S5E7 — Ducks of Death — Robbie Clark & the Hunger v Bob the Barbarian

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A little boy with a tentacle monster in his backpack fought a shirtless, mullet-haired barbarian from Florida in a cozy village full of ducks. Robbie Clark and the Hunger returned as a fan favourite and met Bob the Barbarian, a man so friendly that he bewildered the Lord of Fate, pulled into The Void. Bob fought with nipple tornadoes, gators and three layers of jorts, and over the course of the fight he set out to free a forgotten child from the thing eating his memories. It began as a deathmatch and ended as an adoption.

The Story

Champagne in the Fortress

The evening opened in the halls of The Dread Fortress, far below ground in its subterranean lair. The Lord of Fate still wasn’t used to his new title. He introduced himself by the old one before correcting himself, and remarked, “When you usurp a throne, it just doesn’t feel right for a while.” Then a clanking racket came down the hall. Thea, a tiny pink imp with glittery wings, burst through the doors in a poof of pink dust, dragging a bottle and two champagne glasses behind her.

The Lord of Fate asked how someone about two months old was drinking. Thea had an answer: “Two months as an imp, but I’ve been a worm a lot longer than that.” The goblins downstairs had called it “a nice drink.” It turned out to be from the Lord of Fate’s private reserve, saved for a celebration. As punishment he snapped his fingers, and one of the stars carved into Thea’s forehead faded and healed over. “I worked so hard for those friggin’ stars!” she wailed.

Thea argued that the reserve really belonged to the Grandmaster and he had simply taken it over. She also insisted she had been people once, chanting and getting tattoos with the Acolytes. “You were people for five minutes,” he replied, “but that time has passed.” When she handed him the bottle, he remembered where her mouth had been and dropped it to shatter on the floor. He told her someone would need to clean it up. Thea sadly lay down and licked the champagne off the floor until nothing was left.

The Champions

Thea’s pink portal brought out the first champion. Robbie Clark, small and sunny, introduced himself as an “adventurer and hero of the land,” whose mission with his good friend the Hunger was “to change all life in the universe into a singular biomass so that we can all become one with the greater unity.” The Lord of Fate groaned that they were having the child fight again. Thea had loved Robbie’s last match, where he and the Hunger had, in her words, “kicked their cloaca.”

Opposite him stood Bob: “I’m Bob the Barbarian. I’m from Florida and I love jean shorts, also known as jorts.” In his free time he wrestled gators and drank Coors Light. He admitted he felt weird about kicking a small child’s ass. The Lord of Fate, unsettled by all the friendliness, asked him to “kill this eldritch whore attached to this child.” Bob smiled. “Mayhem’s what I do. I just like to smile while I do it.” The Lord of Fate concluded, “It’s always the nice ones that are crazy.”

Into the Duck Village

A bigger portal opened onto The Duck Village: a quaint courtyard with a big old bell, fruit and veggie stands, villagers, a fountain where gaggles of ducks stopped to rest, and a cat peeking through a window. The clouds overhead were shaped like boobs and penises. The Acolytes filled the sky row after row, chanting for Bob, for Robbie, and in a few wild pockets for “the Hunger!” The Lord of Fate rose above them on white wings and asked whether the tentacle monster even had blood. The Hunger answered, “I am made of the infinite.” “Get ready to see whatever the fuck that is!” he cried.

Tentacles, Titanium and Toes

The Hunger struck first. Three tentacles whipped out of Robbie’s backpack, and two landed on Bob’s bare chest “like a wet towel.” Robbie said he had aimed one at each pec “to create a little bit of a bronzing effect.” Bob was delighted: “I haven’t had vines whipping my nipples for years. Thanks so much.” Then he summoned “the power of the peninsula,” his Florida gator strength. His first punch bounced off (“This child’s made of stone!”), and Robbie ducked the second. The third came on a natural 1 for Robbie, and Bob’s titanium fist cracked straight through the boy’s sternum.

The fight stayed odd from there. Bob rubbed his palms on the crystals embedded in his jorts and then headbutted Robbie for no clear reason, on a natural 20. He jabbed a crystal-spiked finger into Robbie’s eye socket, then struck him “right in the throat hole that I just created.” Thea, still curious about spice, collected Bob’s leg sweat in a vial and licked his leg. Bob asked, “Did we just become best friends, Thea?”

Chaos From Above and Below

The Acolytes’ fervour set off two chaos events. First, a giant saucer blotted out the sky and beamed both champions up to be probed by aliens. Robbie slipped free. Bob did not (“My ass! They’re gonna probe me! No!”), and he came back down unable to hold in his farts, which he decided meant he was “permanently sharting… Well, shit. In my jorts.” Robbie, asked whether the Hunger knew the aliens, explained that it “defies space and time” and admitted, “My memory is full of blank spots.”

The Hunger fed by draining the life from the soil. It then vomited viscera and bits of cat onto Bob’s jorts, to chants of “Dirty jorts!” Bob, realizing after his anal probe that he could use his own shit as poison, dipped his crystal hand deep into his jorts and threw it at Robbie. It missed, and the Hunger simply ate the poop off his hand (“It cleaned it right off my hand, you sick bastard”). His nipple tornado, unleashed by rubbing his nipples as hard and fast as he could, missed as well, because Robbie had averted his eyes: “I’m a little kid and I think nipples are gross.”

The second chaos event was a drought. The Hunger’s warping of the land shrivelled the plants and dried the fountain. Bob found water by drilling into the ground with his diamond hands “like a penguin would do into ice with its beak,” but Robbie ended up parched and badly worn down. He wished for a root beer. Thea offered him a towel soaked in champagne, and the Lord of Fate snapped it out of existence: “He’s a child. You can’t give him booze.” Asked whether he remembered fighting here before, Robbie said only, “I remember waking up and seeing a dead snake.”

The Box of Chaos

Then The Box of Chaos slammed down between them, spouting pink and yellow fire. Shadowy clawed hands and yellow eyes peeked over its rim. Robbie said it felt like Christmas, then wondered aloud whether he had parents. He offered the “weird skeleton” a high five. The Hunger offered something else: “his birthdays.” Tubes pumped out of Robbie as his eyes rolled back, and a tentacle drew out pearl-like orbs of light, his birthday memories. The creature in the box gobbled them up (“Oh, yeah, I fucking love cake”). Robbie received the Shield of the Golden King, a gleaming gold shield that had never seen battle. It looked like someone had carried it purely for show, “because they were.”

Bob tore off only a small scrap of his jorts, holding back so as not to “expose my Python yet.” The box grumbled that it might make an eyepatch out of it and gave him the Blade of Shadow, which holds a piece of the Shadow King’s soul. Thea’s verdict: “Ooh, that’s an old bad guy.” The blade healed Bob with every hit and tired him just by being held. His first great lightning-crackling swing missed completely, and Thea flew out to coach him: “It’s all in the wrists.” When Bob noted it was “a little bit bigger than what most people are used to handling,” Thea replied, “It’s okay, I’ve had to, never mind.”

Thea also ducked into a village building and came back with a pair of New Balance shoes for Robbie. “I’ve never gotten new shoes before,” he said. The Lord of Fate replied, “You got new shoes on your seventh birthday, I remember.” Robbie asked, “What’s a birthday?”

Gators and Hairballs

Robbie charged, and the Hunger swelled into a writhing mass of tentacles that knocked Bob flat. Through the tendrils, the boy’s eyes met the man’s. For a moment the fight drained out of Robbie, and he saw in Bob a yearning for something he had once wanted too and had since forgotten. Then the Hunger shredded across his eyes. It later admitted its purpose openly: “I prevent the child from connecting with another human so that I can best still wield him as a vessel.”

Bob called for Benadryl and summoned his gators, some up to twenty feet long. The first snapped Robbie’s tiny leg off, blood spewing, and Bob announced, “I’m getting hard. I love battle.” The second missed. Thea said it was because he hadn’t named them, so Bob named the third Jeremy and rubbed chili powder on its jaws. Jeremy missed too. Thea lay down and talked with the gator, who explained that her name was Hannah Montana, “and you should have known better,” given the blonde wig. Bob apologised, promised to protect her eggs, and set her free. She spent the rest of the match doing flips in the fountain.

After a break, Thea earned a freshly carved forehead star. The Lord of Fate then asked whether she had really brought them to a normal town with normal ducks. “I’m really regretting that I carved that,” he said. In the arena, Bob told Robbie, “I don’t like it, but I like you, boy.” He curled his mullet into a steel ball bristling with poisoned spikes and rolled over the boy, then jumped up and jammed his toes into Robbie’s eyes (“Smell me, boy!”). Thea opened her arms to offer Robbie a hug. The Hunger’s tendrils swept her back like a wave (“It’s mine”), and she turned away in tears, insisting her eyes were just spicy.

The Fight for Robbie

The Hunger stopped pretending. It wrapped its eye-hat over Robbie’s face, hoisted him like a marionette, and twisted its tentacles into one great spine of eyes and barbs that drilled down onto Bob. Bob rose again, healed, chugged a beer, and spoke to the boy instead of the monster: “He took over your body, son… I could be your dad in a different world. I’m not your dad. Probably not, but I could be. Remember that, boy. I care about you.” Thea asked Robbie whether the Hunger had his back or was his back. The question was, Robbie said, “almost outside of the realm of my understanding.”

Robbie tried to fight in his own way with his child punch and child kick. His high kick in the new shoes met Bob’s bare foot, toe to toe, and they landed with their pinky toes tied. Bob ripped off his jorts to reveal a second pair, and then a third. He promised fan boats through the Everglades, touching gators, and one day a cold Coors Light. The Lord of Fate kept pushing back the next chaos event because he wanted to see this play out, and it never came.

Liberation

When Robbie said he wanted to try a fan boat, the Hunger seized him completely. Tendrils pumped into his ears, his eyes went black, and a different voice spoke: “You will join me and he will forget that this ever happened. He will be happy and he will be mine.” Bob sniffed a pouch of bath salts from his jorts pocket and declared himself “pure Florida man.” He swore to liberate the boy and dropped his “large buxom ass” onto the tentacles. When he ran out of attacks, he told it, “You’re a dirty bastard, hunger.”

The words got through. For the faintest second, Robbie’s eyes were his own. “I think I want to be a Florida man too.” The Hunger thrashed and said “No” as Robbie clawed his way out and reached for Bob’s hand. They clasped hands, and Robbie was pulled free. The Hunger writhed, sparkled into light and melted into bubbling ichor, and only an empty backpack was left.

“Hi.” “Hi. I’m Bob.” “I’m Robby Clark.” Robbie asked whether all of it was true, the gators and fan boats and nipple tornadoes. “Oh, son, it’s all true.” Thea opened one last portal onto a big rusty fan boat with “Bob and Robbie” inscribed on the back. “Go be free, Florida men,” she said, and as the portal shrank, Robbie’s jeans magically became cut-offs. The Lord of Fate counted it a success: “I guess somebody technically died, so I’m happy.”

Dried Blood

In the after-show, Robbie passed on his lesson: sometimes something that seems like an adversary turns out to be an ally, “even if there’s some weird dark eldritch force jamming spikes into your brain to make it so you don’t remember who you used to be.” Bob reported that his Florida boy had now ridden the fan boat, seen gators and rubbed his nipples a bit. “But it only gets better from here, my friend. Because now we’re gonna go to Publix and get delicious fried chicken tenders.” He urged every Acolyte to try them.

