S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius

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A tiefling who loves rocks met a doddering old wizard who turned out to know no magic at all. The arena around them became a sea of lava, then vanilla-flavored snow. Coen (played by seum) and Alfucius the Everbright (played by CantripBreakers) spent most of the match making friends, feeding a familiar to Gerald and plotting behind a floating dragon skull. When the Grandmaster finally demanded blood, the deathmatch became a team-up against a ghost dragon. It ended in ballet, carnivorous tulips and one very unlucky goblin.

The Story

Fetch Day at the Fortress

The episode opened with the Arbiter still in chains, serving his punishment for his failed coup. He clanked through the halls of the Dread Fortress as slowly as possible, making a show of it so people would feel sorry for him. A strange noise drew him to an open courtyard. Inside, some odd magic had conjured a sunny day underground, and the Grandmaster was crouched on the grass with Doug and a plushy twenty-sided die.

“Who’s a good boy? Who wants the ball?” She threw it a heroic seven feet. Doug zoomed after it, tore it viciously back and forth, and trotted back. The Grandmaster had even frozen chicken broth into ice cubes for him because of the heat. The Arbiter was unmoved: “He doesn’t need any snacks. Look how fat he is.” All Doug did, he added, was “sit around and lick himself.” When she claimed licking was exhausting and that he wished he had Doug’s flexibility, he tried to prove otherwise and turned out to be exactly as flexible as you might expect.

He reminded her that “Tuesdays are the dog training days. You know that Sundays are the deathmatch days.” She asked Doug whether he was ready for a deathmatch. Doug barked and ran in a circle, and with that approval she called for two grand champions. “I’ve got champions. I don’t know how grand they are,” the Arbiter replied. He clapped, and visible sound waves rippled off the walls and tore open a portal.

A Tiefling and a Statue

Coen stepped through first. She was a very tall, lean tiefling with pale bluish-green skin, cloudy blue hair and horns hung with golden chains and charms. She wore a sleeveless green coat with dark feathers at the shoulders and had a long pointed tail. She was promptly distracted by crickets, and then by a snail. When the Grandmaster snapped at her, Coen just admired the atmosphere: “It’s beautiful. It’s nice and crisp.”

Her opponent stood utterly still and answered everything with “Hey” or “Hi.” “Did you forget to bring his voice into this plane as well?” the Grandmaster asked. Doug gnawed on his toe. She pushed him, and he didn’t budge, like a London guard. Meanwhile Coen picked up a vaguely four-sided rock to roll for her starting position. When she tied, she hunted through the rubble for a matching palm-sized stone. “I have a thing for rocks,” the Grandmaster declared, and blessed her for it.

Then the statue blinked awake from what he called a meditative state. He was a wizened old man in flowing purple robes, with a long white beard and a very pointed hat. He bowed deeply to the Grandmaster and introduced himself as Alfucius the Everbright. He claimed he had served alongside the librarians of Candlekeep, the Blackstaff of Waterdeep and the magic weavers of Strixhaven and Eberron. The Grandmaster took Coen’s blessing straight back and handed it to him: “You like rocks, but he bowed to me.” Alfucius then objected to the word “death,” having assumed this was a talent show. “Whoever’s more talented at murdering the other,” the Grandmaster clarified. The Arbiter leaned over to Coen and suggested the old man might just die on his own. She agreed.

He nearly did. When Alfucius patronizingly asked about her “skill set, little one,” Coen quietly tripped him. He fell flat on his face and broke his nose, so blood was drawn before the match had even started. “Oh, it’s all right,” he said, “he was crooked anyway.” He then opened his cloak to release Blinkus Maximus, a tiny radiant construct like a beetle, built around a diamond. Alfucius called it his homunculus (“Sorry, my familiar”) and said it had travelled the multiverse with him. The Arbiter spread his great white wings, shot into the sky and roared, “Acolytes, you have come for dungeons and dice and deathmatches. Well, let’s fucking get started then.”

The Floor Is Lava

The Acolytes chanted for chaos. The Arbiter snapped his fingers and Gerald slammed down from the sky, cracking the stone in a column of pink and yellow flame, his yellow eyes peering out from the dark. The Grandmaster had planned to pace out the chaos. She changed her mind and set off two events at once.

First, the pebbles melted and the ground became lava. Both champions leapt onto tall rocks, facing each other across a glowing sea. Alfucius drew a long, beautiful wand: “I hope you know what it means to deal with a wizard, Coen.” It produced sparks and noises and absolutely nothing else. As the light faded, he hiked his robes above his knees and fled across the rocks, singeing his legs when he fell short of one jump. The bones of a giant dragon rose to float in the lava. Gerald paddled his box through it like a canoe, singing his favorite Pocahontas song. As the Grandmaster pointed out at the table, the box is fireproof.

Will You Be My Friend?

The second event cracked open the rock Alfucius had just abandoned like an egg. Out peeked Dolly, a small porcelain doll with raggedy hair and unblinking glass eyes. She held out her hand: “Will you be my friend?” Coen took it. Dolly burned a best-friend rune into her palm and became her familiar, growing fur over her torso and even bigger, glassier eyes. “You just had to do it, didn’t you?” the Arbiter sighed. Coen renamed her Aragorl.

The rune’s sting sent Coen and her new friend invisible. She blinked sixty feet in a burst of sparks and touched Alfucius with a crackling shock, and he lit up like a Christmas tree. She apologized at once: “I wanted to introduce you to someone.” He stared at the doll. “I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.” He threw fifteen gold on the floor between them. Coen caught two coins and threw them back at him, insisting she already had “the most priceless gift.” He proposed an alliance, and Dolly smiled wide enough to show every tooth. “I have one friend,” said Coen.

Then Coen stopped to listen to the crickets for a full minute, in total silence. Alfucius used the pause to send Blinky sneaking toward the Box of Chaos, with a throat-slitting gesture that the Grandmaster briefly took as an order to assassinate Gerald. Then Aragorl bit him, gnawing in poison with her tiny teeth while he flubbed his chance to resist yet again. “Let it be known,” the Grandmaster declared, “do not let ancient, demonically possessed dolls ever bite you.”

