D&D 5E: Gingerbread

by mshrm

This session, the kids were again joined by a couple of more experienced players. Since the kids have been running two characters each, it was only fair that the incoming players do the same, so we ended up with a greatly enlarged team.

• Styx – alchemist wood elf arcane trickster 3
• Necro – experimental warforged conjurer 2
• Reaper – noble drow warlock 2
• RH – noble human paladin 2
• Gwar – knight half-orc monk/barbarian 1/1
• August – folk hero half-elf bard 2
• Brian – tribal human barbarian/fighter 1/1
• Kristina – criminal lightfoot halfling ranger 2

Styx and Necro are just starting a romantic relationship, despite alignment differences. Reaper and RH are childhood friends, presumably thrown together due to their similar backgrounds. Gwar and August are half-orc half-elf half-human half-brothers, working together so that Gwar does heroic stuff and August sings about the heroic stuff Gwar did. Brian and Kristina appear to be partners in crime.

This adventure was largely inspired by an adventure I read once (but can no longer locate) called “Cooking with Auntie Erma”.

What Happened

All the PCs fell in together, the way PCs do. Unusually, they ran in to each other in a library. Or, at least, as close a thing to a library as the mining town offered: the back room of the alchemist’s shop, where the gnome shopkeeper kept a few volumes of lore. When Styx’s research bore fruit, the others became interested – even the PCs who had been standing around bored, waiting for the bookish types to finish up. She had been seeking a way to clear out the Gauntlet of Spiragos, aiming to shrink the artifact down to humanoid dimensions. She found a reference to a particular decanter of endless water which was said to lie at the center of a swamp only a few days’ travel to the southwest. The party formed around this quest, and adjourned to the nearest tavern.

While most of the party were carousing downstairs, Necro went upstairs to set up a brazier with some expensive incense. It didn’t take long to summon his first familiar, a bat. He sent it out to spy on the others and play pranks for a while. Once that got old, he came downstairs, and offered to let Reaper use the brazier to summon his own familiar. The warlock accepted, summoning a spider.

The next morning, they all left, with Angus the miner-turned-driver handling the first of two wagons. The journey was uneventful, until they entered the swamp itself. The road had narrowed to a muddy track with open water to either side. Thick bushes crowded close to the path.

With a cacophony of croaks, a ragged band of bullywugs attacked from ambush! They jumped from behind bushes, surrounding both wagons and attacking with spears. In the first moments of the fight, Angus was badly wounded and knocked out, while one of the horses was killed outright. The party fought back vigorously, incapacitating many of the frog-men and sending the others running off to the south.

While looting the bodies of the fallen bullywugs, they found a scrap of papyrus with some crude hash marks and an obscure rune. After some discussion, they finally identified the rune as meaning “human babies”.

The bullywugs were stealing babies!

This offense could not stand!

Necro sent his bat winging after the fleeing bullywugs, even as Kristina picked up their trail. Leaving Angus and the wagons behind, the party struggled cross-country. After a time, the bat reported that the bullywugs had gone to ground, inside a building. When the party burst out into the clearing, they saw that it was a house… made of gingerbread.

They licked it. Yup, real gingerbread. They tried to peek in the windows, but to no avail – they were glazed.

Styx did her roguery on the door, pronounced it safe, and opened it a crack to peek through. Inside, she saw a huge kitchen, much bigger than the house could possibly contain. For that matter, the table in the middle of the kitchen was bigger than the entire house! Various over-sized, animated cutlery and kitchen utensils were working industriously. On the far side of the room, a normal, human-sized stairway led up to a closed door.

In a decision that would bring later consequences, they left Necro and RH, the louder members of the party, to watch the door, while the others slipped sneakily inside. They stayed under cover, making their way across the room to the stairs. Along the way, they got a peek inside a cupboard, discovering jars full of eyes and similar unwholesomeness.

Gathering at the door, the party burst inside, surprising three green hags at tea!

The room was on the cozy side. The hags were each sitting in an overstuffed armchair. To one side, they saw a waist-high brass cage, with half a dozen babies inside, who immediately set to wailing. With a roar, Brian crossed the room to attack one of the hags with his greatsword. Reaper used the power of his new ring to throw a web at one corner of the room, trapping two of the hags and making most of the room treacherous ground. Gwar joined Brian in applying two-handed weaponry vigorously to the seated witch, whose defense began to crumble under the powerful blows. Styx wanted to call for Necro and RH, but knew they would never be able to join the fray in time.

One of the trapped hags broke free, rushing up close to the party. Her eyes went black as she unleashed the horrible power of the eyebite. This caused a fearful stir among the PCs, but turned out to be more eye-bark than eye-bite; every PC targeted was able to make the Wisdom save and escape unscathed.

With everybody bunched up so close, it didn’t take long for the party to put down one of the hags, breaking the coven. At that point, it became “every witch for herself”. One of the fey creatures was able to slip past the party and escape out the door, but the last one was surrounded. She fell to her knees, begging for mercy, offering to use her magical powers for the good of the PCs.

For a moment, they considered the offer, but Brian was having none of it. He mercilessly lopped off the hag’s head in mid-plea.

As the gingerbread house began to gently crumble, the party got the babies out of the cage and performed a quick search, discovering much coin, quite a few gems, a potion, and a cap of water breathing. They carried the rescued babies back to the wagon and woke Angus. After a bit of searching, they were able to find a small village nearby, where they handed the lost children back to their relieved parents and enjoyed a feast of thanksgiving.

They say the decanter lies near the center of the swamp…

 

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