S07E20: The Gang Has Breakfast For Every Meal

== Previously on MCVFD ==
We’re in the Fey Realm of Phenomar, nestled within the realm of Limbo. We participated in a contest of champions put on by the Queen. We were competing against a man in a dragon mask, Biggaboat Durdun, who claimed to be a living avatar of He Who Sleeps.
Fighting for him were the Flewtang Gang, who we handily dispatched in contest after contest. Even in the final (biased) contest, Nissa managed to sweep the Queen off her feet. The event ended with Nissa and the Queen disappearing stage left and everyone else going “I guess we won?”
Everyone goes to bed as champions, leveling up to 11.
== Session ==
We find ourselves in an abstract space with no particularly defining characteristics. We can’t see much of anything, but it doesn’t seem dark. We feel strangely calm about this development. For an unclear amount of time - hours, minutes? - we stand calmly in place. Perhaps we’re waiting for something?
Eventually we’re aware of a spot on the horizon that’s different. We start walking.
The spot on the horizon grows and resolves itself into an illuminated area, almost like a spotlight shining down on this spot.
In the warm yellow light, we see an ugly shag carpet framed by a comfortable pair of sofas. In between them is a battered old coffee table. As we step into the light, we see the rest of the gang do the same. We’re weirdly not surprised about any of this.
Before we have time to react, we hear a voice coming from an old armchair. An overweight, balding old man smiles warmly and gestures, inviting us to sit down on the sofas.
Nissa pats down a cushion on the far left of one of the couches before sitting down. Kanye takes the middle seat right next to her. Averlyth sits down on the other couch.
Um doesn’t sit down, and does it in a way that makes it clear he’s intentionally not sitting down. The unknown man gestures at the couch as if repeating his ask, and then shrugs and backs off when Um doesn’t take him up on the offer.
The man asks how we’ve been doing? Nissa says we’re doing all right. He sounds altogether too casual, almost familiar with us.
Kanye asks what a guy has to do to get a drink around here. The guy apologizes for his lack of manners. With a snap of his fingers, a pitcher of Kanye’s favorite beer shows up, along with a handful of glasses. Nissa takes a pitcher and starts to sip.
After an awkward silence, the guy admits he’s been watching us for some time. Apparently he’s thought our actions have been pointless, but extremely entertaining.
Nissa innocently asks what he means, and he playfully comments that we don’t need to lie, he knows we’ve been in Limbo working for the Director. He tells us it’s nothing personal, that he’s looking to bring order to chaos, and that he’s been at his job for longer than we have been.
The group takes in the ominous information.
Kanye: I want a diamond pony please.
With another wave of his hand, he indulges. A diamond pony appears off, winks at Kanye and then prances off into the distance.Nissa: Noooo butt stallion!The group exchanges glances nervously, realizing we may be speaking to He Who Sleeps.Kanye: So… why are we here?The man before us confirms our suspicions, introducing himself as He Who Sleeps but saying we can call him “Colin Timbert”. Apparently he just wanted to meet us?HWS/Colin: How’s Linda doing?Averlyth: oh she’s still not over youThe gang doesn’t give him much. Colin claims he just wanted to figure out what we were motivated by, then shares the fact that we’re sitting in someone’s subconscious, and that he’s been working behind the scenes for a whole variety of things this whole time.HWS/Colin: No offense, but you guys are punching above your weight classNissa: I’m level 11Kanye: I have 3 attacks now!He takes credit for summoning the fire elemental that burned down Mulmaster all those years ago. He explains how he and Linda are very very old, and how being immortal changes your perspective of the world. 
Colin describes this perspective change by comparing us to a squadron of organized bees at a picnic.
Nissa answers that her motivation is she likes being alive and not being ruled by a Tyrant. When we don’t share more, he tells us how he can tell he’s putting us all ill at ease.
He promises that he’s waking up soon, proclaiming that he’s the reason why Dak’kon and the rest of the Drakeguard branch in Limbo have been acting the way they have for the past few generations.
