A catfish-man in a trench coat and a finger-collecting goliath were thrown into The Isolated Keep, the Grandmaster’s secret arena, which is stowed away from time and space and riddled with portals. The fight did not stay one-on-one for long. Thanks to a time portal, Mudcat Mahomes ended up fighting three different versions of Thunk, one of them with eight arms, while dodging a pet dinosaur and a blood elemental named Hamster. It is also the match where a champion shot the Grandmaster. It ended with the two survivors arranging to watch Top Gun together.
The Story
Before the Fight
The evening opened with the Grandmaster in a poor mood about the last show. The Arbiter’s previous entertainment, she complained, “included a pig, a spider, and a small little boy who really did not belong here at all.” The boy had just cried. She added that she had not known pigs had “that particular power.” The Arbiter was unmoved: “They bled, didn’t they?” Tonight, he promised, he had brought “fine specimen… of nice breeding stock even.” The Grandmaster pointed out that she had no breeding facility, because she’d “already invested a lot in the arena.”
Then the Champions arrived. Thunk, a goliath monk, explained that he had been picking berries on his mountain before he was taken, and that he spent a lot of time up there destroying things. He wore a collection of necklaces made from the fingers of everyone he had killed, and he had more than he could count, “because Thunk can’t [count] very well.” The Grandmaster immediately wanted a necklace like that.
Mudcat Mahomes was a catfish-man in a trench coat with nothing underneath and a “m’lady fedora.” He had one goal: “I guess I’m going to have to kick somebody’s ass to get back to Kansas City, because I got some subpar barbecue to eat.” He sized up the Arbiter’s stripy shirt, decided he looked like a roller-derby referee, and asked whether he was the Grandmaster’s best friend. The Arbiter said yes. The Grandmaster corrected him at once: “I don’t pay my best friends. He is not a friend. You are employed by me.” The Arbiter replied that he’d never filled out a W-2 and that she didn’t understand “the complexities of our relationship.”
Into the Isolated Keep
The arena was a circular platform ringed by walls about fifteen feet high, with a huge stone table in the middle and four portals that, the Arbiter said, granted “boons and bonuses, depending how lucky you are.” He warned that “there’s more than one thing that may bite,” and offered a proverb of his own: “You can lead a horse to a portal, but you can’t make him travel through interdimensional space.” He mentioned that he was writing his memoirs.
The Arbiter led the people’s traditional anthem, taking the second verse “down a minor third.” The Grandmaster then flew up to an ornate chair on a high perch. The Acolytes filled a ring of bleachers, “getting wasted and slamming dollar hot dogs,” and she gave the champions her terms:
The Grandmaster: “Give me a fight. I want bones broken and I want blood spilt. If not, I shall keep you both here forever.”
First Blood, and the Grandmaster’s Arm
Mudcat began with good manners. He folded his trench coat neatly “like daddy told me,” set his hat on top, and strung his bow, standing in his catfish birthday suit. His first magic arrow went badly wrong, but the next two hit Thunk. He then studied the time portal, a swirl of stars, clocks spinning both ways, and worlds being made and unmade.
The portals had a catch. Stepping into one seemed to do nothing, but you came out of a random portal and felt its effect as you left. The fire portal burned, the blood portal (its floor wriggling with bodies made of blood) withered the flesh, the green nature portal healed, and the time portal scrambled time. “If you thought you could escape my map that easily,” the Grandmaster said, “you’re a fool.”
The Arbiter mocked the name “Mudcat” and called him “an edgelord.” The Grandmaster, though, respected a man who folds his clothes. Mudcat protested that the name wasn’t about being a catfish: “I think I’m nimble like a cat.” Then he called the Grandmaster “Toots,” and the Arbiter reminded him that “this is an arena of death and inclusivity.”
Thunk flexed the arrows out of his skin (“Thunk never miss leg day”), charged, and punched Mudcat in the gut hard enough to crack ribs. Mudcat replied by conjuring a floating “L” in Thunk’s face and firing a weakening arrow. The Grandmaster rewound time so Thunk could try to catch it again, and this time he plucked it perfectly from the air. Except he didn’t, because Mudcat curved the arrow around Thunk and into the Grandmaster’s arm. She pulled it out and snapped it, unharmed: “Your little sticks don’t hurt me, nor do your words… You’re like a little mouse stuck in a cage here.” Mudcat said he’d eaten a mouse before and found it overrated. So she had the Arbiter float a giant rat in front of him and ordered, “Eat the rat.” He swallowed it whole like a pelican, and it scratched his throat on the way down.
Portals and Punches
Thunk was outraged on the Grandmaster’s behalf: “You should not have shot at lady.” Whole sections of the crowd swooned and began chanting “Thunk!” Then he slipped on the wet floor, twice, and Mudcat conjured a dunce cap with an L on it. When Mudcat broke into air guitar, the Grandmaster (“I am a fan of musicians”) blessed him for a round, and the chant switched to “Mudcat.” He walked through the green portal to heal, climbed a rock, and loosed six arrows into the fallen goliath in a single burst.
He then tried to win her over properly, shouting “This is what you wanted! I gave you what you wanted!” She was not convinced: “you’re coming up a little lacking as a person.” Thunk drank the rain, sprang up with a 42-inch vertical leap, punched Mudcat in the shin, grabbed low (“That’s not my whisker!”) and rained punches between Mudcat’s legs. The Grandmaster called for Mudcat to hold up against a grab to the balls. Thunk couldn’t find his balls, because “they were too small.”
A soft voice then sang from all four portals at once. It entranced both fighters and drew them into the nature portal, and both came out of the fire portal burning. Mudcat used his fish slime to fling himself onto the wall and shot Thunk down from there. Thunk bled out from what looked like forty-five arrow holes.
Two-for-One on Fish Night
Then a chill wind blew, and the time portal’s clocks stopped and ran backwards. Out walked a past Mudcat Mahomes and a younger Thunk. “I brought you to the Isolated Keep because I can bring as many versions of you back as I want,” the Grandmaster explained. The Arbiter was delighted: “We don’t bow to the constraints of time. And so now, Mudcat Mahomes, it’s a two-for-one special on fish night!” Everyone took a popcorn break. The Grandmaster spat her kernels over the side, noting that the Goblins would pick them up.
Mudcat banished his past self with obvious satisfaction (“I’ve been waiting to do this my whole life”) and shot young Thunk dead. The Grandmaster was furious that a “small child” had been brought in and promised to put it in the Arbiter’s quarterly review. Mudcat was too busy celebrating to notice: “That’s right, bitches! You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”
Octothunk
The Grandmaster wanted a better Thunk. Specifically, she wanted “Thunk, just from a different timeline… I want Thunk the Octopus.” Octothunk arrived with eight arms and twice the punches. He hurled the giant stone table at Mudcat and knocked holes in the Grandmaster’s new wall (“I just put it up last month… I paid for some really good contractors”). She announced she would bill Thunk for it. Mudcat mooned him.
The past Mudcat then returned from banishment and drew on Thunk. He couldn’t bring himself to shoot. Instead he snapped his bow over his knee and jumped back into the time portal. Whatever happened to him in that banishment, the verdict from ringside was clear: “That boy needs therapy.”
Monsters from the Portals
Next the portals produced monsters: a dryad from the green portal, a fire snake from the fire portal, and a blood elemental from the blood portal. The Grandmaster named the elemental “Hamster” (“I’ve been wanting to name something hamster for a while”), or Stir for short, and promised the Arbiter a Christmas bonus. Hamster went straight for the dryad.
Mudcat proposed a truce: “Let’s team up. We can make a truce. I don’t have to kill you a third time.” Thunk agreed, while privately planning to betray him. Mudcat shot the fire snake through the eye, sending it back into its portal, and then hit Hamster, who turned to stare at him with tiny black hamster eyes. He tried a triple Lindy over the wall and was flung straight back through the time portal, since everyone knows you can’t jump out of the tower. Octothunk then broke the truce with eight-armed punches between Mudcat’s legs. A small, loyal section of the crowd pelted Thunk with crushed beer cans as “medals.”
When Mudcat taunted her, the Grandmaster revealed she had been “saving a little pet of mine.” Her dinosaur, Helena, clicking and full of sharp carnivore teeth, came through the time portal, bit Mudcat, and dragged him into it before spitting him out elsewhere. Meanwhile Hamster drained the dryad to dust. When Hamster was about to take a free swing at Thunk, the Grandmaster stopped it, scoffing at the idea of rules: “In my game, in my arena, it’s my rules and whatever they feel like at that time.”
The After-Party
Then she made an offer. If both survived to the end of the eighth round, she would spare them and let them return to “your picking of berries and little pond.” Hamster took the shape of a blood hamster and slammed Thunk, and Mudcat banished it, then dabbed. The Grandmaster told him not to dab. The crowd loved it, and also thought “Hamster” was a stupid name. Octothunk then dabbed with all eight arms, so the Grandmaster removed six of them: “Don’t you ever dab here again.”
By the end the two survivors had gone soft on each other. “You’ve killed me before,” Thunk said. “You deserve to go home.” Mudcat invited him back to his three-level townhome with a two-car garage and an easy chair, promising a thirty-pack of Budweiser and a choice of Top Gun or The Program unedited on VHS. Thunk would bring Old English, and there would be pork burgers and maybe beer mac and cheese.
The Grandmaster froze time. Moved by “this budding romance,” she declared that “as my heart grows a little less cold… I have chosen in the kindness of my heart to spare you both,” on one condition: that she be invited to the after-party. She would bring the beer. She ordered the Arbiter to enter both in the ledger as the night’s winners. The Arbiter agreed to “just pretend that those other Thunks never existed and had no families.” Octothunk would be sent home to his octopus world and get his arms back eventually. For now, he was enjoying the novelty: “I’ve never just had two arms before. This is fun.”
Notable Moments
- Mudcat Mahomes curved an arrow into the Grandmaster’s arm. She snapped it in half and made him eat a giant rat.
- The time portal turned a duel into a crowd: a past Mudcat, a young Thunk, and the eight-armed Octothunk.
- Past Mudcat drew on Thunk, couldn’t shoot, broke his own bow and fled back into time.
- The Grandmaster named a blood elemental “Hamster” (“or Stir for short”) and summoned her pet dinosaur, Helena.
- Octothunk dabbed with eight arms and lost six of them for it.
- The match ended in a shared victory and an after-party invitation the Grandmaster insisted on joining.
Memorable Quotes
- The Arbiter: “They bled, didn’t they?”
- The Grandmaster: “I don’t pay my best friends. He is not a friend. You are employed by me.”
- The Arbiter: “This is an arena of death and inclusivity.”
- Thunk: “You should not have shot at lady.”
- The Arbiter: “We don’t bow to the constraints of time. And so now, Mudcat Mahomes, it’s a two-for-one special on fish night!”
- Mudcat Mahomes: “Let’s team up. We can make a truce. I don’t have to kill you a third time.”
- The Grandmaster: “That’s hilarious that you think that I follow any precedents. In my game, in my arena, it’s my rules and whatever they feel like at that time.”
- Thunk: “You bring what you bring, Grandmaster! Me and Fishman go home!”
Who and What Appears
Mudcat Mahomes. Catfish-man (gills, scales, webbed feet, slime, “tiny balls”); trench coat with nothing underneath, m’lady fedora; folds his clothes “like daddy told me.” Archer (fighter, arcane archer: banishing, enfeebling and curving shots; sharpshooter; druidcraft). From/heading to Kansas City for “subpar barbecue.” Air guitar; an “Aaron Lewis fish hook” piercing. Lives in a three-level townhome with a two-car garage. Loves Top Gun and The Program on VHS. Ate a giant rat. Shot the Grandmaster with a curving arrow. Killed Thunk and young Thunk; banished his past self and Hamster. Declared a winner; spared. (Not the same as “Mudcat Malone,” “a whole different guy.”)
Thunk (the original). Goliath monk (the Grandmaster calls him a Goliath) from a mountain, where he picked berries and hung out with goats; necklace of fingers from everyone he’s killed; can’t count; “Thunk never miss leg day”; protective of “lady.” Killed by Mudcat.
Young Thunk. A younger visage of Thunk from the time portal, “young and supple and buff,” 40 HP; killed by Mudcat. The Grandmaster calls him a small child.
Octothunk. Thunk from an octopus world/timeline: eight arms, then two after the Grandmaster takes six for dabbing. Threw the stone table; damaged the wall (billed); betrayed the truce; agreed to the after-party. Declared a winner; to be returned to his octopus world.
Past Mudcat Mahomes. A younger visage; banished, then broke his own bow and fled into the time portal.
Helena. The Grandmaster’s pet dinosaur, kept in the past and summoned through the time portal.
Hamster (“Stir”), the blood elemental. Named by the Grandmaster; drained the dryad; took the shape of a blood hamster with tiny black eyes; banished by Mudcat.
The dryad and the fire snake. Portal creatures; the dryad was drained by Hamster, the snake shot back into its portal.
The Grandmaster. Rewinds time “like a Time Lord”; resistant to necrotic damage; bejeweled rings; wings; employs the Arbiter (performance and quarterly reviews, a Christmas bonus); keeps a ledger of winners; has a pet dinosaur; put up a new wall in the keep last month; goblins clean up after her. Followed no precedents: “my rules.”
The Arbiter. Stripy referee shirt; anthem arranger; speaks every language; writing memoirs; claims to be her best friend; summons creatures and visages; builds the portals (“so simple a child could solve it”). Doesn’t like the tech goblins (“They don’t like you”).
Goblins / tech goblins. Clean up and run the sound.
Places
- The Isolated Keep: the Grandmaster’s “little secret,” stowed away from time and space; circular platform, walls, a giant stone table (“a table for giants”), slick wet floor, four portals (time, fire, blood, nature). Jumping out throws you back through the time portal. Ring of bleachers.
- Kansas City and Mudcat’s townhome (his home world). Thunk’s mountain. The octopus world (Octothunk’s plane).
Unresolved references
- “A pig, a spider, and a small little boy”: the Arbiter’s previous entertainment, a roleplay riff (Mudcat): canon as stated, never shown on screen.
Full Round-by-Round
Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)
- 0:00:03 — Opening narration (Caustic Phoenix): the same as Playtest 1, but here she says “we find the Game Master, weary from eons of absolute power.”
- 0:01:11 — Grandmaster and Arbiter. “The last entertainment you brought in here included a pig, a spider, and a small little boy who really did not belong here at all… That little boy was just crying. Also, I did not know pigs had that particular power.” The Arbiter: “They bled, didn’t they?” He has “fine specimen today, of nice breeding stock even”; she has no breeding facility (“It’s a startup cost… I’ve already invested a lot in the arena”).
- 0:02:41 — The champions. Thunk: “I was picking berries before I was here… I spend a lot of time on the mountain destroying things. I have a collection of necklaces… They’re fingers from everyone I’ve killed. I have more than I can count because Thunk can’t [count] very well.” Mudcat Mahomes, a catfish-man in a trench coat with nothing underneath and a “m’lady fedora”: he wants to get back to Kansas City for “some subpar barbecue.” He calls the Arbiter a roller-derby referee in his stripy shirt and asks if he’s her best friend; the Arbiter says yes; the Grandmaster: “I don’t pay my best friends… You are employed by me.” The Arbiter: “I didn’t fill out a W-2… you don’t know the complexities of our relationship.” The Grandmaster wants a finger necklace like Thunk’s.
- 0:06:11 — The arena: the Isolated Keep. “Stowed away from time and space… filled with portals that will grant you boons and bonuses, depending how lucky you are… There’s more than one thing that may bite.” A circular platform, walls about 15 feet high, a huge stone table, four portals. The Arbiter: “You can lead a horse to a portal, but you can’t make him travel through interdimensional space”; he’s writing “a short novel, some memoirs.”
