Godkiller: Balance features Matt Mercer and Aabria Iyengar as gods

The gods are dying. More specifically, they’re being killed. The world is on the other side of the cataclysmic Great Divine War, losing its magic as it waits for a prophesied savior. But that’s not this story. This is the story before that. The story of Ever and Rake, two Godkillers lost in their own grief as they try to find answers in a world that offers none — until they find each other.

This is the story of Godkiller: Balance. First premiering in August 2024, Godkiller: Balance is a prestige drama actual play podcast that explores how we cope with grief, often to our own detriment. The limited series features a pantheon of guest performers to play the gods themselves, including Brennan Lee Mulligan, Matt Mercer, Arabia Iyengar, Anjali Bhimani, Luis Carazo, and Christian Navarro. While these big names bring some of the most emotionally resonant performances of their actual play career to the table, the heart of the series lies with its three core cast members: Gina Susanna as Ever, Jannes Wessels as Rake, and Em Carlson as everyone else.

Over the course of 20 episodes, audiences listen to the parallel journeys of the tender-hearted, obsessively driven Ever and the cynically numb Rake. Ever, searching for a cure to the disease that took her father-figure, and Rake, obediently following the violent whims of his divine mother, find mirror images of themselves in one another as they discover that chasing redemption can either save us or destroy us.

A cast member of BlackwaterDND’s main campaign, Wessels’ portrayal of Rake’s tortured submission evokes Theon Greyjoy’s Reek from Game of Thrones. Susanna, an up-and-coming performer in the actual play space, offers a nuanced range of hope and despair in her performance as Ever, cycling from tender, gentle love to bottomless despair with a level of craftsmanship that allows her to hold her own alongside titans of the actual play medium.

Facilitating the series is BlackwaterDND cast member Carlson, who wields faer experience as a mental health professional as both a shield and a sword, creating space for some of the most emotionally powerful role-playing I’ve encountered as an actual play critic. Carlson’s editing and sound design, though subtle, supports the cast by balancing gameplay with performance while leaving room for the heartbreaking silences in between.

This series is not for everyone, though. Godkiller, a holypunk dark fantasy game designed by Connie Chang of Transplaner renown, is not a high-paced, action-packed comedy vehicle. The series takes its time developing these arcs, reveling in the weight of the world it has built — though you will be rewarded if you slow down enough to hold that weight with it. It doesn’t shy away from navigating the reality of its chosen theme, weaving emotional abuse, substance use, and derealization into its narrative web (with corresponding content warnings before each episode).

Though Balance is technically a prequel to BlackwaterDND’s previous series Godkiller: Oblivion, the series doesn’t require any previous knowledge of the world — though viewers of BlackwaterDND’s main campaign will find easter eggs from the shared universe. As of this writing, 10 of the 20 installment limited series have premiered, meaning there is plenty of time to catch up as the series moves into its second act.

Episodes of Godkiller: Balance premiere biweekly on BlackwaterDND, or wherever podcasts are found.