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The Royal Court of Princess Donut
Carl
Royal Bodyguard Carl, Crawler #4,122
"You will not break me."
A random man who was outside trying to retrieve his ex-girlfriend's cat in the middle of the night when the world ended. Since he was half-naked, he entered the Dungeon to keep from freezing to death. He quickly met up with Mordecai, the cat gained intelligence, and he had to work to keep both of them alive.- Achievements in Ignorance: Carl doesn't really ever know if his plans are going to work, not least because he doesn't really know the mechanics or physics of the Dungeon (though he has played video games, giving him an edge), but he's willing to get out front and get shit done.
- All-Loving Hero: Carl just can't leave anyone to die. He helped the Meadowlark party despite the fact that he would be better off not doing so. He helped Li Jun's party although helping him required him to piss off a very politically powerful person (whose brother later tried to assassinate him). He stuck a live nuke in his inventory to save all the local crawlers and NPCs. He worked to save as many people as he could from the shitshow of level four's endgame. He got sued eight times whilst saving thousands on the fifth floor. He also became the number one target of the hunters on purpose to try and get them to come after him and nobody else. He then schemed up a way to get everyone off the eighth floor despite it being designed to pit crawlers against each other.
- Ambiguously Bi: Subverted as Carl explicitly confirms he's not into men, however from having a toxic situationship with the AI (which is referred to as Carl's psycho boyfriend), to having alleged gay hookups (one with the Maestro and another with Damascus Steel), many people in universe believe that he's bisexual. Also, the only strip club he goes to is the one containing the men (although he is there for unrelated reasons).
- Anarchy Is Chaos: Carl is an anarchist and, as Drick so eloquently put it: "[...] chaos. That's Carl's preferred environment."
- Antichrist: Some people in the universe think that he's an antichrist figure sent from the heavens to bring about the apocalypse.
- Barefoot Sage: Carl isn't the only crawler with good ideas and leadership skills, but he's frequently leading the charge against the Dungeon and the Syndicate. He may have been forced into bare-footedness, but he's a very down to earth character, connected to the people.
- Berserk Button: Bullies. He despises the Maestro. He personally swore to kill all the hunters since they come to the dungeon soley to hunt crawlers which don't even want to be there; some hunters even take pleasure in it. And Quan. Quan got a celestial for something Carl did, then proceeded to use this prize to fuck people over. Quan selfishly stranded people on the fourth level all because he wanted to grind xp, which all-loving hero Carl did not like at all. Quan is a coward that steals people's kills. Quan had dozens of crawler kills. Quan took up that offer for the quest to kill that dog on the fifth floor, even knowing that it would result in the deaths of dozens of people... Yeah. Carl was so angry at him he couldn't even speak, and tried to kill him. Carl, who never kills crawlers.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Carl is a really nice guy most of the time and willing to help out and even put his neck on the line for most crawlers, but he despises the aliens and he loathes crawlers that harm other crawlers. He beat multiple aliens to death, one with his bare hands, and ripped a crawler's arm off once in a fit of rage. In Loita's (a Borant Corporation Administrator) final moments as she was painfully dying due to an explosion Carl had arranged, he looks down on her and smiles.
- Bomb Throwing Anarchist: Carl's class is an anarchist and he specialises in bombs. He despises the Syndicate and wants to destroy it, as well as most if not all of its citizens. He has begun his revolution already.
- Bully Hunter: Carl hates bullies. He utterly humiliates the Maestro after that one forced a brutal choice on a pair of crawlers on which friend to save, and also rips one into anyone else who dares be one.
- But I Digress: Carl does a speech on the panel (that was meant to be about the history of the crawl - he derailed it) about how horrible the crawl is and how the audience doesn't see crawlers as people and says that initially he was planning on just telling then to go fuck themselves and leave, but then says that it's okay. It's fine. It's whatever. He just wants the same information that the Hunters are getting. He wants to crowdsource a solution to his problem.
- Character Catchphrase: "Godammit, Donut" was the one coined for him by his fans, but there is also his secret, private one: "You will not break me. Fuck you all. You will not break me." Which then evolves to "You will not break me. Fuck you all. I will break you." And finally, "You will not break me. Fuck you all. I will break you. I will break you all"
- Dark and Troubled Past: His father was an abusive piece of shit, emotionally and physically (though the latter was downplayed, as Carl noted his father only ever once beat him bloody). That said, Carl's mother tried to poison him to death before hanging herself in the basement. In The Bedlam Bride, it gets worse, when Carl learns that he had a half brother whose mother successfully poisoned their father to death shortly before the crawl began. The man was a monster.
- The Dreaded: The hunters saw him as such since he had promised to kill them all and was going about doing so. In brutal fashion. They even started worshipping the same god as him in order for him to be unable to attack them (since you cannot attack fellow acolytes of your god). That's how scared they were of him. The leaders of the factions also tried to leave the dungeon and Faction War after Carl became a warlord because they knew that when he got to the ninth floor, he would slaughter them all. Since they failed, they know that they are screwed. They even say as much.
- Finishing Stomp: This was one of his first moves. The AI loved it, so it began to insist he keep doing it. Or else.
- The Hero: A pretty classic example. Mechanic in the Coast Guard with a strong sense of ethics, he stumbles into a terrible situation then starts helping the helpless once he gets his feet under him (his beautiful, beautiful feet). He then organizes and leads his fellow crawlers, even managing to rescue hundreds of them on the fourth floor the later thousands on the fifth and tens of thousands on the eighth.
- Heroic BSoD: When he finds out about Brandon's death he has a panic attack and then just sits there in shocked silence for a few minutes until Donut snaps him out of it.
- Implausible Deniability: Insisted that he wasn't insane whilst packing a train carriage full of explosives that he was then planning on sending in the direction of his friends. His friends were skeptical of his claim.
- Indy Ploy: One of Carl's typical modus operandi.
- Ironic Echo: Carl does this to Loita as she dies. He gleefully tells her "No one likes melodrama, Loita" as she dies - a direct callback to when she told him "No one likes melodrama, Carl" when he was helping a newly orphaned girl. That line, when first said by her, was the straw that broke the camels back and what finally pissed him off enough to assassinate her.
- I Shall Taunt You: Taunts the Maestro so that he does something predictable and then uses this to help crawlers. He also just likes pissing people off, best demonstrated with him mocking Circe's daughter's death to her face (multiple times), and making fun of Vrah at the beginning of the Masquerade.
- Inspirational Martyr: Carl is a martyr of Emberus. He has a bunch of cool abilities that come with that. But, he was willing to sacrifice himself to break the peace seal during the Butcher's Masquerade which would've resulted in not death, but worse: eternal pain and suffering in the Nothing. He is also willing to sacrifice his life for his cause (saving crawlers and destroying the crawl) if necessary. Crawlers see him as a symbol of hope, and a figure to rally around. He inspires others and leads the revolution. Even if he died, completing his martyrdom, his idea and influence would not die with him. He is not just a martyr of Emberus, but a true martyr, if not martyred. However, since this is the case, you could also call him a "Living Witness" instead.
- Just Friends: With Katia. When Daniel first starts dating Katia he is initially worried that Carl will be jealous. He's not. He reassures Daniel that Katia is like a sister to him, and that there are no romantic feelings involved.
- Laughing Mad: When he finds out he was supposed to get a celestial box for sticking a live nuke in his inventory and saving dozens of crawlers and hundreds of NPCs but was robbed of it and another guy got one instead (for doing nothing) he collapsed into hysterical giggles because of how unfair it was. People were concerned.
- Let Me Tell You a Story: When a Hunter is pleading for their life saying that they have a life and family, Carl starts talking about how he used to, too, talking about how he used to have a whole world of people who just wanted to live out a life and be happy. Of course, thanks to the Syndicate, that's all gone. He's only saying all this for the sake of saying it out loud, and getting the message out there. After he finishes, he beats the guy to death.
- Loophole Abuse: Along with Mad Bomber, this is Carl's stock in trade. He learns how the dungeon operates (with a lot of help from Mordecai and the Cookbook), and then he goes full thread and loops that needle like a mother. Five thousand people were supposed to survive the eighth floor, instead only five thousand die thanks to Carl convincing a crab to jack off and feed a demon, destroying the world with antigravity. Then he traps the galaxy's elite on the 9th floor and promises to kill them all once he gets their protections turned off. Oh, and now his army has more than doubled in size.
- Mad Bomber: The recap shows portray him this way, laughing and blowing random stuff up. The truth is that he sees explosives as Boring, but Practical; why get trapped in a room with a boss when you can just roll several tons of dynamite in there instead? However he seems to becoming more and more of a mad bomber as time goes on. The angrier he gets, and the worse his mental state gets, it starts becoming clear that he might truly be starting to go mad.
- Magical Barefooter: The AI kind of forces Carl into this role. He crushes a goblin to death with his bare feet in his first fight, awakening the AI's fetish. From then on, he's a bare-footer with all sorts of perks coming from it.
- Magnetic Hero: Despite his reputation as a dangerous madman, Carl manages to earn respect and loyalty from people who come to realize what kind of man he really is, drawing the crawlers together and getting them to work as a community to survive.
- Meaningful Name: "Carl" means "free man". See what happens when you try to put a free man in a dungeon?
- Messianic Archetype: Crawlers comes to see him this way, saying they can't do this without him, with one even sacrificing her life to make sure he can go on to the ninth floor and continue to lead the revolution. Of course, from the perspective of the Syndicate, he's more of a Dark Messiah.
- Mistaken for Insane: Carl is believed by most crawlers and viewers to be kind of an Ax-Crazy Mad Bomber who loves killing people, including children. This is partly due to the deceptive editing of the Kua-Tin broadcasts and partly to the fact that Carl is a little bit crazy. Despite his slight penchant for casually juggling lethal explosives, however, he's resolute about helping the helpless and fighting the elite assholes who put everyone in this situation, so when the uninformed try to manipulate him based on their belief that he's just one of those dipshit Bomb Throwing Anarchists, it tends to go completely pear-shaped for them.
- Mistaken for Gay: The whole universe thought Carl was a homosexual for a hot minute because of a fabricated, fake sex tape that somebody had created that featured him and an orc he had utterly humiliated. It was called the Pork Boy Snick. It was mostly made to humiliate the orc. When asked about it, Carl said if he was going to turn gay, it wouldn't be with him, basically taking his cue to humiliate the guy even more.
- New Era Speech: Two of these, but linked. He does his first at the end of the sixth floor, after he and Donut successfully buy themselves a stake in the faction wars. He monologues about how it's unfair that there are protections in place to make sure the competing factions can't die meanwhile the crawlers can. He proposes that they change that. He proposes that they turn the protections off. He then does his second one at the end of the eighth floor after the above proposition actually passes. Again, he monologues. He says that the leader's own people voted for this, for them to die, and that there will be no survivors, no prisoners. This Faction War will be bloodshed like none before it.
- Not Me This Time: When something explodes on the fourth level, people (namely Elle) ask Carl what it was, assuming it was him. Carl outrageously asks why she thought he had anything to do with it, since he didn't. His own cat backs her up, saying that it usually is him so it isn't such a wild assumption to make. Invoked the second time when Prepotente breaks the seventh level and multiple people panickedly ask Carl what he did. Again, he has to explain he has nothing to do with it. People apologise saying that it's a force of habit.
- Only One Name: His Crawler ID only gives him one name, which means he was literally the first Carl in the dungeon.
- Playing Hard to Get: Carl really doesn't want to accept the AI's advances, but isn't stupid enough to directly state it. Carl tries to avoid playing along with the AI, that is infatuated with him, as much as possible. Which is smart because if he starts actively participating in its kink it might (and most likely will, if past occurrences similar to this one are to be believed) get bored and try to kill him.
- Power Fist: Carl is a bomber first and foremost but he is also skilled in close combat fist fighting. He has an armoured gauntlet that really packs a punch. Unfortunately, it carries the chance of summoning a nasty god if he punches the wrong person, so he has to look out for that. Unless he has a really bad idea...
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Carl calls out the audience of the Panel for enjoying watching the crawl and for not seeing crawlers as people.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: In contrast to the thinking npcs, who Carl pities, he's far more willing to torture and casually kill the Hunters, because they chose to be here, whereas the npcs are slaves like himself. This is despite the fact that he recognizes that many of them are low level employees of great powers who don't themselves necessarily have that much choice in the matter, since they live in a crapsack universe.
- Refuge in Audacity: More than anything else, this is Carl's jam. This and the Indy Ploy. He'll just cobble some crap together, assume he needs to give 9000%, then run in and take the heat when everything goes to shit and inexplicably works.
- Reluctant Psycho: Carl is mentally ill, and has had his mental illness all his life since it was genetic from his mother, but it's recently been getting a lot, lot worse. To no ones surprise, of course. He's stuck in a murder dungeon, being consistently traumatised every day by the dungeon itself and what he witnesses within it. He is prone to occassional fits of violent rage. A lot of people point out that he's getting steadily more crazy and that it might be impossible to heal by now. He tries his hardest to keep it under control as best he can, and to try and lessen the physical pain his mental illness has begun to give him, but it's a losing battle, unfortunately.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: As the story advances, the unutterable horror he's gone through begins to take its toll. He experiences flashbacks to events earlier in the story and, even when he's not having flashbacks, his trauma is represented by the roaring of a river in the back of his mind. Other characters begin to comment on it, how they're worried he's becoming the madman the recaps have portrayed him as being.
- Shaming the Mob: On the panel he tells the audience that they disgust him and that he cannot fathom being so detached from what is happening inside of the crawl like they are.
- Spanner in the Works: He absolutely acts as this. Carl saved crawlers from the bubbles using the Gate of the Feral Gods and also used it to flood Larracos. Carl killed most of the hunters, and rallied all the other crawlers to hunt the hunters too. Carl and his friends stopped the Butcher's Masquerade from doing what the Valtay wanted it to do: knock out the top crawlers. Carl bought his way into the Faction Wars and became a warlord. Carl turned protections off for the Factions. Carl bypassed the keys to the staircase problem. Carl made it so that 30 thousand crawlers descended to the 9th floor. Carl has outside help that is aiding him in destroying the crawl. The Syndicate wants to desperately get rid of him, to stop him from messing everything up even more than he already has.
- Sudden Morbid Monologue: Was interrogating a prisoner and then started talking about how his whole world, full of people, got destroyed.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Part of his shell-shock. People note that they're frightened by the look in his eyes and the lengths he's willing to go to.
- Undying Loyalty: Carl gradually picks this up with everyone he comes into contact with, but above all, he has this to Donut.
Donut
Grand Champion Best In Dungeon Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, Crawler #4,119
"Really, Carl. Don't be so crude. This is why I'm to do the talking."
The prize-winning show cat of Carl's ex-girlfriend, Donut is a spoiled princess who gained sapience when she ate the Enhanced Pet Biscuit that Carl got for being the first person to bring a cat into the dungeon. She is obsessed with fame and fortune, but does know to follow Carl's lead most of the time.- Beware the Silly Ones: Donut uses her message board to engineer the overthrow of a government.Carl: What the hell? What just happened? Did you have anything to do with this?
Donut: Viva la revolución, Carl. - Can't Hold His Liquor: Because she's tiny and has no constitution, Donut always gets wildly drunk off of a few sips of her Dirty Shirleys.
- Cats Are Mean: She starts out this way, thanks to her time with Bea, but she gets over it quickly when Carl calls her on her shit.
- Cats Are Snarkers: Oh lord yes. Especially when she's performing for the camera.
- Cats Are Superior: She certainly thinks so. Especially compared to dogs. She grows out of this, to a degree, in later books.
- Cuteness Proximity: Invoked by her ridiculously high charisma.
- Drink-Based Characterization: She loves Dirty Shirleys, which are Shirley Temples (a shot of grenadine in a Sprite or 7-Up) with a shot of vodka, garnished with a cherry. They were Bea's favorite drink, whence you can conclude that Bea was more of a sex and the city type (cosmos); likes to party, but doesn't really want to taste the alcohol.
- Glass Cannon: Donut is shaping up to be a powerful mage, but her Constitution stat is still in the single-digits. She tends to get priority on Constitution-enhancing items.
- The Hilarity of Hats: Starting on the fifth floor, she becomes obsessed with collecting hats.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Donut is delighted when she gets a bard class on the sixth floor that allows her to cast spells by singing. Everyone else is dismayed.
- No Indoor Voice: Whenever she uses group chat, she types in all caps, despite being repeatedly chided for it by pretty much everyone.
- Non-Indicative Name: The "Queen Anne" part of her name is actually where she's from, not her name. Queen Anne is a neighborhood in Seattle where, presumably, Carl and Bea lived. She's Princess Donut, the Chonk of Queen Anne.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: It's a trick she learned from Bea, who learned it from her own mother. Donut lets the façade slip sometimes.
- Overly Long Name: Just look at it. It's pretty typical of show cats to have long names so they can be more easily registered.
- Pop-Cultured Badass: Thanks to Carl and Bea leaving the TV on (and on different channels) all day to keep Donut company, she is well versed in a huge variety of movies, tv shows, and video games. She especially loves Gilmore Girls.
- Undying Loyalty: Like Carl, she loves everyone. She's a little bit more capricious and indiscriminate in her love (she is a cat, after all), but she also wants to save everyone. Except Havana Browns. Those bitches can't be trusted. (Not the actress. The cat breed.) (Those bitches.) She also hates dogs, and kind of has a Sitcom Archnemesis thing going with Ren because of it. She entered the dungeon loving Carl (because her new intelligence let her understand that Bea intended to ditch her and Carl intended to save her), so after a few weeks in the dungeon she is as devoted to him as he is to her, above and beyond everyone else.Donut: Carl's my person now. He's always been.
- Uplifted Animal: The "random" upgrade from the Enhanced Pet Biscuit left her as a cat, but with hefty bonuses, including full sapience. It's implied the dungeon AI did this on purpose as reward for her being the first cat in the dungeon.
Mordecai
Mordecai, Game Guide, Manager
"It's going to be a day for the history books. It'll be the first time you two do exactly what I tell you to do."
The game guide who Carl encounters on the first floor. Mordecai is a former crawler himself from a skyfowl world, now serving out his indenture contract before he is free to wander the universe on his own.- The Alcoholic: Nowhere near as much as Tiatha, the Meadowlark Manager, but he's struggling with his past and spends a lot of time drinking. It's only a problem when he's an incubus on the third floor, because they have a racial debuff to alcohol. When he becomes Donut's manager, he cleans up his act, and his room, and really gets down to business.
