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In Critical Role Campaign 4, Azune Nayar never corrects mispronunciations of his name. That's on purpose, says Luis Carazo

Is Luis Carazo's Critical Role character ah-ZOO-nay or aH-zoo-nay? Part of Azune Nayar's personality is revealed by the fact that we don't know

Image credit: Critical Role Productions

Critical Role's Luis Carazo believes there's no such thing as coincidence at the TTRPG table. With a medium as sprawling as D&D actual play, Carazo thinks that even the smallest detail can point to something huge about the characters around him or the world they belong to. And that, apparently, is why we're still not 100% sure how to pronounce his Campaign 4 character's name, Azune Nayar.

Carazo got into this subject while discussing the campaign with Temple of Geek's Caitlin Tyrrell, alongside costar Taliesin Jaffe. In case you needed the reminder, it's unclear whether the human paladin (and cohort of Thjazi Fang) pronounces his first name as ah-ZOO-nay or aH-zoo-nay. And while that might seem like a simple detail that can be chalked up to miscommunication at the table, Carazo said there's a deeper meaning.

"[Azune] really is fixated on, 'I will be whoever I need to be, depending on who I'm in the presence of,'" said the voice actor, "There are certain things that I think are easy for him to compromise. There's certain battles that he is not going to have because they're not productive - something like correcting someone's pronunciation.

"It was an accident," Carazo continued, "I just noticed that in the beginning of our playing, people were pronouncing it differently. One of my philosophies and things that do is that there's no such things as mistakes, ever. Anything that happens, something like that can be folded into a discovery about the story, a discovery about a relationship or a character. In that moment, I absorbed that and I thought, 'You know what, I love this.' I'm not going to correct this in any way because I don't think he would."

"He wouldn't correct anybody," the TTRPG staple concluded, "And who knows how many other ways his name has been mispronounced. Maybe he knows exactly how his parents and grandparents would pronounce his name. It hasn't come up. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe that's been eroding. But one thing that I do know for sure, and because we've witnessed it, is he's not once corrected anybody's mispronunciation. We don't even actually know which version is the right version because he's not said so."


With two animated series on Prime Video, Campaign 4 in full swing, and so much more Exandrian lore to come, Critical Role is showing no signs of slowing down. That's why the adventuring party at Popverse are here to bring you everything we can from those nerdy-ass voice actors & Bo., including:

...and much, much more. Roll initiative, player. Magic awaits.

 

Grant DeArmitt

Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.

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