Thunderforge and Chaos Lord Lionfang
The General's Answer
Before Lionfang's return as a Chaos Lord, King Alteon sends the Hero to help him investigate a possible weakness in Chaos. The king's infection is worsening, but he refuses to make his own cure the purpose of the Great Truce. Saving Lore must come first. General Maximilian Lionfang, stationed at the edge of Thunderforge, claims to have found a lead worthy of the Hero's talents.
The first audience reveals how narrowly the general defines loyalty. Declaring service to Gravelyn earns expulsion. Boasting of the Undead Legion brings an order that the Hero's body must never be found. Naming Nulgath prompts a courteous welcome that conceals a torture chamber. These are alternative disastrous audiences, not successive events. The continuing conversation requires an accommodating answer: enough apparent agreement to hear what Lionfang wants.
Lionfang suspects that Alteon's willingness to work with Evil is itself a symptom of corruption. He has studied Chaos since Drakath's attack and believes its history reaches further back than its current champion. His questioning of the Darkblood has uncovered rumors of an ancient relic. A scroll inside Blackhorn Tomb may reveal where to find it. The Hero agrees to search, while the general's contempt for the people whose secrets he seeks is already unmistakable.
The search leads through restless undead, sealed tombs and a wall of spider silk. Lionfang uses his field-alchemy knowledge to help breach the webbing. Beyond the Bonefeeder, toxic cocoons hold the next clue; an antitoxin makes recovering the scroll possible. He treats disturbing Darkblood graves as something that requires no remorse. The promised victory over Chaos is being built on a refusal to recognize obligations to anyone he calls Evil.
Finding the scroll does not bring the general closer to accepting the alliance. It convinces him that the alliance can end. With a weapon against Chaos, he believes Good can survive while Gravelyn and her followers perish. He renounces Alteon's authority and invites the Hero to lead his Golden Onslaught. When the Hero calls this betrayal foolish, Lionfang attacks. Those who will not accept his definition of Good have become enemies too.
The Undead Alliance
Heroes begin disappearing, and Gravelyn summons those still free to Shadowfall. Lionfang has captured Alteon and many of their allies. His letter announces that he intends to purge Evil and everyone who cooperates with it. Around Onslaught Tower, a Death Fog kills living creatures that try to enter. The general who sought a weapon against Chaos has turned his immediate strength against the people defending Lore from it.
Inside the tower, Robina and Artix argue for the truce. Lionfang has not even obtained the weapon, and destroying the alliance would weaken everyone against Drakath. He answers by threatening torture. The captives are Good at heart, he insists; he will make them understand that his way is correct. Their refusal to agree becomes further justification for hurting them.
Gravelyn finds an answer to the fog in the very army her father once used against their towns. Undead soldiers can cross it. She asks the assembled heroes, Good and Evil alike, to become undead temporarily and rescue their friends. A reluctant response brings more persuasion, then rejoins the same plan. The invasion will make the alliance visible in a form some of its members once knew only as an enemy.
Archlich Xollen helps turn that assault into a rescue route. The tower's living soldiers carry protective amulets; recovered amulets, altered and strengthened with Gravelyn's magic, can neutralize the Death Fog. The Hero places them through the tower and searches for the dungeon key. Getting the captives out safely demands more than forcing a way in.
When the prisoners are freed, two Golden Onslaught soldiers recognize what their commander refuses to see. The undead Hero spared them, and Gravelyn came to rescue Good's defenders. They offer their allegiance to the truce. Alteon asks Lionfang to join them too, but he would rather leap into his own fog than surrender. Below the tower, doubt briefly reaches him. The Chaos Twins arrive before it can grow, urging him to destroy Evil rather than reconsider it.
The Price of Falguard
The Twins guide Lionfang to Drakath. He initially rejects becoming a Chaos Lord, but Drakath offers a distinction suited to his anger: Chaos need not be Evil, and it can give him the power to destroy everything he hates. Lionfang accepts, warning that he will turn the same weapon against Drakath once Evil is gone. Drakath welcomes even that promise. His new servant's intended rebellion can create more Chaos.
Many months later, Lionfang's divided army attacks Falguard. Madra rallies the Dreadwatch, whose defense of the city has endured for centuries, but the invader's new powers break that confidence. He intends to take the Darkblood's hidden treasure and exterminate them. The Hero helps defend survivors, deny the invaders useful knowledge, recover supplies and reopen the temple. Madra's initial hostility gives way to a grudging reliance on this outsider.
