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The Party Planner (Chapter 6) · The Apocalypse Will Be Podcasted

0:00
Hello, and this is the Apocalypse Will Be Podcasted.
0:03
We are a married couple from Atlanta with boring
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day jobs. We have been together 12 years, and
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we usually create a lot of weird performance
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art to entertain people. But we are trying our
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hand at having a podcast because we have had
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an obsession lately, and that obsession is Dungeon
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Crawler Carl. This is a spoilers podcast, and
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we will be discussing plot points from all seven
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Dungeon Crawler Carl books. You should not start
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this podcast until you have finished book seven.
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We will not be discussing anything from Patreon
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or the Pineapple Cabaret. There are spoilers
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from this point forward. Be warned. So Louis
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got an airport and an elevator in one of his
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boxes, and I'm fairly impressed by that. I mean,
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people have gotten some really cool stuff in
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celestial boxes, but I don't think anything quite
0:53
to this magnitude before. No, definitely not.
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I kind of wonder what that looked like when he
0:58
opened the box. Like the airport just pop into
1:02
his existence above him. Can you imagine if like
1:05
the airplane just appeared in the safe space
1:08
in their safe room? Or like he pulled a tiny
1:10
version of the box and it just started getting
1:12
bigger and he was like, oh, God. Oh, God. Oh,
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God. Also, I just noticed while I said safe space
1:18
on accident and safe space and safe room are.
1:21
Very different terms, but they're also similar
1:24
in this sense, I guess. One is just more emotional.
1:27
I don't think there is any safe spaces in the
1:29
dungeon. Not emotionally, no, that's for sure.
1:32
So Louie gets this airplane, and it does have
1:36
some specific rules and such surrounding it.
1:40
They can designate three personal spaces as airports,
1:45
and then those personal spaces do need to have
1:49
open air above it. And this does give a form
1:52
of fast travel. So wherever the airship is hangared,
1:57
if you go into a personal space or safe room
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from another location and go into the hangar,
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you will be in the hangar where the ship is at.
2:06
So if it's in the college and you go from the
2:10
HQ, go into the hangar, you're going to come
2:12
out in the college. So yet another fast travel
2:14
option. Yeah. And as I said last week. It's really
2:18
cool that this is a genre that allows you to
2:21
add that stuff in because it just makes it so
2:23
much easier to write impelling battle sequences
2:26
without having to explain how people got there.
2:29
Right. And I think it makes a lot of sense that
2:31
Matt kind of waited until later in the series
2:33
to do this because I don't think that it would
2:37
have really made too much sense on the earlier
2:40
floors to have a fast travel like this. And I
2:43
think that it really would have just made for
2:45
a very... Very different storyline. And the reason
2:49
I say that it makes a lot of sense for this to
2:51
be implemented during Faction Wars is because
2:54
there's just so much happening and the floor
2:57
is so big that if these different fast travel
3:00
options weren't added, I think it would have
3:02
just really slowed things down and made things
3:03
a lot more difficult. Definitely. It also says
3:07
the doors to the hangar can be destroyed. And
3:10
I kind of wonder about the implications about
3:12
that. I was wondering, well, if the door is destroyed,
3:15
does that mean that people can just start parachuting
3:18
into the safe room? No, no. That means that like
3:21
that door is like completely inaccessible because
3:24
the door goes into a dimensional space. But I
3:29
don't think anyone can just come through the
3:30
door if the door gets destroyed because they
3:33
say that it's like the doors at the end of the
3:36
eighth floor. And if the door got destroyed,
3:38
you couldn't go through. the exit portal to the
3:40
next floor. Yeah, that makes sense. Right. Well,
3:43
obviously they found out a way, but yeah, it
3:46
does make it so that you can't get to the airship
3:49
though. So I'm surprised this doesn't happen
3:51
in the book. Well, and it also says, which this
3:54
is big, heavy foreshadowing that we can't really
3:58
expand upon because it goes into Patreon content,
4:01
but it says no airships on the 10th floor. And
4:05
so reading it again, after reading Patreon, I
4:07
was like, Right. So everyone should go subscribe
4:11
to Matt's Patreon. It's worth it. But it is like
4:14
obviously this airship is super useful for this
4:18
floor and like help them out a lot. But I do
4:20
feel like it's kind of a bit of a fuck you to
4:23
get something in a celestial box that you can
4:26
only use for one floor. I mean, maybe later on
4:29
in another floor, but there's no guarantee you're
4:31
going to make it past this floor or even the
4:33
10th floor. I mean, going into my next point,
4:36
it says, in the book that Ellie is very wistful
4:40
and she's just kind of daydreaming about the
4:43
possibility of making it to the 10th floor. And
4:45
she says that nothing has ever seemed so far
4:48
away. So I think that really they're just happy
4:52
to have it for the ninth floor because they know
4:54
how low their chances of success are. Yeah, I
4:57
definitely agree. And I think that throughout
5:01
this entire series, like people kind of have
5:03
been looking forward to different floors, like
5:05
the hunting grounds. And they've been looking
5:08
forward to faction wars in the sense of kind
5:10
of like, we have to plan for this. We need to
5:12
be prepared. But I don't think anyone has really
5:15
put much thought or consideration into anything
5:17
after the ninth floor. Oh, no, I don't think
5:21
that's true. I think people are absolutely terrified
5:24
of the ascendancy games. I think they are, but
5:27
I don't think that anyone really thinks they're
5:29
going to get there. Like, that's so far away.
5:32
And just knowing the history of the game or...
5:36
what they learn about the history of dungeon
5:37
crawler world, like so few people make it past
5:41
the ninth floor. I think a lot of people don't
5:44
want to make it there. It's going to be wild.
5:46
We get there. If we get there, I mean, things
5:48
get broken at the end of this book. So who knows
5:51
really what's going to happen. I have definitely
5:53
had a lot of theories throughout the books of
5:57
just kind of speculating that they might take
6:01
a pretty hard turn and not follow the structure.
6:05
of going through the floors anymore. And I pretty
6:09
strongly felt that at the end of this book. But
6:11
now that I've considered it, I also have some
6:14
other theories. Yeah, I mean, what Justice Light
6:16
did, opening the Nothing and open the Sheol portals
6:22
and all of that, I think that a lot of floor
6:27
stuff is going to get merged together in very
6:29
chaotic ways because of what Justice Light did.
6:32
And if you're confused by that, go and reread.
6:35
that chapter at the end of this book five or
6:37
six times. So everyone is still really stressed
6:41
out about the sepsis horror crown, which is very
6:44
valid. And Carl says it was always there. Always.
6:48
It had been since the moment she put that goddamn
6:51
tiara on her head. That's what has led to all
6:56
of the stress throughout the series. I mean,
6:58
not all of it, but in such a huge factor and
7:01
something really weighing. on Donut and Carl.
7:04
And then once they, you know, found out that
7:06
Eva put the crown of the sepsis whore on Katya
7:09
at the end of the butcher's masquerade, it just
7:12
made things so much worse and so much more complicated.
7:15
Without the complicated deal that they made with
7:17
Wan -Shin Jinx, they still, no matter what, have
7:21
to take out the entire blood salt in it, which
7:23
is a extremely difficult task set out before
7:26
them because nobody has ever killed the sepsis
7:31
whore. Never. Yeah, and we're excited to talk
7:34
about that. More chapters to come, which we have
7:37
to keep saying that. Getting back to what's going
7:39
on with this airship, they have to take an elevator
7:43
to get up into the hangar. And I find it very
7:47
amusing that this is a physical elevator that
7:49
they get into. And I almost think of it as like
7:52
this rickety thing. And it is very slow. Like
7:55
they're waiting together to go up. And Carl.
8:00
has this moment where he notices some tinsel
8:03
on the floor. And this causes a very interesting
8:08
inner monologue that he has. He has a bit of
8:11
an existential crisis. He really does because
8:14
he's not sure how this tinsel is still there
8:16
because it's left over from the Christmas party
8:18
that they had. And either a lot of that got cleaned
8:22
up by the strippers, but then some of it was
8:25
taken from... Memory simulation. Yeah, from the
8:29
memory simulation, and all of that got deleted
8:31
when they came to this floor. And so Carl is
8:34
just sitting there thinking to himself, like,
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which reality did this tinsel come from? And
8:38
he starts wondering and thinking how every person,
8:41
every place, everything that they're interacting
8:43
with in the dungeon, some of it's real, some
8:47
of it's imaginary, or somewhere in between. And
8:50
at any given point, it's hard to know where the
8:54
overlap is. And he makes the comment that they're
8:57
in a simulation of a simulation. Yeah, and that
9:01
make -believe keeps colliding with reality. And
9:04
he doesn't know how to reconcile those things
9:06
in his brain. I mean, a lot of what they're doing,
9:08
you know, they have each other. That's real.
