First appearance: × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover
Solid is a Yuan-ti champion, “well-trained in close quarters combat” and “all about espionage,” who fought in the × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover (title not in metadata). He is a one-eyed snake man with fangs, a stealthy streak and very quick feet. He kicked The Box of Chaos over the treetops and shoved a hellspawn duck into a river. His past caught up with him in the end: Pyxis had come to the arena hunting the people who killed his family, and Solid was one of them.
Story
Solid stepped through a purple and blue portal into a feast hall of The Dread Fortress, already talking into thin air: “Otacon. Otacon. Are you… Lost contact with him.” He introduced himself to the Grandmaster and the Arbiter with a professional’s calm. That calm lasted until Grog the Malodorous arrived and filled the room with a stench “you can feel,” at which point Solid admitted, “I don’t know if I can do this.” The Grandmaster sized him up as someone who “looks like he could eat a duck on his own.” When he asked whether the food was real, she slapped his hand away. Then came the bad news. Grog, the fairy Beans the Terrible and Solid were a team for the gauntlet, and the mammoth Pyxis had just told the hall he was looking for “a little fairy, a strange centaur person, and a cobra of some kind” who had killed his loved ones.
In the gauntlet, Solid left the eating to his teammates (“I was really betting on that fried turkey”) and went to the wall to taunt the other team. When the doors to the sleeping Chinchillas’ room slid open, he hushed everyone: “shh, this is where I come in.” He crept past the knife-cuddling chinchillas almost perfectly. One woke up anyway, courtesy of an Acolyte donation, and kicked him in the shins. He swallowed his yell (“Oh, mother”), kept sneaking (“Stealth build, baby”) and flexed silently, fangs over his lip. Grog’s farts then woke the whole room, and the chinchillas stabbed all three champions. Solid later pulled a steak knife out of his own leg. At the alchemist’s table he followed his own rule, “always drink the red one because those are the good ones,” and turned into a frog for half a second.
When a mini-boss dropped on the team, Solid sized up his allies with cold practicality: “I usually work alone, but maybe I can use them as bait.” He ran at Thea, transformed into a giant purple worm called the Abyss Devourer, and landed three of four punches in a wave that rippled through her body. He even tried to “hit her in the jejunum,” but she shook it off. One of her tongues grabbed him, and Perry’s rogue fireflies lit him up along with the worm. When Dave the Doom Duck trapped Team A in a ring of hellfire, Solid slipped through without a scratch. On the Fortress grounds he made the move of the night. He leaped the river, picked up the protesting Box of Chaos, tossed it in the air and kicked it clean over the 20-foot trees. The Grandmaster scored it “10 out of 10 across the board.” The Arbiter, “just because I want to be a little evil,” had it come down on Beans and Grog.
Once the match became a free-for-all, Dave tried to banish four rivals at once. Solid shrugged off the magic with a perfect roll, and every target held on. Solid answered by leaping the river, landing behind the duck, punching “and punch some more,” and shoving him into the rapids. Then Pyxis flew up, grabbed Solid by the head, poured necrotic magic into him and dropped him from 30 feet. Solid slowed his fall and survived, and he later backflipped clear of the flaming turd Dave shot out of his butt as a fireball. Pyxis was caught in that blast. As it burst, Pyxis prayed to Selûne, goddess of the moon, and day turned to night. The moonlight steered him down onto Solid, and his finger poked out Solid’s last good eye. The fall killed Solid, and Pyxis died with him. Solid saw “the moon maiden behind him” and offered a final, blunt confession: “yeah i did kill your family that’s it.” The Grandmaster’s verdict: “Redemption found in Pyxis, the objective made complete, and now both eyes taken. Beautiful farewell.”
Personality and Abilities
Solid is a 5’6” Yuan-ti, which he called “a solid, you know, average American high five.” He has fangs and is missing an eye, and he wears glasses perched over his eye patch. On arrival he noted, “This vision is less than solid.” He got called “green guy,” “cobra” and “old snake.” There was also a pronunciation gag over his name, which the Arbiter insisted was “more guttural,” and the Arbiter praised the Grandmaster for her restraint in not mentioning “Solid’s possible cloaca.” His manner is that of a dry, self-serious operative: he prefers to work alone, has no patience for puzzles (“I’m all about espionage. I don’t know puzzles very well”), and makes deadpan asides. When Beans asked what a lawyer was, Solid said, “I believe it’s something like a demon.” During a smoking chinchilla’s ambush he observed that smoking calms the nerves before a sniper shot, “referencing my old video game days.”
He fights as an unarmed martial artist. He threw rapid flurries of punches, burned bursts of inner energy to cover huge distances, and shoved foes away with open-hand strikes. He had a knack for slipping out of the way of fire and explosions entirely, and he could slow his fall from great heights. He is also unusually resistant to magic, which is how he walked out of Dave’s mass banishment.
Relationships
- Pyxis: The mammoth whose family Solid admitted to killing. Pyxis had already taken one of Solid’s eyes “last time,” and he took the other in the moonlit drop that killed Solid.
- Beans the Terrible: Teammate for the gauntlet. Beans offered him luck at the puzzle table, and Solid told him to stop talking to the worm and punch it.
- Grog the Malodorous: Teammate whose smell nearly broke him. Solid wanted to “cast reflect missiles at those farts.”
- Dave the Doom Duck: Opposing champion who tried to banish him. Solid punched him and pushed him into the river.
- Thea: The worm mini-boss he tried to punch in the jejunum, and who grabbed him with a tongue in return.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Slapped his hand away from the feast and scored his Box of Chaos kick a perfect ten.
Memorable Quotes
“Yuan Ti is what they usually call us, but my name is Solid. I am known to be well-trained in close quarters combat.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “Stealth build, baby.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “I usually work alone, but maybe I can use them as bait.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “Worm battle.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “I believe it’s something like a demon.” (on lawyers, × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
“yeah i did kill your family that’s it.” (last words, × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)