Root thread

(SPOILER WARNING: THE WHOLE MAIN PLOT OF THE GAME)

Ghost of a Tale
In the short intro video we are told that in the beginning was the Green (or Emerald) Flame, a force consuming all in its path. The creatures of the world fought back, but they fell one by one and they rose again as its puppets. The Rats alone resisted. Until, at the battle of Periclave, the Green Flame was extinguished.

You take the role of a mouse, Tilo, and you wake up in a cell and call for your wife, Merra, but she isn’t there. More than 10 days have passed since you had stood before the Rat Baron, with Merra at your side, and he bid you play the song “The Poisoned Cup”, and you knew then that this wasn’t for his amusement, but a test (as the song tells of the cowardice of mice in the war). You started playing (as a minstrel is obliged to play what the client wants), but Merra wasn’t dancing along, but rather had a look of defiance, so the Baron moved to strike her. You went to protect her and then, darkness. Now you are in a cell in Duinlan (or Dwindling) Heights Keep, on the eastern shore of the acidic Lake Vaelia. You find a note, written by someone named “S.” and the key to your cell. The note refers to meet him at the top of the watchtower. (Baron Osdrik is Regional Administrator of the former Mouse lands of Muridea, and one of the five members of the Council of the Red Paw.)

Upon reaching “S.” you see he’s a Rat Signal guard, named Silas. He says he’ll find where the Baron’s Rat Guard has taken Merra, by sending a message with a trained skappbeetle to a friend of his in central command building (Yuva Citadel). Until the reply arrives (and in return) he wants you to descend into the catacombs beneath the keep of the garrison and get him the treasure of the Rat hero Duinlan, buried there. But before going there, he tells you that you must assemble a suit of armor, to pass as a (scrawny) rat guard (then named “Private Scow”) allegedly transferred here from Yuva, and to find a spider venom antidote, as the lower levels are infested with spiders. For the antidote, he tells you to meet Faustus in the jail’s sewers.

After you assemble the guard suit of armor and have the antidote for spider venom from Faustus, Silas gives you a piece of paper with forged orders from the Commander of the Keep, to give it to the guard in front of the door to the lower keep, that you are to accompany the Rat Guard deployed in the lower levels of the Keep, so that you can reach the catacombs and get the treasure. In the catacombs you find Duinlan’s tomb and you realize it’s a female, but in the thousand years that have passed since her death in the war against the Green Flame, she is referred to as a male in history and folklore. Lady Duinlan’s ghost allows you to take the chest, but it breaks on your way back and you carry a bag, which was inside, to Silas. He unties it and pulls from it a silver cylinder, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. Lady Duinlan’s ghost appears (but only you can see it) and tells you that there was once a second chest, but a mouse took it and then fell to its death, but she can’t remember where. All she can remember is the feeling of love, but she can’t remember to whom. So she asks of you to find the name of her true love and her mind will be helped to remember the place where that mouse fell too. She tells you to search for an obelisk that bears the image of a clarion and there you’ll find her true love’s name. You also learn from her that King Rodgar the First, Jahrlan, Nikto, and Lady Duinlan were the mighty Rat heroes that sacrificed themselves to finally destroy the Green Flame centuries ago. Oddly though, Lady Duinlan says that she can still feel the Green Flame’s power.

You discover that Lady Duinlan’s true love was Hythe and you tell her. She shows you where the mouse that stole her other chest died, debris had fallen on it, and with the use of some brisance you clear the debris, find the chest and also open a passage to the harbor and shore. In the chest you find a silver ring (or band), which you take to Silas. As a final thing, he asks of you to bring him another silver band that two mice thieves (Gusto and Fatale), kept in a nearby cell, have. The mice say that the guard who arrested them took it, and you win it from him by gambling. You return it to Silas and he says he has some great news. That a prison transport on a boat is due to make a rest stop here on its way to Yuva, and Merra is with them. So you have to go to the harbor and wait for the ship’s arrival.

(continued at the next post)

On board the ship you find two mice prisoners (son and his old mother) saying that they were held with Merra for almost a week, but then as the two of them were going to be separated, Merra took the old mother’s place and was put on another ship. You bring them the key to their shackles, but it isn’t safe for mice to escape here. So you add a safe port of call (Gadwell) to the ship’s itinerary and have it signed by the Commander, so that they will get off in a safe region.

One of the Commander’s quests is to investigate a matter of smuggling operations within the Keep and identify the five guards working as smugglers, as well as unmask the Master, leader of the smuggling ring. The Master is the female mouse cook (Ouma Rezzia) and you turn her in.

Before the ship with the two mice leaves, they tell you that they don’t know where Merra currently is, but they know that she was on board the “Rathskellan” ship. You go to Silas to tell him that, but he is drunk and disrespectful towards you. You have the cook make a tonic for him (before you turn her in, that is) to sober up. When he does, he tells you the story of the silver cylinder and the silver bands, he was after, and also that he was raised as a mouse by a female mouse, who was the house maiden of his rat mother. Apparently his father was Rodrik, the last Rat King, who abandoned his palace, more than 30 years ago, at the face of the war with the Saltarians, and he is considered a coward ever since, and 5 barons, led by Osdrik, formed the Council (the Red Paw) and they are since ruling together, not as a monarchy. Also the Singing Stone of the Rat Kings (or the Stone of Ascension) has been lost, either by Rodrik (so no one can claim the throne without it), or hidden away by the barons. So his mother left the child in the care of her house maiden for his safety, to not be recognized and hunted by the Red Paw, as the child of a coward king.

Silas searches his books and finds that the “Rathskellan” ship was reported lost in the Cloak of Periclave, so he believes that there is no chance that Merra has survived. There is a phrase in folklore that says “ask a Magpie” and Tilo takes it quite literally and wants to do that. Magpies are big birds that have a specialty in gathering and transferring (and merchandizing with) every kind of spoken word, knowledge and information is possible, and are thus considered to know all and to value truth. But Magpies will only converse with noble and important figures among mice (everyone else is just meal for them), so Tilo has to assemble a king’s disguise.

After you assemble the king’s disguise, you find the female Magpie Ravik in the Catacombs (the Magpie who had startled you and you dropped Duinlan’s first chest). You present yourself as King Souk of the Ferrets, and while she believes you at first, she sees through your disguise. Upon hearing your real name, she realizes you were apprentice to Master Lewlin, who is considered one of the most influential minstrels of the new age. As she says “he is a king among minstrels, and a minstrel is far greater than any king”. You also play to her Silas’s song (something that she hasn’t been told before) and upon hearing Silas’s tale, she says that Silas doesn’t know the truth (but you don’t find it either in the game). She decides not to eat you and lets you live, but Tilo wants to know about Merra. So Ravik, before she tells you anything, she wants you to descend to the Lower Hall and bring back a tapestry adorned with Magpies and a great battle, as she is big and can’t fit to pass through down there. After you bring back the tapestry, the Magpie tells Tilo to travel to the Isle of Periclave, as what he seeks is waiting for him there. To travel there, a rowboat is needed, as well as the chart of the currents of the Lake Vaelia.

When you complete all quests for the Commander of the Keep, he grants you the rank of the sergeant (Sergeant Scow). He also tells you that Silas was arrested for the jailer’s murder (Tilo had found the jailer’s remains at the bottom of a well in the courtyard), and thrown to jail, in fact in the same cell (seven) where you were at the start of the game. Upon conversing with him, Silas admits that he had met you before. It was when Tilo and Merra’s baby (Brin) got bitten by a spider and they were rushing to a physician at a mine a few miles away. They had no proper papers and they met two soldiers at a checkpoint on the road at night, who told them to wait until their sergeant arrives. Their sergeant was Silas, who was soused and was sleeping it off in the gatehouse just nearby. After much time, Silas realized that the matter was serious. He came and grabbed the baby and rushed towards the physician, but, as he was drunk, he lost his way in the dark and heavy snowfall, and the baby died.

Tilo gives him the key to the cell and tells Silas to escape and wait him by the rowboat on the beach. Tilo then visits Kerold the Frog, who (as Tilo is in Captain Otto Powerkeg’s disguise, whose remains are in a nearby cell, but Kerold still believes he is alive) tells Tilo about a chest containing the charts, buried in the beach. As Tilo unearths the chest, Ouma Rezzia approaches and says that she was in league with the jailer, before the latter was killed by one of his many enemies (not Silas) and that they were after Otto Powerkeg’s treasure, which was on the nearby half-sunken ship where also Kerold was in. Tilo says that he only wants the charts to go to the Isle of Periclave, not the treasure, but Ouma goes to kill him. As she takes an emerald from the chest, she dies as her flesh melts from her bones and the Green Flame awakens from the chest. Duinlan appears and tells Tilo to gather as many of his living friends as he can. Tilo returns to the fort as Silas is about to be hanged before the Commander and other soldiers. He tells them of the danger and, as it is revealed that he is a mouse, he reminds everyone of how much he has helped each one of them. As the Commander is still stubborn and wants Tilo arrested, Rolo the blacksmith knocks everyone unconscious and frees Silas. Rolo reveals that he is Captain Otto Powerkeg and that they had that chest full of emerald crystals on board and that the crystals can be destroyed with brisance.

With the use of brisance and the help of Rolo and Silas who were fending off the undead, the crystals are destroyed and Rolo secures the locks of the chest again. Rolo says that he kept it hidden for 20 years and, for it not to be revealed, he had to kill the jailer and the previous blacksmith, in order to be near the chest. He also took up the blacksmith’s profession to raise money for the blacksmith’s family. He also says that the crystals aren’t the source of the Green Flame, they are more of a channel for its power, and the actual source is in Periclave.

Then Tilo bids farewell to Silas, Rolo, and Gusto and Fatale, and they all say that they will try to warn and convince the Council of the Red Paw (the 5 Barons) about the return of the Green Flame. Then Silas tells Tilo that “You are the shortest creature I’ve ever looked up to” and we watch as Tilo rows in the boat on Lake Vaelia towards the Isle of Periclave.

END