ch 18 to the end The gate of the Feral Gods

Ch 18 pg 270

Let's see if I can get a good picture of this little drawing they have for this chapter. 

Nope, upside down.  Better luck next time.

Carl and Donut go on the show.

Their new awful PR lady Loita is there.  

She doesnt wear fancy armor like Zev, or anyone with common sense should.  She just has a rebreather that sprays water on her gills so she can exist out of the water.

It's less of a show and more of a commercial taping.  There's a script and everything.  Carl goes off script a little.  Like it matters.  It's just a taping.  But Carl says something about it mattering in the dungeon. I dont get it.

All of a sudden there's an explosion. It was in the green room where Loita is.  It was the donut robot toy.  Carl did something to make it explode.

Loita is dead.

This is Wonderful.  As a kid asking for something for Christmas and then waiting for it and then getting it is great.  Being a grownup and wanting something and then buying it immediately is even better.  This is what that feels like. 

Ch 19 pg 285

No picture

They are brought in to speak with a Syndicate representative. 

He asks how many aliens Carl thinks humans have killed during this crawl.  Carl says 0.

15

The previous high was 3.  The Syndicate person asks of they have an opinion on why there are so many this time.  Carl blames it on the Kua-Tin cheaping out on security. 

The syndicate guy explains to Carl how Carl did it.  Carl denies it.  Also says, if there was real proof, they wouldn't be having this conversation.  There's not enough firm evidence so Carl gets to go.  The syndicate guy tells him it was the Kua-Tin that decided to let him get away with murder.  Carl's ratings are more valuable than justice for him killing Loita.   The syndicate guy warns him, there's rumors that his people will be taking over on the 6th floor and they will not be so lenient. 

Also, they've been in stasis for 5 days.

Ch 20 pg 299

5 days is an eternity Katia is back in the top 10

Most of the previously level 20 people have been whipped into shape and are nearly level 30

They had to tear the top floor off the baloon house because the game wouldn't let the stairwell on that floor leave this area of the bubble.  Now they have a fun baloon house they can take anywhere

 

The castle on the land is a sand castle.

There's two options here

1. Open the valve that will drain the tomb back to the sea and that will wash the sandcastle away.  Problem with that is the nage with the winding box would wash away with it and the titular gateway would be lost to them

2.  There's a lightning rod that's connected to a door frame.  When the storm starts, lightning will hit that rod and the doorway will become a portal and they can go inside the sandcastle and fight the mage so they can get the box and open the titular door.

They go with option 2.  Problem is the door only stays open for.a few seconds so only Carl, Donut and Katia are gonna go in and fight the mage.

Ch 21 pg 314

They go through the castle and they find the mage.  His backstory is sad and pathetic. 

Carl knocks him out with one punch and steals his box.

He's the npc, kinda like Bonnie in the baloon house. 

The boss they gotta fight is an ooze.

It's also basically immortal in that it can regenerate from a remaining piece that's the size of a grain of sand.

But Carl doesnt need to kill it.  He just needs to neutralize it so he can get into the thrown room and win the level.

Ch 22 pg 332

The problem here is the ooze has spread.kinda everywhere.  If you touch it, you die.  They have to light its core on fire to get it.to contract.  So they use the hole spell from the room above where the oozes core is and they lower Carl down with a rope and he uses his sticky feet to fix to the ceiling of that room and then he drops flammable goo on It and lights it on fire and its WAY TOO HOT and it melts the glass and the whole level is collapsing. Carl tells Katia to leave and the people outside to turn on the water that will wash away the sand castle.  Long story short Donut and Carl make it to the ocean Barely alive and there's sharks and stuff and Donut FREAKS OUT!!!

CH 23 PG 349

There's lots of details and maybe jokes that i dont care about.  The important part is Carl gets out of the water with Donut and they reunite with every one. 

Also, Mordecai says hes making progress with the root vegetable Carl got from the pacifist group.

Ch 24 pg 364

They get back to home base and open up boxes and talk about future plans.  Somehow they get a map of the 9th floor and this makes Carl think, maybe we can use the titular gate to get to the 9th floor.  Mordecai tells him he cannot.  He also talks a bunch about how this whole thing with tourists works.  People on the 18th and 9th floor can go to the 6th floor and start buying gear that crawlers have sold back to the game.

FORESHADOWING: Mordecai takes this moment to mention to Carl that he still needs to sell the crawler killer ring.  Calling my shot here.  The Meistro will end up with that ring.

This chapter ends with Katia stating that all of this is building up to Carl making a horrible decision. 

Chekhov`s root vegetable remains a mystery.

Ch 25 pg 380

I never understood why after the ocean level was beaten why the tomb level filled with water.  Its because after taking the castle, which in this case is a submarine,  the submarine started pumping water into the tomb.  I'm curious if this had to happen or if this is something Megan decided to do.  Either way, at this point the need to make their way to the submarine and turn off the pump so they can go into the tomb and pop the bubble.

Ch 26 pg 397

The group is Carl Katia and a couple guys we don't know.  Someone suggests they wear red shirts.

They get to the submarine without incident.

Except that there's some sort of giant thing below them.  If they don't make a scene they should be ok.

They're mostly to where they want to get, but then the Ptyradactle ghost that's supposedly tomb boss is there.  It does something that almost kills one of the guys.  

Then it leaves the sub heading down and hits the giant thing below the sub. 

On the bright side, the guy with the final piece to create the titular gate is down here.  So Carl has all the pieces he needs to start the apocalypse. 

 This is exactly the kind of thing they were trying to avoid.

The thing below them grabs the sub with its tentacles and drags them down to the bottom of the sea.

But wait, it gets worse.  They are attacked by an octoshark.

Ch 27 pg 409

The octoshark bites the sub in half.  The way this works in the wild is that the mommy octoshark bites something in half and then the babies eat the thing.  The babies are at the front of the sub trying to break in and eat everyone. Carl has an idea, he puts a bomb un the mini fridge and then everyone goes into the room with the stairwell.  At least that was the plan, but one guy goes for the escape pod.  He doesn't eject because they tell him it won't work cause they're inside the shark. The babies break in and Carl sets off the bomb.  It's a bomb he's infused with the bloodlust potion and all the baby octosharks start eating each other. 

There's a timer to indicate when the mom will swallow the half a sub that's in her mouth.  They have a two part plan to get out of here.  Part 1 is katia turns herself into something everyone else can hold onto and then shoots a rocket out her back so they are propelled forward.  Part 2 is Carl does his shield spell to stop the octoshark in its tracks so they can get away.  Part 2 works really well in that it kills the octoshark. Part 1 doesn't go so great and they end up crashing into the bottom of the sea.  Now that they're out of the sub, the sea pressure starts doing damage to them.  Also, they don't really have a good way to move up and also up is a layer of dangerous jelly fish.

On the bright side, the guy in the escape pod was able to eject right through the octoshark. The remaining red shirt wishes they had tried it when the octoshark was alive.

Desperate times call for desperate actions. 

They open up the titular gate.  The portal takes them to just outside of town so they can run to a safe room.

We will see how safe it is with a feral God on the loose.

Ch 28 pg 428

ch 1 to 17 the gate of the feral God's by Matt dinniman.

This is a brand new book and some herkoff already water damaged it.

Diagram of the desert bubble

Ch 1 pg 1

On this new level they re unceremoniously dumped into a sandstorm.  They make their way to town.  The primary npc on this level is camel people.

They learn the objective here is to attack a castle in the sky.  They dont know how to fly, so thats a tall order.

The whole level is made up of these bubbles with four parts.  You cant move to another part until you beat the castle in your part.  Mordekai figures everyone else is useless and theyre gonna have to beat all 4 castles themselves.  16 days, 4 castles, 4 days per castle.  They better get to work.

Ch 2 pg 18

They make their way to a safe room and unpack all the achievements and boxes from the end fight of the previous level.

They talk to some friends that are in the ocean part of the bubble and theyre on boats and they don't know how to use them.

I should probably pay more attention in these types of chapters cause they are full of foreshadowing.   How do I know that?   Mordecai just told me.  He says pay attention to the loot boxes you get at the beginning of the level.  They usually foreshadow what's to come.  They get a lot of poison resistance and water breathing potions so there's gonna be a lot of water and venemous stuff.

Carl walks through the town and finds a house with a telescope on the roof.  He knocks on the door and a blank shapeshifter child shows up.  The child forms itself into a tiny Carl.  They go on the roof and Carl looks at the castle in the sky.  Lots of gnomes.  The boy tells Carl the reason this level is a wasteland is because there was a war with the gnomes and they bombed the hell out of this place.  Carl is able to use the telescope to look at one such bomb and the description says there aren't many left.

