Ep 59: A PARADE OF HORRIBLES | Ch 06 - 13
Hello Crawlers - A Dungeon Crawler Carl Podcast
In Episode 59 of 'Hello Crawlers - A Dungeon Crawler Carl Podcast', the hosts dive into Chapter 6 through 13 of Book 8, 'A Parade of Horribles'. The episode begins with a playful drinking segment featuring absurd flavored beers, followed by a
Key takeaways
- The narrative pacing slows slightly after months of relentless action, offering a brief reprieve for character reflection.
- Race mechanics introduce randomized paths with unique monsters, adding unpredictability to the dungeon challenges.
Main topics
- Dungeon race mechanics
- Character adaptation challenges
Notable quotes
The city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive.
Conclusion
The episode concludes with a mix of exhaustion and amusement, highlighting the absurdity and
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:04) The Speaker 1 (0:05) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 3 (0:15) The new Speaker 1 (0:20) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 4 (0:45) Mordek! Aye. Oh, so bad. Loot fit for a hero? Tar-crossed lovers. Speaker 6 (0:55) Wow. You just want to kill us, don't you? Speaker 4 (0:59) And a cold can of peach bush light. Hello, crawlers, and welcome to episode 59, or part 2 of book 8, our dive into a parade of horribles. I'm Grant. I'm John. And I'm Martin. And today, we are, we were moving in to heat 2. but we actually don't get into the race. We have a little bit of the setup in this section, which is kind of nice because it has felt go, go, go, go, go, go, go for months now. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 6 (1:37) yeah. All with the last book and jumping straight into this one with no break. It's Speaker 4 (1:43) been intense. So a little bit of a reprieve. And we are recording this before we're actually kind of right at the cusp of when our last episode came out. So I don't really have a lot of show notes or a lot of comments and replies from you guys on our previous episode. Oh, yeah. Correcting all the things I got wrong. My favorite Speaker 5 (2:03) kind of episodes. Brisk. It's good. Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna probably get finishes in about 20 minutes here. I can go home and like lay down with my cats. Should we Speaker 6 (2:12) not banter this time? Speaker 4 (2:14) You know what? We did like 15, 20 minutes in the last week. We just went for it. I was editing. I was like, Ooh. This is a lot, actually. Somewhere, Rubio's gritting his teeth. I haven't watched it, so I'm fine. Speaker 6 (2:30) And now you know not to. Speaker 4 (2:32) Don't watch. Now, before we begin this episode, I do have one surprise for you guys. Speaker 6 (2:40) Oh, yeah, of course you do. This Speaker 4 (2:42) is never good news. Speaker 5 (2:45) It might Speaker 6 (2:46) be. Not when you Speaker 5 (2:48) follow it up like that. Speaker 6 (2:49) Yeah, not when you say might. Because you know the answer. You could have said, sure it is. It's going Speaker 5 (2:54) to be something with a dumb hat or involving a spinning wheel or something. Speaker 4 (3:00) Well, I would like for both of you guys to close your eyes for just Speaker 5 (3:03) a second. Oh, boy. Okay. Speaker 4 (3:05) All Speaker 5 (3:05) right. Speaker 4 (3:07) One moment here. If Speaker 5 (3:10) this is going to be like silently just us with our eyes closed, I want the graphic kill me to come up. Yeah, just right in front Speaker 4 (3:20) of me. All right, Martin, reach out with your hand. Oh, Speaker 6 (3:23) okay. Speaker 4 (3:25) Grab. All right. Speaker 6 (3:27) Wow, that is huge. Speaker 4 (3:29) Rubio, reach out with your hand. Go inside. Speaker 6 (3:32) Oh. Speaker 5 (3:35) Jesus Christ. Okay. All right. You both have Speaker 4 (3:38) reached out and grabbed. I feel the pop top. I Speaker 5 (3:40) got one. Speaker 4 (3:40) Open your eyes. No. Oh, uh-uh. Hold it out for the camera. Why would you do this? This is Speaker 6 (3:49) an endorsement. Speaker 4 (3:51) So I spent a bit of time driving around the gas stations trying to find some peach bush light. And let me tell you. Apparently, it didn't go into distribution this summer. Okay, so that didn't stop you and make you go, ah, maybe we shouldn't do that. No, what it made me think was, oh, we need our own regional flair. And what do we have here in Austin? Modelo Choladas. Speaker 6 (4:17) Is Modelo an Austin brand? No. No. No. Speaker 4 (4:22) No. Speaker 6 (4:23) No, he's trying Speaker 4 (4:23) to fucking validate it. It's Tex-Mex-ish. Speaker 4 (4:27) Anyway, crack it open, boys. We can be as Speaker 6 (4:31) disappointed Speaker 4 (4:31) as... Speaker 6 (4:32) We don't want to save it until we get to that part of the book. Do you want to? It's a gallon. Oh, yeah. I guess if we don't start drinking now, it's never going to... Speaker 5 (4:40) Yeah. I mean, Speaker 6 (4:42) even in the book, they don't like it. Speaker 5 (4:45) Yeah. You know what? Speaker 6 (4:46) We had this Speaker 5 (4:47) on The Beerists once. We do a craft beer podcast. Did you? And once in a while, we have some dumb shit beer, and we had this on the show, and none of us liked it. I didn't Speaker 6 (4:57) say we have to drink at all, but we do got to cheers. Why is it every podcast I'm on has a whole stunt drinking? Speaker 6 (5:08) Why Speaker 5 (5:08) do you pick being on podcasts with people who just fucking hate us? I think that's the nature of Speaker 6 (5:14) podcasts. Wait, which one did you get? Speaker 4 (5:17) Watermelon, Sandia. Oh, Speaker 6 (5:18) okay. That's got to be worse. What about you, John? Pineapple. There's just no winners in this thing. You got mango? I got mango. Speaker 4 (5:25) I don't know which one's going to be the worst, but probably this watermelon. I'm pretty Speaker 6 (5:28) sure watermelon's the worst. Because watermelon Speaker 4 (5:29) always makes me think of vomit. Speaker 6 (5:32) Yeah. I mean, whichever one is closest to citrus, which I don't know if any of these are. Speaker 4 (5:39) Yeah, it's ass. Yeah, that's not good. Speaker 4 (5:43) So this is like what it's like kicking it with Yasha and Dimitri or whatever the other restaurant's name was. Or kicking it with Grant. Speaker 5 (5:53) Like it's less like Speaker 6 (5:55) that and more like that. They didn't give these to us. You did. Yeah, this is your fault. I'm Speaker 4 (6:00) sorry, but you have to finish it. Speaker 6 (6:02) I will say that the salt or tyene that's in it offsets. The sickly sweetness. Speaker 4 (6:13) Mine could be worse. I will say that. It's a low bar. It could be worse, though. Speaker 5 (6:19) Yeah, there could be a lump of shit in it. Well, no, you know, I Speaker 6 (6:24) had a really bad reaction to that crazy expensive beer you guys were passing around last week. Oh, did you? But then I got used to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, okay, well, maybe it ain't so bad. Hopefully this will warm up on you. Speaker 6 (6:39) I don't have high hopes, but it's possible. Speaker 4 (6:44) All right, folks, we are going to go through all of this book linearly as usual. Just a reminder to you guys, Martin and I have not read anything, so keep your comments spoiler free for anything that happens beyond chapter 13 of this book. Speaker 6 (6:59) Yeah. Speaker 4 (7:00) And. If you guys want to support us, you can do so at patreon.com slash hello crawlers. And if you also want to get some sweet merch, go to hello crawlers.com slash store. And with all that out of the way and all of us with a delicious beer in hand, let's dive in. Okay, they have completed the race, and immediately, they and their car teleport away to a driveway of a house. They pull their truck into a garage. It's nighttime. And Donut notices that the AI's voice is getting all glitchy. Like, the AI is like, he too. Or something. It's weird. I Speaker 6 (7:40) just thought Jeff was tired. Speaker 4 (7:41) It was an off day for Jeff. But Donut noticed that Jeff was feeling a little tired. And then we get some details. I think most of this is from the GPS lady. We get details about the next race, including that they have a 10-hour break until the next race. It's going to be 10 kilometers, which seems insanely short. Right. Once again, it's going to be on asphalt. There's going to be two diverging paths, and you're going to randomly get one or the other. And if I guess there's eight teams. Probably gonna be like four and four. And each path is gonna have its own unique monster. You have to kill it before you can get