S2E5 — The Gauntlet — Dan Kowalski v Gordy Gotta Get Em

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For the Grandmaster’s birthday, there was no ordinary duel. Dan Kowalski, a party-loving satyr, and Gordy Gotta Get Em, a small, twitchy stabber, were sent racing side by side through The Jungle Gauntlet, her oldest training ground, under a simple rule: first across lives, last dies. Along the way came murderous squirrels, a dragon named Gerard, a foreskin-wrapped wand, a lovesick Babau and a carrot called Crazy Eyes Tony. It made for a strange, sweet and brutal birthday party.

The Story

A Birthday in the Fortress

The night opened on a celebration in The Dread Fortress: it was the birthday of the Grandmaster, who admitted to being “a little bit older. Not a lot.” The Arbiter, calling himself “a pretty smooth talker,” handed her a small box. She opened it very carefully, half-expecting a jack-in-the-box to lunge at her. Inside sat a swirling black-and-purple crystal like a captured galaxy. He called it “a particularly favorite item of mine,” a thing that displaces time and space and can change the health and defenses of two opponents at any Deathmatch she likes. He offered to take it back if she didn’t care for it. “No, no, no. I want it,” she said. She declared it “absolutely diabolical,” and, sipping from her pineapple cup, added: “This is evil, and I appreciate it.”

Her birthday wish was to go “back a little bit to the beginning,” to “my oldest of training grounds… where I first began my own growth as a warrior.” She also wanted worthy champions: “I am, after all, 284. I deserve something.” Luckily, the Arbiter had “met some guys at the bowling alley the other week… They would love to die for you, I think.”

Gordy entered first, stammering: “My name’s Gordy, um, I gotta get em. I just gotta stab. Mostly stab.” Asked what the very first thing he ever “got” was, he answered: “A circumcision actually.” The Grandmaster took this in stride and offered free circumcisions to any Acolyte afterwards. Then came Dan: “Dan Kowalski, Danimal on the weekends, Daniel to my mother,” a satyr with “sick horns,” clip-clopping happily. Asked what her party needed, he answered “Punch, pie, and Danimal!” He then pulled a wargong out of a magic pocket and gave a full solo performance, hitting it from every side. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a gong solo in the Dread Fortress,” the Arbiter noted. Satisfied that both were “worthy and at least interesting,” the Grandmaster asked to be taken to the jungle. The Arbiter clapped, and the sound waves tore open a portal.

Welcome to the Jungle

The jungle was where the young Grandmaster had once trained alone, running its lanes “when I had no one to go up against.” Each champion took his own lane, Dan to the north. They could see and talk to each other the whole way, and they had to win through with battle and cleverness. “If you’re not first, you’re last,” she announced. “In this case, dead.” She then took her seat in the stands beside Doug the Pug, who was barking his head off over his own dog-friendly cupcake, and thanked The Acolytes for coming.

Dan bounded over the opening log like “an ibex” (the Grandmaster: “Much cuter”), sparing a grateful grub. He was immediately pelted by furious squirrels hurling “vicious and sharp acorns.” He then pinned Gordy in place with grasping earthen hands, only for his own hooves to slip on the cliff. He slid all the way to the bottom “just eating dirt,” which he claimed “tastes like kombucha.”

Gordy fought back by planting his voice in Dan’s head, psychically chanting “gotta get em, gotta get em” to rattle him. Dan stayed unbothered and invited Gordy bowling afterwards: “Next time, I definitely want to use the pink ball, man. Six pounds.” Gordy wriggled free with “the old suck it satyr special.” Because he had lingered so long, more squirrels showed up to pelt him too. “Nothing here is cute or friendly,” the Grandmaster warned. “Trust nothing.” The squirrels shouted insults back, which she refused to translate because they were “incredibly rude.”

Then a gang of middle-schoolers in the stands started heckling both champions about everything: “He’s got dumb hair. He’s got feminine hips.” Both men took it hard. “Hey, I know I don’t have birthday gifts, okay?” Dan cried. Gordy summed it up: “Children are the worst. I may be the same size as them, but they just radiate so much more evil.”

Snakes, Lily Pads and Mom Jokes

The friendship frayed on the cliff. Dan flung fire and missed, and Gordy started calling him “Daniel.” “Don’t you call me Daniel, okay?” Gordy raced to the clifftop and tossed a psychic blade into him, then ran straight into four flying snakes (“I’ve made an error”). One flew past his face, smacked into the rock and died. “It was a dumb one,” the Grandmaster observed.

Dan’s attempt to put Gordy to sleep fizzled, and Gordy faked a snooze just to taunt him. Then Dan met his own line of snakes. “Why did it have to be snakes?” Rolling a perfect 20, he sweet-talked them: “Hey, snakes. Why don’t you go to Gordy? Because he really wants to get you.” The whole swarm nodded along and slithered over to Gordy’s lane. “They don’t speak common,” the Arbiter explained, “but those hips don’t lie.”

At the raging river of lily pads, Dan slipped, bit his own tongue, and got chomped by an alligator that would not be persuaded to go bother “a guy over there named Gordy. He’s a fucking asshole.” Gordy teleported past the snakes, spotted the dodgy lily pad, and stayed dry: “I’m drier than your mom, Daniel.” On the far bank, the five squirrels had followed him and unloaded their entire food supply on him. “Daniel, we need to team up and destroy these squirrels.” Dan declined, stepped through a magical door to the treeline, and flipped Gordy off with a mom joke. Moments later he relented: “Like my friend Aristotle once said, let it be.”

The Farting Forest and the Box of Chaos

Next was a forest of unnaturally bright blue and yellow plants that puffed toxic pollen with every gust (“farting plants, essentially”). The Acolytes, thrilled, granted each champion a gift of their favor and demanded the Box of Chaos, which the Grandmaster set on the forest’s far side.

Gordy dashed straight through, breathing deep. He came out poisoned and glowing blue: “Suck it, Daniel. I’m magic now.” At the Box, flaming with cool fire, he sacrificed “the ceremonial goblin dagger that’s used for all circumcisions. Its handle wrapped in the foreskin of my forefathers.” The Box shook its approval and gave him a Wand of Secrets with a matching hilt. A manticore lunged, missed, bit a tree stump, and cracked a tooth.

Dan, who “knows his horticulture,” took the patient route. He summoned a tidal wave that soaked the pollen into the earth and strolled through untouched. For his sacrifice he hacked off a piece of his own horn. The Box made a near-vocal “mmm,” laughed chaotically, and produced a Sphere of Annihilation. “Is this like one of those balls from that David Bowie movie?” Dan asked. “Cool bowling ball, Dan,” said Gordy.

Then a lamb (or was it a puppet?) began singing “This is the song that never ends” on endless loop. Gordy and his manticore fell into a trance, and a gathering of ducklings waddled onto the field.

Gerard, the Hag and the Vegetables

To impress the birthday girl, Dan ribbon-danced and summoned a fiery red dragon with antlers like his own, one of them now short. “Grandmaster, for your birthday, I present to you Gerard the Dragon.” (“That’s not a dragon. That’s a Wyrmling,” the Arbiter objected. The Grandmaster: “No, he’s a dragon. Hi, Gerard the Dragon.”) Gerard flubbed both attacks out of stage fright, then torched the manticore.

Gordy woke to a seasoned manticore’s perfect bite and begged to go home. The Grandmaster blessed him instead: “Don’t you dare back down from my gauntlet. Put some metal into your bones. Buck up, buddy.” He killed Dan’s manticore, which turned out to be geriatric and relieved: “Damn, I’m glad this was my time. I’ve had enough.”

Gordy then found an old woman tied to a tree. He called her “a very beautiful young maiden,” checked her with his wand (one of its foreskin wrappings came off, slithered to the tip, flew off and burst into salt) and cut her free. She banished his manticore, healed him, and hugged him, and he hugged her back (“Oh my gosh, this is the greatest day ever”). “Do you have any idea how many travelers have come past me every time and never given me anything?” she said, before vanishing. Meanwhile a troll in scuba gear rose from the river and set a plate of wilted, sludge-covered veggies before each champion: “Eat your veggies.” Dan had Gerard rotisserie his and ate them. Gordy ignored his, and his spurned vegetables grew enormous and inched after him into the cave. A broccoli and Crazy Eyes Tony the carrot (“because of the way that I’m orange”) pleaded with him for just one bite. “This is the worst PBS nightmare I could think of.”

Bidding Gerard farewell at the narrow cave mouth (“Please assist that big pile of poo”), Dan stuck a candle in his broken horn as a headlamp. He asked a passing ghost to give his condolences to his friend James, and a second ghost replied “Who is James?” He took a weapon that exploded “in the smallest sort of way.” Then he found a chest holding an emerald that melted into his skin and healed him. Gordy found two of his own and gave one to the Grandmaster: “I offered you my foreskin. You didn’t like that. So how about the stone?” Doug hopped down and fetched it in his little mouth. Both champions stepped through the same portal.

The Lovesick Babau

They landed together in a dungeon with no visible exit, where a Babau leapt from a balcony. When it turned its weakening gaze on Dan, he flirted back (“I think you’re cute, but I’m taken”). The grey beast blushed bright pink and for a while would only attack Gordy. “Those feminine hips are entrancing. It’s flustered by your sexual appeal,” the Grandmaster said.

Dan then set the Sphere of Annihilation down between Gordy and the Babau and walked off. Gordy slashed him on the way past with a perfect strike (“Technically, you’re a bitch”). Dan answered by blasting the Sphere. It erupted on Gordy and the Babau alike before collapsing into a black-hole singularity and vanishing. “Gordy, how did you explode next to that creature? I don’t even know.”

The wounded Babau turned on Dan in “a lover’s fury” and dropped him to the brink of death. Dan spent the Acolytes’ gift on a magical door beneath himself and escaped. Hidden behind a pillar, Gordy spent his own gift on a wall run up the column and came down with both daggers. “Wall run, Gordy’s gotta get em!” The Babau slumped dead, and the crowd went wild.

The Final Blow

But two still stood. Dan clawed back to his feet, barely alive, and crept up on the celebrating Gordy. This time his sleep spell worked, and Gordy dropped where he stood. “Seeing what you did to my beloved Babau,” Dan declared, and stomped his cloven hooves. Lightning cracked the stone, and Gordy’s particles dissipated into the energy. The blast threw Dan skyward, and the Grandmaster caught him in midair.

The Arbiter swept Gordy’s remains into a sack and walked away whistling: “Got him.” A single tear fell from the Grandmaster’s eye as a smile spread across her face. The Acolytes chanted “Dan, Dan, Dan” until the stands shook. “Here is our first winner of the gauntlet,” she proclaimed, “the first to make its path and live to tell the tale, since yours truly had survived it.”

Dried Blood

In his final words, Gordy bore no grudge: “Happy birthday, Grandmaster. You’re a lovely, lovely overlord. And we gotta go bowling in the afterlife.” The Grandmaster promised to put up some pins for him. The Arbiter offered a simpler epitaph, “One is born and one dies.” Dan closed with one more borrowed wisdom, from “my good friend Leonardo da Vinci.” At the table, the hosts admitted the cave had held surprises nobody reached, including giant spiders, and that nobody had ever been put to sleep in a match before.

Notable Moments

• Dan persuaded an entire swarm of flying snakes to go bother Gordy instead, with a perfect roll and his hips.
• Gordy sacrificed a foreskin-wrapped circumcision dagger to the Box of Chaos, and got a foreskin-wrapped wand back.
• A manticore cracked its tooth on a tree stump, and another died grateful it was finally its time.
• Gordy’s uneaten vegetables grew huge and chased him into the cave, led by Crazy Eyes Tony the carrot.
• A Babau fell in love with Dan, blushed pink, and attacked only Gordy until Dan blew it up with the Sphere.
• The Arbiter carried Gordy’s remains away in a sack, whistling “Got him.”

Memorable Quotes

• Gordy Gotta Get Em: “My name’s Gordy, um, I gotta get em. I just gotta stab. Mostly stab.”
• Dan Kowalski: “Hey, my name is Dan Kowalski, Danimal on the weekends, Daniel to my mother.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “If you’re not first, you’re last. In this case, dead.”
• Gordy Gotta Get Em: “Children are the worst. I may be the same size as them, but they just radiate so much more evil.”
• The Arbiter: “They don’t speak common, but those hips don’t lie.”
• Dan Kowalski: “Grandmaster, for your birthday, I present to you Gerard the Dragon.”
• Crazy Eyes Tony: “They call me Crazy Eyes Tony because of the way that I’m orange.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Here is our first winner of the gauntlet, the first to make its path and live to tell the tale, since yours truly had survived it.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Dan Kowalski (endlesschad). A satyr: “Danimal on the weekends, Daniel to my mother.” He has horns and cloven hooves.

• Background:
  • Says his mom and dad “fell in love” and that he’s “part mountain goat.”
  • Hates being called Daniel.
  • Has a cousin, “Dan Koala,” and a friend, James (sent condolences via a ghost, so inferred to be dead).
  • Likes partying, kombucha and bowling (wants the six-pound pink ball).
  • Quotes made-up wisdom from “my friend” Socrates, Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci.
  • “Dan knows his horticulture.”
• Gear and powers:
  • Plays a wargong kept in a magic pocket; performance expertise.
  • Magic resistance, Mirthful Leap, persuasion proficiency; speaks Common and Sylvan; no darkvision.
  • Spells: Earthen Grasp, fire bolt, sleep, dimension door, tidal wave, Summon Draconic Spirit (“Gerard the Dragon”, red with antlers like his), mage armor, Thunder Step.
• In this episode:
  • Cut off part of his own horn for the Box of Chaos and got the Sphere of Annihilation, which he destroyed in the dungeon.
  • Wore a candle in his broken horn.
  • Charmed the snakes and the Babau.
  • First winner of the Gauntlet.

Gordy Gotta Get Em (theshortnord). Small (“the same size as” middle-schoolers; “short legs”).

• Lore:
  • The first thing he “got” was a circumcision.
  • Does daily affirmations. Met Dan and the Arbiter at bowling.
• Powers: rogue with Nimble Escape, Uncanny Dodge, sneak attack, darkvision and thieves’ tools; psionic psychic blades, Psychic Whispers and psychic teleportation.
• In this episode:
  • Glowed blue after the pollen.
  • Got the Wand of Secrets. Freed the hag.
  • Gave the GM an emerald.
  • Killed the manticore and the Babau.
  • Killed by Dan while asleep. His remains were bagged by the Arbiter.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Gave the GM the time-and-space crystal.
• Recruited both champions at a bowling alley.
• Opens portals with a thunderous clap.
• Carried off Gordy’s remains in a sack, whistling.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Her birthday; she claims to be 284.
• This jungle is her oldest training ground; she ran it in lanes “when I had no one to go up against” and survived it.
• Drinks from a pineapple cup.
• Blessed Gordy so he wouldn’t quit.
• Caught Dan out of the air. Shed a tear, then smiled.

Doug the Pug. Sits beside the GM and had a dog-friendly cupcake. He fetched Gordy’s emerald in his mouth.

Monsters and NPCs:

• Angry squirrels (they follow you and insult back).
• The heckling middle-school gang.
• Flying snakes (one killed itself on the rock).
• The lily-pad alligator.
• Two manticores: one cracked a tooth on a stump; the other was the “geriatric” one killed by Gordy.
• The singing lamb puppet (“the song that never ends”) and the ducklings.
• The scuba troll (“Eat your veggies”).
• The hag tied to the tree, who heals and hugs travelers who finally free her.
• Crazy Eyes Tony the carrot and Barbara/Brenda the broccoli.
• The cave ghosts, one of whom “left everything behind.”
• The Babau, infatuated with Dan.

Places

• The Dread Fortress throne room (opening; “a gong solo in the Dread Fortress”).
• The Jungle Gauntlet: the GM’s “oldest of training grounds,” with two lanes. Its stages are the log and squirrel trees, the 45-ft cliff, the lily-pad river with a waterfall, the blue-and-yellow pollen forest, the Box of Chaos clearing, and a narrow cave with ghosts, skeletons, webs, chests and a portal rune circle.
• The Babau dungeon: swords, books, clay pots, a balcony, tall pillars, and no visible exit.
• The bowling alley where the Arbiter met them.

Items

• The Arbiter’s crystal: swirling black-purple, cosmos-like. It changes two opponents’ health and AC. It was not used this episode.
• Wand of Secrets (Gordy, from the Box; foreskin-wrapped hilt; bursts into salt).
• Sphere of Annihilation (Dan, from the Box; destroyed).
• The ceremonial goblin circumcision dagger and a piece of Dan’s horn, both sacrificed to the Box.
• The emeralds that melt into the skin and heal; the GM now has one.
• Dan’s wargong.

Lore statements

• The Box of Chaos reacts to sacrifices: it shakes, gives an “mmm” at a sacrifice of flesh, and laughs chaotically.
• The Grandmaster trained alone in this jungle gauntlet as a young one. Dan is its first winner since her.
• The gauntlet’s rule: first to the end lives, last dies.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the Grandmaster’s birthday

1. 0:00:00 The Arbiter opens the show: tonight is “an auspicious night, as we celebrate the Grandmaster’s birthday.” She says she is “a little bit older. Not a lot.” The Arbiter says she doesn’t look it and calls himself “a pretty smooth talker.”
2. 0:00:48 — The Arbiter’s gift. In the throne room he hands her a small box. She opens it very cautiously, half-expecting a jack-in-the-box to attack her. Inside is a swirling black and purple crystal that looks like it holds liquid, like a galaxy or cosmos of swirling energy. He calls it “a particularly favorite item of mine.” It displaces time and space. Specifically, it changes the health and AC of two opponents when thrown out, at any Deathmatch she likes. He first says “initiative” and corrects himself. He offers to take it back if she doesn’t like it. She says: “No, no, no. I want it.”
3. 0:02:58 “It’s absolutely diabolical.” She admits she may already have had too much to drink. She sips a magical drink from her pineapple cup. “This is evil, and I appreciate it.”
4. 0:03:30 — Her birthday wish. Instead of the usual PvP, she wants to go “back a little bit to the beginning.” She asks to return to “my oldest of training grounds… where I first began my own growth as a warrior.” She asks for worthy champions: “I am, after all, 284. I deserve something.”
5. 0:04:11 — The bowling alley. The Arbiter: “I met some guys at the bowling alley the other week… They would love to die for you, I think.” He double-checks the name (“Your name is Dan Kowalski? Okay, okay”).
6. 0:04:46 — Gordy’s entrance. Gordy is nervous and stammering: “My name’s Gordy, um, I gotta get em. I just gotta stab. Mostly stab.” At bowling, “I gotta get them pins.” The Arbiter admires his focus, “especially on the lanes.”
7. 0:05:28 The GM asks what the first thing he ever “got” was. Gordy: “A circumcision actually.” GM: “I know that’s a little different from castration, but you’re on the right track here.” She offers free circumcisions to any acolyte afterwards. Gordy: “I got daggers ready to go. Chop, chop.”
8. 0:06:14 — Dan’s entrance. “Hey, my name is Dan Kowalski, Danimal on the weekends, Daniel to my mother.” He is a satyr with “sick horns,” “just clip cloppin’ around.” At the bowling alley he met “this rad dude” with a jacket (the Arbiter), then found Gordy grabbing pins shouting “I gotta get em!” and joined in. “That was a long and interesting story.”
9. 0:07:15 The GM asks what her birthday party needs. Dan: “Punch, pie, and Danimal!” She promises all three.
10. 0:07:46 — The wargong solo. From a magic pocket Dan pulls out his wargong and plays a solo, clip-clopping around it and hitting it from every side. Performance 16 (he has expertise). The Arbiter: “It’s been a while since we’ve had a gong solo in the Dread Fortress.” Caustic Phoenix: “We are vibing with this solo gong performance.” Dan: “Like a show pony.”
11. 0:09:06 The GM approves both champions as “worthy and at least interesting”: “Take us to the jungle.” The Arbiter claps. The sound waves rip open a portal, and they arrive in a jungle “like you have never seen before.”

The rules of the gauntlet

12. 0:09:45 “Welcome to the jungle and also not part of that song because we don’t have the rights to that.” This is “the beginning grounds where I stood in each lane as a way to practice and refine myself when I had no one to go up against.”
    • Each champion runs his own lane and races to the far side. They defeat what comes “not only just in battle, but cleverness.”
    • “Whoever defeats their map first will be crowned our victor and whoever is last will die. If you’re not first, you’re last. In this case, dead.”
    • The two can see and talk to each other the whole way. Dan has the northern lane.
13. 0:11:11 The GM flies into the stands and thanks the acolytes: “your presence is a very gift to my soul. Together, we have built this time and time again.” She warns that the jungle is beautiful but dangerous: “These grounds I once trespassed as a young one myself.” She sits beside Doug the Pug, who is barking his head off and has his own dog-friendly cupcake.
14. 0:12:13 First stretch: a ~30-ft dash over a log, then a 45-ft rocky climb to a flat cliff top.

Round 1

15. 0:12:42 Initiative: Dan 18, Gordy 9.
16. 0:13:11 — Dan’s start. “I thought there was going to be kombucha, but whatever.” He uses his satyr Mirthful Leap. He explains: “I’m part mountain goat. My mom, you know, and my dad, they fell in love. It’s love, real.” He hops the log gracefully, and a small grub is thankful he didn’t land on it. Dan: “Like an antelope… an ibex.” GM: “Much cuter.”
17. 0:14:53 — The squirrels. Eyes peer from the branches. Angry squirrels, furious that he has invaded their home, pelt him with “vicious and sharp acorns” for 12 damage. Dan: “No. I’m your friend… It’s me. Dan. Dan Kowalski.”
18. 0:16:55 — Earthen Grasp. Dan climbs 10 ft, turns and casts Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp on Gordy. Gordy rolls a nat 1 and is restrained by earthen hands. Then Dan’s own climb fails. His hooves can’t grip the rock, and he slides to the bottom “just eating dirt.” Dan: “Tastes like kombucha. I like kombucha.” Answered: “No, you don’t. Nobody does.”
19. 0:19:28 — Gordy’s whispers. Gordy fails to break free (“This guy clearly sucks. Acorn balls”). He uses his psionic Psychic Whispers to talk into Dan’s head for the next seven hours. He just yells “gotta get em, gotta get em…” to break Dan’s concentration. Dan: “Hey, man. After this, you wanna go bowling again? It was a lot of fun.”
20. 0:21:16 Dan’s magic resistance gives him advantage, and he holds concentration. “You lucky son of a bitch.” Dan: “Next time, I definitely want to use the pink ball, man. Six pounds. Don’t you steal it from me, bro.” Gordy: “No way.”
21. 0:22:09 Gordy uses Nimble Escape to get a second strength check (19) and slips around the earthen chains: “The old suck it satyr special.” He clears the log easily.
22. 0:23:21 Because he was stuck so long, two more squirrels appear and pelt him (half damage on a good Dex save). The GM warns: “This ground is dangerous. Nothing here is cute or friendly. Trust nothing.” Gordy keeps yelling into Dan’s head: “Fuck these squirrels. Got to get them.” Dan: “Yeah, those squirrels suck, Gordy.”
23. 0:24:39 The squirrels hear them talking trash and offer insults of their own. The GM refuses to translate because “it’s incredibly rude.” Mudcat: “Squirrels are not nice people.”

