Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book four, The Gate of the
Feral Gods, chapters six through eight. In these chapters, it
turns out that these shape shifters are up to something
not even really not clear on the overall plan here,
but I really was delighted with the reveal that they're infiltrating,
because if you've got shape shifters, right, I mean, you've
gotta you gotta do something like this. 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 today along with rub and Seraphim
and his tea and Eduardo. So it's a big group
and it's lovely. Oh they're talking about the wandering in guys,
and Saraphim says, the first audiobook is forty eight hours long.
That is bonkers. Yeah, that's huge. So I'm really feeling
like kind of vindicated in a way that it's maybe
not quite fair. But y'all remember how like baffled I
was back when Carl was kind of he was calling
Kotcha's shape shifting a billity. I think the words he
used were quote not very useful, And at the time
I was like, are you fucking high? What do you mean?
That's a super useful skill. There is so much that
you could do with that. And then now we are
here in this place where that's the whole thing. You know,
We've got shape shifters left and right, and Katcha's shaped
shifting skill is proving to be kind of fucking clutch,
to be honest, like this whole the way that they
have her spying is she turns herself into pieces of
the architecture of the building so that she can just
watch them and their movements in order to shout out
to our friends in the chat. I mean, I'm really
feeling a I maintain that it's surprising how Carl didn't
think through how much this thing could come in handy
for them. Seraphim says, well, at the time, Katcha wasn't
that good at it, No, but like the point was
that he was mad at her for spending the coupon
on a table that would make it easier for her
to do and like for me, if the skill, like
it's not that he was saying like, it just felt
to me that the words that he said were a
skill that wasn't that useful, and like, maybe she's not
that good at it, but that is not the same
thing as the skill not being useful, and if she's
trying to upgrade her ability on it, like that's the
definition of what you're supposed to be doing in this game.
It's just that she was behind in her development and
on her skills overall because of the way that the
team functioned while she was with Hecla, and how nobody
really advanced very far because they let Hecla do all
of the work. So it just seemed very shortsighted to me.
You know. There was just this feeling in him of like,
I don't even know what you'd use that for, you know,
And he began to get some great ideas that he
expanded on where he was like giving her that metal backpack,
you know, to enhance her mass and everything, so he
like began to see it as useful. But it was
just wild to me in the beginning how he really
just didn't seem to understand all of the potential that
was there with that. Because if I had been Carl
and I got a person who could do this in
my crew, I would fixate on them getting really good
at that instead, because it seems like Carl Loki wanted
her to sort of ignore that and just like be
a tank and the way she can work as both
is kind of the thing, right, Like, I don't know
it just he he responded to it the exact opposite
way that I would have responded to it, where I
would have been really pressuring her to get good at
it because instantly I like thinking it through. We've met
a lot of different races, so I don't know what
all is out there, but like shapeshifter would be a
real tempting one for me if I were going to
have to pick a race. It's just something that I
think comes in handy so often, especially considering that the
AI actually says that you are the thing you're in
it that you are imitating. If you do it well enough,
that is crazy advantageous. So yeah, it's just I'm glad
that he has gotten to a point where he is
seeing it, because it was just he was very dismissed
of it. You know, Michael's in the chat saying he
dismissed the ability, just as I'm saying he was dismissive
of it. He was thinking more in terms of combat ability,
not infiltration exactly. It was just a very like he
just wasn't really using his imagination, which is weird to say,
because Carl can be super imaginative about a lot of things,
and in this respect, it just sort of felt like
it was almost disrespectful, how completely he acted as if
it weren't worth anything, you know. So yeah, I just
I'm excited to see how useful this is. And I
really wonder, like how much more it's going to play
into things, because it seems like we're going to be
leaning into it a lot for this particular mission or
this floor overall, I guess. So we're dealing at the
beginning of this chapter with that second sun that rises
that makes the temperature go up twenty degrees, and apparently
they don't put up that like awning when the temperature
goes up. It's only for when there's a sandstorm. Honestly,
I don't really think that's smart. I feel like we
should just put it up, guys. What's the harm? I
don't know. Outside of Town, the Thorny Devil mobs were
replaced with something else. These were donut sized, fast moving
things called dune scythes. There were a lot of them
outside the town's walls. They're red dots swarming about. I
had no real desire to go out and face them,
but I knew fighting them would be inevitable. We're gonna
need to install air conditioning on the royal chariot, I said,
as I leaned back against the back of the Adobe building.
I love the idea of them creating air conditioning and
like selling it to the townsfolk, because considering the climate,
I feel like that would be really useful and would
be very valued and also potentially get people on your
good side. So you know, I'm sorry. Michael lives in
the chat and says I think Patcha also mentioned in
the previous book that Carl is that Carl also tended
to dismiss ideas he didn't come up with himself, especially
if they endangered people other than himself. That's an interesting point.
Maybe that is it something to think about. So we
have Katcha, who I think he says that she's imitating
like a drain pipe or something. The guy who just
left his name, Henrik. He's a ra level thirty but
he showed some sort of id in a town full
of shape shifters, it makes sense to have extra security,
I guess. Which it's funny considering that it hadn't occurred
to me when she said this, and then later it
turning out that there are shape shifters infiltrating already. This
apparently is not doing like any good. And there's also
a mention here as like each of them are gathering
this information that Mordecai is at a bar and he
is mentioning the sighting of one of those like toad creatures,
like an army of them, And at the time I
was sort of like, what what does that mean? Is
this like something he really saw or but it wasn't
mentioned to us? And then later on it turns out
this is all part of this like narrative that we're
setting into place so that when he uses his little
beanie baby, we can pretend that that one frog that
they all saw, this one toad is actually part of
a whole group, but for some reason he's the only
one that was visible at all. Let's see, we learned
from the toe's barkeeper that the citizens did not rest
during the two hour night. Instead, they mostly slept in
the hot hours before the sandstorm started, and with less
people out in the streets, now was the best time
to infiltrate the building. And even so, Carl is thinking
to himself, this is a terrible idea. But short of
going in there and just killing all the camel NPCs,
I couldn't see an alternative, not when we were under
such a time crunch. Now, I think probably going in
and killing all of them would be in the long
run a bad idea because I don't know how many
there are. But it's possible that once the alarm goes up,
you get beset and there's too many for you to handle. However,
considering that killing the NPCs is supposed to be like
one of the best things that you can do for
them according to the book, a part of me is like,
maybe you should just do that. I understand not wanting to,
but I don't know, man, it might just be the
best and easiest, most efficient way. I don't know. So,
long story short, that is not what they do. And
let's see. Oh right, there's the two guys who are
both sobered up now, and they are one of them
is introverted and way easier to deal with when he's sober,
and the other one is just kind of a dick
no matter what. I was pretty sure the guy never
had a job in his life. He wouldn't shut up
about cartoons I'd never heard of. When he found out
Katcha was from Iceland, he started calling her lazy town
I had no idea why I've never heard of this either,
you know, I'm sure it's the thing. Apparently Don't not
like knows a lot about night Rider, which engages him,
even though she says she hates the show it's listed
as despite pretending to hate the show. So apparently Carl
thinks that she's just doing that to annoy this dude
because he sucks so bad, which frankly I do understand.
Let's see, the second floor of the town Hall was
ringed by exterior balconies. Kachia said. The one facing the
alley was attached to an office that appeared to be empty.
So they're sneaking, and unfortunately like these dudes. It's so
funny because later on one of them says something like
is it always like this? And Carl says, like what?
And it's clearly what this guy means is that I
like he has not engaged in any real combat of
any kind. So having the stress of a plan that
they are enacting instead of it just being fly by
the seat of your pants and try to stay alive
until the end of the floor, but you actually have
a plan that you're following through. The stress is like
almost too much for him. He's like ready to throw up,
And honestly, I get that, you know. I feel like,
fly by the seat of your pants and just stay
alive until the floor closes is probably the way that
I would be playing, just because I mean, I'm dropped
into this like hell escape situation. I'm not in great
physical shape. I'm not somebody with like particular skill sets
in combat or anything like that, So I think I
would probably be like just panic flailing a lot of
the time, you know what I'm saying. But there does
come a point where it's like, yeah, okay, but you're
on like the what is this the fifth floor? Now?
What floor are they on? I've totally lost count, but
I mean it's time. It's time for you to fucking
get a grip, you know. So let's see. There were
multiple offices on this level, and only one appeared to
be occupied. Three roaming guards moved through the hallways, though
they hit the downstairwell and disappeared from my map. Let's
wait until the roaming guards return and go upstairs and
then we'll move. Leuis be ready. I rifled through the desk,
looting everything that wasn't bolted down. And this is when
Kotcha gets in touch and she's like, you guys should
go now because they're taking a smoke break, and Carl
hesitates because this isn't the plan. But then she's like,
oh wait, there's a shift change. They're all going to
be milling around for like an hour before they get settled.
So unless you want to wait for an hour, you
need to go now. I love this. We can't disguise
our steps, so walk with calm purpose, not fast, not slow.
I don't know what that means, Farris said, just follow me.
And it's funny because honestly, I mean, of course I
understand what Carl means, but it is a difficult thing
to describe. You know, it is like you know what
when you see it, but trying to imitate it when
that's not what's happening is a tricky It's a tricky
energy to capture. There are two guards on the other
side of this door, so we have to do it quick.
Donut will cast her whole spell. You'll cast your cloud spell.
You have to wait until after their dots turn red.
I'll take care of that. Don't step in front of
the hole in the door. We don't want them seeing you.
Once they're down, I'll try to open the door. So
they do this and it all works great. But when
Carl puts his arm through the door, there is no
bolt to turn or handle or anything. It's just a
key hole. And at first he's like, I guess I
just have to blow it up, and Donut says, don't
be so dramatic, Carl. And it's so funny because just
as he was saying in this audio book, I guess
I'm gonna have to blow it up, I immediately thought,
can't you just put a hole in the part where
there's a lock? And instantly she does that, and like, guys,
my brain was going, can't you just put a hole
in the part where there's a lock. And then I
followed the thought up with I guess if they could
do that, they would have been doing it the whole time.
And so when we get this moment of her doing it,
and then Carl asks, well, what the fuck why didn't
we just do this? The whole time I was cracking
up because it was like he was reading my mind
as he wrote this scene. But we find out later
that there's a good reason we don't do it this way.
Not that we knew that, not that like Donut was aware,
but trying to put the door back together, like it doesn't.
It doesn't come back right in place. It's off by
a little bit, which means that you can't even close
the door because the whole you know, which, in some
circumstances not being able to use that door again might
not be a problem, but for them, they needed to
be able to close it behind them. So let's see
Katya from outside as this whole thing is popping off
and it's attracting a bunch of attention. Is like, hey,
there's like fifteen camels coming in now, so be ready
for that. The moment it happened, I realized why we
should never use the whole spell. I'd either pushed the
door closed to you tightly or not tightly enough, but
when the missing part reappeared, the bolts weren't perfectly lined
up with how they'd been before. The door cracked loudly
and then swung back open. Two hunks of metal, pieces
of the actual bolts, I realized, fell to the floor.
The whole side of the door looked as if I'd
hit it with a small charge. Well that was unexpected, Carl,
What did you do? I love that? So he uses
a smoke bomb again. I returned my gaze to the room,
focusing on the two passed out drummedarians. Only they weren't
dromedarians anymore. What the shit these were changelings. They both
reverted to their faceless humanoid form. The one I'd seen
just a moment ago playing cards was passed out on
a floor, cards spread all around him, only now he
was much smaller. His head pulsed with an odd sapphire luminescence,
almost like a jellyfish. This sounds rad I really want
to see see this on screen somehow. And he has
a fifty times fifty second timer over his head, which
is a lot shorter than they were planning on These
guys being knocked out CHANGELINGK Principal level forty nine. This
mob is exhausted, and then we get this really weird
AI description about old women who collect things and grow
more and more obsessed with the things they haven't collected
than the things they have, and how that is the
curse and driving force of the changeling principle. And honestly, guys,
I don't get it. I'll be real with you. I'm
not even gonna stop and analyze this right now. It's weird,
but suffice to say, Carl gets in touch with Mordecai,
and Mordecai is like, oh my fucking god, the place
is filled with shape shift. I should have seen this coming,
And honestly I feel the same way now. I'm wondering
if all the camels are shape shifters. No wonder everybody
hates you, guys. They're rare. It's an old story I
haven't seen used in a long long time. They're a
sect of change link culture. Sometimes they give them new
special powers cultish kind of like those city elves from
the third floor, but less apocalyptic and more power or hungry.
They are obsessed with getting a full library. Changelings can
only change into something they physically touched, so they seek
out rare creatures. Okay, I'm realizing that this I've read
this part twice and I don't know how I miss
this part. But so they're just looking for things that
they can, like become interesting. I wonder if that was
part of like doughnuts appeal. But Mordecai tells Carl, get
the brain, the glowing part. If you kill one, take
the head, I can make a cool potion from it.
And I really want to know what kind of potion
you can make, because if it is like a shape
shifting potion, that would be very fun. I would be
interested to see Carl change into somebody else, especially because
he has become so recognizable. That might be useful sometimes,
you know. So yeah, this suh. I strongly suspected whatever
was going on right now was a mirror of what
happened over in the bactory in town. The crawlers had
fucked up the city Hall quest, just like we were
in the middle of doing. The original plan was to
get in and out without being noticed or hurting any NPCs,
and if we had to do something with the collateral,
we had a plan to shift the blame. But with
this changeling fuckery, we couldn't afford to be diplomatic. So
they have to kill them. He takes the heads and
I love when he tells Lewis to kill one. Lewis
is like, he's gonna wake up as soon as I
hit him, and Carl is like, oh my god, are
you fucking serious? Which the idea that like, oh, he's
gonna wake up if you kill him enough, then he won't.
I mean, just you know, what do you expect to
do here, bro, because he's waking up either way. Just
it couldn't be an easier ask to kill him while
he's passed out. That's so embarrassing that he won't even like,
you know, and he finally does, but it's just like
the fight he puts up is so troubling to me.
I feel like this is a problem. And let's see
donut kill him the moment he wakes up, a full
power missile to the head. Just make sure they get
a few hits in, and Doughnut says, he's boss level strong.
What if it doesn't work. Fearris took his mace and
smashed it as hard as he could, directly into the CHANGELNK.
Just as the timer ran out, Lewis smashed him with
the bat. Both of them pummeled it in the head
a few times. The spell enhanced the damage for several seconds,
but they barely caused the creature's health to fall at all.
That sucks. That sucks. Oh my god. So she uses
a magic missile boom done and just this, even though
they did no damage, causes Lewis to go up two levels.
You guys, Like, honestly, it's almost like when you're in
the beginning of a game and you get all of
this crazy experience, like at the start that has you
leveling up every five minutes, and eventually, because it's sort
of proportional, that slows down, so you're not getting the
dopamine hit of leveling up every five minutes anymore. But like,
it feels like these guys they had to fight to
not level up, considering how easy this was. Just now,
you know, I mean, Jesus Christ, this is where Carl
goes down that hole underneath the building, and let's see,
he picks up a map the Necropolis of Answer. You've
discovered the catacomb plans. The information has been added to
your map and the map of everyone in your party.
Shit said as the scroll dissipated into dust. And I
had a moment here of not understanding why he thinks
like this sucks, you know, because he thinks after this
like fuck me, and I was. I think it's actually
a reaction to how intricate the map is, because it
says that made the Iron Tangle look like child's play.
But later on we find out like this map was
for somebody else's mission, and the fact that it disintegrated
like that means that he has to like draw it
out for them or Kotcha does. Either way, it's just
like a huge cramp in the balls. Let's see, Kotya.
Something odd just happened. Two of the level thirty camels
wanted into the town hall, but another camel stopped them.
It was one of the waster guards. They fought, and
the guard camel killed them both. He dragged their bodies inside.
