S7E2 — Under the Oil Tree — Big Business v Bog Boy

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A towering, money-spewing Warforged named Big Business and a gnarled old swamp turtle called Bog Boy brought a long-simmering feud to a snowy mountaintop graveyard. They were fighting over a swamp, a failed oil tree and a catfish named Clementine. What started as a brawl between capitalism and nature turned into a love triangle with Doug the Pug, a proposal with a nut for a ring, and a furious witch mother. By the end, the winner and the loser were stuck in the same body.

The Story

Spanish Lessons in the Throne Room

After an extended break, The Dread Fortress was open for business again. The Arbiter strolled its halls in his Italian leather boots. He passed the chinchilla room, where the chinchillas were locked in a training simulator, “X-Men style,” fighting each other. (“Don’t worry, they get a break. They are unionized.”) He checked the koi pond room and the brewery and found nobody, and Thea was nowhere to be found. At last he buzzed the intercom. A crackling voice answered: “In the throne room, where else would I be?”

He found the Grandmaster sprawled across her chair with a notepad, practising her Spanish conjugations of “to kill.” “We should be going international,” she explained. She wanted her victims to understand every insult she hurled at them, because “it’s not an accidental death.” The Arbiter approved, since he does “a lot of monologuing” himself. When she asked whether he’d brought anyone to murder, he reminded her: “That’s Thea’s job now. I’ve delegated as management.” The Grandmaster had assumed that arrangement was pretend, because “Thea is a potato of a brain.”

The talk turned to a video Thea had made that “talks poorly about Claude.” The Grandmaster hadn’t known Claude worked there at all. “He’s just the janitor,” she said. “He has no magical powers as I’m aware of. Have we had him take the magic test?” The Arbiter didn’t see why they would, but she added it to the list for after the Deathmatch. She also admitted that they call them champions because “they’re less likely to say yes if we just call them murderers.”

Two Old Enemies

The Arbiter clapped, and the sound broke through the portal. Big Business rose from his chair in the lobby, plumes of steam billowing from his base. He stood somewhere between 6’7” and 7’9”, though nobody could tell through the steam, “but he big and you know he mean business.” “Big is my business, and business is big,” he announced. “Who do you want me to fight?”

The answer rose out of the reeds in the corner. Bog Boy was a gnarled old snapping turtle whose spiked, spray-painted shell was stuffed with refuse, fishing line and net. He wore an apron made from an old band shirt, his clothes dripped moss, and bugs flew around him. He clutched a tin bucket. “It’s me, Bog Boy, Freak of the Creek, and no one touches Clementine.” A big catfish splashed out of the bucket. He pointed a curled digit at his rival: “You know what you did.”

Big Business: “You know what they say, one bog down, one more shopping mall up.”

“That’s not what they say, actually,” said the Grandmaster. When Bog Boy held Clementine up and asked whether she wasn’t beautiful, the Grandmaster sided with Big Business on that one and asked the Arbiter to get them out “before Freak of the Creek stinks up the rest of my throne room.” Hoping the cold would cut the stench, the Arbiter ripped a portal onto a snowy mountaintop strewn with the bones, armor and swords of old warriors. “Many dead bodies have died here,” he observed. The Grandmaster set the terms: “The two of you have a grudge and it is going to be a death grudge.” Then she flew up through the clouds to a ring of Acolytes clutching blue slushies and took her royal seat.

Turtle Power

Bog Boy moved first. He sharpened his beak on a skeleton’s bone (“That’s what I’m going to do to you, big business”), set Clementine down gently in the snow, and even lit her a little fire. Then he went for one of Big Business’s shovel-like scoop hands. It was the one that had smacked him “way back when, when he was just a little turtle in the woods.” Signs went up in the stands: “Save the turtles!” (“And the frogs,” Bog Boy added.)

Big Business flung him off with a sneer, “You haven’t grown up a day.” Bog Boy’s answering flurry slammed uselessly into a clear-coat shield. Meanwhile the arena’s broadcast was struggling, and the Grandmaster ordered everyone down to 720p because the violence was “too much for 1080.” She called for Stuart to refresh.

Then Big Business got serious. His core charged bright green, his cannons showered the crowd with gold coins, and he folded himself into a giant bulldozer (“Transformers, the most capitalism-based robots ever”). His charge landed hard, but Bog Boy caught the blow, bit onto a shovel and twisted the arm back around. Big Business was distracted by Clementine leaping in her bucket, all “beautiful scales” and whiskers in the cold sunlight, and Bog Boy drove the shovel into Big Business’s own gut. “I have some bets I need to go change real quick,” said the Arbiter.

The crowd loved Big Business anyway and roared him a second wind. Slushies flew everywhere. His next charge, “We’re going to pave you into a parking lot,” missed completely. The Grandmaster had “never been so hyped up and then so disappointed.” Between blows the history came out. Big Business claimed the swamp as his land and wanted his “fish wife” back. Bog Boy countered that he had squatter’s rights and that Clementine had left Big Business. And no, she wasn’t a mermaid: Clementine was “just a catfish. Bottom feeder.”

Bull Rides and Oil Trees

The first chaos event lit the mountain orange. The ground turned sticky, the air smelled of PBR and cigarettes (“Hell yeah,” said Bog Boy), and a giant mechanical bull burst up beneath both champions. Bog Boy had never seen a bull, “only an upturned firebird,” and he was thrown at once. Big Business simply wired himself into the machine. Apparently he used to hang out with a man named Mandroid who “knew how to connect the machines.” “I think I’m just not going to think too hard about it,” said the Arbiter.

Bog Boy, who now introduced himself as “Chico del Panto,” handed Clementine up to the Grandmaster for safekeeping. The Grandmaster reeled her pail up beside her seat. Then he brought up the oil. “Remember that time when you took all that oil and you poured it all through the swamp. The only thing that it did is it made me slicker.” He zigzagged across the snow, his shell glowing radioactive, and blasted Big Business with lightning. Big Business defended himself: “I was trying to grow an oil tree… You plant the oil, then you come back and you got an oil tree.”

Bog Boy vanished into the lightning-blasted snow. The last anyone saw was a turtle leg far away, “just straight running.” He tucked himself into a snowy rock outcrop “like Frodo and Sam,” and his rival’s head scanners failed to find him. It didn’t matter. Fuelled by a slushy an Acolyte lobbed into his chest receptacle, Big Business healed in a burst of steam and cash, and his leg spun up all sevens like a slot machine. He piston-punched the earth and sent an earthquake straight at the hiding place. “That’s what you get for not having a decent portfolio, son.” A rock fell from the mountain onto Bog Boy’s shell.

The Real Freak of the Creek

Bog Boy crawled out with radioactive ooze on his lips and his beloved Rammstein shirt in tatters. He wiped the blood away anime-style: “Now you just unlocked the real freak of the creek.” He latched onto Big Business’s chest “like a little toddler backpack.” Big Business answered by spinning up his turbines and blasting cash into the turtle’s face, while an internal stock ticker never stopped printing money. Bog Boy swung through the flying bills (his first blow went wide, “just punching George Washington in the face,” as the Arbiter put it) with a manic grin, chanting: “Everyone’s going to be frogs.”

“Grandmaster, what the fuck does that mean?” asked the Arbiter. “Are we sure that he’s not Thea?” Big Business blessed himself and two Acolytes in the crowd, B-Town and Cookie Monster Steve. An Acolyte named Scrib screamed, “I don’t want to be a frog.” Big Business turned it into a campaign promise: “We’ve got to stop you from turning people into frogs. And in exchange, we’re going to build a shopping mall.” Bog Boy then dropped a revelation: “I used to be a four-year-old boy before I got turned into a toad.” Big Business confirmed it: “He was a human child. Then I put him in the oil tree.” The Grandmaster looked at poor Clementine and decided, “I need to go find Doug the Pug.”

Doug Steals the Show

She returned with a small wagon. On a plush purple pillow sat Doug, wearing a crown far too small for his head. “Doug’s ugly and he shouldn’t even be here,” said the Arbiter. The Grandmaster covered Doug’s ears and explained that he “doesn’t have bones today,” so he needed a front-row seat. “I saved his life once,” the Arbiter grumbled, and it was true: he had once stepped in front of The Shadow King’s attack on Doug. He produced an Italian leather ledger listing everyone he had ever saved and the favors they owed. Big Business liked him immediately and wanted to talk real estate.

Big Business vowed to plant oil trees across the whole hemisphere. The Arbiter shrugged that “The Void is a place of inclusivity” and wondered aloud whether the Void should have a bylaw on marriages to fish. “We may have stepped into some real swamp shit,” said the Grandmaster.

Back in the fight, Bog Boy hid in his shell, poked his head out (“Wait a second. I might have made a little mistake”), and then saw something worse than any blow. Clementine was sitting beside Doug, the two of them “talking,” and she was almost blushing. “That’s my wife, Doug.” Heartbroken, he missed his stunning strike, then rained blows on Big Business with tears in his eyes: “She was mine, big business.” Big Business promised to beat him “in front of your fish wife, and she’s going to get with that dog.” The Grandmaster objected: “Doug has no bones. No bones. Anywhere… He has been neutered.” (“I think you don’t understand how anatomy works,” said the Arbiter.) Big Business turned his scoops sideways into “the kill position.” A single floating dollar bill reminded him he was blessed, and he swung. As the glowing fist came down, Bog Boy tried to turn it back. Then he saw Doug whispering into Clementine’s ear, let it go “almost like a little bit of defeat,” and took it down his side. In the stands, Doug began sloppily licking the water in Clementine’s pail.

Rock, Paper, Steak

The Acolytes chanted for chaos. A giant rock, a pair of shiny metal scissors and “a beautiful paper plane” fell from the sky: it was rock, paper, scissors time. The stakes, the Grandmaster declared, were beef steaks. Inspired by the Arbiter, she made the prize healing instead of harm. The Arbiter was stunned that chaos events could ever help the champions. “I don’t advertise that for obvious reasons,” said the Grandmaster, and he quietly wrote her name in a book with “kill” scratched into its cover. “Whatever he’s writing, it does not matter,” she said. Big Business threw rock, won, and asked for money instead of meat. He got a raw steak from “the cows from right outside the fortress,” and it did not sit well with the slushies.

I Live for the Bog

Bog Boy whipped up a snowstorm he named Snowstorm August. It ripped across the flesh of the Acolytes, tearing their skin off and exposing the bone underneath, but Big Business’s “fresh undercoat” stopped it from freezing him. Bog Boy’s last flurry went badly, ending in a stumble. Up above, a shocked Clementine tipped right off the ledge. In a puff of snow, Bog Boy caught her: “I’m so sorry, baby.”

Big Business loomed over the pair and made an offer: become manager of the new shopping mall, or die. “It pays very little.” Bog Boy’s answer: “I live for the bog. I die for the bog. The freak of the creek.” He tossed Clementine into the crowd, where Scrib caught her, and lay splayed out “like a Braveheart, like freedom.” Big Business stomped twice. The second stomp landed, but somehow the turtle absorbed it and lived. “Staying alive,” marvelled the Arbiter. “Metal as fuck.”

The Final Blow

Exhaustion set in. Big Business admitted, “My only instinct is capitalism, Grandmaster.” As his boot glanced off the shell, Bog Boy shoved the leg aside and landed a straight punch. “Oh, my money port,” groaned Big Business. “Why does it sound dirty when you say it?” Then Bog Boy pushed the leg up and punched, boom, right into the groin. Coins clinked and money spun in Big Business’s eyes as he dropped to his knees. Then, “like one of those old robotic punching games,” Bog Boy struck without even looking, and that was enough. In slow motion Big Business saw Clementine in the Acolytes’ arms and thought of “all them poor little dollars he got at home waiting for him to return.” His eyes went to zeros. His head popped off, and his body clattered into a pile, “mere scraps now, perhaps to be sold and cycled back in.”

The Witch’s Price

The Grandmaster flew Clementine down to the victor. Bog Boy had learned his lesson: “Maybe the world doesn’t want to be frogs. Maybe the frog is inside here.” He meant his heart, not the actual croak coming from his shell. He picked up a nut that had fallen off Big Business and asked Clementine to marry him. Her mouth fell open in shock.

A screech came from above. In the stands, surrounded by hags, stood Griselda, the swamp witch, a foul, long-haired, swampy beast. Bog Boy had promised to help her turn everyone into frog people. “How dare you propose to my daughter!” she shrieked. The promise had been “the price for her fin,” and he had broken it. “You are not the half the man she needs.” She drew Clementine back toward her, the catfish thrashing as if she couldn’t breathe. “What could make me more?” Bog Boy asked.

Griselda’s eyes fell on the scrap pile. Green power flowed from her long-nailed fingers, and Big Business’s remains rose and fused into Bog Boy’s flesh one piece at a time. He grew taller and stronger, and a second voice spoke inside his head: “Tell you, bog boy, we ain’t done yet. You ready to do some business?” Bog Boy said no. The hag rose into the sky, and the night ended.

Dried Blood

At the table, both players confessed it was their first time in the arena, and the Arbiter called the result “sort of a double win, sort of a double loss.” Bog Boy’s player offered a fairy-tale moral, “Don’t make deals that you cannot fulfill… for me, I’m now half robot, half turtle,” and added that Big Business was “pretty lonely now that Clementine’s gone… this is a shell of him.” Big Business, ever the salesman, had one last piece of advice for the Acolytes: “Big business keep telling you to invest.”

Notable Moments

• Bog Boy drove Big Business’s own shovel into his gut while Clementine’s whiskers distracted him.
• Big Business wired himself into a mechanical bull “like USB,” while Bog Boy, who had only ever seen “an upturned firebird,” was thrown off at once.
• Clementine flirted with Doug the Pug in the stands and broke Bog Boy’s heart, and then Doug licked the water in her pail.
• The Grandmaster revealed that chaos events can help champions, and the Arbiter wrote her name in his “kill” book.
• Bog Boy punched Big Business’s head clean off, then proposed to Clementine with one of his rival’s nuts.
• Griselda fused the dead Warforged into the victorious turtle, leaving two old enemies in one body.

Memorable Quotes

• Big Business: “Big is my business, and business is big. Who do you want me to fight?”
• Bog Boy: “It’s me, Bog Boy, Freak of the Creek, and no one touches Clementine.”
• Big Business: “I was trying to grow an oil tree.”
• The Arbiter: “Are we sure that he’s not Thea?”
• Bog Boy: “That’s my wife, Doug.”
• The Grandmaster: “I’m going to make a movie of this, and Ewan McGregor is going to be in it.”
• Bog Boy: “I live for the bog. I die for the bog. The freak of the creek.”
• Griselda: “That was the price for her fin. You cannot have her. You are not the half the man she needs.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Big Business (Nate). A towering Warforged paladin, 6’7”–7’9”, wreathed in steam. He was killed and then fused into Bog Boy.

• Body:
  • Shovel/scoop hands that combine into a bulldozer (a “Transformer”).
  • A core that glows bright green and goes “cha-ching.”
  • “Odor cannons” and turbines that spray gold coins and cash; exhaust pipes and slot-machine sevens on his leg.
  • A chest receptacle, head scanners, a clear-coat shield, and an internal stock ticker that prints money.
  • “Bleeds money,” “like a piñata”; a “money port.”
• Gear and powers: maul, shield of cash, Lay on Hands, smites, Bless.
• History and claims:
  • Claims the swamp as his land and wants to build a shopping mall on it.
  • Poured oil through the swamp “trying to grow an oil tree.”
  • Says he backhanded Bog Boy when Bog Boy was a little turtle, and “He was a human child. Then I put him in the oil tree.”
  • Clementine was his “fish wife” and left him.
  • Used to hang out with Mandroid, who connected machines and vending machines.
  • His only instinct is capitalism. He offered Bog Boy a low-paying mall manager job.
  • His last thoughts were of “all them poor little dollars he got at home.”
• After death: Griselda integrated his scraps into Bog Boy, and his consciousness lives on inside him.

Bog Boy, the Freak of the Creek (Peter). A gnarled old snapping-turtle Tortle, a Way of the Elements monk.

• Appearance: spiked, spray-painted shell full of refuse and fishing net; apron made from a Rammstein band shirt; moss and bugs.
• Lore:
  • Calls himself “Chico del Panto” in Spanish.
  • Claims squatter’s rights on the swamp. Has never left the swamp or seen a bull, “only an upturned firebird.”
  • Loves the Lord of the Rings books. Sits “like Winnie the Pooh.”
  • Was a four-year-old human boy before he was turned into a turtle (“toad”); the player adds “a teenage mutant ninja turtle… in Florida.”
  • Promised the swamp witch Griselda to help turn everyone into frogs (fewer resources, “everybody gets smaller”), “the price for her [Clementine’s] fin.”
• In this episode:
  • Won the Deathmatch.
  • Proposed to Clementine with a nut from Big Business.
  • Was fused with Big Business’s remains by Griselda, becoming taller and stronger with a second consciousness. “Now half robot, half turtle” (Dried Blood).

Clementine. A catfish (“just a catfish. Bottom feeder”) in a rusty tin bucket/pail.

• Bog Boy’s beloved, and Big Business’s former “fish wife.” She doesn’t speak, except to Bog Boy.
• Revealed as Griselda’s daughter.
• She sat beside the Grandmaster and Doug, flirted with Doug, and Doug drank her pail water.
• She fell and was caught by Bog Boy, was caught again by Scrib, and was held out by the GM for the proposal.

Griselda, the swamp witch (bog witch) (Caustic Phoenix). A foul, long-haired, swampy hag who arrives with other hags around her.

• Clementine’s mother. Bog Boy promised to help her turn people into frog people.
• She animated Big Business’s scrap and fused it into Bog Boy, then rose into the sky.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Italian leather boots. Monologues when he kills.
• Has “delegated” champion-finding to Thea “as management.”
• Says he once saved Doug’s life. Keeps an Italian leather ledger of everyone he has saved and the favors they owe. Wants a timeshare or vacation property.
• Defends “the Void is a place of inclusivity.” Asks for a bylaw on fish marriages.
• Wrote the Grandmaster’s name in a book with “kill” scratched on its cover.
• Bets on the fight. Calls Doug ugly.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Learning Spanish to “go international.”
• Didn’t know Claude worked there.
• Admits chaotic events can help champions and that she doesn’t advertise it.
• Rescues and holds Clementine. Wants to make a movie starring Ewan McGregor. Bans an Acolyte over “olive oil trees.”

Thea. Not present on screen (outside the break). The Arbiter has made finding champions her job, and she made a video “last time” that talks poorly about Claude. The GM calls her “a potato of a brain.”

Claude. The Dread Fortress janitor. Thea may think he’s a wizard. He hasn’t taken “the magic test” (a follow-up item).

Doug the Pug. Rides in a wagon on a purple pillow, wearing a tiny crown.

• “Doesn’t have bones today” / “has no bones… has been neutered.”
• A “charmer” with Clementine. The Arbiter says he once saved Doug’s life.

Stuart. Told by the GM to “refresh” during the 720p gag.

Mandroid. Big Business’s old associate, who could connect machines.

Acolytes named: B-Town and Cookie Monster Steve (both blessed); Scrib (screamed “I don’t want to be a frog,” caught Clementine); Great to be Gator (gifted subs); “the IT dude”; Raiders (welcomed in).

The chinchillas. Trained in the chinchilla room’s simulator. Unionized.

Places

• Dread Fortress:
  • halls, the chinchilla room, the koi pond room, the brewery, an intercom;
  • the throne room;
  • a lobby where champions wait;
  • cows “right outside the fortress.”
• The snowy mountaintop arena: a graveyard of old warriors’ bones, armor and swords, with snow-covered rock outcrops.
• The floating grandstands in the clouds.
• Bog Boy’s swamp, which Big Business oiled and wants for a mall.

Items

• The Arbiter’s ledger and his “kill” book.
• Clementine’s pail.
• Blue slushies.
• The giant rock, scissors and paper plane.
• The mechanical bull.
• The steak (10 HP).
• The nut used as an engagement ring.

Lore statements

• Clementine’s fin had a “price”: Bog Boy’s promise to make everyone frogs.
• Warforged “bleed money” (Big Business, at least).
• Acolytes can be blessed by champions and can shift fatigue between them (mechanics framed as crowd favour).
• Mechanics note: adrenaline, fatigue, heroic surges and glancing blows, alongside 2024 monk features; Nate calls them “chaos classes.” This points to the Champions of Chaos system. Mechanics only.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the Arbiter looks for the Grandmaster

1. 0:00:35 The show is back in the Dread Fortress “after a extended break.” The Arbiter walks the halls in his Italian leather boots (“leathery kisses”). His route:
   • He passes the chinchilla room, where the chinchillas are locked in a training simulator, “X-Men style,” fighting each other. “Don’t worry, they get a break. They are unionized.”
   • Thea is nowhere to be found.
   • He peeks into the koi pond room and the brewery. Nobody is there.
2. 0:01:37 He hits the intercom button on the wall: “Grandmaster. Grandmaster.” Her voice crackles back: “What do you want?… In the throne room, where else would I be?” Her voice echoes down the stonework. He magics himself into the throne room.
3. 0:02:21 — Spanish lessons. The Grandmaster is sprawled across her chair with a notepad and pen. She practises: “I kill. Yo mató. He kills. El matá. She kills. Ella matá… Nosotros matamos.”
   • She explains: “We should be going international.”
   • Her reason for learning languages: “That way they know all the insults I’m hurling at them… It’s not an accidental death.”
   • The Arbiter agrees it makes sense. When he kills somebody and wants it to sting, “I do do a lot of monologuing.”
   • She wants “to stab, blood, murder” translated next and scolds him for not writing them down. He finds a pen.
4. 0:03:45 — Thea’s new job. The Grandmaster asks whether he brought someone to murder. He reminds her: “That’s Thea’s job now. I’ve delegated as management.”
   • The GM had assumed they were only pretending, because “Thea is a potato of a brain.”
   • The Arbiter points out that Thea “made that video last time.”
5. 0:04:10 — Claude. The GM says Thea’s video “talks poorly about Claude.”
   • The Arbiter asks what Thea’s deal with Claude is. The GM didn’t know Claude worked there until the video.
   • “Does she think Claude is a withered [wizard?]” The GM: “He’s just the janitor. He’s not a wizard. He has no magical powers as I’m aware of. Have we had him take the magic test?”
   • The Arbiter: “Why would we? He’s a janitor.” The GM adds it to the follow-up list “after the deathmatch.”
   • She admits: “They told them champions, right? They’re less likely to say yes if we just call them murderers.”
6. 0:05:09 — The champions arrive. “Let me see if Thea actually did what she said she was going to do.” The Arbiter claps, and the sound waves break through the portal into the throne room.
7. 0:05:44 — Big Business enters.
   • Plumes of steam billow from his base. He stands somewhere between 6’7” and 7’9”; nobody can tell through the steam, “but he big and you know he mean business.”
   • He gets up from his chair in the lobby and walks in: “I’ve been summoned.”
   • “Big is my business, and business is big. Who do you want me to fight?”
8. 0:06:38 — Bog Boy enters. He rises out of reeds in the corner.
   • He is a gnarled old turtle with a spiked shell that is spray-painted and filled with refuse, fishing lines and fishing net.
   • He wears an apron made from an old band shirt. His clothes drip with moss and bugs fly around him.
   • He carries a tin bucket: “It’s me, Bog Boy, Freak of the Creek, and no one touches Clementine.” A big catfish splashes out of the bucket.
   • “I’m here for the swamp and the swamp is here for me.” He points a curled digit at Big Business: “You know what you did.”
9. 0:07:54 Big Business: “I’ve been meaning to take him out. You know what they say, one bog down, one more shopping mall up.”
   • The GM: “That’s not what they say, actually.” She polls the room on whether anyone would wear it on a shirt.
   • She warns: “Just because it’s the tallest doesn’t mean that you’re winning this.” The Arbiter: “Sometimes the tallest does winning.”
10. 0:08:40 The GM wants the fight, not “this bog business… this mall business.” She adds: “Your words mean nothing here. Though maybe Clementine’s would if she talked.”
    • Bog Boy: “Clementine, don’t speak. Don’t speak, but you do only speak to me.” He holds her up: “She beautiful, ain’t she?”
    • The GM: “Disgusting… I’m going to have to vote with big business on that.”
    • She asks the Arbiter to leave “before Freak of the Creek stinks up the rest of my throne room.”
11. 0:09:33 — The arena. “Let’s go somewhere cold… Maybe we can mitigate some of this stench.”
    • The Arbiter rips open a portal onto a snowy mountaintop.
    • “Many dead bodies have died here. I guess they were live bodies when they died.” Their bones, armor, swords and other objects lie strewn through the snow.
12. 0:10:17 — The GM’s charge. She pushes the Arbiter aside to stand front and center:
    • “This will be one of yours graveyard… no more than one of you is making it out alive and that’s a hope at best.”
    • “The two of you have a grudge and it is going to be a death grudge.”
13. 0:10:59 — The stands. She flies up into the clouds. They part to reveal a ring of Acolytes holding blue slushies, chanting “Big business!” and “Bog boy!” (the second chant “has a very different rhythm”).
    • “Feed them blood and bone tonight, and we shall feast well.”
    • She takes a chair fit for royalty among them.

Round 1

14. 0:11:51 Initiative is a flat d20. Big Business: “I have a D20 with a bunch of sides on it.” Bog Boy 19, Big Business 7 (“Working the crowd too much”).
15. 0:12:29 — Bog Boy’s claws.
    • He picks up a skeleton bone and sharpens his beak on it (he’s “kind of a snapping turtle”): “That’s what I’m going to do to you, big business.”
    • He sets Clementine down gently in the snow and lights a little fire.
    • “Big Business, I’m going to poke some holes in you, sink you to the ground.”
    • The claws hit. He aims for the backhand of one of Big Business’s shovel (“scoop”) hands, the one that smacked him “way back when, when he was just a little turtle in the woods.” “This one’s a little bit personal.”
    • Signs in the stands read “Save the turtles!” Bog Boy adds: “And the frogs. Save the frogs, too.”
16. 0:14:26 Big Business tries to fling the turtle off: “You haven’t grown up a day.”
    • Bog Boy rights himself in the air and comes down with Flurry of Blows.
    • The GM: “gathering all that turtle power… None of us are allowed to take a breath of oxygen” while he finds the button.
    • The flurry misses: a clear-coat shield drops over Big Business and the blows slam into it. The GM: “Embarrassing.”
17. 0:16:29 — 720p. The GM tells the champions to drop their cameras to 720p: “you all are just too much for 1080… The children, they may gouge their eyes out. It’s just so violent.”
    • Bog Boy: “It’s just too beautiful to be seen.”
    • “Stuart, refresh.” The Arbiter: “Sorry, Stuart had to do that.” The GM: “Thanks, Stuart. Freaking Stuart.”
    • She mixes up the names (“Big bog… I can merge the two of you”).
    • Bog Boy lands in the snow and questions his decisions. The Arbiter: “What did I do?”
18. 0:17:50 — Big Business’s bulldozer.
    • The GM: “Oh, Great Warforged, you’ve taken a hit.”
    • His core charges bright green. His “odor cannons” launch up and shower the audience with gold coins.
    • He puts his hands together and turns himself into a giant bulldozer. The GM: “Is Big Business a Transformer?” Big Business: “Transformers, the most capitalism-based robots ever.”
    • The GM: “Big Business has a lot of buttons.”
    • The maul charge hits (26).
19. 0:19:30 — The redirect.
    • Bog Boy uses Deflect Attacks to reduce the damage to nothing, then redirects it. The GM praises his politeness.
    • Bog Boy: “This one though, I bite onto one of your shovels and I turn one of your arms around so it kind of turns back into you.”
    • Big Business rolls a natural 1 on the save. He was distracted by Clementine jumping up in her bucket, “those beautiful scales, those whiskers coming off the cold sunlight.”
    • Bog Boy drives the shovel into Big Business’s own gut, “like if you’re shoveling snow and you get stuck on the driveway.” It deals 18.
    • Bog Boy: “Big business, baby. I mean, I’m Bog Boy.”
    • The GM: “Save the turtles!” The Arbiter: “You attacked him, and you ended up taking 18 points of damage?… I have some bets I need to go change real quick.”
20. 0:22:24 Big Business: “Oh, you got me right in the business.” The GM urges him on: “Yell a loud insult so an avalanche falls on his head. I don’t care.”
21. 0:23:33 — The crowd. The Acolytes chant “Big business” despite the fumble and gift him a heroic surge (“You can go plus ultra one moment”).
    • Slushies fly everywhere. The Acolytes pour them over themselves.
22. 0:24:32 Big Business: “That’s what you get for paying them off.” He turns slightly to the right and goes full steam ahead: “We’re going to pave you into a parking lot.”
    • The charge misses (13). The GM: “I’ve never been so hyped up and then so disappointed.”
    • The Arbiter: “At least you didn’t damage yourself this time.”
    • The GM: “Big business, you are building no mauls this time.”
23. 0:26:01 — Warforged blood. The GM asks whether a Warforged has blood. “Oh, you just bleed money?” The Arbiter: “It’s all money in here.” Big Business: “I’m like a piñata!”
24. 0:26:32 — The dispute.
    • The GM: “Then you can build a whole fence around your swamp. Wait, are you Shrek?”
    • Bog Boy: “He’s no longer in the swamp. You know, he moved far, far away.”
    • Big Business: “I’m going to get my fish wife back.” Bog Boy: “Big business, you know she left you.” Clementine’s bucket slowly starts to freeze over.
    • Big Business: “That’s my land. I’m going to build a mall on it, and I’m going to get my fish wife back.”
    • Bog Boy: “I have squatter’s rights. Your fish wife left you. This is my swamp now.”
    • The Arbiter asks whether the fish wife is a mermaid. No. Clementine is “just a catfish. Bottom feeder.” The Arbiter was going to ask “which half.”

Chaos event — the mechanical bull (0:28:28)

25. The Arbiter rolls 14. The scene changes:
    • The light sets to an orange hue. The ground rumbles and turns sticky.
    • The air “smells of PBR and cigarettes.” Bog Boy: “Hell yeah.”
    • A giant mechanical bull bursts up under both champions. “He who falls first shall take damage… who can yee-haw for the longest.”
26. 0:30:05 The GM: “Bog boy has never left the swamp before. Have you ever seen a bull?” Bog Boy: “No, I’ve only seen an upturned firebird.”
    • Bog Boy rolls a natural 1. “Clementine, remember me.” Her bucket shifts closer to Big Business. The Arbiter: “Clementine leaves with the bull.”
27. 0:30:40 Big Business rolls 19 and “integrated himself into the riding bull,” wiring in like USB.
    • “He used to hang out with this man named Mandroid. Mandroid knew how to connect the machines, various vending machines and the like.”
    • The Arbiter: “I think I’m just not going to think too hard about it.” The GM: “Theater of the mind, the curtains close.”
28. 0:31:39 Bog Boy gets a heroic surge as the crowd chants his name after he’s thrown off. He takes 10 from the fall, doubled for the nat 1.

Round 2

29. 0:32:12 The Arbiter: “Fight.” The GM: “That’s dos for our international viewers.” The Arbiter: “I always thought of this as kind of a domestic show.”
30. 0:32:40 Bog Boy: “Chico del Panto, which is Bog Boy in Spanish” (he admits he Googled it).
31. 0:32:56 — Clementine goes to the Grandmaster. Bog Boy asks her to look after Clementine: “She is too distracting to me.” The GM throws down a reel, hooks the pail and lifts Clementine up to sit beside her.
32. 0:33:29 — The oil. Bog Boy: “Remember that time when you took all that oil and you poured it all through the swamp. The only thing that it did is it made me slicker.”
    • He slides across the snow in a zigzag, withdraws into his shell, and the shell glows a radioactive color.
    • He leaps and casts Elemental Burst.
    • The GM: “I can’t believe you sludged the swamp, big business.”
    • Big Business: “I was trying to grow an oil tree.… You plant the oil, then you come back and you got an oil tree.”
    • The Arbiter: “You’re not a botanist.” He agrees that it “makes perfect sense.” The GM: “Not make sense at all.”
    • Big Business fails the save and takes 17 lightning damage. Bog Boy: “I am a frog. I mean a toydle [Tortle].”
33. 0:36:19 — Bog Boy hides.
    • He uses Patient Defense to disengage. Lightning-blasted snow goes up, and when it settles, a turtle leg is seen far away, just straight running. “Oh boy.”
    • Stealth 20 against Big Business’s insight. Little scanners come on Big Business’s head, but he only gets a 9.
    • Bog Boy tucks into a snow-covered rock outcrop “like Frodo and Sam” by the gates, and his shell is covered in snow.
    • Big Business: “Bog boy loves Lord of the Rings.” Bog Boy: “Big fan. Love reading them books.”
34. 0:38:57 — A slushy for Big Business. An Acolyte throws a slushy across the arena. His chest receptacle opens and catches it. It pours over his coins and wires and “lubricates” him, setting up a critical hit.
35. 0:40:01 — The earthquake.
    • Big Business: “You got a little slippery compared to last time, bog boy, but you ain’t still ready for the big league.”
    • He uses Lay on Hands. Steam, cash and coins pop out of his exhaust pipes, and his leg rolls “all sevens” (“Are we in Las Vegas?… Ding ding ding”).
    • “If I know one thing about the bog boy is that he ain’t never go too far.”
    • He “piston power punches” the earth and sends an earthquake toward the hidden turtle. The GM: “Triple P.”
    • He rolls with disadvantage but still hits (26) for a critical 25, plus a smite (his first time playing a paladin): “Standard mortgage. Smile.”
    • The description: Big Business jumps on cash-fueled legs and smashes down with both scoops. “That’s what you get for not having a decent portfolio, son.”
    • A rock falls from the mountain onto Bog Boy’s shell. He rolls out: “Oh, Lord.”
    • The international gag continues: “dose D8,” “dos, the Spanish,” “for the Italian.”
36. 0:44:59 The Acolytes wince for Bog Boy and toss him a blue slushy too, setting up his own crit.

Round 3

37. 0:45:27 — The real Freak of the Creek.
    • Radioactive ooze comes from his mouth. His beloved band shirt is ripped up.
    • Anime-style, he wipes the blood away: “Now you just unlocked the real freak of the creek.”
38. 0:46:31 The GM announces “round number trois.” A language muddle follows: tres, “trace,” “dos. No, wait.” The GM: “I think that’s German for three.” Bog Boy: “Ramstein. That was my band shirt.”
39. 0:47:04 — The grapple.
    • Bog Boy’s grapple strike auto-crits. Big Business fails the save and stays grappled (his escape roll is a 9). The GM: “Everyone point and laugh.”
    • Big Business: “He’s just so damn slippery. Get off me.”
    • Bog Boy clings to his chest “like a little toddler backpack” and whispers: “You know when I win all this… you’re gonna lose and everyone’s gonna get what I want.”
40. 0:49:13 — The shield of cash. Big Business spends his heroic surge to equip his shield. The GM: “I want a fucking cool way in which you reveal this awesome shield.”
    • “You forget one thing, bog boy, a big business always ready for a tussle.”
    • His turbines spin up and hordes of cash spray out, hitting Bog Boy in the face.
    • “Business is booming.” A stock ticker inside him constantly prints money.
41. 0:50:30 — The flurry. The grapple crit lands for 19. Then a heightened flurry:
    • The first blow sails wide: money is flying and he can’t see. The Arbiter: “Just punching George Washington in the face.”
    • The second lands with a clang (12): “I got you.”
    • The third lands too, “like punching through a waterfall.”
42. 0:53:02 — “Everyone’s going to be frogs.” With a manic turtle smile, Bog Boy chants “Everyone’s going to be frogs” as he punches.
    • The Arbiter: “Grandmaster, what the fuck does that mean?… Are we sure that he’s not Thea?”
    • The GM: “He probably has just drank the oil that big business has flooded his swamp with… He’s maybe lost his mind.”
    • The name chant: “Big, big, big bog boy businessman.” The GM: “I still have my money on big bucks. Sorry, big business.” The Arbiter: “He’s a turtle. He thinks he’s a frog, so us forgetting his name is not that big a deal.”
43. 0:55:33 — Bless.
    • Big Business shuts the turbines down and unequips the shield. His core glows higher with “cha-ching, cha-ching”: “Oh baby, we just hit new record high profits.”
    • He casts Bless on himself (“everyone got laid off because of that”) and on two Acolytes:
      • B-Town, whom he spotted at the start.
      • Cookie Monster Steve, who has “a really big cookie”: “Are we going to get in the cookie business, baby Steve?”
    • The Acolytes go crazy. Scrib screams “I don’t want to be a frog.”
    • The Acolytes remove Bog Boy’s fatigue just before it would have made him take critical damage.
    • The GM welcomes Raiders: “Will we become a Maulstrip?… Will we become frogs because a turtle says so?”
44. 0:58:09 — The campaign slogan.
    • Big Business: “We’ve got to stop you from turning people into frogs. And in exchange, we’re going to build a shopping mall.”
    • The GM: “This is not a campaign I am for.”
    • Big Business: “You’ve got to go in for nature or completely destroy nature.” The Arbiter: “There’s no in between.”
45. 0:58:40 — Bog Boy’s origin.
    • Bog Boy: “I used to be a four-year-old boy before I got turned into a toad.”
    • Big Business: “He was a human child. Then I put him in the oil tree.”
    • Someone says “Well, now I’m 85” (labelled Caustic Phoenix; speaker uncertain).
    • Bog Boy starts a story: “When I was a little boy playing by the swamp…” A little chair comes up for it.
    • The GM cuts him off. She makes eye contact with “poor Clementine, the fish wife”: “How? Why? I can’t… I need to go find Doug the Pug.”
46. 0:59:23 — Halftime. Big Business has 50 HP and Bog Boy has 32.

Break (0:59:23–1:10:30, excluded) and show intro

• 1:03:26 — Show intro narration (kept): “Far beyond the comforts of home… lies a dark void outside of all space and time. If you’re lucky, the Dread Fortress will call to you… the Grandmaster, Elusia Skypiercer. Though retired from battle, the Grandmaster yearns for the days of glory and bloodshed. She has tasked the Arbiter, her servant in all things, to curate a spectacle… Heroes, villains, monsters and beasts of all shapes and sizes are ripped from time and their plane of existence to fight for survival in her arena. You, Acolyte, are called to bear witness to D20 Deathmatch.”

After the break — Doug, ledgers and oil trees

47. 1:10:30 — The grandstands. The Arbiter describes the break: Acolytes in the floating grandstands got into fights, ripped their shirts off and swung them around their heads, and threw their grandmothers onto the field of battle.
48. 1:10:56 — Doug the Pug.
    • The GM pulls out a small wagon with a plush purple pillow. Doug the Pug sits on it wearing a tiny crown too small for his head, “his eyes even bigger than it.”
    • The Arbiter: “Doug’s ugly and he shouldn’t even be here.” The GM covers Doug’s ears: “He doesn’t have bones today. So he needs a front row seat.”
    • The Arbiter: “What has Doug ever done for anybody?” The GM: “Rolled higher than you.”
    • The Arbiter: “I saved his life once.”
49. 1:11:50 — The ledger. The Arbiter pulls out a small Italian leather pocketbook with a ledger of everyone he has ever saved and the favors they owe.
    • Big Business: “I like you, Arbiter. We got to talk real estate.”
    • The Arbiter has had his eye on a vacation property, “maybe a timeshare.”
50. 1:12:15 — The oil-tree debate.
    • Big Business: “We’ll plant oil trees across the whole hemisphere.” The GM: “There are no such thing as oil trees.”
    • The Arbiter: “The Void is a place of inclusivity… I can’t really tell him that burning the planet in order to make a couple of dollars is bad… me pushing my ideologies onto him.”
    • The GM sees Great to be Gator gifting sub after sub and takes it as proof the Acolytes agree with her: “Bog boy is correct. Minus the turning people into frogs thing.”
    • Bog Boy: “Everyone become a frog, everybody gets smaller… we use less resources… And it fulfills my purpose with my bog witch. But that’s another story for another day.”
    • The Arbiter: “There’s usually not this much backstory in our deathmatches.” The GM: “We may have stepped into some real swamp shit.”
    • The GM: “you brought in two champions who have a lot of turmoil… their fish wife, their swamp witch, and their ledgers and concrete floors and oil trees.”
    • The Arbiter: “Do we recognize marriages to fish in the void?… We should have some sort of bylaw about that.” The GM: “If they both kill each other, it’s not a problem.”
    • Big Business hears an Acolyte talking about “olive oil trees”: “If I don’t find a way to grow oil in trees, I’m going to chop down every tree I find.” The GM goes looking for “which acolyte to ban.”

