Library/ Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Compendium Story so far

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Coast-Guard vet and Donut's bodyguard, entering the third floor to choose a race and class.

Galaxy-famous talking show cat who tricks her way into the Former Child Actor class on floor three.

A timid, badly-sculpted doppelganger art teacher — really a tank class ten levels behind, sent by Hekla to be protected.

Donut's baby dinosaur-chicken pet, revealed by Odette to be a velociraptor that will grow huge.

Carl and Donut's NPC mentor, now a strikingly handsome Incubus — and tricked into becoming their permanent manager.

Wheelchair-bound, dementia-suffering Mrs. McGibbons from Brandon's care home — shockingly now a top-ten Frost Maiden.

Daniel Bautista

An unseen crawler whose decisive earlier kill leaves the Divider's perforated corpse and an emptied neighborhood behind.

Brandon's coworker, who escaped the third-floor collapse his last stand bought — now on the party's minds.

The Iron Tangle

The fourth floor — a vast, moving subway/rail network of colored lines, monster-filling trains, and safe transfer stations.

The Icelandic leader of Brynhild's Daughters, transformed into a towering Amazonian Shieldmaiden.

Nightmare Express

A larger, wide-gauge express line running a five-stop figure-eight — the party's likely key to backtracking to stairwells.

A mile-wide flaming pit ringed by thousands of portals — where the colored trains are dumped as garbage, revealing the floor's true machinery.

Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

A unique, secretly-magical book disguised as a joke recipe collection — a hidden guide to burning the dungeon down.

The wrath ghouls' gathering point — and, having no soul crystal, the one room a crawler team can actually hold.

Interdiction Rapid-Response Railway Repair Cart

A never-used hobgoblin workhorse with a tunnel-wide portal blade that dumps everything ahead of it into a trainyard or the abyss.

The Chinese crawler Carl saved on the Maestro's show — now a top-ten Street Monk.

A stairwell station housing a top-of-the-line ghoul generator, now vomiting blister ghouls up the Vermillion line.

Six ravenous monsters disguised as Terminus Station 433 — the trap that devours crawlers foolish enough to disembark at the 'last safe stop.'

The Desperado Club

An exclusive crawler club — 'So fun it hurts' — whose members-only section Carl and Donut can access via their neck-tattoo passes.

Katia's cobra-headed friend and Hekla's enforcer — a four-armed killer with thirteen skulls whom Carl instantly, deeply distrusts.

A hidden magical crystal in the depot ceiling that recharges the dormant Swordsmen and masks Remex's presence.

The one stairwell station with stairs and no ghouls — which is exactly why Carl expects something worse to gather there.

Station and Repair Hub E

A mile-wide underground engine-car trainyard behind the Abyss portals — one of ~20 such hubs, now overrun by a collapsing ghoul infestation.

A grieving Mango-line dwarf conductor at station 60, weeping over the realization that his little girl was never real.

Exhausted red devil-woman sealed in a boiler, stoking a train with the corpses of her own failed young.

Ghoul Generator

Soul-crystal-powered devices that manufacture ghouls from the floor's dead — the engines behind the Iron Tangle's undead flood.

The game's likely most powerful crawler — a former street kid now a goat-legged Lajabless Black Inquisitor General.

A genetically-engineered 'taur that's half human and half human — a two-torsoed, four-armed brute bred to be a Tangle train engineer.

Brynhild's Daughters

A large all-female crawler group led by the Icelandic Hekla, currently scattered across the Over City.

Brandon's quiet, estranged brother — alive after leaving the party, but unreachable and possibly blocking all contact.

Dungeon Crawler World

The galaxy-spanning broadcast the crawl exists to feed, keeping season records like any other sport.

Enchanted Repeating Crossbow of the Scavenger Mother of Mothers

A female-only unique that never runs out of bolts, scales with the women beside you, and sterilises monster-birthing enemies.

Hobgoblin Smoke Curtain

Round fused bombs from Pustule that blanket a whole area in heavy fog — far better than goblin smoke bombs.

Miss Quill's most-prized beanie baby — an armored soldier on a black horse — kept in a Sheol glass case.

Li Jun's sister — an odd demon-like race who fights with chains, traveling with her brother and Zhang.

The magistrate's fiercely obstructive elderly Skyfowl assistant — a devoted gatekeeper and Beanie-Baby hoarder.

Skull Empire prince and cruel showrunner, humiliated by the viral Pork Boy meme and Carl's combat challenge.

What a ghoul horde becomes when nobody stops it congregating — a station-filling boss above a city boss, and unkillable this floor.

One of roughly eighty endangered crawlers, who uses the new quest chat to blame Carl and Donut for the crisis.

Stage Three Monster

DT-warped horrors marked by blinking red exclamation points — bear-sized things sprouting thick, native tentacles.

The jikininki generator station — a ghoul factory that once produced a horde even Lucia Mar could not hold.

The colour-line transfer hub where a weeping dwarf conductor sits — and the only place to find out where the F line goes.

Valtay Corporation

A powerful parasitic-alien corporate government whose fleet waits to collect Borant's debt and run the next season.

A ready-made trap cube that blasts a 'Very Loud' Billboard Hot 100 song when triggered — Carl's tripwire alarm.

Carl's baseball-sized dwarf-metal shot for his xistera — hundreds of crafted scrap-metal projectiles.

Level-20 undead spawned one-for-one from every non-undead death on the floor — tenacious, tight-skinned, and endless.

Carl's signature homemade jug bombs — his go-to thrown explosive against packed enemies.

Clockwork Triplicate

Donut's spell that splits a pet or minion into three real, independently-acting copies for one minute.

Club Vanquisher

The Desperado Club's stuffy rival — a country-club-style venue for clerics and paladins.

DungeonWerx Portal Selector

A pair of numbered handles on a dusty screen that dials which of forty-eight coloured lines a portal opens onto.

A loot box whose contents are voted on by a crawler's followers, unopenable for 30 hours during voting.

The special golden kill-marker that appears over a crawler who has killed and cashed in one of the top ten.

An indestructible, guilt-drunk gnoll bartender who could not leave his bar to fight — and dies fourteen times to save strangers.

A war god worshipped by the ManTauR engineers — and a catastrophic entity Carl's gauntlet can accidentally summon.

Round, baseball-sized hobgoblin bombs — the trademark thrown weapon of Hob-Lobbing Lobbers.

Hobgoblin Dynamite

White, high-yield, stable hobgoblin explosives with remote Hobgoblin Pus detonators — an upgrade to Carl's arsenal.

A lonely creature who could not bear children, so she ate a world to brew them — and made clones instead.

Krakaren Crotch Dumpling

Thousands of rice-grain clones that burst from a hatching stage three monster — and grow up terribly fast.

Magistrate Featherfall

The Skyfowl town's magistrate — a black cleric who can control the undead, and a prime suspect in the killings.

Mistress Tiatha

The NPC game guide assigned to Brandon An's band, whose location fixes where they've entered the floor.

The bug-helmeted talk-show host who mentors Carl off-air and needles the Skull Empire on-air.

An unknown top-ranked crawler — a Caprid 'Forsaken Aerialist' sitting third on the floor-four leaderboard.

Princess Formidable

Katia's mysterious new sponsor — a Skull Empire princess Carl suspects is now heir after Prince Stalwart's disgrace.

Powerful royal empire whose prince Carl publicly feuds with; its king has come to Earth orbit.

A Vermillion-line express station where a thousand crawlers, including Li Jun's crew, are boxed in and besieged by mobs.

An overrun junction station of switches, portals and Mini-Cooper-sized work cars, littered with dead hobgoblins and gnolls.

The Bolt of Ophiotaurus

One of a hundred. Shoot a god in the eye and its invulnerability stops for fifteen seconds.

Vermillion Line

An express 'Terminus Direct' rail line that skips most stations — still powered, and the route to the trapped thousand at station 101.

A rare, exceptionally strong ghoul that appears among the festering horde — thought to mark the end of the infestation's second stage.

The party's loyal little kua-tin agent, feeding them audience reactions and booking interviews from afar.

He ran from the safe room to hand Carl a wand with one charge left, and saved the entire plan with it.

Bomo and the Sledge

Two dim-but-loyal level-35 Cretin bodyguards Carl adopts as his regular Desperado Club security.

The Oak Mother — an in-game tree goddess elves worship as the mother of all gods, invoked in the city elves' apocalyptic creed.

The kua-tin political party that runs Borant, whose members get better treatment and whose troubles cannot be discussed.

Borant Corporation

The debt-ridden kua-tin company running Earth's dungeon season, which owns and mind-wipes its living NPCs.

Carl's Doomsday Scenario

The title item — an un-stabilizable city-leveling bomb, permanently stuck in Carl's inventory, that detonates the instant it's removed.

A cowering wolf-headed game-show host whom Mordecai hates enough to attack on sight — earning himself a seven-day banishment.

The charge that killed Hekla, now with a cone of collateral behind it and a five-minute cooldown instead of a day.

A tunnel-wide mobile portal on a blade — the Iron Tangle's answer to a crashed train, and the party's evacuation tool.

The crocodilian shotgun-wielder from the recap shows — fourth on the floor-four leaderboard.

The third and last of the rescue lines, chosen for a group already moving toward it through the pit.

The locked employee train that ferries the Tangle's workers — the line the party rides out on, all to themselves.

Krakaren Borough Boss

A borough-boss Krakaren Imani calls 'an old friend' of Carl's — one of the many tentacled Krakaren, left alive by Elle's crew.

Level-16 flying vampire heads trailing their own organs — ghost-class mobs that only truly die if their hidden corpse is destroyed.

Hekla's former Borant rep — a Bloom party member now claiming Carl's party as her own account.

A soot-covered, self-important Iron Tangle HR associate the party rescues — whose thin false memories start unraveling under Carl's questions.

Donut's workhorse spell, now thrown from the back of a moving dinosaur at a monster nobody can hurt.

Magical Pet Carrier

A Rubik's-Cube-sized device that stores a bonded pet unharmed so it can truly rest — bought for Mongo.

Car-sized chattering mouths on centipede legs that become two of themselves when you cut one in half.

One level up from Bautista's group, reachable by an intact gangway that Wall Monitors have started to crowd.

A human Shepherd at level 30, seventh on the leaderboard and otherwise entirely unknown to Carl's party.

Mordecai's Special Brew

A homemade thirty-second de facto immortality potion — nonstop healing and regeneration, with brutal side effects.

Princess D'nadia

A tentacle-faced Saccathian princess of the small Prism kingdom — an outspoken Danger Zone regular and ardent fan of Carl and Donut.

Donut's Unique fan-box gift from D'nadia — glamorous goggles that turn her Magic Missile into a focused four-beam laser.

Protective Shell

Carl's short-lived dome shield that repels enemies while letting friendlies act freely.

Donut's short-range teleport spell — at level 5 it can jump the party up to unseen higher ground.

Katia's once-a-day Juggernaut charge — using her own body as a battering ram.

Second Chance Spell

Donut's necromancy spell that reanimates a fresh corpse as an undead minion under her command.

Sheol Glass Reaper Case

An expensive fire-forged display case repurposed to contain an overloaded soul crystal and its city-killing explosion.

The Daughters' timid fairy healer who hoards her heals, obeys only Hekla, and finally flees the fight entirely.

Number seventeen on a portal's colour list, and the deepest of the three lines that reach stranded survivors.

Eagle-headed winged humanoids — Mordecai's original race — who make up over half the medium town's populace.

A platform covered in Xs where a city boss keeps house, and the only station on the floor that isn't a station at all.

A stairwell station now completely filled by a province boss — hundreds of festering ghouls fused into one screaming mass.

Swordsmen Guards

Collective-minded armored town guardians whose prior approval of Carl's corpse possession defeats Miss Quill's arrest order.

The Employee Line

The narrow-gauge line down to the deeper levels, guarded by mantaurs and impossible to drive a rescue cart onto.

A human mage crawler who entered with fifteen goats and now fields a hellspawn familiar and an armored biped goat.

The Neighborhood Map

The local boss reward Donut retrieves from the gore-filled pool while Carl lies unconscious on a rooftop.

The Personal Space

Carl's pocket room, entered under cover of a bathroom break, where the Cookbook gets read and written.

The Sex Workers Who Fell from the Heavens

Carl's second floor-three quest: discover what kills the drained, twisted women appearing nightly in the town's alleys.

The Space In-Between

An empty chamber between two mirrored decks, big enough around to fit a railway tunnel.

Lizard mobs endlessly generated inside the abyss, now massing at the one gangway that still stands.

A jai-alai scoop won in a fan box that becomes Carl's signature launcher — hurling bombs and shot far and fast.

The dungeon's narrator drops the sarcasm for a mock-motherly storytime, and tells crawlers the Krakaren's origin as a bedtime fable.

Battery Fabricator

A microwave-sized dwarven machine that turns mana potions into rechargeable batteries — Carl covets it but can't afford it.

A curse carried by Nekhebit's crossbow, cast on any monster type that generates or births more monsters.

Every safe room has one, and by now the party walks straight past without a word.

The warm maintenance-worker crawler shepherding elderly survivors, now scattered far from Carl and stuck in class selection.

A young, mismatched-eyed human clerk in the Skyfowl town hall who wryly wishes Carl 'good luck' seeing the magistrate.

Carl's Naughty Little Piggie Goes to Market

A viral deepfake 'snick' mocking Prince Maestro as 'Pork Boy,' engulfing the Skull Empire in scandal.

A skinless, eyeless, echolocating rabbit-monster whose sonic attack makes crawlers violently sick.

