S4E9 — Shootout — Stanley Second Life Gibbs v Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th (Greg)

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Stanley “Second Life” Gibbs, the self-proclaimed fastest gun in the West, met Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th, a polite, terrified and endlessly apologetic duelist who just wanted an honorable fight. They fought in an abandoned saloon in a Western ghost town. Stanley died ten times and kept getting back up. Greg lost a toe and three fingers, and the real villain of the night turned out to be his own pair of pistols.

The Story

Before the Fight

The Acolytes poured in from all over The Void. Meanwhile the Grandmaster stomped down the very empty hallways of The Dread Fortress, following a racket of electric noises and gunshots. She kicked open the doors to the throne room and found it drab, dark and damp, lit only by a single screen. In front of that screen sat The Shadow King, controller in hand, playing his PlayStation.

“Fuck you, Danny!” he shouted. Danny, he explained, was his friend: “Well, Danny, I don’t know, he’s 12 and he’s a piece of shit.” He had recently learned of video games. The Grandmaster was not impressed. “We are clearly an Xbox household,” she declared, stomped on the console and hurled it against the wall.

The Shadow King protested that the guy at Best Buy had assured him it was the best console. He’d only gone to Best Buy because the Radio Shack over in Prexmarin was closed. “That Radio Shack has been closed for 38 years,” the Grandmaster told him. “Well, I’ve been in the box for 700 years,” he replied. He had, after all, once been the soul inside the Box of Chaos. The Grandmaster couldn’t believe that, of all the things he had killed, he was mourning a Radio Shack. He insisted it had a great business model. “You know what’s a great business model?” she shot back. “Death, blood, violence.” She threw the controller against the wall too, and it shattered into a portal.

The Champions

Stanley strolled out with a cowboy drawl and a hood rather than a hat. “Well, howdy there. My name’s Stanley Second Life McGibbs, and you can call me the fastest gun in the West.” When asked about Call of Duty, he announced, “I am the answer to the Call of Duty.” The Grandmaster said that made zero sense. He had come for the reward, to be claimed in the name of justice: “Who’s justice? Well, that’s the best part. That’s all up to me. Judge, jury, and executioner.” The Grandmaster had assumed Justice was his dog. He didn’t have a dog.

The green, lizard-handed Greg gave his full name and offered the shorter versions “Greg, or Gregory.” He looked up at the towering Shadow King and gasped, “Oh gosh, you’re very tall.” He admitted that one of his many siblings used to tease him with “Gregor” and that it was a sore spot, so the Grandmaster immediately introduced him as Gregor. “Gregor, it’s a strong name,” the Shadow King mused. “I knew a Gregor once. I slit his throat.” Greg wanted a real, honorable duel where everyone shook hands at the end. He also confessed, ominously, that some accident always occurred whenever he stepped into an arena.

The talk of dogs hit a nerve. When the Shadow King pointed out that she didn’t have a dog either, the Grandmaster fumed: “That is not fair. And I bet he’s alive somewhere.” Her pug Doug was still missing. She clutched the amulet at her neck, hoping he might find his way back to the arena, and in her tantrum she crushed it. It bled into her hand and opened a second portal. “I feel like we’ve walked into a bit of a family spat,” Greg observed.

Into the Saloon

The champions pushed through swinging saloon doors into a good old Western town. Cards still lay on the tables, a few coins were scattered about, and a piano played softly to itself. The Grandmaster called it a ghost town, “and we’re looking to add at least one more.” When the Shadow King said Greg might walk away if he still had his legs at the end, Greg assumed he meant sea legs and asked if they were going on a boat. Stanley decided he liked Gregory. Greg liked Stanley too: “You’ve got a lovely gun.”

A tumbleweed rolled past. The Acolytes whooped, swinging cowboy hats and lassos, and the Grandmaster flew up to her seat beside a tiny, empty throne. Stanley flipped an ace of spades into the air and shot a hole clean through the spade (“luck’s got nothing to do with it”), and through an Acolyte’s cowboy hat as well. Greg tried the same draw-and-twirl, dropped his pistol and stumbled after it. Stanley helpfully pointed out the safety. “Yours has a safety? Shit.” “Oh, that could have saved so many people,” said the Shadow King.

The Honorable Bow

Stanley proposed a gentlemanly wager, with drinks from the bar for whoever missed. Greg wanted to bring his big sister, who fights with a polearm and whom he’d seen disembowel people. The Grandmaster liked the sound of her but ruled: “Those who are in the arenas will stay in the arena. No additions.” So Stanley paced ten steps away with his back turned and his hands up, and invited Greg to draw first.

Then Greg bowed, as any honorable gentleman must before a duel. One pistol fell out of its holster, fired into the floor and ricocheted into Stanley’s thigh. As Greg bent to pick it up, the other pistol fell out and fired too, and Stanley died. “Why does this keep happening?” Greg wailed. The Grandmaster booed: “You didn’t even try. You accidentally killed a man.”

Greg knelt to prod the body, and a small flash of light appeared over Stanley’s head. A little floating mechanical drone with a single eye brought him back to life. The shock knocked Greg backwards, a gun misfired through its holster into his own foot, and Greg’s pinky toe sailed across the room onto a table. Stanley found it (“Oh, man, that’s real green”), dropped it in a mug of ale to keep it fresh and sent it to the bar. “Will my toe be drunk when it gets done?” Greg asked. The Grandmaster explained to the crowd that certain individuals had made a deal of some sort to keep coming back, “and their secrets are theirs to keep.”

The Box of Chaos

A flaming pink-and-yellow comet crashed between the champions: The Box of Chaos. To prime it, the Shadow King snatched an Acolyte from the stands with a shadowy hand and slammed them into the corner pocket of the pool table until they were pulp. Then he tore out their soul and stuffed it inside.

Stanley, overconfident as ever, threw himself into the box. He found it oddly empty except for one mug, and only one mug. His corpse flew back out clutching a greater silver pistol, and the drone sparked him back to life. “This is just beautiful. Like a little flower. I think I’ll call it… Daffodil.”

Greg had no second life to offer. Instead he poured several bottles from the bar into the box, along with the toe beer, and then gingerly dropped in the toe. The newly trapped soul peeked out: “Why the fuck do you think I want your dirty toe?” After a pause it decided, “I’ve had worse. I’ll take the toe,” and handed it back as a pendant on a silver chain that let Greg fly. “He just re-gifted it back,” the Grandmaster marveled. Meanwhile, tequila vendors worked the stands, and Stanley danced and caught a waterfall of about eight shots in his mouth.

Death After Death

Daffodil’s debut was a dazzling show of twirls that ended with six bullets tossed into the air and landing in the cylinder, followed by a miss. Stanley’s second shot clipped Greg’s arm, and Greg wondered aloud if he was dead. He wasn’t. Then Greg begged his pistols to “just work normally for once.” They did: one shot made Stanley’s heart explode in his chair, and the other shattered his glass so that a shard opened his throat. “Maybe go for more center mass next time,” Stanley suggested after waking up again.

Greg dove under the billiards table to cower, dropped a gun, and it fired straight between Stanley’s eyes. “Quit dying!” the Grandmaster yelled. “Listen, the respawn here is terrible.” The drone took the hint and revived Stanley thirty feet away. The Shadow King was not amused: “It’s not much of a deathmatch if they don’t actually die.”

When the chaos meter filled, the Grandmaster announced it was time for “a little finger action,” meaning the prismatic spray rings the Shadow King had taken from Vythorn, which he kept “as mementos.” “Very well, champions, let me prismatic finger you.” Greg went stiff and began turning to stone behind the pool table, with a warning that he “might end up rock hard.” “He’s busy getting fingered right now. Give him a break,” the Grandmaster told the crowd. Stanley choked on poison and was then struck by lightning through the ceiling, left a skeleton in his chair. The drone rolled its single eye as if fed up with its day in the saloon and brought him back yet again. At the end of the round the Grandmaster rolled a plushy die that clearly hadn’t been played with in a long time, and Stanley simply lost the will to live and died once more. She called a break to go cry and punch a wall.

The Turn

After the break, the Shadow King gave Greg a tip: “Maybe shoot the little contraption.” Stanley answered with a shadow-magic round from his old pistol. Greg held his guns up in front of his face in terror, and the shot took off his pinky instead. “You lost the toe, now you lost the pinky,” said the Grandmaster. The dark magic also somehow cured his colorblindness. “Stanley! I can see you properly,” Greg cried, gazing at the bright, beautiful world. “Well, you’re going to be seeing red here in a second,” Stanley replied, and then Daffodil missed. The Grandmaster tossed him some extra healing: “Second wind for second life. I got you, Gibbs.”

Greg shook off the stone and gave the Shadow King a little salute, though not before Stanley noticed “a stain on the front of his pants.” The Shadow King answered by zipping an 8-ball past his head. Then came Greg’s masterpiece. He aimed at the chandelier above Stanley, missed, and sent the bullet out a window, off two posts outside and back in through another window. It dropped one chandelier, broke several containers of drink behind the bar, ricocheted off a mug of ale, dropped a second chandelier, whizzed past Greg’s own face and finally brought down the third, leaving half the bar destroyed. Stanley’s head slipped neatly between two spokes, giving him a split second of hope before the weight snapped his neck. “I’ll pay for any damages, I promise,” Greg told the hosts. “Not for you, Stanley.”

Stanley woke to find Greg’s barrel pointed at him again, and a whisper came on the wind: “Greg, shoot him.” Greg’s bullet went straight down Stanley’s barrel and backfired Stanley’s own round into his face.

The Guns Take Over

Feeling his luck run out, Stanley flicked a gold coin from his belt pouch, melted it into a single round and loaded it into Daffodil. The pistol burst into full bloom, a flower engulfed in lava, and the shot flew at the speed of light into Greg’s chest. It took off two of the fingers Greg had pressed there in fright. Rather than save them, Greg drank the beer Stanley offered to keep them in: “Oh, it’s much better than the toe beer, the finger beer.” Daffodil burned through its holster and fell to the floor.

Stanley tried one last trick shot to undo Greg’s perfect vision. Greg deflected it with one of his pistols, which broke. Greg insisted it was the guns, always the guns. One of them, he said, had whispered that he was a little bitch. He tossed the broken gun up to the Grandmaster, Stanley shot it out of the air, and as it sailed out of the arena it screamed, “Greg, you’re a bitch!” “See? See, I fucking told you!” Greg shouted. “This guy’s got demons he’s fighting on his own,” the Grandmaster observed.

The surviving pistol had had enough. It floated out of Greg’s hand, pistol-whipped him in the forehead and took the fight into its own hands. “It doesn’t have hands!” the Grandmaster objected. “It’s metaphorical hands! Keep up!” said the Shadow King. The gun had always been the real combatant, and Greg was just its ride into the Deathmatch. It fired three perfect shots that shattered the drone. The last one ricocheted off a fragment into Stanley’s chest.

“Would you look at that? Seems there won’t be a second life for me after all.” (Stanley)

Stanley complimented whichever of the three of them had delivered that performance and admitted it was the most beer he’d ever had during a duel. With blood bubbling up, he made one last request: “The next time we meet, bring your big sister.” Then Stanley died for good.

The Final Blow

The pistol turned on its owner: “Greg, you little bitch. You got my sibling killed.” It shot him twice. Bleeding out, Greg asked what it had wanted all this time. Then he slipped on his own blood, cracked his head and died. “Oh, I was, but I was going to kill him. Shit,” said the Shadow King. “Well now, now it’s not fun.”

Free at last, the gun fired into the air in celebration and killed an Acolyte, JustJules22. The Grandmaster planted a foot on the railing, drew her bow and pinned the pistol to the floor. It exploded like a mechanical firework. With both champions dead, she declared the Acolytes the only winners, for they had witnessed a true fight to the death. The Shadow King conceded that it was “kind of bullshit, though. Whatever.”

Dried Blood

Greg’s spirit took comfort that he had finally fought a noble duel. His pistol told him, “Shut the fuck up, Greg,” and complained that it had been shot to pieces by a longbow, despite being “the evolution of ranged weaponry.” Stanley’s drone grumbled about reviving “that sack of shit,” a drunk who flung himself out windows and into flaming boxes, without even a break to take a poo. Then it admitted, quite frankly, that it would miss him.

Notable Moments

• The Grandmaster destroyed the Shadow King’s PlayStation because the Dread Fortress is “clearly an Xbox household.”
• Greg’s honorable bow before the duel killed Stanley before the fight had properly started.
• The Box of Chaos refused Greg’s toe, accepted it anyway, then gave it back as a pendant.
• A single bullet bounced off two posts outside, dropped three chandeliers and wrecked half the bar.
• By the table’s count, Stanley died ten times in one match.
• The pistols turned out to be sentient; the surviving one killed both champions and an Acolyte, then lost to the Grandmaster’s longbow.

Memorable Quotes

• The Shadow King: “Well, I’ve been in the box for 700 years.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “You know what’s a great business model? Death, blood, violence.”
• Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th: “Will my toe be drunk when it gets done?”
• Stanley “Second Life” Gibbs: “I didn’t get the name Stanley Second Life Gibbs for nothing.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Second wind for second life. I got you, Gibbs.”
• The Shadow King: “It’s metaphorical hands! Keep up!”
• Greg’s pistol: “Greg, you little bitch. You got my sibling killed.”
• Stanley’s drone: “And quite frankly, I will miss him.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Stanley “Second Life” Gibbs (BDTeej). Introduced as “Stanley Second Life McGibbs” and called Gibbs elsewhere. “The fastest gun in the West.”