More chaos followed. Rainless lightning crackled down on both champions. The Grandmaster tossed down a rock, which Alfucius caught with a perfect roll, only for it to glow red: in four rounds it would explode on whoever touched it last. “I don’t like spice. I’m very vanilla,” he protested. As if in answer, it began to snow, the snow tasted of vanilla, and the lava cooled into what the Arbiter called “a snowy vanilla lava.”

Blinky’s Sacrifice

Blinky landed on Gerald’s shadowy hand. “What the fuck is this?” asked the box. “His name is Blinky! I literally couldn’t give two shits about him! Take him!” Alfucius shouted. “Bottoms up then,” said Gerald, and swallowed him. Blinky’s light flickered out inside the shadows like a dying bulb. “He may have been a homunculus,” the Grandmaster said, “but you are the real monster.” Alfucius wondered aloud whether they were the bad guys.

The box rumbled and flipped open, and a book with Blinky’s wings fluttered out: a tome of understanding, which made its reader cleverer. “Does that mean that Gerald shit out a book with Blinky’s wings?” the Grandmaster asked. The Arbiter couldn’t speak to the biology of shadow creatures, “but yes, he shit out a book.” Alfucius wiped the leftover shadow feces off the cover and cried, “Oh, Blinky, I never doubted you for a second!”

Freshly brilliant, he chugged coffee from a container in his robe and threw down an Eldritch Cannon, a clockwork gun on four mechanical spider legs. He kicked the hot rock to Dolly, who caught it, then ran to hide behind the floating dragon skull. The cannon just stood there menacingly.

Time Out Behind the Skull

A voice filled his head: Coen, telepathically chanting “Never gonna give you up.” She dashed to his side, conjured a bonfire and patted the ground beside her. He sat down. They checked the stands: the Arbiter had his feet up, picking his teeth with a knife, and didn’t care. The Grandmaster saw everything but kept her mouth shut.

Gadgets tumbled out of Alfucius’s sleeves, and he came clean. “I don’t know any magic at all. I just have these. I have a gun!” He admitted he had planned to shoot her in the face. He tried a sob story about rescuing his son’s soul, then dropped it at once: “There’s a ring of like three wishes, and I really, really want it.” He pitched killing her and promising to wish her back. He had fallen on hard times, he confessed, and had spent most of his money on the commute. Blinky, he added, had been made of a diamond, “so in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have fed him to a demon.” Aragorl changed again, her fur turning black-and-white spotted, and Coen offered him friends of his own: “I could give you lots of friends.” “You mean those freaks?” Coen, unswayed, made clear she wanted the wishes for herself.

The Grandmaster Demands Blood

The Grandmaster’s laugh cut through their plotting. The grass of these fields, she told them, grows not from water but from blood. “So I require a death.” She asked whether the Arbiter was thinking what she was thinking. “That I’d really like to just go home,” he replied. She made his chains heavier with a spell, and he raised a half-hearted hand. Mist gathered over the dragon bones, and a ghost dragon rose with a roar. “I’m sorry, that’s what you think a dragon sounds like?” “Trust me, it’s a ghost dragon. It’s different.”

“I hope you know I blame you for this,” Alfucius told Coen, and he tried to bolt. She grabbed his ankle. The Acolytes’ faith surged into both champions like a whole can of caffeinated soda. Alfucius reached for his gun to shoot her and fumbled his bullets onto the ground. Coen used her surge to calm his anger through her familiar, and they greeted each other anew: “There’s a dragon behind us. Probably should take care of that.”

Friendship, Ballet and a Bullet

The dragon breathed a necrotic mist that dried them out. Alfucius took the full blast and wiped his tears with his beard: “Alfucius has a brand and he’s keeping it up.” Its ghostly tail swept through Coen and dropped her: “It’s not you, it’s me.” Aragorl threw the hot rock, which passed straight through the dragon and reappeared in her own pocket.

Alfucius fired scorching rays at the dragon, but his cannon hadn’t joined the friendship. It blasted Aragorl, who was immune to fire and lost only the white of her head tuft. “My cannon’s getting a little bit jealous.” Coen then summoned a twenty-foot greater demon in Aragorl’s image, with crab claws, spindly legs, a tutu and pink Barbie stilettos. “All legs, baby… Honestly, she’s a leg model.” Beaming like a mom at a spelling bee, Coen spelled out “Dragon, D-A-R-G-U-N. Dragon,” and from then on it was “the dragoon.” Little Aragorl threw the rock again, and this time the dragon caught it, baffled, while Big Aragorl pirouetted and kicked it twice in the face. The Acolytes threw roses. Then the dragon clawed Coen with the rock still in its grip, and the fourth round arrived: it exploded.

The Grandmaster blessed them both and demanded massive damage. Alfucius shot the dragon, then fired again with a perfect roll. The bullet carved a tunnel through its chest, and the ghost burst into green, purple and pink fairy lights that drifted away on the wind.

Blood, Tulips and One Unlucky Goblin

“I don’t think that was blood,” Coen observed. “That was light.” They agreed on a small sacrifice and moved to stab each other at the same moment. Invisible Aragorl beat them to it and gnawed Alfucius’s arm until blood dripped onto the grass. “Well… that will do,” said the Grandmaster. Yellow tulips with tiny teeth sprang up where it fell. One snapped at Alfucius, and Coen snapped back, biting off their heads. Both Aragorls joined in, tearing up dirt and worms in a shower of yellow petals.

The Grandmaster granted both champions their money and their wishes, though she kept her distance from the giant doll, whose every blink was a thunderclap. The Arbiter was furious: “You know that I love when the deathmatches don’t end in death.” His chains grew heavier still. So he flicked a finger and sent a goblin from the stands flying miles into the sky, where it crashed into the Acolyte Das Fuster. Coen called after it in Goblin: “Goodbye.”

