S2E6 — FoTA - Sands of the Arena (Fate of the Arbiter, Part 2)

Champions and players	Ahnubyss as Toddleheim; Miss_Magitek as Locket; BDTeej as Flynry
Result	none. The champions refuse to fight each other, survive the Arbiter’s monsters and escape with Lyrus.
Arena	the Sands of the Arena (the Grandmaster’s arena), then the Arbiter’s own arena (a dark temple-side arena high above a city, with a giant statue of the Arbiter); then a chain of portal realms; then a city street and a hidden blacksmith shop
Hosts	Mudcat (narration, the Arbiter, Lyrus, the Seer, all NPCs)
Watch	YouTube

What happens

Recap and the Sands of the Arena

1. 0:00:11 Recap (Drew). The heroes crossed the lava fields to the eastern outpost and met Orin, commander of the installation. They pushed on against the Servants of the Void, infiltrated the compound and found the Arbiter they had come to rescue. He turned out to be “evil the whole time.” His plan to overthrow the Grandmaster came out and they fought. They defeated him, chopped off his hands and carried them back to the Dread Fortress. There “the visage of the Grandmaster faded” and they were facing the Arbiter again. He told them they would not see the Grandmaster that day, branded them traitors, and condemned them to fight to the death.
2. 0:01:15 A portal throws them onto the sands of the arena, the arena they saw “the night the Arbiter was taken.” Fire shoots up around them, hot night wind blows sand, and the Acolytes scream. The Arbiter flies up and spreads his wings: “Acolytes! I have returned to satiate your bloodlust.” He circles the stands and presents “three champions… Former teammates, former compatriots, now forced to fight to the death.”
3. 0:03:04 They refuse. Toddleheim just looks at the others. Flynry: “I don’t think I’d like to fight any of these two… Also, you’re the bad guy.” Locket: “We’re friends, not foes.” Someone calls him a liar; Flynry adds, “He’s very tall, but he’s a liar.” The Arbiter: “If the Grandmaster was here, she’d be appalled. Never before have the champions refused to fight.”
4. 0:03:57 Flynry suggests the three of them fight the Arbiter again, since “we already beat you once.” Toddleheim and Locket agree: “We will gladly fight you again.” The Arbiter: maybe, “but… maybe not quite yet.”
5. 0:04:29 He tries to turn Toddleheim: “I know that you’re prone to violence. I’ve seen it.” Toddleheim won’t fight his compatriots: “You’ve been through too much.” Flynry says he doesn’t make many friends, and he is glad to have “a single blood brother and a blood sister.” The Arbiter: “you’ve put me in a tough spot here… this is not what I normally do here.” He decides to “play into your games” for the Acolytes and take them “somewhere special.”

The Arbiter’s arena

6. 0:05:40 He snaps his fingers and the sands, arena and Acolytes dissolve into a new scene: high above a city, in the side of a temple, with a huge statue of the Arbiter looming over it. Lightning cracks everywhere. The Acolytes now fill “a very dark and sinister” arena. The Arbiter, on a balcony: “You didn’t want to fight in the sands of the Grandmaster’s arena. But maybe you’ll fight in mine. I know, it’s a little garish… sometimes you have to love yourself.”
7. 0:06:38 The statue. Toddleheim: “I feel like he may be slightly overcompensating for something.” Flynry: “I don’t think he gets a lot of love from others.” Someone adds, “Clearly not the Grandmaster.” The Arbiter: “Do you know how hard it is to find someone who can make a statue that large?” Flynry mentions a “Hailey Seinfeld song” about loving yourself and asks, “Do you want to be our friend?”
8. 0:07:06 The hands. A champion (most likely Flynry, whose player rolls the check) asks how the Arbiter got his hands back: “I’ve got in the bag… a couple of hands. I thought they might have been yours.” The history check is a 5. Even so, he remembers that the hands they brought back shriveled up and vanished moments ago, along with the visage. The Arbiter: “A simple-minded fool. You can’t even remember five minutes ago. Speak up, Toddlheim.”
9. 0:08:20 Toddleheim: if they are going to tour arenas, “I might be able to stamp my passport better. We’re not going to fight each other. I’m a terrible traveler.” Flynry would like to see multiple arenas too: “I’m sad I didn’t bring anything.” Locket repeats the challenge. Flynry: “unless you’re too afraid after last time… You got your tushy whooped quite nicely.”
10. 0:09:25 The Arbiter’s claim: “What you defeated was merely a visage, a fraction of my power. A golem, a stand-in, a mist.” He won’t fight them himself “just yet. I’ll let you earn that privilege.” To the Acolytes: “In this arena, death is certain. We play with all types of forces of magic and all types of evil here.”
11. 0:10:17 He vanishes and reappears in the stands on a giant, garish black throne, eating grapes. He points, and bones, ooze and goo rise from the floor to form a Deathlock with a cricked neck, “a foul imitation of life.” In front of it appears a line of vampiric kobolds (vampire spawn). “Champions, if you won’t fight each other, then you will fight all of the creatures of the darkness.” Flynry: “Typical Friday… They’re quite tiny by comparison.” Locket: “I don’t trust anything that wants a bite.” The Arbiter: “This is the Arbiter’s arena, not the Grandmaster’s arena. You will find no favor here.”

