S4E16, The Dragon and the Spider, Ricky Red Dragon v Traxton (Spider)

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The Season 4 finale set Ricky Red Dragon, a “red dragon” cursed into human flesh after one rave too many, against Traxton, a 45-year-old emo elf who would very much prefer you call him Spider. They fought in a forest clearing The Shadow King had been quietly turning into a festival venue. Along the way there were crossing fireballs, a magic beard, a Christmas nutcracker, and a coming-of-age story that finished in the worst possible way for everyone involved.

The Story

The Secret Pre-Party

The Grandmaster walked the echoing halls of The Dread Fortress, her heels clacking on stone, until she heard techno thumping up from somewhere deep in its dungeon-like depths. She threw open the doors of the Shadow King’s throne room and found strobe lights, lasers, and the German techno song from Super Troopers playing on loop. “Well, this is embarrassing,” said the King. “You should have knocked first.” He shoved a keg behind his throne.

The lights drew a crowd of goblins who treated the music “as if this is their soul music.” The Shadow King tried to blame the song on “the one with the hair,” which did not work, because every goblin was bald. A lice problem a couple of weeks earlier had been solved with a full shave. Once the King admitted to liking “that girl music,” the Grandmaster ordered him to share the keg. The goblins mobbed it, ripped it open, and drank from wherever it poured: the floor, their hands, each other.

The bickering continued. “Well, if you were more fun, I would have invited you to the party,” the King told her. He then asked what the party was even for, since Sunday nights for him meant reruns of Heroes. She reminded him that he was the king and was supposed to represent them. His reply was “I am so tired of you.” She clenched her amulet, its bladed edge slicing her fingers, and her blood opened a blue portal for the champions.

Enter the Dragon (Allegedly) and the Spider

Ricky arrived in sunglasses and flip-flops. “My name’s Ricky Red Dragon. I’m a red dragon,” he explained. A curse at a techno concert had trapped him in a squishy human body, and he was fighting for the prize: his scales back. The Grandmaster called that “absolutely doable.” Spider introduced himself as “pretty much the coolest elf from my part of the woods” and told Ricky he was sorry about his stupid skin. Ricky shot back, “They don’t call me Chromatic Red for nothing.”

The Shadow King had a soft moment with Ricky, as someone who “was once a shadow monster” and knew what it was like to lack flesh: “I had skin and then I didn’t have skin and now I have skin again.” Ricky’s sunglasses meant he couldn’t tell if the King had a tail. Maybe there were five. Spider got a cooler reception. The King complained that they’d had “like four teenagers die this season.” Spider explained, “My mom called me Traxton,” and the King decided he could die. Spider added that Spider was one word, “like Seal.” When Spider called his rival “Idiot Dragon Man” and doubted he looked like a dragon, the King agreed, betraying their bonding moment without a flicker: “You’re here for my entertainment, don’t take it personally.”

The Coachella Ground

The arena was a forest clearing full of loud birds, with a ring of shiny purple portal circles in the middle and lightning-like energy dancing between them. The Shadow King admitted, “I was building a venue for the next Coachella.” The Grandmaster had no interest in festival crowds leaving trash in her space. “I gift you this Shadow King’s potential Coachella ground,” she told the fighters, “and I beg of you, destroy it.” She spread her white wings before a sky filled with the screaming faces of the Acolytes and made her speech. The fight was a gift to them, and the champions’ tale would be written upon their hearts, “perhaps in a freaking EDM song.”

Darkness and Butthurt

Ricky asked about the rules (the Grandmaster’s answer: “Murder, maim, pummel into the ground…”), then teleported thirty feet up a tree to take the high ground. With no wings, he asserted dominance by T-posing. It worked so well that Spider was rattled. Spider answered by casting magical darkness on him. “I’m not afraid of the dark, bitch. I’m an adult,” said Spider. “I am terrified of the dark,” said Ricky, who promptly fell out of the tree ass-first. “If only you had a tail to land on,” the Grandmaster sighed. Spider didn’t notice the fall and kept shouting insults at the empty treetop.

The Shadow King couldn’t see the action either, so he made his eyes glow yellow to pierce the darkness. When the Grandmaster insisted the Acolytes deserved the same, he snapped his fingers. A wave of shadow rolled through the stands like a stadium wave, and every Acolyte’s eyes turned yellow.

The crowd’s roar spurred both champions on. Ricky stumbled out of the dark, spotted the glowing eyes, and poured “all of my butthurt anger” into a banishment spell. Spider snuffed the spell out. Ricky tried to snuff the snuffing and failed. Taking pity, the Grandmaster “banished” Spider anyway, into the Dark Circle, which was just his own darkness. “I said I wasn’t afraid of the dark,” Spider admitted. “I may have been lying.” Ricky gave away his position by yelling back that Spider was the one who sucked. The Shadow King asked where she had found the two stupidest people on the planet. “It was a Longhorn Steakhouse,” she replied. Spider had ordered the salad. “It’s healthy, and I’m gonna nutritionally kick your ass.”

Angst, Beards and Dabbing

Spider dropped his own darkness, spotted Ricky, and hurled a psychic javelin made of “all of my teenage angst.” “You ever heard of My Chemical Romance? It’s going 24-7 over here.” Ricky, nursing a headache, adjusted his fake beard. The Shadow King was appalled to learn it was fake. Ricky explained, “It shows everybody that I’m 6,012 years old.”

Then Spider dabbed. Ricky was charmed (“I kinda like this guy… Do I have to kill him?”). The Grandmaster was not. She threw her whole carton of buttered popcorn at Spider’s head, which wasn’t even vegan. “Never dab in my arena ever again.” A goblin wrote the new rule in a notepad: no more dabbing in the arenas.

Chin Dragon

After all that talk about scales beating fur, the Grandmaster clapped and a gigantic chinchilla charged through the forest. She named it Chin Dragon, and the Shadow King asked why she couldn’t just call it Chinzilla. The champions briefly agreed to team up against it. It simply trampled both of them and ran out of the arena. “Our peace treaty was short-lived,” said Spider. “All it took was a pair of cute fuzzy paws,” the Grandmaster gloated. “Suck it.”

The Circles and the Box

Ricky flicked a firebolt at Spider that zigzagged “like clip art,” then stepped onto a portal circle. It coated his flesh in purple, but he now had to open every turn with a lyric from an annoying song, starting with “Friday.” Spider stepped onto another circle and was turned into a fuzzy fruit bat with a blonde tuft over one eye. “Damn it, I shouldn’t have named myself bat.” The Grandmaster dubbed him Bat Boy, “because you haven’t hit puberty.” His bite missed. Ricky complained about his breath, Spider retorted, “It’s called halitosis, and it’s a medical condition,” and Ricky handed him a mint, then the whole bin.

Baffled by this kindness, the Grandmaster summoned The Box of Chaos. A pink and purple chest fell from the sky like a comet. The Shadow King lifted an Acolyte named Toolkit 71 from the crowd (“I’m going to need your soul. You can keep your body!”), ripped them in half, and slammed their soul into the box. Shadowy claws and yellow eyes peeked out. “Actually, it’s a funny story,” the King explained. “I used to be the box of chaos.” He added, “I killed the guy who made the box.” The box’s maker was The Arbiter.

Ricky sacrificed a spare unwashed beard, and the box’s tormented occupant came out wearing it. “You didn’t actually shit in this, did you?” the King asked. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” After some buffering (“Do you think we’d lay fiber out here?”), it offered him “the beards of many things.” Ricky put on the white one. It felt like a warm summer’s day and turned him tougher and wiser on the spot. “Ricky,” the narrator declared, “you pulled the Sun card.” Spider marched up to the box (“Did that guy shit in your mouth?”) and traded it his hero point for one thing: “If you have any extra puberty in there to give, I need it desperately.” Puberty hit, and it hit hard. The box also handed him a wooden rod shaped like a dick, holding one fireball. “This is what manhood feels like.”

Crossing Fireballs

Spider fired the rod. Ricky fired back. The two fireballs met tip to tip in the air, sealed by Ricky’s perfect natural 20, and the explosion engulfed them both. The Grandmaster tried to describe it from above (“Two rods, hefty in size, aim straight at their target and spew out… an engulfing flame”) and gave up partway: “I’m not finishing this.” The Shadow King said she really missed the chance to say “shoot their loads.” Ricky took the full blast, was left barely standing, and collapsed. “You’ve never taken a load this big to the face before,” said the Grandmaster. He played dead convincingly, tongue out. He was, after all, “a dragon that goes to raves… People die at parties all the time.”

The heat woke a second chaos event: healing rods of various sizes sprouted from the ground like fungus, smelling of pineapple and, on one side, asparagus. Still “dead,” Ricky whispered “Somebody once told me…”, rolled over in a fake death spasm, and tongued the tip of one, drinking himself back to health. He then conjured an illusion of the Acolyte Ristin8012 beside Spider, which kept saying “Look, he’s dead. Don’t attack him.” Spider believed it completely. “I’ve never killed a man before. Does that make me a man if I’ve killed another man?” He tried to high-five the illusion, then went and stood straddling Ricky’s body, flexing with his rod.

The Wall and the Nutcracker

“That is his biggest folly of the night,” said Ricky. “Oops, I did it again. I cast Wall of Force. Goodbye, bitch.” A wall of force shot up between Spider’s legs and launched him twenty feet into the air. His newly dropped testicles survived the landing. “I just exploded his nuts,” Ricky told the box. “He’s gonna be really mad.” He crawled to the box and dove in face-first. It turned out to be shallow. From the trash and bones at the bottom he pulled a classic Christmas nutcracker, a fine magical maul painted, he said, in red and blues. He was colorblind and wearing sunglasses. “All I know is I’m a red dragon!”

The Final Blow

Spider was furious. “Why would you blow my testicles away like that?” He unleashed a destructive wave from his mouth, all his unresolved teenage angst at once. Ricky had one last piece of wisdom: “All that angst you have built up, it never goes away.” “No,” Spider gasped. “It can’t be true.” Ricky crumbled to dust. His final words went to the Shadow King: “I’m not really a dragon.” “You son of a bitch,” the King replied. The Grandmaster threw the popcorn bowl full of rocks she had been saving at Ricky’s dusty face, for the emotion of it all. “Dragons don’t have to tell you they’re dragons,” the King grumbled. “You just know.”

The Grandmaster saluted the winner: “Spider, today you have grown in more than one way. We are proud of you.” Spider put on Ricky’s sunglasses and told the crowd, “Stay cool, cool babies,” and everyone wept. Then the Shadow King dissolved into shadow and reappeared behind him. “You’ve kind of grown into the name… let me help you truly look the part.” Spider shrank into a tarantula, and the King booted him out of the arena. Rising into the air, the King closed the season with a promise: “While I’m around, there will be death in the arena.”

Dried Blood

In the after-show, Spider’s player said he built the character while chatting with his tall, 19-year-old nephew, and that the two champions would have had “cool uncle-nephew vibes” in a longer campaign. This was Ricky’s player’s first Deathmatch. He had kept mouthing off and waited for a thunderbolt that never came. The Grandmaster explained the line: “You can insult me. It’s when you insult my arena that I get real pissed.” He called the crossing fireballs “the most passionate and potentially satisfying encounter that this show has ever had.” Pressed on whether Ricky was a dragon, he first said no, then insisted he was.

Notable Moments

• The Shadow King was caught throwing a solo techno pre-party, keg hidden behind the throne, with a room full of freshly de-liced bald goblins.
• Ricky T-posed in a tree to assert dominance, then fell out of it ass-first because he is terrified of the dark.
• The Grandmaster banned dabbing in the arena by throwing popcorn, and a goblin wrote the rule down.
• Spider traded the Box of Chaos his hero point for puberty and received a dick-shaped fireball rod.
• The two fireballs touched tips on a natural 20.
• Ricky’s dying confession, “I’m not really a dragon,” was followed, after Spider’s victory speech, by Spider’s transformation into a tarantula.

Memorable Quotes

• Ricky Red Dragon: “I am terrified of the dark.”
• The Shadow King: “I also don’t understand why you keep bringing teenagers to die in the arena.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Never dab in my arena ever again.”
• Traxton: “If you have any extra puberty in there to give, I need it desperately.”
• The Shadow King: “Actually, it’s a funny story. I used to be the box of chaos.”
• Traxton: “I can’t believe he’s dead. I’ve never killed a man before. Does that make me a man if I’ve killed another man?”

Ricky Red Dragon: “Wait, let me tell you a secret. All that angst you have built up, it never goes away.”

The Shadow King: “I knew that guy was full of shit. Dragons don’t have to tell you they’re dragons. You just know.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Ricky Red Dragon (RealLifeFakeWizard)

• Claims to be a red dragon (“Chromatic Red”) cursed into a human body after partying too hard at a techno concert. Wants his scales back, and Elusia called that “absolutely doable” as the prize.
• Says he is 6,012 years old. Wears sunglasses (from Costco), flip-flops and a top with pockets, but no pants. Carries fake beards in his pockets and never washes them.
• Terrified of the dark. Colorblind. A “dragon that goes to raves.” Has a political career to uphold “one day.”
• Spells and actions: Misty Step, Banishment (cast with his hero point), Counterspell, Fire Bolt, Shocking Grasp (joy-buzzer handshake), Fireball, Minor Illusion, Wall of Force (5th level).
• Won from the Box of Chaos: the beards of many things (the white beard gave 50,000 XP and +2 AC) and a +3 nutcracker maul.
• Dying confession: “I’m not really a dragon.” Turned to dust by Spider’s Destructive Wave.
• Whether he has a cloaca was never answered.

Traxton, “Spider” (theshortnord, Mike)

• An elf, “the coolest elf from my part of the woods.” His mom calls him Traxton; he goes by “Spider,” a one-word name “like Seal.” He likes spiders.
• Age stated as 45, “young for an elf.” Caustic Phoenix later says 46. A late bloomer: unbroken voice, no muscle mass. Emo, a My Chemical Romance fan.
• Shops at Earthbound. Ordered a salad at the steakhouse and is pro-vegan. His dad loves “Sweet Caroline.” Has halitosis.
• Was class president briefly, under the slogan “feeling forward,” after cheating in the vote. His classmates answered with the hashtag “feeling betrayed.”
• Spells and forms: Darkness, Counterspell, Raulothim’s Psychic Lance, Destructive Wave (5th level). Was a bat (“Bat Boy”) from the portal circle.
• Traded his hero point to the Box of Chaos for puberty. It arrived, along with a wooden phallic immovable rod holding one Fireball.
• Won the match. Gave a “stay cool, cool babies” speech in Ricky’s sunglasses. Turned into a tarantula by the Shadow King and kicked out of the arena.

The Shadow King (Mudcat)

• Rules from the Dread Fortress in Season 4 and has his own throne room there.
• Throws secret solo pre-parties: strobes, lasers, the Super Troopers techno song, a keg behind the throne.
• “Was once a shadow monster… I had skin and then I didn’t have skin and now I have skin again.” The tail question was left unclear.
• Can make his eyes glow yellow to see through magical darkness, and gave the whole crowd that sight with one snap.
• “I used to be the box of chaos… I killed the guy who made the box.” Fuels the box by ripping an Acolyte (Toolkit 71) in half and taking their soul.
• Claims he saved orphans; Elusia: “it was not a good thing.” Claims he gave himself tinnitus to tune Elusia out.
• Can dissipate into shadow and reappear elsewhere, and can transform people (Spider into a tarantula).
• Closing promise: “While I’m around, there will be death in the arena.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix)

• Runs and plans the finale despite the Shadow King’s rule. Opens portals with an amulet whose bladed edge cuts her fingers to draw blood.
• Has white wings and sits beside the Shadow King. Says she has “a title and a crown.”
• Throws popcorn at dabbers and banned dabbing in the arena. Saved a bowl of rocks for later. Eats goldfish (“the snack that smiles back”).
• Offers the winner a snack pack of goldfish and fruit roll-ups. Has a niece (mentioned in a colors joke).

The goblins. All bald after a lice outbreak a couple of weeks earlier. They treat the techno as soul music and drank the keg from the floor and from each other. One keeps the notepad of arena rules. In Dried Blood (unclear if canon): unionized, each with a pet chinchilla.

Chin Dragon / Chinzilla. A dragon-sized giant chinchilla summoned as a chaos event. It charged straight through the arena, trampled both fighters and left.

The shadowy figure in the Box of Chaos. Clawed fingers, yellow eyes. Calls itself “just a tormented soul in a box.” Wore Ricky’s sacrificed beard, has halitosis, and buffers like dial-up.

Acolytes named. Toolkit 71: ripped in half for the box. Ristin8012 (“HK Ristin”): impersonated by Ricky’s illusion.

Places

• The Dread Fortress: echoing halls and dungeon-like lower levels. The Shadow King’s throne room is there.
• The forest clearing arena: thick foliage, loud birds, and a central ritual of glowing purple portal circles that hum “like a giant subwoofer.” The Shadow King says it was meant as a Coachella venue. Each circle had a random effect: a purple coating (+1 AC, sing an annoying lyric) and a bat wild shape.
• The Dark Circle: Caustic Phoenix’s name for Spider’s own Darkness, into which the Grandmaster “banished” him.
• Longhorn Steakhouse, where the champions were found (a real-world joke).

Items

• Elusia’s bladed portal amulet.
• The Shadow King’s keg.
• The goblin’s notepad of rules, with “No more dabbing in the arenas.”
• The Box of Chaos (pink and purple, chest-sized and shallow, holding trash and bones).
• Ricky’s fake beards, and the beards of many things (the white one: 50,000 XP, +2 AC).
• The wooden phallic immovable rod with one Fireball.
• The +3 nutcracker maul (red and blue).
• Ice Breaker wintergreen mints.
• The healing mushroom-rods (pineapple- and asparagus-scented).
• Ricky’s sunglasses, taken by Spider after the fight.
• The goldfish and fruit roll-ups winner’s snack pack.

Lore statements

• Four “teenagers” died in the arena this season (the Shadow King’s claim).
• The Shadow King used to be the Box of Chaos and killed the box’s maker.
• New arena rule: no dabbing.
• The arena’s Wi-Fi is bad. “Do you think we’d lay fiber out here?”
• “Dragons don’t have to tell you they’re dragons. You just know.”

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the Shadow King’s secret pre-party

1. 0:03:37 Elusia walks down the echoing halls of the Dread Fortress, her heels clacking on the stone. Deep in its dungeon-like bowels she hears EDM or techno music. She throws open the doors of the Shadow King’s throne room. “What are you listening to?”
2. 0:04:30 The Shadow King has strobe lights and lasers going and is playing the German techno song from Super Troopers on loop. “Well, this is embarrassing… you should have knocked first.” “This is not what it looks like.” When she asks whether he’s having a pre-party by himself, he shoves a keg behind his throne.
3. 0:05:05 The bald goblins. Goblins pour in behind her, drawn by the lights and music “as if this is their soul music.” The Shadow King blames the song on a goblin: “It was the one with the hair.” Every goblin is bald. There was a lice problem a couple of weeks ago, and shaving them was the easiest way to end the infestation.
4. 0:05:59 He admits it (“Fine, I like that girl music”; speaker inferred: Shadow King, though the line is diarized to Caustic Phoenix). Elusia: “Share your freaking keg. It’s the pre-party before our season finale.” He offers all the goblins a drink “or some German techno.” They mob the keg, rip it open and drink from wherever it pours out: the floor, their hands, another goblin.
5. 0:06:42 Elusia: “If you had organized this better, it would have been a better party.” Shadow King: “Well, if you were more fun, I would have invited you to the party.” (“Nothing, nothing.”) She complains there aren’t even Doritos.
6. 0:06:58 He asks, “Pre-party for what?” She gives him daggers. It’s the season finale Deathmatch, which “happens every Sunday.” He says Sunday nights for him mean “reruns of Heroes?”
7. 0:07:34 She has planned a great Deathmatch with two amazing champions. He should at least have a drink to welcome them: “You’re the king, you’re supposed to represent us.” He replies, “I am so tired of you.”
8. 0:07:53 Mumbling, Elusia clenches her amulet. The blade along its edge slices her fingers and blood pours. A blue portal opens, and Ricky Red Dragon and Traxton walk through.

The champions

9. 0:08:19 Ricky Red Dragon. “My name’s Ricky Red Dragon. I’m a red dragon.” He says he partied too hard at a techno concert last week and was permanently cursed into a human “mortal coil.” Elusia supplies the word: “Flesh, they call it flesh.” He finds it squishy and wants his scaly dragon form back. He is fighting to get his body back after seeing “a post like you get a reward if you win.” Elusia: “That’s absolutely doable.” He wears sunglasses and flip-flops/sandals.
10. 0:09:18 Traxton, aka Spider. Elusia jokes that “we have cast silence upon you” (he was muted). He calls himself “pretty much the coolest elf from my part of the woods” and adds, “I’m sorry about your stupid skin.” Ricky: “They don’t call me Chromatic Red for nothing.” Spider: “Oh, big words like chromatic, huh?”
11. 0:10:12 Ricky asks about the drinks and the bald goblins. Told about “a lice epidemic,” he asks whether the place is “sterilized.” Shadow King: “We’ve cleaned it thoroughly, or somebody has, I’ve been told.” Ricky’s insight says it looks “clean-ish.”
12. 0:11:11 A bonding moment. Shadow King: “As someone who was once a shadow monster, I know what it’s like to have a lack of a flesh… are you sure you want the scales back? You look so good.” Ricky: “I look good all the time… the red dragon guarantee.” Shadow King: “It’s the confidence.” Then: “I had skin and then I didn’t have skin and now I have skin again.” Ricky eyes him: “That is certainly a tail you’ve got there. Do you actually have a tail?” His sunglasses give him disadvantage, and he can’t tell. “Maybe there’s five tails there.”
13. 0:12:50 “Teenagers.” Shadow King: “I also don’t understand why you keep bringing teenagers to die in the arena… we’ve had like four teenagers die this season.” Spider: “I prefer Spider. My mom called me Traxton. It’s not very cool.” Asked whether he named himself: “People call me that.” Shadow King: “You know what, I changed my mind, he can die.” Spider says it’s one word, “like Seal.”
14. 0:14:01 Insults. Ricky: “I thought your first name was Itsy Bitsy.” Spider: “Idiot Dragon Man. I bet you’re not even looking like a dragon.” The Shadow King agrees: “You don’t look like a dragon. It’s true.” Ricky feels thrown under the bus after their bonding moment. Shadow King: “You’re here for my entertainment, don’t take it personally.”
15. 0:14:33 Elusia opens a second portal with the amulet: “Please, the two of you, get your asses through here.”

The arena: the Shadow King’s “Coachella ground”

16. 0:15:03 A forest clearing with thick foliage and loud birds. In the center is a ritual of shiny purple lights and portals, energy dancing like lightning between the circles.
17. 0:15:46 Shadow King: “I was building a venue for the next Coachella.” Elusia: “Coachella would never come here.” Ricky: “If you build it, they will come, bro.” That leads into Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones jokes. Spider can’t get the title right (“Shadow Man… Shadow Guy”) and says it’s cool that the Shadow King is “fighting your own name using lights.” Shadow King: “I don’t really like that you thought of that, so you can die first, hopefully.”
18. 0:17:09 Elusia sends him to his seat and gives the fighters the ground: “I gift you this Shadow King’s potential Coachella ground, and I beg of you, destroy it.” She doesn’t want crowds invading her space and leaving trash.
19. 0:18:09 Initiative: Ricky 21, Spider 20.
20. 0:18:15 The opening speech. Elusia opens her grand white wings and flies up. In place of clouds there are screaming faces of the Acolytes “begging for a bloodbath.” “This fight is not for the two of you. It is a gift that we give our wonderful Acolytes… to witness glory, to witness beautiful violence… your tale will be written upon our hearts… perhaps in a freaking EDM song.” She sits next to the Shadow King.

