51: Thank You, Gary
April 24, 2026
Setting
Greyport. A massive arena on its own island off the coast, sold out for Razlemania — Gary's retirement match after 250 years as the undisputed champion. Not long after the orphanage heist, the party arrives with backstage passes from Iro, Gary's younger brother, as thanks for helping save his shop. By the end of the night, three wrestling factions have brawled across the full card, the arena has been partially detonated, a retired champion has walked home with the crowd's tears at his back, and Crowley has claimed another prize.
Players Present
- Taylor Ramsey (Guest DM) — also running Silas Fairbanks (Halfling Rogue/Sorcerer, ring name: Sanchez Fuego)
- Justin Hale as Bru — Goblin Artificer, ring name: the Brutador
- Ali Leonard as Elspeth Cooper — Dwarf Artificer/Gunslinger, ring name: Speed Racer
- Luke Neverisky as Leliana Goldspring — Human Bard, ringside manager and crowd liaison
- Ellis Taylor as Olivia Cooper — Dwarf Paladin, ring name: The Matriarch
Plot Events
Razlemania
Iro, who gets backstage passes every year as Gary's younger brother, shared them as a thank-you to the people who helped save his shop. The venue is an island arena off the coast of Greyport, and tonight it is packed — fans in replica championship belts, faux prosthetic arms, Gary-themed merchandise at every turn. Inside the venue, a museum documents Gary's 250-year career as undisputed champion: his famous frying pan (used, per the placard, "to bonk demons on the head with divine justice"), replica belts ranging up to a thousand gold pieces, and footage of his only attempted heel run — approximately two seconds before he apologized.
Olivia rolls History with advantage as a dwarf from High Forge: 17. She places Gary immediately as an icon, roughly equivalent to a major sports franchise. She is personally indifferent in the way someone grows up surrounded by football and never once cares who wins. Leliana, starting from zero, visits a guest-services kiosk and learns the entire sport from scratch. The employee tells her it is "redneck anime."
Bru slips away while the others take in the exhibits and steals a substantial cache of pyrotechnics from backstage — mortars, remote charges, sparkler cones. He terrifies the roadies with technical jargon, barely talks his way past a skeptical crew member (Persuasion: 11), and walks out unseen (Stealth: 22). This decision pays dividends for the rest of the night.
In the museum footage: Gary tag-teaming with Iro one hundred years ago — and Iro looks exactly as he does now. Olivia flags this immediately. He is not human.
The Demon Squad
The opening match is a Royal Rumble — the winner earns the right to face Gary in the main event. It does not finish.
Geysers of fire erupt through the ring floor. Pentagrams materialize. Five demons emerge from the eruption, led by Balthazar, and encircle every wrestler in the ring with flaming demonic chains. Iro, watching from his suite with the party, recognizes Balthazar — and is wrapped in chains himself and dragged off to the side. Then Gary's throne launches skyward on hellfire rockets, propelling him above the cloud barrier and out of sight.
Gary, miked up, as the throne clears the roof:
"Oh, shoot."
Balthazar addresses the crowd:
"You came here to celebrate your hero, but instead we will destroy his legacy once and for all. We, the Demon Squad, shall reign in the world of wrestling. And there's not a damn thing anyone in this arena can do about it."
Before anyone can respond, a shaft of golden light fires down from Eldora's moon, and five Knights of Eldora descend onto the entrance ramp. They issue a formal challenge to the Demon Squad for the glory of the one true god, Eldora. A three-way faction war is now inevitable.
Taco Cat Enters the Card
Iro, straining against chains he cannot break, tells the party these are Gary's old nemeses, humiliated in the ring for years. Then he calls for a microphone and declares that if anyone is here to defend Gary's honor, it will be him — and his squad. If the party stays out of it, the demons ruin his brother's retirement and probably kill him, or the Eldorans bury any chance of reviving Luna's name.
Silas and Bru have wrestled before. The party agrees to compete, and Taco Cat is declared the third faction.
Role assignments:
- Silas (ring name: Sanchez Fuego) and Bru (ring name: the Brutador) for the tag team match
- Elspeth (ring name: Speed Racer) for the ladder match
- Olivia (ring name: The Matriarch) for Hell in a Cell
- Leliana at ringside as crowd manager and promo anchor
Leliana gets to work first. Each faction has its own crowd worker with a bullhorn — Casius for the demons, Fogberry for the Eldorans — and she borrows a megaphone and lands a Performance check of 23, mocking the demons' gods and taking a swing at Eldora in the same breath, while Olivia starts a "fake moon" chant. The crowd swings toward Taco Cat. Then the Brutador and Sanchez Fuego come out, notorious from their prior run in Lucha Underground; the crowd boos them loudly, and Puppet Kevin spraying fart gas on the front rows undoes most of Leliana's work.
Match 1: Tag Team
Demon faction sends Lissa and Carmela, two charming demon women. Eldoran faction sends Lester and Fester Chester, twin brothers with violescence crystals sewn visibly into their gear.
Bru starts in the ring. While Silas distracts the referee (Deception 17), Bru casts Enlarge on himself and sends his familiar Puppet Kevin in with Color Spray. Lester fails the save and is blinded; Lissa shrugs it off and dropkicks Bru back into the ropes. Bru rides the momentum into a leg sweep that drops Lester to the mat. When Bru goes for the pin, Lester slides away across the canvas without moving a limb — and Bru, Passive Perception 25, clocks why: the violescence crystals in the Eldorans' gear are glowing, sliding Lester to safety and, moments later, launching Fester like a projectile. The Eldorans are cheating. Bru kicks out, and Lissa's basement dropkick boots both him and Fester out of the ring.
Bru slips beneath the ring and rigs his stolen explosives to the undercarriage, with a Minor Illusion of himself staggering around the ring surface as a decoy. Arcana: 25. He finishes before Carmela finds him. Lissa sees through the illusion and sends her partner under the ring to look; Fester, fooled, charges the double and whiffs straight through it, and Lissa clotheslines him and goes for the pin.
Bru makes the hot tag. Silas slingshots in over the ropes and somersaults onto Lissa to break up her pin, then hits the rope-launched flying kick he calls Apollo's Arrow — Acrobatics 28 — square on Carmela's jaw. He goes for the cover on Carmela. The referee counts to two. And stops.
Lissa's eyes go violet. She has charmed the referee, who winks at Silas and refuses to complete the count.
Leliana steps forward:
"I don't know how they do things down there in hell, but up here, we have rules."
She casts Counterspell — 3rd-level slot against a 2nd-level charm. The possession breaks. Olivia, watching from the corner, immediately casts Bless on the referee to prevent a repeat.
Carmela wraps Silas in a submission hold. Bru detonates the ring.
The explosion is pyrotechnic — fire, light, noise — but the result is real: Carmela releases the hold, all four opponents are disoriented, and the match is open. Silas tags Bru. They converge on Carmela from opposite ropes, headbutt-and-kick, then Misty Step above her for simultaneous elbow drops. Bru covers her. The referee — Bless holding — counts to three. Lissa's eyes go violet again. The Bless holds.
Taco Cat wins Match 1.
The announcer:
"Some impressive teamwork and some novel cheating from — well, all three teams — but the best cheating came from Taco Cat."
Bru celebrates by showing his bare backside to the crowd.
Match 2: Ladder Match
Before the match, Bru and Silas disguise themselves as ring staff and rig the ladders with additional remote charges. Bru installs fireworks in the rafters as a contingency.
Elspeth takes the ring as Speed Racer — fire suit, tassels, goggles — introduced by Leliana, to a consistent mispronunciation, as "the speed racist." By the end of the match the whole crowd is chanting "Go speed racist, go speed racist!" This is interpreted as a win.
Her opponents are Azafel from the Demon Squad and Elsa from the Eldoran faction. The victory medallion hangs at the top of the ladders.
Azafel opens with a suicide dive that knocks Elspeth into a ladder; Elsa swings another ladder into Azafel like a baseball bat and starts climbing. Elspeth casts Heat Metal on the rigged ladder Elsa is climbing — the planted charges detonate, blasting Elsa onto the mat. Azafel gets his own ladder up and starts climbing until Elsa's crystal-powered quake freezes him in place, and Elspeth shoves his ladder over onto Elsa, pinning both opponents under steel. Azafel tries a web-goo attack as Elspeth climbs. She uses Flash of Genius to power through it.
