S2 Ep19, Battle for the Crown Round 2 - Team Grandmaster (Cosmonius & Locket) v Team Arbiter (Silky Slim & Baron Voltágè)

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Round two of the Battle for the Crown sent the Grandmaster’s team of Cosmonius, a vain centaur monk, and Locket, a vengeful tabaxi archer, against the Arbiter’s pair: the lubricated bugbear Silky Slim and the robot-bodied Baron Voltágè. The fight took place in the silent, rotting land of the corrupted. Along the way it brought a zoo of transformed champions, a mob of heckling children, an exploding puddle of lube and a Kraken. It ended with a death scene nobody saw coming, and a plea for the bloodshed to stop.

The Story

Before the Fight

With the Arbiter one point behind in the tournament standings, the Grandmaster ran through the Dread Fortress in a panic, heels in one hand and her dress in the other, shouting for him. She found the Arbiter lounging sideways on her throne, feet on the table and a cigarette in hand. A card on the back of the throne read “Belongs to the Grandmaster.” She ordered him off, “Feet off, butt off. That is mine until you actually try to earn it,” and complained that she never got his calendar invite. He was having none of it: “I don’t work for you anymore, and I don’t have to send you calendar invites. Manage your own Google shit.”

The Arbiter accused her of letting Gerald help her champions cheat the week before. She said it was a random draw and that his champions died because he picked weak ones. He called it “a fluke… a little performance anxiety,” clapped open a portal, and brought out his team. First came Baron Voltágè, whose soul the Arbiter had placed “in a nice new robot body.” Then came “our original champion, Silky Slim.”

The Grandmaster shoved them aside for a grander entrance. Goblins wheeled in a creaking red-draped curtain, and she pulled it open on “the bad asses of the arena.” The goblins applauded “because they have to.”

The Champions

Cosmonius trotted out like a dressage horse. He was a topless centaur monk from the Feywild, with flowing Fabio hair, a chestnut horse body and a much-admired mustache. He finger-gunned the walls and ceiling, because he always assumes someone is scrying on him. He introduced himself as “the monk who can heal himself by punching himself in the face,” and admitted he hadn’t expected to see the light of day again after his first bout.

Locket kept it short. She was there to stop the Arbiter: “He is a phony. He is a fake, and he deserves to go down. You have no idea what I’ve been through.” The Arbiter agreed they had history, and twisted the knife: “I’m sure a lot of people thought they weren’t going to die. You know, your friend Lyrus, for one, maybe.”

Baron Voltágè was delighted to be back in a body, though it was nothing personal: “the Arbiter just offered dental.” He announced he was rebranding, and instead of cackling he would now make “servitor noises.” He vented steam from the back of his neck. Silky Slim turned out to be a large bugbear in a beret, a vest and briefs, lounging on the biggest pillow in sight with a squirt bottle of hibiscus oil. “Oh, hey, Daddy. I heard you needed some hips and nips.” He squirted oil on Cosmonius’s dry coat. When the Grandmaster offered the Baron some oil, he declined: “I’m a professional, Grandmaster. I lubricate it before entering.”

Into the Land of the Corrupted

The Arbiter’s portal opened onto a cold, damp and utterly silent place. There were no birds and no sound. Barren trees reached almost to the moon, the ground was close to freezing and smelled of rot and death, and boulders ten to fifteen feet high stood among them. “Welcome, dear champions, to the land of the corrupted,” said the Grandmaster. “Nothing grows well here… Perhaps spilling a little blood might bring back my garden.”

Slim opened by pouring a circle of oil around himself. He then challenged “Robo Daddy” to a fight, and the Arbiter had to remind him the Baron was on his team. Slim flew into a rage and stomped around squirting oil into the air. The Baron went back to back with him: “Mr. Slim, you must protect me while I commence my unnecessary startup sequence.” He then shifted from robot to truck with Transformer noises, sped himself up with magic and raised a shield. Cosmonius cantered across the field trailing Feywild pixie dust and blessed himself and Locket. The Grandmaster held up Doug the Pug so he could get sparkles too, and Doug licked at them. Locket scrambled up a boulder, picked Slim as the weaker target, and drew first blood with two arrows. Slim was unbothered: “Silky Slim ain’t no pincushion, lady. He’s luxurious.”

The Zoo and the Children

The first chaos event turned everyone into animals. Locket became a giant bat, Slim a giant badger, and the Baron a robotic walrus. Cosmonius became a giant goat, and his mustache hung off both sides of its face as a goatee. When the Grandmaster mocked his luck, the Arbiter snapped: “You’ve been riding my ass for years about these rolls, and I’m fucking sick of it.” Badger Slim tunneled under the goat and burst up biting. Cosmonius checked, for science, whether he was a fainting goat. He wasn’t. The walrus slapped its own stomach, hauled itself up a ten-foot rock tooth by tooth and gored the bat. Goat Cosmonius rammed the badger onto its back, crying “Cosgotnius!”

Then the Grandmaster ended the zoo, and a crowd of bully children, eight and under, began heckling from the stands. Cosmonius shrugged off half the sting; the others took it full on. The Arbiter approved: “Children can be cruel. That’s why I like them.” The Baron fired back at them, “Well, you’re adopted and your parents were killed in the purges of 1528,” and two of the children passed out. “No mercy for stooges… get juked, you little shits.” Locket shed a small tear: “That hurt my soul.”

Slippery Slim

Slim fumbled drawing his glaive and stabbed himself in the right butt cheek with it. The Baron helped by harpooning a hose into Slim’s buttocks and pumping him full of green growth fluid: “Oh, hello, my name is Silky Slim now. I’m a big boy.” The Arbiter added that he now had an enlarged heart. The Baron then punched Locket with electric gauntlets for sharing his rock. She disagreed: “This is my rock, okay? I do not share.”

Cosmonius tried twice to wrestle Slim and slid off both times, once ending up face-first in Slim’s perm. He then talked the bugbear into a rebrand: “Your name should be Slippery Slim.” Slim loved it. The Baron lightning-bolted the centaur, and Cosmonius got a twitching “charley horse” in one back leg. Then Locket asked a question. The Grandmaster looked it up live: lube is flammable. Locket touched her quiver, lit her arrows in her signature move, and fired a perfect shot. The lube went up like lighter fluid. “How would you do this to me with my lube? You’re hateful. A hateful woman… Curse you, Cat Lady.” The Grandmaster called it “Classic Locket.” Cosmonius told the Arbiter he was backing the wrong horse.

A singed Slim pole-vaulted onto Locket’s rock, chopped her and sprayed oil in her face. Cosmonius ate the one chocolate bar he had saved from his last fight’s piñata, galloped over in a sugar rush, beat Slim with his hooves, and punched healing into Locket’s arm: “Come on, get back on the horse!” Locket brought out a Helm of the Gods she had barely used and prayed for “this one chance to get something right” for herself and her friends Toddleheim and Flynry. Then she filled Slim’s head with dissonant whispers.

The Ground Gives Way

“I think you’re going to lose,” the Grandmaster told the Arbiter. In answer, he snapped his fingers. The rotten ground withered and holes opened around the rocks, and he blew a gust that knocked Locket off her perch. The shaking scrambled the order of battle, and the Grandmaster’s team now went first. Locket fired four arrows at Slim and three hit, the last one because “It’s personal.” He dropped, then swapped his hibiscus oil for a lavender bottle and fought off death, just barely.

Cosmonius grabbed the Baron and galloped straight into a hole with him, then teleported back out in a puff of fey sparkles. The Baron fell thirty feet onto an altar in a ruined cavern below. Its pillars had crumbled, trees grew toward the light, and to one side lay a lake with “not a single ripple.” Up top, Slim retreated into the brush and survived on handfuls of nutrient-rich grave dirt, sniffing his lavender lube to get it down. Below, the Baron touched the still water. A tentacle flashed up and vanished. He jetted out of the hole on thrusters, declared “I was way more happy with my old brand,” returned to screaming, and called lightning down between his enemies.

The Fall

Locket walled off the hole with an updraft that the halfling-sized Baron could not fly through. Underneath all that armor, it turned out, he was a halfling. Cosmonius leapt the pit, rode the wind to the rock behind the Baron and shoved him back in. Then he followed him down on purpose: “You know what hurts more than falling 50 feet? Having a centaur fall 50 feet on top of you.” He landed hooves-first on the Baron’s head with a perfect roll, and finished him off with punches. The Baron lay dying but conscious and spotted four tentacles rising from the lake. He taunted Cosmonius into keeping up the beating so the centaur wouldn’t notice.

The Kraken rose, with row upon row of teeth and black eyes glinting in the moonlight. The Baron played dead and was spared. Cosmonius hopped from rock to rock: “Thank you for the opportunity to train, Grandmaster. Glorious as ever.”

Deaths

Up top, Locket tracked Slim by the new lavender scent. He tried his seductive “hips and nips” dance on her. She was taken (the Grandmaster reminded everyone of Baptiste, a beautiful elven boy with long silver hair) and shot him anyway, apologizing: “It’s nothing personal… Blame the Arbiter for this.” She shouted up at the Arbiter, “Are you happy, Arbiter? I have to do this to this poor creature.” He stared back with no emotion. Her second arrow killed Silky Slim. His last body roll fell flat, a shot of lavender oil rose and trickled down “like doves,” and his lavender ghost floated up to complain: “Hey, Cat Lady, you suck… It’s very personal. You killed me.” Only then did the Arbiter wince: “God damn it, you slippery bastard.”

Below, Cosmonius asked, “What can be more heroic than fighting a fucking Kraken?” and threw himself at it with all six limbs: “Grandmaster, you seem to have a pest problem. I’m dealing with it for you.” He numbed one tentacle. Locket jumped down to help and spent her first moments eating goodberries. Slim’s ghost drifted onto Cosmonius’s back to criticize his split ends and his bad dye job, and Cosmonius begged, “No, no, please don’t tell anyone.” The Kraken summoned a lightning storm, which Cosmonius soaked up and turned back on it. Then it grabbed him and flung him into Locket, and both went down hard.

Then the Baron died. Steam burst from his helmet seam, and a barely formed, slimy baby with a single cybernetic arm crawled out. It dragged itself between the fallen victors and looked up at the sky. “Look what they make us give. As these two bicker over something as trivial as a throne while gambling with our lives… It doesn’t have to be this way.” Cosmonius crawled to it and took its hand: “It’s okay, little one. Your suffering is almost over.” The Baron’s last words were “Why the long face?”

“Good one. Enough. Enough bloodshed.” (Cosmonius)

The Grandmaster drifted down and sent the Kraken back into the deep with a wave. The ground lifted everyone. The fallen stopped at the Acolytes’ level, and the victors rose to the throne beside Doug. “There are two ways to win every battle,” she told The Acolytes. “The first is to survive… The other way to win is to win the hearts of your fans.” She called a vote on who had put on the best show and promised one final round the next week.

Notable Moments

• The Arbiter lounged on the Grandmaster’s throne smoking, and she was mad that she never got his calendar invite.
• Cosmonius checked, of his own free will, whether he had become a fainting goat.
• Locket set Silky Slim’s lube on fire after the Grandmaster confirmed live that lube is flammable.
• Slim survived on grave dirt, sniffing lavender lube to keep it down.
• Cosmonius jumped fifty feet into a pit to land on the Baron’s head.
• The dying Baron crawled out of his armor as a tiny disfigured baby to condemn the war for the throne, and Cosmonius held his hand.

Memorable Quotes

• The Arbiter: “That’s because I don’t work for you anymore, and I don’t have to send you calendar invites. Manage your own Google shit.”
• Silky Slim: “Oh, hey, Daddy. I heard you needed some hips and nips for the situation.”
• Baron Voltágè: “Well, you’re adopted and your parents were killed in the purges of 1528.”
• The Arbiter: “Children can be cruel. That’s why I like them.”
• Silky Slim: “How would you do this to me with my lube? You’re hateful. A hateful woman.”
• Cosmonius: “You know what hurts more than falling 50 feet? Having a centaur fall 50 feet on top of you.”
• Baron Voltágè: “Look what they make us give. As these two bicker over something as trivial as a throne while gambling with our lives.”
• The Grandmaster: “It’s easy to be brave when you’re stupid.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Cosmonius (RobertHartleyGM).

