Part 38 - The Witcher 3 - 2nd playthrough - Death March

The next quest I tackled was Possession. This is the one involving a baby and an oven. I'm sure everyone who played this game even once has memories of that moment when Geralt must decide in a few seconds what to do with a baby in front of a burning oven...

This quest leads us to the island of Spikeroog. Crach's daughter Cerys is here to help the local jarl, Udalryk, who is sick.

I didn't manage to take a good picture of her this session, but here she is at King Bran's wake.

Cerys is trying to cure Udalryk for the same reason Hjalmar was trying to kill the ice giant on Undvik, to prove that she is brave enough to be the next ruler of Skellige.

We learn that Udalryk feels remorse over the death of his brother, Aki, who drowned after falling into the sea from a ship when they were both young. Udalryk was there but couldn't save him. Since then, he's been hearing voices that tell him to hurt himself. As the brothers had been fighting over the family sword before Aki's death, Geralt and Cerys first conclude that Aki's ghost must be tormenting Udalryk and will stop if it receives the sword.

"Ah, nothing more refreshing than an early morning swim in the icy sea."

Geralt's job was to dive to Aki's bones and place the family sword next to them.

Just realized dead sirens look like Keira Metz...

This is Udalryk's advisor Hjort (who looks like the twin bother of the pellar from Velen...) and the baby is Udalryk's son, named Aki after his uncle.

So giving the sword to Aki's skeleton under the sea didn't help, because Udalyrk was in fact tormented by a demon called a hym, which feeds off of guilt. Once Geralt realized this was the case, he explained to Cerys that one way to get rid of the hym was to trick it. If it sensed an even greater feeling of guilt in someone else, it would move on to that person, leaving the original victim alone. And then once it learned it was tricked, it would be forced to disappear.

Cerys thought out a brilliant plan to trick the hym but of course didn't explain it to Geralt, because his guilt needed to be real. She stole baby Aki and while being chased by Udalryk and his guards, handed him to Geralt and ordered him to throw Aki in a burning oven. Cerys knew the baby would immediately be removed from the oven through a back panel by Hjort in the other room, but Geralt didn't. If you as a player choose to trust Cerys and do as she says, Geralt really thinks he just killed a baby, and the hym will move from Udalryk to him. However, when Hjort emerges from the other room with the unharmed baby, the hym knows it's been tricked and leaves.

Just another Witcher 3 side quest that could be written into a book. :)