Cyrus Flux

## Cyrus

Bard 10

Hello! My name is Cyrus Flux.

## Backstory

I am a druid emloy who comes from Thorsa in The Web. This planet happened to have a clockwork moon named Mesic orbiting it. As an emloy, I grew up with my family learning how to build all sorts of things. My escape from the endless learning was to go into the forest and relax. Over time, I began to hear voices in my head, which I later learned to be from Mesic. He was slowly teaching me to fight for myself. That was my life for the better part of five decades: learning building by day and learning fighting by night.

After the 50 years or so, I had pretty much finished up learning all the crafts I could from my family and began to devote all of my time to Mesic. He eventually began to ask me to do things, go on quests. I am not sure why, but he sent me to Hell and The Abyss. There, I studied the demons and devils there and learned how to take their forms. After exploring and questing for another century and a half or so, The War of Legends Crux finally ended and I began to take advantage of the empty battlefields, having lived off of nothing for quite a long time. After scavenging for 20 years or so, I was on a dead planet scavenging some new boots when I met some very strange people.

## Act IV: The Fetch Quest

Get the Hilt of Eis’Bahad - the hilt of a blade of lich king Savathos, from the planet Gepren. During the war of the lich king, they used Gepren as a forward base. Jade went to the planet and destroyed the entire army (this was where he ascended to Legend-hood). When asked about it, Jade responds “It was not intended, and it was the first time I used every ounce of power I could.” Since, Gepren has been lost, and it has not successfully been explored since.

Gepren “Hellscape”: Magic generally does not work around the planet, and spell points do not regenerate. Ether is gone. There is no dirt or sand on the surface. Wind blows glass-like shards. The least-hospitable planet I’ve seen. The air is thin, barely breathable. Only inhabitants are the Ravenous. They are very attracted to light/heat, especially heat.

Ancient saying, told to me by Mesic:

Those that fear the Earth fear emerald and iron

Those that fear the Sun fear diamond and gold

Those that fear the Moon fear jade and silver

Ravenous are being controlled by a necromancer, who is way over our level. She is wearing Savathos’s armor, and is wielding a giant pick and a blade, made from the Hilt of Eis’Bahad. The blade seems to have the power to destroy a dead creature’s soul, because she kills Nilloc and we are unable to revive him. We frantically get away, riding on my dragon’s back. Ciara is able to teleport Nilloc’s body to us. In doing so, we leave Seeker and the house behind.

As I fly away, I spot an abandoned crashed ship. I land, and we hole in for a night. After a Ravenous attack, a True Dragon attacks, and we get the fuck away. Trodon appears out of nowhere, and we all hop on. The True Dragon is a very powerful being, much more powerful than my dragon form. We spot a massive train, which begins firing golden balls of fire at the True Dragon. We get reeled into the train, and the True Dragon falls back.

When on the train, I discover that it was built by an emloy! I would love to see how the heck they get this thing moving with no magic. The train is ~15 cars long, each car is ~0.5 miles long. I cast 22 Goodberrys, providing the people of the train with food. I am granted a mana potion, which should restore my spell points.

The people say that if we can take care of a being in a cave, we will be granted audience with the conductors. As we enter the cave, the whole party disappears and Mesic shows up. He asks what has been going on, and I talk about the adventures I’ve had with the group. It turns out that this Mesic was an illusion, created by the creature we were sent to fight. We beat the creature through song.

The train takes off for the Ice Queen’s mountain, where we crashed originally. There is a massive war going on at the base of the mountain, and as we ascend on Trodon, we spot a Dragon Tyrant (4 wings, 1000 ft wingspan). Kid turns into a phoenix and battles with it. At the summit of the mountain, we encounter the Ice Queen. The ensuing fight is long and very difficult, many of us nearly dying. In the end, we successfully kill her. The door to her loot opens up. All that is in the room is a stalactite, dripping pure water onto a patch of dirt. Within the dirt is a small tree sapling. We learn that she was trying to save the tree by picking dirt from adventurers landing on the planet. We are douchebags.

We learn while in the room that Jade is actually not Jade Larrell. Jade Larrell killed himself when he was young, and this child was forced to fill the role of arc-human by the universe. We also learn that the arc-human who killed himself was none other than Aman.

After leaving the planet on a giant flying train, we get a message from a messenger. He tells us that we can find a part of the puzzle to defeat Haythen. We go to recover the part, and during the ensuing fight, we summon a lot of different things. One of the things summoned was Mesic. Mesic fought valiantly, but in the end was brought down by a giant laser, fired by the platinum dragon (normally guards of Tiamat), being controlled by Haythen. MESIC DIED. HAYTHEN MUST DIE. We get the object (a large black egg, spawn of the true immortal, Biwore), and Haythen talks to us for a bit, then disappears.

I go to Mesic for a funeral. A Witchhunter goes with me, and while I’m praying for Mesic, he collects a sample of every material Mesic was made of and puts it together into a pendant, about the size of a d20.

We get pulled in by a strange black orb, emanating from Seeker’s glove. We all get teleported to a ship that is currently fighting a god. Asdentrena is the god’s name. We join into the fight, to help in defeating the god. We learn that the god is actually a fallen god, all her followers were killed by Adon, and she went crazy. With the help of a guy (Rain), we manage to kill it.

Three months later, we enter the next phase of our fetch quest. We have to fight in a tournament in Necross. According to Terminus, we will fight based on our current power level. We each only get one item to enter with, but winning battles can let us find our items.

On the first day, I observe my surroundings. I see the edge of the map to the west and mountains to the east. After that, I just stay in one place, foraging for food and defeating any who encounter me.

After a week or so, Simon shows up. He introduces himself as Beth, and says that Cylo (Alan) is at a town. While at town, I introduce myself as Flux and begin to look about the town. I learn that this world is expanding, pretty quickly. In addition, this world is entirely magically created, and there are no consequences to anything here.

After some time, two new people show up in town. Their names are Tyr and Edith. Edith has a dog named Boris. Tyr’s dog is named Borf. Tyr is very strong and helps out in making additions to the town. After a while, part of my group shows up: Iolanthe, Zilchran, Ciara, and Borghildr. They know where McRabbit is, he build his own bar and is living quite peacefully in it.

After a few days of continuing to build up the town (including a smokehouse and refrigerated storage room), Tracy calls me into the help kiosk. He, Cylo, and Simon have gotten a call from Skyra (one of the many intelligences inside Seeker), telling them a theory about Haythen’s legend.

Shortly after, a message appears in the sky: “Agamemnon has appeared. Kill him to get some great loot!”. We form up a group and teleport over to Agamemnon’s position. By the time we get there, he has been killed and the group that killed him begin to come after us. Before any serious injuries, we learn that the group is a Cannibal Cult, let by none other than Aman. After realizing this, the group backs off and we group up.

Shortly after, a whole bunch of Tier 11 people show up [out of game, these were more PCs] and offer to aid us in getting a victory. Tracy formulates a plan to get a victory, and he realizes that the only way to get a guaranteed victory is to kill Terminus.

And so begins the planning stage for the fight with Terminus. Our plan is to recruit other Tier 12’s to aid us. We get a bunch, most of them being lich lords. One of note is Vexin, the guy we beat in the bar fight.

Among the people we recruited was a woman named Tullia. She is a moon, and seemed to take to me. She gives me a massive amount of power, putting me on equal footing with her, so I can at least stand a chance in this fight.

While fighting I am killed by Terminus. Shortly after, I awake on a line between two worlds. On one side is a red desert with a black sky, and on the other is a black field, full of swords. I enter the red desert, being used to hot hostile environments. As I walk, from the black side, a figure who I assume is Death come forward and begin guiding me to a light. I enter, and awake out of the game. From this data, I assume that there are two different Deaths.

In the after party, I speak with Tullia about everything that’s happened, seeing as she is a moon. Iolanthe does her news ability and finds out that Haythen is attempting to get a one-up on us, and is trying to get the next thing we need for our fetch quest. Our research leads us to a place called The Nexus, where everyone is an asshole. It is a place where women have absolutely no rights and men are absolutely dominant.

Somehow, we have to find and gain the everlasting hatred of Soljenure. As we enter the plane, we are stopped by a few policemen. They claim to be arresting us, and after some shenanigans on our part, we get set up to a firing squad. The bullets aren’t too harmful to most of us, but Dull is especially harmed. I turn into a dragon, everyone hops on my back, and I fly us to where we know the item to be. There, there is a book. Iolanthe touches it and she begins to get sucked in. We all try to pull her out and in doing so, we all begin to get sucked in. After some struggle, we see Death the Inevitable (Chaotic Death) come out and begin to pull us in.

We all get sucked in and appear in a space in which the laws of physics do not appear to exist. After some time, we all begin to disappear. I appear first, digging myself out of a desert made of red sand. It looks familiar, the same place I saw when dying in the game. One by one, the party members all come out of the sand. I get onto a sand dune and try to get a look around. I see a “sun” made of nothing that is slowly setting. We all begin to run in the direction it’s setting, and on the way, something streaks past us so fast we can’t even see it. According to the more perceptive members of the party, that was Death the Inevitable, Adon’s daughter.

After reaching the “sun”, we go through it, into nothingness. After a short period, we appear back in the space where physics don’t work. According to Iolanthe, this place is called the Wyrd. Aman spots something floating in the nothing and thinks he can get us out of here. He sees the Far Shore, the place spirits go when they die. Apparently, we can get back from there. We go into a fountain of sorts and appear in an ocean, with a shoreline closeby.

We look out into the ocean and see a small black void at the bottom, similar to the hole from the red desert. We swim towards it and come out back in the Wyrd. Dull sees a white circle, and we head toward it, in an effort to find a way out of here. Once inside, we are in the middle of a white stone circle. On the other side of the circle is a figure.

The figure is Adon [The Adversary]. He comes up to us and completely shatters each of our minds, bodies, everything down to the most basic pieces. He questions what our convictions are, why we fight. Dull answers love, and he says that isn’t strong enough. He gives us a start to put our beings back together and says to come back when we have an genuine reason to fight, and he will give us the everlasting hatred of Soljenure. We get spit out back in the Wyrd.

I don’t know or remember anything, and after sleeping for a while, I am awoken by a man who calls himself K. After conversing with him and the party for a while, I begin to remember stuff. K takes us through a white door and we are on the Endless Staircase. The rest of the party has been here before, and they tell me how to traverse this.

It turns out that when you open a door there, it can link to any place in the universe. We open a bunch of doors and a bunch of crazy things are on the other side. We eventually head back to the Wyrd and return to encounter The Adversary again. He appears in front of us, and I begin to gravitate towards him, not under my own volition. He just stares at me, and I tell him that my conviction is revenge for Haythen killing Mesic. He raises his mace and cracks me over the head with it, and I shatter.

He does this with each party member, and though I have been completely shattered, I am somehow aware of my surroundings. The Adversary does something and suddenly the Titan is there, impossibly huge. Soon after, 12 distant lights wink into existence, these are the 12 True Immortals. After that, things get a little hazy. From my perception, it seems as though The Adversary destroys the universe, only to bring it back immediately. All out bodies are reformed, and we get the everlasting hatred of Soljenure.

Suddenly, it’s like it never happened and I am standing again. I suddenly remember Nilloc.

After recovering from that, we went to go bar-hopping with the Smite of Tales. She is very rowdy and convinced us to go bar-hopping in a strip club. She has a cask of alcohol that changes your emotional state whenever you drink from it. We hang out in the strip club for the night, waking up in the morning without any hangover.

In the morning, we are awoken with the sounds of people dying. After going outside, we discover that Fable is slaughtering people in the street. He knocks us out and we all go unconscious.

We awake in an enormous bed, in the middle of a room. In the corner is an angel who looks like Fable, playing a saxophone. When we begin questioning him and he says his name is Bo. He is a very helpful person, answering most of our questions. He tells us to wait for Joyce, who will bring us to see Fable.

I decide to do some exploring, and turn into a fly-sized imp and fly into the fountain’s water pipe. After swimming through the water for a few hours, I come into a giant room with a house-sized orb with blue runes inscribed in it. There are a bunch of female scientists who all look the same (similar to Fable) studying the orb. They appear to be keeping it regulated to provide water. I think that if they were to mess up, it would produce a different fluid. One of them sees me despite me being invisible, points, and I am suddenly back in the room with Bo.

After some time, Joyce walks in and tells us that we now have our own rooms to stay in. Shortly after, Bo stands up straighter and it seems that he is now Fable. I assume this means that Fable has a bunch of bodies that he can jump to and from. He wants us to question him very specifically, or he will get bored.

I begin mapping the place we are in, walking around with Zilchran and Iolanthe. After figuring out that the hallways endlessly loop with the same 12 or so rooms, Iolanthe and Zilchran walk back to the room and I go to the science lab. I speak with the original Joyce and she says that the lab is in the process of cloning herself and Fable into the clones we see walking around the place. After the most awkward conversation humanly possible, I end up hooking up with Joyce that night. It was the first time I have had sex with someone who does not deal in sex.

That morning, Fable and the rest of the party meet up with me and Joyce. As we were talking, Fable shows up as one of his clones. We go to the office and ask him a lot of questions. Shortly after, he seems to get fed up with us, like we were asking the wrong questions. He then takes us to the forbidden room and shows us what is inside. Inside is Fable’s actual body, and it looks diseased and weak. Not how you would expect an archangel to look.

He slowly stands up and showed us a view of Haythen. He is inside a large structure, known as the War Castle. It was built and used by Alara to shelter all the races during the wars with the unreal creatures. It draws its infinite power from Tier’s End, a sword of unimaginable power. For reference, Jade could only wield it for a fraction of a second, and when Alara wielded it when fighting The Adversary, the sword’s attacks were so devastating that they damaged the end of the universe (the pearl). The castle was sealed long ago by Alara who holds the master key to bring it to life again.

Haythen strolls inside and uses his legend to gain control of the vessel, albeit with some resistance. This is mostly worrying not because he now has a huge castle in his hands, but because his legend can supersede Alara.

After the vision fades, Fable explains to us that we need to get much stronger if we have any chance to stand up to Haythen. Fable also explains that he is dying from a poison - the only poison in the universe that can poison legends. After doing extensive research, it was discovered long ago that while this poison could theoretically exist, it would not exist naturally. It has to be manufactured. Fable tells us that the cure is inside one of the three legendary books (The Book of Legend, The Book of Exalted Deeds, and The Book of Vile Darkness). He knows it is in the most powerful of the three, The Book of Legend.

He will give us one of his feathers (the next part of our fetch quest) if we can procure the antidote. He directs us to the Queen of Humanity, Cara. Then, he tells us the exact ramifications if a legend were to die. Because a legend is basically a law of the universe, if one were to die, there would suddenly be a void in the universe where that legend used to be. If no one adopts the legend’s dogma, then the dogma will cease to exist.

This is very bad news if it were to happen, since Fable’s dogma can be boiled down to one word: Justice. If all Justice were to suddenly go away, the ramifications are enormous. He takes us (as a clone) to the movie theater and we walk through to one of the human-controlled planets, where Cara currently resides. We get an audience, and after Aman has a long discussion with her, she tells us that she does no have the book and to go looking for Mira.

Mira is an archangel who is also a legend, and she is one of the two leaders of the valkyrie. She believes in protecting the valkyrie, no matter what it takes. The other leader, Venser, has slightly different thoughts as to how to further the valkyrie. They apparently don’t hate each other, but do butt heads over some issues. Mira, after some convincing, gives us a drop of the her blood and says that the blood of a valkyrie legend is the only cure for the poison.

We bring Fable the cure and he takes it, though he says it will likely take a while to take effect. He then asks us where we have to go next, and that he will send us an escort to get us safely there. We walk through the cinema again, this time emerging on a planet that is entirely made out of hard light. The entire planet is basically a living museum full of simulacrum designed to emulate legends before and after their ascension to legendhood. It is called Wonderland, and as we enter we are met by a dwarf who explains that he has been following our progress and wants to take snapshots of our consciousnesses before we ascend to legendhood. We all consent, though some more so than others.

We enter beds and go to sleep, only to immediately wake up inside the simulacra. The dwarf encourages us to walk around and explore, as this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We do some exploring and come upon a hard light replica of an old and prestigious school, Valiant. It appears that back when he was Jaden, Aman went here for several years. We all go to classes, to learn stuff about Haythen, as from there simulacra’s perspectives, Haythen does not exist yet. Aman, Zilchran, and I all go to a class based around positing potential legends and what their powers/weaknesses would be. We pose to the teacher Haythen’s legend, and learn a lot about it. The most useful being that with what he has done, it is likely that he’s getting outside help.

Afterwards, I go to a dragon class, taught on the edge of a cliff, and I learn that the dragons of this school want to be the top at everything sports-wise. I enter the class as a mechanical dragon and the teacher does not seem to care, though they definitely noticed I was not an actual dragon. After we all finish up our classes, we enter the next area. It looks like a ziggurat, though hundreds of levels up. It appears that people only exist on the lower 5 floors or so, with floors above that seeming to have no creatures whatsoever. We are told by the Fable bodyguard that this city is what held the final piece of our puzzle - a jewel from a crown that will never be.

We also know that this particular item is currently in the possession of Ciara’s parents, whom she has not seen since they were attacked. They likely think she is dead. Though, at this point we do not know if her parents are real or just simulacra. As we enter the lowest floor of the huge city, we notice that everyone here is very poor, and they are all looking at us in a suspicious manner. McRabbit decides to explore the upper floors and he uses his bow to launch himself upwards, to get a better look. The moment he comes back down, the entire town turns on us and we have to fight our way out. We are all pretty sure we can do it, but then a very powerful person steps forward, with a staff in her hand. She bangs it on the ground, and all magic is ceased. I can’t transform, and no one else can do anything.

We almost die among the crowd, but Aman abundant steps to a higher floor, and conjures a tank out of his arm tattoo. The tank shoots multiple shells at us, and we are mildly hurt, but everyone else is extremely dead. We all run upstairs and are not followed by the poor people. They seem to only stay on the first floor. Each sequential floor gets richer and richer, though the people become more and more sparse. Eventually, after some exploring, we come to a jewelry shop. Ciara assures us this is the correct place, and she walks in with Iolanthe, Zilchran, and me in tow. Zilchran has glasses in his pack that have true-seeing, so when he looks at the vampires running the shop, he assures us that they are actually there, not just simulacrum. However, they don’t seem to realize that Ciara is their daughter, and treat her just like another customer. At this point, Iolanthe shoves me and Zilchran out, so I don’t know what happened after that.

Some time later, she comes out with tears in her eyes and a beautiful ruby ensconced in gold in her hand. Iolanthe assures us the meeting went well, and we prepare for the fight with Haythen, as we now have all the pieces to combat him.

## Act V: The War

We go out, recruiting various people. All the people we manage to get on our side: see this. We contact people we know throughout the course of about a month, and most of them come to our aid. We fly to Arindain, the other party members’ home planet, where Haythen has begun the war. We arrive in a Dwarven Pyramid, which enables us, with the help of Greywind, to punch a hole in the blockade surrounding the planet. We land at a place the party remembers as being easily defensible but disaster strikes as we are landing.

Haythen is waiting for us on the ground, and as we fly down, he controls some of the pilots into crashing into each other, and by the time we land, we have significantly fewer soldiers. We land in the middle of a colosseum, with Haythen and his generals, along with an army, right in front. (Haythen’s generals: Etherion lady, ancient sapphire dragon woman who was the first necromancer, a very fast guy (not as fast as Vexin), and a very tanky dullahan) We all fight as best we can, and do surprisingly well, considering we are fighting a legend. We all contribute in some badass way or another and make our escape as quickly as possible, as it was a losing battle right from the start.

We escape from the fight, licking our wounds to group up with the dwarven pyramid that landed far to the north east of our position. After running for nearly 6 hours, night begins to fall and the other soldiers are starting to get tired. We set camp for the night and everyone prepares for a nice and well-needed bath in the nearby river. The men go first, and during the bath, I decide to see how long I can hold my breath for, as it has been some time since I have tried. At last count, several years back, before I met this group and got mixed up in this Haythen thing, I could manage about 15 minutes.

After an hour or so, the McRabbit and Zilchran begin to tell me that I need to get out, as the woman need to take their bath. I just close my eyes and try to shoo them away. After another few minutes, Zilchran gets fed up and picks me up, carrying me away from the bath area. After another 50 minutes or so, I breathe in for the first time in nearly 2 hours. It would seem that the Smite of Tales has done wonders for us.

Shortly after, I get a message over the ring from Iolanthe, saying that there is a strange fire on the opposite shore of the river. Apparently the fire is a magical symbol of peace among Etherions. Most of us are extremely worried that the fire is being caused by Haythen’s etherion general, so while Iolanthe goes alone to talk, most of the rest of the group stays on the our side of the bank, to make sure nothing terrible happens.

After some discussion, Iolanthe makes her way back and tells us that apparently it was the general and that she had asked us a question that none of us had considered before: “Why is Haythen fighting?” After pondering for some time, we all go to sleep, ready for a long march in the morning. We all wake up, well-rested and ready for the day. We begin marching north, following the river to where the pyramid is. After only a few hours of marching, the scouts ahead report that they saw some ships being loaded with supplies, and when one tried to take a closer look, they were blown apart, as if by a cannonball, but it was completely silent.

After much deliberation, the two sneakiest of our group (McRabbit and Aman) goes to investigate with a small band of soldiers in tow. Some time later, we hear a huge shockwave, like something breaking the sound barrier, and I immediately ask through the ring if anything is wrong. They respond that while they have it under control, there is one of Haythen’s Brack Knights there, and they are in combat. Some time later, the group calls over the rings, saying they’ve won and have commandeered ships to take.

Out of the 37 man of war ships there, we can only manage to crew about 10 with the relatively small force we have at the moment, the majority of our forces being in space still. (~6k with us now, ~10k in the pyramid, and ~3.7m in space). We sail down the river towards the pyramid, making much better time now that we have ships. One of the ships is interesting in that it has many arcane glyphs on it, and has a large cannon barrel pointing out the front. Ciara informs us that while she is sure the boat is magical in some way, she is unable to determine the type of magic, let alone activate it.

After sailing for a few hours, we come upon the massive lake next to which our pyramid landed. It is currently being assaulted by ships from the lake and a land army from the south east. As the sun begins to set, we sail into the war zone, ready to engage the ships in naval battle. On the way there, I telepathically check the water to see if anything cool lives down there, and soon, I get a response. It is some enormous creature, more powerful than me (though not by much) and it wants food. I tell it that our ship tastes gross and that the ships over there (mental gesture) taste great. It listens, and goes off to attack their ships.

We sail closer, and can see the pyramid firing at the ships when one that looks identical to the strange arcane one we are on fires a pulse of magical energy and all the cannons on the pyramid freeze in place. Ciara determines that the blast was similar to an EMP - called a time silencer, it freezes time for most mechanical systems. However, it is so powerful that the effect is relatively short lived - only a few minutes at best. We engage the closest of their ships, and as we all prepare to board their ship, McRabbit goes to the edge and yells at us to get back. He then summons his friend, Hammock. Hammock was an Umber Hulk who he tamed a while back. However, Hammock consumed the black egg of Biwore we obtained back on the fight on Jade’s ship, and has since turned into a horrible Unreal spawn of Biwore (thankfully completely loyal to McRabbit). Anyway, Hammock is now about the size of one of these ships, so when he gets summoned, he instantly crushes the enemy ship.

McRabbit swiftly unsummons Hammock, since he can’t swim well. Other ships begin to approach, and at this point I can see my large watery friend beginning to attack some of the enemy ships. Or, at least I presume that creature is doing it, as all I can see is ships suddenly being sucked underwater. An enemy ship begins approaching, and both Aman and Zilchran fight this one. Aman summons his star tank, and turns it into a submarine, firing torpedoes. Zilchran decides to test something out, about which he and Seeker have a theory.

Zilchran suddenly begins to glow green, and the shadows begin to bend and spiral around him. His green glow brightens, and I recognize that he now has god powers. Apparently he and Seeker, while on Arindain, are gods. He teleports to the enemy ship and throws a Brack Knight through the seven storied ship, all the way to the water below. The ship quickly sinks, and we all revel in the coolness.

After the battle, we convene with the generals in the dwarven pyramid for a council meeting. We determine that we need a better foothold on the planet, and look towards two walled cities nearby. We go to Hollow Hold and send some Witch hunters to Longbow. After a short boat trip, we make it to the city, most of us disguised. I elect not to, since nobody on Arindain has ever heard of me. We enter, seeing many Brack Knights around, acting as city guards. While we make our way to the center of the city, where the leader is bound to be, we see something strange. It looks like a Brack Knight, but it is covered in huge plates of armor that look to be several inches thick. It is carved in runes, and Ciara tells us that the runes are magical. She tells us that the creature appears to be bound to the city by some kind of blood magic.

We avoid the creature (we hear some townsfolk call it a siege lord) and make our way to the tower. While there, we tell the lord that a group of people coming to conquer the city is floating down the river. He suddenly seems very happy and that he can’t wait for them to get here. Confused, we leave the room and walk back into town. After searching for an inn, we find a strange sight. It looks like a thieves’ guild, but mixed with a church. After inquiring, we discover that these people seem to be the religion that Seeker is the god of.

They are very strange people, being a previous thieves’ guild turned good. They heal people but use kind of strange techniques to do so. We all make fun of Seeker for a while before coming back to discuss the situation. Haythen seems to be just giving us this city, which is worrying. We contact our generals, and they tell us that the group that went to Longbow did basically the same thing we did, but they were told by the lord to come back with the 8 of us, as he had a message for us.

Because McRabbit and I were not disguised, and do not care if people see us, so we go back to the lord’s tower and ask if there is a message for us. He tells us that he does, and it is in the form of a very pompous and annoying letter. Basically, he wants us to choose a walled city that we get for free, and a walled city that we have to defend against his army for.

After much deliberation through the rings, we decide to take Longbow for free and defend Hollow Hold. The letter is sent to Haythen, and we begin preparations. After many plans, we decide on one that will most successfully defend the town. My position is in one of the cannonades outlooking the nearby river. My orders are to take down any ships and after that, generally go to where I am needed. We will have about a week to prepare, and when the end of the week gets closer, we realize that we will have to wait about 12 hours for our army to get there, after Haythen has his army arrive. This means that the 8 of us will have to hold the city for 12 hours, until our army can be reinforcements.

The siege begins at dusk, and immediately I can see come ships coming up the river. I go dragon form and obliterate them over the course of the first four hours or so. After that, I turn to the city to see how my companions have faired. They seem to mostly be fine, though we have been pushed back to the innermost walls. As I begin to go to help defend, I see a humongous ruby dragon rise out of the city, and I know that this is my battle. My job is to keep the dragon occupied so my allies only have to worry about the ground. I engage the dragon and prepare for a long fight.

8 hours later, I am exhausted and hurt, having been reduced to about half strength. The dragon is many times better than me, and I have barely inflicted any damage. However, as the 12 hours comes to a close, in a ray of dawn, I can see our army appear over the horizon. Soon after, Haythen calls his army to retreat, and they all flood out of the city. We managed to hold out for 12 hours. In the post-fight discussion, I learn that at one point, Vexin joined the fight, taking on Haythen. He managed to hit Haythen with a rock, something that we previously thought would be impossible.

It turns out that Vexen figured out part of Haythen’s legend, and how to beat it. Apparently, Vexen went to a planet that had no significance whatsoever, and it barely had any sentient life on it at all. He then went and found an ordinary rock that had one exception. The rock had formed sometime before, and shortly after formation, it was picked up by an ordinary person. The man put it in a sack, containing other rocks, and on his way back to town, the stone fell out of a hole in his bag and was abandoned on the ground. This was the stone that managed to hurt Haythen.

As the sun rises, we look around to see the aftermath. Out of the 15000 or so militia that rose up to help the 8 of us defend the city, only 102 have survived. The city itself has been utterly ruined, though with the aid of magic, it can be repaired. The city got its income mostly from merchants, so we need to set up trading between this city and the dwarven pyramid downstream to help kickstart the city’s economy. We will fill the population in with the former, a people from the Endless Staircase who want a new home to live in.

We begin the rebuilding effort, each of us doing a different part of the city. I am tasked with the docks, and with the aid of magic, it isn’t too hard. While building, we talk over the rings on what our next action will be. McRabbit comes up with a great plan that I wholeheartedly support: tame some dinosaurs and train them to be mounts in battle. We learn from a general that the area to the east of the colosseum (where we first landed) is extremely lush, due to a battle between two powerful magic beings a long time ago. If we farm there, the crops will have a 300% yield, which will be a great boon to feeding our troops.

As we rebuild, Cylo goes to the vayla kingdom of Stormbrim, to the north. They immediately send him back, saying that they want an official delegation before doing any negotiations. We speak with the generals about what our next plan of action will be, and it is decided that after aiding in rebuilding for a short time, to allow more troops to land, we will be marching on Clenar, after which we will go to Ebanen, which will greatly strengthen our borders.

That night, as I dream of new dock designs, I see Vexin in a dream. He tells me that we need to hurry up and put pressure on Haythen. We need to stop playing his game. In addition, he says that Haythen is looking for something. He does not know what it is, or where it is, but Haythen is looking for something. We need to find the thing before he does, because if he finds it, Vexin thinks that is will get substantially harder to fight him. Shortly after, another person arrives in the dream. I have never seen them before, but they act strange and have silver hair and eyes. They somehow kick Vexin out of the dream and begin to speak with me.

They tell me stuff that Vexin already told me, but with one piece of new information: the thing that Haythen is looking for is not in Zastreya. After telling me that, Haythen appears in the dream and I tell the mysterious person to do the same thing that they did to Vexin, so that the dream ends. Everything goes black.

I wake up on a cot, surrounded by the worried faces of my friends. Apparently, my soul got kicked out of my body and ejected into the Wyrd. Haythen, wanting this to be a fair matchup, went there and retrieved it, as searching the Wyrd for a soul would take normal people an enormous amount of time. I tell the group everything from the dream, and we begin plans to infiltrate the vampire kingdom of Lescata, to the south.

While planning, Tristan (a powerful Witch Hunter, the only one to ever solo kill a phoenix) comes in with a woman. He claims that she is unusually powerful, and is unsure of what to do. We do some tests and discover that she is close to our power level. She tells us that her name is Adriana and that she was just a simple person before last night, when a person with silver hair and eyes came up to her and bestowed great power to her. She says that her goal is to figure out how Haythen can just roll up to a planet and take it over, bloodlessley, in only a few days. We tell her that we are basically doing exactly that. I begin to lose interest in the conversation, wanting to go to apply some of the designs I dreamt up to the dock. I leave, but keep conversation with the rings.

After some time, I walk back up, having finished at the docks. As I walk into the building, Adriana, Ciara, Cassandra, Zilchran, and Simon are all there, all red-faced and some staring at each other with a lustful gaze. They invite me in, and I back away and try to disappear, as I know Cassandra’s strange appetites from Zilchran’s stories. As I back away, Simon shoots the house with a flaming bullet and it catches fire. They all go upstairs, to do whatever as the innkeeper runs out, in a panic. I tell him to not worry and give him a helpful supply of gold to pay for damages, and begin to try to contain the fire.

Several hours later, they all exit the building, which by now has burned basically to the ground, looking completely exhausted except for Cassandra (who is the weakest person there by far). The rest of the party laughs it off, saying that it only took Adriana a few hours to have her first orgy with us. This group seems to have those a lot.

In the morning, I transform into a submarine and we (The Northbound Legends and Tristan) move out to chug up the river towards Lescata. On the way, I spot a bunch of dragons flying overhead. I have been told by the people who grew up on Arindain (Ciara, Seeker, and Zilchran) that the dragons here are much less powerful than those normally found in the Web. However, Tristan immediately tells me to dive down and hide, as these are True Dragons, the kind that frequent the Web. These are not the small ones of Arindain. We suspect Haythen and his platinum dragon have something to do with this, but we keep chugging up to Lescata.

I land us a short walk away from a port town that Ciara calls Shestra. We enter the city and immediately see a couple True Dragons, in humanoid form, walking down the street, seeming to be patrolling the city. We keep our faces covered and keep going, deeper into the city. An old man recognizes Cassandra and pulls us into the basement of a tavern. Here I learn that Cassandra is the daughter of the vampire nobility here. Iolanthe tells us that Haythen seriously fucked up the nobility here, killing their children and severely crippling the Queen. Also, he used some of his red lightning to make it so that the Lord (Queen’s husband) can no longer interact with the Queen at all. At this Cassandra demands to know where they are, and as soon as the old man tell us, we all go out, following  Cassandra.

After walking through the city for a while, we enter another basement that leads to a long tunnel. Cassandra storms ahead, leaving the rest of us behind. I transform into an imp smaller than a fly and follow her, because if she gets ambushed, it would be bad for loads of reasons. She heads into the throne room and is greeted by her mother and father. They both immediately burst into tears and go hug her. Her mother gets there first, and as the Lord gets close, red lightning flickers over his body and he can’t move closer. He sighs and guesses correctly that his wife is there. It appears he can’t see her or interact with her in any way.

After a tearful reunion, the Queen, Lord, and Cassandra all talk with each other for a while, and the rest of us excuse ourselves to let them have come company. After some weeks of planning, we come to Wish Day, and Ciara’s wedding. We managed to get a truce from Haythen, so that we could proceed unhampered. However, the wedding is still happening during wartime, so it is not as elaborate as some of the vampires want. Terminus is officiating, and the ceremony starts off strangely, as both Simon and Ciara walk down the aisle, rather than the man being at the front and the woman walking down. After they say their vows, we all break for the reception. Similarly to the ceremony, it is relatively short, but entertaining all the same.

After the wedding, we speak with our general on how to proceed next. We decide that climbing Honor Mount and trying to get the attention of the dragons is the best way to stop playing Haythen’s game, so we begin planning the massive assault. Honor Mount is a mountain that is so incredibly huge that it reaches into space, and near the very top, there is a crescent-shaped part through which the rings of the planet rotate through. It is the home of most of the dragons on Arindain, who had been tasked with keeping Arindain’s technology level low, so that they don’t go looking in the ground, as the Oblivion Unit lies there.

We gain the support of a militia containing around 2.5 billion people, nearly all of which have almost no combat training. Basically, though they might not know this, they are our meat shields so that the Northbound Legends can get to the top without taking as many hits. We make the plan to have one of the dwarven pyramids in space fire an Earth Hammer at one side of the mountain, while we climb up the other side a week later. We know that the climb will take about 5 months, and we will cover roughly a million miles.

A little over a week later, we are at the base of the mountain, ready to begin the long and grueling climb. We have enough food to last our army for only two months, so we expect the survival rate by the end to be about 0.5%. We begin the climb, and are fine for the first few days. However, soon after, we spot a dragon flying overhead that seems to have noticed us. It begins to quickly fly off, probably to try to alert the other dragons. Aman, being awesome, pretty much single-handedly takes down the dragon before it can get the alarm out. We note that it was a True Dragon, not one of the stunted Arindain ones.

After 3 months of marching, we have taken down an additional 30 True Dragons, with minimal losses to our army. We have done surprisingly well by now, and Seeker and Zilchran have been showing off all these super cool god powers. Seeker even has a paladin amongst our forces who has been requesting power from Seeker. As we march upwards, we come upon a gigantic wall. Standing behind the wall are three dragon siege lords. As we enter battle with them, behind us, we hear a voice. Drunsala appears and begins smashing through our troops.

In addition to all that, a few dozen more True Dragons appear, and we begin to fight. The our group takes on the dragon siege lords while Wizward, Tristan, and Salazar take on Drunsala. I decide to take on the several dozen True Dragons, as no one else seems to have claimed them. After half an hour of fighting, the siege lords are dead, the dozens of True Dragons are dead, and our army is running upwards again. We leave the people fighting Drunsala behind, to keep her from destroying our troops.

Soon after, we come upon another gigantic wall, again with three dragon siege lords. We take it down relatively quickly, thanks to the help of Cylo and Simon. They run ahead, to take out more walls. We soon learn that there are 16 walls in total, and some of the upper ones have four dragon siege lords rather than three. It is a long and hard battle, an we lose the vast majority of our troops, but as we run through the final wall, Haythen appears.

He looks pissed and goes into a relatively short monologue about how we should have kept playing his game, and that now he won’t be going easy on us. We enter our first real fight with Haythen. The battle is very short, only lasting less than 15 seconds. In that time, I only have time to stack all my forms, but he manages to nearly kill Ciara and Borghildr. He does kill Aman (though he seems to be fine), and comes very close to killing Zilchran, if it weren’t for Iolanthe calling down someone.

That someone turns out to be Gilla (Ex-Council member who was destroyed then recreated by The Adversary, has vowed to aid Iolanthe). As Gilla comes down, in a battleship made of darksteel, looking badass as fuck, he fires a giant laser beam at Haythen, who nimbly dodges. However, the laser beam cuts through the ground and, based on Haythen’s reaction, into the Oblivion Unit. Haythen then smiles as we begin to feel the ground shake. Soon after, Drunsala flies up, with Wizward, Tristan, and Salazar in pursuit. She bashes Wizward and Tristan down, nearly killing them. Salazar lands next to us as she flies into space and tells us to go after her. She apparently is weak right now, and we might be able to take her down.

Needing to get away from the crumbling ground as the Oblivion Unit is waking up, I fly up as a dragon, Seeker flies up on Trodon, and the rest of our group hop in Aman’s tank and we all fly into the ring of the planet, to chase down Drunsala. During the chase, we all discuss what we saw while fighting Haythen, and we believe we have a grasp of his Legend now. He seems to be able to take anything, whether it be person or object, and move it anywhere along its timeline. For example, when we fought him when first landing on Arindain, he set Seeker and Zilchran back to tier 1 for a round, to throw off their focus.

After a long chase, we get a few potshots on her and after some time, she crashes into an asteroid and we jump on the opportunity to kill one of Haythen’s generals. I fly through the asteroid field as a dragon, with Aman’s tank behind. Aman is using his dragon slaying cloak to keep up with her, so by the time I arrive, he is already engaged with her. His strategy, because she is so large, is to throw pieces off a nearby temple to Tiamat at her. It seems to be going well, even as I step in and help tank hits for him.

Soon after, the rest of the group appears in the tank and we all begin the fight. After a long and drawn out battle, we defeat her. However, as her body crumples, we can see a large blue energy come out, in the shape of a sphere. We identify it as her soul, and shortly after, she begins to knit her body back together, using pieces of dragon corpse from other dragons. The resulting abomination has 5 dragon heads, and a multitude of arms. None of them are in the places they should be.

After more fighting, we discover that the abomination is a cocoon of sorts, protecting her regenerating body. We redouble our efforts, and I go unconscious for the first time in quite a while. However, thanks to some healing by Borghildr, I am quickly back up and fighting. As we fight, we can see that the Oblivion Unit has fully come out of the planet, and stands massive in comparison to the planet.

It reaches out for one of the system’s two suns (binary star system) and closes its fist, immediately after which the sun begins to explode in a supernova. However, it immediately freezes, as though time was stopped for it, and the Oblivion Unit pulls the star into a cavity in its chest. In the brief view we get of the cavity, we can see a supernova in there, in its last death throes. We can also see that the space inside could theoretically hold thousands of supernovae. As the new star is placed inside, the Oblivion Unit shutters and a whole bunch of lights illuminate along its body. It looks fully charged up.

Haythen speaks to us as we fight, telling us that we should have followed his game and that we have severely made a mistake by pissing him off. We mostly ignore him, trying to not die from Drunsala’s lightning breaths. The last thing Haythen tells us is to hide, as the Oblivion Unit fires lasers from its hands, which zigzag down to the planet, in theory obliterating any life that once was on the surface. After that, it materializes a spear the length of multiple suns and throws it at Gilla’s darksteel battleship. It obliterates the ship, and instantly disappears afterwards.

After more fighting, we kill Drunsala again, and this time, we do not see a soul. We guess that her body was her phylactery, and begin preparations for how to deal with the Oblivion Unit. As we look for it, we see that it has a fist pointed right at us, ready to fire a laser. We get only a few seconds to react, and then it fires. Greywind throws himself as the arm of the Oblivion Unit, causing its aim to be off by a significant enough distance so that we don’t all die. Greywind spirals off into space, and Seeker tries to go save him. I do not know if he was successful at this time.

The Unit begins preparing another blast, and Ciara manages to fire off a gate spell, teleporting all of us and Drunsala’s corpse down into some tunnels beneath Arindain’s surface. Shortly after we arrive, Iolanthe, McRabbit, and Adriana teleport in, seemingly from nowhere, and say that our entire army who assaulted Honor Mount, all 2.5 billion, have been killed. We tell them what happened and that we managed to kill Drunsala, though Greywind is very injured. Borghildr does her best to heal him, which works somewhat. We realize that there is a sword sticking out of Drunsala’s body, a sword none of us recognize. McRabbit then pulls out a sword that is very similar. Both swords, when wielded, take on the fighting style of that person. It is like they are made of a kind of bright steel that, instead of only learning stuff once, can learn whatever the person wielding it is.

Aman then says he can get us some reinforcements and draws a circle on the ground, placing a cut-off arm of Drunsala in the center of the circle. He then summons three people from the Far Shore. According to him, he is actually not summoning them, but is rather opening a doorway for them to step through. They are all naked and hungry, so we feed them some supplies and clothe them. We then begin to make our way down, away from the Oblivion Unit’s piercing vision. Apparently it has x-ray vision, but only to an extent.

As we descend, it gets more and more depressing, until eventually I can feel that there is no ether down here. According to the part of the group who has been here before, this place is called the Underdark and it is very depressing and void of magic. It kinda reminds me of Gepren, but less harsh and much less magic (Gepren had a little ether, the Underdark has no ether). As we walk, Ciara has the bright idea to drink some of Drunsala’s blood. According to her, now that Drunsala is dead, it should be fine. As soon as she takes a sip, she instantly collapses to the ground, dead. After some fast thinking, McRabbit drips some of his strange blood (it has extremely fast regeneration powers) into her mouth and she slowly recovers over then next day or so.

As we descend more, Greywind begins to look worse and worse, as dragons are basically made of ether, and he needs it to repair himself. We realize that we need to find a leyline if he is to survive. Aman and Iolanthe begin to try to find one, and soon after, we come to a flat plane of nothing, in the middle of the tunnel. At this point, the tunnel has considerably widened into an immense cavern, and McRabbit sends out Hammock to scout ahead. Immediately after Hammock is summoned, we are all thrown into the tunnel wall by an unseen force. Then, in the ceiling, we can see a huge finger poking through. The Oblivion Unit has reached a finger down into the cavern and as it pulls away, we can see a huge eye looking for us. However, it does not seem to be able to find us and it pulls away.

After we recover, we realize that we are standing on a huge dwarven mural. All the dwarves depicted are pointing down a specific tunnel, so we decide to go that way. After another week or so of walking, we begin to hear music and see an orange glow down the tunnel. As we get closer, it becomes apparent that the music is dwarven in nature and the glow is coming from massive pools of liquid metal. As we step into a huge dwarven city, a strange dwarf intersects our path. He is strange because unlike the dwarves I see normally, this one appears to be barbaric in nature. Wearing almost no clothing and wearing lots of huge knobbly metal jewelry, he speaks in a language that none of us know, except Aman (it isn’t dwarvish).

According to Aman, he is speaking a dialect of Universal (!?) and Aman begins speaking with the dwarf, not translating to us what is being said. They talk for a while, and after some time, more dwarves begin to get in on the conversation. They then notice the wounded Greywind and seem very concerned. A few dwarves go over and lift his body up, walking with him to a nearby structure, presumably to aid his wounds. We get led into the city, and all the dwarves in the city appear to have hair made of crystals.

After some walking, we are led to an empty amphitheater. Here, Aman finally tells us what the conversation has been about. Apparently, these dwarves are the guardians of the Oblivion Unit, and have been cut off from the universe for so long that they do indeed speak their own version of Universal. They are discussing entering the war against Haythen, since they need to get the Oblivion Unit back into confinement. They light a fire in the middle of the theater, though it isn’t a normal fire. The flames appear to be made of crystals. They begin to tell us the story of the creation of the universe.

In the beginning, there were only 13 beings. They all hated each other, and all but one were constantly focused on fighting each other and gaining power. The one that didn’t was kind, and his name was Khalia. He used some of his own soul to create the first world: Archenon. He then created the first beings, apart from the 13 True Immortals: the Intintein (etherions), the Engorath (titans), and the Drakothu (drak-otha) (dragons). The other 12 True Immortals were not happy with this, and were driven to madness because of it.

Khalia had committed a heresy of kindness: he wanted life. He wanted to give more and more of himself to life, and in doing so, he created more and more land for the first people to live on. Khalia worked to create a world that could self-sustain itself, one that he would not need to influence. This is when the planets and other celestial beings were created. All of a sudden, more land was available to the races, and they began to populate the new space. This infuriated the 12 True Immortals even more.

Suddenly, Khalia committed another heresy. He again carved his soul into pieces, creating more races: the elves and dwarves. From here, the races began to war with each other, and for the first time, people began to die in droves. As they died, Khalia realized that because so many were dying, knowledge was being lost. After the bloody wars, the survivors were encouraged to begin to record knowledge, to preserve it for the future. Here, a multitude of races came into existence. Khalia kept straining his soul, trying to be able to feel the pain his created people felt. However, because he was a True Immortal, he could not.

Here, he committed his second grave mistake: the universe had become so large and expansive that not all of it could be monitored at once. In a far corner of the universe, the other 12 True Immortals quietly entered and began wreaking havoc on the universe. Once again, many lives were lost, as the True Immortals were extremely powerful. In the end, through the combined effort of the entire universe, they were able to push the True Immortals back to the edge of the universe, back into the void beyond. To finish the push and seal them away, one particular being made a huge sacrifice to drive the 12 True Immortals from the universe.

Here, the races began to go on the offensive, and began planning to invade the void and try to kill the True Immortals. The result of this planning was the Oblivion Unit: a structure created explicitly to be able to combat the True Immortals. Here, Khalia committed his worst heresy: he shredded his soul into pieces to try to aid the beings he had created. Each shred was born into a new universe, and from here, all the rest of the races we know today came into being.

The Oblivion Unit malfunctioned, and began to wipe away the universe. The original races had to fight it back, but were strained since it had been created to fight the True Immortals. They managed to defeat it, and deactivated it, throwing it into a corner of the universe where it hopefully could never be discovered. The dwarves were split into two factions: the Diamond clan and the Ruby clan. The Diamond clan went along with their business, but the Ruby clan were tasked to keep the Oblivion Unit hidden, and to make sure it would never be reactivated. Over time, as massive as the Oblivion Unit was, it began to accumulate space dust, and was captured by the gravity well of two stars. Over the eons, an artificial planet had formed around the Oblivion Unit, and this was how Arindain came into existence.

As the story finishes, we realize that as the performance was going, the theater filled up with dwarves. They talk for awhile, and eventually all agree to help us fight Haythen. We begin to contact our generals, letting them know we are safe and alive. They begin to tell us a report of what has happened on the surface since the assault on Honor Mount.

All 3 dwarven pyramids survived, though to varying stages or destruction. They won’t be involved in the war for some time. One general (Theresa) has been confirmed dead, as well as most of our troops. All we have left are a select few who were either cowardly enough to survive or tough enough to survive. We still have much of our navy, but can’t deploy any of it, as Haythen has complete control of the skies. “Our army is hanging by a thread, our navy is useless” is the most impactful thing said. We tell the generals to hunker down, and wait for further instructions, as well as tell them to get underground ASAP so they will be out of line of fire from the Oblivion Unit.

After the AAR, we discuss with the Lore Binders (what these ancient dwarves seem to call themselves) about how we will take on the Oblivion Unit. They have a total of about 600 lore binders left, and we do some scrying to figure out who is alive and who is dead. Iolanthe, Borghildr, and I all set down for a long scrying session. We learn that by now, surprisingly, most of the people we scry are actually alive, though not all are doing fine. I discover that my leviathan friend has been killed, and Iolanthe learns that Tracy is alive, but in grave danger. She, Ciara, and Aman begin planning a way to get him here to safety.

Ciara prepares a gate spell, and Iolanthe prepares a rain bridge spell. She rain bridges with Tracy, and he appears in her place. Almost immediately after, though, Tracy disappears and we are left with several seconds of nothing before both she and Tracy reappear, both drenched in blood. Apparently, the Oblivion Unit canceled the rain bridge spell after it had already gone off, and Tracy had to use some of his legend powers to not die, though he is very near death, kind of like how Vexin was after fighting Haythen.

We coordinate with the generals, and manage to get our troops marching towards the entrance to the Cul De Sac, where we will try to damage Haythen’s stronghold. We know that there is an elf-made bronze wall, built to try to keep the titans in, and we will have to try to get through it. It will not be easy. Scouts report that there is a titan walking around inside the Cul De Sac, and it has strange runes all over it. We know from experience this means that it is a siege titan, something that is quite scary to think about. As our forces move into position, we all have a discussion about how to best approach the issue. After much discussion, we decide on setting up a fake siege out front, as a distraction as the rest of us sneak around back through the tunnels under the mountains, to attack from behind. During the discussion, Iolanthe scries on Cylo and we discover that Haythen has a child, presumably with the etherion general, as the baby appears to be an etherion.

Aman and Iolanthe have a heated debate on what to do with the kid, Aman wants to kill it ASAP as Haythen could use it as a valuable asset in the future. Iolanthe believes that despite that, it is still an innocent child and that we should try to capture it but not harm it. I am firmly in Aman’s camp, as having 2 Haythens running around is not my idea of a fun time. He will likely train it to be as powerful as he is, and that is something no one needs running around the universe.

Then, Iolanthe uses her news ability to see what Haythen is up to. After she comes out of it, she won’t say anything about what happened, leaving the tent immediately to go to her own tent. Ciara follows her, and the rest of us continue planning. Later, Ciara tells us what Iolanthe saw. The person with silver hair and eyes is inside a jail cell, and Haythen walk in. He talks to the person for a while about a deal, though we kind of already knew about that. The important thing here is that we learn that Haythen has to up his ante, and though he is unwilling to bet his lover/wife etherion general, he is willing to bet his child. We also learn that the mysterious person is some kind of conglomeration of etherions, though I do not know the specifics.

We decide to rest for a week before our assault, as we still have to rest and recover from the Drunsala fight, and to let our troops arrive. Three days later, we scry Wizward and discover that he is in danger. Iolanthe, Ciara, Aman, and Zilchran all go through a gate created by Ciara to help him. This operation seems to to better than the one to get Tracy, as they all come back seemingly without a hitch.

At the end of the week of recovering, we leave to begin our sneaky operation to get in behind enemy lines, while the main force of our army distracts Haythen’s troops in front. Apparently, there is a contingent of emloy in the distraction force who are cheering for me. I am not used to it, it is a strange feeling to have people cheering me on. Up until meeting the Northbound Legends, I never did anything that people would warrant with cheering. Stealing from corpses on old battlefields is generally not seen as something to cheer about.

We get inside the Cul De Sac, and it is amazing. Everything here is titan-made, and as such, is of the highest quality. Also, the stuff here is not at the technological level of Arindain, seeming to be relatively current with the Web. We manage to sneak in really well, under the guise of a marching band. Somehow, by pure luck we are seen as being just a marching band, and no one suspects us.

We see three huge towers, all with a different color light on top. There is one other tower, one with a lightning rod on top. We figure that because of all the cables running around, the tower with the lightning rod is likely the source of power for the other three, as it gets struck by lightning every few seconds. We decide to not push our luck and head to the barracks, to take some uniforms for our army so they fit in better. When we get there, Iolanthe talks with the quartermaster, and through some quick taling and forgery, we manage to convince the quartermaster to train our troops, as they are mostly made up of the cowards who have little to no training.

I sneak around and manage to steal some charges to aid in taking down the lightning rod tower (or, as we began to call it, the power tower). We sneak our way to the tower, and we begin to climb, setting charges along the bottom. Once we get to the top, we see a figure sitting in a throne. As the figure stands up, it seems to grow in height until it is around 7 and a half feet tall. The rest of the party seems to recognize this figure, and they tell me that it is Kinder, who was basically Seeker’s dad (though, he is a warforged, so obviously not a biological father). Kinder is wearing a crown of thorns, emanating a red light.

As Kinder walks towards us, a bunch of crappy quality TV screens pop up around us and Haythen appears on them. He taunts us, and specifically tells Seeker that we have two options, both of which are impossible: free Kinder from his control, or kill him. Wonderful thought. We all prepare for battle, and before I can fully transform, a bunch of bones fold up around the top of the tower, forming a sort of cage, made of what can only be titan bones.

As the fight starts, Kinder seems extremely slow, though his punches definitely hurt a lot. Over the course of the battle, he begins to speed up, gaining momentum. While he is not a legend, he is an etherion, and extremely difficult to kill. As we fight, Dull begins to try to break the cage of titan bone surrounding us, keeping me from being able to use my forms to their full effectiveness. As he shoots the bone with fire, suddenly there is a crack. Then, a darksteel fist punches through, and we see Gilla on the other side. He tells us to keep Kinder occupied, and that he will be protecting our army and fighting off the siege titan.

With the help of the rest of us, we manage to break down the cage, though as soon as we do it, Kinder smacks Seeker particularly hard and he goes flying away from the tower. It is now that we learn that Kinder has some sort of ability which tethers us to him, and as he jumps after Seeker, we all get yanked along with him. After more fighting, Kinder activates his meditation, ab extremely powerful ability that etherions can do. The floor suddenly becomes lava, and Kinder’s already fast attacks speed up even more. It is now that Seeker gets badly damaged, and he seems to realize something.

He suddenly flies towards Kinder, and from his posture, I can tell that Skyra (the legend contained within Seeker) has take over, in a last-ditch effort by Seeker. However, instead of attacking, he leaps off of Kinder, using Kinder’s momentum to launch himself into the dense cloud cover above. We all keep fighting, though with the loss of one of our tanks, the fight is significantly harder, and I get knocked out of form for the first time since the Drunsala fight. Suddenly, we look through a clearing in the clouds and can see the Oblivion Unit acting strange. It has blue lights on it instead of red, and seems to be blowing up Haythen’s troops. It seems that Skyra has taken control of the Oblivion Unit, and we can see Seeker’s body falling.

After blowing up Haythen’s moon naval base, the Oblivion Unit turns to the planet but soon after, the red lights begin spreading back. It seems that Skyra can only keep the Oblivion Unit under his control for a short time. As the red lights take over, the Oblivion Unit holds a hand out and suddenly, black runes appear all over Kinder and he begins to slow down. Taking advantage of the situation, we all quite literally pile on Kinder and begin slashing and hacking. Gilla shows up again, and pierces Kinder’s eye with a darksteel sword, telling us to back off.

Gilla and the slowed Kinder begin to fight, though the fight is very short. Gilla, after only a few attacks, manages to shatter the crown on Kinder’s head, and Kinder immediately falls unconscious. In the sky, we can see that the Oblivion Unit is back under Haythen’s control, and we can see Haythen, riding his platinum dragon, flying past the Oblivion Unit. Shortly after, as the last of the blue lights vanish, we all feel some strange tearing in our minds. This, according the the members of our party who have lived long enough, feels like the death of a legend. We all mourn the loss of Skyra as Gilla catches Seeker’s falling body, and as soon as he lands, Seeker casts a spell on us and we all turn into black mist and fly towards the gate and our army.

As we regroup with our army, we are are speaking to them when suddenly several people appear over the course of a few minutes. Each person who appears means something to one of us, and it gets pretty suspicious when lots of people we care about are suddenly all in the same place. Ciara’s cousin, Kayel Sunwrath, Vampire King, walks over to Ciara. For Zilchran, his old battle trainer showed up. For Aman, Jade himself appears. For me, Joyce shows up. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her. I’m relieved. Gilla shows up fro McRabbit, and I learn that Gilla is his father figure. Kinder gets to his feet and walks over to Seeker. Necrotal, the etherion that we fought in the bar long ago, appears for Iolanthe. Apparently, he is her grandfather.

We all are told the same thing by our mentors/parents/girlfriends: the Oblivion Unit has two weak points: the eyes and the chest. The eyes are less defended but will be less likely to deal damage to the Oblivion Unit, while the chest will be better defended but more likely do deal significant damage. We are also told that it will be the hardest thing we will ever have to do.

From Ciara’s earring, the Wrath Star comes out and begins to fight the Oblivion Unit. Gilla creates a bolt of silver light and we all get swept up into space. As we fly through space towards the Oblivion Unit, we see into space and see Metalbeard, our train (Callen), and the rest of our forces fighting Haythen’s ships. We can also see the platinum dragon with Haythen riding it flying around, destroying our forces. In a unanimous vote, we decide to go for the throat rather than the eyes. As we land on the chest, we can see Haythen sitting in a golden throne. He pulls out a scroll and suddenly, we can see a bunch of people that look like us in front of him. He summoned doppelgangers of us.

They appear to be protecting a sword that looks like the two swords that we got after the fight with Drunsala. It is crackling with red lightning. Next to the sword is a slot that is about sword sized, also crackling with red lightning. Seeker pulls the sword out and Iolanthe shoves her special sword into the empty slot next to where the other sword was. Nothing happens. She decided to keep pushing it down, as maybe it’s not as deep as the first sword was. McRabbit gets fed up and shoots an arrow at Haythen. It misses, but Haythen gets pissed at us.

He then uses his ability to set all of us but me and Seeker back to tier 1. Everyone who is hit falls hard and takes massive damage. Haythen sits back in his chair and tells us he wants us to become desperate. Around now, Iolanthe finishes shoving the sword all the way into the slot. The Oblivion Unit’s lights go dark for a moment, and falters. Slowly, the red lights begin to come back online. However, the second the lights go out, our navy ignores Haythen’s navy and begins firing on the Oblivion Unit with all their might. Under attack by millions of ships, the Oblivion Unit falters again. After tens, maybe hundreds of millions of attacks, the Oblivion Unit’s lights begin to go dark again, and seems to lose power.

Haythen seems extremely disappointed, saying that we exceeded his expectations. He says he made a mistake, and that we outmaneuvered him. He didn’t think we would do this and that we have still lost, but however, he also lost. We are too tired to kill him, and for some reason, he can’t kill us now.

All of the people who appeared before the fight appear behind us and we realize that Haythen is projecting some sort of aura that is being dispelled by our friends/family. Haythen then raises his arms and all of our forces, as well as his, fall into extreme disarray. Each one suddenly has no leader and have no idea who the enemy is. Soon after, we realize that the space around us has turned a deep red. It seems that all the stars in the nearby area are going supernova, and loads of planets are exploding.

The Wrath Star is dying, millions of ships firing on it, and we can tell that some are ours. After a time, the Wrath Star goes supernova and dies, much to the dismay of Ciara. Haythen then points out the obvious: people are dying. This seems to affect my allies more than it affects me. I have seen battles of this magnitude before, and looted them. However, Iolanthe especially, seems to very  much not like this.

Iolanthe asks Haythen what his son’s name is. He responds with “Ray”. Haythen then offers us a three year truce to get our forces back together, as well as let the surrounding space heal from something he called “legend burn”. It appears to be an effect that occurs when too much awesome shit happens in too small an area, and literally all the ether in the area disappears. The war castle appears and he walks in, and we leave the surface of the Oblivion Unit with all our friends/family. We all are unable to use any of our abilities, and all seemingly fall back to tier 1. We all spread out over the planet, to try to have a nice quiet time before the final push.

During the three years we have, I bring Joyce to a cave behind a waterfall and hang out with her, mostly talking about stuff. She tells me much about social situations and I will strive to be better, as the group seems to be annoyed sometimes. I do some research into the Lore Binders’ technology, trying to see what they were doing.

About one and a half years in, we all decided to meet up in a tavern and have an adventure at our lowered power. I learn that Iolanthe had a son named Cal, and adopted Haythen’s kid (Ray). Zilchran has had 3 kids with Cassandra. We learn by talking with people that some kids have recently gone missing, thought to be kidnapped by kobolds. We (mostly Iolanthe) decide to try to rescue the kids. We head off, heading down the road, guided by locals.

As we walk down the road, we see a sack lying next to a corpse. Inside the sack are two goblets, one of which Borghildr fumbles around with for a bit and we all have a good laugh before realizing that it is actually trying to kill her. We manage to defeat it and keep moving down the road until we come to an entrance to a tunnel. We enter and descend some stairs. At the bottom, there is a room with a ruined obelisk in the center. Around it are 7 kobolds. We dispatch them relatively easily and begin exploring.

In the next room is an altar surrounded by molten slag, and the walls are covered in blood. We aren’t fazed and continue to explore. We are ambushed by a Grik, and it takes some difficulty to bring down. We open a door and down the hallway see a pair of bright red eyes at the other end. Suddenly, Zilchran, who is in front, gets wrapped up in chains and slowly gets killed by the chains. We manage to get him out and we slam the door behind us, and I use magic to bar it. We run back through the altar room, through the obelisk room, and down another hallway. A short way down, we see a door to a barracks.

Inside, we find a bunch of empty beds, and some bat-mosquito things hanging on walls. They attack Zilchran, draining his life force worryingly fast. Iolanthe dispatches them with a sonic spell and we decide to take a rest in the beds after barring the door securely.

\*\*TO BE CONTINUED\*\*

Some time close to the end of the three years, I am exploring the lock that kept the Oblivion Unit held inside the planet. I see that it has not been enchanted to be magical, but rather it is like the positions of the gears just make it inherently magical. The gears are made of all sorts of materials, I even see a few wooden ones. The materials used in the machinery seem to be mostly silver and iron, with some jade and emerald. I am reminded of the poem Mesic taught me:

Those that fear the Earth fear emerald and iron

Those that fear the Sun fear diamond and gold

Those that fear the Moon fear jade and silver

Therefore, based on the information I have, is seems that because of the materials used to keep the Oblivion Unit locked up were mostly silver and iron, the Oblivion Unit fears the earth and moon but not the sun. This makes sense, as it eats stars for energy. In the center of all the mechanical parts is a massive diamond, about the size of a basketball. I pull it out of the lock and examine it. Joyce, over my shoulder, says she has seen something like this. Apparently, it is called an astral diamond, and apparently it has great significance in the universe.

Back when Alara was fighting The Adversary, he, like all etherions can do, summoned his regalia. It was shattered when Tier’s End was used against him, and the shattered bits of the regalia were scattered throughout the universe. This is one of those pieces. Apparently, according to Joyce, this may well be the largest single chunk of astral diamond. I put it in my bag and Joyce convinces me to go have a date with her on the edge of the hole where the Oblivion Unit came out.

We sit on the edge of the impossibly wide and deep hole in the planet, and Joyce pulls out food. We talk and eat for a while, just savoring the moment. Shortly after, the ring that lets me communicate with my allies, which has remained silent for the past three years, lights up and begins to glow. I sigh and once Joyce sees it, she also sighs. This means it is time for me to get back on the front lines, as it seems the Legend Burn has worn off. I get the sense, though i have no idea how, that I have to come to a specific field in Zastreya in exactly one week. I spend my last week half with Joyce and half continuing to study the lock.

After the week is up, I shift into dragon form and fly Joyce to the field. We arrive after everyone else has, and on the opposite side of the field seems to be Haythen’s camp. I catch up with my friends a bit, and shortly after the ferryman appears in the center of the field, along with 8 swords. These look like the swords that change form based on who wields them. The ferryman says that the peace treaty ends in precisely one hour, and that we must come retrieve the swords we had. We have 3 and the enemy has 5.

The people on their side who go up are 4 generals (etherion, dullahan, Rorick, and Radagast). The 5th we presume to be picked up by Haythen himself, but instead we see Dominic come up. Iolanthe immediately freezes and we all stare him down. Now that we know he is involved in the war, we all can’t wait to flay him alive. I make the suggestion to use the sword of Eis’Bahad on him (the same sword that destroyed Nilloc’s soul). On our side, Zilchran, Iolanthe, and Aman pick our three up.

After they have all picked up their swords, the enemy leave the clearing though we stay, to begin strategizing our next move with our generals. We discover that most of our generals are here, though some, along with Vexin’s body, have been kidnapped and thrown in a prison somewhere. After speaking with our generals about where we will land the war pyramids (the Colosseum, Anvilguard, and Lust Vegas), Cylo mentions that there exist weapons that were made by the etherions long ago. One such weapon is called the Subtle Knife, and it is a knife that is completely indistinguishable from other knives. It is also philosophy proof, made from a similar process as the Black Bullets. If we could get it, it in theory would affect Haythen exactly like a normal knife.

We go on to do some war planning, as we basically have to restart from square one. Our main goal is to expand territory, and during the first four months, we are able to mostly retake the area to the north near the Colosseum. The other pyramids do fine, and Lust Vegas is making money. One day, one of our spies claims they saw a massive shape, as well as a general, moving through the forest of Shelnor. Seeker and I decide to investigate, and discover that the large shape was the platinum dragon, and the general was Rorick. Seeker decides to follow the platinum dragon on Trodon, while I stay and take on Rorick. Before I manage to, we communicate this over the rings and Ciara teleports the other members of the party to aid us.

I get Adriana, Zilchran, Dull, and Borghildr, while Seeker gets Iolanthe. Soon after they arrive, we learn that Rorick isn’t alone. He has an army of about 700,000 troops with him, and they seem to be planning to march to the Cul De Sac. We call for a backup army and charge into battle. I go straight for Rorick, while everyone else goes for the army. After breathing fire on him a bunch, I realize that he can shapeshift, though not in the same way I can. For example, at one point I completely incinerate one of his forms (a mage), and he reverts to a slimy-like figure, before transforming into a barbarian.

Another hint at his power is when he kills a siege lord and then transforms into one. Therefore, I am guessing that he functions kind of like a shapeshifter who gains forms like Jade does - by killing them. Wheile in archer form, he has an attack that is magically enchanted to not miss - something that is very annoying. After some more fighting, Zilchran and the other members of the party begin to get overwhelmed and begin retreating. Not wanting to completely lose our footing, I instead disengage from Rorick and fly stealthily into the Cul De Sac.I hide out in tunnels we used to invade the last time we came here.

I peek out of the tunnel at the immense lava field in front of me and as I do, I can see a huge platinum dragon striding through the lava, with Iolanthe and Seeker magically bound to it. It does not seem to notice me, striding towards a twisted metal structure in the center. Some time later, it comes back out lacking Iolanthe and Seeker. It then begins stalking around the Cul De Sac, apparently keeping guard. I decide to watch and study its movements.

As he walks around the magical lava, I notice that he walks in a similar way to a panther stalking prey, something not usually exhibited by dragons. He also doesn’t seem to be specifically looking in any one area, he is just circling the tiny island. Suddenly, I see Zilchran, Aman, and Borghildr teleport in on the edge of the laval pool. Instantly, the dragon turns its head to them and dives into the lava, appearing right next to them. I take the chance to try to get to the island where I presume Seeker and Iolanthe to be. As I do, Atarax turns his head to me and I instantly drop dragon form and begin plummeting towards the insanely magical lava.

I can’t cast any spells or activate any abilities until the dragon turns its head away from me. I then, to try to keep a low presence, turn into a small glider, riding the massive updrafts from the lava. As I do, I can now get a better look at the island. I can see four figures there. Iolanthe and Seeker are there, though Seeker is heavily damaged. The other two forms are Haythen and Dominic. Haythen seems to be in the middle of casting an enormous spell, one which I can’t even begin to comprehend, and Dominic is dueling Iolanthe. Shortly after, Aman teleport himself to the island, and begins aiding Iolanthe.

McRabbit then flies in somehow (I’ve learned to stop questioning his methods) and begins peppering Atarax with arrows. As McRabbit falls towards the island where Haythen is, Atarax angrily turns his head and stops looking at him. It seems Atarax’s eyes can dispel magical (and some nonmagical) effects, and he wouldn’t want Haythen’s spell dispelled. I then decide to perform an experiment on Atarax’s ability.

I turn the wings of the glider into very shiny and (more importantly) reflective silver so as to see if his gaze can be reflected. I angle myself so that if he were to look at me, his gaze would reflect towards the island. As I get his attention, as he begins looking at me and quickly realizes what is going on. He then uses his claws to gouge his eyes out of his skull, and the effect causes his ability-cancelling gaze to end. However, interestingly, I am affected by the gaze.

However, Atarax’s attention is quickly drawn elsewhere as Aman’s war buddy, Athezin (a platinum dragonborn) shows up to aid us. Atarax looks at Athezin with surprise and astonishment, and soon after we all follow suit as Athezin transforms into a platinum dragon. After getting over my surprise, I quickly shift back into a glider as Atarax’s gaze is now elsewhere. McRabbit begins getting fed up with the whole situation and shoots an arrow at Haythen’s hand.

At this point, as the arrow goes into his hand, we all realize that Haythen is completely undefended. Sure, Dominic is there, but he isn’t really much of a threat with Iolanthe, Seeker, and Aman fighting him. Once we have realized this, Haythen smiles and summons some creatures to aid him. They are called The Knights of Autumn’s Gate, and we know basically nothing about them. As I come in for a landing, I decide to try to push one of them off into the lava, in hopes of destroying it. However, I fail, as apparently a gargantuan retrosteel cube smacking into one at pretty high speed isn’t enough to make them even stumble.

Iolanthe then jumps into the spell Haythen is casting, and we all realize we have to do something to save her. I turn into a shield, blindly protecting her from whatever is inside, as at this point, these people are basically my family. As I enter the spell and shield her, I can instantly feel a presence that is very familiar. Inside is The Adversary, sitting on a throne, with a man who I later learn is Kane, on the ground before him. Iolanthe then says something to The Adversary, which I’m pretty sure is basically a direct quote from when The Adversary was “defeated” so long ago.

The Adversary then makes a decision and we are all spit out of the spell (including Kane). As we all spill out, Haythen is furious. He is angrier than we have seen him yet, as it seems that we finally did something that truly messed with his plans. He releases control of the Knights of Autumn’s Gate and they disappear. He then leaves Dominic behind and gets on Atarax, then flies away. We finish off Dominic, with Iolanthe beheading him and Aman damning his soul to wander forever in limbo.

As Aman returns from hiding Dominic’s soul, he returns through the portal he created to get to the Far Shore with 40ish people. They all seem to be from the Far Shore, and will no doubt be great allies for us, as they all seem to love to fight. They are important people from history, and Iolanthe seems to be very interested. I easily recognize one of them - Estan Oristalk. He was the emloy who basically invented a huge amount of stuff (pretty much the Web’s Leonardo Da Vinci). I decide to try to learn everything he knows, as he is likely the smartest emloy currently alive.

According to him, astral diamonds have an energy inside them called “astra”, and it can be used to pretty much accomplish any task as long as there is enough of it, which the astral diamond I took from the Oblivion Unit’s prison apparently has lots. I also discover that he can make transistors, something which modern emloy cannot. He and I talk for quite a while about things, while Iolanthe uses her abilities to identify the rest of the people. After she is done, they all want to go to a bar, so we head towards the Anvilguard pyramid to rest for the night.

Over the course of the next year, we begin planning for taking the surrounding land of Lust Vegas (Hearthshire, Pelwater, Darkhold, Shitthor, and Falt Port). We also begin the digging of the channel from the lake Lust Vegas is in to the rest of the ocean, to enable us to sail ships down the river to invade New Lamon. Soon after, our spies report that a massive force of Haythen’s army mounting near Clad Rim, possibly readying to attack the Anvilguard pyramid.

Several months later, the army still hasn’t arrived, and we presume it is due to the terrible winter killing their troops. We call a meeting to replace our general Theresa, and end up not deciding to promote someone to general yet, though we end up promoting other people. We then decide we should rescue Vexin, Marianne, and Moba from jail. After we make a plan, Estan pulls me aside and we discuss using the astral diamond to construct a fortress using it as the power source, which would end up being a similar construction to Alara’s Palace of Noon and Night.

Wizward decides to make a distraction by making the city Tronid burn. He ends up making a plane of the infinite Abyss appear right on top of it. We know that the prisoners are being held in a nearby city, Scalon. As we make our way to Scalon, Haythen flies above on Atarax, heading to Tronid. I turn into a sled to be pulled by Zilchran, transformed into a large zombie while McRabbit scouts. We all get in, posing to be part of Haythen’s army.

As we leave the compound, the guards escorting us turn on us and attempt to kill us in a coup, though very unsuccessfully. After we apprehend them, we realize they are our own soldiers. We manage to explain what is going on, and after having a nice laugh we head back to friendly territory. As we enter the pyramid at the Colosseum, we get nearly simultaneous notifications that Letha is being attacked, Shitthar is being attacked, and the Ebonin siege is meeting heavy resistance.

Aman, Seeker, and I decide to head to protect Letha, who is currently assaulting Archidal. As we get there, we can see a long line of brack knights, and we can see one of the 40 summoned by Aman (Watari Wutanashi) is flanking the army. After we successfully defend, we head back to the Anvilguard pyramid for more planning.

As we plan, Ciara comes in with a few knives in her hands, and asks us to find the special knife that McRabbit had. We analyze them, and determined that none of them are. We decide to take a especially normal knife and stick it in the table to hold maps down. For 6 months we plan on assaulting Mad Reach, as Mad Reach is an important city to capture in the south of Zastreya.

After the 6 months, we begin to get messages that we haven’t heard from anyone sent to siege and capture Ebonin in quite a long time. We also get a letter written in blood, saying “Send no men to Red Run”. We ask if any of our officials have heard of a place called Red Run, and they haven’t. No place in this portion of the galaxy is called Red Run.

After more confusion and research, Iolanthe uses her scrying ability to see the history of the letter we received. After coming out of her vision, she is visibly worried. She says that she saw 5 True Immortals (Nacunne, Sekwatar, Venj-Gennoreoth, Soljenure, and Flen’Ahowley), around a table planning over a map of Ebonin. Shortly after, we get another letter written in blood, saying “Send all paladins to Red Run”.

We decide to split up and send some of us (Seeker, Ciara, and Borghildr) go to Ebonin and Zilchran, Dull, and I go to Mad Reach. As we approach Mad Reach, we try to figure out how to break down the city gates. I offer to turn into two enormous balls of retrosteel and fly into the gates. I am successful, and begin bouncing around the city, breaking buildings and soldiers over the next 12 hours or so. At some point, we learn that the enemy soldiers have literal citizen meat shields. Each soldier has a glyph on their armor, which is linked to a citizen in the city. If the armor is hit, the citizen dies and the soldier takes no damage.

After assaulting for two days or so, we have managed to capture most of the destroyed remains of the city when suddenly the dullahan general, Throne, shows up. I begin distracting him by throwing spherical clones at him. We learn that his body is indestructible without the head, so we begin to search for the head. As other people begin distractions, I hop on the wall and utterly destroy any troops on them. Soon after, Seeker, Ciara, and Borghildr teleport in and we inform them to search for the head. Eventually, Ciara finds the head, encased in a cage of darksteel with tons of glyphs on it. She removes the glyphs and takes apart the cage like a puzzle box. Seeker stabs the head, and we get another Changeling. In the scuffle, we did lose Hiro (though Zilchran resurrected him). The rest of the defending army all falls and we capture the ruins of the city.

For the next 9 years, nothing much of note happens. I continue construction of the Palace of Noon and Night, along with Estan. At the end of the 9 years, Cylo and a whole bunch of paladins return from Red Run (formerly known as Ebonin), having managed to kill a very powerful Outsider, constructed from the body of Time, Zilchran’s sister in law. We learn that Rorick was actually a minor Outsider, and was turned into the thing that Cylo killed. Cylo also managed to retrieve an empty, used up Sky Knife.

We have been defending and slowly pushing into Zastreya until we realize that there is a huge army massing near the Anvilguard pyramid. We must all join and defend it from a 4 million troop strong army. Before the battle begins, I am speaking with Estan about the Palace of Noon and Night, when Joyce enters the room. She wants to do something, and seems to not like the fact that I’m always working. She wants to go down into Lust Vegas and have a good night.

After the wonderful night is over, I have learned that there is something I like to do that is not work (besides Joyce). Apparently I like to repair cars, improving them as I go. Joyce seems happy, and I spend the night with her. In the morning, I get a message that larger amounts of scouts are being seen. I head on over to the Anvilguard pyramid to aid in defense, along with the other members of the party.

When I get there, they present me with the Changeling we obtained from Rorick. As I pick it up, it changes into a wonderful blade. The sword is mainly constructed of gears, all made of silver. The handle is a cage containing a mass of gears and cogs, all spinning seemingly of their own volition. The guard is two strips of metal, attached to the handle with gears. Embedded in the handle is a gem that looks like the yin yang symbol, but fills with white as the moon goes through its phases. In addition, the blade telescopes into a dagger form when not being used as a sword. The entire blade is made of sheer black rock (moonstone). I attempt to wield the sword when in dragon form, but it just melds into the form. It appears I must be in a form that could wield the sword to be able to use it.

Shortly after, we receive a notification that there are enemy scouting parties on the move. We have set up massive defenses and traps along their path, and are feeling uneasy as we have not seen the bulk of their army. Dull then sees an enemy scout plant something in the ground and a red glyph flares to life on the ground. Troops immediately begin teleporting in. This happens two more times before we see a platinum flash in the sky. Atarax shows up, and breaks through a few of our walls in an instant. We also can see a flash of gold and red on his back. It appears Haythen has personally joined this fight.

On the base of the mountain, where the troops are teleporting in, 6 squads of 100 dragons each begin flying towards the pyramid. I go with Seeker to begin to try to shut down the teleportation glyphs. As we move out, Seeker begins to feel the presence of the 5 True Immortals from before. As we make it to the end of their lines, the front gets to the gate that triggers a very specific portal. The other end is on the bottom of the ocean, and suffice to say the front of Haythen’s army gets washed down the mountain. As it carried men down the steep slopes, the torrent suddenly stops.

At the head of the army, we can see the etherion general, Leyola, standing with an outstretched hand. The water all instantly reverses and begins flowing back through the portal. Or, it would be, if Haythen hadn’t dispelled it. The water spills over the face of the mountain, unfortunately unusable now. Iolanthe steps in and begins dueling her one-on-one. While this is happening, McRabbit shoots a siege lord riding a siege dragon in the sky. He manages to catch that the siege lord is carrying a small porcelain jar. He decided to try to break it, and shoots several arrows at it. As it breaks, a familiar red glyph appears on the dragon’s back. Suddenly, the dragon is carrying around 500k troops. It isn’t airborne for much longer, and in the crash landing, the majority of the troops are killed.

Aman begins dueling Atarax with the aid of Athezin, though he isn’t doing so well. However, all of a sudden, Haythen and Atarax whip around and fly at breakneck speed away from the battlefield. We get a message over the ring from Ciara saying that Haythen likely now knows where the thing he has been searching for all this time is. She gates out to aid in defending the object, which we still have no idea what it is.

After Atarax and Haythen leave, Aman and Athezin go to fight the newly present Ratagast and his ruby dragon. Around this time, I finish off the squadron of dragons, as they are nowhere near the power level that the dragons in the rest of The Web have. After they all are killed, I head down to the infantry and, deciding that it worked last time, I turn into two huge steel balls and began crushing troops by the thousands. I am in the back, mopping up the stragglers.

Now, four days into the battle, their army has managed to reach the final gate before their long march up to the pyramid, and thus begins phase 3 of our defensive plan. All seems to be going fine until one of their solders manages to scale the wall and on the other side, manages to plant a teleportation glyph before he is shot down. This glyph is different from the others, as it looks like a pitch black doorway to nothingness rather than a red magical circle on the ground. From it, thousands of brack knights, siege lords, and siege dragons all spill out and begin marching.

We quickly realize that they aren’t like their normal counterparts. The moment one dies, it instantly begins to reform. Based on what Haythen has been doing, we begin to assume that they are Outsiders. They start out marching slowly, but very quickly pick up the pace and begin full charging along the spiral path to the pyramid. Zilchran and Dull step in and begin to try to fight the army, but are largely unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Iolanthe has finally managed to kill Leyola, and thus we have another Changeling on our side. Seeker, having destroyed all the teleportation runes except the black one, goes to aid Aman in fighting Ratagast.

Despite their best efforts, Zilchran and Dull fall back to our final defensive wall, right outside the doors of the pyramid. As they do, a near-beaten Ratagast teleports out like a coward, along with his dragon, and Aman is pretty pissed. At this point, Zilchran and Dull are getting desperate, as they are basically all that stands between the Outsider army and our pyramid. Dull turns into a fiery unicorn and charges, as Zilchran suddenly does something very interesting. He was able to become a super lich and a vampire.

Now that the danger has ended, there still is a field of nearly a million regular troops to take care of, and we all hop in and swiftly mop them up. Some flee, and we really don’t care if they want to. In the end, while we did win, the pyramid is in shambles, brought to the brink of destruction by the Outsider army firing on it as they marched. We give Dull the Changeling from Leyola, and we begin to try to get a sense of the aftermath.

After the battle, Iolanthe uses her ability to scry on Haythen to see what he’s up to. After looking for a few minutes, she comes out of it and says that he was at Leyola’s grave, and seemed to be really mad. According to her, he said “Now it’s personal.” This does not bode well, because if he did not consider it personal up to now, that is terrifying. The first thing I do is head to Joyce and tell her she should probably leave. She refuses, and I trust her enough to trust that she can take care of herself.

We need to go to Lust Vegas but the True Immortals are preventing us from easily doing it. We basically can’t use any magic or it would get very Wyrd. I begin building a roller coaster down the mountain to facilitate our getting down fast, and we have several weeks of planning the attack on New Lamon from our position at the Anvilguard pyramid.

As we plan, Iolanthe decides to use her History Channel ability to try to find out what the object Haythen is looking for is. She sees the throne room that we visited when in the vampire country, and Ciara bursts in. She sees a pedestal and runs over to it. On the pedestal is a mannequin head and a rack from which you would hang a sword. Both are empty. Despite this, Ciara takes something off of the mannequin’s head (invisible to us) but before she can move to the rack, Ratagast and a bunch of soldiers burst in.

As she picks up the thing off of the mannequin’s head, her arm instantly begins to melt and her power palpably increases, even through this vision. Ratagast stabs her in the arm to try to get her to drop it, but as he does, a bunch of holes in the universe open up around her and she throws the invisible thing into one. Ratagast seems angry and as she reaches for the invisible thing on the rack, he pushes her through one of the portals. With her out of the picture, he puts on a white glove with red lightning coursing through it and he picks something invisible off of the rack.

After doing many more visions, Iolanthe is able to determine that the object Ciara threw through the portal was a crown and the object Ratagast has is a sword. We don’t know the significance of the crown, but the sword apparently used to be Alara’s sword before he used Tier’s End. After that and more planning, we begin the assault on New Lamon. Dull is able to reverse engineer the teleportation sticks that Haythen’s army used in their assault on our war pyramid and Seeker and I begin throwing boats at the city.

All in all, we take the city with relative ease and begin to set our sights on Dragon’s Rest, which we expect will be a difficult challenge as we are getting closer to Agranem. However, after making an elaborate plan and marching up, the city falls extremely easily and we begin planning our march on Agranem, which we know will likely be the most difficult thing we have done thus far.

After laying down a basic strategy, we begin the assault. Initially, Seeker and I are with Kane, and to get past the near-indestructible titan stone, Kane rips open a portal to the Wyrd and he takes us through. As we travel through, Kane suddenly looks surprised and touched my and Seeker’s shoulders. Suddenly, taking up most of our field of view, is a projection from Agranem. In it, Haythen has just walked out of the War Castle into the center of the city and is addressing the crowd.

He makes lots of boastful statements, saying he has won already, blah blah blah. As he goes on, I can see around my peripheral vision monstrous horrors in the Wyrd, though Kane wards them away. I don’t get a good enough look and keep focussing on the vision. Suddenly, in the crowd, the previous king of Zastreya, Elijah, speaks. The entire crowd gasps and turns around to see him sitting comfortably in a golden throne, eating grapes. Haythen looks visibly amused as Elijah speaks out and gives the crowd hope. It is a pretty hilarious scene, and the vision cuts as we step back into the universe.

My and Seeker’s goal is to get him to be able to take control of the city's automatic defenses, as a long time ago, he himself constructed them. As we emerge from the Wyrd, we can see a lake surrounded by brack knights, siege lords, and red-cloaked infantrymen. In addition, we can see what is presumably an Outsider, in the form of Aman. Kane cracks his knuckles and quite literally wades through the enemy to get to the Outsider.

Seeker and I begin fighting the regular troops, but very soon after, Ratagast shows up, riding his ruby dragon. As I fly up to engage him, he suddenly turns around and flies quickly towards the north. Frustrated that I didn’t even get to engage him in combat, I fly after him. As I fly over the battlefield, I look up and see that all three dwarven pyramids have lifted off and are currently barraging the War Castle. One of them suddenly shudders and begins falling out of orbit towards the War Castle.

To catch up to Ratagast faster, I decide to slightly modify my dragon’s wings - I create some jet engines on them and begin rocketting closer. Before I can catch up, the War Castle begins to move over to a large circle on the ground - the rest of my party say it is a Web Anchor - a teleporter that Haythen can use to teleport in troops from the Web. The War Castle moves over the Web Anchor and fires a beam of light into it. At that point, I have finally reached Ratagast, and as I do, Aman riding Athezin appears and the two of us begin fighting Ratagast and his ruby dragon.

Suddenly, Ciara comes on over the ring and says that Biwore is here. We are all a little stunned, asking if it is just a part of him (an Avatar-like thing maybe), but Kane confirms that it is indeed the actual Biwore. Shortly after, Ciara again says over the ring that now Maadrakath has appeared, though he is currently in a weakened state, and is fighting Biwore. After making a mental note to not ever go over towards what is now basically Ground-Zero, I resume fighting Ratagast.

While we are fighting, suddenly all the cannons on the outer walls simultaneously rotate to face the War Castle. Then, they all fire but only one volley. As the shots approach the War Castle, we go back to fighting since we know that even if Seeker has managed to take control over the defenses, anything fired from the cannons won’t be able to break through the War Castle’s shimmer. The shimmer is basically a forcefield that does not let anything through. However, to everyone’s surprise, the shimmer suddenly begins to break down. It seems the shots actually did do something.

I ask if Seeker did that, to congratulate him, but apparently he has not taken over the city’s defenses yet. We have no idea what caused the cannons to do that, and are more bewildered at what could possibly have been loaded inside them as ammo. A while later, Seeker manages to break into the city’s defenses, and he rotates all the cannons on all the walls towards the War Castle, with its defenses now down. In addition, 100 Colossi emerge from the walls of the city, prepared to fight for us.

Around this point, it has been a full week of combat. As I continue to fight Ratagast, I get an idea. As I pierce his dragon’s scales, I turn my claws into mercury and inject it into the dragon. Sadly, red lightning appears and the mercury is gone. However, because Haythen intentionally stopped it, I can guess that it would be effective. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I instantly feel horrible. All hope is lost. We have lost. Everything is bad.

As I look around to try to get my bearings, I see that both Aman and Ratagast are suffering as well. However, shortly after, Ratagast gets up with red lightning swirling around him and his dragon breath weapons both me and Aman while we are defenseless. After that, as quickly as it came, the horrible feeling disappears. Over the ring, I can hear my party members saying that apparently that was caused by Biwore, and I keep on fighting. Shortly after, over the ring I hear Iolanthe saying “Joyce! You’re out of position!”. I inquire as to what is wrong, but she just says that Joyce is fine and that she knows what she is doing.

A while later, the horrible feeling comes back as Biwore does something. This fear lasts for longer than the first did, but similarly to the first, it disappears. After more combat with Ratagast, one of the two remaining pyramids in the sky fires its Earthhammer on the War Castle. It does not appear to do much. Then, finally, I manage to kill Ratagast’s dragon. Very soon after, Aman kills Ratagast himself and after more than a week of fighting, we have taken down Haythen’s last general.

As per the plan, we hear over the ring that the astral diamond is going to explode soon. We are advised to get behind a titanstone wall to protect ourselves from the blast. 10 days after the initial confrontation, the astral diamond explodes. Everything goes white for several seconds and all sound cuts out. Slowly the white fades and the aftermath is revealed. Everything is destroyed, and the War Castle has shattered. However, Haythen, being the fucker that he is, throws red lightning at the shattered remains and it puts itself back together.

In addition to all that, however, all of Haythen’s troops have turned into Guardian Angels. Seeker, Zilchran, and Wizward, all technically being gods, get a bunch of angels each and all the angels begin descending on Haythen. According to people over the ring, Maadrakath now suddenly has a distinct advantage over Biwore and the fight is now swinging in Maadrakath’s favor.

Now that Haythen’s army is nonexistent, we all begin to converge on the center of the city so we can charge Haythen (who’s in the western side) together. It takes a while, but we all meet up with our army and begin what will hopefully be the final march of this war. However, as we march, something horrible happens. Haythen holds his hand up and red lightning shoots upwards towards the deactivated Oblivion Unit. Red energy floods into its eyes and it slowly powers up.

As this happens though, the stars begin to brighten and the sky flashes white. The stars arrange themselves into four constellations: a crown, a sword, a torch, and a ship. Out of the Web Anchor steps a man with platinum hair: Alara himself. He engages the Oblivion Unit in combat, along with his constellations.

At this, Haythen retreats inside the War Castle and begins flying it. He also summons a duplicate that fights with seemingly equal power to him. The War Castle begins floating upwards, into a portal that has opened. He is trying to escape. Cylo and his tarrasque jump over and literally hold the War Castle down, preventing it from ascending through the portal.

Alara and Maadrakath force Biwore to retreat, and as he vanishes, Maadrakath, also wounded, vanishes as well. Seeker then fires an extremely powerful shot from one of the city’s defenses and the War Castle shatters into billions of pieces. Haythen flies out of the rubble, riding Atarax, and the two of them fly into the control room of the War Castle, which is the only remaining large piece. It appears that will be where the final fight takes place. After nearly 12 days of combat, we have won the war. However, Haythen still lives. We begin to converge on the control room and prepare for the final fight.

As we walk into the War Castle, we all can feel the universe looking at us. It seems that after the fight, we may walk out of here as Legends. However, it will be difficult. As we step in, Iolanthe makes a toast to the fight to give us some buffs and we begin what could potentially be our final steps. The War Castle is in twisted metal shambles, with sparks flying around. However, as we come to the control room with the map in the floor, we can see that that room is completely unscathed except for one area. It looks like the “engine” for the War Castle has fallen through the ceiling and is hanging by a bunch of wires, looking like a strange chandelier.

As we walk in, we can see Haythen sitting in his golden throne. He summons a spear in his hand and, without saying anything, begins the attack. Nothing we do is affecting him, and he is just walking slowly and deliberately towards Ciara. In an attempt to stop him, I turn into a Marilith/Pit Fiend and get in his way. However, he shoves me aside like I weigh nothing. Red lightning chains wrap around her and he drags her to the center of the room in one blindingly fast motion.

We all begin surrounding the two of them, and Ciara manages to stab him with her Changeling, though it doesn’t really do too much to him. Suddenly, we can see Atarax staring up at us from under the glass floor. He lodges his claws into the glass, cracking it a bit but holding him there. While he isn’t a huge threat because he can’t get to us, he can still cancel our abilities. For that reason, I am back to my normal form. In an effort to cancel his vision, I take off my hide armor and pull out some random clothing I have accumulated from my bag and lay them out on the floor. Suddenly, I can transform again. However, shortly after, before I’m able to do anything while shifted, he says “Clever” and uses a lightning bolt to blast the clothing, turning it useless and I am back into my normal form, now without armor.

While I’m trying my stuff, Zilchran manages to divert one of Haythen’s strikes into the floor, shattering a section of it. Aman, Seeker, and Zilchran begin falling through the hole. Atarax loosens himself from the floor and flies after them. Haythen then kicks Iolanthe down after them. McRabbit intentionally falls through the hole and summons Hammock underneath, similar to how Atarax was positioned. He then flips back up with a rope attached to an arrow. At this point, I realize that with Seeker and Zilchran gone, I am the sole tank up here with Haythen. I turn into a 14-headed hydra/Hecatoncheir and Haythen begins attacking me intensely. Thanks to Borghildr’s healing, I manage to hold out long enough to be able to attack Haythen.

While I’m getting sliced up, Ciara throws a fireball at Haythen and he actually stumbles for the first time. Zilchran suddenly comes out of the hole in the glass and rejoins the fight. I now manage to attack Haythen, and it is a doozy. I strike him nearly 100 times plus 14 breath weapons and again, similar to with Ciara, he actually stumbles again. Since I am in melee range with him though, he can make a counter strike against me. He kills the form and nearly kills me all in a very short time span. Haythen then uses an ability to suddenly make me unable to use any of my more powerful abilities. However, I can still transform, though the forms will be unmodified by any of my abilities. Haythen then tosses Zilchran, Borghildr, and Dull down the hole, but since Hammock is there, they just fall onto his belly.

Then, Haythen turns to Ciara and absolutely murders her, but because she set up some pre-arranged spells, she ends up being fine. She then casts a spell and teleports the people that just fell back into the room. Out of anger, Haythen makes and angry gesture and the entire floor disappears. However, we all have one way or another to fly, and are all able to stay relatively close to him. The throne did not fall when the floor went, and he is standing on it. He then throws a magical spear at me and suddenly I can’t move a muscle. He is then able to cancel out a few of our methods of flight, and some of us begin falling (me included, since I can’t flap the Pit Fiend’s wings anymore). As we fall, the glass floor reappears above us, sealing us off from Haythen and the only person who hasn’t fallen yet, McRabbit. McRabbit shoots an arrow through the crack in the floor, which appeared along with the rest of the floor, and the arros strikes the spear still in my chest. He then pulls on the rope attached to the rope and it pulls out the spear. Suddenly, I can move again.

McRabbit stabs Haythen, and suddenly the feeling of the eye of the Titan intensifies. Haythen suddenly balls his fists and is engulfed in red lightning. As the light settles down, Haythen has disappeared and anyone still on the platform is thrown off in an explosion. Ciara teleports us all to the Anvilguard on the map below us, and we then learn that this map is such a perfect replica that it has detail down to a crazy amount. In Anvilguard, we can see pedestrians walking around as they actually are in the real world. The difference is that here, everything is made of crystal.

As we get teleported, Atarax begins flying in a huge circle and a massive vortex appears, seeming to be a cross between a tornado and a hurricane. The massive storm is so powerful that we begin to get carried along with it, floating around high in the air. Far above, we can see the bottom of the War Castle and a huge storm of red and gold is making it impossible to get there. According to the people who are currently fighting Atarax, there is a duplicate of Haythen slowly appearing on Atarax. Out of the swirling clouds, Seeker riding Trodon appears and taps me on the shoulder with his Changeling and I can now make full use of my abilities again.

Now back at full power, I turn into a primal air elemental and begin floating around, empowered by the storm. Shortly after, Seeker attempts his impetus. Since I am right by him, I get a very good look at what happens. He holds out a glowing orb, and it glows brighter and brighter. The storm appears to get pulled in by the orb, and the storm lessens a bit. Then, the orb suddenly cracks, all light fades, and the gale is full strength again. It appears that Seeker has failed his impetus, and will not be a Legend.

Suddenly, the red and gold storm overhead explodes outward and the slowly-assembling duplicate on Atarax’s back crumbles to dust. It appears Haythen has failed in creating a duplicate. Suddenly, the gale stops and the winds die down. Over the ring, they say that Atarax’s wings have been locked so he is unable to fly. We all rush to the location that Atarax has fallen to and as we all arrive, a red lightning bolt strikes Artrax and he suddenly gets stronger. We all look around and realize that we are missing McRabbit. Those of us that know what happened tell the rest that McRabbit is still up in the War Castle, probably fighting Haythen on his own.

We ended up landing in the crystal replica of Agranem, and we begin fighting Atarax amongst our allies fighting the remnants of Haythen’s army. As we charge in and begin the fight, Borghildr attempts her impetus. She touches her hands to the ground and begins to try to heal the planet. This planet, Arindain, has been torn apart by the Oblivion Unit, Haythen, and the war itself. Energy begins flowing out of the War Castle and into the planet. It appears that she is taking the leftover energy from the War Castle and using it to restore the planet. We can see from inside the replica that the planet begins pulling itself together. She appears to have successfully succeeded her impetus.

Atarax begins charging a breath weapon but before he can unleash it on us, Dull stabs him in the base of the neck with a Changeling and the accumulating energy dissipates. Iolanthe then casts an extremely powerful spell and unexpectedly kills Atarax. She tells us that she had been storing energy from the storm and unleashed it with the spell, so that's where all the power came from. As he dies, red lightning begins shooting everywhere and we realize that the red lightning isn’t happening to us but rather is happening to the our allies outside. What few cannons remain on the war castle begin firing into our army and our allies begin falling.

As we watch in horror, I suddenly catch a glimpse of Joyce in the crowd. Currently unharmed, but she is getting shot at quite a bit. I realize that in my current state, I cannot hope to defeat Haythen and protect those whom I love. Therefore, I will need to gain the power from something larger. I realize that the Oblivion Unit is the only thing I have seen that can likely overpower Haythen. Therefore, I must become the Oblivion Unit. I close my eyes and concentrate. At first, nothing happens. Then, I feel a huge rush of power and as I open my eyes, I am standing nearly to the height of the red and gold storm swirling around the War Castle. I have turned into the Oblivion Unit. I have succeeded my impetus and am now firmly on the road to Legendhood.

I punch a hole in the storm and Ciara teleports everyone up to the War Castle so we can keep fighting Haythen. McRabbit, who has been soloing Haythen for quite a while, looks pretty beaten up but is still alive.

Then, the unthinkable happens. As Zilchran is fighting Haythen, Haythen stabs him in the stomach and Zilchran falls. His body turns to ash right in front of all of us. Suddenly, through tears, Ciara begins yelling at Haythen and after a few seconds of this, I realize that she is attempting to ascend. She monologues for quite a while, and when she is done, she does something to one of her spells. I’m not really sure of the significance of it, but she apparently does succeed her impetus. Shortly after, all the rest of my allies begin their impetuses. Dull monologues and calls a whole bunch of stars to the battlefield. He succeeds his impetus. Iolanthe picks up her Changeling and suddenly all color fades from the universe. In her hand is a new sword, one that I don’t recognize. As she swings, suddenly every star summoned by Dull vanishes, my (the Oblivion Unit’s) right arm falls off, and Haythen is struck by an enormous blow. I learn later that she was able to wield a fragment of the legendary blade Tiers’ End. She succeeds her impetus.

Aman reaches up into the sky and grabs one of Alara’s constellations. He then pulls it down and it slams into Haythen, causing him to go down to one knee. I also am hit a bit, but not nearly as bad as Iolanthe hit me. He succeeds his impetus. Shortly after, the dust of Zilchran’s body begins to reform and he suddenly is alive again. Apparently his impetus needed him to die first. Apparently, he too succeeded his impetus. At this point, we have all attempted our impetuses, only one having failed. Haythen gets up from one knee and suddenly transforms into a being made entirely of golden light.

When Legends have been injured enough, their physical bodies can no longer support them, so to compensate, they turn their bodies into pure Legend. We now are quite literally fighting Haythen’s philosophy. When we strike, we are hurting him, not his physical body.

As we resume the fight, we learn that in this form, he has gained a whole bunch of new abilities. By far the most annoying is one that lets him permanently (at least, until he dies) destroy our abilities. Struggling to repair the damage dealt to me by Iolanthe, I begin shoveling the crystal from the map into the Oblivion Unit’s chest, where it stores energy. Stars would give more, but the crystal gives enough that I can safely resume the fight.

Dull is knocked unconscious, but Seeker heals him before he dies. After more fighting, Haythen strikes me particularly hard and I revert to normal form. He then strikes me in normal form and I go unconscious. Thankfully, I awake not to Death but to Seeker healing me. I resume combat and take a look at my allies. We are all beaten hard, all struggling to hold on to life. We are constantly wavering between conscious and unconscious. However, thanks to our two healers, Borghildr and Seeker, we are able to keep going without dying.

