SHP Forums

Being a fighter, I beat Heroine's Quest for the first time, scoring 497 points out of 500 (aww... where did I miss 3 points? ), and an honour score of 94%. Yay! I made sure to train up my fighting skills all the way up to 100, get Balmung, befriend Ratatosk and make him a Bloom Squirrel (LOL! I love the idea of a Bloom Squirrel), and defeat Egther (of course).

Overall, I'm very impressed by the research that went into HQ. One very, very minor niggle: the names "Svartalf" and "Svartalfheim" are pronounced differently by different characters. The humans give it the English pronunciation, whereas the actual Svartalfars (or Svartalfrs) give it the German pronunciation, i.e. "Schwartalfar" (literally meaning "Black Elf" - yep, this name is the origin of the infamous Dark Elves of D&D fame) or "Schwartalfheim". Any ideas why the difference in pronunciation? Are they both correct, or only one - and in that case, which one is right? Curious minds what to know...

I'm also curious about the names of the other cities in the game. Apparently there is an actual Fornsigtuna in Norse mythology, but I haven't been able to find much about whether Munarvagir is also a real place or a real place-name. Does anyone know?

Feel free to share your HQ exploits, too!

I'd attribute the difference in pronunciation to just differences between voice actors. I'm pretty sure the way they do the voices is to send out the scripts to the actors and have them record the lines and send back the audio files. This makes it harder to get completely consistent pronunciation than if the dialogue were recorded in a single studio, with someone listening and giving feedback after each line.

As for Munarvagir, Wikipedia does have a page for a place called Munarvágr.

Ooh! *gets to reading* So... the names Hervor and Arngrim are also derived from Norse mythology... and the mythical Arngrim (like the HQ one) was also a berserker. Neat!

In addition, Arngrim in the Gesta Danorum (i.e. "Deeds of the Danes") attacks and slays a king called Egther. Unfortunately there's nothing more about him in the English wiki - but, in the Spanish wiki (and here is a translation, Egther was a king of a place called Bjarmaland. These territories are mentioned in Viking sagas, and correspond today to part of the Arkhangelsk Oblast of Russia (in Russia's northwest). Its nearest neighbour was known at the time as Kvenland, Cwenland, Kænland or similar terms, and is an ancient name for an area in the northeast of Scandinavia.

*looks around* Sorry, I didn't mean to bore you all. But I'm now even more impressed by the research the game-makers did. *thumbs up*