S7E6 — Bone Force — Jerry Bonesman v TD

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On Father’s Day in The Void, a training construct called TD and a vengeful skeleton pugilist named Jerry Bonesman fought in the sleepy, duck-filled Duck Village. TD treated the whole match as a lesson. He stacked protective layers like a metallic onion and sealed himself inside an unbreakable dome. Jerry punched it, gnawed it, wrote math on a notepad about it, and turned Thea into a T-Rex to bite it. Then he woke the giant orc skull outside The Dread Fortress, the first time anyone had seen the fortress speak, and the fight ended in one of the season’s oddest and most tender deaths.

The Story

Father’s Day in the Secret Lab

Deep inside the Dread Fortress, in an open lab strewn with cadavers, Thea hopped from body to body looting organs. She took hearts, livers, a few gallbladders and long strings of intestine. She tied them into a bouquet (“Intestines!… The army’s gonna love this!”) just as The Arbiter’s Italian leather shoes, “probably fake,” came clicking down the stone. “This is my secret lab,” he protested. “No one’s supposed to know about this place.”

Thea presented the falling-apart bouquet: “Happy Father’s Day!” The Arbiter refused the title. He called her “a mindless worm that I plucked from the soil to do my bidding” and their arrangement “a business relationship.” Thea pointed out that some people call him daddy. When he asked whether she had been reading his mail, she said, “You know I’m illiterate, so that’s not true. But I have been opening it!” They settled on “Papa.” He told her not to ruin the cadaver he was still using, then clapped them both into the throne room.

The Bastion of Sorrow

The Grandmaster greeted him with “Happy Father’s Day, Arbiter.” Everyone had heard him call himself daddy, she said, and opening his mail is “not a federal offense here in the Void.” Thea strained every muscle to summon her two favourite champions. She let out a small fart that grew into a gaseous green portal full of glitter.

TD stepped through first. He was a rigid construct who moved more gracefully than expected, with metallic-sheened skin, vivid artificial blue eyes, hovering blue crystals and a cape that clearly wasn’t for fashion. “This is not the training ground,” he observed. “But there’s so much training to be had upon these grounds.” The Grandmaster was charmed. She suggested that if he lost, they might keep him as “the most entrancing art installation here.”

Jerry came next, and he had to correct Thea at once: “It’s Jerry Bones Man, all right? Not Bones Min.” He was a polished white skeleton in glowing purple and cobalt robes, with ossified horns and a necrotic mist of tiny grasping hands that followed him everywhere. He made a poor first impression by asking whether the place was called “the Dread Shack or like the Dread Hut,” and by complaining about the lack of bones in the decor. TD called the fortress “a bastion of sorrow.” The Arbiter said that was exactly the vibe. The Grandmaster declared TD her chosen champion then and there, and promised the winner a pizza buffet.

TD can’t eat, so the Arbiter offered intestines instead. Thea fetched a single strand, which the Grandmaster helpfully noted runs about 25 feet. TD tied it around his waist like a karate belt and magicked the blood off his hands. Jerry promised to “throw some hands… or maybe throw some bones. If I could wink, I would.” He has no eyes. TD’s verdict: “That sounds like a skill issue to me.”

Duck Village and the Layers

The Arbiter folded space and set them down in Duck Village, a quaint place of market stalls, a church and ducks walking through the fountain. The Grandmaster said it had been “demoted” to that name; the Arbiter insisted it was the official one. Above them, millions of Acolytes had brought their fathers along and were hurling blue slushies at each other. The Grandmaster sat with popcorn and Doug the Pug and issued one rule: “Please do not harm the baby ducks.”

TD went first and spent the whole turn powering up. A glowing armour booted up over him with a startup chime, a magical ward rippled over that, and then he simply beckoned Jerry forward. “The test is to get through multiple layers,” he explained. Jerry answered with a three-fingered evil eye (“Stare into my evil eye hole”) and an armour of his own, his body ossifying further, his ribs sealing shut and his cheekbones spiking outward.

TD added a frozen aura and a glint of blade-turning magic. Jerry cocked a haymaker: “Behold! My fisticuffs!” It landed, and the cold armour bit straight back into his bones. It also only reached the ward underneath. His second punch missed, and his hand audibly shattered. “Help,” Jerry told the camera. “What am I doing here?” During a water break, TD dipped a finger in his glass and tossed it aside. Jerry gulped his down, and it splashed out through every empty hole in his body onto his robes and between his legs, so it looked like he had peed himself.

The Birthday Gator

An alligator with piercing yellow eyes burst from the fountain and sang “Happy Birthday” at everyone. Jerry shrugged it off. TD didn’t, and the song dragged up a buried memory: a bluish-skinned, possibly draconic figure celebrating a birthday for the first time, “the one he was created for.” Without realising it, TD began to sing along, beautifully enough that the Grandmaster snapped, “Fuck you and your angelic stupid voice.”

The Wall of Force

Shaking off the memory, TD announced that “the first test is complete.” He pressed a button on his hand and enclosed himself in a dome of pure force. The Acolytes went wild for him and showered him in blue raspberry slushie, and TD told Jerry in Draconic, “Your turn. The next test, the breakthrough.”

Jerry bared his arm. Ice crystals formed along it, and his bones cracked and oozed black ichor that hardened into a Dread Hand. He dedicated the next blow to every level-one skeleton ever slain by adventurers: “Too many of my skeleton brothers are dead.” “This is the revenge story I didn’t know we needed,” said the Grandmaster. The fingers lashed at the dome like tentacles and did nothing. The crowd loved it anyway, stripping off their clothes and brawling.

Thea brought Jerry a notepad and pencil: “It’ll help you write down your thoughts.” TD offered riddles about little Tommy’s apples. Jerry asked if he could just push the wall. The Grandmaster summed it up: “Jerry is all bones, no brain.” TD pressed a hand to the dome, Titanic-style, and told him, “You will learn eventually.” Then he added necrotic protection and settled in to dodge. “This is like fighting a Russian nesting doll,” said the Arbiter.

The Box and the T-Rex

The Arbiter couldn’t stand to watch any longer. A bolt of multicoloured lightning brought The Box of Chaos slamming down at Jerry’s feet, wreathed in yellow and pink fire, with a shadowy figure leaning over its side. When Jerry called it “Mr. Box,” it replied, “Mr. Box was my father. He’s dead now.” Jerry started to wish his late father a happy Father’s Day, and the Box told him to shut the fuck up.

The Box would “certainly not” put a brain in his skull, but it would take bones (“I’m building something”). Jerry handed over his shattered wrist and hand. “This is gonna come in handy,” said the Box, and the Grandmaster refused to let the pun go. In exchange it gave him a large animal femur that worked as a wand of polymorph. Jerry tried his evil eye through the dome again. It stung, but TD kept the wall up.

Thea then volunteered as tribute. She told everyone about the fortress’s “good dental program” and her enormous Tooth Fairy earnings, which made Jerry realise he could have been running that con for years. TD tried to stop the transformation as a teaching moment, “a each one teach one moment,” but the spell went through. Thea became a massive pink T-Rex with bulging eyes and threw her whole body at the dome. It held. Before the break, the Arbiter stated his only requirement: “As long as one of you ends up dead, I’m gonna be happy.” TD replied: “Noted. Switching to obliteration mode.”

Obliteration Mode

After the break, an exhausted Thea Rex napped by the fountain, and the village had somehow grown into a town (“The sign has changed”). TD drew energy out of the dome, which pulsed like a beating heart, to heal himself and rebuild his ward. When his eyes reopened, they were red.

Jerry thanked Thea for “believing in the bones.” Then he asked about the giant skull he had seen outside the fortress. It belonged to the Grandmaster, she said, and “no one has ever asked its name before.” The name was Seavold. Chanting “Seavold, be bold, be bold, Jerry, be bold, be the bone,” Jerry channelled his bone lord Bonar and the skull together. True horns erupted from his head and spines jutted from his back: “Now I am the great bones man.” The skull’s call broke reality, and both champions landed on the front lawn of the Dread Fortress among endless lava fields, with the orc skull’s eyes beginning to glow.

Jerry burst into bone dust and reformed inside the dome, face to face, because “he’s not going to bone from behind.” TD copied the trick and stepped out, leaving Jerry sealed inside. “You still have not learned, bone man,” he said, and soon after, “Only one has ever beat me.” “That’s a fucking masterclass,” said the Grandmaster. A true third eye socket split open in Jerry’s forehead, and as his hex took hold, strange flashes appeared that might have been Seavold’s history. TD filled the dome with psychic static, “a whole disco laser show.” When the smoke cleared, a bony hand waved it away: “I’m still here. I’m still here.”

TD dropped the wall. Jerry, who had been planning to dig his way out, demanded he put it back. “Does not compute,” said TD. Jerry tried “please.” Charging in with a high-pitched scream, he cursed TD and found a new lesson: “punching that wall of force taught me how to punch back with force.” TD was frightened at last: “Egads, I am shaking in my bones.” In reply, TD made Jerry see training denizens like himself beaten down by warriors chasing their own success. The Grandmaster named the agony they shared and ruled that every hit would now do double damage. Jerry rolled a natural 20 to resist and wondered, “Have I become the thing I was fighting against?” He held TD with his fist cocked: “If one of us gets out of this alive, we can make a change.” “Perhaps we can,” said TD.

Seavold Speaks

In round eight, a round the show didn’t even have placards for, TD split into mirror images. They caught Jerry’s fists, steered the blows into their own faces and chests, and shattered. Jerry admitted he “has no utility” and prayed to the skull. Its eyes lit, a jaw rose out of the ground, and Seavold spoke. Jerry offered to be its knight, defending all undead and “all skeletons, even the ones inside of the people that have flesh still.” Seavold sneered, “You are but an ant to me.” TD stood up for his opponent, and Seavold called the match “a farce.” Then, before Acolytes who had never seen the Dread Fortress move, the giant head attacked them both with every insult it knew: “Training dummy, skeleton fodder, bone dust, calculator.” TD’s ward shattered.

Training Complete

The Arbiter stood and pulled out his metal chair:

The Arbiter: “If one of you guys doesn’t die, I’m gonna come down there and fucking kill you both.”

All damage was now tripled. TD drove a psychic lance into Jerry’s skull while Jerry led the crowd in a “Bonesman!” chant. The Grandmaster asked what he saw, now that he could finally calculate faster than anyone and death was at his door. Jerry ran the numbers one last time and found peace: TD was the right one, he would stop this from happening again, and “sometimes somebody else has to take the torch.”

At the last moment a bony hand and a metal one clasped, “the skeletons and the dummies of the world.” Jerry crumbled to dust from the inside out, and his hand turned to dust as it fell. “Training complete,” said TD. A slight voice whispered behind him, “You trained him well.” “And this is just phase one,” TD replied, as green crept into his blue eyes: his second directive was necromancy. The Grandmaster offered him the pizza he couldn’t eat. He chose the intestines as his topping, and she raised his hand to the Acolytes: “Let the training continue.”

Dried Blood

Afterward, the players looked back on how badly matched the two had been. Kyle said the Wall of Force saga “felt like five episodes of Dragon Ball Z,” and admitted Jerry had been planning to cartoon-shovel his way under the dome. Kyle, as the show’s “bone salesman,” made a closing pitch: “Hey, you got broken bones? We got new ones for you right here.” The Arbiter and the Grandmaster realised they now owed the giant orc skull a backstory. “We just liked his skull,” the Grandmaster shrugged. “We’re like snails… or hermit crabs.” TD’s parting creed: “The training does not end when the adventure begins.”

Notable Moments

• Thea summoned the champions with a fart that blossomed into a glittery green portal.
• A singing fountain alligator unlocked a memory of the person TD was built for.
• Thea, as a giant pink T-Rex, body-slammed an unbreakable dome while Jerry chewed on it beside her.
• Jerry finally got inside the Wall of Force, and TD immediately stepped out and locked him in.
• Seavold, the orc skull of the Dread Fortress, grew a jaw and spoke for the first time, calling one champion a “calculator.”
• Jerry and TD clasped hands, bone and metal, as Jerry turned to dust.

Memorable Quotes

• Thea: “You know I’m illiterate, so that’s not true. But I have been opening it!”
• Jerry Bonesman: “It’s Jerry Bones Man, all right? Not Bones Min.”
• TD: “Losing is part of the journey. I will die at some point, just not today.”
• The Box of Chaos: “Mr. Box was my father. He’s dead now.”
• Jerry Bonesman: “Turns out that punching that wall of force taught me how to punch back with force.”
• TD: “You were so close, Jerry, but you are not my master. Only one has ever beat me.”
• Seavold: “I will look down on whoever I want. This match is a farce.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Remember, please and thank you goes a long way.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

TD, the “training denizen” (Crit Bard)

• Who it is:
  • A construct. Its skin has a metallic sheen, its blue eyes are artificial, blue crystals hover around it, and it wears a functional cape.
  • Pronouns at the table are he and they.
  • Speaks Draconic as well as Common. Has no tongue and cannot eat or drink.
• Its maker:
  • Created by “my master.” It doesn’t know how it was made, and it hums a tune its master hummed.
  • “Only one has ever beat me”: the master, by context.
  • A memory log shows a bluish-skinned, possibly draconic person celebrating a first birthday: “the one he was created for.”
• Its directives:
  • Training others (“each one teach one”); “his directive is to protect.”
  • Its second directive is necromancy, and its eyes turn green.
  • Its eyes turn red in “obliteration mode.”
• Personality: speaks in tests, lessons and math riddles; asks for well-being “in a series of numbers.”
• Gear and spells:
  • An abjuration wizard: Mage Armor, Arcane Ward, Armor of Agathys, Blade Ward, Wall of Force, Protection Rune, Counterspell, Arcane Vigor, Mirror Spell, Synaptic Static, Mirrored Agony, Mirror Image, Silvery Barbs, Psychic Lance.
  • Wears a 25-ft intestine belt from Thea.
• In this episode:
  • The Grandmaster’s chosen champion. Defended Jerry against Seavold, killed him, and won the pizza (intestine toppings).
  • Was last seen holding Jerry’s bony hand.

Jerry Bonesman (Kyle). “Bones Man, not Bones Min.”

• Who he is:
  • A skeleton in glowing purple and dark cobalt robes with leather gauntlets. Ossified horns; a necrotic mist of tiny grasping hands follows him.
  • No eyes, no glowing orbs, no brain (“all bones, no brain”). Wisdom −1.
  • A “punch skeleton” pugilist (moxie, haymaker, fisticuffs, brace, Dread Hand) with “black magic”/eldritch invocations: Evil Eye, Armor of Agathys, Otherworldly Walk, Misty Step, Bane, Form of Dread, Frightful Avatar.
• His cause: wants revenge on adventurers who kill level-one skeletons; “too many of my skeleton brothers are dead.” He keeps a bag of things collected from low-level adventurers.
• His gods: channels “the Dreadlord / bone lord Bonar” and, in this fight, Seavold.
• In this episode:
  • Sacrificed his shattered wrist and hand to the Box of Chaos and got a wand of polymorph (seven charges) made from a large animal femur.
  • Turned Thea into a T-Rex. Became “the Great Bones Man.”
  • Offered to be Seavold’s knight protecting all undead and was rejected.
  • Realized “have I become the thing I was fighting against?” He passed the torch to TD and died as dust.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix)

• A little pink, illiterate creature. The Arbiter calls her “a mindless worm that I plucked from the soil to do my bidding” and his “ward.”
• Loots organs in his secret lab for “the army.” Opens his mail.
• Insists on calling him Daddy, and settles for Papa.
• Summons champions with a fart portal. Volunteered “as tribute.” She has had a lot of Tooth Fairy money via “a good dental program.”
• Polymorphed into a pink T-Rex, she body-slammed and gnawed the Wall of Force, then napped by the fountain.

The Arbiter (Mudcat)

• Has a secret lab of cadavers in the Dread Fortress (“I’m using that”).
• Wears (probably fake) Italian leather shoes. Denies being anyone’s father; known to call himself “daddy” and “Dice Daddy.”
• Interfered to give Jerry the Box of Chaos.
• Threatened both champions with his metal chair.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix)

• Chose TD as champion. Offended by “Dread Hut.”
• Set the pizza-buffet prize and protected the baby ducks.
• Owner of the orc skull at the Dread Fortress and keeper of its name.
• Ruled double damage via the “agony” and delivered TD’s pizza.

Seavold (voiced by Caustic Phoenix; spelling uncertain)

• The giant orc skull outside the Dread Fortress, owned by the Grandmaster. “No one has ever asked its name before.”
• Has a soul Jerry could commune with, with history glimpsed in flashes. Its eyes glow, and a jaw rose from the ground to complete it.
• First time anyone has seen the Dread Fortress speak or move.
• Calls Jerry “an ant,” looks down on both champions, and called the match “a farce.”
• Attacked as a chaos event with insults (“calculator”).

The Box of Chaos (Mudcat)

• Black inky tendrils; yellow and pink fire.
• Took Jerry’s bones (“I’m building something”) and gave the wand of polymorph.
• “Mr. Box was my father. He’s dead now.” (speaker inferred: the Box)

The singing alligator: in the Duck Village fountain, yellow eyes, sang “Happy birthday, dear Gator.”

Doug the Pug: seated beside the Grandmaster.

Jerry’s “skeleton brothers” / bone men and TD’s fellow “training denizens”: both groups beaten down by adventurers and warriors (mirrored visions).

Places

• The Arbiter’s secret lab inside the Dread Fortress: cadavers on metal tables.
• Throne room (Dread Fortress).
• Duck Village: the official name. A quaint village with marketplace stands, a church and a duck fountain (alligator inside). It became a “town” after the break (“the sign has changed”).
• The front lawn of the Dread Fortress: lava fields “as far as the eyes can see,” and the giant orc skull (Seavold).
• The floating grandstand: Acolytes with their fathers for Father’s Day.

Items

• Thea’s organ bouquet (hearts, livers, gallbladders, intestines).
• The 25-ft intestine belt, TD’s karate belt and later its pizza topping.
• Wand of polymorph (femur bone, seven charges), from the Box of Chaos.
• Jerry’s shattered wrist and hand, now in the Box (“I’m building something”).
• Thea’s notepad and pencil. Blue slushies.
• The round placards, which only go to seven. The Arbiter’s metal chair.

Lore statements

• Opening mail is not a federal offense in the Void.
• The Dread Fortress has a giant orc skull outside it, which belongs to the Grandmaster and is named Seavold. It can speak and move, and the Acolytes had never seen that before.
• The Arbiter keeps “an army” (Thea’s gift is for it).
• The Arbiter can transport the arena by clapping; Seavold’s pull also shifted the fight to the fortress lawn.
• In Dried Blood, Mudcat calls the Arbiter “master of all time and space.”

Full Round-by-Round

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

Opening — the secret lab (Father’s Day)

1. 0:00:46 Cadavers lie about in an open lab deep inside the Dread Fortress. Caustic Phoenix first says “castle,” then corrects herself to “fortress.” Thea, “a little pink thing,” hops from body to body looting organs: hearts, livers, a few gallbladders, and strings of intestine. She wraps them into a bouquet of internal organs. “Intestines!… The army’s gonna love this!”
2. 0:02:10 The Arbiter’s Italian leather shoes (“probably fake”) click down the stone as he comes looking for Thea. Someone shouts “You’re not supposed to be here!” (speaker uncertain). The Arbiter: “What are you doing in my lab?… This is my secret lab. No one’s supposed to know about this place.”
3. 0:02:32 Thea unveils the falling-apart bouquet: “Happy Father’s Day!” The Arbiter: “Number one, that’s fucking disgusting… Number two, I am not your father.” Thea: “But some people call you daddy.” He asks whether she’s been reading his mail. Thea: “You know I’m illiterate, so that’s not true. But I have been opening it!” She says the bouquet “looks just like you” and shoves it into his hands.
4. 0:03:26 The Arbiter slumps to the ground: “You are a mindless worm that I plucked from the soil to do my bidding. That’s it. It’s a business relationship.” Thea: “But I’m going to call you daddy.” He tells her she’s not old enough for him to explain. They settle on “Papa” (“Fine, whatever”).
5. 0:03:57 Thea has picked “the best” two champions, “or Papa’s gonna be really angry at me.” She asks whether she can call him Daddy if they do well: “I saw the Dice Daddy thing.” He tables the discussion. She slaps one of the metal tables so hard that the cadaver on it jumps. Arbiter: “I’m using that. Don’t ruin it.” Thea: “Am I going to kill him again?” He claps his hands and transports them both to the throne room.

The throne room

6. 0:04:54 The Grandmaster: “Happy Father’s Day, Arbiter.” He asks why everyone keeps saying that. Her answer: everyone has heard him call himself daddy multiple times. He complains about people reading his mail, and she says he leaves it out for weeks. “It’s also not a federal offense here in the Void.”
7. 0:05:27 Thea: “Got two of my favorite champions of all times!” A very limited magical creature, she has to strain to pull two champions into the Void. She contorts every muscle and lets out a small fart, which grows into a gaseous green portal mixed with glitter (“because that’s very Thea”).
8. 0:06:15 — TD’s entrance. A rigid figure steps through and stops to take in the place. Its thoughts: “This is not the training ground. But there’s so much training to be had upon these grounds.”
   • TD is a construct that moves more gracefully than expected. Its skin looks like skin but has a metallic sheen, and the eyes are vibrant blue and clearly artificial.
   • Blue crystals hover around it, rising and falling. It wears a cape that “doesn’t really look like it’s for fashion.”
   • It scans the room “to understand who exactly is getting trained today.”
9. 0:07:53 The Grandmaster: “You seem like a work of art. If you do not win the fight today, perhaps we’ll keep you as the most entrancing art installation here.” TD: “Fighting is not my style… But I do enjoy watching those fight and helping them grow. Am I to help you?” GM: “Not today, unless it’s for entertainment purposes only.”
10. 0:08:34 — Jerry’s entrance. Thea announces “Jerry Bonesman.” Jerry corrects her: “It’s Jerry Bones Man, all right? Not Bones Min.” Thea made “a pretty good guess” because she’s illiterate.
    • Jerry: “All bones, baby.” He wears glowing purple and dark cobalt robes and thick leather gauntlets.
    • Ossification gives him a horned visage. A necrotic mist forms tiny grasping hands that follow him everywhere. His face is a polished white skeleton.
    • “For a bag of bones like me, it’s awful cold here.”
11. 0:09:51 — The Dread Hut. Jerry: “What’s this place called? The Dread Shack or like the Dread Hut?” TD: “This is clearly a bastion of sorrow.” The Arbiter: “That is the vibe we’ve been going for… you would not believe how many people come here and they’re like, what am I doing here?”
12. 0:10:21 Jerry complains of “a very, very distinct lack of decor… Where are the bones, man?” TD suggests installing Jerry on the wall as art. The GM: “I’m backing TD on this. Clearly I have my chosen champion already. Jerry, you can’t just come in here and compare my home to a fast food joint. A hut?” Thea: “Like pizza huts?” TD has never heard of pizza.
13. 0:11:06 — The prize. After a mixed exchange about installing a buffet (speakers uncertain), the GM declares: “Whoever wins, you get a pizza buffet.”
14. 0:11:22 — The intestine belt. TD says it is “not made of flesh and bone” and can’t eat. The Arbiter: “I could whip you up some intestines… Thea, grab those intestines.” Thea brings a long, single strand. The GM googles it: intestines are typically 25 feet long.
    • TD wraps them around its waist like a karate belt, end hanging off the side (“Very Goku”). The Arbiter calls it “a corset made of intestines.”
    • TD wipes its hand twice and prestidigitates the blood away.
15. 0:12:41 TD asks Jerry what he wants from “this training exercise.” Jerry: “I’m just here to crack these knuckles and throw some hands… or maybe throw some bones. If I could wink, I would.” TD: “I hope you would throw something harder than that. Please, I dare you.” Jerry, to the camera: “Wink.” He has no eyes, “not even glowy orbs.” TD: “That sounds like a skill issue to me.”

The arena — Duck Village

16. 0:13:40 The Arbiter claps, time and space fold, and they arrive in Duck Village: “a small, quaint village where you might see a French girl running around reading books.”
    • GM: “This had an official name once, but it’s just been demoted to Duck Village.” The Arbiter: “That is the official name, actually.” It’s named for the ducks.
    • GM: “Please do not harm the baby ducks.” She threatens Jerry with disadvantage on his first attack if he keeps bringing up the Dread Hut.
    • The village has marketplace stands, a church, and ducks walking through the fountain.
17. 0:14:30 The Arbiter flies up to the floating grandstand of “hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Acolytes.” They are throwing blue slushies over each other, and they’ve all brought their fathers for Father’s Day. “Acolytes! Are you ready for blood?” The GM sits on her throne with popcorn and Doug the Pug beside her.
18. 0:15:28 In the roll-off, TD gets 13 and Jerry 12. TD goes first.

Round 1

19. 0:15:52 TD: “Thank you, Arbiter and Grandmaster… I will not let you down.”
    • A light forms from its feet up over about six seconds, with a booting-up sound: Mage Armor.
    • TD: “The test is to get through multiple layers. If you can do such, you will be victorious.” Jerry: “But first you have to get there.”
    • As the armor hits “100% completion,” a ripple puts a second layer over it: TD is an abjuration wizard, so the spell gives it an Arcane Ward.
    • TD beckons Jerry forward with its hand. That’s its whole turn.
20. 0:17:10 GM: “This is my chosen champion because he has impressed me already. You come into this fight ready to begin. You challenge your opponents.”
21. 0:17:34 Jerry’s mic is muted (“Jared Bowen” / “Jerry”). The table jokes that he has no tongue or lungs. TD: “Skill issue, for I don’t have a tongue either.” The GM suggests a speaker voice box. TD: “I do not comprehend exactly how I was created by my master.” GM: “We’ll have to figure that out in a later day. Maybe a side quest.” TD: “Losing is part of the journey. I will die at some point, just not today.”
22. 0:18:52 — The evil eye. The GM narrates the three-finger gesture: “He’s opening up his third eye.” Jerry glares at TD and lays a baleful hex on it: psychic damage, and his unarmed strikes now crit on a 19 or 20. TD: “This is a funny feeling. I do not know what this flavor of damage is.” Jerry (unmuted): “Can’t keep me muted forever… Stare into my evil eye hole.” Arbiter: “I don’t want to look in your holes.”
23. 0:20:38 — Armor of Agathys (Jerry). Jerry tilts his head back, cradles his hands skyward and whispers while necrotic mist spills out. He asks TD to lend him some bones; TD is “made of a substance that you probably cannot comprehend.”
    • His body ossifies further. The gaps in his rib cage seal into “an impenetrable sort of body armor kuros [cuirass?].”
    • His cheekbones spike out: “if you come and hit me, you’re gonna take a lot back.”
24. 0:22:26 Jerry: “It’s attacking your brain, TD. I’m in your brain now. I’m in that nothing you call a skull. Wait, you actually have a skull?” TD: “It means I am, how does the kid say, getting under your toes. No. Getting under your flaps. No. Getting under your crane.”

