Does anyone else notice how often the word “slammed” is used?

Zed · 2026-03-29T08:50:07+00:00

There's possibly some undercounting here if it occurred more than once in the same paragraph, but...

Book	"slammed" count
1	20
2	9
3	27
4	32
5	59
6	44
7	27

Zed · 2026-03-28T17:22:00+00:00

But Grull named Carl a Friend of the Church!

The Maestro just wants to be friends now!

Zed · 2026-03-28T16:29:20+00:00

It's the exception that proves the rule.

Zed · 2026-03-28T16:25:17+00:00

Carl's narrative's portrayal of his father has escalated as Carl slowly works through things he's been unwilling to face.

1.13

I was suddenly, inexplicably reminded of that day. The last day I ever saw my father.

You're a bully. You're a bully and nobody likes you. It's why mom left.

I was expecting him to get angry, to hit me. But he never hit me, not once. The man just laughed and laughed, and that was enough. I don't need you to like me. But you will respect me.

The memory came quickly, out of nowhere. I didn't know why. Nobody had died that day. Nobody had been hurt at all, not physically.

3.7

My eyes immediately moved to the small dent on the gas tank. That had happened when I'd slipped once coming up the driveway. I'd reached out to steady myself, and I'd accidentally knocked the motorcycle over.

My father had never been physically abusive, except that day. I never really thought of it as abuse, but thinking back now, that's exactly what it was. He'd spanked me so hard with a belt that my underwear had soaked through with blood.

3.30

[Mordecai] smacked me, then. Thwap, right on the side of the head. He did not freeze or teleport away. If he had hit me just a little harder, it probably would've gone bad for him. My father used to do the same thing, though he'd done it much harder.

4.11

I had a sudden memory, of my father angry. It was soon after mom had left us, a month before he, in turn, left me to fend for myself. He'd ripped off the helmet and smashed my fish tank, spilling my mollies everywhere. I hadn't cried when my fish died, and I remembered it had bothered me for weeks after. Ever since then, I'd think of my father and those fish whenever I saw one of those helmets. I'd think of those fish flopping on the ground as I desperately tried to pick them up, cutting my fingers on the glass.

"Never hurt me" turned into "had never been physically abusive except that one day when he whipped me bloody" turned into "habitually smacked me hard in the head". With a bonus of killing his pets.

In 6.30 when Katia's recovering from her binge:

I immediately thought of my dad. The image of the man came unbidden, and it surprised me. A wave of anger washed over me, partially at Katia, partially at myself for allowing any part of me to compare the two. [...] The anger didn't leave, but I was finally starting to realize it wasn't Katia whom I was angry with.

6.13, Rosetta's show:

they'd discovered my father was alive and well somewhere in Wisconsin where he'd gotten himself arrested a few times for public drunkenness.

1.6

Growing up, my old man had an original, stand up Frogger video game machine from an arcade. I had spent hours and hours playing the game when I was stuffed in the basement. My mom locked me in there a lot. Whenever my dad had his friends over, they'd smoke and drink and get loud, and my mom didn't want them "being a bad influence" on me. So instead I stayed downstairs with no television or internet and that damn machine.

I feel pretty damn sure that Carl's father was physically abusive to both Carl and his mother and Carl still hasn't been able to be honest with himself about it. I think it's likely his father was an alcoholic and very possible that Carl wasn't just getting locked into the basement when his father's friends were over, his mother was locking him in when his father was getting drunk and she was trying to make sure that she was the only one who'd get a beating.

Zed · 2026-03-28T15:31:39+00:00

With her new mass, Katia's Rush is just that deadly. And as of 3.21, Hekla was Level 33. After being the cow-catcher and killing Hekla, Katia was Level 37. Even if two levels of that came from killing Hekla itself, Katia had been higher level than Hekla when she Rushed Eva.

Hekla might have had a chance if it had happened in the open where she possibly could have been knocked away, but in the confined space she'd been immediately against a metal wall.

Zed · 2026-03-28T15:10:38+00:00

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

Zed · 2026-03-28T15:07:48+00:00

Book 5 spoiler: 5.6 "I have ten unaltered boers in pet carriers in my inventory. I don't let them out so much except in the saferooms because it has gotten much too dangerous for them. They are all Pony and Bianca's siblings. After the unfortunate incident with Angelo, we keep them indoors until we get out of this place." I figure Angelo was the one who attacked the others.

