Oblivion's Betrayal: Deleuze Tundra

Deleuze Tundra — Waking in the black snow

The invitation’s map links the Nation’s earlier refuges to a further northern journey. In Deleuze Tundra, the Hero wakes into exhaustion and uncertain memory. Dark cliffs and red-lit fissures surround the snow; a red-eyed head beneath discarded robes lies nearby. A voice tells the Hero to rub the sleep from their eyes and remember why they came. Curiosity slowly returns: Nulgath placed a bounty on Oblivion, one of his oldest loyalists, and the Hero followed the hunting parties north.

The bounty promises a replacement’s place to whoever brings Oblivion back, dead or alive. Its picture shows his familiar hooded shape; it does not solve what he looks like beneath it. The Hero jokes about that omission, then asks whether the talking robes are Oblivion. They deny it: they are picking up his dirty laundry. The joke does not remove the danger. Even breathing is becoming tiring.

Deleuze Tundra — The guide in the robes

The stranger says the robes once belonged to them—or, more precisely, were them. They are temporary shelter for something with unfinished business involving an old student. Most of Oblivion’s pursuers have already surrendered to the cold. The stranger takes that as evidence that Oblivion has returned to his true form. The Hero needs a guide, but remains unsure whether this one can be trusted.

The advice is practical and terrible. Focus on a goal to stay alert. Avoid pitch-black snow and ice. Do not stare at organic growths long enough to make them aware they are alive; avoid eye contact with anyone who will not answer a greeting. The Fiend’s Void is wearing those shells. Other hunters have forged ahead, and the stranger recommends joining them: together they can decide whether to approach Oblivion or leave him behind.

In conversation, the guide describes themself as a ghost of what they used to be. They know Adimonde’s insatiable Void firsthand and distinguish its numb emptiness here from whatever character Nulgath gives the Fiends under his own banner. Oblivion was once their reserved student. Before cutting up his mentor and feeding the pieces to the Fiend God, he had been fascinated by the Void’s power. The guide calls the betrayal unavoidable and claims not to take it personally.

Deleuze Tundra — Empty eyes and borrowed bodies

Empty Eyes begins the nine-quest progression by confronting possessed animal carcasses. The guide insists that no ghost or magic animates the hollow creatures, preferring to call their hunger a force of nature. Infectious Sleep turns against the Nation’s Outriders, whose pacts did not prevent them from succumbing. Their condition is contagious. The guide reads Nulgath’s earlier ability to contain Oblivion’s aura as evidence of the present Archfiend’s strength.

Cadaveric Spasm asks the Hero to cover bony spines without lingering over them. According to the guide, the landscape itself is becoming a Fiend, a process acknowledgment could awaken. A frozen traveler nearby predates Oblivion’s return and is still alive, though something else has taken ownership of them. Nihil Scholars then destroys Magi trying to harness the emptiness. Beneath the party lie generations of bodies, the guide says, from before Nulgath made Oblivion a servant.

Deleuze Tundra — The survivors by candlelight

Id and Superego brings the Hero to Jadzia and Carnage, the other lucid survivors of the hunt. The guide interprets them as products of Nulgath’s method: make many pacts and let the weak fall away. Carnage calls the bounty another test. Outriders found the trail, hunting parties followed, and one after another the pursuers slowed, slept and froze. To him, Nulgath must have expected it.

Carnage says he and Jadzia received private orders to stand back until no one was left. He stresses “until” as proof that their Master anticipated the deaths or abandonment of the chase. This time they intend to intervene early, and Carnage acknowledges a debt to the Hero from their previous encounter. Oblivion, meanwhile, has always been puzzling: blades passed through him but still caused pain, and an easily beaten follower somehow held extraordinary standing. Carnage’s claim that he cannot die is his account of that familiar servant, not proof of unlimited invulnerability.

For Jadzia, the mystery is a chance to write history. Oblivion’s place near the Nation’s beginning has always drawn a smirk rather than an explanation from Nulgath. She considers him a possible first follower but disputes the certainty of that idea. The Northlands are among Nulgath’s old haunts; fewer travelers seem to have died there after his rise, a correlation she cannot yet explain. She has heard that Adimonde’s other favorites were eaten away by teeth and time. Even the claim that Nulgath has been the only Archfiend since before written history is, she admits, impossible to prove.

Deleuze Tundra — The traveler who points both ways

The Lost Expeditioner is an eerie landmark with three arms. The accompanying account says moving their frozen body would shatter it. One hand points west, suggesting home and the people still waiting there. The other extends east in a warning to stop. Old magic around the traveler holds back some of the empty creatures, even though it cannot stop them all. The path offers a reason both to withdraw and to continue investigating.

The third arm grows from the traveler’s back. Its fingers move in a particular order—index, thumb, then pinky—and the Hero senses something pulling them like invisible strings. The source describes danger without identifying that agency. The optional Zheleznymi Zubami begins from this disturbing sign and asks for Rotten Teeth from the Blighted Zubami. Its completion calls the remains proof that no Nature Dragon has been born for generations, accusing their own Avatar of abandoning them to decay. That accusation belongs to the quest’s voice; the third hand alone does not identify its controller.

Deleuze Tundra — The expedition’s last words

A separate written account lies behind the landmark: the Expeditioner’s Last Words. The writer remembers Casey dying despite the last blankets and coats, leaving only the writer and Verde from a team of ten. Bodies had to remain where they froze. The writer claims their own heart stopped miles earlier, after finding the Great Dragon GenoKratos. Something kept them moving long enough to protect Verde, but that borrowed time was running out.

The writer plans to send Verde flying south without looking back, carrying news home while discovering only later that his companion is gone. GenoKratos is dead, the journal says, and their heirs have become bones inside their eggs. A creature perched on half the corpse delivered a warning: until it is accepted, Nature Dragons will be born in rot and decay. Those who fled screaming turned into worms; the others watched the dragons carry their progenitor’s remains into the sky. The expedition followed, and the writer credits that decision with their remaining chance to survive.

The writer does not know whom to trust with the message: the Avatar of Nature’s followers, other Dragonlords, or someone not yet ready to receive it. Verde might be harmed for what he knows. The other half of GenoKratos raises further questions about the Dragons of Metal and what reuniting the halves might do. These remain questions in an attributed journal. Its last request is personal: let Verde know his companion will always be here, dreaming of him soaring. The four displayed pages preserve a farewell, not an observed reunion or a settled account of every dragon’s origins.

Deleuze Tundra — Keeping a reason to move

Sleepflying uses the surviving hunters’ ritual area to strengthen focus: the Hero gathers Void Hearts and places candles. The guide remembers when Oblivion grew as tall as his mentor while his ambition remained stagnant. Then the Fiend God became impatient. An Archfiend, the guide says, was meant to reach the point at which a successor could harvest them.

Battle-Weary clears the remaining Outriders and purifies their bones according to the guide’s instructions. Their souls withered before their bodies. The memory turns Oblivion’s former battles into a warning: enemies fell before their blades could rise, slain through exposure to the elements. Self-Destructive Spell then disrupts the Magi and fortifies the Expeditioner’s protective aura with candles. The Hero cleanses the traveler and gathers Obliteration Runes while the guide reflects that a moment trapped with one’s own thoughts can be enough to invite destruction.

Deleuze Tundra — The Herald and the fall

Allure of the Void confronts Oblivion’s Herald. The guide compares it to Nulgath’s trusted attendants but calls this one a husk through which the Fiend’s Void spreads the urge to wither. Those who sought oblivion, the quest says, found it. The Herald’s defeat does not bring relief: Carnage reports that the Hero has collapsed, and Jadzia calls for help dragging them back from the edge.

The Hero returns to awareness almost unable to breathe and says this keeps happening after defeating these monsters. Jadzia describes the hunters slowing, sleeping and allowing the cold to kill them before the Void filled their bodies. She explicitly calls her explanation of Oblivion’s true-form effect a hypothesis. Carnage tells the Hero to leave the bounty to him. The Hero would gladly escape, but the empty creatures are trying to go south. Leaving their source untouched would let them spread.

Deleuze Tundra — The Archfiend before Nulgath

The guide judges the three survivors unusually strong-willed: instead of immediately surrendering, they are “microdosing death.” Carnage is startled that the laundry speaks; Jadzia takes the phrase as appreciation of her work ethic. The Hero presses the guide to explain their knowledge of Oblivion, Adimonde and the Void. The reply refuses the old name and adopts the condition left in its place: another faceless Hushed.

The Hushed earned Adimonde’s favor by killing the Archfiend before them, then conquered and consumed until they had reached their full potential. Their own student betrayed them when they had nothing more to offer the Fiend God. Jadzia completes Carnage’s incredulous realization: Oblivion was the Archfiend before Nulgath. The Hushed says the cycle has merely paused, not ended. This unit reveals that history without yet naming the mentor or showing how Nulgath reduced Oblivion to servitude.

The scene turns from the hunters to darkness and a green eye. Oblivion asks whether the listener has ever regretted being born. It is a closing threat rather than proof that the Hero accepts the despair it offers. The next journey into Oblivion Tundra remains ahead.

Deleuze Tundra — A history with a gap

Jadzia now sees fragments of the missing timeline: an Archfiend grows a Nation of Evil, reaches their potential, is betrayed by a successor and becomes food for Adimonde. Something interrupted that succession between Oblivion and Nulgath. Carnage resists the discovery, insisting there is only one Archfiend worthy of the name. Yet even he feels the urge to lie down and rot, and suspects his Master must have had a reason to let Oblivion’s true power loose.

The Hushed urges the Hero to catch their breath and keep a goal in mind: find Oblivion, then decide whether to approach him or leave. They believe Oblivion saw the futility of the feeding cycle, leaving Adimonde to accept a new Archfiend while the old one stared into the Void. How Nulgath made that predecessor his servant is still the question. Nothing There, the optional repeatable investigation, asks for evidence from the empty creatures, Magi and Herald rather than reliance on stale memory. Its answer offers no solution—only another question about what shackled Oblivion to life.