Overarching Plot

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"But sometimes when the world tries to bend you, you have to stand straight until one of you breaks.” – Jason Asano, He Who Fights With Monsters

Arc I: [The Eorwin Arc]

There is no cost too large to pay

Ari, Bia, Rosa, Ramuj, and Dan fight off the newly emerged Haelborne threat in Eorwin as society collapses around them.

Advent of the Haelborne

Change requires risk and sacrifice

AOH ends with collapse of society in Haelcrien. Arodorros, their only lead, dies in the final chapters and the company is left with no direction to go. Ari reaches tier eight, Rosa and Dan acquire tier two.

Book II

Stand strong when all is lost

As of book two, the company are now on the Haelborne watchlist, with Ari having recovered the Firmament Glass. The escape portal conveniently leads them to Sahrongard, the capital of the Autumn Kingdom. Book 2 is them running away while dealing blows to the Haelborne. They form connections with other adventuring teams in these operations. Group of interest: team ‘Fully Optimized Operations Legion’ (FOOL). Haha, funny acronym. FOOL is led by the charismatic Autumnic royal Atiryn, who gets along with Bia seamlessly. He’s also a frontline magic swordsman. The others are the analytical healer Richael, Dawo and Noru, the twin ranged damage specialists (from Altegan, of course), Aera the dodge tank, and Spear, who uses a spear. The two teams end up joining forces on most operations, having a friendly alliance.

The Haelborne have become bold, using the ruined Haelcrien as their base of operations. As they take control of cities, they raze them and build bases atop. Each city they pass through does not become a morgue, however. They reuse the bodies of the dead to create constructs for their conquest - think Builder converted.

Aryon slowly gets more and more worried as she sees the Haelborne raze city after city. Most of the time the company are attempting to spread the word of the Haelborne, but world governments simply don’t acknowledge the threat. Ends with Ari busting into a Sahrongard parliament hall and trying to force the Autumn King into believing, which is interrupted by a Haelborne attack. This time however, the attack is effectively fended off (barely :P), and the Autumn Council are able to spread alert. Ari has stalled out one of the Haelborne’s plans yet feels no success.

Ari is simply done with the world. Lloyd’s betrayal is her only motivator. She must do all that she can to avenge what they did to him, to raze the Haelborne to the root.

Bia is worried for Ari, and tries to influence her positively, to no success. Bia herself is also worried about the world situation, but holds out hope. She wants to keep everyone safe, as does Ari.

Rosa and Dan are settling into their power sets and into the adventurer mentality. Dan isn’t sure he wants the callousness of the adventuring life, and begins having doubts behind his comic relief facade.

Rosa, on the other hand, is a child growing up in a fucked up world (yeah, she’s seventeen, but weird shit is still happening at that age, deal with it :P). She’s enjoying herself, hunting down monsters and evil Haelborne cultists. However, inside she’s burning. Javenshard, her home, is probably gone, razed by the Haelborne and probably not even built upon - there was nothing worth keeping there, to a race of interdimensional scale.

By the end, Ari and Bia have reached the tier ten, Dan and Rosa tier four.

Book III

Power triumphs all

The Haelborne threat is now widespread knowledge and nations organize responses. The company is no longer instrumental to the effort, which leaves Bia relieved and Ari agitated. They decide that it might be worth the time to simply hunt monsters for the sake of advancement - clear their heads a little.

There’s some occasional narratives of monster hunting, then a massive time skip six months forward. Ari and Bia have arrived at tier twelve, and Rosa and Dan tier six.

The company run around the Autumn Kingdom hunting down monsters. However, the catharsis doesn’t last long, as they soon find something intriguing: a dungeon. They don’t recognize what it is but advance through it to the end, at which point they find the dungeon’s core mechanisms and dismantle them. Examining the mechanisms, they find relics of Deliran construction techniques. Ari, eager for something less formulaic, advocates for a trip to the Deliran Isles. Bia, seeing no association with the Haelborne, decide it’s worth the risk. It’s just a special adventure :D

They travel back to Sahrongard and take a teleportation link to Feykang, Carioneth. They take transport further to the port city of Delensis. This time is quiet, except for the occasional monster hunt. They meet up with FOOL again and do some bullshit. A few times a professional adventuring team attempts to steal their kills, and Ari scares em off with pure madness energy. Bia’s concerned.

