First appearance: S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold — DeeDrah v Gazpacho Man Andy Gammage · watch it on YouTube
DeeDrah was the first champion to introduce herself in the Season of Vigilance. She was a sword-and-sickle warlock with one name (“Just like Cher”), wings of her own and a strict rule about her hair. The Grandmaster bet on her before her opponent had even introduced himself. DeeDrah gave the Gazpacho Man, Andy Gammage, a long and bloody fight, but she died on the ramparts of a moonlit castle with his soup ladle through her eye.
Story
A Soup Served Cold
DeeDrah arrived at The Dread Fortress through a portal that the Arbiter hoped Thea had remembered to arrange. Her introduction was brief: “Grandmaster. I am DeeDrah. I am here to fight for you.” Asked whether she was an experienced fighter, she said only “Yeah,” and the Grandmaster accepted it on the spot (“Who would just say they were if they weren’t?”). Andy Gammage then delivered a long list of titles, and the Grandmaster decided she preferred a champion with one name, which was “easy to chant.” She chanted it four times. The Arbiter put his faith in Andy instead.
The fight took place on the rampart of a dreary, blood-soaked castle under a giant full moon. Andy struck first with a steel chair pulled out of his elbow crease, then charged her down the wall. DeeDrah answered with a short sword in one hand and a sickle in the other. She threw him off his next swing with a vicious slash and put a curse on him. Andy then got her in a headlock, pulled a barbed-wire two-by-four from a pocket somewhere in his bicep, and gave her “the worst noogie of your life.” He wrecked her hair. “Nobody touches my hair,” she said, and blasted him point-blank in the face with sparkly eldritch magic, straight up the nostrils. Her second blast went into his mouth, and Andy swallowed it in two gulps. It was a first for the arena. “Okay, now I know what I’m dealing with,” DeeDrah said, and wrenched herself free.
The chaos kept coming. A crowd of children in the stands hurled insults at both fighters, with a tiny pink Thea among them. Then the castle briefly became a western bar, and each champion found a mechanical bull rising beneath them. DeeDrah turned out to be a pro rider who had already named her bull Edward (“We’re buddies”). When Andy tried to grab her again, she slipped under him (“I’m a slippery little fucker”) and wrapped herself in shadows pulled from the Plane of Shadows. He caught her anyway, sprouted golden wings, flew her a hundred feet into the sky and let go. On the way down DeeDrah unfurled wings of her own. “Come and get me, fucker!” she shouted, and then, “Everyone has wings!”
A tiny, sad-eyed chinchilla then pattered across the battlefield. DeeDrah stared it down (“I’m cute too”), and it bonded to her. It rode on the end of her blade and took a bite every time she landed a hit, and a whisper in her ear christened the pair the Chinchilla Crew. The Acolytes were furious about her ruined hair. They rioted in the stands, chanted her name and spurred her to a crushing sickle blow. When Gerald arrived and DeeDrah had nothing else to offer, she asked her best friend to “take one for the team” and let the chinchilla hop into the box. Gerald used it to finish his boots and gave her a heavy Dragon Slayer, which the Grandmaster renamed a “bear slayer.” DeeDrah bound it to herself as her pact blade. Her first two swings missed. “I bet the sword’s not that heavy,” Andy said, “but the weight of your conscience is on it.” “And your soup is gonna taste like guilt,” she shot back, and her third swing finally bit deep.
By then both champions were running on fumes, and DeeDrah was very close to death. Andy grabbed her once more and swung his ladle and missed. The ravenous Acolytes, trampling each other to death and stabbing each other with broken bottles in the stands, then summoned the deadliest game in the world: rock, paper, scissors, with the loser’s life at stake. DeeDrah threw paper and Andy threw scissors. He told her that in other circumstances he would have taken her under his wing, then drove the handle of his ladle through her eye and into the ground. The Grandmaster poured her bowl of gazpacho over the body: “May you be remembered well and swim in the bowl that never ends.” Her bet on DeeDrah had lost. As with most champions, an arena death is not necessarily the end.
Dried Blood
Afterwards, Andy informed her that she could call him Andrew, “because you’re not a person anymore.” DeeDrah maintained that the chinchilla had volunteered (“I said, take one for the team, homie”), and the Grandmaster agreed it was “a volunteer jump.” The Arbiter warned that the chinchillas are unionized and would hold a grudge for the rest of the season. The Grandmaster added that chinchillas in the Void are immune to magic, and that you can throw them. Asked about next of kin, DeeDrah said to notify the Sanrio company: “She’s a loner. She likes to be on her own.” The Grandmaster offered to record her other name, Kurumi, in her eulogy.
Personality and Abilities
DeeDrah was laconic and unbothered, and very protective of her hairstyle. She liked stinky things, rode mechanical bulls like a professional and called the Acolytes “these people” with obvious approval. At the table, her player said she drew on Kuromi from Hello Kitty and Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters.
She fought up close with a short sword and a sickle. Her slashes threw opponents off their next swing, and she backed them up with warlock magic: eldritch blasts, a sapping curse, armor woven from living shadow, and a burst of hellfire she saved for the moment Andy needed punishing. She shrugged off radiant light and could unfurl celestial wings at will. By the end of her fight she carried the Dragon Slayer from the Box of Chaos as her pact scimitar.
Relationships
- Andy Gammage: Her opponent and killer, the Gazpacho Man. They traded insults, wings and blows, and he said that in other circumstances he would have taken her under his wing, maybe even as tag team champions.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She bet on DeeDrah from the start, lost the bet, and poured her own gazpacho over the body.
- Chinchillas: A chinchilla bonded to her mid-fight as the Chinchilla Crew. She then sacrificed it to the box.
- The Box of Chaos: Gerald took her chinchilla for his boots and gave her the Dragon Slayer.
- The Acolytes: They rioted on her behalf after her hair was ruined and chanted her name.
Memorable Quotes
- “Nobody touches my hair.” (S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold)
- “I’m a slippery little fucker.” (S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold)
- “Come and get me, fucker!” (S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold)
- “Maybe you should just sit in chairs from now on instead of swing them.” (S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold)
- “You think you could take one for the team this time? Because I don’t really got any shit on me right now to put in this box.” (S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold)
- “And your soup is gonna taste like guilt.” (S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold)