Butcher's Masquerade Ball

This article contains unmarked spoilers for Book 5.

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The Butcher's Masquerade Ball is an event on the Sixth Floor.

For the spell, see Butcher's Masquerade Spell. For the book, see The Butcher's Masquerade (Book).

Castle Design & Ball Details

Overarching Design

Edgar the tortoise was able to successfully map the castle ahead of time in great detail. From the outside, it's reminiscent of a sugar cube with a small turret at each corner, but it extends several stories underground, so its true shape is rectangular. The crawlers will be located in one ballroom on the 4th floor, the hunters will be in another ballroom on the 2nd floor, and the High Elves will be in the throne room on the 7th floor. These are separated and considered goodwill rooms, so that crawlers and hunters both don't have to fear the other group (i.e., goodwill rooms allow for very minor physical interactions, like a light touch, but nothing more). Queen Imogen is bound by no such goodwill. There are two servant staging areas on the 1st floor (A and B) that house the pets and other entrants into the competitions.^[1] Servant Ballroom B is located immediately below the Hunter's Ballroom. The Security Room that enforces the anti-violence protocols is located on the 3rd floor.^[2] The alarm system is controlled from the Security Room, and when the system is either activated or deactivated in a ballroom, the glow globe on the wall flashes twice - one for being muted and one for being unable to access inventory (peace bound).^[3] There are many additional rooms and hallways, but they are unimportant. The most important other feature is the cat tunnels that run between the levels and rooms.^[4]

Crawler Attendance & Arrival

All top-50 crawlers will be going to the masquerade, and each one has a plus-one token, so that they can bring a guest of their choice. It will be a running leaderboard up until shortly before the masquerade, and anyone who has an invite and subsequently falls out of the top-50 will no longer have a valid invite. Crawlers with "attendants" (e.g. pets, dinosaurs, mercenaries, etc.) get escorted in, while the ones without attendants get teleported into the castle. Those escorted in meet at the border of the elf kingdom and then get escorted to the castle accordingly.^[3]

Origin Story

Taranis and his wife, Apito, put on the first masquerade for all of their children and extended family. Grull asked his mother about why she called it a masquerade, and her answer is apparently considered sacred gospel, "She said, 'My son, the masks we wear are the smiles upon our faces and the goodwill we present to each other this evening. There will be no violence. No maneuvering. Just an evening of feats and friendly contests and tales of past conquests. A place where you can face your greatest enemies and not worry about it being the end of your plots."

Everything went accordingly to plan until Yarilo, the god of lust, tried to force himself onto another god's familiar while drunk. Apito subsequently banished him to The Nothing as punishment, which then turned the entire party into a massive fight. All mortals and demigods got slaughtered.^[3]

The How and Why

Queen Imogen is hosting this to cast The Butcher's Masquerade spell, which will grant her a boon from Apito if the party properly finishes without violence. A caster has only shot at this spell ever, and Imogen wants that boon. The guest list is deliberately supposed to introduce discord and threaten violence to mimic what happened at the first masquerade.^[3]

Prize Counter

Hunter hands and crawler scalps can be traded in at the prize counter run by Chaco. Since hunters do not have an unlimited inventory system, they receive any items above and beyond their capacity in an inventory box that needs to be opened by the end of the level. If they do not open it before then, the items disappear. Chaco will teleport away as soon as the seal is broken, so crawlers and hunters are limited to the hands/scalps that they came in with. There are more prizes than what is listed below as I've only included those with explicit names and prices. ^[5]

Prize Counter

Cost	Prize	Description	Bought By
100[5]	Memorial Crystal	Created by gods and demigods when they die, filled with information, spells, and knowledge (mostly god-tier). Queen Imogen's prized possession, and it has to be included in the Prize Counter as part of the Butcher's Masquerade spell.	?
50[5]	Book of War Lord	Book of War Lord	?
50[5]	Book of Gore Golem	Book of Gore Golem	?
30[5]	Seventh-Floor Pole Position (Single Item)	?	Prepotente (Crawler, lvl 70 Forsaken Aerialist)
30[5]	Eighth-Floor Book of Lore (Random starting location. Full title will reveal itself upon purchase). (Single Item)	?	Carl (Crawler, lvl 59 Compensated Anarchist)
20[5]	Drop Shield	Disposable item, similar to Protective Shield, lasts until the battery runs out (about an hour of usage) or until enough damage is done to break it. It stays rooted in place, and doesn't stop magic.	Zabit (Hunter, lvl 66 Beastmaster) x 1
20[5]	Wand of Shrinking	10x charges to Shrinking	Carl (Crawler, lvl 59 Compensated Anarchist)
10[5]	Potion of Level Up	Potion of Level Up, limited to 1 per crawler/hunter	?
10[5]	Book of Skedaddle	Book of Skedaddle	Carl (Crawler, lvl 59 Compensated Anarchist)
10[5]	Book of Poison Grapple	Book of Poison Grapple	?
10[5]	Book of Scar Tissue	Book of Scar Tissue	?
10[5]	Book of Fish Blaster	Book of Fish Blaster	?
5[5]	Random Spell Book	Random Spell Book	?
3[5]	Invisibility Potion Pack	12x Invisibility Potions	Zabit (Hunter, lvl 66 Beastmaster) x 1
3[5]	Size Up Potion Pack	X Size Up Potions (quantity unknown)	?
3[5]	Feather Fall Potion Pack	24 Feather Fall Potions	Carl (Crawler, lvl 59 Compensated Anarchist)
3[5]	Scroll of Mapping	X Scroll of Mapping (quantity unknown)	?
3[5]	Paw Patrol	X Scroll of Paw Patrol (quantity unknown)	?
3[5]	Scroll of Milk of Lamashtu	X Scroll of Milk of Lamashtu (quantity unknown)	?
2[5]	Upgrade +10% to Lowest Stat	Upgrade +10% to Lowest Stat, limited to only one 2 cost item per crawler/hunter	?
2[5]	Upgrade +5% to Highest Stat	Upgrade +5% to Highest Stat, limited to only one 2 cost item per crawler/hunter	?
2[5]	Upgrade +2 to Random Skill or Spell	Upgrade +2 to Random Skill or Spell, limited to only one 2 cost item per crawler/hunter	?
1[5]	Good Healing Potion Pack	25x Good Healing Potions	Carl (Crawler, lvl 59 Compensated Anarchist)
1[5]	Good Mana Potion Pack	25x Good Mana Potions	?

Story

Plan 1A

The original plan is to use the Gideon distraction to first empty as many guards as possible from the castle (unclear on what exactly Gideon will do for the distraction, probably a frontal assault along with other things).

Regardless, a key part is getting the dinosaurs stored in the servant's ballroom (B) right under the hunter's ballroom, while the other attendants will stay in the planned servant's ballroom. In preparation for the ball, crawlers will go through a boudoir to freshen up, and Carl will leave Half Splat and Dinosaur Repellent potions in here for other crawlers to take (the same potion combo might be distributed directly to crawlers during the party). Britney has a special jacket made from many of Bautista's Slate Butterfly stuffed animals, as they are attracted to light when activated, so they can be used to mask the flashing lights for when their room is deactivated.^[3]

The final piece to the inside plan, is that Donut needs to don her new tiara from a benefactor box that doubles her charisma for thirty hours. Once in place and with her buffs, her charisma now exceeds 300. This is important because Mistress Tiatha swears that province bosses can be charmed if your charisma is at least 100 over their constitution + charisma. Ferdinand is indeed a province boss - the crawlers guessed correctly - and he has 100 constitution and 75 charisma. While Donut is doing this, Samantha will use the cat tunnels to sneak into the Security Room, drop a potion she has stored in her neck hole to incapacitate the guards, and remove the security crystals that have the crawlers muted and peace bound (i.e., unable to access inventory).^[4] Donut will then double charm Ferdinand by using a Charm Animal potion during the Pet Show.

While all of this stuff is going on inside the castle, Bomo will go back out into the Zockau safe room to loot all of the stuff left behind by the remaining hunters there (i.e., as they will be teleported away to the ball). Sledge will meet up with half of the changelings and enter through the secret entrance in the tunnels beneath the castle. They will then impersonate elves, take control of all of the guard towers, and create a docking station for the Twister, which contains the other half of the changeling cohort. Now that all of the changelings and Sledge are attached to the castle, Sledge will cast Zerzura to teleport the castle, the changelings, the other party-aligned NPCs, and himself to the ninth floor.

As soon as the crawlers need Queen Imogen out of the ballroom, they will use Sledge as a relay to send a changeling upstairs and rat out Signet in the dungeon. This will force Imogen and her security detail to leave their room and deal with the threat. ^[6]

Plan 2B

Instead of having the crawlers make the first move, they now plan on proceeding with everything outside of the party, but doing nothing provocative within (i.e., due to Imogen not being touchable while in her ballroom and simultaneously being able to murder the shit out of them). This plan then gets thrown out the window as soon as they learn that Imogen cannot leave her room as it relies on them being able to draw her out. ^[3]

Plan 2C

The crawlers call another audible when it turns out that, once Imogen enters the room, she can't leave. Instead of trying to wait it out, now Donut will cast Hole at the appropriate time dropping the crawlers from the 4th to the 3rd floor. ^[3] Since Imogen can't leave her room, they no longer plan on ratting out Signet, and instead want to either trigger Signet early or save her for once the security seal is broken. This plan is then thrown into chaos as soon as the AI decides to show itself as Apito to Signet, tell her that she is welcome at the ball, and then teleport her into the crawler's ballroom.^[6]

Plan 3D

With Signet getting teleported in, and then Sledge and the outside crawlers suddenly finding themselves attacked by mantis nymphs, the plan changes rapidly on the fly. Instead of sneaking in through the tunnels, Sledge will now fly in with the changelings. Having Skarn moor the Twister to a turret is still important, but this proves impossible with the elven magic missiles from the towers and the nymph swarm. Sledge has a controller that he uses to remotely steer the Twister into the two remaining, active towers after the other two are taken. Samantha is about to "kill them all" in the Security Room, but finds them already decapitated ala mantis. This is good as Samantha decided to remove the potion in her neck hole anyway. ^[7]

The crawlers are now at an impasse because they need the seal broken, but have no idea how to bait someone else to do it. Carl plans on killing Eva to break the seal, sacrifice himself, and thus, saving his friends.

Events

Instead of Carl having to get sucked into The Nothing, Signet is enraged after she discovers that all of this is just part of a story. She decides to kill herself to save Carl, cast her spell, while also breaking the seal. As she is exsanguinated, she is sucked into The Nothing, and her blood stays behind to power her tattoos.

Donut and Carl had smuggled in potions to the show as part of the velociraptor costumes. While onstage, Donut pops one of the costume bubbles around Kiwi's neck, and gives her the I Take it All Back potion just as Tina reappears. This reverts Kiwi to her bear form, now pregnant, which triggers the end of the completion of The Recital Quest. Since Kiwi is no longer a raptor though, the remainder of the raptors now turn into enemy combatants.^[8]

Sledge finally finishes casting Zerzura, which teleports the castle to the ninth floor, as planned. This triggers everyone not teleported away to fall to the bedrock of the castle (hence why Carl tried to distribute Half Splat potions to all crawlers). This also triggers a four-way boss battle between the crawlers, the hunters, Queen Imogen, and Diwata/Circe Took.

Donut casts level 15 Laundry Day to strip Circe out of Diwata's body, which then makes her vulnerable as Diwata returns to the Halls of the Ascendancy. A dozen of her nymph children immediately descend and kill her. Carl then kills the last hunter, Zabit, by using Tripper to activate the traps tied to the hunter's body. The rest of the crawlers are focusing on slowly whittling Imogen down, who is susceptible to physical attacks. As her health lowers, her lightning spell becomes more and more powerful. The second-to-last strike does enough damage to activate Donut's Cockroach skill, while doing significant damage to other crawlers. The last strike will be powerful enough to kill Donut - and probably many other crawlers - but Britney pulls the tags on the rest of her jacket to release a cloud of the moths, which the strike ends up targeting due to size and location.^[9]

Aftermath

Donut and Mongo did not win the Pet Show. Both are outraged. Ren's Tummy Acher, Garrett, won instead - naturally there is suspicion of cheating.

After Signet kills herself, her tattoos are willed to life, including Clint and Miss Nadine. There is also a flesh golem of her mother, Princess Lunette, left behind. If this item is given to a pulpmancer, Samantha can transfer to it and inhabit a full body again.^[8]

Several important crawlers died - namely Firas, Gideon, and Gwen - while others became permanently disfigured (i.e., Britney received burns to her face and Tran lost his legs). While the Popov twins also died, since they are a nodling, they split into ogre yearlings that then get teleported out of the dungeon because they are now age-ineligible.

Queen Imogen has the memorial crystal returned to her, but it gets replaced around her neck instead of being stuck into her inventory. Thus, when Pony kills her, another crawler, Osvaldo, is able to snatch the crystal first (even though Pony has first rights to loot her inventory). Both Pony and Carl have quests that revolve around the crystal, so both have a vested interest in retrieving it from Osvaldo.

Katia and Li Na find Eva and, before Katia manages to kill her, she places the Crown of the Sepsis Whore on Katia, adding her to the royal succession line, and further complicating the ninth floor for Donut.^[10] Speaking of the ninth floor, the castle got teleported there successfully, along with Sledge, Clint, Miss Nadine, other NPCs, and Ferdinand (who became a minion of Donut as soon as she charmed him).

References