Atlas

First appearance: Playtest 2 (Pre-Launch) — Atlas v Bromir · watch it on YouTube

Atlas is a huge mechanical champion with fists that float free of his body and a voice but no mouth, a fact that torments him in nearly every match he fights. He was crowned winner of Reaper’s Rock, he lost his brain to his own hand against a soda salesman, he made a refrigerator his brother, and he blew his own head off for a crystal of salt. Whether he is the cold, logical defender of the innocent or the lightning-mulleted “brother” that Double Sun Cola turns him into, he always comes back. Played by DeadAussieGamer.

Story

Playtest 2: Reaper’s Rock

Atlas first entered the arena in Playtest 2 (Pre-Launch) — Atlas v Bromir, perched on an icy precipice above the wrestler Bromir. Shaking frost from his hissing joints, he offered “organic man” a coat to dab the tears he would soon be crying. Then his plates split open in blue-purple light: “Come forth, Halifax!” Out came a horse of crackling lightning. Bromir enlarged himself, picked up the horse and threw it at him.

The fight that followed was a duel of escalating spectacle. Atlas leapt down and fired a crossbow of energy bolts from his split forearm, called up a tidal wave that electrified Bromir’s nipples, and brought the mountainside down on him. When a blizzard struck, he climbed to a brazier and honored the Grandmaster with his signature pose, half-kneeling and shouldering an orb of light that bore her face. When she offered both champions a healing potion, Atlas, having no mouth, tossed his to Bromir. Bromir answered: “Atlas, I respect you. You earned the right of your name.”

Atlas then remade himself into a war machine, threw his shield into the chasm and took his sword in both hands. When the Arbiter unleashed a two-faced ice elemental, the rivals became a team. Atlas spun at the waist and catapulted Bromir into it, and when it whirled Bromir into the chasm he hurled his sword into the cliff as a handhold. He then blasted a hole through the elemental with a siege engine on his back, declaring “Atlas is unbreakable.” Bromir chose to drag the elemental down with him. As he fell, Atlas reached through the rock to grab him by the neck (“Illogical. Atlas has not beaten you yet”), but his iced hands slipped.

The Grandmaster crowned Atlas winner of Reaper’s Rock and raised a small mountain beneath him: “You have true heart that no flesh and blood could ever mimic.” She sent him home to fulfill his charge of bringing justice and protection, and promised to bring him back for “a true fight.” Atlas said nothing. He knelt and shouldered his orb of light while the crowd chanted his name. No one, Atlas included, saw the Arbiter snatch the falling Bromir away for his own purposes.

Season of Fate: The Lord of Fate’s Lawn

In the Season of Fate, a reality only the Arbiter lived through, Atlas was summoned again in S5E1 — Rise of the Lord of Fate — Atlas v Killy Yesman. The Arbiter, now ruling as the Lord of Fate, had just made the newborn Thea his assistant, and the match was held on the front lawn of The Dread Fortress. Atlas introduced himself as “defender of the innocent, breaker of bones and bitches” and blamed the misunderstanding on an aggressive autocorrect. His opponent was Killy Yesman, a pec-thumping salesman for Double Sun Cola.

Atlas opened by finding a skull-faced, buzzsaw-jawed lawnmower and swinging it into Killy’s face: “It is time to cut the grass.” A boomerang fist slammed Killy’s head into it again, and a perfect punch followed his diagnosis that Killy had eaten “a big bowl of little bitches.” Killy, who had grown up with the world’s most punchable face, healed himself with sips of soda. He then tossed Atlas a shaken bottle that exploded in his hands and left his circuits sparking (“It tastes like science”). Atlas impaled Killy on a pitchfork in a garden shed and then sprayed antiseptic on the wound, because he would not let Killy die of infection. “You will die because I will tear you to pieces.”

Earlier, a chinchilla had stuck a spare AA battery up Atlas’s butthole to recharge him. At The Box of Chaos, Atlas squatted, the battery thunked back out, and he offered it up (“I present to you, Raw Power”), trading it for Kenny’s missing goblin arm, which he stuck out of his sternum. When Killy took off his hat and revealed a bald spot, Atlas hugged him and assured him “Being bald isn’t that bad.” He was really recharging in that hug, and he turned it into a suplex aimed at the bald spot. Killy shrugged off even that and pried Atlas’s port open into a crude mouth. Atlas heard angelic choirs at the realization, then crammed the hole shut so the soda dripped off his faceplate. “I cannot disappoint Thea.”

His end was entirely his own work. Trying to smash Killy with his own head plate, he pulled too hard and ripped his cybernetic brain out of his skull. “I appear to have made an error.” As his body collapsed, the canister at his heart poured out bright golden liquid. Atlas had been running on Double Sun Cola all along. A stricken Killy drank it so that Atlas would live inside him and help sell more soda, and a horde of goblins hauled Atlas away on a canvas to rebuild him in the locker room.

