The Box of Chaos

The Box of Chaos is the Void’s most dangerous vending machine. It plunges into the arena like a comet, bursts open in a column of fire that gives off no heat, and a shadowy figure with long black fingers leans over the lid to haggle. Give it something and it gives you something back, though what that is, and whether you’ll like it, is anybody’s guess. Behind the wisecracks it carries one of the darkest secrets in the Void: its first resident, Gerald, was a soul sealed inside, and his name is an anagram.

Overview

The box arrives with a crash, usually falling from the sky in a burst of chaotic lightning or streaking down like a pink and yellow meteor. When the lid flips open, it throws up a pillar of magical fire in pinks, yellows and purples (sometimes green or red) that is cool to the touch, and once beamed hundreds of feet into the air. A small shadowy figure with clawed or tendrilly fingers and glowing yellow eyes peers out. It is sometimes summoned by The Acolytes, sometimes dropped in at the snap of the Shadow King’s fingers or at the Arbiter’s suggestion, and between Deathmatches it is kept at The Eastern Outpost.

The deal is always the same: a sacrifice for a magic item of unknown power. It takes almost anything. Offerings over the years have included hair, an opponent’s arm, a bottle of vodka, a championship belt, a chinchilla, a grandmother (who turned out to be a bottle of Bailey’s), 396 channel points, a homunculus named Blinky, PayPal, cryptocurrency and a credit card. In return it has handed out everything from a Holy Avenger and a Cube of Annihilation to a free ruler and pencil “for the school year.” Usually it allows one trade per champion, and a second one takes a toll.

The box needs a soul to run. It was built around one, and when that soul left, it was kept going on borrowed ones. Its occupant has changed over time, but its personality has stayed remarkably consistent: greedy, rude, squeamish about blood, a compulsive collector of teeth, hands and junk, and secretly a softie when someone is nice to it. The Grandmaster has been careful to tell it apart from a different container entirely: “the no-no box. We do not touch the no-no box.”

History

Origins

The box was made by Vythorn, The Arbiter, after the defeat of the Shadow King in Skypiercer. He ripped out the soul of Agdrel, The Shadow King, and sealed it inside, rearranging AGDREL into GERALD. Vythorn kept the box to use its power, but its influence slowly corrupted him and led to his betrayal of the Grandmaster. Meanwhile the piece of the Shadow King he had kept was working on him, and in time the King rebuilt himself.

Season 1 and Fate of the Arbiter

The box first turned up in the Season 1 finale, where Lucien and his opponent faced an arena loot chest ringed in magical fire that opened for blood. Nobody yet called it the Box of Chaos, but that is what it was.

In Fate of the Arbiter Part 1 it was shown kept at the Eastern Outpost, burning green, pink and purple and demanding a sacrifice. By Sands of the Arena the Acolytes were summoning it themselves, and it wanted meaningful offerings: a Pearl of Healing, a bracelet, a healing potion, blood. For the first time, it let the giver choose between items.

Season 2: Gerald Gets a Personality

The box’s early Season 2 outings were all business. In Prize Fight nobody claimed it at all. In A Lovers’ Quarrel it vanished at a single look from the Grandmaster. In Antsy, where it kept burning pink and yellow even underwater, it took Geril-Lee’s hair. In Hand to Hand Combat it swapped Carn’s horn for a suit of enchanted chain mail. Then, in Father’s Love, its fire burned Baron Voltágè’s soul right out of him. The box was buried after use, and in Dried Blood the Arbiter went and retrieved it.

Everything changed in Bees. Veronica offered the fiery being in the flames her nuts, then seduced him. He gave her a ring (“call me”), became a tattoo on her arm (“I’ll be with you always now”), became her steed and her lover, carrying her into battle, ran hand in hand with her, and dove to take fire meant for her. The Arbiter took credit: “I invented Gerald.” The romance did not last. Gerald was erased from Veronica’s mind and from her arm, and the box exploded into red and purple flames and rolled away in a sandstorm.

By Filicide Gerald had moved into a new box commissioned by the Acolytes, a small shadowy silhouette among cool purple, pink and yellow flames. He talked now. He enjoyed blood but wanted variety, insisted “I have a soul,” and kept undead raccoons or squirrels as pets, one named Francisco. He handed out the Sun Sword, the Helm of the Gods and a breastplate, got angry when Thornabub returned the sword, and openly favored Glassy. In Dried Blood it came out that he was paid in table scraps and drops of blood, and that his girlfriend, who had fought in a Deathmatch “a little while back,” now worked on The bee farm with her memory of him modified.

From there Gerald became a fixture. In Secrets he made himself a golden grill out of Blaktoof’s ancestral teeth and found Zorhel’s sister story boring (“I’m not running the convenience store here”). In Blood Cookies he had a cough, fake-walked down imaginary stairs, cackled over a cursed orb, shot at the champions with Martin Messiah Malenko’s lucky bullet on the Arbiter’s orders, and handed Wandering Willy a Deck of Many Things: “That’s my whole job here.” The Arbiter called him “a paid employee.”

In The Brave he took Buli’s clothes (“These are just my size”) for a flying scroll, and believed Chancy’s story about the lyre and Van Halen enough to trade Gauntlets of Ogre Power for it. In Shrooms he ate both bags of Snoop’s mushrooms, his eyes turned into yellow spirals, and he handed out a pair of golden lions, then ate one. His defense: “It could have been anybody’s lion.” He left mid-buzz.

Black Hole Sun was not his favorite day. Mad Cass O Weary dragged him around, slammed the lid on him and told him, “If I want to listen to an asshole, I’ll fart.” Gerald, who could see the invisible Professor Stabbz, told Cass she needed therapy, then gave Stabbz a scroll of Sunburst for no sacrifice at all, purely out of spite. The box that week was a purple trunk, light and seemingly empty inside, with a heart carved into the lid: “G plus V.” In Pub Brawl he was at his rudest (“Don’t bullshit me, just give me shit”), put up with Broose Scorchtail calling him “Jerry,” and traded a flaming carrot, Dewdrop Grizzlebee’s notebook and some salt water for an alchemy jug, a potion of speed and a potion of mind control.

The Live Show and Season 3

At GCX Orlando 2022, Gerald crawled out with his fingers hanging over the side and explained that his name had been his father’s, “and it was his mother’s.” He traded a healing potion for a horn and a neck-shield for Phoebe. Then someone asked him what he wanted, and nobody ever had. He wanted to paint, start a family and have “a couple of shadowy kids, make some shady deals.”

Season 3 was Gerald in full bloom. Some of his best moments:

• In Kill em with Kindness he snapped, “Don’t tell me how to be a box of chaos.”
• In The Student and the Master he took a ceremonial dagger for armor of resistance, gave out a healing potion as “my business card” with the email “Gerald1972 at yahoo.com,” struck a Marilyn Monroe pose and planned to take a job at the assassin academy.
• In Couples Therapy he accepted a pair of trousers, said a massager would “go well with my collection,” and later tossed the couple a wooden paddle from outside the box.
• In Crypto Monkeys he took Mort (“I kinda wanted that thing”), bragged about “200,000 in my savings account,” offered to buy four of K-Boom’s coins, and deadbolted the box from inside when the pitch went disastrously wrong.
• In Edge Lords he turned into a legless shadow snake, admitted he doesn’t “get TV,” had a blunderbuss appraised as a collectible, and ended up wearing two nipple rings: Verryn Ruth’s bejeweled one and a pink glitter tassel.
• In Homunculus he canoed across the lava in his fireproof box with a shadowy paddle, singing his favorite Pocahontas song, then ate Blinky the homunculus (“Bottoms up then”) and returned him as a tome.
• In Severed Limbs he clawed Chedrick McDougan for hitting him, gave Cress a healing potion out of spite, showed off his “hand collection,” traded Chedrick’s severed hand back for Cress’s foot plus a sewing kit, and puppeted the sewn hand. “I’m a demon in a box, not a monster.”
• In Fire Heart he got swole watching Minh Lý, doing dumbbell curls after having “skipped every leg day,” waxed himself with Alyndra Morlynn’s starlight body glitter, and got sat on.
• In Blood Feud 1 he was “just hanging out in the box, dealing chaos,” starting a teeth jar, and answered Havoc’s blow with a blast of pink and purple fire.
• In Blood Puppets he handed Basil Herringbone a saw, got queasy at the blood and then got a faceful of it, and forged Dawnbringer into a leg.
• In Magic Duel he revealed his trading card collection (Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, Magic and Pokémon), took a finger and a trade binder, handed out the Vorpal Pinkie and a used ring-of-wishes card, and pulled Seth Kaiser into the box to save him from a fireball because “you seem like a good guy.” Counting last week’s leg, he was now at “three quarters of a full body.”
• In Sunday Slam he took Belet’s coupons to see Les Mis, got high on Derick’s pipe weed until his eyes went red, fired a blunderbuss by accident, and drifted off on the smoke “to Les Mis.” He was expected back with a souvenir cup, T-shirt and flag.

