S3E11 — Blood Feud 1 — Havoc v Isha Inverraseth

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A werewolf alpha and the vampire who has been hunting her met in the Grandmaster’s silent, fog-choked “dark city.” It should have been a simple monster mash. Instead Havoc and Isha Inverraseth turned out to be childhood best friends bound by a blood oath, torn apart on the night Havoc’s pack slaughtered their village. Between burning huts, pulled teeth and a genie who hated being called a shrub, it became one of the most heartfelt grudge matches the arena had seen. It ended with no death at all, frozen at the very last second.

The Story

A Dark Night at the Fortress

The Dread Fortress was home again, and chaos was home with it. The Arbiter came up through the subterranean entrance with his chains clanking at his wrists and ankles, as they had every week. The chains came up so often that someone at the table finally groaned, “We get it. You have chains.” The Arbiter’s reply was simple: “I’m still a prisoner.” The Grandmaster suggested he bedazzle them with gems from “some treasuries somewhere in the dungeon.” He promised to “definitely put a pin in that one.”

The throne room was dark. Every candle was out, the moonlight was cold, and the Grandmaster sat on her throne under a giant blanket with Doug on her lap. She was reading him an ancient book of monsters, and he shivered at every page. When they reached the zombies, she invited the Arbiter to share his “firsthand experience. You look like one.” He pointed out that Doug is “literally a cyborg zombie.” The Grandmaster clapped her hands over the pug’s ears: “He doesn’t know that.” Glad to escape story time, Doug hopped down to the Arbiter’s feet, actually happy to see him for once in his life.

Asked whether he’d found two worthy champions this time, the Arbiter hedged: “Two, one and a half, we’ll see.” Then he slammed his chains against the floor. The ringing tore open a portal, and he announced the night’s match: Havoc versus Isha.

Two Old Scars

Havoc came through first. She was six foot four and built like “a brick shithouse,” with storm-wave black hair, steely gray eyes and a body covered in scars. She wore a tattered black cape and crimson-and-obsidian leather and carried a sixty-pound maul on her back. One scar stood out from the rest: a jagged cut on the back of her right hand that looked older and kinder than the others. She had been taking a bath in a lake when the Void took her. “This isn’t what I expected when I dipped into that lake to take a bath,” she chuckled. The Grandmaster promised that she might get a bloodbath after all.

Isha arrived out of shadow. At first only her footprints could be seen, as if eyes slid off her. She was tall and vampiric, with glowing red eyes, hair shaved at the sides and gathered into locks “for hunting,” tattooed hands, and more belts and pouches than anyone could need. She raised a palm in greeting: “Huh, this is unexpected. But not unwelcome.”

Havoc’s gaze snagged on that palm. She knew this hunter by reputation: the Lycan Slayer, who stalked shifters through the weavespun forests. Isha admitted she had been hunting Havoc for some time, following her shadow and killing anyone who seemed close to her, and that she had been “saving you for last.” When the Grandmaster brought a candle close, Havoc saw it. Isha’s palm bore a mirror image of the scar on her own hand, and that scar began to itch. “Isha?” “Now you remember me.”

Havoc had thought Isha was dead. Isha had a different view of that night: “I was your choice and you chose differently and left me alone in that forest, bathing in my own blood. And now I’m going to make you bathe in yours.” The Grandmaster was thrilled. She slapped the Arbiter on the back and told him he’d actually done well, then held both champions’ scarred hands. Havoc crushed hers without ever taking her eyes off Isha. The Arbiter opened a portal to the Grandmaster’s dark city, and fog rolled out across the throne room floor.

Into the Dark City

The arena was a sleepy village of small wooden huts under the moon. Fog snaked through every alley, and there were ghostly footprints everywhere but no one to be seen or heard. The Grandmaster spread her wings and commanded the champions to “Turn this dark blue land into red. Change this fog into a river of blood.” Doug, terrified of the two killers, let out a small fart, and she flew him up to her seat. The Acolytes cheered from above like “a haunting, gorgeous choir,” and the Grandmaster told the fighters that whoever did not disappoint her people might return home.

Havoc saw it for what it was: “Oh, so our pain is meant to be a spectacle, isn’t it?” It reminded her of that other night, “when there were other hungry eyes watching us.” Now the new alpha of the Kingslayer clan, she had to pay back Isha’s debt in blood and could not just let it pass. The Arbiter, feeling like he was interrupting, said “let me get the fuck out of the way” and flew off on his white wings.

Arm Day, Leg Day

Isha struck first, or tried to. She leapt for a rooftop, barely caught the edge and tore off shingles hauling herself up. Havoc laughed like a war drum: “Oh, Isha, skipping arm day.” Isha shot back “I never skip leg day” and attempted a somersault to the next roof. As she ran, Havoc called out some helpful advice: “Brace your knees for landing. You are always so bad at that when we were kids.” The advice stung. Isha crashed into the gap between the houses and hurt her knee. Then she vanished into the fog, utterly undetectable.

Havoc’s taunts called up their history. Isha had been the bookish runt of the village, who knew everything from tomes and nothing from the outdoors, and was picked on even by the nerds. Young Havoc burst into the village library with a huge stick, the ancestor of her maul, and drove the bullies off: “Hey, fuck off! That’s my friend!” Later, in a bathroom somewhere in the woods, Havoc gave a nervous Isha the shaved sides she had always wanted. “I gave you your first queer cut,” Havoc said. Isha’s answer: “Gotta kill the barber.”

