Character · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Princess Donut

GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk — Bea's tortoiseshell Persian show cat, carried into the dungeon under Carl's arm. An Enhanced Pet Biscuit makes her sapient, a tiara makes her royalty, a charisma score in the forties makes her a talker of goblins and a natural on television. Crawler #4,119. Carl is, per the system, her Royal Bodyguard.

Segment appearances

Arc

Legendary Diva

Ten minutes in a booth and Donut is a Legendary Diva, a bard who cannot sing (ch. 1, ch. 4): spells cast by song, Golden Throat as a corrective, the A-Team theme for Standing Ovation (ch. 3), a vocal coach in the saferoom (ch. 36), and a stripping spell called Laundry Day that Carl has her train every day toward a number he will not explain (ch. 4, ch. 55). She sings Entourage on a rollercoaster (ch. 5) and through a weasel fight (ch. 16), hears Wonderwall from a castle vent over the alarm (ch. 26), and by the end sings her mother's lullaby so well it becomes a spell (ch. 74).

Mayor, guildmate, plaintiff

She owns towns now — Point Mongo first, renamed when the mayor goes into the river (ch. 11), then three on her collar (ch. 39) — refuses the title Mayor, names her sergeants and will not leave Mongo. Something she has read on the social board, never named, is a thing she is 'supposed to pretend like I don't know', and Katia, she says, has already left them (ch. 12); she smuggles Valtay agents to Zev and the Borant Emancipation Front, by a channel Carl assumes is the same board (ch. 20). Not invited to CrawlCon (ch. 21), she is instead the reason seven hundred fan chapters exist, and 'as she suggested' they sue the Syndicate (ch. 41, ch. 43). She blackmails a doorkeeper with a ledger (ch. 58) and reads a liaison better than the liaison reads himself (ch. 59).

Ferdinand

The cruelty aimed at her is a cat. The queen's familiar in the howdah is Ferdinand, her long-distance beau from the window, whose memory, she says, they changed to turn him into a jerk, and she takes a lightning bolt for Mongo and then sees who fired it (ch. 51). 'It's not even a discussion' — they are not going down the stairs early — and of the heartache, 'It'll make for a good song' (ch. 52). Instead she charms him: a tiara that doubles her charisma, a narcissist who fawns while insisting he leads (ch. 72), and then, with a potion of her own cat's blood, a minion who calls her his bride and saves Carl by accident (ch. 74, ch. 75).

The mask

She tames a pack leader with one potion and two rules (ch. 49), bleeds Mongo without thumbs (ch. 46), reads a spellbook too soon (ch. 47), casts a Fireball (ch. 27), and asks Carl whether he would do for her what a goat did for his mother (ch. 47). Her pet-show entry has a moonwalk (ch. 70); her talent-show entry has thirty velociraptors in sea costumes (ch. 74), and 'Sic 'em' (ch. 75). In the pit she strips a god with Laundry Day at fifteen, and her cockroach skill saves her from a lightning she would not survive twice (ch. 76). Level 55, top billing, Co-Warlord, number one on the leaderboard — and, in Carl's arms, she asks why it does not hurt as much as it should. He tells her about the mask (ch. 77). In the epilogue she picks a class unread, Viper Queen, and clicks Florida (epilogue).