• Who he is: a centaur monk from the Feywild with a chestnut horse body, topless, with Fabio hair and a much-admired mustache. He assumes someone is always scrying on him and finger-guns nobody.
• Previous fight (his own account): he beat “a bloody grandma hitting me with a handbag” and “the old fairy folk” who cast Ashardalon’s Stride. They couldn’t hit him with seven attacks. He kept a chocolate bar from that fight’s piñata.
• Abilities seen:
  • Fey-touched Bless and Misty Step, leaving pixie dust trails.
  • Evasion, Slow Fall, running up vertical walls.
  • Hand of Harm and Hand of Healing (punching heals into an ally).
  • Stunning Strike; Sentinel opportunity attacks.
  • “Equine build” makes climbing hard for him.
• Self-given names: the galloping grappler, the chops buster, the piñata king, the harrowing hooves, the Kraken Combatant (“menu list of names”).
• In this episode:
  • Renamed Slim “Slippery Slim.”
  • Dropped the Baron into the pit twice and landed on him from 50 ft.
  • Fought the Kraken.
  • Held the dying Baron’s hand and called “Enough bloodshed.”
  • Survived and won.
• Ghost Slim says his roots show a bad dye job; he begged him not to tell anyone.

Locket (Miss_Magitek).

• Who she is: a Tabaxi gloom stalker ranger who “specializes in bows.” Her signature move is flame arrows, lit by touching her quiver. She prays to Chantia [?].
• Feelings and ties:
  • She hates the Arbiter: “a phony… a fake… You have no idea what I’ve been through.” They “have a lot of history together.”
  • The Arbiter cites “your friend Lyrus” as someone who died.
  • Her friends include Toddleheim and Flynry [?]; they’ve had “so much bad luck against the Arbiter.”
  • She is “taken” and likes Baptiste, a beautiful elven boy with long silver hair. “Maybe we can practice our stabbing later.”
  • She dislikes being near people and claims rocks.
• Item: owns a Helm of the Gods (a gift, barely used), used to cast Dissonant Whispers.
• In this episode:
  • Mudcat first blood.
  • Ignited Slim’s lube with a nat 20.
  • Killed Silky Slim, apologizing and blaming the Arbiter. Slim’s ghost now haunts her.
  • Survived and won.

Silky Slim / “Slippery Slim” (endlesschad).

• Who he is: a large bugbear in a beret, vest and briefs. He carries hibiscus oil/lube and a spare lavender bottle “in my trunk,” and has permed (not knotted) hair. “Hips and nips.” He calls the Arbiter “Daddy.”
• Status: the Arbiter’s “original champion,” “the late, the great.” Rebranded Slippery Slim by Cosmonius for this fight.
• Abilities: barbarian/fighter multiclass with bear-totem rage, a glaive and Second Wind.
• In this episode:
  • Stabbed his own right butt cheek.
  • Was enlarged via a harpoon to the buttocks.
  • Was set on fire.
  • Ate the corpse-rich dirt of the land of the corrupted to survive.
• Killed by Locket. His ghost is lavender-colored. He now haunts her (“Hey, Cat Lady, you suck”) and heckles Cosmonius.

Baron Voltágè (TalesofPesh).

• Who he is: gave his soul to the Arbiter, who put it in a new robot body. He joined because “the Arbiter just offered dental.” Title: “the Electacult [?] of Electricity, the Servitor of Shock.”
• Body: a halfling inside the armor. He has a helm HUD (advantage on initiative), shoulder harpoon-syringe, electro gauntlets, lightning rod, boot thrusters and a VTOL-style back jet. He no longer has lungs.
• Abilities: artificer shield, Flash of Genius, haste, Enlarge, Lightning Bolt, Fly, Call Lightning, Ashardalon’s Stride.
• Personality: tried rebranding from cackling to “servitor noises,” then went back to screaming.
• In this episode: fell to the altar, woke the Kraken and played dead. Revealed as a slimy, disfigured baby with one cybernetic arm. Dying words condemn the Grandmaster and Arbiter “bicker[ing] over something as trivial as a throne while gambling with our lives.” Last words: “Why the long face?”

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Now insists “I don’t work for you anymore.” Lounged on the GM’s throne smoking.
• Accuses Gerald of cheating last week.
• “I should have just stabbed you in my throne room.”
• Revived the Baron (“I knew I revived you for a reason”).
• Likes cruel children.
• Winced at Slim’s death.
• His event: collapsed the ground into holes and blew the champions with his breath.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Owns the throne (its card reads “Belongs to the Grandmaster”).
• Expected a Google invite from the Arbiter.
• Has goblins wheel a curtain for her champions.
• Doug the pug is with her.
• Calls the arena “my garden.”
• Ran the wild shape, heckling children and Kraken events.
• Ended the fight by sending the Kraken under.
• Holds an Acolyte fan vote.

Doug the pug. Licked Cosmonius’s pixie dust; the victors stand beside him at the throne.

The Kraken. It lives in the still underground lake. It has hundreds of teeth and black beady eyes, uses lightning-storm attacks, and threw Cosmonius at Locket. One tentacle was numbed. The GM sent it back underwater.

The heckling children. Bullies aged eight and under in the crowd. Two passed out from the Baron’s comeback.

Goblins. The GM’s curtain crew, who applaud “because they have to.”

Gerald. Named by the Arbiter as letting the GM’s champions “cheat last week”; per the GM, it was “a random draw.”

Mentioned:

• Lyrus: Locket’s friend; the Arbiter implies he died.
• Toddleheim and Flynry [?]: Locket’s friends.
• Baptiste: an elf Locket likes.
• Chantia [?]: Locket’s god.

Places

• The Dread Fortress, with the Grandmaster’s throne (scene of the opening).
• The land of the corrupted: a dead, silent forest with moon-high barren trees, a cold rotting-smelling ground near freezing, 10–15 ft climbable boulders and dense forest edges. Nothing grows. Blood “might bring back my garden.” The soil is so full of the decayed dead that eating it heals.
• The chamber beneath: collapsed pillars (the cause of the holes), trees reaching up, an altar at the center, and an unnaturally still underground lake where the Kraken lives.
• The Feywild (Cosmonius’s home).

Items

• Silky Slim’s hibiscus oil and lavender lube (flammable).
• Cosmonius’s leftover piñata chocolate bar (heals 2).
• Locket’s Helm of the Gods; her flame arrows; goodberries.
• The Baron’s robot body and its gadgets.
• The grave dirt (heals).

