Motif · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods
The collapse dead
'People who die in the collapse aren't really dead, but they're put in storage.' Maggie's claim, in Chris's voice, that the dead of the first night can be brought back, changed, and put in a crawler's path on the deeper floors; the Cookbook has hints of it and Mordecai has not been asked. The epilogue's word for them is the Collected.
Segment appearances
Progression
'People who die in the collapse aren't really dead, but they're put in storage' — Maggie, as Chris, about a daughter (ch. 14); Jennifer and Dale's three children (ch. 17); no pregnancies in the dungeon and no answer about pregnant crawlers (ch. 25); 'They have my other daughter' (ch. 34). The epilogue's null remembers Crawler Hoon's five children as hunter-killers guarding the elevator to the twelfth floor, and the ban on collected children that followed (epilogue).