S3E5, Edge Lords - Captain Fable v Verryn Ruth

Watch on YouTube

Two of the moodiest champions ever pulled into The Void met in a drowned graveyard: Captain Fable, an eight-foot minotaur pirate sworn to kill every god, and Verryn Ruth, a winged tiefling who draws his power from chaos and his patrons. Between the brooding monologues came dead presidents, a heckling pack of children, a nipple ring for Gerald, a codpiece bright enough to blind a shrunken bull, and a swarm of bats. It ended with one head on the ground and one champion sailing off in a brand-new ship.

The Story

Five Thrones and a Prisoner

The night began in the halls of The Dread Fortress, where The Arbiter shuffled along with chains clanking behind him. He was a prisoner in the domain of the Grandmaster now, and he arrived out of breath (“Not a young man anymore”). She had sent a raven hours earlier. When he asked her to take off the chains so he could move faster, she refused. The chains were “a gift… like ankle weights,” and his real problem was his “weak little chicken legs.”

Grandmaster: “It’s like you skipped leg day for those 400,000 whatever years you’ve been alive.”

She needed his opinion because five thrones now stood at the front of her throne room, and she couldn’t decide between them. One was made of swords, which she found “a little too overdone… I feel like I’ve seen that before somewhere.” Another was a towering purple velvet seat crowned with a diamond sun, which looked regal but made her look short. The Arbiter took the diamond as a personal insult: “that diamond says I’m richer than you are and I know it.” The poor goblins kept dragging the thrones back and forth for comparison. She finally decided The Acolytes should vote on it after a Deathmatch, because “only the most amazing individuals worship me.” The Arbiter clapped, sound waves visibly rippled through the air, and a portal tore open.

Two Edge Lords

Captain Fable stepped through first: a huge minotaur in pirate gear, trailing a deathly, necromantic aura. He had been a paladin “until the gods screwed them over,” and he had come to play their games only so he could one day “slay them all.” He is also a storyteller and fortune teller, and he promised to find out whose death this fable would be about.

Verryn Ruth strutted in after him, his hooves clacking on the cobblestones “like a couple of coconuts.” He called himself “but a humble, forlorn soul,” “thirsty for glory” and “blessed by the shadow.” When he admitted he was a hexblade warlock, the table mocked him (“Tieflings are never warlocks”). He showed off a pair of bat-like wings and folded them back into his back, which the Grandmaster called “beautiful, majestic.”

She then asked each champion which throne he would choose. Fable wanted one made of riches, skulls and “lots and lots of alcohol,” set on a ship rather than in a castle. The Grandmaster suggested the goblins could build one “like a cute little treehouse.” The Arbiter warned her off: “You saw how the kitchen renovation came out.” Verryn answered with an illusion of a bust of Doja Cat. The Grandmaster was instantly won over (“It’s magnificent! Why have I been missing this?”), several goblins began to drool, and she ordered them to sculpt one. When she added that the only throne the Arbiter would ever get was a toilet, he promised to build his “out of your bones.” Then, annoyed that Verryn had been showing off his wings, he flared one of his own giant glowing white wings and waved everyone into the portal.

Into the Swamp

The arena was the overgrown ruin of a cathedral in a swamp. It “smells like farts and death everywhere,” feet sank into the moss, and rib cages and skulls bobbed up underfoot. Fragile old tombstones made useful rocks for hitting people, and crumbling ten-foot walls offered cover. Up in the stands, brightly dressed Acolytes waved flags, spilled beer and shoveled in popcorn and cotton candy, pointing at the field and telling their children “someday this could be you.” Doug hopped up beside the Grandmaster onto her temporary throne, which was the Doja Cat bust. The Arbiter then whipped around the arena at lightning speed and stirred the fog up to waist height, so nobody could see where they were stepping.

Presidents and Insults

Fable opened with a question: “Where exactly does your strength come from?” Verryn said he pulled “from the abyss, from chaos itself,” and that his patrons were “quite poor” at controlling him. Fable called him “a fool for accepting such power… strings attached to a puppet.” He sensed something moving beneath the moss and dragged his massive buster sword through the dirt. A small thunderstorm gathered overhead and a shroud of death settled over him, while skeletal arms clawed up out of the ground.

The dead here were well dressed. The nearest had wooden teeth and a tombstone reading George Washington. Andrew Jackson lay further down, and “Abraham Lincoln, the vampire hunter” was a couple of rows over. The Grandmaster recommended Taft, famous for getting stuck in a bathtub, whose skeleton had “bathtub-shaped bones” and enormous hips. Fable told the dead he didn’t know their “presidential history,” but they would help him regardless.

Verryn rose thirty feet above the fog and asked the crowd whether this was what they wanted for their “capitalist endeavors.” Then he threw his voice so that “Bitch, I’m a cow. Bitch, I’m a cow” seemed to come from Fable. The minotaur was wounded: “I’m not a cow. I don’t even know what I am. The gods took that from me as well… I have feelings, you know.” The Grandmaster awarded emotional damage. It came to exactly one point.

Gerald’s Bargains

The Arbiter cleared a patch of fog, and the Box of Chaos slammed into the sludge. Pink and yellow flames shot skyward, shadowy hands crept over the edge, and yellow-eyed Gerald peeked out. Chaos followed close behind. Six glowing mushrooms sprouted across the moss, and a gang of children in the north stands started roasting both champions: “That guy’s a cow.” “Your wings aren’t that special. Anyone can fly.” “Your mother of a mountain kissed a horse.” The words genuinely hurt them both. Fable insisted, “I am not a cow. I am a bull. Fear me,” and added that he was just trying to mind his own business, “culling the gods and everything in between.”

Asked to sympathize, the Arbiter explained that mean words help you reach your full potential, “isn’t that right, you piece of shit?” He said it while looking at Doug, which earned him a scolding. Ordered to be encouraging, he told Verryn, “You’re much taller than those children… They’re short,” and healed him. He also suggested the children’s mothers were “probably very promiscuous.” One mom winked back. “It’s that one mom that’s really into my chains,” the Arbiter noted. Verryn tore his top to reveal a tattoo reading “MOMS ONLY,” and she blew him a kiss that patched him up a little more.

Fable lured Doug off the throne with a corpse’s bone. Doug took it and refused to bring it back. Fable then peeled off one glove to reveal a skeletal hand, seized Taft’s skeleton (“Now join my crew”), put a tiny pirate hat on it and ordered it to “drag them down to hell.” He paused to pet Doug: “I may be like angry all the time, but I have a soft spot.”

