Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer

First appearance: Skypiercer Part 1

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer rules The Void from The Dread Fortress and presides over every Deathmatch fought in her arena. She is retired from battle and misses the days of glory and bloodshed, so every Sunday she has The Arbiter curate a spectacle for her and her Acolytes. She is a princess who came back from exile to dethrone a tyrant and a monarch who throws metal chairs. She is also a woman who has lived long enough to outlive people she loved, and the Deathmatches she founded celebrate death and remembrance. Played by Caustic Phoenix.

Story

Childhood and Exile

Elusia is the daughter of Faucius Golden Shield. On the Night of the Long Shadow, about 700 years before the first Season 1 Deathmatch, her uncle Agdrel murdered her father and seized the Dread Fortress, ruling from then on as The Shadow King. That night the Knights of Chaos gave their lives in a blood rite to send young Elusia out of the Void entirely, to the realm of Cor’thun. In a flashback she asked after her mother and got no answer. Her mother has never been named.

She grew up in Cor’thun as a refugee. She was trained in combat by Empress Juntikar, an ancestor of the later Emperor Thornos, and she outlived her teacher. When she first turned up in Cor’thun’s banquet hall, she was declared an unwanted guest at swordpoint. She spent the next three centuries training and, so the joke went, very little of that time reading.

Skypiercer

In Skypiercer Part 1, 300 years into her exile, the Endless Scholar Vythorn (the future Arbiter) crossed into Cor’thun to find her. He called her “Princess Elusia.” She would rather have been called “just Elusia.” Emperor Thornos hailed her as “Princess of the Void, refugee, stranger no more,” and noted she had remained “undying, even as we have perished around you.” She was named General of the Champions of Honor, and the oath was sealed in blood. She still thought of herself as a guest (“I don’t bear the same history”). She killed the Cursed Juggernaut, flirted shamelessly with Kaja by drinking from her cup and carrying her up a hill, and finally agreed to return to the Void and take her “rightful place.”

In Skypiercer Part 2 she carried the Oathbringer, sworn to defeat the Shadow King. She wrote the decrees that raised the resistance and gave House Plintos to Thea (a Cor’thun noble, not the later imp of the same name). Craven called her the “savior of the Void.”

In Skypiercer Part 3, about 400 years before Season 1, she and her companions Atalantos and Kaja ended the Shadow King’s 300-year reign. Elusia killed Agdrel herself. She was crowned Empress in a black crown, and the Arbiter named her Grandmaster, “the one who pierces the sky.” She created the Arbiter’s office, knighted Kaja and Atalantos, and called her people Acolytes. She also founded the arena, making the Deathmatch a day of remembrance. Her Oathbringer came out of the war burnt and cracked, and she came out of it with Kaja. The two were together after Skypiercer until Kaja’s natural death.

The Early Days

Before the first season, the Grandmaster was already “weary from eons of absolute power.” She watched from a high perch, and fighting stopped whenever she stepped onto the field. Rain politely avoided her. In Playtest 2 her wings glowed purple. She handed out blessings, potions and growth, ended a blizzard, valued honor and sportsmanship, and threatened to replace the Arbiter. In Playtest 4 she rewound time “like a Time Lord” and proudly followed no precedents: “my rules.” She also revealed she gives the Arbiter performance and quarterly reviews (with a Christmas bonus), keeps a ledger of winners and has a pet dinosaur. She had recently put up a new wall in the keep, and she has goblins to clean up after her.

Season 1

Season 1 opened, in S1 Ep1, with a bored Grandmaster playing bocce for one, surrounded by paintings of herself and throwing chairs at the Arbiter. She set her philosophy out early: “Victory may hurt, but it lets us know that we are alive.” Over the season she proved clumsy with knives (she cut her own hand and covered it up). She came to own an abandoned abbey, Kirken’s Mine and The Siren’s Nautilus, and she took a mandatory afternoon nap with her beloved pug, Doug.

She took a personal interest in the fights. In S1E3 she named Sunozar her chosen champion and saved him from his fall in exchange for worship of her wings. She also began to suspect the Arbiter resented her and that his shadow “is trying to come for my crown.” She bottled that night’s crowd chaos and uncorked it to open the next match. In S1E8 she let the Acolytes vote and flipped coins, then spared both Grorx and Lord Xiren by fusing them into one body: “two phoenixes circling each other throughout eternity.” In S1E9 she doubled every consequence for the rest of the fight and promised the Arbiter “a long talk later” about where his shadow’s voice was coming from.

