The Black Tome

S7E8 — Private Bathrooms — Livid Lady Lin v Gandor Thalion Umbrae

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Two old rivals, the absurdly buff battle-wizard Livid Lady Lin (played by Emily Graymoor) and the orb-obsessed, three-named Gandor Thalion Umbrae (played by Patrick Perini), were pulled into the Void to settle who would get the lease on a hundred-floor wizard’s tower. The match began in the Grandmaster’s private bathroom, moved to a frozen mountaintop, and featured a weaponized can of baked beans, a unionized chinchilla avalanche and a summoned mother in curlers. It ended with a lightning bolt bounced back onto the wizard who tried to counter it, and one final, very petty murder. The Grandmaster called it “the strangest wizard versus wizard duel I have ever seen.”

The Story

A Private Matter

That Deathmatch Day, the Acolytes were brought into the fortress itself, “not the hut, not the cabin.” They came deep underground through the wide-open skull and into empty hallways. The Grandmaster was nowhere to be found. Instead, the clacking of the Arbiter’s “disgusting Italian shoes” echoed down the corridors as he opened door after door. “Grandmaster, it’s Deathmatch Day. I need you.”

A yelp came from behind a heavy wooden door: “I’m pooping!” The Arbiter, to his credit, could tell: “Oh, yeah, no, I smell that now.” She had sent Thea for toilet paper thirty minutes earlier. The Arbiter had just seen Thea running around the lava fields, so she wouldn’t be back soon. The Grandmaster explained it was “meant to be a private bathroom,” and begged him to use his “fancy little hands” before she was late to her own Deathmatch.

He helped, in his way. He walked a roll over and set it under the stall door just far enough out of reach that she had to lean off the seat for it, “just to make you uncomfortable.” “The smell is very strong. This is as close as I’m getting.” The seat cracked, her fingertips missed, and only then did he kick the roll toward her.

Old Rivals in a Small Room

Then he clapped, ripped a portal open, and welcomed the champions to “the Grandmaster’s private bathroom.” Livid Lady Lin stood five feet tall, a “wizard machine” so hench under her blue and black robes that her spellbook looked tiny in her hands. She used it as a weight. She sparked a flame on her thumb like a match to air the place out.

Her opponent introduced himself formally. “My name is Gandor Thalion Umbrae, and you will address me as such using the entire thing every time.” Asked whether he really had three names, he replied, “I have many names. These are the three that are the most expedient for the likes of you.” The Arbiter wanted to know if he was planning to shoot a president. Gandor said he had not yet “gazed into the orb of time” to check, “but it is not outside the realm of possibility.”

An eye peered through the stall gap and suggested they shake hands. “We know each other too, too well,” said Gandor. “I would say nice to see you again, Gandalf, but it ain’t,” said Lin. When he called her pugnacious and clarified it was not a compliment, she set out her whole philosophy:

“I don’t use my book learnings for learning words. I use it for learning spells to kick your ass.” (Livid Lady Lin)

The toilet flushed. The Grandmaster emerged, washed her hands, greeted both champions, and told Gandor there was “no smoking in the bathroom.” She had eaten twelve Brussels sprouts that day, “and everybody’s gonna pay for it.”

The Mountaintop

The Arbiter’s portal opened directly on the Grandmaster’s toilet, and through it everyone went, onto a giant snowy mountain peak. Millions of Acolytes in the grandstands threw blue slushies and tore their shirts off, nipples hard in the cold. They chanted both champions’ names, except Gandor’s, which had too many parts. “I will remember this, all of you,” he promised. The Grandmaster came through last, closing the portal and the toilet seat behind her. She told the champions they were not there for the view, but to give the crowd a story “so that when your bones do lay to rest under this snowy peak, it is your name that will be remembered.” Meanwhile, the Arbiter shoved Doug out of his chair: “The dog was here first. Fucking Doug.”

Gandor struck first. “Today, we settle this once and for all. Have at thee!” A crystalline orb congealed between his whirling hands, the Orb of Infinite Ponder. Lin’s gaze was swallowed by it, and he slipped back into the mountain mists. Lin answered what she couldn’t see with “biological warfare.” Popeye-style, she crushed a can of baked beans, swallowed them, and unleashed Baked Beans, a horrific fart blasting out in every direction that hurled Gandor fifteen feet back. She kept it going, concentrating “on farting very, very loudly,” and the expelled wind solidified into what the Grandmaster called a “60 foot long shit brick.” The Grandmaster added a little poison damage “because it was the beans.” Off to the side, Thea vacuumed up the scent: “I’m going to turn this into a candle!” The Arbiter pulled a seatbelt out of his chair.

Blood, Mirages and Chinchillas

“Foul creature, give me your blood!” Gandor’s orb shattered into “a trillion pieces,” raking Lin’s skin. He snatched her blood out of midair, then noticed how thick it was and asked if she needed a doctor. Lin chalked it up to her period (“Listen, I don’t know if you know much about women, but once a month…”), thanked him for helping her “pass through things very quickly,” and asked to sign up next, and the Arbiter concluded that Gandor “moonlights as a gynecologist.” Gandor went pale: “Liv, you are undeserving of the tower.” Lin replied with You Wouldn’t Hit a Woman, Would You?, a mirage that turned the hulking wizard into a frail, petite, cute figure with a tiny voice. Gandor was, at the table’s estimate, “genuinely speechless. Confused. Perhaps aroused.”

The Acolytes demanded chaos. The mountain went quiet, then rumbled as a northern peak collapsed into an avalanche. It wasn’t snow. It was a herd of giant fluffy white chinchillas, and they trampled both wizards under hundreds of tiny paws. At their head was a small chinchilla in a hard hat with a cigarette, shouting “Get him, boys!” Then a distant whistle blew. “That’s lunch, boys.” The herd wandered casually off. Lin had thought they were lunch (“chinchilla tacos”), and one gave her a side-eye and a middle finger on the way. Gandor approved of their discipline: “Hey, no overtime. A matter of regulation. I approve.”

The Tower

Only now did the Grandmaster ask what this tower was. “My tower,” said Lin, who already had her boxes packed (“At least I got balls in my boxes”). Gandor insisted it was “a literal wizard’s tower and I will have it,” with “reflecting pools… pondering pools… summoning pools.” Lin asked whether his mother had never warned him that if you ponder too much, you’ll go blind.

Gandor’s answer was a spell called Shut the Fuck Up, and Lin’s mouth fused over, “smooth like a Ken doll.” She wrote “fuck you” in the snow in reply. With the floor finally his, Gandor pushed through the gale and swung his staff: “You have no business taking occupancy of a sage’s tower… You are not worthy of its orbs and its many pools.” He missed. Lin caught the staff, drew her dagger and cut her own mouth open. Her lips never came back, and she looked like the Mouth of Sauron. She spat blood. “Gandor, we need to talk.”

Gandor tried to crush her spirit with The Big Sad, telling her that “the fact that we are the two finalists for this lease is unacceptable.” Lin had nothing going on up there for despair to grip, and the Acolytes had showered her with blue slushies besides. She shrugged it off so completely that Gandor’s orb exploded with rage.

Calling Mom

“I think it’s time we called your mom.” Lin mimed a phone call, reporting that Gandor had been swearing, smoking, and “I caught him pondering his orbs again.” An old woman stepped out of a portal in a pink fluffy bathrobe, curlers in her hair and a cigarette in her lips. “I thought I told you to stop pondering them orbs!” She threw a slipper with floppy bunny ears. Gandor cried “You cannot hit me without my consent!” and raised a shield that did nothing. He leaned back Matrix-style, but the slipper still caught him, and hard. The Acolytes had clearly chosen their favorite.

Battered, Gandor was granted a heroic surge by the Grandmaster, who warned that anyone who died without using theirs would be revived “just to pummel you back into the earth again.” He used it to transform into an adult red dragon (“Ancient would be gauche”). The result was portly, cartoonish and roughly mother-sized, with tiny T-Rex arms, his beard and his pipe intact. He spoke by telepathy, “maybe the worst of both worlds.” The Arbiter leaned back: “I’m unimpressed. I’ve seen a dragon before.”

Lin answered with Embarrassing Browsing History, a field of tentacles that aired his internet history in front of his mother. “Have you been looking up that hint I gave?” Mom asked. “Mother, this doesn’t concern you.” Gandor turned so red it hurt to look at him, and Lin earned a heroic surge of her own: “I may not be able to hurt you physically, but I can hurt you mentally.”

The Final Blow

Gandor breathed fire across Lin and his mother. His mother burned to death. Lin spent her surge on Miss Me With That Shit, rolled a natural 20, and dodged the inferno entirely. “The dice gods clearly want me to win this challenge.” The dragon deflated in smoke and steam, leaving a weeping man on his knees: “It’s not fair! I was so close!” Lin felt a little bad. “Don’t feel bad, you killed your mom,” said the Arbiter. “Not everyone gets to say that.”

Lin pointed her dagger and cast Nylon Robes. Gandor’s robes clung to him as static crackled all around. From the snow he cried, “No, no. I shall not lose! Counterspell.” The two wizards locked wills, the lightning bouncing between them in a dead-even tie, until Lin won out. The whole bolt slammed back into Gandor. He reached out to her in a plea for mercy, flipped her off instead, and exploded into glittering pipe dust. In a distant office, a pixie in a green accounting visor penned Lin’s name on the lease. As his dust drifted skyward, the Acolytes saw Gandor’s dreams of the tower: “so many orbs… Balls everywhere.”

The Grandmaster handed Lin the leasing papers and asked what she would do from her wondrous tower. “I’m gonna watch the Gilmore Girls.” The Arbiter responded: “Power word kill. I’m not fucking standing for that.” Lin died on the spot, and agreed with the verdict: “Neither of us deserve the tower or to live.” Thea vacuumed up her remains and, out of kindness, slipped a Gilmore Girls DVD box set into the bag with her. The Arbiter admitted his lab was getting cramped and he’d been thinking about “blowing out that west wall.” The Grandmaster had no champion to present. She promised they would have words back in the private bathroom, then sent the wizards off to rest “in really itty bitty tiny pieces.”

Dried Blood

Afterwards, Thea took the vacuum bags back to her closet of a room, dumped them out, and began piecing Gandor and Lin back together one speck of dust at a time. “This is going to be my greatest puzzle.” The charred remains of Gandor’s mother were floated for the food court as “Gandor’s mom’s kebabs,” because “once you’re here, you’re forever here.” The Arbiter, meanwhile, seemed to have got what he wanted. He gave a tour in the style of Cribs: “I’m the Arbiter, and welcome to my crib. We’re gonna do all 100 floors.” Gandor’s final words were a promise: “Gandor Thalion Umbrae. I will remember every single one of you.”

Notable Moments

  • The first Deathmatch ever to open in the Grandmaster’s bathroom, with the arena portal opening straight out of her toilet.
  • Lin’s baked-bean fart, so foul that Thea vacuumed it up to make a candle.
  • A unionized chinchilla avalanche that knocked off mid-trample for lunch.
  • Lin cutting open her own magically sealed mouth with a dagger, and keeping no lips.
  • Gandor turned into a chubby cartoon dragon and roasted his own mother.
  • Lin won the duel, the lease and the night, and the Arbiter killed her seconds later to take the tower for himself.

Memorable Quotes

  • Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “I just ate 12 Brussels sprouts today and everybody’s gonna pay for it.”
  • Gandor Thalion Umbrae: “I have many names. These are the three that are the most expedient for the likes of you.”
  • Livid Lady Lin: “Didn’t your mom ever tell you if you ponder too much, you’ll go blind?”
  • Chinchilla foreman: “That’s lunch, boys.”
  • Gandor’s mother: “I thought I told you to stop pondering them orbs!”
  • The Arbiter: “Don’t feel bad, you killed your mom. Not everyone gets to say that.”
  • Livid Lady Lin: “I’m gonna watch the Gilmore Girls.”
  • The Arbiter: “Power word kill. I’m not fucking standing for that.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Livid Lady Lin (Emily Graymoor). Called Liv by Gandor.

  • A five-foot, very buff wizard in blue and black robes. She lifts her hefty spellbook as a weight and lights a thumb flame like a match.
  • Reads books “for hurting,” not for learning words. Wisdom +0; “nothing going on up there.”
  • A long-time rival of Gandor. They are the two finalists for the lease of a 100-floor wizard’s tower. She wanted its adventurers and gold.
  • Cut her own fused mouth open with a dagger, leaving her lipless like the Mouth of Sauron.
  • Summoned Gandor’s mother, whom Gandor’s dragon breath then killed.
  • Won the duel and the lease. Planned to watch Gilmore Girls. Killed by the Arbiter’s Power Word Kill; her dust was vacuumed up by Thea with a Gilmore Girls DVD box set.

Gandor Thalion Umbrae (Patrick Perini).

  • A transmutation wizard and “Gandoff clone” with a too-dark gray beard, a pipe, a staff and a crystalline orb. Insists on all three names; has “many names.”
  • Wears elven mithril chainmail, said to be from the King of the Elves (speaker uncertain).
  • Obsessed with orbs, “orb related activity,” and pondering pools. Weak (“I’m weak as hell”). Speaks telepathically while polymorphed. Approves of chinchilla union rules.
  • Polymorphed into a portly Sword in the Stone-style red dragon and killed his own mother with fire breath.
  • Disintegrated into glittering pipe dust by his own counterspelled lightning bolt, flipping Lin off as he died. The Acolytes saw his dreams: orbs everywhere.

Gandor’s mother (voiced by Emily, as Lin’s Summon Draconic Spirit). An old woman in a pink fluffy bathrobe with curlers and a cigarette. She scolds him for pondering orbs and throws a bunny-ear slipper. Burned to death by her son’s dragon breath. Patrick confirms in Dried Blood it was really his mother.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

  • Has a private bathroom in the fortress. Ate 12 Brussels sprouts.
  • Grants heroic surges; threatens to revive anyone who dies without using one “just to pummel you back into the earth.”
  • Handed Lin the lease. Has “beef” with the Arbiter, to be settled privately.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

  • Italian shoes. Placed the toilet paper just out of reach. Shoved Doug out of his chair. Carries a seatbelt in his chair.
  • Admits he has hit women “many times.”
  • Killed the winner with Power Word Kill because he wanted the tower for his cramped lab; plans to blow out the west wall.

Thea. A small pink impish pig-like creature who:

  • was sent for toilet paper and went running around the lava fields;
  • vacuums the fart smell to make a candle;
  • vacuums both champions’ dust, adding a Gilmore Girls DVD;
  • in Dried Blood, is piecing them back together.

Doug. Sleeping in the Arbiter’s seat; shoved out.

The chinchilla herd and their hard-hat foreman. Unionized, they take lunch on a whistle with no overtime. One flipped off Lin.

The leasing pixie. Works in a distant office and wears a green accounting visor; pens the lease.

The King of the Elves. Named as the source of the mithril only.

Places

  • The fortress (inferred: the Dread Fortress): deep underground, entered through a skull opening. It holds the Grandmaster’s private bathroom, with stalls and a heavy wooden door.
  • The lava fields, where Thea was running.
  • The snowy mountain peak arena, reached via a portal on the toilet.
  • The wizard’s / sage’s tower: 100 floors, a West Wing with a pool, reflecting, pondering and summoning pools, and a west wall. The lease went to Lin; the Arbiter wants it.
  • The pixie’s distant office.
  • “The Eastlands” / “the West” (Lord of the Rings phrasing; unclear).
  • Thea’s closet of a room (Dried Blood).

Items

  • The tower lease papers.
  • The bunny-ear slipper.
  • The elven mithril chainmail.
  • Blue slushies: Acolyte currency and favor.
  • The toilet paper roll.
  • The Gilmore Girls DVD box set.
  • Gandor’s pipe, staff and orb.

Lore statements

  • The Acolytes give champions blue slushies (adrenaline) or fatigue, and openly picked favorites.
  • Heroic surges are granted by the GM.
  • Dust remains are vacuumed by Thea and, per Mudcat, she tries to reassemble champions.

Full Round-by-Round

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