The Gate Of The Feral Gods, Chapters 15-17

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These chapters are the ones where Carl has to fight a goose, and Donut can basically do nothing to help. 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book four Gate of the Faral Gods,
chapters fifteen through seventeen. In these chapters, we have to

(00:24):
fight one of the cruelest, meanest creatures created by Mother Nature,
and that is a goose. We all know, we all
been known. There are few animals out there that seem
to uniformly inspire fear the way that a goose does.

(00:45):
Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I

(01:07):
am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning
this episode. I've got a busy chat today, so welcome
to everybody. We've got Rob Razoo, Sarah and Melanie, Miss Tea,
John trying to see if Michael's even here. I don't
even see his name, but he'll probably get here eventually.

(01:30):
So yet, y'all, this section is really sad. It's real sad.
I wasn't prepared for the emotionality of it. And it
ends with Carl like making a decision to kick things
up a notch and I don't know what that means.

(01:53):
You know, it's Carl, so I'm assuming it has something
to do with explosives. I feel once he says, okay,
you know what I've decided to do it almost always
that's going to involve some kind of incendiary device, whether
that be a physically incendiary device or perhaps verbally incendiary

(02:16):
who knows, who can tell? Risu says, making you stop
right there was cruel. Look it it was a it's
a rough cliffhanger, but also it felt like a good
spot because I needed a break, because it is very sad.
Like I appreciated ooh, my camera blinked out. My camera's

(02:42):
been sorry guys, But I appreciate just knowing that Carl
has some other means of handling things. Well, I say that,
I don't even know if that's exactly it, but I
like that it seems he is going to try and

(03:02):
really like make a point, whatever it's going to be.
What has happened here deserves an answer, And there was
something satisfying for the moment about stopping there knowing that
Seraphim says, they didn't even need to alter the goose,

(03:24):
just turn it loose as is, and honestly, yeah, this
is just like granted, they changed things up so that
the people around the goose can't use their magic and
YadA YadA. But like, for the most part, the goose
is just a goose, and that's wild to me. And
it's not just a goose, actually, it's a nineties middle

(03:54):
class kitchen decoration goose. Now I say that without actually
having been somebody whose mother had that sort of decor choice.
My mother really never has leaned into any trendy kitchy

(04:16):
like decor choices. Ever, she has her style and she's
had it and it's what she does no matter what
year it is. And I have to say that a
part of me really admires that. But I would be
lying if I tried to pretend that this like goose
trend wasn't a thing, because I certainly saw it in

(04:36):
other friends' kitchens, and I also still see the remnants
of it in thrift shops and things. These geese wearing
little bonnets and shawls were fucking everywhere, kids all over
the place. I think it's very funny the way that
trends like this happen, and I wonder what causes them,

(05:00):
you know who, like who was so influential that they
were able to just make this become a thing. But
something that's so sort of peculiar. I remember, you know,
there was a time in the two thousands where it
was strawberries were decorating absolutely fucking all kitchen ware everywhere,

(05:21):
and I was just sort of but why why is
this happening? And my mother said that when she was
a kid, it was mushrooms. Everything had, like, you know,
like all of the little jars and things for storing
flour and coffee in the kitchen all had mushrooms on them,
and it would come painted on the sides of tea

(05:43):
pots and whatnot. So, yeah, this is very much a thing.
But these types of geese, it just feels really familiar
to me. I didn't need much of a description. I
pictured it pretty much immediately, as he won ends up
describing it later. So we start with chapter fifteen with

(06:07):
Carl talking to to Juice Box. I keep wanting to
say Juicer and I'm like, no, that's that other guy,
the Juicer. And you know, she tells him about how
this whole thing with Quetzal whatever. She says, you know,

(06:31):
that's that is what they're looking for. But it's being
framed as if they just want to take on her
appearance and abilities to fill in a slot in their
inventory for like potential options for transformation. But the truth

(06:51):
is that what's going on is she can cast a
spell that alters plants. And this was an interesting to
me because like what it means is they don't just
take on the appearance of a certain type of creature.
They can also take on the abilities of the creature

(07:12):
that they transform into, which is a pretty big deal
that I don't think we knew. Did we know that
for sure? Guys. That's like it's one thing to just
be able to mimic somebody's appearance, but it's another thing
that when you turn into them, you can do the
thing they do. But anyway, what he had seen with

(07:35):
the compression sickness in that one kid, it turns out,
is like a birth defect. This is not something that
was a result of activity on the part of the child,
and the birth defect is happening to like a quarter
of their children now, and it is because they are

(07:57):
living in a world that isn't like specifically, they weren't
supposed to be here, and so the nutrition in this
world isn't adequate to actually keep her race healthy. And

(08:18):
they're hoping that if they are able to get her abilities.
They can grow plants that are going to fill in
the gaps in their nutrition, not fill in the gaps
on what they can transform into. So we are trying
to fill in some gaps. It's just different. And then
he brings up the Gate of the Feral Gods, and

(08:41):
it turns out that what this is, it's an artifact
that when you put together, the gate opens from one
place to the next, but when it closes, an ancient
feral god comes through into the world, and it comes
into the side that you open it in, which means
you can get where you're going, but you're condemning everybody

(09:03):
in the world you left behind to probably a pretty
awful death. And so it is something that it's like
an option, but it sort of feels like a nuclear
weapon where you just you have it, but you don't
really seriously consider using it because the side effects are

(09:24):
just too awful. And when he asks what a faral
god is, she says they are the gods from before,
the immortal beasts who roamed the heavens before the Pantheon
banished them into the nothing and created the world. Their
banishment has driven them mad. And then Carl feels this

(09:45):
like free Sant and all of a sudden new quest,
the Gate of the Faral Gods, Henrik the Changeling Commandant,
Kane the Mad doom Mage. They all have pieces of
the artifact. Take it from them, collect all three, put
them together. What happens next is pretty damn neat reward.

(10:06):
Oh boil boy, Oh boil boy. And honestly the fact
that he's being encouraged to put it together when it does.
What she says, doesn't feel like this should be a
quest because it seems like it's going to ruin your

(10:27):
ability to get to the next floor, or ruin your
ability to solve whatever's going on here that is supposed
to contribute to everything else. I don't know, but I
feel like maybe here's a quest that we should just
fail and have it and just put it in your inventory,
but don't use it. I'm just you know what I'm saying.

(10:48):
So then we go to the sandstorm that comes down,
and you know, they have to hunker, as he puts it,
and the repairs aren't totally complete, so things get pretty
fucked up in town. The moment the shield failed, we

(11:10):
all received a quest to save the town by procuring
a bunch of deflated balloons that they could use as
a shelter. It was a regular bronze quest that I
shoved off onto Lewis and Fearis and Langley, who'd finished
searching the ruins of the other town. They could use
the experience, and it seems like they are beginning to
do better. You know. I know that that one thing

(11:32):
they participated them in had them go up two levels,
So I'm wondering what level they're at now and if
they are, like, if there's anything new being added to
their abilities that would be particularly helpful. And let's see,
the tomb raiders were stuck in safe rooms. The entire
catacomb was now filled with water. They had dozens of

(11:55):
water scrolls, but that wasn't enough. They were paralyzed for now.
Chrit A slash Maggie remained entombed. Donut could see their
dot on the map as long as she stood nearby.
The room was half filled with water and was pitch black,
which had to be awful. Yeah, that sounds really terrible,
and Carl thinks a bit about that, even though he

(12:18):
had been relieved when Donut did what she did to
Chris to get him out of the way that maybe
it was a mistake to not put him out of
his misery. And honestly, guys, a part of me really
feels that way it sounded. You know, there are times
where I feel like a person might say kill me,

(12:39):
it's for the best, and they really they It's that
they intellectually know it's for the best, but they really
don't mean it, and they would love for you to
find another option. But there was something about the messages
from Chris that felt like he really meant it. He
would really like to be dead versus what's happening right now.
And I can't help but feel like, even if you

(13:02):
are able to save him, is he going to be grateful?
Is he gonna want to be alive in this world? Like?
I don't know that I would want that. I don't know.
So Anyway, after we'd crashed the Wasteland, all that remained
was a single building, held aloft by an enormous magical balloon.

(13:25):
The building was a house, nothing more. There were no
obvious defenses. The entire Gnomish Air Force was now grounded.
It appeared there were only two living creatures up there,
Commandant Cain and his daughter. The kid was about ten
years old. That was it. And he says something later

(13:46):
about how it reminds him of up and I was like,
oh good, we're all on the same page here. This
house was an actual house that belonged to somebody in
the world, so it's not a set piece. And when
he actually gets to it, there's like Christmas lights still
on it because it was winter and they'd apparently taken

(14:09):
their Christmas tree down and stuff. But you know how
that is, lights are always like the last thing to
come down. And there are diplomas on the wall of
the people who actually lived there and stuff like that,
and it was just a I like these little haunting
reminders that the world used to be there and isn't anymore,

(14:31):
and here are the remnants of real people and their lives.
So Carl and Katcha have a conversation about whether or
not to bring down the house just by shooting the balloon,
which is possible to do, but there is a child
in there, and they are aware, fully aware that the

(14:53):
kid is being used to tug at their heart strings
and make them choose the more difficult option. But they're gonna,
you know, they're capitulating, and they seem to be just
sort of coping with that. And Katcha asks him at
this point, did you ever want children? And it is

(15:15):
sort of like it feels like an out of nowhere
kind of question, and Carl says, no, I wouldn't be
a good dad, which I think is bullshit, But I
completely understand that feeling. He says, b told me she
thought she was pregnant like ten times. She never was
the first few times I thought she really was. I

(15:37):
was goddamn terrified. I I have trouble seeing you with
that woman. She shook her head. Yeah. Same, this idea
of like a pregnancy thing, it's it very much ties
in with the whole Pretend that you're in a fight
and then maybe he'll propose, because a lot of women
seem to think that if you have a kid, it'll

(15:58):
force your partner to like shape up or commit to you,
and it does the opposite ninety eight percent of the time.
So b B, you are just that bitch was a disaster.
She reminds me. The more I hear about her of
like eleanor from the good Place, which is funny because

(16:21):
we already have like a Jason Mendoza. So it's starting
to feel like we're getting a little bit more casting
out of that. And Kasia says that she got pre
approval to adopt. Something happened and I got disqualified. It's
not important. I'm sure it's not, but you can't say

(16:48):
that and then not make me curious what happened, you
know what I'm saying, like, now I really want to know, now, Katya,
like really really, And the fact that Karl doesn't ask, like,
I'm not really surprised because I see him as being
somebody who wouldn't want to pry. And probably if I

(17:10):
were actually in this conversation with Katya and she said
it's not important, I would take that as her kind
of signaling I don't want to talk about that part,
so I probably wouldn't bring it up either. But you know,
as a reader, I'm desperately curious. And there, you know,

(17:31):
there was that whole thing about, uh, the way that
Eva was making fun of her for, you know, like
being sad that she couldn't get her adoption, and I
just wonder, it just feels like the way that Eva
was treating her, it was like something that was Kotscha's

(17:53):
own fault somehow. And you know what, I mean because
Eva is just it was a very much like part
of what was behind even mocking her was you keep
complaining about things, but you are the reason why, Like
all of those things are true. And it may just

(18:15):
be that Eva's very mean and that's not actually correct,
but she wants to make Kotya feel bad, which I
would be very willing to believe. But also I would
be I can see that maybe she had reached a
level of frustration with Katya because of this sort of thing,

(18:39):
you know. So it's, uh, this is this is a
difficult you know. And I said this when we had
the whole like Eva yelling at her thing. When you
have a friend or an acquaintance that keeps like making
bad choices that everybody gives them, they ask for advice,
everybody gives them advice, and then they proceed to ignore it,

(19:02):
and then they cry about how stuff doesn't go their way.
It can just be like you get to a point
where you're just like, I'm starting to lose sympathy for you,
you know, But again, even seems pretty terrible and mean,
so I'm not willing to take that at face value.
And she says in the end, like it's a good

(19:25):
thing that I didn't have a kid when all this happened.
I'm glad now that I don't. And he's like, ah, yeah,
she's full of shit, and he says it wasn't something
I would ever understand the need to have children. I
said nothing, same, Carl, Like, I can understand certain little
aspects of it as being appealing, but I have never

(19:48):
felt that like drive. You know, It's never been something
that's the sort of foregone conclusion for me. There have
been periods in my life where I considered it and wondered,
but it never felt like a good idea, And I
never had like the confidence that I think is unwarranted

(20:09):
by a lot of people to believe that I was
going to be good at the job. And honestly, in
the end, I think that the reason so many people
have what I would consider unwanted or unwarranted confidence is
because nature makes us this way. You know, if we

(20:29):
all used our intellect to determine whether or not we
should have children, probably our species would die out, because
if we really stopped to think about it, we would
realize but we can't have that, so Katcha tells him.
I'm usually irritated when you want to leave me behind

(20:52):
on your little schemes, but I'm pretty happy to sit
this one out. And she winds up She had been
helping him sow this like apparently huge parachute, I think,
but they don't wind up using that, and she gets
irritated about it. Later. This whole series of chapters, by
the way, is punctuated by the bizarre versions of doughnut

(21:17):
that are cropping up because this company keeps making new
prototypes and sending them in, which we get this conversation.
So one of them jumps up on Carl's shoulder and says,

(21:37):
there's sure were a lot of babies in there, Carl,
I wonder how long they will continue to cry in
the dark, And he shoves it off him. It lands
and breaks, and of course Mango jumps on it again
and then it explodes, which, if you're trying to make
a toy that's for children, isn't a great look. And

(22:03):
all of a sudden, Louita jumps in and says, Carl,
you know perfectly well that the real version of these
toys can take much more stress. Your boosted strength is
what's causing the problem. The toy is meant to be
played with outside of an enhancement zone by children not
survive within a dungeon environment. And honestly, she says, like,

(22:28):
you know perfectly well, I don't know about you guys,
but that hadn't entered my mind. So it's something that like,
once you say it, okay, I understand now. But she's
acting as if he's like being willfully obtuse about this,
and I'm not sure that's true. And zeb the audience
loves the strange vibe of the doll, but I tend

(22:50):
to agree with the crawler. It does not sound like her.
We put that in the notes, but vera Lux hasn't
changed it, and says, after we realized you were going
to fiddle with the toy, we started requiring the sponsor
to make the doll self destruct if it is sufficiently broken.
We don't want you unfairly getting your hands on the

(23:12):
important interior parts. The real version won't have that feature.
And Carl rightfully is like, so you're the ones making
it explode and look very bad for them. I don't
feel like that's gonna work so well marketing wise, and
Zev says, you're not wrong, Crawler. There are memes later

(23:36):
on Zev is no longer going to be working with them,
And even though it is cited as, oh, you got
the social media thing, you don't need me anymore, I
kind of feel like she keeps sort of agreeing with
them on things, and that is more of a problem
than anything. Also, the fact that it's like we can

(24:00):
can't let you have any of the little parts inside, well,
then I guess this whole setup that you've got here
isn't going to work, and maybe you should reconsider it.
If it can't stand up to the stress of people
who with enhance strength, like crawlers, and if you can't
let the crawlers get their hands on the pieces, maybe

(24:23):
this isn't something that you should be doing then, you know.
And also like after we realized you were going to
fiddle with the toy, the whole point of this is
for them to interact with it, as you put it,
which is fiddling with it. Like newsflash, you asked them
to do this. It's so irritating. And then Donut says

(24:46):
that she wants to name it. I haven't decided on
Charlie or Ivy. What do you think, Zev? And at
first Zev says it's inconsequential, but then later says I
would go with Ivy, and you know, when she says
in consequential, Donut gets very upset, but saying Ivy, Donut
seem so relieved by that. Now, I don't these names

