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

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

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

Aurora waits by the door while KFC hands off Otto, and Dr MacDonald is effusive about it. "Well done," he says, studying the dog and then studying KFC a beat too long, like he's checking the math on something. Uncomfortably, KFC fills the silence. "He's still pretty smelly. I tried to wash him, but I didn't have any soap…" She spreads her wing to gesture at Otto. Beaming, MacDonald tells her, "I've heard things about you, and none of that's true. You're perfectly lovely

Orbart pounds down the hall and finds Bayleaf braced in a bedroom doorway, weapon up. The minotaur rounds the corner into the room and stops. The one who called himself Viktor lies where he fell. His daughter is gone. The Vistana swordsman stands at the ready, a dangerous glint in his eye. Bayleaf comes in beside Orbart, and his blade lands, knocking the elbow of the Vistana, who swears. Together they drive the swordsman back, and for the first time something moves behind t

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.

Morning light struggles through the shutters of the Blue Water Inn, catching the dust motes above tables still scarred from the werewolf assault. The companions gather in the main room, battle-worn but resolute, and lay out their plan to Urwin Martikov: back to the old windmill, to hunt down the last of the night hags. Urwin listens, wiping the same tankard he’s been wiping for the better part of ten minutes. “You’re going back there,” he says. It isn’t quite a question. “We

The Blue Water Inn is in disarray — overturned tables, shattered glass glittering in the lamplight, the copper stink of blood soaking into good Vallaki floorboards. The last of the werewolves know the fight is lost. Two of them — Lawrence and Curlew, if the pack keeps names at all — bolt through the kitchen, scattering pots and pride in equal measure. Mohsen takes the more theatrical exit, hurling himself through the front window in a spray of glass, and is gone into the nigh

The safe house is too small for a battle, but a battle has come anyway. In the narrow hallway, a Vistani swordmaster lunges at Bayleaf, his blade flickering once, twice. The paladin answers in kind, and on the second cut, a surge of divine power skitters up his sword's edge. For one blinding instant the corridor is lit white, every face carved from shadow. Torgan, bleeding from a half a dozen wounds, hefts his greataxe against a Vistani lieutenant. "If I go down," he growl

Sound travels strangely in the fissure between Malbolge and Maladomini — every clash of steel, every furious roar, bounces off stone until it’s impossible to tell where the battle actually is. Kiki, Vali, and Thunk are hurrying back from their errand to retrieve the truck, now shrunk down and cradled against Kiki’s paw. The distant echoes of combat put new urgency in their steps. Sound, being sound, travels in all directions. Someone else trapped in this narrow purgatory hea

Urwin and his family leave the companions in the taproom, bidding them a good night. Late at night, the Blue Water Inn has settled into its particular quiet — the kind that feels less like peace and more like held breath before bed. Candles gutter in their sconces. The fire in the cavernous room has burned low, casting everything into amber and shadow. The party lingers rather than retreating to their rooms, drawn together by some unspoken instinct that tonight is not a night

The tree blight lies broken across the road, branches still twitching faintly as if some sap-thick memory of life refuses to let go. The air reeks of crushed pine and the metallic tang of ichor, and steel rasps against wood as the party and a handful of borrowed guards hack their way down toward the two buried beneath it. Sawdust and splinters settle in their hair like snow. It’s in the middle of all this that Etuttelong makes its appearance — a small, curious creature tha

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 forest is very quiet when a man is dying in it. Torgan stands over the body of the first Vistani, the fallen leaves around him already gone dark with blood. The second one — his captain, a lean man with a crossbow slung across his back and a pair of scimitars still in his hands — circles to the left. Viktor watches from somewhere behind Torgan, breathing in shallow pulls. Arabella, round-eyed, does not make a sound. The captain is not going to fall easily. Torgan can

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

Diro comes back alone. He is calm about it, which is its own kind of information. He reports what happened below in the even tone of someone who has already processed the worst of it and moved on to logistics: there is a devil down there. He met it. He told it he was a student doing research. The devil — Orestes — let him leave. He told Orestes he was guarding captives. Diro pauses here, letting that land. He believes those captives are the alternates. Their versions, from

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