Icthlarin's Little Helper

Details
Important Notes:
 * It is possible to get out of the city without purposely dying, finishing the quest, or using a teleport. There is a small crack in the north-eastern corner of the wall near the locust. You can re-enter the city from a cave north-east of where the quest started.
 * It is also possible to use a Hellcat as the cat you are required to bring with you for this quest.
 * 3-5 waterskins are recommended
 * Note that wearing a lot of weight will make you die faster in the desert. Take this into account- bring more waterskins if you are bringing a lot of armour and weapons with you.
 * Note that jumping the pit is chancy. You will not always make it, even if you have at least 20 run energy and nothing equipped.

Walk through
Visit the Wanderer by her tent just west of the Agility Pyramid.

The Wanderer will have a strange reaction to your cat (if you don't have it with you, it won't work.) She will tell you that if you get your cat away from her, she will tell you about the secret entrance to Sophanem. Once your character picks the cat up, the wanderer will ask for a tinderbox and full waterskin. Once you give them to her, she will hypnotize you and you'll enter a small cave (you can now use this passage to enter the city at any time). The entrance to that cave is north-east from wanderer's tent, in a rock. You will enter at the eastern side of the city.

You will end up outside a pyramid in Sophanem many hours later, and a Canopic jar will appear in your inventory, which you can't bank, but turns to dust if you drop it. If you wish to be insulted by the ghost you find yourself next to, you can speak to it using a ghostspeak amulet. Touch the north door of the southern pyramid to begin the first flashback.

If you ever have to leave Sophanem and want to get back in, just enter the small cave east of the wanderer.

Flashback 1
Every now and again during the quest, you'll experience a flashback where you remember what you did while you were hypnotised. You need to play through these in order to progress through the quest.

Beware, dying in the flashback is no different from a normal death so make sure to bring plenty of strong food. Also, a mysterious force will block any teleports so be careful.



During the first flashback, you will need to go through the pyramid. You'll see some wall crushers. Avoid them at all costs.

Stepping diagonally will mean avoiding them. If you touch them, you will receive 80 damage to your health.

Once you're past the crusher blocks, you'll find pit traps in the next hallway.

If you step on the wrong spot, you'll fall into a pit and end up at the beginning of the pyramid.

Stay along the left wall until you pass the whitish rectangle on the wall, then go to the right side.

Continue walking until you are opposite the next whitish rectangle. Go back to the left side until you pass a candle.

Switch to the right wall, and you will be done.

'''The fourth image in the gallery below shows where the first set of traps are. The red squares represent the traps, the normal squares represents the path you should take.'''

You'll see Mummies (level 84). They will attack you, however, you do not have to fight them, just run past them. You'll also see Scarab swarms (level 98) crack out of the ground. They hit either 0-20 rapid damage continuously and can do a 30 life points poison condition, although they are slow. Continue to some more wall crushers. Past these, you'll eventually find a large pit. Jump over it with running option turned on and both hands free, you will need at least 20 run energy to do this. If you fail to clear the pit you will return to the area right after the floor traps and take 50 life points.

Go to the left (west) door and open the puzzle door. You need to solve a puzzle. The objective is to flip all of the tiles onto their gold sides. There is no required number of flips that you must make, nor is there any sort of limit. Each time you flip a tile, the 8 tiles around it will also flip. Once you've solved it, you'll wake up fully healed outside the pyramid.

Click to enlarge!

After Flashback 1
After you finish the flashback, talk to the Sphinx (with your cat), asking for help, and she will ask you this question: "A husband and a wife have 6 sons. Each son has a sister. How many people are in the family?" The answer is 9. If you guess wrongly, you will lose your cat! Once answered correctly you will receive a Sphinx's token so you can speak to the High Priest.

Go to the High Priest, located on the west side of the city (in the temple), and ask him about the remains. He will tell you to put them in the burial chamber, and that you will need the help of your cat. Before entering the pyramid, take note of what examine text you have when examining your canopic jar!

Go back through the pyramid. When you again try to jump the pit, you'll enter another flashback.

Click to enlarge!

