This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me covering the Dungeon Anarchists cookbook Dungeon Crawler Carl Book three, chapters three, four, and five. In these chapters, our friends are trying to untangle the Iron Tangle with mixed results. They do get an advantage, but that dude is dead now probably I'm unclear on how this thing works. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode.
These this Okay, I'm gonna start something off or start this off by saying something.
That I don't know if it's like.
A criticism exactly, because I feel like there is a possibility that it will all make.
Sense in the end.
But I just have to start it off because I feel like a bit of a way about it and I will acknowledge you guys like warned me. And also there's the uh the intro of this book where the author lets me know, I don't need to figure out exactly what's going on with this line and try and like understand it because it's meant to be pretty much impenetrable to the reader. It's them working with the actual information, you know, because we don't get given every single little detail.
So I acknowledge that you know, you guys warned me about this, and that he himself warned me about this, But I have to say, I think if we're not meant to figure it out, there is too much focus on it. I think that there is. The focus would have been fine if it were just like our people sort of spitballing ideas and it were a.
Little bit less like literally info dumping.
But I feel that maybe, and this may be incorrect, but maybe the author wound up having to put that intro in because he found that people were focusing a little bit too much on trying to like solve the tangle itself and realized that it was like distracting from the story itself. And I would argue, maybe then the solution isn't to just put the intro and warn us, but maybe.
You should edit some of it. I don't know what the publishing situation is with this.
I think you guys have said that it's self published, and I know that there's a lot of controversy about publishing something that's already gone up and whether or you know, so I get not really wanting to do that, but it does just feel like the disclaimer is admitting kind of a problem with the material actually to me, And I'm glad to know that I don't need to puzzle all of this out, because that would be very distracting for all of us for this recording, for the whole series,
for the book. But at the moment, it just feels like we're being given so much heavy detail on certain.
Things that.
I when I know that it's not something that I can really do anything with, I sort of glaze until we get to the end of that little section of info. Does that make sense? So I don't, like I said, may there may come a point with this story where I change my mind and I'm like, Okay, now I get why it was done this way. But at the moment, it's just feeling a little bit tedious all of the colors and numbers that are being thrown at us if we don't actually need to do anything with them. And
maybe that's the point. Maybe it's supposed to be. Look at all the information that is getting thrown at them and how confusing it is, and that's you know, maybe that's fair. I just am as I go along. That's the point of this show, right is for me to share how I'm feeling in the moments that I'm reading the chapters that I'm reading. So that is how I'm feeling right now. Arezu says, yeah, there are parts with
unnecessary details. Rob says, without spoiling it does become significantly more clear, but I would encourage you to revisit how you feel about it at the end of the book. Oh, unavoidable, that's of course happening. Arazu says it came out chapter by chapter originally. Rob says glazing is totally okay. Sarah Fem says, I don't see it as a problem. This is meant to be incredibly confusing in verse and something
the Crawlers have to figure out. Michael says worth, noting that we are feeling the confusion of the characters too.
They need to figure it out.
Rob says this is a hard one not to talk about more and miss t says that's how I took it. It's confusing to the Crawlers. I agree, and I think that, like I just think that there was a way to get across how confusing it is without quite going into the detail that he goes into, and maybe I'm wrong. We'll get there and i'll read you the section that's like stands out to me. So chapter thirteen opens with them entering their private space and setting things up, and
I love that immediately donuts door is purple. The writing that labels her door is purple. It's a real sorry, I'm seeing the chat. Michael says, thirteen, question Mark, did I say chapter thirteen?
I'm in chapter three.
I must have said chapter thirteen. Sorry, guys, yeah, if that was that was my bad. My brain is all confused by all the numbers that were being thrown at me. Like I said, and I'll say this too, just a real quick aside on that. I also just have an issue with numbers, so it helps when it's.
In the audiobook. But I think that.
I have the dyscalculia I think is how or discalculia. It's basically the numbers version of dyslexia, where I will look at a page of numbers and it literally looks for me like they are moving around. It is really fucking frustrating and unnerving, and like if I have to enter data that is very numbers heavy into anything, I have to have somebody read the numbers to me as I enter them into the database, because if I try to look and then remember and go to the database,
I will invert the numbers. I will do crazy things. And so that might also be part of it. Is just personally, numbers blow balls.
I hate them.
I understand that for some people they provide a kind of comfort in their solidity, consistency, and meaning, and that is something I am that exists for people, but it.
Is not me.
My comfort is language, which is funny because it is the least consistent bullshit ever, and yet something about that speaks.
To me, you know.
All right, So Doughnut, like I said, has the purple label and the purple door because she's a girl after my own heart who is almost immediately starting to customize the whole space to just look a little bit nicer. This reminded me a little bit of when I was first married and I was traveling with my then husband, and he traveled a lot for work, and one time he asked me to come with him because he was
going somewhere we'd wanted to visit. And I came in the door and we had our bags, and I immediately like unpacked everything and.
Set up little areas.
That was his spot for getting ready, my spot for getting ready, a place to put our shoes, where did we hang up our robes on our you know, all this stuff. And he was just standing by the door watching me do it and just goes, wow, this is way home than when I travel by myself. This is nice. We just you know, there are some people that this is our thing and it's me and Dona to the end.
