First appearance: Blood Puppets · watch it on YouTube
Basil Herringbone is a self-described “rabbit boy man” who fought Befferfoot in the Grandmaster’s echoing “cave of wonders.” He is a kung-fu bunny in the middle of puberty. He traded his own left leg to Gerald for a glowing sword-leg, raised a pond of tadpoles as his children, and survived on spite and bunny hops. He won the match with a perfect kick at the perfect moment, then walked away with a dead man’s birthday card and his dog.
Story
Basil came through the Arbiter’s portal, out of the laser lights and fog, and his first act was to correct how his name was pronounced. When the Arbiter said he’d sounded like “some sort of ornamental… food item,” Basil agreed: “I am quite delicious, yes.” Befferfoot called him a “puny rabbit,” and Basil explained that he was a rabbit boy man going through “a transitional period.” When the Grandmaster asked outright whether that meant puberty, he answered “Yes!” He added that it only made him angrier. His opening spell went badly. Chill Touch froze the stalactites overhead, and one cracked loose and nearly landed on him. He came back with a threat anyway: “If you see what I’ll do to me, just wait till you see what I’ll do to you.” Through the early rounds he answered every fire bolt with a burst of Hellish Rebuke. His secret was that his long ears point out the back of his head “like a tuning fork,” so he could aim it behind him.
When the Box of Chaos crashed into the cave, Basil glided down to it “like a sugar glider.” He asked Gerald for “something that I can hit him really fucking hard with,” and offered his left leg from the knee down as payment. Gerald handed him a saw. Basil admitted he was “kinda squeamish” and asked Befferfoot to hold on. Befferfoot politely waited while Basil bit down on his quarterstaff and hacked off his own leg. Gerald said he got queasy at the sight of blood, so Basil held the leg by the foot and let it pour all over the box’s face. In return, Gerald wrapped a longsword in shadow magic and reshaped it into Dawnbringer, a metal leg with the burning power of a sun blade. Basil’s blood had turned the water red, and the cave’s tadpoles swarmed to feed on it. He tickled them, and they took him as their feeder. “Hello, my children.”
The cave then summoned each champion’s greatest fear. For Basil it was a giant garden snake, the little green non-venomous kind that “bite your fingies and hang on for way too long,” only big enough to eat him. He leapt forty feet onto the cave wall and pelted Befferfoot with lightning from on high. He sent his tadpole children to charge the snake, though they were tadpoles, so it did nothing. Basil asked, “Are you saying this cave of wonders is full of little swimmers?” A batch of enchanted edible underwear, which the Arbiter suggested they “probably bought from an OnlyFans account,” made both champions swell a size larger, and Basil declared, “Now I’m truly a bunny man.” He kicked the snake with Dawnbringer, whose holy light burned the fake beast badly. Then he split it in half with a karate chop until it “curls backwards like one of those party favors.” When the Arbiter collapsed the cave, a giant frog drawn by his bond with the tadpoles swallowed Basil whole. He happily sat inside reading his magazines while Befferfoot carved the frog open from outside. Later he caught one of Befferfoot’s crossbow bolts and ate it with his rodent teeth. When the Grandmaster gave him a pet frog of his own, he named it Geronimo, kissed it on the head, failed to get it to do anything, and “pulled a Han Solo” back up the wall without it.
The end came after Befferfoot used a frog-on-frog launch (the Arbiter ruled he had “successfully anal handled this frog”) to slash him and then tumbled off onto his back on a rock. The two traded their final words. Befferfoot: “You’re gonna die, stupid bunny man!” Basil: “You’re on your back on a rock, you fucking moron!” Basil worried about his knees, since he only had one left. He sprang up another twenty feet and dropped forty with his sun-sword leg extended. The fall hurt him (“Ow, my one knee!”), and at the table it was admitted the dice had very nearly killed him. Then he kicked again at the helpless Befferfoot and rolled a natural 20 that shattered his magical shield like glass. “Murder, death, kill.” As Befferfoot died, he handed Basil a birthday card for his Mama. Basil said “Yoink,” shook the blood, guts and brain matter off it, and promised to deliver it. Befferfoot’s emotional-support corgi, Rolando, had already fled after nearly being shot. He came down to Basil, took his place at his side, and was promptly renamed “Bethabitch.”
Personality and Abilities
Basil is a rabbit-man of ordinary size, at least until he ate the enchanted underwear and grew. He has long ears, rodent teeth and, after the fight, one sun-metal leg. He is cheerful, crude and theatrical. He curses freely (the Grandmaster told him, “you’re just a boy. You watch your language”), and he insists on the exact order of “rabbit boy man.” He reads Drunken Master Weekly, which covers questions like “what are the best gourds to drink out of before you go and punch a bunch of people in the face?” He has a soft spot for small creatures, though not much follow-through with big ones.
He fights as a monk with a dabble of genie-pact warlock magic. He bounds around with his Rabbit Hop, flurries of kicks and slaps, and supernatural leaps. He can feather-fall gently, swat missiles out of the air, and throw Chill Touch, poison spray, long-range witch bolts and backwards-aimed Hellish Rebukes. The Grandmaster dubbed one of these “the Heroic Rebuke.” His prosthetic, Dawnbringer, burns with radiant light and is especially deadly to the undead. He also has a pseudodragon with little pom-poms, which was “just there in spirit” because he’d burned through his magic too fast. The Arbiter asked, “Would you say you blew your magical load too early?” In the after-show, his player explained that Basil’s escape plan was to retreat into his genie’s bottle “and float down the river.”
Relationships
- Befferfoot: His opponent, whom he killed with a final kick. Basil promised to deliver Befferfoot’s birthday card to his Mama.
- Gerald: Took Basil’s left leg and gave him Dawnbringer in exchange, and got a face full of blood for his trouble.
- Rolando (“Bethabitch”): Befferfoot’s corgi, who took Basil as his new owner after the match.
- The tadpoles: His adopted “children,” who followed him through the water after he fed them his blood.
- Geronimo: The giant frog he named, kissed and promptly abandoned.
Memorable Quotes
- “I am quite delicious, yes.” (S3E12)
- “Hello, my children.” (S3E12)
- “My little rabbit ears… point out the back of my head… like a tuning fork.” (S3E12)
- “You dare? I eat it because I have rodent teeth.” (S3E12)
- “You’re on your back on a rock, you fucking moron!” (S3E12)
- “Always bleed out onto tadpoles. You’ll never know when it’s going to come in handy.” (S3E12, Dried Blood)