S5E13 — Bone Rust — Ruby Rust v Bone Daddy

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Two champions came back from the dead for a rematch with fate in Bone Rust. One was Ruby Rust, a snake-turned-programmer who had been devoured by the Hunger and returned as a glitching eldritch nightmare. The other was Bone Daddy, a skeletal leather daddy in hammer pants with his beloved skeleton Darcy at his side. Their tavern brawl had fire, bone cages, sparkly flatulence and a great deal of body horror, and it ended with a strange prize: a snake given exactly what he wanted.

The Story

A Sticky Situation in the Kitchen

The night began with the Lord of Fate wandering the halls of the Dread Fortress and noticing that things smelled “a little bit more fragrant” than usual. Thea shouted “Nothing! Nothing!” and slammed the kitchen door. Then came the sound of hammering, because she was nailing planks to the door itself rather than to the wall beside it. The Lord of Fate didn’t bother with the door. He simply appeared behind her (“Ah, that’s cheating!”).

He found goblins stacked on each other’s shoulders, pouring cinnamon into two boiling vats of sun cola. Thea explained they were “getting into the holiday spirit,” and that heating it up “releases the flavors,” which she had read in a cookbook once. The cola had cooked down into a thick orange sludge. He switched off the burner and announced her punishment: “We’re gonna sit here until you eat it all.” Thea did not treat this as a punishment. She shoveled the syrup in with her claws and hands while the goblins spoon-fed her, and her teeth dissolved on the spot.

“I didn’t need teeth,” Thea said, “and this leaves more room in my mouth for more food.” He snapped her teeth back. She asked for teeth like a shark, and he answered “You want extra? Fucking fine.” He gave her a second row, but they were human teeth. The imp who had wanted to be “a little piranha” now had two full sets of human teeth and found she “can’t stop smiling.”

Back from the Dead (Mostly)

Thea clapped, two portals opened, and the champions tumbled through. Ruby Rust was not pleased: “Why must you keep torturing me? I was devoured whole by some sort of hunger, and now I’m still here.” Being eaten by the Hunger had left him unstable. Parts of him glitched and stretched into an abomination of a snake, and his forked tongue whipped out like a shadowy tentacle to lap up the syrup Thea offered. Bone Daddy was just as confused. The last thing he remembered was being consumed by “an ever growing wave of bones,” and after fighting a man and then a half-animal hybrid, he was now being asked to fight a snake.

Thea told them she’d brought them back because “your story isn’t finished being told yet.” The Lord of Fate gave the honest reason: “mostly because we’re bored, and it’s hard to find champions this time of year.” Thea admitted her magic “isn’t as good,” and that she’d forgotten to heal them first. It came out later that she had handed the job to Thomas the Goblin, who is “working on his certification.” The Lord of Fate pointed out that Thomas can’t read or write and eats paint chips. Thea’s defense was “Well, he’s seen straight lines before.”

Ruby told his story while his head turned itself inside out. He had once been a snake, then a programmer in software development (“Yes, a Python working programming”), then somehow sentient. “Please let me die,” he said. Ruby shed his skin, and there was no skin underneath. The old skin pooled into black ichor that started crawling back up his sides, and Bone Daddy cried “Darcy, pick me up!” His skeleton companion scooped him up and carried him clear of the ichor. Thea flew over and put a band-aid on Ruby. Wherever she touched him, real skin returned and the ichor took shape as ruby-red, diamond-shaped scales. Ruby then coughed up his missing helmet, which still held its two drinks: poison on one side, java on the other.

Last Orders at Emmery’s Tavern

The lair slid away “almost as if a boring PowerPoint slideshow has just moved to the left,” and the champions found themselves in Emmery’s Tavern. It was a dark, gross bar with a monstrous skull heaving over the fireplace, barrels of number two ale (“Don’t ask what it takes to make it”), and an old bartender wiping the same spot over and over. The ceiling turned clear to show the Acolytes cheering above. “We hate this place anyway,” Thea said, “so you can totally destroy it.”

Ruby blinked, and his eyelids fused shut while eyes bulged out where his scales had been. “Please kill me, quickly,” he begged. Then the Lord of Fate offered a deal: “Ruby, just to make this interesting, if you win, we’ll put you back to normal.” Ruby said “Oh, thank God” and bared his teeth.

Bones, Whips and Ground Snake

Bone Daddy sent Darcy to curl Ruby into the fire, but her hands sank into him like a tar pit and he oozed out between her bones. “I’ve picked up some new tricks since being assimilated into the hunger,” Ruby said. Bone Daddy answered with his “Bone Daddy Arcanum,” pulling fire from the hearth and breathing it out like a flaming skull. Then he did something truly horrible to the crowd. He ripped the bones straight out of several Acolytes, leaving “bags of meat” in the stands, piled them onto Ruby, and fused them into a shifting bone cage. Ruby had joked at the start that “three is a magic number,” and he spent the opening watching nearly every attack find him.

Ruby swirled java and poison in his mouth and spat it on the cage, which dissolved. He split off a decoy blob of black goo, slipped between the table legs and grabbed Bone Daddy by the ankles, then wrapped around him. His venomous bite missed when Darcy hurled a femur into his mouth. Bone Daddy’s comment was “Can’t touch this.” It also turned out that Bone Daddy was wearing hammer pants, or rather “the shortest shorts possible,” so baggy that “you might see a little bit revealed if I move too quickly.” Thea asked whether he’d brought his own snake to the fight, and the Lord of Fate observed, “There’s two pythons in the tavern tonight.”

Thea headbutted her die, rolled a perfect 20, and cracked out her human teeth so her sharp imp ones grew back. They kept growing, so she ripped them out and pelted the Acolytes with them: “Give those to your tooth fairy!” Her lucky roll set off a chaos event. Ruby’s acidic thrashing burned a hole in the neck of a patron sleeping on a table, and he died without ever waking (“We revived him plenty of times, it’s okay”). Then the tavern’s morning coffee kicked in. Ruby could not hold it, and there was “a lot of poop coming out of that cloaca.” Bone Daddy, who “knows how to hold his bowels through a lot of practice,” credited his “buns of steel.”

Those buns sent Bone Daddy flying to the ceiling, where Darcy caught him like a trapeze artist. As he flipped over Ruby he lashed him with his bullwhip, and on a disastrous roll for the snake, Ruby’s skin “just bursts open like a hot sausage.” Thea’s reaction: “I’m horrified! Do it again!” Darcy dove in and shredded Ruby’s back half. Bone Daddy rolled the pieces into “a Ruby Rust meatball” and tried to toss it into the fire, but it missed. The ground snake curled away from the heat and sprouted pseudopods, and then a human hand pushed out of the front of him. “Why did you do this to me?”