“Isn’t death just the friends we find along the way?” Alfucius mused, putting an arm around Coen. She removed it and set little Aragorl on his shoulder instead. Goblins walked the aisles tossing stuffed Aragorls to the crowd, and one plush’s leg stabbed somebody in the eye.

Notable Moments

• Alfucius broke his nose tripping over Coen before the match began, drawing first blood with no attack at all.
• Alfucius fed his diamond familiar to Gerald, who swallowed it and shit it back out as a book of intelligence.
• Alfucius confessed behind a dragon skull that the great wizard knew no magic, just gadgets, coffee and a gun.
• A twenty-foot demon doll in Barbie stilettos ballet-kicked a ghost dragon in the face to a shower of roses.
• The Grandmaster accepted a doll bite as the blood price, and tulips with teeth grew from it.
• The only casualty was a goblin the Arbiter flicked out of the grandstands in protest.

Memorable Quotes

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “He may have been a homunculus, but you are the real monster.”

Alfucius the Everbright: “Okay, I’m going to come clean. I don’t know any magic at all. I just have these. I have a gun!”

• The Arbiter: “Tuesdays are the dog training days. You know that Sundays are the deathmatch days.”
• Gerald: “Bottoms up then.”
• Coen: “All legs, baby… Honestly, she’s a leg model.”
• Alfucius the Everbright: “I hope you know I blame you for this.”
• The Arbiter: “Trust me, it’s a ghost dragon. It’s different.”
• Alfucius the Everbright: “Bless you, and in many ways, isn’t death just the friends we find along the way?”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Coen (Sam / seum). A very tall, lean tiefling, described above.

• Personality: easily distracted (crickets, snails). She loves rocks and finds creepy creatures “beautiful.” She has one friend, her familiar. Polite and apologetic, but secretly the menace of the match.
• Abilities seen: shocking grasp; a reaction when damaged that makes her invisible and teleports her 60 ft; telepathic speech (the Rick Roll); dash; create bonfire; calm emotions cast through her familiar (hero point); summoning a greater demon; speaking Goblin.
• Uses found rocks as dice; one turned out to be granite.
• Wants the wishes for herself.

Dolly / Aragorl (voiced by Caustic Phoenix as Dolly; by Sam once she is Coen’s familiar).

• An ancient, demonically possessed porcelain doll from the second chaos event. She came out of a cracked rock under a dark cloud.
• Burned a “best friend rune” into Coen’s palm and became her familiar. Coen renamed her Aragorl.
• Appearance: porcelain limbs, a furry torso, big glassy eyes and a beak of tiny poisonous teeth. Her fur went gray, then black-and-white spotted; she is pink, white and black by the end. Her top tuft was singed black. She has a big pocket.
• Fire-immune. She can teleport and go invisible.

Big Aragorl. A 20-ft greater demon in Aragorl’s likeness: all legs, crab-claw arms, pink Barbie stilettos and a tutu. A ballerina kicker whose blinks are thunderclaps. The Grandmaster is a little afraid of her.

Alfucius the Everbright (Ed / CantripBreakers). A wizened old man described above.

• Claims to be a great wizard who served with the librarians of Candlekeep, the Blackstaff of Waterdeep, the mages of Mournmount [?], and the magic weavers of Strixhaven and Eberron.
• The truth (his confession): “I don’t know any magic at all.” He’s a gadgeteer and con man with a gun, coffee, a wand of pyrotechnics, an eldritch cannon, a clockwork mechanical dragon, and gadgets falling out of his sleeves.
• Has fallen on hard times: 15 gold was the last he had, and he spent most of the rest on the commute.
• Lied about wanting to save his son’s soul. He wants the ring of three wishes for money.
• Fed his diamond familiar to Gerald. Rolls only in extremes: two nat 1s and two nat 20s.
• Killed the ghost dragon.

Blinkus Maximus (“Blinky”). Alfucius’s homunculus familiar: a tiny, radiant, beetle-like construct built around a diamond.

• Alfucius claims it travelled the multiverse with him.
• Gerald ate it, and it came back as a winged tome of understanding (+2 Int), “a shit book of intelligence.” It now sits in Alfucius’s cloak.

The Arbiter (Mudcat). Still imprisoned and in chains, which the Grandmaster can make heavier with a spell; she does so twice.

• Rolled 9 on acrobatics.
• Raised the ghost dragon half-heartedly and wanted to go home.
• Angry that no one died, so he flung a goblin from the stands.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Trains Doug at fetch and freezes chicken broth ice cubes for him.
• “I have a thing for rocks.”
• Moves her blessings to whoever impresses her.
• Says the arena grass grows from blood and demanded blood before ending the match.
• Granted both champions their wishes and money.

Doug. The Grandmaster’s fat pug. He plays fetch with a plushy D20, gnaws Alfucius’s toe, and “approved” the deathmatch. The Arbiter says Tuesdays are his training days.

Gerald / the Box of Chaos. Yellow eyes, shadowy fingers, a pink-and-yellow flame column.

• The box is fireproof. He canoed through the lava with a shadowy paddle, singing his favorite Pocahontas song.
• He ate Blinky (“Bottoms up then”) and returned it as a tome.

The ghost dragon. A spectral dragon raised by the Arbiter from the floating dragon bones.

• Breathes necrotic mist; its tail siphons vitality without a physical hit.
• Caught and used the hot rock. Burst into colored fairy lights when shot.

Das Fuster. An Acolyte, “the last commenter,” hit by the flung goblin for 21 damage.

The flung goblin. An Acolyte in the stands, the match’s only death (inferred: Ed’s “Just the right amount of goblin death” and Caustic Phoenix’s “Just the one goblin death,” 1:33:52–55).

Places

• A courtyard of the Dread Fortress with magically made “subterranean sunny day” weather.
• The arena (unnamed): tall rocks, grass and pebbles, then lava, then vanilla-snow-chilled lava. It holds a giant dragon’s bones. The northern quadrant is mentioned.
• Named by Alfucius: Candlekeep, Waterdeep, Mournmount [?], Strixhaven, Eberron.

