In The Heart Of The Woods

[Warcrimes McGee]

I'm currently doing "In The Heart Of The Woods" contract in Skellige, the one where there's a Leshen killing villagers and you can either kill the Leshen or renew a pact with it so it will leave the villagers alone. Most of the time I choose to kill it, but this time I'm going the other route and I got to wondering: Are Leshens sentient? As in, are they actually capable of forming a pact with a group of people and helping them rather than just harming them? There are two arguments I can think of in favor of this idea.

1. Leshens can mark humans to share their life force so they'll come back if killed. This in itself doesn't seem like much, but it is proof of two things: That Leshens can interact with humans without killing them, and that humans can actually be beneficial to the Leshen and they are capable of realizing this.

2. The old man in the village says that they used to adhere to more primitive methods, such as hunting with knife and spear. Facing the wild with their brute strength rather than with bows, traps or other trickery. The way he worded it, it sounds like he believed the Leshen respected their strength. But I think there's more to it than that. I think, if what he says is true, it has more to do with how they were a closer part of nature than "proving their strength". Here's why.

In the other contracts we have involving Leshens, it's always someone ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with nature that pisses it off. The dwarven woodcutters for example. Leshens respond to perceived threats to the ecosystem. So if man lived more in keeping with nature, such as using only the most primitive tools to hunt, would a Leshen then acknowledge them as just another part of the ecosystem and leave them alone?

Therefore, is it possible that these villagers actually DID have a pact with the Leshen that the creature itself acknowledged? Or is it just a dumb monster that needs to be destroyed and these villagers are just reading into something that's not there? Let me know what you think.

[Ardenian]

In Witcher 3, a leshen (Fandom[witcher.fandom.com], Fextralife[thewitcher3.wiki.fextralife.com]) is a guardian of the forest, very territorial, but there are not many evidences that they are as sentient as human beings.

However, considering that the actual mythological creature that the W3 Leshen is based on, the Leshy (Wikipedia[en.wikipedia.org]), which is a forest deity, is indeed sentient, as there it is said: „He is however also known to have a more neutral disposition towards humans, dependent on the attitudes and behaviours of an individual person, or local population, towards the forest."

As a result, I would say that (some) Leshen in W3 might be sentient enough to interact with humans and come to agreements like pacts.