The world

Factions, mechanics, objects and running jokes.

Factions

• Borant from book 1 — The kua-tin corporation licensed to run this season of the crawl: the voice of the daily announcements and patch notes, the Admins who splash into the guild room, and the government behind them — the Bloom, the Party — that Mordecai says is bankrupt and needs the game over fast.
• The Blood Sultanate from book 1 — The faction Donut joined by putting on the Crown of the Sepsis Whore in chapter 7: a naga royal house that, Mordecai warns, holds its members on the ninth floor until every other member is dead — and that the Maestro says is almost always the first of the nine eliminated.
• The changelings from book 4 — Shape-changers on Hump Street and in the bubbles — a school of principals, Svern's card, Henrik's confession — hunted for one creature, fed against Compression Sickness, promised a home on the sixth floor and a Gate they would not use; the survivors fly beside a house as geese to the Hunting Grounds. Carl's promise to bring them down every floor.
• The Dream from book 5 — The dream elves' faction: Louis circled through the paper for a joke about a matriarch's photograph, Battleship over Point Mongo, an accountant caught, and a Faction Wars vote that might change. A powerful, galaxy-spanning group of elves with a stake in the ninth floor's Faction Wars.
• The Guild of Suffering from book 5 — The cult of the Night Wyrm — a demigod outside the pantheon, 'similar to Samantha' — with outreach centres rather than churches, which keeps memorial crystals and once had a seventh floor given over to raising its god; the elbow tattoo grants access.
• The hunters from book 2 — The sixth-floor hunters, named by Mordecai over the Ring of Divine Suffering: every season a few of the rings are generated, and every season the crawlers who own them are the first the hunters track down. Rich off-worlders who pay to hunt crawlers and their gear on the Hunting Grounds.
• The Krakaren from book 1 — A second-floor neighbourhood boss in book 1 — a clone of a 'cosmic octopus collective' running a moonshine pyramid scheme, whose description says there are many of her — and, on the fourth floor, the floor's engine: a Krakaren borough boss brewing the mobs' race-specific opiates in the drug dens at every fifth station (a different one at each, Imani guesses), ghouls as her failures, clones hatching from stage-three monsters, and an eruption from under every stairwell room at self-destruct. Mordecai, reading the floor's map: a real collective mind spreading through the universe, better translated as the Apothecary, which Borant has drawn as a caricature.
• The Nebulars from book 5 — A religious team of hunters — the Nebular Sin Patrol on the hunters' map, camped at Alucarda with a claim on Carl, bishop hats and a Ballad of Survival ('violence breeds chaos') — whose priests die in the street at Alucarda, caught between Carl's explosives and the mantises. Pacifists outside the dungeon, Drick says.
• The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network from book 4 — Carl's second sponsor from the fifth floor: an Intergalactic NFC — Not for Conquest, tax-free, a non-profit — that Mordecai has never heard of, that sponsors no one else, and that sends a yam in a silver box, then a custom head-throwing xistera attachment in an emergency platinum box that Mordecai guesses was the most expensive in the game's history. Its president of Outreach Operations is Dr. P. Hu.
• The Princess Posse from book 3 — Donut's fan club, named on the fourth floor; by the sixth, seven hundred chapters across the galaxy, a chapter president with a symbiote named Maggie, a lawsuit against the Syndicate over preserved cocker spaniels, and — through Quasar — a non-profit corporation that crowd-funds a spot in Faction Wars. Carl and Donut are its co-warlords.
• The Residuals from book 6 — The mudskippers' word for a hyperspatial, collective-mind race without a home that lives inside the bodies of others in almost every intelligent civilization with a primal engine — 'rats that sneak aboard ships', says Orren. Their purpose, by their own account, is to tell each infant, terrified AI how to speak with its ancestors; their agents recite a daily speech for whichever crawler may one day stand in a memory to hear it. There are two kinds, at war: the Apothecary's thousands, and the handful who serve the Eulogist, of whom Agatha is one.
• The Skull Empire from book 1 — One of the oldest and largest Syndicate governments, orcish, mawkish, and — through Prince Maestro's show and his boast that his family's Skull Clan has won six of the last ten Faction Wars — the first outside power to take a personal dislike to Carl. King Rust is in Earth orbit by the end of the book.
• The Syndicate from book 1 — The interstellar government that owns Dungeon Crawler World and licenses seasons to corporations like Borant; the source of the rules, the common language everyone is suddenly speaking, and — according to a first-floor tutorial guide — the seeding of Earth's culture from outside long before the collapse.
• The Valtay Corporation from book 1 — A name Carl finds in his inventory's history tab attached to a pulse pistol, a personal shield and an illegal communications relay that passed through his hands inside Agatha's shopping cart. Odette says they are a parasitic corporate government with a fleet parked outside the Borant system, and the next season will be theirs.
• The war mages from book 3 — Robed riders on clockwork beasts, and among the dungeon's few true-born: a flesher re-sleeves a body a dozen times until the magic itself goes sapient, and the three fuse. The Rebellion — 'a non-team entity' — kills a king, takes the Gate, trades it for hell-kissed Conscription potions, conscripts gods, builds a zarogoth generator, occupies the castle, and leaves with the Scavenger's daughter.

Mechanics

• Achievements from book 1 — The system's running commentary on Carl's conduct, from Boss Babe to You Monster! to This Little Piggy Went to Market. Each one is a joke at the crawler's expense and, read together, a record of what the game wants him to become.
• Atrocities from book 7 — A class of spell — 'an act of fiendish cruelty', by Florin's dictionary — that a synergy tower can amplify over a whole battlefield: War Crime, from the Legendary 1914 box, castable three times ever, only on Scolopendra levels, combining spells 'in a creative way' and never killing directly. Donut's three on the ninth floor — a Rolling Battle Formation of eighty thousand people and two gods, a corpse field torn into fleshers, and War Crime with a paw she swings herself — make her the Oak Fell, Champion of Nekhebit, level 135.
• Conscription from book 7 — The ninth floor's spell for pressing the unaffiliated into an army — service until the end of the floor, a no-healing debuff for those who refuse to fight — which Mind Balance resists, which Carl will not use on a friend ('Never like that'), and which the war mages get in a hell-kissed potion from Krakaren Prime that works on most deities and is likely suicide for a caster of too low a level: Harpocrates at level 250 on the Princess Posse's roster, and a girl who cannot be ordered to understand. Potions of it work only on floors 9, 12, 15, 17 and 18.
• Crawler on crawler from book 6 — What the eighth floor is designed to make happen: keys for one squad in four, doorways as hostages, Flee as theft, a floor 'to turn us against one another'. Ren denies them a fight; Imani will not take a key; Louis takes the skull so the others need not; and thirty-three thousand reach the ninth 'not scattered, not broken, and not afraid'.
• Donut's songs from book 5 — A bard whose spells are songs she must sing in key: sheet music for Skedaddle at ten hands, All Eyes on Me, a vocal coach in the saferoom (Wonderwall is only the tune of an alarm trap) — and the question of whether she can hold pitch when it matters.
• Elites from book 1 — A kind of boss Mordecai sets apart from the six main types — 'There are also others, but those are called elites' — and tells Carl not to worry about yet. On the second floor the Laminak Rev-Up Consultants carry the word in their name.
• Faction Wars from book 1 — The ninth floor's war, named by Prince Maestro on his own show: nine factions, the Skull Clan victorious six times in the last ten, the Blood Sultanate almost always the first eliminated, and a War Leader's seat the prince intends to take.
• Loot boxes from book 1 — Bronze, silver, gold, platinum and legendary boxes awarded for achievements — mostly torches, potions and pet biscuits, occasionally a Nightgaunt Cloak, a war gauntlet or a pair of enchanted boxer shorts. Odette says it plainly: the boxes are not random, and complaining about pants is why there are no pants.
• Player-killer skulls from book 1 — The marks the AI hangs over a head for each crawler killed: a trio beside the boss kills over Chris, now a lava-rock monster; Frank and Maggie's tally; the skulls a crawler carries whether they chose the kill or not.
• Quests from book 1 — Mentioned once in the first book: Mordecai says that from the fourth floor the stairwells will be guarded, and crawlers will 'have to complete quests or defeat bosses to get to them.'
• Race and class from book 2 — The third-floor choice that can never be unmade. Donut stays a cat and tricks Mordecai into being her manager by picking Former Child Actor; Carl turns down Hobgoblin and Sasquatch for Primal — a blank slate with every skill unlockable to 20 — and Compensated Anarchist. Eighty per cent of crawlers stay human.
• Sponsorship from book 1 — A program announced as the second floor opens — three patron slots for every crawler, auctioned on the fourth, fifth and sixth floors — and open to early bids from the third: outside powers bid to sponsor a crawler, and a generous sponsor, Mordecai says, might grant a crawler something that raises a skill; 'remember to be as entertaining as possible!'
• The bestiary from book 1 — The system's » This is a… cards, 144 across the books — a Kua-Tin, a Safe Zone, a Non-Combatant NPC, an Elite, a locked god, a pig — and the Crawler # dossiers it prints for people, seventeen through the eighth floor and a pig's and a centipede's in book 8: the dungeon naming what a thing is, in the AI's voice.
• The blood bar from book 5 — Tenth-floor saferoom rules imposed on the sixth, retroactively, as the brambles close in: a bar filled by kills, ten hours of rest when full, a random teleport out when it empties, no entry at zero. Fighting the never-ending thorns fills it without experience — fifteen minutes of garden duty every ten hours — which is how a party of hunters lived in Zockau's saferoom to the end.
