LogFAQs > #924069517

azuarc posted...

Nominate: Tifa Lockhart (Final Fantasy VII)

This was kind of a throwaway, and not a very inspired choice. If you're still mid-ranking and this won't interfere, I'd like to propose a different character instead, and I'm surprised I didn't think of her sooner.

Nominate: Katrina (Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness

The QFG series features a silent protagonist who becomes a hero across several point-and-click adventures. QFG2 ends with you defeating the sorcerer Ad Avis. Meanwhile, at the very end of QFG3, just as you defeat the final encounter, dark magic seizes you and teleports you to parts unknown. You wake in the opening sequence of QFG4 in a very strange cave, filled with strange ritual chambers and forcing you to cross a dangerous chasm to escape. The mouth of the cave is shaped like a literal mouth -- with teeth -- that closes as you exit. And standing a short distance away, watching, is an attractive young woman.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EYHVKZP6h84/hqdefault.jpg

Her appearance is highly suspect, but she walks off after welcoming you to the land of Mordavia, almost as though your appearance is completely normal. When you follow to the next screen, there are obstacles that make you, the player, wonder how she disappeared so easily. When you finally reach town, none of the townsfolk trust you. And Katrina is also nowhere to be found. However, if you return to town after night has fallen and the gates are already shut, Katrina is waiting outside for you.

She strikes up a sort of friendship with you, claiming she works in the nearby castle. (The townsfolk will tell you this castle is haunted and abandoned.) She's evidently very lonely, only narrowly holding back her amity for the hero. On the third or so time you meet her, she finally removes her hood, suggesting she's finally comfortable around you enough to do so. And yet, you know something is very off about her.

It turns out Katrina is actually a vampire sorceress who intends to summon Avoozl, an eldritch being whose arrival on Earth will bring about permanent darkness. In this, she is thinking only of herself, and how she is unable to leave the castle during the day. It also turns out that Ad Avis was apprenticed to her, and she performed a ritual that would turn him to a vampire when he died -- which was his driving motivation for getting away and seeking immortality in QFG2. But now he is back and reunited with his dark master. When Katrina decided she needed a human agent to acquire the symbols needed for Avoozl's summoning ritual, Ad Avis suggests using the hero, which is how you came to be summoned.

You don't know any of this yet, though. In sneaking into the castle to look for a child who has been missing from town for five years, you find her in a high tower of the castle, turned as a vampire so she might never age. It seems Katrina abducted her so she would have a sort of family since she had been so fretfully lonely at the castle. You return the girl to town and help perform a resurrection ritual that restores her humanity. Obviously, Katrina isn't happy to have her "daughter" taken from her, but says nothing.

But on a second trip to the castle, you find her asleep in her coffin and have the option to wake her with a kiss. At that point, she immediately turns on you, revealing her vampiric nature and accusing you of attempting to slay her at her weakest. You immediately find yourself in the dungeon, bound and whipped, until you plead with her that you meant no harm. At that point, she spills the whole plot and orders you to find the ritual symbols for summoning Avoozl within 3 days...or else.

And despite all this, you still have the sense that she has some lingering trace of affection for you. In fact, that might be why she hadn't killed you already.
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Video Game Music Contest 13 winner: Ar Nosurge - CLASS::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE;