Candy Cottage

Start-class article · First seen: s12 · Last seen: s14
Candy Cottage
the candy house · Nibblecheek's cottage · the gingerbread house
Portrait of Candy Cottage.
Location
StatusActive
First seens12
Last seens14
FactionUncle Nibblecheek's household

The Candy Cottage is a conjured cottage of confectionery in the woods east of Eldwythe, home of the toothless, candy-eating hag Uncle Nibblecheek [5][78][37]. The party fought through it across sessions 12 to 14: they survived the Gummy Mummy and the seven-foot cyclops baby doll Bubba Walker, freed the Bubblegum Halfling, who proved to be Edith Applegarth’s lost brother, and left with the mind-controlled dragon Briochebane [27][79][80]. Nibblecheek yielded and was left in residence.

Overview

The Candy Cottage is a cottage made of confectionery in the woods east of Eldwythe, an hour’s walk along a trail of sweets. All of it is conjuration magic, and food eaten from it is replaced within ten minutes [5][6]. It belongs to Uncle Nibblecheek, a toothless hag who eats candy and the people he turns into candy [7].

The party worked through it over three sessions (12 to 14). They freed the Bubblegum Halfling, woke the mind-controlled dragon Briochebane and left with him. Hugo took a +1 greataxe from the dungeon skeleton, and Caelumn the crooked broom and a candied apple clamped in dentures [8][9][10][11]. Nibblecheek yielded and turned everyone back; he was not killed [12].

Geography and appearance

A sprawling cottage deep in the woods: lollipops, taffies and truffles on its walls, sugar-glass windowpanes, a porch of pink wafers and a licorice-thatched roof. A squat peppermint tower topped with icing rises at the back; a small red barn stands to the east and an outhouse near the forest to the north, both of chocolate planks [13]. A sweet smell comes off all of it, and a candy rocking chair faces the forest from the porch [5][14].

Layout

  • Porch and front door. A covered porch of bright pink wafers, with a double door of chocolate slabs carved to look like wood. In front lies a fruit-leather doormat that reads “Please, wipe your feet” [14]; it attacks anyone who does not [15][16].
  • Foyer. Coats and cloaks hang just inside the door, with boots and shoes of different sizes above them. A sitting room lies to the east and a child’s playroom to the west; there are no traps [17].
  • Sitting room (east). Candy furniture (a couch, two chairs, a low table), candy teacups on sugar doilies, and a candy kettle whistling over the hearth [18]. A small rug hides a hatch to the basement [19].
  • Playroom (west). Toys litter a spacious room, with a giant cradle toppled on the floor and a rocking horse that cries “hot dog hot dog hot dog” when rocked [20]. The three candy goblins were in the room beyond [21].
  • Taffy room. A next room holds the taffy puller that turned Vasquez to taffy [22][23], a large blob of unstretched taffy by the west window, and three buckets of about 100 wrapped saltwater taffies each [24].
  • Peppermint hallway. Long, tiled in flaked peppermint and dusted with flour [25]. Pressure plates in the floor drop a giant rolling pin on everyone in the hallway, and those who fail the save are turned to gingerbread [26].
  • Bubba Walker’s post. Round the corner of the hallway a diapered baby doll, over seven feet tall even seated, guards a double door of hinged chocolate bars: the kitchen door [27]. His own room lies down the hallway [28][29].
  • Orchard courtyard. A door by Bubba’s post opens on a sunlit courtyard of four peppermint-bark trees hung with candied apples, closed to the south by a four-foot wall of bubblegum bricks. Three creatures hide among the trees [30].
  • Tower stairwell and study. A stairwell climbs to a study in the peppermint tower: curved shelves of rock candy on the inner wall, a chair, end table and claw-footed desk of dark chocolate, a pair of dentures clamped round a half-eaten candied apple, a crooked broom and an open storybook [31].
  • Basement dungeon. Down a ladder from the sitting-room hatch lies a sugar-glazed dungeon with striped walls and candy-cane cages hanging from the ceiling. A boy of pink bubblegum is in one cage and a very large skeleton gripping an axe in another, with four six-foot gingerbread people armed with rolling pins between them [32].
  • Tunnel, doors and portals. Beyond the dungeon a tunnel runs past more doors, with a staircase to a magical portal [33]. Portals join parts of the cottage [34][35].
  • Tomb. A hard-candy sarcophagus between two statues of crystalline sugar and coconut, amid a trove of gold coins and precious objects, under the inscription “May death curse all who interrupt my rest.” [36].
  • Kitchen. Pots of boiling sugar, cluttered countertops, chocolate toads and jars of still-fluttering gossamer wings. A staircase of chocolate planks in the southwest corner leads down. A massive wood-fired oven festooned with rubies dominates the room, with the dragon lying on top [37]. The stair is a long one, about 60 feet [38].
  • Barn. Chocolate eggs are kept in the barn [39], and the chocolate cockatrices ran from it in the last fight [40][41].

