First appearance: S1E12 — Feast — Potato v Dinkledink · watch it on YouTube
Potato was a shy, gentle champion who never had a present, never had fish and never knew his mother. The Arbiter found him in line to sit on Santa’s lap and brought him to the Void for the holiday Deathmatch S1E12 — Feast — Potato v Dinkledink. There he did something no one planned: he decided his opponent, Dinkledink, was his new stepdad. Halfway through the fight he was reborn as the grandiose Starfall, and the match turned from a duel into one of the strangest and most touching father-son stories the arena has seen.
Story
Potato arrived at The Dread Fortress just after it had been decorated for the holidays, introduced as the champion “coming in on the left knee” of Santa. His first words were a question: “Hi, I’m Potato?” His second was a plea to go back to Santa. The Grandmaster had a goblin bring him a hot cocoa. The Arbiter promised him a present if he won, which would be the best present he’d ever had, since it would be his first. Shrunk down onto a giant feast table, Potato started on the first tier of a strawberry cake and struck first. He ducked behind the berries and pulled a rifle, to the Arbiter’s delight: “he brought a gun.” He then shot down a chocolate wafer onto Dinkledink. His next idea, hiding by lying in the frosting, went worse. He sank into it like quicksand and ended up stuck in hardened chocolate, licking his hand.
The turn came when Dinkledink vowed to find Potato’s mother, take her to a fried fish dinner and never call her again. Potato had never known her. To him the threat meant there was a mother to meet, and maybe a new family. He pried himself free, leapt onto Dinkledink’s back crying “Daddy, please,” and was promptly flipped into the cheese-covered cake. He took the throw as a hug and thanked him. Even after the Acolytes had pelted him with their potluck (including his “very distant potato cousins”), even after a thrown turkey cracked the table into a chasm and a giant magnet began humming overhead, Potato kept apologising to his “Dad” between sword swings. He was badly wounded and losing his gear, and he prayed for strength. After learning his mother really existed, he found new hope: “I wanna meet my mom, too.”
The Arbiter then summoned a giant to eat the feast, and both champions were shovelled into its mouth along with the cake. On the candy-cane-strewn tongue, near death, Potato prayed again, calling on Tiamat: “I want power. Power enough to live. Power to stand on my own two feet.” Dinkledink agreed to accept him and cradled him like a baby, and Potato came back changed. “I was named by Tiamat. I was given the name of Starfall.” Tiamat blessed father and son and restored them both to full strength. When a cake elemental rose out of the chewed crumbs and saliva, Starfall swore a vow against “this pathetic cake creature.” He discovered that biting the thing kept it from growing back and declared, “I am the one who will be devouring you.” Father and son fought as a team, with Starfall boosting Dinkledink into a flying leap at the monster.
It wasn’t enough. The elemental struck Starfall with a perfect, crushing slam. He threw himself into the beast to soften it, but he was knocked lifeless and swallowed in cake and goo. Dinkledink tore the elemental apart in grief. Then he forced the giant to spit them out, and Starfall’s body hit the table 30 feet below, mangled, every bone broken. Dinkledink tried to revive his son by stuffing “magic cake” and candy into his mouth “like taxidermy.” With a final breath granted by Tiamat, Starfall looked up, said “Father,” and passed his goddess’s power to Dinkledink so he could lay his son to rest. Dinkledink buried him under the placemat with a star cookie to mark the name Starfall, and promised to find his mother, treat her “real nice” and “possibly make more Starfalls.” Afterwards, in Dried Blood, Starfall was still at it: “No, I killed them all. Right? Yes, father.”
Personality and Abilities
As Potato he was timid, hesitant and painfully sincere: “I just do what I’m told… I don’t want to die… I’ll try my best.” He had so little experience of the world that he didn’t recognise a hug, a present or a magnet. Faced with the magnet, his whole reaction was “oh, shiny.” As Starfall his voice turned confident and grandiose. He scorned the cake elemental as “a joke,” declared that he had “always hated desserts,” and was creepy enough to unsettle even Dinkledink (“Yeah, you’re really creeping me out, kid”). Through both forms he stayed fiercely devoted to his new father, even scolding the Grandmaster for getting Dinkledink’s name wrong.
He fought with a rifle, a longsword, a shield and a double-bladed scimitar, and the scimitar was the only one he kept to the end. He could catch a second wind, swear vows of enmity against a foe and land wrathful divine strikes. He drew power from his faith in Tiamat, and claimed to be immune to disease, which was handy for a champion who ended up eating once-chewed cake.
Relationships
- Dinkledink: His opponent, whom he adopted as his “stepdad” and then his father. Dinkledink raised him for about an hour, fought beside him, buried him and gave his eulogy.
- Tiamat: The goddess he worshipped. She heard his prayers, renamed him Starfall and blessed him and his new father.
- The Arbiter: Found him in the Santa line and promised him his first-ever present if he won.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Ordered him a cocoa, and after his death told Dinkledink to be proud of the son he had found.
Memorable Quotes
- “Can I go see Santa again? I want to be there instead.” (S1E12)
- “I’ve never had one of those before.” (S1E12, on being offered a present)
- “I have a family now?” (S1E12)
- “Is this a hug?… Thank you, daddy.” (S1E12)
- “I was named by Tiamat. I was given the name of Starfall.” (S1E12)
- “We shall feast on the corpses of our enemies.” (S1E12)