3.3 Legends of the Reach: The Last Song
General Summary
Robin
Your tower falls around you, your greatest work, the arcane arches of the Chronogates crumbling to rubble and smoke. With a sigh of both pain and relief, you step away from your dark destiny into a realm of pure light.
You find yourself standing in a strange place, far from home. You are filled with an indescribable agony–and you realize that this pain is normal, this is the background of your life and has been for eons uncountable. In your mind, a manic litany repeats itself as if to ward off this suffering: Only I have the power to save the world. I will do what needs to be done, they may not understand, but I have seen the beginning and the end and I will make it perfect, I will fix it, because only I can…
Before you, a god kneels in chains. He looks up at you with pain and kindness in his eyes, and you see yourself in his reflection—wreathed in darkness and power, ancient and strong and cruel.
Then, your heart glows within your chest. The heart of the god before you–but your own heart shining through even brighter.
The agony fades from your mind, and you feel the darkness melting away, all the years and pain and power sloughing off you like snakeskin.
I’m glad you had a change of heart.
The Suffering God stands before you, free of his chains, incomprehensible in his vastness and majesty. You have the fleeting thought that something about reminds you of Riven.
I don’t believe you need that anymore, Ilmater says, pointing at your chest. Allow me to return it to its keeper. They need it more than you now.
“Will I die?” You question the god, more curious than anything. He smiles.
No more than you have already.
You accept the god’s words, accept his reclaiming of the radiant power in your chest. As the heart vanishes, returning to its winged keeper, Ilmater continues:
You healed a great deal of suffering in the world today, O Golden One. More than you could ever have otherwise. But perhaps the greatest suffering you ended was your own. You are whole once more—and I think that may be your greatest work, my noble artificer.
You feel a sense of peace and rightness wash over you. Starfire blazes to life at your back.
Now, go on and help your friends save the world. I think it is time for me to rest.
You take another step, away from the Black Tower, away from the Suffering God, back into Elfriede's spell that pulls you home.
Riven You fly from the Black Tower, falling from the sky on dark wings to warn your Crimson Pact friends of the void at their doorstep. You fly for hours, praying that you don’t arrive too late, hoping that your companions back at the tower can handle the horde heading towards the Last Rest territories. As you see the tower of Juorog Ulak rising above the Trollskull hills, the vast Mare Tenebreux roiling beneath a stormy sky in the distance, you fear that you weren’t fast enough–void riders are battering at the gates, husks of wargs, goblins, demons, beasts tearing at the reinforced wood as if it were a child’s stick fort. As you fall into a desperate dive towards the outpost, time warps around you, and you are suddenly somewhere else. You stand before Ilmater. The god’s chains are gone. You look to where the Dark Lord had been standing, the last time you were here–you see instead a vision of a radiant Robin, stepping away from the Black Tower and leaving his ancient power behind him, stepping through a portal to the closest thing you all have to home: the Last Rest, under siege. The Suffering God inclines his head. His suffering has ended. His voice in your mind is tired, but filled with pride. He turns to you. Yours, however, remains. The artificer has found his heart, he has found healing and wholeness–thanks in no small part to you, Seamstress. He has no more need of mine. Let it return then to its keeper, that it might sustain you in stitching back together all the many fragments of yourself you have lost throughout your long and faithful service. As he says this, you suddenly remember. You remember everything. Time splits and buckles, every stitch undone in that moment, and every self that you ever were or would be all comes back together in a rush as Ilmater’s heart begins to heal several centuries’s worth of pain and loss and grief. And you are once more, for the first time since before the dawn of Volskaira, fully and wholly yourself again. You wake up in a crater at the foot of the Pact’s headquarters. Your old friend Domokos the Warlord is kneeling beside you, Sand-fury looming over you both protectively. You look towards the gates, which have been smashed open by the void hordes, the Crimson Pact defenders bravely preparing to meet their final end. Between you and the hordes, a shimmering rift has opened–one final stitch–opening a way between you and your friends in Last Rest. Domokos does not hesitate, and the Warlord bellows for his men to fall back, pulling the last remnant of the Crimson Pact from their ancestral lands into the safety of the rift and the town they had once tried to conquer. You are the last to go through, closing the stitch behind you as the void hordes swarm through the breach. “Stand watch against the dark," you murmur, recalling your ancient oath. "A light against the false, a champion for those who suffer." A living heart beats in your chest, and you breathe deeply. Perhaps it is time for one last watch.
