Age of Ruin III: Thelima City

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — A noise beyond the temple

Warlic, Tara and the Hero travel to the Yew Mountain Chain because its strange echo resembles the sound made by the inert Doom Spirit beneath Termina Temple. Warlic believes that the spirit is calling out to someone; Tara can still hear its ringing. Song, Felix and the Lorekeepers have gone ahead. Tara hopes that an investigation through the mountains might also give them a little rest after Skye. Their home has defenders: Illaria and the others remain behind, while Artix and Galanoth have volunteered to help protect it.

The Stranger hiding in the Hero’s shadow discovers that it has no secret audience. The Hero told Warlic and Tara about it, and both can see it. They have allowed it to remain because its knowledge may prove useful. Tara asks about the Doom Spirit and Infamy, but the Stranger seems uncertain how much time has passed and refuses to explain its connection. Volgritian’s warning grunt earns a promise that the Hero will ask for help if the Stranger becomes dangerous. Warlic, meanwhile, has been shaking through the carriage ride; he calls the feeling nostalgia.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The city beneath four forges

Thelima stands on the border of Dwarfhold and Greenguard Forest, below the four peaks of Maleno, Albedo, Citrinitas and Rubedo. Their Magnum Opus Forges promise extraordinary works to smiths who temper a weapon at each forge in the proper order. The city has expanded rapidly around that promise. Song’s House Noelle, the Dwarves and the Drow share its protection and prosperity, but crowds seeking the flames are arriving faster than its guards can comfortably manage.

Snowbeard represents the Dwarves while their Elders discuss a possible partnership with Queen Victoria. She has promised that it would not require their submission, but reports about Undine and the war with Skye have made the Council cautious. The local coalition rests on firmer personal trust: the Drow left behind by Vath have become part of Dwarfhold’s community, and Song has kept her promises. Svala, once imprisoned by Vath, works to reconcile people who suffered under him, served him through fear, or knew no other life. She wants a peaceful home for Drow who have repeatedly seen their settlements destroyed.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — New bodies and old wounds

Tara wants an adventure alongside the Hero after being absent from the ordeal in Skye. Her new appearance is a choice rather than ordinary growth: she can no longer grow up normally, but can alter how she looks. Victoria helped with the new clothes, and Tara added a little height. The pleasure of that change catches on a loss she cannot repair—she will never know how she would otherwise have grown. She also wants absolute privacy to discuss the Old Worlds Order and its suspiciously accurate warnings.

Volgritian followed the carriage and endures the disguise of an intimidating horse. He admits that leaving the temple was premature: snapping twigs and even his own lightning still return his thoughts to the cave. Helping the person who saved him gives him a sense of himself again. He remembers the Yew Mountains as Akriloth’s former nesting ground, and the First Champion of Fire as a man who retreated there during the deadly rivalries between the earliest Champions and Great Dragons. His recollection complicates the heroic simplicity of the local monuments. He also remembers Akriloth’s unusually extreme contempt for lower lifeforms and his continued crusade after the Planar Conflict. Volgritian recalls a change from Akriloth’s earlier pride, but cannot place when it happened.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — A shared monument

Geopetal greets the Hero in an obsidian body made by Snowbeard and the seven sisters. Possessing a second sculpture lets the mountain spirit remain at Heartstone Forge while also watching over Thelima. The successful work led House Noelle to commission three more bodies for the other peaks. For Geopetal, the assignment brings an intimate wonder alongside its public purpose: she can finally see the sky.

One monument celebrates harmony between Drow, humans and Dwarves beneath Fiamme’s protection. Another commemorates the First Champion of Fire, whose obsidian body supposedly fell where Thelima now stands after he defended Lore from an all-consuming flame. Geopetal tells the familiar version: the Champion defended Fiamme, fought the being from the stars and died with it, leaving their flames to kindle the forges. These are the city’s inherited accounts, rather than a complete explanation of what the mountains contain.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The people behind House Noelle

Song’s new authority carries family grief as well as public work. Henry has come to support her, keep opportunistic nobles in check and help arrange trade partnerships. He recognizes affection in Adreanna Noelle’s adoption of Song, while also noticing the succession it secured for a house without heirs. Adreanna’s elderly mother has not been told that her daughter died. Kadenza believes Song is preserving Berenice’s mistaken recognition of her as Adreanna so that the old woman can spend her last years happily.

