Games Logs

The party descends beneath Mt. Strix, chasing another piece in the ritual Alister and Titania need to separate. What they find first in the duergar ruin isn't a monster. It's a coffin. Twin bridges span lake of lava, depositing the party at the foot of several short, steep flights of stairs that rise into the dark. A balcony juts from above, and atop it is a stone sarcophagus. There, sits a tomb presiding above the grand staircase, elegantly carved and coated in a thick, ash

The two hags close on Vincent, easily a head and a half taller than him, close enough that he can feel the ground tremble faintly with each step. "Where is the child? Why is she not with you?" Vincent has little to offer them — a girl glimpsed once, at a distance, through a haze of bad wine and unfamiliar company. "I really don't know," he tells them. "I didn't even know the people I was traveling with." The hags withdraw, hissing to each other. The larger of the two — Morg

The cliffside radiates heat through Diro’s shoes and he realizes his proximity to the salamander is causing his skin to become pink and scalded. The air between himself and the creature is shimmering with heat haze, just like the air over river of lava, far below. Realizing he is burning, Diro retreats downward, followed by his stand. The salamander watches him with patient contempt and only half-heartedly slashes at Diro and his stand, missing them widely. It slithers int

The Ulrich Mansion settles with creaks and sighs, the buzzing of insects stifled by its thick walls. The party rests on musty straw mattresses in the abandoned guards' quarters, trying to recover strength and arcane energy. Four in the afternoon becomes six becomes dusk. Pinecone, who took the worst of the ghast's attention at the churchyard burial of Maartin, is finally resting comfortably but still very weak. He noses at Soulfire's hand and settles onto the bed besi

The party climbs the forested shoulder of Mt. Strixhaven, the volcano Alistir insists, with mounting and increasingly suspicious enthusiasm, is perfectly safe. No one has yet explained why a perfectly safe volcano requires this many signs reading DANGER, NO ADMITTANCE, RESTRICTED, and KEEP OUT. Alister assures them that these signs are only to keep out those who have no actual business in the caves. “This place,” Alister says confidently, “is perfectly safe.” Sweating and

Moving past the pole where the watcher-eye hung, the group finds a rotted plank leaning against a moss-covered rock. Something tattered and black hangs from it. As they draw closer, the shape resolves — the dead body of a large raven, nailed to the wood, wings pinned wide. Soulfire casts Detect Magic and feels strong transmutation magic radiating from the bird, and something darker still — a heavy pulse of subjugation magic from the nail itself, which she realizes now is g

Rain comes, a few drips at first and then all at once, hammering the deck of the Bright Lady in gray sheets. The small keelboat groans against the swells. Her captain, a weathered man named Keeler stands fixed at the bow beside a mounted ballista-like device he adjusts with a large wrench. Water sluices from his braided beard onto his waxed cloak. The only other crew member, Jeeter Beeching, is a younger man, tanned and clean-shaven. He directs the party up the gangplank

The big top empties in a hurry to escape the rapidly spreading inferno— even the pit fiend doesn't linger for an encore. At the top of the bleachers, Kiki slits the canvas with her dagger and slips out through the hole rather than fight the panicked bottleneck at the entrance. Inside the burning tent, the barlgura is still eating whatever weaker infernal it can reach. What's left of the crowd spills into the oven-heat of the Maladomini fairgrounds: a gang of horned devils,

Rampart lies on the common-room couch with an ice pack pressed above one tusk, the bruise beneath it already gone deep purple-black. Someone has draped a blanket over him that doesn't quite reach his feet. Alternate KFC finds him there. "Looks like somebody had an adventure," she says, and her tone tries for light and lands somewhere else entirely. "I didn't want to bother you, hon," Rampart says. "I tried sparring with Diro instead. It didn't work out." A beat. "It was two

The road to Tser Falls has proven dangerous. From out of the forest emerges a familiar face, its features twisted now with rage and hatred. Sheriff. He was taken by the hags in exchange for passage along the road, back when they carried Ireena toward Ravenloft. Dag ducks, opened by one of Morgantha’s spells and bleeding freely. Sheriff’s blade arcs toward him, and again — whatever the hags have done to him in his time with them, they have granted him no gift for swordplay.

