All this talk made me remember this quest. I am currently on

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werewolf island. To get here, I had to go to Baldur's Gate to get the sea charts. When I entered the area with the counting house, Marek and his buddy showed up and threatened me. As soon as the dialogue was over, I attacked him and killed him. I've never killed him before the geas quest even starts before, so my question is: What is going to happen when this quest kicks in? Or will it simply not happen? Or will I have to kill Marek when it starts and he's already dead so I fail? Or will I automatically succeed? Or will Bif the Understudy take his place? Or will he regenerate? I have his antidote and all the stuff that he dropped when I killed him. I have a save before I did it and I want to start playing it now if I'm just going to have to start it up later anyway. Any input???

jeromy

You're in luck, I myself have killed Marek and taken all of his valuables. Afterward you'll never have to worry about him again. The understudy does not reappear and the quest doesn't occur. At least when I killed him nothing happened so you should be in excellent shape. Even if the quest does occur, which I seriously doubt, you'll already have the antidote, but this is very unlikely.

Cool. I should be finishing up the game within the next few days, so I'll post again and let people know how it turns out. That way, the answer is out there if anyone has this question again (and the search function is on again so they can find it).

It's a while ago now, but on one occasion I met Marek and Lothander on the way to getting the Charts, but never went back to do the quest. It was ok, I didn't get poisoned. Though it's always hard to know if the time has elapsed.

I believe the trigger for the poison is the 2nd meeting with Lothander, so if he's dead the meeting never happens and the quest never starts. If I'm wrong then the Antidote won't help you and your screwed.

On another occasion I went to get the Sea Charts, and rather than risk getting into the Geas Quest, I used Invisibility to walk right passed the two of them. (Must have been in my solo game.)

Just a thought though. If you kill him and you don't get poisoned and you don't have to worry about the quest wouldn't you also be missing out on the 10000 eperience you get upon completion? Plus the side quests that have to be completed to get there?

Chances are that by the time you reach BG city you're capped on exp anyways; however, if you get a cap remover that is a different tale all together. I myself am happy with the exp cap for now. That and my bro is paranoid about viruses screwing up his pc, on which I play BG, so downloading is highly restricted.

I did run into Lothandar again and he did tell me he was poisoned and even though I drank Marek's antidote I still started to get sick. So for future reference, DON'T kill Marek if you see him the first time, because somehow he still poisons you later and you'll die. Fortunately, I finished the game before this happened, but since I plan on exporting into SoA, it's kind of cheap that I can get around a deadly poison by just finishing BG1 and having the fact that I'm dying not roll over. Oh well, I guess it was cheap that a dead guy poisoned me in the first place...

jeromy

I think it's safe to kill Marek, IF you kill Lothander, too. As long as the computer knows Lothander's alive, the quest will still initiate and progress as normal....but if Lothander's dead, he naturally won't show up at the Blushing Mermaid. Yep, poisoned by a dead guy. Sucks, huh?

Odd that I've never seen this issue addressed in any of the BaldurDash fixpacks....