S3E14 — Magic Duel — Talbot Cage v Seth Kaiser

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On Halloween night, two very different spellcasters were dragged into a haunted maze to fight for the amusement of The Acolytes. Talbot Cage was a scorched, malnourished wizard whose magic misbehaved, and who had been summoned mid-coffee. Seth Kaiser was an immaculately dressed duelist who cast his spells by playing cards from a deck strapped to his shield. Between a riddling horror, a returning Dolly, and a Gerald who made a new best friend, it was a night of horror, glory and a lot of pumpkins.

The Story

The Masquerade Pre-Party Party

The Acolytes flew back into The Dread Fortress through the open mouth of its great orc skull, its eyes ablaze with fire. Inside, the stone halls were cool, and strange seasonal music drifted out of the ballroom. The Arbiter followed the sound and peeked in. It was, as the Grandmaster put it, “the masquerade pre-party party, obviously,” and he had not been invited. The Grandmaster had invited “all of the acolytes and some buttheads and one person named Kristen.” It turned out Thomas the Goblin had thrown the Arbiter’s invitation in the trash. “Turns out Thomas doesn’t like you,” she said. “You should take it personally, because Thomas loves everyone.”

The Arbiter was already wearing a mask, which he insisted had nothing to do with the party (“Don’t worry about it”). The Grandmaster was simply relieved that no one had to look at his “hideous face.” He swore that someday Thomas’s entire family would die suddenly and tragically. Then Pikachu zapped him. Around them, Acolytes in pixel-art costumes mingled with a moose that was just the top half of Bullwinkle. When asked to provide the entertainment, the Arbiter sighed that this was his entire job. “That being a prisoner.”

Two Champions Rise

The Arbiter hurled a giant pumpkin into the middle of the ballroom. It splattered, and its magical pieces formed a portal in the floor. Up rose the champions on what looked like an interdimensional lift below the stage.

Seth Kaiser stood tall, “with posture that could make the gods envy.” He wore a long, clean white coat studded in strange places and covered in logos, chiefly a large K. His mossy hair sat “somewhere between a mullet and a weird K-pop thing,” and a rune-carved buckler hung on his arm. He had come a long way, he said, to test the merit of his skills as a duelist. “And that’s all I’ve got.”

Talbot Cage had been heating his coffee with magic when a portal ripped open beneath him. He was in his late twenties, slightly malnourished, in tattered green robes and strappy sandals. Magical burn scars marked his hands, neck and face. One eye was emerald green. The other was a deep, dark purple with black capillaries where the red should be. On his shoulder sat his squirrel, Mr. Nutters, in a vest and fez, squeaking angrily. Talbot looked for an exit, and the Arbiter told him there wasn’t one.

Talbot had brought a mask too. He wore it for Mr. Nutters, he explained, because it soothed the squirrel. “This man is nuts,” the Grandmaster declared. “Literally, he has to be nuts for us all to like him.” Seth was less charmed and called Talbot “this third-rate something with a fourth-rate squirrel.” The Arbiter apologized: they had lined Seth up against a maniac with a bunch of knives, but he had died earlier that summer. Talbot offered to forfeit. “No forfeiting,” said the Grandmaster. They would fight and find out whether there was any candy inside them, because she had forgotten to buy some for the trick-or-treaters.

A second pumpkin landed whole, turned its crooked smile toward the Grandmaster, and grew until a portal opened in its mouth. The Grandmaster suggested the Arbiter could be a fairy godmother as a side gig. “One day, one day,” he muttered, “you and Doug and all of your friends are gonna go down.”

The Maze

The arena was “a corn maze of a sorts that actually doesn’t have any corn.” It held pumpkin stalls, coffins, dolls, tombstones and a gargoyle statue, and its floors crawled with insects. Its portals worked, the Grandmaster warned, “so hopefully you’re not colorblind.” She vanished in a puff of smoke and reappeared high above. Under her arm was Doug the Pug, propelling himself on green fart gas. She took her seat on a grand skeleton throne, with Doug in his own little nest of bones beside her. The Arbiter spread his great white wings, glowing faintly pumpkin-orange, and joined her.

Talbot struck first, in his own way. He took the glowing orange portal for an exit sign and walked straight into it, and its flames singed his hair. He came out forty feet from Seth and decided not to disappoint him. “You want a taste of my power?” Mr. Nutters fled into the maze. Wind spun around Talbot, and both his eyes ignited into flame. Then he conjured three tiny floating lights. “Behold!” The Grandmaster called the climax “so disappointing.” The lights did reveal that the floor was swarming with spiders and centipedes.

Seth drew five cards from his buckler and grinned. “The first thing I do is play Pot of Greed.” Talbot protested that this was illegal in tournaments now. “Screw the rules, I have money,” Seth replied. He summoned a fey spirit, which dropped a cube of magical darkness over Talbot. The fey was a glowing deer, though the Grandmaster thought it looked more like “a weirdly shaped pickle,” and it was the pickle goat for the rest of the night. Seth set three illusory cards face down on the field and did not move an inch. At the round’s end, Doug leapt from his bones, rolled his plush die and beat the Arbiter yet again. “Every week, week after week, it’s the same fucking thing from this fucking dog,” the Arbiter fumed. “People go missing on Halloween,” he noted. “Doug should be careful.”

Eyes, Fugues and Fingers

The Acolytes called for chaos. Two giant, wet, glowing eyeballs fell from the sky, a voice boomed “My eyes!”, and lasers swept the maze. Seth took a glancing hit. Talbot took the full blast, and his wild magic flared. One eyeball, drawn to his magic, split off to blast him again. Something animalistic took over Talbot then: an instinctual fugue known as “Rage Cage.” He fired a bolt of flame as three red lasers out of the darkness and missed, even after a lucky second try. The crowd, delighted that both champions had bled, granted each of them its favor. Talbot’s instincts kept him away from the face-down cards, so he stepped back through the orange portal and lost an eyebrow. He insisted the look was intentional. The Grandmaster called him “slightly toasted now, like a cute marshmallow.”

Seth strolled down the middle aisle without a single portal, taunting his hiding opponent. “They’re looking for blood, Talbot. I didn’t expect to play the boogeyman when I came here. Come out and play.” When the Arbiter flubbed another roll, a dunce cap appeared on his head and Doug gleefully outrolled him. In a fit of rage, the Arbiter slammed the Box of Chaos onto the field in a column of pink and yellow fire. “Gerald’s not picky.”

Silent and feral, Talbot exhaled a wind across the arena, and the bugs rode it to swarm the pickle goat. He ran for the box. Gerald peered at his floating lights: “What are you supposed to be? Some sort of nightlight?” Talbot had seven fingers on one hand, most likely from a terrible wild magic accident. He cut one off without flinching. Gerald was squeamish at the squirting blood but took it anyway. “I got a leg last week. I’m like three quarters of a full body.” In exchange he handed over the Vorpal Pinkie, a strapped prosthetic finger with a purple-glowing obsidian blade. “I wasn’t using that,” said Talbot.

Meanwhile Doug hopped down, bit a pumpkin and left behind a fart cloud so foul that both champions spent the next stretch fighting with one hand over their faces. The swarm devoured the pickle goat from the hooves up until its two front hooves were skeletal. Seth investigated the pumpkin stalls and found one that was hard, metal and ticking. “This is either a loot box or a grenade, and I found out which one.” His throw went five feet (“I play children’s card games”). A portal singed the corners of his deck, but he had sleeve protectors. He tried to trap Talbot in an illusion. “Finally, I’m unaffected,” said Talbot. At the round’s end, the Grandmaster tossed the Arbiter his own pumpkin, and it exploded in orange dust all over his face.

The Riddle and the Wish

Chaos came again, partly summoned by a champion this time. A creature appeared in smoke high above. It had twelve-foot handless arms, a round white face, hollow black eyes and a lipless grin full of teeth. “What word is three letters, but begins with a T?”

Talbot ignored it, unfurled a whip, swung “fucking Tarzan style” and drop-kicked the deer. Seth teleported to the box, where Gerald peeked out. “Nice duel deck, bro. You play?” Gerald held up a box of Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, Magic and Pokémon cards. Seth offered a Holographic Charizard, then dropped his entire trade binder into the chest. “I can get more.” The Grandmaster told Talbot he should have offered two fingers.

Deep in the back of his own head, the real Talbot had been wandering, looking for an exit. He saw the riddle creature on a sort of screen and screamed “Toe!” With that he woke in his own body, just in time for the creature to crush him for the wrong answer. Seth guessed “tea” and was swatted too. Then Gerald crawled out with his best card, a top-graded card on a golden chain that pictured a ring of three wishes. “I already used two of them.” Seth looked at it, at Talbot, at the creature, and wished to know the answer to the riddle. The card burned to ash with the word written in it. “That’s like using a machine gun on a fly,” marveled the Arbiter.

The Trap Card That Wasn’t

Talbot had had enough. He raced for the purple portal and hurled a Fireball over his shoulder at the explosive pumpkins surrounding Seth, the deer and the riddle creature, to set them off like powder kegs. “You’ve fallen for my trap card!”

It was brilliant, and it failed spectacularly. With a perfect roll, Gerald reached out, yanked Seth into the box and shut the lid. “That was fucking close, but I, you know, you seem like a good guy,” he explained. “I think the real prize here, Gerald, was friendship,” said Seth. “Yeah, and all those cards you gave me.” The deer rolled perfectly too. Talbot’s wild magic struck as well: he aged twenty years mid-throw, and the Fireball sailed far behind Seth. “He’s only 48,” Seth said. “He’s not that old.” The purple portal then made Talbot’s new varicose veins glow and left him in socks and sandals. “Who touched the thermostat?”

Seth answered “Two.” The creature frowned, flipped its head toward Talbot, smashed him with both arms and vanished. Seth’s green portal demanded hello in five languages and half-strangled him with words when he fumbled it. Then the Arbiter called on the arena’s true resident. Dolly sat up out of the ground like a rising corpse, swollen with necrosis and pulsing a green wave of rot. “Do you wanna be my friend?” Seth shrugged off the putrid cloud. Talbot did not. “Put me out of my misery.”

A Pinky Promise

Talbot cracked his back, blamed the weather for his knee, pulled up his sagging socks, made them glow with magic and dashed to face Seth. “I’m not doing great, OK? I was just trying to warm up my coffee.” The plea was a feint to ready his blade, and Seth saw through it. “There are times where one should fight,” Seth answered. “And those times should be every moment and every second of your life. And today you haven’t.” As a final kindness, he summoned his most loyal companion. Egged on by an Acolyte called Turtle Man, it took shape as a white, blue-eyed dragon with a turtle shell. Its breath dropped Talbot to one knee. “We could have been friends in another life.” “Not this one. I don’t need friends. I have card games.”

Talbot raised the Vorpal Pinkie, charged with thunder. “I’m going to give you a pinky promise you’ll never forget.” He missed. He missed again. The Grandmaster wept for him and bent time backward for a heartbeat to give him one more chance. “It’s fine, I picked up a trick or two,” she told the confused Arbiter. “Time magic’s my thing,” he protested. Talbot missed a third time. Seth simply held him off by the head. Talbot shifted the pinky to the middle position. “Just fucking do it.”

“This is a mercy,” said Seth, and ordered the Neutron Blast. Talbot let it take him.

Talbot Cage: “I just wanted to warm up my coffee.”

The Acolytes raised their middle fingers in salute. On the railing, Mr. Nutters shook his head, then took off his fez and held it over his heart as Talbot became a ball of white flame. The dragon bowed to Seth and returned to his cards. “I don’t feel good about that,” Seth admitted. The Grandmaster landed like an asteroid, sending Dolly skittering back down her hole. “You have brought us horror and glory. And that is all we could have asked for. For tonight, we feast on blood.”

Dried Blood

Afterward, both champions offered the Acolytes some wisdom. Seth’s was simple: “I have never settled for failure, and neither should you.” Talbot’s was hard-won. If your coffee ever gets cold, just make it iced coffee. Otherwise, “your wild magic will throw you into a deathmatch and you’ll die.”

Notable Moments

• Talbot cut off one of his seven fingers to pay Gerald and got a vorpal prosthetic pinky in return.
• Seth traded his entire card binder to Gerald, who later saved his life by pulling him into the box.
• Seth used a wish to learn the answer to a riddle.
• Talbot’s pumpkin-bomb Fireball was foiled by back-to-back perfect rolls, then by aging twenty years mid-throw.
• The Grandmaster bent time to give Talbot a final chance, much to the Arbiter’s confusion.
• Mr. Nutters doffed his fez as his master burned.

Memorable Quotes

• Seth Kaiser: “Screw the rules, I have money.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “This man is nuts. Literally, he has to be nuts for us all to like him.”
• Gerald: “I got a leg last week. I’m like three quarters of a full body.”
• The Arbiter: “That’s like using a machine gun on a fly.”
• Talbot Cage: “You’ve fallen for my trap card!”
• Seth Kaiser: “Not this one. I don’t need friends. I have card games.”
• Talbot Cage: “I’m going to give you a pinky promise you’ll never forget.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “You have brought us horror and glory. And that is all we could have asked for.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Talbot Cage (Michael / pthofficial). A wild-magic caster, wizard and sorcerer spells both.

• Pulled into the Void while heating his coffee with magic.
• Appearance:
  • Age 28, aged to 48 mid-fight by wild magic.
  • Malnourished; tattered green robes and strappy sandals, plus socks after the purple portal (one with a toe hole).
  • Magical burn scars.
  • Mismatched eyes: emerald green, and dark purple with black capillaries. Both ignite into flame when he channels power.
  • Hair unwashed for a month. Lost one eyebrow and some hair to the orange portal.
• Hands: seven fingers on one hand, from a wild-magic accident. He cut one off for Gerald and received the Vorpal Pinkie.
• “Rage Cage”: an instinctual fugue state triggered by the magic damage. Normal Talbot wanders “inside the back of his head” during it. In his words, he usually “black[s] out” and comes back to everyone dead.
• Companion: Mr. Nutters, the squirrel.
• Gear and spells: a blade and a whip. Dancing Lights, Fire Bolt, Infestation (twinned), Fireball, Expeditious Retreat, Booming Blade. Three luck points, all used.
• Death: burned to death by Seth’s white dragon after choosing to fail the save.

Mr. Nutters. Talbot’s squirrel. He wears a vest and a fez, wanted his coffee heated, and is calmed by Talbot’s mask. He fled into the maze early. At the end he watched from the railing and took off his hat over his chest as Talbot died.

Seth Kaiser (Rogue / rogueexmachina). A self-described duelist who traveled “across dimensions” seeking a challenge.

• White studded coat with a big K logo; mossy mullet/K-pop hair; perfect posture.
• His rune buckler holds his card deck, from which he “plays” spells:
  • Pot of Greed
  • Summon Fey (the “pickle goat” deer)
  • face-down “trap” cards
  • Phantasmal Force
  • Benign Transposition
  • Summon Draconic Spirit (a white, blue-eyed, turtle-shelled dragon, his “most loyal companion,” which returns into his cards)
  • Silvery Barbs
• Card collector: sleeve protectors, a trade binder, a Holographic Charizard. He gave his whole binder to Gerald and became Gerald’s friend.
• Athletics −1 (“I play children’s card games”). “I don’t need friends. I have card games.”
• Used a wish (from Gerald’s ring-of-three-wishes card) to learn the riddle’s answer. He won, and the GM then blew him up with the ticking pumpkin (if he was the recipient).

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Threw the masquerade pre-party party. Invited the Acolytes, “buttheads” and Kristen, but not the Arbiter.
• Sits on a skeleton throne with Doug.
• Used time magic to give Talbot advantage (“I picked up a trick or two”).
• Lands “like an asteroid,” which scares Dolly off.
• Gave the winner the exploding pumpkin.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Wore a mask for an unexplained reason of his own.
• Calls his job “being a prisoner.”
• Threatened Thomas’s family and Doug.
• Lost to Doug’s roll twice, and got a dunce cap.
• Has giant white wings. Slammed the Box of Chaos down in a rage. Summoned Dolly.
• “Time magic’s my thing.”

Doug the Pug. The GM’s pug. He flies on green fart gas, nests in bones and rolls a D20 plush, beating the Arbiter (19). His fart cloud made both champions one-handed for a round.

Thomas the Goblin. The GM’s goblin, apparently handling invitations. He threw away the Arbiter’s invite; he “loves everyone” except the Arbiter.

Gerald (voiced by Mudcat). Lives in the Box of Chaos; he has shadowy hands and yellow eyes.

• Squeamish about blood.
• Collects trading cards: a box of Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, Magic and Pokémon.
• “Oh, I love making deals.”
• Received a finger (Talbot) and a trade binder (Seth). Gave out the Vorpal Pinkie and the used ring-of-wishes card.
• Saved Seth from the Fireball by pulling him into the box because “you seem like a good guy.”
• Says he got a leg last week (“three quarters of a full body”).

The riddle creature / “slender man grinning riddle creature” (Caustic Phoenix). Chaos event: a lipless, toothy, hollow-eyed figure with 12-ft handless arms.

• Its word was “two.”
• It smashes wrong guessers and crushed the loser after Seth answered correctly. It vanished afterward.

Dolly (Mudcat). A giant necrotic doll that rises from the ground like a corpse and emits a putrid green cloud. She has porcelain eyes and asks “Do you wanna be my friend?”

• “Dolly returns to the arena,” so she has appeared before.
• She calls out “One candy!” and fled from the Grandmaster into her hole.

The giant eyeballs. Chaos event: “My eyes!” They fire laser damage and are drawn to magic.

Kristen: “one person named Kristen,” an invited guest who is also addressed in the Dried Blood sign-off alongside the Acolytes and the buttheads.

Turtle Man: a crowd member (likely a chat viewer) screaming for blood; Seth’s dragon got its turtle shell from him.

The knife maniac: Seth’s planned opponent, who “died earlier this summer.”

Places

• The Dread Fortress: entered through the open mouth of the orc skull with fiery eyes, with cool stone halls.
• The Dread Fortress ballroom: the masquerade pre-party.
• The Halloween maze arena:
  • Pumpkin stalls, one with a metal ticking pumpkin.
  • Coffins, dolls, tombstones, gems, and floors covered in spiders, centipedes, fleas and cockroaches.
  • A large gargoyle statue.
  • Dolly’s hole.
  • Portals, all of which damage you. Orange: fire; singes hair. Purple: tongue-twister “Purple Portal”; purple damage. Green: say hello in five languages or be suffocated by words.
• The grandstands, with the GM’s grand skeleton throne and Doug’s bone nest.

Items

• The Vorpal Pinkie: a strapped prosthetic finger with an obsidian, purple-glowing vorpal blade.
• Gerald’s PSA 10 card on a golden chain, picturing a ring of three wishes. It held one remaining wish, used and burned to ash.
• Seth’s rune buckler/deck and trade binder (Holographic Charizard), now with Gerald.
• The Arbiter’s portal pumpkins; the ticking pumpkin bomb; the dunce cap; the D20 plush.
• Talbot’s mask and Mr. Nutters’ vest and fez.

Lore statements

• Halloween is celebrated in the Void with a masquerade and seasonal music.
• The Arbiter calls himself a prisoner whose job is to bring entertainment.
• The Grandmaster can bend time a little (“picked up a trick or two”); the Arbiter considers time magic his thing.
• Gerald can be befriended and will intervene to protect someone he likes.
• Champions can arrive through “an interdimensional lift” via the Arbiter’s pumpkin portals.
• Dolly is a recurring arena presence that “calls this playground home.”

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the masquerade pre-party party (Dread Fortress)

1. 0:01:38 “Happy Halloween.” The Acolytes fly back into the Dread Fortress through the open mouth of the orc skull, its eyes ablaze with fire. Inside, the stone is cool to the touch. “Weird, rocky, bluesy music only heard this time of year” plays. The Arbiter follows the sound and peeks into the ballroom.
2. 0:02:32 It is “the masquerade pre-party party, obviously.” The Arbiter never got an invite. The Grandmaster asks Thomas the Goblin whether he sent it. Later she explains that Thomas threw it in the trash: “Turns out Thomas doesn’t like you… You should take it personally, because Thomas loves everyone.”
3. 0:02:46 The Arbiter is already wearing a mask. He says it isn’t for the party: “This was just something I was doing… Don’t worry about it.” The GM: “no one wants to look at your hideous face anymore… you also don’t like to see your face in the mirror. I know this.”
4. 0:03:09 The Arbiter complains that she scheduled a party on deathmatch night and asks who is “paying for all the streamers.” The GM has invited “all of the acolytes and some buttheads and one person named Kristen.” The Acolytes wear a myriad of Halloween masks.
5. 0:04:23 The Arbiter: “Someday Thomas’s entire family will die suddenly and tragically.” Then:
   • Pikachu zaps the Arbiter (“God damn it!”).
   • A wolf howls.
   • There are pixel-art costumes, and a moose that is just the top half of Bullwinkle.
6. 0:05:03 The entertainment is “my entire job here. That being a prisoner.”
7. 0:05:15 — The champions arrive. The Arbiter materializes a giant pumpkin and throws it into the center of the ballroom. It splatters, and the magical pieces form a portal in the floor. The two champions rise up from “some sort of interdimensional lift below the stage.” “Talbot Cage versus Seth Kaiser!”
8. 0:06:08 — Seth Kaiser’s entrance.
   • He is a tall man “with posture that could make the gods envy.”
   • He wears a long, clean white coat, studded in places that probably should not be naturally studded. It is covered in logos, chiefly a large K “from his namesake”.
   • On his arm is a strange buckler anointed with ornate runes.
   • His hair is mossy and long, “somewhere between a mullet and a weird K-pop thing.”
   • “My name is Seth Kaiser. I’ve come a long way to challenge myself. To really test the merit of my skills as a duelist… And that’s all I’ve got.”
9. 0:07:22 — Talbot Cage’s entrance. He was heating up his coffee with his magic when a portal ripped open.
   • A squirrel, Mr. Nutters, sits on his shoulder squeaking angrily (“use the magic, use the magic”).
   • Talbot is slightly malnourished and in his mid-to-late 20s.
   • He wears tattered green robes that need a wash, and strappy sandals.
   • Magical burn scars mark his hands, neck and face.
   • His eyes don’t match: one is deep emerald green; the other is a horrifying deep dark purple with black capillaries instead of red.
   • His hair is a mess, unwashed for about a month.
   • He is extremely confused and looks for an exit.
   • The reply comes from the host side (labeled 01, inferred to be the Arbiter): “There’s no exit. You’ve been summoned for the Deathmatch. You are going to stay here and you will fight.”
10. 0:09:22 The GM notes that Talbot brought a mask too. He wears it “for Mr. Nutters. It calms him and soothes him,” and the squirrel nuzzles under his chin. Mr. Nutters wears a vest and a fez. The GM: “This man is nuts. Literally, he has to be nuts for us all to like him.” The Arbiter: “the only way out is in a body bag.” The GM removes her mask to stare Talbot down and makes him say “Yes, ma’am” again “with more gusto.”
11. 0:10:38 Seth is insulted: “This third-rate something with a fourth-rate squirrel?” The Arbiter apologizes. They “had you lined up to fight against a maniac with a bunch of knives, but unfortunately he died earlier this summer.”
12. 0:11:12 Talbot offers to forfeit. The GM: “No forfeiting.” They will fight “and discover if there’s any candy hiding inside either of you because I forgot to buy some for the trick-or-treaters.” Their entrails will be “given out as gifts to all the acolyte kitties.”
13. 0:11:48 — The pumpkin portal. The Arbiter “bibbidi-bobbidi-boos” them out. A second pumpkin lands without breaking and turns its crooked smile toward the Grandmaster. It grows until an orange light shines from its mouth and a portal rips open. They walk through the mouth to eerie, festive music. The GM suggests he could be a fairy godmother as a side gig. The Arbiter: “One day, one day, you and Doug and all of your friends are gonna go down.”
14. 0:12:51 — The arena. The GM calls it “a spooky little hideout of our own” with gems, creepy crawlies and scares. Its portals work, “so hopefully you’re not colorblind.” It is “a corn maze of a sorts that actually doesn’t have any corn.” “Not everything is a prop in our maze.”
15. 0:13:19 The GM throws a smoke bomb. She reappears high in the air with Doug the Pug under her arm, propelling himself on green fart gas. Up above:

