First appearance: S1E9 — Fizban’s Dragon Battle Royale — Amethyst Dragon v Dracohydra v Hollow Dragon v Topaz Dragon · watch it on YouTube
Narfi runs the lemonade stand at the arena, which the Grandmaster calls “the best lemonade in the entire realm.” He came to the Deathmatch over a complaint about ice and left as its champion. On Halloween the Arbiter turned him into a Dracohydra and threw him into a four-way dragon battle royale. Narfi was terrified of dragons and of death, he wanted nothing to do with committees, and he won anyway. Every time an enemy cut off one of his heads, two more grew back.
Story
Fizban’s Dragon Battle Royale
Narfi did not exactly volunteer. He had been promised more ice, because his lemonade kept “going rather warm on the regular.” The Arbiter offered him all the ice he would ever need if he won. Narfi only caught up with the fine print afterward: “I’m sorry, what? Fight for what?” His opponent was Vashon, a living amethyst die with designs on Narfi’s lemonade. Vashon threatened to let his purple amethyst rain all over everyone’s faces, and Narfi objected on scientific grounds: hot things on cold lemonade make warm lemonade, “That’s thermodynamics.” Narfi admitted he was afraid of dragons, so the Arbiter and the Grandmaster made it a battle of dragons. When Narfi said all the talk of death was “just so scary,” the Arbiter promised that tonight he would make the Acolytes “make their own lemonade, but in their pants.” The Arbiter pulled small dragon forms out of the pages of Fizban’s Treasury. Narfi’s bones cracked as he grew into the Dracohydra, and from then on he spoke in the plural: “We are many, many heads.” The hosts debated what to call a plural Narfi, and he settled on “Narfacist,” though the Grandmaster kept calling him “Narfissus.”
Under an open sky, The Acolytes opened the fight by hurling everything they had brought: fish heads, pizza, goblins, someone’s grandmother. The barrage missed three dragons and smacked the Dracohydra. “Tiny, tiny puppies scare the shit out of us,” Narfi groaned. He quickly joined the Grandmaster’s Topaz Dragon aspect, and she declared them BFFs with matching tattoos to follow. Then Vashon, now the Amethyst Dragon, hit him with gravitational breath. The blast froze him in place and took off a head. Two grew back. “We are growers, not showers,” Narfi explained. Inside the Amethyst Dragon’s cave lair, The Shadow of the Arbiter tried to recruit him. The Shadow had been reborn as the Hollow Dragon, and he urged Narfi to unionize and seize the means of ice production. Narfi worried that this kind of talk would get them both fired, and he stayed loyal: “Boss is good for us. I will not unionize.” Later Narfi bit the Amethyst Dragon’s spectral projection, which took no harm and started rickrolling him instead. Narfi wondered aloud whether the mushroom was to blame. Soon after, the projection ripped off one of his heads.
His heads were both his weakness and his weapon. Each head he lost made him lighter and faster in the air (“Working here is great”). His prismatic breath crackled over a whole corner of the cave. When the Topaz Dragon and the Amethyst Dragon ended up in a heap over the arena’s spinning crystal, Narfi’s “one smart head” sneaked under the pile while the rest distracted. When the Amethyst Dragon blinked away, six heads bit the Hollow Dragon at once and every one of them landed. The seventh head touched the crystal and whisked everyone to the Topaz Dragon’s island tower. There Narfi prayed to his “Boss” for the strength to clear her foes, leapt off his stumpy legs, and breathed poison at the Amethyst Dragon. His eighth head sprouted soon after.
The final map was Narfi’s own lair. He had no lair, so the Arbiter built him one: an underwater cavern where his speed doubled (“We are the most speediest”). The Topaz Dragon finished off the Hollow Dragon, and Vashon’s singularity breath killed her newborn wyrmling and pinned Narfi in place. She dragged him toward Vashon by teleporting him, then fell to the next blast herself. That left the Dracohydra and the Amethyst Dragon alone, and Narfi was up to ten heads. He shrugged off one last singularity breath (“We are stronger”) and charged with every head at once. The ten bites made “a scary ball of dragon heads,” and the Amethyst Dragon died. The Grandmaster hailed the underdog from the lemonade stand as “our absolute winner of this evening.” Narfi had one message for the crowd: “Half-priced lemonade for all.”
In Dried Blood, Narfi, back to himself, was thinking about the stand. He saw “opportunities for growth” and even floated adding Vashon’s blackberry lemonade to the menu, though he could not quite remember Vashon’s name.
Personality and Abilities
Before the transformation, Narfi was a nervous small-business owner. He took his lemonade very seriously and his own safety even more seriously, and he found all the talk of death “just so scary.” He kept a running feud with the blue raspberry slushie stand and vowed to burn it down while he was a dragon. He fretted about Todd letting blackberries taint the lemonade at his stand, threatening to snap him in half with one of his six heads, and he begged not to be put on any more committees. Even as a monster he defended his product (“The lemonade is never the problem”) and stayed touchingly loyal to the Grandmaster. He called her “Boss” and praised her as “very charismatic.”
As the Dracohydra he became a chorus of heads that spoke as “we.” He grew stronger the more he was hurt. A severed neck flailed and squirted dragon blood everywhere, then split “like string cheese” into two fresh heads, so he grew from a handful of heads to ten over the fight. He could unleash a rainbow-colored prismatic breath and bite with every head at once. Losing heads made him faster, and in water he became surprisingly “nimbly bimbly.” His winning philosophy was simple: many heads, many ideas, many bites.
Relationships
- Vashon: His lemonade rival, who threatened him with blackberries and called him “Draco Malfoy.” Narfi killed him in the final exchange, then offered to put his blackberry lemonade on the menu.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: His “Boss.” He teamed up with her Topaz Dragon aspect as self-declared BFFs, and she promised him a full ride to any university.
- The Arbiter: Recruited him with the promise of ice and built him a lair when he didn’t have one.
- The Shadow of the Arbiter: As the Hollow Dragon, tried to unionize him. Narfi politely refused and later bit him six times.
- The Acolytes: His customers, and the first to draw his blood. He rewarded them with half-priced lemonade.
Memorable Quotes
- “That’s thermodynamics.” (S1E9)
- “For when you cut off one head of the Hydra, two more will grow in its place.” (S1E9)
- “Boss is good for us. I will not unionize.” (S1E9)
- “Just no more committees. I cannot be on any more committees.” (S1E9)
- “I say to them, we say to them, Half-priced lemonade for all.” (S1E9)
- “Listen to those voices and bite the shit out of anything you see, especially if you have a lot of heads.” (S1E9, Dried Blood)