S7E11 — The Cat's Meow — Zhora Bloodfang v Bezil

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The worms had been promised a show. Under the deal that ended Thea’s revenge, the first Deathmatch of the new era had to be held at the Ether Drifts, in front of the worm delegation, and Thea had found both champions herself. One was Zhora Bloodfang, a six-and-a-half-foot half-orc barbarian who wanted to retire and run her dad’s bakery. The other was Bezil, a tressym the size of a house cat who had come for a kraken. The Arbiter called him a house pet, and the Grandmaster took responsibility for him anyway. Over eight rounds Bezil set Zhora’s mohawk on fire, clawed her butt, killed her with a flaming hairball and slashed a scar down her face. She came back held together with rainbow duct tape, gained a cowboy squirrel as an ally, and squeezed him until he stopped moving.

The Story

Guests from the Hollow

The Arbiter and the Grandmaster returned “for another bout of chaos and death and blood.” The Grandmaster had forgotten what they did on Sunday nights because there was blood all over her notes. The Arbiter sympathized: his whole journal was covered in blood too. Thea came in to report that the champions were ready and the guests from the worms were expected. She had prepared her home and made a gift basket of gummy worms and bloody fingers from the last champions, but she could only find about five fingers. Somebody had been eating the extra body parts. When the Arbiter asked whether it was her, she said she wouldn’t say no and wouldn’t say yes, and dove behind the basket with her tail sticking out.

As part of the agreement, the first Deathmatch of the new era had to be held at the Ether Drifts. The Grandmaster warned that the champions had to be top notch or the worms would come back demanding more. The Arbiter suggested they could just destroy the entire worm civilization. That was Thea’s family, the Grandmaster said, so no. And where would he find another assistant like her? “I’d make another one.” She reminded him that no one else in the kingdom would ever work for him, and that his employee evaluation was in three months. Thea didn’t want the champions to see the Dread Fortress first, because it looked really cool and they might think her home was less cool. So the Arbiter clapped open a portal straight to the Ether Drifts, where the two champions were waiting.

A Cat and a Barbarian

Bezil was no bigger than a house cat: copper fur, iridescent golden eyes, ear tufts tinged the green of oxidized copper, and huge leathery bat wings on his back. Sitting up at his full height, he was about twelve inches tall. He yawned, and with a little thaumaturgy the yawn came out as a dragon’s roar. The Grandmaster asked whether he was the pet of the champion who was coming. Bezil strutted over and waited. “This is when you’re supposed to give me scritches.” She dropped to her knees and scratched behind his ears. He began listing his ancestry (“My great, great, great, great…”) and gave up. He had come, he explained, because they’d told him he could get a kraken to chase and eat. The Grandmaster had a whole lake of them and offered him his pick of color and size. When she called him tiny, he informed her that he was tall for a tressym, and stretched his ears for an extra two inches.

“Thea, sidebar,” said the Arbiter. “Did you get a cat for this deathmatch? … You can’t just bring random house pets into the arena.” Thea pointed out that house pets can’t talk. The Arbiter told the Grandmaster he’d had nothing to do with it. She said that if it failed, it was on her.

Zhora was in the back: a huge half-orc woman about six and a half feet tall, with thick tattooed arms and locks pulled up into a ponytail. She’d seen so many battles, and she was ready to fucking party. Then she learned her opponent was “that adorable little one-foot monster.” “You’re saying I gotta hurt the little good boy?” The Grandmaster wanted him killed, not just hurt: spill his blood, crush his skull in her hand, “you know, the classics.” The Arbiter suggested stomping on him or setting him on fire. “A lot of ways to skin a cat,” Zhora said, sweating. Bezil reassured her: it was her or the kraken, so she had to go. Then he made biscuits on the ground.

The Grandmaster pulled Zhora aside and offered power, gold and connections, and also the Arbiter’s entire collection of Italian leather shoes. What Zhora really wanted was to restart her dad’s bakery, find a nice wife, have a family and retire. And to make it complete: “Him on my mantle!”

The Grandmaster opened her wings, and the Acolytes rose above the Ether Drifts, ethereal in bliss, over shifting sands, a giant purple planet and a setting sun. She asked the champions for more than blood and gore: “a story that will last longer than any fight.” The Arbiter announced that the Deathmatch was brought to them by the worm council and the delegation of worms, “including Old Todd over there. Looking at you, Todd,” and screamed at Stuart about the round cards.

Two Natural Ones

Zhora went first. She unslung a huge battleaxe and asked whether Bezil counted as an animal, since she could talk to animals and might intimidate him. He was “animal adjacent at the very least,” the Arbiter decided. Bezil disagreed with the utmost rage: “I am going to chew on your bones.” Zhora planted her axe, dropped into a deep squat, made the meanest face she had, and called him out. She rolled a natural 1. Bezil walked up slowly, sat down a millimeter from her nose, curled his tail around his feet and said, “I would like to scratch you.” The Grandmaster ruled that from then on, handling Bezil as an animal would be contested. The Acolytes who had brought signs for Zhora lowered them about two inches.

Zhora stepped back and dodged. Bezil swiped at her and rolled a natural 1 too. Zhora took the chance to make him an offer: they could both walk out right now. She had a warm soft bed for him, and milk (almond, rice, goat, lactose-free), feline greenies and kraken jerky. Bezil wanted a full live kraken. The Arbiter reminded them both that the contract said someone had to die, and the Grandmaster sweetened the pot with a chain of bakeries or two krakens. Kraken symbols spun into place in Bezil’s eyes like a slot machine. He flew up to about seven feet, just high enough to look down on her. Thea, watching her two finds open with a pair of ones, told them, “Don’t fucking embarrass me and roll another nat one or I’ll come out there and kill you myself.” When the Arbiter threatened to take away her pope hat, she reminded him she had earned it “with my own efforts and a little bit of a sewing machine.”

The Meow

Zhora took the two-handed axe in one hand, spun it and swung with all her weight behind it. It was going to hit. In the instant before it landed, Bezil looked at her with sheer shock and let out the cutest little meow. It was Silvery Barbs. “This isn’t how we play. This is not nice, Mr. Bezil.” Her reroll only grazed him, and he stood on the axe head and bounced off it. She punched him and tried to grab him by the scruff of the neck, which she’d heard neutralizes his kind. “Why do you all try to neuter me?” he asked, slipping free. “I just want to love you.”

Bezil answered with a cone of fire that singed the side of her mohawk (“Oi, oi, oi, watch it. I look good”) and smelled strongly of sardines. Then, because she had tried to grab him and he does not like being grabbed, he dove past her swing with the advantage the meow had given him and rolled a natural 20. He asked where Zhora looked softest. “A boob or a butt, probably.” He clawed straight into her left butt cheek. “Oh my days! You’re not playing fair. I appreciate that, but also, bad kitty!” A very good-looking elven man stood up in the crowd and yelled “That’s right, stab her,” the Acolytes ripped their clothes off and spilled their blue slushies, and in the front row the worm delegation writhed in excitement.

The Acolytes demanded a chaotic event, and the Grandmaster released the dehydration bug. Every drop of moisture began to leave the champions’ bodies. Zhora looked around for water, found none, and took the damage. Bezil turned to the crowd, flapped weakly as if the thin air hurt him, and stared at whoever had the best-looking goblet of water. Commodore Scrib threw him a slushie and Gator threw another, and Bezil’s next hit was guaranteed to be critical.

Hairball

Seeing the crowd go wild for a cat, Zhora raged. Her tusks glinted, her muscles rippled, and her ass clenched so mightily that the bleeding stopped. The Grandmaster said she had never heard a rage described as a butt clench before, and that it was perfect. Zhora’s reckless swing went for the top of his wing. Bezil sacrificed a leg to save it, throwing up one little paw, and in slow motion Zhora began sobbing as the blow landed. “Are you all right? Are you okay? I’m not supposed to give a shit. … Does anyone have a band-aid?” There are no band-aids in the arena. Her second swing (“For your Dunkin’ franchise. I’m sorry”) drew a second Silvery Barbs, this time from nothing more than a pitiful look. “No more butterfly kisses!” It hit anyway. She promised his corpse would go on her mantle, “stuffed with only the finest hay,” and asked him to forgive her. He said never.

Bezil limped. Then the clouds parted, which was impressive since they were in outer space, and an old copper dragon, one of his many-times-great ancestors, looked down at him: “Get your shit together. Make them a scratching post.” Bezil popped his paw back into place. A bead of fire rose up through his chest, and with the unmistakable hack of a cat bringing up a furball, he spat a flaming hairball of Sorcerous Burst at her. Asked whether cats keep their magic in their bellies, he said, “They keep it in their butts.” The eights kept exploding. It came to 85 damage, and Zhora, a nature barbarian, had no resistance to fire.

The Acolytes gave her a heroic surge. Zhora caught the hairball in her white-hot rage and tried to Hadouken it back. It didn’t work. The blast carried her backwards into a cart of drinks that was left smoldering around her body. Bezil, gleaming with a dragon’s pride, forgot she existed and turned to the hosts: “So do I get my kraken now?” The drink slipped out of the Grandmaster’s hand, and the show went to a break to “figure this whole thing out.”

Duct Tape

After the break, Thea came rolling in on dozens of rolls of duct tape, in camouflage, black, blue, orange and rainbow, and began piecing Zhora back together. Did the arms go on the top half or the right half? Which butt cheek was which? Did Zhora want her head facing forwards or backwards? (Forwards, please.) Zhora felt a little creaky but workable, and Thea gave her the rest of the roll in case she needed it later, then left to go get toast. The Grandmaster explained to Bezil that his contract also required the fight to last a certain amount of time, and offered him double or nothing: four krakens if he could kill Zhora again. “Jackpot” flashed over his head, and they shook hand to paw. Zhora returned at half strength and, by the Grandmaster’s ruling, still raging, since rage is an emotional state and would carry on even if she were a ghost.

Jameson

Zhora threw a handaxe that clipped his wing (“That’s a warning shot, babe”) and brought the greataxe down with a battle cry that shook the ground he wasn’t standing on. Bezil raised a fiery Shield that looked, at a glance, like a flaming ball of yarn. She complained that he had an unfair advantage because he was cute. “To everyone,” he said. Except the squirrels in his neighborhood, who hated him. He pointed his tail at the railing, where a squirrel sat with a silver toothpick and a little cowboy hat. That was Jameson, “like the liquor.” “He looks like a right bastard,” said Zhora. The enemy of her enemy was her friend. She invited Jameson onto her shoulder, and he drew two revolvers, spun them on his fingers and fired them into the air. The Grandmaster congratulated her on her new pact. Bezil: “I did this to myself.”

Out of pure spite, Bezil’s shadow grew into a cat ten times his size, just as adorable, and pounced on her, a Blindness/Deafness spell sharpened with a sorcery point. Zhora opened her arms (“Baby!”) and was smashed into the ground. “It’s okay, sometimes love hurts, everyone.” While she was blind, Bezil took the handaxe she’d thrown and sat on it. “I have claimed this axe as mine. I sat on it, so it’s mine.”

Blind and deaf, Zhora stomped a crater into the asteroid like an earthbender, ripped out a four-foot hunk of rock and hurled it where he had been. Natural 1. She threw another; it missed. Clawing at the shadow cat, she found it warm, with the comfort of being chosen by a cat, and almost gave in: “Oh no, I just want to live in here. Focus up! We got a bakery to find!” She rolled a natural 20 on the save and tore it off her face. The Arbiter ruled she could never be blinded or deafened again. “You will not keep making a fool of me.”

Bezil flung her own handaxe back at her with Catapult, then let it slow as it reached her so she could snatch it from the air like a warrior princess. She did, and then smashed it on the ground. The Grandmaster told Bezil everything was falling apart; did he want the four krakens or not? He spent his own heroic surge trying to cast two spells at once. As he failed, the flame inside him took the shape of a second, ever-larger Bezil, his draconic spirit, rising out of him. Then came revolver fire from the crowd. Jameson, now wearing a big cowboy mustache as bushy as his tail, shot the spirit to pieces. “That’s for what you did to my begonias, you son of a bitch.” “Fuck your begonias! They were never in season and they were ugly too.” Jameson started rolling a cigarette. Zhora: “Brother, I never knew I needed you.”

Bezil retreated twenty feet up, landed eye to eye with the Arbiter and told him, “You must be a dog person.” The Arbiter, looking at Doug, said he very much was not.

The Scar and the Hug

Zhora climbed the stands after him with the reflexes of a panther and only her handaxe. She had seven adrenaline and he had seven fatigue, so a hit would be devastating. Bezil folded himself in his wings, a gift from his metallic-dragon blood, and both her swings missed. She overreached and nearly fell. “Fuck you, little cat!” “Fuck your bakery!” “Fuck your krakens!” Goaded by the Grandmaster (“Is this how you’re going to handle a kraken? By flying away?”), Bezil landed nose to nose with her, yawned, and breathed a Cone of Cold into her face. She survived with frost in her eyelashes, blue lips under her smeared lipstick and goosebumps everywhere. “I’m gonna fucking get you for that!” He answered by raking three claws down her face from forehead to lip.

Zhora wiped the blood across her face and laughed. “I’m even sexier now. … No lady’s gonna be able to resist me.” When she told them she’d fought a giant ten-foot cat and lived, they’d swoon. The Grandmaster agreed (everyone loves a scar, especially three across the eye) and gave her a permanent bonus to Performance.

Then she grabbed him. “Oh, you smell like strawberries and sunshine, you do. … You’re a good boy.” She squeezed him for serious damage and mashed her cheek against his. “I wasn’t joking about the matching jammies.” Bezil clamped his teeth onto her cheek. “Oh, you’re giving me little kisses, are you?” She promised him tiny costumes and hats for every holiday. He could match Jameson: Jameson in a silver cowboy hat, Bezil in a brown one as the sheriff. Thea appeared with a platter of tiny hats, and Zhora picked out a rainbow sombrero to start.

“I must commit an atrocity,” said Bezil. He tried to liquid his way out of her arms, and she held him together. “This is handling.” Then a blue orb rose in his chest and turned red in his throat as he transmuted a Cone of Cold into a cone of fire, point-blank. She pinched his snout nearly shut and took only the edge of it, and was left with one hit point. She asked if they could be friends. “Never!” So she planned the taxidermy instead: copper marble eyes like his granddad’s, or, at the Arbiter’s suggestion, “the yellow eyes of a coward.” She settled on one yellow and one gold, because he fought valiantly.

Bezil had seven hit points left and she had one. Her next swing bounced off his wings. “Are you denying my love?” “Yes!” He told her to go pet Jameson if she liked him so much. Jameson said he didn’t much like being manhandled, and that no one could really domesticate him anyway: “Ask my ex-wife.”

Zhora apologized and squeezed one last time. In his ear, too quiet for the crowd, she said, “Don’t worry, brother, we will be reunited in Valhalla.” The crowd went silent at the death rattle. “I love you. I hope you know I fought you because I respected you.” Bezil peed as he died. “That’s called scent marking,” Zhora said, “and that means you like me. I am yours in death, sir, I am.”

For Bezil

“To Bezil!” The Grandmaster told Zhora to keep the body as her trophy. Thea, who had been wheeling out two giant tanks of krakens for the winner she expected, had to roll them away. The Grandmaster named Zhora an unexpected comeback champion, a reminder to never give up, and handed her the contract for twelve new bakeries. Zhora slung Bezil around her shoulders like a stole and gave her speech. She thanked her estranged family, her father (“Dad, you are sweet human bacon. No one ever expected you to be able to pull a lady like Mom, but you did”), the gods above and below, 3M for the fantastic duct tape, and Bezil: “Thank you for the donation of your organs and body. They will be cherished.” The Grandmaster raised a mug. “For Bezil!”

Break Segments

• Thea Teaches: The Three Little Theas. The first little Thea was quick but dumb and built her house out of straw, and the evil Claude huffed and puffed at it. The second built hers of bricks, so Claude turned her into a T-Rex and she couldn’t fit inside. The third little Thea was pissed as hell and built her house out of the bones of her enemies. It was structurally unsound, but it made a fucking statement, and she lived happily ever after.
• Breaking news from the Dread Fortress arena: the Pokémon Charizard is considered highly overrated.
• Did You Know? Crayons work as makeshift candles. Better yet, get a flashlight.
• Name That Monster: a kraken.

Dried Blood

At the table, the champions agreed the double natural 1 was quite an introduction. The meow was improvised on the spot, and chat called it the best Silvery Barbs they had ever seen. Mudcat noted that hardly anyone brings Silvery Barbs or Shield to a Deathmatch. Candace the Magnificent admitted she had picked the barbarian path of the wild heart before seeing Bezil’s art, and was furious with herself. Brutha Queon said Bezil had been built as a support caster, with Haste and Slow, and had to be rebuilt to be destructive. Bezil had peed out of spite, and Zhora now needs cleaning supplies they don’t make in this realm. Chat, it turned out, kept loading Bezil with fatigue not out of hate but because they wanted Zhora’s hot cocoa, and Zhora confirmed that by the end the invitation was open to all the Acolytes.

Asked about her bakery, Zhora said its best item is the cat croquembouche: cream puffs shaped like little cats, glazed in golden syrup and filled with catnip-scented sweet cream. The mascot is Bezil. The Grandmaster questioned how many greats really separate Bezil from his copper dragon ancestor (“at least 12”), suggesting he might turn out to be some other kind of dragon entirely, or part manticore. Bezil: “So that’s where I get my temper from.” Mudcat, delighted to be handed a cowboy squirrel, noted he now has a whole stable of rodents to play, alongside a New Yorker chinchilla who smokes and a union boss. The Grandmaster floated a sponsor-a-cat commercial (“for two coins a day, you can save this cat”) and said she’d love to see the two of them back as a tag team.

Bezil’s final words for the Acolytes: “meow.” Zhora’s: stay hydrated, love on your pets, and come on down to Bezil’s Bakery, where it’s buy two, get one free on all milk bread.

Notable Moments

• Thea’s welcome basket for the worms held gummy worms and only five of the last champions’ fingers, because someone had been eating the rest.
• Both champions opened with natural 1s.
• Bezil’s meow turned Zhora’s hit into a graze: Silvery Barbs, twice.
• Bezil rolled a natural 20 and clawed Zhora in the left butt cheek.
• Zhora’s rage stopped her bleeding with one mighty butt clench.
• An old copper dragon appeared in the clouds of outer space to tell Bezil to get his shit together.
• Bezil killed Zhora with an 85-damage flaming hairball after her Hadouken failed.
• Thea duct-taped Zhora back together, head facing forwards.
• Jameson the cowboy squirrel shot Bezil’s draconic spirit to pieces over some begonias.
• Zhora took three claw marks to the face and declared herself even sexier.
• Zhora hugged Bezil to death, and he peed on her as he died.

Memorable Quotes

• Bezil: “This is when you’re supposed to give me scritches.”
• Zhora Bloodfang: “You’re saying I gotta hurt the little good boy?”
• Thea: “Don’t fucking embarrass me and roll another nat one or I’ll come out there and kill you myself.”
• Bezil: “I would like to scratch you.”
• The old copper dragon: “Get your shit together. Make them a scratching post.”
• Bezil: “So do I get my kraken now?”
• Bezil: “I have claimed this axe as mine. I sat on it, so it’s mine.”
• Jameson: “That’s for what you did to my begonias, you son of a bitch.”
• Zhora Bloodfang: “Brother, I never knew I needed you.”
• Zhora Bloodfang: “I’m even sexier now.”
• Bezil: “I must commit an atrocity.”
• Zhora Bloodfang: “That’s called scent marking, and that means you like me.”

Zhora Bloodfang: “Thank you for the donation of your organs and body. They will be cherished.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

• Zhora Bloodfang (new; Candace the Magnificent): half-orc barbarian (Path of the Wild Heart, aspect of the panther), about 6’6”, thick locks in a ponytail, a mohawk, tusks, heavy tattoos; from an island, eats fish; can speak with animals; human father (the Dried Blood “sweet human bacon” line), mother implied orc; estranged from her family; dreams of restarting her dad’s bakery, a wife, a family and retirement. Won 12 bakeries. Scar: three claw marks from forehead to lip. Permanent +1 Performance. Keeps Bezil’s body as a trophy and plans taxidermy. Ally of Jameson.
• Bezil (new; Brutha Queon): a tressym about a foot tall, copper fur, golden eyes, oxidized-copper ear tufts, leathery draconic wings; descended “at least 12” generations from a copper dragon; sorcerer (Silvery Barbs, Shield, Sorcerous Burst, Catapult, Blindness/Deafness, Cone of Cold, Transmuted Spell, Dragon’s Breath, Thaumaturgy; gift of the metallic dragon). Wanted a kraken. Hated by his neighborhood’s squirrels. Killed Zhora once; killed by her hug. Now the mascot of her bakery.
• Jameson (new NPC, voiced by Mudcat): a squirrel from Bezil’s neighborhood; silver toothpick, cowboy hat, two revolvers, big cowboy mustache, rolls his own cigarettes; speaks the common tongue; has an ex-wife; hates Bezil over his begonias. Allied with Zhora mid-fight and shot down Bezil’s draconic spirit.
• The old copper dragon (unnamed): Bezil’s ancestor, seen in the parted clouds.
• Thea: found both champions; hosts at her home; gift basket; pope hat she sewed; duct-taped Zhora; tiny hats; kraken tanks.
• The Arbiter, the Grandmaster, Doug (not a dog person), Stuart (round cards), Old Todd and the worm delegation (front row), Claude (Thea Teaches), Commodore Scrib and Gator (slushies).
• An unnamed good-looking elven man in the crowd: “That’s right, stab her.”

Places

• The Ether Drifts: the arena, by the S7E10 agreement; Thea’s home.
• The Grandmaster’s lake of krakens.

Items

• Zhora’s greataxe and handaxe (Bezil “claimed” the handaxe by sitting on it).
• Thea’s pope hat (sewn); the duct tape; the platter of tiny hats; the rainbow sombrero.

Lore statements

• The first Deathmatch of “the new era” must be held at the Ether Drifts under the agreement with the worms.
• The Arbiter’s employee evaluation is due in three months.
• The Grandmaster keeps a lake of krakens.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Cold open — the worms’ guests (0:00:32)

1. 0:00:32 Intro. The Arbiter: “We’ve returned for another bout of chaos and death and blood and, you know, the thing that we do on Sunday nights.” The Grandmaster forgot; her notes are covered in blood. The Arbiter: “My entire journal is covered in blood.”
2. 0:01:29 Thea arrives. The Arbiter asks if the champions are ready and whether “our guests from the worm empire” are arriving. Thea has prepared her home to receive guests and made a gift basket of gummy worms and bloody fingers from the last champions, but she can only find about five fingers: “somebody’s been eating the other extra body parts.” Arbiter: “Have you been eating the extra body parts?” Thea: “I won’t say no, but I won’t say yes!” She dives behind the basket, tail poking out.
3. 0:02:18 As part of the agreement (S7E10), the first Deathmatch of the new era has to be held at the Ether Drifts. The Grandmaster: the champions must be top notch or the worms “will come back demanding more.” Arbiter: “Or we could just destroy the entire worm civilization.” Grandmaster: “That’s Thea’s family. We will not be doing that.” Where else would he find such an assistant? Arbiter: “I’d make another one.” Narration: no one else in this kingdom would ever work for him. The Arbiter’s employee evaluation is in three months.
4. 0:03:29 Thea wants to take everyone to her home. She doesn’t want the champions to see the Dread Fortress first, because “the Deathmatch Fortress looks really cool” and they’d think the Ether Drifts less cool. The Arbiter claps open a portal to the Ether Drifts, where Zhora Bloodfang and Bezil are waiting. Thea found both champions.

Bezil (0:04:19)

5. 0:04:29 Bezil: no bigger than a house cat, about a foot tall (“he sits up at his full 12 inches”), copper fur, iridescent golden eyes, ear tufts tinged a greenish oxidized-copper color, and huge leathery bat-like draconic wings. He is a tressym (“Bezel the Tresum”). He yawns, and uses thaumaturgy to make the yawn a draconic roar.
6. 0:05:33 The Grandmaster: “Are you the pet of the champion that’s coming?” Bezil struts up and waits: “This is when you’re supposed to give me scritches.” She kneels and scratches behind his ears.
7. 0:06:19 “My name is Bezil. My great, great, great, great… Actually, that doesn’t matter.” He came because they told him he could get a kraken “to chase and eat.” Grandmaster: “We have a whole lake of krakens. We’ll give you your pick.” She calls him tiny. “I am tall for other tressyms, thank you very much.” He stretches his ears for two more inches. He dodges her second scratch.
8. 0:07:07 “Thea, sidebar.” The Arbiter: “Did you get a cat for this deathmatch? … You can’t just bring random house pets into the arena.” Thea: “House pets can’t talk. Can they, Bezil?” Arbiter: “Grandmaster, I had nothing to do with this.” Grandmaster: “If it fails, it’s on me.”

Zhora Bloodfang (0:07:44)

9. 0:07:44 Zhora: “I’ve seen so many battles. I’m here tonight and I’m ready to fucking party.” Told she’s fighting “that adorable little one-foot monster”: “You’re saying I gotta hurt the little good boy?” Grandmaster: “Kill it, ideally… spill its blood upon the ground, hold its skull in your hand and crush it into pieces, you know, the classics.” Arbiter: “You could stomp on it if you want, or set it on fire.” Zhora: “A lot of ways to skin a cat.”
10. 0:09:00 She’s sweating. “A certified 100% made of sugar and spice sweet good boy.” Bezil recites a very long string of “great”s about his ancestry. Zhora: “I don’t usually like murdering people because who they are, what they are.” Bezil: “It’s you between me and a kraken, so you’ve gotta go.” Zhora: “Good way to die… a little baby boy on my chest.” Bezil makes biscuits on the ground.
11. 0:10:12 The Grandmaster pulls Zhora aside: power, gold, connections. She offers the Arbiter’s entire Italian leather shoe collection. Zhora’s dream: restart her dad’s bakery (“not too good at making cakes”), get a nice wife and a family, and retire. And to complete it: “Him on my mantle!”
12. 0:11:19 The Grandmaster opens her wings: the Acolytes rise overhead “ethereal in bliss,” over shifting sands, the asteroid belt, a giant purple planet, and a setting sun. “I beg of you to not just give me blood and gore, but give us a story that will last longer than any fight.” She flies up to sit among them.
13. 0:12:25 Arbiter: “This Deathmatch is brought to you by the worm council and the delegation of worms, including Old Todd over there. Looking at you, Todd.” He screams at Stuart because the round cards aren’t working. Initiative: Zhora 7, Bezil 3.

Round 1 (0:13:24)

14. 0:13:27 Zhora unslings a huge, heavy battleaxe and limbers up. She asks whether Bezil counts as an animal, since she can speak with animals and beasts; she wants to try animal handling or intimidation. Arbiter: “He’s animal adjacent at the very least.” Bezil: “Excuse me! … I am Bezil.” Zhora: “Just because you got wings, mate, doesn’t mean you’re not an animal. That just makes you technically more of an animal.” Bezil: “I am going to chew on your bones.”
15. 0:14:56 Natural 1 on intimidation. Zhora plants her axe in the ground, drops into a deep squat and makes “the meanest fucking face”: “You, Bezil, I’m calling you out.” Bezil walks up slowly, sits, curls his tail around himself, tucks his wings in, a millimeter from her nose: “I would like to scratch you.”
16. 0:16:05 Ruling (the Grandmaster): any future animal-handling attempt on Bezil is contested, since he disputes being an animal. The nat 1 gives Zhora a fatigue. The Acolytes who brought signs for her lower them about two inches.
17. 0:17:18 Zhora steps back and takes the Dodge action. Bezil’s claw, at disadvantage: natural 1. He stalks around her, “very feline and feral.”
18. 0:18:44 The offer. Zhora: “You and I, right now, we can walk out of here.” A warm soft bed, milk (“almond milk, rice milk, goat milk… lactose-free”), feline greenies, kraken jerky. Bezil: “I want a full live kraken.” The Arbiter: no one can walk away until someone dies; it’s in the contract. The Grandmaster raises Bezil’s prize: a chain of bakeries or two krakens, “the whole Dunkin’ enterprise.” Bezil: “It’s about the thrill of the hunt.” Kraken symbols spin into place in his eyes like a slot machine.
19. 0:20:43 Bezil flies up, first planning 15 feet, then settling for about seven feet, just above Zhora’s eye level, and looks down on her menacingly.
20. 0:21:21 Zhora described: a big, tall half-orc woman, about 6’6”, thick locks pulled up in a ponytail, heavily tattooed.
21. 0:21:55 The Arbiter: “Thea… you did say this was going to be a good deathmatch, right?” Thea: the atmosphere is thin; athletes take time to adjust. To the champions: “Don’t fucking embarrass me and roll another nat one or I’ll come out there and kill you myself.” The Arbiter threatens her pope hat. Thea: “I earned this hat with my own efforts and a little bit of a sewing machine.”

