First appearance: S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree — Big Business v Bog Boy · watch it on YouTube
Bog Boy, the self-styled Freak of the Creek, is a moss-dripping old snapping-turtle tortle who rose out of the reeds to defend his swamp from Big Business, a Warforged developer who wanted to pave it into a shopping mall. He arrived with a tin bucket holding Clementine, the catfish he loved, and a murky promise to help turn everyone into frogs. He won one of the most backstory-soaked Deathmatches the Arbiter can remember. He left the arena alive, his marriage proposal unanswered, and sharing his body with the man he had just killed.
Story
S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree
Bog Boy was summoned to The Dread Fortress in S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree — Big Business v Bog Boy, rising from reeds in the corner of the throne room. “It’s me, Bog Boy, Freak of the Creek, and no one touches Clementine,” he announced, while a big catfish splashed out of his bucket. He pointed a curled finger at Big Business: “You know what you did.” The grudge went back years. Big Business had once smacked him with a shovel hand when he was “just a little turtle in the woods,” had poured oil through the swamp trying to grow an “oil tree,” and still called Clementine his “fish wife.” Bog Boy’s reply was that she had left him, and that he had squatter’s rights. The Grandmaster found the fish romance “disgusting,” and the fight moved to a snowy mountaintop strewn with old bones, in the hope that the cold would cut the smell.
Bog Boy struck first. He sharpened his beak on a skeleton’s bone, set Clementine down gently by a little fire, and went for the very hand that had hit him long ago. A flurry of punches bounced off Big Business’s clear-coat shield. When the Warforged turned himself into a bulldozer and charged, though, Bog Boy caught the blow, bit onto one of his shovels and twisted the arm around. Big Business was distracted by Clementine leaping in her bucket, and Bog Boy drove the shovel into Big Business’s own gut. A chaos event then burst a giant mechanical bull up under both fighters. Bog Boy had never seen a bull, “only an upturned firebird,” and was thrown hard: “Clementine, remember me.” Later, slick from the oil once dumped in his swamp, he zigzagged across the snow and blasted his rival with a crackling burst of elemental energy. He then hid in a snowy rock outcrop “like Frodo and Sam.” Big Business found him anyway with an earthquake punch that brought a boulder down on his shell. Bloodied, his beloved Rammstein shirt in tatters, Bog Boy wiped his mouth anime-style: “Now you just unlocked the real freak of the creek.” He clung to Big Business’s chest “like a little toddler backpack” and pummeled him through a blizzard of sprayed cash, grinning and chanting “Everyone’s going to be frogs.” The Arbiter wondered aloud whether he was secretly Thea.
Then his heart got in the way. After the break, Doug the Pug appeared beside the Grandmaster, and Clementine seemed to be warming to him. “That’s my wife, Doug,” Bog Boy raged, weeping as he punched. When Big Business brought both scoops down in “the kill position,” Bog Boy started to turn the blow back on him. Then he saw Doug whispering into Clementine’s ear and, with “a little bit of defeat,” let it cleave him down the side. His last flurry fumbled, and Clementine’s pail tipped off a ledge in shock. He dashed through a puff of snow to catch her: “I’m so sorry, baby.” Big Business offered him a job managing the new mall (“It pays very little”). Bog Boy refused: “I live for the bog. I die for the bog. The freak of the creek.” He tossed Clementine into the crowd, where an Acolyte caught her, and lay splayed in the snow like Braveheart. He somehow survived the stomping boot that followed. With both fighters near collapse, Bog Boy pushed the leg aside, punched Big Business in the groin, then knocked his head clean off without even looking, “like one of those old robotic punching games.”
The Grandmaster returned Clementine and asked who he had fought for. Bog Boy admitted his mistake: “Maybe the world doesn’t want to be frogs. Maybe the frog is inside here.” He meant his heart, not the croak from inside his shell. Then he proposed with a nut that had fallen off Big Business. The catfish’s mouth fell open in shock. A screech answered from the stands. Griselda the swamp witch, Clementine’s mother, had arrived with her hags. The frog plan had been “the price for her fin,” and Bog Boy had broken his promise. “You are not the half the man she needs,” she declared. When Bog Boy asked, “What could make me more?” she answered with green magic, animating Big Business’s scraps and fusing them into his flesh piece by piece. He grew taller and stronger, and a second voice spoke up inside his head: “Tell you, bog boy, we ain’t done yet. You ready to do some business?” Bog Boy said no. In the after-show, he summed up his new state as “half robot, half turtle.”
Personality and Abilities
Bog Boy is a gnarled old snapping turtle whose spiked shell is spray-painted and stuffed with refuse, fishing line and fishing net. He wears an apron made from an old Rammstein band shirt, his clothes drip with moss, and bugs follow him everywhere. He loves reading the Lord of the Rings books, sits “like Winnie the Pooh,” and groans “Oh, these old bones” when he gets up. He says he was once a four-year-old human boy before he was turned into a “toad,” and he has never left his swamp. He is fiercely territorial and hopelessly devoted to Clementine. He is also a little unhinged about frogs, which the Grandmaster guessed came from him drinking the oil in his swamp. He even looked up a Spanish name for himself: “Chico del Panto, which is Bog Boy in Spanish.”
In a fight he is a monk who follows the way of the elements. He sharpens his beak, strikes in rapid flurries, and catches incoming blows to hurl them back at the attacker. When things go badly he can withdraw into his shell. His shell glows a radioactive color when he gathers power. He has thrown crackling bursts of lightning-charged energy and once whipped up a full snowstorm, which he named “Snowstorm August,” that ripped across the Acolytes’ flesh, tearing their skin off and exposing the bone underneath. Thanks to Big Business’s oil spill, he is also very hard to pin down: “The only thing that it did is it made me slicker.”
Relationships
- Big Business: His bitter rival, who oiled his swamp and wanted it for a mall. Bog Boy killed him, and now the Warforged’s remains, and voice, are part of him.
- Clementine: The catfish he carries in a bucket and loves. He proposed to her after the fight, and her mother objected.
- Griselda: The swamp witch and Clementine’s mother. He promised to help her turn everyone into frogs, broke that promise, and she fused him with Big Business.
- Doug the Pug: His sudden rival for Clementine’s affections. Doug flirted with her and drank from her pail in the stands.
- The Grandmaster: She minded Clementine during the fight, sided with him on the oil debate (“Bog boy is correct. Minus the turning people into frogs thing”), and handed Clementine back at the end.
Memorable Quotes
- “It’s me, Bog Boy, Freak of the Creek, and no one touches Clementine.” (S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree)
- “I’m here for the swamp and the swamp is here for me.” (S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree)
- “I have squatter’s rights. Your fish wife left you. This is my swamp now.” (S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree)
- “Now you just unlocked the real freak of the creek.” (S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree)
- “I live for the bog. I die for the bog. The freak of the creek.” (S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree)
- “Maybe the world doesn’t want to be frogs. Maybe the frog is inside here.” (S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree)