S1E13 — Snow-clad — Highfrost v Bryltyn

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The kilted ice warlock Highfrost and the self-proclaimed one-of-a-kind warrior Bryltyn fought in a snowbound fishing village in the north, which turned out to be Highfrost’s own family’s home. The fight took in poisoned ale, rooftop combat, a bagpipe solo so bad it hurt the Grandmaster, a deadly game of tag, a rescue mission for a line of ducklings and an avalanche. It ended in blood on the snow, a toast, and one last flash of kilt.

The Story

A Fortress in Disrepair

The Dread Fortress was falling apart “for some reason.” The walls were crumbling, the roof leaked, and burst pipes had left everyone ankle-deep in backed-up sewage. The Arbiter sloshed through the muck to find the Grandmaster finishing “this last little two lines of goblins.” She was shaking each one’s hand, turning them around and clapping three times. “And that way, I know it’s you, and you know it’s me.”

She had a reason. She wanted a secret handshake with the Arbiter too, in case she was ever cloned and her evil clone tried to take her place. The routine was a shake, then finger guns three times (always two fingers, never one: “What kind of barrel are you?”), then both of them spin. The spin was the important part.

“If you turn left first, then I know you’re the clone and I should murder you right on the spot.”

The Arbiter wondered whether a clone “of any repute” would also have her memories. She insisted the most popular clones don’t. He promised to put together an anti-cloning task force. Her parting wisdom: “If any relationship matters to you, you should always have a secret handshake.” She then checked that the two champions behind the Arbiter hadn’t seen anything. Highfrost reassured her: “I fell asleep when you talked about cloning.”

The Arbiter apologized for the state of the place. “It’s an old building. We bought it. We’re trying to fix it up.” The Grandmaster had a plan for the repairs: “We’re watching a few episodes on TLC.”

The Champions

Bryltyn introduced himself briefly: “I’m just a warrior. There are none like me. That is all.” The Arbiter thought they’d had several champions who looked almost exactly like him. Bryltyn dismissed them: “They were all fakes. Clones, perhaps.” The Grandmaster felt this proved her point.

Highfrost, “the indomitable,” greeted the lads and lasses and explained that he was “a warlock from the north.” Warlocks from the south, he said, can’t do ice spells: “If there’s no ice spells, are you really a warlock?” Bryltyn promised to bring some pain to this warlock “who seems to believe he’s got something special.” Highfrost offered to lift his kilt and show him. The Arbiter stepped in to explain the arena’s strict no-up-kilt policy. Some of The Acolytes are children, and while they like blood, death and gore, “there’s a line.”

With her castle “deteriorating at a fast rate,” the Grandmaster called for the arena. The Arbiter swirled the sewage into “a whirlpool of shit and whatever else,” and everyone fell through it.

Homecoming

They landed on a winter dock in an abandoned fishing village under a light dusting of snow. Highfrost recognized it at once: “My uncle used to live here.” Bryltyn asked if he knew what had happened to them. “I killed them all.” Highfrost promised it would make a perfect burial ground for him.

The Grandmaster was delighted by the accidental history. Would Highfrost reclaim the town for his family’s name, or would it stand abandoned as “a tombstone? A warning, perhaps.” She warned the champions that the buildings could be climbed and that the snow hid patches of ice. Then she rose into the sky in a poof of snow and took a seat beside her dog, Doug.

Before the fight, Highfrost found old barrels of his family’s ale and proposed a toast. He raised a drink to the Grandmaster “and to you, winged minion of the Grandmaster. I’ve forgotten your name.” The Arbiter brushed this off (“It’s Arbiter, it’s unimportant”) and claimed they had gone to high school together. Highfrost remembered him as “that lad from math class.” The Arbiter added that he now sold scented candles through a Facebook group. The Grandmaster had heard enough: “It’s an MLM. Don’t buy it. It’s a pyramid scheme. Quit selling your candles in the workplace.”

The ale had sat far too long. It was badly fermented, had a film on top, and poisoned both men. Highfrost shrugged off half of it. Both were left drunk enough that their feet went wherever they pleased. As the Arbiter put it, “This is the very first time in the arena that the arena has made the first move.”

Drunk Shots and Flying Roofs

Highfrost’s legs carried him up onto a building. His first Eldritch Blast blew through the flimsy structure under him, and he crashed into the shack below. His next one, fired blind from about 160 feet away, flew perfectly true, “with the spirit of your ancestors guiding your hand.” It struck Bryltyn in the head, and the explosion gave away Highfrost’s position. “This is rigged,” Bryltyn grumbled. His answer was an ice-packed snowball, which missed.

The insults started early. Bryltyn called Highfrost “nothing more than a charlatan,” and Highfrost replied, “I don’t know what that word means, but if I did, I’d be really angry about it.” Then Bryltyn flew into his bear-spirit rage, screaming into the sky. In that state every kind of harm hit him only half as hard, except attacks on the mind. The Acolytes, bundled in winter coats with cocoa that was more schnapps than cocoa, spilled their drinks cheering.

In the second round a draft lifted Highfrost’s kilt (“a little Marilyn Monroe action”), and he admitted he’d “Not had the time to trim in a few weeks.” Bryltyn suffered a point of psychic damage “for the trauma.” Highfrost answered with a perfect Ray of Frost, fuelled by “my uncle’s ale flowing through my body.” It coated Bryltyn in ice that his rage melted into steam. The Arbiter began to fret that Highfrost would die too soon, since “They paid a lot of money for these tickets.” The narration noted that this had nothing to do with his wagers on the Deathmatches. The Grandmaster offered Bryltyn a reward if he impressed her, but he waved it off: “Keep your potions.”

