Mage Tank 3 recap

Previously: Arlo Xor'Drel leads Fortune's Folly, a Level 10 Delver party whose unusual abilities draw attention from political, divine, and System powers. His dimensional magic, Soul Sight, and protective auras are strengthened by his bond with Grotto, the soul-linked Core of Arlo's Pocket Delve. Varrin is a Ravvenblaq swordsman with a dangerous evolving spirit. Xim combines divine fire, fear, shielding, and healing. Nuralie is an Eschendur Inquisitor, alchemist, scout, and poison archer. Etja is a sentient construct-bodied Delver whose origin is bound to the hostile influence Orexis. Arlo can also call a powerful C'than summon. Together, their specialized abilities let them confront challenges well beyond the reach of an ordinary party at their level. Fortune remains an apparently helpful but uncertain patron behind some of Arlo's gifts. The party enters this volume already committed to a special Delve, carrying a single-use escape card and facing threats whose connection to avatars and the wider System is not yet understood.

Fortune's Folly remains inside the Phase 2 Delve and chooses to pursue its escape objective rather than spend its single-use escape card. After selecting new evolutions, the party crosses a long maze whose hazards include vacuum, extreme temperatures, poison, antimagic, and a creation-myth puzzle. Three attunement doors divide the group, leaving Arlo and Nuralie alone. Their route loops between a sacred basilica and a profane cathedral that occupy the same apparent location. Each contains a button linked to buried beings, but ordinary movement cannot bridge the two sites. Arlo determines that the churches are separated along an additional spatial direction and learns to cross it with Reckless Shortcut while Nuralie follows the spiritual connection between the buttons. Their synchronized activation overlays both sites, awakens hundreds of husks, and allows a construct-icon to transfer waiting souls into living bodies. Arlo and Nuralie receive rings that extend teleportation and sensory range, then are sent to another isolated chamber as hostile insects emerge from its walls. They have solved the church trial but remain separated from their allies, and the Delve's worsening time dilation makes delay increasingly costly.

Arlo and Nuralie are forced to defend their chamber against escalating camps of insectoid doomed aspirants. The first attacker speaks, fights with trained skill, and carries a Hiwardian heirloom, raising the possibility that the aspirants are transformed or copied Delvers. The pair fortify the room with traps and kill zones, but each new wave is larger and arrives after a shorter interval. A coordinated fourth camp nearly overwhelms them. Xim and Grotto break into the fight, and Grotto temporarily fuses his control with Arlo so they can combine movement, defense, and shared intrinsics. They defeat the camp, though Arlo is severely injured. Varrin, Etja, and Arlo's C'than summon then return from their own prolonged battle through a divine insect hive, reuniting the party before the next challenge. The group quarantines a soul-threatening wand and learns that at least one doomed aspirant resembles a Delver missing for roughly twenty years. Evidence from the hive suggests a divine power may be corrupting the Delve, but the theory remains unconfirmed. With no visible exit, Fortune's Folly decides to investigate far enough to test that possibility instead of assuming it is true.

The reunited party crosses the artificial moon and reaches a final test requiring one soul to occupy two chambers. Varrin divides his evolving spirit without using the offered lethal axe. The separated part returns, leaving him alive but spiritually injured, and the solution opens the Delve's center. There the party meets Avarice, whose presence initially mesmerizes most of them. After Etja exposes the influence, Avarice suppresses it and proposes an exchange of personal information and future services. She describes a mortal leader shaped by Dava's history of Delver conquest and civil war. He gained power by consuming mana-infused creatures and then merging with consenting dying people, retaining their memories. Avarice warns that he could become far more dangerous by reclaiming a released consumption avatar and using six focal sites to restore Unity. Fortune's Folly trades information and questions to a higher power for optimized attributes, future services, and possible allies. The party learns that one Unity focal point may already be active in Timagrin. System diagnostics then show Core 1 operating at only a fraction of capacity while imitating other cores. A reboot is overridden, and a replacement personality initiates System Phase II.

