First appearance: S4E6 — The Hunt — Witch Hunter v Grickle · watch it on YouTube
Grickle was a four-armed thri-kreen champion pulled into The Void to fight Witch Hunter, an amorous centaur paladin, during the dark days when The Shadow King ruled The Dread Fortress. He arrived as a sneaky, cowardly bug who killed his own mount by accident. He left as the survivor of the fight and the would-be rescuer of the man he was meant to kill, which made the Shadow King’s final cruelty land all the harder. He was also, by his own account, only two years old.
Story
Grickle was summoned by blood through the Grandmaster’s amulet in S4E6 — The Hunt — Witch Hunter v Grickle. He stumbled into the Shadow King’s throne room asking, “Where am I? Is this the thing? This is the thing.” Witch Hunter took one look at him and told him he had “a dump truck for a thorax.” Grickle answered by turning his shiny carapace a dull gray, billowing out a cape-like display and spreading his wings, and Witch Hunter began sprouting marigolds, which bloom on him when he finds someone attractive. When the champions arrived at The Frozen Lake, a lonely tundra beneath a coliseum full of The Acolytes, the wind hit his lidless eyes so hard that he wept as if something awful had happened, though he stood his ground. The first chaos event gave him a shape-shifting magical mount, which he made into a giant rhinoceros beetle named Gricklebackackack.
He opened the fight with flair. He rolled a perfect 20 to strike first, hid behind his beetle’s fluttering wings, and vanished “like a magician.” Then twin scimitars came flying out of the wings at Witch Hunter, and he leapt back onto the beetle and skittered across the ice before the centaur could answer. The Shadow King’s blood-smeared ledger of deaths credited him with only “one half” a kill (“That book is lying!”). A second strike sliced off Witch Hunter’s nipple, which flew into the stands as food for the Acolytes. Then Grickle’s luck turned. He slipped on the ice, fired an arrow straight up, and it came down and killed his own beetle. His furious follow-up shot hit an Acolyte named Glass Flippers in the arm, and the crowd turned against him. The Shadow King then ripped Glass Flippers in half and slammed the soul into The Box of Chaos, ready to grant gifts to anyone who fed it.
Grickle fed it a piece of stale bread. The Box took it (“I like bread”) and gave him the Iron Fang, a war pick he could swing two-handed while keeping scimitars in his other two arms. He hurled it with an awful screech and only clipped “just the tip” of Witch Hunter’s other nipple. He tried juggling his scimitars to impress the crowd, kept dropping them, and inspired only his opponent. When a swarm of paparazzi blinded both fighters, Grickle tried to flee and ran straight into Witch Hunter’s newly sharpened nipple dagger. He lost an eye. Pressed flat against the ice like a cockroach, he hid so well that “being blind is your strength.” When the Shadow King’s freezing storm cleared their sight, he rose from the snow with a crushing blow to the centaur’s ankle that knocked him flat.
The end came on thin ice. Reasoning that the heavy centaur and “a little bug” were not equally safe out there, Grickle spent the Acolytes’ gift of fighting spirit to shoot the ice at Witch Hunter’s feet, and his rival plunged into the freezing water. Then Grickle had a change of heart: “I’m going to play into the story we’ve created.” He ran over and tried to haul Witch Hunter out with all four arms. In an awkward, slippery tangle of hands slapping hands, the rescue failed. Witch Hunter asked him to carry on with his grandmother’s glaive, let go, and sank as his marigolds floated up “almost as a beautiful funeral.” Grickle, now the winner, lay on the ice making snow angels in grief, clutching the glaive. The Shadow King appeared beside him (“It’s okay. Don’t cry. Your pain’s almost over.”) and dropped a giant black boot from the heavens, crushing him and splattering his guts across the ice. Under the Shadow King’s rule, that death was final. At the table, his player said Witch Hunter had been so kind to Grickle that the bug simply had a change of heart, and that his youth fed into the rescue.
Personality and Abilities
Grickle was a thri-kreen: four arms, a carapace that could shift from glossy to dull gray, wings and a showy cape-like display, and no eyelids at all. He was very young, two years old by his own count, because “we don’t live that long,” and he still worried that his mom was going to kill him. He was proud and touchy (“You will live to regret that,” though he fumbled the line), insisted the ledger was lying and that he knew what he was doing, and summed up his approach plainly: “I’m a bug. I don’t do math. I kill people.” He was also a natural showman who kept his scimitars out “just for show” because he was “trying to impress the people.”
In a fight he was a slippery skirmisher. He struck from hiding, darted away across the ice, turned aside blows, tripped his foes, and called his frequent flights “a tactical retreat,” to the delight of the crowd’s “coward’s corner.” He carried two scimitars and a longbow and won the Iron Fang from the Box of Chaos. His dice seemed to know only extremes. As he put it: “I don’t roll anything but 1s or 20s, baby!”
Relationships
- Witch Hunter: His opponent, who flirted with him all match. Grickle drowned him through the ice, then tried to save him and inherited his grandmother’s glaive.
- The Shadow King: Kept the ledger that mocked his kill count, and crushed him with a boot moments after his victory.
- The Grandmaster: Summoned him and hosted the match. She declared the two champions “twins,” brought together by fate.
- The Box of Chaos: Took his stale bread and gave him the Iron Fang, later complimenting the bread as “delicious.”
Memorable Quotes
- “I’m a bug. I don’t do math. I kill people.” (S4E6)
- “That book is lying!” (S4E6)
- “Now’s my opportunity to run! Surprise! Who didn’t see that coming?” (S4E6)
- “Like a cockroach, I’m going to lie to the ground and suck myself really close to the ground.” (S4E6)
- “He’s a centaur. He’s super heavy on this ice. I’m a little bug.” (S4E6)
- “Oh, man, my mom’s gonna kill me.” (S4E6)