Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 56: Side Quests and Pirate Battlefuckers

Beginning

<- Previous: Black Alice’s Monster Lord Castle

Before attempting the Bird God Shrine ritual I thought I’d knock off the last remaining side quests.  Some of them unlock useful items, one of which is another advanced job/race unlock.

As with part 1, the side quests can be found pinned on a board to the right of the doors at the end of the entrance hall in the pocket castle.  It might be because I haven’t really been paying attention, but part 2 seems to have a lot less of these, although the rewards from these later ones make completing them much more worthwhile than… say, teaching Ratty a poison breath attack, for example.

Unlocking Human -> Vampire Race Change

This is Promestein’s side quest.  Take her to the vampire pub in Sabasa and have her talk to the left-hand barmaid.

I vant your blood

She’ll give Promestein a sample of her blood.  Promestein does some on-the-spot experimentation, mixes it with something else, and then injects Luka with “garlic extract”.  This turns Luka into a vampire thirsting for blood.

Um, why?

It’s not bad and is actually rather useful.  Humans only have a beginning race and run out of further options (unless you unlock the Worm Summoner race with Lily).  This gives them an extended progression path as you can now switch their race to vampire.

After this Promestein will appear in the pocket castle lobby (between the maid and Teeny’s inn, you can’t miss her) and give you the option to make various race changes.

The first is to change a character’s race from human to vampire.

Providing you let her inject Bunni with “carrot extract” in part 1, she can also change a character’s race from slime to beast.

There is also a third option to change mermaids to fairies, but this requires completing Gigi’s side quest and recruiting Lucia rather than Lily.  What this means is that NG playthroughs have the option of either human -> worm summoner or mermaid -> fairy depending on which side you took during the Magistea Village war in part 1.

Pirate Gloria and the Lewd God’s Soul

The fishy pirates also have a side quest.  There is a rivalry between them and some human pirates led by a woman named Gloria.  Bonnie and the others want to settle who is the best once and for all.

Put Bonnie and Ashel in the party (or maybe just Bonnie) and sail directly east from the Naval Headquarters.  Travel in a straight line and you’ll come across another boat.

A pirate ship.  Easier to find than the vampire isle, thankfully.

This is Gloria’s ship.

Gloria the Pirate Queen

She has two henchwomen—Ariadne and Cresta

Ariadne and Cresta

All three are battlefuckers.  Rather than settle their disagreements through normal fighting, Gloria suggests they do it through battlefucking, and Luka is the one nominated to represent the fishy pirates.

(Sonya is as happy about this as you might expect.)

This segment is basically just three battlefucks to withstand, one by one.

Ariadne is a paizuri specialist.

Boobs!

Cresta likes a bit of buttock frottage.

Ass!

Gloria will just wank you off.

Wank!  (ow ow ow ow, too hard)

Depending on what current job/race combo you have for Luka, she probably will wank you off, as her total damage is somewhere in the region of 4.5k.

Ariadne gives a pirate scroll on defeat and Cresta a gun scroll.  Gloria is the more important as she gives you an accessory that halves MP usage, but more importantly the Lewd God’s Soul, an item required to unlock the advanced level prostitute jobs as well as some of the advanced succubus races (I think).  This might be dependent on how many battlefuckers you have found and defeated.  After beating Gloria I got an achievement for besting 35 battlefuckers.  (Which isn’t actually all of the them.  Spoiler: there’s at least one more to come.)

I’m not entirely sure when this quest unlocks as I wasn’t looking.  So I don’t know what happens if you complete it before running into Aurora in Remina, or any of the other later battlefuckers.  It could be that the achievement and Lewd God’s Soul reward are tied together and you get the soul off whichever battlefucker happens to be the 35th battlefucker you defeat.

If you come back to recruit Gloria afterwards she’ll also give you Proof of the Pirate King, another advanced job/race unlock item.

So, yep, you probably want to do this side mission.

King Grangold’s Insecurity

This is more optional as the rewards are boosts to King Grangold, but they’re pretty hefty boosts, so you’ll probably want to carry this quest out if you make a lot of use of King Grangold in your “A” party.

It’s another one that had me confused at first, mainly because I seem to have a blind spot for the quests where you have to talk to the character in the pocket castle first in order to initiate the quest.

Talk to King Grangold in the pocket castle.  Mephisto, who is in the same room, will tell you that she’s been unable to show Grangold how to shift back into human form.  The king is worried about how he’ll be received by his subjects in his new, monstrous form.  Mephisto suggests trying small scale to start with by seeing how people react to him in a smaller village like Goddard.