• Wears a hood, not a hat. Speaks with a cowboy drawl.

• Calls himself “judge, jury, and executioner.” Has no dog. An old pal “Jack” is behind the bar (whiskey joke). An expert tequila drinker.

• Dies and is revived by a small floating mechanical drone with a single eye and holographic healing hands. The Grandmaster says such individuals “made a deal of some sort” to keep coming back, and “their secrets are theirs to keep.”

• Died 10 times this episode. The cause of each:

  1. Greg’s bow misfires.
  2. The Box of Chaos (he threw himself in).
  3. A heart explosion from a gunshot.
  4. A glass shard in the neck.
  5. A floor ricochet between the eyes.
  6. Lightning and poison from the prismatic rings.
  7. Losing “the will to live.”
  8. A chandelier snapping his neck.
  9. His own round backfiring into his face.
  10. Final: the drone shattered and a ricochet to the chest.

  (The order above follows the transcript; Teej’s own count was “10”.)

• Weapons: an old pistol with shadow-magic rounds, and Daffodil, a greater silver pistol from the Box of Chaos.

• Last wish: that Greg bring his big sister next time. Calls Greg “Timmy 10 guns.”

Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th (“Greg”, “Gregory”) (MyNameIsByf). A green-skinned lizard person (“lizard hands,” a “real green” toe; “some lizards are colorblind”).

• Family and background:
  • Has many brothers and sisters. One teased him as “Gregor” (a sore spot). His “mom and pa” are mentioned.
  • His big sister fights with a polearm and has disemboweled people.
• Seeks honorable duels, but accidents always happen when he’s in an arena.
• Dual-wields two pistols that turned out to be sentient.
• Wounds and gains:
  • Lost a pinky toe, which he turned into the toe pendant of flying, unused.
  • Lost a pinky to the shadow shot and two more fingers to Daffodil.
  • His colorblindness was cured by the nat-20 save.
• Seems smitten with the Shadow King: salutes him, “Was I also easy go?”
• Killed by his own pistol, then slipped on his blood.

Greg’s pistols. Sentient “shit posters” (Byf).

• One broke deflecting Stanley’s shot, and Stanley shot it out of the arena: “Greg, you’re a bitch!”
• The other (“you got my sibling killed”) pistol-whipped Greg, shot the drone and Stanley, killed Greg, then killed Acolyte JustJules22 while celebrating.
• Destroyed by the Grandmaster’s longbow. In Dried Blood it is embarrassed to have died to a longbow.

Stanley’s drone. A little floating mechanical figure with a single eye; it seems to be “growing sentience.” Shattered by Greg’s pistol. In Dried Blood it complains about Stanley and says it will miss him.

The Shadow King (Mudcat).

• Now holds the throne room. He “recently learned of video games,” plays PlayStation with “Danny,” who is 12.
• Bought the console at Best Buy because the Radio Shack in Prexmarin was closed. Says “I’ve been in the box for 700 years.”
• Has killed a Gregor (slit his throat).
• Keeps Vythorn’s prismatic spray rings “as mementos.”
• Primed the Box of Chaos by pulping an Acolyte on the pool table. Gave away the drone’s weakness. Zipped an 8-ball past Greg’s head. Was annoyed that he didn’t get to kill anyone.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Walks “very empty hallways.” Says “We are clearly an Xbox household.”
• Her dog is missing. She believes “he’s alive somewhere,” keeps a small empty throne beside her seat, and clutches an amulet that she crushes to open the arena portal.
• Rolls a plushy d20. Gave Stanley an extra d12 of healing. Killed the sentient pistol with her bow.

The Box of Chaos soul. A “monstrosity of a soul now trapped in the box.” Voiced by Mudcat. Didn’t want the toe, took it anyway, and gave it back as a pendant.

Acolytes.

• “Elendari” had their cowboy hat shot through (name uncertain).
• An Acolyte was sacrificed to the box (name garbled).
• JustJules22 was killed by a stray bullet.
• Tequila vendors; one heckler shouts “your enemies can’t kill you if they’re already dead!”

Danny. The Shadow King’s 12-year-old online gaming “friend.”

Places

• The Shadow King’s throne room (the Dread Fortress, inferred from the S4 context; not named): drab, dark, damp, lit by a screen.
• The ghost-town saloon arena: two stories with five chandeliers, a self-playing piano, billiards/pool table, card tables, bar shelves and windows onto posts outside. Half the bar was destroyed.
• Prexmarin: has (had) a Radio Shack, closed 38 years ago.

Items

• Daffodil: a greater silver pistol (+3 attack, advantage on Int/Wis/Cha saves, immune to charm). It blooms into a lava flower and burned through Stanley’s holster.
• Greg’s toe pendant: a silver chain; as an action, fly 20 ft, and fall if not landing.
• Vythorn’s prismatic spray rings.
• The Grandmaster’s amulet (crushed, opened a portal) and her plushy d20.
• The Shadow King’s PlayStation (destroyed); the controller became a portal.
• The toe beer; the one shared mug inside the Box of Chaos.
• Stanley’s melted hero-point golden bullet.

Lore statements

• Inside the Box of Chaos is “oddly nothingness” containing one mug, and only one.
• Some individuals can’t die because of a “deal” whose secrets are theirs to keep (the Grandmaster).
• The Grandmaster’s dog is missing and she hopes he’s alive.
• Real-world shops (Best Buy, Radio Shack) exist in the Void.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the Shadow King’s throne room

1. 0:01:41 The Acolytes are welcomed in from all over the Void. The Grandmaster marches (more like stomps) down “those very empty hallways.” She hears odd electric sounds and gunshots. She kicks open the doors to the Shadow King’s throne room, which is “drab… dark and damp” and lit only by a single screen. The Shadow King, controller in hand, is playing his PlayStation.
2. 0:02:31 Shadow King: “Fuck you, Danny!” He then greets the Grandmaster (“Hey, Lucio”, most likely a mishearing of “Elusia”). Asked who Danny is: “Danny is my friend. Well, Danny, I don’t know, he’s 12 and he’s a piece of shit.” The Grandmaster says that’s not how you talk to your friends. Shadow King: “I recently learned of video games.”
3. 0:02:50 The Grandmaster stomps on the PlayStation: “We are clearly an Xbox household.” Shadow King: “What’s an Xbox?” She tells him it isn’t “a trash can like this” and throws the PlayStation against the wall.
4. 0:03:18 Shadow King: “the guy at Best Buy assured me this was the best console.” She’s appalled that he went to Best Buy. He went there because “the Radio Shack was closed”, meaning the Radio Shack over in Prexmarin. The Grandmaster: “That Radio Shack has been closed for 38 years.” Shadow King: “Well, I’ve been in the box for 700 years.”
5. 0:03:51 The Grandmaster tells him Radio Shack “went kaput.” She asks: “Of all the things that you’ve killed, you’re upset about a Radio Shack dying?” He says they “had a great business model.” Her reply: “You know what’s a great business model? Death, blood, violence.”
6. 0:04:05 In anger she throws the PlayStation controller against the wall. It shatters and breaks into a portal. She starts to announce “Stanley Second Life Gibbs versus Gideon Regalis…”, gives up on the name (“Fuck it. Just name yourself”), and hands the intros to the champions.

The champions

7. 0:04:46 Stanley: “Well, howdy there. My name’s Stanley Second Life McGibbs, and you can call me the fastest gun in the West.” The Grandmaster asks the Shadow King whether he plays Call of Duty, then asks Stanley. Stanley: “I am the answer to the Call of Duty.” Grandmaster: “That makes zero sense.”
8. 0:05:18 Greg: “It’s Gideon Regalis Electus Gregorius the 537th, actually. But my friends call me Greg, or Gregory, if they’re feeling very funny that day.” He looks from the Grandmaster up to the Shadow King: “oh gosh, you’re very tall.”
9. 0:05:41 The Grandmaster asks whether they also call him “Grego, for, like, medium.” Greg: “one of my many brothers and sisters used to tease me with Gregor… It’s a bit of a sore spot.” She immediately introduces him as “Gregor.” Shadow King: “Gregor, it’s a strong name. I knew a Gregor once. I slit his throat.” Greg: “That’s not very honorable.” Shadow King: “maybe, but it was a fun time.”
10. 0:06:15 She asks Greg how he plans to win the prizes and riches they offered. Greg wants honorable combat and “a real honorable duel.” He admits that “some accident always occurs” whenever he steps into an arena. He hopes everyone can “shake hands” at the end and “prove who the most honorable duelist is.”
11. 0:07:08 Stanley compliments Greg: “those are the fastest lips in the West there, Gregory.” He has come for the reward, which he’ll claim “in the name of justice. Who’s justice? Well, that’s the best part. That’s all up to me. Judge, jury, and executioner.” The Grandmaster had expected “Justice” to be his dog. “I don’t have a dog.”
12. 0:07:48 The dog. “Elusia, you don’t have a dog either. Do you? Uh oh.” (This line is labeled as Caustic Phoenix’s voice, but from context it is most likely the Shadow King.) The Grandmaster fumes: “That is not fair. And I bet he’s alive somewhere.” She clutches the amulet around her neck: “Maybe he’ll find his way back to the arena and he’ll show up tonight.” In her tantrum she crushes the amulet. It bleeds into her hand and opens another portal. “Come into the portal and perhaps we’ll find a really adorable dog.”
13. 0:08:33 Greg: “I feel like we’ve walked into a bit of a family spat there.” Stanley: “Walk through the door!”

The arena: the ghost-town saloon

14. 0:08:49 They push open saloon doors into “a good old Western town.” The bar sits on the far side and the piano plays soft music to itself. The room is empty, with cards still laid out on the tables and a few coins lying about. “This is my gift to you. A place certainly abandoned, a ghost town… and we’re looking to add at least one more.”
15. 0:09:31 Stanley: “Hey, does candy still work here?” Greg worries that “making ghosts” doesn’t sound like an honorable duel where everyone walks away. Grandmaster: “the Shadow King often has other plans.” Shadow King: “if you still have your legs by the end, then maybe.” Greg: “I presume you must mean sea legs… We’re going on a boat, right?” Stanley: “Oh, I think I like you, Gregory.” Greg: “I think I quite like you too. You’ve got a lovely gun.”
16. 0:10:24 A tumbleweed rolls in. The Grandmaster’s wings open and she soars up. The Acolytes yip and holler, swinging cowboy hats above their heads, with a few lassos circling. “Give them a showdown that they’ll remember.” She takes her seat next to a small, tiny, empty throne (inferred to be her missing dog’s; see 0:11:17 “Think it of its dog”, garbled).
17. 0:11:27 Stanley’s trick shot. He picks an ace of spades off a table: “luck’s got nothing to do with it.” He tosses it up and shoots a hole through the spade. The performance check is good enough, but the bullet also punches a hole through “Elendari’s” cowboy hat in the crowd.
18. 0:12:19 Greg’s twirl. “I too can use a gun.” He tries the draw-and-twirl flourish, drops his pistol and stumbles to pick it up. “Terribly sorry. It’s been a minute.” Caustic Phoenix calls it a self-inflicted nat 1. Greg: “Sometimes the weight is perfect and sometimes it’s just very awful.” Asked if he’s ready: “I have been trained for this my entire life.” Stanley points out the safety’s on the left. Greg: “Yours has a safety? Shit.” Shadow King: “Oh, that could have saved so many people.… You’re not going to be needing it tonight… Acolytes, are you ready to see some blood? Roll initiative.”
19. 0:13:31 Greg rolls a 10, Stanley 12. Stanley goes first.

