Chapter 26 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 26 — Growler Gary

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 25 — Seven hundred hats · Next: Chapter 27 — Physical · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

The level-25 gnoll bartender’s name was Growler Gary.

Summary

Growler Gary, the Shade Gnoll bartender of the Downward Dog, level 25, drunk on the floor: the ghouls came, everyone died, and an invisible wall kept him at the door while Jumping Jen-Jen, the driver whose marrow juice he kept cold, called him a coward and died in front of him. The Tangle 'Turned the whole thing into a Krakaren nest. The whole damn system. Instead of declaring bankruptcy.' A woman came through, looted his brothers and sisters, tore out his throat and took the alcohol — and he woke in his own blood. The Cookbook (Azin, 17th; Drakea, 22nd): an NPC who regenerates has something or knows something. He tells them about the interdiction carts: battery-powered, a dial for any of a hundred lines, 'make sure you take a lead car. They got the front portal.' Carl has already traded the last L'Amours and a jug of moonshine to Limp Richard for the Battery Fabricator — the Cookbook says these batteries were common in earlier crawls. The depot's yard: flatbed trailers, auxiliary carts with one dwarven battery each, five track portals (one to trainyard C, four dial-a-line), and ten never-used Rapid-Response carts with a squeegee blade across the front that is a mobile portal — everything on the track ahead goes to a trainyard or the abyss. 'This cart may only be started by a pair of gnolls.' Two hand-plates, eight feet apart. 'Fuck.'

Katia, who reshapes herself into a gnoll the system accepts at 98% and still cannot start it, stays in the personal space; Mongo, level 23, is given the job. Bautista has three stranded groups reaching three lines — Sinopia, Mindaro, Grullo — from different heights of the pit; the plan is two carts per line, the first tuned to the abyss to sweep the wrecks and ghouls, the second, fifteen minutes later, tuned to the yard for the crawlers standing on the track. The plates want a left hand each, and the engine dies when a hand is lifted: fourteen left hands, fourteen deaths, Gary sobered by each resurrection and hiding in the back room with a spear by the fifth. Carl stops it and tells him everything. 'And this is to get the people who killed my friends?' 'Yes.' 'Will you give me some when it is done?' He puts down the spear: 'Do your best to make sure it doesn't hurt.'

Characters

• Growler Gary — An indestructible bartender killed fourteen times for his left hands; consents to the last ten.
• Carl — Reads the depot; the Battery Fabricator bought; explains the killing to its victim.
• Princess Donut — 'DOGS ARE LIARS'; directs Mongo — face first, then the hands.
• Mongo — Level 23; the executioner.
• Katia Grim — A 98% gnoll the key refuses; dismantles an engine with her Gear Head hobby; stays out of the bar.
• Daniel Bautista — Maps three groups to three lines from the pit.
• Limp Richard — Traded the fabricator for the rest of the westerns.

Locations

• Station 75 — The Downward Dog's back room slick with blood; the yard of carts and five portals.
• The Abyss — Three lines reach three stranded groups at different heights.

Motifs

• The mobs are victims — 'If you're sorry, then why are you doing it?'
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Regenerating NPCs; the batteries; Katia's hobby potion.
• 'You're not going to break me' — Thought, not said, before the first killing.
• The interdiction carts — A portal on a blade; two gnoll hands; the plan for the pit.