Part 1: One cold from the barrel

So, Legie is a game about an Innkeeper, beer, and the devil. In this first part, we’re going to come face to face with the first two.


Coming, coming…

This is the innkeeper, whose major characteristic is that he drinks a lot and our protagonist hates him. But, as you know from the intro, in this universe beer is literally the only thing holding society together. So, basically, he’s the most important person in the city.
And yes, our first assignment in this adventure is to do stuff in the bar. Later we'll do stuff for the bar, and so on. A little less exciting than most RPGs, perhaps. But sure, let’s take a look around and try to sort out this beer problem.



The game controls like a normal dungeon crawler – you can turn with the mouse and click on things to interact, or use an item if you like. Here, our nameless hero (I could definitely use a name for him so I can refer to him more easily) is grabbing some tankards and a “mouldy rug to wipe up vomits”. We also find a metal coin!

Lo! A lost treasure!



There is an exciting minigame when Legie-man fills up tankards, but it’s impossible to actually fail it and doing perfectly garners no benefit in any way. In any case, we fill up the tankards we have on hand, and

So slow… while you are crawling like an INSECT, mess is growing here, tankards not tidied up, vomits from yesterday, thirsty guests hitting the tables. Devil’s deed, such a hand!
I am sorry, my lord, I dreamt a bit…
What a smooth-faced lie! If I did not tackle your laziness, you would be still sitting by the furnace heating your idle hands! I do not want to see you stop for even a minute! There is enough work here, no excuses! Even if the world collapsed and stars fell, this inn will never run out of beer in the tankards and barrels drunk will still roll down the hill even to hellhole itself!

...Well said, strange angry bald innkeeper! And so we clean up around the place.



A herd of pigs they are no guests!
Bring me more, boy, or I will die from thirst and then I will sit here forever…
I don’t think that will be a big change…
Very funny. You youngsters have no regard to the elders. Sometimes I say, where did the good old manners gone? Probably left in the mines just as a joy of work and happiness…
We have beer, so what unhappiness?
Oh, shut your trap, lazy bastard, did you also lose your miner’s honour? They are giving us pitiful money to drink ourselves to death here! There is heap of work and gold down there, the whole city could be healed, even the whole sick land…

I’d just like to point out here that no, there isn’t a heap of gold down there. But… we’ll get to the mines later.

No nugget will save a man, as one preacher used to say…
Keep playing and don’t interrupt us!
Go on boy, go on! I have to drink through a long moment!
shouldn’t I bring the whole barrel?
Barrel of tankard, no difference, we shall drink all that our bellies can contain. Nothing matters anymore, when we don’t matter to the city… I will tell you more if you bring me some beer.

This is, in essence, Legie’s style of story-telling: endless badly translated conversations about how everyone is dying. Oh, and fetch quests! Lots of fetch quests in Legie, combined with shoddy combat segments – but those will happen a long time from now, so don’t worry about them. In any case, these nice men are miners – Jilemnice is apparently a mining town in the context of the game, even though in real life it wasn’t, nor did it look like the town depicted in this game. Oh well.

Anyway, we go back and grab some more beer.

Tough time boys, tough. Heart of the city turned its back to us, closed the gates. Sickness is spreading through the mining quarters. They throw us bones from the walls as if we were dogs.
One cold from the barrel…
Thank you boy, take this broken coin…

Another metal coin! I should take the time to explain currency in Legie a little. There are metal coins, that can be used to buy a couple of things from a shop like wine and bread, and gold coins, worth far more. Gold coins can be traded for metal, but not vice versa, meaning that we’re stuck with metal coins until we find a source of gold.

So we give a tankard to the other guy too, and he begins his own long protracted story of misery.


We found new golden seams, unspoken riches within grasp. But rains started flooding the mines as if through an unknown underground channel. And since the non-stop rain everyone lost hopes that the water will be soaked into ground. Also the whole surroundings die with the coming autumn. The deer of the nearby forests jumped to our turnspit in summer. A flash of lightning hit the city granary and what has not been burned immediately gradually rot. Rats entered the city, they climb all the houses as if they lost their senses. The cats vanished. Even people did not escape the sickness inner part of the city has been closed in terror.
Drink and go on!
The innkeeper was a sole ruler here. When the rains came he went astray, bald and furious. He even closed the inn for a week, so he could drink himself to death alone. We had to break in and bring him to his senses. Fortunately you came not long after that as an unexpected innkeeper’s hand, so we are very lucky that someone will take care of all of us thirsty ones and the innkeeper has time to think. Poverty and woodworms struck the forest, the needles defoliated, animals vanished.
If drinking beer means thinking, it is an insult to all the thinkers and emptiness of the history of thinking from the very beginning!

What.
That was all a bit much, I have to say. Before we report back to the innkeeper, let’s ask that bagpipe-player for a song – maybe cheer things up a bit?


What do you think about this one? It’s just an intro. I am sad, no success, no success. No one is interested in my songs.
... Try: "dead leaves fell", that’s going to sound sadder.

This is my favorite NPC in the game. You can spend your money on him whenever you want to ask for a song, and they are all fantastically depressing, so much so that they become comical. He’s like this game in microcosm. In any case, let’s get on with things and tell the bald and furious innkeeper that we’re finished here. He’ll be pleased, I’m sure.

Damned, by all the devils and goats and all other horned beasts, even watery ones! If you are drinking my beer here I will whip you all the way where you come from! Now you will go and look for the beer coachman and his coach. The scoundrel should have unloaded the barrels in our yard hours ago. He tasted the barrel and then was carried in by his horse in its mouth.
A terrible time for a forest walk. I am glad to have my hood...

And, at last, we can leave the bar – but don’t worry, we’ll be back soon and many times afterwards. But next time, we’ll go on our first quest: trying to find a horseman. Stay tuned – the adventure never ends.