Bawser, a towering yellow brute with a green shell, and Grakas, a wheezing, blue-bearded swordsman who never wanted to be there, met in a drizzly forest arena. Bawser expected to be the scary one. Instead he got out-muscled, out-hidden and out-scared, and spent part of the fight sobbing behind a rock. It ended with a flood, a forest fire, a hug, a burial and a rebirth, which is a surprisingly tender way for a fight to the death to finish.
The Story
A Legally Distinct Arrival
The match was billed simply as “Bawser versus Grakas.” Everyone was very clear that Bawser was spelled “with an A. Very clearly, it’s an A… legally distinct from any other intellectual property.” The arena was announced as a “completely new, never before seen” forest, which happened to be the same rainy forest as before. It came with a cliff, giant mushroom ledges, tall trees, and a nice drizzle “that makes your skin shimmer and glimmer.”
Bawser landed “like a comet,” all big yellow body and green shell, and let out a roar that shook the leaves and scattered the birds.
Bawser: “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!”
He tried to listen for his opponent in the falling leaves and couldn’t hear a thing. So he decided he hated leaves (“Leaves are the worst. They’re the literal worst”) and tried to set the tree on fire with his tinderbox. The tree was far too wet to burn. He threw the tinderbox on the ground.
The Man Behind the Tree
Grakas, meanwhile, was hiding behind a tree and having a bad time. “Oh, I don’t like this… What am I doing here?” He shook his inhaler and took a puff. “If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.” When he tried to climb the trunk, he slipped in mud that smelled faintly of hibiscus.
Bawser bellowed a generous offer: “Grakas, show yourself and I may not tear you to a million little pieces. Heck, I’ll even let you keep one of your arms.” Grakas was rattled that the monster knew his name, and he shook so hard the tree dropped its leaves. Bawser threw a mud ball in completely the wrong direction. Then he started pelting the spectators with mud pies, demanding, “Show me where he is!”
Grakas answered with an eerie whisper: “You should just go away. You’re never gonna catch me and it’s not worth your time and you’re stupid for trying.” Then he scrambled twenty feet up the tree. Bawser followed his muddy footprints to the trunk but couldn’t spot him in the branches. In his frustration he punched the cliff and broke off giant mushroom ledges, while Grakas clung to his branch “like a monkey.”
Catching Hands
Grakas dropped out of the tree with his two short swords, his “short sword choppers,” and put a curse on Bawser. Bawser went for a grapple. The two locked hands in a dead standstill until the little swordsman shoved him off and slapped his hands away. Bawser was deeply offended. “No, that’s my thing. I’m the big bully. I do the big strength thing… What are you doing wrong here?” He flew into a rage.
Grakas then struck with a blow so frightening that the brute recoiled. “How did you become the scary one on the field?” Bawser hurled his spear and javelin, and Grakas cowered behind his crossed swords. So Bawser gave himself a pep talk: “I may not be very strong right now, but I can at least look strong.” His sheer presence made the forest tremble. Grakas fumbled completely, lost his advantage, and was terrified in turn, which the table called “a Nudo reverse card.” Bawser loomed over him, belly to forehead: “If I were a comforting person, you would actually really like this hug.”
Blurs, Ice and Lightning
Grakas blinked back up the tree in a burst of magic and turned himself into a drunken blur of blue hair and blue beard. “I have a master’s degree in computer science. This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.” Bawser promised to “eat you up, spit you out, then eat you again, and then poop you out.” His javelin struck home, and his spear knocked Grakas clean out of the tree.
Bawser’s frenzied greataxe swing missed the blur and stuck fast in the mud. Grakas started shivering so hard that he coated himself in a layer of ice. Then lightning ripped across the arena, “as if the gods themselves… are disappointed in the fight.” It struck both champions. Grakas compared it to Thor “smacking Mjolnir onto the field.”
The Strong One Breaks
Bawser’s next swing went so badly wrong that his greataxe flew ten feet behind Grakas. He squished his opponent’s blurry face between his claws: “You should have been afraid of me. Why are you stronger than me?” He was close to tears. Being the strong one was his whole identity, and this small wheezing man was out-strengthening him and out-hiding him at once. Grakas’s second sword clinked harmlessly off Bawser’s shell, and he needed another puff of his inhaler.