Havoc shifted, kicked down the door of a nearby hut like a drawbridge, and barricaded every window with the table, chairs, cabinets and a cast-iron pan, leaving only the door open. As she worked she shouted into the fog that she had never wanted to do what she did, that she had carried their oath on her palm and “etched across my heart” every night since. Then her rage broke loose. Her eyes turned gold and a pillar of primal light burst through the roof. The Grandmaster fanned herself: “Wow, this is a show.”

Teeth for Gerald

The Acolytes rewarded both champions with an energy drink each (“Just remember to use it before you die”). Then the Arbiter decided to “pick it up a notch.” The Box of Chaos fell hundreds of feet into the street, and Gerald poked his yellow-eyed head out. Moments later a small gold lamp drifted down beside him, ringing like a Disney World fireworks show. Havoc heard it from inside her fort. She had been to Disney World and loved it.

Isha strolled over to the box. “Just hanging out in the box, dealing chaos,” Gerald explained. She had no soul to offer, having lost it when she became a vampire, so she offered her wisdom teeth instead, which she had never had removed. She reached into her mouth and pulled them out herself. Gerald was delighted: “This will go create my teeth jar.” In return he floated over a dagger he wasn’t using: Tinderstrike, a flint blade that showered sparks and guarded its wielder against fire.

The Burning House

Isha pocketed the lamp, lit an oil-soaked rag with Tinderstrike’s sparks and promised to smoke Havoc out. She threw the firebomb down in the doorway and walked straight through the flames into the hut. The tinder-dry walls caught. While the fire roared, the Grandmaster called a short break because Doug was doing his potty dance. The two champions stayed in the burning house the whole time.

Isha breathed the smoke in, since she didn’t need the air, and drew her spectral longbow. It was woven of “grief and shadow,” dripped like ink and turned to vapor. Her first arrow was perfect. It pierced Havoc’s heart and slammed her back into the chair Isha called “your throne,” and a second arrow pinned her there again. “Oh, Isha, when did you learn how to handle a bow that well?” The arrow carried its own answer. It showed a young girl, still in the clothes she was wearing when Havoc left her, scavenging a bow from empty houses and training through the years with tears in her eyes until the bow melted into her hands. In the background, Havoc saw graves: “You buried them. Every single one of them.”

Havoc’s maul glowed red in the furnace heat. She charged and caught Isha with an uppercut to the jaw, then pounded her down onto one shoulder. Flaming beams began falling from the ceiling.

Refusing the Game

“Let’s take this outside,” Havoc said. “We’ll decide this under the night sky, the same way it began.” She slung her maul over her shoulders and walked straight past Isha. Isha held Tinderstrike out and let Havoc walk right through the blade. Havoc only looked down: “Isha, come on. You can do better than that.”

In the town square, Havoc turned on the crowd itself. “You seek to laugh at our pain. You seek to exploit our grief. I refuse. I refuse to abide by the terms of your game.” Then she swung her maul to slam the Box of Chaos shut. No champion had ever attacked the box before. Gerald answered with a hellish blast of pink and purple fire, hot this time, and Havoc couldn’t escape any of it. Undeterred, she begged Isha to “forget this box of flaming skeletons” and face her with even terms.

Isha agreed, for once, and tossed Tinderstrike aside. Havoc raised her scarred hand and spoke their oath aloud: “We live together, we die together.” She had prayed “to gods I have seen my pack devour” that Isha would survive. She explained that the wolves who destroyed their village had sent her to hunt and kill Isha, and would have slaughtered Havoc too if she had done anything but rip Isha within an inch of her life. “Your life, to me, has never been a mistake. It has always been beautiful.” Isha saw it differently: “I seem to think of this as nothing short of abandonment while you think of this as nothing short of a miracle.” She tore off her coat, spat blood from her pulled teeth and drew two short swords. Tears ran down her face as they had when she was a child.

We Die Together

The Grandmaster asked them what they truly wanted. Havoc wanted the itch on her hand to stop, and the oath fulfilled. “Then I guess we die together,” said Isha. “That’s what I want.”

She walked forward swinging her short swords like a maul. The first cut opened Havoc’s chest. The second drove toward her still-bleeding heart, and although Havoc tried to will it aside, it hit anyway. Isha chose not to make it a killing blow. Her tears darkened into shadow as she became something like a vengeful spirit, repeating with each swing, “You left me. You left me behind.” Then, strangely, she summoned a bright golden spectral eagle to heal herself. Both women, it turned out, had an eagle spirit.

The Genie

Chat voted for the lamp. It was deceptively sharp and drew blood when Isha rubbed it. Green smoke spilled out and took the shape of a man. “What is that, a little shrub?” Isha asked. “Just because I’m green doesn’t make me a shrub,” he snapped. Isha had only ever read the word “genie” in books and had never heard it said aloud, so he had to spell it for her. Havoc introduced herself proudly: “I am a Lycan. I am Havoc. And this is my maul.” He turned away, unimpressed.

Havoc begged her not to, but Isha made a wish: “I want to go back to where it began.” The genie clapped faster and faster and, poof, sent both champions back to where they had started the fight. “I can’t believe you made it so easy for me,” he said. Havoc sighed from across town that this was just like the time Isha took the bullies’ words literally. Isha downed her energy drink and explained what she had really meant. She didn’t want to fight in “this meaningless space”; she wanted to die where Havoc left her. Havoc turned to the sky and asked the “heretics, angels, devils, demigods, divines” to grant it.

The Pack

The Arbiter was happy to oblige, with one condition: “they’re going to want to come too.” Dozens of werewolves Havoc knew climbed onto the rooftops and slunk out of the alleys. “Are these the ones you call family now?” Isha asked. Havoc said yes. She insisted they weren’t evil: they had attacked the village because they were hungry and vampires were driving them from their hunting grounds. The pack was not interested in her defense. “We’re a pack. You can’t leave or lie to us,” they said, and Isha’s fate was clear: “you’re going to finish it. Or we will.”