Kadenza is one of the Astravian survivors who found safety in Greenguard because of the Hero. Song gave them a home, and many joined her knights. Their armor carries a star, the emblem Adreanna prepared for her adopted daughter in place of House Noelle’s old key. Svala, who still trembles around nobles after Vath’s imprisonment, has also found support from Song as she tries to recover her voice. The coalition is held together through these acts of shelter as much as through its need for guards.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Paladins without a single master

Magni and the Mana Solace Paladins escorted the carriage after learning alongside Tara from Warlic and Lady Celestia. They expect to support Thelima’s strained defenders. Other Paladins have gathered under the Luminary Coalition, which Arondight describes as an alliance of Orders opposing the Lightguard’s fanaticism. Protection should not have to be purchased with wealth or devotion. For him, the Light is the resolve to protect others, rather than Celeritas herself. His complicated bond with Maleagant has taught him to place responsible choices above his own revenge.

Ana was expelled from the Lightguard as supposedly tainted despite Sigrid’s defense, then welcomed by the Luminaries. She still keeps the shard connected to her brother, accepting the reminder of a person’s hidden depth while acknowledging its possible danger. Yara likewise found a new home with the coalition after expulsion. She and her friends recognized Sigrid’s handwriting in an anonymous recommendation. Yara’s experience in Atlas remains painful, but withdrawing from the world could let another such disaster go unchecked. Exploring with Ana and Arondight gives her both companionship and people able to pull her out of trouble.

Sigrid has entered Thelima privately to use the library; the Lightguard as an organization is barred. Astero nevertheless ordered a base built on Mount Citrinitas against Song’s wishes. Sigrid sees the needless conflict but has lost influence after her performance in the Sandsea. She expects weapons from the miraculous forges, suspects that Astero wants still more, and finds opposition to him dangerously entangled with devotion to Celeritas. Her wish to speak with Tara also carries older guilt: she believes she could have stopped Lynaria’s attempt to recover Valen from the dark, before the queen’s decline deprived Tara of her mother.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — A city that cannot extinguish its fires

The forges’ renewed prosperity has produced casualties that no supply of medicine can cure. Trespassers who mishandle Mount Maleno’s flames keep burning until their bodies are consumed. Cleric Ariel and the Sisterhood of the Dishpan Hands work with Song in a clinic east of the library, far from the House of Ash. The difficulty is not a lack of supplies: nothing they try heals the burns. Ariel has yet to hear from sisters sent to the other peaks, so she cannot turn her fear for those places into a report of what happened there.

The House of Ash was a warehouse before it became quarantine for the burned people called Maleno Matchsticks. Song’s own knight is inside, carrying a key that his distraught comrades cannot bring themselves to retrieve. Kadenza warns that even touching the outside walls can burn a person to the bone. Stone contains the fire for now, but stories of divine punishment encourage outsiders to dismiss the victims while ignoring the danger to everyone else. Song also explains why Warlic has not solved the disaster: his magic feeds these flames.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Hospitality and a dangerous guide

Aina offers food, quiet rooms and lodging in gratitude for the Hero’s help to Diauhtla and Ingrid. She is building further inns on the other peaks, hoping that safe places to rest will reduce deaths among unprepared travelers. Her guests report a sharp metallic echo from Maleno, loud enough to wake the city, with similar noises across the mountain chain. Soundproof walls offer a little relief from the hammers; they do not answer the investigation.

Dahlia offers another kind of access: a paid route up Mount Maleno despite Song’s closure. She admits that most of the groups she guided did not return and separates her promise to show the way from responsibility for their survival. She has overheard the party’s search for the echo and insists that a risk is unavoidable. Warlic is wary of her. After the Hero meets her during the investigation, he warns that pressing for her secrets may simply give her openings to steal theirs.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The library’s worried keepers

Muusa and Maya have spent months helping Warlic research the mountains and recover House Noelle’s scattered records. The library also equips travelers with reports and expedition procedures, though warnings have not stopped fatal intrusions. Muusa worries that Warlic is withholding knowledge because the coming confrontation recalls something painful. She compares his behavior to avoidance and her own habit of rewriting traumatic memories, while making clear that she does not think he means harm.

Muusa recalls Maya remaining at the Hero’s bedside after their collapse before Atlas. She says Maya now forgoes sleep by forcing herself to work on the library’s archives. As both historian and friend, Maya wants to offer more than a written account of another ordeal. She notices that the Hero has gone months without sleep while friends still think of them as human. Her faith in a universe watched over by someone who understands helplessness leads to a pointed request for recognition, but she does not explain a new ritual or demonstrate what she knows here.

Felix deciphers the extensive expedition journals of Lucas Bligh, the former Court Mage whose experiments on innocents he remembers personally. The information is useful, but hearing the old man’s voice through his writing unsettles him. Victoria has restored Felix’s titles and granted him Bligh’s former territory in Arcangrove; he plans to meet its mages after Thelima is settled. For now his concerns are the Hero, his family and Ophelia, whom Illaria is caring for back at the temple.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — What the histories can establish

Yew Mountain’s Sparks records the common human and Elvish version of the ancient battle. A beast from beyond the heavens sought to destroy Lore, beginning with Fiamme; the First Champion and Akriloth defended her. The Champion’s fire burned white and then blue until it consumed his life. His petrified body fell at Thelima, while the surviving flames lit the four forges. The book acknowledges differing Dwarven and Drow accounts, missing records and a chronology without confirmed dates.

The book distinguishes the flames from the structures themselves: Dwarfhold’s Elders have no written account of who built the forges, and they may predate the Planar Conflict. The Council theorizes that overuse, theft and attempts to reproduce them caused their extinguishing; this is a proposed cause, not a witnessed event. Centuries later, the fires reignited around the first weeks of the Greenguard–Skye war. Expeditions resumed, crowds returned, and mishandling produced the Matches and spreading fires. The strange ringing was noticed alongside that renewal.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Warnings for an unfinished expedition

The expedition guide is a changing, edited compilation, much of it drawn from Bligh’s reports. The path called Astrum Argenteum leads toward Maleno through trees said to have been punctured by falling stars. Wind through the holes causes disorientation and perceived time dilation, with rare incinerations attributed to an unknown force. At Forge Maleno itself, travelers should keep to lighted areas, leave locked doors alone and avoid windows marked by handprints. Reports call its bodiless guardian amicable but advise ignoring its requests.

Aiwass Sanctuary is listed as a safe point for teleportation and supplies, but claims that its otherworldly dead patron can communicate from the tomb remain qualified. At white Forge Albedo, expeditioners report altered personalities and extra group members; they are told to keep journals against a guardian’s denials. Golden roses along the fault toward Citrinitas produce creatures travelers should avoid, and the Lightguard occupation has suspended expeditions there. Warwick’s trees burn without becoming ash, while access to the Rubedo logs requires an application and vetting by House Noelle. These warnings establish hazards and reported phenomena ahead, rather than adventures the Hero has already completed.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Bill finds his sister

Felix identifies Ophelia as Drakath’s real mother and the living vessel through which the Queen of Monsters manifested. He offers the journal of her brother Bill. An archival note says it was recovered from an unmarked grave and that Bill’s bones were secured for possible future leverage. With most of the original research from Dethrix I’s era lost, the note treats the journal as a rare surviving account of the vessel candidates and the successful vessel’s identity. It reports that the vessel’s transfer from Swordhaven to Balemorale caused a small number of casualties through proximity, then proposes investigating whether similar methods could create Champions of the eight primary Elements to strengthen Greenguard. That proposal records an ambition, not a successful experiment. The journal begins with Bill’s forbidden view of the vessel: he recognized his sister and believed their kinship might explain why he was dying slowly instead of suffering the more immediate damage described by the captors he interrogated. His account is a witness’s damaged record, including his guesses, not an impartial explanation of every magical effect.

Bill remembers Ophelia as a determined woman whose boasts helped her force herself through discouragement. She gained schooling, married a merchant and expected a child, but losing that baby led her husband to throw her out. Bill believes shame kept her from seeking her already troubled brother. While he searched for her, Dethrix’s Court Mages seized her and other people whose disappearance would attract little notice. Bill reached Dreadhaven too late: Drakath had already been born.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The vessel and the bargain

Bill reconstructs what a Court Mage told him as a numbered list. Dethrix made a bargain with a sealed being Bill calls Q-O-M, which needed someone linked to it who could release it. An unreachable being could only have a fragment summoned, and that fragment needed a living vessel naturally born in Lore. Bill records that the mortal vessel unexpectedly limited the fragment’s power, thought and influence. Only one vessel was successfully made and only Drakath was born alive. He also records the mortal vessel resisting when the mages took the child away.

Dethrix ordered the vessel kept alive in case he needed it again. Bill’s list says that creating and maintaining it drained many of the Court Mages and required a steady supply of prisoners. The sustaining spells were kept in writing. When Drakath later fell desperately ill, Bill thought those spells might save him and resolved to return for both child and sister. The next entry undercuts the emergency: Drakath woke, and the illness was the flu. The correction matters, because Bill’s fear briefly supplied an extraordinary explanation for an ordinary sickness.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The uncle who stayed

Bill originally intended to kill the child and then wait for his own illness to finish him. Resemblance to Ophelia changed that intention. He tracked the adolescent Drakath, staged a display of violence to earn a place beside him and concealed the family truth. Training exposed how badly Dethrix had prepared his heir: according to Bill and former nobles among the bandits, teachers were punished for teaching too well, while the boy was expected to worship the father who threatened to replace him.

Bill’s affection never makes him harmless. He loses a finger protecting Drakath from Alteon’s knights, remembers his own violent bandit life, and admits killing the captured doctor before discovering how badly he had misread the illness. Yet his final entry, written as memory and mobility fail, returns to the nephew whose face recalls his sister. He finds hope in being needed and wishes Drakath a long, determined and troublesome life. The journal preserves care entangled with cruelty, while the family relationship remains hidden from the boy he raised.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Work beside the main road

The city’s optional work gives substance to its coalition. Svala asks the Hero to retrieve Drow heirlooms from Camlan and to surprise the Drow soldiers as a training exercise. Geopetal arranges sparring with the three allied forces, including the inexperienced Noelle Knights and the Dwarven Aegis formed after Vath’s conquest. Snowbeard seeks a Gemrald Shard for his urge to craft and asks for help locating a guard who owes him gold. These tasks belong beside the investigation rather than advancing its ten-step sequence. Thelima Training is a daily drill; its repeatable classification does not permit repeated completion within the same day.

Magni’s requests connect the new Paladins’ armor and magic to older places. The Chaos Ether they gather is swallowed by the pure mana Warlic and Tara have been studying; ordinary ore helps local smiths refine armor; Orpheum Ore brings a strange exchange about a nap in the carriage; and the Paladins’ dreams of a Wyrm lead Magni to suggest asking Tara about her Mindbreaker studies. The completion dialogue leaves these as research and experiments, without demonstrating a final explanation for the dreams.

Gole Den has come to commission armor for the Aegis. In a separate conversation gated by Familial Blessing, he recalls his uncle forging Alteon’s gold armor, Dethrix coercing Dwarven smiths and Alden instead approaching them as a friend. The commission also requires Swordhaven rank 10 and Alden’s Liberation Armor according to its local instructions; its native definition additionally sets a minimum level of 80. The King’s Armor asks the Hero to gather materials for a replica that may comfort the queen. Gole Den’s explanation of wearing gold is practical and restrained: it takes enchantments well, and Dwarves should take only what they need from the mountain. His separately gated commission is optional context, not an additional step required before the city’s crisis.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Five errands toward the truth

Warlic’s main investigation begins after Tell-Tale Heart. Sister Statues sends the Hero to Tara and Geopetal; Starstruck Chivalry tests Song’s knights; Black Dahlia draws attention to the northern sculptures and the suspicious guide. In Talls and Stouts the Hero spars with Drow and Dwarves while Warlic examines the monolith. He feels anxiety near it and relief when the Hero stays close. The route’s small errands let the newcomers learn how the city works before the danger becomes immediate.

A Lost Matchstick takes the Hero into the House of Ash for the key carried by Song’s burned knight. Warlic believes fire spread to him from someone who tampered with Forge Maleno, and cannot find a spell that smothers it. His own power makes it hotter. Recovering the key closes the fifth step and leads into the gathering in which Song recounts the mountains’ legend. The map’s authored quest-completion hook connects that turn-in to the second film.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The order of the dominoes

Song tells the story of the First Champion and the beast, then explains why the party initially dismissed a link to the final predicted threat: the forges had been cold for centuries. They reignited during the Hero’s time in Skye. The Hero remembers Fiamme strengthening Galanoth during the war and his fire escaping control. Song asks whether the Hero still carries the amulet from Undine. With Felix supplying a barrier and false lunch conversation for any eavesdroppers, the group can finally discuss its suspicions openly.