Put King Grangold in the party and take him to Goddard.  As you enter the village you’ll get some lines of dialogue that indicate the quest has started.  Sonya will helpfully draw a face on Grangold’s shiny egg head.

...........

No, it’s not helpful.

Talk to every NPC in Goddard.  They will all run away.  After you’ve scared away every NPC in Goddard a little girl will spawn in the centre of the village.

You need to terrorise this girl

She will also try to run away, but trips and hurts herself in the process.  The king will use magic to heal her, which reminds the girl of a previous time when she tripped and fell and the king used magic to heal her.  She then recognises him as the king despite his new monstrous appearance.  This completes the quest and gives King Grangold the hope he will be accepted again by his subjects.

The net gain is a whopping +40% to Magic ability and the ability to cast magic for half MP.  Very useful if you want to make King Grangold your main party nuke.

Medal Queen’s Search

This is another one where I don’t know when it unlocks.  I’d completely forgotten about the Medal Queen, to be honest, and only noticed this quest existed while looking up how to complete King Grangold’s quest.

Collect enough medals and select the reward that has the Queen of Grand Noah join the party.  (This is Queen of Grand Noah in her Medal Queen palace rather than her Grand Noah throne room.  Yes, I did not realise they were the same character for a long long while).

Her joining the party will unlock her side quest.  Talk to her in the pocket castle and she’ll reveal she wants to find the original Medal King, who is rumoured to have disappeared somewhere around Iliasville.

Remember this mysterious gravestone way back in the starting village.

Cripes.  They hid this in the very first village.

You probably thought Luka’s mum was buried there or something like that.  Nope.  It’s the Medal King.  Take Queen of Grand Noah here.  She’ll be able to translate the inscriptions on the gravestone and confirm it is the Medal King buried here.  At this point the spirit of the Medal King will appear.  Not only does this complete the Queen of Grand Noah’s side quest, it also unlocks the Medal King as an NPC you can trade small medals to for even more powerful items.

Whew.  That’s all the side quests done apart from Lazarus in the casino—which I think is just about winning (or buying) enough chips to unlock the soul item he’s holding.

-> Next: Still not the Bird God Shrine.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 55: Black Alice's Monster Lord Castle

Beginning

<- Previous: Remina

After a brief stopover at Remina which didn’t give us much other than some juicy background info, it’s time to continue on to the monster lord castle up in the north.

Here be succubi and all kinds of filthy fun

In the castle Alice reminds Luka to stay focused.  We’re not here to fight the demon lord Black Alice.  We’re here to pick up the blue orb.  We should stay focused on the task at hand and avoid running into Black Alice.

Black Alice... sorry... Alicetroemeria agrees.  We should avoid running into Black Alice... who is standing right next to us.

There are also some rather attractive succubi to tempt us with their seductive wiles as we make our way through the castle.

I say tempt us with their seductive wiles, but it might be more pound us to a pulp with their muscles.

I'm not sure you want these thighs wrapped around you.  They might fracture something.

Aha, here are the succubus martial artists teased on the original cover.

Demon Monk’s temptation move is a powerful vacuum blowjob.  Sadly there are no pictures of this, but we do get to see her ride us, muscular cowgirl style, afterwards.

She's going to ride us very very hard...

She’s tight and very pneumatic, and after Luka comes she jabs her tail in his ass and pumps him full of aphrodisiac venom.  Despite this, it’s not a drained-to-husk snuff ending.  But given that she takes Luka off to train on, I don’t think it will be long before she breaks her new toy.

I like this artist’s style, mainly because Luka actually looks like a mature hero here and it doesn’t matter because the succubi still over-sex him.

Other monster girls include the Guivre Girl.

Naughty and nice all in one package

She’s half-demon, half-angel, I think.  Although I wonder if TTR had a research fail here as when I looked up guivre I got a mythical French wyvern thing.

She’ll tempt Luka with a blow-job.

Tempted

And then, like Demon Monk, rides us cowgirl-style afterwards.  Using her half-demon, half-angel powers, she alternates her pussy between angelic (soft and fluffy) and demonic (muscular and very very tight).

Lost

The scylla maids running around are one of Xelvy’s creations, hence spines where There Should Not Be Spines.

She's very efficient and diligent, and not at all... spiky

Her bad end scene is surprisingly medium for a Xelvy.

One of Xelvy's more restrained scenes

I’m not sure the angles work here, but at least she milks out our cum without those spines going into soft parts of our anatomy.

That’s enough fun.  Time to continue the exploration.  Oh and one important thing:

DO NOT GO UP THIS STAIRCASE.

I wouldn't go up here...

This is the middle staircase leading up to the 3rd floor.  The NPC will tell you that it leads to Black Alice’s throne room.  Alice will also warn you again that you’re not here to fight Black Alice.

The main downside of walking up the stairs is Alicetroemeria will leave the party.  This is presumably to take her place on the throne so we can fight her.

Or maybe.  Despite her strategic disappearance at this point, I do wonder if they’re one and the same person.  Walking through the castle the NPCs talk a lot about an ongoing war between Alice and her sister.  I might be reading more into it than is there, or just misreading a bad machine translation, but I do wonder which loon we currently have in our party.

You can fight Black Alice, but it’s not advised, especially if you were leaning on Alicetroemeria’s offensive capabilities, as she will have left the party before this fight.  Despite this I still made a reasonable attempt at it.  Whether it’s winnable or not depends on what damage Black Alice’s Monster Lord’s Cruelty attack caps out at.  Against me it was a total party kill.  I could survive that as I’d levelled up all my party members through the Apprentice Hero job to pick up the self-resurrecting Protection of the Goddess ability.  The first Monster Lord’s Cruelty anyway.  The second Monster Lord’s Cruelty... yeah, that was a party wipe.

I reloaded and avoided this part of the castle in the end, mainly because I don’t know if you actually get Alicetroemeria back once she leaves the party.  You probably don’t want to lose her either, as her damage output is useful when fighting the proper boss of this region.

Where you need to go is up the east tower.  That’s where the treasure room containing the blue orb can be found.

It’s not a simple case of picking it up, as standing between us and the treasure room is the infamous Black Sanyaki (Black Rose?).

Legends of their time

This is the legendary trio of Kokka (succubus), Kokuja (lamia), and Kurobara (vampire).  They are quite a tough boss fight.  The Bad End you get varies depending on which one of the trio landed the final blow.

If it was Kokuja, she’ll suck Luka’s sperm out with a tail orifice she heats up for extra comfort.

Hot (literally!) tail-sucking action

Kurobara will suck you up with her pussy.

Vampires have other mouths to suck with...

Kokka will really suck you up with her pussy.

...but they don't suck as hard as succubi

And I mean really.  She doesn’t waste any time on it.  The gal is on a schedule.  Cue sweet, but extremely short sex as she sucks out all our cum and energy in not much time at all.

But, as always, this is a fate for alt!Luka.  In this reality, like Heinrich before us, we gave Black Sanyaki a good spanking and sent them packing.

Interestingly, their profiles in the monsterpedia have a (1) after the name, which implies we’ll be seeing them again for more sexy fun in part 3.

The blue orb is ours.  Time to head over to the Bird God Shrine.

-> Next: Not the Bird God Shrine

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 54: Remina (alt)

Beginning

<- Previous: Recruiting the Queens II

Right, so with our harem forces bolstered by various powerful monster girl queens, it’s time to go and pluck the missing blue orb from Black Alice’s castle in an alternate reality.

Got that?

Ok, let’s go.

The stopping off point is the alternate succubus village.  If you’ll remember, there was a dude by the river standing next to a boat that looked like it might get used at some point.

Giz us yer boat

Well that point is now.

Or rather not.  The boatman won’t hand over the boat until we get permission from the mayor.

The mayor’s house is up in the north, just left of the path heading out of town.  If I remember right, it was blocked by a maid last time we passed through here.  The mayor looks like a loli, which is suspicious.  She’s grateful to us for driving off the succubus queen(s), but when Luka brings up the boat to Helgondo she refuses, saying it’s too dangerous.

At least until Black Alice... sorry Alicetroemeria... steps in.  They appear to know each other and the mayor changes her mind fairly sharpish.  Cue another line of suspicious “..........”s from our Alice.  Methinks shenanigans.  Methinks loli mayor is not as she appears and knows and recognises her demon lord.

Then it’s off to Helgondo.  Despite being in a different reality, the monsters in the ocean and on the land before the tunnel are the same ones we encountered in our world.

Once inside the tunnel we run into some new encounters.  Four new monster girls and none of them are repeats from the original series.  Obviously I wasn’t paying close enough attention when perusing the graphics folder, as I thought the game was nearly out of new encounters at this point.

Two are Setouchi’s, which I like as I like their artwork, even the weirder stuff.  One is Pile of Snakes Woman.

