Carl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goddammitdonut) wrote2026-01-18 01:45 pm
goddammitdonut) wrote2026-01-18 01:45 pm
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User Name/Nick: Siobhan
User DW:fiercebadrabbit
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: plurk:fiercebadrabbit
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Wen Ning, Vaggie
Character Name: Carl
Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl
Age: 27
From When?: End of book 7, This Inevitable Ruin
Warden Justification: Carl was the world’s most regular guy, a very active decision he made after a rough start, whose world ended in a very literal way. While he was absolutely dragged unwillingly into the chaos of the dungeon, it wasn’t kicking and screaming. He took to it like a fish to water. Well. A fish with feet to stomping goblins to death. Everything about Carl is achingly deliberate. That’s why his painful disaster of a childhood ended with a well-adjusted mechanic determined never to harm anybody, and that’s why being turned into canon fodder for reality TV ended with an indefatigable rebel leader striving toward ending the vast conspiracies behind that trashy television show. Carl’s skills in leadership and planning and politics (not that he’d admit that last one) are all impressive, but they’re all rooted in his unflagging determination to make the only decent choice.
He’s dealt with people from all walks of life and walked them through hideous tragedy and disaster. He knows what regular life is like and what happens when it can’t go on any longer. He doesn’t forgive easily, for all his steady calm, but he does think most people have a path forward, and he knows what it’s like to become a monster. On purpose. He has his own demons, consciously and deliberately controlled, and he’s had his slip-ups. He also has an elaborate mental construction of his own trauma as a semi-metaphorical river of madness. It helps a little. You gotta have structure.
Just as long as you don’t let them break you.
Item: The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, a nondescript leather tome with an anarchist symbol on the cover.
Abilities/Powers: The dungeon changes crawlers at the most fundamental level, and Carl was among the many who chose a completely new species. The species, however, was primal, which looks and functions exactly like a human for almost all purposes. However, it has been established that magic that defines humans as a species will not recognize him anymore.
Because of how stats work, Carl is stronger, faster, harder to hurt, etc. than any naturally born human has ever been. Physically, he’s more classic Superman than Captain America, something he’s going to have to be careful to navigate now that he’s surrounded by regular people and things again. He heals at an accelerated rate. He isn’t nearly as magically impressive as some (like Donut), but does know quite a few spells, many of them mostly useless outside a dungeon context (like tripper, which sets off all traps in an area), some still useful in combat (like wisp armor, which blocks some magical damage and protects against mental attacks). His skills are concentrated around unarmed fighting, traps, and explosives, but include some peculiar ones because the dungeon and AI are just Like That (cesta-punta, dumpster diving, Operating a Sony Brand RMVLZ620 Universal Remote Control).
He will not have access on the barge to any magical (or sci-fi techie) items, his inventory, or the game interface. This will take some getting used to. He still has the knowledge to craft some of those items, such as explosives and potions, but will have to follow normal rules to create them and would have to carry them like a normal person. Several of his tattoos are magical as well, including a creepy-ass eye that definitely can’t mean anything good, but none will function under normal barge circumstances. He is the worshiper of a mad god (long story) and has attracted the attention, for good or ill, of several more. All these are included in case of future barge shenanigans but shouldn’t matter day to day.
During his time in the Coast Guard he received firearms and hand-to-hand-combat training in normal earth human kinds of ways. He’s also a pretty good mechanic/electrician and a bad video game player.
Wardening Strategies and Philosophies: The worst day on the barge is better than the best day in the dungeon, and Carl is very good at both staying calm and putting together Plans even when there are wizard skunks and night weasel hordes and shit coming at him. He’s good at stern stoicism. (Which means when he does snap, people generally take it seriously.) He has high expectations, but he can be patient while people who are a little freer with their emotions get on with it. He’s willing to give grace, though he may need a little practice with that now that he’s in a place where death isn’t the imminent consequence of any misstep. He’s used to playing quiet straight man to histrionics and absurdity, but he will call you out if your nonsense is causing issues and not just letting you get your shit out. He’s observant and has an excellent memory for both personal tics and weird shit. Basically he’s a dad friend. Don’t disappoint dad.
Nobody should ever tell him this. Really. He doesn’t have good feelings about dads.
