S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn

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Bargo, a cape-wearing brawler who talks about himself in the third person, faced Carnelian, a glitter-sweating gem dragonborn warlock, in the ruins of a long-dead mining civilization deep underground. The fight had a herd of baby minotaurs, a capybara steed, a cave-in and a graveyard full of grasping dead. It ended with a decapitation and a quiet act of needlework from the Arbiter that nobody in the arena was supposed to see.

The Story

A Bad Night for Television

Deep in the halls of the Dread Fortress, the Grandmaster sat on her throne glaring at a small box: a television. She had been promised “some amazing tournament, a finale of some sort against rams and tigers,” and she had not seen a single ram or tiger. Nobody was dying. They were just tossing a ball around (“I guess some people really like playing with balls”), and the goblins kept moving the antenna, so the picture was terrible. “I’ve been there, the goblins,” the Arbiter sympathized as he clacked in.

He had come to confess. The traitors who had been planning to overthrow the Dread Fortress had escaped “the other day,” though he had his best people on it. The Grandmaster was not soothed. “For planning to overthrow my entire kingdom, what I’ve planned, what I’ve built, you let them escape?” “Let is a strong word,” he offered. She rose from her throne in fury and asked, “I thought I brought you in because you’re competent. Are you?”

The Arbiter promised to fix it, and to make it up to her he offered a real bout of sport. She demanded something grand, nothing like “this drivel,” and kicked the television over. Then she guessed where he had found this week’s champions: “an Arby’s or an Applebee’s, McDonald’s, the bowling alley.” The Arbiter opened a portal: “Bargo Blakely versus Carnelian!”

The Champions

Carn kicked the door open and stomped in, and the hellfire light scattered through his crystalline scales. “I’m a killer, not a talker,” he announced. The Grandmaster liked that. “Action over words, Carn. I see true potential in your eyes. You are a champion I’m keeping my eyes on.”

Bargo arrived to smash things and to explain his limited relationship with grammar:

“Bargo went to fighting school. Not grammar school… Bargo don’t need no grammar to punch you through your face.” (Bargo)

The Grandmaster called the screaming “the best pick-me-up after watching this game of no rams and tigers.”

Into the Cavern

The Arbiter said Carn’s crystalline look had inspired his choice of arena, a favorite of the Grandmaster’s. The portal opened onto a hot, dank, foul-smelling cavern. The Grandmaster explained that it had been home to “a very long forgotten underground civilization” of gem farmers and miners. Then their entrance collapsed, “and well, it was a little hard to breathe after that.” Blue and yellow crystals lit the space, and tenuous stone bridges stretched between platforms over a fog so deep that a yell might never echo back. “Perhaps their death will be a warning to you to be careful of this very fragile arena,” she said.

She flew up through the ceiling to a ring of stadium stands packed with stomping, chanting Acolytes and took her seat next to Doug the Pug. The Acolytes gave each champion a gift of their favor, which the Grandmaster called “your Super Saiyan two card.” They had also already summoned the Box of Chaos onto the far platform. “My goodness, are you all really intense for this?”

Carn Goes Shopping

Bargo was still talking when Carn bolted. He spent the Acolytes’ gift on a burst of speed, sprouted gem-dragon wings and reached the box before anyone else had moved. It creaked open and hissed, “Give me something!” Carn snapped off one of his own horns, blood spouting, and dropped it in. The lid slammed, rumbled and flew open in a burst of heatless pink and yellow flame. Out floated a suit of magical chain mail. Bargo suggested he toss it into the pit. Carn put it on.

Minitaurs

The chaos began at once. Pebbles shook, little tunnels burrowed up through the floor, and out popped a dozen tiny minitaurs: baby minotaurs of “a certain unique breed that have evolved within these dark caverns.” One full-sized minotaur crawled up too. The Grandmaster counted only eleven babies and laughed: “Apparently the Grandmaster might be on some hallucinogens.”

Carn tried to lure the big minotaur with lightning, and it shrugged him off. He tried to smooth things over (“It’s just a misunderstanding. I mean, rawr!”), but his roar came out as the exact sound the minotaur’s dinner makes. Now it was hungry. “I start sweating,” Carn said, “but since I’m a gem dragonborn, it’s just glitter.” He flew thirty feet up, out of reach. The minotaur hurled its greataxe at him, nicked his foot, and failed to catch the axe on its way back down. It hurt the minotaur more than it hurt Carn.

Bargo took on the babies. A blast of wind swept four of them off the bridge. “They cry for their mom and I laugh.” The Grandmaster offered to let him check whether they were really babies. “Bargo does not care.” Then he flourished his cape so well that the nearest minitaur decided he was a magician and fell to worshipping at his feet, tugging his cape with big minotaur eyes. “Bargo make friends,” said Bargo. “It’s going to hurt twice as much when I kill you both.”

Mushrooms, Grease and a Very Stupid Minotaur

Glowing pink and blue mushrooms sprouted across the cavern (“mushrooms can be tasty or dangerous”). Carn missed the minotaur with his crossbow, and the minotaur stuck out its tongue at him. So Carn taunted it. The Arbiter flipped a coin to decide whether it was really dumb enough to fall for it. “He is, in fact, that stupid.” The minotaur charged straight at Carn and off the cliff, Die Hard style. It looked back once as it fell, and a long moment later came a distant thud, then “blood and gore.”

The surviving minitaurs rushed Bargo with their mini axes. He dropped to one knee under a shimmering magic bubble, and they screamed at him from the other side “almost like a small rager.” Laughing, he coated them all in Grease. They slipped and slid like they were dancing and grabbed hands in a chain. Then one went over the edge, and the whole chain followed, “even the one that adored you.” Carn pointed out that Bargo could save him. “Bargo’s gonna let go. Bargo don’t want to risk it.” The Arbiter called it very pragmatic.