As I have said before, Mordecai also is very excited that there is a room for him because they have upgraded to five and that means that he gets his own little compartment. Otherwise he'd be sleeping on the floor, which I'm very happy for him about. That's nice. And the kitchen it says food upgrades not yet purchased, but as we've heard, there are things that like once you cook in there will give you some upgrades and stuff which is nice. Crafting Studio has an upgrade possible. You
may apply this upgrade in the common area. If you disengage your space, the upgrade will be returned.
To your library.
And then there is the training room, which is really nice.
This is something that comes.
Into play a little bit later, but they can actually practice inside.
They can't practice magical stuff.
But you know, it's something I just like there being any increase in space where our friends are safe, you know, any addition of new places that they can go where they can do things for their own betterment out of the fucking actual dungeon.
I'm into it. So let's see.
Mordecai explains about all of the things that they basically skipped that they would have had to purchase one space where you can, like you have to set it so that you can share it. It's way smaller and it's just one room other than the crafting studio. The fact that this place is as big as it is. He's thinking, there's even a possibility that we could like add a second floor to this place, which is pretty interesting. I'm curious about how all that works.
There are some.
Games where like you can have a second floor, but you also need to build the staircase to get there, so the floor will if you don't know that before you do it, the floor will just be up there inaccessible. It would just be kind of funny, but uh yeah, And he says that there are other helpers that they can employ which is really interesting. I'm curious, like who
they can get. I'm assuming somebody to cook maybe, but I don't know, and would they live with them or you know, I'm just I have a lot of questions about all of this. ARESI says Sims Flashbacks. I have never played the Sims you guys, and like everything I see of it, it looks like it would be actual crack cocaine to me. So I have avoided it because I don't need another thing gluing me to a screen. I already have the tendency to remain way to inert a lot of the day. You know, I need to
do things that get me moving more. But everything I see of it, I'm like, oh, that looks so fun.
I really want to do that, and I just can't.
I can't do it. I can't jump in, I can't do it. Michael says roller Coaster Tycoon for me, I would make rides that ended in enclosed areas guests could leave. Rob says there's a subgenre of web novel progression slash RPG fantasy that is base building stuff, and while it's not super my jam when it's the primary focus, it's totally fun. When it's a small little bit like this,
and I almost want more of it. Michael, free food and drinks, but bathrooms cost fifty bucks, right, Yeah, all of these things are just kind of fun in a way that like, I understand Carl's lack of interest, Like we don't even get him choosing his door or anything.
He just places a door right next.
To where Donuts is and it's not even mentioned what his door looks like. That's how little he gives a shit. But a part of me is like, can.
We please get donuts?
Povs that I can see the assortment of choices that she gets and disagree or agree with whatever it is that she selects from the space because I would like to get I have a general understanding of her taste, but I would like to get zeroed in a little bit more.
So. Oh sorry, guys, I kicked a dog.
Toy that I didn't realize was under my desk and that was very loud. So this is when Carl has the exact same question about sleep that I was saying in the last episode about whether or not sleeping only two hours is going.
To fuck him up.
And what we see at least here is that it seems not. I am very relieved, and I hope that this like is is true and is real. But yeah, he falls asleep and is like he shares the room with Donut, who is like, you are sleeping with me, you idiot, and immediately passes out because the bed is so comfortable, and even Mongo climbing onto him, he can't feel the weight of Mongo, which I assume is just a.
Feature of the bed, you know.
And he wakes up feeling like he has slept a full ten hours. Oh my god, can you imagine? And he actually gets achievement and a reward for sleeping in this bed consistently, a buff of ten percent to base stats plus experience and skill training. I mean, that's a huge buff. That's a lot. And I wouldn't have needed any other motivation to climb into bed to begin with. So yeah, that sounds pretty good. I as long as it does seem to function the way it.
Seems to like, as long as it really does.
Because I've said before, and this is the thing, guys, there are so many things in life that are simultaneously the best and also a total drag. And one of those things for me is showering I love being showered. I love when I'm in the shower, the feeling of being in the water, but the act of having to put aside time to shower and then dealing with like my hair and skin app.
It's all a fucking chore.
Ugh. And sleep falls squarely into this for me, where sleep is amazing and I love sleeping, but also I resent deeply that I have to that it is like a non negotiable, and especially that sleep is like during the time that a lot of us have to ourselves. So it feels like when we're at home and we have to get up to work in the morning, we stay up later than we really should because we're trying to get the most out of the little free time that we have, and that inevitably winds up fucking us
the next day. But it's just this like desire to squeeze out everything you can from the time you've got, you know. So anyway, I just if this works as well as it appears.
I am real, real jealous.
And yeah, he feels amazing and goes out there to see that when Dita made them all food, poor Mordecai has a big plate full of dead bugs, which is he does not look happy about it. I'm you know, she made this clearly because of the race that he is. But I can't help but wonder if, like, if you took a bite, would you suddenly be like, oh, this is amazing because of the race.
That you are or are you not?
Does that you're what you eat not depend on your race?
Does that make sense?
Like if he tried to eat pizza, would it do something bad because now he is this toad thing and toads don't eat pizza.
Just curious.
I love this description too, of the way that they are showing them. The Iron Tangle with like weird mixed up footage of real life and also movies and video games. It included stills from the animated movie The Polar Express and a bizarrely long sequence of a beat up John Travolta riding the subway from the movie Saturday Night Fever while the Beg's played in the background, which just in aside,
if you've never seen Saturday Night Fever. I hate that movie so much, and it's so frustrating because the way that we talk about it makes it sound like it's this riporin fun dance movie, and it's actually one of the most depressing examinations of like poverty and the futility of many people's lives and situations in their attempts to like better themselves or advance in society. And it also has this very unexpected and not at all dealt with
sexual assault that is terrible. So I would just say, if you think that movie seems fun and you want to throw it on for like a fun girls night with her friends, rethink it.
