Delicious in Dungeon: Court Cuisine/Boiled In Salt Water
March 30, 2024 8:42 AM - Season 1, Episode 6 - Subscribe

Curiosity - and a rumbling tummy - lead Laios to try seeing if the food in the enchanted paintings is a possible food source. But he gets more than a meal as the scenes he enters tell the tale of the Golden Kingdom, as well as that of the Mad Mage. Later, a midnight bathroom break leads to Chilchuck trapped with his nemesis...

So yeah, it's not just a certain long lived elf that has issues with mimics this season (a point that anime fans have been chuckling over.)

But before that, we wind up mixing food and exposition as Laios wonders if the food in the cursed paintings is edible/retrievable - and so decides to go into them to find out. As a result, we get to see some key scenes in the life of King Delgal of the Golden Kingdom (who, as you may recall, is the man who crawled out of the dungeon and asked for help before collapsing into dust in Episode 1.) The first painting depicts his birth, while the second shows the feast at which Prince Delgal is forced to take over as his father falls ill. Finally, the third painting is of Delgal's coronation, and it is in this painting that he runs into an elven jester who seems to take his presence in the painting with incredible hostility, almost burning Laios to a cinder.

Though he doesn't know it yet, Laios has just met the Mad Mage Thistle, lord of the dungeon and the reason for all the horrors of the Golden Kingdom.

Unfortunately, painted food - even from an enchanted painting - is not a potential food source, as the food vanishes when Laios is pulled out of the painting. So Team Touden continues on, subsisting on the food they stocked, looking for a chance to harvest more as they make camp. Chilchuck wakes up in the middle of the night to make a bathroom run and get some water - which winds up being a mistake as the water skin is just enough to make him heavy enough to trigger a pressure plate and trapping him in a room. Which would be bad enough on its own, but it turns out that the room also contains a mimic (which in Delicious in Dungeon are more akin to predatory hermit crabs), which decides that halffoot is on the menu. The result is Chilchuck racing around the room to unlock the door, while effectively wielding the room traps to deal with the mimic, ultimately resulting in the door crushing the crabby creature as the rest of the party comes to Chilchuck's aid.

Laios and Senshi, upon seeing the dead mimic, go "waste not, want not" and proceed to cook up some mimic, much like a crab boil. Chilchuck initially is less than impressed with the dish (especially when Laios uses his lockpicks as utensils to get the mimic meat out of the shell), but has to concede that mimic does wind up tasting good. (We also find out that treasure insects from the prior episode are the mimic's natural predator, using them to lay eggs in and devour from the inside out, leaving chests filled with "treasure".)
posted by NoxAeternum (1 comment total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Living Paintings are one of the least explained items in this world. I don't think Laios met the actual Thistle, but a simulacrum of him.

The way Chilchuck accidentally triggers the trap is perfect. It makes sense that he would forget he was carrying added weight while following the treasure bug, AND that he would chide himself for forgetting something like that.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:18 AM on March 31


« Older Taskmaster: Season 17 (Full Se...   |  Movie: Godzilla x Kong: The Ne... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments