S2E2 — Prize Fight — Asena v Ralzamon

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Season 2 of the Deathmatches opened with a grudge match. Asena, a dragon-blooded brawler from the dimension of Northport, faced Ralzamon, a long-dead psychic “master of the unknown” who, by his own count, had fought her “like, five times” and haunted her nightmares. Their arena was the kitchen of the Dread Fortress itself. Over the night the Acolytes rained flaming snowmen on the floor, an alien saucer came down through the peeled-back ceiling, and a pair of snake arms settled the matter. In the final moments the Arbiter did something nobody else saw.

The Story

A Meal Order and a Bones Day

The season began in the old halls of the Dread Fortress, where the stone was “loose and crumbling with age.” The Arbiter strutted through the corridors whistling and pointing at the cooks, “channeling his best Tobey Maguire from Spider-Man 3.” He found the Grandmaster on her throne in a foul mood. Doug the Pug sat with her, and a huddle of goblins at her feet were trying to take down her dinner order. The goblins could barely write (“We don’t have a great education program in the Dread Fortress yet”). She wanted macaroni noodles, bacon grease and soy sauce, and the kitchen had no bacon grease.

“Finally, somebody here with half a brain,” she said when the Arbiter walked in. “Thank goodness you’ve returned.” She told him things had been “a bit of a chaotic mess” while he was away. She called him her right-hand man, then added that she could obviously manage without him but wanted him to feel important. “DoorDash doesn’t deliver here,” so would he please run her order down to the chefs?

The Arbiter suggested a Deathmatch before dinner. The decision fell to Doug. The Grandmaster gave him a little shake, the pug sat bolt upright, and she declared, “It’s a bones day. Perfect. Then we will have a battle.”

Old Enemies

The Arbiter tore open “a spectacular, a little showy” portal. Asena spoke first, a seasoned portal traveller who found “this trip was pretty lovely.” She introduced her opponent as “Ralzypoo” and urged the Grandmaster to say it to his face: “He loves it.” At home she fought as a pugilist. For this arena she had chosen to lean into her dragon heritage and become “a version of myself that is just more epic and more dragon-y.” The Grandmaster was charmed: “You have captured my heart right away… I am keeping my eye on you.”

The talk of dragons set the Arbiter reminiscing. It “wasn’t too long ago” that he and the Grandmaster had been dragons, he said. She agreed that she had been “the most gorgeous Topaz dragon. Just beauty. And then I got killed.” He insisted “they cheated,” and she shut the subject down.

Ralzamon arrived floating above the molten rock. He was a wretched being of ghostly ectoplasm, dressed half for a jungle expedition and half as “a megalomaniacal madman.” He pointed one hand at his nemesis and spoke:

Ralzamon: “Her energy does not belong in this world! It corrupts everywhere that it goes! If I could not banish it from my own world, then I will snuff it out in this one! For I am Ralzamon, master of the unknown.”

Before the fight the Grandmaster asked for tombstone requests. The Fortress keeps a tombstone guy on staff, a craftsman who can work materials from any realm, and since they are weekly customers he offers a discount for friends and family. Ralzamon found marble “a little gross.” Asena proposed “Ralzy Poo lies here,” which offended him deeply: “Ralzamon isn’t even my real name… What would my mother, my poor dead mother think of that?” Asena shot back that he didn’t even know his real name. The Arbiter said he had missed this place, and opened one more portal to the sound of lutes and flutes.

Into the Kitchen

The champions stepped into the Dread Fortress kitchen, which the Arbiter claimed was envied by every mansion and hotel. It had tables loaded with food and knives, a second-floor balcony with a twenty-foot drop, trophies mounted on the walls, and a very deep, dark well in one corner. “I don’t have to clean it up,” the Grandmaster said. “So food fight if you want.” She proved it by hopping onto a table and kicking the food off it. “Make this place unrecognizable.” Then she flew up to her throne in the sky beside Doug.

Ralzamon took the balcony, “looking down on you, as only appropriate.” Asena started beside the well. She moved first, and she pointed out that she rolled better than he talked.

The Acolytes opened with Dodgeball and hurled everything they had. Down came pickles, dim sum, a live octopus, cats, toilet paper, mismatched battle slippers, snowmen on fire, and Christmas trees shedding their ornaments. The Grandmaster had to warn one Acolyte, Belle, not to throw her dog. Ralzamon ended up bruised and buried. Asena announced she had needed a snack and started eating the barrage. She ate the cheese, pie and durians, but she refused the raccoon, because “raccoons are sacred animals, okay?” Eating her way through the onslaught spared her half the pain.

Then two shiny vials appeared on the center table, one red and one blue. The Arbiter also announced that the Acolytes had summoned a Box of Chaos: “It’s a box with lots of chaos in it.” It was full of magic items, and anyone could take one for a sacrifice of their own choosing. It went to a corner by the window, and nobody claimed anything from it that night.

Red Pill, Blue Pill

Asena’s friend John had told her about The Matrix, so she ran straight for the red vial. “Again with these incursive anachronisms,” Ralzamon groaned. “Why do you corrupt the plot so badly?” She threw it back like a shot without checking what it was. The blue vial flew up to Ralzamon (“Over the lips and through the gums, look out, Tommy, here it comes”). The red made her blazingly quick, “going in bullet time.” The blue made him “one with the universe” and far deadlier.