In the Season 3 finale he was grumpy, called Soot Mustam’s offering trash, dumped a trash can on him, ate Flamewing and picked his teeth afterward, then paid out a Cube of Annihilation and an Amulet of Health. The same finale saw the Shadow King rebuilt and back in the world.

Under the Shadow King

Season 4 opened with the truth said out loud: “You were the box of chaos.” The Shadow King later put it his own way, “I should know, I was it once,” and called the box “my former home.” With its original soul gone, the box ran on borrowed ones. In Under the Bottom it was powered by Commodore Scrib’s soul and gave out a Holy Avenger. In Swindlers it was fuelled by Vegeta’s soul, and its hoard of “toes and teeth and daggers and honey” grew to include Griff’s staff, his Go set and Cappin Fodder’s ashes.

Through Death Dealers, Toxicity, The Hunt and Wings it fell like a comet, sometimes at the snap of the Shadow King’s fingers, and took any sacrifice, PayPal included. It was “not explosive, but not in that way.” In Blood Rain it made clear it did not like having things thrown at it. Elsewhere, in Into the Mirror, Vythorn described the box he had made.

By Rivals it was being fed Acolyte souls (“it all depends on the strength of the soul”) and accepting cryptocurrency. Then Decima consumed it, leaving it dormant, and Nonamatt animated it. It was back in Racoons as a gold and pink chest said to hold a rabies vaccine, fusing and un-fusing beings. In The Dragon and the Spider it was a shallow pink and purple chest of trash and bones. Its occupant called itself “just a tormented soul in a box,” wore Ricky Red Dragon’s sacrificed beard, had halitosis and buffered like dial-up. The episode also brought the boast “I killed the guy who made the box,” meaning Vythorn.

The Season of Fate

The Season of Fate was a vision of rule that only the Arbiter lived through, with him reigning as the Lord of Fate. In Rise of the Lord of Fate the box was empty, holding only “leftover essences,” until the Lord of Fate put his own shadow inside. That shadow is the Arbiter’s own, the same one he once tore out of himself. The new resident was a shadowy, skeleton-like thing that clawed its way out. Inside the vision, the tome of Morir’s Cataclysm came out of the box more than once.

The new tenant kept the old habits. In Eldritch Fangs it swallowed some of Robbie Clark’s years, added Ruby Rust’s incisor to its necklace of teeth, and tied her shield on with twine: “Honestly, I’m not picky.” Thea noted in Frigid Fedoras that it had previously taken “toes and dentures and tax books.” In Ducks of Death Robbie called it a “weird skeleton.” It loved cake, ate memories, and considered making an eyepatch from a scrap of jorts.

Graveyard Grudge showed its soft side. It kept sacrificed heads on a shelf “next to the other ones,” but when Granny Edith offered milk and cookies, it confessed it had never been given a cookie: “I’m a piece of a soul trapped in a box.” It feasted, gave Granny a healing bread and butter pudding, and gave Teddy Oso a poisoned Granny Smith apple. The Lord of Fate confirmed the box “contains part of my soul.” (Granny’s own Gerald is her late husband, a different Gerald entirely.)

