Chapter 30 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 30 — The Syndicate logo

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 29 — The Bolt of Ophiotaurus · Next: Chapter 31 — The Iron Tangle, signing off · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

The first thing we did was walk out to the main restaurant.

Summary

A 25,000-gold cleaner bot, a flying Roomba, is bought without haggling. Mordecai: it will not happen again; we are not going to talk about it; what did you pick from the carousel? 'A stupid recipe book.' Then he sees the ring. Divine Suffering rings are generated every season and their owners are the first the sixth-floor hunters track down; in the right hands the power compounds per kill, every Faction Wars champion has one, the factions get idiots to hunt them on the sixth floor; the ring is 'meant for tourists,' to farm combatants by the hundreds — 'It is evil.' He smacks Carl on the side of the head, does not freeze, and is as surprised as Carl, whose father did the same. 'Don't touch me ever again.' The ring comes off; they will talk about selling it on the fifth floor.

Over Katia's blood-spattered map Mordecai draws the Syndicate's logo — overlapping rings of different sizes — and the named lines trace it: the Nightmare's loop, the Escape Velocity (named for the ship that found the wormhole to the Primal ship graveyard and the Vog generation ship). The whole floor is a simplified map of the galaxy, the abyss its centre, the tracks the old worm paths; the six station mimics are the H'lene, who ate travellers at six waystations until the Valtay and the orcs wiped them out. The Krakaren is real: a collective mind spreading through the universe, better translated as the Apothecary; the Pooka are the Plenty, the caprid race whose proprietary tunnelling gave the universe real-time communication and made Borant's relays obsolete. 'This whole floor is a racist political cartoon' — the Plenty as pushers, the Krakaren as the addiction — broadcast by Borant over the Plenty's own tunnels. Mordecai has installed the repair bench Carl found and bought three more benches, a second alchemy table, a metalworking table and a Bolt-Thrower's Workshop; he admires the landmines and the healing smoke curtains and says nothing. Katia folds the map: each line is a noodle with a track on both sides, mirrored and upside down; the logo works twelve or twenty-four or forty-eight times; the mimics are big because they occupy two stations at once; and the room from the recap is the space between. Mordecai remembers the earlier puzzle floor that flipped its crawlers into a hidden chamber. The ghoul generators float, Imani thinks; the bosses at 36 and 48 fill their rooms; the Krakaren young are growing at every 24. 'Fuck me. I think I've figured it out.'

Characters

• Mordecai — Reads the floor as the Syndicate's map; explains the Plenty and the Apothecary; the ring; the slap.
• Katia Grim — Folds the map into a mirrored, upside-down noodle; the six mimics explained.
• Carl — Takes the ring off under threat; sees the chamber in the circle of stairwells.
• Princess Donut — 'A stupid recipe book'; Love Vampire never triggered.

Locations

• The Iron Tangle — A map of the galaxy: the abyss at the centre, worm paths for tracks, the logo in named lines.
• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut — A cleaner bot; new tables; the map on the counter.

Motifs

• The Ring of Divine Suffering — What it is for, and who comes for it on the sixth floor.
• The Krakaren — The Apothecary: a real collective mind, caricatured for politics.
• Borant — A floor-sized cartoon against the Plenty; Escape Velocity and the Syndicate's founding.
• The Syndicate — Its logo, its founding, the H'lene waystations.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Landmines and healing smoke admired, their source unsuspected.