Asena opened her campaign of terror by karate-chopping a jar of milk off the table. “Take that,” she told him telepathically, “now you can’t have any milk.” Ralzamon was unmoved: “I’m lactose intolerant.” Asena filed that away for later. She then summoned her dragon’s frightful presence, which happened to take the form of the spilled milk swirling around her feet.

Ralzamon rose into the air, and the trophies on the back wall began to glow. He sniffed out “the stench of Jill and Carmichael” behind her new power. Asena admitted she had never really understood his whole shtick. Ralzamon was exasperated: “We’ve done battle, like, five times. I’ve traumatized you. I haunt your nightmares… Do you go to the story meetings?” She explained that the next day everything “just kind of goes away.” His words still got under her skin a little, and the Grandmaster told him, “You found a thread that you might want to keep pulling on.”

A Saucer in the Ceiling

The Acolytes gave both champions a burst of heroism, which the Grandmaster likened to chugging a Mountain Dew. Doug was allowed to roll the next chaos event himself. The kitchen ceiling peeled back and curled upward into the sky, and a silver saucer of dazzling colours lowered itself down a beam of light. Asena happened to know all about it. She had learned about alien abductions that very morning, in another world. This was a spaceship, and at the end of the next round it would suck someone up whether they liked it or not. The Grandmaster quietly added that the aliens had been known to give “good gifts and negative gifts.”

Teeth, Fire and a Mental Prison

Ralzamon’s plan was simple: “You’re really good at punching. I can float… don’t get punched.” Asena sprouted spectral dragon wings and flew straight at him (“Personal space, personal space”). Her first punch was a natural 20, and her fist hit his jaw with a force he had never felt before. In the Grandmaster’s words: “Teeth flying jumbled, the dentist is gonna be real expensive later.”

“Not so fast,” Ralzamon answered. He poured all the trauma of their shared history into a blast of hellfire: “Rebuke that shit.” Asena took it on the chin and punished the spell with another punch. She tried to stun him, and he shrugged it off. That critical first punch had also wrapped him in clinging wisps of dimensional mist. Ralzamon’s player had designed that trick for her himself, back home, and he cried, “I made this crap for you!”

Ralzamon refused to be “terrified of a freaking milk dragon.” He called on the crystal heart where his consciousness normally lives “when not imprisoned in this fleshy apparatus.” He invoked the powers of the Zul’quian jungles, and the roar of a jaguar cleared his head. Somewhere in the stands, baboons began hurling eggs (“Keep your red butts in your seats”).

Then he struck at the fear he knew was there. He sealed Asena inside a mental prison full of ninjas, void slimes and his own face mocking her from every direction. She spent her heroic boost to fight it off a second time, and did even worse. “You’re breaking my heart!” cried the Grandmaster. If Asena tried to leave the prison, it would hurt her far more.

Ralzamon drifted down and hobbled toward the Box of Chaos at half speed (“I’m just a dude”). On the way he reached out telepathically to the saucer, in his best alien voice: “Hail and welcome to our world. The specimen that you requested is ready for collection, immobilized through psychic means.” The aliens bought it completely. “Excellent, excellent.” He then shook off the wisps of mist, which the Grandmaster said looked like cool smoke, except “it makes it seem like you farted.” Ralzamon sighed, “There was a chance to be cool and we just blew it.”

Abducted

The beam came for Asena, and she went willingly, because aliens sounded really cool. Ralzamon objected that moving her should set off the prison. The Grandmaster ruled it a teleport (“beam me up, Scotty”) that would return her to the same spot. “Have fun on your vacation,” said Ralzamon.

His new friends rewarded him with a healing potion for delivering the specimen. It didn’t seem like much, so they felt sorry for him and threw him another: “You seem thirsty. Here you go.” Meanwhile Asena lay strapped to a table while Ralzamon chanted “Extract the brain, extract the brain.” The experiment turned out to be a gift. Her arms became two slithering snakes, each one an extra brain she could talk to. The aliens zapped her back into her prison and flew away, and the ceiling folded shut as if they had never been there. With three minds working on the problem, Asena broke out of the prison, just barely.

“I don’t want to die,” said Ralzamon. “Oh, I want you to die,” said Asena.

The Final Boop

Ralzamon fled past the skulls and furs on the wall and pulled a huge clock down behind him, like a movie duel with thrown candelabras, “except, you know, as far away as possible.” Asena hopped over it. “Bring it on,” he sighed. “Commence the punching.”

She punched him and yelled “Boop!” The snake bit him. “You boop me, I boop you,” Ralzamon answered, and burned her with a second blast of hellfire. Her dragon blood did nothing against fire. She bit back until his arms were dotted like “a vampire saw you as a snack.” The Arbiter added that he was “not not promoting cannibalism.” Then Asena let loose a final flurry. Both snakes struck, and Ralzamon fell.

Dying, he delivered a prophecy:

Ralzamon: “You will bring doom! Doom upon the world that you call home! You are the harbinger of elder evil… Death is but a door, time is but a window. I’ll be back.”

The Grandmaster landed on a barrel of mead. She said she did not doubt the danger he spoke of. Asena admitted she didn’t know much about her past. The Grandmaster told her to do some family digging, and offered some advice: “There have been plenty who have called me good or evil, hero or villain. Don’t let those labels stick to you.” Then she lifted the fallen champion’s head and honoured him. His blood would seep into the stones of the Fortress: “You are the veins that keep this alive and you will not be forgotten.” She asked the Arbiter to tend to their champion.

