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

[Shizofrend98HR]

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?

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Publicado originalmente por 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.

No, that village was filled with children. You can go to any walkthrough of Downwarren on youtube and hear the children playing. You run past little children when you first go to Downwarren, they're skipping in the road or something. So those children are dead now if you freed the spirit. A lot of things are conjecture like what happens with the children and spirit after, but that fact is not; anybody who was in Downwarren is dead, adults and kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9hPtaR75Mc
See. You can see the kids, NPC named "boy" "girl" etc. playing when you walk around.

You can easily load up your game, fast travel to Downwarren from before it's destroyed, and see the kids. When you talk to the ealdorman you can hear the kids talking, playing, laughing in background who lived in Downwarren too.

[MsL229]

Publicado originalmente por Red Star, Blood Moon:

Publicado originalmente por 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.

Publicado originalmente por 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.

Publicado originalmente por 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 know am reviving an old post but replaying Witcher this summer cause of NextGen so- just wanted to say this is some very solid explanation. Like damn.
But yeah I agree with the fact the Baron and his family are the least important bits here since they are all pretty crappy people, with daughter I guess being most sympathetic (but yeah if this was like, open RPG she would probably die a while later in Novigrad trying to fight Geralt).
This quest is wonderfully crafted so that there is always something bad being chosen (I did both choices in my previous playthroughs and neither felt fully right xD) but I guess of the two the one with where you fight the tree makes more sense - the spirit is clearly evil in a very chaotic way too, if Crones fear it in some way then it says volumes on how dangerous it could be for Velen. I pity them orphans but I don't think having entire village and who knows how many more people in future get massacred is worth releasing the spirit. Cheers for the great post, gonna stab a tree to death now,

[Lyonardo]

Publicado originalmente por MsL229:

Publicado originalmente por Red Star, Blood Moon:

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. :M3::necroheart:

You're on the right track with not trusting what's "obvious", especially when dealing with evil entities. In this case it's The Crones who are the evil ones. They murdered their own mother so they could have Velen for themselves. As far as the book She Who Knows, it basically says that the mom started to go senile. Not that she had turned evil.

I see the mother as more of a Mother Nature figure who wants to protect Velen. Yes, if you let her spirit go she massacres the villagers of Downwarren. But that was about protecting nature. They had spent generations sending villagers to give their life to destroy her "sacred" forest. From nature's point of view, those villagers were the villains. An evil cult who sacrificed their own children, and cut off their own body parts to appease the crones.

Lets compare the Crones and their mother:
The Crones have been eating children sent on the Trail Of Treats for generations. The Mother saves these children and they end up in a village, and back in school.

The Crones keep Ana as their slave. And judging how they talk to Geralt and Ciri, we can assume that she is their sex slave as well. As far as the mother, we don't see any sign of evil or cruelty other than against the Downwarren cultists who've been trying to destroy her and her forest area for what? Decades? Centuries?

Everyone in-game who calls the spirit in the tree evil are unreliable witnesses. But with the Crones we see example after example of their evil, violence, depravity, child abuse, and straight up slavery.

On my first playthrough years ago, I accidentally found the tree before I found the crones. I ended up getting an ending where the Baron and his wife get a 2nd chance, the children are freed, the disgusting cult gets ended, and the Crones get NONE of their evil goals satisfied. I guess things get weighted towards whoever you talk to first. That's as close to a win as I can think of in this horrible situation.

Another subtle sign about who you should trust: when the Mother tells you about the children missing, she doesn't say "let me go and I'll reward you by saving those useless kids". She says something like "I would not like to see them hurt. Let me go and I will save them". Big difference from her disgusting daughters who make demands but betray everyone. And have demanded child sacrifice for whatever "protection" they've been giving Velen for all those years.

[Alexis Machine]

Publicado originalmente por Lyonardo:

Publicado originalmente por MsL229:

You're on the right track with not trusting what's "obvious", especially when dealing with evil entities. In this case it's The Crones who are the evil ones. They murdered their own mother so they could have Velen for themselves. As far as the book She Who Knows, it basically says that the mom started to go senile. Not that she had turned evil.

I see the mother as more of a Mother Nature figure who wants to protect Velen. Yes, if you let her spirit go she massacres the villagers of Downwarren. But that was about protecting nature. They had spent generations sending villagers to give their life to destroy her "sacred" forest. From nature's point of view, those villagers were the villains. An evil cult who sacrificed their own children, and cut off their own body parts to appease the crones.

Lets compare the Crones and their mother:
The Crones have been eating children sent on the Trail Of Treats for generations. The Mother saves these children and they end up in a village, and back in school.

The Crones keep Ana as their slave. And judging how they talk to Geralt and Ciri, we can assume that she is their sex slave as well. As far as the mother, we don't see any sign of evil or cruelty other than against the Downwarren cultists who've been trying to destroy her and her forest area for what? Decades? Centuries?

Everyone in-game who calls the spirit in the tree evil are unreliable witnesses. But with the Crones we see example after example of their evil, violence, depravity, child abuse, and straight up slavery.

On my first playthrough years ago, I accidentally found the tree before I found the crones. I ended up getting an ending where the Baron and his wife get a 2nd chance, the children are freed, the disgusting cult gets ended, and the Crones get NONE of their evil goals satisfied. I guess things get weighted towards whoever you talk to first. That's as close to a win as I can think of in this horrible situation.

Another subtle sign about who you should trust: when the Mother tells you about the children missing, she doesn't say "let me go and I'll reward you by saving those useless kids". She says something like "I would not like to see them hurt. Let me go and I will save them". Big difference from her disgusting daughters who make demands but betray everyone. And have demanded child sacrifice for whatever "protection" they've been giving Velen for all those years.

Is this a joke? A protector spirit? The problem here is that you obviously missed a big piece of the lore if you think that the spirit is even remotely close to being "not so bad", or, even more absurd, a "savior of children" or a "protector"... Let's set aside opionions and stick to facts, here is a quote from the game, the description of what happened to the children in Downwarren (yes, that lovely, little children you see when you firs enter the village.. there are - but I should say THERE WERE - several of them...) when the spirit struck: "...mothers carrying babies suddendly smashed them against stumps and.. the horror..."

In a few word the kind, children friendly spirit protector made the mothers of Downwarren go mad and smash their kids to bloodied pieces.... Did you miss that part?

[xraptor108]

Publicado originalmente por Red Star, Blood Moon:

Publicado originalmente por 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.

Publicado originalmente por 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.

Publicado originalmente por 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."

It is not about a few kids against a lot of kids, it is few kids that Geralt cares and knows about vs a village of cultist and many kids.
Will you sacrifice your kid if it saves 10 more kids or will you let 10 kids to die for your own single kid?

[DAWN OF THE DEAD]

I feel like villagers would sacrifice own kids for crows anyways. Tho in reality don’t think any choice is lesser evil