Karok Invades the North

Syrrus and the Tower of Winds

The Queen of Monsters' escape brings another disaster to Draconis Island. A white flash shatters the land, scattering refugees among the broken islands. At the Tower of Winds, the astromancer Syrrus seeks help through the stars. A messenger promises a mage from Glacera, an army and a power Lore has encountered before. Syrrus believes they will help him oppose the Queen, but the message has promised an arrival, not an allegiance.

You help him build the Horologium Gate before the Obscura Majora Alignment. While gathering its starstones and protecting the refugees, you notice how readily Syrrus trusts the future he has foreseen. If he can force the stars into an alignment, someone else might have arranged them to tell him what he wants to hear. His apprentice Lorentz also questions the stranger's timing and intentions. Syrrus's divination reveals that the mage's own blood has visited Lore before, but neither that warning nor the island's changing creatures stops the work.

The gate opens onto an invasion. FrostSpawn pour through, and their master Karok treats the wounded world as a prize to plunder. He names Kezeroth as his brother and promises to succeed where the World-Ender failed. Syrrus realizes that his trust has admitted an army rather than rescued the refugees. As you fight it back, he finds disturbing human similarities in its creatures. The Queen watches the new terror with interest, but Karok has begun his conquest without serving her.

Closing the gate requires a journey through it. The spell has created a twin on Glacera, and Syrrus believes Karok's Scythe of Vengeance can bind and break the connection. Lorentz accompanies you, frightened of the creatures on the other side but determined to help. He guards the way home while you enter the fortress, then insists that the floating ice scythe matters more than the treasure around it. With the weapon recovered, he asks how to become a hero before you return to Lore. Meanwhile, Karok's horde has continued to advance.

Lorentz and the Broken Gate

You protect Syrrus while he prepares to bind the scythe to the portal. Karok interrupts with the truth of his expedition: the screams from Lore reached across space and time, drawing him from a cold, starving world whose resources he had exhausted. He intends to feed his army here, take everything, then answer another world's plea for help. Seizing Lorentz, he hurls the apprentice into the gate and kills him, destroying the passage. The way back to Glacera closes, but the invaders already on Lore remain.

Syrrus is crushed by guilt. Karok says the gate can never be repaired, while the astromancer points to the Queen's escape as proof that no seal lasts forever. Learning that the Queen broke the island before his arrival, Karok has another power to reckon with. You suggest letting the enemies fight and facing whichever survives. Lorentz's ghost can offer no escape from what happened: his time is over, and Syrrus must follow the horde toward Northstar without him.

At Northstar, refugees are becoming monsters. Grief drives Syrrus to suspend one of them in the air and hurt it until you intervene. You tell Syrrus that the creature already knows pain. He must either put an end to its suffering or let it go. He lets it go and breaks down over Lorentz. You gather the apprentice's damaged journal, pieces of Syrrus's lodestone and small reminders of home. Snowdrops recall his mother's song, and the broken objects still preserve something worth saving. Syrrus begins to turn his attention back toward the people he can protect.

The Queen's Gift

A strange creature appears among the FrostSpawn, identifying itself as a gift from the Queen. You defeat it while Syrrus wonders how her magic is affecting the horde. The Queen has deliberately made her gift weak enough to lose: the defenders' confidence will make their eventual despair more satisfying. She also interrogates an Invader about Karok, learning an inherited account of the general's earlier life.

According to that tale, Karok stayed to defend Glacera while his wife and children fled, only for an invading army to capture them. He surrendered the battle and his soldiers in exchange for his family. The returning wagon held stained fabric and flies. When he recovered his senses, the invaders were dead, his own soldiers had fled and he was alone. New warriors eventually became a replacement family, but his growing brutality changed him. The captive describes Glacera as a world whose magic can turn people into monsters through the choices they make. The Queen values precisely what Karok has become.

Karok dismisses heroes as predictable, so you use his contempt to distract him while Syrrus strikes. Asking Lorentz's forgiveness, the astromancer sends a great blue blast into Karok. Afterward, there is no body. FrostSpawn have also died without either of you killing them, making you suspect blood magic if their master survived. Reports of a maelstrom, a floating piece of the Astarian Plains and spiders gathering near a new tower draw attention back to the Queen.

Karok does survive and meets her. She explains the weakness she built into her gift and offers a division of the spoils: his army will ravage Lore and receive its riches, while she feeds on its fear and devours its heart. He will be permitted to rule. Karok accepts and calls her his queen, but only for now. Neither has entered the arrangement intending to surrender control.

The Battle of Cryostorm

Karok next searches for the Champion of Ice, believing the bearer has not yet discovered their power. He wants to reach that strength before the Queen can claim it. Syrrus follows the same trail to Cryostorm, the village where Lorentz grew up. You arrive with Blizzy to help the isolated settlement celebrate its first Frostval. A young spellsword named Abel recognizes your adventures and eagerly joins the preparations. Gifts, warm blankets and a decorated tree briefly give the village something to anticipate beyond hunting and defending itself.

The celebration ends in an alarm as Karok reaches Cryostorm. Abel helps repel the first attackers, then returns to protect the village while you meet the assault. The Alliance of Good and Evil cannot arrive in time, but Laurissa brings Thermax and reinforcements from nearby cities. Thermax speaks of their own interests on the island. Laurissa reminds him that Cryostorm is his birthplace. Karok answers the resistance by committing stronger forces. Even Drakath intervenes from the Chaos Realm, sending Chaos creatures into the fighting rather than let someone else destroy the Hero he intends to defeat himself.

You confront Karok in the Temple of the Ice Guardian with Syrrus, Laurissa and Thermax. Abel warns that the shrine belongs to a guardian created by the Ice Lord to watch over Cryostorm. Karok strikes Thermax with a conjured spear, and Laurissa is thrown back when she tries to retaliate. Abel attacks, declaring that he is not yet a hero. Suddenly Karok struggles with his own power. Syrrus urges you to exploit the opening, and after your attack Karok disappears. You recognize that he has escaped, while Thermax's swords remain in the shrine.

Away from the defenders, Karok confronts the Queen and accuses her of suppressing his strength. She admits it. His independent search has gone far enough, and the humiliation is meant to teach him that he will defeat you only when she permits it. Frostval's hope must be allowed to grow before she turns it into despair. Laurissa also answers the Queen in secret, assuring her that her companions suspect nothing.

Syrrus tells you that the stars guiding him toward the Champion went out around Thermax's fall. You conclude that Thermax must have been the Champion, and Syrrus cautiously agrees. He proposes searching for a newly born successor before Karok can steal that power. Abel, shaken by Thermax's death, admits that he had not understood what becoming a hero could cost. You remember Athon's sacrifice and encourage him to keep fighting for something worth protecting. He still hopes to become a hero and asks whether you will meet again.

Three years before the battle at Cryostorm, Glace had watched Kezeroth atop Quetzal and apologized to her fellow Champion. She said the Queen had twisted Quetzal's mind and filled it with lies. Kyanos told her that Quetzal's spirit was traveling to the Plane of Ice, then declared that another Champion would rise as his instrument of vengeance. When Glace tried to object, he silenced her. After more than twenty thousand years, the Ice Lord intended to make the Queen pay for what she had done to his Champions.

Kezeroth's Awakening

Almost a year of silence follows before Karok returns. The approaching solstice strengthens his power and his connection to Kezeroth, giving him a way to avenge himself on the Queen. Syrrus calls you back, fearing that the brothers together could destroy Lore. Four years have passed since Athon's sacrifice sealed Kezeroth away for twenty-six thousand years. You follow Karok through Icewind Pass, using Syrrus's crystals and gathered traces of magic to break the spell concealing his route. Abel joins the pursuit, determined to answer what happened to Thermax.

You reach the frozen Kezeroth too late. Karok frees him, but his brother's first reaction is fury: only four years have passed, and Quetzal's comet will not return within his remaining lifetime. Karok tells him that Quetzal died when he brought him to Lore and proposes that they conquer the world together. Kezeroth suspects a lie and rejects the ambition itself. He is the World-Ender, not a ruler. He attacks, and Karok calls in the FrostSpawn he has held in reserve.