Round 1

21. 0:19:30 Ricky kicks his flip-flops snug and opens his spellbook, which is hard to read through sunglasses. He asks “your highnessnessness” whether there are rules. Elusia: “Murder, maim, pummel into the ground until his bone turns to ash and his blood turns into a river.” Ricky: “The last time I got a little heated, I got turned into a fleshy human.” She gives him a “very wiry smile.”
22. 0:20:43 Ricky distrusts her smirk and Misty Steps 30 ft up into a tree to take the high ground (“as a dragon, I sit and perch on top of mountains”). Elusia: “much like a majestic cardinal bird… You are majestic. You are fleshy.”
23. 0:22:00 The T-pose. With no wings, Ricky T-poses with his arms to assert dominance, and Caustic Phoenix makes him do it on camera. Intimidation 18: birds avoid him, and it’s “the kind of social post that gets like 100,000 likes.” Spider’s insight is a 7, so he is intimidated and gets disadvantage on his first attack against Ricky. Spider: “Oh man, you look super rad up there… I have to. There’s rules.”
24. 0:23:53 Darkness. Spider casts Darkness on Ricky. “I’m not afraid of the dark, bitch. I’m an adult.” Ricky: “I am terrified of the dark.” He fails a Dex save and falls out of the tree ass-first. That is the first damage of the fight. Elusia: “If only you had a tail to land on… Those fleshy buns are clearly flat.”
25. 0:25:56 Spider rolls a 6 on perception and doesn’t know Ricky fell. He keeps yelling up at the tree: “I bet you look real cool in the dark, idiot.” Elusia: “Great insult. Really piercing.”
26. 0:26:53 The crowd’s eyes. The Shadow King can’t see. His eyes glow yellow and he sees through the magical darkness. Spider: “That’s super cheating.” Elusia insists the Acolytes get it too. He snaps, and a wave of shadow energy rolls through the crowd like a stadium wave, turning every Acolyte’s eyes yellow. Spider now faces a crowd of glowing eyes. Elusia: “You’re a spider. It’s like looking at… eight cousins.” Spider: “As long as you say so, I trust you, lady.” Elusia: “Somebody trust me, finally.”

Round 2

27. 0:28:05 The Acolytes’ cheering gives both champions a hero point, which Caustic Phoenix calls going “plus ultra.” Spider says he is 45, “young for an elf.” Shadow King on Elusia: “Don’t worry, she yells at everyone regardless.” Ricky: “I don’t know if you guys are a thing, but yikes, Shadow King.”
28. 0:30:04 Banishment vs Counterspell vs Counterspell. Ricky charges blind out of the darkness (a d4 sets his direction), sees the yellow eyes (“oh, shit!”) and spends his hero point to cast Banishment on Spider: “Spider hurt my butt, so he’s gotta go.” Elusia: “You’re a little butt hurt about this.” He channels “all of my butthurt anger into this banishment” and throws it. Spider casts Counterspell. Ricky counterspells the Counterspell and fails. Spider wins the second roll-off and the Banishment is negated.
29. 0:36:18 The Grandmaster’s pity. “You can’t banish him to another plane, but let me help you out.” Spider is “banished to the Dark Circle”, his own Darkness, still in place, without knowing it’s his. (Mudcat briefly switched the map by mistake: “We’ve all been banished!”)
30. 0:37:36 Spider: “I said I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I may have been lying… this sucks. And you suck.” He turns in circles yelling. Ricky gives away his own position by yelling back, “No! You are the one that sucks!”
31. 0:38:13 The steakhouse. Shadow King: “You find the two stupidest people on the planet? Where’d you find these guys? Like in Long John Silver’s?” Elusia: “It was a Longhorn Steakhouse.” Spider (speaker inferred) says one of them looked found “on the median of the highway,” and someone notes that Spider ordered a salad at the steakhouse (speaker uncertain). Spider: “It’s healthy, and I’m gonna nutritionally kick your ass.” He rolls Intimidation 23 against the Shadow King (“I feel fine. Just fine.”). Ricky: “Spider’s the champion of the vegans.”
32. 0:39:55 Ricky holds his turn to “stand there awkwardly.” “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words hurt my feelings.” Elusia rules that successful insults now deal him psychic damage. Ricky: “We’re here for a good time, not a long time… I have deep-rooted emotions and trauma to unpack. Would you like to hear my life story?” Elusia: “No!”
33. 0:41:01 Psychic Lance. In panic, Spider drops his own Darkness (“You fail your own con”) and sees Ricky: “there you are, you not-scaly bitch.” He casts Raulothim’s Psychic Lance: “All of my teenage angst kind of bundles up into a sort of Zeus lightning bolt javelin.” Ricky saves for half. Spider: “I learned math recently, and I love it.” Then: “That’s called teenage angst, bitch… You ever heard of My Chemical Romance? It’s going 24-7 over here… Most people just listen to it, but you’re feeling it, baby.”
34. 0:44:01 The fake beard. Ricky has a headache: “Let me fix my fake beard here.” The Shadow King: “It was a fake beard? You wore a fake beard to this match?” Elusia: “Take it off.” Ricky: “It shows everybody that I’m 6,012 years old.” Shadow King: “He does look that old.” The beard slips to his chin and into his mouth. Elusia predicts it will become chest hair, “a long glowing mane… Instead of flesh, you could have fur.” Ricky: “Dragons aren’t fuzzy”. Scales can’t be pierced “unless, you know, you got one scale missing.”
35. 0:46:19 The dab. Spider dabs. Ricky: “Did you just dab on the haters?… Hey, Shadow King, I kinda like this guy. He’s growing on me. Do I have to kill him?” Shadow King: “Yes, unless you want to die… My hands are tied… Metaphorically… There’s a lot of paperwork… I don’t do any of it… but I’ve been told we can’t back out now.”
36. 0:47:12 Popcorn. The Grandmaster throws her whole carton of popcorn at Spider’s head for dabbing. The butter burns, and “it’s not even vegan.” “Never dab in my arena ever again.” A goblin pulls out a notepad and writes the new rule: “No more dabbing in the arenas.” Ricky suggests it as merch, and Elusia wants it on a shirt.
37. 0:48:23 The Shadow King rolls an 18 at end of round: “Almost the best roll… I try to be humble… What about all those orphans I saved?” Elusia: “We all knew about what you were doing and it was not a good thing.”

Chaos event: Chin Dragon / Chinzilla (0:49:02)

38. Elusia claps. After all the talk that scales beat fur, a gigantic chinchilla, “fantastically large chunk boy”, charges through the forest. She names it “Chin Dragon.” The Shadow King mocks the name: “Why couldn’t you just call it Chinzilla?” Both names stick. Ricky fails his Dex save (“I couldn’t see it coming”), and the table tries to work out what sound a chinchilla makes.
39. 0:51:34 Spider: “Really cool glasses. Where’d you get those?” Ricky: “Costco.” Ricky proposes they team up against the “Chinzilla Hydra thing” and go back to killing each other afterwards. Spider agrees. It just rampages straight past them and leaves the arena. Spider: “Our peace treaty was short-lived.” Both take a hit of chinchilla damage. Spider: “Took that on the chin.”
40. 0:52:53 Elusia: “All it took was a pair of cute fuzzy paws. Suck it.” Ricky asks the Shadow King whether she just attacked people personally. Shadow King: “I’ve been trying to correct this behavior all season. It’s kids… Do you have any kids?” “No.” “I am one” follows (speaker uncertain, probably Spider). Elusia: “You’re 46.” Spider: “I’m a late bloomer.” His voice hasn’t fully dropped and he has no muscle mass. Will he go through puberty this match? “If I’m lucky.” Ricky offers to hit him to help it along.

Round 3: the portal circles

41. 0:54:25 Ricky’s Fire Bolt hits. He flicks it at Spider with a slap, and it zigzags “like a picturesque lightning bolt… like clip art.” Elusia: “Everything you do from here on out will be clip art.” Spider’s clothes are singed. Hot Topic? “I actually got it from Earthbound.”
42. 0:55:58 Ricky’s circle. Ricky jumps onto a glowing circle (“like standing on a giant subwoofer”). Purple coating covers his flesh: +1 AC, but he must start his turns with a lyric from an annoying song. He picks “Friday, Friday. Gotta get there”. Ricky: “I made a calculated move. Boy, am I bad at math.”
43. 0:57:51 Spider’s circle. “I’m not going to be left out of this slideshow, bitch.” Spider steps on the top circle and is wild-shaped into a bat. “Damn it, I shouldn’t have named myself bat.” The joke is that it’s the wrong animal. As a bat he keeps a tuft of blonde hair over one eye and is “the most fuzzy little fruit bat… a cool cat bat.” Elusia: “You are not Batman, but you are Bat Boy, because you haven’t hit puberty.” Spider: “I like baseball.”
44. 1:00:01 Halitosis. Bat-Spider bites Ricky (“he got way better cool stuff in the light”) and misses. Ricky: “I bet you don’t taste good anyway… Your breath is disgusting.” Spider: “It’s called halitosis, and it’s a medical condition.” (Split of this exchange inferred from context; diarization runs it together.) Ricky hands him a wintergreen Ice Breaker mint, then the whole bin. Spider: “I never have these at parties when I need them.”

The Box of Chaos (1:01:04)

45. “In this strange mode of kindness, the Grandmaster doesn’t know what to do.” She claps, and a comet streaks in. A pink and purple box lands behind the champions with a thud.
46. 1:01:43 The Shadow King picks an Acolyte out of the crowd and lifts them with a shadowy hand: “Toolkit 71. I’m going to need your soul. You can keep your body!” He rips Toolkit in half, throws the halves aside and slams the black soul into the box. A heatless column of pink, yellow and purple magical fire shoots up. Two shadowy clawed fingers and yellow eyes peek out.
47. 1:02:28 Shadow King: “This is the Box of Chaos. If you make a sacrifice to it, it’ll give you a magic item… Big, small, personal, meaningless, whatever.” Ricky: “Is this your box of chaos?” Shadow King: “Actually, it’s a funny story. I used to be the box of chaos.” Ricky says it’s metal but feels like compensating, since he tore a guy in half. Shadow King: “It’s for the show… I didn’t make the box. I killed the guy who made the box. I don’t see you pulling boxes from the sky and putting souls in them… You’re beating up a teenager.” Ricky: “He’s 45… he signed the waiver… You’re the one dealing with the lawsuit.”
48. 1:04:06 Break announced; it is cut from the mp3.

Table-side banter (after the cut, still in character)

49. 1:04:25 Shadow King: “Can you quit punching on your popcorn so loud?” Elusia: “It’s not popcorn. It’s the snack that smiles back.” Shadow King: “She wouldn’t share either.” Elusia: the winner gets a small pack of goldfish and fruit roll-ups, “all our favorite snackos.” Spider: “Sounds like my mom packs me for lunch.”
50. 1:05:04 Feeling forward. Ricky wants “a talk” about moms and snack packs: “It’s not something we talk about openly.” Spider: “We should definitely talk about feelings… I call it, like, feeling forward.” That slogan won him class president, “but only for like a little bit because I cheated with the voting.” Ricky: “Voter fraud?” The other girl’s side ran “failing forward,” and his classmates started the hashtag “feeling betrayed.” Shadow King: “Somebody has to plan the reunions, I suppose.” Elusia: “Vote and don’t follow hashtags.”

Round 4 (“round asparagus”)