Chaos event — the hecklers (0:25:11)

24. A gang of older middle-school kids in the far corner of the stands heckles both champions about every insecurity: “your eyes are just a little too close together… your ears are weird, mister… He’s got dumb hair. He’s got feminine hips.” The GM adds: “There’s nothing wrong with my elbows, but those kids pick up on it.” Both fail their Wisdom saves and take psychic damage. Dan: “Hey, I know I don’t have birthday gifts, okay?” Gordy: “That’s what I’m sensitive about.” The GM: “nothing screams louder than the critiques of small children in your head.”
25. 0:27:06 Gordy: “Children are the worst. I may be the same size as them, but they just radiate so much more evil.”

Round 2 — the cliff and the snakes

26. 0:27:35 Dan: “It’s like my friend Socrates said. Don’t hush my vibe, bro.” He leaps and climbs, then turns on Gordy: “You’re going to keep fucking talking in my head because this really fucking sucks.” He flings a fire bolt “because those fucking kids really got in my head.” It misses. Gordy: “You’re so much not on fire, you can’t even make me on fire.”
27. 0:28:52 — “Daniel.” Dan: “Don’t you call me Daniel, okay?… this is what the fucking [Perliwits?] call me.” Gordy: “Daniel, Daniel.” Dan: “That’s it. You were gonna pay for it.” Dan is left hanging 36 ft up the rock face.
28. 0:29:29 Gordy dashes 60 ft, tops the 45-ft wall and drops onto the flat cliff top. “Hey, Daniel, suck it.” He throws a psychic blade that hits Dan for 7 (Dan took mage armor, not shield).
29. 0:30:55 — Gordy’s flying snakes. Four flying snakes burst from the bushes into his path. Gordy: “I’ve made an error.” Their bites mostly miss. The second snake rolls a nat 1, flies past his face, smacks its head into the rock wall and dies. GM: “It was a dumb one.” “There’s a reason they were waiting in a line.” Gordy compares them to British colonial warfare. Foundry was subtracting from their rolls; after the fix, one snake bites him for poison and piercing damage. Gordy: “Ah, you damn snakes. Rip your wings off. I gotta get them.”
30. 0:33:26 — Dan’s failed sleep. Dan finishes the climb and casts sleep on Gordy (“You just fall asleep”). His dice total too little, because he had misread how sleep works. Gordy fakes falling asleep, says “gosh, bitch” in Dan’s head, and opens his eyes again.
31. 0:34:37 — Dan’s snakes. Dan leaps toward his own line of flying snakes. “Oh no, snakes!” GM: “Who could’ve predicted this?” Dan: “Why did it have to be snakes?” He protests: “I played you a wargong and serenaded you for your birthday. I thought you’d be a little nicer.”
32. 0:35:51 — The nat 20. Dan: “Hey, snakes. Why don’t you go to Gordy? Because he really wants to get you.” Persuasion nat 20: the snakes nod along, “catching your vibe,” and all slither over to Gordy’s lane. Mudcat: “They don’t speak common, but those hips don’t lie.” Dan: “I’m sorry, Mikey.” Mudcat: “Typical flying snake shit.”

The river of lily pads

33. 0:37:01 Past the snakes is a raging river with lily pads about 15 ft apart. “Not all lily pads are secure.” Dan’s acrobatics is a 2. His knee slides into the water, and he bites his own tongue landing on the lily pad. It swells and burns.
34. 0:39:28 He jumps north to another lily pad, and an alligator that guards it bites him and submerges. Gordy: “Damn, Daniel, you suck.” Dan to the alligator: “There’s a guy over there named Gordy. He’s a fucking asshole. You should go hang out with him.” The persuasion is at disadvantage (“Alligators are a little denser”) and fails. It will bite again if he lingers.
35. 0:40:40 — Gordy teleports. Faced with “a small army of flying snakes,” Gordy hurls a psychic blade as far as he can and psychic-teleports 70 ft onto a lily pad near the waterfall (“let’s go see the sights”). It’s safe.
36. 0:41:13 — “Second Dan.” Gordy, meaning to say his own name, says “Second Dan, gotta get him… second Gordy, or second Daniel.” Dan: “You said it right the first time, bro!” Gordy: “I do daily affirmations, it’s just a slip up.”
37. 0:42:51 Gordy’s insight (24) spots extra ripples around one pad. He hops to the other one and stays dry. “I’m drier than your mom, Daniel.” Dan: “Joke’s on you. Wait. No.”
38. 0:44:14 Gordy hops onto land, and the five squirrels from earlier have followed him. They pelt him with “all of their food supply.” Gordy: “Why are you doing this? This is just cruel. Daniel, we need to team up and destroy these squirrels.” Dan: “It’s because you’re the worst.”
39. 0:45:24 — Dimension door. Dan opens a dimension door to the edge of the trees. He shouts “Hey, Gordy!”, flips him off and makes a mom joke as he walks through (“she’s so big, I can walk through her”). Then: “It got real, real quick… Can we be nice again?” “You call me Daniel, and I get real mad.” “Like my friend Aristotle once said, let it be.”

