steelheart part 2

Ch 14 pg 141

We are bonding and whatnot.  The trail they're following is from the bank to the insurance company.  Hoping the insurance company has records of everything in the bank and that might point to steal hearts weakness.  David is gonna go on a fieldtrip.

Ch 15 pg 154

David goes with Megan and Abraham to an arms dealer down in the catacombs. There's a fun thing with a group of nare do wells where Abraham is like, how about instead of all of us fighting, we do a single mono i mono fight.  Abraham lets the other guy shoot first (cause Abraham has magic armor) and he shrugs off a few bullets.  Then he shoots him in the leg and bandages him up.  It's fun.  Abraham is fun.

They get to the arms dealer and the "guard" is a little girl.  It's fun.  Diamond the arms dealer seems fun.

Ch 16 pg 170

steel heart part 1

Preamble

There are people with super powers called epics.  Narrator's father thinks despite the fact this far all of them have been evil,  eventually there will be good ones.  Narrator is in the bank with his dad when an epic shows up and starts killing people.  Another epic shows up and narrator's dad thinks hes there to save the day.  Hes not.  He's Steelheart and hes the emperor of this city.  All shall bow down before him.  Narrator's dad shoots him and it goes badly.  Steelheart is basically superman and he can also turn stuff into Steel.

Ch 1 pg 23

It's 10 years later.  Narrator is a grown man.  He lives in what used to be Chicago with an awesome name, Newcago.   It's bad, but most other places are much worse.  Steelheart has been able to keep a semblance of order here.

There's an organization that goes around killing epics.  There's an epic that can see the future and hes their target tonight.  There's a sexy lady thats trying to lure him to a club where there's probably a trap set for him.  But another epic seems to be wise to this and gets involved.  Narrator rushes in.

Ch 2 pg 35

It works, narrator is able to get the other epic away so the lady can move forward with her trap. Problem is narrator tells this epic he works for a dead man.

Ch 3 pg 40

Narrator runs down an alley.  Fortuity,  the epic that can see the future comes back, but hes in handcuffs.  The other epic gets shot by a sniper.  Red dress lady comes back.  She is thinking killing Narrator is a good idea but then he talks about all the stuff he knows and hes trying to help and she let's him live.  But hes on his knees hands behind his back and the sniper is told to kill him if he moves.  But then a bunch of thugs come and red dress lady is gonna die so Narrator pulls out his gun and shoots at the thugs.

Ch 4 pg 46

Narrator's name is David.  He catches up to red dress lady.  He gives her his gun and steals a car and goes after fortuity. There's some cool action movie stuff where David is chasing fortuity and red dress lady , who's name is Megan, is shooting and the windshield is destroyed and fortuity does cool flips.  The end is that David is enough of a distraction for Megan to shoot fortuity in the chest.

Ch 5 pg 52

They are rescued by a garbage truck.  They get away and go down into the steel labyrinth. David is a little excited he might be accepted onto the epic killer team.  But one look at the garbage truck driver told him that wasn't happening.  At best, he was a friendly captive.  

Ch 6pg 60

They do a blood test to make sure hes not an epic.  They ask who told them they were gonna hit fortuity.  He says he figured it out on his own.  He says he wants to join them.  Megan seems to be for it.  But the rest of the team is worried.  So they leave him.

Ch 7 pg 66

As they leave her shouts that hes seen stealheart bleed.  They come back to hear his story.  This causes a sudden swap in Megan's demeanor. She thinks he lying and it PISSES HER OFF!!!  But the leader is intrigued.  He asks who he thinks theyre gonna go after next.  Turns out hes close enough that theyre gonna change their plans.

Ch 8 pg 76

He talks about how all he does is obsess about the epics and the reckoners.  Eventually this gets to him talking about how hes got notes at his apartment. 

Ch 9 pg 83

At first doc just wants to firebomb the place and be done with it.  David convinces him his notes are worth the trouble.  David and Cody and Megan go to his place.  Most places to live in Newcago nowadays aren't traditionally built.  They're carved out of the steel that steelheart has turned the land on the northern half of Chicago into.  David's room is one of these.  It's quite extraordinary for an 18 year old to have their own room.  David basically blew all his factory earnings on it so he can focus on documentation of epics.

They scope out his place and figure out there's a team there waiting to pounce with an illusion epic keeping them hidden.  David concludes the epic must be Refactionary. Her weakness is smoke.  The plan is for David to go inside and use this smoke bomb to expose Refactory and Megan and Cody will cover him from outside.

Ch 10 pg 95

The plan goes ok.  One wrinkle is that one of the enforcers, Roy, knows David.  David convinces him he had no part in the attack, he just heard there was gonna be an epic fight and was there to watch.  When cody and megan start shooting Roy and one other enforcer make it out alive.  David tells them an Epic named limelight is coming to take out steelheart.  The smoke bomb thing doesn't work.  Refactory isn't inside David's room like he thought she'd be. What David does is calls her with Roy's phone and cody and megan are able to take her out.

Ch 11 pg 104

Megan wants to kill Roy and the other enforcer. Cody is the veteran and says no.  The enforcers are not the enemy.  Epics are the enemy.

They make their way to the hideout.  They tell David about the cool gloves they have that turn stuff into powder.  Makes for mining through steel real good.  Supposedly it can carve through anything but doesn't affect living beings. I need A LOT more explaining of that.

Ch 12 pg 116

The team goes through David's files and they are impressed.  What doc isn't impressed with is David's plan to kill Steelheart.  He tells David yes gotta convince Megan that its gonna work.  That's gonna be a tough road to hoe as Megan still thinks David's story where he saw steelheart bleed is a lie. 

Ch 13 pg 120

David talks about the other high level epics in Steelheart's organization and what he suspects are their weaknesses. His basic plan is to take out other epics and claim to be an enemy epic and eventually lure Steelheart out into a fight and then kill him.  Lots of holes in this plan.  But Doc is in and that's all that matters.

ch 18 -34 the dungeon anarchist's cookbook - Matt Dinniman

Ch 18 

There's 400 crawlers at a terminal, which is a giant mimic and is killing people really efficiently and their only hope is another train comes along and saves them.  Carl learns from the HR lady that Naga like monsters are doing all the memory wiping and periodically eating employees.

They go around checking stations to see how much of what Madison says is true.  Katia tells Carl she can grow an eye in the back of her head.  With said eye, she saw donut hide Carl's kill your friend card.  This makes katia nervous because she assumes donut still has her card and is worried that donut might plan to kill her.  Carl calls some folks from the old folks home to ask about their take on the situation. They tell Carl they already talked to donut about it and she told donut to do what she did and get rid of all her cards.

No fights in this chapter, but Madison loses it when they get to stop 60 and all the employee housing that's supposed to be there isn't. 

Ch 19 pg 278

Franks traffic back story.

Carl has a cool ring that gives him bonuses when he a crawler he has named dies.   Big downside, after he names someone he cant heal until they die. BUT the part that has me horny for it is also usable on the floors where aliens do non RPG fight stuff.  Im specifically thinking of glub glub talk show guys family.

Ch 20 pg 291

They do an uninteresting talk show.  Fun thing here, they're in a submarine.  Extra fun, because of cheepness the system still thinks theyre in the RPG becuase they're below sea level.  So Carl steals a bunch of shit from the submarine. 

Ch 21 pg 301

All the warrior ladies are in their private room.  UNCOOL KATIA!!!!!  If you invite friends over you gotta tell your roommates. 

There's a lady with 13 skulls.

Hekla wants their help.  There's a thousand people stuck at a station and mobs on the tracks .  The plan is to plow through them with Katia affixed to the front of the train like a cow catcher.  Carl hates this plan but eventually goes along with it but with the caveat that katia stays as part of their group for now.  

Thers a bit of mystery here cause when he says this out loud Katia gets a little emotional and hugs him and whispers thank you in his ear.  Just this morning it seemed like Katia was desperate to get back with Hekla's group because she thought Donut might be trying to kill her to get the kill your friends box.

Now it seems like she genuinely wants to stay in their group and i dont understand why or maybe im reading too much into a hug.

Ch 22 pg 316

Problem with trying to plow through mobile in a subway is there's no space for their bodies to go.  So the plan is for Katia to put the dead bodies into her inventory. 

Shenhannegans ensue. The healer is slow to heal Katia and Carl is pissed about it and then she just disappears and donut sees Hekla shooting invisible arrows at Katia.

Carl tells donut to relax, we dont wanna fight Hekla.

You tried to kill Katia you bitch!!1!!!

Ch 23 pg 332

FIGHT!!!!1!!

Carl and Donut are fighting Hekla and Eva.

Some other Brynhild's Daughters also start the fighting.

Cooler heads prevail.

These Invisible arrows that Hekla shot Katia with also cause amnesia. Katia has no idea whats going on.   She keeps asking whats going on, she's so confused.

Eva and Katia knew each other in the before times.   Katia was useless in the before times and her confused blah blah blah is pissing Eva off and Eva says a lot of mean personal things.  Katia is sick of Eva's shit.  She engages her Rush ability that flattens anything in her path.  This doesn't go well and she accidentally kills Hekla instead of Eva.

Ch 24 pg 337

The remaining Brynhild's Daughters fight Carl and Katia and Donut for a while.

Eventually they get the train door closed so theyre "safe" inside.

One of Brynhild's Daughters is still inhere with them.  They talk about their feelings with her and Carl figures out Hekla's plan. This fairy healer was the one that was supposed to be healing Katia.  She specifically left because Hekla told her to.  The idea was that Talia would die and Carl would blame the Fairy healer and kill her and Brynhild's Daughters would kill Carl and Donut would join them.

Carl drives the train with a thousand crawlers on it to safety.  Li Jun, of Li Jun, his sister and Zhang from the glub glub show, comes to pay his respects as Carl has once again saved his life.

Carl puts him to work as the train driver. Carl needs someone else to drive while he takes a other train to the end of the line to save Bautista and friends.

Ch 25 pg 351

They go to a safe room and clean up.

Sad visit from Zev.  She thinks she gonna be replaced cause she's not a republican the republican that represented Hekla is gonna take her spot.

Pg 367

Iron tangled endgame train map.

Ch 26 pg 371

In the bar there's an immortal NPC.  He is a Gnoll.  Carl thinks this is important because he read something in the ACB about how immortal NPCs always have something that's vitally important to the plot. 

He tells them there's no trains here, but there's maintenance carts.  They find an awesome cart with a snowplow that transports the stuff it hits to either the abyss or the main train station.   The idea being garbage goes to the abyss and repairable trains go to the station.  Problem is it has kinda a nuclear submarine system where two Gnolls.  

They figure out that's why there's an immortal Gnoll.  So you can chop his arms off and drive the awesome cart.

Ch 27 pg 388

They use the gnoll arms to drive around carts that clear the lines.  They "program?" Them to go on a loop and come back.  The cart they sent to Bautista doesnt come back.  So now they gotta do this the hard way.

Ch 28 pg 406

There's these hats I dont really remember the exact purpose of.  I think they can call a train to your location or something.   The game is a little dirty with those as everyone got one early on and shopkeepers would give you a ton of gold for them.  So early on trains were plentiful and lots of people sold theirs.  So Carl and donut ask for hat donations so they can save Bautista's group. 

On thing that kinda messes up stuff a lot is there's a whole station that's a mimic and Carl accidentally hits it with the plow programmed to send stuff to Train Yard E.  That was supposed to be a safe place and they turned it onto one of the most dangerous places.

Donut was hoping to sell all the hats and now they cant cause they need them to save people.  But the people end up giving them back so it ends up being inconsequential. 

Ch 29 pg 417

Our heros chitchat with Bautista. 

Turns out the beanie babies the bird lady that was the bad guy on that one floor had are Hella useful.  If you pull the tag it summons a real version of that thing.  Bautista has been using them like crazy.  Carl tells him he and his crew have gotta stop doing that and start fighting with weapons to level them up cause soon those beanie babies are gonna run out.

They go back to a safe space to clean up and watch the show.  Katia does a bunch of cleaning up the area cause she's all stretchy. She opens up a fan box, which has riot gear that improves the rush ability she killed hekla with. 

She also gets a sponsor box.  Her sponsor is the meistro's sister.  It's a single crossbow bolt.  If she shoots it in the eye of a god, said got stops being invulnerable for 15 seconds.  Carl figures thats pretty cool so this lady hates her brother.

There's an announcement,  you're not allowed to put liquid in your inventory anymore unless its in a container.  Mordekai comes back and is shocked by the fact that its been 7 days and by all the skulls everyone has.  Right after that Carl thinks katia explodes.  Remember how during the train track cleanup when Katia was a plow she put all the killed monsters into her inventory

Ch 30 pg 433

Mordekai sucks.  He won't explain himself and he doesn't appologize and he smacks Carl in the head.

They talk a lot about the layout of the level and how the named tracks are all circles that are an approximation of the  galaxy and mordekai talks about out a lot of the politics of it all.

Katia kinda figures out the whole thing kinda has a mirror image below it.  They discuss this idea further and the fear they have is that the whole thing is gonna flip gravity at the end.

Carl chats around asking about station layouts and whats up and down trying to think about what the end game.would be like if it all flipped.  He thinks hes got it.

Ch 31 pg 445

Carl tells people in chat to do stuff for the upcoming flip.  We'll see if that information helps them.

Katia and Donut go out killing Krakaren babies, which are mostly teenagers now.

Carl is organizing people to do something good with the carts.

