Nulgath and the Nation

Earlier Encounters with the Nation

Murry and the Citadel

Murry has escaped the Grand Inquisitor, whose followers persecute magic users while persuading villagers and rulers that they act for Good. He asks you to help the witches still in danger and strike back at his tormentors. Their campaign conceals a contradiction: devices drain magic from prisoners, but Murry finds that the power is stored and compressed rather than destroyed. He suspects that the Grand Inquisitor is keeping it for himself.

The Grand Inquisitor condemns witches, mages and wizards alike. He intends to hunt them with a beast that feeds on magical energy, and Belrot the Fiend answers his summons. You defeat Belrot and then its summoner, following Murry's hope that stopping the leader will end the persecution.

Polish and the Citadel Ruins

Nine years after your first campaign against the Inquisition, Polish calls you to the ruined Citadel. Murry has survived, but the mana vacuums took more than his power. Magic is woven into a wizard's being, and its extraction has left his mind deteriorating. Polish hopes that the machines responsible can reverse the damage.

Inside the ruins, you discover an attempt to revive the Inquisition. Its organizer is Enn’tröpy, Polish's Mirror Realm counterpart. His Murry was the Grand Inquisitor until his own followers overthrew him and extracted his magic. Enn’tröpy now keeps him alive with stolen mana, intending to replenish it through further persecution.

Enn’tröpy exposes what Polish has concealed: Polish is Murry's extracted magic, given an independent life by the wizard's exceptional power. Enn’tröpy has the same origin. He believes that his survival depends on keeping his Murry alive, but refuses to reunite with him because that would end his separate existence. Polish instead chooses to attempt the reunion, despite expecting to disappear.

You repair the apparatus and help Polish try to restore Murry. The attempt fails. Enn’tröpy offers to sustain your Murry with another Mana Amplifier, but you refuse a solution that would harm more people. When you turn against him, he invokes the Archfiend's displeasure. You ask what Nulgath has to do with his plans, but he gives no answer.

You defeat the Mirror Grand Inquisitor and then Enn’tröpy. Polish believes his counterpart has retreated rather than been destroyed. He offers to destroy the laboratory so it cannot sustain the revived Inquisition. Murry remains unhealed, but Polish refuses to abandon him and promises to find another way.

Carnage and the Dark Makai Rebellion

In Tercessuinotlim, Nulgath assigns Carnage to teach you about the Dark Makai, the Nation's discontented grunts. Many have fled and begun to rebel. Carnage begins with slaughter, praising your willingness to destroy without questions, before turning to the knowledge needed to keep them under control. An ancient Makai scroll offers an account of their origins.

The scroll tells of Mako, a Moglin who sought a higher existence and gathered followers tired of being dismissed as harmless furballs. Warlords and kings laughed at them until Kurok Gravefang's great-grandfather agreed to make their bodies reflect the evil within. Lightning struck during the final incantations, leaving the Moglins partially transformed, disfigured and near death. Abandoned as useless, they hid to heal and grew more deranged. The account fades just as it reaches their encounter with someone else.

Carnage responds to their Moglin ancestry by experimenting on captive Makai, comparing them with Moglins' healing hugs and sugar crazes. One prisoner he kills turns out to be their leader. The rebels no longer want only freedom from Nulgath's oppression; they want to destroy his empire. Unwilling to face the horde himself, Carnage sends you to Verick, Nulgath's double agent in the sewers. Verick remains loyal to the Archfiend, but mourns the dead leader.

Verick cannot persuade the Makai to seek a new leader instead of revenge. Even restraining their faction leaders fails to bring them to terms, and he admits that only Nulgath's blood will satisfy them. Lacking the force to subdue them, he uses stolen personal items from Lore's leaders to bluff that those groups have allied against the rebellion. You help make the deception convincing and join Carnage in crushing the uprising. Carnage welcomes further slaughter, but Verick knows the unrest remains. He still hopes for a new leader and asks forgiveness: "even minions have minds."

The Spirit from Oversoul

When Dirtlicker reports that Malgor's Shadowflame overtook a Nulgath clone, Nulgath dismisses the loss as a fraction of his power but agrees to send reinforcements so neither the Legion nor Malgor will see the Nation as weak. More Fiends emerge through the portal as he warns Dirtlicker against wasting them.

In Pinewood Forest, you approach a Fiend that has left the Nation stronghold, but before the encounter becomes a fight, a Spirit emerges from its body and the empty vessel falls.

The Spirit came from Oversoul, where it was killed during Nulgath's conquest but refused to pass on while its world still needed help. It has reached Lore in search of the source of his power and argues that either saving a world or claiming that power yourself should appeal to you. Agreeing to help, you lead it into the Nation's stronghold.

