The situation reminds me a bit of Lord of the Rings - in that a climactic battle is exactly the wrong way to go, sure defeat for all if that is the only tactic used. Yet, remember how the White Council staged one, just to distract Sauron enough for Frodo to get through to Orodruin?
What follows is a smorgasbord of ideas (some mutually incompatible), cooked up from Ian and I discussing the situation as described by Frank. They're almost certainly completely non-canonical, but they could be heaps of fun.
So, there's going to be a climactic battle anyway, from the sounds of how your players have been thinking. Fine, let them plan it. Let them have it. However, get them detached from it. Send them in as a special tactics squad to face LDoaH and deal with him personally. Since you're treating Lord Death as a tragic anti-hero, he needs to end in a blaze of something. Glory, death, whatever you feel best, it's got to be there.
So, your knights have a secret weapon (The Mirror of God), that they've been warned not to look at, or they will be destroyed themselves. ("For the sake of your souls, do not look at this object!") I suspect that they'll probably assume that this is something like Medusa's head, or a one-way trip to the Underworld, rather than something that forces you to search your very soul.
I don't know how much character development they've done on their knights, but it's a rare person who hasn't tried to deceive themselves. Surely they haven't done everything in their lives from pure and unselfish ideals? If your players can stand it, expose them to it, and go into an orgy of self-examination, culminating in whatever fate seems appropriate for each individual. Maybe some actually secretly wanted to be part of the Kingdom of War, and they then attack their own fellows.
Another idea: involve the women of Zoria in the denouement. Apparently they have no fear of the KoW, even though they live on its border. One reason might be that they know that he lost his soul while in Zoria, and Lord Death wants to stay as far away as possible from his soul. Slight variant, he is too afraid of Love to face them. (Option A) Or perhaps they created him on purpose, to fend off Loskalm, the Lunars, and everyone else who might like to change their way of life. In which case, he stays far away because they have the power to stop him in his tracks if he ever turns on them. (Option B, which is the one that Ian really prefers, because he likes the idea of the City of Love being as sneaky and unscrupulous as this.)
In option A, LDoaH has put his soul aside on purpose, so as to be free of any pangs of conscience that might interfere with the necessity of being a total monster in his quest to strengthen Loskalm. He decided that attributes such as love, mercy, compassion, hesitation, tolerance or anything else that he thought might cause him to hold his hand from acts necessary to forge the Kingdom of War, were all feminine. So, he travelled to Zoria, the city of Free Love, to ask the Three Aspects of Woman to remove these useless virtues. He was successful. The Maiden ripped out his heart, the Mother cut off his balls, and the Crone scooped out the part of his brains infected with grandmotherly tales of duty, honour and the rest of the knightly virtues, and filled it with bile and hatred instead. However, what he actually encountered on his quest was Gbaji, playing a terrible trick on him, and through him all the inhabitants of the KoW and their opponents. (Option A)
Either option, you could send your knights off to Zoria, or (mostly option A) a Zorian could come to them. You might want to have an explanation ready for why the Zorians hadn't done this a long time ago if you choose A. They hadn't realised their link to Lord Death? They didn't know that it was Gbaji? They didn't know of any way to reverse or modify the HQ, and have been working on it until now? An internal faction fight has resulted in Option B being revoked by the victors? They have just discovered that some of them were responsible, and more compassionate inhabitants want to reverse it? A HQ would then be necessary to show Lord Death how he was tricked by Gbaji, or ruthlessly shaped by the Zorians. Feel free to put the knights through the same wringer that Lord Death went through, and let them see how they'd choose.
The Loskalmi knights must HQ for LDoaH's missing soul, and bring it back to him (� la Angel in Buffy, if you like). Maybe they could bring it back in the Mirror of God - sounds like too neat an artifact not to use.
I must admit, I prefer option A. The potential of a soppy, excuse me, Romantic ending, strangely appeals to me. Flowers rain down from above. Thousands of spontaneous marriages are consummated between the women of Loskalm and Zoria, and the warriors of the Kingdom of War, right there on the battlefield. Love conquers War. That's epic, that is.
Alison
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