Chronospan and Iadoa, with separate New Year introduction
The Professor's Library
The Span is a city assembled from memories, populated by people who resemble familiar faces. Its Warlic is a golem, made to guide the Hero through lessons prepared by an unseen master. He begins with other versions of Lore: a world of mecha and interstellar war, a world of dragons and elemental struggles, and a world that belongs to both the future and the present. These worlds have helped shape the Hero's own. Understanding that inheritance will require more than listening.
The library's assignments turn those explanations into experiences. The Hero gathers accounts from the town's golems, opens passages into reconstructed worlds, and explores their histories. One passage offers a warning about the Hero's own possible future. There, failure has allowed Drakath's portal to open; Alteon is dead, and Queen Brittany rules a changed Swordhaven. This kingdom belongs to the lesson's simulation. Its purpose is to show what could be lost.
The master finally introduces himself as Iadoa. For a Hero who fought him during the New Year's crisis, the meeting reopens an apparent betrayal: he claims that his earlier attack was a test, and that Lim understood his plan. For a Hero meeting him here for the first time, he explains that he has been observing the library lessons instead. Either way, the Hero recognizes the immediate problem. Their prospective teacher is a Chaos Lord.
Iadoa calls himself unfinished and uncommitted. Chaos is changing his body, but its greater threat is to his will: the loss of control over his thoughts, choices and identity. He is resisting that change to prepare the Hero for a future tied to Drakath and the gate he seeks to open. He does not promise safety. He expects a time when he will try to kill his student. His choice, while he can still make it, is to teach.
The Hero's trust remains uncertain. Warlic defends his creator's struggle, then leads the Hero to Vaxt Ahas, the Unending: a celestial serpent whose body circles back upon itself. Earning its trust means tending its afflictions, recovering what was stolen, restoring the sands of its exaglasses, and exchanging blood and blows with one of its children. Recognized as belonging in the Time Void, the Hero is ready to witness the Beginning.
What the Sands Remember
The history Iadoa shows begins with a world the Hero was not there to defend. Sepulchure has triumphed, and Galanoth has lost his friends, family and home. Ancient lore offers a desperate possibility. The Dragonslayer travels beyond Lore to confront the Dragon of Time. The Dragon knows why he has come, and what reversing the world's fate will demand.
The Dragon's death breaks the three hourglasses within its heart. Their sands mingle, and the world is remade. Iadoa tells the Hero that they were born in that reformation, alongside Drakath and his Master. Later answers distinguish the mixing of the timelines' essences from the destruction of their worlds: those other Lores still exist, and Lore itself existed before the cataclysm changed it. Galanoth acted on incomplete information, driven by grief. The lesson presents a rescue with consequences he did not fully understand.
The AdventureQuest reconstruction gives those consequences a practical setting. Its instructors teach the Hero to unite with unlikely allies, keep the elements in harmony, protect innocents, continue after betrayal and failure, and recognize what saving others may cost. They are golems with limited knowledge and inherited memories, rather than the original people from those worlds. Questions become available as the lessons progress; their answers extend the history without making every uncertainty disappear.
Defeating Carnax does not restore the teacher's control. Iadoa explains that the environments, quests and inhabitants are constructs made for the Hero to learn from, then struggles against worsening pain. Before the next lesson, the Hero's willingness to stay briefly steadies him. The respite is short. The DragonFable reconstruction now has a framework Iadoa did not design, and paths he can sense but no longer command. The Hero continues through lessons about persistence, defending a home and confronting Fluffy, the second proto-beast.
Iadoa finally explains what those battles are also doing. Each proto-beast carries part of the Chaos Beast that must be summoned; the Hero has been helping prepare it. His constructs draw on the hourglasses' sands. He starts to explain what those sands really are, but the explanation breaks apart as Chaos overtakes him. The image of a shattered surface gives way to darkness and a plea for help. His student has learned enough to recognize the danger, but not enough to end it.