Inside the temple, Lionfang demands the location of the Tears of the Mother. When the Primarch refuses, he tears the answer from the leader's mind. The relic has been hidden in the Death Pits. Having extracted the secret, Lionfang leaves the corrupted Primarch to attack the Hero and then turn against his own people. Madra must watch someone she follows become an instrument of their destruction.
Defeat frees the Primarch from Lionfang's control, but cannot stop his body turning to stone. He explains that the Tears can remove Chaos once. They cannot cleanse Drakath, who has become Chaos itself, but might still save Alteon. He names Madra his successor. Her people's protection has been taken from them, and isolation will no longer keep the war outside their walls. She sends the Hero after the Tears, demanding above all that Lionfang must fail.
Logash of the Dreadwatch guards the way into the Death Pits. He has sworn that Lionfang will not enter while he lives. Lionfang answers the oath by draining his life away, then passes his remains. Death does not end the obligation. Logash's spirit binds itself to his amulet, carrying the duty his living body could no longer fulfill. The Hero will need that guide to descend after the relic.
A Cure for One
The Death Pits preserve a history the Darkblood cannot place entirely at Lionfang's feet. Rival tribes enslaved one another to mine poisonous Rotstone; after unification, they turned to human captives. Angry dead remain below. Logash helps the Hero prepare protective runes, survive the poison and ease some of those old wounds. Reaching the Tears means passing through the consequences of cruelty committed long before the present invasion.
At the lowest depths, the struggle with Wrathful Vestis delays the Hero while Lionfang takes a beautiful vial from its chest. Apparent failure gives way to Logash's final secret: the real Tears were hidden elsewhere, beneath a rock. He describes them as the last tears of the Mother of Monsters before she surrendered her humanity. The relic passes into the Hero's care, and his oath is fulfilled. He is free to rest; later, he says he wants to remain and help the other tormented souls.
The Hero takes the cure to Alteon. Victoria wants her father to drink it, but he refuses. There is only enough for one person, and he orders the Hero to use it against Lionfang instead. The discovery has already given him something he did not possess before: hope that a cure can exist. For now, saving those threatened by his former general must take priority over saving their king.
Sir Valence has tracked Lionfang to the Venom Vaults, a former prince's keep. The Chaos Manticore was once the lion he raised from a cub; his power has transformed and strengthened it into a threat to the Darkblood and Gravelyn's soldiers. The former owner's records offer a way to survive its venom. With a cleansing potion introduced into the water supply, the Hero can face the Beast and use the treated water against its poison.
The Manticore's defeat brings Lionfang's fury onto the Hero. Valence intervenes, and an attempt to break the vial over Lionfang puts the real Tears in his hands instead. Reading the Hero's mind, he learns that his earlier prize was false. He treats this discovery as a life saved, and spares the Hero in repayment. Yet Valence recognizes that a plan is working: a tracking rune on the Tears may lead them to the place where Lionfang intends to confront Drakath.
Rain over Thunderforge
Following Lionfang leads the Hero up a mountain in the rain. A lightning strike sends them slipping, but Madra catches them. A seer foresaw the fall and insisted that she intervene. Her help is practical as well as personal: the Darkblood still need their chosen avenger. Above them waits the Storm Temple, where Lionfang plans to face Drakath.
The temple's solid clouds show how far Lionfang's power can bend the natural world. Madra helps the Hero prepare for its lightning and find a way through its barriers. Captured cloud matter and storm energy become the means of breaking his defenses. The Hero presses onward, hoping to recover the Tears before he wastes the only cure on an enemy they cannot cleanse.
Lionfang throws the vial at Drakath before the Hero can stop him. For a moment, Drakath pretends that it is working, crying out as though his power is dissolving. Then he laughs. Lionfang, certain that these were the true Tears, turns his rage on the Hero again. Even evidence before his eyes becomes another accusation of deceit.
After his defeat, Lionfang learns why the relic failed. Drakath calls himself the avatar of Chaos, remade by the Mother of Monsters, his queen and master. She waits beyond the Chaos Gate for him to free her. The Tears have boiled into vapor, but their power has not vanished. It spreads through the clouds supporting the temple, breaking its magic and raining onto Lionfang. His corruption is stripped away. He begs for the power he accepted to destroy Evil, but Drakath says that, for now, the cure has made him immune to Drakath's power.
The temple comes apart. The Hero asks Drakath to help the falling Lionfang and receives only mockery before escaping. Lionfang's death is not confirmed; Madra's later account says he has eluded capture. Below the clouds, the Hero thinks the diluted power of the Tears may make Thunderforge more resistant to Chaos. Madra sees the Mother still protecting her children, while the Hero must reckon with a different revelation: the figure behind that sacred relic is also the power behind Drakath's campaign.