• The Acolytes wear masks of dogs, monsters, goblins, ghouls and “a few moose, meeses.”
• “Halloween elicits a special energy in all of us.”
• She sits on a grand skeleton throne, with Doug in his own little nest of bones beside her.

16. 0:14:35 The champions roll placement. Both roll fours twice; “for the sake of funds” the Arbiter places them himself.
17. 0:15:56 “ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!” The Arbiter spreads his giant white wings, glowing with a faint orange pumpkin hue, and joins the GM. Talbot 6, Seth 5: “throwing out those tombstones early on.”

Round 1

18. 0:16:58 — Talbot looks for the exit. He tells Mr. Nutters they’ll leave as soon as they find the exit. He walks into the orange portal, assuming the glow is an exit sign. The orange flames singe “the top of your puppy dog hair.” He beats at it like Marv (“Oh God, ah!”). The GM: “I see you’re maneuvering quite quickly towards your opponent. Brave, you actually are.”
19. 0:19:09 Talbot comes out 40 ft from Seth, beside a table of pumpkins. He doesn’t want to disappoint him: “You want a taste of my power?”

• Mr. Nutters panics, runs down his body and off into the maze.
• A violent wind spins around Talbot. His green and purple eyes ignite into flames, with flame bits around him “very Goku style.”
• Then he casts Dancing Lights: three little lights float in his hand. “Yeah, what are you going to do now, Bal? Huh?… Behold!”
• The GM: “The climax was so disappointing.”
• The lights reveal small spiders and centipedes covering the floor and rocks.

20. 0:21:42 — Seth’s deck. “I’m glad that you decided to face me down.”

• The buckler is too oddly shaped to defend with. Its attached blade is too dull to be a weapon, and a deck of cards is attached to it.
• He draws five cards and grins. “The first thing I do is play Pot of Greed,” and he draws two more from the shield.
• Talbot: “Isn’t that illegal?… in tournaments, you can’t do that anymore.” Seth: “Screw the rules, I have money.” Talbot: “His dad owns this.”

21. 0:22:56 “I summon a Fae to the field”: he casts Summon Fey (tricksy). The fey drops a 5-ft cube of magical darkness around Talbot (“a very oddly accurate cube”).

• The fey spirit is a glowing deer. The GM says it looks like a goat or “a weirdly shaped pickle… the butt is very light green.” This starts the running “pickle goat” / “pickled deer” gag.
• Seth then sets three illusory cards face down on the field. He doesn’t move: “I haven’t been goaded into moving yet.”

22. 0:25:02 — Doug wins again. The Arbiter’s end-of-round d20 is 9. Doug the Pug leaps out of his bone pile, femurs flying, and rolls his D20 plush for a 19. The Arbiter: “Every week, week after week, it’s the same fucking thing from this fucking dog… People go missing on Halloween.” GM: “Is that a threat?” “No, it’s just a factoid. Doug should be careful.”

Chaos event: the giant eyeballs (0:25:47)

23. The Acolytes “have already summoned the first chaos” (“Chaos!”). The GM’s “new favorite one, inspired by one of my favorite people, myself”:

• Two giant glowing orbs fall from the sky, wet and dark. They are two huge eyeballs. A voice booms “My eyes!” and they fire lasers.
• Seth saves (5 damage) and Talbot fails (9). “Laser damage is unique here,” so no one resists it.

24. 0:28:34 — Wild magic. Inside his darkness cube, the laser hits Talbot’s shoulder. When Talbot takes damage he rolls for chaotic magic. The roll is under 50: “It is not A-OK.” One eyeball splits off, drawn to his magic, and blasts him for 8 more. “You’ve drawn the eye of magic.”
25. 0:30:14 — Rage Cage. After the two lasers, his eyes glow their two colors and something “animalistic, instinctual” takes over. Talbot becomes what Michael calls “Rage Cage,” a full-instinct fugue state. He fires Fire Bolt as three red lasers out of the darkness and misses. He burns a luck point (“this is my opening statement”), but the reroll misses too.
26. 0:32:21 The crowd sees that both champions have bled, and grants each a hero point. The GM gets “a little worked up.”
27. 0:33:06 Talbot’s body “knows” not to go near the face-down cards, so he steps back through the orange portal. It singes off one eyebrow. The GM: he looks like “one of those cool, like partially emo… kids.” Talbot: it looks intentional, “styling it slowly through walking through portals.” GM: “slightly toasted now, like a cute marshmallow.”

Round 2

28. 0:34:36 Seth is confident and hasn’t lifted a finger. He strides down the middle aisle without using portals, slow-walking. “Do you hear them, Talbot? You ran away, but I’m sure you can still hear them. They’re looking for blood, Talbot.” Talbot stays hunched like a beast. Seth: “I didn’t expect to play the boogeyman when I came here. Come out and play.”
29. 0:36:00 The fey moves and fey-steps 30 ft toward Talbot. Seth: “I’m plotting a few things.” The Arbiter mishears: “Clotting. I like it.”
30. 0:37:08 — The dunce cap. The Arbiter’s end-of-round roll is terrible. A dunce cap appears out of thin air on his head, and Doug “quite gleefully” outrolls him again.
31. 0:38:00 — The Box of Chaos. “In a fit of rage” the Arbiter slams the Box of Chaos onto the field. Pink and yellow fire shoots up in a column. GM: “He’s overcompensating.” Make a sacrifice for a magic item: “Any sacrifice will do… Gerald’s not picky.”