The Arbiter dragged Ralzamon to the well and threw him in, and then jumped in after him. As they fell through what seemed like eternity, he touched the body and brought Ralzamon back. “That was quite a show, especially the mental prison. I’m a big fan. And I think I could use a general for the days to come… Come with me. We have much to plan for.”

Above, unaware, the Grandmaster waved away Asena’s snakes (“You are free from your pythons”). Asena took her hand: “I like having fingers again. Do you think I could try some of that meat?” The Grandmaster raised their “queen of the fight” before the roaring stands and announced that drinks were on the Dread Fortress.

Dried Blood

In the after-show, Ralzamon left a final warning: “Do not trust in otherworldly magic, for it seeks only to corrupt your universe and eat it from the inside out.” Asena tried to remember her own catchphrase and came up with “cut the bullshit and tell me what you need to know, or something like that.” Ralzamon’s player assured her that getting it slightly wrong only made it more authentic. The players explained that the two come from a genre-hopping campaign that has taken them through pulp adventure, dragons-versus-mechas and the stars. Ralzamon terrorised Asena with a mind prison the first time they met, but after months of facing him she no longer finds him that scary.

Notable Moments

• Doug the Pug declared “a bones day” and personally rolled the arrival of an alien spaceship.
• Asena ate her way through the Acolytes’ barrage but drew the line at raccoons, which are sacred.
• Ralzamon passed himself off as an alien, handed Asena over to the saucer, and got two healing potions for it.
• The aliens gave Asena snake arms with their own brains, and those brains got her out of the mental prison.
• The killing blow was a snake bite delivered with a cry of “Boop!”
• The Arbiter threw the dead Ralzamon down the kitchen well, revived him mid-fall, and recruited him as a general.

Memorable Quotes

• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “I have a meal order and DoorDash doesn’t deliver here.”
• Ralzamon: “Ralzamon isn’t even my real name… What would my mother, my poor dead mother think of that?”
• Asena: “I’m not going to eat the raccoon because raccoons are sacred animals, okay?”
• Ralzamon: “We’ve done battle, like, five times. I’ve traumatized you. I haunt your nightmares.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Teeth flying jumbled, the dentist is gonna be real expensive later.”
• The aliens: “You seem thirsty. Here you go.”
• Ralzamon: “Behold the mental nose booping of Ralzamon.”
• The Arbiter: “And I think I could use a general for the days to come.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Asena (PodsofWar)

• Origin: from the dimension of Northport, a Coriander Society character. Normally a pugilist; here a monk “more dragon-y,” tapping her dragon heritage for the arena.
• Powers:
  • Telepathy.
  • Spectral draconic wings (Wings Unfurled).
  • Aspect of the Wyrm frightful presence, which manifested as swirling milk.
  • Step of the Wind, Stunning Strike, Flurry of Blows, Mage Slayer.
  • Dimension Strike, a custom feat: force damage on a crit, plus wisps of mist that slow the target, hamper its attacks and block teleport.
• Personality and lore:
  • Forgetful (“the next day, everything just kind of goes away”).
  • Not cautious.
  • Thinks raccoons are sacred animals.
  • Her friend John told her about Matrix.
  • Learned about aliens that morning in a dimension called Ico.
  • Says she doesn’t know much about her past.
  • Calls Ralzamon “Ralzypoo.”
• In this episode:
  • She was abducted willingly by aliens and given snake arms with two extra brains; the GM later removed them.
  • She won; the GM called her “queen of the fight.”
  • Ralzamon calls her a corrupting energy and “harbinger of elder evil”; the GM says she doesn’t doubt she is a danger.

Ralzamon (TrmntdByGnomes)

• Nature: “master of the unknown.” A long-dead being of ectoplasm, dressed half jungle explorer, half megalomaniac.
  • “Ralzamon” is an assumed name, not his real one. He has a “poor dead mother.”
  • His consciousness normally resides in a crystal heart and he calls this body a “fleshy apparatus.”
  • He was once “a mere mortal.”
  • He’s lactose intolerant and finds marble gross.
• Powers: psychic. He used levitation, Hellish Rebuke (twice), Lucky, Pact of the Talisman invoking the Zul’quian jungles, and Mental Prison (ninjas, void slimes, his own mocking face).
• History with Asena: they’ve fought “like five times.” He mind-prisoned and haunted her. He believes her energy corrupts worlds and failed to banish it from “my own world.”
• In this episode:
  • He fooled the aliens into thinking he was one of them and got two healing potions.
  • He was killed by Asena.
  • He was revived in secret by the Arbiter in the well as “a general for the days to come.”

The Arbiter (Mudcat)

• He has just returned to the Dread Fortress after an absence (“I really miss this place”). The GM calls him her right-hand man.
• He claims he and the GM were recently dragons.
• He secretly revived Ralzamon and recruited him: “We have much to plan for.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix)

• Wanted macaroni, bacon grease and soy sauce.
• Was once “the most gorgeous Topaz dragon,” then got killed (“they cheated,” per the Arbiter).
• Has been called “good or evil, hero or villain.”
• Removed Asena’s snake arms with a wave and bought drinks for everyone.

