S7E10 — Thea's Adventure (Thea's Revenge, a one-shot)

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On the one day off a year the unions had won her, Thea stole a car, ran down a good part of a candy town, found her long-lost little brother inside a badly built robot, and tried to murder her boss. The episode was a one-shot, “Thea’s Revenge,” and it finally told her story. She was a worm of the Hollow, sent to kill The Arbiter under a blood oath. A god had helped her get the job, and she had mostly forgotten all of it. By the end, one candy kingdom had been vaporized twice, one champion had been delivered by portal in his swim trunks to be blown up, and Thea had been promoted to ambassador, with no raise and a pope hat.

The Story

A Mission in the Dark

Far from The Dread Fortress, past Prexmarin and deep in an asteroid belt, a seven-foot warforged knelt before a council of figures hidden in darkness. “Do you understand your mission?” “Of course.” It wore tattered clothes, leathery gauntlets and boots, and carried a shield and an obnoxiously large longsword that spat little sparks. It stood up and walked backwards into the shadows without ever breaking eye contact with the council, then backed straight into a portal.

Thea’s Day Off

Back at the Fortress, the Arbiter clacked his Italian leather boots up to Thea’s room, which is a closet, and knocked. Thea was overjoyed: “I have a door? … Look at this door!” He had installed it so she would stay in her room at night. “Who’s there?” “It’s me.” “I don’t know me.” He had come to tell her it was her day off. Ever since the goblins and the chinchillas unionized, the bylaws gave everyone in the Dread Fortress one day off a year. Thea asked whether today was the day she cleaned his shoes. No, that was tomorrow.

She wanted to go to the beach, or eat lots of candy, or go to the bathroom, preferably the bathroom first. “Listen, it’s your day off,” said the Arbiter. “I honestly don’t give a shit what you do.” Thea slid out into the hallway: “I don’t have to give a shit anymore. I’m good to go.” He asked whether she had just taken a shit in her room. “It was my room. No one said your room couldn’t be a bathroom.” He had to admit nobody had ever said that. Thea pressed the point: she had a throne, and the Grandmaster had a throne, so both of them outranked him. He gave up. They would go through a portal together, he would run his errands, and they would meet back at six o’clock. He snapped a watch onto her wrist, letting her choose, and she chose a giant watch of pure diamond. He had expected a Casio.

Sugar Hills

The portal opened onto Sugar Hills, a vast land made entirely of candy. Thea started drooling out of every orifice. “It looks like Candyland! But it has the name of, like, a white woman’s home in a suburban landscape.” To everyone’s shock she knew everything about it: it lies across the Void, it is a huge marketplace for many kinds of people, the underground candy market runs through it, and people come for a good time. Everything is lickable, and the streets are icing. She did a happy tippy-tap dance in it. The Arbiter, she noticed, had put hospital shoe covers over his boots.

He reminded her that it was her day off and she didn’t have to work. Then he handed her a list of things to fetch for him, which was “totally not work.” Thea couldn’t read it, but she called it a scavenger hunt. He walked off, and she set out with no money and her tongue dragging along the ground, licking the street as she went, while candy music played from every corner.

Her first stop was a hot chocolate stand. A large man stood behind it, wiping the same spot on the counter, under a sign she couldn’t read: Emmery’s Number Two Hot Chocolate. Emmery had franchised. He read the list for her. The first item was a driveshaft. He didn’t sell those, but he did have a car, so Thea made an offer: “Come here, driveshift! Or else I’ll break all your bones and then stick them into the icing and light them on fire and make my own damn birthday cake out of them!” Emmery handed over his keys. “Just don’t go back.”

The car was a 1994 Pontiac Bonneville. “It’s one you would give a very stupid teenager in hopes that they won’t rack up your insurance. I love it!” There was a paved road behind the shops. Thea drove down the candy sidewalks instead, with her tires sticking in the icing and townsfolk diving for their lives. An old man complained that he had been walking there. “Not anymore, old fartso.” He fell, couldn’t get up because his life alert got no reception, and slowly sank into the icing and drowned.

She stopped at a roadside stall run by a very tall, slender, very good-looking man in fine leathers. His belt was covered in knives, and he sold candy canes sucked down into shivs. He read her list too, and the next item was forty sharpened candy canes. He happened to have exactly forty. Since Thea didn’t know how to open a trunk, he broke into it with a knife and loaded them for her. “If you need any more knives, you tell your friends that Baptiste sent you.” “I will never remember that name ever again. Thank you, you very weird man, and goodbye forever!” She drove off without paying. When he shouted after her, she closed her ear flaps.

Have You Seen This Dick with a Pube?

Elsewhere in Sugar Hills, the warforged stepped out of its portal knee-deep in candy sludge, lamenting how long its boots would take to clean. It found the most respectable-looking man around and unrolled a huge scroll with its own drawing of the person it was hunting: a line with two eyes and a smirk, labelled “WORM,” spelled W-Y-E-M. The man checked his pocket watch. “What I’m seeing here is a dick with a pube. You’re asking me if I’ve seen a dick with a pube?” The warforged allowed that perhaps that was how they identified the individual on this planet. “Have you seen this dick with a pube?” “I’ve seen a lot of dicks around here, but not one like that.” “I wasn’t asking about your sexuality.” The man sent it to the food vendors, and it left the way it did everything, walking backwards and staring.

It tripped backwards into a candied hot dog stand, where a large man named Frank was stirring boiling sugar with a giant wooden spoon and smoking over the pot. “You can candy anything, my guy.” Pencils? Car keys? A chair? A ladder? Then the warforged reached down without looking, picked up a kobold by the neck and asked if Frank could candy this. Frank had standards. “Like, morally, I like… Well, it depends. Are you rich?” “I’m rich in spirit and in character.” “Oh, you’re just another bum. Get out of here!” The kobold was set down unharmed. Frank candied the scroll instead, plunging his own hands into the sugar, and when the warforged leaned in obnoxiously close to whisper, “Have you seen a worm, perhaps?”, he pointed it to the gummy worm stand. The backwards walking, it turned out, was not a choice. Its pilot simply had terrible control of the suit and could not turn around.

Little Brother

Thea came barrelling down the road with her eyes closed, singing, and clipped the warforged with the Bonneville. It went face down in the sugar. She offered to pull it out if it would read her list, sealed the deal with a pinky promise (a backwards claw sticking out of the icing), dropped into a deep Thea squat and heaved. Behind them, the abandoned car kept rolling through town. Pretty much everyone the warforged had talked to got hit by it, and far off Frank cried, “Oh, my knee.” Thea called it a strike.

Then she looked into its face. “Those eyeballs. I know those balls from anywhere. Theo?” The head and chest popped open. “Thea, it’s me!” “Give me a hug, little brother!” Inside the suit was Theo, a worm with bulbous eyes and no arms. The worms had built the mech so his wiggling could work it, but they had no thumbs or hands, so it looked impressive and wasn’t any good. He was startled by her new body and especially her four hands. She explained they were “a bit of a curse and kind of a gift,” given by the Arbiter, and that she’d keep them because they’re handy for doors.

Theo had been searching for eleven years, five months, thirty-something days and twenty-seven seconds. He had spent seven months stuck in a vending machine he mistook for the Fortress. Thea admitted she had once been stuck in a vending machine for about ten years, so it probably smelled like her. He had also fought a pigeon for thirty-seven days. Thea went grave: “What was its name? Sean…” “I fucking hate Sean.” “I fucking hate Sean, too. He’s such an asshole.” Sean had kept trying to eat her. She gave Theo a candy-cane shiv from the trunk, and they walked back along a road now lined with bodies, broken stalls and burning shops. “Well, if you need any body parts, I’ve sourced many right now for you.”

After a secret tongue shake to prove she could still be trusted, Theo asked the real question: had she defected from the worms? “I’m still a worm. I will always be a worm. Thea is a worm forever and ever… Always remember the Hollow.” He had come to bring her home to debrief. Thea couldn’t leave: she was doing both jobs, the undercover one and this one, which she took very seriously so she could keep it. Theo told her the truth: “I miss my sister, and they say they’re afraid that you’ve switched sides.” She hadn’t, she insisted. It was complicated, and she had forgotten some things. She’d grown fond of the Deathmatches too. Worms have no bones, and everyone at the Hollow had always been fascinated with the breaking of bones. “I haven’t broken the bones of who I was supposed to break the bones of yet. … I took a blood oath that I would do it.”

Then Thea had an idea. Maybe she didn’t keep her job. Maybe she went for a promotion. “If I kill the Arbiter, then not only do I kill him and fulfill my promise to the Hollow, but then I also get to have a new job, and then I can be the Arbiter! … I can hire you, and I can hire all the other worms that were smashed to smithereens, and I’ll finally get to avenge Mayor Timothy!” “Mayor Timothy!” Welcome, the Arbiter announced, to Thea’s revenge.

The Gummy Gnome Army

The Arbiter wasn’t due back until six, and Thea remembered he had gone to “a cave in the opposite direction.” So they planned a trap: something sticky, something sweet, something sour, and an army of gummy gnomes with brains put inside them, Frankenstein-style. The gummy worm stand turned out to be a crater like everything else on the street. There were gummies everywhere, people crying, children wailing, and townsfolk who had been run over bleeding into the candy road. There were gummy gnomes all over the ground, and real gnomes too, though Thea only wanted the gummies. She paid in candy canes. The Bonneville, half-parked in a restaurant and caked in candy, blood and viscera, started right back up, and they packed forty-nine gummy gnomes into the trunk.

Theo rode with his head popped open and took charge of the radio. He picked classical; it played slow jams. “Somebody die?” “Someone’s about to.” He told her the worms had started building the mech suits not long after she left, and he had volunteered because he missed her. Everyone had been sad for a while, but now there was determination against the Arbiter. Thea wondered whether they had lost faith in her, then reminded him she was indestructible. She had drunk a whole potion as a kid and glowed silvery for twenty minutes, so the Arbiter only thinks he has revived her all those times. “That dumb idiot.” She asked whether he could still do the family secret, the Thermopolis. Theo was more than prepared to deploy it.

Theo had also learned on other worlds that people have last names, sometimes several. Thea demanded one. Was the price blood? One of her hands? He explained that a last name is given by someone who loves you, like family. She wanted one of his, he wouldn’t give them up, and they wrestled until her foot-hand was in his face and the car hit a giant candy cane tree. The Bonneville was too old for airbags, so both went through the windshield into the sludge. They looked up at a giant gingerbread castle with cupcake trim at the end of the road. The car burned behind them.

The gnomes were melting. Theo suggested they let them melt into one mega gnome, so they squished the forty-nine into four giant ones that looked like a worm in a mech suit had made them. Thea insisted on tails, horns and buttholes: “Well, if something eats… then it has to have an exit. It’s only kind.” This was a dessert place, so she gave them big cake butts too.

The Worms Inside Your Body

The crash, the explosion and the screaming about buttholes brought the Arbiter running out onto the castle’s drawbridge. “Thea?” “Thea’s not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep!” He had been handling some diplomatic business. He had given her a fake list just to keep her busy on her day off. That was the last straw. Thea listed her duties: “Picking up poop, eating poop, shoveling poop out of the way, picking up dead bodies, burying dead bodies, un-burying dead bodies, putting the bodies at the table to scare the Grandmaster.” “But you like poop,” he said. “You pooped in your own room.”

“We have a gift for you. It’s the gift of death. Theo, get him!” Theo’s voice box had been wrecked in the crash, so he advanced backwards with his sword raised, rolled a perfect search, and still kept missing the Arbiter, who lazily sidestepped out of his peripheral vision until Theo walked past him. Theo announced his full name, Theo Thracklebolt Thermompolus Thuundar Thed, but the broken voice box turned it to static and the Arbiter caught about 30% of it. Thea spelled it out: “We are the Worms from the Hollow. We are here to avenge Mayor Timothy.” The Arbiter didn’t remember any Timothy. His eyes flickered with lightning as he reversed time inside his own head. “Oh, that guy?”

“He was a hero! We all voted for him! He was making changes! He built a playground! We loved him!” The Arbiter pointed out that they had sent a gift basket. Thea was having none of it. A few measly cheeses would not satisfy the worms. They had plotted their revenge for years (“and by years I mean probably more like minutes”). They had sent Thea, then she forgot what she was doing, so they sent Theo. “You thought you were a puppet master. But no, we are the worms inside your body puppeting you.”

A Deal with Fil

Theo’s heel thrusters fired like little Iron Man boosters and his sword came down hard. It bounced off the Arbiter’s rippling muscles. Theo swung again at those beloved Italian leather shoes, and the Arbiter whipped his foot out of the way: “Hey, hey, hey, don’t make this personal.” Theo said he had made it personal by convincing his sister to stay. “I just picked a random worm and turned it into my servant,” the Arbiter said.

“You thought you did,” said Thea. She had made an offering to the god Fil, and Fil had given her control of that moment. “Oh, Fil, yeah, they’re really cool. They just came down and were like, hey, for a handshake… I’m like, well, I don’t have any hands because I’m a worm. And they’re like, one day you will, and then you’re going to give me a handshake.” The Arbiter snapped his fingers, lifted her into the air and twisted her into a pretzel. “You fucking idiot! You’ve been talking to Fil!” Thea asked him to get a bit more on the right side because her shoulder had been killing her, and mocked the damage: “Even Richard Knottley can hit harder than that.”

The Arbiter launched into a long lament. For years he had been looking for a servant smart enough for mediocre tasks but not smart enough to betray him, and good help was so hard to find. While he monologued, Thea tried to fit his whole head inside her mouth to suffocate him. He palmed her like a basketball and dribbled her without breaking stride. So she pulled a shiny silver pistol out of her pocket and threw it at him. Thea is a monster hunter who attacks with her intelligence, so she knew his weak spot and hit him square in the crotch. It did more damage than he had done to her. “Yeah, you get him, sis!”

Theo lit his sword on fire with a swipe of his metal hand and went for the shoes again. He missed, and the blade sank into the candy and hardened in place, sword-in-the-stone style. The Arbiter, who has advantage on stomping worms, stomped at him and missed, and his boot went straight through the chocolate-bar bridge into the syrup below. Theo used the lull to bend his flattened sister back into shape. “Remember, I’m indestructible.” The Arbiter answered with finger guns to both their heads, which blasted them ten feet back. “You’re never going to kill me, and I’m going to kill you, and then I have to start the whole job application process over again.” Thea shrugged it off: “That’s no worse than when Tom used to fart on us.”

Thea pulled out another gun, the Baron’s Blunderbuss, and threw that too. “You’re supposed to shoot those.” “I’ll shoot what I need to shoot. Also, I don’t know how to use that.” The Arbiter told her to take it from someone who had led a successful coup that she didn’t have what it takes. She vowed the whole Hollow would become the Arbiter, “except the Grandmaster. She seems kind of cool. I like her hair.” The Grandmaster was in charge, he protested. Thea said he had led her astray. And anyway, he was the one who shit in the closets. “They call it a water closet!” He was done with this. He would not debase himself by fighting “you two peons.” “Why are you peeing on us?” asked Theo.

Lightning and the Pebble

The Arbiter raised a hand, and multicoloured chaos lightning struck it again and again until the crackling energy took the form of a person. Thea recognized it at once. When she was still a worm, crawling around the arena drinking up the blood, she had watched this champion: Baron Voltágè. “I channel the lightning!” The spectral Baron blasted Theo and then dissipated. “Thea, this worm, your brother, it’s a bad influence. I’m going to free you of him.”

“Two can play that game. You know who is resistant to lightning? Pebble.” Thea stomped all four hands into the ground, Sugar Hills shook, and a former champion rose from the cracked earth: The Pebble. Thea had revived him with a potion, and he owed her one. “I will smash your face in and then we’ll slip back through the cracks.” He did exactly that.

Theo was smoking now, and cinders were popping out of the suit. “All systems are starting to go critical.” He winked at his sister, which from outside looked like the helmet bobbing for no reason, and she bobbed back. Thea threw one more pistol (“another one”) and missed, then offered terms. If the Arbiter surrendered, he could keep the pistol, and one of his Italian leather shoes. “I’m taking the other one,” he said, and cackled into the sky.

The Thermopolis

“Thea, it’s time for the Thermopolis! … Hit the deck!” Theo charged at his burning sword and the cackling Arbiter at once, planning to blow the suit and leap out at the last second. He guided it in perfectly. Then he rolled a 1 trying to jump clear. Thea couldn’t get clear either. The blast did three hundred and eleven points of damage and vaporized them both instantly. Thea’s last words were “You killed us. This is horrible.” Theo’s were “I always wanted to play the violin!” (“He would have been terrible.”)

It was Judgment Day for Sugar Hills. The candy melted and oozed, and for miles there was nothing left. In the middle of the wasteland stood the Arbiter, covered in soot and a little of his own blood, boots scuffed, wings on fire. He patted them out, and then the melted bridge dropped him into the syrup and filled his boots. “Thea, you could have been so helpful to me. It took me so long to find someone who had that kind of hatred and rage within them. Somebody who is that bent on killing me.”

He reached up into the heavens and pulled. The clouds rolled backwards, the sun rose and set in reverse, and Thea and Theo were back where they had stood before the explosion, unharmed and fully remembering being vaporized. “I am the lord of all time and space. I feel like we’ve covered this.”

Revenge, Redirected

He tried diplomacy. Fine, they had been a little careless. They got Timothy killed; it happens. Sure, they had destroyed the worms’ cities, and “that big door that one time.” “Did I grind your sacred crystal into salt?” It was rhetorical. Theo answered anyway: yes, he did. “Yes, of course. I ate the salt. It was delicious. But… I didn’t kill Timothy.” He loved revenge, he told them (“I’m like the biggest revenge guy”), but theirs was aimed at the wrong guy. All he had done was suggest a game of tag. He didn’t make anybody “grab your mayor and throw him like an exploding Krillin into the sky.” Champions have their own agency. Then he snapped his fingers, and Strako fell out of a portal at the end of the bridge, wearing swim trunks from his own beach day. “What’s going on, guys?” “Yeah, you want revenge. Listen, this is the guy.”