Inhabitants

Notable features

  • The taffy puller: stretches and transforms those pushed into it into elastic taffy, armour and all [23].
  • The pin-roll trap: a pressure plate drops a giant rolling pin that turns the failed into gingerbread [26].
  • The Gummy Mummy’s curse: no healing, and the maximum hit points drop by 3d6 every 24 hours until death [56][57]. Nibblecheek lifted it as the price of the party’s exit [58][59].
  • The storybook: it says that Edith Applegarth, as a girl, “betrayed her brother and struck a bargain with the hag that lives in this cottage” [60].

History in the campaign

Session 12: Eldwythe and the Candy Cottage

Main article: Session 12

A trail of candies through the woods east of Eldwythe led the party to the cottage [61][13]. Ruin’s Detect Magic showed conjuration, and a sweet he ate was replaced ten minutes later [6]. The doormat shouted “GUESTS MUST WIPE FEET!” and flew at Terry, and the party killed it in a round [62]. They took tea in the sitting room, then fought three candy goblins beyond the playroom, one of which pushed Vasquez into the taffy puller and turned him to taffy [63]. The session ended at the start of the peppermint hallway [25].

Session 13: Bubba Walker and the Gummy Sarcophagus

Main article: Session 13

A pressure plate dropped a rolling pin on the party in the hallway and turned most of them to gingerbread [26]. Bubba Walker was fought until Vasquez talked him down; he would step aside from the kitchen door for three kinds of candy [64]. The party got an apple past the orchard’s tree creatures [65], took the dentures and broom from the tower study [66], and went down the hatch to kill four gingerbread guards and free a bubblegum halfling [32][67]. In the tomb beyond, Caelumn’s reach for the gold woke the statues and the sarcophagus [68].

Session 14: The Gummy Mummy and Aurelian Eldwythe

Main article: Session 14

The Gummy Mummy rose and cursed Caelumn and Vasquez [69][70]. Posing as gingerbread recruits, Terry and Ruin talked Nibblecheek into lifting the curses so that the two could work for him [71][58]. Terry woke Briochebane from his trance with one of Phil’s brioche buns [72]. In the fight that followed, Brioche’s breath and claws, Vasquez’s grapple and the party’s blows made Nibblecheek beg for terms. He turned everyone back and let them leave with the dragon [51][73][12].

Status

As of session 23. Not revisited since session 14. Nibblecheek was not killed [74] and is presumably still in the cottage, with the Gummy Mummy back in its sarcophagus [75]. Asger was restored to a normal halfling before the party left [76] and was killed by an Aurelian archer in session 15 [77].

