Season 3

Season 3 of D20 Deathmatch is the season of the Arbiter in chains. After his attempt to overthrow the Grandmaster, the Arbiter spends every week shackled at the wrists and ankles. He does the taxes, buys the groceries and keeps losing dice rolls to a pug, while champions from across time and space bleed for the Acolytes. The fights are some of the strangest the arena has seen: a duel over stolen yogurt, a marriage-counselling session settled with thighs, a con-man wizard who feeds his diamond familiar to the Box, and a werewolf and a vampire bound by a childhood oath. Under the jokes, Gerald keeps collecting sacrifices. In the finale he gives back the worst gift of all.

Background

At the start of the season the Arbiter is a prisoner in the Dread Fortress. He traded his black spiked leathers for plain sackcloth and spectacles, and he now knocks before entering rooms: “Just part of the punishment.” The Grandmaster reminds him why in the second episode: “You tried to overthrow the Dread Fortress. That was like two months ago.” The Arbiter later puts it more plainly to a pair of champions: “I tried to overthrow the Grandmaster. I did that with resurrected champions that I had brought back to life.”

The Story

S3E1: Kill em with Kindness

The season opened in S3E1 — Kill em with Kindness — Lumos the Spark v Ferndell Ironwind. The Arbiter sat chained at a desk, buried in receipts for 203 chinchillas, one for each goblin in the fortress to prevent an uprising. He had also clearly forgotten to book a Deathmatch, though he insisted he hadn’t. Lumos the Spark, a corgi-obsessed high elf, came for Ferndell Ironwind, a dwarf wizard and her colleague in an office of bounty hunters in another dimension, because he kept stealing her yogurt. He had never even eaten it. “I opened it and I took the spoon, just threw everything in the trash can.”

The fight in the arena of nowhere began with a chinchilla stampede led by a cigarette-smoking chinchilla who cited “union rules.” Ferndell offered Gerald his only hero point, and the Grandmaster stood up and demanded two magic items in return. He then charmed Lumos’s flying corgi Maximus with the promise of cheese. Ferndell’s Phantasmal Killer finished her by summoning her worst fear, his grandmotherly mom, who threw a burnt cookie like a shuriken. Lumos left everything to Maximus, “the world’s first quadrillionaire dog,” who opened a dog shelter with Doug the Pug. Ferndell won, and the Grandmaster decreed that the arena would only use local yogurt vendors.

S3E2: The Student and the Master

S3E2 — The Student and the Master — Alma v Ahyan pitted Alma, a hyperactive earth genasi student of wild magic, against Ahyan, the weary minotaur mentor who had taught them everything. They fought at The Grandmaster’s temple, a ruin on a pillar in the sky. A giant sky magnet pinned both of them in mid-air, and the hosts swan-dived in with metal chairs. Ahyan won Gerald’s heart by becoming, Gerald suspected, the first person ever to thank him. They then handed him a business card for the Academy of Assassins and got a healing potion labelled “Gerald1972 at yahoo.com.”

The Arbiter called the counterspell duel that followed the first time anyone had used Counterspell in the arena. After that, the Arbiter’s breath turned the temple into a blizzard. Ahyan begged Alma to forfeit, and finally, covered in locusts and down to their last breath, gave Alma permission. Alma’s single magic missile curved through the swarm into Ahyan’s heart. “I’m proud of you, Alma.”

