First appearance: S1E4 — Multiclass — Kleen v Ivanna Kishu · watch it on YouTube
Ivanna Kishu was an aasimar druid, a self-described “protector,” who was pulled into the Void to fight the warlock Kleen in a frozen, abandoned mine. Her name is a pun (“I wanna kiss you”), and she lived up to it, blowing kisses at her enemies and promising to smooch them between spells. She lost the fight, but her story didn’t end in the snow. The Arbiter carried her off to his laboratory and quietly brought her back to life.
Story
Ivanna was summoned to the Dread Fortress’s throne room alongside Kleen, where the Grandmaster had spent the evening complaining about the blandness of water. Ivanna made her pitch with a threat. Violence, she explained, is only one way, “but there are always other ways. There is Ivanna Kishu ways.” She swore she was “definitely not OP at all,” announced “I’m gonna beat the shit out of Kleen,” and then promised him, “I’m gonna kiss you.” As her prize, she was promised “the finest eyeball juice dish” from their chef. She declared she was “drooling already.”
The arena was Kirken’s Mine, a snowbound ruin far in the north. Her night started badly. In the opening chaos event, The Acolytes pelted both champions with whatever they had on hand. Kleen dodged most of it, but Ivanna took a faceful of pasta, a cookie, a teacup and a cute pumpkin, and possibly a toilet. She answered Kleen’s first barrage of eldritch blasts by smearing the blood off herself and licking it back up (“Not so Kleen, I see”). Then she called down a beam of moonlight and let the Acolytes choose what she would become. They picked a hippogriff. Her arms became white wings, and lipstick appeared on her new beak. The Grandmaster called it “very sexy, sexy Hippogriff,” though, as she admitted, “it’s a pretty Hippogriff, it’s not a strong Hippogriff.” Kleen proved it by blasting it out of the sky with a perfect shot from his long-range eldritch blast.
Ivanna refused to break. Her mind held so firmly that the Grandmaster ruled her moonbeam would burn twice as hard. She then healed herself back from the brink simply by brushing her hair, a recovery the Grandmaster said she had never seen before. Ivanna wanted to become a lion, settled for a dire wolf “with stripes,” won the crowd’s blessing in a howling contest, and gained a sheet of protective ice from the Arbiter. He insisted this “has nothing to do with the fact that I placed a small wager on you.” She leapt a wide gap and burrowed into a snowdrift to hide. During the Round of the Pig, when every word had to be spoken in Pig Latin or the speaker got a rock thrown at them by the Arbiter, she fumbled her incantations, collected a rock, and still brought an ice storm down on Kleen with the crowd’s favor. Even an eldritch blast shaped like Mr. Kleen himself couldn’t knock her out of wolf form.
Finally she dropped the wolf entirely. “Ivanna comes back! I am tired of all of this. Let’s end it.” She struck Kleen with lightning just before the Arbiter grew bored with the distance between them and buried the mine in an avalanche. Both champions fled onto a rickety bridge above a frozen waterfall. There Kleen hit her with a brutal volley and a snowball that evened the fight. Ivanna healed by drinking her own blood back in, which prompted the Arbiter to offer an introduction to his blood-bank friend Larry. She prayed to the Acolytes for a blessing and found a snowball of her own. She shrugged off Kleen’s attempt to confuse her, and when the Grandmaster walled off the bridge and forced the two to stop running, she blew him a kiss. Her own snowball flopped at his feet (“I’m proficient in chess balls”). Kleen spent the crowd’s favor on one last flurry of blasts, and Ivanna collapsed into the snowbank, unable to drink her blood back this time.
Ivanna Kishu: “You stinky balls. I don’t want to kiss you.”
As Kleen lifted the filth of all 52 stadium toilets into the clouds and rained it down on the Acolytes in a literal “shitstorm,” the Arbiter grabbed Ivanna by her wings and vanished with her into his laboratory. He laid her on the table and revived her, looking down at her body with a promise: “I’m not done with you yet. You will kiss again.”
Personality and Abilities
Ivanna was flirtatious, defiant and unbothered, a fighter who treated a deathmatch as a show and blew kisses in place of taunts. Her running catchphrases were “Me too” and “I’m gonna kiss you,” and her insults ran toward “stinky balls.” She stayed defiant through blood loss, a rock from the Arbiter and an avalanche.
She was a shapeshifting druid with plenty of tricks. She turned into a lipsticked hippogriff with polished nails and a striped dire wolf, and she commanded moonbeams, ice storms, lightning and confusing magic. She also had a touch of sorcery, which she tried to use to stretch her moonbeam’s reach. Her healing was her signature: she mended wounds with healing hands, by brushing her hair, and by licking her own spilled blood back into her body, which the Grandmaster compared to “that weird Skyrim dude who could just eat wheels of cheese and heal.” As an aasimar, she had wings.
Relationships
- Kleen: Her opponent in Kirken’s Mine, the warlock who outlasted her healing and killed her on the bridge.
- The Arbiter: Bet on her, shielded her wolf form with ice, and secretly revived her after her death.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Hosted her fight, promised her an eyeball juice dish, and penned her in on the bridge to force a finish.
- The Acolytes: Pelted her with snacks and possibly a toilet, then picked her hippogriff form and blessed her howl.
Memorable Quotes
- “Violence is one way, but there are always other ways. There is Ivanna Kishu ways.” (S1E4 — Multiclass — Kleen v Ivanna Kishu)
- “I’m a protector, an aasimar, and druid. And I’m definitely not OP at all.” (S1E4)
- “It’s my moon.” (S1E4)
- “When I lick my blood, to put it back inside my body, I heal a little bit more… This is the new way of healing. You drink your blood back.” (S1E4)
- “You tried to confuse me. I blow my kiss. Now you’re the one who’s confused.” (S1E4)
- “You stinky balls. I don’t want to kiss you.” (S1E4)