Characters
The main cast, the people who recur, and everyone else the books name. Through book 1.
The party
- Carlfrom book 1The narrator. Twenty-seven, ex–Coast Guard, a marine technician in Seattle, six foot three; on the night the world's buildings vanish he is outside in boxer shorts, a leather jacket and his ex-girlfriend's pink Crocs, coaxing her cat out of a tree, which is why he enters the dungeon without pants and soon without shoes. Crawler #4,122. He fights bare-fisted and barefoot, discovers a gift for improvised explosives, and gets angrier at the people running the show than at anything in it.
- Princess Donutfrom book 1GC, 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.
- Mongofrom book 1The pet Donut chooses from the kobolds' menagerie on the second floor — a seven-inch, pink-feathered 'Mongoliensis' that bites her nose and fights anything it sees. Bonded as her Royal Steed hours before the floor closes. Odette supplies the translation: velociraptor.
- Mordecaifrom book 1The tutorial guide assigned to Carl and Donut: a former crawler, born skyfowl, who chose Changeling and reached the eleventh floor of his own season, now serving out an indentureship as a shapeshifting NPC in a guild room with his mother's ashes and a photograph of his brother. He is bound by rules about what he may say, and he says as much as he can.
The supporting cast
The people the story keeps coming back to.
With them from the start
- Imanifrom book 1A young nurse from the Meadow Lark eldercare facility in Wenatchee, ninety pounds and level 10 with twelve crawler-killer skulls when Carl meets her: she had to put down the residents the monsters would otherwise have burned. Says almost nothing. Shows Carl how to use the pedicure kit.
- Elle McGibbonsfrom book 1Ninety-nine years old, wheelchair-bound, sometimes calling Carl 'Barry' after her late husband, and fond of telling him what she would have let him do in the tunnel of love. When the Rage Elemental's spell throws her against the hallway ceiling, Carl carries her over his shoulder into the safe room.
- Zevfrom book 1A two-foot-tall kua-tin in a water-filled 1950s space suit: Borant's Assistant Communications Representative, assigned to Carl and Donut as their PR agent once interview requests pile up. Terrified of her own government, starved of anyone to talk to about Gossip Girl.
- Odettefrom book 1Host of Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette, the most-tunnelled private program in the galaxy. On camera a crab-taur in a mantis helmet; off camera a legless human woman on a floating disc who was once a crawler, once Mordecai's trainer, and now makes money from Carl and Donut staying alive.
- The System AIfrom book 1The voice that reads every item description, names every achievement and awards every box — snide, profane, obsessed with Carl's bare feet. Distinct from Borant, which runs the season; the AI runs the game.
- Lucia Marfrom book 1A girl of about thirteen in a yellow soccer jersey with two rottweilers, Cici and Gustavo 3, who is the recap show's favourite from the first episode: silver armour, a mace, four crawler-killer skulls by the second floor, and a dog that mauls Odette's producer.
- Li Nafrom book 1Li Jun's sister: one of the two people the Maestro leaves frozen in a hallway scene on Death Watch, whom Li Jun and Zhang are told to choose between with their two teleport points. They refuse to choose, and she escapes with them through the troglodytes into a safe room.
- Li Jun and Zhangfrom book 1Two warehouse workers plucked out of a hallway between hornets and troglodytes to play Death Watch for the lives of Li Jun's sister Li Na and their manager. They refuse to choose, and Carl gets them sent back with a plan instead of a teleport point.
Recurring
Present in three or more of the books read, by how often.
Everyone else
Everyone else the books name, grouped by the book that first names them. Open a book, or type a name.
Book 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl 27
- Agatha — A homeless woman with a shopping cart, an IKEA bag of spray paint and a pink flamingo with an arrow through its head, who set fire to the eldercare facility and walked down the dungeon's stairs cackling. Level two without ever going through the tutorial. She is edited out of the recap episode, and her cart is not what it seems.
- Bea — Beatrice, Carl's ex-girlfriend, Donut's owner and handler, in the Bahamas, with her ex-boyfriend along, when the world ends. Never on the page in person; present in Carl's resentment and in every one of Donut's sentences that begins 'Miss Beatrice.'
- Brandon — Brandon An — a maintenance man at Meadow Lark with a comically large lightning hammer, whose group spray-painted 'Stairs + People' on the walls, and who will not leave the surviving residents behind. He builds the redoubt with Carl and names it the Speedbump.
- Chris — Chris Andrews 2 — Brandon's older brother, near-silent ('Silent Bob'), who casts a magic spear and pulls the residents' train in a tuskling pig harness.
- Ferdinand — Someone Donut loved from the moment she first saw him, whom she invokes on her deathbed after the Juicer and in her drunken confession under the Krakaren, and ranks above Carl. Carl asks, 'Who the hell is Ferdinand?' She will not say.
- Frank Q and Maggie My — A married couple — whom Carl takes for police by their bearing — who stumbled into the dungeon with their teenage daughter and were told by their guide that the only way to survive was to kill other crawlers. Frank has three skulls when Carl meets him; Maggie has five. Their daughter, Yvette, would not.
- Hekla — An Icelandic woman in a Valkyrie helmet with a repeating crossbow that shoots firebolts, whom the show dresses as a shieldmaiden and who gathers an all-female party, Brynhild's Daughters. Seen only on screen in the first book.
- Jack this book only — A Meadow Lark resident in a Cincinnati Bengals hat who pokes the women and asks 'You still alive, Marybeth?' He urinates on a dungeon wall on the second floor after the system has announced that doing so summons a Rage Elemental.
- King Rust — King Rust of the Skull Empire, 'who recently arrived in earth orbit': the orc king named on Odette's show, quiet about his son being called Carl's Naughty Little Piggie.
- Lexis — Odette's associate producer, a thin not-quite-human woman with a tablet who walks the guests to the couch and tells them where the invisible walls are.
- Meadow Lark (party) — The party of night-staff and residents from the Meadow Lark eldercare facility in Wenatchee, Washington, camped at the borough boss's stairwell on the first floor when Carl and Donut find them: four able-bodied workers, Agatha and thirty-three elderly residents, with about thirty more in a Waffle House safe room nearby. The Royal Court of Princess Donut fights beside them without ever joining them.
- Mistress Tiatha — 'Our tutorial guide lady, Mistress Tiatha': the Meadow Lark party's guide, whom Brandon calls their guildmaster, and who told them where the stairwells are.
- Mrs. Parsons this book only — Carl's first-floor neighbour, leaning out of her window to complain about the howling cat when the building is crushed. She is the first person he watches die.
- Mukta this book only — The Admin who substitutes for Zev during her suspension, overrides her booking, and puts Carl and Donut on the Maestro's show with the words 'You seem to be under the impression that you have a say in this, crawler.'
- Prince Maestro — Host of Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem, a gold-tusked orc in a pink silk shirt who calls his teenage audience 'piglets' and makes doomed crawlers guess who dies for the chance to save one another. A prince of the Skull Empire, bound for the ninth floor, and — after Carl humiliates him on air and an anonymous 'snick' goes viral — known across the tunnels as Carl's Naughty Little Piggie.
- Prince Stalwart — Crown Prince of the Skull Empire and the Maestro's older brother, who, Zev says, owns the production behind the Maestro's show. Carl wonders whether the voice that threatened to drown him and Donut when they tried to walk off it was his.
- Ralph this book only — Level 11 Neighborhood Boss: a frenzied gerbil, champion of the kobold fighting pits, whose mouth opens as wide as a dingo's. Swallowed by a freed dingo, blown out of it, stunned, and smushed under Carl's bare foot.
- Randall this book only — A Meadow Lark resident with a walker who pushes into the boss arena to see if the kids are all right; killed beside Yolanda by the Rage Elemental.
- Rebecca W this book only — A level-3 crawler with a koi-and-crane sleeve tattoo, found naked and dead against a wall 200 metres from a safe room with an apple core in her inventory and Killed by Crawler Frank Q over her corpse. Frank's story makes her a human trafficker; the Maestro's footage shows she was just afraid.
- Rory and Lorelai this book only — Two level-7 goblin shamankas — one pierced fifty times, one in a bone necklace — whom Donut charms into tears and a chopper by asking whether the piercings are a daddy thing. They start a meth war with the llamas on her word.
- Tally this book only — Bopca Protector of the first safe room Carl and Donut find, a hairy, motionless gnome in a paper hat with a Slavic accent who makes the best vindaloo Carl has ever eaten, special-orders salmon for Her Highness, and explains what happened to the last planet the Squim Conglomerate ran.
- The Ball of Swine this book only — Level 15 Borough Boss: thirty tuskling knights and courtesans fused by war magic into a rolling sphere of flesh that guards the stairwell to floor two. Popped like a balloon by the Speedbump, then slaughtered in their tuxedos and gowns.
- The Hoarder this book only — Level 7 Neighborhood Boss: a fifteen-foot woman in PINK sweatpants buried in a room of garbage, vomiting Scatterers, begging in Spanish to be sent to Jesus. Carl beats her to death with his fists and a dog leash, and never forgets it.
- The Juicer this book only — Level 9 Neighborhood Boss: a troglodyte fused with a bodybuilder, curling in a gym boss room and throwing flaming weight plates. 'Bro, I need a spot, bro.' Donut opens his neck vein and nearly dies of it.
- The Rage Elemental this book only — Level 93 penalty mob summoned by urinating on a dungeon wall, a six-legged badger skull in purple smoke that dissipates only after 666 souls. Kills Yolanda and Randall, besieges a chicken restaurant for most of a day, and is lured into a stairwell to dissolve.
- Yolanda Martinez this book only — Yolanda Martinez 13, a four-foot-eleven CNA from Meadow Lark with a bow and a quiver that drags on the floor. She is the one who has to shoot Jack. She dies standing over Randall when the Rage Elemental comes, and the book stops to give her an obituary.
- Yvette this book only — Frank and Maggie's teenage daughter, who wept in the tutorial guild, refused the gun her mother put in her hand, hid under Maggie's stealth field in the safe room, and was hurt by Carl's rat-corpse trap before her mother strangled her.