The Screams Weren't From Goblin Warriors — It Was the Nursery
The DM calls for Insight checks on the high-pitched screams echoing from the fire, revealing the barracks the party just leveled was actually a goblin nursery. Dark, absurd laughter fills the table.
The cheering over the barrel explosion doesn't even finish before Reece asks for Insight checks. Something about the screams coming out of the fire isn't sitting right.
"No, these are children," he says, letting the reveal land at its own pace. "These are high-pitched screams. But these aren't humans."
The table goes quiet for exactly one beat before it fully registers: the barracks Barzer just chain-detonated wasn't a barracks at all. It was a nursery. Reece counts it out loud, twist of the knife included — "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight" — and the room dissolves into the specific kind of laughter that only shows up when a table realizes their heroic moment was actually a war crime.
Reece later admits he improvised the whole twist on the spot, fresh off reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. Nobody at the table is entirely sure how to feel about that, but everybody's laughing anyway.
The Screams Weren't From Goblin Warriors — It Was the Nursery