First appearance: S4E6 — The Hunt — Witch Hunter v Grickle · watch it on YouTube
Witch Hunter, born Ricardo, was a centaur paladin who came to the arena to kill a bug and ended up falling for him. He handed out pamphlets for his god, bloomed marigolds whenever he saw someone attractive, and was allergic to the red dye in healing potions. His Deathmatch against Grickle on The Frozen Lake began as a farce and ended as one of the strangest, saddest love stories the arena has seen.
Story
S4E6 — The Hunt
Witch Hunter came through the Grandmaster’s blood-summoning portal into The Dread Fortress in the dark days when The Shadow King sat on the throne. The Grandmaster was a ruler in name only. He arrived asking, “Is this the bathroom?”, and he blamed her for the building’s lack of centaur accessibility. The Shadow King agreed with him. When Grickle the thri-kreen arrived, Witch Hunter took one look and declared, “Oh my god, you have a dump truck for a thorax.” He then tried to talk Grickle into following “our lord and savior, Maliki.” Marigolds began blooming all over him, and he explained what that meant. The Grandmaster plucked one off him and called the pairing perfect: “One who is ready to fight and hates the other, and the other loving the one who hates them.”
On the frozen tundra, a chaos event gave each champion a magical mount that could take any beast’s shape. Witch Hunter, noting of his horse that “technically this is my cousin,” chose a naked, mustachioed, forty-something human with a dad bod and named him Bruce. The fight that followed was mostly a comedy of errors. Witch Hunter slapped Bruce’s jiggling butt cheeks to get him moving, then swung so badly that his glaive went into the ground and he and Bruce both flipped into the snow, with Bruce’s “Ding-a-ling” splayed out in it. He blasted Grickle with holy smites, one of which wrapped the bug in a rainbow to the tune of “Colors of the Wind” and left marigolds blooming from his wounds. In return Grickle’s scimitar sliced off one of his nipples “like a pepperoni,” and it flew straight into an Acolyte’s mouth. When the Grandmaster ripped off the Shadow King’s face to reveal the horrifying void of shadow behind it, Witch Hunter asked whether it was weird that his one remaining nipple was hard, and she ruled it was now sharp enough to be “a small piercing nipple dagger.” Grickle’s thrown war pick later clipped just the tip of it. A blinded Grickle then ran face-first into the dagger and lost an eye. Along the way Witch Hunter revealed that his real name was Ricardo. He had been a bounty hunter “until like an orphanage incident,” then rebranded to hunt “anyone who doesn’t believe in Maliki and uses magic.” Most of his 69 kills, he admitted, came from that orphanage.
The Box of Chaos did him no favors. Bruce, freezing in the Shadow King’s conjured storm with his face frozen to his own butt cheeks, rolled into the box as a sacrifice. It rewarded Witch Hunter with half a gallon of greater healing potion. He drank it, discovered he was allergic to the red dye, and his throat swelled as the potion hurt him instead of healing him. He traded the box his family’s lucky rabbit’s foot keychain and got a regular healing potion, the same kind he was allergic to. Then Grickle shot the ice out from under him, and the heavy centaur plunged into the freezing water.
The ending turned everything around. Grickle, moved by how kind Witch Hunter had been to him, ran over and tried to haul him out with all four arms. The two of them only managed to slap each other’s hands away in what the Grandmaster called “the most awkward thing of a rescue mission.” Even the Grandmaster cheered him on: “Oh, Witch Hunter Ricardo! Do not give up this fight tonight! Survive!” Instead, Witch Hunter gave Grickle his grandmother’s glaive, wished him well, and let go. In his heavy chainmail, he sank into the cold. As he went down, his frozen marigolds broke off and floated to the surface “almost as a beautiful funeral.” Grickle made grieving snow angels with the glaive clutched to his chest, until the Shadow King crushed him under a giant black boot, splattering his guts across the ice. In the Shadow King’s era, deaths in the arena stuck.
Personality and Abilities
Witch Hunter was a centaur in heavy chainmail who fought with his grandmother’s glaive and carried a spear and a stack of Maliki pamphlets. He was relentlessly upbeat, shamelessly flirtatious and quick with a strange line. He hit on his opponent, asked aloud whether the two of them had an OnlyFans, and called the fight a “love story for the ages.” When he found someone attractive, marigolds bloomed on his body. He pressed their oil into his own skin to heal, caressing himself in a way that left the Acolytes “slightly uncomfortable, but also slightly aroused.”
As a paladin, he could call down holy and searing smites, conjure a shimmering shield of faith, and mend his own wounds. Nothing could frighten him. He said he had learned to fight rogues from playing “an unhealthy amount of World of Warcraft.” He had once had a gluten intolerance, which becoming a paladin cured. He never learned to swim, he had no father figure, and he had romantic feelings toward bug people. After the Grandmaster misspoke, he also gained the title “Witch King” by what the Shadow King called a “battlefield promotion.”
Relationships
- Grickle: His opponent and his crush. Grickle went from rival to would-be rescuer and inherited his glaive.
- Bruce: His mount, a naked human with a mustache, who spent most of the fight curled up “on break” before rolling into the Box of Chaos.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She summoned him, plucked his marigolds, and begged him to survive at the end.
- The Shadow King: He agreed about the centaur accessibility, accidentally turned Witch Hunter on with his true face, and crushed the last survivor of the match under a giant black boot.
- The Acolytes: One of them, Divinity D&D, snatched his severed nipple in their mouth. “Food for the Acolytes!”
Memorable Quotes
“This is my grandmother’s glaive. She, like, saved her family from this. Please, I would appreciate it if you could, you know, keep it going. You use it in your future battles, and I wish you all the best. And maybe in the next life, we can do laundry in Texas together.” (S4E6 — The Hunt — Witch Hunter v Grickle)
- “It’s your fault you don’t have centaur accessibility in your building.” (S4E6)
- “When I find someone attractive, flowers bloom on me, and flowers are blooming.” (S4E6)
- “I regret to inform you that I am a centaur.” (S4E6)
- “Is it weird that my singular nipple is hard?” (S4E6)
- “Love story for the ages. Do you feel something?” (S4E6)