“I’ll do it,” said Isha. For the first time, Havoc cried. “Isha, I’m sorry.” “Took you long enough.” “Then let’s die together.” She hauled the maul back to strike.

The Freeze

The maul stopped just short of Isha. The air itself froze, and both champions stood like statues. The Grandmaster landed between them and gently moved the weapon aside. “This battle will continue, and we will have blood. But it is not going to end here.” She stroked Isha’s frozen face and promised she would have her wish and find the ground she once stood on. To Havoc she said, “you will need to choose a side and prove who you really are and what you truly love.” To the Acolytes she gave a final reminder: “there is always a fight going on in our hearts, in our minds, with all of our body.” Nobody died, and the feud was left unresolved.

Dried Blood

Each champion was pulled away to a separate demiplane to train. Isha left with a promise: “Wherever their shadow goes, mine will follow. This isn’t the last you’ll see of me.” Havoc, for the first time, looked deeply conflicted as she glanced at the werewolf family that wanted the Lycan hunter dead: “A blood debt, like I said, Isha, must be paid in blood, but if the brokers are corrupt, why do I swing my maul?” Afterward came a revelation about the genie. He was a knockoff, properly called a weenie, with very limited powers: wish for a cool weapon and you’d get a balloon one. Sending two champions back across town was the most magic he had spent in years, and he was expected to sleep for a very long time. The Arbiter noted that the last time someone sought a wish in the arena, they ended up morphed into one body with someone else.

Notable Moments

• Isha pulled out her own wisdom teeth to pay Gerald, kicking off his teeth jar.
• Havoc became the first champion ever to attack the Box of Chaos, and was promptly roasted for it.
• Havoc’s “brace your knees” advice hurt Isha’s feelings so badly that she fell off a roof.
• A perfect arrow to the heart carried a vision of young Isha training alone among graves.
• The genie had to spell “genie” for a vampire who had only ever read the word.
• The Grandmaster froze the killing blow in midair and left the match without a winner.

Memorable Quotes

Isha Inverraseth: “I seem to think of this as nothing short of abandonment while you think of this as nothing short of a miracle.”

Havoc: “Your life, to me, has never been a mistake. It has always been beautiful.”

• The Arbiter: “I’m still a prisoner.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “He doesn’t know that.”
• Havoc: “Oh, Isha, skipping arm day.”
• Isha Inverraseth: “I never got my wisdom teeth out so you can have them.”
• Gerald: “Just hanging out in the box, dealing chaos.”
• The lamp genie: “Just because I’m green doesn’t make me a shrub, are you kidding me?”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Havoc (Connie Chang). A Lycan (werewolf) and beast-hide shifter; in wolf form a black dire wolf with gold eyes when raging. New alpha of the Kingslayer clan.

• Gear and powers:
  • The 60-lb maul (gnarled steel head, jeweled pommel).
  • Bear-spirit rage (resists all damage but psychic), reckless attacks and a luck point.
  • Her rage manifests as a harmless pillar of primal light and a soundless wind around her.
  • Has an eagle spirit.
• Lore:
  • Arrived in the Void while bathing in a lake in the Whispering Woods.
  • She has been to Disney World and loved it.
  • Childhood: Isha’s protector. She beat off bullies with a stick and gave Isha her first undercut.
  • The night: after wolves slaughtered their village, the wolves sent her to hunt and kill Isha. She tore Isha “within an inch of” her life and left her alive.
  • She believes the pack attacked because vampires were driving them from their hunting grounds.
  • Calls the Grandmaster and the Arbiter “heretics” / “pretender to a god.”
• Acts and defiance:
  • Refused to strike first and refused the arena’s “game.”
  • The first champion to attack the Box of Chaos, and Gerald burned her for it.
  • At the end she cried and swung to kill, choosing “let’s die together.”

Isha Inverraseth (blackgirlmage / Lexi). A vampire with no heartbeat who doesn’t need to breathe, has no soul (“I became a vampire”) and has elongated canines. Known as the Lycan Slayer / Lycan Hunter among the packs.

• Gear and powers:
  • Rogue skills (cunning action, sneak attack, Steady Aim).
  • Spells: Pass Without Trace and Healing Spirit (a golden eagle).
  • A spectral longbow of grief and shadow, two short swords, explorer’s kit and many pouches.
• Lore:
  • Childhood: bookish runt and bullied, but “the smartest person” Havoc has known. She learned everything from tomes and didn’t know “genie” was pronounced that way.
  • After she was left for dead: she gathered a bow from the village houses and trained for years.
  • The hunt: she has hunted Havoc’s shadow through the weavespun forests, killing those close to her and saving Havoc for last.
• The scar: a mirror image of Havoc’s scar on her palm, which “burns every time I killed someone that wasn’t you.”
• In this episode:
  • Pulled out her own wisdom teeth for Gerald.
  • Set the hut on fire.
  • Wished to fight where Havoc left her.
  • Said “I’ll do it” when the pack demanded her death.

The oath. Matching scars, on the back of Havoc’s right hand and Isha’s palm, mark a blood oath: “We live together, we die together.” It was made with shared blood “on that day.”

The werewolf pack (Havoc’s pack / family). Dozens of werewolves who appear on the rooftops when Isha asks to leave. They ordered Havoc to finish Isha long ago: “Because you’re going to finish it. Or we will.” Member names heard: “Asmodai,” “Gerald” (uncertain). One reference to an “elder wolf” (1:04:08).