There's something about these carts and the music they play that I feel should somehow be amusing but I dont get it.

Carl and a bunch of other crawlers work together to build a crane that's holding up a cart.  My guess is its meant to be a weapon with the idea that anything they hit gets sent to the abyss.

With 1 day left there's an announcement that they've been betrayed by the Krakaren and the system has been set to self destruct. Carl tells everyone to get out of big areas and prepare to defend yourselves. The floor opens up and Krakaren babies start to erupt. This is bad all over.  But not so much for carls group becuase the cart on a crane works great and all the monsters that were coming to.kill them are going straight to the abyss.

They are fighting tons of monsters.  At one point things get a little desperate and they run a play where katia rushes and Carl does explosions and after that there's a BIG explosion.   They figure out that if you kill enough enemies it makes a nearby soul crystal explode.

Ch 32 pg 460

Their plan is to push a super big boss into the abyss and then somehow kill it and make ALL the soul Crystal's explode at once.  This seemed pretty cool except someone else from the flip side was in the midst of a long and complicated set of spells that would have killed the same boss and done the same thing.  It was the goat man and his goat master lady and their GIANT goat pet and they leave to find another boss to do the same thing to.

The team keeps fighting monsters,  a couple mantuars show up.  This gives Carl an idea.  Summon the got by punching the mantuar.  Then use the cart to send it to the station E with the hope it will kill the mimic there.  Then punch the other mantuar and send the God to the abyss.

Part 1 works, with a hitch, the mantuar had grabbed Carl's foot, so Carl goes to station E with it.

Ch 33 pg 480

Fun extra thing here, the God is sponsored by the Maestro's family. The God IS maestro.  He wasn't dead.  He was already in the dungeon when his ship got blown up.

He starts tromping around destroying stuff.  Carl takes mordecai's special potion.  He's getting stomped on repeatedly in ways that would have easily killed him had he not taken said potion.  The rest of the group teleports in and they execute part 2 of the plan and send the God to the abyss.

Ch 34 pg 494

Katia is a little sad she didn't shoot the God in the eye with her special anti God crossbow bolt.

They move forward with the plan to drive the nightmare train into the abyss and blow it up and kills all the monsters down there and overload the ghoul generators.

Epilogue pg 501

The zeb replacement shows up and she SUCKS.  Zeb probably isn't coming back cause she's been sent to reducation.

They go on the odette show and the zeb replacement is constantly butting in and being all "we're not talking aeducation.

The whole thing is just kinda lame. 

Backstage at the pineapple cabaret pg 513

This one is all about Growler Gary.  If you've forgotten, he's the gnoll they cut the arms off of repeatedly to hijack the carts. But he looks back on that time period because the pain and repeated death made him forget about her.  

He doesn't explain who she is.  Maybe jumping jen jen?  

Rory the goblin is there and she has a drek named juju as a pet.

The fairies are working on something called a drop screamer.  My understanding is its a disembodied face that will scream as it falls on you from above while you're already fighting a boss.  Even so, maybe it should also shoot fire?

Rory tells his brain is gonna explode, metaphorically,  when he finds out who he really is.

They are gonna go talk to Minerva. 

There's a floating brain named Nigel.  Nigel is mean.

Thers a fake sign for the desperate club that's really a trap.

A door appears and Rory and Gary go through  it.  He somehow knows it was a portal. Minerva is there.  Shes a high elf. She asks is Rory has woken up Gary yet.  She says no cause he won't listen.  In Gary's defense it doesnt seem like Rory is trying very hard.  She reminds me of the doctor in idiocracy that just keeps repeating "Your shit's all fucked up" without further explanation. In Rory's defense, Gary is kinda like Towley from Southpark in that hes just walking around saying "i have no idea whats going on." Without putting any effort understand.  They're both doing a bad job.  

Minerva tells Rory to stick with the Method, Ask him his earliest memory and walk him back from there. Point out the contradictions and have them try to explain themselves.  Just like Carl's book tells him how to drive NPCs crazy.  They're more helpful after they've lost their sanity.  Rory asks what a contradiction is.

At the hearing of this Gary instantly snaps out of it and explains not only what a contradiction is, but also all of his character's contradictions.

Rory explains Gary is an important part of the group putting together the maze on this floor.  If they do it good, they get to go to the pineapple cabaret. 

Rory leaves and Gary is left with Minerva and his feelings.

Jumping Jen Jen is real and Gary loves her.  She didnt always think he was a coward, but he always was becuase he never told her he loved her.

Gary asks where he can get a drink as being drunk and dieing and coming back was his whole thing on the fourth floor.  Minerva tells him he'll have to tough it out.  Just like Rory and the other goblins when they stopped doing drugs.  This gives Gary hope, cause Gary suddenly realizes Rory is obviously high now that Minerva claims she's not.  So if she can get drugs, he can get booze.  He's gotta get to work.   They need him to level up a ton and there's very little time.

Minerva leaves and Gary grabs one of her bottles of booze and leaves.  He finds a drug dealing llama.

He makes his way to grandma llama who's in charge of building.  Minerva wants him to meet with a crazy racoon lady and become a powerful mob.  Maybe even THE end boss of the maze.  But grandma llama says he should become a builder and then he can create all the booze he wants.  Gary's brain immediately takes this another step in that they seem to be able to build whatever they want.  My guess, Gary is gonna try to recreate Jumping Jen Jen and tell her he loves her.

tinamd part 2, Quinn god to the end.

Part 2 chapter 3 Quinn god

There's an egg shaped stone with an ancient god inside that people in the Antimemetics Division come to talk to from time to time.  It's a good hang.  The downside is that it eats your memory of how to ride a bicycle. Hakuna matata,  the Division will teach you how in 1 to 3 hours.

This chapter is a flashback to a time Quinn talked to the egg.  The egg suggests a number of self care approaches. My favorite was Quinn quitting her job and becoming a goat herder.  The one she acts on is going home to be with her husband. 

.part 2 chapter 4 green and red.

There's a memetic treat they call green.  The man at the center of it, they call red. He's broadcasting his memetic on the internet. Its already infected 100,000 people.  There's a big man from the memetics Division come to end the threat.  One letter difference from a treat.  He gets into the room with red where hes attacked with a soldering iron.   No bother.  He disables red and starts what he calls memetic chemotherapy. The goal is to get whatever memetic is inside to go back home. This seems to be going well.  Then red asks the agent what happened to his partner. The agent has forgotten about his partner.  His partner is screaming in the living room. 

 The agent isn't capable of handling the red threat.  He's not trained for this as Red is an Antimemetic threat.  After Red takes care of the agent he sets his sites on the executives in the Memetics Division. Pretty soon they forget about Red all together and Red can spread unopposed. 