9:11
That's tangible. But then a lot of these things
9:13
that are in the dungeon, it is in a way make
9:15
-believe. And I think that the simulation of
9:18
a simulation is maybe a little bit of a reference
9:21
to The Matrix. where there is the real world
9:24
that's happening in the Matrix that's been taken
9:26
over by the robots and everything. But what happens
9:29
in the Matrix also has effects on the reality
9:32
of their world, even though it's just computer
9:36
programs. Well, even if it's just computer programs,
9:39
the entire galaxy is watching them. And that
9:43
is going to have implications that are outside
9:46
of the dungeon, which we're going to see so much
9:48
of in this book. Carl reminisces about, that's
9:53
not the right word, but we're going with it,
9:54
the high cleric from the Empress Temple in Club
9:57
Vanquisher that was taken over by the AI, and
10:00
he made the comment, we all have our limitations.
10:04
It is definitely one of the themes of this book.
10:06
It is, and that's something that the AI will
10:09
say multiple times, and other characters say
10:12
it as well. I think Oren says it at one point.
10:15
I don't know of any other characters that do
10:17
make that comment except for Auron and the AI.
10:20
The AI makes that comment a lot, though. And
10:22
I find that really fascinating because we don't
10:25
actually quite know what the limitations of the
10:29
AI are from what we see throughout the book.
10:33
It seems like it can do pretty much whatever
10:34
it wants. So I wonder what its actual limitations
10:37
are. Well, and I think that the AI's limitations
10:40
are actively breaking down. Yeah. I think that
10:43
is true. I mean, it is growing in power day by
10:47
day. And its zone of influence outside of Earth
10:52
is also growing more rapidly. And a lot of people
10:55
don't actually realize that until later in this
10:59
book. And that's a very big reveal. Yeah, well,
11:03
and Carl didn't have a way to share with everyone
11:05
else, you know, what happened at the gas station
11:07
on fake Christmas. So that's just context that...
11:13
a lot of the people that he's dealing with doesn't
11:15
have. And even if they did have it, they probably
11:17
couldn't discuss it besides their bathroom door
11:20
writing method, which has its own limitations.
11:23
Right. Well, and I understand it's a big secret
11:27
that Carl needs to carry, and that's a burden.
11:29
But also, I think even if he did go around telling
11:31
people, like, ultimately, would that actually
11:34
make any difference? And I think it's also just
11:37
so big that, like, no one would know how to engage
11:39
with it. Carl certainly doesn't know how to engage
11:43
with it, and that's part of what he's having
11:44
a meltdown over this chapter. And, I mean, I
11:48
think, you know, the showrunners, the syndicate,
11:50
Oren, etc., feel like there's something that
11:53
they can do about it, but because of what Carl
11:56
did, like, they actually can't. Like, no one
11:58
can really do fucking anything at this point.
12:00
No, but they still have the illusion of control.
12:03
Right. And that gets shattered. It's really impressive
12:07
how much... Carl has on his shoulders. He has
12:13
this knowledge of shutting off the failsafe.
12:16
He has to figure out this whole eye of Shemaria
12:18
thing that's going on. He's had Carl's doomsday
12:21
scenario since book two, which fortunately for
12:25
him is not too much to be concerned with because
12:28
it can just sit in his inventory forever. But
12:31
it does kind of have that looming knowledge that
12:34
it could be. implemented at any point if circumstances
12:38
were dire enough. So the sepsis horror quest
12:43
is definitely the most urgent thing on the list
12:47
of things weighing on Carl's shoulders at any
12:50
given time. Yeah, at least they have a pretty
12:52
decent plan for that, though. They do. Well,
12:55
not yet. They do come up with a great plan and
12:57
it works. We got off on a little bit of a side
13:00
tangent, though, and we want to get back on track
13:03
with what's happening in this chapter. So they're
13:06
still learning about Party Planner, and Ellie
13:09
makes the comment. You got this in a celestial
13:12
box? This makes Carl's back patch look like something
13:15
he picked up at the dollar store. That's what
13:17
I said. I think this is some more lampshade hanging.