Flashback 2
You'll be starting exactly where you left off with your last flashback. Go through the door (no puzzle this time) and pick up the jar that you had in your inventory before (there are four on the ground). Depending on your jar, you will fight a different guardian god: either Apmeken (examine text has a lid shaped like an ape, level 75), Het (man, level 81), Crondis (crocodile, level 75) or Scabaras (bug, level 75). Their levels range from 75 to 81. Protect from Magic (or melee depending on the attack) prayer can make this battle a walk in the park. He can also be trapped behind the table and killed with magic or range if he is using melee to attack.

Once you've defeated it, pick up the Canopic jar. Jump back over the pit to end the flashback. If you ever find yourself out of antipoison, kill Locusts in the city and eat their meat for 30 life points each. You can also stand in the middle of a bunch of locusts and let them attack you, the meat will stack on the ground.

Click to enlarge!

After Flashback 2
After the flashback is over, you will say to yourself that you think you should put the Canopic jar back. Go to the west door. This time you have to solve a puzzle identical to the previous one. Turn all of the tiles to their gold side, then enter the room. Drop the jar where you found it and go back to the High Priest.

He will ask if you could prepare a ceremony by helping the towns Carpenter and Embalmer. Find the Embalmer to the south of the temple and talk to him. He will ask for a bucket of sap, linen, and a bag of salt. To get a bag of salt, you can either buy it from a slayer master or go to the lake north of Sophanem and use an empty bucket on it. Then use the bucket on the centrepiece inside of Sophanem in the southeast region of the city. You will pour the bucket of water into the font, and the water will evaporate, leaving salt that was in the water. search the font and take the salt. A bucket of sap can be obtained by using a knife with an evergreen tree while you have a bucket. Then head to the city's eastern side to find the carpenter. Give him your willow log. (After the quest he will buy willow logs from you at 40gp each in groups of 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20.) Next, head a bit north to the linen worker, named Raetul with a purple headpiece. Buy a sheet of linen for 30gp. Then go back to the Embalmer. Give the items to him. (After the quest he will buy buckets of sap from you at 30gp each in groups of 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20.)

Head back to the High Priest and he will tell you to talk to the Carpenter. Go speak to the Carpenter (who is at the pottery wheel). He will ask you for a willow log to make the symbol (this will take some time to make) after that time is up he will give you the Holy symbol. Next, go back into the southern pyramid (pray at the altar if needed) and try to jump the pit. When you try, you'll enter another flashback.

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Flashback 3
You will find yourself outside the west (left) room and will have an Unholy symbol in your inventory. Go to the east (right) room. Enter it and use the symbol with any Sarcophagus around the walls. Go back through the door.

Searching the sarcophagi can result in poison gas (7 poison damage) or scarabs attacking.

Click to enlarge!

After Flashback 3
You will speak to yourself again, saying that you should not have done that. Jump across the pit again and reenter the eastern burial chamber. After a cutscene, you'll learn that the Wanderer was behind it. She is really the Devourer, Amascut, an evil goddess, and she'll possess one of the priests. You will fight a level 91 Possessed Priest. Use Protect from Magic prayer and kill him, this fight is very easy for level if you have level 60 + stats in combat and you will need maybe 2 or 3 salmon to kill. He will drop an attack, strength, magic, defence, or agility potion. Regardless of which one drops, it will have 4 doses.

Talk to the High Priest again then leave the room.

Click to enlarge!

Flashback 4
You'll experience another flashback. This one is simply a cutscene. You will be escaping from the pyramid, and Icthlarin, god of the dead, will de-hypnotise you with the help of the previous high priest.

Click to enlarge!

After Flashback 4
You will find yourself back in the eastern burial chamber. Head outside and talk to the High Priest to complete the quest. Note that if you have food and don't feel like making your way completely back through the pyramid, just fail the pit and then purposely step on the trapdoor to get back to the beginning with only around 100 life points. Congratulations! Quest Complete!

