Here's a story about the old Elvish kingdom, a time of peace, when the eight elf clans lived together in harmony. But everything changed when the Iorwerth attacked. The Iorwerth clan betrayed the others and attempted to control Prifddinas, the elvish capital. The other clan leaders saved it by reverting it into a crystal seed (anyone in it is trapped in suspended animation), and scattered across Tirannwn. The city could only be re-grown by the eight clan leaders working together, but Lord Iorwerth has found a shortcut, and it involves killing everyone in West Ardougne. Iestin Edern, an archaeologist of the Iorwerth clan, is utterly horrified by this and immediately about-faces. To stop them, it's up to you to start up a revolution and kick the mourners out of West Ardougne, and kick King Lathas off that throne he's been abusing.
With the help of several familiar faces from West Ardougne, you kill all the Mourners in their headquarters, raise a new flag, and start a civil war when half of East Ardougne's military force (the Heroes and the Knights of Ardougne) believes you and fight to overthrow Lathas, and half (the Paladins and Warrior Women) doesn't. You can either spare Lathas and send him into exile, or kill him right then and there- either way, his cousin Thoros is now on the throne.
Now that plan is down the drain, but there's no guarantee that Lord Iorwerth won't find another way to raise the city under his control, so there's only one thing left to do- find the eight clan leaders and grow the thing yourself. Whoever raises Prifddinas controls it, so you'll thwart Iorwerth's plans by doing so.
The eight leaders are as follows-
Lord Iorwerth: Obviously, he isn't going to help you. But that's okay, because Iestin knows enough about the magic involved to take his place.
Lord Cadarn: Turns out, you've met him before- he's Arianwyn, who swore not to use his title until he won the war.
Lady Ithell: She's dead. However, she "put her soul into her greatest work", Lletya (she designed the town to match the beauty of Prifddinas without using Seren crystals). What that means is that she hid the plans to a statue of herself around, and encoded in it the knowledge needed to become the new Lord/Lady Ithell. Kelyn, a Lletyan elf from the Ithell clan, sees the statue and receives the knowledge.
Lord Amlodd: He reverse-summoned himself into the spirit plane (the place where your familiars come from). You can create a 'Lord Amlodd' pouch to re-summon him.
Lady Trahaearn: She hid herself in a cave just south of the Well of Voyage, using a special exoskeleton to put herself in suspended animation. It's broken down a bit, so you'll have to fix it to revive her.
Lord Cyrws: He turned himself into a tree. The tree's now sick, so cure it and you'll revive him.
Lady Hefin: She hasn't done anything ridiculous like the others- she has just fled to the east of the Poison Waste, and lived as a hermit. Answer her quiz about Seren, and she'll listen to you.
Lady Meliyr: She's hidden herself in Daemonheim (there are a lot of unique herbs there, which she wanted to investigate), and with a potion that she made the recipe for, you can find the rooms she's sequestered herself in.
Once you have all the leaders gathered, you have to solve an eight-stage light puzzle to re-grow the city. But guess who's here to ruin your day? The Dark Lord that Lord Iorwerth serves. He's a fragment of Seren, being the part of her that grew obsessed with death (which she, as an immortal, had never experienced personally). She cast that bit of her out, but it was able to influence the Iorwerth. After you defeat him (multiple times) and solve the puzzle, he dies as Prifddinas is regrown. Now, because of your influence with the rebellion, non-elves are allowed in.
Congratulations, quest complete!
This quest contains the following tropes:
- Asshole Victim: You're not gonna feel an inch of sympathy for Lord Iorwerth following his abrupt death at the hands of the Dark Lord, considering his heinous actions during the Elven Civil War.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Iestin Edern is the archaeologist cousin that the dead Mourner mentioned in his diary, and is the reason the Iorwerth discovered the Prifddinas undercity, and the Great Library.
- Devour the Dragon: The Dark Lord consumes the souls of both Lathas and Lord Iorwerth.
- The Dog Bites Back:
- With your help, the citizens of West Ardougne start a revolution against the Mourners, evicting them from the territory and reclaiming rightful ownership of their city.
- General Hining agrees to fight back against Iorwerth's forces after you inform him of Arianwyn's plans to restore Prifddinas alongside the other elven clan leaders. Hining and Tyras's remaining forces hold off Iorwerth's forces and successfully make it out alive by the end of the quest.
- Everyone Has Standards: Iestin Edern is racist against humans and is working for Lord Iorwerth, but he thinks the mass murder of West Ardougne is too much.
- Face Death with Dignity: If you choose to execute King Lathas on the spot, he accepts his fate, going down as the self-proclaimed last true king of Ardougne.
- Failed a Spot Check: When you ask Kelyn why she never constructed the Lady Ithell statue herself, she'll admit that despite living in Lletya and walking past the symbols all the time, she never noticed them (or at least never considered them important).
- Graceful Loser: If you choose to spare Lathas and evict him from Ardougne, he concedes defeat and exiles himself to an unspecified location, and promises that you'll never see him again.
- Heel–Face Turn: Actually lampshaded by the mayor of the Iorwerth Camp. She doesn't want to give Lord Iorwerth's master plan to Iestin (despite him complaining that he can't do his job without it) because she suspects that an intellectual like him would be horrified by what it entails and immediately betray the Iorwerth. She's absolutely right.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Post-quest dialogue with Morvran has him condemn the Elven Civil War as unjustified, but insists that he was only doing his job.
- Not Me This Time: After the quest, you can talk to a gnome from Arposandra. He'll reveal that the elves initially thought the Arposandrans were behind the fake plague, and he's kind of annoyed by this.
- The Reveal: It turns out that the Dark Lord (and not Iban) was responsible for driving people within the Underground Pass into insanity, in an attempt to see more interesting deaths.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: It turns out that the Temple of Light was once the can for the Dark Lord, which is why it's infested with shadows.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Lord Iorwerth writes his plan like this. The Mayor complains about how utterly boring it is to read. Notably, "Quasi-elf necromantic resources" means "Sacrifice the entire human population of West Ardougne".
- Super Gullible: The Mourner keeping watch of the gnome food in the Iorwerth camp buys your claim that the Mayor requested that the food be distributed to the common elves in the camp.
- This Cannot Be!: For someone so obsessed with death, the Dark Lord apparently never thought about it happening to him.
- Upper-Class Twit: The Mayor of the Iorwerth Camp gets gnome food shipped to her personally while the rest of the camp starves.
- Weirdness Magnet: Lampshaded. Normally, Councillor Halgrive wouldn't believe a story so out there, but you have been on so many strange adventures that even elf necromancer conspiracies are par for the course.
- Your Answer to Everything: The Dark Lord can't go on for a minute without making some mention of death. You even get the chance to lampshade it when talking to him in between combat sessions.