Thea’s history was, improbably, perfect. She remembered the scene exactly: Strako had asked nobody’s permission. He had looked around for something living, grabbed it, tagged it and thrown it into space. So she negotiated. Her demands were Strako, at least twenty front-row seats at every Deathmatch, a ten percent cut of every match held over the Hollow, a pair of Italian leather shoes, and legs and hands for Theo so he could play the violin. Theo added front-row tickets to Rent.

The Arbiter, feeling generous and very diplomatic, granted the seats. He snapped his fingers and reshaped Theo into an imp like Thea, but with hands only and no arms, “just T-Rex hands.” He threw in a violin, which Theo couldn’t play because his hands were too close together. He agreed to pay royalties back to the Ether Drifts and the Hollow. Then he made a confession of his own: he had sensed her hatred long ago and always suspected she would try to betray him. “I just didn’t think you had it in you. And that makes me proud.” He named Thea the Dread Fortress’s official ambassador to the worms of The Ether Drifts, on top of all her current duties, with no extra pay and a second day off each year. “Do I get a hat? Like the Pope?” She could have a “Popat,” he decided, but then the extra day off was cancelled. Final terms: one day off, two jobs, one Popat. “So, do we have a deal?”

“Yes. Thermopolize him, Theo!”

Theo sent the mech suit roaring at Strako and tried once more to jump clear. Just before the blast, the Arbiter threw a shield around himself and Thea. Strako stood blinking in his beachwear and saw the worm inside the glowing suit. In the briefest moment he understood, and he muttered, “I’m sorry.” Then he and Theo were vaporized, and Sugar Hills was a melted wasteland once more. “At least he got to play the violin,” said Thea.

A small scrap of burning paper floated down in front of her. With his new hands Theo had tried to write, and Thea snatched the note and held it to her chest. She can’t read. “Those are words. He drew me nice words. Just like mama used to write.” Beside the words was a little doodle of a line with two eyes and a smile: a worm, or possibly a few balls. She kept it secret. What it says is a story for another day.

“Are we good here now?” “Good enough for now.” She had four giant gummy gnomes for him, and the chinchillas would love them. There wasn’t room in the portal. Back in the Dread Fortress, the Arbiter had one more thing to say. “Maybe we don’t mention any of this to the Grandmaster.” “Mention what?” “Exactly.” Thea sauntered off one way, and the Arbiter clacked off the other.

Dried Blood

Thea, now a diplomat with an official hat, went home to report to the council. Her hat was tall, pope-shaped and a hot, vibrant blue. She brought a small crystal orb containing the ghost of her brother. (“Can you hear me?” “I’m awake.” “I am dead.”) She knocked with her third foot-hand. The council sat far above in the dark, with one harsh light on the speaker below, and Old Todd, who refers to himself in the third person, welcomed her back and wondered whether he should get a hat like that.

Old Todd hoped the Arbiter was finally dead and the Deathmatches over. Not exactly, said Thea. Theo had been “thermopolized,” and the Arbiter had survived and rewound time, “which was really nice because then Theo lived.” But they had found the real murderer of Mayor Timothy, Strako. They had also won front-row seats for life, “because we do love the bone crushing,” and Thea could slip the worms the dead bodies, “because we do love to eat the dead bodies afterwards.” Old Todd summed it up. Instead of killing the Arbiter, ending the Deathmatches and getting justice for Timothy, and for years of their civilization’s destabilization, she had negotiated a truce “for a nobody and some front row tickets?”

Thea explained the big-brain version: the truth, a tourism boom, endless dead bodies for food, and Theo’s new hands. Next, they would use Theo’s death to negotiate for all the worms to get hands and arms. She would visit once a year on her vacation: “Send all letters to TheaIsGreat over at my email and I will answer them. If you have any other needs, don’t.” Theo asked for a holiday in his honor and a parade. Old Todd said they would discuss it. Theo waved his hands at the council on the way out: this could be you.

When the doors shut behind Thea and Theo, out of their earshot, Old Todd turned to the others. “Traitors. Handed traitors giving up the sleek, warm physique for the joys of handed pleasure.” It was time, he said, for step 20 of Mayor Timothy’s plan. He shouldered open a book, with some difficulty since he has no hands, and had to ask for help opening it. The page read: Step 20: Call Fil.

At the table, the creators said they had been holding Thea’s story in their back pocket for a while, and that the worms had waited long enough. Thea also forgot to ask the Arbiter to rewind time for Theo, which everyone agreed was very on brand. The gun-throwing was RealLifeFakeWizard’s idea, and Caustic Phoenix vowed that any character of hers with a gun will only ever throw it from now on. The walking backwards came from wanting Theo to be completely incompetent in the suit.

Notable Moments

• Thea took a shit in her own room, explaining that no one ever said her room couldn’t be a bathroom.
• Theo searched Sugar Hills with a hand-drawn worm poster that everyone read as “a dick with a pube.”
• Thea mowed down a trail of Sugar Hills townsfolk in Emmery’s stolen 1994 Pontiac Bonneville and drowned an old man in icing.
• The worm siblings sculpted four giant gummy gnomes with horns, tails, buttholes and cake butts.
• Thea revealed she was the Hollow’s agent, and that Fil gave her control of the moment the Arbiter picked her in exchange for a future handshake.
• Thea threw her guns instead of firing them, starting with a pistol to the Arbiter’s crotch.
• The Arbiter summoned a lightning ghost of Baron Voltágè, and Thea answered by raising the Pebble from the earth.
• Theo’s first Thermopolis did 311 damage and vaporized both siblings and all of Sugar Hills. The Arbiter rewound time.
• The Arbiter handed over Strako, and Theo’s second Thermopolis took Strako with him.
• Old Todd opened Mayor Timothy’s plan to step 20: “Call Fil.”

Memorable Quotes

• Thea: “It was my room. No one said your room couldn’t be a bathroom.”
• Theo: “Have you seen this dick with a pube?”
• Thea: “Not anymore, old fartso.”
• Thea: “I took a blood oath that I would do it. Don’t cry, Theo.”
• Thea: “I gave an offering to the god, Fil, and she gave me control of that moment.”
• The Arbiter: “You fucking idiot! You’ve been talking to Fil!”
• Thea: “I’ll shoot what I need to shoot. Also, I don’t know how to use that.”
• The Arbiter: “Did I grind your sacred crystal into salt? … Yes, of course. I ate the salt. It was delicious.”
• Old Todd: “Traitors. Handed traitors giving up the sleek, warm physique for the joys of handed pleasure.”

Thea: “You thought you were a puppet master. But no, we are the worms inside your body puppeting you.”

Thea: “Those are words. He drew me nice words. Just like mama used to write.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Theo (RealLifeFakeWizard). Thea’s little brother, a worm from the Hollow with bulbous eyeballs and no arms.

• The mech suit: a seven-foot warforged-looking robot with tattered clothes, leathery gauntlets and boots, a sparking longsword (later lit on fire with a hand swipe) and a shield. Built by worms with no thumbs or hands, worked by wiggling: impressive-looking, not good. Heel thrusters. A voice modulator (Robocop/“Darth Vader knockoff” voice) wrecked in the crash. Head and chest pop open. He walks backwards because he can’t control it well, without breaking eye contact.
• Mission: sent by the council to find Thea and bring her home to debrief. He volunteered because he missed her. Searched about 11 years 5 months; stuck seven months in a vending machine; fought the pigeon Sean for 37 days.
• Shares with Thea: the secret tongue shake, the family secret the Thermopolis (self-destruct), hatred of Sean, being Tom’s fart target.
• Full name: Theo Thracklebolt Thermompolus Thuundar Thed (garbled by the broken voice box when he says it).
• Learned on other worlds that people have last names; won’t share his. Always wanted to play the violin.
• Got hands (only hands, no arms, an impish body like Thea’s) and a violin from the Arbiter. Wrote Thea a note.
• Died twice by Thermopolis: the first was rewound; the second killed him and Strako. In the Dried Blood epilogue his ghost is in a small crystal orb Thea carries. He wants a holiday and a parade.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). The Arbiter’s assistant; a worm from the Hollow.

