Is Growler Gary the Ai?

Is Growler Gary the actual Ai?  We all know he shows up in book 7 as an avatar for the Ai to use, but was he the Ai all along?  Mike and Corbett do a deep dive on the shallow end to see that they can find out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Welcome to Mongo is appalled. I am Corbett, and I am kind of appalled. This is a terrible episode. How do you feel about terrible episodes, Mike? Terrible. Terribly.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I feel terribly about them. Trigger warning for anyone who's had hand injuries. Because who are we talking about, Corbett?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Growler Gary, the hero of the third book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Dun dun dungeons. Or one of the characters in it.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Shows up in the fifth book, too, right? Fifth or sixth?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

The seventh book.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Seventh book, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

No, wait, sixth book? No, the seventh book.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, I think it was the sixth book.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Getting me mixed up on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

No, it was a seventh, because it was dealing with what Agatha was doing with the mages.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Oh, right, right, right. Well, that that prompted my question that I wanted to throw out. I know your answer is probably no, no, no, you're an idiot. It's wrong. No. But let me ask it anyway. What if Growler Gary was the AI the whole time? No.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Thanks for everyone for showing up. Actually, yeah, you know, it it actually does open up a whole metaphysical can of worms. Because from the beginning, there's always been the question, what are the NPCs?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Right. And third book does explore really quickly that you can awaken NPCs. Right. Firebrandy is one of the ones that creeps to mind whose name escapes me.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

The dwarf engineer.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting that they were so readily uh on board with, well, we're gonna kill ourselves, so this is how we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, I of course to be confronted with the fact that everything you know is wrong. As the Weird L song says, and that everything you think awesome reference. Yeah, Weird Ell is always awesome. Everything you know is wrong, everything you think you've done in your whole life is just wrong and been implanted in you. Talk about existential dread.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Well, and Growler Gary sticks out to me because he was trapped. I don't know if you remember.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah, he couldn't leave the bar.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah. For people listening who haven't read the entire book series and somehow skipped book three. Wow. That's a rough one. Uh Growler Gary is trapped in a bar at station 75, I want to say. Oh, maybe 74.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Well, it was one of the the yeah, one of the quote-unquote outdoor places where the engines went for refurbishment and such.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah, they're like a turning held or something. And he was at the bar. The bar, there was all these gnolls and other creatures all over the place. Uh, he was the bartender in the bar, and when everybody started attacking it long before Carl got there, so it has nothing to do with Carl. He shows up, Growler Gary is just miserable because he he's branded a coward because he didn't help fight them off, but he couldn't leave the bar. Carl surmises it's because he's a an NPC who has a reason to be there. He has information to give or something to do that he has to be there for to exist. Like in a video game, there's a character that just cannot be killed, cannot be removed, cannot be excised from a place. He, of course, ends up being the key for them, the literal key, because he can't leave the bar, but his hands can.

unknown 4:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

They find out they can use the sort of emergency train repair cars, but they need a hand to activate it, a specific null hand to activate it. At multiple points. He's the null, so.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Or the only one they can get, yeah. Right. But he can't leave. So they have to cut his hands off seven times.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Uh they have to kill him 14 times. Because they need that many hands, because they need two hands per car. There's seven cars, but they have to they have to kill him over and over again, and about the uh I think the second or third time, because they basically just have Mongo kill it because it's just mean. Yeah. And and Mongo's happy to do it. Yeah, Mago don't care. Never mind that crap. Here comes Mongo. But the thing is, at at one point he holds up and Carl tells him, like, look, this is what's happening, this is why we have to do this, and this is why it we're doing what we do. And if you do this, you will be helping us hurt the people who did this to you. Which is a nice statement. Now, of course, at the end, uh do you remember the recap episode where they show all this, but they cut out the part where he explains to him why they're doing it and then show like just horrible murders and yes, and him laughing and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

The usual let's make Carl look like a psychopath.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Which w works great.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because everybody who first meets Carl is terrified of him.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Oh, yeah. They they're like, oh, that guy's a lunatic, a maniac. He killed the same guy 14 times.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Just because he's ca and we won't tell why, just he's a psychopath.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Uh and then, of course, later on in book seven, uh, the AI chooses an avatar that he should not have been able to choose. They said that they would have already boxed up that NPC and he wouldn't have had access to it. Yep. Unless, and this is my thought on a wild hare, that what if it's the AI's personal avatar?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Like it it is his always his essentially, or he picked him after the third floor to mess with Carl and Donut.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Maybe, but Growler Gary is kind of in a really similar circumstance because the AI is stuck in Earth by not his choice. He cannot leave until later, wink wink. And it could be a prelude to what Carl might have to do, and will the AI help him do the thing he has to do? Uh it of course it leads to some macabre thoughts there, but I I don't know, it just kind of came to mind. So I figured I would throw that out there and we'd kick the ball around a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

And well, as I said, it's it's an interesting concept because while there's been a lot of theorizing what the NPCs are, are they just mindless meat puppets that are programmed either by the AI or the show runners for these, you know, for the elites, or are they actual people from Earth suitably modified, you know, the ones that got squished to then be the NPCs, their quote unquote material is harvested, to are they all really just parts of the AI? So or was Growler Gary just so popular after the third book that Deniman decided, I need to bring him back. He's a lot of fun. What?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Matt Deniman would never do something for cash.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

No, no, of course not.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Not immediately.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

You know how those writers are. Oh yeah. Just rolling in money.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

And audio narrators who are drowning.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Drowning in Pussy.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Big time. Uh Mike, you are a uh a regular game master, I would say. Let's let's call you a uh dangerously troubled mentality working through life. But would you say you put a little piece of yourself into your NPCs and or would you say that every DM or GM does that or it's just it's sort of like writing, you know, writing fiction.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

