The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, Chapters 6-8

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Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode! 
These chapters are the ones where Carl asks himself why he's so paranoid while at the Desperado Club right before someone nearly kills Donut. 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book three, The Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook,
chapters six, seven, and eight. In these chapters, Mordecai is

(00:27):
penalized and taken out of the running of the game
for seven days. Pretty pretty huge. This is rough. I'm
hoping that the book Carl has wound up with makes
up for Mordechai's absence. We shall see. Welcome to spoil Me,

(01:09):
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. Michael is
here in the chat. I just you, guys. This section
is so packed with events, and I am going to
really need to pace myself. There's so much happening. So

(01:29):
the first thing that I want to talk about is
really the issue with Katcha, because I could not help
but crack up, you guys. It was just the last
recording that I decided to take a moment and reflect
with you all about how I'm feeling about Katcha and

(01:51):
feeling like I don't dislike her, but I don't feel
like she's up for it the way that everybody else
has been YadA, YadA, and essentially it seems the rest
of the audience pretty much agrees with me. I really
wonder about the author's, like the writing process here, because

(02:18):
what I am seeing is that the author wanted to
do this on purpose. He came into it and was like,
I'm going to create a character that I know isn't
going to have the panache of our main characters, because
there are going to be people out there playing this

(02:38):
game that do not have flair and do not have
the kind of personalities that are going to attract attention.
And I would like to examine what it looks like
to play this game while not having the kind of

(02:58):
what's the word I want, charisma. It's funny because, like,
even though Carl's charisma stats are significantly lower than I mean,
donuts are just so insane, right, And I think that
makes sense. But it's also I feel he has a

(03:19):
lot more than the average person on screen due to
his affection for Dona and the way that he interacts
with her. So it's like she is managing to bring
out the best in him because of the nature of
their relationship, and she doesn't have that kind of relationship
with Katya, so Katya is just sort of reacting to

(03:42):
Donut in this I want to say, it's just a
little bit of a flat way, And I know what
Donah is attempting to do over the course of these chapters,
but it's just she's trying to force something using means
and methods that are It's it's like, you know, trying

(04:09):
to insert It's the sort of superficial stuff that when
you watch a trailer for a movie makes a character
look like they might be awesome, but then you watch
the movie and you're like, oh, there's nothing more to
them except that they have that dope costume and otherwise,

(04:30):
you know, And I completely understand what it is that
Donuts attempting, but and it's certainly going to be a
means that doesn't require Kotscha to like change her actual
personality necessarily, But I think it might be easier to

(04:55):
like just prompt her on what to say at a
given moment than it is to try and do things
this way. Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Michael is
in the chat saying the biggest issue wasn't losing Mordecai,
it was Carl ignoring Donut and not choosing the ass
list chaps. You guys, remember how I said that I
thought her brainstorming those chaps was great and really smart,

(05:17):
and the fact that he doesn't pick them in light
of what else was on offer, I think was the
best choice. But I was sort of bummed because I
kind of felt like that was there, There could have
been real potential there, but who knows. So first we
have this conversation about how our dwarf friend Vernon, who

(05:41):
died horribly because of these fucking fire ants, didn't actually
have a wife. He believes he did. You know, all
of this though, they are implanted with memories that are fake,
and Katchya, who didn't realize this, is really like kind
of flipped out by the whole concept of it. It
does make you wonder, like, how do you know your
minds don't have memories implanted that are artificial? But we

(06:04):
can't go down that hall Just don't go down there.
Leave the doors closed and go back down the stairs.
Don't go down that hallway. So anyways, zev it's about Katchia.
She's boring. People don't like her. Odette complained about her
lackluster participation in the interview, and the tunnel is filled

(06:27):
with people hoping she gets wasted just so it can
be you two again. You either need to ditch her
or make her more interesting, tell her to spice it up.
Maybe you're all mohawk. I'm not allowed to message her
directly yet, but I can talk to her face to
face after your next interview if you want. And doughnut.
Maybe she should be sexy or maybe have bigger boobs.

(06:49):
It's like when they added this is zev when they
added April to Gilmore Girls, but worse donut. Oh no,
I will help her. This is a reference that I
don't get, but it is funny to me because Gilmore
Girls has been coming up in the Supernatural episode as well,
because apparently the actor Jared Patalechi, who plays Sam, played
a character that was like quite popular, I think, named

(07:12):
Dean in Gilmore Girls. And the episode of Supernatural we
just watched, they're on a tour of an alleged lot
in LA that passes by one of the studios that
they film Gilmore Girls in, So it's a little self
referential joke there. And I just talked with Rashan about

(07:32):
how I've never I've seen half an episode of Gilmore Girls,
and I just didn't like the dialogue. It felt very
like it was too self aware and too quippi in
a kind of like Jos Sweden esque sort of way
that was very popular for the era. But I find
really grating now, and I like the fact that this

(07:56):
has just popped up. It's just very funny because this
happens a lot. There will be references that all of
a sudden, I'm surrounded by the reference to the same
property over and over again. But I would love to
hear from anybody who has watched Gilmore Girls what adding
April means. Was this like an additional Gilmore girl, allegedly

(08:17):
like in Buffy when all of a sudden she has
a little sister out of nowhere. Because I really did
not like any of the stories that had to do
with Dawn, and I stand by that. I know she
got a lot of shit, but I think it was deserved.
So anyway, if they don't like her, they'll stop watching.
If they stop watching, you get less views. If you

(08:38):
get less views, you'll get less prizes. And we're just
getting started with fan and sponsor prizes. And Carl is
just like, this is super unfair. You can't expect us
to just change somebody, and Donna is like, yeah, we
can do it, and she just says out loud, you
need to grow a mohawk and maybe get a catchphrase.

(09:01):
That really worked for Carl, and he, of course says
his catchphrase right here, and Donut tries to be really
diplomatic with Katcha with explaining it, but Katcha knows exactly
what it is she's saying, Like, is she saying I'm boring, no,
Donut lied. She just seems she'll get more followers if

(09:22):
you give the viewers something, and she's like, I have
ten billion followers, and Doughnuts like I have seven hundred trillion.
I know that sounds like a lot to you, baby girl,
but it ain't nothing. And I have to say, this
is one of those moments that I always like, stop
and consider what it must be like for people who

(09:43):
are out there actually being influencers. Because I've talked about
this on other episodes that I have a certain audience
for Unspoiled and spoil Me episodes that isn't big. My
audience is by no means big. It can trick you
into feeling big, but it actually is a really small group.

(10:07):
And I will occasionally get people in my dms who
clearly think I am at a level of influencer that
I'm fucking not, and I have. I just recently cracked
one thousand followers on Instagram, for example, just a thousand,
like this is nothing. Who knows how many of those

(10:29):
people are even real people. But the weird thing is
I have on Patreon like five hundred and twenty five patrons,
and that ratio is insane because usually a creator who
has a Patreon and also does content on the socials,

(10:53):
they have like around three percent of their socials as patrons,
and I've got over fifty percent. So that's it's it's
a weird I occupy a very strange place where I'm
not an influencer by any stretch of the imagination. I

(11:14):
just by no metric. But the number of people who
follow me who really support my work is way way
higher and more like involved than average. And I still
don't really get why that happened or how it's continuing
to happen. But I often will like think about my

(11:36):
friend Sydney, who creates Sydney does Cause plays on TikTok
and Instagram, and Sydney's got like seventy five thousand followers,
and so every now and then when I start to
feel like tough shit, I will look over at Sydney's
like view counts and stuff and just be like, oh

(11:56):
my god, I could never it's sobering, and let's see
they decide to shelve this. But later on Katcha gets
this like black body suit and does have a mohawk,

(12:17):
and they are trying out this like whole look for her,
and I really was attempting to sort of brainstorm you guys,
how I would have approached this, because I genuinely you don't.

(12:38):
This is something that I run into a little bit
with co hosting, and you know, it may happen eventually
because I'm starting to do book club episodes with listeners.
If you're at the twenty dollars level and you suggest
a book and I am interested, I will have you
come on as a co host on a book club
episode for the book that you suggest. And that's like

(13:00):
a new thing I'm doing with a twenty dollars tier.
And I had one person who had technical difficulties and
it didn't work out, and then I had one with
Cindy and it went really really well. I have had
what are called wanta be episodes for spoil me, where
the person commissioning it can pay extra to join me
on the episode, And so far all of those have

(13:23):
gone really, really well, and I have gotten so lucky.
And at one point I was talking about it with Rashaan,
and Rashaan is like, maybe they didn't just go really well.
Maybe you are good at making a person talk to you.
Maybe that's part of what you do well, is that
you know how to draw a personality out of hiding.

(13:49):
And maybe But the thing is that the people who
pay to do this are extroverted enough to want to
do this. Somebody like Kanya, I don't think would be
paying extra to co host with me. I don't think
she would want to do that. So maybe I have

(14:09):
a talent for drawing people out, But those are people
who want to be drawn out in the first place,
I would assume. And somebody like Katya, who feels very
guarded and is much more involved with her old crew
than she is with the present crew, I just don't

(14:30):
know exactly how I would manage her, because I think
that's a big part of the problem is there is
such a sense of her not being a real part
of the group. It's clear she's biding her time until
she can go back to the people that she actually
has an interest in, So I might approach her with
that and be like, look, I don't blame you for

(14:52):
the fact that you have a crew that you did
well with, that you felt safe with, and I can
understand that there might be a point where you want
to go back to them, and I respect that and
I won't hold anything against you for it. But in
the meantime, I think you're going to need to commit
more to being part of our crew in a real way,

(15:13):
because they can sense you're holding back. And most of
the conversations that you have in the dungeon are via
text with your friends and they're not happening with us,
And the conversations that we have are always really practical
and always geared toward a plan and getting things done,

(15:37):
and there's very little of yourself in it. So, you know,
it makes me think of something like The Circle, which,
for those who don't know, is a social media type
game show. It's a reality show, and what would often
cause a really strong connection between two players would be

(15:59):
one of them sort of confiding in the other about
somebody really important in their lives, or some sort of
like traumatic or life changing event or a part of
their identity that they don't often share with people that's
important to them. And so I'm sort of thinking, maybe
that's the thing to do, is to like humanize Kotcha more,

(16:20):
have her talk about like where she's from, like her people.
And there is a little bit of that in this episode,
but I like want more, you know, So I don't know,
that's just I was just thinking, you know, because this
is an interesting question, and it would count against you

(16:40):
if you are not this to I would be very donut.
I think I would take to this really well, and
I would manage to team up with people who have
certain really good skills, and it would be my charisma.
That was really what was my strength. But you know,
everybody has their place in a party, and maybe we

(17:02):
can find something for you. So this is when they
meet this thing called a red Cornet and it has
this potion vile in its hand that later on, Carl
is trying to find out what like the remnant of
the potion is and he can't do it, and when

(17:23):
he breaks it, it just disappears, and so he is
kind of frustrated. Because he feels like there's something significant
about this potion and I'm really curious about it. So
they are these like weird rabbit creatures, and they evidently

(17:44):
like don't have no skin normally, but we're just designed
that way for the dungeon because it's really creepy looking.
And it had been mentioned before that they have an
oral attack, which I hate the fact that the word
oral sound like oral because it's really confusing. Guys. Can
we just use a word like auditory instead? Can we

(18:09):
just do that? I mean, I just don't you know why.
But anyway, it causes this intense nausea and they all
like vomit, except for Mango, who his like ears don't
work the same way. So yeah, they eventually build up

(18:31):
an immunity to this, but it is definitely extremely debilitating,
Like Carl doesn't even quite realize it's happened and he's
already puking his guts up, and Mordekin says, the good
news is your body quickly builds up a natural resistance

