Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Parts 161 and 162: The Rite of Valor and Drugs and Dragon's Blood

In Which Our Hero defeats the Hydra with a little help from an old friend, and graciously lets her win the Rite; and learns Erasmus has been drugged and begins making the Ring of Truth.





We pick up outside of the Hydra's cave, where Marcus is preparing for combat. He picks up his pre-combat sludge, draws his sword, horses around for a while, and then runs up to the Hydra and starts stabbing it repeatedly. He chops a head off before someone unexpected shows up: Elsa. She offers to help, and Marcus watches as the head he just removed regrows.

Maybe some help isn't a bad idea.

With Marcus on offense and Elsa on point, the two return to the Hydra, systematically chopping off heads and burning the stumps. It's a slog but the beast is eventually vanquished. Marcus runs up and pulls the teeth out of its ugly mug. Elsa protests: what is her reward for helping with this process?

Marcus thinks about this for a second, and then does the right thing and gives Elsa the Hydra's teeth.

A quick search of the cave reveals some good loot, which Elsa takes a part of and vanishes. Marcus loots around and goes back to his room with the Mystic Magnet, then heads to the apothecary to sell some loot. Julanar and Salim tell him a bit about Rakeesh's poisoning, then inform him that Erasmus has been drugged - although it's different from the poison. That's strange.

Marcus sells them the Hydra's scales, which they can use to make fireproofing potion. That will come in very handy, very quickly.

It's off to Shakra's to sell the spell, then off to roam around the island and the Dragon's Cave. Here, in a boiling pool of lava, Marcus dips Justinian's Ring to begin creating the Ring of Truth (yeah, remember that?) And it's back to the inn, where he tells Ann that Ferrari isn't playing - yet. But everyone has their weak spots. Even Signor Ferrari.

Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Part 154: The Rite of Freedom

In Which Our Hero frees the last of the five villages.



We find Marcus after a bit of offscreen action where he took care of liberating the other three villages. At the start of this video, he's standing in front of Naxos, night has fallen, he's laden down with loot and ready to kick some more ass.

He runs in Marcus style, hacking and slashing his way through mountains of enemies until he makes his way to the boss house where he makes quick work of the mercenaries inside before grabbing the last sigil and liberating the final fishing village from the clutches of the invaders.

Booyah!

Marcus then swings by the dragon pillar outside of Silmaria. Bad news: Kokeeno is there dead, lying facedown in a pool of his own blood (and without any good loot.) Worse news: the dragon pillar is cracked. I'm guessing that's definitely not a good thing.

Marcus runs back to Silmaria and tells the city guard about Kokeeno's death. They promise to recover the body and investigate. Then Marcus starts the long, arduous and profitable process of selling the giant mountain of loot he's acquired and depositing it in the bank.

A hero's life is hard sometimes.

Quest For Glory Epic Let's Play Parts 120 and 121: Tanya and Toby and Toby's Sacrifice

In Which Our Hero meets the Innkeeper's daughter and witnesses true sacrifice.







It isn't the finale of the series, or even the game, but this scene is possibly the best-written and most moving in all of Quest for Glory. As such, there isn't a lot of commentary here: I'll let it speak for itself for the most part.

Marcus is back in the castle, basically looting the place. There are a couple of chests, one of which is guarded by a wraith, so there's some fun interior combat. Then Marcus eventually finds what he came for: Tanya, the inkeeper's daughter. She's, um, different.

OK, she's a vampire. And she's guarded by a massive monster.

Showing her the doll from the Domovoi warms her up to Marcus a bit and we're finally able to get her side of the story: overprotective parents and an Aunt Trina who seems to have kidnapped her and kept her as her own child.

Katrina's kind of fucked up, huh?

Marcus then tells Tanya that there's a way to restore her to life: Erana's Staff and the Destiny Spell. He tells her what it entails, and Toby says he understands.

It's off to the Staff, where Toby makes the ultimate sacrifice to save Tanya.

And that's where we pick up next time.

Quest For Glory Epic Let's Play Parts 102 and 103: The Other Lovers and Wraithbusting

In Which Our Hero reunites Nikolai and Anna and clears Mordavia of wraiths.








A big night after a big day: Marcus starts off traipsing and tromping through the woods after putting the Wisps back in their swamp. He happens upon Anna's ghost, who is now joined by the ghost of Nikolai: at last the lovers are reunited in death. And Nikolai sounds like Robby Benson!

We talk to them for a while, and then go on a little wraithbusting spree, taking care of the rest of the restless undead in Mordavia valley. Our loot haul this time includes a killer set of plate mail armor, so Marcus is finally covered (so to speak.)

Back at town we rest in our room for a bit before going off to meet the Domovoi, who tells us of another Domovoi in 'the bad place' near the inn. Presumably the monastery. Which is where we leave off this time.

Next time: Marcus burns down a building!

Quest For Glory Epic Let's Play Parts Ninety-Six and Ninety-Seven: Ghostbusting and A Strange Crime

In Which Our Hero helps a ghost come to terms with her death and learns of a crime that has been committed - maybe.







This is where things really start to take off. We open the first video with Marcus addressing some various ghostly undead issues: first, it's back to the female ghost in the forest, whom Marcus finally convinces she's a ghost. We then return and learn her name: Anna. As if we didn't realize it already. This is Nikolai's lost love, who perished after being out at dusk. Seemingly on an errand for Dr. Cranium, but who's counting?

Then Marcus heads to another wraith barrow where he does battle with the vicious undead and is triumphant. Another wraith horde to add to the stack. It's too bad Marcus can only buy candy and sandwiches with his loot. Maybe he should look into the deed on Borgov Castle...

Back to town and the inn, where Marcus has a quick meal, a good night's sleep and wakes up for the second video.

There is a lot of dialogue in this one and not a lot of commentary, mostly because I wanted you guys to enjoy it. As I pointed out in the commentary, this is the start of the events that lead to the endgame of Shadows of Darkness. We're through learning about the town and this series of events will lead us to our final confrontation. But enough about that: this is something to be savored.

Marcus rolls out of bed, heads downstairs, noshes a bit and walks out to Mordavia's fine morning. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and there's a lynch mob ready to tie a gypsy to the stake and burn him.

What?

It seems that Igor the gravedigger's gone missing. And the mob caught a gypsy outside of town. Naturally, gypsies are werewolves and eat people so this gypsy was brought into town for questioning as he is clearly related to Igor's disappearance. Or is he?

Looks like Marcus is going to have his work cut out for him.

Personal note: this is one of my favorite scenes in the series because it combines so many great elements of gothic fiction: the paranoid mob, the slightly supernatural, the disappearance of someone familiar and the terrible things that linger just beneath the surface of common folk. So yeah, enjoy.

Quest For Glory Epic Let's Play Parts Ninety-Four and Ninety-Five: Waiting for Baba and A Paladin's Sword

In Which Our Hero kills a little time (necessarily) and gets a new sword, and another quest to complete his other quest. Sigh.







We've got two videos today to help speed things along. The first one is Marcus' morning routine: getting some potions from Dr. Cranium, including the Rehydration Solution, and going to see Boris. Then it's off to Baba Yaga, but we meet the Leshy first who asks us another riddle but chides us for not having visited Baba yet.

We're about to fix that, oh yes. The second video picks up right outside Baba's hideout, where we meet Bonehead again. He'll let us in as long as we get him something to 'improve his looks.' Damn, another quest. At least this one won't be too hard to complete.

Once we're done with Bonehead (and he does give us some good exposition about Baba's background) we kill a little time until nightfall and then face another wraith to take its plunder - a big old shiny pile of plunder, which includes a Paladin Sword. Our inventory says is belonged to Piotyr. Well well.

Watch out world: Marcus is back.

Quest For Glory Epic Let's Play Parts Seventy-One and Seventy-Two: Intro and Welcome to Mordavia

In Which Our Hero is Imported to Mordavia, escapes a gross cave and meets a new friend.



It's time to get our Mordavia on! Quest for Glory 4 picks up right where 3 left off: with Marcus doing the boogie down as he's snatched by Dark Magic. After a brief Sierra flourish and introduction, we go to Mordavia:



Note that John Rhys-Davies, the narrator of the game, even narrates the intro process. Aubrey Hodges' awesome score overlays everything so enjoy the kickass music while Marcus comes aboard.

If you look carefully at his character sheet, his official name has been shortened to Marcus Warwick the Pur. I guess the Mordavia DMV only has 22 spaces on their licensing forms. Oh well.

Without further ado, let's get down to the game:





Quest for Glory IV opens in a cave that appears to be made at least in part of the bones of some giant creature. There's a horrid altar made of bones, and human skeletons that have half-melted into the cave.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we aren't in Tarna anymore. Or Spielburg. Or Shapeir. Or even Raseir. This is the real deal. We're alone in a very dangerous place.

Our first item of business is what anyone in our situation would do: loot the fuck out of the corpses. Doing so yields some money (crowns and kopecks, the coins of the realm), a dagger, some flint, and not a hell of a lot else. We use the flint to light the torch by the altar, which glows a horrible green and doesn't seem to have any source of fuel.

Passing through the sphincter (heh heh) into the next room we find the corpse of a Warrior and take his sword and shield. The poor fucker doesn't need them anymore so we take them. On the way out of this place we're beset by Badders, which we dispatch by the power of our mighty chin.

