The Holy Sword of the Ice Palace

The Holy Sword of the Ice Palace (氷宮の聖剣) is a quest, generated by the Cardinal System's «Automatic Quest Generation» function, that is available in Jötunheimr in ALfheim Online and is the main focus of the Caliber side story.

Background
King of the Frost Giant tribe «Thrym» once transformed into a wolf and infiltrated Jötunheimr to steal the Holy Sword Excaliber. He then threw Excaliber into «Urðr's Spring», a lake at the center of Jötunheimr, where it impaled the World Tree and cut off its roots. At that moment, Jötunheimr lost the blessings from the Tree and quickly degenerated into a barren wasteland of frost. As the roots of the tree retracted to Jötunheimr's canopy, the frozen lake was pulled up along with the roots. Thus the large mass of ice reached the canopy of the world, where the ice dungeon was formed and later fashioned into Thrym's castle, Thrymheim.

Thrym then ordered his subordinates to capture, imprison and kill the Rock Giant tribe. With this, the power of Queen of the Lake Urðr and the power of her sisters would completely vanish, and Thrymheim would be allowed to rise to the plane above, Alfheim, and invade it. He would then continue to cover the land in snow and ice and advance up the World Tree, where the «Golden Apple» is kept.

However, as massacring the Rock Giant tribe proved to be a difficult task, Thrym and the frost giants begun using the power of the fairies to aid them, promising the Holy Sword Excaliber as a reward for their help, but planning to give them the «Fake Sword Caliburn» instead. With most of the frost giants leaving to join the hunt with the fairies, Thrymheim was left barely guarded and Urðr used the opportunity to approach the fairies who have made friends with her kin to request for their help in retrieving Excaliber, which, after impaling the roots of the Tree, became stuck at the bottom of Thrymheim, keeping the castle from melting and the roots of the World Tree from regrowing. If Exacaliber were to be retrieved before the last beast-type Evil God is killed, the castle would melt and Jötunheimr would return to its former glory, but if the fairies fail to complete the quest in time, the Ragnarök event would be triggered and Alfheim would be invaded.

Quest Details
After accepting the quest from Urðr, the fairies are given a medallion which keeps track of the percentage of beast-type Evil Gods still alive and, in turn, the time left for the completion of the quest. The players must then enter Thrymheim and navigate it to the bottommost floor. As most frost giants had left to participate in the battles outside, the players barely encounter any minions and only half of the floor's sub-bosses, however, they must still face and defeat the three bosses guarding the stairs to the lower floors: a cyclops on the 1st floor, The Black and Gold Minotaurs on the 2nd and a centipede-like giant monster on the 3rd, as well as navigate through the complicated passageways and various puzzles to reach the staircase to the next floor and, ultimately, the boss room at the bottommost floor.

When the players arrive on the last floor, they come across a female NPC, named Freyja, imprisoned in a cage of ice and are given the choice of rescuing her, or leaving her behind. If the players choose to rescue Freja, she joins the party of the players as a special member and supports the players during the final boss battle with Thrym with thunder magic. Additionally, at some point of the battle, Freyja requests the players to retrieve and return a stolen treasure, which is a hammer, to her. If the players successfully complete this secondary task, Freyja turns into a giant, who is revealed to be Thor, and assaults Thrym, occupying the attention of the boss. Additionally, the players are rewarded a fairy-size replica of Thor's hammer, the Thunder Hammer Mjölnir, as a bonus prize.

Whether or not the fairies choose to rescue Freyja, they must proceed to the boss room to confront Thrym. The giant tries to tempt the fairies with treasure in return for giving away Urðr's whereabouts. If the players refuse, they must face Thrym in battle. If they successfully manage to defeat him, the players must then advance through the stairs behind the throne to reach the plinth where the Holy Sword Excaliber is kept. To complete the quest, the players must remove the sword from its plinth and then escape the collapsing castle with the help of the beast-type Evil God that they have made friends with. Until the quest is formally completed by meeting Urðr and her sisters, Verdandi and Skuld, Excaliber cannot be placed in an inventory, and thus must be carried on hand to be kept after the quest is completed. Verdandi and Skuld both reward the player with a large amount of various treasure, while Urðr allows the players to keep Excaliber, as long they keep it away from Urðr's Spring.

Completed By

 * Kirito - party leader
 * Asuna
 * Klein
 * Leafa
 * Lisbeth
 * Silica
 * Sinon

Trivia

 * As the quest is generated by the Cardinal System's Automatic Quest Generation Function, the plot of the quest incorporates elements from various myths and legends, including the legend of King Arthur and the Þrymskviða poem.
 * The quest is likely only available to players who have managed to befriend a beast-type Evil God.
 * In the non-canon ending of Caliber, Caliber SS, it was revealed that the quest's progress was sped up due to Marinca activating the Cardinal's quest acceleration function during a maintenance, but forgetting to disable it afterwards.
 * As ALfheim Online is based on the entire version of the Cardinal System from Sword Art Online, the Cardinal System in ALfheim Online has the authority to autonomously delete maps in the game and create a backup immediately that would make it hard to perform a rollback to undo the damage done.

Navigation
Misión de Excalibur