• New this episode: she has a door on her room-closet. One day off a year (the unions’ bylaws). She pooped in her room and calls her throne proof she outranks the Arbiter. Diamond watch. Can’t read, but history +11 (30 on Sugar Hills, 29 on Baron Voltágè, nat 20 on Strako).
• Origin revealed: the Hollow’s agent. She took a blood oath to kill the Arbiter (“break the bones of who I was supposed to”), forgot some things, and has stayed undercover; she’s come to like the Deathmatches and her job. She gave an offering to Fil, who gave her “control of that moment” so the Arbiter picked her; Fil said she would one day have hands and owes Fil a handshake. The Arbiter “gave” her the hands (“a curse and kind of a gift”). Four hands (some used as feet).
• Claims: indestructible since drinking a whole potion as a kid (glowed silvery for 20 minutes); the Arbiter “thinks” he’s revived her many times. Stuck in a vending machine about 10 years. Had two heads as a kid. Mama used to write. Tom used to fart on them.
• Monster hunter; “attacks with intelligence”; collects guns and throws them (shiny silver pistol, the Baron’s Blunderbuss, another pistol).
• Revived the Pebble with a potion; he owed her one and she summoned him from the earth.
• Likes the Grandmaster (“I like her hair”); blames the Arbiter.
• Ran over most of Sugar Hills in a stolen 1994 Pontiac Bonneville; drowned an old man in icing; stiffed Baptiste.
• Now the Dread Fortress’s official ambassador to the Hollow (the worms of the Ether Drifts). No extra pay, still one day off, a blue pope hat (“Popat”). Keeps Theo’s unreadable note secret. Email: TheaIsGreat.
• Tells the council she’ll slip the worms the dead bodies to eat.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Installed Thea’s door; gave her the day off and a fake errand list; ran “diplomatic business” at the candy castle in Sugar Hills; wears hospital shoe covers over his Italian leather boots.
• Reverses time inside his own head to remember. Snaps people into pretzels, dribbles Thea like a basketball, fires finger guns (force), summons a lightning visage of Baron Voltágè with chaos lightning, rewinds time after being caught in a 311-point blast. Has wings and “rippling muscles.”
• “Somebody who’s led a successful coup.” “The lord of all time and space.”
• Admits: destroying the worms’ cities, “that big door,” grinding their sacred crystal into salt and eating it; getting Timothy killed through carelessness (“we sent a gift basket”). Denies killing Timothy: he only suggested tag; Strako acted of his own volition.
• Hand-delivers Strako for revenge. Grants front-row seats, royalties to the Hollow, Theo’s hands and violin, and names Thea ambassador.
• Alarmed by Fil: “You fucking idiot! You’ve been talking to Fil!”
• Wants none of this mentioned to the Grandmaster.

Strako (NyteTide’s champion; voiced by Mudcat here). Pulled by portal in swim trunks from a beach day. Thea’s nat 20 memory: he asked no permission; he grabbed the first living thing, tagged it and threw it into space. Vaporized with Theo (“I’m sorry”). Mudcat calls him “this variant of Strako” pulled for the purpose. Dried Blood: “we killed his character. Again.”

Mayor Timothy (mentioned). The worm mayor killed in S1E7. Thea: a hero, everyone voted for him, he made changes and built a playground. The worms put up a little graveyard for him. He had a plan with at least 20 steps; step 20 is “call Fil.” Mudcat (Dried Blood): he was leading his people to a golden age.

Fil (“Fil” in the transcript; mentioned). Came down to the worm Thea for a handshake deal: control of the moment the Arbiter picked a worm, and a promise she’d one day have hands; then she owes Fil a handshake. Thea: “they’re really cool.” Step 20 of Mayor Timothy’s plan is “call Fil.”

Old Todd (Mudcat). A worm on the Hollow’s council; refers to himself in the third person; no hands. Hoped the Arbiter was dead. Calls Thea and Theo “handed traitors.” Opens Mayor Timothy’s plan to step 20.

The council (the worm council of the Hollow, by context). Figures obscured in darkness who sent Theo; in Dried Blood, seated high above a single harsh light.

The Pebble (summoned; Caustic Phoenix rolls for him). Thea revived him with a potion; resistant to lightning; emerges from cracked earth; smashes the Arbiter’s face; “slip back through the cracks.” Caustic Phoenix thanks SenseiSuplex, his player.

Baron Voltágè (a lightning visage, conjured by the Arbiter). “I channel the lightning!” Thea saw him as a worm in the arena.

Emmery (Mudcat). Now runs Emmery’s Number Two Hot Chocolate, a franchised stand in Sugar Hills. Gave Thea his car keys under threat.

Baptiste (Mudcat). The Faithful’s Baptiste (confirmed). A very good-looking, tall, slender knife vendor in fine leathers, belt covered in knives, selling sharpened candy-cane shivs. Thea stiffed him.

Frank (Mudcat). The Faithful’s Frank (confirmed). The candied-hot-dog cook: large, smoking over the sugar pot, “can candy anything” (a person only if you’re rich). Candied Theo’s scroll. Hit by the car (“Oh, my knee”). Not the chinchilla Frank of S7E5.

Sean. A pigeon. Theo fought him 37 days; he kept trying to eat Thea. Both hate him.

Tom. “Used to fart on us” (Thea and Theo). Unknown.

Stuart. The Arbiter docks his pay again (cold open, tech troubles).

The old man (improvised by RealLifeFakeWizard). Run off the sidewalk by Thea; drowned in icing (“My life alert’s not working”).

The respectable man (Mudcat). Pocket watch, late; “a dick with a pube.”

A kobold. Grabbed by the neck by Theo to be candied; set down unharmed.

“Mama” (mentioned). Thea and Theo’s mother, who used to write “nice words.”

Places

• Sugar Hills: a vast candy land across the Void, many kinds of people (goblins, chinchillas, kobolds, halflings, gnomes), a huge marketplace; the underground candy market runs through it; a leisure destination. Icing streets and sidewalks, a paved road behind them, carnival food (funnel cakes, deep-fried Oreos, candied hot dogs), candy music on every street, candy cane trees, a gingerbread candy castle with a chocolate-bar drawbridge over syrup at the end of the road (“you think a witch lives here”). Laid waste for miles by the Thermopolis (and, after the rewind, again).
• The Hollow: the worms’ home (Ether Drifts). It has a council and a little graveyard for Mayor Timothy. “The recovery process has been pretty interesting.” Gets royalties and front-row seats.
• The Ether Drifts: an asteroid belt “past Prexmarin, past Damerong” (the cold open). The Arbiter calls Thea “the ambassador to the worms of the Ether Drifts.”
• The Void Asteroid: Thea, “You’ve been back to the Void Asteroid so many times” (the worms’ asteroid, by context).
• The Dread Fortress: Thea’s room/closet, now with a door.
• The council chamber (Dried Blood).
• Prexmarin, Damerong (named in passing).
• A vending machine Theo mistook for the Fortress.

Items

• Thea’s diamond watch (snapped on by the Arbiter).
• The “not work” list (fake; read as “a driveshaft,” then “40 sharpened candy canes”).
• The 1994 Pontiac Bonneville (Emmery’s): totalled against a candy cane tree.
• 40 candy-cane shivs (Baptiste’s, unpaid; used as money).
• Theo’s mech suit, sparking/flaming longsword and shield; destroyed twice.
• The WYEM poster (candied by Frank, left with him).
• 49 gummy gnomes → four giant gnomes with tails, horns, buttholes and cake butts. Left behind.
• Thea’s guns: a shiny silver pistol, the Baron’s Blunderbuss, another pistol. Thrown.
• The violin (Theo’s, from the Arbiter).
• Theo’s note (unreadable to Thea; a worm doodle; secret).
• The Popat: Thea’s tall blue pope hat.
• The crystal orb holding Theo’s ghost (Dried Blood).
• Mayor Timothy’s plan (a book; step 20: “call Fil”).
• The worms’ sacred crystal (ground into salt and eaten by the Arbiter, by his own account).
• The worms’ gift basket of cheeses (from the Arbiter’s side, after Timothy).

Lore statements

• Since the goblins and chinchillas unionized, the bylaws give everyone at the Dread Fortress one day off a year.
• The worms of the Hollow have no bones and are fascinated by the breaking of bones; they eat the dead. (Caustic Phoenix: a delicacy.)
• The worms sent Thea to kill the Arbiter (a blood oath); she forgot some things and stayed. They grew afraid she’d switched sides and built mech suits; Theo volunteered.
• Thea arranged, through an offering to Fil, to be the worm the Arbiter picked. She owes Fil a handshake now she has hands.
• Thea as a worm crawled the Dread Fortress and the arena drinking blood and powering herself up (consistent with S6E1).
• The Thermopolis is a family secret of Thea’s and Theo’s: a self-destruct.
• The Arbiter can rewind time and reverse time in his own mind.
• The Hollow now has front-row seats at every Deathmatch, royalties from the Dread Fortress, and Thea as ambassador.
• Mayor Timothy had a plan; step 20 is “call Fil.”

Full Round-by-Round

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

Cold open — the mission (0:02:13)

1. 0:00:14–0:02:13 Scuffed start: the stream freezes. Mudcat: “Freaking Stuart. We start once again in the Dread Fortress with the Arbiter docking Stuart’s pay.” Title: “Welcome to D20 Deathmatch, Thea’s adventure … a D20 Deathmatch one-shot brought to you by D20 Deathmatch on D20 Deathmatch.”
2. 0:02:13 Far from the Dread Fortress, “past Prexmarin, past Damerong,” deep in an asteroid belt on a desolate rock, a solitary warforged kneels before a council of figures obscured in darkness. “Do you understand your mission?” “Of course.” “Then go now!” A portal rips open behind him.
3. 0:03:38 The agent. Seven feet tall, robotic, tattered clothes, leathery gauntlets and boots, an obnoxiously large longsword with little sparks popping off it, and a shield. He stands and walks backwards into the shadows without breaking eye contact with the council, then backs into the portal.

The door and the day off (0:04:13)

4. 0:04:13 The Arbiter’s Italian leather boots clack through the Dread Fortress toward Thea’s room (her closet). Caustic Phoenix pictures many tiny high-kneed steps “like Mr. Krabs.”
5. 0:05:21 He knocks. Thea has a door now: “I have a door? … Look at this door! … it works!” She knocks back. “Who’s there?” “It’s me.” “I don’t know me.” The Arbiter installed it so she would stay in her room at night.
6. 0:06:09 The day off. “Ever since the goblins unionized and the chinchillas unionized, I’m obligated to give you one day off a year.” She’s neither, but “there’s bylaws, there’s clauses, now it applies Dread Fortress wide.” Thea asks if today she’s supposed to clean his Italian leather shoes; that’s tomorrow.
7. 0:06:43 She’d like to go to the beach, or eat lots of candy, or go to the bathroom, preferably bathroom first. “Listen, it’s your day off. I honestly don’t give a shit what you do.” Thea: “I don’t have to give a shit anymore. I’m good to go.”
8. 0:07:32 “Did you just take a shit in your room?” Thea: “It was my room. No one said your room couldn’t be a bathroom.” Arbiter: “You’re right. No one ever said that. Not one person.”
9. 0:07:48 Thea: “I have a throne. The Grandmaster has a throne, which means both of us are higher ranked than you.” The Arbiter gives up: candy it is. He has errands too, so they’ll portal together and meet back at six o’clock. “We’re doing a family trip?” “No.”
10. 0:08:39 The watch. He snaps a watch of her choosing onto her wrist: a giant watch of pure diamond. He expected her to pick a Casio.

Sugar Hills (0:09:47)

11. 0:09:47 A portal opens onto “a vast land made entirely of candy.” Thea drools “out of every orifice she has.” Arbiter: “Welcome to Sugar Hills.” Thea: it looks like Candyland but has “the name of, like, a white woman’s home in a suburban landscape.”
12. 0:10:45 History check: 30 (Thea has +11 to history). Thea knows everything about Sugar Hills: it exists across the Void, a vast area with many kinds of people, a huge marketplace for goods and wares; the underground candy market runs through here; people come for leisure. Everything is lickable. They’re standing in icing. She tippy-tap dances in it.
13. 0:12:07 The Arbiter wears hospital shoe covers over his Italian leather boots.
14. 0:12:17 The “not work” list. It’s her day off, so no work, “friend-to-friend”… then he hands her a list of things to get for him, “totally not work.” Thea: a scavenger hunt. “I can’t read, but I’ll just say them out loud.” He walks off in a different direction. She has no money: “That’s a you problem.”
15. 0:13:54 Thea walks with her tongue dragging on the ground, licking the floor. Candy music plays across the streets (it plays constantly; later “like torture”).

Emmery’s car (0:14:23)

16. 0:14:30 A large man wipes the counter of a hot chocolate stand: “Emmery’s Number Two Hot Chocolate.” “He’s now franchised out into hot chocolate.” Thea hands him the list; he reads “a driveshaft.” He has a car. Intimidation 14: Thea: “Come here, driveshift! Or else I’ll break all your bones and then stick them into the icing and light them on fire and make my own damn birthday cake out of them!” “What the fuck?” He hands over his car keys: “Just don’t go back.”
17. 0:16:21 The car: a 1994 Pontiac Bonneville (d4; Mudcat’s real first car). Thea: “It’s one you would give a very stupid teenager in hopes that they won’t rack up your insurance. I love it!”
18. 0:16:56 She drives down the sidewalks of the candy town (there’s a paved road behind; she isn’t on it), tires sticking in icing, people diving out of the way.
19. 0:17:29 The old man. (Improvised by RealLifeFakeWizard.) “Hey, I was walking there.” Thea: “Not anymore, old fartso.” He falls, can’t get up (“My life alert’s not working”), and slowly sinks into the icing and drowns. “Terrible reception in Sugar Hills.” Caustic Phoenix: technically the sugar killed him. Mudcat: “His diabetes is what got him.”

Baptiste’s shivs (0:18:42)

20. 0:18:42 She slams the brakes at a roadside vendor: very good-looking, very tall, slender, in fine leathers, his belt covered in knives. He sells candy canes sucked into shivs. He reads her list: “Number one item: I need 40 sharpened candy canes.” He has exactly 40, breaks into the trunk with a knife (she doesn’t know how to open it) and loads them. “If you need any more knives, you tell your friends that Baptiste sent you.” Thea: “I will never remember that name ever again. Thank you, you very weird man, and goodbye forever!” She drives off without paying (“Thea has closed her ear flaps”).
21. 0:21:41 Out of character: there is no real list; the items were improvised.

The agent in Sugar Hills (0:22:15)

22. 0:22:15 The warforged steps out of a portal knee-deep in candy sludge: “It’s gonna take forever to clean these boots.” He seeks the most respectable person and unrolls an obnoxiously large scroll: a drawing he did himself, “a line with two eyes and a smiley face,” labelled “WORM” spelled “W-Y-E-M.”
23. 0:23:48 A respectable man checking a pocket watch: “what you’ve given me is a line with a face.” Caustic Phoenix: a line with two eyeballs looks like a dick and balls. It’s a single-line smirk. The man: “What I’m seeing here is a dick with a pube. You’re asking me if I’ve seen a dick with a pube?” Agent: “Perhaps that is how you would identify this individual on your planet… Have you seen this dick with a pube?” “I’ve seen a lot of dicks around here, but not one like that.” “I wasn’t asking about your sexuality.” The man sends him to the food vendors. It’s 11 a.m. (“right position for second breakfast”).
24. 0:25:24 He leaves walking backwards, not breaking eye contact. “Please stop looking at me.” He’ll keep doing it “until another vehicle or person breaks the concentration.”
25. 0:26:28 Dex save 9: he trips backwards into a candied hot dog stand (hot dogs dipped in melted sugar and recrystallized). The cook, Frank, a large man stirring a pot of melted sugar with a giant wooden spoon and smoking a cigarette over it: “You can candy anything, my guy.” Pencils, car keys, a wooden chair (bigger pot), a ladder…
26. 0:28:46 “Can you candy that person over there?” He grabs the nearest small person without looking: a kobold, by the neck. Frank: “Like, morally, I like… Well, it depends. Are you rich?” “I’m rich in spirit and in character.” “Oh, you’re just another bum. Get out of here!” He sets the kobold down unharmed.
27. 0:30:16 He shows Frank the scroll: “a dick and balls with a pube… very high value target.” Frank: “I think that I would not miss that. By the way, I could probably candy that.” He candies the scroll, hands and all in the boiling sugar, peeling hardened sugar off his fingers after. “Don’t ever let it be said that Frank couldn’t candy everything.”
28. 0:32:08 The agent leans in “obnoxiously close” to whisper: “Have you seen a worm, perhaps?” Frank sends him to the gummy worms stand down the road. The agent leaves the candied scroll with him (“I will come back for it”).
29. 0:33:18 Narration: he walks backwards because he has “really dog shit control” of the suit and can’t turn around easily.

The Bonneville meets the agent (0:34:15)

30. 0:34:21 Thea is barrelling down the road, eyes closed, singing her song. She runs the warforged over, clipping him with the left side. He’s face down in the sugar.
31. 0:35:13 Thea: “Person! I need you to read a sheet of thing for me.” She’ll pull him out if he promises. Pinky promise: a backwards claw-hand from a face-down suit. She squats (“a Thea squat”), grabs an ankle, heaves (“God, you’re really heavy, ho”); he wiggles. Upright.
32. 0:37:19 He asks who hit him. Thea: “They must have flown away.” She bailed out and the car kept going: “I didn’t know how to stop it.” Mudcat: pretty much everybody the agent talked to was hit by that car. Frank in the distance: “Oh, my knee.” Thea: “That’s a strike. They reward you for that in bowling.”

Theo (0:38:20)

33. 0:38:31 She shoves the list at his face, then drops it: she knows those eyes. “I know those balls from anywhere. Theo?” “How do you know my balls?” “We grew up together.” She knocks on his “tin can outer shell.”
34. 0:39:25 The head and chest pop open. “Thea, it’s me!” “Give me a hug, little brother!” “It’s my sister!”
35. 0:39:51 Theo inside the suit: a worm with bulbous eyeballs and no arms. The mech is rigged so his wiggling works it, “but it’s also not well done because it was built by worms that don’t have thumbs or hands… It looks impressive, but it’s not good.” Thea: “you mimicked your eyeballs really good on the outside.”
36. 0:40:30 Theo: “Why you look like that? You look like a scary creature thingy-majiggy.” Thea: she had changes done. She has hands, four of them (she shows all four). “It was a bit of a curse and kind of a gift… And they gave it to me, the Arbiter.” Theo offers to cut them off (sword wobbles up, falls). She’ll keep them: “really handy to, like, open doors.”
37. 0:41:48 Theo’s search: he has been looking for her “11 years, 5 months, 30 something days, but like 27 seconds.” He was stuck in a vending machine for seven months because he thought it was the Fortress. Thea: “I did get stuck in a vending machine for about, like, 10 years,” so it probably left her scent.
38. 0:42:28 Sean. Theo had to fight a pigeon for 37 days. Thea, gravely: “What was its name? Sean…” “I fucking hate Sean.” “I fucking hate Sean, too. He’s such an asshole.” Thea: “I just want to break every single one of his bird bones and then shake his brain around. He kept trying to eat me.”
39. 0:43:12 She gives him a candy-cane shiv from the trunk. The car left a trail of bodies and broken stands; the road is destroyed and businesses are on fire. Thea: “if you need any body parts, I’ve sourced many right now for you.” Theo stays in the suit.
40. 0:44:01 The secret tongue shake. “Can I trust you?” Thea still knows the secret tongue shake (wiggling tongues in the air; “I do not want siblings doing a tongue shake,” Caustic Phoenix adds out of character).
41. 0:44:45 The Hollow. Theo: did she defect from the worms? Thea: “I’m still a worm. I will always be a worm. Thea is a worm forever and ever… Always remember the Hollow.” Theo: “I remember the Hollow.” “Is everyone okay?” Theo: “the recovery process has been pretty interesting… people miss you… I come to get you, to bring you back to debrief.”
42. 0:45:43 Thea can’t go home; she has a job. “You already had a job.” “I’m doing both jobs. That job is an undercover job and I take this job very seriously so I can keep this job. It’s just very slow going. Is that why you’re here? Are they mad at me?” Theo: “they say they’re afraid that you’ve switched sides.” Thea: “It’s complicated, and… I forgot some things. But I’m working on it.”
43. 0:46:51 Thea: she has come to like the Deathmatches. “we’ve always had a thing for like bloodlust and tearing things apart. And especially because we don’t have bones in our body. You know, everyone at the Hollow has always been fascinated with the breaking of bones. … I haven’t broken the bones of who I was supposed to break the bones of yet.” “He’s just really, you know… really powerful. And… I also kind of want to keep this second job.”
44. 0:48:18 “I took a blood oath that I would do it. Don’t cry, Theo.” Theo is crying and laughing at once because the street soundtrack is “really fucking funny.”
45. 0:49:09 The plan. She slaps his face with a forehand. “Maybe I don’t keep my job. Maybe I go for a promotion… if I kill the Arbiter, then not only do I kill him and fulfill my promise to the Hollow, but then I also get to have a new job, and then I can be the Arbiter! … I can hire you, and I can hire all the other worms that were smashed to smithereens, and I’ll finally get to avenge Mayor Timothy!” “Mayor Timothy!”
46. 0:50:01 Mudcat: “Welcome to Thea’s revenge. A D20 Deathmatch one-shot.”

Preparing the trap (0:50:11)

47. 0:50:11 He isn’t due back until six (she checks the watch on the first of her four hands; a Casio “would have been better… a reliable brand”). Speed up time? Or he went to “a cave in the opposite direction.” Theo: set a trap, or stab him and poke him with big swords and hit him with a big hammer? Thea: “What if we do all of it?”
48. 0:51:17 She wants something sticky, sweet and sour. Gummy worms (Theo didn’t know worms came in gummy form), gummy fish, and gummy gnomes, almost life-size. Thea: “we can put brains inside of them and control them like a Frankenstein army… and then we’ll take the Arbiter and end the world!”
49. 0:52:54 The gummy worm stand is a crater like everything else: gummy worms everywhere, crying people, wailing children, gnashing teeth, people run over by the car bleeding into the candy road. Gummy gnomes everywhere, “also real gnomes.” Thea only wants the gummies. She has no money, but she has candy canes, which serve as money.
50. 0:54:23 Sleight of hand 18 restarts the Bonneville (“they built those Pontiac Bonnevilles to last”): beat up, front covered in candy, blood and viscera, parked halfway into a restaurant. d100: 49 gummy gnomes packed in the trunk.
51. 0:55:46 Theo pops the suit’s head open to ride (“You sound like Robocop”; Men in Black style). Theo’s in charge of the radio: he picks classical orchestra; the DM gives slow jams. “Somebody die?” “Someone’s about to.”
52. 0:57:00 Theo: the worms started building the suit not long after she left; there were a few; he volunteered to come because he missed her. Everyone was sad for a while; “now there’s a lot of resolve… determination… against the Arbiter.”
53. 0:57:44 Thea: “Do they not have faith in me? … this, like, Bionicle suit’s really fucking cool, but like, they made me basically not indispensable.” Then: “Indestructible! Remember I drank that whole potion and I glowed silvery sparkles for like 20 minutes, which was concerning because it was only supposed to go for like 10 minutes… and now they can’t kill me. Like the Arbiter technically thinks I have died many times and he always tries to revive me back… That dumb idiot always thinks he’s reviving me.” “He’s got stupid shoes, too… He has hairnets for his booties.”
54. 0:59:34 The Thermopolis. Thea: “remember when we were growing up and we had that little family secret of the Thermopolis? Can you still do that?” Theo: of course; it’s hard to navigate in the suit, but “I am more than prepared to deploy the Thermopolis.”
55. 1:00:16 Last names. Theo has learned on other worlds that people have first and last names, “many last names.” Thea demands one (“What does it cost? Is it blood? Do you want one of my hands?”). Theo: a last name is given by someone with friendship or love for you, like family. She wants one of his; he won’t give them up. They wrestle; she kicks him in the face with her foot-hand.
56. 1:01:37 The car hits a giant candy cane tree and both are flung through the windshield (no airbags; “it’s too old”). Both are hurt slamming into the candy sludge.
57. 1:02:46 Perception: at the end of the road is a giant candy castle of gingerbread and cupcake toppings, at the entrance to its drawbridge. “You think a witch lives here.” The car is totalled, smoking and on fire.
58. 1:03:40 The gnomes. “They’re gonna melt!” Theo: “Let them melt. We’ll get one mega gnome.” They form the 49 into four giant gnomes (about ten each). They look “like a worm in a mech suit made them.” Thea: “Let’s give this one a tail and horns and a butthole.” “Well, if something eats… then it has to have an exit. It’s only kind.” “We are kind creators.” Caustic Phoenix: “if we’re gonna be in a dessert place, let’s make them caked up.” They give the gnomes cake butts. Mudcat: “Gnomes with buttholes, horns, and all this shit.”

The Arbiter at the castle (1:05:24)

59. 1:05:24 Hearing the crash, the explosion and screaming about buttholes, the Arbiter runs out onto the drawbridge. “Thea?” Thea: “Thea’s not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep!” “I can see you and I can hear you.” “God damn it, what?”
60. 1:06:33 “You had a day off. I gave you a fake list to keep you busy. … That was just a joke.” Thea: “Oh, now it’s on.” Her rant: “Day in and day out. Picking up poop, eating poop, shoveling poop out of the way, picking up dead bodies, burying dead bodies, un-burying dead bodies, putting the bodies at the table to scare the Grandmaster. I do so much work, and this is how you repay me.” Arbiter: “But you like poop. You pooped in your own room.”
61. 1:07:14 Thea: “We have a gift for you. It’s the gift of death. Theo, get him!” Theo’s voice modulator was wrecked in the crash: only fizzle. He walks backwards toward the Arbiter, sword raised, facing him and walking backwards. “I’m sorry, who is this?” “It is I, Theo.”
62. 1:08:35 Natural 20 on investigation while walking backwards: the Arbiter keeps lazily sidestepping out of his peripheral vision, not even paying attention, until Theo walks past him and sees him.
63. 1:09:32 Theo introduces himself: “My name is Dio Trackelbolt Thermopolis Thundarthed [as heard; the voice box garbles it], and I am here to rescue my sister!” Arbiter: “I got about 30% of that.”
64. 1:10:02 Thea: “We are the Worms from the Hollow. We are here to avenge Mayor Timothy, who you authorized his death. You, Arbiter, have lived too long.” “Tommy?” “Timothy! … We even put a little graveyard up there for him.” “That is not ringing a bell.”
65. 1:10:52 The Arbiter’s eyes glow multicoloured, lightning around them, as he reverses time in his own brain to remember. “Oh, that guy?” Thea: “He was a hero! We all voted for him! He was making changes! He built a playground! We loved him!” Arbiter: “We sent a gift basket.” Thea: “You thought a few measly cheeses would be enough…? For years we plotted our revenge, and by years I mean probably more like minutes… they sent me, and then I kind of forgot what I was doing, so they sent him… You thought you were a puppet master. But no, we are the worms inside your body puppeting you.”

The fight (1:12:11)

66. 1:12:14 Theo’s heel thrusters fire like little Iron Man boosters; he flies forward and brings the sword down: a hit, but it bounces off the Arbiter’s “rippling muscles” like steel. Caustic Phoenix: “you have never described the Arbiter as having rippling muscles.” Mudcat: “Oh, yes, I have.” Theo: “Thea, you didn’t tell me he has rippling muscles!” Thea: hard to notice when all she sees is “those annoying Italian leather shoes.” “You told me you liked my shoes.” “No one has ever liked your shoes.”
67. 1:14:40 Theo’s extra attack goes for the shoes. The Arbiter lifts a foot lightning fast: “Hey, hey, hey, don’t make this personal.” Theo: “You made it personal when you convinced my sister to stay working for you instead of coming home to be with her family.”
68. 1:15:19 The Fil reveal. Arbiter: “I just picked a random worm and turned it into my servant.” Thea: “You thought you did. … I gave an offering to the god, Fil, and she gave me control of that moment.” “What did you just say? … You made a deal with who?” Thea: “Oh, Fil, yeah, they’re really cool. They just came down and were like, hey, for a handshake… I’m like, well, I don’t have any hands because I’m a worm. And they’re like, one day you will, and then you’re going to give me a handshake. And I’ll be like, okay.”
69. 1:16:09 (“Thea, you’re a fucking idiot,” speaker uncertain.) The Arbiter snaps; Thea is lifted and twisted like a pretzel, organs squeezed, and thrown in the sludge (half damage). Arbiter: “You fucking idiot! You’ve been talking to Fil!” Thea: “can you get a little more on the right side? My shoulder’s been killing me!” “That didn’t hurt as much as you think… Even Richard Knottley can hit harder than that.”
70. 1:17:20 Arbiter: “I thought we had a good thing going. For years, I’ve been looking for a servant who is smart enough to handle some mediocre tasks, but not too smart enough to try to betray me.” He monologues on and on about how hard it is to find good help (giving them advantage). Thea: the debt “can’t be paid with baskets unless it’s baskets of your bones or Baskin Robbins.”
71. 1:18:13 Thea grapples and tries to fit his head in her mouth to suffocate him. Fails. He palms her like a basketball and dribbles her while monologuing.
72. 1:19:41 Thrown guns. Thea pulls a shiny silver pistol from her pocket (“You’re gonna regret this”) and throws the whole gun at him. “As a monster hunter, Thea attacks with intelligence.” She throws it at the Arbiter’s crotch (“that head”): ten damage, more than the Arbiter did to her. Theo: “Yeah, you get him, sis!”
73. 1:20:50 Arbiter: “This was supposed to be a nice, relaxing day off. I was handling some diplomatic business.” Thea: “We’ll become the Arbiter. We’ll be co-Arbiters. And it’ll be like I had two heads like I used to when I was a kid.” She wiggles out of basketball form.
74. 1:21:32 Theo runs a metal hand along his longsword and sets it on fire, going for the shoes (“We don’t have fancy shoes because, well, because we’re worms”). Natural 1: the flaming blade melts into the candy, which hardens around it: “a sword and a stone situation.”
75. 1:22:23 “Okay well fuck you, guy.” The Arbiter stomps at him with his Italian leather boots, with advantage against stomping on worms (“I’m not a worm, I’m a warforged”). Miss: his foot goes through the chocolate-bar bridge into the syrup below. Foot stuck, sword stuck.
76. 1:24:22 Theo helps reshape Thea (“You gotta bend here… Oh, you are covered in sticky candy.” “That’s a defense mechanism.”). She springs back, plumps back up. Thea: “Remember, I’m indestructible. Always come back. They can’t kill me.”
77. 1:25:29 Finger guns. The Arbiter fires finger guns at both heads: force damage; both blown back 10 feet. “It is hard to find good help. You’re never going to kill me, and I’m going to kill you, and then I have to start the whole job application process over again.” Thea: “That’s no worse than when Tom used to fart on us.” Theo: “That really hurt my noggin.” Thea: “Don’t worry. You don’t have much up there anyway… Nature’s benefit.”
78. 1:27:10 “It’s serious time!” Thea pulls another gun: the Baron’s Blunderbuss (“I collect them!”), and throws it too: 18 damage. “You’re supposed to shoot those.” “I’ll shoot what I need to shoot. Also, I don’t know how to use that.” Theo: “That is how you use guns. You just throw them.” She moves to flank.
79. 1:28:43 Arbiter: “You should take it from somebody who’s led a successful coup that you just don’t have what it takes.” Thea: “all of the Hollow will be the Arbiter… Except the Grandmaster. She seems kind of cool. I like her hair.” “She’s in charge. Why are you blaming me?” “You authorized it… You led her astray.”
80. 1:29:27 Thea: “You shit in the closets.” Arbiter: “In the bedroom!” Thea: “They call it a water closet!” Arbiter: “I’m done with this shit… I’m not about to debase myself by fighting you two peons.” Thea: “You don’t have to debase anything because we’re gonna base you.” Theo: “Why are you peeing on us?” Thea: “Yeah, that’s gross, man.”
81. 1:30:11 Baron Voltágè. The Arbiter raises a hand; clouds roll in and multicoloured chaos lightning strikes it again and again; his body hums as the electricity forms a figure. History 29: Thea recognizes him instantly, from when she was still a worm crawling around the Dread Fortress and the arena, “taking in all of the blood, powering yourself up”: a spectral lightning form of Baron Voltágè. “I channel the lightning!” A bolt hits Theo (failed save, 27 lightning). The visage dissipates. Arbiter: “Thea, this worm, your brother, it’s a bad influence. I’m going to free you of him.”
82. 1:32:38 The Pebble. Thea: “Two can play that game. You know who is resistant to lightning? Pebble.” She stomps her four hands into the ground; Sugar Hills vibrates as the former champion the Pebble emerges from the cracked earth (it takes a whole round). Mudcat: “To be fair, Thea did revive the Pebble. I gave him a potion to revive him.” Caustic Phoenix: “Yeah, he owes me one.” (Out of character: the Pebble’s sheet is missing from the campaign; Mudcat has Caustic Phoenix roll for him.) The Pebble smashes the Arbiter’s face in: 39 damage. Pebble (Caustic Phoenix): “I will smash your face in and then we’ll slip back through the cracks.” Caustic Phoenix: “Thanks, Sensei Suplex.”
83. 1:33:50 Theo: “All systems are starting to go critical.” He winks (the helmet just bobs); Thea bobs back.
84. 1:36:41 Thea throws another pistol (“Another one,” DJ Khaled style). Miss. “You can keep it if you surrender… we’ll let you keep one of your Italian leather shoes.” Arbiter: “I’m taking the other one.” He cackles maniacally into the sky.
85. 1:37:43 (Theo has no blue slushie this time: “that’s for regular Deathmatch.”)

The first Thermopolis (1:38:04)

86. 1:38:04 The suit is smoking, cinders popping out. His flaming sword is still stuck next to the Arbiter. Theo: “Thea, it’s time for the Thermopolis! … Hit the deck!” He runs into his burning sword and the Arbiter at once to blow the suit and jump clear, using the sword as the switch. He puts his own hit points up as collateral.
87. 1:40:29 He guides it in (28 with advantage; the Arbiter is still cackling). Natural 1 on the dex save to escape (rolled at self-imposed disadvantage; a zero with his modifier). 60d10: 311 damage. Thea’s save fails too. “You both take 311 points, killing, vaporizing both of you instantly.”
88. 1:42:34 Last moments. Thea: “You killed us. This is horrible.” Theo: “I always wanted to play the violin!” Caustic Phoenix: “He would have been terrible.” Theo: “I had no hands. I couldn’t play the violin.”
89. 1:43:15 “Like Terminator Judgment Day when Sarah Connor’s on the fence.” Sugar Hills is decimated: the candy melts and oozes and for miles there is nothing. Only the Arbiter remains, covered in soot and a little blood, singed, boots scuffed, wings on fire (he puts them out). The bridge melts and he drops into the syrup; his boots fill with syrup. “Thea, you could have been so helpful to me. It took me so long to find someone who had that kind of hatred and rage within them. Somebody who is that bent on killing me.” (“You just can’t replace someone like that.”)
90. 1:45:18 The rewind. He reaches into the heavens; the clouds move backwards, the sun rises and falls; he rewinds time and both return to their positions before the explosion, hit points intact, with full memory of exploding. “How did you do that?” “I am the lord of all time and space. I feel like we’ve covered this.” To Theo: “I was on a different episode. I don’t know who you are.”

