Spoiler Warning
Spoiler warning. This guide covers the new and newly changed characters in The Butcher’s Masquerade, by Matt Dinniman, book five of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and it gives away who lives and who dies, the ending included. If you haven’t read it, come back after. Chapter numbers are from the ebook edition I read. I call someone new only when this book introduces them, and I say when a name comes back from earlier.
Here is the short answer. Book five has six groups of newcomers: the hunters, the elites, the dinosaurs, the other crawlers, the queen’s court, and the people running the show. Four of the biggest are a mantis, a tattooed elf, a vampire and a scarred raptor. I will take them in that order, then a few smaller names.
The Hunters: Vrah And Her Family
Vrah is the hunter who matters most. She is a mantis of the Dark Hive, and in chapter two she is only a rumor, a hunter who wears the heads of her victims. In chapter five Carl kills her little sister Xindy, a level sixty-one mantis, with missiles. From then on Vrah wants Carl’s head.
By chapter thirty-five she is level seventy-four, with a back covered in heads, including Langley and Bogdon Ro. Carl pushes an arrow of Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea into her. She survives and returns at the Masquerade. In chapter seventy-three she dies, limbless, and Mongo finishes the job.
Circe Took is their mother, a minor mantis hive queen who owns an amusement park. She moderates the convention panel in chapters thirty-one to thirty-three. Later she sponsors the god Diwata, and in chapter seventy-four her own children kill her.
Other hunters are a short list. Akland is a level fifty-one moon elf who admits he is an accountant. Edict, a mantis merchant, is the second accountant Carl meets. Zabit commands the night weasels and kills twenty-five crawlers. He lives until the cage fight at the end.
The Elites: Signet’s Crew
Tsarina Signet returns from book two as a level sixty half naiad and half high elf. She is covered in tattoos, each for a fallen friend or a worthy enemy. Her half-sister is Queen Imogen, and her goal is revenge. In chapter seventy-two she cuts her own throat beside Imogen to break the Masquerade, and her true name, Psamathe, is spoken.
Areson the Wise is her ogre bodyguard, a nodling who splits into new creatures when one dies. Edgar is a tortoise who pokes new tattoos. Miss Nadine is a giant caterpillar who used to be a teacher. She dies at Fort Freedom in chapter twenty-seven, then returns as a tattoo.
Two more are Holger and Clint, were-beavers. Clint has a prosthetic foot, and Holger has a mullet. In chapter seventy-three a small boy named Clint appears as a tattoo.
The Head: Samantha
Samantha is a sex doll head with a withering spirit inside, who says she is a god. She screams, she bites, and she gets strapped with missiles. She claims Signet as a cousin and wants a body back. In chapter seventy-three she teleports away, and Nadine tells Carl to find a Pulpmancer.
The Crawlers: Miriam And Pony
Miriam Dom is a vampire in a calm, motherly voice. She grew up on a farm in Parma and cared for her parents for twenty years. She calls her goats her children. A dinosaur turns her into the source of the floor’s vampire plague. If she dies, the infected are cured. In chapter forty-seven she waits for sunrise, and she dies in the light.
Prepotente, called Pony, is a goat who became a crawler, and he reaches level seventy by chapter sixty-five. He is ranked third at the start of the book, behind Carl. He loses Miriam and swears revenge. His quest update in chapter seventy-five is Find Out Who Killed My Son, Geyrun. His pet Bianca Del Ciao is a goat familiar that grows to rhino size with black flames.
Lucia Mar was already on Odette’s top ten in book two. In this book she takes over a dryad village with two rottweilers, Cici and Gustavo, and wrecks the safe room. In chapter thirty-seven Donut decapitates Cici with a hole. In chapter sixty-nine a friend learns there are real children inside her head.
The Dinosaurs: Kiwi And Big Tina
Kiwi is the leader of the female raptors. She is level sixty, one-eyed and scarred. She mates with Mongo in chapter eleven, and Donut is horrified. Donut later charms her with a potion, and Kiwi becomes her minion.
Big Tina is Kiwi’s daughter, an allosaurus of level eighty in a pink boa and a tutu. Prudence, a bear barmaid, explains that she once loved ballet. After the nine-tier attack by Scolopendra, the female bears turned into dinosaurs. Tina’s quest is The Recital. At the end of the book she says one word, Mom, to the bear Kiwi becomes.
The Court: Imogen, Ferdinand And Diwata
Queen Imogen is the high elf queen, a level one hundred forty-five country boss. She fears weakness, as her father King Finian did. Katia reads her at two hundred one in every stat except intelligence, which is three hundred.
Sir Ferdinand is her cat, a level one hundred province boss. He is also Donut’s first love. Donut charms him with a potion made from her own cat blood in chapter seventy-two.
Diwata is a tree god, a shapeshifting squirrel sponsored by Circe. She marks Carl for death, and in chapter seventy-four returns to the Halls of the Ascendency. Apito, the Blessed Oak Mother, hosts the Masquerade.
The Production Crew
Orren is a liaison with a fishbowl head, with a worm inside it, and he runs the Desperado Club office. He explains the options in chapter one, and Carl answers with the magic words, I want a lawyer. Quasar, Zev and Odette return from earlier books. Lexis is Odette’s assistant. Chaco, a winged wolf, runs the prize counter, and was once in Mordecai’s party. Empress D’Nadia, a tentacled Saccathian, sponsors Donut. Nihit is a naga reporter who gets stabbed by Carl in chapter forty-one. Britney is a crawler in a patch jacket, who disables Vrah’s warning light with a butterfly.
Smaller Names Worth Knowing
Claude Sludgington the Fourth is the river boss of Fort Freedom, a level sixty-five Eryops Gigantis. He shoots lightning from his eyes, and he kills Nadine in chapter twenty-seven.
Elmer is the bear mayor Carl pays for an execution in chapter ten. Donut pushes him down a slope, and the town becomes Point Mongo. Goiter is a level forty-two bugbear council member in the town Carl bombs first, and Carl warns him that the hunters will be back.
At the Desperado Club in chapter fifty-eight, Clarabelle is the crocodile bouncer, Astrid is the assistant manager, a level one hundred twenty-five Bloodlust Sprite, and Pearson is a changeling who used to be a bartender. At the castle, Theobold is the footman in the wagon, and Kibben is the stablemancer.
Horton, a mushroom crawler, plays guitar for Donut’s song. Osvaldo is the ranger who ends up with the Memorial Crystal, the queen’s most prized possession. Iota, a crafter hunter, gives Carl the nipple rings.
Which newcomer will you remember? Subscribe, tap like, and tell me below: Vrah, Miriam or Kiwi?