Round 3

32. 0:38:49 — Infestation. Silent, using his senses, Talbot exhales a wind through the whole arena. The spiders, centipedes and fleas skitter along with it. He casts Infestation, twinned, but Seth is out of range. So he runs toward the box while the bugs swarm the deer.
33. 0:40:45 — The finger. Shadowy fingers claw out of the box. Gerald, eyeing the dancing lights: “What are you supposed to be? Some sort of nightlight?”

• Talbot has seven fingers on one hand, “probably from a terrible wild magic accident.”
• He cuts one off with his blade without flinching and offers it.
• GM: “Brought his own homegrown fingers.” Then “Free range fingers.”
• Gerald: “I got a leg last week. I’m like three quarters of a full body.”
• Gerald closes his eyes, squeamish at the blood squirting out, but takes the finger and vanishes into the rumbling box.

34. 0:42:57 — Doug’s fart. While the Arbiter looks up the item, Doug hops down, bites a pumpkin, brings it back up and leaves a cloud of farts. Both champions fail their saves (“I could not break like 10 tonight”). The smell infests clothes, hair and tongue, “almost vomit inducing.” For the next round both are one-handed, the other hand covering nose and mouth. Talbot holds his nose with “my bloody hand that still has six fingers on it… I got a couple extras.”
35. 0:44:07 — The Vorpal Pinkie. Gerald floats over a prosthetic pinky with a strap across the hand. Its blade is obsidian black with a purplish glow: a Vorpal Pinkie (a vorpal sword “made a pinkie for the fun”). It replaces the lost finger: “a tiny switchblade that sticks in.” Talbot: “I wasn’t using that.”
36. 0:45:13 The twinned Infestation hits the deer. It passes its save, but the Arbiter rules half damage “for the sake of this battle.” The centipedes, fleas and cockroaches devour the “electric-looking pickle deer” from the hooves up. Its two front hooves turn skeletal, with the gnawed flesh rotting. GM: “Rotting flesh is not exactly a go-to for Vogue magazine these days.”
37. 0:47:56 — Seth sends the deer back. He commands the deer away to draw the swarm off, then sends it down the aisle back toward Talbot, the infestation slowly following.
38. 0:48:38 — The ticking pumpkin. Seth investigates the pumpkin stalls. He knocks on them “like Karens” do. One is hard and metal, and its top twists. GM: “A 360 twist around with the stem?” This starts the “old pumpkin twist” gag (“It’s her favorite move”). He hears ticking. “This is either a loot box or a grenade, and I found out which one.” He throws it, but his Athletics is −1 (“I play children’s card games”), so it lands five feet away.
39. 0:51:05 Seth goes north through a portal and takes 3 damage. The corners of his deck singe, so he looks “like you’re not a new player.” “I have sleeve protectors, it’s okay.” (Transcribed “sleep protectors.”) The Arbiter: “send those things to PSA, get them graded.”
40. 0:52:17 From around the corner Seth sees Talbot’s back (Talbot is facing the box). He casts Phantasmal Force at 2nd level. Talbot saves (19) and is unaffected. Talbot: “Finally, I’m unaffected.” (Table: Seth’s camera went dark; “No dual casting here today.”)
41. 0:54:08 — Pumpkin to the face. The Arbiter’s end-of-round roll is 17. The GM jabs that he hasn’t been rolling well. He threatens her with “the old 360 pumpkin stem twist.”

• She tosses him his own pumpkin, and it explodes in a poof of orange dust all over his face.
• He tries “I cast shield.” She replies: “That mask has holes in it… I cast silence on you. I’m the DM. Anything I say goes.”

42. 0:55:24 The Arbiter has to go to the bathroom after “a big lemonade.” The GM says he also drank “all that pickle juice from the pickle goat.” “Free pickle slushies at the pickle goat during halftime, everyone.” The Arbiter: “It’s not a pickle goat… It’s a deer.” Then: “It is a pickle goat.” (Break cut.)

Chaos event: the three-letter word (0:55:58)

43. “In a rare case, not only have the Acolytes, but a champion themself has done much to summon chaos.” A faint chant rises from one end of the stands (“Chant, chant… Words, words, words”).
44. 0:56:47 A creature appears in a puff of smoke, perched high above.

• It has long spindly arms and legs. The 12-ft arms have no hands, and it balances on the points where fingers and toes should be.
• It has a round white face, a toothy grin of many sharp teeth, hollow black eyes and no lips.
• It pokes its sticks down at their toes. “Let us see if you can read my mind. What word is three letters, but begins with a T? And whoever guess will not make an enemy of me.”
• It stays until it gets the answer it wants. A wrong guess earns a light blow from a pointed arm.

Round 4

45. 0:58:59 — The whip. Still in the fugue, Talbot ignores the riddle. He unfurls his whip (“pulling a Castlevania”) and moves toward the pickled deer. He wraps the whip around a big gargoyle statue to pull it down on the summon.

• The whip catches, but the Strength check fails, even after another luck point.
• So he swings “fucking Tarzan style” and drop-kicks the deer for a hit (22), pushing it about five feet to clear a line to its master.
• The deer goes “[bleat]”; GM: “I don’t know what deer sounds are.” “It’s a dying one.”

46. 0:63:55 — Gerald and the trade binder. Chat screams three-letter T words at Seth. He uses Benign Transposition to teleport 30 ft to the Box of Chaos.

• Gerald peeks out with yellow eyes: “Nice duel deck, bro. You play?”
• Reply, speaker uncertain (inferred Seth): “I invented a duel deck. Do you?” (likely “duel disk”).
• Gerald holds up an entire box of Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, Magic and Pokémon cards.
• Seth: “we should probably exchange socials.” He pulls a trade binder from his coat. Gerald: “You got foils in there, bro?”
• Seth offers the Holographic Charizard, then drops the entire binder into the chest. Gerald: “That’s like a million dollars worth of cards.” Seth: “I can get more.”
• The GM to Talbot: “you should have offered two fingers… Why grow them if you’re not willing to give them up?”