Round 1: the wager and the “accidental” duel

20. 0:13:58 Stanley admires Greg’s “fine pair of pistols.” Greg: “a duelist is only so good if they can dual wield. A kimbo, as they say.” Stanley says he’ll only need one pistol and proposes a wager: shoot the bullseye of cards in the sky, and whoever misses takes a shot from the bar before they fight.
21. 0:15:04 Greg agrees (“I’ve never done a duel with drinking before”). He hopes they don’t have “this dreaded tequila stuff” out “here in the Outback.” Stanley will be looking for “my old pal Jack… behind the bar.” Greg: “Grandmaster, he’s allowed to bring a friend?” She says the rules bend. So Greg asks to bring his big sister: “She always beats me in a fight… She uses a polearm… I’ve seen her disembowel people.” Grandmaster: “I think I’d like your sister as my friend, too.” Stanley: “I never said no to hanging out with anybody’s big sister.”
22. 0:16:18 Ruling: “Those who are in the arenas will stay in the arena. No additions.” To Greg: “Gideon, Gregory, 500, whatever it is. Your mother must have hated you.”
23. 0:16:50 New wager. Stanley walks 10 paces down the floor, hands in the air and back turned, and tells Greg to say when he’ll shoot. If Greg’s quick on the draw he gets a free shot. Mechanically, Stanley takes the Dodge action.
24. 0:17:37 The bow. “As any honorable gentleman would do… one must bow before a duel.” Greg gives a very awkward bow. One pistol falls out of its holster and fires. The bullet hits the floor and ricochets into Stanley, “right in the meat of the thigh.” Stanley: “Damn it, Gregory.” Greg: “Oh, no. Oh, not again. I’m terribly sorry.”
25. 0:19:10 As Greg leans over for the dropped pistol, the other one falls out of its holster and also fires. Stanley: “I’m noticing a theme.” Stanley dies (death #1). Greg: “Why does this keep happening?” He gently re-holsters the guns: “Gregor, just give me strength.” Shadow King: “Did he kill him already?” Grandmaster: “You didn’t even try. You accidentally killed a man. Boo!”
26. 0:20:16 Greg kneels carefully so the guns can’t fall out and prods Stanley’s shoulder: “Are you still alive, Stanley?”
27. 0:20:46 The drone. A small flash of light appears above Stanley’s head. A small mechanical figure reanimates his corpse with a flash of light. Stanley: “I wasn’t expecting it to be so, uh, so quick, but, gosh darn it, it didn’t satisfy.”
28. 0:21:23 The toe. Startled by the light and the voice, Greg falls backwards. A gun misfires through its holster into his own foot and tears off his pinky toe. “You now only have nine toes.” The toe flies through the air and lands on a table. Greg: “There’s so much blood, Stanley.”
29. 0:22:39 Stanley finds the toe: “Oh, man, that’s real green. I guess that kind of matches the rest of you.” He pours a big mug of ale, drops the toe in and sends it to the bar: “That’ll probably keep till the end of the fight being all fermented in there, so you might be able to reattach that.” Greg: “Will my toe be drunk when it gets done?”
30. 0:23:41 Greg: “Well, I suppose there’s some blood for you there, Shadow King. Onwards with the honorable jewel [duel].” Stanley: “Why don’t you gimp your way over to the other side of the room.” Greg, no longer trusting his holsters, carries the guns in hand and hops across the room.
31. 0:24:14 How Stanley lives. “I thought he was dead… What happened?” (speaker uncertain, probably the Shadow King). Grandmaster: “There are certain type of individuals who have the ability to not die. It turns out they’ve made a deal of some sort and they can continue to come back unlimitedly as long as the, well, their secrets are theirs to keep.” Stanley tips his hood (not a hat) to her.

The Box of Chaos (0:24:52)

32. The Grandmaster offers “a little extra weaponry… Dead Man’s Tale, Crimson, you know, the classics.” A flaming comet of bright pink and yellow hurtles down between the two champions. Shadow King: “before you stands the Box of Chaos.”
33. 0:25:43 Priming the box. The Shadow King reaches through the crowd with a shadowy spectral hand and snatches up an Acolyte (name garbled: “names in action”). He slams them into the corner pocket of the pool table over and over until their body is pulp, rips their soul out “of the meat pile” and slams it into the box. Pink and purple flames shoot through the saloon roof. “You can make a sacrifice to it. Anything you like… And if you’re worthy, or if you’re not, maybe, you’ll get a magic item in return.”
34. 0:26:51 Stanley sacrifices himself. “In his overconfident recklessness,” Stanley throws himself into the box. Inside, “this space is oddly nothingness, but within it, you find at least one mug. And only one mug.” His dead body flies out, a crumpled corpse, holding a new pistol: a greater silver pistol (+3 to attacks, advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma saves, immune to being charmed).
35. 0:28:40 Naming it. “Every great weapon has a name.” The drone sparks him back. Stanley: “That worked a lot better than I thought it was going to… This is just beautiful. Like a little flower. I think I’ll call it… Daffodil.”
36. 0:29:38 Hero points. Both champions earned hero points for spilling blood. Grandmaster: “Go plus ultra… go super Saiyan that we all scream, it’s over 9,000!” Shadow King: “9,000? That’s a buzzword.” Grandmaster: “There’s nothing that angers us more than a hero point unused.”
37. 0:30:48 Greg: “Stanley… seeing as I’ve seen you die twice now… Is this all just some kind of special effects?… Please tell me it’s a show.” Stanley: “Sometimes life deals you a bad hand and you go down. And in my case, I didn’t get the name Stanley Second Life Gibbs for nothing.”
38. 0:31:25 Greg’s sacrifice. “I don’t have a second life, but I suppose I have something to offer the box.” He fetches the toe beer and several bottles from the bar, pours all the liquor and the beer into the box, then gingerly drops in the toe. A shadowy hand claws out as the “monstrosity of a soul now trapped in the box” peeks out: “Why the fuck do you think I want your dirty toe?” Greg: “I heard it goes well in the booze. Did you at least appreciate the booze?” The soul: “I’ve had worse. I’ll take the toe.” Stanley: “this soul’s been through quite a lot in the 40 seconds they’ve been inside the box.”
39. 0:32:30 Tequila. Meanwhile vendors walk the stands selling tequila. Stanley calls one down (“Down here, little lady”), and a small waterfall of about eight shots pours toward him. He dances and catches them all in his mouth. He passes the Constitution save easily: “You’ve taken quite a few tequila shots in your life.” He winks at the server: “Thank you, darling.”
40. 0:33:20 The toe pendant. The box’s fire fills the room but gives off no heat. The shadowy hand returns Greg’s toe on a silver chain: a pendant made of his own toe. As an action it lets him fly up to 20 ft on top of his movement, but if he doesn’t land at the end of the flight, he falls. Grandmaster: “He just re-gifted it back.” Greg: “Oh, you really shouldn’t have.” Chat calls it “the Eye of Agamotto.”

Round 2

41. 0:35:24 “After all this drinking I seem to be a little tipsy.” Stanley says Greg “got me pretty good.” Greg concedes Stanley should take “the first shot” since the duel’s honorable beginning didn’t happen. Stanley: “Well, it’ll certainly be the fourth.”
42. 0:36:46 Daffodil’s debut. Stanley does an overly elaborate set of swirls and twirls with the silver pistol: around his finger, behind his back. He slides out the cylinder, throws six bullets in the air, and they land in the cylinder. He snaps it shut and fires. It misses. (Table talk: the roll wouldn’t go through because Stanley’s sheet sits at 0 HP. “Turns out you can’t shoot if you’re dead.”) Frustrated that the showy shot didn’t land, he fires again and hits Greg in the arm. An Acolyte screams: “Your enemies can’t kill you if they’re already dead!”
43. 0:39:20 Greg: “Am I supposed to be dead? Am I dead?” He’s fine, just overdramatic. Stanley (“A little hot dog there, Gregory”) sits in a chair and sips the table beer left on it: “God knows how long it’s been there, but tastes good to him.”
44. 0:41:07 Greg’s turn. Bleeding from the arm, he chastises his pistols: “Why can’t you just work normally, please? Just work normally for once.” He fires. Stanley spends a luck point, but the shot still hits. “Stanley’s heart will explode and he dies in the chair” (death #4). The Grandmaster: “Stanley, again? Quit dying!” She throws popcorn at the little metallic figure: “Wake him up!”
45. 0:43:28 Greg to his gun: “I told you to work, but not quite like that… How are you doing this? You’re just a pistol.” He shoots with the second pistol and lands a glancing blow. Stanley raises his glass tumbler to sip; the bullet shatters it and a shard opens the artery in his neck. He dies (death #5). Grandmaster: “We need to find this guy some new armor.” Stanley, revived: “That one was in the throat… maybe go for more center mass next time.”
46. 0:44:49 Stanley tries to intimidate the freaked-out Greg, and Greg counters with insight. Stanley: “if I could explain it myself, I probably wouldn’t tell you.” Greg: “No, I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
47. 0:45:25 Greg dives under the billiards table to cower. A gun falls out of his hand, hits the floor and fires. It ricochets off the floor “right up into between his eyes.” Stanley dies (death #6). A green hand reaches out from under the table to retrieve the gun.
48. 0:46:09 Spawn killing. Grandmaster: “Quit dying! Listen, the respawn here is terrible… this is basically spawn killing.” Hearing this, the drone flies Stanley’s revival to another spot, 30 ft away. Stanley: “I don’t remember sitting here five seconds ago.” He reaches for a different table beer.
49. 0:46:50 The Grandmaster apologizes to the Shadow King for all the deaths: “Gregory keeps talking to his guns. This is the weirdest match.” Shadow King: “he’s not staying dead, and that’s upsetting… It’s not much of a deathmatch if they don’t actually die.”

Chaos event: Vythorn’s prismatic spray rings (0:47:13)

50. The Acolytes chant “Chaos!” as the chaos meter hits its first benchmark. Grandmaster: “I think it’s time for a little finger action.” Shadow King: “I’m sorry, what?” She means the prismatic spray rings on his fingers. Shadow King: “Yes, Vythorn’s prismatic spray rings. I kept them as mementos.… Very well, champions, let me prismatic finger you.”
51. 0:48:06 From behind the pool table, Greg pokes out a pair of finger guns with lizard hands. Greg’s roll means he must save or be slowly turned to stone; Stanley’s roll means two damage types. Grandmaster: “He’s busy getting fingered right now. Give him a break.” Giggling comes from behind the billiards table.
52. 0:49:40 Greg goes stiff. “Due to this fingering, you are now stiff. You are restrained right now. If you fail to save a couple more times, you might end up rock hard.” (00: “Look at him stand so fast.”)
53. 0:50:02 Stanley: poison and lightning. His throat scratches and closes from a suffocating poison. Just as he reaches for the table beer, a lightning bolt comes through the ceiling and fries him. He’s left a skeleton sitting in the chair (death #7). Greg: “Oh Lord, are you okay?”
54. 0:50:50 The drone, “seemingly growing sentience,” rolls its single eye as if frustrated by its day in the saloon, and puts Stanley back in the chair. Stanley: “Ooh, I’m all tingly, but I’m feeling a little tired. How you doing there, little buddy?” Silence. “Somewhere the voice of Peter Dinklage rings out.”
55. 0:51:34 The plushy d20. For the end-of-round roll the Shadow King rolls his “back to back six.” Grandmaster: “Let me show you how it’s done.” She picks up a plushy D20 “that has clearly not been played with for quite some time” (inferred to be her missing dog’s toy, given the dog thread) and rolls a 19. “Not lame sixes, 19s.” Stanley: “I’m bringing you to my next poker game.” Shadow King: “You know, it’s fine. I have to give you something since you don’t have your dog.” Stanley “loses the will to live” and dies in the chair (death #8). Grandmaster: “Maybe somewhere out there he’s rolling his own dice. We’re taking a 10-minute break right now. I need to go cry my eyes out and go punch a wall 15 times.”

After the break

56. 0:52:54 Caustic Phoenix’s mic sounds odd. Shadow King: “There’s something wrong with your voice.” Grandmaster: “one of Greg’s bullets again went haywire and probably just shot my mic on accident.” Greg: “I promise it’s not my fault. It’s the guns. They keep doing things like they’ve got the will of their own.” Grandmaster: “Do we need to get like sticky glue or something?” Shadow King: “Well, I just killed him too, that’s not hard. What are you bragging about?”
57. 0:53:54 The Shadow King’s tip. “Greg, point of advice… maybe shoot the little contraption.” Grandmaster: “You can’t give away secrets like that.” Stanley: “That was pretty underhanded… We’ll deal out some justice to you once I wrap up this down here.”

