Place · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The Hunting Grounds

The sixth floor by its NPC name, first spoken by Mordecai on the third: for the over-city's printed residents it is the next level down, an urban floor of bigger and richer villages gone to jungle ruin, once ruled by the high elves. Signet was taken from it as a child, and Carl guesses her story is heading back there. One of the Desperado Club's unlit doors leads to stairs down to it, which open once crawlers reach the sixth floor.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — The vice principal's office
• Chapter 5 — Zockau
• Chapter 8 — The Night Wyrm's web
• Chapter 10 — No dinosaurs of any kind
• Chapter 14 — Were-castors
• Chapter 15 — The kids' menu
• Chapter 22 — Samantha, open wide
• Chapter 28 — Premature Questjaculation
• Chapter 29 — Blood and ink
• Chapter 34 — How to kill a mantis
• Chapter 44 — The Recital
• Chapter 52 — Gehenna Bramble
• Chapter 58 — The last stall in the women's bathroom
• Chapter 73 — Wonderwall, again

Arc

The third floor's layout under centuries of jungle, 2,344 exits (ch. 1); Forkith's Cookbook map — a named city in the north, a high-elf city in the southeast, naiads between (ch. 5); Iceland-sized, with a 500-kilometre river and a dozen bridges (ch. 9). The changelings' ancient home; Signet's; the floor where the rich can die, and do.