The Butcher's Masquerade
By Matt Dinniman · Narrated by Jeff Hays · 640 pages pages · October 2022
The Butcher's Masquerade
The dungeon stops pretending to be fair. Guilds form. Parties are capped at 30 members. Class specialization forces everyone to commit to what kind of crawler they're going to be. The survival game becomes a political one, and the political game becomes something worse.
New party members arrive. Donut gets a class upgrade. She cannot sing. This does not stop her. Mordecai's response to this development tells you everything you need to know about Mordecai.
What makes this book matter
Carl's "river" of rage surfaces seriously for the first time. The Enchanted Night Wyrm's Ring of Divine Suffering starts showing its side effects. The achievement for using the ring warned of "unintended and unadvertised side effects of using such a powerful and evil magical item." The river gets louder every book. What it means is one of the biggest fan debates.
The Masquerade event on this floor is one of the most discussed sequences in the entire series. The Butcher's Masquerade itself is a set piece that readers either love or find devastating. Often both.
The moment everyone remembers
Carl makes a decision. Not a plan. Not a strategy. A decision about what kind of person he is going to be from this point forward. It happens quietly, in a single sentence, and it changes the trajectory of the entire series.
Key introductions
- Lucia Mar joins the Royal Court
- Guild mechanics and 30-member party cap
- Class specialization (Carl: Agent Provocateur, Donut: Legendary Diva)
- Carl's "river" becomes a recurring presence
- The Syndicate Council begins making rulings about the AI