Character · from book 1
Zev
A two-foot-tall kua-tin in a water-filled 1950s space suit: Borant's Assistant Communications Representative, assigned to Carl and Donut as their PR agent once interview requests pile up. Terrified of her own government, starved of anyone to talk to about Gossip Girl.
Race and class, since book 1: Kua-tin
First appears: Book 1
Series arc
Through book 1
The first face of Borant that is also a person. Her one speech (B1 ch. 36) is the series' statement of the machine from inside it — her family, her Party boss, everyone afraid — and her friendship with Donut is the first alliance across the crawler/operator line. She has already been suspended once for helping (B1 ch. 44) and knows the AI is watching her.
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Borant's bankruptcy and the Valtay fleet at the door | B1 ch. 36 | open — Mordecai's whispered politics; Odette: the next season is the Valtay's. |
All threads: Open threads.
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl | 8/48 | Ch. 35, Ch. 36, Ch. 37, Ch. 38, Ch. 39, Ch. 41, Ch. 44, Ch. 47 · the book's own page |
By book
Zev in book 1 — Dungeon Crawler Carl
Introduced at the end of ch. 35 by a warning that weapons may not be wielded in the presence of Admins, Zev is two feet of kua-tin in a bubbling 1950s water suit she cannot move in, on her first trip into a dungeon that has eaten twelve site-prep workers. She is there to tell Carl and Donut that she is their PR agent now. Carl's temper gets the book's clearest statement of what the game is from the other side: her family will be wiped out if she says the wrong thing to a Party boss; everyone here is afraid; 'we are all parts of the same, inexorable machine' (ch. 36). Then Donut mentions Chuck and Blair and Zev has a friend.
She is suspended for warning of the Rage Elemental a half-second before Jack's stream hit the wall (ch. 37, ch. 44), cleared on appeal, and returns knowing the AI has noticed her. She tells Carl to stop using the slingshot because it is boring (ch. 47), that the Meadow Lark storyline has completed, that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and that the Party is delighted with a sex tape she cannot quite bring herself to describe (ch. 44).