Did they stay camels when they died? Yeah, why, I'll
explain later. Honestly, you could just say it now. I
don't think it takes that long. It's fine. A lot
of the camels are changelings. It turns out, Boom Done,
what I thought was the end of the chamber was
actually the boundary line to the subterranean zone. But I
also noticed something else. The white dot of an NPC,
and it turns out that there is this dwarf not
dwarf gnome who is being held prisoner down here, and
his name is Win and he is a flesh mechanic,
which is a really fun name. I really like that description.
And Win is the great and favored uncle of Commandant
Caine of the Dreadnought Wasteland. He is a flesh mechanic,
a healer gifted with the ability to bring the long
dead back to life, if only temporarily. He is being
held as hostage by the Dromedarians as a guarantee of peace,
which he's not being treated well at all, so this
really sucks. He says something like, who are you going
to pretend to be today? My mother? Perhaps, which the
idea of transforming into somebody's like loved one. This is
something that I find really frustrating in a lot of
storylines that have shape shifter characters is that the whole
thing will sort of like revolve around we are trying
to convince a person to do something by tugging at
their heartstrings and making them think they're talking to a lot,
you know, And it's one thing if they don't realize
that there is a shape shifter around. You know. It's
one thing when they are being legitimately tricked into believing
they're looking at a ghost something like that, you know.
But I always find it really frustrating when a person
transforms in front of the individual that they are trying
to trick, because then it's sort of like, oh, I
can't say no to my mom, and it's like, that's
but you just saw that. You know, that's not you know,
and I know it's supposed to be like well, but
psychologically it can get in your head. Now. If anything,
I'd be so much more pissed because they're like shitting
on my memory of somebody by transforming into that person.
It would make me less inclined to cooperate because that
would be such a disgusting thing to do. So I
just find this like really annoying as a plot device,
and it comes up a surprising amount in different properties, guys.
And it's something that is used especially in a lot
of the anime that I have seen. And in one piece,
it's like, you know, mister two transforms into a hot
chick or Nammy specifically, and Sanji is like utterly disarmed,
and I just don't have any tolerance for it. If
you just saw them as themselves when they transform, it
shouldn't have any effect on you. It just doesn't make
any fucking sense to me. So you know, it's just oh,
Sarah m is mentioning Vin from mis Born. Yeah, doesn't
buy it for a second. But then there's another whole
thing with that where that she does buy that I
found frustrating. So I don't know. Michael says, the only
time I buy is when they're doing it to show
that they were actually said person the whole time. Yeah,
that's different, you know. But it's like this, He's like,
who are you going to transform into today my mother?
And I'm like, was he supposed to believe that you
had captured his mother and brought her down here? Or
were you just turning into his mother trying to convince him?
I guess it would depend like maybe you could transform
into his mom and then have another of these things
like bring you down here in shackles and make like
you had captured his mom and that you were going
to torture her if he didn't cooperate, Perhaps I suppose,
but uh, you know, it just I wasn't buying it.
So this dude, he says, the last dose hasn't worn off.
If you feed me where it might kill me this time.
I can only hope. And then when Carl gets a
good look at him, he was elderly, he was not
wearing the red hat, and he looked sickly and pale.
He had scabs on his face, and he looked half
starved to death. And I just felt so bad for
this little guy. How long has he been down here?
You know? If I can get him out of those change,
we can take him talk ourselves onto the flying platform platform.
As if he was reading my mind. The system gave
me an update, new quest, free Win from his bondage.
And this goes bad almost instantly. These other crawlers come in,
and as they are coming in, Winn gets a look
at Carl and he assumes this is Henrik transformed into
another being, that he chose a human, and that it's
so it's this weird thing where what Wind does here
is not actually him trying to sabotage anybody. Really, he
genuinely believes what he is saying, although he knows he
doesn't have that map, but he does believe that, like
this is a bad man actually, and so I just
I felt frustrated because it was like, what could you
possibly say to convince him that you are Henrik? Like,
if a shape shifter is labeled as a shape shifter
in the system, if they're labeled as the thing they
are impersonating, there's really no fucking way, and that is insidious.
Maybe there's like a drug that you can take that
unshifts them, that you can drink and if it doesn't
do anything to you, be like see, but you know
that's a whole other thing. So anyway, these guys come
in and there's a student of Banana costume who's yelling, you, bastard,
you destroyed the map, which isn't technically true. He has
the map and everyone in his party has the map,
so it's not destroyed and you need to calm the
fuck down. And now we're fucked. There were two maps
and we lost both of them. So this is when
Wynn says, it's not really a human, he's a change thing.
He's torturing me. If you kill me, you will have
access to the map. I have it, you can take
it from me. And Carl is trying to tell them
not to do it, and Lothig pulls his spear out
and kills this thing without even a second thought. It's
extremely like bothersome to me that this guy believes what
the gnome says instantaneously, Like sure, I am going to
need you to engage another brain cell here. NPCs are
not necessarily fucking telling you the truth, like you know
what I'm saying. Guys, I just wow immediately doing what
he says. How how are you still alive? It's anyway.
I love that the spider guy is a freelance psychiatrist.
He's only level twenty three, like everybody here is low
level twenty five, and it is another thing that's really worrying.
So Carl gets an achievement for failing the quest within
five minutes of getting it, and they just have to
blast their way out of here. The walls shook, followed
by a secondary explosion that was even bigger. Part of
the ceiling caved in. Experienced notifications scrolled by. I down
to health potion and the pain in my head eased.
I knew from experience it'd take a full minute for
my hearing to return. Both Fearius and Lewis were on
the ground. Lewis was screaming, his hands to his ears,
burn marks across his forearms, and just the fact that like,
look I am by no means trying to say that
this guy is because if I lost my hand, if
my eardrums blew out, I would also react this way.
But it's the kind of thing that feels for me, like,
if you haven't figured this out by now, if you
haven't like learned how to cope, I have a lot
less sympathy, you know. That's the thing. It's you're when
you say that somebody's being a baby, usually what that
means is that you are acting like a delicate little child, right,
And that's literally what I feel like here is like
he's being a baby, like it's his first day playing
the game, Like he's a fucking nube, you know, And
how are these guys going to be fucking It's like,
even if you level up, there comes a point where
it's not about your level anymore. It's about the fact
that you have any goddamn sense, And it seems like
maybe not, I don't know, he has to like tell
him to take a health potion. Why does he have
to fucking tell you that anyway? So this is when
he pulls out the bean bag, the beanie baby and
pulls the tag and this poor little dude, I felt
so bad for him. He comes out and it's like,
what am I doing here? And you know, a reminder
about this being actual summoning, it makes sense that sometimes
they just fight you because you're the one there and
they're like, what the fuck is happening? So yeah, I
would also probably lash out. But eventually Carl is like,
can you just like turn right and hop over the
city wall? You summon me just to make me run
like a little bitch, Yes, hurry go. The frog only
had ten seconds left. He grumbled, but hopped out onto
the street, landing in front of a pair of surprised camels.
He bounded to the right, sailing into the air, crashing loudly.
He hopped once more and out of sight. And the
fact that he only has ten seconds is that's the
part that I was sort of like, oh man, it
could be really easy for this whole thing to get blown,
which later on Kotsha talks about all of the ways
that this could be found out and explained, And honestly,
it's the kind of thing where like she's right in
the sense that there are many pieces that one could
put together to logically explain, but also there's like that
sense for me of how many people fall for bullshit
that can be easily proven to not be what it
looked like and cling to it despite the fact that
it's easily disproven. What I'm saying like, I am not
sure just because you can pick it apart that anybody will,
or that enough people will that it will really turn
into a problem for them, because it's remarkable how much
folks are willing to buy into certain theories despite the
fact that nothing seems to be supporting the theory. There's
no evidence whatsoever, So I don't know. We'll see the
frog jumps off disappears, and let's see don't puddle jumps
us all the way down the street, right where the
street started to curve with the wall. WHOA, that was
way further than I expected. I wish you'd done that
last time. It lets me send us really far now,
Donnat said, also looking around. A female camel standing about
ten feet away looked in our direction and startled at
our sudden appearance. Oh my, what happened, Doughnut asked, sounding innocent.
The camel paused uncertainly. Her eyes focused on fear Us,
who was being held up by Lewis. I pulled out
an empty bottle of whiskey from my inventory and pretended
to drink in an attempt to look like we just
wandered over here from a nearby bar. She seemed to relax.
She blinked twice and said the town hall was attacked
by frog creatures. Nobody knows where they came from. I
saw one with my own eyes. He jumped to the
top of the house right there and then leapt straight
out of town. Of course, Doughnut has to do a
like frog suck. Am I right? And this is when
katcha let's see the frog con isn't gonna last. The
world is too small to pull that sort of scalem off.
They're going to go out there and find no other
frog creatures, or worse, they'll find that stuffed animal, and
then they're gonna realize the only ones who mentioned seeing
the frogs were all the new people. It's not rocket science,
and I mean this lady saw frog. If they don't
find the beanie baby, it might be fine. That's the
main thing. If enough people saw the actual frog that
he summoned. I feel like that's sort of a rap.
So I'm just gonna be hopeful. I'm just gonna, you know,
see where this goes, because I get what she's saying.
I just feel it might not be as tidy as
she thinks, because she tends to be logical and not
everybody is like that. Let's see, there's this line that's
been underlined by people on kindle. Apparently you keep destroying
governmental buildings, Karl don't said, people are going to start
thinking you have a problem with authority. So let's see,
several dramed aarians went to work manually affixing the storm
shield over the city. That material looks like it's it
used to be part of a balloon. It's definitely magical.
So Carl It talks to Bordecai via chat here and
is asking whether or not there is a way to
tell which of these drummedarians are actually and which of
them are shape shifters, and Mordecai zeros in on donuts
sunglasses and says they have a really like different heat
signature in the brain area that a changeling brain is
a lot hotter. So maybe if you are able to
look at their heat signatures, you'll be able to tell,
Donut says. I will try, but I wouldn't get my
hopes up. Their head scarves will make it extra hard
to see. And this isn't this as a test, it's
not like ideal, but it's got potential here. This floor
was going to require a spending a lot of time
in the crafting room, which meant less time for regular experience. Now,
talking of crafting, I just want to say that, like,
I have my suspicions about the material that's being used
for this awning, maybe potentially being the material that gets
used for whatever they craft to get where they need
to go, Like maybe you can cut out a big
section of the awning somehow and turn that into like
hanglider wings or Honestly, I don't even know. That's like
as much of an idea as I've got, but it's
something still something, So I don't know. I just think
that this awning is like it's such an unusual way
to defend the city from this these sandstorms that it
seems like it has to be something planted for our
guys to use, you know what I mean. It just
there is something so specific about it and the way
that it's being mentioned, and the fact that the fabric
is magical. Maybe it being magical means that they can't
cut it for all I know, and that would suck.
But uh, it's worth looking into. That's all. That's all
I'm saying. I'm sorry, there's a bunch of chat. Let's see.
Saraphim says in the Gnomes case, they were also drugging him,
so that will mess with your ability to think rationally. Yeah,
that's true, Michael says, how Looc and Faras are acting
just shows us, just shows up overpowered cloud of exhaust is,
just shows us how overpowered the cloud of exhaust is.
It's basically very likely the very first time they're facing
any real danger or violence. Yeah, And it's like it's
sort of funny because it seems like such an advantage,
but if you're able to completely lean on it, then
you wind up getting stunted. And you know, that is
also how life can be at times, if you just
become really used to doing something a certain way, having
a kind of get out of jail free card, because
like you have money or connections or whatever, you really
feel like you're doing something. But it means that later
you just don't have any way of thinking your way
out of a situation when those things are no longer useful,
or if they don't work on whoever it is you're
talking to or whatever, let's see. Uh, I'm trying to
find the next spot. Sorry, we need to get through
the rubble. There's something important in the basement of the
town hall, and it may still be with us, she said,
though her voice held little hope. What if it's not.
I didn't think she was going to answer, but then
she said, Then we moved to the shelters. Every day
after sunrise, we give the Gnomes proof of collateral. If
that doesn't happen tomorrow, what happened to the Bactorians will
happen to us. And Carl asks what sort of proof?
And I am sort of thinking that perhaps we can
have Kotcha imitate this Gnome man. You know, I don't
know exactly, like if his body is still there or
it seems like they're gonna find out pretty shortly that
he isn't alive, So I don't know, but potentially maybe
we could have covered this whole thing by sticking her
in there. That could work if the timing were right.
But it just seems like maybe it's not. Carl could
approach the Dramedarians and say like, hey, she can be
that if you need her to, or one of the
other shape shifters could offer potentially, It's sort of unclear
to me, Like because there's a mention later about this
being that they are trying to get it can't be
killed except when it is corporeal, and so the idea
is that they are trying to get this gnome to
use his knowledge to make her corporeal so that she's
easier to kill. Now, I don't know if him, like
if it's if Katcha is just looks like him but
doesn't actually have the information. He wasn't giving it up anyway,
so I suppose that wouldn't matter. I don't know, just
a thought. This is when I checked him with Undelin Duet.
They'd managed to breach a hole in the first of
the four walls, which was made of sand. The second
was made of seashell, and they felt they could break
through that also. Instead of going over, she had them
building siege ladders just in case. Worst of all was
this massive bird that kept harassing them. It was a
giant version of the chainsaw buzzards she'd described earlier. If
only this one was a burrow boss. It was constantly
circling the structure of the necropolis. If it saw any crawlers,
it would swoop down to attack. It had wrecked two
siege towers they'd started building, causing them to abandon the idea.
It was too strong for them to fight, so they
had to hide every time it appeared. The thing was
so fast they couldn't even get a good description off it.
I do have some good news. I saw a pair
of crawlers on the water. They were too far away
to talk, but they were in some twoud twenty thousand
leagues under the sea looking submarine. The two crawlers emerged
and fought a jellyfish thing and then disappeared. I know
somebody is working on it under there. So this is
when Carl gets the info about his sponsor, a new
one called the Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network Intergalactic NFC.
And they are NFC stands for not for Conquest, which
means they're not sponsored by a system and are free
from taxes like a nonprofit, and Carl says, a charity
like some religion and Mordecai says there's no such thing
as a nonprofit religion, which I guess is true. It
sounds like one of the many groups out there that
don't support the krawl. They probably bought into your sponsorship
so they can show commercials. I hope that's not the case.
If it is, you won't be getting any more boxes
from them. And they wind up sending Carl this thing
that looks like a yam that doesn't really seem like
it is worth very much. And I am so curious
about what the fuck this is going to turn out
to be, because I don't get sending him anything if
it's so expensive to do it, if what you send
is something like that, you know, I am really really
curious if there turns out to be something useful about
it that we didn't see right away. And let's see,
Donut gets the Vera lux Real Pet Companions, which are
the little Beanie baby guys, right, and then Katchya gets
I got the Squim Conglomerate and they have sponsored like
five hundred people, and Donut checks and finds out that
Princestinnadia just sponsored five other crawlers, and my new sponsor
sponsors a bunch of other people. But after she gets
sad about this, it very quickly transforms because they get
a message from Loyda that Donut brought in the highest
sponsorship bid in the history of the series, beating both
Carl and Prepotente, which is amazing. And I love this
for her. I am so proud of you, girly, absolutely
queen behavior. I you deserve more crowns. Incredible and I
love that. She says, that's pretty much what I expected. Uh,
so great, so great, And Carl says Lucia isn't commanding
the most sponsorship money, which, like, considering how she's behaving,
isn't surprising to me. She's just too much of a
friggin' like wild card, you know. And then Luita mentions
a product sample don it's going to be getting that
they want her to like take out and interact with,
basically like a product placement where you just look at
it and you're like, wow, did you see that the
new model of Toyota's SUV comes with automatic rear parking?
I had no idea like that kind of weird, you know,
And Carl says, we're going on an infomercial, Are you kidding? Me,
Lloyd says, I am not zev Carl, do not speak
back to me like that. It will not be tolerated.
The fact that she reacts like this to are you
kidding me? That's troubling. That's nothing coming from Carl. He
didn't even swear, you know, and she like it will
not be tolerated. What does that even mean? They're commanding
the highest bids. What are you gonna do to them?