In Patriotic Punch Up it showed off its bracelet collection (WWJD, Livestrong, now Jort Daddy), didn’t recognize Richard Knottley at first (“You’re the guy with the frogs in your ass”), and wore his mustache like a merkin. In Appliance Adversaries it accepted a radical chinchilla, which now rides on its shoulder, and ate Thea’s half-eaten hot dog. In Imitation Game it admitted “I used to be a shadow,” revealed it knew the Lord of Fate’s phone passcode, and moved into a roomier, minimalist box that Kopy Katt gave it, which it cannot leave. It handed Ragu The Arbiter’s Rings and gave Kopy Katt the Grandmaster’s bow. By Bone Rust it was grumbling that the Lord of Fate was “kind of a cock,” the Acolytes “kind of idiots,” and that “I just don’t have as much shit as I used to.”

The Season of the Trials and Beyond

Back in the real timeline, the Arbiter carried on under the Grandmaster and stored Morir’s Cataclysm in the box. Its resident was still his shadow, now demanding rent and teeth. At GCX Orlando 2023, summoned at the Arbiter’s suggestion, the box arrived when Ragu pooped it out. It asked “What do you want?”, took a pair of nunchucks and gave a small blue pill.

During the Ether Drifts, a piece of Thea’s skull went in during Ether Drifts Part 1. In Part 2 the occupant wanted people to knock, was caught napping, complained that he “doesn’t get paid enough” after “working forever now,” took a credit card, and turned traded tentacles into sashimi that “tastes like puppies.” At the Wounded Warrior Project crossover it handed out a Vorpal Sword, a Trident of Fish Command, a Hat of Vermin and a potion of giant strength, one item per champion.

The Season of Vigilance

In A Soup Served Cold the box’s fire beamed hundreds of feet into the sky. Its occupant kept the championship belt, used a chinchilla to finish his chinchilla boots, asked “Where’s HR?”, and gave away the Dragon Slayer as “junk.” In Dried Blood it was established that his fingers taste like black licorice.

In Bone Force he took Jerry Bonesman’s bones (“I’m building something”) and handed over a wand of polymorph. That wand left Thea stuck as a T-Rex at the start of the next week. He also shared some family history: “Mr. Box was my father. He’s dead now.” In A Father’s Son the box’s grim origin got a blunt one-line summary: “I put a guy’s soul in that box.”

Then came Necro-Nightmare. Feeling peckish, the occupant ate a sack-worm and then Pixie the Chihuahua, complaining of “a little fur on the teeth,” and gave Ray S’urdead a fireball orb. He had a hammock to lounge on inside the box and an expired can of Spam, and that week Squiggles did what no one had ever done: he robbed the Box of Chaos. The box snatched back the Tome of the Stilled Tongue and gave him a ring of spell turning instead.

Notable Moments

• Gerald’s whirlwind romance with Veronica in Bees, which ended with him erased from her mind and her arm; a “G plus V” heart later turned up carved on the lid.
• Spitefully gifting Professor Stabbz a scroll of Sunburst for free, just to annoy Mad Cass.
• Saving Seth Kaiser from a fireball by pulling him into the box, because he seemed like “a good guy.”
• The public reveal in Season 4 that the Shadow King had once been the box.
• Being given a cookie for the first time by Granny Edith: “I’m a piece of a soul trapped in a box.”
• Squiggles becoming the first person ever to rob the box.

