S4E13 — Swole — Storm on the Horizon v Grug the Wizard

Watch on YouTube

A snow leopard monk with knives for feet faced a barbarian who sincerely believed he was the most powerful wizard in The Void. Storm on the Horizon and Grug the Wizard fought in a peaceful meditation valley that the Grandmaster ordered them to wreck. They argued over familiars, threw spell books like boomerangs and took metal chairs to the head from their hosts, and neither of them survived the night. The episode is remembered for Grug yelling spell names he could not cast, his “buns of holiness,” and the Shadow King’s cruel last word on the winner.

The Story

The Jingle Bell Boy

The night opened in The Dread Fortress, where The Shadow King strolled the hallways in fancy leather boots with silver straps. Tiny bells hung from the backs of them. He had not put the bells there. As the narration explained, “The rest of us did, so we knew when he’d be coming close.” The Grandmaster called him “this little jingle bell boy.”

He found the Grandmaster drilling the Fortress’s chinchilla army, a troop of stick-wielding martial artists with murder in their eyes. She said the training was for security, “to protect the Void against anything or anyone who might try to invade or disrupt the games.” The Shadow King called it admirable, at least as far as “keeping the regime safe,” and added that not many would be attacking the Dread Fortress while he sat on the throne. The Grandmaster suggested the chinchillas might really be there to protect “all the goblins and the civilians that we have here in the Dread Fortress. You don’t seem particularly inclined to protect them.” He agreed quite happily: “That’s a fair point. They don’t mean a lot to me.”

He then admitted he had only been “looking for a bathroom, but yes, let’s go to the Deathmatch.” At the Grandmaster’s clap the chinchillas parted like an ocean to clear the path to his throne, which she described as ugly, though she conceded she might be biased. The chinchillas circled and beat their sticks against the tables, walls and floors. The Grandmaster clenched the amulet at her neck until it cut her fingers and blood dripped, then announced the match. The two champions stepped out of a blue portal.

Two Very Different Champions

Grug, played by BanzaiBabee, introduced himself as “the most powerful wizard that one has ever seen.” He had once been an unintelligent barbarian. He climbed the tallest mountain, found the most powerful wizard there and told him: “Puny Wizard, make me powerful!” The wizard laid hands on him. What Grug got in return was a curse: he now believed he was the mightiest magic user alive, while doing nothing more magical than punching things and setting off the occasional accidental surge of wild magic.

Storm on the Horizon, played by PixiesandPins, woke up from a catnap to answer her name. Henrietta the Goblin brought her a cup of black coffee and she shot it in one gulp. When the Shadow King asked whether her knives were strapped on, she rolled onto her back, stuck all four legs in the air, and ten organic blades came out: shink. “Do you not know how cat work? You’ve never met cat before?”

The talk wandered into Fortress lore. The Grandmaster said there were several cats in the Fortress and that “besides the chinchilla army, the cat army also does a very notable job” keeping out the constant invasion of mice and rats. The Shadow King said he barely knew they had chinchillas. Storm asked whether chinchillas were snacks. They are not. They are pets and armies, and every Fortress employee gets an emotional support chinchilla who doubles as a bodyguard. “Trust me,” the Shadow King warned, “you don’t want to mess with the chinchillas. Their union is very strong.”

For their poses, Storm showed her belly with every knife out. Grug flexed his “awesome wizards books,” which were medieval county tax records and old codices, not spell books of any kind. He flexed so hard his robes tore at the biceps and neck.

Destroy the Valley

The Grandmaster opened a purple portal onto a brisk, bright valley, where a breeze ruffled fur and beard beside a calm babbling stream. It was a perfect place for meditation. “Destroy it,” she told them. “I give you this landscape for you to demolish.” Overhead, row after row of The Acolytes filled stands that made the valley feel like the Coliseum itself. “They are the ones that demand that your story be told today. So make sure that it’s a fucking good one.” The Shadow King had one wish: “I’d like to see this river filled with blood by the end of the Deathmatch.”

Storm struck first. She threw her boomerang, “that slightly bent stick,” and it smacked Grug square in the forehead. While he powered up his “mythical magical energy” like a hero in a cartoon, she hit him again. The Grandmaster noted that powering up is “prime time to hit them,” and that Grug now had an equal sign on his forehead. On its next pass the boomerang zoomed across the field, and the crowd accidentally did “a duck” instead of a wave.

Grug decided the bad kitty should bow down and become his familiar. He yelled “BRRRRR! … Blur.” and was wrapped in multicolored protective lights. Then he punched Storm while shouting “Death Touch!” She yowled like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. The Grandmaster wondered whether he was just naming his fingers. “No, this is, I’m a wizard. These are magical spells,” Grug insisted. Storm, meanwhile, had been completely won over: “I love Grug. I don’t want to fight Grug. I want to be friends with Grug.” The Acolytes were enthralled, and the Grandmaster granted both champions a single moment of glory to spend later, a once-per-fight burst of “plus ultra.”

The Box and the Siren

The Shadow King snapped his fingers, and a yellow and pink box slammed onto the battlefield like a meteor. “I’m going to need a volunteer.” His spectral hands plucked an Acolyte named Iron Trout from the stands and wrung them out over the box “like a wet towel.” The soul dripped in, the box erupted in pink and yellow fire, and a shadowy figure with bursting yellow eyes clawed its way out. This was the Box of Chaos. Anyone who offered it a sacrifice would get a magic item. The Grandmaster said the lint in a pocket would do.

