The Arbiter

First appearance: Skypiercer Part 1

The Arbiter, also known as Vythorn the Endless Scholar, is the Grandmaster’s servant in all things and the curator of every Deathmatch. He opens the portals, gathers the champions, runs the arena and unleashes the chaos. He is a true master of chaos magic and calls himself the “master of time and space.” He is also petty, broke, bitter about a pug, and fond of hitting people with a metal chair. Over the seasons he has been the Grandmaster’s rescuer, her betrayer, her prisoner, her usurper and finally, in his own words, her friend. He is played by Mudcat, who also plays The Shadow King.

Story

Skypiercer: The Rescue

The Arbiter is much older than Elusia, and his history with her family runs deep. He told her he had served “your uncle, Agdrel, in the Dread Fortress in the time of Faucius Golden Shield,” and also that “I once served your father.” When Agdrel seized power, Vythorn survived by serving the Shadow King’s court. Across The Void he became known as the Shadow King’s right hand, free to come and go from The Dread Fortress as he pleased.

That freedom hid a long game. In Skypiercer Part 1, he appeared in Cor’thun, tall and black-winged, with a purple cloak over one shoulder, a high collar, a large mustache and his hair pulled back and shaved at the sides. He had spent decades mastering the magic needed to find the exiled Elusia, and the crossing out of the Void had cost the blood of a titan. It left him drained. He needed three days to recover, and he could bring back only Elusia and her two companions. In Skypiercer Part 2, he took one of Elusia’s stray arrows to the chest for his trouble.

After the Shadow King fell, Vythorn did not let him die completely. He spared the dying king to keep his power and knowledge. He then resurrected Agdrel, ripped out his soul, rearranged the letters AGDREL into GERALD, and sealed it inside the Box of Chaos. The effort of making the box turned his wings white. He used the trapped king’s power to keep order in the Void while the Grandmaster held her games. That power was not silent. As he later admitted, the box clouded his mind and whispered to him.

The Playtests and Season 1: Building an Army in the Basement

When the Deathmatches began, the Arbiter was the Grandmaster’s long-suffering assistant. He filled her calendar, bought her family’s birthday presents, arranged and performed the anthem, and flipped her off and rolled his eyes behind her back. He also did her laundry, coached her water drinking, and took payment in leftover cold popcorn. In the very first season opener, S1 Ep1, he muttered, “One day I’m gonna show her.”

He meant it. Starting with the fallen Bromir in Playtest 2, he began quietly collecting dead champions. He revived Eshrinn in a secret lair, remade Amren from lava, and took Zayliss “for my army.” He revived Milliac in a secret laboratory in the Dread Fortress catacombs, which was stocked with potions, specimens in jars and a book of plans. There he monologued about “phase three” and declared, “This entire castle will be mine.” To one champion he let slip, “Normally, I would reserve a specimen such as you for my army.”

The season also gave him plenty of public humiliation. In S1E3, the Grandmaster made him fight Sunozar through a proxy. He removed his rings and over-cloak, ripped out his own shadow and tore its wings off. He warned, “If he falls on the field, I will finish him myself,” but later blessed the Shadow anyway: “there’s a good heart in you yet.” He insisted ever after that his shadow “doesn’t speak for me.”

In S1E7 he learned that Doug the Pug existed, and he blamed his ignorance on Deathmatch stress. He then lost a roll to Doug and raged so hard that he summoned a meteor swarm. The Grandmaster observed that he “clearly has anger issues.” He confessed he was “a cat person” and vowed to “show that pug… show them all.” This began a feud that has lasted the entire series.

Other Season 1 highlights include betting on Ivanna Kishu and slipping her an ice shield. In that same match, a natural 1 sentenced him to clean all 52 stadium toilets, and he made his exit as a cloud of gas, “compelled by his own beans.” In S1E8 he gave the Grandmaster a giant velour optical-illusion painting of Doug, carried in by two goblins. In S1E9 he pulled dragon forms from his favorite book, “Fizban’s Treasury,” and drew out the Grandmaster’s shadow as well as his own. He claimed he went to high school with Highfrost, back when he was “fatter, like a lot,” and admitted to selling scented candles through a Facebook group. In the Season 1 finale, he used time magic to hold the Tarrasque for the whole battle, until it swallowed him whole, alive, and carried him off.

