Prince Maestro

Host of Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem (ch. 42): a boar-black orc with one gold tusk, a pink silk shirt and an audience of twelve-year-olds who chant 'glurp, glurp' at deaths. His game is to freeze doomed crawlers and make them guess who dies for teleport points; his surprise guests for Carl are Frank and Maggie and their dead daughter (ch. 43); his parting gift is boots. Carl reads him as a bully with an audience — beaten not by strength but by being expensive — and takes his crowd away from him on his own live show. Muted, he explains himself: a prince of the Skull Empire, whose Skull Clan has won six of ten Faction Wars, on his way to Earth to lead them on the ninth floor. By the epilogue his show is on hiatus, his father King Rust is in Earth orbit and oddly quiet while a royal spokesperson asks people to stop, and the whole galaxy calls him Carl's Naughty Little Piggie.

Stripped of his titles and disowned before the panel (ch. 19); reported dead aboard his brother's yacht with the queen consort when the Valtay destroy it (ch. 19, ch. 20). Odette confirms the sex tape was a snick (epilogue).

Reported dead with his mother in book 2 and not: 'my brother had already brought me into the dungeon […] rest well, mom' (ch. 33). He makes his debut as Grull's sponsor in a Death Challenge, four storeys of minotaur-centaur with the Maestro's face, cleaves a city boss in half, promises Carl's planet will be forgotten, chases a decoy, and is ejected by a second summoning with an attack half-formed. 'Glurp, glurp, motherfucker.' A new snick within minutes (epilogue). 'You're lucky it wasn't somebody who knew what he was doing' (ch. 34).

Named once by the recap as Grull's driver (ch. 4); Maggie's first sponsor, who gave her a scroll to choose a god and, with his brother, a Celestial Grenade — which Carl throws at Quan Ch instead (ch. 14, ch. 31). 'That Maestro guy is letting you live rent free in his head.'

Franchised to a subsidiary of a subsidiary the Skull Empire later acquired — a loophole for the ultra-rich (ch. 42). 'I am not the Maestro,' says Circe Took (ch. 33). His mother's photograph is one Carl holds up at the end (ch. 77).

Princess Formidable, his sister, does not get along with the family, and he will have access to Katia as an attendant (ch. 19); Crown Prince Stalwart is his older brother (ch. 21); an orc woman of the same wild-boar kind turns up as an adjutant candidate (ch. 36); Elle's spell came from the first fight with him in Grull's form (ch. 65); the bolt Formidable wanted used on him is still on the table (ch. 72).

Rust's disappointment (ch. 34); a sponsor reminded by Victory not to make his god act against its nature (ch. 55); by the end, Huanxin says, claiming the crown (ch. 86).

He rides Grull into the Screw Factory in person; Laundry Day ejects him into the molten river, and because tourists cannot die on the tenth floor he is back inside Grull within minutes (ch. 66).