Fight 1: the Deathlock and the vampiric kobolds

12. 0:13:29 Locket uses her feline agility to climb a pillar for high ground and puts two arrows into a kobold. They sink in but barely seem to affect it. The kobold “doesn’t seem to mind those pokies out of his body” (Flynry).
13. 0:16:08 The kobolds charge and use pack tactics. One bites at Flynry and misses. Flynry holds it off by the forehead “like the school bully,” and he soon has two kobolds by the neck, one in each hand: “They’re quite feisty… I’m just going to keep them over here for a bit.”
14. 0:17:00 A kobold bites Toddleheim for piercing and necrotic damage. Drew lets his poison resistance cover it (“a necrotic poison… Never say I wasn’t nice to you”). Locket: “The fact that he’s being nice means that we’re in danger.” Another kobold climbs the steps and bites Locket’s ankles. She kicks at it: “Get away from me, you little thing.”
15. 0:20:01 The Deathlock (“no thoughts up there, just pure chaos… an empty husk of evil”) targets Toddleheim as the magic user with Chill Touch, a ghostly skeletal hand. Toddleheim fends it off. It misty-steps 30 ft to the stairs. The last kobold bites Toddleheim hard. “Unlike the visage of the Arbiter, these vampire kobolds mean business.”
16. 0:22:33 Flynry’s flurry. His first punch is a nat 1, and the kobold catches his fist in its teeth. “Stop that, naughty.” He slaps it in the face to free his hand, then lands a crit that feels like breaking bones. His next hit lands on a face that has somehow gone harder: “I thought I would have knocked a few out.”
17. 0:27:23 Toddleheim the Great casts Enlarge/Reduce on himself and grows to Large (“I’m about to reduce these filthy creatures”). He hits the weakened kobold with Acid Splash. It bubbles and boils and melts “like the guy from RoboCop,” and dies. Flynry: “I think I like you when you’re bigger… Proving to be a shower and a grower.”
18. 0:31:44 Locket’s Fear. She leaps down: “I have had enough of you two.” Her face turns from a cute kitty cat into a feral beast, with massive claws and fangs “even more fangly” than the kobolds’. Three kobolds fail their saves and flee. Flynry blushes and goes slack-jawed, nearly losing his grip on a kobold’s neck, because he finds the display “quite remarkable.” Toddleheim: “You liked that, didn’t you?” With a bonus action Locket touches her quiver and imbues all her arrows with flame.
19. 0:36:13 The Deathlock casts Blight on Locket and sucks the moisture from the air, her fur and her blood. She saves for half and keeps her concentration. The remaining kobold gets only a “small pinch on the ankle” against the enlarged Toddleheim.
20. 0:42:16 Flynry shifts. Inspired by Locket, he shifts into his own beastly visage and looks back at the Arbiter, who is eating grapes and sipping wine: “Don’t mind me, just enjoying the show.” Flynry runs to the Deathlock and casts Inflict Wounds (nat 20). The Deathlock soaks up some of the necrotic energy, which swirls around it as if becoming part of it. His fists hit bone and cartilage and it doesn’t care. In frustration Flynry drops his hands, points his head to the sky and roars: “the first time maybe that the party sees him abandon some of his passive demeanor.” He stares the Deathlock down with drool running from his beast jaws.
21. 0:47:24 The enlarged Toddleheim (“big chonker”) moves. The kobold’s attack of opportunity is a nat 1: “It cannot seem to bite you. You’re in its head.” His Acid Splash and Magic Missile hurt the Deathlock. They chip bone, and it staggers for the first time: magical damage works.
22. 0:51:02 Locket’s flame arrows cauterize a kobold, which squeals. At the end of the fear, a frightened kobold rolls a nat 1 and dives off the ledge to its death “like a lemming” (“I didn’t sign up for this!” — Drew adds that they can’t speak).
23. 0:54:11 The Acolytes intervene. Chanting for chaos, they give each champion a hero point and summon the Box of Chaos into the middle of the field. They’ve seen the box before: some of them sacrificed a Pearl of Healing to it at Orin’s Keep. A meaningful sacrifice may yield a magic item. Flynry: “The acolytes seem to be most lovely and also most horrible all at the same time.”
24. 0:55:49 The Deathlock sprays Poison Spray into Toddleheim’s face, a gas of the residual blight energy. It’s a crit, but his resistance halves it. The Acolytes roar over the thunder and give everyone a Lucky as well. Locket’s arrows push themselves out of the kobold’s chest as it regenerates.
25. 1:01:51 Flynry and the box. He casts Minor Illusion: a silent freeze-frame of himself staring at the Deathlock and sneaks away (stealth beats it). At the box he sacrifices a very valuable piece of jewelry from his home world, a bracelet he almost lost in a gambling match and got back by “intimidation” (Drew: “misinformationed your way into this”; Flynry: “I told him I have a condition”). The lid slams, the box rumbles, and a breastplate floats out: armor of resistance (necrotic). Because it’s a worthy sacrifice, it doesn’t hinder his monk movement and gives +1 AC.
26. 1:07:19 He dashes back and crashes through his illusion “like a weird mirror,” hoping to surprise the Deathlock. “It’s used to magic. It’s seen this before.” His punch does half damage.
27. 1:09:42 Toddleheim, “still enlarged, still in charge,” acid-splashes again and fires a 5th-level Magic Missile. The force cracks the Deathlock’s bones.
28. 1:11:52 The brazier. Locket’s potion of storm giant strength has worn off: after the fight with the Arbiter, the journey back across the lava plains took several days (“go watch the VOD. I said it. I narrated the shit out of it”). She climbs back up and tips a bowl of fire onto the kobold, which dives out of the way and is only singed.
29. 1:15:33 One kobold shakes off the fear and regenerates. Another sees the others’ example and also leaps to its death. Flynry suggests “cut off the head of the snake,” as in Skyrim.
30. 1:17:00 The Deathlock lashes out with Arms of Hadar: necrotic tendrils “like octopus, squid arms” flail around Toddleheim and Flynry, who both resist. Then a grave bolt tendril stabs Flynry. It isn’t a projectile, so he can’t deflect it, but he breaks free.
31. 1:19:44 The burning kobold. The kobold from the brazier looks at Locket, at the fire, at Locket, at the fire, then rolls its body in the flaming oil and charges her ablaze. Its burning bite hits her hard and it burns itself too. Drew: “I’ve never set an NPC on fire and then had to attack somebody.”
32. 1:21:13 Flynry, in his flashy new armor, studies the Deathlock: only non-necrotic magical damage really hurts it. His Inflict Wounds still lands for half, but a nat 1 punch throws him off balance: “I do not want to die!”
33. 1:23:55 Toddleheim (“giant and also a valley girl at the same time,” per Flynry’s player) acid-splashes, but the Deathlock Counterspells his Magic Missile: “This thing does not want to die!” Toddleheim moves away and leaves Flynry “alone right up in the jaws of the beast.”
34. 1:27:17 The kill. Locket, 30-plus ft away, looses one flame arrow. “Like that one scene in Lord of the Rings with Legolas,” it goes right into the Deathlock’s skull, and it falls backward with the arrow in its head. It seeps back into the stones, leaving a few bone fragments. A kobold flees; Locket’s short sword gets it on the way out. The rest hide or dash away.

