First appearance: S1E3 — Blood Mage — Sunozar v the Shadow of the Arbiter · watch it on YouTube
The Shadow of the Arbiter is exactly what it sounds like: a white, ethereal echo of The Arbiter, torn out of his chest by his own hand. He carries a sliver of the Arbiter’s power and, by the Arbiter’s own admission, “the worst parts” of him. He is creepy, whispery, petty, and quietly convinced the Void should belong to him and his maker. He has fought in two Deathmatches, lost both, and both times used the arena to plot openly against the Grandmaster, which has left the Arbiter doing a lot of uncomfortable explaining. He is played by Mudcat.
Story
S1E3 — Blood Mage — Sunozar v the Shadow of the Arbiter
The Shadow exists because of a dog joke. The Arbiter turned up at the Grandmaster’s throne room, interrupting her designated coloring-book hour, with only one champion. The promised second had claimed to be a boxer and turned out only to own boxers, the dogs. The Grandmaster’s punishment was simple: the Arbiter would fight himself. Since he couldn’t enter the arena at full strength, he took off his rings and over-cloak, reached into his own chest and ripped out his shadow, a ghostly version of himself in matching studded leather. Then, “to even the odds,” he planted a foot in the Shadow’s back and tore its wings off. The wings evaporated into vapor. The Shadow’s first review of his creator was immediate: “You dick.”
On The Disregarded Cliffs, a ruined mountaintop fortress studded with golden crystals and a humming blue portal, the Shadow faced Sunozar, a half-orc blood hunter with a flaming greatsword. He tried to flare his missing wings for the crowd and introduced himself as their Arbiter. He also explained that this was his first birthday: “for thousands of years, I’ve had to share a birthday with this asshole.” His chaos bolt missed, and so did his next spell. When he turned time backwards to try again, he missed again, which led the Grandmaster to call him “a pure loser.” He threw a tantrum and shoved Sunozar toward a cliff, and twice shook off Sunozar’s blood curses on the grounds that “it’s hard to curse what doesn’t have blood.” When things got close he ran away, which earned him “You little coward” from the Grandmaster.
Then he made his big move. His eyes glowing red, he told Sunozar it would be “more fun if you and I killed the Grandmaster instead,” and bent the half-orc’s will to the idea. The Grandmaster demanded an explanation. The Arbiter offered one: the Shadow was the voice that tells you to eat the third cheeseburger. She was not soothed. “Your shadow is trying to come for my crown.” Sunozar’s swing between the Shadow’s legs forced another time reversal, and the Shadow delivered his first-ever insult (“You are but a shadow of an orc”). He then ripped a shadow-creature out of himself, the same way he had been ripped from the Arbiter. This “shadow of a shadow” was a winged horror that looked like Ryuk from Death Note, and it carved Sunozar up badly.
The Shadow’s luck ran out in the palm of Theodore the Giant, who scooped up the ground they were standing on and lifted it into the clouds for a stroll. The Shadow spent that round siphoning life from the grass and rubble around him and dodging, and his spawn slipped and vanished. “I really wish I had done something besides dodge this round.” Even a grudging blessing from the Arbiter (“What do you want, asshole? You have my blessing”) couldn’t save him. In the final round he mocked Sunozar’s pink mohawk, which was a mistake. Sunozar swung his sword like a baseball bat at the Shadow’s head. Dying, the Shadow said his only other regret was that he never got to eat, and a shadowy tear rolled down his cheek. Sunozar responded by eating his last piece of candy in the Shadow’s face, and the Shadow faded away, decapitated.
S1E9 — Fizban’s Dragon Battle Royale — Amethyst Dragon v Dracohydra v Hollow Dragon v Topaz Dragon
For a Halloween dragon battle royale, the Arbiter pulled his shadow out “once again,” alongside an inverse-colored shadow of the Grandmaster. The Shadow was not thrilled to be back: “What the fuck do you want this time?” While the others became gleaming dragons, his bones broke and he became only a light. The Arbiter melded that light into a suit of armor, producing the Hollow Dragon: metal plating held up by an ethereal soul. “I hate it here.” He also started the match as “it” in a game of tag, and nobody wanted to go near him because of the cooties.