It's not fun.
It's a very The whole zeitgeist around that movie was very misleading to me. So let's see, the show was going on and on about trains. Mordecai started rambling about maintaining a schedule, and he wants Carl to train his smush skill. And there's also a big part of this that is redacted because they don't want the crawlers to actually see how the level works, which Mordecai says, that's basically from here on out what it's going to be like,
because they will want to hide stuff about the levels. Sorry, Michael says, h only thing I knew about the movie was traveled to doing that hand in the air hip thrust dance move, and that's kind of what I mean. Yeah, that's what's circulated, and it makes it look like it's a fun, glittery movie about.
Dancing, and that is not the case. It is not. So we have Katya.
This is I really like the way that Katya is written because there is nothing about her that I dislike. But you just every time she speaks, it's about the daughters, and she's just really obviously like in constant contact in a way that reminds us every single time that she opens her mouth that she really isn't part of their party really.
You know, And.
I don't begrudge her that, you know, I think that she's being smart. Honestly, I feel she's an asset to the team in terms of what she can do, but she obviously doesn't really have the instinct to do what she's built for, and that's a problem. So her skill set is something that I'm like, yeah, we should hold onto that, But I can't fully endorse her because it's
not like she's she's doing her best. You know, she does training on some of her things, and later on she does this weird like popeye transformation to her body that is very helpful, But there is something about her hesitancy that it feels is never really going to go away.
And maybe that's not true.
Maybe it you know, if she got more practice and now that she's leveled up so much, maybe it will begin to be that she starts growing in her confidence and she's able to like do more with the skills.
But I just don't feel.
Coming from her the kind of like hunger that I feel from Carl and Dona, where it seems like they are so focused on like getting ahead in a way that's about their own.
Like pushing themselves.
And Katya it seems like she depended a lot on the daughters and is in constant contact with them in a way that feels to me like she wants to go back to being in a group where she doesn't have to pull her weight quite so much, you know, which in a smaller group it is going to be
more pressure. But yeah, it's I'm in this weird place where I like her fine, and I understand where she's coming from, but I am also a little impatient with her as a person, and I am waiting for this shoe to drop because she will bounce as soon as she can. And I worry about our friends being too dependent on her skills and then her suddenly, like you know, deciding to fuck off, and now they have to rework some of the strategies that they've grown to depend on
because they don't have the tank anymore. So this is when he starts collecting the information from Mordecai about what he saw when he first got there and when he was at a different train station. It was stationed number three seventeen. The two smaller trains were the Yellow and Emerald line, and the big one was called the Misery. We should probably start charting this out. Do you have another one of those dry erase boards. I have one more in my room. I'll get it and start putting
it all down. So far we only have the Yellow Line in common. Talk to your friend Brandon and figure out where he is. As soon as you come across any other crawlers, get all the other info you can from them, and we find out quite shortly what's going on with Brandon. We will get there in a moment. First we have to go through the top ten list. I'm not going to go through it's this, you know,
the usual suspects here. But there is just a really important mention of how Missus mcgibbons is a frost maiden now, so she is this blue skinned elf thing that he saw that he didn't recognize with her, and that Lee June is a street monk class, which is dope.
And let's see.
Then we saw buff heckliskewering a mass of four legged rat things with her crossbow. Then Lucia Amar, who was simultaneously terrifying and badass as ever, it showed the disgusting witch form of Lucia or Lucilla Tip, literally ripping the head off one of the Jinkininki Janitor ghouls. The girl laughed maniacally as blood showered the interior of the train car.
And then we get to see all of their bounties, and we are told later that the people on the leader board can also participate in the bounty hunting and if they manage to survive to the next floor, they get a portion of their bounty as like a bonus, and they get a.
Box loop box.
So that's kind of fun, even though, like you know, putting bounties on them is fucked up and terrible. I was sort of like, well, that's you know, there's even more perks than just the fact that you have stayed alive.
I appreciate that.
This is when Carl opens his chat and it's interrupted by the announcements about this floor and what's going on.
That there won't be early.
Cross through to the fifth floor. Will the stairwells are only going to actually open six hours prior to collapse. Patron bidding is active and we are happy with the results. You'll get a notification when your bidding has concluded. And this is when she explains the bounties. And then finally, we'd like to address this the especially high mortality rate of the third floor. This occurred due to a high
instance of group quests gone bad. While the number of crawlers are still in the acceptable range, we are all concerned about early extinction. That does not mean we will be letting up. So quit sucking. It's as simple as that. Now, get out there, ride the rails and kill, kill, kill, Quit sucking.
Katya asked, is that supposed to be a joke? I this is this is.
Actually like kind of perfect, because you know how many things out there that are like slowly destroying us.
Do we just like.
And I say we, I mean more like powerful companies just think like I get points for simply acknowledging that, and then I don't do anything about it, and I don't change anything, and I kind of still.
Blame you for it.
But the fact that I acknowledged it is supposed to be something.
This is just it.
