First appearance: S3E14 — Magic Duel — Talbot Cage v Seth Kaiser · watch it on YouTube
Seth Kaiser is a self-styled duelist who crossed dimensions looking for a real test of his skills. In the Void he found a Halloween Deathmatch, a terrified wild mage and a box full of trading cards. Seth fights with a deck of cards strapped to his shield and plays them like spells. He won his only match, made a friend of Gerald, and treated the whole thing as the world’s most dangerous card tournament.
Story
Seth rose into the ballroom of The Dread Fortress during the masquerade “pre-party party” in S3E14 — Magic Duel — Talbot Cage v Seth Kaiser. He stood tall in a spotless studded white coat, and his introduction was short: he had come a long way to test his merit as a duelist, “and that’s all I’ve got.” He was openly insulted to be matched against Talbot Cage, calling him “this third-rate something with a fourth-rate squirrel.” The Arbiter apologized and explained that Seth had originally been booked against a maniac with a bunch of knives, who had unfortunately died earlier that summer. In the pumpkin-portal maze, Seth drew his opening hand from his shield and played Pot of Greed to draw two more. When Talbot protested that the card was banned in tournaments, Seth answered, “Screw the rules, I have money.” He then summoned a glowing fey deer that dropped a cube of darkness over Talbot. The Grandmaster said it looked like “a weirdly shaped pickle,” and it was the “pickle goat” from then on. Seth also laid three illusory cards face down on the field and refused to be “goaded into moving.”
For most of the fight Seth strolled the maze like a horror-film stalker, calling out that the crowd was “looking for blood, Talbot.” When Doug the Pug bit a pumpkin and left a cloud of farts over the field, Seth spent a round with one hand clamped over his nose and mouth. He twisted open a pumpkin that turned out to be a ticking bomb, but his arm was weak (“I play children’s card games”), so it landed five feet away. A portal singed the corners of his deck, which did not worry him: “I have sleeve protectors, it’s okay.” His big moment came when he teleported to the Box of Chaos. Gerald admired his “duel deck,” and the two bonded over cards. Seth offered a Holographic Charizard and then dropped his entire trade binder into the box, waving off its value with “I can get more.” Gerald returned the favor with a graded card on a golden chain that depicted a ring of three wishes. Two of the wishes were already used. When a grinning, handless creature appeared and demanded a three-letter word beginning with T, Seth guessed “tea” and was swatted for it. He then spent his wish on learning the answer, which the Arbiter called “like using a machine gun on a fly.” Seth smiled and kept the answer to himself for a while: “I’ll hang on to this for a minute.”
That friendship saved his life. Talbot hurled a Fireball at the explosive pumpkins around Seth and declared, “You’ve fallen for my trap card!” With a perfect natural 20, Gerald pulled Seth into the box and shut the lid before anything went off. “I think the real prize here, Gerald, was friendship,” Seth told him. Wild magic aged Talbot twenty years mid-cast, and the blast missed. Seth then answered the riddle (“Two. T-W-O.”), and the creature turned its fury on Talbot. Seth shrugged off Dolly’s putrid cloud when she rose from the ground. When the aching, sock-wearing Talbot begged him to call the fight off, Seth saw through the ploy and delivered his verdict: Talbot had not fought, only suffered, so Seth would grant him “one final kindness.”
That kindness was his most loyal companion: a white, blue-eyed, turtle-shelled dragon summoned from his deck and empowered by the crowd’s favor. Its breath scorched Talbot to one knee. Seth stole away Talbot’s luck at a crucial moment with a flick of silvery magic. After three swings of Talbot’s Vorpal Pinkie missed him, Seth calmly put a hand on Talbot’s head and held him aside. Talbot moved the pinky blade to his middle finger, flipped him off and said, “Just fucking do it.” Finally Seth called for “Blue Eyes [White] Dragon, Neutron Blast,” and Talbot disappeared in blue and white flame while the Acolytes raised their middle fingers in solidarity. Seth was the victor. The dragon bowed and vanished back into his cards, and Seth admitted, “I don’t feel good about that.” In the Dried Blood after the match, he offered the Acolytes some advice of his own: “I have never settled for failure, and neither should you.”
Personality and Abilities
Seth is tall, with posture “that could make the gods envy,” and long mossy hair “somewhere between a mullet and a weird K-pop thing.” His long white coat is covered in logos, the biggest a large K for his name. He is supremely confident, a little smug, and devoted to card games above people. He insists “I don’t need friends. I have card games,” yet he gave away his whole trade binder to a box he had just met. Beneath the swagger he has a sense of fairness: he upcast his dragon only so far, to stay “somewhat kind,” and he framed his killing blow as mercy.
His weapon is a strange rune-carved buckler. It is too oddly shaped to block with and carries a blade too dull to cut, but his deck is attached to it. He “plays” his magic as cards: drawing extra hands, summoning a fey deer, setting face-down illusory traps, conjuring illusions, teleporting across the field, and souring an opponent’s luck. His trump card is his dragon, which returns to his deck when its work is done. He prefers patience and traps to brawling, which suits a man whose physical strength is admittedly poor.
Relationships
- Talbot Cage: His opponent, whom he dismissed, stalked, and finally killed with his dragon, “a mercy.”
- Gerald: A fellow collector and his new friend. Seth gave him his entire trade binder, and Gerald gave him a wish card and later pulled him to safety from a Fireball.
- The Arbiter: Apologized for Seth’s disappointing matchup.
- Dolly: Rose against both champions, and Seth shrugged off her necrotic cloud.
Memorable Quotes
- “Screw the rules, I have money.” (S3E14)
- “This is either a loot box or a grenade, and I found out which one.” (S3E14)
- “I think the real prize here, Gerald, was friendship.” (S3E14)
- “Not this one. I don’t need friends. I have card games.” (S3E14)
- “I have never settled for failure, and neither should you.” (S3E14, Dried Blood)