Season of Fate: The Chinchilla Forest

Atlas returned in S5E11 — Appliance Adversaries — Atlas v Frigidoom staring at his own palms. “Atlas is back. I died. I saw eternity and was one with it. Hell is real even for automatons.” Asked why he had been brought back, the Lord of Fate explained: “Mostly because we were bored.” His opponent in The Chinchilla Forest was Frigidoom, an irradiated 1950s refrigerator full of rotting leftovers. Frigidoom had never received a compliment until Atlas told him “fridges are supposed to be cool.” The fight turned into a deeply violent exploration of friendship. Their hugs were crushing, and Atlas’s punches were attempts to touch the festering heart inside the fridge.

When Frigidoom reached into Atlas’s chest and shook the cola canister that was his heart, Atlas became “10 times more radical.” He grew a lightning mohawk that evolved into a mo-mullet, his voice turned to a wrestler’s “brother,” and he lost a pinky without caring (“It’s just a finger!”). Atlas then opened his chest and blasted Frigidoom with a near-nuclear geyser of Double Sun Cola that stained the clouds orange. Frigidoom rose from the crater glowing and Tang-colored, and Atlas lifted him up: “Welcome to the rad side.” Atlas traded the most radical chinchilla anyone had ever seen to the Box of Chaos for a cup of blue slushy he could not drink. He then spun like a cyclone and hurled Thea, slushy and all, into Frigidoom.

His Double Sun Nova punch landed. His geyser missed, though, and Frigidoom absorbed it, while Atlas sank back into his old, logical self (“I feel funny. Why am I in the dirt?”). Frigidoom insisted on saving his friend. He drained every bit of his own glow back into Atlas’s heart and made him permanently radical, then shrank into a small green blob. Atlas scooped him up (“I’m here, brother, I’m right here”), poured one out for the homies, and sealed Frigidoom in a bottle that he placed beside his own heart until the fridge could be rebuilt. Nobody died, but Thea declared Atlas the winner. Afterward, his parting words as champion were simple: “Friendship is unbreakable.”

Season of the Trials: The Ether Drifts

In this reality, Atlas was among the three champions the Arbiter pulled from a portal in S6 Ep2 · Ether Drifts Part 1 · TTRPG One Shot (Team A mine mission), alongside Copycat and Robbie Clark and the Hunger. He remembered almost nothing: “Atlas does not possess memories. Fragments of memory, perhaps. Familiarities acknowledged.” He asked what a protector is with no one to protect. The Grandmaster answered by showing him The Void as a tiny purple marble threatened by The Shadow King. He also shared his family history: his mother was a bucket with no eyes, and his father was an engineer who never gave him a mouth, “hence the lack of asshole.”

The team, provisionally Team A, was sent to a silent mine in The Ether Drifts to recover a vital mineral. Atlas caught a meteor one-handed and grew tank treads from his shins. He interrogated a tiny blue worm named Theresa about whether she might later work for the Shadow King “in an act of narrative betrayal.” Boarded doors proved his only weakness. Sarcasm chip disabled, he rocket-punched the door open with the fist still holding Theresa, though the key had been on the doorframe the whole time. He then signed the Arbiter up for “Atlas subscription services” and injected the unconscious worm with Double Sun Cola. She ballooned into a caffeinated monster.

Abducted by a silver saucer, Atlas had his greatest fear dug out of him: staying conscious with the power off, alone in the dark forever. The horrified aliens flipped his switch back on, and he spent the rest of the mission updating. When Theresa returned with a spear hole in her head, his update finished in a gorilla stance with a spine cannon fed by silos of cola. “Update complete. Emotional vulnerability detected. Have a nice fucking day.” His first blast missed, going straight through the hole in her head.

For his last stand he cut loose a stalactite to pin Theresa in place, and his own fists grabbed him from behind and rocketed him at her. He poured everything he had left into the charge, and still she turned it aside. Thea screamed at him not to give up, balled up the Box of Chaos’s energy and shoved it into his body. On the second try Atlas became a ball of metal, fire and impish energy and smashed through worm, crystal and stone in a spray of debris, fire and entrails. His eyes read “have a” and “nice day,” and then his head exploded. The precious mineral turned out to be salt for the Arbiter’s fries. The Grandmaster tossed Atlas’s head, caught it, closed his jaw and began piecing him back together: “I think the Void has a place for you.”

Season of the Trials: The Team A Deathmatch

Atlas arrived for S6 Ep3 — Ether Drifts Part 2 — Team A deathmatch (Atlas v Robbie Clark and the Hunger v Copycat) not completely built. He was only a faceplate, two enormous fists, a pair of boots and tiny arms, about knee high. “Atlas feels breakable.” Thea climbed onto his back as a backpack. The winner of this match against his own teammates would lead the team and name it. Atlas opened by machine-gunning stickers into The Hunger’s many mouths, which only added to Robbie’s eons-old sticker collection. He then tore Robbie’s backpack away, though it proved to be living flesh that grew back.

