Oblivion's Betrayal: Oblivion Tundra

Oblivion Tundra — The last lesson in a dream

Sleep catches the Hero again. Their eyes will not open, and they ask someone to kick them awake. The Hushed says Nulgath’s followers are caught in the same temptation and offers to share a dream instead. The scene becomes an encounter at a dark cliff: Oblivion addresses his former mentor, Casimir, asking whether he regrets granting a Darkness Elemental free will and the power to replace him.

Casimir says he is proud that this student, of all his pupils, betrayed him. Oblivion hears the Fiend God laughing at his Master’s foolishness and proclaims that Lore will know Oblivion. Casimir remembers standing in the same place after betraying his own teacher. He saw this coming, he says, but eventually stopped trying to fight it.

His final lesson is to watch what happens to his body after he falls, then never let go of what the Fiend God has done. A dark, green-marked figure stands at the cliff edge before the view leaves that ledge empty. The Hushed cannot show what follows: the remnant does not know. The Hero now names the succession—Casimir before Oblivion, Oblivion before Nulgath—and is told to find the pit. This is a shared dream and the guide’s fragment of memory, not a complete view of the fall’s aftermath.

Oblivion Tundra — Down among the leftovers

The guide names himself openly as Casimir, a former Archfiend who terrorized Lore and bound souls by contract. He mentored the Darkness Elemental who became Oblivion, only to be betrayed as he had betrayed his own Master. Indignant Stubbornness sends the Hero east after Carnage through Empty Creatures seeking to fill themselves with living viscera. Carnage heard Nulgath stepping over the survivors before going east, over the cliff and into the pit.

Over the Edge makes a safer descent from sinew gathered among the bone spires. Casimir says Adimonde leaves discarded remains gazing toward the cliff. Oblivion spent years staring into that abyss, distraught that nothing stared back. Restless Pride takes the Hero down the rope toward a spatial tear into the Fiend God’s realm, fighting the Hushed—other Archfiends reduced to scraps by their followers. A temporary beating can quiet their rage, the guide says, but cannot make them let it go.

Greywater brings the party deeper, where the guide warns that boots will melt and everything will eventually drain toward Adimonde. Casimir imagines the Hero meeting the angrier parts of himself. He survived by attaching to Oblivion’s rags, perhaps as the impulse to teach distilled from the rest of his bitterness. A Fiendish Waste confronts the Withered Archfiend at the bottom. The guide senses Nulgath nearby and believes he is waiting to see whether the Hero can drive that predecessor back into the Void.

Oblivion Tundra — The contract that stopped a meal

The Hero nearly falls into the pool while fighting Adimonde’s leftovers, possibly another part of Casimir. Nulgath’s hand saves them. The Hero thanks him, and he confirms that Oblivion’s possession by the Doom Spirit stirred old memories. He allowed the crisis to continue so that he could measure how powerful Oblivion had been at his peak. The empty Fiends scattered through the tundra show him that this predecessor could have been a troublesome obstacle.

When Adimonde named Nulgath Archfiend and sent him north, he found Oblivion hunched beneath the black snow, repeating that he must not let it go. Nulgath admits trapping him in a contract that sealed his mind. He enjoyed having a former Archfiend as a servant, and suspects Adimonde resented being deprived of the same meal again and again. The servant’s lost memory was an imposed condition, not simply an old follower’s obscurity.

The Hero sets out the feeding cycle: a chosen Archfiend conquers and spreads Adimonde’s influence, then a follower betrays that Master at full strength and delivers them as food. Nulgath identifies the pit as the drain through which old Archfiend bones sink into the Fiend God’s belly. The Hero points to Dage’s rebellion as a sign that Nulgath’s interruption is precarious. Adimonde can wait for another betrayal or introduce another player. Nulgath answers by asking what the Hero thinks he has now set in motion. Casimir’s command not to let go becomes a challenge rather than surrender.

Oblivion Tundra — Leaving what wants to be followed

Inevitable Departure makes the choice concrete: turn away from the Fiend’s Void and head west. Casimir proposes relighting the candles and looking to the Lost Expeditioner for direction. If the candles will not light, he says, Oblivion is watching. He taught the Elemental to spread himself through the surroundings. Carnage senses that darkness all around them and thinks Oblivion is furious at being left behind.

