Quest Issue: Lord Grimrot's Love

[Dolalin]

Let's try and gather some info about this quest.

This quest originally resulted in the Electrum-bladed Wakizashi. Source @ 18/07/1999:

Lord Grimlot's Love: This is the quest for the Electrum-Bladed Wakizashi.
Lord Grimlot tells you about his poor, misguided beloved Arlena, who has run
away from him to Mistmoore castle. Being the sentimental type, he wants you
to track down the lass, kill her and return her lute of the gypsy to him.
When you return it to Grimrot, you will receive two items: a blackened
blade hilt (LORE) and a note, and more info on how to complete the quest.
Take the note to the NPC Dekam N'Tazi near SK guild in Neriak, and you will
get a LORE item, blackened iron mold, a container with 2 slots in it plus a
combine button. He will also explains you need some metal to forge the
blade. We tried different types of metal, from silver to platnium, enchanted
and plain, and found only enchanted electrum bar works. Put the enchanted
electrum bar + hilt into the mold and hit combine to make the wakizashi,
remember the blade is NO DROP so only the user should combine the items.
Banky wrote in message ...

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....Y/yJFs7Jr0V40J

The earliest web archive link from everquest.gamestats.com (which used to be Allakhazam, by the way, if you see it referred to as such in old Newsgroup posts) is from 05/10/1999, and the quest spoiler had been updated by this point to show it no longer resulted in the Wakizashi:

Lord Grimlot's Love: This quest no longer results in the Electrum-Bladed Wakizashi. I am not sure what if anything you get for this. Lord Grimlot tells you about his poor, misguided beloved Arlena, who has run away from him to Mistmoore castle. Being the sentimental type, he wants you to track down the lass, kill her and return her either the lute of the gypsy or her bones.

https://web.archive.org/web/19991005...gamestats.com/

If you note the two-three extra spaces after the colon, in both the quoted newsgroup text and in the October 5th source version, they are the same. I think the quote is authentic.

However there is a newsgroup post from around the same time that contradicts this account of how the quest worked (@ 10/08/1999):

>> Yep, I saw that one too. That spoiler is _wrong_. Mine is right.
>
> Just curious: have you/your friends verified that the other spoiler
> doesn't
>work? It wouldn't surprise me if there were two different ways to get
>the weapon.
Yes, plenty of people have tried giving Arlena's lute to Grimrot, and all you
get is some xp, faction, and gold, not a blackened blade hilt. Whoever thought
up that quest on Allakhazam's had a great imagination.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....I/P-3p1BLbVsEJ

I will continue gathering information on this, but the consensus from what I have found so far is that there was an NPC named Arlena in Mistmoore after launch, who was later removed.

The Prima Kunark strategy guide has her styled as `Lady Arlena`, but in the South Karana section:

https://vdocuments.mx/download/48825...fficial-eguide

So maybe that was her name in-game.

[Dildy]

Have you ever tried to hail lord grimrot, I’ve been very interested in obscure quests as of late and can never find this guy up.

[Dolalin]

No I haven't seen him up recently. There is a P99 wiki for Grimrot's Love though with the hail text.

This bit of second hand info from Everlore claims that Arlena spawned on the stage in the ballroom.

I read elsewhere on this site that Arlena spawns in the Ballroom, on the stage.
Can anyone confirm/deny this?

https://web.archive.org/web/20030223...e=35&id=307906

I'll try to find the original source info.

[Dildy]

What does ‘lute of the gypsy’ princess identify to

[Dolalin]

This seems to be the original post:

When you do this, Grimrot will speak with you about his former love, Arlena.

Arlena is found in Mistmoore, in the ballroom. She spawns on the stage.

Unfortunately, that is as far as I've gotten -- I have no specific information about Arlena at this point.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020902...&pg=2&sortby=2

Not super fruitful. However I came across a utility to scrape the entire contents of sites like Everlore from archive.org and I can grep them for keywords like 'arlena' (how I found this quote). I will do more sites like EQLizer, MaximumEQ, Alla and the like when I get some time.

[Dolalin]

Actually I found a great one! Thanks for the lute suggestion. I don't know what its LORE is but it brought up a great hit in the grepping of Everlore.

posted 08-26-1999

I belive that the Lute of the Gypsie Princess loads off Grimrots Alena, she can be found in MistMoore, but you have to relize she is camped for the Electrum Wakazashi quest. And the lute is a rare drop... I think she is about level 32+?, Not sure, the MistMoore battledrum comes off Miss MistMoore herself, the big dog, the one that you see chasing groups of 35+ guys to the zone, she Backstabs for over 400, real nasty lady. She is i belive only lvl 33+, But she is much harder then the con might indicate. As for the Horn of Brahm. it comes from a Named Minotaur in the Gorge, I think he is like lvl 17 or so, but I wouldn't advise hangin out looking for him. I have only heard of him spawning once... And I do hang out in the gorge from time to time... Well I hope I could answer some questions...

Balrin Soulsinger, Bard of Bristlebane

https://web.archive.org/web/20000229...ML/000008.html

Edit: it identifies as Item Lore: Lute of the Gypsy Princess which is not very helpful.

[Erati]

Everlore has probably the worst information possible when you look back and piece quests together and Mistmoore went tru a ton of changes from Beta > Live.

Mayong himself was a real mob originally on Beta so likely the npc the quest refers too is also from that version of Mistmoore. The vampires used to all charm (it was removed) and I believe the Gypsys backstab so a named lvl 33 Gypsy backstabbing for 400 on beta seems plausible.

I imagine what happened is this quest simply got moved to the less difficult Maid/Butler fang quest that rewards the 7/21 Electrum Bladed Waki and those ambiguous retelling of quest bits are from beta memories.

Another classic rumor was Aegis of Life was rechargeable so its likely Aegis of Life/Lord Grimrot were in very early parts of EQ launch/Beta and thats where this stemmed from as its possible Beta was much more limited on quest giver uniqueness.

[Dildy]

You could be correct, or we can continue on our quest to prove it doesn’t work ��.

[Dolalin]

I downloaded all of eq.stratics.com and grepped it, found this bit, from which we can deduce that the vampire fangs quest for the Wakizashi was active at least as of July 1999.

Posted by Lord Scrote on July 19, 1999 at 10:44:43 AM CDT:

(209.2.156.202)
In Reply to: Electrum-Bladed Wakizashi posted by Radjak on July 19, 1999 at 10:18:07 AM CDT:

There was a rumor floating around that it's part of a quest that Lord Grimlot initiates (In the S Kar Skeleton/Putrid camp) but I think this turned out to be fake. I stress though - I am NOT positive about this rumor being false.

An alternate source - and I believe this is correct - is that guy in the Mistmoore graveyard who isn't aggro and who tells of his parents being taken in as slaves by Lord Mistmoore. I think he carries this sword.

S'right,
Lord Scrotearumormonger

http://web.archive.org/web/200003120...54833012.shtml

Thanks for chiming in by the way Erati, it's indeed possible the quest was only in Beta and revamped out before launch as you say. I'll keep going but if I hit a dead end that's what I'll assume.

[Dolalin]

So, Erati, I think you are broadly correct. This must have been a quest spoiler from late beta or very early launch.

I had to crawl around a lot but found an old Onelist mailing list called eqbards whose archives are still on groups.yahoo.com. I used the api to extract all the messages and grep through them, and found this email from Sunday, July 25, 1999 5:39:27 PM (932924367) describing that Grimrot did not accept the lute as a reward, and the wakizashi was the result of another (obviously the vampire fangs) quest.

Ok here is the story. No, you can not get the Wakizishi from this quest =(

It is in Mistmoore but has nothing to do with Arlena. Lord Grimlot does

want you to bring back Arlena's bones and give them to him, what that does

who knows. Lord Grimlot has two forms, an easy skeleton form, and a super

hard Human in full plate form, sometimes with Opal Scythe sometimes with

some type of good scimitar. The way to get Lord Grimlot to spawn is to go

to the skeleton camp just outside the bridge in south karana. gotta clear

the camp and hope he spawns at night. we got him to spawn first night, and

had a dark elf necro talk to him, and got him to talk about his lost love,

but he wanted bones not lute. myself and my bard friend didn't want to risk

losing our lutes (that do nothing, but you never know). a level 50 druid

friend of mine took his level 25+ bard and went to Grimlot. with his bard

he used his mask of the deceiver to become a dark elf and sang charismatic

carillon on Grimlot. Grimlot was no longer KOS but was amiable i think, got

him to talk about the quest, and gave him the lute. all Grimlot did was

equip the lute, so they had to kill him but was able to loot the lute

(hehe).



Shada

https://groups.yahoo.com/api/v1/grou.../messages/4295

And a followup from Sunday, July 25, 1999 10:27:22 PM (932941642):

> It can't hurt. Let us know! =) Also if you ever manage to find Arlena and

> give Grimlot her bones instead of the lute of the gypsy princess, would be

> interesting to know what that quest gives. Another reason I doubt Grimlot

> has anything to do with the Wakizishi or the Lute is because he mentions

> Arlena, and she is not who carries the lute. just thought of that. anyway,

> good luck.



Yeah, Arlena is the main reason I thought it was bad. And the fact that

there's already another quest, verified to work, which is much harder than

the lute->grimrot quest, that gives a wakizashi.



And to rephrase more clearly what I said in the previous message.. if

you're going to disprove something, might as well do it right. =)



---

Jesse <j@...>

http://www.lumiere.net/

https://groups.yahoo.com/api/v1/grou.../messages/4310

Here's the extract digest if anyone else wants to use it for research in the future:

https://github.com/dbsanfte/eq-archi...-lists/eqbards