First appearance: S3E4, Crypto Monkeys - K-Boom v Ignacio Marchade · watch it on YouTube
K-Boom (also known, he insists, across the different realms as Kyle Boomishnow and Kaboom) is a gnome artificer who loves explosives, cigarettes, cryptocurrency and, as he added right after his opening speech, arson. He came to The Void to prove that his K-Boom Coin would be “the best cryptocurrency that the realm has ever seen” by winning a Deathmatch against Ignacio Marchade. He didn’t win. Neither did anyone else. Along the way he set himself on fire, tried to pay the Box of Chaos in crypto, turned into a giant ape out of misplaced sympathy, and gave one of the arena’s most memorable death-scene sales pitches.
Story
K-Boom arrived through the Arbiter’s portal in The Dread Fortress and greeted his hosts as “Master Chief and Arbiter.” He immediately went after Ignacio’s winged monkey, Mort, as “copyright infringement just waiting to happen.” In the arena, a lake beneath snow-covered mountains that somehow hadn’t frozen over despite the cold, he pulled out a microphone, conjured a small spotlight with a spell, and delivered a stirring independence-day speech for “the 14th of August,” ending with “K-Boom coin on sale now.” The Grandmaster wept and blessed both champions. When The Arbiter told him he had what it took to be president, K-Boom said his father used to say the same thing “before he died tragically from a house fire that I caused accidentally.”
The fight began badly and got stranger. His first fire bolt missed, but a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher of his own making peppered Ignacio with magic missiles. He was proud of it: “built in my basement after my father died… before I delved into crypto.” When he finally got his turn at the Box of Chaos, he offered it one K-Boom Coin, “one of the first in existence,” supposedly worth 50,000 gold. Gerald offered to buy four. K-Boom said he wanted a cool item, not gold. His pitch then collapsed so badly that something inside the box locked the lid and slid a deadbolt across it. Moments later, standing far too close, he hurled a vial, flicked his cigarette after it, and caught himself in his own fireball. He lost his eyebrows but kept the mustache, which “grows back faster.” He dunked himself in the lake, which turned out to have healing magic, and tried to convince Ignacio the water burned. It didn’t work.
K-Boom then went for the dirty tricks. He flicked a switch on his chest, and his pauldrons opened to release a swarm of magical daggers around him. Next he chugged an energy drink, smashed the can on his forehead, blinked away and charged back in so the daggers sliced Ignacio again, then grabbed Ignacio’s thighs underwater and sent lightning through the lake. Both men wore metal, so both got shocked. When Ignacio skewered him full of holes, K-Boom remembered his father’s wisdom, “when in doubt… return to monkey,” and drank a brown vial that turned him into a giant ape. He had done it, he later explained, to help Ignacio reminisce about the monkey he’d sacrificed to the box. As the ape he smashed Ignacio’s pinky toe and cracked the lakebed. Then two javelins to the chest broke the spell, and he shrank back into “your typical, now eyebrowless, K-Boom.” Ignacio then aimed his lance right at K-Boom’s sack. It should have missed, but the Grandmaster reminded him of her blessing, and it became a glancing blow to the nuts.
When the Arbiter unleashed a water weird from the deep pit in the middle of the lake, the two rivals called a truce: “Enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It lasted about one round. K-Boom gave Ignacio a half-ass thumbs up, ran, and tossed two vials behind his back for a fireball that took Ignacio down. He then slid down the rocks to cradle his burning rival, promising he’d be remembered thanks to a new product line, “NF trinkets,” starting with a stick-figure Ignacio card. With his dying breath, Ignacio renamed him K-Boom Marchand. K-Boom dropped him back in the water and turned to pitch the crowd. Mid-spiel, the water weird’s tail wrapped around both champions and dragged them into the black water. Both died, and the match had no winner. The Grandmaster kicked over his NFT trinkets, stamped all over them and told the Arbiter to clean up the mess, so he dove headfirst into the deep water to recover the bodies.
Personality and Abilities
K-Boom stands 3’2” on a good day (“the doctors say I’m like three foot one and a half, but I round up… for the ladies”). He wears a long robe covered in trinkets, vials and gears over plate armor, and he always has a cigarette going. He calls himself a sleazy salesman, and he never stops selling: seconds before his death, he was reciting the coin’s web address. He kept calling the Grandmaster “Master Chief,” and he corrected her about her own crypto: “That is Doug coin. Doge coin is completely different.” The Acolytes booed him for it. In the after-show he explained that he “never had a lot of love when he was a child.” He had lost his family young to “an arson accident that is definitely not my fault legally,” and he makes up for it by getting people to fall in love with him and buy his merchandise.
His arsenal is all homemade: pauldrons that release a cloud of daggers, a Predator-style shoulder rocket that fires magic missiles, fireballs made from a vial and a well-thrown cigarette, and a brown vial that turns him into a giant ape, “K-Konga, the Crypto Monkey.” He can also cast spells in the middle of a melee, and he fights dirty, cleverly and usually far too close to his own explosions.
Relationships
- Ignacio Marchade: His opponent, punching bag, brief ally and, by the end, something like a tragic soulmate. Ignacio died declaring “I love you, and I always have, even though you killed me.”
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She wept at his speech, but never got him to call her by her real name, and she trampled his NFTs after he died.
- The Arbiter: He encouraged K-Boom to use his father’s death as fuel. Afterward he dove into the lake to recover K-Boom’s body.
- The Box of Chaos: The first champion to name his price to the box, which answered by bolting its door on him.
- Doug the Pug: The Grandmaster’s pug, whose face is on the coin she said rules the Void. K-Boom insisted that coin was “Doug coin,” not Dogecoin.
Memorable Quotes
“You know what never misses? Magic missile!” (S3E4, Crypto Monkeys)
“Hey, we could have been friends. We really could have… even in your death, you will be remembered. Because I have a new line of cryptocurrency coming out. They’re called NF trinkets.” (S3E4, Crypto Monkeys)
- “My dad used to say the same thing before he died tragically from a house fire that I caused accidentally.” (S3E4, Crypto Monkeys)
- “Oh God, the water, it burns.” (S3E4, Crypto Monkeys)
- “This ain’t the first time a devil’s beat me down.” (S3E4, Crypto Monkeys)
- “You have a very internalized anger you have not resolved yet.… Would you like some K-Boom coin?” (S3E4, Crypto Monkeys)