Places

The places with pages across the series. 18 in all through book 5.

• Club Vanquisher from book 1 — The other club. A warning card on the first floor says holding a Desperado Pass negates the ability to obtain a Vanquisher pass; Mordecai names it in book 2 as one of the Over City's two main clubs, a country club of old clerics; on the fourth floor its entrances are churches at every transfer station ending in nine, its members are clerics, a mantaur engineer and the goat Prepotente, and the party has never been inside.
• Larracos from book 3 — '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.
• Production trailers from book 1 — Boats on the winter ocean where crawlers are held between floors while a holographic studio is projected around them for interviews. Menus go dark, the sets are bigger than the rooms, and nothing on the couch is quite real except the cat treats.
• Safe rooms from book 1 — Restaurants, bus stations and storm shelters lifted whole from the surface and set into the maze, where no violence is possible, food is served by surly Bopca Protectors, and three screens count down the collapse, the next episode, and the living. Mobs that attack inside one are teleported out — a rule that cuts both ways.
• Sheol from book 2 — 'The mysterious 15th level of the World Dungeon', where Sheol Glass Reaper Cases are forged and sold by traveling Spider Reaper Minions, who also sell lollipops; a case can blast whoever opens it with the Sheol Fire spell.
• The all-tree from book 5 — One tree under the whole sixth floor, reflecting magic; a whisperer of apostates to a god; Grimaldi's roots. The high elves' castle stands in the middle of a grove of its outcroppings.
• The Desperado Club from book 1 — Known in the first book only as a dagger tattoo burned onto Carl's neck and Donut's shoulder out of a Bronze Asshole's Box, three drink tickets, and a warning that holding a Desperado Pass forfeits a Vanquisher pass. Mordecai will not discuss it before the third floor.
• The Dungeon from book 1 — The eighteen-floor structure that replaces the surface of the Earth at 2:23 in the morning, into which some thirteen million people descend: a maze of quadrant-sized squares, safe rooms, tutorial guilds and boss lairs, run as a broadcast for an interstellar audience and collapsing a floor at a time on a timer.
• The Great Race from book 5 — The seventh floor, a new level Borant finished just in time with Valtay capital, so that the planned seventh floor became the eighth; named after a fairy tale about a boy in a maze whose tunnels seal behind him: crawlers wake in glass pods on a spiral over a string of portal stairwells, to be slid one by one into hundreds of kilometres of tubes with pitstop saferooms, danger ratings and paths that close behind a party. It lasts ten minutes. Prepotente, holding Pole Position and a hammer and a stick from the masquerade's sponsors, cracks the resurrection chamber and every wall on the level explodes.
• The Hunting Grounds from book 2 — The sixth floor by its NPC name. Mordecai names it on the third floor as the over-city's next level down, high-elf jungle ruins where Carl guesses Signet's story is heading; the Desperado Club keeps a staircase to it. By the fifth floor it is the changelings' ancient home, the only floor where the rich can truly die — the hunters who enter at level thirty and up, their fees paid, a record number waiting — and the place the factions send people for gear. Carl's pledge at the end of book 4 is addressed to it.
• The Nothing from book 3 — A double spot on the Desperado Club's wheel of fortune — 'the Nothing sure is something' — and a trapdoor under the roulette table that drops a losing player into a hole full of screams. Carl's spin stops just short of it.
• The Over City from book 1 — The third floor, named once in the first book, when Zev tells Carl that 'once you do hit the over city' he will need something compelling. She says the third, sixth and ninth floors are linked in a way that will later become clear, and that they all come into existence at the same time.
• The Penis Parade from book 2 — One of the lit signs in the Desperado Club beside Bitches, which Carl takes for the restrooms: the male strip club and brothel, which Mordecai tells Carl and Donut to stay out of.
• The production facility from book 5 — Where Carl is transferred for each of his CrawlCon events: the first time a Valtay landing vessel at the bottom of the ocean, the last a green room shared with the Popovs and an autograph table whose pen is mirrored halfway across the galaxy.
• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut from book 3 — The party's own rooms behind a door in every saferoom, bought on the fourth floor with the AI's coupons: three level-three spaces conjoined into a level five, with a manager's door, a two-hour bed, a shower that lowers detectability, a crafting studio and a training room. Named by Donut. Katia's space is part of it; if she leaves, it shrinks.
• The Twister from book 4 — The flying house that was the dreadnaught Wasteland, flown by Louis and Firas: the changelings' transport to the sixth floor, a bomb rack over a town, a ballista built from its garage-door opener, the escape plan — until mantis nymphs take it and the Sledge crashes it into two castle towers 'like helicopter in game GTA'. 'DON'T CRASH THE TWISTER!'
• The Valtay landing vessel from book 5 — The Valtay landing vessel parked at the bottom of the ocean, not far from Borant's headquarters, where crawlers are taken for shows: cheering under the deck, a child's ladder into a zero zone, a green room like a cell, an empty production room.
• Tutorial guilds from book 1 — Rooms off the corridors, each holding the guide assigned to whoever enters — Mordecai for Carl and Donut, Mistress Tiatha for the Meadow Lark party — where a crawler's inventory is switched on, boxes are opened and fight notes are reviewed. Viewers can watch the crawler there but not hear the guide.