We're all worried about early extinction, but not really, not that worried, not actually like worried, worried, just we're we We just want you to know that we noticed and we get it. But also, fuck you, this is just familiar,
That's all I'm saying. And finally, after she finishes, Carl can see that the message from Brandon it's it's I knew as soon as it says the I finally noticed the name of the folder in the top corner of my interface, and as he was saying earlier that it was in a weird folder that I hadn't seen before, I immediately was like, oh, that's that's dead people messages like I just fucking knew, and he gets so he
gets hit so hard with this. There's something too. I'm looking at the text and it's done in such a way that there's online crossing through his name, which you know, obviously there's no way to really get that in audiobook, and that is a quite a good choice, I think. So, I uh, this whole thing with him dying, it's such
a combo of things. I was talking about this with somebody on the discord the other day and like, don't get me wrong, I know that this isn't really the same thing, but like Brandon and Carl, they work together for a short time, they had met in person, and they are part of this like collective trauma from this dungeon.
So it's a very different thing. But it just made me think of how odd grief can be and the special set of circumstances that can happen where even somebody that you didn't know that well or who maybe personally wasn't like super important in your life, you know what I'm saying, how their deaths can be oddly impactful in a way that you would not have expected. If somebody told you in a vacuum, oh, by the way, so and so dies it's whatever time, you'd probably think like, oh, wow,
that sucks and is tragic. But you know, I'm not really that close with them, or we never even met
in person or whatever. And there's been kind of a spate recently of people that I know secondhand or as influencers who have died, and the odd quality of what it feels like because it's like a parasocial relationship, so I don't actually know them, but I admired them for whatever it was that they were doing, and I just it's like it helped me to contextualize this moment a little bit because they didn't know each other that well, but they bonded over doing the right thing in a
way a lot of people wouldn't have done it. And it's also the only person from the group that he had in his chat, which he says later is very stupid of him. And I have to agree, I understand having the one contact person, but I fully thought that he had options to contact others and this was just
the person he was friendliest with, you know. And he is about to like he's sending this message right before the third floor is about to collapse and they are trapped somewhere, so he knows that they're not getting out, and he explains that he had a really bad fight with his brother Chris, and he left and took some of the guys with him, and they were in a separate party and he can see that those dudes are
all dead, but Chris isn't. However, it says that Chris can't accept any new messages, which he suspects is because Chris blocked him, which I've got to say that must have been a hell of a fight, because in this situation, to actually block your own brother and make it so that he can't even reach out to you in moments of extreme emergency is a choice, like, I don't that
is pretty aggressive. And he says something about how Mom used to say that he was slow, but he ain't slow, and even if he was, I said something stupid and he got mad.
And I am.
Super curious what it was that he said, because it's easy for me to imagine that he said something insulting to his brother based on the context of that, but also it's possible that he just said something like declarative about drawing a line in the sand, about an action, and his brother was just like, you're being an idiot, you know. And the whole like tone of this is I fucked up by alienating him. I love him and it is the only thing that mattered, and I completely
lost sight of that. And I never said to him that I love him and it's all I can think about. So please, if you find him, let him know I sent this message also to.
Who else?
Does he say, I'm sorry, I'm trying to find the spot because he mentions that he has sent the same message to two.
Other people but I can't find it.
Of course, tell him, I said, if there's an afterlife, I promise not to give him shit ever again. He can eat all the Damn Traveler biscuits he wants. I promise not to get mad about him taking risks, not about girls, not about him stealing my matchbox cars, nothing, and tell him I love him. That's the most important part. It's always been the most important part, but I didn't realize it until it was too late.
I gotta go.
Damn Shade Gremlins, get them for me, Brother, get them all.
And then the AI.
This message is from a diseased, deceased Crawler. When you close this message, the crawler will be removed from your message list.
Hey, at least you're still.
And we come back to Carl, who is just reeling, and he decides to go into the training room and train his bare knuckle skill because he is very, very angry and needs to take that out on something which I respect. And then chapter four begins with it had been several hours since I'd beaten my knuckles raw on the wooden dummies. Both Donut and Kotia entered the training
room about twenty minutes after I did. Doughnut worked on her dodge skill, bouncing back and forth while the hologram of a forearmed monster holding four whips lashed at her. Kotia was on the other side of the room doing something similar, but instead she was jumping in front of rocks as they were being tossed at a holographic puppy by the same forearmed virtual opponent.
If I were.
Motivated to protect a puppy, oh, it would be really rough, guys, that would be tough. I would really put myself in harm's way. I really, I mean I have, I actively have.
So.
Mordecai then tells him about the three tables. He says, get them set up. I want you to basically like empty all of the stuff out of your pockets that is labeled as an alchemical supply, and while you're out, I will begin assembling these things into stuff, which, as we know from the past, results in Carl getting the recipe for the thing, which is nice. Well, he gets the recipe if he makes it according to Mordecai's instructions.
But I imagine Mordecai is going to see what he can work with and like save things, so that, okay, this is that recipe. In that way, Carl can come back and assemble things that are already like figured out. And then he let's see, he has the Sappers table, which, guys, is that for blowing up stuff? I can't remember what Sapper's table even means, and I heard it so much in this chapter it began to lose all meaning to me.
And then the engineering table is where he uses a shaping tool to mess with a huge chunk of metal, and this becomes essential later when he uses it to jam open the our jam the space for these creatures that try and get on the train, so that they can't get past. It becomes like this, basically like a closed door.
They're telling me, yes.
