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S1E10 — The Bear — Diamond Joe v Milliac

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tagsepisode, season-1

38 min read

Champions and playersramjiv (Ramji) as Diamond Joe; NVNGpodcast (Jared) as Milliac
ResultDiamond Joe (Milliac falls to his own black-powder bear bomb)
Arenaan abandoned sandy dig camp where Farcheck once dug up black powder (tents, barrels, clay pots, a raised “top arena” about 10 ft higher, a wooden structure across the back). The Arbiter calls it “an old classic, one of your favorites.”
HostsCaustic Phoenix (Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer) and Mudcat (narration, the Arbiter)
WatchYouTube

What happens

Opening — the Arbiter’s lab

  1. 0:00:20 Drew sets the scene deep inside the Dread Fortress. They go past “the Grandmaster’s Barrow” [spelling uncertain], past the hearths, halls and merriment, and down into the dungeons and catacombs, where the Arbiter keeps his lab. It is dark, lit by wall sconces. Beakers and glassware hold liquids and potions, some boiling and moving, some still. Jars hold unfamiliar creatures preserved in formaldehyde and other fluids.
  2. 0:01:12 — The Arbiter’s scheme. Hunched over a table, the Arbiter reads a book feverishly, scribbles notes and swirls potions. “And then phase three is going to be… Yes… This is going to work! My time is coming! This entire castle will be mine. The power. All of it. The fame. The glory. The prestige. The women. Well, we can worry about that later.”
  3. 0:02:01 Heels clack down the halls from far away, echoing through the catacombs “almost as a bit of a warning sign.” The Grandmaster calls “Arbiter!” before she appears: “What are you doing down here?”
  4. 0:02:29 — The cover-up. Just before she enters, the Arbiter slams the book shut and waves his arm over the table, making many of the contraptions vanish. He claims he was checking that things were prepped for the Deathmatch: back-end work, talking to the vendors, “the lemonade guy.” The GM adds “the blue raspberry slushies,” and he confirms they are “in effect for today.”
  5. 0:03:13 The GM scolds him: “You gotta get better on your time management.” She can already hear the acolytes screaming in the arena above. He fumbles around, clearly uncomfortable with her in his lab. GM: “You should pick up here, by the way. It’s really messy.” Arbiter: “Things have gotten away from me.”
  6. 0:03:46 He claps, a portal opens, and the two champions walk through: “Milliac versus Diamond Joe.”

The champions

  1. 0:04:11 — Diamond Joe is confused: “Am I in the right place?” The Arbiter reminds him of their deal: he can find Steely Dan here, and after the Deathmatch the Arbiter will “reconnect” him. Joe: “I look forward to seeing my boy again.”
  2. 0:05:03 Joe introduces himself to the Grandmaster. He is looking for his estranged “young man, boy, thing, person… I built him anyway… His name is Steely Dan. Steely Dan the Sir.” The GM is impressed: “You built the illustrious Steely Dan… The creator.” Joe: “The one, the only… You’ve heard of me? Oh, how delightful.” The Arbiter recalls that Steely Dan “was quite the instrument of destruction… in the previous Deathmatch.”
  3. 0:06:02 — Milliac: “I come from the woods. I don’t know who this dragon is. I don’t know who the Steely Joe is… I was told there’d be pie and punch. I come bringing the punch, if you know what that mean.” GM: she hopes it’s twofold, a drink and a fist. Milliac: “I never go fisting without a drink…” Joe: “It’s important libation and lubrication, that’s what I always say.” This turns into a riff about odd catchphrases (“I always go big. That’s what my mother said”).
  4. 0:06:58 — The flyer. Milliac came from “the woods, down the block.” He saw a flyer: “Come, we fight. You get pie and punch.” GM: “I told you, Arbiter, that the flyers worked… Flyers work.” The Arbiter says the flyers aren’t the problem: “it’s so hard to find a Kinko’s in this day and age… there’s no more love for the analog.” Joe: “I don’t feel there’s any reason to Kinko’s shame here.” Arbiter: “Copy that.”
  5. 0:07:42 The GM approves both champions: “terrifying in nature.” The Arbiter opens a portal to “an old classic, one of your favorites.”

The arena — Farcheck’s black-powder camp

  1. 0:08:17 GM: “Let me welcome you to an abandoned site… just because no one else is here, doesn’t mean that it’s safe.” “Once, there was Farcheck, and his main goal here was to dig up black powder. He may have left some behind.” Joe hears “Fartchap.” GM: “It wasn’t exactly an exciting name… He may have been imaginary, I don’t know. But… the black powder that resides here is not imaginary.” The barrels may hold surprises. There is a raised top area about 10 ft higher that you can jump off, and a wooden structure across the back you can climb for the high ground. The floor is sand, “and it’s coarse and gets everywhere.”
  2. 0:09:49 — The crowd. The Grandmaster’s wings fly open and she points to the stands. The crowd has already summoned a chaotic event before the fight began. Every acolyte was given a satchel of black powder at the entrance, and they are getting ready to throw it. She soars up to their eye level: “Acolytes, I hear your pleas once again, and I bring you blood that will pour from two… Two champions from afar, but come together to give you the best show you’ve seen yet!”

Chaos event — the shimmer (0:11:22)

  1. Milliac rolls a natural 1, “the most chaotic of chaotic events.” A tingle starts at the back of both champions’ spines and spreads across their skin. It shimmers and shines as if they were being coated in something, but they feel no effect yet. They must find out what triggers it. Arbiter: “I don’t envy your position right now.”
  2. 0:12:49 On the placement d4s, they start in opposite corners, “looking each other directly in the eye.”

Round 1

  1. 0:13:57 Diamond Joe wins initiative (18 to 6). He sniffs around: “you don’t get nostrils like this without having huffed a bit of powder in your life.” He nicknames Milliac “Pie Boy” and “Milli Vanilli.” His armor, which had sat in the background until now, unfolds over him as fused metallic plates. He asks the Arbiter whether he’s supposed to suppress Milliac, beat him, or “cook them and serve them.” Arbiter: “If it so happens that you… cease his life functions… I’ll look the other way.” GM: “As long as there’s only one standing by the end.” Joe: “No one spends an evening with Diamond Joe, darling, and… remain standing at the end.”
  2. 0:16:05 — Pie talk. Joe strolls across and asks Milliac what pie he likes. Milliac lists apple, blueberry, boysenberry and elderberry: “I got the big belly for a reason here.” Joe calls him an expert on “pies of the multiverse, or dragons” and asks his favorite. Milliac: “Cherry Pie.” He sings “she’s my Cherry Pie” (“they made a whole song about this”). Joe’s Foundry froze during all this (see table talk).
  3. 0:17:52 — The blue pill. About 110 ft away, Joe “casts Haste.” Since he’s an artificer, he actually pulls out a little blue pill and crunches it: “At my age… sometimes it’s just a bit better, so it’s not just over in six seconds.” GM: “You never want to see a deathmatch end prematurely… It’s got to be satisfying for all parties.”
  4. 0:19:05 At double speed he moves closer and takes the Dodge action. In his case that means bumbling and swerving: “Is that a little coin on the floor? No… my eyes are a bit funny.” Arbiter: “He’s going to Mr. Magoo his way through a fight.”
  5. 0:20:00 — Zephyr Strike. Milliac casts Zephyr Strike (“It lets me move very fast towards my enemy… and then I get to strike, punch him”) and Dashes. He leaves a trail of dust behind him. GM: “Is this freaking Sonic the Hedgehog here?” Milliac: “Go fast.” He ends up nose to nose with Joe.
  6. 0:22:18 — Getting acquainted. Milliac: “You look kind of cold… What’s with all that shiny armor? Look, I don’t wear much clothes… And you take all those pills. That stuff isn’t good for you.” Joe: “At my age, dear boy, it’s pretty much all that’s keeping me in one piece… if I hadn’t built this bloody contraption, I’d probably be just unable to even get up off the floor.” He describes himself as “a better living through alchemy kind of person”: not “metformins,” but he doesn’t mind “a little bit of… intravenous healing potion drip.” He asks to call Milliac “M” and asks his pronouns. Milliac: “It’s gonna have to be a he.”
  7. 0:23:41 — Steely Dan described. Joe asks if Milliac has seen his other boy: “imagine a sort of eight or nine foot tall steam-powered vibrator with a large quantity of cassette tapes and… mini discs and various other things attached to his body.” Milliac: “No, I usually upgrade my machines when I have them.” Joe: “That’s a little impolite, innit?” GM: “I love beginning with a slight insult.”
  8. 0:24:22 The GM demands a nat 20 from the Arbiter and gets a 12: “again, disappointed am I.” She asks Joe for one of his pills. He offers the “whoopsie whoopsie” ones or the “time out and space out” ones. She picks whoopsie whoopsie, then the table rules: “After the show.” Arbiter: “He said they were performance enhancing.”

Round 2 — “Stop hitting yourself”

  1. 0:25:27 Joe complains about the GM: “she’s all very blood for the masses, blood for the masses, and I barely even know the boy.” Arbiter: “Maybe you do that while you’re making him bleed?”
  2. 0:25:59 — The chaos triggers. Joe apologizes for the “pro forma manner” and swings his Thunder Gauntlet. The shimmer grabs his muscles and his hand swings back at his own face. The first swing misses even him. Ruling: for this round and one more, every melee attack against another champion turns back on the attacker. His shield doesn’t count when he punches himself. “What the bloody hell is going on here?” Despite “his ridiculous intelligence,” he swings again and smacks himself in the face for thunder damage: “All right, that’s a bit of a refresher.”
  3. 0:29:05 — The cream pie. With his hasted action Joe brings out a cream pie with a crispy lemon-colored topping: “how about we have some pie for a round while it figures its shit out.” Milliac: “Thank you very much, Diamond Joe… I’ve never been cream-pied so early in the night.” Joe: “The night is but a fetus, as they say.” GM: “You take the first hit to your own face and then you gift a pie to your opponent. This is true beauty, something we’ve yet seen on this arena.” Joe sings: “Tale as old as time, song as old as wine, Milliac and the pie.” GM: “You sound just like Angela Lansbury.”
  4. 0:31:01 — The bear within. Eating the pie gets Milliac very excited, and “when Milliac gets very excited Milliac can’t control the beast inside.” He Wild Shapes into his “natural shape… a polar bear.” His growl: “rawr, rawr” (“I’ve actually been working on this specifically”). GM: “I shivered a little on the inside.”
  5. 0:32:13 Joe: “I’ve never had that effect with a pie before… I didn’t spike the pie in the slightest… forensically analyze it, because there ain’t no Cosby in this show.” He boops the bear on the snoot: “You are the cutest, cutest little bear.” Milliac doesn’t like being talked down to and bares his fangs. Joe: “Oh, I don’t speak bear, but [nice] to meet you too, buddy.”
  6. 0:33:49 — The bear’s nose. Milliac sniffs for black powder. History check: he has “been around a powder keg or two.” With advantage in bear form his Perception is 22, and the GM reveals the first barrel: “a rather large barrel… this will go a boom… Maybe a kaboom.” Milliac: “I bared up, and I sniffed out the black powder, and now I have a plan.”
  7. 0:35:22 The Arbiter’s d20 is a 15. GM: “I’m used to you being a disappointment.”

