Ravenloss: Chaosweaver War

The Key at Twilight's Edge

This account of the March 2014 invasion combines official release records with the community-preserved quest text and scene transcripts. The original scene files have not been recovered, so the dialogue, action and scene order described here remain qualified by those records.

The ChaosWeaver Queen promises her children the surface world's wealth, captives and food. Her call to conquest also carries a fear: another war is coming, and she intends her people to survive when Chaos overtakes the world. A flashback places her in the Realm of Chaos, bargaining over a diversion that will cost her unnamed listener dearly. The preserved transcript does not identify that listener. The invasion begins with a promise of victory and a calculation still hidden from its victims.

Riadne, an Arachnomancer who has studied the ChaosWeavers, meets the Hero at Twilight's Edge. Her friend Tomix is missing. He holds the key needed to control the portal, and finding him becomes the immediate task. Riadne can restrain the invasion with a forcefield, but her strength will not hold indefinitely.

The search leads through attacked settlements, from Swordhaven and Faerie Forest into Darkovia and Doomwood, then through Firestorm, the northlands and other threatened places before reaching Battleon. The Hero fights invaders and follows reports from those caught in their path. The scene account describes a slaughter that reaches humans, beasts and undead alike. Finding Tomix is part of stopping an invasion already spreading far beyond its point of entry.

Riadne believes the captive is too valuable for the ChaosWeavers to kill. She distinguishes her own study of spider magic from Tomix's SoulWeaving, whose workings she does not claim to understand. Elsewhere, the Queen anticipates the search's success. She expects the Hero to acquire the key, close the gate and then pursue her into Ravenloss, accompanied by both the Arachnomancer and the SoulWeaver. What the defenders hope will defeat her is also part of her design.

With Riadne's forcefield failing, the Hero cuts into a web and finds Tomix fighting a ChaosWeaver Warrior. The rescue quest requires that warrior's defeat; the following scene reunites Tomix and Riadne and establishes that they have the key. The Hero closes the portal, but intends to enter Ravenloss and exterminate its ChaosWeavers before leaving the passage sealed.

The Queen welcomes that determination. She calls the Hero both her people's most dangerous enemy and their strongest champion. She also claims the Hero has visited before and will not remember it, but will rediscover lost knowledge on the way to her. The scene leaves this as the Queen's claim, without supplying the forgotten visit. She expects the approaching confrontation to end the greatest threat to her nation.

What the Codex Preserves

The Codex Arachna survives here in eleven community-hosted screenshots of the game's pages. These supply readable in-game text without a fresh native capture. Its histories, teachings and predictions belong to the ChaosWeavers' own account of themselves; they do not establish that every claim is impartial or that every prophecy has come true.

In Ravenloss, Riadne proposes gathering information while other heroes fight. The unrest offers a chance to reach a normally guarded library and recover its scrolls. She translates the recovered writings into the Codex. Learning why the Queen has started the war becomes part of the effort to stop it, alongside defeating her forces.

The Codex describes four main schools of Weaver magic, while naming only three as widely known: SoulWeaving, ChaosWeaving and SoulSmithing. It praises SoulWeaving and SoulSmithing as skilled arts, while describing ChaosWeaving as the use of corrupted magic and tainted elemental spirits. Its claim that such magic twists what it touches gives a different context to a people the Hero has encountered primarily as attackers.

Its origin story begins with Tanislav trying to save his dying son, Roirr. A mysterious merchant sells him instructions for converting life into an elixir. Tanislav first sacrifices his wife, but her life is insufficient. He then performs the ritual around his village, after moving his son away. Roirr recovers; his father flees when the boy asks for his mother. Years later, according to the account, Roirr becomes the First Weaver, uses the power of the ghost village and teaches the arts from which four schools develop.

Another account attributes the ChaosWeavers' changed bodies to Vaal's ambition. He forces clerics to create the Judgement Wheel, but a priest secretly makes the granting of wishes conditional on their worthiness. Vaal's unworthy demand brings a disease upon those practising ChaosWeaving. The Codex's account of their tribes says that some remained human, that conflict between them and the transformed Arachna became a civil war, and that the Queen is the surviving human exception.

Ravenloss's history describes an underground settlement growing into a city ruled by successive queens. Its account of society divides duties among peasants, warriors, priests and rulers. The Queen is presented as both leader and mother, whose protection is an obligation shared by all. The current Queen is said to predate the civil war; her daughters are Arachna, although she herself remains human. This is the society's explanation of her exceptional position and its dependence on her.

The same writings preserve the brutality of that society. Military instruction commends deception and force, dismisses mercy and permits an alliance when necessity demands it. A magical teaching describes drawing strength from the darkness and desires within living beings, while warning the practitioner against being consumed by that power. A separate page dismisses mocking songs by conquered enemies as propaganda. These are interested voices explaining how their nation should understand power and its opponents.

The Codex also preserves a damaged prophecy. It anticipates the enslavement of the ChaosWeavers, a meeting of figures called the Mother, the Champion and the Destroyer, and a savior needed during a time of Blood and Magic. Its priests have warned generations of queens to prepare. The surviving page supplies these titles and fears; it does not itself identify every figure or explain the Queen's bargain.

An Audience beyond the Web

The preserved guide scenes end before the final audience with the Queen. Official release notes establish that defeating the war boss unlocks a final cutscene, and the official achievement description records peace afterward. The missing conversation is left unfilled here: the account supports the approach and the outcome, but cannot reconstruct their full connection.

As the Hero enters Ravenloss with Riadne and Tomix, the invaders' confidence begins to look less simple. ChaosWeaver soldiers question the Queen's continued sacrifices and discuss other escape routes. They say she risks her children to draw in dangerous prey, while remaining a slave herself. Her remaining warriors are to delay the Hero while others prepare an exodus. The Queen speaks of deception ending and of a future without hunger or pain. These are the intentions and explanations preserved in the scene account, rather than proof of an escape already accomplished.

After the Codex research, an ambusher moves against the Hero and Riadne intervenes. They face the Queen's Cleric. The Hero threatens him and boasts of the ChaosWeavers already slain; Riadne instead asks for an audience, explaining that the Hero has read the Codex and must discuss matters urgent to everyone. The Cleric resents the losses incurred in bringing the Hero there and refuses to believe this outsider can help. He attacks, placing a final defender between the Hero and the Queen.

The historical war adds a shared barrier to that encounter. The March release notes require the war meter to reach its target and the player to recover all ten Codex scrolls before challenging the High Cleric. The preserved quest text makes his defeat the means of seeking a truce audience. These sources explain the war's original structure; they do not verify today's unlock conditions or establish one mandatory order between every information quest and every contribution to the war.

The official Book of Lore achievement records the resulting change: the Hero makes peace with the ChaosWeaver Queen and strengthens the Alliance. That is the supported destination of an expedition begun with an intention to exterminate her people. The final audience's wording, any additional revelations and the terms of the agreement remain absent from the recovered sources.