S3E3: Couples Therapy

In S3E3 — Couples Therapy — Chade v Kairen, the goblins were tearing down load-bearing walls in the kitchen renovation, and Doug summoned the champions himself. They were a married couple: Chade, a huge half-orc paladin and stay-at-home father of seven in a pink apron, and Kairen, his adventuring elf wife. Their grievances included forgotten asparagus, 3,000-gold cooking knives and their neighbor Margaret’s blueberry scones. The fight in a lava-filled ruin quickly became something else. Chade traded his trousers to Gerald for a red velvet rope and fought on in a goblin-faced thong, spanking his tied-up wife with the flat of his greatsword. A hot breeze blew up the Arbiter’s sackcloth and showed the entire crowd his tiny penis, which he promptly cast enlarge on, and the furious Arbiter conjured three stone Margarets. Kairen stabbed one to pieces with the vibrating purple tentacle sex toy Chade had bought her for their anniversary, then crushed the last one’s head between her thighs. Nobody died, so the match was a shared victory, and the Grandmaster sent the couple off to the Dread Fortress’s actual Smash Room, full of paddles, swings and chains, while the Acolytes threw condoms.

S3E4: Crypto Monkeys

S3E4, Crypto Monkeys - K-Boom v Ignacio Marchade opened with goblin cowbell band tryouts and the news that the kitchen was finally finished. K-Boom, a gnome artificer who loves explosives, cigarettes, cryptocurrency and arson, faced the brooding Ignacio Marchade at a freezing lakeside cabin. Ignacio sacrificed his winged monkey Mort to Gerald for the Wheel of Stars. K-Boom offered the Box one K-Boom coin, and Gerald became the first to name his price. Then K-Boom fumbled his pitch so badly that Gerald deadbolted the lid from the inside.

K-Boom caught himself in his own fireball, turned into a giant ape called “K-Konga, the Crypto Monkey,” and drew a truce out of Ignacio when the Arbiter loosed a water weird from the lake’s pit. The truce ended when K-Boom’s fireball killed Ignacio. With his last breath Ignacio confessed his love and renamed his killer “K-Boom Marchand.” Mid-sales-pitch, the water weird dragged both bodies into the deep, so there was no winner. The Grandmaster held a weeping Mort aloft like Simba.

S3E5: Edge Lords

The Grandmaster couldn’t choose between five new thrones in S3E5, Edge Lords - Captain Fable v Verryn Ruth, until Verryn Ruth, a bat-winged tiefling hexblade, conjured an illusory bust of Doja Cat and won her over instantly. His opponent was Captain Fable, an eight-foot minotaur pirate and fallen paladin who swore to kill every god. The gods had abandoned him as his crew was slaughtered around him. In a swamp cathedral full of presidential graves, Fable raised the skeleton of Taft as his crew and gave it a tiny pirate hat. A mushroom also shrank him into one of the arena’s minitaurs.

Gerald took a blunderbuss and a bejewelled nipple ring, and gave back a Far Realm Shard and a shield that Verryn wore as a codpiece. Fable’s thunder-struck blade dropped Verryn. When Fable offered him a place in his skeletal crew, Verryn replied that he would give him the finger instead, and Fable took his head. The Grandmaster rewarded the victor with a black-sailed ship.

S3E6: Homunculus

S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius matched Coen, a dreamy tiefling warlock easily distracted by crickets, against Alfucius the Everbright, a bowing old “wizard” who claimed to have served in Candlekeep and Strixhaven. The floor turned to lava, and Dolly hatched from a rock asking, “Will you be my friend?” Coen promptly renamed her Aragorl. Alfucius fed his diamond homunculus Blinky to Gerald, who ate him and shit out a tome of intelligence with Blinky’s wings, and Alfucius wiped the shadow feces off the cover. Then, crouched behind a floating dragon skull, he confessed: “I don’t know any magic at all. I just have these. I have a gun!”

The two plotted together instead of fighting. The Grandmaster demanded blood, so the reluctant Arbiter raised a ghost dragon from the bones. Coen’s towering Aragorl in Barbie stilettos kicked it in the face, and Alfucius’s pistol blew it apart into fairy lights. A doll’s bite and a few drops of blood sprouted toothy tulips, which satisfied the Grandmaster, and she granted both champions their wishes. The only death of the night was a goblin the sulking Arbiter flicked out of the stands.