At the box, Gerald demanded, “You come to my house, who are you?” When Fable introduced himself as a teller of fables, Gerald said, “Sorry, I don’t get TV here.” Fable offered a blunderbuss he’d barely used (“They never really explained this in… pirate school”). Gerald said it matched some stuff he got “from a guy named Martin.” To Fable’s “You know, Martin…” he replied, “I know a lot of Martins, bud.” Meanwhile Doug finished the bone, and a noxious fart rocket-launched him back to the throne, trailing green “like how the Wicked Witch used to fly.” Gerald handed over the Far Realm Shard, a crystal that rips a slimy tentacle through reality: “It’s not a gun, but it’ll fuck someone up.” He added that the gift wasn’t really free, since he’d had the blunderbuss appraised and it was a collectible. Fable said he’d found it in a random abandoned haunted house and grumbled that he’d “have to yell at Moana eventually.”

Verryn armed himself with a shimmer of protective chaos and a shadowy greatsword pulled from the abyss. Then he tossed a bejeweled nipple ring toward the box. It fell short, so Gerald slithered out as a legless shadow snake to fetch it, and he popped back up wearing it alongside a pink glittery tassel. In return, Gerald gave Verryn a Sentinel Shield, which can take any shape. Verryn made it a codpiece. “Someone hand buffed this thing.” He then planted a curse in Fable’s mind (“Thank you for the real estate inside your mind”). Fable promised to make use of Verryn’s corpse (“Kinky, I like it,” said Verryn), and the Grandmaster approved: “We recycle here, it’s good.” As the round closed, Doug got his revenge for the Arbiter’s insult by farting in his direction.

The Small Bull

Fable hurled a lightning-charged javelin at the flying tiefling and missed completely. Then he wandered into a mushroom and shrank. Tiny and still furious (“Screw the gods!”), he became one of the minitaurs, which the Grandmaster declared “a chaotic event in and of themselves.” Taft picked him up and held him aloft while he bellowed “CHALLENGE!”

Verryn dove to the ground and raised a shadowspawn from Fable’s own shadow, a smoky echo of despair that dredged up his deepest regrets. Fable told his story. He had once been a happy pirate captain and paladin, causing mischief across the lands, until enemies surrounded his ship and killed his crew one by one. He called on the goddess of the sea, the god of the storm and every pantheon, and all of them failed him. That despair now fuels his vow to kill every god. The Acolytes bawled, salty tears rained over the arena, and Taft did a rain dance. The shadow struck him hard. “Good, you remind me I’m alive,” Verryn said, and someone at the table added that “we bleed to know we’re alive.” The Grandmaster: “Feels like we could start an emo band any minute now.”

Between rounds, Doug gave the Arbiter a matching plush d20 squeaky toy. The Arbiter ripped it in half, rewound time to make it whole, and ripped it again, over and over, right in front of the dog. The Grandmaster opened the closet behind her throne, and hundreds of plush d20s tumbled out. There was a whole basement of them. “Looks like I’m taking a trip to the basement,” the Arbiter said with a wink at the mom, who swooned into her girlfriends’ arms.

Darkness and Bats

Tiny Fable now stood at eye level with the codpiece, and light glinting off it threw off his aim. His sword, now “like a toothpick,” still bit in, and a thunderous second swing rang off the codpiece “like a bell.” When Fable admitted he was running out of things to say, Verryn shot back, “I’ve heard that excuse before, in the bedroom.” Then Fable grew back to full size while Taft was still cupping his butt cheeks, and the sudden growth snapped off one of the skeleton’s hands. The damage broke Verryn’s focus, the shadowspawn vanished, and Taft slashed Verryn down to one knee.

Verryn answered with a sphere of true darkness. “Fable, I see the darkness in your heart, but how do you fare in true darkness?” His eyes changed colour with a night-vision whir, and he could see perfectly inside it. The crowd watched through special glasses, since the arena is apparently “like 4D,” complete with seat-back air jets and water spritzers for every blood splatter. Verryn asked whether Fable could feel the weight of his past, and Fable answered:

Captain Fable: “They took everything from me. My name, my crew, my life. I have no past, but my future will be forged in blood. Yours.”

Verryn whiffed his first swing right after “one of the coldest lines of the whole Deathmatches,” then landed the second. The Arbiter, given his own chaos to unleash, summoned bats from the trees and fog. “Beware of the batnado!” They swarmed both champions and tore Taft’s bones apart. Fable looked down at the little pirate hat in the muck and gave his crewmate a eulogy: “You fought well and bravely, soldier. Even though I think you only hit once… You will be remembered.” Then a bat smacked him in the face.

The Final Blow

Blind, beset by bats and remembering every man he had lost, Fable called on his dead. Skeletal and zombie hands burst from the ground and chained Verryn in place. “Die by my blade, boy, and kneel before me.” His first swing should have landed, but a taunting whisper (“oh, he’s not there, he’s over here”) pulled it into empty air. Fable shut out every thought and swung again. Even with the Grandmaster’s blessing, Verryn couldn’t hold his ground. Thunder boomed, lightning struck the blade, and the sword sank into Verryn’s neck as divine light burned away the darkness.

Dying, Verryn spoke his last: “I was born by chaos. I lived by chaos… It is to chaos I go, and by chaos I will return.” Fable offered him a place in his skeletal crew, where no one leads and all are equal. Verryn declined: “This isn’t my first life though… I’m gonna give you the finger and you can rip your sword out of my chest.” “Devoted to your foolish ideals. Respect,” said Fable, and he cut Verryn’s head clean off.

A Ship in the Sky

“The blood has been spilled,” the Grandmaster declared. “Arbiter, clear my arena.” He slung the body over one shoulder, grabbed the head by its hair and flew off, “stuck with the fucking cleanup work.” Fable asked whether they were “good.” He had been told that if he killed this one person he could do whatever he wanted, though he never said who had told him. The Grandmaster took his skeletal hand (“I’ve held worse. Strong hand.”) and flew him up to a ship with a black hull, black sails and a gold crown emblem. She gifted it to him as a reminder that “the strength comes from unity,” and whatever name he chose would be embroidered in gold along its side. The Acolytes screamed and popped champagne for its maiden voyage. Fable settled into its throne and gathered his crew: “Everyone gather around the table and let me tell you all a D20 Deathmatch fable.”