In the Amethyst Dragon’s waterfall lair he made himself felt. He blew his armor apart in a thunderous burst and pulled it back together, then had to sit through a mocking speech from the Grandmaster’s Topaz Dragon aspect about having no heart, brain or soul, which rattled him enough to throw off his attacks on her. He then turned union organizer. He told the many-headed Dracohydra (Narfi, the arena’s lemonade vendor) that the boss underpaid him and that together they could “control the means of production of the ice.” Narfi worried this would get them both fired and stayed loyal. Along the way the Hollow Dragon ate a poisonous mushroom and was entirely fine, being immune. When six of the Dracohydra’s heads piled onto him at once, he was appalled: “You’re basically the ideal unionized worker in one body. Why are you doing this?”
He also formed a shaky alliance with Vashon, the Amethyst Dragon. Vashon secretly promised to double-cross the others and make sandwiches with him, and after the Hollow Dragon fell he declared, “Once team hollow, always team hollow. Sandwiches will be all mine now.” In the Topaz Dragon’s island tower, the Shadow let slip his real ambitions again: “One day, me and the Arbiter, we’re going to kill all of you. This place will be ours.” The plan included a beanbag chair and a soda fountain. The Grandmaster asked the Arbiter whether the Shadow was speaking for him. He insisted it was trash talk (“he looks like an idiot, you can’t take him at his word”), and she agreed, for now, to “ignore the idiot.”
Down in the Dracohydra’s underwater cavern, the Topaz Dragon finished him with a bite. His last words were a promise: “One day, I’ll be back.” The light in the armor went out, and the pieces shot across the cavern and drifted to the bottom. The Topaz Dragon caught his skull, held it up to the Grandmaster and the Arbiter, and crushed it in her claws. The Arbiter’s protest (“That’s not fair”) got nowhere.
Later: the Shadow in the Box
The Shadow did not stay gone. It returned to the Arbiter’s body, and he later tore it out again and put it into The Box of Chaos, whose shadowy, yellow-eyed resident it has been ever since. In the Season of Fate vision, the Lord of Fate did the same thing on camera, ripping his own shadow off the ground to power the empty box. Whether its old promise that “the Arbiter and I” would one day take the Fortress still stands is not known.
Personality and Abilities
The Shadow looks like a pale, ghostly copy of the Arbiter in studded leather, minus the wings his maker tore off. He whispers, sulks and refers to himself as the Arbiter. He resents nearly everyone: the Grandmaster, who noticed he holds “some slight resentment” against her, and the Arbiter, who keeps ripping him out of his own body and then mutilating him. He doesn’t like fighting his own fights, prefers dodging and running when he can, and is touchingly new to things like birthdays, insults and the hope of a snack. He also has a gift for saying the quiet part out loud, especially about seizing the Grandmaster’s crown.
His powers are a slice of the Arbiter’s. He hurls shifting chaos bolts of rock, lightning, fire and water, and he can turn time backwards to force a second chance, though it rarely helps. He can shrug off curses, shield himself, slip away in a blink and siphon life from the grass around him. He can also mind-bend opponents and rip a shadow of his own out of himself. As the Hollow Dragon he became a suit of armor with a soul inside. He could explode outward and reassemble, drain the vitality of everything around him, and breathe a cone of radiant light. When knocked down, the armor collapsed around a talking puddle of ether.
Relationships
- The Arbiter: His creator and the source of “the worst parts.” The Arbiter tears off his wings, threatens to finish him personally, and disowns his trash talk, but blessed him anyway when he was losing.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: His preferred target for scheming. He tried to turn Sunozar against her, and her Topaz Dragon aspect killed him and crushed his skull.
- Sunozar: Beheaded him, then ate candy in his face as he died.
- Narfi: Received his union pitch as the Dracohydra, turned it down, and later savaged him with six heads at once.
- Vashon: An unreliable ally as the Amethyst Dragon, who swore to double-cross the others and make sandwiches with him.
Memorable Quotes
- “For all of my life, for thousands of years, I’ve had to share a birthday with this asshole.” (S1E3)
- “Listen, I could kill you easily with the snap of my fingers, but I think it might be more fun if you and I killed the Grandmaster instead.” (S1E3)
- “That was a mistake. I really regret that now. My only other regret is that I never got to eat.” (S1E3)
- “If we rise up as a worker force, we could take our benefits and we could own the supply of the ice.” (S1E9)
- “Listen, I’ve had enough of your shit. One day, me and the Arbiter, we’re going to kill all of you. This place will be ours.” (S1E9)
- “One day, I’ll be back. And the Arbiter and I are going to sit in that beanbag chair together eating cheese puffs.” (S1E9)