See also

References

  1. ^ Session 12, line 832-866: Cottage description; conjuration magic; food regenerates.
  2. ^ Session 12, line 961-1325: Animate flying rug; candy goblins; Vasquez taffy-form'd.
  3. ^ Session 13, line 102-2146: Pin-roll trap; Bubba Walker; bubblegum halfling rescued; sarcophagus cliffhanger.
  4. ^ Session 14, line 76-1293: Gummy Mummy survived; Uncle Nibblecheek bested; Brioche recovered; egg fails to resonate.
  5. ^ Session 12, line 832: Inline citation.
  6. ^ Session 12, line 853-855: Inline citation.
  7. ^ Session 13, line 1842: Inline citation.
  8. ^ Session 13, line 1203: Inline citation.
  9. ^ Session 13, line 1247-1255: Inline citation.
  10. ^ Session 13, line 1971: Inline citation.
  11. ^ Session 13, line 1995: Inline citation.
  12. ^ Session 14, line 1270-1288: Inline citation.
  13. ^ Session 12, line 832-836: Inline citation.
  14. ^ Session 12, line 865: Inline citation.
  15. ^ Session 12, line 961: Inline citation.
  16. ^ Session 12, line 1049: Inline citation.
  17. ^ Session 12, line 959: Inline citation.
  18. ^ Session 12, line 1080-1082: Inline citation.
  19. ^ Session 13, line 1289-1293: Inline citation.
  20. ^ Session 12, line 1129-1141: Inline citation.
  21. ^ Session 12, line 1160-1163: Inline citation.
  22. ^ Session 12, line 1282: Inline citation.
  23. ^ Session 12, line 1299-1327: Inline citation.
  24. ^ Session 12, line 1493: Inline citation.
  25. ^ Session 12, line 1537: Inline citation.
  26. ^ Session 13, line 113-145: Inline citation.
  27. ^ Session 13, line 102: Inline citation.
  28. ^ Session 14, line 774: Inline citation.
  29. ^ Session 14, line 1056: Inline citation.
  30. ^ Session 13, line 949-958: Inline citation.
  31. ^ Session 13, line 1200-1203: Inline citation.
  32. ^ Session 13, line 1338-1342: Inline citation.
  33. ^ Session 13, line 1945-1957: Inline citation.
  34. ^ Session 14, line 114: Inline citation.
  35. ^ Session 14, line 351: Inline citation.
  36. ^ Session 13, line 2080: Inline citation.
  37. ^ Session 14, line 179: Inline citation.
  38. ^ Session 14, line 361-362: Inline citation.
  39. ^ Session 13, line 939: Inline citation.
  40. ^ Session 14, line 1169-1170: Inline citation.
  41. ^ Session 14, line 1220: Inline citation.
  42. ^ Session 12, line 1024-1026: Inline citation.
  43. ^ Session 12, line 1299: Inline citation.
  44. ^ Session 12, line 1367: Inline citation.
  45. ^ Session 12, line 1456: Inline citation.
  46. ^ Session 13, line 1342: Inline citation.
  47. ^ Session 13, line 1829: Inline citation.
  48. ^ Session 13, line 956-958: Inline citation.
  49. ^ Session 13, line 1143-1152: Inline citation.
  50. ^ Session 13, line 1842-1847: Inline citation.
  51. ^ Session 14, line 1090-1092: Inline citation.
  52. ^ Session 14, line 75: Inline citation.
  53. ^ Session 14, line 136-145: Inline citation.
  54. ^ Session 14, line 441-457: Inline citation.
  55. ^ Session 14, line 1162-1170: Inline citation.
  56. ^ Session 14, line 331: Inline citation.
  57. ^ Session 14, line 626-633: Inline citation.
  58. ^ Session 14, line 851: Inline citation.
  59. ^ Session 14, line 1281: Inline citation.
  60. ^ Session 13, line 1206: Inline citation.
  61. ^ Session 12, line 818: Inline citation.
  62. ^ Session 12, line 961-1026: Inline citation.
  63. ^ Session 12, line 1160-1327: Inline citation.
  64. ^ Session 13, line 896-903: Inline citation.
  65. ^ Session 13, line 954-1152: Inline citation.
  66. ^ Session 13, line 1203-1255: Inline citation.
  67. ^ Session 13, line 1838: Inline citation.
  68. ^ Session 13, line 2144-2146: Inline citation.
  69. ^ Session 14, line 328-331: Inline citation.
  70. ^ Session 14, line 393-407: Inline citation.
  71. ^ Session 14, line 792-835: Inline citation.
  72. ^ Session 14, line 952-974: Inline citation.
  73. ^ Session 14, line 1230-1237: Inline citation.
  74. ^ Session 14, line 1270: Inline citation.
  75. ^ Session 14, line 484: Inline citation.
  76. ^ Session 14, line 1297: Inline citation.
  77. ^ Session 15, line 160-164: Inline citation.
  78. ^ Session 12, line 853: Inline citation.
  79. ^ Session 13, line 1838-1876: Inline citation.
  80. ^ Session 14, line 1281-1288: Inline citation.