The allied crawler network is the set of continuing relationships through which Carl and Princess Donut cooperate with crawlers outside their immediate party. It grows from the rescue of Team Meadow Lark into an arrangement of separate parties, personal contacts, specialists, and eventually military units. Its members do not share a single permanent party roster. Imani's people, Katia's squad, Li Jun's group, Florin, Prepotente, and others can work toward a common objective while keeping their own companions, priorities, and command responsibilities. By the Ninth Floor, those connections support the Princess Posse's army in Faction Wars. The alliance's history is therefore also a history of changing obligations: people first helped as strangers later have the means to rescue, defend, or command one another.
Meadow Lark: rescue becomes a lasting relationship
Carl and Donut's connection with Team Meadow Lark begins with an unusually difficult group to move through the dungeon. Caregivers and residents have entered together, and many residents need physical help to travel. The group's existing relationships matter before anyone has an effective combat build: Brandon, Imani, Chris, and Yolanda know whom they must move, feed, and calm. Carl's intervention helps them survive the First Floor, but it does not turn the survivors into his dependents or dissolve their organization. The caregivers continue making decisions for their own group.
On the Second Floor, Brandon's plan to send less mobile residents toward the next stairwell illustrates that independence. He weighs the limited benefit of further training against the danger of keeping them on the floor, while Imani and Yolanda handle immediate care in the safe room. Carl and Donut remain with them through a crisis that changes the relationship from a completed rescue into a continuing commitment. Jack's urination outside a designated bathroom summons a Rage Elemental; Yolanda kills Jack too late to prevent its arrival and subsequently dies in the encounter. The surviving caregivers have to move a large, frightened population while the monster pursues them.
The group does not simply wait for Carl to solve that crisis. Brandon, Chris, and Imani build replacement transport for the remaining residents, using wheeled contraptions that the stronger members push. Carl and Donut prepare an explosive trap for the elemental. The two efforts are connected: defeating or delaying the monster matters because people who cannot run still need a route to the stairs. When Carl later thinks about the experience, he recognizes a limit to what one rescuer can promise, even while he continues to care about Brandon's people. That mixture of attachment and practical restraint remains characteristic of his dealings with other teams.
Meadow Lark subsequently becomes a source of help rather than only a group in need of it. Elle McGibbons, originally one of the residents, acquires formidable ice magic. In the Iron Tangle, Carl receives reports that Imani's group has crossed a dangerous trainyard, while Elle holds back ghouls by freezing large numbers of them. Elsewhere on the floor, Meadow Lark prepares a flamethrower defense against Krakaren creatures. These are actions taken by a separate team protecting its own position and communicating its status to Carl. Imani later supplies judgment, healing, and organization across a much wider circle of crawlers.
Katia and the widening circle
Katia Grim enters Carl and Donut's life on the Third Floor as a lower-level crawler associated with Hekla. Her awkwardly assembled body and Monster Truck Driver class make her capabilities difficult to judge from appearance alone. Working beside Carl and Donut gives her an intimate place in their circle, but that closeness does not fix her permanently to their party. Later floors find her traveling and planning with Bautista, Louis, Firas, Britney, Tran, and others. Her group can carry out a separate objective while staying in contact with Carl. The distinction matters whenever a plan requires more than one simultaneous operation.
Katia's attachments also make the network vulnerable to the dungeon's attempts to set crawlers against one another. Eva places the Crown of the Sepsis Whore on Katia, creating a threat that directly involves Donut. Katia discloses the crown and its danger to Carl and Donut, while acknowledging that other crawlers already know. Donut's response is fear of being forced into conflict with someone she loves, not a claim that Katia has ceased to be an ally. The group seeks another route through the crisis. Trust here consists of sharing a dangerous fact and working with people who may be placed under incompatible rules.
The connection to Li Jun, Zhang, and Li Na begins differently. Carl first encounters Li Jun and Zhang through the Maestro's televised Death Watch, where they are treated as entertainment while facing a lethal situation. His decision to intervene creates a recognizable link before the groups ever operate side by side. On the Iron Tangle, Li Jun, Zhang, and Li Na step forward when Carl needs volunteers for a hazardous action. Li Jun makes clear that the rest of his team must remain at its own defensive position. Their help is real, but it has a boundary: joining Carl for one task does not mean abandoning the people they are already protecting.
The same division of labor appears later when Li Jun, Li Na, and Chris work in a town threatened by Odious Creepers while Carl, Donut, Katia, Louis, and Prepotente pursue related targets elsewhere. They exchange information about kills and locations without standing in one formation. By Faction Wars, Li Na's Dreads have become a distinct coalition resource. She mans a tower that extends aura effects, while Imani supplies a different kind of aura through Blessings. Their abilities have different effects and limits; treating the two women as interchangeable support would misrepresent how the army uses them.
Independent allies and difficult loyalties
Prepotente is neither a subordinate nor a uniformly cooperative friend. His early meeting with Carl on the Iron Tangle is abrasive, yet he is pleased to meet Donut and maintains his own partnership with Miriam Dom. On the Sixth Floor he kills Odious Creepers independently, contributing to a shared need without taking instructions from Carl. During Faction Wars he joins Carl, Katia, Bautista, Zhang, and Li Jun in an operation around Club Vanquisher. He brings an interior map and knowledge of a hidden exit obtained through his own contacts. Carl realizes that a closer conversation with him earlier might have revealed useful information. The episode shows both the value and the limits of an alliance in which capable people retain private knowledge.
