Chapter 1 of 35 · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Chapter 1 — Hump Town

Book: The Gate of the Feral Gods · Next: Chapter 2 — The Wasteland through a telescope · Floor: Floor 5 — The Bubbles · Series: the series

Opening

» Welcome, Crawler, to the fifth floor.

Summary

The fifth floor opens in a sandstorm: fifteen days on the clock, 1.43 quintillion views, third on the leaderboard, a bounty of 800,000, 178,887 crawlers left, and an achievement (The Quarry Sees Another Spring) for entering a stairwell in the top ten that doubles every bounty against Carl from now on. Bubble 543 of 1,172, Air Quadrant. Donut's Character Actor forces a class in the wind: Glass Cannon, everything but the +15 constitution, so no more riding Mongo into battle. A cave mouth in the sand is the way to the subterranean zone, sealed by a forcefield until 'your current quadrant's castle is liberated'; a banger sphere rolled through it sets off a trap somewhere below, and Katia's torch lights a carved brick hallway with a screaming, flaming pterodactyl on the walls: a tomb. The Necropolis of Anser. A burned-out shell of a vehicle lies half-buried in the sand, unlabelled.

Hump Town is a brothel town of eight-foot bipedal camels — Dromedarians, 'once known for their abject brutality', now content to smoke weed — walled in riveted metal under striped fabric sails they furl onto city hall the moment the storm stops. Clay, the gatekeeper with a homemade anti-air bazooka, takes a blitz stick as toll and tells them to stay out of city hall, which spawns the quest Stay out of city hall. Mordecai is a clipped rock-edge skyfowl cleric ('Imagine if you suddenly woke up in the body of a eunuch and were then thrown into a supermodel orgy'), and the sky is a dome four or five kilometres up: they are on top of a tower, and the castle is a speck against the ceiling. The announcement in The Toe: 1,172 bubbles, four quadrants each (Land, Sea, Air, Subterranean), a castle with a stairwell in every throne room, and all four castles must fall before anyone's stairwell opens. Mordecai's arithmetic: about 150 crawlers in the bubble, three dozen in this quadrant, most of them underpowered, and less than four days per castle.

Characters

• Carl — Bounties doubled; scammed by a camel; 'There's your castle.'
• Princess Donut — Glass Cannon, without the constitution; vomits sand on his shoulder.
• Katia Grim — Reads the bowl as a tomb; 'We're under a dome.'
• Mordecai — A clipped skyfowl cleric, gathering intel in a brothel town.
• Mongo — Miserable in his container; two clockwork copies as sand scouts.
• Clay — Gatekeeper of Hump Town; a blitz stick for the toll, and a laugh about it.
• Juice Box — The Toe's one changeling prostitute, pouting after the party declines.
• Elle McGibbons — On a floating island of lashed boats, in a hailstorm, in a hold of fish monsters.
• Imani — With Elle in the sea quadrant of some other bubble.
• Daniel Bautista — In a claustrophobic tunnel somewhere.

Locations

• The Bubbles — 1,172 snowglobes, four quadrants each; announced.
• Hump Town — Nested semicircles, sails on city hall, Hump Street.
• The Necropolis of Anser — The tomb under the bowl; a sealed cave mouth.
• The Wasteland — A speck against the ceiling of the dome.
• Safe rooms — The Toe: a bar, a few rooms, one prostitute.

Motifs

• The leaderboard — Bounties doubled for the top ten; 800,000 on Carl.
• Achievements — The Quarry Sees Another Spring.
• The crawler count — 178,887.
• Quests — 'Stay out of city hall.'
• Race and class — Glass Cannon; a cleric's clipped wings.
• The dromedarians — A hunter race gone lethargic in a stalemate.
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — No warning about doubled bounties; a line about changelings.