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Library/ A Parade of Horribles
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Generic location illustration for The Pineapple Cabaret
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The Pineapple Cabaret

the Cabaret · the oasis · Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret

The secret NPC-refuge dimension the party plans to reach via a cleaner-bot shop exploit — first testing it by smuggling the dying Li Na inside.

Story so far

The Pineapple Cabaret is the hidden pocket-dimension oasis the forgotten crawlers Herot and Menerva secretly built behind the never-visited seventeenth floor as a permanent refuge for the dungeon's mobs and NPCs. With Akuma's casino route to it apparently a bust, the party commits to the second, 'cleaner bot' method — Herot's idea. The clue that convinces Carl it's real: cleaner bots have been mysteriously unavailable in the personal-space shop for 'overwhelming demand' because Herot, trapped inside the Cabaret with limited world-control but a working shop interface, holds a standing order buying every cleaner bot that appears (the white one Carl looted from Architect Houston was the last old model in the store).

Meanwhile Menerva runs the seventeenth floor's 'Backstage Death Maze' — the training ground from which the AI plucked the over-leveled Growler Gary — invisible to showrunners for hundreds of seasons. The Cabaret itself is overrun (the intelligent, self-aware Ogre Imperium, a shadow-mimic infestation, and worse 'remnants'), which is why the war mages need Carl's crew to clear it. The plan's first live test: smuggle the deity-less, poison-dying Li Na inside — curing her Left to Fester, sparing Zhang, and proving the route before a mass crawler evacuation after Heat Five.

Mordecai and Rosetta's bench tests (on Samantha and sluggalos) work with 'wrinkles,' but everything still hinges on Akuma having told the truth about Herot.

Appearance

An unseen pocket-dimension oasis behind the seventeenth floor, reached via a shop-interface/cleaner-bot exploit; overrun by ancient monsters.

Role

The secret NPC-refuge dimension the party races to reach via a cleaner-bot exploit, first tested on Li Na.

Relationships

Herot — Trapped inside with a shop interface, buying every cleaner bot to keep the exploit's door open.
Menerva — Runs the seventeenth floor's Backstage Death Maze that fronts the oasis.
Li Na — The deity-less dying crawler chosen as the first live test of the escape.
Ogre Imperium — The self-aware ogre faction infesting the overrun oasis.
Akuma — Whose truthfulness about Herot the whole plan depends on.

Earlier in this series

Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:

Sources — 3 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 25
  • A mysterious, ominous location the AI once offered as a banishment 'choice' — now Akuma's promised escape route.
Chapter 40
  • A secret pocket-dimension oasis built by two forgotten crawlers as a permanent refuge for mobs and NPCs — now infested and needing to be retaken.
Chapter 58
  • The secret NPC-refuge dimension the party plans to reach via a cleaner-bot shop exploit — first testing it by smuggling the dying Li Na inside.
Character portrait