First appearance: S5E4 — Chaos in Chinchilla Forest — Tormiir v Granny Edith · watch it on YouTube
Granny Edith is a very small, very old, very sweet baker who wandered into the Void’s Deathmatches because she’d heard there was “some good old-fashioned home cooking” to be had. She fights with a rolling pin as big as she is and an apron full of kitchen utensils. Her kindness lasts right up until somebody mistreats a nice young lady, and then she gets her temper. She did not survive her first fight, but she came back to win her second, and she has become one of the best-loved Champions of the Season of Fate, when the Arbiter presided over the arena as the Lord of Fate.
Story
Chaos in Chinchilla Forest
Granny Edith made her debut in S5E4 — Chaos in Chinchilla Forest — Tormiir v Granny Edith, facing Tormiir in The Chinchilla Forest. Thea summoned her in suitably sugary style. She pulled a doughnut from a basket and blew on it until it swelled to about twelve feet tall, with pink icing, sprinkles, and a space of void where the hole should be. Granny stepped out with a cheerful “Well, hello there, dear fellow.” Tormiir announced, “I’m gonna murder all of you.”
She explained that she just loved baking things. She also shared a good deal of family history: her grandpappy lived to 200, and she grew up on her great-grandpappy’s farm “up north.” She said she had been a girl of 17 in “1725” and had lived through five major world conflicts. A man named Gerald, she said, was waiting for her on the other side. During the fight, The Box of Chaos woke something in her: a yellow-eyed inner monster lurking beneath the curls and the cardigan. Even so, her signature move, Granny’s Cookies, in which she sends her rolling pin spinning at the enemy (and sometimes runs along on top of it), failed to connect. Granny did not leave the forest alive.
Graveyard Grudge
Death did not keep her down for long. In S5E8 — Graveyard Grudge — Granny Edith v Teddy Oso, Thea was celebrating Halloween on October 1st (“30 days of Halloween”) and pulled Granny back through a pink portal as “the favorite of all favorites.” Granny was not thrilled. She had hoped to finally “rest after the last fight and see Gerald.” She showed her feelings by pinching the Lord of Fate’s cheeks extremely hard. Her opponent was Teddy Oso, a zombie-apocalypse survivor with a shotgun, and the venue was The Midnight Mausoleum, a moonlit graveyard where skeletal hands clawed up through the grass.
Teddy opened by trying to sweep her legs with his gun stock. Granny hopped clean over it, because she had been a jump rope champion in her youth. He did land a kick to her butt that dropped her to her knees, and then he refused to help her up. Thea slid underneath to lift her instead, and Granny went to work on him with a fly swat (“my nana always had a fly swat in her hand”), one ear after the other. When she threw a handful of flour to blind him, Thea farted, and the terrible-smelling breeze blew the “fart flower” into both their lungs. When a chaos event set The Acolytes dancing the Macarena, Granny couldn’t join in. She and her late husband Gerald used to go dancing every week, she explained, “but I can’t dance by myself.” Later she told the story of how they met on a train, and of their “long and lovely life together.” When she bent down to fetch his photo from her bag, Teddy’s shot sailed over her head and blew apart a rising zombie.
What followed was a sustained campaign of kitchen violence. She tripped Teddy with her rolling pin and tried to pin him under her “granny butt,” but misjudged her knees and rolled around on the floor. She fried hot butter in a magic pan and flung it at him, leaving him badly burned. She sprayed onion juice into his eyes while safe behind her own goggles. Then Teddy took Thea by the hands, spun her around, and hurled her at Granny. Granny caught her perfectly, and that was the end of the nice Granny. “I tried to be nice… but you messing with this lovely young lady right here, that’s enough.” Granny’s Cookies missed again (“a signature miss,” Thea noted). Her hard raisin cookies, “the ones I give to people I don’t like,” did not miss. They cracked Teddy’s front teeth and wounded several unlucky Acolytes in the stands.
When the Box of Chaos arrived, Granny offered its shadowy resident fresh chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk. It was baffled: “I’m a piece of a soul trapped in a box.” It wolfed them down anyway and gave her a healing bowl of her great-grandma’s bread and butter pudding. A chaos lullaby, the one her mother sang to her as a child, lulled her into lying down. Teddy’s motorcycle dust storm cost her a turn, and a handful of the dust thrown in her face left her blinded for a while. Things turned once she remembered her puns. “They see me rolling, I’m baking,” she declared, and the rolling pin landed. When the graveyard flooded with lava, she toasted bread in it until it was rock hard and threw it rather than go leaping between tombstones. Her final throw was a loaf the size of a boulder. It knocked Teddy off his tombstone and into the lava, and the last anyone saw of him was a small hand giving a thumbs-up as he sank. Granny was the winner. “I know old Teddy’s probably not feeling so great right now,” she said, “but at yeast we had fun.”
Personality and Abilities
Granny Edith is tiny, with gray curls and enormous Coke-bottle glasses. She wears an apron dusted with flour whose pockets bristle with spoons and whisks. She carries a giant teacup on her belt, along with a hip flask. She is unfailingly warm. She thinks Thea “can’t do any wrong,” she gives a lonely soul in a box its first cookie, and she tells her own opponent, “I believe in you.” She is also a little forgetful. She claims 69 great-great-grandchildren and about eight children, though she isn’t sure whether she counted Harry. Under the sweetness is a firm sense of manners and a temper that runs hot once it’s lit. She even advised the Lord of Fate that a fly swat is the secret to handling Thea.
Her arsenal is her kitchen. The centerpiece is a magical rolling pin that glows with runes when she puts her full strength behind it. Around it she has a fly swat, a magic frying pan, a knife, a giant grater, goggle glasses, a broom, rotten eggs, an electric beater with an arcane battery pack, a bladed hand mixer, bread for toasting, and two kinds of cookies: chocolate chip, and hard raisin ones for people she doesn’t like. She also talks in baking proverbs: “stressed is desserts spelled backwards,” “all you need is loaves,” “where there’s a whisk, there’s a way,” “life is what you bake it.” Her puns, some taught to her by a great-great-granddaughter, seem to steady her aim. Her favorite food is her great-grandma’s bread and butter pudding.
Relationships
- Thea: Granny dotes on her. She caught Thea when Teddy threw her, and Thea openly took Granny’s side.
- Teddy Oso: Her rude young opponent in the graveyard. She tried to teach him manners and then flattened him with bread.
- The Box of Chaos: In her first fight, it awakened a monster inside her. In her second, she won it over with cookies and milk, and it rewarded her with pudding.
- The Arbiter: As the Lord of Fate, he presided over her return. She pinched his cheeks hard and offered him her fly swat philosophy.
- Tormiir: Her opponent in her first, fatal fight.
- Gerald: Her late husband, whom she met on a train and went dancing with every week. She carries his photo.
Memorable Quotes
- “Well, hello there, dear fellow.” (S5E4)
- “I used to be a jump rope champion back in my day.” (S5E8)
- “Wait a minute. I’m not your grandma. You do your own damn laundry.” (S5E8)
- “Even a piece of a soul trapped in a box should try a chocolate chip cookie sometime.” (S5E8)
- “They see me rolling, I’m baking.” (S5E8)
- “I know old Teddy’s probably not feeling so great right now, but at yeast we had fun.” (S5E8)