to the finish line. And then weather-wise, there's gonna be a lot of rain and giant hail. That's all we really know so far. Speaker 6 (8:30) So, you know, another level of Mario Kart. Speaker 4 (8:33) Yeah, yeah, so just normal stuff. Still so far, it seems kind of fun. We have Carl and Donut a little worried about the Donut driving situation, which is weird to me because it seems like everything else thus far in these dungeon levels has accommodated the fact that she's a cat. Like everything like adjusts. It seems like weapons she can control with her mind. Speaker 6 (9:03) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. It's such a, you can't rest on your laurels. And remember the dungeon, this whole thing has been set up so that crawlers wouldn't even be at this point. Speaker 5 (9:14) Right. Speaker 6 (9:15) So. Speaker 5 (9:16) And they made the rules. They can change them whenever the hell they want. Speaker 4 (9:20) Yeah. But I would just think that Carl and Donald would probably be like, well, if you get behind the wheel, maybe it formats to you. Yeah. Because it's all magic, but maybe not. I don't Speaker 6 (9:30) know. Take no Speaker 4 (9:30) chances. anyhow, they are now planning to try and build some sort of contraption that will allow Donut to be able to drive. Carl thinks he can work on something, but he's told by Hedy, our little garage gremlin, Speaker 6 (9:45) that Speaker 4 (9:46) no magic and upgrades of their own that they make can be applied to the car. I think a contraption that allows her to drive must be in a little bit of a gray area, Speaker 5 (9:56) but Speaker 4 (9:57) the other stuff. It's not. Speaker 5 (9:59) It seems like that sort of thing would be doable. Speaker 4 (10:03) Yeah. The GPS says that there's a number of hazards that they're looking at for race number two, heat number two. But the main hazard is a car being driven by a fucking cat. Speaker 5 (10:18) So the GPS is being kind of sassy. Speaker 4 (10:20) And Donut doesn't know what to make of that. I mean, do we know this person? That's the voice? The GPS Speaker 6 (10:28) woman? Speaker 4 (10:29) Yeah. Like, Carl says it sounds familiar, which makes me go, do we know? Is it like one of his friends from the before times, before the collapse? Or, I don't know. We pondered on this last time. Speaker 5 (10:40) I did Speaker 4 (10:40) say Gwendolyn Duet. Speaker 5 (10:41) Yeah, but Speaker 4 (10:42) probably not. It's probably not. No. Yeah, so. Speaker 2 (10:50) The Speaker 1 (10:50) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 3 (11:01) The new Speaker 1 (11:05) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 4 (11:15) So Carl has some requests for Hedy, including let's just get rid of all the kitchen shit that's in the back of the truck. Get rid of that fake gun on top. They want to speed up the car and like just have more space and not stuff sliding all about. And Hedy's kind of like, well, we can see what we can do. We can try and fudge with things. But at the same time. So there's a standard set that the car is supposed to be at at the beginning of each race. So there might be some limitations. We'll see. It Speaker 6 (11:44) sounds like they could do a lot of work to get rid of all that stuff and it would just pop back. Speaker 4 (11:48) Right. It might pop back at the beginning of each race or the end of each race when they return to the garage. I'm not sure. But it is interesting to think that Carl hasn't even taken the opportunity to really explore what's back there. Um, and which he notes later on when they, they talked to, uh, the not hop goblins, the bug bears, the bear dudes. Yeah. They have an option to look for a, an upgrade. And among their list, Hedy has already suggested, Hey, after race three. Things might not just be a road you're going down. You might be going up cliffs and buildings and stuff. It's like, what? The possibilities there mean you want an upgrade that allows you to be all terrain. That should be one of the first ones you get. Something with Speaker 5 (12:42) vertical climb. Speaker 4 (12:43) Yeah. Which now I'm like, okay, okay. You can be a lot more fantastical. I wonder if we even need three of these asphalt races. I guess to acclimate. I Speaker 6 (12:55) mean, I guess, you