Watching the brothers fight, Abel suggests helping Karok because you have defeated him before. Syrrus favors Kezeroth, fearing that Karok would otherwise combine their armies. Neither proposal rests on trust. Kezeroth wins the battle, leaving Karok's horde decimated, but victory gives Karok the opening he needs. When his brother lifts him from the ground, Karok springs a binding spell and chains Kezeroth's wrists. Unable to persuade him to cooperate, he will force his obedience. You defeat Kezeroth's seismic mole Soricomorpha while Syrrus searches for another way to stop them.

The Crystal of Glacera

Syrrus turns to the Crystal of Glacera, an aware artifact of ice that never melts. Some associate it with Glacera, while others say Kyanos made it in the Plane of Ice. Knowing how destructive its strength could be in the wrong hands, the crystal has sealed itself inside black ice. Until the new Champion awakens, Syrrus believes it offers the best chance against the brothers, but it will choose whether you deserve its power.

With Syrrus projecting his spirit into the mountain to guide you, you restore fallen crystals and form a bridge across a chasm. You free trapped moglins, then subdue the moglinsters they become farther inside. The crystal recognizes cleverness, kindness and strength in those actions, but demands one final proof: you must defeat the crystal itself. Winning its challenge transforms it into a staff you can wield. FrostSpawn block the entrance, forcing you to fight northward to escape.

Karok orders his army to stand down and asks you to surrender the staff. You refuse to give up the weapon that could defeat him. Kezeroth attacks while Karok saves his strength, but the binding spell has weakened the World-Ender. The crystal lends you enough power to resist him, and blocking his attack with the staff reveals how to freeze him. Before you can continue, Karok intervenes and breaks the hold. He takes over the fight himself.

The Truce with Karok

You overcome Karok, and Syrrus urges you to finish him. Karok instead asks to be heard. He wants to conquer Lore, not destroy it, and insists that the Queen is the more urgent threat. You still believe he serves her until he reveals how she suppressed his power at Cryostorm. He had intended to use her, become strong enough to overthrow her and seize Lore for himself. Now he admits that he misjudged her.

Karok wanted the Crystal of Glacera to fight the Queen, but you doubt it would accept him. He asks you to keep it and use its power against her, offering his own help until she is stopped. He claims that even Kezeroth's oblivion would be preferable to what she intends. You accept a truce without accepting his trustworthiness. Syrrus objects, and you agree with his warning: one wrong move will end the arrangement. Karok survives with his ambition intact, while the Crystal remains in your hands.

Abel and the Trials of Ice

A summons to the Plane of Ice brings you together with Abel again. You hope Kyanos can answer the questions left by that region's conflict about the Ice Titan and the missing Champion. Glace, the spirit of the first Champion of Ice, guides you through the realm's trials. Quetzal, another former Champion whom you helped free from Kezeroth's intended fate, asks whether Abel knows himself. Abel's answer is his own name, and the trials continue toward the Enfield.

Abel recognizes the guardian as the Ice Titan's form without knowing how. Syrrus had continued to sense a weakened presence in Cryostorm after Thermax died. You now wonder whether its bearer had simply exhausted himself fighting Karok, rather than been killed. Abel's unexplained familiarity with the realm makes you suspect that he may be the person you came to find. When Abel's ice attack defeats the Enfield, you call him the Champion of Ice. He corrects you: the battle has awakened his understanding that he is Kyanos's Avatar on Lore. Kyanos's shade confirms it and grants him armor, explaining that Abel will act as his eyes and ears with a power Lore can bear. Humility kept Abel from accepting what he already knew subconsciously, and becoming the Envoy does not take away the person you befriended.

When Abel later summons you back, he has spent years training where time flows differently from Lore. He tells you that Kyanos and Fiamme once exchanged weapons made from pieces of themselves after a long contest: the Frozen Claymore went to Fire, while Fiamme's Conflagration Blade remained in Ice. With Kyanos's permission, you enter a dungeon to earn the blade, while Abel guides you without helping in its battles. At its depths, you defeat an image of Glace, Abel himself and a shade of Kyanos. Abel accepts his loss as encouragement to keep learning, and the weapon of Fire is yours to claim.