Original Doomwood I core and alternate endings

Doomwood I — The promise at Lightguard

Alteon's wound has never healed. When the king summons the Hero, Artix, Beleen and Cysero, he admits that Drakath's attack has left him weaker and the whispers of Chaos louder. He asks them to preserve the truce between Good and Evil, defeat Drakath if he falls, and give Lore a chance at peace. Then he asks the Hero to remain behind. Someone has reopened the Necropolis and is gathering an enormous undead army in Doomwood. The Hero's first instinct is to take Artix along. Alteon forbids it: whatever happens, Artix must be kept away. Before the king can explain why, pain interrupts him and a healer ends the audience.

Before the infiltration, the Hero helps hold the forest approaches: driving back undead, rescuing fallen warriors and reinforcing a lone defender. Scouting confirms the presence of undead paladins. A recovered journal records one paladin losing the struggle to remain himself after being transformed. The danger to Artix is no longer just an unexplained royal warning.

At Lightguard, the defenders need a way around the horde rather than another charge into it. Arryd proposes an infiltration. The Hero will carry a teleportation stone behind the enemy lines; activating its partner at the keep will let the defenders attack from both directions. The disguise is less reassuring than the plan. After the Hero gathers undead remains, the costume maker Sir Coat throws the bones away for being the wrong shade and produces a paper-bag skeleton costume instead. Arryd also wants the infiltrator to identify whoever commands the army.

The mission leads to something much worse than an army of ordinary skeletons. Trying to avoid the inevitable complication of an easy quest, the Hero hesitates over placing the rune—and witnesses a paladin confronting Vordred. The paladin's light magic cannot harm him. Vordred names himself the Paladin Slayer, turns the challenger undead, and counts his latest trophy as the 776th. Only Artix remains. The disguise cannot protect the Hero either: Vordred can detect the living.

Captured, the Hero refuses to give Artix up. The dialogue offers different reasons—loyalty to a friend or a villainous insistence on being the one to defeat him—but both lead to Vordred's same answer. He will let the Hero return to Lightguard, collect the promised reward, and carry out the mission as his undead slave. His transformation spell turns the infiltration into an attack on the keep.

Arryd initially mistakes the returning Hero's condition for excellent acting. Sir Coat realizes the truth, and the defenders discover too late that a real undead Hero is leading the enemy in. Vayle intervenes. She recognizes the strength of the Paladin Slayer's magic and says that ordinary reversal is impossible. Yet she has one remaining resource: the last power in her damaged Spirit Shard. She offers to use it to restore the Hero, on the condition that Artix be kept away from Vordred. Her motive is hardly benevolent toward the paladin: she insists that his death belongs to her.

Artix, meanwhile, has learned that Doomwood is full of undead and can scarcely believe anyone concealed such an opportunity. The restored Hero blocks his way and explains that Vordred has already taken the other High Paladins. Artix regards confronting their attacker as his duty. The Hero cannot persuade him to leave, so the encounter ends with Artix confined in a cell at Lightguard. Keeping the promise has become a betrayal of his trust, however necessary the Hero believes it to be.

The immediate danger is contained, but the real problem remains: how can anyone defeat an undead creature immune to the paladins' light? Vayle directs the Hero to Zorbak's supposedly secret hideout beyond the Chopping Maul. The investigation will require help from the very practice Lightguard exists to oppose—necromancy.

Doomwood I — An education in darkness

Zorbak's hideout announces itself with a sign, yet finding its owner is still an exercise in patience. The moglin calls himself Zomboda and poses as a mysterious teacher. His errands send the Hero through the Chopping Maul: placing foul-smelling candles, dealing with troublesome undead, gathering body parts, and finally subduing a Creature Creation that has escaped his control. Once the disguise is dropped, Zorbak insists that the errands had nothing to do with him.