Notable Moments

• Thea licked the shattered champagne off the floor, and later licked Bob’s leg in search of “spice.”
• Robbie sacrificed his own birthday memories to the Box of Chaos for a purely ornamental shield, then asked, “What’s a birthday?”
• Bob’s gator “Jeremy” turned out to be Hannah Montana, who was freed and spent the rest of the match doing flips in the fountain.
• Bob wore three pairs of jorts and stripped off two of them as the fight wore on.
• The Hunger rejected Thea’s hug and left her crying “spicy” tears.
• Bob freed Robbie with kind words and an outstretched hand, and the Hunger melted away into an empty backpack.

Memorable Quotes

Bob the Barbarian: “I could be your dad in a different world. I’m not your dad. Probably not, but I could be. Remember that, boy. I care about you.”

Robbie Clark: “The hunger’s had my back for a long time. As far back as I can remember, which is about yesterday.”

• The Lord of Fate: “When you usurp a throne, it just doesn’t feel right for a while.”
• Thea: “Two months as an imp, but I’ve been a worm a lot longer than that.”
• Bob the Barbarian: “I haven’t had vines whipping my nipples for years. Thanks so much.”
• The Hunger: “I prevent the child from connecting with another human so that I can best still wield him as a vessel.”
• The Lord of Fate: “You eat five hot dogs and now you think you’re people.”
• Bob the Barbarian: “For the righteous will prevail. And as we all know, the righteous come from Florida.”
• Thea: “Go be free, Florida men.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Robbie Clark (Cinderblock Sally). A small child “adventurer and hero of the land” bonded to the Hunger through a backpack he has never taken off.

• His memory goes back only “about yesterday” and is “full of blank spots.” He remembers waking up next to a dead snake (his previous match).
• He doesn’t know what a birthday is, whether he has parents, or what an alien is. He stopped going to school “when I was too young.”
• Gave his birthday memories to the Box of Chaos and received the Shield of the Golden King. Thea gave him New Balance shoes.
• His moves are the child punch and child kick.
• Freed from the Hunger at the end; left for Florida with Bob on a fan boat. His jeans became shorts.

The Hunger (Cinderblock Sally). An eldritch tentacle entity living in, or as, Robbie’s backpack, with an eye-hat and mouths and teeth that grow from its tendrils.

• Wants to merge all life into “a singular biomass” and “the eternal flesh.”
• Robbie calls it “a creature that defies space and time.” It says “I am made of the infinite.”
• Deliberately keeps Robbie from connecting with other people so it can wield him as a vessel. It mind-wipes him, possesses him, and calls him “my champion.”
• Destroyed: it melted into bubbling ichor after Robbie broke free, leaving only the backpack.

Bob the Barbarian (Big Papa Drak). A friendly, always-smiling, shirtless barbarian from Florida with a glorious mullet.

• Loves jorts, wears at least three pairs, and keeps crystals embedded in the fabric. Wrestles gators, drinks Coors Light, nicknamed “Smiling Bob.”
• Summons gators: gator one, gator two, and “Jeremy,” who is actually Hannah Montana.
• Moves: nipple tornado, steel spiked hairball, toe stench, butt drop. He sniffs bath salts to become “pure Florida man.”
• Probed by aliens and now can’t hold in farts. Got the Blade of Shadow by sacrificing a piece of his jorts.
• Wants children someday. Promised to raise Robbie in Florida.

The Lord of Fate (Mudcat). The former Arbiter, who has “usurped” the throne and still struggles with the title.

• White wings. Has a private reserve of champagne, which Thea says was the Grandmaster’s.
• Carves stars into Thea’s forehead as rewards and can heal them away as punishment. Keeps a report and file on her and claims to pay her.
• Snapped away the champagne towel because Robbie is a child. Says he remembers Robbie getting new shoes on his seventh birthday.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). A tiny pink imp with glittery wings.

• Two months an imp, a worm for longer. Insists “Thea is people.” Says she was “people” for five minutes, chanting and getting tattoos with the Acolytes.
• Licked up the spilled champagne and licked Bob’s leg sweat (“spice”). Speaks with animals.
• Gave Robbie New Balance shoes. Her hug was rejected by the Hunger, and she cried.
• Organized the match and arena. Lost one forehead star and gained another.

Hannah Montana: a female gator with a blonde wig, misnamed Jeremy, freed by Bob. She swims in the Duck Village fountain.

The Box of Chaos creature: black shadowy clawed hands and yellow eyes. Robbie calls it a “weird skeleton.” It loves cake, eats memories, and might make an eyepatch from the jorts scrap.

The goblins of the Dread Fortress: they supplied the champagne and buy the reserves.

The Shadow King: mentioned only. A piece of his soul is in the Blade of Shadow. Thea: “an old bad guy… we didn’t like him.”

Places

• The Dread Fortress: its halls in the subterranean lair, and the Lord of Fate’s private reserve.
• The Duck Village / “village de ducks”: a quaint village courtyard with a fountain, bell, fruit and veggie stands, villagers, ducks and a cat. It was drained into near-desert by the drought.
• Florida, the Everglades, Publix: Bob’s home, the destination for Bob and Robbie. Real-world; see list.

Items

• Shield of the Golden King: gleaming gold and ornamental, never seen battle, “carried for show, because they were.” Gives +1 mettle and shatters on a natural 1.
• Blade of Shadow: holds a piece of the Shadow King’s soul. Heals on hit, causes fatigue.
• Bob’s crystal-studded jorts (multiple layers), the bath salts pouch, and chili powder.
• Robbie’s New Balance shoes and the backpack left behind by the Hunger.
• The champagne bottle (smashed) and Thea’s forehead stars.
• The rusty fan boat inscribed “Bob and Robbie.”

