First appearance: Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas (Mudcat v Caustic) · watch it on YouTube
Bawser is a hulking barbarian with a big yellow body, a green shell and a fragile sense of self built entirely on being the strongest one in the room. He is spelled “with an A. Very clearly, it’s an A,” and he is “legally distinct from any other intellectual property.” He came to the arena expecting to crush a wheezy little opponent. He spent most of the fight being out-muscled, out-hidden and out-scared, wept openly, and then won anyway with the crowd behind him, taking his beaten rival home as a pet.
Story
Bawser crashed into a rain-soaked forest “like a comet,” roaring loudly enough to shake the leaves loose and scatter the birds: “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!” His opponent, Grakas, had hidden behind a tree with an inhaler, and the falling leaves made it impossible to hear him. Bawser decided on the spot that he hated leaves (“Leaves are the worst. They’re the literal worst”). He tried to set the tree on fire with his tinderbox, but everything was too wet. He offered Grakas a generous deal (“I’ll even let you keep one of your arms”), threw a mud ball in the wrong direction, then pelted the spectators with mud pies and demanded they point the way. He tracked Grakas’s muddy footprints to a tree he couldn’t see up into and punched a cliff in frustration, breaking giant mushroom ledges off it.
Things got worse once Grakas dropped from the branches with two short swords and a curse. Bawser went for a grapple, the two locked hands in a standstill, and Grakas shoved him away. “No, that’s my thing. I’m the big bully. I do the big strength thing,” Bawser protested, and flew into a rage. When Grakas briefly made him afraid, Bawser told himself, “I may not be very strong right now, but I can at least look strong.” He loomed until the forest trembled and Grakas fumbled into terror of his own. Even so, his greataxe stuck in the mud on one swing and went flying ten feet behind his foe on another. Grakas wrapped himself in a layer of shivering ice. Then Bawser’s great fire breath came out as a matchstick puff that barely singed Grakas’s eyebrows. “No! I’m supposed to be the strong one! My fire’s not even working!” He ran off crying and hid behind a rock.
When a dam burst, Bawser’s own tears made the ground so slick that the flood swept him to the edge of the arena. There he lamented that “some other small little dude with bright colors” was always coming to wreck his day. The crowd wept with him “like a bad scene from The Notebook,” and that lifted him back up. He found his axe and raged again, swearing to his fans that he would not fail them “until I give my last and final breath.” Grakas, drowning in student debt and feeling that this mattered more to Bawser than to him, offered a free hit. Bawser was deeply moved (“No one’s ever let me hit them before”), so he hugged Grakas, lifted him, and threw him twenty feet into the air.
Lightning set the forest ablaze, and Bawser grappled Grakas in the burning tree: “We will burn in this fiery hell together.” Grakas’s blue hair burned orange and he dropped, then conceded: “You win, you win, you win.” Bawser carried him out of the fire by the neck, praised him as mighty, invited him to feast at his castle any time (on one condition: “tell everyone that I beat you”), and doused him with his water skin. He then buried Grakas up to the head in what turned out to be medicinal dirt, carved “Baby Bow Bow” in the dirt in several places, and declared him reborn as fire and ice and his new pet. That night a hand burst from the earth, and Baby Bow-Bow walked off, glowing like a torch, toward Bawser’s castle.
Personality and Abilities
Bawser is enormous, scaled and clawed, with a yellow body and a green shell. He describes himself as “a full dragonborn. Ish,” and turtle jokes follow him everywhere, along with the reminder that “not all turtles can swim.” He calls himself Bao Bao or Bow-Bow, has a castle, and has a mother, Mama Bowser, whose pride he cares about. He is a showman who plays to the crowd. He is also a bully with a soft center: his whole identity rests on being the strong one, and when that slips, he cries.
He fights as a raging, frenzied barbarian with a greataxe, a spear and a javelin. His intimidating presence can make a forest shake, and he has a fire breath that does not always deliver. He likes to grab, squeeze and throw people, and he is capable of startling tenderness, mostly toward whoever he has just beaten.
Relationships
- Grakas: His blue-haired, inhaler-puffing opponent, who outfought him for most of the match. Bawser came to respect him, renamed him Baby Bow-Bow and claimed him as a pet for his castle.
- Mama Bowser: His mother. In the fight’s last moments he was sure she “would be proud of me.”
Memorable Quotes
- “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!” (Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas)
- “If I were a comforting person, you would actually really like this hug.” (Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas)
- “I’m going to eat you up, spit you out, then eat you again, and then poop you out.” (Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas)
- “Remember, if I kill you, you don’t have to pay your college debts.” (Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas)
- “Little one, though you may be wheezy and small and blue, you are mighty… Bao Bao respects you.” (Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas)
- “You shall come be my pet in my castle.” (Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas)