Mercenaries
Several distinct classes of hired fighters, each with a different fate when Zerzura fires.
Story so far
As the transfer approached, Carl catalogued what would happen to the various mercenaries, and admitted they weren't certain about all of it. The hired ones — including Sledge and the other surviving Cretins — along with the for-hire dungeon-born mercenaries fielded by all teams, would simply disappear, possibly moved into NPC Storage for the next crawl, possibly tossed back into the Mercenary Markets. None of them would move to The Twelfth Floor.
The outworlder mercenaries were different: thousands upon thousands of people had come to the ninth floor to fight both against the crawlers and for them, and all of them would be transferred out of the dungeon the moment Zerzura triggered. The mercenaries from the armies the crawlers had defeated milled about nervously through every level of Larracos, mostly lending a hand in the rapid construction. They, too, would go home — except, as Milk warned, none of them were really going home at all.
Appearance
Nervous crowds of surrendered fighters of every species filling the tiers of Larracos, pitching in on construction work rather than fighting.
Role
The disposable labor of the Faction Wars, sorted at the end into storage, market, or ejection depending on their contract type.
Relationships
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
- The Butcher's MasqueradeBook 5
Sources — 13 recorded facts, by chapter
- The bought soldiers who make up the bulk of the enemy armies, mostly security forces with little real battle experience.
- Hired soldiers, including unfamiliar bugbear-like giants, who pour into the ballroom and are frozen trying to kill Carl.
- Hired forces on both sides: the ones who brought the cookbook authors to Larracos, and the elves' zebra-mounted riders.
- Outworld hired soldiers forming the enemy's real strength, and the category Carl's orders treat as expendable.
- Hired troops filling the enemy's forward trench and riding its zebra cavalry in place of real household guards.
- Hired offworld soldiers holding the enemy trench, distinguishable from NPCs by guns and electric-glowing armor.
- Newly recruited mercenaries too large for Party Planner, sent overland to Shanty Town in captured transports.
- Contracted killers besieging the ninth-floor bases, the same trade the system uses for off-camera cleanup.
- Hired enemy soldiers judged case-by-case after a faction falls, with grunts generally allowed to join the victors.
- The guild whose fighters Rosetta rented for cycles, and whose remaining leaders would all die if the crawl ended now.
- Enemy hirelings won over during the siege, now helping repair the towers they were paid to defend.
- Their loyalty is suddenly uncertain as the Syndicate and the showrunners openly split.
- Several distinct classes of hired fighters, each with a different fate when Zerzura fires.