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Generic event illustration for Taking the Deal
event

Taking the Deal

Exit deals

The formal post-floor negotiation where crawlers may leave the dungeon, offered here on deliberately worthless terms.

Story so far

After Faction Wars, the Syndicate insists that everything be done by the books, so volunteered attorneys are assigned to negotiate exits. Quasar handles three crawlers in one day, Carl being the last; the other two both took their deals, and neither was anyone in Carl's inner circle. Neither of them even asked what the next floor was.

Carl's options are, by Quasar's own assessment, all shit - a direct consequence of twenty thousand survivors flooding the market. Fifty seasons undead. A Desperado Club bomber's guild slot with a contingent exit clause almost as bad as Milk's. And a joint replacement for Chaco, the only one Quasar rates as not bad, which would still stand at the end of the tenth floor. Carl pays a season to learn that The Eleventh Floor is called Don't Come in Last, then declines everything. An audible ping records the refusal. Princess Donut declines hers too, in a meeting with Princess Chandra that ends in fireworks. York's own status entry records the road not taken: he took the deal at the end of the tenth floor.

Role

The system's formal offramp out of the dungeon, refused by both Carl and Donut.

Relationships

Carl — Declines every option on the table
Quasar — Negotiates the deals as a volunteered attorney
York — Took his deal at the end of the tenth floor years ago
Sources — 8 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 15
  • A crawler's negotiated exit from the dungeon in exchange for contracted service afterward.
Chapter 33
  • The bargain that spares a crawler's life in exchange for indentured service inside the dungeon.
Chapter 65
  • The exit offer that ends a crawler's run and begins their indentureship, taken by Justice Light on the eleventh floor.
Chapter 90
  • Offer expected at the tenth floor's start that most exhausted crawlers would accept, and that some would rather die than take.
Chapter 97
  • The offer letting surviving crawlers leave the dungeon, which most of the 20,000 survivors accept at the ninth floor's end.
Chapter 98
  • The offer hanging over every departing crawler as they file into the tenth-floor stairwells.
Chapter 99
  • Most surviving crawlers accepted their offered deals and are on their way back to orbit as the floor burns.
Chapter 100
  • The formal post-floor negotiation where crawlers may leave the dungeon, offered here on deliberately worthless terms.
Character portrait