The Lost Patrols (Sergeant Ma)

In short: A daily errand in Twin City for anyone: Sergeant Ma hands you the day's dispatch, you find the three Patrol Guards who missed roll call and click each of them, and he pays two Meteors - three when the quartermaster miscounts.

Where: Sergeant Ma, Twin City, on the street south of the arrival square. Cost: a walk. Reward: 2 Meteors, 3 half the time. Once a day (resets at midnight).

The story

Twin City has too many guards. The council read that more guards means safer streets, the quartermaster ordered another hundred, and now they stand on every bridge, in the market, in the fields - and every morning three of them miss roll call. They walked out to patrol, ran out of orders somewhere past the pheasants, and just stand there. Waiting.

Sergeant Ma writes them a dispatch every day. Somebody has to carry it. That somebody is you.

How it works

1. Talk to Sergeant Ma and ask for the dispatch. He reads it to you (it changes every day) and names the three guards who are missing, with where each was last seen - a direction from his post and a rough cell.
2. Walk out to the fields. The three lost guards wear the name Lost Pvt. Wu, Lost Pvt. Han and so on over their heads, so you can tell them from the ordinary patrols standing nearby. They never move.
3. Walk up and click each of them. The guard answers out loud (everyone nearby hears it), and a line tells you how many of the three have the dispatch. Talk to the sergeant again at any time to hear the hints once more - they say which guards you have already found.
4. When all three have it, go back and report. He pays two Meteors from the quartermaster's ledger, and half the time the quartermaster has miscounted and you get three.

The three lost guards are the same for everyone that day, so you can tell a friend where they stand. If a lost guard is killed (a PK-mode player can still strike a patrol), another one goes missing in his place and the sergeant's hint follows him.

Good to know

• Clicking a lost guard before you have taken the dispatch does nothing - he stares straight ahead. Take the dispatch first.
• The dispatch and the reward reset at midnight. One errand per character per day.
• The fields east and south of the city hold Apparitions and their kin; a very new character should mind the level of what stands near the guard.
• The Patrol Guards themselves are harmless and cannot be hurt outside PK mode - they are part of the city, and the joke is that there are so many of them.

How our version differs

There is no such quest in classic Conquer Online. It is our own, born of a player's report that "more and more Patrol Guards" were standing around Twin City - which is exactly what happens when nothing ever kills them.

Where to find them