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The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 3

 

Original Fight 1

 

The Rancor vs Vermithrax Pejorative

 

The year is 1983. Filming is wrapping up on Return of the Jedi. Industrial Light and Magic techies decide to take the rancor model from the Jabba’s palace scene and pose it with a model of the dragon Vermithrax Pejorative from 1981’s Dragonslayer which Industrial Light and Magic also worked on.

 

Why did they do it?

 

Because it made a cool picture.

 

Why am I covering this battle?

 

Because it’s a cool idea.

 

Well, there’s a little more than that.

 

Dragon vs Giant Humanoid is a matchup that goes back to the titular brawl of King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), further back to the cyclops vs dragon fight in Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and even further back to Kong snapping a dinosaur’s jaw in King Kong (1933).

 

(Dinosaurs are close enough to dragons.)

 

And then there’s the narrative angle. Both are big antagonistic monsters that are revealed to have a softer side. The audience feels bad for Vermi because her babies get slaughtered and because she’s introduced with this quote:

“When a dragon gets this old, it knows nothing but pain, constant pain. It grows decrepit, crippled, pitiful… spiteful!”

 

The audience also feels bad for the rancor because of her (yes her) relationship with her keeper who cries over her corpse.

 

They’re also both tired, old, monsters well past their prime. While it’s not that obvious in Return of the Jedi, the EU clarifies that Jabba kept his rancor malnourished despite its keeper’s best efforts to care for it

 

And there’s also the practical effects angle. Both of these creatures were brought to life by practical effects when CGI was limited to Atari blocks. To be specific, they were both rod operated puppets captured in go motion.

 

So there’s more to this match theme wise than a cool picture.

 

Though the picture IS really cool.

 

The Rancor

 

Luke vs the Rancor:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tr-DIm-u-c

 

Rancor EU Lore:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzU3pDzVvk

 

Rancor Species Lore:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Jlgn0xZHw

 

In Return of the Jedi, in a confrontation which demonstrates how Jedi were treated power-wise in the films compared to the EU, Luke gets dropped down a pit in Jabba’s palace to get killed by the monster that lurks there. The monster was foreshadowed earlier when it ate a reference to Star Trek’s Orion slave girls, both to build anticipation and because the original trilogy crew actually knew how to make films.

Without his trusty lightsaber missing and with the novels that would grant him planet-level telekinesis years away, Luke has to rely on his wits to defeat an opponent that physically outclasses him.

 

You’d think he would have at least tried the Jedi mind trick on the Rancor. Then the poor thing wouldn’t have had to die.

 

Kid me cried when he saw the keeper cry over the rancor. It was like a pet to him, and I had a dog. I could relate.

 

Stupid Jedi.

 

The Expanded Universe Rancor

 

This required a trip to Wookipedia.

 

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

 

Alright. Rancors are a species of cool giant monsters found throughout the Star Wars galaxy. Typically, they come from the planet Dathomir where the Nightsisters hail from. The Nightsisters domesticate rancors to use as battle-mounts. Who are the Nightsisters? Force-witches basically. Why are there Force-witches? Because EU.

 

Rancors stand around 5 meters tall, have armored hide that can withstand blaster fire, and have a peaceful disposition, though they can be antagonized into a rage.

 

So Luke killed something that was instinctively peaceful.

 

Way to go Skywalker.

 

Rancors come in several flavors including jungle, rage, and shadow. Collect them all!

 

Rancors are classed as semi-sentient, a rather nebulous term that basically means they’re smarter than a dog, but not as smart as a human. Theoretically, with this intellect and their hands rancors are capable of crude tool usage along the lines of “pick up big rock to smashy smashy.”

 

While I’m sure somewhere in the EU there’s a jedi rancor with a giant lightsaber and the ability to crush a planet with the force, the one in this battle is the one sane people are familiar with–Pateesa (yes, that is her name), the rancor from Return of the Jedi. THE rancor.

 

Pateesa, unfortunately, isn’t a shining example of her species. For starters, she’s female, so she doesn’t scale to the bull rancors that show up in video games and charge at soldiers desperately mag-dumping their blasters into it. She’s also been terribly abused by Jabba, though her keeper did his best to care for Pateesa, even risking his own life to protect her from Tusken raiders. She’s malnourished and bears the wounds of many pit fights. She’s in such bad shape that Luke in the novels considered killing Pateesa a mercy kill as rehabilitation seemed impossible (Really? Even with Jedi mind powers?). That being said, the fact that Pateesa is still alive after such abuse is something of a feat. She’s won fights against all manner of weird creatures from throughout the Star Wars galaxy even while beat to shit. Something is keeping her alive. Skill, rage, willpower, whatever it is, it’s something in her favor in this matchup.