Part 3

Chapter 1

I dont remember what this was

Chapter 2

Andy Quinn is on tour as a concert violinist.  He has a deep emptiness in his life.  He's touring with the new England philharmonic. It's their last performance on the tour.  Andy will he happy to get off the road.  Except that Red has spread green all around the world. He seems to be the only person not infected. 

Why?  Sunshine.

He's getting mobbed by the infected and they cut off a couple fingers and they leave him for dead.

But sunshine finds him and directs him to a library so he can read the encyclopedia and sunshine can eat his thoughts.

Chapter 3 5:50:03

Sunshine leads Andy to the base. And eventually to Marie's body.  

Chapter 4

Andy goes into the u 3125 room. He watches all the videos and reads all the notes and comes up with a theory that Marie was right about her theory that the weapon to push good thoughts into u 3125's dimension must already exist because she would have wanted to build it ASAP.  WHERE he sees what she didnt is that it was built at their previous base.  Andy figures out where that is and decides to go there. 

The second hes out of the base Red is there to harass him.  Andy shoots him dead.  He's worried 😟 he might have also shot sunshine.

Chapter 5 6:38

A category gamma unknown is more or less guaranteed to end the world. The only way to avert that scenario is if something else,  likely another category Gamma, ends the world first.

If all the people were dead, u 3125 wouldn't have anyone to possess,  thus solving the problem.  Nobody except for Ed Hix likes this idea.

Ch 6 7:42:30

He makes it to the other base.  The guy is there and hes built the machine that can send someone to memetic space. But Andy isn't the guy.  Who is the guy?  Marie.  Andy shows the guy a drug he found on Marie's dead  body.  It's drug z.  Like the other drug the old man took, this one will kill you.  But it will bring back a memory of a person in physical form. In this case Marie.  

Thus bit is a little nuanced in that its not really Marie,  its Andy's image of Marie.  Not a real person, a perfect memory of a person.  This is Hella good when she's launched into memetic space.  She takes her perfection and dismantles u3125.

part 2 just to Your last first day There Is No Antimemetics Division

 I'm audio booking this so no page numbers, just hour and minutes.

part 2 Escapee 2:02

chapter 1 in memoriam

Marie Quinn is doing a thing with Ollie Morgan.

After a while at the Antimemetics Division you are given the drugs and do their thing and they can see the giant stone spire.  Going up into the giant stone spire is part of initiation.  Did I mention that Marie Quinn has a mimetic friend that helps her?  It can't come with them.  Somehow the walk up the stone spire stops them from going up.  There's a part in the spire where there's equipment.  Computer, generator, etc.

This thing is a memorial.  Morgan asks how many memetics wars there have been.  Morgan is an Egyptologist.

Marie tells Morgan that whoever built this memorial was built by an ancient advanced civiliation.  That whole civilization is completely gone AND there's enough antimemetic stuff about it that normal people just can't see it.

Quinn only knows about 1 antimemetics war.  Quinn tells Morgan that there's a U-4929B that isn't dangerous anymore but they think it was active during Egyptian times.  Nobody knows hyroglyphs anymore so the idea can't possibly be that infections so no big worry.  But Morgan knows hyroglyphs and then a giant monster made of spiders starts to fly at them out of the sky.  Also there's a skinny man with shaggy hair that's been shot.  We know this is the same monster Quinn ran into at the lake.  But Quinn doesn't.  Long story short, it kills Morgan and Quinn doses herself with amnesia juice so she forgets about the monster and thus it forgets about her.  

Chapter 2: Where have you been all my life

Quinn lives way out in the forest.  She doesn't live anywhere near a big city.  The logical thing to do would be find a place away from the headquarters in the direction of a big city.  But she did the opposite.  Someone has broken into her house.  She's gonna investigate while backup comes.  But whatever she's gonna do she figures it'll be over before said backup arrives.  

There's a man coming up the stairs and Quinn gets the jump on him.  It's her husband.  She's forgotten her husband.  His name is Adam.

Adam used to be in antimemetics.  He was there when Quinn domesticated her imaginary friend. 

 There's a flashback to another mission that they were on together where they narrowly escape from being "eaten" by a glob monster.  It eats Adam's shoe as they climb to safety.

hour 3

No, this isn't a mission.  Not for Adam, he was an innocent bystander.  Marie tells him about the organization.  Bestest part is that in this flashback she tells him that they've been doing this for 200 years.  Something we know that she doesn't know anymore.  Also that she's not with the FBI and even if she was, what would the FBI doing in England.  Marie starts complaining about how she didn't like the FBI tv show.  The years of will that won't they is ridiculous.  In the real world, you know if you want someone or not kinda right away.  She knows she wants him.

Back to the modern day.  Adam continues to be kept in jail.  I think he thinks it's cause the organization doesn't trust him.  I think the organization is total happy with Adam and it's Marie that doesn't trust him.  When she finally comes, he goes to hug him, but she shuts that shit down HARD.  She doesn't know him at all.  But he hasn't forgotten about her.  It's hella sad.

And like Onyx said in the musical masterpiece Slam "but wait it gets worse"  She's gonna wipe his memory and relocate him and also wipe everyone's memory of him.  It'll be like he never existed.  

Chapter 3: 3:37 case colorless green

Marie "finds" a secret lab that is setup specifically to combat the thing that killed morgan and the old man.  The idea is that you only work on your theories about the thing while in that room and then you leave all your evidence there and then you purge your memory so you don't remember it so it doesn't come kill you.  There's old video that she left herself.  She's so worried about Adam back then.  Cause the two of them just sorta clicked, which indicates to her they had similar minds and the monster if it got to her would get to Adam through her due to said similarity.  There's a bit of a history of the "war" they had with this monster.  The war is pretty much over.  There used to be dozens, maybe hundres of antimememtic organizations around the world.  Now there's just this one and the headquarters we know isn't even the real headquarters.  That got destroyed and the one they're in now that seems way too big is I guess the backup headquarters and that's only got 90 people.  The war is over, the enemy is just moping up their remains.

But there is a giant engineering lab deep below.  Her hope is someone built a weapon to fight the monster there.

Lee is ther and he is infected by the monster.   Marie runs away.

Chapter 4: 4:08 Your last first day

It's chaos.  Everyone is either infected by or killed by U-3125.  Marie has a super cool ray gun and cuts through people to get to the big lab deep down.  She finds an anti-memetic bomb like the old man in part 1 chapter 3 was talking about.  She knows it won't help anything long term.  It'll erase this base and kill everyone.  It will slow down U-3125 in that all the people it has infected today will go away.  But it won't directly injury it.  It'll come back and eventually destroy humanity and replace it with something much worse.  But Marie sets off the bomb anyway.  Why not?  She's gonna die anyway.

Ends 4:32:13

part 1 There Is No Antimemetics Division

Preamble:

UO055

Yew oh zero zero five five

It's a monster thing.  It's not invisible but its got brain powers where if you look at it, you kinda don't see it and even if you do it makes your forget.  This is the least dangerous of this kind of monster.