What are you even? What are you even gonna do?
They're making you do so much money. I feel like
he's got cards in his hand here, but I don't know.
And he decides not to push the issue right now.
I think that was the right call. But honestly, her
tolerance is really low. If that was enough for her
to get snappy like this, Katcha, I have you booked
on a separate program around the same time. You will
be doing it solo. This will be a one on
one interview on a show called Dungeons Sidekicks. Oh that
is so insulting. Can you imagine? I just it's just anyway.
They go into the Desperado Club. Later on, we have
co wearing a boa, so her and Donut went into
Penis parade, and Donut says something about how eight more
visits and I get a free dance from anaconda, which
I really wonder, like how much is that doing for her? Anyway,
When they're human and you're a cat, it can't really
be that exciting, right, Like I get a lap dance
from a cat. Nothing not happening, no interest, So I
don't know. Let's see. We decided to add a third
regular bodyguard to the team with Katcha's acquisition of the
Desperado Pass. The new guy was also a Cretan, a
rock creature. His name was very Sullen, which is hilarious.
And this is when the crawlers that Carl had run
into before come in. He had told them to meet
him here so that he could kick their ass, and honestly,
a little part of me kind of still wanted him
to do that, but I knew that that was absolutely
pointless and not productive, and yeah, yeah, but I still
kind of like a little bit. And I'm not going
to go through everybody's names and what all they can do,
because we will get there. But spider guy freelance psychiatrists.
There's a human that's a spy and they talk about
their quadrant, and Morris says, the whole place is a maze,
a big fuck you, you're going to die maze. We
start at the top and the crypt of answer is
at the bottom. That's where the staircase is. We start
in the village, which is really a cavern filled with
these things called nude glabors. They're undead mule rack creatures,
but they're naked with almost human anatomy and they're hard
to look at. That's where we are now. There are
dozens of paths away from town. Some of them are
tunnels so tight I have to be pushed to get through.
We got a quest to find one of the two maps,
but we failed thanks to you. I only took one
of the maps. You failed because you were set up
to fail. Maybe I swear to God the fact that
this guy, I mean, you listen to an NPC, you
fucking moron. It's your own fault. You and Carl were
not in competition with each other, whatever you may think,
you know, like it's just asinine. This guy is not
using his head at all. And let's see, Oh my god,
this is when he says filled it with Nana's We
have a guy who shoots banana tree seeds from his hands.
He's a druid and he causes the seeds to sprout
really fast. They work great, but the range is really low.
And it was a pig and they killed it, and
the map was in the same room but out of reach.
It was in the air quadrant. We were building a
tool to take it. You can throw something through the
quadrant barrier, but you can't hold something like a giant
stick or grabber. You can't cast spells either. Before we
could figure it out, a two humped camel thing came
in and saw the dead pig and freaked out. He
upset the table with the map. It fell to the ground,
blowing closer to us. Then he ran away. We spent
hours trying to figure out how to get it, but
before we could, the damn room just blew up and
it said the map was destroyed, so we moved to
the second map. I keep trying to think about ways
that you could make this happen, and I honestly don't know.
There has to be something that could have worked for them.
I'm wondering if like the clockwork triple kit could work,
But I don't know, because you know, like he said,
it's not something you can't use anything that you hold
on to uh or ah, I don't know. Maybe if
you have like a wind, the spell or something perhaps,
So let's see. Do you know who quits some Cole
Colotless is Yeah, I guess answer was the Emperor. He
died and when he did, they built this tomb for him.
They threw his entire court and his wife in here,
even though they weren't dead. Then they sealed it all up.
Kitsel co Lottis is his wife, kowatlas is. I don't know.
I'm just gonna call her Ketza. And she's somewhere in here. Still,
she's some undead thing. Now she's non corporeal. She can
travel through walls within the tomb, and I think she's
really pissed off. Every once in a while we can
hear her screaming. She sounds like a bird. After we
failed the quest to get the map, we all got
a quest to find and kill her. Nobody knows how
to kill a damn ghost. Weird, I said, you need
magic to kill ghosts. Sorry, oh, Sarah. And they aren't
trying to kill it, just touch it so that you
can learn to copy it. Oh, no, I meant these
guys you're talking about the Yeah, I was talking about
the crawlers, Mike. They brought up that brought up a
memory of me watching Bones and her just spontaneously talking
about how amazing the car she was driving was. Bones
is one of the worst for like that product placement stuff,
and it's so unnatural. It's something that comes up a
lot in Crazy Not Crazy Ex Girlfriend Jane the Virgin,
But it's done a lot better in that, and you
still are aware it's happening, but it doesn't feel half
as awkward as it ever did in Bones. Michael says,
that is a lie. I know for a fact you'd
be cooing and cuddling with that lapcat about the Yeah,
I don't think I could cuddle with a lab cat
that's trying to give me a dance. I think it
would just creeped me out too much. I just don't.
I don't know, man. Michael says, it was absolutely set
up for everyone to fail. Both of their goals were
on the other side of the barriers they could not cross,
and the map vanished the moment Carl touched it. Yeah,
I guess. So it just feels like you know what,
I'm falling into that trap of like there has to
be some way to do it, you know, But like
the whole point of this is that it's not fair really,
so who knows? We learned that from the crossroit creatures
on the third floor. Initially there were extensive instructions on
how to kill ghosts in the cookbook, including bomb types
that would do the trick. They're trying to get a
spell that will give her flesh. They want to be
able to physically touch her so they can gain some
of her special powers. She'd probably be easier to kill
if she had physical form. Morris said, probably. I agreed.
