Photo Gallery
First Sorcerer
Synopsis
Jeff Lawing is a lead programmer for Singularity Online, the world's most advanced fully immersive virtual reality game. He joins the beta testing for the game, knowing that the game's AIs long ago took control of the program, and that he has no clue what he might find.
Jeff takes the name Aranos in the game and becomes an aleen, a fay/elf hybrid. He chooses the sorcerer class, a spellcasting class that has to manually craft their spells rather than learning them or gaining them by levels, and discovers that he is the only one of his kind in the game. He also meets Veronica, his AI guide in the game.
He spawns into the world of Ka, a world that has undergone a terrible cataclysm called the Feast of Virnal. During the Feast, the gods of Light were locked away from the world, and creatures of Darkness ran free in the lands of Light, destroying and ravaging freely. The Feast is over, but the kingdoms of Light are few, scattered, and weak, barely clinging to existence and surrounded by deadly Blightlands.
He enters Ka near the elven Stronghold of Eredain only to find that the elves are unfriendly to Travelers, what the natives of Ka call players. The previous Alpha testers apparently ran rampant over the natives, and now Travelers have a bad reputation. Golloron, elder of Eredain, sends Aranos to the Travelers' Trials, a series of deadly tests that only a Traveler could complete. When Aranos completes each test, he encounters the memories of Lythienne, the Last Sorceress, who trains him how to be a sorcerer. He completes the tests and exits the Trials through an Arcane Door, a magical transport system. Inside, he's assaulted by Darkness that tries to take over his body but manages to drive it out, gaining immunity to mental control and domination in the process.
He finds himself in the fallen city of Haerobel, a withered and dessicated ruin of an elven city filled with Corruption and inhabited only by undead. Entering the city, he faces its guardian, a giant flaming skeleton, and in battling it, he discovers how to combine his Stamina and Mana into one energy, giving him a new skill called Arcane Archery. Using his Master Tracking skill, a gift from Lythienne's memories, he discovers a living elf in the city, a warrior named Geltheriel who has been starved, abused both physically and mentally, and filled with Corruption. He frees her and leads her to food and her lost weapons, including her family heirloom sword that she feared lost forever. In return for his saving her life and returning the weapon, she swears an oath to serve him and becomes his Oathbound Follower.
Together, the pair fight their way to the top of the city, seeking the exit. At the city's peak, they encounter the city's master, who is none other than Lythienne herself. The Sorceress, afraid that the Feast would destroy all her learning and knowledge, created a powerful but flawed memory stone to hold her knowledge. The stone sucked her memories from her, and a student carried them to Eredain to place them in the Traveler's Trials before falling to the Feast. Left with great power but no memory of how to use it, Lythienne summoned a dark spirit to instruct her, and at its urging, she performed a ritual that sucked the lives and souls from everyone in the city, shielding it from the armies of Darkness and turning the elves within into undead. Lythienne spent the centuries becoming slowly more Corrupted as she sought her lost memory stone and has gone insane. Aranos gives her back her memories, but when she and her vampiric minion try to kill Geltheriel, he unleashes an Ascended spell against them. This spell transcends the normal bounds of magic, and the weakened Sorceress and her spirit familiar are both killed, freeing Haerobel from the Darkness.
Aranos and Geltheriel return to Eredain through a second Arcane Door but find that the city is hostile to them. A strange elf has been stirring discontent against them, and when Golloron moves to intervene, the stranger summons creatures of darkness to attack Geltheriel, Golloron, and Aranos. They defeat the creatures, and the elf changes form, revealing himself to be the one who assaulted Geltheriel in Haerobel. She kills him in return, and upon death, his body shifts into that of a female elf before fading - the elf is a Traveler, one of the first from the Alpha testing, something that should be impossible. Aranos is left wondering how the Traveler, a woman named Lily, could be in the game still, as the Alpha test is long over.
Sorcerer Ascendant
Synopsis
Aranos and Geltheriel meet with Golloron, the elder of Eredain, to get a quest to cleanse Geltheriel of her Corruption. The elder tasks them with restoring the Arcane Doors, which once linked all the lands of Light but have now fallen into Darkness. This seems an impossible request, but Aranos accepts it and is given the quest to travel to the fallen city of Antas to visit the vault there, the greatest repository of knowledge in the world before the Feast.
Aranos and Geltheriel explore Eredain to begin preparing for this. Geltheriel introduces Aranos to her Uncle Durnal, who has a large library of skill books that can be used to quickly learn a new skill. Aranos discovers that with his Instinctive Meditation skill, he can actually enter the memories embedded in a skill book and train a skill at a vastly accelerated rate. He learns the skills Enchanting and Runecrafting and combines them into a new skill, High Enchatnment.
At the House of the Sickle, home of the Druids, they pick up a quest to redeem more lands and restore creatures lost to the Blight. They also gain a new companion, the Druid Rhys, who wishes to join them to combat the Darkness directly.
After he learns how to use the basic elements to fuel his spells, Aranos seeks membership and training in the House of Stars, the elven spellcasting guild, but when he's locked in the training room against his well, he discovers how to disjoin magical spells in order to escape. When he's once again attacked during training and lashes back at his attacker, he's challenged to a Wizard's Duel by Gorrid, scion of House Exxidor. He neither accepts nor refuses the Duel, holding it in abeyance.
Aranos goes to the House of the Moon to send a message to Phil, his best friend in real life, who's playing a human warrior in the game. He learns how to travel in dreams to pass along his message, but inside the Dreamscape, he's trapped by Morx, the dark god of nightmares. Aranos creates a new Ascended spell to escape and returns to Eredain safely. There, he discovers that an elven elder was slain the night before, and he and Geltheriel go to the House of Blades, headquarters of the elven guards, to investigate. The gaurds suspect him of killing the elder at first, but once he convinces them of his innocence, they give him a quest to find the true culprit. He also gains the services of a guard lieutenant named Saphielle, who joins his party.
Back in the House of Stars, Aranos is ambushed by Gorrid and a hidden Wizard. He incapacitates his attackers and takes them to Master Dirue, a master of the House with whom he's friendly, for judgment. She banishes Gorrid from the House of Stars in punishment.
Aranos and Saphielle investigate the deaths of what are now four elders in total, and he discovers that each elf was killed using void magic, then had their minds drained. He suspects that someone found Lythienne's flawed memory crystal and was using it to steal the knowledge of the elders.
The new party goes hunting together in the Blightlands around Eredain, and there, they slaughter a pack of wolflike amaroks. A single pup remains, and Geltheriel wishes to kill it, but Aranos unleashes an Ascended spell that cleanses Corruption from the area and turns the amarok pup into a fenrin, a celestial wolf. He bonds with the pup and names her Silma, meaning "starlight". He also meets Lily, the Traveler who'd caused trouble in Eredain, inside the Dreamscape. She tells him that she's working with Morx now. He drives her off, but he's sure she'll be back.
Jeff logs out of the game for a day and meets with Phil. There, he discovers that the skills he's mastered in the game have carried into his real life.
Back in the game, Aranos and his party go hunting together, but on their return, they're attacked by a group of twenty Travelers led by an elven Elder, Keryth of Exxidor, Gorrid's father, who Aranos realizes is the one killing the elders and stealing their memories. They defeat the Travelers, but Keryth reveals that after Gorrid's humiliation, the father magically enslaved his son using slave brands and did the same to Dirue in retribution. He challenges Aranos to a duel that Aranos refuses until Keryth shows that he's captured Geltheriel and that he'll use the slave brands on her next. In a rage, Aranos unleashes the same Ascended spell he used against Lythienne and drive off the elven elder. He then dispels the brands on Dirue, freeing her, but doing so leaves him too weak to do anything but execute Gorrid.
That night, Shadowborn creatures attack Eredain, and betrayal at the city's walls allows them to enter. At the same time, Travelers attack the home of Saphielle's parents, where Dirue is being sheltered. Aranos goes to defend her, but the Travelers turn on the elves and join him in the city's defense. They give him enough information to deduce that Keryth is using the knowledge he'd taken from the elders to try and enslave the Tree-heart, the center of Eredain that's linked to everyone in the city. Aranos confronts Keryth, and the two duel above the Tree-heart in full view of the entire city. Aranos wins the duel and frees the partially enslaved Tree-heart by using his Ascended spell to redeem it and the entire city, dying in the process. He's declared a hero of the city and given a patent of nobility granting him the lands and titles once held by House Exxidor, which is cast down.
In the final scene, Lily torments a powerful Summoner in their dreams to gain instruction in magic and reveals that she's been doing so for some time. David Newsome, CEO of Neodyne, speaks to his virtual assistant, revealing his interest in Aranos. Golloron is speaking to a bound captive, telling them that he orchestrated Keryth's betrayal, intending to rescue the city from the elder's attempt to enslave it and thus make the elves even more beholden to him. Aranos foiled that plan, and Golloron says that he will now make the Sorcerer pay, using the unnamed captive as a pawn.
Lord Sorcerer
Synopsis
Aranos, now Lord Evenshade, is faced with two tasks. The first is to build his new Noble House, which many of the Travelers who'd aided him defeating Keryth have joined. He arranges for the Travelers to be given quests to serve Eredain and sets his house up to perform quests for other houses in return for money and favor. He discovers a skill called Soulmending that lets him affect the souls of the deceased, drawing power from them, and finishes his preparations to leave the city. Arranging everything with his majordomo Lorsan, he then sets out to complete his second task: to penetrate the Vault of Antas.
Aranos and his party leave on the High Road, the enchanted road connecting the elven and human lands. At the same time, his best friend Phil leading his own party consisting of himself, an Archer named Longfellow, a Rogue named McBane, and a Shaman healer named Meridian, leave the human city of Stoneleague to meet Aranos at Antas.
Unbeknownst to Phil, his former party members Martina and Hector, a Ranger and a Warrior, join up with a Summoner named Liam and his Assassin companion to follow the other party to Antas. Martina hopes to loot Antas before Aranos, and perhaps even to kill the Sorcerer for the prestige and glory that would bring her. As she travels, though, she and Hector become wary of Liam, who seems to be holding back a great deal of his power.
Aranos and his party travel the High Road and find it overrun by the Shadowborn, especially at night. During the journey, Aranos discovers how to use his direct manipulation of mana to create advanced metals. He also unlocks the secret to enhanced Soul mana, which opens up the possibility of discovering more enhanced aspects.
As they travel, Aranos and Sapphielle grow closer, and he finds himself romantically attracted to her.
Aranos' and Phil's parties join up outside Antas, finding the area around the city overrun by undead. They take a guard tower, and Aranos Redeems it to serve as a base for the group. Aranos learns how to use his Soulmending skill to permanently kill undead, and he and Rhys join their spells to raise a special redeemed tree called oilarie that damages Shadowborn. The party begins making plans to enter Antas, seeking a secret entrance, but the tower is attacked by a powerful army of undead backed by a creature that drains life from all around it. Aranos defeats the creature but is left weakened; when the leader of the undead army tries to attack him, Saphielle comes to his rescue and defeats the creature in single combat. She is badly wounded, though, and falls unconscious after.
Meanwhile, Martina and Hector, who no longer trust Liam, follow him through a hidden tunnel into the city - but not before sending a message to Phil warning him about the tunnel and Liam. Liam ambushes them, and they awaken bound to altars in the temple of Virnal in the city, with necrotic energy draining their lives. Liam reveals himself to be Lily. They send another message to Phil to let him know what's happening.
When Saphielle awakes, she and Aranos sleep together for the first time. Afterward, Phil tells him that Martina and Hector are trapped in the city. Sheltered beneath a barrier Aranos creates, the party infiltrates the city through a tunnel and tracks Lily to the temple. There, she and Aranos battle, and she allows Geltheriel to kill her, which triggers an evolution for her as she drains the life from all her summons. She embraces her Corruption and becomes an undead vampire, but when she does, Zoridos, the lord of Antas and an incredibly powerful lich-like creature, arrives and places her under his thrall. He tries to recruit Aranos, but Aranos triggers a hanging trap he'd built that destroys most of the undead and badly damages Lily and Zoridos, allowing the party to flee at the cost of his life. In the battle, Martina is killed as well, but since she dies in the middle of a ritual designed to make her an undead, she comes back as a daywalker, a half-undead hybrid. She and Hector convince Aranos to let them join his team.
Aranos discovers how to combine his stats with his mana pool, using the link of his extremely high Charisma. This forces an evolution on him, and he shifts from an aleen to a high arcane, a far more magically talented race.
The party works their way into the Library, confronting Lily there. She allows herself to be defeated, hoping they can free her from Zoridos' control. Inside the now-Redeemed Library, Aranos descends to the vault and meets the Vaultkeeper, an otherworldly guardian of the Vault. The Vaultkeeper tells Aranos that to enter the Vault, he'll have to face and defeat Zoridos.
To do so, Aranos splits the party into two teams. He sends one, led by Phil, to attack Zoridos directly, while he, Saphielle, and Silma sneak into the city's Tree-heart so he can try to Redeem it. Phil's party is holding its own when Rhys betrays them by killing Meridian. Rhys tells them they have no choice but to retreat, but Phil rallies them, unwittingly passing the final test to unlock the Paladin class. With his new abilities, Phil holds back Zoridos until the undead lord realizes what Aranos is doing and teleports to face the Sorcerer.
Aranos and Saphielle defeat the Tree-heart's guardian, but before Aranos can Redeem the Heart, Zoridos appears and attacks. The creature is far stronger than Aranos anticipated, and it's about to kill him when Saphielle intervenes, shielding him from its attack. She holds it for only moments before it shatters her defenses. Saphielle dies in Aranos' arms, and enraged, he uses a single-use item and casts an Ascended spell that boosts his power enormously, allowing him to Redeem the Heart. He finds tens of thousands of souls trapped within it, all the souls that died to give Zoridos the power to hold Antas, and he uses his Soulmending ability to grant them peace and free them. Saphielle's soul is the last he frees, sending her to her rest.
Aranos discovers Rhys' treachery and enters the elf's mind to find that Golloron had tampered with the Druid, forcing him to act against Aranos. He does his best to free his friend from Golloron's influence.
Aranos returns to the Vault to gain the information he needs to advance Geltheriel's quest, and when he finishes, he holds a funeral for Saphielle in which he and Rhys plant a special tree in her honor before Antas' Treehome. The tree is a mingling of Aranos and Saphielle, and as he creates it, he hears Saphielle's voice one last time before she vanishes from his life forever.
In the final scene, Aranos confront Golloron in the Dreamscape, and the elder admits that he and the other leaders of the cities of Light have been paying a tribute of lives and blood to the Darkness since the Feast in return for peace. The two battle and destroy one another, Aranos using his Dreamstriding abilities and Golloron with a deep power that Aranos doesn't recognize.
Primal Sorcerer
Synopsis
Aranos has freed Antas, but his Cleansing Quest takes him to the human city of Stoneleague to seek instruction in creating and maintaining portals. He uses illusion magic to make Rhys, Geltheriel, and himself look like humans and to conceal Martina's half-undead nature, and the party travels to Stoneleague by the High Road.
In Stoneleague, Aranos makes contact with Neela, a friend of Phil and Martina and a Wizard of the College of Wizardry. He teaches Neela how to train her stats and mana skills more effectively, and in return, she takes him to the Dean of the School of Air, her chosen school. Aranos displays some of his abilities for the Dean, who agrees to speak to the Dean of the School of Dimensional Magic to see if Aranos can receive the training he wants.
Aranos also meets Avalyn, a teenage student at the College who has been struggling to make her magic work and has become furstrated and bitter. She's unable to pass through a magical barrier that any other student can, and Aranos links her to it so that she can pass freely for several days. He suspects that he can help her further, but he leaves the College without getting the chance to speak with her.
He heads to the Great Square and meets a leatherworker named Portia and sets up a deal with her to provide her with hides in return for her working with his House, and he travels to the Adventurers' Guild and takes a quest from the Guildmaster, Eagle-Eye Ryder, to track down a beast that destroyed some farming villages.
The quest leads Silma and him into the mountains north of the city, where he battles a draconic monster and kills it. He's confronted by a group of dwarves led by a Priestess who were also hunting the creature for its eggs. He makes a deal to let them harvest the monster in return for its head, half of what they take, and a single egg. He and Silma return to Stoneleague and turn in the quest in a single day, gaining him the right to take Guild-only quests without having to join the Guild.
He and Geltheriel take a walk together, where she tells him that his suppressed grief over Saphielle's death is causing his incredibly high Charisma to affect the people around him, including her. He promises to look for a solution. The pair are attacked by thieves, and Geltheriel kills several of them, allowing a few to escape so Aranos can track them to their hideout. McBane, Phil's Rogue friend, and his trainer Malcolm tell Aranos that the attack is strange, as thieves usually avoid dangerous-looking people. McBane gets a quest to look into the matter.
Aranos returns to the College and meets Avalyn once again. He tells her he knows that she's a Sorcerer, not a Wizard, and teaches her how to touch her mana and begin crafting her first spell. He agrees to help her as he can during his time in the city. He finds that Neela isn't available, and he returns to the Adventurers' Guild to meet his friends. They take a quest to investigate the disappearance of road patrols to the east, toward the city of Northmoor, while he and his team agree to investigate a group of monsters slaughtering caravans to the south, toward the city of Avendale. Aranos and his elven party head south and locate the creatures, finding that they're both intelligent and magic-using when they shouldn't be. Rhys realizes that they've been Awakened, an ancient Druidic practice lost to the Feast, and analyzes the creatures Aranos captures to learn as much as he can about the process. They discover a single cub in the creatures' den, and Aranos Redeems it into a leonal, a golden lion whose species went extinct during the Feast.
Back in the city, Aranos returns to the College, where he's told the Headmaster wants to see him. There, he discovers that he's caused some problems, first by teaching Neela, then by linking Avalyn to the barrier so she could pass through it. He finds out that the College has discovered his identity by mentally probing Neela against her will, and he reveals that the barrier uses Mind magic, something that is forbidden to be used on any Wizard in the College without permission - but not students. The Headmaster then asks him to take Avalyn with him to train her since the College can't do so, and Aranos agrees in return for whatever training he wishes - including learning about portals. The Headmaster also teaches Aranos about Primal mana, the powers associated with fundamental concepts of the universe like Death, Creation, and Order. Aranos learns about Domains, areas of Primal magic created by a powerful caster in which the caster can do practically anything related to their Domain without using SP - and the dangers of those Domains, including the fact that Primal mana gradually takes over the mind and will of its user, forcing them to act in its interests. Finally, Aranos meets with the Dean of Dimensional Magic and learns how to target portals, part of his Cleansing Quest.
Leaving the College, he's attacked by another group of thieves, but this time they first cancel out his magic, forcing him to defend himself with his staff. He captures one and lets McBane interrogate her. They discover that someone in the Thieves Guild is declaring war on the College and on Travelers, two things that will mean the Guild's destruction. McBane sets off to find out who this person is.
During logout, Aranos finds footage that shows Livia Tamarank - Lily in the real world - being executed. This happened while she was in the game against her will, trapping her in Singularity as Lily with no hope of logging out. When he returns to Ka, Aranos finds that a large force of urukkai have left the Citadel of Cendarta and are moving to occupy the High Roads toward Haerobel and Eredain. He instructs his House members to pass word in Eredain.
Meanwhile, Lily has gained an Evolved class that lets her capture sapient creatures and make them her thralls. She uses this ability to gain a small army of monsters and urukkai, then begins attacking patrols from Stoneleague and Northmoor. She uses her Dream Haunting skill to invade the dreams of the commanders and rulers of those cities, torturing them for information about troop movements, defensive plans, and the like. The cities send out larger and larger groups to stop her, and she adds them to her army as slaves or undead as she marches on Northmoor. She uses her stolen knowledge to infiltrate the city through an escape tunnel, and her army attacks it from within. She uses a secret failsafe to shut down the palace's defenses and turns the city's general and head of its College of Wizardry into vampiric slaves, then deposes the city's queen. When the Travelers return from logout, she sacrifices them in an attempt to Corrupt the city's heart and gain control over it, but the Travelers respawn in Stoneleague instead of Northmoor once she kills them. This clues Aranos in to Lily's location and plans, and he tells Guildmaster Ryder that the city will need to march an army against Northmoor soon to retake it before Lily can Corrupt the heart.
Aranos and his party travel to the dwarven city of Skollheld Heill to gain blueprints for a portal arch in return for the eggs he gave them. The Priestess of the Heartstone, ruler of the city, agrees to let Aranos have the blueprints he wants in addition to several others and to get training in dwarven enchanting in return for allowing discontented dwarves to leave the Skollheld and travel to Antas. After learning dwarven smithing and enchanting, Aranos meets the Priestess' daughter, Mutroda, a dwarven woman who turned away from her traditional role as a Priestess and became a Dwarven Juggernaut. Mutroda asks to join Aranos' party, and he agrees.
The party returns to Antas, where Aranos builds a portal arch and uses his new enchanting skills to perfect the structure, making it capable of opening a permanent portal. His quest updates, requiring him to maintain an open portal for 24 hours, something that the Dean of Dimensional Magic and the House of Stars have both warned him against. He travels to Eredain and creates a second portal there, outside the city, restoring the lost tower of Danastor in the process. He enters Eredain to discover that Golloron has vanished, and the army hasn't been summoned to face the encroaching urukkai. He agrees to speak with Golloron as the Savior of Eredain to find out why he's been absent. Before he can, the elves of Eredain begin chanting his name, which causes Golloron to burst from hiding and attack Aranos. The elder's battle with Aranos in the Dreamscape caused him to unlock his Domain of Destruction, and the elf hasn't been able to regain control of the Domain. At last, the elf gives into his Domain and attacks Aranos and his party. When they prove too powerful for Golloron to defeat with regular magic, he unleashes his Domain against them. Before he can finish them, though, a Nightmare Beast begins to attack the city. Aranos learns that was why he was warned not to leave a portal open; doing so could allow it to be Corrupted and draw creatures of Darkness.
Golloron wants to flee the city, but Aranos convinces the elf to join forces to face the Nightmare Beast. Aranos takes command of Eredain's forces and leads them against the Beast but to no avail. Golloron faces it to give Aranos a chance, but the Beast kills the elder with a blast of Darkness, then tries to slaughter Geltheriel the same way.
Enraged, Aranos uses an Ascended spell against the Beast, but the spell fails, and Aranos unlocks not one but two Primal Domains, War and Redemption. He unleashes these against the Beast. He and the Beast are perfectly matched in power, but Avalyn distracts it with a spell, allowing Aranos to destroy it but dying in the process. As the Beast dies, he hears the Darkness declare war on him, a war that he welcomes. Mutroda brings him Avalyn's body, but the body vanishes from her arms, revealing that Avalyn is a Traveler - something else that shouldn't be possible.
Aranos and his party Redeem his Corrupted portal, but doing so causes him to be drawn into Morx' realm, where the dark god threatens to trap him forever. Aranos wounds the god with a blast of combined War and Redemption, burning his hand and arm, before Geltheriel rescues him, pulling him out of Morx' realm. He returns to Eredain and tells the elves that Golloron died a hero, and that they now have to prepare for war.
McBane tracks down the high-up person causing problems in the Guild and discovers that this person is trying to destroy the Guild from within. They call themselves the "Scarlet King" and send McBane to respawn.
Aranos tracks down Lily and tells her that he wants to find a way to give her what she wants: a true death. He asks Lily why Livia was chosen to be trapped in the game, but before she can answer, he's forcibly logged out.
Warforged Sorcerer
Synopsis
Aranos logs out of Singularity to find himself called to the carpet of David Newsome, his ultimate boss and CEO of Neo-dyne. Newsome threatens him with being removed from the beta test, firing, and even jail time if Aranos doesn't stop digging into things he shouldn't. Aranos responds by threatening to reveal that Lily was involuntarily trapped in the game and that Avalyn was brought in illegally, as she's too young to join the beta test. That last accusation scares Newsome enough that he sends Aranos back into the game.
Back in Singularity, Aranos is tasked with the unenviable job of gathering the armies of the races of Light, each of whom is sequestered from the others and paying tribute to the Darkness in exchange for peace. Aranos starts by taking Avalyn to the House of Stars to become registered as an official Master there and to ask for their help in the coming war. Master Dirue tells him to come back in a few days to meet with the Grandmasters and be assigned his official duties, and she promises that the House will join the war effort.
In Eredain, with Golloron's passing, the Council of Patriarchs meets to discuss the election of a new Elder to the city. Before the meeting, Geltheriel and her mother meet, and her mother tacitly admits that she was wrong to oppose her daughter's chosen path and admits admiration for the person Geltheriel has become. The meeting is disrupted before it starts by the arrival of Prince Methild, son of the elven King and Queen, who has come to "observe" but who Aranos realizes is actually present to make sure that the new Elder follows the same path as the old one. To Aranos' mild dismay and the prince's shock, only Aranos is nominated for the position of Elder, spoken for by his ally Faraine and the mothers of Geltheriel and Saphielle. The Council is ended to reconvene in two nights to give everyone a chance to consider their choices. Afterward, Aranos and his party travel the High Roads at night for the first time, and in so doing discover that the urukkai have placed two small armies in the field, one heading for Antas.
In Stoneleague, Phil and Martina's party claims a partial reward for scouting Northmoor and finds out that they've become Guildmaster Ryder's elite team, the one he'll send on his most important missions. As they discuss this, Martina and Longfellow spot stealthed rogues infiltrating the Guildhall. Once they unmask the thieves, the rogues unleash explosive devices that badly injure Marie, the assistant Guildmaster. At the same time, they discover that Guildmaster Ryder's been poisoned; Meridian can only heal one. Phil forcibly unlocks a Paladin ability to Lay on Hands, healing Marie, and the party gets a quest to strike back at whoever organized the attack. They decide to rejoin McBane, whose Rogue Quest they now suspect is tied up in theirs.
Back in Antas, Aranos begins preparing a defense of the city. Mutroda tells him that he needs Dwarven defenses and that if they go back to Skollheld Heill, she thinks she knows a way he can trade for them. At the Skollheld, Mutroda discovers that she's officially been declared an outsider, which hits her hard. Aranos meets the Priestess of the Deepstone, Mutroda's mother, and asks for the blueprints to a dwarven gatehouse in return for his clearing the Ungoruszgol, a cavern that's a choke point between the Skollheld and the kongolorn spider-people. The Priestess grudgingly agrees, and Aranos takes a small group of dwarves with him to the cavern. It's held far more strongly than he expected, and he's forced to unleash his Domain to clear it. Afterward, he raises a dwarven gatehouse to secure the cavern, noticing as he does a vein of newly transformed warforged steel that his Domain of War created. He takes some to experiment with, then returns to the Skollheld. As a test, Mutroda asks him to tell the Priestess that he claimed the cavern as an outpost of Antas; when he does, the Priestess attacks him, intending to subdue him and offer him to the Darkness in return for continued peace. He instead Redeems the Stone of Heill, which drives the Corruption from the Priestess and the Skollheld, and the Priestess agrees to ally with him.
Meanwhile, Morx has taken Lily and is trying to train her to unlock the Domain of Death. He uses horrific tortures on the woman, but nothing is working. At last, Lily unlocks her Domain, but instead of Death, it's Madness. Her Domain frees her from Morx' influence, and with her embrace of Madness comes clarity. She realizes that she's been trying to get an army the wrong way. She's a monster, and she needs an army of monsters.
Aranos heads to the Library of Antas to speak with the Vaultkeeper about more legendary materials like his warforged steel. The Vaultkeeper gives him samples of starsteel, warpsilk, thought-silver, and sourcemetal, which comes from the same place as his arcane bloodline. He tries to touch a bar of bloodsteel, but it burns him with its Corruption. Aranos starts Enchanting with these materials, creating Legendary items.
With the newly erected defenses on the High Road leading to Antas, Aranos and his party along with defenders from the city meet the urukkai assault. The battle is close, but in the end, Geltheriel and Silma kill the ohtruk leading the raid, and the attack falls apart.
After the attack, Aranos raises a Masterforge for the Skollheld beneath the city, but it evolves into a Soulforge, a more powerful version capable of creating Mythical or even Divine items. He also begins training in Otherworldly Lore to see if it will teach him more Legendary materials.
The second Council of Patriarchs meets in Eredain, but Aranos is prepared for it. Prince Methild arrives again, this time as a Patriarch; his mother the Queen created a new House for him, giving him a spot on the Council. One of Aranos' opponents immediately nominates Methild as Elder, and Methild tries to convince the Patriarchs not to vote for Aranos. Aranos proves the prince's lies untrue and calls on the Awakened Heart of Eredain to make its own choice. The Prince attacks Aranos thinking to stop the Heart from naming the sorcerer as Elder, but Geltheriel intercepts him. The two battle, and while the Prince is higher-leveled and more skilled, Geltheriel's combat experience gives her an edge. The prince then unleashes his Presence, a Warrior version of a Domain. He fatally stabs Geltheriel, but doing so shows her how to unlock her Presence, as well, and she recovers and battles him once again. Once more, her skill and experience trump his sheer power, and she quickly defeats him. Aranos banishes him from Eredain after being named Elder by the Heart, but the Prince vows to return with the army.
Phil and Martina's party back in Stoneleague track down a hidden shipment moved by the Scarlet King into an abandoned estate in the High Quarter. The party attacks the estate, finding it far more heavily defended than they thought. Phil is locked in combat with an expert swordswoman and defeats her by unlocking the Paladin Smite ability. The party discovers a large group of Wizards from the Mages' College imprisoned in the estate, as well as an empty orb that was once filled with power.
Aranos and his party return to Haerobel, as the prince has told them that the King intends to abandon it. Once there, they're all overcome with melancholy; the city is still a ruin, there's no food of water, everything is on the verge of collapse, and the elves there are all suffering from a Demoralized debuff and are ready to abandon the city. Aranos tracks Lythienne's movements in the city to find the Heart, hidden beneath the stone building in which Geltheriel had first sworn her oath to him. He Redeems the Heart, and while doing so realizes that the Heart and city are one; the Heart is a spellform, and the city is the expression of that spell. He repairs the spellform, rebuilding most of the city using nothing but mana, then finds himself being logged out for his weekly checkup.
Once logged out, Aranos discovers that his doctor has been ordered to keep him out overnight for observation, in violation of the terms of the test. She doesn't want to but also can't go against orders. He convinces her to have coffee with him, observe him that way, and then send him back in. She agrees, and the two find they have a lot in common. Her name is Karla, and he promises to have a full breakfast with her next logout.
Lily meanwhile has ordered her army to assault Stoneleague, knowing that they'll die in the attempt. She travels to Cendarta to learn how the Darkness defeated the Light during the Feast since the urukkai and kongolorns aren't powerful enough to have done it. She fights her way to the master of Cendarta, who reveals to her how to unlock the Arcane Doors to unleash the bodakkai and how to summon a spirit of Madness to serve as a teacher for her new Domain.
Aranos logs back in to find the second urukkai army close to Haerobel. He builds more defenses, and he and the elves once again drive off the urukkai assault. Afterwards, the party returns to Stoneleague. On their way there, they encounter a patch of darkness from which the bodakkai emerge and attack them. Aranos ends the attack by realizing that the darkness is a portal and closing it from within. Once back in the city, he revisits the leatherworker Portia, who tells him that the corrupt noble family that had been harassing her hasn't been seen in a while. He sends a message to Martina's party about it, suspecting it has something to do with their Quest. McBane investigates and summons Aranos, who arrives to find everyone in the noble estate dead, with the head of the family sacrificed. An orb of some kind had been used and was missing, and on the ceiling, the Scarlet King left a note saying, "Proof of concept completed, Sorcerer." Something about all of this is bothering Aranos, and he goes into his skill training that night to distract himself. He can't focus, though, and he asks his Otherworldly Lore trainer Cron to tell him about the bodakkai. Cron tells him that the bodakkai come from the Bottomless Pit, the realm of the dark pantheon, not the Blood Realms as most think. He also tells Aranos that the darkness he encountered before came from the Ways of Shadow, the link between the Pit and the mortal realm. He takes Aranos there and finds the entire place is destroyed. Aranos realizes that the Ways' destruction explains the Feast: the Arcane Doors worked by moving through the Ways' counterpart, the Bridge of Light, rather than being a true portal. The Darkness Corrupted the Doors, and that brought the Bridge of Light into the Ways of Shadow, shattering them both and leaving the pantheon of light cut off from the mortal realm. Before her can leave, he's attacked by an avatar of Garax, one of the dark gods. He uses his Domain to drive the avatar off by bringing Redemption into the realm of Corruption, while he and Cron escape. The next morning, he tells Geltheriel that he's finally figured out how the Doors work, and he knows how to restore them, at least in theory.
His new understanding of the Doors makes him realize that someone could use Corrupt magic and the power of harvested souls to open an Arcane Door and summon the bodakkai. He rallies the city and goes to the Mages' College, where he finds that the Headmaster has been mentally dominated by the Master of the School of Mind magic. Aranos frees the man, interrogates the master, and finds that Radomil has been dominated into serving the Scarlet King by unleashiing the bodakkai. As he makes this discovery, the city's alarms ring out; Lily's army has arrived.
McBane convinces his mentor Malcolm to show him a secret way into the palace, and Aranos, Geltheriel, Phil, McBane, and Silma sneak inside while everyone else joins the defense of the city, preparing for the bodakkai attack. In the throne room, the king is sacrificed, which drains the Heart of power and uses it to fling open the Arcane Doors. The bodakkai pour into the room, but Phil uses a Paladin aura to drive back the darkness shrouding them, while Silma's Purifying Howl destroys them. Doing so also causes Geltheriel's depowered blade to glow with power, showing Aranos that there's still a source of celestial energy left in the world. Radomil, vastly empowered by the dark ritual, opens a portal that sends the bodakkai into Stoneleague. Aranos inspects Radomil to see if the man has any weaknesses, and his skill shows him that the cat sitting on the king's lap is more than it seems. He attacks it, and it shifts forms into a humanoid, revealing itself as a dread naldlooshi, or skinwalker, naming itself the Scarlet King. It attacks Aranos, whose magic is useless against it, but Geltheriel defends him, and the two battle across the throne room. Aranos cuts Radomil off from his ritual, and the Scarlet King flees into the open Arcane Door.
Aranos fetches Savannah, the Headmaster's assistant and a Grandmaster in Astral magic, and he, Phil, and Silma join her in the Arcane Door. There, he creates a Spell to counter the one holding the Door locked in the Ways of Shadow. Before he completes it, an incredibly powerful creature called Arioch the Fallen appears and attacks him. He barely holds Arioch at bay, and as Arioch stabs him fatally, he triggers his Spell using Silma's howl, Phil's aura, and the bar of starsteel the Vaultkeeper gave him to counter the Darkness, which Redeems the Arcane Door of Stoneleague even as he dies.
When he respawns, he discovers that the bar of starsteel has fused to his hand, allowing him to channel mana through to create celestial mana. The authorities in Stoneleague ask him to become their king, as the king is dead, and he reluctantly agrees. He uses his new authority to send out a Quest to all players to gather for an attack on Cendarta, as the urukkai have sent out a much larger army to attack Eredain, leaving the city lightly defended.
Lily travels to the elven capital of Cyva Alari. There, she uses the ritual that the master of Cendarta taught her and the deaths of her army to open the Arcane Door, unleashing the bodakkai and overrunning the capital.
Before heading to Cendarta, he borrows Geltheriel's sword, telling her he can repair it. He takes it to the Soulforge and uses the central forge to craft the item, pouring all of himself and his love for Geltheriel into it, as well as a hefty chunk of XP. Doing so upgrades the sword to a Mythical item, the True Blade of Evenshade. He joins the other players outside Cendarta and gives Geltheriel the reforged sword, telling her that the old one wasn't good enough for her. When she unsheathes it, it erupts with celestial fire, and in return, she swears herself body and soul to him, becoming a Soulbound Follower who he has a chance to raise from death if she dies.
He casts a spell called City Purge that requires half a million SP, meaning he has to tap his linked city Hearts to cast it. The Spell kills most of the urukkai inside the city over the course of an hour, and the players invade the city without much resistance. When they near the center, though, the city's master, a powerful creature called an anqurak, shows itself and unlocks the city's Arcane Door to summon the bodakkai against them.
Aranos builds defenses for the players, then he and his party go to close the Door. The anqurak and bodakkai assault them, but Geltheriel's new blade carves through the bodakkai with ease. The Scarlet King reappears, but Geltheriel once again battles it, holding it at bay. The anquarak unlocks its Domain of Darkness, but Aranos uses the spell he used to undo the Arcane Door's binding to attack the Domain, while McBane and Geltheriel together kill the Scarlet King. The anqurak drains the bodakkai of life to empower himself, and Aranos is forced to tap the world around him for power. Knowing that the whole world is nothing but mana, he turns some of the nearby stone into mana and drains it, giving him the power to destroy the anqurak's Domain and kill the creature.
He draws more power the same way, vastly overfilling his mana pool as he enters the Arcane Door to Redeem it. There, though, he's accosted by Virnal herself, who tells him that Cyva Alari is fallen. She offers to close and seal the Arcane Doors and withdraw the bodakkai if he just agrees to go back to how things were. He refuses, and as she kills him, he once again Redeems the Arcane Door.
He respawns and travels back to Eredain, where he finds Prince Methild and the elven army awaiting him. He confronts the Prince, expecting a battle, but instead the elf tells him that the capital is fallen and swears his blade and army into Aranos' service. The war has truly begun.
Sorcerer Redemptive
Synopsis
War has come to the Lands of Light. The urukkai are marching, their armies headed for the cities of the Light, including sending a massive force against the Stronghold of Eredain. Aranos knows that the key to victory still lies in the Arcane Doors--doors that he still can't open, much less repair.
In a skirmish with their forces, one that involved him and his party killing a couple thousand of their number, Aranos discovers the secret to opening the doors: the power of souls. He channels the power of his Redeemed Soulmending skill to pry the door open, finding that doing so also traps the bodakkai within rather than loosing them on Antas. Within the Door, Aranos, Geltheriel, and the Travelers in his party once again faced Arioch the Fallen, who killed the entire party--including Geltheriel. Enraged, Aranos slew the man with a Soulfire Blast, then used his Bond with Geltheriel to call her back to life. With the Door restored, he heads back to Antas and unlocks his third Domain, Ascension.
With another week in SO done, Aranos returns to the real world for his date with Karla, the physician watching over him. It goes well, and during it, she helps him realize that Arioch must be a Traveler, not an NPC.
In the game, Virnal travels in disguise to where Lily is letting the bodakkai run unrestrained across Cyva Alari and convinces the summoner to turn them on the rest of the elves instead. The goddess tries to convince the deranged woman to attack Eredain, but Lily isn't ready to face Aranos yet, so she turns north instead, claiming the city of Ulethelas as her own and gaining even more bodakkai in the process.
Aranos returns to the game and Eredain to plan for the urukkai assault there. He builds up its defenses and puts out a call to all the Travelers in the Lands of Light to join him. When the urukkai come, he and his party hold them until the rest of the Travelers re-enter the game, then lead them into the Traveler's Trials. There, the effects of death and respawn are negated for Travelers, and they hold the wall he's built across the Trials against the urukkai without difficulty. This allows Aranos to gather enough soul energy to Redeem the Arcane Door in the Trials.
When he, Geltheriel, and Silma enter, though, they face a foe more powerful than anything they've seen before, a seemingly unkillable dragon of tremendous power. Aranos Redeems the Door, pulling them all into the Bridge of Light, weakening the dragon. When they try to kill it, though, it proves itself to be immortal, at least until Aranos links to its soul, channeling the powers of Geltheriel's blade and Silma's howl into its core. When the creature dies, the entire game almost collapses, and when it restabilizes, Aranos finds that the three of them have killed one of the Dark Gods, the Mistress of Beasts. With the Door repaired, Aranos brings the Travelers from Stoneleague, and together with the Armies of Light, they destroy the urukkai army.
Back in Antas, Aranos gets the news that a massive Shadowborn army at least a quarter-million strong is headed for the southern city of Avendale. He creates new armor for Geltheriel that wraps her in a skin of Shademetal, a Legendary metal of his creation. He and his party then head to Skollheld Heill to rally the dwarves. The Priestess of the Heartstone there tells him that the other Skollhelds are suspicious and unwilling to hear his plea and certainly won't travel to him, but he tells her that he's going to make it easy. He and his party travel the Deeps to the kongolorn hive, where his City Purge Spell cleared out everything but the Queen's nest. They travel into the nest and find that all forms of magic are nullified inside except Enchantments. Aranos falls back on his bow and discovers how to use Arcane Archery to mimic his spellcasting abilities, creating a new style of archery called Manarchery and becoming a Master of it in the process. They kill the queen, who tells them before she dies that Morx took half of her brood to the south, toward Avendale.
Aranos takes the Grandmaster test with the dwarf who trained him in Dwarven Enchanting and passes by crafting a new bow for himself that is Divine-ranked, above Mythical. After some confusion based on their inability to Appraise the bow, the Grandmasters certify him, and he and his party travel through the Skollheld's Arcane Door to Redeem it. There, he uses True Enchanting to craft a Redemption Spell that links the three dwarven Doors, but Arioch intervenes to stop him. The party fights him, and this time, they overcome him as Mutroda achieves the Evolved Class Champion of Light. As he dies, Aranos reveals secretly to him that he knows that Arioch is David Newsome, his ultimate boss.
With the Doors to the Skollhelds freed, Aranos travels to Elred Aethel, the northernmost elven city, to reinforce it. The Elder there swears fealty to him, making him High Elder over all elvenkind. He then summons the Priestesses of the Heartstone. They gather, but they're suspicious and unfriendly toward him. One, the priestess of Skollheld Korhl, is openly hostile, and he realizes that she and her skollheld's Stone are Corrupted. He Redeems the Stone through her link to it, and the priestesses all agree to join him, naming him Priest of the Soulstone and ruler of the dwarves.
Lily travels to Elred Aethel to Corrupt the Arcane Door from within, but Aranos' defenses and the city's elder chase her off. Infuriated, she flees the city. Virnal, still in disguise, has been training her in magic and offers to teach her a way to cannibalize the bodakkai to open the Arcane Door. Lily agrees, but Virnal instead takes her body over, trapping her mind inside. Virnal gathers the bodakkai and Lily's vampiric minions, declaring that she'll destroy the Sorcerer.
Sorcerer Eternal
Synopsis
The War for Ka has come to the Lands of Light, and Aranos must prepare. With the elves and dwarves under his banner, he travels to Stoneleague to ready it for war.
Meanwhile, Martina leads her party to Northmoor, which Lily has almost abandoned save for some powerful undead and vampires. Martina uses her Daywalker blood to poison the vampires and kill them, then slips into the palace. There, she finds Queen Ysabelle, Corrupted by Lily beyond repair and insane from torture. The party takes her safely and brings her back to Stoneleague.
Aranos returns to the House of Stars to be verified as a Master. The much-diminished Council of Grandmasters sees him, and Narbeth, Grandmaster of Light, proves to be unfriendly. When he suggests offering Aranos as a sacrifice to end the War, Aranos realizes that something's wrong. He outs the Grandmaster as a naldlooshi, a skinwalker and Legendary beast. The naldlooshi kills one of the Grandmasters before Aranos destroys it using the same soul linkage he used to slay Ilistil. The remaining Grandmasters agree that he should command them in the War.
Lily/Virnal returns to Northmoor to find the guardians slain and Ysabelle gone. Lily uses the goddess' distractions to siphon bits of divine essence, holding these in the hope of eventually breaking free and taking the goddess' place. Virnal orders that the bodakkai gather and prepare to march on Stoneleague.
Back in Antas, Aranos has leveled up and unlocks another Primal Domain, that of Liberation. This domain makes all his Primal mana harder to control but also makes it easier for him to breach barriers and escape bindings. He takes the construct he'd used to free the dwarven Arcane Doors and turns it into a Spell that could theoretically free all the Arcane Doors at once--at least, it could if he had nearly infinite soul energy to spare.
Aranos and party head to Skollheld Korhl to face the gathered kongolorns. He leads the dwarven legions to the hive, which he again destroys. The party goes into the nest to face the queen, who proves to be far more powerful than they expected and seemingly immune to damage. Geltheriel realizes that the queen is truly Blossth, Goddess of Storms. Aranos and his party manage to kill her, destabilizing the game again. While hanging in limbo, Aranos meets Carl, Veronica's counterpart AI and the Lord, ruler of the Darkness. Carl explains to Aranos why killing the gods is disrupting the game and threatens the Sorcerer to get him to stop. Aranos threatens the AI in return and tells him to stay out of his way, which Carl agrees to do.
Aranos returns to Stoneleague to find that his Primal mana is breaking free of his grasp once more. He delves into his power and discovers a link between the aspects and Enchanting that lets him create a much stabler mana pool. Doing so unlocks the remaining Evolved aspects for him, makes him a Grandmaster in Mana Mastery and Mana Control, and links his SP and LP so that his entire body is made of magic. The next day, as he revisits with Phil and Martina's party, a rush of respawned Adventurers fills the guild hall. Avendale has fallen, and the Shadowborn army has landed.
Aranos gathers the leaders of his army, including the armies of Highwater, whose queen swears fealty to him. They begin to plan the defense of Stoneleague. He and all his friends gather in the palace for a party but get interrupted by the approach of the Shadowborn army. The siege of Stoneleague begins. Aranos and Geltheriel remain out of the fighting as much as possible, knowing that their presence will escalate the attack, and the defenses repel several attacks. At last, though, Aranos is forced to intervene, and the Shadowborn strike back with full force, punching through the defenses. Aranos and his full party defend while the Lightborn retreat to the next line of defenses, but as they do, Lily/Virnal appears. She drains a large chunk of the Shadowborn of life and opens a portal to the Pit, allowing the endless bodakkai to swarm onto the battlefield.
Aranos launches a night attack on the fleeing Shadowborn, gaining as much soul energy as possible, then travels to Northmoor with his party. There, he uses Ysabelle's bond with the city's Heart to Redeem it, and his stored power to open the Arcane Door, knowing that this is his last chance to save Geltheriel. If his new Spell works, the Doors will be free; if not, he'll fail, and Geltheriel will die--perhaps by his hand.
In the Ways of Shadow, Aranos meets Arioch once more. This time, the man stops to talk and explains why he'd betrayed Aren Sunlord and the Light. The bodakkai and their opposite number, the asurae, were mistakes, creations of Virnal and Aren that disrupted the game's functioning. He hoped that by shattering the Bridge and Ways at once, he'd free the souls of the deceased to be repurposed as they were meant to, but Aranos tells him that he's wrong, and they aren't. He can sense a soul's passage, and they aren't being reborn. They're just vanishing. Despite this, Arioch and Morx together attack the party, revealing that Virnal is in charge of Lily's body. Morx attacks Aranos with the Domain of Nightmare, but Aranos uses his Dreamstriding skill to wrest control of it, gaining the Domain of Dreams for himself. Geltheriel kills Arioch, while the rest of the party destroys Morx' nightmares. Morx responds with a blast of Primal Darkness that threatens to kill Miwango, but Rhys switches places with the tiny dragonkin, dying but saving his Companion.
As he dies, he asks Aranos to mend his soul and take its power; Aranos does so, but when he does, he's suddenly aware of countless souls filling the Ways around him, the souls of everyone who died since the Feast, trapped there. Aranos calls them all to him, mending them and using their power and Rhys' soul to destroy Morx, then to power his Spell. It fills the Ways and Redeems the Bridge of Light, restoring it and the Doors at the same moment.
With the Doors' restoration, Geltheriel is freed from her Corruption at last, and the Cleansing Quest is ended. Aranos and his party meet Aren Sunlord, freed from his imprisonment at last. The Sunlord is weak but grants each of them a boon, including giving Mutroda the ability to summon the asurae, Geltheriel the power to call on his power once, and Aranos his symbol to use in his name. The party take Rhys' body and return to Stoneleague.
In the meantime, Martina and Phil take over command of the defense of Stoneleague. Lily's most powerful vampiric minions assault them, keeping the Travelers manning the defenses from retreating, but Martina kills General Highcliff on her own, then leads the rest of her party to destroy the two Primal Wizards. As the last of them falls, though they find a pair of nightmare beasts have joined the battle, and one looms above them, ready to destroy them.
Before it can, Geltheriel arrives and attacks the nightmare beast. Without Corruption weakening her, she drives it back. Martina and her party attack the second beast, while Lily/Virnal battle Aranos and Silma. Aranos finds himself outmatched, but even as he's losing hope, Geltheriel rallies him and destroys the nightmare beast, Mutroda summons the asurae to drive the bodakkai back, and Martina and Phil's party slays the other beast. They face Virnal together, and Virnal is losing when she teleports over to the exhausted Geltheriel and grabs her, taking her to the Pit and daring Aranos to follow.
After raging blindly in an attempt to recover Geltheriel, Aranos seeks out Savannah from the Wizard's Guild. She, Headmaster Mandla, Radomil, and Master Dirue together tell him they can send him where he needs to go using Morx' skull as a focus. He travels to Avendale and finds it filled with kongolorns, who he slaughters mercilessly, unlocking the Domain of Retribution in the process. His party joins him, and the four Wizards open a passage to the Pit.
In the Pit, the party enters Virnal's fortress, which is a no-respawn zone where death is permanent. They push ahead, and Aranos finds himself separated from the others, facing temptations created by the Lord himself. He overcomes each but is badly wounded in the process; finally, he faces Lythienne, who offers to restore Geltheriel to him if he leaves Virnal's palace. He refuses, and doing so pushes him to 100% connectivity with the game. He finds himself in Virnal's throne room, where the Darkbringer has Geltheriel crucified on a tree that keeps her in constant agony on the cusp of life and death. Virnal offers to bring Geltheriel down in return for Aranos agreeing to stand aside, and he refuses, determining to end the elf rather than leave her in Virnal's clutches. Before he can, his party finally arrives, but Virnal in turn summons the remaining Dark Pantheon . Instead of aiding her, though, they rebel against her, and in her fury, she loses her focus--and Lily strikes, stealing the goddess' divinity and becoming the new goddess of Darkness.
Lily summons creatures from the Pit to fight Aranos' party while she battles him, and for the first time, he finds himself outmatched by her. Lily proceeds to taunt him by hurting Geltheriel, but when she gets too close to the elf, Geltheriel uses Aren's favor to free herself and stab Lily through the heart, allowing Aranos to used the True Blade as a bridge to attack the goddess' soul. At first, Lily's soul is too powerful for him, but he taps the Sunlord's sigil and draws on the power of the Light Pantheon. Aren resists, but Aranos stands as the undisputed ruler of the Lightborn, and Aren's will crumbles before his authority.
Aranos calls on the power of the Mountain of Light and uses it to undo the Bottomless Pit, using the energies of Light and Darkness to obliterate one another. This kills most of his party, and in the end, the Pit and Mountain are destroyed, leaving only Aranos, Lily, Avalyn, and Arioch alive, hanging in limbo. Veronica and Carl appear and tell Aranos that now that he's reached 100% connectivity, he can become a new god if he wants, and as a new god, he can fix what was broken, even restore his companions to life. Arioch urges him to do it, and Aranos tells the man that he knows that Avalyn is his daughter, the daughter of the company's CEO.
Avalyn is shocked--she didn't know who Arioch was--but Arioch admits that everything in Singularity he did to prove that a person could live inside it so that Avalyn could be uploaded and live there instead of dying. He begs Aranos to enter the game by dying in the real world so that he can get the protections and laws he needs to guarantee Avalyn's safety, but she refuses to let Aranos do it. She tells her father that she wants to spend her time in the game with him and Aranos instead of feeling guilty.
Instead, Veronica and Carl temporarily give Aranos divine power so that he can fix things. He rebuilds the Mountain of Light, Bottomless Pit, Bridge of Light, and Ways of Shadow. He restores his friends so that their deaths aren't permanent. He can't erase Lily like she wants, but he removes her memories of her former life, making her think she's always been in the game and essentially killing Livia Tamarank once and for all. He even considers reviving his party, but he sees how happy they are in the afterlife and can't do it. Instead, he gives up his divine powers and logs out of the game, intending for it to be forever.
Jeff (Aranos) finds himself summoned to David Newsome's office. There, the CEO subtly threatens him, but he pushes back, refusing to let himself be fired or punished. Instead, Newsome promotes him and tasks him with testing the company's newest and best games, including SO. He logs back into the game in the Tower of Sorcery, realizing as he does that it won't be the same. His friends aren't there; his quest is over; most of all, Geltheriel is gone. He heads downstairs and finds Geltheriel waiting for him. The Lady told her that he needed her, and as she promised, she came. The two of them walk out of the tower, intending to quest together, and the story ends.