47. 0:67:07 As the box rumbles, the smiling beast’s arms extend further, “as if there is no place that it cannot reach.” Before the round ends each champion gets one guess.
48. 0:68:12 — Talbot comes back. Inside the fugue, “from the darkness inside the back of his head,” the normal Talbot wanders, calling out for an exit. He hears the crashes of the fight “outside my body” and sees the creature on a kind of video screen. He screams from the void: “Toe!” (spelled T-O-E). The fugue state ends and Talbot is back in his own body.

• It’s wrong. The jaw drops, the arm rises and widens, and it crashes down on him (failed save).
• “Each time you are incorrect, it will land another leg down upon you.”

49. 0:70:51 It turns to Seth, teeth “dripping wet.” Seth (labeled 03, inferred Seth) guesses “T-E-A.” Also wrong; another arm drops on him for a single point.
50. 0:71:30 — The ring card. Fire with no heat shoots from the box. Gerald crawls out: “I did some digging… I found the best card in my collection.”

• It is a PSA 10 graded card on a golden chain, and he hangs it around Seth’s neck.
• It pictures a ring, and the description reads: a ring of three wishes.
• Gerald: “I already used two of them. You got a used [one]. It’s still a pretty cool card, right?” One wish spell; “you may not like the results.”

51. 0:72:44 — The wish. Seth looks at the card, at Talbot, at the tormenting creature: “I wish to know the answer to this riddle.” “It’s just out of spite right now.” The card burns from his hand, leaving the word in the ashes (sent to him privately over Discord). The Arbiter: “you hand a guy a wish spell and he wants to know the answer to a riddle… That’s like using a machine gun on a fly.” Seth smiles at Talbot: “I’ll hang on to this for a minute.”
52. 0:74:14 The Arbiter’s end-of-round roll is 13: “rather close, but not quite.”

Round 5 — the trap card that wasn’t

53. 0:74:44 Talbot: “Usually when I black out, I come back and everybody’s dead and there’s… crazy shit happening.” Not today. “Fuck this.”

• He runs for the purple portal, conjures a mote, says “good luck” over his shoulder, and spends his hero point on a Fireball.
• He aims it at the explosive pumpkins around the riddle monster, the pickled deer and Seth, to set them off “like lighting a bunch of powder kegs” as he dives through.
• “You’ve fallen for my trap card!”

54. 0:76:48 — Gerald saves his friend. On a nat 20, before anything else goes off, Gerald reaches out with his shadowy hands, pulls Seth into the box and shuts the lid. Gerald: “That was fucking close, but I, you know, you seem like a good guy.” Seth: “I think the real prize here, Gerald, was friendship.” Gerald: “Yeah, and all those cards you gave me.” The box throws him back out.

• The deer also rolls a nat 20 (“back-to-back Nat 20s”). The GM: “I’m so mad for Talbot… quite possibly the most brilliant move of the evening.”

55. 0:77:59 — Wild magic: aged twenty years. “There’s only one explanation why this didn’t work… It’s that wild magic, baby.” Talbot is 28. The roll makes him 48.

• As he throws the Fireball, “the aching joints… the back pains of your 30s” set in. It lands way behind Seth and the whole horizon explodes “anime like Dragon Ball Z.” It misses.
• Seth: “I don’t know if I can fight Talbot. I just feel bad now. He’s only 48. He’s not that old.”

56. 0:79:41 — The purple portal. “Say Purple Portal 10 times fast without error.” He starts “terribly” and nails it on the second try (“The second try doesn’t count”). He takes 3 “purple damage.” It seeps into his blood, and his new varicose veins glow bright purple.

• Michael adds that he came out the other side wearing socks with his sandals, with a hole in one toe.
• Talbot: “Who touched the thermostat?”

57. 0:81:23 — “Two.” Seth looks up at “the slender man grinning riddle creature”: “Two. T-W-O.” Correct. Its grin turns to a frown and its head flips all the way over to Talbot. It raises both arms and smashes down on him (half damage on a save). Then it disappears. The GM: “It was not a riddle… it was just like the game of hangman.”
58. 0:83:05 — The green portal. Seth dismisses the fey and takes the green portal: “say hello to me in five different languages or you will take damage. Three, two, one, go.”

• “Bonjour. Hello. Konichiwa. Hello, hey.” It takes too long.
• Words and languages wrap around him, trying to suffocate him (1 damage). “The linguists hate you.”
• He walks slowly toward Talbot; he can’t see him to cast.

59. 0:84:36 — Dolly returns. The Arbiter “just needed four” and summons “the great being that belongs here… who calls this playground home.” “It’s been a while.”

• “With a twist”: a doll sits up out of the ground like a corpse rising. It grows larger, covered in necrosis, and radiates a green wave of energy. “Dolly returns to the arena.”
• She asks: “Do you wanna be my friend?” Her head twists toward them as if she could see through the walls.
• Seth rolls a nat 20; Talbot fails and takes 18 necrotic from the putrid cloud. Talbot: “Put me out of my misery.”

Round 6

60. 0:86:42 Talbot cracks his back. He feels “that old knee pain… It’s the weather, sorry.” He casts Expeditious Retreat: he pulls up the socks slipping down his legs, and they glow with magic. He dashes across the map to face Seth (“Make that sexy eye contact”). The Grandmaster waves the movement through.
61. 0:88:57 — The plea. “Hey, look, I’m not doing great, OK?… I’m not even supposed to be here. I was just trying to warm up my coffee. It got a little cold and boom, I’m here… my magic is a little crazy. What do we just call this thing, man?”

• Seth: “I honestly haven’t even done anything to you.”
• Talbot: “me and you, we don’t have to fight for their amusement, right?” It’s deception, not persuasion; he is readying his vorpal pinky.
• Both roll badly, but Seth sees through the deception.