Appearances

• S2 Ep1, Fate of the Arbiter (Fate of the Arbiter Part 1)
• S2E6 — FoTA - Sands of the Arena (Fate of the Arbiter, Part 2)
• Into the Mirror 15–16, Old Friends - Sky
• GCX Orlando 2022 — Lord Snacc v The Showman|Live | GCX Orlando 2022 — Lord Snacc v The Showman
• LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego)
• S1E14 — Eyes of Chaos — Lucien v Monteclaire (Season 1 finale)
• S2E2 — Prize Fight — Asena v Ralzamon
• S2E3 — A Lovers’ Quarrel — Lethe v Sorry
• S2E4 — Antsy — Glub Glub v Geril-Lee
• S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn
• S2E8 — Father’s Love — Dadrith v Baron Voltágè
• S2E9 — Bees — Rosa v Veronica
• S2E10 — Filicide — Glassy v Thornabub
• S2E11 — Secrets — Blaktoof v Zorhel
• S2E12 — Blood Cookies — Wandering Willy v Martin Messiah Malenko
• S2E13 — The Brave — Buli v Chancy
• S2E14 — Shrooms — Ulfgar Greyblade (Mcswiggins) v Snoop & Dog
• S2E15 — Black Hole Sun — Professor Stabbz v Mad Cass O Weary
• S2E16, Pub Brawl - Broose Scorchtail v Dewdrop Grizzlebee
• S3E1 — Kill em with Kindness — Lumos the Spark v Ferndell Ironwind
• S3E2 — The Student and the Master — Alma v Ahyan
• S3E3 — Couples Therapy — Chade v Kairen
• S3E4, Crypto Monkeys - K-Boom v Ignacio Marchade
• S3E5, Edge Lords - Captain Fable v Verryn Ruth
• S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius
• S3E7 — Severed Limbs — Cress v Chedrick McDougan
• S3E9 — Fire Heart — Alyndra Morlynn v Minh Lý
• S3E11 — Blood Feud 1 — Havoc v Isha Inverraseth
• S3E12 — Blood Puppets — Basil Herringbone v Befferfoot
• S3E14 — Magic Duel — Talbot Cage v Seth Kaiser
• S3E15 — Sunday Slam — Belet v Derick
• S3E17, Season 3 Finale - Soot Mustam v Huey Leatherface
• S4E2 — Under the Bottom — Richardo v Evah
• S4 Ep3, Swindlers - Griff v Cappin Fodder
• S4E4 — Death Dealers — The Scourge v Bone Daddy
• S4E5 — Toxicity — Toocher the Toxic v Sho Nin
• S4E6 — The Hunt — Witch Hunter v Grickle
• S4E7 — Wings — Misery v Daisy Bloom
• S4E8 — Blood Rain — Fatale v Claudia
• S4E10 — Rivals — Nonamatt v Decima
• S4E12 — Racoons — Sam Cletus v Ben Zappa
• S4E16, The Dragon and the Spider, Ricky Red Dragon v Traxton (Spider)
• S5E1 — Rise of the Lord of Fate — Atlas v Killy Yesman
• S5E3, Eldritch Fangs - Ruby Rust v Robbie Clark and the Hunger
• S5E5 — Frigid Fedoras — Kyle Stoddard v Frigidoom
• S5E7 — Ducks of Death — Robbie Clark & the Hunger v Bob the Barbarian
• S5E8 — Graveyard Grudge — Granny Edith v Teddy Oso
• S5E9 — Patriotic Punch Up — Bob the Barbarian v Richard Knottley (Dick Twist)
• S5E11 — Appliance Adversaries — Atlas v Frigidoom
• S5E12 — Imitation Game — Kopy Katt v Ragu
• S5E13 — Bone Rust — Ruby Rust v Bone Daddy
• S6 Ep2 · Ether Drifts Part 1 · TTRPG One Shot (Team A mine mission)
• S6 Ep3 — Ether Drifts Part 2 — Team A deathmatch (Atlas v Robbie Clark and the Hunger v Copycat)
• × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover (title not in metadata)
• S7E1 — A Soup Served Cold — DeeDrah v Gazpacho Man Andy Gammage
• S7E6 — Bone Force — Jerry Bonesman v TD
• S7E7 — A Father’s Son — Agatha Middlebrooke v Lug Hardblock
• S7E9 — Necro-Nightmare — Squiggles v Ray S’urdead