"And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled

If at all. Either you had no purpose

Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured

And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places

Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,

Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—

But this is the nearest, in place and time..."

- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

“Time isn’t a flow. It’s an explosion... An explosion of moments.”
-  The Legion of Luckums

"Did you feel that?"
- Molator, Mercane Chronomancer

• Basile to Hazel: It’s been an honour meeting you. Courage.

• Woog: Overcome with emotion, parting ways with Wind Splinter. Pre-battle serenity. Engages in a hankuan ceremony, touching forheads with each member of the company of heroes

• Luckums: Convenes the Legion of Luckums (to discuss deleting her browser history)… shares thoughts on the G-Nome and the Inbetween Men and how they were created

• Stormfizzle: surrounded with tiny boxes of magical protections and swirling rings of runes, pulls pointy hat on a little tighter

• Hazel: looks around at everyone and declares: “This is the greatest adventure of my short life. It has been an honour!”

• Azariel: gifts an embroidered Azlanti battle banner to Woog and says, “Respect”

• Rip: Stands apart and alone. Arms himself with his secret undead pirate rapier

• Khalid: finishes preparing his gear, quietly humming. Then, moves on to engage in one-on-one awkward conversation with each of the companions, trying to be a leader. Takes out an icon – a memory of Chenwulf… fireballs the war room, so as to leave no evidence… spins the cylinder of his revolver and stands in the ready line…

• Orag: prepares a special glowing blue sushi for everyone, tells them not to ask where it came from, smashes his in his forehead… “Its not the size of the hero in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the hero.”

• Shroktath: takes a moment with everyone as they are preparing to enter battle; his fears are disappearing, replaced by love and confidence in his crew; which includes the Ancorato adventurers; he ugly cries, saying goodbye to Orag, “thank you”

Windsplinter remembers. The Planar adjacency Device ripped a hole in Miden that reverberated forward and backward through time. Windsplinter feels the wound. It will be nothing to the wound felt by Woog will feel when the soul-bonded weapon is gone.

The cold and the dark. That’s what you remember the most of the first time you travelled down the length of the Alabaster Trident’s elongated foundations running down the side of the Pillar Miden. For two hours you sank into the crushing depths of the Maruss Ocean, to reach Auberon’s twisted laboratories at their base.

What you don’t know is where Ochyuma, disguised as Vallik, planted the Planar Adjacency Device: Inside the long tower, or somewhere along the length and breath of the 757 m wide pillar? Where do you even begin?

• Orag: Uses a Hero Point to create the greatest jambalaya feast in history

• Hazel: Finds Auberon’s 10,000 year old stash of “the good stuff” (collection of thousands of bottles—4,326—from across Sentar and the Planes)

• Azariel: As the last surviving member of the Azlanti Elite, she awards everyone with the Azlant Legion of Merit

• Rip: Digging through Auberon’s treasure, coveting things, and begins plans to establish Ancorato as an independent, sovereign entity

• Khalid: Known to his goblin crew as “Mother”, Khalid spends his time nursing Shroktath and Luckums back to health – leads shanties at the kitchen Caleigh

• Shroktath: physically and psychicly damaged, he takes time to heal; blessings of the Gardener to everyone

• Basile: takes it all in; takes the time to see through all of their eyes

• Crabman: eating jambalaya, watching Rip – doesn’t like what he sees

• Stormfizzle: hat pulled low, uses “ghost sound” to launch into Gnomish death metal

• Luckums: shares a copy of her cookbook with Orag, “How to Eat Aberrations”; convenes again with the Legion of Luckums, one last time… [DM: "You don’t have to kill yourself… you just have to ghost yourself when you come calling. The multi-Spheres will be filled with a legion of endless Luckumses no matter what you try to do about it. To obsess over being the only one is sort of like being Ochyuma. Leave pathologies like that to the aboleth."]

This was it. In more ways than one. If we couldn’t stop Ochyuma, it was the end of the road for the spheres, and for life itself. Ohcyuma had managed to locate an ancient Azlanti artifact that was like a massive black powder bomb, except worse. I didn’t really get how it worked, but he’d placed it at the pillars of creation, the pillars that supported Maglulon. If he managed to take down the pillars, the spheres would tumble, and the Indistinction would swallow all.

So, not good.

Sad, in a more personal way, was that we knew that this was it for the camradery between us and the Heroes of Ancorato. The powers that had brought us together across time and space had run dry. The G-nome lay lifeless. But we thought we had a plan.

Ochyuma was ancient, powerful, pure evil and determined to destroy. We prepared this time, and well. Magical energies divine and arcane sizzled through the air. Weapons and armour were checked, gear was secured and positioned. And as the preparations continued it was nice to have a final moment with each of the heroes. The awesome power of Azariel. The steely soul of Woog. The arcane mastery of Stormfizzle. The calm confidence of Rip. 

But I broke down when I got to Orag. He’d meant so much to me, and this looked to be the last time I’d see him one way or the other. I wept as I gave him a big bear hug. I managed to thank him between the tears.

It was a bit like a funeral watching Woog say goodbye to his companion, Windsplinter, as the essence of the weapon dissolved and the energies released brought us back to its home, the Pillars from which it had been crafted. And then there/then we were. Ochyuma and servants with final preparations for their dark plan to end the creation they could not conquer.

We attacked. Thanks to the powers granted us by Brahl, I could hear Basile in my mind, and I knew he wanted my help. He was going to focus his attention on the bomb. But as he used his impressive mind to examine the bomb, its triggers and guards, he quickly realised that one of the triggers for the bomb was the death of Ochyuma. Which, judging from the deadly attention of my comrades, was at hand. Our combined company had come after the Aboleth with all their considerable might and he was bloody and battered.

But Basile got the word out. Largely through my pack warden’s leadership, we managed to separate the bomb from this trigger, and then defeat Ocheyuma and his guards. But the formidable magical guards were still in place and the bomb was still primed to explode. Fear, Pain, Death, Paralysis. It came to me as a feeling more than a thought. As powerful as these magics were, they were all a part of life, a part of my calling. I could defeat these protections by taking them into me.

I’m glad I didn’t stop to think about it too much. When I put my hands on the ring of symbols and opened myself up to these dark magics they quickly threatened to overwhelm me. It was more than I could have handled, and I could feel the destructive forces tearing at my soul. But then I felt the presence of my comrades join my own, their hand on my back, my shoulders. I felt them take some of the suffering from me and onto themselves. I felt their support all around me.

And then a truly strange and awful thing happened. I felt the power of life build within me almost to bursting. The other side of life, it’s ending and suffering, forming a loop without end into joy and growth and back to fear and death, returning to rebirth and over and over and over…

I reached for the G-nome and it pulled the magics from me. I could feel the Azlanti device hum into activity, and spin, its ancient and powerful magics fueled once more. The Heroes of Ancoranto could return home. They would have a chance to save Sentar from the destruction that Ochyuma had unleashed upon it.

The bomb was rushed to a safe distance from the Pillars by dolphin servants summoned by Orag. A sad, but noble and needed sacrifice.

The Heroes took hold of the G-nome and, in a blink, were gone.

I crumpled to the ground, I wasn’t quite sure what the G-nome had taken and left, but it sure felt like it hadn’t left much.

And how would we return to Maglulon and our quest to save that sphere? I was too drained to care at the moment.

It was a moment full of expectation. Here the combined heroic forces of two spheres stood, Having saved all of known existence from obliteration, having defeated two arch villains. And yet the Heroes of Ancorato could not be satisfied. Their homes, their loved ones, almost all that they knew, had been sacrificed to defeat Ochyuma and save creation. Or had it? If life could be brought back to the mighty Azlanti artifact, the G-Nome, its powers could return the heroes to the right moment in time and space granting the possibility of preserving all they held dear.

Incongruously, their fate lay in the hands of a hulking, one-eyed, drooling half orc. You could have heard a pin drop as the young warrior approached the ancient device. Everyone awaited something fantastic… in vain? Shroktath picked up the still clearly dead device, fumbled around with it, plainly having no idea what to do, and you could almost sense the desperation creeping into everyone. And then, some part of the device found something in the gardener. His eyes grew wide, his body glowed, and the device drew from the connection to the architects that flowed through his veins. It didn’t take long. The device sprang to life again with clicks and whirs. 

Shroktath slumped. He seemed smaller, somehow. And you noticed that a niggling sense of fear had crept back into your minds - something that had been pleasantly absent during your time with him. You’d gotten used to it. Tears rolled down his face, but the young warrior looked up at you and smiled. 

“Go,” he said softly. “Protect what you can.”