Larry

Larry is a talking skull who sticks with you from start to finish. You discover him at the very beginning, shut inside a stone sarcophagus in the Inquisition dungeon, and free him with a pickaxe. He travels in your bag through the escape from the town and comments on everything; sarcasm, by his own admission, is kind of his thing.

Arriving at the Inquisitor base, he asks to sit on the box beside your bed (“I don’t like being stuck in a dark sack”). He stays at home after that, and he’s involved in most of what happens around the base.

Early advice

In the introduction, a lot of Larry’s chatter is really the game’s tutorial:

• Too weak for the sarcophagus? He directs you to the mushrooms; eating gives back energy.
• Armour and sword still in the backpack? He tells you to equip them. The story’s checks for the pickaxe, armour and sword only look at the hotbar.
• At the base, he sends you to bed, and that first sleep unlocks the technology tree.
• Leaving the house at 30+ insanity for the first time, he spots the spark of madness in your eyes and recommends good food and wine. The insanity tutorial comes next.

Following Sweet Dreams, he wakes you with a theory from the Inquisitors’ notes: they raised zombies of their own to fight the rest, probably in a room near the morgue. That’s the Resurrection Lab, and once it’s open he mentions that lightning hits the tower every Envy day.

His stories

Larry spends your working hours reading the notes lying around the base and reconstructing events before the apocalypse. He shares it in three instalments, each unlocked by sleeping: once after your first burial, then four more times, then four more. After each batch, step outside your house to hear the next part. Nothing else drives this chain; it simply progresses as you play.

The last instalment needs the donkey talkative. Give Larry 2 Beer in Comrade Donkey, sleep once more and walk out of the house for the ending. There are no items or reputation to be had; the story is the reward.

Playing Robert

You need the explosives held by the two old bandits in the forest to open the old mine. Their late leader Robert, now a skeleton in their camp, hid their treasure, and only his word would move them. In Can’t See The Forest for the Iron, Larry offers to impersonate him. He just needs a Simple Candle placed inside his skull, and he keeps it. He suggests nightfall, but any hour will do. In the role of Robert he tells the bandits their true treasure was friendship, and they give up the explosives. The Quarry page continues from there.

The portal

After the swamp Goddess tells you to mend the magic portal, ask Larry (Any Portal in a Storm). The Inquisitors’ notes told him it stood on a hill north of town, granted wishes, always ended badly, and disappeared just before the outbreak. The Goddess mentioned its soul being tied to someone odd and fixated on symbols, which points to the Astrologer, Gunter, whose floor is covered in them.

Last time round, Gunter says, he was just “a side character”. He directs you to whoever activated the portal, now a monk in the foundry beneath the old bathhouse, reachable through the water tunnel. As it turns out the portal stands in Gunter’s own tower, and every fragment you recover is installed there. You also receive a Story.

Fragments on his branch

Two of the seven fragments fall under Larry’s part of the story tree:

Quest	Fragment	Where
Green Fragment	The fourth, Envy, after Lust is installed	In the Sluice Area debris, once Operation POTATO has cleared the zombies out
Even More Portal Parts	The sixth, Wrath, after five are installed	The mirror first recalls a well-guarded Inquisitor base, then looks again and sees “a funny donkey drinking with… a talking skull”. It’s your own base; the fragment is in its debris

Holding Wrath, Larry points out that as your friend and travelling companion he’s owed a wish too. The mirror reveals the final fragment: the Royal Palace throne room, guarded by a second Keeper, his wife, and another talking skull, a better-looking one. The palace lies at the heart of the infected district, and Larry knows who can get you inside: Davy the Dagger.

The last battle

As you leave for the final battle, Larry insists on coming, back in your bag like old times, because he wants to meet the other skull. At the palace it emerges they’re acquainted: the other skull, Garry, calls him Lucius, Larry calls Garry Jove, and both carry the same curse. At the portal, when Garry wants to wish for both of them, the Old God asks you to keep the pair on probation for roughly another decade, which Larry accepts as fair. Should you go home at the end, his parting words are “I’ll miss you, my friend!”