Character · Book 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Mordecai

The tutorial guide assigned to Carl and Donut: a former crawler, born skyfowl, who chose Changeling and reached the eleventh floor of his own season, now serving out an indentureship as a shapeshifting NPC in a guild room with his mother's ashes and a photograph of his brother. He is bound by rules about what he may say, and he says as much as he can.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 2 — The staircase
• Chapter 3 — Da Tutorial Guild
• Chapter 4 — The character sheet
• Chapter 5 — Inventory and the ratings panel
• Chapter 6 — Donut talks
• Chapter 7 — The Royal Court
• Chapter 8 — Rats and Scatterers
• Chapter 11 — The Hoarder
• Chapter 12 — Six tiers of bosses
• Chapter 13 — Rebecca W
• Chapter 14 — The premiere
• Chapter 15 — Mapping the first floor
• Chapter 20 — Frank Q
• Chapter 21 — Bitchmeat!
• Chapter 25 — No gods here
• Chapter 26 — Six and a half hours
• Chapter 27 — After the arena
• Chapter 28 — The green room
• Chapter 29 — Odette off air
• Chapter 30 — Floor two
• Chapter 32 — The pedicure kit
• Chapter 33 — Plan Pied Piper
• Chapter 35 — Dragged out by a cat
• Chapter 36 — Zev
• Chapter 37 — The janitors
• Chapter 40 — Bomb Chicken
• Chapter 43 — The Maestro explains himself
• Chapter 44 — What Donut overheard
• Chapter 45 — The kobold boss chamber
• Chapter 46 — The dungeon groans
• Chapter 47 — 124.8 trillion
• Epilogue — Epilogue: Odette's couch

Arc

Part 1 — the drunk in the guild room

A level-50 Rat Hooligan with a photograph of his brother and an urn of his mother's ashes (ch. 3), Mordecai is the book's exposition and its conscience. He tells Carl what the crawl is, that it is his last tour, that the deepest any crawler has gone is floor 13; he explains species, stats and ratings (ch. 4), inventory and safe rooms (ch. 5), and is cut off mid-warning as the tiara goes on (ch. 7): 'You can always leave the party.'

He is bound: he may not name a boss's weakness before the fight (ch. 25), may not discuss the Desperado Club or the third floor, and answers the question of whether the bosses will always be people with 'there will be a lot of… recycling' (ch. 12). Within those limits he gives the book its method — 'There will always be clues. Look for them' — and its warning: 'There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege' (ch. 25).

Part 2 — the Bugaboo

On the second floor he is a seven-foot obsidian Bugaboo with a tidied room (ch. 35, ch. 47) and a history. Odette was his trainer; he would rather devour his own children than work for her again (ch. 35), and she admits she pushed him too hard and he paid dearly (epilogue). His brother was a crawler who took the Storm Commander class on her advice (ch. 47); he will not say more. Damien is a name he flinches at.

With the cameras off in Zev's presence he says what he cannot otherwise: the Bloom, the badges, the bankrupt kua-tin system, and Borant forced by its own government to end the game as fast as it can (ch. 36). Odette has told Carl the rest — Mordecai's contract only counts if one of his crawlers reaches the fourth floor (ch. 29) — which is the motive under every piece of help he gives.