The fairy Ivy leads Kasskar to the Raven Forge. There, he finds Polaris's fauxlacteries and Aeris's Orb of Contravention, suggesting the party might have destroyed a fauxlactery instead of Aeris's true phylactery. Ruling the Inkeri decades after finding Lethe's Star, the unaging, left-handed Beowolf is mortified to meet an elderly, right-handed Beowolf.
Beowolf was now cemented as the Inkeri king, so Jaris, Kasskar, and Ord returned to their respective homes.
The Ninety-Nine's Malik had already made Ord the head of al-Watan's guard and Champion of the Ninety-Nine at the beginning of Part 1, and he now returned to al-Watan to pursue that future. Kelly said that Ord would also explore the irradiated plane that the Ninety-Nine had abandoned.
Jaris and Kasskar returned to Hollin. Keith told us that after the campaign, Kasskar would use the Wayward to build a profitable trading enterprise between Hollin and Hilde. Earlier in the campaign, I believe that Derek had told me that Jaris would seek a death doing something good, but now he decided to live and go about doing good to make up for Aeris's evil.
In addition, Kasskar and Jaris were recontacted by Chill Touch after a long silence.
In Game 20, the party was contacted by a man named Maycott, from an organization called Chill Touch. Maycott said that Chill Touch's purpose was to "maintain the balance of justice," and that they'd been aware of Kasskar since his parents were murdered. Maycott gave the party Chill Touch's intelligence that Beowolf's parents were in the divine prison Narshasa. In exchange, Kasskar and Ord's signed an "agreement" with Chill Touch - actually just a blank page that Chill Touch would fill in as they pleased, and Kasskar and Ord signed the agreement in their own blood.
Not too long after Kasskar and Jaris return to Hollin, Maycott comes to visit Kasskar, and brings Kasskar some very nice wine. He asks whether Kasskar can talk with him somewhere private. There, over drinks, Maycott says that originally Chill Touch wanted Kasskar and Ord to kill Kidu, the Gradskan Angel of Death. Maycott says that in fact, killing Kidu was the original purpose of Chill Touch's centuries-old organization.
But, he says Chill Touch has confirmed that Aeris killed the Angel of Death in the Royal Mummy Cache under the Mooncalf. He says that Kidu had protected the ancient Gradskan hoard under the City of the Dead. But now with Kidu dead, the hoard would be open to them, if Kasskar would agree to be their..."locksmith." Maycott says his goal is not to loot the hoard, but that there's something beautiful there that would interest Kasskar, and his friend Jaris.
They go at night, to a place with an iron gate for a door and caskets arrayed inside. Then with Kasskar picking the locks, they go in and downstairs, and indeed, find the ancient Gradskan hoard.
The hoard items aren't modern treasure. The hoard includes many wood carvings, and many iron age craft items. Some are very beautiful, but as a fence, Kasskar imagines they wouldn't bring much on the market. But, loitering among the hoard of treasure there, they meet three Hereward guardians. Maycott says that on command, each of these three guardians will find one soul on earth, alive or dead, that they name, and escort it to Hereward.
So, Kasskar and Jaris should decide who these three souls would be.
I imagined that Jaris might want one of the guardians to escort his own soul, his parents' souls, or even Aeris's soul to Hereward, but I believe he declined. Kasskar decided to keep his own guardians in reserve rather than use them.
After Kasskar returned home from the Gradskan hoard, he was surprised by another visitor.
Kasskar returns home from the hoard. He's maybe making himself comfortable for the evening and drinking what's left of the wine Maycott brought. He hears a soft but rapid tapping on the door.
If he opens it, he finds the fairy Ivy in the hallway. She circles like Lassie trying to get him to follow her. If he follows her, she leads him outside, through the Market, across the Thoroughkill Bridge, and into Lofton Castle. She leads him down to the bottom floor, and there Kasskar finds about 20 orbs that all look identical to the phylactery that the party destroyed in the plane without time - and they're laying neglected around the room. Kasskar hears a low hum, and traces it to a dim orange ball. The ball occasionally changes by itself between different states or moods: a silent, almost metallic grey; or a warm orange that hums quietly; or a hot orange that crackles loudly.
On a successful Insight roll, Kasskar recognized the orange ball as the orb magic implement that Aeris had taken from Krohn - the Orb of Contravention. They considered the possibility that Aeris had returned here somehow; that the phylactery they'd destroyed in the plane without time was a fauxlactery; and that Aeris had actually hidden his real phylactery here among the other fauxlacteries that the fairy Polaris had made. But there was no way to know for sure.
Finally, Steve told us that back on Hilde, Beowolf took the title Defender rather than King, and that he worked to further reunite the Inkeri clans through diplomacy rather than conquest. Beowolf the left-handed, or Beowolf Sinister, became a great and benevolent ruler. But one day, thirty years after the campaign's end:
Then, one day Beowolf is sitting on the throne Touching for the King's Evil, and there's a long line of sick folks coming up to Beowolf. Each supplicant bows before Beowolf so that Beowolf can touch their head, then turns up and faces Beowolf so Beowolf can give them a coin. Although he's busy doing the Touch for many people, a man in the line repeatedly catches Beowolf's attention, distracting him. Beowolf can't see his face, but something about his figure and gait are very familiar. He has a bowed back and leans on a staff in his right hand. Eventually the distracting figure reaches Beowolf and bows for the touch. After Beowolf touches him, he turns his face up to receive the coin. At this moment, Beowolf is stunned to see the man's face is identical to his own.
And so the campaign ended - roll the credits.
Proofreading all the game write-ups a final time, I see now that Beowolf's final scene was pretty clearly foreshadowed in the witches' comments to Aeris in Game 12.