Our rouge(Char'kal) has already gotten in the building but the rest of our crew (Aven, Alexsei, Faline) are all forced to handle the door man. I ask the party how they want to enter, here or somewhere else? we chose here and Faline wants to persuade her way in so I let her roll. She passes and with the help of current ally Raymond Sharpe (Oligarch and team sponsor) the crew is let in. Obviously the place is a mess, our party meets in the kitchen to chat. Char'kal is eating a meat popsicle, they investigate the kobold scuff and have a bit of talk the phrase "did you even have a plan" gets tossed out and like usual we have no plan. They can't identify the creatures that made the scuff yet.
I anticipated this and for a while the party chatted and I waited for anyone to make a perception check to see the obvious way down into the cellar. Eventually we got there but mostly we talked about plans and scuffs.
Into the basement we are introduced to a hard boulder in our path and several little tunnels into the walls. My hope is that the party crawls through the tunnels to each new zone and take a nice roundabout path to our guy trapped in the basement. We chat about whether digging speed gets you through solid rock (it doesn't, please take my path, Char'kal's player is very willing to not do shitty stunts to ruin my plans so this works out. Note to account for burrow speed in the future) and then Char'kal and her digging speed got us moving again, widening the tunnels and making us some headway. That head way was about as twisty as the tunnels were but it was mostly very fun. Now a few notes about this place:
We reached a new room and Char'kal checked for traps and such, she found them obviously. the single net trap was easy to find. The magical water trap for Alexsei specifically went unnoticed. Alexsei is doused by the power of god no saves, oh I'm gonna love this bit. We all recover a bit from the laugh (medium temperature water? huh? huh?) and we move on. How did the trap get there? "God only knows." "No I'm not going to ask god about it" says the cleric. They don't ask any more questions, its hilarious.
We move to the next room, or rather Alexsei hobbles and Char'kal digs a whole nother tunnel to our destination to make fun of him for having a bad hip. This new room is a basement of the store next door, not the restaurant of Duncan. The old man in this basement has a broom and is fighting off some kobolds, Char'kal first in line goes for the cool shit this guy is storing and not the fight happening. Alexsei steps in the room and I hit him with a divine flour trap gooping him immediately. Now gooped up, he still tries to go help the old man but ends up scaring the guy up the stairs, covered in flour Alexsei looks a lot like a ghost you see. Classic.
This frees the kobolds to charge our flour guy. Char'kal intercepts them and gains +2 prisoners/kids. oh shit, I have to get rid of these guys when the mission is over. whoops! someone uses water to rinse off Alexsei, now he is wet but not goopy its a whole mess. he gets ribbed a whole bunch, Char'kal feeds the kobolds some gold (why??), we have a good time here. anyways we go to move to the next tunnel, in a side channel my co-DM tells me I ought to re-flour Alexsei, it is essential to our bit at the end where I turn him into a cake. I need hardly any prodding. This time however Alexsei is ready with a spell.
Banishment is a spell that sends a target to a harmless demi plane. When targeting self (technically a target you can see according to Alexei's player) the spell ought to send you out of the material plane and then place you back after 6 seconds as concentration is broken. Uh, whack. That would avoid my flour trap but, this bit is too funny, so I hatch a plan. There is now a plane of flour and that's where Alexsei went. If he would have taken that hit from my new flour trap he would have had less flour on him. He is now SO floured up.
In the tunnel we carry on with Char'kal "dousing" our route with her new kobold slaves, I mean kids, she keeps offering them treats and such stuff to keep them controlled. The kobolds try to go down one half of the fork that leads them to my next silly set piece, since the player has given me the reigns I make sure they get to see every little detail. I work hard on the details, and I'm pretty sure the players like it too.
So we get to see the MURAL. The mural is a looney toons style roadrunner-esque piece of fine art. My joke does NOT fall flat by having the kobolds get there first, Char'kal reigns them in by their baby leashes so she can investigate. So yeah Alexsei and Char'kal run into a wall. Not the joke moment I wanted but we do stand and chat about stealing the mural wall itself, a funny idea I need to think about in the future since burrow speed on Char'kal (now an all terrain vehicle) makes that kind of solution possible.
We finally get to the main basement of the restaurant. We hear the chorus of voices from the kobold squad. Our man Aven knows draconic! Surprising! So we DO learn that they are just chanting "food more now cook". Incredible. Alexsei enters this room and he gets EGG TRAPPED! yay, we are closer than ever to cake. The party makes deep frying jokes not knowing how right they really are. Then the party notices a giant table full of cake and donuts. They ask if its "real", like did I put it there on purpose? Well, yes, my co-DM did. They gorge on donuts, that's the real victory of this dungeon.
Faline and Aven share a few cakes as Char'kal lets her kobolds destroy the rest. Alexsei runs forward and finally gets CAKED. I mean, he gets blasted with sugar and fire. Baked. "Caked up and Tasty" he says in character. Oh that kills the table. I think I thanked him for that bit. We talk traps and passive perceptions. Its been a few months since we got to play, I've honestly forgotten a lot of typical things our player characters can do unless I'm reminded.
We end our session here after 1 hour of play, ready for bigger fun next play date. I have a lot to think about after this session.
reflections questions
Final thoughts: This was a short session with a weird energy, other shit was going on this day so we had a real air of exhaustion to it. I was greatful to my players for sticking around, but mostly I'm just looking forward to our next session when we'll have more time and a better vibe.