S2E17 — Fate of the Arbiter - The Hall of Fates — Toddleheim, Locket and Flynry reach the Grandmaster

Champions and players	Ahnubyss as Toddleheim; Miss_Magitek as Locket; BDTeej as Flynry
Result	none. The party defeats a sludge elemental, reaches the Grandmaster and exposes the Arbiter. The Grandmaster and the Arbiter agree to a tournament for the Grandmaster title in one week.
Arena	none (campaign episode). Locations: the Faithful’s hideout (an old smith shop), a city market district, the sewers under the Dread Fortress, the Hall of Fates, the Grandmaster’s throne room, the Arbiter’s ice-covered throne room
Hosts	Mudcat (Mudcat) narrates and voices all NPCs (Lyrus, Kenny, Baptiste, Frank, the merchant, the Arbiter); Caustic Phoenix voices Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer in the final scene

What happens

Recap narration (0:00:00)

1. 0:00:00 Drew opens with “Fate of the Arbiter, the Halls of Fate.” The heroes are found “in the future”, months after the Sands of the Arena. They have joined the resistance and “been on countless adventures since.”
2. Recap of the earlier parts:
   • The Grandmaster once hired them to find the Arbiter, “kidnapped by the servants of the Void.” They found him and realized he was the bad guy, “throwing a coup against the Grandmaster unbeknownst to her.” (“Your sudden but inevitable betrayal.”)
   • They defeated “the visage of the Arbiter” and travelled back to the Dread Fortress, “only to realize it was another ruse. And the Arbiter was standing in front of you.”
   • He threw them into the arena to fight to the death. When they refused, he transported them to “his very own arena… under the giant statue of himself in the shade of this monolith.” There they fought werewolves, vampiric kobolds and hags.
   • Lyrus saved them, “with his two void swords ripping open time and space, creating portals for you to escape.” A chase from werewolf after werewolf ended in a castle ward, where they slew the werewolves and the hag.
   • Toddleheim, “the booty loving wizard,” was bitten and became a werewolf (“Rawr”, described at the table as “a growl meets Jeff Goldblum’s laugh”). He kept his wits and killed the last werewolf.
   • They walked into the hideout of the Faithful, “the resistance you are now a part of, that has been plotting to help the Grandmaster overthrow the Arbiter.” “She doesn’t know that this is happening right now, but they are working in the shadows on her behalf.”
   • The Seer, an old blind Dragonborn, forged each of them a magic item, “as he saw past what he couldn’t see to see inside of you.”

Back at the hideout (0:04:23)

3. 0:04:42 They return from a mission into the busy hideout: people drinking, eating and talking strategy. They have lived here “several months.”
4. 0:05:24 — The living tacos. The mission they just finished involved tacos that came to life, “with their toppings… spilling over their sides.” Flynry: “the results were quite delicious.” Toddleheim: “those tacos, they were definitely something else.” Flynry: “These missions these last few months have been stranger and stranger every time we leave the building.”
5. 0:06:19 — Toddleheim’s “enhancements.” Locket asks about his new abilities. Toddleheim: “Hair is growing quite a lot faster in unexpected places, but I’m taking care of business as one should.” Flynry: “You can use a code for manscaping.com,” and the table riffs about sponsorship (“Be ready for the full moon every night”).
6. 0:07:57 Flynry rolls perception (16) and spots someone new: “the fine-looking gentleman over there wearing the blue and red with the purple stuff.” Toddleheim: “His swag is quite on point.” Flynry: “The blind dragon told us we’re special so we can probably talk to anyone.”
7. 0:09:24 — Kenny. Flynry steps on Kenny the goblin: “Hey, would you get the fuck off me?” Kenny complains: “First you’re trying to give me diseases, now you’re trying to step on me.” Flynry asks if he’s got his shorts yet. Kenny: “I’m working on it, don’t rush me. It’s been months.”
   • Kenny is now missing an arm and has large claw marks across his chest and face. He watches Toddleheim “very, very kind of at a distance.”
   • Flynry: “Would seem you’ve been attending those secret meetings again. Did you remember the safe word this time?” Kenny flees: “I have things, I gotta go.”
8. 0:11:14 — Baptiste. The man in the blue cloak lowers his hood: a slender elf with silvery hair. Flynry: “Is your name by any chance Ryzand?” “I am sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am Baptiste… I have never stabbed any of you before, have I?”
   • He does a knife trick and throws a silver knife right past Locket’s head into the wall, then winks. Locket, blushing under her fur, pulls it out: “I’ll keep this.” “I would have it no other way.” It is a pure silver +1 dagger.
   • Elbowing Toddleheim: “I’ve never stabbed you before, but I guess the day is still young.” Flynry: in Locket’s case “the night would still be young, just judging by the color of her cheeks.” Flynry to Toddleheim: “I think he’s quite charming.” “Maybe he will succeed where so many have failed before.”
9. 0:14:26 — The knife smith. Kenny recruited Baptiste, who forgets his name (“Timothy?” “His name’s Kenny”). He says Kenny “promised that there would be stabbing.” “I’m a knife smith by trade, and by knife smith I mean that I just stab people.”
   • He lectures on the nuances of stabbing: at range, skinny blade, fat blade, twisting or not. “It’s really about how you use them and more about the emotion than it is the knife itself.” Toddleheim: “Are you sure we’re still talking about knives and stabbing people?” Locket’s blush keeps deepening.
10. 0:16:36 — Introductions.
    • Flynry: “a traveler. I’ve got a bit of a condition.” His arm briefly turns into a beastly, clawed, furry arm. Baptiste: “you might want to get that checked out. Although good for stabbing, maybe.”
    • Toddleheim: “Toddleheim the Great… This was supposed to be my last adventure, a long time ago, and yet I’m still here. Slightly… enhanced.” His eyes flash yellow and his teeth and claws grow. Baptiste: “your party is in no short supply of fur.”
11. 0:18:27 — The potion of aging. Toddleheim drank the Seer’s potion of aging: he is physically about 12 years younger (“You were 112, now you’re 100 or whatever,” a table aside). Only “some of the fine wrinkles have gone away.”
12. 0:19:00 — Baptiste propositions Toddleheim (“we could teach each other if you would like to practice your stabbing”). Toddleheim deflects: “my expertise is in wizardry and magic, so I feel like maybe Locket might be a more preferential partner for you to practice your stabbing with.” Baptiste: “I guess a no is a no, but if you change your mind, I’ll be around.” Locket is “a little sad.” The table decides he may be interested in several people (a “Prince Oberyn thing”), so Locket “might still have a chance.” Baptiste bows, swishes his cloak “a little too much,” and leaves for “important things to do out on the streets with the stabbing.”
13. 0:20:49 — Frank. An orc in furs has sat through all of this. Flynry: “Sorry about all that, Frank.”
    • Frank: “if I was gonna take odds, he’s not gonna live more than three or four days.” And: “I think the knife was his penis.” Toddleheim: “I do believe he was nothing but subtle.”
    • Frank is the resident chef. His meals are “un-gutted small rodents and stews of whatever he’s found on the ground… and maybe some oats.” “I make a mean raccoon taco.” Its crunch is “the family secret” (Drew: “It’s the pulverized bones”).
    • He stirs a cauldron set on an old forge with his dirty battle axe, tastes it, and sprinkles dirt in “for some texture seasoning,” whistling.
14. 0:24:01 — Lyrus. They find Lyrus (“the bear… the Void Swords”) “in the same place we left him six months ago.” In a makeshift HQ room with schematics on the table, he dismisses an armored soldier: “We don’t have much time though, so get with it. Make haste.”
    • “Did you bring me any back? Because Frank’s cooking dinner again.” Flynry: the ground beef wouldn’t keep in the sun. Lyrus: “Sounds like a classic taco job.”
15. 0:26:49 — Status report.
    • The northern road may be clear after the party’s mission, but the southern and eastern fronts are still heavily guarded (“overrun by the Arbiter’s forces”). The enemy is “hiding in plain sight… now, it’s just… knife to the back.”
    • Lyrus misses the old ways: “you knocked on the door. And you said, I want to take your fucking castle.” He admits that’s “why I am no longer in charge of strategy. I’ve employed minds sharper than mine.”
    • At the table, the players note Lyrus talks “like he’s older than his dad that we met like months ago.” Locket’s player: “he is the son.”
    • The Grandmaster “hasn’t been seen outside of the Dread Fortress in weeks, other than the occasional Deathmatch.” The Faithful’s messengers to her keep going missing, “probably the Arbiter’s doing. He’s tricked us multiple times.”
16. 0:30:36 — The mission. Locket suggests they send a message themselves. Lyrus: “that is your next mission… If the Grandmaster isn’t going to give us an opportunity, then we’re going to have to make an opening.” They have new intel on the makeup of the Dread Fortress.
    • Flynry suggests Baptiste as the expert at “making openings.” Lyrus: “he would like to believe himself a frontline penetrator… I think he’s soft inside… He’s more of the kind of guy you send to sneak around the back door.”
17. 0:32:18 — Kenny’s briefing.
    • Kenny, his stump “still very red,” hides behind the table and watches Toddleheim. Kenny: “You were standing right there. He ripped my arm right off.” Flynry: “I don’t know many [goblins], but you all look the same.”
    • Kenny eyes “your bracelet again that he was supposed to have won in the gambling match” (“You don’t want to play some dice, do you?”). Flynry offers a game with a beastly smile, and Kenny backs up onto the table. Flynry: “Now I can see your facial features very clearly. You’ve got a kind of a crooked nose.”
    • Lyrus: “Kenny, tell them the thing.” Kenny: “The thing about the shoe?” He then paces the table with his arm in his stump behind his back and kicks open a scroll schematic:
      • “A series of old tunnels that jut up against the sewer system of the Dread Fortress. It’s not clean. It’s dirty… a little bit dangerous.”
      • It leads up “somewhere in the western wing of the Dread Fortress… It could be the kitchen, it could be the Hall of Fates,” or “the tiger pit” or “the brewery.” The schematics were smuggled out “a little bit broken, a little bit torn.”
    • Toddleheim: “If it does go sideways, I will be back for that other arm.”
    • Kenny will show them the entrance “but I’m not going any further than that, especially not with you.”
18. 0:38:14 Lyrus: “When the tool doesn’t fit, sometimes you just have to make it fit.” He tells them to rest, eat and say goodbyes. Toddleheim stands beside the seated Lyrus “very intently”: “Very good. Jolly good.”
19. 0:40:03 — The hideout.
    • It is still “a makeshift headquarters… out of an old smith shop.” There are no quarters: sheets hang as partitions like a bazaar, along with clotheslines and clutter. It feels like “a college dorm,” with no cleaning rota. Magical fans (thin wood set to work by magic) stir air that is hot from the forges and musty with armor and leather. The Seer once “conked out” on a box.
    • Locket: “I’m kind of getting tired of all of you. I just want to relax on a beach or something.” Flynry: “being the only woman in this sweaty heap of a blacksmith shop.” Locket: “all this talk of stabbing… I’m over it.”
20. 0:42:48 — Flynry’s gauntlets. He searches the gear for something to reinforce his punches and finds studded leather gauntlets (+1 to unarmed strikes), “a pretty common item.”
21. 0:44:53 They sleep early. Lyrus wakes them “shortly before noon”: he had expected them back “in like an hour” but let them sleep.

The market (0:46:27)

22. 0:46:27 As Kenny leads them out, Baptiste comes in from a night out, “a little rough around the edges.” He bows and swishes his cape, winks at Locket and also at Toddleheim. Drew rolls stealth so that each thinks the wink was only for them. Kenny: “if you could get out of the way.”
23. 0:47:45 The cobblestone district from the werewolf chase is busy before noon: street-sweeping, roast ducks hung in windows, fruit markets for travelers and locals. Flynry suggests Frank could shop here instead of “cooking up rats underneath the forge.”
24. 0:49:01 — The trench-coat merchant. Next to a stall of nice carved silverware stands a man in a trench coat flashing knockoff wooden spoons, wearing “very short shorts” underneath. “You looking for spoons, bud?” Flynry: “Sure, sure, Ryan, I’ll come see you first.” Locket (perception 19) glimpses jewelry, chains, knives and vial-shaped pockets that may hold potions.
25. 0:51:01 — The mood bracelet. Flynry buys a small green bracelet. The merchant: “It came away from the south… a family heirloom. Of course, not my family.” He charges 10 gold, “no refunds… some say it has magical properties.” It is a mood bracelet: it changes color as he clamps it on.
26. 0:52:17 — The giant spoon. From the honest stall Flynry buys the largest wooden spoon, “the one that looks like a boat,” for two silver.
27. 0:53:12 — A gift for Kenny. “Kenny, I know you’ve admired my jewelry.” Flynry slides the mood bracelet over Kenny’s stump as an armband. “It’s turning red. I suppose that means that you like it.” Kenny: “I don’t not like it. It doesn’t really go with my outfit… I’ll appreciate it later, but maybe when I get the fuck away from him.” “It’s certainly not an arm.” The band turns blue as Kenny feels sorry for himself.
28. 0:54:50 — The spoon delivery. Flynry pays a bored teenage stall worker a silver to take the spoon to “a man named Frank” at the forge: “tell him that this is what he’s supposed to use to make the food from now on, not to use his axe.” The teen, flipping through a scroll, trudges off; down the road: “Yeah, who the fuck wants the spoon?”
29. 0:56:15 — Locket’s necklace.
    • Locket asks the merchant for “something very nice to impress somebody… of elven heritage.” Merchant: “Are we talking like explode? Because that’s impressive.” He nudges Toddleheim (“I see what’s happening here”).
    • He produces a thin chain of glowing elven silver with a large ornamental antlered deer pendant set with small stones (rubies or sapphires). “A sentimental piece… close to my heart.” The price is 6 gold; Locket has five.
    • Toddleheim half-transforms (eyes, teeth, hair): “I do hope this is quite sentimental to you.” The merchant, unnerved: “Five is fine… just trying to feed the family. And now I feel like I got ripped off.” Flynry: “I gave him 10 gold for a mood bracelet.”
30. 1:03:22 — Frank and the spoon. Frank tries the spoon, then rubs it in the ground “to season it.” “Not bad quality. Fine craftsmanship. I like the handle.” The teenager just leans in the doorway.
31. 1:04:33 Lyrus: “we do have to keep moving.” Kenny: “What the fuck, are you guys coming or what?” Flynry: “we’ve actually never had a chance to do anything but fight and kill people.” Kenny: “the fate of the realm is in the balance, but sure, if you wanna go to the mall.”

Into the sewers (1:05:16)

33. 1:05:16 Kenny leads them through seedier, colder alleys of “don’t fuck with me” faces to a dead-end alley barely shoulder-width. He wrenches a circular grate free one-handed. The screech echoes, but “this is the part of town where people just don’t give a fuck.” Kenny slides down the pipe, and Lyrus scrunches his huge shoulders and follows.
34. 1:07:48 Flynry: “Well, gang, I suppose we’ve got to go in the poo-poo place.” Perception: Toddleheim rolls a nat 20 and steels himself against the smell. Flynry rolls a nat 1, takes the full wave, fails a Con save and vomits (minor damage): “Sorry about the display there. I’ve lost my tacos.” The rats come out to clean it up.
35. 1:11:10 — The ride. It starts to rain and the storm drains flood. They slide for what feels like miles through pipes, catching glimpses of light through cracks, lit sewers, homes and large buildings. Flynry and Locket stop themselves at the outlet. Toddleheim shoots out, and Lyrus snatches him just before he falls into the pool.
36. 1:13:12 — Kenny dies.
    • Kenny had shot out first and fallen into the sewage. It is the waste “of a magical society… on the cusp of some machinery”: oil, sludge, magical waste and toxic biological waste.
    • His skin sizzles and he fails the save. He sinks with his arm raised, melting away, until only the mood armband is left, and then it melts too.
    • Lyrus: “Don’t get into the water. Don’t let his death be in vain. He showed us the dangers of this place.” The schematics dissolved with him. Flynry is visibly upset after just trying to mend their “tenuous relationship.”
37. 1:16:32 The chamber shows signs of use: fires, small rooms with barrels, boxes and makeshift cots, maybe smugglers or squatters. Locket rolls a nat 20 looking for exits. A dark tunnel leads on 20 feet under the acid; narrow one-person ledges run along the side. Flynry floats a Lara Croft-style box puzzle; they consider “a box boat.”
38. 1:21:14 — Flynry’s dive. Flynry shifts and dives, “to redeem my embarrassment after hurling my guts up.”
    • The acid feels like gasoline on the skin, then like scratching a sunburn, and it stings his eyes. He sees iron bars catching debris halfway down the tunnel.
    • In a small square side opening with a light source, he surfaces in an air pocket full of old tools and boxes and pulls a chain with a handle. The water level drops by half, so the upper tunnel drains to trickles.
    • Swimming back he rolls a nat 20 (“your skin is already saturated with enough acid”). “That was, um, uncomfortable. But I suppose we can walk now.”
39. 1:28:58 — Toddleheim heals Flynry: a green glow engulfs him, mending his skin, regrowing hair and even mending his clothes, “99% of the way there.”
40. 1:29:58 They keep to the upper walkways in case “a sudden wave of this wonderful juice” comes. At a T-junction Toddleheim reasons that the source is upstream, so they go against the flow (“paddling up Ship Creek”).

Rats (1:32:40)

41. 1:32:40 Squeals and splashes: waves of rats pour from both tunnels, fleeing something upstream and clawing over each other and the party to get out of the acid.
42. The fight:
    • Locket cuts into a swarm with her +1 short sword and an offhand blade.
    • Flynry takes a bite on the ankle moving clear, then punches a swarm “into the dirt” with the new gauntlets (“These rats make me angry”). He saves his ki: “there’s gonna be more important enemies than rats.”
    • Toddleheim rules out Cause Fear (“These rats are already afraid”). He fires a Fire Bolt that ignites the oil on the rats. They become squirming flaming balls that smack into the walls, “almost like a fire elemental… just moving, living fire.” He Misty Steps across the tunnel away from them.
    • A swarm bites Lyrus. Lyrus rolls a nat 1 and drops one of his Void short swords into the acid, which chips the blade. With the other sword, each rat he kills “folds in on themselves into a small black void”, a small singularity.
    • Locket casts flame arrows on her quiver and burns a swarm: “you see the fire, just like a little candlelight. And then it just suddenly engulfs in this giant flame.”
    • Flynry finishes the last pack whack-a-mole style. Furious (“I’ve thrown up today, I swam in acid… the guy that I tried to have a friendship with is dead”), he faces one last rat looking up “like please,” and rams his fist down so it pops “like a water balloon.”
43. 1:48:17 Lyrus retrieves his sword. “It just looks like a black chasm in space in the shape of a sword, but the blades have been dulled a little bit.” Lyrus: “Well, that was disgusting… It might be some sort of Rat King situation.” Toddleheim: “I feel we are definitely the scariest beasts in this tunnel.”
44. 1:49:41 Flynry steps aside to pee into the acid. Break.

The sludge elemental (1:50:23)

45. 1:50:32 Upstream is a deeper service room. The walls ooze sludge through the stone, slimy with “years of sludge and algae and mold,” and condensation drips. Locket (nat 20) sees the sewage flowing upward and in circles. “We should be careful… Danger ahead.” She shoots an arrow into it (Flynry: “Just make sure it’s not Kenny who’s actually been alive”). The liquid pulls in all the solids and gunk and rises as a huge sludge elemental “with an arrow sticking out of its face.”
46. The fight:
    • Locket’s flaming arrow blasts it for double damage, but burning it gives off noxious fumes that poison Toddleheim within 20 ft. Flynry, hidden in a side room behind a wall: “Toddleheim looks like he’s about to lose his tacos.” Locket: “it’s very reactive to fire, but also noxious.” Flynry: “I’m going to stay in this little room over here. Good luck.”
    • Toddleheim creates a bonfire at its edge (“he’s not gonna be smart enough to avoid it”) and Misty Steps into Flynry’s room: “Sorry, Locket.” “I’ll manage.”
    • Lyrus casts Haste on Locket and channels divinity with a Vow of Enmity, pointing his Void sword: “Not today, shit monster!”
    • Flynry’s combo: he dips his gauntlet tips in the surface muck and Locket lights them with a flaming arrow. Drew lets the burn slide (“burning off the shit”). He sprints, kicks off the wall over the bonfire, and brings both flaming fists down, then follows with a Flurry of Blows. He is immune to poison, so he is “just showered in this stuff.”
    • The elemental reforms by pulling up debris and heals. The bonfire burns it. It slams twice at Flynry and misses both, then rears back like a whip and uses its “shit cannon,” a cone of necrotic and acid sludge. Lyrus and Locket fail; Flynry’s player saves. The sludge stays on them until scraped off.
    • Locket, hasted, clears the sludge and fires three flaming arrows that burn “giant singeing holes” through it.
    • Toddleheim curves a Fire Bolt around the corner for a huge hit; pieces melt off. He follows with three magic missiles that splatter sludge across the wall. Flynry: “Like the inside of a toilet.”
    • Lyrus drops Haste and casts Bless on Flynry: “Finish it now!”
    • Flynry re-dips: “One more time, love.” He holds his fists up “like the apple on my head,” and Locket’s arrow grazes both sets of knuckles (“Slow-mo, baby”). He clacks them together like a hockey player as little flaming poops fly, then lands a blurring anime-style flurry that leaves it porous.
47. 2:23:51 — The kill. Only its roaring face is left. Flynry rams both fists down its throat, grabs the “dingle hopper” at the back, and twists so that it explodes into a shit fireball. He’s left covered in slime: “I think I got him.”
48. 2:24:51 The blast ignites every liquid surface. In the firelight they see a gate into the next tunnel, with a lever beyond it that would open it. The gate’s bars go down below the water. Flynry: “Are any of you happen to be Jedi?” Toddleheim stretches Mold Earth past its normal limits (needs 19, succeeds) and makes a walk-through tunnel under the gate big enough for all of them. “Just doing what I can, you know, wizard and all.”

Under the Dread Fortress (2:28:32)

49. 2:28:50 The long tunnel ends in a dead end. Locket uses Keen Mind to recall the dissolved schematics: this spot is directly under the floors of some room in the Dread Fortress. “Don’t ask me how I remember that… I remember from that little goblin.” Light shines through square stone ceiling tiles on support beams about seven feet up, where the mortar has chipped.
50. 2:31:43 They weigh Acid Splash against Mold Earth. Drew: “have I as a DM laid traps for you? Or was I too lazy?”
51. 2:33:37 — Flynry’s book. Flynry pulls out a book with “the Arcane Gate… I think maybe we got our items mixed up from the blind dragon. He is blind after all.” He casts Arcane Gate as a “snake cam” into a random spot above.
    • Through it they see a hallway of large statues.
    • A stone door guard clacks past, looks around, misses the portal (hidden behind a statue), and fades down the hall.
52. 2:38:21 Flynry proposes sending Locket first: “we send the kitty and then we see what happens.” While they debate, Toddleheim walks straight through: “I’ve been around here for a long time. It is what it is.” Crossing the hall, he steps on a shifting stone and triggers beams of lightning bouncing between the statues. He takes a big zap. Flynry: “I heard a little shriek. And I smell a bit of burning.” Flynry: “you cocky SOB.”
53. 2:42:48 Locket comes through, climbs a statue, and sees (perception 22) that the statues hold mirrors redirecting the energy. Her arrow shatters one mirror and cuts off part of the chain.
54. 2:45:14 — “Are we being watched?” Flynry: “do you think that, like, we’re being watched… a presence that is perhaps orchestrating our demise… Sounds like an Arbiter.” He looks (17) and finds nothing but the mirrors and loose floor stones over the sewer. “Forget I ever said anything.” (Table jokes: “Surprise, she’s the villain.” “It’s Baptiste the whole time!”)
55. 2:47:03 A second Arcane Gate skips the beams to a large wooden door with a heavy lock, left unlocked. Flynry: “a lock that seems intentionally left unlocked. Does that feel a bit on the nose to anyone besides me?” Locket checks for traps with a nat 20: “it’s just an unlocked door.” Toddleheim: “This guy got us fucked up, man.” They hear nothing beyond it. Silence is cast, then Pass Without a Trace, and they slip through silently.

The Hall of Fates (2:52:32)

56. 2:52:32 A long corridor with nothing on either side: “a void of space.” Series of stairs lead up to large floating mirrors, ten feet or more. Lyrus: “The Hall of Fates. I didn’t think it was real… It’s been a rumor. It’s deep in the Dread Fortress, a place where someone can see their true desires.”
57. 2:53:47 — Flynry’s first mirror. The glass shimmers “like liquid glass.” He sees himself older, perhaps, celebrated as a hero by people who seem to be friends and family, “a place where you feel as if you belong.” His player explains that Flynry has never had a home or felt connected to any place, which is why he wanders. He wipes a single tear away and comes back down without a word.
58. 2:56:05 Toddleheim: “I’ve seen enough time… Not much left for me to discover, to want.” Locket: “We are here for a job.”
59. 2:56:35 — Locket’s glance. She barely glances into one and sees Baptiste, with his elven hair, flipping his knife and winking at her. She feels a pull “besides your naturally being drawn to him,” shrugs it off and walks on, blushing.
60. 2:58:15 — Toddleheim’s squeaking. He hears a squeaking like glass being cleaned, over and over. He keeps his head down and never looks.
61. 2:59:09 — Flynry is caught.
    • A second mirror shows “more of the same but more intense”: a large family feast, a home, potentially grandchildren. Flynry climbs toward it hypnotically, eyes welling: “the ultimate fantasy he didn’t even know he had.”
    • Toddleheim tries to pull him and rolls a nat 1. The mirror has reached out “with a liquid quality” and tethered itself to Flynry.
    • Flynry sets his pack down to settle in. Flynry is described as 6’2”, 250, “a built dude” (compared to Final Fantasy XIV’s Roegadyn). Toddleheim tries Mold Earth to block his view, but it’s not tall enough.
    • Locket smacks him in the back of the head: “Flynry, snap out of it.” He can’t hear her.
    • Toddleheim’s Fire Bolt cracks the mirror (the tether holds). Flynry’s player: “if you kill me for a second time on D20 Deathmatch…” Locket’s arrow hits the crack and the mirror shatters “into a million pieces.” The tether crumbles and the vision drifts away. Flynry keeps walking toward it until Locket grabs him.
62. 3:06:25 — “We’re your family now.”
    • Toddleheim: “Flyn, we’re your family now. The thing you’re searching for is not as far away as you believe it is… Your family is with us.”
    • Flynry: “The things that I saw, that’s something that I feel like I need. Those people… They looked so real.”
    • Toddleheim: “There are many things that can look real in a place like this. But the one thing that is real is the bond that we share… We are truly family. It’s time to move on.”
    • Flynry falls to his knees on the steps in tears. Locket gives him a supportive pat. Toddleheim kneels and puts an arm around him: “These mirrors, they can tell a different tale. But you made the right choice today. Let’s finish this and let’s go home.” Flynry rises and shoulders his pack.
63. 3:08:58 — Lyrus is lost. They turn and find Lyrus staring into a mirror (nat 1). He sees “the moments before his father’s death. You’re all there. The Arbiter’s there. His father is rushing forward to attack the Arbiter.” Lyrus: “I have to help!” He dives into the mirror and disappears. The glass ripples, then is still “as if nothing had even happened.”
64. 3:10:19 Flynry: “Thank you for saving me from that.” Toddleheim: “That’s what family does.” (He recalls Lyrus’s words as “I have to save you.”) They guess it’s one of the Arbiter’s tricks, perhaps dungeon cells or the pit. Flynry: “The guy’s kind of a one-trick pony… just fight to your own death… We get to the Arbiter and we make him give us back our friend Lyrus.”
65. 3:12:23 Walking on, the mirrors call to them; they hear “sounds of people you knew,” and Toddleheim still hears the squeaking, which “brings back some sort of faint feeling or memory.” They don’t look. At the end, two blue crystals ignite and the doorway becomes a blue portal. Flynry: “the Arbiter’s certainly not going to kill himself as much as that would be lovely.”

The Grandmaster’s throne room (3:13:53)

66. 3:13:53 A strange energy courses over them and they land on the floor of a throne room. The Arbiter sits with his feet up on a table, eating a turkey leg, while the Grandmaster stands nearby.
    • Arbiter: “Listen, Grandmaster, I don’t know that my knee bends that way… maybe like a 30 degree angle.” GM: “Well, you just have to try a little bit harder. It’s flexibility. Stretch it out.” Arbiter: “It’s a knee, not a rubber band.” GM: “now you’re just coming up with excuses.”
67. 3:15:57 GM: “Excuse me, how did you get here?” She is “very shocked that apparently she has terrible security.”
    • Flynry: “we’ve actually come to claim him.” Arbiter: “Grandmaster, these are the traitors… the ones that escaped from the Deathmatch.” GM: “If you escaped, why did you come here?” Flynry: “He’s the Arbiter. He’s been trying to kill you this whole time.” Locket: “He cannot be trusted, Grandmaster.”
    • Persuasion succeeds: the GM “sees it in each of your eyes, the truth, the passion” and puts her sword to the Arbiter’s neck: “You have a lot to answer for.”
68. 3:18:08 — The confession.
    • “Fine. I admit it. You’ve grown soft, Grandmaster. I remember the days when we came up together, when we took this kingdom together. You killed your own uncle for that throne.” GM: “That’s not the same.”
    • “Name the last time somebody actually died in a deathmatch.” GM: “That’s not the point of the Deathmatch. It’s meant to challenge them… to strengthen them… It’s not meant to punish anyone.”
    • “The Tarrasque, the attack on the arena, it was me. I kidnapped myself. I’ve been planning this all along… Do you think the champions just get to go home after the deathmatches?”
    • GM: “They were to be rewarded or at least compensated and given back to their home, their timeline. That was the deal.” Arbiter: “Well, deals change sometimes… Only what was necessary for the good of the people beyond the void.” GM: “You don’t get to decide what is good for the people.” Arbiter: “I get to decide whatever the fuck I want!” GM: “you won’t be able to decide much if your head is separated from your shoulders.”
69. 3:20:09 — The ice throne room. The Arbiter snaps his fingers. Their vision flutters black “like a movie reel,” and they stand in a similar throne room covered in ice. GM: “What is this monstrosity?” Arbiter: “Welcome to my throne room, Grandmaster. In this place, I am the ruler. And you are outnumbered.”
70. 3:21:01 — The Arbiter’s army of champions. Dozens of figures surround them, some recognizable from Deathmatches.
    • “Some came willingly to my side, seeking the power, the position I promised. Others had to be convinced.” Some have glowing white and black eyes: “If they wouldn’t join me, then they were touched by my shadow. And they serve me now.”
    • “And of course… none of this would be possible without my shadow,” he says, pointing to the far end of the room.
71. 3:22:54 The GM backs into the party: “Did you bring any weapons, or better yet, an escape?” Flynry clacks his fists. Toddleheim half-transforms, and Flynry shifts fully into his beast form. GM: “There’s only what, 14 of them? If we take three to four each…”
72. 3:23:50 — What the mirrors are. Flynry asks where the mirrors go. GM: “You found the Hall of Fates… That is a defense mechanism… The mirrors are a beast, a living creature all on its own. That’s not a portal.” On Lyrus: “Let’s just say for right now, I don’t think that’s someone we can count on.”
73. 3:24:51 Flynry has “one more good use” of the gate. Locket mentions allies back at the base: “not like a full army, but… They’d be willing to take up arms.”
    • GM: “Arbiter, do you hear that? … there are more who would not recognize you… If you, in this room, slaughter us, no one would respect that. No one would even believe it. You have no witnesses here. This is a form of cowardice.”
    • Arbiter: “What do you propose I do? Sit down and have tea?” Flynry: “that would be right in line with the energy of your big statue.” “Shut it!”
74. 3:26:18 — The challenge. GM: “You want death. You think that you can bring a truer fight than what I have done. Let’s prove that… I put my faith in the three who have fought tooth and nail to come to my throne room… I challenge you head on with these three and those of my champions in a tournament for the Grandmaster title, make it out in the open. I dare you.”
    • Arbiter: “And if I win, I assume your title and your throne?” GM: “Fine. Though I highly doubt you will.”
    • Arbiter: “When you lose, you’ll serve as my arbiter, serving my will.” GM: “You will choose your champion. And we’ll see if they have what it takes against mine.”
75. 3:28:00 — Switching sides? Arbiter: “You’ve seen my power. You sure you don’t want to switch sides?” Flynry: “We’ve seen your power lose once already.” Locket: “We’ve lost friends, allies, because of you. Very good people have died for this cause.”
76. 3:28:36 — Orin. Arbiter: “Are you still mad about Orin?” Toddleheim: “You have absolutely no idea.” GM: “He was a valued friend… What happened to Orin? He’s an old friend.” Toddleheim: “Why don’t you ask your Arbiter what happened to him?” Locket: “No more deceit, Arbiter.”
    • Arbiter: “Orin doesn’t exist anymore. He’s no more real than the dust at your feet. He got in the way. It’s unfortunate. I kind of liked him. But it’s just business. It’s for the good of the realm… Your weakness is a disease, a decay, a rot. It needs to be cut out.” GM: “Fine. Challenge my weakness.”
77. 3:29:38 — The wager. “You know me too well, Grandmaster. I won’t say no to a wager. Very well. Then in one week’s time, my champions will do battle versus whatever riffraff you can come up with. And we’ll see, once and for all, who will control D20 Deathmatch!” (End of episode; no sign-off line.)

Who and what appears

Characters

Toddleheim “the Great” (Ahnubyss). An old, well-travelled wizard.

• A werewolf since the castle ward; he can half-transform (yellow eyes, teeth, claws, hair).
• Drank the Seer’s potion of aging: physically ~12 years younger.
• “This was supposed to be my last adventure.”
• Ripped off Kenny’s arm while a werewolf (per Kenny).
• Spells this episode: Fire Bolt, Misty Step, healing, Create Bonfire, Magic Missile, Mold Earth (pushed beyond its limits).
• Refused to look into the mirrors and heard only a squeaking like glass cleaning. Talked Flynry back: “we’re your family now.”

Locket (Miss_Magitek). A furred cat-like ranger: Tabaxi, inferred from “Tabaxi or a Ranger thing” (2:29:14).

• Fights with +1 short sword, offhand blade and a bow with flame arrows. Has Keen Mind and can climb.
• Smitten with Baptiste. She kept his pure silver +1 dagger, and her mirror glance showed Baptiste.
• Bought the elven chain necklace (+1 AC, deer pendant) for 5 gold, asking for something “to impress somebody.”
• Tired of living with “all of you”; wants a beach.

Flynry (BDTeej). A traveler with “a condition”: he shifts into a beast form, from a clawed arm up to a full shift.

• Immune to disease and poison. Fights as a monk (unarmed strikes, Flurry of Blows, ki).
• 6’2”, 250, built.
• Bought +1 studded gauntlets, the mood bracelet (given to Kenny) and the giant spoon (given to Frank).
• Carries a book with Arcane Gate, perhaps mixed up “from the blind dragon.”
• Has never had a home. The mirrors showed him being celebrated and belonging, then a family feast with grandchildren. Toddleheim and Locket freed him from a mirror’s tether.

Lyrus. Leader figure of the Faithful’s HQ, called “the bear.”

• Two Void swords that look like “a black chasm in space”; enemies they kill fold into small black voids. One blade was dulled by acid.
• Casts Haste and Bless, and channels divinity (Vow of Enmity).
• No longer in charge of strategy; nostalgic for open-field warfare.

Kenny (goblin).

• Missing an arm, with claw marks on his chest and face. Terrified of Toddleheim.
• Covets the party’s bracelet from “the gambling match”; Flynry jokes about his shorts.
• Recruited Baptiste, smuggled out the Dread Fortress schematics, and was given the mood bracelet.
• Dies dissolving in the acid sewage under the Dread Fortress, taking the schematics and armband with him.

Baptiste. A slender, silver-haired elf in a blue (red/purple) cloak; a self-styled “knife smith.”

• Over-swishes his cloak; flirts with Locket and Toddleheim.
• Frank gives him three or four days. Lyrus thinks he’s “soft inside.”

Frank. An orc in furs, the Faithful’s “resident chef.”

• Cooks rodent stews and raccoon tacos (pulverized bones), seasons with dirt, and stirs with his battle axe.
• Now owns a giant wooden spoon, which he seasoned in the ground.

The trench-coat merchant. Sells knockoff spoons, jewelry, knives and maybe potions; wears very short shorts. Possibly called “Ryan” by Flynry. Sold the mood bracelet and the elven chain.

The teenage stall worker. Delivered the spoon to Frank: “who the fuck wants the spoon?”

The Seer. An old, blind Dragonborn who forged the party’s items.

The Arbiter (Drew).

• Revealed this episode:
  • Confesses to the coup, the Tarrasque attack on the arena and kidnapping himself.
  • Champions don’t go home: he has gathered them, willingly or “touched by my shadow” (white and black eyes).
  • Has his own ice-covered throne room, where he rules. He credits “my shadow.”
  • Says Orin “doesn’t exist anymore… He got in the way.”
• His view of her rule: says he and the Grandmaster “came up together” and “took this kingdom together,” and says she killed her uncle for the throne. Calls her soft: “Your weakness is a disease.”
• Accepts the wager for her title and throne.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Bec).

• Hadn’t left the Dread Fortress in weeks except for Deathmatches; unaware of the coup.
• Holds that Deathmatches are meant to challenge and strengthen, not punish. Says champions were to be compensated and returned to their home timelines.
• Calls Orin “a valued friend… an old friend.”
• Explains that the Hall of Fates mirrors are a living creature and a defense mechanism.
• Challenges the Arbiter to a public tournament for the Grandmaster title, putting her faith in the three.

Orin. Not present. The Arbiter says he “doesn’t exist anymore”; the Grandmaster calls him an old friend.

Named members of the Arbiter’s army: Thornabub, Steely Dan, Ralzamon, Baron Voltágè, Mageic the Magician, Blacktooth, Karn, Mick Swiggins, Mad Cass, Dewdrop Grizzlebee, “Gordy got it, get him,” Bully the Brave, and the Arbiter’s shadow.

Other creatures: the stone door guard (a patrol in the statue hallway), the rat swarms, the sludge elemental.

Places

• The Faithful’s hideout: a makeshift HQ in an old smith shop with forges, sheet partitions, magic fans and a schematics room. Home for about six months.
• The market district of the werewolf chase: cobblestones, duck windows, fruit stalls. The seedy alleys and the grate into the sewer pipes.
• The sewers under the Dread Fortress: miles of pipe; acid sewage (“magical waste,” oil, toxic waste); a smugglers’ chamber; a drain chain; service rooms; a gated tunnel; a dead end under the floor.
• The statue hallway in the Dread Fortress’s west wing: a lightning trap redirected by mirrors in the statues’ hands; loose stones over the sewer; a heavy unlocked wooden door.
• The Hall of Fates: a rumored place deep in the Dread Fortress with void on either side and stairs to floating mirrors that show your true desires. The mirrors are a living creature (per the Grandmaster). Blue crystals at the end open a portal to the throne room.
• The Grandmaster’s throne room (Dread Fortress) and the Arbiter’s ice-covered throne room (“my throne room”).
• Mentioned: the Arbiter’s arena under his giant statue, the castle ward, the northern road and the southern and eastern fronts, the Dread Fortress kitchen, tiger pit and brewery.

Items

• Baptiste’s pure silver +1 dagger (now Locket’s).
• The elven chain necklace with its antlered deer pendant (+1 AC).
• The mood bracelet (melted with Kenny) and the giant boat-sized wooden spoon (Frank’s).
• Flynry’s +1 studded gauntlets.
• Kenny’s schematics (dissolved).
• Lyrus’s Void swords (one dulled).
• The potion of aging (drunk).
• Flynry’s Arcane Gate book.

Lore statements

• The Faithful are a resistance working for the Grandmaster without her knowledge.
• The Arbiter staged the Tarrasque attack and his own kidnapping. He has secretly kept champions to build an army, some converted by his shadow.
• The Grandmaster believed champions were compensated and returned to their home timelines.
• The Arbiter says the Grandmaster killed her own uncle for the throne, and that he and she took the kingdom together.
• The Hall of Fates mirrors are a living beast that tethers or swallows viewers.
• A tournament for the Grandmaster title is set for one week later: the Arbiter’s champions against the Grandmaster’s. If the Arbiter wins, he takes her title and throne. If she loses, she will serve as his arbiter (the Arbiter’s stated term).

Quotes by character

Toddleheim

• 0:06:37 “Hair is growing quite a lot faster in unexpected places, but I’m taking care of business as one should.”
• 0:16:14 “Are you sure we’re still talking about knives and stabbing people?”
• 0:17:25 “My name is Toddlheim the Great. I’ve seen a great many adventures. This was supposed to be my last adventure, a long time ago, and yet I’m still here.”
• 0:19:12 “I feel like maybe Locket might be a more preferential partner for you to practice your stabbing with.”
• 0:37:16 “If it does go sideways, I will be back for that other arm.”
• 0:58:43 “I do hope this is quite sentimental to you.”
• 1:49:07 “They do eat each other, but I feel we are definitely the scariest beasts in this tunnel.”
• 2:56:11 “I’ve seen enough time. I’ve been here for long enough. Not much left for me to discover, to want.”
• 3:06:25 “Flyn, we’re your family now. The thing you’re searching for is not as far away as you believe it is.”
• 3:06:59 “There are many things that can look real in a place like this. But the one thing that is real is the bond that we share, all of us.”
• 3:08:21 “These mirrors, they can tell a different tale. But you made the right choice today. Let’s finish this and let’s go home.”
• 3:10:23 “That’s what family does.”

Locket

• 0:12:45 “I’ll keep this.” (the dagger)
• 0:41:05 “I’m kind of getting tired of all of you. I just want to relax on a beach or something.”
• 0:56:17 “Do you have any other nice jewelry? Like something very nice to impress somebody?”
• 1:13:30 “Oh, poor Kenny… Never has any luck.”
• 1:54:11 “We should be careful. That might be danger. Danger ahead.”
• 2:30:09 “Don’t ask me how I remember that, but I just, I remember. I remember from that little goblin.”
• 3:03:22 “Flynry, snap out of it.”
• 3:16:50 “He cannot be trusted, Grandmaster.”
• 3:28:24 “We’ve lost friends, allies, because of you. Very good people have died for this cause. We’re not about to switch.”
• 3:29:02 “No more deceit, Arbiter… Tell her what happened.”

