Orym

Orym is a halfling fighter and member of the Air Ashari who appeared in Exandria Unlimited and in Campaign Three of Critical Role. He is played by Liam O'Brien.

Appearance
Orym is 3 feet and 3 inches tall, slender, with ropey muscles and fine features. He has a short shock of brown hair less than an inch long. He has a full-sleeve tattoo of swirling winds and clouds on his right arm stretching up onto his chest, and a tattoo of Ruidus cradled within a crescent Catha on his right shoulder. He wears green armor with a leaf theme over brown leather, with well-worn sashes with ivy and flower patterns around his waist, and his boots are brown leather with green stone rings laced into his shin guards. His shield is adorned with ivy.

Personality
Orym is generally serious, dutiful and level-headed. He considers himself responsible for "babysitting" his friends' antics, and makes efforts to protect them in combat. Orym prefers to leave complicated, dangerous matters in the hands of more experienced figures whom he trusts. Liam characterized Orym as the straight man of his adventuring groups and as one who seems set to lead but views himself as one who follows, and he felt that Orym is the closest to Lawful Good of any character he has ever played.

Orym is uncomfortable with getting involved in crime or "fucking people over", believing there's more to the world than corruption and temptation. Dariax considered him to be the most moral member of their group.

Background
Orym served as a guard when he lived in Zephrah. There, he overheard conversations with Vox Machina. He did not excel at learning the Air Ashari's druidic magic, but proved to be fast and athletic.

Circa 837 PD, Orym witnessed an attack on Keyleth in Zephrah. It was unsuccessful, though a few Ashari died in the attack. The guards were able to fell some of the assailants, but the bodies melted away into nothing before their eyes.

His father's surname is Tarrintel, but he does not use the name.

Exandria Unlimited
At the beginning of Exandria Unlimited Orym remembered waking up as a group a day or so ago on the road outside Emon, but didn't remember anything about the week prior. He remembered being at Thordak's Crater and seeing footprints leading out toward where the Scar of the Cinder King is located. The others were also missing memories of the same week.

When the group found the Circlet of Barbed Vision aboard the Blightstar at the behest of Poska, both Orym and Dorian Storm became nauseous near it. Later, when Opal was seriously wounded in a battle, Orym stepped in front of her to protect her. When the fight was over, Orym found multiple crates and barrels holding refined residuum, about half of which were from his hometown of Zephrah. He talked the group into taking some of it to the Fire Ashari so they could get word back to the Air Ashari about it. When the group realized that the Circlet was one of the Vestiges of Divergence, Orym suggested showing it to the Fire Ashari as well. When they arrived, he did tell the Ashari about the residuum, but Opal and Dorian stopped him before he could mention the Circlet. Later, he agreed that keeping it was probably a good idea. When the group was kidnapped by Poska on their way out of town and realized they had inadvertently endangered Shaun Gilmore with their overheard conversations, Orym used their gifted magic one-way one-use box to send a warning to Gilmore.

At Byroden, Orym was taken under the wing of the wife of the War Ringer, Ruby Lee Beckfort, who swept him off and fed him pie in an attempt to fatten him up. His participation in the Gem of Byroden Pageant was limited to being the target for an axe-throwing Cinna Brightbow.

Back on the road, Orym confronted Dorian when he offered to carry the Circlet for a while and was able to do so without feeling his former nausea. Orym forced Dorian to give it back to Dariax, and kept a close eye on him thereafter.

Thrascuur, the tetrarch of the city of Niirdal-Poc, gifted Orym with a seed and told him to make it grow. When the party left, a very young feline girl tried to give them a letter to deliver to Umejii, but the group was suspicious. Orym followed her out, spoke to her and learned her name, and promised to deliver the letter.

During the party's final battle, Orym again defended a prone Opal against Myr'atta Niselor. He joined the others in their decision to stay together for at least a while longer as they continued their search for Umejii.

Campaign Three
Following the events of Exandria Unlimited, the party returned to Byroden. Subsequently, Keyleth sent Orym on a mission to Marquet, telling him that his friends Fearne and Dorian could be helpful. Keyleth used Transport via Plants to sneak them to the skyship port in Emon, from which they traveled eventually to Jrusar. They soon found themselves responding to a mysterious attack of animated objects in the streets, fighting alongside Ashton Greymoore, Fresh Cut Grass, Imogen Temult, and Laudna, and they attracted the attention of Bertrand Bell, who promised to make introductions to high-placed people in the city. Given that their mission was to find a person, Oshad Breshio, Orym hoped that an introduction to someone who knows a lot of people in Jrusar would be helpful. After spending a few days with them and being asked by Imogen, Orym told the party the specific details of why he was looking for Breshio.

Keyleth
In Exandria Unlimited, Orym alluded to having worked for Keyleth in Zephrah a long time ago; he also says she had told him about the people of Emon and that she was exactly right about them. He later said he was aware of Keyleth and her possession of a Vestige, and that made him conscious of the danger and unlikelihood of stumbling upon a Vestige himself. Keyleth was the one who sent Orym, Fearne, and Dorian to Marquet.

Fearne
Fearne Calloway and Orym have contrasting personalities: she with a chaotic fey nature and he soberly making a conscious effort to do good and not screw people over. Despite Orym's worrying about the trouble Fearne will get herself and the party into, they are attentive to each other and get along well. Orym entrusted Fearne, along with Dorian, with knowledge of the attack on Zephrah, and both Fearne and Dorian accompanied Orym to Jrusar.

Dorian
Orym expressed alarm about Dorian holding onto the Circlet of Barbed Vision, which inadvertently hurt his feelings; Dorian was more concerned about ensuring that their party collectively kept stewardship of the evil artifact, rather than using the artifact for personal gain. However, by the time of Campaign Three, Dorian considered Orym their small group's leader. Orym supports Dorian in his musical endeavors and entrusted both him and Fearne with knowledge of the attack on Zephrah.

Notable items

 * Boots of Striding and Springing
 * Shortsword
 * Sentinel Shield
 * Refined residuum stolen from the Nameless Ones
 * A seed gifted to him by Thrascuur
 * Dugger's dagger
 * Dugger's shortsword
 * A little burlap sack, contents unknown
 * Rope of Climbing
 * Gold and silver pin shaped like an arced bow with four stars from Ela Lumas
 * Carpentry tools

Former items

 * A sending stone, one of a pair, given to Dorian Storm after its twin was given by Dorian to Cyrus Wyvernwind

Halfling abilities

 * Brave
 * Halfling Nimbleness
 * Lucky
 * Subrace: Unknown
 * Orym's subrace is unclear because of conflicting mechanical information. While casting Druidcraft, Liam mentioned it is Orym's only druid cantrip, suggesting he is a Lotusden halfling. Later, Orym has resistance to poison damage, suggesting he is a Stout halfling. Liam additionally suggested Orym only has resistance and not advantage on a saving throw against poison, where Stout halflings have both. Orym also cast the cantrip Gust while breaking into the Moon Tower.

Fighter abilities

 * Fighting Style: Superior Technique
 * Bait and Switch
 * Second Wind
 * Action Surge (once per rest)
 * Martial Archetype: Battle Master
 * Combat Superiority
 * Student of War
 * Extra Attack

Maneuvers
As a 5th-level Battle Master with the Superior Technique fighting style, Orym knows four combat maneuvers and has five Superiority Dice, which are d8s.
 * Bait and Switch, from Fighting Style
 * Feinting Attack
 * Goading Attack
 * Disarming Attack

During Exandria Unlimited, he temporarily learned two additional maneuvers through magical boons:
 * Pushing Attack
 * Quick Toss

Cantrips

 * Druidcraft
 * Gust

Behind the scenes
In development since 2017, at least since the end of Campaign One, Orym became Liam's initial character concept for Campaign Three. He was brought into Exandria Unlimited for further development. He set out to create a character who was close to a normal person, one who did not start off tangled in challenges like fighting gods or fate, and wished to see where the character would go if he was "really centered and in a good place when he started".

Though the cast usually knows little about one another's characters before a campaign begins, Orym is an exception. Because Orym is connected to Marisha Ray's Campaign One character Keyleth, she knows "pretty much everything" about Orym because Liam checked in with her while developing the character to avoid encroaching on any ideas she had about Keyleth.

Though he had the option to choose another character for the campaign, Liam chose to continue playing Orym. Liam was offered the opportunity to reroll Orym's stats under the same rules as other characters in Campaign Three and prior campaigns—using the rolled method in the Player's Handbook with a homebrewed rule that if the sum of the scores was less than 70, they could reroll the scores—but chose to keep his Exandria Unlimited stats.

Quotes

 * "I know that you are wrong. I know that there's more in this world. I know that temptation and corruption and imperfection is rampant in this world, but that's not all there is."
 * "I am not becoming a criminal. I am babysitting."

Trivia

 * Orym is considered Neutral Good, although this was a spur of the moment addition from Liam.
 * According to the official character lineup, Orym is the smallest member of the group.
 * He is the second member of the Air Ashari played by Liam, following Derrig, who is also a Battle Master Fighter.
 * Orym is also the third of Liam's characters to have a connection to Keyleth, following Vax'ildan and Derrig.
 * He and Vax also share one aspect of their childhood, since both were raised mainly by their mothers in the absence of a neglectful father.
 * Orym's mother taught him about wood carving.
 * Anjali Bhimani felt that Orym would be the best character from Exandria Unlimited to have as a roommate because he is "quiet, respectful, honest, accommodating, and [...] doesn’t take up a lot of space" and that "if someone broke in late at night, little murder man would SO be on the case before I even woke up".
 * A popular fan theory is that Orym previously had a lover, from whom he is separated and who may be deceased. Liam's backup character for Campaign One, who eventually became Orym, would have been a widower to another Ashari man named Riegel. Additionally, Orym's official playlist features two love songs that imply the existence of a lover. The first is "My Lover" by Birtalker, captioned "Not a day goes by...". The next song is "Les Coeurs Jumeaux" (The Twin Hearts) by Concrete Blonde, which features lyrics about missing a loved one and wishing to see them again. The song was simply captioned "Ink", possibly linking the song's sun and moon themes to Orym's tattoo of the two moons of Exandria.
 * The animation on his Campaign Three stat card features falling cherry blossom petals, nodding to his hometown of Zephrah and its cherry trees.
 * Orym's martial movements, almost balletic in nature, are called the Zeph'aeratam.