Round 2 (0:23:04)

22. 0:23:11 Zhora takes the two-handed axe in one hand, spins it, regrips, and swings with all her weight. It’s a hit, faster than Bezil expects, the crack ringing out in the space-vacuum bubble, cutting at his ribs.
23. 0:24:05 The meow. In sheer shock, Bezil meows “the cutest little meow.” Silvery Barbs. Zhora: “This isn’t how we play. This is not nice, Mr. Bezil.” Reroll: 18 against AC 18, a glancing blow (half damage). Bezil stands on the axe tip and bounces off.
24. 0:26:13 Unarmed strike hits (5). Grapple fails: she tries to grab him “by the nape. I heard that neutralizes your kind.” Bezil: “Neutralize me? … Why do you all try to neuter me?” Zhora: “I just want to love you.”
25. 0:28:50 Bezil breathes a full cone of flame (Dragon’s Breath). Zhora’s Dex save: 20, half damage. The heat singes the side of her mohawk: “Oi, oi, oi, watch it. I look good.” His breath smells of sardines. Zhora pulls a Ren and Stimpy face.
26. 0:31:22 “This one tried to grab me. And I don’t like that.” With advantage from Silvery Barbs: natural 20. “Where does Zhora look the softest?” Zhora: “A boob or a butt, probably.” Bezil zips around her swing and claws into her left butt cheek (10). “Oh my days! … You’re not playing fair. I appreciate that, but also, bad kitty!”
27. 0:33:14 In the crowd, a very good-looking elven man stands up: “That’s right, stab her.” The crowd goes “absolutely apeshit,” ripping clothes off and spilling blue slushies. The worm delegation writhes in excitement in the front row. The Acolytes demand a chaotic event.
28. 0:34:13 Chaos: the dehydration bug (Arbiter rolls 3). Mouths parch, eyes dry, hands callus; every bit of liquid is being sucked from their bodies. DC 16 to find water.
    • Zhora, Survival 8: “I don’t see no water.” She takes 11 dehydration damage. The Grandmaster: “No lubrication here to help you out.”
    • Bezil, Performance 25: he flaps sadly and limply, as if the air hurts him, and stares at the person with the best-looking goblet of water. Commodore Scrib throws him a slushie and Gator another; he reaches five adrenaline, so his next hit is critical.
29. 0:37:26 The Arbiter: “What’s wrong with you tonight?” The Grandmaster has some tea. Bezil: “Go ahead and lube up.”

Round 3 (0:37:55)

30. 0:38:00 The rage. Seeing the crowd go nuts for Bezil, Zhora’s tusks glint and she rages: muscles rippling, veins bulging. “I’ve had enough of this! You! You’re going fucking down!” Her ass clenches mightily and the bleeding stops. The Grandmaster: the first rage she’s ever heard described as a butt clench, “a fantastic description.”
31. 0:39:03 Reckless attack: 30 to hit. With five adrenaline she deals max damage plus her roll: 31. She goes for the top of his wing, at his little cat shoulder. Bezil sacrifices a leg to save the wing, putting up a paw. In slow motion, Zhora sobs as the blow lands: “Are you all right? Are you okay? I’m not supposed to give a shit.” “You hit me!” “Does anyone have a band-aid?” Someone at the table (probably the Grandmaster): “There are no band-aids in the arena.”
32. 0:42:16 Second attack: “For your Dunkin’ franchise… I’m sorry.” Bezil gives her a pitiful look, no meow this time: a second Silvery Barbs. Zhora: “No more butterfly kisses!” The reroll still hits (9). “Your corpse will be elevated upon my mantle, stuffed with only the finest hay.” “I hope you can forgive me.” “Never.”
33. 0:44:37 “Remember who you are.” Bezil limps. The clouds part (there were no clouds; they’re in space) and an old copper dragon looks down at him: “Get your shit together. Make them a scratching post.” He flexes the paw and pops it back in place. “You hit me real hard, and I would like to hit you harder.”
34. 0:45:35 The hairball. A bead of fire rises in his chest, then “the lovely sounds of a cat’s furball hack.” Sorcerous Burst, a critical hit with the adrenaline, the eights exploding. Grandmaster: “Do cats keep their magic in their bellies?” Bezil: “They keep it in their butts.” The Arbiter pulls out a giant leather tome to check the rules. 85 fire damage. Zhora is at 70 and, as a nature barbarian, not resistant to fire.
35. 0:49:28 Heroic Surge. The Acolytes award Zhora a heroic surge. “Zhora’s white-hot rage and energy catches the hairball and she Hadoukens it back at you.” Contested roll; it fails. She plants her feet, grabs it, and is carried back with it, crashing into a cart of drinks that’s left smoldering around her. Zhora is dead.
36. 0:52:23 Bezil, gleaming with a dragon’s pride, forgets she exists: “So do I get my kraken now?” The Grandmaster’s drink slips from her hand. “A break, a break, a break.” The Arbiter: “Maybe we take 10 minutes and we figure this whole thing out.”

Break segments (canon) (0:53:33–1:01:01)

• Thea Teaches: The Three Little Theas (0:53:33). The first little Thea was “quick but dumb” and built her house of straw. An evil Claude knocked, and huffed and puffed. The second built hers of bricks; Claude turned her into a T-Rex so she couldn’t fit inside. “The third little Thea was pissed as hell, so she built her house out of the bones of her enemies. And while it was structurally unsound, it made a fucking statement.” She lived happily ever after.
• Breaking news from the Dread Fortress arena (0:58:08): “The Pokémon Charizard is considered highly overrated.”
• Did You Know? (1:00:14, the Grandmaster): crayons work as makeshift candles. “Better yet, just get a flashlight.”
• Name That Monster (1:01:01): “It’s a kraken!”
• Replayed clips from other shows, not new lore (0:55:55–1:00:10): “harbinger of elder evil,” “dice daddy,” a regrown foot, a water weird, charming a dog. Source episodes not identified.

The duct tape (1:02:06)

37. 1:02:18 Thea rolls in on rolls of duct tape (camouflage, black, blue, orange, rainbow) and pieces Zhora together. “Do the arms go to the top half or the right half?” “Which butt cheek is your right one and which one’s your left one?” “Do you want your head facing forwards or backwards, Zhora?” “Forwards, please.” Zhora: “I feel a little creaky.” Thea gives her the rest of the roll “in case you need it for later,” then: “I’m going to go get toast now. Good luck. I’m cheering for you and also you.”
38. 1:02:48 Double or nothing. The Grandmaster to Bezil: “part of the contract is that we need the fight to last a certain amount of time.” Four krakens if he takes Zhora down again. “Jackpot” flares over his head. They shake on it, hand to paw.
39. 1:04:38 Zhora returns at half health (40 HP). Ruling (the Grandmaster): her rage carries on, “an emotional state, not a physical state”; it would continue even if she were a ghost.

Round 4 (1:04:48)

40. 1:06:06 Zhora whips a handaxe from her belt: it clips the side of his wing (6). “That’s a warning shot, babe.” She brings the greataxe down with a ground-shaking battle cry. Bezil casts Shield: a fiery wreath that looks, at a glance, like a flaming ball of yarn. AC 23; miss. A chime as metal hits magic.
41. 1:08:37 “You should be dead.” “You can’t kill me that easily… You’re a cat.” Zhora: “You have an unfair advantage because you’re cute.” Bezil: “To everyone. You don’t know the squirrels in my neighborhood. They hate me.”
42. 1:09:26 Jameson. Bezil points his tail at the railing: a squirrel with a silver toothpick and a little cowboy hat. “He looks like a right bastard. Jameson hates me.” Zhora: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” She can talk to animals, but Jameson speaks the common tongue anyway. “Come on over here, jump on my little shoulder.” Jameson pulls a pair of revolvers from his holsters, spins them on his fingers and fires into the air. The Grandmaster: “You have acquired a new pact.” Jameson, “like the liquor.”
43. 1:11:28 Zhora: “I already killed you once… you could have had all the kraken jerky… I have hot cocoa at home and jammies, matching ones.” Bezil: “When are you gonna learn your lesson, lady?”
44. 1:11:50 “Pure spite.” Bezil’s shadow grows into a gigantic cat, “just as adorable as Bezil, just ten times bigger,” and pounces: Blindness/Deafness, heightened with a sorcery point. Con save 12: fails. Zhora opens her arms (“Baby!”) and gets smashed to the ground. “It’s okay, sometimes love hurts, everyone.” Bezil takes the handaxe she threw and sits on it: “I have claimed this axe as mine. I sat on it, so it’s mine.”

Round 5 (1:15:07)

45. 1:15:24 Blind and deaf, Zhora stomps a crater “almost like Toph,” tears out a four-foot hunk of earth and hurls it where Bezil last was: natural 1. “I don’t fucking know, did I get him?” Again, harder: 16, miss.
46. 1:17:31 She claws at the shadow. It feels like “when a cat chooses you… the you-are-my-person of it all.” “Oh no, I just want to live in here. Focus up! We got a bakery to find! Get off me!”
47. 1:18:52 Natural 20 on the save. She rips it off, her locks come undone, she points the axe one-handed: “You will not keep making a fool of me.” Ruling (the Arbiter): she can no longer be blinded or deafened in any way.
48. 1:19:40 Bezil casts Catapult with her own handaxe. Zhora now has a heroic surge too. Bezil lets the axe slow down as it reaches her so she can catch it, “very Xena-esque.” She snatches it from the air, then smashes it on the ground.
49. 1:21:32 The Grandmaster: “Bezil, everything is falling apart… Do you want those four krakens or not?” Bezil’s heroic surge: two spells in one turn. DC 16 with fatigue: 14, fails. The flame inside him begins to form a second, ever-larger Bezil: his draconic spirit.
50. 1:23:55 Bang, bang, bang. From the crowd, Jameson (now with a big cowboy mustache “as bushy as his tail” and a large-brimmed hat) shoots the draconic spirit apart: “That’s for what you did to my begonias, you son of a bitch.” Bezil: “Fuck your begonias, you bitch… They were never in season and they were ugly too.” “You’re ugly on the inside and don’t forget that.” “And your daddy too.” Jameson rolls a cigarette. Zhora: “Brother, I never knew I needed you.”
51. 1:25:02 Bezil flies 20 feet up to the Arbiter’s seat, eye to eye: “You must be a dog person.” The Arbiter: “I am very much not a dog person,” looking at Doug.

Round 6 (1:26:17)