The pollen forest and the Box of Chaos

40. 0:46:25 Ahead is a dense forest of 60-ft trees in unnatural bright blues and yellows. Every gust releases a fume from the plants. GM: “They are farting plants, essentially.”
41. 0:47:15 The acolytes award each champion a hero point, and they demand the Box of Chaos. The GM has it placed on the far side of the forest: “Let’s see who can get there.”
42. 0:48:22 Dan’s survival check shows yellow puffs of dust whenever the plants move, and no critters or squirrels anywhere in these trees. Gordy whispers “make the forest fart, do it.” Dan waits: “Old strategy. Let’s see how it plays out.”
43. 0:50:02 Gordy: “Aha, you fool.” He Naruto-dashes straight through, breathing deeply. The pollen does double poison damage, and his skin changes color and starts to glow blue. Gordy: “Suck it, Daniel. I’m magic now.” GM: “You’re like a lightning bug, sure.”
44. 0:51:09 — Gordy’s sacrifice. The Box of Chaos is pink, purple and yellow, with flames that are cool to the touch bursting from its lid. It gives a magic item but demands a sacrifice. Gordy offers “the ceremonial goblin dagger that’s used for all circumcisions. Its handle wrapped in the foreskin of my forefathers.” The lid slams, and the box and the ground shake. GM: “What a nice gift. It’s an heirloom.” He gets a Wand of Secrets, its hilt “covered in that same ceremonial foreskin.” It points to secret doors or traps within 30 ft. Mudcat: “You regain charges at dawn. That won’t matter. You may not be alive.” Gordy yells back: “Suck it, Daniel!”
45. 0:53:41 — Gordy’s manticore. A roar, and a manticore glares at him from behind a tree stump. Gordy: “Damn squirrels, I’m at half health now.” He grips “my foreskin wand handle a little tighter in fear.” The manticore’s bite is a nat 1: it chomps the stump as he dives aside, cracks a tooth, and gives up its attack in pain. Gordy: “Shit, shit, shit, gotta get em!”
46. 0:55:46 — Dan’s tidal wave. Dan has watched Gordy rush in, and “Dan knows his horticulture.” Mudcat: “Dan’s a [botanist?] by trade.” He casts tidal wave through the forest as if monsoon season had come. The pollen is soaked into the ground, and he walks through untouched. Another roar: “Surprise, it’s a manticore.” Dan: “I don’t like your surprises.”
47. 0:57:02 — Dan’s sacrifice. With his ordinary dagger (“not made of foreskin”), Dan hacks off a piece of his satyr horn: “I love being a satyr, and I think it makes me special.” The box gives a near-vocal “mmm” at receiving his flesh. His roll is so high that Mudcat has to scroll past the end of the list. GM: “Santa’s coming tonight.” A small sphere floats out of the flames while chaotic laughter comes from inside the box. It is the Sphere of Annihilation. Dan: “Is this like one of those balls from that David Bowie movie?” Gordy: “Cool bowling ball, Dan.”

Chaos events — the song that never ends, and the ducks (1:00:43)

48. Both champions roll. The rock music fades, and a familiar tune from the crowd wraps “its tendrils around your mind.” Everyone makes Wisdom saves, the manticores included. Dan and his manticore shake free. Gordy and his manticore are entranced for a round.
49. 1:03:43 Dan looks up and sees no siren. It is “a small lamb. Or is it a puppet?” singing “This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on, my friend…”, looping every round. “Everyone hates that song.”
50. 1:04:38 A gathering of ducklings waddles onto the field on both sides. Gordy and his manticore haven’t noticed theirs yet. Break: “I hope you all enjoyed my scene.”

After the break — Gerard the Dragon

51. 1:05:16 Welcome back. GM: “Impress me on my birthday.”
52. 1:05:58 Dan spins “like the best ribbon dance you’ll ever see” and casts Summon Draconic Spirit: a big fiery red dragon with antlers like Dan’s, one now short. “Grandmaster, for your birthday, I present to you Gerard the Dragon.” Mudcat: “That’s not a dragon. That’s a Wyrmling.” GM: “No, he’s a dragon. Hi, Gerard the Dragon.” Dan: “Hey, Gerard. I don’t like that dude right there. But we like the ducks.”
53. 1:08:58 Gerard rolls a nat 1 and misses both attacks, “reeling from the shame.” GM: “Gerard, you’re embarrassing us.” Dan: “He’s got stage fright, Gerard, it’s okay, buddy… You’re doing great.” Gerard’s fire breath then burns the manticore badly. “That’s better, Gerard!” Gordy is still in his trance; the GM keeps singing the song. Dan leaps onto a stump.
54. 1:11:02 — Gordy wakes. Gordy rolls 19 and shakes himself out, and the lamb is “almost thrown back.” His manticore wakes first. It is “very seasoned” and “knows where to strike”: a nat 20 bite gashes him, and blood spills on the dust. Uncanny Dodge halves it. The claws miss.
55. 1:13:16 — Gordy asks to leave. “Oh, dear God, there’s a dragon. Grandmaster, Arbiter, this has been a fun race… I would like to go home.” GM: “No, you have to stay and fight the manticore.” She casts bless on him: “Don’t you dare back down from my gauntlet. Put some metal into your bones. Buck up, buddy.”
56. 1:14:04 — The geriatric manticore. Gordy disengages 30 ft and calls: “Dan, Dan, I need help please.” He throws a dagger at Dan’s manticore (sneak attack allowed “because you’re trying to make an alliance”). The dagger slices through it and kills it. It was “a geriatric manticore”, more relieved than anything: “Damn, I’m glad this was my time. I’ve had enough.” GM: “You’ve given him a noble death.”
57. 1:16:25 — The hag. Near Gordy, an old hag/witch is tied to a tree. The GM objects: “just because you get old and you get a few wrinkles doesn’t mean that you can just start calling people a hag.” Mudcat: “if she was young, she’d be a young hag.” The hag: “Help me if you help me.” Gordy: “I’m not sure if you’re just coming on to me… but you’re a very beautiful young maiden.”
58. 1:17:39 Gordy uses the Wand of Secrets. One of the foreskin wrappings comes off, slithers to the tip, flies to the secret and bursts into salt. GM: “I’m so sorry for asking.” It’s no trap. The hag: “I just want to get out of these ropes. Release me from the tree.”
59. 1:18:52 — Dan rides Gerard. “Fly, Gerard.” Caustic Phoenix: “You don’t hold Gerard. Gerard holds you.” They fly 60 ft across the water.