Round 4

51. 1:15:01 The Acolytes “really are not vibing with being turned into frogs.” Bog Boy is at critical fatigue again.
52. 1:15:37 — Shell defense.
    • Bog Boy had been sitting “like Winnie the Pooh” with his legs stretched out in the snow. He gets up: “Oh, these old bones.”
    • He readies an attack, then withdraws into his shell and falls prone in the snow (Shell Defense).
    • His head pokes out: “Wait a second. I might have made a little mistake.”
53. 1:17:06 The Acolytes clear Bog Boy’s fatigue and pile it onto Big Business instead. Big Business: “All this sugary soda inside my inner oil…”
54. 1:17:27 — Clementine and Doug.
    • Bog Boy sees Clementine beside Doug the Pug, the two of them “talking.” He fills with rage: “That’s my wife, Doug.”
    • The Arbiter: “Clementine is quite the opportunist.” Bog Boy: “Clementine, I don’t feel right about it.”
    • His Stunning Strike misses (“Sugar”). The GM: “You’re too overwhelmed with the sight of Clementine happily, almost blushing a little as she talks to Doug the Pug. Because Doug is quite a charmer.”
    • His heightened flurry lands two of three blows, a glancing crit for 17 and a clean hit for 12: “Just clang, clang, clang.”
    • As he punches, tears come: “She was mine, big business.”
55. 1:20:34 The GM: “I’m sorry, these guys fighting over a fish… I’m going to make a movie of this, and Ewan McGregor is going to be in it.”
56. 1:20:56 — “She’s going to get with that dog.”
    • Big Business stands: “I’m going to beat you in front of your fish wife, and she’s going to get with that dog.” The Arbiter: “That was a sentence.”
    • The GM: “Doug has no bones. No bones. Anywhere… He has been neutered.” The Arbiter: “I think you don’t understand how anatomy works.”
57. 1:22:04 — The kill position.
    • Big Business turns his scoops sideways into “the kill position” and swings wildly (“Come on, whammy”).
    • A 16 looks like a miss until he remembers Bless. A single dollar bill floats in front of him to remind him. “Oh, it’s profit time.”
    • It hits for 25, with a smite on top, for 47 total.
    • Bog Boy deflects 22 and tries to redirect it, but Big Business makes the save (Mudcat notes a DC mishap on his end).
    • 25 lands. One shovel smacks Bog Boy into the air and the other slams him down.
    • The decisive image: as the glowing fist comes down, Bog Boy tries to turn it back toward Big Business, then sees Doug whispering into Clementine’s ear in the stands. “Almost like a little bit of defeat,” he lets it go, and it cleaves him down the side.
    • The GM: “That breaks my heart… I love a good loss.”
58. 1:27:05 — “Getting sloppy.” The GM scoots her chair away as Doug and Clementine get “sloppy”: Doug is licking the water in Clementine’s pail. “Have you ever seen a pug drink water?”
    • Bog Boy: “I don’t want to imagine that now.” Big Business: “But he’s got no bones, so it’s even worse.” “He ain’t got no bones.”

Chaos event — rock, paper, scissors (1:27:50)

59. The Acolytes demand blood and chant “Chaos!” The GM eyes both champions (“They’re both kind of not good”) and picks Bog Boy to roll: “Hopefully we don’t all turn into frogs.” He rolls 16.
60. 1:29:04 — Three things fall from the sky:
    • a giant rock lands behind Big Business with a boom;
    • giant shiny metal scissors land behind Bog Boy;
    • “a beautiful paper plane.”
    • “It is rock, paper, scissors time, bitches!” (speaker 04, uncertain). The GM says it’s new to the snowy mountaintop.
61. 1:30:20 — Steaks.
    • The Arbiter asks about the stakes. The GM: “They’re beef steaks, obviously. Filet. We only have the best.” The champions hold the hand signs “like weapons.”
    • Inspired by the Arbiter, she makes the prize healing instead of damage: a steak cooked however the winner likes, worth 10 HP.
    • The Arbiter: “You’re telling me this whole time that the chaotic events could have helped the champions?”
    • The GM: “I don’t advertise that for obvious reasons… You just keep your little brain preoccupied to your little ledgers… Yours is writing things down.”
    • The Arbiter: “I’m gonna make a note of that for sure.” He writes the Grandmaster’s name in a book with the word “kill” scratched into its cover. Bog Boy: “Damn.” The GM: “Whatever he’s writing, it does not matter.”
62. 1:32:19 — The game. The giant stone, scissors and paper plane shake with anticipation.
    • Big Business picks rock: “It’s the strongest one out there.”
    • The GM calls the first throw “slow as fuck” and makes it best of three. The second throw is a tie.
    • Big Business wins with rock again: “You ain’t jumping out of this game.”
63. 1:33:40 — The steak. Big Business: “I like them rare. Actually, just give me money.”
    • The GM: “I don’t have money. They’re just the cows from right outside the fortress.”
    • He puts it in his gears: “between the slushies, I ain’t feeling too good.” The GM: “a combination of raw meat and blue slushies.”

Round 5

64. 1:34:19 — Snowstorm August.
    • The snow spins around Bog Boy. He goes at Big Business with hands outstretched instead of in a combat stance, and whips swirling snow at him (Elemental Burst).
    • The GM: “You want to dream bigger?” Bog Boy spends his heroic surge to make it a snowstorm. “I am a way of the elements monk.”
    • In the audience, “the IT dude” flies out of his seat.
    • The Arbiter rules that if it lands, Big Business is frozen in place “Mortal Kombat style” and can’t defend the next attack. Big Business: “My heaters run hot.”
    • The GM: “All major storms get names.” Bog Boy: “Snowstorm August.”
    • The GM: “August comes, blow it on in!… It rips across the flesh of the Acolytes, tearing their skin off, exposing the bone underneath.”
    • Big Business saves: “a fresh undercoat.” He takes 9 and is not frozen.
65. 1:37:33 — The last focus. Bog Boy spends his last focus on a basic flurry.
    • The GM lifts the pail so Clementine can watch. Bog Boy: “She’s just laughing. I know she is.” The Arbiter asks what a laughing fish sounds like, and someone makes the sound.
    • The first blow misses. The second is a natural 1 (“Clementine is disappointed”) and he gains fatigue.
    • Big Business: “You going back to the swamp, and by which I mean swamp, I mean the big business new shopping mall.”
    • Bog Boy stumbles in the snow: “Everyone was supposed to be a frog. I’ll be back, big business.”
66. 1:38:50 — Clementine falls. Shocked by his failure, Clementine’s pail tips off the ledge above and she falls from the sky, flip-flopping (“She’s a flying fish”).
    • Bog Boy uses Step of the Wind and, in a puff of snow, catches her: “I’m so sorry, baby.”
67. 1:40:11 — The job offer. Bog Boy lies cradling Clementine. Big Business looks down:
    • “Clementine, I told you you should have stayed with the big man.”
    • “Bog Boy, I make you one deal here before I kill you. You ought to go ahead and you become new manager of my new shopping mall, or I take you out here right now… It pays very little.”
68. 1:41:02 — Bog Boy’s answer. “I live for the bog. I die for the bog. The freak of the creek.”
    • He throws Clementine into the air (“Hopefully someone catches her”) and lies splayed out “like a Braveheart, like freedom.”
    • Scrib catches Clementine in the crowd and cradles her. Clementine looks back with worried eyes.
69. 1:41:22 — The boot.
    • Big Business stomps his boot down. The first stomp misses (16). “Come on, hold still now. You’re too slippery for your own good.” Bog Boy: “I ain’t moving, you blind man.”
    • The second lands (27 plus Bless).
    • Bog Boy is at 7 HP. He deflects 20 of the 11 damage and survives. The Arbiter: “What a miracle!… Staying alive. Metal as fuck.”
70. 1:43:49 — Funeral rites. The GM had been about to ask Bog Boy “what are your funeral rites?… I thought in that moment he was going to croak.” The answer: “Oh, throw me in the bog.” (Labelled Mudcat, but probably Bog Boy; speaker uncertain.)

Round 6 — the kill

71. 1:44:02 Big Business is “teetering on the edge with only 22 points of health.”
    • The GM: “Exhaustion is kicking in. The two of you are going to your baseline animal instincts, or at least baseline programming.” Big Business: “My only instinct is capitalism, Grandmaster.”
    • As the boot glances off his shell, Bog Boy pushes the leg aside and lands a straight punch (12). Big Business: “Oh, my money port. Why does it sound dirty when you say it?”
72. 1:45:33 — The finishing blow. A plain bonus unarmed strike for 28 beats Big Business’s remaining health by one point.
    • Bog Boy describes it: “Push the leg up, boom, right into the groin. You hear like the little clink, clink, clink… money spinning in his eyes.” Big Business goes down on his knees.
    • Then “like one of those old robotic punching games,” Bog Boy doesn’t even look as he strikes. The head goes “clink, clink, clink.”
73. 1:46:36 — Big Business’s last thought.
    • The GM: in slow motion, as the fist meets his chin, Big Business sees Clementine across from him in the Acolytes’ arms.
    • Nate: “He just thinks to himself and all them poor little dollars he got at home waiting for him to return, knowing that they might not see him again.” His eyes go to zeros.
74. 1:47:29 — Big Business dies. “The head pops off. Your body stands for a moment before clattering into a pile onto the ground. Mere scraps now, perhaps to be sold and cycled back in.”

Aftermath — the proposal and Griselda

75. 1:47:29 — Clementine returned. The Grandmaster flies across, gently takes Clementine, and lands before Bog Boy: “Who did you win this fight for?”
76. 1:48:11 — The proposal. Bog Boy points at the fish:
    • “I realize my mistake. Maybe the world doesn’t want to be frogs. Maybe the frog is inside here.”
    • A croak comes from inside his shell. “Not that one. I meant like your heart.”
    • “I’m so sorry, Clementine. I disrespected you. I want you to make me an honest toydle [Tortle].”
    • He takes a little nut that fell off Big Business and asks, “Will you marry me?”
    • The GM holds out Clementine. The catfish’s eyes open and her mouth opens even wider in shock.
77. 1:49:28 — Griselda arrives.
    • A loud screeching from above. In the stands appears the swamp witch: a foul, long-haired, swampy beast, with hags all around. She points a bony finger at Bog Boy.
    • Bog Boy recognizes her as the one he promised to help turn everyone into frog people.
    • Bog Boy: “Griselda, I’m so sorry.”
    • Griselda: “How dare you propose to my daughter!… You broke your promise!”
78. 1:50:21 — The bargain.
    • Bog Boy: “Not everyone need to be frog now. Come on Griselda, we can figure this out.”
    • Griselda: “That was the price for her fin. You cannot have her. You are not the half the man she needs.”
    • She walks down the staircase, grips the railing and screams. She reaches high, and Clementine thrashes as if she can’t breathe, drawn back toward her mother.
    • Bog Boy: “Clementine, come on… We can run away.”
    • Griselda: “What will you give up?… You are not enough.” Bog Boy: “What could make me more?”
79. 1:51:15 — The fusion.
    • She sees the pile of scrap metal. Green power flows from her long-nailed fingertips, the pieces animate, rise, and attach themselves to Bog Boy one by one, each one “integrating” into his flesh (Nate supplies the bull-ride word).
    • Bog Boy grows taller and stronger, and a second consciousness enters his mind.
    • Big Business, inside him: “Tell you, bog boy, we ain’t done yet. You ready to do some business?” Bog Boy: “No.”
80. 1:52:34 The hag rises into the sky. “Welcome and goodnight to D20!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

Almost all of it is out-of-character, so it’s logged as creator notes. Possible in-character lines are marked.

• Both players are first-timers. Mudcat calls it “sort of a double win, sort of a double loss.” Nate is a long-time viewer.
• Tech: the cameras failed despite months of work automating the show (the 720p gag). Caustic Phoenix: “so many cigarettes… Our entire budget.”
• Peter on the plan: “first time playing monk… first time playing on D20 Deathmatch.” He and Nate “yes and each other way too much.”
  • Like pro wrestling, they had a loose idea. He expected a heel turn: he’d be the heel and Big Business the babyface who saves the world.
  • He loved the bog witch twist.
• Bog Boy’s backstory (player-stated): “I was a child that got… I was a teenage mutant ninja turtle… but in Florida.” A bog witch was always part of it (“100%”).
• Peter thanks the DMs for bringing out Doug and letting Clementine flirt with him.
  • Nate: “That needs to be a sticker. The dog drinking the fish water, little hearts above his head.”
  • Caustic Phoenix: “everything a pug does is sloppy.”
• Caustic Phoenix on the odds: she expected the Warforged to win on HP. Nate: “Those counterattacks were insane… half my health.”
• Peter almost played a grung, but the AC was too low, so he pivoted to Tortle. Jokes followed: “three grungs in a pail” / “three different fishes in three different buckets. Which one’s the real Clementine?”
• Nate was happy to miss in the late rounds; a win would have felt anticlimactic. Peter: “a Joker/Batman situation… if I destroy you, who will I have left?” and “big business is pretty lonely now that Clementine’s gone… this is a shell of him.”
• Caustic Phoenix on PvP: “You don’t always hope that you hit every single time. What you hope for is the best story… you’re cheering as much for your opponent to give a good show back.” Nate: pro wrestling, “the Vaseline.” Caustic Phoenix: “For the oil in this case.”
• Origin of the characters:
  • Peter joined Nate in Discord. Bog Boy came first; “the best counter to nature is capitalism,” and Peter came up with the Warforged idea.
  • They have played together on Careful Camp Trip [?] with Caustic Phoenix.
  • Clementine was Peter’s idea that night, based on Jake “the Snake” Roberts carrying a snake in a bag. He changed it to a rusty metal bucket because “Jake the Rattlesnake was terrible taking care of that snake in real life.”
• Caustic Phoenix on coming back: “That’s why it’s fun to think of the options of how do we bring you back… You gave a reason to come back.”
• Parting thoughts:
  • Peter: “Don’t make deals that you cannot fulfill… for me, I’m now half robot, half turtle.” (He could be speaking as Bog Boy; possibly in character.) Caustic Phoenix: “Put it in a fairy tale book.”
  • Nate: “Big business keep telling you to invest.” (in character) “Nate says go talk to a financial advisor.” Out of character: “Don’t bring a new character into a PVP if you want to win… looking to see what the hell these chaos classes do.”