52. 1:26:36 It’s an asteroid; she can low-gravity hop up. Aspect of the panther gives her a climb speed. She climbs the stands with only the handaxe (the greataxe is too big one-handed). She has seven adrenaline and Bezil seven fatigue: “like a double crit if you actually hit.” Bezil wraps himself in his wings (his metallic-dragon gift) for +4: AC 22, miss. She reckless-attacks: 17, miss. She overreaches, falls, catches herself: “Fuck you, little cat!” “Fuck your bakery!” “Fuck your krakens!” “You’ll never see the bakery as long as I live.” “The kraken will kill me before you can.”
53. 1:30:11 The Grandmaster calls Bezil out: “Is this how you’re going to handle a kraken? By flying away?” He goes nose to nose with Zhora, yawns, and casts Cone of Cold in her face. She saves; half. “Fish breath! … I’m from an island.” Frost on her eyelashes, pointy frosted eyebrows, blue lips under smeared lipstick, goosebumps. “I’m gonna fucking get you for that!”
54. 1:32:24 The scar. Bezil claws her face: three claws from the forehead down to the lip. Zhora wipes the blood across her face and laughs: “I’m even sexier now… No lady’s gonna be able to resist me. And when I tell them I fought a giant 10-foot cat and lived to tell the tale.” Ruling (the Grandmaster): a permanent +1 to Zhora’s Performance.
55. 1:34:12 The hug. Grapple: 21 against 14, success. “You smell like strawberries and sunshine, you do.” “You’re a good boy.” She squeezes: 26 hug damage. She mashes her cheek against his: “I wasn’t joking about the matching jammies.” Bezil clamps his teeth onto her cheek. “Oh, you’re giving me little kisses, are you?”
56. 1:37:46 “I’m gonna put you in the cutest little costumes. I got tiny hats for every holiday.” He could match Jameson: a silver cowboy hat for Jameson, a brown one for Sheriff Bezil. Thea appears with a platter of tiny hats. Zhora picks a rainbow sombrero for him first. Bezil: “You just wait, you demon.”

Round 7 (1:38:46)

57. 1:38:50 Bezil: “I must commit an atrocity.” He tries to liquid his way out (Dex 19); she holds him together. “This is handling. I’m handling you right now because you’re an animal.”
58. 1:40:24 A blue orb rises in his chest and turns red in his throat: Transmuted Spell, Cone of Cold cast as cone of fire. She saves even at disadvantage, fingers closing his snout so only a mote of fire crosses her cheek. She takes 22: one HP left. “Kitty, we could be friends!” “Never!”
59. 1:42:31 Taxidermy. “Don’t worry, I will preserve your beautiful fur forever.” His marble eyes will be copper “just like your granddad used to have.” The Arbiter: “Give him the yellow eyes of a coward.” Zhora: one yellow, one gold, “because he did fight valiantly today.”

Round 8 and the death (1:43:22)

60. 1:43:22 Bezil has 7 HP, Zhora 1. Her attack: 19; Bezil flexes his wings (+4, AC 22). “Are you denying my love?” “Yes!” Bezil: “Go pet Jameson, since you like him so much… Nobody wants you.” Jameson: “I don’t much like being manhandled anyway… No one could really domesticate me anyways. Ask my ex-wife.” (Speaker uncertain, probably Zhora:) “Oh, and he’s funny.” (Speaker uncertain, probably Bezil:) “He’ll be real funny in a stew.”
61. 1:44:44 “I’m sorry, okay?” The final squeeze: 26, 10 damage. In his ear: “Don’t worry, brother, we will be reunited in Valhalla.” A death rattle as the crowd goes silent. “I love you. I hope you know I fought you because I respected you.” Bezil pees as he dies. Zhora: “That’s called scent marking, and that means you like me. I am yours in death, sir, I am.”
62. 1:47:02 “To Bezil!” The Grandmaster: keep the body; “it’s your trophy.” Thea had been rolling out two giant tanks of krakens expecting Bezil to win, and has to pull them away. Zhora is “an unexpected comeback winner”; she gets a contract for 12 new bakeries.
63. 1:48:26 Victory speech. Zhora drapes the corpse over her shoulders like a stole. “I would like to thank my family whom I’m estranged from. Dad, you are sweet human bacon. No one ever expected you to be able to pull a lady like mom, but you did.” Thanks to “the gods above and the ones below,” to “3M for this fantastic duct tape,” and to Bezil: “Thank you for the donation of your organs and body. They will be cherished.” The Grandmaster raises a mug: “For Bezil!” “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

Host: the Grandmaster/Caustic Phoenix, with Mudcat. Mostly out of character.

In-character (canon, Dried Blood)

• Zhora’s bakery: its best item is the cat croquembouche, cream puffs shaped like little cats glazed in golden syrup and filled with catnip-scented sweet cream. Bezil is the bakery’s mascot. “She makes Bezil her entire personality.”
• The cocoa invitation (Commodore Scrib asked): at the end it was extended to all the Acolytes; at first it was only for Bezil, “because she wanted him to feel like a special boy.”
• Bezil peed “out of spite.” Zhora: “Now I have to scrub cat urine out of all my surfaces… a special mix of cleaning products that they do not make in this realm.”
• Bezil wanted to turn Jameson into a stew with kraken. Zhora: “Don’t talk about my friend that way.”
• Bezil’s lineage: copper dragon, “at least 12” generations back. The Grandmaster suggests he could turn out to be a different dragon entirely; Mudcat: “Whole time part manticore.” Bezil: “So that’s where I get my temper from.”
• Parting words. Bezil: “the most important one is meow.” Zhora: “Make sure you stay hydrated. Make sure you love on your pets. And come on down to Bezil’s Bakery where you can get buy two, get one free on all milk bread.”

Out-of-character (creator notes)

• Both champions opened with natural 1s. The meow-as-Silvery-Barbs was improvised; chat called it the best Silvery Barbs they’d seen. Mudcat: few people ever build with Silvery Barbs or Shield, and the show doesn’t encourage building for the fight.
• Candace the Magnificent chose the Path of the Wild Heart before seeing Bezil’s art: “son of a bitch.”
• Mudcat on Jameson: he now has “a cowboy squirrel, a New Yorker chinchilla who smokes, a union boss,” a collection of rodents he’s good at playing.
• Chat kept giving Bezil fatigue not out of hate but because they wanted the cocoa; a tug-of-war over his fatigue ran in chat.
• Bezil’s favorite moment: begging the crowd for water. The Grandmaster jokes about a sponsor-a-cat commercial (“For two coins a day, you can save this cat”) using a slow zoom on his art.
• The Grandmaster wants Zhora and Bezil back as a tag team. Bezil was originally built as a support (Haste, Slow).
• Mudcat compared Zhora wearing Bezil’s body to Ace Ventura strutting with a stole.