Place · from book 3

Larracos

'The capital city of the disputed lands. It is the prize over which the factions fight,' says a crocodilian guard at the Desperado Club's casino, where a staircase leads down to it and the faction armies party until the crawlers reach the ninth floor.

First appears: Book 3

Series arc

As of book 4. 'Larracos is the capital city of the disputed lands, […] It is the prize over which the factions fight.' — a staircase and cheering from below in book 3, where the faction armies party until the ninth floor. Book 4 makes it real and then drowns it: real stores, the College of Magecraft, every place on Ghazi's list, an inverted cone with a castle at the bottom and nine petals of faction ground around it, and Priestly's poem to it. Its faction market is flooded with sharks and seawater by the Gate, opened by Katia under the sea while a decoy sits in the sand, and its shopkeepers, mercenaries, actors and students die under a rule that says NPCs cannot be replaced; half the faction armies are caught in it. Juice Box is sent there as a bird to tell the survivors what they are.

Open threads

Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.

Thread	Opened	Status
The changelings, and the promise to bring them down every floor	B4 ch. 34	open — Sent through to the sixth floor; Juice Box to Larracos to tell the survivors what they are; a wedding to Louis.
Consequences of the flood	B4 ch. 34	open — Tens of thousands of irreplaceable NPCs dead, says Zev; the Desperado Club likely cut off; a politburo's warning; 'There'll be consequences.'

All threads: Open threads.

Through book 3

First named at the Desperado Club's casino, where a crocodilian guard explains that a staircase leads down to it: 'Larracos is the capital city of the disputed lands, […] It is the prize over which the factions fight.' where the faction armies wait until the crawlers reach the ninth floor (B3 ch. 9). Mordecai: crawlers pass over that floor 'like it's a tornado passing by overhead' (B3 ch. 30).

Through book 4

Real stores; the College of Magecraft; every place on Ghazi's list; an inverted cone with a castle at the bottom and nine petals around it (B4 ch. 3, B4 ch. 21, B4 ch. 24); Priestly's poem to it (B4 ch. 33). Its faction market is flooded with sharks and seawater by the Gate, its shopkeepers and mercenaries dead and irreplaceable (B4 ch. 34). Juice Box is sent there.

Trace

The thread line by line, in reading order: its presence before anyone could see it, and the lines that made it legible. Each line is verbatim from the cited book.

Where	The line	Note
Book 2, Ch. 18	some dude in some sprawling capital city that was on the ninth floor.	Unnamed in book 2: the top of the Over City's chain of command.

Where they appear

Book	Chapters they are in (of the book's)	Where
3 — The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook	1/35	Ch. 9 · the book's own page
4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods	6/35	Ch. 3, Ch. 21, Ch. 23, Ch. 24, Ch. 33, Ch. 34 · the book's own page

By book

Larracos in book 3 — The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

A staircase in the casino and cheering from below: the factions party until the ninth floor (ch. 9). 'The ninth floor was like a distant, looming stop sign.' Mordecai: crawlers ride the ninth 'like it’s a tornado passing by overhead' (ch. 30).

Larracos in book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods

The city

Real stores with NPC proprietors, and everyone expelled when the crawlers arrive (ch. 3); the College of Magecraft, the theatre district, the Tome of Scholars (ch. 21); every destination on Ghazi's list (ch. 23). Mordecai's map: an inverted cone dug by dwarves with the castle at the bottom, nine petals around it, the King's Point pre-fortified, a mercenary market deep in the city (ch. 24). Priestly's poem: museums, galleries, colleges, a play the night before expulsion, and all of it destroyed by the end (ch. 33).

The flood

Katia opens the real Gate five hundred metres under the sea, by the Akula's old shelf, into the faction market at the bottom of the cone: twenty minutes of ocean, timed charges, a chum bomb, a feeding frenzy of Concierge Sharks and pain amplifiers; more than half the city submerged by Katia's reckoning, the shopkeepers, mercenaries and food market dead and irreplaceable by rule, the Desperado Club likely cut off, half the armies hidden there caught (ch. 34). Juice Box is sent through to tell the survivors what they are.