The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, Chapters 14-16

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Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode! 
These chapters are the ones where Carl is figuring out more about how the trains work, and comes up with a plan, which goes (heh) completely off the rails. He ends up with some huge level-ups though, so all's well that ends well. 
Thanks so much to you all for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode!
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl the Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook Book, three
chapters fourteen through sixteen. In these chapters, we have got

(00:24):
a really wild domino effect happening here. And also there's
an interesting moment between Dona and Carl about Kotcha. I'm
curious about how this winds up shaking out. I don't
really get what we're gonna do with Kotya. Welcome to

(00:47):
spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha.

(01:08):
Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode.
Michael is here in the chat along with Rob and Sarah.
M delighted to see all of you. So yeah, this
was I was so excited when I saw that I
was getting to read three chapters, and then it was like,
of course it ended right as I was going. But
but so we are going to I'm going to start

(01:33):
at the beginning because there's a lot of like detail
information here. Dona is training with her whole spell, which
I am so excited at the fact that she thought
it was so lame at first and then has grown
to be obsessed with it. We kept our visit to
the Desperado Club Shore Immani and L I'm sorry, guys,

(01:53):
there's a fly in here, and I'm worried that it's
a moth and I don't like moths. Immani and El
sent an that they couldn't make it. Neither could Batista,
who was nearing the end of the line on his train.
Later on we find out that Immani and Ellie are
and I think he calls her Ellie in the audio
book it's E L L E, which I'm used to

(02:14):
just saying L, but I'm gonna say Elle because L
just sounds so flat to me. But later on they
went up stranded somewhere, and it is a literal like
forty mile walk if they are trying to just get
to the stop they had been aiming for. So they're
gonna try and walk to a different stop and then like,

(02:35):
see if that train is running, and we'll bring them there.
And this is something that had I hadn't really considered
about the train lines going down because I'm not getting
a visual on how far apart everything is. It's very
very easy for me to forget the amount of distance
that we must be covering. So I'm thinking, if the

(02:58):
trains go down, big whoop, you just walk, and I'm
not thinking about how a few of these it seemed
like there was quite a long time before the next stop,
which means that either that train goes slower than the
other trains or it's a much longer distance because you know,
like I have this in mind in a sort of
like New York subway station, like where if you miss

(03:23):
one stop, if you go to the next stop, it's
like maybe like a two three block walk, which don't
get me wrong, those blocks are longer than you think
they are, So that is not nothing, but you know
what I'm saying, in comparison to like twenty or thirty miles,
it's really nothing. So I was kind of thinking in
that sense and finding out just how far apart everybody is.

(03:49):
It like it might be part of the way this
is all supposed to work is separating everybody, you know.
So anyway, but we have a really lovely moment where
Bomo tells Donut that the Sledge bought a spell with

(04:09):
his own money to protect Donut. He cast a magic
protection spell. Our entire party glowed blue as we walked
through the dancer dancers. Ah, thank you, sledgie, Donut said,
patting the rock monster on the head. She now rode
on his shoulder. When we entered the club, the sledge

(04:29):
made a grumbling, satisfied noise. I just really cannot get
enough of these rock monsters that love Donut. I mean,
I thought Mango the Velociraptor was a lovely pairing. But
these rock monsters, these little taciturn I say little, they're

(04:52):
very large, Like I just what a lovely duo? I am?
A trio, I guess. So Donut goes into this one
like training area and she says, the first session is free.
It'll raise you a full level. If I want to

(05:12):
raise it to nine, it'll cost twenty thousand gold ten
is two hundred and fifty thousand. That's outrageous. Which this
is always the thing in these games that you can
purchase it, but you like doing so is so what's
the word I want? It's it's so inefficient if you

(05:34):
are earning money the regular way that unless you have
some sort of weird cheat to earn money way faster,
or if it's one of those games that's like a
phone game with in at purchases that you just decide
to drop one hundred bucks and level yourself up to
like three hundred out of nowhere, it's really never going
to be worth it. And Carl is finding out that

(05:59):
his new ability that he got from taking that pill
doesn't work on all doors, which I'm a little disappointed by,
but I'm not really surprised. You know, everything's gonna have
to have its limitations. It only worked on portals, magical
doorways that were really designed to teleport people from one
place to the next. It didn't work on the front
entrance of the Desperado Club, but it did work on

(06:21):
the doorway into the back room vestibule, the one from
the local bar to the area where Clara Belle sat.
The snap a photo feature didn't work if I wasn't
allowed access to the area, which was a major bummer.
I still didn't know how the hell this worked. It
wasn't magic, it wasn't a skill. It was some sort
of technology thing, a software upgrade that interacted with the dungeon.

(06:44):
There was so much about this world and how it
worked that I still didn't understand. And this is something
that keeps sort of like surfacing for me. Is this weird?
Because you know, the way they've tapped into people's brains
and made it so that you can message and you
can get message and you can see things highlighted or
text pops up. There's a part of me that's like,

(07:05):
is this actually in their brains and they are actually
walking around and doing all of this or is this
one of those things where like they stepped into the
dungeon area and immediately got frozen and put in a
little pod and they think they're moving around doing all
of this stuff, but they're not actually doing any of it.

(07:25):
And I'm pretty confident it's not that second one, but
I won't lie and act like that never occurred to me.
I think that based on the way that things go
with like the interviews and how like there was an
actual attack on the trailer that they were supposed to
be in, they must actually physically be places or else

(07:48):
that kind of attack wouldn't work. But you know, who knows,
so the whole like the idea that he doesn't have
the ability to snap photos on places that he hasn't been,
It's kind of like I was wondering exactly what he

(08:10):
would do with the photos anyway, because he has his
two friends that he can tell what's behind there. I'm wondering,
like maybe he was thinking, if there's some creature I
don't know, I can send a snapshot to Mordecai and
ask him what is this thing? I mean, I'm not
saying that this wouldn't be useful, because it certainly would,

(08:33):
but I just don't have sharing photos. Isn't something that
we've seen, so I'm not even sure if that's possible.
It might be something that it would be a photo
that he just kept somehow in his own like mental inventory.
Sorry if Seraphim says, or the Skyrim method of buying