Round 3 — the circus bear

  1. 0:35:46 This is the last round of self-hitting. Joe raises his Defensive Field, a field of radiant energy that shakes off some of the cream. “I need to get on with a bit of finding my boy… And I’ve given you pie, Milliac, so we’re good, right? Whatever happens.” The bear: “Good-o!”
  2. 0:36:35 — Breath weapon. Joe breathes a line of lightning (“Just a bit of microwaving”). Milliac saves and takes little. Milliac first claims 52 HP for the bear, then corrects it to 42 (“I gave myself 10 extra”). GM: “Look at you telling the truth.”
  3. 0:37:53 — The first fart. Joe casts Thunderwave. Milliac fails the Constitution save. “Ah, that wasn’t that interesting, let’s have a terrific fart.” The burst is magnified through his suit and pushes Milliac back 10 ft with a boom audible for 300 ft. “Pardon me, that pie does not agree with me sometimes.”
  4. 0:39:19 — The sneak. Milliac growls and heads for the barrel. Joe seems to have dozed off (his connection dropped). The GM swaps the opportunity attack for a Stealth roll (“perhaps he doesn’t notice as he’s busy taking his pills”), and Milliac rolls a natural 20: “Quiet bear paws on this dusty field.”
  5. 0:40:32 — The circus trick. “Thinking back to when Milliac spent a little time in a traveling circus,” Milliac picks up the barrel, balances and spins it on his feet like a circus bear, and tosses it at Joe. Joe comes to: “senior moment… I think the world just went a bit dark around me.” GM: he “may have just mixed some pills up the wrong way.” Joe: “I’ve tossed a few salads in my life, but I’ve never tossed a barrel of black powder.” Milliac (or 01): “You are gonna find out pretty soon, buddy.”
  6. 0:42:16 Joe fails the Dexterity save. The barrel explodes for maximum fire damage. Joe casts Absorb Elements, and his Defensive Field soaks up some of the rest. GM: “that was a half full barrel.” Milliac: “That is a lot of damage for a half full.”
  7. 0:44:12 — The bear spa. Milliac focuses on “his natural training as a bear… in the woods” and burns a spell slot to heal himself. It heals one hit point. GM: “That paper cut that you had bringing into this fight heals up for you on your tiny paw. Worth it.”
  8. 0:44:59 — Doug the Pug. GM to her pug Doug: “You need that too. Maybe then you’ll actually have bones.” Joe: “I can help if he’s a bit boneless. I’ve got a little something-something here in my bag.” GM: they’d have to consult his vet. Joe: “little randy bugger.” He also complains that “this multi-universal connection is definitely a bit ropey. I’m going to get a refund from that bloody Mordenkainen fellow.”
  9. 0:45:57 The Arbiter’s d20 is a 6: “That’s even sadder than before.”