Suddenly, Kanye notices that He Who Sleeps is wearing a decoder ring.
HWS tries again to ask about us, but everyone is tight-lipped. He asks if we knew about what it took to put him to sleep: supposedly it took the entire physical realm with Linda at the helm to defeat him back then, so “clearly we have no chance now”.
Averlyth asks if Biggaboat is actually a living avatar. Colin states they are connected, and that he can see through him. Similarly to what Linda has done to us, supposedly? Averlyth asks if he can tell if Linda has done the same with us; Colin states we’ve unmistakably been boosted by her, something to do with her recognizable aura.
Nissa asks Colin if he was trying to dissuade us from fighting us. Colin responds that it wasn’t his intent at all, as he’s not threatened by us at all. He even proclaims to be a fan of MCVFD, positively enjoying “the audacity” of us naming ourselves that given our origin story. 
Kanye casts “Know Your Enemy”, studying Colin. Every signal he’s picking up from the guy is that he’s unremarkable, just a pudgy middle aged dude wearing sweatpants. There’s nothing indicating any secret abilities or that he would win in a fight, though some part of his brain is aware of the fact that this must be a dream or an illusion.
Kanye drains his pint and then chucks it at He Who Sleep’s head. It hits him, and he goes “ow, gonna be that kinda party huh?” Another snap, and the beer vanishes.
He asks if there’s anything else we wanted to say before he leaves. Averlyth asks where the next picnic is. Kanye tries to make a threat around figuring out HWS’s dimensions for his “trophy case”. Colin finds both comments hilarious, then ends the dream and we all wake up.
Nissa wakes up in the Queen’s bed, everyone else wakes up in the guest suite. Kanye dictates his dream to Woodhouse for his dream journal. The rest of the gang hears Kanye dictating his dream to Woodhouse, thereby realizing we all had the same dream.Um: What would happen if we just walked up and slit He Who Sleep’s throat?We conclude it would require an astronomical amount of damage that we currently aren’t capable to dishing out, so not worth.
Averlyth goes straight for breakfast, since this is her second time waking up from a dream with a godlike figure. This isn’t a Gith Zorai base so there isn’t a waffle bar. We’re in the Fey Realm so they serve only cake and voodoo donuts. Slim Shady is complaining about the improper breakfast choices.
Kanye acquires something from the breakfast bar that is definitely not… tiramisu, from the breakfast attendant Terry Mesoo. Nissa joins us after getting breakfast in bed.
The gang talks about the dream in length - especially around the decoder ring. Averlyth questions if we were in the dream of someone who has received a decoder ring from Kanye before. Kanye doesn’t have a list of the people with decoder rings, which seems weirdly insecure for 2FA. After some perusing of the notes, we believe Dak’kon, Qualish, and a handful of other former PC characters are all still in possession of decoder rings.Averlyth: Oh my god what we go back and Dak’kon has a bruise on his foreheadAfter significant debate, we decide we believe the dream was actually from HWS (rather than just an impressive illusion), and that his motivation seemed to be genuine curiosity (rather than trying to get us to do anything one way or another).
Kanye spends about 20 minutes trying to remember who he gave a waffle to almost a year ago. Answer: Bosley, back in January.
The gang eventually decides we’ll go get waffles and turn in our quest at the Gith city first. We gather all the captured Gith Zerai and are given the Limbo Egg from the Fey. We drop off the Gith Zerai at their monitoring station (take some waffles for the road), and then we leave for the Gith City.
As usual, the journey takes an unclear amount of time. We eventually approach the city. We are here, there’s a portal back to the material plane, and there’s Dak’kon and his team, there’s the job board.
We decide to look for Dak’kon first, to update him on the status of the monitoring station from Phenomar. We find him practicing with soldiers at a training dojo-like area, there’s a lot of shouting going on. It doesn’t look like he has a bruise on his forehead.
