Good morrow, students! The history we shall cover today belongs to you. It is the story of how the Kai were restored and a bulwark against the future was secured. The New Order was forged in the fires of the Darklands War, doused in the blood of the First Order, and tested against foes greater than even the Darklords.

(Additional reading: a detailed exploration of the gamebook crash)

Seven Stones... their names are mostly hidden from you, yet plague the edges of your consciousness like a foul odor that flees your attempts to catch it. Though the day is warm, you shiver as echoes of screams long ago unleashed whisper through your mind. The Darklords do not keep stories, they only keep their confidence. Their atrocities are lost to all but them, who keep them the way we might keep favorite books, opening them from time to time to savor memories of blood.

Seven Stones... their names are known to you. Now you find their stories, buried among ancient texts thought lost when the monastery was destroyed. Reading the words set down by hands long turned to dust, you are taken back to days of darkness and uncertainty, where the Kai Lords did not yet exist, and the spies of the Darklords were everywhere. Here, a man dared to chase destiny and in so doing, set the world on a path towards hope.

Closing your eyes, you cast your mind into the infinite possibility of what ifs. A swirl of faces swims in your mind, some famliar, some new. Making sense of it all proves difficult, showing that retelling the story already told is no easy feat. One thing remains certain: in all versions there was but a small beacon of hope and the threat of eternal darkness if that light went out. For the dark door had opened and would never fully close again.

You come to the top of the rise and settle your back against a bare pine. The lands you came from are shrouded in mist yet a map exists in your heart of the journey you have taken so far, the twenty or so milestones you have passed to make it here, not to mention the many side quests. As you reflect, new thoughts come to you, dark secrets of the Pentad. The mists grow cold. You shiver, and summon the voices of friends to warm your nerves. It will be time to move on again, soon, so you take what respite you can to celebrate your achievement.

It took 20 adventures and just as many dead Darklords to finally make Naar curse. August and Jonathan do not deliberate on what the swear word was, instead choosing to use this episode to delve into greater mysteries of the universe. For the first time, we go into details about the Planes of Light, unveil how Naar got a hold of the Moonstone, and reveal what Naar's equivalent to the Sommerswerd is. This episode is a straight hour of lore, a start-to-finish gauntlet of answers to some of Magnamund's best kept secrets.

Cast your mind back to a time when gamebooks and Lone Wolf were selling in the millions of copies. In this time, Hugo award winner John Grant/Paul Barnett was given the task of turning the Lone Wolf franchise into a novelized series. What emerged from this was an entirely new take on the Lone Wolf experience, both diversive and innovative. Today, August, Jonathan, and Shane dive into the first book of the series, exploring its themes, the poly-cosmos, and why we are excited to see it coming back into print.

The penultimate book in the series, Light of the Kai, is due out this spring. And so the podcast welcomes for the first time Ben Devere and Vincent Lazarri, co-authors of books 29-32, to discuss this finale, the writing of it, and what fans can expect. Consider this a preview of Book 32! For those who want to limit spoilers, we broke the conversation down into three sections, each with an increasing number of spoilers ("mechanical", "broad story", and finally "some specific story" elements). We offer easy places to jump off the spoiler-train whenever you like and craft your own adventure fear-free in this episode of Journeys Through Magnamund.