Bryltyn found a glowing crystal in the rubble. It tasted icy, “as if you’re drinking Listerine,” and it blinked him up onto a rooftop. From there he tore up a whole section of clay shingles and rained them down on Highfrost like hail. “Hey, me uncle built that roof!”

The Grandpappy’s House and the Game of Tag

After a break for Doug’s cookie time, Highfrost was found writing his full name in piss on the wall of his grandpappy’s house. His grandpappy, he explained, “could drink with the fishes.” Bryltyn: “It’s funny. Now he’s sleeping with them.” The Grandmaster offered some comfort: “The outside wounds will heal. The ones on the inside, they still bleed.”

Then she landed beside Bryltyn, offered her hand, squeezed it tightly, and declared, “Tag, you’re it!” A red T-A-G was now marked on his palm. Whoever still carried it after three turns would be hurt when it burst. The Arbiter reminded everyone that the last game of tag in the arena had killed a mayor. “Yeah, Timothy, never forget,” the Grandmaster sighed. “Sweet boy.”

Highfrost wisely refused to shake hands and make up. Instead he taunted Bryltyn by boasting that he’d had sex with his mother (“You know who liked it when I was up there? Your mother.” “The kilt gives me easy access. You just pull it up and down like a drawbridge”), whipping his junk at him so fervently that Bryltyn was genuinely shaken. He even wondered, “Could this be my father? Will I be battling my father?” The Arbiter pointed out, “he’s a Warforged, so I don’t know how that all works,” and Highfrost described plugging himself in with a lightning cable. He followed this with a bagpipe performance so dreadful that the Grandmaster herself took psychic damage. She cursed him with a small bane: “Don’t bring that horrid music back into my halls.”

Bryltyn climbed to the roof’s peak, thirty feet up, and slid down it with gravity behind his handaxe, slashing Highfrost bloody. In the scuffle that followed he slipped a hand onto Highfrost’s. As the Arbiter put it: “He touches you. Look who’s it, bitch.”

The Ducklings

A mama duck and her ducklings waddled out of an alley. They had missed the flight south and had come out to watch the fight. Highfrost begged the Acolytes for bread, but all they threw down were bunless hot dogs, Doritos and popcorn, which “makes their bellies all rumbly.” Bryltyn was unmoved: “We don’t feed the ducks.” Friends? “What is that word?” “Oh, that might be the scariest thing you’ve said all night.”

Highfrost asked for “a wee moment,” shooed the ducks to safety and gave the white, brown-flecked straggler “a little tap on the feather buns.” The duckling repaid him by lifting the Grandmaster’s curse and leaving him a protective feather. But the tap had also passed the tag to the duckling, and it would die if it couldn’t pass the mark on. “The wee one. Not the wee one.”

Taking a suggestion from the Acolytes, Highfrost hiked up his kilt to gasps of “Not again!” Underneath hung a small leather satchel of magical hide, holding a slice of bread he had saved. (“Nobody wants your ball sack infused bread,” said Bryltyn.) Highfrost believed in duck independence and refused to become Lord of the Ducks, so he flung the crumbs into Bryltyn’s face. The Grandmaster cried, “For the liberation of ducks!” The ducks mobbed Bryltyn, Mama Duck landed on his shoulder, and the little one tagged him. “These chaos events have not been my friend.”

Avalanche and the Final Blow

Both men were now “just covered in blood… bleeding into the snow.” Highfrost scrambled up a stand and hit Bryltyn with three cursed blasts. Bryltyn followed him up with an all-in attitude (“If you die, I die. Everything’s fine.”). One of his axes shattered on Highfrost’s metal chest, and Highfrost river-danced away from the tag. “Your ancestors are ashamed,” the Grandmaster observed.

Then the Arbiter’s own chaos arrived: an avalanche thundered down the mountain and swept both champions onto the docks, thirty feet apart, facing a frozen ocean. “The final duel begins.” The tag on Bryltyn’s palm burst, sending a red glow pulsing up the veins of his arm, but his rage carried him through.

Bryltyn charged with his last handaxe and told the end himself: “I leap forward by the coast, the ocean spray flaying into my face… A slash, a deep gash in his chest. The blood sprays onto the snow, onto the stones, into the ocean.” Highfrost fell backwards. “You beat me today. I’ll see you in the next life.” With his last breath he lifted the edge of his kilt “just high enough”: “Take a good look and tell your mother she was amazing.”

The Grandmaster raised her drink. “We started this with a drink and we will end it as such,” she toasted, wishing the fallen Highfrost rest with his ancestors. Then she flew down and offered Bryltyn her hand, “this time no tag in sight,” and carried him up to his fans. His rage faded as he left only footprints in the snow.

Dried Blood

Afterwards, Highfrost admitted he had “came out with my willy swinging thinking I was something quite impressive,” and learned that “confidence doesn’t hit quite as hard as an ax.” The Grandmaster noted that having both helps. Bryltyn had little to add: “I told him from the very beginning he was going to die, like the rest of his family. And now he’s dead, there’s not much more to say.” At the table, the players revealed that this was Ahnubyss’s first time playing D&D. Highfrost had been one turn away from a mind-blasting finale, “defeated by a coin toss.”

Notable Moments

• The Grandmaster’s anti-clone secret handshake, where spinning the wrong way means instant death.
• The arena struck first for the first time ever, poisoning both champions with Highfrost’s family’s moldy ale.
• Highfrost’s bagpipe solo was so bad it hurt the Grandmaster, who banned the music from her halls.
• Highfrost saved a tagged duckling with bread kept in a satchel under his kilt, and the ducks went on to mob Bryltyn.
• An avalanche swept the fight down to the frozen docks for the final duel.
• Highfrost’s dying act was one last kilt flash for Bryltyn’s mother.

Memorable Quotes

• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “If any relationship matters to you, you should always have a secret handshake.”
• Highfrost: “If there’s no ice spells, are you really a warlock?”
• Bryltyn: “I’m just a warrior. There are none like me. That is all.”
• The Arbiter: “It’s an old building. We bought it. We’re trying to fix it up. Fixer-upper.”
• Highfrost: “Hey, me uncle built that roof!”
• Bryltyn: “Nobody wants your ball sack infused bread. Not even these little ducklings.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “For the liberation of ducks!”
• Highfrost: “Take a good look and tell your mother she was amazing.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Highfrost (BDTeej). A warlock “from the north” who wears a kilt and speaks with a northern/Scots accent (“laddie,” “wee,” “me uncle”).

• Spells: Eldritch Blast (three beams), Ray of Frost, Frostbite, Hex. Has Spell Sniper. Ice magic is what makes “a real warlock.”
• Family: his family came from the abandoned fishing village. His uncle lived there and built the roof Bryltyn tore off; one house was his grandpappy’s. His grandpappy “could drink with the fishes,” was “a monster… not in a bad way,” and said “sticks and stones… words hurt the insides.” His family has been dead “for ages.”
• Possibly a Warforged (inferred). Lines it rests on:
  • Mudcat: “he’s a Warforged” (0:58:55), right after Bryltyn wonders if Highfrost is his father.
  • Highfrost’s “lightning cable… stick it right in the side” battery joke (0:59:16).
  • Bryltyn’s axe “breaks on his metal chest” (1:28:19).
  • He resists poison (0:17:00).
• Personality: loves ducks and believes in duck independence. Keeps bread in a magical leather hide satchel under his kilt. Plays the bagpipe, badly. Writes his name in piss on walls. Claims the Arbiter was in his math class.
• In this episode: killed by Bryltyn on the docks. Last act: a kilt flash for Bryltyn’s mother.

Bryltyn (Ahnubyss). “Just a warrior. There are none like me.” Insists other champions who look like him were fakes or clones.

• Bear totem barbarian. While raging he resists all damage but psychic. He screams when he rages.
• Weapons: wields two handaxes; one broke on Highfrost’s chest.
• Claims he killed everyone in Highfrost’s family village.
• His mother came up: he briefly feared Highfrost was his father. Says “we don’t feed the ducks” and doesn’t know the word “friends.”
• In this episode: refused the GM’s potion “carrot.” Won after surviving the tag explosion, and was flown to his fans by the Grandmaster.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Clone paranoia. Practices secret handshakes with goblins and sets one up with the Arbiter (shake, two-finger guns ×3, spin right-to-left; a left spin means clone, kill on sight).
• Domestic life: watches TLC to fix the Fortress. Enforces a no-MLM workplace policy.
• Doug: sits next to her dog Doug in the sky. Doug rolls at round ends and gets “cookie time.”
• In this episode: started the game of tag. Took psychic damage from Highfrost’s bagpipe and banished “that horrid music” from her halls. Remembers Timothy the mayor.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Opens portals; this time through a sewage whirlpool.
• Says he went to high school with Highfrost, was “fatter, like a lot,” and sells scented candles via a Facebook group (an MLM).
• Is forming an anti-cloning task force / “clone committee.”
• Bets on the deathmatches (per narration). Has a strict no-up-kilt policy. “We bought” the Fortress, a fixer-upper.

Doug. The Grandmaster’s dog. He sits beside her seat in the sky and rolls the round-end d20 with the Arbiter. The GM calls him “the goodest boy.”

The goblins. The Grandmaster was going through handshakes with “two lines of goblins” at the start.

Timothy. A town mayor killed in a previous game of tag in the arena, “a hero to his people.” The GM keeps his picture.

Mama Duck and her seven ducklings. They missed the flight south and sheltered in the village. The white-and-brown-flecked straggler was briefly tagged and gave Highfrost a feather (+2 AC). Mama Duck landed on Bryltyn’s shoulder while the babies pecked him.

Places

• The Dread Fortress (the Grandmaster’s halls): crumbling, leaking, and flooded with sewage from burst pipes. An “old building.”
• The abandoned fishing village / winter dock “in the north”: Highfrost’s family’s home.
  • Snow, hidden ice, and 15 ft buildings (some two-story) reinforced by ice.
  • A shack, a tiered stall, clay-shingled roofs, a sheet-metal roof, old ale barrels, a little ship and a fence.
  • A snowy mountain above the town (the avalanche) and docks on a frozen ocean.

Items

• The family ale barrels: badly fermented, with a film.
• The misty-step crystal: single use, drunk like a potion, tastes of Listerine.
• The tag mark: red T-A-G on the palm; whoever holds it at the end of three turns is hurt when it bursts.
• The duckling’s feather (+2 AC).
• Highfrost’s leather hide satchel of bread (the hide is “from something very magical”) and his bagpipe.
• Bryltyn’s handaxes (one broken).
• The Arbiter’s scented candles.

Lore statements

• Some Acolytes are children. They come in winter gear with spiked cocoa and pay “a lot of money” for tickets.
• The arena can “make the first move”; this is the first time it did.
• Tag has been played in the arena before, and killed a mayor (Timothy).
• The Arbiter wagers on the deathmatches (narration).

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the crumbling Dread Fortress and the secret handshake

1. 0:00:14 Mudcat opens with “everything’s broken and it’s fine.” The whole Dread Fortress is falling apart “for some reason.” The walls are crumbling, the roof is leaking and water drips everywhere. Burst pipes leave everyone ankle-deep in backed-up sewage. The Arbiter sloshes through the muck to the halls of Elusia Skypiercer.
2. 0:01:15 The Grandmaster is busy. She is finishing “this last little two lines of goblins,” hunched over, shaking hands and turning them around, then clapping three times. It is a handshake routine with each goblin: “And that way, I know it’s you, and you know it’s me.”
3. 0:01:39 She asks the Arbiter to set up a secret handshake between the two of them. The reason: in case she is cloned and her evil clone tries to take her position, so he can tell which of them to save. The handshake is a shake, finger guns three times (two fingers, never one: “What kind of barrel are you?”), then both spin.
4. 0:02:55 The Arbiter asks whether a clone “of any repute” would also have her memories. She insists it wouldn’t: “There’s plenty of clones out there in which they can catch up to your age and not have your memories… It’s one of, like, the most popular clones out there.”
5. 0:03:35 The Arbiter promises to put together an anti-cloning task force.
6. 0:03:57 — The spin. You must spin turning from the right to the left. “If you turn left first, then I know you’re the clone and I should murder you right on the spot.” Since she can be cloned, so can he, and everyone should have secret handshakes. Her life advice: “If any relationship matters to you, you should always have a secret handshake.”
7. 0:04:37 She notices the two champions behind the Arbiter and makes sure neither saw the handshake: “if anybody else saw the secret handshake, you wouldn’t be alive much longer.” Highfrost: “I fell asleep when you talked about cloning.”
8. 0:05:03 — The fixer-upper. The Arbiter apologizes for the state of the Fortress: “crazy weather lately. It’s an old building. We bought it. We’re trying to fix it up… you know how it goes with home ownership.” The GM: “We’re watching a few episodes on TLC. We’ll be able to figure it out.”

The champions

9. 0:05:30 — Bryltyn. “I’m just a warrior. There are none like me. That is all.” The Arbiter thinks they’ve had “a bunch that look almost exactly like him in the other deathmatches.” Bryltyn: “There’s no way. I’m the only one. They were all fakes. Clones, perhaps.” The GM: “See? Clones!”
10. 0:06:15 — Highfrost, “the indomitable Highfrost”: “Welcome out, lads and lasses.” He is “a warlock from the north.” Warlocks from the south “can’t do the ice, the ice spells. If there’s no ice spells, are you really a warlock?” Asked where the Arbiter found them: “The north, we’ve been over this.”
11. 0:07:28 The GM demands Bryltyn fill the halls with his voice. “I am Bryltyn, and I’m here to bring some pain,” against this warlock “who seems to believe he’s got something special.” Highfrost: “Special, you want to see special? Come over here, I’ll lift up me kilt and you can see it.” Bryltyn mocks his accent.
12. 0:08:15 — The no-up-kilt policy. The Arbiter: “here at the arena we have a strict no up-kilt policy… save that for the after party.” Some of the Acolytes are children. “They like to see blood and death and gore, and that’s fine, but… there’s a line.”
13. 0:08:46 The GM: only one of them will make it to the after party. Someone answers, “I’ll just bring your corpse with me as a date” (speaker uncertain, probably Highfrost).
14. 0:09:04 The GM calls for the arena, “especially because my castle seems to be deteriorating at a fast rate.” The Arbiter swirls the sewage into “a whirlpool of shit and whatever else,” and they all fall through it to a winter dock: an abandoned fishing village under a light dusting of snow.

The arena — Highfrost’s family village

15. 0:10:20 Highfrost: “My uncle used to live here.… We’re in the north.” Bryltyn: “Do you know what happened to [them]?… I killed them all.” Highfrost: “Then you’re next… it’ll make a perfect burial ground for you, laddie.”
16. 0:10:54 The Arbiter “inadvertently chose a battlefield of some history.” The GM loves it: will Highfrost reclaim the town for his family’s name, or will it stand abandoned “as a tombstone? A warning, perhaps.”
17. 0:11:28 — Arena notes. The buildings are 15 ft high (double for two-story ones) and can be climbed. Snow hides patches of ice. “Don’t trust your eyes and be careful where you run… even more so if you’re running with sharp objects.”
18. 0:11:53 She opens her wings and pushes into the sky in a poof of snow, then speaks to the champions about the Acolytes’ cheers: “do not let them drag you down, but lift your spirits high… lest you be buried in the snow and forgotten forever.” She takes a small seat in the sky next to her dog, Doug.

The toast and the bad ale

19. 0:13:12 Highfrost spots old barrels with ale still in them and asks for a tap. The GM approves a toast. He toasts the Grandmaster “and to you, winged minion of the Grandmaster. I’ve forgotten your name.”
20. 0:13:35 — High school reunion. The Arbiter: “It’s Arbiter, it’s unimportant… We went to high school together.” Highfrost: “You were that lad from math class.” The Arbiter “was fatter, like a lot” and has dropped “five, six pounds.”
21. 0:14:02 — The candles. The Arbiter sells scented candles and has a Facebook group. GM: “It’s an MLM. Don’t buy it. It’s a pyramid scheme. Quit selling your candles in the workplace. You know that’s not allowed per policy.” Someone adds, “I already sold them to my family… You may as well buy them now” (speaker uncertain). Highfrost: “You better light some of those candles because you’re not gonna like the stench of his corpse.”
22. 0:14:46 — Placement. Highfrost starts by a little ship. Bryltyn starts behind a fence. Neither can see the other.
23. 0:15:42 — The ale fights back. Both roll Constitution saves. Both roll natural 1s (“Natural wands!” “Double breadsticks”). Highfrost: “My family’s been dead for ages. I can’t speak to the integrity of the brew.” The ale sat too long, was never properly fermented and has a film on it. Both take poison damage; Highfrost resists poison and takes half.
24. 0:17:52 Both are drunk for one round. They roll a d4 for which direction their feet take them, and might end up climbing things. Mudcat: “This is the very first time in the arena that the arena has made the first move.”

Round 1

25. 0:18:53 Highfrost wins initiative. From cover he calls, “I don’t see ya!” Bryltyn: “I’ll find you soon enough.” Highfrost asks how sturdy the buildings are. The GM: “The ice has kind of helped reinforce most of it.”
26. 0:20:29 His drunken d4 sends him up onto a building. “You really like this wall here.” Luckily it is tiered like a stall, so the climb is easy. Bryltyn: “You’re heading in the right direction, friend.”
27. 0:21:10 — Eldritch Blast, blind and drunk. They are about 160 ft apart. The first beam is a natural 1. The force of the blast breaks through the thin structure he’s standing on, and he falls into the little shack below and stumbles back up. That costs his second beam.
28. 0:22:33 — The ancestor shot. The third beam is a natural 20. The GM: “With the spirit of your ancestors guiding your hand, this Eldritch Blast arcs up in the air and almost like a homing beacon… does a straight shot.” It does big force damage, and the explosion shows Bryltyn where Highfrost is. It “knocks you in the noggin.” Bryltyn: “This is rigged.” Highfrost: “Did I get you, laddie?” Bryltyn: “Only a little. It’s just a scratch… Shut up.”
29. 0:25:41 Highfrost settles on “my pile of rubble.”
30. 0:25:50 Bryltyn moves 30 ft to the middle of the path but can’t reach. The GM suggests a snowball: “certainly you’ve thrown a snowball before in your freaking life.” His history check shows he knows to pack chunks of ice into it. Highfrost: “The ice balls, they bruise your face.” It misses.
31. 0:29:21 — What makes Bryltyn angry. Asked by the GM, he says: “Insufficient enemies on the field. This man is nothing more than a charlatan.” Highfrost: “I don’t know what that word means, but if I did, I’d be really angry about it.” Bryltyn: “A warlock? A stupid warlock?… You’ll die like the rest of your family.” Highfrost tells him to learn to spell stupid (“There’s no H”), then: “Happy Tuesday.” GM: “Happy Tuesday indeed.” The GM tells them to keep their sharp words “in your pocket for each round.”
32. 0:31:06 — Rage. Bryltyn is a bear totem barbarian. While raging he resists every damage type except psychic. The GM asks whether he yells or is the silent stoic type. He screams into the sky.
33. 0:31:41 — The crowd. The Acolytes are covered in snow, in winter coats, with hot cocoa that has more schnapps than cocoa, or Fireball. They spill their drinks cheering.
34. 0:32:13 The Arbiter’s end-of-round d20 is a 9: “It’s just sad.” Doug rolls too. The GM announces both champions have hero points, “like taking that extra drink of G Fuel.” The Arbiter compares it to “Kaio-ken times 20” (heard “KO Ken”). Then “Plus ultra… The more pluses you add, the better it is.”

Round 2

35. 0:33:12 Highfrost, sober now, leaves the shack (“I felt quite safe in there”) and moves into an alley parallel to Bryltyn. They lock eyes.
36. 0:34:11 — The draft. A draft lifts Highfrost’s kilt: “a little Marilyn Monroe action.” Bryltyn: “That is a disgusting sight.” Mudcat gives Bryltyn 1 psychic damage “for the trauma.” Highfrost: “Not had the time to trim in a few weeks, so I’m a bit embarrassed… Just a bit.”
37. 0:35:04 — Ray of Frost, natural 20. That makes two nat 20s back to back. Highfrost: “My uncle’s ale flowing through my body… you’re making fun of my manhood. I get really edgy about it and I tend to focus a little more.” It deals heavy cold damage, halved by Bryltyn’s resistance. GM: “It creates a layer of ice over your skin, but in your rage, it melts off very quickly, almost giving a cool steam effect from your flesh.” Highfrost: “I’ll be seeing you very, very soon.” Bryltyn: “I bet you will.”
38. 0:37:10 — The Arbiter frets. He worries Highfrost “is probably going to die too soon… They paid a lot of money for these tickets.” The GM offers Bryltyn a reward if he truly impresses her, or fails epically: “we’ll dangle a carrot in front of his face.” Bryltyn refuses: “Keep your potions.” Mudcat narrates: “The Arbiter’s protests in no way has anything to do with him placing wagers on these deathmatches.”
39. 0:38:35 — Hex. Highfrost hexes Bryltyn for extra necrotic damage. Bryltyn resists necrotic too. Mudcat: “Everything besides [psychic]. Don’t worry, I might have lined his boxing gloves with lead, too.” Highfrost: “He’s been eating his Wheaties, then.” Mudcat on concentration: “You only have so many brain cells so you must spend them wisely.”
40. 0:40:47 — The crystal. Bryltyn breaks line of sight and spots a glowing crystal in the rubble (perception 19). It lets him misty step 30 ft once as a free action. He uses it to reach a 15 ft roof; the peak is another 15 ft up. The GM describes it like uncorking and drinking a potion: icy cold “as if you’re drinking Listerine”, and poof, he’s there.
41. 0:43:20 — The roof. “I rip a piece of the roof off and throw it.” It’s a natural 20, with clay shingles and a barbarian brutal critical. GM: “You dig your hands deep into this roof, and like a tidal wave, you lift up a whole section of it, and clay tiles rain down from the sky like hail.” Highfrost: “Hey, me uncle built that roof!” Then someone says, “You’ve got snot on my beard. Damn right.” (speaker uncertain)
42. 0:45:44 The Arbiter rolls a 3 and Doug a 7. “You all are just sad rollers.” “Doug’s not perfect.” “Doug is still better than you.” “It’s time for Doug’s cookie time”: the break is for “the goodest boy.” The Arbiter will “work on the clone committee while we’re on break.”

After the break (cut) — the grandpappy’s house

43. 0:46:41 “With bladders light, we have returned.” GM: “Please don’t ever describe my bladder again.”
44. 0:47:03 Teej narrates that Highfrost is leaning against a building, writing his name in piss across the wall. GM: “Did you drink enough to spell your full name?” Highfrost: “Wrote my whole name… If they were alive to see it, they’d be overjoyed.” It’s his grandpappy’s house: “He was a monster. Oh, and not in a bad way… He could drink with the fishes.” Bryltyn: “It’s funny. Now he’s sleeping with them.” Teej: “I just died.” Mudcat gives Highfrost 1 psychic damage.
45. 0:48:39 GM: “The outside wounds will heal. The ones on the inside, they still bleed.” Highfrost: “sticks and stones… but the words, they hurt the insides… Actual grandpappy used to say that.” Bryltyn: “If he lives, I’ll give you a contact for a therapist.”

Chaos event 1 — Tag (0:49:06)

46. Bryltyn rolls a 10. The Grandmaster lands beside him and offers her hand. He takes it. She squeezes it tightly: “Tag, you’re it!” and flies back up. Bryltyn: “What is this nonsense?”
47. 0:50:25 A big red T-A-G is marked on his palm. Whoever is still “it” at the end of three turns takes damage. He must touch his opponent hand to hand to pass it on.
48. 0:50:46 — Timothy. The Arbiter: “You remember last time we played [tag] and the mayor of a town was killed? A hero to his people.” GM: “Yeah, Timothy, never forget. Sweet boy… I still have a picture of him.”
49. 0:51:01 Highfrost declines Bryltyn’s offer to shake hands and make up. His perception (21) catches it: “you have seen a game of tag before, especially here in your hometown.” The GM praises “the movie” Tag: “Jeremy Renner level.”

Round 3

50. 0:52:12 Highfrost moves to see Bryltyn on the roof. “Hello!” Bryltyn: “Nice to see you here… like the rest of your family.” Highfrost: “Tell your mother I’ll be coming by to pick up my laundry after this.” “Laundry for a corpse?”
51. 0:53:38 — Frostbite. “Something so cold you’ll think it’s been dead for ages.” Bryltyn makes his Constitution save and is unaffected.
52. 0:55:47 — The mother taunts. Highfrost: “I wouldn’t have missed it if he had been… down here on the ground like a brave boy instead of up there on the roof like a pussy.” “You know who liked it when I was up there? Your mother.” “She preferred me to hand her through the back door… The kilt gives me easy access. You just pull it up and down like a drawbridge.” Bryltyn: “Are you a grower and not a shower?” Highfrost: “It’s a bad boy that starts with the show.”
53. 0:57:14 — Natural 20 intimidation. Bryltyn’s insight falls short. He is shaken, put off by Highfrost “whipping his junk at you so fervently,” and starts doubting his mother: “She had a whole second life.” Bryltyn: “There’s no way. I trusted her. How could she with this warlock from the north?” Mudcat: “You even have the fleeting thought that this might be your father.” Bryltyn: “Could this be my father? Will I be battling my father?”
54. 0:58:55 — Warforged. Mudcat: “I mean, he’s a Warforged, so I don’t know how that all works.” GM to Bryltyn: the odds aren’t bad “unless you notice some metallic parts to your body.” Mudcat: “a bicentennial Robin Williams situation.” Highfrost explains: “You just take the little lightning cable, like the Apple phones… stick it right in the side and it just keeps going and going.” GM: “The battery life on this is impressive.” (Inferred: Highfrost is the Warforged; see Entities.)
55. 0:59:41 — The bagpipe. Highfrost pulls out a bagpipe and starts softly playing. His performance roll is terrible (“You only rolled 20s and ones”). Teej: it sounds like the kid playing Titanic on the recorder. GM: “The Jurassic Park version.” Bryltyn: “Yes, please stop.”
56. 1:01:03 — Consequences. The nat 20 taunt deals psychic damage to Bryltyn. The awful song hurts the Grandmaster: she takes psychic damage herself, “for that terrible song that you made me and all the acolytes have to listen to.” “You shall be more than sorry. I give you a small bane. On your next turn, you will roll with disadvantage. Don’t bring that horrid music back into my halls.”
57. 1:02:41 — The leap. Bryltyn climbs to the highest part of the roof, 30 ft up, and jumps off, swinging his handaxe down with the fall. Highfrost: “I think I heard him say he was doing a triple axel, double, double McWhiskey.” Both strikes hit, with three sixes on the falling damage. GM: “You slide down this roof, allowing gravity to pull you straight down, whacking him with your weapon.” Highfrost is bloodied, spurting blood into the snow. They stand face to face, “within hugging range… the optimal range for hugging.”
58. 1:05:20 Highfrost: “Don’t think you want to hug this.” Bryltyn: “Plus you are tagged, aren’t you?” The axe hits don’t count as a touch. Bryltyn tries a bonus-action tag (sleight of hand vs Dex) and succeeds. Mudcat: “He touches you. Look who’s it, bitch.” Highfrost: “If I’d been in my tip top, if I hadn’t just been hit by your axe, maybe I could have gotten out of the way.” Highfrost is now it.
59. 1:06:54 The Arbiter rolls a 9 and a 6. GM: “Apparently you and Doug are on the same page.” “We’re the same thing.”

Chaos event 2 — The ducklings (1:07:37)

60. Highfrost rolls a 9. The tag continues. A mama duck and her line of ducklings waddle out of an alley: eight ducks in all. They missed the flight south, sheltered in the abandoned homes, and came out curious about the fight.
61. 1:08:56 — Feed the ducks. Highfrost begs for bread: “Has anyone got a loaf of bread? Just a slice… Acolytes?” Bryltyn: “We don’t feed the ducks.” Highfrost is disappointed: you feed them “so that you can become friends.” Bryltyn: “Friends? What is that word?” Highfrost: “Oh, that might be the scariest thing you’ve said all night.”
62. 1:09:43 Seeing the tokens, Highfrost cries “Oh my gosh, they’re giant!” and Bryltyn wants an alliance. The GM clarifies they are normal-sized ducks.
63. 1:10:39 The Acolytes throw down hot dogs with no buns (“You don’t have buns that you showed off, so you don’t get any”), Doritos and popcorn. Highfrost won’t feed those to ducks: “It makes their bellies all rumbly.”
64. 1:11:18 — The straggler. Highfrost asks Bryltyn for “a wee moment” and scooches the ducks off the lane under a sheet-metal roof. He helps the straggler at the very back, a white duckling with brown flecks (the rest are brown), with “a little tap on the feather buns” to catch it up to its mother. “And I hope he evolves into a Charizard.” Mudcat: “What is this, Digimon?”
65. 1:12:37 — The feather. The duckling’s gift cancels the Grandmaster’s bane, and a little feather floats into his hand: +2 AC.
66. 1:13:13 — The tagged duckling. GM: “You were it. You tagged this duck by touching it.” The tag leaves Highfrost’s hand, and a smaller, more adorable version appears on the duckling’s back. If it can’t touch someone before the round is up, it dies. Bryltyn: “It’s going to die… And it’s all your fault, duck man.” Highfrost: “The wee one. Not the wee one. Someone give me some bread!”
67. 1:15:27 — The bread (hero point, chat’s idea). Chat suggests he use his hero point to bring enough bread to be king of the ducks. Highfrost hikes up his kilt. Everyone gasps “Not again!”, but a small leather satchel hangs from under it. Inside is a slice of bread he saved earlier. It’s “spicy warm… a little squishy… the hide that we use is from… something very magical. So the bread still… tastes good.” Bryltyn: “Nobody wants your ball sack infused bread. Not even these little ducklings.” GM: “It’s a salty flavor.”
68. 1:17:21 — Duck independence. Highfrost won’t be Lord of the Ducks: “he believes in duck independence.” He crumbles the bread and flings it like sand into Bryltyn’s face, and the ducks, the tagged one included, go for it. The GM proclaims: “For the liberation of ducks!”
69. 1:18:28 — Mobbed. A flurry of feathers hits Bryltyn. Mama Duck lands square on his shoulder while the babies dance around him, and the little one touches him. Bryltyn is it again. Bryltyn: “These damn ducklings. I never liked them anyway.” Mudcat: “You told me they were cute about a wee minute ago.” The ducks peck him; Mudcat rules it halved because he’s “resistant to duck damage.” The GM says it’s piercing (“There is no such thing as duck damage”); Bryltyn: “It’s definitely duck damage.” The starving ducks take their bread and move to the side. Bryltyn: “These chaos events have not been my friend.”

