Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
Speaker 1: covering Carl's Doomsday Scenario, the second book in the Dungeon
Speaker 1: Crawler Carl series, chapters twelve through fourteen. In these chapters,
Speaker 1: Mango gets even bigger, there is some interesting theories on
Speaker 1: what's going on with Donut, and there is a serial
Speaker 1: killer on the loose. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: to Michael for commissioning this episode. If I sound weird,
Speaker 1: it's I'm so sorry you guys about this. I thought
Speaker 1: I had enough time. I broke a tooth and it
Speaker 1: happened in February. Actually no, I lie, it happened last year.
Speaker 1: But they couldn't get me in for an appointment until June.
Speaker 1: And I know I should just find a different dentist,
Speaker 1: but it's one of those things. It's just such a hassle,
Speaker 1: you know. So I got it done today. It was
Speaker 1: the earliest they could get me in four pm. I
Speaker 1: was like, shit, I'm recording. Then I moved the four
Speaker 1: pm recording and I'm like, yeah, four.
Speaker 2: O'clock appointment, five point thirty. I start.
Speaker 1: The next one should be fine, and it's mostly fine.
Speaker 1: It's wearing off, it's wearing off, but it's still numb.
Speaker 1: And like I can hear that, I'm not fully in
Speaker 1: control of my faculties yet. I'm trying to make my
Speaker 1: mouth do the things that I want it to do,
Speaker 1: and mostly it's working, but it's uh, you're gonna hear it.
Speaker 1: And I am so sorry about that. But thank you
Speaker 1: for bearing with me. And hopefully in moving my mouth
Speaker 1: it will cause it to dissipate more quickly. Ah, you guys, Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So chapter twelve we start with Carl at the very
Speaker 1: end of the last one was informed Doughnuts down to
Speaker 1: twenty percent health you have to get there now, and
Speaker 1: he is running through the city at and we get
Speaker 1: a notification Donuts cockroach skill just activated. She went down
Speaker 1: to zero, but it's kept her alive. She's now at
Speaker 1: five percent, you guys, twenty percent.
Speaker 2: I'm not worried.
Speaker 1: She dies once already. Okay, yeah, no, I don't like
Speaker 1: that at all. That cockroach ability is a really really
Speaker 1: good one, both in terms of just being practically good
Speaker 1: for the player using it, but also in terms of storytelling,
Speaker 1: letting us know bish would have been dead, you know,
Speaker 1: and just amping up the drama a little bit. So yeah,
Speaker 1: effective and ouch.
Speaker 2: And the fact is.
Speaker 1: He's heading there and like, we don't know what's going on,
Speaker 1: And this sort of bugged me that Mordecai is like
Speaker 1: telling him what's going on with donut to hurry, YadA YadA,
Speaker 1: but he he isn't actually giving Karl any information on
Speaker 1: what to expect when he gets there, or anything that
Speaker 1: maybe he should have activated as he runs through the door,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of thing. I just really felt
Speaker 1: like he could have been more.
Speaker 2: Informative and prepared him better. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's something to do with the rules,
Speaker 1: but like, based on what everybody's been saying, it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like that's an issue. So because like again, he's
Speaker 1: only supposed to be hands off when it comes to
Speaker 1: combat stuff, right, like what he can't fight mobs, But
Speaker 1: otherwise I feel like it seems it would be allowed
Speaker 1: for him to be like, so, these are the creatures,
Speaker 1: this is what they've been doing, this is what you're
Speaker 1: going to be, what weapons might.
Speaker 2: Work best against them? I don't know, guys, is that
Speaker 2: not allowed?
Speaker 1: Like I would be asking these questions also were I Carl.
Speaker 2: And I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just from the drama of the book. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be just like, well, I don't want
Speaker 1: to tell you what he's going to be running into.
Speaker 1: I want you to be on the edge of your
Speaker 1: seat waiting to find out what it is, and then
Speaker 1: he runs in. You get to find out because of drama,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's fine.
Speaker 2: But I'm just.
Speaker 1: Of the opinion that it makes sense in terms of
Speaker 1: the character Carl, that he would be asking the questions
Speaker 1: and that you should come up with something in universe
Speaker 1: that explains why you can't allow that, and that way,
Speaker 1: I feel like our guy is, you know, being rational
Speaker 1: and careful but also thwarted, and he would have done
Speaker 1: the thing if only he had been allowed to do
Speaker 1: the thing.
Speaker 2: But these damn rules, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I just personally, I think this is what Carl would
Speaker 1: have done if we weren't doing it for the drama.
Speaker 1: I think he would have been like, what's happening, what's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: It's not like.
Speaker 1: Conversing in this way takes time for him. He can
Speaker 1: do it in his head, so it's not like he
Speaker 1: has to stop and type it out or focus on
Speaker 1: it and it slows him down or anything. It's basically
Speaker 1: a mental thing at this point, so it just wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Slow him in any way anyway.
Speaker 1: So he is coming in and there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of x's on the map as he's seeing and as
Speaker 1: he runs in, Oh, I'm sorry, guys, I bet a hah.
Speaker 1: It is so weird not being able to feel it.
Speaker 1: He runs in and Mango is there, and Mango is
Speaker 1: double the size that he had been had been, but
Speaker 1: his health is really really low, and he is defending
Speaker 1: Donut because he is a fucking g and Donut herself
Speaker 1: has a bunch of like spikes stuck in her as
Speaker 1: well as Mango. He let's see, he stood on the
Speaker 1: ground before the pile of garbage I directed around Donut
Speaker 1: screeching in fury, and we find out these are street
Speaker 1: urchins and they are these like spiked guys that shoot spikes, which.
Speaker 2: You guys.
Speaker 1: I am reading Sunrise on the Reaping with Rashaan for
Speaker 1: the show that I do with a co host, and
Speaker 1: we just encountered in that book a vicious giant porcupine
Speaker 1: creature and it's just really funny to me, how often
Speaker 1: this happens when I'm covering stuff. One property will do
Speaker 1: a thing, and like literally in the same day of coverage,
Speaker 1: I will be talking about another property that's done something
Speaker 1: really really similar. And I'm not even really trying to
Speaker 1: compare these too much, but it's just like shooting spikes
Speaker 1: and that being the method, and it being this animal
Speaker 1: and this sort of like gaming scenario. You know, it
Speaker 1: all just feels so very very similar. And I don't
Speaker 1: know why this is a thing. But when I'm saying
Speaker 1: this is not like a criticism of like, oh, these
Speaker 1: writers I'm talking about are so when original. That's not
Speaker 1: what I'm saying at all. I'm just like reflecting on
Speaker 1: the coincidental nature of covering stuff sometimes and how it
Speaker 1: won't be uncanny. You know, there'll be two properties where
Speaker 1: we're dealing with twins turning up in a thing, you know,
Speaker 1: like these tropes that will crop up or things like this.
Speaker 1: This isn't even a trope. This is a very specific thing.
Speaker 1: It's just weird.
Speaker 2: So these things used to be.
Speaker 1: A pet and then after the cataclysm they are turned
Speaker 1: larger and deadlier and a whole lot spikier. After they
Speaker 1: cleaned the corpses of their former owners. They moved into
Speaker 1: the ruins and resumed their duties as the janitor mobs
Speaker 1: of the over city, the ruins version of a rumba.
Speaker 1: These things only have one purpose to remove dead bodies
Speaker 1: and any other refuse left behind by inconsiderate crawlers. They
Speaker 1: won't bother you if you don't bother them, but you
Speaker 1: best not get in their way. They can be very,
Speaker 1: very tenacious when it comes to taking out the trash.
Speaker 1: And this is when Carl realizes I put a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff up to protect Donut. I piled garbage to
Speaker 1: create a barrier around her to protect her. And that
Speaker 1: is what drew these fucking things here, and that is
Speaker 1: what is like the fact that Mango is defending her,
Speaker 1: it has triggered this attack. Like if Mongo had just
Speaker 1: stepped aside and allowed these things to come in and
Speaker 1: clean up, maybe this whole thing wouldn't have turned into.
Speaker 2: A battle at all.
Speaker 1: Maco, of course, is not to blame, because I think
Speaker 1: if these things began to approach and it were Carl
Speaker 1: that was defending Donut, I think Carl would have had
Speaker 1: the precise and exact same reaction that mongo has. I
Speaker 1: don't think that this is like unless you are warned,
Speaker 1: ah out of time, what you need to be looking for.
Speaker 1: I would see these coming and I would assume that
Speaker 1: they're a mob and that they're you know, business is
Speaker 1: to fuck with me. So I really like that this
Speaker 1: detail that they're not just attacking because they're hostile, malicious creatures.
Speaker 2: They would have been.
Speaker 1: Perfectly fine doing their business and getting the fuck out
Speaker 1: of their face.
Speaker 2: But we did what we did, and so they do
Speaker 2: what they do.
Speaker 1: And I love that just the fact that, like Mango
Speaker 1: is here fucking ten toes down standing on business. How
Speaker 1: many toes the velociraptor have six toes down? It's just
Speaker 1: what a good boy, What a good boy? I wonder
Speaker 1: all the time, you guys, if I were to be attacked,
Speaker 1: what Pippin would do in that scenario, because, like, let
Speaker 1: me tell you, I genuinely don't know he can. I
Speaker 1: have seen him fight before and it was really it's scary,
Speaker 1: but it was another dog and it was over nothing.
Speaker 1: It was just territorial. It was not him like actually
Speaker 1: being helpful in any sense. So I think about that
Speaker 1: a lot, just like what would he I think he
Speaker 1: would want to protect me, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: he would catch Like, for example, as a woman, you know,
Speaker 1: you get this image in your head of like, oh,
Speaker 1: what if I'm taking a walk at dusk and a
Speaker 1: strange man comes to me, And I don't know if
Speaker 1: Pippin would be able to tell hey, stranger danger.
Speaker 2: You need to worry about this guy, you know.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I love Mango so much. What a precious angel,
Speaker 1: and I really want, like, I want Mango to get
Speaker 1: accessories as this continues, that he has to wear that
Speaker 1: make him like weirdly cute and just you know the
Speaker 1: version for velociraptors of like little doggie jackets.
Speaker 2: And things like that.
Speaker 1: Some dogs don't like when you dress them up. Pippin's
Speaker 1: pretty good with it. Arwin's actually been handling it somewhat well.
Speaker 1: We've had to put a onesie on her because she
Speaker 1: had been spade. We know that they put a collar
Speaker 1: on him and he tried to rip it off, but
Speaker 1: Doughnut calmed him down.
Speaker 2: And now he's dealing with it, so maybe he could
Speaker 2: deal with like, look, I love this idea.
Speaker 1: What if you had like a little backpack, like you know,
Speaker 1: veloci raptors don't have super long arms, so I feel
Speaker 1: like getting it on and off and wouldn't be too hard.
Speaker 1: Or you could even have like little clips or something,
Speaker 1: and then he could carry stuff.
Speaker 2: That'd be good.
Speaker 1: Or you know, we could also the obvious thing is
Speaker 1: a little saddle that Donut could ride on. I mean,
Speaker 1: if Donut was a riding mango. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it gets much better than that. There's no reason you
Speaker 1: can't do both. You could have a saddle with saddle bags.
Speaker 1: How about that, and then we've got the best of both.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No's that's why wishless.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is carl like getting centered and figuring
Speaker 1: out what to do. I cleaned up the needles at
Speaker 1: my feet by picking them up and tossing them into
Speaker 1: my inventory. After that, the small round monsters lost interest
Speaker 1: and wandered back into the street, and he distracts the
Speaker 1: other ones by tossing stuff out scraps that they go
Speaker 1: chase in order to eat them up and clean up
Speaker 1: the area. Donnut remained to sleep in the chair, but
Speaker 1: her health had been restored. Mongo lay on the ground whimpering,
Speaker 1: and Carlos trives a couple of things to heal him.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't work, and Mordecai is able to give
Speaker 1: him a recipe for a healing potion, a very detailed
Speaker 1: recipe that gets added to his crafting menu. Oh I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: I keep accidentally like biting the inside him.
Speaker 2: I'm dreading.
Speaker 1: Once this really wears off feeling all the spots that
Speaker 1: I bit. He gets a couple of achievements, and then
Speaker 1: another one once he pours it down.
Speaker 2: The gullet of mango.
Speaker 1: And I've got to say the fact that Mongo like
Speaker 1: drinks it as readily as he does good on him.
Speaker 1: He really is trying to be cooperative. I uh to
Speaker 1: bring up my dog again. Poor Oarwin has been through
Speaker 1: a lot since we found her. She was poisoned when
Speaker 1: we found her. We had to put her through a
Speaker 1: whole thing. Then it turned out she had kind of
Speaker 1: advanced giardia and we had to give her not only pills,
Speaker 1: but this like paste that you squeeze down their throat
Speaker 1: with a syringe, and it's like it's a thick paste.
Speaker 1: It's like cement texture. And when I tell you, this
Speaker 1: dog wanted none of it. And we had to sneak
Speaker 1: up on her when she was resting and just fucking
Speaker 1: ninja attack and shove it down her throat. And there
Speaker 1: was one time where she moved too quick and I
Speaker 1: squirted half of it like on the wall behind her,
Speaker 1: and I was so disgusted. Thankfully, the testing afterwards, it
Speaker 1: turns out I was worried for a second, was like
Speaker 1: she barely swallowed any is this gonna stay in her system?
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, Jiardi is gone. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: with pets. It's a lot.
Speaker 2: It's just a lot.
Speaker 1: So Mango is now level ten and is up to
Speaker 1: Carl's waist and is covered in colorful feathers, which.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: I feel like it was mentioned that they were that
Speaker 1: he was pink at one point, but I can't remember.
Speaker 2: I feel like he mentioned to Flamingo something like that.
Speaker 1: I really want to see an illustration of him, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to look because I know I'll get
Speaker 1: spoiled if you guys, if there is an illustration of
Speaker 1: him at around this stage, I would love to see it,
Speaker 1: but I can see that, like there's several more books
Speaker 1: already out and probably a lot of the anime. The illustrations,
Speaker 1: if people are doing fan art, might be when he
Speaker 1: is bigger.
Speaker 2: If that's so, don't show me.
Speaker 1: I'll you know, it might even include like spoilery stuff
Speaker 1: in terms of the gear they've got on or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I have to imagine le that this series has
Speaker 1: spawned some pretty dope fan art, and that is something
Speaker 1: that I think would be very fun to see. So
Speaker 1: this is when he's hanging out and thinking about all
Speaker 1: of the people that he used to know that are gone.
Speaker 1: All I had left in this world was right here
Speaker 1: this I thought, this is my family, and I just
Speaker 1: love this moment. So Dona awakens at dawn. She doesn't
Speaker 1: know what the fuck happened. Mango, of course, is delighted
Speaker 1: to see her. She has risen to level fifteen at least,
Speaker 1: so she's gone up. He's still far ahead of her,
Speaker 1: but she's managed to level without even having been awake.
Speaker 1: So I think that's fair. Come on, I said, we're
Speaker 1: getting out of here. I am so confused, Donah said,
Speaker 1: did I do something? I don't remember anything, but I
Speaker 1: had the hoddest dream. Ferdinand came and visited me, and
Speaker 1: I ran to him, but he turned into a porcupine
Speaker 1: and I kept getting his quills in me. It was
Speaker 1: quite unpleasant. Fucking Ferdinand, I really want this backstory very bad.
Speaker 1: I told Donut the story of the previous evening. As
Speaker 1: we quickly but cautiously set out for the Skyfowl settlement,
Speaker 1: she was oddly quiet about the whole thing. She still
Speaker 1: seemed out of sorts.
Speaker 2: I am going to.
Speaker 1: Make a guess here, because what he says a little
Speaker 1: bit later.
Speaker 2: Is that he.
Speaker 1: Thinks maybe Donut is smarter than she is behaving. We'll
Speaker 1: get to the full dialogue of it, but it's not dialogue,
Speaker 1: it's internal monologue. But the fact that she's super quiet
Speaker 1: about this, I think is due to the fact that
Speaker 1: he said, we don't risk our lives for our pets.
Speaker 1: And then what does he do. He goes and risks
Speaker 1: his life for her, and that's like explicitly what he did.
Speaker 1: You know she was being used against him, held hostage
Speaker 1: so that he would complete this quest. And I think
Speaker 1: when he said we don't risk our lives for our pets,
Speaker 1: she was genuinely upset because she kind of wondered, does
Speaker 1: he actually see me that way?
Speaker 2: Is that it am I just a pet?
Speaker 1: And then gets confirmation that no, I am not just that,
Speaker 1: because here he is doing the.
Speaker 2: Thing I kind of love this if I'm right.
Speaker 1: If I'm right, I think I am. But I just
Speaker 1: I really really like the idea that this served to
Speaker 1: cement to her the reality of what she means to him,
Speaker 1: because otherwise she was like feeling a bit of a
Speaker 1: way about everything or just insecure, you know, which will happen.
Speaker 1: I feel like the word insecure often can be like
Speaker 1: kind of weaponized as an insult against somebody, and it's like,
Speaker 1: very literally it just means that you do not feel secure,
Speaker 1: and that can mean a lot of things. And I
Speaker 1: feel Carl has proved himself again and again as like
Speaker 1: being there for her and prioritizing her, But it was
Speaker 1: never a very literal do this to save her. It
Speaker 1: was always like we're in this together, both fighting for.
Speaker 2: Our lives as a pair.
Speaker 1: And so I could see this being evidence in a
Speaker 1: specific way that I actually wonder if the AI didn't
Speaker 1: do this on purpose, Like is it possible that him
Speaker 1: saying we don't risk our lives for our pets, if
Speaker 1: there was like a response in the AI or even
Speaker 1: in the audience, and they all were like, oh really,
Speaker 1: do we not, Carl, and they decided that they would
Speaker 1: try out that theory and see how he behaves and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, what, what do you know? Maybe we
Speaker 1: fucking do actually, but yeah, I think that's what's going
Speaker 1: on in her head here. So they go past the
Speaker 1: circus and he is like thinking about how mad he
Speaker 1: is that he didn't loot all of the bodies because
Speaker 1: he didn't kill the city boss.
Speaker 2: And he eventually gets an achievement for running the fuck away.
Speaker 2: But uh, you know, you had.
Speaker 1: Your companion on the verge of death, bro, I think
Speaker 1: you get a pass for not remembering to loot them.
Speaker 1: You were in a hurry, It's fine. Something new did
Speaker 1: emerge from the wreckage, a staircase to the fourth floor,
Speaker 1: right in the middle of the park. It had been
Speaker 1: hidden before. Usually these things appeared on my map, even
Speaker 1: if we couldn't get to them, like the one guarded
Speaker 1: by the ball of Swine. This one had not been
Speaker 1: there before. I asked Mordecai about it, and he said
Speaker 1: many of the stairwells from now on would only become
Speaker 1: visible to us after we completed quests. This one had
Speaker 1: probably been there the whole time, right underneath Grimaldy.
Speaker 2: Which makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody that level guarding in a staircase, so.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He mentions that Signet has probably gone already and is
Speaker 1: down on the sixth floor.
Speaker 2: Why didn't you just kill that boss?
Speaker 1: And I ask, you still would have won a quest,
Speaker 1: and think of all the experience we would have gotten.
Speaker 1: It was a trap. If I'd killed it, we'd both
Speaker 1: be dead. Well, if I had been there, we would
Speaker 1: have done things differently. And then he says, be a messenger.
Speaker 1: This is a good thing. I didn't want to say
Speaker 1: out loud, but we have a new group looking out
Speaker 1: for us in that production studio needs to keep us alive.
Speaker 1: So because we help them out, we're good for ratings,
Speaker 1: so they'll need us. And Donut says, until we get
Speaker 1: to the sixth floor and they have written out some
Speaker 1: story designed to get us killed or worse, realize more
Speaker 1: people are talking about you than about Signet. We're guest stars.
Speaker 1: It's dangerous to have guest stars more interesting than the
Speaker 1: main character. That's why they killed Barb on Stranger Things,
Speaker 1: which I do find that reference funny. Barb is one
Speaker 1: of those things, guys where I can't help but feel
Speaker 1: that it's bad faith. Whenever people try and argue about
Speaker 1: how Barb should have stayed alive.
Speaker 2: I feel like it.
Speaker 1: Was just like Barb was just sort of an awkward
Speaker 1: looking character that seemed kind cared about her friend, and
Speaker 1: everybody decided that they were going to like rally behind
Speaker 1: her in a way that felt almost like low key making.
Speaker 2: Fun of her in a way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like we're celebrating her, but like not really.
Speaker 1: There was a similar thing, and I can't remember the
Speaker 1: guy's name. I think I feel like his first name
Speaker 1: was Ken, and I can't remember his last name, But
Speaker 1: there was a dude who like got a bunch of
Speaker 1: notoriety from a clip from a show that went viral,
Speaker 1: and he was a really weird looking like he was
Speaker 1: a fat, mustached guy with weird glasses, and everybody weirdly
Speaker 1: grew obsessed with him for like three days, you know,
Speaker 1: how these viral things happened, and it was all, again,
Speaker 1: we're celebrating him, but it was like you're just kind
Speaker 1: of laughing at him, and I wish that you'd just
Speaker 1: be fucking.
Speaker 2: Real about it, you know.
Speaker 1: I just felt like that with Barb, that it was
Speaker 1: sort of we're pretending we're on her side, but it's like.
Speaker 2: Weird.
Speaker 1: There's like an undercurrent of bullying to it. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's why they killed Barb at all,
Speaker 1: but because like that was all filmed ahead of time,
Speaker 1: that's not how that works. But you know, he says,
Speaker 1: that does make sense. You're better with his television stuff
Speaker 1: than I am. When we get there, we'll need to
Speaker 1: think of every possible scenario. And then in all caps,
Speaker 1: guessing the plot lines of television shows is my superpower.
Speaker 1: And it says the second she said that, I realized
Speaker 1: she hadn't posted the earlier, longer chat message in all caps.
Speaker 2: And that was when I'm listening on the audiobook.
Speaker 1: The narrator yells when she's doing all caps, and so
Speaker 1: when he suddenly yells, it did for me all so go.
Speaker 1: He didn't yell the other one though, So I liked
Speaker 1: it that I had the same moment with Carl of
Speaker 1: just like, huh, there was more to it, something that
Speaker 1: had been bothering me for a while. Doughnut made a
Speaker 1: lot of seemingly rash decisions and comments, yet they were
Speaker 1: almost always good decisions, even though they sometimes didn't look
Speaker 1: like it at the time. And while I knew her
Speaker 1: intelligence being higher than mine, didn't really mean she was
Speaker 1: smarter than me. I'd been suspecting for a while now
Speaker 1: that so much of her camera facing self was an
Speaker 1: act designed to hide her true cunning nature from the world.
Speaker 1: The problem was now we were always camera facing. As
Speaker 1: outgoing as brash as she was, she was still new
Speaker 1: to this world, new to having real sapient thoughts. She
Speaker 1: was still coming into her own. The adult she would
Speaker 1: become was in there somewhere, just starting to emerge. But
Speaker 1: Odette was write about her. She was still a child,
Speaker 1: and she held many childlike attitudes and beliefs. It'd be
Speaker 1: a long time before she fully emerged, sorry, fully matured,
Speaker 1: but it was clear if she did manage to grow up,
Speaker 1: she'd develop into a fiercely intelligent person. At the same time,
Speaker 1: she seemed to hold the belief that outward cleverness and
Speaker 1: quiet efficiency was something she needed to hide or worse, suppress.
Speaker 1: Part of it was the nature of the beast, after all,
Speaker 1: we needed to be popular to survive. But I was
Speaker 1: starting to really worry about her development, and I had
Speaker 1: no idea how to talk to her about it without
Speaker 1: sounding like an ass. I had a quick memory of
Speaker 1: Bee's mom. It was just this past Thanksgiving, and we'd
Speaker 1: driven over to spend the weekend at her parents' house.
Speaker 1: I've been asleep on the couch, but I awakened to
Speaker 1: hear Bee and her mom whispering. Bee's mom had said,
Speaker 1: you have to make them think you're dumber than you are.
Speaker 1: That's the only way to catch a good man. You
Speaker 1: can't control the ones who are smarter than you, and
Speaker 1: you don't want the dumb ones to know they're the
Speaker 1: dumb ones. Well, some man realizes he's superter than his mate.
Speaker 1: He gets mean, You're lucky to have found Carl. I
Speaker 1: just wish he was a doctor or a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: B replies, he's not complicated, that's for sure. It doesn't
Speaker 1: take much to make him happy. He says what he means.
Speaker 1: He won't fight me, even if I try to fight.
Speaker 1: He's not a doctor, but he makes good money and
Speaker 1: he doesn't spend it on anything. Plus, I love him, Mom.
Speaker 1: I know I screw it up a lot, but I
Speaker 1: do love him. I really do. And it's such a
Speaker 1: weird thing because you guys, be it's just felt so
Speaker 1: much like she doesn't love him.
Speaker 2: And her behavior.
Speaker 1: Points to that she doesn't love him. But when she
Speaker 1: says this, I think she believes it. When she's saying this,
Speaker 1: I don't think that this is her lying. I think
Speaker 1: that she's not good at loving. I think that she's
Speaker 1: just a very selfish person. And honestly, in some ways
Speaker 1: I can relate to this.
Speaker 2: I am not always like good at being.
Speaker 1: Kind to the people that I care about, even though
Speaker 1: I know that they deserve it, and that I am
Speaker 1: sometimes snide or snotty in a way that's like not
Speaker 1: about them, but it still affects them, and it can
Speaker 1: be hard to like grapple with that. And her saying
Speaker 1: I know I screw it up a lot for me
Speaker 1: is very much translating as I cheat on him all
Speaker 1: the time. You know, it's just very much to me,
Speaker 1: like translates to that. But yeah, this this thought process
Speaker 1: that you can't let them know you're smart. This is
Speaker 1: a very real tactic talk to women. It is something
Speaker 1: that my mother was very careful about, because she there
Speaker 1: was There's this point in the movie Stand in the
Speaker 1: Liver where one of the women, the girls really because
Speaker 1: she's a student, her mother tells her boys don't like
Speaker 1: it when you're too smart, and is trying to tell
Speaker 1: her like to not be too good at math and stuff.
Speaker 1: And my mom got so angry watching that and was
Speaker 1: just like saying to me, that is absolute bullshit. You'd
Speaker 1: be as smart as you need to be and be
Speaker 1: yoursel YadA YadA. But she also did like kind of
Speaker 1: impress upon me sometimes you need to manipulate men into
Speaker 1: doing the thing and let them believe that it was
Speaker 1: their idea. Don't boss them because they get very resistant
Speaker 1: to being told what to do. Finesse them, drop hints,
Speaker 1: YadA YadA, you know. And it was the kind of
Speaker 1: advice that I know was well meaning, and I think
Speaker 1: in her scenario is very true, and I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of women that probably works. But I chose
Speaker 1: partners that I didn't need to do that with. I
Speaker 1: saw when my mother gave me that advice. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is true for her because she married my father, who
Speaker 1: is a very controlling, traditional, misogynist gender roles kind of guy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, she probably does have to handle him this way.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to do that with Marshall. I
Speaker 1: didn't do that with Brendan. I married men who I
Speaker 1: knew appreciated that I was really smart and that we're
Speaker 1: willing to to the fact that I was better than
Speaker 1: them at things, you know, while they were better than
Speaker 1: me at other things. So this tactic, He goes on
Speaker 1: to say here, that attitude that we had to wear
Speaker 1: a mask even toward our family.
Speaker 2: It was one I could never understand.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, men and women thought like that,
Speaker 1: and I didn't get it. And now I was afraid
Speaker 1: Doughnut had inherited the same attitude directly from Be and
Speaker 1: her mom, and that we have to wear a mask
Speaker 1: even toward our family. The fact that he can't understand
Speaker 1: it is part of the thing that I really personally
Speaker 1: do relate to. But I also like I am someone
Speaker 1: who I am pretty much the same no matter who
Speaker 1: I am around. I will cut back on the swearing,
Speaker 1: for example, when I am with Marshall's family, but I
Speaker 1: will still say the same comment. I'll just cut the
Speaker 1: swear out of it or replace it with something else.
Speaker 1: I don't change my personality up, you know. And I
Speaker 1: understand that we all wear different hats depending on who
Speaker 1: we're around to a degree, but mine don't change too much.
Speaker 1: It's more like I have the same hat and I
Speaker 1: just changed the hat band. You know what, I mean, however,
Speaker 1: I got pretty lucky in terms of my family and
Speaker 1: Marshall's family, and.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of.
Speaker 1: Folks out there who they were not safe being themselves
Speaker 1: and they needed masks to be safe, to be protected,
Speaker 1: to be accepted or taken care of. And so Carl
Speaker 1: feeling like I don't get it, I bet you don't
Speaker 1: get it. Like, as a woman, I have been lucky
Speaker 1: enough in my life to not really have felt in
Speaker 1: danger enough that I have to put on an act.
Speaker 2: But I am very.
Speaker 1: Well acquainted with the feeling of like, am I going
Speaker 1: to have to do that? This guy is giving me
Speaker 1: the willies a little bit? Like should I keep an
Speaker 1: eye on this situation? Should I pretend that I'm okay
Speaker 1: with flirting.
Speaker 2: With him even though I do not like him, because
Speaker 2: he's going to get mad?
Speaker 1: Like women, especially, we have more demand on us than
Speaker 1: men to be like pliable and accommodating, and we have
Speaker 1: to don a mask, especially historically, to keep ourselves safe.
Speaker 1: And people of color black people are going to understand
Speaker 1: this as well.
Speaker 2: That's what code switching is.
Speaker 1: You have to be a totally different version of yourself
Speaker 1: in the workplace than you get to be at home,
Speaker 1: and Carl, you're a white straight male, like you probably
Speaker 1: have managed a lot of your life to not have
Speaker 1: to do that because it's just not expected of you.
Speaker 1: And I've been lucky and I haven't had to do
Speaker 1: it too much. But it's you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: he doesn't get it. I want to just praise this
Speaker 1: overall personality for that, but I also feel like that's
Speaker 1: just privileged too, you know.
Speaker 2: There there is some like a big part.
Speaker 1: Of that is that as men, as white straight men,
Speaker 1: you often do get to be yourselves and it is
Speaker 1: simply taken and accepted in a way that many other
Speaker 1: people who fall outside those lines have not been allowed
Speaker 1: to do without there being repercussions for it of some kind.
Speaker 1: Whether or not it's dramatic repercussions, it's still sometimes just
Speaker 1: uncomfortable enough that we're not going to do it, you know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's wondering about this with Donut and
Speaker 1: her saying like maybe thinking that she needs to pretend
Speaker 1: that she's dumber than Carl, I'm definitely going to be
Speaker 1: He be anigh on that, And there's something later on
Speaker 1: that I feel like points to a moment of her
Speaker 1: doing this, so then Zev checks in and she says,
Speaker 1: I have you both book for a new show the
Speaker 1: day after tomorrow called Danger Zone with Ripper Wanton. It's
Speaker 1: a round table, a real round table. There will be
Speaker 1: other crawlers and a few other intergalactic celebrities, maybe a politician.
Speaker 1: The show covers a few different hot topics of the day.
Speaker 2: It has an audience.
Speaker 1: Participation segment too, people will call in and ask questions.
Speaker 1: This is uncensored, so be ready for anything. Carl asks
Speaker 1: about whether Vengeance of the Daughter is being produced by
Speaker 1: the Cuatine and she says no. Nobody in our system
Speaker 1: is allowed to run cereals while we run the game.
Speaker 1: These are private groups. Who's the one we contracted with
Speaker 1: an entity called Sensation Entertainment Incorporated, And she says, I
Speaker 1: was dealing with a sac a race of people that
Speaker 1: are pretty common, but I can't tell you if you
Speaker 1: don't already know. So we'll be seeing some sex eventually.
Speaker 1: They keep Donut keeps using clockwork triplicate on Mango, so
Speaker 1: she gets that up to level three. He practices his
Speaker 1: speed fear spell. The problem was the spellman tended to
Speaker 1: make them run away, and if we didn't kill them.
Speaker 1: We didn't get any experience.
Speaker 2: To solve the issue.
Speaker 1: Donut and I came with the first move of what
Speaker 1: I would call our playbook. I gave a name to
Speaker 1: each play, and as soon as it was called, we'd
Speaker 1: follow a set of predetermined reactions. While it was good
Speaker 1: to be adaptive and fluid, the flight, the fight with
Speaker 1: the mold Lion taught me that having a set of
Speaker 1: canned reactions to certain situations could be beneficial. Either of
Speaker 1: us were allowed to call plays, and once someone did,
Speaker 1: we needed to follow the play without question. That way,
Speaker 1: we work together and know what each other were doing.
Speaker 1: The first one I called panic, I'd cast fear and
Speaker 1: Donut would hit it with a missile. It wasn't complicated,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty much what we would naturally what
Speaker 1: would naturally happen anyway, but it was a good start.
Speaker 1: We practiced that and I managed to raise Fear to
Speaker 1: level three, and Mango was level ten and was starting
Speaker 1: to look scary as fuck. He still had a tendency
Speaker 1: to scream at the sight of monsters, but he was
Speaker 1: much better at not turning into a death chicken berserker.
Speaker 1: Until we unleashed him. He had a jump attack. That
Speaker 1: was just amazing. He could now leap twenty feet from
Speaker 1: a complete standstill. He'd fly through the air feet first,
Speaker 1: and his claws would disembowel an enemy before it even
Speaker 1: realized what was happening.
Speaker 2: And I like that.
Speaker 1: Eventually he talks about like, if we run into a
Speaker 1: pack of these things at some point, that's going to
Speaker 1: be really scary, and also that Mango is starting to
Speaker 1: become a little bit of an experience.
Speaker 2: What do you call it? Oh, horder, I don't remember
Speaker 2: the word he uses.
Speaker 1: This comes up later, hog, I think is the word
Speaker 1: he uses. But yeah, because he's so eager to fight,
Speaker 1: so he like runs up all the time and just
Speaker 1: attacks before they even get a chance. So he's the
Speaker 1: one just like leveling up, leveling up, which is very
Speaker 1: funny and it makes a lot of sense because he
Speaker 1: just doesn't get.
Speaker 2: How this works. He just wants to fight because he
Speaker 2: enjoys the fight. He doesn't know.
Speaker 1: About the leveling up thing. I don't think he's got
Speaker 1: that piece together. So they reached the town and there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of the type of creature that Mordecai
Speaker 1: used to be. The average man was about five and
Speaker 1: a half feet tall, and more oddly, they didn't have
Speaker 1: separate arms. They had wings with little finger bones protruding
Speaker 1: from the center joint. It appeared they mostly used their
Speaker 1: large talons as hands. Other NPCs, including humans and orcs,
Speaker 1: also wandered through the town. The town guards were the
Speaker 1: same walking suits of armor. I pulled up the map,
Speaker 1: found the closest to Torio Guild, and we headed.
Speaker 2: Straight for it.
Speaker 1: As we walked, I caught sight of multiple crawlers. Most
Speaker 1: of them saw us and froze. A few waved and
Speaker 1: called out. And I like the fact that they are
Speaker 1: known by other crawlers now takes everything to a different level.
Speaker 1: I mean, they haven't run into that many crawlers to
Speaker 1: begin with, so I don't know how we'd even know.
Speaker 1: But this is just like you're a target now in
Speaker 1: a way that might be optimal for them to take
Speaker 1: you out potentially, So just watch out for that is
Speaker 1: all I'm saying, Carl. Other NPCs, including humans and orcs,
Speaker 1: also wandered through the town. Oh wait, I already read
Speaker 1: that part. Sorry, Oh yeah, here it is. I was
Speaker 1: currently level eighteen, Doughnut was fifteen. Most of these guys
Speaker 1: hovered around ten to twelve and didn't have any stars
Speaker 1: by their names. I wondered how the hell they were
Speaker 1: still alive. And that's surprising to me as well that
Speaker 1: they have managed to get this far. But you know,
Speaker 1: we also have all the guys from like the nursing
Speaker 1: home that didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 2: Ever, So.
Speaker 1: Doughnut starts pointing to this tower, and it's got a
Speaker 1: big sign a Desperado club member's only section plus public pub.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to go clubbing. She looked at Mongo.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go dancing with Mommy? Something tells
Speaker 1: me they won't let Mango in there, I said, as
Speaker 1: I pushed to the door and pushed at the door
Speaker 1: of the tutorial Guild. But yeah, this, uh, this moment,
Speaker 1: it's an I kind of like when these moments are timed.
Speaker 2: By the writer.
Speaker 1: As far as they're about to go into the guild,
Speaker 1: Carl takes a moment to stop and look around, and
Speaker 1: then it says, I had a sudden, inexplicable feeling of
Speaker 1: longing wash over me. I wished this was all over.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take much to make him happy, be it
Speaker 1: said to.
Speaker 2: Her mom It was true.
Speaker 1: I wondered what level we'd have to get to before
Speaker 1: they'd allow us to settle in a town like this,
Speaker 1: and I have to assume that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Ever, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of like, you know, in the
Speaker 1: Hunger Games, for example, the victor they're given like a
Speaker 1: house to live in and a stipend of like extra food,
Speaker 1: and yeah, like they get all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: But also something that doesn't get talked.
Speaker 1: About very much is that they get used in a
Speaker 1: way that isn't seen by people outside of the capital.
Speaker 1: And the one that we most often think about with this,
Speaker 1: if we've read the book, is Phinic because he gets
Speaker 1: prostituted out, pimped out, and nobody knows about it. They ally,
Speaker 1: they know that he is a lothario that's out here
Speaker 1: hooking up with tons of people, but it is not
Speaker 1: framed as that this is being done to him and
Speaker 1: that he has no choice, which is the reality of
Speaker 1: the situation. So, you know, I can't help but wonder, like,
Speaker 1: if you even were to win this game, what do
Speaker 1: they continue to do? They have so much power, they
Speaker 1: might just continue to fuck you, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So Chapter thirteen, Oh my god, you guys I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this like I'm just getting the second
Speaker 1: of these three chapters, and I'm at forty six minutes.
Speaker 2: I am out of control.
Speaker 1: Okay. Mordecai is very excited because they settled in a
Speaker 1: medium town and he wants to do some shit.
Speaker 2: And he has.
Speaker 1: Found a potion that he can drink that keeps him
Speaker 1: from getting absolutely fucking flattened by alcohol. And he is
Speaker 1: also like talks about how good he is at alchemy
Speaker 1: that he studied fungus, YadA, YadA. It's all gone together
Speaker 1: very well. Odette made me spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: learning about that stuff. When we made it to that floor,
Speaker 1: the sixth floor is very thick with vegetation.
Speaker 2: Huh, I said, don't it looked at me sharply.
Speaker 1: The moment he said that she'd understood the significance of
Speaker 1: that last sentence the same moment I did. Neither of
Speaker 1: us said anything, And I'm assuming that what they mean
Speaker 1: is just that, like, Odette knows that he knows a lot,
Speaker 1: and that is why she told them to make him
Speaker 1: their manager, because that's gonna be key, I'm assuming.
Speaker 2: So they start going through their gear.
Speaker 1: And let's see, Oh yeah, there was an announcement with
Speaker 1: patch notes, and there is a collective bidding for sponsorships.
Speaker 1: A bunch of info here that I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into in too much detail because I'm positive that later.
Speaker 2: On it will be more relevant.
Speaker 1: And I actually have to watch my time now. New
Speaker 1: achievement one quadrillion. You are one of the first ten
Speaker 1: crawlers to have achieved one quadrillion views. That means one
Speaker 1: of two things. You're either one of the best crawlers
Speaker 1: in the game, or you're such a hot mess people
Speaker 1: can't wait to see you fail. And he gets a
Speaker 1: gold fan box containing items voted voted for by those
Speaker 1: who follow your progress. Once a box is received, you
Speaker 1: may not open it for thirty hours while the fans
Speaker 1: vote for the contents.
Speaker 2: Which Dona also gets.
Speaker 1: And I have to assume that at least some of
Speaker 1: what she gets are going to be torches, because it's
Speaker 1: just funny now, and he's probably going to get something
Speaker 1: foot related, nail polish. I have to assume they're just
Speaker 1: gonna fuck with them a little bit, but there probably
Speaker 1: is also gonna be good stuff in there, so he gets,
Speaker 1: Like I said, the achievement Yellow Belly chicken shit for
Speaker 1: running Johnny Quest for completing a quest, and then Haji,
Speaker 1: you've completed a quest but in a way unusual enough
Speaker 1: to trigger the Hadjie achievement, and your gold quest box
Speaker 1: has been upgraded to platinum for that, and then Donut
Speaker 1: opens hers. She gets the upgrade, she gets fang caps,
Speaker 1: but because she's not really like a fighter fighter, Mordecai
Speaker 1: recommends putting them on Mango, which doesn't.
Speaker 2: Actually go badly.
Speaker 1: I kind of thought this was gonna be a whole thing,
Speaker 1: and so did Carl, but it's not difficult and he
Speaker 1: pops them on. Later we find out and it's gone
Speaker 1: perfectly well. But let's see, I'm trying to find the
Speaker 1: The teeth caps come in pairs, and your dinosaur can
Speaker 1: wear six pairs of these things. It's something unique to
Speaker 1: his type. Skill potion gave her level three and something
Speaker 1: called acute ears, which didn't just improve her hearing, it
Speaker 1: increased the information that appeared on her minimp regarding not
Speaker 1: yet identified mobs.
Speaker 2: Basically, if she.
Speaker 1: Saw a red dot, it showed her how large it was,
Speaker 1: what type of mob if we had already run across it,
Speaker 1: and some with somewhat reliable accuracy the fang caps and
Speaker 1: let's see, increases melee bite damaged by fifty percent. Each
Speaker 1: bite attack has a twenty five percent chance to inflict
Speaker 1: level five poison. Each bite has a ten percent chance
Speaker 1: to inflict level five level five paralyzed.
Speaker 2: Status, which is pretty dope.
Speaker 1: They are understandably a little worried because Mango still sometimes
Speaker 1: nips at them, but they're gonna do what they're gonna do.
Speaker 1: And let's see, I've been expecting another lottery ticket in
Speaker 1: my lucky bastard box, but instead I received a single
Speaker 1: casino chip. Holy cow, Mordecai said, I've never even seen
Speaker 1: one of these before, and then he also gets a
Speaker 1: scroll of upgrade. Now, this upgrades something that he is wearing,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't get to choose, and he thinks about
Speaker 1: taking everything off and then using it except for one
Speaker 1: item so that he can target it. But Mordecai says, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not the first person to think of that, and
Speaker 1: it has not gone well in the past, so I
Speaker 1: wouldn't bother.
Speaker 2: Also, there's been.
Speaker 1: A mention that he was going to go and buy pants,
Speaker 1: and as soon as he said that, I was like,
Speaker 1: you are fucking not going to buy pants. Carl, I
Speaker 1: am sorry, baby cakes, but that ship that has sailed
Speaker 1: you are on floor three. You have had one quadrillion
Speaker 1: views pantsless.
Speaker 2: You are the pantsless man. Now, that is it.
Speaker 1: That's your brand, and that is a rep I am
Speaker 1: my condolences to you. That does not mean that you
Speaker 1: can't get something that mimics the protection of pants, but
Speaker 1: pants actual pant. No, not in the cards, not for you.
Speaker 1: So he uh gets the upgrade to his boxers plus
Speaker 1: two to constitution, where may cast a level fifteen protective
Speaker 1: shell once every thirty hours, plus five to dexterity, plus
Speaker 1: five to intelligence plus three more for a total of
Speaker 1: plus five to constitution plus the free bawling benefit. Recipients
Speaker 1: of this benefit receive an additional one hundred damage bonus
Speaker 1: to all attacks that originate below the waist, which, considering
Speaker 1: he has many feet based attacks, incredible. In addition, all
Speaker 1: skills that originate from below the waist train twenty percent faster.
Speaker 1: But this means you can't wear pants, and Mordecai is like,
Speaker 1: you did this to yourself, right. You should not have
Speaker 1: said out loud that you wanted pants and donut. Here
Speaker 1: here's the thing that I am going to call out
Speaker 1: as her being really smart and pretending not to be.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is delicious, positively delicious. Don't worry, Carl. Maybe
Speaker 2: the next posse will contain leather chaps. You can still
Speaker 2: wear those.
Speaker 1: Those would really frame out your feet. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: how sexy Carl would be in chaps? He says, God,
Speaker 1: damn it, donut. I personally was like, you, little genius,
Speaker 1: this is a brilliant solution.
Speaker 2: Make the AI think.
Speaker 1: It's humiliating him and doing a thing for its own
Speaker 1: gratification because of his feet, and actually it would be
Speaker 1: hugely fucking helpful.
Speaker 2: Like I personally fully.
Speaker 1: Believe this is a genius move. And she is doing
Speaker 1: her little ditzy routine here and that that is bullshit,
Speaker 1: And the fact that Carl didn't instantly go that is
Speaker 1: such a good idea. As much as I want to
Speaker 1: be like you idiot, how do you not see what
Speaker 1: a genius concept this is. His reaction of being annoyed
Speaker 1: is actually perfect because obviously the point of this is
Speaker 1: the funny quality of him not getting the thing that
Speaker 1: he wants. So if he reacts negatively and behaves as
Speaker 1: if this is the last thing he needs, needs, or wants,
Speaker 1: then it's probably more likely to happen. I love it,
Speaker 1: and I am going to be on the lookout for
Speaker 1: him getting chaps and she will get full credit and
Speaker 1: he is going to realize the chaps are super useful
Speaker 1: and it's going to be great prediction, all right. Mordecai says,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to restain this out loud, but once
Speaker 1: your brand gets established, they start to shift the type.
Speaker 2: Of gear you get, which you know.
Speaker 1: We already knew this, and he says, like the upgrade
Speaker 1: squirrels don't usually they're not usually that good, which it
Speaker 1: makes sense it would be an extra good one because
Speaker 1: they know how much he wants pants, and they knew
Speaker 1: they were going to have to give him an offer
Speaker 1: he couldn't refuse. So then he brings out the poker
Speaker 1: chip one hundred thousand gold coin comp chip may not
Speaker 1: be sold or transferred. You may not redeem this chip
Speaker 1: directly for gold. This chip must be played at the
Speaker 1: high Rollers roulette table or the Wheel four game at
Speaker 1: the Desperado Club casino good luck, and Mordecai says, it's
Speaker 1: not roulette like you know it, And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be awful, Like is it gonna be
Speaker 1: like Russian roulette? God only fucking knows. So Chapter fourteen,
Speaker 1: The moment we stepped outside of Mordecai's guild room, I
Speaker 1: pulled up the town's map and looked for the smallest
Speaker 1: pub I could find. Mango kept biting the air, getting
Speaker 1: the choppers on him and been easier than I expected.
Speaker 1: And he is able to make like sparks pop out
Speaker 1: of his mouth and he uses it. And the first
Speaker 1: time he did it, he pissed himself because he was
Speaker 1: so scared. But then once he gets used to it,
Speaker 1: he's like just doing it all the time.
Speaker 2: I love this. His energy is so chaotic, it's great.
Speaker 2: So most of the shops are closed here.
Speaker 1: They go up to the pub, the one eyed narm wall,
Speaker 1: but the logo was of a fat, bald human unzipping
Speaker 1: his pants, grinning ludely. Oh my god. Now Donut doesn't
Speaker 1: want to go to this one. She wants to go
Speaker 1: to the Hot Schnitzel.
Speaker 2: I think it's that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hot Schnitzel, which also sounds very lude. This
Speaker 1: place will be fine, And I wanted to get a
Speaker 1: reasoning from him about going to this place. Versus where
Speaker 1: she says he says something earlier about like how the
Speaker 1: city becomes a free for all and he wants to
Speaker 1: be settled before then. That's all fine, but I don't
Speaker 1: know why he would pick this place over the other one.
Speaker 2: So let's see.
Speaker 1: The pub had four rooms available, twenty gold each, much
Speaker 1: more expensive than the last place, but we had plenty
Speaker 1: to spare, and I still had no idea whether or not.
Speaker 2: We were being ripped off.
Speaker 1: The human proprietor is named Fits, and you know, bows
Speaker 1: to Dona, calling her your majesty, very excited, and they
Speaker 1: get two rooms, one for Mordecai as well. Let him
Speaker 1: have a drink. I'd thrown ten of my stat points
Speaker 1: into strength and two into constitution. My strength without the
Speaker 1: gauntlet was now thirty. I was literally as strong as
Speaker 1: six regular humans, and that had a way of messing
Speaker 1: with your mind. I grasped the edge of the thick
Speaker 1: wooden table. I squeezed, and I felt the possibility there
Speaker 1: I could rip a hunk of wood off the edge
Speaker 1: if I wanted. I felt the potential of my power.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was just so surreal. I really liked
Speaker 1: this moment, this observation because it had occurred to me
Speaker 1: for a moment how it would feel to have some
Speaker 1: of these abilities on your downtime when you're not fighting mobs,
Speaker 1: and what that would be like. So yeah, I just
Speaker 1: I liked this as just him chilling, you know, just
Speaker 1: lounging for a moment and being like, I could tear
Speaker 1: this thing apart. I could if I felt like it.
Speaker 1: Just the sort of thing that would run through your mind.
Speaker 1: So mongo is kind of bothering some people. There's an
Speaker 1: orc woman in particular that she just ignores. The recap
Speaker 1: show comes on. They each get some food. He gets
Speaker 1: a burger that he says that tastes suspiciously like it
Speaker 1: came from Burger King. We get some recaps. A guy
Speaker 1: with an alligator head. Let's see. They also showed the
Speaker 1: goat lady. She'd entered the dungeon with fifteen goats and
Speaker 1: managed to keep them all alive for a while. Now
Speaker 1: it appeared she only had five left. She remained human,
Speaker 1: and she'd clearly chosen some sort of mage class. Three
Speaker 1: of the burly, brown and white goats remained unchanged, and
Speaker 1: he mentions that he actually worked on a small farm
Speaker 1: that had goats boer goats bread for meat, not dare.
Speaker 1: The bucks were heavy fuckers, heavier than they looked. It
Speaker 1: had taken three of us to lift one of them.
Speaker 1: I also worked on a gold farm. It was only
Speaker 1: for one summer, but it was super fun, and there
Speaker 1: were about sixty goats and I milked them in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then in the afternoon I made cheese to sell
Speaker 1: at a farmer's market, and it was delightful. And her,
Speaker 1: having lost so many goats, I feel sorry for her.
Speaker 1: Sorry for your lost lady. I wonder if if they
Speaker 1: died in such a way that she could eat them afterward.
Speaker 1: Probably depended. The other two remaining goats had changed and she,
Speaker 1: they guess, got enchanted pet biscuits, and some of them
Speaker 1: it worked out.
Speaker 2: And some didn't.
Speaker 1: One of them is in armor and on walking on
Speaker 1: two legs, so it's clear he's gotten something like what
Speaker 1: happened to Donut. It's not clear if it talks, but
Speaker 1: it definitely is like a fighter in.
Speaker 2: The human ish way. I love. It wielded a double
Speaker 2: axe and occasionally screamed for no reason, which is very
Speaker 2: a very funny detail.
Speaker 1: The last goat had transformed into a Satanic monstrosity straight
Speaker 1: from the depths of a nightmare. A hell spawn familiar,
Speaker 1: a horse size, multi breasted, pitch black goat monster that
Speaker 1: looked like it belonged on the cover of one of
Speaker 1: those nineteen eighties heavy metal album covers, one where if
Speaker 1: you played it back, where the world just would tell
Speaker 1: you to murder your grandma. A constant wave of steam
Speaker 1: rose from it and its eyes glow red. We watched
Speaker 1: as the hell spawn charged at a group of hyena
Speaker 1: faced creatures and trampled them to death, and Mordecai is like,
Speaker 1: that is a badass pet. They're really powerful. They're one
Speaker 1: of them, like most top in the game. If she
Speaker 1: gets if she can keep it alive, it's going to
Speaker 1: get high level and it's going to grow wings and
Speaker 1: grow to the size of a dragon eventually.
Speaker 2: I watched in awe as the show aired a quick
Speaker 2: fifteen second montage of Mango defending Donut.
Speaker 1: And there's this moment here where Carl reflects on the
Speaker 1: fact that Mongo's show of enthusiasm it used to be
Speaker 1: him like bouncing and squeaking, but now it's a jump
Speaker 1: and a grunt, and it's got a real different sort
Speaker 1: of effect. It was cute before, but now it's very intimidating.
Speaker 1: I thought it was surprising that it's like we only
Speaker 1: get let's see, I'm trying to go back here. She
Speaker 1: had five left, and I'm trying to get some talking
Speaker 1: about the goat lady because he says the two remaining
Speaker 1: goats had changed and there are three that like are
Speaker 1: just still regular goats.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if.
Speaker 1: She fed them the biscuits, uh, because remember he was
Speaker 1: told by Mordecai that do it in a sheltered area
Speaker 1: so that if it doesn't go well, it.
Speaker 2: Won't hurt you, you know. But let's see.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so she got three and they show the
Speaker 1: third biscuit didn't go well for her or several of
Speaker 1: her goats. So maybe she didn't do it in a
Speaker 1: protected area. And that is part of what happened to
Speaker 1: some of her other goats. Is like, whatever she fed
Speaker 1: it caused it to go nuts and kill.
Speaker 2: Some of the others.
Speaker 1: That's a shame. We don't get details about that, and
Speaker 1: I do want to know what happened.
Speaker 2: I'm curious. But so let's see.
Speaker 1: Uh. While Doughnut still had more followers than me, my
Speaker 1: view count had caught up with hers. I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: which one of us had hit quadrillion first. I didn't
Speaker 1: know if she'd noticed this or not. I hope not.
Speaker 2: And then Mordecai.
Speaker 1: Starts talking about the themed floors. It's the equivalent of
Speaker 1: opening an entire theme park filled with rides and roller
Speaker 1: coasters without ever having tested a single one of them.
Speaker 1: The last season, the fourth floor was inside some living creature.
Speaker 1: They were walking around it in testines and it got
Speaker 1: an infection and the walls started caving in. That didn't
Speaker 1: play well with viewers, and they won't do it again.
Speaker 2: None of that was intentional.
Speaker 1: That was like an unexpected side effect these This is
Speaker 1: just like the idea that they would do this without
Speaker 1: testing It is so bonkers, but also feel so true
Speaker 1: because sometimes these big businesses and they do things that
Speaker 1: you're just like, who thought that was a good idea?
Speaker 1: So this there's a orc lady named Gum Gum tries
Speaker 1: to talk to them. I really need your help. No
Speaker 1: fuck off, Mordecais head. I did actually literally laugh out loud.
Speaker 2: When I was listening to the audiobook, and he's like.
Speaker 1: Look, Carl, I get it, but there are going to
Speaker 1: be people all over these pubs trying to get you
Speaker 1: to do quests, and we're not fucking doing anymore on
Speaker 1: this floor. Like he says, if you look on her
Speaker 1: mini map, there's probably a little star on top of
Speaker 1: her icon. There's not, it's just a white dot. Well,
Speaker 1: not all quests show up on the map.
