03/02/2026: Two Traffic Stops

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 with its familiar chuffing, and the party points the nose east.

Somewhere ahead, impossibly far across the scarred and tilting breadth of Malbolge, The Hag’s Arms waits for them.

⚔

No one says anything about the smell at first. It is simply there — stale and yeasty, like the floor of the seediest dockside tavern in Waterdeep. The rank odor fills the passenger compartment. It takes a while before anyone traces it to Borark’s new club, resting across his knees: the Drunkard’s Cudgel, its grain still faintly wet-looking. Once the source is identified, the mood lifts. They pass the miles trading ideas — how might you press a cudgel into someone’s hand in a crowd without them noticing to intoxicate them? Could you hide it under a table during negotiations? Could Borark simply gesture with it during a toast? The Cudgel, they agree, has potential.

The truck, for its part, does not share their optimism. It crawls.

Kiki wrestles the wheel with both hands, her knuckles white, her jaw set. Malbolge does not believe in straight roads. The terrain shifts beneath the tires — a sudden lean, a shudder, a soft place in the ground that tries to grab and hold. In the middle distance, a tower looms against the orange murk, and no one looks at it directly for long. It rises from the banks of the Styx, from the dark fast-moving water that washes away memories of any of those unfortunate to be wetted by its rank waters, damned for all time to oblivion.

 The tower’s base is the great curved arc of a pelvis —an  enormous, pale old bone.  From it, a vast femur rises skyward into the churning orange clouds of Malbolge.

 “Don’t look at it,” someone says.

No one argues.

⚔

The chasm opens with no warning.

One moment, ground. The next, a raw black split yawning across the road ahead. Kiki spins the wheel — frantically, all the way, her whole body behind it — and the truck lurches sideways, tires grinding untrustworthy gravel, the chassis swaying with terrible momentum before it finds traction and holds, trembling, at the very lip of the gap.

From below, a green cloud billows upward in slow, fat coils. It has a smell: something between rot and copper, coating the backs of their throats. Most of the party manage to hold their breath or pull back in time. Two do not. Reklaw reels, the world tilting under him in ways that have nothing to do with Malbolge’s geology. The baby griffon makes a sound that is equal parts sneeze and distress, tucks its head under its wing, and decides it would rather not be conscious.

⚔

Reklaw takes to the air, trying to work the fog out of his lungs, when a shape resolves itself from the haze above the chasm. Gaunt. Ashen. Its leathery wings make the heavy air feel heavier. It regards him with the particular expression of a bureaucrat who has found exactly what it was looking for.

“Papers.”

A nightmare shepherd.

Its demand is final, flat, absolutely certain of itself. And brooks no disobedience.

Reklaw is agreeable. He gestures downward, toward the idling truck at the chasm’s edge, and leads the creature down. The shepherd descends without hurry, raising one thin hand. Six shadows peel away from the dark and arrange themselves around the truck in a loose, menacing ring, their edges fraying and reforming in the weak, orange light.

Kiki winds down the window. Papers change hands. The shepherd holds the licence up — examines Kiki — examines the licence — examines Kiki again. The process is exhaustive. It is unclear what the creature is looking for, or whether it is capable of finding it. The shadows shift. No one breathes especially loudly.

Vali produces his newly acquired Lead Balloon with the hopeful confidence that the item will bind the officious nightmare to the ground upon which it now stands. However, the nightmare shepherd glances at it and shakes its head once. The silence that follows communicates that the shepherd has seen a Lead Balloon before. It knows precisely what a Lead Balloon is, what it does and that this is of no interest to him.

What the nightmare is interested in is the smell. Of alcohol.

The shepherd’s nostrils flare. It looks at Borark.

“Out.”

The tiefling is extracted from the cab with the resigned dignity of a man who has done nothing wrong and knows it will not help him. The Drunkard’s Cudgel, tucked into his belt, goes on quietly breathing its presence into the air.

The sobriety test is conducted with grim procedural thoroughness. Walk a straight line: Borark does this without difficulty, placing each hoof with deliberate precision. Touch your nose with eyes closed: he does this too, accurately, without any visible wobble. His comrades watch from the truck with expressions of cautious hope.

“Recite the alphabet. Backwards.”

Borark is quiet for a moment.

“Who can do that?” he demands, “I can’t do that!”

The shepherd’s eyes narrow.

“Because I’m dumb,” Borark adds, with great sincerity. “Not drunk. Just dumb.”

The shepherd does not appear to find this a meaningful distinction. Its manacles are already in its hands.

⚔

Reklaw, back in the truck, watches the nightmare begin to put Borark through the tests. He makes a decision, uncapping the Nolzur’s Magical Pigments and begins to work — smooth, unhurried strokes in the charnel air — and a breathalyser takes shape between his hands, plausible and official-looking. In the 10 minutes it takes to reach the discussion of who is able to recite the alphabet backwards, Reklaw holds the device in his hands.

Meanwhile, the shepherd is taking takes Borark’s weapons one by one. The magical morningstar. A few hand axes. A javelin. And finally — because it is last, because it is the thing that matters —he takes the Drunkard’s Cudgel.

The effect is not immediate. It is gradual, and then it is not.

The nightmare shepherd blinks, at first. Sways. Its grip on the collected weapons loosens, and they clatter to the ground in an untidy pile. “Oof,” it says, with what sounds almost like apology. “So s— sorry ‘bout that.” It bends to retrieve them and misses. Bends again. Misses again, nearly falling over. 

The shadows drift around the truck uncertainly, lost without instruction by the nightmare shepherd.

“Here,” says the shepherd, thrusting its crook at Reklaw with the decisive motion of someone solving a problem, “hold this—(hic)— fer me, would ya?” The crook’s head glows violet — a deep, pulsing amethyst light — and Reklaw takes it, because the nightmare shepherd has asked him to and because this all seems to be going somewhere interesting.

“I think—” the shepherd begins. It hiccups. “—I might—(hic)—have a lil nap.” The shepherd lists sideways, as if to lay down.  

And tumbles off the ledge into the chasm.

There is a pause in which everyone looks at the space where the nightmare shepherd was standing. Then Reklaw is in the air, diving into the dark of the pit. He returns with a hat — broad-brimmed, official, the kind of hat that says authority in at least three languages — and a badge that catches the orange light.

He passes both to Arman, along with the crook.

Arman holds the hat. Looks at the crook. Examines at the badge. Around them, the shadows have begun to lose their edges, fraying away to nothing without their anchor.

The truck idles at the lip of the chasm. East is still east. The Hag’s Arms is still waiting.

Arman puts on the hat and badge.

⚔

The tower grows no more welcoming with proximity.

It dominates the middle distance as the truck crawls eastward — that vast architecture of bone, the pelvis and rising femur pale against the orange murk, giving the sense of how very large the hag that Glaysa poisoned must have been.

Then someone spots the group on the path ahead.

The creature herding them is large and red-skinned, horned, its wings neatly folded to arch above its head. The cat-o-nine-tails rises and falls in a practiced rhythm. Ahead of it, a dozen lemures shuffle and bunch in their chains, potato-round, weeping with pain and despair. Their wails are carried away on the rank, fetid air.

The horned devil raises one massive hand.

Kiki brings the truck to a stop.

For a moment, no one moves. Then the passenger door swings open and Arman steps down onto the road — and he is not Arman. He is the nightmare shepherd: ashen, gaunt, broad-hatted, the crook held loosely at his side and the badge catching what passes for light. The transformation is immaculate. The hat helps. The crook helps more.

The horned devil dips its great head.

“Laurence.”

“How ya doing?” says Arman.

The devil exhales — a long, aggrieved sound — and gestures at the shambling procession of lemures it has been whipping. “Busy. As usual.” It shakes its head with the weariness. Then its eyes move to the truck, and something shifts in its expression. It leans forward. “Nice ride. Where did you get it?”

Arman does not hesitate. “Impounded.”

The devil’s face opens into something that might be admiration. It holds out the cat-o-nine-tails.

“You have a turn with the prisoners. I want to check out your prize.”

Arman takes the whip. He cracks it once, sharply, and the lemures flinch as one, their wailing briefly peaking before subsiding back into its baseline misery. The horned devil watches with the appreciative expression of a craftsman recognising good technique.

Then it steps to the truck and raps on Kiki’s window.

She rolls it down. Tentatively.

The devil peers in at the assembled passengers, taking inventory. Its gaze moves to Kiki. “They aren’t lemures yet,” it observes, with the air of someone noting an irregularity. “And you trusted the raccoon to drive?”

“It’s a complicated bit of machinery,” Arman calls from behind it, the smooth lie giving the horned devil nothing to doubt. “She’s not going to do anything.” He cracks the whip again for emphasis. The lemures cower.

The devil turns back to the window. Its eyes finding Borark — and its nostrils flaring.

“You.” One clawed finger extends. “You smell like you belong up in Stygia with the other drunks and gluttons.”

The reaction is immediate.

“You dare—” Borark is already moving forward in his seat, smoke-dark with fury, every muscle expressing an opinion about this. “Why I ought to—”

“Keep your chain mail on, little tiefling.” The horned devil grins, and the grin is the worst thing about it. “If you’re not in Avernus for anger issues, you’re clearly headed for Maladomini — too proud to think twice about taking on someone like me.” It seems genuinely pleased. “Well done. But—”

The pitchfork comes through the window faster than Kiki can bring it up, and Borark takes the strike full in the chest. The smell of scorched leather and singed hide fills the cab.

“—take that for being a hothead.”

Borark sits back, smoking, jaw set, radiating fury. Kiki stares at the window she did not close in time. The baby griffon, still unwell on Thunk’s lap, stirs at the smell and then lets out a tiny aggrieved squeak.

The devil’s attention drops to the griffon.

“Where did you get that creature?”

Thunk pulls it slightly closer. “It’s an orphan. I’m raising it. I’m like its parent.”

“Good one. I love a quick lie. You were born for Malbolge.” The devil’s tone carries the specific warmth of someone complimenting an idea they intend to ruin. “You’ll lose it when they make you into a lemure. Griffons are a restricted species on this level.”

No one in the truck speaks. They have all been lemures. The memory sits like something that never entirely left.

The devil straightens up, pulling back from the window. It looks to Arman — to Laurence — with the manner of someone wrapping up a perfectly routine interaction.

“When you get to Osseia, find my brother Fritz. Last year he medaled in torture.” Something approaching genuine pride enters its voice. “It’s sweet to watch him work.”

“I’ll look him up,” says Arman.

The two part. The lemures shuffle past, weeping. The cat-o-nine-tails resumes its rhythm, and the procession continues westward without looking back.

Arman climbs back into the truck and settles into the seat. He is himself again by the time the door closes — or as much himself as he ever is. He sets the hat on his knee.

Kiki puts the truck in gear.

For a while, they drive without speaking. The tower of bones slides past to the south, and then it is behind them, and then it is only a shape in the mirrors.

Eventually, someone turns the conversation back to what matters. The Soul Anchor. The mechanism — whatever it is, wherever it is — that has to be found, has to be stopped, before Hell finds its footing on the Material Plane. Before the layers bleed through. Before the world above learns, in the most immediate and permanent way, what has been building down here.

And their own souls, still out there somewhere with the Soul Anchor, still waiting.

The truck crawls east. The Hag’s Arms is closer than it was.

It is not, by any measure, close.