Gordy Gotta Get Em was a nervous, stabby little rogue whose whole philosophy fit in his name. The Arbiter met him at a bowling alley and brought him to the Void to run the Grandmaster’s birthday gauntlet against his bowling buddy Dan Kowalski. Gordy spent the race heckling Dan telepathically, glowing blue, sacrificing his family’s ceremonial circumcision dagger with its handle wrapped in his forefathers’ foreskins, and freeing and flattering a hag. He landed the most spectacular kill of the night, then died minutes later in his sleep.
Story
Gordy stammered his way into S2E5 — The Gauntlet — Dan Kowalski v Gordy Gotta Get Em: “My name’s Gordy, um, I gotta get em. I just gotta stab. Mostly stab.” Asked what the first thing he ever “got” was, he answered, “A circumcision actually.” The Grandmaster responded by offering free circumcisions to any Acolyte afterwards. The rules of her jungle training ground were simple: each champion ran his own lane, the first to finish would be crowned, and the last would die. Gordy started badly, pinned by Dan’s earthen hands and pelted by furious squirrels, so he struck back the only way he could. He spent the next seven hours yelling “gotta get em, gotta get em” inside Dan’s head, then wriggled out of the earthen hands with what he called “the old suck it satyr special.”
For a while, Gordy was winning. He scaled the cliff first and hit the dangling Dan with a psychic blade. A whole flock of flying snakes, sweet-talked over by Dan, was waiting in his lane, so Gordy teleported onto a lily pad far out in the river and read the water well enough to stay dry. (“I’m drier than your mom, Daniel.”) He sprinted straight through a forest of farting plants that puffed out poisonous pollen and came out glowing blue (“Suck it, Daniel. I’m magic now.”). At the Box of Chaos he sacrificed “the ceremonial goblin dagger that’s used for all circumcisions. Its handle wrapped in the foreskin of my forefathers.” In return he got a Wand of Secrets, its hilt wrapped in the same ceremonial foreskin. A manticore lunged at him, bit a tree stump instead and cracked its tooth.
Then the race turned against him. A song that never ends put him in a trance, and his manticore woke first and tore into him. Faced with Dan’s summoned dragon as well, Gordy politely asked to go home. The Grandmaster refused, blessed him and told him to “buck up, buddy.” He begged Dan for help and killed Dan’s manticore with a thrown dagger, which turned out to be a geriatric beast relieved that its time had come. He then freed a hag tied to a tree, after calling her “a very beautiful young maiden” and checking with his foreskin wand that she wasn’t a trap (one of its foreskin wrappings slithered to the tip, flew off and burst into salt). She banished his manticore, healed him and hugged him, and Gordy called it “the greatest day ever.” In the cave he snubbed the troll’s plate of veggies, which grew into slow, legless vegetable monsters. He picked a chest to find two emeralds that restored him fully, and he gave one to the Grandmaster as a birthday present. Doug the Pug carried it back to the stands in his little mouth.
A portal sent both champions to the same dungeon, where a Babau fell instantly in love with Dan and would only attack Gordy. Dan set a Sphere of Annihilation between Gordy and the monster and walked off, and Gordy slashed him as he went with a perfect natural 20. Then Dan blew the sphere up in both their faces. Gordy hid behind a pillar and waited for the Babau to pass. He ran up the column in an “Assassin’s Creed wall run” and dropped onto it with both daggers: “Yes, Gordy has gotten him!” The crowd went wild, and the Grandmaster stood from her seat. But Dan had survived at the edge of death. While Gordy celebrated, Dan put him to sleep and brought a thunderous hoof-stomp down on him. Gordy’s particles dissipated into the energy. The Arbiter gathered what was left of him into a sack and walked off whistling, “Got him.”
Personality and Abilities
Gordy was small, roughly the size of a middle-schooler, with short legs he blamed for his poor showing (“I’m very dangerous over short distance, but long distance, I turn around and stab the thing”). He was anxious, crude and relentlessly upbeat. He did daily affirmations, though he once fumbled one and called himself “Second Dan.” His favourite weapon was a tongue aimed at “Daniel,” the name Dan hated most. He met the Arbiter and Dan at bowling, squabbled with Dan over the six-pound pink ball, and still wanted to go bowling in the afterlife.
In a fight he was a slippery rogue. He wriggled out of grabs and rolled with blows to soften them, struck hard from hiding, saw in the dark and picked locks. He also had psionic gifts: blades of psychic energy he could throw, a telepathic link for whispering into other minds, and short teleports. By the end of the race he also carried the foreskin-wrapped Wand of Secrets, which finds hidden doors and traps.
Relationships
- Dan Kowalski: bowling buddy, gauntlet rival, telepathic heckling target and finally his killer. Gordy alternated between insulting him and begging him to team up.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: he gave her an emerald for her birthday, after she turned down his foreskin. She blessed him rather than let him quit.
- The Arbiter: recruited him at the bowling alley and later carried off his remains in a sack.
- Doug the Pug: fetched Gordy’s emerald gift up to the Grandmaster.
Memorable Quotes
- “Children are the worst. I may be the same size as them, but they just radiate so much more evil.” (The Gauntlet)
- “Grandmaster, Arbiter, this has been a fun race… I would like to go home.” (The Gauntlet)
- “I offered you my foreskin. You didn’t like that. So how about the stone?” (The Gauntlet)
- “This is the worst PBS nightmare I could think of.” (The Gauntlet)
- “Wall run, Gordy’s gotta get em!” (The Gauntlet)
“Happy birthday, Grandmaster. You’re a lovely, lovely overlord. And we gotta go bowling in the afterlife.” (The Gauntlet, Dried Blood)