Elfriede I’ve never understood this magic. You are lying on your back in the middle of a battlefield, drenched from head to toe in the foul blood of the void husks. It’s over. And you still don’t fully understand it. You don’t understand exactly what happened to Robin as he stepped through your teleportation circle, why he came through the other side so different, why he seemed both less and more heroic in his bearing and aura as he turned to smile at you with an ease that reminded you of when you first met. You don’t understand what power was at work when he drew the now-radiant Starfire from his back and asked for your guidance in making a final wish, what mechanism shifted in the world as the blade melted in a wave of light to take the worst of the void husks’ blight away and give the Free Peoples a fighting chance. You suspect it had to do with a change in your friend, the same letting go and surrender of control that led him to leave the Black Tower and Archanotech behind for good. The same change that led him to stay in the back lines during the battle you just survived, weaving magic wrought not of Archanotech mastery but of art and color and beauty to bolster the forces of Last Rest and save themselves from the void. But the arcana of it all is beyond you. You don’t understand why you took the boy Pip in as an apprentice. You don’t get how he could show such magical potential and just be so… useless. Robin tells you you’re being too hard on him, that Bronwen would disprove, that the youth is very much like you both were at the start of all this. Maybe that’s it—he reminds you too much of yourself, who you were before the Professor and Emelyn and becoming the Sage of the Reach. However, as you remember watching the boy trip over himself trying to bring you a report as you teleported into the training Academy you left him to oversee, you can’t help but cringe in bafflement. You definitely don’t understand the magic at work in Pim the new tavernskeep, how a rat could over the course of several months grow in size, sentience, and power to become numbered among one of Last Rest’s greatest defenders… But you do understand something of his shock and denial when Robin gave him news of Eliana’s fate, the rage with which the mousefolk barbarian leapt at the winged husks and tore them to pieces in the sky… You don’t get Riven at all. How they’re still alive, how they seem split across various selves throughout space and time, how they can tear rifts like the one that opened up in town right before the battle to bring themselves and Domokos and the remaining Crimson Pact forces to safety. You don’t understand how they led the ancient Volskarians to hold onto the Nexus in the way they did to keep it safe for the Dark One — or to keep it from him? — or how it’s actually the literal heart of a god that seems to now beat within Riven’s chest. The divine never did quite mesh with your understanding of the Weave, but this is something else entirely. You certainly don’t understand how Asatavarinuth exists within you, how he has augmented your powers of late, and especially not how he was, at your behest, able to fully take over and remanifest during the battle as he his ancient steel dragon form to wreck havoc upon his foes one last time. ou do, unfortunately, understand that you are lying on the ground completely naked. “Well done!” You look up, embarrassed, grabbing at your nearby pack for spare robes as an astral Emelyn laughs overhead. “You did it! I thought you could—but not in the way you ended up doing it. Not killing Robin? Bold choice. Finding Feyndovul the Allmother and throwing her through a Chronogate to defeat the Dark Lord once and for all? Could not have predicted that in a thousand multiverses—and I’ve been to a few!” This is another magic you don’t understand. But Emelyn the Grey—he is your childhood hero, and you suppose you don’t have to fully understand him for that to still be true. You look up from finally donning your robes, your pack slung once more over your shoulder, Staff of Power held in your hands. But Emelyn seems to be looking past you now, towards a figure stumbling awkwardly over the battlefield towards you. It’s Pip. You sigh. He seems to be bringing you a potion of healing, must think you’re injured with all the blood on you. As you watch, he trips and falls, shattering the potion on the ground. You cringe again. “Ah, the uncertainties of youth,” Emelyn says, a strange twinkle in his piercing grey eyes. “Just remember, young Archmage: the greatest magic of all… is Chronomancy. The manipulation of time.” He nods towards Pip, winks at you, then disappears. As Pip reaches you, breathless and apologetic and crying a little, you notice for the first time that he has the most familiar grey eyes. Your stomach sinks, and you wish suddenly that this was one magic you didn’t understand. “Pip’s not your real name, is it?” You finally manage to ask the lad when he calms down. He looks at you, surprised. “Um, why? Are people making fun of me again?” He pauses, seeming to deflate. “Please don’t laugh at me, master Elfriede… “My real name… is Emelyn.”