Round 4 — the second barrel and the ledge

  1. 0:46:17 Joe grumbles that it’s “a little bit unfair… throwing barrels at an elderly gentleman looking for his boy. But… You want to have a polarizing opinion of me.” The crowd groans audibly. GM puts it to a vote: “yay or nay in chat.” Chat loves it, and the GM grants Joe a d4 of inspiration (“a couple of one to four inches between friends… Just a tip”).
  2. 0:47:01 — The dragon deathmatch snub. Joe has “a bone to pick” with the Arbiter. He saw pictures of a “Fizban’s fabulous treasure thing,” a dragon event, last week: “that seems like my sort of thing. Why the bloody hell am I not on that show? Where’s my invitation?” Arbiter: it was last minute, “someone says, hey, let’s have a battle royale of dragons to the death, and that’s what you do… You’re in on the next one.”
  3. 0:48:44 — Repulsion breath. Joe stumps forward and uses his repulsion breath, “really just a bad case of halitosis mixed with a little bit of… naphthal nitrate.” He aims to push the bear 20 ft toward the gate and into the barrels. GM says this capitalizes on the stereotype that the elderly have bad breath. Joe: “Oh, no, no, it’s because I’m a dragonborn, innit?… all dragonborns are known to have bad breath.” He adds that many of his friends are gerontophiles: “The older the leather, the better the weather.” Arbiter: “Not even one time in my entire life.” Joe: “in the big city, that’s what we say.”
  4. 0:50:44 The bear fails its Strength save. It is shoved 20 ft, knocked prone, and slammed into a second half-full powder barrel. Boom. It takes fire damage. “It’s a barrel fight!”
  5. 0:51:50 — The shoulder firebolt. Joe hadn’t expected the barrel to go off first time. He’d planned to add a firebolt “to give it a little extra spicy.” A little firebolt pops out of his shoulder “sort of like a Predator-like laser,” but instead of three dots it flickers like a dying battery. He takes the batteries out, rubs them between his palms, pops them back in, “go, go, go,” and it zips across and hits. “I didn’t realize Artificers didn’t suck until I built this character.”
  6. 0:53:01 GM: “This polar bear’s fur coat is getting singed.” She jokes it’s payback for Jared making her kill a yeti family on another show that morning (table talk). Joe: killing only the parents is “amateurism… they’re going to track you down in some giant vengeance loop. You’ve got to go the whole way on these things or not at all.”
  7. 0:53:50 The bear is down to two hit points. “The bear lives!” Joe sits down for a breather.
  8. 0:54:42 — The flying tackle. The bear stands and runs to leap into Joe and knock him off the ledge. “Give him a bear hug!” Joe’s Dexterity save gets advantage from Haste, and he sidesteps. “What a piece of Steely Dan cassette, eh? What’s that over there?” The bear sails off the ledge and lands 3–4 ft below.
  9. 0:56:38 From below, the bear swipes at Joe’s ankles and hits. Joe holds concentration on Haste. Milliac: “Angry Bear, rah!” Doug is visibly excited.
  10. 0:58:12 — The helping hand. Joe: “Oh, you look like you fell down. You need a hand up?… you don’t need to dig your claws into me quite so harsh.” He grabs the bear to yoink it back up, forgetting his thunder gauntlet is still switched on. That counts as an attack. The first jolt knocks Milliac out of bear form, and the second misses him in his normal shape. “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to… something electric between us, I’m guessing.”
  11. 1:00:17 — The second fart. Joe Thunderwaves again (“sorry, sorry, pardon me, got one of these coming out”). Milliac fails, and the blast pushes him off the edge. He rolls across a canvas tent and breaks a clay pot full of more black powder. GM: “You’re lucky your fall had first hit on that canvas.” Joe refreshes his Defensive Field and looks down: “A long way down over there.”
  12. 1:02:07 — Heat Metal. Milliac: “I thought I would be able to give you a hug.” He stands, dusts off powder, and steps back from it. Then: “ah it looks like you’re a little cold don’t worry i will heat you up.” He rubs black powder between his hands and casts Heat Metal on Joe’s armor. GM rules it works on the magic armor and adds a d4 for the black powder: “Extra spice in there. I like Salt Bae. Just throw that on there.” Milliac does the praying-mantis Salt Bae hand. Joe: “Salt Bae is the true, the true bourgeois soldier of our generation.” The heat rolls maximum.
  13. 1:04:45 Joe: “Oh, as my friend Nelly would say, it’s getting hot in here. I better take off all my clothes.” GM: “Do we want to see an old dragonborn’s body?… We may have to cast blinding.” Joe: “Good gracious, dragon bodacious.” He can’t drop the armor because he’s inside it, so he takes disadvantage on attacks and checks instead.
  14. 1:06:43 The Arbiter’s end-of-round roll is a natural 1. GM: “You’re the worst.” She calls a break: she’s hungry for pie and needs “sunglasses before we see whatever is underneath that armor.” “Stay tuned for a halftime show… more bears and more black powder and less armor.” “Name that monster.” (Break cut.)

Round 5 — grease and Honey Boo Boo

  1. 1:07:46 GM recap: “pie and glowing armor and bears and black powder and also pills… There’s kindness and meanness and hits and breath… Doug and I cannot keep up.”
  2. 1:08:44 — Grease. Joe: “It’s why I take the pills, you know, because this means I’m not some three-round Joe. I can keep on going all night.” Then: “sometimes the best of relationships… just need a little bit of lubrication.” He casts Grease around Milliac, who fails and falls prone. GM: “lubrication was not on my list.” Joe: “it’s a social lubricant.”
  3. 1:09:56 — The spark. “Like any good relationship, it’s not just the lubrication you need… the oomph, the joie de vivre, that spark.” He steps in and breathes lightning. Prone Milliac fails (“Into the Vaseline of joy”). The GM adds a d4 for the spilled black powder and a d6 for the grease, and the whole patch ignites around Milliac. Joe: “Now that is how you get a party started if you ask old Diamond Joe.” Milliac is bloodied: “I’m having a hard day today.” GM: “Be strong, Milliac. I cheer for you.” “Be the Vaseline monster.”
  4. 1:13:57 Joe’s Constitution save holds, so Milliac’s Heat Metal drops.
  5. 1:14:00 — Conjure Animals. “Milliac is not one to give up quickly.” Roaring with rage while rolling in the grease, he casts Conjure Animals for one beast: another polar bear, summoned right next to Joe. GM: “We’ll bring them to this desert arena.” She pictures it “like how Thor calls Mjolnir.” Milliac: “That’s my power. I just summon bears. It’s quite unbearable.” Joe: “Oh, who’s this little cutie… you need a boop on the snoot too.” Milliac names it Honey Boo Boo.
  6. 1:15:58 Milliac stands and puts Hunter’s Mark on Joe. Joe: “Don’t leave too many marks… it’s nice to know that you want to know where I am, huh? A bit first date creepy.” GM: “It’ll make you hip with all the young kids again.” Joe: “I’ve got a couple of tattoos I could show you, darling.”
  7. 1:17:29 — The greasy javelin. Milliac remembers he has javelins in his backpack. GM: “Well, hello, Mary Poppins.” It misses: the grease makes it slip out of his hand at the last second, and it flies over Joe’s shoulder and sticks in the rock above the polar bear. “You have to have a real good grip on the pole.”
  8. 1:18:22 The Arbiter finally rolls a natural 20. GM: “Let them finish this next round, but after that, I want you to do something special, dear Arbiter, something grand.” Joe: “Is he going to dance?” GM: “His dancing is quite entrancing. He does the Macarena very well.” Joe: “I will call it the Mordenkainen where I’m from.”

Round 6 — the taser, the duplicate, and the bear parade

  1. 1:19:14 Joe, confused after another connection drop, sees “a greasy Milliac,” and the polar bear “just hanging out.” He uses his boots to teleport 15 ft behind the polar bear so the bear and Milliac are lined up, then casts Lightning Bolt: “I used to be quite the old pool shark back in my day… break out the cues.” GM: “You are lightning bolting this polar bear’s butthole, just so you know.” Joe: “Straight through the one, through the other, like a polar bear… caterpillar with electricity.” GM: “like a taser straight to the butthole.” Joe: “A phrase I’ve never said before, but I’m going to say a lot more starting now.”
  2. 1:21:55 Milliac fails and takes the full bolt. Honey Boo Boo saves (“It clenches its butt cheeks, protecting the butthole… strong booty muscles”). Joe reminisces: “In my youth, I used to have somebody take one of those little 9-volt batteries and drop them across dragon scales… A little tingle in the right place.” GM: “Viewers, do not try that at home… This is a disclaimer.” Joe: “if you’ve got dragon scales to try it on, I suggest you bloody well do.” His video freezes (“Am I stuck on some kind of weird time loop?”). That leads to: “as my mother used to say, stick the tongue out, move the head, no one’s gonna complain.” GM: “Your mother sounds like a very interesting woman.” Joe: “My mother was a worldly woman and I won’t hear a damn bad word said against her unless it’s out of my mouth… She shared it around a lot.”
  3. 1:24:19 Joe: “Never to be invited back… Diamond Joe, one and done.”
  4. 1:24:56 Milliac casts Cure Wounds at 5th level on himself (“May it be higher than one. Like last time”). It is more than one.
  5. 1:25:46 — “Don’t let them get the honeypot.” Milliac sends the bear in: “get them, he’s trying to get your butthole. No one gets in the hole of Honey Boo Boo. Don’t let them get the honeypot.” Honey Boo Boo bites and misses. Joe: “I think there’s been some fundamental misunderstanding here. I don’t want to get in your Honey Boo Boo honeypot butthole. I am primarily here looking for my lost boy.” Earlier Joe had said, “He just got you tasered up the ass.” GM: “There’s the butt, but then there’s the butt hole. It’s a very particular target.”
  6. 1:28:31 Milliac learns the grease is only difficult terrain and moves out of it next to his bear: “I want to feel his heat.” Joe: “You’re not the first bear to say that, buddy.” Milliac throws an unarmed punch (“Gonna try and fist Diamond Joe real hard.” “Bring the punch!”). It misses. GM: “you are united, together with your bear once more.”
  7. 1:29:43 — Hero points. The acolytes scream the Arbiter’s name, and each champion receives one hero point. GM: “when you find yourself coming to the end of your moment, push further… demand more.”
  8. 1:30:54 — The Arbiter’s chaos: duplication. “I’m going to take a page out of your playbook.” Milliac calls tails on a coin flip, and the result is “the number two.” The Arbiter raises a hand. The polar bear molts and shifts, its bones creak and split in two with ungodly sounds, and it duplicates into two polar bears that act independently. Milliac: “Yes! More bear.” Joe: “I’ve got a story about twins.” GM and Milliac roar together. GM: “This is one of your best moves yet. Duplication. I didn’t know you were capable of it.” Arbiter: “The other option was the player was going to have two heads.”
  9. 1:32:52 — Chat triggers another event. Both champions roll d20s (6 and 5). GM: “let us make this a night of bears.” She enacts the 5 first:
    • The roars of countless bears searching for honey become deafening, so verbal spell components are useless.
    • A parade of bears loops around the arena. Everyone, bears included, must make a Dexterity save or be swept up. “Bears of all styles and shapes, cubs on their parents’ shoulders.”
  10. 1:34:58 — The conga. Joe voluntarily fails to join the bear conga line (“everybody conga”). Milliac and his bears dance along too, “because it sounds like the right thing to do.” Everyone is swept 15 ft down onto the ground and takes trample (“mosh pit joy”) damage. The summoned bears take less. GM: “Polar bears, grizzly bears, black bears, brown bears… dancing their wiggly, fuzzy butts.” She’ll “even allow koala bears even though they’re marsupials.” The parade leaves the arena. No one is left on the raised platform.

Round 7 — Honey Boo Boo Prime falls

  1. 1:37:48 Joe, disoriented: “Where am I? Who are you people?… Oh right, the thing with the pie! Got it!” He breathes lightning on Milliac and a bear standing in the grease pile. Both fail.
  2. 1:39:28 He teleports again with his Boots of the Winding Path (15 ft): “there will come a point where I think we just have to all get on as friends. Let’s call that point delightful unconsciousness.” Then his last spell, Lightning Bolt, through all three.
  3. 1:40:37 — Milliac’s nat 20. Milliac rolls a natural 20 and takes nothing. GM: “you’re used to lightning. You’ve taken lightning attack after lightning attack. You are resistant to lightning from here on out.” Both bears fail. “Honey Boo Boo Prime is now dead.” Milliac: “Not like this.” The copy survives.
  4. 1:41:46 Milliac uses his last Wild Shape: another polar bear. “Polar bears are the best bears.” Joe: “One is the loneliest number.” GM: “Polar bears always travel in packs of two.”
  5. 1:42:19 — The double bear attack. Milliac roars, sends the second Honey Boo Boo at Joe and charges behind it. The copy misses: “a feigned attack… Strategy.” Joe: “oh, you want to give a little bear kisses? I give you bear kisses.” Milliac’s claw lands a natural 20. “It’s the double bear attack!” Colossus Slayer adds more because Joe was already hurt. One bite misses and the second hits for maximum: “Ah, I’m such an angry bear.” Joe stays standing: “sometimes you have to hand things over to the youth of the day. Just, I didn’t expect it to be my hand.”
  6. 1:46:39 — The dance refusal. The Arbiter rolls a 7, then a disappointing reroll. Joe suggests a belly dance to “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” GM: if the next roll isn’t above 10, “you need to give me a little wiggle of a dance… This will kill him. He hates this part.” Joe: “Just wave your hands a little.” Arbiter: “I will not.” (Someone sings “get down tonight.”) GM: “I will give you a disadvantage on your next action. You disappoint me.” Arbiter: “I’ll take it. I don’t care.”
  7. 1:47:50 — Double damage. GM: “I’ve seen a lot of claws, and I’ve seen a lot of lightning. Let’s make these hit a little harder… All damage is doubled.” “I want this to hurt.”

Round 8 — the fart tornado and the bear bomb

  1. 1:48:25 Joe slaps Milliac’s own bear form (not Honey Boo Boo; “The bear necessities”) with the thunder gauntlet for maximum doubled damage. His second swing rolls a natural 1 and comes back to smack him in the face. GM: “Why do you keep hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself.” Joe: “First cut is the deepest.” He gives himself a small bloody nose and refreshes his Defensive Field.
  2. 1:51:09 — Joe’s hero point. The GM explains hero points: “dream big… Just make it sound badass.” Joe wants a big second-level Thunderwave, “another giant fart,” to blow both bears into the air. He also hoped to whip the grease and powder into “a little napalm tornado.” The Arbiter rules the grease and powder have already burned and can’t combust twice, but the launch is allowed. Joe: “napalm fart tornado for another episode.” GM: “Save your farts.”
  3. 1:53:33 Both fail. “We just see two polar bears like flying up in the air, their legs flailing.” They’re blown 10 ft up and slammed down. With fall damage and double damage, the second Honey Boo Boo is destroyed and Milliac is knocked out of bear form, alive but barely. GM: “It smells terrible right now… this is pie farts.”
  4. 1:55:21 — Milliac’s last stand. Milliac spends his hero point: “Milliac doesn’t go out like this.” “In honor of Honey Boo Boo,” he uses Mold Earth to gather every fragment of black powder into the shape of a flaming bear and drop it like a fireball on the whole area, himself included.
  5. 1:56:26 — The black-powder bear. GM: the powder sifts out of every barrel and clay pot into a fuzzy, gigantic black bear, its eyes shimmering from specks of dust. It roars, and Milliac roars for it. It has a little nub of a tail that works as a lighter. The tail fizzes as it rampages forward, and the bear bomb lands in the middle. Joe reacts with Absorb Elements. Arbiter: “I’m the bear hammer.”
  6. 1:58:13 GM: five d12, because “there’s a lot that you’re pulling from… Not enough were destroyed before this,” then doubled. Milliac saves and takes half, which drops him to dying. Drew rolls Joe’s save for him because Joe’s Foundry is reloading (“Sorry, I failed you”). Joe fails, but Absorb Elements halves it and he survives. GM: “a heck of a way to go out.”
  7. 2:00:08 — The lesson. Joe looks down at the unconscious Milliac: “this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the key problems of going when you bring the bear back.” Milliac: “Oh, never go full bareback.” Joe: “Always, always use protection. That’s why I always carry Absorb Elements.” He adds: “The FDA has not approved [Absorb Elements] as a concept. Off-label uses may apply.”

Aftermath

  1. 2:00:58 GM: “Enough of this PSA!” [heard “PNC”]. The Grandmaster’s wings open and she descends into the arena as the dust settles among scattered fire embers. She carries Doug the Pug and sets him down, and Doug runs over to “the burning ashes that is Milliac,” licking his face. GM: “The Arbiter will take care of you.”
  2. 2:01:29 — The secret revival. The Arbiter swoops down and grabs Milliac by the foot, because he’s “covered in like burnt grease and lube… this is disgusting, but I guess I might find a use for you somewhere.” He secretly revives him, healing him for one hit point, and flies him away, unseen by anybody else.
  3. 2:02:01 GM to Joe: “What does the saying go? Something about leather and… the weather?” Joe: “The older the leather, the better the weather.” GM: “Well, the weather is fantastic here. Let me take you to the sky,” and she holds out her hand. Joe: “Oh, let me take you to the sky, lovely, lovely Grandmastery.” GM: “You can buy me ice cream after this. There’s a nice lemonade stand, too.” Joe asks her pronouns (“You’re my kind of lady or man”). She says “She, her.” “Let’s go get ice cream, she, her.” Joe: “I tell you what I want, what I really, really want.”
  4. 2:02:48 Hand in hand, they rise toward the acolytes, who chant his name. GM: “Diamond Joe, you have fought bravely. And not only will you get ice cream after this fight, but you will get to see your son, your creation. Give them final words.”
  5. 2:03:27 — The final words. Joe: “All right, but can I get a bit of a handjob while I’m at it, huh?” The Grandmaster drops his hand and he falls back down to the ground. “Sometimes you ask for too much. Welcome and good night.”

Dried Blood (after-show)

  • Lore drop (Ramji, stated “for lore purposes”; treat as Dried Blood canon pending Drew): after the match the Arbiter takes Diamond Joe to where Steely Dan is: “a large room full of a lot of scrap metal and junk,” and Joe is free to sort through it for Steely Dan’s parts. Drew: “He’s in here somewhere.” Bec: “You’ve done it once. Might as well do it again.” (So Joe can rebuild Steely Dan.)
  • Ramji: Diamond Joe “will probably have forgotten his win about 30 seconds from now and be searching around going why am I here again.”
  • In-character farewells (Dried Blood):
    • Milliac: “Milliac, I had a grand time, and always remember… Use protection when dealing with fire damage.”
    • Diamond Joe echoes “the importance of protection… especially when you’re shooting such loaded bullets, as you clearly are, young man.” Also: “Asking for handjobs from the Grandmistress… Be careful. Be wise. Don’t do these things, young people. It’s for the elderly.” Then he plugs subscriptions to D20 Deathmatch and Jared’s channel.
  • Out-of-character creator notes are under Table talk below.

Who and what appears

Characters

Diamond Joe (Ramji / ramjiv). An elderly dragonborn artificer in self-built power armor of fused metallic plates. He speaks with an old British accent.

  • Creator of Steely Dan, whom he calls “my boy.” He came to the Deathmatch because the Arbiter promised to reunite them.
  • Gear and powers:
    • Thunder gauntlets that he forgets to switch off.
    • A Defensive Field of radiant energy.
    • A lightning breath weapon and a “repulsion breath.” He blames his bad breath on being a dragonborn.
    • Thunderwaves he plays as magnified farts.
    • A shoulder-mounted firebolt emitter like a Predator laser, run on batteries.
    • Boots of the Winding Path (15-ft teleport).
    • Grease, Lightning Bolt, Absorb Elements.
    • A bag of pills: the blue Haste pill, plus “whoopsie whoopsie” and “space out” varieties. They give him senior moments.
  • Personality and lore:
    • Philosophy: “better living through alchemy.” Claims the armor is all that keeps him in one piece.
    • Catchphrases: “libation and lubrication,” “the older the leather, the better the weather.”
    • Says he’s from “the big city,” and was a pool shark in his youth.
    • As a youth he had 9-volt batteries dropped across dragon scales.
    • His mother was “a worldly woman.”
    • Wanted an invitation to the dragon battle royale.
  • In this episode: he won. He was promised ice cream and a reunion with his son, and was dropped by the Grandmaster after asking for a handjob.

Milliac (Jared / NVNGpodcast). He comes from “the woods, down the block” and answered a flyer promising pie and punch. He has a big belly, and his favorite pie is cherry. He uses he/him.

  • Once spent time in a traveling circus (the barrel trick).
  • His “natural shape” is a bear. He Wild Shapes into a polar bear when excited, and “can’t control the beast inside.”
  • Spells and abilities: Zephyr Strike, Heat Metal, Conjure Animals (always polar bears), Hunter’s Mark, Cure Wounds, Mold Earth, Colossus Slayer, and javelins in his backpack.
  • Granted lightning resistance “from here on out” by the GM after a nat 20.
  • Died to his own black-powder bear bomb. He was secretly revived at 1 HP and carried off by the Arbiter, who “might find a use for you somewhere.”

Honey Boo Boo. Milliac’s conjured polar bear. The Arbiter’s chaos event duplicated it, giving “Honey Boo Boo Prime” (killed by Lightning Bolt) and the copy (killed by the fart tornado).

The Arbiter (Drew).

  • Has a secret lab in the Dread Fortress catacombs. It holds potions, specimens in jars, and a book of plans.
  • Monologues about “phase three” and “This entire castle will be mine.” He hid it all from the Grandmaster.
  • Handles the vendors (the lemonade guy, blue raspberry slushies).
  • Can duplicate a creature as a chaos event.
  • Refused to dance for the Grandmaster, though she says he does the Macarena well.
  • Secretly revived Milliac.

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (Bec).

  • Champions flyers as a recruiting tool.
  • Gave the acolytes satchels of black powder.
  • Owns Doug the Pug (“boneless”).
  • Doubled all damage in round 8.
  • Uses she/her. Wants ice cream and lemonade after the fight.

Steely Dan (“Steely Dan the Sir”). Built by Diamond Joe. “Quite the instrument of destruction… in the previous Deathmatch.” Described as an 8–9 ft steam-powered contraption covered in cassette tapes and minidiscs. His parts are in a scrap room the Arbiter showed Joe (Dried Blood).

Farcheck. Once dug for black powder at this site. “He may have been imaginary.”

Doug the Pug. The Grandmaster’s pug. He gets excited during the fight and licks the fallen Milliac’s face.

Mordenkainen. Mentioned by Joe as the source of a “ropey” multi-universal connection he wants a refund for. Joe also says the Arbiter’s dance is called “the Mordenkainen” where he’s from.

Places

Items

  • The Arbiter’s book of plans and his vanishing contraptions.
  • Black-powder barrels (half full) and clay pots. The acolytes’ black-powder satchels.
  • Diamond Joe’s armor, pills, gauntlets, Boots of the Winding Path, and cream pie.
  • Milliac’s javelins.
  • The black-powder bear bomb (Mold Earth).
  • Flyers (pie and punch).

Lore statements

  • The Deathmatch recruits through flyers (printed at Kinko’s).
  • Arena vendors include a lemonade guy, blue raspberry slushies, and a lemonade stand.
  • The Arbiter has a hidden lab and a multi-phase plan to make “this entire castle” his. Stated in his own monologue.
  • A fallen champion (Milliac) was secretly revived and taken away by the Arbiter, unseen by anybody else.

Quotes by character

Diamond Joe

  • 0:04:47 “I look forward to seeing my boy again.”
  • 0:05:03 “His name is Steely Dan. Steely Dan the Sir.”
  • 0:06:32 “It’s important libation and lubrication, that’s what I always say.”
  • 0:16:05 “No one spends an evening with Diamond Joe, darling, and… remain standing at the end, I’ll tell you that much.”
  • 0:22:37 “At my age, dear boy, it’s pretty much all that’s keeping me in one piece.”
  • 0:23:41 “Imagine a sort of eight or nine foot tall steam-powered vibrator with a large quantity of cassette tapes and… mini discs…”
  • 0:30:03 “The night is but a fetus, as they say, my friend.”
  • 0:30:37 “Tale as old as time, song as old as wine, Milliac and the pie.”
  • 0:49:30 “The older the leather, the better the weather.”
  • 1:08:44 “This means I’m not some three-round Joe. I can keep on going all night.”
  • 1:26:56 “I don’t want to get in your Honey Boo Boo honeypot butthole. I am primarily here looking for my lost boy.”
  • 1:46:27 “Sometimes you have to hand things over to the youth of the day. Just, I didn’t expect it to be my hand.”
  • 2:00:08 “This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the key problems of going when you bring the bear back.”
  • 2:03:27 “All right, but can I get a bit of a handjob while I’m at it, huh?”

Milliac

  • 0:06:02 “I was told there’d be pie and punch. I come bringing the punch, if you know what that mean.”
  • 0:06:58 “I saw a flyer. It said, hey, come, we fight. You get pie and punch.”
  • 0:16:33 “I got the big belly for a reason here.”
  • 0:23:59 “No, I usually upgrade my machines when I have them.”
  • 0:29:49 “I’ve never been cream-pied so early in the night.”
  • 0:31:51 “It’s rawr, rawr.”
  • 0:40:32 “Thinking back to when Milliac spent a little time in a traveling circus…”
  • 1:02:07 “I thought I would be able to give you a hug.”
  • 1:15:23 “That’s my power. I just summon bears. It’s quite unbearable.”
  • 1:26:30 “No one gets in the hole of Honey Boo Boo. Don’t let them get the honeypot.”
  • 1:55:24 “Milliac… doesn’t go out like this.”
  • 2:00:28 “Oh, never go full bareback.”
  • 2:10:21 (Dried Blood) “Always remember… Use protection when dealing with fire damage.”

The Arbiter

  • 0:01:12 “This is going to work! My time is coming! This entire castle will be mine. The power. All of it. The fame. The glory. The prestige.”
  • 0:02:29 “A lot of back-end work goes into setting this thing up… we got to talk to the vendors, the lemonade guy.”
  • 0:07:21 “It’s so hard to find a Kinko’s in this day and age.”
  • 0:15:45 “If it so happens that you… cease his life functions, you know, I won’t… I’ll look the other way.”
  • 0:47:42 “Someone says, hey, let’s have a battle royale of dragons to the death, and that’s what you do… You’re in on the next one.”
  • 1:38:32 “Grandmaster, the other option was the player was going to have two heads.”
  • 1:47:26 “I will not.”
  • 2:01:29 “This is disgusting, but I guess I might find a use for you somewhere.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer

  • 0:02:19 “What are you doing down here?”
  • 0:03:43 “You should pick up here, by the way. It’s really messy.”
  • 0:07:11 “I told you, Arbiter, that the flyers worked.”
  • 0:09:02 “He may have been imaginary, I don’t know. But… the black powder that resides here is not imaginary.”
  • 0:10:35 “Acolytes, I hear your pleas once again, and I bring you blood that will pour from two.”
  • 0:30:20 “This is true beauty, something we’ve yet seen on this arena.”
  • 0:35:27 “Don’t worry. I’m used to you being a disappointment.”
  • 0:45:45 “That paper cut that you had bringing into this fight heals up for you on your tiny paw.”
  • 1:21:03 “You are lightning bolting this polar bear’s butthole, just so you know.”
  • 1:32:11 “This is one of your best moves yet. Duplication.”
  • 1:40:47 “You were resistant to lightning from here on out. That nat 20 is a savior to you.”
  • 1:47:50 “Let’s make these hit a little harder. I’m gonna double the damage moving forward.”
  • 2:02:11 “Well, the weather is fantastic here. Let me take you to the sky.”
  • 2:03:34 “Sometimes you ask for too much. Welcome and good night.”

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