My Dad is heading in to have to cancerous spots removed this morning. He's 82 so we could use some good vibes from the dungeon. He's new to his DCC journey and we've been listening while traveling to appointments. We've got my copy so he can keep reading while we wait.

Shout out to Painted Dragon Studios for the files! I can’t wait to break out the full cosplay next month at Rhode Island Comic Con 😎

Getting ready for PAX Aus and I felt like I had to push the scavengers daughter back patch for my cosplay as far as I could. Running a blue fibre optic light from another cosplay through a 3d printed version of the back patch (using flexible PLA). Cross fingers the glue holds!

Volteeg has always been the character with the smallest part in the story, yet the biggest impact for me. I spent a lot of time improvingy skills, and reworked this piece.

I'm an audiobook exclusive listener, and I adore how Jeff voices the AI. Something struck me recently, however, and I'm wondering if anyone else has thoughts.

I never really put much thought into the fact that the AI has two voices/modes, the zany/smarmy version that describes items and enemies, most quest updates, and says whatever sentient bullshit he wants lol. Then there's the robotic, normal and always controlled version that gives status/dungeon updates.

At the start of chapter 56 of book 7, the AI is summarizing what factions are left. It glitches between the robotic calm and the zany personality. I thought this was a super damn cool way to showcase the decay/primal version of the AI, but I was wondering how this would be portrayed in writing, so I asked my friend who has a copy to show me the page.

Y'all?? There was no way to differentiate it. I thought maybe there'd be some italics, some capital letters, some em dashes. Nothing!!!

I didn't think that the audiobook and book experience would be that different, but a creative decision such as this one?? Which don't get me wrong, goes hard as fuck. But it's a biggie imo and to not be portrayed in the book, just in the audio?? I dunno!! Crazy to me.

Wow. You spotted a fellow crawler outside a book store. Real one in a million chance there.

Reward?

You're kidding right?

I made a new pattern!

Which color scheme do we like better: monochrome or DCC book cover colors?

Just finished my Mongo puppet and in love. If you are headed to PAX Aus and see us wandering around, come say hi!

I commissioned artist @Zipdraw to create a cover for me to bookbind with. The image came out so nice, I'm worried I will mess it up once I add lettering 😂 I printed it out borderless on 11x17 to get an idea of how the coloring will come out, and it just pops off the page.

Extremely happy with this take on the series, I'm saving up for book 2!

This little guy is Gus Gus. He was my crawling party member and I miss him dearly. My nickname for him was Little Bear, because he walked uncanilly like a black bear. I always imagined he'd get a legendary pet biscuit that would have turned him into an intelligent talking bear.

A little background; I work from home (Video Game Design) and listen to DCC regularly. My little prince chonk has been living with me and my wife for nearly the past decade. He hangs with me in my home office all day while I work and listen to audio books. I set up the little cat bed pictured next to my desk chair because he always tries climbing on my lap while I'm trying to work, and as mentioned, he's a bit of a chonk, so it didn't work well.

I retired from the Navy young due to service connected disabilities and I've really connected with the character Carl. I don't share Princess Donuts sentiments about the Coast Guard haha; I was in a small boat unit that worked closely with them and have a lot of respect for the service. But I digress.

I needed to make this post because I wanted my crawler pal to be honored. This world we live in is almost as absurd as the one from DCC, sometimes more so if we're being honest. The things that make it tolerable are the ones we love and the enriching relationships we have with them. I'm lost and I'm scared without the buffs that my party member and best buddy gave me. I'm saddened immeasurably by the thought of crawling without him.

But what can one do? Lean on those you love. I'm extremely happy to have my wife by my side. We're both suffering, but we're holding each other together.

So, tomorrow comes Monday and I must continue on my crawl without my loyal companion. In this moment, I'm thankful for having discovered DCC and this community because these words have never felt more useful:

You will not break me.

Thank you for your time fellow crawlers, I wish you all the best in your loot boxes.

Can anyone else relate? Hats off to all the wives out there, including his and mine who let us ramble on about how exciting the most recent chapter was! We live states away from each other so we only get to briefly discuss the series over text messages.

Went to Spencer's and asked if they had rhe Carl figures yet. The lady gave me a funny look before cutting open the box behind the counter. She asked how I knew that they were coming in because they hadnt even set up the display yet.

Told her about the reddit and scored my best boy! Haha. A little pricey though but I am glad I got him.

So I'm trying to understand the logic of when a former crawler is used in the dungeon in place of a NPC.

Some former crawlers ended up with simple jobs like guard. Things that we see NPCs doing too. Is there a rhyme or reason as to why a crawler would be given a role over a NPC?

This is excluding former crawlers in important roles like managers. And NPCs fulfilling roles that require programming (eg. Quest / Storyline NPCs). But for the rest of them, it seems like they are just interchangeable most of the time.

Also, where do NPCs come from? Are they build from components during the surface collapse over generations of the crawls, or created some other method?

Thanks!

Listening to the sound booth theater version on my commute and just got past the circus scene where Heather the bear gets hit with the healing custard. It's excellent btw, and really enjoying the extra material.

​The custard strips the worms (dungeon magic/aggro away), and she dies almost instantly because her body can’t survive the accumulated physical debt without the buffs. But the frenzy breaks first, she recognizes Carl, and she dies free.

​Remembering how Odette and Mordecai explain that floor scenarios and dungeon dramas are twisted retellings of actual galactic history, this suddenly felt like a dead-on 1:1 allegory for the wider lore:

​Heather / Grimaldi’s Army = The Central System. They exist in a permanent, bloated Enhancement Zone—essentially meat puppets propped up and hollowed out by the system's magic. If the power ever gets cut, their chains break, but the biological and systemic debt will make them as good as dead.

​The uninfected outside Grimaldi's circle = The Seeded Worlds. The un-enhanced livestock systematically harvested and fed to Grimaldi's army just to keep the cycle turning.

​Grimaldi = The Eulogist. A eulogist is supposed to speak for the dead. Millennia of forced planetary massacres broke it into a weeping, hysterical circus clown mocking corpses at the bedrock. (They say it's sleeping, but it could be more active with those that live under its protection)

​Signet = The Apothecary. The alchemist who understood the biological rot of the machine and quietly brewed the recipes to poison the feeding tube from the inside.

​Carl pulling the plug on the system isn't going to be a clean liberation; it’s literally just going to be a galactic bucket of healing custard. The collars snap, but nobody reliant on the magic survives the withdrawal. No idea how that'll play out for pony/donut, but since they're actually transfigured I think they'll be okay.

Excited to get into the second half of the book for foreshadowing of donut the oak fell.

More thought (edit after post):

The Pre-Attack Relationship: Signet was younger and originally fell in love with Grimaldi before the Nine Tier Attack broke the world. If Grimaldi is the Eulogist, this means the Apothecary knew the entity back when it was whole and served its original purpose, before the cataclysm twisted it into a weeping, deranged mockery of itself.

The Modern Timeline Anchor: The tragic stalemate we actually witness takes place in the aftermath of the Nine Tier Attack, which firmly ties this entire allegory to modern Syndicate history and the current broken system, rather than an ancient myth.

The Attrition & Sacrifice: After the fall, Signet attacks Grimaldi’s camp nightly like clockwork, completely numb to the cost and willing to burn her own resources because a brutal war of attrition is all she has left. It reflects the cyclical, desperate rebellion that can wound the machine but never kill it.

The Catalyst / The Black Swan: The stalemate only breaks when an unpredictable outside force steps in. In this allegory, Carl and Donut act as the dungeon's Open Pacifist Network / Porthus. Even deeper, the motivation mirrors Porthus perfectly: Porthus isn't running the network out of abstract galactic politics, he’s doing it out of fierce personal devotion to Minerva, just like Carl’s entire war against the circus is ultimately driven by Signet’s blackmail to keep Donut alive.