First appearance: S1E11 — Gift Horse — Cosmonius v El Hada Rocha · watch it on YouTube
Cosmonius is a large chestnut centaur from The Feywild, a muscle-bound monk with flowing shampoo-commercial hair, a silky handlebar moustache and an unshakable belief that somebody, somewhere, is always watching him through a scrying spell. He entered the arena as one half of the most beautifully coiffed matchup the Void had ever seen, and he left it as one half of a double knockout. He was later summoned back to fight for the Grandmaster in the Battle for the Crown. There he dropped a robot down a pit twice, punched a Kraken in the face and walked away a winner. He collects nicknames the way other champions collect scars.
Story
Gift Horse
Cosmonius was pulled away from enjoying himself at home in the Feywild for S1E11 — Gift Horse — Cosmonius v El Hada Rocha. It was a night when the Arbiter had failed to notice the Grandmaster’s new hair and had admitted to choosing champions by their hairstyles. Cosmonius trotted out of the portal like a show horse doing dressage. He sneered at “these colourful dandies” and won the Grandmaster over with a single line: “I haven’t seen someone so dashing since I was in the presence of the Seelie Court.” She declared him her winner on the spot. His opponent, the peacock-feathered luchador El Hada Rocha, told him he might as well start calling himself Glue. Cosmonius answered by wrapping himself in a cloak of colorful leaves, a blessing of his fey touch, before anyone had even reached the arena. The fight was held “in-house,” on a railed platform over the generator room deep inside The Dread Fortress. The Arbiter put his money on El Hada Rocha, because “you can’t not trust a man who’s wearing a mask.”
Cosmonius opened the fight with a gallop across the platform, a burst of monk speed and two punches straight to the face. That first blood earned him the Grandmaster’s promised favor. Then The Acolytes threw their grandmothers into the arena. The grandmas adored the shirtless centaur. One kissed his cheek and fanned herself (“My, you are very hot, aren’t you?”), while another had already whacked El Hada Rocha with her purse. Cosmonius grappled his rival on a natural 20, swept his legs and stamped on him twice with his free hoof, living up to the names “the Galloping Grappler” and “the Harrowing Hooves.” He even used El Hada Rocha to mop up the blood he had spilled. His popularity did not last. When a singing Grandma Siren lured him toward her, the grandmother who had kissed him flew into a jealous rage and slapped the blessing clean off his face.
The match only got stranger from there. The Arbiter wove El Hada Rocha a shield from feathers plucked from the luchador’s own mask, and it caught fire and became a giant flaming coconut crab. Cosmonius knocked a pincer aside (“You know how hard it is to get crabs out of this much fur?”), a crack at the Grandmaster’s warning moments earlier that STDs like crabs are rampant among the elderly, then dressage-hopped between its pincers and cracked its shell with a hoof. After El Hada Rocha missed seven blasts in a row, a flaming kick knocked Cosmonius’s jaw out of line. Cosmonius fixed it by punching himself in the face with a healing strike, and he delivered the episode’s title line: “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” He gave El Hada Rocha a ride around the arena, back-kicked him over the edge of the pit, and only then realized that the fairy’s wings were not decorative. When a donkey piñata descended, he blinked onto it in a puff of fey magic, and El Hada Rocha apologized “to all the audience for having to watch an ass on an ass.” Cosmonius ripped the donkey’s whole head off with a natural 20 and wore it as a helmet. He crowned himself “Piñata King,” ate one giant chocolate bar and tucked two more into his hand wraps.
By the end, Cosmonius’s back had been broken by a thunderclap, his hair and moustache were singed and there was chocolate in his whiskers. He saved his last burst of the crowd’s favor for “an epic ending.” He tried to sweep El Hada Rocha’s feet out as the fairy dove from fifty feet up, but he mistimed it and took the full explosion. With both champions barely standing, Cosmonius offered a fist bump, which El Hada Rocha returned with broken fingers. “Shall we go out like men then?” asked El Hada Rocha. “No. Not like men. Like Fae. Like Fae!” Cosmonius threw a single straight jab that killed his rival, and in the same instant a final rebuke of fairy fire brought the centaur down. Both champions died on the same exchange. The Arbiter called it “an awful waste of hair,” and the Grandmaster asked the Acolytes to remember both their names.
Battle for the Crown, Round 2
Cosmonius had not expected “to see the light of day again.” Even so, he was summoned for S2 Ep19, Battle for the Crown Round 2 - Team Grandmaster (Cosmonius & Locket) v Team Arbiter (Silky Slim & …. This time the Arbiter was openly trying to take the Grandmaster’s throne. Team Grandmaster made its entrance through a red curtain wheeled in by goblins, who applauded “because they have to.” Cosmonius was paired with the tabaxi archer Locket (“Don’t worry, little tabaxi, I will keep you safe. Cosmonius!”). They faced the Arbiter’s revived champions, the oiled-up bugbear Silky Slim and the robot-bodied Baron Voltágè, in The land of the corrupted, a dead rock garden where nothing grows well. Cosmonius told his own version of his first fight to the crowd: his opponent had been given a shield and still couldn’t hit him with seven attacks. The Arbiter shot back that this was a man who “couldn’t even beat up a grandmother.”