(08:54):
training and then pickpocketing the money back raise your train
skill and pickpocket skill at the same time. I was
always so nervous about pickpocketing I couldn't get into it.
I originally started playing Skyrim intending to be a rogue
so that I could avoid combat as much as possible
and just, you know, sneak up on people. And then

(09:17):
I found that my anxiety about sneaking was worse than
my anxiety about combat, and so I just became a tank.
Michael says, I think leveling to ten is so expensive
because it's a breakpoint where the skill jumps in effectiveness five, ten, fifteen,
and twenty seemed to be the break points. I think
Mordeka I said in a previous book that when Donut
got the dodge skill to attend, she'd be nigh untouchable. Ooh,

(09:40):
I don't remember that, but that's cool. Might be worth it. Then,
so he goes to the bar and he gets like
approached by some people, but you know, one of the
rock monsters keeps everybody away, and then he's like, you
know what, and he gets up and he goes over
to the dance floor and there are about twenty other

(10:03):
crawlers and he says, hey, guys, I think that we
need to connect and start sharing information with one another.
If we are able to gather some data on what's
going on with these trains and we can all figure
out what the trick is or you know, in any
details that could be usable, I think it's really important

(10:24):
for us to like organize and figure this out as
a group. And you know, this is like exactly what
I had been talking about where I was saying there
are advantages to keeping information to yourself, but like those
advantages probably aren't as great if you are actually wanting

(10:46):
everyone to make it through or be as even footed
as possible, and that is obviously the way Carl works. Specifically,
he is so much us as human crawlers in the
dungeon taken advantage of by this alien race versus the
the aliens, the borrent corporation, that of course he would

(11:10):
want to touch base with absolutely everybody, and he fistbumps
with everybody. And it's so funny because it gets very
chaotic very quickly. And this is something that I have
some experience in, and I cannot imagine what it must

(11:30):
be like for people who have a bigger following than
I do, because like, I don't get that many messages.
I'd say I get like two dms a day, and
usually it's just asking a question, or it's a share

(11:50):
of like a post from somewhere. Occasionally it'll be spam,
but I actually don't get as much spam. I think
that like social media has gotten better about detecting when
something is spam and filtering it into a different folder.
And even as little as I get, I can find

(12:11):
it very overwhelming, especially because many people are asking the
same question and it will be information that's like posted
somewhere or that I don't actually even have I get
a lot of questions about like functionality on Patreon, which
is not my wheelhouse, Like I don't I use Patreon

(12:33):
as a creator, and so everything that I do is
going to be totally different, and I can't like, I
have only got a couple of group chats in my
texts on my phone, and one of them has basically died.
And I think that it is in large part because

(12:54):
everybody in it felt so much pressure whenever they saw
a message to like responding and gauge that they all
sort of like punked at at the same time. And
I will admit I'm definitely one of those people. When
a chat is too busy, I mute it. I don't
even you know, I don't find it fun to jump
into that kind of of chat. And considering the amount

(13:20):
of information Carl's already working with that the number of
people that he discovers haven't really pieced together anything about
how the trains work, and he's having to give them
like very basic information. This is the sort of thing
that like drives me personally a little crazy. It's not

(13:41):
like unfair for them to be asking or for them
to not know. It's the repetition of having to share
the same info over and over again. And I have
some questions that I have finally started to like put
in a in my notes app so that I can
simply copy paste the response. But there is like whether

(14:03):
or not I like however I try to write something
that I can copy paste, it's always going to sound
like it's copy pasted in a way that I feel
the need to soften when I actually send it. So
there's always a little bit of labor involved, you know.
And the one, the one that I always get is

(14:25):
how to change your mailing address? On Patreon? People will
DM me personally their addresses. I don't keep that information, guys,
I don't have like an address book. Patreon does all that,
and it's literally all you need to do is Google
how do I change my mailing address on Patreon, And
the very first result will be a step by step

(14:48):
guide with screenshots on exactly how to do that very thing.
So I always feel like if you had just literally
pasted this question into Google, you could have saved yourself
all of the waiting that it took for ME to
find this message and then respond to you giving you
the link to it, and I was hoping that he
would find a way to sort of like create a

(15:11):
bigger chat where he could like basically assign people the
way that you would with like mods in discord, so
that you don't personally need to respond to everything, and
then would be other people who have info who can
step in, because that's the biggest thing, is like I
don't like keeping people waiting for answers, but I don't
always have time to respond right when the question comes in,

(15:33):
and if there's somebody else around who knows and they answer,
it's just very helpful for everybody. But it doesn't seem
like he has quite either got the capability for that
or figure that out. And there's let's see. One guy,
a human warrior from Japan named Koki, had discovered a
way to mass send messages to everyone on your list

(15:55):
at once. And now my messages were a mess of
people asking for help and looking to trade items. It
was too much, and I created a special folder that
would keep them from popping up on my interface. Still
people kept messaging me directly. I was spending a lot
of time explaining what little we knew. It was important
people had all the information, and I wanted to help,
but I was shocked at how little some people had

(16:15):
managed to figure out after three full days. I don't
get it. The fullest line is a subway and it
just goes up and it doesn't circle back. Then fullness
is a color they're using some weird colors. Well, I've
never heard of it. I stopped responding after that. There
was only so much I could say, and that's it.

(16:36):
You know there are going to be I am really
lucky with my listeners, even when I will get irritated
because something could have been answered if they had looked
for the question somewhere else. I have very rarely had
anybody be like rude. Everybody who has contacted me, almost
without fail, has been such a kind, sweet, thoughtful person,

(17:01):
And there have been like one or two exceptions in
the decade that I've been doing this, which is remarkable.
And I will admit that a big part of my
reticence about wanting to like do advertising and get more
listeners is knowing I'm going to be opening the door
to more a bigger, more general audience that will include

(17:24):
some folks who are shittier, and part of me really
doesn't know that I want to like make more money
at the expense of the community itself. You know, yeah, exactly,
Michael said, Carlin needs figure out how to pin a
post exactly. Saraphim says, it's a lot of stuff that

(17:45):
ninety nine percent of which is pointless and distracting. Is
Donut is much much better at handling this. Michael says,
never reply all, and yeah, this is one of those
other things. Is like, there's a generational thing about texting
as well, and there is a generational thing a lot