51. 1:06:54 Elusia loses count of rounds; the Shadow King says counting is her job. Ricky counts: “One, two, three… Asparagus” and “Anvil… the one with the little thing on the top.” Elusia notices his beard has changed. Ricky: “Don’t gaslight me. Gaslight, gatekeep, girl pause [girlboss], bro.” His deception (14) fails. He keeps spare beards in the pockets of his top. He isn’t wearing pants. Elusia: “Some people have things they call flesh pockets.”
52. 1:09:08 The cloaca question. Shadow King: “Considering that this skin is not natural, do you or do you not have a cloaca?” Ricky: “Legally, I can’t answer that.” Elusia: “That’s protected content. [HIPAA] won’t allow us.” Shadow King: “I’ll just check after you’re dead.” Ricky: “I do not consent to that.” Shadow King: “He’s a man of mystery… My money’s on cloaca.”
53. 1:10:02 Sweet Caroline. Ricky’s song for the turn is “Sweet Caroline”, and he gets the Acolytes to sing along. Spider: “Oh, my dad loves that song.” Many Acolytes chant “cloaca” instead. Elusia gives him a d6 of inspiration.
54. 1:11:05 The joy buzzer. Ricky offers to shake hands with a buzzer hidden in his palm (Shocking Grasp), and Spider puts out a bat wing. The hit knocks Spider out of bat form: “From bat to spider. I feel like I could run like a mile… I’m feeling charged and in charge.” Ricky: “This is a 45-year-old man… You guys got a phony here.” Elusia: “45-year-old emo kid.” She says getting excited about My Chemical Romance touring again is “completely relatable.”
55. 1:13:23 Ricky asks whether Elusia is upset at his jokes. Shadow King: “I usually tune most of it out. I actually gave myself tinnitus so I didn’t have to listen.”
56. 1:13:52 Ricky’s sacrifice. On an Acolyte’s suggestion, and to beat Spider to it, Ricky tosses his other beard into the Box of Chaos. A shadowy creature pops out wearing it. Shadow King: “You just carry these nasty beards around in your pocket.” Ricky: “I don’t wash them at all.” Shadow King: “You didn’t actually shit in this, did you?” “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
57. 1:14:54 The soul in the box. Ricky: “Are you that Shadow King down here? How are you in two places at once?” The figure: “No, I’m just a tormented soul in a box. Leave me alone.” The lid shuts and the box rumbles.
58. 1:15:51 Buffering. “Wait a second. Is this box buffering right now?” Elusia: “It’s hard to get good internet here. The Wi-Fi’s slow… Do you think we’d lay fiber out here?” Ricky calls it dial-up and backs off (“I think that was a pressure point”). Elusia: “I’m gonna take all the nerves in your body and lay them out and use that as our new Wi-Fi connector.” Ricky notes she says these things and then listens to My Chemical Romance. Elusia: “I am a very serious person! I’m a Grandmaster! I have a title and a crown.”
59. 1:16:51 The beards of many things. The heatless fire column rises again. The figure hands Ricky a small container of beards: “This may be of use to you… these are the beards of many things. Careful which one you wear.” Ricky picks the white one and fastens it on top of his other beard (off camera). “It feels like a warm summer’s day”: he gains 50,000 XP and the beard becomes a wondrous item, +2 AC (+3 total with the circle). Mudcat: “Ricky, you pulled the Sun card.” Ricky: “I have totally commandeered this entire show and I apologize.” Elusia: “No, this is exactly what should have happened.”
60. 1:19:26 Spider’s offer. Spider says Ricky looks “denser… thicker… tough.” He goes right up to the box: “What the fuck is wrong with your breath? Did that guy shit in your mouth?” The figure replies with Spider’s own line: “It’s halitosis, and it’s a medical condition.” Spider: “If you have any extra puberty in there to give, I need it desperately… What do you think is the equivalent exchange for puberty?” He gives the box his hero point.
61. 1:21:19 His roll totals 145. Elusia: “Way to break the system. Puberty hits real hard.” Spider: “I almost dabbed again, but I refrained.” Elusia warns that next time it would be “a popcorn bowl filled with rocks.” Spider: “I’m not a bat anymore. I’m fully me… now you got the original spider, baby.” The figure: “What a handsome young man.” “Thank you.”
62. 1:22:28 The rod. The figure: “This is the best I could do on a short notice.” It is a wooden immovable rod shaped like a dick, with one use of the Fireball spell. Elusia, when Ricky asks to see it: “Don’t just hand your dick over to another guy, okay?” Spider: “This has got some heft… this is what manhood feels like.” Ricky: “There’s children around.” Elusia: “We are pro-education here.” Spider: “I’m going to give the younger Acolytes out there a lesson that I never was taught. This is manhood!”
63. 1:24:45 Crossing fireballs. Spider runs away and fires the rod’s Fireball. Ricky answers on the way out: “Oh, get wrecked, my guy. That’s a fireball coming right back at you.” Mudcat: “I want the fireballs to touch tips.” They roll off (matching numbers would blow up the ground under both). Ricky rolls a nat 20. The tips touch and the explosion catches both. Ricky asks for a bird’s-eye description. Caustic Phoenix: “Two men turn around and face each other in a heat of passion with sticks in hand… Two rods, hefty in size, aim straight at their target and spew out… an engulfing flame… I’m not finishing this.” Shadow King: “You really missed the chance to say shoot their loads.”
64. 1:27:17 Spider takes half; Ricky takes the full blast and drops to 2 HP. “Just the tip was enough.” Spider: “That’s right, baby. Manhood… Feel the manhood that man gave me.”
65. 1:28:41 Playing dead. Ricky announces “I think I’m at zero” and collapses. Elusia: “you’ve never taken a load this big to the face before.” Asked if he knows how dead bodies look: “I’m a dragon that goes to raves… People die at parties all the time.” “What kind of parties are you going to?” “The best kinds.” Performance 14: he looks dead, tongue hanging out.

Chaos event: the healing rods (1:30:39)

66. The Shadow King’s end-of-round roll triggers a second event. Rods of various sizes, thicknesses and lengths sprout from the ground “like a fungus,” woken by the heat of the fire. They are small fountains of healing for anyone who drinks from them. Mudcat: “Drink deep.” They give off a distinct smell of pineapple, and asparagus on one side. Elusia credits the Acolytes (“This was premeditated”). Ricky: “One Yelp star review.”

Round 5: the dead dragon

67. 1:33:49 Still playing dead, Ricky whispers his lyric: “Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me. I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” Only “a little mouse in the ground” could hear. “I have a political career to uphold one day.”
68. 1:34:39 He rolls away from Spider in a death spasm (“When bodies decompose, they release gases”). With a little tongue extended, he drinks from one of the mushroom-rods (“You tongue the tip”) and heals back to 19 HP. “Slightly sticky.” “Ricky Red Dragon is back.”
69. 1:36:12 Fake Acolyte. He keeps playing dead and casts Minor Illusion: a copy of the Acolyte Ristin8012 (Ristin) appears beside Spider saying “Look, he’s dead. Don’t attack him.” Toolkit is unavailable, “already cut in half.” Spider’s insight fails.
70. 1:38:10 Spider: “I can’t believe he’s dead. I’ve never killed a man before. Does that make me a man if I’ve killed another man?” He looks down at the wooden phallus: “Yeah… Puberty found, baby.” Ricky, aside: “I was part of this man’s awakening.”
71. 1:38:54 Spider tries to high-five the illusion and his hand goes right through it. “Good use of magic there, Ristin.” Ricky: “This is what you call character development.” The illusion keeps looping “Look, he’s dead.”
72. 1:39:36 Spider walks over and stands straddling Ricky’s “dead” body, flexing, rod still in hand: “Always is. Forever… this newfound manhood, both inner and outer.” The Acolytes call out: “Don’t play with it, you’ll go blind.”