The second wave

35. 1:30:06 The Arbiter stands at the balcony: “Well done. You have defeated the forces of evil. All should tremble before you.” Flynry: “I think you should tremble, Arbiter.” The Arbiter: “Do you think it’s over?… there’s always the creatures of darkness to aid me.” Three more Deathlocks rise from the floor, three vampiric spawn ooze up, and a night hag appears by the Box of Chaos. Drew: “Flyn, you just had to ask, didn’t you?” Flynry: “I don’t hide my friends in the floor.”
36. 1:31:43 “It’s like a fine painting… It’s not quite done until it’s done… I got it.” Three werewolves materialize and fix on Flynry.
37. 1:32:15 “I’m a magnanimous ruler here in this domain.” A green light heals them for half of their missing health: “Just because I want to make you do math.” Toddleheim: “You call this fair? Why don’t you come down here and fight us yourself?… Coward.” His intimidation fails. Arbiter: “The last gasps of a dying man. I will let you live in your illusion for the moment.” He lets them use the Box of Chaos before the next round, and his minions won’t stop them. The vampire spawn are three women, hissing; the werewolves growl (“all the Halloween sounds I know”).
38. 1:34:46 Locket’s sacrifice. She drops in her potion of healing. Flynry jokes that it’s lucky this isn’t Pokémon. For the first time ever, sensing her danger and how much the potion means to her, the box raises several items and makes her choose: a headband of intellect (gold, large purple jewel), a medallion of thoughts (three charges of Detect Thoughts, resets at dawn) or gloves of missile snaring. She picks the medallion “to use it on the Arbiter.” It reshapes itself to her imagination into a little heart-shaped locket. She drops her Fear and is no longer feral.
39. 1:39:13 Flynry asks for a cinematic glow. Drew gives her a faint glowing mist that forms a halo, like phosphorus neon, “like a L’Oréal commercial,” or as if a nuclear plant exploded somewhere behind her: “Maybe it’s radiation, maybe it’s Maybelline.”
40. 1:40:16 Locket probes the Arbiter. “Arbiter, is this really what you want?” He answers: “What I wanted was for you to fight to the death. You’ve been in my way this entire time. Sure, I thought maybe you were useful at first. Maybe I could manipulate you into serving my purposes… I gave you the option. You even made me kill Orin. And I liked Orin.” Locket: “We didn’t want you to kill Orin. You made that choice.” Arbiter: “you led him down the path… This entire realm will be mine someday. And it begins here in this arena, my arena.”
41. 1:44:00 Locket rolls a nat 20 on perception and sees that he knows his mind is being probed; he is versed in illusion and manipulation magic. Playing it cool, he crushes the stone banister, digging his fingers in until blood pours from his fingertips. Locket to the others: “We must stay strong. I think we’re breaking him.”
42. 1:45:25 Toddleheim’s blood. The Arbiter: “Champion, do you want for nothing? Surely a sacrifice of some sort. Perhaps a pendant, a spell book. Maybe even your own blood.” Toddleheim cuts his hand open with a little dagger and drips blood into the box. Drew asks about his past with magic. Toddleheim: “One time I lost control in a bar and I burned the place to the ground. Everyone died. They weren’t good people, but it wasn’t the death that they deserved.” Flames rise from the box into his eyes and offer him redemption: he gains a single use of the 7th-level spell Fire Storm. The Arbiter: “it seems we’re all ready for the second round, then. Take your places.” Break.

Fight 2: the hag, the vampires, the Deathlocks and the werewolves

44. 1:49:10 “Welcome back.” The Arbiter watches from his throne, “visibly upset that Locket has tried to enter his mind.” The remaining kobolds fade out of the fight.
45. 1:51:02 Locket’s Dread Ambusher speed lets her climb with her cat’s claws (nat 20 athletics) to perch on a flag post bolted to the wall. Her flaming arrows sear deep into a vampire spawn. The crowd parties “like a Sunday football game,” popcorn flying, thinking this is a normal Deathmatch the champions entered of their own will, unaware of the Arbiter’s motives.
46. 1:55:12 Chaos event: the doll. A small porcelain doll floats in the air beside Locket and holds out a hand: “Play with me.” Locket, a curious character, picks it up. Toddleheim: “Curiosity killed the cat.” Its head spins 360° and it smiles: “We’re going to be friends.” It burns a necrotic rune into her skin and bonds to her, obeying her will for two rounds. She orders it to attack; “Dolly” misses the vampire. Locket: “It’s all right, Dolly. You’ll get him next time.”
47. 1:58:47 The night hag casts Ray of Enfeeblement at Flynry, but his bestial strength fights it off. The three Deathlocks each cast Chill Touch: Flynry is hit (his armor halves it), Toddleheim is missed, and Locket takes a crit, ghostly hands closing around her throat.
48. 2:01:46 Fire Storm. The table urges “the big one.” Flynry’s player proposes that all three pool their hero points; Drew rules each point stacks another disadvantage (“Toss a coin to your arbiter, kids”). Toddleheim’s casting: “I slowly close my eyes, and I’m back in the bar. And my hands are already on fire… the whole building’s on fire. But I’m fine… the fire all flows into me… Then I just scream, and then it just unleashes the fire.” Walls of flame spring up across the field. Everything fails its save; the vampire spawn and the Deathlocks roll natural 1s and are obliterated. The werewolves and the hag are singed but standing. Toddleheim is a “full human torch,” ethereal flames pouring from his body.
49. 2:08:43 Dolly is caught in the blaze too. The rune fades from Locket as the doll screams “No!” and is obliterated. Locket: “Dolly! I’m so sorry, I failed you.”
50. 2:09:21 The rescue. The Arbiter stands: “What is happening? This is not what I planned!” Hooded figures in the crowd throw back their hoods and drop onto the field: a goblin, an elf, an orc, all Orin’s forces the heroes met the night before the battle. From behind the Arbiter, a werebear in full black plate lands with a thud beside the flaming Toddleheim, holding two swords that seem made of solidified gloom from the black Void. He looks oddly familiar, though they’ve never met. To the Arbiter: “I was listening to everything you said. You murdered my father. And I will have your head. But maybe it’s not today. Someday, it will be mine.” To the heroes: “you can’t win this fight in this place. We need to go!” He slices open reality with the Void swords and makes a portal. The heroes realise he is Orin’s son.
51. 2:11:43 One of the orcs challenges the Arbiter directly to buy time. The Arbiter blocks easily, then obliterates him. The Arbiter screams: “Don’t let them leave! Get after them!” All three dive through, the werebear behind them. “Do not let them escape!”

The chase through the portals

52. 2:12:49 Mountaintop pass. They land on a pass in an ethereal realm with floating chunks of debris drifting through space, “almost like a fever dream.” As the portal closes they hear Orin’s men screaming. Not three but dozens of werewolves, with the hag, pour through after them. Flynry stumbles; the werebear pulls him up: “Keep moving, I’ll hold them off!” He slices a werewolf in half, and a void opens between the halves like a black hole, a singularity that sucks in more werewolves.
53. 2:15:17 Flynry creates about ten still illusions of himself in intimidating poses, lined up as a barrier. He waves the werebear through (“come on then, let’s go”). The werewolves swarm the illusions “like a swarm of ants,” and the hag tries to enfeeble the fakes.
54. 2:17:28 The portal hub. The jolting jump nearly makes them vomit. They fall from the sky into a place with a portal in every direction, among them a fountain of blood pouring from an ethereal portal. Werewolves climb out of the blood, with the hag covered in ooze. Something goes wrong in the portal: Locket is duplicated in time and space. The mirror image moves in tandem with her, and the two can read each other’s thoughts.
55. 2:18:36 The werebear cuts more singularities, flinging off a werewolf that digs into his back. Toddleheim’s Magic Missile hits a werewolf in the forehead and knocks it off the tower, where it floats into an empty void “outside of space and time,” free of gravity.
56. 2:19:55 Flynry dashes “straight up linebacker” through the werewolf line and plants his foot; the earth shakes and dust rings out as both fiery fists slam into the hag. She is knocked back into the blood portal, pops out of the green portal behind him healed, and enfeebles him. The werebear: “I don’t know why there’s two of you, but do something!” The two Lockets slice through dozens of werewolves with their short swords. Hands, feet and heads fly off the tower, and chunks of werewolf float in space all around.
57. 2:22:42 Choosing portals. The werebear: “Everyone choose a portal!” Flynry and Toddleheim take the flame portal and come out of the space portal. “As fate has kind of been twisted around,” Flynry’s enfeeblement is gone (“as if you’ve seen two realities”), and Toddleheim comes out with advantage on his next attack.
58. 2:24:10 The twin. Locket rolls a nat 1 through the fire portal and takes heavy fire damage. She passes it to her duplicate, which burns to cinders beside her. Locket: “I actually have a twin sister and I think it kind of looks like her… it just makes her flinch for a second in fear.” It’s a horrifying image of her twin burning, though she knows it’s only a reflection.
59. 2:25:37 The werebear: “What kind of game is this?” He drives the Void swords into the space-time portal and shatters it like a mirror, opening a black portal. Flynry shouts that the green portal might heal (the hag healed there). He punches the hag through the blood portal again, where she seems at home among blood and guts, and he holds the line, parrying werewolf bites and claws. He takes one deep gash across his chest through the armor.
60. 2:28:18 Locket tries for the green portal but comes out of the blood portal next to the hag, choking on viscous, hot, fresh blood. She dashes on all fours instead. Toddleheim casts a 5th-level Cause Fear, but the werewolves roll a nat 20 and aren’t scared at all. A werewolf claw slashes him through a shard of the mirror-broken portal. Werewolf arms and mouths now jut out of the shards everywhere. “We have to go!”
61. 2:30:51 Flynry slides, ducks and rolls under diving werewolves (Drew: “the end of the Avengers… Age of Ultron”).
62. 2:31:15 The plane of chaotic energy. Chaotic energy swirls around them and fewer werewolves follow. The werebear swats werewolves off the edge with the flats of his swords; falling, they stretch and elongate “at almost the speed of light… outside of all relativity” into a long string and out of existence. “Don’t fall off.” “And that’s science.”
63. 2:33:35 The floating tiles. Shifting floating tiles demand harder and harder leaps. Toddleheim falls and catches a tile as the forces tear at him “atom by atom.” Flynry, “full alpha lion,” bounds over and grabs him with his claws (“that Scar–Mufasa moment”) and hauls him up.
64. 2:36:29 Locket falls. She falls into the void: “Goodbye, my friends.” The werebear (Drew names him here as Lyrus) dives headfirst after her, swords trailing. To her it is a tunnel where time elongates. He snags her: “I don’t know if this is gonna work!” His first slash for a portal fails. Both will themselves to hold together, atoms being ripped away in agony. On the second try he slices a portal open, and they stumble back onto the stones. He throws her through the next portal and staggers after.
65. 2:39:10 The city street. They come out in a city street with only three werewolves and the hag behind them. The portal closes on the hag and cuts her clean in half; half her body slumps out, splattering the street. Locket pats herself down to make sure none of her was left behind.

Fight 3: the street

66. 2:40:18 Flynry stays in beast form (“the armor fits my beast body… it’d be really awkward if… it looked like hand-me-down big brother armor”). The hag’s brain falls out and a werewolf starts eating it, so Flynry pounds it mid-chomp on the skull: “it’s gonna feel that one tomorrow if it’s still alive.”
67. 2:43:37 A werewolf dives at Toddleheim and misses. He blasts a 5th-level Burning Hands (“Hadouken”), setting it fully ablaze, then acid-splashes it until its flesh starts boiling off.
68. 2:45:30 Locket marks the far werewolf with Hunter’s Mark and fires flaming arrows as it charges on all fours. It rears up and drops dead at her feet with the last arrow.
69. 2:47:44 Lyrus, exhausted from manifesting so much magic, swings both swords and misses with a nat 1. The stone they sink into caves in on itself as part of it is whipped into another dimension.
70. 2:48:36 Flynry’s blue fire. After Inflict Wounds and two punches, his player narrates the kill. Flynry thinks of the exhausted werebear who “jumped into a time warp space void to save my friend and gave everything to rip a portal in thin air.” Rage overloads his beast form; his fists engulf themselves in blue fire, flames shoot into the sky, and a two-fisted slam explodes the werewolf’s skull into blood and matter. Blue flames rise in a cone around the corpse. Lyrus: “who is this guy?”
71. 2:51:55 Toddleheim becomes a werewolf. The burning werewolf bites him. A black, ichorous poison runs through his veins like syrup; his heart slows and stops; then, racked with pain, he explodes out of his skin and transforms into a werewolf. He now has lycanthropy. He passes the wisdom save (24) and keeps hold of who Toddleheim is: he knows his friends and his enemy, and feels a power unlike magic.
72. 2:56:01 His claws finish the werewolf. He describes it: still shaking with the new strength, flexing, hair on end, “writhing in pleasure and pain.” His claws extend, sharper and blacker, and he slashes its chest, throat and face. “Blood and guts everywhere.”
73. 2:57:02 He turns to Flynry: “You’re not the only one.” Flynry: “I think I like you better like this.” Locket: “Toddlheim, are you all right? Is that you in there?” Flynry: “it seems now we all a bit beastly, aren’t we?” Flynry is visibly more excited than he should be and looks at Locket as if to say “do it again.” They all bare their teeth at each other in happiness. Lyrus, confused, bares his teeth too, then grips Toddleheim’s shoulder: “Calm now, friend. Easy. This is a dangerous time for you. Breathe.” He guides Toddleheim back to his old form: “I don’t know how you survived. Not many do.”

