Character · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Tipid

A Crest and former crawler, author of the Cookbook's fourth-edition notes ('It was me or him, and I chose to save myself'), who pilots the Homecoming Queen — a Long Haul garbage freighter converted to carry fifty thousand former crawlers — into Earth orbit as troopers for the Princess Posse. He knows what the bone key costs, because he once faced a similar choice between saving himself and saving another.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 11 — Tipid; fifty thousand
• Chapter 12 — The base camp; Tina
• Chapter 13 — The FUPA; a suicide bomber
• Chapter 14 — The flag room and the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 20 — Christmas Morning; the Ramp-Up
• Chapter 22 — Colonel Boomer
• Chapter 23 — Killing in the Name
• Chapter 24 — No Man's Land
• Chapter 28 — Toyotomi; Agatha is looking for Carl
• Chapter 29 — The Bamboozle
• Chapter 30 — Comrades
• Chapter 32 — King Rust arrives
• Chapter 33 — Parlay
• Chapter 39 — Alliances break; Operation Snake Pit
• Chapter 40 — Little Günter; a dragon chain
• Chapter 41 — The production facility; Aryl goes dark
• Chapter 46 — Operation Snake Pit: the line of succession
• Chapter 48 — Colonel Prepotente
• Chapter 49 — Bijou, Theia and Khepri
• Chapter 50 — The Temple of the Dagda
• Chapter 51 — Dark Purpose
• Chapter 52 — The Temple of Khepri
• Chapter 55 — Head Banger; Milk
• Chapter 56 — Justice Light; the Nest
• Chapter 59 — Operation Ruin
• Chapter 60 — Meatus; the King's Point erupts
• Chapter 65 — Bear Witness
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 78 — The Scavenger's daughter is with us now
• Chapter 79 — Tart
• Chapter 80 — Inside the dragon
• Chapter 81 — Executive Order 11905
• Chapter 82 — Ursensus
• Chapter 84 — And then there were two
• Chapter 85 — Zerzura
• Chapter 86 — We just need to kill you

Arc

The scalped, sun-leathered Crest Liquid Dervish whose name knocks Carl into a door: 'We've been watching, and we couldn't watch anymore' (ch. 11). His interlude: a key in bloody hands, Cassio and Horatio dead, a brain the Viceroys repaired for his pension, a chain snapped and thrown away (ch. 11). He puts Boomer in charge of the 106th (ch. 22), explains gondii (ch. 30), the necklace (ch. 32), and the ring's history, holds the FUPA through Operation Ruin (ch. 59), and comes along to the Reaver castle as a bodyguard (ch. 79). The nuke's pulse undoes his repairs: 'Who the fuck are you? And where the hell are we?' — his last memory is his last day as a game guide, and 'I lost my key' (ch. 82). He holds Louis's ribs open anyway (ch. 84). He cannot take a deal now, and stays with the Posse (ch. 86).