62. 0:90:33 The Acolytes scream “not for chocolate, not for Starburst, but for blood.” They want “intestines and hearts and gallbladders.” The GM assumes he has extras, like the fingers. Talbot: “I probably have two or three, to be honest.”
63. 0:90:58 — Seth’s verdict. “There are times where one should fight. And those times should be every moment and every second of your life. And today you haven’t. No, today, today you just suffered. So I will give you one bit of mercy. I will give you one final kindness. You will bear witness to my most loyal companion!”
64. 0:92:17 — The dragon. He casts Summon Draconic Spirit. Up in the crowd, “a man named Turtle Man” screams for blood. The summon becomes a white dragon with vibrant blue eyes and a turtle shell.

• His hero point upcasts it; a great spell-attack roll (27) gets it to effectively 8th level (“I’m still gonna be somewhat kind to Talbot”).
• Its breath weapon catches Talbot (failed save): his back is blast-scorched and his clothes are in tatters, and he drops to one knee.
• Talbot: “We could have been friends in another life.” Seth: “Not this one. I don’t need friends. I have card games.”

65. 0:96:05 Dolly stands, plastic creaking and feet stomping. The centipedes and cockroaches scatter. She moves ten feet closer and peeks around the corner, fists in the air, her smile turning to a frown, porcelain eyes narrowing.
66. 0:96:52 — Silvery Barbs. Both make Con saves against Dolly. Seth casts Silvery Barbs on Talbot: Talbot’s 24 becomes a 9, and Seth gains advantage. Dolly screams “One candy!” Talbot: “You son of a bitch.” Dolly’s cloud is fading and “your nostrils are becoming accustomed.”

Round 7 — the pinky promise

67. 0:98:51 “We’re out of round cards, so hurry.” Talbot knows it’s over. He charges the Vorpal Pinkie with Booming Blade, energy swirling around it, and holds it up: “Well… I guess it’s come to this.”

• Miss. He burns his last luck point: “I’m going to give you a pinky promise you’ll never forget.” Miss again.
• “The Grandmaster weeps for you. One last try. Third time’s a charm.” She grants advantage “as if time goes backwards for a hot second.” The Arbiter looks at her, confused. She: “It’s fine, I picked up a trick or two.” Arbiter: “Time magic’s my thing.”
• It misses a third time.

68. 0:101:07 Seth barely leans as Talbot swipes (“I’m gonna get ya”). He puts a hand on Talbot’s head and holds him aside. Talbot shifts the pinky to the middle position, holds it up: “Just fucking do it.”
69. 0:101:41 — The kill. Seth: “At this point. This is a mercy. And… Blue Eyes [White] Dragon, Neutron Blast.” (“Dracarys!” from the table.)

• Talbot chooses to fail the save. Giving Seth the vorpal finger, he says: “I just wanted to warm up my coffee.”
• The Acolytes raise their middle fingers in solidarity and salute him.

70. 0:102:59 — Talbot’s death (described by Michael).

• The blue and white flames engulf him in slow motion and his arm drops.
• He sees the crowd’s raised fingers: “this poor guy never had a chance.”
• Mr. Nutters stands on the railing, arms crossed, disappointed, shaking his head. Then he takes his hat off and holds it over his chest.
• Whiteness surrounds Talbot, and he becomes “no more than a ball of flame.”

71. 0:104:00 The dragon gives its final breath, turns to Seth, bows low and disappears back into cards in his deck. Seth: “I don’t feel good about that.”
72. 0:104:21 — The Grandmaster lands. “Pay no mind!” Her wings open and she lands with a thud like an asteroid. Dolly, frightened of her, skitters back down her hole.

• “You have brought us horror and glory. And that is all we could have asked for.”
• The Acolytes lower their middle fingers and raise their hands in celebration. “For tonight, we feast on blood.”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character (canon, Dried Blood)

• Seth Kaiser’s advice (Rogue calls it a parody): “I have never settled for failure, and neither should you.” (1:56:45)
• Talbot’s advice: “If your coffee ever gets cold, just make it iced coffee. Don’t try to warm it up anymore.” Also: “Cold brews are better anyway… Your wild magic will throw you into a deathmatch and you’ll die. So just don’t do it. Just iced coffee is fine.” (1:57:19–1:58:05)
  • A leg last week, a finger today, and now cards.
  • “Blood, soul. Somebody offered their hero point once.”
  • “A vampire’s teeth, but just their wisdom teeth, not the cool sharp teeth.”
  • Mudcat: “Gerald’s building a golem down there probably out of like decaying body parts.” Delivered as a joke; not stated as fact.

Out-of-character (creator notes)

• Cast: Michael, “Mike the Bard… The Battle Bard Mike,” recently renamed, plays Talbot. Rogue Ex Machina is returning. He had been in the live show, where he played “a bard who was by himself” and was “completely obliterated by Teach.” This was his first time on “an actual show.”
• Talbot’s build is a multiclass designed around wild magic. Mudcat kept waiting to use the wild magic table and never needed to: “you brought your own wild magic.”
• Michael: in PvP, no party is there to pull you out of a bad-roll spiral.
• Caustic Phoenix praised the creative play. The pumpkin-bomb Fireball was “a brilliant play… you remembered things in the map.” Mudcat “wanted to reward that so much, but… you got to honor the 20s.”
• Rogue planned traps: pumpkin bombs, illusions, rigging portals. Most of his spells were built to mess with rolls, and he rarely needed them.
• Mudcat compared it to Michael Myers stalking a cowardly victim (“I jumped into the wood chipper”). Rogue compared it to Dead by Daylight.
• Rogue: his characters in both his games with the show “become best friends [with] Gerald.” Mudcat: “Gerald can be befriended.”
• Michael gave the finger because he had watched the episode where someone gave a leg. Extra fingers fit Talbot’s “crazy fucking magic.”
• A post-show roll of the vorpal attack came up 14: it would have hit, but not as a vorpal kill. Mudcat joked that Mr. Nutters “wouldn’t be able to take his hat off, though.”
• Michael hopes to return, “maybe I’m just the guy you bring in to… just obliterate.” Mudcat made the community-college homecoming joke.
• Michael’s real advice: don’t cheat the dice; “Fail hard, fail up.” Rogue’s: “be unapologetically you.”