Lore statements

• The Arbiter can place a soul in a new robot body (Baron).
• Battle for the Crown is a points tournament. The Arbiter is down one point going in, and next week is the “final round.” Champions get automatic hero points in tournament style.
• A wild shape chaos event “made a debut at our last tournament.”
• Champions who die rise on pedestals; the victors rise to the throne.

Full Round-by-Round

Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)

Opening: the Dread Fortress

1. 0:00:27 Mudcat frames the night: Battle for the Crown number two. The Arbiter is down one point in the standings. The scene is the Dread Fortress.
2. 0:00:45 Near start time, the Grandmaster runs through the fortress in a panic, heels in one hand and her dress in the other, yelling “Arbiter, where are you?”
3. 0:01:13 She finds the Arbiter on her throne. He sits sideways with his legs over the arm and his feet on the table, smoking a cigarette: “What do you want?”
4. 0:01:27 The GM: “Feet off, butt off. That is mine until you actually try to earn it.” The back of the throne has a card that reads “Belongs to the Grandmaster.” She complains that she didn’t get his Google invite for tonight’s Deathmatch.
5. 0:01:59 The Arbiter: “I don’t work for you anymore, and I don’t have to send you calendar invites. Manage your own Google shit.” He accuses her of “letting Gerald let your champions cheat last week.” She answers that it “was a random draw, not cheating,” and says his champions died because he chose weak ones.
6. 0:02:34 The Arbiter calls the first week “a fluke… a little performance anxiety.” He claps and opens a portal. Baron Voltágè enters: “he gave me his soul and I put it in a nice new robot body.” Then comes “our original champion, Silky Slim.”
7. 0:03:26 The GM shoves Baron and Slim aside for a better entrance. Goblins wheel in a creaking, fancy red-draped curtain, and she pulls it open: “Introducing the bad asses of the arena, Locket, and Cosmonius!” The goblins applaud “because they have to.”
8. 0:04:05 Cosmonius trots out “dressage-like.” He is a topless centaur monk with glorious flowing Fabio hair and a chestnut horse body, and he finger-guns the walls and ceiling because he always assumes somebody is scrying on him. He comes from the Feywild. He gives an over-the-top bow on his front legs and is “the monk who can heal himself by punching himself in the face.” He didn’t expect “to see the light of day again” after his first bout, and is briefly alarmed that he might be fighting three people.
9. 0:05:26 Locket: “I specialize in bows and things. I’m just here to stop the Arbiter.” She points up at him: “He is a phony. He is a fake, and he deserves to go down. You have no idea what I’ve been through.” The Arbiter says they “have had a lot of history together.” He jabs at her: “I’m sure a lot of people thought they weren’t going to die. You know, your friend Lyrus, for one, maybe.”
10. 0:06:27 Baron Voltágè is pleased “to be back in my corporal form, by the whims of the Arbiter.” He tells the GM it’s nothing personal, but “the Arbiter just offered dental.” He introduces himself as “the Electacult [?] of Electricity, the Servitor of Shock,” returning in a new robotic form. He is “rebranding: instead of cackling, I make servitor noises” (“Vroom! Vroom!”) and vents steam from the back of his neck. Cosmonius questions the pronunciation (“Voltage… It’s Barovian”).
11. 0:07:24 The Arbiter introduces “the late, the great, Silky Slim.” Slim is a large bugbear in a beret, a vest and just briefs, lounging on the largest pillow in sight and playing with a little squirt bottle of hibiscus oil: “Oh, hey, Daddy. I heard you needed some hips and nips.” He squirts oil on Cosmonius’s dry coat and tells him to brush it and “get a fairy out here to get you new shoes.” The GM offers the Baron oil. Baron: “I’m a professional, Grandmaster. I lubricate it before entering.”
12. 0:09:00 The GM tells Cosmonius that he and “the beautiful Tabaxi” Locket are a team. Locket looks up at the GM with concern. Cosmonius: “Don’t worry, little tabaxi, I will keep you safe. Cosmonius!” The Arbiter: “Really likes his own name.”

The arena: the land of the corrupted

13. 0:09:41 Through the Arbiter’s portal comes the smell of a damp, dark place. The arena is cool, damp and absent of everything: no birds, no sound. Barren trees reach almost to the moon, and cold roots dig into the dirt. It is a rock garden of 10–15 ft boulders with plenty of handholds. The ground smells like death, chilly to the point of icing over, mixed with rot, and dense forest lines the edges. The GM: “Welcome, dear champions, to the land of the corrupted. Nothing grows well here… Perhaps spilling a little blood might bring back my garden.” She tells Locket and Cosmonius in particular to fight well, then flies up.
14. 0:11:51 “Arbiter, get them situated.” “I don’t work for you anymore.” “It’s your job, just do it.” The Arbiter: “I want a dirty fight. I want you to get lubed up.” He compliments Cosmonius’s mustache: “maybe after you die, I’ll keep it for myself.” Placement is by d4. Locket ends up “all the way up in the corner.” Cosmonius: “I’m always where I’m meant to be.”
15. 0:13:41 The Baron’s heads-up display fires up, and his helm gives him advantage on initiative. The order is Slim, Baron, Cosmonius, Locket. The GM says her team is “just polite.” Cosmonius boasts that last time the Arbiter gave his opponent a shield and they still “couldn’t hit me with… seven different attacks.” Arbiter: “I’m not going to take insults from a man who couldn’t even beat up a grandmother.” Cosmonius: “I wouldn’t want to take insults from a man who would willingly beat up a grandmother.”

