Post-Canon where Carl and Donut are a game guide duo. They had to give up a lot to get that deal, to make sure they weren't separated. Their combined contract lasts twice as long as each of them collectively would have had to do. But they refused to be separated, to live for however long without one another and risk not completing their contracts at the same time.
Mordecai gets out and the first news item he hears is about Carl and Donut's contracts and just how *long* they'll be trapped there, in stasis between crawls, how long *he'll* have to wait for them because he had promised them before the end of the crawl that he'd wait for them. He *would* wait for them. He'd do *anything* for his crawlers - his *family*.
After he drinks himself stupid on one of the Open Intellect Action Network's ships he pulls himself together and gets to work.
Mordecai is a lot of things, but he's not stupid. He was a fucking mycologist on his planet, goddamnit. He was a researcher working with grant funding at a university. He knows how to stretch a budget. He knows how to make his work interesting to the right people.
And the people *love* an eccentric weirdo.
He buys a ship (it's one bedroom, a cockpit, and a narrow little cargo bay that he converts into a sound studio). He goes to Crawl Con and corners a bunch of people into agreeing to do interviews with him (Sydnee Iglacia, Drick, Uptown Hal, a dozen other small-time celebrities). And he sets up a goddamn podcast.
It runs on a shoestring budget and is about Dungeon Crawler World. Everything from the history of the Crawl and the way that it was conceived, the inner machinations of how it works, and even about how different mechanics have changed over time. He interviews top crawlers from dozens of seasons. He interviews Dungeon Cookbook Authors. He interviews set designers and production writers and anyone else he can manage to get his talons on.
He brings in an amount of money that if the general public knew they'd be shocked. He squirrels away every cent, subsisting off of waystation food and booze in his little ship.
The first year where The Valtay run a crawl and Carl and Donut are brought out of storage Mordecai chokes up an arm and a leg to sponsor a deity (Horus, a god not in the running for the ascendancy but whose boons align with Mordecai's skills), gets ground-floor interview rights on Carl and Donut's crawlers, and braces himself.
All of Carl and Donut's crawlers die before the fourth floor. None of them get the manager benefit and not a single one of those crawlers listen to Carl and Donut long enough to live to even make deals.
Mordecai watches with his press pass as Carl and Donut grieve. He angles his feed so that he can be as close as possible to them and if he closes his eyes he can pretend he's able to wrap his wings around them and hold them close as Donut sobs and Carl breathes in a slow, forcibly even rhythm.
The next Crawl Mordecai does the same thing. Sponsors Horus, gets ground-floor interview rights on Carl and Donut's crawlers, and braces himself.
Five crawls in he *finally* gets one of those crawlers into a production trailer for an interview. When the interview is done, he shoves a tightly folded note into the crawler's hand and tells them to drop it in Carl and Donut's Tutorial Guild.
He watches as Carl collapses into his chair, staring at the note, his jaw dropped, before he looks up at the ceiling and smiles, letting Donut read the note. She gasps, looking up at the ceiling as well, and Mordecai smiles, unseen by anyone, at the two of them.
One crawl, centuries into Carl and Donut's indentureship, the stars all align. Carl and Donut get an entire team of crawlers that beat the odds, one of which gets the manager benefit with their class. Carl and Donut convince them to worship Horus, and Mordecai's shrine appears in the combined personal space of the party.
He appears in his deity's soul armor, an amalgam of his own Skyfowl form and the humanoid body of the god. Donut and Carl both *gasp* as they see him and he smiles warmly at them, his eyes softening. He wishes he could reach out an touch them, but he can't, they are not who he is here for. Even if these crawlers make it to the tenth floor to make a deal, Mordecai wouldn't be able to touch them until the Ascendancy on the twelf. Steeling himself against his grief, Mordecai turns his gaze on the new crawlers.
"A boon for you, my children," he holds out a taloned hand and summons a book that he has been assembling for this moment and prays to whatever true god is listening doesn't get confiscated.
New Quest! Seekers of Knowledge
You have been given a very valuable item. A Book of Voodoo. Within it contains the knowledge of thousands that have come before you. Take from its pages, but if you do then you must add another page.
Horus: Do not respond to this message or else the showrunners will see what we are speaking of here. Listen to Carl and Donut. I was their manager once just like they are yours now. If you have any questions, pray to my shrine for knowledge and I will help you however I can. Make a show of it. We don't want the worms figuring things out too soon.
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