Doug the Pug: the GM’s pug. He had “a bones day” and rolled a chaos event.

The goblins of the Dread Fortress: servants taking meal orders, barely literate. They are blamed for the broken round sign.

The aliens: crew of a silver saucer. They give “good gifts and negative gifts,” took Asena, gave her snake arms, and gave potions to Ralzamon, whom they took for a friend.

The tombstone guy: the Fortress’s craftsman, able to use materials from any realm, with a weekly discount.

Mentioned: “Jill and Carmichael” (a “he” who may have aided Asena’s ascension; spelling uncertain); Asena’s friend John; Belle (chat).

Places

• The Dread Fortress: old, crumbling stone halls, with cooks and helpers.
• The Dread Fortress throne room, with the GM’s throne.
• The Dread Fortress kitchen:
  • two levels, stairs, a balcony 20 ft up, a 40 ft ceiling;
  • wall trophies, skulls, horns, furs and a wall clock;
  • barrels of mead;
  • a deep, dark well/pit in a corner, seemingly endless, into which the Arbiter threw Ralzamon.
• Northport: Asena’s dimension, which has movies.
• Ico: a dimension Asena visited that morning (spelling uncertain).
• The Zul’quian jungles: the source of Ralzamon’s talisman power.
• Ralzamon’s “own world,” which Asena’s energy supposedly corrupts.

Items

• Red vial (+AC, speed) and blue vial (+attack), lasting two rounds.
• Box of Chaos: magic items in exchange for a sacrifice of the taker’s choosing. Unclaimed this episode.
• Alien healing potions (two, given to Ralzamon).
• Asena’s snake arms.
• The milk jar.
• The GM’s meal order.

Lore statements

• The Dread Fortress has no good education program yet, and DoorDash doesn’t deliver there.
• The blood of champions who die in the Fortress “seeps into the stones… You are the veins that keep this alive” (the GM).
• The Acolytes can summon a Box of Chaos and grant hero points.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the throne room

1. 0:00:16 Mudcat opens “season two of D20 Deathmatch”: “Welcome back, Acolytes.”
   • The halls of the Dread Fortress are described with stone “loose and crumbling with age.”
   • The Arbiter struts down the hallways whistling. He points at the cooks and helpers, “channeling his best Tobey Maguire from Spider-Man 3,” and walks into the large throne room.
2. 0:01:08 The meal order. Elusia sits on her throne with Doug the Pug, frustrated, with a huddle of goblins at her feet.
   • She is trying to order macaroni noodles, bacon grease and soy sauce: “that’s all I want to eat.” It turns out they have no bacon grease.
   • The goblins struggle with little notepads because they’re barely literate: “We don’t have a great education program in the Dread Fortress yet.”
3. 0:02:00 The Arbiter’s return. She greets him: “Finally, somebody here with half a brain. Thank goodness you’ve returned.”
   • “DoorDash doesn’t deliver here,” so she asks him to take her order to the chefs below.
   • She says that while he was away “things were a bit of a chaotic mess… You’re my right-hand man.”
   • She adds: “obviously I could do this without you, but I want you to feel important.”
4. 0:02:45 Doug’s bones day. The Arbiter suggests a Deathmatch before they eat. Doug hops into her lap and she shakes him a little, and he sits upright: “It’s a bones day.” So there will be a battle.
5. 0:03:23 The Arbiter swears he would not kick off a new season without champions of quality and caliber. He rips open “a spectacular, a little showy” portal and presents Ralzamon and Asena.
6. 0:04:16 Asena’s introduction.
   • She’s used to traveling through portals and found “this trip was pretty lovely.”
   • She calls her opponent “Ralzypoo” and tells the GM to say it to his face: “He loves it.”
   • In “our dimension of Northport” she’s a pugilist fighter with dragon heritage. In this magical arena she’s decided to tap into that heritage, so she is “a version of myself that is just more epic and more dragon-y.”
   • The GM: “You have captured my heart right away… I am keeping my eye on you.”
7. 0:05:36 The dragon memory.
   • The Arbiter: “It wasn’t too long ago that you and I were dragons, Grandmaster… she was a Topaz.”
   • GM: “I was the most gorgeous Topaz dragon. Just beauty. And then I got killed. But we won’t talk about that.”
   • Arbiter: “they cheated.” The GM cuts him off (“Okay, let’s not”).
8. 0:06:04 Ralzamon’s entrance.
   • He is narrated as “a wretched being, long since dead, his flesh ephemeral ectoplasm.” He wears a mishmash of clothes: some suited to exploring the most distant jungle, the rest “the garb of a megalomaniacal madman.”
   • He floats above the molten rock, one hand pointed at “his nemesis, Asena.”
   • “Her energy does not belong in this world! It corrupts everywhere that it goes! If I could not banish it from my own world, then I will snuff it out in this one! For I am Ralzamon, master of the unknown.”
   • GM: “Someone is bringing a bit of fire and brimstone.” Ralzamon: “We have clashed before, but this shall be the last time.”
9. 0:07:24 The tombstone guy.
   • The GM asks both champions to note any requests for their tombstones.
   • The Fortress has a tombstone guy, “a craftsman” who can use materials “from anywhere in any realm.” They’re weekly customers, so there’s “a good discount rate… for friends and family.”
   • Ralzamon finds marble “a little gross.”
   • Asena suggests “Ralzy Poo lies here.” Ralzamon: “Ralzamon isn’t even my real name. Why would I put a false iteration of my assumed name on my tombstone? What would my mother, my poor dead mother think of that?”
   • Asena: “You don’t even know your real name.” The GM sees “mind games come into play already.”
10. 0:09:05 The Arbiter: “It’s good to be back in the Dread Fortress. I really miss this place.” He opens another portal; lutes and flutes play as they step through. He suggests a drink, and the GM, who is hungry anyway, makes it “a one-stop shop.”

