If I Could Turn Back Time

Further Hildibrand Adventures Quest Template:Quest

Walkthrough

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Steps

• Speak with Hildibrand in The Dravanian Forelands (x20.3, y22.1).

• Speak with Hildibrand at Zenith in The Churning Mists (x11.3, y28.6).

• Use the salamander oil on Hildibrand.

• Massage Hildibrand.

• Use the Salamanderville on Hildibrand.

• Massage Hildibrand again.

• Massage Hildibrand yet again.

• Massage Hildibrand once more.

• Speak with Cyr at Zenith (x9, y28.3).

• Speak with Cyr in Idyllshire (x6.4, y7.6).

Journal

• Hildibrand wishes to entreat your aid in a matter of grave import.

• Hildibrand Helidor Maximilian Manderville, agent of enquiry, inspector extraordinaire, has formally petitioned you and the others for aid─a rather meaningless formality in light of the fact that all present came for that very reason. The party is gathered and your purpose is clear. “To Zenith, and to Gigi,” the inspector bellows.

• The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Hildibrand, having recently been forcibly interred in the earth, has yet to regain his strength. Fortunately, his mother Julyan has come prepared with salamander oil, the perfect cure for aching muscles─muscles which you have been chosen to massage with gentle ferocity. But first, it must needs rub the oil on the inspector's skin. Or else it gets the suplex.

• The inspector's skin shimmers in the pale moonlight. Or the bright sunlight. Time and weather notwithstanding, there is rather a lot of shiny. Now it falls to you, he of the strong-yet-tender fingers, to relieve your dear comrade of the aches which ail him so.

• So strongly you knead the flesh of Inspector Hildibrand in your eagerness that he nearly faints from the experience. Manderville men are made of sterner stuff, however, and he quickly recovers, proclaiming that the fires of righteousness burn anew in his breast. Yet Godbert would spur his beloved son to greater feats of Mandervillian strength with the power of Salamanderville. An ancient legacy of House Manderville, this most sacred of oils shall see one shine with the brilliance of a thousand suns. Once more, you are granted the honor of anointing the inspector, and you rise to the occasion, your heart fair swelling with pride.

• The vial of Salamanderville has been spent, but your strong-yet-tender fingers are not. Hildibrand's muscles cry out for your ministrations, and you, ever the soul of compassion and generosity, are doubtless eager to oblige.

• With passion and fervor you massage the oily inspector, eliciting such groans of ecstasy that under more dubious circumstances would make passersby blush and depart with all due haste. This is only the beginning, though─harder, better, faster, stronger!

• A lesser man might be satisfied with this most vigorous kneading you have administered. Yet Hildibrand is no ordinary man. As he continues to flex for all and sundry, he cries out to the very heavens that he has not even begun to pose.

• Full of vim and vigor, Inspector Hildibrand leads you and the others to Zenith, where he confronts the Grand Sers once more. The rejuvenated warriors look on you in disdain, proclaiming that they have a dragon to slay. When it becomes apparent that Hildibrand will not go quietly, they execute a spectacular and strangely familiar attack...but when the dust at last settles, Hildibrand remains standing. The young father implores his wayward and pointy-eyed son to give up his futile quest before it claims his life. Alas, in a fit of rage, the mammet once more reasserts his ability to return anyone and everyone to their ideal form, and brings his magicks to bear on Hildibrand himself...but to no avail.

Gigi knows not what to make of his failure, leading the inspector and Cyr to explain that the true nature of his powers is not to turn back the hands of time, but to make manifest his ideals─to remake the world and everything in it as the mammet sees fit. Once Archmagus Quan understood that Gigi already saw him as perfect, he realized the only way to achieve his goal of immortality would be to erase the memories of the mammet he had come to view as his last remaining family. Unable to do so, he came to terms with his inevitable death. However, before he passed, Archmagus Quan decided that the only way to protect Gigi from those who would seek his powers was to take his memories after all, and leave him free to begin a new life─a new story all his own.

Unsurprisingly, Dorys and her comrades have no intention of surrendering the mammet, and make one final attempt to kill you and the others by sending several tonzes of ancient masonry crashing down upon your heads. But in that instant, Gigi rises into the air and uses the last of his remaining aether to return all to the way it should be: Zenith restored, you and your comrades safe, the Grand Sers their natural age, and Hildibrand unconscious.

As all struggle to come to terms with this new yet familiar state of affairs, Hildibrand rises and resolves to resume his adventures, and is duly delivered into the air by his dear mother after choosing his words poorly. Cyr is relieved to discover that Gigi is not forever lost, but may one day reawaken once he has regained sufficient aether. However, the former inquisitor is also acutely aware that the life he once led is forever lost. Fortunately, the inspector left behind a smashing gazebo that Julyan is more than willing to let him look after until her son comes back down.

• With no choice but to leave the Grand Sers and Gigi in the care of Lord Godbert, Cyr leaves to make arrangements for his new life in Idyllshire. Before he departs, however, he invites you to come and see him when next you pass through the settlement so he can properly thank you.

• Cyr introduces to you a new friend─or rather, reintroduces: Gigi, in a somewhat more compact form courtesy of Lord Godbert's modifications. While the mammet does not speak and has yet to regain its former consciousness, Cyr and the goldsmith believe that if he were to accompany you and share in your grand adventures that it might hasten his recovery.

For all his recent troubles, Cyr appears to be a man at peace. No longer bound to serve a cause he did not believe, he is free to begin anew as a consulting inspector, much like the man whose gazebo he has taken as his own. Though your time together is at an end, he hopes that your paths will cross again someday, and he prays that the Fury will bless and keep you in your travels.