The negligent sponsor shared by Hekla and most of her Daughters, which has never once sent them anything.

Crawler Forkith

The 20th-edition Cookbook author — an Urgyle Sapper who reached the 11th floor, grieving his lost sister Barkith.

Danger Zone with Ripper Wonton

An uncensored round-table talk show, hosted by Ripper Wonton, that the party is booked onto.

Death Challenge!

A monster-truck-rally broadcast segment that freezes the world, stamps blood-dripping words over your face, and takes bets on which monster kills you.

Dmitri and Maxim Popov

Two Nodling brothers, an Illusionist and a Bogatyr, who share a single leaderboard slot — to Donut's fury.

Six hundred people, one at a time, bow and lay a stupid train hat at a cat's feet.

The verbose, Naga-hating 22nd-edition Cookbook author from the last Naga-run season — whose fury oddly comforts Carl.

Dwarven Battery

Brick-sized dwarven cells, four mana potions to a charge — common across every previous crawl and the fuel of the rescue.

Li Jun's shorthand for it is mage-tank combo.

Enchanted Shade Gnoll Riot Forces Crowd Control Shield

Six feet of curved riot shield with GET BACK stencilled on it, and it upgrades the one skill Katia hates.

Enchanted Shade Gnoll Riot Forces Telescoping Crowd Control Baton

A police baton that stretches to three metres and knocks over a crowd every five minutes.

Enchanted Tiara of Mana Genita

Donut's new white-jeweled tiara, replacing the lost cursed one — grants intelligence and mob-detection.

Enchanted Wrestling Belt of the Great Gorgo

A WWE-style championship belt granting +5% Strength, +5% Constitution, and the mass-doubling Avalanche benefit.

Carl's map skill: reveals hidden doors and secretly unlocks the Dungeon Locator, the dungeon's built-in signposting.

Escape Velocity

The named train that stops at all the stairwell stations — the easy route out that Carl's party did everything the hard way to avoid.

Crawlers do not win or lose it — they ride it out like a tornado passing overhead and pray.

The genial level-30 human barkeep of the One-Eyed Narwhal, who mourns GumGum and feeds the party clues.

The broken, drunken father from the second floor — now a one-handed night elf who gifts Carl his cursed ring as a final 'revenge.'

Grimaldi the Vine

The circus's namesake, the man Signet loved, now transformed into an immobile mind-controlling vine.

A transformed roller-skating bear-clown that Signet repeatedly captures as her summoning sacrifice — a boss-tier kill.

Hellspawn Familiar

One of the game's most powerful pets — a horse-sized demonic goat that grows dragon-sized and winged.

A human healer, sole survivor of an AK-47 soldier squad, now eighth on the leaderboard and running with Florin.

Intellect Hunter

A finger-sized parasitic worm race that seizes bodies it kills — possibly the Valtay's true form.

Invisibility Potion

A potion that turns the drinker invisible — Carl's prize from the reward room, hidden in lost luggage.

Involuntary Summoning

The accidental kind: the god arrives untethered, furious, free to smash everything in sight, and the summoner dies.

Carl's core punching skill; at level 10 it unlocks the Breadbasket effect — a chance to stun on a solid blow.

Krakaren Juvenile Cloneling

Monkey-sized, tentacled, acid-blooded, and they scream — and by evening they are seven feet tall.

Dark-magic handlers in charge of 'employee return' at stop 435 — who prepare disembarking train crew for the memory-wiping portal home.

Donut's charisma-100 special ability — forces one enemy at or below her level to 'give her his heart,' taking her damage until he dies.

Marked for Death

An infamous crawler-hunting skill: mark a full-health crawler, and their death grants you a permanent stat point — but you cannot heal until they die.

Somebody nobody has met is building a flamethrower kill zone at the choke points, just in case.

The dry, floating-frisbee AI of a luxury undersea security trailer, who bluntly explains Borant's shoddy, penny-pinching crawl systems.

She asked for an electric litterbox for her birthday, got one, and was quite rightfully upset.

Mysterious Letter

A blood-soaked letter in undead 'necroscript' found on GumGum — a likely lich's scroll, and the key quest clue.

Night Wyrm's Ring

A cursed legendary ring granting +5% all stats and the Marked for Death skill — a boon to killers, a doom to the careless.

A black kill-bounty ticket that rewards a crawler for murdering a named fellow crawler — one issued per party member.

Fuzzy goblin-like neighborhood-boss drug-dispensers at the every-fifth stations — who turn into giant tough goats when attacked.

The blank-slate progenitor race Carl chooses — mythic first conquerors of the universe, worshipped and feared as gods.

The abyss-dwelling province boss Carl hoped the train blast would kill; it survived.

A fifth-floor mob Carl never got to meet properly — the first stage three monster his party killed used to be one.

The hidden survivor above the Swordsmen depot, mistaken for a lich until Carl finally corners the quivering creature.

A workbench the looters were too careless to take, pocketed out of a stripped hobgoblin repair station.

Rev-Up Moonshine

Rare crawler-made moonshine — Carl's explosive accelerant and a coveted trade good now out of production.

Rev-Up Vitamin Shots

Race-specific addictive opiate sedatives that keep the train floor's monsters looping — miss a fix and they physically mutate.

The bench that shows a bomb's total yield before you light it — which Carl skipped, and regretted at station 36.

Katia's crossbow emplacement — three legs, a flesh shield, a firing slit, and a monster's inability to see she is alive.

A new gnoll variety, more hyena than jackal — the last survivor of station 75, drunk asleep on his own bar.

Hardened corpses of a Lesser Demon's failed young — coal-like fuel that burns hotter and far longer than coal.

A small Costa Rican restaurant, stolen and installed underground, and the last safe room before the floor ends.

A random transit station picked for a shower, two loot boxes and the recap show.

Stuffed Grulke Infantry Figure

A brown frog in a spiked helmet, the most worthless collectible in the galaxy, and a live soldier if you pull the tag.

Subspace Portal Analysis

A Valtay-granted interface power that lets Carl detect, analyze, and see through doorways and portals.

Its logo is drawn across the fourth floor's rail map, and its founding is written into the names of the trains.

The Celestial Ascendency

A separate game on the twelfth floor, played by rich pricks who paid extra to wear gods.

Five legs, two train wheels for pulleys, and it looks like bullshit college campus art until you notice what it holds.

The Def Leppard Cart

A rail cart hung nose-down from a crane, portal open, swallowing everything that comes up out of the floor.

The Downward Dog

A beer-soaked gnoll tavern with a hand-lettered 'Oi! No hobgoblins!' sign and a drunk bartender asleep on the bar.

The Emergency Escape Tunnels

A round section of floor falls away, shoots up out of the hole, and the monsters come in from below.

The Fools Who Broke the Glass

A compulsory group event that gives eighty crawlers seven minutes to survive the catastrophic failure of the Final War.

