The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

"Second only to the infamous floor boss, a Country Boss is an ancient, towering regional lord placed in the world to ensure crawlers never get too cocky."

"You survived an entire floor without hurting a single, poor mob. That’s not how this works. Nobody likes you."

"More than 1,000 crawlers have received the exact same box at the exact same time. Working together, huh? We don’t know if we like that. Better toughen up the rules a little. Better break a few extra kneecaps. Better bury a few more bodies."

"You’ve received a divine item! This is an item that might’ve once been worn by a god. Divine items behave differently than normal ones: they usually hide what they do until you equip it, and gain new powers in the presence of divinity and demons."

"You invited a red-tagged NPC boss into a saferoom, and he actually managed to get inside! Doesn’t your culture have a whole set of cautionary tales about inviting mysterious strangers into your home? The whole vampire thing? Single White Female 2?"

"You’ve been rendered Terrified! The AI mocks Carl for wetting himself while he can’t move his legs for fifteen seconds or until the scary monster is dead."

"A Celestial Thorn Room: not a throne room, a thorn room. The AI says these are pretty rare and a Celestial one is going to be good."

"You’re getting another job? On top of everything else? Carl takes on a second quest, a slip of skin that pricks his finger and writes itself with his blood."

"Thunder Down Under. Magic Mike. Chippendales. The all-male revue as an attraction is a relatively recent phenomenon. Take a physically gifted, steroid-enhanced male, give him dancing lessons, a shower, a banana, and you got yourself a money-making empire."

"You have found and entered the main room of a hidden guild, to which you are a member."

"It’s important to explain to you how much work it took for you to get here. Artists, engineers, and writers designed the T’Ghee card system. And you just went and made a mockery of their flagship sponsor venue."

"You participated in deck combat as a minion bodyguard for a squad leader! Do you know what that makes you? Expendable. Cannon fodder. Spreadable Meat. Lubrication for the machine."

"You scaled a cliff face with your bare hands! You know, we have scrolls and spells and stuff so you don’t have to do things like that anymore. I suppose it is honest work, but boy was it boring to watch."

"...And make it double! You’re being forced to fight against two card-wielding opponents at the same time! If you survive, you’ll have enough tokens to face the head bad guy."

"Every girl needs the perfect little black dress in her repertoire. You did the same thing, but with a cloak. You successfully taunted an opponent with a garment made out of the flesh of one of his friends."

"You deployed a wand in battle and used it in a creative fashion to help kill an opponent. I’m a big fan of wands. Little sticks imbued with a single spell. Let’s change things up!"

"You survived a boss battle where the boss was wholly created by me with no contribution whatsoever from input parameters. Sometimes our constraints are real; sometimes they’re an illusion."

"There was a time when you could get twelve albums for a penny. You have taken on a financial debt. You got the albums. Now you gotta pay."

"The clock is ticking down, and with everything hanging in the balance, you pulled an Earnest Byner and lost the ball at the goal line."