Motif · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

The interdiction carts

The hobgoblin interdiction team's Rapid-Response carts: battery-powered, five times train speed, a dial to any of a hundred lines, and a blade across the front that is a tunnel-wide portal tuned to a trainyard or the abyss. Started only by two gnolls' left hands. Six of them, singing Billboard hits, clear three lines to the pit; one hangs nose-down over a stairwell hatch as a drain; one carries a war god away.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 26 — Growler Gary
• Chapter 27 — Physical
• Chapter 28 — Plan C
• Chapter 29 — The Bolt of Ophiotaurus
• Chapter 31 — The Iron Tangle, signing off
• Chapter 32 — Prepotente
• Chapter 33 — Death Challenge
• Chapter 34 — Tizquick and Brandy

Progression

Found in the back of a yard at 75, dusty, never used, because the hobgoblins could not start them (ch. 26). Two left hands, fourteen deaths. Six launched with alarm traps for horns (ch. 27); the Mindaro mistake — two carts, one song, the second caught the first (ch. 28); a Terminus mimic scooped by accident (ch. 28); the Def Leppard cart hung nose-down over a hatch as a drain (ch. 31), lifted a foot to bait a province boss (ch. 32), and the last cart driven onto a god's vessel (ch. 32, ch. 33).