 

Also, did you know that the term of venery for a rancor is a crash of rancors?

 

Rancor Positives

 

–Picked up a pig alien (A gamorrean, if you MUST be that way) with one hand and ate it like a twix bar.

 

–Effortlessly snapped a bone shoved vertically into her maw that belonged to some poor unfortunate victim. I’m surprised Wookieepedia doesn’t have an article on the history of that bone.

 

–Her armor can be reliably scaled to that of other rancors which resist blaster fire.

 

–Semi-sentient intelligence.

 

–Years of pit fighting experience triumphing in 1v1 monster fights. Pateesa is a survivor.

 

Rancor Negatives

 

–Died when Luke threw a skull at the control panel of a portcullis gate, thus joining the concept of skulls and switches a decade before Doom. The gate fell on the Rancor and one of its spike portrussions got her in the brain. Pateessa lasted long enough to give a final death-twitch, like all good monsters should.

 

–Pateesa is an underfed, underweight, female of her species carrying several wounds. 

 

–Kid-me cried when it died.

 

Vermithrax Pejorative

 

From the latin: The dragon from Thrace that makes things worse.

 

There’s a lot of Latin in Dragonslayer, likely because using a dead language compliments the film’s theme of magic as a dying art.

 

You’ve seen Dragonslayer, right? Right? I mean surely…

 

I-I can’t be the only one….

 

Okay, brief synopsis. It’s a little after the Roman departure from Britain. Magic is dying throughout the world as Christianity supplants paganism. The setting has a soft, melancholic feel about the departure of magic, sort of like The Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons, Spice and Wolf, and Keats’ Lamia.

 

One of the last wizards, Ulrich, is asked to kill what might be the last dragon by the villages of the kingdom it terrorizes. The kingdom is forced to undergo a lottery where one virginal maiden is chosen to be sacrificed to Vermi–who doesn’t even use the virgins for food. She just burninates them to death like Trogdor, likely because she’s old, in constant pain, and has to watch over what’s likely the last of her race. She doesn’t need the virgins for food, she just likes destroying symbols of youth.

 

She’s a Karen, basically.

 

Ulrich agrees to kill the dragon, but he can see the future and knows his frail old body couldn’t survive the journey. So he tasks his apprentice Galen with a cryptic command–to sprinkle his ashes on a lake of fire. Ulrich then allows himself to be killed by the human antagonist of the picture, a member of the king’s guard named Tyrian who hates wizards. His body is then cremated and stuffed into a pouch. 

 

That’s one way to make magic dust.

 

Galen himself takes up the duty to kill the dragon, but after it blows smoke in his face he freaks out and decides to just drop a rockslide on its cave and call it a day. But Vermi digs herself out causing an earthquake in the process. Galen tries again with an enchanted spear and fireproof shield made out of discarded dragon scales, but is again unsuccessful. Finally, he realizes that the lake of fire Ulrich mentioned was Vermi’s lair which has an underground lake that she sets parts of on fire. Ulrich comes back long enough for a duel with Vermi which kills them both.

 

Vermithrax Positives

 

–Can fly.

 

–Can breathe smoke clouds and fire. This fire is hot enough that when used underground rocks on the surface steam. It can also burn on top of water which implies that its a class B fire caused by a flammable liquid–a grease fire basically. And as you should know (basic life skill here) you don’t put water on a grease fire. The grease isn’t cut off from the air because it floats through the water. Anyone remember that godawful film Reign of Fire? It’s sort of like that. Or it could just be that it burns on fire because, you know, magic creature.

 

–Is strong enough to create an earthquake by digging her way out of her collapsed cave. The earthquake was so powerful it caused parts of the nearby castle to fall apart.

 

–Her dragon scales give her excellent protection and even when they’re pierced she’s hard to put down. Galen’s blacksmith friend made him a spear so sharp that he grated a horseshoe against its edge like it was a piece of cheese. But Galen didn’t even try using it as it was against Vermithrax. As his girlfriend Valerian observed, “That won’t make any difference. What you’re trying to kill isn’t of flesh and blood.” So Galen enchanted the spear with magic to allow it to piece Vermithrax as well as emit a blue flash when it hits things (Got to get that Star Wars appeal).