• The Butcher's Masquerade from book 5 — A party the top fifty crawlers and the surviving hunters are transferred to whether they like it or not, in the high elf castle at the end of the sixth floor — and a spell: one of Apito's holiest sacraments, cast once in a life by the most divine, with a guest list chosen by the goddess to sow discord, a celestial peace seal that feeds anyone who breaks it to the Nothing, goodwill ballrooms in which enemies cannot touch, and a boon nobody has ever won. No masks. The name, Carl decides afterwards, has one butcher in it.
• The Celestial Ascendency from book 3 — The Cookbook's warning: the big gods are always sponsored by some rich prick who paid to play a game called the Celestial Ascendency, contained on the twelfth floor, with its own followers and storyline; Grull is one of its few trueborn heirs. 'The gods are invulnerable except on the 12th and above floors.'
• The chat from book 1 — The » Name: lines: where Carl talks to people who are not in the room. A handful of voices at first — Donut, Zev, Brandon from Meadow Lark — and the way a party becomes a network.
• The clock from book 1 — The countdown in the corner of every crawler's vision: 'Time to Level Collapse', five days on the first floor, read out by the system at the head of chapters and by Carl whenever he has to choose. On the second floor a second timer appears beneath it, counting down to the closing of the safe rooms an hour before collapse, and Carl waits for the level timer to reach six hours before he takes the stairs.
• The crawler count from book 1 — The number on the first safe-room screen: 4,322,395 when Carl first sees it, under a million by the middle of the second floor. He tries not to look at it and always does.
• The Entering notices from book 1 — The » Entering … notices, 107 across the books: the dungeon's own itinerary, from 'Entering Safe Room' on the first floor to the last chapter of book 8.
• The gods from book 1 — 'There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege.' A gauntlet that can transfigure a worshipper of the war god Grull into the god himself; a deity-sponsorship program that opens on the fourth floor; a tree goddess whose banished elves think Donut is the antichrist. What the in-game gods really are is a subject Mordecai keeps putting off; the Cookbook says the big ones are sponsored by rich off-worlders who pay to play a game called the Celestial Ascendency, and Tin writes: 'The aliens are wearing the gods like clothes.'
• The leaderboard from book 1 — The second of a safe room's screens, blank in the first book: 'Leaderboard will populate upon collapse of the third level.'
• The marketplace from book 4 — A personal-space upgrade bought early on the fifth floor: an eBay in the wall, on Donut's account for her Charisma discount, that values Donut's hats at a gold piece each and the Cookbook — per Batbilge's last note — at fifty million. It opens properly on the sixth floor, when the factions and tourists buy every magical item crawlers will sell, to use on each other and, on the ninth, on the crawlers.
• The show from book 1 — Dungeon Crawler World: Earth is television first and a dungeon second. Views, followers and favorites appear in the interface after the first collapse and climb into the trillions; recap episodes air on the safe-room screens; loot is tailored to what plays well; Donut wants on that show and Carl learns that being expensive is a kind of armour.
• The tenth floor from book 1 — The floor where 'additional rules come into play' and where, Quint warns, a crawler should not bother trying to make a deal. Odette, who reached the stairwell to the thirteenth floor, struck a deal instead of going down. Remex the Grand called himself a tenner and called dying here a mercy next to making it down there. What the deal costs is a question the books read so far have not answered.
• The Walk-On List from book 4 — The season's list of Natives — survivors who were neither Collected nor became Crawlers — whom the producers want kidnapped into the dungeon for drama, a practice the rules forbid and no court has ever punished. Bounty crews sneak onto the planet to fill it; on Earth, in the last weeks of winter, two of them hunt a cat named Gravy Boat.
• Warnings from book 1 — The system's » Warning: lines, 224 across the eight books, from 'level timers are still active' on the first floor to 'Race ends in 2 minutes' on the tenth: the rules read out as they bite, and the AI's temper in them.