They arrive at Delensis, rest up for a few days, and board a ship to the Isles. Ari wanted to just take a teleport link from Feykang to Edenthein but Bia, after becoming increasingly concerned with Ari’s bullshit, persuades her to take a nice, calm trip across the seas.

Unfortunately, their ship is attacked by Haelborne. The company escape (nearly die) and end up in the wilderness along the southeastern shore of one of the Isles.

At the Isles, they run around for a bit before arriving in the capital and looking around. They end up meeting Ramuj, a cousin of Lloyd’s and a bit of a conspiracy theorist. As a scholar, Ramuj can tell they’ve been through some shit and insists to hear their story when they let slip that they were in Avertine when the whole Haelcrien doom doom doom happened. The company explain, and Ramuj instantaneously decides he needs to help them - if they can train him to do adventuring too. He’s already been tier six for a while, buying experience to make his life easier.

The company stay in Edenthein for two months, still taking monster hunts. Ramuj comes along every so often to see them fight. He also requests some monster-based reagents to help him study the mechanisms they brought back from the dungeon. The Haelborne attempt an ambush with some gold-level agents once, having heard what they were going after. They nearly die again, but it works out fine :D

Deliria is a higher level area, being up to tier twenty-five-ish. This gives the company a nice challenge, and Ari and Bia reach tier eighteen in record time. (Dan and Rosa end up at tier ten)

Meanwhile, Ramuj is working hard on the investigation. He can’t seem to figure it out - someone’s hidden away whatever it is they’re looking for. Eventually, he does get ahold of some records detailing the construction of the dungeons all across Kaaldenvale. Ramuj infers and explains to the company. The Governance is artificial, and the dungeons are part of it, using its power to create monsters that fuel its users.

Ramuj also manages to find some details leading back to the highest of Deliran authorities - houses whose descendants are still alive today. He says he’s already approached them, and was turned away unceremoniously. Ari decides that they can remedy this issue by some spookin’ threats.

Ari accompanies Ramuj to go intimidate the houses. Bia and co don’t know about this. It works, they get some info out. Bia’s kinda annoyed that they went and corruption corruption some idiots but also, the ends justify the means. The dungeons were constructed as their end of a deal with a force in the Dawne Kingdom.

The company arrive in the Dawne Kingdom and meet Raelia Hastor.

Raelia knows the moment that they have entered Dawne, and summons them. Ari opts to go along for now, despite not trusting her. Raelia sends them to a lower magic area to train up, where we have a Jason in Greenstone style adventuring arc. Ari's very happy to just get back to regular adventuring for a while. Raelia kinda just tells them to come back when they're tier 35, which is like low gold. They need to be at least this powerful to be able to reliably help with the war effort - the Haelborne have not brought many of their own down to Kaaldenvale so as not to attract Immortal attention. End off book three on a nice high note.

Arc II: [The Dawne Arc]

Power triumphs all, but there is never enough power

Arriving in the Dawne Kingdom, the company meet and receive the orders of the enigmatic Raelia Hastor.

Book IV

We enter book four, and the company has moved to a higher magic area - they've reached tier 35. More cool adventures, this is mostly just a chill character development book. Ari is getting better, and starts having regrets about her actions. Lloyd, specifically. The Haelborne turned him against her, so she decides to shove most of the blame onto them and bury the rest. She vows to get Lloyd back. Somehow, she will.

Meanwhile, Ramuj is getting used to his quick advance into the adventuring lifestyle. He's not very good with violence. Now that it's just monsters, he's alright, but if he wants to stay with his new friends, he's gonna have to help them kill cultists. Think of it like Jason and Farrah's moral qualms in HWFWM.

Ari is constantly driving the group to go faster, so that they can get out and get vengeance as soon as possible. This causes conflict within the group as Ari becomes even more callous, and even her monster hunting makes it seem as if she is the monster.

Book V

There is never enough power

Ari stays driven by revenge for Lloyd. She has since stopped being completely mad, but still wants to burn the Haelborne to the ground. She quells those feelings, compromising that she will simply cripple them so that they may never threaten the balance of the cosmos again.

