S6 Ep4 — Tip to Tip - Part 1 (TTRPG One Shot)


Champions and players	Joel as Richard S. Skelman; RealLifeFakeWizard as Richard Knottley, a.k.a. Dick Twist; Yangyang as Killy Yesman (names from Dried Blood, since the description has no guest cast)
Result	no deathmatch. The party (“Team B”, later “Team 3D”) defeats Skelman’s lich grandfather and finds Thea. Skelman v Richard Knottley is set for next week.
Arena	the Midnight Mausoleum in the Shadowlands (the Skelman family plot): graveyard, the crying angel statue, a trapped corridor, then the lich grandfather’s chamber
Hosts	Caustic Phoenix (Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer, narration) and Mudcat (the Arbiter, narration, the angel statue; inferred also the lich grandfather / disembodied voice)
Watch	YouTube

What happens

Opening — Thea is missing

0:07:11 Table banter: the Grandmaster admits the intro runs “three seconds longer” than it should, and the Arbiter agrees with her. “It is in recording… the grandmaster was correct.” Narrated by Bec: “With my newfound sense of rightness, we enter into the Dread Fortress with a sense of pride.”
0:07:40 The Grandmaster walks down deep into the Dread Fortress dungeons. They are cold, empty and strangely tidy, with everything “where it’s supposed to be.” She calls out looking for “any sort of chaos.”
0:08:04 The Arbiter pokes his head out of the ski ball room and asks if she has seen Thea. She hasn’t. Nothing is messy, so Thea clearly hasn’t been there. The Arbiter had told Thea to talk to the Grandmaster about the Deathmatch: get the champions and set everything up.
0:08:42 — The tracker. The GM asks whether he has a tracker on her. He does. He pulls up a tablet and smacks it: “Fucking Stuart. This thing never works.” He complains of bad reception in the fortress. Thea’s location reads as the mausoleum, “all the way over in the Shadowlands.” The Arbiter: “She’s been kidnapped. There’s no way” she’d go alone, “especially not on Deathmatch Day. She loves the Deathmatches.”
0:09:29 — Who’s in charge. The GM: “She’s under your charge.” The Arbiter: “Just because I created her does not mean that I’m in charge of her. I’m not her father.” The GM: “you are her manager… You sign her paperwork every single week to make sure she gets paid.”
0:09:58 The Arbiter caves: “I got a couple of guys… get in, get out.” The GM insists on an elite, top-tier group, because if someone can kidnap Thea, “that puts everyone within the Dread Fortress at risk.”
0:10:41 The Arbiter: “honestly, things look great around here without her.” The GM: “Thea is energy. She’s staying pink because she keeps rolling around in the blood of champions… We need her here or no Deathmatch happens.”
0:11:00 — The elite squad. He slams his hands together and a portal rips open, with the sound reverberating through the fortress walls. Out come Killy Yesman, Richard S. Skelman and Richard Knottley. The Arbiter: “two Richards in one group… it just happened that way.”

Introductions

0:11:36 — Skelman. The GM knows Richard Skelman. He says: “I thought I was the only dick in the room, but it seems that there may be two of us this time.” She notes he’s “always been beloved by the fortress,” but didn’t know he could fight. “I may be missing muscles amongst all of the bones, but I assure you I am quite capable.”
0:12:17 “You don’t even have eyeballs.” Skelman: “I use echolocation. I chatter my teeth really rapidly and it goes out into the ether and returns back as vibrations into my bones.” GM: “Bone conduction.” Skelman: “boy, I pulled that right out of my rib cage.” GM: “You always had a funny bone. Glad you’re back here with us.”
0:13:03 — Killy and Double Sun Cola. The GM offers her hand. Killy hands her a bottle of icy frosted-glass soda instead: shaped like a rocket “with like two balls at the bottom”, with a sun pattern in the middle, sweet and cool. “Hey, I know we haven’t met, but I think it’s more important that I introduce you to the scientifically, chemically calibrated delicious taste of Icy Double Sun Cola.” GM: “you brought your own drink to this party. I like this guy.”
0:13:57 Killy says you have to shake it really vigorously first. GM: “Is it a one hand or two hand job for shaking it?” There’s a deluxe double-handed version “somewhere here in the back.” She pops the cap and it erupts all over her.
0:14:52 — Richard Knottley. “I’m not really too thrilled to be here.” He says the other Richard has no flesh (“I am bones… I am the biggest dick”). He claims the cola “is clearly government funded and you should not be drinking that.” He asks if she’s the boss.
0:15:39 He refuses the half-bottle of cola. Instead he pulls a mason jar of lukewarm pickle juice from his back pocket. He takes it everywhere, and it’s only warm because he forgets to take it out of his pocket. GM: “It’s not even lukewarm, it’s body warmed.”
0:16:03 — Knottley’s backstory. His dream is to become a radio host and run “After Dark with the Twist” (later “After Dark with Dick Twist”). He can’t fund it because he was let go as a Peloton instructor “on account of the many complaints.” The complaints were because “I performed better… No one could keep up with me.” He calls himself “the embodiment of physical prowess.”
0:16:59 — The job. The Arbiter: “The Grandmaster, as you know, has been preparing champions for the eventual showdown with the Shadow King someday, somewhere… It’s common knowledge.” Training must start now. This job is just finding his kidnapped assistant, but “if you guys show a little promise… maybe we can slide you in the roster.”
0:17:45 — Benefits. The GM offers health benefits and “your own pet chinchilla.”
0:18:01 — Conspiracy. Knottley: “The government is run by chinchillas, voles, and small mammals.” Skelman: “I thought it was the mole people.” He adds that moles can dig about 30 ft down before the dirt crushes them. Knottley: “You don’t understand how deep this goes, Richard.”
0:18:28 — The foil hat. Knottley gives Skelman an aluminum foil hat against radiation. Skelman reaches for it with his bony hands. Knottley insists he “clearly can’t take it because you have no flesh.” Skelman: “That’s not the problem!” Knottley wears it himself: “I’ll wear it for us both.”
0:18:51 The Arbiter: “you don’t have to wear each other’s hats or whatever it is you’re trying to fucking do right now… you do gotta save Thea. She’s somewhere in the Midnight Mausoleum.”
0:19:11 — The tryout. The GM calls it a tryout. They are “Team B” until they pick a leader and earn an official team name. If they succeed they get “all the benefits. You won’t die. You get a pet chinchilla, plenty of PTO, a sabbatical even… vacation resorts that are already paid for.”
0:20:01 Skelman: “She’s very loud, so I assume… very easy to find.” Killy: she’ll come running when he cracks a Double Sun Cola. GM: “We’ll see if that cheese leaves the rat trap.”
0:20:18 — Describing Thea. Knottley once went looking for a Chris and found a Christopher. GM: “She’s like a neon pink, almost glows in the dark. If you were ever to break any of her bones and shake her up a little bit, she does glow just like a light glow stick… because she’s eaten a lot of glow sticks.” The Arbiter: “you’ll know you’ve found her because when she’s speaking, you’ll want to pierce your own eardrums.”
0:21:10 — Hands in. Knottley nicknames them “Sir Richard and Phallic Soda Cola Fella.” All hands in. He forgets the chant on three. They cheer anyway: “We did it.”

The Midnight Mausoleum — zombies

0:21:42 A second portal opens and cold, autumn-like air flows through. They step into the Midnight Mausoleum: a graveyard under a full moon, fog rolling around their feet, graves and crypts in the distance. Mettle save. Skelman: “Is it because they’re creepy and undead? Because I am creepy and undead.” Knottley: “You are more than just creepy and undead.” “Well, not really.”
0:22:36 The Acolytes watch from grandstands high above, thousands cheering. Skelman passes. Zombified hands burst up through the dewy grass and grab the legs of Killy and Knottley. Both take damage and are held until they use an action to clear it. More zombies approach. Initiative: Killy 17, Knottley 16, Skelman 9. One zombie gets 18 and one gets 2.
0:24:24 — Josephine. The first zombie comes at Skelman. “Do I recognize them?” Instinct 12. Drew: “Jilted Lover.” Skelman: “Hello, Josephine! It’s been a while. I scarcely remember the last we met, where I buried you alive.” Her jaw hangs slightly unhinged. “Undeath do be becoming of you. Perhaps we should call this whole thing off.”
0:25:30 He pleads to rekindle “what we once had” so she won’t kill his new friends. She swipes at his face. Their rolls tie and both gain fatigue. She swings again and misses (“very slow”). Then she gets angry, lets out a soft roar, and flings her own arm across the distance into his face. “Where did you learn such techniques, Josephine?”
0:27:31 Her claws leave a festering, infectious sludge on his bones, but it has no effect on a skeleton. “A clean set of bones is much easier to live the afterlife in.” Skelman tells the team: “I cannot reason with Josephine… Do what you must.” Killy: “But, but must we?” “I think we might must.”
0:28:28 — Killy described. Big muscles; his pecs undulate with each breath. He sips soda through straws from his hat, which holds two Double Sun Cola bottles. His legs are surprisingly thin. He whispers to the hands: “yo, help a brother out here. I’m trying to just… make a living, sell some soda, and you’re making me look really bad in front of the audience.”
0:29:12 No response. He shakes a bottle, pops both tops, sprays their hands and slips free. He twirls a 360, spinning two more bottles like a cowboy’s pistols, and sprays again. The cola “has caustic effects on bone if you drink it too much.” It singes and melts the zombie’s skin, but the zombie keeps coming. GM: “You just got to brush your teeth afterwards… Teeth aren’t bones.”
0:31:03 — The red bottle. Killy thinks the cola reminds him of his childhood, so maybe it’ll remind Josephine of her love for Skelman. From the back of his form-hugging shorts he pulls a special dark-red bottle he’d been “saving… for a special time” and sprays her. It hits. A sticky red tinge spreads over her chest, chin and arms, soaks into her bones and glows like a glow stick. The glow gathers in her core into a little heart that beats once.
0:32:52 For a moment she shows full sentience. Josephine: “I’ll forever hate you, Skelben.” The red soda dissolves the last of her bones. She crumples, and the heartbeat echoes in the quiet graveyard before disappearing. Killy winks and gives a thumbs up.
0:33:39 Skelman: “I lost my heart a long time ago. Oh, Josephine, what we could have had, I suppose, if I didn’t bury you under the ground while you were still living. Anyways.”
0:34:20 — Knottley’s Peloton lightning. One zombie still claws at Knottley. “I need to know where’s the nearest carpet.” There’s a strip of fresh green grass rolled over a grave, probably astroturf (“We don’t have to pay for lawn care”). He walks over and takes off his very holey slippers. He shuffles his feet as fast as he can, “channeling the energies of my Peloton powers to generate enough electricity to zap” the creature. The GM: “Absolutely sad, Thor.” The zombie rolls a nat 1 and it works.
0:35:49 “The amount of energy pouring out of me just accelerates through my hat, which blows it off of my head.” His hands burn. Killy and Skelman spray him with “two soda bombs.” Knottley: “it’s blistering… I need more.” The Arbiter: “That means it’s healing.” The zombie drowns in the flood of soda. The area becomes so muddy and sloppy that nothing can pull up through it. Knottley: “my fingertips… I was kind of a one and done thing.”
0:37:06 — Flavor. Knottley asks the flavor. Killy: “always chemically calibrated to taste delicious,” and “It’s like having two suns in your mouth.” Knottley: “That’s exactly what the government would say.”
0:37:48 Skelman: “I lost feeling in my bones a long time ago… It’s lonely out here.” He takes off one of his arms: the bones “just seem to go where I need them to go… magnets, how do they work?” Knottley: if they combined, “we would be… double dicked up.” Skelman: “It would be one very large dick.” Knottley goes back for his shoes.

