The Butcher's Masquerade, Chapters 63-66

what's best. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show. Everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Jackie again for commissioning this episode. Jackie, appreciate you so much, my friend. Hope that you are enjoying these episodes. So, yeah, guys,

this was like a I actually really appreciated that. At one point, I think Louis or Faraz, one of the two of them, says something about how they're having Iron Tangle flashbacks, and I was like, Okay, good, because I was feeling rather confused by a lot of it, not in a way that I found necessarily frustrating, because I was sort of just taking it as like a Okay, I bet to a certain degree, I don't really need to like remember all of this, but more in a

way that I was sort of growing worried. Am I going to regret not trying to get a better handle on all of this? And his comment about the iron tangle was sort of reassuring, I think to me in a sense that it was just don't worry. I know it's a lot, it's fine, just enjoy the show. Kind of that was what the like. It felt like a reassurance from the author. And you know, I may be totally wrong about that. It may not be what he intended by that at all, but I am going to

tell you guys that that's how I interpret it. Is so that if there is something that I missed and you're like listening to this coverage, going, how has she not put two and two together yet? That's how I

have not put two and two together yet? Is that I am just like, it's probably that I don't need to know right anyways, So this section is is really interesting because we have everybody like working together on a certain level, but also they are having to adapt on the fly repeatedly, and they are also like being what's the word I want here scuppered, I suppose by some folks who don't want to be part of a team.

And you know, we've got Eva who turns up later on after Carl has put all of these potions out and all of this equipment and stuff, and she just takes everything and then just like makes snide comments. And I don't know about you all and how you have felt about Eva. I am kind of curious, like what the overall audience vibe has been. But I don't think that I expected Eva to be willing to just to put everybody at risk in that way where she would just take all of the supplies and just say screw

you to everybody. I know that she is like that, she has been willing to throw people to the wolves, so to speak. But I thought it was sort of a if it's necessary in this situation, I'll do what I have to do kind of mentality. And what it seems like instead is much more I am out to like fuck everybody over in every sense I can come up with, which there's something much more like malicious and

purposeful about that, which I wasn't really expecting. And it made me very sad because it's not really as if I had been expecting better of her exactly. It's more that, like I thought it was a passive effect that she was simply selfish and the side effect of that was affecting other people badly, But I didn't think that it was there being an actual malice. And when it starts to get to that place where it feels like I just enjoy screwing with everybody and sabotaging things, I don't

know how to cope with that. Guys. I will be very honest, like this is something that I run into in real life as well, and I never really know what to do because there's not a way to reason with a person who's motivated by this sort of enjoyment of causing mayhem and pain. There's no way to like argue the position because there's no logic involved with their enjoying that. And so the only way to sort of convince them to like work with everybody is to give

them some other way of achieving that outcome. And how do you do that without basically tacitly agreeing that they can hurt people later instead of now, you know, and putting folks in their way for them to fuck with eventually down the line, just to buy yourself some time. At this moment, I don't if anytime that people just enjoy hurting others. I genuinely am flabbergasted because it's so unthinkable to me. I don't even really like hurting people

that I dislike or hate. I don't like I can take a sort of grim satisfaction in it when it happens. But I don't think that I could do it to somebody in a particular like I could take somebody out. I feel like if I felt like the world's better off without them in it and we just need to like eliminate them, that's a different thing than making somebody suffer and liking that part of it, you know what I'm saying. And that's just sort of where it feels like it's at with her. I don't know. Ooh, Ariz

just says, I have a map. I have a map. I will put in the discord for you. Awesome, thank you, Irazoo. I think Eva is mentally ill, and without Heckla as a handler, she's gone off the rails. That's interesting. I mean, that does make sense. It's funny too, because she was the psychiatrist right Sarah him says, yeah, I get the feeling she was always like this. Heckla was just keeping her in check. Michael says, Hecla is manipulating Eva to do the dirty shit she didn't want to do herself,

which fucked up even even more. And without Hekla, she's just angry and lashing out, mostly at Katchya for killing Hecla. It's kind of like the Batman Joker arguments us nerds do online. Batman is responsible for the murders of hundreds because he refuses to murder Joker even after he has

escaped dozens of times to murder even more innocent people. Yeah, and this is like, this is a question that comes up all the time, right and I later on I'll be covering the first book of the Expanse series, Leviathan Rises or no, Leviathan Wakes. Leviathan Rises is I think

the second or third book. But there is a character in that who last week I was just talking about our last episode that he seems to think that if you just like don't initiate on like hurting a person, that it's keeping your hands clean, even if by not doing that you are going to be causing more suffering, and to me, that's a very childish understanding of the concept of consequences and responsibility. It feels for me naive

isn't quite strong enough a word. It's over simplistic to a degree that feels purposely obtuse, you know what I'm saying, And it's just so convenient a way to let yourself off the hook for a very complicated situation. So Eduardo says, I may be wrong, but isn't there a high incidence of psychiatrists going into that profession as a way of

trying to understand themselves. I don't know about that, Eduardo, but I do know that it's a bit of a trope that like, oh, the psychiatrist is the crazy person in a lot of fiction, so that maybe where that comes from, I don't know, Michael, Just like pyromaniacs gravitate

to be firemen and bullies gravitate to being cops. Yeah, there's like a list of certain professions that people who have a bit of sociopathy tend to get into, and it's often positions of authority over others and over the helpless. Explicitly nurses is you know, getting into the medical field is one of them. But I digress, so let's get

back to chapter sixty three. The start of this is Karl talking to Signet about what is going to happen during the event, and it's one of those really like tricky situations where Carl knows that he can't really likely get through to Signet fully, but he has to at least make the attempt. And what's happening here is that Signet is fully, fully anticipating that she is going to be able to begin her assault on Imagen during this event, and Karl knows they are not going to allow that

to happen. And it's for a number of reasons, but the main issue is whatever winds up on film as a result of that would be fought over between the people who are running the Krawl and the people who are running the Vengeance of the Daughter show that Signet is the star of. So it just puts them in a weird position where there will be like a whole you know, court issue over it, and likely the people who run the Krawl will find a way to like take Signet out or force the show to take her out.

And if Carl is the one who put them in the position where they have to do that. They will also take Carl out as vengeance for the daughter, lol, because he caused this whole situation to be what it is, so you know, if he pushes this too hard, he's fucking himself over also. And he's trying to convince her to like do things another way, both as a means of avoiding getting in trouble himself getting her in trouble,

and also using her. He's hoping that if he can like convince her to wait and handle things a certain way, they will be able to use signet as a distraction. And he feels a little guilty because he understands that she sees him explicitly as an ally and he knows that he is taking advantage of that to a degree. But he's got to do what he's got to do, you know what I mean. And I understand him feeling bad about it, But I don't fault him in any

way for this, not even a little bit. This is just what has to happen, and it would be awesome if he weren't put in the position where these are the only choices that he has. But I don't really feel like there was another way to handle this that would have kept him alive, and I feel like, even though it's a secondary consideration, it is probably going to like go some ways toward keeping her alive also, So how bad is it really? I don't know, you know,

I'm sorry, I just tell Michael's comment. Can I just say that Vengeance of the Daughter is clearly a crap show? They're a parent big plan finale is for Signet to confront the sister who stole everything from her and get squashed like a bug. How is that entertaining? It isn't even properly tragic, since she'd presumably be swatted like a fly, follow this character and her friends for a long time,

and then watch them die horribly nice storyline. It's an interesting question, Michael, because like it does sort of seem like that is their destiny. But was this the plan from the start? Or was Imagen turned into the big bad for this floor after they had already decided for Vengeance of the Daughter that Imagen was going to be her big bad? Was this the plan all along for

it to like work out this way? Because I know that things have shifted and been changed a number of times, and it's hard for me to tell how much of this is predetermined and how much of it was adjusted, and not that it really matters, but like it does seem sometimes like the people who run the Crawl just like fucking with the the showrunners, you know, of the U, these other dramas. So yeah, I don't know. Eduardos has given how sadistic the Broader Universe seems as a whole.

They may be into that kind of crap show though they might, Eduardo, but it does seem like they aren't that into it based on the way that, like Quasar said that the show just sucks balls unless Dona and Carl are there. So I don't know, I really I it seems like they were if they, Like, we're giving them credit also for planning ahead quite a bit, and I don't know how much of that credit they really deserve, because there are times where writers just fly by the

seage of their pants, you know what I mean. And so part of me is sort of like, are they trying to blame Carl for some shit that's really their own fault because they just didn't handle this all that well.

I don't know anyway, So I the whole thing with him talking with her is also kind of punctuated by this weird sense of unease at the fact that she's being really intimate with him in putting her hand on his knee and leaning on him, and he is thinking about how Doughnut said that it's always like the night before the battle, that the main character has to have sex with somebody to blow off some steam, and you know, that doesn't actually wind up coming to anything here, And

I was sort of surprised that there wasn't even like a hint of it being what she's attempting to do. I am curious if you all were sort of expecting this to be more of a thing, because I was, and I'm not mad at it at all. For the record, I'd rather we not do this, But I really did expect that since it was set up that it was, you know, kind of expected that it would definitely be followed through on in some fashion. And maybe it will be a little later, I don't know. I don't know.

So we go over to the safe room and we have got five more crawlers who were given things from their benefactors that are all meant to go to Donut, and Mordecai says that he has never seen anything like this before. The only one who actually got stuff for

themselves is Katya. She gets a beanie that increases all her stats by three percent and gives her a spell called I Need My Personal Space, which violently knocks everybody back with a powerful blow, and it affects her own team as well, and I'm very excited to see exactly

how that all works. We'd receive notifications because we were bringing attendance to the party, meaning the pets, dinosaurs, two Cretans, and Samantha, that we'd be escorted in instead of being teleported in that Brambles would overtake the village in an hour and a half. Doughnut remained outside with the dinosaurs and Brittany her plus one, practicing for the Big Talent Show dance number. And Brittany, as we see later, she's very, very twitchy. I am extremely concerned that she is going

to wind up being a serious weak link. I just don't at all like where like the vibes that I'm getting from her and the way that it seems she's also the one. Correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but I think that she is the one that Katya mentioned had nothing in her blood bar because she had actually done no damage whatsoever this floor, is that right? So, like, I don't want to go so far as to call Brittany useless. I feel like that's pretty harsh, but it

does seem like she is uh timid. And later on, after there is the conversation with Imagen that we of course will get to, she says something about how Imagen reminds her of her mom, and I was like, Yeah, all of this is really stacking up to make it seem like Brittany is not the person to rely on for this whole plan. But it seems like we're relying on her in some pretty important fashion. And she set off her shield spell that has like a four hour

cool down. She sets it off just on impulse when Imagen shows up, which, like the whole thing was, is your cool down reas set? You know, she's just already fucking up. And she's also later we see her wearing this like weird jacket that's very itchy, So I'm assuming that it's made from something weird and I don't know if it's supposed to be like it's actually an explosive. Because Carl is a little bit worried that they are going to clock it as a weapon when they get searched.