S3E7: Severed Limbs

S3E7 — Severed Limbs — Cress v Chedrick McDougan began in the kitchen, where the Grandmaster’s charcuterie board of “rat to table” slices was insulted as “gamey.” In revenge she sent the champions straight to the Deathmatch, and the Arbiter took the fight to The Shadowlands, a place she hated. Cress, a human monk who needed the prize money to avoid a real job, faced Chedrick McDougan and his penguin, Fear. The fight turned into a limb exchange. Chedrick took Cress’s pinky toe and then her foot, and Cress cut off his hand and slapped him with it. Each fed the other’s body parts to Gerald until Chedrick got his hand back with a sewing kit, cursed to slap its owner.

The Grandmaster finally shot the Arbiter’s shadow ghast through the heart with The Oathbow and handed each champion a rainbow bean for an ultimate move. Chedrick’s “super spinning penguin drill” beat Cress’s beam of light and punched a penguin-sized hole through her. “This isn’t even my final form.” When Chedrick threw a water bottle in the Grandmaster’s face, she granted his wish and left him in the Shadowlands.

S3E8: The Gauntlet 2

The Grandmaster spent the opening of S3E8, The Gauntlet 2 - Floyd of the Pink & Luci v Hurdey & Gurdi gluing glitter onto a handmade gauntlet map in the basement. Floyd of the Pink, a “m’lady”-saying devotee weighed down by a ten-pound triple fedora, teamed with the silent satyr Luci. They raced Hurdey, a bipedal bear, and Gurdi, the red bird in his backpack. The race ran from a flippy-cup tavern, through knife-wielding seagulls (who respected Floyd), a ship heist and The Kraken, to a graveyard island of riddles.

The final riddle demanded “the heart of your ally.” Luci burned Floyd’s waifu body pillow for nothing, and Gurdi burned Hurdey’s heart with a flaming egg fired from his cloaca. Floyd tried to foster a baby mimic, offered it his nipple to suckle, and had the nipple bitten off. Luci then smote Gurdi into the big mimic’s jaws, but his severed wing drifted down and touched the gold first. Hurdey and Gurdi technically won by the rules, but Floyd and Luci were the ones left standing and took the victory, and Floyd claimed the treasure: a golden body pillow.

S3E9: Fire Heart

S3E9 — Fire Heart — Alyndra Morlynn v Minh Lý opened in a new game room, where the Grandmaster had yet to beat Doug at ping pong. At her favourite waterfall getaway, the muscle-bound bladesinger Minh Lý, “the Freshmaker,” faced Alyndra Morlynn, a starlight-haired elf hungry for glory. Doug’s enormous older brother Chet arrived from obedience school. Alyndra saved him with the Heimlich, and he shrank into an eight-eyed Pomeranian. Gerald, overwhelmed by Minh’s physique, started doing curls inside the Box and gave Alyndra a scroll of Meteor Swarm.

After an Arbiter-made flood swept them over the falls, Alyndra wondered aloud whether her mother had been right about her. Minh answered with a speech: “Your heart is on fire and that fire is not easily quenched.” When Alyndra pulled the stars down on them both, Minh gripped her arm, and with his last strength his Lay on Hands shielded her from the blast. Alyndra won, and Minh was left in the ash, his fate unknown.

S3E11: Blood Feud 1

The Grandmaster was reading Doug a book of monsters under a blanket when S3E11 — Blood Feud 1 — Havoc v Isha Inverraseth began. Havoc, a scarred werewolf and the new alpha of the Kingslayer clan, met Isha Inverraseth, the vampire “Lycan Slayer.” Each carried a mirrored scar from a childhood oath: “We live together, we die together.” Long ago, the wolves who slaughtered their village had sent Havoc to kill Isha. She spared her instead, leaving her for dead in the forest.

In the Grandmaster’s foggy dark city, Isha pulled out her own wisdom teeth and traded them for a fire dagger, then set ablaze the hut Havoc had barricaded herself in. Havoc refused to perform for the Acolytes and slammed the Box’s lid, and Gerald answered with a hellish rebuke. Isha wished on a knockoff genie to “go back to where it began,” and Havoc’s pack climbed onto the rooftops to demand she finish the job. As her maul came down, the Grandmaster froze them both like statues and promised the fight would continue on the ground where it began. That conclusion has never come, and the feud remains unresolved.

S3E12: Blood Puppets

S3E12 — Blood Puppets — Basil Herringbone v Befferfoot took Basil Herringbone, a “rabbit boy man” monk going through a “transitional period,” and the half-orc Befferfoot into the Grandmaster’s “cave of wonders” (“Name in progress”). The aliens abducted Befferfoot and returned him smarter, with a much bigger forehead. Basil sawed off his own leg for Gerald and got back a sun-blade prosthetic called Dawnbringer. The tadpoles that fed on his blood adopted him as their parent.

Befferfoot faced two bees and Basil a large garden snake, each conjured from their fears. A giant frog swallowed Basil whole, and he read magazines inside it until Befferfoot split it open. Befferfoot’s emotional-support corgi Rolando fled up to the stands after a misfired crossbow bolt landed at his feet. Basil leapt twenty feet up and dropped forty feet leg-first for the kill. Befferfoot’s last request was that his opponent deliver a birthday card to Mama, and Rolando went home with the winner.

S3E14: Magic Duel

The Halloween episode, S3E14 — Magic Duel — Talbot Cage v Seth Kaiser, opened at a masquerade pre-party party. The Arbiter had never received his invitation, because Thomas the Goblin threw it in the trash. Talbot Cage, a scarred wild-magic caster with a fez-wearing squirrel named Mr. Nutters, had been warming his coffee when he was summoned. His opponent was Seth Kaiser, a rich card-game duelist who fought with a buckler that held a deck of cards. In a corn maze with no corn, Talbot cut off one of his seven fingers for a Vorpal Pinkie, and Seth handed Gerald his entire trade binder. Gerald, now his friend, gave him a graded card of a ring of wishes with one wish left. Seth spent it on the answer to a riddle.

Talbot’s clever plan to fireball a field of pumpkin bombs failed twice over. Gerald yanked Seth into the Box to save his new friend, and wild magic aged Talbot twenty years as he threw. Dolly returned, larger and rotting, and Seth summoned a turtle-shelled white dragon. The Grandmaster even bent time to give Talbot one last swing. When it missed, he raised his middle finger and let the dragon burn him. “I just wanted to warm up my coffee.” The Acolytes raised theirs in salute.

S3E15: Sunday Slam

A daylight-savings panic opened S3E15 — Sunday Slam — Belet v Derick. The Grandmaster refused to abolish the time change on the spot, because “It’s not official unless it’s done Monday through Friday between nine to five.” Belet, a dragon-slaying noble of Waterdeep cheered on by the Big Nose Club, faced Derick, an elderly hippo cleric off his Spelljammer ship, on an ancient battlefield ringed by broken wagons. Belet flipped a wagon onto him (“Suck my wagon!”). Derick ripped off his trunk, which turned out to be held on with glue, and fought with a giant spectral teacup.

Gerald took Belet’s theatre coupons and Derick’s pipe weed, then floated off on his own smoke to see Les Mis. Derick’s explosive blunderbuss nearly turned the fight around, and the Arbiter shielded him because hippos are endangered. Belet still landed the killing blow. Derick’s last regret was taking the armor of his brother, Larry. The Grandmaster promised hippo-shaped cookies in his memory.

Skypiercer

Parts 1 to 3 of Skypiercer, the story of how Elusia first came to power, aired within the season as S3E10, S3E13 and S3E16.

S3E17: Season 3 Finale

The season ended with S3E17, Season 3 Finale - Soot Mustam v Huey Leatherface, fought in the Grandmaster’s treasure room under the eye of her dragon Lilac. Soot Mustam was a twelve-year-old goliath with abs, a backwards hat, a flying squirrel named Marymoo and a deep need to prove himself to his village. Huey Leatherface (properly “Leatherfeather”) was an owlin artificer from Strixhaven who collected dog pee for experiments and stored his dinner under the couch.

Four meemaws joined the fight as the Golden Girls, and the Arbiter’s molten gold golem, Christopher, killed two of them. Gerald dumped a trash can of trash and shit over Soot and handed him a Cube of Annihilation, while Huey sold Soot’s flaming steed to the Box for an Amulet of Health. In the end Soot tripped over his own Cube and was erased, hoping to come back one day as “a great warrior. The very best.” Huey won, but as the Grandmaster flew him up to the crowd, the grieving Marymoo clawed his face. She dropped him forty feet, and he went splat.

Running Threads

The Arbiter’s sentence. Every week opened with him clanking through the halls. Along the way he was colouring in the boxes on the tax forms, shovelling catering into Tupperware, doing the grocery shopping and cleaning up the bodies. He kept begging to have the chains removed and kept being told to do sprints instead. He tried to be “centered” (“I am the best me”) and mostly failed. He wore a dunce cap, took a pumpkin to the face and, in the most infamous moment of all, had his potato sack blown up to show his tiny penis to the whole crowd.

Doug always wins. The Arbiter’s end-of-round rolls lost again and again to Doug’s squeaky plush d20. Mort the monkey and Fear the penguin also beat him. “Suck it, Doug” became his rare victory cry. When he finally rolled a nat 20, the Grandmaster handed him a dollhouse-sized chair to throw. Doug, an undead cyborg pug, also farted, fetched, beat the Grandmaster at ping pong, and in one episode summoned the champions himself.

Gerald’s collection. The Box of Chaos took stranger offerings than ever before: a hero point, a ceremonial dagger, a monkey, a diamond familiar, trousers, a severed hand and foot, a leg, a finger, wisdom teeth, Pokémon cards, theatre coupons and pipe weed. Gerald was thanked, friended, hired, locked himself in, was hit with a sword and taken out of the fight on his own smoke. “I got a leg last week. I’m like three quarters of a full body.”

Life at the Dread Fortress. There are 203 chinchillas, one per goblin, and they are unionised. The goblins have a union too, and the Fortress offers dental, a 401K and generous PTO. The kitchen renovation ran from collapsing walls to a backsplash of skulls. Dolly returned twice. The hosts mourned Mayor Timothy, the worm mayor Strako killed on the asteroid, and joked about sending a gift basket.

Aftermath

After the finale, the Grandmaster declared the Arbiter had proven himself and snapped his chains away in a glitter bomb. He changed back into his black leathers and Italian boots, and the two planned next season together: feathered dinosaurs, a circus, a vacation Deathmatch. Then the Box of Chaos began to burn. Its flames turned red and black and gave off heat, and a shadow tore itself out of the Arbiter and poured into the keyhole. One by one, every goblin knight in the throne room fell with a slit throat.

“Hello, Elusia.”

The Shadow King stood at her shoulder. He explained that the piece of him Vythorn had kept had been clouding Vythorn’s mind against her all along. He had rebuilt his body from the season’s offerings: “A toe, a hand, a foot, cryptocurrency… Magic the Gathering cards.” Shadow chains dragged the Grandmaster from her throne, and The Dragon Knights stepped out of the shadows. When the Shadow King thrust a blade of shadow at Doug, the Arbiter rose and took it through his own heart. “Run, run, Doug, run.” Doug escaped through the doggy door.

Dying at the foot of the throne, Vythorn told Elusia he was sorry “for so many things.” When she asked why, he answered, “For knowledge.” The Shadow King forced her to her knees before him. “Well then, daughter, shall we?”

The Black Tome

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