By Gift Horse her hair had gone blonde, “literally the opposite color” from the blue-teal of her youth. She claimed she had built the Dread Fortress herself, with a lot of goblin help. That night ended with no champion standing, and she gave a eulogy for both Cosmonius and El Hada Rocha. She later conjured a cake elemental, held a fish fry for Dinkledink, and grew paranoid enough about clones to set up a secret handshake with the Arbiter. In that handshake, a left spin means clone, kill on sight.

The season finale, Eyes of Chaos, saw her on the Iron Throne deep in the Fortress, keeper of a secret ruler’s handbook. She revealed she had created a turkey dragon (despite disliking chickens and turkeys) and kept it locked behind the triple-locked Northern Gate. When the arena came under attack, she asked the Acolytes to fight for the first time and refused to flee. She lost the Arbiter to the Tarrasque and vowed to rebuild for Season 2.

Season 2 and the Arbiter’s Betrayal

The Grandmaster spent Season 2 cheerfully unaware of the Arbiter’s coup. She hoarded half-price Valentine’s candy behind her throne and watched Hallmark romances and ball games until she kicked the TVs over. She took up Zumba, admitting she “hasn’t picked up her bow in a long time.” She declared Sunday Deathmatch Day and started The bee farm, hiring Rosa and Veronica as her bee farmers. She threw a dagger between the eyes of her great-great-grandfather Skypiercer’s portrait. She had hated him, but he loved a good fight. She also recalled growing up battling and practicing daily for her legacy. In the same match she blessed Glub Glub’s walrus butthole, and later in the season she renamed invisibility “Fuck this, I’m out” and asked the Acolytes where they’d put a second pair of butt cheeks.

Some of her verdicts were tender. She knelt to Lethe and Sorry after their reconciliation, named both of them champions, and let them use her winter town as their home. For her birthday in The Gauntlet she claimed to be 284. This was a lie. She caught Dan Kowalski out of the air and shed a tear before she smiled. In Father’s Love she said she had laid her father to rest “like 800 years ago” and gave a speech about remembering every champion’s name. She told Glassy she had lost many battles and once had to leave her own kingdom “for some time.” After the Pub Brawl she let slip the house secret:

“No one actually ever dies at the death match.”

She explained it was kept quiet so champions would try harder, and admitted the Arbiter “doesn’t always agree with my policies.”

He certainly didn’t. In The Hall of Fates, Toddleheim, Locket and Flynry reached her with the truth. She had barely left the Fortress in weeks and knew nothing of the coup. The Arbiter had secretly been reviving fallen champions into an army. She insisted the Deathmatches were meant to challenge and strengthen, not punish, and that champions were supposed to be paid and sent home to their own timelines. She called Orin “a valued friend… an old friend.” She then put her faith in the three and challenged the Arbiter to a public tournament for her title.

Battle for the Crown

Before the war she inventoried the armory. Then she declared that deaths in this fight would be permanent. In Round 1 she called down a hailstorm, let the Acolytes’ cheers warm Toddleheim, and honored all four fighters on pedestals of ice. In Round 2, fought in what she called “my garden,” she unleashed heckling children and The Kraken, then ended the fight by sending the Kraken under.

In Round 3 she kept her crown and caught Flynry’s golden coin. She also admitted she had missed the Arbiter’s rebellious streak and its “real consequences,” and had thought he’d gone soft. His punishment was to serve in sackcloth and chains all through Season 3. At GCX Orlando 2022 she reminded everyone: “I’m the only one that can wear a crown around here.” That night The Showman found her sword lying in the forest arena.

Season 3

With the Arbiter in chains, which she called his “ankle weights,” the Grandmaster ran Season 3 with gusto. She bought 203 Chinchillas, one per goblin, to prevent a goblin uprising. She filed three tax extensions out of fear of the IRS and decreed that only local yogurt vendors would serve the arena. She shopped for five thrones and picked a Doja Cat bust throne. She built the whole Gauntlet 2 map as a basement craft project, papier-mâché tavern patrons included, every one of them with a name, an age and a personality. She dove on Alma with a metal chair and refused Ahyan’s plea for mercy. In Homunculus she explained that the arena grass grows from blood and demanded some before she would end the match.

