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 2: Cat · Former Child Actor
First appears: Book 1
Series arc
As of book 2. A Persian cat with a charisma score and a want — the audience — who by the end of book 2 has stopped being underestimated by anyone but the show. Level 26, seventh on the leaderboard, a Former Child Actor who tricked an Incubus into managing her, the party's negotiator and its conscience on the GumGum quest, and the one who says under the glass case that she knows Bea is dead. Open: the ninth floor and the Blood Sultanate (the tiara is ash; the claim may not be), a manufactured feud with Lucia Mar, Hekla's interest, and Odette's line about what keeps her with Carl.
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The Crown of the Sepsis Whore and the ninth floor | B1 ch. 7 | open · B2 ch. 25 — The tiara is ash under wild magic; the description said she would still be a princess. |
| 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.' |
| The manufactured feud with Lucia Mar | B2 ch. 21 | open — A recap cut a drunk remark into a challenge; Lucia accepted it. |
| Hekla's design on Donut | B2 ch. 26 | open — She wants Donut for the permanent manager; Katia is the hook, per Odette. |
| Bounties: 100,000 on each of them | B2 ch. 26 | open — 'It's how much other crawlers get if they kill you.' |
| Whether Bea is alive | B1 ch. 4 | resolved · B2 ch. 24 — 'I'm not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she's dead.' |
| Odette's unnamed class choice | B1 ch. 48 | resolved · B2 ch. 1 — Former Child Actor; the Manager benefit binds Mordecai to Donut's saferooms. |
All threads: Open threads.
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.
Through book 2
The floor where she stops being underestimated. She engineers Mordecai's captivity with a performance (B2 ch. 1), takes the word 'partner' (B2 ch. 5), decides on her own that GumGum's quest is theirs (B2 ch. 17), dismantles a comedian on live television (B2 ch. 19), and refuses to let Carl face a lich alone because he promised she would not die alone (B2 ch. 23). Carl's private worry — that she hides her cunning behind a camera face, as Bea's mother taught Bea to (B2 ch. 12) — is answered by her own admission under the glass case: 'I'm not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she's dead' (B2 ch. 24).
Carried forward: the tiara is gone (ash, B2 ch. 25) but the Sultanate's claim on the ninth floor may not be; Ferdinand is Gravy Boat; a feud with Lucia Mar the show invented and Lucia accepted; Hekla wants her for the permanent manager who comes with her; a bounty of 100,000; and Odette's line about what keeps her with Carl.
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 |
| 2 — Carl's Doomsday Scenario | 26/26 | 1–26 · 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.
Princess Donut in book 2 — Carl's Doomsday Scenario
The choice
Donut's first act on the third floor is her most consequential and her most theatrical: 'Cat. Final answer,' then a fake Artist Alley pick and a real Former Child Actor one, taking the Manager benefit that chains Mordecai to her — 'And scene' (ch. 1). She spends the floor immune to poison, a Character Actor borrowing a merchant class, with a Cockroach skill that will save her life while she sleeps.
The partner
Carl says 'He's not your child, Donut. He's a pet' and regrets it; she says 'Partner' (ch. 5). The floor keeps proving her: the sentry kill from a roof, the reconnaissance of the circus, 'Sic 'em'; Second Chance on a mold lion and Clockwork Triplicate on the zombie (ch. 7); the master negotiator at five general stores (ch. 14); the fan-box photograph of Bea that she loves and Carl no longer minds (ch. 17); the decision — hers — to finish GumGum's quest because GumGum died for it (ch. 17); Tucker destroyed on air (ch. 19); the overacted bait over the spy scroll (ch. 21). Carl watches her hide her cunning behind a camera face and worries she inherited it from Bea's mother (ch. 12).
She loses a day to Water Lily and wakes dreaming of Ferdinand as a porcupine (ch. 12), tells a galaxy that Ferdinand, a moggie, is the love of her life, and Carl tells it his name was Gravy Boat (ch. 19), and asks Carl to promise she will not die alone (ch. 17) — then holds him to it: 'We do this together' (ch. 23). Under the glass case, waiting to die, she says the thing she has been pretending not to know: 'I'm not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she's dead' (ch. 24). The next chapter takes her tiara to ash (ch. 25). She ends the floor level 26, seventh on the leaderboard, wanted by Lucia Mar and by Hekla, and outraged about a Celestial box (epilogue).