First appearance: S5E8 — Graveyard Grudge — Granny Edith v Teddy Oso · watch it on YouTube
The Midnight Mausoleum is a vast graveyard under a huge full moon. Fog creeps across the ground, tombstones stretch toward the horizon, and skeletal hands have been known to reach up out of the soil. It is Thea’s self-declared “favorite spooky place,” and it has become a recurring stage for some of the Void’s more macabre business. Champions have bled there, a rescue party has crept through its crypts, and on more than one occasion the whole place has been flooded with lava.
Description
The Mausoleum is a sea of graves under a huge full moon that casts deep, dark hues over everything. On one visit it looked almost cozy: an isolated patch of grass hemmed in by tombstones, with a gigantic mausoleum on the far side and an ominous angel statue keeping watch over it. On another it seemed endless, a graveyard spanning the horizon with dewy mist rolling across the ground. The grass is notably well fertilized. A stone fence runs around the perimeter, and the graves are a mix of champions’ resting places and unmarked plots. Many of them are shallow, since the graveyard sits below the water table.
The air that drifts out of its portals is cold and autumn-like, and fog rolls around visitors’ feet with crypts looming in the distance. The place has a strange quality of sound, too: it “doesn’t echo there,” which forced Thea to provide her own echo effect, “only on the big shouting parts.” With a single clap from Thea, skeletal hands began poking out of the earth and clawing their way up.
“It came pre-decorated, so… it saved me money on the budget.” — Thea, on the skeletal hands
The Mausoleum also holds a private family plot belonging to the Skelman family. It features an angel statue with a plaque, a grave covered over with astroturf, and a stairwell leading down. Below lie a trapped corridor with three doors and a grandfather’s chamber with only one. According to reports, a good many imps come by.
History
Graveyard Grudge
The Midnight Mausoleum first appeared in S5E8 — Graveyard Grudge — Granny Edith v Teddy Oso, when Thea picked it as the arena for Granny Edith’s fight with Teddy Oso. Before she could open the way herself, the Lord of Fate snapped his fingers and merged the portals himself, leaving her to protest, “I was the portal girl though.” Undaunted, she marched through and bellowed, “Get your asses in here!”
The champions arrived on the grassy patch among the tombstones, beneath the mausoleum and its watchful angel. Thea clapped the dead awake to set the mood. As the fight dragged on, the graveyard was flooded with lava, which later cooled over the graves. Granny Edith walked away the winner, handing Teddy Oso a loss to an old lady that he would not soon live down.
Tip to Tip
In S6 Ep4 — Tip to Tip - Part 1 (TTRPG One Shot), the Mausoleum became the site of a rescue mission in The Shadowlands. The Arbiter cut the champions off with a blunt brief: “you don’t have to wear each other’s hats or whatever it is you’re trying to fucking do right now… you do gotta save Thea. She’s somewhere in the Midnight Mausoleum.”
A portal let cold autumn air into the room, and the party stepped through into fog, moonlight and distant crypts. The place tested their nerve, though Skelman was not sure why it should bother him: “Is it because they’re creepy and undead? Because I am creepy and undead.” Knottley assured him he was more than that, only for the answer to come back: “Well, not really.” Their search, with zombies to contend with, took in the Skelman family plot, with its stairwell, its three-door trapped corridor and the grandfather’s one-door chamber below.
The Cheese
The Mausoleum returned as an arena in S7E4 — The Cheese — Sila v Ol’ Pumpernicklejack, where Sila faced Ol’ Pumpernicklejack. After another clap and portal, mist and fog rolled across the floor and the champions stepped into a graveyard that seemed to go on forever. It was ringed by its stone fence and dotted with champions’ graves, among them the grave of the minotaur Tormiir. The graveyard was turned to lava once again, leaving it “covered in lava and corpses.”
Notable Figures
- Thea: calls it her favorite spooky place, and was later the one in need of rescue somewhere inside it.
- Granny Edith and Teddy Oso: the first champions to fight there.
- The Arbiter: sent a rescue party into the Mausoleum to find Thea.
- Sila and Ol’ Pumpernicklejack: fought across its graves, which ended up drowned in lava.