Some arenas she simply loathed. She hates The Shadowlands so much that she floated rather than touch the ground, and she left Chedrick McDougan behind there. In Blood Feud 1 she froze Havoc and Isha Inverraseth mid-blow and sent them to separate planes to train. In Magic Duel she used time magic to give Talbot Cage the edge (“I picked up a trick or two”). Meanwhile, offstage, she took Toddleheim and Locket into her court. When Flynry fell, she wrote to them that there might be a way to bring him back and sent Elianna with them as chaperone, telling her she must come back safely.

The Season 3 Finale went badly. She shot Soot Mustam as a chaos event, wept when Soot died, and dropped Huey Leatherface in fright. Then she freed the Arbiter for good behavior. The Shadow King returned. “After I usurped you,” she reminded him, but the Arbiter died stepping in front of the Shadow King’s attack on Doug. The episode ended with the Grandmaster chained and kneeling.

Season 4: Under the Shadow King

For all of Season 4 she was the Grandmaster in name only. In Shadows Reign she wore weights and gold rune bracelets and had no crown. Her restraints limited what she could say, and her feet froze when she tried to go to her friends. It was her birthday, and the Shadow King had brought Kaja back from death to fight. Elusia called out what he really was (“You were the box of chaos”), tried and failed to steal the sword, and punched him through his incorporeal chest.

Each week she summoned the champions with a bladed amulet that cut her hands and drew the blood to open the portal, until her palms were scarred. Her choker tightened and silenced her whenever she defied him. Her hair began falling out in patches, and her left eye twitched. She still did the real work of running the Deathmatches, because, she said, the Acolytes didn’t know him. She was “a stranger in her own home,” wanted the goblins to poison him, wished the Arbiter were back, and muttered that she “should have been the one in charge.”

She resisted where she could. She secretly healed Toocher the Toxic, ripped off the Shadow King’s face, and cheered for Witch Hunter. In Rivals she wept, held her spear to the Shadow King’s throat and begged for Nonamatt’s life, “even if this will cost me.” In Shootout she kept a small empty throne beside her seat for the dog she believed was “alive somewhere.” She also trained the chinchilla army of the Void to protect the goblins and civilians, and crowned Storm on the Horizon champion.

Vythorn’s Return and the Season of Fate

In Vythorn’s Return Part 3 the Arbiter came back from the dead. The Grandmaster was still chained, with a choker sunk deep in her throat. She begged him to release her, and for the first time she showed fear. Goblins dragged her from the arena in his old chains. Through the Season of Fate that followed, she sat imprisoned in a dungeon, protesters carried signs about her, and Thea reported that “everybody wants the Grandmaster back.”

That season turned out to be a vision of rule that only Vythorn lived through. In it, her chains hung on her like bangles in a candlelit cell with books and a bed mat. She first mistook him for Agdrel. She told him she had always known he would overthrow her “time and time again,” and had let the risk grow to give him a choice, and she wouldn’t change her trust in him. In the real timeline she stood frozen in fear, holding the choker, until Fil left. She admitted she hadn’t known what he would do and then hugged him, a rare thing between them. She told the Acolytes that “the time of corruption is over” and that they would be “masters of our own fate.”

Season 6: The Season of the Trials

At GCX Orlando 2023, just before the season, she deep-fried a failed Acolyte and honored a natural 20 by making a child a human shield. Back on her throne, she hosted the feast in Murder at the Dread Fortress, sided with the chinchillas on pizza, and celebrated rebirth through the Deathmatch. She then began building teams and an army against the Shadow King. She founded Team A, revived Copycat and Atlas after their bout, and named Richard S. Skelman leader after Tip to Tip. To recruits she offered full employment as “the sword of the Dread Fortress”: immortality, a home, a sauna and a pet chinchilla. At the season’s end she revived Bob the Barbarian with a hand on his shoulder and a slap, and declared, “We now have our three teams.”

