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When the cast list for Critical Role Campaign 4 dropped, it technically would've been a mistake to call Luis Carazo a 'newcomer.' Yes, the actor had never been part of a core CR campaign, but his work with the CR gang stretches to years before we met Azune Nayar in C4. Although the way he tells it, Carazo's previous work with CR actually kickstarted the human paladin we meet in Aramán - beginning all the way back in CR's first non-Exandrian spinoff, Candela Obscura.

The subject came up during a conversation between Carazo and Temple of Geek's Caitlin Tyrrell. Asked about what went into creating Azune, the second character we meet in this chapter of the hit D&D actual play series, Carazo wound the clocks back to talk about longstanding themes he's been interested in.

"There are certain things that I've explored," he began, "That I feel like I haven't satiated my appetite for that particular thing. To be honest, I can even go back to like Candela [Obscura] and Marion [Collodi, Carazo's character]. There's certain aspects of Marion that I was like, 'I'm not done exploring this angle of this element in these three episodes.' It wasn't enough for me to dig into it in a way that's satisfying."

But it wasn't only from his Candela Obscura that Carazo was pulling - Azune's creation also stemmed out of his experience on Carazo's own 2025 TTRPG live play series, Sonoro's Tales Unrolled.

"There is a sort of significance of remembrance," Carazo explained, "There is a different relationship to culture and history and what that means and how that ties together. But there's definitely some ingredients that are are repeating here for sure. Besides the fact that [Azune Nayar] is also the name of an NPC that I had in Tales Unrolled because I thought the name was really cool."

It's true. I don't care what level of D&D player you are - "cool name" is a good 40% of character creation.

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:

• Critical Role release schedule
• Critical Role's Campaign 4 characters ranked
• How to watch Critical Role in order
• Ways for you to relive the Critical Role panel from ECCC '26
• Taliesin Jaffe on playing Mollymauk Tealeaf for Campaign 2 vs. playing him for Prime Video
• Matt Mercer's homebrew warrior class (created originally for Vin Diesel)

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