(18:06):
of times with emailing and both of them. It can
be so if you have folks that are just like,
not familiar with the etiquette, you will open a can
of worms that it is never really possible to close
again because they will start doing a thing and even
when you try and gently tell them like, that's not

(18:28):
what we do, they'll just be like, oh, well, I
just want to make sure that you saw it, and
they won't really hear that you're trying to be like
this sucks, this really sucks. Don't sorry, Rob says uh oh.
He said earlier, I'm curious as to why Dinniman put
Carl ignoring the group chats in the book. I don't
understand it. On a functional basis. I'm wondering on a

(18:52):
meta level why Dinniman would include it. Honestly, on a
meta level, I'm just thinking that, like a lot of
what he does is show us what the experience of
going viral is like, and being like Internet famous is
like in a you know, it's this heightened universe, but
a lot of that is very very like real and

(19:14):
having to get locked into your esthetic and your personality
and whatnot. So probably it's just that level of like
we want to see that sometimes you just wind up
having to filter a lot of people out because it
becomes so impossible to keep up. And it doesn't mean
that he is like doesn't care about people. He's the
one who initiated this chat. But it's just like you'd

(19:38):
spend all of your time catching up on all of
that every day, you know. So let me have the
Nightmare Express. And this is such a weird one. The
train has like a cow catcher on the front, and
it has cars that are open at the top, like

(20:03):
not completely open. It's a cage, but you know, it's
not like solid and the train cars are many of
them filled with monsters, not all of them, the majority
of the other cars were rickety empty freight cars. None
of the freight cars had doors, at least not facing

(20:23):
the platform. There were only two cars on the train
where we could get on, a caboose at the very
back and a passenger car at the front, right behind
the engine car, which had pulled in the forward tunnel
the same way the colored train lines did. There was
no other way to get on the train. We positioned
ourselves near the front and I moved to enter the
passenger car. I grasped onto the door and a message

(20:45):
popped up. This door is exit only enter at the
rear of the train. I was, this is one of
those It's a always I need the reminder that this
game can do that thing where it looks like you
have an option that you don't. It's just really rare

(21:06):
that we get this sort of pop up that just
goes eh eh. And every time it happens, I feel
like you were trolling me, weren't you. You knew I
was gonna attempt this thing, and you let me think
the whole time that I was gonna get to do
the thing. And I always get a little salty about
it because it feels like the AI is snickering at me.

(21:31):
So he looks up and he sees that what this
is like designed for we'd have to proceed up the
train on hands and knees on the roof of the
cars while the ceiling whipped by. And you know, a
bunch of the cars have monsters in them, so they're
gonna be jumping up trying to get you. Since it

(21:51):
was from the back of the train to the front,
my protective shell wasn't going to work. The chain link
fence along the roofs of the cars prevented us from
jumping up there. And I wouldn't trust donuts puddle jumper
spell when the target gangway was so thin. Yeah, fuck this,
I said, backing away, and he lets the train start
to take off, and Donut is like, but that was

(22:12):
the plan. So now what I started counting in my
head how long it took the train to leave the station.
It had taken a full minute and a half. My
protective shell only lasted twenty seconds, which this protective shell thing,
it's so funny, guys, how like how much of a
disadvantage it seemed at the time that it stays in place,

(22:36):
And now how absolutely fucking clutch it is that it
stays in place. You know. Hekla warned me you were crazy.
She told me to be careful because you'd likely get
me killed. First off, you've told me this already, and
this time the only one taking the risk is me
and Donut. I don't like this, Carl, Donut said, she

(22:57):
jumped down and landed on my shoulder. Mango was left
in his carrier, leaving Katya alone on the landing. It'll
be fine, I said, with much more bravado than I felt. Bravado.
It's bravado right, be ready, but stay back in case
we accidentally crash it. And at this point, this is

(23:21):
with a conversation I mentioned in the intro, Donut is saying,
I feel like we should have left Mango with her
so she wasn't alone, And he says, so she's a
big girl, she can take care of herself. If she's
a big girl, then why do you keep telling her
what to do. You didn't even ask her if she
wanted to get giant. You just shoved the backpack at
her and told her to do it. She likes it,

(23:42):
but what if she didn't. Look, who's talking you with
your boots and purple mohawk that's different. Fashion is different
than making someone change. You keep telling her to be herself,
but you're the one making her change the most of all.
I I paused, Doughnut was right, but in the words

(24:04):
of the AI, this wasn't doctor Phil. We didn't have
the luxury of spending all day making sure we weren't
stepping on each other's feelings. I didn't want to be
a jerk, but I also wanted to keep her alive.
You know what, You're right, Donut. Next time I'll ask her.
I've got to say I disagree with Donut on this one. Guys,

(24:24):
Donut is asking her to change the way that she
acts in order to be more engaging. I feel like
that's a much much more significant change to who she
is than the addition or subtraction of mass. You know
what I'm saying, Like the way I would argue, this

(24:51):
is what Karl is doing is finding the most advantageous
way to utilize a race and class that Kotcha chose.
She picked being what she is now, and that what

(25:11):
he is doing is finding ways to utilize that and
not only make it so that she can contribute more
to the group, but also so that she has more
protection and will stay safe. She lost her fucking fingers.
You know, I think donut being like dressed this way,

(25:34):
maybe be more flirty when you say this thing, find
a catch phrase. I think all of that is much
much more asking her to literally change who she is
than what Karl is doing. Now. I'm not trying to
say that, like Carl isn't being a little bit overbearing,
But Kotscha is so passive that I feel like I

(25:58):
don't even feel comfortable using the word overbearing. It's just
that Carl is really proactive and with somebody that is
so passive that can come across as overbearing in comparison,
but isn't really. Carl is somebody who works pretty well
with others. When we've seen him have to, you know,
function within a team. He does often wind up in

(26:21):
the position of calling the shots because he comes up
with these plans, but I don't feel like it ever
comes across as him just like ordering people around and
ignoring feedback or anything like that. So I just think
that what Dona is pointing out about, like that fashion

(26:43):
is different than making someone change. The only thing that's
changing is her mass, and there is really functionally no
difference in her mass changing than changing her clothes. She
can take off and put on any other clothes she wants.