The crying angel

0:39:28 Skelman rolls instinct (9) and finds nothing, but he keeps Josephine’s thrown arm: “that’s coming with me.” Killy, “in your hyped up sugar version”, spots tiny clawfoot tracks leading to a tall, looming angel statue that casts a wide shadow even though it’s night. Knottley is distracted looking at little flowers.
0:41:07 — Conspiracies. Killy asks if Knottley knows any conspiracies about shadows at night. Knottley: “Did you know William Shakespeare was a time traveler? … That’s where he got all of his characters from.” “Romeo and Juliet is based on the Titanic… The film.” Skelman: was there not enough space on the door for Jack? Knottley: “Selfish.” Skelman: “She got what she wanted out of him and then there he goes to the depths!” Knottley: “I can understand why somebody would bury their loved ones live over that kind of a situation.” Skelman: “I was in the right!”
0:42:26 Killy: “I’m the only member that can see during the daytime or nighttime” (it was said he wears sunglasses). Skelman throws Josephine’s arm at the statue (“Josephine, go!”). It lands at the base and draws attention to a plaque: “Hell is home to those that make angels cry.”
0:43:46 — Insults. Killy: “Say something really mean to it.” Skelman: “Hey, you suck.” (verbal assault, 12) The statue almost flinches. Knottley compliments it instead: “Hey, you look lovely… You look adorable… You are so pretty.” He checks how it presents: its hands cover its face and it wears a long robe, so “they/them would be safe.” “Anyone is allowed to be beautiful.”
0:45:35 Killy leans over it, sips soda, pecs undulating, and says: “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?” “Sometimes I say this line and the women always seem to cry.” Knottley explains it’s an insult: “God said, get out of here.” On 17, sniffles come from behind the statue’s hands.
0:46:59 Knottley: “You beautiful gargoyle.” Nat 20 (“Dick Twist is the Rizz master”). The hands drop, the eyes are closed and tears pour down. The tears are small pebbles. Their rhythm hitting the ground unlocks a door at the angel’s feet, and a stairwell opens leading deep underneath. “As it turns out, no one’s ever complimented this angel and it meant the world to them.”
0:48:24 Knottley stays with the statue “for a minute or two.” Skelman: “You guys have really hit it off.”
0:48:41 Smog pours out as the pressure changes. The Acolytes go rowdy, ripping their shirts off and demanding chaos. Skelman’s flat d20 is a 7 (inferred chaos roll). Acolytes chant “Chaos!” Skelman: “No, no, no, thank you. Please don’t.”

The stairs — the poltergeists

0:49:32 Walking down is eerie and freezing; even the bones rattle. Small poltergeists appear, heckling, entering their bodies and making them smack themselves: “Stop hitting yourself!” Killy and Skelman take their own hands to the face. Skelman: “Auntie Ethel, no, stop, please. I know I ruined that one dinner that one time.”
0:50:59 Egged on, the ghosts feed all three a knuckle sandwich. All three find their own fists in their mouths, “impressed that you were able to fit the whole thing in.” The satisfied ghosts evaporate, and it feels warmer and safer.

Dick Twist and the statue (0:52:04)

Back up top, Knottley tells the statue: “you can be more than you think you are. The government and the world tries to tell you, you got to live a certain way… drink their own chemical concoctions, soda… [Killy’s] cool, but he’s selling nonsense.” He asks its name and swears to stand there until it answers.
0:52:54 The statue answers in Knottley’s own voice. Knottley: “Oh, you handsome devil, you!” Statue: “I kept thinking about how all the frogs are gay. They keep croaking all night… The birds… those are cameras from the government. And the trees can talk on the internet.” Knottley: “My man!” “I’ve seen them move.”
0:53:55 Knottley invites it onto his show, After Dark with Dick Twist. Statue: “I only consume radio media.” Knottley dances in his slippers. The statue tries to dance but pieces crumble. He asks it to join “our own little Suicide Squad-esque thing, non-copyright.”
0:54:41 — The ankle monitor. “There’s an incident down at Soho… I’m now wearing this piece of jewelry.” It lifts its rock skirt to show an ankle monitor. Knottley calls it “Dick Third” and pours his pickle juice over the monitor to fry it. Statue: “they’re going to come for us.” Knottley: “They’ve already come for me once. I have nightmares of being controlled by chinchillas in my body… I fought a frog creature in my dreams. It threw little frogs at me out of its mouth.”
0:55:25 The Grandmaster’s face lights up the sky, replacing the moon: “We only have so many slots. It’s just the three of you.” She calls a break with a clap of thunder.
0:55:54 Before the break, the statue tells Knottley: “I’m going to start carving into a piece of stone. I’m going to meet you with these coordinates at the third full moon of the year.” Knottley: “I will be there.” It flaps its stone wings but is too heavy to fly. It skips across the ground knocking over gravestones. A single tear rolls down Dick Twist’s face. GM: “Now you both have cried today.”

After the break — the corridor of three traps

0:56:46 “Welcome back, Acolytes!” Team B (“name to be determined still”) stands at the foot of the stairs in a tunnel. Many torches are lit, and freshly: someone has been here recently. Bec stumbles on “wicks,” and Skelman repeats it in character: “The wicks on these torches have not been burned very far at all.” GM: “Let’s just double down and make sure Caustic’s embarrassed.”
0:58:00 Who goes first? Killy: “you’re the one who’s already dead.” Skelman: “I really just wanted to laugh at someone else getting hurt.” He likes pie “because it sticks to the ribs.” Knottley volunteers: “I will accept responsibility when it is thrust upon me.” Skelman pats him on the back with Josephine’s arm, and the GM rules that Josephine’s arm grants advantage. “Two dicks, one Josephine’s hand.” “She’s got great grip.” The Arbiter: “This moment brought to you by Double Sun Cola.”
1:00:17 — The voice. As Knottley lifts his foot, a voice echoes: “Is this on?… This is my home. Welcome… Why is no one smiling?” It asks them to name themselves. Knottley needs the bathroom. There is confusion over “Team B or Team D.” The voice: “Don’t come down here. We don’t have our shots.”
1:01:10 Skelman asks after a small, loud, obnoxious imp. Voice: “There’s a lot of imps, oddly enough, that come by the mausoleum… I’ve got one. They’re deep down in here, but we don’t just give our imps away for free.” Knottley just starts walking. “Wait… I didn’t tell you the full part… This is the least curious group in the world.” Rocks fall from the ceiling in its anger.
1:02:16 — The rules. “There are three traps, one for each of you… You can’t use the same skills for the same trap… No one can do the same thing twice.”
1:03:01 — Two dicks, one door. Knottley and Skelman both take the center door (“We’re both Richard, so we should both be able to fit”). Killy sprays them down to lubricate them. Because they share a hole, both roll for both traps. Their flat d20s for slipperiness are low (8 and 4), so Killy pulls a magnum-sized bottle that vibrates, pops on its own and sprays them again. “It’s ice cold, but it makes you feel tingly and warm.”
1:05:20 Each must use a different stat. Skelman passes instinct (19) and bloodlust (11). Knottley (“I’m not very good at gambling”) fails twice. The ceiling falls on them. Skelman trips forward onto a switch, and arrows fly straight through Skelman’s ribs and into Dick Twist. “Oh god. Oh, it’s happening again. I’ve been impaled.” “Are your bones stabbing me?” “No, that’s arrows. I’m not made of wood.”
1:07:44 Knottley begs him to pull the arrows out. Skelman rips them out. The Arbiter: “You’re never supposed to pull…” Knottley fails a mettle save and the wounds won’t close.
1:08:16 — Killy’s door. He strolls in confidently. The room is pitch black, and his hand disappears into the darkness. He dumps the rest of the magnum bottle on himself and sprints in face first, because “growing up with the world’s most punchable face… that’s where he takes the damage the best.”
1:10:08 The torches all light at once. The Double Sun Cola is flammable, and he is engulfed in flames. He screams and keeps running: “Why did I pick the flammable one?” Near the end he looks down to pat out the fire, and a ghost appears and sucker-punches his punchable face. He reaches the end. Killy: “I gotta tell Skelman that his relatives all suck.”
1:11:54 The GM confirms: this is Skelman’s family plot. Skelman buried his ex-lover there because “In the last place anyone else would look.” “People go missing every day.”
1:12:31 Skelman helps Knottley up and “subtly place[s] him in front of me.” Knottley: “Do you think that I’ll turn into skeleton and bones like you… if I die down here?” Skelman: “I actually have a gelatinous cube friend that I keep on me for just such occasions. We’ll rip the flesh straight from your bones.” “Only do it if I die first.” Knottley runs down the hall like a little kid.
1:13:39 Voice: “Just go, get out of my corridors… It’s a trial run. One of you burned it down and the other two feel like you defiled it.” Killy: “It’s your fault for having such long wicks on those torches.” Voice: “The next person who mentions the wicks on the torches gets an extra point of damage.” Skelman: “you know about the damage we have, disembodied voice?… This feels like a setup.” Knottley: “once you go down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
1:14:59 Killy patches himself up with two sodas from his waistband, one to drink and one poured on his burns.

Thea found

1:15:17 At the end of the corridor, a squeaky voice. A small pink imp sits on the floor with a torch, apparently talking to herself while making hand shadows on the wall. Knottley: “How’s the wick on that torch?” Skelman: “it’s the imp. I know that one. It died the last time. We solved a murder mystery. I was a real proper dick on that case.”
1:16:24 — Thea: “Yee-hoo! Ah! You found me! … You’re not supposed to find me this quickly!” She’s playing hide-and-go-seek with a friend who invited her over. She doesn’t remember the friend’s name: “They just had a really long creepy hand with very long fingernails, but they were kind of bejeweled and I liked them and they said, let’s play a game.” Skelman: “This is the Skelman family plot… You are trespassing.”
1:17:21 — Mother? Skelman: “Mommy? Is that you? The fingers gave it away. Long, bony, likes hide and seek. One day she let me hide and I hid for hours and hours.” Knottley: that was “to get you to leave for a little while because she was looking for a break.” Asked his mother’s name, he says “Bertha,” then corrects to “Meredith. Meredith is my mother.”
1:18:29 Knottley rolls a natural 1. It grows colder and quieter, and he’s the first to sense a dark presence filling the doorway as a long, bejeweled, creepy hand creeps over his shoulder.
1:18:59 — The grandfather. “It’s Snooki [?]… I’m not your mom, Meredith. That’s my daughter. Where do you think she inherited her beautiful and talented name or style?” Joel at the table: “it turns out Skelman’s grandfather is a lich.”
1:19:35 The grandfather: “I just turned the mausoleum into [a dungeon] because we already own the property and I didn’t want to buy another property.” Skelman: “Grandfather, you know I make dungeons for a living.” Grandfather: “I passed down the business to you. I just wanted a quiet private place where no one would bother me and I could play games in my retirement.” They ruined his game of hide-and-go-seek. He stands in the only doorway: “You ruined my game. I’ll show you a new game.”

The fight — Skelman’s lich grandfather

1:20:26 Initiative: Skelman 17, Grandfather 16, Killy 15, Dick Twist 3.
1:21:20 — Described. Very angry, and he smells: a fungus has made its home on him and spores drift from his crevices. His jaw dangles unhinged, and his ancient earlobes droop down close to his nipples. Skelman: “Death has not been kind to you, grandfather.”
1:21:53 — Skelman’s round.
- He begs on hands and knees (“someone called the Grandmaster put us up to this”). It fails. Grandfather: “You disappoint me. Good thing I have plenty of other grandchildren.” Skelman: “you were quite prolific in your day.”
- He does a Scooby-Doo run to the door, but it’s the wrong way: he hits the wall of a one-door room. The GM lets him “find the wall easily… because of how benevolent I am.”
- His signature move: “I’m going to open up The Bone Zone!” He expands his domain and places his grandfather in one of his own specially crafted dungeons, with advantage on every attack.
- Two hits: a swinging-axe trap slams into where the sternum once was, and a slime drops from the ceiling to eat into his undead flesh. Then Skelman cowers against the back wall as the Bone Zone fades. “I have taken him to the bone zone where he is subsequently getting boned.” Chunks are missing from the grandfather, “but he’s okay.”
1:26:00 — The grandfather’s round.
- He powers up a necrotic fist glowing ethereal purple and swings at Killy. Killy leans in and takes it on the chin, and the fist “gives no purchase” while he sips soda through his hat straws. Grandfather: “Damn you… I hate being embarrassed.”
- The second powered strike ties, a nat 20 against a nat 1, and both gain fatigue. “Now he’s just fucking infuriat[ed].”
- In blind rage he swings twice more and lands one. His signature move absorbs that damage as health: his holes start closing, with “very uncomfortable moaning sounds.” Drew: “your grandfather’s getting hard.” Skelman: “it runs in the Skelman family.”
- He tries to force-choke Dick Twist: “You have such a pretty neck.” It misses. Knottley: “I’m into that, damn it.” Grandfather: “I don’t want this to be one of your weird kinks.” Knottley: “I feel really empowered right now.”
1:29:49 — Killy’s round.
- He takes off his hat and jams it onto the grandfather’s head, spending all three status effects on a permanent one. It hits (inferred nat 20 from “regain a point of fighting spirit… for that nat 20”). Grandpa is permanently blinded: “My eyes. I can’t see anything.” Killy: “You’re only supposed to drink the soda. Never get it to your eyes.” Knottley: “Is that what this rash is from?… Does double sun cola make you itchy?”
- Killy’s majestic blonde hair flows in the wind. He punches the rib cage and lands two of three. Grandfather: “First my balls and now my ribs.” (his eyeballs)
- He tears off a rib and tosses it to Skelman as a souvenir. Skelman stores it next to Josephine’s arm: “I seem to be collecting bones today.”
1:34:04 — Dick Twist’s round. “I have electric hands from my Peloton powers. Do you have any Double Sun Cola that is conductive?” Killy: “All Double Sun Cola is conductive.” Knottley: “get the biggest bottle you have.”
- Killy: “no one’s ever asked me to bring out the biggest bottle before.” He reaches both hands into the back of his shorts, legs spread into a triangle. He pulls out a bottle the size of four magnums, “like a small rocket”; it thuds down in a puff of dust (“It’s magic”).
- Knottley creates friction while shaking the bottle, then fires all three attacks as “a unibeam of double sun shock.” Josephine’s arm gives advantage. All three hit. “He’s still up,” but “surprisingly hard.”
- Killy goes limp and rests against the bottle: “You’ve done me a great service today, Dick.” Knottley: “there may be two Richards here, but to me, there’s three dicks in this party.” Killy: “That means a lot to me to be a fellow dick.”
1:38:08 The Acolytes, the Grandmaster and the Arbiter watch from above ground, seeing through the earth magically, and the crowd goes bonkers.
1:38:33 — Round 2. Grandfather: “This is not how you treat your elders.” “We’re all dicks. That’s the family name. Even Dick Arena.” Skelman: “Ah, yes, my dearest sister.”
1:38:55 — The Bonetron. Skelman uses a heroic surge to “recover my two friends” and opens a second Bone Zone. He “detach[es] myself… to double dickify myself” and builds the Bonetron, an amalgamation with Killy in the center powering it with sodas. “The bonetron stomps forward, blasting away with sodas, conspiracy theories, bones, and the slimes.” It hits. “No match for the bonetron! It’s so big! It’s literally double the size of any dick that’s dicked before!” The grandfather’s torso is blown open, leaving a giant hole in his chest. Drew: “you can write his obituary.”
1:41:51 They power up one more beam: “Let’s all shake one bottle together.” “One big bottle for the road, grandfather.” Skelman likens it to a Megazord with a big gun made of one of the bottles. Drew: “like seeing someone get blasted in the face with a fire hose.” The stream evaporates the grandfather: “You all are too much dick in this moment.”
1:43:00 — The button. All that remains is his forearm, and its fingers inch over to a small red button. Killy: “No, that’s not good.” It’s pushed. Silence, then a bright neon sign drops: “Congratulations! You’ve won!” A chest pops up with t-shirts for everyone that say “you be dick” [?]. They wear them over their clothes. GM: “he was a cheap old man… But they have good quality.”

Aftermath — Team 3D

1:44:09 Thea pouts in the corner: “Aw, man, you guys won. I was wanting to get one of those t-shirts.” The Arbiter and the Grandmaster walk into the dungeon. GM: “You were supposed to prepare a deathmatch.” Thea: “Oh, yeah. I picked out a really great Team B… Oh, no. That was what I missed.” (speakers inferred; Bec voices both)
1:44:39 — The name. Arbiter: “this is Team B now.” Thea: “They look more like Team D.” Killy: “Team 3D.” Thea: “Ew, that’s a gross name, but okay.” (Line at 1:44:56 “You all are weird.” is speaker uncertain.)
1:44:59 — The leader. The GM says they need a leader, “the biggest strongest dick of you all.” Killy: “I’m really good at just saying yes and just following a stronger voice.” Knottley votes for Killy. Knottley: “we should start a gardening company. Three dicks trim the best bush.” Killy: “this is the first time in my life where I feel like something’s more important to me than double sun cola.”
1:46:19 Group hug. Line at 1:46:20, “I have aluminum foil hats for each of you” (speaker uncertain). “Three of you embrace getting a trio of crowns [?] with your matching shirts.”
1:46:29 — Thea’s tail rings. Thea’s tail lights up like a phone. It’s Double Sun Cola HQ asking for Killy. Thea: “it’s also coming in through my butt and I have to poop soon.” GM: “The end of the tail… she’s not talking out of her ass.” Arbiter: “like a tin can attached to a string.” Skelman pats Killy with Josephine’s arm: “You’re the leader of Team 3D.” Killy: “Maybe we could be like a commune.”
1:48:08 — HQ (Bec): “you’ve been giving away a lot of free soda lately and we do not approve of that… [your job] is to promote so that we can sell soda so that we can make money.” The voice is so loud that Thea’s butt cheeks vibrate. Killy: “Yeah, the money-making part… I knew I forgot something.” HQ signs him up for retraining: a two-month-long seminar process, pickup in one minute. “If you reject this, we’ll kick you out of the Sunkola.”
1:49:43 — Killy’s goodbye: “It means goodbye for now, but not forever. … I think I’m not good enough for the two of you. But I’m going to get better. I’m going to go through employee training, and I’m going to come back with better sodas and a better ability to sell.” Knottley: “Just like the government for reeducation.” Skelman: “these two dicks are going to come get you out.” “Team 3D shall return together.” Thea hugs Killy’s thin calf: “I’ll miss you and your skinny legs.”
1:50:57 — Deathmatch called. The Arbiter: “we still need one of them to be a leader, though, right?” The GM agrees: “Deathmatch.” “Dick to dick! Tip to tip!” Skelman: “But our friendships.” Arbiter: “You can be friends. I’ve killed lots of my friends.” GM: “true friendship is beating dicks… We’ll figure it out.” Skelman to Knottley: “we shall have to do dick battle and decide the biggest swinging dick.” Knottley: “Dick dick goose.” A final hug with Killy, “Even though we just met maybe an hour ago.”
1:52:00 The Grandmaster walks away with the Arbiter: “This was truly something… I think it’ll be something promising.” The Acolytes scream yes. “We’ll see you all next Sunday.” “Welcome and good night to D20 Deathmatch!” (1:52:35)

Dried Blood (after-show)

In character (Dried Blood; the final-words prompt was “from either you as a player or from your character”, so status flagged)

2:01:02 Richard Knottley: “Live dangerously.” (GM: “Put that on a motorcycle.”)
2:01:28 Skelman (in character, to Knottley): “fellow Dick, it is going to be very, very hard next week to hurt you in the ways that I must. I hope that you can accept your boning with dignity, pride, and humility, as we will still be friends after.”
2:02:27 Killy: “Stay hydrated. Drink Double Sun Cola.” GM: “Go out and buy it. Don’t just get free.”

Out of character, creator notes

They joke about demonetization from the number of times they said “dick,” and about a jelly-bean-jar style count.
Drew says Killy is probably the first person to successfully land a permanent status effect. Yangyang: “When I saw that nat 20 hit… all the stars aligned.”
Final fighting spirit: Killy 10, Skelman 11, Dick Twist 11.
The grandfather had his own heroic surge, four power-ups, some status effects, and life absorption on one attack per round. He would have used the surge had he survived.
Drew calls it “one of the most wholesome episodes in a strange way”, with the friendships, the statue and Dick, and the hugging. “One of my favorite episodes in a while.”
Yangyang (Killy) and RealLifeFakeWizard (Knottley) played these characters “in the previous season.” Skelman is new to the full show. Joel played him in “the murder mystery”, and his artwork was done days ago by Young Khan [?], the show’s continuing artist.
Joel: “we have to move past the family plot.” Battling a friend will be tough.
Bec: “Remember, you will be reborn. Death is not actually the worst thing… more like beating them in a game of ping pong.”
RealLifeFakeWizard’s idea: open next show with Skelman using the gelatinous ooze on Knottley “so that it’s a bone battle.” Joel: “now we’re just doing spoilers.”
Yangyang: Killy was originally built just for a one-shot with one shtick. He credits “Joel and RealLifeFakeWizard” as excellent improvisers, and wanted Killy to be “more than just dick jokes and soda shaking.”
Bec: Killy returned “instead of just as an opponent, you worked alongside teammates.”

Who and what appears

Characters

Richard S. Skelman (Joel). A skeleton; “Richard,” “Dick.”

Known to the Grandmaster and “beloved by the fortress.”
Has no eyeballs and sees by echolocation (chattering his teeth). His bones are held by “magnets” and detach at will. No feeling.
Buried his lover Josephine alive in the family plot.
Makes dungeons for a living, a business passed down from his lich grandfather. Signature move the Bone Zone; builds the Bonetron.
Family: mother Meredith (said “Bertha” first); Auntie Ethel (a ghost; he ruined a dinner once); sister Dick Arena; a lich grandfather with “plenty of other grandchildren.” “We’re all dicks. That’s the family name.”
Keeps a gelatinous cube friend on him. Likes pie.
Says he solved a murder mystery involving Thea (“a real proper dick on that case”).
Leaves carrying Josephine’s arm and his grandfather’s rib.

Richard Knottley, “Dick Twist” (RealLifeFakeWizard).

Conspiracy theorist. Believes the government is run by chinchillas, voles and small mammals; birds are government cameras; trees talk on the internet; Shakespeare was a time traveler.
Wears an aluminum foil hat (blown off by his own lightning). Carries a mason jar of body-warm pickle juice, poured out on the statue’s ankle monitor. Wears holey slippers.
Ex-Peloton instructor, fired over complaints. Plans the radio show After Dark with Dick Twist.
“Peloton powers”: friction electricity through his feet and hands.
Has nightmares of being controlled by chinchillas and of a frog creature spitting frogs.
Befriended the angel statue and promised to meet it at the third full moon of the year. Voted Killy leader.

Killy Yesman (Yangyang). A Double Sun Cola promoter.

Very muscular with undulating pecs, very thin legs, majestic blonde hair, “the world’s most punchable face.” Said to wear sunglasses.
His hat holds two cola bottles with straws.
Pulls ever-larger bottles from his shorts: regular, deluxe two-handed, a special red bottle, the magnum, and the four-magnum “small rocket.”
Says yes and follows stronger voices. The GM had never met him.
Chosen leader of Team 3D, then recalled by Double Sun Cola HQ for two months of retraining.

Thea (Bec). A small neon-pink imp that glows like a glow stick (she eats glow sticks).

Created by the Arbiter, who signs her pay paperwork weekly. Loves the Deathmatches and stays pink from rolling in champions’ blood. Unbearably loud.
Tracked by the Arbiter’s tablet.
Her tail works as a phone.
Was lured to the mausoleum for hide-and-go-seek by the lich grandfather.

Skelman’s lich grandfather (Drew, inferred). He is unnamed.

Fungus-ridden, with an unhinged jaw, earlobes to his nipples and long bejeweled fingers.
Turned the family mausoleum into his retirement dungeon and is the disembodied corridor voice (inferred from his “trial run” and “my corridors” lines plus 1:19:35).
Powers: necrotic fists, damage absorption, a force choke.
Permanently blinded by Killy, then evaporated by the Bonetron. His forearm pressed a “You’ve won!” button.

Josephine. Skelman’s jilted lover, buried alive by him. As a zombie she throws her own arm; the red cola gave her a moment of sentience before she dissolved.

The angel statue. Robed, hands over its face, stone wings that are too heavy to fly.

Had never been complimented; cries pebble tears that unlock the stairway.
Speaks in Knottley’s voice and shares his conspiracies.
Wears an ankle monitor from “an incident down at Soho.”
Will carve coordinates and meet Knottley at the third full moon of the year.

Auntie Ethel and the poltergeists. Skelman’s family ghosts on the stairs (“Stop hitting yourself!”).

Double Sun Cola HQ (Bec). Disapproves of free giveaways; runs retraining seminars; “the Sunkola.”

The Arbiter (Drew). Has a tablet tracker that never works (“Fucking Stuart”). Hung out in the ski ball room. Recruited “a couple of guys.” “I’ve killed lots of my friends.”

The Grandmaster (Bec). Offered benefits (a chinchilla, PTO, sabbatical, resorts, “You won’t die”). Her face can replace the moon in the sky.

Places

Dread Fortress dungeons; a ski ball room in the Dread Fortress.
The Midnight Mausoleum (in the Shadowlands): the Skelman family plot, with a graveyard, astroturf over a grave, the angel statue and plaque, the stairwell, a three-door trapped corridor, and the grandfather’s one-door chamber. Many imps reportedly come by.
The Shadowlands.
Soho (statue’s incident).

Items

Double Sun Cola (rocket-shaped bottle with two balls and a sun pattern; flammable, conductive, caustic to bone, harmful to eyes, possibly itchy). Its “special red” bottle.
Knottley’s foil hat and pickle juice. Josephine’s arm (grants advantage). The grandfather’s rib.
The Arbiter’s tracker tablet. “You be dick [?]” t-shirts from the grandfather’s chest.

Lore statements

The Grandmaster is preparing champions for the Shadow King’s eventual return: “common knowledge.”
Team B / Team 3D gets a name once a leader is chosen; the leadership is to be decided by Deathmatch.
Champions on the payroll “won’t die” (GM; Bec in Dried Blood: “you will be reborn”).

Quotes by character

Richard S. Skelman

0:11:44 “I thought I was the only dick in the room, but it seems that there may be two of us this time.”
0:12:21 “I use echolocation. I chatter my teeth really rapidly and it goes out into the ether…”
0:24:53 “Hello, Josephine! It’s been a while. I scarcely remember the last we met, where I buried you alive.”
0:33:39 “Oh, Josephine, what we could have had, I suppose, if I didn’t bury you under the ground while you were still living. Anyways.”
0:38:10 “magnets, how do they work? And I think that’s about the reason that my bones all stick together.”
0:50:49 “Auntie Ethel, no, stop, please. I know I ruined that one dinner that one time.”
1:12:53 “I actually have a gelatinous cube friend that I keep on me for just such occasions.”
1:15:59 “It died the last time. We solved a murder mystery. I was a real proper dick on that case.”
1:19:45 “Grandfather, you know I make dungeons for a living.”
1:23:55 “Watch out, my dear friends. I’m going to open up The Bone Zone!”
1:41:17 “No match for the bonetron! It’s so big!”
1:50:16 “These two dicks are going to come get you out.”

Richard Knottley / Dick Twist

0:14:52 “That is clearly government funded and you should not be drinking that.”
0:15:39 “I take my pickle juice with me everywhere I go. It’s lukewarm.”
0:16:03 “My dream is to become a radio host… I cannot fund it on account of me being let go from my job as a Peloton instructor.”
0:18:01 “The government is run by chinchillas, voles, and small mammals.”
0:21:10 “Sir Richard and Phallic Soda Cola Fella. All hands in.”
0:41:07 “Did you know William Shakespeare was a time traveler?”
0:46:59 “You beautiful gargoyle.”
0:52:04 “You can be more than you think you are.”
0:53:55 “It’s called After Dark with Dick Twist. Would you like to be on it?”
1:29:40 “I feel really empowered right now.”
1:37:48 “There may be two Richards here, but to me, there’s three dicks in this party.”
1:45:43 “We should start a gardening company. Three dicks trim the best bush.”

Killy Yesman

0:13:03 “…the scientifically, chemically calibrated delicious taste of Icy Double Sun Cola.”
0:28:28 “Yo, help a brother out here. I’m trying to just, you know, make a living, sell some soda.”
0:31:03 “I’ve been saving this bottle for a special time. And I think the special time is it.”
0:37:36 “It’s like having two suns in your mouth.”
0:45:35 “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?”
1:10:58 “Why did I pick the flammable one?”
1:11:48 “I gotta tell Skelman that his relatives all suck.”
1:31:01 “You’re only supposed to drink the soda. Never get it to your eyes.”
1:34:29 “All Double Sun Cola is conductive.”
1:46:00 “This is the first time in my life where I feel like something’s more important to me than double sun cola.”
1:49:46 “It means goodbye for now, but not forever.”

Thea

1:16:24 “Yee-hoo! Ah! You found me! Hi! Wait, you found me? You’re not supposed to find me this quickly!”
1:17:00 “They just had a really long creepy hand with very long fingernails, but they were kind of bejeweled and I liked them.”
1:44:48 “Ah, Team 3D! Ew, that’s a gross name, but okay.”
1:47:32 “It’s also coming in through my butt and I have to poop soon.”
1:50:47 “I’ll miss you and your skinny legs.”

Skelman’s lich grandfather / the corridor voice (Drew, inferred)

1:01:21 “There’s a lot of imps, oddly enough, that come by the mausoleum.”
1:02:01 “This is the least curious group in the world.”
1:02:16 “There are three traps, one for each of you… No one can do the same thing twice.”
1:14:20 “The next person who mentions the wicks on the torches gets an extra point of damage.”
1:18:59 “I’m not your mom, Meredith. That’s my daughter.”
1:19:50 “I passed down the business to you. I just wanted a quiet private place where no one would bother me and I could play games in my retirement.”
1:22:52 “You disappoint me. Good thing I have plenty of other grandchildren.”
1:29:18 “You have such a pretty neck.”
1:32:57 “First my balls and now my ribs.”
1:38:33 “This is not how you treat your elders… We’re all dicks. That’s the family name.”

Josephine (Bec)

0:33:10 “I’ll forever hate you, Skelben.”

The angel statue (Drew)

0:53:22 “I kept thinking about how all the frogs are gay.”
0:54:41 “There’s an incident down at Soho, and well, long story short, I’m now wearing this piece of jewelry.”
0:55:54 “I’m going to meet you with these coordinates at the third full moon of the year.”

Double Sun Cola HQ (Bec)

1:48:17 “You’ve been giving away a lot of free soda lately and we do not approve of that.”
1:49:21 “No exceptions… If you reject this, we’ll kick you out of the Sunkola.”

The Arbiter

0:08:42 “Fucking Stuart. This thing never works.”
0:09:39 “Just because I created her does not mean that I’m in charge of her. I’m not her father.”
0:10:41 “Honestly, things look great around here without her.”
0:16:59 “The Grandmaster, as you know, has been preparing champions for the eventual showdown with the Shadow King someday, somewhere.”
0:20:49 “You’ll know you’ve found her because when she’s speaking, you’ll want to pierce your own eardrums.”
1:51:20 “You can be friends. I’ve killed lots of my friends.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer

0:09:46 “You sign her paperwork every single week to make sure she gets paid, right? That makes you her manager.”
0:10:48 “Thea is energy. She’s staying pink because she keeps rolling around in the blood of champions.”
0:14:03 “Is it a one hand or two hand job for shaking it?”
0:19:11 “You won’t die. You get a pet chinchilla, plenty of PTO, a sabbatical even.”
0:20:30 “She’s like a neon pink, almost glows in the dark.”
0:47:45 “As it turns out, no one’s ever complimented this angel and it meant the world to them.”
1:51:24 “Everyone knows true friendship is beating dicks.”
1:52:15 “I think it’s gonna be something good… Eager for a Deathmatch, I see.”

Canon notes

Players: RealLifeFakeWizard (Richard Knottley), RunawayRobot (Skelman).
Stuart is the Dread Fortress’s IT support.

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