(25:11):
Charlie and Ivy are ringing a faint bell for me?
Are these also references to something on? I keep thinking
about Gilmore Girls, But I only watched a very little
bit of that, and I don't think these names would
ring for me if it were that. But yeah, so

(25:31):
it's like later on, when Zev is taken away from them,
I felt like at least Donut got this little taste
of Zev's personality coming back, just to reassure her a bit.
You know. It's so, this is just so troubling, and

(25:56):
we'll get there, okayet The plane's name was death Trap.
It had four bombs painted after the tag, I took
a can of spray paint and covered it up. I
then wrote Nightmare two on the side. Dona objected, but
only half heartedly. She'd been oddly distracted since our discussion
with Lota, and that isn't improved later on, So they

(26:25):
have to gain altitude using this balloon, and Doughnut gets
very excited because there are bullets still left in the
gun of this plane. I didn't see any enemies before
the storm. They had been a handful of balloons up
against the ceiling, but they'd all disappeared. I knew a
few had simply fallen, crashing against the desert like meteors,

(26:47):
some had plummeted onto the land quadrant, some in the ocean.
All that was left was the target, And they wind
up getting up there faster than I was expecting. I
really did, Like I felt the same way as Karl
of Oh, we're here already. And they hit the ceiling
of the bubble, which I just keep forgetting that there's
an actual physical ceiling. I keep thinking of the bubble

(27:11):
as being like kind of the Hunger Games, like what's
the word, like a force field or something, you know,
a thing that isn't physical but is I guess, electronically triggered.
So they get down to the house and he decides

(27:35):
that he is just going to go to the front door,
considers ringing the doorbell, decides against it, and as it
like winds up shaking out, I think that maybe ringing
the doorbell would have been fine, you know, and it's
they step inside and I love that. There's a little

(27:58):
bit here where Dona is talking about about how you're
not afraid of heights, are you? And he says no,
and she's like, well you should be. This is insane,
and he is like, wait, you didn't have an issue
with heights, like up until very recently. What's going on
And she says, well, we fell, you know, and like
now I just really don't want to go through that

(28:19):
again because it was fucking terrifying. And that makes a
lot of sense to me. To be honest, I am very,
very bad with heights, but it really depends for me
the situation. I can sometimes heights, like like, if I'm
in a high building and you're looking out a window

(28:43):
on the side of the building, that kind of heights
doesn't bother me. But if it's the sort of thing
where like you walk out onto a balcony that's got
a glass floor that you can look down through, absolutely
the fuck not no, thank you. So they go in
through the door and this little girl comes out and says,

(29:06):
have you come to kill my father? You're a little late.
He's already dead. Do you want to come in I'm
making lemonade, and this is the most unnerving thing. Pretty
quickly Carl is able to see that her eyes are
dilated and determine that she is under some sort of enchantment.

(29:26):
But her behavior here is just I almost wondered if
she were a shape shifter herself, you know, that somebody
had replaced her. And then of course there's the question
of whether she killed her own father, because she's covered
in blood and all of like the details that we

(29:47):
get later are that her father gave her a essentially
a sedative. It was a potion because the collateral that
the Bactrians had was her pig. Sausage was his name,

(30:09):
and when Sausage was killed, she completely had a meltdown
and she was just really emotional, and they were trying
to like deal with that, and then there came a
point where he realized, oh, I'm gonna die because he
knew somehow that this goose was coming for him, so

(30:32):
he decided to get out ahead of it and gave
her the potion right before everything went down so that
she wouldn't have like a complete mental break. Which all
of this adds up to me to a dude who
seems to be trying his best to be a good dad.
He's really looking out for her, you know, like not

(30:54):
saying he was a good guy or anything, but it's
it's just later when it begins to wear off and
she's starting to have to feel again that it almost
I think it was the right call to delay it.
So once she's coming out of it and she's feeling it,

(31:15):
she's at least in a safe place, surrounded by people
who are going to care for her, and that's ideal,
but it's still going to be horribly traumatic. So let's see.
Oh yeah, and I forgot Donah is able to like,

(31:36):
I won't say she's able to tell if somebody is
a changeling, because I feel like that's making it sound
like she just has like a detector, but she can
see if their head is really hot, and this little
girl's head isn't. So they're pretty confident she is what
she's claiming. And Donah is trying to ask Bonnie where,

(31:58):
like what happened to her father because they can see
this trial of blood and they don't know what the
deal is at all, and Bonnie is like not even
really able to answer them. It's like she's so disconnected
from the present moment that the vibe that I got
is that her father told her to make some lemonade

(32:20):
right before he gave her the potion, and that like
giving her that potion made her kind of fixate on
that objective in a way that feels a little bit
linked to me, and so she gets really preoccupied with
that and keeps wanting to make lemonade, And of course

(32:41):
we have this whole thing where Carl is tricked into
believing that the lemonade actually is going to serve a
major purpose in the fight itself. And guys, has anybody
come across a plot point like this in like Skyrim

(33:05):
or something where you think this particular item is really
going to help and then it turns out that it
was like a fake out. Because I'm trying to think
and the old I can't recall anything that was specifically
meant to trick you. I've come across things that I
expected a result that I didn't wind up getting, But

(33:27):
that's not really the same thing as them expressly trying
to fuck with you. And I'm wondering if this is
something that is in other games. I think I would
be so annoyed by that, Like, really, I think that
would piss me off so bad. So anyway, they see