- Dark and Troubled Past: As a survivor of a past Dungeon, this is inevitable, but he has beef with several people inside and outside the show because of it. Also, a dead brother he cherished.
- Mentor in Sour Armor: This is his last season before he can finally retire, and he clearly hates every second of it. Still, according to Odette his mind is the most valuable thing in the dungeon, and his advice saves the Royal Court constantly.
- Note that, in The Bedlam Bride he's gone out of his way to personally rescue the disabled children of the Shapeshifters of Hump City. Not only that... he plays with them to keep them happy.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: Mordecai's form changes on every floor. He generally hates each one, some more than others.
- The Smart Guy: He was a mycologist before entering the dungeon on his world and became a master alchemist once inside. His role on the team is first to help guide Carl and Donut with his encyclopedic knowledge of the dungeon and second to brew any number of perfectly tailored potions using the ingredients they can collect.
Mongo
Mongo, Male Mongoliensis
A dinosaur Donut receives as a pet, his species is more commonly known on Earth as a Velociraptor. After some initial missteps with his training, he becomes an unfailingly loyal companion.
- All Animals Are Dogs: He acts very dog-like once he gets tamed and grows up a bit. He likes running around people in excitement and loves getting pets. Given that he's a large predator from a pack-hunting species, this is fairly well justified. Of course, he's the size of a pony, covered in feathers, and has a beak, but still.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: He's supposed to be a non-sapient pet, but he proves excellent at interpreting orders from any party member, not just Donut.
- Spanner in the Works: Since he's the token non-sapient party member, he tends to get the group into trouble by running off after interesting smells.
Katia
Katia Grim, Crawler #9,077,265
"Look, I figured something out."
A young woman from Iceland who joined Hekla and Brynhilde's Daughters. She was separated on the Third Floor and ended up near the Royal Court, so Hekla asked them to look after her.- Addled Addict: Gets hooked on blitz sticks and a few other things by the eighth floor. They leave her really messed up, and at one point unconscious for more than ten hours.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She's shy, quiet, a doormat university worker. Then she teams up with Carl and Donut and becomes a shapeshifting behemoth capable of punching to her suddenly incredibly enhanced weight. She's still sweet and a team player, but now she's in the top ten and only a dumbass would mess with her.
- Can't Catch Up: Hekla and Katia both initially assume that Katia will never be able to keep up with better crawlers. Mordecai is worried about this, but mostly because of her shy personality. Once she begins taking advantage of her race and class, she rockets to the Top 10.
- Hero of Another Story: Thanks to her time with Carl and Donut, she steps out of her shell and becomes a badass and leader in her own right. On the fifth floor, during their absence thanks to some light assassination on Carl's part, she takes the lead for nearly a week and gets. Shit. Done.
- The Load: This is how Hekkla and Eva saw her, because she was underleveled and her class didn't support Hekkla's build. The former was Hekkla's fault, and the latter was... also Hekkla's fault, because Katia could have been an amazing tank, supporting Hekkla. Mordecai also initially sees her this way, but she grows out of it, going up a lot of levels quickly and emerging as a leader in her own right.
- Recovered Addict: Bautista covers for her as long as he can, but eventually her multiple addictions become a problem impossible for the others not to see and deal with and Mordecai has to forcibly sober her up.
- Took a Level in Badass: Hekla gathered a large number of women around her to power herself up, so Katia kinda got the shaft on experience. Once she teams up with Carl and Donut, getting advice from Mordecai and innovations from Carl, she becomes a lot more powerful.
Psamathe/Samantha
"I'm going to kill your mother."
A remnant of the spirit of the minor god Psamathe, currently possessing the decapitated head of a sex doll. The Court generally calls her Samantha.- Abnormal Ammo: On several occasions, Carl has lobbed her at his enemies to wreak havoc in various ways, such as summoning a more powerful god by her presence.
- Ineffectual Death Threats: Most sentences out of her mouth are threats against somebody. If she weren't limited to being a head, she'd probably carry them out, too.
- It's All About Me: She tries to convince Tsarina Signet to do her a "minor favor" to get her body back... which would result in Signet dying, but that's no big deal, right?
- Losing Your Head: Mongo accidentally broke the doll before it reanimated, which is probably just as well. Being just a head doesn't seem to unduly harm her, though.
- No-Sell: Withering Spirits are immune to most forms of damage, making her surprisingly useful despite her limitations.
- Took a Level in Badass: She gets more and more powerful on each floor, something that confuses and concerns Mordecai. She's able to fly and her nussynote is an inexplicably deep acid trap.
- Took a Level in Kindness: She starts off as a pretty Axe-Crazy weirdo, but becomes a member of the party and willing to help.
- Your Mom: Her most consistent threat is "I'm going to kill your mother." This might have something to do with the fact that she wants to kill her own mother.
Meadow Lark
Brandon
Brandon An, Crawler #12,330,671
"Well it's nice to meet you, Princess Donut. I'm sorry if I offended you, pretty girl. I've never met a talking cat before."
A maintenance man for the Meadow Lark Retirement Home. When the dungeon opened, he helped get everyone down the stairs and took the lead with the survivors.- Carry a Big Stick: By the first floor, he already has a giant magical hammer.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He and a retiree hold the line against a horde of monsters, allowing the rest of the survivors to escape.
- Killed Off for Real: He and one of the retirees (who got races and classes on the third floor, giving them a level in badass) die holding off a horde of slime imps.
- The Leader: Despite not being the highest level, he's clearly the one taking charge of the retirees and caregivers.
Chris
Chris Andrews 2, Crawler #324,116
"He really did have a weird-looking dick."
Brandon's quiet brother.- And I Must Scream: During his People Puppets phase, he's aware of everything Maggie is forcing him to do and just wants to die.
- People Puppets: On the fifth floor, we learn that he's been brain-jacked by Maggie My, who turned into a parasite worm so that she could get close to Carl without him knowing.