Season 7: The Season of Vigilance

She opened Season 7 with a warning: “Things are changing in the Void and danger is edging along.” She also put the Arbiter firmly in his place, and she ended that first match by pouring an unending bowl of gazpacho over DeeDrah’s body. She briefly wore an eyepatch after scratching her eye playing darts with Thea, and a memo went out telling everyone not to bring it up. She said she had saved the Arbiter’s life more than once, played chess with Claude the janitor before flipping the table and sending him to clean the toilet, and revealed she owns the orc skull of the Dread Fortress and keeps its name, Seavold. She crowned both Agatha Middlebrooke and Lug Hardblock when the ending flustered her. She threatened to revive anyone who died with fight left in them “just to pummel you back into the earth.” In Necro-Nightmare she blushed red at Ray S’urdead, begged him to destroy Squiggles, then claimed she had always rooted for Squiggles, and buried Ray’s half-locket.

Personality and Abilities

The Grandmaster has vast wings whose color shifts with the telling: black-feathered, deep blue, purple-glowing, white, and in Season 7 vast and colorful. Her hair was blue-teal in her youth and is blonde now. She favors gold-and-black dresses (her chainmail one tragically has no pockets) and a very large bedazzled crown that she takes off to sleep. Her robe can become black-and-gold armor with a snap. Her people live extraordinarily long lives. Nobody truly knows her age, and her own claims (“I am 284”) are lies. The Arbiter puts her at “not a day over 3000,” and in Season 7 she called herself “eons of ages old.”

She is a serial hobbyist and a deeply unserious ruler who takes some things very seriously. She hates drinking water (“Clearly not a vampire”), loves Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew Major Melon, and is bad at maths and at keeping secrets. She always asks champions about their bowels. She started and forgot a brewery, and she calls the arena her first successful hobby and business. Her favorite rule is that there are no rules but hers: “I am the law!” She rules “this kingdom” with her “big gold balls,” though elsewhere she said, “Thank God I don’t have balls.” She offers staff vision but not dental, and she wants her champions paid. At heart she believes getting hurt “is what makes you alive,” and she treats every Deathmatch as remembrance.

In combat she is mostly a martial fighter with extraordinary powers. She has fought with The Oathbow, the same bow from her Skypiercer days, plus a spear, a staff, a sword, and her signature metal chair. Necrotic magic doesn’t bite her the way it should. She can summon a moon as a spotlight, raise a tornado by circling, freeze a gelatinous cube by standing on it, shrink trees to shrubbery, and replace the moon in the sky with her face. She also commands smaller-scale time magic: “I speed up time around you.” At the Hall of Fame 2025 she revived Talon by stopping, then restarting, his heart with his own scythe. Mind control doesn’t work on her because, she says, she has “brain control.”

Relationships

The Arbiter: Vythorn, her servant in all things. He served her father, brought her home from Cor’thun, betrayed her, died for her dog, and came back. He has known her for about a thousand years.
The Shadow King: Agdrel, her uncle and her father’s killer, whom she overthrew. He loved her mother, calls Elusia “daughter,” and insists “I raised you.” He gave her a Bop-It when she was 12, and she got to 52.
Faucius Golden Shield: her father, killed by his brother Agdrel. His golden-shield portrait hangs in the Dread Fortress.
Kaja: her companion in Skypiercer and her love until Kaja’s natural death. The Shadow King later revived her to fight.
Atalantos: her companion in Skypiercer, knighted by her at its end.
Doug the Pug: her beloved undead cyborg pug, who has a throne beside hers. She has never beaten him at ping pong.
Thea: the Arbiter’s assistant, whom she supports more than he does. The two have played darts together.
Orin: “a valued friend… an old friend.”
Her mother: never named. The Shadow King loved her and killed her husband.
Her living family: she has mentioned nieces, nephews and “my nephew” in passing, but who they are has never been made clear.

Memorable Quotes

“Victory may hurt, but it lets us know that we are alive.” (S1 Ep1)
“There are no rules except for the rules that I make up.” (S1E7)
“This is something that I have earned.” (S1E8, on her crown)
“I’m the only one that can wear a crown around here.” (GCX Orlando 2022)
“No one actually ever dies at the death match.” (S2E16, Dried Blood)
“There’s no Grandmaster and Arbiter. There’s the Grandmaster and then the Arbiter.” (S7E1)

tags	character
aliases	Elusia, Elusia Skypiercer, The Grandmaster, Grandmaster Elusia, Princess Elusia, GM

The Black Tome

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