| Champions and players | Caustic Phoenix as Brunhilda Doogle; Mudcat as White Hat H03 |
| Result | a tie. Both die within moments of each other. |
| Arena | a forest map with a rocky cliff, a ravine and berry bushes (no name given) |
| Hosts | none; Mudcat and Caustic Phoenix are both PLAYERS and rule as they go |
What happens
- 1:37:20 — Placement. Brunhilda starts on top of the rocks; White Hat on the ground. “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
- 1:43:24 — White Hat opens fire. “Special robot eyes” ignore Brunhilda’s cover; three pistol shots hit.
- 1:46:30 — Brunhilda aims her longbow “at your stupid mechanical shiny head,” hits twice, then hides behind a rock: “If you want to fight, you have to come find me.” “You do not know anything about cliffs… if you fall, you will die.”
- 1:49:14 — The climb. White Hat (“southern for some reason, sort of”) struggles up a rock (“a DC of seven… the lowest DC I’ve ever heard of”) and misty-steps the last ten feet. Brunhilda: “It’s not Misty Step, it’s Greasy Step. The oil just seeps from you… polluting Mother Nature in all her glory. She hates you for it.”
- 1:51:09 — Bane backfires. His eyes glow red as he casts Bane; she rolls a nat 20 on her Lucky reroll (“Your eyes! I’ve seen them before! They’re hideous!”) and the spell short-circuits in his brain, baning him instead. “I’m rubber, you’re glue.”
- 1:53:17 — Thorn whip. Brunhilda puts her bow on her back and lashes him with a thorn whip (nat 20, “Mother nature doesn’t take this lightly!”) and drags him to the edge. She grabs his “smug little metal face”: “You are so weak here and out of your element… I will allow you to be devoured here by nature itself,” and pushes his white hat off the cliff. He isn’t scared: “Bigger snakes have been in my boots than you… tipping a man’s head off is very unbecoming.”
- 1:58:16 — White Hat Ho. Oil splatters from the thorn wounds. Chat starts calling him “White Hat Ho” now that he’s lost his hat; Bec makes him roll to resist the mockery; he passes on a reroll: “Nobody calls me a hoe but me,” and spits a forceful stream of oil into the front row “like front row SeaWorld.” He spits oil at Brunhilda too: “I may be just a simple machine. But I was founded on the principles of fair economics in the oil trade.”
- 2:03:46 — Off the ledge. Brunhilda’s tail whips around his feet and throws him off the ledge (he’d blocked her shove with a metal shield formed from his gun). She camouflages herself against the rock with dirt (hide in plain sight).
- 2:08:09 — The purple berries. She finds purple berries she doesn’t recognize, eats them in desperation (“Berries, I eat you!”) and heals, but sees funny colors (the berries are “dog berries”). She keeps eating them all fight; she builds up a resistance to the side effects. He casts cure wounds on himself and falls off the slick rock face he greased with his own oil (“Captain Planet… this is your own fault”).
- 2:15:20 — Poison spray from hiding (he’s resistant as a robot). She claims to have moved and throws her voice; he isn’t fooled. She makes the cliff rockier. “I have the high ground, White Hat Ho.”
- 2:23:06 — The screwdriver. Brunhilda casts fear: an image of a giant screwdriver with angry eyebrows, “kind of like Clippy from Word,” spins over him. He is frightened (“No one’s scared of you. I just don’t like screwdrivers”). “I give gifts like you to children all the time… A little wind up key and you go running.”
- 2:28:23 — Chaos event: flood and rain. A flood washes them off the cliff; Brunhilda rides the wave (“Snakes can swim”). In the rain White Hat begins to rust, his armor weakening each round.
- 2:31:31 — Jammed gun. His disarming shot rolls a nat 1 and his gun jams; he fixes it and hits her bow hard but she holds on. She draws two short swords: “I will stab you like Caesar!” Then she licks his oil off her blade to intimidate him (“I eat gams like you for breakfast”); the oil hurts her and nobody is impressed.
- 2:38:45 — Chaos event: a constrictor snake slithers out of a hole. It bites White Hat and chips a tooth on his metal leg. Brunhilda charms it with her snake-only animal friendship: their tails both shake like rattles; it follows her “like a puppy.” White Hat breaks line of sight and shakes off the fear. He finds his hat in the mud at the bottom of the ravine, dusts it off with his pocket square and puts it back on: “Seems we’ve got the upper hand again.”