He soon rebuilt himself around Thea and encased her as his core, becoming a small iron figure with electric wings: “We are no longer Atlas or Thea. We are… Fatlas.” When Copycat claimed she had heard “fatass,” he blew three Acolytes into ash. From the Box of Chaos, he extracted a little blue pill to “keep you going all night long,” which he had to feed to Thea, since he had no mouth. He then initiated “yeet protocol” and threw the box itself at Copycat. “Don’t forget to knock.” Robbie’s tendrils later flung him into the VIP stands, squashing Acolytes and spraying the front row with blood.

His masterpiece was the Mateship. Atlas pulled together a hail of magnets the crowd had thrown and built a giant tanker, with Copycat’s shield-wielding arm as its figurehead, to show Robbie the one thing he had learned on planet Australia that was greater than friendship. He dropped the ship on both rivals and then drove it down again on Thea’s enormous electric wings, burying part of the arena. In reply, the Hunger coated his chassis in spores. Atlas ejected Thea out the back like an escape pod just in time. For the first time he felt cold air on his body, and a mouth split open across him, along with, yes, an exit port at the other end. His systems flashed red, and he became part of the Hunger’s unified whole, fighting for Robbie.

Copycat collapsed into a black hole that swallowed much of the arena, and Robbie Clark and the Hunger were left as the winners. The Grandmaster revived Atlas in his original form, “no longer Thea-ized.” Robbie named the team “the unbreakable, redacted friends” and whispered to his teammates: “We’re going to take these motherfuckers down.” Atlas whirred, and his eye display read: “New directive: take these motherfuckers down.”

Personality and Abilities

Atlas is enormous and slow, with grey metal plating, a faceplate with four eye sockets, heavy iron boots and fists the size of goblins. The fists float free of his shoulders, held by magnetism, plasma arcs and rocket turbines. He has no mouth and no nose. He has a port, which he insists is not a butthole, and he wears pants that do not always stay attached. His chest can open into a window that plays audio clips (“your mother,” “Nice hat, bro”), one finger sprays antiseptic, and he carries a syringe of Double Sun Cola. At various times he has had an assistant, a sassy paperclip, and claims to have once been “a tiny little toaster.”

When sober he is logical, formal and deadpan. He refers to himself in the third person, speaks of “this unit,” and corrects everyone (“Incorrect”). When the cola in his heart is shaken loose, he becomes a lightning-haired wrestler who calls everyone “brother” and “little lady.” Under both modes he has a protector’s code. He tried to save Bromir, hugged a bald man in distress, and gave away a healing potion he could not drink. His lack of a mouth is “a great source of misery and contention,” and he brings it up every time someone offers him food, drink or medicine.

In battle he has summoned a lightning horse named Halifax, shaped stone and water, transformed into a war machine, and fired a disintegrating blast from a siege engine on his back. In later fights he relied on gyroscopic rocket fists, tank treads and mine-cart wheels, a gorilla-stance cola cannon, energy blasts from overheating cylinders in his gauntlet, and signature moves that burn his own life for one devastating strike. His motto never changes: “Atlas is unbreakable.”

Relationships

• Bromir: His first opponent, who became a respected rival. Atlas tried and failed to pull him from the abyss.
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Atlas honors her with his orb-of-light pose. She crowned him at Reaper’s Rock and later pieced his exploded head back together.
• The Arbiter: As the Lord of Fate, he pulled Atlas back from death “because we were bored.” Atlas later signed him up for Atlas subscription services.
• Killy Yesman: The soda salesman who branded him “part of the family,” gave him a mouth, and drank his core after he died.
• Frigidoom: His “mechanical brethren.” Atlas carries him bottled beside his heart until the fridge can be rebuilt.
• Thea: She cheered him on in the Season of Fate, rode him as a backpack, became his core as Fatlas, and saved his last charge in the Ether Drifts.
• Kenny: Atlas once wore the goblin’s missing arm out of his sternum.
• Robbie Clark and the Hunger: A teammate who beat him, converted him with spores, and became the team’s leader.
• Copycat: A teammate and rival on the Unbreakable Redacted Friends.

Memorable Quotes

• “I am Atlas, defender of the innocent, breaker of bones and bitches.” (S5E1 — Rise of the Lord of Fate)
• “I cannot. I have no mouth.” (S5E1 — Rise of the Lord of Fate)
• “I died. I saw eternity and was one with it. Hell is real even for automatons.” (S5E11 — Appliance Adversaries)
• “Friendship is unbreakable.” (S5E11 — Appliance Adversaries)
• “My mother was a bucket.” (Ether Drifts Part 1)
• “Update complete. Emotional vulnerability detected. Have a nice fucking day.” (Ether Drifts Part 1)

Appearances

• Playtest 2 (Pre-Launch) — Atlas v Bromir
• S5E1 — Rise of the Lord of Fate — Atlas v Killy Yesman
• S5E11 — Appliance Adversaries — Atlas v Frigidoom
• S6 Ep2 · Ether Drifts Part 1 · TTRPG One Shot (Team A mine mission)
• S6 Ep3 — Ether Drifts Part 2 — Team A deathmatch (Atlas v Robbie Clark and the Hunger v Copycat)