July 29, 2025 • 67 mins
If you'd like to get these episodes early AND ad-free, please go to https://www.patreon.com/unspoiled and become a patron, or just follow us as a free member for updates!
Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode!
These chapters are the ones where our guys go up against Dismember, a War Mage doing some pretty horrific magic and with a LOT of minions. Then Carl fixes up a new item for Katya, and she grows...a lot.
Thanks so much to you all for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode!
Wanna talk spoilers? Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/rEF2KfZxfV
Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode!
These chapters are the ones where our guys go up against Dismember, a War Mage doing some pretty horrific magic and with a LOT of minions. Then Carl fixes up a new item for Katya, and she grows...a lot.
Thanks so much to you all for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode!
Wanna talk spoilers? Join the Discord! https://discord.gg/rEF2KfZxfV
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is Unspoiled, covering
the Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook chapters twelve and thirteen. In these chapters,
Carl gets a capsule as his gift from the Valte
(00:24):
Corporation and it I have to say, it does something awesome,
but I don't know that I would have been as
willing to take it as he was. Also, we have
this wild hack that he has come up with for
Katcya that is genius and also seems like such a
(00:47):
pain in the ass. Welcome to spoil me, Welcome to
(01:10):
the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much
to Michael for commissioning this episode. Oh my god, Saraphim
just called I was describing how behind certain paywalls, I
will be more expressive than I will be because I
know that it's unlikely just anybody is going to pay
to get behind the paywall, and Saraphim just called it unspoiled, unfiltered,
(01:34):
And honestly, that name is genius, saraf Em. And I
want it, but I don't know what I would use
it for, but I'm filing it away for future use potentially.
Michael says, poor Katya, and Saraphim says genius Will being
a hot mess is pretty much Carl's whole shtick, And yeah,
(01:56):
I think that's pretty accurate. He this this whole thing
with Kotya. You guys, I'm realizing, you know what, I'm
getting ahead of myself. I'm going to wait and we
will talk about that when we get to it. First
we are going to uh because like the last chapter
(02:17):
eleven ended with him finding out that he had gotten
a sponsor, and Doughnut and Kotya, it turns out both
got sponsors because, as we find out later, everybody in
the dungeon got a sponsor this year. I am really
curious about this. This is the first time it's ever
happened for Dungeon Crawler World, and I'm wondering if it's
(02:41):
because of the fact that so many people got like
other upgrades and stuff, because of the ai that it's
made it like more affordable for people, or the options
available to them are like better than normal. I don't know.
I don't know if that's even like a factor, but
there is just it fascinates me that this is the
(03:01):
first time that has ever happened, and you know, there
was the mention of budget issues, and I wonder if
it's like it used to be out of reach for
certain people to even be able to afford to sponsor
a crawler, and that perhaps they have lowered prices on
(03:22):
things because they are just trying to make as many
sales as possible. I don't know. So we start off
with him. The mention of his sponsor is at the
end of the last chapter, but we find out that
(03:45):
Donuts is Princess Dinadia of the Prism Kingdom, which I'll
tell you what, kids, It takes a few times of
them saying this on the audiobook for me to realize
that he was saying Prism and not Prison, because I
had forgotten and I definitely thought it was Prison Kingdom,
and I was like, that sounds terrible. But Donadia we've
(04:08):
met before, and Carl didn't even remember her, so he
has to like apologize out loud because she's probably watching
and offended to the fact that he doesn't remember anything
about her. In his defense, somebody did try and kill
him and Donut that day, so he was a bit distracted.
But also, I would think that the people around you
(04:29):
when you almost got killed would probably wedge in your
mind a little bit better than they have. So okay,
let's see. He mentions that I'll take Corporation to donut
and then very quickly switches to texting and says not
a word about them out loud. Borran hates them. They're
the ones trying to invade the boring system. And she's like, well,
(04:49):
then why did they let them sponsor you? And he says,
I'm not sure that they have a choice in allowing that,
but it might mean that I get really good stuf,
or it might mean that they try and get me
killed off way faster. The thing is that, like, I'm
good for ratings, so I think as long as I
managed to make myself stay interesting, that will be okay.
(05:11):
But we will have to be careful. And there's a
mention of the the commercials and do not hoping that
it doesn't get so tedious that people begin to get annoyed,
because she remembers watching Matt Locke and they're being the
I've fallen and I can't get up commercial every single time.
(05:32):
And yet, you know, I recognize that to a degree.
A big part of advertising's effectiveness is it just being
relentless and persistent, and you know, almost like wearing you down.
But there have been times recently where I've decided to
(05:54):
go for the free streaming option on a given service
but with ads, and it has been the exact same
three ads every ad break. And I'll tell you what,
It's a pretty effective strategy for getting me to pay
for the service. It really is, like, even though from
(06:16):
what I've heard, paying earns them less money, if they
want more people to be watching ads, they should vary
it up a bit more than they do, because I
am I start to be more likely to reach for
my wallet when I have seen the same exact ad
fourteen times in a row. Sorry, there is so much
(06:36):
chatter and I am not going to be able to
get to everybody's the everybody's comment. Sorry, guys, I really
like I might be able to go back and look,
but I'm wanting to stay on task this time because
I've been having a rush toward the end of some
of my episodes. So he like, uh, don'nut says that
(06:58):
she kind of wants a name for her groupies, and
he suggests the donut Holes, which actually is amazing. I
really love that name. It is crude. She's not wrong.
You could go with the munchkins, but like, that's so
specific to dunkin Donuts that I'm not really sure if
(07:18):
many people would get that. I'm trying to think of
like another donut related name, but donut holes is really funny.
I kind of feel like that's going to catch on,
even though she didn't like it, because it's that's just
the sort of thing that happens, I feel like in
this game. So he lootes that corpse of Gorgor, he
(07:45):
gets an ochre line engineer's key rev Up Magic hair Restoration.
This is something that could be really valuable to somebody.
I'm curious if it actually works because it's called rev Up,
and that is that brand name for the uh like,
(08:07):
what do you call it? Moonshine, right, so it may
not actually do what it says. It may be addictive
for all we know, Like I have no idea, But anyway,
he gets a map of the complete ocre line, including
all the stops and current locations of all the trains,
which is really really valuable and oh my god, two
(08:32):
people in the chat suggested doughnut blazers. I dislike it deeply,
thumbs down to you both. I might mute you for
that since one fifty one was another transit station, the
next station after that one would have monsters. That would
have monsters was one f two. I watched as one
mob something called a drake bitch, hit the electrified line
(08:57):
and turned itself into an x More monsters appeared by
the minute. The monsters are jumping on the track and
walking up to station one point fifty five. The trains
had stopped coming, and the creatures weren't waiting any longer.
It was going to take them a long time. There
were miles between each station that would soon start happening
(09:18):
behind us too. The early stations were much closer. We
went up the stairs to find Katya sitting on the
ground crying silently. Now, you guys, there is a moment
earlier where you know, her hand gets chopped off, and
he has a moment of like, oh no, and then
he tells himself it's fine. It's not really her hand,
(09:41):
it's just a chunk of metal. And I don't know
if I even mentioned that happening in the last recording,
because it was so not of concern to me, and
it's so not of concern to him and Donut as well,
that they hang out in chit chat and then finally
make their way back over to her. They had no
(10:01):
idea that she was injured. And then as they come forward,
he sees the blood on her hand, and when she
holds up her right hand, it looks normal at first,
but then when it reshapes, her own fingers disappear. He
chopped my fingers off. When I healed, they didn't come back.
(10:26):
It's stupid. I can build fingers from other parts of me.
He didn't really chop off my fingers. I'm like Clay.
All I lost was a bit of flesh. I had
to take a ring off my severed finger and put
it on my new fingers. But part of me is gone.
I'm losing myself. That's not true. I gently tapped her forehead. Look,
(10:48):
the real Katcha is still there. They can cut everything
else off, but you're still You. Don't let them break you,
no matter what they do. Okay, okay, she said, getting
to her feet. She did not sound convinced. Yeah, this
(11:10):
is one of those. It can be very difficult for
me sometimes to know what the right thing to do is,
whether or not it's the time to give somebody a
pep talk, or whether it is the time to be
sympathetic to what they're going through. And I think probably
Carl is right in handling this this way and having
(11:32):
it be a pep talk. But honestly, it feels like
it's so close to after she has lost her fingers
that probably if I were her, or if I were
in his shoes talking to her, I would have gone
in the direction more of sympathy, because it feels like
(11:52):
he's trying to be like to stop her from wallowing,
and they are in the middle of something, so I
think his tactic here is probably more practical, But it
just feels like this just happened to her, and I
(12:13):
kind of wanted there to be a moment of just
that really fucking sucks, dude, I'm so sorry, you know.
I uh. I think maybe if she hadn't used the
words I'm beginning to lose myself, he would have aired
on the side of sympathy, but that indicated a sort
(12:34):
of like nihilistic attitude that he wanted to nip in
the bud. So I think probably he did the right thing.
It just felt for me a little bit I don't
even want to say like like heartless, just it did
(13:00):
feel very practical in the moment in a way that
felt like it was lacking a bit of sympathy. Losing
your fingers, even if you are able to make new ones,
that is a big deal. You know, It's not as
bad as it could be. And yes, she can make
(13:20):
new ones and function basically the same way, which is incredible.
But I would be really shaken by that too, I
really would. I think a lot about injuries that would
(13:41):
be particularly devastating. And I am such a creative person.
I love to draw and paint and craft and cook,
and losing fingers or hands is a big one that
really scares me. And it's something that comes up for
me a lot because I am beginning to experience arthritis
(14:02):
in my hands. I'm only forty years old, kids, and
it's already happening. And so the fact that I'm this
young and already starting to have this, it makes me
feel like it's probably going to get pretty bad, and
I worry about it. So, yeah, this just sort of
gets to me in a certain way, you know. So anyway,
(14:26):
it turns out that her sponsor is Princess Formidable of
the Skull Empire, which the fact that she is being
sponsored by somebody who is in a position where they
could very understandably have a grudge against Karl is concerning
(14:50):
It's sort of interesting because who knows what's going on
with this woman. I'm calling her woman for lack of
a better word, the way that she is described here,
it is King Russ was the orc leader of the
Skull Empire. Prince Stalwart was the crown Prince. Maestro had
been second in the line of succession until he'd been
(15:13):
disowned and then killed. As Zev had said, if Stalwart
was disowned for his failed attempt, the sister would be
next in line, and he doesn't know whether Stalwart has
been disowned or not. Now it could be that the
sister is going to be assigned to take down Karl,
that this will be like part of a grudge that
(15:35):
she inherits, or maybe she hates her brothers and is
secretly delighted by the fact that Karl was able to
take both of them out of the lineup if indeed
Stalwart was disowned, and it could be that she has
(15:55):
to like put on a front like she's going to
take Carl down, but actually wanted her brothers out of
the way, and so has a weird soft spot for him, Like,
there's a lot of directions that you could go in,
and even knowing which direction she was leaning, it wouldn't
(16:17):
necessarily help me understand the advantage of sponsoring Hecla. The
only thing that I could think of is potentially, if
you want to get it, Carl, and you want Sorry
I keep saying Hekla, I'm talking about Kotchya. But if
you wanted to get it, Carl, and you wanted to
use HECLA to do it, maybe sponsoring Kachya. I don't
(16:42):
know if you're allowed to sponsor more than one person,
but I assume you probably are. If you have the money,
maybe you could sponsor more people that are linked in
some way, you know, And maybe she could do something
strategically that focks things up for Carl somehow and gives
(17:02):
the advantage to HECLA through Katchya. So I don't know. Sorry,
there's an art argument in the chat about the rings
and how they work, so let's see Katchia. This is
the part where she is pointing out something on the
(17:24):
map and she explains it to Carl and he's like,
I don't know what you're talking about, but whatever you say,
I believe you, and let's see the problem is if
we don't yet know if the named trains like Nightmare
Express or Dismemberment Limited are safe, of course they're not safe.
(17:44):
The boss box was a bust, Donut said, all I
got was a bunch of healing scrolls and a poison
dark trap kit. That sounds awesome, I said, so what's
the plan, as Donut? The fact that she just does
not give a fuck is very funny. So the Dismemberment Limited,
(18:08):
this is really something. The track itself was a wide,
flat platform with two metal beams running on either side.
This was a monorail system, a maglev train. We'd had
something similar in Seattle, though this looked much more futuristic.
Donut practiced with her whole spell while we trade. While
(18:31):
we waited. I'd finally talked her into grasping it wasn't useless,
and eventually she literally says, this is the greatest spell
in the world, Carl, and later they do something with
it that is fucking great. So we will get there.
As they are waiting for this train, he gets in
touch with l and Imani and Immani tells him, hey,
(18:57):
I think that the train thing, not necessarily that it's
been a mistake, but there are some real consequences to
this that we are just starting to figure out what
they might be. And I think we should refrain from
derailing any more or stopping any of them in any way,
because things can get pretty crazy. And Elle says, the
(19:21):
Octopus Lady has them all addicted to opiates painkillers. They're
called rev up vitamin shots. They're called shots, but you
drink them every five stops, all the ones ending in
a five or a zero. There was a set of tunnels.
Each monster from the previous stops in that section would
(19:44):
get off the train and they'd line up by race.
Entering the tunnels. At the end of each passageway was
a door with a slot on it. Behind the door
was a monster called apuka, and Moni described them as fuzzy,
goblin like creatures. They were neighborhood bosses. Each Puka had
a pile of potion vials, and it would hand out
(20:05):
one to each monster through the door slot, who'd then
take the vial and go through a swirling one way
portal that had return them to their station. The potions
appeared to be a powerful, addictive race specific sedative that
explained why the monsters who missed their stops would panic.
The monsters were only allowed one vial at a time,
(20:28):
and each high would only last so long, and Mani
said it appeared that drugs didn't activate until they took
it through the portal, So the monsters would get their vial,
go through the portal to take it, and once the
high started to wear off, they'd return to the train
station to go get another. And Moni goes on the
description of the vials, says, if the mobs don't get
(20:51):
their fix in time, something happens to them. They change physically.
So every time we interrupt the trains, it sets off
a chain reaction up and down the line for the
monsters who can't get their vials. The kirk Karen is
the one making the individual drugs. I'm guessing since each
vial is race specific, there's a different Kirkaren Burrow Boss
(21:14):
at each one of those stops. I wasn't confident in
our ability to face her, so I had the team
back off. The Puka monsters turn into giant goats when
you attack them, so be careful if you face one.
And Katya, when they talk about what the theory is here.
(21:34):
She says that she feels like stringing out a whole
floor's worth of mobs seems overly complicated, and Carl is like, well,
I mean it is, but it is also like kind
of efficient in a weird way. It's like this self
contained ecosystem. The floor is designed to break the moment
(21:55):
people start messing with the system. Imani says, they change
if they don't get their drugs. I suspect we're gonna
find out soon what that means. And yet the system
is designed to break as soon as people start messing
it up. That sounds right. That's the way that it's
set up, isn't It is that like it's the system
(22:20):
is designed to keep us all doing the thing that
harms us, because if we stop doing the thing that
harms us, it punishes us in a whole new and
exciting way. So we still get harmed. And there is
a sense of control in choosing to keep doing a
thing rather than getting a consequence that is a result
(22:40):
of something indirect. It makes you feel like you it's comforting,
you know, it feels like you're choosing rather than having
it done to you, even though in both cases it
is really being done to you, like it doesn't matter.
And honestly, I was kind of a prize by Katchia
(23:01):
saying that this is over overly complicated. This seems really
simple to me, you know what I mean, Like it's
almost it dehumanizes all of the elements, not that they're
human in the first place, but you get what I'm saying,
where you're not dealing with like these beings as individual
(23:24):
monsters anymore. You're turning them into a particular cog and
controlling them almost the way you would with like a
remote control, except it's a drug and you put the
drug into this like automated setup. I mean, if you're
(23:45):
going to actually be messing around with living beings, I
can't think of a more efficient way to get everybody
going in the direction you want to go than to
do it like this. It's I don't know, I understood
what she meant in a way, but the more I
(24:07):
thought about it, I was like, this is actually extremely simplistic,
if anything, and it also has the potential for the
most havoc as soon as it's disturbed, which is like
kind of what this show thrives on, right, is everything
being balanced on a razor's edge, and then the moment
(24:30):
that somebody begins to like do anything a little bit different,
it's all thrown into total chaos and disarray, and that's
where the fun starts for the viewers, so to speak.
But anyway, so yeah, this to me makes total sense
(24:52):
and is also awful just the idea. As I was
saying in the last episode or the one before. I think,
even if these creatures are not real, even if they
were created for the show, getting them addicted to drugs
to control their behavior is still awful. So the train
(25:14):
pulls up and the front cockpit has the operator in it,
who is super weird looking, and eventually Carl realizes that
this dude has flesh is super loose. He had thought
(25:35):
the guy was wearing a pawn show, but that is
his skin. He had no muscle or definition. The green
tinted flesh hung off him like a fitted sheet placed
on a too small bed. The right side of his
face hung loosely. When he spoke, the hole for his
mouth hung below the bottom of his jawline, and the
(25:57):
words came from the noseholes. The nose itself appeared like
it was supposed to be hooked, but it hung to
the side, dangling like a used condom on the side
of the creature's face. The eyeholes drooped, revealing yellow bone.
Clumps of hair clung to the head. You guys, this
sounds so fucking ghastly, and the way he's describing like
(26:21):
the eyes and stuff. If you've ever encountered a particular
breed of Great Dane, you might have seen this. It's
one of those things where I'm like, I love dogs,
I've grown to really love dogs, but there are certain
breeds that are just fucking freaky looking. And some Great
(26:44):
Danes get so droopy in the face that you can
see almost as much red from their eyes as as whites,
because the skin pulls so far down on the sides
of their eyes that it's like a huge section of
very tender looking, vulnerable looking red flesh is always visible
(27:10):
in a way that I find incredibly off putting. And
that's just immediately what I thought of. So the system
tells him that this is a troll flesher and hobgoblin
skelly symbiote. This is two creatures. Only when combined do
they have intelligence and the ability to speak. The skelly
(27:30):
is your typical run of the mill reanimated skeleton of
all the war made spells soldiers encounter during the brutal
mass combat that will occur on the ninth floor, You're
not Done Yet spell is one of the most terrifying.
Fallen soldiers are cast with a spell and their flesh
is ripped from the body. This loose skin becomes a
(27:53):
sentient minion called a flesher. Fleshers are oftentimes tossed across
the battlefield, landing in and around the trenches of the enemy.
Fleshers have one goal to find a new set of bones.
Once they've found a victim, the skin unfurls and pounces,
covering the body, smothering and melting it. Once dead, the
(28:17):
rest of the victim burns away, and the flesher casts
the only spellet nose boned, which animates the remaining skeleton.
The creature that eventually forms is no longer a minion
to the original mage, nor is it undead. It is
new to the world, oftentimes confused and afraid and weak.
(28:40):
The symbio is very easy to kill. After a few
hours have passed and the new symbio is complete, the
combined creature becomes a target for other fleshers, who are
said to be drawn to their former companion's new bones.
If a flesher kills a symbio, the second iteration is
more intelligent and powerful than the last. There are rumors
(29:03):
about oft re sleeved symbiotes. After enough repetitions, it's whispered,
they can become quite powerful. This is Levi the seventh.
This quest is triggered six times now since the floor
has opened. This is this is thank you, Michael. Michael's
(29:31):
in the chat saying I worry about Matt. How did
he come up with this monstrosity of a spell? That
is the question. I honestly, what the fuck? What the fuck?
Where did you even come up with this idea? I mean,
(29:57):
I'm trying to think because so many things in this
and by this, I mean this series have been obvious
allegories or metaphors for the way the real world functions,
and I've been trying to think what this is. Honestly,
(30:23):
I don't know that it is anything. It just feels
so specific that it's like it's gotta be something right.
But maybe not. Maybe he just tried to think of
the creepiest shit he could think of and you know
what mission accomplished. If that's it, Matt, you really outdid yourself.
(30:47):
I mean those fucking the flying Harpee women with their
guts hanging out, those were pretty bad. But this, this
is different, This is oh my god. Yeah. It's the
fact that it's like you get your flesh, melts it
off as something takes you over, and then a bunch
(31:09):
of other things want to take you over a bunch
of more times. Like the way that the suffering is
like prolonged and changes and there's different levels. It just
it feels like, you know, the possibilities are sort of
endless in a way that I really really dislike a lot.
(31:35):
Oh shit, Misty says, honestly, it's a little like Sanderson's
Misborn Monsters. Yeah, and then Seraphim says, thank you. I'm
not alone in thinking it's like a colass slash chondra hybrid.
H Seraphim keeps accidentally doing all caps like, don'tut, that's funny,
but yeah, co loss chondra hybrid is kind of it
(31:58):
huh interesting but like in the worst way where nothing
seems to remain of the original beings. It's a whole
new thing. How weird, how fucking weird. So past fail
(32:18):
quest do not allow Levi the seventh to be devoured.
This quest is active as long as you remain on
the train reward, you'll receive a silver quest box. A failure,
every crawler on the train will be turned into a flesher.
That is horrifying. It's possible later on when they are
starting to get attacked. Those were crawlers at one time.
(32:43):
I hate it, okay, So they have to block the
door and they get things set up as these fleshers
are appearing on the map and there are like hundreds
of them, and then comes the warm age whose name
(33:06):
is dismember ha haha, so funny, and he is, you know,
this is the Dismemberment Express. Let's see. I'm trying to
find the moment where he shows up, because the first
thing he says is basically like, I can't believe that
(33:26):
you think you're going to be able to get out
of this without me skinning you. That is hilarious. But
you may as well just give it up now. It'll
only hurt for a second and then it'll be over.
Just get this done. And let's see, he asks Levi,
what race this guy is, and Levi says warm ages
(33:49):
are warm ages, that one looks like an elf. I'm
not an elf, you fool. I just need eight more
iterations and you'll know, Levi, you'll know exactly what we are.
Eight more trips seven after I get past these interlopers.
I can't deny, guys, I am a little curious about this,
Like you'll know exactly what we are? What are you?
(34:12):
Then this feels like there's something here, which later on
Carl says, probably this whole thing is part of some
other shitty storyline that now isn't going to go anywhere,
or maybe we'll continue without him. I don't know, but
I am curious about it. So they decide to go
with Surprise three attack, which is something that is not
(34:36):
possible to practice, as Carl mentions, and I love the
way that this goes so much, you guys, because Carl
starts off trying to distract Dismember, and it turns out
he doesn't need to try and distract him because Dismember
is so excited to monologue himself. So he starts off saying,
I want to tell you a secret. Oh, we don't
(34:56):
have time for your secrets, you filthy crawler, let me
tell you a secret, okay, The way that he says,
we don't have time for secrets, and then he's like,
but let me tell you one, sir, And the fact
that Carl just goes okay and he doesn't find it weird,
(35:16):
dismember it doesn't. I mean, like, I feel like somebody
that you're about to attack. If they seem like they're
real open to listening to you do your fucking soliloquy here,
then you should probably wonder why they're so willing. After
I knock this metal barrier down, I'm gonna send my
(35:38):
minions in and one of them is gonna recently LEVI.
But they won't bother you. I'll have them leave you
be go on, I said, holding up a second finger,
you guys. The fact that he says go on, and
and this guy doesn't kind of go that's weird. Why
is he encouraging me? This guy is dumb. And then
(35:59):
I'm gonna cast the spell that will peel the skin
off of you and your friends, but I'm not going
to kill you. I have another spell to keep you
alive even after you've been flayed. It will be a
journey of pain, unlike anything that has ever been experienced
in this world. I'm going to I held up a
third finger. A hole appeared in the metal plate. Fast
(36:21):
as I could, I reached through, grasped the surprised elf
like creature by his long silver hair, and pulled. The
moment I pulled his head through the hole, Doughnut snapped
off the spell. I let go, and the severed head
dropped to the ground, mouths still open wide. What was that, bitch?
(36:44):
I didn't quite get that last part, I said, which
later on we find out that line played very well
with audiences, which doesn't surprise me. I love the use
of this spell like this we saw earlier than practice,
and Mango just biting off whatever comes through the hole,
(37:04):
but just letting the whole do the work itself is
so neat and tidy that I can't help prefer it.
Mango doing it gets him XP so there's definitely an
advantage to that, for sure, But this just is so
self contained that I can't help but be a little
(37:29):
bit obsessed with it. It's basically, you're carrying around a
guillotine with you, and like, I don't remember what the
cool down is for this, So it might be that
it takes a long time before you can do this again,
and they won't be able to depend on it too much.
But I am really really into it. I love this
(37:51):
so much. So then we go to chapter thirteen. The
fleshers are now bereft minions, which begin to swarm. I
didn't know if the process required a skull to successfully
convert the flesher into a symbio, but at least one
of the monsters was making the effort because they're attacking
(38:11):
the dismember's body Levi. Meanwhile, I really loved the way
that the narrator does Levi's voice, because he decided to
go with like a very whiny, paniced, crying voice that
is totally reasonable for somebody that has undergone the awful
(38:34):
transformation that Levi has. Several times now, I think he
says six times, so it's reasonable, but it's also one
super annoying and two not helpful in any way. And
so eventually, when Carl just yells at him to shut
the fuck up, Levi I was just thank you, thank you,
(38:57):
because that man needs to either help or get the
fuck out of the way. You know this, this made
me think of, you know how those of us who
are eighties kids. We grew up in an era were
oftentimes our families would either tape a movie off the
(39:21):
TV or buy a VHS of a movie that, for
some reason was the movie that our family decided was
good enough to purchase and was not like a Disney movie.
It was like something that the whole family would often
watch together repeatedly. And everybody's movie is different. Nineties kids
(39:46):
know you know what I'm talking about, So our family
the movie was The Fugitive with Harrison Ford. I have
seen The Fugitive at least fifteen times. I can recite
almost all the dialogue word for word, and one of
the things in there that I really remember is there
(40:08):
is a point where they think they're going after Harrison
Ford's character, doctor Richard Kimball, and they're going to a
place where this guy has holed up, and you think,
as they're swarming the place that they have finally found
doctor Kimball, but it turns out they're there for a
different convict who is on the run, and there is
a woman there hold up with this guy who is
(40:32):
screaming the entire time that they are. It's like coming in,
swarming and attacking and Eventually, after somebody gets shot and
the convict is the one who gets shot and he falls,
she keeps screaming even though shit's over, and Tommy Lee
Jones is walking past her as she's screaming, and he
(40:54):
just turns to her and goes shut up. And it
was the exact same sensation of just somebody being useless
and screaming and just helping in no way at all,
and meet sheering from the sidelines. So anyway, Carl, thank
you for being the Tommy Lee Jones in this situation.
(41:14):
LEVI I feel for you, I really do. You have
all my sympathy. But enough already, enough already. So anyway,
what Carl thinks is going on is I think he
was building an army. He takes our skin and uses
our bones to become stock for his budding army. It's
(41:36):
probably some bullshit storyline we don't have time to get
involved in. I'm wondering if this is going to come
back and bite them in the ass at some point.
So this is when zeb calls and she tells them
I booked you guys for a show called Planet Beautiful.
(41:57):
It's drier than what you're used to, but I'm I'm
confident you too can spice it up. You'll be going
into a sound booth and reading prepared lines. And Carl
is like, wait a minute. If we're reading prepared lines,
what do you mean we can spice it up. She
doesn't actually answer that question, just for the record, and
then he says, I'm not gonna read some anti earth
(42:19):
propaganda bullshit. And she's like, oh, I don't know what
it's even gonna be about. And he's like, Zev, stop it.
You are not a good liar. What is it? It's
about beauty pageants and pet shows. Doughnut audibly gasped, we
(42:41):
will do it. I can't wait. I was about to object,
but then I realized this would be a goddamn vacation
compared to what usually happened when we went on a show.
What could possibly go wrong inside of a sound booth? Carl,
I'm gonna need you to not even ask questions like that,
(43:01):
what are you doing? You jinxed it? It's the jinx?
Why now I have my suspicions about this it being
about pet shows? Like, first of all, anybody who knows
anything about human beauty pageants knows what a complete horror
show those are anyway, so that whole topic is already
(43:29):
rife with issues. Pet shows, though, you can do also
like this a whole thing with them, because rightfully, the
breeding of purebred animals for pet shows is often a
horror in and of itself. It's a combination of like
(43:51):
the process of breeding, the people who do it, but
also the fucking animals as a result that are like
purebreads are often these freaks of nature that can't fucking
breathe or stand or you know, like all of these
things that they have limitations on them that if they
were healthy and had been allowed to interbreed, would not
(44:12):
have happened. And I am I'm not even sure how
much that's going to be a factor in any of this,
but I am really really concerned, that's all I'm gonna say.
I feel like this could be something that could easily
kind of fuck up Dona as well, because even though
(44:35):
it's a topic that is something that she has personal
experience in, that could be part of the problem is
she didn't have the level of understanding that she does now,
and maybe as she begins to learn more, it's like
designed to kind of get under her skin and unnerve
her because we've seen clearly the way that some things
(44:59):
have been designed have been to upset Carl. And I
can't help but think that, like now it's donuts turned,
She's sort of do. I don't know, man, I don't know.
I just feel very worried about it, That's all I'm saying.
(45:20):
So this, uh, we go to station two eighty one.
We'd stay there and sleep train and then head back
it into the world. So this is when Carl goes
and gets a different crafting table. Let's see the I
(45:45):
think Armorer one, and I'd like to upgrade my sappers
table to level three. My book confirms something I'd already suspected.
While I could use an engineering table to shape just
about any type of armor, it didn't become a true wearable.
If I created and shaped an item using engineering and
(46:05):
then stepped over to the new Armorer's table. However, the
item's description changed. All I had to do was pull
up my new Armorer's workshop tab, select the item, and
then pick its intention from a list. So then we
go to him reading an entry about the way that
backpacks work regarding explosives. This is just really giving him
(46:31):
the idea for a backpack. But there's a whole thing
here that's like fascinating to me about how progressively the
way the game works changes, and so sometimes the advice
that is left for future crawlers is no longer actually
relevant anymore, which really sucks balls. Let's see the high
(46:57):
level madness satchels. The bronze here ones, the big yield
are not as useless as they look because they randomly
fall into rapid destability and explode. They are most dangerous
unless they are in your inventory, but with the fifteen
second waiting period after removing it, it makes them almost
impossible to use because they can and do explode during
those fifteen seconds. I've discovered a solution. If you can
(47:23):
find or build an equippable backpack, they will not lose
stability as long as they are in the backpack and
the backpack is equipped. This also works for other party
members if you wish to give them explosives to utilize.
And then somebody adds there's no longer a fifteen second
waiting period for removing items for inventory, so this advice
is moot. Backpacks do still maintain stability, and then somebody replies,
(47:47):
backpacks now only slow destabilization but not negate it. And
then it's followed by found that out the hard way.
Rest Well, little sister her name was Barkthin that she
was all I have left. I was so sad about this,
you guys, finding out that somebody lost family because this
(48:15):
information was no longer accurate is so devastating. I swear
to God, this got to me really really bad. There's
something about like the way in which certain deaths occur
that changes how I feel about them. And I can't
help that. But if you change, if you're killed in
(48:37):
the midst of like a fight, that feels very different.
