# The Reckoning — Endgame ## Overview The Reckoning is whatever happens when the players have gathered enough threads and decide to act. It's not a fixed encounter — it depends entirely on what they've learned, who they've allied with, and what they're willing to risk. This document covers the primary confrontation paths and the central moral dilemma. --- ## Reaching the Endgame Players arrive at the Reckoning through any combination of: - Following the ethereal trail to the cellar - Bren's testimony pointing to a fiend - Essek revealing the summoning - Veil Dust trip exposing Xarrul - Orenn's letter and preparations in the storage room - Exploring the [Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md) — the chalk-wall notes and the [Guest's](../npc/the-guest.md) cult-infiltration intel both point at the Order of Mending and the summoning; the vault arms the party for the fight - Logical deduction from the ambiguous clues There is no "right" order. The Reckoning begins when the players know enough to act and choose to do so. --- ## The Clock The Reckoning is player-driven, but it is not *timeless*. When Mags shattered the summoners' lockstone in Act 2, she sealed the house across every plane into a **closed vessel** — and that is exactly what Xarrul needed to finish crossing. It now has until **midnight**, when the seal lapses, to complete the crossing through the old tear in the cellar — the **lockdown clock** ([xarrul.md — The Night's Clock](../npc/xarrul.md#the-nights-clock--presence--escalation) and [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door)). The longer the players wait, the colder the room, the bolder Xarrul, the higher the body count. If they never act at all, the clock runs out and Xarrul **crosses over completely**: permanent, material, no Slip Between escape, far worse to fight. This is the pressure that keeps Act 3 from drifting. Slowing or breaking it — **breaching a sealed exit** to re-open the vessel, the iron bell, re-powering the cellar containment, the fifth rule's burn-and-seal — is the pushback; letting it run is its own quiet choice. --- ## Confrontation Scenarios ### Scenario A: Direct Assault Players know about Xarrul, have combat resources, and go to the cellar to fight it. **Setup:** The cellar is dark, cold, and cramped (10m x 8m). The thin point dominates the eastern side. Xarrul is in the Ethereal Plane — players need a way to reach it or force it into the Material Plane. **Methods to force Xarrul into the Material Plane:** - **Fiendbane Manacles** (from Tallow, 200 gp): Restrain it on the Material Plane for 1 hour - **Fiendbane Salt** (from the [Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-fixers-arsenal) vault, 4 doses): a thrown pinch anchors it to its plane until the end of its next turn (DC 14 CHA save) — the exploration reward that lets a party pin Xarrul without spending gold at Tallow's - **The iron bell** (main hall fireplace): an old house-relic that wakes the foundation sigils for a time, giving Xarrul disadvantage on Ethereal Jaunt - **The binding circle** (cellar floor; the summoners', not Orenn's): if lured inside, DC 17 CHA save or trapped - **Warding chalk circles** (from storage): Minor constraint, 10 minutes per use - **Force damage:** Affects ethereal creatures from the Material Plane **Xarrul's tactics:** See [Xarrul NPC file](../npc/xarrul.md). It uses Ethereal Jaunt to avoid being pinned, Voice Thief to sow confusion, and Whisper of Ruin on the strongest melee fighter. It doesn't want to die. At half HP and restrained, it negotiates. **Difficulty:** Hard for level 4. The shifting between planes makes Xarrul slippery. Without a way to pin it on the Material Plane, it's a war of attrition that Xarrul wins. ### Scenario B: The Rebinding The "easy" resolution. Haddon proposes recapturing Xarrul using the binding circle in the cellar and restoring the original binding. This is available to any party that uncovers the fiend's existence — it doesn't require deep investigation into the cult's true nature. A loyal Dalla actively supports this. **Requirements:** 1. Binding components from Tallow (~50 gp) 2. Dalla's blood (she gives it willingly — rolls up her sleeves without hesitation) 3. The summoners' binding circle in the cellar (DC 16 Arcana to adapt it for rebinding rather than containment) 4. Xarrul must be lured to the cellar or forced onto the Material Plane 5. Haddon leads the ritual (10 minutes, concentration), Rennt assists **How it plays out:** - The party must get Xarrul to the cellar and keep it there for 10 minutes while Haddon completes the ritual. This is a fight — Xarrul does NOT want to be bound again. It fights with everything it has. - **Xarrul targets Haddon specifically.