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A party-loving rabbit on holiday met a fairy scholar who had learned to fight from a book, and the Grandmaster set them loose in a brewery she had forgotten she owned. Broose Scorchtail just wanted to take his opponent out for a drink. Dewdrop Grizzlebee wanted to prove that people of science can throw down. What followed was a fight of honey, salt water, collapsing hairlines and a staggering run of terrible luck, and it ended with both champions in over their heads in beer.

The Story

The Grandmaster’s New Hobby

The night began deep in The Dread Fortress, where the Arbiter followed a racket of clanking metal to a storage room now crammed with giant steel tanks. The Grandmaster sat on the floor among piles of wheat, pipes and scattered papers. She had ordered a brew kit to start “another little hobby of a side business,” and she suspected she had been sold the knockoff version. “I think I got all the wrong things,” she admitted.

The Arbiter gently pointed out that the Fortress already had a brewery. They had built it downstairs below the kitchen “last fall sometime,” the last time she wanted a side business. “I think you lost interest somewhere around the second or third day,” he said. It had been “fully operational the entire time.”

The Grandmaster swore, “This will not be a hobby that I give up.” The Arbiter suggested they clear their heads the usual way: hold a Deathmatch and watch people die. She agreed, calling the arena “my first hobby and wonderful business that has succeeded.” The Arbiter tore open a portal.

Party On

Broose Scorchtail arrived first: a six-foot-three rabbit with an Australian drawl, here “for some R&R” in “me nice poncho… for me holidays.” The poncho was pink, with “PARTY ON” across the front and purple ghost flames behind it. He liked fire a lot, which the Arbiter said they had in common. When Broose asked what exactly he was looking at, the Arbiter told him: “You’re going to fight this fairy to the death.” Broose had apparently signed the documents. “Yeah, all right. Yeah, I’m game.”

Dewdrop Grizzlebee described himself as an old, red-haired, out-of-shape man with a monk haircut, “very retired Boston cop look,” with a pair of wings that couldn’t lift him in his heavy armor. He had been studying the “M’lee” tactics expected of him and had come, he said, “to fisticuffs with a rabbit.” Broose’s reply: “Take a guy out for a drink first, alright?” Dewdrop would have liked that, but there were rules, which he had jotted down and had thoughts on. The Grandmaster and the Arbiter traded a look. They were, it turned out, thinking exactly the same thing.

The Forgotten Brewery

The portal opened onto the brewery she had abandoned. It was warm, smelled deliciously of grain, and was very clearly brewing well. Thirty-foot tanks rose among stacks of ale barrels, with walkways on top and hatches for peeking in, taking a swig, “or maybe take a small dive.” There was no ceiling, only an open, transparent sky full of cheering Acolytes. The Grandmaster had big plans for the place, “drinks and a show,” and one request: “I do hope to actually make a business out of this, so don’t ruin any of my batches.” She took her seat next to Doug the Pug.

The Acolytes struck before a blow was thrown. The tiled floor swelled into a bouncy castle, and little mushrooms sprouted along the tops of the tanks. “It’s not mold. I don’t have mold growing in my brewery,” the Grandmaster insisted. “No one call the health inspector.” Broose thought a bounce-house brewery was incredible. Dewdrop declared it “definitely not up to code.”

Carrots, Crossbows and Mushrooms

Broose grew himself a carrot out of the floor with a little druid magic and rabbit-hopped thirty feet up onto a tank walkway. He took the carrot out of his mouth: “How you going, mate? I mean, what’s up, doc?” Dewdrop bounced after him, notebook in hand, and announced, “I would like to conduct research by stabbing you.” He explained that he had been studying the Arbiter and the Grandmaster “for ages.” His crossbow bolt and thrown dagger both missed. Broose credited the poncho.

Then Broose found the mushrooms. He gave one a slobbery lick, and it sped him up. “Crikey, Dewdrop, get on these, mate. These are fucking ripper.” Dewdrop refused: “I don’t partake in psychedelics, you silly rabbit… Those tricks are for kids.”

Gerald’s Swap Meet

The Acolytes summoned Gerald, who landed in a pink and purple pillar of fire while a dark, clawed shadow peered over his lid. Broose cartwheeled off a tank to land right in front of him. Gerald handed out freebies first, a ruler and pencil “for the school year,” then got down to business: “What’s in it for me?” Broose summoned his fiery spirit, a giant flaming carrot (“It’s fire that looks like a carrot, not carrot that looks like fire”). Gerald sucked it in and spat out an alchemy jug full of honey.

Broose chugged it, happily tapping his foot. The Arbiter said it came “straight from our bee farm,” the honey they used in their mead, and the Grandmaster boasted of having two of the best bee farmers out there. That started a short, baffled debate about whether the honey lives inside the bees. (“No, but then how does it get in the hive if it’s not in the bee?”) The honey was far too sticky to swallow. It got into Broose’s fur, his swords and everything else, and a chunk of fur came away in his hand.

A Sticky Situation

Dewdrop leapt in for an aerial strike and fumbled the banter. “I only read melee tactics, not the banter part. I haven’t read that chapter yet.” His longsword slowed in the honey and stuck harmlessly in Broose’s fur. Broose answered by flinging the free pencil and ruler at him, which actually drew blood. “This is a horrible misuse of school supplies,” Broose said. “I suggest you come back more measured. I’ll measure you.”

Dewdrop wrenched the longsword free, then lost his short sword entirely in Broose’s honeyed side. “Literacy has failed me,” he said. The Grandmaster was blunt: “It’s not personal. You’re just not good.” It turned out he had paid a man a lot of gold to train him, “and he gave me some books.”

Broose’s luck was no better. He walked up the wall on honey-sticky feet, went in for a gentle poke, missed, got honey in his eyes and walked straight off the edge. The honey held him to the wall. When the jug turned to poison, he coated his blade in a nice green glow and landed the first real wound of the fight. “See, that’s how you poke.”

Mind Control and Mushrooms

Desperate, Dewdrop gave Gerald the notebook he wrote everything in. “I clearly cannot learn from just paper alone. I need something to help me kill this gigantic rabbit.” Out came a potion of speed, which he downed without asking what it was. He tried to shrink Broose with magic and managed only to make the wool poncho a little snug.

Broose poured twelve gallons of salt water from his jug straight into Gerald (“What are you doing? Stop it.”). The annoyed box coughed up a potion of mind control, which Broose drank before anyone finished explaining it. “Do the two of you not, like, read any labels?” the Arbiter asked. “It’s a brewery,” said the Grandmaster. Broose reached into the fairy’s mind, and Dewdrop fell under his spell. Then Broose looked down at his empty jug, hung his head and wandered off, leaving honey footprints behind him.

Dewdrop spent his turn thinking. “I came here trying to break the stigma that, you know, people of science can’t throw down. And well, I’ve kind of failed.” The thinking broke the charm and gave him a nosebleed. “Science be damned. Psychedelics, let’s do this.” He ate a mushroom, and it slowed him down, cancelling his speed. Now he was just normal. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”

Do Over

After a short break for fresh brews, Dewdrop reminded everyone that the tortoise won the race. He was, he explained, a “kind of tortoise-shaped fairy, very bulbous.” Broose lit him up with a moonbeam and tossed back his stuck short sword, which landed at Dewdrop’s feet with a chunk of white fur still attached. Dewdrop leapt off the tank top, flapped down with both blades and finally landed a hit, then sent the furry short sword home (“I’m return to sender, baby”). Moved by all that study, the Grandmaster blessed him: “Use that stupid brain of yours. Come on.” Dewdrop started to sob.

