WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Die #16, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes, on sale now.
After a six-month hiatus, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans's dark fantasy comic Die is back to begin its final story arc. The series has been lauded for both its incredible narrative and its cerebral exploration of the literary roots of Dungeons & Dragons, being nominated for two Hugo Awards and winning 2021's British Fantasy Award.
Die follows six people who were sucked into a roleplaying game as teenagers. Five of them returned and never again spoke about what happened. Decades later, they are all adults with careers, families and midlife crises when they are returned to the game world. They must confront their shared pasts, fighting for their lives as they try to get home. Now, Die is starting its darkest story yet as the characters delve into a subterranean dungeon, marking the beginning of the end and a perfect jumping-on point for new readers.
The world of Die is a 20-sided polyhedral, representative of the D20 used in D&D, where each side is a separate nation with its own fantasy themes. Similarly, the characters were brought to the world by a set of polyhedral gaming dice, where they encountered hordes of undead called the Fallen. They eventually learn that the Fallen are other people like themselves, brought here by dice and then killed. Now, a set of newly constructed dice are traveling to the center of the world, and if they get there, they will cause Earth to merge with the world of Die, thereby destroying the characters' home.
The newest story arc begins with Issue #16 as the characters travel by ship to an island rumored to contain the entrance to the center of the world. The protagonist, Ash, is gagged in the brig so she cannot use her voice to enchant people after having previously caused widespread destruction with her magic. Caged alongside her is their former game master, Sol, who has become one of the Fallen. Her sister Angela has a daughter who has become one of the Fallen--and whom Angela hopes to save. The team's new leader is Matt, a knight who converts his grief and rage into powerful battle magic. The other two members are Isabelle, who can bind gods to serve her, and Chuck, a perpetually lucky grief-stricken fool with a terminal illness.
When they arrive on the island, they find a sleepy dead-eyed populace that is at once corpselike and childlike. The party splits up to explore, despite knowing the risks. Matt, Izzy, and her leashed Fallen daughter journey together and discover the place is swarming with Fallen. Chuck finds the local tavern completely empty while Angela stumbles upon a grim discovery: when the isle's corpse-children awaken from their stupor, they perform gruesome sacrifices. Ash is left by the ship, bound to Sol, when he begins to remember things he has forgotten since becoming one of the Fallen. Sol explains that dice are a new method to divine people's fortunes. Since the islanders have no dice, they perform human sacrifices like the one Angela witnessed, reading the entrails as an older form of divination.
To stop the dice and escape the islanders, the group board a steampunk submarine and descend into the dark ocean depths, as there is an entrance to the dungeon below. They realize that the whole island is just the fingernail of a giant outstretched hand on a massive statue. Near the ocean floor, they can finally see the statue is the foundational horror writer H. P. Lovecraft foreshadowing the monstrous things that await them.
Within the statue, they find fresh air and solid land. They exit the submarine and are greeted by a guide, claiming that they have arrived in Hell and should be wary of nearby Eldritch forces. The guide calls himself "Howard"--short for Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Having looked up the dungeon's terrors, he gouged out his own eyes. Blind, he leads the party--and the readers--into the depths to discover those same unimaginable horrors.