S4E5 — Toxicity — Toocher the Toxic v Sho Nin

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A trash-talking frog wrestler met a 15-year-old anime hero in an abandoned steampunk town, and the result was one of the strangest fights of the Shadow King’s reign. Toocher the Toxic brought poison skin and pro-wrestling theatrics. Sho Nin brought a mysterious inner wind and a truly cursed run of luck. Along the way, both champions’ butt cheeks turned into butterfly wings, the harbor turned to acid, and the crowd started wearing red scarves.

The Story

Taxes at the Fortress

The night began with the Grandmaster clacking down the stone halls of The Dread Fortress and bursting into a “very dank and musty throne room.” Inside, The Shadow King sat buried in paperwork, “as if a tornado came through and decided to vomit every high school notebook.” He was attempting the taxes for the first time in his life.

“What is it, 1099?” he asked. Elusia reminded him that he had always made “some poor intern do the taxes at your tower.” He was unbothered. “It can’t be that hard. Vythorn did it. Although I will say most of his writing here is in symbols. Does he know how to read?” Elusia pointed out that Vythorn had done their taxes for years, and would have done them again “until you decided to off him.”

The Shadow King had sorted the receipts by size and thrown half of them on the floor. Elusia’s hair visibly grew wider at the thought of redoing it all. She handed the papers to the goblin employees Heather and Tophne and pulled the Shadow King to his feet to watch something better than 1099s. “Well, after last week, I’m open to it,” he said.

Elusia clenched the amulet around her neck. Blood dripped from it, and her palms and fingers were scarred from doing this many times before. A portal as clear as still water opened, and two champions stepped through.

The Battle Before the Battle

The insults started at once. “I’m Toocher the Toxic, and I’m here to make sure that you don’t leave this pit alive,” the grung announced, calling his rival “Sho Nin Pootagonist.” Sho Nin suggested he crawl back to the sewer he came from. Toocher promised to send him “crying back to Senpai.” When Sho Nin rated Toocher’s power level “like a three,” the frog snapped back, “this is over 9,000, biatch.” The Grandmaster assured them that, as in all anime, “you can defeat people with the power of friendship. And also swords.” The Shadow King offered his own guarantee:

“I promise you, you’ll learn a lesson today. I don’t know if it’ll be any good.” — The Shadow King

As the arena portal opened, Toocher gave Sho Nin a “friendly” tap on the shoulder that landed a little too hard. “We’re partners in this thing,” he said, like a veteran wrestler briefing a rookie backstage. “I think you might have what it takes to be a star. So don’t mess up tonight.” Under cover of the pep talk he slipped into the boy’s thoughts. Behind Sho Nin’s confident front he found deep self-doubt and a sense of unworthiness, and a mind overwhelmed by the grandeur around him. (“Also probably fire.”) “The battle begins before the battle itself,” the Grandmaster noted approvingly.

Sho Nin struck back without knowing it. He shouldered past to be first through the portal and, with a perfect natural 20, stuck out a foot that sent Toocher triple-somersaulting into the dirt. Sho Nin strolled out of the dust cloud “as if you’ve walked through an explosion looking majestic and powerful.” Toocher picked himself up, rubbing a scraped knee, while The Acolytes asked, “Who is this new person? Have they never walked before?”

Into the Arena

The arena was “one of my favorite little playgrounds,” the Grandmaster said: a tiny, long-abandoned steampunk city of docks, crates, boats, bridges and trinkets. “By the end of it, I want nothing left, including your opponent.” She took to the sky on black wings while a small dog yapped somewhere in the background, to the Shadow King’s disgust.

Sho Nin still couldn’t say his opponent’s name (“Too, Too, Toocher, Tootcher, Tiddy, Tutor, Truder? What are you?”). Toocher explained that he was a grung. His parents were both frogs, giving him “100% pure big frog energy,” and his tragic egg-hatched backstory was long: “It’ll require several flashbacks.” “This isn’t a Nat Geo episode!” the Grandmaster shouted. The Shadow King offered Toocher a job as the new sign guy if he lived.

Sho Nin went first and ignored his opponent completely. He backed into a rusty crane to look for trinkets, and the whole thing toppled onto his legs. He decided to stay there. “That whole moment is perfect as it is.” Toocher bounded onto the fallen crane, scarf fluttering. He wore only pants, a shield and a flamboyant red scarf (“for a statement”). He dropped an elbow into Sho Nin’s chest. Blood spurted from the boy’s mouth, and the grung’s poisonous skin left a burning residue in him. Up in the stands the Acolytes were “punching their grandmothers in the face,” which Toocher called “my kind of crowd.”

Chaos Comes Calling

When the Grandmaster nearly called the Shadow King “Arbiter,” the answer came back flat: “No, he’s dead. I killed him.”

Then a comet streaked down and smashed into the town: The Box of Chaos, a chest wreathed in heatless yellow-and-pink flame. The Shadow King rose, pointed into the crowd and bellowed, “You! Blissful Dwarf!” A shadowy hand seized the Acolyte Blissful Dwarf and ripped off his arms, legs and head. A second hand pulled a black soul out of the neck hole and tossed it into the box. “There, the Box of Chaos is primed.”

Next, a patched top hat rose from the water, followed by a strange old man with big ears, white hair and a teacup. “Change places!” he cried, and snapped. Suddenly Toocher was pinned under the crane and Sho Nin stood on top of it. “Damn you, Uncle Pennybags!” The old man sank back under with a cackle. The Grandmaster explained that he was “just kind of crazy. Mad, you might say,” and that sometimes a bunny showed up. The Shadow King demanded “a full accounting” of what she’d been doing while he was gone.

Sho Nin, vomiting blood and bile from the poison, flung a dart that rode a gust of wind into Toocher. Then he rode the wind straight to the box. The soul inside crawled out shrieking, “Where am I?! What am I?!” It refused to haggle (“That’s not how this works, what do you have?”), so Sho Nin drew his sword and handed over the scabbard. In return he received a gleaming Moon Sickle. He laid his old sword before the chest, pointed the sickle at “this toad,” and struck a very obnoxious pose just as the wind blew past, and the crowd screamed at his beauty. “I’m 15! I prefer cool!” “It’s a frog,” Toocher corrected.

Toocher answered with “the strongest squat that anyone has witnessed,” sending the crane flying so that it nearly hit the front row, where fans scrambled to grab it like a prize. “That’s gonna be you in a moment, kid.” Then he leapt, limbs splayed, onto Sho Nin’s face. He pulled the boy’s dart out of his own chest and stabbed Sho Nin with it, poisoning him again. He fed the bloody dart to the box and received Bracers of Defense shaped like long trailing red arm scarves. “Now I do. Thanks, Sho Nin,” he said. The Grandmaster dubbed him “Scarf Boy.”

The Butterfly Rounds

The next chaos event started with an odd sensation. Both champions’ butt cheeks swelled, flattened and sprouted into butterfly wings, lifting them thirty feet into the air. “I make no apologies for the events I create,” said the Grandmaster.

Still in Toocher’s grip, Sho Nin blasted them apart with his wind, which comes “from inside me without being from inside me.” Asked whether it was a fart, he insisted, “It’s not from betwixt the cheeks.” The power was inherited and had skipped a generation. He was only beginning to understand it, and perhaps his mother, “the musky maiden,” had answers. A voice in the wind whispered, “Look to the stars.” It was daytime, so he stared at the sun and fluttered off half-blind like a moth. “Oh man, that was stupid!”

Toocher gave chase on his own wings, which looked “like two giant pairs of frog feet.” He turned around, spread his butt cheeks and clapped them together around Sho Nin. “The great bougie clap of 2023 begins!” cried the Grandmaster. His attempted piledriver went wrong when Sho Nin wiggled free, and Toocher drove himself into the ground. “I’m not used to using my butt as a grapple attack quite yet.” A second “hiney hold” worked better: residue from Toocher’s butt cheeks dripped onto Sho Nin’s face cheeks and poisoned him again. To him it felt “like getting pushed out between two large slices of ham.” The Acolytes then shouted out every animal they knew that had a butthole, which made for a long list.

Deli Meat and Acid

Bleeding and poisoned, Sho Nin closed his eyes. His beating wings became applause, and his moon blade glowed and screamed as he began his bladesong. “I’ve had enough of this game. It’s time to finish this.” When Toocher made one more deli joke (“That’s baloney”), the Grandmaster nocked an arrow and shot him in the shoulder. “When I tell you no more deli-made jokes, I meant it.” The Shadow King beamed: “I think you’re learning from me.” Regretting that she’d sided with him, she quietly slipped Toocher some healing. The Shadow King caught her anyway. “I was so proud of you. You’re very disappointing me.”

Toocher closed his own wounds with a warm healing wind, a gift from a relative whose inner wind “had nothing to do with flatulence.” Then he swore to take Sho Nin’s hopes and dreams and send them “to the dump where it’s going to get crushed, buried, and forgotten.” He hurled a crate of small potatoes that exploded across the gears (“Potato mash!”) and dived into the harbor.

That was when the Shadow King decided the fight had been “a little clean for my liking” and turned all the water to bubbling green acid. The butterfly wings shriveled. Sho Nin fell thirty feet, and the wind caught him. “I’ve got you, my child,” it whispered. Sho Nin was not grateful. “That wind is bait, man. That’s an abusive entity.”

The Final Blow

Toocher burst howling from the acid, mourning his lost wings, and grabbed Sho Nin again. Summoning his inner fury, he bound the boy’s wrists with his arm scarves and hurled him into the acid. “Not so pretty now, kid.” Red scarf banners rippled through the stands as fans copied his look. “Buy my merch!” “$29.99. Tonight only,” said the Shadow King.

Sho Nin dragged himself onto a boat as the Acolytes bowed their heads for his final moments. He wasn’t finished yet. “You forget who I am… You will know my name.” In one anime-perfect flash he zipped past Toocher, and the two stood back to back in silence. Then Toocher’s leg cracked open with green flame burning in it. “Your tricks only work once, frog.” His follow-up kick, though, came with his fifth natural 1 of the night.

Toocher faked a limp, leapt over Sho Nin, and threw everything he had left at him. Sho Nin dodged it all, sweating and exhausted. Then Toocher’s eyes began to glow and his warts pulsed with inner toxicity. He knocked the Moon Sickle out of Sho Nin’s hand and caught it in the air. “Your ratings aren’t good.” “Just give it back, I’ll do it myself,” Sho Nin muttered.

Toocher brought the sickle down. As it fell, the color drained from the scene, and then even the black faded to nothing. A small gust of wind crossed the floor, leaving “nothing but a child that you cut down for the sake of your own glory.” Toocher raised “the sickle of victory” and chanted his own name. A multicolored whirlwind swept Sho Nin’s body away and lifted the victor almost to his rulers’ eye level. “See, Shadow King? Great champions indeed,” said the Grandmaster.

The Shadow King melted into shadow and reappeared beside Toocher. “Well, champion, let’s take a victory lap.” He flew him over the Acolytes, dipped his body into the acid on the way past, then raised his arm, “but only your arm,” into the sky.

Dried Blood

At the after-show, the table counted Sho Nin’s five natural 1s and praised how gracefully he played through every one. The crane collapse was his favorite moment: “It just played out very anime.” Toocher was built as a poisoner with a toxic personality to match, “the perfect antagonist for an anime protagonist to discover their inner strength.” The Grandmaster agreed: “Tonight, you were each other’s villains.” The parting advice was “Don’t panic if your butt suddenly turns into big ass wings. Just keep saying yes and rolling with it.” To which the Grandmaster added, “And it won’t even be your final evolution.”

Notable Moments

• Sho Nin tripped Toocher through the portal on a natural 20, then got flattened by a crane on his very first move.
• The Shadow King ripped off Blissful Dwarf’s arms, legs and head in the stands to feed his soul to the Box of Chaos.
• Both champions sprouted butterfly wings from their butt cheeks, leading to “the great bougie clap of 2023.”
• The Grandmaster shot Toocher over a baloney pun, then secretly healed him and got caught.
• The Shadow King turned the harbor to acid just after Toocher dived into it.
• Toocher won by knocking Sho Nin’s own Moon Sickle out of his hand and catching it in midair, after the crowd had taken up red scarf merch.

Memorable Quotes

• The Shadow King: “It can’t be that hard. Vythorn did it. Although I will say most of his writing here is in symbols. Does he know how to read?”
• Toocher the Toxic: “You’re gonna wish this was an isekai by the end of tonight, cause I’m gonna send you into another world.”
• Toocher the Toxic: “My parents were both frogs, thank you very much. There’s 100% pure big frog energy running through me.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Don’t forget to use it before you die, or else then we’ll revive you and then murder you again out of disappointment.”
• The soul in the Box of Chaos: “Where am I?! What am I?!”
• Sho Nin: “That wind is bait, man. That’s an abusive entity.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “When I tell you no more deli-made jokes, I meant it.”
• Sho Nin: “Just give it back, I’ll do it myself.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Toocher the Toxic (twooftheyangs).

• Who he is:
  • A grung (frog person) whose parents were both frogs; hatched from an egg. He has a tragic, long backstory “requiring several flashbacks.”
  • A professional wrestler. Level 6 Battle Master fighter / level 4 Inquisitive rogue.
  • Poisonous skin, exceptional leaping, Tavern Brawler.
• Look: shirtless, in pants and a shield, with a flamboyant red “statement” scarf.
• Gained in this episode: Bracers of Defense shaped like red arm scarves, from the Box of Chaos.
• His family: a relative had an inner wind ability (not flatulence); Toocher’s Second Wind draws on it, and at the end his own “inner wind” made his warts glow.
• His act: trash talk, and “partners… putting on a good show.”
• Result: won the match and inspired red-scarf merch ($29.99).

Sho Nin (Forgeling).

• Who he is:
  • 15 years old. Level 6 Kensei monk / level 4 wizard. Toocher calls him “Sho Nin Protagonist/Pootagonist.”
  • Confident outside, full of self-doubt and unworthiness within. Overwhelmed by the arena’s grandeur.
• The wind: a latent wind power passed down to him that skipped a generation. He is on a quest to understand it, and perhaps his mother, “the musky maiden,” has answers. Twice a voice in the wind gave him bad advice (look to the stars, look to the north).
• In this episode:
  • Got the Moon Sickle +3 by trading his scabbard to the Box of Chaos.
  • Used bladesong and green-flame blade, and cut Toocher’s leg open.
  • Rolled five natural 1s.
  • Was disarmed and killed with his own sickle; the wind carried his body away.

The Shadow King (Mudcat).

• Running the Fortress:
  • Back in power; doing the taxes (1099s) for the first time and sorting receipts by size. His tower always had an intern for the taxes.
  • Wants “a full accounting” of what Elusia did while he was gone.
• On Vythorn: “off[ed]” Vythorn, per Elusia, and a line likely his says “No, he’s dead. I killed him.” He mocks Vythorn’s symbol-writing.
• Cruelty: murdered the Acolyte Blissful Dwarf to prime the Box of Chaos, and turned the arena water to acid.
• With the champions: offered Toocher the “sign guy” job. Gave Toocher a victory lap that included an acid dip.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Her captivity: opens portals by clenching an amulet around her neck. It draws her blood, and her palms are now scarred from it.
• At the Fortress: her hair widens with stress, and she directs the goblin employees.
• In the arena:
  • Flies on black wings.
  • Shot Toocher for a pun, then secretly healed him; the Shadow King caught her.
  • Voiced the wind spirit (inferred) and “the old man.”

The old man in the top hat (Caustic Phoenix): worn, patched top hat, large ears, white hair, teacup. He rises from the water and swaps the champions (“Change places!”). The Grandmaster says he’s “mad,” holds tea parties at random times, “sometimes a bunny shows up.” Toocher calls him “Uncle Pennybags.”

Blissful Dwarf: an Acolyte in the crowd, dismembered by the Shadow King. His black soul primed the Box of Chaos, and it crawled out confused (“Where am I?! What am I?!”) to trade with Sho Nin.

The wind voice: unidentified. It says “Look to the stars,” “Look to the north,” “I’ve got you, my child.” Caustic Phoenix is improvising its lore (“no idea what lore I’m building”).

Heather and Tophne: goblin employees at the Fortress who take the tax papers.

Vythorn: did the Fortress taxes for years, in symbols; dead (killed by the Shadow King).

Places

• The Shadow King’s throne room: dank, musty, cobwebbed, drab. Location not stated (presumably the Dread Fortress).
• The Shadow King’s tower (mentioned; interns did taxes there).
• The arena: an abandoned tiny steampunk city, “one of my favorite little playgrounds.” It has docks, water (turned to acid), a rusty crane, crates (one of potatoes), boats and a turret above the docks.

