Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

...would still smell like guril berries.

On the way to interview our second witness, I decided, on a whim, to speak to one of the unnamed children on the street here. Here’s what she had to say:

“MY MOTHER SAYS THAT DARK ELVES SHOULD BE HANGED UNLESS THEY’RE NAMED DRIZZT!”

And I didn’t paraphrase that at all. That’s a word-for-word quotation. No joke.

…I got nothing. I mean, damn. Even Vespero is satisfied by this and resolves to make a point of NOT killing her when he gets his Kensai powers back. Godspeed, kid. You’re going places.

Anyway. We're now going to see the harlot known as Rose Bouquet, who claims to have smelled something unusual at the scene of the murder.

I get the feeling that this young lady has taken a leaf out of old Rampah’s book, because she’s charging us 20 gold just to talk to her. Not quite as steep, granted, but still. If that’s her going rate for brief chit-chats then I’d hate to think how damage we'd have to inflict on our wallets to actually get her out of her obnoxiously bright clothes.

That said, this price is completely non-negotiable, and since there’s no option available to take the “piñata” approach, (that is, tying her to the ceiling and hitting her with sticks until she breaks and spills information) we’re just going to have to swallow our cheapskate nature and pay her fee.

Basically, our task here is to go to the nearby merchant and bring back things to sniff that might be what she smelled at the murder scene; guril berries. Now, obviously there’s the berries themselves and the tannin the merchant gives us, but I don’t think we’re really given the opportunity to take advantage of this. For example, what if I happen to think that Jaheira’s slender, athletic thighs smell like guril berries? You’d better give those a sniff. No? Are you sure? Try her neck, then. Oh, well, how about Viconia’s tunic? Maybe you should take it off her so that you can get a really good whiff. Take your time, there’s no hurry.



...hey, look, I paid twenty gold for this, alright? I just want to get my money’s worth.

Anyway, she reckons it was the tannin, which means the tanner did it, which means that we’re dealing with the most incompetent murderer ever.

Seriously, what were you playing at, Mr. Hidesman? Were you even trying? As if leaving flayed corpses in the middle of the street for the guards to find wasn’t bad enough, you apparently think it’s a good idea to sprinkle a bunch of tannin around the murder scene, thereby implicating everyone in your line of work. (And you're the ONLY person in your line of work in the whole city.)

On top of that, you somehow manage to louse up completely and leave an ENTIRE ELEPHANT HIDE lying near the victim. Just…what? God only knows how you managed to drop something like that and not notice, but forget that. The more pertinent question is "Why did you bring it with you in the first place?" What possible purpose could it have served? “OK, going out to murder a hobo, better make sure I’ve got everything I need…knife, gloves, dark clothes, ELEPHANT HIDE, yep, all set.”

Honestly, at this point, I don’t know who’s worse; the murderer himself for leaving such an obvious trail of clues or the city guard for somehow missing it all and needing us to clean up the mess. I’m half-tempted to abandon this side-quest out of sheer contempt for everyone involved, but the lure of XP is too strong to resist.

Let’s just go.