Round 1

16. 0:14:53 Slim smells the death in the dirt and pours a circle of hibiscus oil around himself. He rolls a 3 on perception: “Yes, that’s a rock.” He walks to the center and calls out “Robo Daddy” to the Baron as if challenging him. The Arbiter has to remind him the Baron is his teammate (“Don’t embarrass me”); Slim was used to fighting one-on-one. To the enemy: “Horse and man and fatal feline friend, you won’t like me when I get angry.” He rages, stomping around and squirting oil in the air. GM: “Try to keep more of your liquids inside you.” Arbiter: “You can’t tell a man what to do with his liquids.”
17. 0:17:16 The Baron goes back-to-back with Slim: “Mr. Slim, you must protect me while I commence my unnecessary startup sequence.” He shifts between forms (a robot, then a truck) making Transformer noises, casts haste on himself, and raises his artificer shield for temporary HP. Slim: “You’re just like a Rubik’s Cube. I got rid of that after five minutes.”
18. 0:18:32 Cosmonius warms up with dressage and “old-timey pugilism,” then canters 60 ft, leaving a trail of Feywild pixie dust. The dust catches up and sticks to his oiled chest. Some drifts to Locket and to the GM as he casts Bless (Fey Touched) on himself and Locket. The GM holds up Doug the pug to get sparkles too, and Doug licks at it. Cosmonius preens instead of taking a bonus action: “In comes the galloping grappler.”
19. 0:20:27 Locket climbs the boulder in front of her with cat-like agility and surveys the field on all fours. She judges Silky Slim the weaker of the two and Hunter’s Marks him: “So now I have you in my sights… First blood.” Two longbow arrows hit Slim. His rage blunts them. Slim: “Silky Slim ain’t no pincushion, lady. He’s luxurious.” GM: “Locket, pin him down and we’ll hang him to the wall. Beautiful fur coat up there.”

Chaos event: everybody wild shapes (0:23:23)

20. Cosmonius rolls the d20 (16 × 2 = 32). The event “made a debut at our last tournament”: everybody wild shapes for two rounds (d10 for the animal). Locket becomes a giant bat (“At least I can fly”). Slim becomes a giant badger. Baron Voltágè becomes a walrus (a robotic one). Cosmonius becomes a giant goat. He’d hoped for a horse (“Not a million miles away”), and his mustache becomes a goatee that hangs off both sides of the goat’s face. The Arbiter notes they are technically polymorphed: “We call it wild-shaped for fun.”
21. 0:26:24 The Arbiter’s end-of-round roll is a 7. GM: “Yeah, that’s embarrassing.” Arbiter: “You’ve been riding my ass for years about these rolls, and I’m fucking sick of it.” GM: “One of these days you’re supposed to get better.” Arbiter: “I should have just stabbed you in my throne room.”

Round 2: the zoo

22. 0:26:59 Badger Slim hates that his fur is dry and finds he has no pockets. (Animals can talk here: “Magic.”) He burrows under Cosmonius and bursts out of the ground, landing a bite and a claw. Cosmonius voluntarily rolls to see whether he’s a fainting goat. He isn’t: he jumps aside, startled, but doesn’t seize up.
23. 0:29:47 Robo walrus Baron flails, slaps his own stomach, hobbles to a rock and flops against it (“you’re in big trouble when I get up there”). A strength roll of 26 gets him up the 10 ft rock, digging in his walrus teeth inch by inch. In a “turbo walrus” frenzy of tusks, one of two hasted attacks hits bat Locket, who flutters around sporadically.
24. 0:32:22 Goat Cosmonius steps away from the badger, drawing an attack of opportunity that misses, then rears up: “Cosgotnius!” He loses Bless concentration to the badger’s strikes: “First time it was against a bloody grandma hitting me with a handbag, and now it’s against a badger strike… I don’t feel I’m very blessed by the Fae after all.” His charging ram knocks the badger prone (“Four claws in the air now”). “Goats have no bonus action.”
25. 0:34:44 Bat Locket swoops at the walrus’s face and bites it.

Chaos event: the heckling children (0:35:50)

26. The GM ends the zoo: “Enough with the zoo… Say goodbye to your walruses, badgers, goats, and bats.” Everyone returns to normal shape. Baron rolls for the next event.
27. 0:36:45 From high in the crowd, a group of bully children, eight and younger, heckle the champions: “You suck! Your name is stupid! I can hit harder than you!” It’s a Wisdom save or psychic damage. Arbiter: “Children can be cruel. That’s why I like them.” Cosmonius saves for half. Locket, the Baron and Slim fail.
28. 0:38:03 The Baron claps back (Flash of Genius): “Well, you’re adopted and your parents were killed in the purges of 1528.” The kids fail their own save and take psychic damage; two of them pass out. GM: “Congratulations on harming small children.” Baron: “No mercy for stooges… get juked, you little shits.” Arbiter: “That’s the way a real champion acts.”
29. 0:39:00 The children deal 19 (10 on a save). Locket sheds a small tear: “That hurt my soul.” The GM reads Acolyte-submitted insults as the children: “My little sister hits harder than you,” “You have more handle on your face than I do on my bike,” “Is that a mustache or a caterpillar that needs a resting spot?”

Round 3

30. 0:40:21 Slim: “I’m tired of your ass, show pony. Let me show you what I can do here with my pony stick.” He rolls a nat 1 drawing his glaive and stabs himself in the right butt cheek (“That paper cut hurts”). His next swing misses Cosmonius (“Freaking monks”). He re-lubes: “I can’t do this while I’m dry.” The kids said his hair was knotted. “It’s not knotted. It’s permed.” GM: “I feel like Neosporin would be much more effective than lube.” Slim: “Are you a doctor?”
31. 0:42:15 The Baron fires a hose from a port on his shoulder like a harpoon into Silky Slim’s buttocks and plunges green fluid in: Enlarge. Slim: “Oh, hello, my name is Silky Slim now. I’m a big boy.” GM, for the Acolytes: yes, his butt is larger too. Arbiter: “He also now has an enlarged heart.” Slim: “My life expectancy has gone in half.” The Baron climbs back up his rock (“a robot built for climbing… must be a new module”).
32. 0:44:14 Baron: “I hope you enjoyed the blubber action, but the fun’s over now and the gloves are coming off, or rather, coming on.” He charges his electro gauntlets and punches Locket, who shares his rock, for thunder damage. Locket: “This is my rock, okay? I do not share… I don’t like to be near people. Robots, I guess.” He re-raises his artificer shield, which the kids’ insults had drained.
33. 0:45:30 Cosmonius turns his back toward Slim: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but hooves will hurt much longer,” and back-kicks him (“wapow”). Both hooves land, halved by the rage, and the left heel slides off the oiled body. “And now for the old one two!” He tries twice to grapple Slim. The first try fails, and he ends up face-first in Slim’s perm curls with a mouthful of chest. On the second (“let’s turn this into a wrestling match between two oiled up boys”) Slim snakes free again: “Too slick!… Silky Snake.” Slim: “We all have performance issues.” Cosmonius: “You still want to be able to feel some of the friction.” Slim: “It’s never too much… It’s like a slipper slide wherever I’m at.”
34. 0:49:17 Locket wants the Baron off her rock and casts Fear: a phantasmal image of her claw scratching down his robotic arm with an ear-splitting screech. Underneath all his armor the Baron is actually a halfling, which gives him advantage, and he resists. Arbiter: “I knew I revived you for a reason.” The 30 ft cone doesn’t reach Slim. Locket climbs down, drawing the Baron’s attack of opportunity (“I am king of the rock”; the result isn’t stated). She scrambles up the other, 15 ft rock like a cat on a scratching post: one foot slips in a little pebble slide, but she makes it.
35. 0:53:19 The Arbiter’s end-of-round roll is 11.

