S6 Ep2 · Ether Drifts Part 1 · TTRPG One Shot (Team A mine mission)

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There was no Deathmatch this week, only a “suicide mission of sorts.” The Grandmaster sent three new recruits, the robot Atlas, the shapeshifter Copycat and the symbiotic duo Robbie Clark & The Hunger, into a sealed mine at the edge of the Void to bring back a mineral vital to the war against the Shadow King. Along the way they were abducted by aliens, caffeinated a worm into a monster, and lost a robot head. The mineral they fought for turned out to be salt for the Arbiter’s fries.

The Story

Popcorn and Pirated Movies

The episode opened with the Grandmaster wandering the halls of the Dread Fortress. She had given up on her crown for the day because she hadn’t brought enough bobby pins and kept stabbing herself in the head. She was hunting for the Arbiter, who was hiding from her and whispering to Thea to keep quiet, because “she’s going to make us do work.”

The Grandmaster threatened to throw out his “extra Italian shoes,” and he surrendered at once. She found him in a big recliner behind a large screen, watching Dune 2. He was eating popcorn out of Thea, who had a divot knocked into her head for the purpose. When she pointed out that the film was still in theaters, he explained that, as master of time and space, he had “popped a little forward into the future” and snagged a copy, adding that “movies can’t belong to people.” The Grandmaster kicked the TV over. “This is trash.”

She wanted the Void protected, and she wanted the champions she had asked for. The Arbiter passed the question to Thea, who said, “No.” He insisted he had delegated, “which is what a great leader does. It’s not my fault that I’ve created an idiot here.” Thea agreed: “I don’t have brain cells. That’s why it was easy to make the divot in my head. Empty.” With a snap of his fingers, the Arbiter tore open a portal, and the three champions walked out.

Meet Team A

Thea, in her tiny pink impish form, flew circles around the newcomers. She said she felt she’d seen them before “in some sort of dream or maybe a nightmare” and picked at the tentacles of Robbie Clark and The Hunger. The pair explained that they were best friends who had merged their consciousnesses into one symbiotic unit. Robbie was an eight-year-old boy and The Hunger was an Eldritch Horror: “So now I get to be an Eldritch Horror and I get to be an eight year old child.” Thea asked to be an eight-year-old too. The Arbiter said she lacked the brain capacity, so she happily settled for Eldritch Horror.

Copycat kept her face hidden. Asked why, she answered with a question of her own: “Is there a reason why you can’t lick your own elbow? Yes, I know about that.” She explained that she “won’t be me the whole time.” The Grandmaster guessed that the towering machine was named “Brawn.” He corrected her: “This unit’s designation is Atlas. Atlas does not possess memories. Fragments of memory, perhaps. Familiarities acknowledged.” With no one to protect, he asked, what was Atlas? The Grandmaster opened a tiny portal showing a little purple marble, the Void itself, home to her, the Arbiter and all the Acolytes. “You can protect this marble.” A light flickered behind Atlas’s mask. He perceived the marble.

When Copycat’s voice cut out mid-answer, both hosts hollered for Stuart, the Fortress’s IT support, who lives “just down in the basement.” Copycat was the only one who knew the Shadow King; she’d “been doing a lot of research on him.” Robbie didn’t “stay up and watch the scary shows.” The Grandmaster explained that the Shadow King was in pieces but still a threat: “I must build an army.” The Arbiter boasted that he had saved her. She corrected him: “Temporarily.” From now on, he said, they would no longer throw lives away in the arena week after week for nothing. If champions were going to die, it would be to find the cream of the crop.

The team couldn’t agree on a name. Robbie pitched “the Silver Jacksons or the Alabaster Sunshines,” Copycat wanted “Redacted,” and Atlas proposed “Unbreakable.” The Grandmaster ruled that the survivors of the mission would go on to a Deathmatch, the survivors of that would pick a leader, and the leader would name the troop. “For now, you’re Team A.” Thea asked if A stood for asshole. The Arbiter said it did. That led to the revelation that Atlas “does not possess the hole of ass,” that his mother was a bucket, and that his engineer father had given him no mouth. “I did not know what mother saw in him because mother did not have eyes.” Thea rolled on the floor laughing.

The mission itself was simple. The Arbiter had lost contact with miners deep in the Ether Drifts who were gathering “a certain mineral,” and Team A was to find out what happened and bring it back. Copycat twirled like a magical girl into a fedora, trench coat and pipe. Thea handed out walkie-talkies she had been told were cell phones, and she cheerfully revealed that her email password was “…is the best” plus about twenty exclamation points.

Into the Ether Drifts

The Arbiter clapped, and the team landed on orange asteroids in the shadow of a huge purple gas planet, at the very edge of Void space, among “a wreckage of worlds.” A meteor shower greeted them while the Acolytes watched from a giant grandstand. The rocks simply shattered on Atlas’s armor, and he caught an iron-veined asteroid one-handed. The Hunger’s tentacle mouths sucked up debris and spat it back at oncoming meteors while Robbie made finger guns. Copycat copied Atlas’s arms exactly.

To find the mine, Copycat did a downward dog and rolled herself into a satellite dish, picking up the latest Taskmaster along the way. Her ping returned faster each time, because something was approaching. It was a tiny, rotund, neon blue worm, two or three inches long (“knee high to a koala,” Atlas decided), and it was panicking. “Is this a D20 Deathmatch where we all arrive to destroy our colony again?”

The Worm and the Door

Atlas’s hands are floating fists joined to his shoulders by arcs of plasma. He drilled out a neat disc of earth around the worm and floated her in front of him like a compass. Then he interrogated her about working for the Shadow King, now or “at a later date… in an act of narrative betrayal.” She had never heard of him. Her name was Theresa, and the mineral lay beside her home, the Hollow. Robbie gave her a lollipop to cheer her up. Theresa explained that people from the Void “always come. They always have deathmatches here. And they always kill us.” She had lost Timothy, then Tommy, then TT, then everyone else. She cried hard enough to make a small river.

Atlas plugged into Copycat for grip, turning her into his radio tower, and wrenched his shoulder doing it. Robbie found the way by spotting a sign reading “mine shaft this way.” At the bottom of a crater they found a heavy metal door, sealed and boarded up. “Oh no, a boarded door, my only weakness,” said Atlas. His first rocket fist only dented it. So he tried his “good arm,” forgetting it still held Theresa. The door burst open, and Theresa came to a very forceful stop.

A crowd of neon worms surrounded their unconscious friend. Why hadn’t the champions just used the key? It had been on top of the doorframe the whole time. A purple worm named Taylor fretted about the cost of doors. Copycat soothed everyone by handing over a platinum card number, a PIN and the name “Arbiter J. Wilkinsmith… The third.” The worms were delighted: “These champions are different. We like them.” Atlas added that the Arbiter was now subscribed to Atlas subscription services.

