Mission received! Mae was so fired up, she could scarcely contain her excitement as she made her way out of Faetalis’ Dollhouse, her new jacket carefully draped over her arm like a butler’s towel. When she arrived at the meeting today, she did so full of anticipation, eager to see what lay in store for Infactorium and its Overseers in the time to come, as well as for a chance to contribute to the good of the guild in a brand new and (hopefully) more impactful manner. Now she made her way outside again with her every expectation exceeded, bearing the precious gift and even more precious praise of a Supreme Being and fulfilled in a way that a meal never quite could. It was a little overwhelming, even; to be ascended from the status of cook to a position on par with Lady Faetalis herself was a dizzying prospect, and part of her wanted nothing more than to trundle back to the Gorging Trough, put up her feet, and relax with a nice bowl of Chimeric Stew. But as her boss’s new assignment suggested, today’s excitement was far from over.

She returned to the Gorging Trough posthaste, where she found her Maneater staff in the restaurant’s makeshift dining hall, chatting over lunch. The moment the reverb of her footsteps reached them, however, the ladies leaped up from their seats to rush the door. None of them, of course, beat her sous-chef Head, who already stood at the entrance ready to receive his boss.

“The meeting went well, I presume?” Head asked by way of greeting, his manner politely cordial. It didn’t take a mind reader to sense that Canology Mae was on top of the world, but she went ahead and made it crystal clear, anyway.

“You bet your britches it did!” she sang, her good cheer practically radiating from her flabby stump of a neck. “Faetalis gave everyone a promotion! From now on, we’re gonna be helpin’ keep the guild safe!”

As the Maneaters behind him echoed their leader’s announcement in eager undertones, Head clasped his hands. “Goodness, how exciting,” he monotoned, sounding like the least excited person in the universe. “Have you some idea for the capacity in which we shall do so?”

“I sure do, so listen up!” Mae exclaimed, and dutifully her staff gathered close. Instead of stand there to explain, however, she turned to go and beckoned for the rest to follow. “C’mon, I’ll show ya! Basically, we’re gonna be funnelin’ anyone fool enough to come at us up through the mountain. To reach the top, they gotta climb up through a whole heap o’ floors, all o’ which’re gonna be defended by us Overseers! And get this,” she added, proudly putting her hands on the fat rolls on her hips. “[i]We’re[/i] the top floor, right below Faetalis! That means [i]I’m[/i] the second-to-last boss! Ain’t that a riot!”

Her announcement elicited a chorus of cheers and applause from her Maneaters, including a golf clap from Head. “Alright, alright!” Mae said after a second, shooing at them with her hand. “Don’t go bringin’ the house down just yet, before we do any defendin’, we gotta build the place first! And I ain’t the architechtin’ type, so y’all’re gonna help!”

A few minutes later, the whole kitchen crew stood in the middle of a giant cavern, its walls and floor all smooth, featureless rock newly hollowed out by the build crew. It was totally empty except for the lift that Mae and her cooks arrived on, itself a wonder of engineering considering the sheer combined weight it just supported without giving up the ghost. In hand the headless horror clutched the key that it would be her life’s duty to protect, with which any invader would be able to ascend to the upper reaches of the stronghold and challenge the Supreme One herself to decide the fate of Infactorium. Of course, Faetalis wouldn’t lose to anyone, Mae knew, but for that to even be a question the enemy would have to get past her first. Her fist tightened. Even if she was just some freaky, overfed monster in a chef outfit, she wasn’t going to go quietly. And this huge space was here to help her.

The only question was what she’d make of it.

“Kay, folks!” Mae clapped her hands together. “‘Cordin’ to the boss, we can stick whatever we want in here to give us the best shot at beatin’ the tar outta whoever comes in ‘ere. Jus’ keep two things well in mind, y’all. One, we gotta have a clear path through. Can’t just stick three walls around the door an’ call it a day, or they can start bustin’ up our crap. Two, if anyone reaches us, that means they got past [i]everyone[/i] else, so they’re gonna be stronger’n a gallon o’ moonshine at midnight. So I need some real bright ideas, gimme all ya got!”

In a flash the awed gathering descended into a cacophony of suggestion and discussion, of half-baked ideas, whole-baked schemes, and no-bake spitballing.

“We should cover the whole floor with spikes!”

“Just a giant cave full of spikes, nothing else? That’s so lame!”

“What if they can fly, dummy? Or swing around with grappling hooks?”

“Well, what if we shoot them down with turrets?”

“Turrets can be blocked, snuck around, and disabled. We must diversify and keep them on their toes.”

“If ya ask me, we should put tons of fire everywhere!”

“Just hazards aren’t enough, we need traps. Stuff that they trigger by accident and that takes them by surprise.”

