Spoiler Warning
This is a character guide to The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, by Matt Dinniman, book three of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It spoils book three, including a death, and says nothing about later books. The book has heavy swearing and gore.
The short answer: a floor of subway trains brings a mole man with a shop, a game show wolf, two rock bouncers, a half-man engineer, a demon who stokes a boiler, and a crawler, Hekla, whose arc ends badly.
I cite each person by chapter, using the book’s own numbering, and I checked every detail against the text. I did not read books one and two, so I only call someone new when this book stages the first meeting.
Limp Richard And Wendita: Chapter Two
At station eighty-three, the first town of the floor, Carl meets Limp Richard, a mole man who runs a general store and reads all day. He is level thirty-six and a non-combatant.
The safe room is a fast food place called Nirula’s, run by a bopca protector named Wendita. When the team pays fifteen thousand gold for a personal space, she is in tears, and says she knew it was a test.
Mordecai also arrives in a new body in this chapter, a toad called a Grulke, level fifty. He will be in trouble soon.
Vernon And Pierre: Chapter Five
Vernon is a level thirty-two dwarf, the Yellow Line conductor, and the first conductor Carl talks to. He sits in the employee break room with a drink, and he talks about saving money for his wife.
Pierre is a level twenty-five Grapple, a quarter giant, and the Yellow Line porter. He runs the reward room and hands out prize suitcases. Carl’s holds an invisibility potion. Donut’s holds a swarm of literal fire ants.
The ants burn the car, and Vernon dies. Carl later says there was no wife, and that Vernon believed what the system had written into him.
Chaco: Chapter Seven
Chaco is a winged, wolf-headed song bard, level sixty-six, listed as a non-player character. He hosts the Prize Carousel, a game show that appears when a fan box is opened.
When Chaco enters the room, Mordecai throws a chair at him. It freezes in the air, and Mordecai is sent to a seven-day time out. Carl asks what Chaco is to Mordecai, and Chaco says he cannot talk about it. The book never explains here.
The Desperado Club: Bomo, The Sledge, Clarabelle And Tito
At the Desperado Club, a dance hall that appears at transfer stations, Carl hires two guards, Bomo and The Sledge. They are level thirty-five rock monsters called cretins, seven feet tall, in tuxedos. The Sledge casts a protection spell on the team.
Clarabelle is the crocodilian bouncer at the door. She tells Carl his manager only gets one warning.
Tito is a bald, one-toothed croupier who runs the wheel of fortune. In chapter nine his wheel hands Carl a scroll that upgrades his toe ring.
Gore-Gore And Levi: Chapters Eleven And Twelve
Gore-Gore is an engineer on the Ochre Line, a level forty mantaur, half man on top of half man. Carl fights him after the derailment in chapter eleven, and he ends up on the electrified rail.
Chapter twelve introduces Levi the Seventh, a troll Flesher joined to a hobgoblin skeleton, level seven. He drives the Dismemberment Limited, which also holds a war mage called Dismember. Levi begs Carl to leave. Later he is glad to be freed.
Fire Brandy: Chapter Fourteen
Fire Brandy is a lesser demon, level seventy-five, who tends the Nightmare Express. She works the fire, and the text shows a child being born whenever her face scrunches in pain.
In chapter sixteen she asks Carl not to blow up the train. In chapter thirty-four she and Tizquick choose to stay with it. Brandy says she remembers her babies now.
Madison: Chapter Seventeen
Madison is a level ten human resources associate, caught in a ghoul attack, whom Carl lets onto the train. Katia suspects a trap. Madison says she tells employees overtime is mandatory and that the Kravyad work under her.
She is not a combatant, but she is dangerous in her own way. In chapter eighteen Carl leaves her, and she tells him Rod will come. Donut says Rod is her ex-husband and the chief financial officer of the Iron Tangle.
Hekla, Eva And Silfa: Chapters Twenty-One To Twenty-Four
Hekla is the Amazonian Shieldmaiden, level thirty-three, and a top-ten crawler. In chapter twenty-one she meets Carl in his own home with thirty of Brynhild’s Daughters.
Eva Sigrid is a four-armed, cobra-headed nimblefoot enforcer, level twenty-seven, with thirteen kills shown over her head. Silfa is a wisteria fairy and holistic healer, level twenty-five.
In chapter twenty-two Hekla shoots Katia with invisible bolts. In chapter twenty-three Katia kills her. Katia goes from level twenty-four to thirty-seven.
Tizquick And Growler Gary: Chapters Twenty-One And Twenty-Six
Tizquick is a Mango line conductor whom Carl finds crying on a hallway floor in chapter twenty-one. He says his little girl was never real. Carl kneels beside him.
Growler Gary is a level twenty-five gnoll bartender who cannot leave his bar. A woman ripped out his throat and he did not die. In chapter twenty-six the team realizes he is one of the NPCs the cookbook warned about, and they use him.
Grull, The Mimic And Prince Maestro: Chapter Thirty-Three
Grull is a war god, level two hundred fifty, a horse-bodied minotaur with a double-headed axe. The text says he is invulnerable on this floor. The Mimic Rex is level ninety, with over twenty-three thousand deaths to its name.
Grull’s sponsor is Prince Maestro of the Skull Empire, who the book shows alive. In a clip he says people thought he was on a ship, but his brother had already brought him into the dungeon.
What Changes For The Team
Some familiar faces change in this book, and the chapters show how.
Mongo reaches level fifteen in chapter seven. He stops growing at the height of a pony and about thirteen feet long, and he gains a jump attack called Earthquake. In chapter ten Donut gets an enchanted saddle for him that boosts her spell damage.
Donut kills a crawler in chapter eight and gets a skull. In chapter twelve she gains a sponsor, Princess D’nadia.
Katia learns to copy others with an ability called Walk in Their Shoes. Her first try at Hekla only reaches about sixty-five percent. By the end she can pass for Carl at a distance. Carl reaches level forty-one.
Returning Faces
Several people return. Zev is Carl’s publicist, Odette the host, and Loita an administrator. Imani, Elle, Bautista, Li Jun, Li Na and Zhang are crawlers who help at the end. Agatha pushes a shopping cart down the stairs at the very end, and Carl tells Imani they will talk later. Brandon, a friend, appears only as a message from a dead crawler in chapter three.
In the epilogue Loita says Zev is on a temporary reeducation retreat, and that Loita will be the public relations agent. The text does not say what happened to Zev.
The Last Word
That is the cast. If you want the plot, my recap is next to this one. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me below which new face you liked best, Fire Brandy or Growler Gary.