Ch 3 pg 38

They go out in the world intending to go to the other t0wn.  They fight a giant spikey lizard and that goes pretty well.  They take it out with ranged weapons.  Then there's a gnome airplane.  They think they're about to get bombed but it drops something and there's no explosion. But it opens up and it's a dead feral goose.  It's a neighborhood boss so they get a neigh map.  This was staged as an accident that the goose was supposed to be freed half way down but instead it didn't and dies on impact.  But Carl knows better.  They're trying to keep people from being free.  So they fgo back to t9wn.

Ch 4 pg 57

They build a sort 9f dunes buggy on tracks thing.  

They test it out a bit and they figure they're ready to head to the other town.  But before they can head out in earnest, they see the other town get bombed.  They head back to their town and watch the recap show.

Lucia mar kills another crawler completely unprovoked.  So maybe she is that bad.  More importantly we get to see exactly how, it's with a reflection spell.  Someone attacks her and the damage goes to whoever Lucia targets.  Mordecai thinks maybe its shown because the powers that be want people to try to kill her.

Ch 5 pg 75

They go back to the bar to rally the troops .  Two important things come of this.  The first is that the shapeshifting sex workers are super dangerous. So be nice to them.  The second is there are two guys that have been drunk this whole time and one of them has a super powerful spell.  So mordecai detoxes them.

Ch 6 pg 87

They teleport over to city hall and carl makes it down to the hostage.  So he gets rewarded for finishing that mission and now theres a save the hostage mission.  This area is confusing as its on the border of the sky and tomb areas.  Carl finds a map of the tomb area, but that doesnt help him cause he cant go there.  Also I guess the hostage is in the tomb area because some crawlers from the tomb level kill said hostage.

Ch 7 pg 105

Carl and the crawlers that killed his hostage meet up in da club.  Carl has Katia draw them a map of their area.

Their Zev replacement sucks.  I hope she dies.  They get new sponsorships.

Ch 8 pg 120

I have 4 days.  40 pages a day.  I should be able to do that.

Carl gets an add on to show speed and altitude from his original sponsor. I expect eventually there will be flying and it will be very useful. 

His new sponsor is a pacifist group so Carl is not optimistic about this  box even though its silver. 

It turns out to be a very rare root vegetable. It grows under dirt that's covered in Lava.

My personal hope is that somehow this pacifist group is related to the anarchist cook book and Carl will find an awesome way to use it in there.

The storm comes and goes.  Everyone is still alive, no bombing yet.  But a giant bionic bird flies by and Carl is thinking he can test his newly crafted missles on it.  It's a burrough boss and the last time anybody engaged with this thing it destroyed a town.

Ch 9 pg 129

Carl distracts the shapeshifter kid with the telescope while donut steals the telescope.  On the bright side, he does tell the kid if there's a bombing he should go to the Toe as its the only true safe room.  So its not 100% bad.

Carl takes the group out to do battle with the giant bionic bird.  Hes got 4 missiles.  Donut got an upgrade to her glasses from her sponsor.  She's disappointed it's not a new thing.   Mordecai explains that this is how sponsors work a lot of the time.  They send you a really useful thing and then they keep sending you upgrades to that thing.  In the end you have something that's of legendary quality but much more cost effective than sending such an item all fully upgraded.

The plan with the missiles is to hit from miles away.  They created two stage rockets for this.  The first rocket they shoot at the bird doesn't do well, it explodes prematurely shortly after the second stage rocket fires off.  Carl is gonna risk it for the biscuit.  He tells Katia to head toward the bird.  This seems I'll advised, the bird has basically a giant chainsaw it dangles beneath them.  Really it's a bunch of buzz saws connected on a large steel pole.  So very scary.  This time Carl shoots from much closer and he fires 3 missiles at once.  It loses a wing and plummets to the ground and donut finishes it off with magic missles.

Before they can celebrate their achievement,  there's an announcement that something much more important has happened.  Chris from the old folks home has liberated the ocean area.

Ch 10 pg 144

They go back to town and Carl talks to a channeling disguised as a camel person about the proof of life process with the gnomes.  Maybe a changling can look like the gnome and fake it.

It doesnt work

Carl gathers a bazillion npcs into their private room.

All of a sudden Carl gets a mission.  Save the town.  He's got an hour and 15 minutes until the bombing starts.

Ch 11 pg 161

I dont remember exactly why but the gnomes send down a baloon to retrieve the gnome hostage.  Donut has cast her zombie spell on him so when the gnomes check, it confirms its him.  They also test everyone to make sure theyre not changelings.  Katia is the chair that the zombie gnomes is in.  Whe. The zombie spell wears off, she uses her shapeshifter skills to form a representation of him so now she's the chair and him.