The Level Collapse

Seventeen hours left on the floor, and the desperation shows in the traffic: cries for help, rumours of groups in need.

The Prize Carousel

A cheesy 1970s-style game-show segment where a lucky crawler picks their own fan-box prize from a spinning merry-go-round.

The Pulse Attack

Prince Stalwart's botched pulse-strike to execute Carl for sedition — it killed the singer Manasa and ignited a Valtay reprisal.

The Stairwell Portals

Eighteen hours to power up, six hours open, then the charges blow.

The Syndicate Logo

Overlapping rings of different sizes — the shape the named train lines have been drawing all along.

Train Conductors Souvenir Hat

A junk souvenir toddler's hat awarded for arriving on the fourth floor's train — non-magical, worn with irony.

The instance Bautista's survivors are being posted to — four hundred crawlers already holding its station 36.

Valtay Neural Enhancer

A permanent brain-altering pill from Carl's Valtay sponsor box that grants him the power to identify and analyze subspace portals.

Vengeance of the Daughter

The producer-run drama/storyline centered on Tsarina Signet's nightly war against the circus that enslaved her love.

Walk in Their Shoes

Katia's doppelganger skill that borrows another being's very nameplate — if her disguise is a 90%+ match.

One coloured line with platforms at 60 and 75, and by the end of the chapter it belongs to the party.

201st Security Group

A crank militia of banished city elves who worship the Skyfowl as angels and vow to protect them from the 'earthbound.'

A Champion Has Fallen

System-wide announcement of a champion's death and claimed bounty, source unknown to Carl's group.

Cackling old crawler with a flamingo-topped shopping cart who turns stairs into ramps and knows Carl.

Mordecai buys a second one so he can specialise the first, then asks for the upgrade coupons that are already gone.

A light-brown subway color-line intersecting the Yellow Line at Station 131 — a deceptively non-color-sounding name.

A dog from Carl's old street, and apparently the subject of extensive commentary from Donut.

Apito Education Center

The 201st Security Group's outreach temple — a 'Corrupt Temple' of Apito-worship that Carl burns to the ground.

Apollon the Mighty

The circus strongman Elite, a vine-necked ogre selling worm-filled iced cream — twin to Signet's three-headed ogre tattoo.

Armorers Workshop

A crafting table/tab that turns Carl's shaped scrap into true equippable gear — the key to Katia's absorbable mass.

Artist Alley Mogul

A charisma-and-intelligence merchant class Donut publicly feigns choosing — and later takes as a floor specialty.

Assassin Achievement

Carl's achievement for killing a ranking NPC town official — with a Bronze Assassin's Box reward.

The Desperado Club's level-125 assistant manager — a tuxedoed fairy with heart-bursting cardiovascular magic.

A legendary rare who looked like somebody's grandfather, lasted two hours, and spent them explaining that these are real summonings.

A benefit that doubles your effective mass whenever your whole moving body strikes a living creature.

The seventeenth-edition Cookbook author whose two sentences on indestructible NPCs are worth five hundred lives.

Chaos-incarnate baboons with tiny-featured human faces and Florida-drunk-tank temperaments — doubly deranged when suffering the DTs.

Carl's trap-farming skill: pick up an enemy trap and deconstruct it for reusable materials.

Bandit Achievement

A rare, stackable achievement that upgrades a quest box twice to Celestial — Quan Ch's fluke jackpot.

A cheap enchant spell that adds fire and electrical damage to an equipped item — and cooks hotdogs.

Banshee Station 116

A multi-exit Yellow Line station honeycombed with tunnels, home to drugged Red Cornets and a mysterious pair of sealed robots.

A dead sister named twice in one sentence of a manual, as the reason a crawler wanted to kill a god.

The subway color-line where Elle and Imani's crew is operating, around station 241.

A magical circus ticket granting safe passage inside the big top — Carl's only way to reach the vine.

The tired gray-alien producer of Planet Beautiful — an idealist whose culture show got hijacked by ratings and corporate meddling.

Black Inquisitor General

Lucia Mar's rare triple class fusing cleric, magic-user, and warrior.

A magically addictive intelligence-boosting hallucinogen — 'candy for your mind.'

Blood and Ink Elemental

Signet's summoned minions: huge, flat, paper-cutout monsters of blood and ink that fight with brutal area attacks.

Bolt-Thrower's Workshop

A bench bought for a floor they have not reached yet: mass production of explosive crossbow bolts.

Bomb Surgeon Skill

A skill letting Carl cut explosives into smaller bombs and deconstruct devices into reusable parts.

Slow floating squid-umbrella mobs with a psionic attack — upgraded Mind Horrors, harmless to high-charisma crawlers.

A second-floor incident bad enough that three crawlers chose their entire classes around never being burned by acid again.

A subway color-line linking Elle and Imani's Beige Line to the party's Yellow Line at station 277.

The color-line Bautista is working — running toward the huge near-end transfer station 433.

The woman who tried to kill Carl's father and herself as his birthday present, and half succeeded.

Casino Comp Chip

A rare 100,000-gold comp chip playable only at the Desperado Club Casino's high-roller games.

Cauldron Caster

Tattered purple-and-yellow robed circus figures who ring cauldrons to fire whistling magical mortars.

A worshipper prays, the god comes to fight for him, and the worshipper dies anyway.

Cesta Punta Skill

The random Earth hobby skill (a jai alai discipline) Carl gains at level 3 from his Hobby Potion.

Chain-Making Scroll

Imani had a few left in inventory, and they turn out to be strong enough to hang a van from.

A crawler race that leaves you tall, ghost-pale, wide-mouthed and horned, and still recognisably yourself.

Character Actor Skill

Donut's signature skill: pick a new class specialty each floor, with the AI randomly rolling how strong it is.

Small, endearing avian townsfolk protected by Quill's feather magic but stricken when her unfinished spell collapses.

Cici and Gustavo

Lucia Mar's two beloved rottweiler pets, cast by the show as Princess Donut's manufactured arena rivals.

A race of banished, conspiracy-addled elves cast out by the high elves for their outstanding stupidity.

Hidden casters who cloak Shambling Berserkers in empowering darkness and launch anti-magic bolts from behind the undead.

The affable level-40 crocodilian bouncer who guards the Desperado Club's members-only door.

Twenty-five thousand gold for a flying Roomba, and the cheapest way out of a room painted in ghoul blood.

A color-line near station 271 whose service outage may force Elle's crew onto the named train The Eviscerator.

Cockblock Achievement

Carl's achievement for killing an NPC another crawler needed alive — stealing that crawler's promised reward.

Compensated Anarchist

Carl's rare Monk/Rogue Earth class: a trap-making, bomb-making, social-media dynamo with weak conventional combat.

Cone of Knockback

Swing at ten of anything and the baton does the rest, once every five minutes.

A scroll that spreads a lingering fog only enemies can't see through — key to Carl's Mold Lion trap.