Items

• The Grandmaster’s amulet (a blood-drawing portal key).
• The Box of Chaos: a chest of yellow-and-pink heatless flame, fed by a soul. Sacrifices to it give magic items.
• Moon Sickle +3: Sho Nin’s, then taken by Toocher as “the sickle of victory.”
• Sho Nin’s scabbard (sacrificed) and his sword (left by the chest).
• Bracers of Defense: red arm scarves; came from Sho Nin’s bloody dart.
• Red scarf merch, $29.99, tonight only.

Lore statements

• The Shadow King killed the Arbiter/Vythorn, who had done the Fortress’s taxes for years.
• The Grandmaster’s portals now require her blood through the amulet.
• The Fortress pays taxes “to the process” for infrastructure, per Elusia.
• The Acolytes can be killed and harvested for souls by the Shadow King.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the Shadow King does the taxes

1. 0:00:56 Elusia stomps down the stone hallways, heels clacking, and bursts through the doors into a “very dank and musty throne room” with cobwebs and dust. It houses the Shadow King, who in her opinion thinks the room matches his personality. He is buried in pin markings and paper, “as if a tornado came through and decided to vomit every high school notebook.”
2. 0:01:44 The Shadow King: “What is it, 1099?” He is going through their tax documents: “I was told we have to do the taxes.” Elusia: “You have never done taxes. I remember that you always made some poor intern do the taxes at your tower.”
3. 0:02:07 Shadow King: “It can’t be that hard. Vythorn did it. Although I will say most of his writing here is in symbols. Does he know how to read?” Elusia: “He’s been doing it for us for years… and he was going to do it again this year until you decided to off him.”
4. 0:02:36 He sorted the receipts by size and threw half of them on the ground. Elusia’s hair visibly grows wider at the thought of redoing all the tax paperwork alone. Shadow King: “I’m not sure who’s taxing us anyways. We are the governing body here, correct?” She explains that taxes pay for key infrastructure, then gives up.
5. 0:03:00 She hands the papers to the goblin employees: Heather takes one, Tophne takes another. She pulls the Shadow King up by the hand: “Let me show you this amazing deathmatch… These champions way better than 1099s.” Shadow King: “Well, after last week, I’m open to it.”
6. 0:03:46 — The amulet portal. Elusia clenches the amulet around her neck. Blood drips down, and her palms and fingers now carry many scars. A portal appears, clear as still water, and two champions walk through. “My dear Shadow King, I gift you two of the greatest champions in all the realms. Toocher and Sho Nin.”

Introductions and trash talk

7. 0:04:21 Toocher: “I’m Toocher the Toxic, and I’m here to make sure that you don’t leave this pit alive.” He calls him “Sho Nin Pootagonist” and says he’ll scrape him off his shoe.
8. 0:04:46 Sho Nin: “You talk so much trash, you may as well just crawl right back in the sewer you came from.” Toocher: “I’m gonna have you crying back to Senpai before this night is out. Hurry up and go get into your little sailor skirt.” Sho Nin: “I do like girls in skirts.” He rates Toocher’s power level “like a three.” Toocher: “this is over 9,000, biatch.”
9. 0:05:31 Sho Nin: “We’re gonna take a trip down beat town.” Toocher: “You’re gonna wish this was an isekai by the end of tonight, cause I’m gonna send you into another world.”
10. 0:05:45 The Grandmaster tells them to save it for the audience. Sho Nin, to the Shadow King: “Thanks for dragging me in here… hopefully we end this with a lesson… or just don’t make me sweep off after.” GM: “Like all animes, you can defeat people with the power of friendship. And also swords.” Shadow King: “I promise you, you’ll learn a lesson today. I don’t know if it’ll be any good.”
11. 0:06:32 “Let’s go ahead and take them… away from all the paper documentation so no one spills blood all over my stuff.” She clenches the amulet in her other hand. Blood pours, and a second portal opens to the arena.

Before the portal — the battle before the battle

12. 0:07:05 Toocher gives Sho Nin a “friendly” tap on the shoulder that is a little too hard. “I just wanted to put on a good show. We’re partners in this thing… We’re working together, right?” Sho Nin: “Is that a threat? Are you threatening to wear any, like, piece of clothing?” Toocher: “I think you might have what it takes to be a star. So don’t mess up tonight.”
13. 0:08:24 As he leaves, Toocher casts detect thoughts and uses Insightful Fighting on Sho Nin. GM: “The battle begins before the battle itself. We’ll write that down.” His insight (17) beats Sho Nin’s deception (16).
14. 0:09:28 — Sho Nin’s weakness. Behind a very confident exterior is a strong sense of self-doubt and unworthiness. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, and the grandeur around him is far beyond his understanding. “Also probably fire.” GM: “Turns out most humanoids are pretty flammable.”
15. 0:10:11 Toocher: “Sorry. Newbie here, you know.” Sho Nin shoulder-barges past to be first through the portal, and the GM calls a Dex contest. A nat 20 is rolled (“I’ve never had a start of a match this way before”). Sho Nin’s right foot “in a moment of brilliance” trips Toocher, who triple-somersaults forward. Sho Nin walks out of the dust cloud “as if you’ve walked through an explosion looking majestic and powerful.” The Acolytes gasp.
16. 0:11:34 Sho Nin gets a d4 inspiration for round one. Toocher gets a d4 bane as he picks himself up and rubs a small knee scrape. The Acolytes wonder: “Who is this new person? Have they never walked before?” Toocher: “Oh, I’m gonna make you pay for that, kid. I tried to be friendly.” Sho Nin gives the crowd a smile, a wink and a big wave.