Storm hit Grug with a blast of thunder and declared, “My dad would be very proud of me.” Every hit Grug took seemed to set off his magic. He yelled “Entangled!” and wild plants swallowed the ground around her. His aura grew brighter, but only because the Acolytes were shining flashlights on him to support the image he had of himself. Storm then made herself small and gave him enormous, blinking kitten eyes. Grug broke: “So cute, too cute. Maybe hug.” He went in for the embrace and tenderly hugged a rock next to her instead. “Wait a second! We’re in the middle of a battle! How dare you!” He recovered by bringing a tome down on her head while yelling “Burning Hands!” When the Shadow King doubted they knew what a wizard was, Grug spelled it out: “W for Wonderful, I for Intelligence, Z for Zap, U for Ultra, R for Radiant, D for Damage.” The Grandmaster’s advice: “You should have chosen a shorter word.”

A figure then descended the steps of the stands, singing “Chicken wing, chicken wing, hot dog and bologna.” To the champions it sounded like a childhood music box. Storm resisted it, and her sensitive cat ears made her cover them in pain. Grug was entranced. He wandered to the edge of the arena with his mouth open, and the siren pelted him with chicken wings. The Grandmaster ruled that chicken wing damage cannot be resisted, and listed it alongside the arena’s other special damage types, pillow and rock. Grug choked up a bone and snapped out of it. The siren turned into a chicken and ran off, never to be seen again, “unless you go visit the chicken wings stand that we have during the halftime show.”

The Hairball Chariot

Storm walked up to the Box and coughed a hairball straight into it. “What are you doing? Wait, wait… Don’t do that,” the figure inside protested. Storm only asked, “Is sacrifice for you? … Give me presents.” The fire column rose, and out rolled a much bigger hairball harnessed by two long leads to a flying chariot. Storm described the hairball as white, so it looked a little like clouds. Grug, it turned out, had never really noticed clouds.

Storm circled him at the end of her long-reach spear, the iklwa, and landed a natural 20. “Stone skin!” Grug cried, then “Mage armor!” as more blows landed. He hit back by throwing his spell books, yelling “Magic missile!” and then “Fireball.” One book bounced back into his own head. The audience sat in stunned silence before erupting, “happy to know what a boomerang and fireball look like now.” Grug renewed his offer. “Soon I will get a magic tower… You will have wet food all around.” Storm lied that it sounded real good, if he would just put down the books. She asked whether he had treats. He believed her.

Too Close to the Sun

Storm opened the next round with another natural 20. Grug shot a beam of color out of his chest, and when Storm answered with a shattering blast of sound, a small dog somewhere in the stands barked and tried to get at the cat before being shooed away. When Grug declared “Mage Armor!” yet again, the Shadow King protested, “You can’t just say Mage Armor! That’s not how it works!” The Grandmaster overruled him: “You can say Mage Armor whenever you want!”

Storm flew her chariot fifty feet straight up. Grug tore off his robe so that both pecs could blaze out and blind her. Many Acolytes had to put on sunglasses. Then he looked up, perhaps for the first time in his life. “So much sky, it’s endless. If only I could be part of the sky.”

He spent his moment of glory on the most glorious jump of his life. In his head, light poured into his back and wings unfolded. In reality he was simply jumping, again and again, like a double-jumping plumber, until he was eye to eye with Storm and the front rows. The Acolytes who saw his eyes lost their minds and their language and began barking in madness at the beauty. Then Grug himself asked the arena to check whether he had thought about where he was landing. He had not. “I just jumped up in the air, I didn’t actually jump up to anything.” He dropped sixty feet, left a small crater that filled into a lake, and lay face down in a river two or three feet deep, unaware that he could stand up. “Icarus, my boy!”

Metal Chairs

The Shadow King rolled a perfect 20 and chose “the classic,” with a twist: “I’m going to need your help, Elusia. A little family activity.” He conjured two metal chairs. “Let us hear you scream! It’s time for the metal chairs!” the Grandmaster cried, and she dive-bombed the blinded Storm, clanging the chair off her skull before tossing her “two tiny little blue pills” for the headache. “Nice hit, but let me show you how it’s done,” said the Shadow King. He swooped on shadowy wings and brought his chair down on Grug’s head. Then he hauled Grug out of the river by the collar so he wouldn’t drown: “Try not to die too early.” The blow set off Grug’s magic one more time. A beam of radiant light blasted out of his ass into the sky. Twenty swooning Acolytes were knocked out by the sight of “those tan cheeks.”

The Final Blow

Still blind, Storm spent her own moment of glory dive-bombing the chariot onto Grug, homing in on the sound of his gurgling and the clang of the chair. “We’re friends of science.” Grug yelled “Dimension Door!” and popped into the one-seater chariot with her, nose to nose. “Eskimo kisses?… That’s not how babies are made.” She blasted him with her four-footed “Fist of Four Thunders” (“I am Cheetara. I’ve always wanted to be.”). He wrapped them both in vines and drained her with necrotic tentacles, healing himself. The Grandmaster suggested calling it Vampiric Touch, and Grug wrote the new “spell” into his book in crayon, which doubled as a snack. “You told me you’d be my familiar. I really, really, really believed you’d be my familiar.” He begged her to surrender. She lied to him again, and he believed her again: “You got to have trust in your family.”

In the last round Storm stunned him with her spear. “Stone skin was too strong. Now I am stone.” She landed four blows, and with the last, “the Kill Bill, five fingers of death,” she shoved him so hard he popped out of existence for a second and reappeared twenty feet away in open air. As Grug fell, he dreamed of “growing old as an old wizened wizard in a wizard’s tower… with my new familiar at my side.” The Acolytes whispered his name, Grug the Wizard. He smiled, exhaled for a very long time, and landed dead between the two streams.