The hideout

74. 2:59:23 Lyrus leads them through dark streets. People gasp at the dead werewolves, and troops clang swords and shields as the city’s infantry mobilises. They slip into a blacksmith shop. They are out of combat.
75. 3:00:04 Lyrus. “My name is Lyrus. From what I’ve gathered, you knew my father, Orin.… The Arbiter, I can’t believe it, he killed him. I heard it with my own ears.” Toddleheim: “I tried to save him.” Lyrus asks whether he died well. The players agree not to mention the obliterate spell. Locket: “He died a hero.” Flynry: “He died fighting for what was right.” Lyrus: “He died fighting for a traitor. For a man that he considered like a father to him.” Locket confirms it was by the Arbiter’s own hand: “We were sent to help the Arbiter, and he turned on all of us.”
76. 3:01:41 Lyrus: “He’s been a hero to many… a staple of virtue… an upstanding member of society, the right hand of the Grandmaster.” The shop holds fighters who escaped through the portals plus new faces, with a smith’s hammer clanging and forges burning.
77. 3:02:22 “This is a covert ops hideout we used to use on raids. No one knows of its existence except for those in this room.” He has gathered whoever would believe him, “a small band… dedicated to setting things right. To saving the Grandmaster from the influence of the Arbiter. I think it’s safe to say we’ll be branded as traitors.” Toddleheim: “We’ve beaten him once before. We’ll do it again.” Lyrus: “I don’t know how. He’s so powerful. So good-looking.” Flynry: “That might be another one for Locket to unpack.”
78. 3:03:34 Introductions. “I am Locket.” “My name is Toddlheim the Great.” “You can call me Flynry. I’ve not got another name.” Lyrus: Toddleheim’s control of the inner beast is rare, and his fire “maybe the grandest display of magic that I have ever seen.” Toddleheim credits his friends’ hero points.
79. 3:04:33 The Faithful. Lyrus: “we are going to fight back to rescue the Grandmaster, to save the realm, to save the Void… honor and decency compel me to fight for my father’s honor, for his legacy… I guess you would call us the Faithful at this point. We have faith in the return of the Grandmaster to her ultimate power. Unlike the Arbiter, she truly has been a friend to those in the realm. Sure, she has people fight to death in her arena, but it’s always of their choice. It’s an honor to die in the arena for the Grandmaster’s pleasure. She has brought peace and prosperity to the Empire.” Locket: “You have my bow.” Flynry: “And my fists.” Toddleheim: “And my new gnashing teeth.”
80. 3:06:17 Lyrus’s true form. He transforms back to his Goliath form: bald, seven feet tall, grey skin, tattoos like tiger stripes. He sheathes his swords. Flynry turns human too, visibly disappointed that everyone looks “quite normal” again. Lyrus chuckles: “I think my father would like you. He wasn’t a fan of spending much time in his humanoid form either… he was a talker.” “Well… you’ll be wanting to talk to the seer.”
81. 3:07:45 The Seer. The shop has rooms, cots and beds, a makeshift military camp much like Orin’s outpost. By the forge a white-scaled dragonborn with completely white, blind eyes stops hammering. Lyrus introduces the three as having joined “to help us take back the Void from the Arbiter.” Flynry whispers to Toddleheim: “There’s a bit of irony in his name, isn’t there?” Toddleheim: “You know you’re terrible.” The Seer fumbles and smacks into his anvil, tries to shift it and can’t: “I don’t know who left this here… Let me get a look at you.” “A little bit of blind humor there.”
82. 3:10:33 “Now, are you pure of heart?” Flynry: “Is anyone truly pure of heart?” Seer: “your past doesn’t define you. I myself was quite a ruffian in my younger days. Back then, the ladies, they liked me, and I liked them, and…” he trails off. “I see goodness in you.” Flynry, openly, with an elbow jab: “I suppose eyesight doesn’t matter if you spend all your time in the dark.” Toddleheim: “You are something else.”
83. 3:12:29 Locket’s gift. “I see what’s inside and I manifest it. Tell me, what is it you desire?” Locket: “my family. I have a sister and many family and friends and small trinkets.” He gives a large reptilian smile and peers into her eyes as if he can see her; she looks away awkwardly. “I see a noble heart… Give her life for the good of others and especially for those she calls family.” He takes a glowing coal from his forge, smashes it with a glowing magical hammer (“magic forgery”) and makes a Helm of Brilliance in the form of a choker necklace set with gems, diamonds and rubies (prismatic spray, fireballs; the gem count to be rolled later). “It is nice to look at, but it can be rather fierce on the inside.”
84. 3:15:10 Flynry’s gift. Flynry: “I’m but a humble traveler. I grew tired of my same life… I said, Flynry, you’re going to pack your belongings… and go see all there is to see… I thought I would see a lot more places by now and have maybe killed a lot less things. But I’ve made true companions along the way… I’m with them till the end.” Seer: “I see a weary soul. A soul that hasn’t quite found his place yet.” He forges a plain gold loop on a chain. At his touch it flattens and expands into a spinning compass rose: the Atlas of Endless Horizons (Arcane Gate, Dimension Door, Gate, Misty Step, Plane Shift, Teleportation Circle, Word of Recall; three charges). “May this serve to guide your feet, no matter what plane you choose to set them in.”
85. 3:18:07 Toddleheim’s gifts. “How about you, old man?” Toddleheim: “I’ve done lots of things that I’m proud of and things that I’m not so proud of… the one last thing that drives me forward is the adventure… I may make it to retirement, I may not, but if I don’t, it was time well served with great, great teammates.” Seer: “I see another traveler, someone looking for that last hurrah… I am a man of many years myself… I was going to save it for myself, but I’ve sensed a kindred soul in you. And besides, I’m tired.” First, a potion of longevity: Toddleheim de-ages 12 years. Flynry: “Toddlheim, what happened to your face? Merlin’s beard.” (Drew: “he has essentially given you 12 more years to adventure.”) “I’m kind of a homebody anyway.” Second, a plain gold ring: a dimensional loop, “a piece of a whole. I’m not skilled enough to make the entire Orrery of the Wanderer.” It can send his body out of the material plane for a minute (dimensional cloak) and fold up to 60 ft of space as if it were 5, each once per day, plus +1 to strength saves. “These are priceless artifacts… I just barely have the supplies to make them.”
86. 3:23:02 The Seer: “I sense that you will do what is right with these. She will save us all.” (The “she” is unclear.) “I’m tired.” He lies down on a box near Lyrus, maybe mistaking it for a bed, and falls asleep snoring. Lyrus: “The Seer hasn’t made a magical item in over 25 years. He must see something very special inside of you.”
87. 3:24:22 Lyrus: “We’re compatriots now. Your home is my home… I like the cut of your jib,” with a punch to the shoulder. Flynry has never heard the expression. Lyrus: “You’ll learn a lot of phrases around here… two in the hand, one in the pantry.” Flynry: “That reminds me, have you got a galley?”
88. 3:25:18 The goblin. In the makeshift kitchen and dining room, a shifty goblin is rolling dice with an elf: “I swear to God he’d cheat me one more time!” The smug elf (“I would never”) bows, sweeps the goblin’s coins into his hat, puts it back on his head and walks off. Flynry: “I think I know that little fella.” The goblin looks up wide-eyed (“Oh shit”) and bolts. Flynry: “I suppose he’s not yet vaccinated.” (Inferred: this is the goblin from the gambling match Flynry won his bracelet back from with his “condition”; see 1:04:16.)
89. 3:26:58 The night. Drew narrates the night: food and friendship. Locket still remembers the Arbiter’s hatred and darkness. Toddleheim remembers the cost of the fire spell, “forever burned on your soul.” Flynry, disappointed that not everyone’s in beast form, spins the compass rose and wonders where life will take him.
90. 3:28:04 Flynry: “For only being a span of a week, I feel like I’ve lived several lifetimes by now.” He asks whether the Arbiter would really hurt the Grandmaster. Toddleheim: “The Arbiter seems to be completely out of control.” Flynry asks how they’ll convince the Grandmaster. Locket: “We have many allies here.” Flynry: “I know that he has her trust… perhaps we can appeal to his sense of longing.” Locket: “I did see a lot in him, a lot of anger and conflict.” Toddleheim: “Maybe we should ask him about the relationship with his father.” Flynry: “he doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who had a very strong father figure.” Toddleheim: “who with a good father figure would make an extremely large statue of themselves?” Locket: “when we fought him, that was only one portion of him. I actually believe him. The real him might be much more of a force to be reckoned with.”
91. 3:31:07 Toddleheim’s eyes flash yellow. Locket hopes he can control it. Flynry: “I think it’s my favorite quality of yours, Toddlheim.” “It’s becoming a fast favorite of mine too.” Drew closes the scene: sleep takes them, with more fights to come. Perhaps they’ll die, perhaps Toddleheim never gets his last adventure, “maybe you’ll never find your sister.”
92. 3:32:32 The Arbiter, alone. He paces his arena: “What happened? This was my arena. I am God here. No one leaves! Without my say so.” He reaches out to the werewolves that failed him and turns time on them: they grow old, white and grey, then bones, then dust. His whole werewolf force is wiped out with a turn of his hand. “Well, I guess it’s starting from scratch then. Next time.” Looking at his statue’s face: “We will be victorious. And one day, we will rule D20 Deathmatch.”

Who and what appears

Characters

Toddleheim (“Toddlheim the Great”) (Ahnubyss). An old spellcaster: Enlarge/Reduce, Acid Splash, Magic Missile, Burning Hands, Cause Fear, Misty Step. Resistant to poison (Drew extended it to necrotic for the kobold bites).

• Backstory: he once lost control in a bar and burned it to the ground; everyone died (“not good people, but it wasn’t the death that they deserved”).
• From the Box of Chaos: one use of Fire Storm, paid for with his own blood. He wiped out the second wave with it.
• Bitten by a werewolf and gained lycanthropy; kept his mind; Lyrus talked him back. His eyes flash yellow.
• From the Seer: a potion of longevity (−12 years) and a dimensional loop ring.
• “A terrible traveler” who wants passport stamps. Driven by adventure and “one last hurrah”; may not make it to retirement.

Locket (Miss_Magitek). A cat-like Gloom Stalker ranger: feline agility, claws, a climbing speed, and runs on all fours. Longbow with flame-imbued quiver, short sword, Hunter’s Mark. Her Fear spell turns her face feral.

• Has a twin sister (Drew’s narration: “maybe you’ll never find your sister”). She is curious by nature and picks up the doll.
• From the box: a medallion of thoughts shaped as a heart-shaped locket, plus a faint halo glow. Used Detect Thoughts on the Arbiter.
• Killed the Deathlock with an arrow to the skull.
• From the Seer: a Helm of Brilliance as a jeweled choker.
• Bonded briefly to the doll “Dolly”; was duplicated in a portal, and the duplicate burned.
• The potion of storm giant strength from the last episode has worn off.

Flynry (BDTeej). A shifter monk: flurries, Step of the Wind, Minor Illusion, Inflict Wounds, Deflect Missiles. Beast form, which he loves and wishes everyone kept.

• A “humble traveler” who left his old life to see the world; “I’ve not got another name.”
• Gave the box a bracelet from his home world (once almost lost gambling, then won back by claiming “a condition”). Got armor of resistance (necrotic), a breastplate that fits his beast form.
• Clearly smitten with Locket’s feral form.
• Blue-fire fists. Saved Toddleheim on the tiles.
• From the Seer: the Atlas of Endless Horizons (a compass rose necklace).
• Teases the Seer about being blind.

The Arbiter (Drew).

• Branded the three traitors and staged the fight.
• Owns his own arena: a temple above a city with a giant statue of himself and a black throne. Eats grapes and drinks wine.
• Claims the visage they beat was “a fraction of my power… a golem, a stand-in, a mist.” Summons creatures of darkness from the floor and heals the champions.
• Admits he hoped to manipulate them, and that he killed Orin (“And I liked Orin”). “This entire realm will be mine someday.”
• Seethes with hatred of the Grandmaster, plus shame and embarrassment. Knew he was being mind-probed and crushed the banister until he bled.
• Called “the right hand of the Grandmaster” and “a staple of virtue” by Lyrus.
• Ages his failed werewolves to dust by turning time. “I am God here.”

Lyrus (Drew). Orin’s son.

• A werebear in black plate, wielding two Void swords of “solidified gloom.” The swords cut portals in reality, create singularities, and shatter portals like mirrors.
• True form: a Goliath, bald, 7 ft, grey skin, tiger-stripe tattoos.
• Heard the Arbiter confess and vowed to take his head “someday.”
• Saved the trio, and dove into the void to save Locket. Exhausted by the magic.
• Leads a small band at a covert raid hideout in a blacksmith shop; “I guess you would call us the Faithful.”
• Phrases: “the cut of your jib,” “two in the hand, one in the pantry.”

Orin (mentioned). Commander of the eastern outpost. Killed by the Arbiter (by an obliterate spell, per the players). He disliked his humanoid form and “was a talker.” Considered the Arbiter “like a father.”

The Seer (Drew).

• A white-scaled, blind dragonborn smith and magic forger. Bumps into anvils; “a little bit of blind humor.”
• Was “quite a ruffian in my younger days… the ladies, they liked me.”
• Sees what is inside people and manifests it into items. Had not made a magic item in over 25 years.
• Can’t make the whole Orrery of the Wanderer. Is a “homebody” and tired; sleeps on a box.

Orin’s forces: a goblin, an elf and an orc, who hid among the Acolytes and dropped in. The orc held off the Arbiter and was obliterated. At the hideout, a shifty goblin loses dice to a cheating elf and flees from Flynry.

Dolly: a porcelain doll from a chaos event (“Play with me”; “We’re going to be friends”). She burned a necrotic rune into Locket, served her, and died in the Fire Storm.

Enemies: a Deathlock (mastermind) and five vampiric kobolds in wave one; three Deathlocks, three vampire spawn (“three women”), a night hag and three werewolves in wave two; then dozens of werewolves through the portals.

The Acolytes: they gave hero points and Luckies, summoned the Box of Chaos, and believed the fight was a normal, voluntary Deathmatch.

Places

• The Sands of the Arena (the Grandmaster’s arena), seen “the night the Arbiter was taken.”
• The Arbiter’s arena: temple-side, high above a city, a giant Arbiter statue, constant lightning, a balcony, a black throne, braziers, a flag post, a ledge over a drop.
• The portal realms: a mountaintop pass with floating debris; a hub with blood, fire, green and space portals; a plane of chaotic energy with floating tiles over a relativity-warping void.
• A city street, with an unnamed city and its infantry.
• The covert blacksmith hideout (forge, cots, armory and kitchen).
• Mentioned: Orin’s Keep / the eastern outpost, the lava plains (several days’ journey), the Dread Fortress.

Items

• Box of Chaos: summoned by the Acolytes; takes meaningful sacrifices (a Pearl of Healing earlier, a bracelet, a potion of healing, blood). For the first time it offered a choice of items.
• Armor of resistance (necrotic, +1 AC); medallion of thoughts (heart locket); Fire Storm (one use).
• Helm of Brilliance (choker), Atlas of Endless Horizons (compass rose), potion of longevity, dimensional loop (a piece of the Orrery of the Wanderer).
• Lyrus’s Void swords. The severed Arbiter hands, which shriveled away.

Lore statements

• “Never before have the champions refused to fight” (the Arbiter).
• Lyrus: the Grandmaster’s arena deaths “always of their choice… an honor to die in the arena for the Grandmaster’s pleasure”; she “brought peace and prosperity to the Empire.”
• The Arbiter can create arenas, summon creatures, heal, and age beings to dust by manipulating time.
• Portal travel can duplicate a person, “twist fate,” and tear at a body atom by atom.
• Flynry: all of this has happened in “a span of a week.”