I think surrounding yourself with giant poisonous snakes definitely qualifies as playing hard to get

Not sure what’s going on here—whether she’s sitting on a pile of snakes, or is some kind of weird scylla/lamia crossover where the tentacles are replaced by snake heads.  Her temptation move is a snake bj, for which there is mercifully no artwork.

(I really hope I’m not inadvertently responsible for this whole snakejob thing after putting this story out.)

After that, her Bad End scene is rather restrained, or rather, we end up being restrained by snakes while she bounces away on top with what seems a perfectly normally human pussy.  (Of course, being part snake, that part of her anatomy does get rather tight when she gets around to properly milking us.)

Tight.  Very tight.

Next girl is called Master Shadow and she clearly has some sort of undead/ghost thing going on.

Ghost goo girl?

Maybe an iffy translation of lich?  I don’t know.  Her Bad End is rather undignified as she dunks Luka head first in spirit goo and drains first his cum and then all his life energy.

One of Luka's many undignified Ends

I skipped on the other two—Kirin and Enera.  I’m not a big fan of the loli/chubby chibi head shape and body type.

Nope...

...and nope

The artwork looks fine from what I saw in their respective temptation scenes, just doesn’t do anything for me.

On the other side of the tunnel is a rundown church.

What's a church doing all the way out here, and why is the priest acting so strangely?

The priest inside looks somewhere between distracted and completely blissed out.  The reason for that becomes clear as we bump into Lilim and Lilith (the other one) on the way out.  Ah, so that’s where those twins got to.

Ah, that'd be why

They recognise Alicetroemeria and nearly give out her real name before she cuts them off in a way that implies they came very very close to making a very bad mistake.  This is also where you can recruit the Lilim twins as Alicetroemeria talks them into joining.  I wonder what Black Alice is up to here.

Remina is over to the west.  The Helgondo monster girls are all taken from the original series—Wyvern, Behemoth and Kyoryuu.

Remina.  Come visit.  Ignore the poison pools and ravenous monster girls.

Unlike previous towns, Remina is more of a background dump than a quest gate.  There’s nothing stopping you from running straight past it to the demon castle, but that would mean missing out on some useful items, so it’s worth visiting.

Humans and monster girls are co-existing in Remina, but there are tensions.  Most of these appear to be caused by the Church of Ilias, which is also aggroing the science community as well.  An angry mob wants to burn down the main academy/lab.  It’s worth going in here as the scientist next to the blackboard has the Scientific Extremes item required to unlock some of the advanced jobs (Scholar?).

This guy has the book you want

There are also some nice call backs to the chaosised Remina we visited through Tartarus.  Going left takes you to a residential area that should look familiar (this is where we first emerged from the first tartarus region many many moons ago).  In the first building there is man with his scylla wife and daughter.  This is also the same house where we found [Nuruko] in part 1.  I did bring her along to see if it triggered any interactions, but there weren’t any, which seems like a missed opportunity.

Hmm, I have a feeling I’ve been here before...

There is a succubus prostitute hanging around at the end of a long alley.  Sonya is not going to let Luka have any fun with her even if you select ‘yes’.

The other side of the town is the commercial district.  You can find the battlefucker, Aurora, in the item shop.

Items with a bit of battlefucking on the side

Other than that there’s not much around.  Alicetroemeria enjoys herself going around incognito and we learn the pubs are segregated, mainly to avoid accidentally poisoning the squishy humans.

Things get a little more interesting in the castle.  You want to talk to the king anyway as he’ll gift you the Warrior God’s Soul needed to unlock more advanced jobs/races.  There is also plenty of talk about Edina, the king’s daughter, and some big whopping hints that Luka is the descendent of Heinrich and Edina.  This would mean he also has hidden royal blood to go along with his hidden angel blood.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of the hidden king trope popular in fantasy stories, but then the recent Star Wars film tried the parents-are-nobodies angle and… it was not very well received.

I guess a Heinrich-Edina pairing might go some way to explaining why Black Alice went off the rails.  Although, to be honest, I’m not sure she was on any to start with.

That’s it for Remina.

-> Next: Black Alice’s Monster Lord Castle

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 53: Recruiting the Queens II

Beginning

<- Previous: Recruiting the Queens II

Time to pick up more of those gorgeous, sexy monster girl queens.  Hopefully ones that won’t try to eat us mid-nookie.

Queen Harpy - Lucretia

This is straightforward.  Go back to Queen Alraune at the top of the World Tree.  The Yggdrasil fruit will have ripened by now.  Collect it from Queen Alraune, warp to the Harpy Tower and present it to Queen Harpy.  This will cure her and she’ll join the party.