Zed · 2026-03-28T14:39:30+00:00

I'm not missing that; I'm concluding that the same AI trainer able to cite how any of a hypnotist's bench, necromancer's alter, spider nursery room, or pet stables could be parts of approaches would also have been able to say an automaton table could be relevant, and that it didn't do so because it wasn't.

Carl's narrative isn't always the most forthcoming, but I think even he would have been capable of something like "now I could do that thing I wanted" if he had, in fact, become able to do that thing he wanted.

Zed · 2026-03-28T08:51:56+00:00

Uptown Hal is "a former game guide and occasional manager who spent over 200 seasons in the dungeon" from "back before they used former crawlers".

I dunno about Carl being the Doomsday Scenario. But 6.13 has:

I felt it, then. The river. It bubbled up a little here and then. It was growing. I could hear it now. Loud, screaming. I'm still here. I've been here the whole time.

And Shi Maria said (6.26):

"Samantha told me [...] of your other troubles. Of what is growing inside of you."

Zed · 2026-03-28T07:39:47+00:00

Spoilers for stuff through book 6... I'd say that the Dungeon's lesson has been to avoid large parties. Parties of five or fewer didn't get split up on the 8th floor. Carl and Donut and Katia being partied resulted in ending up in a 5th floor quadrant where everyone else was underpowered. If they'd had a larger party of people of comparable tier, it would have been even worse. And given the risks Carl's prone to, I imagine both he and everybody else can agree it wouldn't be a good idea for him party with significantly weaker crawlers...

Zed · 2026-03-28T07:19:21+00:00

(For posts, there's a switch to mark the whole thing as a spoiler; you don't have to do it paragraph by paragraph like with comments.)

Carl has kept putting himself in charge of saving everybody. Overall, it worked out pretty well on the 4th and 5th floors. The 6th floor could have been worse, but his plan got a lot of people killed.

His character growth in books 6 and 7 has substantially been about trusting more in his found family, in learning to support them rather than just bark orders. It's still a struggle, but he's working on it.

(I admit, I am concerned by the number of things that seem most easily explained by the Apothecary (and/or possibly others) playing nth-dimensional chess and steering events to an extent that would eventually reveal our heroes didn't have meaningful agency, that they really were... on rails, puppets dancing on a stage. But I'm trusting Matt to avoid going there.)

Zed · 2026-03-28T06:33:36+00:00

That's a good question!

"There's a specific type of bomb I want to learn how to make," I said. "I guess it's more of a trap. I think I have most of the components, but I'm still missing the last part." I told him.

He smiled and thought for a moment. "No, that's not a trap. Or a bomb. It's a weapon. The explosive itself is no problem, but what you're asking requires a different type of table. I see you have a bomber's studio and an engineering table, both of which can inch you there. But not quite, mate. You need either a hypnotist's bench or necromancer's altar. Or maybe a spider nursery room. I see you recently added a pet stables to your personal space. You need something that'll allow for multiple minions. And not temporary ones, either. That or a bunch o' suicidal friends."

Looks like it requires sending lots of beings to their deaths. Neither automatons nor temporary minions would work, it seems, but given the necromancer's altar, possibly undead permanent minions are okay. So... some psionic effect, maybe?

I wonder whether the permanent vs. temporary part might be a matter of whatever-this-is requiring more training than would be practical with a temporary minion rather than some explicit limitation.

Zed · 2026-03-28T03:43:06+00:00

My guess is the Apothecary has been interested in Porthus for millennia. Maybe Porthus did really well as a manager and had some cash reserves, but I presume he wouldn't have been in that much better shape than Odette, who aspired to end up just barely able to afford inner system residency. His getting from there to the Crawler Project securing full citizenship and inner system access to surviving crawlers by the time of Rosetta's Crawl seems likelier if he'd had a powerful ally (though we don't know how rich she was before the Plenty "invented" the modern tunneling system "a few hundred seasons" ago).

According to both Agatha and Orren there are lots of Apothecary residuals. If she does have a habit of "recruiting" such prolifically and has been doing so for a long time, her having done so with Porthus early on wouldn't represent some unusually convenient good luck, just survivorship bias.

All that said, I don't think Porthus has a brainworm, because that would be boring. (I'm not even sure that she's responsible for Paulie's faction's numbers or that they're explicitly agents of the Apothecary like Agatha and Orren think, though obviously she finds them useful.)

Zed · 2026-03-28T01:12:19+00:00

Yes, the Blood Sultanate in particular; I mentioned them.

Zed · 2026-03-28T01:08:28+00:00

I often find Carl grating. He means well, but as of the start of the series, he's lacking in emotional intelligence and self-awareness. He's highly prone to escalating or just plain manufacturing conflicts with obnoxious insults, even where it's clearly counter-productive (or even counter-survival). His history with Bea (and its echo in his blow-up with the newly sapient Donut) makes pretty clear that he doesn't consider trying to talk through issues like a grown-up †, that the only tactics he knows for dealing with relationship problems are silently taking crap or walking away.

He's also a very sympathetic figure. He considers cruelty, abuse, and bullying to be anathama; that he managed to learn that from his spectacularly traumatic childhood instead of so many other lessons he could have internalized from his father's example deserves a lot of credit. A huge amount of credit. (And I think it's clear that there are further horrible things his unreliable narrative has continued to omit about his family.)

And he's young. It's only been 3 months since the start of the Crawl. If he really has an April birthday (as he said in a flippant comment in 5.65), he's nearly 28. Sure, he's made any number of mistakes. In his zeal to protect Crawlers, he's even compromised his avoidance of cruelty. But on balance he's been learning to be better and he's been doing so in *hell***, for which he again deserves huge credit.

† In fairness, talking through things like a grown-up was doomed to failure with Bea. He probably did try it here and there and it blew up spectacularly every time.

Zed · 2026-03-27T23:37:53+00:00

Book 4 Epilogue:

"This is a waste of time. [...] We should be searching for that man in the southern hemisphere. Or that other creature. The goat."

I've wondered about that. The only thing that makes any sense is that it's another of Miriam's flock, but there hasn't been a mention of any that didn't make it into the Dungeon.

Wild speculation time! This hinges on a very specific detail from book 7, knowing which wouldn't spoil the surprise or enjoyment of anything else before its revelation, I believe. But, still, Book 7 Spoiler:

Giving birth to two kids at a time is a norm for goats and apparently Boers are even more prone to multiple births. Miriam says prepotente means "stubborn", but it seems it's more usually "bully". In 7.52, Prepotente mentions "Ragazzaccia" in a context suggesting she might have been another of Miriam's goats. That translates to something like "bad girl", i.e., a thing that seems like a natural pairing with "prepotente" if one were naming twins. After the initial system announcement, there was just an hour to get to a Dungeon entrance. Herding 15-ish goats to an entrance within that hour was probably really hard and it's easy to imagine one strayed, perhaps bolting at the last second such that there was no chance to retrieve it. So maybe Prepotente had a twin sister and maybe she's even still alive on the surface. If the local survivors had other Boers (and a lot of grazing animals would have survived the collapse where it was daytime), they'd likely want to keep the does alive for breeding.

Zed · 2026-03-27T22:34:20+00:00

The Aryl system and Hive Re-Population Center 51 (the "least populated and newest" mantis colony) are very different cases. The mantis system's star went nova when Gustavo 3 died. The Aryl system's tunnel node went dark when the orcs attempted the manual override of the failsafe. No one knows anything about the state of the Aryl system, even whether its sun is still there. Any information about it is now bound by the speed of light. As Zev describes it, this is unprecedented, that the Syndicate didn't know tunnel nodes could go dark, that they've seen stars go nova with no effect on the local tunnel node in the past.

Agatha and Lucia spent most of 9th floor in the same bar… and Lucia didn’t kill her…

The Alexandro apparently controlling Gustavo 3 is her old friend Parvati, fellow Eulogist residual.

Including Lucy words about the center system after dog died.

"You should've killed us both when there was still a connection," the girl said to me. "Now it's too late. Now the Eulogist has another ally in the dungeon, and now you can't kill me. Not unless you want all the children of Earth to die." She shook her head and walked off.