The Old Worlds Order warned of the Voice in the Sea, the Rumbling of Cold Thunder and the Flame of the Beyond. Tara suspects that its contact with the Avatars helped drive Neso into becoming the first threat. The group traces connected consequences through Skye’s surveillance, Iona’s kidnapping of Champions including Galanoth, and Haeos’s downfall. The Hero wonders whether Fiamme’s boost to Galanoth belongs to the same chain. Warlic sees a sequence too meticulous to be accidental; Tara points out that the Jus Divinium appeared each time. This is the party’s reconstruction of manipulation, not a confession from the Order. Brentan’s note warns that the Jus Divinum are in Termina Temple and that the Mouthpiece speaks for a mask. Tara begins to mention the warning, but a shock, pain and smoke interrupt her.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The flames enter Thelima

The remaining five main quests turn the investigation into an evacuation. Flash Fire sends the Hero after civilians while Warlic directs Tara to help Song. Unio Naturalis disperses the fire’s Elementals, which Warlic says are not Fiamme’s. A Friend’s Distant Laugh retrieves the north-gate key from burning guards whom he cannot save. Their suffering will continue slowly, and even water increases it. The Hero and Warlic are already struggling to breathe.

Putrefaction drives the Elementals and Matches away from the city. Warlic urges the Hero to use their full power even if the Old Worlds Order objects, recognizes the flames and says this is only a quarter of their full strength. Enatiodromia confronts their source at the gate toward Mount Maleno. Warlic expects his own spells to do little damage and offers protection while relying on the Hero’s blade. His completion text breaks into fear of losing another person after the Chosen and the Dragonlord. The tenth turn-in triggers the third film.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — A power that sees the reversal

The third scene opens across a failing evacuation. Yara, Arondight, Song, Henry and Ariel cannot solve the burns; Svala sends a group toward Castle Natalis with Snowbeard. Tara leaves Felix to reach the Hero and Warlic. Before the creature, the Hero tries to establish whether it is an Elemental or even sentient. Tranquility and Infamy urge an immediate reversal of time, while Warlic cries out against the impending attack. Close views show Warlic’s clothes and face charred. The Hero calls to him without an answer, while the creature laughs.

Tranquility asks again for time to be rewound, and even the Stranger demands that the Hero obey the voices. After the reversal, Warlic is alive to ask what happened—but the creature says that it saw the act. The Hero is then burned and cannot repeat the escape: the fire is destroying their mana. The Stranger’s unfinished observation about its Master supplies no complete explanation. Tara is approaching when the creature notices another Champion and turns its repeated command to die toward her.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — The hero in the stone

Dahlia intercepts Tara during the emergency, insisting that she has business of her own. Tara warns her of danger and pushes her aside before being struck herself. The next conversation finds Tara hurt against the monument and unable to move, pleading with a figure she identifies as the First Champion of Fire. Its questions are disarmingly basic: who is she, what does hurt mean, and why should it help? Tara answers through the role the monument celebrated. It is supposed to be a hero. The figure repeats that identity and begins responding to her request.

The intervention turns the encounter. Aleister helps Tara to her feet, then raises fire-wreathed hands. Song calls out that the flames are receding; in the city, a seated survivor receives help while guards rally again. The Hero counters the creature with an uppercut, then wants to pursue the escaped source before it can strike again. The newcomer gives his name as Aleister, the First Champion of Fire. He can help save people yet cannot answer Tara’s much smaller request to cool hands that feel like hot coals. The distinction matters for the city’s new legend: the person emerging from it has power and a name, but almost no practiced understanding of the people around him.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — A survivor learning to be a person

Aleister’s later conversation describes acute amnesia so severe that the Clerics were surprised by his speech. He misremembers diagnosed as diagonaled, learns by grabbing at what attracts him and crushes a butterfly without understanding whether it can recover. His name came immediately when Tara asked, but the stories of his former life come from other people reading to him. He wants to pursue the beast with the party, hoping that shared adventures will recover his memories and make new stories worthy of their cheers.

Tara has to teach him to knock before entering homes and to ask before opening drawers. She is grateful that being thrown at the giant rock woke him, but Song urges caution about both his identity and the apparent return of the beast. She has already sent for help from Swordhaven; the forges’ value cannot justify endless uncontrolled fires. Neither Aleister’s assertion nor the public story settles everything that survived inside the stone.

Age of Ruin III: Thelima City — Bandages before another climb

Warlic thanks the Hero for rewinding time to save him, promises protection and offers to bandage the arms the creature burned. In the repeatable Iron Blooded tasks, he and Tara offer support while the Hero gathers lingering traces of the Elementals, Matches and Maleno Flame. Warlic’s closing concern is the damage of trying to fix everything alone. He does not want guilt to force the Hero into another reversal.

The route now points toward Mount Maleno, where the escaped source of the fire must be found. The city remains behind them with dangerous forges, strained alliances and an awakened Champion who is learning what a hero should do. A book beside Felix also provides an authored route to Tercesamileht, but its current access has not yet been verified.