Whispering Hillock Quest Dilema (Spoilers...obviously) Crones VS She Who Knows (which evil is lesser?)

[Shizofrend]

SPOILERS:

So I am finally replaying this gem of a game and I've come to the part where you are asked to kill hillock spirit for crones.

Spirit says it will save children from the crones.

We can tell Crones probably eat the kids if we checked the basement at their tapestry house and all the suspicious hints from before about kids being sent to the bog.
Plus the masked elf warns Ciri not to mess with Crones.

However, I was reading up on lore via in-game books and found "She Who Knows" book that says there was first a lady controlling and ruling Velen but got lonely and made 3 daughters.
She afterwards gone insane and wrecked havoc. The daughters killed her and imprisioned her. The Spirit however says she is their sister instead and that they wanted to rule Velen alone so they had to kill her.
Here I am obviously leaning more towards killing the spirit but then again would she still make more mayhem in Velen than Crones eating kids and here and there helping villagers?
Idk...

Anyhow. What I wanted to get to is that this seems like the usual pick the lesser evil thing but I was wondering if anyone found any more evidence in the game to pass judgement on which side is more evil and/or would have better outcome.

I can't remember where I found that She Who Knows book. It's green, old and molddy and I prolly looted it somewhere in Velen.

Is there maybe a third option for this quest that I haven't stumbled upon?

[Errach]

You've touched upon a very interesting subject but any answers will be very spoilery obviously so proceed with caution.
There's hardly a 'lesser evil' choice in this quest as all possible outcomes have severe consequences.
To be brief, by killing the spirit you help rid the crones of a powerful enemy and it's implied they eat the children.
But if you let the spirit loose it wrecks havoc in Velen and the crones punish Anna.
And interestingly enough, there is a 3rd option, but it needs to be done in a specific, unusual order. I got it unintentionally in my 1st playthrough.
If you let the spirit loose before you talk to the crones, they can't order you to kill it, so it sort of breaks the quest. The spirit still wrecks havoc, but the ending is similar to when you kill it.
A very interesting quest line, as both the crones and the spirit are evil and malicious so there's no morally good choice.

[Shizofrend]

Originally posted by Errach:

You've touched upon a very interesting subject but any answers will be very spoilery obviously so proceed with caution.
There's hardly a 'lesser evil' choice in this quest as all possible outcomes have severe consequences.
To be brief, by killing the spirit you help rid the crones of a powerful enemy and it's implied they eat the children.
But if you let the spirit loose it wrecks havoc in Velen and the crones punish Anna.
And interestingly enough, there is a 3rd option, but it needs to be done in a specific, unusual order. I got it unintentionally in my 1st playthrough.
If you let the spirit loose before you talk to the crones, they can't order you to kill it, so it sort of breaks the quest. The spirit still wrecks havoc, but the ending is similar to when you kill it.
A very interesting quest line, as both the crones and the spirit are evil and malicious so there's no morally good choice.

I already finished the game when it launched and saw both choices cuz I watched my sis play that part too but I wasn't aware there was third option. I always go chronologically and do quests from lowest to highest level with main ones getting priority so i haven't stumbled upon that third pathway yet.

So in the third way of doing it you basically set the spirit free but crones eat the kids and baron and wife live? seems like the worst moral choice unless player would think the spirit would oppose crones and maybe the outcome would be better for Velen but who's to say who'd wina nd which side would be better without any other in-game clues.

Thanks for info. Guess I'll maybe kill the spirit this time purely cuz I let her go free in first playthrough. All this ancient relics godesses over velen lore part is pretty interesting. wish there was more to it. about way the world was closer to conjugtion of spheres in general.
I noticed there is "She Who Knows" card in Gwent The Game where some figure is making another one out of mud. Same as in She Who Knows book from Witcher 3. I wonder if I'll stumble upon some more lore of those things in Thronebreaker.

