Season 2 of D20 Deathmatch is the season where the Arbiter comes home to The Dread Fortress and the weekly bloodshed settles into a rhythm: a strange domestic scene with the Grandmaster, two champions pulled from somewhere in time and space, an arena, and a lot of chaos. Most of its fights stand alone, and they range from tender to filthy. A lovers’ quarrel ends in a shared vacation home, a cookie wager ends in friendship necklaces made of bones, and one champion goes down with an ant crawling into his butthole. Underneath the jokes the season is building something darker. More and more of the fallen are carried off by the Arbiter “with the utmost respect,” and not all of them stay dead. The Box of Chaos also stops being a simple loot chest this season and becomes Gerald: a voice, a personality and a lost love.
Background
The season opens with the Arbiter returning to the Fortress after time away. The Grandmaster greets him as “somebody here with half a brain” and admits things were “a bit of a chaotic mess” without her right-hand man. He tells her, “I really miss this place.” There are signs of trouble from the start. A few weeks in, he confesses that “the traitors escaped the other day,” the ones who had been planning to overthrow the Dread Fortress. The Grandmaster is furious: “You have one task.”
The Story
Prize Fight
The season began in the throne room, where the Grandmaster was trying to order macaroni with bacon grease (there was none) and Doug the Pug declared it “a bones day.” In S2E2 — Prize Fight — Asena v Ralzamon, fought in the Dread Fortress kitchen, the dragon-blooded pugilist Asena faced her old nemesis Ralzamon, who called himself the master of the unknown. Asena drank a red vial, chopped a jar of milk onto the floor at her lactose-intolerant foe, and was abducted by aliens, who sent her back with snakes for arms. A Flurry of Blows dropped Ralzamon, and as he lay dying he prophesied that she would bring doom to her world. The Grandmaster honoured him as “the veins that keep this alive.” The Arbiter then threw his body down the kitchen well, jumped in after him, and revived him on the way down: “I think I could use a general for the days to come.”
A Lovers’ Quarrel
Sick of formulaic Hallmark romance, the Grandmaster got the real thing in S2E3 — A Lovers’ Quarrel — Lethe v Sorry. The seven-foot goliath Lethe of the Witchlight Carnival fought their ex Sorry, a crybaby satyr barbarian from Strixhaven, in the Grandmaster’s private winter town. The fight had glitter-bomb pixies, goblins snatching hand axes and swinging scimitars (“Kenny’s got to pay his rent”) and metal-chair attacks from both hosts. Then Sorry ugly-cried mid-swing and Lethe finally confessed they had wanted to ask her to join the carnival. The Grandmaster declared “today, love will win.” Both were named champions, and the Grandmaster let them use her retreat for as long as they liked.
Antsy
In S2E4 — Antsy — Glub Glub v Geril-Lee, the Grandmaster threw a dagger into the portrait of an ancestor (“He’s an ugly motherfucker”) and sent the hobgoblin scientist Glub Glub against the timid, blood-drinking Geril-Lee in The Grandmaster’s great-grandfather’s old hunting grounds. The fight became a war on Glub Glub’s balls and butthole, waged with an Unseen Servant tickling his balls, a weasel running figure-eights around his balls and butthole, and finally a single ant crawling into his butthole. He fought back with a flag-cannon, a walrus wild shape that mooned her, a blessed butthole, a ripped-off loincloth and a world-shaking fart, and his new skeletal friend Bony. Two critical strikes from Geril-Lee ended it. With his last breath, Glub Glub entrusted Bony to her, and she politely pulled the ant out so he wouldn’t die with it in his butthole.
The Gauntlet
For her birthday (“I am, after all, 284,” a lie), the Grandmaster got a crystal that warps time and space from the Arbiter. She also got a speed race through her oldest training grounds, The Jungle Gauntlet. In S2E5 — The Gauntlet — Dan Kowalski v Gordy Gotta Get Em, two bowling buddies, the satyr Dan Kowalski and the goblin rogue Gordy Gotta Get Em, ran parallel lanes past squirrels, alligators, manticores, a scuba-diving troll and vengeful vegetables. Gordy sacrificed a ceremonial circumcision dagger, its handle wrapped in the foreskin of his forefathers, to the Box, and Dan sacrificed part of his horn for a Sphere of Annihilation. A lovestruck Babau was waiting at the end. Gordy killed it, then fell to Dan’s sleep spell and a Thunder Step. Dan became the first champion to survive the gauntlet since the Grandmaster herself.
Hand to Hand Combat
The Grandmaster was angry about the escaped traitors and bored by a ball game with no rams or tigers in it. She demanded something grand. In S2E7 - Hand to Hand Combat, Bargo v Carn, the grammar-free fighting-school graduate Bargo faced the glittering gem dragonborn Carnelian in a collapsed crystal-mining civilization. Bargo greased a chain of minitaurs into the chasm, rode a polymorphed bear and survived two psionic “bitch”es. The Acolytes rejected Carn’s plea for mercy, and Bargo slit his throat and sawed off his head. Out of sight, the Arbiter sewed it back on: “Pull yourself together. I might have use for you.”
Father’s Love
After squabbles over half-price Valentine’s candy and whether Doug can eat chocolate (“what is it gonna do kill him again”), S2E8 — Father’s Love — Dadrith v Baron Voltágè took the fight to the back of the eternal turtle in The endless sea. Dadrith, “dad of dads,” fought with dad jokes, a spectral rolled-up newspaper and a summoned celestial “son” in a Hawaiian shirt. Baron Voltágè answered with mirror images and an Iron Man flight suit. He also became the first champion to sacrifice his own soul to the Box, which gave him a Ring of Three Wishes. The Arbiter sank the turtle with crushing gravity, and Dadrith boiled the Baron in his armour underwater. In secret, the Baron spent his last wish on a clone that crawled out of a beached shark 120 days later. In Dried Blood, the Arbiter carried the Box and the Baron’s blackened soul back to his laboratory to build a metal body “for his army.”
Bees
The Grandmaster had taken up Zumba. Her goblins Thomas and Leed wheeled out her squeaky throne for S2E9 — Bees — Rosa v Veronica, set in The bazaar, a sun-blasted desert market she had “acquired.” The halfling Rosa brought bees and a bee costume with a poisoned butt dagger. The half-elf bladesinger Veronica was lassoed and shoved into the Box of Chaos, where she fed it a handful of nuts, seduced it and left with a ring; later the Box’s fire wrapped her arm in a tattoo reading “Gerald.” Rosa drew the Talons from the Deck of Many Things and lost every magic item she had. Then Veronica whipped the Arbiter off his ledge, and he caught her blade bare-handed: “I invented Gerald.” The Grandmaster hired them both as bee farmers. The Arbiter erased the tattoo and Veronica’s memories of Gerald, leaving her just enough to know something had been taken. Veronica called it “my villain origin story.”
Filicide
The Grandmaster overslept because of daylight saving time. The Acolytes then presented Gerald with a brand-new box. In S2E10 — Filicide — Glassy v Thornabub, Thornabub came from the Nine Hells to drag his runaway daughter Glassy home and marry her off. Glassy fought him with lightning learned from her boyfriend and the eldritch magic her heritage gave her. A giant sky magnet tore the arena open, and Thornabub rode it down at her; she rolled clear, but his punch with Touch of Death dropped her. As she lay dying, she signed an infernal contract without reading it, trading her boyfriend Jerry’s soul for her life. Thornabub won and went on a pub crawl with the Arbiter. In Dried Blood, the Arbiter confided that he had “been trying to overthrow the Grandmaster for years.” The Grandmaster told Glassy, “This is not your last chapter.”
Secrets
Fuelled by Major Melon soda, the Grandmaster watched S2E11 — Secrets — Blaktoof v Zorhel in an abandoned mining cavern. The bugbear blood mage Zorhel faced Blaktoof, champion of the War of a Thousand Toofs, who traded his great-grandmother’s gold teeth to Gerald, who put them in his own skull as a golden grill. The two duct-taped butt stingers to themselves, and Blaktoof bragged loudly about the one hidden on his boot. Then a Booming Blade split Blaktoof open, revealing three goblins in a trench coat: Gaz, Gork and Mork. Zorhel summoned a shadow “Shadowtoof” and, with the Arbiter’s acid flood filling the cavern, killed all three. “We lived like kings,” said Mork as he died.
Blood Cookies
In S2E12 — Blood Cookies — Wandering Willy v Martin Messiah Malenko, the Grandmaster offered cookies as the prize for a graveyard fight between the druid Wandering Willy and the gunslinging light cleric Martin Messiah Malenko, whose guns are his polymorphed family. They tried to steal Doug, raised zombies by accident and traded a Harm spell for a heal. Then they refused to finish each other off and became the Bone Brothers. The Arbiter wanted blood and had Gerald fire Martin’s lucky bullet at their backs. The Grandmaster rebuked him openly: “Don’t you dare go behind my back again.” He fled to his own arena, where, beneath a statue of himself, past losers including Carn and Baron Voltágè rose from the shadows. “Our time has come. Won’t be much longer now.”
The Brave
In S2E13 — The Brave — Buli v Chancy, the Grandmaster baked cookies only for the Acolytes and set the tiny owlbear Buli the Brave against Chancy, a fairy bard who claimed to have slain 10,000 dragons. They fought in a seaside ruin haunted by Christina the ghost, a bride still searching for her missing Frederick. Buli held Chancy’s lute hostage and dropped it down the well, and was polymorphed into a butterfly. He even recruited Doug, and he rose twice through sheer rage. It became the longest fight the show had seen. A Cloud of Daggers finally dropped him, and the Arbiter tossed his body down the well. According to Dried Blood, he is still falling, back up on one hit point: “I’ll be back.”
Shrooms
The Arbiter clacked in wearing Italian leather shoes taken from a man he had killed. In S2E14 — Shrooms — Ulfgar Greyblade (Mcswiggins) v Snoop & Dog, the hosts opened a lost plane with a squishy membrane floor that looked like a testicle and an atmosphere of fallen Acolyte farts. The mushroom-addled Snoop and his silver drake Dog faced the drunk dwarf barbarian Ulfgar Greyblade, better known as Mcswiggins the Everthirsty, who was caught mid-piss against the wall when the first chair shot landed. Snoop fed Gerald both kinds of mushrooms. Mcswiggins slam-dunked one of Snoop’s lions into the Box. Together they fought off an Aeorian Reverser, Mcswiggins pissed into the hole it had climbed out of, and Snoop shoved him down that hole, which was, apparently, a toilet. The Arbiter dove after him with a plunger, and in Dried Blood caught him and took him to his lair: “I’m going to have a use for you very soon.”
Black Hole Sun
The Arbiter had spent a week fixing the Fortress sewers. He found the Grandmaster wrestling Doug in the bath and opened a portal from the splashed bathwater. In S2E15 — Black Hole Sun — Professor Stabbz v Mad Cass O Weary, the cowardly goblin Professor Stabbz of the University of Stabbz faced Mad Cass O Weary, a furious, glass-eating tiefling monk who had wiped his ass with the Arbiter’s contract. Cass walked on lava, dragged the Box of Chaos across the arena and told it, “Shut the fuck up! If I want to listen to an asshole, I’ll fart!” A furious Gerald handed Stabbz an eighth-level Sunburst for free. Cass faked a friendship, then betrayed it, and fought on while knocked out cold. When the Arbiter tore open a black hole, the Sunburst blasted Cass into it, middle finger last. Dried Blood ruled that Stabbz will hear his laughter from another dimension as he dozes off.
Pub Brawl
The Grandmaster forgot she already owned a fully working brewery, built under the kitchen “last fall.” In S2E16, Pub Brawl - Broose Scorchtail v Dewdrop Grizzlebee, the laid-back harengon Broose Scorchtail fought the balding, book-taught fairy Dewdrop Grizzlebee among her tanks. Gerald handed out free school supplies and an alchemy jug of honey from the bee farm. Dewdrop traded away his notebook. The round cards ran out, so the Arbiter turned back time, then axed every vat and flooded the arena with beer. Dewdrop dragged Broose under, died on Broose’s braced blade and drowned. In Dried Blood, the Grandmaster let the champions in on a secret: “No one actually ever dies at the death match.”
Running Threads
The Arbiter’s army. This is the season’s quiet main plot. Ralzamon is revived as a “general,” Carn is sewn back together, Baron Voltágè’s soul goes into a golem, and Mcswiggins is plucked out of the abyss. Meanwhile the Arbiter grows openly resentful of the Grandmaster’s mercy. “You always let them live. Every time.” He confesses his overthrow ambitions over drinks with Thornabub, and by Blood Cookies the fallen are rising in his private arena. The Grandmaster still treats him as her mediocre partner, but she knows he “doesn’t always agree with my policies.”
Gerald and the Box of Chaos. The Box goes from “a box with lots of chaos in it” to a character. Gerald peeks out with shadowy claws and flaming eyes. He coughs, gets the Acolytes’ gift of a new box, adopts a zombie raccoon named Francisco and sports a golden grill. The Arbiter claims him as his creation (“This is why I created you”; “I invented Gerald”). After seducing the Box, Veronica wore Gerald’s name until the Arbiter erased it and her memories with it. When Mad Cass found a carved “G plus V” heart on the lid, he decided it stood for gin and vodka.
The Grandmaster’s hobbies. Each episode opens on a new one: Hallmark movies, Zumba, birthday drinks from a pineapple cup, discount candy, a war on daylight saving time, a secret TV room, cookies, dog baths and the brewery she keeps forgetting. Under the comedy, her speeches keep returning to remembrance. Champions’ blood “seeps into the stones,” and she told the Acolytes, “we will say his name.”
Doug versus the Arbiter. Doug, the undead pug, rolls whenever the Arbiter’s chaos roll fails. He usually does better, using a squeaky plush d20 from his own pedestal. “Suck it, Doug” becomes the Arbiter’s catchphrase, along with threats to skin him. In return Doug farts at him, bites a champion and once ran off in anger and embarrassment.
Recurring chaos. Dodgeball barrages from the stands, metal-chair attacks from both hosts, polymorphing steeds and the floor turning to lava all return across the season. So do hero points, and the Grandmaster’s rule that nothing angers her more than one going unused.
The bee farm and the goblins. Rosa and Veronica’s bee farm becomes part of the Fortress economy, and its honey turns up in the Box by the finale. The goblins scurry through every scene, taking orders, holding antennas, staffing HR and, in one case, posing as a legendary warrior.
Aftermath
The season closes with the Fortress apparently in order and the Grandmaster raising a glass to Broose. Every thread of the Arbiter’s scheme is still loose. Ralzamon, Carn, Baron Voltágè and Mcswiggins are in his keeping, and the Grandmaster has warned him once, in public, never to go behind her back again. Some survivors remain at large. A clone of Baron Voltágè walked out of a shark, Veronica has vowed revenge from the bee farm, and Buli is still falling down the well.
“Our time has come. Won’t be much longer now.” (the Arbiter, before his army of fallen champions)
Episodes
- S2E2 — Prize Fight — Asena v Ralzamon
- S2E3 — A Lovers’ Quarrel — Lethe v Sorry
- S2E4 — Antsy — Glub Glub v Geril-Lee
- S2E5 — The Gauntlet — Dan Kowalski v Gordy Gotta Get Em
- 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