【vegetative eroticism】

Right from its explosive opening sequence,vegetative eroticism The Legend of Vox Machina Season 2 has been all about dragons. The season kicked off with the draconic quartet known as the Chroma Conclave laying waste to the city of Emon, and they have only gotten more voracious from there.

The main dragon who keeps antagonizing Vox Machina this season is Umbrasyl (voiced by Matthew Mercer), a black dragon who decimates foes with its potent acid breath. But he's not the only beast our heroes have to worry about. Elsewhere, we have Raishan (voiced by Cree Summer), a shapeshifting green dragon; Vorugal (voiced by Liam O'Brien), a white dragon with icy powers; and their leader Thordak (voiced by Lance Reddick), a red dragon who calls himself "The Cinder King." They're a scary bunch, and they certainly raise the stakes for the season.

For Mercer, who created the Chroma Conclave as part of Critical Role's first-ever Dungeons & Dragons campaign, getting to bring these dragons to life was an exciting opportunity. "I grew up such a fan of dragons, and for most media they tend to be these massive, I won't say 'mindless' beasts, but they're more a force of nature than anything else," Mercer told Mashable in a Zoom interview. "For these stories, we definitely wanted to make them ancient, intelligent beings, each having their own individual, greedy, selfish pursuits."

The development of the dragons involved examining not only the kind of destruction they could wreak across the land, but also how their group dynamic would gradually devolve into dysfunction. After all, dragons are usually solitary creatures — what happens when they team up and allow themselves to have one leader?

Then, of course, there was the question of adapting these dragons to the screen, terrifying powers and all. "[We got to] dive into even more detail on what makes each dragon uniquely terrifying and terrible, and also what makes them dangerous, what their powers sets are, and how they would engage in tyrannical assaults on a city or on Vox Machina," said Mercer. "Getting to discuss these power sets, getting to work with the animators and designers...was just a really, really fun exercise in getting creative."

But the dragons' looks and powers weren't the only place where The Legend of Vox Machina team got creative. They also produced the single most bananas way to incapacitate a dragon — which Mercer cited as his favorite dragon-specific moment of the season.

"There are a lot of ways that fantasy heroes attack the dangers that they are faced with," Mercer said. "I am hard pressed to find a moment in which the heroic assault involves thrusting themselves through the back end and intestinal tract of a terrifying and ancient dragon."

You heard that right: Members of Vox Machina go up a dragon's butt in order to attack it from the inside.

The heroes in question are bard Scanlan (voiced by Sam Riegel) and rogue Vax (voiced by O'Brien). They use Scanlan's magical hand (a play on the Bigby's Hand spell) to insert themselves into the dragon Umbrasyl. Yes, we do see the dragon's animated butthole and digestive tract, and yes, it is as wild as it sounds.

The Legend of Vox Machina cast is certainly aware of how hilariously out there this approach to dragon slaying is, as members of the team immediately burst into laughter at Mercer's mention of the moment during our interview.

"What other way would you do it?" asked Ashley Johnson, who voices Pike.

"Now we know, Ashley!" Mercer responded.

Meanwhile, Taliesin Jaffe, who voices Percy, added: "That's how rogues go."

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"That's how rogues go," Mercer laughed. "Attack from behind."

While Scanlan and Vax do enter Umbrasyl's stomach in Critical Role's original campaign, they do it in a much more sanitary way. (Although how sanitary can you really be when you're inside a dragon?) Scanlan casts the Dimension Door spell to teleport into the belly of the beast, and Vax drinks a Potion of Diminution so he is able to travel with him, as Dimension Door only allows you to transport creatures who are your size or smaller. Once the two arrive inside Umbrasyl, they use an Immovable Rod to hold him in place. Obviously, that is not what happens in the show.

The change came about when considering the already very large amount of magical items and spells at play this season, like the Vestiges of Divergence. Would the show be able to introduce another spell like Dimension Door or a Potion of Diminution without the season feeling too cluttered? "We were like, 'We've got to find a different way to get in that dragon,'" O'Brien said. "And the suppository method was struck, and I think it changed [the moment] for the better."

Since Scanlan had already used his magical hand throughout the show, it makes sense to adapt that to a more...penetrative approach to getting inside the dragon. (It also helps that the original campaign includes lines like "I would like to fist the wound.") This new way of getting inside Umbrasyl is absolutely in keeping with The Legend of Vox Machina's already filthy, unpredictable tone. Plus, it makes for a truly outrageous moment of television. Props on your ingenuity, heroes — that's what I call working smarter, not harder.

Season 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina is now streaming on Prime Video.