Peoples and Cultures: Dungeon Crawler Carl Lore Guide

Kua-Tin and the faces of Borant

The fishlike figures around a dungeon entrance are identified as Kua-Tin, the principal owners of Borant. Carl later meets Zev, a two-foot-tall Kua-Tin representative whose job gives her authority over his appearances but leaves her answerable to more powerful superiors.[2]

Bopcas keep the safe rooms running

Bopcas are magical, gnome-like caretakers who run safe rooms. They cook, clean and maintain the shelters on which crawlers rely.[3]

Goblin workshops, families and expectations

The first Goblin Engineer Carl meets speaks Syndicate Standard and says the language has been implanted. A later workshop contains engineers, bomb specialists and female shamankas under a chieftain. Carl negotiates with these workers for transport, using goods they value to make a deal.

Rory, a shamanka, refuses Donut’s offer to take her along. She says descending would dissolve her body and hopes years of dungeon service will eventually earn her children a life without crawlers. The later attack on the goblin camp kills civilians. Donut tells Carl about the babies there only after he has activated the attack.[4]

Mordecai's birth species and changing bodies

Mordecai was born a skyfowl and chose Changeling on the third floor of his own crawl. His rat body is a later assignment. His species, selected race and current form describe different stages of his life.[5]

Skyfowl authority favors those who can fly

The skyfowl settlement is built for people who can fly. Ground workers must use an obscure elevator, and the magistrate’s assistant dismisses concerns about murdered non-skyfowl residents.

Mordecai describes the 201st as a City Elf gang rejected by the High Elves. Its members believe skyfowl are angels and follow a tradition promising protection beneath their wings. The generally nonreligious skyfowl accept the elves’ service.[6]

Doppelgangers reshape material bodies

Katia’s doppelganger race lets her sculpt her body and absorb equipment to supply more material. She has to learn how to shape it, and copying an outline does not automatically give her the subject’s nonphysical powers. An inspection may display Human while she is imitating one, even though her underlying race is still doppelganger.[7]

Grulke history comes through an unfriendly description

Grulke resemble frogs, but Mordecai corrects the party: they are toads. Their hostile species description portrays a warrior people driven by infighting into mercenary work and vagrancy, with tunnel trolls now hunting them.[8]

ManTaurs and the railway workforce

Gore-Gore is a ManTaur with two torsos, using his lower arms to help move. His human-sounding voice initially conceals that appearance. The species description attributes ManTaur strength and dexterity to genetic engineering for railway work. He belongs to a workforce organized around shifts, depots and restricted engine access.[9]

Fleshers create new combined identities

Levi the Seventh is a Troll Flesher attached to a Hobgoblin skeleton. A war spell creates the Flesher, which hunts another victim, eats its flesh and animates its bones. The combination becomes a new speaking being with its own identity.

Other Fleshers hunt Symbiotes and remake them again. Levi has already undergone six remakings since the floor opened. The process can increase intelligence and power, but leaves him needing protection while he works as an engineer.[10]

Changeling ability exists within family and work

Changelings work differently from Katia’s doppelganger race. They adopt adult race templates and adjust their appearance within them, including nonhumanoid forms. Their mass and copied strength have limits. Ordinary crawler changelings can shift once every ten minutes, while Juice Box can change much more quickly.

Juice Box’s father and siblings are among the changelings endangered by Hump Town’s destruction. She helps shelter refugees and forbids casual imitation of Dromedarians in their shared refuge, considering it disrespectful to the people hosting them.[11]

Camel peoples and gnomes give competing histories

Dromedarians, Bactrians and Dirigible Gnomes are caught in a three-sided conflict. The gnomes have aircraft and suspended settlements. Henrik’s changelings hold Wynne beneath Hump Town, while the Bactrian settlement holds another captive in pig form. The hostages deter gnome attacks; killing one can leave a town open to bombardment.

Henrik says the Bactrians turned away his displaced changeling village, while the Dromedarians reluctantly took them in. His group now helps control Hump Town through the hostage arrangement. Dromedarian families also remain there and need rescuing.

The gnome delegation claims its ancestors helped free both camel peoples after they were enslaved to build Anser’s tomb. The delegates now look forward to exterminating the remaining town, despite that account of past cooperation.[12]

Kua-Tin politics can punish cultural contact

Loita treats Zev’s interest in Earth culture as contamination. She says Zev’s mother and aunts were harmed to bring her back into the Bloom’s fold. Zev’s work has exposed her to a culture that her political superiors want suppressed.[13]

Corporate control does not define a people

A Syndicate ruling separates Borant Corporation from the Borant government and gives Valtay a 51 percent stake in the company. The government loses ownership of Earth, its resources and the production. The corporation keeps operating the crawl under its existing contracts.[14]

Naiad descent and contested government

The Large Ursine Settlement excludes naiads and people of mixed naiad ancestry. Signet’s mother belonged to a naiad royal family, and Signet wants to reclaim territory now governed from Fort Freedom. Her shark aunt is another member of that family, despite their very different bodies.

Signet says her mother was assassinated while considering a peaceful transition. Areson says naiad dissidents killed the royal family because it supported the High Elves. He describes the later government selling licenses and descending into disorder. The two accounts reflect rival claims to the territory.[15]

The Chee survivors dispute their transformation's history

The Chee survivors once lived among carpenters and teachers. Nadine, formerly the teacher Miss Science Fair, became a caterpillar. Six surviving pupils became were-castors who could take beaver form. Their transformed bodies and years of fighting followed persecution and displacement.

Signet blames Imogen and High Elf royal cleansers. Clint and Holger disagree about when the transformations occurred, whether Imogen could have been alive then and how the changes helped them survive the later catastrophe.

Imogen rules the High Elves after Finian, whose death is confirmed by a later quest. Lexis says Queen Imogen was created as this season’s country boss because Carl joined Signet’s storyline.[16]

A Shade Gnoll guard has family outside his duties

A Shade Gnoll guard at the orbital checkpoint asks Carl to favor his granddaughter Lix in an art contest. Carl agrees and receives gentler treatment, then arranges for another judge to score her highly. She wins through the favors exchanged around her.[17]

Repeated remaking can produce self-aware war mages

War mages develop through repeated Flesher and Symbiote re-sleeving. Eventually they can become independently aware, at which point administrators normally recycle them. Akuma’s War Mage Rebellion acts as an alliance even though Faction Wars does not recognize it as a registered team.[18]

Shadow mimics and Moon Reapers are different creatures

Mordecai initially appears as a Moon Reaper but explains that his assigned race is actually shadow mimic. Encountering new races seems to trigger involuntary changes and threatening visions, leaving him distressed and unable to remember everything he has done. The danger becomes physical when his Reaper Gaze kills Rend, who then resurrects.

Tipid says Mordecai’s state should be impossible. Changelings cannot touch mimics, and ordinary shadow mimics do not gain the skills of the creatures they copy. Mordecai’s lethal borrowed ability is an abnormality.

The apparent Mitch is later revealed as an adolescent shadow mimic that recently ate the original wall rat. The AI describes mimics as a species opposed to a group of changelings called the Principals and places them among sapient mobs. It does not establish exactly when the impostor replaced Mitch in earlier conversations.[19]