Just what I did not want. Having two timed quests at the same time. It seems I'll be having my work cut out for myself. I need to convince the giants to join the war efforts and find some missing folks.

It was time to head into a region I've spent very little at in Hallowed Marsh. I ended up taking the route from the forest into the marsh. That is when I learned that I was cut off from the mainland.

There were two ways to get to the mainland. One was a giant bridge that led into a building and the bridge had a barrier up. The other was inside a different dungeon that had a locked gate inside. Both of these had to be opened from the other side for me to use them.

I decided I was going to make a third path to the mainland. I jumped down into the waters below. That alone took most of my health. The water was then toxic and it finished the job. Thankfully I respawned on the other side.

I’m also thankful in this zone the main city has a giant light pillar that you can see from anywhere in the region for the most part. So, I just set my sights on it and went for it. The creatures in the marsh got a good taste of my new mace and they were not fans.

Once I made it into the main city my main goal was to get some new spells. I did end up getting around to that at one point. Not before finding out from a quest popping up that some people were missing and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

I had just enough money to buy a house. The broker was not in town as of yet. I can only guess I had to work on some other quests before being allowed to have a house in this location. I was not a fan of running around with about five hundred silvers in my pocket. I did not have much choice in the matter for the time being since I could not waste time heading back to another region to drop it off.

I decided since I had lots of time on my main storyline quest that I'd track down the missing people first. In some cases, I could work on both of the quests as they were sometimes having me do things near the other one.

Working on the missing people first was the better of the choice. As it turns out there were timers within the timed quest. If I had shown up late, I would have had to do more work to solve the mystery.

Since however I showed up in time, I got some fresh clues that pointed me to a place called Dead Roots. Inside I needed to acquire a bunch of notes for whatever reason. This was also my first time inside this dungeon since I've spent very little time in the marsh before.

I’m never a fan of dungeons that were filled with creatures that gave me corruption. I however had to fight off some horrors. At some point, I need to stop being lazy and get into crafting my potions and cures. At least for now, I started to have a use for that extra silver I was carrying around to buy a bunch of cures to reduce the amount of correction I gained.

The notes I ended up finding in that dungeon did not sound good. It seems some town folks got mixed up with another faction whose name is not important. I always got a rather creepy feeling anytime I'd run into at random that other faction.

I ended up bringing the evidence I had collected back to the main town in the marsh. The leader there was irate about what I discovered. It seems the city was at some kind of risk as well.

At the very least due to the elevated threats the leader decided to hire a bunch of extra guards for the town. I would not know it at the time but that would come quite in handy later on for the main storyline that I now was going to start working on.

Just to make things a bit easier on myself. I went into the Spire of Light dungeon that has the bridge that I can take from the marsh to the forest blocked off. I needed to go around pulling a bunch of levers on different floors till the barrier was lowered.

This place was quite challenging and since I was on a time crush, I did the bare minimum. Once I knew the barrier was lowered, I ran out of that dungeon before anything had a chance to kill me again. This would make it easy to get back to the forest later on.

Next up I needed to work on getting the giants to join us and provide some support for a massive war that was brewing. The giants wanted me to pass a test that required me to gather some roots. This was kind of weird but I went along.

I also needed to gain better insight into the culture so I could answer questions the leader had about joining us in a way that works for his people. This was part of the negotiating phase and I'm kind of shocked I got away with some of the claims I would end up making.

Before talking the giants into joining us, however, I was given a chance to learn about them better. I decided to get all the information I could about giants. I wanted to get perfect success on this quest as I felt it might have a huge impact down the line.

I also lucked out. Quite a long time ago now. I ended up finding this rather strange gem. It was a giant's heart and it was rather rare. It turns out the giants rather respected me for returning it to them. This I felt could only help in my favor.

In addition to needing to learn more about the giants. I was also given a task to prove I could handle myself. I needed to go into the Reptilian Liar and collect a bunch of tree roots. Perhaps the hardest part of this was finding the tree roots themselves as they were quite small.

I also had one giant tell me there was a book written about giants in a shed not that far from the giant’s town. I also ended up running up to the main town in the region and talking with a bunch of NPCs hoping someone had further information to tell me about giants which someone did.

With the test finished and myself armed with information I headed back to the giant’s town and spoke with their leader. I then went through telling them about our faction how well everything would work between the giant's cultures and how we ran things.

In the end, they agreed to join us and sent some giants to help protect one of our towns. That caused those who declared war on us to feel the pressure that they were on the wrong side. After many losses, they wanted to call for a peace agreement.

I then had to go around getting a bunch of the different factions on our side to agree to accept terms of peace. Little did I know however that the real violence was about to start. Everyone agreed to meet up back in the marsh region for the final details and sign a peace treaty.

That is when I learned the other side had a good reason for wanting peace. One of their top people had suffered a mortal blow and was dying. The only way to save them was if they got help to ascend into a higher being.

It seems the other side was a bit shocked that was the only one to save one of their leaders. The ritual to do so would end up causing the local beasts of the marsh that were being kept away by charms to come charging the city. I was tasked with defending the city with many others while the ritual took place.

Up to this point, I did not have much to do with the war. I was not on any of the major battlegrounds. I more or less was just running around doing things in the background. Now however I had to defeat quite a massive army of beasts raiding the city.

Thankfully since the city already had extra guards. Along with everyone else that I had helped out who showed up to help defend the place. This fight was not so bad.

I just ended up running around the city helping take out pockets of beasts that were invading. Most of the time the beasts were already quite damaged. Other times the fight was already over and I just ran to the next part of the town looking for anyone needing help.

There was one challenging fight with a creature called The Butcher. He was not much of a match for the amount of cold damage I can now do. I took some massive blows but managed to survive that fight which concluded the war.

Final Thoughts

I was given some new armor that had a decent boost to cold damage on it. I could also now buy a house to have in the marsh. While all those were great. I was just glad to have finished off these timed quests. I’d hate to think what the consequence was for failing them.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Outward Definitive Edition.