The lamp genie (“weenie,” per Dried Blood). Green smoke in a deceptively sharp gold lamp; he takes payment in blood. He is touchy about being called a shrub or bush, and is a knockoff genie with limited powers. He granted Isha’s wish to return to the starting points.

Gerald / the Box of Chaos (Mudcat). Laid-back (“Just hanging out in the box, dealing chaos”). He collects “all kinds of shit” and is starting a teeth jar. When Havoc struck the box he retaliated with a hellish rebuke of pink and purple fire.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix). Reads Doug monster stories under a blanket. Promises the winner may return home. Froze both champions mid-blow, promised Isha her wish, and told Havoc to choose a side. She ordered them sent to separate planes to train.

The Arbiter (Mudcat). Still a chained prisoner of the Grandmaster. He opens portals by slamming his chains, and has white wings.

Doug the Pug. Scared of the monster book. Per the Arbiter, Doug is “literally a cyborg zombie,” which Doug doesn’t know. He farted in fear and did a potty dance.

The Acolytes. The Grandmaster’s “people, those who I love and care for,” cheering in a ghostly choir.

Places

• The Dread Fortress throne room and its subterranean entrance.
• The Grandmaster’s “dark city”: a foggy, moonlit village of small wooden huts, with ghost footprints and no people. One hut burned down in this episode.
• The Whispering Woods (Havoc’s lake) and the weavespun forests (where Isha hunted).
• Havoc and Isha’s slaughtered home village, with its library, and the forest where Havoc left Isha: “where it began.”
• The two separate planes/demiplanes where they now train.
• The Grandmaster’s treasuries “somewhere in the dungeon.”

Items

• Tinderstrike (flint dagger, sparks, fire resistance), from Gerald in exchange for Isha’s wisdom teeth. Isha dropped it at Havoc’s request.
• The sharp gold lamp and its genie.
• Hero points as energy drinks.
• Isha’s Molotov (tinderbox and oil cloth).
• The Grandmaster’s monster book.
• Gerald’s teeth jar.

Lore statements

• The Grandmaster says champions who don’t disappoint “may return home.”
• Wishes in the arena are dangerous: a previous wisher was morphed into one body with someone (Dried Blood, Mudcat).
• Gerald retaliates when the Box of Chaos is attacked.
• The Grandmaster can freeze champions in place and pause a Deathmatch to continue later.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the Dread Fortress throne room

1. 0:00:53 “We have returned to the Dread Fortress! Chaos is home.” The Arbiter comes in through the subterranean entrance, his chains still clanking at his ankles and wrists. Mudcat interrupts his own narration: “We get it. You have chains. You describe it every single week.” The Arbiter: “I’m still a prisoner.”
2. 0:01:22 The Grandmaster suggests he bedazzle the chains, perhaps with real gems from “some treasuries somewhere in the dungeon.” The Arbiter: “I’m going to definitely put a pin in that one.”
3. 0:02:00 The throne room is dark. Only moonlight comes through the windows, every candle is snuffed out, and a cold breeze raises goosebumps. Elusia sits on her throne under a giant blanket pulled over her head, with Doug the Pug on her lap. She is reading him an ancient, worn book of monsters from woods, deserts and sky. Doug shivers at every page.
4. 0:02:53 She points out a zombie, with sunken undead eyes and a jaw hanging askew. To the Arbiter: “Come, you’re a bit of a monster yourself. Tell Doug about the zombies. You should know firsthand experience. You look like one.” The Arbiter points at Doug, “who is literally a cyborg zombie.” The Grandmaster covers Doug’s ears: “He doesn’t know that.”
5. 0:03:54 Glad to escape the scary stories, Doug hops to the Arbiter’s feet, actually excited to see him “for once in his life.”
6. 0:04:14 The Grandmaster asks whether he has brought “at least two worthy champions this time.” The Arbiter: “Two, one and a half, we’ll see.” She lights a few candles.
7. 0:04:32 The Arbiter slams his chains on the ground. The ringing reverberates off the walls and rips open a portal. “Grandmaster, for your pleasure tonight, Havoc versus Isha!”