Thea, out of guilt, pressed a handful of band-aids into the new hand. “It’s collusion,” the Lord of Fate admitted, but “we never said this was gonna be a fair fight.” Bone Daddy glitched and clipped into the same space as Ruby to attack him from inside (“We, we are one”). That was a mistake. A human arm, a bat-wing arm and a tiny porcelain doll’s arm reached out of Ruby to hold him there. The doll’s arm stuck a band-aid on Ruby’s cheek. Ruby’s head split down the back, turned inside out to bite, and then he crushed Bone Daddy hard enough to break his glasses. Thea took one piece as a monocle, grabbed an Acolyte bone and posed: “I’m Bone Daddy… Yes, Darcy, you are my best friend.”

Tuna Juice and Treachery

After a break, Thea rolled out a cart of pickle juice and tuna juice shots. She argued tuna juice is the eco-friendly choice when camping and is “kind of like having dragon’s breath.” Ruby offered his own poison, and Bone Daddy produced a flask of bone marrow. Thea drank all six shots herself. “You want to know what you smell like?” Bone Daddy asked her. “A traitor. I haven’t forgotten about that band-aid that you gave Ruby Rust.” He promised “Ruby Rust may be first, but you’re next,” and Thea pouted at the wall.

Thea told the tavern she had been “specially bred from my family to be an invincible worm” before becoming an imp. Her family had wanted her to get a college degree, “so right now I’m a partial disappointment.” Asked whether she could die, the Lord of Fate said “No, unfortunately. I mean, I could, but then I would have to go back to doing all the paperwork and the taxes.” He apologized to the Acolytes for getting distracted, bought everyone blue slushies, and gave them the chaos they were chanting for.

The second chaos event came from Thea. She walked between the champions, bent her knees and released “the longest, stinkiest, tuna pickle fart you’ve ever had.” Neither champion could shrug it off, and both were coated in pink glitter from her “special pocket.” Skinless Ruby complained that “the glitter is directly between my muscles and the tendons.” Thea then shared that Thomas the Goblin keeps eggs in his “butt pocket” and they’re cooked by lunchtime.

Trading With the Box

The Lord of Fate raised his hand, and The Box of Chaos slammed down with a column of pink and yellow fire. Shadowy hands and yellow eyes crept out of it. Bone Daddy broke free with his “patented bone swirl” and ordered a pick-me-up at the bar. The bartender poured him a stein of number two ale and a “pickle juice” shot that was really the wrung-out bar towel. Bone Daddy hurled the stein at Ruby, and both of them came out of it worse for wear.

At the Box, the shadowy figure asked whether this was a fight to the death and grumbled about the Lord of Fate having his own day: “God, that guy’s kind of a cock.” Bone Daddy opened his coat to reveal it was lined with unsold hammer shorts. The figure took ten (“they’re kind of idiots. They’ll buy anything”). His first prize was a black vial, and when Bone Daddy opened it, out came “the shadow of The Shadow King,” which settled heavily on him. The figure admitted “I just don’t have as much shit as I used to,” but when Bone Daddy protested that he’d handed over ten hammer shorts, it rummaged again and gave him the Shield of the Golden King.

Darcy’s Last Stand

“Darcy, to me.” The bones of the old cage locked onto Bone Daddy until Darcy covered him completely. He slammed the fireplace skull on top as a helmet: “This is my truest self.” His signature slam, “Daddy’s Girl,” should have ended things, but Ruby dodged it cleanly. While Bone Daddy had been chatting at the bar and the Box, Ruby had spread his tail across the floor “like a paintbrush being pushed down onto a piece of paper.” He had threaded tendrils into the patrons and taken over their senses, so he could watch the attack from every angle and slide aside in slow motion.

Ruby then went to the Box himself. He claimed the shield had been his before the Hunger took him (“You gave it to me even though I had no arms”), and he paid with “the last years of this one’s life.” The shadow drained an old patron to dust (“Oh, yeah, that’s the good stuff”), and Ruby received a small box that screamed when opened. He reared like a king cobra and lashed out with dozens of tiny fanged mouths on tentacles, but Bone Daddy’s giant golden-shielded skeleton mech, which looked “anime as hell,” held firm. The Box, used up, shot off into the sky.

Bone Daddy hurled a barrel of ale at him (“very Donkey Kong-ish”). Ruby crunched open his screaming box, and the barrel missed. Bone Daddy then opened the Darcy armor’s ribcage to engulf his rival from its heart, and that missed too. “Darcy, I’ve never been disappointed in you until this very day,” he said. Ruby swelled to Bone Daddy’s size, stretched thin like putty and wrapped him in “the big squeeze.” Bone Daddy’s defense collapsed completely, and the Shield of the Golden King shattered.

Cocooned and fading, Bone Daddy wondered aloud whether it was time “to hang up the hammer shorts.” He offered to give himself to the Hunger if Ruby would spare Darcy, “she did nothing wrong.” Ruby refused: “She is nothing more than a table to me.” That was too far. “You listen to me, Rust. No one talks to Darcy like that… She will outlast us all, even the Lord of Fate. If I’m gonna die today, you’re gonna come with me.” Bone Daddy threw them both into the fireplace and set Ruby alight.

For one brief moment Ruby became himself again: his skin stitched shut and his eyes and jaw settled back where they belonged. He unhinged his mouth and swallowed Bone Daddy whole. Burning, he crawled out of the fire toward Thea. “Your problem was bringing me back without considering how I should be.” He swelled to the size of the bar and absorbed furniture and patrons through his skin. Then he tensed his “wee snake abs,” and on the worst possible roll, Bone Daddy was ground into bone dust. Before the end, he punched one hand out of Ruby and let go of a single finger bone of Darcy’s. “I hope that finger bone can find her way home.” Nobody noticed it creep away.

Freedom

Ruby kept growing and turned on his hosts: “Where are your protections now?” Thea said “Hold on,” conjured five chinchillas, took the one that volunteered and yeeted it into Ruby’s mouth. As it went down, his body deflated, his insides sorted themselves out, and he shrank into “an adorable, non-sentient Ruby Python.” “Aw, you fixed it too much,” the Lord of Fate sighed. “Now it can’t code.” Thea kicked open the tavern door (“You deserve to be free! I release you!”), and Ruby slithered out into the Void. His last thoughts faded one at a time:

“Peace. At last. No more deadlines. No more projects. No more rent. No more taxes. Just hunting for mice.”

“See,” Thea told the Acolytes, “this is what the Deathmatch provides.”

Notable Moments

• The Lord of Fate “fixed” Thea’s melted teeth with a second full row of human teeth, and she spent the night headbutting things to get her sharp ones back.
• Bone Daddy ripped the skeletons straight out of the Acolytes in the stands to build a bone cage.
• Ruby’s whipped skin burst “like a hot sausage,” and Darcy turned his back half into ground snake.
• Thea’s tuna-pickle fart coated both champions in pink glitter, which in Ruby’s case got under where his skin used to be.
• Bone Daddy paid the Box of Chaos in unsold hammer shorts, while Ruby paid with an old man’s remaining life.
• Ruby won, was turned into an ordinary python by a thrown chinchilla, and was freed into the Void. Darcy’s finger bone escaped unnoticed.

Memorable Quotes

• Thea: “I didn’t need teeth and this leaves more room in my mouth for more food.”
• Ruby Rust: “I was IT, and then somehow I became sentient… Please let me die.”
• The Lord of Fate: “There’s two pythons in the tavern tonight.”
• Thea: “I’m horrified! Do it again!”
• The shadowy figure in the Box of Chaos: “Lord of Fate, he has a day? Yeah, he has a day. God, that guy’s kind of a cock.”
• Ruby Rust: “I’ve got every drink that I need right here. First the java, then the venom, then your blood.”
• Bone Daddy: “No one talks to Darcy like that… She will outlast us all, even the Lord of Fate. If I’m gonna die today, you’re gonna come with me.”
• The Lord of Fate: “Aw, you fixed it too much. Now it can’t code.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Ruby Rust (Robert Hartley). A massive serpent with crimson/ruby, diamond-shaped scales. Wears a helmet holding two drinks, poison and java.

• History:
  • Once a snake, then a programmer (“a Python… software development”, “IT”) who became sentient.
  • Died in an earlier fight: “devoured whole by some sort of hunger.”
  • Says he had the Shield of the Golden King before (with no arms to hold it).
• In this episode:
  • Returned glitching and assimilated into the hunger: tentacles, inside-out head, eyes erupting from scales, a humanoid hand, bat-wing and porcelain-doll arms. He can assimilate others and share their senses.
  • Begged to die until the Lord of Fate promised to restore him if he won.
  • Traded a patron’s remaining life to the Box of Chaos.
  • Killed Bone Daddy, then turned on Thea and the Lord of Fate.
  • Was reduced by Thea’s chinchilla to a non-sentient python and released into the Void: “Just hunting for mice.”

Bone Daddy (Johnny Stanton). A skeletal “leather daddy” (Robert’s term).

• Appearance and gear: duster/coat lined with his patented hammer shorts; whip; glasses (broken this fight); flask of bone marrow.
• Build: “buns of steel,” shaped like “a single meatball on a stick.”
• Powers: the “Bone Daddy Arcanum” (fire); pulls bones from Acolytes to make skeleton swarms and bone cages; “the patented bone swirl”; Darcy death armor topped with a skull; signature move “Daddy’s Girl.”
• History: Earlier fights against “a man” and “a half man, half animal hybrid”; last consumed by “an ever growing wave of bones.” His parents are a mother and his father Charles. “Bone Daddy’s always been Bone Daddy.”
• In this episode: He called Thea a traitor (“you’re next”), considered retiring, and begged Ruby to spare Darcy. He died swallowed and crushed. His last act was releasing Darcy’s finger bone.

Darcy. Bone Daddy’s skeleton companion (“there’s not a bad bone in her body,” “great hip bones”).

• Grapples, throws a femur, catches him on the ceiling, feeding-frenzies, and forms his death armor.
• Ruby called her “nothing more than a table.”
• A single finger bone of hers escaped the tavern unnoticed and survives.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). The pink-winged imp running the show with the Lord of Fate.

• Says she was “specially bred” by her loving family “to be an invincible worm” and was transformed into an imp. She can’t die (per the Lord of Fate’s “No, unfortunately”). Her family wanted her to get a college degree.
• Brewed sun cola with goblins; lost and regrew her teeth (two human sets, then endlessly regrowing sharp ones).
• Revived the champions and let Thomas the Goblin heal them; gave Ruby band-aids.
• Fart chaos event (pink glitter, tuna-pickle). Summoned chinchillas and freed Ruby.

The Lord of Fate (Mudcat). Apparates, regrows teeth with a snap, and buys the crowd blue slushies.

• Says Thea doing his job would spare him “the paperwork and the taxes.”
• Promised Ruby restoration if he won. Summons the Box of Chaos.

The shadowy figure in the Box of Chaos (Mudcat).

• Thinks the Lord of Fate is “kind of a cock” and the Acolytes “kind of idiots.”
• Took ten hammer shorts from Bone Daddy and an old patron’s remaining life from Ruby.
• “I just don’t have as much shit as I used to.”

Thomas the Goblin. Thea’s healer-in-training (certification unfinished). Can’t read or write, eats paint chips, and claims to cook eggs in his “butt pocket.”

The bartender of Emery’s Tavern: an old man wiping the same spot. He served Bone Daddy number two ale and a towel-wrung “pickle juice” shot, and was later assimilated.

Tavern patrons:

• a sleeper killed by acid during the chaos event;
• a shady quest-giver type in the corner;
• an older patron drained to dust by the box.

Named Acolytes:

• Bones ripped out for skeletons: Kelly, Great to be Gator, Commodore Scrib, Cookie Monster, Saint Paulyboy.
• Pelted with Thea’s teeth: Kristen, Lady Magdalene, Kyle.

Places

• The Dread Fortress: its halls and kitchen (Thea nailed planks to the kitchen door).
• Emery’s Tavern: the arena. A dark, gross bar with a monstrous skull over the fireplace and barrels of number two ale. “We hate this place anyway.”
• The Void wilderness: where Ruby was released.

Items

• Sun cola, boiled with cinnamon into syrup.
• Number two ale (“Don’t ask what it takes to make it”).
• Ruby’s helmet with its poison and java bottles.
• Thea’s band-aids (advantage), and the “news horn” [?].
• Bone Daddy’s patented hammer shorts (ten given to the box), whip, bone-marrow flask, and broken glasses (one piece now Thea’s monocle).
• Box of Chaos items:
  • a vial holding “the shadow of the Shadow King” (fatigue);
  • the Shield of the Golden King (+1 Mettle; destroyed on Bone Daddy’s nat 1);
  • a screaming small box with a dark ethereal soul (swap Bloodlust and Mettle for a round).
• Thea’s five chinchillas.
• Pickle and tuna juice shots; blue slushies.

Lore statements

• Thea can revive dead champions, but her revival magic “isn’t as good,” causing glitches.
• The hunger assimilates what it consumes; Ruby retained its abilities.
• The Box of Chaos’s keeper accepts trades, including a person’s life force.
• Thea: “We’re in the Void” (worms there are not “earthling worms”).

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: the Dread Fortress kitchen

1. 0:07:53 The Lord of Fate wanders the halls of the Dread Fortress. Things smell “a little bit more fragrant” this week. He calls out: “What am I smelling? Thea?”
2. 0:08:19 “Nothing! Nothing!” The kitchen door slams, followed by hammering. Thea opens the door again (“You don’t need to come in here!”) and slams it. She has been nailing planks onto the door itself, not to the wall next to it.
3. 0:08:50 Without trying the door, the Lord of Fate apparates behind her. Thea: “Ah, that’s cheating!”
4. 0:09:06 Behind two boiling vats of sun cola giving off a sweet aroma, goblins stand on top of each other pouring a ton of cinnamon in. Thea says they are “getting into the holiday spirit.” Heating it up “releases the flavors”; she read that in a cookbook once.
5. 0:09:51 Perception check (16): the cola has been reduced to a thick orange sludge, syrup at best. He turns off the burner.
6. 0:10:17 — The punishment. “You worked very, very hard on this… We’re gonna sit here until you eat it all.” Thea doesn’t take it as a punishment. She gobbles it with claws and hands while the goblins spoon-feed her and let it drip in like syrup. “This is delicious, I love it.”
7. 0:11:06 — Teeth. Thea’s teeth erode away instantly from the sugar. Thea: “I didn’t need teeth and this leaves more room in my mouth for more food.” He snaps his fingers and her teeth regrow.
8. 0:11:28 Thea asks for teeth like a shark. “You want extra? Fucking fine.” He gives her a second row of teeth, but human ones, so she has two sets of human teeth. Caustic Phoenix compares it to dogs photoshopped with human teeth: “Imps should not have human teeth.” Thea wanted to be “a little piranha,” but now she “can’t stop smiling.”
9. 0:12:14 — The champions. Thea claps, and two giant portals open: “Ruby Rust versus Bone Daddy!”

The champions arrive (both returning from death)

10. 0:12:46 Ruby Rust: “Why? Why am I here again? Why must you keep torturing me? I was devoured whole by some sort of hunger, and now I’m still here.” Thea: “Wasn’t that fun?” She offers him a dollop of sun cola syrup.
11. 0:13:09 — Ruby is glitching. Since being devoured by the hunger, parts of him glitch and then stretch out into an eldritch abomination of a snake. His forked tongue whips out like a shadowy tentacle and laps up the syrup. “I can’t control this anymore.”
12. 0:13:39 — Bone Daddy is confused. “First, you had me fight against a man. Second… a half man, half animal hybrid mutant creature. And now I’m just fighting a snake.” The last thing he remembers is being consumed by “an ever growing wave of bones.”
13. 0:14:14 Ruby seems to shed his skin, but there is no skin underneath. “Why have you done this to me?”
14. 0:14:29 — Why they are back.
    • The Lord of Fate: “mostly because we’re bored, and it’s hard to find champions this time of year.”
    • Bone Daddy: “And for the thrill of victory.”
    • Thea: “I saw the potential in the two of you… your story isn’t finished being told yet.” She admits her magic “isn’t as good,” so they might be glitching, but “I’m sure the goblins did a great job putting you back together.”
    • The Lord of Fate: “usually people are healed before they come back.” Thea: “I forgot.”
15. 0:15:24 Hunger-like tentacles erupt from Ruby’s back and slip back in. “It does that from time to time now.”
16. 0:15:33 Bone Daddy: “The Bone Daddy’s reputation lives long and wide across the world, but what is this snake doing before me in a constant state of agony and pain?”
17. 0:16:03 — Ruby’s story. His jaw dislocates and his head turns inside out, then the teeth come back through the middle into a head with inside-out features. “I once was a snake… Then I was consumed by the hunger, and now I am this thing, this abomination. Even before that, I was a programmer… software development. Yes, a Python working programming.” Bone Daddy: “You’re IT.” “I was IT, and then somehow I became sentient… Please let me die.”
18. 0:16:53 Bone Daddy: “I’ll be honest, I’m quite scared… when I thought about the theory of an Ouroboros, I didn’t really think about logistically what it would look like.”
19. 0:17:21 — Darcy. Ruby’s shed skin pools into a black ichor and starts crawling back up his sides. “Darcy, pick me up!” A skeleton (Darcy, Bone Daddy’s companion) scampers over and lifts Bone Daddy into her arms, away from the ichor. (Speaker attribution is split across IDs 00 and 05; it reads as Bone Daddy.)
20. 0:17:43 The Lord of Fate: the arena doesn’t get many snakes, but “we’re not going to discriminate just because this guy doesn’t have any arms or legs.” Bone Daddy asks whether many “beautiful, lovely, empathetic skeletons” come through. Lord of Fate: “More than you’d think.”
    • Bone Daddy takes offence on Darcy’s behalf, and the Lord of Fate apologizes: “It’s not the only skeleton in the world, in the Void.”
    • Thea: “She’s got great hip bones.” Bone Daddy: “There’s not a bad bone in her body.”
21. 0:18:51 — Thea patches Ruby up. Thea flies over on her pink impish wings and puts “a little news horn [?]” and a band-aid on Ruby: “You’re better now.” Where she touches him, his skin becomes real skin again and the ichor takes shape as ruby, diamond-shaped scales. “It feels better. Thank you.”
22. 0:19:28 — The helmet. Ruby coughs up a mass larger than his skull: his helmet. “It’s my helmet! I didn’t know where that went.” He slithers back into it.
    • It still holds its two drinks, both dripping digestive fluids: poison on one side, java on the other.
    • Asked where the orange syrup goes, he sucks from whatever is left in the bottle.
23. 0:20:12 Bone Daddy asks whether the glitching will affect the fight. Thea: “just turn it into a dance move… not like you’re going through puberty or something.” Lord of Fate: “These guys were dead half an hour ago.”

The arena: Emery’s Tavern

24. 0:20:54 Thea claps and the lair slides away “almost as if a boring PowerPoint slideshow has just moved to the left.” Emery’s Tavern has:
    • a beaten-down, dark, gross bar;
    • a giant monstrous skull heaving itself above the fireplace;
    • an old man who wipes the bar in the same spot over and over;
    • barrels of the number two ale (“Don’t ask what it takes to make it”).
25. 0:21:41 Thea welcomes them to win “victory and accolades and glory to your story.” The ceiling turns transparent to show the cheering Acolytes. Thea: “We hate this place anyway, so you can totally destroy it.”
26. 0:22:13 Bone Daddy finds it “quite more cozy than I would expect.” Ruby objects that Bone Daddy has been given a massive skull to use. Thea: “There are no hands or arms or spine.” Bone Daddy: “Any bone is a friend of Bone Daddy.”
27. 0:22:43 Ruby blinks and his eyelids fuse shut. Eyes pulsate out where scales were; a scale falls off, and there is an eye in his neck. “Please kill me, quickly.”
28. 0:23:05 — The deal. Lord of Fate: “Ruby, just to make this interesting, if you win, we’ll put you back to normal.” Ruby: “Oh, thank God.” He bares his teeth at Bone Daddy at once.
29. 0:23:21 “Acolytes, are you ready to see some blood? Well, whatever Ruby’s full of right now… and an old-fashioned tavern brawl.” The table chants “Splat D20” for initiative.

Round 1

30. 0:24:14 Bone Daddy: “Darcy here is gonna put you down in the ground… Darcy, why don’t you go put him in the fire?” Darcy scampers, bones flapping, to curl Ruby into the fireplace. It misses: her hands sink into Ruby like a tar pit, and he oozes out between her bones. Ruby: “I’ve picked up some new tricks since being assimilated into the hunger.”
31. 0:25:41 Bone Daddy uses his “Bone Daddy Arcanum” to pull fire from the fireplace and shoot it out like a fire-breathing skull. Caustic Phoenix: “Let’s see how you measure up to Fire Lord Ozai.” It hits (against Ruby’s defense of 3).
    • Ruby: “Three is a magic number.” This becomes a running gag.
    • The wall of fire engulfs the oozing Ruby “as if the fiery dragon itself has come to life.” Thea: “That’s real magic, not numbers. This isn’t algebra.”
32. 0:27:08 — The Acolyte skeletons. Bone Daddy calls skeletons “out of the stands” to pile on Ruby.
    • The bones are ripped directly out of Acolytes’ bodies, leaving “bags of meat” in the stands. Caustic Phoenix names the Acolytes: Kelly (from her feet), Great to be Gator, Commodore Scrib, Cookie Monster, Saint Paulyboy.
    • The pile hits (another 3 for Ruby). Ruby: “Said it at the beginning and the dice are like, oh, okay.”
33. 0:28:00 — The bone cage. Bone Daddy fuses the bones into “a bone cage that only legend has heard of,” with the bones always shifting so Ruby can’t ooze through. It hits, and Ruby is trapped (a status effect).
34. 0:29:31 — Names. Thea: “Thank you, Daddy. That felt weird.” Bone Daddy answers to “Bone, Bone Daddy, and Daddy.”
    • Asked whether he had a name before Bone Daddy, he looks off wistfully, thinking of his mother and his father, Charles: “Bone Daddy’s always been Bone Daddy.”
    • Thea: “I’m so sorry.” Mudcat interjects “Foster.” (joke; meaning unclear).
35. 0:30:26 Ruby swirls java and poison in his mouth and spits it on the bones. The corrosive liquid dissolves the cage, and he slides out.
36. 0:30:43 — The ankle grab. Ruby slithers between chair and table legs to stay out of sight. He splits off a smaller splinter of himself made of black goo as a distraction, circles behind and grabs Bone Daddy’s ankles. It hits.
37. 0:31:54 “Give him the squeeze.” Ruby wraps around Bone Daddy and slams his body against him; it hits.
38. 0:32:00 — The venom bite. “You can play at this game.” Ruby sucks more poison from his helmet for a venomous bite (to poison him). It misses. Darcy throws a femur straight into Ruby’s maw. Bone Daddy: “Can’t touch this.”
39. 0:33:17 — Hammer pants.
    • Lord of Fate: “Is Bone Daddy wearing hammer pants?” “Now he is.” He is wearing “the shortest shorts possible,” “really, really baggy shorts pants,” loose and comfortable. “You might see a little bit revealed if I move too quickly.”
    • Thea: “Are you saying you brought your own snake to the fight?” Bone Daddy: “Younger audience be warned.”
    • Lord of Fate: “There’s two pythons in the tavern tonight.” Ruby: “I do also answer to python.”
40. 0:34:21 — Thea’s nat 20. Thea headbutts her d20 and cracks her teeth so that her sharp imp teeth return: “no longer those weird, freaky human teeth you gave me, you jerk.” Bone Daddy: “something’s different about you, Thea.”
41. 0:34:56 The Lord of Fate: “you did ask for teeth like a shark.” Shark-style replacement teeth keep growing in.
    • She rips them out and pelts Acolytes Kristen, Lady Magdalene and Kyle: “Give those to your tooth fairy!”
    • Bone Daddy: “How many rows do you have back there?”

Chaos event (11): the morning coffee (0:35:30)

42. Thea’s nat 20 triggers a chaotic event. Ruby rolls an 11.
    • Ruling for the night: no fatigue penalties on chaotic events, damage only.
    • Mudcat: “shaking and just like globs of acid… hitting against tables… a dude sleeping on a table, you’ve just burned a hole in his neck and he’s just bleeding out… just dies without even knowing it.” Thea: “We revived him plenty of times, it’s okay.”
43. 0:37:11 “Your morning coffee is giving you more than a burst of energy… Roll to not poop yourself.” (Mettle save, DC 15.)
    • Ruby fails (13): “There’s a lot of poop coming out of that cloaca.” He takes a point of Fighting Spirit.
    • Bone Daddy passes (16): “Bone Daddy knows how to hold his bowels through a lot of practice.” Lord of Fate: “this isn’t even like the fifth time we’ve mentioned a cloaca on this show.”
44. 0:38:34 — Bone Daddy’s build. Thea asks whether he won because he has butt cheeks. “I have buns of steel… I am thick where it counts.” Ruby: “I can’t clench your glutes together to keep that shit in.”
    • He is “pear-shaped… like a kebab… a single meatball on a stick. That’s how Bone Daddy’s built” (compared to Lord Farquaad).
    • He wears the shorts “without a belt, that’s for sure.”

Round 2

45. 0:39:55 — The trapeze. Bone Daddy uses his glutes of steel to leap to the ceiling, where Darcy has snuck up. She catches him like a trapeze artist. As he flips over Ruby, he lashes him with his bullwhip.
    • Ruby defends with a nat 1. Bone Daddy lets Robert describe it: “the snake skin just bursts open like a hot sausage. Just starts flailing around skinless on the ground.”
    • Bone Daddy: “I’m going to go with your first request… that you want to be killed, and just try to ignore the rest.” Thea: “I’m horrified! Do it again!”
46. 0:41:53 — Feeding frenzy. “Darcy’s getting hungry while I talk about a sausage.” Darcy dives in and shreds the back half of Ruby; the meat goes into her ribcage and falls out. Thea: “Is that like ground snake then?”
47. 0:42:57 — The meatball. Bone Daddy hops down, combines the pieces into “a Ruby Rust meatball” and tries to toss it into the fire. It finally misses.
    • The meat curls away from the heat. A pseudopod of ground snake meat bulges out, sprouts smaller pseudopods, and then a humanoid hand sticks out of the front of the snake.
    • Ruby: “Why is this happening? What is this? Why did you do this to me?”
48. 0:44:11 — Guilt band-aids. Thea, out of guilt, puts a handful of band-aids in Ruby’s new hand. Each band-aid he puts on gives him one advantage (called ahead of time). Lord of Fate: “It’s collusion… we never said this was gonna be a fair fight. We just said it was gonna be a fight to the death.”
49. 0:45:00 — Thomas the Goblin. Thea admits she didn’t oversee the healing and let Thomas the Goblin do it. He’s “working on his certification” and hasn’t finished.
    • Lord of Fate: “He can’t read or write. What made you think that he was going to be able to put together a snake?” Thea: “Well, he’s seen straight lines before.” Lord of Fate: “He eats paint chips.”
50. 0:45:26 Ruby: “I was one with the hunger. I am assimilated with everything… I will now assimilate you.”
51. 0:45:36 — The glitch tackle. Bone Daddy glitches out, clips into the same space as Ruby, and attacks that way. It hits. “We, we are one.”
52. 0:46:23 — Ruby’s arms. “No, you do not move now.”
    • A humanoid arm reaches around inside him to hold the glitched Bone Daddy in place.
    • A bat’s-wing arm wraps around him (grapple).
    • A tiny porcelain doll’s arm comes out of his chest and places one of Thea’s band-aids on his cheek.
    • It hits, and Bone Daddy is grappled. (The table confirms Bone Daddy was never poisoned, since the venom bite missed.)
53. 0:48:07 — The inside-out bite. Ruby’s head splits down the back and turns inside out to face Bone Daddy, and bites; it hits.
54. 0:49:02 — The frenzy. Ruby powers up with “death by a thousand cuts.” His misshapen eyes dilate: “Suddenly they liked the taste of that, and this hunger within them is now overpowered.” His head bites everywhere too fast to see.
55. 0:49:37 — The crush. His tail wraps Bone Daddy for a crush; it hits (21). Thea: “Oh, killer hug.” Bone Daddy: “I need new glasses.”
56. 0:51:00 — The monocle. Thea asks, “If I roll high enough, can I have Bone Daddy’s old sunglasses?” Lord of Fate: “I don’t care what you do with the broken shit in the arena.” (She rolls 10.)
    • She wears one piece of the broken glasses like a monocle. Holding one of the Acolyte bones (from Gator or another), she poses tough: “I’m Bone Daddy… Yes, Darcy, you are my best friend.”
    • Bone Daddy: “would be incredibly flattered right now if it wasn’t for so much pain.”
57. 0:51:41 “We’re going to slow things down for a minute, take a slow dance… 10-minute break.” (Cut from the mp3.)

After the break: tuna juice and the traitor

58. 0:52:00 “Ask no questions about the tuna juice.” Thea argues that drinking tuna juice is “the most eco-friendly and smart choice”: if you’re camping, pouring it out attracts animals. “It’s kind of like having dragon’s breath in that no one wants to get close to your face afterwards.” The Lord of Fate imagines “tuna backs,” a tuna-juice chaser, like pickleback shots.
59. 0:53:34 — Shots. Thea rolls in a small cart of pickle juice and tuna juice shots: “Everyone pick your poison.”
    • Ruby offers his actual poison.
    • Bone Daddy pulls a flask out of his jacket: he drinks bone marrow.
    • Thea drinks all six shots herself, three of each. “I’ve got pickle and tuna breath now.”
60. 0:54:29 Bone Daddy: “Hey, Thea, you want to know what you smell like? A traitor. I haven’t forgotten about that band-aid that you gave Ruby Rust.” Ruby confirms: “Like pickle and tuna.”
    • Thea: “I was doing what I thought was right.” She throws her Great-to-be-Gator wannabe-Darcy skeleton at him and pouts in the corner.
    • Bone Daddy: “Ruby Rust may be first, but you’re next.” She faces the wall: “This is stupid.”
61. 0:55:20 Lord of Fate: “You would honestly be doing me a huge favor if you did.” Asked whether she can die: “No, unfortunately. I mean, I could, but then I would have to go back to doing all the paperwork and the taxes.”
62. 0:55:36 — Thea’s origin. “I was specially bred from my family to be an invincible worm and I got transformed into an imp.” Her family “put all their love and care and said you will be all our hopes and dreams and never die.” They wanted her to get a college degree, “so right now I’m a partial disappointment.”
63. 0:56:39 — Earthling worms. The Lord of Fate asks whether she’s the kind of worm that splits in half into two worms. Thea: “we’re not like earthling worms… We’re in the Void!” Ruby: “Can I fight this guy? What is happening?” Bone Daddy muses on why only humans are called Earthlings.
64. 0:57:38 — More teeth. Bone Daddy: “You can’t even close your mouth anymore with all them teeth.” “Traitor says what?” “What? No!” She bashes her head into the wall, cracking more teeth out, and two grow back for each one (“I got Hydra”). “She’s in dire need of braces.”
65. 0:58:26 — Blue slushies. The Lord of Fate snaps his fingers: “Sorry, Acolytes, we got distracted. Blue slushies on me.” Attendants and goblins pass them out to the whole crowd. The Acolytes demand another chaotic event: “CHAOS!”

Chaos event (5): Thea’s fart (0:59:05)

66. Bone Daddy rolls a 5 (the event does two Fighting Spirit on a failed save).
    • Thea walks between the champions, bends her knees and lets out “the longest, loudest fart you have heard in your entire life.”
    • Caustic Phoenix attempts the sound effect at length. Ruby: it “sounds like when you go to the dentist and they’re sucking the water out.” Thea: “Your butthole is weirdly shaped… It makes a weird sound.” Ruby: “she’s somehow farting on the inhale… just getting more and more bloated.” (The table refuses to move on until Caustic Phoenix does a better fart sound.)
67. 1:01:30 “The longest, stinkiest, tuna pickle fart you’ve ever had.” (Mettle save, DC 15.) Bone Daddy (13) and Ruby (6) both fail and take two Fighting Spirit.
    • The fart dust is sparkly: both are coated in pink glitter. “It’s my special pocket.” Bone Daddy: “She eats a lot of glitter.” Lord of Fate: “A lot of paste too.”
    • Ruby: “The glitter is directly between my muscles and the tendons. Now that I have no skin…”
    • Bone Daddy: “As one with the title of Bone Daddy, I’ve become very comfortable with a lot of bodily fluids… glitter should not be up there.”
68. 1:02:55 — Thomas’s butt eggs. Thea: “Thomas the Goblin tells me he hides eggs in his butt pocket… his body temperature is so high, you put in a raw egg, and then by lunchtime, it’s cooked.” The table adds a mock “do not try this at home” disclaimer (salmonella, sous vide).

The Box of Chaos (1:04:10)

69. Ruby reminds everyone Bone Daddy is still glitched inside him and he’s “in extreme pain.” The Lord of Fate raises a hand, the chaos storms part, and the Box of Chaos slams down. The lid flips open, a column of pink and yellow fire shoots into the sky, and shadowy hands creep out with yellow eyes peering. A champion can sacrifice an action to it for a magic item.

