First appearance: Playtest 4 (Pre-Launch) — Mudcat Mahomes v Thunk · watch it on YouTube
Mudcat Mahomes is a catfish-man in a trench coat, a m’lady fedora and absolutely nothing else. He was pulled into the Void with one goal: to get back to Kansas City for “some subpar barbecue.” In Playtest 4 (Pre-Launch) — Mudcat Mahomes v Thunk he became the only champion ever to shoot the Grandmaster. He killed his opponent twice, banished his own past self, ate a rat on command, and walked out of the arena alive with a new friend.
Story
Mudcat arrived opposite Thunk, a mountain-dwelling brute who wore necklaces of his victims’ fingers. Mudcat opened by mouthing off to the Arbiter. He called him a roller-derby referee in a stripy shirt and asked whether he was the Grandmaster’s best friend, which started a small workplace dispute about W-2s. Once the fight began in The Isolated Keep, a walled platform with four portals, Mudcat did something no one expected. He took off his trench coat, folded it neatly “like daddy told me,” set his hat on top and strung his bow, standing in his “catfish birthday suit.” His first magic arrow went badly astray, but the next two found Thunk. The Arbiter sneered at his name and his outfit (“An edgelord”). The Grandmaster, though, respected a man who folds his clothes. Then Mudcat called her “Toots,” and the Arbiter reminded him who he was speaking to.
Thunk flexed the arrows out of his skin and cracked Mudcat’s ribs with a punch to the gut. Mudcat answered with a floating “L” conjured in Thunk’s face and a weakening arrow. The Grandmaster rewound time so Thunk could try to catch it again, and this time Thunk caught it perfectly. Mudcat ruined the catch anyway: he curved the arrow around Thunk and into the Grandmaster’s arm. She shrugged it off, pulled it out and snapped it:
“Your little sticks don’t hurt me, nor do your words… You’re like a little mouse stuck in a cage here.”
“I’ve ate a mouse before,” Mudcat replied. “Kind of overrated.” So she had the Arbiter float a giant rat in front of him and ordered him to eat it. He swallowed it whole like a pelican, “Ozzy Osbourne style.” Thunk, the gentleman, scolded him for shooting at a lady and won over swaths of The Acolytes. Then Thunk slipped on the wet floor twice, and Mudcat crowned him with a dunce cap. Mudcat won the crowd back with air guitar. The Grandmaster, “a fan of musicians,” blessed him for a round, and he flipped out his “Aaron Lewis fish hook” piercing, healed in the green portal, climbed a rock and loosed six arrows in a single furious burst into the fallen Thunk. Thunk drank the rain, sprang back up, punched Mudcat in the shin, grabbed low (“That’s not my whisker!”) and rained punches between Mudcat’s legs, going for his balls. He couldn’t find them, because they “were too small.” After singing portals dragged them both through fire, Mudcat used his fish slime to fling himself up onto the wall (“I’ve never heard of greased air before and I love it!”). From there he shot Thunk down, and Thunk bled out from what looked like 45 arrow holes.
The Grandmaster wasn’t finished. The time portal’s clocks stopped and ran backwards, and out walked a past Mudcat Mahomes and a younger Thunk. Mudcat banished his past self, saying he’d “been waiting to do this my whole life.” Then he killed young Thunk, which left the Grandmaster furious (“Why did you bring a small child?”) and threatening a note in a “quarterly review.” Mudcat’s reply: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!” Next the Grandmaster summoned Octothunk, Thunk from an octopus timeline, who threw the stone table at Mudcat. Mudcat mooned him. His past self came back from banishment, couldn’t bring himself to shoot, snapped his bow over his knee and leapt back into the time portal (“That boy needs therapy”). When three portal creatures joined the fray, Mudcat talked Octothunk into a truce, shot a fire snake through the eye, and tried a “triple Lindy” out of the arena. The portal threw him straight back in. Octothunk betrayed the truce at once with eight-armed punches between Mudcat’s legs, though a small section of the crowd declared itself “100% only for Mudcat Malone,” a whole different guy, and pelted Thunk with crushed beer cans. Provoked by Mudcat’s taunts, the Grandmaster let her pet dinosaur, Helena, bite him and drag him through a portal.
The Grandmaster finally offered to spare both champions if they lasted to the end. Mudcat banished the blood elemental the Grandmaster had named Hamster, then dabbed. She told him not to. Octothunk dabbed with all eight arms and lost six of them for it. By the end the two rivals had become friends. Mudcat invited Thunk back to his three-level townhome with a two-car garage for a 30-pack of Budweiser and either Top Gun or The Program unedited on VHS. Moved by “this budding romance,” the Grandmaster froze time and spared them both, on the condition that she be invited to the after-party, and had the Arbiter note them both in the ledger as the day’s winners.
Personality and Abilities
Mudcat is a catfish-man with gills, scales, webbed feet, a generous coat of slime and, as Thunk discovered, tiny balls. He insists his name has nothing to do with it: “It’s not because I’m a catfish! … I think I’m nimble like a cat.” He dresses like an internet edgelord and has suburban tastes: a townhome, an easy chair, Top Gun, and a VHS of The Program. Under the swagger he is polite in his own way. He folds his clothes, eats what the boss tells him to, and invites his enemy home for beers.
In a fight he is an archer, and a magic one. He can bend arrows around corners, banish targets to somewhere else for a while, and weaken them with a shot. He also uses small nature magic to conjure insults that float in the air. He keeps his distance whenever he can, climbing rocks and walls to rain arrows down. His slime turned out to be a weapon too: it let him fling himself through “greased air.”
Relationships
- Thunk: His opponent, whom he killed twice. By the end they were planning an after-party with pork burgers and Old English (“Me and Fishman go home!”).
- The Grandmaster: He shot her, called her “Toots,” and was made to eat a rat. She still blessed his air guitar, spared him, and invited herself to his party.
- The Arbiter: Mudcat mocked his stripy shirt. The Arbiter mocked Mudcat’s name and outfit right back.
- The Acolytes: The crowd swung back and forth between chanting “Thunk!” and “Mudcat.” They loved his dab.
Memorable Quotes
- “Gonna have me coughing up my old caviar.” (Playtest 4)
- “I’ve ate a mouse before. Kind of overrated.” (Playtest 4)
- “I’ve never heard of greased air before and I love it!” (Playtest 4)
- “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!” (Playtest 4)
- “Let’s team up. We can make a truce. I don’t have to kill you a third time.” (Playtest 4)
- “This is what you wanted! I gave you what you wanted!” (Playtest 4)