Florin follows another path into the coalition. He is visible as a high-ranking crawler before he works closely with Carl. His relationship to Lucia Mar makes his position particularly complicated: Lucia is dangerous, but Florin's concern for her is not erased by her danger to other crawlers. At the Butcher's Masquerade, Florin helps restrain Katia when she attacks Eva, participates in the confrontation with Queen Imogen, and leads a line of attack when Carl divides the assembled fighters between two enemies. On the Ninth Floor he takes recruiter duty, commands the 101st Crocodiles on the northern defense, captures enemy armor, and reports its properties and the resulting tactical risk to Carl. His independent judgment becomes part of the army's command system.
Lucia's presence prevents the network from being described as a simple collection of trusted friends. Her condition and conduct create serious danger, and the crawlers around her do not always agree about what to do. Near the end of Faction Wars, Florin, Jurgen, and Imani gather around her and try to persuade her to take a deal. Their attempt is a concrete form of care for someone whom they cannot safely treat as an ordinary teammate. It also shows Imani working beyond Meadow Lark's original circle and Florin continuing to act on Lucia's behalf within a larger coalition.
The Popov brothers, Dmitri and Maxim, occupy a more limited but memorable place in this web. Their nodling form makes them recognizable among the high-ranking crawlers, and they appear with other allies at the Masquerade. The brothers also possess the guitar Britney uses to accompany Donut's performance there. Later, the consequences of their departure from the dungeon affect Katia's thinking about a possible exit. Their connection to the others is documented through encounters and shared possessions, though it should not be mistaken for evidence that they operated as permanent scouts under Carl's command.
The Eighth Floor: shared space, separate squads
The Eighth Floor gives these relationships a more practical infrastructure. Separate parties occupy rooms in a common guild area, and access between places becomes a resource to allocate. Katia explains that a door installed in Meadow Lark's room lets members of that party reach their church and other linked locations. Extending its use to the entire guild would cost far more, so individual doors and keys remain important. Imani and Elle report pooling money for a barracks upgrade. Such choices turn trust into movement, shelter, and capacity for fighters; they also leave the original parties recognizable rather than merging everyone into one interface team.
When the FOSCA building collapses during the demon crisis, Imani and Tran are trapped near the stairwell. Other crawlers move through the damaged structure to reach them, and Carl helps break into the pocket where they are confined. The situation reverses the early Meadow Lark pattern. Imani, once a caregiver helping residents escape, is now herself the person whom the extended group refuses to abandon. Tran belongs to Katia's circle, yet his rescue is treated as a shared responsibility. The overlapping ties make a response possible even though no single small party contains everyone involved.
Imani's authority is visible in less dramatic decisions as well. She coordinates people moving out from the church, manages access to its doors, and discusses costs and upgrades with Carl. Elle is willing to challenge him directly, including when he suggests that the others should leave a danger to him. Their standing comes from repeated action, not from a formal rank granted by Carl. Crawler rescue coordination depends on precisely that ability to argue over a plan and still act together.
Faction Wars: relationships become command
The Ninth Floor gives the alliance formal military obligations. During the ceasefire, crawlers may enlist with a faction, and Carl's side needs recruiters as well as fighters. The groups that once met through rescue and floor-specific emergencies arrive in separate saferooms, open their own rewards, and take assignments. Florin is drawn into recruiting; Li Jun remains in communication; Katia's team has its own arrival problems. The early hours do not resemble one enlarged adventuring party. They resemble multiple groups deciding whether and how to join a common campaign.
Once fighting begins, the Princess Posse's forces have named battalions and assigned sectors. Florin's 101st Crocodiles guard the north with support from Jurgen's 105th Scream Warriors and the 103rd Recon Legionnaires. Tran commands the 102nd Bulwark on the southern front, where its defensive mages and engineers hold fortifications; Boomer's 106th Bloody Leeches add close fighters and trap specialists. Tipid's 104th defends the castle, while Li Na's 107th White Dragons are positioned around Shanty Town. These assignments make clear that the network has acquired command structure, but commanders still report what they see and respond to local conditions.
Florin's capture of two pieces of enemy armor is one example. He tells Carl that the vehicles can be useful with infantry support, then warns that the enemy knows its armored force has been lost and may move before being trapped. He later moves with Katia and Bautista to keep a western retreat corridor open. Tran's southern position is another: his unit works trenches and artillery sites, and later rushes to defend the FUPA. Neither action is merely a favor to Carl. Each is a commander's contribution to a plan whose failure could endanger other battalions.
Carl still relies on small combinations of people who know each other's abilities. For the Club Vanquisher operation, Prepotente's map, Katia's disguise, Bautista's guard position, Zhang and Li Jun at successive doors, and Li Na's aura-related role have to fit together. Donut acts elsewhere with Elle and Imani in case the targets escape the intended trap. The plan uses old personal ties inside a new military framework. It also exposes a persistent weakness: information held by one ally, such as Prepotente's map, may reach the others only when they ask the right question.
The network's final Ninth Floor shape includes more than Earth crawlers. Mercenaries and NPC allies fight beside them, while surviving enemy soldiers may be treated as people who can leave rather than as targets for execution. That broader coalition changes what victory means to Carl's group. Its purpose is not simply to keep his original party alive; it is to get as many of the people drawn into the war through it as possible. The relationships forged during earlier rescues make that scale of cooperation conceivable, while the named units, shared resources, and difficult negotiations make it operational.