Character · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Katia Grim

Crawler #9,077,265, a former art teacher and one of Brynhild's Daughters, sent to Carl and Donut by Hekla to level up: a doppelganger who must sculpt her own face and gets it wrong, in a Monster Truck Driver class whose constitution climbs with speed. Level 9 when she arrives at the One-Eyed Narwhal; 21 when she leaves the floor with them.

Segment appearances

Arc

The lost lamb

Constitution 102 from a momentum bonus on a moving train (ch. 1); a shatter shield that explains the doppelganger rule — ten per cent metal, continuous (ch. 2); an art history professor told by Zev's audience that she is boring (ch. 6) and by Donut that she needs a mohawk. Gore-Gore takes four fingers and healing does not give them back: 'part of me is gone. I'm losing myself' (ch. 12). Carl's answer is the Ugly-Ass Backpack: a ton and a quarter of robot steel, six legs, a slug, a blob, an eleven-foot Hekla (ch. 13). A third eye that lets her watch behind her, and less human for it (ch. 18). A Makeup Table bought with both coupons; Hekla's face at 65% (ch. 10); Carl's face well enough to fool a god (ch. 33); a gnoll at 98% that a key still refuses (ch. 26).

The cowcatcher

Hekla comes back for her with thirty Daughters, and the plan is Katia's own: fasten herself to the front of a subway train as scoop and spikes (ch. 21). 'She brought the entire team to pick me up. That is more than anyone has ever done for me.' Carl feels her heartbeat through the plate. Two Dirty Little Phased Bolts in her shoulder inside her own scoop, amnesia and a bleed to 1% (ch. 22); Eva's mockery in her own voice — Fannar, the adoption, 'this is why I left you behind' (ch. 23); and Rush, the ability she hates, which misses Eva by inches and kills Hekla against the wall. Level 24 to 37 in one blow; a golden skull; the first bounty of the season (ch. 23). 'Goddamn it, there's nowhere to sit down and have a breakdown in here' (ch. 24).

Monster Truck Driver

She loots the key and, quietly, the crossbow (ch. 24). Then the boxes: a Desperado tattoo, Find Crawler, the 500,000, the Gorgo belt (ch. 25); a riot shield that turns Rush into Crowd Blast every five minutes, a baton, and one bolt for a god's eye from a princess who dislikes her brother (ch. 29). The map is hers: the prime numbers she did not see, the route in hours not days (ch. 12), and at the end the folded paper — a mirrored, upside-down noodle with a chamber between (ch. 30). She tracks blood across the saferoom floor while laughing about her mother, and is on the team for good without anyone saying so (ch. 25); the blood she stored on the cowcatcher erupts in every direction when the rules change (ch. 29). The recap calls her kill rage (ch. 25); Odette calls her zippier (epilogue); the leaderboard calls her a Monster Truck Driver, eighth.