Then Atlas pulled a tiny syringe from his chest and injected Theresa with Double Sun Cola. Over the walkie, Thea mentioned that worms “get really bad if they get caffeine in their system.” Theresa ballooned into a giant worm monster and barrelled after them. Robbie led the escape flawlessly, and The Hunger formed a giant organic spear that pierced her through the head and pinned her to the wall. “Yeah, we killed Theresa,” said Robbie. “So that’s chill now.”

Down the Mine

Atlas’s scanners were broken, so Copycat tracked slither marks past bones dripping from the walls and chose the right-hand fork after sniffing a skeleton. A pulse rose through the ground, and every champion was left with a migraine that would not let up. Thea checked in to warn them that if they did badly they’d be killed, “not permanently,” just demoted to the B, C or D team. Robbie reported that they had “slaughtered an ancient beast,” turned into satellites, and “learned the power of friendship.” When he called them the Super Friends one too many times, Atlas crushed his walkie-talkie to powder with a long, uncomfortable stare. The Grandmaster had the Arbiter give Thea mind-speech instead. Anyone unwilling to go “balls to the walls” and bleed for the Void, she said, didn’t belong on the team: “Bones, blood, balls, tits, I don’t care.” Atlas noted he had none of those things. Copycat suggested he tuck them under, Atlas compared it to a glove compartment, and the Grandmaster ruled: “All right, you’re allowed to glove compartment your balls.”

Back at the Fortress, the Grandmaster watched on a new multi-camera TV. “Even if they die, we’ll bring them back. But I want them to be willing to go that far.” The Arbiter predicted they’d all die, and added that the wallet Copycat thought she’d stolen was a fake.

Probed

Thea decided Team A deserved a gift. A whirring rose behind them, and “this little mediocre silver saucer” caught up and beamed all three aboard. The aliens cut into metal and flesh, hunting for each champion’s greatest fear. Robbie and The Hunger’s was the end of everything: “all the stars will fade and there will be no more light left to consume and all that will be there is us for eternity.” The aliens released them first, terrified. In Copycat they found no fear at all, and kept digging until they hit her kidney. In Atlas they found an electric sheep asking, “What if, when the power is off, you were still conscious?” The aliens yanked out the plug in horror, flipped his switch back on, and dumped all three on the tunnel floor. Atlas murmured: “Updating 1%.”

“Man, they probed me pretty bad,” said Copycat, holding her side. She had put duct tape over “the trash bag area,” even though she knew very well they had been probing her brain. Bruised, the team pressed on toward a faint white light and a hum. Copycat patched herself by transforming into an exact copy of Robbie, though she left out The Hunger. Then she pointed at something on the ceiling and said, “That is what I am hungry for.” Nobody ever learned what it was.

The Crystal

In a cold geode cavern, a large chunk of white, humming crystal sat half-buried in orange rock. Robbie punched it with “the fury of a thousand regular eight-year-old punches” while the Acolytes tuned in by the million. Then three blue eye-stalks rose from a side tunnel, and Theresa burst in with a giant hole in her head. “I’m back, bitches!”

Her eyes sapped the champions’ strength. Robbie split down the middle into a mass of teeth and eyes and bit her head. She knocked his teeth loose and absorbed them (“Thank you for your offering”), then spewed cola bile on Atlas, which rushed his update along. Copycat turned into Timothy, and Theresa’s next strike went badly wrong: “I’m sorry, Timothy.” Theresa revealed that the Hollow had turned to ashes when Timothy died. He had left a book of instructions for after his death, and the worms had followed rules one through eighteen. When she asked for the worm password, Copycat answered “my name with, like, 20ish exclamation points,” which convinced her completely.

Atlas finished updating. He dropped into a gorilla stance and a cannon fed by silos of Double Sun Cola unfolded from his spine. “Update complete. Emotional vulnerability detected. Have a nice fucking day.” He poured himself into his Unstoppable Force beam, but it missed, passing straight through the hole in Theresa’s head.

The Acolytes wanted more, and the Box of Chaos smashed through the ceiling in pink and yellow flame. A little piece of Thea’s skull was ripped out and thrown inside, and a voice from within asked, “Yeah, what the fuck do you want?” Robbie, inspired by Crash Bandicoot, burst two of the eye-stalks with toothy tendrils. He told Theresa that “sacred is really a perspective thing.” Copycat’s bid to relocate the crystal ended in a mutual embarrassment duel over “the summer solstice 25 centuries ago.” Theresa coiled herself around the crystal and screamed that she would never give it up.

So Atlas made his last stand. His fists cut a stalactite loose and planted it behind Theresa. He charged armless like a blocker while his fists swung round to rocket him forward, and he spent everything he had left. Theresa braced, and the blow went wide. Thea screamed at them to use her reinforcements, balled the Box’s energy up, and shoved it into Atlas with her impish claw. On the second try, his cola fuel became pink-yellow fire and blue impish energy. He hit Theresa, the crystal and the stalactite as one blazing ball of metal. His head rolled forward, one eye reading “have a,” the other “nice day,” and then it exploded. Theresa proved incredibly flammable and crumbled to ash at the crystal’s base.

Seasoned Fries

The Grandmaster and the Arbiter stepped through a purple portal. The Arbiter had Thea twist the crystal into an apparatus, and salt poured out onto his fries. The Grandmaster caught Atlas’s half-exploded head and praised the team for seasoning the fries “very well, empowering him for another battle to come.” She quoted a favorite story about lessons and self-knowledge, then began piecing Atlas back together. “I think the Void has a place for you.” Back at the Fortress, she invited all three to return next week for a Deathmatch to decide their leader.

Notable Moments

• The Arbiter watched a pirated Dune 2 from the future, eating popcorn out of a divot in Thea’s head.
• Atlas launched Theresa, still in her clump of dirt, through a door whose key was on the doorframe the whole time.
• The vital mineral against the Shadow King turned out to be salt for the Arbiter’s fries.
• The aliens found no fear at all inside Copycat, which frightened them most of all.
• Atlas’s head read “have a / nice day” just before it exploded.
• Copycat won over Theresa by impersonating her dead sibling and guessing the family password formula.

Memorable Quotes

• Atlas: “Atlas does not possess the hole of ass.”
• Atlas: “I did not know what mother saw in him because mother did not have eyes.”
• The Arbiter: “It’s not my fault that I’ve created an idiot here.”
• Robbie Clark & The Hunger: “Yeah, we killed Theresa. So that’s chill now.”
• Theresa: “Is this a D20 Deathmatch where we all arrive to destroy our colony again?”
• Thea: “Just kill it already. We need the crystal, but be gentle and kind and then bury the body out of respect afterwards.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “We don’t do figures of speech. We are very direct people here in the Void.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “You have seasoned the Arbiter’s fries very well, empowering him for another battle to come.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Robbie Clark & The Hunger (player inferred as Cinder). A symbiotic pair who share one consciousness.