He’s pretty jaded when it comes to weird species and magic. He knows vampires and demons and shapeshifters and weird furries personally. He’s leery of the admiral, because either the admiral is another AI or he’s something new and potentially worse, but at least the guy isn’t as antagonistic as the all-powerful spooky voice he usually has to deal with. And isn’t into his feet.
He knows that his time in the dungeon has changed him. You enter the dungeon, you die in the dungeon, wherever your meat happens to physically fall. So he’ll try not to make it anyone else’s problem that he sees this as just another quest, redemption as something to level up and game if at all possible. But yeah, he sees it that way. You figure out what you can do and what you need to do better. You work on it. You find a good way to cheat if you can. He’s done awful things himself, and he’s pretty relaxed about a lot of horrors at this point, but when he does lose his temper, it’s usually at someone taking advantage of their position. Inmates who lashed out at people weaker than they were or just took advantage won’t get a lot of sympathy out of him. Which might be what they need! Maybe. He’ll find out. He’s at his most gentle with people in unwinnable situations, whatever they had to do to play the hand they were dealt.
Deal: Carl lives in a world where multiple factions of aliens, ancient AIs, nebulously real supernatural entities, new and increasingly insane AIs, and the normal horrors of capitalism and associated politics swirl around him, dooming worlds in extremely showy ways and also slow, sad ones. He doesn’t know what the right move is, but he knows he wants a deal to break the powers that be forever. It’s a work in progress.
History: Background
Carl was having a bad night. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend. He was looking at uprooting his whole life. And then her cat decided to jump out the window on a nasty, cold night. Carl, in boxers and Bea’s shoes, much too small for him, stumbled out into the snow.
And then the world ended. In an instant, anything with a roof flattened, and stairways into nothing opened all around him, the cat, and the head of an elderly neighbor who’d been yelling out the window at him when the buildings all went down. Carl, whose other choice was to stand there and freeze to death, walked down the stairs with the cat who’d kept him from dying along with the vast majority of the human race.
Thus Carl and Donut entered the world dungeon, a surreal nightmare-space controlled by alien technology and an already slightly-mad AI that broadly followed the rules of lazy video games for teenage boys. Most crawlers died in the first few hours, chased down by monsters because they were random traumatized people (and some animals) with no defenses. Carl and Donut got lucky a few ways. They found a guide, a grumpy changeling named Mordecai who assumed they’d be dead in about ten minutes but gruffly laid out survival strategy. They had Donut’s wild charisma, once she accidentally was granted sentience by a quirk of in-game magic, and Carl’s… ability to be a pretty big guy who hits things. And the AI, uh, liked Carl’s. Assets.
So they stumbled around staying alive for a bit. What gave them purpose and direction, though, was stumbling on the inhabitants of a nursing home that’d been evacuated in the middle of the night due to a fire alarm. Defending some of the fragile residents, making allies of the surviving nurses and maintenance guys, and working together to defeat a major boss put them on the route to both finding their own ways in the dungeon and their new world’s most important distinction: Influencer status. The dungeon system may be a nefarious plan to protect the entrenched powers of their universe, but it’s also the most popular reality show of all time. Being popular crawlers let Carl and Donut claw their way along not just by killing monsters and doing quests, but by amassing fans. As top ten crawlers, they got attention.
And surviving was no longer the only aim of the game.
In theory, the dungeon allows a winner. There’s never been one. There’s clearly never intended to be one. Even Carl doesn’t expect to win. But he and his allies did learn to game the system, to turn their alien overlords’ own systems against them, and to begin to unearth the secrets behind the AIs, the dungeons, and the worlds beyond earth. Carl’s resolution when he learned what was going on was you will not break me. Nine floors later? I will break you all.
By the time of his arrival on the barge, Carl has just successfully wiped out several heads of state and corporate overlords, killed thousands of mercenaries, led an army of former crawlers, allied with powerful NPCs, unleashed gods and demons and multiple demon-zombie hordes, and technically earned his release from the dungeon if he should so choose. He does not, but he’s happy for everyone who does. Under his leadership, thousands more are escaping the dungeon than ever have. It’s something.
It’s not enough.
Sample Network Entry: Sample 1
Sample RP: Sample 2
Special Notes: Carl will be arriving with his pet. No not that one. Donut hasn’t been a pet for a while. He’s here with Rend the Tummy Acher.