“They said I couldn’t be smart enough to be a wizard, but I showed them.” (Grug the Wizard)

The Grandmaster praised the story as a lesson “to always challenge and be who you are supposed to be,” and presented Storm to the Shadow King as champion. He gave her a victory lap. A spectral falcon took the hairball’s reins and whipped the chariot faster and faster around the arena. “Rise high, champion. Let everyone may see you as a shining star.” “I’m just cat,” said Storm, as the chariot climbed through the atmosphere and into space, where she began to suffocate and freeze.

Dried Blood

After the show, Storm’s player told the rest of her story. Storm had been separated from her whole tribe when she was very young. She had spent her life searching for them, growing stronger and seeking inner enlightenment, which is why she became a monk. As the cold of space set in, it woke her last childhood memory of her family, which involved snow. Growing colder made her feel at home and happy. “When she closed her eyes for the final time, she imagined that she was right next to her tribe again. So she just went home.”

Grug’s player explained that Grug had always been told he was “too dumb to be a wizard.” His curse makes him hear spell names and believe in them, and it guarantees that whenever he dies he will have a happy ending in his head and die smiling, saying he was the greatest wizard. His jump, his player said, was pure muscle: “So muscular, it looks like magic… He falls! Gravity, it works.” The champions left the Acolytes with their wisdom. Grug’s was “Always wash your hands.” Storm’s was “Is helpful to have knives for feet.”

Notable Moments

• The Shadow King strolled the Fortress with bells that others had secretly hung on his boots.
• Grug tenderly hugged a rock instead of Storm, and it later stood between them like a small monument.
• The siren pelted Grug with chicken wings, a kind of damage nothing in the arena can resist.
• Grug’s mythic jump to the sky ended with a sixty-foot fall into a shallow river he did not know he could stand up in.
• The Grandmaster and the Shadow King took turns hitting the champions with metal chairs as “a little family activity,” and Grug answered with a beam of light out of his ass.
• The Shadow King rewarded the winner with a victory lap into space.

Memorable Quotes

• Storm on the Horizon: “Do you not know how cat work? You’ve never met cat before? Is this new for you?”
• The Shadow King: “Actually, I was just looking for a bathroom, but yes, let’s go to the Deathmatch.”
• Grug the Wizard: “W for Wonderful, I for Intelligence, Z for Zap, U for Ultra, R for Radiant, D for Damage.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “You should have chosen a shorter word.”
• The Shadow King: “You can’t just say Mage Armor! That’s not how it works!”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “You can say Mage Armor whenever you want!”
• Grug the Wizard: “So much sky, it’s endless. If only I could be part of the sky.”
• Storm on the Horizon: “I’m just cat.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Storm on the Horizon (PixiesandPins). A snow leopard monk, cat-speech (“Do you not know how cat work?”).

• Ten organic knives on her four feet (“knives for feet”). She fights with a boomerang, an iklwa (10-ft reach), cat claws, Thunder Wave (“Fist of Four Thunders”) and Shatter, plus Flurry of Blows, Stunning Strike and Deflect Missiles.
• She takes catnaps and shoots black coffee.
• She sacrificed a hairball to the Box of Chaos and got the flying hairball chariot.
• She tricked Grug twice by promising to be his familiar.
• She won, then was sent into space by the Shadow King’s “victory lap” and froze. Dried Blood: she was separated from her tribe as a child and died imagining herself home with them.
• She likes treats and wants to be Cheetara.

Grug the Wizard (BanzaiBabee).

• A former barbarian who forced the most powerful wizard on the tallest mountain to “make me powerful” and was cursed to believe he is the most powerful wizard. In truth he rages and punches, with wild magic surges, and yells spell names at everything (“Death Touch,” “Burning Hands,” “Magic Missile,” “Fireball,” “Stone skin,” “Mage armor,” “Color spray,” “Dimension Door,” “Black tentacles”).
• His “spell books” are nonsense tomes (medieval tax records, old codices). He throws them like boomerangs and writes new “spells” in them with a crayon he also eats.
• His muscles burst his robes. His chest beam and “buns of holiness” blind or knock out Acolytes.
• He had never noticed clouds or looked up at the sky.
• He wanted Storm as his familiar and dreamed of a magic tower.
• He died falling, smiling, believing he was the greatest wizard.

The Shadow King (Mudcat).

• He wears fancy leather boots with silver straps; others secretly hung bells on them.
• He sits on the Dread Fortress throne and speaks of “the regime.” The goblins and civilians “don’t mean a lot to me.”
• He barely knew about the chinchillas or the cat army.
• He ran the Box of Chaos with Iron Trout’s soul and called the metal-chair event a “family activity” with Elusia. He saved Grug from drowning (“Try not to die too early”).
• He sent the victor into space with a spectral falcon.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• She trains the chinchilla army of the Void for Deathmatch and Fortress security, and to protect the goblins and civilians.
• She is snarky toward the Shadow King.
• She summons portals by cutting her fingers on the amulet around her neck.
• She watched from among the Acolytes. She metal-chaired Storm, then gave her aspirin (“two tiny little blue pills”).
• She crowned Storm champion.

Theodore the Goblin: leads the chinchilla drill from the front, stick in hand.

Henrietta the Goblin: serves Storm black coffee.

The chinchilla army of the Void: martial artists with sticks; “murder in their eyes.” Each Fortress employee gets one as an emotional support chinchilla and bodyguard. They have a strong union and form cuddle puddles.

The cat army: several cats in the Dread Fortress that keep the “constant invasion” of mice and rats at bay.

The chicken wing siren: sings “Chicken wing, chicken wing, hot dog and bologna,” pelts victims with wings, then turns into a chicken and flees. Linked to the halftime chicken wing stand.

The Box of Chaos soul-figure: a shadowy figure with yellow eyes. It reacts with disgust to the hairball.

The siren-barking small dog in the stands, which tried to get at Storm.

Places

• The Dread Fortress hallways and training hall (the chinchilla drill) and the Shadow King’s throne, “ugly.”
• The meditation valley arena: brisk, bright, breezy, with babbling streams and a 2–3 ft-deep river. Its stands are like the Coliseum. Grug left a crater lake in it.
• The tallest mountain, home of the most powerful wizard who cursed Grug (unnamed).
• The halftime chicken wing stand.

Items

• Flying hairball chariot (Box of Chaos; +1 AC and flight; white like clouds; one-seater). Later a spectral falcon took it over.
• Elusia’s amulet (cuts her fingers to summon portals).
• Grug’s nonsense spell books and his crayon.
• Two metal chairs.
• Two tiny blue aspirin pills.
• Storm’s boomerang and iklwa.

Lore statements

• Every Dread Fortress employee gets an emotional support chinchilla. The Fortress has chinchilla and cat armies.
• The Box of Chaos is fuelled by a sacrificed Acolyte’s soul. A sacrifice of anything to it, as a free action, yields a magic item.
• Arena-only damage types: chicken wing damage (cannot be resisted), pillow damage, rock damage.
• The Shadow King and Elusia joke about a “family activity.”
• Hero points: once per champion, “plus ultra,” and they can’t negate a nat 1 or undo another hero point.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the jingle-bell boy and the chinchilla army

1. 0:00:07 The Acolytes zoom into the Dread Fortress. The Shadow King walks the hallways in fancy leather boots with silver straps and tiny bells hooked on the back. He didn’t put the bells there. “The rest of us did, so we knew when he’d be coming close.” Caustic Phoenix calls him “this little jingle bell boy.”
2. 0:01:19 The Shadow King asks what all this is. Elusia says it is training: “We want to make sure that our security is fully aware and ready to protect the Void against anything or anyone who might try to invade or disrupt the games.”
   • He calls it “admirable… At least you’re on board with keeping the regime safe.”
   • She hears snark in that. He replies: “it’s not like many are going to be attacking the Dread Fortress when I sit on the throne.”
3. 0:01:57 Elusia says the chinchillas may be there to protect “all the goblins and the civilians that we have here in the Dread Fortress. You don’t seem particularly inclined to protect them.” Shadow King: “That’s a fair point. They don’t mean a lot to me.”
4. 0:02:17 The Shadow King admits he was “just looking for a bathroom, but yes, let’s go to the Deathmatch.”
5. 0:02:24 Elusia claps. The chinchillas part “like an ocean” and open a path to his throne (“Ugly, as it may be, but I may be biased in my description”).
6. 0:02:48 — The summoning. The chinchillas circle and beat their sticks on the tables, walls and floors, building a rhythm. Elusia clenches the amulet around her neck until it slices her fingers and blood drips. She announces “Storm versus Grug the Wizard!” The champions step out of a blue portal.

The champions introduce themselves

8. 0:03:52 — Grug. He calls himself “the most powerful wizard that one has ever seen.”
   • He was once “a unintelligent barbarian.” He climbed the tallest mountain, found the most powerful wizard and told him to make him the most powerful magical being on the planet.
   • “Puny Wizard, make me powerful!” The wizard laid his hands on him. “My muscles are pumping with magical aura!”
   • Henrietta the Goblin runs up and offers her a cup of black coffee. Storm shoots it in one.
9. 0:05:26 The Shadow King asks whether the knives are strapped on or organic. Storm rolls onto her back, puts all four legs in the air, and the knives come out: “shink.” She has ten organic knives.
   • “Do you not know how cat work? You’ve never met cat before?”
10. 0:05:55 — The Fortress’s cats. The Shadow King asks whether there are any cats in the Dread Fortress. Elusia: “Several, actually. They are the ones that help keep the mice and rats at bay. It’s a constant invasion. Besides the chinchilla army, the cat army also does a very notable job.” Shadow King: “I barely knew we had chinchillas.”
11. 0:06:12 — Chinchilla lore. Storm asks: “Are chinchillas snacks?” Elusia says no: “Chinchillas are pets and armies.”
    • “Every employee here at the Dread Fortress gets an employee emotional support chinchilla to help them out. And there’s also their own bodyguard.”
    • Shadow King: “Trust me, you don’t want to mess with the chinchillas. Their union is very strong.”
    • Elusia says they’re “perfect for cuddle puddles.” If Storm wins, “you might be able to get one of those. They do a nice little pile on if you survive.”
12. 0:06:37 — Poses for the Shadow King.
    • Storm rolls onto her back and shows her belly with all her knives out.
    • Grug shows off his “awesome wizards books.” They are not spell books at all, just huge nonsense tomes such as tax records of a medieval county and dark 15th- and 16th-century codices.
    • Grug flexes, and his wizard robes tear at the biceps and neck, giving “a nice little peek of flesh.”
    • Shadow King: “I suppose we’ll have to see which is stronger, those books or those kni[ves].”

The arena — the meditation valley

14. 0:08:25 Elusia summons a purple portal. Beyond it is a cool, almost brisk place on a bright day: a breeze ruffling fur and beard, and “a beautiful little calm babbling stream.” It is “perfection and beauty, a site of meditation.”
    • “Destroy it, the Grandmaster will say. I give you this landscape for you to demolish.”
15. 0:09:21 She points up. Rows and rows of Acolytes fill the stands overhead “as if you have been placed in the Coliseum itself.”
    • “They are the ones that demand that your story be told today. So make sure that it’s a fucking good one.”
    • She flies up to sit among the Acolytes.
16. 0:09:58 Shadow King: “I’d like to see this river filled with blood by the end of the Deathmatch.”
17. 0:10:42 Initiative is tied at 19. A straight d20 roll-off gives Grug 7 and Storm 17, so Storm goes first.

Round 1

18. 0:11:41 — The boomerang. Storm stays back and throws her boomerang, “that slightly bent stick,” at Grug’s face. It knocks him square on the forehead and leaves a red line that may bruise.
19. 0:12:32 Grug: “Is very nice looking with mark. Oh, how dare you! Such a pretty kitty indeed. Now face the wrath as I summon my mythical magical energy.” He goes “full stream magic” (a rage).
20. 0:13:06 While he powers up, Storm hits him with the boomerang again. Caustic Phoenix: when they’re “powering up” like Super Saiyans, “that’s the prime time to hit them!”
    • Storm: “Another mark very nice on you. You are doing a wonderful job.”
    • Caustic Phoenix: “You now have an equal sign on your forehead.”
21. 0:14:21 The boomerang zooms across the field. The crowd accidentally does “a duck” instead of a wave to avoid being hit.
22. 0:14:48 — Grug wants a familiar. “Oh, bad kitty. Now you will see that you must bow down to me and I will graciously accept you as my familiar.”
    • He bolsters his magic and Wild Surges. He says he “teleports” 20 ft, but the surge table roll is a 6: multicolored protective lights surround him (+1 AC).
    • He yells “BRRRRR! … Blur.” Elusia: “I’ve never heard these spell words before. I quite like them.”
23. 0:17:01 — “Death Touch!” Grug punches Storm and yells the spell name. Caustic Phoenix: “Are you just naming your things? This finger’s dead touch, this one’s pickles.” Grug: “No, this is, I’m a wizard. These are magical spells.” Storm: “This one makes me a sandwich.”
    • The punch hits for 9 bludgeoning. Storm yowls like a cat whose tail has been stepped on.
24. 0:17:36 — Grug’s curse (player, out of character). Grug was cursed by the wizard to think he is the most powerful magic user. He uses no real magic, only accidental wild magic.
    • Caustic Phoenix relays chat (Cranston): “Grug is really Conan the Librarian.”
25. 0:20:11 Storm: “I love Grug. I don’t want to fight Grug. I want to be friends with Grug. … He seems like he needs help.” Elusia: “Don’t we all?” Grug’s feet are now wet from crossing the streams.
26. 0:21:02 The Shadow King’s end-of-round roll is a 9. Elusia: “Disappointing as ever… even though you are a sad disappointment to all of us…”
    • The Acolytes are enthralled, so both champions get a hero point. Caustic Phoenix explains: “This is your plus ultra… over 9,000 going super Saiyan.”

The Box of Chaos (0:22:41)

27. The Shadow King snaps his fingers. A yellow and pink box slams onto the battlefield like a meteor.
    • “I’m going to need a volunteer.” He plucks Iron Trout out of the stands with his magical spectral hands and wrings them out over the box “like a wet towel.” Their soul drips like liquid into the box.
    • The box explodes in a column of pink and yellow fire. A shadowy figure made of that soul claws its way out, eyes bursting yellow. “This is the Box of Chaos.”
28. 0:23:34 Shadow King: “Should you make a sacrifice to it for a free action, you will get a magic item in return. So, good luck making a deal.” Elusia adds that anything works: “The lint in your pocket, the knife in your paw.”

Round 2

29. 0:24:13 Storm: “You stepped on my tail. Sad about that.” She casts Thunder Wave at close range. Grug makes his save and takes half.
    • Storm: “I did 12. My dad would be very proud of me. … I’m so proud of you.”
30. 0:25:36 — “Entangled!” Being hit triggers Grug’s wild magic (7). He yells “entangled!” and wild plants climb up and consume a 10-ft radius around Storm, making it difficult terrain. Storm: “I’m a very agile person… You got like built-in cleats.”
31. 0:26:49 Grug: “Magic shall protect me, for I am Grug, the most powerful wizard.” His aura grows brighter, but it’s really the Acolytes shining flashlights on him “so you look like you glow. They support this visual that you have of yourself.”
32. 0:27:23 Storm swipes with her cat claws (“Is this like a boop?”). She misses. “No goal, he was in the crease.”
33. 0:29:16 — Puss-in-Boots eyes. Storm stays put and makes herself small. Her eyes get big, her ears go down, and she does “the big blinky” to appeal to Grug’s “sweet nurturing caring about tiny creature side.”
    • Her persuasion 18 beats his insight 7. “For a moment, you are taken in by the pure adorableness… a slight moral dilemma.” Grug has disadvantage on his next spell.
34. 0:31:17 — The hug. Grug: “So cute, too cute. Maybe hug,” and he goes in for a grapple. He misses. He tenderly hugs a rock next to Storm instead (“it’s got a top part and a bottom part”).
    • Grug: “Wait a second! We’re in the middle of a battle! How dare you!”
    • Storm: “You are excellent opponent. Very proud of you.”
35. 0:33:27 — “BURNING HANDS!” Grug brings a heavy tome down on Storm’s head while yelling a random spell name, and it lands (“boop, right on top of your head”).
    • Foundry briefly showed her taking 83 damage; it was really 9.
    • With his “magic,” Grug once per round shoves her 5 ft back: “Cuz my spells are so powerful.”
36. 0:36:02 — W-I-Z-A-R-D. The Shadow King: “I’m not sure they know what a wizard actually is.” Grug spells it out: “W for Wonderful, I for Intelligence, Z for Zap, U for Ultra, R for Radiant, D for Damage.” Elusia: “You should have chosen a shorter word.”
37. 0:37:01 — The rock. Between the two champions now stands “the fake Storm, the rock version… not Dwayne the Rock Johnson.” Caustic Phoenix adds that his face is carved into it, “like a small little monument.”

Chaos event — the chicken wing siren (0:37:18)

38. High in the sky, a figure walks down the steps between the Acolytes, singing a siren song: “Chicken wing, chicken wing, hot dog and bologna.”
    • It is brutal and annoyingly high-pitched. To the champions it sounds like “the lullaby of your old music box in your childhood.” Wisdom save, or crawl toward the siren.
39. 0:38:54 Storm resists and stands there confused, hearing how annoying the song really is. Grug is entranced (“the delights and sounds of chicken wings fill your mind”). He walks past Storm to the edge of the map and reaches up to the siren.
40. 0:39:23 Storm takes an opportunity slap as he passes and misses. As a cat, she is attuned to pitch, and the song pierces her ears so badly she has to cover them.
41. 0:39:50 The siren pelts the open-mouthed Grug with chicken wings for 5 chicken wing damage.
    • Rulings: “Chicken wing damage cannot be halved as no resistance exists to it.” The arena has other unique damage types: “Pillow damage, chicken wing damage, rock damage.”
    • Grug: “Special sauce spices, two million spice.”
42. 0:41:14 He chokes, coughs up a chicken bone and wakes up. The siren turns into a chicken and runs off, “never to be seen again. Unless you go visit the chicken wings stand that we have during the halftime show.”
43. 0:41:47 The Shadow King rolls 16: “seven better than nine.” Elusia: “Look at you doing math.”

Round 3 — the hairball chariot

44. 0:42:14 — The sacrifice. Storm walks to the Box and sacrifices a hairball, coughing it right in. The soul-figure in the box protests: “What are you doing? Wait, wait… Don’t do that.”
    • Storm: “Is sacrifice for you? … Give me presents.”
    • The box: “Yes, I think we’re all sacrificing something now… hold your horses.”
    • Storm: “Even if I don’t get anything from it, I feel a lift in middle of battle.” She does a cat arch stretch, “body feeling limber.”
45. 0:44:34 — The item. The pink and yellow fire column shoots up, producing no heat because it’s magical.
    • Out rolls a hairball much larger than hers, attached by two long leads to a chariot: a flying hairball chariot (+1 AC and flight while riding).
    • The table compares the hairball to a Star Trek tribble. Storm, a snow leopard, describes it as white, so “it looks a little bit like clouds.”
46. 0:46:14 — Clouds. Grug’s history check suggests he has never really noticed clouds: “Like it makes sense, but it’s like, oh, that’s what they are.” Mudcat: “Grug’s whole life is gonna change when someday they just look up.”
47. 0:46:47 Storm flies the chariot to Grug but stays at the reach of her iklwa (a 10-ft-reach weapon; transcribed “Ikawa”), out of fist range.
    • She lands a nat 20. Grug yells “Stone skin!” Caustic Phoenix imagines him pushing little pebbles into his skin.
    • Her second hit lands too. “Mage armor!”
    • She spends ki on Flurry of Blows. The first is a glancing blow; the next hits, and Grug is “looking almost a little bloody.”
48. 0:51:10 — “Black tentacles!” Grug’s wild magic (1) lashes Storm with necrotic tendrils. She makes the save: “It’s gross, do not like, no thank you.”
49. 0:52:20 — Books as boomerangs. “Time to use stronger magic.” With Tavern Brawler, Grug throws his spell books (“that’s how you cast spells with your spell book, right?”).
    • “Magic missile!” Storm tries Deflect Missiles (it needs a 20) and fails. The book smacks her in the face. Caustic Phoenix: “Last time we got a really interesting game of hacky sack.”
    • The book comes back and hits his own head. He throws the second book: “Fireball.” It hits.
    • “The audience just stunned silence… that’s not what boomerangs look like.” Then “the crowd erupts… happy to know what a boomerang and fireball look like now.” Grug: “Fear my spells!”
50. 0:55:06 — The familiar offer. Grug: “You can always surrender and become my familiar… Soon I will get a magic tower. Because as you know, all wizards have magic towers. … I will take good care of you. You will have wet food all around.”
    • Storm, circling in her chariot, lies: “Yeah, it sounds real good. Just put down the books of spells, and then I will be your… you have treats for me? I like treats.”
    • Her deception 19 beats his insight 15: “For a moment you think, yes, I’m getting a familiar.” Storm gains advantage on her next attack.
    • Grug: “I’m the master, you better come to me.”
51. 0:57:21 Break: “go check on our familiars real quick.” It was cut from the mp3 (back at 0:57:44).

Round 4 — the beam, the jump, the fall

52. 0:57:44 Shadow King: “We are back for the finish… Blood will be spilled and maybe a few hairballs here and there.” His roll is 19. Elusia: “Finally, something worth writing home about. I mean, I am already home.”
53. 0:58:32 Storm: “I don’t wanna mess with the classics.” Another nat 20, before she even needed her advantage: “My deception pays off real good.”
    • Her Stunning Strike fails when Grug saves.
    • Caustic Phoenix relays chat (Ray Ace): “We’ve never seen a wizard take so many nat 20s and survive.”
54. 0:60:50 — “Color spray!” Grug’s wild magic fires a beam from his chest. Storm saves.
    • She counters with Shatter. From somewhere in the stands, a small dog barks and tries to get at the cat but is “quickly shunned away.”
    • Grug saves and takes half: “My magic is so powerful. You think you can harm me with your spells kicking?”
55. 1:02:28 Grug declares “Mage Armor!” again. Shadow King: “You can’t just say Mage Armor! That’s not how it works!” Elusia: “You can say Mage Armor whenever you want!”
56. 1:02:46 Storm flies her chariot 50 ft straight up. Mudcat: “Grug has never looked up, so—” “This is going to be a game changer.”
57. 1:03:27 — The pecs. Grug uses the chest beam as a bonus action: “Color spray!” Storm fails and is blinded until his next turn.
    • “From my muscles filled with magic as you see I remove my robe.” “Both pecs are now on display, quite blinding in nature. Many [Acolytes] have to put on their sunglasses.”
58. 1:05:44 — The sky. Grug spends part of his turn just looking up in awe: “So much sky, it’s endless. If only I could be part of the sky.” He uses Instinctive Pounce (“teleport!”) but only rises 5 ft, “45 feet short.”
59. 1:06:45 — Grug’s hero point: the mythic jump. “All the magic is pulsing in me… I could see eye to eye with my betrayed familiar.”
    • In his head: his eyes glow, light pours into his back and wings drop out, and he soars on “magical wings of magic.”
    • In reality: “It’s really just me jumping really high continuously.” It’s like a magic trampoline, “the double jump as Mario does.”
60. 1:08:03 He rolls athletics. Elusia: “your legs somehow go beyond their normal proportions… double jump, triple jump, quadruple jump to reach the 50… Touchdown!”
    • He is eye level with Storm and the front rows. The Acolytes see his eyes, lose their minds and their language, start barking in madness at the beauty, and go blind. “Everyone is blind.”
61. 1:09:33 — The Intelligence roll. Grug proposes an Intelligence roll to see whether he actually lands on the chariot. Caustic Phoenix: “I’ve never seen anyone so willing to nerf their own hero point.”
    • He rolls a 10. “I just jumped up in the air, I didn’t actually jump up to anything, so I’m dropping 60 feet down.” He takes 13 falling damage after halving.
    • “Grug, too, too close to sun, too much magic overload. Icarus, my boy!”
    • Grug: “Too much magic, too strong. … Mage armor on. No, it didn’t hurt that bad.”
62. 1:11:17 He makes a small meteor crater, and a small lake pools at his feet. Grug lies face down in the river, only 2–3 ft deep, unaware he can stand up. Storm, still blinded, can hear him gurgling.

Chaos event — the metal chairs (1:12:16)

63. The Shadow King’s end-of-round roll is a nat 20, so he brings his own chaos event. “I think I want to go with the classic this evening… I’m going to need your help, Elusia. A little family activity.” He snaps his fingers and produces two metal chairs. “Ladies first.”
    • Elusia stands with her chair: “Let us hear you scream! It’s time for the metal chairs!”
    • “In true wrestling fashion,” she dive-bombs from the sky at Storm. The chair clangs into the blinded Storm’s skull.
    • “You’ll need some aspirin for that.” She tosses Storm two tiny little blue pills.
64. 1:14:53 — The Shadow King’s dive. “Nice hit, but let me show you how it’s done.”
    • He leaps up on spectral wings of shadow and dive-bombs the river with his chair. He lands like a meteor and brings it down on Grug’s head for full metal-chair damage.
    • Then he grabs Grug by the back of the collar: “Try not to die too early,” and throws him out of the river so he doesn’t drown. He reappears on his throne.
    • Caustic Phoenix: “Shadow King should have thought this through. He didn’t.” The chair hit triggers Grug’s wild magic.
65. 1:16:11 — The buns of holiness. Grug “accidentally flash[es] with my buns of holiness.” A beam of radiant light blasts out of his ass into the sky.
    • “Two glossing buns fresh from the oven. Many of the acolytes swoon at the sight of such glory. Those tan cheeks are truly a thing to behold. 20 of them are knocked out.”

Round 5 — the chariot dive and the squeeze

67. 1:17:07 — Storm’s hero point. Still blind, she dive-bombs her chariot onto Grug: “Just like, thunk it on him.”
    • With a perception check with advantage, she homes in on the gurgling and the clang of the metal chair. The hit is glancing.
    • Grug’s bludgeoning resistance shrinks it, plus extra damage “for your weight in the chariot and the gravity of that.” “We’re friends of science.”
    • “Grug’s looking pretty rough.”
68. 1:19:24 — “Dimension Door!” Grug’s wild magic (2) lets him teleport. He appears in the one-seater chariot with Storm, nose to nose and squished together.
    • Storm: “Eskimo kisses?… That’s not how babies are made.”
69. 1:21:13 — “Fist of Four Thunders.” Storm casts Thunder Wave from inside the chariot. It’s named for her four knife-feet: “it’s all four of them.” “Very Thundercats energy… I am Cheetara. I’ve always wanted to be.” Grug saves and the damage is quartered.
70. 1:23:24 Grug: “You told me you’d be my familiar. I really, really, really believed you’d be my familiar.” Storm: “Maybe this is how familiars act. You’ve never had one before.”
    • His wild magic (7) entangles them both in vines: “We needed more together time.”
71. 1:24:52 — The first nat 1 of the night. Storm’s slap tangles in the vines, giving her a d4 bane on her remaining attack. She hits anyway (“Catclaws forever!”). The Acolytes make cute little scratching motions in the sky to cheer her on.
72. 1:27:07 — Black tentacle, vampiric. Grug’s wild magic (black tentacles) drains Storm: she fails, takes 8 necrotic, and Grug heals 8.
    • Elusia: “Should we call that Vampiric Touch? Must write down for future spells.”
    • Grug writes the “spell” into his book: scribbles everywhere, in crayon, which “serves as a writing utensil and a snack.”
73. 1:29:29 Storm moves the chariot for flavor. Elusia: “You’re getting your own magic carpet ride… over, sideways, and under.”
74. 1:29:48 Grug punches Storm inside the chariot (“pick me’s hand,” transcription unclear) and lands it: “I’m sorry I have to do this, but you must learn.” The name of his second strike is unclear (“Still wind strike,” speaker uncertain).
    • Elusia: “I’m just impressed that Grug knows so many names of spells. That’s more than what a lot of wizards actually do know.” Storm: “I’m proud of you, Grug.”
75. 1:31:05 His intimidation 22 beats her insight 17: “spell after spell, one of these might actually be a real spell.” He gains advantage.
76. 1:32:24 Grug: “Please, familiar, I will welcome you with open arms. You just have to say, I surrender.”
    • Storm deceives him again (15 vs 12). Grug: “I’ve heard this before, but maybe this time… You got to have trust in your family.”
    • Storm gets an extra attack, “a little sneak attack.”