Your tower falls around you, your greatest work, the arcane arches of the Chronogates crumbling to rubble and smoke. With a sigh of both pain and relief, you step away from your dark destiny into a realm of pure light.
You find yourself standing in a strange place, far from home. You are filled with an indescribable agony–and you realize that this pain is normal, this is the background of your life and has been for eons uncountable. In your mind, a manic litany repeats itself as if to ward off this suffering: Only I have the power to save the world. I will do what needs to be done, they may not understand, but I have seen the beginning and the end and I will make it perfect, I will fix it, because only I can…
Before you, a god kneels in chains. He looks up at you with pain and kindness in his eyes, and you see yourself in his reflection—wreathed in darkness and power, ancient and strong and cruel.
Then, your heart glows within your chest. The heart of the god before you–but your own heart shining through even brighter.
The agony fades from your mind, and you feel the darkness melting away, all the years and pain and power sloughing off you like snakeskin.
I’m glad you had a change of heart.
The Suffering God stands before you, free of his chains, incomprehensible in his vastness and majesty. You have the fleeting thought that something about reminds you of Riven.
I don’t believe you need that anymore, Ilmater says, pointing at your chest. Allow me to return it to its keeper. They need it more than you now.
“Will I die?” You question the god, more curious than anything. He smiles.
No more than you have already.
You accept the god’s words, accept his reclaiming of the radiant power in your chest. As the heart vanishes, returning to its winged keeper, Ilmater continues:
You healed a great deal of suffering in the world today, O Golden One. More than you could ever have otherwise. But perhaps the greatest suffering you ended was your own. You are whole once more—and I think that may be your greatest work, my noble artificer.
You feel a sense of peace and rightness wash over you. Starfire blazes to life at your back.
Now, go on and help your friends save the world. I think it is time for me to rest.
You take another step, away from the Black Tower, away from the Suffering God, back into Elfriede's spell that pulls you home.
Riven You fly from the Black Tower, falling from the sky on dark wings to warn your Crimson Pact friends of the void at their doorstep. You fly for hours, praying that you don’t arrive too late, hoping that your companions back at the tower can handle the horde heading towards the Last Rest territories. As you see the tower of Juorog Ulak rising above the Trollskull hills, the vast Mare Tenebreux roiling beneath a stormy sky in the distance, you fear that you weren’t fast enough–void riders are battering at the gates, husks of wargs, goblins, demons, beasts tearing at the reinforced wood as if it were a child’s stick fort. As you fall into a desperate dive towards the outpost, time warps around you, and you are suddenly somewhere else. You stand before Ilmater. The god’s chains are gone. You look to where the Dark Lord had been standing, the last time you were here–you see instead a vision of a radiant Robin, stepping away from the Black Tower and leaving his ancient power behind him, stepping through a portal to the closest thing you all have to home: the Last Rest, under siege. The Suffering God inclines his head. His suffering has ended. His voice in your mind is tired, but filled with pride. He turns to you. Yours, however, remains. The artificer has found his heart, he has found healing and wholeness–thanks in no small part to you, Seamstress. He has no more need of mine. Let it return then to its keeper, that it might sustain you in stitching back together all the many fragments of yourself you have lost throughout your long and faithful service. As he says this, you suddenly remember. You remember everything. Time splits and buckles, every stitch undone in that moment, and every self that you ever were or would be all comes back together in a rush as Ilmater’s heart begins to heal several centuries’s worth of pain and loss and grief. And you are once more, for the first time since before the dawn of Volskaira, fully and wholly yourself again. You wake up in a crater at the foot of the Pact’s headquarters. Your old friend Domokos the Warlord is kneeling beside you, Sand-fury looming over you both protectively. You look towards the gates, which have been smashed open by the void hordes, the Crimson Pact defenders bravely preparing to meet their final end. Between you and the hordes, a shimmering rift has opened–one final stitch–opening a way between you and your friends in Last Rest. Domokos does not hesitate, and the Warlord bellows for his men to fall back, pulling the last remnant of the Crimson Pact from their ancestral lands into the safety of the rift and the town they had once tried to conquer. You are the last to go through, closing the stitch behind you as the void hordes swarm through the breach. “Stand watch against the dark," you murmur, recalling your ancient oath. "A light against the false, a champion for those who suffer." A living heart beats in your chest, and you breathe deeply. Perhaps it is time for one last watch.
Elfriede I’ve never understood this magic. You are lying on your back in the middle of a battlefield, drenched from head to toe in the foul blood of the void husks. It’s over. And you still don’t fully understand it. You don’t understand exactly what happened to Robin as he stepped through your teleportation circle, why he came through the other side so different, why he seemed both less and more heroic in his bearing and aura as he turned to smile at you with an ease that reminded you of when you first met. You don’t understand what power was at work when he drew the now-radiant Starfire from his back and asked for your guidance in making a final wish, what mechanism shifted in the world as the blade melted in a wave of light to take the worst of the void husks’ blight away and give the Free Peoples a fighting chance. You suspect it had to do with a change in your friend, the same letting go and surrender of control that led him to leave the Black Tower and Archanotech behind for good. The same change that led him to stay in the back lines during the battle you just survived, weaving magic wrought not of Archanotech mastery but of art and color and beauty to bolster the forces of Last Rest and save themselves from the void. But the arcana of it all is beyond you. You don’t understand why you took the boy Pip in as an apprentice. You don’t get how he could show such magical potential and just be so… useless. Robin tells you you’re being too hard on him, that Bronwen would disprove, that the youth is very much like you both were at the start of all this. Maybe that’s it—he reminds you too much of yourself, who you were before the Professor and Emelyn and becoming the Sage of the Reach. However, as you remember watching the boy trip over himself trying to bring you a report as you teleported into the training Academy you left him to oversee, you can’t help but cringe in bafflement. You definitely don’t understand the magic at work in Pim the new tavernskeep, how a rat could over the course of several months grow in size, sentience, and power to become numbered among one of Last Rest’s greatest defenders… But you do understand something of his shock and denial when Robin gave him news of Eliana’s fate, the rage with which the mousefolk barbarian leapt at the winged husks and tore them to pieces in the sky… You don’t get Riven at all. How they’re still alive, how they seem split across various selves throughout space and time, how they can tear rifts like the one that opened up in town right before the battle to bring themselves and Domokos and the remaining Crimson Pact forces to safety. You don’t understand how they led the ancient Volskarians to hold onto the Nexus in the way they did to keep it safe for the Dark One — or to keep it from him? — or how it’s actually the literal heart of a god that seems to now beat within Riven’s chest. The divine never did quite mesh with your understanding of the Weave, but this is something else entirely. You certainly don’t understand how Asatavarinuth exists within you, how he has augmented your powers of late, and especially not how he was, at your behest, able to fully take over and remanifest during the battle as he his ancient steel dragon form to wreck havoc upon his foes one last time. ou do, unfortunately, understand that you are lying on the ground completely naked. “Well done!” You look up, embarrassed, grabbing at your nearby pack for spare robes as an astral Emelyn laughs overhead. “You did it! I thought you could—but not in the way you ended up doing it. Not killing Robin? Bold choice. Finding Feyndovul the Allmother and throwing her through a Chronogate to defeat the Dark Lord once and for all? Could not have predicted that in a thousand multiverses—and I’ve been to a few!” This is another magic you don’t understand. But Emelyn the Grey—he is your childhood hero, and you suppose you don’t have to fully understand him for that to still be true. You look up from finally donning your robes, your pack slung once more over your shoulder, Staff of Power held in your hands. But Emelyn seems to be looking past you now, towards a figure stumbling awkwardly over the battlefield towards you. It’s Pip. You sigh. He seems to be bringing you a potion of healing, must think you’re injured with all the blood on you. As you watch, he trips and falls, shattering the potion on the ground. You cringe again. “Ah, the uncertainties of youth,” Emelyn says, a strange twinkle in his piercing grey eyes. “Just remember, young Archmage: the greatest magic of all… is Chronomancy. The manipulation of time.” He nods towards Pip, winks at you, then disappears. As Pip reaches you, breathless and apologetic and crying a little, you notice for the first time that he has the most familiar grey eyes. Your stomach sinks, and you wish suddenly that this was one magic you didn’t understand. “Pip’s not your real name, is it?” You finally manage to ask the lad when he calms down. He looks at you, surprised. “Um, why? Are people making fun of me again?” He pauses, seeming to deflate. “Please don’t laugh at me, master Elfriede… “My real name… is Emelyn.”
Epilogues Domokos: The battle won, his people saved, the Hobgoblin warlord gathers the remaining forces of the Free Peoples and leads them back east, seeking to push the void hordes from the Crimson Pact lands and take the fight to the greater Greenskin Plains. Many heroes of the Reach join the effort and set out to remove the void threat for good, with Captain Margaret and other Last Rest councilmembers continuing to support the war effort on the home front. Pim: Finally processing the loss of Eliana, Pim sells the Tavern of Last Rest to a tiefling named Boris and sets off north to uncover the mystery of his past—and perhaps find his true home. Grunk: After leading the Monsterary dojo in the defense against the void husks, Grunk sticks around Last Rest to occasionally meddle in his guild’s affairs (to the chagrin of his accountants). He does disappear for days at a time, and when he is spotted is more often than not standing motionless for hours at a time (Grunk is tree), or flopping on his side in the fownten (Grunk is fish). He remains utterly oblivious to the veneration he is held in not only by his disciples, but by the people of Last Rest. Riven: With a newfound sense of peace and wholeness, Riven the Last Templar, Avatar of Ilmater, decides to set off for Volskaria to see if there is anything of their home they might uncover and perhaps restore. They heard of an expedition of heroes that headed north several months ago—perhaps they’ll start there. Elfriede: Asatavarinuth thanks the wizard and bids him farewell, taking up residence in Pip’s—young Emelyn’s—crystal arcane focus, and says he’ll be back after a long rest. Elfriede, alerted by his Mirror of Warning to a long-anticipated threat drawing near Yyrda, decides to take his apprentice on an adventure to fight an Elder Brain. He suggests the name the Starlight Brigade for the new party, which nearly sends Emelyn into hysterics. Robin: His work in the Reach at an end, the artificer decides to head back to the Adlehyde estates, concerned about reports of civil war in Falinor and rumors that Hephaestus Arms has gone rogue with new Archanotech innovations. He makes a profound impression on his family, emboldening them to stand on the side of good in the conflict ahead. Robin will also maintain connections with his friends back in Last Rest, especially Elfriede (when he can get ahold of him), and he manages to establish a fairly reputable artificery guild at Castle Adlehyde with a focus on finding the beauty in the world and allowing it to flourish as it will.
Report Date
04 May 2025
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