S6 Ep4 — Tip to Tip - Part 1 (TTRPG One Shot)

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When Thea went missing on Deathmatch Day, the Arbiter scraped together a rescue squad of a skeleton, a conspiracy theorist and a soda salesman, and sent them into a haunted family graveyard. There was no fight to the death this week. Instead, Richard S. Skelman, Richard Knottley and Killy Yesman charmed a weeping angel, punched themselves in the mouth and built a giant bone robot to destroy Skelman’s own grandfather. It was one of the strangest and most wholesome nights the Void had seen, and it ended with two friends promised to a duel: dick to dick, tip to tip.

The Story

Thea Is Missing

The night began on an unusually agreeable note. The Grandmaster had complained that the show’s intro ran three seconds too long, and the Arbiter conceded she was right. Buoyed by her “newfound sense of rightness,” she went down into the dungeons of The Dread Fortress. She found them cold, empty and suspiciously tidy, with everything “where it’s supposed to be.” She called out for any sign of chaos.

The Arbiter poked his head out of the ski ball room to ask whether she had seen Thea. She hadn’t, and the tidiness proved it: Thea had clearly never been there. The Arbiter had sent his assistant to help the Grandmaster set up the night’s Deathmatch, and now nobody could find her. He did have a tracker on her. He pulled up a tablet, smacked it and growled, “Fucking Stuart. This thing never works,” blaming the fortress’s reception and its IT man, Stuart. When the screen finally loaded, Thea’s signal sat in a mausoleum “all the way over in The Shadowlands.” The Arbiter was sure she had been kidnapped, because she would never wander off on Deathmatch Day. “She loves the Deathmatches.”

The Grandmaster told him Thea was his responsibility. He bristled:

The Arbiter: “Just because I created her does not mean that I’m in charge of her. I’m not her father.”

She pointed out that he signed Thea’s paperwork every week so she got paid, which made him her manager. He admitted that “things look great around here without her.” The Grandmaster had no patience for that. “Thea is energy,” she said. “She’s staying pink because she keeps rolling around in the blood of champions.” Without her, there would be no Deathmatch. Anyone who could kidnap Thea was a danger to the whole fortress, so the Grandmaster wanted an elite team. The Arbiter slammed his hands together and a portal tore open, its sound echoing off the fortress walls. Out stepped the squad. “Two Richards in one group,” the Arbiter noted. “It just happened that way.”

Team B

The Grandmaster already knew Richard Skelman, a skeleton who had “always been beloved by the fortress,” though she had never known he could fight. “I may be missing muscles amongst all of the bones,” he assured her, “but I assure you I am quite capable.” When she pointed out that he didn’t have eyeballs, he explained that he chattered his teeth and read the echoes through his bones.

Killy Yesman, a stranger to her, skipped the handshake and gave her an icy bottle of Double Sun Cola, shaped like a rocket with two balls at the bottom. She liked him at once. He told her to shake it hard first. She asked whether it was “a one hand or two hand job.” She popped the cap and the soda erupted all over her.

Richard Knottley was less enthusiastic. He declared the cola “clearly government funded” and pulled out a mason jar of lukewarm pickle juice instead. He carried it everywhere, and it was only warm because he kept forgetting it in his pocket. His dream was a radio show, After Dark with Dick Twist. He could not fund it because he had been fired as a Peloton instructor over complaints that, he insisted, came from people who simply couldn’t keep up with him.

The Arbiter laid out the job. The Grandmaster had been preparing champions for an eventual showdown with The Shadow King, “someday, somewhere.” That was common knowledge. Rescue Thea and show some promise, and they might make the roster. The Grandmaster sweetened the deal with health benefits, PTO, a sabbatical, prepaid resorts, “your own pet chinchilla,” and “You won’t die.” Knottley warned that the government was run by Chinchillas, voles and small mammals. He tried to give Skelman a foil hat against radiation, then decided Skelman couldn’t wear it without flesh and put it on himself: “I’ll wear it for us both.” Until they chose a leader and earned a name, they would be Team B. The Grandmaster’s description of Thea was simple: neon pink, glowing faintly, “because she’s eaten a lot of glow sticks.” The Arbiter added that they’d know her when they heard her, because they’d want to pierce their own eardrums.

The Graveyard

A second portal let in a cold autumn breeze. Beyond it lay The Midnight Mausoleum: a graveyard under a full moon, fog curling around the gravestones, and The Acolytes cheering by the thousand from grandstands high above. Rotting hands burst out of the grass and seized Killy and Knottley by the legs.

The first zombie went for Skelman, and he recognized her. “Hello, Josephine! It’s been a while. I scarcely remember the last we met, where I buried you alive.” His jilted lover was unmoved by his offer to rekindle things. She clawed at his face. When that failed, she flung her own arm at him. Her festering claws had no effect on a skeleton, so Skelman gave the order: “Do what you must.”

Killy, all undulating pecs and surprisingly thin legs, sipped soda through straws from the two bottles on his hat. He sprayed himself free of the hands and twirled two more bottles like a gunslinger. The cola, it turned out, was caustic to bone. Then he pulled a special dark-red bottle from the back of his shorts that he’d been “saving for a special time.” It soaked into Josephine and gathered in her chest as a glowing little heart that beat once. For a moment she was herself again. “I’ll forever hate you, Skelben,” she said, and crumbled. Her heartbeat echoed through the graveyard and faded. Skelman sighed over what they could have had, “if I didn’t bury you under the ground while you were still living. Anyways.”

Knottley dealt with his zombie his own way. He asked for the nearest carpet, found a strip of astroturf over a grave, kicked off his holey slippers and shuffled furiously to channel his “Peloton powers” into a blast of static lightning. It worked so well it blew his hat off and blistered his hands. His friends hosed him down with soda until the last zombie drowned in the sticky mud. Skelman pocketed Josephine’s arm as a keepsake.

The Crying Angel

Tiny clawfoot tracks led to a towering angel statue that cast a shadow despite the darkness. Its plaque read: “Hell is home to those that make angels cry.” Skelman tried insulting it (“Hey, you suck”). Killy tried his best line: “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?” That earned sniffles. Knottley tried kindness instead, and his “You beautiful gargoyle” landed perfectly. The angel lowered its hands and wept pebbles. As the Grandmaster explained, “no one’s ever complimented this angel and it meant the world to them.” The rhythm of the falling stones unlocked a stairway beneath its feet.

While Knottley lingered with his new friend, the others headed down. Poltergeists possessed them on the stairs, made them hit themselves (“Auntie Ethel, no, stop, please. I know I ruined that one dinner that one time”) and finished by stuffing each of them with their own fist. Satisfied, the ghosts evaporated.

Up top, the statue turned out to speak in Knottley’s own voice and to share his worldview: the frogs are gay, the birds are government cameras, the trees talk on the internet. Knottley invited it onto his radio show, and it told him it only consumed radio media. It showed him an ankle monitor from “an incident down at Soho,” and he fried the device with his pickle juice. When the Grandmaster’s face rose in the sky in place of the moon to call a break, the statue promised to carve coordinates and meet him at the third full moon of the year. It flapped its stone wings, failed to fly and skipped away, knocking over gravestones. A single tear rolled down Dick Twist’s face.

Three Doors, Three Traps

Below, the corridor’s torches had been lit very recently. A disembodied voice welcomed them to “my home,” called them “the least curious group in the world” and admitted it had an imp, though imps weren’t given away for free. It explained the rules: three traps, one each. Both Richards squeezed through the middle door together, lubricated by Killy’s vibrating magnum bottle. The ceiling fell, and arrows shot straight through Skelman’s ribs into Knottley. Skelman helpfully yanked them out. Killy drenched himself in cola and charged his own door face first. The torches flared, and he learned that Double Sun Cola is flammable. “Why did I pick the flammable one?” he screamed. A ghost sucker-punched him at the finish line.

This, the Grandmaster revealed, was the Skelman family plot. Skelman had buried Josephine there because it was “the last place anyone else would look.”

Grandpa

At the end of the corridor sat Thea, making shadow puppets by torchlight. “Yee-hoo! Ah! You found me! … You’re not supposed to find me this quickly!” She had been invited to play hide-and-go-seek by someone with “a really long creepy hand with very long fingernails, but they were kind of bejeweled and I liked them.” Skelman thought it was his mother, Meredith. A bejeweled hand crept over Knottley’s shoulder. “I’m not your mom, Meredith. That’s my daughter.”

It was Skelman’s lich grandfather, who had turned the family mausoleum into a retirement dungeon rather than buy new property. “Grandfather,” Skelman protested, “you know I make dungeons for a living.” “I passed down the business to you,” the old lich replied. Furious that they had ruined his game, he blocked the only door: “I’ll show you a new game.”

He was fungus-ridden, with a dangling jaw and earlobes drooping toward his nipples. Skelman begged and was disowned (“Good thing I have plenty of other grandchildren”). He tried to run and hit a wall, then opened his signature Bone Zone, trapping Grandpa in one of his own dungeons with swinging axes and a dropping slime. Grandpa’s necrotic fist bounced off Killy’s chin. He healed himself by draining his foes, his wounds closing with “very uncomfortable moaning sounds.” “Your grandfather’s getting hard,” the Arbiter observed. “It runs in the Skelman family,” said Skelman. Grandpa tried to choke Knottley, who said, “I feel really empowered right now.” Then Killy jammed his soda hat onto the lich’s head, and the cola blinded him for good. “You’re only supposed to drink the soda,” Killy explained. “Never get it to your eyes.” Killy tore off one of Grandpa’s ribs and tossed it to Skelman, who added it to his collection.

Knottley asked whether any Double Sun Cola was conductive. “All Double Sun Cola is conductive,” Killy said. From his shorts he hauled out a bottle the size of four magnums, and Knottley shook it into “a unibeam of double sun shock.” Grandpa staggered. “We’re all dicks,” he snarled. “That’s the family name.” Then Skelman detached himself into the Bonetron, a towering bone construct with Killy at its core, “blasting away with sodas, conspiracy theories, bones, and the slimes.” It blew a hole clean through the lich’s chest. All three shook one last bottle together, and the stream evaporated him.

Only his forearm remained. Its fingers inched toward a little red button and pressed it. A neon sign dropped: “Congratulations! You’ve won!” A chest popped open full of matching t-shirts. They were cheap, the Grandmaster noted, but good quality.

Team 3D

The hosts arrived. Thea sulked that she’d missed out on a t-shirt and remembered she was supposed to have set up a Deathmatch. Killy named the squad Team 3D. “Ew, that’s a gross name,” Thea said, “but okay.” Knottley voted Killy leader, and Killy said it was the first time anything had mattered more to him than Double Sun Cola. Then Thea’s tail rang like a phone. “It’s also coming in through my butt and I have to poop soon,” she complained. It was Double Sun Cola HQ, so loud it made Thea’s butt cheeks vibrate, furious about all the free soda and summoning Killy to a two-month retraining seminar on pain of expulsion from “the Sunkola.” He left with a promise: “It means goodbye for now, but not forever.” Thea hugged his skinny calf.

That still left the question of leadership, and the Grandmaster had an answer: a Deathmatch. “Dick to dick! Tip to tip!” Skelman worried for their friendship. “You can be friends,” said the Arbiter. “I’ve killed lots of my friends.”

Dried Blood

Asked for final words, Knottley offered “Live dangerously,” and the Grandmaster suggested putting it on a motorcycle. Skelman spoke tenderly to his rival: “fellow Dick, it is going to be very, very hard next week to hurt you in the ways that I must. I hope that you can accept your boning with dignity, pride, and humility, as we will still be friends after.” Killy signed off with a sales pitch: “Stay hydrated. Drink Double Sun Cola.” The Grandmaster added that people should buy it, not just get it free. She reminded the champions that they would be reborn, so losing was “more like beating them in a game of ping pong.”

Notable Moments

• The Arbiter’s tracker “never works,” and he blamed Stuart.
• Killy’s red cola gave Josephine one heartbeat of sentience, just long enough to hate Skelman forever.
• Knottley’s “You beautiful gargoyle” made a lonely angel weep pebbles, and the two promised to meet again at the third full moon of the year.
• Killy blinded the lich grandfather with a soda hat, probably the first time anyone had landed a permanent effect like that.
• The Bonetron, a giant bone construct powered by soda, erased Grandpa, whose severed arm then pressed his own “You’ve won!” button.
• Thea’s tail turned out to double as a phone line to Double Sun Cola HQ, coming in through her butt.

Memorable Quotes

• The Arbiter: “Just because I created her does not mean that I’m in charge of her. I’m not her father.”
• Richard S. Skelman: “Hello, Josephine! It’s been a while. I scarcely remember the last we met, where I buried you alive.”
• Josephine: “I’ll forever hate you, Skelben.”
• Killy Yesman: “Why did I pick the flammable one?”
• Richard Knottley: “There may be two Richards here, but to me, there’s three dicks in this party.”
• Skelman’s lich grandfather: “I passed down the business to you. I just wanted a quiet private place where no one would bother me and I could play games in my retirement.”
• Thea: “I’ll miss you and your skinny legs.”
• The Arbiter: “You can be friends. I’ve killed lots of my friends.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Richard S. Skelman (Joel). A skeleton; “Richard,” “Dick.”

• Known to the Grandmaster and “beloved by the fortress.”
• Has no eyeballs and sees by echolocation (chattering his teeth). His bones are held by “magnets” and detach at will. No feeling.
• Buried his lover Josephine alive in the family plot.
• Makes dungeons for a living, a business passed down from his lich grandfather. Signature move the Bone Zone; builds the Bonetron.
• Family: mother Meredith (said “Bertha” first); Auntie Ethel (a ghost; he ruined a dinner once); sister Dick Arena; a lich grandfather with “plenty of other grandchildren.” “We’re all dicks. That’s the family name.”
• Keeps a gelatinous cube friend on him. Likes pie.
• Says he solved a murder mystery involving Thea (“a real proper dick on that case”).
• Leaves carrying Josephine’s arm and his grandfather’s rib.

Richard Knottley, “Dick Twist” (RealLifeFakeWizard).

• Conspiracy theorist. Believes the government is run by chinchillas, voles and small mammals; birds are government cameras; trees talk on the internet; Shakespeare was a time traveler.
• Wears an aluminum foil hat (blown off by his own lightning). Carries a mason jar of body-warm pickle juice, poured out on the statue’s ankle monitor. Wears holey slippers.
• Ex-Peloton instructor, fired over complaints. Plans the radio show After Dark with Dick Twist.
• “Peloton powers”: friction electricity through his feet and hands.
• Has nightmares of being controlled by chinchillas and of a frog creature spitting frogs.
• Befriended the angel statue and promised to meet it at the third full moon of the year. Voted Killy leader.

Killy Yesman (Yangyang). A Double Sun Cola promoter.

• Very muscular with undulating pecs, very thin legs, majestic blonde hair, “the world’s most punchable face.” Said to wear sunglasses.
• His hat holds two cola bottles with straws.
• Pulls ever-larger bottles from his shorts: regular, deluxe two-handed, a special red bottle, the magnum, and the four-magnum “small rocket.”
• Says yes and follows stronger voices. The GM had never met him.
• Chosen leader of Team 3D, then recalled by Double Sun Cola HQ for two months of retraining.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). A small neon-pink imp that glows like a glow stick (she eats glow sticks).

• Created by the Arbiter, who signs her pay paperwork weekly. Loves the Deathmatches and stays pink from rolling in champions’ blood. Unbearably loud.
• Tracked by the Arbiter’s tablet.
• Her tail works as a phone.
• Was lured to the mausoleum for hide-and-go-seek by the lich grandfather.

Skelman’s lich grandfather (Mudcat, inferred). He is unnamed.

• Fungus-ridden, with an unhinged jaw, earlobes to his nipples and long bejeweled fingers.
• Turned the family mausoleum into his retirement dungeon and is the disembodied corridor voice (inferred from his “trial run” and “my corridors” lines plus 1:19:35).
• Powers: necrotic fists, damage absorption, a force choke.
• Permanently blinded by Killy, then evaporated by the Bonetron. His forearm pressed a “You’ve won!” button.

Josephine. Skelman’s jilted lover, buried alive by him. As a zombie she throws her own arm; the red cola gave her a moment of sentience before she dissolved.

The angel statue. Robed, hands over its face, stone wings that are too heavy to fly.

• Had never been complimented; cries pebble tears that unlock the stairway.
• Speaks in Knottley’s voice and shares his conspiracies.
• Wears an ankle monitor from “an incident down at Soho.”
• Will carve coordinates and meet Knottley at the third full moon of the year.

Auntie Ethel and the poltergeists. Skelman’s family ghosts on the stairs (“Stop hitting yourself!”).

Double Sun Cola HQ (Caustic Phoenix). Disapproves of free giveaways; runs retraining seminars; “the Sunkola.”

The Arbiter (Mudcat). Has a tablet tracker that never works (“Fucking Stuart”). Hung out in the ski ball room. Recruited “a couple of guys.” “I’ve killed lots of my friends.”

The Grandmaster (Caustic Phoenix). Offered benefits (a chinchilla, PTO, sabbatical, resorts, “You won’t die”). Her face can replace the moon in the sky.

Places

• Dread Fortress dungeons; a ski ball room in the Dread Fortress.
• The Midnight Mausoleum (in the Shadowlands): the Skelman family plot, with a graveyard, astroturf over a grave, the angel statue and plaque, the stairwell, a three-door trapped corridor, and the grandfather’s one-door chamber. Many imps reportedly come by.
• The Shadowlands.
• Soho (statue’s incident).

Items

• Double Sun Cola (rocket-shaped bottle with two balls and a sun pattern; flammable, conductive, caustic to bone, harmful to eyes, possibly itchy). Its “special red” bottle.
• Knottley’s foil hat and pickle juice. Josephine’s arm (grants advantage). The grandfather’s rib.
• The Arbiter’s tracker tablet. “You be dick [?]” t-shirts from the grandfather’s chest.

Lore statements

• The Grandmaster is preparing champions for the Shadow King’s eventual return: “common knowledge.”
• Team B / Team 3D gets a name once a leader is chosen; the leadership is to be decided by Deathmatch.
• Champions on the payroll “won’t die” (GM; Caustic Phoenix in Dried Blood: “you will be reborn”).

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — Thea is missing

1. 0:07:11 Table banter: the Grandmaster admits the intro runs “three seconds longer” than it should, and the Arbiter agrees with her. “It is in recording… the grandmaster was correct.” Narrated by Caustic Phoenix: “With my newfound sense of rightness, we enter into the Dread Fortress with a sense of pride.”
2. 0:07:40 The Grandmaster walks down deep into the Dread Fortress dungeons. They are cold, empty and strangely tidy, with everything “where it’s supposed to be.” She calls out looking for “any sort of chaos.”
3. 0:08:04 The Arbiter pokes his head out of the ski ball room and asks if she has seen Thea. She hasn’t. Nothing is messy, so Thea clearly hasn’t been there. The Arbiter had told Thea to talk to the Grandmaster about the Deathmatch: get the champions and set everything up.
4. 0:08:42 — The tracker. The GM asks whether he has a tracker on her. He does. He pulls up a tablet and smacks it: “Fucking Stuart. This thing never works.” He complains of bad reception in the fortress. Thea’s location reads as the mausoleum, “all the way over in the Shadowlands.” The Arbiter: “She’s been kidnapped. There’s no way” she’d go alone, “especially not on Deathmatch Day. She loves the Deathmatches.”
5. 0:09:29 — Who’s in charge. The GM: “She’s under your charge.” The Arbiter: “Just because I created her does not mean that I’m in charge of her. I’m not her father.” The GM: “you are her manager… You sign her paperwork every single week to make sure she gets paid.”
6. 0:09:58 The Arbiter caves: “I got a couple of guys… get in, get out.” The GM insists on an elite, top-tier group, because if someone can kidnap Thea, “that puts everyone within the Dread Fortress at risk.”
7. 0:10:41 The Arbiter: “honestly, things look great around here without her.” The GM: “Thea is energy. She’s staying pink because she keeps rolling around in the blood of champions… We need her here or no Deathmatch happens.”
8. 0:11:00 — The elite squad. He slams his hands together and a portal rips open, with the sound reverberating through the fortress walls. Out come Killy Yesman, Richard S. Skelman and Richard Knottley. The Arbiter: “two Richards in one group… it just happened that way.”

Introductions

9. 0:11:36 — Skelman. The GM knows Richard Skelman. He says: “I thought I was the only dick in the room, but it seems that there may be two of us this time.” She notes he’s “always been beloved by the fortress,” but didn’t know he could fight. “I may be missing muscles amongst all of the bones, but I assure you I am quite capable.”
10. 0:12:17 “You don’t even have eyeballs.” Skelman: “I use echolocation. I chatter my teeth really rapidly and it goes out into the ether and returns back as vibrations into my bones.” GM: “Bone conduction.” Skelman: “boy, I pulled that right out of my rib cage.” GM: “You always had a funny bone. Glad you’re back here with us.”
11. 0:13:03 — Killy and Double Sun Cola. The GM offers her hand. Killy hands her a bottle of icy frosted-glass soda instead: shaped like a rocket “with like two balls at the bottom”, with a sun pattern in the middle, sweet and cool. “Hey, I know we haven’t met, but I think it’s more important that I introduce you to the scientifically, chemically calibrated delicious taste of Icy Double Sun Cola.” GM: “you brought your own drink to this party. I like this guy.”
12. 0:13:57 Killy says you have to shake it really vigorously first. GM: “Is it a one hand or two hand job for shaking it?” There’s a deluxe double-handed version “somewhere here in the back.” She pops the cap and it erupts all over her.
13. 0:14:52 — Richard Knottley. “I’m not really too thrilled to be here.” He says the other Richard has no flesh (“I am bones… I am the biggest dick”). He claims the cola “is clearly government funded and you should not be drinking that.” He asks if she’s the boss.
14. 0:15:39 He refuses the half-bottle of cola. Instead he pulls a mason jar of lukewarm pickle juice from his back pocket. He takes it everywhere, and it’s only warm because he forgets to take it out of his pocket. GM: “It’s not even lukewarm, it’s body warmed.”
15. 0:16:03 — Knottley’s backstory. His dream is to become a radio host and run “After Dark with the Twist” (later “After Dark with Dick Twist”). He can’t fund it because he was let go as a Peloton instructor “on account of the many complaints.” The complaints were because “I performed better… No one could keep up with me.” He calls himself “the embodiment of physical prowess.”
16. 0:16:59 — The job. The Arbiter: “The Grandmaster, as you know, has been preparing champions for the eventual showdown with the Shadow King someday, somewhere… It’s common knowledge.” Training must start now. This job is just finding his kidnapped assistant, but “if you guys show a little promise… maybe we can slide you in the roster.”
17. 0:17:45 — Benefits. The GM offers health benefits and “your own pet chinchilla.”
18. 0:18:01 — Conspiracy. Knottley: “The government is run by chinchillas, voles, and small mammals.” Skelman: “I thought it was the mole people.” He adds that moles can dig about 30 ft down before the dirt crushes them. Knottley: “You don’t understand how deep this goes, Richard.”
19. 0:18:28 — The foil hat. Knottley gives Skelman an aluminum foil hat against radiation. Skelman reaches for it with his bony hands. Knottley insists he “clearly can’t take it because you have no flesh.” Skelman: “That’s not the problem!” Knottley wears it himself: “I’ll wear it for us both.”
20. 0:18:51 The Arbiter: “you don’t have to wear each other’s hats or whatever it is you’re trying to fucking do right now… you do gotta save Thea. She’s somewhere in the Midnight Mausoleum.”
21. 0:19:11 — The tryout. The GM calls it a tryout. They are “Team B” until they pick a leader and earn an official team name. If they succeed they get “all the benefits. You won’t die. You get a pet chinchilla, plenty of PTO, a sabbatical even… vacation resorts that are already paid for.”
22. 0:20:01 Skelman: “She’s very loud, so I assume… very easy to find.” Killy: she’ll come running when he cracks a Double Sun Cola. GM: “We’ll see if that cheese leaves the rat trap.”
23. 0:20:18 — Describing Thea. Knottley once went looking for a Chris and found a Christopher. GM: “She’s like a neon pink, almost glows in the dark. If you were ever to break any of her bones and shake her up a little bit, she does glow just like a light glow stick… because she’s eaten a lot of glow sticks.” The Arbiter: “you’ll know you’ve found her because when she’s speaking, you’ll want to pierce your own eardrums.”
24. 0:21:10 — Hands in. Knottley nicknames them “Sir Richard and Phallic Soda Cola Fella.” All hands in. He forgets the chant on three. They cheer anyway: “We did it.”

The Midnight Mausoleum — zombies

25. 0:21:42 A second portal opens and cold, autumn-like air flows through. They step into the Midnight Mausoleum: a graveyard under a full moon, fog rolling around their feet, graves and crypts in the distance. Mettle save. Skelman: “Is it because they’re creepy and undead? Because I am creepy and undead.” Knottley: “You are more than just creepy and undead.” “Well, not really.”
26. 0:22:36 The Acolytes watch from grandstands high above, thousands cheering. Skelman passes. Zombified hands burst up through the dewy grass and grab the legs of Killy and Knottley. Both take damage and are held until they use an action to clear it. More zombies approach. Initiative: Killy 17, Knottley 16, Skelman 9. One zombie gets 18 and one gets 2.
27. 0:24:24 — Josephine. The first zombie comes at Skelman. “Do I recognize them?” Instinct 12. Mudcat: “Jilted Lover.” Skelman: “Hello, Josephine! It’s been a while. I scarcely remember the last we met, where I buried you alive.” Her jaw hangs slightly unhinged. “Undeath do be becoming of you. Perhaps we should call this whole thing off.”
28. 0:25:30 He pleads to rekindle “what we once had” so she won’t kill his new friends. She swipes at his face. Their rolls tie and both gain fatigue. She swings again and misses (“very slow”). Then she gets angry, lets out a soft roar, and flings her own arm across the distance into his face. “Where did you learn such techniques, Josephine?”
29. 0:27:31 Her claws leave a festering, infectious sludge on his bones, but it has no effect on a skeleton. “A clean set of bones is much easier to live the afterlife in.” Skelman tells the team: “I cannot reason with Josephine… Do what you must.” Killy: “But, but must we?” “I think we might must.”
30. 0:28:28 — Killy described. Big muscles; his pecs undulate with each breath. He sips soda through straws from his hat, which holds two Double Sun Cola bottles. His legs are surprisingly thin. He whispers to the hands: “yo, help a brother out here. I’m trying to just… make a living, sell some soda, and you’re making me look really bad in front of the audience.”
31. 0:29:12 No response. He shakes a bottle, pops both tops, sprays their hands and slips free. He twirls a 360, spinning two more bottles like a cowboy’s pistols, and sprays again. The cola “has caustic effects on bone if you drink it too much.” It singes and melts the zombie’s skin, but the zombie keeps coming. GM: “You just got to brush your teeth afterwards… Teeth aren’t bones.”
32. 0:31:03 — The red bottle. Killy thinks the cola reminds him of his childhood, so maybe it’ll remind Josephine of her love for Skelman. From the back of his form-hugging shorts he pulls a special dark-red bottle he’d been “saving… for a special time” and sprays her. It hits. A sticky red tinge spreads over her chest, chin and arms, soaks into her bones and glows like a glow stick. The glow gathers in her core into a little heart that beats once.
33. 0:32:52 For a moment she shows full sentience. Josephine: “I’ll forever hate you, Skelben.” The red soda dissolves the last of her bones. She crumples, and the heartbeat echoes in the quiet graveyard before disappearing. Killy winks and gives a thumbs up.
34. 0:33:39 Skelman: “I lost my heart a long time ago. Oh, Josephine, what we could have had, I suppose, if I didn’t bury you under the ground while you were still living. Anyways.”
35. 0:34:20 — Knottley’s Peloton lightning. One zombie still claws at Knottley. “I need to know where’s the nearest carpet.” There’s a strip of fresh green grass rolled over a grave, probably astroturf (“We don’t have to pay for lawn care”). He walks over and takes off his very holey slippers. He shuffles his feet as fast as he can, “channeling the energies of my Peloton powers to generate enough electricity to zap” the creature. The GM: “Absolutely sad, Thor.” The zombie rolls a nat 1 and it works.
36. 0:35:49 “The amount of energy pouring out of me just accelerates through my hat, which blows it off of my head.” His hands burn. Killy and Skelman spray him with “two soda bombs.” Knottley: “it’s blistering… I need more.” The Arbiter: “That means it’s healing.” The zombie drowns in the flood of soda. The area becomes so muddy and sloppy that nothing can pull up through it. Knottley: “my fingertips… I was kind of a one and done thing.”
37. 0:37:06 — Flavor. Knottley asks the flavor. Killy: “always chemically calibrated to taste delicious,” and “It’s like having two suns in your mouth.” Knottley: “That’s exactly what the government would say.”
38. 0:37:48 Skelman: “I lost feeling in my bones a long time ago… It’s lonely out here.” He takes off one of his arms: the bones “just seem to go where I need them to go… magnets, how do they work?” Knottley: if they combined, “we would be… double dicked up.” Skelman: “It would be one very large dick.” Knottley goes back for his shoes.

The crying angel

39. 0:39:28 Skelman rolls instinct (9) and finds nothing, but he keeps Josephine’s thrown arm: “that’s coming with me.” Killy, “in your hyped up sugar version”, spots tiny clawfoot tracks leading to a tall, looming angel statue that casts a wide shadow even though it’s night. Knottley is distracted looking at little flowers.
40. 0:41:07 — Conspiracies. Killy asks if Knottley knows any conspiracies about shadows at night. Knottley: “Did you know William Shakespeare was a time traveler? … That’s where he got all of his characters from.” “Romeo and Juliet is based on the Titanic… The film.” Skelman: was there not enough space on the door for Jack? Knottley: “Selfish.” Skelman: “She got what she wanted out of him and then there he goes to the depths!” Knottley: “I can understand why somebody would bury their loved ones live over that kind of a situation.” Skelman: “I was in the right!”
41. 0:42:26 Killy: “I’m the only member that can see during the daytime or nighttime” (it was said he wears sunglasses). Skelman throws Josephine’s arm at the statue (“Josephine, go!”). It lands at the base and draws attention to a plaque: “Hell is home to those that make angels cry.”
42. 0:43:46 — Insults. Killy: “Say something really mean to it.” Skelman: “Hey, you suck.” (verbal assault, 12) The statue almost flinches. Knottley compliments it instead: “Hey, you look lovely… You look adorable… You are so pretty.” He checks how it presents: its hands cover its face and it wears a long robe, so “they/them would be safe.” “Anyone is allowed to be beautiful.”
43. 0:45:35 Killy leans over it, sips soda, pecs undulating, and says: “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?” “Sometimes I say this line and the women always seem to cry.” Knottley explains it’s an insult: “God said, get out of here.” On 17, sniffles come from behind the statue’s hands.
44. 0:46:59 Knottley: “You beautiful gargoyle.” Nat 20 (“Dick Twist is the Rizz master”). The hands drop, the eyes are closed and tears pour down. The tears are small pebbles. Their rhythm hitting the ground unlocks a door at the angel’s feet, and a stairwell opens leading deep underneath. “As it turns out, no one’s ever complimented this angel and it meant the world to them.”
45. 0:48:24 Knottley stays with the statue “for a minute or two.” Skelman: “You guys have really hit it off.”
46. 0:48:41 Smog pours out as the pressure changes. The Acolytes go rowdy, ripping their shirts off and demanding chaos. Skelman’s flat d20 is a 7 (inferred chaos roll). Acolytes chant “Chaos!” Skelman: “No, no, no, thank you. Please don’t.”

The stairs — the poltergeists

47. 0:49:32 Walking down is eerie and freezing; even the bones rattle. Small poltergeists appear, heckling, entering their bodies and making them smack themselves: “Stop hitting yourself!” Killy and Skelman take their own hands to the face. Skelman: “Auntie Ethel, no, stop, please. I know I ruined that one dinner that one time.”
48. 0:50:59 Egged on, the ghosts feed all three a knuckle sandwich. All three find their own fists in their mouths, “impressed that you were able to fit the whole thing in.” The satisfied ghosts evaporate, and it feels warmer and safer.

Dick Twist and the statue (0:52:04)

49. Back up top, Knottley tells the statue: “you can be more than you think you are. The government and the world tries to tell you, you got to live a certain way… drink their own chemical concoctions, soda… [Killy’s] cool, but he’s selling nonsense.” He asks its name and swears to stand there until it answers.
50. 0:52:54 The statue answers in Knottley’s own voice. Knottley: “Oh, you handsome devil, you!” Statue: “I kept thinking about how all the frogs are gay. They keep croaking all night… The birds… those are cameras from the government. And the trees can talk on the internet.” Knottley: “My man!” “I’ve seen them move.”
51. 0:53:55 Knottley invites it onto his show, After Dark with Dick Twist. Statue: “I only consume radio media.” Knottley dances in his slippers. The statue tries to dance but pieces crumble. He asks it to join “our own little Suicide Squad-esque thing, non-copyright.”
52. 0:54:41 — The ankle monitor. “There’s an incident down at Soho… I’m now wearing this piece of jewelry.” It lifts its rock skirt to show an ankle monitor. Knottley calls it “Dick Third” and pours his pickle juice over the monitor to fry it. Statue: “they’re going to come for us.” Knottley: “They’ve already come for me once. I have nightmares of being controlled by chinchillas in my body… I fought a frog creature in my dreams. It threw little frogs at me out of its mouth.”
53. 0:55:25 The Grandmaster’s face lights up the sky, replacing the moon: “We only have so many slots. It’s just the three of you.” She calls a break with a clap of thunder.
54. 0:55:54 Before the break, the statue tells Knottley: “I’m going to start carving into a piece of stone. I’m going to meet you with these coordinates at the third full moon of the year.” Knottley: “I will be there.” It flaps its stone wings but is too heavy to fly. It skips across the ground knocking over gravestones. A single tear rolls down Dick Twist’s face. GM: “Now you both have cried today.”

After the break — the corridor of three traps

55. 0:56:46 “Welcome back, Acolytes!” Team B (“name to be determined still”) stands at the foot of the stairs in a tunnel. Many torches are lit, and freshly: someone has been here recently. Caustic Phoenix stumbles on “wicks,” and Skelman repeats it in character: “The wicks on these torches have not been burned very far at all.” GM: “Let’s just double down and make sure Caustic’s embarrassed.”
56. 0:58:00 Who goes first? Killy: “you’re the one who’s already dead.” Skelman: “I really just wanted to laugh at someone else getting hurt.” He likes pie “because it sticks to the ribs.” Knottley volunteers: “I will accept responsibility when it is thrust upon me.” Skelman pats him on the back with Josephine’s arm, and the GM rules that Josephine’s arm grants advantage. “Two dicks, one Josephine’s hand.” “She’s got great grip.” The Arbiter: “This moment brought to you by Double Sun Cola.”
57. 1:00:17 — The voice. As Knottley lifts his foot, a voice echoes: “Is this on?… This is my home. Welcome… Why is no one smiling?” It asks them to name themselves. Knottley needs the bathroom. There is confusion over “Team B or Team D.” The voice: “Don’t come down here. We don’t have our shots.”
58. 1:01:10 Skelman asks after a small, loud, obnoxious imp. Voice: “There’s a lot of imps, oddly enough, that come by the mausoleum… I’ve got one. They’re deep down in here, but we don’t just give our imps away for free.” Knottley just starts walking. “Wait… I didn’t tell you the full part… This is the least curious group in the world.” Rocks fall from the ceiling in its anger.
59. 1:02:16 — The rules. “There are three traps, one for each of you… You can’t use the same skills for the same trap… No one can do the same thing twice.”
60. 1:03:01 — Two dicks, one door. Knottley and Skelman both take the center door (“We’re both Richard, so we should both be able to fit”). Killy sprays them down to lubricate them. Because they share a hole, both roll for both traps. Their flat d20s for slipperiness are low (8 and 4), so Killy pulls a magnum-sized bottle that vibrates, pops on its own and sprays them again. “It’s ice cold, but it makes you feel tingly and warm.”
61. 1:05:20 Each must use a different stat. Skelman passes instinct (19) and bloodlust (11). Knottley (“I’m not very good at gambling”) fails twice. The ceiling falls on them. Skelman trips forward onto a switch, and arrows fly straight through Skelman’s ribs and into Dick Twist. “Oh god. Oh, it’s happening again. I’ve been impaled.” “Are your bones stabbing me?” “No, that’s arrows. I’m not made of wood.”
62. 1:07:44 Knottley begs him to pull the arrows out. Skelman rips them out. The Arbiter: “You’re never supposed to pull…” Knottley fails a mettle save and the wounds won’t close.
63. 1:08:16 — Killy’s door. He strolls in confidently. The room is pitch black, and his hand disappears into the darkness. He dumps the rest of the magnum bottle on himself and sprints in face first, because “growing up with the world’s most punchable face… that’s where he takes the damage the best.”
64. 1:10:08 The torches all light at once. The Double Sun Cola is flammable, and he is engulfed in flames. He screams and keeps running: “Why did I pick the flammable one?” Near the end he looks down to pat out the fire, and a ghost appears and sucker-punches his punchable face. He reaches the end. Killy: “I gotta tell Skelman that his relatives all suck.”
65. 1:11:54 The GM confirms: this is Skelman’s family plot. Skelman buried his ex-lover there because “In the last place anyone else would look.” “People go missing every day.”
66. 1:12:31 Skelman helps Knottley up and “subtly place[s] him in front of me.” Knottley: “Do you think that I’ll turn into skeleton and bones like you… if I die down here?” Skelman: “I actually have a gelatinous cube friend that I keep on me for just such occasions. We’ll rip the flesh straight from your bones.” “Only do it if I die first.” Knottley runs down the hall like a little kid.
67. 1:13:39 Voice: “Just go, get out of my corridors… It’s a trial run. One of you burned it down and the other two feel like you defiled it.” Killy: “It’s your fault for having such long wicks on those torches.” Voice: “The next person who mentions the wicks on the torches gets an extra point of damage.” Skelman: “you know about the damage we have, disembodied voice?… This feels like a setup.” Knottley: “once you go down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
68. 1:14:59 Killy patches himself up with two sodas from his waistband, one to drink and one poured on his burns.

Thea found

69. 1:15:17 At the end of the corridor, a squeaky voice. A small pink imp sits on the floor with a torch, apparently talking to herself while making hand shadows on the wall. Knottley: “How’s the wick on that torch?” Skelman: “it’s the imp. I know that one. It died the last time. We solved a murder mystery. I was a real proper dick on that case.”
70. 1:16:24 — Thea: “Yee-hoo! Ah! You found me! … You’re not supposed to find me this quickly!” She’s playing hide-and-go-seek with a friend who invited her over. She doesn’t remember the friend’s name: “They just had a really long creepy hand with very long fingernails, but they were kind of bejeweled and I liked them and they said, let’s play a game.” Skelman: “This is the Skelman family plot… You are trespassing.”
71. 1:17:21 — Mother? Skelman: “Mommy? Is that you? The fingers gave it away. Long, bony, likes hide and seek. One day she let me hide and I hid for hours and hours.” Knottley: that was “to get you to leave for a little while because she was looking for a break.” Asked his mother’s name, he says “Bertha,” then corrects to “Meredith. Meredith is my mother.”
72. 1:18:29 Knottley rolls a natural 1. It grows colder and quieter, and he’s the first to sense a dark presence filling the doorway as a long, bejeweled, creepy hand creeps over his shoulder.
73. 1:18:59 — The grandfather. “It’s Snooki [?]… I’m not your mom, Meredith. That’s my daughter. Where do you think she inherited her beautiful and talented name or style?” Joel at the table: “it turns out Skelman’s grandfather is a lich.”
74. 1:19:35 The grandfather: “I just turned the mausoleum into [a dungeon] because we already own the property and I didn’t want to buy another property.” Skelman: “Grandfather, you know I make dungeons for a living.” Grandfather: “I passed down the business to you. I just wanted a quiet private place where no one would bother me and I could play games in my retirement.” They ruined his game of hide-and-go-seek. He stands in the only doorway: “You ruined my game. I’ll show you a new game.”

The fight — Skelman’s lich grandfather

75. 1:20:26 Initiative: Skelman 17, Grandfather 16, Killy 15, Dick Twist 3.
76. 1:21:20 — Described. Very angry, and he smells: a fungus has made its home on him and spores drift from his crevices. His jaw dangles unhinged, and his ancient earlobes droop down close to his nipples. Skelman: “Death has not been kind to you, grandfather.”
77. 1:21:53 — Skelman’s round.
    • He begs on hands and knees (“someone called the Grandmaster put us up to this”). It fails. Grandfather: “You disappoint me. Good thing I have plenty of other grandchildren.” Skelman: “you were quite prolific in your day.”
    • He does a Scooby-Doo run to the door, but it’s the wrong way: he hits the wall of a one-door room. The GM lets him “find the wall easily… because of how benevolent I am.”
    • His signature move: “I’m going to open up The Bone Zone!” He expands his domain and places his grandfather in one of his own specially crafted dungeons, with advantage on every attack.
    • Two hits: a swinging-axe trap slams into where the sternum once was, and a slime drops from the ceiling to eat into his undead flesh. Then Skelman cowers against the back wall as the Bone Zone fades. “I have taken him to the bone zone where he is subsequently getting boned.” Chunks are missing from the grandfather, “but he’s okay.”
78. 1:26:00 — The grandfather’s round.
    • He powers up a necrotic fist glowing ethereal purple and swings at Killy. Killy leans in and takes it on the chin, and the fist “gives no purchase” while he sips soda through his hat straws. Grandfather: “Damn you… I hate being embarrassed.”
    • The second powered strike ties, a nat 20 against a nat 1, and both gain fatigue. “Now he’s just fucking infuriat[ed].”
    • In blind rage he swings twice more and lands one. His signature move absorbs that damage as health: his holes start closing, with “very uncomfortable moaning sounds.” Mudcat: “your grandfather’s getting hard.” Skelman: “it runs in the Skelman family.”
    • He tries to force-choke Dick Twist: “You have such a pretty neck.” It misses. Knottley: “I’m into that, damn it.” Grandfather: “I don’t want this to be one of your weird kinks.” Knottley: “I feel really empowered right now.”
79. 1:29:49 — Killy’s round.
    • He takes off his hat and jams it onto the grandfather’s head, spending all three status effects on a permanent one. It hits (inferred nat 20 from “regain a point of fighting spirit… for that nat 20”). Grandpa is permanently blinded: “My eyes. I can’t see anything.” Killy: “You’re only supposed to drink the soda. Never get it to your eyes.” Knottley: “Is that what this rash is from?… Does double sun cola make you itchy?”
    • Killy’s majestic blonde hair flows in the wind. He punches the rib cage and lands two of three. Grandfather: “First my balls and now my ribs.” (his eyeballs)
    • He tears off a rib and tosses it to Skelman as a souvenir. Skelman stores it next to Josephine’s arm: “I seem to be collecting bones today.”
80. 1:34:04 — Dick Twist’s round. “I have electric hands from my Peloton powers. Do you have any Double Sun Cola that is conductive?” Killy: “All Double Sun Cola is conductive.” Knottley: “get the biggest bottle you have.”
    • Killy: “no one’s ever asked me to bring out the biggest bottle before.” He reaches both hands into the back of his shorts, legs spread into a triangle. He pulls out a bottle the size of four magnums, “like a small rocket”; it thuds down in a puff of dust (“It’s magic”).
    • Knottley creates friction while shaking the bottle, then fires all three attacks as “a unibeam of double sun shock.” Josephine’s arm gives advantage. All three hit. “He’s still up,” but “surprisingly hard.”
    • Killy goes limp and rests against the bottle: “You’ve done me a great service today, Dick.” Knottley: “there may be two Richards here, but to me, there’s three dicks in this party.” Killy: “That means a lot to me to be a fellow dick.”
81. 1:38:08 The Acolytes, the Grandmaster and the Arbiter watch from above ground, seeing through the earth magically, and the crowd goes bonkers.
82. 1:38:33 — Round 2. Grandfather: “This is not how you treat your elders.” “We’re all dicks. That’s the family name. Even Dick Arena.” Skelman: “Ah, yes, my dearest sister.”
83. 1:38:55 — The Bonetron. Skelman uses a heroic surge to “recover my two friends” and opens a second Bone Zone. He “detach[es] myself… to double dickify myself” and builds the Bonetron, an amalgamation with Killy in the center powering it with sodas. “The bonetron stomps forward, blasting away with sodas, conspiracy theories, bones, and the slimes.” It hits. “No match for the bonetron! It’s so big! It’s literally double the size of any dick that’s dicked before!” The grandfather’s torso is blown open, leaving a giant hole in his chest. Mudcat: “you can write his obituary.”
84. 1:41:51 They power up one more beam: “Let’s all shake one bottle together.” “One big bottle for the road, grandfather.” Skelman likens it to a Megazord with a big gun made of one of the bottles. Mudcat: “like seeing someone get blasted in the face with a fire hose.” The stream evaporates the grandfather: “You all are too much dick in this moment.”
85. 1:43:00 — The button. All that remains is his forearm, and its fingers inch over to a small red button. Killy: “No, that’s not good.” It’s pushed. Silence, then a bright neon sign drops: “Congratulations! You’ve won!” A chest pops up with t-shirts for everyone that say “you be dick” [?]. They wear them over their clothes. GM: “he was a cheap old man… But they have good quality.”