Fate of the Arbiter: The Mask Slips

The kidnapping was a lie. In Fate of the Arbiter Part 1, a band of adventurers found the Arbiter apparently free in a cathedral chamber of a dwarven fortress, claiming he’d been “stuck here for weeks.” He soon openly declared that he wanted the Dread Fortress: “Elusia will rue the day.” He grew giant, shielded himself with orbiting stones, turned back time, threw chaos lightning and petrified Orin, who turned to dust. His apparent defeat was a deception, because the thing they fought was only a visage of him. He then disguised himself as the Grandmaster, branded the party would-be murderers and traitors, and portaled them into the arena.

In Sands of the Arena, he received them in his own arena. It was a temple above a city, with a giant statue of himself and a black throne, and he sat eating grapes and drinking wine. He told them the being they had beaten was “a fraction of my power… a golem, a stand-in, a mist.” He admitted he had hoped to manipulate them and that he had killed Orin: “And I liked Orin.” When one of them probed his mind, he knew it, and he crushed the banister until he bled. He aged his failed werewolves to dust by turning time on them and proclaimed, “I am God here.” Lyrus, Orin’s son, had once called him “the right hand of the Grandmaster” and “a staple of virtue.”

Season 2: Phase Three

Back at the Dread Fortress, the Arbiter carried on as though nothing had happened (“I really miss this place”). He kept recruiting. He revived Ralzamon with the words “We have much to plan for,” stitched a beheaded champion named Carn back together with a magical needle and thread, and, in Dried Blood, carried Mcswiggins off to his lair. He admitted he had let “the traitors” escape “the other day” and was under orders to fix it. Over drinks with Thornabub, he confided that he had been trying to overthrow the Grandmaster “for years.” In S2E9 he used a charm to take Veronica’s memories of Gerald, her lost love, and then flew off. The Grandmaster called him a sore loser and jealous.

His temper got worse as the season went on. In S2E12, he sent Gerald to shoot the champions and accused the Grandmaster, “You always let them live.” He then stormed off to his own arena, where he raised the losers of past Deathmatches from the shadows: “Our time has come.”

Meanwhile, during Fate of the Faithful, Lyrus described the Arbiter to newcomers as the Grandmaster’s vizier, secretly amassing an army, keeping her isolated and sending impostors to cause unrest. Circe warned that he hunted deserters across all realities. She said he had destroyed an ogre named Chester and erased his echoes across the multiverse. In Part 5 the Arbiter appeared on a throne of ice in his own fortress, “a twisted echo of the Grand Throne.” It was a shadow version of the Dread Fortress that he had conjured by bending time and space. “The next phase of my plan has begun… the fight is near.”

In The Hall of Fates, Toddleheim, Locket and Flynry finally reached the Grandmaster, and he confessed everything. He admitted to the coup, the Tarrasque attack on the arena and kidnapping himself. He revealed that champions never went home: he had gathered them, either willingly or “touched by my shadow.” Of Orin he said, “doesn’t exist anymore… He got in the way.” He claimed that he and the Grandmaster “came up together” and “took this kingdom together,” and he accused her of killing her uncle for the throne. “Your weakness is a disease,” he told her, and he accepted a wager for her title and throne.

Battle for the Crown

“I don’t work for you anymore,” he announced in Round 1. He called her Deathmatches unfair and laid out his plans for the Fortress: his own portrait, his statue in the throne room, Spanish tile, and a balanced budget. He had printed the invitations on the Dread Fortress printing press. He promised his champions they would “cease to exist” if they failed, triggered an avalanche with a snap, and curb-stomped the dying Glub Glub before leaving with “This isn’t over.” Glub Glub and Ralzamon both died for good in that round.

By Round 2 he was lounging on the Grandmaster’s throne, smoking. He grumbled, “I should have just stabbed you in my throne room,” and accused Gerald of cheating. He was pleased with Baron Voltágè (“I knew I revived you for a reason”), and he winced at Silky Slim’s death. For Round 3 he had moved a water bed, a velour patchwork couch and a TV into the throne room. When the duck died, he smashed Prof. Stabbz with his folding chair hard enough to make it wobble, and he erupted the arena with lava in his anger. Then he lost the crown. He was allowed to keep the water bed and couch, but he was moved to the dungeon, collared and leashed, and paraded around by Doug the Pug.

