The Reshaper: Broken Woods Research and the Hive

The Reshaper: The Sisterhood's Work

Madra comes to the Broken Woods with doubts about the figures her people have worshipped. Looking at the ruined landscape, she questions whether the Darkblood could survive what the Queen and Kolyaban intend to make of Lore. She offers to help the Hero stop them. Saving her people, she believes, may require opposing the powers they regard as their mother and first ancestor.

The Hero takes her to Cleric Joy. During the struggle against Drakath, Joy's sisterhood worked on treating Chaorruption. The Hero asks her to resume that work, only to learn that it never stopped. The clerics still cannot cure Chaorruption completely, but their treatment can slow its progress and reverse some minor symptoms. Victory over Drakath did not end their efforts to repair what Chaos had done.

The Hero proposes a connection. The Rift leads to the Plane of Monsters, while Drakath spoke of the Queen coming from the Realm of Chaos. Perhaps those are two names for the same place, and perhaps the changes happening now are another form of Chaos. Joy sees why the Hero hopes her existing formula might offer a starting point. It is a theory worth investigating, rather than a treatment already known to work.

The Hero begins by dosing and tagging urstrix and spiderwings with the original formula. It has little apparent effect. Joy asks for samples from the altered creatures and from their unaltered counterparts: leatherwings and hootbears. Comparing claws and feathers may reveal where the treatment needs to change. The experiment begins with identifying the difference between what the creatures were and what they have become.

Plants provide more evidence. The Hero gathers twisted roots, spores and fungal slime, then brings back goo from the wandering Extrikiti. Joy wants to see how unaltered samples respond to Rift matter. Her adjusted serum is then given to the same creatures tagged earlier, so its effects can be followed. Some of the problem has been addressed, but the treatment still does not do everything they need.

Joy asks for living Rift creatures to compare with the reshaped ones. Captured parasites and plague spreaders help her identify what she describes as a biological halfway point: the altered creatures resemble the invaders without becoming identical to them. She now wants a formula that attacks the Rift-like parts while healing the body's natural form. The research has found a direction, but not yet a proven way to restore Aria.

The Reshaper: The Hive and the Promise of War

For Aria's human body, Joy combines the work with a health potion, uncorrupted spitter seeds and treeant berries. The ingredients come from Reens in Northpointe, seed spitters in Arcangrove and treeants in Poisonforest. Joy hopes the result will heal Aria while destroying the altered parts. It is specific to human anatomy, and no other reshaped humans have been found on whom to test it first. The Hero accepts the potion knowing how uncertain the attempt remains.

Madra wants Aria treated before anything else. Her new power makes her dangerous in Kolyaban's service; removing that strength from the enemy would matter even before the wider work of restoration begins. If the treatment succeeds, Madra hopes to spread it across the continent. For now, the Hero and Madra set out with an untested means of helping one friend.

Eremon and the other pilgrims block their path. He accuses Madra of betraying her people by siding with outsiders against their ancestor and Mother. Madra tries to make him understand what she has seen, but he answers with a revelation of his own. Kolyaban has fused three Darkblood into the Hive. Eremon presents the creature as proof of magnificence and power; the Hero recoils.

Madra is horrified that her people would worship someone who mutilates them. The Hive stands in the way, and the Hero defeats it. Looking at the broken creature afterward, Madra asks the watching followers whether this is truly how they want to live. Coming face to face with the legends has left her disappointed and determined to stop their work. Defeating the Hive has not restored the three people who made it.

Kolyaban appears and dismisses the Hive as weak creatures that served their purpose. She offers to do far more with Madra. The Primarch refuses, saying she would sooner die. Eremon would prefer to win her over, but will fight anyone who tries to stop Kolyaban. More pilgrims gather around their goddess as he declares that there will be war. The potion has not yet reached Aria, and the effort to deliver it has divided the Darkblood openly.