First appearance: S2E8 — Father’s Love — Dadrith v Baron Voltágè · watch it on YouTube
Baron Voltágè, “the elitist of electricity, the supplier of shock,” was a halfling artificer who fought inside a suit of crackling, transforming armor and would not let anyone mispronounce his name. He is the first champion ever to throw himself bodily into the Box of Chaos and sacrifice his own soul. That made him valuable to the Arbiter, who rebuilt him as a robot to fight in the war for the Grandmaster’s throne. He was a Saturday-morning-cartoon villain to the end, and his last breath was a bad horse joke.
Story
Father’s Love
Baron arrived in S2E8 — Father’s Love — Dadrith v Baron Voltágè vowing to “finally put down this thorn in my side,” the cleric Dadrith, dad of dads. Why they had a grudge was never explained. His entrance was quickly derailed by his name. When the Arbiter asked whether it was just “voltage,” Baron snapped, “No, it’s Voltágè! It’s said the exact way it’s spelt!” The family name, he explained, was Barovian. The Grandmaster repeated it dozens of times without getting it right, and the Arbiter decided he “might just be an electrician.” Baron’s answer was “Enough! I did not come here to be belittled!”
The arena was a tiny island on the back of the eternal turtle, crossing the endless sea. Baron landed beside the Box of Chaos, and once the sand turned as hot as lava, he hopped on top of it. He then began what he cheerfully called his “unnecessary power-up sequence.” His suit unfolded around his “little manlet shoulders” piece by piece in slow motion, he swelled to giant size, and he screamed like an anime hero the whole way through. The Grandmaster was so taken with the show that she put her money on him. He split into four enlarged Barons who passed lightning between them to call down a storm, and he rocketed into the sky on a back thruster. Dadrith answered with dad jokes, a spanking newspaper and a celestial “son” in a Hawaiian shirt swinging a coconut mace, and slowly beat Baron’s armor open.
Coughing blood and tucking his guts back into his armor, Baron smirked, spread his arms and dropped backward into the Box: “Grandmaster, I offer you the most valuable thing in my possession, my blackened soul!” The Box burned his soul clean out of his body and spat him onto the sand wearing the Ring of Three Wishes. His first wish healed him completely. Black goo filled his wounds and black smoke poured from his armor. Then the Arbiter cranked up the gravity, sinking the turtle and dropping both fighters into a sea circled by sharks. There Baron’s second wish brought down a massive storm of lightning that hit Dadrith for 51 damage. Baron teleported into the shark-filled depths, but Dadrith spotted him there and cooked him alive inside his own metal armor.
As Baron sank, Dadrith wept and begged his gods to take him instead, but no help came. Dadrith swam after him, urging him to hold on. Baron gave him one final scowl, the ring glowed, and he drifted into the dark. Believing him dead, the Grandmaster ordered a memorial on the beach and gave a speech about remembering every champion’s name, accent or no accent. Unknown to Dadrith, and possibly even to the Grandmaster and the Arbiter, 120 days later a shark beached itself on the turtle, a robotic fist burst out of its stomach, and a cloned Baron Voltágè crawled out: “Ah, Dadrith!” His last wish had been a clone, with the shark as its vessel. At the table, his player explained that Baron chose it “out of spite… Won’t let him know he saved my life.”
Dried Blood and the Arbiter’s army
In the in-character epilogue, the Arbiter laid Baron’s headstone on the island, recovered the Box of Chaos and carried it back to his laboratory. There he took Baron’s blackened soul and forced it into a metal golem he had built for his secret army. That rebuilt Baron is the one who fought again. Whatever became of the soulless clone from the shark has never been revealed.
Battle for the Crown
Baron returned in S2 Ep19, Battle for the Crown Round 2 - Team Grandmaster (Cosmonius & Locket) v Team Arbiter (Silky Slim & …. The Arbiter introduced him at the Dread Fortress: “he gave me his soul and I put it in a nice new robot body.” Baron assured the Grandmaster it was nothing personal. “The Arbiter just offered dental.” Now “the Servitor of Shock,” he had tried rebranding from cackling to “servitor noises” (“Vroom! Vroom!”). He teamed with Silky Slim against Cosmonius and Locket in the land of the corrupted, a dead, freezing rock garden.