The arena: the Dread Fortress kitchen

11. 0:09:40 “Welcome, dear champions, to the Dread Fortress kitchen… no kitchen grander anywhere else. Mansions, hotels, all envy for the grand chef room.”
    • It has tables, food, knives and a second level reached by stairs. Falling off the balcony is a 20 ft drop.
    • “I don’t have to clean it up. So food fight if you want.”
12. 0:10:27 The GM’s wings open. She steps onto a chair, then a table, and kicks food off it to show she doesn’t care about anything in here either: “Make this place unrecognizable.” She flies to her throne in the sky next to Doug, “eye to eye with her lovely acolytes.”
13. 0:11:20 She addresses the crowd: two champions “already familiar with each other… Perhaps this is the last night they will taste each other’s weapons.” The chat has already registered two chaotic events.
14. 0:13:02 Placement.
    • Ralzamon starts on the second-floor banister, 20 ft up. He says he is “looking down on you, as only appropriate.”
    • Asena starts beside the “very deep dark hole” (the well) by the stairs.
15. 0:13:47 Initiative. Asena gets 18 and Ralzamon 11. Asena: “If only you could roll as good as you talk smack from up there.”
    • Ralzamon: “I do like having your mind erased.” Asena: “Getting used to it.” GM: “What are memories but anchors that hold us back?”

Chaos events: Dodgeball and the vials

16. 0:14:57 Dodgeball (“a fan favorite”). The chat throws whatever they have from the stands.
    • The GM warns Belle not to throw her dog.
    • Items thrown: pickles, dim sum, hot dogs, cheese, a live octopus, hamburgers, cookies and cats, popcorn, cake, walnuts, snowmen on fire, broccoli, toilet paper (“that’s kind”), mismatched battle slippers, fish, and Christmas trees whose ornaments crash down.
    • Asena: toilet paper is “hard to find right now” in some places.
17. 0:17:05 Asena eats the barrage. She announces she needed a snack, and the GM calls it creative.
    • Ralzamon is buried and bruised by the falling objects.
    • Asena gets pelted with raccoons, cheese, pie and durians. A Survival check decides what’s edible. She refuses to eat the raccoon: “raccoons are sacred animals.” Ralzamon: “Eat the raccoon you want.”
    • Because she eats half of it, she takes only half damage. GM: “eating things may help you. Just be careful what you pick up.”
18. 0:19:10 The vials. Two shiny vials, one red and one blue, appear on the center table. Whoever gets there first chooses. Unclaimed vials vanish after two rounds.
19. 0:20:04 The Box of Chaos. The Arbiter announces that the Acolytes have also summoned a Box of Chaos: “It’s a box with lots of chaos in it.”
    • It holds magic items “of all different types, denominations, levels.” To get an item you must sacrifice something, and the sacrifice is up to you.
    • It is placed in the bottom-right corner by a window.
    • GM: “Enough, Arbiter… I would like to see battle.”

Round 1

20. 0:21:29 The round sign breaks. Ralzamon: “She has that effect on things… She broke everything.” Asena: “I break a lot of things, including people’s faces.”
    • Ralzamon: “Cosmic fabric of reality, plot lines, plans… it’s really a smorgasbord of destruction.” His prompt for her to begin: “Ring it, punch lady.”
21. 0:22:34 The red pill. They are 75 ft apart. Asena runs for “those pills,” because her friend John told her about the movie Matrix and to always take the red pill. Ralzamon: “I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes… Again with these incursive anachronisms. Why do you corrupt the plot so badly?”
22. 0:23:13 Asena skips the medicine check (“I’m not really that cautious”) and takes the red vial as a shot. The blue vial flies up to Ralzamon: “Over the lips and through the gums, look out, Tommy, here it comes.”
    • Red vial: it burns hot down her throat and makes her quicker, leaning on her monk talents, “going in bullet time.” It gives +5 AC.
    • Blue vial: it makes Ralzamon aware and more powerful, “one with the universe.” It gives +5 to attacks.
    • Both last two rounds, until they “sweat it out in this very hot, hot kitchen.”
    • Ralzamon: “You’re done now. It’s over.” Asena: “That’s assuming you can hit me.”
23. 0:25:53 The milk jar. Standing on a table among cups and porcelain bowls, Asena karate-chops a jar of milk onto the ground. She means it as a threatening act and tells him telepathically: “Take that, now you can’t have any milk.”
    • Ralzamon: “I’m lactose intolerant.” Asena: “Now I know that I need to throw it at you next time.”
    • Intimidation 9 against insight 20: he is unafraid. The GM calls the spilled milk “an omen” of the destruction she will bring to the room.
24. 0:28:09 The milk dragon. Asena activates Aspect of the Wyrm, a 10 ft frightful presence, because fear “is how he normally defeats me.”
    • It looks like the milk swarming around her feet, “milky substance all around me.”
    • “You shouldn’t come close to me, Ralzypoo, especially since you’re lactose intolerant… I’ve gotten a lot better in this arena than you remember me.”
25. 0:29:40 “Jill and Carmichael” (spelling uncertain). Ralzamon: “I smell the stench of Jill and Carmichael about this. Did he put a hand in your ascension?” Asena: “Maybe. Maybe not. Could have been my idea.” Ralzamon: “We’ll give you all the credit as I grind your brain into moldering gold.”
26. 0:30:23 Ralzamon levitates. He spreads his hands and his eyes roll back. An eerie aura fills the room, and the mounted trophies on the back wall begin to glow.
    • The GM says the ceiling is 40 ft from the floor (“You can fly wherever you want, Superman”). He floats 10 ft up, “looking very ominous.”
    • “Your presence may be corrupting yet another world, but now I shall smite you from existence and no amount of milk will help you.”
27. 0:32:04 Asena doesn’t get his shtick. Asena: “Is that, like, your mission?… I’ve never really understood your whole shtick.”
    • Ralzamon: “We’ve done battle, like, five times. I’ve traumatized you. I haunt your nightmares. I’ve literally told you every time that you are a pollutant whose energy does not belong in my own world… Do you go to the story meetings?”
    • Asena: “like the next day, everything just kind of goes away.”
    • An intimidation-vs-insight roll-off goes 27 to 23. She is a little frightened, not enough for advantage, but the GM tells him: “You found a thread that you might want to keep pulling on.”