Bawser gathered himself, meditated, and breathed fire. Out came a tiny matchstick puff that singed Grakas’s eyebrows.
Bawser: “No! I’m supposed to be the strong one! My fire’s not even working!”
He tore free of the crackling magical tether Grakas had hooked into him and ran away crying. “You started this,” Grakas called after him. “You’re a big tough guy with a big tough shell. You’re gonna run away?” Bawser wept behind a rock.
The Dam Breaks
Then a dam burst and the arena flooded. Grakas backflipped to safety on the rocks (“All those tumbling classes are really paying off”). Bawser slipped on the ground his own tears had made slick and was swept to the edge of the map, because “not all turtles can swim.” Soaked and miserable, he laid out his life’s great grievance: “It has always been… some other small little dude with bright colors always coming to wreck my day. I can’t just be my cool badass self by myself now.”
The crowd wept with him, “like a bad scene from The Notebook,” and their tears lifted his spirit. “You cheered me at the beginning of this fight and I will not let you down.” He found his greataxe, raged again, and swore: “For you, my spectators, my fans, I will not fail you until I give my last and final breath.”
A Free Hit
Grakas had a surprising change of heart. “This seems like it means a lot more to you than it does to me… Just go ahead and hit me.” He had a master’s degree, but he was drowning in debt and the job market was bad, so he might as well let Bawser take him out. Bawser was touched: “No one’s ever let me hit them before.” He hugged Grakas, lifted him up, and threw him twenty feet into the air. “You are the nicest little thing I’ve ever met. I will never forget this.”
Grakas landed and reconsidered. “That hurt, and I didn’t really care for it, so I’m gonna go ahead and fight back now.” Bawser offered an upside: “Remember, if I kill you, you don’t have to pay your college debts.”
Fire and Ice
Bawser seized him for good (“Thank you, little one. My mother would be proud of me”). Just then more lightning struck and set the whole forest ablaze. Bawser held Grakas in the burning tree and declared, “We will burn in this fiery hell together.” Grakas’s blue hair turned orange as it caught. “Of all the ways that you could die, I always thought that fire would be the worst.” His last desperate strike nearly turned the tide, but he collapsed, “like Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith.”
When Bawser demanded to be named the winner, Grakas gasped, “You win, you win, you win.” Bawser carried him out of the fire by the neck and gave him the highest honor he knew:
Bawser: “Little one, though you may be wheezy and small and blue, you are mighty… Bao Bao respects you. At any time you may come to my castle and we will feast. As long as you tell everyone that I beat you. That’s the one rule.”
He doused Grakas with his water skin.
Born Anew
Bawser then dug a hole and buried Grakas up to his head to heal him: “either it heals you or it holds you.” He also decided that “Grakas is a terrible name,” and proposed “Baby Bow-Bow 2.” The dirt turned out to be medicinal, and Grakas clung to life. Bawser carved “Baby Bow Bow” into the ground in several places and made a promise: “When you awaken, you will be born anew… now you have orange and blue, for you are fire and ice. You shall come be my pet in my castle.”
That night, a hand shot up out of the hole. “I am Baby Bow-Bow!” The buried man’s hair and beard burst into flaming orange, and he walked off, glowing like a torch, toward Bawser’s castle.
Notable Moments
- Bawser’s fire breath came out as a matchstick puff that only singed Grakas’s eyebrows, and he fled the fight in tears.
- Bawser slipped on his own tears when the dam broke and was swept to the edge of the map, because “not all turtles can swim.”
- The spectators wept along with Bawser “like a bad scene from The Notebook,” and it gave him the will to fight on.
- Grakas, buried in student debt, offered Bawser a free hit, and Bawser thanked him with a hug and a twenty-foot throw.
- Bawser held Grakas in a burning tree and vowed they would “burn in this fiery hell together.”
- The loser was buried in medicinal dirt and rose that night with flaming hair as “Baby Bow-Bow,” bound for Bawser’s castle as his pet.
Memorable Quotes
- Bawser: “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!”
- Grakas: “Okay, let’s calm down. Let’s just stay behind the tree. If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.”
- Bawser: “That’s my thing. I’m the big bully. I do the big strength thing and I crush you with my giant claws.”