Aftermath — Team 3D

86. 1:44:09 Thea pouts in the corner: “Aw, man, you guys won. I was wanting to get one of those t-shirts.” The Arbiter and the Grandmaster walk into the dungeon. GM: “You were supposed to prepare a deathmatch.” Thea: “Oh, yeah. I picked out a really great Team B… Oh, no. That was what I missed.” (speakers inferred; Caustic Phoenix voices both)
87. 1:44:39 — The name. Arbiter: “this is Team B now.” Thea: “They look more like Team D.” Killy: “Team 3D.” Thea: “Ew, that’s a gross name, but okay.” (Line at 1:44:56 “You all are weird.” is speaker uncertain.)
88. 1:44:59 — The leader. The GM says they need a leader, “the biggest strongest dick of you all.” Killy: “I’m really good at just saying yes and just following a stronger voice.” Knottley votes for Killy. Knottley: “we should start a gardening company. Three dicks trim the best bush.” Killy: “this is the first time in my life where I feel like something’s more important to me than double sun cola.”
89. 1:46:19 Group hug. Line at 1:46:20, “I have aluminum foil hats for each of you” (speaker uncertain). “Three of you embrace getting a trio of crowns [?] with your matching shirts.”
90. 1:46:29 — Thea’s tail rings. Thea’s tail lights up like a phone. It’s Double Sun Cola HQ asking for Killy. Thea: “it’s also coming in through my butt and I have to poop soon.” GM: “The end of the tail… she’s not talking out of her ass.” Arbiter: “like a tin can attached to a string.” Skelman pats Killy with Josephine’s arm: “You’re the leader of Team 3D.” Killy: “Maybe we could be like a commune.”
91. 1:48:08 — HQ (Caustic Phoenix): “you’ve been giving away a lot of free soda lately and we do not approve of that… [your job] is to promote so that we can sell soda so that we can make money.” The voice is so loud that Thea’s butt cheeks vibrate. Killy: “Yeah, the money-making part… I knew I forgot something.” HQ signs him up for retraining: a two-month-long seminar process, pickup in one minute. “If you reject this, we’ll kick you out of the Sunkola.”
92. 1:49:43 — Killy’s goodbye: “It means goodbye for now, but not forever. … I think I’m not good enough for the two of you. But I’m going to get better. I’m going to go through employee training, and I’m going to come back with better sodas and a better ability to sell.” Knottley: “Just like the government for reeducation.” Skelman: “these two dicks are going to come get you out.” “Team 3D shall return together.” Thea hugs Killy’s thin calf: “I’ll miss you and your skinny legs.”
93. 1:50:57 — Deathmatch called. The Arbiter: “we still need one of them to be a leader, though, right?” The GM agrees: “Deathmatch.” “Dick to dick! Tip to tip!” Skelman: “But our friendships.” Arbiter: “You can be friends. I’ve killed lots of my friends.” GM: “true friendship is beating dicks… We’ll figure it out.” Skelman to Knottley: “we shall have to do dick battle and decide the biggest swinging dick.” Knottley: “Dick dick goose.” A final hug with Killy, “Even though we just met maybe an hour ago.”
94. 1:52:00 The Grandmaster walks away with the Arbiter: “This was truly something… I think it’ll be something promising.” The Acolytes scream yes. “We’ll see you all next Sunday.” “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!” (1:52:35)

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In character (Dried Blood; the final-words prompt was “from either you as a player or from your character”, so status flagged)

• 2:01:02 Richard Knottley: “Live dangerously.” (GM: “Put that on a motorcycle.”)
• 2:01:28 Skelman (in character, to Knottley): “fellow Dick, it is going to be very, very hard next week to hurt you in the ways that I must. I hope that you can accept your boning with dignity, pride, and humility, as we will still be friends after.”
• 2:02:27 Killy: “Stay hydrated. Drink Double Sun Cola.” GM: “Go out and buy it. Don’t just get free.”

Out of character, creator notes

• They joke about demonetization from the number of times they said “dick,” and about a jelly-bean-jar style count.
• Mudcat says Killy is probably the first person to successfully land a permanent status effect. Yangyang: “When I saw that nat 20 hit… all the stars aligned.”
• Final fighting spirit: Killy 10, Skelman 11, Dick Twist 11.
• The grandfather had his own heroic surge, four power-ups, some status effects, and life absorption on one attack per round. He would have used the surge had he survived.
• Mudcat calls it “one of the most wholesome episodes in a strange way”, with the friendships, the statue and Dick, and the hugging. “One of my favorite episodes in a while.”
• Yangyang (Killy) and RealLifeFakeWizard (Knottley) played these characters “in the previous season.” Skelman is new to the full show. Joel played him in “the murder mystery”, and his artwork was done days ago by Young Khan [?], the show’s continuing artist.
• Joel: “we have to move past the family plot.” Battling a friend will be tough.
• Caustic Phoenix: “Remember, you will be reborn. Death is not actually the worst thing… more like beating them in a game of ping pong.”
• RealLifeFakeWizard’s idea: open next show with Skelman using the gelatinous ooze on Knottley “so that it’s a bone battle.” Joel: “now we’re just doing spoilers.”
• Yangyang: Killy was originally built just for a one-shot with one shtick. He credits “Joel and RealLifeFakeWizard” as excellent improvisers, and wanted Killy to be “more than just dick jokes and soda shaking.”
• Caustic Phoenix: Killy returned “instead of just as an opponent, you worked alongside teammates.”