The information is worth the aggravation. Zorbak confirms that Vordred was made in the reopened Necropolis with something far beyond ordinary necromancy. To enter that city of the undead, the Hero needs an acceptable identity. The tower's eyeCom helps construct a Necro U student card from unpleasant paper and ink, a photograph, a protective case and an official seal. The three identification errands provide a route into the campus without requiring the Hero to become a necromancer.

The tower offers a separate challenge: a timed reading exercise followed by ten puzzle levels and an encounter at the summit. Its supposed supreme necromancer is Sally, a young woman in pink carrying a teddy bear. She describes how loneliness led her to make friends from skeletal remains, and how Noxus's surviving voice taught her magic. In return, she restored him as a lich. She also helped make Vordred from an ancient evil buried beneath the Necropolis. He still needs Artix's death to reach his full power. Sally enjoys leaving the reason unexplained.

At Necro U, practical work buys access to lectures. Ghoulliver's students silence and manage ghouls; Bonevert demands the materials for skeletal construction and repair; Goordan teaches through slime experiments; Skulltz turns skulls and shells into art. Beneath the jokes, the professors supply a coherent warning. Reanimation connects a subject to the Darkness Realm. Vordred required a deeply corrupted master with centuries of experience, and his connection is strong enough to protect him from light. He might even exceed his creator's control.

Skulltz supplies the decisive requirement: Vordred can absorb Artix's power only by killing him. During a later encounter, Sally proudly presents Noxus himself. The lich treats the Hero's imprisonment of Artix as assistance to his own plans. In their discussion, the Hero learns that Noxus obtained his knowledge from ruins and takes the map showing how to reach them. Sally's greeting has alternatives for whether the Hero previously reached her tower summit; the campus investigation does not depend on pretending those greetings happened together.

While the Hero investigates, Vordred breaks into Lightguard. He finds Artix's cell empty: the paladin has escaped to hunt him. Vayle has remained with the Blinding Light of Destiny. When Vordred takes it, its power hurts him despite his immunity to light. Both recognize why. Freed spirit orbs have followed Artix in their millions and made a common metal axe appear golden and radiant. Its apparent light was never the explanation.

Vordred turns the captured weapon into the Shadowreaper of Doom and leaves to await the final confrontation. Vayle knows what his success would mean, but the Hero is elsewhere with Noxus and Sally, slipping away toward the ruined temple. Keeping Artix in a cell has failed; understanding what he is may be the only protection left.

Doomwood I — The voices in the crypt

The ruined Temple of Light has a guardian who cannot leave his post. A skeletal geomancer turned the Stone Paladin into a statue, leaving his mind awake. He remembers a sanctuary for paladins, healers and orphans under Lady Celestia. It was Celestia who brought the young Artix there and insisted on his training, even though he could use neither healing nor light magic. The elders imagined that a spell had sealed those abilities. The guardian admits that he never knew whether Celestia understood more.

His memory of the temple's fall offers a different measure of Artix. With most paladins away, Noxus's army caught the defenders unprepared. The guardian hurried toward the orphanage and found the boy already protecting it with a dull woodcutting axe. Artix stood on the bones of defeated skeletons, occasionally listening to something the guardian could not hear and answering it. After years of reflection, the Stone Paladin recognized the words: Artix had been thanking the souls he freed.

The crypt below holds the information the Hero needs, but reaching it means descending twenty levels through the consequences of the invasion. The guardian guides the journey through thoughts and memories. Alongside battles and stolen keys, the work restores protective lights, clears debris, soothes trapped souls and cleanses the halls. His grief sometimes overwhelms his voice. He remembers his daughter Anora, killed in the third wave, and asks that Artix be saved even if he himself cannot be.

The final barrier has two solutions: obtain a Temple Key from the Dracolich, or assemble the other key from forty scattered shards. The route does not require both. Beyond it lies an ancient dragon tome with missing pages. Zorbak cannot read its language; the Hero's Book of Lore can, provided it is allowed to eat the volume. Its promises of a translation then become a demand for the rest of the meal: recover the scattered pages, retrieve others from the invaders, and take the final page from the Cryptkeeper Lich.

The crypt also offers an optional act of rescue. After its main work is complete, a basilisk scale and a scroll of magic inversion can be combined into a cure for petrification. The quest's successful ending restores the Stone Paladin to life, and he promises to join Lightguard's defenders. This is a separate outcome available to the Hero, rather than an event that every passage through the main story proves has happened.

With the tome restored, the Book of Lore explains its account of the elemental planes. Their masters send champions into the world, and the current ambition of Darkness is to engulf Lore and absorb it into its own plane. Vordred has not yet become its champion. Before the Hero can finish questioning that distinction, Artix arrives through the tunnel he used to escape prison. Another Dracolich interrupts the discussion, to his delight.

Artix defeats the undead dragon and lets the Hero perceive the spirits released from it. The dragons say that Noxus imprisoned them in skeletal bodies. One refuses to depart peacefully while other dragons face the same fate and asks to join the fight. Artix then rushes off to confront Noxus and Vordred. Beleen and Cysero arrive in pursuit, already aware that Vordred must not be allowed to kill him. With containment exhausted, they and the Hero turn toward the source of the disaster: Noxus and the Necropolis.

Doomwood I — A stolen army and a failed experiment

The Necropolis is strangely empty. The Hero, Beleen and Cysero find neither the expected undead army nor Noxus in his study. The attack has moved to Shadowfall. Noxus confronts Gravelyn with a claim to have built her fortress, created its army and helped create Sepulchure. He means to replace her with Vordred and end the truce. Gravelyn's superior numbers offer no protection when her undead forces are taken from her control.

Noxus keeps the empress alive as bait. The rescuing heroes reach the courtyard only to discover that the defenders have allowed them in and surrounded them. Before the trap closes, Sally interrupts with news from Doomwood: ArcAttack's experiment has begun. Vordred leaves to seize that opportunity, while Noxus stays to enjoy the destruction of the heroes.

One small exception breaks his plan. Noxus may have created Sepulchure's army, but Gravelyn made Chuckles herself. Her own minion frees her, and with Vordred gone she regains command and lets the heroes through to fight Noxus. Defeat does not silence the lich. Gravelyn answers his claims of immortality by reducing his role to a talking skull and considering a new career for him as a weapon. She also entrusts the Hero with Sepulchure's Shadowscythe Amulet, saying it may help if Vordred becomes the Champion of Darkness.

At CastleMania, ArcAttack's scientists are being forced to put their work at Vordred's disposal. They are exploring how music can amplify energy; he wants to receive the output. King Beat uses calibration and the lack of sufficient power to delay him. The Hero offers a plan: join the band, increase the power beyond what a living subject could withstand, and destroy Vordred by giving him more than he can handle.

That plan requires more than a dramatic solo. The Hero finds a damaged guitar, gathers strings and tuning knobs, obtains a lightning rod and transmitter components, and helps modify the lab's machines. Wire, dials and amplifiers prepare the equipment for a far greater output. While this work continues, Sally tells her undead companions what she expects the experiment to accomplish: connect Vordred to the world's magical energy network so that he can turn all of Lore undead at once.

The final source is a storm above the mountain. After reaching the summit and defeating the four test subjects guarding the research area, the Hero channels the storm through the guitar toward the lab. The instruments overheat and the scientists celebrate what looks like Vordred's destruction. Instead, he survives the overload, announces that he no longer needs them, and leaves more powerful than before.

The Hero returns to a lab full of valuable experimental data and a disastrous practical result. ArcAttack can continue studying what happened; the Hero has a friend and a world to save. The attempt to remove Vordred has increased the danger of the confrontation everyone has tried to prevent.

Doomwood I — The paladin and his shadow

Artix reaches Vordred first. Unarmed, he has already freed the spirit orbs in the surrounding army and offers their captor one last chance to surrender. Above the battlefield, the Hero finds Beleen and Cysero and sends them for help. The encounter offers Gravelyn, Vayle or Zorbak; completing those three ally routes unlocks Daimyo. These are alternative versions of the rescue, not four visitors who all arrive in the same telling.

The Hero jumps down before learning that Cysero has cast Feather Fall. Artix is preparing a dragon soul spear with the help of the freed spirits, but he needs time. Protecting him leads directly into the fight. Trying to stop him produces another failed attempt at the untied-shoelace trick and reaches the same decision to stand together. The successful route holds Vordred off while Artix prepares the attack.

Two spirit-powered dragon spears strike, and Vordred seems to absorb them. His armor swells with more skulls. Artix explains that the skulls, rather than Vordred himself, provide the immunity to light, while his shadow continually regenerates them. The apparent failure is part of the opportunity: souls Artix has freed cannot truly be enslaved again. At his signal, the spirits act from within, weakening the armor so that the Hero can break away what remains.

Exposed, Vordred tries to turn Artix undead. Nothing happens. The reason is the secret everyone has concealed: Artix is the Champion of Darkness, and Vordred must kill him to take that power. Vordred claims that the undead invasion which destroyed Artix's foster family came to reclaim him. Artix is shaken by that accusation, but his answer to Darkness is unchanged. He has sworn to protect the world from the suffering inflicted by its undead.

Vordred releases a vast shadow and insists that Artix reveal his own. Artix refuses. When the Shadowscythe Amulet begins to glow, Vordred urges the Hero to use it to force the issue. The offered choices all use the amulet, with different stated motives. At first it appears to do nothing. Then a dragon-shaped shadow rises and pins Vordred's shadow, stopping its regeneration while the Hero fights his body. After victory, Artix and the Hero see the sun rise over Doomwood—until Vordred makes one last attempt to kill them.

In Gravelyn's ending, she destroys him with a weapon made from Noxus. She then demands that Artix serve as her champion and lead her undead army. He refuses: being a paladin is a commitment to a way of life, not merely the ability to cast light magic. Gravelyn postpones the confrontation while the truce lasts and leaves the Hero with the protesting Noxus weapon. Victory has preserved the alliance without removing its tensions.

In Vayle's ending, her intervention saves Artix only so that she can confront him herself. She still blames him for destroying her brother's undead form and damaging the shard that held his spirit. Artix lets Edward speak. He tells his sister that bringing him back was never possible and thanks the Hero and Artix for allowing him to redeem himself. Vayle says goodbye, yet refuses reconciliation: the next meeting, she declares, will be as mortal enemies.

In Zorbak's ending, the moglin drops onto Vordred and takes an interest in his remains as another possible throne. Learning that Artix is the Champion of Darkness also interests him rather too much. Their conversation turns to the other elemental champions. Drakath is already known as Chaos's champion; the Hero hints at a candidate for Light, without naming one. This scene leaves a question rather than supplying that later revelation.

Daimyo's ending gives Artix a gentler aftermath. The dog stops Vordred's final attack, and Artix admits how many questions remain about his identity. He asks the Hero to keep the Shadow Amulet, because the Hero is the person he trusts most. Only the handle of the Blinding Light of Destiny remains; a new axe will have to be forged. Their friendship survives the promises, prison and revelations that have tested it.

That ending continues with Sally alone again. Drakath arrives, refuses her suggestion that he has come to make her a Chaos Lord, and gives her Vordred's skull. Her grief becomes delight. She intends to rebuild Vordred stronger and reopen the full, original Necropolis. Doomwood has seen a sunrise, but the source of its next disaster is already in her hands.

The encounter also preserves a separate betrayal ending. If the Hero chooses to backstab Artix and join Vordred, Artix dies and Vordred claims the Champion's power. He promptly turns on his new accomplice and proceeds toward an undead world. A final time-warp prompt and return to the encounter mark this as an alternate failed outcome, rather than an event to insert between the successful battles and their sunrise.