Larracos: Dungeon Crawler Carl Lore Guide

A capital glimpsed from the club

At the Desperado Club, Igor points out the lower stairs to Larracos, capital of the disputed lands. He explains that the factions want the city but must wait until crawlers reach the ninth floor before conquering one another.

Carl learns about the coming war from the club guard while the city itself remains out of reach. He has yet to see its neighborhoods or meet the people living there.[1]

A small center within a larger battlefield

Mordecai draws the ninth floor with the factions arranged like petals around a smaller central Larracos. The city extends downward underground, with a castle at its lowest point.

Wealthy outside participants can replace some NPC soldiers and receive extraction protections before the crawlers arrive. The city’s inhabitants do not share that security: their deaths can be permanent.[2]

Families and cultural districts before the war

Priestly’s Cookbook entries describe a populated capital with families, art, museums and colleges. His account gives Carl an early picture of life in the city.

Priestly says the war economy has converted cultural districts into markets for weapons and mercenaries. He fears the armies gathering around Larracos will destroy the people living there.[3]

The market flood attacks the war economy and the city

Carl hides the real Gate underwater near the Akula’s former location and opens it into Larracos’s central market for twenty minutes. Ocean water and dangerous creatures flood the city’s inverted center, damaging the merchants and supplies intended for the faction armies. He hopes the upper residential districts will remain above the worst of it.

Zev says the floor’s creation rules prevent the dead NPC merchants from being replaced. She reports tens of thousands dead and says some faction leaders had hidden in the city, without confirming which survived. Carl believes destroying the market could stop the larger war from destroying Larracos, but his attack has killed civilians.[4]

Larracos joins Faction Wars

D’Nadia later proposes deleting Larracos’s NPCs through an emergency motion. The system rejects the proposal without putting it to a vote.

The audience approves a protected tenth faction for NPCs. The new team receives Larracos as its base and Ferdinand as king, giving the inhabitants a formal place in the war over their city.[5]

Floodwater drains; the city is still a home

Carl, Donut and Imani arrive after much of the floodwater has drained. Mud and dead sea creatures remain. Team Retribution holds Larracos, but recognition as a faction has not made its people invulnerable or given Juice Box ordinary control of the defenses.

Carl visits inhabited neighborhoods while recruiting allies. Homes, residents and armed defenders fill the city he previously knew only from descriptions and maps. His attack on the market has become part of the damage these people must live with.[6]

The Semeru account of roots and a buried city

War Leader Arief’s description recounts the Semeru’s search for a lost paradise beneath volcanic land. Abandoned by their gods, they dug down to the roots of the AI Tree and found a city among them. Scolopendra’s Nine-Tier Attack made them mortal. They remained below for ten thousand years before later excavation beneath Larracos caused another collapse.

The description places a gods’ city deeper still and warns against awakening what sleeps there. Carl does not yet know what lies beneath the capital.[7]

Sixty-six levels with defenses and neighborhoods intertwined

Arief says Larracos has sixty-six levels, with some rings only partly circling the center. The college occupies most of level fifty, below the art district and a high cultural ring. He describes gate repairs at levels twenty-nine and fifteen. Opening the drains has lowered the remaining water to level three, where it still covers the castle roofs.

Their route passes artillery, ongoing repairs and explosives placed on alternating ramps. Defensive positions run through the same streets and levels where civilians live.[8]

Occupation turns the city defenses against its rescuers

During the Peeling, the War Mage Rebellion takes Larracos’s throne room and begins its attacking hold. A protected antenna and crystal generate Zarogoths throughout the streets and college. Rosetta and Milk tell Carl to destroy the power crystal. Baroness Victory warns that attacking the city’s defensive towers can activate them early.

Carl’s hurried strike on the theater generator triggers explosions and activates the defenses before the grace period ends. Towers track him, threatening allies and civilians. Later, the mages leave the castle, the defenses are disabled and the throne returns to Team Retribution after a brief Princess Posse occupation.[9]

Zerzura moves the city before the faction's defeat

After Shanty Town is connected to Larracos, The Sledge casts Zerzura. The joined cities and eligible inhabitants move to the twelfth floor’s Court of Ascendency, where they have protected time before that floor opens.

Current and returning former crawlers cannot leave by this route, and dungeon-born mercenaries do not automatically qualify as citizens. The inhabitants must be gone before Team Retribution falls and the defeat-death rule takes effect. Once the transfer is complete and both warlords have left the realm, Retribution is defeated and the Princess Posse wins.[10]

Its disappearance reveals roots and the exits below

With Larracos gone, enormous living roots and the stairs beneath the city are exposed. Carl also discovers that the trap apparatus extends through the castle rather than stopping at its visible defenses.

Carl and Donut descend through the crawler stairs with other survivors, while Juice Box takes a separate route. Larracos has escaped the ninth-floor battlefield, but the people moved to the Court of Ascendency still face whatever comes next.[11]