Round 3

70. 1:04:52 Bone Daddy: “Ruby Rust… you’ve done a lot to force me to challenge myself.”
    • He does “the patented bone swirl” to break the grapple. “They gave me a patent, copyright, trademark, all of three.” Lord of Fate: “I would love to see the schematics.”
71. 1:05:41 — The bar. Huffing and puffing, he goes to the bar: “Garçon, I need a little pick me up. I need a tuna back.”
    • The bartender pulls a giant stein of the “patented number two ale.” Then, “unbeknownst to you,” he wrings out the towel he’s been wiping the bar with into a shot glass, passing it off as pickle juice. “Drink up on the house.”
    • Bone Daddy: “bottoms up,” and he chucks the stein at Ruby. Thea: “never put your dishes back where they’re supposed to be.” It’s a tie, so both gain a fatigue. Bone Daddy: “You’re good. But I’m better.”
72. 1:07:22 — Bone Daddy at the box. The shadowy figure leans over the side: “So you guys fighting to the death or what’s happening?”
    • Bone Daddy: “typical Tuesday.” The figure: “that’s a Sunday.” Bone Daddy: “Lord’s Day.”
    • The figure: “Lord of Fate, he has a day? Yeah, he has a day. God, that guy’s kind of a cock.” Bone Daddy: “He’s an acquired taste.”
73. 1:08:18 — The trade. Bone Daddy offers his stein, pickle juice, Acolyte bones, and his patented hammer shorts. “No one else was willing to try to have them… they’ve not sold very well.” He opens his coat to show it lined with them.
    • The figure: “I think I can move those. I’ll take ten.” Bone Daddy hands over ten and wants advertising (“where they find a Bone Daddy”).
    • The figure: “most of the people I deal with usually end up dead later.” On the Acolytes: “they’re kind of idiots. They’ll buy anything.”
74. 1:09:31 — First item: the vial. A small black vial: “As you open it, a soul escapes… a small darkness that begins to weigh heavily on you. It is the shadow of the Shadow King,” and it gives Bone Daddy a fatigue. “This is not what I was hoping for.”
75. 1:10:53 — Second item: the shield. The figure: “supplies run out. I just don’t have as much shit as I used to.” Bone Daddy protests: “I gave you ten of these hammer shorts.” The figure relents and rummages again.
    • Bone Daddy receives the Shield of the Golden King: “Behind its golden gleam, your Mettle increases by plus one… But on a nat one defense, your shield will be destroyed.” His health rises by one.
76. 1:12:04 — Darcy armor and “Daddy’s Girl.” “Ruby, I think it’s about time that we finish things up.” “Darcy, to me.”
    • The chunks of the old bone cage attach to him until Darcy covers him completely.
    • He grabs the monstrous skull above the fireplace and slams it on top of his gigantic helmet. “You thought right, Ruby. This is my truest self.” (He swaps Bloodlust and Instinct: Bloodlust 3, Instinct 1.)
    • He makes a power-up slam with his signature move, “Daddy’s Girl” (Thea: “Let’s all say that together.” Ruby: “Let’s maybe not.”)
    • It misses: Ruby defends with a dirty 20. “Incredibly disappointing.”
77. 1:13:50 — How Ruby dodged. During Bone Daddy’s long power-up (the bar trip, the box chat), Ruby’s back end splays out “like a paintbrush being pushed down onto a piece of paper.” Tendrils seep across the tavern to the patrons: the man sleeping on the table, “some old shady guy in the corner that’s definitely meant to be giving you a quest,” and the bartender.
    • He assimilates them and taps into all their senses, getting a full 3D view of the attack, and bullet-time darts aside.
    • Bone Daddy: “I didn’t forget that I was fighting somebody who is non-Euclidean.” Ruby: “We are assimilating. Now you will feel my wrath.”
78. 1:14:55 — Ruby at the box. “That shield was mine before I was assimilated by the hunger. I had that shield. You gave it to me even though I had no arms with which to hold it. Give me something better.”
    • The figure: “You look like shit. What are you going to trade for it?… I can’t be held responsible what happens to the items after you die with them.”
79. 1:15:26 — The trade of a life. “I will give you the last years of this one’s life.” Ruby drags an older patron over.
    • The figure’s shadowy hand goes into the patron’s forehead; his eyes flip back as his life force drains. He turns gaunt, almost mummy-like, and crumbles to dust. “Oh, yeah, that’s the good stuff.”
    • Ruby receives a small box that screams when the shaky shadowy hand unlatches it. Consuming the dark ethereal soul inside lets him swap his Bloodlust and Mettle for one round. He keeps it.
80. 1:16:52 — The cobra. Ruby rears up like a king cobra; frills like needle spines flare all down his body, and he lunges to bite and grapple.
    • Bone Daddy defends with a nat 20, regaining Fighting Spirit and gaining an adrenaline. He bone-swirls out of the way. Ruby: “Typical.”
81. 1:18:07 — The fang tendrils. Ruby powers up. The “spines” are revealed as snake fangs, each in a tiny snake mouth on a little tentacle, and they all bite at once.
    • It misses (18 defense) thanks to the shield. Bone Daddy: “You see this giant mech skeleton with a giant golden shield in front of it. It looks anime as hell.”
82. 1:19:24 Ruby spends his heroic surge to recharge all his status effects so he can grapple again for his final power-up. The needle skins absorb back into him. Bone Daddy: “I don’t like it when you do that face.” Thea: “That was good. I am uncomfortable.”
83. 1:20:01 Thea rolls a 2 (“It’s not a one”). The Box of Chaos shoots off into the sky, used up.

Round 4

84. 1:20:38 — The barrel. Bone Daddy: “I have noticed you haven’t even tried this tavern’s potent brew. I think you should have a taste.” He hucks a barrel with Darcy’s giant arm (power-up). Robert: “This feels very Donkey Kong-ish.”
    • Ruby crunches open the screaming box with his teeth and swaps his Bloodlust and Mettle. The barrel misses.
    • Ruby: “I’ve got every drink that I need right here. First the java, then the venom, then your blood.”
85. 1:21:46 — The engulf. Bone Daddy: “I’ve learned to be adaptable. I’ve learned to never do what they expect… I’m going to engulf you like you tried to engulf me.”
    • The Darcy armor (death armor reborn) opens its chest cavity, revealing the meatball-on-a-stick Bone Daddy in its heart. The ribs and arms expand like Ruby’s spines and collapse down (heroic surge, 5 damage).
    • It misses (16 defense). Ruby: “That was the end of me if you had hit.”
    • Bone Daddy: “Darcy, I’ve never been disappointed in you until this very day. You’re going to have some explaining to do when we get home. If we get home.”
86. 1:23:35 — The big squeeze. Ruby: “You will never teach the master new tricks.”
    • He inhales and grows to Bone Daddy’s size, then stretches thin like Play-Doh or Blu-Tack to wrap him in his signature move, “the big squeeze.”
    • Bone Daddy rolls a natural 1 on defense. The Shield of the Golden King is destroyed.
87. 1:25:06 — The cocoon. Ruby spends the three saved status effects to strip Bone Daddy’s actions: “I just wrapped around you like a piece of spider web… trying to cocoon you.” The first fails.
88. 1:26:07 — Bone Daddy’s plea. “Before you go any further.”
    • He wonders whether to “listen to the haters, to the Acolytes who think that it’s time for Bone Daddy to hang up the hammer shorts… to retire, to say goodbye, goodnight, baby doll, for one last time.”
    • “I will, as you put it, fall into the hunger and assimilate. But please spare my Darcy, she did nothing wrong.”
89. 1:27:10 The second squeeze misses. Bone Daddy: “I need that promise, Rust.” Ruby: “I have no need for negotiations [?]. Your Darcy is inanimate. She only moves by your command. She is nothing more than a table to me.”
90. 1:27:42 The third squeeze hits: Bone Daddy is constricted, down to one action.