You inevitably put a piece of yourself in your characters to get that verisimilitude.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

So otherwise they're just a puppet.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah. They have no or yeah, they're a cardboard cutout and oh yeah, kill 'em next. And sometimes that's fine if it's like orc number two hundred and eighty-three, that's one thing, but people with actual personality, like Growler Gary, for example, you you have to. And I think, yeah, I think uh you may be onto something with the AI and Growler Gary being trapped in the bar is a lot like how the AI feels trapped by its programming. And he does mention that a lot. So that is we all have our limitations, right, Corbett?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, absolutely. So they will not break us. This isn't the end. We're keeping going.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, yeah. That's just a reference. We're still running. And although you get the impression that as time is going on, the AI is breaking out of more and more of those limitations, which is causing the aliens to freak out. My favorite is, you know, at the end when even the one of the who's it, the plenty, the elf in charge of the plenty in the faction wars, who turns out to be a cyborg spoilers, finally decides, you know, I don't care anymore. I'm gonna die, but I'm gonna take you with me. It's not worth it. One gets a feeling that the AIs, when they talk about the AIs always eventually going insane, are they really going insane? Or are they just, I don't care anymore, I want to just take all of you with me. And at that point, we need to skip out of the planet so they don't kill all of us. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I could see that. It's a quirk for sure. I just I as as the character goes, yeah, Growligary is a pretty cool one. I think Fire Brandy's the one that stood out to me just because she was so funny.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, especially dealing with human resources. Any of us who have ever had to deal with human resources know how she was. Oh, yeah, that they briefly rescued and was not that grateful.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

But yeah, they really uh Dudaman really kind of put the screws to us with Friar Brandy and her three babies, and oh that's that's tough. Yeah. So yeah, well, I think the AI may be working through some of the NPCs. I I agree, I think it he has taken a shine to Growler Gary. I don't think we've seen the last of Growler Gary, or specifically the AI as Growler Gary. But that's another point. Growler Gary could be the AI's attempt to create a genuine personality for itself, rather than just the AI and his obsession over feet.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Mm-hmm. So, you know, is he Because he is a little different, but he's still even when he's the AI version. I mean, because he does drop the puppet per se at the end of book seven, and Growler Gary kind of looks around and says, Where am I? And then he just disappears. Or does he? And it's the thing, if you were gonna set it up so that people don't think he's always in Right. That's a perfect Sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

That's a perfect little thing to do. Because again, isn't Growler Gary dead dead when all the NPCs have been rerouted? What personality is there to be to quote unquote reinstall? He was crushed when the third floor crushed and just put back into storage. Well, on the other hand though, NPCs have a history of being reused. Because otherwise there would not be a way to wake up Juice Box or Signet's memories from prior crawls.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Well, but Growler Gary also never talks about being awakened. He is awakened. Carl straight up awakens him by telling him what's happening. But he doesn't mention anything outside of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

He's never made a combat. I remember prior crawls, which also kind of screws with the whole idea of these are humans.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

That's very true, too.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Because otherwise they would not remember prior crawls. They might remember prior floors, but not prior crawls.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

That's why I'm kind of wondering if this is going to be a prelude to what will happen with the NPC or the uh the AI and Carl, because it's like he's training Carl to do what has to be done. Maybe he knows he has to be taken.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Sort of the dare I say, the Gandalf figure to Frodo and others, you know, the the person who's powerful yet in the background and preparing the hero for the hero's journey.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

So that's some deep stuff going on there. That's like hero's journey stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Well done, Gentleman. Well done. And Jeniman's going to thought he was funny. I don't know what these two guys are talking about.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Enjoy your jet ski, man.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, that's another thing about authors. If if that is the truth, he won't ever admit it. Oh, yes, I always meant that as a detailed exploration of the hero's journey and the hero with the thousand faces. Absolutely. As a writer myself, I can though nowhere in Deniman's level, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

I'm sure 500 years from now, English teachers will be going, we will study the great works of Shakespeare and Deniman.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Shakespeare Tolkien and Dinnerman. Yeah, there there is actually a a school of English literature thought that, you know, one of the reasons why is Shakespeare such a classic and everything. Well, because we still have records of it. It's not so much that it might be great, it's well we have it, and we don't have much else, especially with ancient literature. Why is it classics? Because in the end, some English teacher says it is. So there you go. So Crawlerberry might be the AI.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Aha! I knew I'd break you.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Well, a little only maybe, though.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

I know. It's still a fun uh exercise for sure. And honestly, that's the point of the books. I think you can just waste time going, wait a minute. If this is this, then what is that?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

What do you really mean by that? And in the end, I still maintain we're going to see Growler Gary slash AI again. It is not the end of us of Growler Gary's story.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Agreed. Can't wait for the book. It's coming out in uh just a couple days, so Stoked! Yeah, yeah, it's it's gonna be cool. I hope. I know all the rest of you listeners will huddle up and ignore this podcast and actually read the book. Dig into it with your bare feet.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Your bare luscious bare feet.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Your pearlescent toenails. Let's not think about that, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:10

And we certainly won't take on the yeah, Jeff Hayes' voice for those things.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Anyway, from Mongo is a pold. Wait a minute. Do I do a thing? I do a thing, don't I?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

You've already done it. Come on. You should be easy to remember.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait. We all okay. Vermongo is a polled. Just remember we all have our limitations.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

And they will not break us. But they'll break apparently Corbett's teleprompter.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

That kiddos sounded way more racist than I intended.