User DW:
fiercebadrabbitE-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: plurk:fiercebadrabbit
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Wen Ning, Vaggie
Character Name: Carl
Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl
Age: 27
From When?: End of book 7, This Inevitable Ruin
Warden Justification: Carl was the world’s most regular guy, a very active decision he made after a rough start, whose world ended in a very literal way. While he was absolutely dragged unwillingly into the chaos of the dungeon, it wasn’t kicking and screaming. He took to it like a fish to water. Well. A fish with feet to stomping goblins to death. Everything about Carl is achingly deliberate. That’s why his painful disaster of a childhood ended with a well-adjusted mechanic determined never to harm anybody, and that’s why being turned into canon fodder for reality TV ended with an indefatigable rebel leader striving toward ending the vast conspiracies behind that trashy television show. Carl’s skills in leadership and planning and politics (not that he’d admit that last one) are all impressive, but they’re all rooted in his unflagging determination to make the only decent choice.
He’s dealt with people from all walks of life and walked them through hideous tragedy and disaster. He knows what regular life is like and what happens when it can’t go on any longer. He doesn’t forgive easily, for all his steady calm, but he does think most people have a path forward, and he knows what it’s like to become a monster. On purpose. He has his own demons, consciously and deliberately controlled, and he’s had his slip-ups. He also has an elaborate mental construction of his own trauma as a semi-metaphorical river of madness. It helps a little. You gotta have structure.
Just as long as you don’t let them break you.
Item: The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, a nondescript leather tome with an anarchist symbol on the cover.
Abilities/Powers: The dungeon changes crawlers at the most fundamental level, and Carl was among the many who chose a completely new species. The species, however, was primal, which looks and functions exactly like a human for almost all purposes. However, it has been established that magic that defines humans as a species will not recognize him anymore.
Because of how stats work, Carl is stronger, faster, harder to hurt, etc. than any naturally born human has ever been. Physically, he’s more classic Superman than Captain America, something he’s going to have to be careful to navigate now that he’s surrounded by regular people and things again. He heals at an accelerated rate. He isn’t nearly as magically impressive as some (like Donut), but does know quite a few spells, many of them mostly useless outside a dungeon context (like tripper, which sets off all traps in an area), some still useful in combat (like wisp armor, which blocks some magical damage and protects against mental attacks). His skills are concentrated around unarmed fighting, traps, and explosives, but include some peculiar ones because the dungeon and AI are just Like That (cesta-punta, dumpster diving, Operating a Sony Brand RMVLZ620 Universal Remote Control).
He will not have access on the barge to any magical (or sci-fi techie) items, his inventory, or the game interface. This will take some getting used to. He still has the knowledge to craft some of those items, such as explosives and potions, but will have to follow normal rules to create them and would have to carry them like a normal person. Several of his tattoos are magical as well, including a creepy-ass eye that definitely can’t mean anything good, but none will function under normal barge circumstances. He is the worshiper of a mad god (long story) and has attracted the attention, for good or ill, of several more. All these are included in case of future barge shenanigans but shouldn’t matter day to day.
During his time in the Coast Guard he received firearms and hand-to-hand-combat training in normal earth human kinds of ways. He’s also a pretty good mechanic/electrician and a bad video game player.
Wardening Strategies and Philosophies: The worst day on the barge is better than the best day in the dungeon, and Carl is very good at both staying calm and putting together Plans even when there are wizard skunks and night weasel hordes and shit coming at him. He’s good at stern stoicism. (Which means when he does snap, people generally take it seriously.) He has high expectations, but he can be patient while people who are a little freer with their emotions get on with it. He’s willing to give grace, though he may need a little practice with that now that he’s in a place where death isn’t the imminent consequence of any misstep. He’s used to playing quiet straight man to histrionics and absurdity, but he will call you out if your nonsense is causing issues and not just letting you get your shit out. He’s observant and has an excellent memory for both personal tics and weird shit. Basically he’s a dad friend. Don’t disappoint dad.
Nobody should ever tell him this. Really. He doesn’t have good feelings about dads.
He’s pretty jaded when it comes to weird species and magic. He knows vampires and demons and shapeshifters and weird furries personally. He’s leery of the admiral, because either the admiral is another AI or he’s something new and potentially worse, but at least the guy isn’t as antagonistic as the all-powerful spooky voice he usually has to deal with. And isn’t into his feet.
He knows that his time in the dungeon has changed him. You enter the dungeon, you die in the dungeon, wherever your meat happens to physically fall. So he’ll try not to make it anyone else’s problem that he sees this as just another quest, redemption as something to level up and game if at all possible. But yeah, he sees it that way. You figure out what you can do and what you need to do better. You work on it. You find a good way to cheat if you can. He’s done awful things himself, and he’s pretty relaxed about a lot of horrors at this point, but when he does lose his temper, it’s usually at someone taking advantage of their position. Inmates who lashed out at people weaker than they were or just took advantage won’t get a lot of sympathy out of him. Which might be what they need! Maybe. He’ll find out. He’s at his most gentle with people in unwinnable situations, whatever they had to do to play the hand they were dealt.
Deal: Carl lives in a world where multiple factions of aliens, ancient AIs, nebulously real supernatural entities, new and increasingly insane AIs, and the normal horrors of capitalism and associated politics swirl around him, dooming worlds in extremely showy ways and also slow, sad ones. He doesn’t know what the right move is, but he knows he wants a deal to break the powers that be forever. It’s a work in progress.
History: Background
Carl was having a bad night. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend. He was looking at uprooting his whole life. And then her cat decided to jump out the window on a nasty, cold night. Carl, in boxers and Bea’s shoes, much too small for him, stumbled out into the snow.
And then the world ended. In an instant, anything with a roof flattened, and stairways into nothing opened all around him, the cat, and the head of an elderly neighbor who’d been yelling out the window at him when the buildings all went down. Carl, whose other choice was to stand there and freeze to death, walked down the stairs with the cat who’d kept him from dying along with the vast majority of the human race.
Thus Carl and Donut entered the world dungeon, a surreal nightmare-space controlled by alien technology and an already slightly-mad AI that broadly followed the rules of lazy video games for teenage boys. Most crawlers died in the first few hours, chased down by monsters because they were random traumatized people (and some animals) with no defenses. Carl and Donut got lucky a few ways. They found a guide, a grumpy changeling named Mordecai who assumed they’d be dead in about ten minutes but gruffly laid out survival strategy. They had Donut’s wild charisma, once she accidentally was granted sentience by a quirk of in-game magic, and Carl’s… ability to be a pretty big guy who hits things. And the AI, uh, liked Carl’s. Assets.
So they stumbled around staying alive for a bit. What gave them purpose and direction, though, was stumbling on the inhabitants of a nursing home that’d been evacuated in the middle of the night due to a fire alarm. Defending some of the fragile residents, making allies of the surviving nurses and maintenance guys, and working together to defeat a major boss put them on the route to both finding their own ways in the dungeon and their new world’s most important distinction: Influencer status. The dungeon system may be a nefarious plan to protect the entrenched powers of their universe, but it’s also the most popular reality show of all time. Being popular crawlers let Carl and Donut claw their way along not just by killing monsters and doing quests, but by amassing fans. As top ten crawlers, they got attention.
And surviving was no longer the only aim of the game.
In theory, the dungeon allows a winner. There’s never been one. There’s clearly never intended to be one. Even Carl doesn’t expect to win. But he and his allies did learn to game the system, to turn their alien overlords’ own systems against them, and to begin to unearth the secrets behind the AIs, the dungeons, and the worlds beyond earth. Carl’s resolution when he learned what was going on was you will not break me. Nine floors later? I will break you all.
By the time of his arrival on the barge, Carl has just successfully wiped out several heads of state and corporate overlords, killed thousands of mercenaries, led an army of former crawlers, allied with powerful NPCs, unleashed gods and demons and multiple demon-zombie hordes, and technically earned his release from the dungeon if he should so choose. He does not, but he’s happy for everyone who does. Under his leadership, thousands more are escaping the dungeon than ever have. It’s something.
It’s not enough.
Sample Network Entry: Sample 1
Sample RP: Sample 2
Special Notes: Carl will be arriving with his pet. No not that one. Donut hasn’t been a pet for a while. He’s here with Rend the Tummy Acher.