Items

• Coen’s rock dice: a “D4-ish” rock, a palm-sized rock, a granite mud rock and a divoted pocket rock.
• The hot potato rock: thrown by the Grandmaster, it glowed red and exploded after four rounds.
• Alfucius’s 15 gold, wand of pyrotechnics, coffee container (mug of replenishing coffee), Eldritch Cannon, pistol, tiny mechanical dragon, and Blinky’s tome of understanding.
• The ring of three wishes, which Alfucius says he came for.
• Stuffed Aragorl plushies, thrown into the crowd by goblins.
• The yellow tulips with teeth, grown from Alfucius’s blood.

Lore statements

• The Arbiter is imprisoned and chained in the Dread Fortress during this period. Dried Blood: he had just tried to stage a coup “because no one ever dies in the death matches.”
• The arena grass grows from blood, according to the Grandmaster.
• The Box of Chaos can eat an offered creature and turn it into a gift.
• Hero points come from the Acolytes’ faith.
• The Grandmaster can bless champions and move a blessing from one to another.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the courtyard of the Dread Fortress

1. 0:00:03 Show intro: “Welcome to D20 Deathmatch!” Mudcat adds, “Welcome to the Thunderdome. Wait, that’s a different franchise… No one sue us, please.”
2. 0:00:28 The Arbiter is still imprisoned. He clanks his chains through the halls of the Dread Fortress, walking very slowly and “making a show of it, wanting people to feel sorry for him.” He hears a strange noise from an open courtyard in the Dread Fortress. He peeks through the open door and finds “somehow a subterranean sunny day,” made by some strange magic.
3. 0:01:12 The Grandmaster is crouched on the ground with Doug the pug and a plushy D20. “Who’s a good boy? Who wants the ball?” She throws it seven feet, which is far for a pug. Doug zooms after it, viciously tears it back and forth, and runs back: “an adorable game of fetch.” She explains: “we’re doing some training with Doug. We’re practicing fetch.”
4. 0:01:56 She asks whether the Arbiter brought Doug’s snacks. He says no: “He doesn’t need any snacks. Look how fat he is.” She had frozen chicken broth into ice cubes for him because it’s a hot day. The Arbiter: “All he does is sit around and lick himself. What does he need to train for?” The Grandmaster: “Licking is also exhausting. You wish you had that kind of flexibility.” The Arbiter: “Maybe I do. You haven’t seen me.”
5. 0:02:27 The Arbiter rolls acrobatics to prove his flexibility and gets a 9. “I’m as flexible as you might expect.”
6. 0:02:40 The Arbiter reminds her: “Tuesdays are the dog training days. You know that Sundays are the deathmatch days.” She replies that Doug needs exercise every day. She asks Doug, “Who’s ready for a deathmatch?” Doug barks and runs in a circle. “With Doug’s approval,” she asks for two grand champions.
7. 0:03:09 “I’ve got champions. I don’t know how grand they are.” The Arbiter claps his hands, and visible sound waves ripple off the walls and rip open a portal in time and space.

The champions

8. 0:03:39 Coen’s entrance. She is a very tall, lean tiefling with bluish-green pale skin and cloudy long blue hair. Her horns curl out from under her locks and are adorned with golden ribbons of chains and charms. She wears a long green belted coat cut off at the sleeves, with dark feathers on the shoulders, leather bracers to the elbows, leather knee-high boots and dark pants. She has a long pointed bluish-green tail. “Oh, it’s finally good to be here. I wonder who’s gonna come up to me next.”
9. 0:04:33 The Grandmaster asks whether she is well-versed in battle. Coen loses focus because she hears crickets, and then gets distracted by a snail. The Grandmaster snaps at her. Coen: “You telling me you don’t like the atmosphere? It’s beautiful. It’s nice and crisp.”
10. 0:05:22 Alfucius stands silent like a statue. He answers “Hey” and “Hi” to everything. The Grandmaster: “Did you forget to bring his voice into this plane as well? You can’t just bring the body.” Doug gnaws on Alfucius’s toe. The Grandmaster pushes him a little, and he doesn’t move, “like one of those London guards.” She decides that if he’s made of stone he might have a really good AC. “Perhaps he’ll break his moment of silence at the right moment to surprise us all.”
11. 0:07:03 The rocks. Each champion has to roll a d4 for placement. Coen picks up a “D4-ish” rock and rolls it. It comes up three, and Alfucius’s roll is also a three. For the reroll she hunts through the rubble for a palm-sized rock of the same shape and asks, “Do you like this one?” The Grandmaster: “I have a thing for rocks. I think they’re just not collected enough.” She grants Coen a Blessing (d4) for her first round.
12. 0:08:38 Alfucius wakes. He blinks: “Where am I?” He says he was “in a meditative state.” Then he sees the Grandmaster and bows obsequiously. He is a wizened old man in flowing purple robes, with a long white beard, pale liver-spotted skin and a very pointed purple hat. “I am not worthy… My name is Alfucius the Everbright. I have served alongside the librarians of Candlekeep, the black staff of Waterdeep, the mages of Mournmount [?], and the magic weavers of Strixhaven and Eberron. And yet, oh, I have never met one as powerful as yourself.”
13. 0:10:12 Coen stares at him blankly, “almost as if she wants to crack a smile and laugh,” but is concerned about this old man. Coen: “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Alfucius promises “a very friendly competition.”
14. 0:10:45 The blessing changes hands. “Oh, Alfucius, this is a deathmatch. Though you come with the right manners…” The Grandmaster takes back Coen’s blessing and gives it to Alfucius. “You like rocks, but he bowed to me.”
15. 0:11:08 Alfucius raises “a point of order” about the word “death.” He assumed this was “an offering of talents.” The Grandmaster: “Whoever’s more talented at murdering the other.” The Arbiter leans over to Coen: “I think that he might just die on his own.” Coen: “I was thinking the same thing.”
16. 0:12:13 The trip. Alfucius asks, “So what is your skill set, little one?” Coen tries to trip him. Her stealth is 21. Alfucius rolls a natural 1 on athletics, falls face first at her feet and breaks his nose. “Blood has already been drawn before the deathmatch even begins” (1 point of fall damage). Alfucius: “Straight in the nose. Oh, it’s all right, he was crooked anyway.”
17. 0:13:38 Blinky. Alfucius opens his cloak. A radiant glow comes from within, and a tiny construct like a beetle, built around a diamond, flies out. Coen stares at it: “Beautiful.” Alfucius: “This is Blinkus Maximus, my homunculus. Sorry, my familiar. He has accompanied me across the multiverse. We have seen hundreds of realities, thousands of galaxies, millions of worlds.” The Grandmaster asks whether Blinky needs an “I’m also a champion” button. Alfucius says Blinky is “quite harmless,” there “for moral support and to give me… an arcane eye into the beyond itself.”
18. 0:15:30 Placement. Alfucius starts in the northern quadrant, with Coen about 45 ft to the southeast. The Arbiter throws out his giant white wings and shoots into the sky: “Acolytes, you have come for dungeons and dice and deathmatches. Well, let’s fucking get started then.” The Grandmaster: “Only if you want to.”
19. 0:16:22 The initiative rock. Coen digs in the dirt and finds a clumpy, D20-ish mud rock. She makes a nature check (13): “it’s a sturdy piece of granite.” Alfucius copies her and scoops up some dirt. He gets 17 and Coen gets 11.