Round 4 (continued)

70. 1:19:44 Highfrost backs out of tag range and climbs a 10 ft stand using a little step. Bryltyn’s opportunity attack hits. Highfrost: “Don’t run from me… I climbed up on the roof and I’m still bleeding from the ankles.”
71. 1:22:01 “You’re both just covered in blood at this point, just bleeding into the snow.” GM: “It’s really quite beautiful, the red to white contrast.” Bryltyn: “It’s almost like that scene out of Kill Bill.” Highfrost: “Straight out of SimCity. I suppose that means you’re saying that I’m the one that dies.” Bryltyn: “That’s exactly how this is going to go.”
72. 1:22:39 — Eldritch Blast. All three beams hit, carrying the hex, mostly halved by bear-totem resistance. Highfrost: “Gross, dude… Look me up ahead of time? Bears?” GM: “They got thick skin that just lives through anything.” “That force damage… knock[s] the wind out of you.” Bryltyn: “I’m coming for you, Highfrost.” Highfrost: “You’re looking a little ragged.” Bryltyn: “Worry about yourself.”
73. 1:26:02 Bryltyn is it, and low on health. “It’s a notable poof.” He follows Highfrost up to the ledge. “If you die, I die. Everything’s fine.” GM: “a very all-in mentality.” Bryltyn: “Both of us on leaving this place.”
74. 1:27:29 — The broken axe. The height difference gives Highfrost +1 AC. The first handaxe swing hits. The second is a natural 1: “it breaks on his metal chest.” Bryltyn has only one handaxe left. (A short retcon settles that he reached up rather than threw the first axe.)
75. 1:29:16 — The failed tag. Bryltyn can only reach Highfrost’s feet, so he tries with disadvantage while Highfrost dodges with advantage. Highfrost escapes. GM: “You are river dancing your way out of this. It’s not a good river dance… Your ancestors are ashamed.” Highfrost: “I saw a traveling guy do it once down the street. I just had to copy it.”

The Arbiter’s chaos event — Avalanche (1:31:08)

76. The Arbiter rolls a 14. GM: “Your own personal chaotic event may ensue.” An avalanche comes down the snowy mountain above the town and sweeps both champions to the docks. Highfrost’s save halves his damage; Bryltyn’s resistance halves his.
77. 1:32:29 Coin flips land them at opposite ends of the dockside, about 30 ft apart. GM: “The final duel begins.”
78. 1:33:13 — The tag goes off. Bryltyn’s tagged palm glows bright red and burns. The glow seeps into his veins, turning his arm red as it pulses light across the snow. He accidentally rolls two dice, and a coin flip decides which counts. He gets the low one, and rage halves it again. “Game of tag!” GM: “Game of tag can be deadly.” He survives.
79. 1:34:55 The avalanche leaves them at the edge of the dock, looking out on a frozen ocean. Initiative is rerolled. Highfrost rolls a 4, Bryltyn an 8.

The kill

80. 1:36:15 Bryltyn runs straight at Highfrost and swings his last handaxe. It hits (20). Mudcat asks him to describe it.
81. 1:36:58 — Bryltyn narrates: “I leap forward by the coast, the ocean spray flaying into my face. His eyes are wild and wide with fear. He had no idea this was coming. But at peace still, knowing he’ll join the rest of his family. A slash, a deep gash in his chest. The blood sprays onto the snow, onto the stones, into the ocean. He exhales and he falls backwards. He knows he’s lost… Be at peace with your family, foe.”
82. 1:37:59 — Highfrost’s last words: “You beat me today. I’ll see you in the next life.” As his breath fades, he lifts the edge of his kilt “just high enough”: “Take a good look and tell your mother she was amazing.” Mudcat: “I don’t want to be there when you call her.”
83. 1:38:45 — The toast. The GM stands from her throne, drink in hand: “We started this with a drink and we will end it as such. Cheers to our champions who fought bravely and beautifully, turning the white snow to a murky red. To you who have fallen, Highfrost, may you rest with your ancestors.”
84. 1:39:20 She flies down to Bryltyn and holds out her hand again, “this time no tag in sight”: “Come, take my hand and I will take you to your fans.” He takes it. His rage subsides and he rises “as light as a feather,” leaving his footprints in the snow below.
85. 1:39:47 To the Acolytes: they asked for an epic battle and got rooftop-to-rooftop fighting, a battle with the ducks, “and truly… the most epic game of tag.” “The dialogue that we have heard tonight shall be remembered forever for many different reasons.” “We welcome and goodnight you to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In character (canon, Dried Blood)

• 1:47:19 Highfrost: “You know, I came out with my willy swinging thinking I was something quite impressive. And by the end of it was shown that confidence doesn’t hit quite as hard as an ax.” GM: “Having both helps.”
• 1:47:46 Bryltyn: “I told him from the very beginning he was going to die, like the rest of his family. And now he’s dead, there’s not much more to say.” GM: “You are not a liar, sir.” Reply: “No, I’m a very honest man… honest day’s work for me” (speaker uncertain; diarized as 01).

Out of character (creator notes)

• 1:40:42 Mudcat: “Don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson… this time we are recording.” He isn’t sure of the episode number (“12, 13 maybe”).
• This was Anubis’s first time playing D&D. He called it “a nice slice of revenge after Warlords” against Teej and may make beating Teej “a routine.” Teej: “All I have to do is change my voice.”
• Teej’s planned finale: True Strike, then Mind Spike (psychic, which Bryltyn doesn’t resist), then Shadow Blade as a bonus action. A “what if” roll at the table: Bryltyn fails the Wisdom save and takes 10 psychic, and the Shadow Blade would have done 16 psychic on a hit. Teej: “Defeated by a coin toss.” Caustic Phoenix: “That’s the beauty of the game… The dice and the coins.” Mudcat said Bryltyn had about 21 HP left.
• Caustic Phoenix suspects a record number of nat 20s and nat 1s, starting with the “double nat ones” on the ale.
• The ale (Mudcat’s description): a layer of mold had started to grow, and it’s gritty, “like sand as you’re drinking it… like drinking mineral spirits.” Caustic Phoenix: “it’s the drink of your ancestors.”