And we get some lovely nights filled with fluffy feathers...

Touch Fluffy... Wing?

Queen Alraune - Alrauna

Recruiting Queen Alraune is a little trickier.  Go back to the World Tree and talk to her.  She wants to secure succession to the throne and put the Alraune Priestess on it.

Alraune Priestess doesn’t want to have anything to do with it, thank you very much.  Running Plansect Village stressed her out to the point it gave her stomach ulcers.

Queen Alraune carries on talking as though Priestess had accepted.  She tells us we need to go to the gold coast to look for “light seedlings”, whatever they are.  Priestess still isn’t particularly happy about this.

Hmm, these queen quests seem to involve a lot of questionable choices and screwing over previous party members.  In other mainstream RPGs I’d be thinking these decisions would come back later to bite us in the ass.  But this is a frothy hentai game about collecting a harem of monster girl waifus... created by someone very familiar with RPG tropes and fully cognizant enough to twist and exploit them.

Are you up to something, TTR?

It turns out it’s the alraunes that are up to something.

Gold Coast is the beach section just before Poseidoness’s temple.  Wander around the grassy sections and look for the sparkly lights indicating an item.  Once you find it, Priestess will beg you to break it.  She really doesn’t want to be the new Queen Alraune.

If you refuse, she grabs and breaks it anyway.

...which upgrades her into a Queen Alraune, just as the old Queen Alraune planned all along.

Alraune Priestess promoted to Alraune Queen

Former queen alraunes burst out of the ground and scary boss music plays.  Uh oh.

I think we've been had...

Turns out it’s a prank.  It seems no-one wants to be queen of the plants, so the previous queens are continually tricking their successors into breaking the light seedling and getting stuck with the job.  Cue much weird supervillain cackling.

Alraunes are strange.

As with Spider Princess, we don’t lose anyone.  Queen Alraune, real name Alrauna, joins the party and Priestess stays with you and gains a new form.

She also gets three new request moves that are variations of her sitting on our lap.

Flowers suck.  (That is Luka under there, I think.)

The variations come from what she decides to suck our balls empty with—her pussy, or two types of fleshy flowers custom-designed for maximum sperm suckage.

Queen Mermaid - Laura

This had me stumped for a while and I had to look up how to do it online.  Even after the battleplan to go to Black Alice’s alt demon castle, Queen Mermaid still refuses to join.  It’s clear we need to do something with El, but this isn’t triggered by talking to Queen Mermaid.

For this you need to check the side quests in the pocket castle (you might have forgotten about them, which is understandable as it’s barely been used in part 2).  El has one where she wants to make amends for waging war on San Ilias.  How, is a little confusing.  I did run around all the locations in this region with El in the party without much luck.

Turns out you have to talk to El first in the pocket castle (or rather on the MS Fish, as that’s where she can be found).  El is really hurting over her role in the violence and comes to the conclusion she needs to use her blood to heal the people who’ve been injured.  After coming to this conclusion she rushes up to the deck and throws herself into a nearby iron maiden.

Of course, MGQ-universe iron maidens don’t work that way and El gets a rather pleasant shock instead (I think she liked it).

You need to take her to Queen Alraune (who was in my pocket castle at this point).  She will give El some seeds for medicinal herbs to be planted on Natalia Coast (the region before the descent into South Ocean Temple – Meia/Kraken’s domain).

The site of El's herb garden

Plant the herbs.  Come back.  Come back again.  Beat up the poor mini-crab girl because she was curious.  El learns that beating up people just because they’re curious is bad.

Now go back to Queen Mermaid.  El will talk to her and convince her to join.

And we can have some nice family fun tog—

A nice... eggjob?

Pass.

Queen Fairy - Airy

We left Queen Fairy recuperating on the island at the centre of Fairy’s Isle.  Her recruit condition is pretty random and not related to picking up the red orb at all.

She wants to see the Hide’n’Seek trophy.  You pick that up by finding all the hidden Amiras... which we already have.

So that one’s easy.

(Unless you haven’t found all the Amiras and—worse—can no longer remember which locations you found her at and which you didn’t.  At which point I imagine there will be much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair.)

Queen Elf - Freya

Queen Elf’s recruitment condition is also rather random.  She wants to see a silver and gold trophy from Grand Noah’s coliseum.

She denies being a fan of all that sweaty fighting stuff, but is also very specific on what we need to do to obtain those trophies.  (Alice just rolls her eyes.)

The silver trophy is obtained by winning the first race restriction fight.  This is the second option and requires all four members of the party to share the same race (the imp party with a random other succubus is fine if you've kept leveling them up).  Fight three random encounters and win and the trophy is yours.

The gold trophy is obtained from the third option, which is some kind of endless mode.  You’ll need to win ten fights in a row, but as the monster girls they throw at you are low- to mid- level it shouldn’t be too difficult.

Take both trophies back to Queen Elf and she’ll join the party.

And we get to experience the exquisite pleasures of her pussy if we ask her very nicely in the pocket castle.

Mmm, luscious tight elf pussy.  You never got this in LotR.

And that, I think, is that for recruiting all of the monster girl queens.  I know there are still some side quests outstanding in the pocket castle.  I’ll come to those later.  As for now, it’s time to penetrate Black Alice’s... castle.

-> Next: Remina (alt)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 52: Recruiting the Queens I

Beginning

<- Previous: The 6 Orbs

Right, sub-quests today.  Lots and lots of sub-quests.  I’ll be picking up the queens in reverse order to fighting them, mainly because that’s how I did it.

Vampire Queen – Fatima

Go back to the throne room in the vampire castle.

Vampire Queen will agree to be Luka’s “concubine”, on the condition he helps her achieve her aims of world domination.  Sonya is not impressed by this.  Then it turns out Vampire Queen’s sinister plan to achieve world domination is to... open a chain of vampire pubs?

Um.  Okay.

Alice (or Sonya) points out it’s basically a rip-off of what the mermaids are doing, but the vampire queen is undaunted.

The vampire queen wonders if anyone in the vampire family is good at business.

Well... there is that former bandit queen who runs the shop in the pocket castle and has negotiated trade deals with pretty much every settlement in the world and even some on other planes.

This is Vanilla’s time to shine.  She talks with the vampire queen about opening a pub in Sabasa.  Vanilla already has a list of possible locations, with the old assassin’s HQ at the top of the list.

At this point you need to go to Sabasa.  The house you want is the one where Salaan (the assassin battlefucker) can be found hanging out.

The soon-to-be first Vampire Pub

Talk to her and she’ll sell the house to Vanilla.  Then it’s back to the Vampire Castle to talk with the queen (You’re going to want a time mage able to cast Warp in the party, as this and the next few quests require a lot of bouncing around the map).

After talking to the vampire queen she’ll relocate to Sabasa, where she can be found inside the old assassin building along with various vamps engaged in interior redecoration.  She will then set two quests.

The first is to find a nice carpet.  Remember that mysterious sheep island right near the start of [part 2], well finally we have a reason to visit it.  It’s just west of the Navy HQ if you’ve forgotten where it is.  Go and talk to the sheep girl blocking the door to the building and she’ll provide the carpet the vampire queen is looking for.

So this island of drunken sheep was actually here for a reason

Quest two is the one where I initially heard rumours of it being broken if characters were recruited in the wrong order.  Those characters are Lazarus and Merlin.  They can be recruited in the pub in Gold Port pretty much the first time you visit there.  I’ve left them there after seeing a forum post about this quest line being broken.  Whatever that problem was, it doesn’t appear to be present now.

Queen Vampire wants beer.  Going through the brewer’s guild is expensive, but fortunately there is a shadowy underworld figure capable of bypassing all that.  You’ll need to go to Lazarus.  If, like me, you haven’t yet recruited him, you can talk to him in Gold Port and he and Merlin will join the party.  After being recruited he can then be found in the casino of the pocket castle (and will be here if you recruited him ages ago).  Talk to him to satisfy the second part of the vampire queen’s quest.

Then it’s time for a night’s sleep at the inn and then return the next evening to see how the vampire inn is faring.

Very good as it happens.  It’s full of happy patrons.  They’re drinking the beer.  The vampire girls are drinking the patrons (non-lethally).  In fact, the men seem a little too happy.  They're all paired up with very willing and rather attractive vampire girl hosts.  There’s even one squirming away in bliss in one of elder vampire’s tentacles.

Looks around.

Wait a minute.  I don’t think this pub is a pub...

And the world was doomed as a chain of high-quality vampire brothels spread across it.

To be fair, I suspect the mermaid “pubs” are running the exact same business model.

Anyway, Queen Vampire is happy, and that’s her quest line done.  She reveals her real name is Fatima and joins the party.  Vanilla reveals she doesn’t have a real name as no-one gave her one.  So Fatima, as head of the vampire clan, bestows one on her.

Awwww.

You dun gud, little Vanilla.