(18:53):
and you'll probably get a skill notification. And this is
when Katya I find it's the potion vial, but nothing
comes of that, and they train their queasy resistant skill
as they keep going, which also because Mango is the
only one of them who can really attack. Throughout a
lot of this, he manages to hit level fifteen and

(19:17):
he grows six inches taller and a foot longer. And
there comes a point where it's mentioned that like his
abilities are going to make it so that he can
create a small earthquake when he stamps his feet, and
every time he gets a new ability, Carl is just like,
oh God, this guy is so scary. Like, if we

(19:39):
are ever on the other side of things fighting velociraptors,
we are going to be so fucked because he really
is a badass. And I frankly just don't even want
to think about that. I just really think, let's just
cross that bridge. Don't even think about it right now, Carl,

(20:01):
it's too upsetting. I also just hate the idea of
Mongo possibly being killed by creatures of his own kind.
You know that they that he would fight them, and
they would be like a pack against him. I want
so much for the scenario where like they start to

(20:23):
attack and then Mongo jumps out and is just like
I am your king, and they're all just like, oh okay,
and then he manages to keep them from attacking in
a very like C three po with the Ewoks sort
of way. That's my that's my fantasy scenario. So you know,

(20:44):
let's see. As for the loot, these monsters were mostly
a bust. Most dropped a few coins and sometimes corn
at meat or random organs. Mordecai once said most monsters
wouldn't directly drop good loot. On the first several floors.
They get the easy debuff eventually and uh or the
resistance to it, and then they see this area at

(21:08):
the end of the tunnels that they think is probably
a boss room. Doughnuts ability to see distant mobs, which
I'd started calling her monster vision, didn't work in the
closed off area, which further added to my hesitation. So
they approach this and they go inside and they like,
you know, their guns blazing, ready to deal with some

(21:28):
real creatures, and instead there is this like weird writing
in this circle, and then there are these things off
to the side that are like robotic type creatures. And

(21:49):
let's say, I'm trying to describe this thing here. The
glowing circle looked like something used in a Satanic ritual
mix with the text from protos one ring and Mordecai
says that's a control sigil. Only you can see it
because of your escape plan skill. They're mostly used by
secondary programs like Vengeance of the Daughter, but they're sometimes

(22:11):
used by the Dungeon creators too. I know their use
is considered sloppy programming because they're easy to break. Sigils
have all sorts of uses, but they're typically for controlled gating.
They can stop a specific type of mob from passing.
The symbol can be turned on and off by showrunners,
not the Dungeon Ai, which is why they use them.
If it's blue, it means the symbol is turned on,

(22:33):
it will have no effect on you. And he says
that crawlers cannot make these, but there is another type
of sigil that looks a little similar and acts a
lot of the same way, but it takes a ton
of manna. And maybe Donut might be able to do
it one day, but like Carl definitely won't. And when

(22:54):
they go further in these these robot things, they're like
exhaust and they look Carl thinks a little bit like transformers,
and they are called Dwarven Industrial light duty automaton contraption

(23:17):
this again is reminding me of Skyrim, because there's like
whole sections of Skyrim where we've got like Dwarven technology
that has been abandoned and sometimes looted, and you go
in and you have to like collect a number of gears,
you have to get through weird traps, and it's got

(23:39):
a very Indiana Jones sort of vibe to it, those
areas where you have to like not just get through them,
but you have to figure out what they are to
begin with. And it can be a little bit difficult
when your point of view is so blinkered, because something
can happen out of sight and then all of a
sudden there's an error or not an error message, but

(24:03):
like a warning message because you just got bashed in
the head with something and you literally don't know what
it was because it came in out of view of
your little camera. So I cannot tell you, guys how
much I fucking hated having to explore the Dwarven ruins.

(24:28):
It was like a combo of the anxiety of the
traps and everything that you pick up as loot is
super heavy, So if you have kind of a low
weight limit to what you can carry for your character,
or if you don't have like one of your little
assistants to carry shit for you, it would get to
a point where you felt like you couldn't pick up

(24:50):
any loot because everything weighed a ton and you didn't
really know sometimes what was worth saving and what. And
so I would find myself carrying around some really heavy shit,
being prepared to sell it for a good amount, and
then I would get nothing for it, and I had

(25:10):
wasted all of that weight in my inventory for fucking
this useless nothing. The one plus is that once I
did sell it for practically nothing, at least my inventory
got opened wide up again. But I maintain I love
the design of those areas of the game. They're beautiful.

(25:31):
I think they're They're like some of the prettiest areas.
But it was just the way that I would have
to figure out the traps and the traps themselves that
it was just exactly the way that my brain has
trouble working. I didn't like it. And so as soon

(25:51):
as we get like Dwarven Light Automates, I was like, oh,
fuck these fucking things, And Kotscha says, I've been talking
to Heckle and Eva. They just found a similar room
in another warren. She says, it's the same thing. I
put my hand against the chain link cart which earlier

(26:12):
it was labeled cage wire cage materials cart wheeled. It'd
probably be fun to roll down a hill in this thing.
There was a door on the side, designed so one
could effortlessly load something into it. I wondered if I
could lift it. I wrapped my fingers into the chain
links and heaved. It was heavy and awkward, but I

(26:32):
easily lifted the wheels off the ground. I stuck it
in my inventory. And this is when Donut says that
we should blow up these robots, and Katya disagrees, and
Donut is like, this is what we were talking about, sweetie,
with having more personality, you should agree with me about
blowing stuff up because everybody really likes it. And Carl

(26:55):
at first is starting to agree with Katia, and then
he goes, you know what, actually, let's fucking do it.
He says, you know, for training and science. All right,
I guess, she said, but if we do this, maybe
we should kill the rest of the cornets first, too
clear the whole place out. She gave me a wink,
you know, for science, Donut that's the way to do it. Now,

(27:19):
we just need to work on the mohawk and catchphrase.
Oh my god, I what would what would a catchphrase that? Like?
It's like trying to come up with your own nickname.
Everything is going to sound so stilted and forced. I
don't know how, you know, like his goddamn it donut

(27:40):
is just an inadvertent thing, that's what makes it fun.
What can they come up with for Katcha that wouldn't
feel like completely manufactured? I don't even know. Oh god,
I hate this so much. I'm trying to think, like

(28:00):
if I have a catchphrase, and I just think that
I have a tendency to use a lot of different
phrases repeatedly, so I don't know if I have one.
I think I just sort of, you know, I see
two lou motherfuckers at the end of every episode, and
I guess you could say that is maybe I don't know,
but anyway, okay, okay, So they first killed cornets and

(28:25):
that helps level them up a little bit. Let's see,
we sent seven into fight, and in the midst of
the chaos, we sent in the eighth holding a fused hoblubber.
After that, I tossed in a smoke curtain and we
mopped up. The rooms were nothing more than a filthy
waiting area. Oh and what I say send in, I

(28:48):
mean the second chance thing where they're reanimating the dead ones.
A realization was starting to form. By the time we
killed the ones in the third room and finished like
all the dropped coins, I had a growing sense of unease.
I think they're all stoned more meth, Donut asked, not

(29:10):
Math something different. I think they're going to that fifth
stop to get these vials, getting their fix, and teleporting
back here when they start to come down from their high,
they get back on the train. What does that have
to do with the robot room, Don'tut asked. I don't know.
It doesn't make sense, especially if there's a robot room

(29:33):
in all these landings. The idea that they are being
drugged is so fucking upsetting. I have a very strong
reaction to this sort of thing, and it's like I
just don't even have time to fully get into the
levels of it. But I have mentioned that I had

(29:56):
parents who both struggled with addiction alcohol cocaine, and I
watched my dad overdose when I was little, and It
was just a really formative experience of me not touching
any kinds of like mind altering substances until I was

(30:17):
in college, and even then that was when I got
drunk for the first time. I didn't smoke weed until
like literally fifteen years ago. You know, I was almost
out of Philly and had been married for like six
years by the time I smoked weed for the first time.

(30:37):
So I have seen the way that addiction can ruin
your entire life in other folks. My parents managed to
get it together, but I would argue there were still
lots of consequences that they had to cope with. And
I think that is part of why my dad died young,

(30:58):
is because doing so much coke fucked up his heart
and weakened it, and so ultimately, you know, he was
like in his early sixties and he had to get
a pacemaker and wound up with a heart attack that
killed him when he was like sixty seven. And I
know about the way that the US government flooded black

(31:22):
communities with drugs in order to try and decimate their
populations and how well that worked, and that kind of
I don't even know what I want to call it,
but it's just one of the sickest, most fucked up

(31:49):
methods to me using somebody's own body against them. You know,
I get that when people are choosing to use a drug,
they are choosing to use a drug. And so a
lot of people might disagree with my assertion here, but
there is a part of me that feels like it
is sort of akin to rape, where your own body

(32:12):
becomes a crime scene. And what's so gross about it
is that then everybody else feels free to judge you
for your addiction and stops seeing you as a human being, which,
of course is part of the goal in flooding black
communities is to get white people to dehumanize black people

(32:36):
in a way that they were starting to be able
to break free of in the Civil rights movement. Well,
we can't have that, you know. And it's astonishing how
people who are otherwise really kind, generous people will say
some of the most hateful shit you ever heard about

(32:57):
drug addicts and just think that's a completely rational and
normal thing to say. And I was once at Thanksgiving,
i think, with my husband's family, and one of his
aunts was talking about a neighbor of theirs whose daughter
was a heroin edict, and she had, like, you know,
their their neighbor. His name was Jack. They like helped

(33:21):
him do his lawnmowing and making him food because he
was getting older. And then his daughter like got out
of jail, showed up at his house and like robbed him, right,
And yeah, it's fucking horrible. It's horrible that we don't
have any fucking support system for addicts. And as much
as I can understand seeing her as an enemy after

(33:44):
what she did, it is just not in me to
completely hold an addict responsible for their behavior. It's just
I don't think that people who have never had addiction
issues can possibly understand how out of your own hands
your actions become after a certain point. And at one
point there was like a mention of her taking his car,

(34:08):
and this woman said somebody should have locked her in
the trunk and left her there. He would have been
better off. And I remember just stopping and staring at
her because all I could think it was just such
a weird thing of like, on the one hand, he
might have been better off in that he wasn't being robbed,

(34:32):
But you want this man to find his own dead
daughter in his trunk, and you think that's going to
make his life better, you really think that, and like
that will destroy him and it didn't. Like for her,
that was just super nice because this woman who was
an addict was not a person to her anymore. So anyway,

(34:56):
what human beings are really good at is dehumanizing each other.
It's bizarre. And I know that we're talking about like
monsters here, but how many of these monsters had used
to be conscious beings. I know a lot of these
things are created for the game, but there is clearly

(35:17):
like a mix of former contestants if we want to
call them that, former crawlers that are in the mix.
And even if they aren't originally conscious sentient beings, if
you are creating them and then getting them addicted to
a thing to control their behavior, is that fucking better? Like?

(35:40):
Is it? And I just I hate everything about where
this is likely going. And that is not to say
I hate the writing, but because I am sure it
is going to be something, you know, But I'm just
saying that, like I all read have a very very

(36:02):
acute understanding of this issue first hand, secondhand, and it
is ugly. It is a really unpleasant reality to grapple
with and the United States is so guilty of causing
so much harm to so many people and then just
fucking leaving them twisting in the wind with no help

(36:23):
or support. And it's disgusting and it makes me literally
feel sick to my stomach when I think about it.
So yeah, so that's that. Well, we don't get any
further info on that here, so we'll see where this
winds up getting a little bit more expansion. Let's see.

(36:46):
Oh right, this is when Daniel Bautista gets in touch
with Carl and he says, I'm at the Desperado Club
and there's a woman named Immani here and I met
a guy here who says he's in contact with someone else,
you know. And she says she'll try to be at

(37:07):
the bar of the Desperado Club each night after the recap.
I need to talk to you too about something else,
but it's too complicated over chat. I hate this mental
typing shit, but you gotta be careful, man. I heard
a few guys talking about hunting down the leaderboard for
the bounty. I don't know if they're serious, but I
don't think this bar is a safe room. And he says,

(37:30):
if there's a trick to finding out finding the club.
If it's a transfer station and the station's number ends
in the number one, they'll be a Desperado club. If
it ends in the number nine, it's Club Vanquisher. Anyway,
talk to you later. And this is when Katca comes
out in her body suit. She wore poorly shaped knee

(37:54):
high boots. She also had a purple mohawk. She looked ridiculous,
had an odd expression on her face one I was
having a hard time reading. It seemed like a mix
of exasperation, despair and desperation. Whatever it was, it was
clear she did not want to be doing this. And

(38:15):
he says, just be yourself, and Donut says that's the
worst advice. She's literally a doppelganger. The point is for
her to not be herself, and Katya actually agrees, I
don't even know what that means anyway, I never really did,
which is fair actually, because it does feel like a

(38:36):
completely meaningless phrase. In my opinion, just be yourself means
feel free to share your thoughts and opinions up to
a point depending on the audience, really, and you know,
react to things genuinely and not just through the filter

(39:01):
of what other people are also doing or saying. But
I think that requires a type of ability to read
social situations that not everybody has. And so you know,
it's not great advice always, because sometimes who a person

(39:22):
is is very incompatible with whatever the audience is that
they are with, and it is extremely painful to watch
when somebody is themselves in the wrong setting. So anyway, okay, okay,
Chapter seven. The dwarf conductor on the next train was

(39:44):
a heck of a lot grumpier than Vernon, but by
the time we pulled up to station one thirty one,
we had the full list of stations all down the
yellow line. Mordecai said he thought he might be onto something,
but he wasn't certain yet, And the the whole thing
here with Mordecai is starting to be onto something. I

(40:05):
don't feel like we get quite enough information after he
gets zapped out, because now we're gonna have to potentially
put together the clues he has left ourselves, which sucks.
I feel very strongly that later on what happens might
be due explicitly to the fact that he is figuring

(40:27):
out the tracks and all of the information too quickly
and going to be giving them way too much of
an advantage. I feel like this is like a targeted
attack for a specific reason. So let's see Mango hits
level fifteen, which we find out is like the largest

(40:49):
he will ever get. He was the height of a pony,
from the tip of his beak to the end of
his colorful red and blue feathered tail. He was about
thirteen feet long, though more than half of that was tail.
The individual claws were bigger than his entire body had
been when we first got him. He still fit in
subway cars okay, but if we came across smaller cars

(41:09):
with road seating, it was going to be a tight squeeze.
I suspected he was going to be spending a lot
of time in his carrier, which sucks. I hate the
fact that he's like full size, and now it's maybe
getting to be an issue. You know, And he has
a special attack. This is it called earthquake. Each time
he leap attacks, there's a small chance he'll trigger an

(41:30):
earthquake when he lands, which will knock the bad guys
off their feet. I sure hope that it doesn't knock
them off their feet, that it's only enemies. I am
assuming that that is the case, and it just doesn't
affect members of his own party. Fingers crossed, and let's see,

(41:50):
have you ever been to an Arby's, I asked Katya. No,
she said, I've never heard of it. I realized I
knew next to nothing about this woman. I know you're
fromand but you knew about the Russian subway? Did you
spend a lot of time in Russia? I spent a
summer in Moscow when I was a student, working at
the Pushkin. It's a museum. I've spent a lot of
time on holiday in Europe. We take a student trip

(42:13):
to Paris every other year and one to Amsterdam the
other years. It's the only traveling I've done recently. How
about you? Did you ever leave America? And he's been
to the Arctic Circle and Costa Rica, and he's gone
to Victoria and Vancouver in Canada. I was hoping that
this would be more of a thing, you know. As

(42:34):
he starts to like talk to her about who she was,
I was thinking, Okay, maybe this is an angle, but
it doesn't really turn into anything here. Let's see. This
is when they come back into their rooms and Mordecai
has been working on something and the place stinks, and

(42:55):
he's kind of cranky, and Donut says he used my
two table grade coupons on the alchemy table. He didn't
tell me he was making stink bombs. I'll be making
worse than that. If you don't get out of here,
eat your food. I'll be out in a minute. And
finally he comes out and he says, I don't have

(43:15):
enough time or supplies to make some of the best stuff,
but this is a good start. And he has made
what are called Mordecai's Special Brew, a potion designed by
a shifty changeling who has a tendency to kill those
who count on him the most. This special potion combines
the effect of a gold standard healing potion and the

(43:38):
troll's second wind to create a de facto immortality for
a period of thirty seconds. It has a few unfortunate
side effects. I am going to put money on it
makes you fart. There's just something about the word wind
and troll being in there that is giving fart monster

(44:02):
And maybe I'm wrong, but I just had to put
that out there right now. I also like the fact
that Carl specifically thinks I chose to ignore that first
section of the description. I knew how the system labeled
items I had created, which meant whatever they said here
was not accurate. Okay, maybe not accurate in spirit, but

(44:29):
it is accurate in technicalities a lot of the time.
Now I have fixed feelings on this because one I
like the fact that immediately Carl is like this fucking
AI Like It's if you were a different writer and

(44:49):
you wanted to create conflict in a very boring way,
you could have your main character be like, what does
that mean? Can I trust him? Oh? My god? You know,
but we're not doing that cheap lazy shit. Carl has
done this long enough that he fucking knows you are

(45:11):
trying to stir up doubt. You're just a pot stir
or HEYI that's what you do. And I love the
fact that she just discounts it utterly. It's great. It
just made me very happy. So what this potion does
is create a constant stream of healing mixed with rapid
regeneration for thirty seconds. It'll heal almost anything and keep

