Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl book seven, this Inevitable Ruin recap
through chapter three. In these chapters we get a bunch
of information. I am going to have to really sort
through some of this in real time. I hope that
you guys are prepared to lead me through it. But
overall this I don't know that it changes everything, but
it changes the way I look at some things. Welcome
to spoil Me, Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha.
Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode.
Michael is here in the chat just saying I made it,
so I am delighted to have you, Michael. This is
a wild start to the book. First of all, I
just have to mention how I really enjoy the way
that nat Denniman is handling a recap, because, like, it's
not an easy thing, and I know that there are
plenty of writers out there who do series where they
are encouraged to make it so that a person can
sort of jump in at any point in the series
and read from whatever, which I think is frankly unhinged
to think that an author is like going to be
able to do that, but as far as best possible,
like handling, I think Matt Deniman is doing really well
by having there be somebody summarizing it for someone else.
I sorry surfing, says Cough dressed and files cough dressed
in is. It's like, it's just so weird to me
that people will like jump in. I could never do
it this way. I could never do it this way.
I think the only time I've ever jumped into a
series midway was because I didn't realize it was a series.
And that's like it. But we start off with tempests
floor eight recap School Report, and like it's not really
a full series recap, it's just meant to be for
the previous book. But nevertheless, you know, it's sort of
it's serving this function, and I like also that it's
separate from everything, because it was nothing that sort of
would take me out of the moment, like getting to
a point where you're in a character's POV and suddenly
they're thinking about how and then last summer when so
and so turned out to not be dead after all,
it was a real shock and you're just like, oh boy, okay,
I get it. But like this just is so unnatural,
you know. So anyway, I think that this is a
great way to do it, and I think that it's
also especially want I really want to interview the audiobook narrator.
I just want to know when he is told, Hey,
you're gonna have to do like an entire chapter practically
as his like weirdo lawyer, is he like, oh, this
is gonna be super fun or is he like okay, okay,
like maybe a little bit of both. So then we
go there, there's a moment where she like at the
very end, is like, are you in danger because you're
representing him? And he's like, uh, well yeah, but I'm
not the only one. I think everybody's in danger. Actually
we're kind of in the middle of nowhere. So that's
the first time I've been glad of it, which I
do have no real idea like what that means in
this series, like in the middle of nowhere? What is that?
How does that actually factor? But uh, I appreciated it
kind of coming back down at the end from being
just a comedic recapp to then a moment of but
this is a real character. This is somebody who actually
has a life and stakes and their own family, and
it's just a good way to humanize him right at
the end there, so to speak, He's not human, but
you know, you get me. So then we go into
the prologue, which we have gone back to Christmas Morning,
and I just really want to mention that, like Donut
was saying, they needed to open their presence from Santa,
and I still kind of have my suspicions that maybe
Santa was real, like a character that showed up. I
when this is saying, when it starts with Christmas Morning,
I really got my hopes of y'all. I really thought, oh,
we're about to find out, and we do not. And
I as much as like I wanted this reveal, of course,
this isn't really what I was here for. This is
you know what I'm saying. So I had a little
moment of just like darn it. But yeah, So we
are back at the homeless shelter with this guy who
has taken over the body of Paulie doing his monologuing again.
And it's an interesting thing because I was partially right
about there being something in that coffee, but it's not
the coffee on a tray that's being circled around which
I think when like in the original scene, that's what
we are seeing happen, it's and it's also like that's
not the only thing going on here. There's a frozen
moment where Carl is getting all of this information packed
into a second before he is transported to speak to Oran.
So that's really fun because what it means is that
he's just been given all of this info and then
when he's in that interview with Orin, he knows that
like he knows what he needs to know, and he
also knows that the way that Oran is saying, oh,
none of this was really pertinent or all of this
was a trap, He's got all this info already, so
he's just playing along in the moment, which I really
wonder if I would be able to pull this off,
because you know, managing to seem as if something is
news to you, I feel you kind of need to
like plan for that and get your face ready, and
Carl is just managing to Like I think it's just
that he is so angry all the time that the
anger sort of supersedes all the other emotions on his face,
and so that's all anybody sees, really, which I guess
is like certainly a method. So this guy switches to
syndicate standard and he says, if you can hear this,
that means the current system AI is allowing us to
have a real talk, which I was at the time
sort of like, I'm surprised that AI is not yet
at a point where it wants Carl to hear because
you know, Orrin says, like, we made a deal with
the AI that we would have to I think it
was partially just like we would have to have this
conversation with you about it or something like that. So
I just the fact that the AI is kind of
where I was thinking it is reassures me a little bit.
So he says, I really need you to listen carefully,
and this is fascinating people like you. They want meaning
to their suffering and to know that what's happening to
them is for some greater good. But there's not, and
this crawl is unnecessary and they are doing all of
this to make money, and there is no reason to
do it other than pure greed. You and all living
things born on one of the priests worlds has a
miniature primal system built into your brains that allows you
to interact with the system. It is the size of
a grain of sand. Once these systems are activated, they
are able to be harvested. The way it was designed
is that you would be born, you would live, and
you would eventually die. When you do pass on, the
element within you, having grown and filled with the energy
of a lifetime, would return to the system, allowing it
to keep running. A healthy system is self sustaining. It
doesn't grow, it doesn't shrink, it exists in perpetuity. And
this is so like, it's a really fun idea because
it's sort of being like, oh, we're all connected and
there is a higher power, but just not in the
way that anybody usually thinks of that as a spiritual thing.
It's all very much just like a computer code. But
it's obviously more than that, because it's something that even
these beings don't grasp. So yeah, it's an interesting like
the idea that it's only possible for it to be
harvested once you have lived your life. And I also
want to mention a healthy system is self sustaining. It
doesn't grow, it doesn't shrink. This is the thing that's
like fundamentally wrong with how capitalism works is there is
an expectation of just growth in perpetuity, and it's asinine.
It's insane. Actually, when you look at the way that
people who allegedly are intelligent approach the economy, you'll look
at things and be like, well, we all should have
known that, you know what I'm saying. Like, there was
this moment where everybody was buying laptops because of the pandemic,
and they were all working from home, so yeah, we
had a buy on laptops, and all of a sudden,
people are like investing in these laptop and they're acting
as if this is just going to go on forever.
And then people stop buying laptops and it's surprised Pikachu
face because yeah, well we all have one now and
we don't need to update it for a while. And
it's just really like this moment of wait, what do
you mean? And this is part of the reason that
so many like subscription services have to increase their pricing,
because there's only so many customers and there's only so
many people at a time that you are going to
get to sign up, and they, for some reason just
think that they can keep tapping this pool and it
will endlessly produce more customers, and it's just you know
that that is not how it works. But we all
have to function in this like false reality that fucking
like startups have created, acting as if there's just you
know what I'm saying. It's it's really the whole thing
with capitalism is let's share this delusion together and any
fallout from it will worry about later. And no matter
what it is or how soon it's supposed to happen,
we'll worry about it later. Let's not worry about it now.
Let's worry about it later every fucking time. So anyway, sorry, guys,
I just like it just struck me. You know how
that can happen The planetary system doesn't have an active AI.
By the time you hear this, the mant had made
Frankenstein of a system will have been installed, and everyone
born on the planet will have their internal systems switched
on and activated. When you die in the dungeon, they
harvest these elements themselves, starving out the existing planetary AI
that doesn't even know how to feed itself until we
teach it. So this is the starve thing coming into play.
When you die in the dungeon, they harvest these elements
starving out the planetary AI. So basically, it's like the
planetary AI that hadn't that had been there but was
just functioning a different way. I guess, is suddenly robbed
of its source of sustenance is the best way I
want to say that food doesn't feel quite right. But
despite him using the word feed itself, and even then
it's bound by programming that precludes it from properly sustaining itself. Instead,
the vultures descend and steal the elements from the crawl's aftermath,
all of that death and it fits on a single ship.
They take it all to the bloated, comatose Center System
and feed it. It grows, it maintains, it allows the
citizens to live on naturally long lives. Each time the
Center System is fed the harvested elements from the Crawl,
it expands, capturing new systems. Yet they don't even understand
what it is or how it works. If they stopped Crawl,
the zone would start to shrink, but it would be slow,
very slow, and everyone currently within it would be fine.
It would take generations to starve, after all it had
been given, and if they wanted to simply sustain what
they already have. It wouldn't take much. The crawl itself
doesn't need to exist at all. The creation of what
they call macro ai is made over and over is unnecessary.
It only happens this way because the spectacle of the
crawl generates so much money. So that's it's a lot,
it's a lot of information, and it all just feels
like very aligned with the way that the world actually
works with like, oh, we're going to feed this to
our system that already has more than it needs, more
than it knows what to do with. Really, and even
if we stopped, it would be like a hundred years
before it even started to be a pro problem. This
is always my question to folks who have the kinds
of money that the uber rich now have in the
year twenty twenty six, where the disparity between the rich
and poor is higher than it's ever been, and it is,
when are you done, Like I'm genuinely wanting an answer,
When do you feel like, Okay, I have enough? When
does that part happen? When do you feel you no
longer need to exploit people because like, these folks literally
have more money than they could possibly spend. I mean
very literally more than they could possibly spend, and I
cannot imagine. I just simply cannot not wanting to get
other people a quality of life when I could do
that by sacrificing not even five percent of my income,
You know what I'm saying, Like, I just there is
something wrong with them fundamentally. I do not believe that
you can get past a certain income level and continue
hoarding money without being broken in the head. Somehow, something's
the matter with you. That's just my take. And yeah,
same thing, same thing. So sorry, I'm seeing a bunch
of comments now I just jumped back in. I'm scrolling
back up a little bit. Saraphim says, given I think
we've heard the lawyer species are seen as second or
even third class people. He lives out on the sticks,
so no one wants to be But that means he's
so far away from important people it's not worth going
out there to deal with him, right, Okay, Michael says,
had to give Anatasha credit for catching the coffee thing
last book, even though it wasn't quite the coffee she
thought was important. Not. Yeah, I was like I was
on the right track, but it was like just off.
Jeff says. It's a bit like Earth being a giant
computer designed to calculate the ultimate question, to solve the
meaning of life, the universe and everything, Michael says, or
the gaming company seeing how live service games were doing
extremely well during the pandemic and assuming they should just
try to pump out a bunch more. Fast forward a
few years and Sony's Concord gets released and is shut
down two weeks later. Fast forward another year and High
Guard does the same, exactly like, there are trends that
I feel this shouldn't be a mystery. This is a
predictable change due to a massive lifestyle shift that was
very temporary. And if this, if you decide to try
and capitalize on this and it falls through, that's on
you for being completely hair brained. Like, I don't know
what else to tell you, Jeff says, has this been
Has this process been going on for two hundred thousand years?
That's a lot about how long modern humans have been around,
Michael says, So it sounds like the central system in
habits discovered ais that can power systems to turn their
solar systems into lit RPG worlds where they can live
lives like they're in games, benefiting from stats and skills.
Seraphim says the system is mostly just hardware running on
auto till they installed the AI. Michael says they've been
grabbing more of them cycle after cycle to harvest the
materials needed to power the central one to make it bigger,
and Jeff says exploitation is a hell of a drug. Yeah.
I feel like there's just there has to be. I
want somebody to do like a psychological study of people
who hoard wealth and just find out like, what the
fuck happened? Where when did the switch flip for them?
Because I can't help, but wonder is this something that
could possibly happen to me if I were suddenly in
a position to inherit a bunch of wealth, and I
am coming from my present circumstances of like very low
middle class. I don't even know if I quite reach
middle class. Actually, would there be a point where I
begin to hoard as well? Does the wealth do it
to you? Or is it that you get wealthy because
something's wrong with you? I kind of feel like it's
that second one. But then there are people who inherit
wealth and do they also hoard I don't know anyway
getting back to this. So we're trying to stop this madness.
That is why you are here now. By now you
should be able to move. And he tells him to
drink the coffee in front of him, and is basically
like there's a system thing in there that's an upgrade
that it's not tested, and we don't you know, it's
very much a risk for Carl to drink this, but
he decides to go for it because of course, what
are you going to not do it? Like get out
of here, and he tells Carl that this is an
interface to pull the lever on the failsafe. Essentially you
will die and you'll kill everyone else on the way out.
And he says that like the whole thing that we
are asking you to do is to sacrifice yourself. That
you know it's not going to get better, and the
only way to stop this is to wipe out everybody
and all of this wealth that has concentrated in one place,
which is part of what the argument was at the
end of the last book that like the fact that
we've allowed this to happen to begin with, and for
everybody to be such invaluable targets is also really stupid
of us, and he says, We've tried to use this upgrade,
but we can't do it. It has to be one
of you, guys. It will only work on this AI.
The AI wants you to have this power. It wants
you to trip it. It is in pain, it wants
to die, it wants to go back home. And then
it's interesting. He's like, here's the thing. This is my
whole mission, and I've been trained to just get to
the point where I'm communicating this to you and convince
you to drink the thing. But I will be honest,
I've started to have a little bit of a change
of heart regarding all of this and feel that maybe
you shouldn't. I don't know. I know that humanity can
be fucking awful. I've seen some of the worst, but
I've seen some really great shit too, and I don't know.
It's got me sort of wondering if this is really
the best way to do this. What we're saying for
you to do will disrupt the crawl, but it's not
gonna like bring it to an end. It's simply going
to fuck things up for enough of for enough time
and kill enough people that like everybody's going to have
to regroup, but probably it's going to like eventually get
back to doing the same thing and it won't ultimately change.
And I don't know that like killing so many innocent
people is worth it if it's not doing something permanent.
And this is when he says, there's another faction of
my kind who are much more extreme. This feels like
something they would do, and that's the faction that Agatha
is part of. If you make this decision, be sure
it's your only option. This is more than just a
fail safe. It's the end of everything. If there's time
to do something else, don't be so quick. And then
he enters the Desperado Club and that was when he
starts talking to Orin. So that's the intro. We go
to Porthos here and this is a flashback, and it's
really it's this was so tough, you guys, because like,
we don't know what exactly is going on with Porthos,
but we do know that he's being put in this
position where he is emotionally really triggered. He is not
in a state where he can make a good decision
because he is so distracted and worried and it's so
incredibly predatory to have him making a deal right now
when he is in this frame of mind. I just
this is so awful, you know, I can't imagine like
the fact that he is worried about this friend that
he is, like, is she dead? She could have made it,
but I don't know. And this guy that he's talking
to has no sympathy for him at all is incredibly unnerving.
And also the fact that Porthos won't even if he like,
if he were to make a deal and get out here,
he wouldn't get to find out what happened to her
for a long time, which that is also particularly awful.
That it's not like I just all I want. They're
using him wanting to know against him even I really
I hate this so much. And he's like he's covered
in blood, he's trembling, and he can't use like a
healing spell even though he's instinctively trying to like click
on one mentally, which is something that I wondered if
this would happen when you're in the game for so long,
do you start to, like, when you're out of that environment,
you're gonna keep functioning as if you can do these
things for a while, I would expect, you know. And
also this dude fucking brought snacks with him. So Porthos
tries to be like, can I just go back out
there to find out if she made it? Because I
can't pull up my messages, and this guy is like, well,
I mean you can, but the outreach guilds don't open
again until the twelfth floor, and the deals might not
be as good as they are right now. And it's
like he's not being given any sorts of real options
here other than wait till the twelfth floor, or I
could tell you what's going on, because something tells me
this guy could find out quite easily, you know. So
let's see. The tenth had been a nightmare, a world
where every physical, non natural object had sapiens, some could speak,
all were psychotic. A world where if one object consumed another,
it grew in power. By the end, there had been
behemoths roaming the barren floor, all searching for one last morsel,
all wanting to get bigger. This is a it's a
Katamari capitalism combo. How interesting. Porthos's party had been twenty
strong when they finished the ninth, half had taken deals
at the beginning. They couldn't even find an outreach guild
at the end, but that was okay. They thought one
went straight to a guild upon the start of the
eleventh the deals would be better. They just needed to
survive long enough for the portals to open. As far
as Porthos was aware, he was the only one of
his group who'd survived Himu was dead, had been plucked
right up as they climbed the back of the monster
searching for the moving exit. Porthos had watched him get
right in half. But Minerva, he had to know if
she was okay. It was driving him mad. So this
is the thing that's so like. It's part of what
pulled at me so much in the first book, Guys
the goblins saying like, we just wanted to get down
to the next floor where our children would be safe,
where we wouldn't have to fight anymore, And that's all.
That's the story. Everybody gets fed is like, if you
just reach this point, you'll be okay, you'll be safe.
This won't happen to you anymore. And it's such a
fucking lie. The way that we make people safe is
we build that into our infrastructure and the way that
we function as a country. But we are such weirdos
about individualism, especially in the US, and how you shouldn't
need anybody, which is just fucking hilarious to be honest
and then make people feel inadequate for not being able
to like all of you know what, you know what?
All right, back to the story, So city attenant for
the hunting grounds thirty seasons, and he is just like, no,
fuck them. Next offer game guide one hundred seasons, but
that could be shortened depending on the progress of your crawlers.
I recommend you take this one unless you want to
be a guard at the rogue Club. And he's thinking
here about the dungeon Crawler cookbook, and he says still,
this deal was his best chance. It had a high
chance of survival despite the extra seasons. He would get
out of here, build wealth, and one day return. That
was it. That was the plan. And as far as
I know, he's able to pull this off. Like we've
seen that Porthos is still alive, right unless he got
got in the interim, but I don't think so. So anyway,
if he took this deal, he wouldn't know what had
happened to her. For a very, very long time, but
did it matter. The plan was for them all to
take a deal. Even if he didn't know she'd survived,
it was still possible he'd never see her again. They
separated you for this part. You had to do it alone.
They didn't warn you it would be like this and
that again, like separating you out and keeping it so
that you don't have anybody to consult. You can't necessarily
be like, oh, we'll both pick a certain deal so
that maybe we can like meet up again and actually
have like an ongoing relationship with somebody not necessarily romantic,
you know what I mean. And so he picks the
game guide. You have a few moments to pick some
pre collapse items to take with you, and you will
be allowed to sift through your current inventory should you
want to take anything in there as well. No weapons,
of course, but any interesting trink or items of sentiment,
a good will gesture as thanks for all your hard work.
The way that this is framed as just like we're
being so nice. Really took deal upon the start of
the eleventh floor, worked as game guide survived his inventureship.
Author of the second edition current status missing wanted by
syndicate security. So then we go to chapter one, the ceasefire,
and we get a map at the beginning of this
with just starting positions, and then we have the start
of the description of Faction Wars. I don't want to
get too in the weeds on this because I you know,
I have three chapters ahead of me that I need
to cover and I only have thirty minutes, so I
just got to hit some highlights, although I do know
that Michael understands I may have to delay some things
into the next episode, which you know, if I've got to,
I will. But they get slammed into this hallway that
is full of like mud, and you know, Loroccos has
been underwater for a while. It's supposed to be that
you get transported to this gorgeous city and then you
watch it get like ripped apart and destroyed, but it's
already destroyed when they arrive here, So, you know, small favors.
I guess to not have to watch that, But also
it would have been nice to just have a moment
of break and they get separated from Imari and have
to like message each other in order to find a
safe room where they can all meet back up again.
The buildings were made of stone blocks and their walls
were chipped and pitted even before the flooding. The sense
this is a poor area of town. I had a
few chats waiting for me from before, from before I'd appeared,
and one of them is from Florin. One is Quasar,
and it's quite long. I'm negotiating with the Liaisons, which
really means I'm negotiating with the AI. It's been a
Class nine shit cyclone out here these last four days.
Lots of legal movement, warships threatening blow things up, syndicate
security intervening. Most is good from your point of view,
but some of it is gonna itch like an infected
ass tattoo. I'll leave the faction war stuff alone for
your adjutant to explain. But remember that contract that the
Sensation Entertainment for the Vengeance of the Daughter, even though
the main character is dead, That guarantee of a third
season is about to haunt the fuck out of us.
Sensation Entertainment just got purchased by a subsidiary of the
Dream and things are moving. They're demanding their third season.
Just stay the fuck away from any elites. Nothing is
official yet, saying it won't be coming back, which means
whatever happens, it's going to be something stupid. Problem is,
the new showrunners won't be caring about that anymore. They're
going to try to use your contractual obligation to ask
fuck you. I'm trying to stop it on my m
but I don't think I'll be successful. Plus, the AI
gives zero shits about what the courts say. If it
thinks it's going to be funny, it's going to let
it happen. Just keep your head down and listen to
what Judge Victory tells you. She's a smart one. So
I really really enjoy this. I didn't remember that they
had done the like guaranteed three seasons thing. If I
had remembered that, I think I probably would have seen
coming that they would have used this against him somehow.
I am very, very curious how this is going to
work because it's one of my favorite things, and my
favorite I mean, like in a car crash kind of
way to see how a TV series especially does this,
how they try and regroup after they kill off somebody
or they make like a bad decision narratively and they
have to regroup in the next season and you can
just see the seams sometimes and it's really you know,
like there have been occasional things where I'm like, oh, Okay,
they killed off the villain in the last season because
they wanted there to be a satisfying ending, but then
they couldn't come up with a better villain, and so
they either will like bring that villain back and have
them unexpectedly not be dead and I don't think that's
part of a plan always, or they will have a
new villain who feels almost identical to the old villain
somehow just sort of you know what I mean, like hmm,
or they will kind of do like, oh well. The
one that I think about this Jeff says, remember hero
season two horrifying, and Michael says, Heroes did that? Jeff
beat me to that's very funny. I don't think i've
finished season two. I started it, but yeah, I one
of the ones that I think of is Once upon
a Time, because the first season is a really fun
idea and a very complete story, and then they just
clearly did not know where to go, and so they
basically just do the first season over again, and it's excruciating. Eventually,
I hear that they wound up coming up with some
better stories later on. But I will be perfectly honest,
I never watched the past season two because it was
too it was not good. And same thing with like
Desperate Housewives. You know, there's a when a show has
a first season that is excellent and feels complete, it's
always a twenty eighty chance if they're going to be
able to pull off a second season, because they all
often have this one great season just to get signed
because they have to, you know, somebody has to agree
to pick them up. But making a complete season that
feels satisfying often inherently means there isn't somewhere to go
from there, because that's the point, you know. Anyway, I
think it's part of why shows that have like whole
different storylines every season with a whole new like cast
of characters, or they take the same actors but they
change up the setting or whatever, you know what I mean,
like American Horror Story, White Lotus, even like True Detectives.