- 0:08:58 — The anthem. “The people’s traditional national anthem.” The Arbiter “took the whole tune down a minor third” in the second verse; he “speak[s] every language.” The Grandmaster flies to a high perch with an ornate chair: “I want bones broken and I want blood spilt. If not, I shall keep you both here forever.” The crowd: a ring of bleachers, “getting wasted and slamming dollar hot dogs.” “You, Acolytes, you have come for dungeons and dice and deathmatches.”
- 0:12:03 — Mudcat’s opening. He folds his trench coat neatly “like daddy told me,” sets his hat on top and strings his bow, standing in his “catfish birthday suit.” His first banishing shot fumbles (nat 1); then two arrows hit Thunk.
- 0:15:32 — The portals. Mudcat looks into the time portal (stars, clocks spinning both ways, worlds created and uncreated). Going through any portal seems like nothing, but you come out of a random portal and its effect hits you on exit: the fire portal burns, the blood portal (bodies made of blood wriggling on the floor) deals necrotic damage, the green nature portal heals, the time portal messes with time. The Grandmaster: “If you thought you could escape my map that easily, you’re a fool.”
- 0:17:36 — The Arbiter mocks the name “Mudcat.” “Did you see what he was wearing? An edgelord.” The Grandmaster respects that he folds his clothes. Mudcat: “It’s not because I’m a catfish! … I think I’m nimble like a cat.” He calls the Grandmaster “Toots”; the Arbiter: “That is the Grandmaster you’re speaking to… This is an arena of death and inclusivity.”
- 0:21:21 — Thunk flexes the arrows out of his skin (“Thunk never miss leg day”), charges, and punches Mudcat’s gut, cracking ribs (“Gonna have me coughing up my old caviar”).
- 0:27:29 — Mudcat shoots the Grandmaster. He druidcrafts a floating “L” in Thunk’s face and fires an enfeebling arrow. The Grandmaster rewinds time “a bit like a Time Lord herself” so Thunk can try to catch it again; Thunk’s nat 20 catch is foiled when Mudcat curves the arrow into the Grandmaster’s arm. She is resistant to necrotic damage, pulls it out and snaps it: “Your little sticks don’t hurt me, nor do your words… You’re like a little mouse stuck in a cage here.” “I’ve ate a mouse before. Kind of overrated.”
- 0:32:37 — The rat. The Grandmaster has the Arbiter float a giant rat in front of Mudcat: “Eat the rat.” He swallows it whole like a pelican (it scratches his throat) — “Ozzy Osbourne style.”
- 0:36:02 — Thunk the gentleman. “You should not have shot at lady.” Swaths of the audience swoon; the crowd chants “Thunk!” He slips on the wet floor twice, falling prone; Mudcat druidcrafts a dunce cap with an L on it.
- 0:40:16 — Air guitar. The Grandmaster loves Mudcat’s air guitar (“I am a fan of musicians”) and grants him Bless for the round; the crowd switches to chanting “Mudcat.” He flips out his “Aaron Lewis fish hook” piercing. He walks through the green portal and heals, climbs onto a rock, and action-surges six arrows into the prone Thunk (two crits).
- 0:48:33 — The persuasion fail. “This is what you wanted! I gave you what you wanted!” The Grandmaster: “You do not believe your own words… you’re coming up a little lacking as a person.”
- 0:50:21 — Thunk drinks the rain, springs up with a 42-inch vertical, punches Mudcat in the shin, grabs low (“That’s not my whisker!”) and rains flurry-of-blows punches between his legs. The Grandmaster calls for a constitution check for a grab to the balls; Thunk can’t find them (“They were too small”).
- 0:55:43 — Chaos event: the singing portals. A soft voice from all four portals entrances both and draws them into the nature portal; they come out of the fire portal burning.
- 0:59:34 — The greased air. Mudcat flings himself onto the wall using fish slime (“I’ve never heard of greased air before and I love it!”) and shoots Thunk down. Thunk dies of his death saves, “bleeding out from what’s like 45 arrow holes.”
- 1:04:00 — Visages through time. A chill wind; the clocks of the time portal stop and reverse; a past Mudcat Mahomes and a younger Thunk walk out. The Grandmaster: “I brought you to the Isolated Keep because I can bring as many versions of you back as I want… Take a look at your past self, young, fresh, vibrant.” The Arbiter: “We don’t bow to the constraints of time… It’s a two-for-one special on fish night!” Then a bathroom/popcorn break (she gets one free refill; she spits popcorn kernels over the side: “the goblins will pick that up”).