know, considering the different terrains, maybe going with a biological creature would have been better. Speaker 4 (13:06) But yeah, I feel like us, the reader, are more conditioned now that you could have been wacky with the first race and we're on board. Speaker 6 (13:18) Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, you got to ease them into it. You give them a false sense of security. Speaker 4 (13:24) Yeah. Yeah. Carl also takes a peek at what some of the other options were for upgrades. And this is more of like just getting an assessment of what other cars might upgrade with good strategy. And now he knows what he might anticipate from some of his enemies on the road or people that merge into his race later down the road. Uh, I don't mean down the road as a pun, but Hey, uh, Just want to check. Do you guys feel like we need to finish these Medellas? No, Speaker 5 (13:55) here, put mine over there also. Because, good God, this is awful. I think I'm tapped out. Okay, so. So we're clear that sort of thing happened in the dungeon because the dungeon is trying to torture people. You did this. Why? There's certain things I keep going back. There's certain things that the fandom, I think, have completely miscalculated about their read in the book. And I think this is one of them for you. Like, for instance, Dirty Shirley's. Donut is drinking because not because they're like fucking good, but it's because that's what B used to drink. And B was a basic bitch. It's literally, here's a basic bitch drink. And people are like, oh, give me all the dirty Shirley's. It's what donut drinks. It's great. The other thing, Glurp Glurp is supposed to be the sound of the audience sucking the maestro's. Speaker 5 (14:58) But everybody's like, oh, Glurp Glurp. That's just the sound that we make now because we're fans. I Speaker 4 (15:02) think we call it a dink, but fair enough. A dink. Speaker 5 (15:07) So had you learned those two very valuable lessons, I don't think you would have bought those for us today. Speaker 4 (15:16) I think I would have because I'm still a Speaker 6 (15:19) troll. Okay. Fair. Yeah. You, you've been recording with him for a while. Speaker 5 (15:24) You know, I'd still get it. This tracks. I'm surprised by it every time. I have higher expectations of Speaker 6 (15:32) my friends. Okay. So here's the thing. If you yell at him for doing hacks, he's just going to traipse over to something else. So you might want to cut your losses. Are Speaker 4 (15:42) you wanting a hat watch back? Nope. Nope. Nope. Okay. Let's move on with the show. Well, I think on that note, there's one other thing I have noticed about the books and that's like, it does have this strong anti-capitalist message, this like a profit above all other things and exploitation to get that profit and, and all of that. And I notice that this. property is going the way of all these other big properties where every little thing is getting made into by this item. Like there's just merch, hello, crawlies.com slash store all over the place. And, uh, I don't know. There's something that feels weird about the message of this book versus fans just wanting to, to have that. make and buy frenzy? It Speaker 6 (16:35) is called inevitability. Speaker 4 (16:39) Inevitable ruin of sorts. Speaker 6 (16:41) Yeah. Yeah. Of my wallet. Yeah. Yeah. One could say that. I mean, I always talked about this, how, you know, growing up, you had your geek stuff that you loved and they just wouldn't make merchandise of it. They did. It was just crappy. And at some point they figured out like, wait, those kids are older. And they've been wanting this stuff for a while. And we can make lots of money off of it. So at first it seemed like, oh, they love us. They're making this stuff. We always want it. And they pump so much of it out. It's like, oh, this is not about us at all. This is about them. And everything tends to go that way. You have something that's like, hey, this is my thing. Oh, there's a small community. This is our thing. If only the world could know about this. And once that happens, uh-oh. Be careful what you wish for. Now the world knows about it. Now it's ubiquitous. Now you can't get away from it. You're oversaturated. And there's money flowing everywhere. It's always