“Ooh, like they step on a plate, and suddenly arrows shoot from the walls, and axes swing around like, [i]shwing, shwing[/i]!”

Mae just stood there for a bit, absorbing it all. If had a head she would have been nodding thoughtfully, but she settled for having Head do it for her. Everyone seemed to be coming up with lots of ideas for traps and such, but nothing structural or cohesive. Finally, she piped up. “Girls, girls, girls,” she rumbled, getting everyone’s attention. “Before we put stuff in the rooms, we gotta have rooms! Plus, we need a theme. Somethin’ that ties the whole doggone place together.”

That left everyone a little perplexed, reconsidering what they needed to do. In that silence, however, Head spoke up. “I may have an idea, madame.”

Mae gave him the thumbs-up to continue.

“Well, if we are to give our unwelcome guests the lowest possible odds of survival, we should aim to keep them in here as long as possible and confront them with as much trouble as we can. For a moment I considered some sort of maze, but that leaves too much to chance, and any challenge they miss constitutes wasted effort.” He paused for a moment as the others took in his wisdom, agreeing with the conclusion drawn. “So, I would consider presenting a linear experience, with only one way forward. We could divide this cave into a number of rooms, where Maneaters can be challenged, connected by halls full of traps that snake throughout the whole area, rather like obstacle courses. And in terms of theme, I see no reason to reinvent the wheel. “

Mae snapped her fingers. “Of course! We can make it like the Gorging Trough, except…bigger. WAY bigger. So when our ‘customers’ arrive, it’s like [i]they’re[/i] the food that’s getting prepared!”

Her idea ignited a spark of inspiration through her cooks, who began to churn out new ideas, fresh and full of flavor.

“So, each connecting hall should resemble an assembly line for a dish? Something like, an enormous chopping block for an antipasto charcuterie board, with giant chopping cleavers and knives?”

“Maybe make it uphill too, with huge olives, salami, and blocks of cheese sliding down the wood floor to crush ‘em like boulders!”

“What about a fish dish? We could have a water section where they have to swim around a bunch of hooks, nets, and sea monsters, but to get out they have to find the right hook to grab and ride on.”

“Make the bastards run across a grill above roarin’ fire! Or a stove, with jets of fire poppin’ up all over the place!”

“How about a bunch of sausage grinders, with a load of raw sausages the size of punching bags dangling above? One wrong step, and they’re mincemeat!”

“For the salad, we could have a garden room full of dangerous plants. It could have a harvester of some kind, to slice them up while they’re rooted down.”

“Ooh, what about a dessert room full of freezing ice cream, and pits full of sticky syrup! That’d be sweet!”

All the suggestions filled Mae with joy. “Now you’re thinkin’! she hollered. “A gauntlet of killer prep stations, runnin’ the gamut of elements an’ damage types, plenty of tricks and traps, with each death run punctuated by a dinin’ room custom-made for y’all to throw down in ideal conditions. Best of all, we can still use the place to actually make food, too! And we’ll call it…” the eldritch chef spread her hands out dramatically. “Madam Mae’s Full-Course.”

Everyone was in agreement, and without further ado, work began.

[hider=The Full-Course (Work in progress for Mae)]
After leaving the elevator, the intruders are presented with a dining room, with a number of tables all set for a banquet and laden with food. There are no enemies, and it’s very quiet. The only exit is a pair of metal double doors on the far side with a single round, misty window each, with a plaque above that reads ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die’.

All the food in the room is very tempting, devoid of enchantment and seemingly safe, all providing health and buffs. However, is all prepared by Mae using her skills Share & Share Alike and Five-Course Meal. This means that the food’s numbers are ‘negative’ and do the opposite of what they should, and they also proc a stack of Glutted after a brief delay. This trap is especially insidious because of how Mae made everything; she’s made each dish as minimal as possible and then put them together to resemble larger dishes, which means that it doesn’t take a whole ‘dish’ to add a stack of Glutted, but a single ‘item’. Eating what looks like a normal sandwich, then, would count as eating two Toasts, one Salad, and one Chicken Breast, adding four stacks of Glutted instead of one.

The double doors lead to a dead end, an innocuous little kitchen that’s spick and span. It does however have secret teleports and is where any Infactorium member with the proper overrides can reach the different dining rooms in the Full-Course. The only way to advance is to sit at a chair in the dining room, at which point a trapdoor opens and drops the intruders into chutes that lead to the first course.

All the courses have an obstacle course that is essentially an assembly line for a certain kind of food full of traps and hazards that fit the theme, followed by a dining room where a Maneater miniboss and a smorgasbord of the related dishes can be found. All the minibosses start in their Placid human forms fighting with her job class, but after taking enough damage they morph into their horrific Jubiliant forms and fight as monsters with unique mechanics. All of them can also eat the food in their dining rooms to heal themselves. Only the first miniboss, head, is different; when in danger, he just leaves, and shows up at the very end to fight alongside Mae. The end result is a tremendous slog that’s made all the worse if any intruders are Glutted.