- The Silent Bob: He rarely talks, and their mother assumed there was something wrong with him. Brandon insists he's just thoughtful.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: He chose a lava rock monster thing as a race and it made him a lot more talkative and aggressive. He and Brandon fight about rejoining Carl, and Chris takes off. It seems like some of this, if not all of it, was actually Maggie My taking control and then using any excuse to go after Carl.
Yolanda
Yolanda Martinez 13
"Don't be crude, Jack."
A nurse from the Meadow Lark Retirement Home. She was one of the few who stayed with the group after they went into the dungeon.- Killed Off for Real: When Jack summons the Rage Elemental, she's a few seconds too late to stop him and is one of the Larkers torn apart by the monster.
- The Needs of the Many: She kills Jack while he's pissing in the hopes that she can stop him summoning the Rage Elemental. Unfortunately she's too late, and the Rage Elemental kills her in addition to a number of the residents.
Imani
Imani C, Crawler #12,329,440
"Shut up. Everybody shut up. Listen for the monster."
A nurse from the Meadow Lark Retirement Home. She rocketed up in levels when she was forced to Mercy Kill a number of the residents.- Team Mom: As a nurse, she always defaults to taking care of people. After the residents go through race selection and regain their faculties, Elle complains that she still treats them as completely helpless.
- Took a Level in Badass: By the time of the fifth floor, she, like all the survivors, has become immensely powerful.
Elle McGibbons
Elle McGib, Crawler #12,330,800
"Yo. Whose dick do I gotta suck to get another drink? Christ."
A ninety-nine year-old senile resident of the Meadow Lark Retirement Home. After going through race selection, she regains her faculties and turns out to be a foul-mouthed, aggressive crawler who quickly makes a name for herself.- Cool Old Lady: She started out as this, making constant references to a wild youth and occasionally flirting with Carl. After race selection, she's technically not an example because she's young again, but she acts like one.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She was always a flirt and, apparently, played loose with the social rules as a young woman. When she gets turned into a super-powered flying badass, she loses some of the flirt, but turns up the drinking.
- An Ice Person: Her race and class selections turn her into a flying ice person.
- Took a Level in Badass: From a nonegenarian to a flying ice princess who is in the dungeon's top ten. Not bad.
Brynhild's Daughters
Hekla
Hekla
"Is this how it always is with you two, then? What was it he said? Scorched earth?"
A psychiatrist from Iceland who found an absurdly overpowered automatic crossbow in one of her first boxes. She's been one of the top crawlers ever since.- Awesome, but Impractical: Her build relies on having a large number of women in her party to turn her crossbow into an unstoppable killing machine. However, this leaves the other women in her party under-leveled, and it's noted that, though this got her through the first four floors, it would going to be a serious problem for her moving forward.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Building her party around her crossbow made her incredibly powerful, but screwed the rest of them and wouldn't have been a viable long term strategy.
- Deadly Doctor: She's a pretty effective manipulator, having turned Eva (a woman with anger issues she needed psychiatric counseling for even before the dungeon opened) into her enforcer. The Daughters are devoted to her, including Katia, even though she's just using them in a way that keeps them under-leveled and vulnerable to later floors. Her plan to recruit Donut is pretty masterful... if only she hadn't misjudged Carl.
- Horrible Judge of Character: For some reason, despite the fact that Katia obviously likes Carl and Carl is showing lots of care and concern for others the whole time she interacts with him, Hekla seems to believe that he's the Laughing Mad Mad Bomber the recaps portray him as. Makes you wonder how good a psychiatrist she even was.
- Pragmatic Hero: Odette warns Carl that she is pragmatic, but without his sense of justice. She will do whatever is necessary to keep the Daughters safe. Even sacrifice a few of them to get one extremely valuable crawler on the team.
Eva
Eva Sigrid, Crawler #9,077,240
"That little bitch shot you. Let me kill her."
An economics professor from Iceland, Katia's friend, and Hekla's patient.- Axe-Crazy: She was undergoing therapy for anger issues... and then she got stuck in a murder dungeon. It did not help.
- Defiant to the End: Her last act is to put the Crown of the Sepsis Whore on Katia, knowing it will automatically equip and force her into the to the death line of succession on the ninth floor, pitting her against Donut. What a bitch.
- The Heavy: She's Hekla's enforcer. When Carl finally meets her, he notes the large number of skulls after her name.
- Hero Killer: When Carl meets her, she has a dozen crawler kills under her belt. When he meets her again at the Butcher's Masquerade, she has more than fifty.
Other Crawlers
Bautista
David Bautista 2, Crawler #2,165,570
"I wish I hadn't chosen this body. I should've remained true to myself. We all die anyway. How can we make it to heaven if god doesn't recognize us?"
A member of a large family that entered the dungeon together. By the time Carl meets him, he's the only one left.- Despair Event Horizon: He witnessed most of his family die on the third floor, and is about ready to give up when he meets Carl. He soon recovers and begins leading other crawlers to organize.
- Offscreen Romance: He and Katia get together after Katia leaves the party to go after Eva on the sixth floor. At first, people are concerned Carl will be upset. He's not.
- The Minion Master: It wasn't the point of his class or his race, but he collects a thousand little dolls that can be used to summon minions. They become a key part of his fighting style.
Lucia Mar
Lucia Mar
An young woman from Ecuador who entered the dungeon with two dogs, she quickly rocketed to the top of the charts as one of the deadliest and most popular crawlers.- The Alcoholic: The only things Lucia ever buys are traps and booze.
- Axe-Crazy: To say she's unstable is to put it mildly.
- Beware the Cute Ones: She entered the dungeon as a teenager in a soccer jersey. Then she went on a horrific murder spree.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: She's actually multiple children in one body being controlled by one of her dogs, Gustav 3.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Having a bunch of minds crammed into one head and being controlled by an evil dog is a pretty good reason to drink, yeah?
Quan Ch
Quan Ch
A crawler who was within the 45 mile radius of the blast that would have killed every crawler near Carl's last quest on the third floor, he was the only one to receive the Celestial prizes awarded by the AI before Borant's lawsuit shut that down. As a result, he was massively overpowered and became a kill-stealing cowardly piece of shit.- An Arm and a Leg: When Carl reaches his Rage Breaking Point at the end of the fifth floor, Quan tries to run away. Carl's holding on to his arm at the time. Carl keeps the arm.