Your acquaintance with Dirtlicker gains you access to the library he built to preserve the Nation's history. Once he returns to his duties, you and the Spirit find The Origins of Master Nulgath, The Archfiend of Adimonde, whose account takes you back to Nulgath's mortal life.

Nulgath and Adimonde

Refusing to become a tool of the Inquisition, whose members want to control his magical talents, Nulgath fights his way through their guards and captains and defeats the Grand Inquisitor to escape.

In the caverns, Nulgath opens a portal and follows an unfamiliar power into the Fiend Realm. Its god, Adimonde, is surprised that a mortal can endure the realm, but Nulgath demands to know where he has arrived.

Bound to the Fiend Realm and needing a vessel to reach and consume other worlds, Adimonde offers Nulgath power through a Fiend Shard in exchange for conquest and leadership of the Fiends. Nulgath refuses to become a puppet, but considers a bargain that lets him build power of his own.

Nulgath accepts the challenge of becoming strong enough to command the Fiends, telling Adimonde his eventual aim without disguising it: he will grow the offered power, return and take the Fiend God's place. Despite the threat, Adimonde accepts the bargain.

The Founding of the Nation

Intent on controlling access to the power behind his new authority, Nulgath establishes his rule by force, training the Fiends, destroying rival shards made through their own attempts to commune with Adimonde, and punishing disobedience.

Nulgath faces a Fiend Champion's challenge as other Fiends attempt to destroy his shard, but defeats the challenger and stops the coup. Claiming the survivors now accept his rule, he plans to create more shards, conquer other worlds and eventually replace Adimonde.

The Fortress Shard

Back in the library, the Spirit sees an opening in Nulgath's fierce defense of his shard: one of his crystals is in this fortress, and destroying it may weaken his hold on Oversoul. You agree to act while the chance remains.

Dirtlicker refuses to step aside despite your wish to avoid fighting him, revealing a personal Fiend Shard granted by Adimonde. Having studied Nulgath's rise, he hopes to become his second-in-command by killing enemies and traitors, including you.

You fight through the fortress defenders and break the personal Fiend Shard that gives Dirtlicker his new power. His last attack fails and leaves him unconscious, and the Spirit urges you onward to Nulgath's separate fortress shard.

The fortress shard is enormous, making the Spirit wonder how powerful Nulgath's other crystals must be. You chip away at it while holding off the defending Fiends until it breaks.

Nulgath's Response

The Fiends collapse with the shard's destruction, leading the Spirit to believe they were drawing power from it and will need time to recover. Although the shard may regenerate, weakening this stronghold gives it hope that Oversoul can survive, and it stays to search the library until reinforcements force it home.

When Adimonde mocks the loss in the Fiend Realm, Nulgath answers that he has many shards across Lore and Oversoul: removing a grain of sand does not remove a desert. Enough grains would, Adimonde replies, questioning whether you might have made a better champion.

Nulgath calls your achievement impressive rather than punishing strength, deciding that if his tasks helped make you capable of this, he will make the next ones harder. As he considers returning to remind his subjects of their place, Adimonde urges him to use the power gained in the Fiend Realm for its intended purpose: consume.

The Nation Loremasters

Jadzia, head of the Nation Loremasters, studies Nulgath's domain with a ruthlessness that matches its ruler. Her order are scientists as well as scribes, willing to sacrifice lives to remove its flaws. Strengthening the Makai will force those above them to improve or lose their place. Her experiments make them deadlier and crueler, and screams rise from the research pit. Jadzia wonders whether they belong to the subjects or the Loremasters studying them. She blames weak soldiers for Nulgath's defeat by his former protege and believes humiliation can drive his complacent followers to greater strength.

The Fiend Shard exposes the limits of what Nulgath will share. Jadzia knows it holds Adimonde's power and cannot understand why Nulgath keeps it from his followers. His refusal to grant access does not stop her from studying fragments obtained by other means. The possibilities leave her uncertain whether she is trembling with terror or excitement.

Taro Blademaster

Taro Blademaster presents another puzzle. Jadzia cannot explain why such a powerful Horc follows the samurai path or remains in the Abyss when she believes he owes its ruler neither loyalty nor debt. He refuses to speak to the Loremasters, but you earn his trust and receive a journal. Jadzia's questions remain unanswered, and the diary becomes yours to read.

Reading the diary, you follow Taro's attempt to sharpen his tranquil spirit by confronting darkness. Voices draw him through caves that seem to change with his position or perception. He crosses a portal radiating malice and finds familiar-looking caverns that no longer feel part of Lore. Ferocious, Moglin-like creatures attack him; a cloaked figure refuses conversation. Carnage is more forthcoming, describing a strange space-time used by Nulgath. Recognizing the name from old scriptures, Taro presses on to find him.

Taro next describes an armored warrior whose body resembles Carnage's. Disarmed, the warrior attacks his mind, but Taro overcomes him and believes the enemy's mistake was to dismiss him as an ordinary Horc. Afterward he feels watched. The next page repeats "Endless eyes" until the writing breaks off. In the following entry, he questions whether he wrote it at all. Insisting that his mind is not easily broken, he suspects something more dangerous than the fallen warrior and feels compelled to find it even as he wishes to leave.

His meeting with Nulgath ends that confidence. The Archfiend outmatches him, treats his challenge as entertainment and, in Taro's account, seals him inside the realm to fight disciples for amusement. His strong spirit promises a "more satisfying harvest." Taro keeps resisting, but watching other travelers die makes him question whether helping them would save them or condemn them to his own fate. He fears that the chance of freedom might make him abandon his convictions. The last entry waits for someone different, someone with enough promise to change what seems inescapable.

Ana and Carnage

Gravelyn asks you to investigate the Nation with Ana, a Lightguard Paladin troubled by her order's torture and executions. Ana's father, Advocatus Carcano, had fled to her childhood home after breaking his contract with Nulgath and stealing a weapon described as a dying star. Leaving a conspicuous dummy to conceal her absence, Gravelyn accompanies you to find him.

At the estate, the Lightguard and Nation are already fighting, and explosive talismans on novice paladins make Gravelyn question whether their commanders are using them as shields. Jadzia identifies the stolen weapon as a Fiend Shard that siphons mana for Nulgath, warning that it is overloaded and threatens to collapse into a black hole linked to Adimonde.

The house exposes Ana's connection to Carnage: Carcano had promised his second child to Nulgath for power, but Ana's older brother had entered the Nation in her place. When a damaged notebook reveals his resentment of the attention she received, Ana cannot understand why he had substituted himself, and you continue into the spatial tears to recover the missing pages.

In the restored diary, her brother kept a lamp burning against Ana's nightmares, saved her drawings, and treated her injuries after she protected him from both the mirror's Gentleman and their father. As he tended her injuries, Ana admitted that she did not want to become a monster and asked why no one would save them. Meanwhile, the Hushed threaten to expose the Nation's secrets. You reach an understanding with Adimonde that silences them and directs you toward Carcano.

Near the unstable Shard, Gravelyn interrupts Adimonde's further attempt to bargain with you before Nulgath arrives to declare that Carnage had passed his test of loyalty. Together with Ana, you help defeat Carcano, who is still trying to offer his daughter as payment. Carnage refuses to give Ana the simple explanation she wants, but Nulgath rewards him with a place in his inner circle. Both siblings receive Fiend Shards, giving Ana a source of power beyond the Lightguard's blessings.

The Temple of Light

While the alliance between Good and Evil still holds, Gravelyn sends you to a newly discovered Temple of Light after reports that Nulgath's Nation had attacked it. Neither she nor Queen Victoria had known the temple existed. She asks you to establish what had happened before the incident breaks the alliance.

At the gates, Carnage confronts you over the destroyed Fiend Shard, but Nulgath stops him to explain that an impostor had invaded in the Archfiend's name and become trapped when the clerics sealed the temple. Nulgath insists that, whatever he might do outside a treaty, he had not attacked an ally. You offer to find the impostor in exchange for settling your own dispute with him.

Nulgath silences Carnage before he can reveal what the Nation had lost besides its Fiend Shards, leaving you with other questions about the temple: it stands near Lynaria's birthplace and displays her image without Victoria's permission. Although Gravelyn's connection to Celeritas gives Nulgath another reason for restraint, he warns that the relationships between Light, Darkness, and the Shadows are changing.

Working with Carnage, you investigate the impostor's trail and break the outer wards without killing the temple's paladins. Their rune-covered sashes grant spells beyond their abilities, but when the seal fails, the Light leaves them unable to respond or control themselves.

Jadzia confirms that the replacement Temple of Light had escaped the notice of Swordhaven, Celestia, and both Evil factions' spies, and notes that its followers' access to Elemental power recalls the Planar Conflicts. Nulgath finds that Light is not what holds the inner doors shut: the impostor is using Nation contractors against him. Because they had kept their vows, his own agreements prevent him from attacking them.

You gather Shadow essence from possessed creatures while Nulgath investigates how the invaders use dead bodies to shield themselves from daylight. Using that essence for a disguise, Nulgath fools the presence behind the doors. Inside, you discover what the Nation has concealed. Oblivion has been possessed, and the defective Nulgath clone entrusted to him has been stolen.

After you drive the parasite from Oblivion and it escapes into the temple, he explains that the attackers had resembled their Shadowscythe allies. Nulgath's defective clone requires careful destruction to prevent Adimonde from exploiting it; the Stranger wearing its corpse has instead gained access to the Nation's contracts. When another fragment enters your body in the ensuing darkness, Nulgath pulls you outside and removes it.