• Who they are:
  • Robbie is an eight-year-old boy. The Hunger is an Eldritch Horror with tentacle mouths, many eyes and teeth.
  • Robbie claims “eons of knowledge… born of dying stars and wailing souls.”
• Personality:
  • Not allowed contacts, email or Reddit; doesn’t watch scary shows.
  • Hands out lollipops and makes finger guns. Plays at walkie-talkie radio talk.
  • Calls the team “the Super Friends.”
• Powers:
  • The Hunger forms organic spears and toothy tendrils.
  • Signature move: boy and infinite flesh become one, splitting Robbie into a form of teeth and eyes.
• Fear: the stars fading, leaving only them for eternity.

Atlas (player is Australian).

• Memory: “does not possess memories… fragments… familiarities acknowledged.” He says his memory banks have been corrupted many times, “like in the Dread Fortress.”
• Family (his own claim): his mother was a bucket with no eyes; his father was an engineer who gave him no mouth. He has no orifices.
• Body:
  • Floating rocket fists joined to his shoulders by plasma arcs.
  • Shin tank treads, later swapped for mine-cart wheels that lay their own track.
  • USB ports, a sarcasm chip, and a gorilla-stance transformation with a spine cannon fed by Double Sun Cola silos.
• Powers: Unstoppable Force (sacrifices HP).
• His wit: sells “Atlas subscription services” and carries a Double Sun Cola syringe.
• Fear: staying conscious with the power off, forever.
• In this episode: updated after the aliens turned him off and on. Died gloriously (his head exploded) killing Theresa, and was being pieced back together by the GM.

Copycat (“Cat”).

• Appearance: a shapeshifter whose face isn’t seen. She wears a bag (trash bag) and says she “won’t be me the whole time.”
• Shapes she took: magical-girl twirl transformations into a detective (fedora, trench coat, pipe), Atlas’s arms, a satellite dish/radio tower, Robbie, and Mayor Timothy.
• Habits: has researched the Shadow King and keeps a notebook. Collects passwords and gave out the Arbiter’s (fake, per the Arbiter) card details. Knows Morse code and does yoga.
• Fear: the aliens found no fear in her.
• Name she proposed: “Redacted.”

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). A tiny pink imp.

• The Arbiter says he “created” her (“an idiot”). She says she has no brain cells and has at least five eyeballs.
• The Arbiter uses the divot in her head as a popcorn bucket.
• Her email password is “…is the best” plus ~20 exclamation points; Stuart resets it for her.
• Given mind-speech this episode.
• She delivered the chaos event, and a piece of her skull went into the Box of Chaos. She channelled the box’s power into Atlas.

Theresa / Teresa.

• Neon blue worm of the Hollow, two to three inches, “only a mouth and two eyes.”
• Mutated into a giant worm by Double Sun Cola (caffeine). Gained three blue eye stalks that block power-ups, and a hole through her head.
• Absorbed Robbie’s teeth. Guarded the “sacred” crystal.
• Killed by Atlas, burned to ash.

The worms of the Hollow.

• Around 80 neon worms, with names starting with T: Taylor (purple), Tails, Tulius, Tate, Tandem.

• The dead: Timothy, Tommy, TT. Their mayor is “Turbicky”/“Timothy”, killed by past Void visitors.

• They hide keys in obvious places and use passwords of the form name + “is awesome” + ~20 exclamation points.

• They say deathmatches keep coming to their planet and destroying their homes.

• Theresa’s sibling(?), who built an “empire”. The Hollow “turned to ashes” when he died.

• He left a 20-step book of instructions for after his death.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Watches pirated Dune 2 from the future. Owns extra Italian shoes.
• “Saved” the GM from the Shadow King “temporarily,” but didn’t kill him.
• Copycat dubbed him “Arbiter J. Wilkinsmith the Third” and Robbie took him for a triplet.
• The mission’s mineral turned out to be salt for his fries.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Building an army and teams against the Shadow King.
• Founded Team A, with leadership to be decided in a Deathmatch.
• Says revival is assured (“we’ll bring them back”) and that “death isn’t permanent.”

Stuart. An unseen person blamed for muted mics; “lives in the basement”. Table joke or in-world, unclear.

The aliens. Pilots of the “mediocre silver saucer” chaos event. They probe for fears and fear AI.

Places

• The Dread Fortress: its hallways, and the Arbiter’s screening room.
• The Ether Drifts: an asteroid belt at the edge of Void space, in the shadow of a large purple gas planet, with orange asteroids and “a wreckage of worlds.”
• The Hollow: the worms’ home beside the mine; “turned to ashes” after the mayor’s death.
• The mineshaft (door boarded up, key on top of the frame), the fork (right path), and the geode cavern with the white crystal.

Items

• The white glowing humming crystal. The “very important mineral” against the Shadow King; it yields salt.
• Double Sun Cola. Caffeinated cola that powers Atlas and mutates worms. Its label shows a fairy with two suns.
• Thea’s walkie-talkies (“cell phones”), one of them crushed.
• The Box of Chaos (pink and yellow fire; a piece of Thea’s skull went in).
• The Arbiter’s platinum card (fake, per the Arbiter), Copycat’s notebook, Robbie’s lollipop, the GM’s crown and bobby pins, and the new surveillance TV.

Lore statements

• The Shadow King is “in pieces” but alive. The GM must build an army, and Team A is the first test.
• The Void appears from outside as a tiny purple marble.
• The Arbiter can step into the future (“popped a little forward”).
• Void deathmatches have repeatedly come to the worms’ planet and killed them (Theresa’s account).
• “We are very direct people here in the Void” (GM).

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening: hiding in the Dread Fortress

1. 0:04:21 The intro line is transcribed as “Welcome to D20 Trust Bowl!” (almost certainly “D20 Deathmatch”).
2. 0:04:31 The Grandmaster wanders the halls of the Dread Fortress. She is trying to put her crown on, but she didn’t bring enough bobby pins and keeps stabbing her head, so she puts it down for the day. She is looking for the Arbiter.
3. 0:04:55 The Arbiter hides from her: “Shh… She’s coming… she’s going to make us do work.” He tells Thea to shut up.
4. 0:05:08 The GM threatens to throw out his “extra Italian shoes” if he doesn’t come out by the count of three. He gives up at once: “We’re in here.”
5. 0:05:19 Dune 2 and Thea the popcorn bucket.
   • She finds him behind a large screen, in a big recliner, eating popcorn.
   • The “bucket” is actually Thea. He has knocked a divot into her head and filled it with popcorn.
   • They are watching Dune 2. The GM: “That’s still in movie theaters!”
   • The Arbiter: “Master of time and space, I just popped a little forward into the future, snagged a copy.” The GM says he stole it; he says “movies can’t belong to people.”
6. 0:06:06 The GM kicks over the TV and it crashes at his feet: “This is trash.” She wants the Dread Fortress and the Void protected. She asks whether he gathered the champions she asked for.
7. 0:06:23 The Arbiter passes the question to Thea. Thea: “No.”
8. 0:06:34 The GM’s plan. “We can’t just have regular deathmatches. We need to strengthen… find our true teams… three great champions.”
9. 0:06:51 The Arbiter says he delegated, “which is what a great leader does. It’s not my fault that I’ve created an idiot here.” Thea: “I don’t have brain cells. That’s why it was easy to make the divot in my head. Empty.” Arbiter: “Great popcorn bucket. Not a great thinker.”
10. 0:07:16 He snaps his fingers. A portal rips open and out walk Atlas, Copycat, and Robbie Clark and The Hunger.

Meeting the champions

11. 0:07:39 Thea, “in her tiny pink impish form”, flies circles around them: “I feel like I’ve seen them before in some sort of dream or maybe a nightmare.” She picks at Robbie and The Hunger’s tentacles.
12. 0:07:59 Robbie Clark and The Hunger.
    • They introduce themselves as best friends and a symbiotic unit: “we are the same thing.”
    • They combined consciousnesses so both could keep existing and have new experiences: “So now I get to be an Eldritch Horror and I get to be an eight year old child.”
    • Thea waves timidly at The Hunger and asks to be an eight-year-old too. The Arbiter says she lacks the brain capacity. She settles for being the Eldritch Horror: “Yes, score.”
13. 0:08:51 Copycat.
    • The GM asks why they can’t see Copycat’s face. Copycat: “Is there a reason why you can’t lick your own elbow? Yes, I know about that.” The GM: “That’s a very difficult skill.”
    • In a different voice: “What is the universe but a tiny marble?” Then: “Because I won’t be me the whole time.” The Arbiter: “Who were you just being? Carl Sagan?” Copycat: “Watch it.”
    • The GM: “The spy speaks with the eyes.”
14. 0:09:59 Atlas.
    • The GM guesses the large mechanical champion is “Brawn.”
    • “Incorrect. This unit’s designation is Atlas. Atlas does not possess memories. Fragments of memory, perhaps. Familiarities acknowledged. Protector, unit designation not found. With no one to protect, what is Atlas?”
15. 0:10:52 The marble.
    • The GM opens a tiny portal showing a tiny purple marble: the Void, home to her, the Arbiter and all the Acolytes. “You can protect this marble.”
    • A bright light floats between the eye slits of Atlas’s face mask as he scans it: “Yes, Atlas perceives the marble.”
16. 0:11:29 Who knows the Shadow King.
    • Atlas: “Negative.” Robbie: “I don’t stay up and watch the scary shows.”
    • Copycat’s mic is muted, and the GM and Arbiter shout for “Stuart.” Copycat: “Stuart, I know where you live.” GM: “It’s just down in the basement. It’s nice though.”
    • Copycat: “I’ve been doing a lot of research on him.”
17. 0:12:40 The stakes. The GM pushes Atlas’s head toward the marble. The Shadow King threatens to engulf it. “He’s in pieces now, but I must build an army.” She calls the mission “a suicide mission of sorts, to prove that maybe they’re worthy.”
18. 0:13:19 The Arbiter’s briefing.
    • “The Shadow King is still at large, despite our best efforts to kill him. I did pretty good.”
    • GM: “Because he’s not dead because you didn’t kill him.” Arbiter: “Did I or did I not save you?” GM: “Temporarily save me.”
    • “No longer can we throw away your lives in the arena week after week… If we’re going to kill you, we need to do it to make sure we find the very best, the cream of the crop.”
19. 0:14:11 Team names.
    • Robbie suggests “the Super Friends or the best friends or the coolest kids in town… the Silver Jacksons or the Alabaster Sunshines.”
    • Copycat: “I would prefer to be called Redacted.”
    • Atlas: “Unbreakable. If we are to stand against the Shadow King, it’d be best all know that nothing will break our lines.”
20. 0:15:14 The GM’s rules.
    • Whoever survives the mission goes on to the deathmatch.
    • The deathmatch survivors decide the leader, and the leader names the troop.
    • “For now, you’re Team A.” Arbiter: “You guys look like a bunch of A’s.”
21. 0:15:58 The bucket exchange.
    • Thea asks whether A stands for asshole. Arbiter: “It does.” Atlas: “Atlas does not possess the hole of ass.” Thea: “I can give you one.”
    • Copycat tells the Arbiter “you look like a B… You look like a bucket.” The Arbiter points at Thea’s dented head: “She looks like a bucket.” Copycat: “This is a bag, not a bucket.”
    • Atlas: “My mother was a bucket.”
    • Asked about his father: “He was an engineer. I did not know what mother saw in him because mother did not have eyes.” The father also “failed to give me a mouth. Hence the lack of asshole.”
    • Thea rolls on the floor laughing.
22. 0:17:39 The mission.
    • The Arbiter has lost contact with “miners, I guess” deep in the Ether Drifts at the edge of Void space.
    • They were gathering “a certain mineral… integral to the fight against the Shadow King.”
    • The team is to find out what happened and bring back the mineral.
23. 0:18:27 Detective Copycat. Copycat says a detective is needed. She twirls like a magical girl, throwing off sparkles and glitter, and comes out in a detective outfit: fedora, trench coat and matching pipe. “On the contrary, dear Watson, we will need some more information.”
24. 0:19:17 The point of contact.
    • Copycat opens a book and asks for a point of contact. Thea volunteers: “I got at least five eyeballs, two that I’m currently using.”
    • Robbie: “I’m not allowed to have contacts or an email address.”
    • Thea hands out walkie-talkies, which she has been told are cell phones.
    • Copycat asks for Thea’s email password. Thea gives it as “…is the best” plus “like 20 exclamation points-ish”. “Stuart always has to reset it for me and he hates me for it.”

The Ether Drifts: meteor shower

25. 0:20:41 Arrival.
    • The Arbiter claps and portals them to an asteroid belt in the shadow of a large purple gaseous planet. They land on large orange asteroids.
    • The Ether Drifts lie “at the edge of all of void space, home to a wreckage of worlds and locations and asteroids that float around aimlessly.”
    • They stand at the edge of a mine. Meteorites crash down around them. The Acolytes watch from a giant grandstand.
    • Everyone passes the Mettle save.
26. 0:22:05 Atlas. He doesn’t dodge. The rocks shatter on his armor, which is denser than they are. One asteroid is thick with iron ore veins. His eyes glow as he scans it, and he catches it one-handed, rotating it on his jointless arm so it lands beside him.
27. 0:23:01 Robbie. He high-fives The Hunger and makes finger guns. The Hunger’s tentacle mouths suck up bits of meteor and shoot them at other meteors. “Super friends. Good job so far.” Atlas answers with two big robot thumbs up.
28. 0:23:39 Copycat. She twirls again and shifts her arms into copies of Atlas’s, imitating him exactly.