Freedom in the Span
Drakath and the Chaos Twins turn the teacher's struggle into an opportunity. In the war's introduction after the DragonFable lesson, Xang boasts of helping push Iadoa past his breaking point. An alternate introduction for an earlier visitor discusses his complete transformation as something still to come. Both lead to a rebellion among the creatures and golems created for his lessons. Chaos can bind a mind, but here it also breaks the creator's control over his creations.
Freedom does not give the golems a common purpose. Warlic and his companions choose to help the Hero and their master. Elsewhere, Ultra Vultragon longs for a promised return to a former existence, Drakonnan sees room for a new life, and Lucretia wants the life from which she believes she was taken. The Twins exploit those competing desires, offering independence while threatening a future cut short by the Chaos Beast.
After the fighting, Lucretia turns on the Hero. The Twins intervene, preserving someone their Master still needs. Their interest in the Hero's destiny is no assurance of friendship; they want that destiny fulfilled for a different purpose. Warlic refuses the suggestion that Drakath and Iadoa are working together. He has gained independence too, and chooses to continue helping his creator teach. The next lesson will take the Hero into space.
There is still an attempt to help Iadoa. The Hero gathers fragments associated with his will and sanity, while Warlic warns that the restoration spell may not have been strong enough. Elsewhere, an unidentified watcher observes Drakath and speaks of keeping him under watch. The identity of that observer remains unrevealed in this lesson. Iadoa, increasingly unstable, prepares for the final confrontation even as he insists that his student must learn.
The MechQuest lesson returns to trust, preparation, knowledge and identity. Odessa urges scrutiny of allies' motives; Worsh values training; Selina teaches the importance of knowing an enemy; Mysterious Johnson warns against letting others dictate one's actions. A lecture orb links Drakath's chosen path to an amulet and observation dating from the cataclysm. After Dragonoid falls, Starstorm senses Iadoa's mind restored, though the Hero questions what actually achieved it. Warlic supplies a more immediate consequence: victories over Carnax, Fluffy and Dragonoid have spilled the sands of Time and awakened the true Beast.
The Lesson at the Metafold
Kathool has been feeding on Iadoa's growing insanity. Through that connection, Chaos has entered its own power. The ancient creature accepts the bond for now, confident that it can endure after Chaos fades. Iadoa struggles against its whispers and retreats toward a place beyond their reach. The Ash golem volunteers to help weaken the Beast, supported by the limited power Warlic can draw from the hourglass sands. He wants a chance to become a hero in his own right.
The Hero's victory sends Kathool into retreat, promising another encounter. Its defeat is not presented as a final end to the creature. The path now leads into the Metafold, where Iadoa waits. Warlic says there is one more thing the Hero must learn before the teacher goes. The confrontation has become a struggle over what can still be saved, and what the lessons have been preparing the Hero to do.
The reassurance that the Hero fought a golem substitute proves false. The opponent was Iadoa himself. Lucretia attacks again, and he warns of what her attack could have done to either of them. He then destroys her golem body, denying the Twins further use of his creation. They answer with another cruel lesson: resisting Chaos has not freed him from causing it.
The Hero refuses to kill a teacher, ally and friend. Iadoa is moved by that friendship, but insists that saving his student requires the confrontation to continue. He attacks; the Hero blocks, then throws their weapon. A flash ends the exchange, and the teacher is gone. Warlic's anger and the Hero's regret leave little sense of triumph. Yet the Twins suggest that a Chronomancer's disappearance may not be permanent.
Before Warlic can explain the Hero's true identity, an earlier Iadoa interrupts. This version is not fully corrupted, and must remain in the Time Void to avoid risking the Hero's future. He leaves the answer for another time. The aftermath holds both loss and possibility: Lucretia's empty inn marks an absence, while Starstorm says the sands animating the surviving golems will endure as long as Time. Iadoa has wished them freedom to live as they choose. His creations can now seek futures beyond the lessons for which they were made.