Caleb Widogast

Caleb Widogast, born Bren Aldric Ermendrud, is a human wizard and a member of the adventuring party known as th test of his three students' loyalty, Trent modified their memories so they believed that their parents had betrayed the empire. The three killed their parents, but Bren "broke" when he heard his parents' screams from inside their burning house. Bren spent the next eleven years in the Vergesson Sanatorium until a woman whom he believed to be a fellow patient touched him, removing both his madness and his fake memories. After that, he killed one of the guards, took a necklace to hide from Ikithon, and escaped. He started going by multiple aliases and hid from Trent for the next five years. During this time, Caleb discovered that people did not pay attention to poor, dirty wanderers and maintained a disheveled appearance to escape notice. While he still has hopes not to let his parents down, Bren considers murdering them to be an unforgivable act on his part. Approximately five years after his escape from the asylum, Nott and Caleb met in a small jail (where he introduced himself to Nott as Caleb Widogast), which they escaped from together. Caleb came up with their escape plan, using Frumpkin to bring a piece of wire into their cell which Nott used to pick the lock. Caleb proceeded to set the jail on fire and scream for help. The guards promptly fled, and Caleb and Nott walked out of the jail together, staying together first out of convenience, but then for several months. They survived by petty theft, trickery, and con schemes, living from hand to mouth as wandering hobos.

Caleb stated that he does not currently have any children and that he did not have children in the past.

Pre-Stream
The day before they met the rest of the Mighty Nein, Nott and Caleb were attacked by a pack of gnolls hiding in grass, and Caleb was knocked unconscious. Nott fed him the health potion Caleb carried on his belt, saving his life. Nott blamed herself for their inability to stay in any place for long without getting into trouble. It was Caleb's idea to stay in Trostenwald to find new companions "to tag along with."

Chapter 9

 * Expeditious Retreat
 * Feather Fall
 * Find Familiar
 * Gift of Alacrity
 * Identify
 * Mage Armor
 * Magic Missile
 * Shield
 * Sleep
 * Unseen Servant (dubbed Schmidt)
 * Witch Bolt
 * At least one other transmutation spell
 * At least one other transmutation spell

2nd-level

 * Arcane Lock
 * Blur
 * Enlarge/Reduce
 * Flaming Sphere
 * Fortune's Favor
 * Hold Person
 * Invisibility
 * Immovable Object
 * Knock
 * Levitate
 * Maximilian's Earthen Grasp (takes the form of a cat's paw)
 * Melf's Acid Arrow
 * Mirror Image
 * Scorching Ray
 * Suggestion

3rd-level

 * Counterspell
 * Dispel Magic
 * Fear
 * Fireball
 * Fly
 * Haste
 * Leomund's Tiny Hut
 * Major Image
 * Protection from Energy
 * Slow
 * Tongues
 * Vampiric Touch



4th-level

 * Banishment
 * Fabricate
 * Gravity Sinkhole
 * Greater Invisibility
 * Polymorph
 * Resonant Echo
 * Wall of Fire
 * Widogast's Vault of Amber
 * Widogast's Web of Fire

5th-level

 * Cat's Ire (functions identically to Bigby's Hand)
 * Seeming
 * Telekinesis
 * Teleportation Circle

6th-level

 * Disintegrate
 * Globe of Invulnerability
 * Magic Jar
 * Programmed Illusion
 * Widogast's Transmogrification

7th-level

 * Teleport
 * Widogast's Nascent Nine-Sided Tower (functions identically to Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion)

Quotations
Caleb: "Yeah I'm not a happy guy." Beau: "Was."
 * "It's on the table though, so on the table it will stay." (Caleb telling Nott when not to steal)
 * "Leave me alone, I'm reading." (Caleb telling Jester not to bother him while he reads his new book)
 * "I'm a dirty hobo and I reek of yesterday's garbage." (Caleb describing himself.)
 * "I'm either a clown or a toad-killer. Let's see what it is."
 * "Well, my social anxiety is getting the best of me; I'm taking a walk. Goodbye."
 * "I am going to tell you the story of how I murdered my mother and father."
 * "Anybody can make lights. Anybody could send a message through a wire. I want to bend reality to my will."
 * "You were always a better dancer than me, Astrid." (Drunkenly told to Jester during their waltz)
 * "Shine bright, circus man." (Caleb's last words to Molly)
 * "Brave, dead... it's semantics, really." (Caleb taking the lead on the infiltration of Sour Nest)
 * "They. Are. Going. To. Die." (Caleb upon Frumpkin being killed in the Sour Nest)
 * "You shouldn't have killed my cat." (Caleb's words when he killed Lorenzo in the Sour Nest)
 * (to Nott, discussing hijacking The Mist) "I know that did that it didn't go very well, but this is our new family, right? So we want the family to stick together."
 * Twiggy: (after Caleb succeeds on the saving throw against Tasha's Hideous Laughter) "Funny, right?"
 * "My name was... Bren Aldric Ermendrud."
 * "Yes, I was trained to be a terrible person. Yes, I was a student of the Cerberus Assembly. Yes, I murdered those most dear to me, yes. And yes I want to see specific people dead. And if that lines up with something that can save where you and I are from, where Veth and Yeza are from, where our friends live...then all is one!"
 * "I don't know how my brothers and sisters could stomach wearing a mantle of loyalty, knowing that it was woven so throughly from sin. And I am very sorry for you."
 * (during Essek's interrogation) "You were not born with venom in your veins. You learned it."
 * "A long time ago you asked me about myself and I just never answered. I value this family, Fjord, because I killed my own, for these people that we are going to deal with."
 * "Yasha, let yourself a little happiness."
 * "Astrid and Eadwulf were willing to do anything that... Ikithon asked of them. And their final test was to kill their own flesh and blood. And they did so. And I am like them. W--was... Am. Am like them."
 * (after admitting he killed his parents to the full party) "I suppose I enjoyed being seen as I should have been. Or could have been. [ ... ] Whatever we’re doing here, I have come home in the hopes of atoning. And that idea has evolved quite a bit over time, and I’m not sure what the exact answer is. But I mean to atone."
 * "I often feel like a failure and a success within the same hour."

Trivia

 * Caleb's intelligence is one of the highest for any player character, tied with Percy, Lyra, and Lillith.
 * The name Caleb is Hebrew for "dog" ("kelev") and "whole-hearted" ("collev").
 * The name Widogast is an Old German name composed of the elements "witu" ("wood") and "gast" ("stranger, guest").
 * From Old and Middle, gast (also spelled ghast due to associations with ghost) means "to frighten", or "soul", "spirit", or "breath."
 * From a Proto-Indo-European origin, it can also mean "anger, agitation."
 * From Old French, it can mean "destruction" or "destroyed; ravaged; decimated", and is an alternate form of wast, which the word waste is related to or originates from.
 * Brian Wayne Foster described Caleb as "Homeless Troy Baker". After Caleb was cleaned by Pumat Sol, Brian began calling him "Basic Cable Troy Baker".
 * When Liam joked about Caleb "being all about" the Mold Earth cantrip, Laura responded that Caleb smells like "moldy earth".
 * When Liam speaks the Zemnian language as Caleb, he actually speaks German. Because of this, Matt now uses a German accent for Zemnian characters.
 * Caleb came up with the adventuring party's name the Mighty Nein, when Watchmaster Bryce Feelid needed the group's name for paperwork.
 * When Caleb cast Knock in "Within the Nest" the spell did not create a loud booming sound as described by the spell. It's likely this was an oversight by Matt.
 * Before Caleb spent a decade in an asylum, he was an evocation wizard.
 * The name Bren Aldric Ermendrud has a few different roots in German.
 * The name Bren comes from the German verb brennen meaning "burn"
 * Aldric comes from a Germanic name, derived from the elements ald "old" and ric "ruler, power"
 * Ermendrud is Germanic as well, derived from the elements ermen "whole, universal" and thrud "strength"
 * Caleb once claimed to have invented the club-and-ball sport known as "golf".
 * Caleb is the first player character on Critical Role to roll a Natural 20 while attacking himself.
 * As of Episode 125, Caleb now knows Teleportation Circles in Asarius, Rosohna, Nicodranas (Yussa's Tidepeak Tower), Uthodurn, Zadash, Rexxentrum, Port Damali and Emon (Allura's Ivory Tower).
 * The word Caleb uses to complete the Widogast's Vault of Amber spell is "Una", his mother's name.
 * When describing the material components for the spell Fly, Liam specifies that Caleb uses a raven's feather, possibly a reference to Vax'ildan and his connection to The Raven Queen.
 * In the fourth episode of Narrative Telephone (Widogast's Web of Words), Liam told a gothic tale of three children who became cursed by a "Waldhexe" (forest witch). The first child was cursed by having part of his brain removed so that his thoughts were no longer his own, the second had an eye removed so she could no longer see true, and the third's heart was removed so he never knew love again, metaphorically representing Eadwulf, Astrid, and Caleb himself, respectively.
 * Caleb is attracted to both men and women. Liam has confirmed that Caleb is in love with Jester Lavorre,, that he had a prior relationship with Astrid, and that he is attracted to Essek Thelyss.
 * The smell that makes Caleb the happiest is that of his mother's apple tarts.