S7E9 — Necro-Nightmare — Squiggles v Ray S'urdead

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A gnome pool caretaker in floaties and a drawn-on mustache met a velvet-voiced necromancer who was more or less Halloween in human form, in the Void’s graveyard arena. Squiggles and Ray S’urdead fought among the dead while the Grandmaster blushed at one champion and begged him to destroy the other. It ended with a robbed Box of Chaos, an artificial sun, and fifty-eight furious ghosts proving that “I’m rubber, you’re glue” is a valid combat strategy.

The Story

Trouble at the Front Door

The evening opened at the front door of The Dread Fortress, a heavy wooden door bound in metal. A small pink Thea was dragging a giant orange pumpkin basket while chinchillas pushed from the other side. It was the Halloween basket, she explained, full of goodies for trick-or-treaters. The Arbiter didn’t care about the basket. He cared that the chinchillas were on their break.

The labor dispute that followed went badly for management. The chinchillas had been expecting overtime, because Thea had promised them triple pay. Thea pointed out that she couldn’t read, so she couldn’t know how to contract. She also couldn’t take the promise back: “You can’t take words and put them back in your mouth. I tried, because then I thought I will never be hungry again.” She declared triple pay for everyone. The Arbiter shrugged it off. Stuart, whose prank had apparently gotten the Arbiter “real good” earlier, had just had his pay docked, so the Arbiter would simply shift some numbers around.

When Thea demanded help, the Arbiter snapped his fingers. His eight coloured ring gems glowed and the basket floated into the air. Thea called it cheating and complained that he wasn’t always “Mr. Approachable.” He reminded her he had given her consciousness and existence itself, and explained that he looks straight over her because he has “a neck thing. I can’t look down at people that are beneath me.” With a clap he tore reality open and moved everyone, basket included, to the Grandmaster’s throne room. Thea had only just got it to the door, and she began shedding hair in sheer stress. (Yes, Thea has hair.) The Arbiter snapped the basket back to the door and reminded everyone what night it was: not Prank Day, as Thea had thought, but Death Day.

Contracts, Quills and Crushes

The Arbiter ripped open a portal and presented the champions to the Grandmaster, who asked whether this was the prank. Squiggles insisted his mom really had named him Squiggles, though he admitted the mustache was drawn on. He had been floating in a pool moments earlier and had no idea why he was here. He had never received a welcome packet, because Thea had eaten it. She squatted and pooped out the contract. “We keep our pets hydrated,” the Grandmaster noted.

Ray was a study in disgust. When Squiggles tugged his jacket for a pen, Ray batted him away with perfectly manicured nails: “Do not touch me. Small thing.” Squiggles countered that he was “actually pretty tall for my height.” For a pen, the Arbiter shook Thea by the face until a pin fell out of her butt. Ray had other ideas. He drew a feather quill, jabbed Thea gently in the backside, and signed in her blood, which turned out to be teal. The Grandmaster explained that Thea’s blood changes with her recent diet. Ray tasted a drop from the quill (“Delectable”) and told a horrified Thea he had no interest in eating her, though he “would have use for your corpse.” She assured him she was a terrible corpse.

Squiggles, borrowing the quill, grabbed Ray’s hand with both of his wet ones. Ray wiped his hands on his jacket as if they were covered in some bodily fluid. When Squiggles mentioned he had already died about four times and somehow come back, Ray promised, “Well, I intend to bring you back. Trust me.” Then he shook hands with a summoned shadow hand, which was freezing. “Death is rarely warm.”

The Grandmaster offered the winner one wish. She was not coping well. Pulling the Arbiter aside, she confessed that Ray reminded her of the romance characters in the books hidden in a bookshelf in her back wall. “I think what you’re feeling is arousal,” the Arbiter told her, admitting he felt a little of it himself: the voice had a frequency that “really like rattles your plums.” She insisted it was “Purely violence.” “It sounds like he’s in an audio book.” When Ray purred that surely she had wishes of her own, her face flushed red. Staring at the ground, she announced, “Squiggles, I’m choosing you.”

Into the Graveyard

The Arbiter stood up from a chair nobody had seen him sitting in, which began the night’s running gag, and portalled everyone into a cold, muggy graveyard. The Grandmaster warned The Acolytes not to look too closely and promised one champion would end up six feet under. The clouds parted, the moon came out, and Ray strolled in like a man arriving at a spa.

Squiggles admitted he had never read the contract; he never reads terms and conditions. He did work out Ray’s name (“raise your dead”), which Ray called the first intelligent thing “the small mermaid” had said. Squiggles was thrilled: “Mermaid? Oh my gosh, that’s an upgrade. Most people just call me, like, stupid.”

His weapon of choice was a light hammer he keeps at work in case of kraken attacks, since krakens were what had eaten him those four times. His first bop was “like a child’s toy hit,” and Ray caught it in his palm. Then Squiggles launched into a spinning leap “like a Super Mario spiral through the air” and left a scuff on Ray’s flawless cheek. The crowd erupted into chants of “Squiggles!”, women ripped off their tops and slushies flew, and the cheering hurt Ray more than the hammer did. “People like me,” marvelled Squiggles, who had been ridiculed by a monkey at his last job.

Ray, whose family of necromancers the Grandmaster dismissed as “a family of edgelords,” answered with a ghastly illusion: every bone in his body shattering into a snapping pile of gore. Squiggles barely flinched. Ray reassembled and found the gnome unnervingly strong-willed. Looking closer, he saw “something dead behind those eyes… Something cold and black and lifeless.” The eyes in question were muddy brown, which the Grandmaster summed up as “diarrhea eyes.”

The Bladder Incident

The Acolytes chanted for chaos and got it. All that hydration had everyone’s bladders jiggling, and everyone, champions and crowd alike, had to keep from peeing their pants. The champions managed. In the stands, Gator, August and GF Powers did not, while Kruega held firm and earned a fortified blue slushie. Enough Acolytes peed themselves that the whole arena reeked of piss and stung everyone but Kruega. Ray pressed a silk cloth to his face, Thea mopped the grass (“I’m working as hard as I can!”), and a chinchilla strolled onto the field to flag the safety violation. It promised to look the other way this time, but “it better be fixed by the time I fucking come back off my break.”

Oogie Boogie and the Shoelace

Squiggles revealed his wish: the missing right foot from his 1999 McDonald’s Inspector Gadget Happy Meal toy collection. The Arbiter knew a guy. With his life suddenly important, Squiggles healed his piss damage (“Squiggles has a boo-boo, everyone”) and ran to hide in a mausoleum. As he fled, Ray made finger guns, aimed with a big smile, and fired his own index finger as a giant bone bullet. Squiggles dodged it completely, because he had bent down to tie his shoelace. Yes, he wears socks and shoes in the pool, and no, his socks don’t match.

