Games Logs

Thunk finally gets his turn to draw. The Knight. A figure clad head to toe in plate appears, kneeling at Thunk's feet — broad, rune-marked, and fully convinced that fate has bound him to Thunk's service. He does not ask questions. He simply kneels and pledges himself. Thunk draws again and gets something rarer than loyalty: The Fates, one chance to tell the universe that something never happened. Thunk puts it away for later. It is the most sensible thing anyone does all day.

The truck rattles through another stretch of Hell's endless carnival midway, and somewhere out the shattered passenger window, a stuffed effigy of the Lord of Blades sits slumped in a game booth, a prize nobody wanted to claim. It's the kind of detail the party can't leave alone. Naturally, they don't. The trouble starts with a rope in Borark's hands. Nearby, the barbarian has spotted a fortune-teller's cart — a table of cards spread out under an awning, unattended, or so

In an attempt at leaving, the truck rolls through the carnival lot toward Vali, pursued by what amounts to the business end of the Nine Hells: three spiny devils and two horned devils are now approach at speed, and a barlgura freed from its recent captivity, loping across the cinders on its knuckles with real aggression. Somewhere behind all of it, the pit fiend former captor of the barlgura, watches. He is patient, waiting for the distance between himself and the truck to cl

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

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 cavernous silence of the maze is punctuated by the echoing scuff of boots. The sounds bounce back to their ears, making it impossible to tell from which direction the noises come, despite the evidence of the listener's eyes. Then suddenly, from somewhere — perhaps around the next corner, perhaps from behind them, or perhaps in no place at all — there is maniacal laughter that belongs to no one present. There is also quiet weeping, a child's, high and inconsolable, cutt

“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

What is left of the taproom of the Hag’s Arm has seen better decades. Kiki flings a Web spell into the churning mass of devils still stan

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

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

Chase Stone. Erebos, Bleak-Hearted [Digital image] . Wizards of the Coast, 2020. The party greets the morning with something close to relief. Eight hours have passed without the ground swallowing them, without ambush, without catastrophe. Borark is mended — or mended enough — and that, in Malbolge, counts as a victory worth celebrating. They take a moment to acknowledge it before the dull orange sky reminds them where they are. Kiki fires up the truck. The engine turns over