Seems like the plan is a success.

Ch 12 pg 176

There's another part of the plan thay unfolds.  The guys on the ground shoot missles at the flying fortress to take out the planes.  It goes really well.  Katia secures herself to the baloon basket and donut casts hole on the bottom of the basket and the gnomes fall to their doom.

They blow up some other stuff on the flying fortress and there's a notification that they saved the town.  Huge success.

They jump out of the baloon and they all take a potion that results in them staying alive when they hit the ground.  It's very painful.

Zev chats at them.  Yay!!!  Shes obviously gone through some sort of brainwashing so not yay.  

Im psyched to see whats in this platinum box Carl gor for saving the town.

Ch 13 pg 190

The AI is angry with Carl.  It wants to see him smoosh things with his feet and Carl refuses to play its game.  So the AI sends an endless wave of feral gerbils and doesn't stop until Carl gives in and gets to smooshing.

They open some boxes.

Chris shows up.

Ch 14 pg 207

Talia gets an emergency sponsor box and she goes to open it.  Also their views are going through the roof.  Seems the viewers know something about Chris that we dont.

They do and its a doozy.

Chris isn't really Chris.  It's Maggie (Frank's wife that wants to kill Carl) controlling Chris as she is a mind worm.  

That is fucking nuts.  But with the previous advice Maggie got from her advisor it shouldn't surprise me that she ended up something insane like a mind worm.

Now it makes perfect sense why Chris killed Frank cause it was Maggie the whole time.

Chris/Maggie Chraggie 

If this stays a thing im sure mr dinnamon will have a much funner couple name for them.

Talia comes back and shoots Chraggie with a bolt.  It's a special petrification bolt.  Chraggie can't move.   But temporarily Chris isn't under Maggie's control so he can chat.

Chraggie had a god summoning orb.

Chris chats that the plan was to summon the god of suffering to make Donut and Carl suffer.

There seems to be a plan that Talia's sponsor can see that results in Chris getting free from Maggie and that's why she sent these paralysis bolts.  But they cant figure it out.  Mordekai says he could whip up something if they had materials from the 6th floor.  But they don't. They have no choice.  Carl is going to kill Chraggie. 

But instead donut opens a hole beneath Carl and Chraggie.  Carl goes down a bit and hits the force shield between the sky area and the tomb area.  But Chraggie has already defeated their castle and they are free to go anywhere and they fall quite a ways down into the Tomb.

Carl realizes he needs to know what the viewers know, so they buy the upgrade that allows them to see their supporters chats.

Ch 15 pg 223

Carl and donut take a plane up to the castle.  The castle is just a house that's being held up in the sky.  There's an evil little girl named Bonnie. You know she's evil becuase she's wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey.

Ch 16 pg 238

Turns out Comandante Kane committed suicide in a creative way in that he bought his daughter an exceptionally dangerous pet that killed him.  

Carl looks his corpse.  Lots of gold and a watch that's used to form the titular gateway of the feral God.

Speaking of Feral things, the pet is a level 53 feral goose and it quickly dispatches the Mongo duplicates guarding the roof.

The goose is pretty kickass.  It kills anything it sees other than Bonnie.  It nullifies all magic.  It shoots teeth out like its a shotgun.  It also appears to be invisible becuase nothing they do hurts it.

Carl figures out the trick when he himself is tricked into thinking Bonnie's lemonade is the solution. It's not and it pisses him off and he throws the lemonade pitcher at the goose and it does damage.  It's marked as an Environmental. What Carl figures out is that only things in this environment can hurt her.  Things like the kitchen's garbage disposal. Goose head in the garbage disposal ends the fight.

I'm a little disappointed Carl didn't get some sort of goose pate accomplishment.

Ch 17 pg 254

The head changling is rebuilding 

Carl is helping

Their awful new pr person tells him to stop that, people dont care about NPCs

I hope she dies

They are getting ready to go on an infomercial for a toy that looks like Donut and says some of her catch phrases.

We're left with Carl saying hes made a decision to do something.  I hope its killing the new PR person 

End of ch 17 pg 269

steelheart part 4

Ch 31 pg 369

Megan is dead

There's some details and  nuance I didnt understand because I was sobbing uncontrollably. 

Ch 32 pg 379

Confluence is a prisoner,  always has been.  He's a slave steelheart uses to power his city.  His name is Edmund and mostly he gifts his power to other people and they actually go out and power stuff.  He can also ungift it.  They tell him to do.so and the power goes out in the city.

Ch 33 pg 388

Edmond has been a slave to other epics since a month after he got his power.  Some of his former masters were angry at him because he can't gift his power to other Epics, just people.  Steelheart wasn't  bothered by this.  He made great use of Edmond .

They decide they're gonna do this confrontation with steelheart even though they don't know his weakness.  They've got a lot of ideas and they're gonna try them all.

Ch 34 pg 402

They are gonna fight steelheart at soldier field. David is tensoring through some shallow tunnels so they can hide explosives to booby trap steelheart. Doc comes to appologize for how he acted with the tensor and Megan's death and what not.  As part of that appologize he let's David ask one question. Turns out Prof was a 5th grade science teacher before all this.  

He didnt invent any of the stuff they use.  Doc is just good at using it to kill epics.

They've also got UV lights setup incase night Weilder shows up.

Ch 35 pg 415

They light off a bunch of fireworks to get steelhearts attention. A ton of enforcers show up and position in the seats of the stadium.   Im imagining theyre all in the lower section.

David is up in the nose bleeds.  He sees a gold person for a second.  He tells the team and they are dismissive.

Prof gets on the loud speaker and asks if steelheart is afraid to face him.

Steelheart and night Weilder and firefight show up.

The first part of the plan is to just shoot steelheart in the hopes his weakness is something from the vault, which is scattered around the middle of the field .  Cody is gonna take that shot.

Ch 36 421

That didn't work. 

Even worse, nightweilder immediately makes a bee line for David.  David runs for it and in running he finds a steel Megan. 

Ch 37 pg 426

David's situation is worse than we thought as firefight is doing illusions to confuse David's even more.

Doc is somehow holding his own against steelheart. 

David thinks he figures out why the epics are a couple steps ahead of them.  He thinks they have Megan's mobile and have been listening in on all their mobile chatter. 

Also, they tested out both the true believer and friendly fire theories and steelheart is unharmed. 

So dad's gun is the only remaining hope.

Unfortunately,  David is already up to his ears in epics and is gonna have a heck of a time getting to steelheart to shoot him with his dad's gun.

A Megan's illusion talks to david. David grabs its arm. He swears its real. But then there's an explosion.

Ch 38 pg 438

David gets on the mobile and Cody tells him he's going to come for him.  David gets an idea to use the idea that the epics might have Megan's mobile so he does some disinformation. He tells Cody to meet him in the closest bathroom. But instead he makes himself a hole to hide in.  What he sees is Megan in a pile of rubble crying for help. Then nightwielder shows up and David kills him to death.  

Megan thanks David for killing nightwielder. She never liked him.  

Megan is firefight. 

But she seems to have brain damage or multiple personalities or something cause one second she's talking like she's an evil mastermind and the next like she's Megan, but a little confused.

Ch 39 pg 446

Tia has ordered a withdrawal. Abraham is carrying Cody to the extraction point.  But David just cant stomach the idea of leaving without trying to kill steelheart with his dad's gun. 

Ch 40 pg 454

It doesn't work 

Steelheart makes a great speech about something I forget.  It's intended purpose is to draw out Prof.  It works, steelheart kills him easily. 

All of a sudden David has  Kaiser Sose esque realization about steelheart. Only people that aren't afraid of him can hurt him.  That's why he does everything he does. If everyone is scared of him,  he can't be hurt.  

It seems he's a day late and a dollar short here. Steelheart picks up David's dad's gun and shoots David with it.

Unbeknownst to steelheart the detonater is in the gun barrel. So steelheart is setting off the bomb.  He and David are blown to smithereens. 

Ch 41 pg 461

steelheart part 2 AND 3

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

They find a cool gun.  The problem is each shot requires more electricity than their biggest battery can hold.  But they have this plan to capture an epic that generates electricity so maybe that won't be a problem long term.  Problem,  Night Weilder is here.

Ch 17 pg 189

They go to a dead end and use the sensor to make an escape tunnel.  But they make too much noise.  David thinks they're caught.

Ch 18 pg 196

David grabs Abraham's gun and runs over to the arms dealer (diamond) and tells him he fixed it and knows enough about guns to pass as diamonds assistant. Night weilder asks about forensics. One of these forensics shines a uv light. David wants to test out his theory that uv light makes night wielder corporial.  He shines on night wielder. 

Ch 19 pg 203

Night weilder notices, but David keeps staring at the device like he was trying to figure something out and he successfully removes the memory chip from the device.

