First appearance: S1E7 — Wild Magic — Strako v Zayliss · watch it on YouTube
Tabitha is a name the Void has given to two small, easily overlooked lives. The first Tabitha was a worm who crawled out onto an asteroid at exactly the wrong moment in S1E7 — Wild Magic — Strako v Zayliss. The second was a goblin employee of The Dread Fortress in S4E10 — Rivals — Nonamatt v Decima, one of the staff the Grandmaster insisted were people with names. Nothing in the show connects the two beyond the name. Both are a reminder that the Deathmatches have a lot of bystanders.
Story
Wild Magic: the worm
During the asteroid round of the Wild Magic match between Strako and Zayliss, the champions fought on a rock that was home to a little worm colony. That colony had already lost its mayor to Strako earlier in the round. While the Grandmaster called for every bone left on the asteroid to be gathered up for Doug, who was busy munching popcorn, Zayliss found a bigger, electrified chunk of rock and threw it together with a smaller one. The Grandmaster admitted she was trying not to make a balls joke, since they had “met our quota a couple episodes ago.”
The big rock found Strako. The small one missed and landed on Tabitha, the other worm that had crawled out, killing her. The Grandmaster noted the growing toll: “She’s destroying the small little colony here.” Zayliss, for her part, blamed her opponent and yelled at Strako, “You were supposed to catch it!”
Rivals: the goblin
Long afterwards, during the reign of The Shadow King, another Tabitha turned up among the goblin staff of the Dread Fortress. At the start of the Nonamatt and Decima match, the Grandmaster declared that they were a team and that the staff deserved tacos. Tabitha, Sarah, Kennedy and “all the goblins” came sniffing in through the doors.
The Shadow King had only ever numbered the goblins, from 1 to 328, and couldn’t keep even the numbers straight (“this one’s number 7, I think… 17, 70, I’m not sure”). The Grandmaster set him straight: “We have 328 employees here, and we know they all have names!” Tabitha was one of the few goblins actually named, and her fate after the tacos isn’t recorded.
Personality and Abilities
Neither Tabitha speaks or does much on screen. The worm is defined by very bad timing: she had crawled out just as a rock came her way. The goblin is defined mostly by her appetite, joining her coworkers to sniff out the promised tacos. Neither shows any powers or gear, and neither does any fighting.
Relationships
- Zayliss: killed the worm Tabitha with a missed throw.
- Strako: the intended target of the rock that killed the worm Tabitha.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: noticed the worm’s death, and later stood up for the goblin Tabitha and her coworkers as named employees.
- The Shadow King: the goblin Tabitha’s ruler at the Dread Fortress, who knew her only as a number, if at all.