It's bomb building sappers, where the people charge with bringing down enemy fortications, usually via big booms a seraphim Okay, I wonder why it's called SAP like sapper like did they use actual sap? Is that why or is it like you're sapping the enemy's energy or supplies or like what you know? Anyway, etymology, So we have him crafting this thing and getting a Martha Stewart achievement where I came really close to feeling called out, but not quite.
You used a workbench to craft for the first time. The next thing you know, you'll be fashioning bottle cap earrings, drinking oat milk, and selling your ugly crap on Etsy while you wax poetic on Instagram about your journey and look as somebody who is trying to open an Etsy store and working on building the stuff that she has made into actual sellable objects. I am on a journey
and I will probably talk about it on Instagram. However, I drink regular milk, although oat milk is pretty good, I gotta admit, and I don't make bottle cap earrings. But other than that, it was a personal attack, so you know, what can you do? It is so funny, guys, because like, it makes sense why so many people make and sell on Etsy, because it feels like an outlet for creativity, a potential side hustle, you know. But I think that if people don't know, they think it's a
lot easier than it is. And let me tell you, as somebody who's just in the beginning stages of doing all this, it's so much work. If you want to do this, you better really want it, and you better have a plan, because without a plan, it is so easy to get caught up in silly details and like completely miss the forest.
For the trees. So let's see.
Oh yeah, he mentioned to Mordecai about having talked to Batista. He is on the Azure and Brown line their station one ninety nine. They don't have a non colored line at their station, but they're going to the Azure line today. He also got a fancy base thanks to that upgrade. And they all do their like buff stuff shower and
they go out into the world. And the first thing they do is stop at Limb Richard's little shop, and there's this thing called a battery fabricator that is seventy five thousand gold, which Carl is like, oh my god, I really want this, but I genuinely don't really know what I would do with it yet, and it's possible that its description isn't super accurate, and for this price, I just don't really think that I can justify it,
but it's on his mind and I can't help. But wonder if there's going to come a time where it's like, if you give me enough books, you can have it. You know, maybe he'll sent on like a quest, which would be kind of fun. And the what it comes down to in this scene is him explaining that, like, because of the status that he holds in this place, he doesn't get access to the entertainment action stuff like movies and TV shows. All he gets is physical media,
which means books and comics. And he only has fifteen books right now and he has clearly gotten sick of them. One of the books has like the last few chapters pulled out, and I was sort of expecting that Carl was going to be like because he says that he had read that one. I was like, is he just gonna like offer to tell him how it ends, since he's probably read up unto a certain point many times and is desperate to know what happens in the end. But Uh, it doesn't come up. I feel like I
might have used that, but I don't know. Maybe something else will happen with that later, or maybe he will find the missing chapters for him as a quest, which just a real quick aside, Guys, I'm starting this business with a friend of mine, and it's going to be a mystery in which you have to find both a murderer and a book that has been ripped apart chapter by chapter, and those chapters hidden in different places. So
this just has my particular attention for that reason. But anyway, it's a book about cats that is by Andre Norton, who was a woman. Carl says, I don't recognize this author has been mentioned before. My dad hated cats, so he never had any books with cats on the cover. And this is when he gets the Luis Lamore books out and is like, I'll trade you five.
Of mine for five of yours.
And even though Limp Richard is like those books are a lot shorter, it's obvious he just would like something new, and he also hasn't tried reading westerns before, so he agrees to the deal, and Carl chooses a Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon, or no, he doesn't choose that. He left that one on the table and picked up sci fi three Andre Norton books, including the one he'd been reading, Breed to come. I'm sorry, guys, but Breed to Come is just such a It's a title that
means too many things nowadays. I also picked up The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula kay Legwin and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I would like to announce officially here I've said at other places, but like here, I will put myself in your hands. Anybody listening who wants to commission any Ursula kay Legwin. I would be interested because I haven't read any of her books, and she is brought up so often as like one of the
fundamental authors of sci fi fantasy, you know whatever. And I am very interested, But it also feels like the sort of thing that I don't want to pick up on my own.
For some reason. It just feels like.
I want a fan to lead me through it.
Does that make sense? So I'll just say that here and.
Then we will move on. And Carl, as they are walking away, is reprimanded by Donut for not driving a hard enough bargain. But basically Carl is playing the long game here, and he's like, hey, I know it looked like I went easy on him, but don't you worry. I know exactly what's going to happen, because in the Coast Guard you would get real sick of the shit you've read already. He is going to be Jones and and we are going to take advantage of it.
Then, So.
Let's see, the train that they were looking for only comes every hour and a half, and they'd missed it while they were.
In his shop.
Which just as somebody who has lived places with trains, this is such a funny, like it's it's not usually that far apart, but it is just the reality of some place that's got public transport is that, like, if you don't already know the route that you're going on,
you will just find yourself screwing yourself. For like in ways like this, and they're looking at like there are different types of trains from different countries that are all mixed together in this This train traveled in a figure eight pattern, which meant once one got on it, they'd eventually end up back at this station.
That was good to know.
The train only had five stops total, though it appeared there was a good distance between each stop. Four of the five stops were transit stations. The one stop that was not a transit station was number four thirty six and appeared at the very top of the figure eight, which we'll get to this later. Unlike the map outside of the red station, this one gave slightly more information. It gave the colors for each of the transit stations
it intersected. This station was yellow and red. The next was station two eighty three, but it was mauve and purple. The stop after that was four thirty six. Then stop two thirty eight again, but this time was the green line and the yellow line. Then it was station eighty three again but a different station eighty three. It was the tangerine and plumb line. And for me, this is adequate for me to be completely confused. You know, this is enough, And now I'm like, okay, I get it.
There is no figuring this out. And then from there we went to the landing of the Yellow line. The map here was identical to the map of the Red line. The transit station numbers were the same, the line itself was shaped differently, like a giant upside down fish hook. As I was looking at the map, the train pulled up. And then we have these creatures, which it turns out they can like kill while they're standing on the platform and the creatures as like I'm trying to find the spot.
Donut hit the cave Mudge standing in the open door with a pair of magic missiles, and it fell over dead just as the doors started to slide close. We can get them, but they can't get us. Let's wait for the next train and shoot some more, Doughnut said, and Katschia says, Hekla is doing this very thing, has been for a while, and she thinks that maybe this is some kind of bug.
And Carl's is of a differing opinion. He thinks that it's done this way.
On purpose to encourage people to sit tight and just snipe at these things all day and get them hooked on this like easy. But in his opinion, the XP that you would be getting from creatures this low level isn't worth sitting still for.
And she goes on.
Heckla also says the monsters all get off every five floors if you follow them out. The levels are like a cave system, and there are tunnels she hasn't yet explored, but she thinks the tunnels might lead back to the previous four platforms. She thinks the monsters are constantly migrating in a circle that was kind of weird.
Tell her we'll check it out.
Also tell her about the Matt Mordecai is building. Have her collect all the round info she can from all of her contacts and report it back to you so you can pass it on.
I hope to have a better idea of.
This place by this time tomorrow. And this is one of those things that I feel like I judge myself for a bit. It would be advantageous to everybody that you're in contact with, like recruit them for putting together a more accurate map. However, because I am feeling less than trusting about Hecla at the moment, I don't want to give her information and trust that she is giving
me information that is accurate. I would be worried about her holding back because she is, you know, maybe looking to take me out, and it would be a very convenient way to do that is to like leave off some of what she is telling Katcya and get you cornered in a spot where she can swoop in. So a part of me was like, am I just being
too paranoid? Or is Carl being too trusting? And also there's just the aspect of like, it's such an advantage to potentially know what's going on with the trains over other players who may not yet that I don't know how much information I would want to share because I want that advantage, And it's a difficult balancing act because the info that people are working with is going to be super valuable, so you want to be able to
come to an agreement with them. But also it's you might wind up putting yourself in a position.
Where you could have had a lock on a whole section because you know how it works.
So yeah, I was sort of uncertain if I would have done what he would have done here, And also like I don't know exactly how the difficulty is that in addition to maybe using this as a way to get Carl out of the picture, if Hecla is trying to take Donut, it's just.
A I don't know if Hecla.
Knows this, but Mordechai is Donuts manager. So if Carl dies, Mordechai is still a resource that Hecla could take advantage of as part of her party if Donut became integrated, and thus any information that Carl put together would be saved and like complete, It's not like Carl dies and whatever it is that, you know, whatever info he's working with no longer applies or becomes inaccessible, even if it were in his inventory, I guess you could loot it
off him. But yeah, so there's just there's a lot of angles of this that because of how I'm feeling about Hecla lately, I'm just a little bit more gunshy and I am a little saddened by it because I like Hecla in a way and I don't want to feel this way about her. But it is what it is, you know. Arazou says, it's a fair thought, but Carl is nicer than us. We just have to accept that.
And this is the thing is like I'm not even sure I wouldn't do the same thing, but I would probably have anxiety about it because I can be nicer than I necessarily feel as wise in the moment, depending on the situation, just because I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. So it might be that he's not nicer than me. It's just that I have
to acknowledge a little bit of a misgiving. Sarah Fem says, why would Karl want an advantage over other crawlers when that mindset will just make it harder for all of them to survive. I'm not talking about Carl, I'm talking about the mindset of players in the game in general, Like what is the practical thing versus what it is that he chooses to do, And like, I have to acknowledge that there is a potential advantage in not sharing
with people. You just got to like face that there's reasons that some people operate the way that they operate, and I'm not saying one of them, you know, is what Karl should be doing. Like we want Karl to be the guy that's rooting for everybody, but I can't ignore that there would be some advantage to it. Arazeu says at this point, I think if Katcha knows, then Hekla knows. Well, that's kind of what I mean about. Like,
Mordecai is the one in charge of the information. So if Katya were to leave their crew, she's got whatever they had before, like up until the point she left. But if Mordecai is continuing to assemble info, then getting donut means that you get everything.
Beyond that point.
And somebody who is good at processing that information, because it seems like Mordecai is pretty good at keeping track of all of the differences in there. You know, Seraphim says, there's no real advantage in withholding information for this unless your goal is to be a playing kill I think it's meant to be player killing asshole. Well, yeah, that's exactly my point, though. There are people that are gonna do player killing, and there are advantages to playing that way,
Like saying there's no advantage is just incorrect. It's simply that those advantages don't align with the way that you would want to play or what you think is best for everybody. And that may be true, but it is a way to play, and there are going to be people who would handle it that way. And this is like,
this is the thing about real life as well. You know that there are things that would practically be a smarter way to operate if you are only looking at the words smarter from a really narrow viewpoint, if you were only looking at like the number crunching as your pros and cons, and you were not looking at the
long term effect of doing something that way. So if you are alienating people and you are not willing to share information for the greater good, and you are not willing to look out for other players because you're targeting them the same way that you would target monsters. That is going to cause some real problems for you with other players.
In a huge way.
But some people are fine with that because they like feeling as if they have ay. There's a feeling of superiority that can come with that, not only because of the inherent power over people physically in that way, but also telling yourself, Oh, these soft idiots who are trying to band together, it's hopeless, you assholes. Accept your situation. Anybody who decides to work together is just prolonging the inevitable.
And there are countless people in the world who function according to that every day, And in my opinion, that's not the point of a society. Your whole reason for having a society is to provide a support system for everybody, including people who are not able to function according to what we deem as.
Most valuable in capitalism.
But I can't deny that a lot of the folks who function that way wind up financially stable, not necessarily in a good position. According to my metrics of a happy life, but it pays, you know, So it's just everything is very subjective. So we get we meet the bonkers, which are described by the AI in such a way that they it is clear that he is pissed at the Kuatine because of the way like he's basically like, yeah, they're complete morons, but at least they're smarter than those
assholes type of thing. And then Karl wants to like get onto the train and check things out. See if there's like a driver, and there is no like front compartment where the pilot would the driver would be. It's just like closed off. Each train car held four sets of exterior doors on each side.
And he looks up, h.
Let's see it, says we need a Yellow Line engineer's key to open the next door. Katia said, how do you think we get one of those? We need to get the driver to come out somehow, I guess.
Then we got to take it.
Then we got to take it from him, either that or maybe we can figure out how to break into the car from the outside. So they are I'm not gonna get too much because I'm running out of time here, but this is one of the moments where they are going up against these creatures and Kotcha does her popeye shape change and it all goes pretty well, and she says that it doesn't hurt this time as much as sting. And then let's see phantom kangaroo coming up.
Came the announcement.
The voice was similar to the last train, but not identical. That'll be station number eighty four. After that is stop number eighty five, which is an exit only cavern stop. Thank you for riding the tangle, and they let's see, I made it just about the right size. There wasn't anything fancy about it. This is when he uses his chunk of metal to block the door.
And what I thought was.
Sort of interesting is when these monsters come up to it. He says that they're sort of lethargic until they realize that they can't get.
Onto the train, and then they begin to freak the fuck out. And I couldn't help but wonder if.
Maybe it's two different groups of monsters and it looks like it's the same group, that's like going in a circle. But what of it's one group, what of it's two groups that are each pursuing the other. There's a point later on where the dude that they meet up with is saying that there are two groups of these like snake creatures that look identical, but that they fight each other.
And so I wonder if that's what it is. If it's just like we are motivating them by cycling them through these caverns and onto this train in pursuit of or to escape the other group that preceded them.
I don't know. Let's see.
Oh, I forgot about this part where Carlo says, get ready to repel borders. Don't get grunted. You know, this isn't a boat, right. All the starboard and aft and pirate talk is starting to really annoy Mango. I love that she says that it's Mongo who's getting annoyed.
Love you.
So anyway, this thing manages to hold them back, and one of its arms gets cut off because this does not have the safety precautions built into a regular subway. And then they see the do not entertangle employees only sign and they go in anyway, and I'm glad I have too much respect for the rules, and I know, oh,
it's a problem. So I was thinking to myself, would I keep out what I really or would I do it, and I think that I'd probably go in, just because the way that I work in Skyrim is I'll try every door a lot of the time, and I probably would go in. So this is when they meet Vernon the little Dwarf, and he is fed up and he basically explains to them that his role is pointless and
nobody listens to him. So between when the train arrives where it's going and when it leaves, he is getting drunk and he's pretty unfriendly and is like, there's a sign you need to fucking go up until the moment that he sees Donut and processes her being royalty, and of course her charisma ends up getting all kinds of information out of him that is likely going to be useful, but it just feels so disconnected from things at the moment.
And let's say I'm trying to find this this moment where he explains because he keeps on saying that stop four thirty five is the end of the line, And when Karl is asking yeah about what happens after that, he's real cagy.
And finally don't know.
It's like, why won't you answer his question? And he finally takes a big drink and is just like, all right, I don't know. We pull in there, everything gets weird, and then I'm on platform ten, which is really just the yard, and then when I climb on the train, it starts over and I don't even know how much time has passed. And some people think it's a time loop. But if it were a loop and I got injured and start over, the injury would be but the injuries
don't go away. But and if I'm hungry at the end of it and then I start over, I'm still hungry. So it's obviously like something is moving forward in time, but I don't know why it's happening or what's going on. And I'm assuming, actually now that he says this, that maybe this is.
What's going on with the monsters.
Also, is that it's just this constant loop for them,
and they don't like they're trying to get out. Maybe they're getting on these trains hoping that they are going to be able to get out of the tunnels, and it really just takes them back to where they had been on another level, and then they wind up in the same place, which is pretty awful, Like can you imagine just being put in a maze where there's no escape, but you think there is, and it keeps doing its thing over and over like so anyway, he explains too that like, there is this.
Uh drawing his wife that.
He normally leaves on the bedside in his cabin, but one day he put it in his pocket, and then the next day it was in his pocket again, so every time he does that he can make another one, which he's figured out also.
Works with money.