13:20
Mm -hmm. So we do find out there's a controller
13:24
for it, and Louie says that it runs on a soul
13:27
crystal, which is interesting to know because
13:31
I feel like even the soul crystal itself outside
13:34
of the plane could be used as a weapon. Yeah,
13:37
and I will say that those have seemed to be a
13:40
little unpredictable on past floors, so they
13:44
should be careful with it. They should, but it
13:46
also gives me the idea that even though the plane
13:48
can't be used, on the 10th floor, the soul crystal,
13:53
I wonder, could still serve a purpose in itself.
13:56
That's a good point. But Donut asked why it was
14:00
called the party planner and Louie gets sad and
14:04
says that that's what Faraz wanted to call the
14:06
twister. And originally Louie said that that
14:09
was a stupid idea. Well, told Faraz that was
14:13
a stupid idea at the time, but obviously, you
14:16
know, he wanted to pay homage to his friend and
14:18
it's really sweet. It is. Yeah. So Louie lets
14:22
us know that he has a protect aircraft shield
14:25
and it comes with an anti -flak shield and they
14:28
can upgrade the stealth mode of it as well. And
14:32
they do need to hire a gremlin mechanic. Do they
14:35
do that? I don't think they do. I don't think
14:37
they do. Or maybe they do. And it's just not
14:39
something that really comes up. It's not necessary
14:41
to tell us about it. But actually, the party
14:44
planner does take damage later in the book. But
14:47
I just don't think that after that it is necessary
14:50
to repair it. Yeah. Yeah, he does go down. Yeah,
14:54
he crashes. So I think maybe it's just completely
14:57
destroyed. Possibly. It also has the ability
15:00
to drop bombs. It does. And they let us know
15:04
that it just takes one person to fly it. And
15:07
then they have the bomb bay and there's room
15:09
for a crew of five, a pilot, co -pilot. a tail
15:15
gunner, a ball turret gunner, and a bombardier.
15:17
And Samantha says, I call the ball turret. Wait,
15:21
what's a ball turret? Well, and then also she
15:26
sneaks on later in the book and they're like,
15:29
Samantha, you can't be on there. She just makes
15:32
things complicated and more difficult and they
15:35
end up dropping her out of the plane. Serious.
15:37
Yeah, it's a good thing Samantha is indestructible.
15:41
Yeah, so Florin and Katya both feel that the
15:45
party planner is a death trap. Mm hmm. It does
15:48
have that appearance. So they're able to inspect
15:51
it. And we're going to read part of that description
15:54
here. The type of plane that it is is classified
15:56
or is called a casket in the sky. And Louis says
16:01
that's the name of the type of airplane it is.
16:03
There's a bunch of different models, but there's
16:05
another one called a dumbass mobile. Super reassuring.
16:08
Mm hmm. And Carl exchanges a look with Ellie,
16:12
who had her trademark are -you -fucking -kidding
16:14
-me look. In the description of the party planner,
16:18
the AI goes on an interesting little tangent,
16:21
and Bree's going to read that out for us. If
16:24
one studies the history of societies who managed
16:27
to wipe themselves out before they reached the
16:29
ability to flee into the stars, there are a few
16:32
remarkable similarities in all of them. There's
16:35
a roadmap that contains multiple waypoints along
16:38
the way. from certain types of religions, to
16:41
the mass production of projectile firearms, and
16:44
usually culminating in either nuclear winter
16:46
or uncontrolled biological warfare. It's almost
16:50
always the same. Sad, really. Anyways, one of
16:53
the final waypoints on the this is how they killed
16:56
themselves is almost always the thing that you're
16:58
looking at right now. I love that there is this
17:03
kind of roadmap that the AI is talking about,
17:05
and I would imagine that This is accurate. I
17:10
would imagine no matter where you are in the
17:12
universe, you know, at some point nuclear fission
17:15
could become possible. Physics don't change too
17:19
much overall. Of course, our understanding of
17:21
physics and everything is limited and there's
17:23
a lot that we don't know and there's a lot that
17:26
we don't know that we don't know. Well, this
17:29
is alluding to the Fermi Paradox, and I would
17:31
love to do a side tangent episode on that, and
17:34
we probably will at some point. The Fermi Paradox
17:36
is extraordinarily fascinating and something
17:38
that I would like to talk about in detail. But
17:41
we're definitely going to make that our own episode.
