Faction Wars Guide | Dungeon Crawler Carl

A future battlefield below the club

Carl first learns about Larracos from Igor at the Desperado Club. Igor identifies it as the capital of the disputed lands and points out the stairs leading down toward the future battlefield.[5]

The armies and the people they replace

Mordecai describes nine armies, each starting with fifteen thousand troops. Paying outsiders replace some NPC soldiers. Those visitors normally receive extra health and emergency extraction, while NPCs risk permanent death.[6]

Life in Larracos

Larracos occupies the small central region of a map whose faction territories spread outward like petals. The city extends underground, ending at a castle at the bottom. In the Cookbook, Priestly remembers its neighborhoods, art, museums and colleges from an earlier crawl, before the war turned its economy toward mercenaries and weapons.

Carl attacks the merchants’ market to disrupt the factions’ supplies, shaping the destruction to try to spare the upper residential districts. The damage forces the outsiders to seek more equipment through the sixth-floor Hunting Grounds.[7]

The Princess Posse buys a place in the war

Sledge uses Zerzura to send Queen Imogen’s castle and an NPC force from Floor Six to Floor Nine. The Dreadnoughts and Burrowers vacate two faction slots, which go to the Princess Posse and D’Nadia’s Prism Kingdom. Carl and Donut become the Posse’s co-warlords, supported by fan donations and money connected to their earlier lawsuit.

The Posse receives the Burrowers’ place without their mercenaries and must recruit an army. Carl proposes stripping the sponsors’ safety protections so they face the same risk of death as the crawlers. Each team has one vote, but the motion initially stalls.[8]

The competing teams and their referees

The production meeting identifies nine teams: the Skull Empire, Operatics, Princess Posse, Blood Sultanate, Prism Kingdom, Dream, Lemig Sortion, Madness and Reavers. A proposal would add a tenth NPC faction. D’Nadia’s later efforts to delete Larracos’s inhabitants or exclude crawlers are rejected without a vote.

Each faction can appoint an adjutant to advise on rules and act as an observer and referee. They must attend in person and cannot participate in combat. Their protections are separate from those Carl wants removed from sponsors. When Odette declines, Carl chooses Baroness Victory, whose family ties connect her to opposing rulers.

Six teams attempt to withdraw, but the Earth-system quarantine prevents them from leaving. They remain trapped while the vote on their safety protections is unresolved.[9]

Audience votes change the terms

Carl spends the Posse’s final emergency action to settle the stalled decisions, and the AI turns them over to the audience. Viewers remove sponsor safety, approve a protected NPC faction, enlarge the battlefield, extend bombardment range and accelerate pet leveling. They reject a reduction in divine summons, leaving fifteen per team.

The new NPC faction receives Larracos as its base and Ferdinand as king. It can ally with the Posse, but the rules still allow only one winner.[10]

The opening deadlines and alliances

Floor Nine begins with a sixty-hour ceasefire. It will end after thirty days or ninety hours after victory is declared, whichever comes first. Its 293 stairwell chambers open once the war ends or thirty hours before collapse.

The eight established factions form the Bloc against the Posse and the NPC faction, Team Retribution. Donut accepts Retribution’s truce. The Posse initially has only fifty-eight approved soldiers, with further recruits awaiting approval and officer positions unfilled.

Juice Box discovers that Retribution’s people can still die despite the promised protection and regeneration. She also lacks normal warlord controls and cannot operate the city defenses, leaving the new faction badly disadvantaged.

The ceasefire can end early if all factions mark themselves Ready or if one voluntarily withdraws. Even when a ruler is allowed to leave, their soldiers may remain trapped in the war.[11]

Recruitment, reinforcement and unequal equipment

Recruitment requires physical contact between an authorized officer and a willing recruit. Rank determines permissions, regardless of Donut’s changes to the rank names. Unaffiliated crawlers risk being conscripted by enemies.

Fifty thousand former crawlers join the Posse at level sixty. They retain compatible skills but receive standard equipment and need training. The eight opposing factions each add roughly twenty thousand experienced level-sixty soldiers who keep their own gear, preserving a substantial equipment advantage.[12]

Ramp-Up limits what an army can do

A scheduled 180-hour Ramp-Up follows the ceasefire. It suppresses offensive magic and skills, as well as abilities that transport people. Puddle Jumper, Gloom Wraith Phase, Gate travel and Wisp Armor become unavailable. Ordinary shields and qualifying static traps still work, making artillery, trenches and physical combat especially valuable.

The ceasefire ends before the Posse is ready. Stockade, Lemig Sortion’s warlord, dies under Shi Maria’s lingering Insanity spell. The system treats the defeat as voluntary withdrawal, gives his assets to the Madness and immediately starts Ramp-Up. The first bombardment strikes the Posse’s shield as Carl returns from the hearing.

At the hearing, Ferdinand wins an emergency action giving everyone in the dungeon an immediate live feed. Crawlers can now watch events without the delays their enemies exploited through outside observers.[13]

Captured bases and conscripted soldiers

A faction can be defeated by killing its warlord or occupying its main base for six hours. Later changes introduce co-warlords and additional complications. When Mongo kills D’Nadia, the Posse inherits Prism’s assets, including a headquarters separated from its original territory that Carl must defend if he keeps it.

Captured mercenaries receive an Under Orders condition, forcing them to serve their new faction even against former friends. Carl spares some prisoners but continues ordering other enemy mercenaries killed.[14]

Compulsory sponsor participation

As divine combat begins, Ferdinand fails to win a ban on summoning gods. His second proposal passes: sponsors must personally pilot their deities instead of sending substitutes. Summoning a god can now pull its sponsor into the dungeon.

Akuma’s War Mage Rebellion confronts Stalwart after his escape from a northern attack. The mages kill him, take the Gate from Elle and leave. They are not yet a registered faction; after Stalwart expelled them from conscription, his killers joined Retribution. The Bone Clan’s assets therefore pass to the NPC faction.[15]

The Peeling and the new defeat-death rule

The Peeling starts when four factions remain. A defending team must hold Larracos’s throne for a week, while attackers need six hours. Retaking it as defender restarts the longer clock. Only one faction can hold the throne, and its defenses normally activate thirty minutes after control changes.

The Madness’s defeat starts the Peeling. Akuma uses permissions obtained from Juice Box to register the War Mage Rebellion, with Agatha as co-warlord, bringing the next phase’s count to five teams. Agatha wins a rule that immediately kills defeated faction members still on the battlefield. The mages seize Retribution’s throne and begin their six-hour hold, threatening both the city and everyone who would die if its faction fell.

The city’s defense timer runs separately from the throne timer. Attacking its towers can activate them early, cutting short the period in which rescuers can approach without facing those defenses.[16]

The final factions and Louis’s rescue

Agatha loses her co-warlord position for abandoning her post, leaving Akuma in sole command. The mages later leave the castle and its controls. After a brief Posse occupation, Retribution regains the throne. Akuma leaves the floor, defeating the War Mage Rebellion.

During the rescue of Louis, Juice Box uses his EMP bombs while Carl detonates devices outside the Reavers’ castle. The castle is destroyed, and the mechanical drake Calliope crashes and explodes with Fang’s biological remnant hidden inside. The Reavers are defeated and their assets pass to the Posse. Louis survives, but his replacement organs hide another enemy.

Tagg, the Dream’s last member, is embedded in Louis’s heart and lungs. Louis needs new organs to survive his removal; waiting for the faction timer would trigger the defeat-death rule. As the healers prepare, Emberus threatens to destroy the floor in sixty-six minutes unless Samantha submits to questioning. Her cooperation may only delay him.

Samantha sacrifices the organs intended for her restored body. The healers transplant them into Louis, and Mongo eats the discarded machinery containing Tagg. With the Dream defeated, only the Posse and Retribution remain. They must find a way to end the war without killing their allies before Emberus’s deadline.[17]

Evacuating Larracos before declaring victory

Shanty Town is joined to Larracos, and Sledge casts Zerzura to move the connected cities and eligible inhabitants to the Court of Ascendency on Floor Twelve. They will have protected time there before the floor opens.

The spell cannot carry current crawlers or returning former crawlers. Some dungeon-born mercenaries also lack the required citizenship. Carl refuses to execute prisoners for his ring’s benefits and has them conscripted into the evacuation instead. Everyone must leave before Retribution’s defeat triggers the death rule.

After the population and both Retribution warlords leave the realm, the NPC faction is defeated and the Princess Posse wins. About twenty-eight thousand of the fifty thousand veterans survive, alongside 20,221 current crawlers. The stairs open, but Emberus’s countdown continues. Many survivors intend to seek exit deals on Floor Ten.[18]

Justice Light and the declaration of war

Larracos’s disappearance reveals the stairs and huge All-Tree roots beneath it. Carl and Donut descend together. Juice Box has entered the Nothing, while Justice Light remains behind to finish an operation using the Gate and traps linked to other realms.

Justice Light’s activation breaks open the Nothing, draining it into the Halls of Ascendency, Sheol and Scolopendra’s Lair. Scolopendra awakens. Justice Light’s fate and the escape of the warned club guests remain unconfirmed.

Porthus turns the former crawlers’ intervention into an open declaration of war against the Syndicate’s governments, demanding an end to the crawl. Carl and Donut reject their own exit deals and continue downward.[19]