Secret Level: DEI & Dragons
There’s an anthology series on Amazon Prime called Secret Level, which Wikipedia describes as “fifteen stories set in the worlds of different video games”. One of them is…well, it certainly has the Dungeons & Dragons label slapped on, and given the direction WokeC wants to take and tank the brand and its overall nu-WarCraftian visuals lumping it in with a video game anthology checks out.
Overall the episode feels shallow. Rushed. A stream of predictable nonsense further burdened by millennial-tier writing and DEI-driven assthetics. In other words, precisely the sort of post-modern slop you’ve come to expect with anything associated with the current version of WokeC’s Greygoo Skinsuit Dungeons & Dragons derivative.
Basically, you’ve got four characters and let me know if any of this surprises you:
None of them are human
One is a half-orc (ie, tall human with grey skin and tusks)
Another is a goliath (ie, tall human with grey skin and face tattoos)
One is a World of WarCraft gnome but they never explain how she was punted into a different franchise
Only one is male
The male is a dwarf
The dwarf is black
All of the women are ugly
I’m not sure if they are all actually women
There is no fighter or rogue/thief (ie, someone without inherent magical powers). Instead you have an ugly paladin, ugly druid, ugly wizard, and then there is Token Black Dwarf monk. You know, classic D&D party.
The ugly paladin has a mental illness haircut
My wife thought the ugly paladin was a man at first glance, and I can see that so I am calling him Troon Paladin. Here is what he looks like:
It opens with the they/thems rescuing some cursed guy from a cage. He’s covered in tattoos which Token Black Dwarf later points out “mark him as a sacrifice”, but Fuckugly Midgette thinks he’s a cultist because you gotta have that forced and—given how quickly this nonissue resolves itself—ultimately pointless drama.
You find out later the guy has been cursed for years. How it happened isn’t explained but, what, the cult captured him, and then for no discernible reason decided to cover him in tattoos? Why? They could have just as easily branded him, and/or put shackles on him if they needed an easy reminder of who the Tiamat mule is supposed to be.
Or just wait for him to succumb to the curse? Not like he has to be anywhere specific, and would it really matter where Tiamat pops up? I’m also confused why the cultists didn’t just kill the guy if that’s all you need to do, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
I’m guessing the animators thought it would be a neat visual to have them magically removed by Oreo later, and knew their intended audience of goldfish-brained hobby tourists wouldn’t bother asking questions, which is a pattern the discerning viewer will notice throughout the episode’s runtime.
Anyway, the camp is like five tents and you can’t really see any sentries, though someone was there because Troon Paladin does that stupid cliche paladin thing where he announces their presence so it’s a fair fight or whatever. There’s also no dragon of any sort to be found, which is something you think a dragon cult would have handy while escorting a guy with Tiamat around (you also think they’d just get a dragon to fly him where the fuck ever they want to go).
The characters easily defeat the cultists, free the guy, and decide to hole up in what I think is supposed to be a tiny hut spell, which is depicted as a glowing golden hemisphere.
Personally, if that’s what the spell is supposed to look like in the Greygoo Skinsuit D&D derivative I wouldn’t have bothered, especially at night when it’s blatantly obvious, but then maybe the characters realize that the DM won’t bother rolling random encounters because that’ll interrupt the drama and infodump.
But if you wanted to distract the audience with a constant stream of magic crap because hobby tourists think that’s what D&D is nowadays, everyone having magical powers and using them constantly, just have someone use secure shelter and how it: doesn't glow—at least, not as far as I know—and it’ll better blend in with the terrain.
But then maybe they won’t think it’s “magical” enough after the fact.
Anyway, Cursed Guy wakes up, and Fuckugly Midgette suddenly decides to voice her suspicions that Cursed Guy might be a cultist…even though he was caged up and Token Black Dwarf already knew what the tattoos signify and they would have had this conversation while he was unconscious, probably before even taking him anywhere.
But, just in case Fuckugly Midgette thinks that maybe the cult tattooed up a random cultist and put him in a cage as a distraction, something that would make sense given that the tattoos serve no purpose—not like Tiamat demands that her sacrifices be inked up before devouring them—and how little resistance there was when rescuing him, Troon Paladin could just use detect evil to sort the whole mess out.
Apparently Tiamat lets Cursed Guy move super fast, sometimes, as he’s able to grab Troon Paladin’s sword and stab him before anyone can react, plunging the blade…right through the gut which is one of the few places his hilariously impractical armor doesn’t protect. I wonder if anyone will complain about that, or is it only when armor is remotely feminine that it’s magically an issue?
This causes Fuckugly Midgette to sperg out, but before she can hit Cursed Guy with a fire spell Troon Paladin teleports a pot into his hand–which that and a spoon is the only time we see anyone carrying anything resembling adventuring gear–and snuffs out Fuckugly Midgette’s flames. I guess he can also rapidly cool the pot and whatever was inside, because Fuckugly Midgette doesn’t get scalded by anything.
And it’s good that he did what he did, not just for Cused Guy but also Token Black Dwarf because he was restraining Cursed Guy at the time.
But then there’s probably a feat or some class feature that would let Fuckugly Midgette avoid hurting him because this is the Greygoo Skinsuit D&D derivative and you can’t have tourists waiting a round or two before using their cool powers. Actually, wouldn’t be surprised if there was errata pinched out that states allies can only be hurt if they want to be because otherwise it’s hit point rape or taking away agency.
Troon Paladin takes Cursed Guy out of the pointless magical memberberry hut to have what I’m guessing is supposed to be some mix of You’re Stronger Than You Think You Are speech plus the banal “I used to be bad but now I’m a paladin” backstory that hobby tourists still think is subverting expectations in the same way that The Church is Secretly Evil does, which is to say not at all.
Oh while doing so he removes a holy symbol from his hilariously impractical shield, because you can’t have it just painted on—too “mundane” like playing a humdrum normie human—or multiple symbols, and in the Greygoo Skinsuit D&D derivative gear never gets damaged. Also it looks like her shield is made entirely out of metal, but that’s no biggie because in the Greygoo Skinsuit D&D derivative encumbrance is an afterthought so let’s just not think about the fact that it would weigh a lot more and that properly made wooden shields are already incredibly durable.
Ugly Druid is somehow surprised that the bad guys noticed their magical glowing shelter. At least they were considerate enough to wait for the paladin to finish his oh-so-dramatic and original backstory infodump, but I’m curious what took her so long to notice the massive bat flying at the speed of horses running, as well as why Cursed Guy and Troon Paladin waste time casually chatting a bit more.
Seriously, watch the scene: Ugly Druid is like, they found us, and Cursed Guy just calmly looks at Troon Paladin for a bit, asks him if Oreo can help him, he smiles, and then suddenly they are riding all of one horse and the bad guys magically haven’t caught them even though they were RIGHT on top of them.
Speaking of being on top, Token Black Dwarf is shown riding Ugly Druid in her giant boar form and my immediate thought was, whelp, at least they didn’t SHOW the Token Black Dwarf fucking the boar.
Anyway, they ride across a bridge that looks like a sword which I’m sure has no significance and was only included because the animators that it would be cool but since everything is overdone it’s just stale. Like the giant fucking door, and how Fuckugly Midgette teleports her book into her hand, which floats and glows and she barely glances at it once so this is just yet another moment of “look the book is floating like in Final Fantasy 14 isn’t it so cool please tell us how creative and awesome we are”.
But then why does she even have to open the door? Oreo is right inside and while it’s not like the bad guys are any meaningful threat—you think they’d send more to retrieve the guy smuggling Tiamat in his figurative ass—but he could have just saved us some time and fast-tracked us to the end.
Ugly Druid creates a wall of wind, I think, while what I’m pretty sure is something that at least looks somewhat like a lich flies around on a giant bat instead of anything more appropriate, like a dracolich or other undead critter. I mean you’re already jingling worn out cliches and tropes in front of your goldfish-brained audience and overloading visuals in a pathetic attempt to compensate for a lack of creativity, might as well go all in.
But as bad as that is it somehow gets worse:
Bat-Lich sprinkles some ice shards on the group, Cursed Guy does the cliche where he shields Fuckugly Migette from harm instead of, you know, just picking her up and running, which also makes her feel bad and immediately stop being suspicious of him (even though if you were a secret bad guy that’s precisely the sort of thing you’d do). Despite being impaled by a bunch of shards Cursed Guy is fine though, and while Troon Paladin carries him inside the others waste time striking poses:
Seriously, does Fuckugly Midgette get some sort of bonus for having her book just floating around her hand? The only time your spellbook gave any sort of immediate bonus beyond reading to memorize/prep spells was in 4th Edition: did they trot out that mechanic along with the other 4th Editionisms for the Greygoo Skinsuit D&D derivative?
Inside Cursed Guy meets Oreo, a massive gold dragon because oh wow isn’t that so very interesting and surprising? Almost as surprising as the fact that Cursed Guy is not only completely fine but his shirt is also magically mended. After some eye-rollingly bad dialogue you get some eye-rollingly bad combat, interspersed with Oreo lasering off Cursed Guy’s tattoos because I guess gold dragons can do that, now.
Outside you have some guys that were on I think skeletal horses but those mysteriously vanish between scenes. I guess the animators forgot about them like they did with Formerly Cursed Guy’s injuries and Troon Paladin’s horse. They start walking through the wind wall, only one of them bothers loosing an arrow for no other reason than they could show Token Black Dwarf throwing it back in the laziest way possible.
It’s only when other cultists, having patiently waited their turn try loosing arrows that Ugly Druid decides to use some wind-based power to throw them off the bridge…something she could have done from the start instead of the wind wall.
Token Black Dwarf declares that like a dozen mooks are somehow too high a Challenge Rating—even though Ugly Druid took out like half a dozen and no one has been harmed or even inconvenienced in the slightest—so I guess this is Fuckugly Midgette’s time to shine but…wait, what:
So, uh, where the fuck did her wand and spellbook go? Becuase if they actually had some sort of immediate mechanical or magical function, you know, like wands did in 4th Edition, you think she would be utilizing both, or least one. Maybe the animators just forgot about it like game mechanics and so much else?
Doesn’t matter, because Bat-Lich jumps off his bat, takes no falling damage (why didn’t he teleport or just fly down?), and in a patriarchal fit of dominance shuts her down in a way that would make Joss Whedon wince:
Yep, he just…snaps his fingers. That’s it. I’d ask how quickly goldfish-brained hobby tourists would wear this out at their tables, but then they don’t play or read the rules so a better question is how quickly will YouTube pretend-play grifters wear it out.
And on the note of not reading the rules, Former-Bat-Lich does this twice in a row: dispel magic takes an action, and counterspell is a reaction, so in either case he couldn’t have done this.
And I get that it’s a shitty movie but what was Batless-Lich’s plan? Jump down so that he’s sandwiched between the party? Yeah, good idea allegedly intelligent undead wizard: make it so that it’s super easy to surround you, much harder to use magic, and get the shit kicked outta you.
Token Black Dwarf goes to help Fuckugly Midgette after effortlessly beating up “too many” mooks but then Giant Bat suddenly shows up…only to be unceremoniously punched off the bridge in like one attack (why didn’t Giant Bat just maul Fuckulgy Midgette?). Instead of Batless-Lich getting his comeuppance from Fuckugly Midgette, Ugly Druid turns him into a snail because lolsorandom plus bad writing and also who cares if liches can auto-succeed on saves?
And oh don’t ask why she didn’t just do that right after wind-blasting the “too many” mooks off the bridge, instead of wasting time making melee attacks that STILL manage to destroy them left and right without any problem.
Even though Token Black Dwarf and Ugly Druid clearly have the cultist fight under control, Fuckugly Midgette unleashes some fire-cone attack but luckily the animators move Token Black Dwarf and Ugly Druid next to her even though they were both just on the bridge and with that the not-at-all-tense quick-cut combat is mercifully over.
Too many indeed.
Seriously, though: if the three of them could effortlessly best a Lich-In-Rough-Concept-Only, his bat, and some nobodies, why not do that before coming here, when they would have also had Troon Paladin helping out? Why did Fuckugly Midgette bother wasting time opening the door? She knew how long it would take and how close the baddies were: maybe let her blast everything with fire first?