[Errach]

Yeah the third way is odd, there's no mention of the children when talking to the spirit so there's no promise to help them.
I guess you could argue the crones are the lesser evil bc at least they supposedly help the peasants of Velen, where as the spirit tortures them. Also you get to eventually deal with the crones while the spirit just keeps hanging out around the swamps I guess.
The promise to help the children I always saw as nothing more than an attempt to manipulate Geralt, though I guess the spirit keeps the promise, which seems like the only positive thing it does.
So the 'She Who Knows' book seems to be correct about the spirit being crazed and bloodthirsty, but it also completely whitewashes the crones.

[Alun1]

the lesser evil choice is to kill the spirit in the tree.

granted the children die (or it is implied so). but the spirit in the tree also isn't freed to kill an entire village (later in the questline).

the crones will get their aswell near the end of the game so all will die eventually.

the only reason this is the lesser evil choice is the the village inhabitants survive (though they still believe the crones are good) and anna survives.

[Castyles]

I freed She-Who-Knows from the tree. Felt bad about the mare but other stuff didn't really bothered me.

[Shizofrend]

Ohh yeah, I forgot we can deal with Crones later. Still feel kinda bad for the kids. The villagers sent em to their deaths and many probably knew what they were doing actually.
But, yeah, I guess killing the spirit might be somewhat lesser evil considering all the info.
Thx for help guys. It's been 7 years or so since I played it so I forgot some of this stuff. Guess I'll go with killing the spirit this time around.

[Alex_x86]

You are going to hunt down Crones later in the game anyway so nobody is going to help those villagers after that. I am not sure but it doesn't look like Crones were directly terrorizing the village but villagers were offering sacrifices to the Crones so I am having quite a few doubts of the sanity of that village. With that said these villagers look to me goners anyway and the real question boils down to: do you want to save kids (and free spirit that might be bad, however we do not really see that outside of the destroying the village as part of the revenge) or Baron and his wife.

With all this said if you already completed the game where you freed a spirit you might want to kill it this time around... b/c why not?

[TheClosetSkeleton]

Full spoiler alert :


Freeing the spirit will save the children, but the spirit will take revenge on the villagers and Grandma (aka Anna, the Baron's wife) will be condamned as punishement.

Killing it will save Anna and the villagers, but the children will end up as soup for the Crones

[Shizofrend]

Originally posted by Alex_x86:

You are going to hunt down Crones later in the game anyway so nobody is going to help those villagers after that. I am not sure but it doesn't look like Crones were directly terrorizing the village but villagers were offering sacrifices to the Crones so I am having quite a few doubts of the sanity of that village. With that said these villagers look to me goners anyway and the real question boils down to: do you want to save kids (and free spirit that might be bad, however we do not really see that outside of the destroying the village as part of the revenge) or Baron and his wife.

With all this said if you already completed the game where you freed a spirit you might want to kill it this time around... b/c why not?

yeah, i thought i remembered crones doing some minor bad things here and there besides eating kids and anyone carrying elder blood but maybe I'm remembering it wrong.
you put it quite well I guess. since we do take out crones later it mostly boils down to:
1- save kids, barona and wife die, free spirit that destroys a village and Maybe more.
or
2- kids die, save baron and wife, kill spirit.

so i guess I'll be killing it this time around mostly cuz I freed it in my first run

[Shizofrend]

Originally posted by TheClosetSkeleton:

Full spoiler alert :


Freeing the spirit will save the children, but the spirit will take revenge on the villagers and Grandma (aka Anna, the Baron's wife) will be condamned as punishement.

Killing it will save Anna and the villagers, but the children will end up as soup for the Crones

yeah I sorta remember most of that from my first playthrough. I was more curious about the whole great evil inserting it's power onto land in the future. like, which of the two is worse for the future of world but I forgot we can cut down the crones later in game so I guess killing spirit and then crones might be the best. especially since it saves kids instead of witch worshipping villagers sacrificing kids and ears. whilst baron and his wife being alive is nice extra bonus even though wife will prolly stay semi crazy forever and baron will never see his daughter again or his wife her true self but their fates were alrdy pretty ruined past return anyhow.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Alun1:

the lesser evil choice is to kill the spirit in the tree.

granted the children die (or it is implied so). but the spirit in the tree also isn't freed to kill an entire village (later in the questline).

the crones will get their aswell near the end of the game so all will die eventually.

the only reason this is the lesser evil choice is the the village inhabitants survive (though they still believe the crones are good) and anna survives.

I've argued this point before and I've found it's a quest that very neatly wraps up whether you're an overly emotional, sentimental type person who's easily manipulated, or a more logical, analytical, cold and facts based personality. See the thing is, you actually not only meet but also briefly talk to and play with those kids, so ironically CDPR gets this right in this brief sidequest better than it does developing the main story across all three of their witcher games. Because you've interacted with them creates this shallow sense of "bond" to the kids, which is why some people choose that, and then rationalize their own evil to themselves by saying "well the villagers deserved it" after the fact like some egoistic self-protection mechanism, because I guarantee few people did that with wiping out a whole village as an objective, and few seem willing to admit their mistake to themselves.

The other thing about it is gullibility and naivety. I'd like to play those people for money in poker. Why on earth would you believe a clearly evil spirit that's imprisoned under an evil looking tree? I mean, it's just blatantly evil, it's literally one of the most used fictional tropes "evil sealed away in the whatyacallit" so why are you a) believing a single thing it has to say, b) freeing it? I was shocked to discover it wasn't lying to me and the children would live.

However, the thing I'd add to that "yeah but ♥♥♥♥ the villagers" part is that first of all, this cult is everywhere, so unless you want a full on genocide of Velen, good luck with your righteous crusade. Secondly, know the thing about wiping out villages? It wipes out children too. By taking the side with the evil spirit route, you probably just took out a lot more kids than you just saved. Oh, what's that? But you liked these kids? So are you gonna raise them? Walk them back to Oxenfurt or wherever on foot and hope some evil person doesn't find another use for a bunch of orphaned children? I think it's also interesting about that quest in that you're technically "saving" a handful of children, but without taking one bit of responsibility caring for them. I mean, you're a witcher. You can't. You gonna retire and raise them yourself?

So the whole thing is pretty FUBAR either way, but releasing it is basically believing an evil spirit that's already lied to your face and loosing it on the world with totally unknown consequences long term, getting a whole bunch of children slaughtered in the process some of whom you likely walked into in Downwarren, ensuring more villages would be tormented, all to save a handful of children you never had any intention of raising yourself anyway. If you're choosing to be vindictive, and maximize the suffering, well, good for you becoming the monster I guess? Because that's the logical reason for siding with the spirit. Also, it promises to deal with the Crones, but how? All this is unanswered and up in the air and if you paid any attention at all to lore books you'd already have known that that very spirit is so evil that the whole reason the villagers began sacrificing their children to the crones to begin with is because sacrificing a few kids to the Crones was seen as lesser evil and that the spirit you just freed? That's the mother of the Crones. So you just freed a spirit so evil that it created the Crones and even the Crones thought it was too evil, and it immediately wipes out a whole village as its first act when you release it.
might as well spoiler it even though there's already a spoiler at the top of the page

Oh and I forgot to add, Anna is a ♥♥♥♥ human being so it's largely irrelevant what happens to her to me. Her whole family is a dysfunctional set of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and this part I won't even bother to hide, the Baron, as a drunk wife beater, manages to come across as more sympathetic than the rest of his family. If this were a real living open world where you can run into and cut down named characters, odds are you'd just end up murdering the Baron's daughter somewhere in Novigrad anyway along with other witch hunters.

Part of the whole point of this quest is where Witcher shines brightest, and that is its glorious morality murkiness and the amount of darkness, cynicism, jadedness, and deeply shaded greys and blacks over any hope of real optimistic idealism. It's probably very Slavic, come to think of it. So this was the most enjoyable part of the last three games to me so far.