Bargo then picked up a golden mushroom that soaked into his skin and lit his veins yellow, leaving him revitalized. Carn set the grease-soaked bridge on fire with a green-flamed blade, then found a different mushroom, one that slows anyone who eats it or touches it to bare skin, and left it to simmer. Bargo blew the fire straight back at him.

While Carn smouldered, the Grandmaster asked Bargo about his grades at fighting school. He had graduated with an “Apple, Apple Plus, which is like the best grade. The grade with the fruits.” On the fighting-school scale cucumber is the worst, then orange, then pineapple, with apple at the top. “You are all apples, sir,” said the Grandmaster.

Bear Versus Capybara

The Acolytes, thrilled by “carnage and fire, mushrooms flying everywhere, Minotaurs falling left and right,” set off another chaos event, one the Grandmaster had only just written. A small horse appeared under each champion and grew to full size. Each could read its rider’s thoughts and change into whatever they wished. Carn’s became a massive capybara. “No one suspects the capybara, but look at the size of those chompers.” Bargo asked what eats capybaras. “There isn’t one!” Carn crowed. Bargo picked “a big brown thing that’s bigger and meaner”: a bear.

Carn dipped his hand axe in the slowing mushroom and charged, but Bargo blocked him with another bubble. Bargo answered with a stunt: he rode his bear behind Carn, leapt off, flipped in midair and hit him with a bolt of fire. “Because I’m not a wuss, I don’t need a shield. Just fight me!” Carn protested.

During the intermission both champions did push-ups. The Grandmaster wanted them on a calendar, and Bargo’s flawless form sharpened his strikes. Carn struck back from inside Bargo’s head: using his psionic gift, he said “bitch” straight into Bargo’s brain, and the self-doubt got to him. Then Carn unhinged his jaw and breathed a blast of radiant gem-dragon fire into Bargo’s face. Bargo took it and insisted he was “much more better than you.”

The Cave-In

Carn took to the skies and left his capybara to wander off and munch on things, ignoring orders to bite ankles. “You just keep doing your thing, buddy… I’m worried now.” Bargo teleported thirty feet into the air, missed his stab and grabbed Carn’s foot, and dangled there as Carn flapped back and forth under the extra weight.

Then the Arbiter got bored. “Grandmaster, this is getting a little boring. I would like to shake things up.” He clapped his hands with a thunderous crack that echoed off every surface. The ceiling came down, rocks pounded both champions, and the two of them sank to the bottom of the cavern.

The Graveyard

At the bottom lay the true ruins of the lost people. “Clearly the digesting of bodies over time has produced some interesting results with interacting with the crystals,” the Grandmaster observed. The bodies were not alive, but they were moving. Hands reached out of the ground, and a pool nearby squirmed with corpses. “The dead may still try to claim you.”

Bargo leapt to Carn’s platform with circus flair and cast a fire bolt mid-flip, then tumbled into his own flame. He still stuck the landing. “Bargo did not mean to do this. But I mean to do this.” Carn answered with a glassy, crystalline hand tipped with needles that jabbed into Bargo’s chest and drew his blood visibly through the clear fingers. Carn offered Bargo the mushroom on his axe (“You ate the last one. This one’s delicious. Have it”). Bargo was tempted, took a sniff of its beautiful floral scent and didn’t eat it.

Then Bargo looked up, yelled “Firebolt!” and landed a perfect shot. The ball of fire looked twice its normal size, and it blasted Carn another thirty feet into the air. Carn admitted he was down to seven, then corrected himself: “100 million, actually.” Wreathed in swirling spirits of the dead, he dive-bombed back down and drained Bargo again. Because they were fighting in a graveyard, the Grandmaster let the clawing dead lend him extra strength. “You taste delicious!”

Bargo spent the Acolytes’ gift on a trick of his own. He scattered ball bearings behind Carn and blew him across them into the pool of squirming bodies. Carn burst out “like a hellish mermaid” and landed a perfect point-blank crossbow shot, then said “bitch” into Bargo’s mind a second time. Bargo, starting to wonder, answered with a volley of magic missiles and teleported away. Carn chased him, and Bargo’s last bubble stopped his shot. Carn searched his options and came up empty. “I got nothing. This is it.”

The Final Blow

Carn begged for mercy, and the Arbiter put it to the crowd: “Acolytes, what say you to this plea? Will you take mercy?” Bargo had a suggestion: “Watch him suffer!” The vote was mixed, but most wanted blood. “They reject you,” the Grandmaster declared. “Bargo is in their hearts.” Carn blamed all the times he had called Bargo a bitch inside Bargo’s own mind. “They’re very perceptive,” said the Arbiter. “Tears of glitter fall from my eyes.”

One last volley of missiles dropped Carn to his knees. “Care for the capybara,” he managed. Bargo walked over, tired of watching. He slit Carn’s throat with his dagger (“You die with honor”), kept sawing until the head came off, and held it high: “For you! For you!” The Acolytes rose in a wave chanting his name. The Grandmaster floated down on open wings and told him he had graduated from the arena. With blood still spurting, she had him hand the head to the Arbiter, who said, “Great showmanship, Apple Plus.” The Grandmaster added, “See what happens to cucumbers at the end? They get diced up.”

Stitches

The Arbiter tucked the head under his arm, grabbed the body by what was left of its neck, and flew up out of the cavern to a cliff where no one could see. There he set the head back on its body and sewed it in place with a magical needle and thread, leaving a ring of stitches around Carn’s throat. “Pull yourself together. I might have use for you.” Below, the Grandmaster wondered aloud whether she’d heard something. Maybe it was just the capybara, still loose. Somewhere above, Carn flew away with his falling glitter forming a rainbow behind him.