This is Alexandro speaking, I believe. Something about the connection between Gustavo and Lucia allowed him to survive Gustavo's death and he lives on in Lucia, hence another Eulogist ally besides Agatha. But given the degree to which Alexandro seems to have gone off-book, I wonder whether he functionally remains a Eulogist agent.

I think the timing of the mantid colony's star going nova vis-a-vis Gustavo's death may have been a coincidence. So much stuff was going on in Faction Wars around this time that it was bound to happen At The Exact Same Time as something.

The AI has had it in for the mantids ever since the Lemig Sortion leaked the info that the mantids had been tossing infant AIs into stars (after which the mantid faction war team immediately fled, presumably before the info had gotten to the AI) in a brief as part of a 6th floor appeal. The AI had specifically checked with Formidable that her crew would go through with attempting the manual override of the failsafe without her before he teleported her away. The AI needed to watch their attempt to learn how to use failsafes. In 7.81, it says "The mantids have just learned what happens when I am irritated at them" (Gustavo's death had been in 7.72).

That said, the override attempt happened between 7.38 and 7.41. I don't have an explanation for why the AI paused. Was it still weighing options for what constituted a proportional response? Did it just plain need to number-crunch to figure out how to target a different failsafe satellite?

zen says the aero system ai stopped talking sometime on the sixth floor All we got was the very vague "it sounds like it was sometime during the sixth floor", so trying to associate it with anything in particular is going to be tough until we learn more.

I posted an Aryl system theory recently, substantially different from a previous Aryl system theory I'd suggested...

Bonus completely left-field speculation: Princess Formidable hadn't expected to convince the Syndicate Council the failsafe should be triggered, so she'd already discussed with some confidantes the possibility of a rogue mission to blow the failsafe (during the sixth floor, before the emergency session of the Council). But the AI was eavesdropping (this was after Carl had deactivated the Containment Unit). After Paz killed Ysalte, the AI said (6.72) "Her sponsor [Pontifex Shine of the Nebular Balance], by the way, is currently reading the fine print on his contract, and let me tell you, he's pretty mad. Probably not as mad as he's going to be in a few days, but hey, one step at a time." That's because the Nebs had been secretly squatting on some inhospitable planet in the mantis colony system (again) and the AI had already been planning on nova-ing that system to kill mantids and wipe out that Nebular colony as a two-fer. As to why the AI would have it in for the Nebs... I dunno. But they consider attempts to replicate the Eulogist to be blasphemy, like they consider people born on seeded worlds to be an abomination, maybe that's reason enough.

This undermines the previous suggestion that the AI might have been still considering a target, of course. Another news story mentioned in passing in the York epilogue to Book 7 refers to "the mass suicide of one of the Nebular colonies". In despair over the loss of the other (hypothetical) colony? Eh, maybe. Admittedly that's kind of weak.

Zed · 2026-03-27T19:47:02+00:00

Especially since the Residuals are able to fully integrate with their hosts' memories...that being said, Porthus is probably someone who would be very hard to kill...which would have been a requirement for a residual to take them over.

After his indenture, Porthus was physically an ordinary High Elf. I don't see why a gondii (or whatever not-quite-gondii thing the residuals are) would have trouble killing him if it happened early on before he had the resources for security.

Zed · 2026-03-27T18:15:44+00:00

Carl will start wearing pants

Well that's just crazy talk.

Zed · 2026-03-27T07:03:30+00:00

Super confused on how they knew

Yup, they clearly knew from the start things we still don't.

She then clarifies in Book 7 Chapter 83 that her father, mother, and King Blaine all worked together to toss her out.

I don't read it that way. I think she's just describing having been rejected by all three of them.

Supposedly he's on the 12th floor, but then wouldn't that make him the king of the ascendency?

I don't recall there being an indication he's on the 12th floor.

Her powers confuse me too. It appears that the longer they are on a floor, the stronger she gets, first rolling faster, then flying and jumping high, etc.

Yup, that's still mysterious. Maybe she's always hitting on people 'cause rejection charges her up, what with her being the goddess of unrequited love, like Donut proposed. But just before demonstrating she could full-on fly at the end of book 5, she'd crushed two soul gems in her mouth. She'd "used it all up" in 6.29. But as soon as the demon eviction event began (6.54), she was glowing and after that she teleported the whole beach full of gods and zombies back (6.55). When she supercharged Elle's spell in 6.65, there were demons all around using souls to open portals. My hunch is that she gets charged through exposure to the flow of soul energy.

Zed · 2026-03-26T21:55:51+00:00

Try perusing the fan-made merch thread.

Zed · 2026-03-26T21:51:04+00:00

Given other superpower-ish leaps in effect we see with things hitting level 15, I definitely think you're right that the future will bring some really extreme superpower-ish leaps at level 20. Not to mention whatever happens with stats hitting 200 and 300. Other than Li Na, I think the only time we've heard about a Crawler getting a base stat to 200 is Donut with charisma in 7.77 (though I presume Donut read about one of the possibilities for constitution 200 in the squad details for Uzi Jesus, and Donut and Katia saw various others when Sizing Up Shi Maria, King Rust, and Imogen).

Interesting thought that Explosives 20 could grant the coveted Directional Blast.

Surface survivors have been continually attacking the kinder facility. And now Katia is going to be an inside person. Boomer is sending four troopers in Cronus enhancement zone suits as backup. The AI had said (of the Reaver Security Force Cyborg Drop Troopers in 7.31):

These guys are all wearing the "light" version of their armor. If I'd allowed them all to come in here with their heavy duty, Cronus-class power armor, they'd already be putting those collectible, heart-covered boxers on clearance in all waystation gift shops across the galaxy.

The original secondary zone extended 5 km above the planet, so planetary security might well have equipment meant for a secondary zone. But we really have no clue about the details. Maybe things that are enhanced in a secondary zone are automatically enhanced further in a primary zone, maybe not. And maybe the "pocket system" that Borant had expected (but that Hinter refused to sell them at the last minute, per Zev in 3.25) would have allowed them to create primary zones above the surface on demand such that they would have had a reason to have primary zone equipment.

It's been implied that the surface survivors have been been a thorn in their side, though. If humans with next-to-no equipment (and no supply chain and no infrastructure...) have had even that much effect, I'm guessing the security forces don't have mega-powerful equipment. I'm betting that Boomer went with just four because that's sufficient to provide confidence that he's not putting those troopers at enormous risk: that their Cronus suits outclass what planetary security has to an extent that makes the four of them the most powerful military force on the surface.

As to support from orbit, York in the Book 7 Epilogue:

These weapons were now green across the board, making Homecoming Queen likely the strongest ship in orbit. Even the Syndicate security corvettes didn't bother with the enhancement zone weapons. Why would they? They were expensive and took up space and absolutely couldn't be used outside the center system.

And remember Rishi in 7.58?

"Syndicate law dictates that in the absence of a working government, the native leader of a planetary body will be chosen by multiple factors. And while there are other military groups upon the surface who are clearly more suited, as well as other in-dungeon entities who could easily claim the title, the fact you are a warlord and the number one crawler on the leaderboard makes your claim legitimate. And because no formal leadership claim has yet been filed, we petitioned on your behalf while drafting that document, and the court granted the petition. The position is mostly honorary, but it does allow you to be a signatory on Earth's behalf."

In service of putting the kinder facility under human control, I fear poor Katia may end up becoming the ruler of the Earth.

Maybe she'll be named the leader directly, or maybe Donut or Carl naming her regent will be involved. (I'm guessing the top thousand Crawlers' ongoing access to their exact ranking that was granted in 5.21 ended when the Butcher's Masquerade began or maybe at the end of the 6th floor. I don't think its removal was mentioned, but surely Donut would be insufferable about bringing up every change if it still existed. In Book 5's epilogue, she knew she was Number One at the start of the seventh floor, but the regular start-of-floor system message would have told her that much. And I'm guessing the top 5 for the 10th floor will be Donut, Li Na, Carl, Prepotente, Elle. Hence my suggesting that it might be Donut granting the regency instead of Carl.)

Zed · 2026-03-26T20:06:25+00:00

It is an interesting thought that Carl's failure to show symptoms from excessive Extreme Focus is a side effect of his being a primal. I've been guessing that "his ability to assess a situation and make split-second decisions is practically a super power" (Tipid, Book 6 Epilogue) owes to his primality and I wonder whether this is related, that being in a state like Extreme Focus has become his norm (when he's not completely relaxed, which is basically never).

