Battle for the Crown was the three-week tournament that closed Season 2, when The Arbiter tried to take the Void’s throne from the Grandmaster in the arena. Each round set two of her champions against two of his, and every death was declared permanent. Two points were up for grabs each week: one for the team left standing, and one for the team The Acolytes voted the best show. It was the bloodiest, silliest and most personal Deathmatch run the show had yet staged, full of cows, killer ducks, lubricated bugbears and one very confused magical box. It ended with the Grandmaster still crowned and her former right hand walking the arena on a leash.
Background
By the time the tournament began, the Arbiter had stopped pretending to serve. “I don’t work for you anymore,” he told the Grandmaster, again and again, and he accused her of rigging the Deathmatches for her favourites: “your deathmatches have never been fair. That’s something I will change.” His team was the proof of what he had been doing out of sight. He had quietly brought fallen champions back from death and gathered them into an army of his own. Among them were Ralzamon, his general; Glub Glub, who announced, “Me am is Glub Glub, and me has returned!”; Baron Voltágè, who “gave me his soul and I put it in a nice new robot body”; Silky Slim, “the late, the great”; and Mcswiggins, who arrived convinced he had finally landed in hell.
The Grandmaster’s side had grudges of its own. Toddleheim, Locket and Flynry had already spent time pursuing the Arbiter. Locket called him “a phony” and “a fake,” and the Arbiter answered by needling her about her friend Lyrus.
The Story
Round 1: The Frozen Fortress
S2E18 · Battle for the Crown Round 1 · Team Grandmaster (Toddleheim & Veronica) v Team Arbiter (Ralzamon & … opened with The Dread Fortress in a panic. Looters stole paintings and silverware, betting the Grandmaster was finished, while the Arbiter strolled the halls planning a remodel: a portrait of himself, his statue in the throne room, maybe Spanish tile. He told the Grandmaster to “fuck off,” and he had already sent fancy cologne-scented invitations to the champions. The Grandmaster fielded Toddleheim, “the Tattletailor,” and Veronica the Bee Farmer. The Arbiter fielded Ralzamon and his “assistant for the day,” Glub Glub. Before the fight the Grandmaster told her own champions: “This is not our usual deathmatch… this one is for war. So death and all its actions will be permanent.”
The arena was a deserted fortress frozen in ice, and chaos struck almost at once. A swirl of snow forced every champion into animal form. Ralzamon and Glub Glub became adorable cows, Toddleheim a cockatrice, and Veronica a giant badger. Ralzamon tiptoed along an icy ledge like a “beautiful little ballerina,” politely gored the badger form right off Veronica, then fell twenty-five feet into a tower, mooing in slow motion. Glub Glub swan-dived off the fortress for a perfect landing and was promptly promoted to acting general (“Me will act generally”). Back in their own shapes, Ralzamon froze Veronica in place so Glub Glub could pound her. Toddleheim turned into a werewolf and was then outplayed by Glub Glub, who threw a stick and watched him chase it.
The turning point came from Gerald, who slammed down into the arena at the sound of Veronica’s breaking bones. He knew at once that he was meeting his forgotten love, even if she did not. “Veronica! You never called!” he cried, and she had no idea who he was, though she touched his hand just the way she had the first time they met. In exchange for her ring he gave her a Horn of Valhalla, and she noticed a strange “G and V” carved on his side. The Arbiter grew bored and buried everyone in an avalanche, which swept the fight into a snowy forest. There Veronica blew the horn, and five berserkers named Bug Bug, Slug Slug, Grug Grug, Shazzle and Mazzle leapt from the mountain. Toddleheim’s wolf-frenzy bit into Ralzamon before Ralzamon blasted him into the snow, and Veronica clung to a tree, holding Glub Glub helpless while the berserkers hacked away.
Ralzamon died first, aflame, whispering to the dying dwarf beside him: “Not more than pawns in their game. And not more shall we ever be.” Glub Glub shed a single tear, broke free, told the berserkers they had “all fought well today,” and fell to Veronica’s Ray of Frost. His little skeleton Boney ran onto his chest, sobbing. Then the Arbiter flew down, called him “a fucking disappointment,” and curb-stomped him. Toddleheim woke, battered but alive, and the Grandmaster took the first point. Neither of the Arbiter’s champions would ever come back.
Round 2: The Land of the Corrupted
In S2 Ep19, Battle for the Crown Round 2 - Team Grandmaster (Cosmonius & Locket) v Team Arbiter (Silky Slim & …, the Grandmaster found the Arbiter smoking on her throne, which bore a card reading “Belongs to the Grandmaster.” He blamed his first-week loss on “a little performance anxiety” and on Gerald letting her champions “cheat.” Goblins wheeled in a red curtain to reveal her team. The first was Cosmonius, a topless centaur monk from The Feywild with Fabio hair, “the monk who can heal himself by punching himself in the face.” The second was Locket, there “to stop the Arbiter.” Against them stood the robot-bodied Baron Voltágè, who had joined because “the Arbiter just offered dental,” and Silky Slim, a bugbear in a beret and briefs who carried a squirt bottle of hibiscus oil and offered “hips and nips.”
The fight took place in The land of the corrupted, a dead rock garden where nothing grew. It quickly became a zoo, with a robot walrus, a goat, a bat and a badger. Next came a gang of heckling Acolyte children (“Is that a mustache or a caterpillar that needs a resting spot?”), and the Baron reduced two of them to unconsciousness with a single insult. Slim stabbed himself in the right butt cheek, had a hose harpooned into his buttocks by the Baron and was pumped up into a “big boy,” and was renamed “Slippery Slim” by Cosmonius, an idea he happily accepted. Then Locket asked whether lube was flammable. The Grandmaster checked, and the answer was yes. Locket lit her arrows, and Slim’s lube went up like lighter fluid. “Curse you, Cat Lady. I will get you.”
The Arbiter tore open the ground, revealing a collapsed cavern with an altar and a lake too still to trust. Cosmonius galloped the Baron into a hole, came back, shoved him in again, and finally jumped down after him hooves-first: “You know what hurts more than falling 50 feet? Having a centaur fall 50 feet on top of you.” The Kraken rose from the lake. Topside, Slim ate grave dirt to survive and tried a seductive dance on Locket, who said she was taken, a nod to Baptiste. Her arrows killed him anyway. “Are you happy, Arbiter? I have to do this to this poor creature,” she shouted, and the Arbiter, unmoved by her, winced at Slim’s death: “God damn it, you slippery bastard.” Slim’s lavender ghost went straight to haunting everyone.
Cosmonius fought the Kraken with all six limbs until it flung him into Locket. The dying Baron crawled out of his armor as a tiny cyborg baby. “Look what they make us give,” he said of the fight over the throne, and delivered his last words to the centaur: “Why the long face?” “Enough,” said Cosmonius. “Enough bloodshed.” The Grandmaster won both the fight and the Acolyte vote.
Round 3: The Jungle Temple
S2E20 — Battle for the Crown Round 3 — Flynry & Prof. Stabbz v Thornabub & Mcswiggins began with movers hauling a water bed and a hideous tie-dye velour couch into the throne room. (“You don’t throw out velour.”) The Grandmaster sent in Flynry and Prof. Stabbz, a reluctant tiny professor still bitter about “being dumped in lava” last time. The Arbiter sent Thornabub, a new drinking buddy with a martini, and Mcswiggins, who greeted his teammate as “Satan.”
The ancient jungle temple delivered three chaos events in a row. The first was a duck family, which the Grandmaster swore to avenge if harmed. The second turned every weapon into its owner’s favourite pillow. The third was a flock of very perceptive crows. Both of the Grandmaster’s champions turned invisible. Stabbz grabbed the mama duck and dropped her behind his enemies, where she exploded into a fireball. The Arbiter punished him for the duck’s death with a folding chair. Stabbz then struck Thornabub with a perfect, devastating blow, and Thornabub fell.
Mcswiggins, losing badly, asked for “some sort of talking treasure chest.” Gerald arrived (“It’s Gerald”) and traded a weapon of fate for Thornabub’s body. The Arbiter, furious at the scoreline, made the arena erupt in rivers of lava. Then the twist came. Thornabub had warded himself and Mcswiggins against death before the fight. Alive inside the box, he bullied Gerald into handing over a ninth-level spell scroll, and both of the Arbiter’s champions popped back out. Flynry fed the box one of his poems (“Fuck is this, a Nicholas Sparks book?”) and got smarter for it. He then got his tongue stuck to Mcswiggins, who had sealed himself in a tomb of frozen beer.
Thornabub unrolled the scroll and called down a Meteor Swarm on everyone, his own teammate included. Flynry flicked a golden coin up to the Grandmaster, who caught it perfectly. As the meteors fell he saw Toddleheim and Locket in his mind, and Orin, the giant bear, reached down from the heavens to tell him his journey was done. “Home,” Flynry said. “I think I like that.” Mcswiggins took one last sip and lay down to watch the sky. Stabbz, still mind-linked to his partner, asked, “Flynry… you mind if I come with you?” Thornabub was the last one standing. “Thornabub, you son of a bitch!” the Arbiter cheered.
Aftermath
The fight went to the Arbiter, but the Acolytes’ votes did not. They had sided with the Arbiter in Round 1 and with the Grandmaster in Rounds 2 and 3, so the tournament ended 4–2 for the Grandmaster. Flynry and Stabbz reappeared as smiling ghosts beside her chair. The Grandmaster thanked the Arbiter for the challenge: “I’ve missed this. This had some real consequences.” She admitted “it had taken you a lot longer to rebel than I thought.” The Arbiter honoured the wager (“but I’m keeping the fucking waterbed”). She let him keep the couch as well, and announced he would stay on, though “not in the same capacity,” moved down to the dungeon. Then Doug the Pug trotted out in a tuxedo with a collar and leash in his mouth. It sealed itself magically around the Arbiter’s neck, and Doug paraded him around the arena.
The two hosts had been sparring since the first week’s after-show, when the Arbiter insisted he had only lost “because Gerald decided to help Veronica” and the Grandmaster told the Acolytes to “keep faith.” The question of the Arbiter’s new place was left for Season 3. At the table, it was promised that this was “probably not the last of Flynry.”
Episodes
- S2E18 · Battle for the Crown Round 1 · Team Grandmaster (Toddleheim & Veronica) v Team Arbiter (Ralzamon & …
- S2 Ep19, Battle for the Crown Round 2 - Team Grandmaster (Cosmonius & Locket) v Team Arbiter (Silky Slim & …
- S2E20 — Battle for the Crown Round 3 — Flynry & Prof. Stabbz v Thornabub & Mcswiggins