The Acolytes’ chaos and the Box of Chaos (0:17:41)

20. The Acolytes trigger three chaotic events, and then a fourth. The crowd shouts “Chaos!” The Grandmaster plans to “pace it out… That way we don’t murder them too quickly.” Alfucius: “You keep using these words like murder. We are committing to the bit then.”
21. 0:18:47 The Box of Chaos is summoned. If you give something to it, it gives something back, and interacting with it is a free action. The Arbiter snaps his fingers, and Gerald slams down from the sky at breakneck speed, cracking the stone with a thud that echoes across the arena. Pink and yellow flames shoot up in a column, shadowy fingers creep over the edge, and Gerald’s yellow eyes stare out.
22. 0:19:58 “Change of plans”: two chaotic events at once. Coen rolls a smooth rock with little divots from her pocket.

Chaos event 1: the floor is lava (0:20:42)

23. The pebbles dance, stop, and melt into the ground. The ground becomes lava. Only the tall rocks are platforms, and crossing grass or small rocks burns. Both champions pass the Dex save and each leaps onto a great rock, about 10 ft up, 35 ft apart, eye to eye across a sea of lava.
24. 0:22:37 Alfucius’s beard blows in the wind, lit from below by the lava. He produces a long, beautiful wand: “I hope you know what it means to deal with a wizard, Coen.” Coen’s mouth falls open: “That’s a beautiful wand.” The Grandmaster: “How many things are you going to keep pulling out of that robe?” Alfucius: “It’s quite billowy, as you can see. I have quite a lot in it.”
25. 0:24:16 The wand of pyrotechnics. It does “absolutely nothing. Just sparks and noises.” As the light dies down, Alfucius hikes his robes above his knees and legs it as far as he can from Coen. He has to jump between rock islands, and even with the blessing he falls short. His legs are singed by the lava (6 fire damage), but he scrambles up the next rock, about 55–60 ft from Coen.
26. 0:25:22 The bones of a giant dragon have risen from the ground and float in the lava. Gerald paddles his box through the lava like a canoe, with a shadowy paddle. Caustic Phoenix: “The box is fireproof. It’s fine.” She adds later (0:38:18) that he is “singing his favorite Pocahontas song.” Alfucius hunkers down. The Grandmaster: “Oh, so brave.”

Chaos event 2: Dolly (0:26:50)

27. A dark cloud forms over the rock Alfucius left. The rock cracks open like an egg, and two small hands reach out. A small porcelain doll peeks out, with raggedy old hair and glassy, unblinking eyes. She holds out a hand to both of them: “Will you be my friend?” The Grandmaster: “Oh my gosh!” The Arbiter: “That’s the correct reaction.” “This is Dolly.”
28. 0:29:16 Dolly transforms. Coen describes it. Dolly keeps porcelain arms and legs, but fur grows over her whole torso, and her eyes become bigger, glassier and glossier. The Arbiter: “You just had to do it, didn’t you?” Caustic Phoenix DMs Sam a card for Dolly, who acts right after Coen. Coen renames her: “I will call you Aragorl.” (The name is heard many ways; see Spelling.) Dolly is later described with a beak hidden under her fur, full of tiny sharp teeth (0:40:00).

Round 1, Coen’s turn

30. 0:31:32 Taking damage from the rune triggers Coen’s reaction. She and her “fiendish friend” on her shoulder turn invisible, and she teleports up to 60 ft (“Hylia” [?]) in a quick burst of sparks, reappearing right next to Alfucius. She lets go of Aragorl’s hand and touches his shoulder with shocking grasp. Alfucius: “Oh no.” It hits, and Alfucius “lights up like a Christmas tree.” He uses Uncanny Dodge to halve it, squirming away from her fingers: “Get off, get off!”
31. 0:33:24 Coen apologizes at once: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just, I wanted to introduce you to someone.” Alfucius stares at the doll: “I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.” Coen: “I thought you had better manners than this.”
32. 0:34:23 The gold. Alfucius: “I have gold. I have gold.” He throws 15 gold on the floor between them: “I think I’m a little over my head.” Coen catches two coins, one in each hand, and throws them back at him, not realizing he meant no harm. “I don’t need gold when I have the most priceless gift,” she says, pointing at her familiar.
33. 0:35:43 The first alliance offer. Alfucius: “you’ve been shortchanged… How about an alliance… maybe you and I can find a way to win together.” Dolly smiles wider, showing all her teeth. Coen: “I have one friend.”
34. 0:36:19 Alfucius backs to the edge of the rock and asks whether it’s his turn. Coen hears the crickets again and listens to them for a full minute. “It’s dead silent in the arena. All we can hear are the crickets.” Then she says: “Yes, every girl would like to have a turn with you. And now it’s her turn.”
35. 0:37:39 Blinky’s errand. During that minute, Alfucius quietly points Blinky toward the Box of Chaos as it comes round the bend. Caustic Phoenix gives Blinky advantage because “he’s tiny… I want this to do well,” and Blinky sneaks off. Alfucius points at Blinky, draws a finger across his neck and points at the box: “It’s for you!” Caustic Phoenix: “I thought you were telling Blinky to murder the Box of Chaos. I was like, that’s bold.” The Arbiter puts a pin in it.
36. 0:40:00 Aragorl’s bite. Coen and Aragorl turn to Alfucius “in a very creepy unison.” Aragorl bites him with her tiny teeth (23 to hit). He rolls another natural 1 on the Con save and takes heavy poison damage, which he halves again with Uncanny Dodge. “Oh boy, Alfucius ain’t looking good.” Coen: she gnaws “like… SpongeBob… biting the Krabby Patty… secreting poison into your skin.” Caustic Phoenix: “Aragorl’s very effective. She’s bitten a few people before.” The Grandmaster: “Let it be known, do not let ancient, demonically possessed dolls ever bite you.” Alfucius: “I’ve seen one before. What was I meant to do?”