Quotes by character

Toddleheim

• 0:04:43 “Yes, that is quite true, yes. But not against my compatriots, no. You’ve been through too much.”
• 0:06:38 “I feel like he may be slightly overcompensating for something there.”
• 0:08:20 “I might be able to stamp my passport better. We’re not going to fight each other. I’m a terrible traveler.”
• 1:33:08 “You call this fair? Why don’t you come down here and fight us yourself?”
• 1:47:19 “One time I lost control in a bar and I burned the place to the ground. Everyone died. They weren’t good people, but it wasn’t the death that they deserved.”
• 2:02:49 “I slowly close my eyes, and I’m back in the bar. And my hands are already on fire.”
• 2:57:06 “You’re not the only one.”
• 3:03:11 “We’ve beaten him once before. We’ll do it again.”
• 3:06:09 “And my fists. And my new gnashing teeth.” (speaker uncertain: Toddleheim or Flynry)
• 3:18:20 “I may make it to retirement, I may not, but if I don’t, it was time well served with great, great teammates.”
• 3:30:17 “Who with a good father figure would make an extremely large statue of themselves?”

Locket

• 0:03:13 “You can’t expect us to fight. We just went through so much together.”
• 0:12:00 “I don’t trust anything that wants a bite.”
• 1:40:16 “Arbiter, is this really what you want?”
• 1:41:12 “We didn’t want you to kill Orin. You made that choice. Don’t blame it on us.”
• 1:45:05 “We must stay strong. I think we’re breaking him.”
• 1:58:33 “It’s all right, Dolly. You’ll get him next time.”
• 2:09:13 “Dolly! I’m so sorry, I failed you.” (labeled 06; Locket by context)
• 2:36:48 “Goodbye, my friends.”
• 3:06:05 “You have my bow.”
• 3:12:47 “I suppose my family. I have a sister and many family and friends and small trinkets.”
• 3:30:48 “The real him might be much more of a force to be reckoned with.”

Flynry

• 0:03:39 “He’s very tall, but he’s a liar.”
• 0:09:17 “You got your tushy whooped quite nicely.”
• 0:19:04 “They’re quite feisty… I’m just going to keep them over here for a bit.”
• 0:29:43 “I think I like you when you’re bigger… Proving to be a shower and a grower.”
• 1:30:17 “I think you should tremble, Arbiter.”
• 1:31:28 “I don’t hide my friends in the floor.”
• 2:57:06 “I think I like you better like this.”
• 3:09:00 “There’s a bit of irony in his name, isn’t there?”
• 3:11:28 “I suppose eyesight doesn’t matter if you spend all your time in the dark.”
• 3:15:21 “I thought I would see a lot more places by now and have maybe killed a lot less things.”
• 3:20:25 “Toddlheim, what happened to your face? Merlin’s beard.”
• 3:28:04 “For only being a span of a week, I feel like I’ve lived several lifetimes by now.”

The Arbiter

• 0:01:15 “Acolytes! I have returned to satiate your bloodlust.”
• 0:03:42 “If the Grandmaster was here, she’d be appalled. Never before have the champions refused to fight.”
• 0:06:29 “But maybe you’ll fight in mine. I know, it’s a little garish… sometimes you have to love yourself.”
• 0:09:25 “What you defeated was merely a visage, a fraction of my power. A golem, a stand-in, a mist.”
• 0:10:03 “In this arena, death is certain.”
• 1:11:25 “Champions, if you won’t fight each other, then you will fight all of the creatures of the darkness.” (0:11:25)
• 1:31:43 “It’s like a fine painting, like a work of art… It’s not quite done until it’s done.”
• 1:40:53 “You even made me kill Orin. And I liked Orin.”
• 1:41:29 “This entire realm will be mine someday. And it begins here in this arena, my arena.”
• 1:45:41 “Champion, do you want for nothing?… Maybe even your own blood.”
• 2:09:21 “What is happening? This is not what I planned!”
• 3:32:42 “What happened? This was my arena. I am God here. No one leaves!”
• 3:33:39 “We will be victorious. And one day, we will rule D20 Deathmatch.”

Lyrus

• 2:10:52 “I was listening to everything you said. You murdered my father. And I will have your head. But maybe it’s not today.”
• 2:14:17 “Keep moving, I’ll hold them off!”
• 2:21:36 “I don’t know why there’s two of you, but do something!”
• 2:25:37 “What kind of game is this?”
• 2:37:49 “I don’t know if this is gonna work!”
• 2:58:23 “Calm now, friend. Easy. This is a dangerous time for you. Breathe.”
• 3:00:10 “My name is Lyrus. From what I’ve gathered, you knew my father, Orin.”
• 3:01:10 “He died fighting for a traitor. For a man that he considered like a father to him.”
• 3:03:18 “I don’t know how. He’s so powerful. So good-looking.”
• 3:05:20 “I guess you would call us the Faithful at this point. We have faith in the return of the Grandmaster to her ultimate power.”
• 3:05:20 “It’s an honor to die in the arena for the Grandmaster’s pleasure.”
• 3:24:22 “I like the cut of your jib.”

The Seer

• 3:10:33 “Now, are you pure of heart?”
• 3:10:49 “Your past doesn’t define you. I myself was quite a ruffian in my younger days.”
• 3:12:29 “I see what’s inside and I manifest it.”
• 3:14:59 “It is nice to look at, but it can be rather fierce on the inside.”
• 3:16:12 “I see a weary soul. A soul that hasn’t quite found his place yet.”
• 3:17:58 “May this serve to guide your feet, no matter what plane you choose to set them in.”
• 3:21:32 “I’m not skilled enough to make the entire Orrery of the Wanderer.”
• 3:23:02 “These are priceless artifacts… She will save us all.”

Dolly

• 1:56:28 “Play with me.”
• 1:57:33 “We’re going to be friends.”
• 2:09:04 “No!”

Goblin and elf (hideout)

• 3:25:18 Goblin: “I swear to God he’d cheat me one more time!” Elf: “I would never, I would never.”
• 3:26:31 Goblin: “Oh shit.”