09/14/2026: Traveling in Maladomini

The truck rattles through another stretch of Maladomini'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 it seems. A lasso, a tug, and the whole table goes galloping out of the caravan on its own four legs, cards scattering like startled birds. What steps out after it is not amused. Lady Baba — proprietress, witch, and evidently a woman who takes her card collection personally — fixes the truck with a look that promises this will not be a short conversation, and the scattered cards come to rest lodged in several places around the interior of the truck.

"Those are cards from a Deck of Many Things," gasps Reklaw. "We need to be careful. There are as many terrible things as there are good in the Deck!"

Heedless, Borark goes first, and gets lucky: The Wind. Instantly, he is able to fly, enormous leathery wings sprouting over his head — for about as long as it takes him to get greedy. He presses his luck, and this time it costs him: The Betrayal. Possession of this card predicts an ally in the party will turn against him. Rather than risk that, Borark gives up his wings to make the problem go away — flight traded for peace. Because the cards came to the comrades in such an unusual manner, the trade is accepted. Both cards vanish abruptly.

Vali draws next and walks away permanently diminished — The Decay card erodes his

vitality, gone for good. He elects to leave the other cards be.

Kiki's luck runs more mixed. Her first card, The Seal, eliminates one of her hard-won magical bonds with her arcane objects, permanently. Then, unwilling to leave well enough alone, she gambles on a second draw and hits the jackpot: The Treasure. A surge of hard-won experience flows through her, enough to carry her straight into a new level of mastery — she finds a wondrous prize that more than papers over the loss of her ability to attune to magical items.

What waits in the satchel at her feet is Rayomund's Toy Blocks: colorful wooden shapes the kind a child builds castles with, except these grow to house-size at a clap and shrink back at three, wobbly and unglued the whole time — which is either the best magic item at this Kiki has seen in a while, or the worst, depending entirely on how the party decides to use it.

Reklaw draws last, and quietest, pulling The Vizier. Owed to him will be a single true answer to any question, whenever he chooses to ask it. Good for one year. He tucks it away. Everyone agrees, without needing to say it out loud, that it's the kind of thing you save for the moment when everything goes wrong.

Each of the cards from the Deck of Many Things blinks out of existence as it is read by the recipient. Gearloose and Thunk will need to wait to examine theirs: too much is happening, and they tuck their cards away for later.

🗡️

While the cards are being chosen on the truck, Madam Baba calls down a Chain Lightning spell to join the devil escort pursuing the comrades. Parting the air between the horned devil circling overhead and the pit fiend prowling below, the bolt shimmers straight through the truck's metal frame. The pit fiend follows with a Wall of Fire and the horned devil's Fireball lobbed through the cab for good measure. For a few tense rounds, the truck's occupants discover exactly how little of their fireproof vehicle actually protects what is within it.

Kiki, unconscious and dying, loses her grip on the wheel. The driverless truck veers into a wagon at speed, crashes through it. The truck lands wheels-first in what can only be described as Hell's answer to bobbing for apples — if the apples were crawling, undead hands. Several clamber aboard. The truck, already smoking, already short a window, is now also infested by disembodied limbs.

What saves the day, in the end, is a very large, very well-timed prayer. As Kiki slumps, dying, at the wheel and others follow her, Thunk unleashes a wave of healing that resets the whole party, stitching everyone back together, more or less, in one glorious burst.

The crawling claws get picked off, swatted, and mage-handed out the window like unwanted mail.

The truck limps on toward the next leg of the road — somewhere past Mount Bulge, allegedly toward Cania. They agree, unanimously and with real feeling, to find somewhere to rest, undisturbed, before anything else can find them.

They roll toward the River Styx.