The opponents roll to recover: a 1 and a 4.
Elspeth takes the medallion off the hook.
Bru, contributing color commentary from the announcers' table after the first ladder exploded:
"Looks like the organization bought some really cheap ladders for this fight. We'll have to have a word with the suppliers."
Elspeth strikes Sailor Moon poses at the top of the ladder, and over the mic comes the line of the night: "All things are possible through Luna." It is now canon: followers of Luna pose like Sailor Moon.
Match 3: Hell in a Cell
Olivia enters the steel cage as The Matriarch — leather suit, sheepskin, dwarven warpaint. Leliana, managing, finally finds her promo voice:
"By the time my friend Olivia is through with you, you could be wishing for a body bag."
The crowd produces signs reading "Mommy's always on top." They begin chanting "Mommy."
Her opponents: Balthazar, and Kintwell Chessingfield IV, the Eldoran paladin commander, joining the faction war's deciding match in the cage.
Olivia slams her axe Thor-style into the ring mat and uses Channel Divinity — Abjure Foe. DC 17. Balthazar rolls a 5. Kintwell rolls a 2. Both are frightened and cannot approach her.
Kintwell, pinned in the corner by his own terror, shoves Balthazar toward her in panic.
Olivia catches the demon mid-air and takes him to the mat. Athletics: 24. The referee counts to three.
It is the biggest squash in Razlemania history.
The Boss Fight
Balthazar rises.
"No, no, not like this. My revenge will be complete. I will kill you."
He draws his remaining demon cohorts into a pentagram ritual circle and drains their life force into himself. The transformation is slow enough to watch: he expands to fill the entire ring, fire wings erupting from his back, additional horns splitting from his skull, shoulder spikes that can only be described as maximally edgy. A wall of fire blasts outward — arena wards stop it at the crowd. Kintwell Chessingfield IV, manifesting angelic wings, charges the demon independently. He is swatted away like a fly.
The DC 15 Dexterity save for Balthazar's fire wall: Silas avoids all damage. Olivia fails with a 13 until Bru lends her his Flash of Genius, and takes 15 instead of 30. Bru triggers the rafter explosives, raining catwalk shrapnel down on the giant demon. Olivia attacks with two weapon strikes and opens a divine smite — a groin strike from knee height deals 21 and 24 before fiend bonus dice. She uses her Lucky point to impose disadvantage on Balthazar's counter-grapple.
Leliana attempts Polymorph. She uses Luck to impose disadvantage on Balthazar's Wisdom save. He rolls a 16. DC 17.
He fails by one.
Balthazar becomes a tiger shark — a deliberate callback to a previous fight against a vampire. Bru deploys a spike-strip-style air cannon, redirecting the shark skyward.
From the press box, Iro tears free of his restraints, flies out in his wrestling trunks, catches the shark in his signature lightning lariat, and flips it into Gary's trajectory.
As Iro lands, a portal opens behind him and a malevolent demonic figure steps out: Count Dastardio, Gary's sworn nemesis. Iro does not look at him; he looks solemnly up.
"I warned you what would happen if you stepped in the ring again, Iro."
"I know, but my brother needed me."
They lock in combat and vanish through the portal together.
Gary Returns from Orbit
Gary streaks back through the atmosphere like a meteorite — beard on fire, clothes burning away, expression of pure determination. His jet boots run dry short of the arena, so he paints a targeting laser from his robot arm to show where he will cross — the assist he needs from Taco Cat — and the shark arrives right on his line.
The extinction impact spear makes contact with the shark. Balthazar's ribs shatter. Gary uses the ring ropes to apply a guillotine grip.
Balthazar is decapitated. The resulting crater produces a mushroom cloud.
Gary rises.
The arena weeps.
"Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Gary."
Gary officially retires. He vacates the championship belt and walks over to Olivia.
"That was some pretty good wrestling."
He holds out his hand. As she shakes it, he taps his other hand on her forearm — tapping out, a deliberate gesture from a man who has done nothing in the ring casually for two hundred and fifty years. The arena falls silent, then weeps openly. Olivia, who does not even like wrestling, cries too.
"Thanks for making this a special night, guys. I think wrestling is going to be in good hands."
Silas hands Gary a slip of paper. Gary reads it out: "All things are possible through Luna. We love Luna."
The Cost of the Night
Before he goes, Elspeth asks Gary how to reach Caspian — she wants to write a book about Iro. Gary tells her to come by the workshop tomorrow; he will give her a sending stone.
As Gary walks home through the foggy back alleys of Greyport, a portal opens in his path.
"Say, Gary, would you like a piece of candy?"
Crowley. Waiting — specifically waiting, it turns out, for Gary to stop being champion. Challenging a reigning champion would have required a formal ring match. Gary, now retired, has no such protection.
Gary steps through the portal. Crowley has captured a second member of the Steve Squad.
Olivia flagged it in the museum: Iro has not aged in a century. A hundred years ago, he and Gary tagged together. Tonight, Iro chose his brother over whatever agreement he had with Count Dastardio — and all Gary will say of it is that Iro has to defeat Dastardio, and "it's a whole thing." Where that leaves either brother is unresolved.
The Ticking Clock
Luna is dying. The deadline is roughly two weeks out. The party holds four crates of violescence from the orphanage heist: one unloaded at the pocket village, three still in the portable hole. They have Gary's endorsement — a retired champion who read a Luna note aloud to a weeping arena.
Next: Iro's boat. Luna's body. Whatever time is left.
Notable Character Moments
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Bru's pyrotechnic long game is the session's structural backbone. The backstage theft in the opening act pays out across three separate matches: ring explosives in the tag match, rigged ladders for the ladder match, rafter charges in the boss fight. Every time Bru did something unhinged with fire tonight, it was premeditated.
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Leliana's crowd work is the session's quietest force multiplier. She never wrestles. She manages the crowd — a 23 Performance check before the first bell, escalating through promo speeches and a mid-match Counterspell on referee possession, culminating in her body-bag promo before Olivia's Hell in a Cell. The crowd swings from hostile to devoted, and that matters for everything else on the card.
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Elspeth's ladder match is the most efficient violence of the night. Heat Metal, ladder explodes, opponent flattened. Opponent's ladder toppled onto first opponent. Flash of Genius through web-goo. Medallion retrieved. The crowd chanting a mispronounced version of her ring name is either an embarrassment or a triumph; Elspeth climbs the ladder either way.
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Olivia's Hell in a Cell ends almost as soon as the bell rings. Abjure Foe frightens both opponents simultaneously, Kintwell shoves Balthazar toward her in a panic, and Olivia catches him mid-air and pins him before the arena has fully processed what happened — Kintwell, too frightened to approach, cannot break it up. The "Mommy" chants were unearned by kayfabe and completely earned by the dwarf who walked into that cage.
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Silas's note to Gary — "All things are possible through Luna" — is the most important piece of diplomacy in the session. Everyone else fought for Gary's retirement. Silas slipped the greatest champion in history a line to read to a weeping arena, and advanced the actual mission.
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Iro's choice at the close of the session costs him something real. He is at minimum a century old, possibly much older, and he stepped back into the ring knowing what Count Dastardio would do about it. He chose Gary anyway. The fact that Gary is now captured by Crowley in the same breath makes it land harder.
Themes
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Spectacle as cover: Everything the party accomplishes tonight happens inside the frame of wrestling kayfabe. The demons cheated. The Eldorans cheated. Taco Cat cheated best — and because they cheated within the rules of spectacle, the crowd loved them for it. Luna gets an endorsement. The demons lose. The arena is still standing.
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Retirement and capture: Gary's night ends in a crater with his arms raised and a full arena in tears. His immediate next scene is a Crowley trap in an alley. Both are true at the same time. Crowley has been patient — waiting precisely until Gary handed over the one protection he had.
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Old loyalties and older debts: Iro's willingness to step back into the ring, and Count Dastardio's waiting portal, raises questions about what agreements exist among people who don't age and entities who profit from those arrangements. The campaign has a growing list of very old things that have been waiting patiently for something to change.
Session MVP
Olivia — For the fastest pin in Razlemania history, a divine smite groin strike at knee height dealing 45+ damage before bonus dice, and a Hell in a Cell that was functionally over before it started. She walked into a cage with two opponents and left in under a minute. The crowd chanting "Mommy" in a wrestling arena was unplanned and completely correct.