Games Logs

In front of one of the ruined tents of the infernal fairgrounds, canvas rotted to lace and swaying in a wind that smells of scorched sugar, Thunk crouches beside a hellhound and decides the name Adolph no longer suits him. "Your name is TBA now," they announce. The hellhound tilts his burning head, unbothered by the demotion. TBA seems to take the rebranding as an invitation to work. He noses through a heap of bones at the foot of the tent, selects a yellowed skull with the

On the grounds of Maladomini’s Carnival Eternal, there is tension between the friends and a group of violent clowns. But as quickly as they descended, the clowns are gone — folded back into the crowd like a trick of the light. They leave only chalk dust settling in the churned mud and the faint, retreating jingle of bells. The friends stand a moment, catching their breath, before the Carnival Eternal reasserts itself around them: calliope music, the tang of sulfur-sweet ca

arvalis, Sir Billy the Cockatrice, Deviant Art, 2014. "Which door leads us to Maladomini?" demands Vali. leaving malbolge The first golem does not speak. It simply raises one iron hand and points — a slow, deliberate gesture toward the door on the right — and that is enough. After their twenty minutes of argument, the answer arrives without ceremony. In unpacking the guards' declarations, the party determines it is the first guard who has never lied. The second has: it claime

The Armen do not charge. They advance — measured, deliberate, wearing Arman’s face across every iteration, each one belted with the Giant’s Strength that makes even a clone of a changeling into something genuinely dangerous. The staffs they carry hum with the same force as the one Arman took from Lawrence. Arman himself stands apart from the fray, watching his own face multiply through the chamber, and does nothing. He cannot make himself raise a hand against them. They are h

The Hag’s Arms is a faded memory far behind them. The truck pulls up to the wall which contains a closed gate. The maze lies beyond. They rest before entering. This is the sensible decision, the adult decision, the decision that every resource management framework and dungeoneering manual would endorse. It is also, in Malbolge, something of a gamble. Night in the sixth layer of Hell is not restful. The hags are gone from their tavern— evicted from their own establishment

“Fall out” would definitely describe what is happening. The truck is falling out of the sky of Malbolge. That detail is important. There is no dramatic pause, no moment of collective realization — the truck simply is in freefall, forty feet above the tavern roof, because this is where Kiki’s spell has placed it. The mapach has the wheel. Vali rides shotgun. Whatever conversation they were having before this moment is now entirely irrelevant. Below, where Kiki cannot see, th

The fireball has already done its work. Where the common room of the Hag’s Arms once hosted the ambient misery of Hell’s traveling public

The plan had seemed sound enough, right up until the moment it wasn’t. Arman, wearing the face and form of the nightmare shepherd Lawrenc

Being in the bathroom of the Hag’s Arms has become, against all reasonable expectation, being part of a command center. Thunk is the first t

As the truck rolls slowly up to the Hag’s Arms, a landmark in the land of Malbolge, the massive, mummified limb that gives the tavern its na

The truck crests a ridge and the sixth layer of Hell opens before them, broken and uneven. Malbolge is nothing like the levels that came

Reklaw volunteers for first watch as his companions settle into makeshift beds—some sprawled across the truck’s hood, others curled in its b

Moving on from the piles of items they have found in the Cave of Lost Things, most of them tuck away their treasures. All have valuables, ex

Charybdis stands motionless in the tunnel ahead, hands crossed before him, blocking the truck’s path with quiet confidence. His appearance i

The storm giant’s lips curl into a sneer as he watches Thunk back away, the tiny griffon tucked protectively out of sight against the bugbea

The party stands before the remorhaz’s nest, heat radiating from the creature’s segmented carapace in waves that make the air shimmer. Six e

Reklaw twists desperately within the hellish scourge that binds him, the barbed coils biting into his flesh with each movement. Despite the

Furiously fast, the companions tumble down the slick dark tunnel, their bodies helpless against the relentless pull of gravity and ice. Weap

The group stands at the pile of lost things, tucking away their oddly apt discoveries. Arman buckles on a Belt of Hill Giant Strength, and

The comrades eye the remorhaz, which has burst through the ice and positioned itself directly before their sled. Chunks of frozen debris sca