** The moment the party commits to rebinding, Haddon is the hand reaching for the chains — and Xarrul removes hands. It spends Brand, Visions of Spite, and everything else on Haddon over any other target (*"you reach for the chains, I take the hand"*). Protecting the ritualist becomes the party's core problem. If Haddon dies, rebinding is off the table unless another character takes over (DC 18 Arcana, with no time to prepare). - If the ritual completes: Xarrul is bound. It screams in fury as the chains take hold. The cult has their weapon back. - If the ritual is interrupted (Haddon takes damage and fails a DC 14 CON concentration check): The binding snaps. Xarrul is free and enraged. Combat continues with no second chances. **Aftermath:** Dalla's connection to the binding restores — Lístek's condition stabilizes but doesn't improve. The child stays frozen. The cult moves toward Phase Two with renewed confidence and a bound fiend. Dalla tells herself this is progress. The murder is "solved" (the weapon is leashed), but nothing is actually fixed. **Mags's reaction:** Disgust. "You're handing them back the thing that killed him. On a leash. And you think that leash will hold?" She won't stop the players, but she won't help, and she won't forgive. ### Scenario C: The Dual-Plane Kill The "true" way to destroy Xarrul — synchronized destruction in both the Material and Ethereal planes. This is the method that cures Dalla's child. It's also the method that tears the veil. **This scenario is only available if Dalla has broken from the Order** (see [Order of Mending — Dalla's Breakdown](order-of-mending.md)). A loyal Dalla would never consider destroying the fiend over rebinding it — destruction serves no purpose to the cult. The dual-plane kill requires a Dalla who understands the real cost of the cult's path and is willing to abandon it for her daughter. Players who never uncover the truth about The Opening never reach this option. **Requirements:** 1. At least one character on the Ethereal Plane (Veil Dust at the thin point = 10 minutes, or Oil of Etherealness from Orenn's bedroom = 1 hour) 2. At least one character on the Material Plane 3. Both groups damage Xarrul simultaneously on both planes 4. Both "halves" of Xarrul must be killed within 1 round of each other **How it works mechanically:** - When Xarrul is on the Ethereal Plane, characters there fight its ethereal form (full stat block) - When Xarrul shifts to the Material Plane, characters there fight its material form - At the thin point, Xarrul cannot fully separate its planes — it exists on both simultaneously, split. Material form: half HP (39 HP). Ethereal form: half HP (39 HP). AC and attacks unchanged. - If one form is killed and the other survives more than 1 round, the surviving form regenerates the dead form at full HP. The kill must be synchronized. **During the kill:** The veil tears. For 1 round at the moment of synchronized death, the planar boundary at the thin point *dissolves*. The Material and Ethereal planes merge in a 20-foot radius for 6 seconds. Everyone present sees both planes at once. The temperature drops. Sounds echo from wrong directions. For that one round, everything Mother Vyre predicted is true — the planes *do* want to touch. Then the veil snaps back. The tear heals. Xarrul is gone. **And Dalla's child:** The stolen vitality used to bind Xarrul — Dalla's blood, her life force — snaps back along the binding's path. Dalla gasps, clutches her chest. Miles away, a three-year-old girl blinks, looks around her room, and says her first word in four years. ### Scenario D: Negotiation Xarrul is