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.

Quest for Glory Epic Let's Play Parts 159 and 160: Gnome Ann's Blues and Icarus' Wings

In Which Our Hero learns that Ann paid far too much for the Inn and flies like a bird.





This next Rite is going to be a doozy. No matter who we talk to, they all agree on one thing: getting to Hydra is going to be the hard part. I suppose that's a good thing...

Talking to Ann, we learn that she owes a lot of money to someone for the Inn. Who? None other than Ferrari, our old 'friend.' Very interesting. We'll try to help her of course, but Ferrari being Ferrari we might as well be hitting our head against a wall.

We do however have two very interesting conversations with Pholus and the Famous Adventurer. We're reminded of stories of the hero Icarus, who built a pair of wings. I wonder if we could do the same?

In fact - we can. Marcus gets some beeswax, and then makes his way to science island (after a brief interlude where Ferrari confirms that he is, in fact, a complete asshole.) We make ourselves a pair of Icarus wings with the wooden frames on the wall, take off and arrive safely on Hydra. Well, mostly safely - we have to kill a beast that can't be killed. But we'll take care of that next time...