First appearance: × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover
Dave the Doom Duck is a duck in the way a volcano is a hill: technically, from a distance, if you squint. He came up out of “the hells below” to fight in the × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover (title not in metadata) Deathmatch. He pooped wherever he pleased, turned on his own team and lit the rest on fire. He was the last champion standing, and hell was glad to be rid of him.
Story
Dave arrived in a castle hall of The Dread Fortress, laid out with food, when a small portal opened in the floor and a duck fluttered up out of it, quacking. “Hello, are you my fellow sacrifices?” he asked. The Grandmaster admitted she wasn’t “fluent in duck” (“I have it on my Duolingo… I push off the notifications”). Nobody knew whether the portal had been opened for him or ripped open from below. As it closed, hell could be heard cheering that “they got rid of this damn beast.” Asked whether he pooped wherever he liked, the answer was a creed: “That’s his birthright. This land is his. This world and all others connected to it is his. It is his own toilet.” The Arbiter said he had battled ducks “more times than you would believe,” and bet on Dave to win anyway.
Dave was put on a team with Pyxis the mammoth and Perry the shovel-wielder for the gauntlet. In the kitchen he helped clear the feast with a spectral hand shaped like a duck’s head, beaking food into Pyxis, who lay on the table and turned invisible so the meal vanished with him (“This is your day, bro”). In the room of sleeping Chinchillas, each one cuddling a kitchen knife, Dave didn’t sneak at all. He strode in with “pure, unbelievable confidence,” and when they woke he stared straight into their eyes and put them back to sleep. They sat bolt upright, blades glinting, then flopped back down. “All right. Well, I’m going to the other side of that room.”
On the way across he quacked insults (“got your armor, bro. Quack. It looks like shit. Quack.”) and, out of pure spite, left a poop in front of every chinchilla bed exactly where they’d step. The invisible Pyxis followed behind and wiped up the poop because he felt bad for the chinchillas. He missed one. A chinchilla who got up for a glass of hot milk stepped in it, marched over and stabbed Dave in the butt with its steak knife. Dave flared up in flames and a demonic aura, the screams of hell behind him, and said: “Don’t hurt the chinchillas. Don’t hurt the chinchillas. Don’t hurt the chinchillas.” Then he left the biggest poop he could at the door: “Clean that up!” While he was busy pooping, Perry and Pyxis solved the alchemy puzzle and slipped through the portal without him. Abandoned, Dave tried to intimidate the potion vials, which have no brains or emotions. He kicked over a chest and a table, then sat on a throne-like chair. From there he spotted the answer on a sticky note under an upturned skull. “Ah, it’s good to be a duck.”
When a donation turned Thea into a giant purple worm, the Abyss Devourer, Dave called across the chasm, “Hey worm, how about some roast dinner?” At Pyxis’s suggestion he raised his wings and drew a ring of hellish fire around the rival team and the worm, then waddled off as if he knew the worm wouldn’t touch him. “Oh, Ducky, you’re so good now. I like him,” said Pyxis. Beans the Terrible answered with a fire wall of his own around Dave’s team. Dave, part dragon where it counted, shrugged off the flames completely.
Once the gauntlet turned into a free-for-all, “Dave is mad.” He rose with an Abyssal cry and fire in his eyes and tried to banish four champions at once: “minion one, minion two, that green guy and the horse,” since he’d never bothered to learn their names. That meant Solid, Grog the Malodorous (“I’m a dang centaur”), Beans, and his own teammate Perry. “Hey, this is an all-out Deathmatch.” Every one of them shrugged it off, but the Grandmaster was so pleased with his creativity that she blessed him anyway. Dave: “ah, duck.”
Solid later punched him into the river, and it turned out the waterfowl hated water (“I’m a duck! I’m a freaking duck!… Water hurts!”). He was swept along and struck by a passing rock. He climbed back out, pointed his butt at Pyxis, mentioned the “spicy stuff” he’d eaten earlier, and launched a lava-like fireball. In the Grandmaster’s words, “that flaming turd goes flying across the map.” Solid backflipped clear, but Pyxis was badly burned. Praying as he died, he was lifted by moonlight and dropped onto Solid’s head, poking out Solid’s last good eye, and the fall killed Solid. That left Grog. Grog hit him with a thrown trident (“I’m okay. A little on the shish kabob side”) and a glancing blow from a Vorpal Sword that left Dave’s draconic wings half falling off. Hurt and furious, Dave rose into the sky without a single flap, “just unholy rising”: “Oh, you gave me hell. Let me send you to it myself.” A second, smaller fireball out of his butt turned Grog to ash. Dave rolled happily in the grass while the trees burst into flame as if to celebrate: “I win! I win! Take that, Satan!” The Grandmaster declared that he had captured the flag.
Personality and Abilities
At a glance Dave looks like a regular duck, but he’s “a little too scaly… Hellish, a little too wrong,” with draconic wings where his feathered ones should be. His presence “would have made your grandma blush,” and anyone who looks him straight in the eye feels a madness and unbridled rage that is a lot like stepping in poop. He speaks Abyssal and quacks, and he stands at “the perfect majestic duck height,” which is “the perfect height to nip you where you need to be nipped.”
Dave treats the world as his toilet, holds grudges, and can’t be bothered with anyone’s name. Other champions are “minion one, minion two,” and teammates are fair game. His player admitted he’s “not the most smartest of ducks.” Even so, he stumbled into the answer to a puzzle his whole team left him behind on. For a waterfowl, he has a striking hatred of water, perhaps because, as the Grandmaster noted, there aren’t many rivers in hell (“Rivers of lava,” Dave corrected).
He is a draconic sorcerer. He can put creatures to sleep with a stare and conjure spectral hands shaped like snapping duck heads. He can raise rings of hellfire, try to banish several foes at once, and fire explosive fireballs out of his butt, especially after spicy food. His draconic heritage makes him very hard to hurt with fire.
Relationships
- Pyxis: Gauntlet teammate who quietly wiped up Dave’s poop and cheered his fire. Dave’s butt-fireball was the end of him.
- Perry: Gauntlet teammate who left him behind in the alchemy room, and whom Dave tried to banish along with everyone else.
- Grog the Malodorous: His final opponent, “the horse,” burned to ash by Dave’s last fireball.
- Solid: Knocked Dave into the river, the one thing a duck should be good at.
- Beans the Terrible: Answered Dave’s ring of fire with one of his own. “I like roasted duck.”
- Chinchillas: He put them to sleep and pooped in their path. One stabbed him in the butt for it.
- The Arbiter: Bet on Dave from the start.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Blessed him for his creativity and declared him the winner.
Memorable Quotes
- “Hello, are you my fellow sacrifices?” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “Don’t hurt the chinchillas. Don’t hurt the chinchillas. Don’t hurt the chinchillas.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “Hey, this is an all-out Deathmatch.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “I’m a duck! I’m a freaking duck!… I’m a waterfowl!” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “Oh, you gave me hell. Let me send you to it myself.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “I win! I win! Take that, Satan!… They kicked me out of hell. I’ll make a new hell.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)