The champions

8. 0:05:05 — Havoc. “A brick shithouse”: six foot four, light brown skin, thick tangled black hair “like the wine dark waves of a storm-tossed ocean,” and steely gray eyes. Scars cover her muscled body. The one that draws the eye is a jagged, roughened cut on the back of her right hand that looks older and kinder than the rest. She wears a long tattered black cape, crimson and obsidian sleeveless leather armor and bright gold chains. Across her back is a 60-pound maul with a gnarled, weighted steel head and a jeweled pommel. “She’s a blunt, brutal weapon of death.”
9. 0:06:03 Havoc chuckles: “This isn’t what I expected when I dipped into that lake to take a bath.” The Grandmaster: “You won’t find water here, but perhaps you’ll get a bloodbath after all.”
10. 0:06:34 Havoc asks: “What are you, a god? A pretender to a god, perhaps?” The Grandmaster: “This is not the day for answers from me. At least not yet… Perhaps if you win, you’ll stand a chance.”
11. 0:07:05 — Isha. She is shrouded in darkness, and eyes slide away from her because something about her is unnatural. At first all you see are shadows of footsteps, then she reveals herself. She is very tall and vampire-like, with dark brown undead skin, black hair shaved at the sides and pulled into locks down her back “for hunting,” glowing pulsing red eyes, and a smirk. She has thick archer’s arms and many belts, clips and pouches, “prepared for every situation.” Her dark cape is tattered, ripped and blood-soaked, and tattoos cover her arms and hands. She carries herself elegantly. She raises a palm in a wave: “Huh, this is unexpected. But not unwelcome.”
12. 0:09:12 A shadow passes over Havoc’s wolfish face, and her gaze sticks on Isha’s raised palm.
13. 0:09:35 Isha: “I’ve been hunting you for some time now. I knew one day it would come down to this.”
14. 0:10:03 Havoc: “The Lycan Slayer. Ah, yes, the packs have been whispering about your ilk. Traveling about the weavespun forests, hunting down shifters. And yet, you haven’t taken any fighters from my pack yet.” Isha: “Wherever your shadow went, I followed. And whenever I killed anyone that seemed close to you, it just didn’t feel right… So I was saving you for last.”
15. 0:10:54 Asked why, Isha smiles. Her canines elongate, and she raises her palm again: “For this.”
16. 0:11:13 The Grandmaster brings a candle close to look: “What is this? Some bond, some broken memory?” In the light, Havoc sees on Isha’s palm a jagged, symmetrical mirror image of the scar on the back of her own right hand, which itches in response. Her hand twitches toward her maul. “Isha?” “Now you remember me.”
17. 0:12:07 Havoc thought Isha had died. Isha: “After you killed me, right?” Havoc: “No… I didn’t, I spared you.” Isha: “Only in vitality. You left me… I was your choice and you chose differently and left me alone in that forest, bathing in my own blood. And now I’m going to make you bathe in yours.”
18. 0:12:46 The Grandmaster is delighted. She slaps the Arbiter on the back: “I think you’ve actually done well this time.” She calls it a grudge match (“weapons in hands because this is how we talk here”) and asks to hold both their scarred hands. Havoc grips hers like a crushing vise, her eyes never leaving Isha. Isha takes it “way less delicate, but more precise.” The Grandmaster: “I like to hold hands with everyone.”
19. 0:14:00 “Arbiter, would you summon the portal to my dark city?” Magic particles from the Arbiter’s palm coalesce into a singularity, and a black void rips open with misty fog rolling out across the floor.

The arena — the dark city

20. 0:14:37 The Grandmaster leads them through onto brick and stone ground edged with dirt. It is a sleepy, quiet, eerie town: fog snakes through every crevice and alley, and moonlight is just enough to see by. The buildings are simple small huts about 10 feet tall. There are ghost footprints everywhere, but no one is heard or seen.
21. 0:15:30 Her wings open and briefly part the fog, which rolls back thicker. “Turn this dark blue land into red. Change this fog into a river of blood.” Doug, terrified of the two champions, lets out a small fart, and she flies up to her seat with him.
22. 0:16:30 The Acolytes, almost ethereal, cheer from above in “a haunting, gorgeous choir,” demanding blood. The Grandmaster: “You will be witnessed by my acolytes, my people, those who I love and care for. So do not disappoint them… And if that’s true, then you may return home.”
23. 0:17:29 Havoc: “Oh, so our pain is meant to be a spectacle, isn’t it?” She half suspects she is drowning at the bottom of the lake and hallucinating. “Doesn’t this take you back… to that fateful night when there were other hungry eyes watching us, another fight to the death?” Isha: “Nobody deserved what happened to us… I believe our burdens were shared at the beginning and will be shared at the end.”
24. 0:18:26 Havoc: “If you truly are the Lycan Hunter, I have to pay back your debt in blood. As the new alpha of the Kingslayer clan, I cannot just let this pass.” Isha: “I think you have bigger things to worry about than some little pack.”
25. 0:20:23 The Arbiter: “I feel like I’m interrupting here, so let me get the fuck out of the way.” His white wings carry him into the sky. Initiative: Isha 16, Havoc 14.

Round 1

27. 0:21:10 Isha’s undeath has “stilled the blood in her veins, but brought new life to something deeper.” Her eyes glow brighter red. She leaps for a rooftop, barely catches the edge and rips off shingles. She uses pure strength, clawing into the wood: “this could be you.”
28. 0:23:52 Havoc kneels by her maul and laughs “like a war drum being beat by a vicious hand”: “Oh, Isha, skipping arm day.”
29. 0:25:33 Isha: “I never skip leg day,” and tries a somersault across to the next house. As she runs, Havoc calls out advice: “Brace your knees for landing. You are always so bad at that when we were kids.” The advice hurts Isha’s feelings, and she crashes to the ground between the houses, hurting her right knee.
30. 0:27:34 Havoc sniffs with her bestial snout: “I don’t smell blood. Maybe you didn’t crack your skull open. Come on, get up. Fight me.” Isha: “You could never tell your ankles from your knees, from your arms, from your elbows. That’s not how bodies work… I was perfect at it when I was younger.”
31. 0:28:10 Havoc: “Maybe I’m not drowning in some half-baked lake out in the Whispering Woods. And if that’s so, then the Isha I know would have picked herself up by now.” Isha: “Why don’t you use more than just your fists and your silly little nose and get over here.”
32. 0:29:15 Isha casts Pass Without Trace and hides (stealth 36), which makes her effectively invisible. “Come fight me,” then silence.
33. 0:30:31 — Flashback (built by both players).
    • Isha was the bookish one, the runt of the litter, slow to grow and the last of her class to hit a growth spurt. She knew everything from books but never went outside, so everything physical was three times harder for her to learn.
    • She was picked on even by the nerds.
    • Young Havoc, “an outdoors non-binary butch lesbian” as a child, burst into the village library and beat the bullies off with a huge stick, a “progenitor” of her maul: “Hey, fuck off! That’s my friend!”
    • Havoc kept supporting Isha. Isha always wanted the sides of her hair shaved, and Havoc cut it for her in a bathroom somewhere off in the woods, while Isha was nervous (“I gave you your first queer cut”). Isha: “Gotta kill the barber.”
34. 0:33:33 Havoc is a beast-hide shifter: shifting gives her temporary HP and +1 AC.
35. 0:34:57 She kicks in the door of the hut 10 feet away (strength 23); it goes down “like a drawbridge.” Inside are a small main room with a stove, a table with four tucked-in chairs, two closed doors to bedrooms, two windows on the left and a curtained window on the far side.
36. 0:36:22 Havoc barricades the windows with the table, chairs, cabinets and a big cast-iron pan, leaving only the door open so Isha can’t shoot through a window. As she works she shouts: “You know I had no choice, you think I wanted to do what I had to do to you. I didn’t. If you just come in here and we talk, we can talk. But if you want to fight, we can fight too.”
37. 0:38:04 “That oath we swore, I have carried it on my palm, etched across my heart every night since. No moon has passed that I haven’t thought about you… but I thought you were dead.” She rages: her eyes turn bright gold, and a pillar of pure primal light bursts harmlessly out through the roof. Afterward a soundless wind whips around her, as if she were always swimming, and power ripples off her shoulders. The Grandmaster fans herself: “Wow, this is a show.”

