First appearance: S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn · watch it on YouTube
Bargo, introduced by the Arbiter as Bargo Blakely, is a champion who speaks about himself in the third person, freely admits his “loose grasp of grammar,” and backs it all up with a startling amount of combat magic. He fought Carnelian in S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn, a match the Arbiter offered a bored, angry Grandmaster as “a real bout of sport.” It ended with Bargo holding his rival’s head aloft while the Acolytes chanted his name. He is the seventeenth of his line, and he would very much like you to name your children after him.
Story
Bargo arrived in a cavern of a long-forgotten underground civilization, a place of glowing blue and yellow crystals, fragile stone bridges and fog hanging over a drop so deep that a yell might never echo back. The Arbiter had pulled him there to calm the Grandmaster, who was furious about escaped traitors and a television showing no rams or tigers. Bargo’s entrance was a mission statement: “Bargo here to smash things. Bargo gonna smash Carn into pieces.” He explained that he “went to fighting school. Not grammar school,” and that he didn’t “need no grammar to punch you through your face.” While he was still talking, Carn sprinted for The Box of Chaos, snapped off one of his own horns as an offering, blood spouting, and came away wearing a suit of magical chain mail. Bargo had suggested he toss it into the pit instead.
Then the cavern floor burrowed open and a dozen minitaurs popped up: tiny minotaurs of a breed that had evolved in the dark caverns, plus one full-sized one. Bargo met them with a gust of wind that blew four of them off a ledge, crying for their mom as he laughed. When the Grandmaster offered him a chance to work out whether they were babies, he declined: “Bargo does not care.” A dramatic flourish of his cape convinced one minitaur that Bargo was a magician, and it attached itself to him with big adoring eyes. Bargo’s response was “Bargo make friends. It’s going to hurt twice as much when I kill you both.” When the rest of the horde charged with their mini axes, he dropped to one knee inside a shimmering shield, then coated them all in grease. They slipped, grabbed each other’s hands for balance, and when one went over the edge the whole chain fell into the chasm, his little admirer included. Carn pointed out that he could save him. Bargo let go. “Bargo don’t want to risk it.”
The fight only got stranger from there. A golden mushroom sank into Bargo’s skin and lit his veins with fresh strength. He blew Carn’s own fire back at him, and when magical steeds appeared that could become anything, Carn picked a giant capybara and gloated that it had no natural predator. Bargo picked a bear. Riding it, he U-turned behind Carn, leapt off mid-flip and hit him with a fire bolt. Even his push-up form during the intermission earned him an edge. Carn’s psychic insult, “bitch” whispered straight into his brain, rattled him more than once. When Carn took to the air, Bargo teleported up after him and caught his foot, dangling there until the Arbiter clapped his hands and brought the ceiling down on both of them.
They landed among the cavern’s restless dead, in a graveyard of moving corpses and water full of squirming bodies. Bargo opened with a showy leap that ended with him tumbling into his own fire bolt. Carn drained his blood with a needle-fingered crystal hand and tried to talk him into tasting a slowing mushroom; Bargo only sniffed it (“a beautiful floral scent”). Then Bargo rolled a natural 20 on a fire bolt that looked twice its usual size and blasted Carn thirty feet further into the sky. He spent the Acolytes’ gift on a trick of his own, scattering ball bearings and gusting Carn backwards into the corpse-filled water. After that he took a point-blank critical crossbow shot, peppered Carn with magic missiles and blocked the rest with his shield until Carn admitted, “I got nothing. This is it.” Carn begged the Acolytes for mercy, Bargo yelled “Watch him suffer!”, and the crowd turned Carn down. Bargo felled him with magic missiles, slit his throat with “You die with honor,” and kept sawing until the head came free. Holding it up, he cried “For you! For you!” The Grandmaster told him he had “graduated from this arena.” He never saw the Arbiter carry the body away and stitch the head back on.
Personality and Abilities
Bargo is all swagger and showmanship: a caped fighter who narrates himself in the third person and sometimes starts talking without knowing where his sentence is going. He is proud of his education. At fighting school he graduated with an “Apple Plus,” the top mark on a fruit scale that runs from cucumber (worst) through orange and pineapple up to apple. “Bargo” is a family name, and he is “the 17th Bargo,” heir to a long lineage that he hopes the Acolytes will carry on at home, even if only through a dog or a goldfish.
He fights cold and pragmatic. He is cheerfully unbothered by flinging baby monsters into an abyss, and he plays things safe when it counts. For all his talk of punching, most of his damage came from magic: gusts of wind, a bubble shield he called on four times, grease, fire bolts, darts of force and a short teleporting step. He could also twist away from the worst of a blow. His kit was a cape, a short sword, a dagger and a backpack of ball bearings, every piece of which earned its place.
Relationships
- Carnelian: His opponent, a gem dragonborn warlock who called him a “bitch” telepathically twice. Bargo beheaded him and showed no remorse.
- The minitaurs: One worshipped him after his cape flourish. He let it fall into the chasm with the others.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She was charmed by him, praised his “Apple” credentials, and presented him to the crowd as the night’s champion.
- The Arbiter: He brought Bargo to the arena and sent him off with “Great showmanship, Apple Plus.”
- The Acolytes: They rejected Carn’s plea for mercy because “Bargo is in their hearts,” then chanted his name.
Memorable Quotes
“Bargo make friends. It’s going to hurt twice as much when I kill you both.” (S2E7)
- “Bargo went to fighting school. Not grammar school.” (S2E7)
- “Bargo’s gonna let go. Bargo don’t want to risk it.” (S2E7)
- “I graduated with an Apple, Apple Plus, which is like the best grade.” (S2E7)
- “Name your children after me! That is optional, Acolytes… It is a kind request.” (S2E7)
- “Bargo says, when times get tough, don’t be yourself. Be Bargo. And you’ll be okay.” (S2E7, Dried Blood)