First appearance: S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn · watch it on YouTube
Carnelian, better known as Carn, was a crystalline gem dragonborn warlock who stomped into the Void promising carnage and very nearly delivered it. He flew, he breathed radiant energy, he whispered insults directly into his opponent’s brain, and he sweated glitter the whole time. He lost his duel with Bargo in the most final way the arena allows. What made him matter came afterwards: The Arbiter quietly carried off his severed head and stitched it back onto his body, because he “might have use” for him.
Story
S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn
Carn arrived the way he meant to go on. He kicked the door open and stomped in while the hellfire light of The Dread Fortress bounced off his scales, and announced that he was “a killer, not a talker.” The Grandmaster was in a foul mood after a disappointing evening of television, but she perked up at once. She told him she saw “true potential in your eyes” and called him a champion she was keeping her eyes on. The Arbiter, inspired by Carn’s crystalline body, sent both fighters to a long-forgotten underground civilization. It was a cavern of glowing blue and yellow gems and fragile stone bridges over a fog-filled abyss, and the people who once mined it had suffocated when its entrance caved in.
Carn struck before Bargo had finished talking. He spent the gift the Acolytes had given him to double his speed, sprouted wings and zipped straight to The Box of Chaos. Then he snapped off one of his own horns, still spouting blood, and dropped it in. The box rewarded the sacrifice with a burst of heatless pink and yellow flame and a suit of enchanted chain mail, which he put on immediately. The cavern soon filled up with tiny minitaurs and one full-sized minotaur. Carn tried to calm the big one with a friendly “rawr!” but happened to make “the exact sound that its dinner makes.” It hurled its greataxe at him as he hovered out of reach, failed to catch it on the way down, and later charged straight off a cliff after him like something out of Die Hard.
The fight went back and forth across burning grease, magic mushrooms and a pair of mind-reading steeds. Carn’s became a massive capybara (“No one suspects the capybara”), while Bargo chose a bear. Carn found a slowing mushroom and smeared it on his hand axe. He blasted his radiant breath weapon in Bargo’s face and twice used his psionic mind to say “bitch” straight into Bargo’s head, rattling him badly. Bargo, however, kept throwing up a shimmering shield at exactly the right moment. When Carn took to the skies, Bargo teleported up, grabbed his foot and hung on. Then the bored Arbiter clapped his hands and brought the cavern ceiling down on both of them.
They landed among the actual ruins of the lost civilization, where the long-dead bodies had mingled with the crystals and still clawed at the living. Carn fought like he belonged there. He wrapped himself in a shroud of swirling spirits and dive-bombed Bargo with a transparent glass hand whose needle fingertips drank his blood. The Grandmaster was moved enough by all that death to give the dead an extra push on his behalf. Carn even burst out of a pool of squirming corpses “like a hellish mermaid” and landed a perfect point-blank crossbow shot. But Bargo’s flaming hit had already blasted him thirty feet higher into the air and left him nearly spent. When he finally admitted “I got nothing. This is it,” he begged the Acolytes for mercy. They voted him down, and Bargo finished him with darts of magic, cut his throat and sawed off his head to hold aloft. Carn’s last request was simple: “Care for the capybara.”
He did not stay dead long. The Arbiter tucked the head under his arm, flew the body high above the cliffs where no one could see, and sewed the two back together with a magical needle and thread, leaving a great ring of stitches around Carn’s neck. “Pull yourself together. I might have use for you.” Carn flew off into the sunset, trailing a rainbow of glitter. As he later admitted, not all of his stab holes had closed yet.
S2E12 — Blood Cookies — Wandering Willy v Martin Messiah Malenko
Carn turned up again during the match between Wandering Willy and Martin Messiah Malenko. He was named among the “losers of past D20 Deathmatches” raised from the shadows of stone in the Arbiter’s arena. The Arbiter’s use for him had begun: Carn had become one of the fallen champions he was quietly gathering into an army of his own.
Personality and Abilities
Carn was all swagger and sparkle. His carnelian scales were crystalline, and everything that came out of him glittered: his sweat, his tears and, by his own account, his blood (“I’m very crystalline”). He talked a big game while insisting he didn’t talk, delighted in mocking his opponent, and sounded wounded when the crowd turned on him. Fittingly for a dragonborn, he once described himself as swimming “like the little crocodile man that I am.”
In a fight he was mobile and tricky. He could grow wings and fly for long stretches, and he had a radiant breath weapon. A psionic mind let him speak into other people’s heads, which he mostly used for insults. As a warlock he could lure foes with lightning, wreathe a blade in green flame, summon a shroud of spirits and drain life through a glassy, needle-fingered hand. He was an expert with his hand crossbow, his “lovely little gun gun,” which he paired with a hand axe. He also had retractable claws he never got the chance to use, and he wore the enchanted chain mail he won from the Box of Chaos. His loyal steed was a capybara of questionable loyalty.
Relationships
- Bargo: His opponent. Carn got into his head, but Bargo beat him and took his head.
- The Arbiter: Sewed Carn’s head back on in secret and later raised him among his fallen champions.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Saw “true potential” in him at first, then let the Acolytes decide his fate.
- The Acolytes: Gave him his first burst of speed, then rejected his plea for mercy, because “Bargo is in their hearts.”
- The Box of Chaos: Took one of his horns and gave him enchanted chain mail in return.
Memorable Quotes
- “I’m gonna warlock you out of this house. I’m gonna smash your face with my jaw… I’m a killer, not a talker.” (S2E7)
- “Carn is ready for carnage.” (S2E7)
- “I start sweating, but since I’m a gem dragonborn, it’s just glitter.” (S2E7)
- “No one suspects the capybara, but look at the size of those chompers.” (S2E7)
- “Because I’m not a wuss, I don’t need a shield. Just fight me!” (S2E7)
- “When I flew off into the sunset, I left a little glittery rainbow behind me. Not all of my holes were closed at that point. Stab holes.” (S2E7, Dried Blood)