Originally posted by Alex_x86:

You are going to hunt down Crones later in the game anyway so nobody is going to help those villagers after that. I am not sure but it doesn't look like Crones were directly terrorizing the village but villagers were offering sacrifices to the Crones so I am having quite a few doubts of the sanity of that village. With that said these villagers look to me goners anyway and the real question boils down to: do you want to save kids (and free spirit that might be bad, however we do not really see that outside of the destroying the village as part of the revenge) or Baron and his wife.

With all this said if you already completed the game where you freed a spirit you might want to kill it this time around... b/c why not?

Again, I have to ask: why do you take a clearly evil spirit at its word?

I suppose another angle of it is lots of people just played this game first, and only this game, and so weren't yet used to what those of us got used to earlier on: other beings lie to you. Constantly. Like there is this one quest in Witcher 2 where some soldier pisses himself in fear, claiming to have encountered this ghost, and now his mates laugh at him. So during this whole convoluted questline it becomes increasingly unclear which thing happened: did the solider kill the daughters? Did the father murder them? Were they sacrificed? Is it some curse, or is that soldier their brothers? Did the brother rape and murder the daughters? His name starting with M is a good clue or possible red herring. To spoil that it turns outthat you should never EVER believe a clearly evil spirit at its lying word. It's possibly most effective in that quest because the games toy with you nonstop to where you want to hear people out, Bloody Baron being a fantastic example why you often want to do that. But then sometimes it turns out, no, you were right to trust your first instincts, that first story was true and you were being lied to all along by the others.

You really need to use your better judgment. In this one, you get She Who Knows and other tidbits, and it becomes clear this isn't some nice poor little druid who got locked up by some evil swamp demons, so knowing that it lies to you throws everything to question. Also people keep saying that about the Baron and Anna but I mean who cares really? She's exactly in that position because she's a bad person who refused to ever take responsibility or suffer consequences for her actions until being enslaved by child murdering demons, and now must live out her servitude snatching innocent children and feeding them to monsters. All ultimately because she wanted to be adulterous and cheat on her husband while he was at war, and then didn't want to take responsibility for that in leaving her husband because he was a resource provider and protector and running off with some lover was too much a personal risk.

Then on top of that you realize later on thathe wasn't lying she clearly was goading him into punching her and beating her on purpose hoping he'd falcon punch her hard enough to get an abortion. Not saying that justifies him AT ALL, or making any excuse for him being a terrible monster of a husband, but just pointing out when he starts victim blaming it starts to click "oh..ohh OHHH that's why she did that." I think signing a pact with child eating swamp demons to abort her kid that you then have to bury to appease the angry spirit, in contrast to how the Baron acted with sincere regret and sorrow for the daughter he lost and that he still blames himself for the miscarriage, really makes it clear in retrospect not only they're all awful people, but he's the closest one to even having a heart of the three.
So yeah no ♥♥♥♥ Anna she wound up there from her own damn fault, just like I'm not going to feel sympathetic to the Baron being heartbroken his wife and daughter left him when you find out why. So while I'd rather have saved her if I had the choice, I ultimately don't care about sacrificing her to save a bunch of other people.

Originally posted by Lost Soul in a fish bowl:

Ohh yeah, I forgot we can deal with Crones later. Still feel kinda bad for the kids. The villagers sent em to their deaths and many probably knew what they were doing actually.
But, yeah, I guess killing the spirit might be somewhat lesser evil considering all the info.
Thx for help guys. It's been 7 years or so since I played it so I forgot some of this stuff. Guess I'll go with killing the spirit this time around.

I'd honestly just say that you should approach it the way you do any Witcher mission and get the info you can on the situation then make the choice and deal with the consequences using your best judgment, because there is no happy ending to this quest. No matter what you do innocent people are going to die. Who, how, and why is up to you to figure out based on your own perspectives. There's ultimately not an objectively "right" or better choice in this sense, although there is a difference in how many people get killed and unforseeable consequences vs the status quo.

There's literally a story called "The Lesser Evil" written by Andrzej Sapkowski that describes how Geralt got the monicker "the Butcher of Blaviken" and really helps explain and develop his character better with what happens to Renfri. In a lot of ways the whole series can be titled "The Lesser Evil."

[Shizofrend]

Originally posted by Red Star, Blood Moon:

Originally posted by Alun1:

the lesser evil choice is to kill the spirit in the tree.

granted the children die (or it is implied so). but the spirit in the tree also isn't freed to kill an entire village (later in the questline).

the crones will get their aswell near the end of the game so all will die eventually.

the only reason this is the lesser evil choice is the the village inhabitants survive (though they still believe the crones are good) and anna survives.

I've argued this point before and I've found it's a quest that very neatly wraps up whether you're an overly emotional, sentimental type person who's easily manipulated, or a more logical, analytical, cold and facts based personality. See the thing is, you actually not only meet but also briefly talk to and play with those kids, so ironically CDPR gets this right in this brief sidequest better than it does developing the main story across all three of their witcher games. Because you've interacted with them creates this shallow sense of "bond" to the kids, which is why some people choose that, and then rationalize their own evil to themselves by saying "well the villagers deserved it" after the fact like some egoistic self-protection mechanism, because I guarantee few people did that with wiping out a whole village as an objective, and few seem willing to admit their mistake to themselves.

The other thing about it is gullibility and naivety. I'd like to play those people for money in poker. Why on earth would you believe a clearly evil spirit that's imprisoned under an evil looking tree? I mean, it's just blatantly evil, it's literally one of the most used fictional tropes "evil sealed away in the whatyacallit" so why are you a) believing a single thing it has to say, b) freeing it? I was shocked to discover it wasn't lying to me and the children would live.

However, the thing I'd add to that "yeah but ♥♥♥♥ the villagers" part is that first of all, this cult is everywhere, so unless you want a full on genocide of Velen, good luck with your righteous crusade. Secondly, know the thing about wiping out villages? It wipes out children too. By taking the side with the evil spirit route, you probably just took out a lot more kids than you just saved. Oh, what's that? But you liked these kids? So are you gonna raise them? Walk them back to Oxenfurt or wherever on foot and hope some evil person doesn't find another use for a bunch of orphaned children? I think it's also interesting about that quest in that you're technically "saving" a handful of children, but without taking one bit of responsibility caring for them. I mean, you're a witcher. You can't. You gonna retire and raise them yourself?

So the whole thing is pretty FUBAR either way, but releasing it is basically believing an evil spirit that's already lied to your face and loosing it on the world with totally unknown consequences long term, getting a whole bunch of children slaughtered in the process some of whom you likely walked into in Downwarren, ensuring more villages would be tormented, all to save a handful of children you never had any intention of raising yourself anyway. If you're choosing to be vindictive, and maximize the suffering, well, good for you becoming the monster I guess? Because that's the logical reason for siding with the spirit. Also, it promises to deal with the Crones, but how? All this is unanswered and up in the air and if you paid any attention at all to lore books you'd already have known that that very spirit is so evil that the whole reason the villagers began sacrificing their children to the crones to begin with is because sacrificing a few kids to the Crones was seen as lesser evil and that the spirit you just freed? That's the mother of the Crones. So you just freed a spirit so evil that it created the Crones and even the Crones thought it was too evil, and it immediately wipes out a whole village as its first act when you release it.
might as well spoiler it even though there's already a spoiler at the top of the page

Oh and I forgot to add, Anna is a ♥♥♥♥ human being so it's largely irrelevant what happens to her to me. Her whole family is a dysfunctional set of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and this part I won't even bother to hide, the Baron, as a drunk wife beater, manages to come across as more sympathetic than the rest of his family. If this were a real living open world where you can run into and cut down named characters, odds are you'd just end up murdering the Baron's daughter somewhere in Novigrad anyway along with other witch hunters.