ancient and pragmatic. If cornered and unable to escape, it will negotiate. **What Xarrul offers:** - Everything it knows about the Order of Mending, Mother Vyre, and Phase Two - The truth about Dace's treachery - Information about Skein and how to kill it - The names and locations of other fiends bound by mortal cults in the region **What Xarrul wants:** - Freedom. Not destruction, not binding — the right to leave unmolested. - A host (not present — it will leave and find one later) - Or, if particularly cunning: the thin point left unrepaired. "Leave the door open. Not for me. For *air*." **The problem:** Xarrul is evil. Letting it go means it's someone else's problem. It killed Orenn. It will kill again. But its information is genuine and valuable. This is a classic devil's bargain. **Mags's reaction:** "No." Simple. Final. She won't negotiate with the thing that killed Orenn. If players choose negotiation, they do it over Mags's objection, and their relationship with her is damaged. ### Scenario E: Faction War If players haven't uncovered the fiend, or if tensions boil over before the Reckoning, the factions turn on each other. **Trigger points:** - Kael loses patience (2+ hours of lockdown with no resolution) - The cult's summoning is exposed to the assassins - Dace is exposed and the cultists realize they've been compromised - Any NPC is attacked or killed **What happens:** Lethal combat. Assassins vs. cultists. Mags tries to stop it. Players can: - Join a side - Try to stop the fight (DC 18 group Persuasion, or DC 16 with evidence of the fiend) - Use the chaos to pursue the fiend while everyone's distracted (ironic echo of the brawl) **Casualties:** Without intervention, Kael dies (he charges Rennt), Rennt dies (he's outmatched by Sevra), and Dalla is caught in the crossfire. Essek tries to flee and is cut down by a guild soldier. Haddon escapes using Misty Step. The fiend watches, delighted. ### Scenario F: The Open Door (Joining Xarrul) The darkest ending — and the one that most fully commits to the module's thesis: the players help Xarrul cross over and become real. This is **not** the passive "let it walk" of Scenario D; it is active complicity. It is also **not** an edgy freebie. Like the dual-plane kill, it is *gated behind depth*: a party only reaches it if they have learned enough to find the cult genuinely more terrifying than the fiend, **and** enough about Orenn and Mags's cages to have soured on the "victims." **Why a party chooses it** - **The lesser monster against the greater plan.** By now they understand Phase Two — the real apocalypse is Mother Vyre, not one fiend, and Xarrul is the *enemy* of the Opening. It knows every name, every mapped thin point, every cult secret ([What Xarrul Knows](../npc/xarrul.md#what-xarrul-knows-if-it-negotiates)). Its pitch: *"Free me, and I will gut her network. You cannot kill the Opening. I can make it not worth her while."* - **The ground has rotted under the defenders.** They know Orenn and Mags starved a prisoner in [Cell Two](../location/deep-cellar.md#cell-two--the-long-dead) and caged the [Guest](../npc/the-guest.md) for eleven years. Xarrul killed a jailer who ran a private dungeon under a bar. *"You freed the changeling. My cage was a whole plane of glass. Why is mine different?"* - **It offers what the clean endings can't.** The dual-plane kill cures Lístek but tears the veil and validates the cult. Xarrul offers the cure **without** the tear — it understands the binding better than Haddon ever will. The monster hands them the cleanest fix for the child. **The twist — it is honest.** In a building where everyone lies, Xarrul is the one thing that doesn't. So there is *no betrayal*. It keeps its word to the letter — hunts the cult, cures the child, thanks them — and the world is worse anyway, and they knew going in. The horror isn't that it double-crosses them; it's that it *doesn't*. (Contrast the [Guest](../npc/the-guest.md), who makes the same "free me" pitch and *is* lying.) **What it requires** 1. **A vessel.** Default: the caged **Guest** — a body that can be anyone, poured full of an honest fiend. The knife: the Guest is **annihilated** in the process. A party that frees the Guest out of *mercy* may be handing Xarrul its skin — and the Guest, who reads thoughts, may know it, becoming either a desperate ally against Xarrul or a rival racing to the same door. *(Alternatives: a PC volunteers as host — the most personal; that character leaves the party. Or simply leave the door open — Xarrul crosses as itself, weaker, and finds a host later.)* 2. **The crossing.** Let the [lockdown clock](#the-clock) run — keep anyone from breaching the seal or waking the sigils — or complete the crossing at the rift, while holding off anyone who tries to stop it. 3. **Getting past Mags.** She will not accept this. **Mags, and the shape of the finale.** Mags says *"No"* — simple, final. Siding with Xarrul means going through the widow of the man it murdered, in front of her. So Xarrul triggers the [Warden's Mark](../npc/mags.md#the-wardens-mark-dm) — its first favor to its new allies — and Mags fights *compromised*, grief-broken and half-frozen in a vision of Orenn's death. This is not a slugfest but a **desperate holding action**: complete the crossing while a diminished Mags throws everything she has left at the objective. Winnable, tragic, and *the players'* to win. It ends not with a clean kill but with her going down and the fiend quietly thanking them. (For a bigger fight, add **Sevra** at her side.) **Aftermath.** Xarrul keeps every promise (see [After the Reckoning](#after-the-reckoning)). No betrayal. Just the bill. --- ## The Central Dilemma: The Choice If players pursue the dual-plane kill, they face the moral question at the heart of the module: ### The Case For - Dalla's child is cured. A three-year-old girl gets her life back. - Xarrul is permanently destroyed. The murderer is dead. - The binding energy returns to Dalla, restoring her vitality. - Justice, in a form. ### The Case Against - The method requires thinning the veil — a micro-Opening. It validates Mother Vyre's core theory. - Haddon is watching and taking notes. He now has empirical data for Phase Two. - Rennt's faith becomes unshakable. "The planes touched. I felt it. She was right." - Essek's warning: "You're running a proof of concept for the end of the world." - Even if the tear heals, the thin point is *weaker* afterward. Future attempts at the Opening are easier here. ### NPC Reactions During the Choice | NPC | Reaction | Why | |-----|----------|-----| | **Dalla** (broken) | "Do it. Please. I don't care what it costs." | Her child. Nothing else matters. She's only here because she learned the truth. | | **Rennt** | Ecstatic. Helps eagerly. "The planes want to touch!" | Validates everything he believes. | | **Essek** | Terrified. "You're proving her right." | Knows what Phase Two means. | | **Haddon** | Quiet. Watching. Taking notes. | This is exactly the data he needs. | | **Mags** | Conflicted. She wants Xarrul dead. But not like this. "That tear's been sealed under my feet for fifteen years and I slept fine. You want to rip it *wider* to kill one fiend?" | She respects the sacrifice but fears the consequence. | | **Sevra** | Pragmatic. "Does it work? Then do it. Worry about theory later." | Results-oriented. | | **Bren** (if lucid) | "The thin point has been growing for years. One more tear won't matter." (This might be true. Or it might be exactly what Skein wants him to say.) | Unknown — is this Bren's genuine assessment or Skein's manipulation? | ### There Is No Right Answer If the players save the child, they arm the cult with proof. If they rebind the fiend, the cult gets its weapon back and Phase Two moves forward. If they negotiate, a killer goes free. If they destroy it conventionally, the child stays cursed and Dalla has nothing. If they *join* it, they behead the Opening and cure the child — and loose an honest monster on the world, over Mags's dead body. If they never dig deep enough to learn the truth, they never even see the real choice — they get the rebinding and think they won. Every choice costs something. The depth of investigation determines which choices are even on the table. That's the point. --- ## After the Reckoning ### The Lockdown Ends Dawn comes. Mags opens the doors. People