First appearance: S7E9 — Necro-Nightmare — Squiggles v Ray S’urdead · watch it on YouTube
Ray S’urdead (say it out loud: “raise your dead”) was a wizard and necromancer from a longstanding family of necromancers. He was pulled into the Void to fight Squiggles, a gnome pool caretaker in floaties, in S7E9 — Necro-Nightmare — Squiggles v Ray S’urdead. With perfect skin, perfect nails and a voice straight out of an audiobook, he had the Grandmaster blushing before a single blow landed. Then almost every spell he cast slid off his opponent, and his grand finale erased him from the arena.
Story
The Arbiter presented Ray to the Grandmaster in the throne room of The Dread Fortress alongside Squiggles. Ray made his feelings about physical contact clear when the gnome tugged his jacket for a pen: “Do not touch me. Small thing.” He signed his contract with a feather quill dipped in Thea, jabbing it gently into her backside to draw a drop of her teal blood. He then dabbed a little off the quill to taste (“Delectable”) and told her he had no interest in eating her, though he “would have use for your corpse.” When Squiggles offered a handshake, Ray summoned a freezing shadow hand to take it for him. When the Grandmaster promised the winner a wish, he asked for “some recently departed” and suggested that surely she had wishes of her own, which turned her face red.
The fight took place in a moonlit graveyard, and Ray strolled into it like a man arriving at a spa. He caught Squiggles’ little hammer in his palm and called it cute, but the gnome’s follow-up spiral swing left a scuff on his cheek. Worse, The Acolytes began chanting Squiggles’ name, and women in the stands ripped off their tops. “Really, all of you. This is how you feel,” Ray said, wounded. He cast an illusion of every bone in his body shattering into a heap of gore, then reassembled in front of everyone, but Squiggles was unmoved, and Ray glimpsed “something dead behind those eyes.” A bone bullet fired from his detached fingertip sailed harmlessly overhead because Squiggles had bent down to tie his shoe. Ray then raised the Oogie Boogie Man from a nearby grave, and the zombie danced toward his target singing all the wrong lyrics and missed both of its swings.
Ray shrank Squiggles’ hammer into a toddler’s toy and drew aqua smoke from every grave into his chest to shore himself up. He flooded the area with shadowy gloom, and when it cleared Squiggles was wearing children’s sunglasses. Squiggles answered by tearing open the sky and bringing the sun into the arena. By then Ray was fraying: his hair was out of place, his jacket was torn by Squiggles’ sword, and he found the gnome’s “baby somersaults” almost insulting. When the Arbiter dropped The Box of Chaos to give Ray a chance, it landed directly on the Oogie Boogie Man and crushed it. Undeterred, Ray raised an undead Chihuahua named Pixie from a pet’s grave and offered it to the box’s hungry, shadowy occupant, who accepted. In return the box gave him a single fireball, which he stored in one of the jack-o’-lantern lockets on his jacket.
His attempt to read Squiggles’ mind backfired; whatever was in there read him instead, and Ray warned the hosts that “there is something inside that tiny creature.” A curse meant to make the gnome forget all his abilities also failed, and at the table his player admitted he didn’t know what any of his spells did “because none of them have landed.” Ray locked eyes with the Grandmaster and, without looking away, hurled the fireball at Squiggles. The frustrated screams of the Acolytes made the blast devastating, and this time it landed in full. Squiggles survived it anyway, then climbed half into the Box of Chaos, robbed it of a ring of spell turning, and healed himself back up. After the Grandmaster begged him, “For the love of God, destroy Squiggles,” Ray summoned 58 vengeful spirits from the graves, wanting for the first time in a long time to feel impressive. Squiggles shrugged that off, the ring turned the swarm back on Ray, and the spirits he had disturbed tore him apart. Only half a jack-o’-lantern locket remained, and the Grandmaster dug a little hole and buried it.
Personality and Abilities
Ray was described as “a physical embodiment of the holiday of Halloween”: Mr. Halloween. His jacket was hung with jack-o’-lantern pendants that opened like lockets, he carried a staff, and a company of tiny ghosts, “more like pixies that don’t do anything,” trailed after him. He was immaculate, from his manicured nails to his flawless hair, and he spoke in a deep voice that the Grandmaster said made him sound “like he’s in an audio book.” He was fastidious and avoided physical contact at every turn. When Squiggles grabbed his hand with pool-wet hands, he wiped his own hands on his jacket as if it were some bodily fluid, and he held a pressed silk cloth over his face when enough Acolytes peed their pants that the whole arena smelled of piss.
He was arrogant and theatrical. When the Grandmaster called his family “a family of edgelords,” he replied, “I don’t have many peers. If that wasn’t obvious, that’s sort of the point.” He hinted that he tasted the dead, explaining that everything “is meant to have some sort of taste.” His necromancy had a strict theme: when he raised the dead, he only ever got Halloween pop-culture icons, and the graves worked like portals that could pull bodies from anywhere. His arsenal included illusions of his own body shattering, a bone bullet fired from his fingertip, shadowy claws and eruptions of gloom, mind-reading, a curse of incompetence, life stolen from the graves around him, and his last, fatal summoning of the graveyard’s restless spirits.
Relationships
- Squiggles: His opponent. Ray found the gnome baffling, insulting and eventually frightening, and Squiggles summed up the result: “Pretty Boy’s fucked!”
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Visibly flustered by him from the start. She rooted for Ray, mocked his struggles, buried what was left of him, and then told Squiggles she had always been rooting for him.
- Thea: Supplied, unwillingly, the blood he signed his contract with. He offered to make use of her corpse, and she backed into a wall and slunk away.
- The Arbiter: Brought him to the Void and called him “just a really creepy man.” He later dropped the Box of Chaos into the fight to give Ray a chance.
- The Box of Chaos: Took an undead Chihuahua as payment and gave Ray a fireball in return.
Memorable Quotes
“A real victory is achieved in death, where we all will meet again very soon.” (Dried Blood, Necro-Nightmare)
- “Do not touch me. Small thing.” (Necro-Nightmare)
- “I’ve no interest in eating you, small one. I would have use for your corpse, however.” (Necro-Nightmare)
- “Death is rarely warm.” (Necro-Nightmare)
- “You would have had to have had any for me to take it.” (Necro-Nightmare)
- “This is energy and life. It is a new sensation.” (Necro-Nightmare)