First appearance: S1E13 — Snow-clad — Highfrost v Bryltyn · watch it on YouTube
Highfrost was a warlock “from the north” with a kilt, a thick northern brogue and no shame whatsoever. He was a champion in S1E13 — Snow-clad — Highfrost v Bryltyn, where the arena turned out to be the snowbound fishing village his family once called home. He lost the fight. He also flashed his opponent more than once, liberated a family of ducks, and produced some of the most memorable dialogue the Void had heard.
Story
Snow-clad
Highfrost arrived at a Dread Fortress that was falling apart, with sewage sloshing ankle-deep through the halls. He fell asleep during the Grandmaster’s talk about cloning. Introduced as “the indomitable Highfrost,” he greeted “lads and lasses” and set out his philosophy: warlocks from the south “can’t do the ice, the ice spells. If there’s no ice spells, are you really a warlock?” When his opponent Bryltyn threatened pain, Highfrost offered to lift his kilt and show him something special. The Arbiter promptly cited the arena’s “strict no up-kilt policy,” since some of The Acolytes are children. Then the Arbiter swirled the sewage into “a whirlpool of shit and whatever else,” and the champions fell through it to an abandoned fishing village under fresh snow. Highfrost recognised it at once: “My uncle used to live here.” Bryltyn replied that he had killed them all.
Highfrost spotted old barrels of ale and raised a toast to the Grandmaster and to her “winged minion,” whose name he had forgotten. He then decided the Arbiter was “that lad from math class.” The ale had sat far too long and fought back, poisoning both champions and leaving them drunk. Highfrost’s feet carried him up onto a flimsy building, and his first blast of eldritch force went so wrong that he blew a hole through the roof under himself and tumbled into the shack below. His third beam, guided “with the spirit of your ancestors,” arced through the air like a homing beacon and struck Bryltyn square in the head. Bryltyn’s response: “This is rigged.” Later a draft lifted Highfrost’s kilt for “a little Marilyn Monroe action.” Bryltyn called it “a disgusting sight” and took psychic damage for the trauma, and Highfrost admitted he hadn’t “had the time to trim in a few weeks.” A perfect ray of frost followed, coating the raging barbarian in ice that steamed off his skin. Bryltyn, a bear-hearted berserker, shrugged off half of nearly everything Highfrost threw at him. He also tore a whole section of roof off a house and rained its clay tiles down on Highfrost. “Hey, me uncle built that roof!” Highfrost protested. Later he wrote his name in piss across the wall of his grandpappy’s house, a man who “could drink with the fishes.” Bryltyn noted that now he was sleeping with them.
The fight turned into a game of tag when the Grandmaster marked Bryltyn’s palm. Whoever was still “it” when the game ended would get burned. Highfrost wisely refused a handshake to “make up.” He then launched a campaign of insults about Bryltyn’s mother so vivid (“The kilt gives me easy access. You just pull it up and down like a drawbridge”) that Bryltyn briefly wondered whether he was fighting his own father. Highfrost followed up with a bagpipe performance so dreadful that the Grandmaster herself was wounded by it and cursed him for it. Bryltyn then leapt from the roof peak with his axe and left Highfrost bleeding into the snow, then tagged him with a quick touch. Then a family of ducks waddled out of an alley. Highfrost begged the crowd for bread, shepherded the ducks to safety and gave the straggling white duckling “a little tap on the feather buns.” The duckling’s gratitude lifted the Grandmaster’s curse and left a lucky feather in his hand. That tap also passed the tag to the duckling. To save it, Highfrost hiked up his kilt and revealed a magical leather satchel hanging under it, holding a slice of saved bread. (“Nobody wants your ball sack infused bread,” said Bryltyn.) He refused to become Lord of the Ducks, because he believes in duck independence. Instead he flung the crumbs into Bryltyn’s face, and the ducks mobbed the barbarian, tagged him and pecked him. The Grandmaster cried, “For the liberation of ducks!”
In the closing exchanges, Highfrost hit Bryltyn with three beams of hexed force. One of Bryltyn’s handaxes shattered against Highfrost’s metal chest, and Highfrost river-danced out of reach of another tag, badly. (“Your ancestors are ashamed,” said the Grandmaster.) Then the Arbiter’s avalanche swept both men down to the docks facing a frozen ocean, and the tag burned through Bryltyn’s arm, though he survived it. But Bryltyn was faster. He charged through the ocean spray and opened a deep gash across Highfrost’s chest, sending blood across the snow and into the sea. Highfrost fell back, accepted defeat with grace, and used his last breath to lift his kilt “just high enough” one final time: “Take a good look and tell your mother she was amazing.” The Grandmaster toasted him from her throne: “To you who have fallen, Highfrost, may you rest with your ancestors.” At the table, his player admitted that he had a finishing combination planned, one that Bryltyn’s thick hide couldn’t have resisted, and that he’d been “defeated by a coin toss.”
Personality and Abilities
Highfrost was loud, bawdy and cheerfully unbothered, a man who peppered every sentence with “laddie,” “wee” and “me uncle.” He was proud of his kilt and prouder of what was under it. He was also oddly tender. He loved ducks, believed in feeding them “so that you can become friends,” and was genuinely horrified when Bryltyn asked what friends were. His late grandpappy left him the wisdom that “sticks and stones… but the words, they hurt the insides.” His family had been dead “for ages,” and the village was his ancestral home. He played the bagpipe, terribly.
He fought from a distance with ice and eldritch magic: triple beams of force, rays of frost, numbing frostbite and a hex to make his blasts bite harder, all with a sharpshooter’s reach. He shrugged off poison better than most, which helped when the ancestral ale turned on him. Somewhere along the way it was declared that he was a Warforged. Highfrost happily explained that he charges with “the little lightning cable, like the Apple phones… stick it right in the side and it just keeps going and going.” Bryltyn’s axe did break on his metal chest.
Relationships
- Bryltyn: His opponent and killer, who claimed to have wiped out Highfrost’s family and promised he would die like the rest of them. He was right.
- The Arbiter: Highfrost insisted the Arbiter was “that lad from math class.” The Arbiter agreed they went to high school together.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: He toasted her at the start. She cursed him for his bagpipe playing and toasted him at his death.
- His uncle and grandpappy: Long-dead relatives who lived in the arena’s village. His uncle built the roof Bryltyn tore off, and the grandpappy’s house got Highfrost’s name written across it.
Memorable Quotes
“You know, I came out with my willy swinging thinking I was something quite impressive. And by the end of it was shown that confidence doesn’t hit quite as hard as an ax.” (Snow-clad, Dried Blood)
- “If there’s no ice spells, are you really a warlock?” (Snow-clad)
- “Hey, me uncle built that roof!” (Snow-clad)
- “Oh, that might be the scariest thing you’ve said all night.” (Snow-clad, after Bryltyn asked what friends were)
- “The wee one. Not the wee one. Someone give me some bread!” (Snow-clad)
- “You beat me today. I’ll see you in the next life.” (Snow-clad)