous for creating iconic fantasy characters such as Elric Of Melniboné.
"Dignity: An Adventure With Stephen Colbert," an hour-and-a-half Dungeons & Dragons session recently ed to Critical Role's YouTube channel, is the second time comedian Stephen Colbert has been in a D&D session with Matthew Mercer, a professional voice actor and regular Dungeon Master for the Critical Role live-play series. Back in 2019, Colbert participated in an RPG one-shot run by Mercer to raise money for Red Nose Day; this was the first time Colbert had played Dungeons & Dragons in over 30 years after relentlessly playing AD&D during his youth. The Dignity one-shot reunited Colbert with Mercer and introduced him to three of the Critical Role gaming group - voice actors Sam Riegel, Marisha Ray, and Ashley Johnson.
Matthew Mercer's opening narration established the core premise of the Dungeons & Dragons one-shot and introduced the new player character Colbert had designed using the 5th edition rules; "Lucky Jack," a human fighter seeking to reclaim their dignity and a magical artifact literally called "Dignity," stolen by the evil cult leader who burned down the temple Jack was sworn to protect. Over the course of this one-shot RPG session, Colbert's Lucky Jack PC teamed up with three PCs from the second season of Critical Role's Wildemount campaign, foiled an evil plot to summon a powerful demon, and delivered several shout-outs to British author Michael Moorcock, a pioneer of "New Wave" sci-fi/fantasy fiction whose stories influenced early Dungeons & Dragons back in the 1970s.
In The Critical Role One-Shot, Colbert's PC Serves A God From The Elric & Corum Stories
At the start of the "Dignity" Critical Role one-shot, Stephen Colbert introduced his Lucky Jack character as a Fighter with the Acolyte background, a warrior who once served in a temple dedicated to Arioch, the Duke of Chaos. The divine pantheon of Critical Role's Exandria fantasy setting contains no deity by this name, but Arioch does show up in two of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion fantasy sagas. In Michael Moorcock's Elric Of Melniboné stories, Arioch is a powerful demon lord from the hellish planes of Chaos, a gold-skinned youth with aspects of an insect who is Elric's patron deity and occasional nemesis. In the Corum novels (directly referenced by Colbert during the session) Arioch, in his aspect as the Knight of Swords, takes the form of a fat, jovial man who treats Corum with hospitality but also exterminates the protagonist's people on a whim. At first glance, a character as heroic as Lucky Jack should have no reason to serve a chaotically cruel deity like Arioch; that said, Arioch is a creature of chaos, not evil.
In The Critical Role One-Shot, The Pacifist Battleaxe Mirrors Stormbringer From The Elric Saga
In the "Dignity" Critical Role D&D One-Shot, Stephen Colbert's Lucky Jack character fights with a sword and hand-axe, but also carries a relic weapon from his temple called the Battleaxe Of The Gentle Path. Mechanically, this item was capable of dealing heavy amounts of damage at the cost of players making attack rolls with disadvantage. Narratively, the Battleaxe Of The Gentle Path was also a sentient magical weapon with pacifist beliefs who vocally objected whenever Lucky Jack tried to use it on his enemies.
Besides being a catalyst for comic relief in the Critical Role one-shot, this Dungeons & Dragons weapon may also be an inverted reference to the sentient sword called Stormbringer seen in Michael Moorcock's Elric saga; while the Battleaxe Of The Gentle Path is an unconventional D&D weapon with thoughts, feelings, and a dislike of violence, the Stormbringer of the Elric tales is a sentient, demonic Runeblade that devours the souls of its victims and gleefully seeks to murder Elric Of Melniboné's friends.