He went back to back with Slim for another startup sequence and was briefly turned into a robotic walrus by a chaos event. Some bullying children in the crowd heckled him, and he flattened two of them with a comeback: “Well, you’re adopted and your parents were killed in the purges of 1528.” He injected Slim’s buttocks with a growth serum from a shoulder harpoon, punched Locket on “her” rock with electric gauntlets, and blasted Cosmonius with lightning. Eventually he admitted, “I was way more happy with my old brand. We’re going back to it. Are you ready for the screaming?”
Then the Arbiter opened holes in the ground, and Cosmonius grappled Baron and galloped him into one. Baron fell onto an altar beside an unnaturally still lake that held The Kraken. He flew back out once. Cosmonius shoved him back in and then landed hooves-first on his head from 50 feet up. Down and dying, Baron saw the Kraken’s tentacles rising and taunted Cosmonius into pummeling him so the centaur wouldn’t notice. When the beast surfaced, he played dead and was spared.
It wasn’t enough. When his body finally gave out, steam burst from his helmet, and a slimy, barely formed baby with a single cybernetic arm crawled from the armor. It dragged itself between Cosmonius and Locket and looked up at the sky. “Look what they make us give. As these two bicker over something as trivial as a throne while gambling with our lives… It doesn’t have to be this way.” Cosmonius crawled over and took its hand, and Baron whispered his last words: “Why the long face?” His body rose on a pedestal to the Acolytes’ level as Team Grandmaster won. Deaths in the Battle for the Crown are permanent.
A Lightning Ghost
In S7E10 — Thea’s Adventure the Arbiter conjured the Baron again, this time as a spectral form of multicoloured chaos lightning. Thea recognized him instantly from her days as a worm crawling around the arena. “I channel the lightning!” The visage blasted Thea’s brother Theo and then dissipated.
Personality and Abilities
Baron was a cackling, screaming cartoon villain who was very proud of his own grandeur, thin-skinned about his name, and spiteful to the last. He loved theatrics, treated every power-up as a performance, and insisted he was “a professional.” Under the bravado he had enough grit to bet everything, including his soul, on one throw. His dying words also showed a flash of bitter clarity about what the Deathmatches cost.
He fought from inside layered artificer armor that unfolded like Iron Man’s. It had a thruster for flight, a protective energy field he kept renewing, gloves of great strength and boots that could teleport him. His specialty was lightning: storms called from the sky, bolts from a lightning rod, charged gauntlets. He also had a genius’s knack for shrugging off attacks and a halfling’s luck. His robot body added a helmet display, a harpoon-syringe in the shoulder, boot thrusters for fiery leaps and a jet pack, and it no longer had lungs.
Relationships
- Dadrith: His long-standing rival, who killed him and then tried to save him. Baron’s clone survived out of pure spite.
- The Arbiter: Rebuilt Baron’s soul into a robot for his army. Baron joined him for the dental plan.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Bet on him and gave him her favor in Father’s Love. He later condemned her and the Arbiter for gambling with champions’ lives.
- The Box of Chaos: Took his soul in exchange for the Ring of Three Wishes.
- Silky Slim: His Battle for the Crown teammate, “back to back just like in the films.”
- Cosmonius: Dropped him into the pit, stomped him, and held his hand as he died.
- Locket: Fought him for a rock and was left wondering whether his glare was flirty or angry.
Memorable Quotes
- “No, it’s Voltágè! It’s said the exact way it’s spelt!” (Father’s Love)
- “Now to begin my unnecessary power-up sequence!” (Father’s Love)
- “Going to, but not because you want me to, because I want to.” (Father’s Love)
- “Grandmaster, I offer you the most valuable thing in my possession, my blackened soul!” (Father’s Love)
- “I’m a professional, Grandmaster. I lubricate it before entering.” (Battle for the Crown Round 2)
- “Why the long face?” (Battle for the Crown Round 2)