And we get a lovely new concubine for our harem, where we can look forward to nights of pleasure just like...

A date with a vampire.  BYOB.

...eep.

Moving on.

Spider Princess – um, Spider Princess

Getting Spider Princess in the party involves throwing all common sense out of the window and having Luka behave like a complete idiot.

Go to her throne room.  Thankfully, an arachne lord is on hand to teleport us straight to her rather than battling through the maze-like Isle of Solitude.  Spider Princess will tell you she wants to ascend to the throne of Queen Insect again, but needs the votes of Queen Bee, Queen Ant and Queen Roach to do so.

That’s an interesting teaser.  I wonder if we’ll get to see a Queen Roach in part 3.

Hmm.  Are we sure we want to see a Queen Roach?

Queen Roach isn’t around, so it will have to be the votes of Queen Bee and Ant.  Agree to help Spider Princess out and you’ll be teleported to Queen Bee at the top of the insect mountain.

I don't think Queen Bee is going to agree to this...

She is not too happy about letting Spider be queen again and is totally not convinced by Spider’s claims that she’s turned over a new leaf now that she’s found her “love”, Luka.  Queen Ant shows up and is also for vetoing Spider Princess’s claims.

This is where I initially thought I’d fucked up as it ends up in a battle where you have to pick a side.  I thought it was going to be another of those either/or scenarios, but it doesn’t play out that way.  Side with Spider Princess and you’ll have to fight Queen Bee and Queen Ant.  Win and Spider Princess wrangles her way to Insect Queen and joins the party.  Fortunately, you don’t lose Queen Ant and Queen Bee in the process.  They can still be found in the pocket castle afterwards as if nothing has happened.

This means that the correct course of action is to side with Spider Princess, even if all common sense suggests Luka should not do this and definitely be nowhere near Spider Princess’s bedchamber when she starts to feel a little frisky.

Because, well, we know why...

How many times have we told you...

-> Next: Recruiting the Queens II


Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my other writing.  Currently I'm queuing up the MQ:P playthrough posts for the next few weeks.  Once that's done, I'll get back to writing.  Not sure what that'll be.  The rest of "The Heart Squad" hopefully, but if I find that's gone a little stale, I'll try changing things up.  2,000 words a day on a random story I'm not supposed to be writing is better than 0 words a day on a story that has gone cold and stubbornly refusing to be written.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 51: The 6 Orbs

Beginning

<- Previous: Vampire Castle

Hmm.  This section of the game is going to be a little awkward to write about, given that it’s a big chunk of exposition and a ton of random side quests.  Bear with me.

We’ve defeated all four of the monster girl queens that declared war on humanity, so it’s time to convene another war council to figure out what to do next.  The consensus is to take the battle to Alice (Alice’s mum, Alice) in Helgondo.  The main problem is getting there as the continent is ringed by impassable mountains.

Now comes the part that will be familiar to anyone who played through the original series.  Alice suggests resurrecting the Bird God and flying over.  This requires a ceremony at the Bird God Shrine and 6 magical orbs.

So about those 6 orbs.

Queen Noah tells us she’s already given us the green orb as a prize for winning in the coliseum.

Sphinx has the yellow org, which we haven’t yet picked up.  That will involve a trip back to the pyramid.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be able to recruit her now.

Robo-Pope has the information on the red orb.  That was lost to/carried around by merchants.  He thinks it’s ended up in the secret elf village just outside of Yamatai Village.  Alice suggests asking Queen Elf to help with negotiations to try and obtain it from the shut-in Elf Princess.  (This is a deviation from the original series where, I think, Queen Elf held the orb.)

Grangold mentions the purple orb was in possession of Pirate Queen Selene.  That’s already been looted from the ghost ship, so we’re good here.

The silver and blue orbs were given to the ocean queens for safeguarding.  We’ve already grabbed the silver one from Poseidoness, but it looks like we’ll have to go back to the South Sea Temple to pick up the blue one.

At this point Kraken informs us that the blue orb was destroyed by Astaroth when the shikibus besquidded her.

Ah.  I guess we won’t be following the plot of the original series after all.  Hmm.  Why would Astaroth want to blow that orb up?

Then it’s Black Alice... sorry, Alicetroemeria of all people to save the day.  She suggests snatching the blue orb from her reality where it is still intact.

That is... a sensible suggestion?  Are you okay there, Bla... sorry, Alicetroemeria.

She points out the tunnel route into Helgondo is still open back in her day.  They should be able to sneak in and take the orb, as long as they take care to avoid Black Alice.