Also, why bother putting a lich in here if he doesn’t do anything iconically lich? He doesn’t scare anyone, paralyze anyone, animate any undead—imagine the party defeating the mooks and then the lich revives them all—drain anyone’s life, etc. Hell, in 5E he can try to drain life from everyone essentially for free, every round. It would have been a lot cooler, or cool at all, for him to sap everyone’s life, have them barely make it into the temple, and then Cleric Guy heal them all as Tiamat appears.
Still pointless but would have been at least a shred of tension.
Anyway, they go inside the temple conveniently just as Oreo has finished taking all the tattoos off Cursed Guy, which I guess also transfers the curse to him? Maybe Transfer Curse is a new spell, though I’m not sure why you’d do that instead of just using Remove Curse or Break Enchantment. Sounds like a better option, especially since even though Former-Cursed Guy was able to retain it for years, Oreo for some reason cannot contain it for even like a minute.
So after one last bit of forced praise for Cursed Guy Oreo dies, but who cares because you didn’t get to know him or anything, and then Tiamat just pops out of his corpse?
Somehow.
Okay so, what was the curse? That Tiamat is someone inside the guy? Did Tiamat do that? If so: why? If Oreo had to die for her to manifest, why didn’t the cult just kill Former-Cursed Guy when they had the chance? Purely for the audiences’ sake Tiamat says that every dragon is a door. Okay, so assuming that she can only arbitrarily emerge from a dragon, why not just do that?
Specifically, I mean, why not just pick any random chromatic dragon and do that? She could even pick a wyrmling, have it follow the cult around, and then when the party beats them up and takes Cursed Guy to the gold dragon she could then pop out of the wyrmling and defeat the gold dragon without much fuss. Or just have the cult roam around the countryside looking for noteworthy landmarks like a giant sword bridge and temple.
And then there’s the issue of how retarded Oreo is. He doesn’t bother investigating the curse, trying to determine what it is, what it does. Nope, he just sucks it out and takes it into himself for no particular reason. And if Oreo knew this would happen, why? Why not tell them to take Cursed Guy to, I dunno, a temple of Torm and remove the curse that way. Hell, Oreo could even just fly them there: surely a powerful gold dragon’s life is worth a day or two of inconvenience. Not like Tiamat can actually do anything to Cursed Guy, anyway.
Fuckugly Midgette mutters some Millenial Speak about it being a “whole lot of dragon”, because that’s definitely what you’d say upon seeing Tiamat, but her combined breath attacks are all effortlessly stopped by Formerly-Cursed Guy who is apparently now a cleric, though we only know it because Fuckugly Midgette, whilst surrounded by fire, casually looks at him, uncanny valley smile stretching across her comically oversized head, and calmly states “Well, guess we found our cleric”.
But then why should she be worried? This is the Greygoo Skinsuit derivative: they all know it’s a level-appropriate encounter and/or the GM is going to pinch out some banal narrative bullshit so they can win. It’s why Cleric Guy, despite just now getting his kewl cleric powers–why did Torm wait all this time–confidently tells them that he can hold her, as in Tiamat, at bay, all on his own. Troon Paladin says that she believes him (yeah, okay), but that he’s not one his own (groan), they all strike more poses–oh hey Fuckugly Midgette even has her floating spellbook just for the occasion–Tiamat lunges at them, and the screen goes black.
In normal fantasy you might call this a cliffhanger, and wonder how the party will emerge victorious or even escape? Will they all make it? Will they all make it in one piece? Pffft, this isn’t normal fantasy: from the hilariously impractical-and-overdesigned armor and clothing, to the near absence of (boring) humans, visual overload, pervasive magic and complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling beauty it’s post-modern power fantasy pandering.
In other words: the party isn’t in any genuine danger.
They’re going to win, and I’d imagine without much if any fuss. Maybe Token Black Dwarf will get hurt a bit. Probably smacked into a wall by Tiamat’s tail, maybe stunned or pass out for a moment. Maybe at some point Troon Paladin or Ugly Druid will get hurt, and then Cleric Guy will just heal they/them, but in the end they won’t merely escape, or barely defeat Tiamat. No, they’ll utterly trounce her, and Fuckugly Midgette will wrap things up with some sarcastic remark like "Shoulda kept her heads in the game."
A waste, certainly, but what isn’t that has been burdened with the Dungeons & Dragons label for the past decade or so?