 

–Is protected from her own fire. When Galen went to confront Vermi for round two, he only brought his spear with him without any thought for defense because he’s kind of a fuck-up. Fortunately, his girlfriend had the sense to gather up some of Vermi’s discarded scales and make a shield out of them that saved Galen’s dumbass from being cooked. It may seem like a “duh” for a dragon to be immune to fire, but that’s not an assumption you can make for all dragons across fiction. In this fight, the salient feature of Vermi’s immunity is that Pateesa can’t pull a Halloween 2 and charge at Vermi while on fire in the hopes of “spreading the love” as it were.

 

–Is significantly smarter than a Skyrim dragon. When fighting Ulrich, she did the smart thing and strafed him with fire blasts and claw swipes, because why would you engage your opponent in hand-to-hand unless you had to? She only swooped down to grab Ulrich when she saw that her fire had no effect on him because he’s a wizard..

 

–Beat a wizard’s apprentice twice and scored a double-KO with a true wizard. This wizard by the way was capable of summoning clouds and meteors, which would mean that Vermithrax scales VERY high (get it? scales?) if I was one of those death battlers that didn’t understand the difference between a magic spell that causes meteorological phenomena and a magic spell that hits with the force of meteorological phenomena. Still, Ulrich was no pushover. He was able to make himself fireproof and blast Vermithrax with lightning. But he still had to sacrifice himself in order to kill Vermithrax.

 

Vermithrax Negatives

 

–Is in constant agony because her scales are hard and rigid. Think having plantar warts all over your body.

 

–Couldn’t protect her eggs. No eggs. Empty egg carton. You don’t have any eggs.

 

–Died to an exploding geriatric.

 

–Her death is emblematic of the decline of magic in the world as it took her and one of the last wizards.

 

The Match-up

 

Speed: Vermithrax. She can fly very fast in the air while Pateesa sort of lumbers around on the ground. If Vermithrax is on the ground, however, her speed is very close to Pateesa.

 

Strength: Vermithrax. Pateesa couldn’t stop a falling gate from killing her. Vermithrax made an earthquake by digging herself out of her caved-in lair.

 

Durability: Vermithrax. A rancor’s scales can survive blaster fire, but enough shots will drop even the strongest rancor (and Pateesa is far from being the strongest rancor). Vermithrax on the other hand, took two lightning bolts at once, which means she’s tougher than a Shivan dragon. It didn’t even ground her. She tumbled a little, righted herself, and kept on flying like it was no big deal. Pateesa died when a rusty gate stabbed her in the head. Vermithrax took a spear enchanted to break through her scales to the back of her head several times and then to her throat. She was more or less unharmed aside from some blood loss and went on to fight a wizard.

 

Fighting Skills: Pateesa. Vermithrax spent most of her life either incinerating virgins or sleeping in her cave. She’s never fought another dragon or monster. Pateesa on the other hand is a hardened veteran of many pit fights against alien monsters. Pateesa might also be more intelligent. “Semi-sentient” is a very grey term in Star Wars, but Vermithrax has never been shown being smarter than an animal.

 

X-factors: Vermithrax. Her wings and fire breath give her a huge advantage. She can attack Pateesa from a distance Pateesa can’t close, and while the fire likely won’t kill Pateesa as her hide can withstand bolts of plasma, being set on fire will drain her air supply. Remember kids, in a fire, it’s not the flames you have to worry about. It’s the smoke. And Vermithrax can belch plain smoke to blind and choke Pateesa as well.

 

The Result

 

Looks like my inner-child gets to cry again, because the rancor is toast.

 

Even the galaxy’s strongest bull rancor likely wouldn’t beat Vermithrax. Flight plus fire breath is just way too much of an advantage for any rancor to overcome.  

 

Let’s assume for the sake of fairness the fight takes place in a cavernous location like Vermithrax’s lair or Jabba’s pit. Without room to fly, Vermithrax loses her mobility advantage. But unless they’re fighting inside an adamantium dome, Vermithrax can just dig herself out just as she did against Galen’s rockslide. Though even purely claw-to-claw, the fight still goes to Vermithrax. She’s strong enough to make an earthquake and shrugs off the kind of attacks that killed Pateesa.