The arena

17. 0:12:20 GM: “One of my favorite little playgrounds.” It is a tiny city that used to be inhabited. “Civilizations go up and then they go down, and people just disappear, so we’ve got towns to destroy. Demolition practice is all yours.” It is “a steampunk-type era, full of wisdom and trinkets and bridges.” “By the end of it, I want nothing left, including your opponent.”
18. 0:13:13 The Grandmaster flies high on “beautiful black wings.” The Acolytes in ethereal suspension scream the champions’ names. A small dog barks in the background. The Shadow King: “Who brought that little yapper in here?… Take care of this foul creature while I introduce the champions.” He points out the boats and odds and ends: “I just want a lot of blood. The more the better.”
19. 0:14:31 Sho Nin can’t get the name right: “Too, Too, Toocher, Tootcher, Tiddy, Tutor, Truder? What are you?” Toocher: “I’m a grung. Have you never seen a frog person before?” “My parents were both frogs… 100% pure big frog energy… BFE.” Sho Nin: “So you came from an egg?” Toocher: “Um, yes… it’s tragic. And long… It’ll require several flashbacks.” GM: “This isn’t a Nat Geo episode! Keep it rollin’!”
20. 0:15:52 Initiative: Sho Nin 18, Toocher 14. GM: “Why couldn’t we ever start with round five?” Shadow King: “the cards only go to seven.” Toocher: “All I need is one round with this chump.” Shadow King: “Listen, if you live, maybe you can be the new sign guy.” “Deal.”

Round 1

21. 0:17:06 Sho Nin ignores the water and Toocher and walks backwards into a rusty crane-like structure to look for trinkets: “So many wonderful things. What’s being left behind?” He rolls a natural 1 on the Dex save, and the whole crane topples onto him. He is knocked prone with it on his legs (“dig into that inner mom strength”). “I think this seems dangerous, man.” He ends his turn there: “That whole moment is perfect as it is.”
22. 0:19:33 Toocher uses his grung leaping to jump onto the top of the fallen crane and perch over Sho Nin. “What are you doing, kid? I thought we agreed to put on a good show.” Sho Nin: “Nothing seems really steady around here… Just dance or something.” Toocher: “I’ll show you how it’s done, kid… one professional giving a newbie a lesson.”
23. 0:21:13 — The outfit. Toocher wears only pants, a shield and a flamboyant red scarf, showing a lot of skin. “The scarf is for a statement. He’s a professional wrestler, not a professional… cloth person.” Sho Nin: “That could have been anything.” GM: “It’s hiding something extra.” Toocher: “Oh, just you wait.” “Plot device.”
24. 0:22:06 — The elbow drop. He leaps high and drives his elbow into Sho Nin’s chest, scarf streaming in a red arc. It hits hard. His poisonous grung skin burns; Sho Nin fails the Con save and is poisoned. Sho Nin’s narration: a small crack, blood spurts from his mouth, and a residue spreads and is absorbed into the skin, setting off a fiery sensation.
25. 0:25:38 Toocher listens for the cheers. The crowd is “slinging beers around and throwing slushies… punching their grandmothers in the face… rolling each other down the aisles and slapping each other around with cotton candy… normal crowd stuff.” Toocher: “This is my kind of crowd.”
26. 0:26:13 The GM almost calls him “Arbiter.” A voice answers: “No, he’s dead. I killed him.” (speaker uncertain, likely the Shadow King). He rolls a 4. GM: “Even the Arbiter rolled better than that.” Shadow King: “No, I don’t think he did. I watched the logs.”

Between rounds — hero points, the Box of Chaos, the old man

27. 0:26:30 Both champions get hero points: “plus ultra over 9,000.” “Don’t forget to use it before you die, or else then we’ll revive you and then murder you again out of disappointment.”
28. 0:27:16 — The Box of Chaos. A comet streaks from the sky and smashes into the ground: a chest burning with yellow and pink flames. The Shadow King stands: “You! Blissful Dwarf!” An ethereal shadowy hand zooms through the crowd and grabs the Acolyte Blissful Dwarf. It rips off the arms, legs and head, and a second shadowy hand pulls a black soul out of the neck hole. He throws the soul into the box, which erupts in flame. “There, the Box of Chaos is primed. If you make a sacrifice to it, you’ll get a magic item.”
29. 0:28:53 — Chaos event: change places. Paid for by the Acolytes’ “bits and their subs and their tips.” A worn, patched top hat rises out of the water, then a strange old man with large ears and white hair, holding a small teacup. “Change places!” He snaps his fingers and the champions swap: Toocher is now pinned prone under the crane, and Sho Nin stands on top “looking like the winner.” Toocher: “Damn you, Uncle Pennybags!” With a cackle and a sip of tea, the old man sinks back under the water.
30. 0:30:13 Shadow King: “Who is that guy? Is he on the payroll?” GM: “He’s just kind of crazy. Mad, you might say… having tea parties at whatever random time… Sometimes a bunny shows up.” Shadow King: “I don’t really know what you’ve been doing since I’ve been gone, but we need to have a full accounting along with the taxes.”

Round 2

31. 0:30:52 On the crane, Sho Nin looks with concern where the old man vanished. He vomits more blood and bile, darkening from the poison. Glancing at the box: “Hey man, you gotta play the games, you gotta win.” He flings a dart from his sash, and it picks up speed with a gust of wind (Catapult). Toocher fails the save; it hits hard, “almost like a celestial gust” careering at “his little froggy companion.”
32. 0:33:07 With a slight glow in his eyes, Sho Nin moves 55 ft on a wind-fuelled burst (Step of the Wind) toward the box, leaping down acrobatically. Toocher: “Come on back here, kid! You coward!” GM: “He’s late, he’s late! For a very important date.”
33. 0:34:07 — The soul in the box. A shadowy figure crawls out of the sacrificed soul: “Where am I?! What am I?!” Sho Nin: “You’re in a box, and you’re… a guy? Girl? Entity?” The soul: “That’s not how this works, what do you have?” Sho Nin draws his sword and hands over the scabbard: “I won’t be needing this anymore.” “Whatever!” The lid shuts.
34. 0:35:45 — The Moon Sickle. The box rumbles and the magical fire, which gives off no heat, rises again. A curved Moon Sickle +3 floats into Sho Nin’s hand. It adds a d4 to healing from spells he casts and +3 to his spell DCs. Sho Nin: “This kind of feels like a disservice.” He rests his own sword in front of the chest, takes up the sickle, and dramatically points it at “this toad.”
35. 0:37:53 — The pose. He strikes “a very obnoxious pose” (Performance 16). The wind blows past at that exact moment, giving him an ethereal look, and everyone screams at his beauty. Sho Nin: “I’m 15! I prefer cool!” GM: “That’s never stopped anyone fangirling over those K-pop stars.” The table riffs: “Remember that time you elbowed a 15-year-old in the chest?” Toocher: “The crowd’s cheered, so I’ll take it. We’re all accomplices here.” GM: “A 15-year-old against a toad.” Toocher: “It’s a frog.” Sho Nin: “It’s like Wind in the Willows.”
36. 0:39:55 — The leg press. Toocher braces with his hands, gets his powerful legs under the crane, and does “the strongest squat that anyone has witnessed” (Athletics 28). The crane flies and nearly hits the front row, and spectators cheer and try to grab it like a prize. He points at the crane, then at Sho Nin: “That’s gonna be you in a moment, kid.”
37. 0:41:58 “Psych!” He leaps frog-style, limbs splayed, onto Sho Nin’s head and grapples him (30 vs 17). “You have a frog on your face.” Sho Nin: “Oh God, you’re slimy.”
38. 0:43:09 Toocher: “Hey, remember this, kid?” He pulls Sho Nin’s dart out of his own chest and stabs Sho Nin with it. It’s a glancing blow, plus a sneak attack (his inquisitive insight from before the fight), plus poison. Sho Nin is poisoned again and grappled. GM: “A boy fights with his fists, a man fights with his mind.” Mudcat: “And a better man fights with a sword or a gun.” Sho Nin: “What are you fighting with again? Your excretions?” Toocher: “Excretions plus your own dart.”
39. 0:46:03 — The bracers. Toocher rips the dart out, glances at Sho Nin’s blood on it, and tosses it into the box (“The gift of my opponent”). A shadowy hand floats out Bracers of Defense. They look like his red scarf, wrapped around his wrists with long trailing red tails. Sho Nin: “You have scarves for your arms?” Toocher: “Now I do. Thanks, Sho Nin. Arm scarf… These are functional.” GM: “Scarf Boy.”

Chaos event — butterfly butts (0:47:36)

40. “You feel an odd sensation starting in your butt?” Mudcat: “Is it puberty?” “It’s not puberty.” Both champions’ butt cheeks grow bigger, wider and flatter and sprout into butterfly wings. For two rounds they can fly at their walking speed. “I make no apologies for the events I create.” Their “ass wings” lift them 30 ft into the air. The Shadow King rolls 18.

Round 3

41. 0:49:36 Sho Nin is still grappled in the air. He describes his cheeks as “very well clothed and completely opaque. For legal reasons.” GM: “censored out, giant black blocks around them.” He tries to “emerge from this toad-like cocoon to be a gorgeous butterfly” but fails to break the grapple (Toocher rolls 31). “Might try cutting his arms off first.”
42. 0:51:47 — The wind’s origin. Sho Nin “approaches the bench.” He uses Warding Wind plus his hero point to blast them apart. Asked where the wind comes from: “It comes from inside me without being from inside me.” Mudcat: “It’s a fart, isn’t it?” “It’s not from betwixt the cheeks.” The lore: these wind energies were passed down to him and skipped a generation. They’ve only now fully settled into his body, and he is beginning to understand the power within, but nobody has explained it to him yet. He is on a quest to understand “the wind within… not his ass,” and perhaps his mother has answers. She “is not a windy lady”; she is “the musky maiden.” “It’s a weird family, don’t ask.”
43. 0:54:14 The wind throws them 10–15 ft apart and the grapple breaks. Sho Nin hears a voice in the wind: “Look to the stars.” (inferred to be Caustic Phoenix as the voice; the line is diarized to 01). It’s daylight, so he looks at the sun (“The sun is a star”). Sho Nin: “Oh man, that was stupid! Oh man, what are these spirits trying to tell me?” Half-blind with sunspots, he flies off erratically like a moth, Brownian motion, about 40 ft. He shakes off the poison.
44. 0:56:41 Toocher looks back at his own butt: elongated and flat, “like two giant pairs of frog feet.” He flexes, finds buoyancy, and “makes a straight behind towards Sho Nin” (GM: “You can’t make a beeline, you’re a butterfly”).
45. 0:57:29 — The great bougie clap. Toocher turns around, spreads his butt cheeks and claps them together around Sho Nin as a grapple. GM: “The great bougie clap of 2023 begins!” It works (24). Toocher grabs Sho Nin’s head over his shoulder and flips to piledrive him from 30 ft. The attack misses: Sho Nin wiggles free, and Toocher piledrives himself into the ground. “I’m not used to using my butt as a grapple attack quite yet… I need to train harder.”
46. 0:59:15 Toocher describes his cheeks: “like two flat frog’s feet,” because he can’t recall if frogs have butt cheeks. The table debates which animals have buttholes; the answer is octopi don’t. “The Acolytes start screaming everything that has a butthole… a long list.” Toocher: “A very educated crowd.”
47. 1:01:00 The GM gives Toocher a psychic unarmed strike for “the old hiney hold.” Sho Nin: “like getting pushed out between two large slices of ham… freshly sliced ham when it’s still a bit damp.” Sho Nin: “Two slices of ham!” He fails the Con save (4) and is poisoned again: residue from the cheeks drips into “his own face cheeks.” Mudcat: “Cheek on cheek action… Dancing cheek to cheek.” Sho Nin: “Tenderly.” Shadow King rolls 11.
48. 1:03:29 Break: “I need a small break while I go look up every animal that has a butthole.”