Dried Blood

Captain Fable left the Acolytes with a sermon. Strength never comes from outside, omnipotent forces, which “will screw you over and drag you through the dirt.” It comes from yourself and the people around you: “strength in unity.” Verryn then walked out of the locker room, sweaty, bloody and carrying his own head under his arm like a helmet, with a towel over his shoulder. Speaking into a mic held to the head, he advised that feelings “remind you you’re alive,” and that in chasing good ones you should be mindful of how your pursuits affect others. In the background, Fable was still asking whether anybody knew where Doug was, because he still had a bone.

Notable Moments

• The Grandmaster abandoned five perfectly good thrones the moment she saw an illusion of a Doja Cat bust.
• Fable raised President Taft’s wide-hipped skeleton as his crewmate, put a pirate hat on it, and eulogized it after bats ate it.
• Verryn paid Gerald with a nipple ring and got a hand-buffed codpiece in return, which later blinded a shrunken Fable.
• Doug was fart-propelled back to the throne, and the Arbiter tormented him with an endlessly rewound plush d20.
• A pack of children in the stands out-roasted both edgelords.
• Fable beheaded Verryn after he turned down a place in the skeletal crew, then sailed off in a ship gifted by the Grandmaster.

Memorable Quotes

• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Arbiter, we all know the only throne you’ll have is a toilet.”
• The Arbiter: “I’ll have a throne and I’ll make it out of your bones.”
• Captain Fable: “I’m not a cow. I don’t even know what I am. The gods took that from me as well… I have feelings, you know.”
• Gerald: “Ah, well, it’s not a gun, but it’ll fuck someone up.”
• Verryn Ruth: “Thank you for the real estate inside your mind. I’ll be sure to put it to good use.”
• The Arbiter: “It’s that one mom that’s really into my chains.”
• Verryn Ruth: “This isn’t my first life though. So I’ve got a better deal for you. I’m gonna give you the finger and you can rip your sword out of my chest.”
• Captain Fable: “Devoted to your foolish ideals. Respect.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Captain Fable (sensei_suplex).

• An eight-foot minotaur in pirate attire with a deathly necromantic aura.
• A fallen paladin: Oathbreaker, with Battle Master manoeuvres. A fortune teller and storyteller (“let me tell you a fable”).
• Gear:
  • A massive buster greatsword.
  • Javelins charged with lightning.
  • A skeletal necromantic hand under one glove.
  • Bones of corpses carried as treats.
  • A blunderbuss from “an actual campaign”, traded away.
  • Gained the Far Realm Shard and a black ship with a gold crown emblem.
• Powers: thunder and lightning; Divine Sense, Spirit Shroud, Control Undead, Commander’s Strike, Aura of Hatred, Thunderous Smite.
• Backstory (stated this episode):
  • Once a happy pirate captain and paladin.
  • His crew was slaughtered while every god and pantheon (the sea goddess, the storm god) ignored his prayers.
  • “They took everything from me. My name, my crew, my life.” He doesn’t know what he is: “the gods took that from me as well.”
  • He now aims to slay/cull all the gods.
  • Creed: strength in unity, never from higher powers. His crew has no leader; all are equal.
  • Insists he’s a bull, not a cow, and has feelings.
• Has “a soft spot”: pets Doug.
• Claims he found the blunderbuss in an abandoned haunted house. Mentions “Ingot, Philo” and “Moana” (unexplained).
• Says “they” told him to kill one person and he could do what he wanted.
• Winner.

Verryn Ruth (Ascension_Matt).

• A tiefling hexblade warlock with hooves and bat-like wings that fold into his back. Calls himself “a humble, forlorn soul,” “blessed by the shadow,” “thirsty for glory.”
• Draws power “from the abyss, from chaos itself”; his patrons give him power, but they’re “quite poor” at controlling him.
• Gear and powers:
  • A shadowy greatsword pulled from the abyss.
  • Mage Armor (“armor of chaos”), Minor Illusion, Hexblade’s Curse, Armor of Hexes.
  • Summon Shadowspawn (despair), Darkness, and sight through magical darkness (eyes change colour).
• Body: bejeweled nipple rings (gave one to Gerald). A “MOMS ONLY” tattoo on his chest.
• Gained the Sentinel Shield as a hand-buffed codpiece.
• “This isn’t my first life.” Expects to return by chaos.
• Decapitated by Fable. Later seen leaving the locker room carrying his head (Dried Blood).

Taft’s skeleton (“bathtub boy”). One of the arena’s dead presidents, with bathtub-shaped, mammoth hip bones.

• Pressed into Fable’s crew with a pirate hat. Fired a short bow, then a short sword.
• Lost a hand when Fable regrew. Destroyed by the bats; Fable eulogized him.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Now a chained prisoner in the Grandmaster’s Dread Fortress.
• Says he is “four, four and a half thousand years old,” yet “timeless and has no birthday.”
• Powers: claps portals open with visible sound waves; giant glowing white wings; rewinds time (the plush d20 gag); summons bats.
• Believes in mean words. Insults and bullies Doug.
• Possibly said “I should have killed you in my throne room. And I had the chance” (target unclear).
• Flirts with the “mom who’s into my chains.”
• Does the body cleanup.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Shopping for five thrones; picks a Doja Cat bust throne to be sculpted, and uses it temporarily in the arena.
• Plans an Acolyte vote on the throne. Keeps the Arbiter in chains as “ankle weights.”
• Protects Doug. Has a closet and a whole basement of plush d20s.
• Blessed Verryn’s save. Gave Fable a ship.

Doug (the GM’s dog). Breed not stated; pug-fart and Frenchie jokes.

• Sits at the GM’s feet. Took Fable’s bone and didn’t return it.
• A bone-fuelled fart rocket-launched him back to the throne, and he farted at the Arbiter for insulting him.
• Owns a plush d20 squeaky toy and gave the Arbiter one.

Gerald (Box of Chaos).

• Yellow eyes, shadowy hands. Can become a legless shadowy snake.
• Doesn’t “get TV.” Got stuff “from a guy named Martin” (“I know a lot of Martins”). Had the blunderbuss appraised as a collectible.
• Now wears two nipple rings: Verryn’s bejeweled one and a pink glitter tassel.

Others:

• The goblins: throne-movers and droolers. Earlier botched a kitchen renovation.
• The mean children in the north stands.
• The mom who’s into the Arbiter’s chains, and her girlfriends.
• The shadowspawn: Fable-shaped despair spirit, also mini.
• Dead presidents in the graveyard: George Washington (wooden teeth), Andrew Jackson, “Abraham Lincoln, the vampire hunter,” Taft.

