First appearance: S2E16, Pub Brawl - Broose Scorchtail v Dewdrop Grizzlebee · watch it on YouTube
Dewdrop Grizzlebee is a fairy scholar who claimed to have studied the Arbiter and the Grandmaster “for ages,” and who learned to fight from a book called Melee for Dummies. He was played by TheShortNord. He faced Broose Scorchtail in the Grandmaster’s forgotten brewery in S2E16, Pub Brawl - Broose Scorchtail v Dewdrop Grizzlebee. His dice failed him again and again, his hairline retreated every time he used his powers, and he ended the night at the bottom of a lake of ale.
Story
Dewdrop arrived at The Dread Fortress having read up on “the melee tactics that are expected of me,” which he insisted on pronouncing “M’lee.” He announced he was “here to fisticuffs with a rabbit,” and admitted he had some thoughts on the rules, which he had jotted down. The arena was the Grandmaster’s own brewery, a maze of 30-foot steel tanks with walkways on top. The Acolytes immediately turned the floor into a bouncy castle and sprouted mushrooms on the tanks, which Dewdrop declared “definitely not up to code.” His first attacks set the tone. Crossbow bolt and thrown dagger both missed, and he corrected his angle in midair by invoking the “Pythagorean theorem, that’s a word.” His wings could steady him, but he couldn’t fly in his heavy armor.
Things got stickier. When Broose came out of a trade with Gerald coated in honey, Dewdrop’s longsword stuck uselessly in his rival’s fur and his short sword stayed stuck there. He confessed he had “only read melee tactics, not the banter part,” and revealed that he had paid a man a lot of gold to train him and been given books. Desperate, he surrendered his precious notebook to Gerald for a potion of speed. He tried to shrink Broose and only made Broose’s poncho a little snug. Broose then dosed himself with mind control and charmed him. Dewdrop eventually thought his way free, and while he was at it he admitted his real purpose: “I came here trying to break the stigma that, you know, people of science can’t throw down. And well, I’ve kind of failed.” He then threw science to the wind, ate a mushroom, and was slowed back down to “a little more normal.” Dewdrop’s verdict: “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”
His comeback began with gravity. He leapt off a tank and dived at Broose’s face, landing his first real hit of the night. When Broose tossed the stuck short sword back up to him, Dewdrop returned it “to sender” with a chunk of Broose’s fur still stuck to it. The Grandmaster offered some tough love and blessed him: “Use that stupid brain of yours.” The blessing moved him to tears. When the Arbiter, out of round cards, simply turned back time, Dewdrop asked if this was “a Groundhog Day situation.” He hurled a barrel by telekinesis, which only bumped Broose’s butt and gave him a comfortable seat. The Arbiter, calling the fight “pathetic,” then axed open every tank, and the beer began to rise. Dewdrop made the most epic and bloody dive the Grandmaster said the show had seen yet, powered by a fistful of his own arm hair, and then fashioned Broose’s honeyed fur into a toupee. The beer rose to their necks, a lightning strike from the Acolytes lit up Dewdrop’s “full fairy turtle bear arm skeleton” through the amber, and soon the beer was over their heads.
Barely alive, Dewdrop tore off the toupee, threw it in Broose’s face, and swam in to grapple the rabbit and drag him under. “I’ve heard rabbits got small lungs.” Broose simply held his scimitar braced at his side as he was pulled down, and Dewdrop ran onto it. He bubbled out a final confession of hair envy and sank to the bottom with a soft thud. The Grandmaster explained that he was too muscular to float. Dewdrop’s own explanation: “It’s just a potato. It’s a very heavy, dense potato.” The Arbiter drained the beer back into the mended tanks and flew off with the body, a little disgusted by its wet, hairy forearms. Afterwards, in Dried Blood, the Grandmaster let the pair in on a secret: “No one actually ever dies at the death match.” She said Dewdrop could join the afterlife party later, while the Arbiter worked his corpse like a puppet.
Personality and Abilities
Dewdrop looks like “an old, like, red-haired, out-of-shape man with, like, a monk haircut… Very retired Boston cop look.” He has a receding horseshoe of red hair and very hairy “Robin Williams” forearms. He described himself variously as tortoise-shaped, a “turtle fairy,” a “turtle unicorn fairy,” “a Psyduck in a fairy’s body,” and “an old spud you left outside.” He is earnest, pedantic and easily wounded, an academic who writes down everything he sees and refuses psychedelics (“Those tricks are for kids”), right up until he doesn’t. He is openly jealous of Broose’s hair. His insults run to “you big-eared fool,” “you rube,” and “carrot boy.”
In a fight he carries a crossbow, daggers, a longsword and a short sword, and wields them strictly by the book. By his own account, he skipped every chapter’s practical test because “that’s for gym rats.” His real strength is his “big brain.” He can fire psionic strikes like a mental dagger, raise a protective mind-field, make a psi-powered leap into the air, hurl objects by telekinesis, shrink a foe, and wreath himself in fairy light. Each use of his mind costs him hair, until only about five strands remained. As the Grandmaster put it, “There’s always a cost to knowledge.” He found his manual lying on the floor of “a magic half-priced books.” He gave the author as “Richard Stabbs,” and later tried to swap in John J. Kilcullen, whereupon Broose claimed the name as his own pseudonym.
“I like to think of myself as a record breaker. And I’ve broken the record of failing enough times. So in a way, I’ve succeeded in failing.” — Dewdrop, in Dried Blood
Relationships
- Broose Scorchtail: His opponent. Dewdrop called him a “psychopathic rodent,” envied his hair, and briefly wore his fur as a toupee. Broose only ever wanted to take him out for a drink.
- The Grandmaster: One of the two subjects of his studies. She mocked his scholarship (“You probably should have majored in something else”) but blessed him at his lowest, which reduced him to tears.
- The Arbiter: The other subject of his studies. The Arbiter dismissed him as “some nerd with his notes,” flooded the arena that drowned him, and later puppeted his corpse.
- Gerald: Took Dewdrop’s beloved notebook in exchange for a potion of speed, which a mushroom promptly cancelled.
Memorable Quotes
- “I would like to conduct research by stabbing you. I heard that’s why we’re here.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “Literacy has failed me.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “I paid a man a lot of gold to train me, and he gave me some books.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “This is not how I want to go out. Drowning in beer and being electrocuted is literally the worst way a scholar can go out.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “I’d like to just bubble out as I’m drowning in the beer. I knew you were stronger because you had all the hair in the world. And I was jealous.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl)
- “Whenever you’re studying, remember to be practical about it. Go outside, take a break, lift some weights.” (S2E16, Pub Brawl, Dried Blood)