So it seems to me that it must be something that's sort of offensive, But I don't know what it could be. I am trying to think there there are so many abilities and hacks and loopholes to like keep track of, you know, guys, that there are a lot of things that I think if I had some sort of spreadsheet that I was always double checking about who's got what and can do what, maybe I would be able to pinpoint, oh, Okay, probably this is what's happening here.

But I really don't want to go through that effort. I don't feel like I want to solve this like it's a mystery. I just want to let it happen and then see what it turns out to be. I think that's fine. Michael says. I don't know if the broader universe is supposed to be any more statistic than we are. Honestly, the descriptions of how people acted at crawlcom really fit a lot of how people act at ARCNS. It's just that they are cheering about real people dying,

of course, but that isn't so far from us. Public executions used to be used as entertainment. Gladiatorial combat was also common, and while most gladiators didn't die, the slaves they used as Podder did. Yeah. I think that her jumpy trigger finger on her shield and her empty blood bar doesn't speak well as to her ability in the game. I think the implication for her characters that she finds someone to cling to to take care of her the skeezy plastics surch when we first met her and now

fi Us Yeah, agreed fully. So, Yeah, whatever it is that they've got her doing, I really hope that they have accounted for the fact that she doesn't seem reliable. I mean, they clearly know that about her, but it still seems like they are relying on her in a way that I'm not mad at them for, because like, truly,

what options do we actually have? You know? But I also can't help but feel like, oh, I just don't like that you're doing this, Like just fucking find it a way to like execute this whole plan without involving her at all, and frankly, that's just probably not possible. So there's this stuff that like Carl is seeing that Doughnut has accumulated recharge wand scroll I understand the same with the tiara and the sheet music. But what's the stick for? And this I picked up the ball peen hammer.

The whole thing fit in my hand. It had been given to Amani. She'd gotten to notice that Boran had filed a dangerous appeal to keep the gift from arriving, an appeal that had been immediately denied. Why give it to Donut? She can't even use it. What is she supposed to do? Hold it in her mouth? And what does the name mean? Enchanted hammer? A fast forward. This is a small hammer. It's enchanted. That means it's magical. It just doesn't do anything magical, which like, how is

it enchanted but doesn't do anything magical? I don't know what that means. I like, how does that work? What? And he eventually he's like running his fingers over it, and he's like, oh shit, there's a number seven on the end of this. And I'll be honest, He jumps immediately in his mind to maybe this is supposed to mean floor seven, which, you know, considering what all they are in the midst of it makes sense that's what he would think of. But I will be honest, guys,

what I immediately thought of as like assembly instructions. I was thinking about those, you know, pieces of furniture that poor people wind up having to assemble themselves, and there are little stickers on the parts that are like ABCD, et cetera, and then numbers or A one, A two, a three, and you have to get your little like very frustratingly vague instructions and assemble the thing using these numbers to connect each thing to each other, which might

account for the fact that they are not able, that they like are enchanted but don't do anything. Perhaps it is that they are the sum of their parts but don't do anything on their own, you know what I mean, And it's that they have to be connected to one another in order for something to actually get activated. I don't know, but I did want to mention that as a possibility, and it like it just a hammer doesn't

seem as if it itself would be a part. It would be something to use to assemble stuff potentially, but then it being called fast forward that doesn't quite work then, you know, So I don't know. I just had a lot of thoughts going around in my head there, and he comes to the conclusion in the end because he's sort of wondering why somebody would just be sending all of this stuff to Donut, and he comes to the conclusion that it's because whoever is sending this stuff doesn't

think anyone else is going to survive. He thinks that all of them believe she's the one that's going to remain standing. And then we get this little bit it's why Quasar wanted donuts name on the board of directors for our new corporation, and just sort of drops that in there like it's nothing, and I was like, excuse me for your what now, Like, you know, we didn't

get any details on this. We have him and Carl meeting, and then the camera cuts away, so to speak, and so we don't get to see exactly what all happens there. So this just gets mentioned in this offhand way, and I was just sort of blinking in surprise. I don't know.

There's a conversation later with the princess turned Empress Denaudia, who turns up as well, and Carl says something about how he has a newfound disdain for her or something like that, and I think that this has to be related to whatever was going on with them behind the scenes that we didn't get a chance to see yet, so we'll see. I'm just like very much sitting here

waiting for a lot of things to be revealed. We've got even Carl says in this whole scene, like at the end with Mordecai, I don't like all these loose ends. I'm always spinning plates, but this feels like it's too much.

Something is going to go wrong, and Mordecai helpfully just says always does, which you know, not exactly super encouraging, bro, But I also can't argue with you, so you know there's that, and like something will go wrong, of course, there's just things go wrong before they even really get started, because they are operating with whatever information they have, which is always incomplete. And this is the sort of thing

that I always like find sort of paralyzing. I am somebody who really loves to have a plan, but I can when there are a lot of variables that I know are out of my control and I don't feel like I've got a good grasp on what's most likely to happen, my anxiety will like fully take over and I won't do anything because I'm just sitting there sort

of panicking about well, who knows what could happen? And I feel like this is one of those things where they have all of these plans and all of these scenarios in place with like Plan D, E, and F. You know, within case things don't go the way that they expected them to go, but there is no possible way that you can cover every scenario. But you've also

got to plan something. You've got to do something you know to a degree, and like keeping track of all of the different plans and how they're supposed to go versus how they're actually going. I don't know, guys, it's just an awful lot. It's just a bit overwhelming. I don't think I would be particularly great at this part. If I were working with all of them, I feel like I would be a wreck right now. I don't know.

At the same time, I can have a weird sort of philosophical reaction where knowing that the results of something are out of my hands like gives me a sense

of peace. I don't know. It's like a couple days ago, my husband and I found out we are currently paying just under six hundred dollars a month for health insurance through the market in the US the health care market, and we found out that our premium is going to triple to just over fifteen hundred dollars a month next year for the same plan, and my husband was understandably losing his actual shit, but I was weirdly calm, and I could see that he was sort of like a

little irritated by the fact that I wasn't reacting as strongly as him, and I had to explain to him that it's not that I'm not worried, it's just that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. So I am not having the kind of reaction I would when it's like we need to fill out a bunch of papers, we need to get in touch with a lawyer, we need to do this and that, where there's a big to do list and that feels kind of overwhelmed. There's none of that. We can't change this, there's not

a thing we can do. And so to a point, I just didn't feel that panic on that level and was very much feeling, well, we'll figure it out. Well, maybe we won't have health insurance, I don't know, but whatever it is that we figure out, it's sure not going to be changing the price, because that's not something we can affect at all, you know. Oh, oh god, Michael in the chat, six hundred for two people is

actually pretty decent, and then well that sucks. Yeah, six hundred dollars for two people, I would say is not decent at all. It's actually insane. It's not decent, And the fact that we would think it's decent is evidence of the fact that we as Americans are fucked up. It's bad, you know, Like, it's just very hilarious to me that we would rather this be the system than just be taxed for healthcare, Like you're spending so much more this way? Do you not fucking see that? No,

they don't, because they're very dumb. Anyway, I digress again. So there's this moment too where what are the fucking bears? Is telling Ruby that she's going to hell? These bears just why did we save them? They suck? So we

get then sixty four. The start of this is an entry that Carl references in the previous chapter, and it's a crawler who is having some misgivings about her sponsor, and then the sponsor Sensor's something that saves her life and her whole party's life, and she's feeling pretty good about it actually, and thinking maybe there are some decent people out there, and even feels like confident that, well, my sponsor is going to want to keep me alive because as long as I'm alive, their ads will still

be aired. So I can take I can rely on that. And then I take it back. I take it all back. My sponsor was deliberately steering me not toward life, but a death that would be watched and remembered and ultimately heartrending and painful. I was a fool. Fuck you dictum Waystation Controls Limited, whatever that means. I hope your company

and all your children die in pain. And this is followed up by somebody saying that she never gave us any details on what exactly happened, which is a shame, and that in the future, people who leave notes need to be as detailed as possible. And then we get

Carl's entry, and he is being real fucking detailed. He is taking them at their word and being like, yeah, bet, I will give you every single little bit of the notes and what our plans are, and you know all of that, and you know this is of course meant to sort of get our uh like, increase the tension for us as readers, knowing that just because you're getting a bunch of stuff that seems to be pointing towards a certain direction doesn't mean that that direction is to

your benefit. But I also know that there is somebody who is interested in keeping Dona and Carl alive in the mix of sponsors. So I can trust to a degree that somebody involved genuinely wants to help them. It's just whether or not they are behind all of these other things that are all being directed toward Dona, Like what exactly could be going on there? And why would Burn want to stop it? At least stop one of the things the hammer of fast forward, I don't know.

So solve the Tina quest number one, get her to dance on stage. I used to want to abandon this one, but I think we can use this to our advantage to kill Eva. If she's stupid enough to go to the party, we shouldn't waste the opportunity. Not something I really want to do, but how many more good people will she hurt? Three? Save the change things and get

them to the next floor down four. We can only accomplish three if we get them into the castle, that won't be easy unless we first killed Queen image In and take the castle for ourselves. The fight will probably be forced on us, whether we like it or not. Five kill Lucymr. Again. I don't want to do this, but she's too dangerous. Six. I made a promise at the end of the last floor, and I intend on keeping it. We are going to make certain not a

solitary single hunter gets off this floor alive. Once you see this, sign your name so I know I can erase it and we can move on to the planning. And it's the signatures of everybody. With occasional commentary, La just says Jesus Christ. Car, you are going to get us all killed. Donut. I hate this paper thing, Carl, GC BWR and W Princess. Don't at the queen an chunk. I am claiming Lucmr for myself. If someone attempts to