The tundra’s warnings change with the route. Earlier words dismiss legacy and promise that everyone ends as dust; nearer the retreat they demand attention: “Listen to me! LOOK AT ME!” Another tells the departing party that they cannot do this to him. A separate message describes the Lost Expeditioner smiling and pointing home. These are the map’s authored messages, giving the landscape an increasingly possessive voice as its claims of indifference fail.

Emptiness Embodied cuts through the moving Magi while Casimir notes a change beyond numb melancholy. Ice Ages Past confronts the long-extinct Ettin, pulled from the black snow and mutated into Fiends. Nulgath takes interest in the discovery that an Archfiend’s presence can transform even a tundra. Stirring Darkness forces a way through the gathering minions. If Oblivion means to stop the party, he must get up himself. Casimir reminds his former student of the bones, breath, scream and new lungs that came with becoming flesh.

Oblivion Tundra — The body of despair

Jadzia stays conscious by writing frantically, her notes circling around the history they have uncovered. In her account, Casimir’s hunger for knowledge became hoarding, while Oblivion’s collapsed ambition became a domain that drains the will to live. She asks whether Adimonde engineers the succession through causality or simply relies on the pattern repeating. Those are questions, not a discovered mechanism. The darkness around them, she says, is Oblivion’s body.

Remember to Breathe confronts the Archfiend who rises from bitterness, envy and rage. Casimir observes that this is far from emptiness. Nulgath has finally acknowledged the guide and asked him to hand over his student. Before the Hero stands a huge dark form marked with red fissures and a circle of gold-edged blades. Oblivion asks why the mortal came, recalls their first approach to Nulgath, then tells them to lie down and die. The Hero answers: after you.

Oblivion says he was already trying to die before Nulgath sent hunters after him. Both visitors have seen the pit; feeding him to Adimonde will not save the next Archfiend. The Hero refuses the claim that all his actions are pointless: if he truly believed it, he would not be here. They were going to leave him alone. If he intends to follow, someone below wants to speak with him.

Oblivion Tundra — The gift Casimir carried

The voice is Casimir’s remnant, red eyes looking out from the old robes. Oblivion cannot understand how anything remains after Adimonde devoured his mentor. The Hushed calls himself scraps. He has met the new Master, received a gift and offered knowledge in return. Oblivion recognizes the gift as his own Fiend Shard. Nulgath kept it all this time.

Casimir has one last lesson before he fades: descend into the Fiend God’s belly. His quest’s closing reflection calls him better as a teacher than as a Fiend and wonders whether that distinction could become the first step in destroying the cycle. It is his hope for the future, not proof that the cycle has already ended. The next scene places Oblivion, Nulgath and briefly the Hero inside Adimonde’s orange-lit realm.

Oblivion Tundra — A private matter between Archfiends

Nulgath holds a bright shard and greets Archfiend Oblivion. Thousands of Nation Fiends became empty husks at the sight of him, but Nulgath declares that the predecessor will now meet defeat at the hands of the true Archfiend. The Hero starts to join in, only to find themself back in the tundra with Carnage and Jadzia. Nulgath has thrown them out. Adimonde objects that this was the one visitor he had wanted to see.

Nulgath says he has confirmed that Oblivion and the Hero can survive in the Fiend God’s realm; he would expect Dage to manage it too. His own earlier ability to enter no longer makes him uniquely special. He calls that belief masterful manipulation. Adimonde invites him to kill the rival, enjoy the long-awaited feast and move one step closer to replacing the god. The invitation keeps the same old appetite behind a promise of advancement.

Oblivion turns his rage on the Master who robbed him of memory and made him a willing servant. Their clash plays before the delighted Fiend God, who calls it dinner and a show. Nulgath asks why Oblivion thrashes like a cornered animal if everything is pointless. At last Oblivion recognizes what Casimir meant: Adimonde is laughing at them. Nulgath asks what he intends to do about it.

Oblivion Tundra — Who is the real enemy?

Nulgath presents the shard again, saying Oblivion dropped what was meant for him when he ran. The bright piece is shown beside the ring of blades. He names the Darkness Elemental turned Fiend and asks who stole his destiny—who his real enemy is. The scene turns back toward Adimonde with a red circular flare and a brilliant slash across the god’s face. Oblivion later says that, under Nulgath’s guidance, he struck a blow at the creature pulling their strings. The sources establish the attack without specifying a lasting wound or exact unseen point of contact.

Adimonde is surprised that Nulgath empowered a rival to his title. Nulgath replies that his Nation is his power: the stronger its members become, the closer he comes to breaking the cycle. This changes what he chooses to do with another Archfiend. The rival becomes an asset against their common predator instead of another meal.

Oblivion Tundra — Come back when you become a god

Adimonde still dismisses the challenge. He says he could melt Nulgath down immediately but is too bored to finish the matter, and tells him to return when he becomes a god. Nulgath is then shown with pale, dripping material across his arms and torso, which remains visible after the return to the tundra. The sampled art supports that changed appearance; it does not measure an injury or establish that the god has been permanently harmed.

The Hero protests being left out. Nulgath calls the encounter a private matter between Archfiends; the Hero notices that he can now tolerate a second one. Carnage demands that Oblivion kneel to the Nation’s sole Master. Oblivion declares he can kneel even lower and credits Nulgath’s Nation with the power to break fate’s wheels. The Hero identifies the bounty’s two purposes—measuring Oblivion and eliminating weak followers—but Nulgath’s silence interrupts that assessment.

Nulgath asks Oblivion to do everything possible to turn him into a husk. He means to resist and make his body a weapon against Adimonde. He declares the Nation on the cusp of a new age, with the Hero as its first witness. This is the next undertaking he chooses after the encounter, not a transformation already completed in this unit.

Oblivion Tundra — What survives the test

Jadzia has gained a history of the Nation but nearly died obtaining it. She objects to a test that judges everyone as a warrior: a loremaster does not need chin-ups to wield a quill. Carnage says the survivors had to rely on Light magic and that Jadzia called Ana for help. His account also places a Fiend Shard within both himself and Oblivion, even as he insists he will prove the stronger warrior.

Oblivion now calls Nulgath his liberator and says Adimonde can be harmed. He promises his greater power to the Nation and expects his Master to rule the Fiend’s Void. That confidence is his allegiance and prediction. He also says his brooding is over only for now: self-aware Darkness Elementals tend toward it. He has heard that other things in the Plane of Darkness behave similarly, but says they do not mix well with his kind and are desperate to latch onto beings born in Lore. His disguised kind can be mistaken for Mysterious Strangers, but that resemblance does not identify every such stranger as an Elemental.

Oblivion Tundra — The teacher left in the scraps

Oblivion says Casimir found him in disguise and sensed his frustration with his brethren. The scholar accelerated his evolution to see what would happen, turning an Elemental into a Fiend with flesh, power and free will. Whether there was fondness behind the experiment remains a question. Casimir’s curiosity and wish for an intellectual equal survived as the fragment the Hero met; much of the old experimenter had already been eaten.

The Archfiend before Casimir was Casimir’s own mentor. Oblivion contrasts that inherited knowledge with Nulgath, who had a traitorous understudy but no predecessor to teach him. Perhaps restoring Oblivion’s memories was a way to recover what Adimonde had hidden. Oblivion can now give his Master that knowledge. His interpretation turns the freed servant into a teacher as well as a weapon, while leaving Nulgath’s full plan ahead.

Oblivion Tundra — Going through the motions

The optional repeatable Going Through the Motions continues that exchange. Nulgath asks Oblivion to impart the eras before his reign; encounters with the Hushed and Ettin jog the old Archfiend’s memory, and he offers another fight if the cold has not already exhausted the Hero. His completion reflects that old faces are gone but familiar motions remain. Nulgath became Archfiend as new life rose from ruin and immediately marched into war. The past has become usable knowledge, while the struggle against Adimonde continues beyond the tundra.