- Grakas: “I have a master’s degree in computer science. This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.”
- Bawser: “No! I’m supposed to be the strong one! My fire’s not even working!”
- Bawser: “It has always been… some other small little dude with bright colors always coming to wreck my day.”
- Grakas: “Of all the ways that you could die, I always thought that fire would be the worst.”
- Grakas: “I am Baby Bow-Bow!”
Who and What Appears
Bawser (Caustic Phoenix). “With an A… legally distinct.” Huge, yellow body, green shell, claws, scales; Caustic Phoenix calls him “a full dragonborn. Ish,” a dragonborn with a shell (and jokes about turtles). Barbarian (rage, frenzy, intimidating presence), greataxe, spear, javelin, breath weapon. Calls himself “Bao Bao” / “Bow-Bow.” Hates leaves. Has a castle and a mother (“Mama Bowser”). Insists on being the strong one; cries when he isn’t; plays to the crowd. Winner. Took Grakas as his “pet.”
Grakas (Mudcat). Half-elf hexblade warlock / College of Swords bard; two short swords; blue hair and blue beard; asthmatic (inhaler); took fencing and tumbling lessons; master’s degree in computer science and student debt; cowardly but deadly. Spells: vicious mockery, hexblade’s curse, wrathful smite, shield, misty step, blur, Armor of Agathys, lightning lure, booming blade, eldritch smite. Lost, survived, buried and renamed “Baby Bow-Bow”; rose with flaming orange hair and beard and headed to Bawser’s castle.
Places
- The rainy forest arena (same map as Playtest 3): a cliff with giant mushroom ledges, a 30-ft tree, rocks; flooded, then set on fire. The dirt is medicinal.
- Bawser’s castle (mentioned).
Full Round-by-Round
Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)
- 0:00:22 — Setup. “Bawser versus Grakas.” Bawser “with an A. Very clearly, it’s an A… legally distinct from any other intellectual property.” The “completely new, never before seen” forest map (the Playtest 3 map again), with a nice drizzle “that makes your skin shimmer and glimmer.”
- 0:05:54 — Bawser lands “like a comet”: “his big giant yellow body and green shell.” He roars, shaking leaves and scattering birds: “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!” He listens for Grakas in the falling leaves and fails; he decides he hates leaves (“Leaves are the worst. They’re the literal worst”) and tries to set the tree on fire with his tinderbox, but it’s too wet; he throws the tinderbox down.
- 0:09:48 — Grakas hides behind a tree: “Oh, I don’t like this… What am I doing here?” He pulls out an inhaler and shakes it: “If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.” He slips trying to climb in the rain (a faint smell of hibiscus in the mud).
- 0:13:11 — Bawser roars: “Grakas, show yourself and I may not tear you to a million little pieces. Heck, I’ll even let you keep one of your arms.” Grakas: “He knows my name. How does he know my name?” Grakas shakes so hard the tree sheds its leaves. Bawser throws a mud ball the wrong way, then mud pies at the spectators: “Show me where he is!”
- 0:16:16 — Vicious mockery. Grakas whispers in an ethereal voice: “You should just go away. You’re never gonna catch me… You’re so stupid for trying.” He climbs 20 feet up the tree. Bawser follows his muddy footprints but can’t see him in the branches and punches the cliff in frustration, breaking off giant mushroom ledges; Grakas grips the branch “like a monkey.”
- 0:22:12 — Grakas drops out of the tree with two short swords (“short sword choppers”) and lays a Hexblade’s Curse on Bawser.
- 0:24:58 — Catching hands. Bawser tries to grapple; they lock hands in a standstill, then Grakas shoves him off and slaps his hands away. Bawser: “No, that’s my thing. I’m the big bully. I do the big strength thing… What are you doing wrong here?” He rages.
- 0:29:04 — Wrathful smite. Grakas frightens Bawser. “How did you become the scary one on the field?” Bawser throws his spear and javelin; Grakas cowers behind his crossed swords (shield spell). Bawser’s pep talk to himself: “I may not be very strong right now, but I can at least look strong.” His intimidating presence makes the forest tremble; Grakas rolls a nat 1, loses his smite, and is frightened in turn (“a Nudo reverse card”). Bawser looms over him, belly to forehead: “If I were a comforting person, you would actually really like this hug.”