stop me, we will have a problem. Florin which Florin, buddy, you can claim her all you want, but if the situation doesn't work out that way, you had better be able to adapt. I don't think he is. I don't think he's able to adapt. He's not okay. Nobody has tried to convince me not to go down the stairs. I think we should. Louis same, Firas le na, I have my own method of speaking with my team. I will keep them updated. Also, I agree with Ellie who

said you're gonna get us killed. Daniel Batista says, I'll do whatever I can, and Chris just signs his name. So we get to see like everybody who's really on the inside of this whole plan. And it's interesting to me that Brittany is not one of these people, which leads me to believe that she isn't like I won't say that she's not instrumental, but she certainly isn't probably in the inner circle in terms of understanding the full scope of the plan is what I'm getting from this,

But I don't know what Firas would tell her. It's possible that because of his involvement, she's getting everything anyway, I don't know. So we have the like meet up with this elf who is their sort of liaison explaining how everything is going to go. And his name is Theobald, and he's talking about, like, you know, just the timing of things and what they'll have access to and he says,

the Queen will not attend either performance. It's crucial we keep to the timeline, and Carl clearly had expected her to be at the performance, so he's sort of thrown immediately regarding that. And no weapons will be brandished in the ballroom. Normal magic of any kind be tolerated. You may cast limited magic or brandish weapons on stage if it is crucial to your act, but you will not be allowed to physically interact with anyone not on stage with you. Those of you with magical storage not be

able to access it within the ballroom. You enter the ballroom and you are deemed to be in compliance with all the rules. You will officially be under the formal protection of the Queen of all that is, and the Queen of all that will be the one and only true blood, her Majesty on High Queen Image and of

the Highalves. And Carl tries to get information on him about what the Queen's protection means, and I won't go through this whole back and forth, but suffice to say he gets a more detailed explanation from Image in herself fairly shortly. And this is just the first time that the Goddess of Pito is mentioned, and you know, Carl begins to understand that this whole thing is working on

a scale that he wasn't really prepared for. And I forgot about this whole thing with Donut arguing with Tina in the background, because Tina just keeps on trying to eat people, and Donah is a tempt to insist that Tina is like well trained, but you know, when the bitch keeps on trying to decapitate folks, it's not really very convincing argument. So Carl also he sort of attempts to like ingratiate himself with Theobold by suggesting, I have

all kinds of difficulties with my cat, Dona. I bet you have the same thing with your cat the Night. And Theobold is just like, he's not really a night. He's just a fucking creature. And that's part of his name. It's not a real title that means anything, which apparently is like a thing for his race. And you know, he tries to insinuate a little bit of doubt into it, like, you can't I'd watch him if I were you. You can't ever trust cats. And then I have a whole

stat of these hands I got from killing hunters. They said there'd be a prize counter. Do I need to take them from my inventory ahead of time? No needs, sir. The award table attendant will be able to extricate the items from you, And we don't get to see anything about that in this section. I'm very, very curious about what the rewards are, like, really dying to know. So this is when he is sitting with Brittany trying to calm her down. We get this little bit with surrenderl Gore.

Everybody is calling her Wren because no one can pronounce her name. I don't think surrendal Gore is that hard to say once you get it. I don't know, but the narrator always makes sure to sort of stumble over it when he says it, which at first I was sort of puzzled by, and then I began to understand that it was like part of the bit. She has a pet herself that she got from attending the con, called a tummy acre named Garrett, and he's like giant with and round, with stubby legs and a single tooth

and is weirdly adorable. And evidently there is like the potential for it and Tina to clash pretty spectacularly, So look at there in a second. But he also has a changeling in the cart that is meant to look like Signet, as if he were attempting to smuggle Signet

into the party with him. And this is in an effort to attract Imagen's attention, because they are trying to draw her out, and I think it's a combination of hoping that they can get information from her and also to figure out who is going to be playing Imagen, because everybody knows that it's likely the showrunners are going to make it somebody they all know since it had been going to be be and they just can't do that. Now,

who will it be? And it turns out that it is the twins sister of Effeci, Floren's girlfriend who died, and so it's not actually that they used Effeci, it's her twin. But it's like in effect going to probably

have the same effect on Florin regardless, you know. And he says something about how the vibe coming off her is like this contained rage and that there's a sense of her being drugged out of her mind, and I was sort of wondering if her twin was actually alive, if it were like the same situation as b where she was captured and they are forcing her to play this role but controlling her in some way way, versus reanimating her corpse, which is what it seemed like they

had done with some of the others. You know, I don't know. I'm curious, Michael says. I'm curious as to when Slash how Karl replaced his ink that Louis spilled. I don't remember if it was mentioned. I am so glad you say that, Michael, because I have the same thought while I was reading it, and I just let it go. I was like, oh, I guess it was just you know, but I definitely also had a moment of going, huh. I thought he ran out of ink and that that ink was kind of hard to find.