(27:05):
She can remove and equip as much mass as she wants.
It is not him changing her, It is him showing
her a way to take advantage of the class and
race that she chose for herself. So I think that
this is a real, like weird way to approach things.

(27:26):
I don't know if, like I'm not sure if the
author believes what he is saying to like what Donah
is saying here, I get the impression that in this moment,
I'm supposed to agree with Donah because Carl thinks Donut
was right, But I don't agree with her at all.
And I'm kind of surprised that he doesn't argue more

(27:50):
because there isn't to me any difference between what he's
doing and what Donah is doing. And like I said,
the way that she is, Donah is encouraging Katsha to
like even change the way that she literally behaves and acts.
That is very much about who you are. That is

(28:11):
about you know, deciding that you are going to like
perform in a way that is a fundamental change in
your priorities. As a person, and I understand that this
is to her advantage if she were to take Donuts
advice and everything, but I just don't think that it's

(28:33):
actually less I was going to say offensive, but I'm
not sure if that's the right word, but you get
what I'm saying, Like, it's just as it's just as,
if not more, of a demand on her identity. In
my opinion, Saraphim says, it's more telling for how Donut

(28:56):
sees things. She is a performer and sees that stuff
as just the act you put on for the audience,
not who you are, I suppose, But I just don't
see why him giving her more mass is what's making
Donut go, well, that's not cool, because it feels like

(29:16):
that's the functionality of her race and class. I guess
really what it comes down to for me is simply
that I don't feel like Donut would have an issue
with this to begin with. I don't feel like this
conversation and the way that she is like talking to
Karl about this really feels in character for me. I

(29:39):
think that she would be trying to like approach Katya
in a way that kind of gets her confidence up,
and if anything. Karl helping Katya figure out how to
utilize this mass manipulation does get her confidence up, Like

(30:02):
we literally hear her say, let so and so tell
me I'm useless now. So to me, what Karl is
doing with Katya is beneficial to her identity instead of
what Donut is doing, which is like behave as if
you're an entirely different person. You know, it's maybe a performance,

(30:24):
but it is like literally making someone change. It may
be that the performance is the thing changing, but it
doesn't matter functionally because you're on camera all the time
in the dungeon. So it is basically making someone change

(30:46):
in the way that they engage every second of the
day that they are on camera, which is almost always.
So yeah, this just this argument doesn't hit at all
for me, And I think that it's like he's trying
to do something here that, in my opinion is there's

(31:08):
just like a weird disconnect, And I don't know, that's
just me, So Rob says, I also wonder how much
feedback Denman gets from the Patreon posted chapters, because I'm
curious how much he adapts based on what he hears
from early readers. Yeah, that's interesting and this is something
just really briefly, I'm starting this project with my friend Sidney,

(31:31):
and we're going to be doing a subscription based storytelling
service where there will be these mysteries ongoing in this
one particular town and you have to like find items
and piece together things. And this is not a brand
new idea, like there are other things out there like this,
but the story we want to have a lot of
it nailed down before we begin. But we are also

(31:53):
really aware of our tendency towards being a perfectionist and
wanting everything figured out before we start. So we have
agreed maybe we need to be a little flexible and
get a certain amount nailed down and then be ready
to be like more adaptable when we do start, because
you know, and I'm curious to see how I will

(32:14):
respond to that, because I know that some of my
least favorite properties out there, part of the reason they
were my least favorite is because they felt so utterly
cowardly and caved to the pressure of viewers, one of
them being The Walking Dead. Once they started the Watching Dead,

(32:35):
i think is what it was called, where they would
recap the show with the actors right after you began
to see a like real decline in the writing because
they were just fan servicing all the time. And then,
of course there's Rise of Skywalker, which I won't start
talking about right now, but is one of the worst
examples of this I think we've ever seen and probably
ever will, Like they walked back everything good about the

(32:58):
second movie and then like just sucked the fanboys dicks
for the rest of the film, and it was embarrassing.
And I think that there are ways to incorporate feedback
that you're getting, but it can be a really, really
slippery slope. So yeah, I'd be interested to hear from
him exactly how that works. Saraphim says, it's less what

(33:22):
he's doing and more how he's doing it, just telling
Katchya do this instead of talking it over with her first.
And yeah, Donah is likely doing that as well, but
she's a cat. Self awareness isn't something they're known for. Well,
this is the thing, Seraphim, And I think that's why
I'm saying, like, I don't buy that Donah would bring
this up with him, because this does require a kind

(33:42):
of awareness that if she has it, she would have
to have a little more self awareness, and it just
doesn't feel like the point that she's making like can
coexist with not understanding this. So it just doesn't feel
like it makes sense to me. Rob says, I felt

(34:03):
that way about Half Blood Prince. Haven't read a book
since that has made me want to be a writer more.
You felt that way about Half Blood Prince with her
caving to fandom stuff. I actually don't know what you're
referencing there. Is that you know what this is for
the discord, Share with me what you're talking about in
the discord. But yeah, so this whole thing here, it's

(34:27):
like it's compelling to me, it's interesting, but it just
doesn't feel like I'm taking away what I think the
author was trying to get me to take away. So
at this point Donat turns around and says, I think
we went too far. The closest I can get is
three or four hundred feet before the platform, And he says,

(34:50):
you said it was line of sight, and she says,
that's what it says. It's not my fault if the
description is wrong. I really hate this. The fact that
the description of her ability isn't functioning as it is
said to function. That is a big problem. That is
a big problem, because it's one thing if items can

(35:11):
have descriptions that are unreliable because they were labeled by
people who didn't know, or if the AI can tell
you that a creature is a different creature than it
is because it's imitating that creature at the moment or whatever,
that's one thing. This is straight up incorrect information that
feels like on purpose. If there isn't If it's not

(35:34):
on purpose, I don't understand why this is happening. And
this has me really really worried. So at this point
Carl is beginning to really freak out. They're hearing the
train coming down the tunnel and he tells her to cast,
and we jumped a quarter of a mile down the track.