Between rounds: hero points and the alien saucer

28. 0:33:42 The chat summons another chaotic event and grants both champions a hero point.
    • The GM describes the boost as “chugging… an energy drink or Mountain Dew or Surge.” It can be an action surge, a reroll, or going “that extra mile.”
    • “There’s nothing that breaks our heart more than a hero point that goes unused.”
29. 0:34:32 Doug rolls. The Arbiter rolls for his personal chaotic event (14, nothing). Doug the Pug rolls the next event: “One of my greater DM moments.”
30. 0:35:00 The silver saucer.
    • The kitchen ceiling pools and peels away. The stone crumbles but is “curled back, sunk upwards into the sky, gravity in reverse.”
    • A silver saucer of bright, dazzling colors lowers down a beam.
    • Ralzamon dumped his knowledge stats “to kick Asena’s butt,” and Asena rolls a nat 20 on History. They learn it’s an alien spaceship that will try to suck them up at the end of next round, willing or not.
31. 0:36:57 Asena’s private briefing. The GM has Tormented take his headphones off and tells Asena privately: “the aliens have been known to give good gifts and negative gifts.” Since she rolled high, “apparently you’ve been abducted before.”
    • Asena’s explanation: she was “in a world earlier today” where someone told her how he was abducted, so she only learned about it that morning.
32. 0:37:39 The round sign is “totally broken again.” The Arbiter: “We’re doing it live.” Ralzamon: “The goblins can live for now.”

