Chapter 12 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 12 — The Dismemberment Limited

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 11 — Gore-Gore · Next: Chapter 13 — The Ugly-Ass Backpack · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

“Carl, Carl, I hit level 28 and I got a sponsor!

Summary

Sponsors: Donut has Princess D'nadia of the Prism Kingdom, the tentacle-faced Sac from Ripper Wonton's panel; Carl has the Valtay Corporation — 'Not a word about them out loud. Borant hates them' — and Katia, Princess Formidable of the Skull Empire, whom Carl privately identifies as King Rust's daughter, perhaps now heir. Gore-Gore drops an Ochre Line Engineer's Key, hair restorer, and a neighbourhood map that is the whole ochre line, stations 11–435 with every train on it: the X-marked train still climbing, a jam behind the wreck, and mobs already walking the electrified track between stations, dying on the third rail. Stations 11–72 are a block or two apart; 300 and 301 are forty miles. Katia is on the floor crying: Gore-Gore's blade took four fingers and healing did not restore them — she rebuilt them from her own clay, but 'part of me is gone. I'm losing myself.' Carl: they can cut everything else off; don't let them break you. She needs to be 90% metal.

Katia plots a route — ochre, a jump to the Dismemberment Limited, the Mauve line, the Nightmare Express to 436 — in hours instead of days ('I don’t understand what the hell you just said, but I believe you'). Imani's report: every fifth station has tunnels where the mobs queue by race for a Pooka to hand each one a Rev-Up Vitamin Shot — a race-specific opiate brewed by a Krakaren borough boss — then portal home; miss the fix and they change. Carl's theory: the only way to make free-willed monsters run a timetable is to addict them all, and the floor breaks the moment anyone stops a train. The Dismemberment Limited is a maglev with a glass nose and a driver who begs them not to board: Levi the Seventh, a Troll Flesher on a hobgoblin skeleton, the product of a ninth-floor war-mage spell called You're Not Done Yet, on his seventh iteration. Quest: keep Levi from being devoured, or everyone aboard becomes a Flesher. Hundreds of skins slap at Carl's gangway chock; War Mage Dismember, who has eaten six parties, leans on the plate and promises a flaying without death. Surprise Three: Donut's Hole, Carl's hand through it, a fistful of silver hair, and the spell snapped off. 'What was that, bitch? I didn't quite get that last part.'

Characters

• Carl — The Valtay sponsor; the ochre map; drags a war mage's head through a hole.
• Princess Donut — Level 28; Princess D'nadia; Hole to level two; Surprise Three.
• Katia Grim — Four fingers gone; Princess Formidable; routes the party across the Tangle.
• Levi the Seventh — Driver of the Dismemberment Limited: a Flesher on hobgoblin bones, seven times over.
• Dismember — An elf-looking war mage who needs eight more iterations; beheaded through a hole.
• Imani — The Pooka tunnels and the Rev-Up Vitamin Shots.
• Princess D'nadia — Donut's sponsor.
• Princess Formidable — Katia's sponsor: a Skull Empire princess.

Locations

• The Iron Tangle — The full ochre map; distances between stations; mobs on the tracks.
• The Dismemberment Limited — A blood-caked maglev with one door, a driver and a war mage in the back.

Motifs

• The Valtay Corporation — Sponsoring Carl; Borant hates them.
• The Skull Empire — Princess Formidable sponsors Katia.
• The Rev-Up Vitamin Shots — Named: Rev-Up Vitamin Shots, race-specific opiates from a Krakaren; the floor's ecosystem.
• The mobs are victims — A floor of addicts; Levi begging strangers not to board.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Several sizes of gangway chock now — 'I need to put handles on these.'