Round 3

58. 0:54:39 Disappointed at the Shadow King for spilling the beans, Stanley nods to the drone. Two little holographic hands come out and gently cup his face to heal him.
59. 0:55:16 The shadow shot. Stanley holsters Daffodil and takes out his old pistol, the one he walked in with. He loads a strange transparent casing full of dark, swirling magic and fires a shadow shot at “Gregory. Grego.” Grandmaster: “if you actually take a good shot at him… he will be Grego more permanently.”
60. 0:57:24 Greg holds his guns up in front of his face in “absolute abject terror” to deflect the missile. He loses the roll-off narrowly, and the shot “hit[s] you in the hands instead.” Grandmaster: “You lost the toe, now you lost the pinky.”
61. 0:58:28 Perfect vision. Greg rolls a nat 20 on the save against blindness, and the shadow shot instead “corrected his vision!… You see everything!” Mudcat: “You are now eligible to be a fighter pilot and you can’t be blinded. Anymore.”
62. 0:58:51 Greg: “Stanley! I can see you properly.… your face has still got blood on it from the time when I shot you earlier… Oh, that’s what that little bright light looks like.… the world is just so bright and colorful and beautiful. Did you know that some lizards are colorblind? I’ve never seen the, is that what they call orange or is that what they call red?” Stanley: “Well, you’re going to be seeing red here in a second.”
63. 0:59:37 Grandmaster: “Get him, Daffodil!” Daffodil misses. Grandmaster: “that’s what happens when you forget your own gun’s name.” Stanley: “It is Daffodil’s wiltin’.… I need to get me a vase with some water.”
64. 1:00:39 Second wind. “I’m just going to go down to my inner happy place here and just think about all the things that I’ve done right in my life.” “My therapist says that if there’s anything that can bring us out of the bad luck, it’s just thinking about some good luck.” He rolls a 1 on the heal. The Grandmaster tosses him an extra d12: “Second wind for second life. I got you, Gibbs.”
65. 1:01:55 Greg unstiffens. Behind the billiards table, Greg works to “shake it off and not be so stiff.” Stanley: “You look a little plugged up there, Gregory.… Just work it out.” Greg passes (“Actually, I feel marvelous”) and is no longer restrained. Stanley: “There’s a stain on the front of his pants.” With the 19, Greg “limp[s] his way out of here.”
66. 1:03:08 Greg looks up at the Shadow King, waves and gives a little salute. Grandmaster: “That one was for you.” The Shadow King, not understanding, magically zips an 8-ball at Greg’s forehead. It flies right past his head. Greg: “Terribly sorry.” Shadow King: “Get on with it!” Greg: “I suppose this is what mom and pa would have wanted. Stanley, you’re going down.”
67. 1:03:54 The chandelier hero point. Greg spends his hero point on a hypothetical chandelier above Stanley. Grandmaster: “All saloons have a standard chandelier.” The map turns out to have five chandeliers and a second story. Stanley: “I literally could have been sitting at a table without a chandelier.” Grandmaster: “Just be thankful they’re not the Pokemon chandelier.” Stanley spends a luck point to challenge the roll, but Greg still hits. The Grandmaster lets him drop up to three chandeliers and describe the path.
68. 1:05:50 The ricochet. The shot first misses, flies out a window, hits a post outside, then another post, and comes back in through another window. It drops the leftmost chandelier, ricochets back into the bar breaking several containers of drink, ricochets off a mug of ale, drops the second chandelier, comes back, shoots past Greg’s face, and finally drops the intended chandelier. Half the bar is destroyed.
69. 1:06:30 It’s a spoke chandelier. Stanley’s head goes right between two spokes. “For a split second, you see just a little bit of hope until the weight of the chandelier snaps his neck and he dies in the chair” (death #9). With each bounce the Acolytes scream louder.
70. 1:07:40 Greg: “I’m terribly sorry, Grandmaster, Shadow King. I’ll pay for any damages, I promise. Not for you, Stanley.”
71. 1:07:57 “Death Strike.” Stanley revives, dusts chandelier dirt off his clothes, and finds Greg’s barrel pointed at him again: “Well, damn it, here we go.” Greg says he’ll “use Death Strike” (the deft strike ability, misheard and then adopted as “Death Strike”). The Grandmaster won’t let him say it so calmly. Greg: “My pistol, which is a far more proficient combatant than I am, is going to use Death Strike.” Stanley: “Sentient pistol.” As it fires, a whisper comes on the wind: “Greg, shoot him.” Greg looks at his guns, very confused.
72. 1:09:06 Stanley raises his pistol to fire back, but Greg’s bullet goes straight down Stanley’s barrel and backfires one of Stanley’s own rounds into his face. He dies (death #10).
73. 1:09:31 The Grandmaster makes the drone dodge a falling chandelier. Stanley: “You got mad at the Shadow King for giving up my secrets and now you’re the one finding the new scraps?” The drone dodges easily (“He’s real little”). Stanley: “Snap my neck, not his parts… I volunteer as tribute… Take me instead. My nickname doesn’t stand if he goes away.” Grandmaster: “I don’t really know what he is. No, no idea.”
74. 1:11:01 Stanley, of Greg: “If that’s all for Timmy 10 guns.” The Shadow King’s end-of-round roll is a 5: “Easy come, easy go.” The Grandmaster rolls a 10. Greg: “Was I also easy go, Shadow King? Was I also easy go?” Grandmaster: “We’re not talking about you right now.” Greg: “If you weren’t easy come, I could take it.” Shadow King: “He can’t pitch me a softball like that and not expect me to hit it out of the park.” Stanley: “I feel like y’all are having a whole different kind of duel out there.”

Round 4

75. 1:12:33 The golden bullet. Stanley feels his luck running out. He pulls his hero point from his belt pouch, flicks it like a coin, checks it on his wrist, then channels fire-like energy into his hand and melts it into a single round, which he loads into Daffodil for one very powerful seeking shot. Grandmaster: “Give up that multi-shot for one big hit. I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before.” His two attacks are combined into one, with double damage plus fire.
76. 1:14:55 Daffodil blooms. “The barrel of this pistol goes into full bloom of a beautiful flower engulfed in lava,” dripping lava down the grip: “an incredible mess of beauty and flora.” The shot leaves slowly, engulfs itself in flame, and takes off “at the speed of light” into Gregory’s chest.
77. 1:15:37 Greg had his hand on his chest from stress, so the bullet takes off his lower two fingers. “Was that really necessary, Stanley?” Stanley: “Well, Gregor, I do apologize for your fingers.” He suggests dropping them into the table beer “for later.” Shadow King: “At least he can add to his necklace.”
78. 1:16:23 Greg grabs the beer and drinks the whole thing instead: “All right. Fucking shit.” He passes the Constitution save. Greg: “Oh, it’s much better than the toe beer, the finger beer.” Stanley raises his own glass, “awful room temperature table beer… Half backwash, half booze.”
79. 1:18:26 Stanley holsters Daffodil, and the holster melts and turns to ash; Daffodil falls to the floor. With his other pistol he tries a trick shot to graze a bullet across both of Greg’s eyes and undo the perfect vision. He points at something on the wall so Greg looks away. He makes it even with a sharpshooter penalty.
80. 1:20:06 The first gun breaks. Greg deflects, with a huge roll. “Again, it’s much more the gun than anything.” Greg holds the guns up “like the Scream classic piece of art”: “oh God, oh God, oh God.” The bullet hits the side of one gun, breaking it, and deflects away. Stanley: “Seems your eyes are as sharp as ever there, Gregory.”
81. 1:21:09 Greg: “It’s the guns. It’s always the guns. This one just, I think it might’ve whispered and told me that I’m a little bitch.… I’ve been trying to prove it for so long. And now I think I finally have.” Grandmaster: “Hold on, a cult [the gun] is talking to you?” Greg: “Can’t you hear it?”
82. 1:21:35 Greg unloads the broken gun and chucks it up to the Grandmaster. His throw is too weak, so the empty gun “shoots” itself to propel into her lap. Stanley shoots it out of the sky. It flies past the Grandmaster’s hands and out of the arena. As it goes: “Greg, you’re a bitch!” Greg: “See? See, I fucking told you!… Is that the way it’s going to be?” The remaining gun stays silent; Greg looks like a madman shouting at his own gun. Grandmaster: “This guy’s got demons he’s fighting on his own.” Stanley: “I’m hardly the first man to speak to one of my weapons, but this is something else.” Ruling: “Being crazy is not an action.”
83. 1:24:02 The pistol takes over. The remaining gun levitates out of Greg’s hand and pistol-whips him in the forehead. It “has had enough and is taking the fight into its own hands.” Grandmaster: “It doesn’t have hands!” Shadow King: “It’s metaphorical hands! Keep up!”
84. 1:24:41 The floating pistol, “which has lost its compatriot,” fires on its own at Stanley and again uses “Death Strike.” “The gun, which has always been the real combatant here… Greg is a vehicle to get them into the Deathmatch.” Caustic Phoenix admits: “I made up a spell called the castration spell.” Mudcat: “She meant the brand of castigation.” It fires a second shot, reloading itself, while Greg stares agape and cowers.
85. 1:26:24 The drone dies. The gun’s bonus-action shot is aimed at Stanley. As he sips the disgusting table beer, three beautifully placed sentient pistol shots ring out and shatter the drone into pieces on the floor. The last ricochets off a broken piece into Stanley’s chest. He realizes “his name’s about to change… no longer going to be Stanley Second Life Gibbs.”
86. 1:28:12 Stanley’s last words. “Would you look at that? Seems there won’t be a second life for me after all.… I gotta hand it to somebody. One of the three of y’all over there just delivered quite the performance.” Greg: “my guns don’t have hands, I don’t think.” Stanley: “this has been the most beer I’ve ever had during a duel in all of my life.… I died several times during the course of this fight.” Blood bubbles over: “the next time we meet, bring your big sister.” Greg: “She’ll be far better at this than I am. She’ll destroy you.” Stanley dies for good.
87. 1:29:25 The gun’s revenge. Greg’s gun turns and points at Greg: “Greg, you little bitch. You got my sibling killed.” “And for that, someone’s got hell to pay.” It shoots twice, spending one of Greg’s key points to make the second hit. Greg is at 1 HP, bleeding out.
88. 1:30:28 Greg: “I don’t understand this whole time. You were alive and what did you want from me? Did you just want all this death and killing? Oh God.” He stumbles backwards, slips on his own blood, falls, cracks his head and dies.
89. 1:30:54 Shadow King: “Oh, I was, but I was going to kill him. Shit. Well now, now it’s not fun.” A moment of stunned silence from the Acolytes.
90. 1:31:20 The gun celebrates. Having revealed its sentience, Greg’s gun shoots into the air in celebration. A wild bullet kills JustJules22 in the audience. Grandmaster: “Someone, put that gun down!” (00: “You too, JustJules22.”)
91. 1:31:39 The longbow. The Grandmaster stands, foot on the railing, draws her bow and shoots the pistol, pinning it to the ground. (00: “Who would have known the longbow was the superior ranged weapon all along?”) The gun combusts and breaks apart as if made of a thousand pieces all exploding: a “mechanical firework.”
92. 1:32:35 No winner. With both champions dead, “the crowd of Acolytes go wild… The battle for no one has won except for them, for they have witnessed a true fight to the death for both of our champions. Remember this, Acolytes, at the end of the day, if you haven’t given your all, are you really living? Shadow King, does this not suffice?” Shadow King: “I mean, I suppose it’s kind of bullshit, though. Whatever. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character closing lines (canon, Dried Blood)

