Quote Originally Posted by Errorname View Post
Except, you know, the two prophecies saying that Durkon would return home posthumously / bringing death and destruction which were introduced early on. There's also just obvious dramatic value in going to the hometown of one of your main characters that doesn't exist for an fortress in the middle of nowhere with nothing of value inside it.
Also, there's a big difference between "Characters who are starting a new story arc will go to a place they haven't been before" and "The climax of a story will suddenly shift location to a place with no obvious dramatic significance." Usually, when the Oots goes to a place as part of an adventure, they finish the adventure there before leaving. But I doubt that anyone would have argued it was unlikely for the Order to go to anywhere in particular as part of a side adventure between gates.

The better analogy here would be "Before it turned out that all of Girard's descendants were dead there was no plot-relevant reason to move the climax of the story arc to the Empire of Tears... and so they didn't."