The Grandmaster lifted Bargo into the sky to face his fans. “You gave us blood. You gave us fire. You gave us grease.” She promised that his legacy would be passed down to children, grandchildren and eventually pets. Bargo asked the Acolytes to name their children after him, kindly and optionally. Bargo, it turned out, is a family name, and he is the 17th of them.

Dried Blood

After the show, Bargo left the Acolytes with a creed: “When times get tough, don’t be yourself. Be Bargo. And you’ll be okay.” Carn described his exit from his own side. When he flew off into the sunset he left a little glittery rainbow behind him, because “not all of my holes were closed at that point. Stab holes.” At the table, Carn’s player admitted that begging probably isn’t proper Deathmatch etiquette. He also wished he had gotten to use his retractable claws and finish with a punch to the throat. Bargo’s player said he had also considered stomping the head “into a mush.” Both players noted that the Acolytes showed no remorse for the babies, not even the one who loved Bargo.

Notable Moments

• Carn snapped off his own horn to feed the Box of Chaos and got a suit of magic chain mail for it.
• A full-grown minotaur was taunted into charging straight off a cliff.
• The minitaurs, greased and holding hands, fell into the chasm as one chain, taking Bargo’s adoring little fan with them.
• A bear faced off against a capybara, and the capybara wandered off mid-fight to have a snack.
• The Arbiter clapped the cavern ceiling down because he was bored.
• After Bargo took Carn’s head, the Arbiter secretly stitched it back on: “I might have use for you.”

Memorable Quotes

• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “I thought I brought you in because you’re competent. Are you?”
• Carn: “I start sweating, but since I’m a gem dragonborn, it’s just glitter.”
• Bargo: “Bargo make friends. It’s going to hurt twice as much when I kill you both.”
• The Arbiter: “He is, in fact, that stupid.”
• Bargo: “I graduated with an Apple, Apple Plus, which is like the best grade. The grade with the fruits.”
• Carn: “No one suspects the capybara, but look at the size of those chompers.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “See what happens to cucumbers at the end? They get diced up.”
• The Arbiter: “Pull yourself together. I might have use for you.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Bargo (Blakely) (Chunkerrific). The full name “Bargo Blakely” is used only in the Arbiter’s introduction.

• Speech and schooling:
  • Speaks in the third person with a “loose grasp of grammar.”
  • Went to “fighting school, not grammar school” and graduated with an “Apple Plus,” the best grade on the fighting school’s fruit scale (cucumber worst, orange, pineapple, apple best).
• Family: “Bargo” is a family name, and he is “the 17th Bargo.”
• Gear: a cape, short sword, dagger, and ball bearings in his backpack.
• Abilities used: Gust, Shield (cast four times), Grease, Fire Bolt, Misty Step, Magic Missile, Uncanny Dodge.
• In this episode:
  • Killed the minitaurs, including one that idolized him after his cape flourish.
  • Ate nothing, but was tempted by the floral smell of the slowing mushroom.
  • Won the Acolytes’ vote, decapitated Carn, and was told he has “graduated from this arena.”

Carn / Carnelian (CucumberLives).

• A carnelian gem dragonborn warlock with crystalline scales.
  • He sweats glitter, cries glitter, and seems to bleed glitter.
  • He can grow wings and has a radiant breath weapon.
• Abilities used: a psionic mind that lets him speak into minds, Lightning Lure, Green-Flame Blade, Vampiric Touch at 5th level (a crystalline glass hand), Spirit Shroud.
• Weapons: a crossbow expert with a hand crossbow (“gun gun”) and a hand axe. He also has retractable claws, which he didn’t use.
• Snapped off one of his own horns for the Box of Chaos and got +3 chain mail.
• His steed: a capybara.
• Fate: rejected by the Acolytes, then decapitated by Bargo. The Arbiter secretly sewed his head back on (“I might have use for you”), and he left a glitter rainbow as he flew away.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Let “the traitors” who planned to overthrow the Dread Fortress escape “the other day,” and is under the Grandmaster’s orders to fix it.
• Triggered his own event, a thunderclap that collapsed the cavern.
• Secretly took Carn’s body and head out of the arena and stitched them together with a magical needle and thread.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Watched a ball game on a goblin-tuned television and kicked the TV over.
• Angry at the Arbiter over the traitors: “I thought I brought you in because you’re competent.”
• Sits next to Doug the Pug at the arena.
• Gave Carn a graveyard damage boost.
• Presented Bargo with the legacy speech.

The minotaur. A regular-sized minotaur with a greataxe, summoned by chaos event. He hit himself with his own thrown axe and was taunted into charging off a cliff.

The minitaurs. Twelve (eleven counted) tiny baby minotaurs, “a certain unique breed that have evolved within these dark caverns,” armed with mini axes.

• Four were gusted off the ledge. The rest fell in a hand-holding chain after Grease.
• One became Bargo’s admirer and companion before falling with the others.

The polymorph steeds. Magical horses that read their rider’s thoughts and polymorph to match. Carn’s became a capybara (still loose at the end), Bargo’s a bear.

The dead of the cavern ruins. Bodies that are “not alive” but moving, reaching from the ground and the water to claim the living. The GM says this is the result of digesting bodies interacting with the crystals.

Doug the Pug. The Grandmaster’s seatmate.