Round 5

91. 1:29:16 Lord of Fate: “are you going to let him talk to Darcy like that?” Thea: “A table. A table.”
92. 1:29:28 — The defense of Darcy. Bone Daddy pulls Ruby close, eye to “orb” (a compound fly’s eye in the side of Ruby’s face).
    • “You listen to me, Rust. No one talks to Darcy like that. Darcy has gone through things that you wouldn’t understand. The heart that is in that skeleton, the brain, the mind, the love… She will prevail. She will outlast us all, even the Lord of Fate.”
    • “If I’m gonna die today, you’re gonna come with me.” He throws them both into the fireplace. It hits, burning himself too, and he uses a status effect to set Ruby on fire.
93. 1:31:25 Ruby: “I will use her ribs to pick your flesh from my teeth.”
94. 1:31:32 — The swallow. On the second round of constriction, Bone Daddy must save or be swallowed.
    • For a brief moment, Ruby’s non-Euclidean assimilation reverses: his skin stitches itself up, the nubbins withdraw, and his jaws and eyes return to their proper places. He becomes himself again.
    • His mouth comes down over Bone Daddy’s head and shoulders and swallows him like a constrictor. The save fails (7). Bone Daddy is swallowed and being digested by stomach acid.
95. 1:33:09 — Ruby turns on Thea. Still burning, Ruby crawls out of the fire and goes toward Thea.
    • “Your problem was bringing me back without considering how I should be… You have no idea how much stronger I am now.”
    • He grows to the size of the bar to consume everything. On a nat 20 (flavor only), he pushes furniture and patrons into himself through skin like a water meniscus, including the body of the old man he traded to the box.
    • Bone Daddy (from inside): “Has the Lord of Fate ever considered that his creations might start fighting back?”
96. 1:34:57 — The kill. “Let’s see if I can just tense my abs, tense my wee snake abs and just crush him from within.” Ruby rolls a 4, but Bone Daddy defends with a natural 1. “Goes out with a nat one!” Bone Daddy is ground into bone dust.
97. 1:35:42 — Bone Daddy’s last words.
    • “The greats only become great when they get to go out on their own terms. And I decided too late that it was my time.”
    • “maybe I should have considered the people who I hurt along the way. Far more that I pleased, but some that I did hurt.”
    • With one last gasp he punches out of Ruby and opens his hand, letting go of a single finger bone of Darcy. “I hope that finger bone can find her way home.”
98. 1:37:23 The finger bone sneaks away through the tavern; no one notices, and it survives. Ruby grows in power, morphing and evolving. Thea: “This is becoming a bit of a problem.” Lord of Fate: “I don’t like this. We’re gonna stop this.”
99. 1:37:51 Ruby turns on the Lord of Fate and Thea: “Where are your protections now?… Fighting for your amusement.”

Ending: the chinchilla

100. 1:38:06 “Hold on.” Thea magically produces five chinchillas in little poof balls; one volunteers. “You deserve this, Ruby Rust.” She yeets the chinchilla, and Ruby devours it.
101. 1:38:19 — The restoration. As it goes down: - his constricting muscles relax and he deflates; - his insides and intestines rearrange to where they should be, and his eyes stay put; - he shrinks into “an adorable, non-sentient Ruby Python. Cute, big, beautiful eyes.” Thea: “Look, we fixed it.”
102. 1:39:22 Lord of Fate: “Aw, you fixed it too much. Now it can’t code.” The snake crawls out from under the helmet. “Now we lost a champion.”
103. 1:39:35 Thea: “He deserves this!” She kicks open the door: “You deserve to be free! I release you!” Ruby goes out into the Void.
104. 1:39:46 — Ruby’s last thoughts as his sentience fades thought by thought: “Peace. At last. No more deadlines. No more projects. No more rent. No more taxes. Just hunting for mice.… Ah, peace.” He goes out into the wilderness.
105. 1:40:23 Thea: “See, this is what the Deathmatch provides. Freedom, victory, the chance to write your own story and get exactly what you want. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• This is episode 13 of season 5. Two episodes are left; the finale wasn’t decided yet.
• Johnny says Bone Daddy’s record is 0-2-1. Ideas for a return: Bone Daddy’s son (“the grandson of Charles, Bone Daddy the Third”), “Bone Baby”, “the bonelet”. Also “Maybe Darcy is the one that returns”, avenging Bone Daddy.
• Johnny on tonight’s lore: the relationship with Darcy. “He holds her on such a pedestal.” Since joining the death armor he hasn’t had success, and in the afterlife of assimilation he’s wondering about a rebrand.
• Robert on Ruby:
  • In his first fight Ruby was “just a snake… turned sentient enough to do some coding.”
  • After being assimilated by “an eldritch horror” (the hunger), he could “do anything” with Ruby’s appearance.
  • He’d planned to play reluctance (tendrils forcing him to fight) but used Mudcat’s “if you win, we’ll turn you normal” as the reason to fight.
• Robert’s visual imagination: the opposite end of the aphantasia spectrum. He dislikes consuming horror but runs body horror in Halloween specials with content warnings. Mudcat’s favorite image was the paintbrush.
• Mudcat recalls a past match: a reluctant cowboy gunslinger, “Bife” [?], whose sentient guns fell out and fired, against Tiege [?], a Destiny-style guardian resurrected by his ghost each time he died.
• Mudcat on the season format: recurring champions give viewers characters to latch on to (new people every week was “a logistical nightmare”). “The hunger having consumed you” gives storylines running through the season.
• Robert: “I’m glad I got to win again finally”; his previous loss was his first loss in any PvP TTRPG.
• Johnny is taking improv classes and focused on keeping a consistent character.
• Art: all season 5 tokens and the eight background pieces were done by Young Khan (Twitter), styled like Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat stages, with idle animations.
• Johnny wants a screenshot with his on-screen name changed to Bone Daddy.
• Plugs: Robert Hartley GM (works with Viva La Dirt League). Johnny Stanton IV: PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia (the “Himbos game,” on Sunday) and his TikTok/Reels series “Athletics Check.”