Greetings, Questfans! Happy...summer?

Okay, mea culpa. I meant to have this posted months ago, ideally during the spring when this quest would be thematically appropriate, but since my writing process is best described by the sound of air being slowly let out of a balloon (plus we had DXP month, and a Yak Track, and some big quests, all of which is very distracting), so here we are: a fair bit later than I'd hoped, but let's still try to summon a little excitement for...

Garden of Tranquility

We begin by talking to Queen Ellamaria of Varrock, who...does not give a good first impression, it must be said:

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I want to pause here briefly to ask a question I'm going to come back to: why does everyone hate Ellamaria so much? Keep it in mind going forward, it's going to be important later.

So, what does Ellamaria want us to do? Well she wants to do what is colloquially known as "pulling a Seren". No, not "scream and flee the consequences of her actions", the other thing Seren does:

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That's right, she wants to make a garden. More specifically she wants us to make a garden for her, because apparently she's too delicate to do it herself. We're furnished with a list of plants she wants, along with who to speak to about them (very helpful, honestly), and told that "diplomacy will be required." Okay, first of all, rude. Second of all...fair enough. We're directed to the Wise Old Man in Draynor Village, who is apparently a master of the diplomatic arts, something I'm sure poor Elfinlocks can attest to.

The Wise Old Man, incidentally, has some choice words about Ellamaria, as well as giving us a bit of backstory on her:

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It turns out that the reason she's so haughty is that she isn't actually noble, she was a barmaid who King Roald fell for and eventually married, and she's just affecting an upper-class attitude. Remember that question I asked earlier? Good, good; we'll come back to it later.

Apparently the Wise Old Man deems us a lost cause for training in diplomacy, and a shortcut is needed. This leads to one of the more interesting bits of foreshadowing, given where the plot has gone in 2020:

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Foreshadowing magically transforms and starts flirting with, just, everyone

I don't remember where I heard this now, possibly in some of the Lore Council Q&As that came out after Desperate Measures, but I remember hearing that Jagex had planned to make Charos a character in the game for a long time, they could just never quite figure out where to slot him in. It's interesting to see the seeds of the idea that he might still be around, even way back in 2005.

Anyway, it turns out that the Ring of Charos, which we picked up from Doctor Fenkenstrain way back when, used to have an enchantment on it that would sway the opinions of the weak-minded, making them easier to convince to work in our favour. The Wise Old Man can restore the enchantment, but will only do it if we can prove that we deserve the power. This leads into a classic morality quiz, which isn't really hard (the answers are almost always pretty obvious), but has some fun references, most notably:

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Having passed the test, we are now in possession of the Jedi Mind Trick - I mean the activated Ring of Charos, and we're free to start Ellamaria's list! The first three are pretty dry: we talk to the farmers and charm them until they agree to give us a seed, and then we have to grow something in the nearby patch.

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Fear my level 25 Farming! I am invincible!

So this is a pretty dry section of the quest, involving a lot of waiting for things to grow. Farming in a nutshell, isn't it?

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In fairness I probably could have parallelized this, started a few patches growing at once, but I was paranoid about patches becoming diseased, so I opted for this approach. Slower, but safer. The only comment I'll make is that there's a deeply unnecessary bit of characterization given to Lyra, the farmer at the Morytania allotment patch, which paints a very grim picture of life east of the Salve:

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That's...very dark, even for Morytania. And it doesn't bode well for Elstan, the farmer south of Falador, who confessed to being a bit sweet on Lyra. But the quest doesn't dwell on it, so why should I? Moving on!

Next up, and beginning to break the pattern, is getting some rose seeds from Brother Althric. Remember him from Perils of Ice Mountain? It's okay, I didn't either. Unusually, so far, Brother Althric realizes what we're doing, with the whole "bending minds to our will" thing, and refuses to deal with us until we've disposed of the Ring of Charos. Fair enough, I probably could just right-click Destroy it, or I could bung it down the well in Edgeville. That does the trick, but how am I going to get it back now?

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Good idea, Brother Althric! Annoyingly I need to acquire a new fishing rod, because I can't use the one on my toolbelt, but after a quick trip to Port Sarim I'm gone fishin':

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Ring back in hand, it's time to visit Bernald, in Taverly. After some...persuading, he agrees to give me the secret seeds to his vine if I can cure the disease it's picked up. That's no problem, I know where to get Plant Cure...

