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[7.6] MARQUIS DE LA MONTALBAN
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The main quest of Sid Meier's Pirates, and certainly the most convoluted one,
is tracking down and defeating the evil Marquis who made off with your entire
family in the introduction movie. To do this, you'll need to find his hideout
and defeat him there; but to do that, you'll need to track him down at sea a
couple of times, first.

To be able to find Montalban at sea at all, you'll need to get a lead on him
just like with Raymondo, except the lead is a little harder to get. You must:

- Rescue a missing family member (which in turn requires you going through the
whole Raymondo chase several times);
- Dance near-perfectly with a beautiful governor's daughter.

Either will get you Montalban's location. You will then need to chase his Flag
Galleon in exactly the same way you track down Raymondo; talk to bartenders and
crews of captured ships to find out where he's gone off to next. Soon as you
catch up with him, you need to defeat him in a ship battle, which is no easy
task. Flag Galleons may be slow, but they're very powerful, and Montalban only
sails fully upgraded and stocked ones. He's powerful in duels, too, probably
the most powerful opponent in the game. Just how hard he is depends on the
level, of course.

Defeat Montalban at sea and he'll manage to escape, but searching his ship
will turn up a map piece for his hideout. On Apprentice level you only need to
find two of those to get the complete map, but on all other levels you need
four. Then, when you finally have the complete map, you run into the same
problem as with Lost Cities: more often than not he's got his hideout somewhere
in Mexico, far away from the coast, and very hard to find.

When you do finally come across his hideout, it's not over yet. The exterior
is protected by a band of Indian mercenaries that you need to defeat in a land
battle. Depending on the difficulty level, you will likely need several
hundred crewmembers to win this. If you get through all that, you finally need
to face Montalban in a one on one duel and prove one more time that you're his
master with the sword.

The reward for going through all this is solid though. You get 2 fame points
for every map piece to the hideout you uncover, and a total of 10 fame points
for tracking him down and defeating him. Furthermore, you get 100000 gold from
his hideout - the highest gold reward in the game - all crew specialists that
you don't have yet, and any further family members you rescue/beautiful
daughters you charm will give you Lost City pieces so you can focus on that
very profitable quest.