Places

• The Dread Fortress: its hallways, the throne room behind giant wooden doors, and a closet behind the throne and a basement full of plush d20s. A kitchen was renovated by goblins.
• The swamp cathedral graveyard (arena): overgrown cathedral ruins, a green fog, fragile tombstones, unstable 10-ft walls, and buried bodies including dead presidents.
• The floating grandstands, which are “4D” with air jets and water spritzers. Acolytes wear 3D-style glasses to see through magical darkness.
• Fable’s new ship in the sky.
• The locker room (Dried Blood).

Items

• The five thrones: swords; purple velvet with diamond sun; three others. Plus the Doja Cat bust throne (to be sculpted).
• The Arbiter’s chains.
• The Far Realm Shard (Fable). The Sentinel Shield / codpiece (Verryn).
• Fable’s blunderbuss (now in the Box of Chaos). Verryn’s nipple ring (worn by Gerald).
• Plush d20 squeaky toys.
• Six chaos mushrooms (one shrinks you).
• Fable’s ship: black hull and sails, gold crown emblem, name to be embroidered in gold.

Lore statements

• The Arbiter is a chained prisoner of the Grandmaster in the Dread Fortress.
• The Arbiter’s stated age: about 4,000–4,500 years. The GM jokingly says “400,000 whatever years.” Mudcat says he is “timeless and has no birthday.”
• The Acolytes include children; the arena is “family-friendly.”
• The Box of Chaos can be fed from range (“keyword attempt”), and Gerald can leave it.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the Dread Fortress and the five thrones

1. 0:00:10 The show opens with the Arbiter out of breath (“Not a young man anymore”). The GM asks how old he is. Arbiter: “four, four and a half thousand years old.” She thought he’d say four and a half years, and muses about celebrating his birthday (“but who cares?”). Mudcat: “Despite the fact that he does have an age, he’s also timeless and has no birthday.” Asked where he came from: “Don’t ask questions.”
2. 0:00:49 In the halls of Elusia Skypiercer in the Dread Fortress, the Arbiter walks the hallway with chains clanking behind him, “a prisoner in this domain now of the Grandmaster’s.” He follows the commotion to the giant wooden doors of the throne room and peeks in.
3. 0:01:40 The GM says she sent a raven hours ago because she needs his opinion. He asks her to remove the chains so he can move faster. She refuses: “just get stronger… You got like weak little chicken legs.” The chains are “a gift… like ankle weights,” and he should do sprints up the staircase. “It’s like you skipped leg day for those 400,000 whatever years you’ve been alive.”
4. 0:02:29 The thrones. Five different thrones stand at the front of the throne room, because she couldn’t decide which to get:
   • A throne made of swords. She finds it “a little too overdone… I feel like I’ve seen that before somewhere.” The Arbiter calls it garish.
   • A purple velvet high throne reaching to the sky with a diamond sun at the top. Regal, but it makes her look short. Arbiter: “that diamond says I’m richer than you are and I know it.”
   • Three more of varying size, colour and gaudiness.
   The poor goblins keep shifting the thrones around so she can compare them. She wants to put it to a vote of the Acolytes: “They have good taste in everything.” The Arbiter mocks trusting “the common man… they’re not uncommon.” She insists: “Only the most amazing individuals worship me.”
5. 0:04:26 She decides it’s time for a Deathmatch, after which the Acolytes can vote on the chair. The Arbiter claps; sound waves visibly ripple as he rips open a portal and introduces “Verryn Ruth versus Captain Fable.”
6. 0:05:18 Captain Fable’s entrance. “Seems to be that I have wandered upon this strange land. However, if the gods want me to play their games once more, then I must abide if I wish to slay them all. I raise my sword in this individual’s name and blood will be shed.”
   • He is an eight-foot minotaur in pirate attire with a necromantic, deathly aura.
   • He was a paladin “until the gods screwed them over”, and carries a chip on his shoulder.
   • He is a fortune teller and storyteller who loves to tell fables: “we will see whether this fable will be that of someone’s death, or even theirs.”
7. 0:06:40 Verryn Ruth’s entrance. A tiefling man struts forward, his hooves clacking on the cobblestone “like a couple of coconuts.” To the GM: “It is a blessing to look upon you, Grandmaster. Your visage is fabled.”
   • He calls himself “but a humble, forlorn soul”, “thirsty for glory.”
   • He fights with “Only that which my patron bestows upon me… blessed by the shadow.”
   • Matt reveals he is a hexblade warlock. The table mocks this (“Tieflings are never warlocks”).
   • He stretches out bat-like wings, then folds them back into his back. The GM: “Beautiful, majestic, love it.”
8. 0:08:57 The throne question. The GM asks each champion which throne he would sit on.
   • Fable wants a throne of riches, skulls and “lots and lots of alcohol,” on a ship “worthy of sailing all of the seas” rather than in a castle. The Arbiter asks where she’d get a ship this time of year. She’d have the goblins build one, “like a cute little treehouse.” The Arbiter: “You saw how the kitchen renovation came out.” She loves the idea of a built-in bar in the throne. Fable says a major image or hallucinatory terrain would also do: “I’m not hard to please.”
   • Verryn casts Minor Illusion and holds up a bust of Doja Cat: “Do you have any thrones that look like this?” The GM: “It’s magnificent! Why have I been missing this? This is an immediate choice.” Several goblins start drooling. Fable: “Is this some strange divine power?”
   • The GM orders the goblins to cover it, take a picture, and sculpt one like it.
9. 0:11:16 The GM: “Arbiter, we all know the only throne you’ll have is a toilet.” Arbiter: “I’ll have a throne and I’ll make it out of your bones.” Annoyed that Verryn was showing off his wings, the Arbiter flares one of his giant glowing white wings to beckon them into the portal.