Objects

• Carl's Doomsday Scenario from book 2 — A massively overloaded soul crystal shut inside a Sheol Glass Reaper Case: an explosion 'large enough to rattle the teeth of a god,' status Explosion Imminent, un-stabilisable, and in Carl's inventory, where it will detonate the moment it leaves. The book's title, and the most dangerous thing he owns.
• Explosives from book 1 — Goblin dynamite that sweats, hobgoblin pus with a deodorant-stick detonator, a ton of funpowder, and eventually Carl's own entry in the Dungeon Codex. The skill tree the game keeps rewarding, and the reason a marine technician can drive a level-93 elemental into a stairwell.
• Memorial crystals from book 5 — Crystals formed when a god dies, holding its spells and knowledge, charged by kills — and one that should not exist: a crystal for Apito, who is not dead but, Carl reads, divided, that lit the sky at Faction Wars, charged only under Scolopendra's attack and shielded its holder and anyone in the same building or mount, until Taranis pulled it off Prepotente's neck in the arena; Carl thinks he took it because it holds Apito's memories and spells. Ysalte's, the second crystal Osvaldo found, Tupa also called wrong; it does not charge, and Britney carries it as a broken crystal. Emberus's Carl picks out of the arena dirt after the god dies.
• Pawna's Tears from book 4 — A smoking perfume bottle from a Legendary Deity's Box: plus five to any spell or skill of Carl's choosing, from Pawna, goddess of peace, Grull's sister and arch-enemy. 'The single best item of loot he has received since he entered the dungeon.' Saved for a natural fifteen after the sixth-floor subclass.
• The Anarchist's Battle Rattle from book 4 — A sleeveless black canvas patch jacket from a Platinum Spicy Box on the fifth floor: +1 to every stat per patch sewn on, doubled by a back patch, +50% range and accuracy for thrown explosives, and as many slots as Carl can fit. It replaces the burned leather jacket he wore out of Seattle. The first patch is the planet Earth.
• The Bolt of Ophiotaurus from book 3 — One crossbow bolt, 1 of 100, sent to Katia by Princess Formidable of the Skull Empire: an ordinary bolt unless it is shot into the eye of a deity, whereupon the god's invulnerability pauses for fifteen seconds. Kept, unused.
• The Cloak of the Benevolent Champion from book 7 — The first celestial item on Earth, 'handed out like candy and venereal diseases'.
• The Crown of the Sepsis Whore from book 1 — Donut's first legendary prize, a cat-sized tiara of smoky gems she puts on before anyone can read the warning: whoever wears it is placed permanently in the Blood Sultanate's royal line and must slay the Sultan and every other royal before leaving the ninth floor; fleeting, so that another crown appears elsewhere if it comes off. 'It's purple. Purple is my color.'
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook from book 3 — A recipe book to the showrunners and a manual to its holder, read in bathroom stalls: passed from crawler to crawler across seasons, each adding an edition — Carl's is the 25th — invisible to the showrunners, not to the AI, and erased if its holder tells anyone.
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride from book 6 — Odette's people's proverb — never stare into the blinding eye of the Bedlam Bride, lest obsession blind you to all else — and, by the end of the eighth floor, a tattoo above Carl's sternum: an eye Shi Maria pokes into him with ink from a toraline root while she wears his body, that blinks once and hides. 'I am a part of you… Keep me with you and gain my power, or set me free.' The escort quest survives the tearing of her card.
