S6 Ep3 — Ether Drifts Part 2 — Team A deathmatch (Atlas v Robbie Clark and the Hunger v Copycat)

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Three teammates, one asteroid, and a single leadership position. Atlas, Robbie Clark and the Hunger and Copycat were pulled out to The Ether Drifts to fight to the death and decide who would lead Team A. What followed included a sticker war, a half-built robot wearing Thea as a backpack, an impersonation of an eldritch mother, a tanker ship named Mateship, and a black hole that swallowed the whole arena, audience included. The team that survived had a name, a leader and a whispered plan to overthrow the people who made them fight.

The Story

Late, as Always

The night opened in a busy back room of The Dread Fortress. The Grandmaster, the Arbiter and Thea were racing to finish the last details: Acolyte invitations, and restocking the concession stands with blue slushies, hot dogs and plizzies. “We’re already late,” the Arbiter grumbled. Thea arrived lugging a giant bowl of goldfish, her “pre-show dinner.” She proudly reported that the arena was clean and “really primed for some blood,” and that she had sent the champions their invitations. She had even reminded them that everyone would be revived, so they could “pull out all the stops” (“Pull them out or stop them?”).

The Arbiter held up the invitations. They were still in his hand. Thea’s jaw dropped. Once the Grandmaster told him to stop teasing her and send them, he sighed, “I’ll do all of the work, as always,” cracked his knuckles, slammed his hands together and ripped a portal open.

Three Champions, None Assembled Correctly

Copycat came through first, and she came through wrong. She was still stuck in the form of Timothy, the mayor, a worm, and complained that she couldn’t get her leg out from behind her neck and that her pinky toe was poking her liver. “It’s like I’m stuck in a Chinese finger trap, except it’s my whole body.” The Arbiter’s fix was to lift her with one hand, rip every molecule of her body apart into individual atoms (“super painful”) and put her back together. “That’s about as good as I can do.” When she asked whether they covered therapy, he told her they “only care about the hard sciences here.” She wanted to see the therapists anyway, “so I could steal their identity.”

The Grandmaster called him “deeply disturbed” and slapped him across the face. The Arbiter asked what was really bothering her, and she told him: “Deathmatch is returning. I want it to be good.” Tearing champions limb from limb was her job, she said, not his. “We are a supportive environment.” Copycat used the moment to demand compensation in the form of a credit card and a social security number. She did not get them.

Next, steam and whirring poured from Atlas’s portal, along with the clank of heavy boots. Atlas arrived “not completely built.” He was a faceplate, two enormous electrified fists, two boots and a pair of tiny arms, with no torso, no legs and no waist, and he stood about knee height. Thea squealed that he was adorable and knocked on him. “Atlas feels breakable,” he admitted. So Thea climbed onto his back as a sort of reinforcing backpack, and Atlas remarked that it felt oddly familiar.

Robbie Clark and the Hunger arrived last. The Arbiter could never remember the name (“two first names. That’s a lot to remember”). Robbie, a small boy in a baseball cap, said they were ready after cartoons, cereal and “puppies,” a word his backpack echoed. He announced the team as “the super redacted Unbreakable friends!” Copycat asked whether he had just said he ate puppies, and Robbie explained that puppies “have a great amount of nutrients for their biomass.” The Grandmaster froze, declared it “an internal team thing,” and went off to make sure Doug stayed far away from the arena.

The stakes were simple: the winner would name the team and lead it. Thea promised stickers for everyone. Atlas then ran two tiny pipes into his Thea backpack, made a soft noise and retracted them. Asked what that was, he said only: “You will find out once we begin the mayhem and death.”

Into the Drifts

The Arbiter’s portal dropped the trio onto an asteroid beside a huge gaseous planet, where gravity was lighter than at the Fortress. The Acolytes watched from a floating grandstand. The Grandmaster charged the champions to prove themselves, since the winner might one day lead “perhaps my greatest armies as we continue to defend the Void.” Robbie found it hard to punch people he thought were so cool, “but somebody’s got to do it. Friendly fire protocols disabled.” The Arbiter spread his white glowing wings, and the crowd responded by throwing their grandmothers into space.

Before the fight began, the champions had to settle Atlas’s anatomy. He wears pants, despite having no legs, and he has no butthole. “It is a port. It is just not a butthole.”

Stickers, Backpacks and Sympathy

Atlas struck first with a machine-gun barrage of stickers fired into the mouths of the Hunger’s tendrils. It was a trap. Robbie opened his backpack to reveal the Hunger’s “nest of the abyss and the shadow,” along with a sticker book the pair had been filling “for eons and eons.” The Hunger gently dragged the stickers inside. “Our power grows as does our collection.” Atlas had predicted this, and with the backpack open he launched the biggest Michelangelo sticker straight at the nest. Robbie clipped the bag shut, and the sticker landed harmlessly on the outside.

Atlas then grabbed the backpack and wrenched it off. It turned out to be organic: veiny, dripping and lashing as if severed. Robbie went blank and lost. “Uh, mister? Where am I? … This is not after school. I just want to go home.” It was an attempt to crack Atlas’s iron heart, and Atlas’s programming answered:

“Small child, subject, detection, sympathy required, lost child, 404 error, fuck’s not found.” (Atlas)

Robbie tilted his cap down. “Man, I really thought that was going to work on you, but you should have seen season one.” A new backpack erupted from the flesh of his back, showing he was no human child at all. The Hunger declared that they were unified “before the first waves crashed against the first beaches” and would remain so “when the last star dies in the sky.” He told the stolen backpack in Atlas’s grip to “Fetch.” It became a giant insect with baby hands, a tiny baseball cap and a fly mouth, bit Atlas and skittered back to Robbie’s shoulder carrying Atlas’s detached arm.

Copycat, meanwhile, was taking notes on the Hunger’s philosophy: its hunger “is for friendship and biomass, which kind of is friendship but on the most intimate of scales.” Then she twirled into a crisp chef’s outfit and served the Hunger Candyland gummy dots, a candy banned for being too dangerously chewy to breathe around. She also stole the sticker book. Her attempt to scrape the stickers off failed, because Robbie had used the special Gorilla glue from the drawer, the one that “smells funny.”

Thea coughed up a die “like a cat coughing up a hairball.” The hosts placed bets: the Grandmaster backed Robbie, and the Arbiter backed Copycat, reasoning that Atlas lacked “the stature of a leader anymore.” “Heights? That’s how you’re basing leadership?” the Grandmaster said. “Every day I like you less and less.”

Fatlas and the Eldritch Mother

Atlas came apart, spun each piece at high speed and rebuilt himself around Thea. To the wail of an electric guitar, he encased her in his shell, making her his core and body. The result was a tiny iron Thea with electric wings and rings of energy around her arms. “I’m ready for this! I was born ready!” she cried. Atlas announced: “We are no longer Atlas or Thea. We are… Fatlas.” When Copycat claimed she had heard “fatass,” Atlas blew three puppy-cheering Acolytes into piles of ash (“We’ll put them back together later”).

Robbie, wounded by his former friends’ betrayal, activated his true power. The Hunger’s tendrils stabbed into his eyes, and his body floated up, “very Akira-esque,” with mouths where his eyes had been. He fired beams of “friendship eldritch energy.” A perfect natural 20 scorched Fatlas’s shell, and grabbing his book back left Copycat with a paper cut between her fingers, “the worst kind.” She slapped him for it.

Since nobody would give her a band-aid, Copycat dropped into downward dog and became the Hunger’s mother, complete with curled tentacles and a cigarette. “Hunger! What have I told you about combining yourself with… creatures from other dimensions?” The Hunger protested that Robbie was really cool. Mom warned that his father would bring out the Eldritch Belt and asked why he couldn’t be more like his brother. “Mom, my brother’s an asshole.” “Your brother’s a dimension conqueror.” The guilt landed hard: “You’re grounded… No supper for six whole centuries.” Robbie deflated and sank back to the ground.

Mom then turned on Fatlas (“An overgrown can opener?”) and reached in to pull Thea out. The chassis snapped shut on her tentacle like a mousetrap. “The only thing this can opens is cans of whoop-ass.” The Grandmaster scored it ten out of ten, then told the Arbiter he had never managed a comeback that good and blamed his Italian leather shoes. “You leave my shoes out of this.”

Snacks, a Slip, and the Floor Is Lava

During the break, the Acolytes worked through nachos and Double Sun Cola while the Arbiter scarfed a giant plate of chili fries. The Grandmaster asked him to scooch away so he wouldn’t fart near her. “I’m the master of time and space. You think I can’t control my own bowel?” Moments later, as she talked over him, he muttered, “I should have let the Shadow King just, I should have.” “I’m sorry, what?” “Nothing, nothing.”

The Acolytes chanted for chaos, and lava bubbled up from the asteroid’s craters. Robbie found high ground, having learned its importance “from that Star Wars movie.” Fatlas tried to fly, but Thea’s little wings could not lift a metal body. His feet burned, and his pants, technically Thea’s pants now, became hot pants.

Knock First

The Arbiter snapped his fingers, and The Box of Chaos crashed into the lava like a meteor, blasting a column of pink and yellow fire into space. Atlas opened it and found the box’s shadowy, yellow-eyed resident. “I was in the middle of a nap. You gonna knock first or what?” Atlas shut the lid and knocked. He offered two severed Copycat tentacles, which the creature cooked in a full Monster Hunter World-style cooking montage (“Tastes like puppies. Delicious”). In return, Atlas got a small blue pill, his “boner medicine,” to keep him going “all night long” (the Grandmaster warned him that a deathmatch lasting longer than four hours was his problem). When the Grandmaster called it a suppository, Atlas pointed out he had no port back there either. Having no mouth, he let Thea swallow it for both of them. “I’m a real boy!” Then he picked up the whole box and hurled it at Copycat. “Atlas, initiate yeet protocol.” His parting advice was “Don’t forget to knock.”

Robbie talked the quaking Hunger back from its mother-induced shame (“Hey, that’s not your mom… Do you remember when she made lemon squares?”) and chose to let the pain drive him. He kicked the box open, traded a copy of Everybody Poops from his world, and received a ring that once belonged to the Arbiter himself, which made the wearer master of time and space for a moment. He tried to kick “Mom” in the leg and missed, then hurt himself, and finally landed a forbidden move he had learned in school: a kick right in the nuts. “Sorry for using bad language.”

Mom fought back by calling Robbie’s real mother “mom to mom,” but got only a dial tone. Her carrier, Eldridge T, had no service in this hell, and the Arbiter recommended Dread Fortress Mobile, for which Stuart could set her up. Robbie saw through the act anyway: “You wear an excellent mask, but it is a mask.” Copycat’s next disguise was the Box of Chaos itself, creature included, face to face with the original. “Hey, good looking, what’s cooking?” She slipped it a credit card that Thea had supposedly been given to buy the Grandmaster Taco Bell. The box was out of rings, so the Grandmaster threw in Doug’s collar. Copycat knocked, traded the collar back, and walked away with the Shield of the Golden King. She then became a single floating arm to wield it. It was the Arbiter’s right arm, and it barrelled into Atlas’s head.

Mateship

A second chaos event sent the Acolytes hurling junk into the arena: magnets, nacho plates, an Ethernet-cable lasso and whole anvils. Copycat hid behind her shield. Atlas pulled the magnets together and introduced Robbie to what he had learned on planet Australia, “the one thing greater than friendship.” A giant tanker ship called Mateship formed around Copycat’s shield-arm, which became its figurehead. Atlas threw everything he had into the attack and slammed the ship down on both rivals. Then he leapt after it on Thea’s newly huge electric fairy wings and drove it down again, burying that end of the arena under scrap. “Thank you for raising the bar, Atlas,” the Grandmaster said.

From under the wreckage, the Hunger peeled itself into an exoskeleton and lifted Robbie’s limp body. It skittered forward like a spider in a film reel with missing frames and coated Atlas in spores. Atlas ejected Thea out the back like an escape pod just before they struck. For the first time, Atlas felt cold air. A neural network spread across him, his systems flashed red, and he grew a mouth (and, yes, an exit port). He was now one with Robbie and the Hunger.

Black Hole

Robbie told Copycat that he considered them friends, that he would probably recycle her biomass so she could live again, and that the hosts “seem like they’re the real bad guys.” Still, rules were rules: “So I must consume you. But we are friends.” Exhausted, he missed every attack and was left barely standing.

Copycat flipped off the Arbiter and the Grandmaster, dropped her shield like a mic, and became a black hole. She poured the rest of her life into swallowing the entire arena, audience included. Goblins, chinchillas, Acolytes and their ashes all went in. Robbie and the Hunger “have seen the void before” and did not move.

“I will remain no one. But everyone, on my own terms.” (Copycat)

She collapsed into stardust.

The Unbreakable Redacted Friends

The Grandmaster landed on the empty arena floor, congratulated Robbie Clark and the Hunger, and clapped her two fallen champions back to life. Copycat returned as glittering stardust, and Atlas returned in his original, no-longer-Thea-ized form. She granted Robbie leadership. After a dark look at his hosts, he named the team the Unbreakable Redacted Friends, to be written on the stone itself as an official commissioned team of the arena.

Then two of the Hunger’s tendrils settled on his teammates’ shoulders, and Robbie whispered: “We’re going to take these motherfuckers down.” Copycat felt she had every right after being ripped apart and reassembled. Atlas’s eye display read: “New directive: take these motherfuckers down.” Unaware, the Grandmaster closed the night by praising the drive to push for power: “You will discover who you are and who your friends really are.”

Dried Blood

With the champions sent home, the hosts confirmed the Unbreakable Redacted Friends as the team’s official name. Teams B and C will not be told it in advance. The Arbiter also took a moment to address Stuart’s career ambitions: “Stuart, it’s never going to fucking happen.” A promotion was briefly offered in reply and immediately withdrawn.

Notable Moments

• The Arbiter “fixed” Copycat’s worm problem by splitting her into individual atoms and reassembling her.
• Atlas arrived knee-high and half-built, then fused with Thea into Fatlas.
• Copycat impersonated the Hunger’s mother and grounded it for six centuries.
• The Box of Chaos resident demanded that people knock and cooked a tentacle sashimi that “tastes like puppies.”
• Atlas built a tanker ship called Mateship out of thrown magnets and dropped it on his teammates twice.
• The newly named team secretly vowed to take down the Grandmaster and the Arbiter.

Memorable Quotes

• Atlas: “It is a port. It is just not a butthole.”
• Robbie Clark: “Man, I really thought that was going to work on you, but you should have seen season one.”
• The Hunger: “The hunger is for friendship and biomass, which kind of is friendship but on the most intimate of scales.”
• Copycat (as the Hunger’s mother): “What are you supposed to be? An overgrown can opener?”
• Atlas: “The only thing this can opens is cans of whoop-ass.”
• The Box of Chaos creature: “I was in the middle of a nap. You gonna knock first or what?”
• The Arbiter: “I’m the master of time and space. You think I can’t control my own bowel?”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Deathmatch is returning. I want it to be good… We are a supportive environment.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Robbie Clark and the Hunger (guest, “Cinder” inferred). Appears as a small boy in a baseball cap with a backpack. The backpack is the Hunger: a fleshy nest of fangs, jaws and tendrils “of the abyss and the shadow.” Robbie “is not a human child.”

• They claim to have been “unified before the first waves crashed against the first beaches.” The Hunger “is for friendship and biomass.” They eat all biomass equally, puppies included.
• They keep a sticker book collected “for eons,” stuck down with Gorilla glue.
• Powers: regrows the backpack; turns pieces of itself into creatures (“Fetch”); a unified form where tendrils enter Robbie’s eyes and he floats, with “mouths for eyes”; friendship eldritch beams; spores that grow a neural network, feeling and a mouth in a target and make it an ally.
• Family (per Copycat’s impersonation, unconfirmed): a mother who made lemon squares (Robbie confirms “that was real”), a father with “the Eldritch Belt,” and a brother who is a dimension conqueror and “an asshole” (said by the Hunger).
• Item gained: the Arbiter’s ring.
• Won; named leader of the Unbreakable Redacted Friends. He privately calls the Arbiter and Grandmaster “the real bad guys” and vows to take them down.

Atlas (guest). A robot/construct with a faceplate, huge electric fists and heavy boots. No mouth (until this fight) and no butthole: “it is a port.” He wears pants.

• He arrived “not completely built”: just boots, head and tiny arms.
• He combined with Thea as “Fatlas” (“Phatlas,” per Copycat).
• Abilities: Unstoppable Surge, Immovable Force; “yeet protocol”; magnetic energy.
• Says he learned about “Mateship” on planet Australia.
• Item gained: the blue pill.
• Converted by the Hunger’s spores: given feeling, a mouth and an exit port. Allied with Robbie. Revived in his original form.

Copycat (guest, “Kat” inferred; “she”). A shapeshifter who wears a paper bag. At the start she was stuck as Timothy, the mayor (a worm), until the Arbiter broke her into atoms and reassembled her.

• Forms this episode: a chef; the Hunger’s mother; the Box of Chaos creature; the Arbiter’s floating right arm; a black hole.
• Carrier: “Eldridge T” (in her mom persona).
• Gave the box the Grandmaster’s/Thea’s credit card. Got Doug’s collar, then the Shield of the Golden King.
• Died by imploding as a black hole; reborn as glittery stardust. Motto: “I will remain no one. But everyone, on my own terms.”

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). Flying (winged) helper at the Dread Fortress who eats goldfish.

• Forgot to send the invitations.
• Served as Atlas’s backpack, then his core (“Fatlas”). Swallowed the blue pill for him and was ejected as an escape pod.
• Had a card for buying the Grandmaster Taco Bell (per Copycat).

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Fixes Copycat by atomizing her. Doesn’t believe in therapy (“hard sciences”).
• Slapped by the Grandmaster.
• Has a sponsor for his betting; bet on Copycat. Wears handcrafted Italian leather shoes. Ate chili fries.
• “Master of time and space.”
• Nearly said “I should have let the Shadow King just…”
• Summons the Box of Chaos. A ring of his came out of the box.
• Says Dread Fortress Mobile gives him five bars.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• “Deathmatch is returning.” Calls the arena “a supportive environment.” Has torn champions apart “hundreds of times.”
• Wants Team A’s leader to champion “perhaps my greatest armies… to defend the Void.”
• Bet on Robbie. Protects Doug from the Hunger and gave away Doug’s collar.
• Revived Copycat and Atlas, and commissioned the team.

The Box of Chaos creature (Mudcat). A shadowy figure with claws and yellow eyes. Wants people to knock, naps, and says he “doesn’t get paid enough.” Cooks traded tentacles as sashimi (“tastes like puppies”). Took the credit card. Says the box has been “working forever now.”

Doug the pug. The Grandmaster’s pug; he rolls dice. His collar grants pug swiftness.

Stuart. Blamed for Foundry/IT problems. Can set people up with Dread Fortress Mobile. Practices magic tricks in the courtyard. Is denied a promotion (Dried Blood).

Dr. Octor. A specialist who “takes too long.”

Timothy, the mayor. The worm form Copycat was stuck in.

Acolytes named: Commodore, Cassander, “Build up” (blasted by Atlas); Family IT Dude, Gator, Lux, Christina (squashed); Scrib (in a blue slushy); Rikon (magnets); Kristen (consumed). All names uncertain.

Places

• The Dread Fortress (prep room, concession stands, courtyard).
• The Ether Drifts arena: an asteroid by a gaseous planet (“somewhat inhabited”), with low gravity and a floating grandstand.
• The VIP “splash zone” front-row stands.
• “Planet Australia” (Atlas).
• Robbie’s “world,” where Everybody Poops comes from.

Items

• Box of Chaos. Lands like a meteor with a pink and yellow fire column. A second trade costs fatigue.
• Blue pill: raises the fatigue limit.
• The Arbiter’s ring: master of time and space for one round; attacks against the wearer have disadvantage. There’s only one.
• Doug’s collar: advantage on mettle saves.
• Shield of the Golden King: +1 mettle and health; shatters on a natural 1 defense.
• Other: the Robbie/Hunger sticker book; Candyland gummy dots (banned); Everybody Poops; the Michelangelo sticker; the Mateship tanker; the Grandmaster’s/Thea’s credit card.
• Concessions: blue slushies, hot dogs, plizzies, nachos, Double Sun Cola, Mang Cola.

Lore statements

• Team A = the Unbreakable Redacted Friends, an official commissioned team of the arena. Its name is written “on the stone itself,” and it will be sent on missions.
• Teams are framed as possible leaders of the Grandmaster’s armies “as we continue to defend the Void.”
• Champions are revived after the Deathmatch (Thea and the Grandmaster).
• The Arbiter’s line about the Shadow King (1:03:35) is cut off unexplained. The blurb says the Shadow King is “scattered but alive.”

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — last-minute prep in the Dread Fortress

1. 0:08:15 Caustic Phoenix opens: “Welcome, Acolytes, to the arena!” The focus is on Team A, “soon to be determined what their actual team name is”. Tonight the team members find out who will lead.
2. 0:08:40 In a busy room of the Dread Fortress, the Grandmaster, Thea and the Arbiter rush to finish the last details: Acolyte invites, and restocking the concession stands with blue slushies, hot dogs and plizzies. The Arbiter: “We’re already late.”
3. 0:09:14 They call for Thea. She has been lugging around a giant bowl of goldfish, her “pre-show dinner.” The Arbiter tells her the Grandmaster “has instructed me to instruct you to make sure that all this shit gets done.”
4. 0:09:46 Thea says she cleaned the arena (“really primed for some blood”) and sent the champions their invitations. She reminded them that everyone will be revived, so they can “pull out all the stops” (“Pull them out or stop them?”). The Arbiter holds up the invitations: they’re still in his hand. Thea’s jaw drops. The Grandmaster tells him not to tease her and to send them now (speaker inferred).
5. 0:10:40 “I’ll do all of the work, as always.” The Arbiter cracks his knuckles, slams his hands together and rips open a portal. The champions step through. He asks, “Are you guys ready to die or…?”

The champions arrive

6. 0:11:06 — Copycat, still a worm. Copycat is still stuck as a worm in the form of Timothy, the mayor: “I can’t get my leg out from behind my neck… I think my pinky toe is poking my liver.” She asks for a chiropractor or Dr. Octor. The Grandmaster says Dr. Octor takes too long and asks the Arbiter to do “little magically thingies with your fingers.” Copycat: “It’s like I’m stuck in a Chinese finger trap, except it’s my whole body.”
7. 0:12:07 — The Arbiter’s fix. He raises her with one hand. Then he rips every molecule of her body apart into individual atoms, “super painful,” and puts her back together. “That’s about as good as I can do.”
8. 0:12:38 — Therapy. Copycat asks whether they cover therapy. The Arbiter: “We only care about the hard sciences here… therapy doesn’t work.” Copycat wants to see the therapists anyway “so I could steal their identity.” The Grandmaster says they have “a plethora of resources.”
9. 0:13:12 — The slap. The Grandmaster calls the Arbiter “deeply disturbed” and slaps him across the face: “This is a Deathmatch. You need to be pumping them up.” The Arbiter asks what this is really about; “you seem on edge tonight.” She answers: “Deathmatch is returning. I want it to be good. … I have torn champions limb from limb hundreds of times. That’s not your job… We are a supportive environment.” Copycat demands compensation: “Please give me your credit card and your social security number.” The request is declined.
10. 0:14:25 — Tiny Atlas. Steam, hissing and whirring come from Atlas’s portal, along with the sound of heavy metal boots. Atlas comes through with only his faceplate, his enormous electrified fists, two boots and “a pair of tiny arms”: no torso, no legs, no waist. He is “not completely built” and about knee height. Thea: “Oh my god! You’re adorable!” She knocks on him. Atlas: “Atlas feels breakable.”
11. 0:15:48 — The Thea backpack. Thea climbs onto Atlas’s back like a small backpack to reinforce him. Atlas: “It’s almost like another pair of characters that were on the deathmatch a while ago. I feel very familiar now.”
12. 0:16:27 — Robbie Clark and the Hunger. The Arbiter can never remember the name: “He’s got two names… two first names.” Robbie: “I remember everybody’s name from my class.” He says they’re ready after watching cartoons and eating cereal, and adds “puppies,” which the Hunger echoes. He announces the team as “the super redacted Unbreakable friends!” The Grandmaster says it would fit on a cape. Atlas: “I don’t wear a cape. I wear a backpack.”
13. 0:17:38 — Puppies. Copycat: “Did you just say you ate puppies?” Atlas: “Atlas cannot eat. He still does not have a mouth.” Robbie: puppies “have a great amount of nutrients for their biomass.” The Grandmaster freezes, calls it “an internal team thing,” and goes to make sure Doug doesn’t come near the arena.
14. 0:18:23 — The stakes. The winner gets to choose the team’s name and become team leader. The Grandmaster says the leader might even ban dog-eating on the team, and Thea promises stickers to everyone. Atlas runs two tiny pipes into the Thea backpack; there’s a soft sound and the pipes retract. Asked what that was, Atlas says: “You will find out once we begin the mayhem and death.”
15. 0:19:18 — The arena. The Arbiter’s sound wave opens a portal to the Ether Drifts. The champions stand on an asteroid beside a large gaseous planet, where gravity is lower than at the Dread Fortress (“We never really talked about what the gravity is at the Dread Fortress, but it’s different here”). The Acolytes watch from a floating grandstand.
16. 0:20:03 — The Grandmaster’s charge. “Prove yourself worthy to lead this trio, for it is not just this team that you will champion, but perhaps my greatest armies as we continue to defend the Void… destroy your teammates.” Robbie: “It’s going to be hard to punch all these people that I think are so cool… Friendly fire protocols disabled.”
17. 0:21:10 The Arbiter spreads his white glowing wings and asks if they’re ready for blood. Acolytes throw their grandmothers into space, rip off their shirts and sling beers.
18. 0:21:50 — Pants. Atlas left his dice “in my pants, which are no longer attached to my body,” so the Arbiter rolls for him. Copycat: “You have no mouth, but you wear pants.” The table recalls that Atlas has no butthole. Atlas: “It is a port. It is just not a butthole. … That is where I keep all of my junk. All of my junk inside my trunk.” Atlas has the highest initiative and goes first.

Round 1

19. 0:22:43 — Sticker barrage. Atlas patters toward the Hunger’s many fangs and jaws. He fires a machine-gun barrage of stickers into the mouth of each tendril. He misses.
20. 0:24:27 — The sticker book. Robbie: “You have fallen for our greatest trap.” He opens his backpack to reveal the Hunger’s “nest of the abyss and the shadow,” plus a big sticker book that Robbie and the Hunger have been filling “for eons and eons.” The Hunger drags the stickers gently into the book. Hunger: “Our power grows as does our collection.”
21. 0:25:12 — The Michelangelo sticker. Atlas: “As predicted… you have opened your backpack and made it vulnerable.” He loads a huge orange 90s pizza-turtle sticker with a bandana (“the biggest Michelangelo sticker”) onto his fist. He spends a power-up and his Unstoppable Surge and launches it at the nest. Robbie clips the backpack shut (“Clip”), and the sticker sticks harmlessly to the outside. “Thwarted by a child’s backpack.”
22. 0:28:04 — Separation anxiety. With the sticker on his fist, Atlas grabs the backpack and wrenches it away. It turns out to be organic: veiny, sticky, dripping fleshy tendrils that lash out as if severed. This hits. Robbie and the Hunger now have “separation anxiety.”
23. 0:30:17 — The lost child. Robbie freezes and looks confused. “Uh, mister? Where am I? … This is not after school.” He walks up to Atlas, points at the crowds and fires, and says, “I just want to go home.” This is an emotional attack to “crack that iron heart.” Atlas’s programming: “Small child, subject, detection, sympathy required, lost child, 404 error, fuck’s not found.” The attack fails.
24. 0:32:39 — The backpack regrows. Robbie tilts his cap down: “Man, I really thought that was going to work on you, but you should have seen season one.” A new backpack erupts from the flesh of his back, revealing he is not a human child. Hunger: “Robbie and the Hunger are the one. We cannot be separated… We were unified before the first waves crashed against the first beaches, and we shall still be together when the last star dies in the sky.” The maw turns back into a backpack and keeps some of the stickers.
25. 0:33:28 — “Fetch.” Robbie tells the stolen backpack Atlas is holding to “Fetch.” It turns into a giant backpack-insect with baby hands, a little baseball cap like Robbie’s and a fly mouth. It bites Atlas’s hand, turns into “a weird handshake face,” and skitters back to sit on Robbie’s shoulder, holding Atlas’s detached arm. It hits, with a status effect. Robbie: “That’s what you get for not falling for my sympathy trick… I am the unifying force.”
26. 0:35:24 Copycat has the Hunger repeat its “first waves” line and takes notes. The Hunger adds that “friendship is the most powerful power in the universe.” Its hunger “is for friendship and biomass, which kind of is friendship but on the most intimate of scales.” The Grandmaster: “I’m learning so much about friendship today.”
27. 0:36:09 — Candyland gummy dots. Copycat twirls into a crisp chef’s outfit with a tray and serves the Hunger Candyland gummy dots, which were banned and pulled from production for being too dangerously chewy to breathe around. It hits, and Robbie is stuck chewing.
28. 0:38:36 — The stolen sticker book. Copycat steals the sticker album out of the backpack, which hits: “It’s my sticker book now.” Robbie: “That’s not part of the game!” She tries to scrape the stickers off with her thumbnail as a “crushing loss” status. It fails because they’re stuck fast. Robbie: they used “the special glue… hidden in the drawer… because it smells funny.” It’s Gorilla glue. “If you put it in your nose, you have to go to the hospital.” Copycat keeps the book under her arm.
29. 0:40:58 Thea, still on Atlas’s back, coughs up a d20 “like a cat coughing up a hairball” and rolls a 10.
30. 0:41:41 — The bet. The Arbiter “told my sponsor I wouldn’t take any more bets.” The Grandmaster backs Robbie Clark for his invincible backpack and his ready-made team name. The Arbiter backs Copycat, who “might have what it takes to annoy the rest of them to death.” Atlas, he says, is too tiny to have “the stature of a leader anymore.” Grandmaster: “Heights? That’s how you’re basing leadership? … Every day I like you less and less.”

Round 2

31. 0:42:52 — Fatlas. Atlas separates into his pieces, spins each one at high speed to shake off the status, and reassembles around the Thea backpack (“I feel like Iron Man”). Then, to the sound of an electric guitar, he pulls apart his shell and encases Thea in it, making her an Iron-Man-style core and makeshift body. Thea (probably): “I’m ready for this! I was born ready!” He heals, using Thea’s “vitality.” The Arbiter calls that “all that made up stuff”; the Grandmaster adds “Goldfish… lots of goldfish.” The result is a tiny iron Thea with electric wings and rings of energy around the arms, like a fisticuff monk with interchangeable wrist weapons. Thea (probably): “I’m voting for you, Atlas.” Atlas: “We are no longer Atlas or Thea. We are… Fatlas.”
32. 0:45:45 — Three Acolytes blasted. Copycat claims she heard “fatass.” Atlas asks to blast whoever said it in the audience. The Grandmaster has him pick three Acolytes from chat (“with that nat 20”; which roll she meant is unclear). He spares “down with the puppy killer” and blows up Commodore, Cassander and “Build up” (names unclear), who cheered for the puppy killing. They explode into piles of ash: “We’ll put them back together later.” Copycat says she’ll spell it “Phatlas,” P-H. Atlas: “The only word that he knows is pain.”
33. 0:47:25 — Robbie’s grievance. “Looking at these two once friends, now traitors… You don’t care about my stickers.” Copycat’s line is the puppies: piglets are “a gray area.” Robbie: “I don’t put different biomass above the rest… All biomass is delicious and it is all equal in power.” Atlas opens his faceplate to show Thea inside. Robbie: “Just because you can sit in a driver’s seat doesn’t mean you know how to build a car.”
34. 0:49:36 — The power of friendship. “I’m also mostly going to kill you, and then eat your bodies, and then you shall become one with me, because that seems to be the best way to make friends.” The Arbiter: “That’s just standard leadership.” Robbie activates his superpower: the tendrils stab into Robbie Clark’s eyes and form an insular tube, and his body floats up “very Akira-esque.” “We are truly together.” He spins and fires beams of “friendship eldritch energy”, two at Atlas and two at Copycat. A natural 20 lands on Atlas’s “medley outer shell” and restores some of Robbie’s fighting spirit. Against Copycat, grabbing his book back hard gives her a paper cut “in between my fingers. That’s the worst kind”; the push misses. Copycat slaps him: “Get your hands off… I need a band-aid.” Hunger: “All shall become one.” Atlas tells Copycat she’ll be destroyed long before infection sets in.
35. 0:53:04 Robbie: “I just wanted to be friends, and then you guys started being mean.” Copycat calls Fatlas “a casserole.” Robbie: “I love casserole.” Robbie is now in his unified form: “He’s got mouths for eyes.”

Round 2 — Copycat becomes the Hunger’s mother

36. 0:54:11 Since nobody will give her a band-aid, Copycat goes into downward dog and transforms into the Hunger’s mother. Atlas describes her as the Hunger with curling rings in its tentacles and a cigarette in one of the mouths (“An old coffee!”).
37. 0:55:07 — The scolding. Mom: “Hunger! What have I told you about combining yourself with… creatures from other dimensions?” Hunger: “But mom, Robbie’s really cool.” “What am I supposed to tell your father?” “Tell him I’m happy for once, mom.” Mom says the father “is gonna bring the Eldritch Belt” and asks why he can’t be like his brother. Hunger: “Mom, my brother’s an asshole.” Mom: “Your brother’s a dimension conqueror.” Hunger: “I want to just be friends with dimensions.”
38. 0:56:33 — Parental disappointment. It hits as a status effect. “You’re grounded… No supper for six whole centuries.” Robbie deflates and lands back on the ground.
39. 0:57:42 — “Overgrown can opener.” Mom to Atlas: “What are you supposed to be? An overgrown can opener?” Her tentacle attack hits; Foundry lags and the Grandmaster blames Stuart. Her tentacle grabs Atlas by the neck to pull Thea out, but the chassis snaps shut on it like a mousetrap. “You’re a bad little can opener, aren’t ya?” Atlas: “The only thing this can opens is cans of whoop-ass.” The Grandmaster scores the comeback 10/10 and the Arbiter 6/10. The Grandmaster says he’s never delivered a great comeback: “Maybe if you weren’t wearing those Italian leather shoes, you’d be a little faster.” Arbiter: “You leave my shoes out of this.” “They’re handcrafted.”
40. 1:00:46 — Break. The Grandmaster goes to hide Doug and promises chaos when they come back. (The break is cut from the mp3.)

After the break

41. 1:00:48 — Concessions. The Grandmaster asks the Acolytes what they’re eating: nachos and Double Sun Cola (“always a power of the sun”). An Acolyte, Scrib, is “dispersing your molecules into a blue slushy… Perhaps when you come back, you’re reborn part blue slushy.” The Arbiter scarfs a giant plate of chili fries.
42. 1:02:24 The Grandmaster rolls the end-of-round d20 for the busy Thea and asks the Arbiter to scooch away so he doesn’t fart in her area. She rolls a 2, “distracted by your smell.” Arbiter: “I’m the master of time and space. You think I can’t control my own bowel?”
43. 1:03:31 — The slip. The Grandmaster talks over him about the chaos event. Arbiter: “I should have let the Shadow King just, I should have.” Grandmaster: “I’m sorry, what?” “Nothing, nothing.” The Acolytes stomp and chant “chaos.”

Chaos event — the floor is lava (1:04:17)

44. Robbie rolls a 4. Lava bubbles up from craters and the floor becomes lava: “find a higher ground to protect your little toesies.” Robbie: “I learned about how important the high ground was from that Star Wars movie. Also from lava.” Atlas gets advantage from Thea’s electric wings but rolls a natural 1: “you gave her wings, but they are too tiny to lift up this metal body.” His feet burn. His pants, “technically Thea’s pants now,” become “hot pants.”

The Box of Chaos (1:06:31)

45. The Arbiter snaps his fingers. The Box of Chaos crashes down like a meteor into the lava, and its lid flips open, shooting a column of pink and yellow fire into space. Sacrificing an action to it gives a magic item: “like 80% are fine… You get what you get and you don’t get upset… like one of those tattoo machines.”

Round 3

46. 1:07:40 Atlas got his arm back with the status effect. Robbie’s stolen backpack “became part of me again, as all things do inevitably.”
47. 1:08:19 — Knock first. Atlas opens the box. A shadowy figure with claws and yellow eyes: “I was in the middle of a nap. You gonna knock first or what?” Atlas slams it shut, then knocks. He asks for weapons and channels Thea: “Gib.” (“Give, give!” echoes Thea inside.) His hand becomes a juicer that squeezes out bits of the Hunger stuck to him, and his chassis gives up two severed Copycat tendrils. He merges them: “Shapeshifting Eldritch Horror.” The box creature puts on a headband and a chef’s knife and, in a Monster Hunter World-style cooking montage, serves the tentacles as sashimi: “Tastes like puppies. Delicious.” Atlas: “I have no mouth.” “That sucks to suck.”
48. 1:10:40 — The blue pill. Atlas gets a small blue pill that extends his fatigue limit by one (“keep you going all night long… if your deathmatch lasts longer than four hours… get that checked out”). Atlas looks at everyone in turn: “I have no mouth.” Grandmaster: “It’s a suppository.” “I have no port back there.” He opens his mask and gives the pill to Thea, who swallows it for both of them: “I’m a real boy!” Atlas: every time he comes to Deathmatch he has no mouth. Arbiter: “We’re a mouth-heavy show.” Grandmaster: “Cloacas for everyone.”
49. 1:12:21 — Yeet protocol. “Feeling Thea’s stiff energy,” Atlas picks up the Box of Chaos and hurls it at Copycat, pretending she did it (status effect “anger the box”). The box protests (“Whoa, you can’t just pick me up”; speaker uncertain). “Atlas, initiate yeet protocol.” It hits. Copycat (still as the mom): “Did you throw chest at me?” Atlas: “Don’t forget to knock.” Atlas folds his gloves back so Thea can flip the middle finger, then heals (“Fuck yeah!” “The power of fuck power”).
50. 1:14:40 — “That’s not your mom.” The Hunger is coiled up and quaking. Robbie: “Hey, that’s not your mom… Do you remember when she made lemon squares? … Let me take care of this one.” The Hunger withdraws into the backpack. Robbie keeps the status effect on purpose: “I’m going to let the pain drive me.”
51. 1:15:52 — Everybody Poops. Robbie kicks the box open. The dizzy creature: “Why does nobody want to knock?” Robbie offers “an ancient tome full of secrets, the secrets of where all things end”: a book called Everybody Poops, “from my world,” which teaches “that even a robot like Atlas has an M[outh?].” He gets a ring that once belonged to the Arbiter himself: for one round the wearer is master of all time and space, and attacks against them have disadvantage. He puts it on his finger.
52. 1:17:33 — Kicks. “I’m gonna kick you in the leg, because I’m just a little boy.” The first kick misses. The second is a natural 1, and Robbie hurts himself and gains fatigue. Then “the secret move”: a power-attack kick in the nuts. “I’m not even supposed to do this move. I learned that in school.” It hits: “Right up mama’s nuts.” Robbie: “Sorry for using bad language.” Mom: “First my face, I got chest in the face, and now I get a foot in the nuts… what is wrong with you kids?”
53. 1:20:30 — Mom’s turn. “I made you lemon squares.” She pulls out a cell phone and calls Robbie’s own mother (“I’ve been to a million dimensions, sweetie. Mom to mom”). It’s just a dial tone. “Is there no service in this hell, pal?” Arbiter: “I have five bars right here… Who’s your carrier?” “Eldridge T.” “You need to subscribe to Dread Fortress Mobile.” Grandmaster: Stuart can connect her; “He’s always out in the courtyard trying to practice his magic tricks.”
54. 1:22:20 She tries to grab Robbie’s ear and misses; “I snap my hat on extra tight.” Robbie: “You wear an excellent mask, but it is a mask.” Copycat (as herself): “You’re right. It is a mask.” She tries to lick Robbie (“Give me your face. You got something on your face”). He dodges and her tongue flaps in the wind.
55. 1:24:44 — Doug. The Grandmaster brings out Doug the pug (jingling collar, untrimmed nails), who rolls a 9 (“He’s warming up”). Arbiter: “Hey, Doug, I hear the hunger really likes puppies. You should go say hi.” “Don’t you dare.” She grabs Doug: “There’s no dog up here.”

Round 4

56. 1:25:33 Atlas heals twice. His form grows smoother and sleeker, more form-fitting to Thea (“little hills all around,” says the Grandmaster), less like his usual chunky “Warhammerverse” look. He jumps on Robbie’s back and rips out chunks of tendril “like plucking weeds,” but it fails. Robbie: “you can’t hurt my feelings or my body right now because I’m helping my friend.” The Hunger regenerates too fast for the damage to matter.
57. 1:28:25 — Hulk fling. “In a voice of a thousand generations”: “Wait.” Tendrils fling Atlas far away like the Hulk getting knocked across the sky (Robbie’s last power-up), and it hits. “I am the greatest.” Atlas smashes into the VIP stands, the “splash zone,” squashing Acolytes Family IT Dude, Gator, Lux and Christina (names uncertain), who try to catch him. The whole front row, in white D20 Deathmatch T-shirts, is sprayed with blood.
58. 1:29:51 Robbie punches his little fists together “for real” and clears the Hunger’s sadness. The Hunger roars out and bites Copycat’s fake tentacle and her “fake Eldritch mom hair,” hitting with both. “We are The Hunger and Robbie Clark. There were never anything before us and at the end we shall be all that is. And you are not our mom.”
59. 1:31:31 — Copycat becomes the box. “Oh God, no, honey, I ain’t gonna keep this up anymore. My throat’s killing me.” Ragged from the bites, she whirls and turns into a copy of the Box of Chaos, creature included, face to face with it. Box creature: “Jesus Christ. God damn it. I don’t get paid enough for this shit.” Copycat: “Hey, good looking, what’s cooking?” “I actually appreciate the compliment.” “How much junk you got in that trunk?” They argue over who gives whom stuff.
60. 1:32:57 — The credit card. The box creature asks for a million dollars. Copycat hints that “Thea’s a little clumsy” and was given a card to buy the Grandmaster some Taco Bell. The creature: “Technically, as an employee of the Dread Fortress, I can’t take it, but if it happened to fall into my box…” She flicks the card into the box. “Oh, you dropped that. Let me go see if I can find it.”
61. 1:34:30 — Doug’s collar. She rolls a 17, but “the ring has already been given. There cannot be another.” The Grandmaster unclasps Doug’s collar and throws it down: wearing it gives “the swiftness of a pug” (advantage on mettle saves). Atlas: “And I got boner medicine.” Arbiter: “You put those together, you have a good Friday night.”
62. 1:35:35 — The second deal. Copycat knocks. “Who is it?” “It’s me. Or you.” It costs her a fatigue. “We’re meeting now for the first time ever.” “I could never pick you out of the lineup, even if it was in a mirror.” “The reflection is very good looking.” She trades Doug’s collar for the Shield of the Golden King: a golden gleam, +1 mettle and +1 health, and it shatters only on a natural 1 defense. “It wasn’t even a dog collar. That was from a cat.” The Arbiter covers Doug’s ears.
63. 1:37:59 — The floating arm. Copycat becomes only an arm to hold the shield. It isn’t Dwayne the Rock Johnson’s or the Napoleon Dynamite guy’s arm: it’s the Arbiter’s right arm (“That’s a nice looking arm”). It flexes into a power stance as the light glints off the shield (“shing!”) and barrels into Atlas’s head. It hits.
64. 1:40:04 The Grandmaster rolls a 6, then rerolls: “You can’t go into a fight cold.” She gets a 16, which triggers another chaos event.

Chaos event — the Acolytes throw things (1:40:44)

65. Atlas rolls 17. The Acolytes hurl projectiles that screech “like a bat swallowed a whistle”: Rikon’s magnets, straws and empty nacho plates, Mang Cola, crossover plizzies (the dogs and pizzas falling apart), an Ethernet-cable lasso, car keys for an old car, and whole anvils with crickets. Robbie and Atlas are hit. Copycat is safe behind the Shield of the Golden King. The Arbiter: “Swing for the fences, because I think the Grandmaster’s getting bored and wants to see some blood.” Grandmaster: “Dream big… Show them that you are the rightful leader.”

Round 5

66. 1:43:00 — Mateship. Atlas grabs the shield as it slams into him. The thrown magnets pull together, and a megaphone-like voice: “Atlas knows that Robbie has spoken many times of friendship… But allow Atlas to introduce you to what he learned on planet Australia. The one thing greater than friendship.” A giant tanker ship called Mateship forms, with Copycat’s shield-arm built in as the figurehead. Atlas burns his heroic surge, a status effect, a power-up and his Immovable Force (sacrificing six fighting spirit) and hurls the ship down on Robbie and Copycat. It hits both, and both take a status effect. The figurehead hits Robbie first; the ship crumples and skids at 45 degrees, dragging a trench, and ends upright like a pylon.
67. 1:46:35 Atlas leaps after it and pours his energy into Thea’s wings, which become giant electric fairy wings. He grabs the aft and drives the ship straight down. It hits Robbie; Copycat defends. The ship collapses into scrap salvaged from the audience stands, burying that part of the arena. Grandmaster: “Thank you for raising the bar, Atlas.”
68. 1:48:35 — The spores. Robbie is “the limp and broken body of a young child under mountains of rot, twisted iron, and bits of boat.” The Hunger peels out and forms an exoskeleton to lift him. “You don’t know the power of friendship because you’ve never felt anything, Atlas. But I’m going to change that.” The Hunger pilots Robbie, skittering like a spider in a film reel with every third frame missing, blipping in and out of reality. It releases a thin layer of itself as spores over Atlas’s chassis. It hits.
69. 1:50:20 — The escape pod. Before it lands, Atlas ejects Thea out the back like an escape pod.
70. 1:50:42 — Atlas feels. “For the first time in your life, Atlas, you feel the cold air on you… a neural network is built across you… a crack and a split… you find yourself growing a mouth. And yes, that does imply growing also an exit port of sorts.” Atlas’s systems go red with codes he doesn’t recognize. Something comes out of the crack (“Thea Plentos, Thea Plentos”; the transcript is garbled here and there’s a gap to 1:52:23). Atlas is now allied with Robbie and the Hunger and out of the match as his own agent. He keeps one action to act for the Hunger.
71. 1:53:07 Robbie to Atlas: “That voice thing, you’ll get over that after a couple days, when you’ve sort of re-centered as a part of the unified whole… like big training wheels.” To Copycat: “I have considered us to become friends… If I win this and kill you, I will probably recycle your biomass so that you can live again. And we can probably try to kill these guys… they seem like they’re the real bad guys.” He points at the Arbiter and the Grandmaster. “In the time being, I have no power here other than their rules. So I must consume you. But we are friends.”
72. 1:54:09 Copycat’s shield-arm turns to show the hand and makes a gesture (not described in the transcript). Robbie: “I’m sorry, I don’t want to do this.” He closes his eyes and uses his heroic surge, but misses. Two more attacks also miss. He forgot the status effect on himself (“I’m a little kid… not strategic… Arbiter and Grandmaster, you guys are the real meanies”), so it costs him, leaving him with one fighting spirit. Arbiter: “What have we done to him?” Grandmaster: “Well, we did put him in a deathmatch… Let him experience all of his emotions.” “It’s not our fault we’re making him fight to the death.” “No, he really kind of sucks.”
73. 1:56:16 — The black hole. Copycat signs in fake sign language, flips off the Arbiter and the Grandmaster, and throws the shield down like a mic drop. She transforms one final time into a black hole, pouring her heroic surge, power-ups, actions and the rest of her life into one final attack on the entire arena and everyone in it, audience included.
74. 1:58:46 — The hug. Atlas asks to “hug it out” with Robbie, really to drag him into the black hole. The Grandmaster rules no, since he already used his turn this round. “I tried, Kat.”
75. 1:59:56 — The implosion. Copycat’s attack fails against Robbie. She collapses into herself and grows as she pulls everything in. Robbie and the Hunger “have seen the void before and are unmoved.” Goblins, chinchillas, Acolyte ashes and whole Acolytes are swallowed: Scrib, Gator, Rikon, Kristen, IT Dude, Christina and more from chat. Copycat’s final thought: “I will remain no one. But everyone, on my own terms.” She fades into stardust.

The winner

76. 2:01:28 The Grandmaster lands softly on the arena floor. “Well done, Robbie Clark and the Hunger.” She claps, and both teammates are reborn: Copycat “all and nothing at the same time,” glittery stardust, her skin shining under a paper bag “that we cannot see”; Atlas in his original form, “no longer Thea-ized.” “Robbie Clark, I grant you the status of leader, that you may, under our command, extend this power of friendship.”
77. 2:02:38 — The name. Robbie looks at Atlas, at Copycat, then darkly at the Grandmaster and the Arbiter: “We shall be the unbreakable, redacted friends.” Grandmaster: “We will have it written on the stone itself, and you will be an official commissioned team of the D20 Deathmatch arena… occasionally we’ll send you on missions… lead your team to glory.”
78. 2:03:35 — The whisper. Two of the Hunger’s tendrils go to Copycat’s and Atlas’s shoulders. Robbie to the Grandmaster: “Oh, yes, we can do that.” Whispering to his team: “We’re going to take these motherfuckers down.” Copycat: after being ripped apart and put back together, “I have every right to do it again.” Atlas swears and whirs, and his eye display reads: “New directive: take these motherfuckers down.”
79. 2:04:49 — The Grandmaster’s closing. “I respect the drive to continue to push for power. After all, that’s what the arena is always for… If you choose to be weak… you are not meant to be here… through blood, through sweats, through metal of all sorts… you will discover who you are and who your friends really are. Thank you and welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• The players were sent home because the episode ran long; Mudcat and Caustic Phoenix talk alone (“with words and interpretive dance”).
• This is “episode three of the season, but only our first Deathmatch.”
• Caustic Phoenix: this is the “new updated style” they wanted: a setup episode to get to know characters and build camaraderie, then the Deathmatch. It brought “personal attacks.” She loved how the players asked each other’s permission to “take liberties” describing each other’s characters: “a lot of trust established.”
• The official Team A name is “The Unbreakable Redacted Friends” (Mudcat: “It’s a mouthful”). T-shirts are planned. Caustic Phoenix won’t tell Teams B and C the name, to see what they come up with.
• Caustic Phoenix lists “the D20 family” now in place: the Grandmaster, “the Arbiter back in his place where he’s supposed to be,” Thea, Doug, Stuart, Dr. Octor, the champions, chinchillas and goblins.
• Mudcat: Stuart is “our go-to shit on for anything IT related.” He enjoys being mean to Stuart as the Arbiter. Season 1 was meant to be episodic with little lore; the lore has developed naturally, “the best of both worlds.” (Caustic Phoenix: “All right, Hannah Montana.”)
• In character (Dried Blood), Mudcat as the Arbiter: “Stuart, it’s never going to fucking happen.” Caustic Phoenix replies: “Stuart, we’ll look at getting you some promotion. No, we won’t.” (Caustic Phoenix’s speaker role is uncertain.)
• Caustic Phoenix, explicitly as Caustic: the community’s participation matters (“how many of them we crushed in the actual episode”). She wants viewers to see themselves as part of the world, not just viewers. She’s off to get Taco Bell.