| Champions and players | Caustic Phoenix as Bawser; Mudcat as Grakas |
| Result | Bawser wins. Grakas yields (“You win, you win, you win”) and survives, buried in the dirt, and rises as “Baby Bow-Bow” |
| Arena | the same rainy forest map as Playtest 3 (cliff, mushroom ledges, tall trees) |
| Hosts | none; Mudcat and Caustic Phoenix are both PLAYERS and rule as they go |
What happens
- 0:00:22 — Setup. “Bawser versus Grakas.” Bawser “with an A. Very clearly, it’s an A… legally distinct from any other intellectual property.” The “completely new, never before seen” forest map (the Playtest 3 map again), with a nice drizzle “that makes your skin shimmer and glimmer.”
- 0:05:54 — Bawser lands “like a comet”: “his big giant yellow body and green shell.” He roars, shaking leaves and scattering birds: “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!” He listens for Grakas in the falling leaves and fails; he decides he hates leaves (“Leaves are the worst. They’re the literal worst”) and tries to set the tree on fire with his tinderbox, but it’s too wet; he throws the tinderbox down.
- 0:09:48 — Grakas hides behind a tree: “Oh, I don’t like this… What am I doing here?” He pulls out an inhaler and shakes it: “If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.” He slips trying to climb in the rain (a faint smell of hibiscus in the mud).
- 0:13:11 — Bawser roars: “Grakas, show yourself and I may not tear you to a million little pieces. Heck, I’ll even let you keep one of your arms.” Grakas: “He knows my name. How does he know my name?” Grakas shakes so hard the tree sheds its leaves. Bawser throws a mud ball the wrong way, then mud pies at the spectators: “Show me where he is!”
- 0:16:16 — Vicious mockery. Grakas whispers in an ethereal voice: “You should just go away. You’re never gonna catch me… You’re so stupid for trying.” He climbs 20 feet up the tree. Bawser follows his muddy footprints but can’t see him in the branches and punches the cliff in frustration, breaking off giant mushroom ledges; Grakas grips the branch “like a monkey.”
- 0:22:12 — Grakas drops out of the tree with two short swords (“short sword choppers”) and lays a Hexblade’s Curse on Bawser.
- 0:24:58 — Catching hands. Bawser tries to grapple; they lock hands in a standstill, then Grakas shoves him off and slaps his hands away. Bawser: “No, that’s my thing. I’m the big bully. I do the big strength thing… What are you doing wrong here?” He rages.
- 0:29:04 — Wrathful smite. Grakas frightens Bawser. “How did you become the scary one on the field?” Bawser throws his spear and javelin; Grakas cowers behind his crossed swords (shield spell). Bawser’s pep talk to himself: “I may not be very strong right now, but I can at least look strong.” His intimidating presence makes the forest tremble; Grakas rolls a nat 1, loses his smite, and is frightened in turn (“a Nudo reverse card”). Bawser looms over him, belly to forehead: “If I were a comforting person, you would actually really like this hug.”
- 0:37:30 — Grakas misty-steps back up the tree and casts blur (a drunken blur of blue hair and blue beard). “I have a master’s degree in computer science. This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.” Bawser: “I’m going to eat you up, spit you out, then eat you again, and then poop you out.” His javelin hits; his spear knocks Grakas out of the tree.
- 0:42:37 — Frenzy and the lost axe. Bawser’s greataxe misses the blur and sticks in the mud; Grakas casts Armor of Agathys: his shivering coats him in ice (“I’m shivering so much that I’m creating this ice layer”).
- 0:46:43 — Chaos event: lightning, “as if the gods themselves… are disappointed in the fight.” Both hit; Grakas: “as if Thor himself were smacking Mjolnir onto the field.”
- 0:50:02 — Bawser’s second nat 1 throws his greataxe ten feet behind Grakas. He squishes Grakas’s blurry face: “You should have been afraid of me. Why are you stronger than me?” Bawser is almost in tears: this was his identity, being the strong one, and Grakas is out-strengthening and out-hiding him. Grakas’s second sword clinks off Bawser’s shell and he has to take another puff of his inhaler.
- 0:57:01 — The breath weapon. Bawser meditates and breathes fire: a tiny matchstick puff that singes Grakas’s eyebrows. “No! I’m supposed to be the strong one! My fire’s not even working!” He runs away crying, breaking free of Grakas’s lightning lure. Grakas: “You started this… You’re a big tough guy with a big tough shell. You’re gonna run away?” Bawser weeps behind a rock.
- 1:05:15 — Chaos event: the dam breaks. Grakas backflips onto the rocks (“All those tumbling classes are really paying off”). Bawser’s nat 1: his own tears make the ground slick and he’s swept to the edge of the map. “Not all turtles can swim.” “It has always been… some other small little dude with bright colors always coming to wreck my day. I can’t just be my cool badass self by myself now.”
- 1:09:51 — The crowd weeps with him “like a bad scene from The Notebook,” giving him inspiration. “You cheered me at the beginning of this fight and I will not let you down.” He finds his greataxe and rages again: “For you, my spectators, my fans, I will not fail you until I give my last and final breath.”
