The Feud
Entry posted by Merch Gwyar
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I did 'The Feud' quest by accident. After using the ring of duelling to leave the desert after 'The Golem', I was running back to Al-Kharid, when I saw the quest symbol next to Ali. I had half an hour before going to the cinema ('Spiderpig, spiderpig, does whatever a spiderpig does; does he swing from a web? No because he's a pig'), so I decided to start the quest, then come back another time.
I wandered down to the Shanty Pass and, once inside, spoke to Irena, thus started 'The Tourist Trap' too. They both seemed pretty easy and straight-forward, but I decided to stay with 'The Feud' for the time being. I pushed on through until the part where I needed to meet the hag, then paused to grab a veggie bacon sandwich. Returning, I walked off west into the desert, until I reached a hilltop circle surrounded by cacti and determined that the hag would be all over here. I retraced my steps back to the town, circumnavigated the high sand-dudes and set out west again from their northern face. The hag was right there! You could see her house from the town.
(Pause to go to the cinema and laugh a lot at the film)
Once back, it occurred to me that I was actually going to finish this quest, so I should have been more prepared. I finally read what was coming up and noted that I was going to need a weapon. I briefly wondered if I could punch a lvl 75 and lvl 70 to death, using my protect from melee, but thought that it would possibly be too close. I didn't want to write a blog saying that I'd been killed by a level 70, because I'd been too lazy to fetch a sword.
I nipped to Nardah and back, tooled up, and very quickly finished the quest thereon.
This quest gave me a weird taste in my mouth. When I first started playing Runescape (Yule time 2006), I quickly became addicted. I searched google for information on the game and read all sorts of articles and things. This is how I found Sal's site. Another thing that I found was something in the petition site, which accused Jagex of racism and cited the desert as its evidence. At that time, I'd only ever been in Al-Kharid (I was F2P) and could't see it myself. Yes, the guards said things like, 'let me help you with this infidel', but that was hardly racism. It was NPC loyalty to each other fighting invaders who had, after all, walked into their palace and attacked them. The community of Al-Kharid had many different sorts of people, from the highly intelligent spy to the sharp salesman. I had the petition makers pegged as over-sensitive, wishing to find racism wherever there were people not pasty white.
I hadn't given it another thought in the intervening months, except when I did the H.A.M. quests and noted that this was evidence against that charge. The racist H.A.M. members are hardly portrayed as sympathetic and you actively fight against their views in the Dogeshaan quests.
Then I did 'The Feud'. Here, I've finally found what the petition-makers must have had in mind. One of the more dangerous tenets of racism is to view anyone of a different race to yourself being 'all the same'. Once you have them cloned, then you can dismiss them as other, or sub-human, then it's easier to deny their humanity, along with their human rights or even their right to exist. This quest played heavily on the fact that everyone is called Ali and that everyone has an uncle called Ali. In fact, ALL of their uncles are called Ali. Even women are called Ali. Wft?! None of the Alis come out of it looking like decent human beings either; they are all in a huge conspiracy to part you from your money and to commit crimes.
I don't know. It just made me very uncomfortable.
On the other hand, the thieving xp at the end of this raised me two levels. Woot! Level 52 thieving now.
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