Nulgath recalls once dismissing Sepulchure as a puppet of the Strangers, until Gravelyn's birth briefly showed him a warrior fighting for himself instead. With the impostor able to command Nation followers through the clone, Carnage and Oblivion cannot accompany you below. You and Nulgath make a temporary contract before entering together, binding his borrowed authority to a strict promise.

In the lower halls, you help free Darkness spirits from Doom by extinguishing the torches, which Nulgath takes as evidence that the Shadows use Voidstar's realm without belonging to it. The possessed Nation warriors prove harder to save: their parasites kill their hosts rather than be captured. A hidden stair leads you to a burned library, where a captive necromancer's surviving journal offers clues to the temple's purpose.

Astero, a Light Elemental claiming to serve Celeritas and Gravelyn, identifies the invader as the Worm That Walks and says it is redirecting a life-draining portal toward Darkness. The journal and pedestal contradict that account: the Light's followers had already prepared that destination themselves. You and Nulgath play along, with him taking his place on the pedestal while you hold off the Worm.

Wearing the clone's corpse, the Worm claims Nulgath will eventually betray you and asserts a right to your soul through his contracts. Your pact has reversed that relationship by lending Nulgath a fraction of your power to destroy the impostor in exchange for forgiving your past offenses. Any attempt to harm you or use the power for another purpose will cost him his life, and on the pedestal he prepares a destination Astero had not intended.

Nulgath sends the Worm into Adimonde's stomach rather than the Plane of Darkness; the Fiend God mocks the Shadows' diminished state and claims their Master was lost to time before consuming the intruder. With the clone destroyed and your contract ended, you demand that Astero report the temple to Victoria and Gravelyn. Nulgath remains to study its pedestal, recognizing an unstable imitation of the Drowning Machine described in the journal.

Oblivion, Nulgath and the Fiend Void

Drawn into Deleuze Tundra by Nulgath's bounty on Oblivion, you follow a Hushed remnant hiding in discarded robes through the black snow, hearing its warning that the landscape is part of Oblivion's body. Jadzia and Carnage are among the few hunters still able to resist its despair. An expedition journal supplies clues about GenoKratos and Verde, but defeating Oblivion's Herald only leaves you overcome by the same influence.

Your guide reveals himself as Casimir, the former Archfiend who had taught Oblivion, given the Darkness Elemental flesh and power, then been betrayed to Adimonde as earlier Archfiends had been. Oblivion's discovery of that feeding cycle had left him unwilling to continue. Nulgath had interrupted the expected feast by binding his predecessor into service and sealing the memories that are now returning.

Nulgath gives Casimir's remnant Oblivion's original Fiend Shard, then brings his predecessor into Adimonde's realm while excluding you from their confrontation. Rather than feed another rival to the god, he pushes Oblivion to recognize their common enemy, and Oblivion responds by striking Adimonde and pledging his strength to Nulgath. Nulgath tells Adimonde that a stronger Nation brings him closer to breaking the cycle. He then asks Oblivion to test his resistance to the Void.

The investigation continues in Terces Archive, where a guide wearing Jadzia's face leads you through Nulgath's experiments. Her logs describe clones collapsing, repeated transfers injuring his soul, and one trial removing his capacity for fear. When another produced a personality he could no longer recognize and later work created a mindless predator, Jadzia questioned what becoming a god would gain him if he could no longer remain himself. At the Infinity Pool, your guide drops the disguise: Adimonde had brought you there to speak directly.

You enter the Fiend Void to question whether replacing its god would end the cycle or merely repeat it. Adimonde reconstructs Casimir as your guide and displays the former Archfiends Vigneron and Rodeleros as further examples of his control, with your time powers offering little leverage inside his body. Threatening Lore's sun if Nulgath does not advance quickly enough, Adimonde proposes a wager that would let him visit your world.

With his Infinity Pool and Shards unresponsive, Nulgath seizes Termina's portal and takes Celestia and Felix as insurance; Hans volunteers to accompany and protect them. Meanwhile, Adimonde's ancient Fiends overrun Tercessuinotlim. You return to find the Nation wounded and divided, free your companions, and fight through the invaders to reach Nulgath and Adimonde in the realm the Archfiend is building.

You reject Adimonde's claim that you fear Nulgath's potential and temporarily advance the Nation's internal clocks, granting powers they could attain in the future. Under your wager, you will not fight Adimonde personally; if the Nation defeats him, he will let Nulgath kill and replace him. When they force the god to surrender, he makes the offered victory sound like another gift from your hand, and Nulgath refuses it. His refusal fulfills the wager's losing condition, allowing Adimonde to take a vessel and remain in Lore. You leave the damaged alliance to search for him. At Termina, Hans's glowing eye, missing memories, and sudden hunger suggest where the danger might have gone.