Part 2: Copy Protection and Being Wrong

Welcome back to King's Quest III. So let's do that again, this time without pissing off the wizard.



I lied, by the way. I'm deliberately trying to provoke him here. This is Manannan's room. By all accounts he should have appeared by now, but he hasn't.



It took him a full extra minute to appear and glower at Gwydion. Seriously, that's all he does here. He doesn't even acknowledge that you did the chore. He just poofs into the room and stares at you for like 4 seconds.

At this point we may as well wait the next minute out.

As a whole, I'm not fond of the timer mechanic. There are five items we could be getting right now. We could be progressing the story, such as it is. We could be engaging with the copy protection, for that matter. Instead, we're stuck wandering back and forth in a tiny hallway waiting for the 0:05:00 marker.



Manannan is punctual when it comes to this matter.

: Gwydion, I have decided to take a journey.

We now are free to loot the shit out of everything for the next 25 minutes. Manannan will return from his journey at the 0:30:00 mark, and we have a lot to do between now and then.

: Gwydion, Manannan is not appearing on sensors. You are safe for the time being. I will let you know when he is close to returning.



First things first, the third floor. You can kinda see a few pixels on the ground, as well as the telescope centerpiece. So let's take a closer look...

>look telescope

: Manannan has the brass telescope pointed out a window. It is well polished. He uses the telescope to keep tabs on the citizenry of Llewdor.

>look floor

: There is nothing on the dusty floor but a dead fly. Gwydion picks it up and drops it into his hand with no small amount of disgust. He carefully removes the wings and discards the body.
: Carrying around a dead fly is disgusting. The wings, though, could come in handy.

: The fly wings are remarkably beautiful for having come from such a disagreeable insect.



Next, we need to loot the hell out of Manannan's room.

>open drawer (while in front of the nightstand)

: In the vanity drawer are many uninteresting items, although the wizard's hand mirror may come in handy. Gwydion grabs it and closes the drawer.

>open drawer (while in front of the dresser)

: Gwydion finds baubles and trinkets which do not interest him. Suddenly, his eye falls on something that does... a vial labeled "Rose Petal Essence," which he eagerly takes.

Alternatively if you stand too close to the dresser...

>open drawer

: Gwydion bangs the drawer against his shins repeatedly. Try backing up!

>open cabinet



>look in cabinet

: In the cabinet there are voluminous velvet robes, satin slippers, peaked hats, and soft linen gowns.

>search cabinet

: Gwydion is startled to discover an ancient parchment scroll. Its ink has faded, but it seems to be a map. He takes the treasure and leaves everything else exactly as it was.

This next item is unncessarily hard to find for no particularly good reason.

>close cabinet
>look on top of cabinet

: Gwydion runs a hand along the top of the closet. Suddenly, he touches something metallic. Grabbing it, he discovers a small brass key! What could it unlock?

We're going to need this in a minute.

: The mirror is set in a round, oak frame with a long handle. You peer into it and see your rather dirty, but handsome, face.
: The little vial of rose petal essence has a delicate, sweet aroma.
: The small brass key is brightly polished.

Finally, rather than show a picture of the map...



This is map of Llewdor, which gets filled out as we explore the land.



It's also a magic map that can teleport you to any map square you've visited previously. Naturally, this comes with significant limitations that I'll cover several updates from now.



We're down in Manannan's study. On the way down, I stopped by Gwydion's room to grab all the stuff from under his bed.

Now, the little cabinet in the bottom left corner is incredibly important. It's locked, and we just so happen to have found the key.

>unlock cabinet

: Gwydion unlocks the oaken cabinet with the brass key. Inside he finds the wizard's magic wand. He takes it, knowing that it will mean his death if the wizard finds it missing. After closing the door, he carefully relocks the cabinet.

Gwydion is smart enough to cover his tracks in this one case. Now for the next part...

>look bookshelf

: So many books line the bookshelf, that you wonder when Manannan has time to read them all. Titles cover many subjects: from "Ancient Arabic Mythology," to "A Study of the Heavens," to "The Philosophies of Socrates."

>get book

: Gwydion glances at the titles of the books, but none of them interest him. Wait... was that a glint of metal behind one large book?
: This bears further investigating...

>move books

: Gwydion pushes the large book aside, revealing a metal lever attached to the back of the bookshelf.

>pull lever



: A trapdoor opens, revealing steep stone steps leading into darkness.





Ahh, the copy protection room. This next bit doesn't happen in the game, but makes sense narratively...

: On the large preparation table, Gwydion finds a series of recipe cards. The recipes, however, call for all sorts of ingredients, some of which are decidedly sinister sounding. He collects the cards. One in particular stands out.