Round 4: Slippery Slim

36. 0:53:35 Slim pretends to help Cosmonius up, then shoves him. Cosmonius: “Your name should be Slippery Slim.” Cosmonius rolls a nat 20 on persuasion against Slim’s insight of 7, and Slim accepts the rebrand: “Yeah, I like the alliteration, Slippery Slim.” Cosmonius: “Trust me, I know marketing.” Arbiter: “Can you just hit him already?” The shoulder-check misses. Slim pirouettes and swings his glaive at Cosmonius’s haunch, and Cosmonius dressage-hops over it. Slim: “I don’t get how I keep missing the broad side of your ass.” He oils himself again until he’s “pearlescent” in the moonlight.
37. 0:57:19 The Baron watches his ally and the centaur writhing in oil. He channels electricity, forgets his rebrand and starts screaming again (“Sorry”), and casts Lightning Bolt from his lightning rod at Cosmonius (“That’s how you use a rod”). Cosmonius fails (“harder when you have more legs to move”), and Evasion halves it. One back leg twitches: “I feel like I’ve got a charley horse.” The Baron then glares at Locket from the edge of his rock: “The audacity for you to challenge my supremacy.” Intimidation vs insight leaves Locket unsure: “Are they flirty eyes? Are they angry eyes?… Like, are you winking?”
38. 1:04:24 Locket asks whether oil is flammable, then lube. The GM googles “is lube flammable” live: “It may explode, catch fire. Yes.” In her signature move, she touches her quiver and her arrows ignite (Flame Arrows), then fires at Slim. If she missed, she figured it would hit the oil on the ground. It’s a nat 20. Cosmonius: “You’re backing the wrong horse, Arbiter.” The lube goes up like lighter fluid. Slim: “How would you do this to me with my lube? You’re hateful. A hateful woman… Curse you, Cat Lady. I will get you.” His bear totem halves the damage. It now smells of hibiscus everywhere, and the fire has burned off all his oil and dried out his fur. Locket looks down in shock that it worked. GM: “Classic Locket.”
39. 1:08:27 Break: “let these actions just percolate.” Arbiter: “let Slim lube back up.” (Cut from the mp3.)

Round 5

41. 1:08:49 “Not sure where the music went, but we’re here.” Slim was “on fire… not in a good way.” GM: “In the land of corrupted, time is a made up thing.”
42. 1:10:05 Slim (“She dried my hair”) sprints and pole-vaults off his glaive onto Locket’s rock, adding gravity damage to a glaive chop on her head. Both hits land. GM: “Don’t be afraid of him. He’s got dry hair. Probably has dandruff too.” Slim: “I comb. I brush. I put oil in there… You don’t know me.” Arbiter: “She’s having a rough time. She’s about to lose her kingdom.” Cosmonius: “Your kingdom, your kingdom, your kingdom for a horse.” Slim then sprays oil in Locket’s face. She fails the Dex save and is covered: “It smells nice. It’s a lot.”
43. 1:13:04 The Baron raises his gauntlets to the sky, calls lightning down into them, and throws a haymaker at Cosmonius: “You dented my armor, you know how much that costs to get buffed out?” (The hit isn’t stated.) Cosmonius: “Put your dukes up. Let’s finish this like men.” GM: “Neither of you are really human.” “Men adjacent.” He casts Ashardalon’s Stride, with lightning crackling from thrusters on his boots. Cosmonius notes “the old fairy folk that I defeated last time cast the same thing.” The Baron leaps off the rock, denies the opportunity attack (Cosmonius takes fire damage), and climbs up beside Slim: “Come, Mr. Slim, back to back just like in the films.”
44. 1:15:11 The GM reminds everyone that in tournament style every champion already has a hero point from the Arbiter, the GM and the Acolytes.
45. 1:15:44 Cosmonius: “the galloping grappler didn’t work, but the chops buster gave you the old one two… do you know why they also call me the piñata king?” He pulls from his hand wraps the one chocolate bar he didn’t eat from the last fight’s piñata and eats it messily, chocolate all around his face (2 HP; “Chocolate heals the soul”). On the sugar rush he gallops around the rock to Slim (“Let me put that out… stamp the fire out on your otherwise glorious fur”). Two halved hoof hits. Then a flurry nat 20 with Hand of Harm: “Let me show you why they call me the harrowing hooves… The old chops buster.” Then he punches healing into Locket’s arm (Hand of Healing), pat-slapping it like a bodybuilder hyping a friend: “Come on, get back on the horse!”
46. 1:20:24 Locket doesn’t dare use her fire arrows while covered in lube. She takes out a Helm of the Gods, “received as a gift” not long ago and never used, or used once without luck. She prays to Chantia [Chauntea?], her god: “This could be it. We’ve had so much bad luck against the Arbiter in the past. Me and my friends, Toddleheim, Flynry [?], just give us this one chance to get something right.” She casts Dissonant Whispers on Slim. The Baron throws a crackling electric shield over Slim like a helmet (Flash of Genius), “Back to back!”, and Slim takes half. GM: “You look like you need a new perm.” Slim: “How dare you?” Locket swaps Flame Arrows back to Hunter’s Mark on Slim.

The Arbiter’s event: the ground gives way (1:24:28)

47. GM: “I think you’re going to lose.” Arbiter: “I believe in Slim… The Baron’s got some tricks up his sleeves, if he was wearing sleeves.” His 9 triggers the Arbiter’s event. He snaps his fingers, the decaying ground withers and falls away, and holes open all around the rocks. Then he blows a gust of wind to knock them off (GM: “You’re always full of hot air”). Only Locket is blown off. “You said you don’t want to be in melee, right?” She lands on all fours like a cat but takes 2 fall damage: “Thanks, Arbiter.”
48. 1:26:46 The shaking jumbles everything, so initiative is rerolled. Locket 24, Cosmonius 18, Slim 14, Baron 8. “The order has completely flipped.” Cosmonius: “We told you, Arbiter, we were just letting them get the head start.”

