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This article is part of a collection for the walkthrough for Part One. |
| Important: This quest was introduced in Valine's Extended Edition remake of Part One (this article describes the 2.20 version). The quest, as well as most of the locations and NPCs involved, do not exist in version 1.50. |
While exploring the sewers, the Princess may stumble into a strange temple full of eerie and erotic paintings. While a certain Family member can help explain the temple, she'll need to ask around quite a lot if she wants to fully investigate.
Notes
- When blackmailing people, it's useful for the Princess to have any suspicious items she might have found present in her inventory
- Stealing heavily guarded treasures might make people angry, and the Princess should be prepared to deal with subsequent ambushes
- Unless she wants to wake up in a compromising situation, the Princess shouldn’t agree to drinking contests without preparing first. She’ll need both discipline and a hardy body.
- There are multiple people interested in the book the Princess acquires during this quest. One option will give her Lawful points, while the other will give her a hefty payment.
| Note: For the series of 13 tasks found during this quest, see Kingdom of Shadows Paintings |
Walkthrough[]
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Investigating the Temple
You start this mission by finding a temple in the sewers, which can be done as early as Lesson 3. The temple is accessed via a secret door in a room filled with water and a large lizard (labeled "Big Lizard" on the map of the sewers near where Drago stands.)
The most direct path down into the temple will lead you down to an area with a couple skeletons and a gong. Getting here is enough to ask about the temple later, but to complete the quest, you'll need to get to the lower floor of the temple.
On your way in, you'll come to a three-way intersection where two hallways are dead ends. The one with a skeleton hanging over it has another secret door to the lower floor of the temple.
| Tip: The door seems to require a higher Search check than most, and if you come here early in the game you may not be able to find it. If that's the case, try coming back after you've boosted your Search. (You have to find the door back too, so if you're using short-term buffs to boost Search, wait to find the door back before heading down the passage.) |
On the lower floor, you'll find a bill and a robe in containers (grab both for later.) In the main chamber, you'll find 13 paintings (chosen from a pool of 26 based on the letters in the Princess's name.) The paintings are a quest in their own right, found here: Kingdom of Shadows Paintings
As soon as you've found the temple (even if you haven't made it to the lower floor), you can ask Jacia about the temple to learn more about the paintings.
Stealing Kingdom of Shadows
The bill you found is to Books by Boris, located in Western Betancuria. There are two entrances: the main entrance with a "Books by Boris" sign which has a guard dog, and a back entrance at 7, Squire's Road which does not. Boris won't talk to you unless you steal a robe from his apartment and talk to him with both that robe and the robe from the sewers in your inventory.
Once Boris is sufficiently blackmailed, he'll offer you 1000 gold to steal a book from the vaults under the Betancuria Temple. You can persuade him to pay more, which will net you some experience but won’t have any impact later.
The book is behind two very difficult locks, so come to the Temple ready to deal with them (Thieves Tools, Potion of Rogue’s Cunning, Amulet of the Master, Knock, etc).
You're allowed in the basement of the temple, but will need to sneak past a guard to open the door of the vault (DC 44). The first room of the vault has some illicit necromancy scrolls - the higher level ones sell for hundreds of gold, but your real objective is the trap door in the floor.
The trap door will lead you past a minogon guardian guarding another tricky lock (DC 47 with a DC 40 trap) and into a small room containing the book you're after. Sneak back out and return to Boris.
Getting Rid of the Book[]
Once you have the book, you can return to Boris—only to find an assassin standing over him. If you're sneaky, you don’t have to fight the assassin here, but he has some enchanted gear to loot if you do.
Next time you go to your apartment building, you’ll get ambushed by another assassin as soon as you walk in the door. He does piercing damage, so the Archer’s Belt from Jerner's shop in the Harbor district can help if doing the fight at lower levels. You’ll find a ring on the assassin's body. The description will point out it’s the same design as the one from Yance in Lesson 5.
| Tip: If you discover you aren’t equipped to handle the ambush, you can run outside. Either the assassin will follow and the Dhorn Patrol will attack him (though depending on the hour a commoner might also try to help and get killed), or he won’t follow and you can go heal and prepare before returning. |
If you ask Yance about the ring, he'll tell you Timmy stole it from a dwarf at The Ox and the Wheel, an inn outside of town. You may have run into him during Lesson 7. To get back, just sneak past the guards guarding the gate out of town in the Harbor district.
The Dwarf
The dwarf is named Haffer Stengarks, and he won't talk to you unless you join him in a drinking contest. Careful: if you lose, you'll automatically wake up in bed with him. (This situation seems to have been borrowed from another drinking contest that originally existed in Part Two.)
Winning the drinking contest is a Discipline check that gets easier the higher the Princess’s Constitution is. There’s no roll here—it’s simply a flat check of your Discipline score.
The exact check you need to pass based on your Con can be found in the table below. Use your current Con value including temporary boosts from potions or items.
| Con Value | Required Discipline |
|---|---|
| 8 | 40 |
| 9 | 28 |
| 10 | 21 |
| 11 | 16 |
| 12 | 12 |
| 13 | 11 |
| 14 | 10 |
| 15 | 8 |
| 16 | 5 |
| 17 | 3 |
| 18+ | 2 |
- The alchemist in Northern Betancuria sells potions of Endurance which will boost temporarily Con by a random number between 2 and 5. You can save before drinking to get the best value.
- At the same place, you can buy potions of Bull’s Strength. Discipline is a Strength-based skill, so this will give a small boost to Discipline
- Jerner in Betancuria South sells very cheap (~120-200 gp) Gloves of Discipline which give +3 Discipline when worn
- If you started with a low Con and have no points in Discipline, you may need to stack the Endurance potion with some Con-boosting boots (also sold by Jerner) to have a shot at winning. If you can't reasonably win the contest but don’t want to wake up in Haffer’s bed, you can try skipping the dwarf and directly talking to one of the people below.
Discharging Your Illicit Goods
Haffer will direct you to the priests on the Isle of the Dead. Only the priest at the back will talk to you, and if you show him the book or the ring, he won't be happy with you for stealing it. You can return the book to his care for a big lawful boost and a smidge of respect. You can also offer him the ring for even more lawful points.
If you aren't interested in restoring the natural order of things, you can also go the route of personal gains.
- Jacia Colds will tell you that the book contains the name of a demon, and is very interested in getting her hands on it. She'll offer 10k, but can be persuaded higher. With a DC 14 Persuade check you can talk her all the way up to 50k, and with 20 Persuade you can get a whopping 100k gold for the book.
- The ring gives Darkvision and can cast the Darkness spell, which can be nice for sneak attacking if you'd like to keep it for yourself. (Note that only Ultravision or True Seeing will let the Princess see through magical darkness from the Darkness spell: Darkvision will just help you see better in poorly lit areas. However, a rogue is at an advantage fighting an equally blind opponent in darkness even without Ultravision or the Blind Fight feat, because every attack will be a sneak attack.)
- You can also sell the ring to a merchant for a nice chunk of change