Monster Cards

Story so far

Monster cards were the whole conceit of the eighth floor, which Quasar describes as "supposed to be a bullshit filler floor so the pricks running all this can drag it out as much as possible and collect as much tug money as they can". Crawlers had to collect cards and then use them to fight other card-wielding monsters. He rates it a bold choice — some people hate that nerd shit, especially when there are lots of rules, but he is fine with it, and he is very fine with the artwork on the Medusa card one crawler had, right up until that crawler looked at it too.

Carl and Princess Donut, stranded in Cuba, assembled a genuinely absurd deck: a seal, a crab called Raul, a giant terrifying cat, a donkey-snake thing, Uzi Jesus and Asojano (who got combined into Lazarus), and Alpha Carl, a card that was simply Carl with much better hair and a much cooler voice. The card duels themselves, Quasar says, were "like a Saccathian orgy" — everyone begins by following the ground rules, and the moment anything weird happens it becomes crying, bleeding and a whole lot of screaming confusion.

The system also chewed Carl's team up: they were "basically donkey fucked by the system" and looked like missing a key to the next floor entirely, which is what led to Quan Ch's theft and death. And the mechanic did not stay confined to monsters — Paz was turned into a card, and killed a god that way.

Appearance

Physical cards bearing monsters, complete with artwork lurid enough to be a hazard to whoever looks at it.

Role

The eighth floor's central mechanic, generating its deck-building, its duels, and most of its deaths.

Relationships

Earlier in this series

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

• The Eye of the Bedlam BrideBook 6