Goblins Quest 3 – Day and night

By Ilmari

I had almost forgotten that Blount was supposed to be a professional reporter. I guess the newspaper articles of the events have been penned by the goblin himself, but it’s so easy to forget that when you don’t see the actual process of putting them down. Of course, it has been a tradition since at least Tintin that the famous reporters do more of the hero business than the actual job they get paid for. In any case, Blount had just found an opportunity to do an interview with queen Xina, when something dreadful happened.

It’s full moon again

 

This was another level, where I was playing with Fulbert. Like earlier, the snake was good at climbing and thus managed to get me a candle on top of a long candleholder. There were suspicious looking candleholders at the left side of the room and I could place the candle to each one of them, but this resulted in nothing. Maybe I should light it?

With nothing else to do, I tried to chat again with the queen, but every time I did that, a guard appeared and prevented me from getting near her. Wolf-Blount got angry and suggested he wanted to hit the guard, so I did as he wanted and used my hammer to the guard. The man dropped his gun and never bothered me again.

I tried chatting again with the queen, who then proceeded to kiss me. Her personal seer thought it was icky and covered her own eyes. This was clearly a time to do something – like rob the magic wand of the seer.

I had a hunch that the wand might be able to do some fire magic, and indeed, I could use it to light the candle for a moment when it was in one of the candleholders. This awakened the shadow of the fountain.

Funnily enough, the shadow looks exactly like Blount’s own shadow in the previous level

After using the candle in all the three candleholders, the shadow opened up the mouth of the fountain and revealed that it would take me to the castle of king Bodd, the arch-enemy of queen Xina. I decided to check what it would look like on the other side.

Time to do an interview again. But wait!

Someone closed the curtains and the moon is not shining on me anymore!

Back as regular Blount

King Bodd had in his possession the slipper of queen Xina’s ancestor. Reminiscent of Quest for Glory III, this slipper was one of the reasons for the hostility between the two kingdoms and I had to return to its rightful owner. Bodd had also imprisoned Wynnona in her butterfly form. Before I could do anything about either of these two tasks, the king wanted a present. I finally gave him a fake hand that had been in my inventory for a long time. Bodd was pleased and said he would use it to discipline his son.

The just-mentioned son pestered me, when I tried to reach Wynnona’s cage, but stopped when I gave him the gun from queen Xina’s guard. When I talked with Wynnona, king Bodd said he would release her, if I returned the skull of his ancestor from queen Xina’s palace. This was getting more and more like Quest for Glory III. I still had no way to return to queen Xina’s castle, but I quickly noted that using my magic wand to put out three candles in a similar order to the one I had used at the queen’s place opened up a fountain from Bodd to Xina.

Of the two McGuffins – the slipper of queen Xina’s ancestor and the skull of king Bodd’s ancestor – the slipper was by far the easier one to get. It was lying on a column above the king, just beyond my reach. Now, if Fulbert, my trusty serpent friend, put his head to a nearby hole full of cockroaches, one of the roaches dropped in front of the king, who proceeded to kill it with the slipper. I should most likely take the slipper at that moment, but how?

The answer was the jester of the king. Jester was a proper circus professional, and when I gave him my magic wand and a food dish, he showed me how to do some plate spinning. If I asked him to do it, while the king was busy hitting cockroaches, the dish and the slipper would slam together, sending the slipper flying to the ground, where I could pick it up. I used the fountain to return to queen Xina, and when I gave her the slipper, she promised to give me an elixir to return Wynnona back to goblin form, once I had just solved the famous labyrinth we’ve been hearing from.

The skull was a bit trickier. Like the slipper, it was standing on a column, above queen Xina. I could make Fulbert climb to it, but the skull was attached to a rope of the queen’s cup and ball, the skull being the ball (I’m sure king Bodd appreciates the way how the queen treats his ancestor’s remains).

This puzzle required some out-of-the-box thinking. I had earlier met the queen’s cook, hidden in a pot on the mantle of the fireplace. The cook was enraged at the queen’s cat, who was sitting at the top of the queen's throne. When Fulbert toppled the skull, so that it hung on the rope for a couple of seconds, it was positioned directly between the cat and the cook. Maybe if I offered the cook something sharp, he would throw it at the cat and cut the rope at the same time?

Testing this required finding something sharp, and Blount had mentioned that one of the guards had an axe he might make use of. I finally found out that an onion I had picked up earlier was a key to this conundrum. Getting the onion had been a challenge in itself, since it was found on a table at queen’s palace, where Blount was in his werewolf form and wasn’t particularly keen on onions (“chemical warfare”, the wolf had said). I could grab the onion, only when I was wearing glasses – and getting them was another puzzle, this time one of quick movements.

You see, there were glasses in a box on a bookshelf at the queen’s palace. Fulbert could climb to it and drop some glasses, and then they would break. I could ask the wolf-Blount to take them, while they were in the air, but he managed to only juggle with them for a while, until he dropped to a floor on a lower level of the room. So, I had to quickly move Fulbert to the lower level to soften their land.

And in pictures: here’s were-Blount juggling the glasses

And now he has lost them

And they land on Fulbert

With the glasses, I could take the onion without hurting my eyes (as a person wearing glasses, they are not a protection for the tear inducing powers of onion, but this is a cartoonish game, so I am not expecting realism). I could then eat the onion in front of the guard, making him feel nauseated and losing his grip on his axe.

Chemical warfare indeed

And then all I just had to do was to give the axe to cook and go and hide myself.

Here’s the axe

Here comes the cook

Success!

I gave the skull to king Bodd, but he still didn’t free Wynnona, but asked also me to solve the labyrinth.

And since the king and the queen saw me in different forms, I have to do it as both regular and wolff Blount

First Blount goes in…

…and then he has to do it as were-Blount

Let’s see next time what the labyrinth is like!

Session time: 1 h 35 min

Total time: 11 h 10 min