Places

• Elusia’s throne, “deep in the halls of the Dread Fortress”, where the television sits.
• The long-forgotten underground civilization (“Al-Anon” [?]):
  • Crystal and gem miners whose entrance collapsed, suffocating them.
  • Blue and yellow crystals, tenuous stone bridges over a foggy, near-bottomless chasm.
  • A circular Acolyte stadium visible through the ceiling.
  • The Grandmaster calls it a favorite of hers, according to the Arbiter.
• The ruins at the cavern bottom: a graveyard with moving dead and water full of squirming bodies.
• A cliff high above the cavern where the Arbiter sewed Carn back together.

Items

• The Box of Chaos: takes Carn’s horn and gives +3 chain mail in heatless pink and yellow flames.
• The glowing mushrooms:
  • A golden mushroom gives temporary vitality; the veins glow yellow.
  • Another mushroom slows for one turn if eaten or touched to skin. It has a floral scent, and Carn coated his hand axe with it.
• The Grandmaster’s television (kicked over).
• The Arbiter’s magical needle and thread.
• Bargo’s ball bearings and cape.

Lore statements

• Traitors planning to overthrow the Dread Fortress exist and have escaped under the Arbiter’s watch.
• The Grandmaster “brought [the Arbiter] in” for his competence.
• The Void has television and ball-game tournaments, with goblins on the antenna.
• Acolytes can grant hero points, summon the Box of Chaos, trigger chaos events, and vote on mercy.
• The death in the cavern feeds the dead, according to the GM’s graveyard ruling.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the Grandmaster’s television

1. 0:00:07 “Deep in the halls of the Dread Fortress,” Elusia sits on her throne staring at a small box: a television. The Arbiter walks in, heels clacking on the stone.
2. 0:00:38 She is baffled by what she is watching.
   • She was promised “some amazing tournament, a finale… against rams and tigers,” but she hasn’t seen a single ram or tiger.
   • “Maybe it’s just a bunch of barbarians playing, but that seems really boring to have one class the entire time.”
   • Nobody is killing anyone and nobody is dying. “They’re just tossing a ball around… I guess some people really like playing with balls.”
3. 0:01:44 She is “bored to death with it.” On top of that, the goblins keep moving the antenna and the signal is terrible. The Arbiter: “I’ve been there, the goblins.”
4. 0:01:54 The escaped traitors. The Arbiter “lays the cards on the table.”
   • He admits that “the traitors escaped the other day,” the ones “planning the overthrow of the Dread Fortress.” He says he has his best people on it.
   • The Grandmaster: “For planning to overthrow my entire kingdom, what I’ve planned, what I’ve built, you let them escape?”
   • Arbiter: “Let is a strong word.” GM: “You have one task.” Arbiter: “I have a lot of tasks. I’m very important around here.”
5. 0:02:33 The Grandmaster rises from her throne, angry, and confronts him. Protecting the Dread Fortress is imperative, and any risk he let escape is his to solve. “I thought I brought you in because you’re competent. Are you?” He promises to “figure it out.” To make it up to her, he offers “a real bout of sport.”
6. 0:03:10 She demands something “grand, something different,” better than “this drivel,” and kicks the TV over. She gives him a death glare and guesses where he found this week’s champions: “an Arby’s or an Applebee’s, McDonald’s, the bowling alley.”
7. 0:03:48 The Arbiter opens a portal: “Bargo Blakely versus Carnelian!”

The champions

8. 0:04:30 Carn’s entrance.
   • Carnelian kicks the door forward and stomps in. Hellfire light bounces through his crystalline scales. He is a carnelian gem dragonborn and a warlock.
   • “I’m gonna warlock you out of this house. I’m gonna smash your face with my jaw… I’m a killer, not a talker.”
   • The Grandmaster: “Action over words, Carn. I see true potential in your eyes. You are a champion I’m keeping my eyes on.”
9. 0:05:20 Bargo’s entrance. “Bargo here to smash things. Bargo gonna smash Carn into pieces… Bargo have loose grasp of grammar. Bargo went to fighting school. Not grammar school.… Bargo don’t need no grammar to punch you through your face.”
10. 0:06:13 The Grandmaster says the screaming is “the best pick-me-up after watching this game of no rams and tigers.” She is excited to see how they play “even though there’s no grammar rules applied.”

The arena

11. 0:06:40 The Arbiter says he was inspired by Carn’s crystalline structure and picked “a favorite of yours.” His portal opens onto a hot, dank cavern full of putrid smell.
12. 0:07:03 The Grandmaster’s introduction.
    • This is “a very long forgotten underground civilization,” the “Al-Anon” [?] civilization. They once farmed and mined the gems all around. Then their entrance collapsed, “and well, it was a little hard to breathe after that.”
    • “You’ll find yourself not alone, just beautiful things, but the memories of those who used to be here. Perhaps their death will be a warning to you to be careful of this very fragile arena.”
    • Gleaming blue and yellow crystals light the cavern. Tenuous stone bridges run from platform to platform over fog. A yell would echo “down and down and down, perhaps never reverberating back to you.”
    • “Be safe. But of course, push your opponent, maybe to their death.”
13. 0:07:59 She flies up. Through the cavern ceiling, a full circle of stadium stands holds Acolytes stomping and chanting “Go, go!”
14. 0:08:51 “I have brought you to these ancient ruins, not for a beautiful visit, but for you to bring glory to them once again. They once saw life, and you shall prove it once more.” She tells the Acolytes to cheer for the champions, “and they will give you all that you ask for.” Then she takes her seat next to Doug the Pug.
15. 0:09:29 Placement. Chunk can’t find the d4 at first (“We like to hide our dice here. It’s part of the game”). Carn starts at the top of a cliffside and Bargo on a bridge, 40 ft apart.
16. 0:10:41 The Acolytes award each champion a hero point. The Grandmaster: “There’s nothing that makes me angrier… when a hero point goes wasted.” She calls it “your Super Saiyan two card.”
17. 0:12:17 The Box of Chaos. The Acolytes have already summoned it. The Grandmaster: “My goodness, are you all really intense for this?”
    • It sits on the far platform.
    • Offer anything of value and the box gives something back: “sometimes it’s nice and sweet and sometimes it’s an intense dangerous magical item.”
18. 0:13:15 Bargo: “Bargo, ready.” Carn: “Carn is ready for carnage.” Bargo: “It is one great fighter and one mediocre one.”

Surprise round: Carn and the Box of Chaos

19. 0:13:29 While Bargo is still talking, Carn zips for the box.
    • He spends his hero point to double his speed. As a bonus action he grows wings, a gem dragonborn ability.
    • The Arbiter grants him a surprise move before initiative: 60 ft, enough to reach the box. “This is gonna make this night so much easier.”
20. 0:14:16 The box creaks open, whirls and hisses: “Give me something!”
    • Carn snaps off one of his own horns and drops it in. “Oh yeah, it’s spouting blood.”
    • Offering a piece of himself earns him advantage on the roll.
21. 0:15:16 The lid slams shut on the horn, rumbles, and flings open. A burst of pink and yellow flames with no heat comes out, and a magical suit of chain mail floats out: +3 chain mail, no penalty to wear it.
    • Bargo suggests he “toss it into the pit.” Carn puts it on immediately.
    • It brings Carn’s AC to 17.
22. 0:16:36 Initiative. Carn goes first (7), Bargo second (4). Bargo: “Sometimes I start talking without knowing where my sentence is going.” Arbiter: “Tell me about it, me too.” GM: “Remember you went to fighting school… no brain school here.”

Chaos event 1: the minitaurs (0:17:10)

23. Carn rolls 15, one of the Grandmaster’s new chaos events (“Chaos!”).
    • Pebbles shake, little tunnels burrow underfoot, and up pop 12 tiny “minitaurs”: “baby minotaurs, but a certain unique breed that have evolved within these dark caverns.”
    • One regular-sized minotaur crawls up too. “You must decide which is more fearful.”
    • Carn: “I would like the one minotaur, please.” The GM and the Arbiter go back and forth over whether there is also an extra-large one. Carn: “like an Arby’s large, not like a McDonald’s large.”
    • The GM counts only 11 and laughs: “Apparently the Grandmaster might be on some hallucinogens.”

Round 1

24. 0:19:52 Carn casts Lightning Lure on the big minotaur, which passes its Strength save.
25. 0:20:37 Carn tries to smooth it over: “It’s just a misunderstanding. I mean, rawr!” His Intimidation fails. He makes “the exact sound that its dinner makes.” The minotaur now sees him as a chicken dinner and is hungry.
26. 0:21:20 “I start sweating, but since I’m a gem dragonborn, it’s just glitter.” Carn flies 30 ft straight up and hovers over the box.
27. 0:22:18 The minotaur’s turn.
    • It charges to gore Carn but can’t reach him. Carn “spits pop rocks on him.”
    • It throws its greataxe up at him. The axe scrapes his foot for a little slashing damage.
    • The axe comes back down on the minotaur, which fails to catch it, so it takes more damage than Carn did. Carn: “It hurts him more than it hurts you.”
28. 0:24:11 Bargo’s Gust.
    • Bargo steps 5 ft and casts Gust in a 30-ft cone over the minitaurs on the bridge.
    • One group fails the save, and four minitaurs are blown off the ledge.
    • “I pull back and I go… and all the little minotaurs just tumble like screaming… they cry for their mom and I laugh. Bargo show you too that’s stronger than you.”
    • The GM offers a Nature check to tell whether they’re babies. “Bargo does not care.” GM: “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”
29. 0:27:06 The cape flourish.
    • Bargo flourishes his cape (Performance 16).
    • The nearest minitaur’s eyes go wide. To him Bargo is a magician, and he worships at his feet. The baby minotaur becomes Bargo’s companion and tugs at his cape with big minotaur eyes. The Arbiter marks him “stunned.”
    • Bargo: “Bargo make friends. It’s going to hurt twice as much when I kill you both.”
30. 0:28:23 The Arbiter rolls 19 at round’s end. The GM: “That’s not embarrassing. I respect that.”

Chaos event 2: the glowing mushrooms (0:28:46)

31. Bargo rolls a 3.
    • Tiny mushrooms pop up all over the map, glowing pink and blue like the gems.
    • “As we know, mushrooms can be tasty or dangerous.”

Round 2

32. 0:30:16 Carn flies halfway across the bridge and fires his crossbow at the minotaur, but misses. The minotaur sticks its tongue out.
33. 0:30:50 The taunt.
    • The minotaur has Intelligence 10, so the Arbiter flips a coin and Carn calls heads. “He is, in fact, that stupid.”
34. 0:31:31 The minotaur charges straight at Carn and off the cliff. “It’s totally like Die Hard.” As he falls into the abyss he looks back, and then there’s a thud far below, “blood and gore.”
35. 0:32:16 The minitaur horde.
    • The surviving minitaurs, except the stunned admirer, charge Bargo with their “mini axes” (“They don’t have great axes”).
    • Several would hit. Bargo reacts with Shield: “I go down to one knee like superhero foes and just this like little bubble, you know, like the robots and the droids in Star Wars.” No hit lands. They scream on the other side of the bubble “almost like a small rager.”
36. 0:34:54 Bargo laughs because “they did not do what they wanted to do,” and casts Grease on them. The Arbiter struggles to draw a 10-ft square (“Equal sides on both sides of the square”).
    • The GM says they’re all huddled together, so they’re all “oiled up minitaurs… slick and shiny.”
37. 0:36:12 The chain.
    • The minitaurs roll a natural 1.
    • They slip and slide “like they’re dancing” and grab onto each other in a chain.
    • One slips off the edge, and since they’re all holding hands, the whole chain falls into the chasm. “Even the one that adored you.”
    • Carn: “You can save him.” Bargo: “Bargo’s gonna let go. Bargo don’t want to risk it.” GM: “Don’t let anything hold you back.” Arbiter: “It’s very pragmatic.”
38. 0:37:15 The golden mushroom.
    • Bargo picks up a mushroom behind him and holds it.
    • It is a golden mushroom. It pulses, seeps into his skin, and his veins glow yellow for a moment. He feels revitalized: 10 temporary HP. “Some magic mushrooms to make you feel good.”
39. 0:38:35 The Arbiter rolls 10. The GM: “Not as much of a disappointment as usual.” Arbiter: “That’s what I aim for.” GM: “My mediocre partner.”