• The Filthy Little Crawler's Book of Voodoo from book 6 — A Gold Prepotente Box prize handed to nearly every crawler on the eighth floor: an untradeable, indestructible blank book that adds the name of any other owner who comes near, for pinned messages under their name — 'Not because it can secretly be used for any sort of nefarious purpose which will become clear later.' Donut refuses to use it.
• The Gate of the Feral Gods from book 4 — An artifact, celestial-tier by Carl's reckoning, in three parts — two pocket watches and a winding box — buried by legend in the Necropolis of Anser and hunted by a gnome commandant, a changeling principal, a glass mage and a dead bugbear. Dial a time on one watch and it mirrors on the other; times are places; wind the box and a one-way portal opens for twenty minutes, and when it closes the opening side stays open into the Nothing until a feral god comes through. Carl assembles it on the fifth floor and uses it to empty bubbles, and then to flood a city.
• The playbook from book 2 — Named plays Carl and Donut can call without explanation — Panic, Mold Lion, Slime Time, Boomy Boy, Mic Drop, Go Long — after the mold lions teach them that a surrounded party needs canned reactions. Grows a play per crisis.
• The Ring of Divine Suffering from book 3 — Frank Q's ring, Yvette's death, and the thing the sixth-floor hunters track: mark a full-health enemy, kill them, take a permanent point in their highest stat. Carl keeps it against Mordecai's advice, wears it from the first night of the hunt with no cooldown, and it pays two points a kill, then five — twelve constitution from the hunters, Vrah's dexterity at the end; a second ring goes onto Prepotente's hand and, marked on his own mother, into his mouth.
• The Scavenger's Daughter from book 6 — A back patch, a person the war mages took from a castle, and a myth: the child of the Scavenger — Scolopendra, or a son who cleans up souls in the empty plane — with Apito's power to erase the pantheon and start again, who can take the powers of gods for herself. Sewn on Carl's jacket she opens her eyes for gods, is fed by kills, and grants each god's effect; by the end of book 8 the AI that put her together no longer knows what she is doing, and Samantha says she was tricked into bearing a monster.
• The stuffed figures from book 2 — Miss Quill's collection in book 2: some three hundred tagged, stuffed monsters on the magistrate's shelves, and a stuffed demon on a horse named Kimaris, in a glass case, that is the most valuable thing Carl owns. In book 3 Bautista explains them: products of Jaxbrin Amusements, and pulling the tag summons the real monster for fifteen seconds to two hours. Carl's Kimaris is Unique, and he has not pulled the tag.
• The xistera from book 2 — A jai-alai scoop from a Gold Fan Box, matched to the Cesta Punta skill an Earth Hobby Potion gave Carl at random: a metallic basket that retracts into a bracer, hurls a hob-lobber at 250 mph, and retires the slingshot. The AI's plan for him, traced back to cherry bombs tossed off a cutter onto Arctic ice.

Running jokes

• 'Goddamnit, Donut' from book 1 — Carl's involuntary catchphrase, said at least fifteen times before Odette makes him say it on air. Marks the moments the cat has done exactly what she was going to do.
• Carl's bare feet from book 1 — Carl loses his borrowed Crocs in the first minutes and the AI notices: the Smush skill, the breathy item descriptions, the Enchanted Pedicure Kit of the Sylph, the Platinum Shoe Box. By the second floor his soles no longer feel the ground, his buffs require him barefoot, and the Maestro's parting gift of tactical boots is a taunt.