The satellite and the worm

29. 0:24:17 Atlas asks whether anyone can scan large areas for entrances.
30. 0:25:12 Copycat the satellite dish.
    • She stretches, does a downward dog, and rolls into a ball shaped like a satellite dish.
    • She picks up the latest episode of Taskmaster (“Oh, my favorite show”).
    • She pings across the asteroid. Something answers, and the echo comes back faster each time: something is approaching.
31. 0:26:47 Theresa appears.
    • A small panicked voice: “Guess what? You’re here on our planet again.”
    • Robbie: “You forget that I come with eons of knowledge beyond knowledge. I was born of dying stars and wailing souls.” Because he knows wailing souls, he can hear many frequencies.
    • He spots a tiny, rotund, bright neon blue worm inching toward them. It is “only a mouth and two eyes.”
    • The worm: “Is this a D20 Deathmatch where we all arrive to destroy our colony again?”
32. 0:28:03 Copycat, still a dish with no arms, rolls around beeping profusely.
33. 0:28:23 Measuring the worm. The GM sizes it at two or three inches. Atlas: “Did you just use inches to describe to your Australian friend how big something was?” She tries “smaller than a koala.” Atlas accepts: “Knee high to a koala.”
34. 0:28:50 Atlas scoops the worm.
    • His hands are floating fists joined to his shoulders by electric plasma arcs; he has no elbows or forearms.
    • One fist rises and comes straight down, drilling a perfect circle of earth around the worm. He floats it in front of him as a little platform.
35. 0:29:35 The interrogation.
    • “Do you work for the Shadow King? If so, you will be destroyed imminently.” The same goes for working for him indirectly. “If you are not working for the Shadow King, then you will be spared, unless at a later date you intend to work for the Shadow King in an act of narrative betrayal.”
    • The worm: “I don’t wanna die! … We don’t even know who the Shadow King is! We just orbit the void! We’re just here and we’re in the hollow!”
    • Robbie asks where the mineral is. The worm: “It’s next to our home called the Hollow.” Atlas: “You will lead us there.”
36. 0:30:58 Robbie gives the worm a lollipop: “Here, don’t feel so bad.” It has no hands, so he sets it on the dirt.
37. 0:31:12 Picking up Copycat.
    • Atlas holds the worm’s platform out like a compass.
    • Copycat sounds a tornado siren to get attention. Atlas: “Atlas, do you speak satellite? That is racist. All machines do not speak the same language. But yes, I do still speak a little satellite.”
    • Copycat: “My foot is stuck behind my head.”
    • “As long as it’s consensual,” Atlas plugs several ports into her for grip. “Atlas now has a radio tower.”
38. 0:32:26 Finding the way.
    • Atlas rolls a nat 1. Lifting Cat damages his shoulder socket (1 damage and a fatigue). “It is a whole satellite, so fair.”
    • Copycat gets +1 “because you’re a satellite.” She knows the way but can’t say it, so she beeps faster as they get closer, like a metal detector.
    • Robbie (19) simply sees a sign: “mine shaft this way.”
39. 0:33:44 The NPC.
    • Robbie treats the worm like a video-game character: “we hit X a lot… and we just want to try to kill the chicken and run away in Zelda.” Copycat beeps in Morse code: “you mean an NPC?” Robbie: “On Reddit, but I’m not supposed to go there.”
    • “People from the Void. They always come. They always have deathmatches here. And they always kill us. Or destroy our homes. We lost Timothy, and then we lost Tommy, and then we lost TT, and then we lost all of my other friends.”
40. 0:35:02 Atlas the rover. Atlas floats Theresa just out of earshot. Tank treads fold out of his shins and he rolls forward. The GM calls him the Voyager, then the Mars Rover; the table argues over whether the rover is “little.”
41. 0:35:44 The passwords.
    • Copycat, in Morse, offers condolences and asks whether the dead siblings had social media accounts with passwords.
    • Theresa: their passwords are “whatever their name is and then ‘is awesome’ and then with like at least 20ish exclamation points. It’s kind of like a family trait.”
    • Copycat: “I will make sure to [redacted].” Theresa: “Don’t redact me!”
    • Theresa cries profusely. Her tears make a small river and muddy the ground for Atlas.

The sealed mineshaft

42. 0:36:45 In low gravity they bop toward a crater. A path leads down to a mineshaft braced with metal and lumber. Its heavy metal door is sealed and boarded up.
43. 0:37:37 Atlas: “Oh no, a boarded door, my only weakness.”
44. 0:37:48 Copycat wiggles out of satellite form back into downward dog: “I finally got my foot unstuck from behind my head… I need a little bit more practice on that one.”
45. 0:38:27 The rocket fist.
    • “Atlas just has slow turns. He disables his sarcasm chip.”
    • His fist rockets backward and the plasma arc stretches. Then plasma blasts from the back of the fist and it flies at the door.
    • The GM gives disadvantage because doors are his “greatest weakness.” It still hits but only dents the door. “Me and doors do not get on.”
46. 0:40:06 The good arm.
    • “Maybe I should use my good arm.” He launches the other fist, forgetting that it still holds the clump of dirt with Theresa in it.
    • She rides inside a protective bubble but suffers the G-forces.
    • The door cracks and bursts open. Mudcat reminds him how physics works: the worm comes to a very forceful stop. Atlas: “I liked Theresa, she was really cute.”
47. 0:41:20 The key.
    • Theresa flies in unconscious. A crowd of neon worms gathers around her: “How could you do this? Why did you break down the door? You couldn’t just use the key!”
    • The key was on top of the doorframe the whole time. Robbie: “What a mysterious place to hide a key.”
    • Copycat lists the obvious places people hide keys.
    • A neon purple worm, Taylor, hides its key under the big coal rock Atlas threw. “There’s at least 80. Tails is out there, Tulius, Tate’s, Tandem’s… Do you have any idea how expensive it is to build a door?”
48. 0:42:54 The Arbiter’s credit card.
    • Copycat kneels and gives the worms a credit card number, PIN and full name to pay for “all the damages, both physical and emotionally.”
    • The name is “Arbiter J. Wilkinsmith… The third.” The worms: “Ooh, platinum… These champions are different. We like them. Thank you, Super Friends.”
49. 0:43:58 Double Sun Cola.
    • Atlas: “The Arbiter has now subscribed to Atlas subscription services. Every month… deductions… to unlock the pro features of the Atlas program.”
    • He opens his chest and takes out a tiny syringe. Its label shows a fairy in a shirt with two suns and a cola bottle.
    • He injects Theresa with Double Sun Cola.
50. 0:44:52 Theresa mutates.
    • She changes through neon colors and turns blob-like.
    • Through a megaphone: “you guys should probably go.” Thea, over the walkie: “They’ll get really bad if they get caffeine in their system.” Atlas: “There was a lot of caffeine in what I just gave her. Run!”
    • Theresa balloons into a giant worm monster and barrels down the shaft after them.
51. 0:45:52 Robbie’s nat 20.
    • Robbie rolls a nat 20 on the escape save. He gains Fighting Spirit and an adrenaline, and leads the party to safety.
    • “We are many… we can sometimes split up tasks.” The Hunger forms a giant organic spear, pierces Theresa through the head and pins her to the wall, stretching it as they walk on.
52. 0:46:51 The triplets.
    • Robbie: “I did not know the Arbiter was a triplet.” Because of “the Third”, “that means there’s two more.”
    • Copycat writes it in her book: “I learned about it right now.”
    • Atlas: “Incorrect. What it would mean is that the Arbiter’s father was also Arbiter, as well as his grandfather, making him the third Arbiter in the line of Wilkinsons.”
    • Robbie: “Yeah, we killed Theresa. So that’s chill now.” She got to experience “the radical physical dismorphation of her body… which can really expand your consciousness when you are facing the cosmic horrors of the void, which everything does after death.” Atlas: “Double Sun Cola is strong stuff.”