asking you for money. And so now you got to move on to something else. Speaker 4 (17:36) Yeah. We can't stop it. No. We're riding within Speaker 6 (17:40) it. Although I will say, I don't know. I never know if anything is real or it's AI. But I saw some like. Carl action figure online. Oh yeah. Is that real? I want that so bad. Speaker 5 (17:54) I Speaker 6 (17:54) know they, they let that out at comic-con the first time, like they started selling it at comic-con. Speaker 5 (17:59) Yeah. Uh, and I didn't have anybody I knew who could get me one. Damn it. I know. I want one so bad. Those are kind Speaker 4 (18:07) of cool. All right, folks, diving back into this. Carl is thinking of ways that he can build something for Donut to be able to drive. And he's like, man, it'd be great if Katya could help. But then he's like, oh, yeah, she's gone. And it gets a little bit sad. Yeah. He's like, well, she's probably more safe than we are. But we don't know that. We do not know if Katya is safe. And hopefully we find out later in this book. Right, Rubio? Speaker 4 (18:37) I think it's Speaker 5 (18:39) interesting that this book, I feel like they're having to adjust to their current situation more than maybe we've seen in the past. You know, like Donut trying to adjust to her trauma. Yeah. And Carl trying to adjust to stuff like Katya being gone. Yeah. Like there's, there's a lot of, uh, growing pains that we're getting to see here that I don't think we've seen as much of in the past. Speaker 6 (19:03) It's this, this is, this book really feels like a throwback to the second or third book. And, and there the trauma was just how new and everything was and not knowing stuff. Now they know things, but they've had all this other really bad or traumatic stuff happened in the last book. But it's like, Hey, so it's just back to figuring things out and stats and all. And it's like, yeah, okay. But okay, I Speaker 4 (19:30) guess. Yeah. It is weird. This is a very marked shift from the last book. They are about to go to the safe room. Mordecai chimes in to say, hey, leave Rend in the garage. And Carl's like, okay. And he just goes ahead and deputizes Rend and Mongo to be the bodyguards of Hedy, which also just seems like a really smart call. Yeah, yeah, it's Speaker 6 (19:56) a Speaker 4 (19:56) smart call. Speaker 6 (19:57) Protect Speaker 4 (19:57) your fucking mechanic. Speaker 6 (19:58) Yeah, because, yeah, I mean, even, I don't know if Mordecai or Hedy was the one to say, like, yeah, if, you know, she dies, you're fucked. Yeah. Speaker 4 (20:08) Mm-hmm. They get into the safe room, and they have a blood bar that only allows them to be in there for 10 hours. So they'll have to go and reset their blood bar. Currently, they only have a 10-hour break before the next heat, so they're kind of fine. Speaker 6 (20:23) Blood bar, that resets when you start killing things, right? Yes. So that means once they get back on the race, they got to kill. They got to kill stuff for it to fill up. I mean, I guess they can kill things that aren't other racers because they don't want to kill the other racers. Speaker 4 (20:36) Right. Right, there's mobs out there. Speaker 6 (20:37) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 4 (20:39) And then they see Mordecai. And if you guys recall last week, I thought Mordecai might be a snake. Speaker 6 (20:46) And we did not. Speaker 4 (20:49) I was wrong. The first of probably very few wrong predictions. I'm probably going to get most right. He is in the form of a Grim Reaper, or more particularly, a Moon Reaper, which is, it's got a cloak on, but when you take the cloak off, there's a Speaker 5 (21:09) flaming eyeball Speaker 4 (21:10) head. Speaker 6 (21:11) Yeah, because I guess he looks like, kind of like Orin when he first comes out, until that hood comes off. Speaker 4 (21:18) Yeah, I believe Donut says, it looks like if Orin discovered Depeche Mode. Yeah. Which feels like such a snarky, like, pop culture reference that. Donut? Okay. Speaker 6 (21:28) All right. It Speaker 4 (21:29) felt like something from Venture Brothers. Speaker 6 (21:31) Oh, yeah. I mean, she knows about all kinds of stuff you wouldn't think she would. And it's pop culture related. Speaker 4 (21:38) We learn that Rend has a weakness