JRPGs aren’t always the best medium for characterisation, but our Alice’s line of “............”s here is absolutely hilarious.

Alice knows Alicetroemeria is really Black Alice.  I think Alicetroemeria knows everyone knows she’s really Black Alice, and the fact everyone is pretending to not know she’s really Black Alice is what’s making the game fun for her.

Okay, we’ll cross that bridge when Black Alice inevitably sets fire to it.  In the meantime the quest goals are fairly obvious.  We need to pick the yellow orb up off Sphinx, get the red orb from Queen Elf/Elf Princess, and fetch the blue orb from a parallel demon castle.  I’m guessing the first two are simple fetch quests, while the third is an actual quest in a new location.  At this point, having glanced through the graphics folder, I’m wondering what monster girls are left.  There are the muscle succubi drawn by the guy (or gal) that actually makes Luka look like a proper hero in their art.  I suspect we’ll see them in Helgondo/demon castle.  After that... some weird angels?  Oh, and La Croix’s circus.  I’m wondering if she’ll be the overall final boss of [part 2].  It would give some symmetry with [part 1] considering that “good” La Croix was the final NPC we found in the tower at the end of the universe.

But that’s for future consideration, we still have a fair bit of game to get through (which surprises me, as I thought I was somewhere near the end).

And side quests.  A lot of side quests.

We do want to recruit all those lovely monster girl queens after all.

Randomly, the max party size is increased to 12 at this point.  This is pathetically inadequate for the purposes of levelling up Luka’s monster girl army, but I’ll take what I can.

Right, this is the point where the game throws a ton of separate side quests at you to unlock and recruit various characters.  While I did these in some sort of overlapping fashion, I’ll break them out into an easy follow guide, rather than the mess of an order I actually did them in.

Yellow Orb

This is a straightforward fetch quest.  Warp to Sabasa and walk out west to Sphinx’s pyramid.  Thankfully, we don’t have to fight our way back through the pyramid.  Talk to the scorpion girl outside and she’ll give an option to teleport us right to Sphinx.

At this point the trickiest part is talking to Sphinx without accidentally selecting the “challenge her to a battle” option.

Oh, yeah.  We don't have Alma Elma with us this time...

All you have to do is ask for the orb and she’ll hand it over.  Sphinx will also tell you that she senses the presence of Black Alice’s old “gods” wandering around and is getting the urge to get out and about.  This means she’ll now join the party if you ask her.

I’m not sure if having Sara in the party affects things here.  There are some comments about how pleased she is to fight alongside her great-great-great-great-this-could-go-on-for-a-while-great granny, but I think you get those whether she’s in the party or not.

Red Orb

For this you need to talk to Queen Elf on Fairy Isle.  She’ll tell you that contacting the elf princess is rather difficult as she’s a hikikomori (shut-in) waiting to find an impossibly perfect man.  Alice suggests sending her a picture of Luka.

Now, if you went purely by the art of the game, you might be scratching your head at this point.  Luka, as he is most frequently depicted, would not seem your typical manliest manly man.  But to be fair, MQ:P is a game playing with femdom themes, and to reinforce those themes most of the Bad End scenes depict cartoon Luka getting curb-stomped (sexaphorically speaking) by big and busty monster girls.  The Luka of the story is a legitimate hero at this point with all his various deeds and probably quite a dish to blushing maidens everywhere.  (Good luck to those blushing maidens in getting past Alice and Luka’s growing harem of horrors.)

Elf Princess seems to think so anyway, as she agrees to meet us at the snake shrine in Yamatai Village.

New elf waifu

Then runs away.

You can find her in the main shrine building.  She’s too shy to speak to us directly, so does everything from behind a screen and through some elf minions we haven’t seen before.

Elves we won't see naked until part 3

And she likes, Luka.  I mean really likes Luka.  Not only does she give us the red orb, she also hands over the God Hunter’s Soul, a nice sword, and a whole bunch of goodies.  There is also lots of wedding talk and other dating stuff.  Sonya eventually snaps from pure jealousy and charges behind the screen to confront the princess.

It does not go well for her.

But we have the red orb.  That leaves just the blue orb and a trip to an alternative demon castle to go, but before then I’ll go through the various side quests required to recruit the various queens... in the next post, as this one has run on for a bit.

Hmm, a bit short of lewds today.  How about a blowjob from Alicetroemeria.

Her other scenes are worse.  A lot worse...

And don’t anyone complain about the vanilla-ness of it.  You never saw her teddy bear in the original series.

shudder

-> Next: Recruiting the Queens I