New round 1

49. 1:27:53 Locket uses Dread Ambusher for an extra attack (she forgot it at the last reroll). After a VTT glitch (“Everyone has invis… Theater of the mind, baby!”), she steps back for a better angle. Of three arrows at Slim, two hit. She spends her hero point on a fourth: “It’s personal.” It hits, and Slim drops to 0, dying but conscious. The table checks whether Relentless Rage applies: it needs 11 Barbarian levels, and “that multi-class bites you in the ass.”
50. 1:33:49 Slim’s hibiscus bottle rolls from his hand, and he pulls lavender lube from his trunk and takes a large scoop. With his hero point he uses Second Wind to “fight off death, just barely.”
51. 1:34:50 Cosmonius steps to catch Locket, sees she’s fine, and keeps his momentum. “Living up to my name as the Galloping Grappler,” he grapples the Baron, carries him off the rock (monk slow fall) and drags him to a hole. The Baron’s Sentinel opportunity attack misses (“I can’t roll for shit”). Rather than throw him, Cosmonius gallops into the hole holding him, “like the scene from Lord of the Rings,” then Misty Steps back to the top in a burst of fey sparkles. Locket: “Cosmo, you scared me. I thought I just lost my teammates.”
52. 1:37:29 The Baron falls 30 ft and lands smack in the middle of an altar in a chasm below. Cosmonius: “at least we’ve split them up, partner.” GM: “Just stay from above and throw rocks down at him.” Locket: “I prefer the high ground.”
53. 1:39:23 The cavern (Caustic Phoenix): broken stones and once-tall pillars that held up the ceiling. Their crumbling is why the holes caved in. Trees grow below, light comes only through the holes, and to one side lies water that is unnaturally calm: “Not a single ripple.”
54. 1:40:14 (The Arbiter fixes the order: it’s Slim’s turn.) Slim retreats (“nope, enough of this, bye”) and searches for help. The GM rules that because so much has decayed into the soil, it’s full of nutrients, so eating it could help. He holds his lavender lube to his nose and shovels handfuls of dirt into his mouth: dry ash and dust, but it heals him. Cosmonius: “the sound of scraping… scraping the bottom of a barrel.” Caustic Phoenix: “Listen, we’ve all been there as DMs.” Arbiter: “One of those children that were raised by wolves.” He hides in the brush “Homer Simpson style,” and his burn scarring blends with the scorched trees.
55. 1:43:38 The Baron, below, pushes himself up coughing: “I don’t have lungs anymore.” Parched, he dips a hand in the still lake. Bubbles, a gurgling growl and a long tentacle flash up and vanish. “I was hoping for buffing magic, but no.” The back of his armor bursts open like a VTOL jet as he casts Fly, and he rises from the hole behind Cosmonius and Locket, crackling with lightning, to metal music. Cosmonius: “Looks like he won’t be a problem for us anymore.” He lands on the southwest outcrop.
56. 1:46:20 Baron: “I was way more happy with my old brand. We’re going back to it. Are you ready for the screaming?” Fists to the clouds: “I channel the lightning!” He drops Call Lightning between Cosmonius and Locket. Locket rolls a nat 20 and takes nothing; Cosmonius halves it with Evasion: “I’m shocked that you managed to get out of that pit so quickly.” The Baron used his hero point to cast two spells this turn and re-raises his artificer shield.

New round 2

57. 1:49:22 Locket (“You are annoying”) casts Wind Wall horizontally across the hole, an updraft wall that small flying creatures can’t pass, and the Baron is a halfling. He takes half and keeps concentration with another Flash of Genius (“Big brain time”). GM: “I bet you were the nerd who got straight A’s.”
58. 1:52:44 Cosmonius, being large, can cross the wall. He takes a run-up and leaps the pit dressage-style; he comes up short, but the wind wall lifts him onto the rock behind the Baron. GM: “We can’t seem to hit him, so let’s let gravity do all the work.” He shoves the Baron into the wall and back into the hole (“I didn’t give you permission to come back up yet”). The Baron’s Fly had ended when he cast Call Lightning, so the fall is longer: “Not again!”
59. 1:55:17 Cosmonius: “You know what hurts more than falling 50 feet? Having a centaur fall 50 feet on top of you.” He jumps in without slow fall and lands hooves-first on the prone Baron’s head (“Forget throwing rocks, throw yourself!”). It’s a nat 20 for 71 total, and Cosmonius takes 10 himself. “I’m so sorry, Voltage… Keep breathing.” The Baron gives “one consistent scream all the way down and then he ran out of air.”
60. 1:58:31 Something cracks beneath the hooves: “Sorry, you didn’t like it when I put a dent in your armor, did you? Let me try and pop that back out for you.” Two more punches with Hand of Harm put the Baron at exactly 0. Already committed, Cosmonius delivers a coup de grace: two failed death saves.

Chaos event: the Kraken (2:01:12)

61. The Baron, dying but conscious, looks at the water (investigation 20). Four tentacles silently rise, dripping, arching 5 to 20 ft. The Acolytes “timed it perfectly.” The Baron taunts Cosmonius into continuing to pummel him so he won’t notice, and Cosmonius deliberately fails his perception. Cosmonius: “We can count one down. I think we’re guaranteed to win this thing.”
62. 2:03:02 “With that bold confidence statement,” the Kraken’s head surfaces: hundreds of teeth, row after row, and black beady eyes glowing in the moonlight. Its tentacles beat the ground. The downed Baron plays dead (a performance roll of 17) and is spared. Cosmonius uses Evasion to hop dressage-style across rocks jutting from the ground at angles: “Thank you for the opportunity to train, Grandmaster. Glorious as ever.”
63. 2:05:22 Slim, topside, sneaks (“Sneaky Slim”) around the rocks. Locket hears him shifting and smells the new lavender scent over the hibiscus: “Not forgotten about you, Silky Slim.” He eats more grave dirt (Hunger Games, “Tom Hanks in Castaway”): “This ain’t a game, this is my life. I’m gonna eat this dirt.” He dashes, and Locket spots him glinting in the moonlight. His rage has run out, and he half-suspects she saw him (“maybe, maybe not”).
64. 2:09:29 The Baron rolls a death save success. He lies watching Cosmonius gallop across the rocks, hot-footing and trailing pixie dust, “with a slowly growing white light above him.” “Majestic. They should name a vehicle after him… this is the Nissan Cosmonius.” GM: “Five-star safety rating.” Cosmonius: “The Nissan Cosmonius can fall off of a 50-foot cliff and not damage itself.”