And they ask him like, if you've got this much money, why don't you just fucking leave? And he basically tries to play it like, oh, I'm not trapped. I'm choosing to stay and keep making money. And then this one, no way, I'm letting some greasy dwarf steal my magic gold supply while giving him such fine stroke material. Oh my god, I've never heard anything called stroke material before,
and that is honestly very funny to me. And also the fact that it's like a crude drawing, which I interpreted to be a poorly done drawing, but now I wonder if it's crude meant to be like poor graphic. I think it's still the first one, but now I'm like, m so, yeah, this is when he says, we've got snakeheads in eighty six and eighty seven. They look the same, but they fight each other. Station eighty eight is Mothman station, and a few of the skinned mollies get on, which
we see later. I think, which are those weird rabbit things? And he brings up the yellow line and the Indigo line, and she, being catcha is like, oh, that's where the daughters are, and just as Carl is like, fuck, well, I don't want to see them, she realizes, Oh, no, they're not there anymore. Never mind. Do the monsters always get off every five stops?
Yes, I don't know why.
They're usually pretty excited about it too, which maybe that's it where they think that, oh, we were finally getting out of here.
I don't know.
And Carl says, do they ever miss their stop or stay on? If one of them misses his exit, he'll get off on the next stop. They're always in a big panic when that happens. Once a GOADEO from station two twelve tried.
To loop around.
He stayed on all the way to the end of the line. It was the only time I've ever seen something remain on the train. He was still there when you got back on sort of. His skeleton was still on the train, his skin and blood and hair wasn't. Whatever happened after four thirty five ended up killing him. It killed him a lot, which is a very funny line. And when they ask, like, what is a way to get the engineer out of his compartment, he says, the only time he's ever seen one come out is derailment.
So I'm going to this section.
I'm halfway through chapter five, but I'm already like five minutes overtime, so I'm going to kind of speed this up and also try and get across how much of this is began sort of blending together for me. While each colored line had hundreds of trains on a track at any given moment, he believed there was only one of the larger trains per line. He didn't know much about the tracks and the system, other than that trains
did not cross tracks with other trains. The tracks worked like highways, with the tunnels going above and below one another. After every five stops, the train would completely empty of monsters until the next spot.
Let's see.
According to Vernon, the monsters wouldn't break into both cars fifteen and ten if they knew we were there, but he insisted they'd never attack his car number five in the time between stations. The time between stations varied greatly. Sometimes the stations would come one after another, coming every minute or two, and then there'd be a stretch of twenty minutes. It turned out the entire trip from stations eleven to four thirty five took three whole days, which
was alarming. My initial instinct was that we needed to stay as close to the stairwells as possible, but I was starting to suspect we need to get ourselves to the end of the line to figure this out. We only had nine days. The good thing was if there truly was only one Nightmare Express Line train that minute managed to take to make its large figure eight pattern in only an hour and a half, that meant we'd be able to end up back where we started fairly quickly,
if we decided it was necessary. So Dona and Carl leave for a moment, and they are talking about how they need to find a neighborhood boss and they need to, you know, explore things and see if there is a map on one of them, and he asks Dona if Katcha has said anything to her about Hekla and Donuts, like, well, she did tell me that Hecla named a kick after me because I.
Said it was awesome.
And Carl has to be like, Okay, well, be careful how much you tell her, and he doesn't want to explain to Donut the whole thing. But and you know, honestly, I feel like, probably it's the right call not to tell her. I don't like keeping things from Donut. But she's also like, I don't believe that she's a good liar, and I can see maybe her suddenly acting very different with Hecla and giving it away that, oh, you might be after Carl, I don't like you anymore, and we
need to stay allies for right now. So maybe keeping it to yourself for the moment is the right call. But it also means that like Donut potentially might have her guard down. So the way that Carl plays this off is, you know, we have this bounty thing, and I know that she's like with us for right now, but you can't trust anybody too much. Just be careful, And then I'm going to summarize what happens next quite a bit.
They wind up at.
A room that is a reward room like where they found Mango, and they meet a grapple who is a third Giant and he is in charge of giving them whatever suitcase by its number they request between one and two hundred. Carl gets a suitcase that's got like some women's clothes in it, that seems like a genuine suitcase from somebody's trip. But there are manipotions and an invisibility
potion which only says, guess what this does? And I really would appreciate a bit more because I don't know what that means in terms of how long it lasts, and what if it just makes you invisible permanently, you know, if it doesn't say they could just do anything.
And I don't like it.
And then he goes to open donuts for her and he gets a.
Warning, you sure you want to do that?
Bucco, And he doesn't understand what the warning is and it turns out, as he sees later, this was a trap warning because he has a skill about spotting traps. And it is full of actual fire ants, their ants that are on fire. And I am on record on Facebook after having moved down to Texas. I think it was maybe year three that I said, you'd think it would be the heat or the backward legislation, but the
worst part of Texas is the fire ants. And if you have never dealt with fire ants, you are very lucky, and don't change that because they are the actual worst. These things only set things on fire. These are, in my opinion, way less awful. I would rather deal with these version of fire ants than actual fire ants, just for the record, and if you know, you know, and that's all I'll say about that. But they light everything up and cause a massive conflagration that results in poor
Vernon being burned alive. And I felt so bad for him, this poor dude, because like they're in a bar, so there's moonshine right there. I hated this and it ends up doughnut just saying that was the worst prize ever. Yeah, that sucks, poor Vernon.
Wompomp.
All right, I'm way over time, so I have got to go, But thank you guys again so much for hanging out with me. And I will be seeing you on Thursday with the new episodes and I'll miss it.
And until then, to lou motherfuckers. That was an unspoiled network