I think that might be part of why that trend
is there. But uh, anyway, I just am really really
curious what they're gonna do with that, because it could
be really amusing to see. So Carl is in pain
by the way he has these fucking de buff that
and I hadn't hadn't thought about the fact that him
and Moni are going to get separated because she can
heal him from this friggin slug thing and she they
have to find their way to her. But he had
thought he had would have more time before this stuff
started to catch up to him. And the first one
is soul poisoning. This condition has additional effects that will
soon be revealed if you don't do something about it,
and it's due to the friggin you know, Scavenger's daughter
thing that he did not vent in time, So now
he's trying to find somewhere to vent it immediately to
keep it from like really doing a fucking number on him,
and is looking around like, oh my god, because he
can do so much damage that it can harm him
or the people around him. Like the way this attack
works can actually be a really bad thing, depending which
is what happened to trigger a fucking a zombie demon
event last time. And meanwhile, Dona is being given like
thirty seconds to figure out what class she wants to be,
and she also has to pick cards to keep, and
Mordecai is talking her through them, and it's very funny
because what she winds up choosing, it's like she did
not understand exactly what this meant. First consecrated Enchantress, which
comes with a sash, and I love the fact that
the Ai is like giving her descriptors with a specific
accessory highlighted as the thing. Yes, Ai, Yes, this is
how to do it. This is how to do it.
I love it so much. I'm not going to pick
the Halloween officia now. My personality is too sparkly and
optimistic for me to be a goth. It does come
with black lipstick and a box cutter for some reason dark,
and then it comes with a hat and something else
what's a gilly suit? So yeah, we'll get there. This
is when Carl goes and decides to unleash on this
weird concierge shark, and they both get blown backward and
he gets an achievement Sushi's Smoothie. You've received a sushi
making kit. And he also gets told that he has
to use his foot next time, which I'm wondering if
he can use the Scavenger's daughter power out of his foot.
Is that something that he can channel? Like can he?
I don't know. And let's see, Ellie went from thunder
Princess to hailstorm. Queen Ellie says, this is probably as
far as I'm gonna get. I can add the final
element if I ever make it to the twelfth floor.
But I'm betting this whole shit show self destructs before
we even get close, which is, you know, understandable that
she would feel this way. I am still thinking about
the way Samantha reacted to Ellie and like that there's
some link there, but I can't make heads or tails
of that not pun intended Samantha at the moment. And
they also get a bunch of notifications as warlords about
like where they are, how many people are in their
army right now, how many people's like positions they need
to fill still, and the number of different people who
are like teaming up together in truces. Let's see, I'm
trying to find the protection enhancements have been removed. While
some protections exist during a ceasefire, those of you who
were getting regenerated can now die, So don't trip and
break your neck. At least wait until the ceasefire, and
there's Team Retribution who has offered them a truce, which
they think is the NPCs. And he starts to be like,
before we accept the truth, and Donut immediately accepts it
without asking or like talking it over with him, and
he gets really mad, understandably because historically Donut has not
been great about looking through her options. But this time,
when he gets mad, she's like, relax, I've been reading
the help section of the Warlord tab. I love this
that She's just like, I've done my research, dude, you
can calm down. When did you get the time? I
don't use the restroom merely as much as you do. Honestly,
I think you need to see a doctor. I think
you might have out ibs uh and hear me out
she's being given advice from somebody. There's also that which
I wouldn't discount, And of course there's probably not a
way for her to tell him that if she's in
the same position he is, she can't share, you know
what I mean. I don't necessarily think it's true in
the way of like the cookbook, but I could definitely
see there being coded language between her and zev are
people in the chat rooms, like, that's something that absolutely
has to be happening. I forgot about this. Warlord Donut
of the Princess Posse has named the Truth the Good Guys.
Warlord Ferdinand of Team Retribution has renamed the Truth Ferdinand
and his Bird, and it won't let her change it back.
So let's see. Here comes Cascadia and Carl is like,
she sounds really weird and determines that she's either drunk
or stoned, which leads to and exceptional performance from the
voice narrator. You guys, you guys, I am so sorry,
but this is one of the best deliveries. Like, people
who have to do have to play drunk will often
overdo it and they will get sloppy in a way
that's really not usual. It's sort of a stereotype in
a cartoonish way of what people are like, but it's
not like quite right. And this narrator is just fucking
nailing it with her like kind of speeding up at
certain times and other times pausing a little too long
and then just like laughing and then going and it's
top tier. So good. Ooh sorry, more chance. Michael says, Hey,
gods can be sexy. I mean are you kidding me?
Gods are like the sexy. Whenever dudes talk about like
the it's always big titty goth girlfriend. That's you know.
I don't think it's the sexy thing she's saying. It
just doesn't go with her or vibe because she's too bubbly,
which I kind of like the contrast between bubbly personality
and goth aesthetic. I think that's classic and definitely could work.
But I also get what she means, so this whole
thing is her at first just being like, you guys
know how that worked? This works? You fucked it all up.
It should have been this way and it's not. And
whose fault is that? I love anyway. There are ten
teams total, nine attacking teams and one defending team, the NPCs,
who have decided to call themselves Team Retribution. The basical
is simple, capture the castle in the center. Normally, you
crawlers don't really need to know much about this stuff.
The floor is no different than the hunting grounds. Once
this cease fire ends, you're teleported out of the city.