Teej described Ray as “a physical embodiment of the holiday of Halloween,” with jack-o’-lantern pendants on his jacket and a cloud of tiny useless ghosts trailing him. His necromancy only raises Halloween icons, so out of a nearby grave climbed a zombie Oogie Boogie Man. It danced over to the mausoleum singing its song with the wrong lyrics and missed every slam. “You pulled out the wrong body,” the Grandmaster observed. Squiggles shimmied past it and told it to memorize the words next time. Then he drew a longsword, charged, and struck Ray with holy fury, followed by another hammer spiral. “I am unstoppable.”

The roaring crowd gave both champions a surge. Ray spent his shrinking Squiggles’ hammer to toddler-toy size, and Squiggles dropped it. Ray wrapped himself in stolen life, drawing aqua smoke from every grave into his chest, then flooded the arena with shadow. When it cleared, Squiggles had shrugged off the worst of it and was wearing kids’ sunglasses “you find at a Kmart.” Oogie Boogie finally landed a slam, but Squiggles was still healthier than when he started.

Let There Be Daylight

After the break, the Grandmaster shared popcorn with Doug, and the Arbiter digitized the rest and sent it “through the internet” to the champions. Squiggles then wondered whether zombies melt in sunlight and tore open the sky, putting a sun over the arena and a second pair of sunglasses on his face. “I feel like I’ve really misunderstood Squiggles if he can rip open the sky and move the sun into this arena,” said the Grandmaster. Oogie Boogie’s sack merely singed, and it wiggled at him. Squiggles somersaulted away. Ray, his hair out of place and his jacket torn, found the “baby somersaults” almost insulting. “He’s breaking,” said the Arbiter. Squiggles declared, “Fuck it, we ball!” and poured every ounce of his healing touch into himself, swelling far beyond his normal health. “This has backfired stupendously,” said the Grandmaster.

The Box of Chaos

“I gotta give Ray a chance here,” the Arbiter announced. Lightning struck his raised hands until he brought down The Box of Chaos. Pink and purple flames shot into the sun, a shadowy figure crawled out, and the box landed squarely on Oogie Boogie and crushed him. Gerald slurped down one of the worms and admitted he could eat. Ray found a small headstone for a “loving Chihuahua companion,” raised an undead Chihuahua named Pixie, and offered it up. Without breaking eye contact, Gerald took the dog and slowly lowered the lid. There was rumbling and barking. What happened to Pixie remains undisclosed.

The box reopened with a little fur on its teeth and swirled its flame around the stadium. It came to rest in Ray’s hand as a single fireball he could throw whenever he liked. “This is energy and life. It is a new sensation.” He tucked it into a jack-o’-lantern locket on his jacket. Then he peered into Squiggles’ mind and found an abyss that stared back and smelled his fear. The gnome’s actual surface thought was “Oh, look, a penny!” Shaken, Ray warned the hosts that “there is something inside that tiny creature.” The Arbiter stood up, checked for himself, and agreed: “That guy’s fucked up.” To the Grandmaster, it just looked like he was trying to poop.

A curse meant to make Squiggles forget all his abilities bounced off; Squiggles was mostly worried about missing Antiques Roadshow. When the Grandmaster mocked him, Ray locked eyes with her and, without looking away, hurled the fireball. The Acolytes screamed his name, mostly out of frustration, and the blast hit Squiggles hard. Ray stared down the Grandmaster against a backdrop of flame, smirking at what was happening behind him. “I am but a witness to this moment of greatness for you,” she said.

Robbing the Box

Squiggles’ answer was to flip the Box of Chaos over and climb half inside. Gerald was lounging in a hammock. “Sorry, do you need something?” Squiggles rummaged past an outdated can of spam and nearly made off with a tome bearing a desiccated tongue on its cover before Gerald snatched it back: “You can’t have that one.” The Arbiter was stunned: “I don’t think anyone’s ever stolen from the box before.” Squiggles came out with a signet ring of spell turning, which he wore like a bracelet. Then he healed himself again while sipping a juice box. “I am defeating death.”

The Grandmaster dropped all pretense. Looking at Ray’s feet, she begged him to have something in his back pocket. “For the love of God, destroy Squiggles.” (“Hey! I can hear you… I thought we were cool!”) Wanting, for the first time in a long time, to feel impressive, Ray called on every spirit in the graveyard. Fifty-eight answered.

The Final Blow

Squiggles’ ring flared and he rolled a perfect 20. The spirits, whose rest a necromancer had just stolen, turned around. Every one of them tore into Ray. Squiggles took off his sunglasses, wiped his eyes and told the spirits they could find peace as they bounced off him toward their summoner. When the cloud of fifty-eight tiny, angry faces dissipated, nothing was left of Ray but half a jack-o’-lantern locket.

The Grandmaster descended, picked up the half-locket, and buried it a few inches down. “A pretty face like yours could never exist in an arena like this.” She stepped over the mound and told Squiggles she had always rooted for him and never wavered. His foot would be waiting in a package in the green screen room. When he clasped her hand with both of his, she gripped back with a death grip and dragged him into the sky, his floaties now completely dry. “A grand champion who shows that even the most unexpected winners can pull through. If he can do it, so can you.” The Arbiter stood up.

Dried Blood

Ray, back in voice, addressed those who had hoped to see him win: no one wanted it more than he did, but “a real victory is achieved in death, where we all will meet again very soon.” Squiggles used his time for a meditation on a rubber duck. He had been haunted all his little life by a scene in a Harry Potter film where the Weasley dad asks Harry what a rubber duck is for. He knew it is technically a floating bath toy for children, and he refused to believe that was all it could be.

Notable Moments

• Thea ate the welcome packet and pooped out the contract. Ray signed it in her teal blood.
• The Grandmaster was so flustered by Ray’s audiobook voice that she could not look at him, and picked Squiggles as her champion while staring at the ground.
• Enough Acolytes peed their pants during the bladder chaos event that the whole arena stank of piss and stung everyone except Kruega.
• Squiggles dodged a bone bullet fired from Ray’s finger by bending down to tie his shoelace.
• Gerald took an undead Chihuahua named Pixie into the box and came back with fur on his teeth, and then Squiggles became the first person ever to rob the Box of Chaos.
• Ray’s fifty-eight vengeful spirits were turned back on him, and he was erased down to half a locket.

Memorable Quotes

• Thea: “You can’t take words and put them back in your mouth. I tried, because then I thought I will never be hungry again.”
• The Arbiter: “I have a neck thing. I can’t look down at people that are beneath me.”
• Squiggles: “Mermaid? Oh my gosh, that’s an upgrade. Most people just call me, like, stupid.”
• Ray S’urdead: “I’ve no interest in eating you, small one. I would have use for your corpse, however.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “I feel like I’ve really misunderstood Squiggles if he can rip open the sky and move the sun into this arena.”
• Gerald: “Whoa, you can’t do that. That’s not how this works. You gotta give me something.”
• The Arbiter: “I don’t think anyone’s ever stolen from the box before.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “For the love of God, destroy Squiggles.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: “Squiggles, I was always and forever rooting for you from beginning to the end and I never wavered in my trust in you.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Squiggles (RealLifeFakeWizard). A gnome paladin. “Pretty tall for my height,” though his player says he isn’t.

• Look: a drawn-on mustache, pool floaties, wet hands, socks and shoes (mismatched socks) worn in the pool, kids’ Kmart sunglasses (later two pairs), muddy brown “diarrhea” eyes.
• Life: a caretaker at a pool at a resort. His mom named him Squiggles. He keeps a light hammer in case of krakens. He has died about four times, eaten by krakens, and “somehow” comes back. At his last job he was ridiculed by a monkey. He has gone through multiple therapists, can’t read well without spectacles, never reads terms and conditions, has no lawyer, and watches Antiques Roadshow. Detect Thoughts reveals something terrifying, or an empty mind (“Oh, look, a penny!”).
• Gear: a light hammer (shrunk by Reduce and dropped), a longsword, Divine Smite, Lay on Hands, Cure Wounds, Daylight, Mage Slayer. He robbed the Box of Chaos: a can of spam (seen), and the ring of spell turning, worn as a bracelet.
• Wish: the right foot of the 1999 McDonald’s Inspector Gadget Happy Meal toy. The GM promises it in a package in the green screen room. The Arbiter “knows a guy.”
• Chosen by the GM, who says in Dried Blood she wasn’t really cheering for him. Winner.

Ray S’urdead (Teej). A wizard and necromancer (“raise your dead”) from a longstanding family of necromancers, with few peers. He calls himself a humanoid.

• Look: perfectly manicured nails and hair, perfect skin, a deep audiobook voice. His jacket carries jack-o’-lantern pendant-lockets. Little ghost “pixies” follow him. He carries a staff.
• “The physical embodiment of Halloween,” “Mr. Halloween.” His Animate Dead raises only Halloween pop-culture icons.
• Habits: avoids physical contact (shadow-hand handshake, silk cloth). Hints that he tastes the dead. Signed his contract in Thea’s blood. The Grandmaster was visibly flustered by him.
• Spells used: Dread Scarecrow (illusion), the finger-bone bullet, Animate Dead (Oogie Boogie), Reduce, False Life, shadowy eruption, Claws of Darkness, Detect Thoughts, a Curse of Incompetence, Spirit Swarm, plus the box’s Fireball.
• Destroyed by his own reflected Spirit Swarm. Only half a jack-o’-lantern locket was left, and the Grandmaster buried it. In Dried Blood, in character: “a real victory is achieved in death, where we all will meet again very soon.”

The Oogie Boogie Man. Raised by Ray from a grave as a zombie: a sack of worms that sings his song with the wrong lyrics and tap-dances. Daylight singed the edges of his sack. He was crushed when the Box of Chaos landed on him. Gerald ate one of his worms.

Pixie. An undead Chihuahua raised from a “loving Chihuahua companion” grave and fed to the Box of Chaos. Its fate is “undisclosed.”

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). Pink, about a foot high, potato-shaped, no neck.

• Body: she has hair and shed it in stress. Her blood is teal and changes colour with her recent diet. A pin was shaken out of her.
• What she did: she can’t read. She ate the welcome packet and pooped out the contract. She promised the chinchillas triple pay. She removed Claude’s arms “earlier” and says she’ll give them back. She mopped the piss-soaked grass.
• The Arbiter says he gave her “your consciousness and your existence.”

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Wears eight individually coloured ring gems and can levitate things and tear reality to move scenes.
• Claims “a neck thing” that stops him looking down at “people that are beneath me.” Cites HIPAA.
• Docked Stuart’s pay; threatened to give Thea’s job to Claude. “Knows a guy” for Inspector Gadget parts. Digitized popcorn through the internet.
• Running gag: “The Arbiter stands up.”
• Dropped the Box of Chaos “to give Ray a chance.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Caustic Phoenix).

• Keeps romance-type books hidden in a bookshelf in a back wall. Flustered by Ray: she flushed red and wouldn’t make eye contact.
• Offers each winner one wish. Shared popcorn with Doug.
• Openly begged Ray to destroy Squiggles, then claimed to have always rooted for Squiggles. Buried Ray’s half-locket.

Gerald (the Box of Chaos) (Mudcat). The shadowy figure that crawls from the box.

• Peckish: eats a sack-worm, then Pixie the Chihuahua, “a little fur on the teeth.”
• Granted Ray a fireball orb. Lounges on a hammock inside the box.
• Robbed by Squiggles, the first time anyone has stolen from the box. Snatched back a Tome of the Stilled Tongue and gave the ring of spell turning instead. Keeps an outdated can of spam.

The chinchillas. Fortress workers on union break, expecting overtime and then triple pay. One walks onto the field to flag a safety violation.

Stuart. Pranked the Arbiter on “October 11th” and had all his pay docked, or took “a pay cut.” Unidentified.

Claude. Someone Thea calls incompetent, whose arms she removed. Unidentified.

Doug. Present for popcorn after the break.

Acolytes named in the bladder event: Gator, August, GF Powers (failed) and Kruega (nat 20, fortified blue slushie). These are chat names.

Places

• The Dread Fortress front door: heavy wood bound in metal, “quite a few levels up” from the dungeons.
• The throne room (Dread Fortress, from context).
• The graveyard arena: over 100 graves within 120 ft, a large mausoleum, a full moon, then an artificial sun from Daylight. The graves act as portals to bodies “from anywhere.” A tiny mound holds Ray’s buried half-locket.
• The green screen room, where Squiggles’ prize package is to be opened.
• The resort pool where Squiggles works; it has krakens (Dried Blood: a Mexican resort).

Items

• The Halloween pumpkin basket (trick-or-treat goodies; no budget left).
• The champions’ contract (eaten and pooped out by Thea), signed by Ray in Thea’s blood with his feather quill.
• Squiggles’ light hammer (Reduced to toy size, dropped) and his longsword.
• Ray’s jack-o’-lantern locket: it held the box’s fireball, and half of it survived and was buried.
• The fireball orb (a heatless pink-and-purple flame from the box).
• The ring of spell turning (Squiggles’).
• The can of spam in the Box of Chaos.
• The Tome of the Stilled Tongue, which Squiggles almost got.
• The promised Inspector Gadget right foot.
• Blue slushies (including the fortified one).

Lore statements

• Sunday is “Death Day.” Thea thinks it was “Prank Day.”
• Champions receive a welcome packet and sign a contract (“training simulation… could result in death”). The winner gets one wish.
• The Arbiter says the Acolytes “don’t remember” things.
• The Arbiter can digitize matter and send it “through the internet.”

Full Round-by-Round

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

Cold open — Stuart’s prank

1. 0:00:44 A mic check opens the episode, then “Welcome to D20 Deathmatch!” (0:00:47).

The front door — the Halloween basket

3. 0:01:17 This time the scene is not deep in the dungeons but “right to the front door” of the Dread Fortress: a heavy wooden door bound in metal. Thea, small and pink, drags a giant orange pumpkin-like basket while chinchillas push from the other side. “Pull!”
4. 0:02:03 Thea explains it’s the Halloween basket, full of goodies for the trick-or-treaters who will come knocking.
5. 0:02:17 — Union trouble. The Arbiter doesn’t care about the basket. He cares that the chinchillas are on their break. Thea: “I don’t know how to read. I couldn’t know how to contract.” The chinchillas: “We was expecting overtime… She said we was getting triple the pay.” Thea admits she said it and can’t take it back: “You can’t take words and put them back in your mouth. I tried, because then I thought I will never be hungry again. But it doesn’t work that way.” She declares “Triple pay for everyone!”
6. 0:03:08 The Arbiter decides it’s fine: “Stuart recently took a pay cut, so we’ll just shift some numbers around.” Thea: “So then I have to let him go?” The chinchillas are done working, but not until after their break.
7. 0:03:26 — Magic. Thea demands help. The Arbiter snaps his fingers, his eight individually coloured ring gems glow, and the pumpkin basket levitates. Thea: “That feels like cheating.” Arbiter: “I literally can do magic.” Thea: “Well, you’re not always Mr. Approachable.” He objects: “I’ve done lots of things for you, including giving you your consciousness and your existence.”
8. 0:04:08 — The neck thing. Thea complains that he looks straight over her. She is “only like a foot high.” The Arbiter: “I have a neck thing. I can’t look down at people that are beneath me… It’s a vertebra thing.” He cites his medical history and HIPAA laws, and tells her to go find the Grandmaster. Thea: “I don’t know any HIPAAs, but I know some HIPAAs [hippos?]. They’re really nice… great for composting because their teeth” go (she makes a chomping noise). Arbiter: “I regret so many things.”
9. 0:04:56 Thea says the Grandmaster told her to get good, sweet treats, and that there’s no more budget for trick-or-treaters. The Arbiter claps, reality tears away, and they reappear with the basket in front of the Grandmaster in the throne room. Thea: “I just put it by the door. Do you have any idea how long it took me and the Chinchillas to get it all the way down there?” Caustic Phoenix narrates: “Thea begins shedding all of her hair in absolute stress… Bet you didn’t even know Thea had hair.” The Arbiter snaps the basket back to the door: “Quit screaming… It’s Sunday night.”
10. 0:05:55 — Death Day. Thea is excited to use “the champions I found earlier. They’re really awful. I love them to bits.” Arbiter: “It’s Death Day.” Thea thought it was “Prank Day, because Stuart got you real good earlier and you looked really stupid.”

The champions and the contract

12. 0:06:51 The Arbiter rips open a portal: “Grandmaster, for your looking ball’s pleasure, may I introduce Squiggles and Ray S’urdead.” GM: “I’m sorry, is this the prank? Those are their names?”
13. 0:07:19 — Squiggles. “My mom named me Squiggles.” The GM doubts it’s as real as his mustache. Squiggles: “No, it’s not… it’s drawn on.” Then he realises: “I was floating. Why am I here?”
14. 0:07:49 — The welcome packet. Squiggles never got a welcome packet. GM: “The Dread Fortress typically runs things a lot better,” glaring at the Arbiter, who glares at Thea. Thea: “I ate it!” She squats and poops out the old contract. Squiggles: “Well, now you’ve been served.” GM: “We keep our pets hydrated.”
15. 0:08:31 Squiggles doesn’t have his spectacles. The Arbiter summarises the contract: “some boilerplate… combat tactics. It’s really just a training simulation, uh, could result in death, uh, for the enjoyment of myself and the Grandmaster… your standard contract.”
16. 0:09:04 — The pen. Squiggles tugs Ray’s jacket for a pen. Ray, disgusted, bats him away with beautifully manicured nails: “Do not touch me. Small thing.” Squiggles: “Excuse me, I’m actually pretty tall for my height. I’m a gnome.” (His player adds that he is not tall for a gnome.)
17. 0:09:50 — Thea’s pin. The Arbiter grabs Thea by the face like a squish doll and shakes her until a pin falls out of her butt, then hands it over. The GM notes Thea has no neck: “she’s a potato, pink potato.”
18. 0:10:16 — Signed in blood. Ray draws a feather quill and jabs it gently into [Thea’s] backside until a drop of blood comes out. Teej says “Ray’s backside”, which is inferred to be a slip, since Thea is the one standing there. Ray signs his contract in her blood. Squiggles’ player: “Oh my gosh, this guy’s edgy.”
19. 0:10:37 — Thea’s blood is teal. Caustic Phoenix rolls for it (“Teal. Sorry, it was the first color I thought of”). Mudcat: “I’m pretty sure we established the color already, but nobody remembers. The Acolytes don’t remember. They’re good for nothing.” GM: “Thea’s blood changes depending on her recent diet. Her body’s very adaptable.”
20. 0:11:15 Ray: “What a delightful color.” He takes a little off the quill: “Delectable.” Thea: “Is he gonna eat me?” Ray: “I’ve no interest in eating you, small one. I would have use for your corpse, however.” Thea: “I’m a terrible corpse. I tried once and they just didn’t stick.” She backs into a wall and slinks away. Ray: “If you change your mind, don’t be shy.”
21. 0:12:16 — The wet hands. Squiggles’ pen is faded, so he asks for the quill. Ray holds it out by the very tip of the feather to avoid contact. Squiggles grabs his hand with both hands, which are wet: he was just in the pool, and he’s wearing pool floaties. Ray: “So you’ve been swimming recently.” He wipes his hands on his jacket as if it were some bodily fluid. Arbiter: “He didn’t say swimming in what.”

The wish, and the Grandmaster’s crush

22. 0:13:19 GM: “Whoever is the winner, we will grant you one wish. Just one, don’t get too greedy.” Eyeing the necromancer, she suggests they have things of value to him, “maybe a new jacket.” Ray: “Or perhaps some recently departed, if you have them around.” GM, looking at Squiggles: “You may be able to make one of your own.” Ray: “Delicious.”
23. 0:14:21 Asked whether he eats the dead, Ray answers: “I think everything is meant to have some sort of taste. It brings it, well, not to life necessarily, but shows what it goes from to what it might be.” Squiggles: “That’s not a no.”
24. 0:14:52 — Four deaths. Squiggles: “I’ve already died, like, four times already… And then I somehow come back.” Ray: “Well, I intend to bring you back. Trust me.” Squiggles offers a handshake. Ray summons a shadow hand to shake it, avoiding contact. It’s freezing. Ray: “Death is rarely warm.”
25. 0:15:47 — The aside. The Grandmaster pulls the Arbiter aside. Ray reminds her of “those romantic-y characters that I sometimes read that I have hidden in my bookshelf that’s in the back wall.” Arbiter: “I think what you’re feeling is arousal.… I’m feeling a little bit of it myself… There’s a frequency really like rattles your plums.” GM: “Purely violence.” She lists the hair, the perfect skin: “It sounds like he’s in an audio book.”
26. 0:16:57 Ray: “Perhaps that can be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Surely you have wishes of your own.” The Grandmaster’s face flushes red. “Okay, let’s go into the next arena. It’s time to murder someone. Squiggles, I’m choosing you,” she says, staring at the ground.

The arena — the graveyard

27. 0:17:21 The Arbiter stands up from a chair nobody described him sitting in. This starts the running gag “The Arbiter stands up.” He claps, and portals pull everyone into a cold, muggy night in a graveyard, “amongst the dead.”
28. 0:18:05 The GM won’t look at either champion. “This is our graveyard filled with the dead. So some of you may find it more enticing. No, not enticing.” She gets flustered, then opens her wings to make space: “My acolytes… Don’t look too closely. I can’t guarantee the effect it will have upon you… by the end of it, one of them will be buried six feet under.” The clouds part, the moon glows, and the Acolytes cheer with blue slushies.
29. 0:19:31 Ray walks forward like someone entering a spa: something in the graveyard air energises him. Arbiter: “Keep your pants on.”
30. 0:20:03 — Initiative. Ray rolls a natural 1 and takes a fatigue. Squiggles rolls a 6 and goes first.

Round 1

31. 0:20:45 — No lawyer. Squiggles asks for a rules check: “I didn’t read the contract. I just signed it. I never read terms and conditions.” He has no lawyer. GM: “Two of you enter, only one can leave.” Squiggles reads the sign above Ray’s head and gets the pun: “Razordead” / raise your dead. Ray: “That’s the first intelligent thing the small mermaid said since we got here.” Squiggles: “Mermaid? Oh my gosh, that’s an upgrade. Most people just call me, like, stupid.”
32. 0:22:12 — The light hammer. Squiggles pulls a light hammer from his belt: “I’m going to have to bop you.” GM: “That doesn’t sound intimidating, Squiggles.” He explains: “I’m a caretaker at a pool, at a resort… I’m always ready in case we get attacked by Krakens. I said I died four times. I got eaten by the Krakens.” “In a pool?”
33. 0:23:20 “I’mma bop ya!” A 12, “like a child’s toy hit.” GM: “Oh no, we brought an imbecile to the fight.” Ray catches the hammer in his palm: “It is cute. I’ll give you that.” He pushes it down.
34. 0:24:33 — The Super Mario spiral. Squiggles has a paladin’s second attack. He leaps into a spiralling swing “like a Super Mario spiral through the air.” GM: “As Mario taught us… we should not count out any handyman.” It hits and leaves a little scuff on Ray’s cheek, like Thanos’s cut in Infinity War (Teej).
35. 0:26:50 — Squiggles-mania. The crowd chants “Squiggles, Squiggles,” women rip off their tops, slushies fly. That fills Squiggles’ adrenaline and the hit turns critical. GM: it’s psychological damage, because “it hurts more that the audience is cheering for Squiggles instead of you.” Ray: “Really, all of you. This is how you feel.”
36. 0:28:07 Squiggles is in awe: “People like me. The last job I had, I was being ridiculed by a monkey.” GM: “You probably deserve that.” Arbiter: “You’ll find our acolytes are an interesting sort.”
37. 0:28:30 — The name. The GM gets it: “Raise your dead.” Ray: “I am part of a longstanding family of necromancers.” GM: “You’re a family of edgelords.” Arbiter: “This is what happens when you don’t get your peers to review your work.” Ray: “I don’t have many peers. If that wasn’t obvious, that’s sort of the point.”
38. 0:29:32 — Dread Scarecrow. His ego too bruised to let minions fight yet, Ray casts “Dread Scarecrow”: an illusion of every bone in his body shattering into a pile of snapping and gore. Squiggles saves (17 vs 16). Thea: “Is that supposed to happen, Ray?” Ray reassembles before their eyes. Squiggles: “That was scarier than him falling apart.”
39. 0:32:20 Ray: “You are remarkably strong-willed for someone so lacking in stature.” “What does stature mean?” “It’s that you’re small, little one.” “Yeah, I’m a gnome!” Ray wonders what horrors this gnome has seen, since the trick usually works and it’s almost frightening that it didn’t.
40. 0:33:05 — Dead eyes. On a perception check (15), Ray sees “something dead behind those eyes… Something cold and black and lifeless.”
41. 0:33:47 Squiggles’ eyes are brown: “a muddy brown, not a cute brown,” “pools of… a septic tank overflow.” Squiggles insists you choose your eye colour. GM: “We definitely chose to have diarrhea eyes.”
42. 0:35:18 Ray has no bonus actions (“You built a wizard with no bonus actions”). He jokes about switching to melee “for the first time” and stands there embarrassed.

Chaos event — the bladder (0:36:00)

43. The GM has the Arbiter roll a d20 (12) to answer the Acolytes’ chants of “Chaos!” All that hydration “is good for your skin… But all of this movement has got your bladder jiggling.” Everyone rolls a Constitution save so they don’t pee their pants. The Acolytes in the stands roll too, although “they go to the bath[room].”
44. 0:37:33 Both champions save. Among the Acolytes, Gator (15), August (4) and GF Powers (4) fail. Kruega rolls a 20 and earns a fortified blue slushie. Because enough Acolytes failed, the whole arena smells of piss, and everyone except Kruega takes a little poison damage.
45. 0:38:33 Ray holds an ornate, pressed silk cloth over his face. Squiggles: “You guys need better, like, cleanup crews here.” Thea mops the grass: “I’m working as hard as I can!” Squiggles: “Isn’t that some kind of, like, OSHA violation or an ocean violation? … Can I sue? … No, I’m not a lawyer.”
46. 0:39:11 A chinchilla walks out onto the battlefield to flag the violation: “Listen, I’m going to look the other way this time. But it better be fixed by the time I fucking come back off my break.” (The speaker is inferred to be a chinchilla union inspector voiced by Mudcat.) Thea: “If I get us in trouble, Squiggles, stop it!” “It’s burning my nose!”

