The second climb
At the top you choose a faction, then fall once more, willingly, and climb again a hundred years later through a world your choice has made worse. It replaces Nightmare; after it comes the endgame.
The second time, you remember the way up.
You fall twice, and only twice. The first fall is the one you never learn the cause of: you wake at the bottom with no memory and climb to heaven. At the top you choose a faction, for good. Then the Apostate who raised you asks one thing back for it: one more fall. You owe her, and you pay. She cuts you loose again, and this time you go willingly and keep your memories; she drops you a hundred years on, so you see what your choice cost. You wake at the bottom in a world made worse by what you chose, and climb it a second time. The second fall burns off heaven's white again, but not your faction: you are clean to look at, and your faction's skills come down with you. After the second climb comes the endgame, where you are your faction's champion.
Each act of a climb ends with a boss, and each act boss gives back a memory: a short scene of who you were, and a strength the character keeps for good.
Decided by Alex on 25 October 2026. Earlier the same day he had decided a rebirth after The 4th Coming, falling and climbing again as often as you liked; he cut it, because falling again and again made no sense for the story. The second climb takes the place of a Nightmare pass. No character skips either climb. The debt, the century, memories and friends below were drafted by Claude's lore team, and Alex kept them the same day.
The debt
She asked for one more fall, and said it was cheap.
- What you owe her is the climb: the gates she unbarred, the champions she drew off you. Nobody knows what a third cut does, so she asks for one more fall and no more.
- She never says what she wants you to see. If you chose the Apostates, the debt is light. If you chose a great faction, she has been selling it fellings, one at a time, all along, and you wake where that trade has done the most harm.
- The hundred years are the fall's, she says, not hers: a coal that keeps its memories falls slowly. You remember agreeing, then the dark, then waking.
A hundred years on
- The same acts, worse. A century of war has passed over them, tipped by your choice: the faction you chose holds more of the board, or more of it lies broken if you chose the Apostates. The same angels play the same champions, a century more practised. Every fire you lit has gone out, and you walk the road again.
- Nothing is reset. A fallen keeps what it remembers, and this time you remember it all: level, passives, skills, faction. The fall burns off what shows, not what you took, and the faithful kept your things. The second climb is quicker, since you remember the way.
Memories
The higher you stand, the more of you comes back.
Six in all, one per act boss of each climb. Memory comes back with height: each act's boss holds the way up, and past it you remember what you knew there. The first climb's three show heaven as you knew it: the white city, the processions that stop at the edge of the House's court, the war. On the second climb the same heights give back older memories, from before your first fall, because the newer ones are already yours. None of them reaches the blow that felled you. Your faction changes what you notice in them, never what happened. The first few are kind. The later ones are not.
With friends
Friends on different climbs play together, in the century of whoever leads the party. Each act boss gives each player the memory of that act on their own climb, if they don't have it yet, and its scene plays for that player alone. A party of mixed factions still climbs together, because kin share a fire.
Between the climbs your seat waits above, out of reach; on the second climb everything is at the faithful's hubs (marked for Alex by a Claude stand-in, at his request).
Proposal
What a century does
- We did this. The places you saved are gone, the ones you passed through are held, and people who were children on your first climb are old, or raised. Nobody below knows it was you.
- Harder: monsters a good many levels higher, more magic and rare packs, and act bosses with an extra phase.
Open questions
- What a memory's strength is: a passive point, a skill unlocked, a bonus no gear can give. Proposed on the Rose: each memory lights a place in your Seat, one of the seats of heaven around the House.
Today
Nothing of the second climb is in the build yet: it needs the campaign and characters that persist between sessions, both on the roadmap.