Lore statements

• The Lord of Fate usurped the throne and was formerly the Arbiter (Season of Fate).
• Thea says the champagne reserves were the Grandmaster’s; the Lord of Fate says he directed the goblins who bought them.
• The Acolytes watch from the sky above the arena and remember previous matches.
• The Box of Chaos takes sacrifices, including memories, and gives random magic items.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the Dread Fortress

1. 0:06:12 “Welcome to D20 Deathmatch!” The scene is the halls of the Dread Fortress, far below ground in the subterranean lair. Mudcat slips and calls himself the Arbiter, then corrects to the Lord of Fate. “When you usurp a throne, it just doesn’t feel right for a while.” Thea: “I also struggle with my own name.”
2. 0:06:53 — Thea’s entrance. A bumbling, clanking noise comes down the hall. Thea, a tiny pink imp with glowing, glittery tiny wings, bursts through two doors in a poof of pink dust. She is dragging a bottle and two champagne glasses along the floor. “I brought her drinks!”
3. 0:07:19 The Lord of Fate: “You’re like two months old. How are you drinking?” Thea: “Two months as an imp, but I’ve been a worm a lot longer than that.” The goblins downstairs told her it was “a nice drink,” so she repeated it and brought it up to celebrate the Deathmatch.
4. 0:08:05 — The private reserve. It was from the Lord of Fate’s private reserve, which he was saving for a celebration. “This is going on your report.” Instead he snaps, and one of the stars carved into Thea’s forehead fades away and heals. Thea: “I worked so hard for those friggin’ stars!”
5. 0:08:47 Thea claims the reserves were really the Grandmaster’s, and he just took them over. The Lord of Fate counters that the goblins bought them for her, and he told the goblins how and where. Thea: “The Arbiter?” “That’s me.” “You’re no longer the Arbiter, though. That’s like a whole different persona.”
6. 0:09:23 — Spice and people. Thea wants to “spice it up,” but she can’t name any spices because he hasn’t given her many flavors. He says she doesn’t need to eat because she’s not people. Thea: “I’ve been people, all the Acolytes, we’re chanting, and we’re all getting tattoos.” He: “You were people for five minutes, but that time has passed.”
7. 0:09:59 — The champions. Thea claps, a pink portal opens, and she brings back “an absolute fan favorite”: Robbie Clark and the Hunger versus Bob! (She struggles to say “Bob” enough ways.)
8. 0:10:27 — Robbie Clark. “Hi there! It’s me, Robby Clark, adventurer and hero of the land. It’s all up to me and my good friend The Hunger to stop evil and to change all life in the universe into a singular biomass so that we can all become one with the greater unity.”
9. 0:10:50 The Lord of Fate: “We’re having the child fight again?” Thea liked it, especially “this thing” the Hunger did that spoke to her spiritually. The Lord of Fate agrees Robbie was “very ferocious” for a child. Thea corrects him: they didn’t kick ass, “They kicked their cloaca. As we learned, snakes have cloacas” (a reference to Robbie’s previous match).
10. 0:11:30 — Bob the Barbarian. “Hi guys, I’m Bob the Barbarian. I’m from Florida and I love jean shorts, also known as jorts. In my free time, I enjoy wrestling gators and drinking Coors Light.” He feels weird about kicking a small child’s ass. The Lord of Fate is bewildered by how friendly he is. Bob: “I’m just a friendly guy!”
11. 0:11:59 The Lord of Fate: “I need you to kill this eldritch whore attached to this child.” Bob: “Mayhem’s what I do. I just like to smile while I do it.” The Lord of Fate: “It’s always the nice ones that are crazy.”
12. 0:12:30 — The bottle. Thea drops the bottle from her tail into his hands. He considers drinking, remembers her mouth has been on it, and drops it to shatter on the floor. “Someone will need to clean that up.” Thea sadly drops to the floor and starts licking it up. “That’s not what I meant. Get a broom.” She keeps licking until nothing is left, then claps above her head and opens a bigger portal.

The arena — the Duck Village

13. 0:13:38 “The Duck Village, go on through!” It’s a quaint, adorable town with a big old bell, villagers, fruit and veggie stands, gaggles of ducks flying by or stopping at the fountain, and a cat peeking through a window. The courtyard is the arena, “yours to destroy.”
14. 0:14:25 The clouds overhead are shaped like boobs and penises. The Acolytes fill the sky ethereally, row after row, chanting “Bob, Bob” and “Robbie, Robbie.” A few wild ones chant “the Hunger!”, “clearly remembering what has happened in previous matches.” Thea keeps slurping champagne.
15. 0:14:53 — The Lord of Fate opens. He rises above the crowd, flaring his white wings in the sun. “Acolytes, are you ready to see some blood?” He asks if the tentacle monster has blood. Robbie isn’t sure which of them is the tentacle monster. The Hunger: “I am made of the infinite.” The Lord of Fate: “Get ready to see whatever the fuck that is!” Acolytes throw beers, rip off shirts and punch each other.
16. 0:15:57 Initiative: Robbie/the Hunger go first.

Round 1

17. 0:16:11 Robbie: Bob isn’t wearing a shirt, “usually that means they’re extra tough.” The Hunger: “Now we shall consume.” Three tentacles whip out of Robbie’s backpack. The first misses; the next two hit “like a wet towel.” Thea asks where. Robbie: “One on each pec just above the nipple to create a little bit of a bronzing effect.” “My nips!”
18. 0:18:13 Bob: “I haven’t had vines whipping my nipples for years. Thanks so much.” He summons “the power of the peninsula,” his gator strength from Florida, and tries to punch the child in the face three times. “When you phrase it like that, it sounds worse than it is.”
19. 0:18:58 The first punch is shut down: “This child’s made of stone! That’s okay, though. My fists are made of titanium.” Robbie ducks the second: “You just punch it too high. We’re just a little guy.” Bob: “Bob and weave.”
20. 0:19:40 Robbie rolls a natural 1 on defense. The titanium fist obliterates his chest. Bob: “When your fist connects with a small child’s breastplate or their sternum, it’s just something about hearing that crack that really gets you going.” Robbie gains his first fatigue (five fatigue means death).
21. 0:21:18 — Table banter in character. Robbie misreads Bob’s stats, then corrects himself. Bob: “You’re just a small boy. We’ve all been there.” Thea asks when she gets to become a small boy. Robbie: “Join the eternal flesh and you can be all boys.” Thea: “Do we all have cookies, though?” The Lord of Fate: “I think if you go with him, you’re going to be cookies.”
22. 0:22:03 Thea: “Some of us are still waiting for testosterone to kick in.” Bob: “Once it hits, you never feel the same again… That’s why they call me Smiling Bob.” Robbie: “I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

Round 2

23. 0:22:38 The Hunger’s tentacles launch Robbie forward into a massive kick at Bob’s belly. It whiffs on a natural 2. Robbie: “Ow, my feet.” The Hunger offers to help; Robbie wants to do it himself. His shin kick misses. The Hunger then defends Robbie, giving Bob disadvantage.
24. 0:24:00 Bob: “That tricky little boy is up to no good.” He rubs his palms on his jorts to pick up the special crystals embedded in the fabric, powering up his hands. Then, for some reason, he headbutts instead. He rolls a natural 20 against Robbie’s natural 1, and it still hits on the disadvantage reroll. Robbie gains a second fatigue.
25. 0:25:34 Bob: “When you fuck with the elders, you get the stick of the horse.” Robbie: “I’ve fought guys bigger than you before, and I’ve had them consumed by the hunger.”
26. 0:25:54 Bob jabs with his crystal-spiked pointer finger “right in your tiny little eye socket.” Then a full-strength strike “right in the throat hole that I just created. Bam. I’m a barbarian.”
27. 0:27:11 — Spice. Thea wonders if that’s what spice is. She runs behind Bob with a small vial to collect his leg sweat, then licks his leg. Bob: “Your tongue is so… hard, like a cat… Did we just become best friends, Thea?” Thea: “Same mind, same mind, which is not great for anyone else.” She’s “seeing a lot of stars.” Bob: “My spice is made out of the mead of fermented hops.”
28. 0:28:24 The Acolytes have triggered two chaotic events. Thea panics and rolls. One will run now, one at the end of the next round.

Chaos event 1 — the alien saucer (0:29:33)

29. Robbie rolls (“I stopped going to school when I was too young”). The sky darkens as a giant space saucer covers the entire sky, whirls and beeps, and beams them both up. They must resist being probed. Robbie saves; Bob fails. “My ass! They’re gonna probe me! No!”
30. 0:30:47 Thea asks whether the Hunger knows the aliens. Robbie: “What’s an alien?… The hunger is a creature that defies space and time. It’s not limited to terrestrial existence or identity.” The Lord of Fate: “As somebody who also uses that as their sales pitch, I can tell you that it’s just a bunch of showmanship.” Robbie: “My memory is full of blank spots.”
31. 0:31:27 — Side effect. Thea: Bob can no longer hold farts in. Bob: “Does that mean I shart when I fart?… I guess I’m just permanently sharting then. Well, shit. In my jorts.” Robbie offers to take the shorts to his aunt’s house.

Round 3

32. 0:32:08 The Hunger drives tendrils into the ground and sucks the life out of it, drying the soil, to rid Robbie of a fatigue.
33. 0:32:43 A giant tendril grows a toothed mouth and goes for a powered-up chomp on Bob’s shoulder. It ties: no damage, and both gain fatigue.
34. 0:33:35 — Dirty jorts. Robbie reasons that the jorts are where Bob’s power comes from. The Hunger vomits viscera, bits of a cat and other things onto Bob’s jorts. It hits. The Acolytes chant “Dirty jorts, dirty jorts!”
35. 0:35:08 Bob admires Robbie: “You pack much more of a punch than I ever could have imagined… weird tentacles coming out of your back.”
36. 0:35:46 — Poop poison. “When I had my anus probed earlier, I realized that I could use the shit to throw poison right back into you.” He dips his crystal hand deep into his jorts and attacks with a shit-poison status. It misses. The Hunger eats the poop off his hand. Bob: “It cleaned it right off my hand, you sick bastard.” He spends an action cleaning his jorts.
37. 0:36:55 — The nipnado. Feeling “admiration for a worthy opponent,” Bob rubs his nipples circularly “as hard and as fast as I can,” unleashing a tornado from them. It misses. Thea: “Maybe you’re rubbing the wrong nipples.” Robbie explains: “I’m a little kid and I think nipples are gross. So I averted my eyes,” and the Hunger took him to “that happy place that it does whenever it needs to take care of business.” “I disperse to the air.”
38. 0:38:45 Thea rolls: “I rolled better than Robbie Clark in The Hunger.” The Lord of Fate notes it in her file.

Chaos event 2 — the drought (0:39:19)

39. Bob rolls (“I love chaos. I’m from Florida”). Because the Hunger warped the life force around them, the plants shrivel and the land turns almost to desert. The fountain runs dry, mouths can’t muster spit, and blinking hurts. They must find water. Robbie fails and is dehydrated; Bob succeeds. Both gain fatigue, putting Robbie at four.
40. 0:40:55 Bob, worried about dying, says he wants “to live a long time and have children someday. Children like Robby, maybe.” He found water by drilling into the ground with his diamond hands “like a penguin would do into ice with its beak.” “As a Florida man, I know how to find water anywhere. Just not good quality water.” Thea asks if there are Florida penguins: “Yes, they’re in zoos… They’re dangerous. You can’t trust them.”
41. 0:42:10 Robbie: “I really wish I had a root beer.” Thea offers him a towel soaked in champagne. The Lord of Fate snaps it out of existence: “He’s a child. You can’t give him booze.” Thea isn’t sure what age policies the Void follows.
42. 0:42:55 The Lord of Fate asks Robbie if he remembers fighting here before. Robbie: “I remember waking up and seeing a dead snake.” “That’s mildly concerning, but that’s a problem for somebody else.”

Round 4 — the Box of Chaos

43. 0:43:05 Acolytes throw blue slushies on each other. “K-K-K-Chaos.” The Box of Chaos slams down between them. The lid flips open, pink and yellow heatless magical fire shoots skyward, and two black shadowy clawed hands and a yellow set of eyes peek over the side. Make a sacrifice, get a random magic item.
44. 0:44:22 Robbie: “Asking for a present and then getting something random reminds me of Christmas.” He wonders, “what was that guy Bob saying about parents and family? Do I have parents?” He clears two fatigue, then goes for the box: “I’m going to give a high five to the weird skeleton… I don’t have anything to give you, but I’d love a present.”
45. 0:45:12 — The birthday sacrifice. The Hunger says “his birthdays.” Tubes pump out of Robbie as his eyes roll back, and a tentacle extrudes little pearl-like orbs of light: Robbie’s memories of his birthdays. The box creature: “Oh, yeah, I fucking love cake.” It gobbles them, its eyes flipping through the memories “like Neo in the Matrix.”
46. 0:46:27 — Shield of the Golden King. Robbie gets the Shield of the Golden King (+1 mettle; shatters on a natural 1 defense). It’s shining gold and has never seen battle, purely ornamental: “It looks like someone was just carrying this thing for show, because they were.” Robbie: “Thanks for getting me this awesome present, The Hunger.”
47. 0:47:51 — The jorts sacrifice. Bob clears a fatigue, then decides he too must sacrifice something dear. He rips a small piece off his jorts, “not the whole thing because I don’t want to expose my Python yet.” Box creature: “That’s not very big… Maybe I can make, like, an eyepatch out of it. I’ll take it. I’m not picky.”
48. 0:49:06 — Blade of Shadow. The fire turns the sky pink and purple, an artificial sunset. Bob receives the Blade of Shadow: “You hold a piece of the Shadow King’s soul.” Thea: “Ooh, that’s an old bad guy. He was bad. We were like, we didn’t like him.” Each hit heals Bob, but holding it gives him a fatigue.
49. 0:50:16 Bob powers it up and hoists the Shadow Blade into the sky, lightning crackling, pecs gleaming, then smashes it down at Robbie’s skull. It misses, and he loses the power up. “Damn everything and damn the Shadowblade to hell.” Thea: “Back where it belongs.”
50. 0:51:26 Thea flies out to coach his grip: “It’s all in the wrists.” “It’s a little bit bigger than what most people are used to handling.” Thea: “It’s okay, I’ve had to, never mind.”
51. 0:52:01 Thea rolls a 10, “humble.” The Lord of Fate: “It’s average like your work ethic.”
52. 0:52:35 — New Balance. Thea runs into a village building, clangs around, and gives Robbie a pair of New Balance shoes. “They’ll do nothing, but you know, sometimes it’s changing up a few things.” Robbie: “I’ve never gotten new shoes before.” The Lord of Fate: “You got new shoes on your seventh birthday, I remember.” Robbie: “What’s a birthday?” Thea pats his head softly and grants him advantage on his next turn.

Round 5

53. 0:53:52 The Lord of Fate snaps and the Box of Chaos shoots into the sky like a comet.
54. 0:54:14 Robbie: “I don’t know what’s going on with Florida. I don’t know why your pants are so magical. But I know that it’s my job to win this fight and to save the world.” He charges, the Hunger turning into a massive writhing mass of tentacles, and knocks Bob over.
55. 0:55:06 — The look. Between the tendrils, Robbie and Bob’s eyes link. For a moment the passion for fighting fades from Robbie: a child sees an adult who might be yearning for something, something Robbie has yearned for for a long time but forgotten. Then the Hunger shreds over his eyes and makes two more tendril attacks, both hits. The Hunger: “He shall be my champion.”
56. 0:56:30 The Hunger (via Cinderblock): “I prevent the child from connecting with another human so that I can best still wield him as a vessel.” Its tendrils of teeth bite Bob “many thousands of little itsy bitsy bites… terrible itches.”
57. 0:57:07 Bob: “Get me the Benadryl, because I’m not done yet, boy.” He gives Robbie advice: “Don’t grow up, boy. Don’t ever make love to people that you belch.”
58. 0:58:04 — The gators. “My nipples failed. My poop failed.” Bob summons his gators, “some ranging in size up to 20 feet.” Gator one bites Robbie’s leg, “snapping his tiny little leg off. Blood spewing.” Bob: “I’m getting hard. I love battle.” Gator two misses.
59. 0:59:22 Thea: it’s because he didn’t name them. Bob names gator three Jeremy and rubs chili powder on its jaws. Jeremy misses: “Damn you to hell, Jeremy, you worthless gator.”
60. 1:00:22 — Hannah Montana. Thea can speak with animals. She lies on her belly beside the gator and they converse. The gator: “First of all, name’s not Jeremy.” It’s Hannah Montana, “and you should have known better… The blonde wig on top of them should have given you an obvious heads up.”
61. 1:00:55 Bob apologizes: “I didn’t even know you were a female gator… I’ll protect your eggs whenever you lay them. That’s what we do in Florida. We protect each other. You’re free now.” Hannah Montana hops into the fountain, does flips, and circles there for the rest of the match.
62. 1:01:37 Thea rolls an 18 and claims another forehead star. The Lord of Fate starts carving one with a pen, then decides he needs “my good pen from inside” for five stars. Break.
63. 1:02:25 Thea: “You didn’t bring the ducks.” The Lord of Fate: “Apparently, I forgot to bring the sound as well.”

