Big Bad Bread Wars

Picking up right after the bell heist, except they didn't actually have to heist anything. Meat Chunk, one of Screetch's ex-wife-adjacent thieves from the Echo Chamber, has already lifted the small warning bell and presents it to R'oarc as a gift. Comes with a string attached, in the good way. Ring it whenever the party needs the Echo Chamber and they will come running.

Which is great, because the party has to figure out what to do with the few hours before Selene's family wedding feast. The collar registration deadline is tomorrow. Selene clocks the obvious: a feast packed with nobles and Farholde's worst is the best chance to gather intel, find allies, or set things in motion before things explode.

A swing through the Slab proves how grim things have gotten. People are already lining up for collars, a day early, like it's a sale. Some look resigned, some are "beating the rush," a couple of protestors get jabbed and chased off. The party follows one of them, a flour-covered baker whose elf wife is hiding in the woods with their half-elf kids, because the kids are going to outlive him by centuries and Farholde is no longer a safe place for them. T'chuck reads him as sincere. The party reveals they are with the resistance and asks him to round up some "rowdy dudes" for tomorrow. Word goes out to Ratma. New cell, just like that.

Then it's off to the feast, and the wardrobe gets weird. Selene in a dramatic crimson dress. R'oarc in a pink ruffly thing with all of her armor still underneath, spikes very much intact. T'chuck dressed like a fancy cartoon villain. Screetch is wearing, by his own description, sweatpants, Crocs, and a shirt that says "I wish I was a bat right now."

The feast turns out to be less a stuffy dinner and more of a district-wide festival, which is great for the disguised murder hobos in attendance. A fancy pavilion for the powerful people, a public area with games, jugglers, fire-blowers, turkey legs, sausages, ale, and the signature orange Womple Wine that will become extremely relevant in a minute.

T'chuck tries to bluff the entrance by claiming Darius personally invited them. The guard is buying none of it, until Marty "Old Man" Breadbasket's cart of warm bread comes trundling in fully out of control and overturns by the line. The crowd swarms the bread. The guard, distracted by bread, lets the party slip past. Breadvantage.

Old Man Breadbasket then becomes the episode. He's recently an orphan, allegedly. The table spends real time debating whether adults can be orphans. Screetch takes it personally on account of the bakery he apparently owns. Theories accumulate that Marty is connected to Old Man Wuk somehow, like there's a whole cosmic layer of Old Man entities just watching this campaign play out. We will let this hang.

Inside the festival, R'oarc gets pulled into a Womple Wine drinking contest by Brunda Kegbreaker, a stocky dwarven woman who has already broken several other challengers. Several Constitution saves and one burned Lucky later, Brunda passes out before the final round. R'oarc wins by default. The prize is either 10 gold or becoming best friends with Brunda. R'oarc, in a development that surprises everyone at the table including herself, picks friendship. She arranges water, bread, and an Uber carriage home. T'chuck gives her a hug. R'oarc retracts specific spikes to make this physically possible.

The mood drops when Selene spots Pip, a halfling running a dart-and-balloon booth. They took classes together as kids, back when Selene's parents had her socialize with "common" children. Pip is already wearing a collar. Selene almost approaches as herself, then doesn't, because she can't actually help in this moment without blowing everything. She tries to slip Pip a gold piece. Pip insists she play the game. Selene wins. Tries to lose so Pip keeps the prize. Ends up holding a comically large stuffed horse.

She is rattled. She tells the party to stop wasting time and find the people who matter, because some real shit is about to go down.

At the pavilion entrance, the guard from before has been fired, both for falling for the bread and for eating too much of it. The new guard recognizes T'chuck from a comically bad sketch with vaguely Shrek-ish ears. They get waved in. The party walks into the pavilion. Michael cuts immediately to credits.