Part of the whole point of this quest is where Witcher shines brightest, and that is its glorious morality murkiness and the amount of darkness, cynicism, jadedness, and deeply shaded greys and blacks over any hope of real optimistic idealism. It's probably very Slavic, come to think of it. So this was the most enjoyable part of the last three games to me so far.

Originally posted by Alex_x86:

You are going to hunt down Crones later in the game anyway so nobody is going to help those villagers after that. I am not sure but it doesn't look like Crones were directly terrorizing the village but villagers were offering sacrifices to the Crones so I am having quite a few doubts of the sanity of that village. With that said these villagers look to me goners anyway and the real question boils down to: do you want to save kids (and free spirit that might be bad, however we do not really see that outside of the destroying the village as part of the revenge) or Baron and his wife.

With all this said if you already completed the game where you freed a spirit you might want to kill it this time around... b/c why not?

Again, I have to ask: why do you take a clearly evil spirit at its word?

I suppose another angle of it is lots of people just played this game first, and only this game, and so weren't yet used to what those of us got used to earlier on: other beings lie to you. Constantly. Like there is this one quest in Witcher 2 where some soldier pisses himself in fear, claiming to have encountered this ghost, and now his mates laugh at him. So during this whole convoluted questline it becomes increasingly unclear which thing happened: did the solider kill the daughters? Did the father murder them? Were they sacrificed? Is it some curse, or is that soldier their brothers? Did the brother rape and murder the daughters? His name starting with M is a good clue or possible red herring. To spoil that it turns outthat you should never EVER believe a clearly evil spirit at its lying word. It's possibly most effective in that quest because the games toy with you nonstop to where you want to hear people out, Bloody Baron being a fantastic example why you often want to do that. But then sometimes it turns out, no, you were right to trust your first instincts, that first story was true and you were being lied to all along by the others.

You really need to use your better judgment. In this one, you get She Who Knows and other tidbits, and it becomes clear this isn't some nice poor little druid who got locked up by some evil swamp demons, so knowing that it lies to you throws everything to question. Also people keep saying that about the Baron and Anna but I mean who cares really? She's exactly in that position because she's a bad person who refused to ever take responsibility or suffer consequences for her actions until being enslaved by child murdering demons, and now must live out her servitude snatching innocent children and feeding them to monsters. All ultimately because she wanted to be adulterous and cheat on her husband while he was at war, and then didn't want to take responsibility for that in leaving her husband because he was a resource provider and protector and running off with some lover was too much a personal risk.

Then on top of that you realize later on thathe wasn't lying she clearly was goading him into punching her and beating her on purpose hoping he'd falcon punch her hard enough to get an abortion. Not saying that justifies him AT ALL, or making any excuse for him being a terrible monster of a husband, but just pointing out when he starts victim blaming it starts to click "oh..ohh OHHH that's why she did that." I think signing a pact with child eating swamp demons to abort her kid that you then have to bury to appease the angry spirit, in contrast to how the Baron acted with sincere regret and sorrow for the daughter he lost and that he still blames himself for the miscarriage, really makes it clear in retrospect not only they're all awful people, but he's the closest one to even having a heart of the three.
So yeah no ♥♥♥♥ Anna she wound up there from her own damn fault, just like I'm not going to feel sympathetic to the Baron being heartbroken his wife and daughter left him when you find out why. So while I'd rather have saved her if I had the choice, I ultimately don't care about sacrificing her to save a bunch of other people.

Originally posted by Lost Soul in a fish bowl:

Ohh yeah, I forgot we can deal with Crones later. Still feel kinda bad for the kids. The villagers sent em to their deaths and many probably knew what they were doing actually.
But, yeah, I guess killing the spirit might be somewhat lesser evil considering all the info.
Thx for help guys. It's been 7 years or so since I played it so I forgot some of this stuff. Guess I'll go with killing the spirit this time around.