- 1:09:21 — Mudcat banishes his past self (“that moment in The Program where the quarterback burns himself… I’ve been waiting to do this my whole life”) and kills young Thunk with arrows. The Grandmaster is furious: “Why did you bring a small child? … He had 40 HP… I’m putting this in your performance review… quarterly review.” Mudcat: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”
- 1:18:05 — Octothunk. The Grandmaster demands “Thunk, just from a different timeline… I want Thunk the Octopus.” Octothunk arrives with eight arms (double actions). He throws the huge stone table at Mudcat and punches holes in the Grandmaster’s new wall (“I just put it up last month… I paid for some really good contractors”); she’ll bill Thunk for the wall. Mudcat moons him.
- 1:20:49 — Past Mudcat returns from banishment, draws on Thunk, can’t bring himself to shoot, snaps his bow over his knee and jumps back into the time portal. “Something must have happened into that banishment portal. That boy needs therapy.”
- 1:28:54 — Chaos event: three portal creatures. A dryad from the green portal, a fire snake from the fire portal, and a blood elemental from the blood portal. The Grandmaster names the elemental “Hamster” (“I’ve been wanting to name something hamster for a while”), “or Stir for short.” She promises the Arbiter a Christmas bonus. Hamster attacks the dryad.
- 1:34:22 — The truce. Mudcat persuades Thunk to team up (“Let’s team up. We can make a truce. I don’t have to kill you a third time”); Thunk agrees, secretly planning to betray him. Mudcat shoots the fire snake through the eye (it’s sucked back into its portal) and hits Hamster, who turns to stare with tiny black hamster eyes. Mudcat tries a “triple Lindy” out of the arena and is thrown back through the time portal (“Everyone knows you can’t jump out of the tower”).
- 1:42:09 — Octothunk betrays the truce with eight-armed punches between Mudcat’s legs. A small section of the crowd is “100% only for Mudcat Malone” and throws crushed beer cans at Thunk as “medals.”
- 1:48:43 — Helena. On Mudcat’s taunting, the Grandmaster summons her pet dinosaur, Helena, through the time portal: “I’ve been saving a little pet of mine.” Helena (clicking sounds, sharp carnivore teeth) bites Mudcat and drags him into the portal; he’s spat out elsewhere. Hamster drains the dryad to dust.
- 2:01:21 — Grandmaster’s rules. She stops Hamster’s attack of opportunity on Thunk: “That’s hilarious that you think that I follow any precedents. In my game, in my arena, it’s my rules and whatever they feel like at that time.”
- 2:04:20 — The offer. “If you do manage to survive… to the end of round eight. I will spare both of you and allow you to return both to your picking of berries and little pond.” Hamster takes the shape of a blood hamster and slams Thunk. Mudcat banishes Hamster and dabs; the Grandmaster tells him not to dab; the crowd loves it (and thought “Hamster” was a stupid name). Octothunk dabs with eight arms; the Grandmaster removes six of his arms and his double action: “Don’t you ever dab here again.”
- 2:14:19 — The after-party. Thunk: “You’ve killed me before. You deserve to go home.” Mudcat invites him to his townhome (two-car garage, three levels, an easy chair): a 30-pack of Budweiser, Top Gun, or The Program unedited on VHS with deleted scenes. Thunk will bring Old English. Pork burgers and maybe beer mac and cheese. “Me and Fishman go home!”
- 2:16:15 — The Grandmaster spares both. She freezes time: “My champions, this budding romance… I am pleased with this performance. And as my heart grows a little less cold… I have chosen… to spare you both… on one condition. That I be invited to the after party.” She’ll bring the beer. “Arbiter… I wish to keep them both in the ledger. Note them both as today’s winners.” The Arbiter: “We’ll just pretend that those other Thunks never existed and had no families.” Octothunk will be returned to his octopus world (with his eight arms eventually): “I’ve never just had two arms before.”