Down the mine

53. 0:48:26 The fork.
    • Atlas rolls a 2: “My scanners are broken. We went over this.” Copycat gets 19. The others’ chatter fades to Peanuts-parent “wah wah.”
    • She notices skeletal bones dripping from the ceiling and walls.
    • There are slither lines but no footprints, leading right at a fork.
    • She scoops dirt, puts her ear to the wall, and sniffs a skeleton. The Arbiter asks if she licked it. “I see. I know. That way.” She points right, “after you put on the performance of a century.”
54. 0:51:04 Atlas rides his treads because he is too tall for the mine.
55. 0:51:08 The pulse.
    • A pulsing comes up through the ground, and the dirt bounces with it “as if this whole place has come to life.”
    • It seizes their muscles and brains with migraines. Everyone fails the Instinct save.
    • Permanent status: an unrelenting migraine. It deals 1 damage per combat round unless cleared with a Heroic Surge. One damage is taken now.
    • Robbie: like the devices “they put in front of the ice cream stand when they don’t want me and my friends to hang out there anymore that old people can’t hear.”
56. 0:54:18 Thea checks in.
    • “We’re really worried about you guys… if you do a really shitty job… we’re gonna have to off you all. Not permanently, but then we just kind of put you back to like the B team, or the C team, or the D team.”
    • Robbie: “Breaker, breaker, niner, niner, alpha, alpha… The Super Friends are en route… We have slaughtered an ancient beast, we have turned into satellites, and we have learned the power of friendship.”
    • Thea: “Show your leadership skills. Take charge. Over.”
57. 0:55:22 The Arbiter grabs the walkie: “Can you make this a little bit more interesting? The Acolytes are getting bored.” He announces a break.
58. 0:55:44 Robbie: “Also, do your brothers have the same name as you? Over.”
59. 0:56:03 Atlas crushes the walkie. “We are not the Super Friends Squad.” He crushes Robbie’s walkie-talkie to powder, holding “this very long, uncomfortable stare.”
60. 0:56:30 Mind voice.
    • The Arbiter: “Grandmaster, they crushed the walkie-talkie.” She tells him to give Thea mind-speech. He objects: “she’s gonna be in everybody’s head and I’m gonna have to hear her all day long.”
    • The GM: “this is just the first of many tests. And if they’re not ready to go balls to the walls… and bleed for the Void, then I don’t want them on this team.” She adds: “Bones, blood, balls, tits, I don’t care.”
    • Atlas: “Atlas has none of those things.” Copycat: “You can tuck them under.” Atlas: “Like a glove compartment.” GM: “All right, you’re allowed to glove compartment your balls.”
61. 0:58:27 “We’re going to break.” The next line is “Welcome back,” so the break was cut from the mp3.

After the break: watching Team A

62. 0:58:27 The GM welcomes everyone back herself: “I’m just gonna be loud and in charge, and that’s why I’m the Grandmaster, suckers.”
63. 0:58:49 She stands over a new kind of TV showing the champions through many cameras, “a bit like Survivor.” She says they need to go further to meet Team A standards.
64. 0:59:18 The Arbiter: “We’ve only scratched the surface.” GM: “They’re literally under the surface… We don’t do figures of speech. We are very direct people here in the Void.”
65. 0:59:40 GM: “Even if they die, we’ll bring them back. But I want them to be willing to go that far.”
66. 0:59:50 The Arbiter: “I really think they’re all going to die… Copycat thinks she stole my wallet, but that was a fake.” GM: “Apparently you also are a triplet, so congratulations.” She jokes about giving them his job.
67. 1:00:25 Through mind-speech: “Can you guys hear me in there?” He asks about the mineral. Atlas: “Our recovery of the mineral is imminent.” Copycat: “Signing you up for spam mail.” Thea: “I love spam mail. I don’t get enough email.”
68. 1:01:20 Thea’s gift.
    • Thea asks to give the team a gift but can’t think of one. The Arbiter suggests a chaotic event: “make it something good, because the Grandmaster is down my throat.”
    • Thea speaks into her fake walkie, on the same wavelength as Robbie: “you could even call it home, but it’s not your home. So I’m going to be sending you a gift… so that way you don’t get too cozy.”
    • Copycat asks if the gift is the Arbiter’s social security number. Thea: “I can’t remember more than two numbers at once.”
69. 1:02:51 Atlas speeds off.
    • Atlas’s corrupted memory banks (“like in the Dread Fortress”) fire up and he speeds away.
    • He gets a “dirty 20” on the save. It’s briefly mistaken for a nat 20; he regains a Fighting Spirit and gains a second adrenaline.
    • He swaps his treads for mine-cart wheels and lays real train tracks in front of himself with little prongs. He gets advantage against the chaos.

Chaos event: the silver saucer (1:04:32)

70. The abduction. Copycat rolls an 8. A whirring echoes down the tunnel, and “this little mediocre silver saucer” catches up. Three tractor beams fire, and everyone fails and is abducted.
71. 1:05:40 The probe. Metallic scalpels cut into metal and flesh, digging into memory storage for their greatest fears.
72. 1:06:24 Robbie and The Hunger’s fear.
    • “Deep down, I suppose we know that there will come a time where all the stars will fade and there will be no more light left to consume and all that will be there is us for eternity.”
    • The aliens step back, terrified, and release them first: “You have… given them their own nightmares.”
73. 1:07:08 Copycat’s fear.
    • They find nothing. “There has to be something in here!… What is she?” The GM: “What being doesn’t have fear”, which is “the most terrifying thing of all.”
    • They dig so deep that she takes extra damage. “That’s my kidney.”
74. 1:07:40 Atlas’s fear.
    • They plug into an open USB port. A screen of ones and zeros forms an electric sheep.
    • It asks: “What if, when the power is off, you were still conscious?… you floated in an endless black abyss… left with your thoughts… will it ever be turned back on?… How much of you erodes as this water cascades over the rocky crevices of your mind…”
    • They rip out the USB plug. “Is this the future of AI? No!” They shove him out but flip his on switch first.
    • Atlas: “Updating 1%.”
75. 1:09:39 Damage. Everyone takes a point, Copycat one more, and the migraine ticks again. They collapse on the tunnel floor, left behind by the spaceship.
76. 1:10:20 Regrouping.
    • Robbie: “Go toward the big noise that hurts us and then we kill it and find the crystal.”
    • Copycat, holding her side: “Man, they probed me pretty bad.” Robbie offers a band-aid. She has put duct tape over “the trash bag area”, “even though she knows very well that they were probing her brain.”
    • Thea on healing: “who cares, right?” GM: “At the end of the day, death isn’t permanent.”
77. 1:11:49 The white light. Their senses are heightened, maybe by the aliens or the headache. A faint white glowing light and a small hum come from down the shaft.
78. 1:12:37 Copycat heals by imitating Robbie.
    • She looks for whoever is in the best shape: Robbie and The Hunger.
    • She opens his eyeballs (a third or fourth pops open), sticks her finger up his nose, then twirls and turns herself to look exactly like him. Robbie: “Now we have twins.”
    • She skips the Hunger: “I see no reason to have a continuous hunger. It would… get in the way of… taking people’s identity. But maybe that’s what I’m really hungry for.”
79. 1:14:54 What she hungers for.
    • She pulls him close and points at the ceiling. “No, that’s a stalactite… Not the bat there… a little bit more to the right… close one or five of your eyes.”
    • “That is what I am hungry for.” Robbie squints with tentacle eyes too. What she points at is never revealed.

The geode and Theresa’s return

80. 1:15:50 The descent. It gets colder, damper and darker, and they feel their way along the walls. Caustic Phoenix’s audio glitches (“Stuart!”). A low rumble grows louder.
81. 1:16:59 The crystal. Inside what is like a geode, a large chunk of white, glowing, humming crystal is half stuck in the ground. It is unlike the surrounding orange rock.
82. 1:17:42 Who can test it.
    • Robbie asks whether Atlas has a scanner. Atlas is glazed over, coasting on wheels with “update at 78%… do not reset” because “they turned him off and on again.” Copycat: “Windows, dang it.”
    • Copycat: “Do I look like a Geiger counter to you?” Atlas: “You were a satellite like an hour ago.” She says that was “a satellite to identify people and their identities.”
    • Thea mind-speaks for the first time: “It’s not the same thing… I’m shaking my head.”
83. 1:19:06 Robbie punches it. Lights and millions of little cameras appear as the Acolytes tune in, shouting “Go beast mode!” Robbie: “the fury of a thousand regular eight-year-old punches.” Glowing, flaky pieces chip off.
84. 1:20:15 Theresa is back.
    • Cat sees three blue glowing lights on giant stalks come from a side entrance as the ground shakes.
    • Theresa bursts in, a giant hole in her head from The Hunger’s spear, three eye stalks staring one at each champion. “I’m back, bitches!”
85. 1:21:18 Initiative. The order is Robbie, Teresa, Cat, Atlas. “I’m still updating! Leave me alone!” Atlas takes a point of corruption damage and two fatigue as his CPU maxes out.

Combat round 1

86. 1:22:31 The enfeebling eyes. Each eye stalk shines blue light on one champion, and they “feel a little funny.”
87. 1:22:55 Robbie’s turn.
    • Into his imaginary walkie: “Hello, little goblin. Update. The worm I killed, I’m about to kill it again.”
    • He uses his Heroic Surge to clear the migraine.
    • Signature move: “the true unity between Robbie Clark and The Hunger manifests as boy and infinite flesh become one.” A crack splits down Robbie’s form, and he is covered in teeth and eyes.
    • He bites Theresa’s head and hits.
88. 1:24:57 Theresa’s turn.
    • Theresa: “I will take your teeth and then I will have teeth.” She has none.
    • Her power-up hits Robbie and knocks teeth loose. She rolls over them and absorbs them into her flesh. “Thank you for your offering.”
    • She spews toxic orange Double Sun Cola bile on Atlas. It cleans his metal and soaks in, pushing his update from 79% to 98%.
    • She lurches at Cat: “Give me that bag!” Cat hip-thrusts and dodges: “You can’t take this bag.” Theresa: “No, no, I used to carry my groceries.” Cat: “I’m not the one you want to hurt.”
89. 1:27:42 Copycat becomes Timothy.
    • She uses her attack to transform into Timothy: “You wouldn’t want to hit your… sibling.” Mudcat: “Psychological damage.”
    • Theresa attacks and rolls a nat 1, losing Fighting Spirit, gaining fatigue and taking damage. “I’m sorry, Timothy.” “It’s okay, sister. I forgive you.” Caustic Phoenix narrates her as “Mayor Timothy.”
90. 1:29:12 Persuading her sister.
    • Copycat steps in front of the others. “Sister, why have you turned out this way?”
    • Theresa: “When we lost you, the empire you built was destroyed. The Hollow just turned to ashes. We thought with you, all our dreams disappeared.”
    • Copycat: “This is not the way that I would want my legacy to continue.” Theresa wins the roll.
91. 1:30:38 The mayor’s book.
    • Theresa: “You left a whole book that said, in case of my death, here’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. And we followed the rules one through 18. We didn’t get all the way to 20 because we haven’t gotten there yet.”
    • Caustic Phoenix narrates that the mayor was “very detailed in his note taking.” Caustic Phoenix says the name as “Mayor Tempathy” here.
92. 1:31:12 The password.
    • Copycat claims brain fog and asks for rules 19 and 20.
    • Theresa: “Step two [says] we’re not allowed to do anything unless the people confirm… the password. Do you remember the password of the worms?”
    • Copycat: “It would have to be my name with, like, 20ish exclamation points.” Theresa: “It is you!”
    • The GM is impressed that a player remembered the lore: “Do players take notes?”
93. 1:32:42 She doubles down and wins. Theresa is dissuaded: she takes damage and gets disadvantage on her next two attacks.
94. 1:33:24 Atlas finishes updating.
    • His abs eject outward on struts. He drops onto his knuckles like a gorilla and his head rotates down into the center of his chest.
    • His shoulders separate and a large cannon whirs out from the base of his spine, fed by silos of bubbling Double Sun Cola.
    • “Update complete. Emotional vulnerability detected. Have a nice fucking day.”
95. 1:34:15 The first cannon blast.
    • He fires a Double Sun Cola beam with his special power, Unstoppable Force, sacrificing 10 of his own HP.
    • The blue eye blocks his power-ups. He narrates that the update ruined his intake valves, so the cola can’t give him the extra juice.
    • He misses. The blast goes right through the hole in Theresa’s head from the earlier spear.
96. 1:36:18 He Heroic Surges to clear his statuses. He tries to heal by ejecting two searing canisters. The jammed cannon won’t retract and keeps clanking. He regains a Fighting Spirit.