I guess he just must have found more, you know, Michael says, Jeff Hayes really sells the snooty disdain from the Footman. It's funny because like, this is actually one of the few times where I felt like I didn't love the voice that he picked. I don't know if it's like a like just a result of going really hard with the distinct quality of the voice he chose. But I found it a little irritating, and not in a way that it's like, oh, this character is so irritating.

I don't know. He kind of does this throughout this section, like with the other elves that are in the ballroom making announcements, he gives them this really bizarre cadence and this like throat clearing or something that precedes the lines. That's a sort of vocal tick. And I was really sort of like, I don't know if this is working for me, but I can't. I don't know, I'm undecided. Jeff says, I really don't love the it's hard to pronounce Asian names bit. Yeah, it's just a weird choice.

And I don't know if it's like gonna be something that's like internally addressed or what. But yeah, I agree, Jeff Michael says, haven't you ever been to a chuck e cheese, Chinese finger traps, whistles, maybe a pair of socks, a few pencils. Yeah, this is exactly what I was saying. Last episode was like, are the prize is all going to be garbage? Single starbursts? All the dishes. Oh right, right right, miss Tea for the prizes and Sarah fem I think it was just the magic ink that let

him write on the paper remotely. But they can still just use regular ink if they are in the bathroom. Oh is that true? I thought that they that he needed the other ink specifically. I don't remember, but doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, Okay. I'm seeing in the kindle version of this book as well. The map is in this kindle version, so I don't know if this is what our zoo had shared in the discord. But yeah, if you are only listening to the audio book, then you

won't get the effect of this. And I don't know how much this really helps, you know, Like I'm looking at it, and it's information, surely, but I don't really have enough like understanding of a lot of the plan to do much with this yet. So it might be the kind of thing that I refer to. But I'm just going to go ahead and bookmarket in the kindle

in case I need to go back to it. So we get the description of the control of the ballrooms and how this all works from Carl's note that's left on the inside of the bathroom, and he's explaining what the restrictions are going to be regarding weapons, and that certain things are going to actually be in the room with them and other things are not going to be. And then we jump back to the present and Queen Imagen and basically what the AI says about her is

that here is a villain with no redeeming qualities. She's not somebody that has a redemption arc. That's not what we're doing. She is just power hungry and that is it. And Donut says, I just got my plus one token back. I don't know why, because Britney got in the top fifty.

She was fifty eight a few hours ago, and it seems like based on the views that they are getting, so she's going to get to go, which actually saves her life because it looks like Queen Imogen had been going to kill her just to make an example of her, or at least hurt her quite badly, which the fact that she's like would even have been allowed to do that as bonkers, but you know whatever. So Carl is looking at her and she's done up with a lot of gold, and he just thinks about how the first

time he saw Effecchi. He had thought that she was maybe a guy, and then is looking at her twin all done up and is just like Jesus, but she's gorgeous, and is a little puzzled at the fact that, like there's this blood purity thing going on with the elves who are all white, but she's black, and how that doesn't really seem to go with the purity shtick, but

nobody seems to care about it. And then we have him like thinking about Floren's reaction, and he messages Katya and says, get him down the stairs, and I was just like, oh, yeah, sure that's gonna happen, and she immediately sends back, there's no way that's going to happen.

I was like yeah, And he messages Floren and says, you know the rule that we all agreed to if Imagen took the form of one of our loved ones, the intended target goes down the stairs, and Florence says, go fuck yourself, Carl, I don't see your cat going down the stairs. Now back off. I'm fine. And you know, as much as if you all agreed to a thing and you immediately back out of it, I am side

eyeing you. I can't help but agree with Florin being like, well, then send Donut down since Ferdinand's going to be there, Like, he's not wrong if this is going to be the rule, you know, like either you think people can handle it or they can't, And why does Donut get a pass? Like, I do not think that this is good for the record. I think that Floren is going to probably do something

very stupid, but I can't fault his logic here. And I understand what Carl like is feeling, and he's right to feel it, but he just, you know, the idea that he could get Florin to just yeah, no, never gonna happen. Absolutely not. Sorry, Michael says, to be fair, Carl did try to go down with Donut when he found out about He wanted to go down just like Frankly, he says, it's about protecting Donut. Like I think that

he believes that. But Karl is also a control freak to a degree, and you know, he could have made her if he really felt it, but he didn't because in the end he believes that she can handle it because of the way that she responded when she came back to her consciousness. So if he's making an exception

for her, then that's just sort of it, you know. Like, so he has this weird conversation with Imagen where she says, like, the whole point of this party is that everyone will be under my protection, and if you suggest that people won't be safe, it's actually insulting. And she says, do you know why it's named such the Butcher's Masquerade? We

do not wear masks, yet it is a masquerade. And I was laughing because when I was listening and she says, do you know why it's named such the butcher's Masquerade? I was like, Yeah, what is the deal with the butcher? And then she's like addressing the masquerade part and not the butcher part, and I'm like, the masquerade part is not the part that I give a shit about, Lady, that's not, you know. But anyway, she explains this like

sort of mythology behind it. Taranus and his wife a Pito, the blessed Oak Mother, put the party on for all their children, and it was meant to be a night of respite with no violence. And you know, the idea is that the masquerade is the smiles that we put upon our faces, and of course eventually somebody got fucked up and tried to rape somebody, and because he disrupted the piece, he banished to the nothing. Taran is angry with his wife for exiling his child. Rage fights broke out.

All the attending mortals and demigods were slaughtered, leaving a Pito in tears. After the party became a ritual, a holy sacrament, a rite of reflection and of nonviolence, of us striving to meet the goal of a Pito, the most perfect of mothers, who wants nothing more than for all of us to get along, which I would just point out. I understand that it's probably the fact that everybody died and that's the butcher part, but it still

doesn't really like explicitly explain that. And I feel like, if we're not wanting everybody to kill each other, probably we should change the name. So, in my opinion, this name is still inadequately explained, and I don't care for it overall. So the whole thing is that a spell is cast for this party to happen. It's not she's just throwing a part the way that you would be like, oh, it's Christmas time and we're having a Christmas party because

it's the time of year to have it. She gets granted the right to cast the spell because she is almost divine and she can cast it once in her life. Once cast, the ritual begins, the guest list forms, and we have the party. It's one of a pedo's holiest sacraments. The guest list comes from the Goddess herself, and we are not to harm the attendants before the party unless they attempt to harm us first, which is why I am here right now talking to you instead of having

my soldiers fertilize the forest with your entrails. And this is when he brings up Ferdinand trying to kill Dona and is like that wasn't self defense, and she is like he has been chasened, and Carl's like, yeah, all right, you can't fucking chase in a cap But whatever, We

prepare the evening just as a pito tirelessly prepared. We offer the same refreshments, the same opportunity to showcase one's talents and familiars, and if the party properly finishes without violence, a pito grants a boon and she is just like, you're not going to fuck that up for me. I want the boon. That's the whole thing. The guest list is deliberately chosen by the goddess, goddess to so discord amongst everyone involved. So she's like trying to fuck with

you allegedly. You know, obviously we know that there's no goddess and that this is the whole just organized thing. But nevertheless, and she's like, I can't harm you, and I can't stop you from coming to the party, but I know you're plotting something, and the second that you make a move on that, I will send you into the nothing. And if anything else goes wrong, you're the one I'm going to look at as being responsible for it.

Like just you know, it's really kind of unfortunate that he's in this position because he decides, like the new plan is that we're not going to try anything and we're just going to party, but like, if somebody else tries something, it seems that you are going to bear

the brunt of it anyway. So she threatens him with this and then disappears, and then we go to chapter sixty six, which starts with Karl explaining to everybody that they need to check out the map and get accustomed to it, because even though the place is like perfectly cubed cube shaped, which makes it seem like everything inside will be laid out in a pattern that will be easy to navigate, that is not actually the case, and that it's very confusing inside and it's sort of labyrinthine

and they are going to have to be able to keep their bearings and all of this like information again about the what you're actually touching and accessing and what you're not and who's actually in the room and who isn't. I won't get into all of this, like because I feel like it's the sort of thing that will touch

on as it comes up with the plot. But it's definitely like interesting to think about this as all of these layers working together to create a complete picture somewhere else just a weird concept, you know, that I really rather like. But this is the part where Louis says I'm getting iron Tangle flashbacks and Carl says it's not

that bad. All you need to know as we'll be in ballroom A, the hunters will be in B, the Queen will be in her own and there'll be a color code system letting you know what items you can touch. So then Carl gets in touch with everybody and is like, new plan. We can't start shit, so we're gonna do everything that we were going to outside the party, but while we're in we just have to behave ourselves. And this is when Brittany is like, should I take this jacket off? And he says no, but don't set it

off prematurely. So again I don't know what the fuck it does, like is it a bomb? Is it just like a sort of distraction? Is it? I don't know. I don't know. Jeff says, are the group separated so all the Crawler hunter nonsense doesn't screw up the TV show? I'm not sure what you mean, Jeff. They are on different floors, the Hunters and the Crawlers, so that they aren't able to actually like be in contact with each other.

Michael says, if Draka ever read Carl's notes, they might have changed their tune about be as detailed as possible. It did. I was thinking that to Michael of like, are they gonna are people going to want? But I think it were I somebody reading this after the fact, I would appreciate all this detail. I would really want to know but uh, that's just how I operate. If I'm trying to like make a plan, I want as

much information as I can get. So so we get to the actual castle, and uh, he is realizing that the place like it looks like it's just cement or something, but when he gets inside, it seems to be made of one single piece of wood that's been like carved out,

which is a really cool idea. And uh, this is when he's like talking about how Zev wanted to make sure he didn't actually try and smuggle Signet in because it would lead to all kinds of problems, and he's he was like, yeah, I was never planning on doing that. But the changelingk who has been clocked as Signet, is told to get the fuck out, and when she tries to be like, but the brambles, they're like, not my problem.

Maybe you shouldn't have tried to sneak in. Then this is when Donut starts to get mad about the fact that the uh show animals are going to be caged, and one of the elves, who is a level high level fifty high elf Stablemancer rolls up and says, all the animals are going in cages. We won't want we don't want them hurting each other that belly acre. He'll swallow one of your Mongolians as whole given half the chance. And your Alisaurus is still a juvenile, which means you

can't control her too well. So he knows what he's talking about. But she still wants to argue. Of course she does, and she is like messaging Carl that her charm upgrade isn't working, and Carl says, yeah, it is. They wouldn't talk to us at all if it weren't for that. It's just not doing as much as it normally would do, which he does regret. But you know, she's behaving as if it's simply like failing, and he says, yeah, that's We're lucky to have it, just to get this far.