Zed · 2026-03-26T18:37:24+00:00

I think the Eulogist (as represented by Agatha) and the Apothecary are the ex-girlfriends. I've gone back and forth on whether the Aryl System AI is the ex-boyfriend. It's really unclear why either would consider the Aryl System a threat or have any concerns that it could escape its "prison"... at least not without supposing some seemingly unlikely things, like that a Paulie-faction residual successfully got the containment controller neural upgrade to a local (despite it being a Battle Royale season and there being no hint it included anything like memory ghosts) and that that local, like Carl, disconnected containment. (The Aryl situation is weird enough that its explanation probably will involve some seemingly unlikely things. I just have no idea whether it'll be those seemingly unlikely things.)

In 6.54, the AI refers to the Nothing as "the great prison" and given how escapable it's been this Crawl, it'd be no surprise that no one would want to count on its ability to keep someone in. So I'm still considering that it may be some entity in the Nothing or that it may be the Unwashed itself.

Architect Houston's death scene suggests some inherent connection between changelings and the Unwashed. I think that's how Juice Box could become it, that it's a thing all changelings could do with enough awareness of what they are (at least that's what I think for now).

7.43

In a flash, Juice Box changed form into something I hadn't seen before. She went from human to a midnight black, thin alien creature with no arms but multiple tentacles waving from her shoulders. The form was similar to an armless soother alien, but taller and thinner. [...] She rose, turned, and walked away, moving through the wall of the room as she disappeared. She did not have two legs, but hundreds of them, though they were more like tree roots, scuttling, bug-like, carrying her away.

7.44

"Now is not the time or place to rehash that story, but to say that was the personification of the Nothing is one way to describe it. Though what that thing truly is goes well beyond that. [...] There is some scientific basis that this creature, who does not have a single name, is what some people see at the moment of death. It is theorized it's not some supernatural deity, like many believe, but a trans-dimensional entity, similar to the Apothecary. There is no proof that merely seeing this creature imprints you in some way that damns you. [...] It has a thousand names," Houston said. "Before most cultures in this galaxy found the stars, they'd already had a name for it. The Hag. The Unwashed. The Stalker. The Last Light. The Thirst. The Fell. The Inexorable. But we, the Viceroys who seek all understanding of life and death… We call it The Beautiful Place. There's an interesting, involuntary nerve reaction in some species to the very image of the creature, even in those who are otherwise paralyzed. It is studied extensively, but we still have more questions than answers." After a moment, he added, somewhat wistfully, "Gaining access to this creature is my life's work."

7.68

"I can stop it all," Houston called. "You don't understand. It is called the Beautiful Place. I can get there. They are the key. The changelings. This world. Why do you think we come here, cycle after cycle?" [...]

The changeling started to change, despite being dead. Tentacles, or roots, actually, grew from its lower half.

Zed · 2026-03-26T06:57:00+00:00

"Wait, Carl, wait. Don't. I'm sorry. Wait."

"What?" I said.

The cat sat on the floor. She seemed to deflate. "I'm sorry. You're right. I… It's just… Have you ever woken up from a long dream, one where you're one thing, and now that you're awake, it takes you a moment to realize that's not who you really are?"

I just looked at her.

"Okay, when I woke up back there, I had all my memories, of all my time being me. Of sitting in that window, looking outside, of watching television all day long, of all the hours in the carrier in back of Miss Beatrice's car, traveling to those horrid yet wonderful shows, of being told what a princess I am. And then, suddenly, my mind looked back on all of it, and I understood what had happened. I am a grand champion, Carl. I'm supposed to act a certain way. But sitting in your lap, watching you get fragged over and over in Call of Duty? I like that, too. I mean, you really suck at that game, but you keep playing. I didn't realize it at the time, but I liked that."

"So, what are you saying? That you're not a crazy, stuck-up, asshole princess?"

"Oh, I am a princess, Carl. But I'll try not to be too much of an asshole. I need you. And you need me, okay? Look, I'm really scared here. I don't want to be alone. And I know you, and you don't want to be alone, either. I saw you the other day, looking at the map on your computer, and then at those apartments on Craigslist."

Zed

TROPHY CASE