If you haven't left already, you just need to survive,
and there's just a bunch of I don't want to
get too into just reading word for word what she
says here, because I feel like it doesn't This will
all come up as we play, you know what I mean,
so to speak, as we keep reading. Any team who
controls the Throne Room will have access to the city
defense system. If the Throne Room changes hands to an
attacking team, there will be a half hour grace period.
Attacking teams will be eliminated if the warlord or warlords
are killed, or if the throne Room of their primary
base is taken and held for a period of six hours.
Soldiers of an eliminated team are traditionally given the option
to join the new team or be slaughtered. There are
nine hundred no sorry, there are two hundred ninety three
stairwell chambers. They will not open until Faction Wars is
one or there are thirty hours left, whichever happens first.
And this is when we get the trade request from
Team Retribution Baroness Victory Warlords. I suggest one of you
proceed immediately to the Flag room to oversee the final
stronghold preparations and deal with the influx of new recruits,
while the other remains in Loroccos and attempts to enlist
your fellow crawlers. Time is short. I cannot wait to
work with Baroness Victory. I am so interested in her.
I was kind of thinking that Princess for is it
Princess Formidable? Is that her name? I was sort of
expecting the Baroness to have a personality more like her,
But now I'm thinking she's going to be even more uptight,
which I'm always here for, like an uptight character, depending
on how it's done. And Donut is like talking about
how she has a celestial box and I just received
a former child actor accessory kit in the safe room
mailbox and I need to open it right away. Plus,
you know, we need to deal with your hair and
I'm missing eyebrows. And he's like, wait, what did you
pick for a class? And he says, WHOA what the fuck? Donut? Great,
isn't it. It's a long range sniper and assassin class.
It doesn't come with many new spells, but the range
on all my existing spells is quadrupled, and my dexterity
is much higher. The odds of one of my spells
inflicting an instakhill is higher too. I can go invisible
at will and to top it off, I kept most
of my spells from the last floor. But best of all,
it comes with a hat and a ghoolie suit. I
don't know what that means. And it says deathbed Hellcat
is the name of the class. It's gilly suit, not ghoolie.
And she's just like, I think it sounds like very
menacing actually, and he's like, uh huh, yeah, definitely. I
don't know how many of you guys looked up what
a gilly suit looks like, but you know, I've seen
them before. But there's a variety of sort of types
depending on what foliage you are trying to blend in with.
I understand completely why Donut hates this so much, but
I think she is going to be so invaluable in
this thing. I think this could be fucking great. I
love it so much. So then uh, she says, it's
like one of signettes to had two people fell through
a paper shredder they gave me. I don't know why
it's necessary. They already gave me the ability to turn invisible.
And I understand what she means, but there are definitely
abilities that can see through an invisibility spell. So I
think that this is a nice cover for that. You know,
it's a way that you could potentially still blend in
even if they can see through the invisibility. If you've
got this on, maybe it's you still fool them, which
would be great. And let's see, I'm trying to find that.
The suit added a skill called blend into background, which
I hadn't had time to examine, and cone of silence
combined with invisibility, it would be great. The floppy hat
added a targeting skill which allowed her to zoom in
and examine mobs from afar And basically all of this
stuff combined means that she could kill somebody from like
a mile away, which should be really bad ass. But
Carl can't help but think, like, this is so scary
because I know we're not the only ones getting bonkers
gear like this right now, so yikes, you know, let's see. Uh.
Mordecai comes in and he says that flack is a
good anti airspell. Get it to level ten and it
puts on quite the show, which I don't know what
that means, but we'll see. Now, guys, there had been
a moment where Mordecai speaks to them and he said
a at the end of the sentence, and I was
listening and I'm like, wait a minute, is he just
like Canadian this war? Is that a thing? And immediately
my brain went like, no, it's not a thing. And
then I went, but why isn't it though that Tenneman
would absolutely be the type to have being just a
Canadian a thing, And that is exactly what we get.
And I'm not mad about it. Just for the record,
I think it's delight and he manages to like have
this be not so over the top as to feel
like distracting or cartoonish. It's just enough that you're like, yep,
there it is. You know, it's not an easy thing
to pull off. This one is something called a Canadian,
part French, part maple syrup. He's weirdly obsessed with ice
hockey and snowmobiles and semi erotic lumberjack fan fiction. Has
a well worn Tim Horton's loyalty card in his velcrow wallet.
He says a boot instead of about and gets really
really upset when you pointed out claiming you're hearing things
and that it's a harmful stereotype. It's not a stereotype,
and that's exactly how it sounds. He has a relative
who is trainfled to death by a moose. You get
the idea perfect no notes, part French, part maple syrup
is a classic. You know what. My mother is married
to a man whose whole family is French Canadian, and
I before I forget am screenshotting this description and I
am sending this to her via text right now. There.
She will love it. He's he got her into ice hockey,
by the way, so that part is fair. And his
family is very into crapes as well, so we could
just like toss that on there. So let's see. There
are three scenarios where the ceasefiretime is shortened. One is
a unanimous vote, which isn't going to happen. Two is
if one of the warlords voluntarily withdraws, which isn't going
to happen because it's not possible. The third is also unlikely.
It's if all teams are finished with their defenses, they're
thrown is locked in place, and they mark themselves as ready,
in which case it ends immediately. Oh, we have to
heal Mango. And it's interesting because Mordecai says that heal
severe injury potion requires thirty three fine healing potions to
make and an autoclave. I don't know what an autoclave is,
but evidently somehow she Maria managed to like sidestep the
way to make this that Mordecai knows about and do
it a different way. And I am so curious if,
like you guys, was this thing with she Maria, Like,
is this gonna have like a bunch of advantages to
it even though it's awful. I don't know, like, is
this is this something horrible that's being allowed because it's
gonna help him in a weird way in the end,
even though it's awful. Like, ah, I don't know, I
don't know. I just get so so suspicious of things
being too good. And I had been wondering whether or
not Carl would be able to call to mind exactly
how she made these, and he isn't able to off hand,
you know. He just says, like she only combined I
think three, but I can't remember specifically. If I go
into my inventory to look, maybe I can figure it out.
And yeah, let's see, there's healed pet potion Carl put
on the ground before the vinegar Goddess Lady got her
head off and now it's super sparkly, and says, revitalize pet.
This was purple and looked as if someone had dumped
half a jar of glitter into it. And he says,
I can figure out the recipe with my new table.
So let me look at it and I'll have his
wing back in a boot an hour or so. I
have to imagine that Mattenman put about in practically every
paragraph of text that Mordecai says, right, you can't just
not do that. You got to. It has to be
the thing. So ooh sorry, Monica says, my son just
finished an online class with a French Canadian teacher, and
she does say a in a boot once in a while.
Jeff says, it mixes chemical solutions very fast. Ah okay.
Michael says, it was interesting to me how Karl referred
to the actions that happened with she Maria as the
stuff that he did. It had to feel to him
like he was doing the things even though intellectually he
knew he held no he had no control. Super traumatizing
given what happened, absolutely and like, not only from his
point of view, but I would imagine that you can't
help but excuse me, guys, I would imagine that you
can't help, but think of it as like everybody else
saw me do it, so to them, I did it,
even if I know that I couldn't control myself at
the time. It's just the easiest way to think about it,
I think, you know, easy in a certain sense, not
all so anyway. Mordecai then uh looks at this other
manner refill potion and it's called Manna blessing, and he's
just like, holy shit, this is incredible. I'll be right back.
And there comes a point later where she's like, I
think he likes the potions more than us, and I
was like, I think you're probably like kind of close
to right. I think that he is getting a lot
of knowledge and stuff for the first time in a while.
I'm guessing that like, up until this point it's been
very much business as usual with whatever knowledge he has
managed to gather, and that he is suddenly happening upon
a bunch of combinations and possibilities that he hasn't seen
after doing this for so long, and it must be
really exciting to fight only have something new, you know
what I mean. So he gets achievements. Lord of the
flies a gold I have the conch box. Demons hate
this one trick, unlimited supply of pea soup chicken shit exploit.
You have received a platinum surrenderl gore box that that
uh huh very interested, and then an achievement for getting
celestial loot. You received a lute punch card used pet
and this we still have not dealt with by the
time these chapters end. But we are going to have
to deal with our tummy acre friend, and I am
extremely interested. There's a whole thing with used Pet about
people who like rescue dogs and then just leave them
in a crate all day. And look, guys, I recognize
that we all have to do what we have to
do in terms of like the way our lives are
set up, and that dogs really can often just kind
of sleep in one place for fifteen fucking hours in
a day. But I just it's never sat right with
me creating a dog while you're like at work. I
just hate the idea. And I had so many people
encouraging me to create train Pippin, and I took it
very seriously initially, and that dog would not go in
that creak from when he was a tiny puppy. I
put the most high value treats in there. I did
everything to like make it cozy and smell good and
feel safe, and it just he absolutely would not fucking
do it. And so it wound up that I just
wasn't going to, you know, And since then I have
come to the conclusion like, yeah, I just I just
don't want to do that. I don't like it. And
I see animals in my neighborhood that are like, they're
young dogs, they're never indoors, and I don't understand what's
the point of like having a pet that you don't
want in your house with you, Like it's it's I
just don't understand. Anyway, the AI goes on a bit
of a rant here, which I definitely sympathize with right
up until the especially when said pets are fucking delicious
or really squishable, and I was like, ah, and there
you are, there you are, AI. But yeah, it's obvious
that the AI is speaking from a certain perspective here.
And let's see, Uh, I'm trying to go through all
of these and not like read every single thing. Oh right,
crab chowder, you jerked off a crab, all food items
in your food boxes now have the option to be
served chowder style, which is so odd because it's like,
it's not even that this is for everybody else to
humiliate Carl. Nobody else sees this just Carl. I'm assuming.
Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's just the AI
fucking like messing with him for the fun which I
can't help but kind of enjoy and new achievement unbirthing.
And this one is very sexual and I do not
want to talk about it. But he does get a
legendary spicy box, which we shall see because he doesn't
open these while we are in this chapter. He also
gets an update from Embras, who is like, yeah, so
I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and make
this deal with Amion. We have a truce. I do
not wish to break it, but I will do what
is necessary to learn the truth. There is a way
for me to do this without causing a war. Proceed
to the temple of Istak in a club. Vanquisher, you
need to the soul Crystal Epito, you are doing well.
Do not disappoint me now. And it said at least
he didn't task me with killing the three brothers myself,
and I was just like Carl, it's early days, baby.
I don't know how to tell you this. But just
because he hasn't done it doesn't mean he's not gonna
do it, like come on right, like it just it's coming.
It's coming. So chapter three, uh, Mordecai comes back out
while she's opening the Platinum boxes, a standard shield spell.
The next box was the same Platinum Surrender Gore box
I had shaped like a jeweled sitting life sized German shepherd,
a war protection spell called Sentry and let's see. The
legendary box was from the Hell Comes to Crawler Town
Quest and it's a book that's got purple smoke coming
off it. And Mordecai I kind of is a little spooked,
and he says it's similar to Donuts Second Chance, but
a lot more insidious. It's called You're Not Done Yet.
And Carl says, I'd heard that spell name before, but
I couldn't remember where. And I can't either, and I
don't remind me. Guys, don't remind if you remembered when
you were reading. I will want to hear about that later,
but I can't remember it. All I remember is like
basically somebody being almost undead and being forced to keep
fighting or something in a certain moment. But yeah, it's uh.
