Chapter 3 of 26 · Book 2, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Chapter 3 — The Over City explained

Book: Carl's Doomsday Scenario · Previous: Chapter 2 — Race and class · Next: Chapter 4 — Knives from a window · Floor: Floor 3 — The Over City · Series: the series

Opening

“This is called the Over City,” Mordecai said as we walked along the wooden street.

Summary

The Over City explained on the walk: an Arizona-sized stage set on a fictional volcano, hundreds of villages in a sea of ruins, NPCs who are living biological creatures printed by Borant and mind-wiped between seasons — the goblins' meth war was written for this world only. Illegal outside a Syndicate production; legal, and worse, on the eighteenth floor, a billionaires' retreat no crawler has reached.

Rules of the floor: level-75 swordsmen guards with a death penalty and no jail; ruins full of mobs, worse at night; villages safe by day; girls with horns to be avoided. A dungeon locator hidden in a discoloured rock points to a medium skyfowl settlement 34 km away. Mordecai walks off toward a pub.

Characters

• Mordecai — The floor lecture; heads for a bar.
• Carl — Asks whether the NPCs know what they are.
• Princess Donut — Riding Carl with Mongo on her back — a vaudeville act.

Locations

• The Over City — Villages, ruins, guards, the volcano story.

Motifs

• The mobs are victims — Printed people with false memories.
• Borant — Owns the NPCs it engineered.
• The gods — 'What about gods?' 'those don’t appear until the fourth floor'