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Not everybody can be J.R.R. Tolkien. For most of us out there, it’s goshdarn hard to create a fantasy language. Even the cast of Critical Role, who have been on the fantasy scene for quite some time now, struggle with it. Or at the very least, cast member Liam O’Brien has been struggling with it, as he record his lines for upcoming animated series The Mighty Nein.

O’Brien mentioned his struggles at the Critical Role panel that went down at San Diego Comic Com 2025, where he was joined by fellow Critical Role cast Matthew Mercer, Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, Ashley Johnson, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, and Laura Bailey. In case you don’t know, the upcoming Mighty Nein is an adaptation of the Critical Role liveplay campaign of the same name. And in that campaign, O’Brien plays Caleb Widogast, who speaks fictional language Zemnian.

Asked about what he loves doing in the booth for the Mighty Nein series, O’Brien said “I love working on episodes of the show where I'm asking myself, ‘Why did I do this? Why did I think this out?’”

Sorry Liam, you made your fantasy bed, you’ve got to deal with the drowsy spell enchanted on it. And yes, part of what O’Brien worked on behind the scenes of the show was actually building out Zemnian as a real language.

“There's going to be scenes with subtitled Zemnian,” O’Brien tells the crowd, “And it's pretty cool.”

It’s a very cool thing to look forward to in The Mighty Nein, but I won’t lie, I’m glad there will be subtitles for the laypeople like myself. Again, not everybody can be J.R.R. Tolkien. 

The Mighty Nein debuts on Prime Video November 19.

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