A showrunner-placed magical glyph that gates specific mobs — visible to Carl alone through his Escape Plan skill.

Coquelicot Line

A subway color-line intersecting the Beige Line in the Iron Tangle.

The first tag Bautista ever pulled, and it did everything wrong immediately.

His advice on gods fits in a miscellaneous chapter and amounts to: only idiots deal with deities, stay the fuck away.

The sixth-edition annotator whose honest shrug about portals is the only guidance any crawler has on them.

He noticed something quite curious: the gods are worn, not born, and clothes can be stripped.

Seven-foot tuxedoed rock-monster bodyguards for hire at the Desperado Club — dim but loyal muscle.

Whatever else it does, it comes with a magical flamethrower.

An intelligent, thick-skinned semi-aquatic race that works as muscle and enforcers across the universe.

Death Watch Extreme

The show Prince Maestro hosts, named as his credential when he returns from the dead on live television.

Desperado Casino

The Desperado Club's newly-opened gambling floor of deadly Earth games — and two guarded staircases down to the Hunting Grounds and Larracos.

Dirigible Gnome Wasteland Fortress

The gnomes' floating castle over a desert, the team's assigned objective for the fifth floor.

Dirigible Gnomes

Sky-castle-dwelling gnomes of the desert wasteland, drawn as the team's fifth-floor opponents.

Zhang's finisher: once Li Na has a monster wrapped and paralysed, rocks pummel it to death.

Dirty Little Phased Bolt

Invisible assassin ammunition that drains a crawler to one percent and credits the death to somebody else.

Dismember the War Mage

The elf-like War Mage aboard the Dismemberment Limited, hunting Levi's bones each run to grow a Flesher army — beheaded by Carl's Hole trick.

Dismemberment Limited

A sleek three-car maglev named train — a rolling slaughterhouse where a War Mage farms boarding crawlers' skin and bones.

A restricted training guild offering an expensive guaranteed skill increase, with a free first session but staggering upper-level prices.

A crawler race of walking, talking dogs — which guarantees at least one enemy in every room Donut is in.

A crawler at stop 24 whose last words were a warning: millions of them, worse than the grubs, don't come.

Madison's despised HR rival at Substation B, whose cost-cutting ghoul-disposal scheme triggered the infestation.

Double Tap Skill

A skill granting a critical-hit chance when Donut lands the same attack twice in a row.

Ravenous, knee-high demon-baby mobs that swarm the Iron Tangle's platforms in packs and can strip an elephant to bone in seconds.

Dungeon Locator

Hidden map legends at major dungeon intersections that point toward exits, bosses, and features.

Dwarven Automaton

Bulldozer-sized dormant dwarven work-robots sealed in warehouse rooms across the train floor — an unexplained recurring mystery.

Earth Hobby Potion

A mandated Syndicate reward that grants a random level-3 Earth hobby skill — usually something useless.

Earthquake Skill

Mongo's first special ability — a jump-attack that can trigger a knockdown quake on landing.

A too-clever game-guide NPC and old friend of Mordecai's in the nearby town.

Enchanted Anklet of the Fallen Oak

A wooden beaded anklet looted from a dead tree-crawler, giving +Dex, +Con, and the Double Tap skill.

Enchanted Auto Buckler of the Peach Pit

Shake your wrist like you're thinking of your hot Aunt Lydia and a shield appears. Carl finally has one.

Enchanted Mongoliensis Saddle

A garish tasseled fan-box saddle that turns Mongo into Donut's mount, buffing them both — once he tolerates it.

Enchanted Necklace of the Haute Bourgeoisie

A chain-of-leadership necklace that collects tax stipends and stat perks from every settlement Carl controls.

A named big-league deity, cited only to make the point that gods have owners.

A hugely pregnant, hot-tempered Fathom Dwarf mother of fifteen who brains a city elf with a rolling pin.

The Forsoothed 'Soother' director of Danger Zone — a glowing, gray-alien-like being who greets the party warmly.

Explosives Handling

Carl's bomb-craft skill hits 11 the moment a train full of dynamite goes off in a ghoul horde.

The dozens of scattered elf and fairy breeds, all descended from a high elf court whose seed a goddess cursed.

Deadly poison-and-paralysis tooth caps, a fleeting item destined for Mongo's bite.

Katia's ex-husband, who left her for one of his students — a wound Eva reaches for as a weapon.

Carl's class spell that frightens mobs into fleeing or drops their dexterity — useless on 'scary' foes.

The scruffy yellow tomcat Donut romanticizes as her star-crossed lover 'Ferdinand' — really Marjory's stray, Gravy Boat.

Festering Ghoul

Not-quite-undead lifeforms reborn from mobs that died of the DTs — sore-covered, mindless, and driven to devour and gather.

A crawler-hunting skill that lists nearby crawlers by name on your map — and, at higher levels, tracks the unseen.

Find Traps Skill

Carl's trap-detection skill, which fires for the very first time — an instant too late — on the fire-ant suitcase.

Fire Brandy's Babies

Fire Brandy's three secretly named children, harvested boiler after boiler and never returned to her.

Sentient flaps of flayed skin that smother victims to steal their bones — the Dismemberment Limited's swarming horde.

Former Child Actor

The rare charisma-and-chance Earth class Donut secretly picks, granting poison immunity, the Cockroach skill, and the Manager benefit.

Former Circus Lemur

Skull-masked knife-throwing monkey mobs, the transformed descendants of Grimaldi's juggling lemurs.

The glowing, big-eyed 'gray alien' race of Earth lore — some are oddsmakers who sampled humanity for the crawl.

Fragmenting Potion Ball

A hardened rubber ball you fill with any potion and hurl — turning healing, poison, or fire potions into thrown weapons.

Carl's home-fabricated train-car barricades — a giant metal wedge and door-blocks to isolate a car from mobs.

A containment spell cast by the Daughter Sadie that immobilizes a target without killing it — key to safely passing the Kravyad's portal.

The scientists who went poking around a Primal ship graveyard and started galactic history.

One of station 75's three intact buildings — and already standing open, emptied by whoever got there first.

The Bopca protector tending the Belly-Rubbed Pug, unimpressed by the party's drunken manager.

The eight-foot, four-armed ManTauR engineer of the ochre-line train — a mead-loving Grull zealot who becomes a neighborhood boss when he learns the party derailed his train.

Grace Bautista 3

One of three Filipino sister-crawlers killed by circus lemurs and left as bait, looted by Carl.

A quieter breed of gremlin drawn to boiler repair and heavy engineering rather than carnage — the Tangle's train technicians.

Great Dirt Island of the Wind Sirens

Floating dirt island of the wind sirens, the fourth and last unchosen fifth-floor opponent.

Grimaldis Traveling Circus

A once-beloved Over City circus whose feral, transformed descendants now hunt the ruins centuries later.

Grimaldis World O Freaks

The circus's fortified sideshow encampment of tents, cages, and mortar-casting cauldrons, ringed for battle.