Then the Arbiter ran out of cards for counting rounds. He solved it by turning back time. “Round number one!” Dewdrop asked whether this was a Groundhog Day situation. Broose celebrated the fresh start by slipping on the oil now leaking from his jug and landing on his scorched tail. He got up to defend his day job (“Someone’s got to deliver the eggs next year… Easter’s no joke”). The Arbiter, declaring “these guys are pathetic,” blessed him too.

The blessing helped. Broose lashed Dewdrop with a vine bristling with carrots (“Death of a thousand carrots,” said the Grandmaster), reeled him in and batted him like a t-ball. Each psionic shield Dewdrop raised cost him a little more of his receding hairline. “There’s always a cost to knowledge,” the Grandmaster observed. His telekinetic barrel throw only touched Broose’s butt, giving him somewhere comfortable to sit.

Liquid Courage

The Arbiter had seen enough. He flew down, conjured an axe and said, “Let’s see how you do with a little bit of liquid courage.” He split open one of the Grandmaster’s tanks, and beer sprayed out “like a beautiful amber fountain.” The Grandmaster raised her glass: “Please pour one out for the battle that has not yet begun.” She dumped it, aiming for the Acolytes’ foreheads. Not satisfied, she urged the Arbiter on, and he broke open every other vat. The beer rose past their knees, soaking into the fighters and getting them drunker by the minute, while the Arbiter scooped up a mug on his way back to his seat.

Broose took a deep gulp and went to work. Tripping over his own foot, he drove his blade straight through Dewdrop’s solar plexus with a perfect natural 20. “Oh shit, sorry mate, I didn’t mean to, oh wait, no, this is what we’re doing and then we get to drink.” “You’ve been m’layed,” the Grandmaster told the fairy. Dewdrop flew thirty feet up, yanked out his arm hair as a spell component (“If I can’t come from my head, it’ll come from my arm”) and dove. The Grandmaster called it “the most epic and bloody dive that we’ve ever seen yet on this show.”

As the beer reached their necks, Broose drew a blade of fire and singed a hole in Dewdrop’s horseshoe of hair. Dewdrop answered by plucking Broose’s honeyed fur off his short sword and wearing it as a toupee (“Wearing you like a hat”). He landed two good swings and then fumbled the rest. Then the Acolytes demanded violence. Storm clouds swallowed the moon, and lightning struck both champions. Through the amber flood, everyone could see Dewdrop’s skeleton light up. “Drowning in beer and being electrocuted is literally the worst way a scholar can go out,” he groaned. Broose disagreed: “This is exactly how I wanted to go out. I wanted to take you out and drown in beer.”

Last Call

With the beer now over their heads, Broose’s flame blade went out, so he switched to his regular sword and shanked the fairy underwater. “I just want you to drink.” Dewdrop ripped off the toupee and threw it in Broose’s face, then swam at the rabbit, grappled him and hauled him under, reasoning that “rabbits got small lungs.” Broose simply braced his scimitar as he was dragged down, and Dewdrop swam right onto it. “I had one hit point left,” he lamented.

“I knew you were stronger because you had all the hair in the world. And I was jealous.” (Dewdrop Grizzlebee)

Dewdrop bubbled out and sank with a soft thud, “a very heavy, dense potato.” The Arbiter drained the beer back into the mended tanks and flew off with the body, mildly disgusted by its hairy wet forearms. The Grandmaster handed Broose a fresh cold brew (“Finally! This is what I’ve been waiting for”), then rocketed him up to the Acolytes for a toast: “May your drinks be full and your opponent’s blood ever running.”

Dried Blood

Afterward, Dewdrop called himself a record breaker for failing so many times that he had “succeeded in failing.” He revealed that Melee for Dummies came from a magic half-priced bookstore floor, that its author was one Richard Stabbs, and that he had skipped every practical test at the end of each chapter, since those were “for gym rats.” Broose, who had only wanted a new drinking friend, admitted, “I didn’t mean to kill a friend.”

The Grandmaster then let them in on a secret: “No one actually ever dies at the death match.” She keeps it quiet because champions who think death isn’t real don’t try as hard. Dewdrop was promised a spot at “the afterlife party.” Meanwhile the Arbiter worked his corpse like a puppet, and the Grandmaster said he “doesn’t always agree with my policies.” The parting advice: Dewdrop told the Acolytes to study practically and lift some weights, and Broose reminded them that “only you can prevent rabbit fires.”

Notable Moments

  • The Grandmaster forgot she already owned a working brewery, and it became the arena.
  • Gerald traded a flaming carrot for a jug of honey that glued Broose’s fur to his opponent’s swords.
  • The Arbiter ran out of round cards and simply turned back time to round one.
  • The Arbiter axed open every tank and drowned the arena in the Grandmaster’s beer.
  • Dewdrop’s hairline receded with every psionic trick, and he ended up wearing Broose’s fur as a toupee.
  • Dewdrop tried to drown Broose and swam straight onto his braced scimitar.

Memorable Quotes

  • Broose Scorchtail: “It’s fire that looks like a carrot, not carrot that looks like fire.”
  • Dewdrop Grizzlebee: “I would like to conduct research by stabbing you. I heard that’s why we’re here.”
  • Dewdrop Grizzlebee: “I only read melee tactics, not the banter part. I haven’t read that chapter yet.”
  • Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “It’s not personal. You’re just not good.”
  • Broose Scorchtail: “This is a horrible misuse of school supplies.”
  • The Arbiter: “I think you lost interest somewhere around the second or third day.”
  • Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Please pour one out for the battle that has not yet begun.”
  • Dewdrop Grizzlebee: “Drowning in beer and being electrocuted is literally the worst way a scholar can go out.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Broose Scorchtail (swoleinitiativenetwork). A 6’3” rabbitfolk (“Herongorn,” likely Harengon) with an Australian accent (“mate,” “crikey,” “ripper,” “how you going”).

  • Look and personality:
    • Wears a pink “PARTY ON” poncho with purple ghost flames, made of wool. Says it makes him “lithe.”
    • White fur. Likes fire. On holiday for “R&R.”
    • Wanted to take his opponent out for a drink, and regrets killing a “friend.”
  • Gear and abilities:
    • Druid magic: Druidcraft (grows a carrot), a Wildfire Spirit shaped as a flaming carrot, Moonbeam, Thorn Whip (vines with carrots), Flame Blade.
    • Martial abilities: longsword/scimitar, superiority dice (parry, bracing attack), Action Surge, Second Wind, Rabbit Hop. His bunny feature means no opportunity attacks when he hops away.
  • In this episode: licked a haste mushroom and drank honey from the alchemy jug, then a potion of mind control, which he used to charm Dewdrop.
  • Jokes about himself:
    • Delivers Easter eggs (“Easter’s no joke”).
    • Claims (Dried Blood) that “John J. Kilcullen” is his pseudonym and that he wrote Melee for Dummies.
    • Lost count of his age “after three.”
  • Won by bracing attack while being drowned. He was given a cold brew by the GM and toasted by the Acolytes.

Dewdrop Grizzlebee (TheShortNord). A fairy scholar: “an old, red-haired, out-of-shape man with a monk haircut… retired Boston cop look.”

  • Body:
    • A receding horseshoe of red hair that recedes further each time he uses psionics, down to “five hairs.”
    • Very hairy “Robin Williams” forearms.
    • Self-described as turtle/tortoise-shaped, a “turtle fairy” and “turtle unicorn fairy,” “a Psyduck in a fairy’s body,” and “a very heavy, dense potato.”
    • Has wings but can’t fly in his heavy armor.
  • Background:
    • Has studied the Arbiter and Grandmaster “for ages.”
    • Learned to fight from Melee for Dummies (pronounces it “M’lee”). He found it on the floor of a “magic half-priced books”; the author is “Richard Stabbs.”
    • He paid a man a lot of gold to train him and got books.
    • Wanted to prove “people of science can throw down.” Is jealous of Broose’s hair.
  • Abilities: crossbow, daggers, longsword, short sword, Reduce, Faerie Fire, psionic strike, psionic protective field, psi-powered leap, telekinesis, Indomitable, Second Wind, Action Surge.
  • In this episode:
    • Gave Gerald his notebook for a potion of speed, then was slowed by a mushroom.
    • Was charmed by Broose and broke free.
    • Was blessed by the Grandmaster. Wore Broose’s fur as a toupee.
    • Rolled a record number of nat 1s. Drowned in beer.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