Then you were killed by some advice that you got
that turns out to have just been outdated. That feels
so cheap, you know, that feels like such a shitty,
undignified reason for somebody to die. I would just be
(49:02):
so bitter about that for so long. Oh that really
that bummed me out, y'all. So let's see, I thought
about Crawler Furkith and his sister. He wrote the twentieth edition,
and from what I could gather, made it to at
least the eleventh floor. He left extensive notes throughout the
(49:23):
book confirming or adding information to multiple passages. He even
left instructions on how to append notes to passages, something
I couldn't figure out how to do with the scratch
pad system. And Forkith had been this little demon guy,
but he was somebody who was a sapper as well,
and Carl is just like, it is wild that he
(49:45):
and I were as a lake as we are, even
though we're completely different races. And there's also this person, Drakia,
who I automatically, because their name ends with an A,
was using like she her pronouns, and then I realized,
there's no reason to think that I'm just so used
to names that end in an A being feminine. But yeah,
(50:09):
he says that Drakia was the most emotional and vengeful,
and there's a whole like paragraph where Drakeia is just like,
fuck them all. Someday when they die, I'll be waiting
for them and I will ruin their after life, and
(50:30):
I hope you'll be there with me doing it. And
he's like, you know what, this is kind of working
for me. This makes me feel better. I didn't realize
that I needed this kind of comfort, but I really do,
and I really did like that. There's just this whole
weird like community of people who have already died that
(50:50):
he is tapping into and it's really bizarre, you know.
So this is when he comes out with his quote
backpack that he is designed for Katya and this thing
it's basically is. She describes it as like a laundry
hamper with straps on it, and it's on a stand
(51:14):
and this way. Until she actually pulls it off the stand,
it won't equip and he can put things into it.
So let's see. She examined it and frowned deeper. I
couldn't help but laugh. The system labeled it as ugly
(51:36):
ass backpack with a completely useless design that only an
idiot would wear. Amazing. So he's setting this up and
he is having her put her arms through it, and
she's saying this is really cumbersome, and he's like, well,
I'm trying to make it so that it can be
(51:59):
usable in sid a train car, but potentially we could
make something way bigger than this. A while ago, I
found out a filing cabin in a boss room filled
with stuff. I learned something interesting about the way inventory worked.
If you put something into a container and then add
that container to your inventory, you can pull the container
(52:21):
out of your inventory, with or without the contents. Carl
Kacia began as I continued to put the heavy metal
poles into the backpack. So he's looking through this like
the what do you call it? I'm trying to think
(52:42):
the user interface, I guess, And he's seeing that she's
been adding points to her strength, but also has been
throwing some into constitution or no her charisma. That was
likely a result of Dona and Zev telling her she
needed to be more interesting? Guys, is that how that works?
(53:07):
I thought putting things into charisma meant that it was
going to make you more effective on other NPCs, but
not that it would make you more interesting to the
audience watching you. Right, that just feels like it just
feels like a profound misunderstanding of the whole way that
(53:30):
these fats work in general. So the fact that she's
doing it this way, I really hoped Gatchia was smarter
than this, Like, really herol this is? It doesn't bode
well to me. And honestly, as this scene progresses, that's
(53:58):
sort of my takeaway is that Katcha isn't very smart,
and I think that's part of why I find her
like a frustrating character in a way that does make
her boring because she's just, first of all, she doesn't
(54:18):
have a lot of trust for Carl, So as he's
doing this and giving her instructions, she's doing what he's saying, yes,
but she's also like complaining the whole time and explaining
why none of this will work. And I'm very much
sort of over here, like, girl, if you're gonna do
(54:40):
what he is telling you, then just do the thing
and stop arguing every step of the way, or say
no and explain to him why not. But don't be
like halfway through it explaining why this isn't gonna work.
(55:00):
It's just like there's just a sense for me with
her of like you don't have the creative thinking that
they have, and you don't even have enough to start
to understand where he's going with a concept as it's
(55:20):
happening in front of you. So she's just digging her
heels in just enough to make me very impatient with her,
you know. And eventually when we get to the end
of this, it turns out that what he has done
by having there be this backpack that she can equip
(55:43):
full of stuff, it means that she can add to
her mass in this huge way with a backpack that
she can adjust what's in it to whatever degree works
for the shape that she is trying to take on.
So with all of the stuff that he has loaded
into that backpack, she eventually is like twenty feet tall,
(56:05):
which does lower her dexterity a little bit, but like,
you know, there's obvious advantages to this, So like what
it is that he's trying to do, it's she gets
to a point where she's just like, it's not going
to let me equip this because it's in there, And
he's like, are you sure? And she gets this wide
(56:27):
eyed look as she and I'm like, do you really think, Katya,
that he would have gone through all of this with
you and having you reshape your own body to adjust
to holding up this backpack without being certain that the
thing is going to actually function the way? Like there's
(56:48):
just she is just very uncreative and narrow minded, and
not narrow minded in like a bigoted way, but just
she even says something about like, don't you think that
(57:08):
this is some sort of bug or exploit And he's like, no,
I think this is kind of what they are intending
you to do with this class, and even if it
is a bug or an exploit, I mean, so do
it while you can do it. I just this scene
is just really frustrating because I was immediately getting what
(57:31):
it was Carl was doing, and he explains it from
the beginning, but it's like she's not hearing him really,
or she's not she's not connecting the dots and he
has to fucking totally spell it out for her by
the end. And it just makes me feel like she
has got some really interesting abilities, and if she wasn't
(57:53):
able to think of something like this as it's happening
to her, as he's like walking her through this process
and explaining how the inventory thing works versus having a
container works, if she wasn't putting this together on her own,
it feels like she's just got abilities that are going
to waste and Carl is going to have to do
(58:15):
all the thinking for her, and that sucks. I hope
maybe that this experience will get her to think outside
the box a little bit more as she realizes like
there are other possibilities for certain things. But I'm just
really worried that, like she's going to be somebody who
(58:35):
has to be held by the hand and led through
every step of everything in a way that feels like
she's not a contributing member beyond what they can make
her do, which feels much more like she's just this
(58:56):
inanimate object that they can use in certain ways, but
doesn't feel like she is is thinking through in a
useful way. Does that make sense? And it's part of
her just being boring, It's part to me at least,
(59:19):
there's a part of this that feels like linked to
her not really being committed to their party because she
is so determined to go back to HECLA. And I
wonder if, like she got so used to depending on
HECLA for a lot of what the fights, like how
that stuff shook out, if maybe Katya has just given
(59:42):
up on thinking of herself as somebody who can make
much of a contribution in that sense. And there's a
point as well. After he shows her all of this,
she mentioned somebody by name, and she's like, I wish
they could see this, try and call me useless now,
So i' her confidence has been somewhat eroded by somebody
(01:00:04):
who was shitty to her, and I'm assuming it's somebody
that is on her old team. But I'm hoping that
perhaps Carl working through some of what she can do
and showing her this as a possibility will galvanize her
(01:00:26):
into approaching things in a different way, because maybe the
person who made her feel useless scept her of so
much momentum, even though that's her skill base. Lol, But
it may have just you know, kind of eaten away
at her and kept her from wanting to extend herself
(01:00:50):
because she kind of like felt like, well, what's the
point I can't do anything decent anyway, So maybe Carl
finding a use for her abilities or this kind of
like hack so to speak. I don't like using the
word hack when it feels like that's just the way
something is made to do, you know, like, but we'll
(01:01:11):
call it that. Maybe this will do something to restore
her optimism and feelings of like, maybe I should be
thinking this all through outside of the box a little
bit more. One can hope. It's just it's it's a
kind of scene where what is happening in the scene
(01:01:33):
is really interesting, but only one person in the scene
of the two of them is actually interesting, and the
other one should be more excited, and like, eventually she
gets there, but it just takes so long for her
to understand what he's doing. You know, let's see. Uh.
(01:01:57):
He explains the way that thing, that this whole thing works,
and she says, I can't replace my eyes and mouth
with metal parts. I'll have to build a cage around
my head. And he tells her to keep her flesh
core deep on the inside and that way she won't
hopefully get the rest of her fingers cut off. I
(01:02:19):
wish Mordecai, oh here it is. If only fan Ar
could see me, I'd like to see him call me
useless now. I wish Mordecai were here, said Dona. I
bet he'd have something to say about this, Betty would
I agreed. I wonder who Fannar is because I'm realizing
that the group with Heckler called the Daughters, and fan
(01:02:39):
Ar she says him. So maybe he wasn't part of
the group, or maybe he wasn't a daughter. Maybe he's
part of a different I don't know, maybe she knew
him before this. He might be like a shitty X
or something. So I'm sorry, guys, that is probably delivery
(01:03:02):
guy or something. We have the watching of the highlights
reel and there is a point where Carl is edited
to make it seem like he is laughing when he
takes the head and puts it in his inventory and
is realizing like, this is making me look fucking insane, which,
(01:03:26):
considering the Heckla already thinks that he is unbalanced, is
not going to do a lot for his rep with her.
And also it makes me wonder about how much with
Lucia Mahr is what it looks like, because she has
looked like a fucking sociopath this whole time. And I mean,
I don't know. From what I hear, it seems like
(01:03:46):
the people's impression of her has matched up with the
video that we've seen, but it's possible that it's not
as simple as it looks. I don't know. And Donna
asks him and why he took the head, and he says,
we loot everything. We should have been taking corpses the
whole time, which, uh, I guess, like there's no limit
(01:04:09):
on your inventory, so there's no reason not to. But
it is sort of weird that he's just started to
now and it does one percent look like he's just
taking a trophy, you know, And speaking of Lucimr, she
he realizes that she has found five stairwells already, so yeah,
(01:04:33):
she can't go down them yet because they're not open,
but she's already got them. So this is when he
gets his bronze Benefactor box. I've gotta I tried to hurry,
and I still wound up in this place. But long
story short, it's from the val Tae Corporation, who are
the brainworm people, And it's a capsule, and he has
(01:04:55):
the exact thought that I did as soon as it's
mentioned that it's a capsule. I thought of a tapeworm
all and I was so relieved that he had the
same thought. And eventually he just decides to swallow it.
But I'll tell you what, warning, taking this pill will
permanently change your brain really would have given me pause.
It really would. The key is they've already changed your brain,
(01:05:17):
and so I have to keep that in mind. So
he takes the pill, and when he finally is able
to like look at a doorway, there's like a purple
glow around it that asks if he wants to analyze it,
and it results in him being able to analyze whether
(01:05:42):
or not the portal is compatible for him to go
through what it is and then he can see through
to the other side and that is going to be
super useful. So looking forward, and this was also like
an emergency delivery. They paid extra so that he could
get his box first because there's apparently so many that
(01:06:03):
they're having trouble delivering. I can't I don't believe it.