The negotiation (1:46:06)

91. 1:46:06 “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Timothy (“Say his name.” “Timothy, okay?”): “We were a little bit careless. We got him killed. It happens. And sure, we’ve destroyed your cities. You know, we definitely destroyed that big door that one time. … Did I grind your sacred crystal into salt? … It’s rhetorical.” Theo: “But you did do it.” “Yes, of course. I ate the salt. It was delicious. But … I didn’t kill Timothy.”
92. 1:47:27 “I get it. I’ve been where you are. You want revenge.” Thea: “You’ve been a worm before? We didn’t know you were from the Hollow.” Theo: “And you wear shoes?” “He’s come so far.” “You have to open up your ear flaps.” “I love revenge. In fact, I’m like the biggest revenge guy. … maybe your revenge is pointed at the wrong guy.”
93. 1:48:28 “Who was it that killed your mayor?” Both: “You.” “All I did was suggest that we play a game of tag. … I didn’t make anybody grab your mayor and throw him like an exploding Krillin into the sky.” Thea: “You authorized it… Didn’t Strako ask you?” “You know, as well as I do, that I can’t make the champions do anything… they’re people with their own agency. He grabbed Timothy of his own volition.”
94. 1:49:34 “I’m going to offer you something a little bit better.” He snaps a portal and Strako the Wild Shadow falls out at the end of the bridge in his swim trunks (he’d had a beach day too). “What’s going on, guys?” “Yeah, you want revenge. Listen, this is the guy.”
95. 1:50:30 History, natural 20: did Strako ask the Arbiter’s permission? (The table checks: Commodore Scrib, a viewer and chat’s lore master, says he didn’t; Mudcat checks his notes.) Ruling for the scene: Thea remembers Strako asking nothing: he looked around for something living, grabbed it, tagged it and threw it into space.
96. 1:52:27 Thea’s demands: Strako; at least 20 front-row seats for every Deathmatch; a 10% cut of every match held over the Hollow; a pair of Italian leather shoes; legs for Theo, and hands, “so that way he can play the violin.” Theo adds front-row tickets to Rent. “It’s owed. You’ve been back to the Void Asteroid so many times.”
97. 1:53:44 The Arbiter’s terms (“I’m feeling very diplomatic today”):
    • The front-row seats.
    • Theo’s body reforms into an impish creature like Thea, but with just hands, no arms (“just T-Rex hands”; “That’s all hands”). He’s given a violin. He can’t use it: his hands are too close together.
    • “We’ll pay a little bit of royalties back to the Ether Drifts, back to the Hollow.”
98. 1:55:25 “I suspected ever since I could feel your hatred… that you were going to try to betray me. I just didn’t think you had it in you. And that makes me proud.” Thea is named the official ambassador of the Dread Fortress to the Hollow, “the ambassador to the worms of the Ether Drifts,” on top of her duties. No extra pay; two days off per year. Thea: “Do I get a hat? Like the Pope?” “You could have a Popat, sure… Ignore the extra day off.” Final terms: still one day off, two jobs, and a Popat. “So, do we have a deal?”
99. 1:56:40 The second Thermopolis. Thea: “Yes. Thermopolize him, Theo!” Theo sends the mech suit at Strako to explode and tries again to jump clear (dex save at disadvantage). The Arbiter shields himself and Thea just before. Theo and Strako are vaporized into nothing, and the wasteland of Sugar Hills is melted once more. (Mudcat calls him “this variant of Strako that the Arbiter has pulled here for this purpose.”)
100. 1:57:53 Thea: “At least he got to play the violin.”
101. 1:58:07 Theo’s note. In the interim, now that he had hands, Theo tried to write. A small burning scrap of paper floats in front of Thea; she snatches it and holds it to her chest. She can’t read. “Those are words. He drew me nice words. Just like mama used to write.” There’s a little scribble on it: a line with two eyes and a smile (a worm, “or a few different balls”; a Rorschach test). She keeps it secret: what it says will be found out “in another story.”
102. 2:00:26 Strako, still in beachwear, sees the glowing mech coming at him with its face open, sees it’s a worm, and understands in the briefest moment. He utters under his breath, “I’m sorry.” (“I didn’t know my own strength,” speaker uncertain.) He explodes with Theo.
103. 2:01:04 “Are we good here now?” Thea: “Good enough for now.” She bought gummy gnomes for him: “There’s four of them, and they’re delicious! The chinchillas would love them!” “I don’t have the room in the portal.” A portal sucks them both back to the Dread Fortress.
104. 2:01:45 “Maybe we don’t mention any of this to the Grandmaster.” “Mention what?” “Exactly.” Thea saunters off; the Arbiter goes the other way, clacking down the halls. “That is where we will end Thea’s revenge. Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

In-character (canon, Dried Blood) — the council (2:08:16)

• 2:08:25 Thea, now a diplomat with “an official hat,” goes to speak to the council. She brings a small crystal orb that holds the ghost of her brother. “Theo, can you hear me?” “I’m awake.” “I am dead.”
• 2:09:03 Her hat is tall, pope-shaped, hot vibrant blue. Theo can’t see it well (“like a bad FaceTime”). She knocks with her third foot-hand.
• 2:09:33 The council chamber: a classic council, sitting in chairs way above, dark, one harsh light on the speaker in the middle. “Welcome back, Thea.” “I have returned with a hat.” “Maybe old Todd should get a hat like that.”
• 2:10:11 Old Todd: “your return is auspicious. Can old Todd… believe that the Arbiter is finally dead and the Deathmatches are at an end?” Thea: “Uh, something like that.” Theo, in the ball: “Yeah, I got thermopolized.”
• 2:10:49 Thea: the explosion didn’t kill the Arbiter, and he went back in time and undid it, “which was really nice because then Theo lived.” “He gave us the real murderer of Mayor Timothy, Strako.” Front-row tickets from here on, “because we do love the bone crushing,” and she can slip them the dead bodies, “because we do love to eat the dead bodies afterwards.” “Plus they killed Theo, which means we have another negotiating tool.”
• 2:11:30 Old Todd has been referring to himself in the third person (“Oh, you’re Todd”). “You negotiated a truce with the Arbiter for a nobody and some front row tickets?” — instead of killing the Arbiter, ending the Deathmatches and getting justice for Timothy, “and more really than Timothy, the entire destabilization of our civilization over the last several years.”
• 2:12:17 Thea: they found the true murderer; they thermopolized; the Hollow’s economy is sustained: a tourism boost, all the dead bodies as extra food and nutrients, and Theo got hands. Old Todd would love hands. Thea: “we start planning our next revenge for Theo and then we use Theo’s death to negotiate the evolution of all the worms and we’ll all get hands and arms.”
• 2:13:47 Old Todd thanks her for her service. Thea will visit once a year on her vacation: “Send all letters to TheaIsGreat over at my email … If you have any other needs, don’t.” Theo asks for a holiday in his honor, and a parade. “We’ll discuss it and get back to you.” Theo waves the hands: “this could be you.”
• 2:14:40 The doors shut. Old Todd: “Traitors. Handed traitors giving up the sleek, warm physique for the joys of handed pleasure. … I think it’s time that we move to step 20 of Mayor Timothy’s plan.” He flips open a book with his worm shoulder and struggles (“Could you guys help me open this book?”). The page says: “Step 20: call Fil.” “And that’s where we’ll see on the next D20 Deathmatch.”

Out-of-character (creator notes)

• Mudcat: a one-shot to do something with Thea’s lore, which they’d had “in the back pocket”; “the worms have waited long enough for the redemption every time we’ve gone back to that map we’ve just terrorized them more and now at least they’re gonna get paid for it.”
• Caustic Phoenix: RealLifeFakeWizard was “the perfect sibling.” Joke that they’re half-siblings and “dad just fucked a clock or something like that”; RealLifeFakeWizard kept “we’re adopted” in his back pocket. Not established either way.
• Mudcat: “Thea didn’t ask for me to rewind time again for you.” Caustic Phoenix: “He died doing what he loves.” RealLifeFakeWizard: if he comes back as a ghost, it’s because he didn’t get to see Rent. Caustic Phoenix hopes to bring Theo back as a Deathmatch champion (a ghost or revenant). Hypothetical.
• Mudcat: they could have rewound time to not kill Timothy, but didn’t. Strako “was an apt sacrifice.” Caustic Phoenix: “You should let him know that we killed his character. Again.”
• Throwing guns was RealLifeFakeWizard’s idea: guns are bludgeoning weapons. Caustic Phoenix: from now on, any character of hers with a gun will only throw it.
• The walking backwards: RealLifeFakeWizard wanted Theo incompetent in the suit, so he can’t control it. The Robocop voice was improvised; a voice mod wasn’t ready in time.
• Mudcat likes that the worms are mad at the Arbiter but bear no ill will toward the Grandmaster. Caustic Phoenix: the worms understand death has to happen and enjoy the cracking of bones, a delicacy they don’t have, “but it is the destruction of their own home.” Mudcat: Timothy was leading his people “to a new golden age of worm society.” Mudcat jokes: what if they were on the cusp of a mech-suit army invading the Void? RealLifeFakeWizard: will the worms rise up because Theo’s a martyr?