He began by trailing pixie dust across the field and blessing himself and Locket. Then a chaos event turned everyone into animals, and he spent two rounds as a giant goat, with his moustache hanging off both sides of the goat’s face as a goatee (“Cosgotnius!”). Back in centaur form, he had trouble keeping hold of the endlessly lubricated Slim. His grapples slid off, and once he ended up face-first in Slim’s perm. He did succeed in renaming him, on a natural 20 of persuasion: “Your name should be Slippery Slim.” Slim liked the alliteration and accepted. When Slim went up in flames from Locket’s arrows, Cosmonius ate his last chocolate bar from the piñata, stamped out the fire with his hooves and punched healing into Locket’s arm: “Come on, get back on the horse!”
His great work that night was done on the Baron. After the ground gave way into a cavern, Cosmonius grabbed the robot, galloped into the hole with him “like the scene from Lord of the Rings,” and blinked back to the top in a burst of fey sparkles. The Baron flew out again, so Cosmonius leapt the pit, shoved him back in and jumped after him without slowing his fall. “You know what hurts more than falling 50 feet? Having a centaur fall 50 feet on top of you.” He landed hooves-first on the Baron’s head for a natural 20. Then the Acolytes’ timing produced The Kraken, which rose from the cavern’s eerily still lake. Cosmonius spent the crowd’s favor to charge it (“What can be more heroic than fighting a fucking Kraken?”). He attacked with all six limbs, numbed one tentacle and soaked up its lightning storm to hit back with it, though the Kraken eventually flung him into Locket. The ghost of Slim, killed by Locket topside, haunted him by whispering about his split ends and his dye job.
The Baron’s final moments belonged to Cosmonius. A barely formed, slimy, disfigured baby with a single cybernetic arm crawled from the broken armor and lamented that champions were dying over “something as trivial as a throne.” Cosmonius crawled over on bowed front legs and took the little hand. “It’s okay, little one. Your suffering is almost over.” The Baron’s last words were “Why the long face?” Cosmonius admitted it didn’t really work, since he doesn’t have a horse’s face, and then said, “Enough. Enough bloodshed.” The Grandmaster sent the Kraken back into the deep and raised Cosmonius and Locket to her throne as the victors, beside Doug the Pug.
Personality and Abilities
Cosmonius has the torso of an olive-skinned Greek Adonis on a chestnut horse body. He fights topless in soft leather fist wraps, with long Fabio-esque hair and a much-admired handlebar moustache that one heckling child compared to “a caterpillar that needs a resting spot.” He is magnificently vain. He says his own name constantly in case anyone is “just tuning in to this scry,” fires finger guns at audiences who aren’t there, and keeps “a menu list” of self-awarded titles: the Galloping Grappler, the Harrowing Hooves, Chopsbuster, the Piñata King and the Kraken Combatant. Under the swagger he is gallant. He protects grandmothers, comforts the dying and offers fist bumps to worthy foes. He says he has fought fairy folk back home in the Feywild many times, and that having seen peacock attacks there is how he knew how El Hada Rocha’s would come at him.
He fights as a monk on four legs. He covers huge distances at a canter, dances around blows in dressage hops, grapples and trips opponents, stamps them flat and dodges explosions with a fighter’s instinct. His fey touch lets him bless himself and his allies and vanish in a puff of pixie dust to reappear nearby, after a bow to the fairy queens of the Seelie Court. He is “a bit of a healer” in the most painful way possible. His hands can find a foe’s vital organs, and they can also heal, so he has realigned his own jaw by punching himself and fixed his own spine with a horse-kick at nothing. He can run up walls and slow his falls from great heights, but his “equine build” makes climbing hard.
Relationships
- El Hada Rocha: His first opponent and fellow fey beauty. Their mockery turned into mutual respect, and they touched fists before killing each other.
- Locket: His Battle for the Crown teammate, whom he promised to keep safe and healed mid-fight. She called him “Cosmo.”
- Silky Slim: An oily foe he couldn’t keep hold of and successfully rebranded “Slippery Slim.” Slim’s ghost tormented him about his roots.
- Baron Voltágè: Dropped down a pit twice and crushed from fifty feet, then comforted by Cosmonius as he died.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Charmed into choosing him on sight in his first match. He fought for her side in the Battle for the Crown and thanked her for “the opportunity to train.”
- The Arbiter: Backed his opponents both times. The Arbiter mocked him as a man who “couldn’t even beat up a grandmother” and said he might keep his moustache after he died.
- The Kraken: A monster he charged headlong for the glory of it.
Memorable Quotes
“No. Not like men. Like Fae. Like Fae!” (S1E11 — Gift Horse)
- “It seems like the Arbiter’s gift to you is the only thing keeping you here… you know what they say? Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” (S1E11 — Gift Horse)
- “And to you, my fans and acolytes, I say, remember me as I was, beautiful and flawless.” (S1E11 — Gift Horse)
- “You know what hurts more than falling 50 feet? Having a centaur fall 50 feet on top of you.” (Battle for the Crown Round 2)
- “Grandmaster, you seem to have a pest problem. I’m dealing with it for you.” (Battle for the Crown Round 2)
“It’s okay, little one. Your suffering is almost over.” (Battle for the Crown Round 2)