(45:34):
that health topped up. But it's not an in vulnerability spell.
It won't protect you against blowing yourself up or being
decapitated or anything that would normally cause you to die instantaneously. Unfortunately,
the side effects are pretty severe. It ups your potion
sickness countdown by about ten hours hours, so you won't

(45:58):
be able to take any post afterward for that time. Also,
you can only take two of these before they stop
working altogether. I've been trying to fix that for ages,
but I can never get past it. And these are
both for Dona stat potions, and they will increase her
constitution between one and four at random. So the first

(46:22):
one that she drinks only increases it by one, and
she's very unimpressed, and I think I can't remember how
much the second one is. I'm trying to find the
spot where she drinks it, because we get a bunch
of other stuff before that. I picked up the final item,
a fragmenting potion ball. A full potion fial may be

(46:45):
transferred to this ball. That was the whole description, he says.
Once I have more stuff for this table, I'll be
able to do a bunch of different things. But you
pour potion in to it and you can throw the ball,
and with your chistia and poison and firewater potions, you

(47:08):
can really fuck somebody up. And also they can actually
work as healing if you throw it not at donut,
but he thinks if it works, it will probably work
on mango, which would be nice. Ooh, Michael says three.

(47:30):
So she gets a total of four points. That's not bad.
That's not bad. Okay, let's see he's looking through his
stuff and he only has one unique item, which isn't
that bomb that's under pretty damn rare. But unique is

(47:51):
the stuffed Kimaris figure with tags. It's impossible to accurately
portray Kimaris usual. I hate this and I I hate
you scowl, but this collectible bean bag makes a valiant effort.
It was still listed as my most valuable item, and
he doesn't have actual numbers. It's just like most to

(48:12):
least valuable. So I'm wondering if there is some sort
of perk eventually where he will get an actual dollar
amount on what he could ask for something. I know
it depends who he's trying to sell to, but uh,
you know, that's just like eventually in Stardy Valley, for example,
you can buy an upgrade so that you can see

(48:35):
how much your stuff would sell for. And granted it's
a different thing because there's only one store, so it's
a very standard amount, but you know, there might be
something that functions similarly. I don't know. So this is
when they get their fan boxes and doughnut opens hers.

(48:57):
One of our fans got us a saddle I can
ride you now look a mongo and they actually like
it's made so that it clicks into place, and even
though he tries to get it off, there's like nothing
that wraps around. There's no girth. What are those called.
I'm trying to think of. Is it just called a girth?

(49:19):
It just pops on him and is stuck there, So
I don't know if there's a way to get it
off again if it just stays. But he doesn't react
super well to it, and it seems like we're probably
gonna have to go through an adjustment period. Riders in
the saddle are afforded the following bonuses plus fifteen percent

(49:46):
to all offensive spell damage, which is bananas anti piercing resistance.
In addition, the saddle gives the following bonus to the
attached mongoliensis twenty percent constitution plus twenty percent melee damage
while the saddle is occupied. And they say, both Carl

(50:08):
and Mordecai that Donut is going to be way too
vulnerable being on his back. So what they are wanting
to practice with her is making a quick escape from
the saddle itself. So let's see he puts it on,
and let's see. Maybe we should wait till he gets
used to it before attempting to ride him. Oh all right,

(50:29):
said Donut, Now open your box up. So he does,
and there's this like and all of a sudden, we've
got a game show starting, ladies and gentlemenutes time for
your favorite segment of Dungeon Crawler World, the prize carousel,

(50:54):
and the host appears, Choco the Bard. You guys, this
whole thing, it's so so good. So this wolfman appears,

(51:16):
he's introducing himself, YadA, YadA, and then all of a
sudden it's interrupted with oh shit, Mordecai, You mother fucker,
Mordecai cried, interrupting. He tries to throw Well, he does
succeed in throwing a chair at the guy, hard enough
that he would have died for sure had it connected.

(51:39):
But the thing is they're in a safe room, and
so let's see. I turned to ask Mordecai what in
the hell was happening? Oh, shit, I said, Mordecai was
frozen in place, his tongue half retracted. He had the

(52:00):
word naughty blazing over his head. You guys, I was
making dinner and I fell out laughing so hard at
this moment, I was like literally cackling like a witch.
It was just a weird combo of the imagery because

(52:21):
Mordecai is a toad now, and also the fact that
I had forgotten that they were in a safe room,
so I forgot about that freezing thing to begin with,
and even once I was reminded about that, I forgot that.
It was like it would label him as naughty. The
whole thing. It was just like a slow cascade of

(52:43):
like oh yeah, oh yeah, oh oh, I forgot about that.
I lost my entire shit, And all of a sudden,
Mordecai vanishes, and so does his room, and understandably, Carl
reaches the fuck out and just just like did we

(53:03):
just lose him entirely? And Donut, because he's her manager,
can see what's going on, and she says he's in
time out for violating the rules for seven days. That
meant we'd only have a day and a half left
on this floor when he came back, and I was

(53:27):
so delighted with what happens. Next, Carl turns around and
is like, Okay, who the fuck are you? And he
tries to be like I'm the host, and he's like, no,
you know what I mean to Mordecai, who are you?
Because somebody set this the fuck up because they knew
this would happen, and they wanted us to get robbed

(53:49):
of Mordecai. This was a setup. And I was like, oh,
thank you, because instantly that is what I thought. But again,
if you're a lazier writer, you have your characters be
stupid and they don't think of things. Oh. I was
so relieved that me and Carl were on the same page.

(54:11):
I was so glad. It's just like little moments like
this where I come to a conclusion and it turns
out the character has also already come to that conclusion,
like at the same time I did. I wish that
I could tell you guys how tasty that is to me,
because when you're reading lazy writing, which a lot of

(54:33):
what I read on my downtime is a lot of
romanticy relies on like miscommunications in a very cheap and
lazy way, it makes me despise my main characters so much.
I just lose a ton of respect for them. And
instances like this are when I'm just yes, Carl, thank you,

(54:53):
you know, like you deserve to be in the top
ten because this is how you think, and I appreciate that.
So anyway, Choco doesn't get into the details of whatever happened,
but what he does say is it happened like literally
decades ago, and I didn't think he would still hold

(55:15):
this fucking grudge, but uh yeah, here we are, and
let's see. Do you not watch the show? That's Carl, No, No,
I can't stomach No, of course I hadn't the fact
that he says he can't stomach the game, like, yikes,

(55:41):
I'm sorry about your manager, I really am. It was
a long time ago, and it wasn't my fault. I
was just doing what his manager told me to do.
If I hadn't done it, he'd have died, and then
we'd all have lost her, We'd have lost Odette. When
he comes back, tell him I said I'm sorry. Not
a day he goes by when I don't regret it,

(56:03):
I'm dying. I am so curious. It sounds like they
sacrifice somebody to save him and Odette and I don't know,
you know, like he had his mom's ashes. I don't
remember if he mentions having had a wife or anything
like that. I honestly, any details that we got about

(56:27):
who Mordecai was were pretty early on, and he has
stayed somewhat closed since then. So we'll see. So I'm
running out of time here, but I'm going to jump
ahead to what it is that Carl winds up choosing.

(56:47):
There are some potions which like they don't even have labels,
and he has to sort of deduce what they might
be about. Of course Mordecai would have helped him to
pick them. There are Earth books quantity two thousand, a
random collection, and he's just sort of like, oh that actually,

(57:07):
then a Harley Davidson. This one killed me. You guys,
he has this visceral reaction. It's the exact one too,
because there's like a dent in it in this certain spot.
My father had never been physically abusive except that day.
I never really thought of it as abuse, but thinking

(57:29):
back now, that's exactly what it was. He'd spanked me
so hard with a belt that my underwear had soaked
through with blood. I could still feel the sensation of
it peeling away. My mother had cried, told him we
were going back to Texas, but we never did. Ooh,
there is nothing like a person who doesn't get physically abusive,
except for that one time, you guys. I have talked

(57:53):
about this before. I don't remember if it's on this show,
but I have on other shows about how my father
was clearly somebody who had a lot of age, and
I always knew there was a potential in him to
go off, and I always sensed that he was on
the edge of it all the time. And finally, one
day when I was in high school, I like cleaned
a fish tank and I got some of the pebbles

(58:16):
in the garbage disposal that he had just installed, which
can really fuck it up, and I saw him look
at me, and I just knew to run. It was
one of those moments that, like, thinking back, I don't
actually remember his face. I just remember the fear like

(58:41):
I had never felt before. And I was always vaguely
afraid of my dad, but this was a moment where
I was genuinely like, no, you are actually in physical danger.
And I ran into the bathroom and I locked the door,
and then he bashed into it and bashed into it.
And this was a solid made people door. This house

(59:01):
had been built in like the forties. This was not
some like hollow door. And my dad broke that door
in half, bashing his body into it, and eventually sort
of came to his senses, and by the time he
broke it in half and could have reached me, he

(59:24):
stopped and had calmed enough to realize that he had
lost it for a second, and he just went and
turned the TV on and watched television. And I just
huddled on the floor of the bathroom for probably an
hour until it felt like it had died down enough
that I was safe to come out. And I remember
like coming out and immediately putting on my shoes and

(59:46):
leaving the house and probably going to see my boyfriend
or something. And it's just like my dad tried so hard.
I know he did. But there is this thing about like,
as long as a person doesn't physically hit you, it's
not abuse or it's not that bad. And it's like
sometimes it's worse knowing that somebody wants to hit you

(01:00:09):
and living with that and just waiting for the day
where they can't hold back anymore, and this being also
over a mechanical physical object, it just felt like I
really really got this memory in a very personal way.

(01:00:32):
It was just it's really this one. I mean, Carl's
whole relationship with his parents is awful, but this got
to me in a way that the other stories didn't quite.
I also should mention that in the previous section, when
he finds out that Brandon is dead, he thinks about

(01:00:54):
how it's so sudden and out of nowhere, and then
thinks it's just like mom, and so he probably had
just like fallen out of touch with his mother who
abandoned him, and then at some point gets notified that
she's died. I think that we didn't know for sure
she was dead unless he's mentioned it at some point,

(01:01:15):
But I think that I had been wondering, like what
her deal was, And yeah, I am interested in getting
a little bit more information on that later. It's just
so what is so fucked up about this is that
they apparently know his history and his memories, and so

(01:01:38):
they're choosing things to upset him on purpose to get
a reaction out of him for the show, I guess,
and it's just such an utterly cruel thing to do.
You could get a reaction out of somebody in a
good way too, you know, but that's not what they're choosing.

(01:02:03):
Prize five, just one book, small leather bound best laid Traps.
Is that porn, Donut asked, I get, I get, I
get what that joke is there? If you know, you know,
if you don't, don't worry about it. And then the

(01:02:24):
sixth one is another book that has the anarchy symbol
on it, and it has a glow to it that
he recognizes as like this means something important here. And
then the ass list and crotchless chaps, and then a

(01:02:46):
single potion, the same orange bubbly concoction Donut had just
used to raise her constitution. And Prize nine a Craftsman
three thousand in series, sixty three inch rolling tool chest.
And it's something that had been chock full of all

(01:03:07):
kinds of useful things, but when he looks at it closer,
he is almost positive that whole thing is empty. So
he chooses the book and it is called the Dungeon
Anarchists Cookbook, which and it's described as having recipes. I

(01:03:28):
was very surprised that nobody seemed to get the anarchist
cookbook reference here. I mean, maybe it's part of the
deal is that the host of this has to play
along and say that it's a shitty prize, but even

