Motif · Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Carl's family

'After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech.' What Carl says of himself in the first chapter, and what leaks out after: a mother who locked him in the basement with his father's Frogger machine whenever his father's friends came over, and who left; a heavily tattooed father who laughed at him, broke his slingshot and never replaced it, and drove on past a wrecked moving truck saying it was a shame.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 2 — The staircase
• Chapter 3 — Da Tutorial Guild
• Chapter 6 — Donut talks
• Chapter 26 — Six and a half hours
• Chapter 32 — The pedicure kit
• Chapter 41 — People buckets
• Chapter 42 — The Maestro's show

Progression

'After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech' (ch. 1); a coast guardsman aboard a cutter as a technician, never face-to-face with real law enforcement but trained in hand-to-hand combat (ch. 2); Bea's dad a lawyer out of Yakima (ch. 8). Of his parents: a mother who locked him in the basement with his father's Frogger cabinet while his father's friends drank (ch. 6); a mother who left, and a father last seen laughing at him over 12 years ago — 'Not since he'd abandoned me that day' (ch. 13, ch. 21); a father who drove on past a wrecked Penske truck (ch. 26); his mother's promise the day she left that it would be okay — 'It had been a lie then' (ch. 41). What Carl says of himself, and no more.