Round 2

33. 0:38:10 Ralzamon on his plan: “You’re really good at punching. I can float… don’t get punched.”
    • Asena uses Step of the Wind and Wings Unfurled. Spectral draconic wings come out of her and she flies up to him. Ralzamon: “This is exactly what I was trying to avoid.” “Personal space, personal space.”
34. 0:39:41 Nat 20. “With the momentum of her flying towards you like a speeding bullet, her fist connects with your jaw with a force you have not felt ever before. Teeth flying jumbled, the dentist is gonna be real expensive later.” Asena: “Take that, Ralzy poo… You can’t dodge me.”
35. 0:40:53 Hellish Rebuke. Ralzamon: “Not so fast… To punish this impudent interloper who’s completely getting rid of the chi strategy that I came up with… I will now unleash my terrible psychic power… Hellish Rebuke. Rebuke that shit.”
    • He spends his hero point to pour “all of the fear, all of the trauma of our past interactions” into it, which gives her disadvantage on the save.
    • She still rolls high and takes half (17, rounded up because “we like people to bleed”).
36. 0:43:05 Mage Slayer. Asena realises the Rebuke was a spell, so she gets a Mage Slayer reaction attack. The table compares it to Magic and “Uno. Reverse. Reverse.”
    • “Hit that mage.” It ties his AC, which counts as a glancing blow (half damage). He hadn’t put up mage armor yet.
    • Her next punch is glancing too; her punches are “sliding off and still connecting.”
37. 0:45:33 Stunning Strike. She spends ki on a Stunning Strike.
    • Tormented, out of character: in the whole time he’s been her DM she’s never used it, “and then the moment it’s a PVP one-on-one, suddenly you’re like, hey, how about I just bust this out round one?” Her reason: “I actually had to like make a character sheet.”
    • He warns: “You are still gonna be up to your neck in ninjas after this.”
    • Her Mage Slayer and his War Caster cancel out. He saves, so he isn’t stunned.
38. 0:47:15 Dimension Strike. The Arbiter reminds Asena of her crit feature, Dimension Strike: an extra force die, and the target is engulfed in wisps of mist.
    • Effects: half speed, disadvantage on attacks, and a Charisma save to teleport or plane-travel. The target can save at the end of each turn to shake it.
    • Tormented: “What happened to Final Destination? Fox only, no items!… I made this crap for you!” Asena: “Using your own creation against you?”
39. 0:49:21 The talisman. Ralzamon must save against her fear. He uses Lucky: “I am not going to get punched to death and then terrified of a freaking milk dragon.”
    • He then invokes the Zul’quian jungles (spelling uncertain): “By the power of the crystal heart in which my consciousness normally resides when not imprisoned in this fleshy apparatus… I hereby call the powers of the Zul’quinn jungles,” adding to the save with Pact of the Talisman. He is not frightened.
    • GM: “The roar of a jaguar helps you out. It re-centers your brain.”
    • Arbiter: “Somewhere in the distance, baboons… in the audience hurling eggs.” Ralzamon: “Keep your red butts in your seats.”
40. 0:51:05 Mental Prison. Ralzamon: “I will reach out with the psychic powers of the unknown and hammer upon the cracks in Asena’s armor, the fear that I know is there, and I will invoke the forbidden arcana of mental prison.” “Throw away the key.”
    • The roll misfires (too many dice) and is sorted out manually.
    • The prison fills her mind with “dangerous, deadly things”: a pack of ninjas, some void slimes, “my face everywhere mocking you.”
    • Asena spends her hero point to reroll the Intelligence save and rolls lower (a 3 becomes a 2). GM: “You’re breaking my heart!” Asena: “It’s meant to be.”
    • She is imprisoned and takes 28 psychic damage. If she moves out or reaches through, she takes far more.
41. 0:53:50 Concentrating on the prison ends his levitation, and he floats gently down 10 ft: “Having thusly dunked upon thee…”
42. 0:54:31 Toward the box. He makes a beeline for the Box of Chaos at half speed because of “the dimensional goo”: “I am not an incredibly fast pugilist dragon monk. I’m just a dude.”
    • He mistakes a pendulum for a hamster.
    • Asena declines her opportunity attack through the prison: “I’m good. I’m chill.”
    • (The Arbiter notes she should have had advantage on saves from Mage Slayer; the GM says “We’ll grant that next time.”)
43. 0:56:10 Ralzamon impersonates the aliens. As he hobbles away, he reaches out telepathically to the aliens in their ship, in an alien voice (inferred):
    • “Hail and welcome to our world. The specimen that you requested is ready for collection, immobilized through psychic means. Stand by for absorption.”
    • His performance roll is a “dirty 20.” He “assimilate[s] perfectly with their speech patterns… a great alien accent,” and they regard him as friendly. The aliens: “Excellent, excellent.”
44. 0:57:14 He’d scarf food to heal but there’s none up there (“ow, ow, ow”). He saves against Dimension Strike and the wisps fade off him. The GM says it looked like cool smoke, “but then you did this, so it makes it seem like you farted.” Ralzamon: “There was a chance to be cool and we just blew it.”
45. 0:58:20 The vials wear off. The saucer whirs and a beam shoots down at Asena.
    • She goes willingly. She learned about aliens that morning “in another dimension she was in called Ico” (spelling uncertain), and they sound really cool.
    • Ralzamon raises a point of order: moving her out of the prison triggers it. The GM rules it’s a teleport (“beam me up, Scotty”) and she’ll return to the same spot. Ralzamon: “Have fun on your vacation.”
46. 0:59:55 She is beamed up and strapped to a table. Break: “what happens to you? Well, we’ll find out after these commercials.” (The break was cut from the mp3.)

Aboard the saucer

47. 1:00:31 The Arbiter recaps: “Asena trapped in a mental prison, abducted by aliens now. Ralzamon craftily convincing the aliens he’s one of their own.”
48. 1:00:59 Gifts for their “friend”. The aliens zap a healing potion into Ralzamon’s hand for gathering the specimen. It’s “not a lot,” so they feel sad for him and throw him another: “You seem thirsty. Here you go.”
    • He warms up to “the copyright safe equivalent of Eye of the Tiger.” GM: “It’s the alien version. Their tiger is different… three eyes.”
49. 1:02:00 Snake arms. Asena rolls a d6 for the experiment. Ralzamon chants: “Extract the brain, extract the brain.”
    • It’s a good one: “two heads are better than one? Three heads are even better.” Her arms become snakes, “fluid and slithery.”
    • Each snake is a brain she can converse with, giving her +4 Intelligence. Her strikes become piercing bites.
    • The GM invites her to name the snakes (she doesn’t on air).
    • The aliens zap her back into the prison and fly off. The ceiling folds back “as if they never were here.”
50. 1:04:36 She rerolls the prison save with her snake brains and breaks out “just barely.” Asena: “Thank the Lord.” Ralzamon: “I don’t want to die.” Asena: “Oh, I want you to die.” Her frightful presence ends.
51. 1:06:12 The clock. Ralzamon flees past skulls, horns, furs and animal skins on the wall. He pulls a big wall clock over to block the way, like in movies where you “throw the candelabra, do some fencing on top of it, except, you know, as far away as possible.”
    • He’s 50 ft off (“the sadness in his voice”). Asena hops easily over the clock. Ralzamon: “Bring it on. Commence the punching.”