(35:56):
Notifications started pouring in the train roared my protective shell.
All the red tagged monsters within were slamming against the
wall of the spell and then getting pushed backwards, splattering
against the back of the train. The back of the train, screamed,
sparks showered. It's not slowing down, it's speeding up. Why
is it speeding up? Fuck? Run? Run and they run

(36:21):
and he all most he almost just gets absolutely fucking
splattered by it. Thankfully, the way that it hits is
mostly on the foot that has all of this protection
on it. I jumped just as the train caught me.
I felt things break and snap within. I was flying,

(36:44):
and then I wasn't. I slammed against hot metal. I'd
instinctively bashed into my heel spell while I was in
mid air, but my health continued to plummet, so I
hit a heel potion. I looked up in time to
see Donut and Kacha's horrified faces looking at me. As
we rocketed the station and back into the tunnel, still
picking up speed, I'd hit the cow catcher and flipped

(37:06):
in mid air, getting slammed by the front of the train.
My constitution, forward, momentum that he'll spell, and the fact
that my vulnerable foot was what actually caught the front
of the train all conspired together to make sure I
clung to life. This is bonkers. Bananas man gets literally

(37:27):
hit by a train, my lord, and of course Donut
is like messaging him right away, like are you fucking alive?
And she says the train is all broken in the back.
So he goes to the ladder and is like carefully
mounting to go into the area where you actually steer

(37:49):
the train, conduct the train, and it is a pretty
complex system. It's still running, reminder, while all of this
is happening, and he is like, at one point starts
to like lower some of the gauges in order to
like he thinks, take pressure off, but instead it winds

(38:12):
up jumping all the way up into the red. A
new tooltip popped up over the control station, shattering train bomb.
It's a train sized grenade that is going to detonate
from extreme pressure, deteriorating seventy five out of a thousand.
If you don't figure this shit out in about two minutes,

(38:33):
it's gonna be pretty damn spectacular. So he's looking around
desperately trying to find any indication of what the fuck
he should do, when all of a sudden, he looks
down and sees the little window where they toss in
the as he thinks, like coal or wood or whatever
to power the train. It turns out that's not what
it is. There's a little face peering out and he

(38:57):
opens it and we get fire Brandy Lesser demon Milf
and she's got a rockabilly look to her, and apparently
the way this works, this is horrifying. She gives birth
to fifteen to eighteen thousand babies over the course of

(39:18):
two months, one every five minutes, and one in ten
thousand are viable. Their corpses shrivel and harden, becoming a
valuable resource called she old bricks. The fifteenth floor will
be lousy with them. If exposed to fire, she olbricks
burn long and hot. Lesser demon mills, who also learn

(39:41):
water magic, can find lucrative work as a steam boiler firestoker.
Once they seal themselves within the boiler, they create an
almost self sufficient system that keeps most larger boilers humming.
Plus it's a convenient method of disposing of their failed young.

(40:01):
And Carl's reaction is this train is running on dead babies.
Holy crap, that's fucked up. My reaction I am not
kidding guys. Was that is so efficient? What a great system?
I swear to God. I don't know. I don't know, y'all.
It just seems like if this lesser demon is involved
in this, maybe it doesn't bother her too much. The

(40:25):
way that it starts is like a single mom's gotta eat,
So it might be that she does have a huge
problem with this, and it's just what she's got to do,
you know. But I definitely took it at face value
that she was fine with it right away, and Carl
just being like, I hate this. This is horrible. Later on,

(40:45):
there's like he's got one of these shield bricks in
his hand, and the AI is like, reminder, that's a
dead baby, and he drops it and I'm just like, ugh,
get over yourself, Carl, pick it up. It's a fucking
it's a charcoal brick. Now, who cares? Like I just look,
I have a very different reaction to the whole idea

(41:06):
of like bodies than a lot of people do. I
guess it just feels for me very much like there's
nobody in there anymore who cares. It's fine, you know,
But I know that that is sort of not the
way many people feel. Seraphim says, I mean, it's not
like they're killing the babies to make the fuel. They're

(41:28):
dead anyway, exactly exactly. It just feels very much like
what else am I going to do with these they?
You know? Like, it's fine. So fire Brandy gives him
instructions on how to reset things and get it under
control again, which gives him a new achievement for like

(41:53):
actually taking control of the train versus just being in
the conductor's seat. And she says, do not go fast,
do not over pressurize, and we will have no problems. No, now,
close my door and leave me be if something happens
to me. You have that box, you can't use it
for long because you have no source of water or oil,

(42:15):
so only use it to get back to the station
and vent as much as you can. And she points
to this box at the back of the train car
and she tells him how to get to the next station.
And while they're having this conversation, she's given birth like
two or three times. So yeah, this is when he

(42:37):
sees the shale brick. If Santa gives cold to the
regular naughty kids, he'd probably give this stuff to history's
greatest villains like Hans Gruber and the guy who invented
those shoes with the individual toes built in. I am
very interested in how much people hate those toe shoes.
This is not the first book that there has been

(42:59):
a very specifically like this, and I fancy that there's
also a joke like this in the good place. People
really hate those things and I'm just like, it's nobody's
making you wear them. It's fine. Like for me, if
I were going to pick somebody who was like one
of history's greatest villains, it would be the whoever it

(43:20):
was that invented those like halogen headlights. Those things are
so incredibly over bright and dangerous. They blind me when
I'm driving, when I'm taking a walk and there's a
car coming toward me with those headlights. It literally has
triggered a migraine before because it's like a fucking ice
pick that just goes directly into the back of my brain.

