Hideous Monsters!

(Possible The Witcher 3 spoilers ahead!  Read with caution.)

In The Witcher series you learn pretty quickly that not all the monsters are the ones creeping around with scales or claws.  Humans are just as horrible and can be hiding in plain sight.  I got a good taste of this last night as I unwittingly led Geralt through a series of quests that ended with not so positive conclusions.

In one quest Geralt met a simple fisherman whose wife had disappeared.  The man hoped that Geralt could use his special abilities to track her down and bring her back.  As Geralt is traversing the forest and searching for clues, he rescues a woman from a pack of wolves.  Rather than being grateful she tells Geralt that she will pay him twice what the fisherman is paying to drop the investigation.  This in itself is suspicious--why would she want you to stop the investigation unless she was involved?  So, rather than take her coin, I had Geralt continue his search for clues.  A huge trail of dried blood, a stinking tuft of fur, a severely mangled animal carcass...all things that pointed to a large and unfriendly creature.  Eventually the trail led Geralt to an isolated hut and some further investigation revealed a cave underneath the hut.  As Geralt explored the hut he realized that he was tracking a werewolf and that the best time to attack would be at night.

That werewolf is going to kill me at least 10 times.

It's here that I wish I could brag about my/Geralt's triumph over the werewolf.  Sadly, I probably spent an hour or more trying to kill it.  I would whittle it's health down and try my best to have Geralt avoid attacks, only to see it's health start regenerating very quickly--so quickly that I could no longer manage to effectively avoid attacks and keep lopping off big chunks of health.  I tried a variety of signs--igni didn't seem to do much good, Aard would knock it back a little but not really stop it, Yrden slowed it down enough that avoiding attacks was much easier...I settled on using Quen to help shield from attacks I couldn't avoid and Axii to briefly stun it.  After dying about a dozen times, I managed to get it down to around 25% health and then was greeted with a cutscene.  The lady Geralt had previously rescued didn't want Geralt to kill the werewolf, who in reality was Niellen the fisherman from the beginning of the quest.  She goes on to reveal that she had led the wife to the werewolf's hut as a means to get rid of the poor woman so that she could instead marry Niellen!  Niellen, the now wounded werewolf, makes it clear that he would like to eat this horrible woman.  Geralt is forced to make a moral decision--does he let Niellen eat the scheming woman or does he kill the werewolf?  I decided that killing the werewolf was the better of the two options and then promptly died five more times while trying to cut it down.  I finally managed to kill it and hope to never see another werewolf again (I doubt I will be so lucky).

While pursuing the Bloody Baron's questline I learned that the disappearance of his wife and daughter was much more devious and complicated than it appeared.  Upon meeting the pellar, an odd man who serves as a sort of non-traditional spiritual leader and augur, he offered to provide Geralt with information.  After tracking down his wayward goat, Princess, he performed his auguring ritual and revealed that the Baron's wife, Anna, had a miscarriage after a particularly nasty fight.  According to the pellar, the Baron had a long history of abusing his wife.  Geralt headed off to confront the Baron with this new information.  Upon arriving at the Baron's fortress, Geralt discovers that the stables are on fire.  Players must made a snap decision to enter the stables to save the brother of a guard and the horses or to directly confront the Baron.  Only a jerk would let the guy die!  I rushed Geralt into the stables and Aarded my way through the burning debris to free the man and the horses.  Geralt can then confront the Baron.  In a very emotional discussion the Baron reveals his role in the disappearance of his wife and daughter.  Yes, he beat his wife, but never his daughter.  Anna had miscarried and he had buried the corpse of the unnamed baby near the castle.  Geralt informs the Baron that in order to help find the wife that they will need to lift the curse placed on the unnamed child.  They set off to find the grave where the child is buried.

This is where you meet one of the most disgusting monsters in The Witcher series.  Once Geralt and the Baron reach the gravesite they discover that the baby/monster has freed itself from the grave.  There's an ominous cutscene as the creature crawls into sight--it's a hideous combination of monster and baby.  Here Geralt is forced to make a decision about what happens next--he can perform a ritual that will free the child's spirit from the monster or he can slay the creature and use the blood to find Anna.  The Baron opts for freeing the child's spirit out of guilt so I had Geralt pursue this option.  The next part of the quest functions as as escort as the Baron holds the disgusting, squirming botchling and carries it toward the fortress where he must give it a name and bury it under the threshold.  On the way back to the castle Geralt must fend off groups of wraiths who are attracted by the power of the botchling.  I hate wraiths...they're very slippery and annoying to fight.  Once back at the fortress, the Baron buries names and buries the child and Geralt sends him off so he can wait and complete the second half of the quest which involves following the newly freed spirit of the child, called a lubberkin, which will guide him to Anna.  After following the spirit and looking at all the clues it appears that the wife and daughter were possibly attacked in the middle of their escape.  The spirit eventually leads Geralt to a boatman's hut.  The boatman reveals that he took the daughter, Tamara, to Oxenfurt but that Anna had headed off in some sort of pursuit of the monster that attacked them.

Today I'm hoping to finally track down the Baron's daughter and find out what happened to to the wife...and, in the process, Ciri.  I am liking that these quests have the dark underpinning that is central to The Witcher series.  Humans are the worst....