The arena: the swamp cathedral

10. 0:11:36 They step into dank, musky air: the ruins of an old cathedral in a swamp, long overgrown. The GM: “Know that this place is long forgotten, but you’ll never forget the bodies that decay here.”
    • It “smells like farts and death everywhere.”
    • Feet sink a couple of inches, and rib cages and skulls pop up. Wet socks for anyone without waterproof shoes.
    • Old, fragile tombstones make good rocks for hitting people.
    • Ten-foot ruined walls give cover but aren’t stable enough to walk on.
11. 0:13:13 The GM’s wings clear the stench for a moment as she flies up above the green fog that devours the land. High in the sky, colourful, brightly decorated Acolytes scream the champions’ names and wave flags. “Make sure that it’s worth the memory.” Doug jumps up to join her on her temporary throne, the Doja Cat bust, and sits at her feet.
12. 0:14:28 Placement. Fable starts near graves whose headstones have been pushed out by years of overgrowth (“assuredly there are bodies beneath your feet”). Verryn starts behind a wall with half cover.
13. 0:15:40 Initiative: Fable 14, Verryn 8. The Arbiter flies to the stands, where Acolytes spill beer and shovel in popcorn and cotton candy, pointing at the field and telling their children “someday this could be you.” It’s “a family-friendly event”; “these are very mature kids.” Matt: “They’ll need therapy later in life, like the rest of us.”
14. 0:16:49 The fog. The Arbiter flies around the arena at lightning pace and stirs the low fog up to waist height. From the waist down, nobody can see where they’re stepping.

Round 1

15. 0:17:38 Fable’s question. “I ask this all to who face the end of my blade. Where exactly does your strength come from?”
    • Verryn: “I pull from the abyss, from chaos itself. Its whims carry to and fro, as do mine.”
    • Fable asks whether he draws on the foul entities that seek to control him. Verryn: “They seek to control, but they’re quite poor at it. They give me their power and I do as I will.”
    • Fable: “Then you are a fool for accepting such power. It is not strength, but it’s strings attached to a puppet. If I need to show you true strength, I will beat it out of you.”
16. 0:19:13 Divine Sense. Electricity coagulates in Fable’s eyes as he scans for undead (“In a graveyard?”). He senses something moving under the ground, worming its way under the moss, hidden in the fog.
17. 0:19:56 Spirit Shroud and the presidents. Fable moves 25 ft toward it. A small thunderstorm forms above him as he drags his massive buster sword through the dirt, and a necrotic shroud forms over him: Spirit Shroud. Skeleton arms writhe out of the ground and grasp at his feet.
    • The GM: the dead crawling up are well dressed, in clothes from many time periods. The closest has wooden teeth, and its tombstone reads George Washington. Andrew Jackson lies further down, and “Abraham Lincoln, the vampire hunter,” is a couple of rows over (“Zombie Abraham”).
    • Fable: “I do not know your name, nor your presidential history. Regardless, you will aid me in this fight whether you like it or not.”
    • The GM suggests Taft, the one who got stuck in the bathtub, “if you’re looking for one with some girth.” The fat “did not dissipate around his hips”; he has “bathtub-shaped bones” and giant hip bones.
    • Fable ends his turn glaring at “the patron-worshipping individual.”
18. 0:23:00 Verryn takes to the air. He raises an eyebrow at the “hoisting of the presidents,” unfurls his wings and flies straight up 30 ft above the fog. To the Acolytes: “Is this what you wanted? Two ruthless individuals tearing each other limb from limb for your enjoyment, for your capitalist endeavors? Then you shall have it.”
19. 0:23:53 “Bitch, I’m a cow.” Minor Illusion makes the voice “Bitch, I’m a cow. Bitch, I’m a cow” come from Fable’s direction. Verryn: “Seems my opponent has different ideas.”
    • Fable: “What the hell is this? Damned tricks… I’m not a cow. I don’t even know what I am. The gods took that from me as well. Stop saying. I have feelings, you know.”
    • The GM awards a d4 of emotional damage (“Emotional damage!”). It’s 1. The Arbiter: “the cold grasp of emotional damage spiking through your brain.”
20. 0:25:44 End of round 1. The Arbiter’s roll is a 10 (“good enough”). Half the Acolytes cheer for each champion, so both get a hero point.

The Box of Chaos arrives

21. 0:26:19 The Arbiter swirls the fog into a 10–20 ft clearing, and the Box of Chaos slams into the sludge with a squish. The lid flips open, pink and yellow flames shoot a column to the sky, two dark shadowy hands creep over the side, and yellow-eyed Gerald peeks out. The GM: “this is Gerald… he will grant you something magical if you give him something.”

Chaos events: the mushrooms and the mean children (0:27:33)

22. “Chaos!” Two events trigger, and one roll is doubled.
23. 0:27:55 The mushrooms (roll 2). Six glowing mushrooms of various colours and sizes pop up across the mossy ground. “What they can offer you will be a surprise.” The Arbiter places them.
24. 0:28:24 The mean kids (nat 20, doubled). A group of children on the far north side of the stands start roasting both champions.
    • They mock their hooves and mimic them with coconuts: “look at me, I’m just like them.”
    • The jeers: “Duck, duck, geese. That guy’s a cow.” “Your wings aren’t that special. Anyone can fly.” “Your mother of a mountain kissed a horse.”
    • Both make a Wisdom save against 3d8 psychic damage, doubled.
    • Fable: “I am not a cow. I am a bull. Fear me.” He fails.
    • Verryn calls back: “If you can fly, then please vault to the side of the wall and fly over to me.” The GM: “You’ll have to yell louder for those poor little deaf children… Because their words hurt, you just whisper that almost to yourself.”
25. 0:31:08 Fable: “I know you are, but what am I?… Kids are mean… I’m just trying to mind my own business, you know, culling the gods and everything in between… I didn’t choose to be this way, you know. I have feelings.”
26. 0:31:39 The Arbiter on mean words. The GM suggests he can empathize. Arbiter: “It’s only through the mean words that you really reach your full potential. Isn’t that right, you piece of shit?” He says it while looking at Doug. The GM: “Don’t speak to Doug that way… I thought you’d be more welcoming compared to how many mean words have always been spoken to you.”
27. 0:32:55 The nurturing side. Ordered to be encouraging, the Arbiter tells Verryn: “You’re much taller than those children… Don’t listen to them. They’re short.” He heals Verryn 10 HP: “That’s the most kind words he could come up with.” He adds that the children’s moms “are probably very promiscuous.”
28. 0:33:26 The mom. One mom in the crowd winks back, “just waiting for her opportunity.” The Arbiter: “It’s that one mom that’s really into my chains.” Verryn rips his top a little to show a tattoo reading “MOMS ONLY.” She blows him a kiss, granting +2 HP.

