Chapter Seventeen: On an Isle in the Sun
With Ciri's story settled in Skellige, we're in a similar position as we were in Novigrad—we have WAY too much unfinished business to get right back on the trail.
PLEASE BE ADVISED: This blog series (obviously) contains major spoilers for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Current Level: 20
Current Location: Freya’s Garden, Hindarsfjall, Skellige Isles
With Ciri's story settled in Skellige, we're in a similar position as we were in Novigrad—we have WAY too much unfinished business to get right back on the trail. After all, there's still Cerys' quest to free Udalryk and Yennefer's mysterious favor, among other delights the isles have to offer.
What did we do?
After a quick hop back to Kaer Trolde to sell my accumulated loot, we head back into Freya's Garden to deal with the Morkvarg problem. We head past the sluice levers from before to find Morkvarg’s cave, where he's talking to a set of armor and a skull propped up on a stick. Oof. We fight him again, chat with him again, and discover that he is literally incapable of eating and drinking. All food and drink turns to ash, except for his own flesh, which burns his throat. He once again implores Geralt to help, and I offer to. I do feed him, but the food item I choose is his own flesh, which does lift the curse, but also causes him to dissolve again. We collect his trophy and head back for our reward.
My next stop is Spikeroog, where Geralt heads to Udalryk's house to find out where Cerys is. He talks to his healer, Hjort, about a recent nightmare where the gods demanded a sacrifice from him. Geralt interrupts to ask after Cerys, but Udalryk evades our questions and walks away. Hjort hopes Cerys has gone to the village to mingle, but fears she may have gone to Udalryk's childhood home, which is widely rumored to be haunted. The jarl's screams interrupt the conversation, so we head to the old house. Inside, Geralt remarks that there's something seriously wrong, and finds Cerys unconscious on the floor.
When she comes to, Cerys explains why she went to the house—she needed to find the ancestral sword of Udalryk's family in order to lift the curse that holds him. He and his brother, Aki, had quarreled over the sword, and when it was bestowed upon Aki, Udalryk openly questioned his father's decision. This was a huge nope in Skellige culture, but it didn't really matter because after his punishment, Udalryk went fishing with Aki and Aki ended up dying at sea. Cerys wants to give Aki's ghost the sword in order to settle what she assumes to be his restless spirit. Geralt goes back in for the sword and we head back to Udalryk, with a quick chat about Yennefer on the way.
Udalryk talks again about the gods telling him to do things. Geralt weasels his way in by explaining that Aki is the reason for the gods' wrath, and making amends will help. Hjort helps smooth things along, and Geralt offers to take the sword back himself. At the site of the shipwreck, we fight off a few mucknixers and discover that the game will let me do all Y button actions but dive??? So after a reboot, we head down and place the sword with Aki's bones. Geralt feels like this was a useless task...
...and he's right, because all it did was make things worse! Udalryk has now poked his eye out because the gods said so. Geralt draws a bit more information out of Udalryk about the "gods" and the circumstances under which they show themselves to Udalryk. After hearing what he has to say, Geralt pulls Cerys aside and explains what's holding Udalryk—a hym, or a very rare creature that feeds on human guilt and grows stronger over time as it makes its victims weaker. There's a few ways to defeat a hym: we could try to trick it, which is difficult, or we could have Udalryk spend a night in the lair, which could also end badly. Cerys wants to try the trick first, though for it to work, we can't reveal the idea to the other person.
At Udalryk's old house, we take another look around for ways to trick the hym. We note a well-crafted oven and an old cradle before Cerys calls us outside to tell us she has a plan. Of course, she can't actually tell us the plan itself, so we have to take her at her word that it will work. Geralt hangs out at the house while Cerys goes about her part of the plan. Eventually, she returns with Udalryk's baby, and him and his men hot on her heels. She hands the baby to Geralt and implores him to put the baby in the oven, which is currently fully operational.
This obviously goes quite poorly at first, with Udalryk flying into a rage and banging on the oven door while his men attack. It also goes poorly for me, who gets killed by the warriors on my first try. The second time around, Udalryk confronts Geralt as the hym latches onto the witcher instead. Cerys and Hjort soon emerge from the adjacent room, where the baby is clearly unharmed, having been simply (?) tossed through the oven. The hym leaves, realizing it's been tricked, and Udalryk feels kind of icky at first, but Geralt explains that this is normal and will pass. With that tied up, it's time to return to Kaer Trolde to inform Crach we helped both his kids out, but again, not an urgent task.
For now, I'm gonna wait on that, so I wander around Hindarsfjall a bit before meeting Yennefer in Larvik for her mysterious favor. At the inn, she explains that she's seeking an expert on djinns who had traveled to Skellige, but never returned. She's actually not so interested in the mage as his djinn, which she wants Geralt to help her find. Of course I agree, and we scurry off to her boat in the harbor, as the ship carrying the mage and his djinn had supposedly sunk nearby. At the first stopping point, Yennefer casts a spell to let us dive deeper without surfacing, and we're off into the bay. While there is a shipwreck underneath, Geralt also finds a clan's figurehead, which means it's not the right ship. We do this again before we discover what we came here for—a giant crater on the ocean floor, likely formed by magic.
Yennefer casts another spell to see through Geralt's eyes to confirm what we see. Everything, including the ship, seems perfectly cut in half, likely by the teleportation that Yen says caused the crater. Geralt finds half of a seal and brings it back up. Yennefer can use it to locate the other half to within a dozen yards, and this brings us to the peak of a snow-covered mountain on Ard Skellig, where half the ship is resting completely intact.
