Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
Odette's fast-talking assistant, who spends a two-minute system blackout dumping forbidden intelligence on Carl.
Lexis pokes her head into the studio after the interview and shepherds Carl and Princess Donut back to the green room to await teleport, then leans against the counter smoking one of the same vape devices Quasar uses, the smoke curling rainbow-coloured through the light and smelling of burnt candy. She holds up a finger — wait for it — and when the lights flicker she explains: the hand-off is happening, the system transferring from mudskipper control to The Valtay central control, and for a minute or two no sniffers will be online.
She uses every second of it. Speaking rapidly with her eyes locked on a blinking cursor on her tablet, she warns that this must never be spoken of because it would be construed as cheating worse than anything else said to them, then lays out the shape of the season: Queen Imogen of the High Elves is a Country Boss and a new character nobody has seen, a sure sign she is a repurposed human; Beatrice was the obvious pick because of the Vengeance of the Daughter storyline; the elf probably will not appear until The Butchers Masquerade, where the top fifty crawlers will be transferred whether they like it or not, into a party in the high elf castle full of contests and prizes and surviving Hunters that ends in a battle designed to zero out the top crawlers. She explains the takeover too — the Valtay took 51% of Borant, the collection action is still in limbo, and the worms are the new stepdad, control freaks who will want the top ten to be crawlers of their own choosing. When Carl says they will go down the stairs early, she confirms that is Odette's advice as well, which is how Carl realises all of this is Odette's, filtered through Lexis for plausible deniability. She counts the reboot down from ten and is left staring open-mouthed at the cat when Donut confesses her smuggling.
A production assistant type in casual studio dress, perpetually holding a tablet, vape in hand, quick-eyed and quick-mouthed, more comfortable watching a blinking cursor than the people she is talking to.
Odette's assistant and deniable mouthpiece, delivering the showrunner's warnings during the only unmonitored window in the system.
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings: