A Bitter Rival

**A Bitter Rival** is a quest in *Pathfinder: Kingmaker*.

## Journal

* *While we were chasing the bandits, Tartuccio surely had time to escape from the tomb! Will we be able to find anything there?*
Addendum\_T1\_WeTooLate (5fd994b3b22af2847b17fc637efad5b7)

* *We've lost too much time examining the Stag Lord's former dwelling. Wherever the trail leads us, Tartuccio may have had enough time to escape, or prepare for the encounter.*
Addendum\_T2\_WeTooLate (b31ecc1c73e34c444b3817123f8c14d5)

* *The old house of the Stag Lord revealed many mysteries. But who knows what our insidious rival has managed to do in the meanwhile?*
Addendum\_T22\_WeTooLate (9e115ee2f743e034bb93f4cd15adadba)

* *While we fought the bloodthirsty beasts at the Temple of the Elk, Tartuccio might have found his artifact, or done something else insidious!*
Addendum\_T32\_WeTooLate (49ee4e38c77b8c24fb25107f4f0cd1e1)

* *We made an alliance with the kobold tribe. They will help us find Tartuccio.*
Addendum\_KoboldAlly (f13f4b8af902d0a4ca47cfbfe4fd1305)
* *We made an alliance with the mites. They will help us find Tartuccio.*
Addendum\_MiteAlly (eac8d6dc866adcf4388fd4d669443c4f)
* *We managed to find out that Tartuccio is in the caves under the Old Sycamore!*
Addendum\_TartuccioDungeon (3480c1d17c195f24caeef9e9498e81b1)
* *Tartuccio was seen entering the sacred hall under the Old Sycamore. To enter it, we shall require the mite relic, which was seized by the kobolds.*
Addendum\_TartuccioChamber (4c301cafcde6fe549a810a08629dd8d8)
* *While we fought the bloodthirsty beasts at the Temple of the Elk, Tartuccio might have found his artifact, or done something else insidious!*
Addendum\_T3\_WeTooLate (1ff1fbb4e1ce5b74abccfab7d0a3d45d)

* *We returned the kobold relic stolen by Tartuccio to its rightful owners!*
Addendum\_BranchToKobolds (414be8296186a19479ce4c040475e664)
* *We returned the mite relic stolen by the kobolds to its rightful owners!*
Addendum\_BranchToMites (c3fc3cb0e5274c541a7f4d9c7d30feaa)
* *Our leader offered {his/her} gloves as a new relics for the inhabitants of the Old Sycamore caves!*
Addendum\_ChaoticChoise (1458a2964f9d10945b69303105d8126d)
* *We kept the kobold and mite relics for ourselves, and attacked our former allies instead!*
Addendum\_NotGiveAnyone (a231ed83f1224d84686db1e5a4e242cf)
* *We returned both relics to their rightful owners, and brought peace to the kobolds and mites in the Old Sycamore caves!*
Addendum\_ReturnedAllBranch (767650edd3403ab4a9d9d86f3f621753)

## Walkthrough

* A part of the encounters will play out differently depending which quest you prioritise to do: this or Stolen Land. Generally the main differences is in visiting the Ancient Tomb or Thorn Ford first, and later dealing with kobold/mite war in Old Sycamore or visiting Temple of the Elk.

### Meet with Tartuccio in the Stolen Lands

* After exiting Oleg's Trading Post and traveling a little you will get Special Encounter (Remus) in which you meet Remus an insane or senile old man, he will reveal the Ancient Tomb for you.
	+ Throughout the conversation you can optionally end it with (Neutral) choice or kill him with (Chaotic Evil) choice.

### Examine the ancient tomb

* Visit the Ancient Tomb. If you haven't been to Thorn Ford yet, then you will meet Tartuccio here. You can convince one of the two companions that followed him to join you instead with a Diplomacy DC 10 check.

### Follow Tartuccio's trail

* Exiting the Ancient Tomb will activate the Book Event Book Event (Ancient Tomb)
* You can give up on chasing Tartuccio right away or pass the Lore (Nature) DC 11 check to try and chase after him, there are several information checks and dialogue options will be available, but eventually it all boils down to those choices:
	1. Follow the bigger trail, along the path beside the gully. You get Special Encounter (Tartuccio Trail Ambush) +90xp from kills.
	2. Follow the single set of footprints, down into the gully. Pass the Mobility DC 11 check and get to Pine Patch and gain extra +144xp, fail the check and lose the trail.
		+ Overall tracking down Tartuccio will give more experience because of all the extra skill checks to pass.

### Wait until Tartuccio shows up again

* Meet Kesten Garess in Old Sycamore, he will direct you to Pine Patch.
	+ He could be found in Oleg's Trading Post afterwards.
	+ Oleg Leveton will update his wares with several magic items.
* If you have been to Pine Patch already you won't get this objective nor experience from it.

### Explore the vicinity of the Old Sycamore

* In Old Sycamore the war between Mites and Kobolds have begun, you can now access lower levels. At the entrance you will be greeted by Kesten Garess, if you haven't seen him there already.
* If you prioritized Temple of the Elk over this quest and went there first, then the phrase "While we fought the bloodthirsty beasts at the Temple of the Elk, Tartuccio might have found his artifact, or done something else insidious!" will appear in the Journal. That imply something should play differently for the following steps of this quest, yet so far there's no information about any difference.

### Deliver Tartuccio to Kesten, dead or alive

* Directly north from the place you arrive at you will witness the clash between Kobolds and the Mites. You can decide to attack them all, side with one of the groups or keep neutrality with Neutral-only dialogue option.
* In this location you can do the following errands:
	+ Death to Queen Bdaah! or Death to Chief Sootscale!, if you chose to support one of the groups.
	+ Mandible Jewelry from Gatekeeper Quoggy if you are not hostile with mites.
	+ Moon Radish for errand Moon Radishes for Bokken are found in the middle of the map.
	+ Death to the Worgs! from the hunters at the south.
	+ Fresh Meat from the Grarrukh in the north-east.
		- The way of doing both Fresh Meat and Death to the Worgs! is to trick the kobolds from moon radish field first and then kill Grarrukh.
* Tartuccio is hiding on Old Sycamore Caves level in a sanctum next to where Warrior Queen Bdaah is. But in order to get to him you need Mites' Relic which can be obtained only from Chief Sootscale through dialogue or combat.
* In the section where you find Chief Sootscale there is a cage with the remaining companions that were in Tartuccio's team.
	+ After freeing the prisoners if Octavia is in the party you get to make an alignment choice: (Lawful Good), (Chaotic Good), (Neutral), (Lawful Evil), (Chaotic Evil).
	+ Warning! If any of the four companions (Harrim, Jaethal, Linzi, Valerie) is still taken by Technic League during Hand of the Technic League quest - the dialogue will bug out thinking that the companion is in kobold cage. After telling the remaining companions to join you - pick the "Tell me more about the story of Tartuccio and the kobolds, and getting locked in their prison." dialogue option and the dialog will abruptly end. Otherwise you will lose all the caged companions forever. You won't get Octavia's alignment/romance talk about freeing people from cages either, but that is a minor loss.

### Decide the fate of the relics

* If Warrior Queen Bdaah and/or Chief Sootscale are still alive and not exiled by the time you exit Sycamore Hall, they will ask for their relics to be returned. You can either give them the relics, kill them, or pick Chaotic-only dialogue option to make them worship your gloves instead.
* When dialogue begins you can either tell the truth or lie with (Chaotic Neutral) alignment option.
	+ Truth-only options:
		1. (Lawful Good) Return both branches if you kept neutrality and both leaders are alive, you get extra +384xp
		2. (Chaotic Good) Give the branch to your ally if the other leader was exiled.
	+ Lie-only choices:
		1. If you kept neutrality, give one branch to ally of your choice, the other will attack you.
	+ Shared choices:
		1. (Lawful Neutral) Give the branch to your ally if the other leader was killed.
		2. [Requires Chaotic] Keep both branches and ally with remaining tribes, you get extra +72xp
		3. [Attack] Betray your allies by killing them.
* You unlock Kobold Quarters if you allied with both, kobolds only, or chose [Chaotic-only] option when allied with Mites.
* You can drop the relics on the ground before dialogue, so you don't have to give them away in order to sell them.

### Tell Kesten of Tartuccio's fate

* Return to the Oleg's Trading Post and report to Kesten Garess about Tartuccio's fate to get your reward.
* If you completed the Temple of the Elk part of the Stolen Land then at trading post's gates Guardian of the Bloom will appear revealing Stag Lord's Fort.