Averlyth notices Dak’kon is both impressed and grateful, even though it’s expressed in a very subtle way. He praises us, saying we’ve freed up his team to focus on inner city issues, that we’ve increased the security of the Gith Zerai, and that there are only 2 jobs left: the monitoring station for Warrior’s Rest, and the monitoring station at the base of He Who Sleeps.
Kanye asks Dak’kon if he’s had any weird dreams. Dak’kon says he does not dream because he does not sleep. Um: He Who Does Not SleepAverlyth asks if that‘s a normal Gith Zerai thing or a Dak’kon thing. He explains that most Gith Zerai sleep, but he’s affected because of his people’s belief in him. Nissa asks in a whisper if Dak’kon poops. Answer: Yes.
Kanye asks a variety of increasingly confusing questions in an attempt to figure out how common it is for someone to have the ability to get people in a shared dream. Dak’kon does not have that ability (no matter how much we might believe in him), and the Gith Zerai don’t really use magic in general.
Nissa asks Dak’kon if we’ve gotten any useful information since the monitoring stations were restored. He answers no, but that no news is good news. We’re in the middle of a surge of Slaad activity, but that’s been on the rise for a generation or more, so nothing new since losing/regaining the monitoring stations.
Kanye asks Dak’kon for his favorite waffle toppings (chocolate chip and chocolate syrup) and then invites him to the waffle bar. He surprisingly, graciously accepts the offer, perhaps because this was the first time Kanye did not intentionally mispronounce his name.
Averlyth orders Dak’kon style waffles. Kanye asks for Tiramisu…. At a waffle bar?
After a lot more questions over second breakfast around our options and the threat of HWS, Kanye picks up a waffle to go. The gang goes to Barnstable, where Kanye tries to figure out something he can gift Qualish.Kanye: I mean, what do you get for the guy that already has a Mindflayer in a jar?Kanye successfully commissions and acquires a peeved-looking, Qualish-shaped keychain.
The gang spends 50g to use the teleporation portal back ot Qualish’s lab. Kanye barrel rolls into the room, comes up action posed and then majestically holds his hands out, offering up the keyring.
The gesture is unappreciated as we realize Qualish is not there. The Mindflayer very slowly flips Kanye off.
We see an open garage door, and can hear work happening in there. Kanye starts looking for valuables, Averlyth pushes him into the garage.
Qualish is buried in the middle of a whole bunch of unoperational animal-shaped vehicles. He absolutely has no idea we are here. Averlyth knocks on the door and he jumps, cursing that he forgot he gave us a key.
Kanye presents the keyring to “take their co-working relationship to the next level”, promising it’s not sentient. Qualish is absolutely concerned about the gift.
Averlyth asks Woodhouse to take out the limbo egg. Before Woodhouse finishes announcing it, Qualish snatches it out of Woodhouse’s hands, giggling maniacally. He nimbly approaches a large object near the center of the room, with thick cables running to each of the vehicles. He opens a hatch exposing some metal calipers, then fiddles with them until it holds the limbo egg in place. Then he puts on protective goggles, a thick lead apron, and then points at a glowing green button.Qualish: Who wants to press the button???Everyone but Kanye hides behind the blast shield and Nissa presses the button.
There’s suddenly a glow coming from the object in the center of the room, lighting is arcing along the surface and dancing around the cables. We can’t hear Qualish but we can clearly see him full on cackling as he peers through a narrow slit in the blast wall.
Suddenly, there is a brilliant flash of blue light and we’re plunged into darkness.
All of the indicator lights in Kanye’s power armor go off and it freezes up.
There’s a sudden silence. As our eyes adjust, we eventually see the room isn’t totally pitch black after all: there’s now a faint light coming from all the eyes of the vehicles. They give an unmistakable state of waiting and watching.
After a few minutes, the power armor books back up.
Averlyth is personalizing her vehicle with Bane stickers. If she didn’t know better, it almost seems like the vehicle is kinda proud of them?
It’s immediately clear Qualish is now deep in the zone and gleefully working on the vehicles. He’s begrudging about us still being here, and says we should be ready to fight HWS soon.
The group accepts our cue and leaves to find the Director in Bosley’s office. When we walk in, Bosley is sitting at her desk and surprised but happy to see us. She asks if we’re here for her or if she should call the Director. Kanye asks if she liked the waffle (she did) and then gives her a 6 inch frigate from the plane of Mechanus. He promises it isn’t sentient… she puts it into a box labeled R&D.
Kanye asks her for her favorite waffle toppings. Bosley says she likes fruit on her waffles. Averlyth interrupts, stating that yes, we’re here for the Director. Bosley pages her.
A few minutes later, her usual door opens. Peering through the doorway, we realize it must be a portal, as the room behind it is very clearly in a different location: brightly sunlit, big window city scene? This door must be connected to a location in the city of Neverwinter, where the Director still masquerades as the Queen. When she arrives, she appears in that form, and asks if we have something new to report.
Averlyth explains that we have given Qualish a Limbo Egg, thereby advancing our plans to have mechs for fighting him. She also shares that we think we met HWS in our dreams the night before. The Queen immediately calls him a drama queen, and then asks what he was trying to accomplish with it. 
Kanye tries to get answers on what exactly happened in our dream, and if it was a persistent threat. It sounds like it was just a dreamscape, and he wouldn’t have access to our physical bodies. The worst he could do would be to keep us in the dream and make it compelling - he’d still need an IRL assassin. Averlyth asks about the decor ring; The Queen explains that in order to summon us into a dreamscape, he would have had surface level of our thoughts, so if anyone was thinking about it, he could summon it in the dream. Queen: Do you have any final questions for me? I have a lot of pressing business to attend to.Um: Do you know anyone named Linda?It is clear to Averlyth that she is shocked. To everyone else, she just stiffened, turned to Um and asked where he heard the name. He says “the other guy” was going on about the name. In an uncharacteristically stiff manner, she informs us not to tell anyone that’s her name, that she worked hard to get into a position of power and respect, and that it’s hard to have people respect you while on a first name basis.
She bustles back out the door. 30 seconds after the door is closed, Bosley turns to us.Bosley: Her name is Linda?!?!!Kanye spends 5 minutes discussing ways to totally troll the Director via various Linda-named projects. Bosley and the rest of the group correctly assess this course of action would be a death sentence.
With nothing left to do here, we travel back to Limbo and pick up Moody to set off across the landscape to Warrior’s Rest. This is where Station Epsilon is, where a frazzled voice on voicemail last reported that the station has gotten unmoored and drifted into the arena.
Nissa knows Warrior’s Rest is a self-contained area of Limbo (like Phenomar) with surprisingly little info on it. It was created by a collection of gods of battle, and exists as a posthumous reward for followers of those gods, who get to participate in eternal combat. We don’t know a lot about it, other than they all go there and eternally fight in the name of their god.
We eventually approach and we’re standing just outside Warrior’s Rest. Although we can see the chaos surrounding it clearly, it appears to be a large dome enclosing a stable environment. The ground inside resembles rocky badlands. There does not appear to be a single entrance, it’s more like there’s a border. 
The gang decides to pause just outside of Warrior’s Rest. Averlyth summons a Hero’s Feast for dinner, to give everyone immunity to poison, immunity to being frightened, advantage on Wisdom saving throws, and 2d10 more hit points for the next 24 hours. We then take a long rest before going in so Averlyth can get the spell slot back, so it will last for 16 hours after.
In the morning, we gear up and step inside Warrior’s Rest. As we enter, a booming voice echoes across the land: “New Opponents have entered the dome!”.
Over a ridge, we see the shattered remains of a monitoring station. Visible in the distance to the left is an encampment with red banners. To the right are an encampment with blue banners. When we look at each other, we realize everyone in the group is now wearing totally gray armor.
Before we have time to think about it, we’re rushed by warriors from both encampments. The warriors from the left camp are all dressed in red, the warriors from the right are all dressed in blue.Kanye: Sooooooo glad we waffled up before we came in here.