- 2:47:00 — White Hat hits her with a dazing shot and more bullets, then action-surges to shoot her snake friend into flopping sections because it bit him.
- 2:51:08 — Greater invisibility. “Oh, this hurts so much, my snake friend.” She vanishes and eats more berries; he fires blind and backs against the rock face. She shoots the loose rock above him twice and buries him in two rockslides, pinning him prone: “I will bury you alive.”
- 3:00:53 — Chaos event: lightning. Both are struck; her concentration breaks and she reappears “as if I came from this lightning itself.” He shoots her bow out of her hand: “My precious bow! That was a gift! You’ll pay for this!”
- 3:08:00 — The end. She charges, whips him with her tail, then wraps her tail around his neck and lifts him by it: “I will murder you and I will suck all of the oil and life from your cold metal frame… Even if I have to hold you till you rust in the rain.” She bares her fangs. Her squeezing fires every neuron in his synthetic brain and his hand jerks the trigger involuntarily, shooting her in the stomach. She drops “like a ribbon falling to the ground,” her blood mixing with his oil.
- 3:13:44 — White Hat dies too. “It seems that this was my day to shine in the sun.” Rain pours into the open circuits in his crushed throat; he short-circuits, sparking in all directions, staring at the sky, and “ceases to function. It’s rusted and stopped.” “Mutually assured destruction.” “On D20 Deathmatch. It’s a tie.”
Who and what appears
Brunhilda Doogle (Bec). Yuan-ti (Bec calls it “yaunty”), Gloom Stalker ranger, level 13. Coral-snake colors: red and black with gold instead of yellow, and silver (“Red touch yellow, kills a fellow”). Speaks with a hiss. Longbow that was “a gift”; two short swords; can use her tail to strike, throw and strangle. Animal friendship works on snakes. Spells: thorn whip, poison spray, fear, greater invisibility, frostbite; hide in plain sight. Immune to poison (she says). Ate the purple “dog berries” many times. Befriended a constrictor snake, which White Hat killed. Died, tied.
White Hat H03 (Drew). Warforged gunslinger with pistols that can form a metal shield; white hat and pocket square. Speaks Loxodon and Leonin, “so he can speak to the animal races.” “Southern, sort of.” “Special robot eyes.” Bane makes his eyes glow red. Resistant to poison, shrugs off cold. Spits oil. “Founded on the principles of fair economics in the oil trade.” Rusts in rain. Chat nicknamed him White Hat Ho after he lost his hat: “Nobody calls me a hoe but me.” Died, tied.
The constrictor snake. Chaos-event creature; bit White Hat and chipped a tooth; charmed by Brunhilda; shot to pieces by White Hat.
The purple berries (“dog berries”). Grow all over the forest; heal, but make you see funny colors the first time.
Places
- An unnamed forest arena: rocks and a cliff (made rockier by Bec), a ravine, a mushroom pedestal, berry bushes; flooded by rain.
Quotes by character
Brunhilda Doogle
- 1:48:46 “You can’t get me. You are very weak, and you do not know anything about cliffs.”
- 1:55:36 “You are so weak here and out of your element. You’re not going to win this fight, Tin Man. I will allow you to be devoured here by nature itself.”
- 2:25:14 “I give gifts like you to children all the time. A little wind up key and you go running to the other side.”
- 2:34:00 “I will stab you like Caesar!”
- 3:08:00 “My precious bow! That was a gift! You’ll pay for this!”
- 3:08:50 “I will murder you and I will suck all of the oil and life from your cold metal frame.”
- 3:09:48 “You’ll die here. Even if I have to hold you till you rust in the rain.”
White Hat H03
- 1:57:00 “Bigger snakes have been in my boots than you. I’ll have you know that tipping a man’s head off is very unbecoming.”
- 1:59:34 “Nobody calls me a hoe but me.”
- 2:03:13 “I may be just a simple machine. But I was founded on the principles of fair economics in the oil trade.”
- 2:25:40 “No one’s scared of you. I just don’t like screwdrivers.”
- 2:42:45 “Well, seems we’ve got the upper hand again.”
- 3:13:44 “Well, it seems that this was my day to shine in the sun.”