Light Spoilers
This is a guide to the new faces in A Parade of Horribles, by Matt Dinniman, book eight of Dungeon Crawler Carl. I keep it light on spoilers. I give the chapter where each character first appears, and what the text says about them at that point. I do not say who lives, who dies, or how the finale ends. If you want the full story, the recap video has it.
I skip Carl, Donut, Mongo, Mordecai, Samantha and the rest of the long running crew, because you already know them. This is about the people they meet on the tenth and eleventh floors.
Hedy, Waldrip Chris And The Truck
In chapter one, Carl and Donut land in a garage with two gremlins who are applying for the same job. One is Waldrip Chris. The other is Hedy, a small gremlin mechanic who talks in a rough accent. The wheel picks a mechanical vehicle, Donut points at Hedy, and Waldrip Chris explodes. That is how you meet Hedy, and it tells you the tone of this floor.
Hedy then runs the garage. She reads the upgrade votes off a tablet, warns Carl about the other racers, and tells him it is worth learning who to trust. At the end of chapter eleven she tells Carl she thinks they will get along just fine.
The truck has a navigator that speaks in chapter three in a voice Carl cannot place. By chapter seventeen Donut has named the unit Dr. Metcalf, and Carl does not like the name.
Jasha, Radoslav And Team Free Love
In chapter four, Carl and Donut stop beside a burning minivan. Two bugbears are trying to put out the fire. Radoslav is a level seventy five Jack of All Trades. Jasha is level sixty five and wears a tie dyed headband and beads. Both wear tie dyed shirts and no pants, and both look terrified.
Jasha is the one who asks Carl why he would help them. Carl tells him the truth, that if more than one team fails to finish, he will have to race against his friends. Jasha calls it an honorable reason. The pair race as team Free Love.
Chiyome, The Razor Fox
Chiyome appears in chapter twelve. She is a razor fox, level eighty, a Mistress of Nunchaku in a red cowl. Razor foxes pick a weapon in childhood and train with a ranged weapon too, and most choose throwing stars. She is polite, bows twice, and warns Carl about the garages on the roundabout.
She also mentions a bear named Onikuma, whose vehicle perk is an endless supply of fleas. In chapter twelve she wants Carl to work together with her against the three strongest teams.
The Lady Dominators And Corcunda
In chapters twelve and thirteen, the door to garage number two opens, and Carl looks at the women of a mantaur team. The men of this species look like one large man with a second torso where the neck should be. These women have four legs and are even stranger to look at. The team name is Lady Dominators and the Gimp.
Corcunda comes up at the end of chapter thirteen. He is Dong Quixote’s best friend, a half mantaur known as Corky. A quest tells Carl that his other half, nicknamed Porky, is also on this floor. The reward is two stand ins in the arena on the eleventh floor.
Akuma
Akuma’s name appears in chapter twenty three, on a note that Carl’s skill lets him read. He is the leader of the War Mage Rebellion from Faction Wars. The note tells Carl to kill two teams, come alone, and visit after the next race. In chapter twenty four Carl recalls what Akuma’s group did. They killed Stalwart, and they stole the Gate of the Feral Gods.
Finley, Olga And Quemada
In chapter thirty four, Carl hires three new mercenaries. Finley and Olga can drive, and Quemada is the protection. Olga is a toad, and Donut thinks that is the same thing as a frog. She is quickly corrected. Hiring mercenaries is expensive, because Carl keeps losing them, and Rosetta tells him the prices are doubled.
Penelope And Grigori
Penelope is the pig on the side of team One Fine Pig’s armored vehicle. She appears on the page in chapter fifty three. The Tigrans Nico and Dario drive for the team. The text says Penelope is a regular pig with a regular pig’s intelligence, and there is a whole storyline behind that. Carl calls her Penny.
Grigori the Placid appears in chapter fifty four. He is a level ninety three human Fleshmancer, tall and gaunt, in blue robes. Elle and Imani hired him. He sits stiffly in a booth with crumbs falling on his robes, and later he tells Samantha that he is not a mere fleshmancer but a flesh sculptor.
The Racing Teams
The first heat results in chapter five list the field. One Fine Pig, The Jugglers, Lady Dominators and the Gimp, The Wild Hunt, Girth the Trouble, Team Sparkles, the Royal Court of Princess Donut, Team Free Love, and the Trauco Triplets, who are eliminated at once. Later heats add Team Flamengo. It includes Osvaldo, a crawler who keeps talking in the chat, and Filipe, a Brazilian crawler.
The Show Hosts
In chapter twenty seven, Carl and Donut are taken to a live show on the ocean floor. Lexis walks them through how the judging works. In chapter twenty eight, the caprid hosts take over, led by one named Botis, who bounces up and down and talks in a very formal way. Carl is told to exert himself, and I will leave it there.
The Interlude Voices
The book breaks to follow people outside the dungeon.
Princess Chandra, Esquire, is a Naga lawyer. She opens the book. She wants out of her home system and sees Carl and Donut as the way. Her plan is built on Carl and Donut staying alive a little longer.
Quasar, Carl’s lawyer, is a Nullian. He is already in a meeting with Carl in chapter one, talking about Chandra, and in her interlude she has paid people to visit him. He is not new, but this is the book where his job gets dangerous.
Minus is a Syndicate agent in the interlude after chapter fifty one. He is the brother of Linus, and he goes into the dungeon posing as a tourist.
Sydnee Iglacia, in the interludes after the finale, is a historian and a poet. She wrote a bestselling book about the crawl, and she says the crawl is an epic poem about a fallen civilization. Forkith is a small red demon who meets Louis in the last interlude. He says he is friends, sort of, with Carl.
Late Names Without Spoilers
Chaco, the wolf winged announcer, is also not new, but in chapter eighty eight he takes a new job. The text calls him a former crawler, and he sounds scared, because he has been told to run a parade.
Four names show up late. Mitch Fiorelli is a level one hundred twenty croupier in the casino, and his description is hidden. Lamashtu is a donkey in chapter ninety two that the text calls a mortal, subjugated god. Taranis is a god in the finale. And Scolopendra is the dungeon boss, a level five hundred creature that Carl asks for by name. I will not say what any of them do.
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