Character · from book 1
Princess Donut
GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk — Bea's tortoiseshell Persian show cat, carried into the dungeon under Carl's arm. An Enhanced Pet Biscuit makes her sapient, a tiara makes her royalty, a charisma score in the forties makes her a talker of goblins and a natural on television. Crawler #4,119. Carl is, per the system, her Royal Bodyguard.
Race and class, since book 1: Cat
First appears: Book 1
Series arc
Through book 1
Donut's shape is set in her first two chapters as a person: she is exactly the cat she was, now with words, a charisma score, and a want. The want is the audience. Book 1 gives her the stage (B1 ch. 28) and the follower count, and shows the cost in small ways — checking her numbers during a siege, acting for a single viewer. Against that it sets the things she does for Carl when nobody is scoring them: stopping him leaving (B1 ch. 8), the claws at the Juicer (B1 ch. 24), dragging him out of the fire (B1 ch. 35), the drunk confession that she will not be fine alone (B1 ch. 34).
Carried forward: the Crown of the Sepsis Whore and the ninth floor; Mongo; her friendship with Zev; Ferdinand, whoever he is; and the sentence she said small-voiced in B1 ch. 44 that Carl did not answer.
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Whether Bea is alive | B1 ch. 4 | open — Donut loves her more than Carl and says so; the question is raised and refused. |
| The Crown of the Sepsis Whore and the ninth floor | B1 ch. 7 | open — Donut is bound to the Blood Sultanate; Mordecai calls it a challenge, the Maestro a death sentence. |
| Mordecai's advice to leave Donut before the ninth floor | B1 ch. 7 | open — Overheard by Donut; not answered by Carl. |
| Maggie My's vow and her Find Crawler potion | B1 ch. 43 | open — 'I am going to watch you die. You and the fucking cat.' |
| Odette's unnamed class choice | B1 ch. 48 | open — A class among Donut's options that will make someone very angry. |
All threads: Open threads.
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl | 47/48 | 1–5, 7–48 · the book's own page |
By book
Princess Donut in book 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl
Part 1 — from pet to Princess
Donut gets a crawler number of her own in ch. 2, eats the Enhanced Pet Biscuit from Carl's hand in ch. 5, and emerges talking in ch. 6–ch. 7 as exactly the cat she was with a vocabulary: charisma 25, constitution 2, a grand champion's sense of her own standing, and a tiara she puts on without reading. Her first act outside the guild is to stop Carl leaving (ch. 8) with the most honest speech in the book — she is scared, she does not want to be alone, and she saw him looking at cat-friendly apartments.
The floor gives her two powers and a want. Magic Missile makes her the party's damage (ch. 8, ch. 10); charisma makes her its diplomat — the goblins named B.A., Face and Murdock, the shamankas sobbing in her lap (ch. 15), Tally's five plates of salmon. The want is the show: 'I want on that show, Carl' from ch. 9 on, a catchphrase, screen time, a boss box. She will not use her claws because it is not ladylike (ch. 13, ch. 23) until the Juicer has Carl by the throat (ch. 24), when she opens his neck and is nearly killed for it, then performs a death scene that introduces Ferdinand. She reads Carl better than he reads himself: 'How is it I know what you're going to do before you do?' (ch. 27).
Part 2 — the natural
Odette's couch is her world the way the corridors are Carl's (ch. 28): she interviews the producer, invents an elective feline monarchy, winks at a galaxy, and promises to kill things with style. Carl sees the hunger and knows it is a problem, and it is — she checks her follower count during a grub siege (ch. 37), acts stiffly casual for her first viewer (ch. 31), and is only briefly deflated when the Maestro's gift is for Carl alone (ch. 43).
But the second floor is also where she does the work. Second Chance makes her a necromancer who finds the dead disgusting (ch. 30, ch. 32); Puddle Jumper makes Plan Pied Piper hers (ch. 33) — 'My first solo mission'; she drags Carl's broken body out of the fire by his cloak (ch. 35) and, drunk on fairy smoothie, tells him she loves him less than Bea and Ferdinand and then that she lied about being fine alone (ch. 34). She makes a friend of a terrified kua-tin over Gossip Girl (ch. 36) with a Chuck-and-Blair line that makes Carl laugh just after his outburst could have got them killed.
She chooses Mongo against Carl's advice (ch. 46) and mothers him with unexpected patience (ch. 47). And she has heard Mordecai tell Carl to leave her before the ninth floor (ch. 44); she says so, small-voiced, and he does not answer.