A double-headed axe the size of a passenger jet, with a living oak tree for a handle and a head of still-molten metal.

Grull's Heat Breath

A gust of magic like a death ray that turns trains and awnings into slag and misses a flying ice mage by inches.

A grieving level-5 orc NPC who begs Carl to solve the mystery of murdered women dumped in the town's alleys.

The bomber guy warned all of you dumbasses. Now clear the chat.

Six waystations near the galactic centre, all of them traps — and they were not actually mimics.

Hadji Achievement

A rare, repeatable achievement for completing a quest in an unusually clever way — it upgrades your quest box.

The 16th-edition Cookbook author whose 'Worn Path Method' theorizes NPCs are the dungeon's weak link — breakable, cruelly, by breaking the fourth wall.

The company that rents out system-integration cores and refused Borant at the last minute, stranding Zev in a spacesuit.

A hulking, ugly explosives-and-trap race the AI recommended to Carl, who refused it for its viewer-repelling looks.

Hobgoblin Interdiction Team

Five hobgoblins and two gnoll minders per cart — the Tangle's wreck-clearing crews, hobbled by their own employer's distrust.

Hobgoblin Repair Shop

The hobgoblins' facility at station 75, presumably holding their stash — and presumably already emptied too.

Donut's new utility spell — punches a temporary hole through a chosen surface, more useful the higher its level.

With the leaderboard populated, open season is declared on the top ten — kill one, claim their bounty box.

The seductive, deadly male counterpart of the succubus — the form Mordecai wears on the urban third floor.

Indentured Summoning

A powerful mage drags a god down to fight for him against the god's will, and the god remembers it.

Signet's blood-magic summoning: draw monsters, sacrifice blood, and animate the drawings — as tattoos or paper minions.

Interdiction Auxiliary Railway Repair Cart

The battered, common flatbed rail cart — third-rail or battery powered, portal-selectable, and startable by anyone.

Inventory Liquid Rule

Effective immediately, you may no longer store liquids in your inventory unless they are in a container. The system settled the paradox the loud way.

Jabbering Jibber-Jabber

Level 35, a reanimated buffet-goer's mouth on millipede legs, in constant pain and only soothed by eating.

A pale-yellow subway color-line intersecting the Yellow Line at Station 131.

Jaxbrin Amusements, Limited

The toy company that makes the collectible figures — and, as of this floor, sponsors the crawler who has been throwing them at people.

Carl's homemade naval-style contact landmine — a spiked, hob-lobber-stuffed tube that derails trains, cribbed from the Cookbook.

Seven-foot flesh-eating ghoul 'janitors' who lair in the trains' doorless cars — polite unless you bleed, litter, or trespass.

Jumping Jen-Jen

The gnoll cart driver Gary kept marrow juice cold for, who died outside his door believing he was a coward.

The late, absurdly promiscuous High-Elf king of the Hunting Grounds — Tsarina Signet's father.

Ruler of the Skull Empire, arrived in Earth orbit and ominously silent about his son's humiliation.

A Japanese human warrior who discovers mass messaging, rapidly turning Carl's expanded contact list into a torrent of requests.

The amphibious mudskipper species that runs Borant's crawl, represented at the end by Loita and Zev.

A day/night-split race: beautiful mage by day, skull-faced brute by night, cursed with a goat leg.

The distant capital city of the disputed lands — the prize the ninth-floor faction wars are fought over.

The other biological-armor stripping spell, named in the same breath as a method for undressing a god.

Legendary Bounty Box

The payout box for claiming a top-ten crawler's bounty — in Katia's case, five hundred thousand gold.

Levi the Seventh

The pitiful, ill-fitting-flesh operator of the Dismemberment Limited — a quest NPC begging crawlers not to board and doom him.

Odette's harried assistant, dismissed from green-room duty and terrified of the new admin.

A smart, nasty undead magic-user obsessed with eternal life — suspected mastermind behind the town's Krasue.

A bookish Mole Man sundries shopkeeper at station 83 — of a race that just calls itself 'Men.'

Literal Fire Ants

A trap-monster swarm of endless flaming ants that pours from a booby-trapped reward suitcase and burns car five to ash.

Frank's vengeful ex-wife, a former Seattle detective who killed her own daughter — and now hunts Carl and Donut with biblical fury.

A zealot buff (from eating an acorn) that triples mana and boosts strength — and grants immunity to Fear.

Katia's disguise craft table — superimposes any face she's met onto glass to sculpt doppelganger forms painlessly.

ManTauR Engineer's Apartment

A cramped crew flat welded to the engine car — bed, table, a very long ManTauR toilet, and Earth heavy-metal posters.

An obscure goddess associated with spells and lost children, honored by Donut's new tiara.

Manager Benefit

A hidden class perk that binds an NPC guide as a permanent 'manager' who teleports to the party's saferooms.

A famed cobra-headed Naga pop singer — a Valtay-piloted worm-head star, killed by the pulse meant for Carl.

Map of the Stars

Boss drop from the Station Mimic that reveals boss locations and descriptions across a huge area.

Donut's Football Hooligan skill — when Mongo damages an enemy, the whole party gains dexterity and constitution.

A color-line at stations 281 and 283 — the party's hop point onto the Nightmare Express.

A summoning spell that yanks nearby carnivorous pet-class monsters away from their owners toward a burning stench.

Mentally Unstable Clothing Hoarder

Carl's achievement for stockpiling 500+ identical hats — awarded with open contempt and no reward whatsoever.

Metalworking Table

Bought without explanation, with a promise to explain later.

Donut's convoluted mass-charm spell — five-minute cast, tiny odds, huge potential — that turns enemies against each other.

Level-15 fungus-infested circus lions with medusa tentacles, regrown nightly from a single spore of the vine.

Naughty Boys Employment Agency

A mysterious guild Carl gains access to through his Compensated Anarchist class — likely a quest-giver.

A long-forgotten vulture goddess, jealous and terrible, who cursed the high elf court's seed and made the Fae Diaspora.

Nightgaunt Precipice

The fifth-floor opponent Carl silently prayed against, because his cloak enrages Nightgaunts on sight.

The apocalyptic prophecy the city elves pin on Donut — Apito's antichrist, a great beast destined to unravel heaven and kill all the gods.

The subway color-line the party sabotages first — its train carries tentacle-wolves and knife-wielding skunk fairies, driven by Gore-Gore.

Ochre Line Engineers Key

The color-coded key looted from Gore-Gore that unlocks any ochre-line engine car — the party's route to hijacking a train home.

The dungeon's third floor, an urban level where the 'real' games begin after the training floors.

Over City Ruins

The vast abandoned cityscape between the Over City's safe villages, where the floor's monsters roam.

Over Citys Strongest Citizen

A hulking leopard-leotard circus strongman ogre with a tentacle sprouting from its neck.