New round 3: deaths

65. 2:11:17 Locket calls down the hole: “Good work, Cosmo. I’ll take the other one.” She prowls around the corner like a cat stalking prey (“Found ya”) and Hunter’s Marks Slim.
66. 2:12:03 Slim: “Whoa, whoa… It’s all on the hips, the nips.” He does his seductive “hips and nips” dance, body-rolling and squirting lube: “Now watch the hips. Now watch the nips.” Arbiter: “Well, it’s no Baptiste.” Locket: “I’m taken. You’re not really her type.” Then “I only like elves” (speaker uncertain). The GM reminds her of Baptiste, “beautiful elven boy with long silver hair.” Arbiter, as the voice in Locket’s head: “Maybe we can practice our stabbing later.” Locket ignores the dance.
67. 2:13:38 The first arrow hits. Slim: “Oh, I thought we had something.” Locket: “It’s nothing personal… Blame the Arbiter for this… I don’t want to kill anybody else. I’m sorry.” Slim: “You’re strong, independent. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” (GM: “that’s a strategy I’ve never tried before.”) Locket yells up: “Are you happy, Arbiter? I have to do this to this poor creature.” The Arbiter stares at her with no emotion. “You chose the wrong side.” The second arrow kills Silky Slim.
68. 2:15:32 Slim’s death: slow-motion body rolls until the last one falls flat, and the camera doesn’t move. A shot of lavender oil goes up and trickles down “John Woo style, like doves.” The GM: the lavender scent takes on a purple hue, and Slim’s astral, ghostly self rises, lavender-colored, able only to watch and comment. His first words as a ghost: “Hey, Cat Lady, you suck… She said it wasn’t personal. It’s very personal. You killed me.” He resolves to haunt her. The Arbiter, emotionless at Locket, winces at Slim’s death: “God damn it, you slippery bastard.”
69. 2:17:12 Cosmonius: “There’s something large cracking the stonework down here. I better deal with that.” He spends his hero point: “What can be more heroic than fighting a fucking Kraken?” He launches himself at the Kraken’s face, kicking and punching with all six limbs. The GM grants triple advantage on two attacks (“I’ve always admired you, Grandmaster”). A nat 20 hoof, more hits and Hand of Harm follow: “Grandmaster, you seem to have a pest problem. I’m dealing with it for you.” The Kraken cries out. (GM: “no one’s ever heard it… Underwater, it sounds much better.”) He tries Stunning Strike on every hit, knowing it’s hopeless. One tentacle goes numb and lies limp. “He’s not the smartest… but he’s brave.” GM: “It’s easy to be brave when you’re stupid.”
70. 2:12:12–2:22:51 The Baron’s next death save succeeds (two successes, two failures).
71. 2:22:51 Locket hears the commotion, sees Slim is gone for good, and jumps down the hole, taking fall damage and landing prone. She gets up, sees the Kraken (“Is this part of the match? Okay, I guess I’ll help”) and spends her whole turn eating goodberries. GM: “As you see your partner panicking, you’re stuffing your mouth… Time for a snack.” Cosmonius adds a name to his list: “the Kraken Combatant.”
72. 2:25:00 Ghost Slim floats down onto Cosmonius’s back: “Your mane is so dry… it looks like it’s split ends… I could help you, you didn’t want to listen.” The distraction gives Cosmonius disadvantage.
73. 2:25:38 The Kraken tentacles Cosmonius, then calls a lightning storm (GM: “How Voltage of it”). Locket takes half. Cosmonius rolls a nat 20 and, with Evasion, absorbs the storm and channels it back: his hits deal extra lightning to the Kraken.
74. 2:27:49 Cosmonius: “My hair is as glorious as ever!” He flicks it back and lands a hoof plus lightning. Slim whispers: “I see your roots, and I can tell that’s a bad dye job.” Cosmonius: “No, no, please don’t tell anyone.” Then a nat 1 (“It had to regress to the mean”). The Kraken grabs Cosmonius and flings him at Locket, and both are hurt badly. She’s slammed prone. GM: “As we’ve all learned, horses are really good weapons.” Robert notes that Cosmonius’s last game ended in essentially a draw by mutual knockout, and fears a repeat.
75. 2:30:42 The Baron’s final death save fails. Steam bursts from the seam between his helmet and body, and a barely formed, slimy, disfigured baby with a single cybernetic arm crawls out. It drags itself across the rubble to lie between the prone Cosmonius and Locket, rolls onto its back, and looks up through the holes at the sky: “Look what they make us give. As these two bicker over something as trivial as a throne while gambling with our lives… It doesn’t have to be this way.” It beckons Cosmonius closer with little grunts. Cosmonius crawls over on bowed front legs: “It’s okay, little one. Your suffering is almost over,” and takes its hand. The Baron whispers his last words: “Why the long face?” Cosmonius: “It doesn’t really work because I don’t have a horse’s face… Good one. Enough. Enough bloodshed.”

Ending

76. 2:33:49 The Grandmaster drifts down through one of the holes and, with a wave, sends the Kraken back deep underwater. The ground under the three rises up through the first layer, and Silky (“Slippery,” Cosmonius corrects) Slim’s body rises too. Baron Voltágè’s and Slippery Slim’s pedestals stop at the Acolytes’ level. The victors rise higher, to the throne itself, beside Doug the Pug.
77. 2:34:38 GM: “Acolytes, yet again, another death. But well fought. Your two champions on behalf of the Grandmaster have shed blood.” The crowd cheers for Cosmonius and Locket with banners and streamers. “There are two ways to win every battle. The first is to survive… The other way to win is to win the hearts of your fans.” The Acolytes vote by chat link on who put on the best show: “Whose name will echo from your own lips?”
78. 2:36:13 “We will see you all next week for another and final round of D20 Deathmatch. Welcome and good night.”