I think that they are basically clogging the system on
purpose to make people pay more for emergency delivery. But
there's got to be something coming up that they would
want him to have this really quickly, so I am
looking forward to that. I'm curious what that's about. So
(01:06:25):
all right, I've got to wrap this up. But thank
you guys again so much for hanging out with me.
Appreciates you all, and I will be seeing you Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
So until then, Dulu motherfuckers.
Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is Unspoiled, covering
the Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook chapters twelve and thirteen. In these chapters,
Carl gets a capsule as his gift from the Valte
(00:24):
Corporation and it I have to say, it does something awesome,
but I don't know that I would have been as
willing to take it as he was. Also, we have
this wild hack that he has come up with for
Katcya that is genius and also seems like such a
(00:47):
pain in the ass. Welcome to spoil me, Welcome to
(01:10):
the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much
to Michael for commissioning this episode. Oh my god, Saraphim
just called I was describing how behind certain paywalls, I
will be more expressive than I will be because I
know that it's unlikely just anybody is going to pay
to get behind the paywall, and Saraphim just called it unspoiled, unfiltered,
(01:34):
And honestly, that name is genius, saraf Em. And I
want it, but I don't know what I would use
it for, but I'm filing it away for future use potentially.
Michael says, poor Katya, and Saraphim says genius Will being
a hot mess is pretty much Carl's whole shtick, And yeah,
(01:56):
I think that's pretty accurate. He this this whole thing
with Kotya. You guys, I'm realizing, you know what, I'm
getting ahead of myself. I'm going to wait and we
will talk about that when we get to it. First
we are going to uh because like the last chapter
(02:17):
eleven ended with him finding out that he had gotten
a sponsor, and Doughnut and Kotya, it turns out both
got sponsors because, as we find out later, everybody in
the dungeon got a sponsor this year. I am really
curious about this. This is the first time it's ever
happened for Dungeon Crawler World, and I'm wondering if it's
(02:41):
because of the fact that so many people got like
other upgrades and stuff, because of the ai that it's
made it like more affordable for people, or the options
available to them are like better than normal. I don't know.
I don't know if that's even like a factor, but
there is just it fascinates me that this is the
(03:01):
first time that has ever happened, and you know, there
was the mention of budget issues, and I wonder if
it's like it used to be out of reach for
certain people to even be able to afford to sponsor
a crawler, and that perhaps they have lowered prices on
(03:22):
things because they are just trying to make as many
sales as possible. I don't know. So we start off
with him. The mention of his sponsor is at the
end of the last chapter, but we find out that
(03:45):
Donuts is Princess Dinadia of the Prism Kingdom, which I'll
tell you what, kids, It takes a few times of
them saying this on the audiobook for me to realize
that he was saying Prism and not Prison, because I
had forgotten and I definitely thought it was Prison Kingdom,
and I was like, that sounds terrible. But Donadia we've
(04:08):
met before, and Carl didn't even remember her, so he
has to like apologize out loud because she's probably watching
and offended to the fact that he doesn't remember anything
about her. In his defense, somebody did try and kill
him and Donut that day, so he was a bit distracted.
But also, I would think that the people around you
(04:29):
when you almost got killed would probably wedge in your
mind a little bit better than they have. So okay,
let's see. He mentions that I'll take Corporation to donut
and then very quickly switches to texting and says not
a word about them out loud. Borran hates them. They're
the ones trying to invade the boring system. And she's like, well,
(04:49):
then why did they let them sponsor you? And he says,
I'm not sure that they have a choice in allowing that,
but it might mean that I get really good stuf,
or it might mean that they try and get me
killed off way faster. The thing is that, like, I'm
good for ratings, so I think as long as I
managed to make myself stay interesting, that will be okay.
(05:11):
But we will have to be careful. And there's a
mention of the the commercials and do not hoping that
it doesn't get so tedious that people begin to get annoyed,
because she remembers watching Matt Locke and they're being the
I've fallen and I can't get up commercial every single time.
(05:32):
And yet, you know, I recognize that to a degree.
A big part of advertising's effectiveness is it just being
relentless and persistent, and you know, almost like wearing you down.
But there have been times recently where I've decided to
(05:54):
go for the free streaming option on a given service
but with ads, and it has been the exact same
three ads every ad break. And I'll tell you what,
It's a pretty effective strategy for getting me to pay
for the service. It really is, like, even though from
(06:16):
what I've heard, paying earns them less money, if they
want more people to be watching ads, they should vary
it up a bit more than they do, because I
am I start to be more likely to reach for
my wallet when I have seen the same exact ad
fourteen times in a row. Sorry, there is so much
(06:36):
chatter and I am not going to be able to
get to everybody's the everybody's comment. Sorry, guys, I really
like I might be able to go back and look,
but I'm wanting to stay on task this time because
I've been having a rush toward the end of some
of my episodes. So he like, uh, don'nut says that
(06:58):
she kind of wants a name for her groupies, and
he suggests the donut Holes, which actually is amazing. I
really love that name. It is crude. She's not wrong.
You could go with the munchkins, but like, that's so
specific to dunkin Donuts that I'm not really sure if
(07:18):
many people would get that. I'm trying to think of
like another donut related name, but donut holes is really funny.
I kind of feel like that's going to catch on,
even though she didn't like it, because it's that's just
the sort of thing that happens, I feel like in
this game. So he lootes that corpse of Gorgor, he
(07:45):
gets an ochre line engineer's key rev Up Magic hair Restoration.
This is something that could be really valuable to somebody.
I'm curious if it actually works because it's called rev Up,
and that is that brand name for the uh like,
(08:07):
what do you call it? Moonshine, right, so it may
not actually do what it says. It may be addictive
for all we know, Like I have no idea, But anyway,
he gets a map of the complete ocre line, including
all the stops and current locations of all the trains,
which is really really valuable and oh my god, two
(08:32):
people in the chat suggested doughnut blazers. I dislike it deeply,
thumbs down to you both. I might mute you for
that since one fifty one was another transit station, the
next station after that one would have monsters. That would
have monsters was one f two. I watched as one
mob something called a drake bitch, hit the electrified line
(08:57):
and turned itself into an x More monsters appeared by
the minute. The monsters are jumping on the track and
walking up to station one point fifty five. The trains
had stopped coming, and the creatures weren't waiting any longer.
It was going to take them a long time. There
were miles between each station that would soon start happening
(09:18):
behind us too. The early stations were much closer. We
went up the stairs to find Katya sitting on the
ground crying silently. Now, you guys, there is a moment
earlier where you know, her hand gets chopped off, and
he has a moment of like, oh no, and then
he tells himself it's fine. It's not really her hand,
(09:41):
it's just a chunk of metal. And I don't know
if I even mentioned that happening in the last recording,
because it was so not of concern to me, and
it's so not of concern to him and Donut as well,
that they hang out in chit chat and then finally
make their way back over to her. They had no
(10:01):
idea that she was injured. And then as they come forward,
he sees the blood on her hand, and when she
holds up her right hand, it looks normal at first,
but then when it reshapes, her own fingers disappear. He
chopped my fingers off. When I healed, they didn't come back.
(10:26):
It's stupid. I can build fingers from other parts of me.
He didn't really chop off my fingers. I'm like Clay.
All I lost was a bit of flesh. I had
to take a ring off my severed finger and put
it on my new fingers. But part of me is gone.
I'm losing myself. That's not true. I gently tapped her forehead. Look,
(10:48):
the real Katcha is still there. They can cut everything
else off, but you're still You. Don't let them break you,
no matter what they do. Okay, okay, she said, getting
to her feet. She did not sound convinced. Yeah, this
(11:10):
is one of those. It can be very difficult for
me sometimes to know what the right thing to do is,
whether or not it's the time to give somebody a
pep talk, or whether it is the time to be
sympathetic to what they're going through. And I think probably
Carl is right in handling this this way and having
(11:32):
it be a pep talk. But honestly, it feels like
it's so close to after she has lost her fingers
that probably if I were her, or if I were
in his shoes talking to her, I would have gone
in the direction more of sympathy, because it feels like
(11:52):
he's trying to be like to stop her from wallowing,
and they are in the middle of something, so I
think his tactic here is probably more practical, But it
just feels like this just happened to her, and I
(12:13):
kind of wanted there to be a moment of just
that really fucking sucks, dude, I'm so sorry, you know.
I uh. I think maybe if she hadn't used the
words I'm beginning to lose myself, he would have aired
on the side of sympathy, but that indicated a sort
(12:34):
of like nihilistic attitude that he wanted to nip in
the bud. So I think probably he did the right thing.
It just felt for me a little bit I don't
even want to say like like heartless, just it did
(13:00):
feel very practical in the moment in a way that
felt like it was lacking a bit of sympathy. Losing
your fingers, even if you are able to make new ones,
that is a big deal. You know, It's not as
bad as it could be. And yes, she can make
(13:20):
new ones and function basically the same way, which is incredible.
But I would be really shaken by that too, I
really would. I think a lot about injuries that would
(13:41):
be particularly devastating. And I am such a creative person.
I love to draw and paint and craft and cook,
and losing fingers or hands is a big one that
really scares me. And it's something that comes up for
me a lot because I am beginning to experience arthritis
(14:02):
in my hands. I'm only forty years old, kids, and
it's already happening. And so the fact that I'm this
young and already starting to have this, it makes me
feel like it's probably going to get pretty bad, and
I worry about it. So, yeah, this just sort of
gets to me in a certain way, you know. So anyway,
(14:26):
it turns out that her sponsor is Princess Formidable of
the Skull Empire, which the fact that she is being
sponsored by somebody who is in a position where they
could very understandably have a grudge against Karl is concerning
(14:50):
It's sort of interesting because who knows what's going on
with this woman. I'm calling her woman for lack of
a better word, the way that she is described here,
it is King Russ was the orc leader of the
Skull Empire. Prince Stalwart was the crown Prince. Maestro had
been second in the line of succession until he'd been
(15:13):
disowned and then killed. As Zev had said, if Stalwart
was disowned for his failed attempt, the sister would be
next in line, and he doesn't know whether Stalwart has
been disowned or not. Now it could be that the
sister is going to be assigned to take down Karl,
that this will be like part of a grudge that
(15:35):
she inherits, or maybe she hates her brothers and is
secretly delighted by the fact that Karl was able to
take both of them out of the lineup if indeed
Stalwart was disowned, and it could be that she has
(15:55):
to like put on a front like she's going to
take Carl down, but actually wanted her brothers out of
the way, and so has a weird soft spot for him, Like,
there's a lot of directions that you could go in,
and even knowing which direction she was leaning, it wouldn't
(16:17):
necessarily help me understand the advantage of sponsoring Hecla. The
only thing that I could think of is potentially, if
you want to get it, Carl, and you want Sorry
I keep saying Hekla, I'm talking about Kotchya. But if
you wanted to get it, Carl, and you wanted to
use HECLA to do it, maybe sponsoring Kachya. I don't
(16:42):
know if you're allowed to sponsor more than one person,
but I assume you probably are. If you have the money,
maybe you could sponsor more people that are linked in
some way, you know, And maybe she could do something
strategically that focks things up for Carl somehow and gives
(17:02):
the advantage to HECLA through Katchya. So I don't know. Sorry,
there's an art argument in the chat about the rings
and how they work, so let's see Katchia. This is
the part where she is pointing out something on the
(17:24):
map and she explains it to Carl and he's like,
I don't know what you're talking about, but whatever you say,
I believe you, and let's see the problem is if
we don't yet know if the named trains like Nightmare
Express or Dismemberment Limited are safe, of course they're not safe.