Speaker 2: Now we're all going to go to bed.
Speaker 1: The fact that there isn't a star makes me think
Speaker 1: that maybe whatever's going on here isn't.
Speaker 2: Actually like a quest from the game.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if this is a different thing. But he
Speaker 1: looks over and sees the orc woman start crying, just
Speaker 1: put her hands, her head in her hands and start crying,
Speaker 1: And I love this. At this point one might expect
Speaker 1: I waited for Mordecai to go to bed, and then
Speaker 1: I sneaked out of my room, went to Gumgum New
Speaker 1: York and asked her what she needed help with.
Speaker 2: And as I was listening to this, I was like, that.
Speaker 1: Is what I would expect. I fully expected that is
Speaker 1: that not what I'm getting. And then before he even
Speaker 1: quite reached the end of the sentence, I was like, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's still what I'm getting. I'm pretty sure and then
Speaker 1: he says one would be right, and I was like, aha, almost.
Speaker 1: I told Donah I needed to use the restroom, and
Speaker 1: I went back out there and Gum Gum is already gone.
Speaker 1: Mordecai is like, she left already. Dude, I get it,
Speaker 1: but you can't save everybody. They're gonna be baiting you
Speaker 1: and they're going to try and play on your emotions
Speaker 1: to get you to join in situations that you don't
Speaker 1: need to be part of. I didn't respond. I returned
Speaker 1: to the room. Did you get the quest? Donut ask,
Speaker 1: Holy shit? Am I that predictable? Sometimes? And she went
Speaker 1: to sleep. So Mordecai, next day, you guys need to
Speaker 1: shop and then we're gonna grind find a neighborhood boss
Speaker 1: to kill, and before dark we get back here and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna go to the Desperado Club, but you
Speaker 1: do not go without an escort.
Speaker 2: I need to be there.
Speaker 1: So they go into a shop and there is a
Speaker 1: skyfowl behind the counter named Edge Dancer level thirty. Mordecai
Speaker 1: is explaining about how these shops work. Always leave the
Speaker 1: negotiations to Donut. She'll get you the best prices and
Speaker 1: sell your stuff for the most. So let's see coconut
Speaker 1: twenty one goal. This is food. I think humans do
Speaker 1: something with it. They know, really, that's the tooltip that
Speaker 1: pops up, and it's done in the audiobook in a
Speaker 1: totally different voice than anything else. It is not the
Speaker 1: same as the Ai voice. It's a different voice, which
Speaker 1: makes sense. As Mordecai explains, these descriptions are input by
Speaker 1: the shopkeepers, so they can't actually lie, but they can
Speaker 1: exaggerate what something is for. And if you keep your
Speaker 1: charisma high, you can usually get an accurate descriptor. But
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to push for it once you train
Speaker 1: it enough. Most items will give you a warning if
Speaker 1: the description is too overstated. And Edge Dancer chimes in,
Speaker 1: you would know. Skyfall will never cheat our customers, and
Speaker 1: Morkai is like, uh, I was a Skyfall and I
Speaker 1: know for a fact that anybody without wings you are
Speaker 1: always trying to fuck over because you all are xenophobic
Speaker 1: as hell.
Speaker 2: And I found that so funny. So they sell a
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: Of course, Dona is absolutely incredible with her negotiating, and
Speaker 1: this is when Carlo says to her, like I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I think you had this planned out when
Speaker 1: you pick this class, and she's like, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: I did. I knew we'd be selling everything in this floor,
Speaker 1: so I picked that merchant class. Just be interested and
Speaker 1: call me princess and money bags for nothing. And he's
Speaker 1: like that was money pit because we spent way too much,
Speaker 1: and she's just like, well, the investment paid off. Think
Speaker 1: of general stores like seven eleven's. They're convenience stores you
Speaker 1: buy as a last resort. They're fine to sell stuff
Speaker 1: to you because they'll take almost anything, but even with discounts,
Speaker 1: you'll pay three times as much for basics. So if
Speaker 1: you want potions, go to a potions store, and if
Speaker 1: you want spells, go to a spells store. And sometimes
Speaker 1: guilds sell stuff too, so that is accurate to a
Speaker 1: lot of games as well, where if you go to
Speaker 1: like the main store, you're gonna pay out the ass
Speaker 1: for things, and then when you try and sell that
Speaker 1: exact same thing back to them, it's worth literally a
Speaker 1: fifth what you paid, or it's very annoying. They get
Speaker 1: a magical pet carrier, which is essentially a poke ball,
Speaker 1: as we have heard mentioned before, and Mango like it
Speaker 1: makes him sleep because now that he's gotten bigger. He
Speaker 1: feels like he has to guard them when they're sleeping,
Speaker 1: even though it's not necessary when they're in.
Speaker 2: A protected room.
Speaker 1: So he isn't sleeping, and that is making his stats
Speaker 1: go down because he's not getting any rest.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was kind of an interesting detail,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So let's see when Dona pulled it from her inventory,
Speaker 1: she could activate it and Mango would get zapped in there.
Speaker 1: He'd sleep and regain his strength while he was in
Speaker 1: the cube, and she would call. She could call him
Speaker 1: back with a press of a button. And he says later,
Speaker 1: you might get mounts that work in a similar fashion.
Speaker 1: And I didn't think about mounts as a separate thing.
Speaker 1: I was thinking that Mango would be a mount, which
Speaker 1: he may also be. But so it's possible for both
Speaker 1: of them to be mounted, and for her to be
Speaker 1: on Longo's back and Carl to be on a horse.
Speaker 2: Perhaps.
Speaker 1: Plane mounts tend to have low life points and little
Speaker 1: to no personality. You can have as many as you want,
Speaker 1: but they're expensive and you have to feed them. Mounts
Speaker 1: don't level or grow stronger, so the next few hours
Speaker 1: they go and grind, kicking and killing things the neighborhood
Speaker 1: boss fight could have gone south pretty quickly, but her
Speaker 1: ears skill is very helpful, and they are able to
Speaker 1: have mango like the clockwork thing. One of them grabs
Speaker 1: dynamite and heads into it and it really works quite well,
Speaker 1: and they're like, Okay, this is going in our playbook
Speaker 1: for sure. And then they see he says, I spied
Speaker 1: a single white dot of an NPC in a large
Speaker 1: group of x's on the map one block over, and
Speaker 1: as they get toward it, it smells really bad. And
Speaker 1: they get the announcement from the AI.
Speaker 2: Pile of dead hookers.
Speaker 1: And they all look like they've been picked up and twisted,
Speaker 1: and of course the way this looks, the assumption is
Speaker 1: that this orc woman did it, but it becomes clear
Speaker 1: quickly that she is collecting their bodies, and she's asked
Speaker 1: was asking for their help because she is trying to
Speaker 1: find what is doing this.
Speaker 2: She's like, we.
Speaker 1: Don't know who these women are, what is killing them,
Speaker 1: but they're not from this town. And we find them
Speaker 1: in alleys and their blood is removed from their bodies,
Speaker 1: but not.
Speaker 2: All the blood.
Speaker 1: We pile them up and the street urchins take care
Speaker 1: of them. But We find new ones every day, sometimes
Speaker 1: just one or two, but sometimes, like last night, it's
Speaker 1: a lot. The skyfowl don't care as long as we
Speaker 1: move the bodies out.
Speaker 2: The guards don't work at night.
Speaker 1: But these were people and they're just dead and I
Speaker 1: don't know. Why can you help me? New quest the
Speaker 1: sex workers who fell from the heavens and if they
Speaker 1: solve this they get a silver quest box, which Donut
Speaker 1: is indignant that it does not gold, And of course
Speaker 1: Carl tries to be like, I'll think it over, but.
Speaker 2: He's helping.
Speaker 1: Come now, we're not fools. We know where this is going.
Speaker 1: So all right, guys, I'm gonna wrap. Almost able to
Speaker 1: talk normally now. I'm fucking thirteen minutes over time.
Speaker 2: That's my fault.
Speaker 1: I am very excited to keep reading. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys are enjoying the coverage. And until next time, to
Speaker 1: Loo motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled Network podcast