DildoGagins

I wrote quite a lot and I doubt you will read all of that so I'll just shorten this and say in the first place I doubt Darius has much to do with the balkor cards in the first place as he is too incompetent in my eyes. There isn't even a single spell breaker (a strong combat mage) that we know of that associates with him and I see no way for him to be able to do these things as there would be too many questionable plot-wholes. And if it's truly him, I just hope that he didn't get innumerable amount of convinces happening to him out of thin air or for plot convince.

and yet Vastor's abominations are thousands of year old monsters that surely would have many tricks up their sleeves

We know that the person behind this is a person in a blue archmage cloak, and that they are a member of the kingdom. Thrud is none of the above, and she is too busy preparing for her war and she is approaching labor.

Let's be honest there is probably no reasonable explanation for this. Everyone just turned incompetent and the bad guys somehow grow a five head with an IQ of a 10,000 for the plot's convince.

there may be counter arguments to what I'm about to say but I'll say it anyways I think that all of this balkor card thing is stupid because no matter what at the end the person behind it all is merely an archmage and even if he got assistance from others how is this supposed to be better than the whole kingdom and their best people and the firstborn who is searching for him oh and the master and his organisation is after him too