Shanty Town is the ring of improvised buildings surrounding the upper entrance to Larracos on the Ninth Floor. It appears after the flooding of the funnel city, housing displaced inhabitants, markets, temples, and safe-room entrances outside Larracos proper. Its position gives it two roles during Faction Wars: refuge for people leaving the city and an exposed military border touching the territories around it. Ferdinand briefly holds its mayorship before transferring control to the Princess Posse. Li Na's 107th White Dragon Urban Defense battalion subsequently helps turn the settlement into a fortified perimeter. Near the end of the campaign, Shanty Town is joined to Larracos for the Zerzura transfer to the Twelfth Floor.
Appearance around Larracos
The settlement emerges soon after Larracos is flooded. Its shacks and commercial buildings appear suddenly rather than through a witnessed construction effort. Carl finds records that treat it as a ring around the city's top entrance, large enough to count as a separate settlement. According to Victory, a smaller shanty town normally develops only after fighting begins and nonplayer inhabitants flee the city. The version in this campaign already encircles Larracos before that stage of the war. Its unusually early appearance and size make it more consequential than the customary temporary settlement.
Wood and metal structures contain food markets, other shops, and several temples. The new merchants include inhabitants whom Carl had not expected to appear after the flood, given the limits he understood to apply to newly added nonplayer characters. The markets are expensive and can supply individuals, though they are inadequate for equipping an army. There is no weapons or mercenary market and no Desperado Club entrance in the ring. A Club Vanquisher entrance exists, but it is concealed within an apparently ordinary temple. This mix of services gives Shanty Town practical value to people on every side without making it an independent source of military supplies.
The food market becomes part of the struggle between Juice Box and the invading teams. Her people had poisoned its stock, making other factions distrust it. The ceasefire refreshes the food stores; representatives of the teams then buy what they can, undermining a plan to destroy the market after fighting resumes. Shanty Town is outside Larracos, so the city's entry restrictions do not automatically keep rival teams away from its shops. The distinction makes access to its food and streets a military question even while the surrounding teams are temporarily at peace.
Shanty Town is also a physical passage between the city and the territories of Faction Wars. The river from the northern regions passes through the ring before plunging into Larracos. As a narrow band around the city's lip, the town borders the surrounding sectors rather than sitting behind one defensible front. Its position provides an extra layer of security for Larracos's inhabitants, as Victory observes, but it also exposes the settlement to approaches from multiple directions. These opposing properties shape every later decision to occupy and fortify it.
Mayorship and the Princess Posse trade
The town has a mayoral office before the Princess Posse acquires it. Juice Box tells Carl that successive mayors have been killed by outworlders, although those forces cannot yet take formal ownership. One previous mayor, the gnoll Theora, dies after an opponent challenges her to single combat and attacks her from behind. Ferdinand then becomes mayor. His position troubles Juice Box because, under the prevailing restrictions, she cannot simply remove him as she could an enemy invader once the fighting begins. The mayoralty therefore carries real control of territory even when the incumbent's interests do not align neatly with those of the city's residents.
Carl uses Ferdinand's interest in a magical bowler hat to negotiate a transfer. He asks Ferdinand to give the mayorship to the Princess Posse as part of a trade with Team Retribution. The transaction requires money as well as the promised item. Ferdinand accepts, and the formal truce between the groups is renamed in the process. The exchange is undertaken with Juice Box's knowledge; it moves responsibility for the exposed outer settlement to the crawler faction while her team continues to hold Larracos. A map subsequently identifies Shanty Town as Princess Posse territory, shown as a thin ring around the central city.
Carl explains the bargain in practical terms. Enemy teams will be able to enter the outer town when the truce ends, and its defenses operate separately from those of Larracos. Holding the ring lets the Princess Posse manage that threat directly. For Team Retribution, handing it over reduces the burden of defending a place that hostile factions can enter before they can enter the funnel city itself. The alliance does not erase the different rules on either side of their common border.
Victory points out that the enlarged settlement now gives Larracos an additional protective belt. Carl considers applying town-upgrade coupons to it, including coupons previously gained by him and Donut and a higher-tier upgrade from a reward box. Victory confirms that the coupons can be used there and notes that the new city-defense system might allow defenses resembling those of Larracos. The possibility has an opportunity cost: those upgrades could instead be used at the Princess Posse's own base. The ring is therefore treated as a separately managed possession, not merely a neighborhood of the city.
Building a defensible perimeter
Li Na asks for her squad to oversee construction in and around Shanty Town after she joins the Princess Posse's force. Carl agrees. Li Jun assists with the work, while the 107th White Dragon Urban Defense battalion becomes the main body stationed there. The defenses are still incomplete as fighting threatens to resume. Li Jun reports only two completed splash towers at one point, with more expected shortly. Their rushed installation reflects the need to protect a settlement whose border can be reached from any of the surrounding sectors.
The new towers are not all interchangeable. Shanty Town's management menu offers several automatic defenses but only a limited number of manned synergy towers. One of those, Extend Aura, can be operated by someone whose abilities match its aura function. Li Na mans it with her Dread effects. Cables added to the tower's clocklike arms are an improvised modification conceived by Mistress Tiatha rather than part of its ordinary design. The tower is useful during the offensive-magic ban, when many other attacks cannot operate. Its placement also supports an operation involving the temple entrance in Shanty Town and the linked Club Vanquisher route.
The much larger Nest tower is planned for the edge of the opening into Larracos. Li Na's builders, led by Toyotomi, undertake the expensive construction after the aura-tower work. As the next phase approaches, former crawlers finish its upper structure above the low shacks. Its height makes it a landmark in a district otherwise dominated by one- and two-story buildings. The effort takes nearly two days even with the accelerated building mechanics available on the floor. The tower is a strategic commitment to the border between the outer settlement and the funnel city, rather than a routine improvement to the markets.
Carl worries that a complete circular perimeter can be attacked from many angles. The 107th covers the ring, but a single battalion cannot make every approach equally secure. Larracos's own defense system discourages enemy forces from entering Shanty Town while they cannot strike back at the city. The outer town nevertheless remains accessible. It has no throne room for an invader to seize; Carl understands its capture condition to require killing him. Those rules protect formal control without preventing raids, destruction, or an assault on its inhabitants.
Shanty Town also provides a route for friendly forces that need to avoid hostile territory. After recruiting mercenaries, Carl sends them northwest into the ring and then toward Princess Posse land, bypassing the Naga sector. Li Jun and Li Na are instructed to receive them and distinguish dungeon-born inhabitants from the newly won-over outworlders, who require special caution. Louis likewise flies Party Planner over the town to avoid the Naga route, with advance warning to prevent allied anti-air towers from firing on him. The settlement's streets and airspace thus serve movement and reception as well as defense.
The coalition's deployment later turns the ring into a shared front. Juice Box sends Semeru dwarves and Larracos citizens to occupy it alongside Li Na's battalion. Their line circles the city's upper lip while other Princess Posse units defend more distant sectors. Enemy factions still cannot freely enter Larracos at that stage, but Shanty Town remains vulnerable and valuable. The coalition's defense of it shows that the town's civilian population and its military perimeter cannot be treated separately: losing the outer ring would put the approach to the city and the people sheltering there under direct pressure.
Temples, safe rooms, and shelter
The settlement contains access points that make it more than an exposed encampment. One small shacklike temple houses a Club Vanquisher entrance. Carl and Prepotente approach it during the operation against the Naga position; its exterior gives little sign of its function beyond the location shown on Carl's map. The door from Shanty Town leads into the temple, followed by portal-connected interior doors toward the club. During the operation, Bautista, Zhang, and Li Jun hold separate doors open to keep the route and its aura effects usable. Control of this inconspicuous site matters because closing the portal doors could cut off the team's movement at a critical moment.
Several saferoom entrances are also located in Shanty Town. They become important to travel after Carl's group gains the doggie-door upgrade, which lets them use safe-room connections more flexibly. When an entrance near the Princess Posse's base is endangered, Carl notes that the closest alternatives are among those in Shanty Town. Losing the nearer entrance would make the journey to base substantially longer by tracked vehicle. The town consequently functions as a transport network for crawlers even though its own open streets remain dangerous.
The same buildings offer shelter when conditions turn against the coalition. During Eris's realm-wide effect, Li Na reports that most people in Shanty Town are affected, while those inside structures are safe; she and Li Jun are indoors, but Zhang is outside. This distinction makes the settlement's modest buildings immediately consequential to survival. Later, as fighting rages inside Larracos, children and shopkeepers climb toward Shanty Town and dive into its shops. Its civilian refuge role persists even as the perimeter's defensive towers activate around them.
Destruction and transfer
The late fighting devastates the ring. Gods clash across it, and the passage of their battle flattens nearly all its ordinary buildings. Carl sees most of the Princess Posse's towers trampled before they can be used as intended. The Nest and Li Na's synergy towers remain standing for a time, but are themselves under attack. Larracos's towers also fire during the turmoil, including at Carl as he crosses from the city into Shanty Town. The boundary that once separated the two defense systems becomes a hazardous line in the middle of the battle.
The destruction does not end with the gods' passage. Donut's War Crime takes effect above Shanty Town, leaving blood and wreckage over the area. After the battle, dungeon-born inhabitants, recruited mercenaries, former crawlers, and current crawlers work on clearing damage and repairing towers in the town and city. Ferdinand remains involved around the Nest's repair. These efforts are preparations for the surviving population's next move rather than proof that the ring has returned to its earlier state.
To move the population onward, the coalition must make Shanty Town part of the territory carried with Larracos. Carl's side cedes the town back to the nonplayer faction before the attempted joining, a prerequisite identified while Mordecai and others assess whether the two settlements can be treated together. When Sledge casts Zerzura, Rosetta confirms that the spell's glow includes Shanty Town and that the two towns have been successfully combined for the transfer. The joined settlement is sent toward the Court of the Ascendency on the Twelfth Floor, taking the ring's surviving inhabitants out of the collapsing Ninth Floor campaign. Its final role is the same one that gave it importance when it first appeared: an outer home for people displaced by the violence inside Larracos.