Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Parts 165 and 166: Dance of the Dryads and The Rite of Destiny

In Which Our Hero gets down in a grove of trees, with some trees; and learns about his future from someone other than a gypsy fortune teller.





We start off running back to tell Wolfie the good news about the balloon. He's thrilled that it actually works and says he wants to give it a spin someday. Why not; he's the inspiration after all.

Marcus swings by the Hippocrene stream to get some more water, which the Famous Adventurer said might be useful in dealing with the Dryads. And a good thing too, since it's just a hop, skip and jump to the next island where Marcus finds the Dryad grove. He waters each of the trees in turn and is then treated to a four-minute cutscene in which he gets funky.

Also on this island is the Oracle he seeks. Floating in a pool near her shrine is a Black Lotus. At the very least it's a valuable card, so he picks it up and puts it away for later. There's a pillar in front of the shrine as well which contains an interesting bit of rhyme. Might come in handy for later.

Then the Oracle (Sibyl) speaks after Marcus drops some gold in her pool as payment. She tells Marcus about his destiny: that he will have to walk through death itself to save the kingdom, and a lot of other metaphorical stuff. It all relates to the next three Rites and the endgame. He leaves not sure if he got his money's worth, but he does have a sigil to show for his troubles. It's a short flight back to the Inn where Marcus catches a few hours of shut-eye.

Next morning, the Inn has... changed. Wolfie's sitting there looking very proud of himself, and the Inn looks like a bunch of Photoshop filters threw up all over a coloring book. Well, it's an.. improvement of sorts.

On his way to the Hall of Kings, Marcus stops by Salim and Julanar's place and learns the Shakra too has been drugged just like Erasmus. Two drugged Wizards. Curious. He gives Salim the Black Lotus, and learns that he needs to seek the waters of the river Lethe - which if memory serves, is somewhere in the Underworld.

Logos is duly impressed that Marcus completed this Rite (was it really that hard? What was Elsa up to while we were running around building a balloon - she has a ship for God's sake.) The next Rite: journey into the Underworld (hey, great timing!) and bring back some Styx water. Not the band, the river.

Guess next time we're going to have to go to Hell.