Pestiferous Vine

A hybrid fungus-plant that enslaves mobs via parasitic worms — a dungeon trope, killed by feeding it poisoned blood.

The Grapple porter of the Yellow Line's reward room, who hands out prize 'suitcases' by number.

Planet Beautiful

A dry, popular narration show about the season's planet — Zev books Carl and Donut to voice a segment on Earth beauty pageants and pet shows.

Platinum Slam Master Box

A platinum box awarded for killing a set number of mobs with momentum — it paid out a championship belt.

Platinum Tyrants Box

A high-tier loot box awarded to Carl for seizing control of the Medium Skyfowl Settlement.

Big, dim, acid-fingered fish-monsters of Kua-tin myth — lethargic until they can't reach you, then enraged.

The High Elf rogue who first received the Anarchist's Cookbook in the fifteenth season — its original disguised owner.

Prince Stalwart

The Skull Empire's cruel crown prince, who tries to execute Carl and Donut by pulse strike for sedition.

Private Message Subscriptions

For a small fee, viewers can now read your private messages. Sign-ups started yesterday.

A color-line meeting the Mauve line and Dismemberment Limited at transfer station 281.

Puppy Dog Skill

A passive high-Charisma buff that maddens men with desire — countered only by breaking your own finger.

The color-line intersecting Station 149 that the party plans to ride toward the Nightmare Express and stop 436.

A cheerfully unhinged level-30 hobgoblin explosives merchant destined to become Carl's regular bomb supplier.

Queasy Resistance

A resistance skill earned by repeatedly enduring the Cornets' nausea attack until the body adapts.

A half-djinn Desperado Club 'pharmacist' (drug dealer) and freed former crawler — Mordecai's old friend.

Razor Fox Kite City

Airborne kite city of the razor foxes, one of four fifth-floor opponents the team did not draw.

The subway line the party starts on — a one-way, up-line route of numbered stations with stairwells at 12, 24, 36, 48, and 72.

A salamander-torturing dwarf child, one of Eunice's brood, who loses an arm to Mongo after punching him.

The disarmingly cute Quokka host of Danger Zone — good-hearted, fair, and quietly furious at Manasa's murder.

Metal-guarded chambers hiding long downward escape tunnels that open only when withdrawal transforms the floor's monsters.

The unseen CFO of the Iron Tangle at Station A — Madison's ex-husband, whom she insists 'always comes.'

He reports the floor falling away in real time, then insists nobody warned him.

Rooted in Place

Much harder to knock you over. The system itself points out that this is not necessarily good news.

Royal Palace of Princess Donut

The party's upgraded home base — a hangar-sized conjoined level-five personal space that travels between saferooms.

A common Cthulhu-like tentacle-faced race — the 'Sacs' behind kingdoms like the Prism and studios like Sensation.

A Daughter whose Glass Prison spell froze the Kravyad long enough for Brynhild's team to slip through the employee portal.

The fanatic city-elf Wand Bearer leading the 201st cell that brands Donut the Oak Fell — killed in the temple fight.

A giant hairy melee-tank race the AI offered Carl, who refused to become an Earth-creature parody.

The grim reward box a party's first player-killer receives — containing only a book of kill-bounty PVP coupons.

Seize the Day Toothpaste

A five-use enchanted toothpaste granting a huge, boss-slaying damage buff — if applied in a saferoom before a fight.

Sensation Entertainment

The private center-system studio behind Vengeance of the Daughter, now contractually allied with Carl.

Shade Gnoll Riot Forces

The outfit the galaxy hires when the unwashed masses forget their place — war crimes optional but encouraged.

The advancing third-floor mobs that overran Brandon An as he covered the survivors' escape.

Smoke-like level-14 ghost mobs that swarm with a stinging cold attack — and give unusually high experience.

Shambling Berserker

Slow patchwork-zombie assassins sewn from dungeon leftovers — mostly harmless, but quadrupled in power in the dark.

Shattering Train Bomb

The Nightmare Express's dangerously deteriorated steam boiler, primed to explode when dead engineers leave its pressure unchecked.

One charge left, no effect on living things, and it once killed a whole trainload of people by making the train smaller.

Signet Blood Magic

Signet's summoning magic: a life-ending sacrifice's blood animates her living tattoos into a monster battle squad.

Silver Benefactor Box

A box from your sponsor is a message from your sponsor, and Katia's said something specific about family politics.

Skyfowl Settlement

A medium Over City town, four times the last village's size, populated mostly by flying Skyfowl — home to a Desperado Club.

An ominously-named chain class whose touch inflicts agony and whose lasso can knock a neighbourhood boss out cold five times a day.

Most of them fight for you. The green one turned around and went for Bautista instead.

Crawler Tin's observation: the gods are worn like clothes, and clothes can be taken off.

A ready-made trap cube that erupts 50-cm spikes in a one-meter square — mountable even on a door.

A large transfer station with shops, guilds, an Arby's saferoom, a casino, and a dive-bar Desperado Club.

The ochre/purple transfer station the party picks for their first deliberate train derailment — home to a Club Vanquisher.

A long Iron Tangle platform where Carl's party studies the Nightmare Express and stages a disastrous boarding experiment.

The last stop before the mimic — and where five crawlers got the shock of their lives instead of dying.

Station Repair Portal

A gated rail portal admitting compatible trains and key holders into a vast zombie-infested switching and repair yard.

Steam Engineers Key

A bronze master key granting access to employee areas and actions on all 400 of the Tangle's steam-type trains.

Spiky, knee-high nocturnal 'Roomba' mobs that clear corpses and refuse — deadly only if you're in their way.

Stuffed Kimaris Figure

Carl's single one-of-a-kind Unique item — a scowling collectible beanbag of the demon Kimaris on a horse, still with tags.

Superb Constitution Buff Potion

A permanent stat-buff potion — raises Constitution 1-4 points, limited to two doses ever, 'because cheating.'

Suppurating Eye

A common lich spell — spill a bodily fluid and the caster can see and hear everything near it, like a spy camera.

Table Upgrade Coupon

Mordecai asks for them a day too late; Carl and Katia have already spent theirs.

Take That Shit Off

A spell for removing biological armor — and therefore, in theory, for peeling an alien out of a god.

A free foot-slashing melee skill — turns the side of Carl's bare foot into a slashing weapon with a rare instakill chance.

Grull's father, who worries in public that his son's temper makes him a poor candidate to rule the heavens.

Team Cichociemni

Crawler team locked in a public feud with the Popov brothers through the fourth floor.

Rising min-maxing crawler team named by Odette among the fourth floor's breakout stories.

Terror the Clown

An eleven-foot Slender-Man-clown monster with butcher knives — a transformed Grimaldi circus stilt-walker.

The Air Quadrant

The fifth-floor quadrant the team drew, promising sky castles and a desert start on solid ground.

The Belly Rubbed Pug

A renaissance-fair-style saferoom tavern where the party takes refuge from the circus mobs.