Ch 1

There's a lady who's been summoned to what feels like a superior's office.  The superior's assistant points a gun at her and they explain that she must be a super spy as she has access to everything but there's no official record of her.  She explains that she's part of a secret department and based on the way its set up, if you're not part of it, you cant remember it exists.  The superior has special pills for this so he can remember.   The lady finds the pills and the superior takes it and he starts to remember. The lady shoots the assistant in the head.  He wasn't really a person even though he looks like a person.  He's a monster that made the superior forget and was trying to get the superior to kill the lady.  

Why would this monster want to kill this lady?  Becuase she's not just some lady.  Shes the head of the Antimemetics Division.

Ch 2

Joe is from New York city.  He works for the Antimemetics Division, which is in England.  He's in a giant cafeteria but there's only a handful of people here.  Joe seems to be a bit confused. Where is everyone?  Joe figures its his first day and things will be explained.  Shouldn't there be more people here?  There's a man in an expensive suit and fancy watch.  Joe figures he must be an executive. Why would an executive be in the cafeteria?  He figures the man must be lost and he's going to help him.  But the man isn't a man.  He's a memory monster like UO0055 but much worse.  Joe figures out he's the only one that can see the man and furthermore no one can see Joe.  Now Joe cant remember his own name because the monster is eating his memories.  

The monster calls itself Gage.  Joe figures maybe there's info about this monster in the database.  So he takes gage and turns it into telephone numbers and looks up UO4243 and he finds an entry with all the people that have been targeted and killed by Gage.  Joe tries to hurt Gage and it doesnt really work.  Until he hits Gage in the head with his phone.  Joe keeps reading the Gage file and figures out the way to kill Gage is by "feeding" it too much information at once than it can handle.  So what Joe does is grabs some hard drives and some computer cables and kinda creates an information mace and it works.  He bashes Gage's head in.  

Remember the lady from chapter 1?  Shes back and she's congratulating Joe on his competence.  Joe isn't new, he's been here for a long time.  He's actually an instructor. Lady explains that this sort of thing happens all the time and Joe will be back to normal in about a month.

This seems like a bad place to work.

It reminds me of the Lonely island I run NY song

https://youtu.be/W9PoshXXA7M?si=JXUfpKIhX4mJKD1t

Ch 3

There's an old man, he lives in an old folks home.  He's out at a lake he used to vacation at.  He thinks maybe he's been brought here to die happy in a place full of happy memories. The lady from chapter 1 and 2 shows up again.  She's probably the main character of the book.  Maybe I'll learn her name.

The old man has information she wants.  She gives him a drug that makes him temporarily younger. Hoping he will remember the thing she wants to know.

Excerpt about the drug.  If you go back more than 18 months, the snapback kills you.  So this old man is gonna die.

The pill   He tells her a fascinating tale about how the Antimemetics Division started in world War 2.  They viewed the idea of Naziism as a kind of mind virus and they were trying to build a psychic bomb that would make people forget about it and end the war.  It's kinda worked in that they did a test and it successfully deleted an idea.  Unfortunately it was the idea of the bomb itself that was deleted. Having had their idea removes they once again looked at rhe horrible war and had the idea that it would be cool if they could just make everyone forget about the ideas of Naziism.  They build the same bomb as before but by then the war is over.  It just sits in Storage until one day there's a cult in California that's becoming problematic. This time somehow they remember not to test the bomb cause it'll erase all memory of itself and they just bomb the cult and its as if they never existed.

There are side effects.

Also there's a but of what I would call sexual chemistry between lady and old man that's temporarily not that old.

That very quickly doesnt matter as he's being possessed by a monster.  He describes it as "if you're can see it, it can see you and it HATES being seen."  This monster cam after the organization in the 60s and the only solution was to self destruct in the 70s so nobody remembers the monster.  Until someone discovers the monster again and it kills everyone that knows about it.  

Marie Quinn is the lady's name.  

Ch 4 1 h 52 m, I think, this audio recording didn't say the chapter number, but this is a different story so it makes sense that it would be a new chapter

U2256, it's described like it's the loch ness monster.  In the fifties we started studying them and broke through their anti-memetic capabilities and almost killed them all.  So in 2003 we scaled back studying them.  They died out in 2006.  But their anti-memetic qualities censor the file for it.

2 hours 2 minutes is the beginning of part 2.

city of stairs ch 16 pg 370 to the end.

ch 16 pg 370  family ties

The man that abducted Shara is Vohannes's brother.  People thought he was dead.  He claims he went up a mountain with a bunch of other dudes who all died.  He claims he found god or whatever and now he's gonna do magic to bring one back.  Also, he's building airplanes with the magic carpet and yheyre gonna go destroy shara's country.

Sigrud is on a plane.  He's got a plan.  Kill the captain,  kill everyone else on board.  Use this plane to shoot down the other planes.

VO's brother does some cool magic and makes temper underground temple rise to the surface 

Ch 17 pg 389 what is reaped.

Holy shit, Vo's brother did it.  He brought back Kolkan. Who immediately is offended by the lack of fire and birds and kills everyone.  Except shara who casts an invisibility spell.  But Kolkan doesnt care.  Bigger fish to fry.

Kolkan creates a magical army and attacks city hall.  Shara takes a pill and she's in tune with the magical world and can do some magic against the magic army.  

Sigrud shows up with his flying gun ship with a Greyling flag  and kills a ton of magic army guys.  Then he angles to ship and jumps off and the ship crashes into kolkan.  

Shara goes to have a heart to heart with Kolkan.   The great reveal is that kolkan is actually Kolkan and Jukov mushed together.  The other gods put Kolkan in a prison and Jukov hid in that prison.  The Jukov that the Raj killed was a fake Jukov made. 

The mushed god is just very sad.  Shara uses the black blade to put it out of its misery.

Ch 18 pg 419 what is sewn

Everyone is recovering in the hospital 

A monk god comes to visit shara and says a friend of a friend wants to talk.

That friend of a friend is the one remaining divinity Olvos.  The kaj was her grandson.  Which means Shara is part divine.

She goes to Mulaghesh and tells her she needs to stay in Bulikov cause Shara is gonna take over the government and make everything better for everyone. Also she's being promoted to general so she'll have plenty of money to go on vacations to the island nation she wanted to retire to.

Shara goes to Sigrud and tells him his vacation is over he's the prince of Greyling and its about time he went home to.his wife and kids and killed all the pirates that are fucking up his homeland.

Shara's on a boat (Motherfucker, don't you ever forget.) And she uses magic to call her aunt and they talk about stuff.