Round 6 — the final round, 50 ft up

77. 1:33:27 “Our two champions nearing death… this is the last one of our rounds.” Elusia miscounts the hero points: “The Grandmaster also has apparently failed her own history check.”
78. 1:34:36 Storm hits with her iklwa and lands Stunning Strike. Grug fails at disadvantage “because you think you’re familiar again.”
    • Stunned, every hit against him becomes a critical. Grug: “Stone skin was too strong. Now I am stone.”
79. 1:36:16 — Four attacks. Storm unloads two weapon attacks and a Flurry of Blows, and plans to push him out of the chariot on the last hit (“I’m a little cruel. I’m a little sucker for the dice”). All four hit.
    • Each hit triggers wild magic. The vines wrap around them again, and on the fourth hit Grug teleports 20 ft, straight up (d4).
80. 1:40:04 — Storm’s finisher. “I just like pull on some real monk shit… the Kill Bill, five fingers of death.” Everything moves in slow motion. She shoves him so hard he pops out of existence for a second, reappears 20 ft away and falls straight down.
81. 1:40:51 — Grug’s death fantasy. Asked what goes through his head:
    • “A fantasy of… growing old as an old wizened wizard in a wizard’s tower… with my new familiar at my side. … It’s been a good life. They said I couldn’t be smart enough to be a wizard, but I showed them.”
    • The table riffs “Frog the wizard.” As he falls “like a brick from the sky. But a beautiful shiny brick… muscles gleaming with magic,” the Acolytes chant his name in a whisper: “Grug the Wizard.”
    • His exhale goes on and on (“You had big lungs”). “I have a smile on my face as I finally pass out.” He lands between the two streams and dies.
82. 1:42:28 — The Grandmaster’s verdict. “Acolytes, today we have witnessed a true testament of story. To always challenge and be who you are supposed to be. Pull to it and never doubt yourself. But when it comes to it, only you know what you can do.”
    • “Storm on the Horizon, you have swept through this arena as if it is your own. I present you now to the Shadow King as our champion.” The crowd goes wild. Storm: “Hello. Thank you.”
83. 1:43:27 — The victory lap. Shadow King: “Yes, well, you are the champion.”
    • He creates a spectral falcon that takes over the hairball and whips the chariot faster and faster around the arena: “Rise high, champion. Let everyone may see you as a shining star.” Storm: “I’m just cat.”
    • The chariot rises “through the atmosphere and into space where you begin to suffocate and freeze.”
84. 1:44:12 “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch.”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character / player-stated canon (marked Dried Blood)

• Storm’s death in space (player-narrated):
  • Storm “has been wandering trying to be reunited with her family.” When she was very young she was separated from her entire tribe. She has been searching, making herself stronger, becoming a warrior, and seeking internal enlightenment, “that’s why she went the monk route.”
  • As the cold set in, it awakened her last childhood memory of her family, which involved snow (she’s a snow leopard). Growing colder made her feel more at home and happy.
  • “When she closed her eyes for the final time, she imagined that she was right next to her tribe again. So she just went home.”
  • The opener “Storm has been cleaning herself off” is also in this voice.
• Grug’s curse (player-stated): Grug was always told he was “too dumb to be a wizard.”
  • The curse makes him hear spell names and believe in them (“he got hit but he’s just like… mage armor”).
  • Whenever he dies, the curse means he’ll always have a happy ending in his head and die smiling, “saying, I was the greatest wizard.”
• Grug’s jump, as the player explained it: “he muscled his way up into the… jumping on particles… So muscular, it looks like magic… He falls! Gravity, it works.”
• Last words to the Acolytes:
  • Grug: “Always wash your hands.” (Caustic Phoenix: “You don’t want to dirty those spell books.”)
  • Storm: “Is helpful to have knives for feet.”
  • Caustic Phoenix: “Remember, wash your hands and attach knives to your feet and you will live a half decent amount of time.”

Creator notes (out of character)

• Grug is “a very lovable NPC” BanzaiBabee uses in a lot of their campaigns.
• Caustic Phoenix: “I now firmly believe as long as you declare mage armor, it is automatically cast.” Mudcat: “Grug is the Michael Scott of D&D.”
• Mudcat: “When he said you were going to jump, I was like, please just jump and fall.”
• Storm’s player on the chariot dive: cats have sensitive ears and like to jump from high places. On having a cat on your lap: “Full lean.”
• Mudcat on monk vs barbarian: she had to whittle him down, with “at least three” nat 20s. Storm’s player jokes Foundry compensated for showing her nothing by giving her good rolls.
• The table compares the fight to a dog (Grug, “I love you… you’re supposed to be my friend”) versus a cat.
• Caustic Phoenix on the familiar offer: “Not even apprentice… You’re like, my familiar.”
• Caustic Phoenix notes Grug never got to attack the chicken wing siren.