<n>Standard disclaimer<fn></n> <img attachment="carls-doomsday-scenario-dungeon-crawler-carl-book-2-web-768x768-1493092330.webp" align="right">This is book two of the Dungeon-Crawler Carl series. I'd read <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=5402">Dungeon Crawler Carl: Book 1</a> and moved on immediately to this book. This is a really, really fun series, written by a smart and funny author who has a good amount of world experience that he brings to his wild and complex stories about an Earth-sized dungeon that's been built on the remains of Earth for the sole purpose of galaxy-wide entertainment. This is not hard sci-fi! The books don't bother explaining how any of the technology works or how it could work! It posits what is, essentially, a simulacrum of our world but at galactic scale, complete with the morality-bending effects of a social-media and capital-based economy and society---even when it's a loose agglomeration of widely disparate alien societies, distributed through the galaxy. But none of that is what the book is about...although it kind-of is, at the meta level. For example, this book continues a conversation started in book one about the classification of the various intelligent beings scattered throughout the game world. There are mobs, which are the enemies and can supposedly be slaughtered without remorse. But what are the mobs made of? Where do they come from? We'll find out more in a much later book, but in this book Dinneman is already hinting that some of the higher-level mobs---bosses---are actually people plucked from Earth before the "collapse"---or taken from other worlds that hosted earlier iterations of the dungeon. These creatures are occasionally aware of their plight and seek only to be put out of their misery in rare, lucid moments, although the programming with which they are imbued drives them to fight and try to kill the crawlers anyway. There are NPCs, like Mordecai or the tavern-running bopcas, which have a level but don't take part in battles. These are sometimes ex-crawlers and sometimes completely manufactured by the dungeon AI. Those that are ex-crawlers are fully conscious and sentient, while others are purely creations, though they <i>seem</i> to be the same as the ex-crawler-based NPCs. Then there are the crawlers, who are all former Earth citizens who are "in the game" but it's unclear what that means for their original biology (as with the ex-crawlers who've become NPCs). This book examines the ontological status of NPCs in more detail. Though I'm sure that many readers wouldn't have characterized it like that, that is literally what Dinneman is doing: studying the status of being and existence of these creatures. For example, in a discussion with Carl, Mordecai answered, <bq caption="Page 32">“Oh, they’re very real. They are living, biological creatures similar to some of the mobs. Most have been engineered by the Borant Corporation, and therefore are owned by the Borant Corporation. This is the only world they know and have ever known.” “That’s really fucked up. Do they know what they are?” “Their minds are altered every time they are regenerated. The next time this floor is formed on some distant planet, these NPCs will wake up like it is just another day. But they will have also been changed, planted with false memories. Inconvenient memories—like some crawler sitting them down and explaining to them that they’re props on an intergalactic television series—will be erased.</bq> So their status is that they think they're real but they are actually constructs, not related to an actual consciousness. Some of them, like the elites, have been given a <i>lot</i> of backstory, and they are <i>deeply convinced</i> of the veracity of their lived lives. Much later in the book, Carl thinks to himself as he watches a NPC-style mob die, <bq caption="Page 203">The orc’s lifeless eyes shone in the reflection of Donut’s Torch spell. She’s not real, I thought. She’s a prop, an extra in a high-stakes game show. But that wasn’t true, was it? She was a real, biological creature. What she believed to be real was fake, an illusion. But she was still flesh and blood, an innocent. And she was dead simply because it was part of the plot.</bq> There is a depth to the analysis in these books that I find refreshing and which keeps me reading when, without it, I would have probably given up after the first volume. Though I enjoy the incredible level of detail and interplay of characteristics, points, levels, spells, buffs, debuffs, potions, artifacts, and myriad other things, I think that would have quickly grown old. Dinneman leaves all of that as a layer atop meta-layers of ontological discourse, and also sociopolitical discourse, examining the economics and power-dynamics of a "game" that brings in so much revenue. These layers act as a satirical and critical lens on our societies and cultures. Now, to the more prosaic synopsis. At the beginning of the book, all of the crawlers choose their race and character class. Donut elects to remain a cat with the <a href="https://dungeon-crawler-carl.fandom.com/wiki/Former_Child_Actor_Class">Former Child Actor</a> class, which allows her to choose a different class each level. Call changes his race to Primal---a largely humanoid race (his appearance doesn't change) that ruled at the beginning of time and whose influence is still being felt on galactic culture to this day---and his class is <a href="https://dungeon-crawler-carl.fandom.com/wiki/Compensated_Anarchist_Class">Compensated Anarchist</a>. He will become really good at blowing things up and creating chaos. Carl and Donut navigate the third level, which is called the Over City. The level looks like it's on the surface but its still in the dungeon, so the ceiling is still there, if largely hidden by "magic". As usual, they have a safe room from which they must venture forth to gain experience, levels, and artifacts in order to gain access to the stairwell that will take them down to the next level. They stumble into a quest from an elite named Tsarina Signet, whose story is deeply entwined with a show that films within the context of the dungeon. These "reality TV" shows are basically a cottage industry, part of the economy that extracts value from the crawlers. Their main target is Grimaldi's circus, which gets weirder and more horrifying the more we learn about it. Everybody and everything is a zombie, infected by and infested with various worms or plants or...whatever. This makes it especially disturbing because the creatures that they're fighting are very often not in charge of their own bodies and, every once in a while, the horror at their fate shines through, and Carl sees that they actual want to die, they want to be put out of their misery. I'm not going to recap the whole book because, as with the first one, there is such a tremendous amount of detail that it will make your head spin. Katia joins their party. They all go on more shows to meet their fans. Florin, Miriam, Prepotente, and Bianca are introduced. Donut learns more about the Sepsis Crown that locks in a grim and difficult quest on the ninth floor (should they get that far). Carl gains the titular <i>Doomsday Scenario</i>, which is a <a href="https://dungeon-crawler-carl.fandom.com/wiki/Soul_Crystals">Soul Crystal</a> that is milliseconds from exploding, having stashed it in his inventory where it can cause no harm...until it's drawn back out. Donut and Carl learn about the machinations of other crawlers, many of whom are a good deal less altruistically and socially inclined than Carl, like Hekla. See the <a href="https://dungeon-crawler-carl.fandom.com/wiki/Chapters#Book_2_-_Carl's_Doomsday_Scenario">the recap on the excellent DCC Wiki</a> for more details. <hr> <ft>Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I've pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me of what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I've failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an interest in this book, then I'm happy for you.</ft> <h>Citations</h> <bq caption="Page 24">When the oligarchs want to manufacture a social movement, or better yet, stop one in its tracks, they must first bring in the big guns. The paid protestors. The Agent Provocateur. This Monk/Rogue hybrid class is a trapmaking, bomb-making, social-media dynamo. The Compensated Anarchist will happily throw a Molotov through a window one moment and step in front of a camera to plead for the violence to stop the next. Experts in hand-to-hand and dirty tactics, the Compensated Anarchist only suffers when it comes to more traditional fighting techniques.</bq> <bq caption="Page 32">“Oh, they’re very real. They are living, biological creatures similar to some of the mobs. Most have been engineered by the Borant Corporation, and therefore are owned by the Borant Corporation. This is the only world they know and have ever known.” “That’s really fucked up. Do they know what they are?” “Their minds are altered every time they are regenerated. The next time this floor is formed on some distant planet, these NPCs will wake up like it is just another day. But they will have also been changed, planted with false memories. Inconvenient memories—like some crawler sitting them down and explaining to them that they’re props on an intergalactic television series—will be erased.</bq> <bq caption="Page 32">Take those goblins you told me about, for instance. They were addicted to meth. They were fighting the llamas over it. That storyline didn’t exist in the previous season. That was added for this world and this world only. Next time they’ll be addicted to solar berry extract or something like that. Or they’ll be fanatics of some god. Or something else.” “What the hell?” I asked. That was just as bad, and in some ways worse, than what they were doing to me and my fellow humans. “But these are still living creatures? How is that legal?” “Borant created them, so they own them. One can’t alter the memories of naturals. People who were born in a natural biological process. Not unless they sign away their rights.”</bq> <bq caption="Page 36">[...] the villages don’t have names. The system designates them as tiny, small, medium, large, and extra-large. Not very exciting. This one is small. You can actually name them yourself if you manage to kill the mayor. Don’t bother, at least on this floor. You’ll likely end up dead, and it doesn’t come with any real benefits when the timer is only eight days.”</bq> Crazy overwhelming amount of detail and complexity. Everything is like this: interleaved incentives and stats to balance against one another. <bq caption="Page 50">this could be something useful like Parkour or Jui-jitsu, or you could get fucked and receive some useless crap like Stamp Collecting or Kombucha Brewing. Don’t get your hopes up. The fact your planet was filled with so many boring assholes with inane, ridiculous hobbies tips the scales way out of your favor.</bq> <bq caption="Page 83">I’ve seen it a dozen times. A hot shit crawler comes across an elite, and instead of trying to solve the quest, he decides to go all murder hobo and kill the NPC. Something always happens. Something bad. Most of these elites have very thick plot armor, and in those stories, you’re the extra. The red shirt. The guest star. Not every quest will involve elites, but if it does, then I will always suggest that you stay the hell away. Especially when that storyline just launched, because there’s a whole team of writers and producers out there who don’t want their precious little series to get canceled after the first day. And if they can write in the death of a popular crawler, all the better. It will guarantee their show gets more viewers.”</bq> <bq caption="Page 86">They played a brief history of the Primal race. They showed another human from many seasons ago who’d chosen the same race. They showed him flying through the air with white, wispy angel wings, wielding a massive sword made of lightning as he charged at a humanoid demon the size of a goddamned football stadium, standing knee-deep in a lake of fire. “What the hell is that?” I said, watching the brief scene unfold. It faded away before the actual battle could start. The paragraph that explained what a Compensated Anarchist was appeared and disappeared. “That, my boy, is a Divine Guardian, one of the behemoths of the 12th floor. A Country Boss. He is guarding a fire gate, an entrance to the 13th floor.” “Holy fuck,” I said. “Yeah,” Mordecai said. “Is that the guy who made it to the thirteenth floor?” “No,” Mordecai said. “But he was a famous crawler. He’s from before my time. He died a minute later. The next time you’re with your friend Odette, you should ask her about him.”</bq> <bq caption="Page 109">By healing it, I’d killed the worms. The bear let out a howl, mournful and afraid. She sat down and lowered herself painfully to the ground. The last of the boiling custard sizzled away. The bear looked at me, all of the fight out of her. This was Heather, the real Heather, free of the parasites that’d been controlling her. She looked at me with her newly-formed eyes. End it, those bitter eyes said. I should never have lived this long. She made a quick, pained whimper, and her eyes closed. I approached the bear. I kept a wary eye on her claws, looking for any sign of a trick. The bear sighed heavily as I approached. Her health bar, which had moved to the top was now falling again on its own. Without the worms and mold or whatever the hell magic was keeping this thing alive, her body was breaking down fast. This elderly bear, Heather, was not who I’d just fought. Not really. She was just the shell.</bq> <bq caption="Page 121">It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was the scent of peanuts and cotton candy and roasting corn and hay and animal musk and cheap, plastic toys all rolled into one. But it was more than that. My four-year-old mind couldn’t possibly register it at the time, but it was the scent of happiness, of joy, of being a kid, of not being afraid. Over the years I’d catch similar scents in places such as the county fair, or carnivals, or whenever I visited a place with livestock. But this was a different, oddly specific aroma that had been indelibly imprinted on me as a four-year-old, a scent I’d sometimes remember as the path I could’ve taken, the world I could’ve lived had my dad not found us and taken us back. It</bq> <bq caption="Page 138">I felt a slight pang that’d I’d missed out on my chance to solo-kill a city boss, but I was also certain I wouldn’t have survived the experience. Besides, I’d done something much more productive. The seeds were planted. The roots were already beginning to dig. You will not break me. Fuck you all. Quest Completed. The Show Must Go On.</bq> <bq caption="Page 167">The thing was a horse-sized, multi-breasted, pitch black goat monster that looked like it belonged on the cover of one of those 1980s heavy metal album covers, one where if you played it backward, the words would tell you to murder your grandma. The face still had the distinctive shape and horns of a male boer goat. It continued to walk on all four legs, but the thing was huge, and a group of six human-like breasts grew down the front of the creature. The entire thing had turned black, except the eyes, which glowed red. A constant wave of steam rose from it.</bq> <bq caption="Page 174">The neighborhood boss fight could’ve gone south pretty quickly, but thanks to Donut’s new Acute Ears skill, we knew it was lurking around the corner when we approached. The monster was called the Dispenser, and it looked like a giant manta ray thing. It blended in with the entire side of a building and tried to drop on us as we passed. We’d been ready, and Donut attacked with two reanimated Brain Boilers. Once it’d peeled itself off the wall, we had a clockwork Mongo run at it with a stick of dynamite in each hand. The whole fight lasted less than a minute.</bq> <bq caption="Page 203">The orc’s lifeless eyes shone in the reflection of Donut’s Torch spell. She’s not real, I thought. She’s a prop, an extra in a high-stakes game show. But that wasn’t true, was it? She was a real, biological creature. What she believed to be real was fake, an illusion. But she was still flesh and blood, an innocent. And she was dead simply because it was part</bq> <bq caption="Page 203">“She was a nice lady, for an orc,” Donut said. “She was doing the right thing. We have to finish the quest now.” “Why?” I asked. “Because they killed her. And they probably killed her because we got that quest,” Donut said. “If we hadn’t, she’d probably be in the bar right now waiting to ask someone else to help her.” Goddamnit, Donut. She was right. Of course, she was right. The orc’s lifeless eyes shone in the reflection of Donut’s Torch spell. She’s not real, I thought. She’s a prop, an extra in a high-stakes game show. But that wasn’t true, was it? She was a real, biological creature. What she believed to be real was fake, an illusion. But she was still flesh and blood, an innocent. And she was dead simply because it was part of the story. Just like with all those prostitutes. You’re not going to break me. Fuck you all. “I think I liked you better when you didn’t make so much sense,” I said. “I’ve always made sense, Carl,” Donut said.</bq> <bq caption="Page 221">Cerberus. Heimdall. Aniketos and Alexiares. Qin Shubao. Lev Yashin.</bq>