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

For such a long chapter i feel like not a lot happened.  Everyone is huddled in their safe room.  They open boxes and get cool stuff.  They're basically just waiting for the feral god to leave.  They get confirmation that it has left when other people from other bubbles start complaining about the fire god Emberus going around yelling for Orthus.  He's fucking up shit real bad for so many people.  Carl better do something. 

Ch 29 pg 447

They leave the safehouse and they see a giant two headed dog.  It is named Orthus.  It's not the Orthus Emberus is yelling for.  It's that dog's puppy.  The whole bubble gets a quest to save the giant puppy. Donut and others get into the house balloon and they are on healing duty.

At the same time they also have to kill the ghost Ptyradactle to get the  bubble open. They kill the ghost Ptyradactle with lightening.  The bubble opens and the lightening stops.

But the giant puppy is still being attacked by sharks.

Also Chris, being possed by Maggie is out there somewhere. 

Ch 30 pg 464

It just so happens they have a spell that attracts animals.

They get in a plane and fly away and start the spell and the.puppy follows.

They have a new quest to get the puppy to the god.

Unfortunately wveryone else has a quest to kill the puppy.

Quan, the only guy to open his legendary box is gonna try.

Ch 31 pg 477

Carl uses his invisibility potion on the dog

He worships the god and uses a holy grenade to summon him to where the dog is.

That solves that problem, but Quan is pissed off and he decides to fight Carl.  Luckily the holy grenade has a side effect that makes Carl invisible for a minute. 

It wears off, but Quan doesnt know that.  He tries to get away and somehow Carl rips his arm off.

Ch 32 pg 494

They've got a plan to help the people still in bubbles.  They give those people the titular gate in the desperado club.  Those people use the gate to go to Carl's bubble and then right out the staircase to the 6th floor.  The idea is those people get away and the god is stuck in the bubble.

Ch 33 pg 511

The plan works great.  They save a lot of people.

Katia is gonna leave the band.  

They do one last desperate thing with the titular gate.  They use it to send all the shapeshifters and other npcs to the 6th floor in the baloon house. 

Let's see what god comes out to ruin everything. 

Ch 34 pg 528

The neat thing about all these kids is that they fight each other and poof back to.the nothing. 

But one does not. It's a demon that's got a score to settle with their demigod possessed sex doll head.

Emergency platinum box from the pa ifists.

It's an attachment to Carl's xtera made to throw her.  He does just that and in doing so it summons her mother who kills the demon right away.

Everyone on the outside assumes Carl is going to use the titular gate to summon a god to the 9th floor to rake out the Maestro's family army. The powers that be send him a message saying its cool just thus once. So Carl gets to do this awesome thing without any backlash.   Nice.

Maggie/Chris shows up with the plan to steal the titular gate while they are preparing their 9th floor shenhannegans. Now we get the root vegetable reveal.  Mordekai has created a potion that will allow Carl to phase through magma rock. This allows him to reach into Chris's head and yank Maggie out.

Now Carl reveals his true plan.  The make a gate in the ocean to the 9th floor and it pretty much destroys the town in the center..everyone gets to the stairs to the 6th floor.  See you next book

Epilogue  pg 557

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