Chaos events 3–4: lightning, the hot rock, vanilla snow (0:43:20)

37. The Acolytes scream “chaos, chaos.” The sky turns gray and lightning dances across it, with no rain. Both champions fail the Dex save and take minor lightning damage, “knowing that even though you find some safety on the rock, you’re never truly safe.” Coen: “Please tell me another doll comes down. I’m always prepared.”
38. 0:44:56 Hot potato. The Grandmaster tosses a rock down. Alfucius catches it with a natural 20. “I’m sorry that Nat 20 just got you a hot rock of all things.” It starts to glow red. In four rounds it will explode in the hands of whoever holds it or touched it last. Alfucius: “Grandmaster, why?” “Spice things up.” Alfucius: “I don’t like spice. I’m very vanilla.”
39. 0:46:02 Vanilla snow. “As if to cool things off,” the hot rock chills and it snows a little. The snow tastes like vanilla. The lava cools too. After the break, the Arbiter calls it “a snowy vanilla lava.”
40. 0:46:53 The 10-minute break is announced, and the show returns at 0:46:59 (cut from the mp3).

Round 2: Blinky becomes a book

41. 0:47:46 Blinky lands on Gerald’s shadowy hand. Gerald: “What the fuck is this?” Alfucius shouts across: “His name is Blinky! I literally couldn’t give two shits about him! Take him!” Gerald: “Bottoms up then.” Gerald eats Blinky. Blinky’s light blinks inside Gerald’s shadowy body and flickers out “like a light bulb going out.” The lid slams shut and the box rumbles.
42. 0:49:07 The Grandmaster: “Are we just gonna pass over the fact that you just fed your familiar… to another monster?… He had two names… You are the real monster.” Alfucius: “Are we the bad guys?” He rolls 100 on the d100: “I only roll in extremes.”
43. 0:50:05 The tome. The box flips open, and a book with Blinky’s wings flies to Alfucius. Blinky has become a magic tome of understanding: +2 Intelligence. The Grandmaster: “Does that mean that Gerald shit out a book with Blinky’s wings?” The Arbiter: “I can’t speak to the biological nature of shadow creatures, but yes, he shit out a book.” The Grandmaster: “It’s a shit book of intelligence… Intelligence for dummies.” Alfucius: “That’s me!” He wipes residual shadow feces off the cover: “Oh, Blinky, I never doubted you for a second!” He tucks it into his cloak.
44. 0:51:23 Coffee and the cannon. His synapses firing at full energy, Alfucius pulls out a forearm-sized container. He slowly and menacingly unscrews it and chugs coffee from it. Then he throws down his Eldritch Cannon: mechanical spider legs unfold into four legs topped by a large clockwork gun, about his size. Caustic Phoenix: “would probably have artificers crying for its beauty.”
45. 0:53:13 Alfucius kicks the hot rock toward Dolly, and she catches it. He disengages, billowing his cloak as he climbs down, runs 30 ft and hides behind the floating dragon skull (half cover), now settled in the vanilla snow. “Pull yourself together, Alfucius.” The cannon “just stands there menacingly.” The Grandmaster has counted three items from his robes (“like your robes are a bag of holding”). Alfucius: “There’s more.”
46. 0:55:44 The Rick Roll. Coen’s voice sounds in Alfucius’s head, chanting “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down…” She dashes up beside him, with Dolly floating behind “reaching out like a fearful doll”: “I call upon the power of Rick Roll.” The Grandmaster: “I would love to have a warlock with Rick Astley as my patron.”
47. 0:57:07 The bonfire. Coen creates a bonfire at his feet, sits down and pats the ground for him to join her. He does: “Oh, okay. Hi. Hello.” Coen: “I know they can probably hear us, but it is a pleasure to meet you.”
48. 0:57:49 Time out. Alfucius peeks over the dragon skull: “Can the Grandmaster and the Arbiter see us?” The Arbiter is picking his teeth with a knife, feet up: “He doesn’t give a shit.” The Grandmaster rolls a 22 and sees everything, “but I will keep my mouth shut. I will observe with quiet eyes.” Alfucius makes a T sign with his hands: “time out, yeah?”
49. 0:58:56 The confession. Alfucius: “I usually make friends with other wizards.” Clockwork gadgets fall out of his oversized sleeves. His gray eyes lose their twinkle: “Okay, I’m going to come clean. I don’t know any magic at all. I just have these. I have a gun!” He pulls out a pistol: “Honestly, I saw you running towards me. I was totally planning on like shooting you in the face with this.” Coen: “It’s okay.” He asks what a friendship with her would look like.
50. 0:59:57 Aragorl levitates between them and changes. Her fur turns from gray to black-and-white spotted, her outfit changes, and her legs grow longer and leaner. She vanishes and reappears in front of him. Alfucius: “Oh my God. I really wish you wouldn’t keep doing that.” Coen: “You asked. I could give you lots of friends.” Alfucius: “You mean those freaks?” Then: “He didn’t mean it” (speaker uncertain). He sums it up: her pitch is to make more of those things, give him one, and in exchange not kill him? Coen: “Yes.”
51. 1:01:12 Alfucius’s lies and wishes. “My son. The soul of my son is lost to me, and I wish to bring it back… Okay, that’s a lie. There’s a ring of like three wishes, and I really, really want it.” His counter-pitch: “How about I kill you and I super promise… I will use the ring when I win it to bring you back and then we’ve got two wishes between us.” He would “just wish for like money.” Coen points out that he threw his money at her. Alfucius: “that was like the last I had. I used most of it on the commute over here… I’ve kind of fallen on hard times.” Then: “Blinky was actually made of a diamond. So in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have fed him to a demon.” “But like, I’m super intelligent now.” Coen: “if you have no magic and you’re able to pull this off so far, that’s pretty smart.”
52. 1:02:55 Alfucius notes they’ve been crouched behind the skull for about five minutes. He mocks a shout of “Oh God, she’s killing me!” for the audience. Coen: “I don’t think I agreed to what you liked… I would like the wishes for me.”