- 0:37:30 — Grakas misty-steps back up the tree and casts blur (a drunken blur of blue hair and blue beard). “I have a master’s degree in computer science. This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.” Bawser: “I’m going to eat you up, spit you out, then eat you again, and then poop you out.” His javelin hits; his spear knocks Grakas out of the tree.
- 0:42:37 — Frenzy and the lost axe. Bawser’s greataxe misses the blur and sticks in the mud; Grakas casts Armor of Agathys: his shivering coats him in ice (“I’m shivering so much that I’m creating this ice layer”).
- 0:46:43 — Chaos event: lightning, “as if the gods themselves… are disappointed in the fight.” Both hit; Grakas: “as if Thor himself were smacking Mjolnir onto the field.”
- 0:50:02 — Bawser’s second nat 1 throws his greataxe ten feet behind Grakas. He squishes Grakas’s blurry face: “You should have been afraid of me. Why are you stronger than me?” Bawser is almost in tears: this was his identity, being the strong one, and Grakas is out-strengthening and out-hiding him. Grakas’s second sword clinks off Bawser’s shell and he has to take another puff of his inhaler.
- 0:57:01 — The breath weapon. Bawser meditates and breathes fire: a tiny matchstick puff that singes Grakas’s eyebrows. “No! I’m supposed to be the strong one! My fire’s not even working!” He runs away crying, breaking free of Grakas’s lightning lure. Grakas: “You started this… You’re a big tough guy with a big tough shell. You’re gonna run away?” Bawser weeps behind a rock.
- 1:05:15 — Chaos event: the dam breaks. Grakas backflips onto the rocks (“All those tumbling classes are really paying off”). Bawser’s nat 1: his own tears make the ground slick and he’s swept to the edge of the map. “Not all turtles can swim.” “It has always been… some other small little dude with bright colors always coming to wreck my day. I can’t just be my cool badass self by myself now.”
- 1:09:51 — The crowd weeps with him “like a bad scene from The Notebook,” giving him inspiration. “You cheered me at the beginning of this fight and I will not let you down.” He finds his greataxe and rages again: “For you, my spectators, my fans, I will not fail you until I give my last and final breath.”
- 1:13:46 — Grakas offers a free hit. “This seems like it means a lot more to you than it does to me… Just go ahead and hit me.” He has a master’s degree but is underwater with debt and the job market is bad: “I might as well just let you take me out.” Bawser, touched: “No one’s ever let me hit them before.” He hugs Grakas, lifts him, and throws him 20 feet into the air. “You are the nicest little thing I’ve ever met. I will never forget this.” Grakas: “That hurt, and I didn’t really care for it, so I’m gonna go ahead and fight back now.” Bawser: “Remember, if I kill you, you don’t have to pay your college debts.”
- 1:18:40 — The fire. Bawser grapples him for good (“Thank you, little one. My mother would be proud of me”). Chaos event: lightning sets all the vegetation on fire. Bawser holds Grakas in the burning tree: “We will burn in this fiery hell together.” Grakas’s blue hair turns orange as it burns (“Of all the ways that you could die, I always thought that fire would be the worst”). His crit nearly works, but he drops, “like Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith.”
- 1:31:14 — “Name me the winner.” Grakas: “You win, you win, you win.” Bawser carries him out of the fire by the neck: “Little one, though you may be wheezy and small and blue, you are mighty… Bao Bao respects you. At any time you may come to my castle and we will feast. As long as you tell everyone that I beat you. That’s the one rule.” He douses him with his water skin.
- 1:34:29 — Baby Bow-Bow. Bawser digs a hole and buries Grakas up to his head to “heal” him (“either it heals you or it holds you”), and wants to rename him: “Grakas is a terrible name… We’ll call you Baby Bow-Bow 2.” Grakas survives his death saves; the dirt turns out to be medicinal. Bawser carves “Baby Bow Bow” in the dirt in several places: “When you awaken, you will be born anew… now you have orange and blue, for you are fire and ice. You shall come be my pet in my castle.”
- 1:38:15 — Rising. That night a hand shoots up out of the hole: “I am Baby Bow-Bow!” His hair and beard burst into flaming orange, and he walks off like a glowing torch toward Bawser’s castle.