Round 6: Wall of Force and the nutcracker

73. 1:41:09 Ricky, straddled: “That is his biggest folly of the night. Oops, I did it again. I cast Wall of Force. Goodbye, bitch.” The wall shoots up between Spider’s legs and throws him 20 ft into the air. He lands on the other side. Mudcat and Caustic Phoenix check whether his newly dropped balls survived (a Con save): “They’re still down.”
74. 1:43:28 Ricky crawls to the Box of Chaos and bangs on it. “You got anything else in there?… I just exploded his nuts. He’s gonna be really mad.” The figure: “Oh my God, you are a bad negotiator… You give me something and then I give you something.” Ricky: “Oh, I’ll give you something, all right.” He dives face-first into the box. It’s shallow, “a normal size chest box,” and his face hits the bottom fast.
75. 1:44:49 Mudcat skips the roll. In the swirling dark Ricky feels trash and bones, and pulls out a traditional classic Christmas nutcracker: a +3 maul he’s proficient with. He calls it “super finely painted, like red and blues.” Elusia: “Super finely painted with two primary colors… My niece uses more colors.” Ricky: “I’m color blind… and wearing sunglasses.” Mudcat: “Look at all these shades of gray!” Ricky: “All I know is I’m a red dragon!” Elusia: “Someone told you, you’re actually not a red dragon.”
76. 1:46:35 Elusia: “One has a nutcracker in hand, the other an immovable rod. Who will be victorious?”

The kill

77. 1:46:43 Spider: “Oh my God, you’re not dead. That sucked. I recently just got these. Why would you blow my testicles away like that? …I’m an adult like you are now.” He casts Destructive Wave at 5th level, and Ricky fails the save. “I still have all my angst left over from my teen years, and I haven’t dealt with it yet. So, fuck you, man.” It blasts out of his mouth like Banshee from the X-Men.
78. 1:48:20 Ricky: “Wait, let me tell you a secret. All that angst you have built up, it never goes away.” Spider: “No. It can’t be true.”
79. 1:48:57 Ricky turns to dust “like Professor X in The Last Stand.” His last words go to the Shadow King: “I have a secret to tell you… I’m not really a dragon.” Shadow King: “You son of a bitch.” “You lied to me” follows (speaker uncertain). Ricky: “You’ll never know the legend of Ricky Red Dragon.”
80. 1:49:37 Shadow King: “I knew he wasn’t a dragon.” Elusia, furious, throws the popcorn bowl full of rocks she had saved at the dead Ricky’s face. “It’s for the emotion of it all.” Ricky: “I’m dust, Voldemort style.” Shadow King: “I knew that guy was full of shit. Dragons don’t have to tell you they’re dragons. You just know.”

Victory, and the tarantula

81. 1:50:08 “There is one who still stands, rod in hand, balls between legs.” Elusia opens her wings: “Spider, today you have grown in more than one way. We are proud of you.”
82. 1:50:45 Spider: “I just want to thank my mom and—oh wait, what’s this?” He picks up Ricky’s sunglasses and puts them on: “Stay cool, cool babies.” Tears roll down everyone’s faces. Elusia presents him to the Shadow King as a champion “who has fought bravely and pushed himself to the point of maturity.”
83. 1:51:33 The Shadow King dissipates into shadow and reappears behind Spider. “Well, seems you turned out to be quite a man… You’ve kind of grown into the name… let me help you truly look the part.” Spider’s body shrinks and morphs, sprouting legs, into a tarantula. The Shadow King boots him out of the arena.
84. 1:52:50 The Shadow King rises into the air, arms wide: “Acolytes! What a season! I hope you were entertained. And let me make it clear to you. While I’m around, there will be death in the arena. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• Mudcat hosts “the last one of season four.” Guests are RealLifeFakeWizard (Ricky) and the Short Nord (Mike, Spider). Nord’s hair is longer (“It’s grown on me”).
• Mike built Spider while talking to his 19-year-old nephew, as “just a Gen Z kid.” The nephew is 6’5” and “has everything I never had.”
• Caustic Phoenix was tempted to say “Ricky Bobby” every time.
• RealLifeFakeWizard was glad to “play the heel” so Spider could have an arc. The concept, a dragon trapped in a human body, let Ricky be pompous with a built-in excuse. When asked “But are you a dragon?” he first says no (“It’s a fantasy game”). Mudcat: “The only reason that we’ve been playing D&D with you is because we thought you were a dragon.” Caustic Phoenix: “Short Nord is an actual Nord.” RealLifeFakeWizard then says “I am a dragon.”
• On the crossing fireballs, RealLifeFakeWizard: “The most passionate and potentially satisfying encounter that this show has ever had.” Mike: “a real awakening moment.” Jokes about MTV’s Next, BuzzFeed, and a D&D episode of The Button.
• Mike: in a campaign the two would have “cool uncle-nephew vibes.” “I actually love this character. I don’t want to hurt him.” RealLifeFakeWizard: “To be the man, you gotta beat the dragon.” Caustic Phoenix calls it a Black Widow move. Mike: “You’re the Colin Jost to my Scarlett Johansson.”
• This was RealLifeFakeWizard’s first Deathmatch. He expected to get “walloped” for mouthing off and kept escalating (the dial-up jokes) waiting for a thunderbolt. Caustic Phoenix: “You can insult me. It’s when you insult my arena that I get real pissed.”
• Parting advice (character voice unclear). Mike: “If you meet a cool, cool guy that parties a lot with sunglasses, he’ll make a man out of you. So talk to him.” RealLifeFakeWizard: “Live dangerously.” (“The longer the nods go, the wider the beard.”)
• RealLifeFakeWizard’s unused twist: if Ricky had died earlier, he would have revealed “I’m not a dragon. I’ve been cursed that every time I die, I come back as a level one wizard.” Caustic Phoenix: “Short Nord, why didn’t you murder him earlier?” Never played, so not canon.
• Mudcat: “We’ll see you all on the next season of D20 Deathmatch.”