Round 2

30. 0:34:27 Fable and Doug. Fable eyes the mushrooms: “Ingot, Philo, is that you? What the hell are you doing here?” Then he asks Doug whether the “puppy dog” is able and willing to fight: “you’re pretty cute, I’m not going to lie, but I’m trying to understand your purpose here.”
    • Doug hops down. Fable pulls out a necromantic bone from a corpse: “Hey, little buddy.” Doug runs after the bone but won’t bring it back. He ends up 10 ft away, toward the Box of Chaos.
31. 0:36:16 Control Undead. Fable: “Strength coming from higher powers and higher beings, that is the strength of pawns… Let me show you the true power of strength and unity.”
    • He slowly takes off one glove, revealing a necromantic skeletal hand. Electricity surges around him and his face turns briefly undead and wicked.
    • “I think you’ll do. Now join my crew.” With his Oathbreaker power he takes control of the Taft skeleton, “the one with the mammoth bones… just in the hips” (“dude could twerk”).
    • He puts a little pirate captain’s hat on it.
    • He points at Verryn (“Baron” — he forgets the name mid-line): “Drag them down to hell.” He orders it to fire its short bow.
32. 0:39:04 Fable pets Doug. To the jeering crowd: “Don’t look at me like that. I may be like angry all the time, but I have a soft spot.”
33. 0:39:29 Gerald and the blunderbuss.
    • Gerald: “You come to my house, who are you?”
    • Fable: “I’m Captain Fable… the whole person that’s like gather around the table, let me tell you a fable.” Gerald: “Sorry, I don’t get TV here.” The table jokes he’s on PBS (“The more you know”).
    • They shake hands. “Name’s Gerald. Now… did you have something to give me or what’s your deal?”
    • Fable tosses in a blunderbuss he’s barely used: “They never really explained this in… pirate school.” Verryn wonders where he pulled it from.
    • Gerald: “This is a perfect [match] with some stuff I got from a guy named Martin.” Fable: “You know, Martin…” Gerald: “I know a lot of Martins, bud.”
    • The box rumbles. Meanwhile Doug finishes the bone, and his noxious fart rocket-propels him back up to the Grandmaster’s throne, trailing “a green line of air, kind of like how the Wicked Witch used to fly.” Fable makes a Constitution save: “I’ve been around dead people… We all smell terrible.”
    • 0:42:51 The lid flips open again in cold magical fire. Gerald: “Ah, well, it’s not a gun, but it’ll fuck someone up.” He floats over the Far Realm Shard, a crystal that can tear a slimy tentacle through reality to strike and frighten a creature. (“Avert the children’s eyes!” “Suddenly we’re on Crunchyroll.”)
    • Fable: “Thank you, Gerald. Pleasure to meet you and get free shit.” Gerald: “It’s not really free. I had that blunderbuss appraised. It was… kind of a collectible.” Fable: “I found that thing in just some random abandoned haunted house. Ah, son of a bitch. I’m going to have to yell at Moana eventually. All right. [Verryn], fight me.”
34. 0:44:39 The skeleton’s first shot misses (“I didn’t take him through… basic training yet”). Verryn dodges with a barrel roll. Fable: “Form on me!” The skeleton slogs over to stand in his aura, to imagined lumbering “toddle” elevator music.
35. 0:46:20 Verryn arms up.
    • He casts Mage Armor, “the armor of chaos.”
    • He reaches into the abyss beside him and pulls out a shadowy greatsword, a gift from his patrons.
    • To Fable “and his army of skelly bones”: “It is with this, Fable, that I will rend your soul from your body.”
36. 0:47:03 The nipple ring. Verryn takes one of his nipple rings from inside his tunic and tosses it toward the box. It’s bejeweled and bedazzled.
    • The toss lands short, on the ground next to Gerald. Gerald, “prone to looking for shiny objects,” spots it and slithers out of the box as a legless shadowy snake to grab it.
    • When he pops back up, Gerald is wearing the nipple ring, balanced with a second one: a pink glittery tassel.
    • 0:50:33 With flames shooting up through the fog, Gerald gives Verryn a Sentinel Shield (an eye emblem, +2 AC, advantage on initiative and perception). It can look like anything, so Verryn makes it a codpiece. “Someone hand buffed this thing. They spent a lot of time hand buffing it.”
37. 0:51:27 Hexblade’s Curse. A tight shadowy vision of Verryn’s eyes and nose fills Fable’s mind, and Verryn’s voice: “Thank you for the real estate inside your mind. I’ll be sure to put it to good use.”
    • Fable: “And I’ll make sure to make use of your corpse when you are dead.” Verryn: “Kinky, I like it.”
    • The GM: “We recycle here, it’s good.” The Arbiter: “We here at [the Dread?] Fortress believe in a green world.” Fable: “Reduce, reuse, recycle people.”
38. 0:53:17 End of round 2. The Arbiter rolls a 20 (“two in a row! He’s heating it up!”). The GM: “Suck it, Doug.” Because the Arbiter insulted Doug, Doug farts in his direction, and he makes a Constitution save (“Is Doug a Frenchie?”).
39. 0:54:13 Break. The Arbiter “almost had a heart attack” from the 20. Before the break, Matt pitches his documentary (see creator notes). The break is cut. 0:56:01 “And we’re back!” The GM: “Surprise!”