..Oh, that didn't work? Of course not, that would be too easy. Talking to Bernald again he reveals that he already tried Plant Cure (obviously), but the vines need something stronger. I'm directed to nearby Alain, who helpfully informs me that crumbling some Rune Essence into a Plant Cure should do the trick. Okay...so how do I crumble Rune Essence?

Full disclosure, I ultimately went to the wiki to solve this puzzle. Unfortunately it seems that all of the signposting happens when you try to use Rune Essence on various tools, but because all my tools are on the toolbelt, that didn't happen. I did try buying a hammer and using it on the Essence, which instructed me to use it on an anvil, so I'm guessing I'd have gotten a similar message if I'd tried to use a mortar and pestle on the unbroken Rune Essence piece. There's good signposting in this puzzle, it's just a smidge concealed behind the toolbelt interface. Alas.

Finally, we come to the last items on the list: a statue from Lumbridge and a statue from Falador. I found the relevant statues easily, but I initially had a hard time figuring out quite how to move them. Back to Ellamaria for a hint, and she hands me a push cart. Okay, fair enough, off to Falador! Where I had the good fortune to encounter a passing elven traveller, who was good enough not to report me to the authorities:

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Oh hi Tyco elf, good of you to stop by. Fair does it was actually LukeTotodile who spotted me and announced my crimes in Clan Chat, prompting Tyco to come over and admonish my anti-social behaviour. But alas Luke ran off before I could get a screenshot of him, so he'll have to be content with this shoutout. Though clearly someone tattled on me, because I was just about to push the statue into its final position when it just disappeared, leaving only this message in my chatbox:

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Friggin' narcs. In reality this is what happens if you take too long, which seems more than sightly perplexing given I was literally standing in the Varrock Castle garden when the statue vanished, but in the name of gameplay balance I can forgive it. Back to Falador, and then to Lumbridge, and all that's left is to plant and grow these seeds, after which point Ellamaria instructs me to fetch her husband for the big reveal. He's...not exactly enthusiastic about the idea:

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Despite this apparent terror, he's actually pretty apathetic towards the garden that I, I mean Ellamaria worked so hard to make for him.

This is the point where I want to come back to the question I asked at the very start: why does everyone hate Ellamaria? Because they clearly do; in this very quest two NPCs, one of them Ellamaria's own husband, express negative feelings towards her character, and in Dimension of Disaster Jagex saw fit to turn her into a quisling, the literally-a-shrieking-banshee consort of Zemouregal who takes sadistic delight in ordering Arrav to perform mundane tasks. But...why? Really the only things Ellamaria does in this quest are:

  1. Talk condescendingly to us, which sure isn't a great character trait, but which is given a humanizing justification by the Wise Old Man (even though I suspect the intent of that anecdote was exactly the opposite): she's not born royalty, so is desperately trying to fit into a social position that is both unfamiliar and insecure
  2. Forces us to do her dirty work, also not a great character trait but kind of par for the course when it comes to Runescape quests, let's be real
  3. Makes a garden that her husband doesn't seem to want, which is hardly a hanging offence
  4. She slaps him when he's insufficiently appreciative, which...fair enough? He's kind of being a prick about the whole thing

Really, it seems like Roald (and, to a lesser extent, our own vandalizing selves) is the villain of this story. His response upon learning that his wife had gone to great trouble to make a garden for him to excape the stresses of leadership - the stated purpose, remember? - is a resounding "meh." I've been married long enough to know that there's a good and a bad way to handle telling your spouse that you don't like the gift they got you, and this is definitely a "bad" way. I'm not saying he should have pretended to be overjoyed, but at the very least have an open and honest conversation, not "I hate delphiniums."

Anyway, those are the kinds of things I think about playing a sixteen-year-old quest while pushing thirty. I'm a real hit at parties.

Quest complete!

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Overall not really a bad' quest as such. It's certainly a more natural use of the Farming skill than Forgettable Tale was, and there were some decent puzzles and some good writing. It just hasn't really aged well, either in terms of gameplay mechanics or in certain attitudes. Not bad, not my favourite.