The company advance to that gold rank range, and return to receive orders from Raelia. Ramuj decides it's time to go back, but Raelia advises him not to and casually drops the bomb that Eorwin is now completely taken by Haelborne. Reality mining operations have begun, and Deliria is likely next. Ramuj is obviously not very happy with this, and says he's going back anyway - he has to get his loved ones out, and the rest of the company insist on coming. Raelia obliges, but wants them back timely.

They depart, and travel through Deliria to where Ramuj lives, hunting some monsters along the way. But, the Haelborne have already occupied this part of Deliria… the company get to witness a reality mining operation. They decide they may as well try to shut it down. They stage an attack, and are able to wipe the floor with the peak silver forces there. No survivors were found, but Ramuj holds out hope.

However, the Haelborne have immediately picked up Ari's scent after she has left the Dawne Kingdom, and have just about caught up. As they're cleaning up and looting the camp, their pursuer arrives - one single Haelborne. They prepare to fight the massive ship incoming, but then one single guy jumps out and starts deleting them. They barely escape, via some return-to-Dawne trinket thing

They've recovered some raw reality fabric from the mining operation. They hand most of it over to Dawne for them to maintain dimensional integrity, but Ari keeps a little. She figures it will be useful.

Raelia is happy enough with their performance, knowing that they couldn't possibly have fought a Haelborne at their level. She sends them out with an expedition to another higher power Haelborne encampment, on an airship sailing towards Rueleva.

They succeed in taking the ship and capturing the cultists. A bit of a break.

The company join another attack expedition, and all goes well - until six true Haelborne drop down on them. The few post-100s in the Dawne army are caught up fighting the much older and more experienced Haelborne. One Haelborne goes after Ari specifically, and they stand off for a little bit before a diamond rank Dawne force steps in. There are many casualties, and they only manage to slay one Haelborne before being forced to evacuate.

The world situation is getting worse. The periodic Dawne expeditions aren't enough to stop the Haelborne, and the Haelborne had come to early for the Governance to prepare the world. Dustheus and Elzorn are getting attacked, and will likely be overrun within a few months. Raelia has initiated doomsday preparations.

Book VI

Your home is your people

Book six! Raelia has Ari and co go to the Governance Hub and move it. Specifically, she wants Ari to infuse it into herself - think Jason breaking down the World-Phoenix's bridge. However, the Governance isn’t feeling very cooperative.

When they arrive, they're let in by the guards. The Governance Hub hasn't been entered for centuries, and it's very hostile. The Governance is intelligent, but not consciously. It's kinda like Arbour, pre-soul fusion. It feels Ari's intentions and doesn't want to deal with that bullshit, so it screws around with the company, but they do manage to reach the centre. There's a bit of a bossfight.

Ari absorbs the Governance. Governance screens throughout Kaaldenvale undergo a shift, and Ari now becomes the manager of the Governance. She can do anything with it, change it's rules, but if she fucks it up she's gonna blow up the planet or something.

Ari is offered a choice by Raelia, and they become enemies as a result

Arc III: [The Immortal Arc]

She who fights with monsters must not become a monster

The company put the dying Kaaldenvale and its scruples behind them and advance into the cosmos to receive the patronage of the Great Immortals.

Book VII

Book VIII

Blow up the path

Ari allies with the Great Immortals, as they are antithetical to the Haelborne. Their first request, to show loyalty: eliminate Raelia.

Kaaldenvale dies

Book IX

A little indulgence

Indulgence, as in killing.

Haelborne attempt to negotiate - Ari is, of course, not very interested.

Not long after the negotiation, an attempt is made on the company’s lives. Ari assumes it is the Haelborne, but it’s actually just the Immortals egging her on. She takes a renewed interest in the Haelborne. This pushes her over the edge of ‘just a little killing’ to ‘MY NAME IS THALLEOUS SENDARIS, CHAMPION OF THE SONGS.’

The Immortals want this because they have decided that the Haelborne have gotten out of hand. They were allowing a little of the harvested reality fabric to actually be used for the purpose of defeating them, and the Haelborne progressed too far. They cannot simply smite them themselves because doing so would cause the rest of the cosmos to question what happened, and bring scrutiny upon them.

