The Gate Of The Feral Gods, Chapters 18-20

commissioning this episode. Oh, Michael's in the chat says, shout out to Jackie for booking the next book. Sadly, my break from book means crappy UI is over and over is over and now I have to endure the pain to commission book six. I I book dot means crappy UI. I'm sorry, Michael, I'm not following. I don't know if there was a typo in there or something. But I also thank you Jackie for commissioning the next book. But uh, I am you know. I know that I'm going to

catch up and that it's going to be a wait. Now, this is the thing that happens even when something has been out for a while and has built up enough books that I am getting into it after it's really gotten its legs under it, inevitably I catch up, you know. And this is going on with also the Bastian series, which I really really enjoy, and the author had thought he was going to have the next book out in July, and now it's looking like it won't be till October.

And due to that weight, there was like, you know, a delay with the commissioning, so I probably won't get to start talking about it until January, which means I will have almost gone a year between the last book. In this book, Oh, Michael says, refer to the website you use. Sadly, my break from book Got Me's Crappy UI is over and now I have to inture okay, got you? Yeah, I understand. It's one of those services that you wouldn't think what I need is particularly specialized.

But I had to try eight different booking sites before I found one that did what this one does, and it was really annoying because I didn't always get that it didn't work the way I needed until the mistake was already in place. And then a huge headache to undo. So that is why I have stayed with them. Many of these things that I have to do with my line of work rely on services that are not so reliable, for example crowdcast, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

So Chapter eighteen begins with a note from Crawler Cooley, and he is clearly intending to stage some sort of attack on this interview that he is about to go on, and it's broken up in part where at first he's talking about how this view of my beautiful planet from this ship will be my last view, and then later on we get an update where it turns out that the people he intended to harm weren't even actually physically there,

which is part of the reveal of Carl's plan. Part of it is us finding out exactly how he was able to ensure that Luita was there in the room with him and not just a projection. So Carl, I have some things cooking on my sapper's table. Let me take care of them really quickly before you transfer us.

In case you don't know what that means, just set one off and find out. The smoke will conceal all movement within and the plumes will bounce to the beat, which is rad as hell, like I really really really want to see this. Unlike a regular smoke curtain, the caster of this tossable is not immune to its effects. In other words, you'll be just as blind as the monsters. So you don't want to be dropping this thing at your feet unless you find yourself to be the most

handsome dude at the orgy. And he puts the donut robot on his sapper's table and it knocks the what do you call it, the little smoke thing down onto the floor and causes it to go off. Now what I was sort of thinking here was that he was using the smoke as a means of concealing something that he was doing. But it turns out it's more than that. It's also the residue of the smoke on the robot means that it can't be put on camera and thus has to stay in the room with Loita later on.

So I liked it. It wasn't as simple as what I was thinking. That there was like more going on even and this guy's pretty colors robot, Donut said. I felt the head turn around to face me in the complete multi hued smokestorm. The voice went down and octave. This is what we all see in the end. I'm always here for you, Carl and you guys. This robot

occasionally lapsing into very unsettling statements is very funny. The fact that she says pretty colors had me very arrested for a moment, because, like, between this and her response to some other things said around her later, I was realizing this toy is a lot more interactive than previously. She just used to say shit, you know, and now she's actually formulating responses like AI, which is certainly more fun because it's like specifically mostly within the framework of

what Donut would say. But you know, the way that the voice actor is delivering these I had to say this narrator. I actually accidentally ran across him on my Facebook feed. I don't remember. It was a short video of I think an early recording of him in Book two. Maybe whatever it was I heard, I had heard before, and it was fascinating to see him because he's on camera and he's this Asian guy with like very little expression on his face, busting out these lines and these

jumps between different voices. And there was something about how dead pan he was while delivering these jokes that I found really funny. It was just it was remarkable, It really is. It's like the kind of thing that a part of me. If I were to do something different, I think I might try and get into voice acting or you know, audiobook narration, because like, I'm pretty good at doing the live audio for the show that I do. Occasionally I stumble on my words, you know, as anybody

would who isn't really trained. But I think it would be pretty fun to get into the voice thing. So anyway, Loita transfers them to the little station, which I think it was a submarine this time. Again right, this was a nice middle quality trailer, but it was a submarine, not a boat like the last time. Right, despite being under the surface, this trailer was set up similar to Odet's production trailer, with a green room and a doorway

to the studio. In fact, I realized this was the exact same model, though the green room on this one had a different layout and included a large picture window that looked about the dark ocean. No snacks, Doughnut grumbled. So this is when Carl sort of means over her and is looking out the window. I felt the water from her rebreather splash against my leg, and I'm thinking, if this were some other situation, I would be suspecting him of like pickpocketing her right now, or of planting

something on her. But I knew that really couldn't be the case here unless it was something from like his sapper's table or you know. And even that, I was like, can he detonate that sort of thing remotely when it's like on her person? Would that even work? So I

know something's up, but I'm not getting it. And he asks about whether the trailers go into space or are they all offloaded to offloaded to a large transport, and she asks how that's his concern, and he's like, hey, I don't know if you remember, but people tried to assassinate us when we were on another show, So yeah, I'm a bit concerned about security. She says, you know, for such a famous crawler, you sure are a coward,

which the absolute gull. Just the trailer is shielded once you arrive, nobody comes in or goes out until the program is over again. You are safer here than you are in the dungeon, I hope, so, I said, don't forget. You're in here with us too. Her eyes widened, but it was quick. She finally noticed the dust covered robot donut under my arm. She let out a little gasp of despair. Oh you idiot, what did you do to

the product sample? So she gets in touch with them via messenger and finds out that they have another one and it's fine, but she is very, very cranky about this. Read the script. If you can't think of anything to say, do not be negative. This is not live, so don't think you're going to go changing the universe with your bravado today. Anything stupid you say will be edited out and we'll all be stuck in this can for longer. I'll be watching the taping from in here. Do not

make me get up and go in there. I swear to the gods, you will not be happy if I have to go in there. So this leads to Carl straight up saying, why are you so angry all the time, Loyda, And she said, she answers him, You, your cat, your people, your ugly culture. This is a cancer upon the bloom, and we should not be doing this. We should not be celebrating your culture, spreading your filth so the fry may see celebrating. You're exterminating us and profiting on our ashes.

