The Stowaway

is the forty-fifth episode of the second campaign of Critical Role. The Mighty Nein find a stowaway on the Squall-Eater, who carries a mysterious item that holds dangerous consequences for the curious...

Pre-Show
We should just have a sound cue for Travis at this point. It's expected at this point: it's Critical Role's *bwa-bwa-bwa-bwaaaaa*.

Announcements

 * First and foremost, we have two fantastic sponsors tonight:
 * Our fantastic friends from D&D Beyond return! D&D Beyond has been with Critical Role all campaign and all year-long.  To thank D&D Beyond for such a wonderful 2018, Sam is giving them a gift: an ad that will hopefully live forever.  He is calling it his "Christmas GIF"...that's right: "GIF", not "gift". (Sam tries to make a "G" and a "F" with his hand, but it's just two Cs.) Sam doesn't know how to make a GIF, but Critters do.  So the crew will bring out a green screen, and the cast will do some acting and reactions in front of it, and you can add your own backgrounds to make memorable GIFs!  That way, when you are online searching through the Twitters, the Reddits, the "Immagurrs" (Imugrs...Sam's an old man), and the Giphys, you might see one of these bad boys and give some love to D&D Beyond.  Sam starts by doing his version of the "guy who blinks like, 'That's weird'".  Taliesin does an applause GIF.  Sam directs Laura to do a fail GIF where she rolls a dice but the result sucked, but Laura realizes what he's trying to get her to do, and it turns into a "I'm-so-angry-I-gonna-punch-you" GIF.  Matt does a "this" GIF.  And last but not least, Sam tries to do a success GIF, but then Travis suggests "dramatic prairie dog" instead.
 * Speaking of fantastic partners through this campaign, we have our returning friends from The Rook & The Raven! They have been with Critical Role before, and they are creators of handcrafted, high-quality, disc-bound notebooks for your campaign notes and character notes.  Marisha has the "Mischief & Misadventure" book.  For the month of December, The Rook & The Raven is donating 100% of their profits to schools, teachers, and community centers for them to grow gaming clubs and RPG classes through their "adventure club gaming kits".  They're putting everything together to make sure that these schools and facilities have the necessary materials to help facilitate these clubs and get these kids to build the same strong bonds that Matt did in his school's D&D club.  Give the gift of gaming now by supporting their work (and thus, supporting these kids) at therookandtheraven.com/criticalrole.  Travis thinks that's so cool.  Matt thinks it's badass!  Matt loves seeing messages online from gaming clubs that there are TOO MANY kids playing: YAY!  It's such a surreal reality: Matt loves it!
 * Critical Role has a fantastic art show coming up soon. You all got a chance to see "The Chronicles of Exandria: Vol. II": the final volume of the art for Vox Machina's campaign.  Now Critical Role gets to announce that they are having their very first art gallery to celebrate the fantastic art community that has come out of Critical Role.  Each piece was created by community artists and curated by the cast.  Tickets for the opening reception will available Monday, December 17, 2018.  Tickets are completely free and are just for the reception on Friday, January 18, 2019: you don't need tickets for the rest of the weekend, as the gallery will be open through Sunday, January 20, 2019.  It's going to be at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA, and you can find all the information for that at critrole.com.
 * Also announced for that same weekend, on Saturday, January 19, 2019, Critical Role is returning to the first campaign with a Vox Machina one-shot. It's going to be "The Search for Grog".  No spoilers, but towards the very, very, very end of the campaign, something happened: one of our players pulled the thing from a Deck of Thingy Things (Travis moans, "I'M SORRY!") and briefly derailed the entire thing.  They had just glossed over it, but they are actually going to play through that adventure as a one-shot with all returning members of Vox Machina but two, because Grog is being sought after and another character will not be present.  VIP tickets go on sale this Saturday, December 15, 2018, and General Admission goes on sale Sunday, December 16, 2018.  VIP attendees get a special swag bag (including a Vox Machina print signed by the whole cast), as well as a special Q&A before the show, moderated by Brian Wayne Foster.
 * Be sure to join us next week for our very special holiday one-shot that is being DMed by our fantastic Liam O'Brien. Liam is so excited: he's had this idea in his head for TWO YEARS!  He was going to do this last December, but they ended up doing the Level 20 Battle Royale instead.  But now it's HERE, and he's mostly ready!  Matt was not expecting that much exuberance out of Liam.  Matt is pumped now just from that: that was adorable!  It's gonna be so much fun, and it's going to be called "The Night Before Critmas"!  It will air on Friday, December 21, 2018 at 7:00 pm PST at twitch.tv/criticalrole.
 * Last but not least, Critical Role will be having its very special end-of-the-year "State of the Role" tomorrow on Friday, December 14, 2018. It will give more insight to Critical Role's holiday programming schedule and reveal a few fun things that Critical Role has coming in 2019.
 * Whatever Laura said before they came back from the intro, Matt says it was "adorable".

The Mighty Nein

 * Beauregard
 * Caduceus Clay
 * Fjord
 * Frumpkin
 * Jester Lavorre
 * Nott
 * Yasha Nydoorin
 * Caleb Widogast

New

 * Twiggy
 * Unnamed young blue dragon

Returning

 * Marius LePual
 * Orly Skiffback
 * The Traveler

Mentioned

 * Avantika
 * Calianna
 * Catagan
 * Halas
 * Kiri