I go down a second time, and this time Borghildr heals me. I back away from melee range from Haythen and get a brief opportunity to transform now that I’m not so focused on defense. I transform into a 14 headed hydra/Prismatic dragon, a form I have used on multiple occasions.

Suddenly, the feel of the battle shifts. Haythen begins slowing down. Seeing an opportunity, we all strike in our own ways. Aman carves one of his swords through Haythen’s torso, though is partially blocked by Haythen. Using this as a distraction, Ciara holds a gun to Haythen’s head and shoots. He is able to move his head fast enough that the bullet, while still doing massive damage, does not outright kill him. Seeker throws a lance at him, pinning him to the ground. Now that he can’t move around as much, I move in and use the dragon head to bite his sword arm clean off. Haythen at this point is able to stand up though Dull quickly reacts and wraps a whip around his leg, pulling him back onto the ground. Now prone, Borghildr stabs his chest with her sapphiron sword given to her by the group way back when she joined. Zilchran cuts off his other arm with a strange black sword he pulled from Death’s realm. Finally, Iolanthe finishes him off by stabbing his heart through. With that, we have killed The Myth King.

In the aftermath, we first run out of the War Castle to see if our allies are still alive. We learn that most have survived, though we have lost the majority of our generals. In the end, the only significant deaths were Callen (the AI that ran the ship and Seeker’s husband), Simon (Ciara’s husband), Elijah (the previous king of Zastreya), and Tracey (one of the lich-kings under Terminus). Most importantly, Joyce is alive, though is slightly injured.

As all of us are now on track to become Legends (except Seeker), we apparently have to take a class at Valiant, learning how to be Legends. It is taught by Tieramuse, a Legend himself, and in addition, I learn some important things about the Web because I don’t have a formal Web education.

After it all blows over, I decide to take a break from it all and live with Joyce for a long time. Now that I am on track to become a Legend, a whole bunch of new doors have been opened for me. I begin work on several projects, using the brilliance of Estan to aid me. Perhaps the most large-scale project is to construct what will be the Northbound Legends’ dreadnought. I have several ideas about how that could happen, and begin planning.

Around 20 years later, we decide to regroup and go to The Nexus to wreck shit up. We end up getting a very stern and slightly terrifying talking to by Jade about how that was a bad idea and that we did nothing to help the slaves in the Nexus. We (mostly Iolanthe) managed to save one child, an emloy girl from the Nexus. Jade tells us that we killed several million people to save this one girl.

About a year later, I get a message from Valiant asking if I’d like to teach classes there, and I accept and begin teaching for the first time. In my first class, I get introduced to the students by the classes homeroom teacher, also Jade’s second in command, I’m pretty sure his name was Paris Heart. I give the lecture to a bunch of students that clearly don’t want to learn and aren’t very smart. However, there is one student who seems to actually want to learn and is at least somewhat intelligent. I’m pretty sure I’ve met her somewhere before, but can’t quite put my finger on it.

Anyway, I give the lecture on Alara’s bullshit first order magic, and how different it is from everyday magic (10th order). Pretty standard stuff, but again, it seems to be in one ear and out the other for most of the students. I was informed beforehand that this lecture would be a preparation for their trip to the Endless Staircase, so I talk for while on that. After the lecture is over, I head out of the room to go back to work on my various projects.

Teaching was fun, I guess. However, next time I would definitely prefer to teach students in higher years, as they likely will be more intelligent and actually care about learning the intricacies of the universe we inhabit.

## Arc II: Fatemaker/Fatetaker

[120 years after Haythen’s death]

After getting that done with, I head back to Arindain, which has been our temporary “home base”, while Seeker and I work on constructing what will be the Northbound Legends’ dreadnought. Over the next several decades we continue construction of the dreadnought. I continue to date Joyce during this time, and we begin to get closer. She begins to bring up the concept of marriage often, giving me the idea that she wants me to be the initiator for proposing.

I have been keeping Estan busy in his own research lab that I built for him. He is teaching me how to make and use transistors. We are the first emloy in quite some time who are able to do it, and we have many ideas for the future. He is also helping to construct our dreadnought, adding his input here and there. The war has completely exhausted our money, so I have been using money from Joyce (with her permission) to fund the dreadnought and paying the workers helping us on it.

It has been nice to have a century to think, to wind down from the climax of that final battle with Haythen. I have found myself on multiple nights falling asleep under the stars looking up at the large incomplete dreadnought orbiting Arindain, being reminded of nights I spent as a child looking up at Mesic. Having finally killed Haythen, I have finally avenged my mentor.

Though, at the same time, I do miss being busy all the time during the war. Now that I have nothing to do with myself, I have been working on the dreadnought and other pet projects 24/7, much to the chagrin of Joyce. I have also been thinking about my path to Legendhood and what that will entail. As of now, I have only begun the path to Legendhood and before becoming a full-blown legend, I must complete three trials. I was told this information during Tieramuse’s lecture on becoming a legend.

Despite not being a full legend yet, I can absolutely tell that I have grown vastly more powerful. I have yet been able to turn into the Oblivion Unit again but on multiple occasions I have found myself accidentally crushing objects with my hands, only thinking I was lightly gripping it. It has been slightly inconvenient, but I have gotten used to it recently. This is something I have never had to deal with before: intentionally making myself less powerful.

Over the next hundred year or so, me and Seeker decide to construct our dreadnought. The final design ends up being a solar system. Each of the northbound legends get our own planet, with Dull in the center on the star. After working round the clock for about 50 years, Terramuse shows up to give us some more training in the way of legends. During this session, he tells us the laws of legends.

-1st law: “Power does not come that is not called”

-1st esoteric: “One cannot call power who does not know its Name”

-2nd law: “Force should not be countered with force, but channeled”

-3rd law: “True power cannot be explored, only expanded”

-4th law: “True opposites do not interact”

-5th law: “All power has exactly 1 dominion it it not a part of”

-6th law: “Creating a power is to name it”

After learning from him how to better understand our power in the world, we head back to finish construction of the dreadnought. After another 50 years, we have finally finished construction of the solar system. The one thing yet to do is name it, as well as each of the planets.

Recently, I have gotten the idea for a hypothesis to test: I have the theory that some people are destined to be legends, and others won’t have a chance to ascend. Thus, I have sent a clone down to lower level places to investigate people to see if anyone has what it takes to become a legend. While in some random city (I’m not sure where specifically), my clone meets Mimir and we talk for a while. Then, out of nowhere, the amulet Seeker gave me to alert me if a Northbound Legend is in trouble breaks in half and I suddenly feel pain in my chest and am unable to breathe. I quickly call back the clone and gate to our specified meeting place inside an old war room to see what’s up.

As I arrive, Seeker is already there. Iolanthe is next, followed by McRabbit. Then, Dull. After some time, Ciara comes in, crying. Borghildr then, still covered in blood and surgery garb. Shortly after, Zilchran comes in, in full armor. It appears the one who is in trouble is Aman. We immediately decide to spread out, and use all our abilities to search for him. I go to the Wyrd and begin searching. Soon after I head out, suddenly I feel an enormous shift in the Tapestry.

## Arc III: Fool’s Game

We all begin talking through the rings simultaneously, and all realize that Anam can wait. This shift is a monumental one and we all have to immediately head towards it. We all race towards the disturbance, which happens to be on Paradise, a small territory in the universe that is controlled by Venj-Gennoreoth. As we arrive, we quickly realize the situation is dire. Ragnorock is currently fighting Venj-Gennoreoth around Paradise, which is making it hard for us to get to the surface, where the disturbance occurred.

Me, Seeker, and Iolanthe manage to slip through, and as we do I can see Ryzakel fighting the two true immortals. We quickly make for the disturbance, which leads to a large manor currently being besieged by scores of what look like mafia. My other allies are having trouble getting to the planet’s surface, so they turn away to continue the search for Aman. The three of us that made it to the surface can handle this.

I enter the manor through the roof, and enter into a huge battle scene. A seraph and a chosen of Silill are currently fighting Virgil, who seems to be holding up fine under the circumstances. Just as I land, before I can react, my mind’s eye is drawn to a woman carrying a child towards the seraph. My mind instantly focuses on the child. This is the center of the disturbance. As the woman reaches the Seraph, she holds the child up to him and his smile broadens. “Return my power to me.” Is all he says, and touches the child’s forehead. The child collapses into unconsciousness and his form changes radically. His wings blacken and twist into looking like spider’s legs. He stands up straighter, and his face turns towards me. I don’t immediately recognize who it is, but both Seeker and Iolanthe go pale and begin panicking. Iolanthe whispers “Arquessa”.

Virgil gives a speech about how winter is a wolf and how he is winter, before transforming into a giant wolf made of snow and ice and summoning a blizzard. I don’t really pay attention to the speech, as I am currently processing through what Iolanthe said. If this is really Arquessa, and he is back to full power, we need to either prepare for the battle of our lives or run. I begin battle preparations and activate battle transformations.

Pheo Dell, the master of fire, lands on one of my hydra’s heads, empowering it with starfire, a kind of fire he invented. This increases the effectiveness of that head’s fire breath tenfold. I wonder if I can learn how to wield that fire or reverse engineer it. The fight that had so many sides before is now down to everyone vs Arquessa. This includes Virgil, Seeker, Iolanthe, Phro Dell, Khain, Avin, a bunch of low tier people, and even Venj-Gennoreoth turns his attention downwards.

Venj-Gennoreoth tries to smite Arquessa, which against any normal being would have meant instant death. Instead, Arquessa casts a spell and reflects it back at Venj-Gennoreoth. After the smoke clears, Venj-Gennoreoth has a hole in his arm, and is howling in pain. He turns away, and begins retreating. This is consistent with most true immortals’ behavior. They tend to be cautious and even scared when anything weaker than them is able to hurt them.

Arquessa then casts a second spell and half of the city around us is instantly flattened into the ground, probably killing millions. In the place of the city, rising from the ruined structures, golden buildings and towers rise as he says “My palace shall rise”. Thus, he becomes probably one of the only people to successfully take land from a true immortal.

Pheo Dell tells us all to run, and most of the lesser ascended people heed his words. We all stay, to at least do some kind of damage to Arquessa before we leave. Arquessa attacks Virgil, which cuts off one of his legs. He then turns to Seeker who had the unfortunate luck to be very close to Arquessa. He hurts Seeker enough to kill him, but right before Seeker is dealt the final blow, a figure with golden hair and red eyes parries the blow away. My mind still in shock from the Arquessa reveal, and so it takes me a minute to realize that this is Haythen I am looking at.

Iolanthe and I quickly look at Seeker with a mixture of hatred and confusion and he shoots us a look that says “We can discuss this later”. Haythen then becomes fully engaged with Arquessa, holding him off for now, though he is most certainly on the defensive. While he fights, Arquessa spears the child through the shoulder with one of his sharp wing tips and casts the gate spell, which sends the child somewhere else.

I prepare to leave, getting as many of the people I know on my back as I can. I ask Pheo Dell if he wants to come but he says no but I tell him that his legacy of starfire won’t continue if he dies here. He hesitates a second and then a rune appears in my head, presumably for starfire. I duplicate to have more back room available. The duplicate grabs Seeker and I grab Iolanthe. Ryzakel lands on my back, nods at Iolanthe, and immediately jumps off. As we fly away, Avis leaps onto my back, carrying his huge darksteel greatsword. Pheo Dell, Haythen, Ryzakel, and Virgil are left behind, and thus are either dead or dying.

While we do feel no death ripples from a legend’s death, there is so much chaos going on in the tapestry that it is impossible to tell. While this day we have managed to escape with all our lives, we realize that we must to a TON of preparations for an eventual fight with Arquessa. We must do our trials and continue our ascension towards being full legends. This will be the next Haythen. As I am taking off, a grappling hook gets fired up, anchoring on me and Ievos climbs up onto my back with the rest of everyone.

As we leave the planet’s atmosphere, we enter an enormous debris field, likely caused by the fight with the true immortal. Up there, we find Ciara and she hops aboard. Iolanthe, Ciara, and I are all staring daggers at Seeker, and begin chewing him out about Haythen. We have a long discussion which involves multiple apologies from Seeker and at the end of the conversation we are all on semi-good ground. Avis listens in on our conversation and says that he might be able to resurrect Haythen but it appears that someone else beat him to it. According to Avis, he knows that a death lord grabbed Haythen’s soul.

Death lords are similar to liches but instead of being bound to a phylactery, they have caused so much carnage that Death actually cannot distinguish them from their carnage. Thus, they are functionally immortal and usually have decomposing bodies, surrounded by death and destruction. This particular death lord must be very strong, as he was able to grab a legend’s soul.

Avis also says that due to the massive fight that just occured here, the Record will be too tangled to use, severely hampering Iolanthe’s abilities until it gets straightened out. We ask Avis what the last thing he remembers is before getting catapulted to our time and he says that he can’t say, as well as telling Ievos to not say it, implying that they both have seen the same thing. They both clam up about the matter and we drop it. He then says that we are all just playing a game, and that we all are pieces. He then requests to join the NBL, and we say yes, seeing no reason to say no. Ievos is slightly more hesitant to join, putting the matter on hold for now. As we are flying around, Avis suddenly points to a hole in reality torn by Venj-Gennoreoth and says that the death lord is through there so I pivot around towards it and enter.

Within is a plane of utter disgustingness. The entire place was created to be a haven for liches and other undead things, and as such the plane itself hates the living, constantly sucking the life out of them. It is effectively a tumor on the universe. While here, we are constantly being worn down and all healing does not work, magical or otherwise. The plane is roughly the size of a gas giant, so relatively small compared to many other planes.

At first, only Seeker and I enter further, Iolanthe and Ciara deciding to hold back and get their bearings for a second first. The entire place is made of a fleshy coral-like substance, including the buildings. The entire place is a huge city, full of liches and undead things. Avin tells me and Seeker how to extract Haythen’s soul from the death lord, as he decides he should not be here as his whole thing is based on healing. The two of us turn onto a main road and Seeker goes incognito. I try to, but quickly realize that though I may appear undead on the outside, I am deep down still living so it won’t really matter.

Soon after, I find myself surrounded by a bunch of assassins and other undead things, all very threatening. A few of them get decent hits in, until it kills one of my forms and the explosion causes the rest to back off. An archlich from down the street speaks up, seeming to be the head of this group of people. He summons a few wraiths that slowly begin walking towards me. They are definitely a cause for concern, as The Warren uses them basically as police officers, and the important people around here can summon them to get rid of outsiders.

I converse with the archlich a bit, in tense but nonviolent conversation. Seeker is still incognito, and suddenly a person who seems to be at odds with the archlich comes out of the crowd to address us. He begins by defending me, and as he walks up, I catch the glint of a rapier hilt, buried in his chest right where his heart should be. He walks right past me, up to the archlich. They begin whispering, but with my dragon’s keen hearing, I make out what is said. The newcomer introduces himself as Logos, and also implies he has a brother (Pathos?!). The wraiths then stop moving and begin to move away. The crowd disperses and Logos tells me to hide myself and follow, saying the same thing to Seeker.

I shrink to the size of a fly and follow, landing on Seeker’s shoulder. Logos says that he has a similar goal to us and walks into what looks like a nightclub, complete with strobe lights and loud music. Inside is a whole bunch of undead people drinking and dancing. Logos immediately walks over to a couch on an upper level, where a man and a woman sit. I don’t really notice the man, as the woman seemingly forcefully grabs my attention and holds it to her. I can tell that if I were a less powerful person, I would have been entirely under her spell then and there.

She is an absolutely stunning vampire, one of the most beautiful women I have ever set eyes on. One of the more curious things about her is that her dress seems to absorb light. Finally I manage to tear my eyes away from her and give the man a look. He is much more casual than she is, sprawled out on the couch where as she is sitting straight up in a chair next to the couch. She beckons Logos over, seemingly paying no attention to the rest of us. The man in the couch gets up and leaves as we pass him.

As expected, she ignores both me and Seeker, focusing entirely on Logos. She asks if he is playing a game, and they talk for awhile about games. During the conversation, the name Lady Xanthir gets dropped, cementing my suspicions that she is not someone to trifle with. At this point, the man comes back with a few wine glasses, filled with wine that looks a little too red and thick. He hands one to each of us and then downs his in one shot. He then goes over to the railing and looks down, pausing for a second. He then drops the empty glass down, and judging by the glass shattering and a shriek, hits someone. He then chuckles and walks back downstairs, away from us.

I take a few licks of “wine” with my dragon tongue and find that it tastes strangely sulfurous and chalky, tasting strangely good to my draconic taste buds. Lady Xanthir then dismisses Logos and he gets up and walks away, Seeker and I following. Logos walks down to the main floor to a bar with a wraith standing there, beginning a conversation with the wraith about dancing and fun. The wraith asks to “be introduced to Cyrus and Seeker”, which immediately puts me on edge. Logos introduces us, not missing a beat or seeming surprised.