(01:03:49):
the description felt very suspect to me. Chicken and goblin
recipes galore. It just felt like that's goblin recipes, that's
got blowing up stuff in it, Like you know what
I mean. It's just to me seemed really clearly this
is something. Quickly Carl realizes that that's true. At first

(01:04:13):
he's like, oh my god, we got totally fucking screwed.
But then he opens it and immediately the book is like,
oh boy, I'm so excited for you that you got
this book. We are going to burn all this shit
to the ground. And you can't tell anybody about what

(01:04:34):
you're going to find in this book, because if you do,
you will lose all access to everything you have to
pass your knowledge on, and you will find that there's
like a new section in your message menu that is
a scratch pad, and anything you put in there is
going to be saved in this book. And there's also
notes from other players, which there is something about that

(01:04:57):
that feels so valuable to me, just like the actual
information that they are giving, but they're being a connection
to former players who have gone through this terrible thing.
Also that just makes you feel a little bit less
alone in it all in a way that feels like
really significant, you know. And then there's like we get

(01:05:23):
one of the first ones about the safe room. Restrooms
are a good place to read. Don't take long or
you'll get pinched, which I don't know what that means
if it's like the seat pinches you. And basically the
cameras are only outside, but if you are on the
actual toilet, you are safe and nobody will spot you
reading it. And so anything that he learns from this,

(01:05:45):
he is going to have to frame as if he
came across it accidentally, and he won't be able to
like even tell Donut, which that's the part that makes
me the most anxious, because keeping any sort of secret
is going to flavor conversations now in a way that
could potentially get between them if it feels suspicious to

(01:06:10):
her in a different way, which like the consequences of that.
I just really hope this doesn't wind up becoming a
whole thing. And yeah, he has trouble putting it down.
He keeps reading it in like little sections and obviously
can't like make it obvious how gripping this is to

(01:06:34):
read because it's supposed to just be nothing. It's supposed
to just be recipes that are stupid. So yeah, it's
just uh, let's see, while the bounty was a big concern,
we couldn't let it force ourselves into isolation. Hello, crawlers.
At the end of this message, you will receive a
new tab in your interface. This is where you can

(01:06:55):
interact with your first sponsor. It will populate at the
end of bidding, which will be in about fifteen hours.
I am super interested to see how this goes. You
can see who your sponsors are, what organization they represent,
and if they sponsor additional crawlers. They will not be
able to send you direct messages, but you can send
messages to them. I highly suggest you thank them for
their support and ask them to send you the best

(01:07:17):
loot box is possible. And she also mentions that there
are going to be some updates and stuff, So let's see.
I'm trying to see how much more because I'm like
out of time here. Oh my god, there's a lot
of Chapter eight left that I haven't talked about because
we have we go to the Desperado Club. I'm going

(01:07:40):
to talk about some of this next episode, I think,
But the one thing that I really want to touch
on is first that they get to see l and
how crazy she looks because she's like floating now and
has this sort of grace to her and I love

(01:08:02):
Donut being like she's so beautiful and elegant, and then
she's just screaming, who's dick do? I gotta suck? And
they say something about how like her personality changed, But
I was fully expecting this. This just felt like, No,
that's what her personality had been. She didn't use this
kind of language, but she would have. It just felt
like she didn't have the ability to. So I don't know,

(01:08:23):
maybe I just like misjudged her personality, but I felt
like she was a pretty vulgar person to begin with.
I don't know. And let's see, I'm trying to find oh, right,
right right? She mentions about the manager benefit, which when
she actually chose it, Tiatha, who is her game guide,

(01:08:44):
started crying because she couldn't like influence her to do it.
But once she did pick it. It was just a
big deal. And let's see, miss Amani and I were
the only two of the whole squad who have access
to the club. I only got my tattoo because I
accidentally shot an icicle up the keyster of an orc

(01:09:06):
bar tender on the last floor. We had to high
tail it out of town after that. That guy will
be shitting ice cubes for the next three seasons. And
let's see, here comes Imani, obsidian butterfly fire spiritualist. She
had transformed into a gaunt, skull faced vision. A white

(01:09:29):
skull was painted on her face, reminding me of the
danger dingoes. But the most striking were the translucent ethereal
butterfly wings trailing behind her, which sounds so dope like
this is very much tempting for me. I might pick this,
and eventually, if she levels up, she might reach a
point where she can fly. I'm sure it comes with

(01:09:50):
some drawbacks, so you know, she has to decide whether
or not she's going to want to pick that. I
can't imagine what would make you not pick that, but
you know, I'm sure the AI could come up with something.
And she explains about what happened with Chris and Brandon,
and that Chris picked a rock race and he became

(01:10:13):
way more aggressive and wanted to like go out there
and hunt and kill as just a matter of course,
and him and Chris just fundamentally disagreed on the approach
to the game. And yeah, the whole thing with the
Shade Goblins is because Henry fucked a a succubus and

(01:10:39):
she gave birth to these things, which truly is insane.
But because he said, like the Shade Gremlins or whatever,
and I was like, what is that? Have we come
across that? And I guess we hadn't because nobody had
fucked to succubis. And the chapter ends with this alert

(01:11:00):
happening and he looks over and somebody has just tried
to kill Dona her cockroach skill activated, and another dude,
a human has been killed by either her or one
of her uh, because they bought a package that comes
with bodyguards. But I think it was probably her that
did it. And yeah, it has to be her because

(01:11:23):
the skull appears after her name because she's killed a
fellow crawler, So that changes some things going forward. I
was waiting for somebody to come at them. I really
knew you know, and even Carl thinks to himself like,
I shouldn't be so suspicious of people, and I was like,
you fucking should, dude. Not everybody is like you. Not

(01:11:43):
everybody has the same desire for us all to make it.
You know, there are plenty of people who are not
going to think that way. So I've got to wrap.
I'm so overtime, but thank you guys a lot for
hanging out with me, thank you to Michael for commissioning this,
and I will be seeing you next week with a
new episode. Until then, to the loom, motherfuckers. That was

(01:12:36):
an unspoiled network podcast.