  This paper addresses several significant gaps in the theory of restricted
mis\`ere play (Plambeck, Siegel 2008), primarily in the well-studied universe
of dead-ending games, $\mathcal{E}$ (Milley, Renault 2013); if a player run out
of moves in $X\in \mathcal E$, then they can never move again in any follower
of $X$. A universe of games is a class of games which is closed under
disjunctive sum, taking options and conjugates. We use novel results from
absolute combinatorial game theory (Larsson, Nowakowski, Santos 2017) to show
that $\mathcal{E}$ and the universe $\mathcal{D}\subset \mathcal{E}$ of dicot
games (either both, or none of the players can move) have 'options only' test
for comparison of games, and this in turn is used to define unique reduced
games (canonical forms) in $\mathcal{E}$. We develop the reductions for
$\mathcal{E}$ by extending analogous work for $\mathcal{D}$, in particular by
solving the problem of reversibility through ends in the larger universe.
Finally, by using the defined canonical forms in $\mathcal{E}$ and
$\mathcal{D}$, we prove that both of these universes, as well as the
subuniverse of impartial games, have the conjugate property: every inverse game
is obtained by swapping sides of the players.