The road to Berez has turned out to be far more treacherous than anyone bargained for. Mist clings low over the evergreens, and the stench arrives before the creatures do — a thick, rotting sweetness that coats the back of the throat. Two ghasts, gravecallers both, have cornered the party mid-track, their green-grey flesh peeling in strips, their claws black with old blood. In the middle of the chaos, a figure steps quietly from the tree line, unnoticed by all but the trees

The Fire Jolt Café fills its last chairs as Debbie takes her final bow. The set has gone well — well enough that Quintelius corners her before she's finished packing up her gear and offers her a touring slot on the spot. A replacement spot until their regular guitar player can sort out his romantic entanglements. It is a convenient offer. This timeline's Debbie already owns the bus. There is a wedding coming between Rampart and this timeline's KFC. In the stretch of time

The last of the wolves goes down in a wash of fire, Crystal and Abi's spells silencing the pack's howls. Smoke curls off scorched fur and drifts low across the frost-stiffened grass near the windmill, and for a moment nobody speaks — just the tick of embers cooling and the distant creak of the mill's broken sails turning in the wind. They take stock. Packs are checked, blades wiped clean, potions counted against what's left of the road ahead. They set out on a curiously un

Dawn breaks over Strixhaven, and KFC is smuggling a twelve-foot shambling mound down five flights of spiral staircase underneath a carpet. This is, she will insist to anyone who asks, a school project. Quintilius asks. He is coming up the stairs after an all-night band practice, guitar case flattened against the wall, and he wants to know why the project smells like something decomposing. KFC explains that it is a project *about* how magical creatures decompose, which is the

So your kid came home talking about goblins, twenty-sided dice, and someone named "the DM" — and now you're wondering what exactly you're in for. Welcome, Traveler! You're in the right place. Consider this your parent-friendly field guide to Dungeons & Dragons for the 9–13 crowd: what it is, why it's genuinely good for growing brains, and how to get your young adventurer to their first game.

In the fissure between Malbolge and Maladomini, the truck — reinflated, humming, improbably intact — sits balanced on a narrow ledge outside a crumbling structure. It hovers on its magical horseshoes, a fortunate circumstance given the decrepit state of the scaffolding suspended high above the arid Maladominian valley below. Two of the party were stone, but have been relieved of the condition thanks to their friend Thunk, the cleric, who has restored them. One other, howev

The Abbey of Saint Markovia clings to the hillside above Kresk, its bells casting a long, resonant toll across the valley. As the sound resonates, the creatures within the abbey yard answer with yipping, howls, growls and screams. Nikolai Wachter sits in the relative warmth of the abbey’s receiving room and tries, very hard, to understand what he is being told. A year. He lost a year. He had closed his eyes — he is almost certain he had merely closed his eyes — and the worl

Wizards of the Coast. The Dark Gifts. Digital illustration. Curse of Strahd, WotC, 2016. Hall of the Amber Sarcophagi The East Hall of the Amber Sarcophagi smells of damp stone and something older, sharper underneath — caused, possibly by the divine things that have been imprisoned within for a very long time. Behind one of the chamber doors, the sounds are extraordinary: crashing, roaring, the shriek of something that might be female or might be the sound stone makes when it

The contract room is on fire. The contracts themselves — thousands of them, the accumulated debt of the damned — are burning beautifully. This is not ideal, mostly because Murlack is in the contract room. He is also burning, but likely would not describe the flames that are engulfing his legs as “beautiful,” by any stretch. If anything, there is an urgency to put the flames out. A familiar face appears on the hallway side of the wall of flames. Hope rises in Murlack. It is N

Wintersplinter is already gone, its colossal form crashing through the treeline in the direction of Vallaki. Violet Robin has been sent back to the Martikov vineyard for horses. On the muddy slope of Yester Hill, the old druid and his staff silhouetted in the mist, fighting on. Blinsky and his monkey, Piccolo, lie where they fell — victims of the old man’s lightning. They are alive, barely. Torgen, Feesh, and Krelldutt have closed around the druid, who has proven far stron