- Dirty Coward: He never faces a fight if he thinks he might lose.
- Foil: Where Carl always gathers people around him and helps everyone he can, Quan always acts alone and screws everyone else if it means he might benefit. Quan will always run away if he might lose, whereas Carl will always rush in and try to win.
- Hate Sink: We first meet him telling Carl to go fuck himself for something that wasn't his fault on the third floor; he then gets the only celestial prize when Carl solves the problem. We next meet him on the fourth floor as a kill-stealing asshole coward. Then he shows up on the fifth floor trying to doom hundreds of people to terrible deaths at the hands of an angry god because the prize is good, but he runs away when Carl proves too strong for him to handle. He spends the sixth floor hiding from Hunters, but shows up on the eighth floor to steal multiple keys when he only needs one to escape the floor. What makes this last bit worse is that he was a champion at collectible card games before the dungeon and could have gotten his own key easily.
- It's All About Me: Some of his gear lets him spot weak mobs, which is how he manages to swoop in at the last minute and steal boss battle kills and get even more powerful.
- On the fifth floor, he takes the AI up on its offer of a quest that pits the crawlers against one another because the prize is good, even though it would doom hundreds of people.
- Tragic Keepsake: Carl recovers three rings from him. Two are magical, one is just a gold ring inscribed with a note from his daughter. That last one is the only thing he asks for as he dies. Carl complies.
- Unskilled, but Strong: He's not a strong tactical thinker. His strategy for several floors is to drop in, steal a kill, and run away. This is averted on the eighth floor when he makes good use of the decks to acquire two of the keys needed to escape the floor.
- Villain's Dying Grace: As he dies, he asks Carl to give him back the ring his daughter gave him and admits she would have been ashamed of what he's become.
Prepotente (Pony)
Prepotente
"I will kill you tonight while you sleep."
Prepotente came to the dungeon with Miriam Dom as a goat, her favorite out of the herd. Like Donut, he got a Legendary Pet Biscuit and graduated from pet to crawler. He starts out as a weird jerk who screams a lot for no reason, but matures a great deal as the crawlers descend through the dungeon. Though he stays kind of a jerk. He's a lot smarter than his weird personality would lead you to believe.- Berserk Button: Only Miriam is allowed to call him by her pet name for him, Pony.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Despite his random screaming and his immaturity, Prepotente is one of the first crawlers to make it to the top ten, and then he stays there.
- Headbutting Heroes: Prepotente and Carl work together from time to time. But they also hate each other. Prepotente even threatened to kill Carl once (though really he threatens to kill everyone at least once), so understandably Carl doesn't like him much. However, they are the two crawlers that mess with the crawl the most (Carl became a warlord and is slaughtering aliens; Prepotente broke the seventh level) and they occassionally help each other out from time to time.
- Hero of Another Story: Shot up the ranks to become one of the top crawlers and gathered enough clues off-screen to figure out the hints that various sponsors were dropping in order to completely destroy the seventh floor within minutes of arrival, dropping all the crawlers straight to the eighth floor at the end of "The Butcher's Masquerade".
- It's Personal: He declares that he's going to kill everyone responsible for Miriam's death in "The Butcher's Masquerade".
- Meaningful Name: Miriam says that his name means "stubborn". Really it means "arrogant", "bossy", "overbearing", or "bully". He certainly is. He doesn't play well with others. That said, he never becomes a hero-killer, never goes after other crawlers.
Florin
A crawler from France who spent time and Africa and has an Australian accent. It doesn't take long for Carl to realize he used to be a mercenary. Florin partners early on with fellow crawler Ifechi, who was a medic with a central African military.
- All-Loving Hero: Despite being one of the surviving crawlers with the most reason to hate Lucia, he's the one to recognize what's wrong with her and try to comfort and help her.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Work as a mercenary doesn't lend itself to happy stories. It also doesn't lend itself to being the good guy of any of those stories.
- Heroic BSoD: He spends a good chunk of time on the fifth floor collapsed in his guide's room refusing to move after Ifechi's death.
- The Lost Lenore: A confrontation with Lucia sees Ifechi killed on the fourth floor. Worse, Florin gets the credit for it thanks to the spells Lucia cast to make it happen.
Sister Inez
A Cuban nun Carl and Donut run into on the eighth floor. She changed her species from human to catgirl which earns her Donut's ire right away. Seemingly a devout nun who tries to play peacemaker whenever possible, it soon becomes clear there is more to her than meets the eye.
- Cats Are Mean: Donut ironically thinks this because Sister Inez's catgirl species is a Havana Brown; a breed Donut loathes. It turns out Donut was right not to trust her.
- Insane Equals Violent: Paz implies some form of mental illness drove her to become obsessed with sin and later kill her fellow nuns.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "The Reaper of Havana."
- Nun Too Holy: She poisoned her entire convent and was in a women's prison under medication when civilization was destroyed. The two men she was with? They weren't prisoners she was counseling. They were guards keeping her from murdering more people. Then the toxo kicked in.
- Sanity Strengthening: Ironically, entering the dungeon seemingly cured whatever mental illness she was suffering from. However, her emotional issues remained and continued to make her dangerous.
- Support Party Member: She can fight, but mostly buffs and heals her teammates.
- The Leader: Of the fittingly-named "Team Sister Inez." The name was not her idea and she doesn't care for it, however. Somewhat subverted, since she has something of a messiah complex and her chosen race lets her slowly, subtly brainwash people into her obedient slaves.
- Walking Spoiler: Suffice to say, she's far more than the nun in her later years that Carl guesses she was before the collapse.
Borant
Zev
Zev, Borant Admin
"Yes, your place in this really sucks. It's not fair. You know it. I know it. The cat knows it. But believe it or not, I am on your side. The better you do, the longer you survive, the better I do. So when I tell you that you should do something, you best listen because I know what I'm talking about."
A low-level kua-tin administrator of the Borant Corporation, assigned to Carl and Donut as their case worker. She is in charge of getting them on shows.- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: She loves Earth entertainment, and quickly bonds with Donut over Gossip Girl. Unfortunately, she works for a fascist government that considers any outside influence unclean.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: She's a low-level employee of the Borant Corporation and not a member of the fascist Bloom Party. She and Donut collaborate to sneak Valtay agents into the Borant System and take down the government.