The volcano-world's founding catastrophe: Scolopendra's nine-tiered poison cloud that killed or transformed its people.

A dead two-headed aquatic neighborhood boss whose bloated corpse becomes Carl's accidental gore bomb.

The unseen, human-voiced driver sealed inside the Yellow Line's locked engine car — who emerges only for a derailment.

The Eviscerator

A named train at station 271 that Elle's stranded crew may be forced to ride if the Cobalt line stays down.

The Field Guide

The borough boss drop, one rung below the Map of the Stars in the mimic's reward hierarchy.

The Fifth Floor

The floor the team enters at book's end, split into Land, Sea, Air and Subterranean quadrants with chosen opponents.

Miss Quill's genocidal heirloom spell — a three-generation working to slaughter all of the Over City but the flyers.

The Ghoul Coaster

Elle's name for the corpse-disposal conveyor — now the hatless crawlers' only ride out of the abyss.

Production space below the stairwell where Odette waits and Loita intends to renegotiate Carl's arrangement.

The Guild System

A formal way to bind separate parties together from the sixth floor — mentioned in one obsolete edition and possibly deleted since.

The Hanging of Madison

Word spread, the dwarves and the gremlins got angry, and they built a stand and a noose.

The Hunting Grounds

Where the hunters go to get a cursed ring, and where ring-owners get found first.

Carl's design for turning Katia into a spiked, corpse-swallowing plow so a subway train can drive through a ghoul horde.

The Left Fang of the Green Sultan

Half of a matched pair of sabers, dropped in the gore and worthless alone — which means Eva lost her main weapon too.

Skull Empire matriarch who died in her son's place, and whom Carl says would have done better.

The Nightmare Bomb

The mission Carl hands over when he expects to die: rig the train to explode and put it down the pit.

The One Eyed Narwhal

A seedy human-run pub-saferoom in the Skyfowl town where the party lodges and meets GumGum.

Carl and Donut's set of named, pre-agreed combat plays for coordinated reactions in a fight.

A goat-like race that invented real-time galactic communication, and got cast as drug dealers for it.

Princess D'nadia's small but influential Saccathian kingdom, a power in certain trade circles.

The Production Trailer

The above-surface waiting room where crawlers are held before interviews, now snackless and admin-supervised.

The Quadrant Wheels

Two casino-style wheels in the transfer room that randomly assign each team its fifth-floor quadrant and enemy.

A race listed alongside the Intellect Hunters and the Valtay as aliens who wear other bodies.

The Second-to-Last Message

Congratulations on not dying enough. Say your goodbyes now, because parties lock the moment this message ends.

The Secondary Zone

The rules region above the dungeon surface where inventories lock, class powers fail, and Carl wants answers.

The Self-Destruct Announcement

We have been betrayed by the Krakaren, whom we thought were benevolent. May the gods have mercy on you.

The Show Must Go On

Carl's first quest: uncover why the cursed remnants of an ancient circus still terrorize the Over City.

The open descent at station 36 that nobody used until Carl came back, and that becomes a ramp for Agatha.

Rail yard where the mimic died, the portal was staged, and the Nightmare Express began its suicide run.

The Trainyard Boss Arena

Half-visible walls that come back the moment the death challenge starts: you can go in, you cannot come back out.

The Transfer Room

Stark warehouse of one-way doors and fortune wheels where teams are assigned their fifth-floor fate.

The Trap Door Stations

Only transfer, prime-number and stairwell stations have hatches in the floor — which is why the boring stations are now the safe ones.

The Tunneling System

The reason the outer systems can watch a crawler die live instead of a year late.

The Twenty-Four

The twenty-four crawler authors of previous cookbook editions, all of whom Carl accuses of failing.

The corporation that owns Planet Beautiful and now pressures its producer to sensationalize the once-quiet culture show.

The Desperado Club's mob-enforcer-looking Wheel of Fortune croupier — 'also, the guy who will stab you.'

Tizquick's Daughter

The dwarf engineer's daughter, revealed to be a fabrication — the reason he chose to die.

One crawler's light spell is the only reason anyone saw the strangest stairwell on the floor.

A burned-out trainyard behind station 75's plainest portal, patrolled by two ogre-sized wrath ghouls.

An abandoned yard full of corpses and no mobs — which makes it the best address on the fourth floor.

Two runaway portal carts flipped into a dead-end here, and the crawlers grinding through righted one and kept it.

A terrifying, alluring living-tattoo summoner Elite — a circus outcast branded traitor who lures Carl into a trap.

A talking German Shepherd in a Vietnam-era helmet, and she is not a 'he'.

A pompous, unfunny human stand-up comedian on the Danger Zone panel whom Donut verbally demolishes.

Ugly Ass Backpack

Carl's laundry-hamper-looking equippable backpack — the trick that lets Katia carry over a ton of hidden armor-mass.

Ultima Corp DungeonWerx

The industrial portal manufacturer whose branded hardware runs the Iron Tangle's switching, sweeping and dialling.

Ultimate Extreme Power Achievement

Carl's achievement for killing a settlement's magistrate — granting a Platinum Tyrant's Box and control of the town.

The engine key looted from Hekla's corpse — the only way to detach the engine car and the only lock the Daughters can't beat.

The Yellow Line's loop-trapped dwarf conductor — a hard-drinking font of train lore who dies in a fire-ant trap.

A deranged level-16 city-elf zealot of the 201st who lured Mongo into a trap and was instantly killed by the party.

Village Guard Swordsman

Level-75 plate-armored NPC sentries who guard the Over City villages by day — deadly if provoked.

Vog Generation Ship

Found in a Primal ship graveyard, and a few hundred cycles later there was a Syndicate.

The dreaded skin-and-bone sorcerers who ride the named trains — a preview of the ninth floor's mass-combat horror.

Signet's heirloom naiad sleep spell — the victim never wakes until she cancels it, and dies if she dies.

The star-struck Bopca saferoom keeper of station 83, whom Donut haggles into near-tears over a personal space.

A helpful, flirtatious Grease Gremlin train technician who guides Carl's party through the collapsing trainyard — and is killed mid-rescue.

A dumpster-sized wheeled chain-link ore cart Carl pockets — 'fun to roll down a hill.'

A self-only light-armor spell negating most magic damage and granting temporary mind-control immunity.

A subway line shaped like an upside-down fishhook — the party's main hunting-and-mapping route, home to conductor Vernon.

Yellow Line Reward Room

The Yellow Line's prize room — pick one numbered suitcase per line, and hope it's treasure and not a trap.

The philosophical 10th-edition Cookbook author — a lonely hive-being whose 'we are a hive' essay stirs Carl's conscience.

Frank and Maggie's teenage daughter — a gentle runaway forced to wield the cursed ring, then killed by her own mother to end her pain.

Waist-high warrior-armadillo mobs that roll into armored balls — and get crunched whole like blood-filled hard candy by Mongo.