Round 3

40. 0:56:25 The Arbiter recaps: “trading quips, acquiring codpieces, and other stuff.”
41. 0:56:54 Javelins. Fable: “Why do you fly so high? Are you scared what you will find on the ground? Very well. Let’s see if we can ground this simple bird.”
    • He charges javelins with electricity. “You skeleton, fire!” A Commander’s Strike sends Taft’s arrow first (“He is only as good as his crew”), but it misses.
    • The javelin whiffs completely. Fable: “I’m not suited for this aerial battle… Come to the ground and face me if this is your true strength.”
42. 0:58:45 The mushroom. Fable wanders into a mushroom’s area. The mushroom seems to grow, but he is shrinking: one size smaller for a turn.
    • Still raging: “Fight me! I’ll take you all on! Screw the gods!” He flips everything off.
    • The table: “It’s finally a minotaur!” The GM: “minitaurs are also a chaotic event in and of themselves.”
    • Taft picks him up and holds him aloft in one hand while Fable bellows “CHALLENGE!”
43. 1:01:16 Summon Shadowspawn. Verryn cocks his head and mutters about the “very small cow” on the ground. “It’s a fight face to face, is it? Tell me, Fable. How do you deal with [shadow] daemons?”
    • He points at Fable’s shadow, and a shadowspawn rises from it in roughly Fable’s shape, smoke-like, flowing in and out of form. It is also mini.
    • Then Verryn dive-bombs to the ground beside Fable (“like Thor”).
    • Tiny Fable: “I’ll cut your wings off and I’ll shove it down your throat.” “It’s so cute when he’s angry.” “Don’t make fun of me.”
44. 1:04:25 Despair, and Fable’s past. Verryn chooses despair for the spawn: it reaches into Fable’s innermost sadness, regrets and baggage, and slows anyone near it. The GM: “What just scared you, Fable?”
    • Fable (sensei_suplex): he was once a pirate captain and a normal paladin, happy, “causing chaos and mischief across the lands.”
    • Then one day he bit off more than he could chew. Enemies surrounded his ship and killed his crew on all sides until he was the only one left.
    • He called out to the goddess of the sea and the god of the storm, and to every pantheon. They all failed him.
    • That hatred and despair at losing his crew fuels his path of revenge: “I will kill every god that will do it.”
    • The Acolytes bawl, and their salty tears rain down on the arena. The skeleton does a rain dance.
45. 1:06:45 Chilling Rend. The spawn’s first strike misses; the second hits for 16, and Fable’s fear responses explode inside his brain.
    • Fable sees the spawn hurting too: “You strike me, yes, you don’t even know… your power and how it works. The things that you seek, the things that you control, they still damage you from within. You’ll pay for this, insolence boy.”
    • Verryn: “Good, you remind me I’m alive.” One of them: “That’s why we hurt. We bleed to know we’re alive.” The GM: “Feels like we could start an emo band any minute now.”
46. 1:09:44 End of round 3: the plush d20s. The Arbiter rolls 11 after two 20s.
    • Doug hops up with his plushy d20, rolls it and ties, then gives the Arbiter a matching plush d20 squeaky toy.
    • The Arbiter rips it in half, rewinds time so it’s whole again, and rips it again, over and over in front of Doug.
    • The GM opens the closet behind her throne, and hundreds of plush d20s tumble out. It’s “just the spare overload”; there’s a whole basement full of them.
    • The Arbiter: “Looks like I’m taking a trip to the basement.” He winks at the mom (“That’s the Arbiter’s pickup line”). On his persuasion roll she swoons, and her girlfriends catch her.

Round 4

47. 1:11:48 The codpiece. Tiny Fable is at eye level with Verryn’s codpiece. “You are also blinded by the majesty that is my codpiece.” Light glints off it, so Fable’s first attack has disadvantage.
48. 1:12:28 His buster sword, now “like a toothpick,” stabs in for a hit.
    • Verryn’s Armor of Hexes fails. “I noticed a one is not the number you were looking for.”
    • Despair-fuelled necromantic energy adds Fable’s Aura of Hatred, but his tiny size subtracts the maximum (“Fable considers therapy for a moment”).
49. 1:14:19 Thunderous Smite. “He loves his thunder, he loves his lightning.” He raises the sword skyward: “Fear me!” The second swing misses and reverberates off the codpiece “like a bell.” Fable realises casting the smite dropped his Spirit Shroud, which still adds necrotic damage to the earlier hit.
50. 1:16:32 “These damned gods, they won’t let me enlarge again. But when I do, your corpse will be on this sword. I don’t know, I’m running out of shit to say.” Verryn: “I’ve heard that excuse before, in the bedroom.”
51. 1:16:50 Growing back. Fable regrows to his eight-foot height while Taft is still holding him up, hands cupping his butt cheeks, and the regrowth snaps one of Taft’s hands off. Fable: “Oh, sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean that, buddy. Well, quick, buddy’s distracted. Attack! Do it now!”
    • The damage breaks Verryn’s concentration, and the shadowspawn dissipates.
    • Taft throws down his bow and swings his short sword/scimitar, slashing at Verryn’s leg to bring him to a knee. The aura adds damage because Taft is undead and next to Fable.
52. 1:18:56 The GM reminds both champions to use their hero points: “The only thing that we hate is a hero point gone unused at the battle’s end.”
53. 1:19:47 Darkness. Verryn is shoved back and splays out in a crouch before standing tall. “Fable, I see the darkness in your heart, but how do you fare in true darkness?”
    • He casts Darkness in a 15 ft radius (“Turns out this is Kingdom Hearts”).
    • With his hero point he draws energy “from the crowd and the chaos gods that have given me power” for two greatsword attacks.
    • The Acolytes scream his name and beg for the darkness. They watch through special glasses, like 3D glasses. The Arbiter: “The entire Dread Fortress in the arena is like 4D, so they’ve got those little air jets and like water spritzers behind their seats.” “Every time blood splatters, they get like water in their face.”
    • Fable: “The darkness in my heart is enough.” He can’t see.
    • Verryn’s eyes flick a different colour, as if swapping lenses, with a night-vision-goggle sound effect (“All of my years of Call of Duty”; the Arbiter: “Enemy spotted in your area”). He can see in the magical darkness, so he gets advantage.
54. 1:24:05 The exchange. Pacing, Verryn: “Do you feel it, Fable? Your insecurities, your doubts, the weights of all of your past.”
    • Fable: “I don’t think you understand. They took everything from me. My name, my crew, my life. I have no past, but my future will be forged in blood. Yours.”
    • Verryn’s first swing whiffs despite advantage. The Arbiter: “Delivers one of the coldest lines of the whole Deathmatches and then just whiffs.”
    • The second hits for 14 “sadness damage,” plus the hexblade curse bonus, which Fable reminds him of honestly (“I might be chaotic evil, but I have a little bit of, you know, integrity.” The GM: “A bit. Just a few inches worth.”).
55. 1:28:21 The Arbiter’s chaos: the bats. The Arbiter rolls 18, and the GM lets him bring his own chaos.
    • He raises his hands, and bats pour from the trees and fog, flapping and pinging. They swarm the champions and dive-bomb in and out of the darkness.
    • Verryn can see them; Fable can’t. “Damned things, get away from me. What is even attacking me? I can’t see in this domain.”
    • “Beware of the batnado!” Fable takes 6 and Verryn 3.
    • The bats slam through Taft’s bones, biting and flapping, and destroy the skeleton (“They’re just busy right now devouring bathtub boy”). The bats keep swarming the area for the rest of the fight.
56. 1:31:16 Taft’s eulogy. Fable looks at the fallen crewmate’s little pirate hat on the ground: “You fought well and bravely, soldier. Even though I think you only hit once, but that’s perfectly fine. You will be remembered.” A bat smacks him in the face: “All right, now I’m angry.”
57. 1:31:49 Concentration. Verryn keeps his Darkness up. Fable rolls a nat 20 on his concentration; his muscles bulge as he writhes “with an unnatural and unholy strain.” Matt: if the bats had done more, he’d have been “Nicolas Cage in that movie with the bees.”

Round 5: the kill

58. 1:34:02 Fable’s hero point. Surrounded by darkness and bats, Fable looks at his fallen comrade, and memories of all his men dying wash over him.
    • Lightning surges across the ground. Skeletal and zombified hands burst out, grab Verryn where he stands, and chain him to the ground.
    • “Men to arms. This fool worships the gods, worships devils, doesn’t matter. His strength calls from a higher power. It is time to show him the true strength, strength in unity. Die by my blade, boy, and kneel before me.” He aims for the head.
59. 1:36:17 The first swing hits, but Armor of Hexes makes it miss. Verryn: “Varen sees the sword coming… you hear just like a… taunt, making you second guess yourself… ‘oh, he’s not there, he’s over here’… you end up in mid swing, changing your direction and going through air. And you hear like a small little cackle in your head.”
60. 1:37:21 The second swing. Fable shuts out every thought (“Death and Oblivion”) and swings again.
    • It hits, with Aura of Hatred and Thunderous Smite.
    • The GM gives Verryn her blessing on the Strength save: “Be strong. You have the Grandmaster’s blessing.” It doesn’t help. He is knocked prone.
    • A booming thunderclap echoes, and lightning strikes the blade “almost kind of like Thor,” embedding it in Verryn’s neck and clavicle.
    • The divine light dispels the magical darkness. Verryn falls, conscious but dying.
61. 1:39:39 Verryn’s last words. With his lifeblood flowing from the blade buried below his neck, panting: “I was born by chaos. I lived by chaos. And though you may not know it, you too serve chaos. It is to chaos I go, and by chaos I will return.”
62. 1:40:27 Fable’s offer. “I serve no one. My crew, we have no leader. We are all equal. We gather our strength from each other… I offer them the choice to instead stand with me in the afterlife. The choice is yours to join my skeletal crew in death. But if you seek to worship… a god or a devil… that is your foolish choice. Make your decision now or perish.”
63. 1:41:50 The refusal. Verryn: “That sounds like a pretty good deal. This isn’t my first life though. So I’ve got a better deal for you. I’m gonna give you the finger and you can rip your sword out of my chest.”
64. 1:42:23 Fable: “Devoted to your foolish ideals. Respect.” He cuts Verryn’s head clean off.

Aftermath: the ship

65. 1:42:42 The Grandmaster lands: “The decisions have been made and the blood has been spilled so there will be no going back at this point. Arbiter, clear my arena.” The Arbiter slumps Verryn’s body over one shoulder, grabs the head by the hair and flies off, “stuck with the fucking cleanup work.”
66. 1:43:21 Fable checks the deal: “they said that, hey, you just gotta kill this one person and then you can do whatever you want, and so [I] wound up in [the Void?] or whatever… We good? We cool?” (Who “they” are is not said.)
67. 1:43:46 The gift. GM: “Captain, we are very cool… Take my hand for I have one gift to bestow upon you.”
    • He offers his skeletal undead hand. “It’s fine, I’ve held worse. Strong hand.”
    • She flies him up to a ship in the sky: black hull, black sails, a gold crown emblem.
    • “I gift you a new ship. To remain true to you. That will always remind you that the strength comes from unity, yourself, your own values that have won you the victory today. That it may sail you to more seas and more winds and more than will be able to sit at your table.”
    • Its name, whatever he chooses, will be embroidered in gold along its side. The GM and all the Acolytes nod to him, then scream and pop champagne for his maiden voyage.
68. 1:45:42 Fable settles into the ship’s throne, gathers his crew, cracks his neck: “Everyone gather around the table and let me tell you all a D20 Deathmatch fable.” The GM: “Welcome and goodnight to our bedtime story of D20 Deathmatch.”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character (canon, Dried Blood)

• 1:57:41 Captain Fable’s closing words (in Fable’s voice): “Always remember. Your strength does not come from outside forces. You determine whether you are strong or not. If you feel as if you are weak, then begin to become strong… look towards others around you to bolster your resolve, but never outside omnipotent forces. It will screw you over and drag you through the dirt all the same. This is true strength, strength in unity.”
• 1:58:28 Verryn’s post-show appearance.
  • He walks out of the locker room, still sweaty and bloody, carrying his own head under his arm like a helmet, with a towel over his shoulder.
  • The mic is held to the head under his arm. “I suppose the best advice that I would be qualified to give is it’s important to feel. Your feelings are… powerful things. They remind you you’re alive. You should feel good things, but in your pursuit of feeling good, be mindful of the way your pursuits are impacting those around you.”
  • He stares off into the distance.
• 1:59:36 sensei_suplex pictures Fable in the background: “Hey, does anybody know where Doug is? I still have a bone.” (Player aside, half in character.)

Out-of-character: creator notes

• Sensei is returning; this is Matt’s first time on. Matt stepped away from Twitch for two years. The show reminded him of watching WWE at a wing shop with friends.
• Mudcat: the show’s influences are professional wrestling, Celebrity Deathmatch and Mystery Science Theater 3000. He stresses building a real narrative inside PvP, and would watch both characters in a dark “edgelord campaign.”
• Matt: both characters were “uncannily edgy”: “the most stereotypical liners from the dark, moody characters… but then we got two of them.” The GM: “You get a shadow. You get a hex. Here’s a dead guy. Here’s darkness.”
• Sensei is taking the ship into his own campaign. He says “Martin, the previous character” once referenced the show in his campaign (“Is this the arena? Where’s the Arbiter?”).
• Verryn is from a campaign where he was higher level and has died several times. Matt compares the arena to Goku’s afterlife tournament in Dragon Ball Z: a temporary stop before he is thrown back into the world to resume his hedonism. Verryn is “emotionally unhealthy.”
• Mudcat, on “this isn’t my first life”: “we need a prequel one-shot, a very origin story.”
• Matt’s Kickstarter: “Beyond the Game Dice” from Dice Roll Studios, a feature documentary about tabletop RPG players.
  • Goal: $65,000. Talks with Amazon and Netflix.
  • Five segments: cosplayers/LARPers, homeless shelters and prisons (maybe library programs for children), collectors, the community, celebrities.
• Sensei’s Project Aurora / the Auroraverse: a shared living world run by several DMs, where viewers affect weather, inspiration and worldbuilding. On Twitch as Sensei_Suplex.