My Favorite NPC Mystery

Hail,

Ever have a small storyline in EQ that you followed, or tried to follow, that no one else seemed to know about or care about? I did. The game was much more than a power trip on items for me. I wanted to roleplay.

One of my favorite zones was Najena. Down in the prison, there was this high elf female named Linara Parlone. She’s supposed to be related to the royalty in the Thex Palace in Felwithe. She’s part of the Mystic Cloak quest which many of you INT casters might be interested in. Anyway, the cloak quest is designed to introduce the players to the higher-ups (NPCs that is) in Felwithe. You have to kill a ghoul in the top of Unrest (Priest of Najena) and get a bronze key for her. They key is supposedly to help her escape. Except, prior to Oct 13 1999, it wasn’t.

The previous storyline was that she wasn’t trying to get back to her home, but she was trying to subvert King Thex. The bronze key, as far as the storyline goes, was for a secret passage to the throne room in Felwithe. She was duping adventurers into getting it for her so she could deliver it to Najena herself and curry favor with her. This was totally cool. The symbol of Linara’s betrayal was the weapon that was her rare drop: The Bone Handled Dagger.

It was a pretty good, which is probably why it was removed. The thing obviously was meant to be used by evil races and classes. This was to be interpreted as Linara’s seduction to the darkside. The item lore on it, if you were a bard and had that song, told you something like, "held by one betraying her people" or some such.

I was hoping this would develop more as time went on, but alas, it didn’t. EQ was so new back then that no one really understood how servers and storylines were meant to evolve. We all, I think, imagined the game to be much more like a roleplaying game than it actually was. Ah well, the blissful ignorance back then is something I reminisce about now fondly. I have no idea what the storyline was dropped. But it reminds me of a time when the world seemed much more alive and organic than it does now. EQC won’t provide those same feelings I once had, but it will provide me the chance to relive those good old times.

Incidentally, I kept the stats of that dagger. For anyone interested in extinct items, here’s what I have written down from that time:

MAGIC ITEM
Piercing: 5/26
DEX: +3 INT: +4 SV MAGIC: +5
Effect: Deadeye
SMALL
PRIMARY SECONDARY RANGE
DEF HEF HIE ELF
ENC NEC SHD BRD ROG

-Cazic’s Chosen