Shadows of War: Jinx Recruitment and the Future of Battleon
Shadows of War: The Cat Burglar's Bargain
Back at Yulgar's inn, the Hero faces worried friends. Miko and Victoria have spent a week and a half searching while the Hero traveled with Varga. Teja is introduced as a new ally, carrying her recovered jewel eye. Asked about the Queen of Monsters, the Hero can offer only Malgor's accusation and guesses about lost time or an event in their future. As they explain, Jinx slips into the room, steals the gem and escapes through a portal.
The Hero gives chase. They tumble into Jinx's pocket dimension, breaking his Portal Chakram in the process. It is the device he relies on to leave his immense hoard of stolen treasures. Jinx needs repairs, and the parts will require fighting he does not want to do. The Hero offers that help in exchange for Teja's eye. Pressed about his employer, Jinx confirms the Hero's suspicion: he stole it for Malgor. Reluctantly, he accepts the bargain.
Magpies infest the hoard, collecting far more than the boxes ordinary Sneevils favor. The Hero clears enough of them to work, then gathers parts from junk golems and sparks from portal manifestations. Jinx restores the chakram's motor. Its broken blade still needs welding, so the Hero brings strong metal and portal flame, uncovers the forge and recovers coal stolen by the Magpies.
The forge produces more trouble than heat. A coal elemental forms, animated by the strange energy of the place, and the Hero must defeat it. Then Jinx discovers that the Magpies have stolen the chakram itself. An initial search finds nothing useful. A tracker recovered from a junk golem finally gives the Hero a trail to follow.
The Hero tries to coax the chakram from its thief, but the Magpie runs. Jinx's anger does not recover it; the Hero must fight to get it back. With the device restored to its owner, the bargain should be complete. Instead, Jinx activates it while pretending to search for the eye and shoves the Hero through the new portal. The Hero catches his leg, dragging him along.
They land deep inside the junk heap. Jinx explains why the repaired chakram cannot simply take them home: the pocket dimension is its home setting, reachable from elsewhere, but they are already inside it. Certain platforms are attuned to distant destinations; other portals must be aimed through the space around them. Neither the device nor its owner offers unrestricted travel wherever the Hero wishes. They must find a route out.
Shadows of War: Twenty Years Too Late
The Magpies' tunnels offer a way through the heap. The Hero listens for them in the walls while Jinx opens passages toward the noise. More Magpies must be driven back, and energy from tiny manifestations recharges his portal-making. They reach a rift and pass through, hoping it leads out of the trap.
Beyond it is Battleon beneath a purple sky, boarded windows and Magpies where the townspeople should be. Jinx recognizes the place he has only just visited and cannot understand the change. The Hero suspects they have reached their future: a world overtaken by Malgor. It is Battleon twenty years ahead, presented as the future they must prevent, rather than a disaster already settled in their own present.
A shadow-tainted Sneevil named Niknak needs help escaping captivity. The Hero takes a key from the scouts, frees him and fights back the surrounding monsters. Niknak has been trying to gather supplies for another survivor. Wood for splints, recovered healing potions and medicinal weeds are brought together, and the Hero delivers them to the inn.
Old Yulgar is hiding in the attic with the Magpies. He says many people are dead and many more have disappeared; this small refuge is what remains of resistance here. The Hero promises help. Jinx joins the offer: whatever he expected from working for Malgor, this is not the future he wants to bring about.
The survivors need food, water and concealment. The Hero brings fruit from the treeants and canteens from the scouts, then gathers the inky residue of shadow imps to renew their camouflage. Yulgar also asks them to defeat the Shadowflame Bruiser near the old Coliseum. Removing that threat should scatter its minions and buy the refuge a little safety.
For a moment, it seems to have worked. Then the corrupted Battleon trainers arrive: Metrea, Arcana and Juvania have followed the Hero back to Yulgar. His hiding place has been exposed by the person trying to save it. Yulgar warns that the trainers are acting under Shadowflame corruption. They offer him a gift from Malgor—an orb of concentrated Shadowflame—and his reflection darkens into a red-eyed silhouette.
Shadows of War: A Thief's Choice
The Hero must fight the corrupted Yulgar to protect the others. Niknak does not want him hurt, but cannot let him hurt them either. After the fight, the Hero pleads with Yulgar to resist. He tries to speak, admits that he cannot, and vanishes in black flame. The account leaves his fate at that disappearance rather than explicitly confirming his death.
The Hero turns their anger toward the trainers, but Jinx says they fled during the fight. Niknak remembers them as friends before their minds were changed, just as Yulgar's was. There is no victory over the corruption here, and no restored innkeeper to take charge of the refuge.
Niknak asks the Hero to stay and protect them. The Hero wants to, but believes this ruined world is what will happen unless they return and stop Malgor. Staying would abandon the chance to prevent the future they have found. That decision still leaves Niknak and his friends needing somewhere to go.
Jinx offers his junk pile as shelter and says he can show them the way out. Niknak intends to gather his friends and come with them. The return route leads back to Junkhoard; the offer gives the survivors somewhere to flee, without showing every member of the group settled safely there.
Then Jinx holds out Teja's gem. If it can help prevent this future, he wants the Hero to take it. The Hero asks for his help as well. Jinx repeats that he is a thief rather than a fighter, but that is precisely the skill the Hero needs: someone who can get them into places they should not be, even a castle or throne room. This time, Jinx agrees without making a new bargain.
For now, he can get them out. A platform in his pocket dimension connects to the rift above Malgor's castle, a route Malgor established for his thefts. The Hero has recovered the eye and gained an ally who understands what his former employer could do. Reaching the castle itself, stopping Malgor and preventing that future remain work ahead of them.