Ari gets set off by something while in a Haelborne raid, and massacres civilians. Bia stops her. Ari realizes she’s fucked up. She realizes that she only causes death and destruction wherever she goes. To remedy this - SUICIDE, BITCH! Bia or someone can take her responsibilities. This concludes the monster arc. But - she’s the main character. The Narrator won’t allow this! She’s deus ex machina’d out of death just in time for Bia to come in and call her selfish and stupid and stop suicide you stupid.

Arc IV: [The Narrator Arc]

Small does not stoppable

The Cult of the Aethein and idi0cy.inc have taken an interest in Ari. It’s time for her to see the fundamental nature of this world, and wage war on its false leaders.

Book X

My morals are the morals

Ari is now fully within the monster phase of the cycle. Under the Immortals’ guidance, she and co slaughter thousands of Haelborne nests.

In the process, idi0cy.inc, who are cooperating with the Cult of the Aethein in return for certain insights about the fundamental purpose of the cosmos, come across Ari. She matches the description given, so they attempt to take her multiple times, setting her and co on alert. They take some time off the Haelborne slaughter to investigate, only meeting close dead ends.

Book XI

We were so focused on great that we didn’t do good

Ari and co are approached by the Cult of the Aethein. Ari is initially distrustful, as they have been sending idi0cy.inc after them. idi0cy, of course, was more interested in the research opportunity of a ‘main character’ than their arrangement, so they opted for capture over negotiation. The Cult admonished them, but there was no lingering animosity.

The Cult talks of the Originals, and the fraud of the Great Immortals. Ari doesn’t believe them, but they leave peacefully, simply asking her to consider their offer.

They go out on another Haelborne genocide mission, but this time Bia refuses to involve herself after they finish off the defenders. This is a city, full of civilians. Ari looks around, and realizes she’s kinda fucked up.

They return, and Ari begins to have doubts. Equilibrium specifically asked them to clear out this dimensional vessel - he must have investigated it beforehand. Ari decides to do some digging, and discovers records of orders from the Immortals to the Haelborne. So, if they were on the same side, why were the Immortals now siccing Ari on them?

She goes to leave the records hall, but it intercepted by Equilibrium. She dodges past, alerts the others, and they escape using a portion of the reality fabric they got from the mining camp in Kaaldenvale to block of Equilibrium before disappearing.

The company arrives at the Cult of the Aethein. Ari, however, is still not fully trusting of them, with the history of betrayals that she has accumulated. To accrue her trust, the Cult offers to introduce her to the Narrator - and she agrees.

She asks the Narrator a few questions - but most importantly, how to get Lloyd back. The Narrator answers that the energy required to find and return a soul from the fragments of death is immense. Even he doesn’t know how to do it (he hasn’t written it yet :/). It would be virtually impossible for her to do.

There is another way. The Narrator is willing to grant Lloyd back if Ari follows the plot. She must undo the damage caused by the Great Immortals - all the damage. Not just bringing back the Originals, but restoring their reality mining so that the cosmos is once more stable. Where should she start? Accruing some of her own divine material. It’s time to slaughter some tasty, tasty, Immortal.

Book XII

Arc V: [The Firmament Arc]

Impossible is just the line where people will no longer pay the cost

The company traipse around the cosmos remaking dead worlds, with the aid of idi0cy.inc and the Cult of the Aethein. Along the way, Ari steals a little material for her own projects…

Book XIII

Book XIV

Book XV

Arc VI: [The Restoration Arc]

The only birthright of an empire is to die

With the cosmos’ dead worlds repaired, there is only one loose end left to tie up. The Great Immortals must suffer the cost of their transgressions, and the Originals shall be returned to their seat of power.

Book XVI

Book XVII

Book XIX

Unplanned

• Raelia fucking dies. Because I said so. Literally, that's the lore reason.

• Complete collapse of society in Kaaldenvale

• Kaaldenvale collapses (classic reality go boom)

• Haelborne forces have all left at this point, and they assume that Ari is dead. The company has left via some niche method

• Ari creates Aetheiopeia

• Time loop?? Restore Kaaldenvale? Get Lloyd back?

• Tournament of Relics ensues

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