After the break

64. 1:02:38 The Lord of Fate has his pen and carves a star into Thea’s head. Thea checks the ducks are visible. “We’re in the village de ducks.” They’re normal ducks that quack; they could become evil “when they grow up and they can decide to become that way.” The Lord of Fate: “So you brought us to a normal town with normal ducks?… I’m really regretting that I carved that.” Thea: “Who doesn’t love ducks?”

Round 6

65. 1:03:57 Robbie had “a little talk with the hunger.” The Hunger opens a ginormous mouth for a powered-up super bite at one of Bob’s feet. It misses and bites the earth. Robbie: “Why do you keep missing?” The Hunger: “Quiet, boy.” Two smaller mouths split off and try to bite Bob’s mullet off. Both miss.
66. 1:05:37 Thea asks about his locks. Bob: “They flow so freely, like they have a mind of their own, glistening, sunlight kissing off of every strand.” Village women on the far side freak out over his hair. Bob: “Don’t worry, ladies. I’ll be there to sex you up later.”
67. 1:06:16 — Bob’s speech. “Robbie, when I saw those small ducks, I was reminded of my own. It made my heart feel a certain way… you’re one of the strongest competitors I’ve ever faced… I don’t like it, but I like you, boy.”
68. 1:07:13 — The hairball. “That hair isn’t just for looks.” His hair grows around him into a giant ball, hardens into steel and sprouts poisoned spikes. He rolls at Robbie. It hits with a power-up and status combo.
69. 1:08:15 “I don’t want to finish you too soon.” His “hug of love” crushing attack misses (“maybe my love didn’t get through to you”). Then he jumps up and puts his toes in Robbie’s eyes. It hits. “Smell me, boy! Smell me!” Robbie: “The eye socket again!… This is so bad smelling!”
70. 1:09:30 The Lord of Fate: “That’s an unorthodox fighting style.” Thea notes Robbie is vulnerable in the face. The Lord of Fate: “It’s very punchable.” Robbie has been using his shield, but the +1 hasn’t mattered yet.
71. 1:10:20 — Thea’s hug. Thea opens her arms to offer Robbie a hug. The Hunger’s tendrils block her like a wave: “It’s mine.” Thea turns away, embarrassed and slightly crying. The Lord of Fate: “Cry on your own time. I’m not paying you to cry.” Thea: “My eyes just are spicy.”

Round 7

72. 1:11:22 Robbie is confused about what Bob said: “People take care of each other and there’s like cool animals.” The Hunger: “Don’t worry about it.” The Hunger’s eye-hat envelops Robbie’s face, and it raises him like an eldritch marionette: “We have spent too much time with you.” Heroic surge: its tentacles merge into one massive twisting spine of eyes and barbs that drills down on Bob, crunching him. It hits hard. Robbie clears his status effect.
73. 1:13:29 Robbie, back in control: “Oh, you got a really good hit in there, buddy!” Another eye-and-mouth tentacle misses.
74. 1:14:15 Bob: “Damn you, hunger! How could you use this boy like this? Robbie, welcome back… He took over your body, son. Don’t let it happen again. We can defeat him together.” He uses his own heroic surge to heal: wounds close, muscles bulge, and he chugs a beer. “I’m back, boy.”
75. 1:15:48 Bob punches. The first lands; the second (“It doesn’t have a name either”) misses. “I’ve got to get that demon tentacle thing out of your back.” Robbie asks the Hunger what he means. Bob: “I could be your dad in a different world. I’m not your dad. Probably not, but I could be. Remember that, boy. I care about you.”
76. 1:17:26 Thea asks Robbie if he’s okay. Robbie, dizzy: “I thought he was a bad guy… The hunger, do we need to put him into the biomass too?” The Hunger: “It is better for all.” Robbie: “The hunger’s had my back for a long time. As far back as I can remember, which is about yesterday.”
77. 1:18:01 Thea: “Does he have your back or is he your back?… Can you take your backpack off?” Robbie: “That question is almost outside of the realm of my understanding.”
78. 1:18:23 Thea flies to Bob to whisper, and yells instead: “Boys, back off!”
79. 1:18:47 The Lord of Fate delays the next chaotic event to the end of round eight.

Round 8

80. 1:19:07 Robbie: “Whatever we do, we have to win… We can figure this out afterwards.” The Hunger: “Yes, boy.” The Hunger cocoons Robbie and becomes a large snake-like thing. Spines shoot acid and poison at Bob’s beloved gators, an attack “truly on his spirit.” “Sadness hurts most of all.” It misses. Thea: “Gator number one, gator number two, Hannah Montana are saved.”
81. 1:20:37 — Thea’s pet. Thea asks the Lord of Fate for a pet gator. He: “You basically are a pet.” Thea: “Thea is people.” He: “You eat five hot dogs and now you think you’re people.” She flies off with her hands over her ears: “No, I can’t [hear you]!”
82. 1:21:09 Robbie: “The hunger, you’re messing up too much. Let me try.” He lands. “This Florida sounds really cool… I want to learn how to rub my nips and shoot tornadoes… But I have to defeat you.” His “child punch” to the belly fails. Bob: “That tickled, boy.”
83. 1:22:14 “I’ve got new kicks, thanks to that Thea.” His child kick ties Bob. Both gain fatigue.
84. 1:22:45 Thea describes it: Robbie high-kicks in his freshly tied New Balances, and Bob matches him with bare toes, foot to foot, heel to heel. They land with their pinky toes tied.
85. 1:23:24 — The jorts layers. Bob, tired, rips off his jorts to reveal another pair of jorts. “I have two pairs of jorts on, boy.” He clears a fatigue.
86. 1:24:19 — The promise. “I’m gonna finish that creature and then you and I are gonna get on a fan boat and we’re gonna go through the Everglades and we’re gonna touch gators… we’re going to touch our own nipples the way God intended to, son… one day when you’re old enough, I’ll give you a cold Coors Light.” His football-tackle spear into Robbie’s solar plexus ties again with the shield’s help. He strips a second pair of jorts, revealing a third.
87. 1:25:52 The Lord of Fate pushes the chaotic event back again: “I want to see this play out.” It never happens.