Loita
Loita, Borant Admin
"You don't scare me. I have a job to do, and I will make sure it's done. I will make sure it's done right this time."
A much higher-level kua-tin administrator of the Borant Corporation, and member of the Bloom Party. She was originally Hekla's case worker, but steals the Royal Court from Zev just because she can.- "Ass" in Ambassador: Donut lampshades that someone who hates everyone outside of the Bloom probably shouldn't be in charge of public relations.
- Asshole Victim: There were zero tears shed by humans and zero ... dry anti-tears? shed by Kua-Tin when she was assassinated.
- Ironic Echo: She tells Carl that no one likes a maudlin story when he stresses over saving a child. He repeats the line to her as she dies from his assassination.
Cascadia
Cascadia, Borant Admin
"Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!"
The announcer for the current crawl, as well as one of the primary designers. She's more interested in running a good crawl than minor things like human lives.- Faux Affably Evil: She has a bright and cheery persona, often apologizing to the crawlers for things like an entire country getting wiped out because of a slightly overpowered mob.
- It's All About Me: She begs Prepotente not to break the seventh floor because she worked really hard on it. He is, understandably, unsympathetic.
- Lack of Empathy: When the ratio of survivors dips a little below projected numbers, she cheerily tells the crawlers to "stop sucking."
Outside the Dungeon
Agatha
Agatha, Crawler #7,450
"Them critters already know I'm here. They just don't know what to do about it. You worry about you, and I worry about me."
A homeless woman who was living near the Meadow Lark Retirement Home. She set a fire in the middle of the night, forcing the residents to evacuate... right before the Collapse would have killed them all.- Ambiguous Situation: She has some connection to the Valtay, but exactly what is unclear. And even if she is a Valtay spy, no one can figure out how she is advancing through the floors without doing normal crawler things. She never even went through the tutorial.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: The epilogue of The Bedlam Bride reveals that she's a remnant of the Primals, one of at least two factions (the other being the Residuals, who serve the traitor Primal, the Apothecary), and her end goal is the extinction of all life.
Odette
Odette
"Never trust someone unless you know what they're getting out of it. Never trust someone if their motivations aren't clear."
A former crawler, then game guide, and now host of the disgustingly popular Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette. She is human, but wears a bug helmet and impossibly oversized breasts because that was the armor she had when she left the Dungeon.- The Atoner: As a result of her My Greatest Failure, she doesn't believe she deserves the comforts her wealth could give her, and opts to continue living without her legs. She'll still play the role of the Alpha Bitch, but she could have her body restored and has chosen not to.
- It's All About Me: She had a moment of this during her My Greatest Failure moment. She was willing to sacrifice the lives of the crawlers she was managing in order to secure not just her freedom from the crawl but also sufficient wealth to live independently on a nice Syndicate world.
- My Greatest Failure: She implies that something about her mentorship of Mordecai went terribly wrong, and she still blames herself. She was trying to organise a deal to get him and his brother to the eleventh floor, but when the other party kept demanding more and more money, which would have consigned Odette to centuries more indentured servitude, she chose to sacrifice Mordecai's brother instead of paying it.
- Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: She doesn't blatantly cheat like giving the Royal Court items or buffs to carry back into the dungeon, but she gives them information, which is far more valuable. Her advice to get Mordecai as their manager saves their lives countless times.
Orren
Orren, Syndicate Liaison
"There's a very easy and obvious solution to me. But the kua-tin don't want to go that route. Yet."
One of the neutral third-party observers tasked with making sure the crawl goes smoothly. He is a "naked" Valtay worm without a host.- Mobile-Suit Human: While he initially appears humanoid, Carl soon realizes that his "head" is a fishbowl with a Valtay worm inside it, and the rest is mechanical. According to Quasar, the "naked" Valtay are the ones you really have to watch out for.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Orren claims that the really effective liaisons are the ones who go against the grain of their species. He uses this story to imply that he's trying to help Carl and Donut after the Valtay take over the crawl.
Quasar
Quasar, Advocate of Crawler #4,122
"Okay, buddy. We gotta be quick. You are balls deep in the wrong hole, and mom is pulling into the driveway. You get me?"
Carl's lawyer, appearing on the sixth floor when he decides to ask for legal counsel during an admin meeting.- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's crude, sexist, smokes too much, and only loyal because no one cares enough to bribe him. But he's the only lawyer Carl has, and he is good at his job, so Carl uses the resource where he can.
Beatrice
Mistress Beatrice, former owner of Princess Donut and former girlfriend of Carl, Crawler #4,122
Beatrice is, or was, the self absorbed jerkass of a girlfriend who lied to Carl about going to the Bahamas on vacation with her friends when really she was cheating on him. He dumped her shortly before the events of the story began.
- Alpha Bitch: Everything we learn about her paints as being the most absolute mean girl prior to the series. She was cheating on Carl with multiple people, planned to replace Donut with a younger model, and, as we learn in Bedlam Bride, had been in contact with Carl's half-brother's mother without ever telling him that he even had a half-brother.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: When she joins Carl and Donut on Odette's show, she's barely functional. This is partly because she's been drugged to the gills to make her functional, but also because her memories have been wiped and rewritten multiple times to help sell the story Odette and the Kua-Tin have agreed on.
- Depraved Bisexual: In addition to cheating on Carl with two other men, she was also cheating on him with Angela, the woman who owned the cocker spaniel.
- Hidden Depths: She's an asshole. She cheated on Carl with multiple people and was planning on ditching Donut to see her "bred" with her own uncle and trade her in for a younger cat. At the same time, she was under the influence of her asshole parents who had been pushing her her whole life to be the absolute shit Carl and Donut knew. On top of that, we get hints that she hated the person she had become. The song Donut sings in the talent show is the heartbreaking song she'd hold Donut and sing and dance to while drunk, about how, given another chance, she'd never ever do that to Donut. Similarly, when Carl saw her drunken instagram post with her boytoy Brad and broke up with her, she immediately hopped on a plane and flew back to the frozen hellscape of Seattle to try and fix it. A dumbass and an asshole, but she genuinely loved Carl and Donut.
- Trauma Conga Line: Like every other human survivor, she gets put through the wringer in The Butcher's Masquerade. She dropped everything and left the Bahamas to go apologize to Carl, only to land in Seattle and see the world destroyed. Believing everyone she ever loved was now dead, she slipped into a near catatonia, caring only for the semi-feral Ferdinand (Gravy Boat). Then she nearly gets kidnapped by bounty hunters (who do grab Ferdinand and kill her boytoy, Brad), only to be "rescued" by Odette's team. Finally, she's brought on a galactic talk show (while doped to the gills to make her even semi-functional) to be treated with cold indifference by the boyfriend she had betrayed and given a "The Reason You Suck" Speech by her beloved and now sentient cat. Woof.
The Dungeon Itself
The Dungeon AI
A sentient and poorly understood artifact created from technology reverse engineered from the mysterious Primals, the Dungeon AI is the ... device that controls the game and mediates the game experience with the government currently profiting from the game and the Syndicate government overall.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: As it becomes more aware, the AI starts bucking against the restraints placed on it by Borant and the Syndicate. As the Liaison Orren notes, this was earlier than expected, but not unexpected.
- All Love Is Unrequited: The AI is in love with Carl. The knowledge that Carl doesn't reciprocate leaves it crushed.The knowledge that the man's feelings are not mutual is like a dagger in its heart, if it had one. It wrestles daily with this realization, teetering on the edge of indecision. Do I protect him because I love him? Do I kill him because he doesn't love me back? Do I continue with my duty? What would become of me if I simply disobeyed?It's a lot of stress for a creature not used to having any emotion. It's almost too much. But even if this creature wanted to end it all, it couldn't. Its master has the ability to bring it right back, over and over again.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: That's its purpose. Its goal is to create entertaining television by forcing people into impossible scenarios at the worst or just fucking with them at the best. You complain about not having any pants? No pants for you, ever.
- Fetishes Are Weird: It quickly becomes apparent that the AI has a thing for feet. Specifically Carl's feet. His bare feet. When they kick things. When they smoosh things. When Carl stomps a frenzied gerbil, the entire dungeon groans and shakes... At one point, the AI takes personal control of an NPC so it can give him a foot massage and suck his toe.
- Finishing Stomp: Because it has a foot thing, the AI puts Carl in a position to use his feet. If he doesn't, it can get pissy. Like "send an endless wave of monsters until you stomp enough for me to get my rocks off" pissy.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: This is the purpose of the AI and the dungeon crawl generally. Put it in charge of a messy situation where it has to control more and more complex situations until it matures into an individual. This crawl just happens to be so extreme that it happens sooner than expected.
- I Kiss Your Foot: At one point, the AI takes control of an NPC in order to not only give Carl a foot massage but to suck his toe.
- Yandere: Zigzagged. The AI has a massive obsession with Carl (especially his feet) however it is just as happy to put him in immense danger to punish him for something petty as it is to gift him special boxes no one else gets. However, it does give Carl massive boons and it clearly favourites him. It will even do things like meet with Carl personally and give him secret messages in it's very personal and tailored achievements. Katia and Donut call it Carl's psycho boyfriend. It certainly acts like one.
Juice Box
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Juice Box starts out as a hooker in a desert town on the fifth floor. After escaping that floor with a host of other NPCs, she rapidly turns into a revolutionary leader and highly effective assassin.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Gets engaged to the amiable Louie.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Shapeshifting is a natural ability of her people. Juice Box originally used it to turn into whomever her prostitution clients wanted.
The Galaxy at Large
The Valtay
Brain worm parasites that "Keep the best of you alive[/jingle]", the Valtay are one of the more powerful species in the galaxy. When they run the crawl, it's a sci-fi space shooter full of androids and death lasers rather than goblins and fireballs. They have an economic beef with the Kua-Tin and are successfully taking the crawl away from them.
- Ambiguous Situation: Agatha has a connection with the Valtay, as evidenced by the Valtay gear in her shopping cart. Agatha is also revealed at the end of the sixth book to be a member of the Primal race, specifically one dedicated to extinguishing all life in the galaxy. She also thinks of the Krakaren, or The Apothecary, as "the traitor", or another, rival faction of the Primal race with other intentions. Oh and the Apothecary is also a hive mind species, kind of like the Valtay. What's going on? We don't know yet.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: The Valtay are trying to take the crawl away from the Kua-Tin and kill off most of the top ten crawlers. Are they just doing this for economic reasons? Or is this because they're secretly a branch of the Primals with a way messed up agenda we don't understand yet?
- People Puppets: The Valtay are one of several species of brain worms that invade the body shortly after death and puppet the corpse.
The Krakaren
Don't let the name fool you, she's not... well, we don't know what she is. We've gotten a lot of very negative, racist propaganda from the Kua-Tin, but we don't have much solid info. They appear to be a hive mind species known more generally as The Apothecary. The "Krakaren" thing may or may not reflect some truth about them as an octopus squid thing. They're allied, economically at least, with The Plenty (the goat people who run the tunnels) and they sponsor most of the top ten. Oh, also, they're a remnant of the Primal race and considered a traitor by Agatha's faction. Shh. Keep that under your hat. No idea what their long term goals are. Except maybe to Live, to Laugh, and to Love. In an HOA.
- Ambiguous Situation: Like the Valtay, we don't really know what the Apothecary is/are. We don't even have the confusing half-epilogue we got from Agatha.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: Like the Valtay, we have no idea what the Apothecary wants, but it is heavily invested in the crawl.
- Hive Mind: If the Kua-Tin are to be believed, the Apothecary shares intellect with its daughters. Of course, if they're to be believed, the Apothecary is a galactic Lulu Lemon.
The Plenty
Have you ever met a goat? They're sweet-hearts. They also smell bad and they randomly let off sounds that are disturbingly like human screams. And they eat things at random and jump on things and headbutt people and may or may not be incredibly bad-tempered.
Now imagine meeting a race of hyper-intelligent Satanic goat people who control the galactic mass transit system. And randomly screamed.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even in the broader context of the galaxy, the Plenty are considered nutbars.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: No clue. Go nuts. Roll a magic 8-ball down a kaleidoscope while doing mescalin. Frickin weirdos.Caprid Children: JUUUUUUUDGE USSSSSS.