Round 2

25. 0:22:39 — Three layers, then four. TD casts Armor of Agathys too (“Back to back Agathys”). The GM describes the layers: a clear haze of mage armor, a shimmering, fractal blue ward, and a darker, frozen blue aura outside. TD: “I am going to enjoy feeling what your fist tastes like. Or tasting what your fists feel like?” It adds Blade Ward, a glint of metal. It waves; that’s its full action. Jerry: “This is going to be like five rounds of you guys just powering up.”
26. 0:24:56 — The haymaker. Jerry gets the skin joke at last. He cocks his arms “just like Henry Cavill did in Mission Impossible, but he doesn’t have biceps.” “I’m going to meet all of these weird, shiny force fields of yours with a good old fashioned knuckle sandwich.” He spends a moxie point on a haymaker for maximum damage: “Behold! My fisticuffs!” TD: “I am beholding! Well, I would like to hold them.” He hits.
27. 0:26:28 Jerry instantly takes cold damage from TD’s Armor of Agathys (“feel that in your bones”). The Arbiter calls Jerry “kind of a dick.” Jerry: “Hey, I’m not a dick. I’m just… Just a giant boner.” He has trouble finding the damage button: “Turns out not having eyes is a real problem.”
28. 0:27:32 The punch knocks through the Agathys layer and bursts slightly into the next, but the Arcane Ward takes all of it. GM: “That’s called planning. That’s called preparedness.”
29. 0:28:01 — “You’re my ward.” The Arbiter, to Thea: “That ward. That’s the word… I’m not your father. You’re my ward. It’s different.” Jerry: “Are we having like a familial dispute?”
30. 0:28:31 Jerry’s second, ordinary moxie-fueled punch misses. Jerry’s hand audibly shatters. GM: “I hope you brought extra.” TD: “I see a crack in the armor, but not big enough to actually allow me to feel any type of damage or pain or strife.” Jerry, to the camera: “Help. What am I doing here? What am I fighting?” GM: “TD is giving you excellent coaching advice.”
31. 0:30:33 — Water break. The GM sends Thea with water.
    • TD dips a finger in its glass (“hmm, not a fan”) and tosses it aside. Thea: “Why did I brought that?”
    • Jerry downs his (“kids thought that counts”). It splashes out through every empty hole onto his robes and between his legs, so it looks like he piddled. Jerry: “Oh God, I’m gonna have to clean that up.”
    • TD: “If I could consume it, I would… in the future.”

Chaos event — the singing alligator (0:31:55)

32. As the GM walks away, something snaps at her. An alligator with piercing yellow eyes pops out of the fountain, opens its mouth wide to show its teeth, and sings “Happy Birthday” (“Happy birthday, dear Gator”). Anyone caught up in the festivities takes psychic damage (DC 17 Wisdom).
33. 0:33:17 Jerry passes with 18 despite his −1 Wisdom. TD fails and takes psychic damage.
34. 0:33:42 — TD’s memory. The song forces a memory log back. TD’s eyes flicker like a projection, showing someone with bluish skin, “maybe draconic,” celebrating a birthday for the first time: “the one he was created for.” TD hums along with the gator without realizing it, then sings “Happy birthday.” The GM: “you actually have a really good voice… Fuck you and your angelic stupid voice.”
35. 0:34:48 The Arbiter: “We could use a little more chaos… I don’t know if [the Acolytes are] ever happy, really.”

Round 3 — the Wall of Force

36. 0:35:15 TD notes, to be fair, that its ward is down. It shakes off the stupor: “Wonderful! The first test is complete. However, the second test will require a bit of work and time.” It pushes a button on its hand, and a large dome appears around it: Wall of Force. TD later calls it panels, “a box,” fully 360°.
37. 0:36:27 The Acolytes chant TD’s name and throw blue slushies, some at TD, which is now covered in sticky blue raspberry syrup. They give TD a heroic surge and five adrenaline (its next hit will crit). The last panel lands right in front of Jerry. In Draconic, TD says “Your turn. The next test, the breakthrough.” It waits out its turn. It had thought the ward returned, but Wall of Force is evocation, not abjuration.
38. 0:37:52 — The Dread Hand. Jerry pulls back his robes and rolls up his sleeves to bare bones. Grave mist swells, the air cools, and ice crystals form along his arm. His bones crack and ooze black ichor that hardens into a fibrous, bone-like Dread Hand.
39. 0:38:56 — Jerry’s cause. “You think… he’s probably, like, some cool wizard. Nah, dude… This goes out to all of the adventurers out there that go and kill level one skeletons. I’m here to kill you. Too many of my skeleton brothers are dead. And that’s what these fists, every phalange, every bone, we’re coming to get you.” GM: “This is the revenge story I didn’t know we needed.”
40. 0:39:28 He punches the Wall of Force. Each finger whips out like a tentacle, striking it again and again. TD explains the dome extends into the ethereal, “like when the world is still loading in.”
41. 0:40:18 Seeing him punch an unbreakable construct, the Acolytes cheer louder, rip off their clothes and get into fistfights. Jerry also gets a heroic surge and five adrenaline, and is now covered in blue slushy too (“stop throwing slushies at me”).
42. 0:42:11 — The notepad. Thea brings Jerry a pad of paper and a pencil: “It’ll help you write down your thoughts.” Jerry sits and stares at the wall: “What I’m getting at here is if I laser you instead.” TD: “If two plus two is four, Jerry, and five plus five is ten, how did you get to that conclusion?” Jerry taps the wall lightly with his extra attack: “Are you sure I can’t punch through this thing?”
43. 0:43:42 “Level one skeleton that punches people.” He writes “if two and two is four…” on the notepad. He asks: “Can I like push the wall?… If I like force the wall?” TD: “If little Tommy had three apples.” The Arbiter, as DM, says it is immune to all physical actions; Kyle had read the spell. GM: “Jerry is all bones, no brain.”

Round 4 — the Box of Chaos

44. 0:45:42 TD’s eyes fade to a whitish grey as it watches. It puts a hand to the wall, “Titanic, hand on the window”: “It is okay, dear Jerry Bonesman, if that is your name. You will learn eventually.”
    • Bonus action: Protection Rune. With passive perception 19, it has seen that Jerry’s punch was necrotic, so it now resists necrotic damage.
    • It cocks its head and takes the Dodge action. The Arbiter: “This is like fighting a Russian nesting doll.”
45. 0:48:34 Jerry paces, mumbling: “Adventurers don’t have this… can I just throw a rock at him? Can I throw a slushy at him?” The GM: the arena favors creative solutions, everything is a resource, “even the ducks. As long as you don’t murder the baby ducks.”
46. 0:49:42 The Arbiter stands and interferes: “I can’t stand to watch this.” He snaps his fingers. A bolt of chaotic multicolored lightning shoots into the sky, and a box slams down at Jerry’s feet. Its lid flips open, yellow and pink fire shoots up, and a shadowy figure with black inky tendrils leans over the side: the Box of Chaos. Interacting with it is a free action, and both champions may use it.
47. 0:51:31 — “Mr. Box.” Jerry: “So, Mr. Box…” A voice, almost certainly the Box (labeled Kyle, speaker uncertain), answers: “Mr. Box was my father. He’s dead now.” Jerry: “Oh, well, happy Father’s Day to your… Oh, okay, my bad.” “No, shut the fuck up.”
48. 0:51:50 Jerry: “They’re throwing very simple math problems at me… I’m not a stupid skeleton… I could laser him, or I could get really mad and summon the power of the Dreadlord Bonar.” The Box: “You give me something, I give you something… Certainly not gonna put a brain inside that skull.”
49. 0:52:38 — The sacrifice. Jerry rifles through his bag of things collected from years of dealing with low-level adventurers. “I’m just made of bones. So, do you want some bones?” Box: “Yeah, I’ll take some bones. I’m building something.” Jerry pulls off his shattered wrist and hand: “You can slap people with this.” Box: “This is gonna come in handy.” The GM: “Handy. That was terrible… I’m not gonna let that go.”
50. 0:53:24 The box rumbles through several rolls. TD hums a tune “my master used to hum.” Jerry: “Mr. Box… it looks like you’re doing a lot of hard mental math right now. Are you okay?”
51. 0:54:36 — The gift. The lid flips off and fire shoots up again. Out floats a bone, a large femur “of some sort of animal,” which Jerry attaches: a wand of polymorph with seven charges. Jerry: “A new bone for my collection.” His plan: “turn myself into a Wall of Force, and then I’ll get through his Wall of Force.” GM: “When two Wall of Forces come together, they make a baby Wall of Force.”
52. 0:55:56 At a loss, Jerry gives TD the stank eye again (“Third eye opens”). It goes through the wall. This spends his five adrenaline as a crit on the Evil Eye, by accident (“I certainly did not intend to”). TD resists the necrotic and holds concentration on the Wall of Force (“Hee hee, ha ha, jing tang, walla walla, bing bang”).
53. 0:58:23 — Thea volunteers. Jerry asks whether he may polymorph the village animals. GM: “You could use Thea.” Thea: “I volunteer as tribute.” Jerry: “Thea, if you became a dinosaur, do you think you could break down that wall of force?” Thea: “I would try or lose all my teeth in the effort.”
    • Thea: “We have a good dental program… They give me new ones all the time… I cannot believe how much money I’ve gotten from the Tooth Fairy.”
    • Jerry realizes to the camera that he could have been conning the Tooth Fairy all along by pulling out his own teeth and regrowing them.
    • “Thea, you just enlightened me with some actual real good advice. And for that, I would like to turn you into a dinosaur.” He targets her with Polymorph: Tyrannosaurus rex.
54. 1:00:23 — Counterspell. TD holds up a hand: “He is a training denizen of the multiverse. So this needs to be a each one teach one moment… Acolytes, do we believe the correct lesson is being learned? I don’t think so. Counterspell.” Under the newer rules Jerry makes the save, and he passes (23).
55. 1:01:24 In solidarity, Jerry starts gnawing on the dome: “Don’t worry, we’ll get through this together.” Then the shadow of “Theorex” falls over him. Thea becomes a massive pink T-Rex with eyes too far out of their sockets and very sharp teeth. She gnaws on the Wall of Force. TD: “the lesson is still not learned, but I am very incurious and intrigued about what this new lesson might teach me.”
56. 1:03:05 Jerry: “Thea Rex… give it Thea’s elbow.” She throws her whole body at the dome, tiny arms barely in the way. The wall is still immune. Jerry rubs his polished skull: “I really thought that would work. I was hoping she’d, like, flatten the dome.”
57. 1:04:03 The Arbiter calls a break. The GM: “Thea could be at this for a whole 10 minutes.” TD asks whether to switch tactics: “I do not want to seem, how does the kid say, boring.” Arbiter: “As long as one of you ends up dead, I’m gonna be happy.” TD: “Noted. Switching to obliteration mode.”

After the break — Round 5

59. 1:16:48 “Welcome back, Acolytes!” The GM calls it “the Duck Town, or whatever we called it.” The Arbiter: “It has a name.” She feels like a jerk when he doesn’t push back. Thea the T-Rex lies exhausted, napping by the fountain.
60. 1:17:53 TD: “Would you like to see it now or in about six seconds?… One, two, three, four, five, six. That’s how many bones you have left. Isn’t that correct, Jamie?” Jerry has “a lot more than like six bones.” Jerry gives Thea a conciliatory pet (“you did good”). She pants like a dog, and her T-Rex tail thumps the ground in small earthquakes. Jerry slips (“Duck down… Village!”), and the GM says the place has grown into a town since the break: “The sign has changed.”
61. 1:19:15 — Arcane Vigor. TD: “Allow me to start the countdown. One.” A burst of energy sends tendrils to the edges of the Wall of Force, which lights up like a beating heart while TD’s eyes match its intensity.
    • It casts Arcane Vigor at 4th level, healing itself and restoring its Arcane Ward (an abjuration spell).
    • The energy detaches from the wall and flows into it. TD shuts down fully, and when it opens its eyes again they are red.
    • It Dodges again. The Arbiter: “Keep track of the layers. Like an onion… a metallic onion.”
62. 1:22:23 The Arbiter on the Wall of Force duration: “It’s been 24 seconds, bro.” TD: “Might as well be an eternity.”

Seavold — the orc skull

63. 1:22:49 Jerry, sitting by Thea: “Thank you for… being a really great dinosaur friend and believing in the bones.” Then: “Arbiter Dude and Grandmaster [Mammoth Mist?], I couldn’t help but notice when we got brought here that there was a giant skull outside. Who’s the owner of that skull?” GM: “That would be me.” Asked whether it has a name: “No one has ever asked its name before. What would you do with such a name? That is protected information.”
64. 1:23:34 Jerry: “As a bones man, I can channel the power of bones around me… but with respect… I don’t want to just like, you know, jack another dude’s bone.” GM: “As long as you make them happy.” TD: “Cooperation and community.” GM: “The name is Seavold.” It must be said “with just a little bit of energy.” TD: “Jerry, be bold, Seavold.”
65. 1:24:16 — The Great Bones Man. Jerry chants “Seavold, be bold, be bold, Jerry, be bold, be the bone.” A pulse fans out from him, blowing dust, duck feathers, “maybe an errant bit of gas from Thea.”
    • He channels the power of the bone lord Bonar, and of Seavold. His skull protrusions become true horns like a tiefling’s or something infernal or draconic, and the tips of his spine jut out “xenomorph-esque Godzilla fashion.”
    • This is his Form of Dread: “Now I am the great bones man.”
66. 1:25:46 — The skull’s pull. The Arbiter: the Dread Fortress’s orc skull “has a powerful call on you and begins to shift and break reality around you.” Both champions are transported to the front lawn of the Dread Fortress, with lava fields cascading as far as the eye can see. The orc skull’s eyes start to glow as Jerry communes with its soul. The Arbiter: “Don’t think that I didn’t [notice] that your bone god is named Bonar.”
67. 1:26:40 — Into the dome. “Chaotic unlight from Seavold” manifests in Jerry’s form. “All right then, TD. Let’s get personal.” With Otherworldly Walk (an eldritch invocation from his “black magic”) he casts Misty Step. He spends his heroic surge for a second bonus action (“for double bones”).
    • Jerry explodes into bone dust that swirls and reforms directly in front of TD, inside the wall.
    • “He’s an honorable bone man. He’s not going to bone from behind.” GM: “He doesn’t have eyes to look him face to face, but I like the attempt.”
68. 1:28:28 TD: “So your own obliteration mode has been activated. I see we are copying one another.” Jerry: “I guess you could say I finally learned, TD.”
69. 1:28:41 — Mirror Spell. TD: “And so have I.” Its reaction copies the Misty Step, and TD steps to the other side of the Wall of Force, trapping Jerry inside it. “No!” TD: “You still have not learned, bone man.” The GM: “That’s a fucking masterclass.” TD’s ward gains more points. Jerry pounds on the wall: “No, I finally got in.” TD: “You were so close, Jerry, but you are not my master. Only one has ever beat me.”
70. 1:29:56 — The third socket. This time the skull breaks and a true third socket opens in Jerry’s forehead. He is taking on orcish features as he channels more of Seavold. “I can’t laser you, but psychic should work.” His Evil Eye (a crit through the TD layers) blasts the Arcane Ward. As the hex takes hold, “strange flashes of… maybe the history of the skull, maybe of Seavold” appear as chaos takes hold. GM: “That’s pretty badass.”
71. 1:31:42 Jerry: “This wall is not going to hold me forever.” GM: “At least for 10 minutes.” Jerry: “Well, I’m stuck like this for a minute. So, I mean, take a good look, pal.” TD: “What happened to the confidence, Jerry?” Jerry: “I got put in forced jail.”
72. 1:32:17 — Synaptic Static. TD: “I will not ever call myself a pacifist… However, it is not my directive to maim, disarm, dislocate, destroy, huh? Lots of Ds. You like that, don’t you, Bone Man?” (it audibly snorts). “I will just thank you for being in the perfect space at the perfect time.”
    • The Wall of Force shimmers and the energy reverberates inside it: Synaptic Static, centered on the trapped Jerry.
    • Jerry (“I’m a punch skeleton”) fails the save. TD’s adrenaline makes it a crit, for 77 damage.
    • GM: “It’s a whole disco laser show going on inside this forest [force].” When the smoke clears, Jerry’s hand waves it away: “I’m still here. I’m still here.”
73. 1:35:02 — The wall drops. TD: “Should I give them a fighting chance?… What is the point of training if you do not win, win, win?” It shatters the Wall of Force (drops concentration). Jerry: “I finally had the intelligence to get through this wall and I was going to do it. You put the wall of force back up right now.” TD: “Does not compute. You are not my master. You cannot give directives.” Jerry: “Well, um, please?” GM: “Politeness wins every time.” Jerry: “I’m scary. I’m scary. I’m scary.” GM: “Remember, please and thank you goes a long way.”
74. 1:36:04 Jerry gains his Form of Dread temporary HP. TD’s action ends with an image slowly forming around it, “as if something is starting in the next six seconds.” GM: “All you had to do was dig.”

Round 7 — the one-two punch

75. 1:37:24 Jerry lets out a high-pitched scream and runs straight at TD, channeling his Form of Dread into his fists. “I cannot wait to see what this trap card is.”
    • He casts Bane with his third eye open. TD feels “quiet discomfort… a genuine sort of maliciousness” and fails (“I am not charismatic”).
    • He channels his memories: his fellow bone men in ruins slaughtered by adventurers, getting back up again, “maybe they find a cool silver coin,” then being kicked down again.
76. 1:40:38 — The checkup. TD: “I am a fan of ones and zeros and those that lie between. If you would allow me to understand your current well-being in a series of numbers, how would you be feeling right now?” Jerry: “Maybe I’m like a third of my bony self.” TD: “Then understand this. Touch me if you dare.” Jerry: “I dare.”
77. 1:41:22 GM: “Channel the rage for your fellow Skelemen… Bone men.” Jerry spends moxie for two unarmed strikes, the “one-two punch,” beginning with “the first phalange.” It hits; the Dread Hand means he “didn’t miss” anyway.
    • He switches the moxie-fueled fist to force damage: “Turns out that punching that wall of force taught me how to punch back with force.” GM: “Look at you, learning with force.”
    • “Like an instant speed spell in Magic the Gathering,” his Frightful Avatar triggers. TD fails and is frightened: “How do the kids say, egads, I am shaking in my bones.”
78. 1:45:51 The second punch is a 19–20 crit with max damage. “His bones channeling just raw force energy as Seavold continues to empower him.”
79. 1:47:09 — Mirrored Agony. As Jerry thinks of his lost bone men, TD makes him blink. Instead of bone men he sees training denizens lying on the ground, struggling under “blow after blow” from warriors who beat them down for their own success. “The agony that we feel will always be paramount. Reaction: mirrored agony.” (Mudcat says “Heroic Surge” here; unclear.)
80. 1:47:44 — The Grandmaster’s ruling (in-world). “This agony is devastating for both of you. The two of you are here because you have survived when your fellows have not. From here on out, every hit will do double damage.”
81. 1:48:16 TD forces a Wisdom save. Jerry: “Oh no, have I become the thing I was fighting against?” He rolls a natural 20 and overcomes it. TD: “If he could smile, you see a smile start to form because the training is soon to be complete.” The GM asks if the mold cracks; TD: “Just a little bit… It almost feels Cheshire.”
82. 1:50:15 Jerry, clutching TD with his fist cocked: “There’s always another way, there’s always another option, but the acolytes have a craving, and the Arbiter, the Grandmaster won’t let any of us out. So maybe, just maybe, if one of us gets out of this alive, we can make a change.” TD: “Perhaps we can.”

Round 8 — the mirror images and Seavold speaks

83. 1:51:12 The Arbiter: “We’re in round number eight. We don’t even have cards for this.” (Earlier, 1:45:38: the round placards only go to seven, and “we didn’t commission anymore.”)
84. 1:51:44 TD: “What do you prefer in life? The mini or the none?” Jerry: “What kind of none are we talking about? With a habit?” TD: “Tick tock.” Thinking of the training denizens, the bone men and the Acolytes, Jerry answers “many, many. There’s so many.” TD: “Wonderful choice, choice, choice.” Mirror Image: three shield-like energy variants of TD split from it and surround Jerry on all sides. “You have to find me first.” It burns a 4th-level slot to refill its ward. “Six more seconds. I hope you survive afterwards.”
85. 1:53:44 Jerry: “It was bad enough with just one of you. Now I gotta deal with four?… Just like four more adventurers.” He asks for TD’s condition in numbers. After mechanical sounds, TD answers: “57.04%.” He haymakers the one in front of him (damage is doubled).
    • The duplicate on his left grabs his hand, redirects it to its own face, “handbutts” it and shatters.
    • On his second attack, another duplicate guides his fist to its chest, “as if you just punched their heart out.” Two left.
    • Jerry: “I’m realizing now that Jerry, like, has no utility.”
86. 1:57:27 He tries Armor of Agathys again, but his “black magic” needs a nap first (“These bones are getting a little creaky”). Instead he braces with his third moxie for temporary HP and crouches in a defensive stance.
87. 1:59:16 — The prayer. “Grandmaster, remind me… our orc skull man’s name.” “Seavold, I need you to see me right now. Please see me, please, please… For all the bones, for all the bones, please see me.” With a dirty 20 on persuasion, the skull’s eyes light up and a jaw emerges from the ground, snapping shut to finish the skull.
88. 2:00:19 — Seavold speaks (Caustic Phoenix). Jerry: “Seavold, grant me the power to defeat my enemies, and my life is yours.” Seavold: “You would serve me.” Jerry: “I wish to be the baddest bones in the Dread Fortress.” Seavold: “If you cannot win this fight, why would I want you as a pawn? What good are you to me?” Jerry: “I would choose not to be a pawn, but I would choose instead to be a knight. A knight that will defend all undead, protect all bones, all skeletons, even the ones inside of the people that have flesh still.”
89. 2:01:09 Seavold counters the persuasion: “Seavold. You are but an ant to me.” The eyes go out.
90. 2:01:43 — Silvery Barbs. TD intervenes for Jerry: “One can’t train if they don’t have a chance to grow and you are stifling this one’s potential. You sound like just like every other adventurer out there who sees this as nothing more as numbers in their next level up.” The eyes light up again, turned on both of them. Seavold: “I will look down on whoever I want. This match is a farce.” He rerolls; the exchange ends with Seavold not granting Jerry power (exact result unclear). Jerry: “TD, I appreciate the assist, buddy… that kind of took the wind out of my sails.”

Chaos event — Seavold attacks (2:03:33)

91. The Acolytes go “absolutely ape shit”: “They have never before seen the Dread Fortress speak, let alone move.” GM: “This is a chaotic event of your own doing. Seavold will attack.” “No force will be needed.” He is just a head: no shoulders, no hands, “just a noggin, some good teeth… but that mouth do be talking.”
92. 2:04:28 Seavold mocks them with “training dummy, skeleton fodder, bone dust, calculator,” because “he doesn’t know many other insults.” Jerry: “Calculator is wild work. It’s actually diabolical. Seavold out here throwing bars at people.” Both make a DC 17 Wisdom save (Jerry with advantage from Silvery Barbs), and both take half. TD’s Arcane Ward shatters.
93. 2:06:11 — Round 9, the Arbiter’s ultimatum. “All damage is tripled. Somebody needs to fucking die.” The Arbiter stands and pulls out his metal chair: “If one of you guys doesn’t die, I’m gonna come down there and fucking kill you both.”

The end

94. 2:06:40 TD to Jerry: “There’s a lesson to be had here, right? What can we learn from this? Only one.” It casts Psychic Lance (“Raulothim’s”) on Jerry. Jerry fails the Intelligence save (“there’s no matter in here”). He leads a “Bonesman!” chant in the crowd, and Mudcat joins in. With triple damage and the adrenaline crit, it comes to 204 damage.
95. 2:08:43 — The Grandmaster’s question. “For the first time and the last time in your life, you’re able to calculate this faster than anyone else. You’re able to see that death is actually at your door. What is going through your mind?”
96. 2:09:12 — Jerry’s enlightenment. “Seavold had rejected both Jerry and TD… Jerry, running the math, does one more calculation… no, he’s the right one. He’ll make this right. He can do it. He’ll stop this from ever happening again and that’s how it should be… sometimes somebody else has to take the torch.”
97. 2:10:06 — The joined hands. TD: “At his core, his directive is to protect.” In the last moment, a bony hand and a metallic hand connect: “the skeletons and the dummies of the world.” “He’s doing this because while you are dead, you are not gone. And someone still has to pay.” Then Jerry dies.
98. 2:10:54 Jerry wanted to “die with the thumbs up.” TD: “You’re a bone, so luckily you don’t have a brain, because if you did, that would be the first thing to implode.” Jerry disintegrates from the inside out into dust; his hand falls to the earth and turns to dust as well.
99. 2:11:33 TD: “Training complete.” The GM: TD scans the scene, and instead of the usual fallen companions, “there is nothing except a bony hand and yours.” A slight voice whispers behind TD: “You trained him well.” (speaker uncertain)
100. 2:12:13 TD: “And this is just phase one.” Its eyes flick from blue as a green starts to overtake them, “as the second directive is necromancy.”
101. 2:12:37 GM: “You are ever surprising. TD. I know that you have a task at hand. Quite literally, in your hand, with a hand. But I also have a pizza to deliver you.” She asks what toppings it wants “on your pizza that you cannot eat.” TD: the intestines (“These will suffice”). She raises TD’s hand to the Acolytes: “Let the training continue. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch.”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• Crit Bard’s first official Deathmatch. CB: “I’ve been in the lore of the world, but not in the PvP aspect.” The GM asks how it felt to defeat “one of your DMs in your past” (Kyle). CB: “I felt like Nehepta was a problem.” It’s unclear what this refers to.
• CB on PvP: they grew up watching Celebrity Deathmatch and sports.
• Caustic Phoenix praises the RP moments: who built TD, singing happy birthday, the fallen skeletons. “The characters were hilariously not well matched.”
• Kyle’s favorite moment: the misty step and TD’s “psych”; Jerry’s “big shonen power up moment.” The Wall of Force saga “felt like five episodes of Dragon Ball Z.”
• Mudcat: the show is tongue-in-cheek and doesn’t play strictly by the rules, so it was funny to see mechanics “run as intended.” CB: everything on TD was RAW. CB expected the Wall of Force to last one turn (“you got Misty Step, right?”) but couldn’t say so: “I’m a literal training denizen.”
• Kyle forgot Misty Step bypasses Wall of Force. When TD dropped it, he had been planning to dig under the dome, “cartoon shovel his way out.”
• CB on Jerry’s arc: his brethren are discarded by adventurers, and he’s still learning how to match them. Kyle: it would have been “supremely disingenuous” to make an undead character who knows everything. Jerry is “a low-level adventurer in that sort of mental sense.”
• Caustic Phoenix calls Jerry “our bone salesman.” Kyle (possibly in Jerry’s voice): “Bone sales. Hey, you got broken bones? We got new ones for you right here.”
• Seavold was improvised. Kyle: “And now we have more lore about the Dread Fortress.” Mudcat: “I’m already done with our first lore project. Now I gotta… come up with a backstory for all this shit… Where’d the giant orc come from?” Caustic Phoenix: “We just liked his skull. We’re like snails… we just found the bigger one and we moved into it… Or hermit crabs.”
• CB’s closing quote, TD’s through-line: “The training does not end when the adventure begins.” TD = “the training dummy, I mean denizen.”
• Shout-outs:
  • CB: twitch.tv/SirPfeffers (Tuesdays and Saturdays), twitch.tv/CaptainRobear (Thursdays), twitch.tv/ChristianChronicles (Fridays).
  • Kyle: Instagram @KyleCalrissian; Cosplay America (Raleigh, NC); Miami Supercon; a beginner-friendly sewing-pattern business (“cut-sew pattern making”).