The Grandmaster demands blood: the ghost dragon (1:03:25)

53. The Grandmaster’s laugh cuts through their plotting. “Do you not see these fields with beautiful grass? You know what this grows from? It’s not water, it’s blood.” She waits for them to fill in the blank, then: “So I require a death. If the two of you will not fight,” she and the Arbiter will “summon blood to this place.” “Arbiter, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” The Arbiter, still picking his teeth: “That I’d really like to just go home.”
54. 1:04:21 A spell from the Grandmaster makes the Arbiter’s chains much heavier. “Fine, fine, fine…” He raises a hand “kind of half-assed. He’s not feeling it today.” Whispers and creaks come from the dragon bones, ethereal mist forms over them, and a ghostly dragon rises into the air with a roar. The Grandmaster: “I’m sorry, that’s what you think a dragon sounds like?” The Arbiter: “Trust me, it’s a ghost dragon. It’s different.”
55. 1:05:24 Alfucius to Coen: “I hope you know I blame you for this.” “Why?” He tries to bolt, and Coen grabs his ankle: “You’re not going to leave me here.” Alfucius: “We didn’t agree to the whole friendship thing. Get the fuck off me.”
56. 1:05:49 Hero points. The Grandmaster: “only one of you will be surviving this match.” But the Acolytes have faith, and both champions get a hero point. “Think of it as chugging a whole can of soda filled with caffeine.” “The only thing you can do wrong is to not use it.”
57. 1:06:44 Alfucius reaches for his gun: “Yes, I’m going to shoot you now.” He fumbles his bullets on the ground (“Oh shit, oh no… just give me a moment to load this stupid thing up”).
58. 1:07:30 Calm Emotions. Coen spends her hero point to cast calm emotions through her familiar. Alfucius fails the save, and his hostility toward Coen is suppressed. They greet each other: “Hello.” “Hi. Hi. There’s a dragon behind us. Probably should take care of that.”
59. 1:08:48 The dragon attacks. It flaps its ghostly wings, and the pressure changes. It spews necrotic ghostly mist that eats at their flesh “almost like dehydrating you.” Coen avoids most of it. Alfucius takes it full, and it stings his eyes. He wipes his tears with his beard: “That really hurts.” The Grandmaster: “You really do only fail for sure or completely succeed.” Alfucius: “Alfucius has a brand and he’s keeping it up.”
60. 1:10:06 The dragon’s tail sweeps through Coen, not a physical hit but “vampirically siphoning away your health.” Distracted by her beautiful friend, Coen falls to the ground: “It’s not you, it’s me.”
61. 1:11:10 The hot pocket. Aragorl throws the hot rock at the dragon (a 2). It passes straight through and magically reappears in her pocket. “It’s a big pocket.” Caustic Phoenix: “There’s her hot pocket back at her.” The rock is getting warmer and glowing.

Round 3: the jealous cannon and the leg model

62. 1:12:32 No longer seeing Coen as a rival, Alfucius pulls a tiny mechanical dragon from his robe, throws it on the ground: “Take that, you!” He casts Scorching Ray at the ghost dragon and hits. The Arbiter: “This is not a corporeal dragon, it is a visage of a dragon.” Alfucius: “No one is clapping for you.”
63. 1:13:42 The cannon’s jealousy. “I am friends now with Coen and Aragorl. My cannon is not, and the last thing it was focused on was Aragorl.” The Grandmaster: “Is this like a friendship loop?” Alfucius: “My cannon’s getting a little bit jealous.” Coen: “That was my friend!” The cannon blasts Aragorl with fire, but she is immune to fire. Fire cascades over her and leaves her untouched except for singed fur; the tuft on top of her head is now black, “no longer purely white.” Alfucius: “Oh no, new friend… Look, I didn’t mean to do that. That was the cannon.” He calls the cannon over to crawl beside them.
64. 1:16:26 Alfucius asks whether he should re-roll calm emotions after taking damage. Coen: “Character choice.” He chooses to stay friends. The Grandmaster: “The friendship is an option now.”
65. 1:16:58 The greater demon. Coen is “really enjoying the fact that she’s getting surrounded by so many new personalities… bringing some light and life into her soul.” About 10 ft away she summons a greater demon that looks exactly like Aragorl, but bigger. It has bug-like legs set far apart and crab-claw arms, and it stands waiting for commands. The Grandmaster: “Did Coen just bring her own army?” Caustic Phoenix rules it 20 feet tall and towering over the ghost dragon. Coen: “All legs, baby… Honestly, she’s a leg model.” Caustic Phoenix: “All legs except for like five inches up at the top.”
66. 1:19:52 The spelling bee. Coen stares up at her creation “like a mom who just saw their kid win the spelling bee.” She spells it out: “Dragon, D-A-R-G-U-N. Dragon.” It becomes “the dragoon.”
67. 1:20:20 Little Aragorl throws the hot rock at the dragon again, and this time the dragon catches it. It “looks confused as to why it now holds a rock.” Aragorl clasps her hands (“please catch, please catch”) and turns invisible.
68. 1:21:39 Barbie stilettos. Big Aragorl wears beautiful pink Barbie stiletto heels and a little tutu. She kicks the dragon in the face twice in a ballerina spin on one foot, swinging the other leg round. Coen: “I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s fashion, sweetie.” The Acolytes go wild and throw roses at the ballet performer. The Grandmaster: “Good job, honey.” The dragon’s spectral form splits and re-forms.
69. 1:23:27 The rock explodes. The dragon claws Coen with the hot rock in its claw. It is the fourth round of the rock, and it explodes on impact. Caustic Phoenix: “I don’t think explosion’s real, but I’m making it up, explosion damage.” Its tail sweeps through Alfucius: “What did I do?… That really hurt.”

