First appearance: S7E7 — A Father’s Son — Agatha Middlebrooke v Lug Hardblock · watch it on YouTube
Lug Hardblock is a wealthy, entitled barbarian and real-estate developer, played by Zac (ZacSpeaksGiant). He came into the Void to flatten a sweet little grandma and spent the evening loathed by the crowd. Then the fight turned into a family therapy session, and he left it a crowned co-champion. He thinks therapy is for the weak, and he still means to build high-rise condominiums on everything he sees.
Story
A Father’s Son
Lug arrived through the Arbiter’s portal in S7E7 — A Father’s Son — Agatha Middlebrooke v Lug Hardblock with a “Hoo-yah” and a correction for the Grandmaster: “Correction, champion. Singular.” The Arbiter liked him at once. His opponent was Agatha Middlebrooke, a kindly grandmother who handed out toffees, and Lug announced that beating her would give him the confidence to put on his shoes and socks in the morning. The arena was an asteroid in The Ether Drifts. Lug charged across it, swelled to two or three times his size, and hit Agatha with the golf swing his dad had taught him. She flew off into space and came back in a poof of lavender.
Agatha’s answer was cruel in the kindest way. She filled the field with illusions of Lug’s handsome, square-jawed father, and every one of them said, “I’m proud of you, son.” Lug fell for it completely (“I’m going to win this for you, Papa”). He also missed the cat that leapt out of his father’s arm, latched onto his face and tore up his nostril. This was Lord Cookie Mill, Agatha’s familiar, a killer animal that clung to him like a cat tree and shrugged off every attempt to hurl it into space. When Lug went to hug one of the illusions, it melted in his arms. Agatha then commanded him to “Share,” and he blurted out that his father had never shown him a moment of kindness or warmth. Lug still pressed on. He spotted a tiny worm civilization in a crater and saw only land to clear for high-rise condominiums. Then he set his weapon alight and spiked Agatha into the crevasse like a one-man volleyball team, crushing 60 worms on her way down.
The Acolytes loathed him. They pelted him with slushies, and their hatred made the cat’s blows land twice and then three times as hard. In a chaos event, he and Agatha shooed away a timid little raccoon named Jimothy, and Jimothy urine-sprayed them both with acid before running off. After a break, Lug spent a hero point to smash Agatha’s space helmet, leaving her with about three rounds of air. She told him, “Good shot. He would have been proud,” then cast Little Death and drifted away lifeless. Lug declared that “Silencing women works.” The Grandmaster raised his hand with a forced smile and announced him the winner, and he promised to turn Agatha’s old home into a soup kitchen before knocking that down for condominiums too.
Then Agatha’s ghost appeared and told him the truth: she was his grandmother, kept away by his father, and she had cursed his father into the cat. She possessed Lug, made him hug himself (“No, no, no, I hate this… this is what therapy is for”), and whispered that he could be a better man than his father before the cat tore into him again. Shrunk back to normal size and badly bloodied, Lug grabbed the cat and smashed it so hard it burned up in the asteroid’s thin atmosphere and burst like a firework. “And if that really was my dad, good riddance.” Agatha offered him a choice: fight his grandma, or live free of his father’s yoke. Lug chose freedom: “The first time in my life, I don’t need to win.” He thanked her, and the flustered Grandmaster crowned them both champions.
Personality and Abilities
Lug is a self-described rebel who likes to “push boundaries,” an only child, and his father’s “special boy.” He has one eye, a very strong chin, and a space helmet he made masculine and cool by drawing flames on the sides. Everything in his life was handed to him and he will not admit it. His father paid people off so Lug came first in everything, including his first egg and spoon race, and he got into college for free. Even so, he sneers at “handouts,” at the poor and at therapy, and he insists that no male in his line cries. His one dream is clearing land for high-rise condominiums, whether that land is a worm town or his grandmother’s house. His parting wisdom to the Acolytes was to tape his mouth shut while sleeping and try “mewing” for a stronger jawline.
In a fight, Lug flies into a rage that makes him enormous, and his main talent is launching people across the battlefield. He fought with a greataxe and a warhammer, could set his weapon ablaze, and later swung a huge cleaver-like axe the Grandmaster called “the Lamborghini of great axes.” He also claims to be very good at killing cats, “just like you taught me.”
Relationships
- Agatha Middlebrooke: his opponent, revealed to be his long-absent grandmother. She died after he cracked her helmet, came back as a ghost to make him hug himself, and they were crowned co-champions together.
- His father (“Papa”): taught him golf and how to kill cats, called him his special boy, and was cursed into the cat Lord Cookie Mill. Lug killed him.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: called him a spoiled kid and switched her cheers back and forth during the fight, then crowned him a champion with very mixed emotions.
- The Arbiter: liked Lug on sight and predicted he would win.
- The Acolytes: hated him so much that the crowd’s scorn doubled and then tripled the damage he took.
Memorable Quotes
- “I’m his special boy.” (A Father’s Son)
- “I’m a whole goddamn volleyball team.” (A Father’s Son)
- “Therapy is for old people and poor people and I don’t need it… It’s for the weak and I’m strong. I’m so strong, father.” (A Father’s Son)
- “I don’t need aloe vera. I need my dad to love me.” (A Father’s Son)
- “Whether you’re actually my dad or just a regular cat, it doesn’t matter. I’ll kill you anyway.” (A Father’s Son)
- “The first time in my life, I don’t need to win. I’m still gonna do all that thing with the condominium though.” (A Father’s Son)