I ask for some kind of reciprocation of knowledge between us and them, as Seeker and I clearly are not as knowledgeable as Logos and The Wraith. They both flatly refuse, and as a bit of retribution, I intentionally name drop Logos while staring directly at him, and suddenly The Wraith seems very interested in him, asking to exchange information with Logos. The Wraith begins getting all giddy from the prospect of playing a game which seems entirely unnecessary for the moment, and I flatly refuse to play. This seems to irritate The Wraith, as he seems unsatisfied that I only ask the answer to one question: where is the death lord.

In exchange for a bit of information from each of the three of us, he reveals that the death lord is trying to leave The Warren to a very secure place, to hide a delicate piece of cargo. We deduce that the cargo is Haythen’s soul, and The Wraith tells us that the death lord is trying to get the soul to The Crow, the player of the death lord. I very much do not like The Wraith. He says that I am not suited to play games, as I do not know enough, basically calling me stupid. He asks if he can join us, and I vote no but both Seeker and Logos vote yes.

As we walk out of the nightclub, we run into Ciara, Iolanthe, and a man we met during the fight at Paradise. His name is LT and he offers his help to us. We discuss plans with The Wraith and discover that his goal in this game is to end it. He wants to be able to get 10 minutes without the Titan being in danger. This makes me like him a bit more, as that is basically what I want out of this game as well. The Wraith tells us that likely we (the NBL) are pieces of The Coin. He also reveals that Aman is probably being held by Arquessa, as Aman has something Arquessa wants, presumably the the Scion of Alara. The Wraith then takes us into a record store and picks up a record made of a single sheet of coral, musing how difficult this is to manufacture.

He then hucks it at a wall, saying “So that’s what it sounds like”. We learn that the death lord that has Haythen’s soul is doing it because he is a player for The Crow and The Crow wants to use Haythen’s soul as a bargaining chip. Seeker suddenly becomes interested in something and leaves the store, staying in contact with me through telepathy. Apparently there is a death lord outside, and Seeker asks me to ask The Wraith if this is the same death lord we are chasing. I tell him, and he says that no, it isn’t. However, despite this, Seeker stays outside.

The Wraith seems to not care that we care so much about Haythen’s soul, and thus does not feel that we need to take care of the issue right away. He mentions that we can just let the death lord leave The Warren and then take a trial which would take us to its location. Note this is not the same kind of trial that proto-Legends go through. Shortly later, Seeker walks back into the store, a random person in tow. Apparently he is alive and is one of Seeker’s followers. Sometimes I forget that Seeker is a god. The Wraith, apparently unsatisfied with me current form, destroys it. He is then super condescending and I punch him in the face as hard as I can with a full size dragon claw.

The punch sends him through multiple buildings, and as his body slows down to a stop on the ground, his form explodes into black shadow and pure white fire, several enormous wings sprouting out of his back. He appears to be transforming into something, though it seems much cruder and more painful than when I do it. He also interestingly appears to be trying to resist it. Lady Xanthir appears, as well as Jovan Mayamor (Seeker’s god) and Venser (valkyrie Legend). They all are here to protect The Wraith, apparently having been summoned by him taking damage. This also reveals that they are all pieces of The Wraith.

The body of The Wraith now looks like something is trying to crawl out of it. Most of his pieces seem to be trying to prevent The Wraith from transforming, however Lady Xanthir is slowly walking towards us. Venser tries to persuade Lady Xanthir to stop and calm down. Surprisingly, she does back down for the moment. I ask them what is going on with The Wraith, and Venser turns to me with a look that says “how can you NOT know?” At this point, Logos reappears from the street and pulls the rapier out from his chest. A black ichor flows from the wound, and I recognize the blade. It seems to be the same rapier owned by Wizard before his encounter with the Full Black Moon.

I have a short conversation with Jovan about what is happening here. He says that The Wraith contains some sort of super powerful thing within him, and he is the only thing that can contain it. By decking him, I lessened his concentration on that and loosened the jail bars. We need to prevent this thing from getting out. Suddenly, 8 blooms of red appear on his chest and he falls unconscious. As he does, a claw retracts back into the swirling black and white of The Wraith. From the holes on Jovan, there is a shimmering frost on them. Based on this information and the white fire, I am able to surmise that this creature has something to do with The Freezing, which is VERY BAD.

I am able to telepathically communicate with Jovan, learning that he is not actually unconscious, just unable to move at all. He says to try anything to stop the transformation, so I try my best to intimidate the thing into submission. This actually seems to work, the roiling white flames subsiding and he begins looking more like himself. Jovan then stands up shakily, seemingly fine for the moment. The pieces all then leave, asking if The Wraith is ok first. He waves a hand and tells them to leave, and they do so. We then turn to Logos about his sword,

He says that he has had it as long as he can remember, and also says that he apparently has memories of being Wizward but only recalls them as dreams, not actually real. The Wraith, seemingly sick of us, gestures into the air and a door appears. This, he says, is the way to the Trial with the Adenon. Me and Logos are the last through, and I flip off The Wraith as I go. Logos touches the ground, and somehow heals the entire city block, including anything living. This is particularly interesting, seeing as how we are in The Warren.

We all appear near the center of a massive hemispherical room. Around the edge of the room are 19 statues. They all look unique, each having unique armor and weapons. Some have musical instruments and all are of different race. At the other side of the room is a massive 200 foot tall stone statue, sitting a throne and wearing a crown. The first few seconds are filled with silent awe at the enormity of the space before us. I turn around and see opposite the huge statue are very large double doors.

In the center of the room is a pedestal, upon which is written “Worship him, praise him, and prove your faith in him and you will be granted freedom.” Iolanthe walks over to the doors to investigate and in a blur of movement, a nearby statue wielding a mace sends her spinning across the floor, bloody and unconscious. Seeker immediately runs over to her but as he gets close, the same figure hits Seeker. He fares better, being able to take the hit, but gets thrown almost 100 feet across the room.

Thankfully he managed to touch Iolanthe and get a healing spell off but the statue just smacks her into unconsciousness again. Seeker’s follower (I think he said his name was Gregor?) walks up to try to help Iolanthe. We all try to stop him, since any attack that would down a near-Legend would instantly kill anyone of a lesser power. However, he and Seeker reassure us that he will be ok. I am very curious about how me will manage to do that. He goes over to Iolanthe and tosses her away from the statue, getting smashed into a pulp as he does so.

Soon after, Seeker seems to get some of his energy drained and Gregor is back up, hale and hearty. I have no clue how he managed to do this, but it is nonetheless impressive. Now that Iolanthe is away from the statue, Seeker runs over and heals her. Soon after, a bell tolls seemingly from nowhere  and the words on the pedestal “Worship him” begin glowing. Seeker and I immediately kneel, but before anyone else can, the statue’s eyes light up and blast the room with lightning. Everyone who is fully standing gets blasted, but anyone lying down or on their knees is fine. Only two of us go down (Logos and Gregor), but Gregor again immediately begins coming back. Iolanthe heals Logos and we are now all groveling.

The statue powers up again but does not fire lightning. The second part of the inscription begins glowing “praise him”, and the large statue’s face turns into a nightmarish grin. Iolanthe begins singing an old etherian song and the statue stands up, staring straight at Iolanthe. We all begin singing with her, some of us pronouncing the etheian better than others, and it begins looking at the LT, walking over to him. It steps right on him. He thankfully doesn’t go unconscious but is severely injured. The statue continues forward, walking to the center of the room. Iolanthe suddenly says to move towards the outside of the room towards one of the status with an instrument.

We all spread out to the instruments as Iolanthe goes to try to help LT. She gets squished by the statue as it moves forward. She heals herself and then makes it to LT, healing him. The statue continues on to Gregor. Me, Logos, and Seeker make it to our instruments and as we make it to a statue, it begins to glow blue and play its instrument. Gregor then gets squished by the statue and as usual is fine a few seconds later. It begins to move towards Iolanthe then. LT reaches his statue and it begins playing. The huge statue stops walking and begins looking around the room.

I cast a healing spell on Iolanthe as it seems she has run out of healing magic. She gets up and tells me to run for the throne, as it seems like the best idea right now. I begin running towards the throne, attempting to outspeed the huge statue which begins moving towards me. As it moves to step on me, I put a goodberry in my mouth, which in theory should heal me when I get crushed, enabling me to get up again immediately. Thankfully I don’t have to test the theory as it just barely misses me with its foot. I manage to scramble up the throne by the skin of my teeth.

As I step onto the throne, nothing seems to happen so we formulate a second plan. I run off the throne, getting slapped by a stone hand on the way which hurts but thanks to the goodberry I manage to stay conscious but still severely hurt. We all rotate one statue clockwise, Seeker moving to the only other statue without a weapon: a shield. As Seeker gets to the shield, It begins singing a chorus and the large statue moves back to the throne, abandoning its chase with me.

At this point, the third part of the script begins glowing “prove your faith in him” and an altar which seems to be perfectly sized to fit a body comes out of the ground. We vote Gregor to go there, as he seems to be able to easily come back from death. He seems perfectly agreeable to this, but as we prepare to put him on the altar, 14 red lights light up and the large statue’s face twists back into the hideous grin from before but thankfully doesn’t move.

Through some trial and error, we realize that the statues around the room are now trying to move toward us in the center, but only move when we aren’t looking at them. There are too many statues for us to look at them all at once, but manage to rotate looking at certain ones as the 14 lights begin disappearing, seeming to be a clock. Then the door opens and all the statues freeze. We look back and see that the huge statue has transformed into The Adversary and is no longer made of stone. There are two bright lights aglow in its eyes. We all either wave or salute, each of us choosing a different way of showing respect. Before I turn around, I take a closer look at his armor and get lost in its beauty.

The complexity is insanely high. The armor is just layers upon layers upon layers of woven darksteel. I am reminded of fractals, as the weave seems to get deeper and deeper the longer I look at it. It is mesmerizing, and I have to tear myself away before getting lost in it. This armor is beyond legendary, crafted with the express purpose of being able to withstand any amount of damage, built with the idea that if the universe were to collapse and everything were to die, something would survive: whatever was wearing that armor at the time.

I look up and realize that the helmet is empty. The Adversary isn’t actually here right now. Seeker apparently as drawn to the figure as I moves up to the mace laying next to the throne and suddenly screams in pain. He then relays that he saw a vision. He saw The Adversary in combat with Silill in the place we met The Adversary before, back when we had to put our minds back together. The Adversary wa unarmored, instead wearing a light cloak. He also was wielding a new sword, made out of the same white light that was boiling out of Alpha/The Wraith.

We theorize with Logos’s help that they are fighting for two main reasons: Silill wants to spur The Adversary into action, as we know that he currently is not and does not want to be a player. The second is that if The Adversary is spurred into action, he could likely be a great boon in the search for Aman, as the two are linked closely. Before we leave to the Warren, Iolanthe gives me a kiss on the forehead which gives me a free resurrection as I am currently at critical HP. Then to help more, Seeker lets me hold Compass Rose for a minute or so which quickly restores me back to full strength. I am thankful but still on edge, as in the Warren I will be unable to shift into any forms.

We exit the trial with a juggernaut in tow, one of The Adversary’s darksteel drones. Immediately we notice that LT is not with us, though his dog is. I debate whether to telepathically communicate with it but manage to get convinced not to, as it seems that would be a bad idea. We ask it to aid us but it seems unwilling to help. Any request made of it is responded with “That is not in my directive”. Finally we ask it what its contract is and it says “To find and destroy the death lord”. We tell it to complete its contract and it simply replies “It is done”. We turn around and see a pile of corpses, at the foot of a ziggurat. At the apex is the body of a death lord, as well as a man standing.

The man hold out a hand and in it is a glowing golden light, presumably Haythen’s soul. He pockets it and refuses to give it back to us. He then introduces himself as Inestran Xanthir, who I recognize immediately. Not only is he Lady Xanthir’s husband, he is one of the most evil people in existence, likely topped only by Arquessa and The Adversary himself. In fact, my home world Thorsa used to be within his vast empire before it collapsed many centuries ago. He says that he will help us, reassuring us that despite his alliance with Arquessa that there will be no catch, and no payment required on our end.

He waves a hand and says an incantation and a gate opens up in front of us. He then begins walking towards us, walking right past. Seeker turns and asks if he could please give the soul back to us, and he responds with “Maybe, after you secure your home”. We then all step into the gate to another plane, finally off of the Warren. Walking through brings us to a planet covered in ash as far as the eye can see. This immediately triggers my memory, remembering such destruction before. This was done by an ash hellkite, which certainly does no bode well.

Based on the stars in the sky, we are no longer in the Web which is slightly worrying on its own, besides the ash fields. As we walk around, there are ruins scattered about but most have been reduced to ash. From the ruins, we gather that this civilization before its destruction was roughly in the post-modern stage of scientific development, though their time zone supports more advanced technology. The only significant we can see is a large mountain in the distance. As we get closer, we realize that it isn’t a mountain, rather is an enormous beast. I recognize it to be a hellkite, and the fact that there is a hellkite that has gotten this large is extremely worrying.

Iolanthe turns on the news and learns that this civilization was thriving up until 4 days ago, when the hellkite attacked. Seeker used a combination of detect good and detect evil to determine that there are two good beings near the hellkite but can’t see evil things, as the evil aura from the hellkite is so massive that it is blocking out any smaller auras. We decide that the sneaky approach is best so I take the form of an ash golem and summon a duplicate. We both head closer to the hellkite, Iolanthe and Seeker in tow.

As we get closer, Seeker’s aura reading gets more accurate. He identifies one of the good people as LT and detects several evil auras. For those of us who can’t read auras, there appears to be a small camp set up, and guarding it are several unusual creatures. Sleeping, perched on a nearby ruined house is a thunderbird and shuffling boxes and crates around on the ground is a greater basilisk, and on patrol nearby is a deva. All of these creatures Seeker identifies as having some sort of mind-control tether attached to their consciousness, which seems to be very strong, likely close to unbreakable.

I am now close enough to try to contact LT through telepathy, but his mind is not strong enough to respond. As I get closer, I can finally see LT and another figure, both bound on crosses, seemingly with manacles made of darksteel. Upon closer inspection, the person on the other cross is Dull, someone who I have not seen in quite some time. Near a workbench is a hooded figure, wearing a gas mask. I recall back when I taught at Valiant that there was a man wearing a gas mask who assaulted the school and was somehow able to get Haythen out of Seeker, if only for a moment.

Then, coming out from behind a ruin I see Death the Inevitable just lugging a crate to the workbench. This is pretty shocking, but I suppose this coming from someone who has a mountainous hellkite under his control should be someone to not underestimate. He directly addresses Seeker, not even looking up from his workbench. They seem to know each other, and seem to be on a first-name basis. The man’s name is Drake, and immediately from the conversation I can see that he has hated Seeker for quite a while.

His main goal as a player seems to be to eradicate all Legends, and prevent anyone from ever ascending. This seems like a very short-sighted goal, as the Legends are the only things powerful enough to defend the universe from would-be attackers from the Shattering. Nonetheless, he seems to be hell-bent on achieving his goal, saying any Legend who gets in his way is just another check off of his list. He seems to be making some sort of potion, which looks strange. It is a purple liquid, and inside seems to be a kind of black fire.

Iolanthe jumps into the conversation, seemingly being very mad that he would dare to attack children at Valiant. He merely says that they are being raised improperly, told to respect and look up to Legends. His mindset seems to be very one-tracked. He casually says that he looks forward to killing all of us (I get the sense that he does not just mean the North Bound Legends, but all Legends in general) eventually he then looks each of us in the eye, though notably he does not look at the real me, just at the duplicate. He seems to not be high enough ascended to tell the different. Notably though, Death the Inevitable is staring directly into the real me’s eyes. She does not seem fooled in the slightest.

He keeps mentioning that he is not a monster, and that Legends are. With the number of times he brings it up, I feel that he is more trying to reassure himself than us. LT weakly asks from his cross if he is a player or a piece. He responds with “You can call me The Haunt”, firmly placing him in the player category, which makes sense. He checks all the boxes of being a player. Out of all the players I know about so far, this one seems to have the most opposed view to my own. I would even take The Wraith over this guy.

As he turns to pack up, seemingly done with whatever experiments he was doing, he picks up the potion and begins placing it into a darksteel belt pouch. Before he is able, I take a picture with my duplicate, hopefully to be able to analyze later. He finishes cleaning up the experiment and boards his hellkite, in a specially made harness taking his slaves with him. The hellkite flies away, and now that we are not in direct danger, we recall Inestran mentioning that we have to make our home safe first. We all contact our respective friends and family, making sure everyone is doing well. They all are, and thus we decide to begin the search for Aman in earnest. The first place to get a good idea is from his wife, so we prepare to meet with Jesse. This should be interesting.