(43:44):
That is the sort of thing for me where this
is an invention that you can't avoid, you can't get
away from because you don't have control over when you
encounter it. So to me, I would choose something like
that versus ugly shoes that you can avoid very easily. Fine,
Oh my god, Seraphim says, it makes more sense for

(44:06):
the AI given he's gotten a thing for feet. I
didn't even think of that, and that is a really
good point of Seraphem. That is, Oh my gosh, I
didn't even think of that, But that is really funny.
It's interesting to think that like something that outlines the
feet specifically wouldn't be his thing when I would consider that,
like I would be thinking about it like a very

(44:28):
form fitting dress, you know, where something is like super
tight makes it sexier. So like you can see every
individual toe even though they've got shoes on, Like it's sexy,
you know, apparently not well noted. So let's see. Yeah,
this is when he like drops the baby corpse in

(44:48):
the mess of Gore. I found two items, a small
satchel containing three hundred and fifty gold and a large
bronze key. Steam engineer's key allows access to Iron Tangle
employee only areas and actions on all four hundred steam
type trains of the Tangle, which is pretty huge. And
then he looks at his stats and realizes that he

(45:11):
has risen three levels and has killed three neighborhood bosses
by accident because of what he did with this train.
And he's looking at the train itself and is trying
to see are there exes, like you know, where is
the and evidently the bodies wind up being looted later

(45:35):
by Donut. He's asking her, I think to like look
for the maps. Let's see the passenger car just behind
the engine appeared to be fully intact, though I spied
blood inside. That was the only other car on the
train that remained unscathed, and the others are just like

(45:56):
shredded and peeled apart because of the force of it.
I couldn't believe we hadn't wrecked the whole thing. That
other train had been pretty easy to derail. I wondered
if there was magic keeping this particular train on the tracks.
Maybe the cars themselves were built to break like this.
Maybe they hoped we'd accidentally unleash the giant monsters onto

(46:17):
the tracks and they deliberately made the walls weak, which
I think is pretty likely. So let's see even Yeah,
this is when he asks Donut to go onto the
tracks and loot the corpses, and he says it might
be a good time to field test riding Mango. You

(46:40):
can race down the track to see how fast YouTube go,
and this chapter ends with her saying, never do that again.
I thought you'd been squished. So I'm gonna I'm realizing,
like I only really I started ten minutes late, so
I am it looks like I have less time than

(47:00):
I do, but I still need to pick the time
of my pace up a little bit here, so forgive
me everybody. So there is a switch that had that's
painted red, and I was supposed to use the lands
thing to hit the switch if I wanted to change
the train to change tracks. It was difficult to tell

(47:25):
which one. A colossal glowing portal dominated the center of
the room. I tried to examine it using my new
subspace portal skill, but it said I needed to be
closer for it to work. This was the station repair portal.
I tried to follow the course of the auxiliary track,
but it got lost in the tangle of other tracks.
A large train steamed through the room, belching smoke and

(47:48):
chugging merrily away. This one came from the opposite direction.
A minute later, I re entered the tunnel and Doughnut
lets him know that she got the map and there's
a ton of goal and you're about to come to
this area. But there's tons of body parts on the tracks.
And he's just like, well, we do have this cowcatcher

(48:10):
on the front, so fingers crossed. It doesn't make a difference. Also,
she says, mongo can run really really fast. That's helpful.
Love that The sign above read abyss station. I eased
the engine to a stop, set the brake, stuck the
boiler to stand by, and stepped out of the cab,
entering Abyss station. And he's looking around, and he keeps

(48:34):
hearing this weird crash, and he's like the station itself,
there's nothing here. And finally it's just like, all right,
let me just go up the stairs and look around.
I guess it says it took almost an hour to
ascend the stairs. It's a good thing this man is

(48:55):
in shape. I guess. I know that also his abilities
in the game have changed what his capabilities are. But
an hour just donstairs, Oh my god, Oh my god,
you guys. So then he gets to entering the Abyss

(49:15):
below me, above me, and all around the interior of
the massive burning pit was hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands,
of giant glowing portals. Catwalks like the one I was
standing upon, dotted the interior at non regular intervals. Monstrous
shapes haunted the walkways, but none were near me. I

(49:37):
had a memory of standing on the precipice of the
Grand Canyon. This memory, this author has some really incisive details.
It was just me and my mom standing on the edge,

(49:57):
my father was in the car waiting. I don't know
if any of you have ever had a relative like this,
but my dad was like this sometimes as well. It
was very specifically often when it was something that he
didn't approve of, but he didn't want to like cause
to be totally off limits because he knew that that

(50:20):
would cause us to get really angry in a certain way.
And the thing that I keep thinking of is Christmas trees.
When my dad became a fundamentalist and the origin of
Christmas trees as a pagan symbol came to his attention,
he no longer participated in decorating the tree or getting
the tree or any of that. And it was a
huge bummer. And so he would just be like in

(50:42):
the room, determinedly ignoring that we were decorating the tree,
watching a movie or something, and just basically casting a
pall over the whole moment. You know, his presence patiently
waiting behind us was even bigger than that of the
canyon spread before us. Yeah, yep. And he remembers his

(51:09):
mom clutching his wrist. Do you remember the circus? That
was fun, wasn't it. You're hurting me, I know, honey,
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, And that feels very much
to me, like, uh, this is a woman who knows
that she should have left and taken her child and
she hasn't, and she has a lot of guilt around that,

(51:30):
especially considering that eventually she does leave, but she doesn't
evidently take Carl with her, And I don't know, you know,
what the story is there, but at the moment, without
further information, I definitely judge her very harshly for that.
So this is something that you know, there's somebody that
I know in person who has been not like they

(51:55):
haven't left their husband and left their kids, but they
will they know that husband is abusive, and they will
shut themselves in their bedroom and leave their kids out
in the living room with their husband. And I absolutely
cannot hide my disgust whenever they bring this up, because

(52:16):
it's just the most selfish thing I've ever heard, Like,
either leave and save them from this, or go out
there and cope as a parent and be the barrier
between your abusive spouse and your kids. Pick one. But
you don't get to just save yourself and leave them
to swing in the fucking wind. So I'm bringing that

(52:37):
story that I know of to this, and that might
not be what's going on here at all. So a
train comes through the portal and then just falls into
the pit that the cars do, but the front of
it apparently keeps going. I strain to peer at the base.

(52:59):
The giant hole was filled with thousands of crash training cars,
and he sees like the janitor Goules climbing over it.
I remembered what the mantor guy had told us. He
would go through the portal and it was just his
engine car on the other side. These are all the
colored trains reaching the end of the line. The trains

(53:21):
were driven through the portals. Only the engine car was
teleported back to base. The rest of the cars were
just thrown into this pit like garbage. The conductors and
the porters got off the train at the last stop,
and when they returned, the train had been reformed. The
train wasn't looping through time. They were building new trains,
all except the engine cars. This is so bizarre. What

(53:46):
a weird reveal, you know, Like so Ultimate Corp dungeon
works Industrial Subspace portal and he clicks analyze, you are
facing the incorrect side entering through this side will have
no effect. One way gated by conveyance type and keyholders.