1. Shara knows she killed Efrem because Efrem knew about the Kaj's lineage. 

2. Shara's coming home.

3.  Shara's taking over the government. 

4. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.  I suppose we'll find out in book 2.

city of stairs ch 11 pg 213 to pg 369

Ch 11 pg 213 survivors

A man is on a journey to find Jukov (who im thinking is one of the divinities.)

Instead he finds what u would describe as a party so cool I'm would never be invited to it.  There's an old man he talks to.  I think said old man is joking because he takes off all his clothes and his face and goes into a tent.

The governor goes for a long run cause I guess she wants to punish herself for not previously dying in battle.  She returns to her office and there's a 20 pag2 list of stuff in the warehouse.  It scares her cause its Devine and if there's still a divine alive all that stuff could become infinitely more dangerous. 

Shara is trying to find out how the men disappeared. She does all sorts of stuff with the intention of discovering divine intervening.  One cool thing happens , a silver coin turns to lead.

Sigrud and smShara go to a place where the rich guy that demanded the release of the maid was seen to have dropped off the maid.  They go inside and its empty.  Except Sigrud hears a child laughing.

They find the room with the sound of child laughing. It's a trap.  The thing isn't a child, its a monster.  Specifically a Mhovost, a thing created by the divinity Jukov.  Pretty sure that dipshit Wiclov sent Mrs. Torskeny in here to be eaten by the monster. Also that an affeminite man was here with Wiclov.  Shara lights the Mhovost on fire.

Ch 12 pg 240 recreations

The monster was blocking a door.  The door goes to a tunnel that slopes down.  It goes to what turns out to be the cathedral of the gods.   What they called the seat of the world.  Thers a magic doorway that goes to a door that's in the warehouse.  This is how the rebuilders get in so they could steal stuff.  There's a booby trap abd all of a sudden everything is on fire.  They get the hell out of there and they cave in the tu nel so no one else can go down there.

Something powerfully magical is released from its prison in the warehouse.

Ch 13 pg 264 you will know pain.

KOLKAN made demi gods to spy on people and punish them. 

The monster that escaped from the warehouse is making quite the scene

A drunk man sees him dive into the frozen river.

He eats two ice fishermen

He destroys a tea house and eats all the people inside.

Shara and company go out to the bridge to witness the monster.  She says it is Urav the punisher.

Sigrud says he can kill it.  It's a thing of the water.  He has killed things of the water before.  He just needs a ton of rope, a halberd, strong fishing spears and gallons of fat, preferably whale.  Best of all, a good fire so he can warm up after as he will likely need to be nude.

He's like Finn the human.  An excellent fighter, especially so when nude.

This next part is awesome.  Not that one needs it.  You could have just cut to Sigrud killed the thing and that would have been fine.  But the basic plan that unfolds is that sigrud spears Urav and said spears are tied to the bridge and urav get itself all tangled up and Sigrud slashes its belly with the halberd.  This plan goes basically perfectly until Urav decides to destroy the bridge.  Cant be tangled up in ropes supported by the bridge of there's no bridge. Urav then swallows Sigrud. He tries to do some sort of psychic damage but it turns out Sogrid already has an open wound on his hand that was given to him by the God Kolkan.  Cant make a man suffer worse than the open wound that the god that created you gave him I guess.  Sigrud stabs his way out and Urav is dead.

Ch 14 pg 301 Salvation 

There was a saypur town where the continental colonizers executed a simple girl.  The town rose up and overthrew the colonizers.  The continentals came back in force and destroyed the town.  The Raj lived in the town next door.  The destruction of the town inspired the Raj to do the science that eventually led to him developing the gospel killing weapons.

Sigrud won't let the doctors do their job and they're scared of him so they just leave.

Sigrud tells shara the horrify8ng backstory of how he got the mark of kolkan.  We get the story of how Shara met Sigrud.  She got him out of prison and his family out of harms way.  She says she just wanted for his intelligence. But he ended up becoming whatever it is he is to her now with the promise that some day he would be reunited with his family. 

Mulaghesh is the governor lady.  She enjoyed seeing Sigrud naked before the horrible fight with Urav.

Vohannes is telling Mulaghesh they gotta strike while the iron is hot.  They're famous for killing the monster and they've gotta take advantage right now.

Shara and  Vohannes have sex.

Or maybe they dont.  They seemed to try and it was awkward and im not sure if they did or not.

When Shara awake Vohannes is gone and mulaghesh is there with the paper and a story about how Sigrud saving the town from the monster.

The article also outs her as the Kaj's great grand daughter.

They figure it was Vohannes that leaked that info to the paper.  A paper that goes out to the whole continent. 

Her aunt calls her via the magic window.

Shara's punishment is to make her the official Saypur Ambassador to Bulikov.  Shara tells her aunt that she has proove that a god is still alive.  Her aunt doesnt care. 

Shara thinks her aunt must be somehow compromised. 

Ch 15 pg 329 journal of efrem pangyui

723 is the year when the devinities decided to get together and  make peace.  The part that's is interesting to Efrem is that a little before that there was a lot of documentation on pro peace talk in all six states.  

The Raj killed the divinities with some sort of black metal.  He found this metal because he had a jin as a pet and he tested different things on it until it died.

Then shara, after reading this, is all Its all a lie, everything is a lie. I don't know why she'd say that.  This largely seems like stuff I already knew.

Ch 16 pg 341 the divine city

Jukov does not forget.  By which I think that means Jukov will get revenge.

Shara does some science with coins near the spot the rejuvinators disappeared.  She narrows it down to coins with three gods on their heads she tells Sigrud to get the clothing of some of the men he killed.  The police love Sigrud cause he saved the city from Urav.  So theyre happy to give it to him.  Shara finds tokens to kolkan in the neck and wrists of the clothes.  

They put them on and walk through the spot and are transported to the Bulikov of old.  Giant beautiful buildings.  In one of these buildings Shara finds the Kaj's god killing gun.  They get to somewhere and go through another magic rift and theyre out in the desert somewhere. They find a work camp where tons of dudes are bulding metal boats. Shara tells Sigrud to stay and watch. Shes gonna go back to the real Bulikov and send the army here.

Shara gets a letter from Vohannes saying to meet her.  She figures out what the rebuildingers must have stolen from the warehouse is the magic carpet.  They're taking it apart and using the loom works to weave it with normal fabric to make magical airplanes. 

Sigrud sees the fabric spread out like wings and decides now is the time for action.

Shara goes to meet Vohannes and its not him, its a guy that looks a lot like him.  She is kidnapped.

city of stairs pg 87 to 215

Ch 5 pg 87 to do what he does best

There's a party some people, assuming these are members of the shady organization we assume killed the old man, do a terrorist attack. I think they want to capture Shara's college boyfriend Vohannes, who she just calls Vo.  But that doesnt work out for them as Sigrud kills them.

Ch 6 pg 118 a memory engraved 

KOLKAN is a good listener. 

They're at the police station. 

