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A cowardly goblin academic seeking tenure met a glass-eating, mouthwash-chugging, permanently furious tiefling monk on the rooftops of a quaint little town. Professor Stabbz wanted nothing more than to go home. Mad Cass O Weary wanted to put his foot up the professor’s ass. Between a floor of lava, a fake friendship, a stolen Box of Chaos and a black hole torn open by the Arbiter himself, it became a thoroughly unhinged fight.

The Story

Bath Time at the Dread Fortress

The Arbiter had had a week. He had spent all of it in the sewer system of The Dread Fortress fixing the toilets, and now he had “risen above the shit.” He was clacking through the halls again in his Italian leather shoes, which the Grandmaster called tap shoes. He reached her throne room and called out, but no one answered. From deep in the back, in her master bathroom, came the sounds of a struggle, then a shriek “more like a pterodactyl.”

He drew a dagger, sprinted in, slipped on the wet tile, caught himself, and found the source of the screaming. It was Doug, “the absolute symbol of D20 Deathmatch,” howling in the bathwater while a thoroughly soaked Grandmaster tried to hold him down. “Would you just hold still? This would be over so much faster if you quit moving!” The Arbiter put the knife away and stood there smiling at Doug’s torment: “Yes, perfect.” When the Grandmaster looked up to order him to help, Doug slipped free and bolted, still covered in soap.

She refused the Arbiter’s offer to clean the dog by magic, because the spell doesn’t get the oils out of pug fur. Instead she told him to at least get the water off her. He flicked it onto the wall, where it swirled into a portal, and out stepped the evening’s champions.

Welcome to the Grandmaster’s Bathroom

Mad Cass arrived the way he did everything: angrily. “Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck is this? Who the fuck are you, lady?” The Arbiter explained that the scheduled champion’s “portal provider was down,” so Cass had been fetched at the last minute. Cass’s view of the contract was simple. “I used it to wipe my ass and then staple it to his head. Does that count as a signature?”

Professor Stabbz introduced himself as faculty at the University of Stabbz, where he taught Stabbing 101, theoretical stabbing and stabbing in Spanish. He had never actually stabbed anyone. He had, however, requested tenure, “and I guess this is how one acquires tenure.” Cass promised to put his foot so far up the professor’s ass that he could pick his toenail clippings out of his mouth. Stabbz said he would rather just be stabbed.

The Arbiter suggested the bathroom might make a nice arena, since it was “kind of spacious.” The Grandmaster had just had new marble sinks put in and would hear none of it, though the Arbiter noted that blood “works as a great sealant for the grout.” Cass then grabbed a glass of her mouthwash from the sink and chugged it. He announced that he hated people with cool names and would “disassemble someone with nothing but a stern gaze, a very, very high blood alcohol content, and these!” He was holding nothing. He meant his fists.

A Quaint Little Town

The Arbiter swirled the portal into a small town that, the Grandmaster noted, smelled distinctly of dog. The champions started on a rooftop twenty feet above the town square, with barrels of drink at their feet, cobblestone streets below and a little clock tower nearby. She invited them to tear the place down, promising to build “something grand in its place. Perhaps a memorial to your greatness.” Then she flew up to The Acolytes, and a small, very wet and soapy Doug crept out to sit beside her.

When the Arbiter reminded everyone that one champion would die, Stabbz was horrified. “I thought it was just for flavor.” He asked to be placed “far away from the angry man, please!” Then the Box of Chaos slammed onto the field below the clock tower in a column of yellow, pink and purple flame. Stabbz asked whether he could stop by the bank first to get something to sacrifice.

Dodgeball, Milk and Lava

Stabbz used a flicker of magic to throw off Cass’s reflexes and grab the first move. That delighted the crowd and set off the first chaos event: dodgeball. The Acolytes emptied their pockets onto the field. They threw swords, lightning bolts, dogs, pineapple pizza, unopened cans of Coke, possibly a Yeti, a moose, and a great many nuts. Stabbz dodged nimbly. Cass never looked up and simply slapped everything away like a swaying drunk, except for one glass of milk. “Who the fuck is throwing milk?” He picked out a dwarf in the stands, promised him he was next, drank the milk, and then ate the glass. The Arbiter ruled that this was “not your first time.”

From the high ground, Stabbz conjured a glowing purple and green psychic dagger, landed a sneaky hit, and fled across the rooftops shrieking, “I don’t wanna get hurt! Pain is bad!” Cass inspected the wound and lamented that he was “too fucking sober for this shit.” He dashed to a barrel, headbutted it open and gently cupped the alcohol in his hands. He explained that he would have used the glass, but he ate it. Asked how drunk he’d arrived, he said 19 on a scale of 20, and that it all started “when my dad went out for some cigarettes.”

“Don’t give him a compelling backstory!” Stabbz begged. “I have to murder him!” He then attempted to stage an intervention. The whole arena briefly paused and formed a circle of metal chairs, with six to eight loved ones and some cookies, before the fight resumed. Moments later the cobblestones cracked and lava seeped up until the entire ground was molten.

Stealing Gerald’s House

Cass caught one of Stabbz’s psychic daggers in the barrel lid he had smashed, then strolled straight onto the lava. Monks can walk on liquid, he reasoned, and tieflings don’t mind the heat much. Next he grabbed the ring on the side of the Box of Chaos and started dragging it away. A shadowy creature with beady yellow eyes and claws popped out. This was Gerald. “What the fuck are you doing with my house?” Cass told him, “If I want to listen to an asshole, I’ll fart!” and slammed the lid.

The box was oddly light, as if it should be empty inside. On its lid was a small carved heart reading “G plus V,” which Cass confidently decoded as “Gin and vodka.”

Stabbz, by now thoroughly shaken, turned invisible, a spell he and the Grandmaster agreed to rename “Fuck this, I’m out.” He crossed a tightrope between the roofs with circus-level grace and hid. Cass climbed the wall one-armed, still dragging the box, slammed it down where Stabbz had last been and threw it open. Gerald rose waist-high from the flames, called Cass “a real fucking dick,” and advised him to get therapy. Then Gerald looked straight at the invisible goblin. He could see him. “You know what? This guy’s a dick. I’m gonna help you out.” Without asking for any sacrifice, he floated a spell scroll over to Stabbz: an eighth-level Sunburst.

Cass, meanwhile, produced a boomerang (“You Australian!” cried the Grandmaster). He invoked his trademark drunken luck and clipped the invisible Stabbz in the jaw. “Sixth time pin the tail on the asshole winner.” Stabbz’s verdict was “He’s so drunk, yet still so competently mean.”

A Fall and a Friendship

Stabbz recrossed the rope, stabbed Cass with a flourish, and then rolled a natural 1 on the way back. He fell head first off the wire. “Like Icarus, I have fallen by my hubris!” He landed so hard that he “heard both the left and right cheek simultaneously,” and asked to hold his own butt cheeks “at second level.” Cass put his hands in his pockets and floated gently down beside him, glowing yellow eyes and a wide puckish grin in the alley shadows. He grabbed the professor’s ankle (“It’s so dainty, though. Please be careful with it”) and tried to drag him into the lava. Stabbz clung on.

So Cass changed tactics. “You and I, we’re friends.” Stabbz completely believed him. “I’ve always wanted a friend! Can I tell you about my childhood?” Cass listened to every single word, nodding along, caring not at all. He heard about the professor’s droning reviews in the tome Rate My Professor, the importance of stabbing theory, and his secret crush Vanita, the professor of slashing. Up in the stands, the Acolytes nodded off.

Betrayal

Believing they were friends now, Stabbz walked right past Cass. Cass promptly hip-threw him into the lava, promising to teach him “a new stabbing technique from where I come from.” “I trusted you! I listened to you!” Stabbz dragged himself out, his dainty ankles now bright red, and froze Cass with a paralysis spell.

Cass found a way through it, using his one chance to do the impossible. He smashed his own head to knock himself unconscious and kept fighting on pure drunken reflex, swaying and blind. “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” marvelled the Grandmaster. “He’s handling it all sorts of wrong, but it works.” He clocked Stabbz in the jaw. Stabbz answered with his own burst of the impossible, spinning aside like a bullfighter so that Cass plunged into the lava. Cass climbed out, landed a flurry of blows and backflipped them both into the molten ground. “Man, Mufasa didn’t fight this hard with Scar.”

Black Hole Sun

Then the Arbiter got bored. “This is kind of getting boring, honestly.” The wind drained inward, the sound collapsed, and with a snap of his fingers a giant energy well burst in the middle of town. It crushed the central building into a black hole and swallowed all the lava. Cass rolled a natural 20 and stayed planted. As Stabbz was dragged past, Cass caught him in a scissor hold around the neck. Stabbz stabbed him, and Cass’s mohawk erupted into a mane of punk-rock fire that lashed at Stabbz, who slipped it and took nothing. Stabbz then broke free, swapped places with Cass and ran. Then he rolled another natural 1 and was yanked forty feet straight back toward the hole and Cass. By the end, Cass had been dragged to the very edge of the black hole, his body beginning to tear apart.

“Do you want your PhD or not?” demanded the Grandmaster. Stabbz pulled out “a sheet of paper that I received earlier today” and read Gerald’s scroll at his betrayer. “I told you everything about my life, you son of a bitch!” A small sun burst around Cass and was sucked, with him, into the black hole. The fire woke him at last. He watched the flesh strip from his bones, laughed like a lunatic, and gave Stabbz the middle finger.

Mad Cass O Weary: “Fuck you, Stabby Man! I’m gonna come for you in your nightmares!”

His face became a laughing skull, and his jaw fell away. For a moment only the middle finger remained before it too was consumed. All that was left was his boomerang, lying razor sharp on the ground.

Gerald popped up to ask what that guy’s deal was, and the Grandmaster dismissed him: “Gerald, you’ve done your duty. Out.” The Arbiter picked up the boomerang and walked unscathed into the heart of the black hole and vanished. The Grandmaster swept Stabbz onto her shoulders and held him up to the crowd. “We have all sat within the lecture halls of battle. May you all have taken notes for one day the test may come for you all.”

Dried Blood

After the fight, the Arbiter ruled that Cass had become a Freddy Krueger figure, “burned alive in a different dimension.” In the Grandmaster’s words: “You’re dead, but you’re still here. Forever.” It is also canon that, for a long time afterward, Stabbz hears laughter from another dimension as he dozes off. Stabbz pleaded to stay home, and the Arbiter informed him he had “signed up for a six show contract.” Stabbz offered his whole curriculum: “The first lesson is stab. The second lesson is don’t get stabbed.” Cass’s parting word was “I’ll see you real fucking soon.”

Notable Moments

  • The Arbiter charged in with a dagger to rescue the Grandmaster and found her losing a fight with a soapy pug.
  • Cass drank the milk an Acolyte threw at him, then ate the glass.
  • Gerald could see the invisible Stabbz and handed him a Sunburst scroll out of pure spite for Cass.
  • Stabbz poured out his entire life story to his “new friend,” who threw him into the lava immediately afterward.
  • Cass knocked himself unconscious on purpose and kept fighting on drunken autopilot.
  • Cass’s last act on this plane was a middle finger, the final thing the black hole swallowed.

Memorable Quotes

  • Professor Stabbz: “I did request for tenure, and I guess this is how one acquires tenure.”
  • Mad Cass O Weary: “I used it to wipe my ass and then staple it to his head. Does that count as a signature?”
  • The Arbiter: “It says D20 Deathmatch, not D20 Lovematch.”
  • Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Fuck this, I’m out. We’re renaming invisibility.”
  • Gerald: “Well, maybe your mom was on to something. You need therapy.”
  • Professor Stabbz: “I just saw this guy headbutt a barrel, eat glass, yell at a demon, and now he’s doing push-ups for no reason! I wanna go home, please!”
  • The Arbiter: “Those loans are never going away. You might as well jump in this black hole, bud.”
  • Professor Stabbz: “I told you everything about my life, you son of a bitch!”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Professor Stabbz (TheNoirEnigma). A goblin (“poor little goblin,” “your small goblin hand”) rogue/bard.

  • A professor at the University of Stabbz: Stabbing 101, theoretical stabbing, stabbing in Spanish. He had never used his stabbing in practice and entered the Deathmatch seeking tenure.
  • Gear and moves: a psychic blade (a glowing purple and green dagger), sharpshooter, sneak attack, cunning action, silvery barbs (three times), invisibility (“Fuck this”), hold person, Uncanny Dodge, evasion, Fury of the Small, and Defensive and Mobile Flourish.
  • Personality and lore:
    • Cowardly: “Pain is bad.”
    • Gullible; has “always wanted a friend.”
    • Has a droning lecture style according to the tome Rate My Professor.
    • Was once called “Lips” [uncertain] and got the name Stabbz “until an unfortunate accident.”
    • Has a secret crush on Vanita, the professor of slashing.
    • Says he used to do interpretive goblin dance and moves like he’s been in the circus.
    • Has dainty ankles.
    • Has student loans and wants his PhD.
  • In this episode: he told Cass his whole life story mid-fight. He won with Gerald’s eighth-level Sunburst scroll, and the Grandmaster carried him on her shoulders.
  • Dried Blood canon: he hears Cass’s laughter from another dimension as he dozes off. Gets a “six show contract” from the Arbiter (joke).

Mad Cass O Weary (DeadAussieGamer). A tiefling monk, resistant to fire. He has glowing yellow eyes, a wide puckish grin and a mohawk that becomes a mane of fire when he uses hellish rebuke. He fights with fists and a boomerang; the GM calls him Australian.

  • Joining the match: a last-minute substitute when the other champion’s “portal provider was down.” He wiped his ass with the Arbiter’s contract and stapled it to the Arbiter’s head.
  • Personality and lore:
    • Constantly drunk (“19 drunk”); his drinking “started when my dad went out for some cigarettes.”
    • Eats glass (he’s done it before) and drank the GM’s mouthwash.
    • Has a chiropractor appointment coming up.
    • Hates people with cool names.
    • Dag: “a violent sociopath,” not wise; “heart of a barbarian.”
  • Abilities: deflect missiles, walking on liquid and up walls, slow fall, “drunk(en) luck” (ki to cancel disadvantage), Tavern Brawler and Grappler, stunning strike, flurry of blows.
  • In this episode: he fought on after knocking himself unconscious under hold person.
  • Death: burned by the Sunburst and sucked into the black hole while laughing and giving the middle finger. “I’m gonna come for you in your nightmares!”
  • Dried Blood canon (Mudcat): Cass has become a Freddy Krueger figure, “burned alive in a different dimension.”

Gerald, the Box of Chaos (Mudcat). A shadowy figure with yellow beady eyes and claws who lives in the box (“my house”). Waist-high when standing in it.

  • Cass dragged him around, slammed the lid on him, and told him “If I want to listen to an asshole, I’ll fart.”
  • He could see the invisible Stabbz. He told Cass “You need therapy.”
  • Gave Stabbz an eighth-level Sunburst scroll without any sacrifice, out of spite for Cass.
  • Dismissed by the GM afterward: “you’ve done your duty.”

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

  • Spent last week fixing the Dread Fortress toilets in the sewers.
  • Wears Italian leather shoes (the GM: tap shoes).
  • Ran in with a dagger to “save” the GM, then enjoyed Doug’s suffering.
  • Made a water portal from the bathwater.
  • Opened the black hole: “a rift in space and time.”
  • Walked unscathed into the black hole with Cass’s boomerang.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

  • Bathed Doug by hand, because prestidigitation doesn’t get the oils out of his fur.
  • Has new marble sinks in her bathroom.
  • Took Stabbz’s “Intervention” seriously (metal chairs), and renamed invisibility “Fuck this, I’m out.”
  • Asks Acolytes where they’d put a second pair of butt cheeks.
  • Carried the winner on her shoulders.

Doug. The Grandmaster’s pug, “the absolute symbol of D20 Deathmatch.” He hates baths, escaped still soapy, and sat by the GM wet, afraid to move in case he got another bath.

Vanita. The professor of slashing, Stabbz’s secret crush. Only mentioned.

The milk-throwing dwarf. An Acolyte in the stands whom Cass threatened.

Places

  • The Dread Fortress: its sewer system and toilets; the Grandmaster’s throne room, master bedroom and bathroom (new marble sinks, tile floor).
  • The small town arena:
    • Rooftops 20 ft up, the central tavern/restaurant roof with barrels, a rope between the roofs, an underpass, a clock tower and cobblestone streets.
    • The GM invites the champions to destroy it and promises to build “something grand… perhaps a memorial” in its place.
    • By the end, the middle building is compressed into a black hole.
  • The University of Stabbz.

Items

  • The Arbiter’s contract (wiped and stapled).
  • The GM’s mouthwash.
  • The barrel of alcohol and its lid, which Cass used as a shield.
  • The Box of Chaos:
    • A purple trunk with a ring on the side and metal trinkets.
    • Light, and it feels empty inside.
    • Throws yellow/pink/purple flames, heatless when opened.
    • A carved heart on the lid reading “G plus V.”
  • The eighth-level Sunburst spell scroll from Gerald.
  • Cass’s boomerang, taken by the Arbiter into the black hole.

Lore statements

  • The Box of Chaos is Gerald’s house, and Gerald can see invisible creatures (this episode).
  • The Arbiter can open a black hole, “a rift in space and time,” in the arena and walk through it unharmed.
  • Champions can be fetched last-minute through portals. A champion’s “portal provider” can go down.
  • The GM says arena towns can be destroyed and rebuilt with memorials to the champions.
  • Hero points: one chance per champion to do something beyond the rules (“chugging that energy drink”).

Full Round-by-Round