Round 4: the gun

70. 1:25:23 The Grandmaster: “I don’t even care at this point… Alfucius, Coen, do some massive damage.” She blesses them both.
71. 1:25:39 Alfucius: “I’m going to immediately attack that fucking dragon.” He shoots it with his gun, then spends his hero point on an action surge and shoots again, rolling a natural 20. The bullet carves a tunnel through the dragon’s chest. The dragon stands still for a moment, then its necrotic form explodes into fairy lights of greens, purples and pinks that float away on the wind. Coen watches “in absolute awe of the beauty.”
72. 1:27:05 Alfucius: “So I guess that’s us done then. The two of us have defeated the dragon.” Coen: “I don’t think that was blood. That was light.” “How do we get blood?” Coen: “I can cut you.” Alfucius: “What? No, I’ll shoot you!” Coen: “A little sacrifice.” Alfucius: “So sidebar, Grandmaster, will a little cut do the trick for you?” She says it must do at least 4 damage.
73. 1:27:59 The blood. They roll to stab each other at the same moment. Instead, invisible little Aragorl reappears and gnaws Alfucius’s arm until blood drips down to his hand and onto the ground. All three turn to the Grandmaster. “Well… that will do.”
74. 1:28:44 Tulips with teeth. Yellow tulips grow where the blood fell, with tiny sharp teeth inside. Alfucius bends to sniff them, and one snaps at him and misses. Coen snaps back and bites the heads off the tulips. They taste floral, “like a tea, just pre-tea, pre-soaked.” Both Aragorls join in, tearing up grass and dirt and unearthing worms. “A surprisingly gruesome sight as yellow petals flutter everywhere” and the juice runs down their beaks into their pink, white and black fur.
75. 1:30:14 Alfucius: “So we’re good, right?… We’re done, yeah?” The Grandmaster: “You will get your money. Both of you will get your wishes.” She flies down, but keeps her distance from the Aragorls and is slightly afraid of the 20-foot one. When big Aragorl blinks, each blink is a thunderclap. “It’s a good thing she’s so high up we’re out of range.” “The two of you fought in an interesting way and we’ll count it as entertaining.”
76. 1:31:08 The Arbiter’s protest. “Oh yeah, you know that I love when the deathmatches don’t end in death. That is absolutely the point of this… the way that we’re not honoring our commitment to the Acolytes.” She shushes him, and his weights become even heavier.
77. 1:31:31 The goblin. Still angry that no one died, the Arbiter flicks a finger, almost imperceptibly, and a goblin from the stands goes flying miles into the sky. “That’s better.” The goblin hits another Acolyte, the last commenter, Das Fuster, for 21 damage (“a rather heavy goblin… at a flying speed”). Coen speaks Goblin and calls after it in goblin tongue: “Goodbye.”
78. 1:32:22 Alfucius: “Bless you, and in many ways, isn’t death just the friends we find along the way?” He puts an arm around Coen, and she takes his arm off her. Coen: “Friendships of all sorts, I guess.” She puts little Aragorl on his shoulder: “Friendship.”
79. 1:32:54 Aragorl merch. “All of you will get Aragorls on your way out.” Goblins walk the arena aisles tossing tiny stuffed Aragorls into the crowd: “You get an Aragorl! You get an Aragorl!” One Aragorl’s leg stabs someone in the eye as it’s thrown. “It’s perfect ending for you all, the fiercest creatures on the battlefield. May you remember it, but may it not haunt you in your sleep. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• Ed: “Very wholesome. Just the right amount of goblin death.” Caustic Phoenix: “We had to let someone go anyway.”
• Mudcat: “the Arbiter, you know, just got done trying to stage a coup because no one ever dies in the death matches,” so the episode hit a sore spot for him. This is a creator note that explains the chains.
• Alfucius’s statue-like silence at the start came from Ed’s technical difficulties. He had planned to hold back the “bumbling idiot” reveal longer.
• Sam was always going to make Aragorl her greater demon and use Find Familiar (“I had plans, but you just made them easier”). The Grandmaster’s Dolly chaos event fit her plans. With more rounds she’d have brought another familiar who “celebrates birthdays” (Mudcat: “straight nightmare fuel… like you live inside of Tim Burton’s head”). Sam says someone else once “brought bumblebees, but they didn’t bring the right bumblebee.” Her moderators made the creatures as a personification of her personality: “outwardly cuddly… then… she’s a goblin.”
• The creatures haven’t appeared in Cantrip Breakers (Ed’s show, a horror show).
• Ed’s inventory: a mug of replenishing coffee, a wand of pyrotechnics (“basically just a glorified sparkler”), a gun, the eldritch cannon, tools. His first-ever character was an artificer who avoided magic. This time he wanted “fake bullshit magic.” The concept was “Dumbledore, who was a con man.” Caustic Phoenix compares him to Merlin from The Sword in the Stone.
• Mudcat wants to play a campaign with this character: “a senior citizen A-Team” of bumbling old heroes, “all the real heroes got murdered.” Ed: “Dragonheart, but with old men.” Caustic Phoenix: “Or women… Old is the only requirement.”
• Advice from both players: go with your gut and play the character you want. Sam: “bring your friends… Your DM will never say no.” Mudcat: “If your DM says no, they’re bad.”