I'd honestly just say that you should approach it the way you do any Witcher mission and get the info you can on the situation then make the choice and deal with the consequences using your best judgment, because there is no happy ending to this quest. No matter what you do innocent people are going to die. Who, how, and why is up to you to figure out based on your own perspectives. There's ultimately not an objectively "right" or better choice in this sense, although there is a difference in how many people get killed and unforseeable consequences vs the status quo.

There's literally a story called "The Lesser Evil" written by Andrzej Sapkowski that describes how Geralt got the monicker "the Butcher of Blaviken" and really helps explain and develop his character better with what happens to Renfri. In a lot of ways the whole series can be titled "The Lesser Evil."

Yeah I also never really saw wife and daughter as particulary good people. if i recall correctly she did cheat on him. and even tho he is a drunk bastard who maybe beat her even before she started cheating, his daughter still dismissed him so quickly.
I guess it makes sense if if he was like that most of time like she makes it out to be but then again he says how they had quality times too and was often on missions of his. but ultiamtely I guess it makes sense she'd forget his so fast since it's more likely he was a drunk fighting pig since early stages of her life.
Still wouldn't get over how anna wanted baby dead. even if it's from his seeds it's part hers too and a living being, she could've fled and raised her her own instead.

Yeah I started reading the books and I remember I liked them. Got first one done and started second one but was on ♥♥♥♥ ton of xans at time so i don't rly remember much. Prolly gonna have to read em again.
Like this no good hoice, choose lesser evil thing though. Really enjoyed that aspect of game first time when I played it. Made it feel like a seirous and mature experience.

The reason why I freed spirit first run around was mostly due to She Who Knows book saying how her 3 daughters killed and and iprisioned her there. Book said she went mad and that's why they did it but spirit said it was cuz they wanted to rule Velen alone. However the tipping point was not the kids thing but more so the parents. It sickenned me to think they would send children to be eatn in the swamp for generations to come just so crones would make their crops and cows produce more and such. Any villager with half a brain would know what they were doing morally at mere tohugh of sending a child in the swamp. even in those poor and old times.

Anyhow. Yeah. I get what you were saying. love reading all your guys'es insight. Thanks for the help. I guess there really isn't much more to go on besides hearing both parties, reading that she who knows book and pathcing together tid bits from before the quest.

[Castyles]

Saving ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid, adult, villagers who should've known better over a bunch of little kids who know nothing about life? Who cares if She-Who-Knows i.e. the "tree spirit" is evil, when facing such choices?

Besides, in the end she was just and fair. Fullfilled her end of the bargain.

The villagers had it coming. Plus the baron's wife and daughter are a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and the baron was pretty much an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Good riddance.

Also, the Baron wouldn't be able to rule Velen anyway, despite the choice you picked because 1)He'd just focus on taking care of his family - mostly due to guilt - and that would leave a weak kingdom up for the taking (his right hand man wouldn't content himself with being second in command forever. Get real) and 2)The baron would kill himself and the guy would rule in his place, anyway. That argument holds no weight.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Castyles:

Saving ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid, adult, villagers who should've known better over a bunch of little kids who know nothing about life? Who cares if She-Who-Knows i.e. the "tree spirit" is evil, when facing such choices?

Besides, in the end she was just and fair. Fullfilled her end of the bargain.

The villagers had it coming. Plus the baron's wife and daughter are a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and the baron was pretty much an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Good riddance.

Also, the Baron wouldn't be able to rule Velen anyway, despite the choice you picked because 1)He'd just focus on taking care of his family - mostly due to guilt - and that would leave a weak kingdom up for the taking (his right hand man wouldn't content himself with being second in command forever. Get real) and 2)The baron would kill himself and the guy would rule in his place, anyway. That argument holds no weight.

All the children in that village got killed along with their parents

[Castyles]

Nope. I don't remember anything of the sort. The abducted children in the custody of Anna/The Crones were left unharmed and the adults of the village were killed.

And Johnny would probaly take care of them, anyway - especially because he's a magic creature that lives in the wild. He knows his ♥♥♥♥. Doubtful they would die later on.