10/26/2026: No Good Deed/Nine Hells DnD Log Session

The fuel canister goes skittering across the ice the moment the stone raven is knocked down, which is the ice devils' way of saying nothing happens down here without their permission. These two particular devils wait in the gloom, compound eyes trained on the shadows where the companions crouch.

Reklaw gathers himself into a knot of fury and hurls his elemental power at the roof of the cavern, bringing part of it down on the devils' heads. One of the shades lurking behind them is flattened outright, vanishing with a thin, sad cry. The devils themselves go down beneath several tons of stone and ice.

Borark breaks from cover and charges.

The floor is a ruin of crushed ice and broken stone, and Borark picks his way across it, having decided that something, maybe more than one something, will die today. He looms over the nearest devil. "Need a hand getting up?" he snarls.

Sprawled on its back, the devil extends one clawed hand as if accepting the offer. Borark considers this exactly as long as it takes to recall the old adage: no good deed goes unpunished. He declines to do a good deed.

His axe answers instead, biting deep and leaving the devil slower than it was. The devils haul themselves upright, shaking off the sputtering incompetence of creatures who have recently been hit by a ceiling. Then they begin to swing, and to hit, slowly grinding away at the enraged barbarian.

Kiki advances, surveys the field, and holds a strategic position. She rues leaving Doggo, a perfectly functional cannon, back in the truck.

From the rear of the pack, Vali fills the air over the devils with a whirling Cloud of Daggers, cold-edged and hungry. It's a fine plan with one flaw: the first devil shoulders free, shifts, and flanks Borark. Then the second devil raises a Wall of Ice, cutting off the corridor from the rest of the party. The barbarian is sealed in with both furious devils.

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Kiki squints through the frozen wall and confirms Borark is still there, behind the ice, still swinging. Reklaw does not squint. He takes up the missing Arman's purloined staff and pours a blast of unholy light into the ice until it gives, leaving a breach wide enough to walk through.

Reklaw walks through. He strikes the first devil once, perfectly, the kind of blow that ends arguments by ending the opponent's ability to have them. The creature reels, blinded and befuddled, groping at a world gone dark and quiet.

It does not stay quiet. Gearloose unleashes a Shatter spell, its thunderclap centered on the blind devil. The devil endures it. Borark, standing beside it, endures it considerably less well. The ringing peal shakes loose more of the ceiling, showering stone and ice over Kiki and Reklaw, as well as both devils and Borark.

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Meanwhile, at the truck, Thunk is having a different afternoon.

He can hear the tabaxi pirate called Three Rings padding across the roof. This irritates him beyond reason.

Thunk hauls himself up to sit in the truck's window for a better look. He finds the tabaxi settled comfortably into the arcane cannon's seat.

"Get out of there! Scat!" Thunk snarls. "And do not touch anything!"

Three Rings' paw hovers over the red button. Thunk answers with an upcasted Guiding Bolt. The blast of radiant energy stands the cat's fur on end and mashes his paw squarely onto the button. The cannon discharges, booming into the dark. Thankfully, it hits nothing important.

"What did you do that for?!" the tabaxi demands, reproachfully.

A negotiation follows. Thunk offers violence. Then, chided by Lula the fallen angel, he offers robes. He offers holy water and then, with real sincerity, he offers to harpoon Three Rings. Three Rings weighs these options, selects the robe, carries it to the truck's hood, curls up to nap, and begins to purr. Clunk watches all of this and observes, with some feeling, that this is a new side of Thunk. Thunk does not dispute it.

He does not hate all cats, Thunk explains, but he does hate this cat.

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Back in the icy cavern, the dust settles on a party sprawled in rubble. Farther down the hall, two new shapes are coming, unhurried: a cambion and an ice troll. The blinded devil lashes out at Reklaw anyway and finds him even without the use of its eyes. Reklaw turns aside the blade, but not the cold. The other devil carves into Borark. Borark raises his axe to reply, and the axe, for reasons of its own, has nothing to say. He is beginning to be concerned about the extent of his injuries.

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Somewhere above, a cat is purring on the hood of a truck.