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.