Chapter 6 of Carl’s Doomsday Scenario follows Carl, Princess Donut, and Mongo as they investigate the dead crawlers near Grimaldi’s circus. What begins as a cautious inspection becomes a view of the circus preparing for battle. Mordecai orders the party to retreat, but magical artillery cuts off their escape. They emerge from a collapsed building to meet Tsarina Signet, a level-60 elite whose dispute with the circus has already put them in danger.
The Bautista crawlers
Donut opens the approach by killing the sleeping lemur identified during the previous chapter’s scouting. She uses Magic Missile, and the party waits five minutes for a response. None comes. Carl hears distant calliope music as they move toward the three dead-crawler marks on his map. The street contains more blood and remains than three intact bodies would account for. Carl knows that a dead-crawler mark can disappear if a body has been badly destroyed, so he cannot establish the full number of casualties from the map alone. He suspects a larger fight took place and that any dead lemurs were removed. The position of the visible bodies confirms his earlier judgment that they had been left where approaching crawlers might be drawn into an ambush.
The three corpses are identified as Grace, Nica, and Lea Bautista. Each is a level-eight crawler, and examination attributes each death to a former circus lemur. Two bodies are human; the third has a tree-like form with human facial features, a bent back, and additional limbs. The examination does not disclose the dead crawlers’ new race names. Their shared surname leads Carl to take them for relatives, but he has no account of their lives or of the exact sequence in which they died. Their equipment has largely been stripped away. Carl sees that they have no remaining inventory and considers it possible that other members of their group survived and took the portable items. The chapter does not identify who looted them.
Donut spots an anklet on the tree-like crawler and rings on Nica. The anklet takes Carl several minutes to remove, suggesting one reason it may have been left behind during the hurried stripping of the bodies. The two rings each add two points to Strength. Donut cannot wear them, so Carl cleans them and puts them on, bringing his total to four rings. He feels the value of the increase despite his discomfort at taking possessions from dead crawlers. The discovery also makes him recognize a disturbing incentive of the dungeon: where crawlers encounter one another, another crawler’s death can yield useful equipment. He considers the temptation that could create for a player killer without treating these particular deaths as a killing committed for loot.
The wooden Enchanted Anklet of the Fallen Oak gives its wearer one point each of Dexterity and Constitution and three levels of Double Tap. Donut dislikes both its appearance and the idea of wearing an anklet, but Carl presses the importance of its Constitution bonus. She equips it on a rear leg, where it shrinks to fit and is mostly hidden by her fur. Its small beads make little noise. Carl estimates that her Constitution reaches seven while her hairbrush bonus remains active, a figure he still considers dangerously low. Donut explains Double Tap as a chance for the second of two successive identical attacks to inflict critical damage. Examining the bodies therefore gives Donut an immediate defensive improvement and Carl a Strength increase.
Looking into Grimaldi’s circus
The group moves closer as the calliope grows louder and the sun approaches the rooftops. Carl has seen no new saferoom on this route. They kill five more sentinel lemurs before taking cover in a ruined building overlooking the circus. The lookouts are difficult to notice but comparatively easy to approach slowly. Donut kills most of them, often leaving Mongo to finish the attack. Mongo reaches level four and grows to about Donut’s size. He reacts intensely to the lemurs, sometimes giving a short screech while trying to stay quiet. His eagerness nearly exposes the party when he pounces on a sleeping lemur inside a building. Carl kills that creature before it can do more than make a brief sound. A giraffe carrying lemurs passes soon afterward while the three hide against an interior wall.
From a window opening, Carl sees three large tents, many smaller tents, wagons, and cages holding creatures he cannot yet make out. Lemurs, giraffes, and stilt clowns move among other circus mobs. These include short, round clowns and a large ogre-like performer with a tentacle projecting from his neck. A faded sign advertises Grimaldi’s World O’ Freaks and displays painted attractions along its sides. The signs establish that the encampment is a staged circus as well as a defended position; they do not establish that its inhabitants are harmless entertainers.
One of the painted figures is a horned, tattooed woman advertised as “Tsarina Signet and Her Amazing Battle Squad.” Her image has been circled and crossed out, and “Wanted. Traitor” has been painted above it. A passing clown urinates on the poster. Donut and Carl can see the circus’s hostility toward Signet before meeting her, but the display gives them no reliable explanation of the betrayal or of Signet’s present aims. It marks a conflict within the circus rather than an alliance the party can safely assume.
Other activity points to an imminent fight. A worn battlement of rock, wood, and bone surrounds the circus. Clowns drape animal skins over its barriers, while stilt clowns set out linked wooden obstacles and barbed wire in the street. Carl concludes that the inhabitants are preparing for a battle. He cannot tell who will attack them. The defensive work, combined with the cages and numerous sentries, makes the site far larger and more dangerous than a small pack of lemurs near the party’s saferoom.
Mordecai contacts Carl to ask whether they have reached the other town they had intended to visit. Carl tells him what has happened instead. Mordecai directs them to back away and return to the saferoom before dark, saying they are out of their depth. Carl objects that Mordecai was unconscious when they needed his advice, but he agrees they were about to leave. The warning changes the party’s priority from continued observation to getting clear of the circus while there is still daylight. Mordecai adds that night falls quickly.