So this is the copy protection, more or less. A lot of the crap you collect in this game is used for casting magic spells, thus why Manannan freaked out at finding Gwydion in possession of cat fur. There are seven spells in the game, and we're going to use all seven of them in the course of this playthrough.

I've deliberately slapped the copy protection together in a facsimilie of a recipe card, because that's all it is. The exotic ingredients like Saffron can almost all be found on Manannan's shelf in the background. So in order to prepare this first spell, all we had to do was find the rose petal essence and the magic wand.

So to that end...

>get saffron

: Gwydion searches the shelves for the jar labeled "Saffron" and removes it to carry with him.

: Inside the jar, you see the saffron, an orange-yellow, powdery substance.

While standing in front of the table...

>turn to page iv

: With trembling hands, Gwydion turns the pages of "The Sorcery of Old," and prepares to follow its instructions precisely.

Precisely is right, too. The instructions on that little recipe card I made are almost the literal string you need to type into the game.



>put saffron in essence

: Gwydion carefully sprinkles the precious saffron into the vial of rose petal essence.



Here's the copy protection bit. Magic needs an incantation to work properly, and we have to type it in. One option is to type it with the exact punctuation the manual has.



It's a lot easier to just shitpost the incantation.

>wave wand

: Gwydion waves the magic wand over the vial of rose petal essence. Having successfully completed the spell, he looks again at the wizard's laboratory.



We're done with the copy protection for now. I'm refusing to call it spellcasting. It's the principle of the matter. Anyway, let's get the hell out of here. We've wasted nearly 5 minutes of our precious free time, and we have so much to do yet...



Yeah, that's enough for now.



Now let's enter the bonus zone. Here we're going to try and deliberately piss of Manannan until he kills us.



The easiest way to do so is to try and leave the mountain.



Manannan will always catch you at around this point.

: Manannan's eyes narrow to slits.
: Gwydion!! You are forbidden to be here! I've a good mind to...
: HIs face softens as he continues.
: Well maybe next time. For now... GO HOME!



First time is a warning and you get sent back to the dining room.



Second time... I fall to my death. Whoops! Let's try that again.

: You are forbidden to be here!
: The old wizard's voice is a hiss. His face is stony, emotionless, and cold.
: Try hanging around in the kitchen a while, Gwydion.



: You feel the blood rushing to your head as you realize that you are upside-down. Straining to look up, you notice your feet have been magically attached to a kitchen rafter. You struggle, but can't release yourself. What a vexing situation.

The narrator by default uses second person pronouns for protagonists, and since this is non canon with the actual LP run, it's as good a time as any to use them. Anyway, we're now stuck hanging on the ceiling for a full realtime minute. Typing any command has the narrator acting weird.

: .won taht od t'nac uoY



: You feel dizzy and anuseated at the sudden changes in body position. It's at least some consolation to find yourself on the floor again.



So the third time's not the charm.

: Boy, do you hate these little sessions. But, "No pain, no magic."



Another minute of varied exercises. It was at this point that I was beginning to realize that it was impossible to piss Manannan off enough to die at the start of the game.



But becauses Manannan suspended us from the ceiling and made us do exercises, we've missed our deadline on completing the chore.

: Gwydion! You were assigned a chore. You know what happens to lazy boys!
: Manannan shakes his head in disgust.
: The kitchen is still dirty. When will you learn to OBEY!
: Up goes the dreaded finger.



And we're back here. Manannan has four punishments, and I was super unlucky because I kept getting hanging out in the kitchen.



We're past 5 minutes. He should have left on his journey at this point. But nope, here he is making life difficult.



And we're hanging like a bat for a third time. So that's four punishments in five minutes and he has yet to kill us. So I'm going to call the experiment a failure here. I tried this process several more times, and all I ever got was hanging from the ceiling and rarely the exercises. Never once did I manage to piss the wizard off enough to warrant death.

So I was completely wrong about everything in the first update. Piss the wizard off as much as you like. If you do things correctly, it will not matter an iota.

For the record, I'm unwilling to wait around for the 30 minute mark to try my luck some more. The emulator I'm running this on, ScummVM, forces the game to run in realtime regardless of speed setting. I would have to literally sit around for 25 real time minutes in order to get a single chance to piss the wizard off.

NEXT TIME: We actually leave the old house.

List of Points

+1 - Fly wings
+1 - Gwydion the vain
+1 - Rose petal perfume
+7 - The faded map
+3 - The small brass key
+4 - Stealing the wand
+5 - Finding the hidden lever
+1 - Raiding Manannan's spice rack
+10 - Yer a wizard, Gwydion

Total: 45/210

Register of Deaths

Tripped by the fucking cat x2