After the break — credits

49. 1:03:31 “Welcome back!” The GM apologizes on behalf of “our marketing team” for forgetting the mid-show credits. Toocher: “I am a grung, and I am a level 6 fighter, battle master, level 4 rogue, inquisitive. Because I like to get inside my enemies’ heads and then just grab onto them and then never let go until they’re dead. In which case, I like to let them go because then it’s kind of weird.” GM: “And smelly.”
50. 1:04:51 Sho Nin: “I’m a level six Kensai [Kensei] monk and a level four wizard because every blade deserves a good cutting spell. And I seem to be gifted by the winds with a latent energy that I’m yet to understand.” The Shadow King is allowed a reroll and gets 19. GM: “Stop embarrassing us.” Shadow King: “I’m going to start the next round, but because I want to.”

Round 4

51. 1:05:43 — Bladesong. Bleeding and poisoned, Sho Nin closes his eyes. The beating of his ass-wings becomes a round of applause, the air seems to guide him, and his new moon blade glows and “screams… in physical form” as he activates his bladesong. A dual-tone voice: “I’ve had enough of this game. It’s time to finish this.”
52. 1:07:08 Toocher: “I got you between these clammy slices, right?” GM: “No more Deli meat maybe referenced till the end of this show.” Toocher: “That’s baloney.”
53. 1:07:53 Sho Nin dives and dashes past with a slash and flurry. Toocher uses his Brace maneuver: “suddenly spreads his wings and gives you a clap back.” It misses: “you find nothing between those cheeks but the wind.” Sho Nin’s poisoned slash misses too. “These massive cheeks erupted from the middle of nowhere.” He flies 60 ft away, up and spiraling around a turret above the docks.
54. 1:11:10 — The Grandmaster shoots. Elusia nocks an arrow: “I didn’t like that baloney comment!” It hits Toocher in the left shoulder. “When I tell you no more deli-made jokes, I meant it.” Shadow King: “This is good… I think you’re learning from me.” GM: “There has to be order! No more puns!” Shadow King: “Yes, or we’ll murder you!”
55. 1:12:02 Realizing she’s sided with the Shadow King, she regrets it and secretly tosses Toocher six points of healing with a sleight of hand. The Shadow King’s perception (31) catches it: “I was so proud of you. You’re very disappointing me.”
56. 1:12:51 — The healing wind. Toocher, indignant at “this attack from the gods,” uses Second Wind. In Toocher’s past, a member of his family also had an inner wind ability “that had nothing to do with flatulence.” A warm healing wind, “that does not come from the booty,” seals his wounds.
57. 1:13:50 — The monologue. “All you’re good for is running away, kid. I’m gonna take your hopes, I’m gonna take your dreams, and I’m gonna put this in a tiny bowl… into a little treasure chest… into a little trash can… send it to the dump where it’s going to get crushed, buried, and forgotten.”
58. 1:14:31 He hurls a crate (Tavern Brawler) and misses. Far away, Sho Nin hears only fuzzy wind: “your projection’s not great. Something to work on.” A whisper in the wind: “Look to the north.” (speaker uncertain, inferred to be the wind voice). Survival 11: he looks northwest. “Quick spin.”
59. 1:17:08 Second crate, “filled with small potatoes”: it hits with a sneak attack, explodes, and potatoes go everywhere, stuck in the gears. GM: “Potato mash!” and “the Shadow King doesn’t know how to do math.” Toocher heroically leaps into the water and dives 10 ft down.
60. 1:18:44 — The Shadow King’s chaos: acid. “You know, this fight’s been a little clean for my liking… Trash it up a little bit.” All the water turns acidic, green and bubbling. Toocher, underwater, is burned at once and will be at the start of his turns. Initiative is rerolled: Toocher 13, Sho Nin a natural 1 (“This is your fourth nat one!”). Mudcat: “I love that you dove in the water right before this.”
61. 1:20:23 — The wings end. The butt wings shrivel “as if Botox was injected… it’s firm, it’s young.” Sho Nin falls 30 ft onto what’s left of the crane, which is corroding in the acid air. A sweep of wind negates the fall. GM (as the wind, inferred): “I’ve got you, my child.” Caustic Phoenix, out of character: “I have no idea what lore I’m building out for you right now.” Sho Nin: “That wind is bait, man. That’s an abusive entity.” Then “Look at the sun. You should eat more carbs.” (speaker uncertain: possibly the wind mocking him).