If it were up to me, we'd simply exterminate you and nothing else. You're filthy, you're dry, You're a rot upon the bloom. Donut swished her tail. You probably shouldn't have become a pr agent, if that's how you really feel, Darling. Honestly, I can't help but feel you don't have our best interest at heart. This is why we worked so much better with Zev. She understood how to exploit our star power that seemed to have struck a nerve Zev. What you've done to Zev is the exact reason you are

so dangerous. She is young, she is impressionable. She is the future of the Kuatine, the bloom. Her generation is enraptured by the newest, shiniest thing. They do not trust in the concept of system, strength, of true unity, of the great consensus. Do you know what we had to do just to bring Zev back into the fold? Unspeakable things to her mother and her aunt's. It was only then did she take the badge. We need to do this to a whole generation now because of you, because

of your filthy culture. Well, if you had, you know, just left us alone, you wouldn't have to worry about she interrupted, pointing directly at Donut, who looked stricken. Your culture, your non unifying, defeatist, dry, multi organ diversified attempt at culture is a deadly contagion, and it must be treated as such. After this crawl, after every single one of you drivermen is dead, the boring system will close its borders, and only then will the reawakening occur. Only then will

we be free of this rot. This is bonkers, and Donut just says it. It's just like this bitch crazy, huh. It's really upsetting to hear her say we had to do unspeakable things to her mother and aunt, because if she says that they are unspeakable, it must be really bad, it must be real, real bad, poor fucking zeb And like I assumed that it was going to be something

like this. Honestly, the writing was very much on the wall, like from before Zev even left, and the way that she was talking about certain things, and the depression that had clearly kind of come over her. But it's actually being said now, and poor fucking Zev and the whole like, as Carl points out, nobody asked you to come here. All of this wouldn't even have been in your in,

you know. But they are evidently a conquering people who feel compelled to exterminate and also evidently are broke as fuck, like she's talking about, you know, eventually, once we do this, the boring system will close its borders. And I can't help but think, like, probably not. This is the thing about the way that a lot of bigotry works is that the flames are fanned of that bigotry simply for profit. Sharing increases, simply for money, and the people encouraging it,

it's not even like they believe any of it. They just know there's a profit to be made from this, and so they exploit that and it works, and then the people who believe all of this is in service to our eventual supremacy are genuinely surprised Pikachu face when that's not what they get. And it would be funny if it weren't so sad and so predictable, you know. But I can't help but think she's a fundamentalist, and they feed into this, but it's not really what it

is about. I think it's just purely we're doing this to make money. But will tell these psychos whatever we need to tell them about how it's ultimately good for like the supremacy of our people, as long as that gets them to show up to work on time and not call out and do overtime, you know. So they go into their thing, and this is when we get the update from Cooley. I have secreted bugbear paste in my boots. I will detonate them while I am in orbit.

If this skill works, my blast shield should protect me from the explosion. But if I blow the ship, it won't matter. Think of me, brothers. It is little, but it is all I have. And to find out that he did this and it didn't even result in doing It's really that's the way so much rebellion goes. You know, there are a lot of statements made that nobody ever hears that really don't do much. But sometimes you got to do shit for your own self, even if it

isn't accomplishing a greater purpose necessarily. The hosts of vera lux New Toys showcase were a pair of tall, giant eyed alien soothers, the forsothed a man named Gravo and a woman named Lyddy. I was beginning to realize these soother guys were one of the most common types of aliens in the universe, and they are wearing Gravo's dressed like a cowboy with a sheriff thing on him. Lyddy

is dressed like a superhero. It's just very much like if you were just trying to do the most generic appeal to kids kind of look that you could do. It's almost like we've got Buzz and Woody, but like, obviously if Buzz weren't an astronaut and were just a superhero type. It's got that same energy though, and the room, you know, the whole way that this is set up is a little different because they usually there's a studio

audience element and that's not happening here. The toys would supposedly appear on the table and we were supposed to discuss how awesome they were. And Carl is like, do you guys really think that this is the approach for selling these toys? And they're just like, yes, we do. We have done a lot of research about it, and they find out that this is a commercial that's going to air in gas stations. Basically like the equivalent of that, which the fact that we live in a world now

where like you can't pump gas without getting ads. Of course it depends. There are plenty of older gas stations that don't have this feature, but if you go to like bigger chains, a lot of them are equipped with screens and they feed you all kinds of ads while you're pumping your gas. And if you've got air pods in, it's fine, like you can just ignore it. But it's just it's so ubiquitous that you get ads pumped into

your fucking eyeballs every chance they can get. And Lyddy is a fan of donuts, so they talk about that a little bit and the fact that Donah is one of only two favorites she uh favorites her and of course LUCIMR because everybody has favorited LUCIMR, which honestly kind of makes sense because she's just so unpredictable. I feel like I would have to know what she's going to

do next, you know. Sorry, robson the chat fascist governments making poor financial decisions, color me shocked, sarahim says, I get the impression Loita is the average Bloom Party member. They do seem to be just that committed to being fascist assholes. There's a reason their government is on the brink of financial collapse and had to rush out this crawl. The thing is that the average member doesn't necessarily represent what the ultimate goal of a party is. Do you

see what I'm saying? Like, the average person can believe in what she does, but that's in service to something else. So I don't think that the ultimate goal they're feeding their average member is like the thing at all. But I'm also just deeply suspicious of everybody at this point in life. So whatever Rob says, but also coolly inspired Carl two and then, as for why are alex is spending all this money on something that seems unlikely to ever make enough profit to be worth it. My thought.

My thought was they are just using it as a means to funnel money to warrant indirectly. Any money they make on the toys is just a nice bonus. Which this is also where my mind was, was like, this is a money laundering thing. It's all just so odd the way that it's set up. It felt very much like what is this really? You know, it's a front for something. Rob says that the ads on at gas stations are not a thing in Canada, but I saw the ads when we went to as to Arizona pre

COVID and that was very culture shocking. Yeah, it's not awesome, So let's see. Uh. Research indicates children prefer to have a trusted adult speak down to their level and present them with the best possible options. And like Carl has to be like, Okay, you know what, I think he's completely wrong, But why am I gonna argue with this guy? Let them do what the fuck they want? And I understand this impulse very much. And sometimes you've just got to pick your fucking battles. So then we get another

note from Crawler Coolie. I have failed. I have blown the ship. My skill indeed protected me, but the force field has prevented it from fully breaking. The admins only appeared to be with me. They were hollows. I was fooled today and I am ashamed. Brothers. The gravity has failed, the temperature is dropping, and it's getting difficult to breathe. I do not think they can remove me while the force field remains. But I see my planet, my beloved Corux.

It shines and it warms me in this cold. I pray one day someone will avenge her for I cannot. And uh yeah, just really heartbreaking. So then we go to the ad copy and it's very stilted and weird. There is a mango doll that bites the donut doll on the nose, which is fantastic, and they ask Carl what his favorite feature is, and there's a paragraph that he's supposed to read, but instead he's like, oh, I was able to train the donut doll to do some tricks,

and the dude is clearly like about to be cut. Dude, follow the fucking script, but instead Lyddy is like, no, he's bringing up something that might be you know, appeal to folks, So let's do that. And he says, she says the weirdest shit. But if I tell her to sit, she sits. If I tell her to follow, she follows. She's much more compliant than the real donut. It's what we all want, isn't it compliance? What's your parent company called again, Veritin Linkage? Isn't that their thing? Stop rolling?

Gravo said. He turned on me. I don't know where you heard that, but that's absolutely not true. Varitin is our parent company, yes, but we operate independently from them. I shrugged. It's not what I heard. Someone said, your parent company advocates for slavery. People are saying there are really trackers hidden in the toys. Carl, what are you doing? Donna asked, just stick with the script, Okay, don't be

an imbecile. There's nothing you can say that I'll make it onto air, so why bother nothing I can say? And here the dungeons is another story, though, isn't it. What are you trying to say? You're trying to shake us down for a loop box? Is this a joke? I had no idea if Veralux Toys had any sort of sinister motives. With all this, Mordecai seemed to think it was a money laundering operation or something. Honestly, I didn't care. This was dangerous, stupidly dangerous. I was gambling.

All of this was about to be forgotten. I just needed Loita to get up off that damn couch. The lights flickered, the two soothers disappeared, the floor shook, the studio went black, then filled with red lights. A terrible creaking noise filled the chamber, and of course Carl has to be like, oh, what's happening? You know, I bolted for the green room door. It irised open as I approached. Smoke poured out through the hole, and he sees that there's a huge crack in the window and that it

hasn't ruptured yet, but it's like perhaps about too. The blue force field was the only thing keeping the water out, and he's thinking to himself, oh my god, that you know, he's thinking, thank God, and then no, thank Coolly for the information. The crumpled form of the dungeon admin had been blown across the room and smashed against the wall. Donut rushed to her. The small couwatine was missing her left arm and both of her bottom legs. Her rebreather

miraculously still worked. Her entire fish body was blackened. She looked as if she'd been flash fried in a pot of oil. But she wasn't dead. I felt my heart quicken. She couldn't just teleport away. They had to first lower the shield. But if they lowered the shield, the window would break and Donut and I would die instantly. Barrent had to make a choice. I realized they could probably heal her in seconds, but only if she teleported away, save a low level admin or save their two highest

grossing crawlers. I looked down at the injured woman and smiled. You you did this, Loita panted, What do you mean it was an accident. The robot blew up. You're the one who made them put that self destructed sequence in it. I was in the other room. I have no idea how it blew You saw how buggy that damn thing was. You won't win. The bloom will prevail. You will be forgotten. No one likes melodrama, Loita I said, as the Kuatine died. I am so pleased that he used that line on her.

I know that's what set him off in the first place. So getting to throw that in her face, it's beautiful. It's a wonderful little moment. Note added by Crawler Carl Coolly. I know you can't read this, but I want you and every future reader to know I use the information from your passage to help plan the first step. If it wasn't for your words, I wouldn't have had the confidence or knowledge to act what I did today. I did for you and for a little girl named Bonnie.

My only regret is that my first step was a small one, and I don't know yet if I'll survive long enough to take a second. But if I do manage that second step, please forgive me. What I do from here on out is solely for me and my people. As long as I am alive, I will do everything I can to make them burn. They will not fucking

break me. So then we go to chapter nineteen and the repair subs fix the damage and tell port Dona and Carl away, but they wind up at the Desperado Club instead of going to their personal space like he was expecting, and later on we find out that they are There's like a time lapse that they're not feeling at this point, and five days go by in the game that they are not feeling those five days whatsoever.

This is something that keeps unnerving me. You know, we know that they can do this because they also had this with Mordecai, where by the time he reappears like ten days later, he's still fucking mid sentence with what he was saying when he got teleported away for a moment, so he didn't feel that time lost at all either. And it's just really eerie, you know. It just makes me think of like Rip van Winkle and how how long can they do this for how much time can

they make you miss? It's just like, really it's creepy. There was a part of me that kind of thought, Mordecai, they can do this too, because of like the function he plays in the dungeon and finding out that this can be done to anybody, it seems like is just it's very scary. I don't like it. The desk was the paper covered desk was occupied by a tall man. The shadowy figure wore a dark cloak with a hood

which supernaturally obscured his face. Grim reaper like his hands, the only flesh I could see were a dark, dark purple, almost black. It was a small office with slat walls and the same tiled floor as the rest of the Desperado Club or in syndicate liaison. So he has them sit down and he says, I don't work for BORN. I am independent, retained by the syndicate. You would not normally meet me or one of my colleagues, but under

certain extreme circumstances. And he says, I am a non AI fact finder, not quite a sheriff, not quite an attorney, not quite a judge. If the syndicate sees something that requires more information, they will ask both the Kuatine and AI for reports on what happened. Sometimes those reports contradict each other. Sometimes those reports are inconclusive. In such cases, a liaison such as myself investigates and if the facts warrant it, I recommend what should be done about it.

And this is very much reminding me. Previous to this recording, I was doing the Vorkosigen saga, and Miles in that series has a job as an Imperial auditor, and it's kind of giving that same vibe for me as just somebody kind of outside of all of the workings to

do independent investigations and whatnot. And Carl, as this is like all being explained, is feeling a little bit guilty because he knows that Dona is probably freaking out and she didn't know anything about what it was he was planning, so she's just wrapped up in all of this and it wasn't intentional. But you know, he also wouldn't take it back because of course he wouldn't, Like, I don't blame him for that at all. So this dude says, do you know how many times people have tried to

assassinate admins? And Carl just says probably a lot, And he says, yeah, more than we'd like to admit, and a lot of been successful. Two seasons ago, a crocodilian managed to snap the head off his outreach associate. He shouldered the admin into the hallway and literally bit the man's head off, and instead of teleporting him away into the crawler disposal unit, the idiot Fourton admins sent two of their own security agents to subdue the crawler and

also got themselves killed before the AI finally intervened. Three admins at once, which were the only admins killed by crawlers that season that wasn't the record, but three is still a lot. I'd like you to guess how many have died this season so far due to your fellows, zero, I said, the man grunted an amusement, Not including this most recent death of Admin Louta. The number for this season currently stands at fifteen. Lucia Marr has killed two three if you count her first game guide, which we

do not. The rest were all one off attacks. Genuinely intrigued and more than a little proud of my fellow humans. Guys, fifteen, this is genuine pride in my voice. Good for you, the way they've been keeping it quiet. I mean, who would they tell? Obviously they're keeping it quiet, you know, but I love finding out that this is happening. I'm not even sure it was wise of this man to tell Carl so much, you know, I feel like it's just sort of encouraging him, if anything. But I don't know.

Maybe I don't know, I don't know. Fifteen is already considered a disaster. Do you know why that number is so high? And you know, Carl says what we're all thinking, which is because they don't want to spend any fucking money, and he says, yeah, that's basically it. Every one of those fifteen deaths, and in fact, every single ADMIN murder until this very moment, have all got one thing in common. We know exactly how the crawler pulled it off, but you,

we don't know how you did it. And Carl's like, it was an accident, and Dona is going, oh my god, he thinks you did this on purpose, and dude, it's like, no, no, no, it was an accident. We know what killed her. We can't figure out how you set it up because the explosion shouldn't have been as powerful as it was. And he leads Carl to be like, why do you think it was so powerful? I had the cat on my table.

She was watching me decant those infusions. He slapped the desk and pointed at me like I'd just given him the answer to an equation. The sudden and unexpected sound was like a thunderclap. I tried not to flinch, and I hated myself for flinching anyway. I'm sorry, guys. If you can hear my dogs are do a little bit of a running around out there. They're so adorable it's

hard to be mad. So, Yes, the Sapper thing actually affected this, which is just so interesting to me because I wouldn't expect the game stuff to affect real life objects that are made for sale outside of the world, you know what I'm saying. So I just really was caught off guard by that even being a factor. And then I love this guys, Donna, Oh my god, he

does believe we did it on purpose. If Karl was gonna purposely kill Louda, he would have shoved a stick of dynamite and her gills and kicked her in the head. Carl is very good at killing things, and he can be very clever about it sometimes, but he doesn't do Secret Asian Man style murders. Agent what it's Secret Agent Man, not Secret Asian Man. Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure. How does Secret Asian Man make sense? Yes? I suppose

that does make more sense. This tickled me so much because back in my youth I worked as a grocery stocker for Whole Foods for a while and I had a coworker there who was Asian Japanese tattoos all over his neck, and the radio would play Secret Agent Man that song and he would sing it as Secret Asian

Man when he would sing along to it. So I hear it as secret Asian Man every time I hear it now due to that, and this just felt like a little bit of like, you know, I just it got me in a kind of inside joke sort of way. So when he was with Miss Beatrice, his definition of subtle was pulling his boxers down, saying me so horny, No offense, Carl, What I never did that? Oh right? That was Brad, wasn't it? Anyway? You get my point.

The way that she just casually drops in all of the fucking dudes that Bee was cheating on him with is insane and she needs to chill um so orin. We have surveillance from the MECHS unit in this trailer, but that is it. Since you weren't in the room, the footage isn't nearly as holistic as we like, but what happened is clear. Luyda jumped down off the couch, the toy jumped down to follow, and a few seconds later it exploded, killing her and almost killing you two

as well. The panel on the back of its head dislodged when it jumped, which activated the creature's self destruct sequence. And set off the explosion due to the interface lockout. Because of Admin Luyda's presence, neither of you received a self destruct warning. And then Carl brings up that thing was made out of some shitty plastic. It's not my fucking fault, and he's like, Okay, first of all, it's not plastic. It's made out of tamper proof polymer designed

to fail under certain circumstances. And let's see, I'm saying the residue dust left behind by the disco ball smoke curtain started to slowly eat away at the panel. That process was greatly enhanced when you place the toy within range of Admin Louda's rebreather apparatus. The moisture caused the remaining dust to run across the panel and along the edges. Then you engineered a situation that would cause the admin to get up off the couch, and I love that.

Carl internally is like, wow, this went way better than I expected due to a bunch of shit I wasn't even aware of. It's like, this guy is overestimating Carl in a way that I can't decide if this is beneficial to Carl or not. And he's trying to get them to basically sign a plea deal. If you just admit you did it, you can just go back into the dungeon and it'll be fine. And Carl is like, if you really thought I did it and you could prove it, you wouldn't want me to sign anything. You

just fucking killed me. And this is so interesting. You're obviously getting information from an outside source. We know it wasn't Agatha or any of her helpers. None are in your bubble. We don't believe it was Odette, either.

guarantee your survival until the ninth floor. And this is when we get Carl just being like I had no idea about that reaction, YadA YadA, And it is funny, like I kind of wanted Carl to point out to this guy, you're giving me credit for knowing that this thing would eat away at the panel when I thought it was just plastic, Like, how would I have even known that it did what you claim when Earth doesn't

have a a product like this, you know. So anyway, he breaks the little tab off of the thing that holds the battery in place, just so that it becomes really like delicate and it pops out all the time. So when I'd leaned into tap on the glass and ask Loyda if the trailer could go into space, thus confirming Lloyda was really there thanks to the moisture, I'd attempted to get my nail in place, but it'd slipped out. I'd had to lean in a second time to get

it right. I leaned over the couch and I'd made the move with my left hand, pressing the robot toy against my chest. In the end, it'd been simple. I held the panel in place as I pulled my hand away. When I placed the toy on the couch next to the admined, I'd pulled away with enough force to dislodge my fingernail, which held the panel precariously in place. I'd practically crapped myself when Robot Doughnut had turned its head to say some creepy shit to Loyda, but the little

panel had held it wasn't visibly loose. So yeah, this whole thing, it's like a really genius idea anyway, But it's funny because they're just giving him a lot of credit that he doesn't deserve. I'm not signing anything because I have nothing to give up, nobody to rat out. And believe me, I'd love to get a free legendary box, but I have nothing to give you in exchange. This was an accident, but you're obviously not an idiot, so I won't lie to you. I wish I had thought

of this. I wish I had outside help, because if I did and thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have done it without hesitation. But I wouldn't have wasted the opportunity on some low level bitch like Loyda. And who would you have used it on? Then I didn't answer. There were only so many lines I could cross.

There was so much I wanted to say. I thought of Brandon, of Yolanda, everybody else in the world, they'd all died and nobody cared yet someone like Louda died and we had to go through all of this For reference to anybody listening to this in the future. It is currently September sixteenth of twenty twenty five. A couple of days ago, Charlie Kirk was shot through the throat while he was literally mid sentence about to talk shit about gang violence, which we all know is dog whistle racism.

And when I say we all know, I mean anybody with any knowledge on the way dog whistle politics works knows. And the same day there was a school shooting and I never found out about that school shooting until like next day because Charlie Kirk's murder was made out initially to be the work of left wing terrorists, and then a fucking course, it turned out to be some right wing nut job who was pissed that Charlie Kirk wasn't as right wing as he wished he were, and it

was part of this weird ongoing feud thing. And you know, guys, there's a lot of people out there who are in the unfortunate position of either having said that they aren't sorry he died, and then getting fired from their jobs for having put that out on social media somewhere, or who feel that way but can't actually put it out there due to being worried about being let go. I am not in that position. I work for myself and