Season 3: Sackcloth and Chains

The Arbiter spent Season 3 as the Grandmaster’s prisoner, in shackles and a potato-sack linen cloth, sitting on a wooden crate with a deflated d20 cushion. He had to knock before entering. He did her taxes by coloring in the boxes, managed the budget, and handled the local yogurt vendor contracts. He was frank about what he had done: “I tried to overthrow the Grandmaster… with resurrected champions.” He ran anger-management mantras (“My self-worth is not tied to dice rolls”) and earned Italian leather boots for good behavior. Whenever he got mouthy, the Grandmaster could make his chains heavier with a spell. When nobody died in one match, he flung a goblin from the stands. In S3E14 he lost to Doug twice and was given a dunce cap.

In Into the Mirror, he was sleeping in a cage, unwashed, “honoring our deal.” He sat on her throne picking his teeth with a knife. When he opened the Hall of Fates, he cast Disintegrate on three adventurers to send them to the desert plane beyond the mirrors: “That’s one way to solve my problems.”

In the Season 3 finale, after about “five months” in chains, the Grandmaster freed him for good behavior, and his black spiked leathers returned. He admitted, “I was mistaken” about her being weak. Then the box drew his shadow and chaos energy out of him, and the Shadow King rose with “ten times” his power. When the king struck at Doug, the Arbiter stepped in front of the shadow blade. He died saving the pug he hated. His last words were “I am sorry for so many things… For knowledge.”

Into the Mirror: The Sands of Eternity

Through Season 4 the Arbiter was gone. The Shadow King boasted that he had killed him, and a statue stood in his place. His soul had gone to The Sands of Eternity, where he was trapped in an illusion of a library whose books kept turning to sand. In Old Friends, the party found him. He was weaker and about eight feet tall, though he could still rewind a moment in time. His last memories were of serving the Grandmaster in chains, killing the party, and then “lunch.” He told them the story of the rescue and the box, and he claimed that the king, not he, had killed them. He said he did not know whether he had obliterated Orin. He also said he had known Elusia “a thousand years.” His aims were simple: the Grandmaster safe, the Shadow King dead, and “my power back.”

In The Way Out, he surrendered to Sky by throwing down a ceremonial dagger, then urged Sky to kill the party. Sky told him, “There’s something wrong with you.” He worked out The Oasis mechanism with Toddleheim’s help. Then he used the orrery as a one-person portal and left them all behind: “Nothing personal, the Grandmaster has to be saved.” Sky’s reflection showed Sky picking his pocket on the way.

Vythorn’s Return: The God of Fate

In Vythorn’s Return Part 1, Vythorn woke alone in the in-between and asked, “Am I still dead?” There, his magic worked only with permission. He lost his Italian leather boots to an ink creature, which left him barefoot. He also revealed that he can’t swim and can’t paddle a boat. His earliest memory showed a young boy in the rain, his hands burning with magical fire, outside a burning house full of screams. Fil, the God of Fate, told him he had lost his parents to his own power. Fil also said Vythorn had been dissatisfied with the rule of both Elusia and her father, and spoke of the idea of overthrowing Elusia as a planted seed. “Maybe? Sometimes, who’s not?” Vythorn answered. Then he made his choice: “I want to control fate… I will be the God of Fate.”

In Part 2, Ise revealed the truth about his childhood. Agdrel had killed Vythorn’s parents with his own hands. Vythorn vowed to unravel the Shadow King, and Fil granted him the Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm. In Part 3, he returned to the Void with the words burned into his flesh. He combined that magic with chaos energy, opening toothed portals into hellscapes, sealing enemies in a coffin of light and turning eyes void-white. Agdrel confirmed he had orphaned the boy and had been saving him “like a dessert.” Vythorn destroyed the Shadow King’s body, though the soul escaped. He then declared himself Lord of Fate, imprisoned Elusia in his own old chains, and claimed the Void “by the rules of our Deathmatches.”

Season 5: The Season of Fate

What followed was a vision of ruling that only Vythorn lived through. As the Lord of Fate, he sat on the throne of the Dread Fortress and had the Grandmaster “fired… laid off,” with a beheading joke about her “severance package.” He banned tuna juice throughout the Void. In Rise of the Lord of Fate, he ripped off his own shadow and threw it into the Box of Chaos as its new soul. He also made a worm into an assistant named Thea, then tormented her with performance reports and stars drawn on her forehead, or carved there and healed away as punishment. He once ripped her wings off after the laxative corn dogs. He admitted that he had made the Box of Chaos and that “it contains part of my soul.”