Flynry

• 0:05:24 “I don’t think I expected the tacos to come to life the way they did… but I have to say the results were quite delicious.”
• 0:10:44 “Would seem you’ve been attending those secret meetings again. Did you remember the safe word this time?”
• 0:16:36 “My name’s Flynry, and I’m a traveler. I’ve got a bit of a condition.”
• 0:53:50 “Kenny, it’s turning red. I suppose that means that you like it.”
• 1:07:48 “Well, gang, I suppose we’ve got to go in the poo-poo place.”
• 1:09:58 “Sorry about the display there. I’ve lost my tacos.”
• 2:24:48 “I think I got him.”
• 2:33:37 “I think we maybe got our items mixed up from the blind dragon. He is blind after all.”
• 2:38:21 “Like we send the kitty and then we see what happens.”
• 3:06:41 “The things that I saw, that’s something that I feel like I need. Those people… They looked so real.”
• 3:11:35 “The guy’s kind of a one-trick pony… We get to the Arbiter and we make him give us back our friend Lyrus.”
• 3:28:11 “Oh, absolutely. We’ve seen your power lose once already.”

Lyrus

• 0:24:52 “That’ll be the end of it… We don’t have much time though, so get with it. Make haste.”
• 0:27:37 “You knocked on the door. And you said, I want to take your fucking castle. And they said no. And then you fought.”
• 0:29:51 “She hasn’t been seen outside of the Dread Fortress in weeks, other than the occasional Deathmatch.”
• 0:30:36 “If the Grandmaster isn’t going to give us an opportunity, then we’re going to have to make an opening.”
• 0:31:28 “He would like to believe himself a frontline penetrator… He’s more of the kind of guy you send to sneak around the back door.”
• 1:15:39 “Don’t get into the water. Don’t let his death be in vain. He showed us the dangers of this place.”
• 1:49:15 “It might be some sort of Rat King situation or something.”
• 2:03:58 “Not today, shit monster!”
• 2:53:19 “The Hall of Fates. I didn’t think it was real.”
• 2:53:34 “It’s deep in the Dread Fortress, a place where someone can see their true desires.”
• 3:09:18 “I have to help!” (narrated by Drew)

Kenny

• 0:09:27 “Hey, would you get the fuck off me?”
• 0:09:55 “First you’re trying to give me diseases, now you’re trying to step on me, and it’s like, the fuck?”
• 0:33:32 “You were standing right there. He ripped my arm right off.”
• 0:35:46 “It’s a series of old tunnels that jut up against the sewer system of the Dread Fortress. It’s not clean. It’s dirty.”
• 0:36:21 “It could be the kitchen, it could be the Hall of Fates, I don’t know.”
• 0:54:34 “Well, it’s certainly not an arm.”
• 1:05:03 “The fate of the realm is in the balance, but sure, if you wanna go to the mall.”

Baptiste

• 0:11:59 “I am Baptiste… I have never stabbed any of you before, have I?”
• 0:13:25 “So I’ve never stabbed you before, but I guess the day is still young.”
• 0:14:59 “I’m a knife smith by trade, and by knife smith I mean that I just stab people.”
• 0:16:05 “It’s really about how you use them and more about the emotion than it is the knife itself.”

Frank

• 0:21:12 “If I was gonna take odds, he’s not gonna live more than three or four days.”
• 0:22:52 “Tacos, I make a mean raccoon taco.”
• 1:03:53 “Not bad quality. Fine craftsmanship. I like the handle.”

The merchant

• 0:51:22 “This one was hard to get. It came away from the south… a family heirloom. Of course, not my family.”
• 0:59:06 “Hey, listen, pal, I don’t want any trouble. You know what? Five is fine.”

The Arbiter

• 3:16:29 “Grandmaster, these are the traitors.”
• 3:18:08 “Fine. I admit it. You’ve grown soft, Grandmaster… You killed your own uncle for that throne.”
• 3:18:31 “Name the last time somebody actually died in a deathmatch.”
• 3:18:53 “The Tarrasque, the attack on the arena, it was me. I kidnapped myself.”
• 3:19:45 “I get to decide whatever the fuck I want!”
• 3:20:41 “Welcome to my throne room, Grandmaster. In this place, I am the ruler. And you are outnumbered.”
• 3:21:32 “If they wouldn’t join me, then they were touched by my shadow. And they serve me now.”
• 3:22:38 “Of course, none of this would be possible without my shadow.”
• 3:27:40 “When you lose, you’ll serve as my arbiter, serving my will.”
• 3:28:36 “Are you still mad about Orin?”
• 3:29:04 “Orin doesn’t exist anymore. He’s no more real than the dust at your feet. He got in the way… Your weakness is a disease, a decay, a rot.”
• 3:29:38 “I won’t say no to a wager… we’ll see, once and for all, who will control D20 Deathmatch!”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer

• 3:15:24 “Well, you just have to try a little bit harder. It’s flexibility. Stretch it out a little bit.”
• 3:17:53 “You have a lot to answer for.”
• 3:18:39 “That’s not the point of the Deathmatch. It’s meant to challenge them. It’s meant to strengthen them… It’s not meant to punish anyone.”
• 3:19:20 “They were to be rewarded or at least compensated and given back to their home, their timeline. That was the deal.”
• 3:19:58 “You won’t be able to decide much if your head is separated from your shoulders.”
• 3:20:35 “What is this monstrosity?”
• 3:22:54 “Did you bring any weapons, or better yet, an escape?”
• 3:24:07 “That is a defense mechanism… The mirrors are a beast, a living creature all on its own. That’s not a portal.”
• 3:25:42 “You have no witnesses here. This is a form of cowardice, at best.”
• 3:26:33 “I challenge you head on with these three and those of my champions in a tournament for the Grandmaster title, make it out in the open. I dare you.”
• 3:28:43 “He was a valued friend… What happened to Orin? He’s an old friend.”
• 3:29:30 “Fine. Challenge my weakness.”