First appearance: S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel · watch it on YouTube
Melchizedek, who called himself the Dark One, was the dark passenger living inside the halfling champion Sprinkles. Partway through S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel, he burst out of his host, declared himself a Lord of Darkness and went looking for a better body. He was a fallen angel turned into “a being of pure hatred and pain.” He was also, it turned out, a surprisingly gifted yodeler. In the end he was undone by a tap-dancing child.
Story
Melchizedek surfaced in the middle of the fight against Nigel, a famous actor. The Grandmaster asked the obvious question: “Should we still call you Sprinkles?” He corrected her with contempt.
“My name is Melchizedek, the Dark One, and I have come to find a more suitable host.”
Sprinkles, he explained, was only “my flesh puppet. That pathetic little halfling, the quivering whelp.” The Grandmaster summed up the situation as “flesh puppet versus flesh puppet.” Melchizedek decided that Nigel’s body, already a corpse and “slightly occupied” by a shadow, was “a much more worthy vessel for a Lord of Darkness.” He tried to kick the shadow out. Then he took the face off Nigel’s cloak and used it to “lid myself into the body,” shouting, “I want a new home!” Once he was inside, his first act of villainy was a petty one. He threatened to make Nigel piss and promised “It’s gonna smell like asparagus!” The Grandmaster ruled that asparagus piss is very toxic, and Nigel had to fight off the poison.
Inside the shared body, the two souls faced each other in their true forms. Nigel’s essence appeared as a bright-eyed little Newsie, a high schooler who had just done his first musical and had been told for the first time that he was worth something. Melchizedek appeared as a nine-headed dragon-snake. “I’m going to tear you apart limb from limb, boy,” he promised. The Grandmaster was unmoved by the boy’s box step: “We have no sympathy for the British children.” Melchizedek then put his rage aside, said “Hold still, boy,” and froze the child in place with a spell, mid-step. The boy broke free with a dazzling burst of tap dancing, singing “Let us seize the day.” Melchizedek could only manage, “Impossible.”
Melchizedek loathed dancing. When the child launched into the Footloose dance, he tried to resist and failed utterly. He was charmed: “No thespian before has convinced you that dance is an art… you are truly lost in the sauce.” The child asked whether all this anger came from “a bad demon daddy.” Melchizedek confessed his origin: “I was an angel who was scorned from heaven for my transgressions against my god. And now I have been forced to become a being of pure hatred and pain. But this dancing is pretty fucking tight.” The boy encouraged him to channel his “daddy, I mean, God issues” into art. A roll of the die, chosen from a list that included underwater basket weaving, confectionary cakes and sidewalk chalk art, landed on yodeling, and Melchizedek yodeled. “That’s really good. Just keep working at it. Find your passion. Don’t let anybody bring you down,” the boy told him.
The charm only bound him to dance, and the child had been begging to be hit all along (“Hit me!”). So Melchizedek took an Emmy in one hand and a SAG award in the other and beat the boy with “awards you have not yet won.” Nigel answered with a final act of method acting. He knew he was dying, so he leapt onto Melchizedek and stabbed him in the heart three times with a bone, “almost like killing myself… ego death style.” Blood splurged across his face “like that animation in Kill Bill.” Then he dropped the bone and lay beside Melchizedek, watching an imagined Oscar acceptance speech. As Nigel faded, The Acolytes turned to Melchizedek, bleeding beside him, and asked what was going through his mind. His last thought was: “What an unfulfilling existence, being this force of pain and hate… hurt people hurt people.” The match ended with no winner.
Personality and Abilities
Melchizedek was all theatrical menace. He was grandiose, contemptuous of his host and endlessly bitter about his fall from heaven. He was usually called “he,” though he was sometimes described as “she,” including “all nine of her heads.” When he surfaced through Sprinkles, his eyes burned with flame, his bones cracked and lengthened, his jaw dropped and his fingers became knife-claws. His true form was a nine-headed dragon-snake.
He could steal another body using the face from Nigel’s cloak, and he could freeze an opponent in place with magic. He also showed a gift for gross-out cruelty, like the toxic asparagus piss. Underneath the hatred was something a little sad: a being who hated dancing until he tried it, and who found out in his final fight that he could yodel.
Relationships
- Sprinkles: his host, whom he scorned as “my flesh puppet” and “the quivering whelp” before leaving him for a better body.
- Nigel: the actor whose corpse he stole, and whose childhood self charmed him into dancing and then killed him.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: asked whether she should still call him Sprinkles, and called the clash “flesh puppet versus flesh puppet.”
Memorable Quotes
- “My name is Melchizedek, the Dark One, and I have come to find a more suitable host.” (S4E11)
- “That is the name of my flesh puppet. That pathetic little halfling, the quivering whelp.” (S4E11)
- “I’m gonna make Nigel piss. It’s gonna smell like asparagus!” (S4E11)
- “I was an angel who was scorned from heaven for my transgressions against my god. And now I have been forced to become a being of pure hatred and pain. But this dancing is pretty fucking tight.” (S4E11)
- “I’m going to pop some Nigels.” (S4E11)
- “What an unfulfilling existence, being this force of pain and hate… hurt people hurt people.” (S4E11)