The retreat and mortar strike
As the party prepares to move, sentries stream back toward the circus from several directions. Carl, Donut, and Mongo crouch within the ruined building while lemurs, clowns, and a giraffe pass outside. Donut notices that the flow seems endless. Carl judges that waiting for the patrols to return to their base may give the group a chance to run without being followed. By the time the procession thins, he estimates that an immense number have passed. The last of the street barricades are being completed, and the circus’s defensive preparations have become more visible.
Carl also sees four cauldrons on his side of the encampment, each attended by four tall, thin figures in ragged, brightly colored robes and masks. Round clowns push large painted animal cages to the perimeter with their doors facing outward. Sounds and glimpses of claws and tentacles reveal that the unseen occupants are alive and formidable. Carl guesses the circus may release them against its attackers. He has no reason to wait and learn whether his guess is right; the party leaves its hiding place and heads for the saferoom.
Two lemurs and a clown remain on the street. Donut fires Magic Missiles, Mongo helps dispatch one lemur, and Carl attacks the clown at close range. Carl feels the added Strength from the Bautista rings in his punches. He collects another Big Top Ticket and clown meat. A group of lemurs on a neighboring street spots them but does not pursue. With the saferoom about four blocks away, Carl sends everyone running down the main street rather than taking a slower path through alleys.
Donut begins to report that Magic Missile can now set a target on fire, but an explosion cuts her off. Part of the street behind them is torn apart. The blast throws them forward and injures Mongo; Donut casts Heal Critter on him. Carl then sees a purple-and-yellow projectile rise from the circus, strike the ceiling, and descend toward them. He realizes that the figures at the cauldrons are firing magical mortar rounds. Their failure to pursue on foot has not meant the party is beyond the circus’s reach.
Carl directs Donut and Mongo into a nearby entrance and shields them as another round hits. The building collapses around them. His health drops, and he drinks a healing potion while falling debris and a broken wooden floor send the three farther down. They land in darkness among rubble. Carl frees Donut and Mongo from beneath him, then restores the rest of his health with Heal. Donut casts Torch. No further mortar round lands during their pause; Carl thinks the gunners may believe the strike killed them, but the chapter does not confirm what the attackers know.
The three are in a small stone-walled basement below the main level of the Over City. Carl had not known there were rooms beneath its streets. The staircase has collapsed, and the only visible exit is the hole through which they fell, roughly twelve feet above them. Carl considers building a ladder, but time is short. Donut says her Puddle Jumper spell needs a better line of sight than the narrow hole permits. She jumps out to widen the opening, leaving Mongo briefly distressed by her absence. She returns quickly, frightened by someone waiting on the street: the woman from the defaced circus poster.
Tsarina Signet
Donut reports that Signet looked toward her without attacking. Her map marker is white, which initially gives Carl hope that conversation may be possible. After Donut enlarges the exit, she uses Puddle Jumper to bring Carl and Mongo up. Night has fallen. The circus is brightly lit nearby, and clowns, lemurs, and giraffes can see the party. Their failure to resume the mortar attack gives Carl no assurance that the danger has passed.
Carl examines the waiting woman. Signet has short horns, pointed ears, fangs, faintly luminous skin, and moving tattoos of monsters across her body. Her identification names her a half-naiad, half-high-elf summoner at level 60 and identifies her as an elite. The description also warns that, because she is a fairy-class NPC, Carl’s goblin pass causes creatures of her class to deal twenty percent more damage against him. The elite encounter grants Carl an achievement and changes his map so elites can be marked with a black cross on a white or red dot. That added map information comes only after he has already reached her.
Signet’s presence exerts an immediate effect on Carl. Despite finding her frightening, he feels a strong attraction and begins moving toward her. He alerts Mordecai through party chat while still capable of recognizing that something is wrong. Mordecai distinguishes the effect from a full Charm spell and suggests that Signet’s very high Charisma may be producing a lesser effect called Puppy Dog, which grows stronger with exposure. He tells Carl to fracture his own finger. Carl breaks his left little finger, and the pain clears his thoughts. Signet recognizes the tactic. Carl takes a health potion afterward. Mordecai first mistakes her for a succubus, then reacts with greater alarm when Donut supplies the examined identity and elite status; he again urges them to leave.
Signet says she came to check whether they survived the attack by people she calls her former family. Her language accords with the crossed-out poster and the circus’s visible hostility, but it does not settle why they are fighting. Carl tries to end the encounter and keeps Protective Shell ready in case Signet turns hostile. Mongo initially relaxes under her attention and accepts a pat. Donut resists when Signet reaches for her; Mongo then seems to regain his caution and growls as well. Donut states plainly that she and Carl want no part in Signet’s quarrel with the circus.
Signet replies that it is too late for them to leave. As the tattoos on her body move faster, she gestures toward the encampment. The circus animals and clowns cheer. Carl sees that the perimeter cages have opened. Red markers appear on his map ahead, behind, and to both sides as the released creatures close in. The chapter ends with the party surrounded, before their response to the new attackers is shown.