End of round 1 — hero points, the Box of Chaos and the lamp

38. 0:39:47 “For once the Arbiter and Grandmaster agree. Don’t keep counting on this.” The Acolytes chant “Fight!”, and each champion gets a hero point, described as an energy drink in their hand: “Just remember to use it before you die.”
39. 0:41:06 The Arbiter snaps his fingers: “Let’s pick it up a notch.” The Box of Chaos falls hundreds of feet and lands with a thud in the street. A column of pink and yellow fire shoots up, and Gerald lifts his yellow-eyed head out with clawed shadowy hands. You may sacrifice anything to the box for a magic item.
40. 0:42:00 — Chaos event. Isha is invisible, so Havoc rolls (11). A small gold lamp drifts down and lands softly beside the Box of Chaos. Inside her barricaded hut, Havoc only hears it, with ringing bells “like a Disney World fireworks show.” Havoc has been to Disney World and loved it. “Everyone thought she was like a character actor when she was shifted.”

Round 2

41. 0:44:11 Isha: “Havoc, you always were one to run away from your problems, and here I stand… Hiding is what kept me alive all these years.” Havoc: “Then I’m glad you did it, Isha.” “You won’t be glad for very long.”
42. 0:45:05 — The teeth. Isha goes to the box. Gerald: “What’s up?” “Nothing much. What about you?” “Nothing. Just hanging out in the box, dealing chaos.” She can’t offer a soul, because “I don’t have one because I became a vampire.” Instead she offers her teeth: “I guess I only need four. I never got my wisdom teeth out so you can have them.” She reaches into her mouth and pulls out her own wisdom teeth. Gerald: “Perfect. This will go create my teeth jar.” Caustic Phoenix wonders whether this makes Gerald a tooth fairy.
43. 0:47:22 The lid flips open again with a column of magic fire that gives off no heat. Gerald floats over a dagger: “I found this. I’m not using it.” It is Tinderstrike, an uncommonly sharp flint dagger with sparks cascading off its edge, which makes its wielder resistant to fire.
44. 0:49:24 Isha picks up the gold lamp and scouts the hut. She sees only curtains, not the barricades behind them; the chimney is on the far side.
45. 0:50:33 — The Molotov. Isha takes the tinderbox and an oil-soaked cloth from her explorer’s kit and lights it with Tinderstrike’s sparks. “I’m going to smoke you out.” In the doorway: “You wanted me to face you, you wanted me to fight you. I’m going to make you regret it.” She throws the Molotov on the ground in front of her and steps through the flames into the house. The old, dried-out wood starts to catch.
46. 0:53:19 Isha needs a moment (“I have to process this… It’s emotionally difficult”). The Grandmaster offers a 10-minute break and looks at Doug, who is doing his potty dance. Isha: “Take care of your dog… We will stay here. The fire keeps roaring.” The champions stay in the burning hut through the break.
47. 0:54:23 After the break the fire wicks up the walls and smoke fills the air. Isha, who doesn’t need to breathe, draws the smoke into her lungs and lets the fire burn around her feet. “I’ve been waiting to do this for a very long time.”
48. 0:55:01 — The arrows. She uses Steady Aim. Her longbow is spectral, made from “a force of grief and shadow that traces her every footstep”; it drips like ink that turns to dry-ice vapor. She forms each arrow as she draws. The first arrow is a nat 20 that pierces straight into Havoc’s heart, and a second arrow hits as well. Havoc, who had been leaning forward in a chair Isha calls “your throne,” is slammed back against it as if by a hammer, then pinned again by the second arrow. “Oh, Isha, when did you learn how to handle a bow that well?”
49. 1:01:41 — The vision in the arrow. The shadow is “years of regret”: whispering voices (“Put her in the ground! Put them in the ground!”). Then comes a glimpse of a young girl, still in the clothes she wore when Havoc left her, walking house to house gathering what she could, finding a bow, and training through a time-skip, tears in her eyes at every age, until “the bow has completely melted into her hands.”
50. 1:04:28 The fire climbs both walls, and the bedroom doors burn away to reveal empty rooms.
51. 1:04:41 — The maul. Havoc’s maul glows red from the heat “like a steel blade… in the maw of a furnace.” She charges and attacks recklessly. The first blow is a glancing hit (it exactly matches Isha’s armor), an uppercut to Isha’s jaw. The second pounds her down onto one shoulder. “So you’re up and then you’re down.”
52. 1:07:50 The burning building starts collapsing, and flaming wood drops from above. Both take a little fire damage; both are fire-resistant (Isha through Tinderstrike, Havoc through her bear-spirit rage, which resists everything but psychic).
53. 1:09:23 Havoc: “Let’s take this outside. We’ll decide this under the night sky, the same way it began, just you and me.” She slings the maul across her shoulders and walks right past Isha. Isha is honor-bound but blinded by rage. She holds Tinderstrike out and lets Havoc walk through the blade. Havoc looks down at her: “Isha, come on. You can do better than that. Fight me, out here, even terms, no tricks… Just you, me, our weapons, our teeth, our fists.”
54. 1:12:21 — Havoc defies the arena. In the dark town square she stops by the whispering Box of Chaos and addresses the crowd: “You and all of you, Acolytes, is that what you’re called? You seek to laugh at our pain. You seek to exploit our grief. I refuse. I refuse to abide by the terms of your game. All that I care about right here right now is you, Isha.” She swings the maul to slam the box’s lid shut. “No one has attacked it before.”
55. 1:13:35 Gerald answers with a hellish rebuke. The box slams shut, and pink and purple flames, hot this time, erupt from its cracks and push Havoc back. Havoc rolled a nat 1 on the save; even her second roll fails. Someone remarks, “You didn’t have to be a dick about it” (speaker uncertain).
56. 1:14:39 Havoc: “I see a willing accomplice. Isha, drop these games. Face me. Forget the Grandmaster. Forget that other heretic. Forget this box of flaming skeletons. It’s about you. It’s about me. It always has been… Drop your weapon and face me.”
57. 1:15:12 Isha: “This is about the blood we shared on that day. This is about my palm burning every single time I killed someone that wasn’t you. So for once, I will listen. But after this, you have no mercy from me.” She tosses Tinderstrike to the ground.
58. 1:15:39 Havoc lifts her maul one-handed, muscles bulging (“fan service”), and shows the scar rippling on the back of her hand: “We live together, we die together. You still have that mark on your palm. You still remember your oath, don’t you?” Isha: “This is somewhat of a hymn to me… these words come to lose meaning after time.”
59. 1:16:44 Havoc: “I spared you in that forest, I hoped against hope. I raged against despair. I prayed to gods I have seen my pack devour that you would be okay… and now you stand before me not a ghost, not a wraith, but what? A self-made angel of death? I guess we have that in common.”
60. 1:17:33 Isha: “I wish with every inch of a heart that does not beat in my own chest that it didn’t have to be this way… You left me there staring at the sky, hoping something would finish what you had started… So your biggest mistake was leaving me alive.”
61. 1:18:44 — Havoc’s side of that night. “The wolves that slaughtered our village would have slaughtered me too if I had done anything but rip you within an inch of your life. You know they sent me out into that forest to hunt you, to kill you, and yet I left you standing. That wasn’t a mistake… Your life, to me, has never been a mistake. It has always been beautiful.” Isha: “I seem to think of this as nothing short of abandonment while you think of this as nothing short of a miracle.”
62. 1:19:22 Isha rips off her coat and throws it aside. She draws two short swords; her body is lean, a sculpture she made of herself. She spits a mouthful of blood from her pulled teeth. In flashes of lightning she looks less angry now, and tears trail down her face again, like when she cried as a child.