The new round (counter reset to “one”)

62. 1:22:09 Toocher takes more acid and leaps out of the water howling (the howl was loud enough that “I broke the mic”). He finds his butt wings gone, thinks they melted, and is sad because he loved flying. He notices Sho Nin’s butt is small too (“An adolescent’s butt”; GM: “Why didn’t you notice his eyes first?”).
63. 1:23:57 He grapples Sho Nin, who tries to flip out on the wind. Toocher 18, Sho Nin 17. GM: “Your youth, once again, is showing. Time to level up, kid.” “Without this weird, awkward, extra weight behind me, he’s back in full control.” He spends his hero point to hurl Sho Nin into the acid, but misses at first, and Sho Nin’s Feather Fall would save him.
64. 1:25:47 — The super move. The GM offers triple advantage for a description that “will put Dragon Ball to shame.” Toocher wraps his new arm scarves around Sho Nin’s wrists, shouts loudly to summon the strength within him, and hurls him into the waters “with a might beyond might powered by his inner fury.” It hits and Sho Nin burns in the acid. Toocher: “Not so pretty now, kid.”
65. 1:27:48 Red scarf banners wave everywhere in the stands; children and adults wear red, mimicking his scarf. Toocher: “Buy my merch!” GM: “$29.99atthestore."ShadowKing:"\ast \ast$29.99. Tonight only.**”
66. 1:28:52 The GM nearly skips Sho Nin’s turn and breaks character to apologize. Sho Nin takes acid damage, clambers onto a nearby boat, and shakes off acid that is melting his clothing (“if that goes, that’s a lawsuit”). The Acolytes bow their heads in a moment of silence for his final moments, but he’s still alive. Sho Nin: “You forget who I am.… We just met… You will know my name.”
67. 1:30:43 — The leg cut. Bladesong whirling, Sho Nin charges past Toocher, aiming for his “hammy little frog legs.” Toocher: “You’ve come up to me again. You’ve forgotten. Brace attack.” Shadow King: “No. Not like this.” The brace misses. (Table confusion about whose AC the Moon Sickle and the “functional” bracers boosted; Toocher: “I forgot they were functional!”) Sho Nin: “Your tricks only work once, frog.” Green-flame blade into Toocher’s leg.
68. 1:33:05 GM’s anime framing: Sho Nin crawls from the boat, takes a breath, and in a flash there is just a zip of a line. They stand facing opposite directions in silence, and then Toocher’s leg cracks open with green flame burning in it. The audience is frozen, aghast.
69. 1:34:02 He dashes back toward the crates for a second blow and misses. He kicks at the cut leg as he departs: a natural 1, his fifth of the night. GM: “Have you decided to just smash your dice against the wall?”
70. 1:35:37 — Toocher’s flurry. In shock, his leg turned “into a culinary delicacy in certain regions of the world,” Toocher pretends to be lame, leaps over the lunging Sho Nin and drives a double-fisted blow at his spine. It misses. He remembers “words from his sensei to sweep the leg” and tries a trip attack, which misses. Action Surge. Sho Nin dodges piece by piece, sweating, exhausted.
71. 1:37:43 “His eyes begin to glow as his own inner wind activates. The warts on his body pulsating and glowing with an inner toxicity.” With his final superiority die, he knocks the Moon Sickle out of Sho Nin’s hand (Strength save failed). He grabs it from the air and makes eye contact: “Well, you’ve been, you’ve been cancer [canceled?], kid. Your ratings aren’t good.” Sho Nin: “Just give it back, I’ll do it myself.”
72. 1:39:51 — Sho Nin’s death. Toocher finishes him with his own sickle. Sho Nin’s death, narrated: “As the blade slowly descends… all the color drains out of the scene”. Black and white become stark, then even the black fades into “an absence of presence.” A small gust of wind dissipates across the floor, leaving “a cool figure on the ground. Nothing but a child that you cut down for the sake of your own glory. Well done. You’ve done very well.”
73. 1:40:54 Toocher raises “the sickle of victory” over his head and chants his own name.
74. 1:41:01 — Victory. A multicolored gust of wind wraps around them, sweeping Sho Nin’s body away, while Toocher is lifted in the tornado of color almost to the eye level of the Grandmaster and Shadow King. The Acolytes’ praise builds from soft to loud: “you have built your name in the sands of blood and dirt and bone.” GM: “See, Shadow King? Great champions indeed.”
75. 1:42:20 Shadow King: “An incredible showing!” He fades into shadow and reappears inside the vortex, now a black cloud. “Well, champion, let’s take a victory lap.” He flies Toocher by the hand over the Acolytes, dips his body into the acid as they pass over the water, then pulls up into the middle of the crowd and raises his arm, “but only your arm,” into the sky. (inferred: the acid dip left little more than the arm; not stated outright). “Welcome and goodnight to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• Mudcat opens “another episode of Dried Blood.”
• Forgeling: “There was a curse… He died the way he lived.” Toocher’s player: “I didn’t lose. The dice made me lose.” Caustic Phoenix: “That’s me.”
• Toocher’s player’s favorite moment was the pre-fight shoulder tap: very pro-wrestling behind-the-scenes, and it let him prime sneak attack. Intent: poison attacks plus a “toxic personality” that gets in your head and talks smack. Forgeling “played the reverse Uno card” by making Sho Nin 15.
• Caustic Phoenix: Toocher wouldn’t have minded dying if Sho Nin had risen to “that 9,000 level.” Toocher’s player: Toocher is “the perfect antagonist for an anime protagonist to discover their inner strength.”
• Sho Nin rolled five nat 1s. Caustic Phoenix praised how Forgeling roleplayed through them. Forgeling’s favorite was the crane: “If something like that happens, let that be it… It just played out very anime.” Mudcat: “the anime stories they don’t put on Crunchyroll… where the protagonist gets murked.”
• Favorite anime characters: Toocher’s player picked Hisoka (Hunter x Hunter, bungee gum) as villain and Guts (Berserk) as hero. Forgeling picked Buggy (One Piece) and Kamina (Gurren Lagann). Caustic Phoenix: “a hero is defined by how good their villain is… tonight, you were each other’s villains.”
• Final words (“from you or your characters”, so in-character status unclear):
  • Forgeling: “100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 10 kilometers per day.”
  • Toocher’s player: “Don’t panic if your butt suddenly turns into big ass wings. Just keep saying yes and rolling with it.”
  • Caustic Phoenix: “And it won’t even be your final evolution.”
• Caustic Phoenix mentions “a small sandstorm on a camera.”