They have one the restitutioners in a cell

Shara drugs him to get info

It works pretty well in that she finds out theyre trying to build an airplane and they need metal to do so and Vohannes has plenty of metal.  So the plan was to kidnap him and get him to give them metal.

This questioning is in darkness

The boy says he needs light

She opens the prison door food slot and when she does theyre transported to another place and someone is telling her to come closer and she walks the way the voice is coming from and the next thing she knows she sorta snaps out of it as the boy is on fire.

Why did the boy light on fire?  Divine possession.  So there must be at least one divine still alive.  So thats really scary.

Ch 7 pg 143 dangerous honesty

After Saypur killed the divinities and before it started colonization there was a twenty year period on the continent where every country suffered from plague, famine, etc.  It was hella bleak before they came back to rebuild.

Shara calls her aunt to talk about her investigation.  Her aunt admits she knew about the where house and that Emit had been sent there to resesrxh the deviniti3s and fogure out how to kill one if a new one sprung up.  

Shara doesnt tell her aunt about the divine possession or admit that she wants what emit put in the bank's self deposit box even though her aunt seems to know what's happening there.

Ch 8 Pg 164

According to the Kaj's lutenent there wasn't much fighting on the continent. The gods were already dying. The kaj was the only one that knew how the weapon he used to finish them off worked.  The most fighting was against the demigods. But they died and their boddies burned just like normal people.

Shara kidnaps the old maid they think might have been involved in the murder.  She tells her that she would copy his papers and show these men copies.  She does t know what they said.  She doesnt know how to read.  Shara is pretty sure from the description that the papers the men were interested in were warehouse inventory papers.

They were followed.  Ernest Wilcov shows up and demands she be released.  It's a whole thing. 

Ch 9  Pg 180 what history tells us.

In 1700 the Dreyling people, Sigrud is Dreyling, were sad about their dead king as he was the glue that held their society together.  Now, they've all resorted to savage piracy.

Shara doesnt know what to do so she cooks and they talk about history. Primarily the killing of the gods and the two gods they dont have a record of the killing.  They specifically talk about kloshan and his antiwomen bullshit. The beliefs that most in this city, which is right smack in the .middle of the co tinent, follow to this day. 

Ch 10 pg 198

Vo is homosexual in a place that's basically fantasy world Moscow. It sucks.  He wants it to suck less.  Giving Shara the info necessary to destroy Ernest Wilcov will help do that.  Even if it ends up hurting Vo when it comes out he helped a foreign power against his rival.

This section really ends on page 213

city of stairs pg 1 to 86

Ch 1 someone even worse pg 1

People are doing war in Avlos's name and Avlos does not approve.

We are in a land that Avlos's followers have taken over.  It is against the law to make any mention of the religion that was previously practiced in this land.  A hat maker has a sign that's similar to the old religion symbol.  He is fine 15,000 drekels (which my tablet autocorrects to sheckles)      for this crime.

A messenger comes to tell them court there's been a murder.  At this point the judge feels like this case is stupid and let's the hat maker go with warning.

Who was sent to investigate the murder?  A tiny lady with a HUGE assistant. 

Ch 2 pg 19 We must civilized them.

The guy in charge is a dick about d the tiny lady here to investigate the murder, named Shara, tells him she's truly in charge here and he can go ahead and fuck off forever. 

Shara investigates the body of the murdered man and finds a secret message in his tie.

  Shara uses magic to video chat with her aunt, named Vinya, who's the minister of foreign affairs.  Shara is hoping one dau Vinya can one day become prime minister and if that happens shara can come home.  There was some sort of scandal 16 years ago and since then shara has continued to be a foreign operative and not been allowed to come home.  Turns out Shara is the one that trained the murdered man and its a big time comflict.of interest for her to investigate his murder.  Vinya says she has a week.

Ch 3 pg 41 unmentionables

"Anything is possible "

Kevin Durant

Shara is talking to the governor, a lady named Mulaghesh..  The governer agrees to help Shara if shara can get her a nice tropical beach appointment. Mulaghesh is sick of all the violence and politics and wants to spend her last 20 year somewhere nice and peaceful.  Shara says she can do that.  Mulaghesh drops a some real dangerous knowledge about the murdered man Yamgyui.  He was here to access something they call the unmentionables warehouse.  It's where they store all sorts of forbidden knowledge and magically items and whatnot.  Stuff the public is sure was destroyed hundreds of years ago.  That's probably what got him killed.  

Also, there's some rich guy Shara is familiar with that might be useful. 

Shara's assistant  Sigrud is a very large man.  He's following a guy.  I personally wouldn't have had someone so remarkable try to follow someone, but he feels like he's doing a good job.  The city is still very war torn.  Specifically there's a bunch 0f staircases that go to nowhere because the building they went to was destroyed.  The man Sigrud is following goes up such a staircase and appears to jump off.  There's no sign of him.  But just for a millisecond out the corner of his eye Sigrud doesnt see a city of bombed out buildings.  He sees a city of emense slender white and gold sky scrapers.  

Maybe we're getting to some magic stuff.

Ch 4 pg 67 dead languages 

When Saypuri developed a weapon that can kill a divinity they kinda figured it would be smooth sailing and advanced to colonizing. But before the ships even landed they killed another divinity. Turns out that divinity was the one that built most.of the country.  So when he died everything he built disappeared with him. 

Shara and Sigrud talking about strategy and what not.  I didnt really get a sense that there's a firm plan, but maybe I just didn't understand. 

Flashback to when Shara was in college.  She and this rich guy were an item.  They're both wicked smart and good at board games and they end up doing lots of sex.  Lots of cultural differences that make that relationship really hard 

the dungeon anarchist's cookbook - Matt Dinniman ch 1 - 17

Forward: the fourth floor is a confusing maze.  So if you don't understand stuff, don't worry about it.  There will be a map at the end that explains it all.

Ch 1

We really get off to a running start here.  Our 3 member band is on a moving subway car.  They are on car 20.  The newest member of or team has advanced mapping skills and can see that things don't get interesting until car 15, which is marked with a big question mark.  They dont do anything at first. But then they pull into a station, which is packed with horrible little monsters.  They decide to go into car 15.  It can't be worse than being devoured by a bazillion horrible monsters.  It's not.  There's two monsters and they kill them easily.  But now they have the problem of a train full of horrifying little monsters. Carl uses his protection spell.  It ends up smooshing everything behind them including trains 16 through 20 and all the mobs within. 

Ch 2 pg 19

They make it to a station and they buy a safe room with all sorts of cool stuff.

Ch 3 pg 42

They go into more detail about the cool stuff in their room.  Brandon,  you remember Brandon, the guy from the old folks home. He's dead and he sent Carl a message telling him to find his brother and tell him he's sorry,  he was right and he loves him.  One of the cool things their room has is a training area where you can actually level up abilities just like you're fighting monsters,  you can do this for only 1 hour a day.  So it's not nearly as good as going out into the world and fighting mobs.  With the news of Brandon's death,  Carl decides he will use his time to punch things as hard as he can.

