Chapter 1 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 1 — I'm on a train

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Next: Chapter 2 — Transfer station 83 · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

» Welcome, Crawler to the fourth floor.

Summary

The fourth floor opens in a moving Moscow Metro car — the Red Line, car 20 of 20 — with ten days on the clock, 43.1 quadrillion views, a leaderboard rank of 6, a bounty of 100,000, a souvenir hat ('I rode the Iron Tangle'), and a note that sponsorship bidding has opened on Crawler #4,122. Donut's Character Actor skill forces a new class in six minutes; on Mordecai's advice from his new station-settlement room she takes Football Hooligan: +10 constitution, the Mascot skill (Mongo's hits buff the party), and Guinness, which doubles her strength when drunk. Mordecai's aside: a skill she levels once she keeps on the next floor, minus the class levels — 'That seems like a bug.' 'Don't talk about it out loud.'

Katia's constitution has doubled to 102 from a momentum bonus. Working forward through empty cars, they find car 15 is a windowless Janitor's Lair with two Jikininki — seven-foot ghouls in conductor's hats ('How may I hurt you?') — and kill them as Sirin Station (81) arrives packed with Dreks, level-6 demonic babies in packs of fifty that pour into the train and cannot open a sliding door until one of them can. Carl sets Donut's old Alarm and Spike modules in the fore gangway ('Fergalicious' at Norwegian-black-metal volume), learns from a Drek's bite on his sole that his pedicure buffs have lapsed, and remembers what Mordecai once said about Protective Shell: it stays where it is cast. Cast on a moving train it becomes a bulldozer, scraping every mob in cars 16–20 — and a hedgehog ogre called a Psycho Sticker — into paste. 'YOU BETTER GET USED TO IT'

Characters

• Carl — Reads the floor as a subway system; turns Protective Shell into a weapon.
• Princess Donut — Football Hooligan; Mascot and Guinness; 'I LOVE THIS SONG.'
• Katia Grim — Constitution 102 from momentum; Pathfinder shows all twenty cars; sick at the blood.
• Mongo — Decapitates a janitor; too big for the aisles already.
• Mordecai — In a station settlement; class advice by chat; the skill-retention bug.

Locations

• The Iron Tangle — Floor 4: a knot of subway and rail lines; stations, transfer stations, 9,375 stairwells. Car 20 to car 1; Sirin (81), Mora (82), transfer station 83.

Motifs

• The leaderboard — Rank 6, bounty 100,000, shown at the top of the floor.
• Carl's bare feet — The pedicure buffs lapsed; a Drek bites the sole.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Not yet named — but Carl's first thought is defensive structures for train cars.