But before we go any further, Geralt wants to know why we're here. Yen hems and haws a bit before breaking down and admitting that she wants to find a djinn to take back Geralt's last wish—that the two of them will be together, always. She wants to see if they have any magic of their own left once the spell has been lifted. We agree to her proposition and search the ship, eventually finding the mage's body crushed under a sliding bookcase—and the other half of the seal. After Yennefer combined the halves, the djinn emerges and we fight it. It goes pretty well, and Yennefer captures the Djinn in a sphere and threatens it with an eternal deadlock like this. In order to free itself, it need only lift the spell. Once it does, Yen sets it free. We chat on the mountainside and both agree that nothing has changed, leaving the pair to make out and relax on top of the mountain a bit before parting ways and agreeing to meet at Kaer Morhen.
Now level 21, I head back to Kaer Trolde to report to Crach. We arrive at the castle to Arnvald opening the gate for us. Traditionally, after this feast, the jarls choose the king, meaning the doors stay closed until that's happened and that only Skelligers can be inside the castle. Geralt is allowed inside, thanks to his support of Cerys and Hjalmar, and we head to the hall. On the way there, Arnvald remarks that the feast has been too calm—a good feast in Skellige means that blood and mead "flow in equal measure."
Inside the hall, Hjalmar and Cerys seem to sense this, and are currently engaging in a verbal spar about which of them should be crowned king. Cerys storms off, Arnvald directs us to Crach, and Hjalmar invites us to a fistfight once we're done. I think I'll pass. We arrive at Crach's door to find Birna Bran storming out in a rage, planning to leave tomorrow at daybreak. She huffs off and we chat with Crach, who asks how we're finding the feast and gives us a sword. We hear the feast start to get louder, and Crach fears Hjalmar started a fight. In fact, we discover something way weirder: bears!
Once the threat is eliminated, we survey the damage: there are bodies everywhere, and everyone still alive is pissed. It will fall on Crach and his family to figure out how this happened—or else a curse will befall them. Everyone but the An Craites leave, and Hjalmar sets off to punish the guilty party before Cerys can investigate. I side with her and examine the room. First, let's look at who died. It'll take a while to name them all, but Geralt points out that all of the claimants to the throne were killed but her, Hjalmar, and Svanrige an Tuirseach. An examination of the bears shows that these aren't normal bears. Their mouths smell like honey mead and something herbal, there's a tattoo under the fur, and evidence of a sutured scar on one of the limbs. This is clearly some kind of man-bear, transformed by whatever he drank. We find a tankard that contained the brew, some kind of mushroom and human blood.
Cerys confirms what we already know, and even goes one step further: these creatures were Berserkers (a skald word for warriors who change into animals in battle). She suggests taking the mysterious mushroom to Hjort, who happens to still be outside. He identifies the mushroom as mardroeme, or psilocybe—a hallucinogen. Even with this new information, Geralt suggests that it would still be unlikely that someone spiked the mead in the feast hall undetected, and Cerys agrees, suggesting they search the cellar for clues. On the way over, she says it was too calm before the feast, and Geralt remarks how Arnvald had said the same.
We enter the cellar and head to the area where the poison is kept, but we're stopped in our tracks by the smell of several spilled barrels of Mahakaman spirit on the cellar floor. We've just found the barrel with the spiked mead when someone throws a torch into the puddle of spirit and a fire breaks out. We rush over to a secret passageway blocked by some barrels and Aard our way through, emerging in another part of the cellar. Geralt mentions hearing a bottle break when the fire broke out, and while Cerys can't vouch for that, she doesn't have witcher senses, so we head to the cellar door to investigate.
Indeed, there's spilled mead outside, and the arsonist has tracked it out of there. Although the trail breaks off, we find more evidence: a torn piece of fabric from Arnvald's tunic. Cerys saw him outside, and she remarks that we can probably still catch him if we hurry. It takes a minute, but we knock him off his horse, and he starts talking. He thinks the An Craites unworthy of the throne and the jarls unworthy of choosing the king. Unsurprisingly, Cerys connects this new information to the other person who is always implying this: Birna Bran. We collect his evidence and head to speak to the jarls.
At council, Arnvald admits to betraying Crach, but Birna points out that Arnvald is loyal to him, and he would say anything Crach told him to. We show them the letter, too, but she insists it lacks her signature and seal. Her perfume on the letter isn't proof enough, either. The jarls are prepared to punish Clan an Craite before Svanrige pipes up. It seems Birna had told him to leave the hall before the feast, and he openly accuses her of the crime. The jarls agree, and Birna is set to die chained to a rock in the sea, to be pecked apart by birds. (She kinda deserves it, tbh.)
We're not done yet, though—there's still the matter of the coronation, where Cerys is given the crown. She gives a rousing speech expressing her desire for peace and prosperity, angering Lugos, who leaves. But otherwise, all is well in the isles, and that's where I'll leave you today.
Death Count (This Chapter): 1
Death Count (Total): 50
Killed by Udalryk’s warriors after putting baby in the oven.
NOTE: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the intellectual property of the appropriate copyright holders, including the screencaps from the game I have included in this essay. I have no official affiliation with CDPR or anyone else associated with the game/books/universe; I’m just a fan who plays Witcher to cope.