Round 3

64. 1:21:55 The Grandmaster: “Do not just focus on one moment of your past. Remember the lifetime that both of you have taken to get to this point. The promises you have made to yourself… Now with daggers in hand, what do you want?”
65. 1:22:43 Havoc: “If this isn’t just an illusion or some twisted dream because I drank too much barley beer… All I’ve ever wanted was for the back of my hand to stop itching. To fulfill that oath. We live together, Isha, or we die together.” Isha: “Then I guess we die together. That’s what I want.”
66. 1:23:16 — The short swords. Isha walks slowly toward Havoc, swinging the short swords with the force of a maul. The first blade slices across Havoc’s chest. The second, a nat 20, drives toward Havoc’s still-bleeding heart. Havoc spends a luck point to force a reroll: “No, eyes unclouded this time.” It still hits, and Isha declares the blow non-lethal. Havoc’s tough skin turns the edges; it is the force of Isha’s anger that hurts.
67. 1:28:11 Isha’s tears turn from clear to shadow trailing down her face as she becomes “almost like this vengeful spirit.” With each swing: “You left me. You left me behind.”
68. 1:30:21 — The eagle. Isha drops Pass Without Trace and casts Healing Spirit as a spectral, bright gold eagle circling overhead. Both players say they share an eagle; Havoc has an eagle spirit too. It shines only on Isha, against her shadowy look. Her words get quieter: “You abandoned me. You left me behind.”
69. 1:32:33 The Grandmaster reminds them they still hold hero points, and that Isha has “the lamp that jingles at your side.” Chat votes for the lamp.