• 1:49:53 Greg: “Well, I do suppose that I may have fallen in battle, but at least it was indeed, finally, a noble duel.”
• 1:50:04 Greg’s pistol (00, likely Byf): “Shut the fuck up, Greg. We know what you think about the damn duel.” 1:50:16: “I got shot to pieces by a longbow, Greg. Do you know how embarrassing that is, Greg? I’m a pistol, I’m the evolution of ranged weaponry. What the fuck, Greg?” Greg: “Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll shut it now.”
• 1:50:47 Stanley’s drone (BDTeej): “I’m actually quite sick of reviving that sack of shit. All he does is drink all day and he looks at me and expects me to make up for all his life’s mistakes every time he flings himself out the window or into a mysterious flaming box. Or perhaps just sit still while fucking Chandelier falls on his head.… without a break, take a poo… This is my destined place to be.… now that I’m gone, I’ll resurrect no one. I spent my entire service with this fool, this absolute buffoon. And quite frankly, I will miss him.”

Out-of-character (creator notes)

• Mudcat calls Teej “Big Daddy Teej.”
• Teej’s inspiration: he usually plays long-backstory fantasy characters, so this time he went with a cowboy because “I really wanted to be a cowboy,” with a nod to Destiny, which he and Byf share. He asked Mudcat for a character at 1 HP who is revived every time he’s attacked, with the drone as his real health bar, and Mudcat said yes. Chat rated his southern accent 10/10.
• Mudcat: a chaos event of “a bunch of crows” would have fit. Caustic Phoenix wanted a giant chicken with “the kernel [Colonel].”
• Byf’s inspiration: he’d long wanted to play a “gun monk” (“gunk”), chose double pistols over the musket to be “stupid and fun,” and channeled Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death (“I’m terrible at this” energy). Greg is the child of some noble with far too many children, very replaceable, and terrible at everything. He DM’d Mud beforehand that the guns are “cursed” as in sentient “shit posters,” not cursed as in 10,000 years of suffering.
• Teej says Greg’s crush on the Shadow King fits the Our Flag Means Death authority-figure dynamic. Byf: “Damn right Greg would follow the Shadow King.”
• Death count: Caustic Phoenix calls this the most deaths in any Deathmatch (normally one, two at most). Stanley: 10. Total: 11 champion deaths, two Acolytes, two guns, “15 deaths in one episode.” The Box of Chaos soul isn’t counted, since “their soul stays in there.”
• The chandeliers: Byf improvised it and didn’t know the map had a second story. Mudcat’s planned chaos event was dropping the chandeliers. Mudcat: “You’re a bitch, Mike. That’s me, not the guns.”
• Teej: his favorite action-comedy trope is “the accidental professional.”
• Teej’s hero point: he pictures hero points as literal gold coins, like the John Wick coins, and melted it into a golden bullet. Mudcat asks whether the coin flip was “Cabal” and expected a Drifter joke (Destiny).
• Caustic Phoenix: chat elevated every reference (the “Tokila” (tequila), the Eye of Agamotto); “others build off your story.” The toe in the beer led to the toe amulet. Teej compared preserving body parts in liquid to creepy labs and pictured the toe necklace from Pirates of the Caribbean. Mudcat: “what’s the grossest thing I could do? Make the toe a necklace.”
• Why Greg never flew: “Greg is a fucking coward”; channeling Stede Bonnet meant hiding behind the table and praying.
• Rematch idea: Byf plays Greg’s big sister, and Teej plays “a newly ghost-revived Greg with no memories.” Byf: “Unless you still have the cursed guns.”
• Teej said he’d never won, but he won at the GCX live show as “Lord Snacks” (“we cheated for you”). He “dropped the hammer,” and Mudcat finds the GCX hammer sound bite.