(33:51):
her father's body and it says ripped to shreds by Denise,
and he looks like he's been partially eaten. But they
aren't able to actually get a straight answer out of
Bonnie regarding who Denise is. Um, he tried the Gerbils,
but I didn't like any Plus they're all mean. Then

(34:13):
we tried other stuff, including old Denise. She's okay, I guess,
but she's no sausage. Don't tell her that, though she
gets jealous. Why did Denise kill her father? Donna asked,
he you know? She pointed to the kitchen sink. There
was nothing there. It was just a typical sink. He what,
Donnut asked Bonnie. We do not understand. She ignored the

(34:37):
question and pushed the glass closer to the edge of
the counter. My father gave me the recipe. It's good.
Try some and it just says unknown potion. This kid
says it's lemonade, and Karl doesn't drink it until later,
when it turns out it is indeed just lemonade. All
of a sudden, the walls shake and a bunch of

(34:59):
things tip over, and Carl touches the body of Commandant Cain,
and he is able to loot from it five thousand
gold pieces. Letter from the glass wizard mysterious Watch, and
he sees the letter, seze your hostilities immediately. Your bombs

(35:22):
do not harm me, but they are ruining the structure
of the temple, weakening its wall. Surely you do not
want the whole thing to collapse, even in your floating city.
You must know the danger we all face if such
a thing were to happen. I propose a truce. You
stop the bombing, and I won't end this world. I

(35:43):
have the winding box. I know you have at least
one of the watches, perhaps both. It doesn't matter anymore.
I have cracked the box's secret. I know how to
open a portal, and I do not need the other
two pieces to throw this entire world into the void.
I will do that before I allow that ghost to
leave the temple. You do not need to answer. Just stop.

(36:05):
I know how much you love your people and your child,
think of them, of her, Stop Gazi. This is very interesting,
the idea that somebody has figured out how to use
this thing without the rest of the pieces. I'm not sure.
I believe this person. I feel like this is maybe
just a threat, an empty threat. So all of a sudden,

(36:35):
the house begins to lower, and Bonnie says, oh yeah.
When Denise gets mad, magic stuff doesn't work. She's probably
on the roof. And they get a notification that this
monster blocks magic and it doesn't take any damage from

(37:00):
physical attacks, which is just incredibly unfair. Once you decipher
what the hell it is that like it's an environmental
as it's described, and that it takes damage from things
in the house, they're able to do something. But it's
not like Carl even thought of asking Mordecai, hey, what's

(37:20):
an environmental? And I'm not really mad at him for that.
Perhaps somebody else might have considered doing that, but it
wasn't something that occurred to me. So let's see blah
boss battle. You have discovered the layer of a burrow boss.
The house is falling. It will shatter against the ground
in exactly three minutes after the end of this message.

(37:42):
You must defeat the boss in order to escape. You
can't use offensive or defensive magic, and your own physical
attacks won't do shit either. This should be a hoot.
And then the description of Denise Denise shouldn't be here.
She was plucked directly from the seventh floor when her grandfather,

(38:03):
Emperor Answer, decided to use a magical gait to bring
his people to this world. But like many of those
who were unwilling in their journey to this place, she
lingered too long in the in between the nothing. She
paid dearly for it. She has a few special abilities.
She can move up magic from harming her. She is

(38:23):
an environmental she has an overwhelming need to protect children.
But most of all, she wants to kill everybody, especially
bitches and guess what you are. And the fight really
goes quite left for a minute. This it's all punctuated
with these moments of Bonnie really really underreacting to the

(38:48):
fight itself and just being like, oh, Denise, you're so silly.
And then eventually we have Mango getting really, really injured,
and it is so awful. I understand later why Carl
kind of yells at Dona about that even when Mongo

(39:09):
gets injured, you're going to need to stay more focused.
But you guys, you know, I have this thing in
my head where sometimes I will imagine scenarios that are
truly awful, just to sort of question myself and like,
what would you do in this scenario? And if there
were something threatening Pippin's life, I think I might be

(39:33):
willing to do a really stupid fucking thing to save him.
I think I might be willing to risk my own
life to rescue my dog. And you know, I don't
know that for a fact if the situation ever were
to come up, we would we would see the truth,
you know, And I'm sure it also depends on the circumstance.

(39:54):
But I couldn't help but really feel for Donah. And
even though a part of me felt frustrated the way
that Carl feels frustrated, it was just one of those
Like Carl, if Donut were really badly injured in the
midst of a fight, you would react the way she's reacting.
And so I just don't think he fully understands the

(40:18):
relationship that she has to Mango and how even though
Mango can't talk and there's you know, there's definitely going
to be inherent differences. I like Carl would just never
be able to his focus would falter. It just would

(40:39):
you know, let's see Dona continue to be to be
preoccupied with Mango and not the fight. The dinosaur was
bleeding and injured, but he no longer appeared to be
in pain. Carl Mango won't stop bleeding. My pet carrier
doesn't worth his health is still going down, and he

(41:02):
tosses her a bandage and it does begin to help him.
Go into that room there it's directly over the kitchen,
break through the floor, and make the whole big enough
for all of us to drop through. The beat to
the boss music was getting louder and faster as the
timer moved downward. That in particular, would make me so antsy,

(41:22):
like there is something about increasing the tempo or having
a countdown that makes me very frantic, and in a
way that isn't helpful, and that would bug the shit
out of me. So let's see. She wasn't the most

(41:43):
powerful of the mob, we thought, but we fought, but
that didn't matter. She was practically indestructible. It was only
then that I noticed the Boss now had a health
bar and he's trying to figure out, like what could
have done this to her? And he finally gets his
hands on a lemonade and it doesn't do anything, and
he's so irritated and he chucks the picture at her

(42:08):
out of frustration, and that's when he sees her health
bar and all of a sudden he's just like, oh shit,
and he jumps forward and grabs her by the neck
and she's able to fire darts out of her mouth.
By the way, let's see, what had the kids said
about her father? She'd pointed at the sink. What did
she meant? And he takes he takes this goose's head

(42:36):
and shoves it into the garbage disposal and it is
really really gross, guys, I mean, garbage disposes are just
terrifying anyway. You know, this is the reason that it
comes up a lot in horror movies. Or there's an

(42:57):
episode of Supernatural that I covered, I think in season
two where they keep like kind of teasing you that
this plumber who's working on this thing is going to
wind up getting ground up in the disposal, and it
never happens, and it never happens until you get to
a point where you really do think it's not going

(43:17):
to happen, and then of course, all of a sudden
they do it. It's just it's the worst blood showered
up through the whole geysering into the kitchen. The timer paused.
At one second, the whole house jerked to a stop
and we all flew off our feet. The boss, still

(43:38):
head first in the disposal and no longer being held
by me, started to rapidly spin, And that part got me,
the fact that she's still stuck in it and just
like fucking going around and around and around. So once
they turn it off, she flops out. Bubble notification the
common nouns. Quarters of the Wastline have been successful fully occupied.

(44:00):
The Air Quadrant has been liberated. I'll give congratulations to
the crawlers who successfully took the Throne room. And it
was just that this was the throne room that I
was deeply disappointed by. I was just like, come on,
this is so unimpressive. All crawlers who originated in the
Air Quadrant may now freely travel to the other quadrants,

(44:23):
and I'm I'm just trying to think exactly what they'll
be able to bring to You know, we've got Katcha
who has her mechanics abilities, Carl has all of these
things in his inventory that he has collected and also
his recipe book, and I'm just trying to think, let's see,

(44:46):
we had the thing that was was that the underwater
one that was the first one to get solved, and
then this one. So we've still got the underground one,
which is the you know, the one that got affected
by the wa because now it's filling up. There's a
fourth one, right or is there only the three? I'm

(45:06):
trying to remember there's not. Yeah, because like if we're
doing elements, I'm thinking their air, the underground is earth,
the other is water, and the only other element I
would think of is fire, And I don't know how
that would manifest. Oh, Seraphim says land quadrant with that

(45:29):
mage guy, Okay, I thought that was the underground thing.
But I must be misunderstand misremembering ores, He says, I
don't understand why garbage disposals exist. I would never get one.
It's clutch as somebody who cooks a lot. Garbage disposals
are a fucking godsend. I love them. They're just meant

(45:52):
to make it easy to get rid of the type
of garbage that is so wet that putting it in
a garbage bag is kind of not the move. You know,
some certain types of things, it feels like pouring them
into the trash is a bad idea. Underground is the

(46:14):
ghost Queen thing. Okay ah, the camera died again. Sorry
about this, guys. I really do not know what's going
on with it. I can only do so much. So
then we start chapter seventeen, Stage three of four the
Mad done Mage. The house had landed along the edge

(46:38):
of the bowl about a half mile east of Humptown,
and he tries to tell the little kid like, we've
got to go because your house is going to take off.
He's tried to cut the ropes that tie it to
the balloon and everything, and she's like, oh well, we
can just make it stay here. And she hands over
this soul gem or soul crystal and she says, my

(47:01):
dad gave it to me. He said to give it
an adult, give it to an adult. I guess you'll do.
Which is the best most shading line. I loved that
so much. I guess you'll do. Amen, Girly, it's F
class or F quality and it's yeah, the house is

(47:26):
like settled now and not going to fly away. So
Carl holds onto that and then begins to go through
everything and loot basically any item he comes across. Meanwhile,
he hands over this kid to donut and Katcha to

(47:46):
try and figure out exactly what's going on with her
regarding the spell that she's clearly under. The door to
the master bedroom opened without any effort. I stepped into
an unremarkable room. A king's sized bed with crumpled blue
sheets stood against one wall, and a tall dresser with
all the drawers opened sat against the other, still miraculously standing.

(48:08):
Spilled men's and women's clothing covered the floor. I eyed
a uniform shirt for some plumbing company with the name
Dale sewn on the breast. A framed University of Arizona
master's degree in Library Sciences for the woman who used
to live here had fallen off the wall, but the
glass hadn't broken. Her name had been Jennifer, Jennifer and Dale.

