Mara quest broken?

[Toferth]

Did anyone completed recently Mara quest?

I tried 3 times and there are few issues.

Most notable is - Saddam doesn't accept completion, I can use <item> as much as I want in front of him - even though talking with him brings hint that I should use <item> near him :/

The other is with <item>/marauder itself - it seems it doesn't work every time, sometimes I used <item> few times on him, had to bail to recover mana and return until it affected him.

Lastly I got weird message about wimpy upon combat (but need to check it - perhaps it's one of my triggers that went off the hook)

Edit: replaced key item with <item>

[Raelle]

I just did the quest within the past week without any problems. are you using the item in the right order? with it and then him?
you're obtaining the item yourself?
trying to think of other ways something could have gone wrong...

[Toferth]

Yeah, did it (i.e. had quality time with <npc carrying the item> several times).

I'm pretty sure it may be some of my behaviors interfering (or items), just am not sure which.

Edit:it worked today, I'll review logs and report bug appropriately