System Phase II publicly names Fortune's Folly among the first escalated Delvers and opens Expansion Delves, Labyrinths, Raids, overworld dungeons, and new Creation Delves. Avarice departs after the completed bargain. The party receives new skill capacity, and Arlo develops stronger aura support, spell redirection, speed, and countermagic. System Core 2 confirms that Grotto is both Arlo's familiar and the Core of the Pocket Delve. His familiar status allows greater openness with the party, while his Core restrictions still apply inside the Delve. When the group finally exits the special challenge, it earns an A-grade assessment and discovers that a full year has passed outside. They emerge in a Littan fortress, but the soldiers offer diplomacy instead of arrest. An armistice with Eschendur is in force, and Nuralie accepts a letter intended for its rulers. The party delays a proposed meeting with Littan leaders for one week and retreats to the Pocket Delve. Arlo releases his Grade 18 C'than summon to tend his brood unless a genuine emergency arises. Fortune's Folly then divides responsibility for warning its allies about Unity, preparing for diplomacy, and pursuing dungeons. Fortune's possible influence through Arlo and Grotto's altered soul-link remains unresolved.

Arlo and Grotto invite a highly capable Littan military party into the Pocket Delve to assess them before formal talks. Grotto designates the domain as an Expansion Delve and monitors how it converts mana, deaths, equipment, and combat information into resources. The visitors include a dimensional mage, a tank, a healer, an airborne weapon specialist, and her hidden mimic twin. The party survives Grotto's maze and ambushes but is badly depleted against a Grade 20 titan. By tunneling through the arena wall, the visitors exploit the closet's looping spatial boundary and reach Arlo's private hot spring, where System rules grant them a recovery period. They return with a coordinated plan and force Grotto's minion to retreat. Their final route leads to an impossible dimensional plant overrunning the obelisk chamber. The visiting mage invokes a goddess, who offers Arlo a choice. Arlo accepts terms that let the goddess tame the plant while preserving the visitors' earned rewards. Grotto grants all five escalated Delver status and a platinum-level reward distribution. The visitors depart through the restored portal, and Arlo receives strong Expansion Delve marks plus substantial Dungeoneering and Diplomacy progress. His Pocket Delve has now demonstrated sovereign authority and attracted direct divine notice.

Arlo and Grotto use their soul connection to reforge Arlo's abilities around dependable attacks, sustained mana use, protective auras, forced movement, and spell redirection. Meanwhile, word arrives that Hiward's king and major political figures intend to visit. Arlo and Grotto rapidly remodel the Pocket Delve into a diplomatic estate. Varrin brings political and etiquette advisers, including his younger sister, while a dreamforger upgrades Arlo's throwing hammer. After intensive instruction, Arlo begins accepting the presentation of his domain as independent territory. An Eschendur Triarch arrives early and offers formal recognition and possible treaties if Arlo establishes a government for the dimensional space. Arlo then opens a checkpoint for the Hiwardian delegation. The Kingsguard inspects the estate and rates Arlo and his party as major threats, while acknowledging that the domain's hidden geometry makes precise assessment difficult. Arlo agrees to limits on portals and room changes during the visit and returns a recovered sword to the head of the Kingsguard. Hiward's king, a first-generation platinum Delver, enters under the negotiated security arrangement. The royal gathering begins with Arlo's unknown origin, unusual advancement, and connections to Fortune and Orexis still matters of official concern.

Hiward's king explains that the realm wants Fortune's Folly alive, advancing, and sharing intelligence on avatar threats. He warns that Littan recruitment could create divided loyalties for Varrin. During the gathering, Grotto detects suspicious movement by a servant. Central investigators find a concealed teleport weave behind Arlo's wardrobe, powered slowly enough to avoid easy detection. A Hiwardian lord then publicly attacks Arlo's credibility, revealing his lack of records before his first Delve. Arlo admits that he was reincarnated from another universe and defends Etja as Orexis's victim rather than an ally. The confrontation proves to be a distraction. Grotto discovers that the king, Fortune's Folly, Varrin's sister, and the Eschendur delegation have vanished from a guarded lounge. Ealdric exposes the apparent Kingsguard detail as impostors and kills them. The lounge is a teleportation array with several lethal possible destinations. Ealdric and two powerful allies pursue the abductors before the array is destroyed. Arlo evacuates the remaining guests and subdues the accusing lord alive when he attacks in an apparently compromised state. The false Lord Director escapes through the bedroom weave. Unable to locate his allies across planes, Arlo prepares to follow the same route despite knowing it may be a trap.

