First appearance: S2E16, Pub Brawl - Broose Scorchtail v Dewdrop Grizzlebee · watch it on YouTube
Broose Scorchtail is a six-foot-three rabbitfolk who arrived in the Void on holiday “for some R&R.” He wore a pink party poncho, grew carrots straight out of the ground and greeted everyone with a cheerful “How you going, mate?” He fought Dewdrop Grizzlebee in a brewery deep inside The Dread Fortress and won by bracing his blade as Dewdrop dragged him under a rising flood of beer. All night he insisted he only wanted to share a drink with the man he was killing, and the Grandmaster finally handed him that drink herself.
Story
Broose was pulled into S2E16, Pub Brawl - Broose Scorchtail v Dewdrop Grizzlebee wearing what he called “me nice poncho… for me holidays.” When The Arbiter told him he would be fighting a fairy to the death, Broose protested, until he was reminded that he had signed the documents. The Grandmaster sweetened the deal: he could use as much fire as he liked. “Yeah, all right. Yeah, I’m game,” he said. When Dewdrop announced he was there “to fisticuffs with a rabbit,” Broose had one condition: “Take a guy out for a drink first, alright?”
The arena was the Grandmaster’s forgotten brewery, with towering steel tanks, and the Acolytes’ chaos turned its floor into a bouncy castle. Broose grew a carrot out of the ground, chewed on it, and launched himself thirty feet up onto the walkway atop the tanks. He licked a strange mushroom that left him buzzing with speed (“Crikey, Dewdrop, get on these, mate”). Then he cartwheeled off a tank to land in front of Gerald, the Box of Chaos. Gerald gave him a free ruler and pencil. Broose then offered him a flaming carrot spirit, which Gerald swallowed, and the box spat out an alchemy jug full of honey from the Grandmaster’s bee farm. Broose chugged it, and it went everywhere. The honey glued his fur together so thoroughly that Dewdrop’s longsword simply stuck in it, and Broose answered by throwing his free school supplies at him. “This is a horrible misuse of school supplies,” he noted.
The jug kept changing, and Broose kept finding uses for it. He poured poison along his sword for the first real wound of the fight. He poured salt water into Gerald, who handed over a potion of mind control just to make him go away. Broose drank it before anyone could finish explaining it and briefly put Dewdrop under his spell, though he admitted he “didn’t really think this far.” He cast moonlight down on his hard-to-spot opponent and tossed Dewdrop’s stuck short sword back to him, still wearing a tuft of white fur. After the Arbiter blessed him (“Grandmaster, these guys are pathetic”), Broose lashed Dewdrop with a whip of carrot-studded thorns, a “death of a thousand carrots,” dragged him closer and swatted him like a t-ball. When the Arbiter split open every tank and flooded the brewery with beer, Broose dove down to gulp as much as he could and found new strength in it. He tripped over his own foot and ran Dewdrop straight through the solar plexus. Then he conjured a blade of fire and singed a hole in the fairy’s last horseshoe of hair.
The beer rose over both their heads, and Broose’s fire went out underwater. Barely alive, Dewdrop swam at him, grabbed hold and hauled the rabbit under, reasoning that “rabbits got small lungs.” Broose simply braced his scimitar as he was pulled down, and Dewdrop swam onto the point and drowned. Afterwards Broose explained that he had thought they were finally going to get drunk together: “he didn’t realize that I was holding me sword at me side. And he just kept going on it.” The Arbiter drained the arena, and the Grandmaster flew down to hand Broose a fresh cold brew (“Finally! This is what I’ve been waiting for”). She rocketed him up to the Acolytes, who raised their glasses to the evening’s victor. In the after-show Dried Blood, he regretted that “I didn’t mean to kill a friend,” until the Grandmaster let him in on a secret: no one actually ever dies at the Deathmatch. Broose promised to see Dewdrop at the after-after party.
Personality and Abilities
Broose is tall, white-furred and relentlessly easygoing, with an Australian accent full of “mate,” “crikey” and “ripper.” His signature outfit is a pink wool poncho reading “PARTY ON” over purple ghost flames. He claims it makes him “quite lithe,” because attackers aiming for its edges “just miss, mate.” He loves fire (“that’s my whole deal”), a trait he shares with the Arbiter, though a brewery flood kept him mostly damp. His tail, he says, lights up if he sets it on fire. He also delivers Easter eggs and takes the job seriously: “Easter’s no joke.” He lost count of his age “after three,” and in Dried Blood he claimed that John J. Kilcullen was his pen name and that he wrote Melee for Dummies, the very book Dewdrop had studied.
In a fight, Broose blends carrot-themed nature magic with swordplay. He can grow carrots from the ground, summon a fire spirit shaped like a flaming carrot (“It’s fire that looks like a carrot, not carrot that looks like fire”), call down moonlight, crack a vine bristling with carrots, and draw a blade of fire. He fights with a longsword and scimitar and can parry a blow or brace for a charge. He can find a sudden burst of extra action or a second wind, and he can hop away from an enemy without giving them an opening. The Arbiter described his style as “less swings and just more him running into stuff with the pointy end out.”
Relationships
- Dewdrop Grizzlebee: His opponent, a balding, book-learned fairy he kept trying to befriend and take for a drink, and killed with a braced blade beneath the beer.
- Gerald: Broose’s “friend Jerry,” who gave him school supplies, a jug of shifting liquids and a mind-control potion, the last of them just to get rid of him.
- The Arbiter: A fellow fire lover who blessed Broose mid-fight out of sheer impatience with both champions.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She handed him his long-awaited cold brew and led the Acolytes in a toast to him as victor.
Memorable Quotes
- “Take a guy out for a drink first, alright?” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “How you going, mate? I mean, what’s up, doc?” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “Crikey, Dewdrop, get on these, mate. These are fucking ripper.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “This is exactly how I wanted to go out. I wanted to take you out and drown in beer. This is what I’ve been trying to do all evening.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “I’ve been trying to get you to do this all night! I just want you to drink.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “Remember kids, only you can prevent rabbit fires.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)