I can say what I want. And all up and down my feed were people who were saying, basically like, after the way that man lived, for him to die this way is like some serious irony. And then in the comments, somebody would come in and be like, I can't believe you're acting like he deserved this, and that person would reply with I'm not saying he deserved it. I'm just saying you reap what you sew kind of thing. And I'm like, no, he did deserve it. He absolutely

deserved it. Like I will not stutter, my friends, Louta isn't out here holding a gun to anybody's head or swinging a knife or any such thing. She has a very non violent job, but nobody questions that she's part of this hideous system that wants to annihilate entire group

of people. And Charlie Kirk was also doing this. He was also espousing the same kind of bigoted rhetoric about white erasure, and that black people with certain jobs were clearly not qualified and had been given that job out of some sort of DEI bullshit, and that trans people should be quote taking care of back like they did in the fifties and sixties unquote. He is literally saying they should be murdered, and folks have the goal to call him nonviolent because he didn't personally pick up a

weapon and shoot anybody. Are you seven years old? What is fucking wrong with you? It doesn't get more violent than building your entire platform that reaches there's millions of people and having your entire life revolve around speaking jobs where you share this kind of sick rhetoric. That's all violence. That's all it is. That's the job, and the idea that folks aren't making that connection is wilful. This is

not stupidity. This is on purpose. We are choosing to separate physical violence from the violence of rhetoric when I would argue what he was doing is in many ways worse because he can hide behind that. The fact that he didn't personally wield a weapon while mobilizing a huge group of people, and folks like him are why Trump got elected and why many folks being radicalized, but we act as a country like it's not accomplishing anything, and

it's truly bizarre. It's the weirdest. And the folks who were so sure it was a leftist who killed him, We're all talking about how he had the right to his opinions, but then a person says, I'm not sorry he's dead, which is an opinion. And those same folks arguing about how he has the right to his free speech are reporting that Facebook post to get this person fired.

Do we get free speech or do we not? You know, like the right is decrying political violence with his assassination, But yesterday my governor Greg Abbott pardoned a man who drove over a protester at a Black Lives Matter rally after sending texts to his friends about how he was going down there to quote kill looters. This dude murdered somebody for political reasons and was pardoned by the governor. He was dishonorably discharged when he got arrested, and they're

trying to even reinstate him as being honorably discharged. Do we support political violence or don't we? So I know that there are a lot of liberals out there who are like, well, I don't agree with him, but I don't think we should resort to these measures. Yes we should, Yes we should. I am so sorry, but some people make the world worse and more dangerous. That's just fucking facts, and it's not pretty. I don't like it, but I think the world's better without a minute, and I am

not going to stutter when I say it. You can clip this and cut it and put it wherever you want. I will stand by this until my dying breath. So yeah, good for you. Carl kill Louda. You can't root for this in this fiction and not see how somebody like Charlie Kirk deserved to die. He did, He fucking did, and that's that on that So now their bodyguards are

here to pick them up. It's very fun because he doesn't sign shit, and this guy can't make him, and there's just not anything that they can really do except keep an eye on him. I have no choice but to recommend that the Syndicate closed the matter. However, you should know we have implemented a punitive measure onto Barrent for the remainder of this floor, as this wasn't an isolated incident. No crawlers will be allowed to be teleported

away by third parties until the next floor opens. Yes, that means your next appearance on Odet's show has been canceled. She's already filed an appeal. And this is when Carl starts to be like, filed an appeal, all of this has had It's been like ten seconds, and he's starting to realize, oh wait, it's longer than that. And he's also wondering how Lucy mr had killed two admins and

gotten away with it. Why wasn't she dead? Prediction they did something to her and that's why she's acting so bananas that her acting out overtly got some kind of weird punishment that fucks with her perception or I don't know what. I don't know what they can do, but it seems to me something specific about her behavior is linked to a punishment. So that's my guess, And let's see whomever it is that's helping you. They're not doing it for your benefit. If the Kuatine hadn't intervened on

your behalf, this would have gone much differently. What do you mean how did they intervene? Certain crawlers are simply too valuable to just throw away off screen, no matter how recalcitrant they are. Ultimately it's their call. And even though I can't find legal cause to place Administrator Lloyda's death upon you, if it were up to me, i'd have you removed anyway. We discussed this in council and it was decided that my personal recommend be ignored for

now the month. Skippers aren't known for their ability to recognize threats. If the rumors are correct and we do take over after the next floor, I hope my own people will be much more willing to listen to my personal assessment. How long have we been away. It's only been five days. You're lucky it wasn't longer. You still have five days left to finish your bubble. Your partner, Katia has gotten into some interesting adventures while you've been gone.

She's back on the top ten list above you. Actually, you two are about to slip off, so you probably want to get back to work. And Carl, this is the first time he really shows emotion and is just like motherfucker Orin looked up then, and the man's hood slipped. The swirling black coalesced and I realized it was actually a face shaped bowl of liquid made to look like swirling darkness within that liquid, a tiny glimpse of light.

Mordecai had described what they looked like to me, so I recognized what was in the liquid, A worm of Valtae worm. Yeah, interesting, interesting, interesting, Okay, okay, Valta, I see you. So they come back, and Mordecai is clearly he is a distray and thought that they probably were going to not be returning, And Doughnut has to share the whole story. Katcha actually did go on her Sidekicks show. I guess they added the band as my show was being taped. Zev told me about the band just before

I teleported back down here. So Zev is back as our pr agent again, which Donut is excited about. And I'm really curious because you know, having people tortured to force you into something, it can certainly break your brain and make you terrified, but it won't convince necessarily. So I'm curious exactly what Zev's going to be like when there isn't somebody like Loyda around to restrain her. I also want to mention now that we've gotten to know Loyda,

thinking back to her being Hecla's PR agent. What a terrifying combination, you know, Like, I'm not absolving Hecla of the way she operated, because clearly that was a personality thing and that's part of who she was. But she was clearly being encouraged. I'm sure to be as completely like cold as she was. It says that Zeb's a temporary PR agent, but I don't know. Maybe maybe temporary will last a while. I don't know. I don't know.

So let's see. She was now in the last quadrant and was in the personal space via a pub down there. She was also now level forty one, three higher than the last time I'd seen her, and she didn't know what had happened. She had to have everybody like explain to her. If you hadn't, if you hadn't left the controller with Lewis, we never would have been able to fly the thing. I've spent the last five days killing scorpion men and arguing with Gwen. We could really use

your help down here. Lewis and Firos are on the way back to pick you up. They've turned into quite the pilots. Once you get your asses down here, I'll catch you up and uh, Mordecai. Next thing, you know, the lawyers will be here. Everything gets complicated once the lawyers get here and we find out Chris and Maggie are still trapped. It's let's see a goddamn syndicate liaison. Just let you walk right out of there. Yeah, he didn't even say anything about this. I held Lloyd To's

rebreather up in the air. I'd looted it off the dead Kuatine's body, you guys, that's honestly next level. He couldn't put it in his inventory, so it was just shoved into his boxers. I mean, insane. I love it so much. Now that we're going to be going underwater, potentially this could be really useful. I don't know, you know, I don't know, but Mordecai just gouged me be hanging down. So we go then into chapter twenty and I'm running a long on time here, so I'm going to do

my best. I may have to continue some of my coverage of this into the next episode, but uh yeah, this the fun thing about this. Carl and Donut being gone has sort of given everyone else room to breathe, And it's not like the two of them. I don't think we're a dampening influence. I think they were actually inspirational to people. But there is something about having a person who's super capable and higher level around all the time that I'm sure can make you feel like you

have something to fall back on. And once these two are taken out of the equation, everybody, you know, they don't know that these two are actual going to come back for sure. They just got to fucking manage their shit and it they're managing it, like, you know, not perfectly, but they're stepping up to for fear of us is level thirty now when he had been twenty two at the beginning of this floor. And let's see, did Kaya tell you about how she stuck the house into her inventory?

A lot has happened. It was Lewis's idea. We had the thing floating just off the ground. Katya did that weird thing she does when she puts the backpack on and it worked. Then that same night, after the recap, they patched it and the whole damn contraption just popped out of her inventory, floating over our heads. It almost smushed all of us. We were all in a pub called cuttlefish Point and it pretty much blew up the tavern.

That Pazuzu guy that runs it was pissed, and Pazusu is the name of a demon in the beginning of the Uh what do you call it? Oh, my god, the one where the exorcist. I think that's the name of the demon that possesses her. I was just it was funny to me. We all had to jump on the thing and fly Away thought he was going to sting us for sure. It was pretty intense. Then Lewis peeded over the edge on the guy while he was still screaming up at us, and it pretty much got

us banned from town. Oh my god, y'all, that is a lot. I thought Gwen was gonna rip his schlong off. Katya had to stop her from kicking his ass, but she was laughing too, and that made Gwen even more mad. And later on we meet Gwen and we get a description from Katya that is interesting, So we will get there. Langley has a couple of his guys on it, keeping it clear of sand. It's gonna be tough starting tomorrow

once the Red equinox. They're building something to protect it, and Karl had forgotten about that whole like weather patterns thing, so he's like, ah, shit, this is going to be a whole problem. So this is when Lewis says, all right, we got to get moving. Let's see. Do you feel out of the loop? Donut whispered, I feel out of the loop. Part of me was proud that Katya had just rolled with us going missing. She'd gotten a lot done.

She'd managed to get the whole house down to the land quadrant, and she'd figured out how to breach the magical door that guarded the front of the land Quadrant castle, all without us. Fear Us told me that they would have finished with the castle already if Zev hadn't asked Katya to wait for us. At the same time, part of me stung at the notion she could do this without me. It was stupid, selfish, and it was more than a little narcissistic to think without me and Donut,

Katcha and the others were absolutely screwed. But that feeling was there, and I was simultaneously relieved. It was that I'd been wrong and horrified i'd been thinking it in the first place. I still didn't know if we'd get there in time, but Katsche and the other's actions while we were away proved I wasn't as indispensable as I thought, and in the end I realized it was a necessary feeling. And then we get a flashback from his dad screaming at him, you'll die in a gutter without me. You

need me. You think you're just gonna be fine. What will you do, you disrespectful little shit. You will break after just one day and then you'll die. That's what you'll do, just like your fucking bitch of a mother. This guy's a real piece of work, I swear, Carl, how did you wind up being as good a dude as you are? Like? How though? How I really like this whole thing with Carl reckoning with the fact that

he isn't indispensable. It's not. It's something that I think a lot of us like get into this weird space, especially when we're at shitty jobs, where we tell ourselves like, this whole place would fall apart if it weren't for us, and it really is. It's like a way for us to cope with the garbage situation we're in, and it makes us feel like we've got some power and like, don't get me wrong, upon occasion, when a person leaves a certain job, it is a disaster in their wake

because they did way more than anybody knew. But mostly people are fine. Mostly. You can tell yourself, this place would fall apart without me, and they could replace you tomorrow and almost nobody would even notice. And it's always like, you know, finding out a place is continued on without you. It can be sort of like quelling. And I think he's got a good attitude about realizing it's a mixed

feeling he's having. In response, I think it's mature. So one of Lucimar's Rottwiler's had somehow accidentally killed a group of crawlers after a battle. The event had caused Lucia to undergo some sort of psychotic break one worse than usual. They'd shown the strange crawlers sitting alone in a room sobbing, which was the first real emotion they'd ever portrayed other than rage and pure insanity. Flora in the shotgun Crocodile Guy had finally emerged into a quadrant to find everybody

else in the entire bubble was already dead. That first of all, I want to say that considering that they can bring people's like relatives back that were killed in the thing, I can't help but wonder if they like brought She mentioned her father in one of the videos, and like, is one of the dogs her relative turned into a pet? Did they do that to fuck with her?

And that might make part of I don't know. I mean, it could certainly cause you to go into a psychotic break that one of your creatures killed everybody just because. But I could also see it being extra upsetting if it's like this is a person to me still, but they're not. They're changed, and it's like, as much as I'm hanging onto something, it's not real, you know. I don't know, guys, my brain is going all over the place in terms of possibilities with her Flora. Finding out

everybody is dead is truly awful. It's all on him, like yikes. He'd only managed to clear one castle so far, and the general consensus was that he was screwed. The Goat Squad was almost done with their bubble, but Miriam Don the Shepherd Lady, was hit with some curse that ended up changing her into a vampire. Apparently she was a vegan before this. And the assholes thought to be hilarious to do that to her. Look, I don't think veganism is a great way to live for a number

of reasons, but it's not my fucking business. I don't get why people get so like, you know, just get over it, Jesus. So I'm at eight minutes over time, and there's still like a substantial amount left in this chapter. So uugh, let's see. Okay, we have the meeting with Gwen. We'd exchanged fist pumps when Donut was collecting all the

now worthless engineer hats. The woman was about forty five years old and solid, and she is First Nations, and he can see that she is somebody who has done some real physical labor and has muscle on her and is a person who probably got into bar fights, and just is a type that he knows really well, race human class, boring old fighter. Sorry, we can't whine and dine you first, bomber boy, but we need to get trucking on this bullshit your friend is making us do.

The storm that's about to hit is the last one before the weather change, and we don't know if that's going to fuck us over or not. We can only do Kacha's electric door thing during the sandstorm. Let's see you a friend of yours are going to go in there and try and kill the mage for us, just us. Oh, she didn't tell you the deal, did she? Why does that not surprise me? So? Donut I like her? She reminds me of a miniature sized Hekla, Carl, Yeah, because

that turned out great, Katya. She's an amazing fighter. She's fast too. Her class trades fighting skills for no magic spells whatsoever. I watched her use that spear to pierce a pozuzu in the back, vault over him and use the momentum to throw his body at another monster. The

problem is she's a real bitch. She is like Hecla in some ways, though instead of scheming in her head, she just says it out loud the moment she thinks of it, And if she doesn't like you, she will tell you, and then, just to make sure you were paying attention, she'll say it again, but in a different way. At least, Hackla pretended to be supportive, Carl. I was actually surprised when Firas said you two were always fighting. I thought you could get along with everybody, Kotcha, I

made a promise to myself not that long ago. I wasn't going to take any shit anymore. When Gwen makes up her mind about something, it's impossible to change her mind, and then she becomes a bully about it. I don't like that, donut. That makes her sound more like Carl than hecla. He's not a bully, though, Kotya agreed. Carl doesn't insult you when you have a different idea. Carl, She's exactly the type of person who would survive here. So what's the deal with the castle? Katya? Okay, So

here's the problem. We've discovered. There are two ways to take it easy and hard. Gwen wants to do the easy way, but if we do it her way, I think we're going to lose our chance of getting the winding box from the mage. Honestly, I'd also much rather do it her way too, but Zev has been unusually insistent that we wait for you too. That is interesting to me. The idea that like Zev is trying to influence what's happening in there, I'm sure would not be

approved of by Luita. And it's just showing for me that there's still some of zev in there, hopefully. Let's see. Most of this information is from a drunk scorpion guy. This he turned himself into a sand elemental. That's how he managed to get that one part he has. He's all mixed in with the sand. Now there's a magical door to get into the castle, but you can dig behind it. At first I thought it was a poor but it's not. After they've reached the last wall, Gwen's

team found a secret drainage panel against the side. If they turn it, it will release all the water inside the necropolis and shoot it back out into the ocean through the main drainage tunnel, which is what the sand castle is built around. We wouldn't even need to get through the magical doorway. It'll just destroy the sand castle like

we were hitting it with a water hose. Easy though apparently it would only half drain the necropolis because the water is still being pumped in, and so if we blow it out the water hose, blow it out with the water hose. Plan we take the castle, but the mage guy gets turned to mud and we never find the winding box. What's the hard way? You see those two towers on either side of the sand castle. At the base of each was a coiled up electrical line

with clips at the end. If you attach the line to the tower and then to the door, when the sandstorm hits, lightning hits the towers and they act like lightning rods. They electrify the doorway and a glass hallway appears if you examine it while it opens. The message says it only opens once per sandstorm. But the door closes really fast. There'll only be enough time for a few of us to enter. I made a deal with

Gwen that we would do it. She thinks we're idiots for trying it this way when there's an easier solution, and I'm going to stop here. But suffice to say, the door gets opened, it works, and they go through. I am very interested in seeing what happens from there. So I have to wrap though, because I just wasn't

able to get through at all. Apologies. I know that probably I shouldn't have talked about Charlie Kirk for as long as I did, but you know what, I just needed to get it out, kids, I just needed to say it. I just had to. So sorry, not sorry, appreciate you all so much and until next time to the loom motherfuckers that was an unspoiled network past