First appearance: S7E5 — Rock and a Hard Place — Iowa-Ska v the Pebble · watch it on YouTube
The Pebble is a small but very handsome, very muscular four-foot-tall dwarf. He wears shades and a leather jacket and treats every fight as a pro wrestling match. He swaggered into the Void to face Iowa-Ska in the Chinchilla Forest, armed with a signature microphone, an endless supply of steel chairs and a strict rule never to break character. He lost, but he gave the Acolytes a one-dwarf show of promos, flashbacks, hot tags and a People’s Elbow. He went down on his own terms: still selling, still talking, and still asking when he would finally get his title shot.
Story
S7E5 — Rock and a Hard Place — Iowa-Ska v the Pebble
The Pebble entered the Dread Fortress locker room to a crowd chanting his name. He grabbed his microphone and announced, “Finally, the Pebble has come back to D20 Deathmatch.” He immediately mistook his opponent for “like a lizard.” Iowa-Ska, a middle-aged green dragonborn in a feathered headdress, corrected him firmly. The Pebble then fumbled his first promo and blamed a lack of mirror practice. The Grandmaster admired that he had brought his own microphone and offered him Thea as “a walking megaphone.” He said he would let her know if the Pebble required it.
In Chinchilla Forest, Iowa-Ska’s halberd drew first blood. The Pebble was startled: “I thought this was supposed to be fake fighting… you actually, like, cut me up.” He answered with a raised eyebrow so commanding that Iowa-Ska dropped to his knees. Then he pulled a shiny steel chair from the crowd, which annoyed the Arbiter, who considered chairs his own signature. When the first chaos struck, the Acolytes pelted him with everything in their pockets. Then Thea grabbed a microphone and flooded the arena with screeching. The Pebble simply out-yelled her, so loudly that the trees shuddered and Thea fled. As his prize, she owed him one free call for help. When the Arbiter spotted that Iowa-Ska had dropped his “magnum condom for your monster dong,” the Pebble spread the rumor that Iowa-Ska had turned it sideways and “shoved it straight up your candy ass.” Iowa-Ska replied that it was “already sideways,” which left the Pebble dumbfounded. He then raised ropes and turnbuckles from the ground for his finisher. Iowa-Ska clipped his legs as the elbow dropped. The Pebble insisted, “this is why in my universe that combo is banned.”
When the Acolytes surged their power into him, the Pebble took off his glasses and remembered his father, the Boulder. The Boulder fought storm giant after storm giant until one plunged its massive sword up his ass, while young Pebble watched. His chair turned to lollipop pink and white swirls (“This one’s for you, dad”) and folded over Iowa-Ska’s head. The clouds took the shape of the Boulder giving a thumbs up. He read his next line off his hand, “The state of Iowa sucks,” and then caught Iowa-Ska’s arrow in midair and flicked it back. Later, he cashed in Thea’s debt. She flew in as a living shield. Iowa-Ska filled his magnum condom with his poison breath and burst it on her “like a wet bag of sand,” and the Pebble promised she could be his manager if she protected him. She even clamped the halberd between her butt cheeks and hung off its tip. Now on death’s door, he hot-tagged in his rival Imbe, an eight-foot minotaur with a robotic-looking arm, to take Iowa-Ska “to Suplex City.” The Arbiter allowed it: “As long as somebody dies, we don’t really care.”
It was not enough. Iowa-Ska roped the minotaur and sent a stampede of chinchillas at the Pebble. The Pebble grabbed the lead chinchilla, Frank, who complained about his union rep and his sciatica. When the Arbiter offered him one wild chance at a far bigger blow if he could guess a number, the Pebble picked “the only number the Pebble knows,” 69. He rolled 79. He went for an eye poke and a low blow, tried a “dick twist,” and shot up icicles to “freeze his balls off.” Iowa-Ska pumped all his blood into his dick, which burst straight through the ice. In a game of rock, paper, scissors, his own name forced him to throw rock, and Iowa-Ska’s paper crushed his hand “from rock to pebble.” In the end, Iowa-Ska drove his halberd into the Pebble’s barbed-wire tramp stamp. As the Pebble’s heart slowed, Thea tugged his body off to the locker room and put a small potion to his lips: “It’ll one day be your time.” Whether he was revived has not been revealed.
Thea’s Revenge
In S7E10 — Thea’s Adventure it turned out that Thea had revived the Pebble with a potion, and he owed her one. When the Arbiter conjured a lightning ghost of Baron Voltágè, Thea answered with the one champion she knew was resistant to lightning. She stomped her four hands into the ground, Sugar Hills shook, and after a full round of emerging from the cracked earth the Pebble smashed the Arbiter’s face in. “I will smash your face in and then we’ll slip back through the cracks.”
Personality and Abilities
The Pebble is bald, glistening and proud of it. He makes sure his muscles glisten “in high definition,” and he once oiled himself up so thoroughly that an old lady in the crowd fainted. He mostly refers to himself in the third person, delivers trash talk with a wrestler’s rhythm, and lives by the creed “If you’re not lying, if you’re not cheating, if you’re not stealing, you’re not trying.” He considers breaking kayfabe a sin, because “for all the fans out there, they have to believe just this one night that wrestling is real.” He claims a long career against cow men, bird men, lizards and bears, and he wants a championship push.
Under the showmanship is a real fighter. He is both a bard and a monk. His words from the microphone can wound, he can heal his own body, and he can snatch an arrow out of the air. As a glacier dwarf he also commands ice and frost: he slides away across it, shoots up icicles, and summons wrestling ropes and turnbuckles from the ground. His signature moves are the steel chair to the head and the People’s Elbow.
Relationships
- Iowa-Ska: His opponent and killer. In his dying thoughts, the Pebble predicted the dragonborn would “get a sponsorship from the people.”
- Thea: He out-screamed her and won her one-time service. She served as his shield, was offered the job of his manager if she protected him, and dragged his body to the locker room with a potion.
- Imbe: His minotaur rival and tag partner. “I’m going to kick your ass at some point, but the Pebble needs a little bit of help.”
- The Boulder: His father, a fighter killed by a storm giant. The Pebble fights to honor him.
- The Arbiter: Resented the Pebble’s shinier chairs and approved his tag team on the grounds that somebody would still die.
- Frank: The unionized chinchilla the Pebble grabbed and threw about two feet.
Memorable Quotes
“The Pebble always has to stay in character. Breaking kayfabe is a sin.” (S7E5)
- “Finally, the Pebble has come back to D20 Deathmatch.” (S7E5)
- “I’ve never, in all my years of the wrestling business, I’ve never had someone actually want to shove something straight up their ass. This is new territory for me.” (S7E5)
- “Stronger than a bear, faster than a buck. But here’s the thing you all need to know. The state of Iowa sucks.” (S7E5)
- “Damn. I love showbiz, but also I better be getting pushed after this because I can’t keep jobbing out like this.” (S7E5)
- “If you, yes you, want to go one on one with the great one, then the Pebble is only a call away. So just bring it, Jabroni.” (S7E5, Dried Blood)