Round 3

40. 0:38:56 The bridge on fire.
    • Carn zips back across near another mushroom.
    • He casts Green-Flame Blade and sets the grease on fire where the minitaurs were soaked.
    • He investigates the mushroom (Survival 19). It is a mushroom that slows for one turn if eaten or touched to bare skin. He leaves it to “simmer.”
41. 0:40:23 A taunt: “Come and get me, you baby killer!” This is probably Carn, labeled as Bargo’s speaker.
42. 0:40:41 Bargo uses Gust on the fire and blows it back at Carn, who has landed by the mushroom. Carn takes some fire damage.
43. 0:41:45 Fighting school grades.
    • Bargo steps back from the edge. GM: “Bargo smart… maybe they did teach you something in that fighting school… What was your GPA?”
    • Bargo: “I graduated with an Apple, Apple Plus, which is like the best grade. The grade with the fruits.”
    • The scale: cucumber is the worst, orange in the middle, pineapple higher, apple the best.
    • GM: “I’m very proud of you… You are all apples, sir.” Arbiter: “A gentleman and a scholar.”
44. 0:42:39 The Acolytes scream at “carnage and fire, mushrooms flying everywhere, Minotaurs falling left and right” and trigger another chaos event.

Chaos event 3: the polymorph steeds (0:43:14)

45. The Arbiter rolls 15, a repeat, so he rolls again and gets 19. The GM: “I just wrote this one up, so we’re going to test this out.”
    • A small horse appears between each champion’s legs and grows to normal size.
    • It is magical: it reads its rider’s thoughts and polymorphs into anything they want, and it gives them 40 ft of movement.
46. 0:44:17 Carn’s becomes a massive capybara. “No one suspects the capybara, but look at the size of those chompers.” GM: “They’ve got huge teeth and also a giant rump.”
    • The Arbiter leaves its token as a horse “due to the lack of capybara tokens… it’s a supply chain.”
47. 0:44:54 Bargo asks what the natural predator of a capybara is. Carn: “There isn’t one! Ahahaha, you sucker!” Bargo picks “a big brown thing that’s bigger and meaner”: a bear.
    • Puns follow: “the bear versus the capybara” and “Not to be confused with the Yogi Berra.” GM: “I got that one. I’m not laughing though.”

Round 4

48. 0:45:55 GM: “Round four. Fight… give us a little one-two punch to make us remember this over intermission.”
49. 0:46:10 Carn’s charge.
    • He rides the capybara around the fire, and on the way dips his hand axe in the slowing mushroom (“click, click”).
    • He is a crossbow expert, so his plan is a hand-axe swing plus a free crossbow shot. GM: “I don’t see how this could fail at all.”
    • The axe misses. The crossbow would hit, but Bargo casts Shield again. Carn: “Denied! In your face!” GM: “Especially right before Valentine’s Day.”
50. 0:48:04 Bargo’s bear stunt.
    • Bargo rides his bear forward and U-turns behind Carn, leaps off, flips in the air, and casts Fire Bolt.
    • It hits Carn, who is at AC 17 from the chain mail. Carn: “Because I’m not a wuss, I don’t need a shield. Just fight me!”
    • Bargo: “Bargo think Carn not gonna survive.”
51. 0:49:23 The Arbiter rolls before the break, and it’s a low roll. GM: “You get more embarrassing every single time you roll… Now you’re just showing how you really are.”

After the break (break cut from the mp3)

52. 0:50:02 Push-ups.
    • Both champions were doing push-ups. GM: “Look at that upper body. Rawr… Put you on some calendar, and we’re gonna make some money.”
    • Strength check: Bargo’s good form gives him +1 to the rest of his attacks. “In your face.”
53. 0:50:59 The first “bitch.”
    • Carn uses his psionic mind ability to say “bitch” straight into Bargo’s brain. Intimidation 19 vs Insight 5.
    • Bargo is intimidated and gets disadvantage on his next attack.
    • Someone wonders aloud, “Am I a bitch? Am I a bitch?” The line is labeled as Caustic Phoenix, possibly voicing Bargo’s self-doubt, and Mudcat answers “No. I could be.” GM: “That self-doubt is creeping in. See if you can shake that imposter syndrome.”

Round 5

54. 0:51:57 Carn “unhinges his jaw” and blasts his radiant gem-dragon breath weapon in Bargo’s face. Bargo saves for half: “Bargo much more better than you.”
55. 0:52:30 The capybara wanders off.
    • As a bonus action Carn uses his elemental gift to fly for 10 minutes. He jumps off the capybara and takes to the skies.
    • The capybara “finds something to munch on… very confident in your abilities.”
    • Carn tells it to bite Bargo’s ankles. His animal handling and the tie-break coin flip both fail: it is “more interested in wandering around eating stuff.” Carn: “You just keep doing your thing, buddy… I’m worried now.”
56. 0:53:52 Bargo grabs Carn’s foot.
    • “Bargo go old school”: Misty Step 30 ft into the air to stab Carn with his short sword. Carn: “The skies are mine!”
    • The stab doesn’t land, but Sleight of Hand plus a Strength check means Bargo grabs Carn’s foot and hangs from it as Carn flies back and forth.
    • Carn has to hold both of them up. Bargo weighs “however much it takes to drag me down… whatever that is, plus two more.” Carn drops about 5 ft but stays aloft.
57. 0:56:01 The Arbiter’s event. The Arbiter rolls 8, enough to trigger “your own special Arbiter event… now that you have finally reached your threshold.”
    • Arbiter: “This is getting a little boring. I would like to shake things up.”
    • He claps his hands with a thunderous sound that echoes off everything, and the whole cavern shakes.
58. 0:57:05 The collapse.
    • The ceiling collapses and rocks smash into both champions.
    • Bargo has limited swinging mobility because he’s hanging from “Carn’s toe.”
    • Both take bludgeoning damage and sink to the bottom of the cavern.
59. 0:57:45 The ruins at the bottom.
    • They find the actual ruins of the “Al-Anon” [?] people.
    • GM: “Oh, it is gross. Clearly the digesting of bodies over time has produced some interesting results with interacting with the crystals. If you look around, these bodies, while not alive, are moving… the dead may still try to claim you.”
    • Figures reach out from the ground, and there is water full of squirming bodies.
60. 0:58:28 They land upright, no longer holding each other’s toes. Initiative is rerolled and the Arbiter restarts the count: “Let’s just start from one again. In a new map.” Bargo 13, Carn 3 (“Oh, how non-impressive”). Bargo: “Push button. Button do nothing.”

The graveyard, round 1

61. 0:59:24 Bargo burns himself.
    • Bargo jumps over to Carn’s platform with flair (“I think I saw this at a circus once”) and casts Fire Bolt mid-air.
    • GM: “Your form may be perfect, but as you cast Firebolt, you tumble into your own attack.” He eats his own flame but hits the landing. “Bargo did not mean to do this. But I mean to do this.”
62. 1:00:42 Carn’s Vampiric Touch.
    • Carn casts Vampiric Touch at 5th level. It’s “a super cool, crystalline, transparent thing… like a wet, like bendy glass hand.” Needle points on every fingertip jab into Bargo’s chest, and the blood seeps visibly through the clear hand into Carn’s chest.
    • Bargo uses Uncanny Dodge to halve the damage. The Arbiter rules that Carn still heals the full amount.
63. 1:02:08 The mushroom offer.
    • Carn tries to rub the slowing mushroom on his axe onto Bargo’s skin, but misses.
    • He tries persuasion instead: “You ate the last one. This one’s delicious. Have it.” Bargo fails his Insight. The mushroom juice on the blade looks good to him.
    • Arbiter: “You have your own agency.” Bargo doesn’t eat it. He’s tempted and takes a sniff: “a beautiful floral scent.” The spores do nothing.
64. 1:03:41 Carn flies up 30 ft. Bargo’s opportunity swing with the short sword misses against the +3 chain mail.
65. 1:04:33 The natural 20.
    • Bargo looks up and yells “Firebolt!” and rolls a natural 20.
    • “I get on my knee… because I pushed up much harder, the ball… looks twice as big as it normally does… it hits him, and it sends him up another 30 feet before he starts coming back down.”
    • Carn is left on very little health. Carn: “I’m down to seven.” Arbiter: “Don’t tell him that.” Carn: “I mean, I’m down to something great… 100 million, actually.”
66. 1:06:12 “Help me! Help me!” The GM asks whether he can get the Acolytes on his side. Carn: “No, I probably can’t. So I’m just gonna go for my murder.”
67. 1:07:18 Spirit Shroud and the graveyard bonus.
    • Carn casts Spirit Shroud: spirits of the dead flit around him. He dive-bombs back down with “my little swirly undead dancing around me” and casts Vampiric Touch at 5th level again, which hits.
    • The Grandmaster grants an extra d8: “Because there is so much death here… You are fighting in a graveyard. The dead are clawing at you, and if you push that and give them that boost, they will reach out.”
    • Carn heals: “You taste delicious!”
68. 1:08:56 Ball bearings into the water.
    • Bargo spends his hero point. He tosses ball bearings from his backpack behind Carn, then uses Gust to push him over them.
    • Carn makes the save with triple dice, taking the lowest, and fails. The shroud spirits do slow Bargo.
    • Carn slides back into the water full of squirming bodies, takes necrotic damage from it, and squeezes out of the grasp of the dead for now.
    • Bargo moves back to his square. He tries to Misty Step, but the Arbiter says he can just walk.

The graveyard, round 2

69. 1:12:05 Carn “burst[s] forth from this water like a hellish mermaid” and swims up “like the little crocodile man that I am.” His mushroom-axe swing is a glancing blow, and Bargo casts Shield.
70. 1:12:53 Carn shoots point-blank with “my lovely little gun gun” and rolls a natural 20. Bargo tries Uncanny Dodge, but the Arbiter rules you can’t Uncanny Dodge a critical.
71. 1:13:29 The psionic “Bitch.” again. Bargo’s Insight is a 5 vs 18. GM: “This is the second time you’ve heard this and you’re like, maybe?” Disadvantage again.
72. 1:14:25 Bargo casts Magic Missile at 2nd level: four darts of force into Carn, “looking very bloody and rough.”
73. 1:15:47 Bargo Misty Steps away, about 35 ft. GM: “Go far, young man… Don’t worry, that is just a dead skeleton. He’s not gonna touch you… Maybe he’ll give you a hug.” Arbiter: “He’s gonna ask first, but maybe.”
74. 1:16:32 Carn flies straight at him. The mushroom axe misses, and the point-blank crossbow is blocked by Bargo’s last Shield.
75. 1:17:17 Out of options. Carn digs through his abilities (“What else I got?”). Bargo: “I think you’re done.” GM: “Don’t hyperventilate here, okay?” Carn: “I got nothing. This is it.”