(17:44):
The boss box was a bust, Donut said, all I
got was a bunch of healing scrolls and a poison
dark trap kit. That sounds awesome, I said, so what's
the plan, as Donut? The fact that she just does
not give a fuck is very funny. So the Dismemberment Limited,
(18:08):
this is really something. The track itself was a wide,
flat platform with two metal beams running on either side.
This was a monorail system, a maglev train. We'd had
something similar in Seattle, though this looked much more futuristic.
Donut practiced with her whole spell while we trade. While
(18:31):
we waited. I'd finally talked her into grasping it wasn't useless,
and eventually she literally says, this is the greatest spell
in the world, Carl, and later they do something with
it that is fucking great. So we will get there.
As they are waiting for this train, he gets in
touch with l and Imani and Immani tells him, hey,
(18:57):
I think that the train thing, not necessarily that it's
been a mistake, but there are some real consequences to
this that we are just starting to figure out what
they might be. And I think we should refrain from
derailing any more or stopping any of them in any way,
because things can get pretty crazy. And Elle says, the
(19:21):
Octopus Lady has them all addicted to opiates painkillers. They're
called rev up vitamin shots. They're called shots, but you
drink them every five stops, all the ones ending in
a five or a zero. There was a set of tunnels.
Each monster from the previous stops in that section would
(19:44):
get off the train and they'd line up by race.
Entering the tunnels. At the end of each passageway was
a door with a slot on it. Behind the door
was a monster called apuka, and Moni described them as fuzzy,
goblin like creatures. They were neighborhood bosses. Each Puka had
a pile of potion vials, and it would hand out
(20:05):
one to each monster through the door slot, who'd then
take the vial and go through a swirling one way
portal that had return them to their station. The potions
appeared to be a powerful, addictive race specific sedative that
explained why the monsters who missed their stops would panic.
The monsters were only allowed one vial at a time,
(20:28):
and each high would only last so long, and Mani
said it appeared that drugs didn't activate until they took
it through the portal, So the monsters would get their vial,
go through the portal to take it, and once the
high started to wear off, they'd return to the train
station to go get another. And Moni goes on the
description of the vials, says, if the mobs don't get
(20:51):
their fix in time, something happens to them. They change physically.
So every time we interrupt the trains, it sets off
a chain reaction up and down the line for the
monsters who can't get their vials. The kirk Karen is
the one making the individual drugs. I'm guessing since each
vial is race specific, there's a different Kirkaren Burrow Boss
(21:14):
at each one of those stops. I wasn't confident in
our ability to face her, so I had the team
back off. The Puka monsters turn into giant goats when
you attack them, so be careful if you face one.
And Katya, when they talk about what the theory is here.
(21:34):
She says that she feels like stringing out a whole
floor's worth of mobs seems overly complicated, and Carl is like, well,
I mean it is, but it is also like kind
of efficient in a weird way. It's like this self
contained ecosystem. The floor is designed to break the moment
(21:55):
people start messing with the system. Imani says, they change
if they don't get their drugs. I suspect we're gonna
find out soon what that means. And yet the system
is designed to break as soon as people start messing
it up. That sounds right. That's the way that it's
set up, isn't It is that like it's the system
(22:20):
is designed to keep us all doing the thing that
harms us, because if we stop doing the thing that
harms us, it punishes us in a whole new and
exciting way. So we still get harmed. And there is
a sense of control in choosing to keep doing a
thing rather than getting a consequence that is a result
(22:40):
of something indirect. It makes you feel like you it's comforting,
you know, it feels like you're choosing rather than having
it done to you, even though in both cases it
is really being done to you, like it doesn't matter.
And honestly, I was kind of a prize by Katchia
(23:01):
saying that this is over overly complicated. This seems really
simple to me, you know what I mean, Like it's
almost it dehumanizes all of the elements, not that they're
human in the first place, but you get what I'm saying,
where you're not dealing with like these beings as individual
(23:24):
monsters anymore. You're turning them into a particular cog and
controlling them almost the way you would with like a
remote control, except it's a drug and you put the
drug into this like automated setup. I mean, if you're
(23:45):
going to actually be messing around with living beings, I
can't think of a more efficient way to get everybody
going in the direction you want to go than to
do it like this. It's I don't know, I understood
what she meant in a way, but the more I
(24:07):
thought about it, I was like, this is actually extremely simplistic,
if anything, and it also has the potential for the
most havoc as soon as it's disturbed, which is like
kind of what this show thrives on, right, is everything
being balanced on a razor's edge, and then the moment
(24:30):
that somebody begins to like do anything a little bit different,
it's all thrown into total chaos and disarray, and that's
where the fun starts for the viewers, so to speak.
But anyway, so yeah, this to me makes total sense
(24:52):
and is also awful just the idea. As I was
saying in the last episode or the one before. I think,
even if these creatures are not real, even if they
were created for the show, getting them addicted to drugs
to control their behavior is still awful. So the train
(25:14):
pulls up and the front cockpit has the operator in it,
who is super weird looking, and eventually Carl realizes that
this dude has flesh is super loose. He had thought
(25:35):
the guy was wearing a pawn show, but that is
his skin. He had no muscle or definition. The green
tinted flesh hung off him like a fitted sheet placed
on a too small bed. The right side of his
face hung loosely. When he spoke, the hole for his
mouth hung below the bottom of his jawline, and the
(25:57):
words came from the noseholes. The nose itself appeared like
it was supposed to be hooked, but it hung to
the side, dangling like a used condom on the side
of the creature's face. The eyeholes drooped, revealing yellow bone.
Clumps of hair clung to the head. You guys, this
sounds so fucking ghastly, and the way he's describing like
(26:21):
the eyes and stuff. If you've ever encountered a particular
breed of Great Dane, you might have seen this. It's
one of those things where I'm like, I love dogs,
I've grown to really love dogs, but there are certain
breeds that are just fucking freaky looking. And some Great
(26:44):
Danes get so droopy in the face that you can
see almost as much red from their eyes as as whites,
because the skin pulls so far down on the sides
of their eyes that it's like a huge section of
very tender looking, vulnerable looking red flesh is always visible
(27:10):
in a way that I find incredibly off putting. And
that's just immediately what I thought of. So the system
tells him that this is a troll flesher and hobgoblin
skelly symbiote. This is two creatures. Only when combined do
they have intelligence and the ability to speak. The skelly
(27:30):
is your typical run of the mill reanimated skeleton of
all the war made spells soldiers encounter during the brutal
mass combat that will occur on the ninth floor, You're
not Done Yet spell is one of the most terrifying.
Fallen soldiers are cast with a spell and their flesh
is ripped from the body. This loose skin becomes a
(27:53):
sentient minion called a flesher. Fleshers are oftentimes tossed across
the battlefield, landing in and around the trenches of the enemy.
Fleshers have one goal to find a new set of bones.
Once they've found a victim, the skin unfurls and pounces,
covering the body, smothering and melting it. Once dead, the
(28:17):
rest of the victim burns away, and the flesher casts
the only spellet nose boned, which animates the remaining skeleton.
The creature that eventually forms is no longer a minion
to the original mage, nor is it undead. It is
new to the world, oftentimes confused and afraid and weak.
(28:40):
The symbio is very easy to kill. After a few
hours have passed and the new symbio is complete, the
combined creature becomes a target for other fleshers, who are
said to be drawn to their former companion's new bones.
If a flesher kills a symbio, the second iteration is
more intelligent and powerful than the last. There are rumors
(29:03):
about oft re sleeved symbiotes. After enough repetitions, it's whispered,
they can become quite powerful. This is Levi the seventh.
This quest is triggered six times now since the floor
has opened. This is this is thank you, Michael. Michael's
(29:31):
in the chat saying I worry about Matt. How did
he come up with this monstrosity of a spell? That
is the question. I honestly, what the fuck? What the fuck?
Where did you even come up with this idea? I mean,
(29:57):
I'm trying to think because so many things in this
and by this, I mean this series have been obvious
allegories or metaphors for the way the real world functions,
and I've been trying to think what this is. Honestly,
(30:23):
I don't know that it is anything. It just feels
so specific that it's like it's gotta be something right.
But maybe not. Maybe he just tried to think of
the creepiest shit he could think of and you know
what mission accomplished. If that's it, Matt, you really outdid yourself.
(30:47):
I mean those fucking the flying Harpee women with their
guts hanging out, those were pretty bad. But this, this
is different, This is oh my god. Yeah. It's the
fact that it's like you get your flesh, melts it
off as something takes you over, and then a bunch
(31:09):
of other things want to take you over a bunch
of more times. Like the way that the suffering is
like prolonged and changes and there's different levels. It just
it feels like, you know, the possibilities are sort of
endless in a way that I really really dislike a lot.
(31:35):
Oh shit, Misty says, honestly, it's a little like Sanderson's
Misborn Monsters. Yeah, and then Seraphim says, thank you. I'm
not alone in thinking it's like a colass slash chondra hybrid.
H Seraphim keeps accidentally doing all caps like, don'tut, that's funny,
but yeah, co loss chondra hybrid is kind of it
(31:58):
huh interesting but like in the worst way where nothing
seems to remain of the original beings. It's a whole
new thing. How weird, how fucking weird. So past fail
(32:18):
quest do not allow Levi the seventh to be devoured.
This quest is active as long as you remain on
the train reward, you'll receive a silver quest box. A failure,
every crawler on the train will be turned into a flesher.
That is horrifying. It's possible later on when they are
starting to get attacked. Those were crawlers at one time.
(32:43):
I hate it, okay, So they have to block the
door and they get things set up as these fleshers
are appearing on the map and there are like hundreds
of them, and then comes the warm age whose name
(33:06):
is dismember ha haha, so funny, and he is, you know,
this is the Dismemberment Express. Let's see. I'm trying to
find the moment where he shows up, because the first
thing he says is basically like, I can't believe that
(33:26):
you think you're going to be able to get out
of this without me skinning you. That is hilarious. But
you may as well just give it up now. It'll
only hurt for a second and then it'll be over.
Just get this done. And let's see, he asks Levi,
what race this guy is, and Levi says warm ages
(33:49):
are warm ages, that one looks like an elf. I'm
not an elf, you fool. I just need eight more
iterations and you'll know, Levi, you'll know exactly what we are.
Eight more trips seven after I get past these interlopers.
I can't deny, guys, I am a little curious about this,
Like you'll know exactly what we are? What are you?
(34:12):
Then this feels like there's something here, which later on
Carl says, probably this whole thing is part of some
other shitty storyline that now isn't going to go anywhere,
or maybe we'll continue without him. I don't know, but
I am curious about it. So they decide to go
with Surprise three attack, which is something that is not
(34:36):
possible to practice, as Carl mentions, and I love the
way that this goes so much, you guys, because Carl
starts off trying to distract Dismember, and it turns out
he doesn't need to try and distract him because Dismember
is so excited to monologue himself. So he starts off saying,
I want to tell you a secret. Oh, we don't
(34:56):
have time for your secrets, you filthy crawler, let me
tell you a secret, okay, The way that he says,
we don't have time for secrets, and then he's like,
but let me tell you one, sir, And the fact
that Carl just goes okay and he doesn't find it weird,
(35:16):
dismember it doesn't. I mean, like, I feel like somebody
that you're about to attack. If they seem like they're
real open to listening to you do your fucking soliloquy here,
then you should probably wonder why they're so willing. After
I knock this metal barrier down, I'm gonna send my
(35:38):
minions in and one of them is gonna recently LEVI.
But they won't bother you. I'll have them leave you
be go on, I said, holding up a second finger,
you guys. The fact that he says go on, and
and this guy doesn't kind of go that's weird. Why
is he encouraging me? This guy is dumb. And then
(35:59):
I'm gonna cast the spell that will peel the skin
off of you and your friends, but I'm not going
to kill you. I have another spell to keep you
alive even after you've been flayed. It will be a
journey of pain, unlike anything that has ever been experienced
in this world. I'm going to I held up a
third finger. A hole appeared in the metal plate. Fast
(36:21):
as I could, I reached through, grasped the surprised elf
like creature by his long silver hair, and pulled. The
moment I pulled his head through the hole, Doughnut snapped
off the spell. I let go, and the severed head
dropped to the ground, mouths still open wide. What was that, bitch?
(36:44):
I didn't quite get that last part, I said, which
later on we find out that line played very well
with audiences, which doesn't surprise me. I love the use
of this spell like this we saw earlier than practice,
and Mango just biting off whatever comes through the hole,
(37:04):
but just letting the whole do the work itself is
so neat and tidy that I can't help prefer it.
Mango doing it gets him XP so there's definitely an
advantage to that, for sure, But this just is so
self contained that I can't help but be a little
(37:29):
bit obsessed with it. It's basically, you're carrying around a
guillotine with you, and like, I don't remember what the
cool down is for this, So it might be that
it takes a long time before you can do this again,
and they won't be able to depend on it too much.
But I am really really into it. I love this
(37:51):
so much. So then we go to chapter thirteen. The
fleshers are now bereft minions, which begin to swarm. I
didn't know if the process required a skull to successfully
convert the flesher into a symbio, but at least one
of the monsters was making the effort because they're attacking
(38:11):
the dismember's body Levi. Meanwhile, I really loved the way
that the narrator does Levi's voice, because he decided to
go with like a very whiny, paniced, crying voice that
is totally reasonable for somebody that has undergone the awful
(38:34):
transformation that Levi has. Several times now, I think he
says six times, so it's reasonable, but it's also one
super annoying and two not helpful in any way. And
so eventually, when Carl just yells at him to shut
the fuck up, Levi I was just thank you, thank you,
(38:57):
because that man needs to either help or get the
fuck out of the way. You know this, this made
me think of, you know how those of us who
are eighties kids. We grew up in an era were
oftentimes our families would either tape a movie off the
(39:21):
TV or buy a VHS of a movie that, for
some reason was the movie that our family decided was
good enough to purchase and was not like a Disney movie.
It was like something that the whole family would often
watch together repeatedly. And everybody's movie is different. Nineties kids
(39:46):
know you know what I'm talking about, So our family
the movie was The Fugitive with Harrison Ford. I have
seen The Fugitive at least fifteen times. I can recite
almost all the dialogue word for word, and one of
the things in there that I really remember is there
(40:08):
is a point where they think they're going after Harrison
Ford's character, doctor Richard Kimball, and they're going to a
place where this guy has holed up, and you think,
as they're swarming the place that they have finally found
doctor Kimball, but it turns out they're there for a
different convict who is on the run, and there is
a woman there hold up with this guy who is
(40:32):
screaming the entire time that they are. It's like coming in,
swarming and attacking and Eventually, after somebody gets shot and
the convict is the one who gets shot and he falls,
she keeps screaming even though shit's over, and Tommy Lee
Jones is walking past her as she's screaming, and he
(40:54):
just turns to her and goes shut up. And it
was the exact same sensation of just somebody being useless
and screaming and just helping in no way at all,
and meet sheering from the sidelines. So anyway, Carl, thank
you for being the Tommy Lee Jones in this situation.
(41:14):
LEVI I feel for you, I really do. You have
all my sympathy. But enough already, enough already. So anyway,
what Carl thinks is going on is I think he
was building an army. He takes our skin and uses
our bones to become stock for his budding army. It's
(41:36):
probably some bullshit storyline we don't have time to get
involved in. I'm wondering if this is going to come
back and bite them in the ass at some point.
So this is when zeb calls and she tells them
I booked you guys for a show called Planet Beautiful.
(41:57):
It's drier than what you're used to, but I'm I'm
confident you too can spice it up. You'll be going
into a sound booth and reading prepared lines. And Carl
is like, wait a minute. If we're reading prepared lines,
what do you mean we can spice it up. She
doesn't actually answer that question, just for the record, and
then he says, I'm not gonna read some anti earth
(42:19):
propaganda bullshit. And she's like, oh, I don't know what
it's even gonna be about. And he's like, Zev, stop it.
You are not a good liar. What is it? It's
about beauty pageants and pet shows. Doughnut audibly gasped, we
(42:41):
will do it. I can't wait. I was about to object,
but then I realized this would be a goddamn vacation
compared to what usually happened when we went on a show.
What could possibly go wrong inside of a sound booth? Carl,
I'm gonna need you to not even ask questions like that,
(43:01):
what are you doing? You jinxed it? It's the jinx?
Why now I have my suspicions about this it being
about pet shows? Like, first of all, anybody who knows
anything about human beauty pageants knows what a complete horror
show those are anyway, so that whole topic is already
(43:29):
rife with issues. Pet shows, though, you can do also
like this a whole thing with them, because rightfully, the
breeding of purebred animals for pet shows is often a
horror in and of itself. It's a combination of like
(43:51):
the process of breeding, the people who do it, but
also the fucking animals as a result that are like
purebreads are often these freaks of nature that can't fucking
breathe or stand or you know, like all of these
things that they have limitations on them that if they
were healthy and had been allowed to interbreed, would not
(44:12):
have happened. And I am I'm not even sure how
much that's going to be a factor in any of this,
but I am really really concerned, that's all I'm gonna say.
I feel like this could be something that could easily
kind of fuck up Dona as well, because even though
(44:35):
it's a topic that is something that she has personal
experience in, that could be part of the problem is
she didn't have the level of understanding that she does now,
and maybe as she begins to learn more, it's like
designed to kind of get under her skin and unnerve
her because we've seen clearly the way that some things
(44:59):
have been designed have been to upset Carl. And I
can't help but think that, like now it's donuts turned,
She's sort of do. I don't know, man, I don't know.
I just feel very worried about it, That's all I'm saying.
(45:20):
So this, uh, we go to station two eighty one.
We'd stay there and sleep train and then head back
it into the world. So this is when Carl goes
and gets a different crafting table. Let's see the I
(45:45):
think Armorer one, and I'd like to upgrade my sappers
table to level three. My book confirms something I'd already suspected.
While I could use an engineering table to shape just
about any type of armor, it didn't become a true wearable.
If I created and shaped an item using engineering and
(46:05):
then stepped over to the new Armorer's table. However, the
item's description changed. All I had to do was pull
up my new Armorer's workshop tab, select the item, and
then pick its intention from a list. So then we
go to him reading an entry about the way that
backpacks work regarding explosives. This is just really giving him
(46:31):
the idea for a backpack. But there's a whole thing
here that's like fascinating to me about how progressively the
way the game works changes, and so sometimes the advice
that is left for future crawlers is no longer actually
relevant anymore, which really sucks balls. Let's see the high
(46:57):
level madness satchels. The bronze here ones, the big yield
are not as useless as they look because they randomly
fall into rapid destability and explode. They are most dangerous
unless they are in your inventory, but with the fifteen
second waiting period after removing it, it makes them almost
impossible to use because they can and do explode during
those fifteen seconds. I've discovered a solution. If you can
(47:23):
find or build an equippable backpack, they will not lose
stability as long as they are in the backpack and
the backpack is equipped. This also works for other party
members if you wish to give them explosives to utilize.
And then somebody adds there's no longer a fifteen second
waiting period for removing items for inventory, so this advice
is moot. Backpacks do still maintain stability, and then somebody replies,
(47:47):
backpacks now only slow destabilization but not negate it. And
then it's followed by found that out the hard way.
Rest Well, little sister her name was Barkthin that she
was all I have left. I was so sad about this,
you guys, finding out that somebody lost family because this
(48:15):
information was no longer accurate is so devastating. I swear
to God, this got to me really really bad. There's
something about like the way in which certain deaths occur
that changes how I feel about them. And I can't
help that. But if you change, if you're killed in
(48:37):
the midst of like a fight, that feels very different.
