Part 28 - The Witcher 3 - 2nd playthrough - Death March

I saved Rosa from being raped and / or killed and sent her home to her papa.

I reached level 14 once I completed this quest.

Next up was a funny little quest called The Nobleman Statuette. I had to visit Triss at the decent house for decent folk where no men and no pets are allowed. After stealing all of her butter knives, I told her about the statuette, and she cast a spell to release an unfaithful nobleman who had been locked in it by a jealous sorceress. He was thankful and gave us some coin and a glyph.

It was time to continue the main quest.

Priscilla's song is one of the most memorable scenes in this game for me. It was certainly the most pleasant surprise I had in the whole game. When I watched Geralt and Zoltan sit down at the inn, I was expecting nothing special, just a simple, short song written for a video game scene.

Then Emma Hiddleston started singing The Wolven Storm composed for the game by Marcin Przybyłowicz and I was blown away. I was thinking, wow, this masterpiece was really written just for a 3-minute scene in a video game? I was amazed by such dedication to create a truly immersive game experience.

I was also impressed by the facial animation of Geralt when he is listening to the song and realizes it is about the love between him and Yennefer. It is so easy to read his emotions I almost forgot he was not real. Even without having read any of the books I understood they had a special connection, and I decided there that I would not let anyone stand between them.

Here is a video of this scene featuring a multi-language version of the song.

From Priscilla we learn that Dandelion tried to rob someone called Sigi Reuven and this is where the main story starts to get complicated. We go to Reuven's bathhouse and learn that he knows Geralt and was expecting him too. Geralt knows him and his real name which is Sigismund Dijkstra. He is the former Redanian spymaster, and he is well known to those who played the previous Witcher games and read the novels, but not to me.

I'm trying hard to listen to what the characters are saying to understand the story, but my attention keeps wandering to... the nice architecture.

So let me put together the story so far: Reuven / Dijkstra is now one of the four underground leaders of Novigrad, and he asks Geralt to find his stolen treasure. Geralt keeps quiet about what he learned from Priscilla, namely that he knows who tried to rob Dijkstra, and agrees to investigate. He also learns that another one of these four leaders, Whoreson Junior, is supposed to be the vilest of them all, and the other three are trying to find and kill him. Priscilla also mentioned him and the fact that Dandelion had caused problems to him, so his men were after Dandelion.

So we have two objectives here: Find Junior and find Dijkstra's treasure which we know Dandelion tried to steal but don't know what really happened to it.

An investigation of the bathhouse points to one Margrave Henckel, an old man who Dijkstra says died under embarrassing circumstances some months ago. Meaning the person who was involved in the robbery could not have been him but someone who looks just like him.

While Geralt is searching the dead margrave's home, Dijkstra shows up with none other than Triss. He apparently doesn't trust Geralt. Why did he ask Geralt to help him then? He should just find his own damn treasure! Anyway, at the margrave's house, we learn that the bomb used in the robbery was made there and that Dandelion, Ciri and their doppler friend Dudu were involved. Dopplers can turn into other people, so he must have been the one impersonating the dead margrave. Ciri and Dudu are on the run, but Dandelion, along with the treasure, are held by the witch hunter leader Caleb Menge. (Menge is this asshole we first met in Novigrad when we arrived at Triss' house.)

In other exciting developments, I beat Dijkstra in a close match in gwent, winning the last round 55 to 53 and getting the Big City Players gwent quest!

"Triss, you are burning my loot..."

The next stop was Menge and his witch hunter buddies' hideout where Triss and I slaughtered everyone then Triss burned the place to the ground. Serves them right.

We didn't find Dijkstra's treasure or Dandelion at Menge's place but we did find a key to a vault on his body and a letter on his desk. The letter was signed "Yamurlak". We tricked him into meeting us, Triss tortured him a bit, and he told us that Dandelion is in a dungeon on Temple Isle.

Meanwhile, Dijkstra found out Dandelion had robbed him and that Geralt had lied to him. But he's not mad.

Boy, this story is getting dark, and Geralt is wishing he could just stay out here under these fruit trees in blossom... But he must return to Novigrad if he wants to find his lost daughter.