The plea to the Acolytes

76. 1:18:02 Carn pleads for mercy (Persuasion 19). Arbiter: “Acolytes, what say you to this plea? Will you take mercy?”
    • Bargo yells: “No!” and “Watch him suffer!”
    • The Grandmaster calls a chat vote: 20s for mercy, 1s to deny.
77. 1:18:53 It’s a mix, but there are more 1s. GM: “They reject you. Bargo is in their hearts. They see him and they are cheering. Shut down, Carn.”
    • Carn: “What’d I do to you, Great Gator [?]?… Everybody gets one, buddy.” He blames “calling him a bitch so many times… in his own mind.” Arbiter: “They’re very perceptive.”
    • “Tears of glitter fall from my eyes.”

The kill

78. 1:19:40 “For the last time,” Bargo casts Magic Missile. Carn slumps to his knees, conscious but dying. Carn: “Care for the capybara” (transcribed “Kabimbara”).
79. 1:20:34 The decapitation.
    • Bargo walks over: “I’m tired of watching this.” He slices Carn’s throat with his dagger: “You die with honor.”
    • He keeps sawing until the head comes off, then holds it above him: “For you! For you!”
80. 1:21:06 A massive wave of Acolytes rises, chanting “Bargo, Bargo, Bargo.” The Grandmaster opens her wings and floats down: “Bargo. You have done well today… You have graduated from this arena.” Bargo: “Thank you, Grandmaster. Bargo do good for you… And for the Acolytes… Much relief.”
81. 1:21:58 As blood keeps spurting, she has Bargo hand the head to the Arbiter. Arbiter: “Great showmanship, Apple Plus.” “No cucumbers here tonight… Only apples for you.” GM: “See what happens to cucumbers at the end? They get diced up.”

The Arbiter sews Carn back together

82. 1:22:31 The Arbiter tucks Carn’s head under his arm and grabs the body “by the scruff of whatever’s left of a neck.” He flies up and out of the cavern, high above the cliffs where no one can see.
    • He sets the body down, puts the head on top, and with a magical needle and thread sews the skin back together, leaving a giant ring of stitches around Carn’s neck.
    • “Pull yourself together. I might have use for you.”
83. 1:23:19 Back below, the Grandmaster: “Did you hear something, Bargo?” Arbiter: “Did I hear something? Someone throwing stuff?” GM: “Or maybe it’s just that capybara that’s still running loose around here.”
84. 1:23:30 “All the glitter that falls off of my body forms like a rainbow behind me, like Ho-Oh.” This is Carn’s own line, so Carn is up and moving after the stitching. Dried Blood confirms he “flew off into the sunset.”

Bargo presented

85. 1:23:40 GM: “You gave us blood. You gave us fire. You gave us grease.” She takes his hand. Bargo: “Dreams do come true.”
86. 1:24:09 The legacy speech.
    • She lifts him into the sky, eye to eye with the fans who granted his hero point, chose him over Carn, and applauded his win.
    • “They have memorized every move that you have made. They will tell their children and their children will tell their children and their children who will probably decide not to have children will tell their pets… your story, your legacy will live on.”
    • She presents “the champion for tonight’s evening.”
87. 1:24:59 Bargo: “Name your children after me! That is optional, Acolytes… It is a kind request.” GM: “Perhaps a dog, maybe, or your goldfish.”
    • Bargo is a family name. He is “like the 17th Bargo.” Arbiter: “It’s a long lineage.” GM: “Carry on the name Legacy of Bargo in your own homes and you know that they will be destined for greatness.”
88. 1:25:36 “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In character (canon, source: Dried Blood). The “final words for the Acolytes” segment explicitly invites either player or character.

• Bargo (Chunk), 1:30:58: “Bargo says, when times get tough, don’t be yourself. Be Bargo. And you’ll be okay.”
• Carn (Cucumber), 1:30:44: “When life makes you glitter, make rainbow aid.” Whether this is in character is uncertain.
• Carn’s account of the ending: “when I flew off into the sunset, I left a little glittery rainbow behind me. Not all of my holes were closed at that point. Stab holes.” He says his blood is glitter-like. “High blood pressure… we got lots of salt. I’m very crystalline.”

Out of character (creator notes):

• Chunk and Cucumber both come from Perception Studio(s) on Twitch.
• Chunk: “a quiet couple months into 2022.”
• The GM offers to print a winner’s certificate for his fridge. Cucumber asks for an asterisk with “baby killer” underneath. GM: “A win is a win.”
• Carn’s unrealized plan:
  • Fly Bargo across the bridge while he hung from the ankle, hit him with the slowing mushroom, and drop him to his death. The rolls were too low.
  • He never got to use his retractable claws. He wanted to finish by punching Bargo in the throat with his weakest weapon.
  • “Like when Wile E. Coyote [transcribed ‘Miley Coyote’] holds up that sign.”
• Chunk on the decapitation: “something I always wish I could have done to Cucumber… He’s not allowed to decapitate me at home.” He also considered stomping the head “into a mush.”
• On being rejected by the Acolytes, Cucumber says begging is probably not “Deathmatch etiquette” and he’ll come up with better monologues.
• They note that chat showed “no remorse for the babies,” even the one that was attached to Bargo.