- 1:13:46 — Grakas offers a free hit. “This seems like it means a lot more to you than it does to me… Just go ahead and hit me.” He has a master’s degree but is underwater with debt and the job market is bad: “I might as well just let you take me out.” Bawser, touched: “No one’s ever let me hit them before.” He hugs Grakas, lifts him, and throws him 20 feet into the air. “You are the nicest little thing I’ve ever met. I will never forget this.” Grakas: “That hurt, and I didn’t really care for it, so I’m gonna go ahead and fight back now.” Bawser: “Remember, if I kill you, you don’t have to pay your college debts.”
- 1:18:40 — The fire. Bawser grapples him for good (“Thank you, little one. My mother would be proud of me”). Chaos event: lightning sets all the vegetation on fire. Bawser holds Grakas in the burning tree: “We will burn in this fiery hell together.” Grakas’s blue hair turns orange as it burns (“Of all the ways that you could die, I always thought that fire would be the worst”). His crit nearly works, but he drops, “like Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith.”
- 1:31:14 — “Name me the winner.” Grakas: “You win, you win, you win.” Bawser carries him out of the fire by the neck: “Little one, though you may be wheezy and small and blue, you are mighty… Bao Bao respects you. At any time you may come to my castle and we will feast. As long as you tell everyone that I beat you. That’s the one rule.” He douses him with his water skin.
- 1:34:29 — Baby Bow-Bow. Bawser digs a hole and buries Grakas up to his head to “heal” him (“either it heals you or it holds you”), and wants to rename him: “Grakas is a terrible name… We’ll call you Baby Bow-Bow 2.” Grakas survives his death saves; the dirt turns out to be medicinal. Bawser carves “Baby Bow Bow” in the dirt in several places: “When you awaken, you will be born anew… now you have orange and blue, for you are fire and ice. You shall come be my pet in my castle.”
- 1:38:15 — Rising. That night a hand shoots up out of the hole: “I am Baby Bow-Bow!” His hair and beard burst into flaming orange, and he walks off like a glowing torch toward Bawser’s castle.
Who and what appears
Bawser (Bec). “With an A… legally distinct.” Huge, yellow body, green shell, claws, scales; Bec calls him “a full dragonborn. Ish,” a dragonborn with a shell (and jokes about turtles). Barbarian (rage, frenzy, intimidating presence), greataxe, spear, javelin, breath weapon. Calls himself “Bao Bao” / “Bow-Bow.” Hates leaves. Has a castle and a mother (“Mama Bowser”). Insists on being the strong one; cries when he isn’t; plays to the crowd. Winner. Took Grakas as his “pet.”
Grakas (Drew). Half-elf hexblade warlock / College of Swords bard; two short swords; blue hair and blue beard; asthmatic (inhaler); took fencing and tumbling lessons; master’s degree in computer science and student debt; cowardly but deadly. Spells: vicious mockery, hexblade’s curse, wrathful smite, shield, misty step, blur, Armor of Agathys, lightning lure, booming blade, eldritch smite. Lost, survived, buried and renamed “Baby Bow-Bow”; rose with flaming orange hair and beard and headed to Bawser’s castle.
Places
- The rainy forest arena (same map as Playtest 3): a cliff with giant mushroom ledges, a 30-ft tree, rocks; flooded, then set on fire. The dirt is medicinal.
- Bawser’s castle (mentioned).
Quotes by character
Bawser
- 0:06:58 “I am claiming this map! It is mine! I’ll find you!”
- 0:13:14 “Grakas, show yourself and I may not tear you to a million little pieces. Heck, I’ll even let you keep one of your arms.”
- 0:27:23 “That’s my thing. I’m the big bully. I do the big strength thing and I crush you with my giant claws.”
- 0:59:39 “No! I’m supposed to be the strong one! My fire’s not even working!”
- 1:09:17 “It has always been… some other small little dude with bright colors always coming to wreck my day.”
- 1:12:37 “For you, my spectators, my fans, I will not fail you until I give my last and final breath.”
- 1:16:16 “You are the nicest little thing I’ve ever met. I will never forget this.”
- 1:24:15 “We will burn in this fiery hell together.”
- 1:32:15 “Little one, though you may be wheezy and small and blue, you are mighty… Bao Bao respects you.”
- 1:37:30 “When you awaken, you will be born anew… for you are fire and ice. You shall come be my pet in my castle.”
Grakas
- 0:10:28 “Okay, let’s calm down. Let’s just stay behind the tree. If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.”
- 0:16:16 “You should just go away. You’re never gonna catch me and it’s not worth your time and you’re stupid for trying.”
- 0:39:41 “I have a master’s degree in computer science. This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.”
- 1:13:46 “This seems like it means a lot more to you than it does to me… Just go ahead and hit me.”
- 1:28:13 “Of all the ways that you could die, I always thought that fire would be the worst.”
- 1:38:15 “I am Baby Bow-Bow!”