Round 3: the kill

52. 1:08:46 The boop. Asena punches him and yells “Boop!” It’s a snake bite, so piercing; the snakes are not venomous.
    • Ralzamon burns his second slot on another Hellish Rebuke: “You boop me, I boop you. Behold the mental nose booping of Ralzamon.” She takes half, as fire.
    • Ralzamon: “Your dragon nonsense doesn’t do anything about fire, does it?” It doesn’t. GM: “humans are still very flammable. Or at least burnable.”
53. 1:10:42 Her Mage Slayer reaction bites him again. GM: “You’re starting to look like a vampire saw you as a snack. Little bites just dot your arms.” Her second attack hits too.
54. 1:12:04 Playing with your food. GM: “Playing with your food in this kitchen is allowed. Though… I’m not promoting cannibalism.” Arbiter: “I’m not not promoting cannibalism… Let’s yes and the situation.”
55. 1:12:44 Flurry of Blows. “Asena is not one to play safe.” She spends ki on Flurry of Blows.
    • GM: “If you have a deity… you might want to take this chance to pray.”
    • “By the power of the eclipse, my face, my face!” (speaker uncertain, probably Ralzamon).
    • Both bites hit. Ralzamon: “that is 10 more hit points than I currently have.” Ralzamon is down, dying but conscious.
56. 1:14:13 The prophecy. Asena: “Ralzy? Are you there?”
    • Ralzamon: “You will bring doom! Doom upon the world that you call home! You are the harbinger of elder evil. It follows in your wake. You should not even exist. And I would give all that I used to be when I was a mere mortal… for one last chance to spare our world from what it is that you will bring about.”
    • His last words: “Death is but a door, time is but a window. I’ll be back.”
57. 1:15:38 The Grandmaster’s advice. She lands on a barrel of mead: “This ominous omen he speaks of, this danger that you are, I don’t doubt it.”
    • Asena: “I don’t think I’m an eldritch evil. But maybe it could be an evil dragon. I don’t really know much about my past.”
    • GM: “Perhaps it’s time for you to do a little family digging… There have been plenty who have called me good or evil, hero or villain. Don’t let those labels stick to you. You will get to decide how this power of dragon comes to you. As long as you’re strong enough to contain it.”
    • Asena: in Northport she’s heard about heroes and bad guys “from all the movies… eye of the beholder.” The GM: “You are charming.”
58. 1:17:02 The GM honours the loser. She lifts the dying Ralzamon’s head:
    • “You have fought bravely, pulled out many tricks in this arena we have not yet seen… this is the heart of the Dread Fortress and your blood seeps into the stones and will become part of its own. You are the veins that keep this alive and you will not be forgotten.”
    • Ralzamon begins “May that blood…” and the line trails off.
    • She sets his head down: “Arbiter, tend to our champion.”
59. 1:18:10 The Arbiter’s secret revival.
    • The Arbiter drags Ralzamon’s body to the deep, dark pit in the corner of the kitchen and throws it down the well. Ralzamon falls “for what seems like eternity.”
    • The Arbiter jumps in after him. As they fall he touches Ralzamon: “Ralzamon, that was quite a show, especially the mental prison. I’m a big fan. And I think I could use a general for the days to come.”
    • The touch revives him: “Come with me. We have much to plan for.”
60. 1:19:20 Victory. Up top, the GM extends her hand to “the greatest on the field tonight, unrelenting in your fists.”
    • She waves her hand and Asena’s arms return to normal: “You are free from your pythons.”
    • Asena releases her spectral wings and takes the GM’s hand: “I like having fingers again. Do you think I could try some of that meat?” (the mead)
61. 1:20:10 The celebration. The GM raises her into the crowd: “Mead will be for everyone tonight. Drinks are on the Dread Fortress. Blood has spilled, but even later tonight, the drinks will spill.”
    • She hails “our queen of the fight” for the battle “that has welcomed us back from season two.” The stands rise, chanting her name with glasses raised.
    • “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In character (canon, Dried Blood):

• Ralzamon’s parting words (1:25:01): “Do not trust in otherworldly magic, for it seeks only to corrupt your universe and eat it from the inside out.”
• Asena’s catchphrase, as Pods remembers it (1:25:27): “cut the bullshit and tell me what you need to know, or something like that.” Tormented says that’s not quite it, “but that just makes it more authentic.”

Out of character (creator notes):

• Mudcat calls it “season two, episode one” and says it’s both guests’ first time in the arena.
• Pods: “I’m feeling great because I won… I do not have fun if I lose.”
• Background (player-stated): Asena is from Coriander Society, another Casters and Castles campaign.
  • The first time she met Ralzamon, “he was just an absolute terror,” entered her mind with a mind prison and went on to haunt her.
  • After months of facing him, she finds him “not that scary.”
  • She can also talk to the dead and use telepathy.
• Tormented, “the forever DM,” is “used to my prize creations getting just annihilated.”
  • He converted Ralzamon to mainstream 5e at level 11 as a Great Old One warlock (“Gulok”). Mental Prison was “the nastiest thing I could find.”
• Casters and Castles: esports-community players doing tabletop, all 5e campaigns, streaming Monday, Wednesday and Friday on Twitch.
  • Coriander Society is “genre-mixing, universe-hopping”: a 1930s pulp adventure world, a dragons-versus-mechas world, and currently a Spelljammer world.
• Table jokes: get Ralzamon’s motto tattooed on the lower back in another language, spelled wrong; “fortune cookie” wisdom; “they say games don’t teach us anything.”