First Chaos Lord: Escherion

The Runix Cube

In Chiral Valley, the alliance between Good and Evil has a specific enemy: Escherion, the first Chaos Lord. Mobius bears the consequences of his arrival. Anna describes an attack that twisted the town backward and inside out through the power of his strange staff. She and Otto survived by hiding. Now the invaders are searching the town for something they have not managed to find.

The siblings hold part of the Runix Cube. Escherion has demanded its first piece from his soldiers, threatening them if they return without it. Anna and Otto entrust their piece to the hero instead. Two more pieces remain, and the completed object should form a puzzle. Perhaps it can defeat the Chaos Lord. That possibility is enough to send the hero east to the Faeries.

Dew Drop has inherited another piece, but she has a more immediate fear. Escherion’s creatures are cutting down the trees that sustain her power. If the Tree of Life falls, she says, the life of the forest will end with it—including her own. The hero must earn her trust by protecting the forest. Once that danger has been overcome, she gives up the second piece and sends the hero back to Mobius.

The last part leads to the ruins of Cornelis, where Anise has uncovered records of an old conflict. Cornelis, the Faeries, and Mobius once fought over the Cube. Their eventual truce left each group protecting a third of it. The arrangement survived; knowledge of the object’s purpose did not. Anise knows it is powerful, but not what it does. Gargoyles have interrupted her search. With the hero’s help, the missing piece and a book are recovered, along with a magic mirror from the ruins.

Getting into Escherion’s stronghold requires less ancient lore and more opportunism. A pizza delivery persuades the guards at the teleporter to let the hero through. They assume their master has rewarded their excellent guarding. Beyond them, locked doors demand keys and further tests before the portal will open the way. The hero finally reaches Escherion with the completed Cube and the conviction that it will stop him.

The conviction is disastrously wrong. Escherion has been searching for the object because he needs it. The obstacle to his plans was never the Cube’s use against him, but his failure to find it. The hero has solved that problem on his behalf.

The Cube can summon one of the thirteen Chaos Beasts, as Drakath has commanded. Escherion proceeds with the summoning, and Drakath confirms that the Hydra has awakened. Anna and Otto had hoped the object would help defeat Escherion. Reassembled and delivered into the wrong hands, it has instead brought a new danger into the lake.

The Tower Falls

The Hydra is awake, and Escherion still occupies his inverted tower. The way forward comes from the runestones that have appeared around it. The hero uses Hydra teeth against the stones and brings their fragments to the magical bonfire. With the tower’s support failing, its enormous weight becomes an unexpected weapon: it tips onto the Hydra and settles into the lake.

Returning to the wrecked stronghold, the hero finds Escherion furious about his tower. Otto and other villagers arrive to help. Mobius is their home, and they want to take part in freeing it. Escherion turns their courage against them by inverting them; the people who came to oppose him now announce that they will help him against the hero.

The hero challenges his dependence on the staff. Escherion admits that it was a gift from Drakath, but insists that he can defeat this opponent without relying on it. Even so, he warns that the weapon is loyal and may protect him of its own accord. The ensuing fight ends with the Chaos Lord defeated, and the hero demands that he leave the valley.

His apparent surrender is a prelude to one more attack. Escherion tries to turn the hero inside out. This time, an apparently incidental discovery from Cornelis matters more than the great artifact everyone had sought: the hero has kept the magic mirror. The inversion is turned back on its caster.

At first Escherion sees no obvious change. He returns to more familiar spells, but they now strike him instead of his intended victim. His attempt at polymorph leaves him a frog. The hero concludes that the inversion has changed the direction of his powers. The villagers recover, and Chiral Valley is free of his rule.

Drakath receives the defeat differently. Escherion has lost the valley, but he has already accomplished the part of the plan that mattered to his master. Awakening the Hydra destroyed one of the seals, and the hero’s delivery of the Cube made that possible. Drakath can accept an outcome that looks like a victory for his enemies because his larger purpose has still advanced. Another Chaos Lord has already been chosen.