First appearance: Live | GCX Orlando 2022 — Lord Snacc v The Showman · watch it on YouTube
The Showman (“Yes, legally”) was a masked stranger plucked from the crowd of The Acolytes when The Arbiter turned up to a Deathmatch having forgotten to bring any Champions. Armed with a bowler hat, a face full of bandages and a bandolier of knives named after the cast of Friends, he fought Lord Snacc in an autumn forest. He turned the audience into his personal army, charmed Gerald, and faked his own death in front of the Grandmaster. He lost in the end, but nobody who watched it will forget his exit.
Story
Live | GCX Orlando 2022
The Showman’s career as a champion began by accident. The Arbiter had packed a toothbrush but no champions (“Where else do you put champions?”), so the Grandmaster picked volunteers out of the crowd. After Lord Snacc, she pointed at a masked figure: “Pikachu, get up here.” He introduced himself as the Showman, worshipper of no gods, fan of long walks on the beach and holder of a Disney annual pass. Only after his introduction did he think to ask, “Wait, this is to the death?” The Arbiter tore open a portal to a crimson-leaved forest clearing. There the Showman told the Acolytes, “Let’s kill this viking,” and noticed that “there are knives everywhere. I don’t know how that happened.”
Snacc struck first with a multi-barreled blaster called the Fourth Horseman (“Oh, four horses would hurt more”). The Showman then introduced his knives, Chandler, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe (“the weird one”), Ross (“I don’t like Ross that much”) and Monica, and cast a spell of fear on the barbarian. Snacc swore nothing frightened him. Then he saw the bowler hat: “It’s so round and weird-shaped and out of fashion.” The crowd discovered his other fears (“Bees? Leaves? Cheese!”) and chanted “cheese” at him for several rounds while the Showman buzzed at him like a bee. He soon worked out that the audience was his best weapon. He talked an Acolyte called Turtleman into the fight with a spell and a bribe of one pin, and Turtleman threw Rachel at Snacc and kept her. Snacc shrugged off half the damage, since blades barely bit through his hide. The Showman began handing out his remaining knives, and Ross was auctioned off to the crowd (“He’s a paleontologist”).
When the Box of Chaos landed in the clearing, Snacc turned around, rummaged mischievously near his pants and announced, “My other horn has emerged!” He dropped it in the box for its shadowy keeper, Gerald, who asked, “What do I, like, sit on it or something?” Told to clean it first, Gerald objected: “But then all the flavor will be off of it.” The Showman did something nobody had done before: he asked Gerald what he wanted. Gerald was touched (“No one’s ever asked me that before”). He confessed he’d like to paint and start a family, and admitted he was “kind of a Phoebe guy.” The Showman sacrificed Phoebe and got a little shield to wear around his neck, which left him “very patriotic.” He then brought the rest of the gang to life: “We’re getting Disney up in here, Lord Snacc.” Monica and Chandler missed, but Joey landed a perfect natural 20. “And that’s how you get a spinoff!” Earlier, the Showman had also tied a shimmy-off against the Arbiter. Later he turned the whole crowd against Snacc with a spell, and five Acolytes piled onto the barbarian with weapons of their own imagining.
Then the sky turned on him. A lightning storm rolled in, the Showman rolled a natural 1, and the bolt left him barely standing. Snacc brought down his flaming hammer of inferno and doom and buried him in the forest floor. The Grandmaster declared Snacc the winner, and the Arbiter started dragging the body away. “But wait! He’s getting back up!” The Showman had been faking it all along. He rose from his earthly grave with a sword he’d found in the dirt, which turned out to be the Grandmaster’s. “I am very difficult to kill. I’ve had practice.” He ran Snacc through “like a shish kebab,” but two glaive strikes in the seventh round left him pierced again, blood pouring out of him in a fountain of red, and finished him for real. The Grandmaster took her sword back. With his last breath he crawled toward Snacc on his knees and promised to haunt the fro-yo stand forever. The Arbiter dragged him off again, hat, pants and jacket included, making sure he was dead this time. Like many champions, the Showman did not stay dead and was revived afterward.
Personality and Abilities
The Showman wore a bowler hat that didn’t quite fit his head and bandages that left him unable to see out of his left eye (“it’s very uncomfortable”). The Arbiter liked the look enough to quietly bet on him. He was theatrical, flirty in a menacing way (“it’s going to get pretty intimate, I promise”) and always ready with a quip. Mid-fight he told his opponent to drop the “the” (“just Showman. We’re on a second name basis”). He hinted at a mysterious “hobby” outside the arena and claimed to have started with more than two livers. Both of his remaining livers were lost to Snacc’s glaive.
As a bard, he fought with words, music and the crowd rather than raw strength. His spells could fill an enemy with fear, bend an Acolyte to his will, and turn an entire audience into an angry mob. His six named knives could be thrown, given away, auctioned or brought to life. His best trick was a talent for feigning his own death convincingly enough to fool the Grandmaster herself.
Relationships
- Lord Snacc: His opponent and killer. The two traded insults, fro-yo ambitions and a great deal of blood.
- The Arbiter: Admired his bandages, bet on him, and matched him shimmy for shimmy in a tied dance-off.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: He complimented her crown, stole her sword from the forest floor, and watched her take it back as he died.
- Gerald: The first champion to ask the box’s resident what he wanted. Gerald accepted Phoebe and gave him a shield.
- Turtleman: An Acolyte the Showman recruited as his “homie” and handed Rachel. “Turtleman is so much cooler than you.”
Memorable Quotes
- “Monica! Oh, Monica’s my favorite. She gets around.” (Live | GCX Orlando 2022)
- “Lord Snacc, it’s not wise to put an audience against a bard, because two can play this game.” (Live | GCX Orlando 2022)
- “And that’s how you get a spinoff!” (Live | GCX Orlando 2022)
- “I am very difficult to kill. I’ve had practice.” (Live | GCX Orlando 2022)
- “I’ll be back. I will always be back. And you’ll find me behind the counter at the fro-yo stand. And that fro-yo’s not gonna taste right. And just know it’s me.” (Live | GCX Orlando 2022)
- “I will ruin everything you love even past death.” (Live | GCX Orlando 2022)