Chaos event — the scuba troll and the veggies (1:19:53)

60. A figure in full submarine/scuba gear trudges out of the water and pulls off his mask: the face of a troll. He sets a plate of veggies in front of each champion (Dan’s at the cave entrance): wilty, too-old broccoli and asparagus under a potent, stinking yellow sludge. “Eat your veggies.” He puts the gear back on, dives into the water, and holds up his fist again.
61. 1:21:32 Dan: “Ma’am, hey ma’am, is that guy bothering you?” (to the hag). Gordy says he has her and asks for help with the manticore.
62. 1:22:13 Dan has Gerard flame-roast (“rotisserie”) the veggies, then eats them and heals a little. Mudcat: “Use the dragon to cook vegetables. Smart. Unorthodox player.” Dan: “Much and awesome grindage, hey!” He kicks the plate into the water.
63. 1:23:20 The cave mouth is too narrow for Gerard. Dan: “Gerard, my friend, I bid you farewell adieu. Please assist that big pile of poo.”
64. 1:24:15 — The candle horn. Dan has no darkvision. He can’t pick up a melted candle by hand, so he sticks it into his broken horn as “a bit of a head flashlight.”
65. 1:24:46 — The ghosts. A spirit crosses his path, and chills run down his body. Ghost: “Oh, be careful. There’s many dangers here.” Dan: “Please pass on to the other side and give my condolences to my friend, James.” Ghost: “Thank you. I’ll find James.” It passes through him and heals him slightly.
    • The cave is cold, dark and damp, lined with skeletons, abandoned weapons and cobwebs, with a fork in the road. Dan heads toward a light.
    • A second ghost floats by a pile of goods, gold and bones. Dan: “Hey, did you see James?” Ghost, in a very different voice: “Who is James?” Dan explains, and the ghost says, “Be careful, Dan.”
66. 1:27:50 Investigation 6: “they are things.” “Things and stuff and stuff and things.” GM: “I keep wanting to call you Dan Koala.” Dan: “It’s okay, that’s my cousin.”
67. 1:28:31 — The hag set free. Gordy sprints up and cuts her free. She snaps her fingers and the manticore behind him disappears. “Do you have any idea how many travelers have come past me every time and never given me anything?” She heals him a lot. She goes in for a hug, and Gordy hugs back (“Oh my gosh, this is the greatest day ever”), which heals him more. “Go now! You have to win!” She poofs away. Gordy: “Wait, what was your name?” Dan: “Should have got her number, bro.”
68. 1:29:57 Gordy dashes into the cave, passing up his veggies. With darkvision he sees the whole cave in shades of grey.
69. 1:30:57 — The veggie monsters. His spurned vegetables grow massive and come after him, slow because they have no legs, moving only 5 ft a turn. Mudcat voices a carrot and Caustic Phoenix a broccoli:
    • Broccoli: “Yeah, where you think you’re going?” Carrot: “Hey, Barbara, I’ll handle this, Barbara.”
    • Carrot: “If you just come back here and eat me, okay? Just a bite.”
    • Carrot: “They call me Crazy Eyes Tony because of the way that I’m orange.”
    • Gordy: “This is the worst PBS nightmare I could think of.”
70. 1:32:23 Dan asks the ghost whether the items are his. Ghost: “I left everything behind… I have nothing left.” Dan: “That’s sad. I’m going to take this stuff anyways.” He leaves the gold and takes the weapon, and it explodes “in the smallest sort of way.” GM: “Nothing is safe here.” Dan: “Hey, that’s not nice. I thought we had a connection.”
71. 1:34:04 — Dan’s emerald. Dan finds a large padlocked wooden trunk. GM: “You think I’m just going to give these answers away for free?” No trap. He picks the lock with his dagger on a nat 20. Inside is a beautiful green emerald. Dan: “Hello, beautiful green emerald. My name’s Dan Kowalski.” It melts into his skin, heals him and re-energizes him so he can move again.
72. 1:36:36 A glowing portal beckons. “Hey, my name’s Dan Kowalski, portal, here I come. I hope you like my moves.” GM: “Thought you said boobs.” “And that too.” “Secret tunnel, through the portal.” He flips a coin.
73. 1:37:16 — Gordy’s emeralds. The veggies drag “their vegetable asses closer.” Gordy finds his own locked chest. He uses “the classic rogue feature of fucking shit up,” jimmying it with his thieves’ tools on a nat 20. Two emeralds take him to full health: “Full health, super size.”
74. 1:39:03 Gordy: “Gotta get them stones… Grandmaster, I got you a birthday present.” “I offered you my foreskin. You didn’t like that. So how about the stone?” GM: “I definitely like the stones better.” Doug hops down, picks it up in his little dog mouth and pops back up to the sky. Gordy sprints into the portal. His coin flip matches Dan’s.

The dungeon and the Babau

75. 1:39:52 Both stand in the rune circle and are zapped to the same place: a deep, well-lit dungeon with swords on the walls, books on shelves and clay pots. Boom, boom, boom: a Babau leaps from the balcony, snarling.
76. 1:41:27 The Babau acts first and turns its weakening gaze on Dan, who saves. Dan: “Are you trying to make eyes at me, bro? Because I think you’re cute, but I’m taken.” Performance 22: the grey Babau blushes bright pink. Dan: “Your eyes sparkle in this light.” It becomes infatuated with Dan and will only attack Gordy.
77. 1:42:43 Its claw at Gordy is a nat 1, a “half-assed” swipe while it stares at Dan. GM: “Those feminine hips are entrancing. It’s flustered by your sexual appeal.”
78. 1:43:16 Dan casts mage armor, leaps back among the tall pillars and tries diplomacy: “You got this, Gordy… Gordy’s not here to hurt you… you can go back to perching.” The room has no visible exit. “Can you show us the way out?… My name’s Dan Kowalski. What’s your name?” They share no language (Dan speaks Common and Sylvan). Dan asks to “roll for love language.” Mudcat: “It likes your hips.” Dan sways to music in his head: “Sailing takes me away…”
79. 1:46:12 Gordy jokes that Dan’s antler candle might have set off a smoke alarm, then attacks “this big, grotesque-looking gray boy. He’s making eyes at Daniel, and it’s off-putting. It’s uglier than that beautiful dame I saw earlier.” The dagger barely sinks in, a glancing blow. “Nope, nope… gotta get him somewhere else, just not here.” He runs past Dan. The Babau follows, claws him and spears him (Uncanny Dodge halves the spear).
80. 1:49:46 — The Sphere of Annihilation. Dan: “Wow, Gordy, seems like they really like you. I’m a little jealous.” He sets the Sphere down between Gordy and the Babau and walks away. Two opportunity attacks follow:
    • The Babau, “no longer seeing this group as friendly,” claws him. “It’s longing for you to keep you at its side.”
    • Gordy: “I’m going to slice his little hooves.” A nat 20 does 40 damage to Dan. Dan: “Gordy, you stabbed me.” Reply: “Technically, I slashed you. Technically, you’re a bitch.”
81. 1:52:32 Dan’s fire bolt hits the Sphere. Everyone makes a Dex save at disadvantage. Gordy rolls a nat 1, and the Babau fails too. The sphere deals huge force damage. Dan: “Damn, Daniel. Damage Daniel, they call him.” GM: “As one taketh, one giveth back with full force.” The d100 is a 14: the sphere spins, cracks, goes unstable and collapses into a black-hole singularity, gone. The Babau is in critical shape.
82. 1:54:31 Dan: “Gordy, how did you explode next to that creature? I don’t even know.” On the deception check, Gordy concludes that “he doesn’t know how you exploded and you believe that he believes that.”
83. 1:55:20 Gordy: “This race is horrible for me. I got short legs. I’m very dangerous over short distance, but long distance, I turn around and stab the thing.” His stab barely bites (“Unfazed”). He uses his soul blades to teleport, hides behind a pillar (“deal with that, Daniel!”), and wins stealth when the Babau rolls a 1. It “now only has eyes for Dan.” Gordy thinks “man, I can’t believe I exploded,” and Dan hears it through the psychic link: “Yeah, that was crazy, man.”
84. 1:57:49 — The lover’s fury. The Babau goes after “the person who just tried to explode him to death.” Caustic Phoenix: “This is a lover’s fury at this point.” Claw and spear drop Dan to 0: dying, but conscious. He succeeds two death saves. He spends his hero point to open a dimension door under himself and escapes to the far side without an opportunity attack. The Babau loses him. He still owes one death save.
85. 2:01:06 — Gordy’s kill. Gordy holds his action behind the pillar (stealth 23; “the cold stone against your back… obscures your breath”). As the Babau passes, he spends his hero point on an “Assassin’s Creed wall run” up the 20-ft column and drops with a double dagger stab, adding falling damage. “Wall run, Gordy’s gotta get em!” GM: “Get em, Gordy, get em!” The Babau bleeds out and slumps dead. Gordy: “Yes, Gordy has gotten him!” The crowd goes wild and the GM stands from her seat: “That is a victory in and of itself, but do note, two still stand in the arena.” Gordy cleans his daggers.
86. 2:03:53 Dan’s third death save succeeds, and he is up on 1 HP, bleeding profusely and staggering. He creeps 35 ft until he can see Gordy celebrating (“I got him! Gotta get him”). GM: “The Acolytes silent as they anticipate your next moment. This could be the deciding factor of who lives and who dies.”
87. 2:07:25 — The kill. Anything against the sleeping Gordy is an auto-crit. Dan: “Seeing what you did to my beloved Babau, I will cast Thunder Step at fourth level.” He stomps with his cloven hooves. Lightning covers the ground and breaks the stone. The waves shake Gordy Gotta Get Em’s whole body, and his particles dissipate into the energy. The blast throws Dan into the air, and the Grandmaster catches him and holds him suspended.
88. 2:09:53 — The sack. GM: “Arbiter… pick up whatever remains you can.” The Arbiter gathers Gordy’s pieces into a sack, slings it over his shoulder and walks away whistling: “Got him.” Dan: “It’s beautifully cruel.”
89. 2:10:20 — The victory. A single tear falls from the Grandmaster’s eye; as it drops, a smile grows on her face. She lifts Dan to the acolytes, who chant “Dan, Dan, Dan” until the stands crack and shake “as if the thunder itself has reached high into the heavens.” She spins him so he can see every face: “Here is our first winner of the gauntlet, the first to make its path and live to tell the tale, since yours truly had survived it.” “Thank you and good night for coming to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character final words (canon, Dried Blood):

• Gordy: “Happy birthday, Grandmaster. You’re a lovely, lovely overlord. And we gotta go bowling in the afterlife.” GM: “We’ll put up some pins for you, I promise.”
• Arbiter: “One is born and one dies.”
• Dan: “Like my good friend Leonardo da Vinci once said, happy, happy birthday from the Hooters crew. Happy, happy birthday. I don’t remember the rest of it. But let me tell you, it was primo stuff.”

Out-of-character (creator notes):

• This was the first on-screen gameplay test of the gauntlet/speed-race format. Caustic Phoenix built the map for the birthday, all three maps, in One More Multiverse (in beta, 8-bit style). Mudcat and Caustic Phoenix plug it at length.
• Dan’s player compared it to Legends of the Hidden Temple. Gordy’s player’s plan was to “Naruto run through this entire thing.” The DMs hadn’t known whether the two would attack each other across lanes.
• Content they never reached:
  • Keys in the chest and in the spider webs.
  • Giant spiders in the cave.
  • The cave weapons could have been baby mimics (Caustic Phoenix: “They’re learning… It’s their training grounds”).
  • The manticores couldn’t have fit through the cave mouth.
  • Had the coin flips split them, one would have faced a Strigoi (“vampiric-like creature” with a noodle-like blood straw), and the other three babies / “ravenous children”: Sturges (stirges), which do necrotic damage and heal by drinking blood.
• The veggie monsters were workshopped in the car that day, and Caustic Phoenix drew them herself: “Tony the Carrot and Brenda the Broccoli.” (In the episode the carrot called the broccoli “Barbara.”)
• Mudcat: no one had ever been successfully put to sleep in a match before. Dan’s player had saved a 6th-level slot for a second sleep “if I somehow lived.” He used both 5th-level slots on sleep and Draconic Spirit. He expected “to fail spectacularly”: “shoot for the moon and hope to land in Texas.”
• Gordy’s player on dying with ~50 HP of healing banked: “the flavor of this episode was bitter… like a roller coaster.”
• ACT score jokes (reading 27, math 14).