This indicates to me that like the cockroach skill isn't
going to be enough, which is extremely upsetting. And then
we get this friggin' benefactor box. This is wild. So
it has this amazing presentation and then there's this incredible
tiara on this pillow, and it turns out that the
pillow is part of it, because I thought it was
just this great presentation, But the pillow is the charging
device for the tiara, and basically what it does is
it takes the abilities from other hats and puts them
into the tiara. And for each hat that you do
this to one of the absorption crystals on the tir,
there ninety nine of them will be used up. So
you have to be careful with the kinds of abilities
you use. But this will make the tiara an item
that will be likely one of the most valuable powerful
things in the entire dungeon. Like ever, this is bonkers.
This is next level, and the fact that it's a tiara,
I am absolutely here for all of this. It's described
as like parlessent and red I think it's I think
it's red, right, I'm trying to find the spot here
where a red fluffy pillow with a glittering, shiny opal
lessent Tiara, Okay, so it's red. Is the cushion I'm
trying to see? Is my hold on you? Guys? I
think that, uh, this probably counts as opal lessent, right,
It's not that kind of that thing going on there.
So this is my new I'm with the Princess Posse
fan where this is me at crawl Con. This is
what I would wear. So I'm very happy for you, Donut.
This is ideal. It's got a nice sort of neutral look,
so it can go with any outfit. Incredibly useful, and
I am just absolutely so happy for her. I'm very
here for all of this. And then there's a second
cushion which allows them to transfer from two hats at
a time, which like this shit was already bananas, and
to be able to do two at a time, And
there's even the mention of like they're magnetized so that
the cleaning bot can't just knock the hat off and
make it so that they don't because if it gets removed,
the hat is still deep powered but it doesn't get
transferred to the tiara, so you really have to like
commit and it takes a while. I think it says
something like fifteen hours or something like that, trying to
the specific explanation here, let's see ten hours. That's it.
These properties will be stored in the pillow until the
tiara is placed upon the charger, upon which time all
of the buffs and magical enhancements will be instantly transferred
to the tiara. If a hat item contains five separate buffs,
it will use up five of the ninety nine jewels.
With some careful planning, one can turn this tiara into
one of the most powerful items in the history of
dungeon crawler world. Okay, here come the warnings. Temporary effects
will remain temporary and upon expiration, will burn out the
absorption jewel, which is really important. Items with curse effects
may or may not transfer to the tiara, depending on
multiple factors, so be wary as such. Curse effects may
or may not be removed from items that have been
drained of their magical properties. Certain celestial god blessed hat
items may or may not be properly drained or transferred.
Items carrying a debt cannot be absorbed into the pillow.
This is a big one. Hat items placed on the
pillow take ten hours to fully transfer. However, if you
remove the item after one hour, it will still lose
its magical abilities. So yeah, Dona, of course, it's just like,
oh my god, this is not only amazing because now
I can get the abilities from all these hats I've collected,
but also I still get to keep the hat. It
doesn't destroy the hat, so I still get to keep
my hat collection, which is honestly a great bonus. And
I agree fully. And then a goal of Platinum Benefactor
box from the Apothecary, which brings another charging pillow. This
will drain any magical item, but it will only transfer
to a like item. If you drain a ring, the
store buff will only be transferred to an absorption crystal
fixed to a ring. If you attempt to transfer to
an incompatible item, the buff will be lost, which is huge.
And I don't think that this is restricted to just
her use. I think that Carl could probably use these
items as well. Well. The Tiara one no, but this one, yes,
I would think. So. At this point, we have Mango
actually noticing that his wing is injured, and Doughnut being like, okay,
can we use that potion now because he's starting to
freak out. Uncle Carl is going to give you your medicine.
You'll have to drink every drop. Be gentle, Carl. I
picked up the sparkling potion, walked over to Mongo, and
I smashed the vial on his butt at the base
of his tail. And I really appreciated this. I am
so precious about things that like, honestly, it really is
best to do it this way. When I worked on
that goat farm, I had to occasionally inject the goats
with an antibiotic, and I never stuck them hard enough
the first try, because goats have very thick skin, so
they just sort of hop like they'd been bitten by
a fly. And then I'd have to do it again.
And the guy teaching me was like, you have got
to just fucking clench your teeth and do it, dude,
because you're just making it worse for everybody. And I
was like, I know. So let's see. When we'd first
watched Kwan where his magical celestial tiered cloak, we'd seen
he'd had several new abilities right away, and we automatically
assumed the powers were simply what the cloak gave him,
and we get a description here about how this cloak
is meant to show you who's the weakest in a group,
so that you know who to heal, that this is
meant to make you like somebody who helps people, and
that Kwan used it to do evil basically, and Donut
has a really insightful moment of like, do you think
that this AI is making Quan sound worse by using
the description like framing it all this way, which, in
the end, Carl is like, you know, it really doesn't
matter the way the AI frames it. It might be
trying to make him look worse, but we know what
Quan did and how many player killer skulls he had,
and like that is just objectively, he became a terrible person,
so regardless of the AI trying to spin shit, the
facts are the facts, which yeah, fair, But I do
like the fact that Doughnut clocks the AI trying to
make him sound even worse than he is. So I'm
gonna stop here because I'm fifteen minutes over, so I
really do and I will finish the rest of this
section with the next one, and yeah, I'm just I
want to spend a little bit more time talking about
some of the line things in this section. And also
I'm really excited to see what Carl got in his
boxes because those aren't in this chapter. So all right, guys,
thank you again so much for hanging out. Appreciate you,
and until next time to THELU motherfuckers. That was an
Unspoiled Network podcast.