Purgatory is the sixth season of Dice Funk and takes place in the Planescape setting. The protagonists are a group of morally evil to morally neutral killers who have taken the mantle of the Furies, getting rid of people who threaten the relative stability of the planes.
Starring:
- Lauren Morgan as Cordelia Heller, yuan-ti warlock.
- Quinn Larios as King Badass, lizardfolk fighter.
- Laura Kate Dale as Nifyx, gnome bard.
- Conrad Zimmerman as Blake Ferris, human wizard.
- Austin Yorski as the DM.
Season 6 Tropes
- Back from the Dead: The platonic form of Life Itself brought (limited) resurrection magic back. The party is made up of dead people who have been resurrected by Cato, a descendant of Anubis, to act as the new Furies.
- Happens to Cordelia a second time after she angers Lloyd. Cato brings her back, but it costs so much that any death from here on out is permanent.
- Bittersweet Ending: Generally sweet for the characters involved but with bitter implications for the world as a whole. Nyfix successfully escapes punishment for killing the Yggdrasil, King opens a charity to help poor children, with a sizable donation from Blake who fakes his death and slips back into obscurity, Cordelia ascends to godhood as the Believers win the Faction War while the Athar are set up as a sort of internal affairs for them. The bitter side comes from the destruction of the Yggdrasil which will negatively affect every person in existence and the final thing we see is Nyfix crying in remorse after reading a note she got from King before she turned evil.
- Circles of Hell: The Abyss is arranged in this manner. In the Dice Funk canon it specifically has 666 layers.
- Death Is Cheap: Technically, in the sense that people can pay to bring back dead souls. Practically, this is counteracted by the fact that resurrection is prohibitively expensive. Averted completely for the Furies. After Cato resurrects Cordelia a second time, he makes it clear that any future deaths will be too expensive for him to undo. Although Blake later wins a race that gets him a diamond valuable enough to buy one more resurrection. Later on after King is revived, Cato reveals that the Form of Life is gone, meaning death is permanent again.
- Divided We Fall: The Athar. After the Believers publicly take on the Lady of Pain, the Athar realize they can't win the faction war. Abraham and his followers choose to fight anyway, with the understanding that if the Believers capture Abraham alive they might come to a compromise. Lancelot and a number of others choose to leave so they can try and sabotage the Believers as much as possible before their inevitable defeat.
- End of an Age: By the end of the season the setting has been altered in many ways. The Believers winning the Faction War means that gods exist again and Conduits are significantly less common now. Nyfix's plan collapsed all the Planes into one and removed the In-Universe Character Alignment system from the world.
- Enemy Civil War: The Blood War between Demons and Devils has mostly turned cold due to the deaths of all the main commanders. One arc focuses on eliminating a Demon close to becoming a Demon Lord, which would turn the war hot again and (the real problem) let the Demons win, thereby allowing them to turn their attention to other planes.
- First-Episode Resurrection: The season begins with the party being revived from the dead to become the Furies.
- God Guise: Someone's been spotted here and there who looks like the largely vanished Lady of Pain. After Cordelia surprises them, she realizes that the Lady of Pain is supposed to be omniscient in Sigil. Casting Dispel Magic, the 'Lady of Pain' very uncharacteristically says "Aw, fuck!" and their levitation spell drops them to the ground. It's safe to say there's probably an imposter running around the multiverse.
- The imposter is eventually discovered to be Sharon.
- Godhood Seeker: The Believers of the Source have this as their ultimate goal. They believe that anyone has the capacity to eventually ascend to godhood and should do so. They understandably don't like the Athar.
- Heaven: The Furies' first job is in Celestia, which is loosely based on Dante's interpretation of Heaven. Austin takes the opportunity to further reference Abrahamic mythology with the various types of angels; the first inhabitant of Celestia they meet is an ophanim (the wheels-within-wheels kind) and a throne shows up as a mini-boss.
- Internal Affairs: The Athar eventually become this to the Believers, satisfying the members whose biggest problem with the gods was the completely unchecked power.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Cicero's lasts about half an episode, courtesy of Blake pretty much inviting Jessica to read his mind and show her that Cicero was the mastermind behind her husband's murder.
- The Multiverse: As it's set in the Planescape setting, this is a given. The plot specifically concerns the various afterlives and the management of souls.
- Nay-Theist: The Athars, as in the usual Planescape setting. The difference here is that, as the gods have been dead for some time, the Athars have turned their attention towards people who would position themselves like gods, such as the Metatron. They understandably don't like the Believers.
- Odd Friendship: Blake, a reserved, meticulous, and boring man ends up becoming close friends with Cordelia, who's dramatic, hedonistic, and impulsive.
- Our Souls Are Different: They take the form of petitioners like in regular D&D, but due to the absence of the gods they are sometimes abducted and sold in Purgatory. This is what happened to the Furies before they were resurrected.
- Public Domain Artifact: The Gjallarhorn, a horn from Norse mythology. Before Ragnarok, Heimdall uses it to awake the gods and assemble them against their enemies. This time around, Nifyx plans to use it to signal the Nidhoggs to attack the Yggdrasil, destroying the planes and by extension the alignment system.
- Rage Against the Heavens: The Nidhoggs, more than even the Athar, who mostly just don't think they should exist. Since the Nidhoggs were meant to play a major role in Ragnarok and Dora's actions killed them all before that could happen, they have a bit of a chip on their metaphorical shoulders, feeling like they were cheated out of their destiny. It's why the Furies were able to ally themselves with Calliope's father; there aren't any surviving gods, so they might as well kill the next best thing.
- Some of the Hollyphants seem to have a similar stance, although their anger is directed at the worshipers of the gods rather than the gods themselves. Since some worshipers believe that Hollyphant tusks can create new gods, the Hollyphants found themselves hunted down in the hopes of replacing the dead ones.
- Replaced the Theme Tune: At episode 26 the intros and outros start swapping between Dj CUTMAN, H.A.Covers, and Dodger's remix of Beneath the Mask
and bLiNd's Ninth Circle of Hell. - Seven Deadly Sins: Near the end of the season Austin explains that several major characters are meant to represent the seven deadly sins.
- Blake Ferris is Sloth, being a boring, mundane person hoping to retire comfortably.
- Cordelia is Lust, being a Serial Killer who loves indulging in extravagance.
- Nyfix is Pride, obsessed with besting others in challenges and proving herself as the best. Later on she becomes the Conduit of Pride.
- Cicero is Greed, being a Corrupt Corporate Executive killing his coworkers so he can become extremely wealthy.
- Cato is wrath, he's the Conduit of Wrath but it's all directed at himself for a horrible mistake he made in the past.
- Matilda is Envy, she's the Conduit of Envy which lets her steal the Conduits of others.
- Gluttony is represented by the Nidhoggs who, when the Gjallarhorn is blown will consume the Yggdrasil in order to destroy it despite the fact that this act will doom them to extinction.
- The eighth sin Despair is covered by two characters, Tragedy, who is so miserable and misanthropic that he's eager to cause Ragnarok to destroy the world, and 'Jessica' who became the Conduit of Despair after her husband was killed at their wedding and his funeral was crashed.
- Seven Heavenly Virtues: They're sapient and out for blood after the Furies kill the Metatron.
- Theme Tune: Initially the 'last time' theme is The Musical Ghost's ethnic electronica remix of Devilman no Uta's main theme, the intro is RobKTA's disco house remix of Death by Glamour while the outro is Cement City's remix also of Death by Glamour.
- To Hell and Back: Well, the Abyss. One target is the up-and-coming Demon Queen, which requires the Furies to traverse all 666 levels of the Abyss through the various rivers running through it (Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, etc).
- Tyke Bomb: The purpose of Project Dharma, a program under the now-defunct Nexus crime syndicate based around raising children to be perfect killers. King, Lloyd, and Lime were all results of the program.
- Villain Protagonist: Blake was an assassin for an insurance agency. Cordelia was a serial killer. King was raised by a crime syndicate to be an elite hitman, and he's one of the nice ones. Nifyx is the only Fury without a body count from before her death.
- Wacky Racing: The Athar put on the Götterdämmerung Grand Prix, celebrating the death of the gods with a race around Sigil on flying creatures. Contestants have their choice of mount, from pegasus to enchanted whale.
- Who Watches the Watchmen?: One of the conflicts between the Athar and the Believers. The Believers think that restoring godhood outweighs the possibility of evil gods in and of itself, while many of the Athar think the chance of creating malevolent all-powerful beings is too much of a risk.
- This is eventually resolved when the Believers subdue Abraham. Any Athar who are still loyal to him are folded into the Believers as a sub-group whose purpose is to punish gods who abuse their powers.