  • Her businesses:
    • Serial hobbyist. Started a brewery below the Dread Fortress kitchen “last fall,” lost interest within days and forgot it, then bought a knockoff brew kit to start another.
    • Calls the arena her first successful hobby and business.
    • Wants to expand her hospitality business: “drinks and a show.” Owns a bee farm with “two of the best bee farmers” whose honey goes into honey mead.
  • In this episode:
    • Claims mind control doesn’t work on her because she has “brain control.”
    • Blessed Dewdrop with “tough love.” Poured her drink on the Acolytes.
  • Dried Blood: “No one actually ever dies at the death match,” kept secret so champions try harder. Says the Arbiter “doesn’t always agree with my policies.”

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

  • The brewery: reminded the GM of her forgotten brewery, which he says has been “fully operational the entire time.” Says “I don’t water my beer down.”
  • His interventions:
    • Turned back time when he ran out of round cards.
    • Blessed Broose because “these guys are pathetic.”
    • Axed open the brewery tanks to flood the arena with beer, then restored the tanks and drained the beer at the end.
  • Small moments: stuck his tongue out at Doug. Puppeted Dewdrop’s corpse (Dried Blood).

Gerald, the Box of Chaos. Summoned by the Acolytes. A pink-purple pillar of fire and a dark shadowy figure with claws peering over the lid. Rude (“Don’t bullshit me, just give me shit”; “What’s in it for me?”). Called “Jerry” by Broose.

  • Hands out free ruler and pencil “for the school year.”
  • Trades: flaming carrot → alchemy jug; Dewdrop’s notebook → potion of speed; salt water → potion of mind control.

Doug the Pug. Sits beside the Grandmaster. Growls at the Arbiter and sticks out his dry-tipped tongue.

The Acolytes. Watch from the open sky above the brewery. They summon Gerald and a thunderstorm, and toast Broose.

Richard Stabbs. In-world author of Melee for Dummies (per Dewdrop, Dried Blood). Later retconned to John J. Kilcullen.

Places

  • The Dread Fortress brewery (the old one). Built “last fall” downstairs below the kitchen; unnamed. Giant 30-ft tanks with walkways, barrel stacks and ladders, and an open transparent sky with the Acolytes’ stands above. It became the arena.
  • The new brewing room. A former storage space off a corridor in the Dread Fortress, now filled with the GM’s knockoff steel tanks and wheat.
  • The GM’s bee farm. Mentioned only.
  • “A magic half-priced books.” Where Dewdrop found his book.

Items

  • Alchemy jug (from Gerald). Its contents changed through the fight: honey, then basic poison, then 12 gallons of salt water (given to Gerald), then oil.
  • Free ruler and pencil from Gerald, thrown by Broose.
  • Potion of speed (Dewdrop) and potion of mind control (Broose).
  • Dewdrop’s notebook/diary, given to Gerald.
  • Mushrooms on the tanks. One gave haste (Broose), one slowed (Dewdrop).
  • Broose’s fur toupee: honey-covered fur from the short sword.
  • Melee for Dummies.
  • Broose’s party poncho.

Lore statements

  • The Grandmaster keeps a brewery and a bee farm, and makes honey mead.
  • The GM says no one ever truly dies in the Deathmatch, and that this is kept secret so champions try (Dried Blood, in character).
  • The Arbiter can turn back time (used for the round count) and can mend and drain the brewery with a gesture.

Full Round-by-Round