Reward



 * 2 Quest points
 * 4,500 Thieving Experience
 * 4,000 Agility Experience
 * 4,000 Woodcutting Experience
 * Amulet of Catspeak
 * Access to the city of Sophanem

Music unlocked

 * Hypnotized
 * Mirage
 * Sphinx

Required for Completing

 * Contact!
 * Missing My Mummy
 * Ratcatchers
 * Smoking Kills
 * A Tail of Two Cats

Afterwards
If you wear the Amulet of Catspeak and talk to your cat, you can watch a final cutscene where you are first hypnotized by the wanderer and given the Unholy symbol. Your cat will then explain to you what the wanderer's plans were all about.

Trivia

 * Interestingly, when you talk to the wanderer with you cat out (or let it out during the conversation), the wanderers eyes suddenly turn red, once the cat is picked up, her eyes turn green again, this is a reference to her being the Devourer.
 * When the Ring of Life is used during the flashback you will be teleported out of the flashback, but you cannot enter Sophanem again. This bug has been fixed by Jagex.
 * Even though you eat during the flashback, during the first part of the quest, you have all your food. However, after each flashback, as you eat, your food decreases in real time, too.
 * The level 84 mummies found in the Pyramid are wielding Egyptian Khopesh swords, which actually seem to have evolved from specialized Canaanite battleaxes.
 * Even if you manage to get rid of the Canopic jar, upon entering the pyramid you'll get a message: "You see a strange jar on the floor. It seems oddly familiar, as if you'd seen it before, so you decide to pick it up."
 * When you leave the pyramid after the first flashback, you say "What in the name of Guthix is going on?". There is a similar remark made by the adventurer in the Forgettable Tale quest.
 * Some of the pillars in the Pyramid have a glitch where it does not say what they are when right-clicking them.
 * If you eat while the black circular flashback effect is on the screen, it will disappear.Wandererstaffglitch.png
 * When you buy linen from the town's linen worker, he sells you the linen before you know that the transaction was agreed, and then says, "Thank you come again". This could be a reference to Apu, from the TV show The Simpsons.
 * Most of the quest is very similar to the backstory of the play Oedipus the King by Sophocles, in which a Sphinx sets a plague on the city of Thebes and to save the city, Oedipus has to answer a riddle correctly: What is this: It has four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening? The Sphinx was referring to the human life: As a baby it uses its legs to help it get around the two extra "hands", at noon it means when the person is adult, they walk on two legs, and in the evening when the human is elderly, they use a walking stick: The third "leg".
 * Upon the completion of this quest, one's Adventurer's Log will read: "I was being controlled through visions, but my mind is my own again, after the god of the dead intervened with the Devourer’s mind control."
 * In the flashback when Icthlarin releases you from Amascut's hypnosis, there is a typo in the chat box, and he says "Amscut" instead.
 * Oddly enough, if you drop an item during a flashback, it will remain there in real time. This is weird because objects disappear two minutes after dropping and the events take place several hours apart.
 * There is a glitch where, when you are jumping across the pit, if you walk away fast you will stay zoomed in in the area of the pit while your character walk away from the pit.
 * There is a glitch that after the quest you may still have a Canopic Jar in your inventory.
 * This storyline may be a reference to the Bible when Eqypt came under a plague and the spots may refer to the boils they received.
 * There is a glitch where if you tell your cat you're confused about what happened, after the flashback you might lose your cat. This can be fixed by logging out and in, your cat will then return.
 * After completing the quest, if you talk to Juna, your character will say, "...And with the amulet I recieved, I could understand the language of cats!" to which she replies, "It is a rare privilege to understand the language of those beings. You should listen carefully to all that they say - but not believe too much of it."
 * When going into the Sarcophagus room while the priests are doing the ritual, if you unequip an item or edit your state while your character is talking, you will appear outside of the room as it was before going in, saying to yourself that you should keep to the storyline.
 * If you click to open the Tent Flap on the Wanderer's tent, your character will say, "Yuck! I'm not going in there! It smells like dead cats, or something!" Though dead cats would not appear to smell different from any other dead animal, it is clearly meant to reinforce that the Wanderer hates cats (and probably kills them).
 * In the conversation with the High Preist after flashback #2, when talking about rewards your character will ask if they will get a pointy hat, which is a party hat.