Round 2

47. 0:40:19 Squiggles has Mage Slayer. GM: Ray counts as a mage because he’s “wearing the hat of a mage… If you look the part, you are one.” Arbiter: “You’re a dude pretending to be a wizard, pretending to be a gnome.” Squiggles: “I’ve gone through multiple therapists… they canceled me… One session’s enough and then they stop calling back.”
48. 0:41:25 — Squiggles’ wish. “I want to finish my McDonald’s Happy Meal toy collection from the Inspector Gadget movie from 1999. I was missing one foot.” It’s the right foot. GM: “Do you have any idea how expensive that is now?” Arbiter: “I know a guy. I got a guy for Inspector Gadget Happy Meal parts. You want the hat with the helicopter? You want the extended arms?” Squiggles already has those.
49. 0:42:27 “Now that I know how important it is for me to stay alive,” Squiggles casts Cure Wounds on himself for two points of piss damage. GM: “Lame! … Squiggles has a boo-boo, everyone.” The sheet heals him past his maximum, and the Arbiter lets it stand: “We don’t run a fair ship here.”
50. 0:43:50 — The mausoleum. Squiggles runs to hide in a big mausoleum to the far left: “You won’t catch me here.” Arbiter: “You sound like some sort of offshoot of the Lucky Charms leprechaun.”
51. 0:44:52 — The finger bullet. As Squiggles runs, Ray takes an opportunity spell (War Caster, granted by Mudcat). He makes finger guns, takes dramatic aim with a big smile, whispers, and his index finger detaches as a giant bone-shaped bullet that chases Squiggles. The finger instantly regrows. Teej calls the spell a “Flangel shot” (spelling uncertain). The table: “Goddamn, that was cool.”
52. 0:46:06 — The shoelace. Squiggles rolls a natural 20 on the Dex save. His explanation: “I noticed that my socks were askew and my shoelaces were undone, and I reach down to tie a shoelace, and it just goes right over my head.” GM: “You were wearing socks in a pool?” Squiggles: “You never know when you’re gonna need your shoes on for this job… And my socks don’t match either.” He gains adrenaline.
53. 0:47:39 Ray goes “full Yzma” with ghastly shock: “What is this thing?”
54. 0:48:14 — Mr. Halloween. Teej describes Ray: “a physical embodiment of the holiday of Halloween.” His jacket is adorned with jack-o’-lanterns, and a company of small ghosts, “more like pixies that don’t do anything,” follows him around. He is “Mr. Halloween.” His Animate Dead only raises Halloween pop-culture icons. The graves also work “more like portals that you can pull dead bodies from anywhere.”
55. 0:49:07 — The Oogie Boogie Man. The Oogie Boogie Man from Nightmare Before Christmas climbs out of a nearby grave as a zombie. The GM sings a snippet (“I’m the Oogie Boogie Man and no, I don’t play fair”). “He’s a bag of worms.”
56. 0:51:03 Ray points at the mausoleum and Oogie Boogie dances over, singing the whole way (with wrong lyrics). Both slams miss: “maybe he’s too busy singing.” GM: “You pulled out the wrong body.” Squiggles: “This is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard… The lyrics are so wrong!”
57. 0:54:01 The Arbiter rolls a d20 for the GM, a 6. She has Ray reroll “for redemption” and gets a 16. She takes note: “some things might happen in the background.” Arbiter: “Neither one of you have ever won a deathmatch.”

Round 3

58. 0:55:01 “Round number three. That’s ‘tres’ in Spanish.” Squiggles’ Arcana check (Int −1) tells him only that Oogie Boogie is tied to Ray, not how.
59. 0:56:46 Squiggles shimmies past the Oogie Boogie space by space and gets out of the mausoleum (a contested Dex roll). “You know, if you’re gonna sing, memorize the words next time!… You keep sending these show-tuned creatures after me… I have to leave the nightlight on before I can go to bed?”
60. 0:58:15 — Longsword and smite. “Squiggles is not playing around anymore!” He draws a longsword, runs at Ray and lands a hit with Divine Smite. Ray’s shield won’t help. Asked if Ray is a fiend or undead, Teej says humanoid. Arbiter: “He’s just a really creepy man.”
61. 0:59:52 Squiggles does another hammer spiral and it hits: “I am unstoppable.”
62. 1:00:13 — The shrunken hammer. The Acolytes scream both names, and each champion gains a Heroic Surge. Ray spends his to cast Reduce on the light hammer out of turn. Squiggles: “Oh no! It’s too small for my little hands!” It drops, now like a toddler’s toy-set hammer. Squiggles: “You’ve taken my habit [hammer?] from me, but you won’t take my dignity.” Ray: “You would have had to have had any for me to take it.” Arbiter: “Here comes Squiggles’ Mel Gibson moment.” GM: “Squiggles is the only one who’s done any notable damage here… Pay attention, Ray.”
63. 1:03:26 — False Life. Ray: “I’m not feeling quite as perky as I was when we arrived.” He casts False Life twice (using a hero point): aqua-coloured smoke rises from all the graves and flows into his chest, a “climactic experience.” He smiles at the GM and the Arbiter with a “let’s fucking go” look. The Arbiter starts sweating.
64. 1:05:34 Ray: “Let’s see if we can make this arena quiver.” Shadowy eruption at 3rd level: a 20-foot sphere of gloom, a shadow flood meant to induce dark fear. Squiggles rolls a “dirty 20” on the Dex save. GM: “You don’t have any more shoes to tie.” He takes half damage, and the fear effect fails too.
65. 1:08:28 — The sunglasses. When the darkness clears, Squiggles is wearing kids’ sunglasses “you find at a Kmart.” Arbiter: “Alternate reality where Kmart is the premier shopping destination.” Teej does a mock Kmart sponsor read.
66. 1:10:17 Ray, frustrated, mentally orders Oogie Boogie to “haul his fat worm sack ass” over for a “good slamma jamma ding dong.” The slam hits. Ray: “Somehow he still has more health than he did when we started the game.” GM: “Now we’re into fall weather.”
67. 1:12:14 Arbiter: “Ray is really struggling, and I think he needs a 10.” The break begins.

Ad break (1:12:44–1:22:26, excluded)

After the break — Round 4

69. 1:22:26 “And we’re back, Acolytes.” The GM shares popcorn, “one for me, one for Doug,” and tries to throw some to the champions. The Arbiter stands up and “digitizes all the popcorn and sends it through the internet” to both champions. Squiggles: “Oh my gosh, look at all this popcorn.”
70. 1:24:14 Squiggles asks whether sunlight would melt the Oogie Boogie. On a History check (9) he knows only that it looks like most zombies he’s seen; “very normal in his line of work.”
71. 1:25:51 — Daylight. “You know what happens when the zombies see daylight?” Squiggles casts Daylight at 3rd level and “opens up the sky over the entire arena”; the sun appears. His shades come down again, so he’s wearing two pairs of sunglasses. GM: “I feel like I’ve really misunderstood Squiggles if he can rip open the sky and move the sun into this arena.”
72. 1:26:41 The Oogie Boogie makes its Constitution save: the edges of its sack singe, but it doesn’t burst into flames. GM: “Don’t reference him as his sack.” Squiggles throws his hands wide: “The sun will illuminate the shadows of this place!” Oogie Boogie looks at him and wiggles. “Ew.”
73. 1:28:23 — Tumbling away. Cornered and terrified, Squiggles tumble-rolls 25 feet away, which draws opportunity attacks from both Ray and the zombie. His Perception check (8) finds nothing out of place. GM: “Go ahead, little tumbleweed.”
74. 1:30:26 Oogie Boogie, excited that Squiggles looks “like a little ball of cinnamon roll,” lands a glancing slam. Ray’s Claws of Darkness misses. Teej narrates Ray fraying: his perfectly manicured hair is out of place, there are tears in his jacket from the sword, and he finds the “baby somersaults” almost insulting. A shadowy claw scrapes the ground and returns. Arbiter: “He’s breaking.”
75. 1:33:11 — Lay on Hands, all in. “Fuck it, we ball!” Squiggles uses all 50 points of Lay on Hands and reaches 118 HP, well over his maximum. GM: “This has backfired stupendously.”

The Box of Chaos (1:34:01)

76. The Arbiter stands up: “I gotta shake this shit up… I gotta give Ray a chance here.” Multicoloured lightning strikes his raised hands over and over. He channels it down and drops the Box of Chaos between them. The lid flips open, pink and purple flames shoot into the sun, and the shadowy black figure crawls out.
77. 1:35:01 Teej calls heads and it’s tails: the box lands directly on the Oogie Boogie and smashes it. GM: “You took the one thing that was working for him.”
78. 1:35:49 Ray: “Was the fat sack you’ve just stolen from me not a sacrifice enough?” No. The box’s figure grabs one of the worms and slurps it down. GM: “Timon and Pumbaa do that. You look hungry.” Gerald: “I’m a little peckish, yeah. I could eat.”
79. 1:36:35 — Pixie. Ray finds a small headstone, “loving Chihuahua companion,” and raises an undead Chihuahua named Pixie to offer the box: “Would this satiate your appetites a bit more robustly than sack worms?” “The Box of Chaos stands up.” (“A box cannot stand.”) Without breaking eye contact, Gerald takes the dog and slowly lowers the lid. The box rumbles and barks are heard; “undisclosed what happens to the dog.”
80. 1:39:14 — The fireball. The lid flips open. The box raises its hand, licking its lips, with “a little fur on the teeth,” and steers the pink-and-purple flame in a swirl around the stadium. It comes to rest in Ray’s hand as a heatless orb of magical fire: one 3rd-level Fireball, castable whenever he likes. Ray: “This is energy and life. It is a new sensation.” Squiggles: “What the fuck, man?” Arbiter: “Fair’s fair. You can use the box too.”
81. 1:40:41 — The locket. Ray pops open one of the jack-o’-lantern pendants on his jacket like a locket and swirls the fireball inside. One jack-o’-lantern now glows with it.
82. 1:41:12 — Detect Thoughts. As a rule-of-cool bonus action, Ray casts Detect Thoughts on Squiggles, who fails. Squiggles’ player narrates in a deep internal-monologue voice: “As you stare into the void, you think you understood what death was… you thought you were detecting thoughts, this thing was detecting your thoughts. It is bursting back upon you, and all it smells is fear… death is now coming for you.” Then Squiggles’ own thought: “Oh, look, a penny!”
83. 1:42:58 Ray, wide-eyed, to the GM and the Arbiter: “You should know that despite the outcome of this little scuffle, there is something inside that tiny creature.” GM: “He’s just a pool guy.” The Arbiter stands up and “detects thoughts on his own”: “Oh, yeah, you’re right. That guy’s fucked up.” GM: “Just looked like you were trying to poop there.”
84. 1:43:34 — Curse of Incompetence. Terrified, Ray casts “Drafen’s Curse of Incompetence” (spelling uncertain): fail the Intelligence save and you forget all your abilities. With smoke swirling, his staff going, and his jack-o’-lanterns glowing and sparking, he chants as if in tongues. Squiggles saves. He checks his watch: “I’m gonna miss Antiques Roadshow.” Teej, out of character: “I don’t actually even know what any of these spells do because none of them have landed.”
85. 1:45:52 Ray holds the fireball for now. GM, sarcastic: “You’re winning this fight, obviously, by losing, but it’s the surprise strategy.”
86. 1:46:32 — The fireball. Ray locks the Grandmaster in a piercing gaze, “both aggressive, but also somewhat curious.” “Your mockery is noted.” He whips open the locket and, without breaking eye contact with her, hurls the fireball at inhuman speed at Squiggles, “like… 2 Fast 2 Furious when Brian O’Conner’s driving backwards, locking eyes with Eva Mendes.” Squiggles fails.
87. 1:47:49 The Acolytes scream Ray’s name “mostly in frustration, like just trying to get you to fucking do something.” That fills his adrenaline and the fireball crits for 80 fire damage.
88. 1:48:49 Teej: Ray stares down the Grandmaster against a backdrop of flames and wailing, with a sparkle in his eye at the chance to add “this absolute buffoon to his army of summoned soldiers” for post-death revenge. There is a smirk, and she knows it isn’t for her but for what’s happening behind him. GM: “I am but a witness to this moment of greatness for you.”

Round 5 — robbing the box

89. 1:49:47 Squiggles flips the Box of Chaos over: “What’s going on in there, little buddy?” Gerald is reclined on a hammock inside: “Sorry, do you need something?” Squiggles shoves his hand in and climbs half into the box, rummaging: “This is a can of spam. What do you got a can of spam in here for?” Gerald: “Whoa, you can’t do that. That’s not how this works. You gotta give me something… Hey, stop it. Hands up.” Arbiter: “I don’t think anyone’s ever stolen from the box before.”
90. 1:51:24 Squiggles asks for ointment and gauze: “I think this is like a Walgreens pharmacy.” A rolling mix-up means he almost gets a Tome of the Stilled Tongue (“a desiccated tongue pinned to the front cover. Five of these tomes exist… Vecna!”). Gerald rips it back: “You can’t have that one.” GM: “I feel like there’s other body parts that feel way more collectible… you’re looking for a foot.”
91. 1:53:59 — The ring. Out of the box comes a small signet ring of spell turning: advantage on saves against spells that target him, and on a 20 the spell turns back on the caster. On the tiny gnome it’s like a bracelet.
92. 1:54:52 “It’s outdated. Spam doesn’t actually last forever, okay, Box of Chaos?” Squiggles casts Cure Wounds at 3rd level. With five adrenaline it crits, and he ends at 103 HP, “sipping on a juice box.” GM: “We have, like, five minutes left in this game, and you are choosing to heal?” He takes a battle stance: “I am defeating death.” He keeps his Heroic Surge.
93. 1:57:31 — The pep talk. In the middle of round 5, the GM talks to Ray while looking at his feet (“I know my weakness at this moment”): “Tell me you’ve got something in your back pocket that is going to let you win this moment and destroy Squiggles.” Squiggles: “Hey! I can hear you… I thought we were cool!” He attempts anime eyes. GM: “That’s terrifying… For the love of God, destroy Squiggles.”
94. 1:58:49 — Spirit Swarm. Ray doesn’t usually feel affinity for others, but “for the first time in a long time, he wants to feel impressive.” He casts Spirit Swarm at 5th level, inviting every spirit within 120 feet to take revenge on Squiggles. There are over 100 gravestones, and a d100 says 58 spirits answer.
95. 2:00:24 — Natural 20. Squiggles rolls a natural 20 on the Charisma save. It isn’t a targeted spell, but “I’m gonna say the ring applies.”
96. 2:00:44 — Rubber, you’re glue. The 58 spirits, their rest stolen by a necromancer, turn on Ray instead. Each one rolls its own dice (“They deserve their own time”): 464d8 psychic damage, about 2,000. Ray ends at roughly −1,965. Squiggles: “Pretty Boy’s fucked!”
97. 2:02:30 Squiggles takes off his sunglasses and wipes his eyes: “No, spirits, no, no, it’s okay… We can help you move on… We can help you find peace.” The spirits bounce off him and redirect.
98. 2:03:31 — Ray’s end. “58 really tiny, angry, ethereal faces… flying at me at Mach 2,” like a piranha attack out of water. When the cloud dissipates, only half of the jack-o’-lantern locket remains. There is no trace Ray was ever in the arena.
99. 2:04:08 — The burial. The Grandmaster comes down from her throne and picks up the half-locket: “A pretty face like yours could never exist in an arena like this.” She digs a little hole and buries it a few inches down. “Well, he’s not getting any deader.”
100. 2:04:37 — The victor. Stepping over the tiny mound: “Squiggles, I was always and forever rooting for you from beginning to the end and I never wavered in my trust in you. Congratulations, you are our champion for this evening.” There’s nothing in her outstretched hand yet: “later, back in the green screen room, you’ll get a chance to open up a package and then the foot should be in there.”
101. 2:05:21 Squiggles takes her hand with both of his and “ruins the momentum.” She grips it with a death grip. “Ow! You just got in a fight, that hurts!” “Freaking baby.” She drags him up into the sky, floaties barely clinging on and now completely dry, into the daylight he brought: “A grand champion who shows that even the most unexpected winners can pull through. If he can do it, so can you. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!” The Arbiter stands up.

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character (canon, Dried Blood)

• 2:24:17 Ray S’urdead: “I know that some of you wanted to see victory. Believe you me, no one wanted it more than I. However, a real victory is achieved in death, where we all will meet again very soon.”
• 2:24:45 Squiggles: A monologue about the moment in a Harry Potter film when “the Weasley dad” asks Harry the function of a rubber duck. “That has stuck with me for the entirety of my little life… What is the function of a rubber duck? … I can Google it and… it’s a floating bath toy for children, but that makes no sense… I refuse to believe that! … What is it for if it’s not meant for more?”

Out-of-character (creator notes)

• Records: Teej has never won a Deathmatch, in about five tries. RealLifeFakeWizard won on his fourth appearance (as stated: “I was my fourth… it took me four”). “I’m going to Disney World.”
• Teej: next time his opponent is a paladin he’ll forfeit. This was “a worse blowout than the first paladin match.” Caustic Phoenix: “Maybe sometime you should be the paladin.”
• Mudcat: on paper a 10th-level wizard should eviscerate a 10th-level paladin if the wizard isn’t hit first.
• Caustic Phoenix: “I was not cheering for you even when I said I was at the beginning.” It’s “an under-gnome story.”
• Squiggles’ origin (player-stated): he comes from RealLifeFakeWizard’s first game with the Cantrip Cast [Cantor Cast?] crew, a one-shot run by their friend Brandon the DM, years ago. A kraken came up out of the water and attacked a Mexican resort. Squiggles the paladin swam out in full plate armor, was told he’d sink, and “somehow” was always lifted out of the water and survived. The one-shot was published in their book, “the Codex of Quest[s].” Caustic Phoenix: “somehow” describes every success Squiggles had.
• RealLifeFakeWizard plays “the comic relief dummy.” Squiggles went six for six on saving throws: “I’m annoyed that I wasted it on your show.”
• The Inspector Gadget foot was made up (“the most random shit I could come up with,” after rejecting Szechuan sauce). Mudcat saw one of the toys at a game store and remembers chasing the pieces at McDonald’s; Matthew Broderick played Inspector Gadget.
• Health split: about 103 vs about −1,965, a difference of roughly 2,000+. Mudcat: Spirit Swarm is technically a flat 8d8 however many spirits there are; he gave per-spirit dice “because it was cool.” The ring of spell turning doesn’t normally work on area spells, but “it just has to work.” Teej: “one spell hit and it wasn’t even one of mine.”
• Mudcat: Ray was handed a victory and couldn’t use it, while “Squiggles like a real man just got in that box and took what he wanted.” Caustic Phoenix: “Real men can have manicured nails.” Mudcat: Ray is “like the protagonist from some sort of offshoot anime… my boyfriend was reincarnated as a pumpkin patch.”
• RealLifeFakeWizard’s name has no abbreviation; he jokingly asks to be called “the Wiz.” His “life advice”: sign every contract, read nothing (“not endorsed by D20 Deathmatch”).