The lamp genie

70. 1:34:00 The lamp is deceptively sharp. Rubbing it cuts Isha for a drop of blood. Green smoke slithers out and forms a humanoid: “What is it that you want?”
71. 1:34:51 Isha: “What is that, a little shrub?” Genie: “Just because I’m green doesn’t make me a shrub… I’m power, kind of powerful.” He grows bigger. Havoc: “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
72. 1:35:22 — “Genie.” “You ever heard of a genie?” Isha only knows the word from books and has never heard it said aloud; she has to have it spelled (G-E-N-I-E). Havoc: “Isha, you’re the smartest person I’ve ever known… Look at this book smart nerd. They’ve learned everything from a tome.”
73. 1:36:04 The genie asks Havoc what she is: “I am a Lycan. I am Havoc. And this is my maul.” He turns away, unimpressed.
74. 1:36:22 The genie asks for a gift. Isha tries to “pocket” him for later, and he is offended: “You summon me, I get insulted for being a bush.” Payment, he says, is already made: “it’s with blood!” Isha: “I will treat you however you would like to be treated, I promise, but I do have a wish.” His eyes widen, and he squints at her: “Say that last part again.” Havoc: “No, no, Isha, don’t.”
75. 1:38:29 — The wish. “I want to go back to where it began.” He claps faster and faster, the smoke swells, and poof: both champions are back at their round-one starting points. Genie: “I can’t believe you made it so easy for me… I was thinking I’d have to be clever.” Havoc, from across town: “It’s just like that time, you took those bullies’ words literally. Just meet me by that chest thing that’s full of fire.”
76. 1:39:44 — The hero point. Isha takes her energy drink: “I meant what I said. I want to go back. I don’t want this battle to happen here in this meaningless space. And if I were to die, I’d rather die where you left me.” Havoc: “I understand… Heretics, angels, devils, demigods, divines, whatever you are. Can you grant her that wish?”

The pack

77. 1:40:40 The Arbiter: “You guys want to go somewhere else to kill each other, that’s fine by me… but they’re going to want to come too.” Dozens of werewolves Havoc recognizes climb onto the rooftops and come out of the alleys.
78. 1:41:38 Isha: “Are these the ones you call family now?” Havoc: “Yes… They’re not evil like we think they are. There was a reason they slaughtered our village. They were hungry. Vampires were chasing them out of hunting territory.”
79. 1:41:57 Pack: “We’re a pack. You can’t leave or lie to us.” Havoc: “I never thought you’d find out… the girl is not a problem. She is not a threat.” Pack (Mudcat): “Oh, we know she’s not a threat. Because you’re going to finish it. Or we will.”
80. 1:42:31 Havoc turns back. Isha: “I’ll do it.” For the first time, Havoc cries, and lifts the maul again: “Isha, I’m sorry.” Isha: “Took you long enough.” Havoc: “Then let’s die together,” and she hauls the maul back to slam it down.

The freeze

82. 1:43:27 The maul freezes just before it lands. The air freezes, and both champions are held solid as statues. The Grandmaster touches down and moves Havoc’s weapon away: “This battle will continue, and we will have blood. But it is not going to end here.”
83. She strokes Isha’s frozen face: “You will have your wish and you will find the grounds that you once stood upon. You will not be cheated out of that right.” To Havoc: “And you will need to choose a side and prove who you really are and what you truly love.”
84. 1:45:31 The Grandmaster to the Acolytes: “The battle may not have ended. But it should remind us that there is always a fight going on in our hearts, in our minds, with all of our body. Be sure to join us to see the conclusion of this on D20 Deathmatch.”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character farewells (canon, Dried Blood)

• 1:59:37 Each is pulled away to a demiplane to train. Isha, disappearing: “Wherever their shadow goes, mine will follow. This isn’t the last you’ll see of me.”
• 2:00:25 Havoc, for the first time, looks deeply conflicted as she is pulled away, looking at her werewolf family, who want her to kill the Lycan hunter “that’s been stalking all of werewolf kind”: “A blood debt, like I said, Isha, must be paid in blood, but if the brokers are corrupt, why do I swing my maul?”

Out of character — creator notes

• 1:47:05 Mudcat: this is “our first two-parter”, the first organic one; Battle for the Crown was planned as multi-part.
• Connie and Lexi had orbited each other in tabletop for ages but had never played a streamed game together. Both see themselves as story-first players; Lexi calls them both screenwriters.
• Plans that changed:
  • The town originally held hidden hunters (Caustic Phoenix: “Are they vampire hunters?”). The perception rolls were checking whether the champions’ noise drew them.
  • The plan was a later map change back to the square with the hunters as a chaos event. The fire made Caustic Phoenix drop it (“we don’t need people interfering”).
  • The wolf pack reveal was decided mid-show, with Caustic Phoenix and Mudcat typing in the background.
• The genie (Caustic Phoenix, a creator ruling on lore): “It’s actually a knockoff genie… he’s called a weenie instead.” He has limited powers: ask for a cool weapon and you’d get a balloon weapon; ask for a companion and you’d get a stuffed animal. Lexi: sending them back to the first initiative spots was the most magic he’s spent in years. Caustic Phoenix: “he’s gonna go back in there and sleep for a very long time.” Caustic Phoenix felt bad that the genie disrupted the mood.
• Mudcat: “the last time somebody tried to get some sort of wish granted in the arena, they ended up morphed together in the same body.” (Caustic Phoenix: it would have become a psychic battle; Lexi: “the get along shirt.”)
• Caustic Phoenix worried werewolf v vampire is a familiar tale, but praised the fresh relationship.
• Inspiration: Lexi mentions Darren Shan’s Cirque du Freak and recent vampires-and-werewolves talk. They went for conflict between iconic monsters made personal. Connie: “Let’s make this lesbian drama.”
• Plans for part 2:
  • Connie: she expected a one-shot, hence the heavy exposition. In part 2, Havoc must choose between “this love that they thought they lost and this new family they found that their love hates”, and the pack did kill their village.
  • Lexi: Isha “is not a good person”; she killed many werewolves and “probably still doesn’t see that killing those other werewolves was bad.” She is “almost stunned,” waiting for Havoc’s choice to push her. Both see their characters as neutral evil.
  • Caustic Phoenix: the werewolves have been an “easy otherization” for Isha, but they are Havoc’s family. Caustic Phoenix closes: “We’re going to reveal more in episode the blood feud two.”
• Mudcat notes it’s odd that nobody died, then asks for final words.