[b]First Course - Hors d'oeuvre[/b]
Boss: Head – Butler
Element: None
A sloped wooden chopping block hallway full of falling and swinging cleavers where oversized appetizers tumble down the chute to trip and smash intruders into the knifeblade grinder at the very bottom.

[b]Second Course - Soup[/b]
Boss: Flank – Knight
Element: Earth
A series of kitchens flooded to waist-level by a thick, soupy mud, full of vegetable matter and animal bones. In quite a few spots the floor below the murk actually dips lower, which can leave an unwary wader fully immersed out of the blue. This is bad because there is a heating element below the floor, which makes the whole thing bubbling hot, inflicting damage and a Slow debuff on anyone in it. The de-facto way to get around, then, it to carefully platform across the counters and trolleys. There are dozens of soup pots with real soup in them on the stoves, tended to by magic mud hands that rise from the muck to stir the soups with animal bones. They can also throw the bones at intruders and grab them in order to knock or pull them into the muck. Above many of the counters are trick cupboards with cauldrons full of hot muck in them, which can be triggered by pressure-sensitive plates on the counters themselves, although these take time to refill.

[b]Third Course - Fish[/b]
Boss: Shank - Assassin
Element: Water
A stone-lined waterway that flows at a fast pace in a big circle. Anyone caught in the current must avoid the sharp rocks at the bottom as well as the fishhooks and nets cast by [url=https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kH0GuqcfYDs/WvEBibsv2lI/AAAAAAAAA8U/hN6Y4N7KV00M6b3lOcTXU6AHpY9guzdtACLcBGAs/s1600/excitedkuota.png]fishmen[/url] up on the riverbanks. In order to escape the loop, swimmers must correctly time an exit to the central whirlpool chamber, where a Charybdis-esque sea monster awaits at the very bottom to suck enemies into its fang-lined maw. The 'dining room' is a floating barge on the surface of this central pool, which itself is ringed by a multi-story fish market full of fishmen, who act as adds during Shank's miniboss fight, throwing harpoons and trying to hook the intruders back into the water. The way out is to climb the nets draped over part of the fish market to reach a high-up door.

[b]Fourth Course - Meat[/b]
Boss: Rib - Paladin
Element: Dark
A long hallway with a floor pockmarked by grinder pits that deal immense damage to anyone who falls in, but can be stepped around with reasonable ease. The problem is that there are moving lines of meat hooks that cross the corridor all the way down, carrying large pieces of meat from holes on one side of the wall to the other. The holes are linked in a random magical way, so a hook going in one could come out in a different line anywhere else in the room. Most are the meats are just heavy masses meant to knock people into the grinders, but about one-third of them are cursed, and if someone even gets near one it will explode, inflicting a stack of curse that lasts one minute. The first stack turns the sufferer's hands into cow hooves, the second turns the sufferer's legs into cow legs as well, and the third is a complete cow polymorph, with each stack adding a minute to the curse's duration. Each makes it harder to navigate the hall, with the third pretty much being a death sentence. The only way to proceed at the end of the hall is to climb a bone ladder, which is impossible with even one stack of curse, forcing intruders to wait (or use other means) to get to the dining room above. 

[b]Fifth Course - Starch[/b]
Boss: Heart - Reaper
Element: Wind
A grain chute takes the intruders to an indoor field of wheat and corn, set beneath an artificial sun. The crops grows to chest-height very fast, and the field is patrolled by scarecrows armed with sickles that deal high damage and will repair themselves if destroyed. They move in set patterns, jumping every second or two, and are not the most observant, but when near crops that are fully grown they'll harvest them, removing that source of cover. They then deliver the grain to grindstones situated throughout, where the grain is ground up, mixed with water, and then shipped elsewhere. There are also crows that will alert the scarecrows if an intruder disturbs them. If the threat level rises too high, giant sawblades will begin to slide out from the walls at high speed to cut through the field and anything in them. The 'dining room' is a farmhouse on the far end of the field.

[b]Sixth Course - Drinks[/b]
Boss: Tongue - Sorceress
Element: Poison

[b]Seventh Course - Roast[/b]
Boss: Roast - Pyromancer
Element: Fire

[b]Eighth Course - Salad[/b]
Boss: Chuck - Druid
Element: Nature

[b]Ninth Course – Cold Dish[/b]
Boss: Tender - Cryomancer
Element: Ice

[b]Tenth Course - Dessert[/b]
Boss: Round - Dancer
Element: Light[/hider]