(54:07):
You must be on a gated conveyance and or a
key must be equipped or held outside of inventory, depending
on type. He was greeted of by a screenshot of
a massive train yard, thousands of trains spread out in
all directions. It was only the engine cars. They were
all in a high fenced yard, in the fenced in
area where what looked like thousands of ghoul like creatures

(54:29):
milling about like zombies, but from several different races and mobs.
I moved to another portal down the gangway and took
another screenshot. It was the same, but from a different angle.
From this direction, I could see just past the fence
and saw what appeared to be a line of dwarves
waiting for the train. The zombies were only in the

(54:50):
train yard. I couldn't see how the trains were leaving
the fenced in area or how they were keeping the
zombies within. And then he sees this swirling portal in
the corner of the train yard, too small for a train.
I could see the distinctive form of one of those
rolling cages, like the one I'd looted from the room

(55:11):
with the robots, and he looks up and there is
this like lizard monster coming toward him. But he does
have some time so he doesn't panic right away. But
you know, worth noting that there are creatures in this
abyss area that can do him harm. And let's see,

(55:31):
he finds a new sort buy option in his inventory.
I let's see, I had three keys that would allow
me passage, the ochre key, the steam train key, and
the souvenir hat. Holy shit, that was it. All we
needed to do was equip the stupid fucking train conductor hat.

(55:51):
And he decides to inform everybody of this. I love
the fact that this hat winds up being so important.
It's the sort of thing that, like, eventually there are
some people that tell him they sold their hats because
they were worth so much, and like that would be
the indicator for me not to sell it. I could
understand just ignoring it, but if you go to try

(56:14):
and sell it and it suddenly turns out to be
like five thousand gold, then my fucking alarm bells would
be going off and I'd go never mind. Actually, I
bet I'll I should keep this because when you try
and buy it back inevitably. Now it's twenty thousand, you know.
So he explains to everybody about the stairwells and the

(56:38):
keys and the hats. Possible solution three. Station four thirty
five is where the employees get off. There's supposedly a
portal there that takes you to the headquarters. I believe
the headquarters is on the other side of the zombie fence. Problem.
Sounds like there's a boss monster at these stops called
the Kravad. Also appears as if you go through the
portal you lose time and memory, and we're not certain

(57:01):
you can get through. Possible solution four get on a
named line and get control of the train. I know
there are other solutions if you find them, please let
me know. Porter Tea. Thanks mate, You're not nearly as
crazy as the Mike you look on the show. That
cracked me up a little bit. I wonder how many

(57:21):
people are seeing those messages. But yeah, this like reveal
is very very funny to me. I should have known
when I saw the train conductor hat that that was
I really should have realized, you know, Michael says shit
like this is why I'm a hoarder in games. I

(57:42):
keep everything just in case it turns out to be important.
And yeah, I'll have like moments where I start to
get fed up and begin selling everything, but mostly I
am also a hoarder. So this is when he starts
like answering all of these different messages and and finds
out some more detailed information. He talks to fire Brandy

(58:05):
again and then he gets a message from Donut and
she says, I got my first benefactor box. You have
got to get back here and see what it is.
And he says, I'm gonna make one very quick stop
before I get back. I'm going to make a trade
at station eighty three. Let me know what I'm getting close.
In the meantime, you should have a head over to
the other platforms and grind on the monsters riding in

(58:27):
from two eighty two. Katchiu says, that's what we've been doing.
But the train stopped coming, and eventually he gets that
information about like a bunch of the trains being stuck.
So about two hours later, we don't actually see the

(58:48):
stop and the trade. So'm curious about that. But once
he sees donuts benefactor box gift. They are sunglasses. These
are crazy, They're one of a kind and protects the
eyes from a variety of environmental hazards, including magic based

(59:09):
attacks that render the user blind, enhances dark vision, allows
for heat vision, and other visible light viewing options. In addition,
any energy based spell that originates from the ocular region
is caught and focused, allowing for multiple combat and targeting options,
which means that her magic missiles are now fucking insane
and they are lasers and she can make them like

(59:30):
hold energy and add it to the next one. And also,
of course do not love them because they make her
look like miss Beatrice. Katya hasn't gotten anything from her
benefactor box, so I am curious about that, you know,
Like just what is the deal? Katcha just feels like

(59:51):
a pawn, you know, And I feel bad for her
and I want her to like start to take control
somehow and like determine her own fate. So let's see.
Uh oh, this is when he gets the message. We
found ourselves in a pickle. Wanted to give you a
heads up. We killed a kra Karen and cleared the area,

(01:00:13):
but the train never came. We're stuck. We're gonna have
to walk. We'll be taking the Druggy portal back to
two seventy two, and then we'll hike to two seventy one.
It's still far but not nearly as much. We'll be
out of commission for a day at least. So they're
going through that portal, which I'm interested to see exactly
how that works. The monsters at two seventy two are

(01:00:36):
gross atomizers, floating bags of gas. They're easy to kill,
but they have a poison cloud area attack, which I
hate anything that does, like the kind of that has
an ability that permeates the space around them. That always sucks.
So then they talk about the vampire skill that Donut has.

(01:00:59):
Love vampire. It makes one enemy my level or lower
give me his heart, so if I get stabbed, they
take the damage instead of me. It lasts until they're dead.
I can do it every couple of hours. That is
also bonkers and also potentially really devastating. Like we have

(01:01:21):
met some NPCs that we have liked, and if we
get attacked while we're standing next to somebody that we've
grown to like, that sucks, you know, Like it's the
sort of thing that I feel like, yeah, that's a
really cool, advantageous thing in theory, but I feel like
Donut herself is going to feel like shit at the

(01:01:44):
results of this sometimes and maybe it won't work out
that way, but like, of course my brain immediately goes
to sort of worst case scenario. So and then Carl
opens his platinum Big Daddy box. Seize the Day Toothpaste,
five applications. If you brush your teeth using this cherry

(01:02:05):
flavored toothpaste, you are imbued with the following buffs for
thirty hours. Three times damage to all boss monsters, four
times damage to all boss monsters at the boss is
a province, a country, or floor boss. This buff may
only be applied in a safe room. Bananas. You do
need to know things ahead of time, granted, but thirty hours,

(01:02:27):
even if you get it a little wrong, that's still
a pretty nice grace period. Like so, yeah, I'm a
fan of that. Let's see, I'm trying to find the
next Uh. Taking that train through the portal seemed like
I was abandoning them. I knew that was stupid. Everyone
was spread out to the wind. I didn't even know

(01:02:47):
these people. I told them how to get free. That
was all I could do. But what if it wasn't.
I'd read something earlier that had stuck with me. Reading
the words of those who have come before me. I
know them. You reading this, I know you too. You
are me. That is who this book finds. There is
no shame in wanting to protect those who are your hive,

(01:03:09):
even if you never knew them, for they are yours
and they are being taken. It is us or it
is them. There is consolation in dying in the pursuit
of justice, no matter how small or big that death is.
I wasn't sure I agreed with that last part, but
by the time I closed my eyes, I felt resigned
to the idea that there was something more to be

(01:03:30):
done for those trapped on the tracks. But what was it.
I had no fucking clue. I just realized, like, I
am almost at time here and I haven't even started sixteen.
I got to pick up my pace here. So this
is when Ellie gets in touch and says, there's a
secret way out of those robot rooms. There's a long tunnel.

(01:03:52):
It doesn't look like it opens up until after the
robots wake up. Luckily we don't have to fight them.
I can't believe you blew two of them up. Imani says,
beware of the monsters. Once they transformed, they're much more powerful.
So he goes out to breakfast and Dona is excited

(01:04:14):
because there was a spell book that she wasn't able
to read, and at first she's upset that she read it,
but she lets him know. Mordecai said it was fine
that he actually told her this was going to be key.
Let's see. The Minion Army spell was simple on the surface,
but the spell's specifics were convoluted. You cast it on

(01:04:36):
a group of enemies and some of them would turn
and fight on your side. Mordecai had said it was
a powerful spell, but only in certain circumstances. It was
almost impossible to train up because the conditions in which
one used it were rare. The mass charmed spell had
a casting time of five minutes, which was outrageous. At
level one, it had a cool down of five hours.

(01:04:58):
Its base area of effect was a thirty meter diameter circle,
though that went up a lot based on her charisma.
It only worked on intelligent mobs. That plus it's five
minute casting time, made the spell almost useless at level one.
Once cast, every mob in the area of effect had
a two percent chance to turn and fight against their friends,

(01:05:21):
all of that for only a two percent chance to
turn someone. It didn't seem right to me. I have
to assume that once they get to a floor where
people are really like in battle, that is when it's
going to seem useful. And you're gonna have to find
a place to put donut and you know, put a
protective shell on her, and he's gonna have to train
up his protective shell. That's gonna be the main thing,

(01:05:42):
because it only lasts twenty seconds, so obviously it's gonna
be a combination of that and some other things. But yeah,
I get why he's reticent, but I could see this
being helpful in the right circumstances, and they just haven't
encountered anything like that. So what they are in now
it feels useless. But I'm picturing an actual battlefield, and

(01:06:05):
that changes the whole appeal of this spell, you know.
So this is when it turns out that there are
tons of monsters right outside the safe room, and they
are these baboons, which he opens the door and a
bunch of them jump inside and wind up getting teleported.

(01:06:28):
This mob was created by taking a standard Earth baboon
and crossing it with the population from a Florida jail
drunk tank. Not gonna lie. I'm pretty proud of this one.
These guys ruin just about anything we put them in,
which is actually hilarious. Some of the mobs were attempting

(01:06:50):
to break into the small general store. I could see
the face of the Moleman proprietor through the barred window,
looking out worriedly. I felt so bad for limp Richard.
I don't think that's Limprichard anymore, but I'm calling him
that anyway. I just was like, Oh, these guys coming
after his little shop. He's just trying to have a
little business. Their theory is that they're from the Purple Line,

(01:07:14):
and let's see I cast a bangbro on my gauntlet. Ready, guys,
let's do this. So I'm going to kind of skim
over some of this fight here because actually he kind
of skims over it. Like the way that this works

(01:07:35):
is that we sort of it's not a question of
whether or not they're actually going to be able to
make it. It's taken for granted, we'll deal with these things,
but it sort of we like jump from Carl to
what's going on with Donut and how she's handling, and
then over to Katcha and then back to Carl and

(01:07:55):
Katya says, I think I figured out how to move
the metal around inside of me. I think I can
make traveling spikes so monsters using their hands will impale
themselves on me, which is insane. I love this, but
she says that it hurts, which sucks. So you know,
there's definitely always like a downside to this stuff. And

(01:08:22):
let's see, oh right, this is when he starts getting
tons of messages from people who have encountered mobs that
have that they are suffering detox because they haven't been
able to go through the portal to get their drugs,
or because they crack Heron has been killed or whatever.

(01:08:42):
Fire Brandy remained in her boiler, not coming out at all.
The less others knew about the nature of her presence,
the better, and then she just comes out and it's
just like, hey, guys, and I couldn't help a crack
up by that because she was just like, I didn't
know why, he felt like they didn't don't need to
know why not. It was just a weird moment of like,
I'm going to shield them from this. They've seen worse

(01:09:06):
my guy, like, I don't know, I think he's being
a little bit precious about the whole baby thing. So
I'm going to have to wrap this here. I wanted
to talk a little bit about what he does with
the like, uh, the portal auxiliary thing, and I'll do
that at the start of the next episode because it's

(01:09:27):
really like just engaging by the very end of this chapter.
And yeah, I think that we can. I think that
I can do that on the next episode. So that's
what I'm gonna do because I am just I start
the next episode that I'm recording in ten minutes, so
I really really gotta go. But I appreciate you guys

(01:09:48):
so much hanging out with me, and uh, thank you
all for listening to me rant and rave about my
dog eating a bone before we started. And I hope
they all are enjoying the coverage. Thank you Michael for
commissioning this one. Until next time to the loom, motherfuckers.

(01:10:32):
That was an unspoiled network past