So they go into the building and they get the notifications about being peace bonded, being muted with magic, that the whole place is under protection, YadA, YadA, YadA, and they get searched as they come in, sent into a kind of like locker room, and then they are searched after quote changing into something for the party, even though

none of them actually change into anything. Everybody is wearing the shit that they always wear, because why would you not keep all of the stuff that gives you like a magical edge in a situation like this, of course you wouldn't change into something else. Like I am somebody who would love the excuse to get in like dressed up at any point, and I wouldn't even do that.

I'm not that insane. So they go into the ballroom and it is enormous and just really really impressive, and there's like this huge stage that's very elaborate and done up with like you know, there's a sense of luxury to everything. A buffet was in the process of being erected in one corner. Sure enough, the trays of food on one of the buffet lines were marked gold and the others were marked black, so that the gold is

the stuff that you can actually touch. I'm wondering if this is like, can you stuff your pockets with food and leave the party with all of this stuff? Is that? Does do these treats give you any sort of buff Like I'm gonna be very curious about all of the details. Here, four pillars led upward to a large domed ceiling covered with a massive moving mosaic The artwork featured a glittering black and gold cave dotted with sparkling crystals, like the

anterior of a golden geode. Curled up in the midst of this was a black centipede whose form continued to twist like one of those spirals one used to hypnotize someone. This is a depiction of Scolopendra. She's dreaming. It's said when she finally awakens, she will destroy everything and free us all. So if it's a depiction, I'm assuming that she's not here and can't do anything. But like, I don't know, what do I know? And we find out that the guy who's working the prize counter is Choco,

the one that has the beef with Mordecai. So I don't know if Mordecai comes to this event, does he? So that'll be interesting. But uh, Mordecai, you've made bad moves are e this man before? Don't do it again. This is when Princess Donadia turns up and we find out that she is actually Empress Donadia, and she chats with Carl and says, your attorney and that new corporation of yours almost ruined my buy in bid, and he says, I'm sorry about that. If I had known it was you,

I would have had Donut send you a message. But this, like the way that he talks about I was laying it on thick, trying my best not to let my newfound utter contempt for her show. And I don't know if it's that the contempt had developed when he heard about the buy in bit, or if it's now that

this is happening. But there's something going on here that evidently has changed his feelings towards her, But it doesn't seem to have affected the way Donut reacts to her, unless Donuts just playing it really convincingly, which I suppose is possible. But it may be that whatever the implications are of what she did, Doughnut doesn't fully understand them. But I can't say it because I don't know what

she did. So and this is when Vra enters no longer with her crosh on fire and she sees Donut or she sees Karl and just immediately heads toward them. And then Carl is messaging Beamo and Sledge and tells them it's time. Sledge, tell the change things. Get their asses moving. Brittany, do your thing, and Empress Donadia looks at Vat and says, I'm looking forward to this, and that is the end of the chapter. Really left me hanging. Kids. I was extremely I just really wanted to keep reading.

It's all. This is the fourth to last episode of coverage of this book, so there's three more episodes and then we start Eye of the Bedlam Bride, so we're not as close to the end as I was sort of expecting. I kind of expected the next episode to be the penultimate, but not even so, I'm very interested. We've got a lot left to get through. Seraphim says, No, that is such a minor thing that the actual Crawl

runners wouldn't set up things this elaborate just for it. Sorry, Seraphim, I don't remember what you're referring to at this point, says, but is an image and from that story, Oh, I think Seraphim's replying to Jeff's question about the groups and their relationship with Vengeance of the Daughter, got it, got it? Got it? Michael says, big break over Christmas and New Year's. Unfortunately, it would have been cool if the break coincided with

finishing the book. It happens, and you know, It's kind of good that we're not as far to the end of the book, because if it were like the penultimate episode today and then I had to wait two weeks before I got to read anymore, I'd be super sad. But it's fine. We're gonna we'll have a good number of episodes and I may even go back and re listen to this section in addition to the next section. Get my feet under me a little bit better. So yeah, the time will pass like that, Guys. I always do this.

I see a big break, I get real sad, and then the break is over and I'm like, why was I so worried? It feels like it was two days ago. So anyway, Okay, I have to wrap, But thank you guys again so much for hanging out with me, for listening, and to Jackie for commissioning this episode. Appreciates you very very much. And until next time, which will be just to give everybody a heads up. December sixteenth. December sixteenth and eighteenth, So a little bit of a gap there,

but I don't think that's even like. We've got sixteenth and eighteenth and then, oh I spoke too soon. I spoke too soon. December sixteenth and eighteenth are two more episodes, and then which eighteenth is the penultimate, and then there is a big break until January sixth for the final section. So the very thing that I was like, oh, that would have sucked is what's happening. Oh well, it happens, man, It just it happens. You know, what can you do? But uh, so be it. It's fine, we'll get through

it together. Friends. It'll be just as painful for y'all as for me. Probably uh probably not. Did balloon Motherfuckers? That was an unspoiled network podcast