leave. The night is over. **What follows depends on what happened:** **If Xarrul was destroyed (any method):** - The Brand fades from Orenn's body. Mags closes his eyes. - The thin point remains — weaker if the dual-plane kill was used, stable if not. - The cult's cell is fractured or exposed. - The guild's mole is found or still hidden. - Mother Vyre's Phase Two continues elsewhere. The players know about it. That's something. **If Xarrul escaped:** - The fiend is loose in the city. It will find new entertainment. - Mags hunts it alone. Her chances aren't good. - The thin point continues to grow. **If the players sided with Xarrul (The Open Door):** - The fiend is real and walking the city, wearing a borrowed face — and it keeps its word. The cult's local cell is gutted; Mother Vyre has a new, patient enemy who knows all her secrets. - Lístek is cured — cleanly, no veil torn. - Mags is dead, or gone: walked into the dawn without a word, and she is not the kind to let it lie. - The Guest is annihilated (spent as the vessel) — or, if the party used another vessel, still caged below, or loose. - The players *won*. That is the worst part. **If the faction war happened:** - Bodies. Regret. A tavern full of the dead and dying. - Mags survives (she's the most dangerous person in the room). - She locks the door again. From the outside. She doesn't look back. ### Loose Threads (For a Potential Follow-Up) - **Mother Vyre and Phase Two.** The Opening is still coming. - **Dalla's child.** Cured or still frozen. - **Bren.** Free or still possessed. If free, he has knowledge that many people would kill for. - **Essek.** Escaped the cult or still trapped. His brand might still burn. - **Dace.** In guild custody, escaped, or dead. - **The thin point.** Growing, stable, or weakened further. It will attract more entities. - **Orenn's letter.** "If the veil tears, burn the cellar stores and seal the door." Mags hasn't done this yet. Maybe she should. - **Xarrul, if it crossed.** A fiend at large that owes the party a debt — and, being honest, pays it. Their most unsettling asset, and someone's unfinished business. If Mags lived, she is already hunting it, and them. --- ## Read-Aloud: Dawn > *Světlo. Pod dveřmi hospody se objeví tenký, bledý proužek — první ranní světlo, šedé a studené a krásné tím způsobem, jakým jsou krásné věci, o kterých jste nebyli jistí, že je ještě uvidíte.* > > *Mags stojí u dveří. Chvíli na ten proužek světla jen hledí. Pak sáhne na závoru. Kov skřípe. Dveře se otevřou a do místnosti vpadne vlhký ranní vzduch, který chutná po dešti a po městě, které se probouzí, aniž by vědělo, co se tu v noci stalo.* > > *Otočí se. Podívá se na vás. Neřekne děkuji — možná proto, že pro to, co se tu stalo, to slovo nestačí. Možná proto, že ještě neví, jestli je na místě.* > > *"Jděte," řekne tiše. "Je ráno."* > > *A vy vyjdete po těch třech kamenných schodech nahoru, do světla, do dne, do světa, který vypadá přesně stejně jako včera — a vy víte, že to tak není. Že pod povrchem, za tou tenkou vrstvou, kterou většina lidí nikdy neuvidí, se něco pohnulo. A už se to nezastaví.* --- ## Alternative Ending: The Bell If players **rekindled the foundation sigils** AND rang the iron bell AND have Xarrul trapped in the cellar's binding circle: The old sigils flare to life. The thin point *contracts*. Xarrul, caught between the binding circle and the woken sigils, is crushed between planes — not killed, but *sealed*. Trapped in the space between Material and Ethereal, conscious, unable to move, unable to escape. A fate some would call worse than death. The child is not cured (the binding energy isn't released). But Xarrul is contained. The thin point stabilizes. The tavern is safe again. Mags looks at the cellar floor where the fiend is imprisoned. "Orenn would have done it this way," she says. "Clean. Contained. No loose ends." She pauses. "I hate it. But it's right." This ending costs the least and gains the least. It's the safest choice. It's also the one where a three-year-old girl stays frozen, and a fiend spends eternity screaming silently between worlds. Safety is not the same as goodness. That's the last thing the players learn.