The Box of Chaos

97. 1:37:15 Reinforcements. Thea: “I hear from the Acolytes, they want more! We’re cheering for you!” A voice: “We’re sending the reinforcements!”
98. 1:37:25 The box arrives.
    • The Box of Chaos smashes through the ceiling in a burst of pink and yellow flame.
    • “A small little piece of Thea’s skull is ripped out from her and thrown inside of this box.” An even tinier impish hand reaches out: “If you want anything, you let me know.”
    • Thea apologises to the Arbiter: “I tried to do the typical.” Arbiter: “Not everyone can whisper sexually.” Thea had planned “a dark smoker voice.”
    • Then, as the box (speaker uncertain, Mudcat): “Yeah, what the fuck do you want?”
    • Champions can sacrifice an action to it for a magical item.

Combat round 2

99. 1:38:25 Robbie smashes the eyes.
    • “Those glowing orbs. I have seen something similar in Crash Bandicoot. And I had to smash them in order for me to regain my spin power.” He wants to empower Atlas’s magnetic gauntlets and Copycat’s “psychological transmutation warfare.”
    • He shoots toothy tendrils at the eye stalks.
    • The first, aimed at Atlas’s, misses. The second bursts the eye over Copycat and frees her.
100. 1:40:05 Robbie talks to Theresa.
     • Robbie: “You could have just went out and lived your life.” Theresa: “No, the crystal is sacred. I must protect it at all costs.”
     • Robbie: “take it from one infinite being masquerading as an eight-year-old to a very minuscule being masquerading as a giant worm. Sacred is really a perspective thing… everything kind of is just dust… I wanna see Atlas punch something so hard that it explodes, and that would be you.”
     • His third tendril bursts the eye over Atlas. He leaves his own eye alone: “I don’t care for the one on me.”
     • A tendril speaks (Copycat’s player’s voice track; may be voicing The Hunger, uncertain): “And when you die, we shall consume you.” Robbie: “Yeah, and it’s going to taste great.”
101. 1:41:33 Theresa attacks Robbie. She is furious and hits him twice. “Ow, my second favorite eyeball.” She spews bile and rolls another nat 1. The acid corrodes the geodes in the ceiling, which fall on her.
102. 1:43:01 Copycat’s crazy idea.
     • “I think I’ve got the worm bumps.” Still as Timothy: “Sister, lend me your ear… maybe we take it with us. And deposit it somewhere else.”
     • Mudcat applies the disadvantage he forgot, as “double disadvantage.” The tie leaves both exhausted. Mudcat: “Debate is exhausting.”
103. 1:44:45 Theresa refuses. Theresa: “I kind of like this crystal here.” Copycat tries again and fails. Theresa: “NEVER! I WILL WRAP MY DEAD BODY AROUND THIS BEFORE YOU HAVE IT!” She elongates and coils around the crystal.
104. 1:45:41 The solstice.
     • Copycat: “Stop this at once! Don’t make me tell mother or father what you did on the summer solstice 25 centuries ago!”
     • She rolls a nat 1. Theresa: “What about what you did on the solstice? Should I remind you?” Copycat takes damage from secondhand embarrassment for a memory she doesn’t actually have.
     • Copycat: “It’s probably extremely embarrassing now that I think about it. Almost crippling even… I’ve never been able to eat frozen yogurt the same.”
105. 1:46:56 Atlas’s last stand.
     • He tries to heal twice and regains one Fighting Spirit.
     • Thea: “just kill it already. We need the crystal, but be gentle and kind and then bury the body out of respect afterwards.”
     • “This is the point that separates the robots from the meat sacks.”
     • His magnetic fists rise, claw into a stalactite above Theresa, cut it loose with a clockwise rotation, and set it down behind her, pinning her between it and him.
     • He charges armless like a quarterback or blocker. The fists fly over Theresa, past him, swing round and grab him from behind as their rockets blast.
     • He uses both power-ups and Unstoppable Force, sacrificing all his remaining HP: “I think this is Atlas’s moment.”
106. 1:49:45 The miss and the second chance.
     • Theresa’s defense is a dirty 20 and the attack misses.
     • Thea screams: “Don’t give up! I sent in reinforcements and none of you use it!”
     • She bundles the Box of Chaos into a small ball of energy, and her ethereal impish claw shoves it into Atlas’s body. “Yo, roll again or else! Somebody better make good use of this energy!”
     • He gets a 25. Theresa needed a nat 20 and rolls 8.
107. 1:51:10 The kill.
     • The Double Sun Cola fuelling Atlas is replaced by yellow-pink fire and blue impish energy.
     • He becomes a ball of metal, energy and fire and smashes into Theresa, the crystal and the stalactite in “a cacophony of just debris, fire, and entrails.”
     • Atlas’s head rolls forward. One eye reads “have a”, the other “nice day.” Then the head explodes.
108. 1:52:02 Theresa burns. Theresa turns out to be incredibly flammable. She catches fire, screeches, shrivels into a dried husk and crumbles into ashes around the base of the crystal.

Ending: salted fries

109. 1:52:02 A giant purple portal opens and the Arbiter and Grandmaster walk through. GM: “Well, I guess they did it, didn’t they?”
110. 1:52:44 The mineral.
     • The Arbiter: “This is perfect. Job well done.” He has Thea put the crystal into a giant apparatus: “If you could just give that a twist for me.”
     • Salt drops out of the crystal onto the Arbiter’s fries, and he snacks in front of them. The vital mineral was salt.
111. 1:53:10 The GM’s judgment.
     • She picks up Atlas’s partly exploded head, tosses it and catches it. “A bit unorthodox in your methods, but important. You have seasoned the Arbiter’s fries very well, empowering him for another battle to come.”
     • She quotes “a favorite story of mine also from outer space”: “every game contains a lesson. It doesn’t matter if the stakes are a trophy, like these salted fries. For all our lives, victory comes to those who best understand themselves.”
     • She closes Atlas’s jaw and starts piecing him back together. “The three of you are interesting. I think the Void has a place for you.”
112. 1:54:18 Back to the Dread Fortress.
     • She claps and they are back in the Dread Fortress.
     • “Out of every team that we have, super friends, redacted, unbreakable, there needs to be a leader.” She asks all three to return for a Deathmatch next week “to truly show us how balls to the walls you really can be.” She winks.
     • “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”