17:43
Yes, it's a lot to get into. The description
17:46
also notes that all bombs dropped from the main
17:50
model are given a 50 % increase in yield. and
17:53
this could be further enhanced if you happen
17:55
to know anybody who could build you even better
17:57
custom -made bombs. Hmm. Hmm, wonder who that
18:00
could possibly be. No idea. I mean, just a 50
18:04
% increase in yield alone is pretty spectacular,
18:07
and then with Carl's increase in yield that he
18:10
can add on to any bomb that he makes, like, holy
18:13
shit. Yeah, but Florin very wisely starts worrying
18:18
that if this is what they have access to, what
18:23
does everyone else have access to? And it says
18:27
that they can have a total of 10 aircrafts and
18:30
they are able to steal other people's aircrafts,
18:34
which I unfortunately don't think happens at
18:35
any point. That would have been very enjoyable.
18:37
It would have been extremely enjoyable. And unfortunately,
18:41
it's not just airplanes. They can have 10 tech
18:43
armor crafts or vehicles, which is extremely
18:47
limiting. It is great that they can steal some.
18:50
and keep those, and it doesn't count as their
18:52
original 10. At this point in the series, it's
18:56
kind of expected that they're going to have this
18:58
out -of -dungeon technology that kind of doesn't
19:01
fit with the main theme of the dungeon. And I
19:04
do remember back in The Butcher's Masquerade
19:06
when Carl steals that trebuchet from one of the
19:13
elves races. He's like, do you see this bullshit?
19:15
They're cheating. They shouldn't have this kind
19:17
of stuff. This is ridiculous. With that said,
19:20
Louis does make the comment that the party planner
19:24
itself is very high tech, like out of dungeon
19:26
style tech, but the bullets and bombs that it
19:30
would drop are actually still dungeon style tech.
19:33
And he thinks that this is because when the Valté
19:36
run dungeon crawler world and such, that it's
19:38
all like robots and laser blasters and stuff.
19:41
So this must be some kind of like compromise
19:44
since they took control. It makes me wonder.
19:48
I wonder when the next time they get to run a
19:50
crawl is, like, does this count towards that?
19:52
I'm not sure, actually. I don't think that that's
19:54
something that's going to be a factor at any
19:57
point in this series. No, it's just fun to think
19:59
about. Yeah. Well, and I don't think that Matt
20:02
would do this, but with what he's set up in this
20:07
series, like, there is technically the ability
20:10
to write, like, endless content in this universe.
20:14
Definitely. Lauren notes that... they really
20:18
need to get to their headquarters to start building
20:20
their defenses up, and that they can't see all
20:24
of the rules in the Warlord menu until they get
20:26
to their headquarters, which is really important,
20:29
and a lot of that's going to be coming up in
20:31
the next few chapters. Donut has been reading
20:34
and studying them more. Mm -hmm. I mean, Donut
20:36
has been studying the Warlord rules more than
20:39
Carl has, and he actually makes the comment,
20:41
Florin asks him, he's like, okay, so what have
20:44
you read? What have you been doing? He's like,
20:45
fuck. I haven't done anything. Oh, no. But and
20:49
Florian also makes a really insightful comment
20:51
that he needs to figure out how the other groups
20:55
are able to get tech like this, because he says
20:59
that if they just have to straight up pay for
21:01
it, then you can probably assume that they're
21:03
maxed out. Yeah, absolutely. And they are pretty
21:06
maxed out. Yeah, but they need to get going so
21:09
they can finish reading the Warlord stuff. And
21:11
also because it's time for them to get recruiting.
21:13
Join us next week when we're going to talk about
21:15
my favorite topic, which is illicit butthole
21:18
money. We will see you then. New achievement.
21:21
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