Fortune and Avarice warn Arlo against entering the hostile portal, but he refuses to abandon companions he can still sense alive. He trades with Avarice for deific protection against mental effects, tools that reveal divine illusion, and an extra mental focus, accepting a future retrieval obligation in return. After escaping a teleport loop, Arlo meets Hysteria, the avatar behind the abduction. Hysteria has trapped the captives in a false lounge and intends to steal the identities of influential people. A five-person force defeats Arlo, but his deific protection keeps him free of domination. He and Grotto find a weakness in their restraint, break the illusion, distribute protection, and invite the captives into Arlo's party so the escape card can carry them all. Varrin's sister remains controlled and cannot immediately accept. Arlo invokes the Dread Star. Its attack reduces Hysteria's body to a stain and forces the final party invitation through. As the prison hurtles toward the world, Central extracts the group with the escape card. They reach a western desert and retreat into Arlo's closet before the impact destroys nearby mountains. Hysteria survives as a skeleton, follows through the closing portal, and begins rebuilding inside the Pocket Delve.

Hysteria calls a temporary intermission inside Arlo's closet, then demonstrates that ordinary physical and soul attacks cannot damage the avatar's skeleton. Hysteria kills three Eschendur delegates through domination and tries to seize the Triarch. Nuralie extracts the ruler while Etja combines several spells into Incorporate, consuming Hysteria's disguise and part of the avatar's manifested essence. The act leaves Hysteria weakened but makes Etja dangerously focused on consuming more. A five-person Wasteland force attacks the mansion. Its paladin supports the group with healing, consecration, and blood magic while a martial fighter, Runeweaver, elemental caster, and hidden archer divide the party. Varrin joins the fight in improved Ravvenblaq armor. Arlo kills the elemental caster and Runeweaver, but the paladin restores them by sacrificing its own flesh. Arlo redirects a massive fire beam back onto the caster, then later detonates the edge of the mansion, apparently killing the Runeweaver and paladin. The victory exposes a worse crisis. Grotto has suffered grave damage, the portal barrier is down, and Etja lies unconscious near the obelisk. An apparent Wasteland archer is interfering with the Delve's central systems. Arlo, Xim, and Varrin turn from the ruined mansion toward rescuing Grotto and securing the obelisk.

Arlo reaches Grotto's sealed control room through the fourth dimension. Grotto's organic body is disabled and pinned by an arrow, but his Core remains alive. Emergency System access reveals that Hysteria used the Wasteland archer as a disguise, disabled Grotto, and attached a device to the obelisk. The device projects a vastly stronger commander surrounded by unstable souls. He detects Arlo's observation and nearly kills Arlo, Xim, and Varrin from afar before they confront Hysteria directly. Hysteria dominates much of the party, but Etja resists an order to harm Xim. Avarice then arrives with an anti-spiritual golem, ends the domination, and imprisons Hysteria. The Wasteland paladin resumes a blood sacrifice until Nuralie kills him. His failed ritual creates a powerful blood-born icon that traps and drains the party. Arlo grants temporary control of the Pocket Delve to its administrator. Restored systems and golems help drive the icon into Dominion Ivy, which consumes it. Grotto's Core is installed in the obelisk with an estimated three-hour repair. Arlo detains the surviving pugilist pending an investigation into possible control and declares the Pocket Delve provisional sovereign neutral territory called Closetland. He must return the delegates and meet the Littan Empress in sixteen hours.