Then you were killed by some advice that you got
that turns out to have just been outdated. That feels
so cheap, you know, that feels like such a shitty,
undignified reason for somebody to die. I would just be
(49:02):
so bitter about that for so long. Oh that really
that bummed me out, y'all. So let's see, I thought
about Crawler Furkith and his sister. He wrote the twentieth edition,
and from what I could gather, made it to at
least the eleventh floor. He left extensive notes throughout the
(49:23):
book confirming or adding information to multiple passages. He even
left instructions on how to append notes to passages, something
I couldn't figure out how to do with the scratch
pad system. And Forkith had been this little demon guy,
but he was somebody who was a sapper as well,
and Carl is just like, it is wild that he
(49:45):
and I were as a lake as we are, even
though we're completely different races. And there's also this person, Drakia,
who I automatically, because their name ends with an A,
was using like she her pronouns, and then I realized,
there's no reason to think that I'm just so used
to names that end in an A being feminine. But yeah,
(50:09):
he says that Drakia was the most emotional and vengeful,
and there's a whole like paragraph where Drakeia is just like,
fuck them all. Someday when they die, I'll be waiting
for them and I will ruin their after life, and
(50:30):
I hope you'll be there with me doing it. And
he's like, you know what, this is kind of working
for me. This makes me feel better. I didn't realize
that I needed this kind of comfort, but I really do,
and I really did like that. There's just this whole
weird like community of people who have already died that
(50:50):
he is tapping into and it's really bizarre, you know.
So this is when he comes out with his quote
backpack that he is designed for Katya and this thing
it's basically is. She describes it as like a laundry
hamper with straps on it, and it's on a stand
(51:14):
and this way. Until she actually pulls it off the stand,
it won't equip and he can put things into it.
So let's see. She examined it and frowned deeper. I
couldn't help but laugh. The system labeled it as ugly
(51:36):
ass backpack with a completely useless design that only an
idiot would wear. Amazing. So he's setting this up and
he is having her put her arms through it, and
she's saying this is really cumbersome, and he's like, well,
I'm trying to make it so that it can be
(51:59):
usable in sid a train car, but potentially we could
make something way bigger than this. A while ago, I
found out a filing cabin in a boss room filled
with stuff. I learned something interesting about the way inventory worked.
If you put something into a container and then add
that container to your inventory, you can pull the container
(52:21):
out of your inventory, with or without the contents. Carl
Kacia began as I continued to put the heavy metal
poles into the backpack. So he's looking through this like
the what do you call it? I'm trying to think
(52:42):
the user interface, I guess, And he's seeing that she's
been adding points to her strength, but also has been
throwing some into constitution or no her charisma. That was
likely a result of Dona and Zev telling her she
needed to be more interesting? Guys, is that how that works?
(53:07):
I thought putting things into charisma meant that it was
going to make you more effective on other NPCs, but
not that it would make you more interesting to the
audience watching you. Right, that just feels like it just
feels like a profound misunderstanding of the whole way that
(53:30):
these fats work in general. So the fact that she's
doing it this way, I really hoped Gatchia was smarter
than this, Like, really herol this is? It doesn't bode
well to me. And honestly, as this scene progresses, that's
(53:58):
sort of my takeaway is that Katcha isn't very smart,
and I think that's part of why I find her
like a frustrating character in a way that does make
her boring because she's just, first of all, she doesn't
(54:18):
have a lot of trust for Carl, So as he's
doing this and giving her instructions, she's doing what he's saying, yes,
but she's also like complaining the whole time and explaining
why none of this will work. And I'm very much
sort of over here, like, girl, if you're gonna do
(54:40):
what he is telling you, then just do the thing
and stop arguing every step of the way, or say
no and explain to him why not. But don't be
like halfway through it explaining why this isn't gonna work.
(55:00):
It's just like there's just a sense for me with
her of like you don't have the creative thinking that
they have, and you don't even have enough to start
to understand where he's going with a concept as it's
(55:20):
happening in front of you. So she's just digging her
heels in just enough to make me very impatient with her,
you know. And eventually when we get to the end
of this, it turns out that what he has done
by having there be this backpack that she can equip
(55:43):
full of stuff, it means that she can add to
her mass in this huge way with a backpack that
she can adjust what's in it to whatever degree works
for the shape that she is trying to take on.
So with all of the stuff that he has loaded
into that backpack, she eventually is like twenty feet tall,
(56:05):
which does lower her dexterity a little bit, but like,
you know, there's obvious advantages to this, So like what
it is that he's trying to do, it's she gets
to a point where she's just like, it's not going
to let me equip this because it's in there, And
he's like, are you sure? And she gets this wide
(56:27):
eyed look as she and I'm like, do you really think, Katya,
that he would have gone through all of this with
you and having you reshape your own body to adjust
to holding up this backpack without being certain that the
thing is going to actually function the way? Like there's
(56:48):
just she is just very uncreative and narrow minded, and
not narrow minded in like a bigoted way, but just
she even says something about like, don't you think that
(57:08):
this is some sort of bug or exploit And he's like, no,
I think this is kind of what they are intending
you to do with this class, and even if it
is a bug or an exploit, I mean, so do
it while you can do it. I just this scene
is just really frustrating because I was immediately getting what
(57:31):
it was Carl was doing, and he explains it from
the beginning, but it's like she's not hearing him really,
or she's not she's not connecting the dots and he
has to fucking totally spell it out for her by
the end. And it just makes me feel like she
has got some really interesting abilities, and if she wasn't
(57:53):
able to think of something like this as it's happening
to her, as he's like walking her through this process
and explaining how the inventory thing works versus having a
container works, if she wasn't putting this together on her own,
it feels like she's just got abilities that are going
to waste and Carl is going to have to do
(58:15):
all the thinking for her, and that sucks. I hope
maybe that this experience will get her to think outside
the box a little bit more as she realizes like
there are other possibilities for certain things. But I'm just
really worried that, like she's going to be somebody who
(58:35):
has to be held by the hand and led through
every step of everything in a way that feels like
she's not a contributing member beyond what they can make
her do, which feels much more like she's just this
(58:56):
inanimate object that they can use in certain ways, but
doesn't feel like she is is thinking through in a
useful way. Does that make sense? And it's part of
her just being boring, It's part to me at least,
(59:19):
there's a part of this that feels like linked to
her not really being committed to their party because she
is so determined to go back to HECLA. And I
wonder if, like she got so used to depending on
HECLA for a lot of what the fights, like how
that stuff shook out, if maybe Katya has just given
(59:42):
up on thinking of herself as somebody who can make
much of a contribution in that sense. And there's a
point as well. After he shows her all of this,
she mentioned somebody by name, and she's like, I wish
they could see this, try and call me useless now,
So i' her confidence has been somewhat eroded by somebody
(01:00:04):
who was shitty to her, and I'm assuming it's somebody
that is on her old team. But I'm hoping that
perhaps Carl working through some of what she can do
and showing her this as a possibility will galvanize her
(01:00:26):
into approaching things in a different way, because maybe the
person who made her feel useless scept her of so
much momentum, even though that's her skill base. Lol, But
it may have just you know, kind of eaten away
at her and kept her from wanting to extend herself
(01:00:50):
because she kind of like felt like, well, what's the
point I can't do anything decent anyway, So maybe Carl
finding a use for her abilities or this kind of
like hack so to speak. I don't like using the
word hack when it feels like that's just the way
something is made to do, you know, like, but we'll
(01:01:11):
call it that. Maybe this will do something to restore
her optimism and feelings of like, maybe I should be
thinking this all through outside of the box a little
bit more. One can hope. It's just it's it's a
kind of scene where what is happening in the scene
(01:01:33):
is really interesting, but only one person in the scene
of the two of them is actually interesting, and the
other one should be more excited, and like, eventually she
gets there, but it just takes so long for her
to understand what he's doing. You know, let's see. Uh.
(01:01:57):
He explains the way that thing, that this whole thing works,
and she says, I can't replace my eyes and mouth
with metal parts. I'll have to build a cage around
my head. And he tells her to keep her flesh
core deep on the inside and that way she won't
hopefully get the rest of her fingers cut off. I
(01:02:19):
wish Mordecai, oh here it is. If only fan Ar
could see me, I'd like to see him call me
useless now. I wish Mordecai were here, said Dona. I
bet he'd have something to say about this, Betty would
I agreed. I wonder who Fannar is because I'm realizing
that the group with Heckler called the Daughters, and fan
(01:02:39):
Ar she says him. So maybe he wasn't part of
the group, or maybe he wasn't a daughter. Maybe he's
part of a different I don't know, maybe she knew
him before this. He might be like a shitty X
or something. So I'm sorry, guys, that is probably delivery
(01:03:02):
guy or something. We have the watching of the highlights
reel and there is a point where Carl is edited
to make it seem like he is laughing when he
takes the head and puts it in his inventory and
is realizing like, this is making me look fucking insane, which,
(01:03:26):
considering the Heckla already thinks that he is unbalanced, is
not going to do a lot for his rep with her.
And also it makes me wonder about how much with
Lucia Mahr is what it looks like, because she has
looked like a fucking sociopath this whole time. And I mean,
I don't know. From what I hear, it seems like
(01:03:46):
the people's impression of her has matched up with the
video that we've seen, but it's possible that it's not
as simple as it looks. I don't know. And Donna
asks him and why he took the head, and he says,
we loot everything. We should have been taking corpses the
whole time, which, uh, I guess, like there's no limit
(01:04:09):
on your inventory, so there's no reason not to. But
it is sort of weird that he's just started to
now and it does one percent look like he's just
taking a trophy, you know, And speaking of Lucimr, she
he realizes that she has found five stairwells already, so yeah,
(01:04:33):
she can't go down them yet because they're not open,
but she's already got them. So this is when he
gets his bronze Benefactor box. I've gotta I tried to hurry,
and I still wound up in this place. But long
story short, it's from the val Tae Corporation, who are
the brainworm people, And it's a capsule, and he has
(01:04:55):
the exact thought that I did as soon as it's
mentioned that it's a capsule. I thought of a tapeworm
all and I was so relieved that he had the
same thought. And eventually he just decides to swallow it.
But I'll tell you what, warning, taking this pill will
permanently change your brain really would have given me pause.
It really would. The key is they've already changed your brain,
(01:05:17):
and so I have to keep that in mind. So
he takes the pill, and when he finally is able
to like look at a doorway, there's like a purple
glow around it that asks if he wants to analyze it,
and it results in him being able to analyze whether
(01:05:42):
or not the portal is compatible for him to go
through what it is and then he can see through
to the other side and that is going to be
super useful. So looking forward, and this was also like
an emergency delivery. They paid extra so that he could
get his box first because there's apparently so many that
(01:06:03):
they're having trouble delivering. I can't I don't believe it.
I think that they are basically clogging the system on
purpose to make people pay more for emergency delivery. But
there's got to be something coming up that they would
want him to have this really quickly, so I am
looking forward to that. I'm curious what that's about. So
(01:06:25):
all right, I've got to wrap this up. But thank
you guys again so much for hanging out with me.
Appreciates you all, and I will be seeing you Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
So until then, Dulu motherfuckers.
Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!