Outside of the cave we meet a lovely young peasant woman named Katrina who tells us how dangerous it is to be out after dark, informs us that we're in Mordavia and the town is 'due north' of our present location and wishes us luck before she runs off to avoid the dangerous things lurking around. Good on her. Apparently we're in Eastern Europe. Man, Russian chicks have sexy accents.

Before we leave, there's something called a 'Dark One Sign' that we pry off an archway and take with us. It's almost like it's alive. Perhaps it will come in handy. Afterwards we slide down a gooey path and head into the swamp, noting the disembodied hands reaching up to grab at us. Mordavia looks like it will be an interesting place to spend some time.

Next time: we'll make it to town.

Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Part Twenty-Six: Practice and Poetry

Video With Subtitles





[Note: This is the first video compilation I've done. I think I've finally figured this out - there doesn't appear to be any major loss in quality. Sorry for the large gap without commentary when the poet is talking - I figured he should just speak for himself.]

After breaking our fasts, it's off to the apothecary to sell some of our loot from last night. And what loot it is - 100 dinars worth of dead monster. Not too shabby. Shapeir's homeless population is right outside so we'll take some time out of our day to make a few donations and get a little closer to becoming a Paladin in the process.

Practice makes perfect, and we'll end the day with at least one perfect stat: Dodge. Luckily for you, dear readers, this all happens offscreen.

Omar's rapping tonight at the Inn so we'll swing by and check him out before we head off into the desert where we collect a whole bunch more monster pieces and take down a Terrorsaurus (barely.) Those bastards are tough.

Upon the morrow, there's rumors of a strange fire outside the Inn. Uh oh...

Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Part Twenty-Five: Shapeir Nightlife and Nightunlife

Video With Subtitles



It's off to the nighttime desert to look for some fights, and boy howdy do we find them! I realize this is largely a 'random encounter' video and I apologize, so I tried to throw as much research/fun facting in there as I could for the bits where he's just wandering through the desert. The monsters in Shapeir are pretty awesome though, and we beat up, in no particular order:

Scorpions. The giant variety, not the German hair band variety.
Ghouls.
Jackalmen
More Ghouls.
More Scorpions.

That actually takes care of our creature allotment for this game save two: the Terrorsaurus (!) and the desert brigand, who we will no doubt see a bit more of after we buff up a tad and get some experience.

Oh yeah, and the other one-off fights... but we'll get to those momentarily.

Now: there's still a couple of days before the next major 'event' so the next video will have some grinding gaps in it, but I'll let you know when and where they happen and the results of me fighting Uhura repeatedly.

Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Part Ten: Dancing With Myself

Video With Subtitles



So what you didn't see is me continuing to throw rocks, then wandering offscreen and tossing them at the air because it's much faster to grind your skill up that way (you don't have to wait for the plants), then coming back and nailing the seed. Take note: I ground that fucker up to 100 and STILL missed the seed the first throw.

And after that, it's back to the kobold cave (thank you Integral Catculus!) where we trip over the chest, open it the Marcus way (with our head), then run off to the healers to stock up a bit. It's going to be a long night.

Then it's onto the Dryad's Den so we can drop off this stupid seed and learn about the Dispel Potion, which we'll need to break the curse. A little rest later and it's nightfall. Time to go looking for some trouble.

And we find... psychedelic lights. Fairies. And what do they want to do? Dance. By the way, I apologize - the Pink on Pink fairy's text is impossible to read. There's no real exposition in it, but GV's dumb compression apparently thought it could blur it so badly as to be illegible. Sorry 'bout that!

So we dance with the fairies, then get some of their dust, then walk north where we're attacked by a flying manta ray. Which we handily dispatch. I think it's time we found some more difficult monsters to fight, eh?

Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Part Eight: Criminals, Conspiracies and Crones

Video With Subtitles



We've got some money burning a hole in our pocket, so it's off to the general store to spend it on some armor. Now we can tank around and take a lot less damage. Woohoo!

After that it's off to the bar but not for a pint - it's to find a note (which is very easy to miss if you're doing the home playthough, by the way) and read about a clandestine meeting between B and B. We know where the archery range is, so it's to the south of town where we can spy on the meeting.

Which is some boring exposition about how they're going to try to take over the Brigands and the Thieves Guild. Whatever. A little quick swordplay later and we've got a key to the special entrance, and some time to kill. We're getting very near to the end of our little adventure so let's start wrapping this shit up - let's go meet Baba Yaga.

First, we stop and pay for a couple of points from Bruno (I hate him in general and wish I could just take him out) and then it's off to Baba Yaga's hut, where we use our giant gem and a rhyme I pulled out of the ether of my youth to get inside, where we rap with Baba Yaga for a bit.

Actually, she turns us into a frog and gives us a quest. Which we have approximately an update and a half to finish.