Ruling did not suit him. “I usurped the throne. Fair and square,” he insisted, but he worried about optics, ignored his emails, and complained, “I fucking hate my job.” He kept Doug shackled in the dungeons, which have a bathroom, and he hunted for a blue ring of his that had come out of the Box. When Copycat stole his phone, he offered a reward. By the Season 5 finale, he was brooding in a stripped, unlit throne room under conjured rain, with riots across the Void and The Eastern Outpost ransacked. “Things are not going the way that I had planned for them to go this season.” He left early.

In Vythorn’s Return Part 4, he admitted he was lonely, sleeping in Elusia’s bed and feeling “more trapped than I ever did when I was your arbiter.” In the true timeline, he rejected Fil’s path. He shattered Elusia’s choker shackles with a chaos-channelled dagger and chose to remain her Arbiter, “the other side of her coin.” “The only title that matters to me is friend,” he told her. He warned of threats beyond the Void and vowed to “fight fate itself.” Some champions and things from the vision, like Double Sun Cola, turned out to exist in reality too.

Season 6: The Season of the Trials

In Murder at the Dread Fortress, the Arbiter opened a “new era”: build champions up, then watch them kill each other. He created the real Thea from a worm, rejected Stuart twice and negotiated with the Chinchilla Union. To solve a murder, he used his “time eyes” to replay the night in reverse. It emerged that he had killed Iris and her husband at their wedding feast over a double-booked Deathmatch venue. He apologized, explaining he’s “working on being a little bit better.” When Iris murdered Thea, he brought her back.

The rest of the season was business as usual, in a manner of speaking. He sent a team into The Ether Drifts to mine a mineral that turned out to be salt for his fries. He fixed Copycat by atomizing her, got slapped by the Grandmaster, and nearly said “I should have let the Shadow King just…” In Tip to Tip he admitted, “I’ve killed lots of my friends,” and revealed he had smelted the Golden King’s shield into dice. At the Wounded Warrior Project crossover, he opened a portal by slamming his wings together, claimed to have battled ducks “more times than you would believe,” said he doesn’t clean up poop anymore because of Thea, and transformed Thea. On the live stages he described himself as a member of the Arbiters’ union, available Sundays only. At the 2023 Hall of Fame show he ripped the spine out of the Popcorn Guy through his chest over stale popcorn stuck in his teeth, and at GCX Orlando 2023 he sent the dragon cosplayer “back to the corner like last year.” At the 2025 Hall of Fame show, he printed Void Bucks and took bribes from both sides.

Season 7: The Season of Vigilance

By S7E1, the Arbiter had become “upper management.” He delegated champion-finding to Thea and told the Grandmaster, “We’re partners now,” and “I kind of saved your life.” He keeps an Italian leather ledger of everyone he has saved and the favors they owe. In S7E2 he wrote the Grandmaster’s name in a book with “kill” scratched on its cover. He does keep a kill list, but he has no current plans for another coup. In S7E3 he revealed his motto, “When you can, you should,” tattooed across his three nipples. When the Grandmaster praised Thea, he snapped, “I should have left you in Cor’thun.”

He scruffed two champions off the balcony and punched them across the Void like meteors to Emmery’s Tavern. He designed a labyrinth with no toilets, because “We don’t put people in a labyrinth for them to finish it. We want them to die.” He lost his shiny new chairs to Doug until Christmas and was sent to sit in the corner. He kept a secret lab of cadavers in the Fortress (“I’m using that”) and slipped Jerry Bonesman the Box of Chaos. When asked who was responsible for the box, he answered, “Nobody’s in charge of the box. It’s chaos in a box.” In S7E8, he killed the winner with Power Word Kill because he wanted the 100-floor wizard’s tower for his cramped lab, and he planned to blow out the west wall. By S7E9 he was docking Stuart’s pay, threatening to give Thea’s job to Claude, and citing “a neck thing” that stops him looking down at “people that are beneath me.”

In S7E10 — Thea’s Adventure the Arbiter gave Thea her one legal day off a year, along with a door on her closet and a fake errand list, and took her to Sugar Hills while he handled “diplomatic business” at a candy castle. He wore hospital shoe covers over his Italian leather boots. There he learned that his servant was a sleeper agent of the Hollow, the worm people of The Ether Drifts, sworn to kill him over the death of Mayor Timothy. He also learned that he had not picked her at random: Thea had made a deal with Fil. (“You fucking idiot! You’ve been talking to Fil!”) He had to reverse time inside his own head just to remember who Timothy was (“Oh, that guy?”). He fought Thea and her brother Theo lazily, monologuing about how hard good help is to find. He twisted Thea into a pretzel, dribbled her like a basketball, shot them both with finger guns and summoned a lightning ghost of Baron Voltágè. Theo’s self-destruct caught him anyway and left him singed, bloodied and standing in syrup. He rewound time.

Then he negotiated. He admitted the Fortress had destroyed the worms’ cities and “that big door,” and that he had ground their sacred crystal into salt and eaten it (“It was delicious”). He insisted he had only suggested the game of tag that killed Timothy, and delivered the real killer, Strako, by portal. He gave the worms front-row seats and royalties, gave Theo hands, and named Thea his ambassador to the Hollow. He told her he had always suspected she would betray him, and that he was proud she had finally tried. He shielded Thea from Theo’s second blast, and then asked her not to mention any of it to the Grandmaster.

Personality and Abilities

The Arbiter stands eight to nine feet tall, with long hair and a beard. His glowing white wings were once black and turned white from the strain of reversing time to save Atalantos in Skypiercer. He wears eight rings set with individually colored gems and black-and-white leathers, though at times he has worn referee robes with black Chuck Taylors. He insists his Italian leather shoes are real, though they are probably fake. One pair has a bottle opener on the heel, and he has also kept a collection of shoes taken from the people he’s killed. His signature weapon is a rusty, “seasoned,” bloodstained metal folding chair: “Steel chairs are my thing.”

He is petty, vain and perpetually underpaid. He has a serious betting habit, owes people money, has had “money riding on you with some really nasty people,” and now has a sponsor for his gambling. He claims he can’t read, believes magnets are magic and the earth is flat, and says he is color blind and allergic to cats. His rivalry with Doug the Pug runs through the whole series. He loves the sounds of death (“the death rattle… blood in the windpipe… the bowels”) but defers to the Grandmaster’s rulings, mostly. He has a birthday, whatever he claims. Beneath the sulking runs real grief and loyalty. He died for Doug, and he gave up godhood to stand beside Elusia.

His power is vast. He opens portals with a clap, a slam of his hands or chains, or a flare of his wings. He tears reality to move scenes, distorts arenas and conjures chaos events. Time magic is “my thing”: he rewinds moments, freezes things mid-motion, ages enemies to dust and slips between eras. He has used chaos bolts and chaos lightning, Disintegrate and Power Word Kill. He can rip out shadows and transform champions into dragons. Since Vythorn’s Return, he also wields the magic of Morir’s Cataclysm. He keeps secret labs, a private collection, a ledger of favors and a kill list, and he can be dangerously capricious.

Relationships

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: his ruler, rescuee, rival and friend. He brought her home, tried to take her throne, served as her prisoner, usurped her in a vision, and chose to be “the other side of her coin.”
The Shadow King: Agdrel, his former master and onetime friend, who secretly murdered his parents. The Arbiter sealed his soul in the box and later destroyed his body.
The Box of Chaos: his creation and Agdrel’s prison. It whispered to him and fed his ambitions, and his own shadow later went into it.
Doug the Pug: his nemesis at every dice roll. He died taking a blade meant for Doug.
Thea: his worm-born assistant, whom he created, revived, underpays and constantly reviews.
Fil: the God of Fate, who tempted him with godhood. He took the bargain and later rejected that path.
The Shadow of the Arbiter: his own shadow, ripped out to fight for him. He insists it “doesn’t speak for me.”
Orin: a werebear he petrified and turned to dust in Fate of the Arbiter (“And I liked Orin”).
Lyrus: Orin’s son, who once called him a staple of virtue and later warned others against him.
Toddleheim: a foe in Fate of the Arbiter and an uneasy ally in the Sands of Eternity.
Sky: met in the mirror world. Sky saw that “There’s something wrong with you” and picked his pocket.
Veronica: he stole her memories of Gerald.
Ralzamon: a revived champion recruited for his army (“We have much to plan for”).
Iris: killed by him at her wedding feast over a double-booked venue.

Memorable Quotes

“If he falls on the field, I will finish him myself.” (S1E3, Blood Mage)
“Your weakness is a disease.” (The Hall of Fates)
“I am sorry for so many things… For knowledge.” (Season 3 finale)
“Nothing personal, the Grandmaster has to be saved.” (Into the Mirror 17)
“The only title that matters to me is friend.” (Vythorn’s Return Part 4)
“Nobody’s in charge of the box. It’s chaos in a box.” (S7E7, A Father’s Son)

tags	character
aliases	Vythorn, Vythorn the Endless Scholar, The Endless Scholar, The Lord of Fate

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