The War to End All Wars

The party continued along their warpath as the Legion was deployed again to the front lines. The next eighteen months would lead the Legion through the darkest periods of the war in which Shun and his fellow legionnaires were tested in more than physical battle. The mental strain of heavy casualties, intense rain, and bitter cold winter weather combined to dissolve soldiers' moral. No warlord could disagree that the war was leading nowhere. Trench warfare stalled advances across the battlefront. A revolution had started in the Otvud Empire allowing the Mujikans to focus their war efforts on a single front. In Central Zezen, an ice giant emerged as a result of Txahal artillery hammering the mountain fortifications of their enemies- resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. A soul eater emerged in the wake of low soldier moral on the Western Front and capitalized on a mutiny there. The Legion arrived to revive the soldiers' moral and resume the war effort. After slaying the soul eater, the Legion was able to reignite moral and led the Jabalina infantry on a successful attack against Mujikans lines.

While the attack was a major success, it crippled the Legionnaires' spirits. Shun- who had recently earned his title of Brigadier General- was killed in the attack along with one of his aids. The mentally strained Legion would be dispatched to train new recruits from Turtle Island- Larrunana soldiers arriving in Jabalina in the wake of a recent declaration of war against the Mujikans. The party's new general earned his aids' trust when he correctly identified Plague while the Legion was on leave in the capital. The general it would seem was once a member of the Guardians- the task force designed to train the Half-Demons. Together with the new Larrunana Expeditionary Force, the Legion led a campaign through the northern forests that would cripple the Mujikan armies.

In a final showdown in a ruined fortress, the party squared off with Plague. In the ensuing battle, the party incapacitated through feats of weaponry then besieged him with a piece of the volcano that entrapped him in the First Age. The party's new general was slain in the fight, but they followed through the pain of the loss and defeated the demon. Before banishment to the Volcanic Realm, Plague warned the party a greater evil was rising- one that not even the demons could stop- and that "very soon," he warned, "your assembled armies will beg for our aid." The demon was defeated and Lore was sucked into the demonic realm with Plague. The war that had lasted four long years was at an end. The Legion had suffered more than twelve thousand casualties in the war, and of the original twelve thousand, only three hundred survived the war. Portoputos began the war with four companions and outlasted them all to be the last surviving member of the party.

Curiously, Shao- wielder of the Ancient Blade- never appeared in the final battle between the party and the demon. During the course of the war, Shao was investigating the volcano in which Plague was first trapped. The volcano had over the course of the three ages established a sizeable island in the Ocean of Peace among the Fairy Islands. When Richu Imperial Marines arrived on the island to capture it from the Mujikans, a battle erupted. Shao was caught in the middle of the battle and for five days fought without sleep with his Ancient Blade battling the Mujikans attempting to remain in control of the volcanic island. On the sixth day, Shao was killed. The Mujikans captured the Ancient Blade and brought it back to Zezen when the war ended.

In Turtle Island, the Great Peace Belt once controlled by Shao and hidden among the Drow remained hidden for half a century. After the end of the Great Dwarf War, the Warehouse's portal moved from Labana in the Spessartite Isles to Larrunana in Turtle Island. After the transfer, Warehouse Agents began confiscating powerful artifacts in the country deemed too dangerous for public use- including the Great Peace Belt. In Zezen, a radical Great Dwarf War veteran was gifted the Ancient Blade. This Txahal dwarf wanted to rebuild the might of the Otsosan Empire. The spirit in the blade- Hunger- granted power over this dwarf and gave him the might required for rebuilding the empire. Portuputos took the Volcanic Rock with him after the war's end back to the land of the half-elves where he guarded it in secret.