Too bad. You guys killed the guy you knew had
to cast a spell. So here's where we stand. We
have the gnomes floating over the entire world, and they
bomb the shit out of everybody. On top of the temple,
we have a few groups, the Camels and the Changelings.
The Changelings are pretending to be refugees, but they have
some plan of their own that involves resurrecting the Guardian
on the subterranean level. On the ground, we have somebody
called the Mad Dune Mage, and we don't know much
of him, and then there's one more castle in the water.
From what little we know, it sounds like it's underwater,
and Bobby says yeah, And we keep getting water breathing
scrolls and scrolls of disarm trap and he has a stutter,
which later on there's like a strong chance that he
is dealing with some severe PTSD, which would make sense.
I'm surprise we haven't run into more of that, to
be honest, I said my goodbyes and hit the Silk road.
I topped off my explosive supplies and bought a few
newly available toys. From there, I exited the club and
headed back to the safe room and he gets his
bronze benefactor box. Here. This thing is not a new item,
it's an upgrade to his existing item. You do not,
let's see, but taking this pill will install the following
upgrade current elevation, air speed, and Carl thinks to himself
that's it. And I immediately my thought was like, bruh,
don't this is gonna be crucial? Like are you serious?
And then immediately I felt disappointment, But then I remembered
how damn useful that last upgrade had been, and I
was like, thank you. Yes, that is the attitude. They
know something and they are helping like that is all
there is to it. They fucking know something, and he
takes the pill thanks them for it. And the next
one is the one where it's that toraline root vegetable,
a rare tuber that only grows in dirt that has
been covered by lava. They are very rare. Nobody ever
goes digging them up. You know why, because they taste
like dog shit. That's that's why they're pretty much useless.
In fact, Fuck you for wasting my time with this.
I'm kind of wondering if there's maybe some creature that
really likes these, that this could be used as a
bribe for or something. I don't know. And let's see.
The elevation display was equally complicated. It turned it on
and it filled my screen with a page of information
I did not understand. I tried toggling planetary sea level only,
but that was a mistake. It had me at just
over negative ninety two thousand meters. I realized that meant
I was standing ninety two kilometers under the surface of
the planet. That was crazy was Earth's crust, even that
thick wasn't it all magma and oil and gooey shit
once you got deep enough. I'd never paid attention in
geology class. When he said that, I had a moment
of like geology, I don't even think I had. And
then I remember that we had something called earth science,
which I think is meant to be. That the storm
ended and the town survived. The camels did not retract
the sales as usual, and they've set guards up and
they are interrogating peace people about these toad creatures. And
let's see, Katcha had given them a general map of
the entire structure and a more deep detailed path to
another town. About halfway down to the crypt. They'd need
ladders and ropes to descend. Those subterranean guys are total
train wrecks. Kaya said. Their stress levels are off the charts.
It's understandable, but they're very tense, too tense. I laughed,
that's what Mordecai said about you when we first met.
He called you a train wreck. Also, we're calling them
the tomb raiders. She did not find any of that funny,
understand it being told, like, oh yeah, he had called
you a train wreck. Nobody wants to hear that it's
too soon. If you hear this like two floors away,
then sure, but that was like what one floor ago.
It's too soon, Carl, it's too soon. Bobby is the
only one who can detect traps, and he's already missed
a few. They make others go in tunnels ahead because
he's too valuable, and they keep dying right in front
of him. They described a trap where needles popped up
from the floor and injected the crawler with a potion
that filled his sinuses with flesh eating beetles. I swear
to God, what the fuck, guys? I genuinely like, no,
absolutely fucking not. Can you Yeah, it's like a combo
of everybody depending on you and then watching people die
over and over in horrible ways that it should have
probably been you that died. I mean, no, wonder you know. Yikes.
They kept asking when we thought we might storm our castle.
I have the impression they want to hold back and
wait for us to have access so we can help.
I shook my head. God, damn it, we need to
push them. We don't have time for that. I agree,
and I did. I lied and told them we don't
expect to complete the air quadrant until time is almost
up at least I hope it was a lie, and
that one, like the idea that people are just waiting around,
honestly makes sense. I didn't really think of it before,
but considering something like the announcement specifically said some of
these are going to be easier to beat than others.
If you start running into things this nuts, it would
be very easy to be like, Okay, this one's clearly
one of the top difficulty ones, so let's just chill.
I would never do that because I couldn't say I
would just go crazy waiting, but I can see that
as a as a coping mechanism, honestly. So they get
some information from Juice Box about that giant bird named Ruckus,
which is a steampunk cyborg. The waste or patrols avoid Ruckus,
but one of their responsibilities was to call the regular
sized buzzards if they saw them. Apparently there used to
be a third Camel City. They tried to shoot it
down and it didn't go well for them. Katcha went pale,
and you want to fight this thing, I shrugged, will
be like a mile away. I have a missile. I
need a test. Don't worry, It'll be fine. That's the
end of chapter eight, so yeah, that is the uh,
don't worry, it'll be fine. Shut the fuck up, Carl.
All Right, guys, I gotta wrap. Thank you all for
hanging out with me. Appreciate you, and I will see
you soon with a new one. Until then, to the Loo, motherfuckers.
That was an unspoiled Network podcast.