Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
A terrified showrunner-god 'voluntold' by the AI to serve as Grand Master of the eleventh floor's deadly parade.
Chaco delivers the eleventh floor's opening address in place of the usual hosts — not Cascadia, Zev, Damien, or the AI, but 'your boy Chaco,' who reveals he has been 'voluntold' as Grand Master of the parade and understands almost none of it himself. He lays out the rules: five combined float-groups, each given a theme, ninety minutes to build a procession down a three-kilometer parade route lined with non-hostile spectators, past a judging stand where any performance should peak, ending in an arena stocked with resurrected tenth-floor monsters and a floor boss. Barely holding it together, he signs off — then the speaker catches him whimpering 'Oh shit, oh shit, I'm gonna fucking die,' confirming he's as much a captive of the insane AI as the crawlers.
Mordecai curses him as a 'coward murderer,' marking Chaco as complicit in past bloodshed even as he panics.
Appearance not shown in these chapters — a disembodied announcing voice, audibly panicked, self-styled as a casual, bro-ish showrunner.
The reluctant, terrified Grand Master of the eleventh-floor parade, mouthpiece for the AI's rules.
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings: