The final instrumentality was housed in a Mani settlement called Ruffetts View, where a fissure had opened in the earth and was expelling raw magical energy. Once there, the band became a rallying point for disaffected orcs, many of them deserters from Jennesta's horde. Learning that two armies, Jennesta's and Hobrow Kimball's, were heading towards Ruffetts View, Stryke reluctantly allowed the deserters to join him. A siege ensued, and in the chaos of its aftermath the Wolverines made off with the last star.

When connected, the five artefacts formed a device that magically transported the band to Ilex, an ice-bound region in the extreme north of Maras-Dantia. In a fantastical ice palace they discovered Sanara, who proved benevolent, unlike her tyrannical sisters. She was held captive by the Sluagh, a pitiless race of near immortal demons who had pursued the instrumentalities for centuries. Unable to defeat the Sluagh, the orcs were imprisoned by them.

Their saviour appeared in the form of the mysterious Serapheim, revealed as the legendary sorcerer Tentarr Arngrim, father of Jennesta, Sanara and Adpar. Through him Stryke learnt that Maras-Dantia was never the orcs' world, or the natural world of any of the elder races. Arngrim's ex-lover turned enemy, the sorceress Vermegram, brought orcs into Maras-Dantia to create her personal slave army. But the magical portals she opened also swept in members of other races from their own dimensions. Ironically, Maras-Dantia was and always had been the home world of humans.

Stryke's visions were not insanity but glimpses of his race's home world, brought on by contact with the powerful energy generated by the instrumentalities.

Tentarr Arngrim, trying to make amends for what humans had done, created the instrumentalities as part of a plan to return the elder races to their home dimensions. But the scheme was dashed and the stars scattered.