Night weilder destroys the device.  David gets away and rejoin Megan and Abraham. He watches rhe video and the uv light definitely does something to Night weilder.

Megan hates david.

Ch 20 pg 210

David.and prof talk about the plan to kill steelheart.  David tells prof about how he got proof uv lights make night wielder become solid.  Prof tells him hes being too reckless and if things go bad cause of said recklessness prof will kill him and there won't be any evidence of David's existence. 

Ch 21 pg 225

They're gonna blow up a power plant.  Megan and David are sneaking around and setting explosives.  David is getting good at using the sensor gloves to burrow through steel.  There's trouble when a room they were going to burrow into has a bunch of people in it.  The only way around is up a elevator. David says no big deal, wait for an elevator to go up and jump on.  Pronlemis its the middle of the night.  David is able to make little hand and foot holds with the tensor gloves and they climb up.  Big problem,  security heard them and have opened the elevator door right above them.

Megan hates david because she doesn't like what the team has become. They used to go after the worst of the worst.  Newcago might be the best city in the world because of steelheart.  Megan is from Portland. You know what's there now?  Nothing. 

Ch 22 pg 247

 They do more burrowing around and they steal some fuel cells and they do a small explosion to get an evacuation going.  They really get people in the mood to GTFO when they claim its an Epic doing the destruction.   There's stuff as they evacuate about this building that just doesn't add up to David.  Mystery stacked on Mystery. One thing David got from diamond was a pen that had blasting caps and could be used as a detonater. David finds some explosives that look like they're part of a self destruct system and sticks a blasting cap in just in case.

Good thing too.  Their explosives aren't enough to blow up the building.  David uses his trigger pen and the explosion is way bigger than expected and the building is demolished. 

Part 3

Ch 23 pg 263

They talk about the info they found in steelhearts secret level in the power plant.  It's disinformation about horrible things steelheart has done.  Except its all stiff he hasnt done.  So there's. Secret base in a PowerPlant that's creating disinformation to make steelheart look worse.

The group talks about what newcago will be like after they kill steelheart. They agree it will be much worse.  But the ends justify the suffering of the people. Also, Abraham is like David's dad.  He's a believer that one day good epics will come to save us from the bad epics.

Ch 24 pg 277

One of steelhearts bodyguards is an epic they call firefight.  He's an evil johny storm from fantastic four.  David thinks hes figured out his weakness. The trick is hes not really a fire epic.  Who we think is firefight is really an illusion and david thinks he knows who the illusionist is.  So if firefight shows up, kill the ilkusionist.

Ch 25 pg 288

..

Exciting discovery.  TIA Knows where the. Bank David's dad was murdered by steelheart in is.  They think it must be something in the vault that made dteelheart weak.  David thinks its something to do with his dad.

Ch 26 pg 301

They find a ton of gold and jewelry. So even if they don't find steelheart's weakness, they're rich.

Ch 27 pg 311

They have a plan to kill the epic that generates power.  They know he gets transported via a limo with an armored car and 2 motorcycle escort.  So they wait around until they see such a comglomoration of vehicles head out from the main vehicle.  The plan is pretty cool.  Cody is gonna dress up in a costume as this is to be the reveal of lime wire.  Then from behind him, Abraham will destroy the limo with the fancy gun they got from diamond, you know, the arms dealer.

Big problem, night wilder is in the limo and they Are Not READY FOR THIS!!!!!

CH 28 PG 325

They kinda get lucky because Davis shines his UV light on night Weilder and he gets spooked and flies away.  

Another big problem,  this was absolutely a trap and now they're getting shot at by helicopters.  

Their van gets destroyed and the bikes David wanted them to buy from diamond are there.  That's right, they went back and bought them without David.  Nobody has died yet, but the last thing we see is David using the big gun to shoot a hole in a wall so the bike he and megan are on can go through it.

Ch 29 pg 240

They are running and running and cops keep finding them.  Right as all seems lost and david is considering killing Magan and himself to avoid capture,  doc shows up saves the day.  His skill with the gloves that can convert stuff to dust is unparalleled. He's turning bullets to dust as theyre fired at him. He's turning cops helmets to dust and knocking cops out!!  There's these things that they describe as being like little versions of Starwa4s atats.  He disintegrates their legs.  

As the remaining cops rn away he declares that he's limelight and if steelheart don't come out to play, he'll keep fucking shit up.

Cody makes his way back to the limo and kills the remaining guards.  There's an unconscious epic in the trunk, he brings him back to base with the theory that he is the one that makes the power.

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.