(48:30):
They'd had three kids. They'd likely all been asleep when
it happened. I couldn't stop thinking about what Maggie had said,
that they could bring people back. I didn't want to
think about it, about the potential horrors we could face
if we lived past this day or the next. You're lucky.
I thought, there's only two people out there they could

(48:50):
dredge up. For most that number had to be a
lot higher, and I'm assuming those two people are b
and his father. I may be wrong, but that's what
I'm going with for right now. And either of those
two sounds pretty awful. But I have to like, I
have to admit, if Carl were given the chance to

(49:12):
beat the shit out of his father, I would feel
that would be somewhat cathartic. Yeah, I don't know. He
can see the stairwell on the map, and it's like
inside the closet, it was only wide enough for two
people to walk down side by side. A blue force

(49:33):
field prevented me from entering. We still had two more
throne rooms to capture before it would open. After I
secured the windows the best I could, mostly by duct
taping sheets and tarp over them, I went to work
looting everything, books, toys, furniture. The man had been pretty short, unfortunately,
so there was nothing that had fit me. I was thinking, guys,

(49:56):
I was genuinely like, can you get oh for your
desire to find like pants? Because everything about the way
your attacks work and stuff, it just seems like being
pantsless is something that you need to accept. But also
I can understand just checking, just checking just to see,

(50:19):
you know, I finally hit pay dirt in the garage.
In addition to two mountain bicycles and a cheap plastic kayak,
they had a full work bench filled with tools that
had been meticulously organized. There were boxes and boxes of crap.
A bunch of Christmas supplies, including a fake tree, had

(50:41):
been recently put away. I took it along with a
box of Halloween and Fourth of July decorations, and I
am really curious when and if those decorations are going
to come in handy, because I feel like it's got
to come up eventually, but I really can't imagine. And

(51:04):
he realizes also that the power that's in the house
that's electrifying things, they're not being sourced the way that
normal electricity would be. So when he tries to flip
the braker and turn it off, it doesn't go off.
I removed the outlet from the garage wall, and only
then did it stop working. It didn't make sense. I

(51:25):
didn't want to flood the house, so I didn't try
it with the pipes. I did, however, completely disconnect the
main house panel and I took it. I doubted I'd
have use for it, but you never knew I did
not locate what I was hoping to find, and what
it was is guns. He had hoped that there were

(51:45):
guns in the house. I'm a little concerned that somebody
else might have them, because like the fact that a
bunch of drawers were open and stuff was spilled out
for me was kind of giving that somebody had already
ransacked the place. But you know, it's possible that the
show just didn't want those weapons to be an option
for crawlers to use and they removed them. So I

(52:06):
don't know, So let's see. Then we jumped to Carl
or no, Dona, sorry, I turned to see the airplane
slowly descending from the sky Karl look. Dona exclaimed. It
was the Nightmare too. It had dislodged itself from the
main balloon and the emergency balloon had finally lost its juice,

(52:27):
sending the plane slowly back to the ground, and they
retrieved this. Obviously, there's no use letting something that might
potentially be very helpful. Just sit and he When he
sends Lewis and Fearius out, we find out that they
have both got Borough Boss Stars after their names. They,

(52:51):
along with the Archers, had gotten into a fight with
the Thorny Devil. Queen Langley said they'd held their own
during the fight, which this is really nice, and apparently
caused all of the Thorny Devil mobs to disappear, which
whenever that's a side effect of something, I can't help
but be grateful. There are times where that device irritates me,

(53:12):
but like obviously right now, that is not one of
those times. And this is when Carl talks to Donna
about her completely losing it about Mango, and he says,
I can't do it all on my own, and she says,
you didn't. Who flipped the switch? I mean, really, I

(53:34):
couldn't cast my magic and I'm a magic class on
this floor. What else was I supposed to do? Vomit
on the goose? Besides, you'd clearly figured it out. I
hadn't figured it out until the last minute. We got lucky.
That wasn't luck, Carl, that was you being you. I'm
pretty sure we were supposed to drown the goose in

(53:54):
the sink or the lemonade pitcher, not rip her head
off in the garbage disposal. You're a good fighter, Carl,
and you think fast. That's why we're still alive. You
rarely think of the proper answer to a problem, but
you usually come up with one that works anyway. And
I appreciated this because when you keep escaping by the

(54:16):
skin of your teeth, it is not that you are
fucking up all the time. It's that you're somehow getting
it right all the time. You know, I understand why
Carl feels the way that he does about it, but
this is a game that's actively trying to kill you.
So even though it feels like we barely got out
of that every time, it's still a win. It's still

(54:39):
a win. It doesn't matter. So this is when we
get the second conversation with Loita and Zev. Donut, you
have a new box. They insist this version will not
explode as long as you don't deliberately go into the
head cavity, spend some time with it. If it works

(54:59):
as intended, we are going to bring you to up
to do the show a day early. And Donut, it's
like this is one of those things that it particularly
like touches a nerve for me. She says over and
over to Donut, don't talk back to me, which, uh,

(55:22):
I remember as a kid, my parents never actually said
those words, but I remember thinking how unjust it was
that it was simply you don't get to say anything.
I get to say all the things, and you have
to be simply silent, and just I felt like that

(55:42):
was so fundamentally unfair, and I remember being very relieved
that my parents really never said that. And that's, you know,
like Lita is. She finally says, if you talk back again,
I will have Mango taken from you, will use him
to feed a mob on the next and will make
you watch I can do that. Don't test me. I

(56:06):
cannot you, guys, that is some evil shit. And just
like Doughnut's not even refusing to do what they say.
She's just got an attitude that's literally it. But she's
still willing to work with them, and she's been more
willing to work with them than Carl the whole time.
You know, she was the one who was delighted to

(56:27):
have merched. Like the way that they are coming at
Dona isn't doing them any favors either. But they really
just feel like, I've got the power, so I can
berate you and threaten you and get you to do
what I want. And it's like, well, she probably would
have done what you wanted anyway, but now you had

(56:47):
to make it like this, and so there's going to
be a different energy going forward, and you've just shot
yourself in the foot anyway. This is when Zev says,
you won't You don't need a social media manager anymore.
And Carl says, can you at least send her down

(57:08):
here so Donut can say goodbye to her Loita? No,
of course, not Carl. What about that infomercial for a robot?
Can she go to that? No, it's not her job anymore.
I will be there, of course. Now get back to work,
and Donah is super sad about this, I really like.

(57:29):
Carl promises her that she'll get to see Zev again,
and she says you shouldn't make promises like that, but
he's like, no, I fucking mean it, And I'm interested
to see how he tries to keep that promise. So
they watched the recap. Prepotenti and Miriam were just as
far along as we were. They'd managed to scale the

(57:50):
interior wall of their bubble and kill all the spiders
by applying some deep buff that made them all fall
asleep and plummet to their deaths. That had somehow also
finished at the subterranean zone their bubble, and they were
now preparing to go underwater. The two headed creature that
represented the Popov brothers was on a pirate ship firing
cannons at other pirate ships. I don't know what was

(58:11):
going on there. The cimar fought some multi limbed mummy
ice thing and shattered him. She was actually working with
a group of people, which surprised me, though the show
was low on details, and I am real curious about that.
And we have the top ten list. Lucius still first,
Carl is still second, Prepatenteus third, Doughnut is fourth, Demitrian

(58:34):
Popov fifth, Miriam is sixth, Kwan Chit is seventh, Ellen
mcgibb eight bogged in row nine, and shirag Al is ten.
And let's see, people got bored easily. Quantad dropped several spots,
probably because he'd cleared his bubble early and he wasn't
making any moves to leave the area. There was a

(58:58):
new guy at the bottom of the list. I wasn't
sure if I'd seen him on the show, and I
am curious about that dude and what we might see
from him. So we have a new robot doughnut walking around,
and it seems to be the better version, certainly of
the ones we have had so far. And Mordecai says

(59:24):
something to Carl about how this is not an enhanced toy,
which basically means you don't have to have like a
membership to a thing and Wi Fi in order for
it to work, which is interesting, he says. The logo
on the benefactor box suggests they're associated with Verit and Linkage.
That's a mostly soother lending fund that advocates for the

(59:47):
enslavement of those who can't afford their taxes. I've been
thinking about why a company would spend so much on
such a stupid toy, and none of it makes sense.
Only a megacorp could possibly afford such an expensive ca pain,
and they'd only do it if there was some sort
of payoff. I doubt just selling a cheap toy is
their intent. Odds are will never know. And the thing

(01:00:09):
that I was thinking was that, you know, if it's robotic,
perhaps it spies on people somehow, you know, like the
whole thing with how it seems that Alexas are listening
into conversations, maybe marketing things to you based on what
it overhears type of thing. So he has the pocket

(01:00:33):
watch and he opens it and he sees Henrik. So
this is a way that they are able to communicate apparently,
but Henrick very quickly closes his because evidently he wants
nothing to do with Carl at this point. And let's see,
Bonnie is starting to wake up out of her stupor

(01:00:53):
she's over at Scarn's house. You should go see her
before you and donut leave for your show. How she
doing not so great? But she's a kid. Kids are resilient.
So they have this moment with Bonnie telling her like,
this is where you're going to stay, this is where
you're going to sleep, and they're being really kind and

(01:01:14):
she says something like this isn't my bed, and Carl
just whips out her bed from his inventory and she
doesn't have any reaction, which I sort of like because
like she's coming out of her super but she's still
in it. And also, as a kid, you just sort
of take for granted in a lot of ways that
people are going to do what they can for you
and don't fully appreciate it because you are very self centered.

(01:01:35):
In the world where Alves around you still, and she
asks for another one of the potions, and I was
just like, I really hope this kid doesn't wind up
addicted to some sort of drug or something, because being
around the Dromedarians, they are very into drugs, obviously, and
if she's trying to numb herself, that could turn into

(01:01:56):
a habit. So fingers crossed, that's not thing that happens
to her. Mongo slowly approached the girl and he dropped
the stuffed pink bunny in front of her. The girl
picked it up and held it tight. She closed her eyes.
I took the photo from my inventory, the one of
her and her mother and father, and I put it
on the nightstand. Loita, oh, for the sake of the Gods.

(01:02:20):
Audiences like drama, but not melodrama. Stop concerning yourself so
much with NPCs. We'll be transferring you to your program
in twenty minutes. I really hate her a lot. I
really hate her. It's not even real melodrama, you know,
like it really isn't. It's just literally giving her her

(01:02:43):
stuff and having her come to a point of being
able to actually grieve like a fuck all the way off, Louita,
the girl was sobbing, clutching onto the changeling woman while
she held the stuffed pink rabbit. And I love that
the changelings have take in the form of gnomes, just
to like make her feel more comfortable. That was the

(01:03:05):
moment right then. I'd been toying around with an idea,
but I dismissed it as too risky too soon. That
was the moment I changed my mind. So I am
dying to know what that is, and I'm gonna get
to find out very very shortly. Yay, all right, everybody.

(01:03:26):
I'm very sorry that the camera did what it did,
because it seems to have never come back, but I'm
really really looking forward to reading more. I'll be doing
that tonight, and it's a shame that I can't record
again until Tuesday. I'm gonna have to wait over the
weekend and that's always hard, but I will be seeing
you again, So until then, to the loom, motherfuckers. That

(01:04:18):
was an unspoiled network past