Ch 4 pg 56

They get back on the train and they fight some monsters.

Ch 5 pg 69 ( well done Matt )

More subway monster hunting.  But also they talk to a train engineer about stuff.  And they accidentally kill him via a fire ant trap.

Ch 6 pg 86

They fight more mobs, it goes pretty good.

Ch 7 pg 

They make it.to the safe room.  Mordekai has upgraded their potion making table to level 3.  He made some cool potions.  They have fan boxes.  Donuts is a saddle she can put on Mongo that ups both of their stats when she's riding.  But they probably won't use that because of Donuts very sad constitution score. 

Carls fan box is much more drama.  It's a bit of a mini game show where Carl gets to pick his prise.  On one hand its pretty great.  On the other hand it.sucks shit because the host is someone mordekai hates and he throws a chair at the guy.  He gets put in timeout for 7 days.

The prise Carl picks is THE anarchists cookbook. 

Together,  they will burn it all to the ground. 

Ch 8 pg 121

The book tells Carl that it must be kept secret.  If he doesn't it will, disappears. 

They go to da club and meet up with some old folks home people.  Chris is still alive and hes a lava monster.

Something happens with donut on the dance floor.  She killed a guy.

Ch 9 pg 134

Turns out it was a lady and a guy that attacked donut.  The lady did some sort of explosion to knock out the guards and the guy stabbed donut with a back stabbing knife that was supposed to instantly kill from behind.  But donut has the cockroach feature that kept her alive and of course killed him in self defense.  Then one of the old folks home ladies kills  the explosion lady with an icicles to the head.

Carl does a gamble and wins an upgrade to his toe ring.

Ch 10 pg 146

They go back to their safe room and work on stuff.  The main plot stuff is land mines to derail a train so they can get at the engineer and get their key so they can go all sorts of places they currently cant.

Ch 11 pg 153

The derailment works.  The engineer gets out.  It's a ManTauR.  Half big man, half small man.  It's like a Shaq giving Peter dinklidge a shoulder ride except that the bottom part doesnt have a head.

At first things are cool with the ManTauR.  He greets them as fellow warriors and goes to da club they dont go to.  But things go real bad in a matter of seconds as he comes out of Da Club intent on killing them as he must have learned they were the cause of the derailment.  This guy is hard-core.  He's like giant wolverine.  He nearly kills Mongo with a glancing blow and cuts what's her faces arm off. To make matters worse, he's a follower of the god that carls gauntlet has a 1.5 percent chance of summoning if used against one of his followers.  Making matters even worse, the 1.5 percent adds up.  It procs when it gets up to 11.5 percent.  There is now a 20 second countdown to god summoning. At great risk to kinda everyone, Carl kicks the mantaur in the chest onto the third rail.  The mantaur is dead and Carl is electrocuted a lot.  But donut is able to pull him up to safety and as of the end of this chapter they are all alive.

Ch 12 pg 167

They make their way to the dismemberment limited to shortcut.  The enemies are flesh monsters that desolve your body and steal your bones.  It ends up not being that big of a deal because they block off the end of the train and there's a little scary thing with a war mage but they end up using donuts hole spell and curt pulls the war mages head through the hole and then donut ends the spell and it cuts the war mages head off.

Ch 13 pg 184

The anarchists cookbook is paying serious dividends. There's a whole thing about backpacks and explosive stability that ends up being useless to Carl cause they changed the rules and it got Forkith's sister killed.  That's the downside to having a book written by people from previous iterations of the thing.  You use some else's idea and they change rules and your sister pays the price.

But to the part that's useful for them, anything you have in a backpack counts as being equipped.  So Carl makes basically a dumpster and puts a bunch of metal into it and Katia "equips" it and she can absorb all the metal into her body.  When she reforms as a human sized entity, she's 10 feet tall and hard as a rock.

Also, they all get sponsors and carls sponsor gives him the ability to see through doors.

Ch 14 pg 201

.

The nightmare train truly horrifying. It's a cargo train and each cargo carrier holds horrifying monsters.  The only entrance is in the caboose with the idea you have to fight your way through all the monsters to get to the front with the engineer and the keys you need.

So Carl's plan to start up front and bash through monsters with a protection spell isn't gonna work.  Instead they have the insane idea to try to execute that plan in front of the oncoming train.  Then use donuts teleport to get back to the loading zone. How do I know this is a crazy bad plan?  Carl literally just told me.

It works for donut as she makes it back to the platform. Carl isn't so lucky.  He gets hit by the train but his indestructible feet keep him alive.   

Through a series of fortunate events he is able to take control of the train.  He successfully stole a train.  Pretty neat.

Ch 15 pg 218

Carl take this stolen train to the end of the line to see what's there.  What's there is a bunch of portals dumping the old train cars into a HUGE pit.  The engines start over again but they get all new train cars every run.  

Carl take his stolen train and picks up donut and Katia

Donut gets a pair of enchanted sunglasses from her sponsor.

Also she has a love vampire skill it allows her to use an enemy as a shield kinda in that any damage she takes, it does it to that enemy instead of her, until they die.

Carl gets a fancy toothpaste that makes him do tons more damage against bosses.  So hes gonna save that till a day when they're sure to fight a boss.

Also,  the one guy that got super powers is going around blowing up trains and so there's a bunch of stops that people are just kinda stuck at cause no more trains are coming. 

Ch 16 pg 233

They talk about a new spell donut has now that her intelligence is above 50.  It's called minion army.  It takes 5 minutes to cast and the effect is that there's a 2 percent chance that it will make an enemy join your team.  Seems like a bad spell.  But mordecai said it was good.  So I guess we will find out why when he gets out of timeout.

They fight a bunch of monsters called babababoons. 

They get back on the train and head back to the end of the line.  Carl takes a look at all the different portals a train can go through and decides repair is the only good option.

Also, the train is powered by a demon lady npc and Carl specifically didn't tell donut or Katia about it cause he feels guilty and he feels like they're gonna think hes a jerk.

He gets back to the train and donut and the demon lady are having a conversation about how hard it is to be a mom.

Ch 17 pg 243

They go through the portal and immediately they see zombies heading their way.  A repair npc comes to help.  It seems good and there is hope.  But then a zombie kills him and now they gotta figure out how to get out by themselves.

Donut goes up to the control room and Carl drives the train and they are able to drive away.

On their way out they pick up and npc that's an HR lady.  I'm looking forward to her dying. 

The fun thing that Carl tries to do is make her realize that she's a bit part in a simulation. The idea is once you do this NPCs are super helpful.  He does not accomplish that goal in this chapter.  But he does get useful information about a hopeful escape being a trap and informs others about it.