Round 9 — liberation

88. 1:26:15 Robbie: “I want to drink Chorus [Coors] Light… I don’t know what a fan boat is, but if I’m a fan of boats, that sounds like a pretty cool time.” The Hunger: “Release to me.”
89. 1:26:38 — The Hunger takes over. Tendrils slam into Robbie’s head, pumping into his ears; his eyes roll back and go black. In a different voice: “You will not have the child, but I will. We’ll have you.” Viscous plumes of spore smoke erupt from Robbie’s mouth to bring Bob into the swarm. It misses.
90. 1:27:26 The Hunger: “You will not have the child. If you take him, if you take me, I will take him. Submit.” A “super child punch” with dark ichor pulsing through Robbie’s veins hits. “You will join us. You will join me and he will forget that this ever happened. He will be happy and he will be mine.” A dark child kick misses. The tendrils keep pumping into Robbie.
91. 1:28:55 — Bath salts. Bob: “You won’t hurt him. Not the boy. Not today… For the righteous will prevail. And as we all know, the righteous come from Florida.” He pulls a pouch of bath salts from his jorts pocket and sniffs: “I am now pure Florida man.” “I can see everything that will happen and everything that was… today, Robbie, I will separate you from the hunger. I will liberate you.” His meaty Florida man punch misses.
92. 1:30:18 He leaps high and drops his “large buxom ass” onto the Hunger’s tentacles. It ties again.
93. 1:30:50 Out of attacks, Bob says mean things instead: “You’re a dirty bastard, hunger.” A voice (likely Robbie) cries: “The words were the truth! I always knew it!” The Lord of Fate rules it another tie and hands the scene to Cinderblock.
94. 1:31:28 — Robbie breaks free. The words enter the Robbie-Hunger amalgamation, and for the faintest second Robbie’s eyes go normal. “I think I want to be a Florida man too.” The Hunger: “No.” It thrashes against Robbie as he claws his way out and reaches a hand to Bob: “Could you teach me to be a Florida man?” Bob: “Yes, I can, boy. Come with me, Robbie.”
95. 1:31:28 (cont.) They take hands, and Robbie is pulled from the Hunger. It writhes, twists, sparkles into light and melts into bubbling ichor, leaving behind only a backpack. Robbie stands tired, worn out, wide-eyed.
96. 1:32:32 “Hi.” “Hi. I’m Bob.” “I’m Robby Clark.” “It’s nice to meet you, Robbie.” Robbie: “Is everything you said true?… A place of friendships and alligators and fan boats and Florida men and nipple tornadoes?” Bob: “Oh, son, it’s all true. And it’s all wonderful… I’ll show you the magic that is Florida. It’s time for a new adventure.”
97. 1:33:12 — The fan boat. Thea opens a pink portal. Through it waits a big, giant, rusty fan boat with “Bob and Robbie” inscribed on the back. Bob: “It’s beautiful. It’s everything we deserve.” Thea: “Go be free, Florida men.” As the portal shrinks, Robbie’s jeans magically cut off into shorts.
98. 1:34:07 Thea: “I think this was exactly what we were looking for.” The Lord of Fate: “I guess somebody technically died, so I’m happy.” Thea: “This was chaos. This was blood breaking. This was bone destroying.” The Lord of Fate says the Acolytes had a great time; they’ll do it again next week. Thea: “This time, next week, for another round of D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character (canon, source Dried Blood)

• 1:48:01 Robbie’s message (relayed by Cinderblock as “what Robbie wants to say”): “Sometimes you just gotta be really willing to change. Sometimes something seems like it might be an adversary and it turns out that it’s an ally… Even if there’s some weird dark eldritch force jamming spikes into your brain to make it so you don’t remember who you used to be. It’s okay to be like, yes, to a new friend and to a new adventure.”
• 1:49:20 Bob’s message to “his boy, Robbie, his Florida boy” and the Acolytes: Robbie has now ridden the fan boat, seen gators and rubbed his nipples a bit, “But it only gets better from here, my friend. Because now we’re gonna go to Publix and get delicious fried chicken tenders.” He tells every Acolyte to try them. (Inferred from these lines: after the fight Robbie and Bob went to Florida together.)

Out-of-character (creator notes)

• Mudcat: this was Big Papa Drak’s debut, not only on D20 Deathmatch but in any tabletop RPG. Drak has an acting and improv background (New York). He was nervous but had a blast.
• Mudcat: Robbie Clark & the Hunger are now separated, with “one loss, one win this season.”
• Cinderblock’s original concept: “what if it was Pokemon but in Eldritch Horror.” He didn’t expect this much of a story arc. Robbie’s future: finding his own fighting-style niche “amongst the Everglades,” learning a bit from Bob.
• Cinderblock did not plan the Hunger becoming the villain; he leaned in once the box sacrifice became “horrible.” The Bob/Robbie connection grew from something Drak did, plus the similar names. If the dice had gone differently, the Hunger would have retaken Robbie and mind-wiped him “and just keeping on keeping on.”
• Drak planned only the name Bob; all the Florida Man material was improvised just before the start. He says the Robbie bond was spontaneous: “there was a life and death of a child… someone who could be like a son.”
• Mudcat: this episode is “up there in one of my favorites” across five seasons.
• Caustic Phoenix explained the “Florida man horoscope” (Google “Florida man” plus your birth date).
• Plugs: Cinderblock Sally streams D&D homebrew on YouTube and makes shorts. Big Papa Drak streams Warzone and Raid Shadow Legends on YouTube and Twitch.