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Travels Through Temeria (The Witcher Travel Diary) - Part 1

The following is a diary of my journeys through the land of Temeria, the land of The Witcher. It is not a walkthrough but does heavily contain plot spoilers, so if you have not played the game and plan to do so in the future then I advise you read no further. Here is the first part of my adventures and this part is based around the prologue.

I get told some story about how a monarch's daughter has been cursed and that the only way to cure her is to spend the night with her. Sounds like a cushy job to me but apparently the curse means she's a monster, literally. So I get to watch Geralt (the character I'll soon be controlling) fight her with weapons and magic, none of this works however, but a punch in the face at the top of a building stuns her long enough for me to run away and jump in a coffin. She climbs on top and attempts to join me in there. She fails though, so just waits in the same room as me (I guess I pissed her off). Morning comes, I wake up and get out of the coffin and find her lying naked on the floor. I decide to turn her over and check out the goods but as I do that she tries to scratch my eyes out.

Next I hear some story about how the Witchers are vanishing from the world due to “normal” people hating us.

Years later I find myself running through the woods trying to get away from people. I collapse in a puddle and it turns out the people I'm running from claim to be my friends. I wouldn't know, unsurprisingly I've caught a dose of that ever prevalent amnesia. They take me back to their castle where I get to watch them training, it seems that I've stumbled in to a witchers training ground. Apparently, despite my amnesia I still know how to fight and I tell this to Triss Merigold (or Booby McBoobs as I've taken to calling her).

Before I know it, some bandits are trying to force their way in to our castle. I choose the only sensible option and pull a rusty sword out of a training dummy and get to work slicing them up in to tiny pieces. Once that was done I relaxed, thinking that the threat was over, especially with the gate having been closed, but typically it wasn't. Another group of bandits, this time accompanied by a sorcerer and a giant insect that I assume is meant to be scary due to it being called the frightener are trying to break their way through the gate. The frightener seems to be using its head as a battering ram, it's going to scramble its brains at this rate.

I get ready to fight the insect but we see two more people walking along, a powerful mage and a guy wearing glasses known as The Professor. OK, I'm thinking, so I have to chase down a school teacher. Apparently I'm wrong, he's not actually a school teacher but a professional assassin. The Professor and the mage lock us out of the upper courtyard and I'm sent off on my own, well apart from my amnesia, to find a way to let my friends in to the upper courtyard whilst they hold off the mage, frightener and other bandits. I work my way up some more stairs and squeeze myself through a gap in a wall fighting more bandits (on either side of the wall), who are kind enough to queue up to attack me – why can't all foes be this kind? Finally I get to the gate's winch and open the entrance to the upper courtyard and I am finally reunited with the other residents of the castle.

The man who claims to be the leader of the castle (Vesemir) sends me off to chase down the school teacher and his magic friend with my only assistance being Leo, a trainee Witcher, whilst he stays to fight the insect with Eskel (who bares a remarkable resemblance to my uncle Thomas (right down to the scar)), Lambert and our very own sorceress, Booby McBoobs. It doesn't really seem a fair deal to me, I have to fight a powerful mage and a professional killer whilst they could just use bug spray, but I set off in to the castle itself.

The Professor and the mage appear to be using our castle for their very own party, and we weren't invited. Due to this, I decide to do the polite gatecrasher thing and put my sword through all of their guests, that will teach them to not invite me. I work my way down to our laboratory and find the mage hunting for something, but before I can stab him in the back, he erects a magical barrier between us. Unfortunately, this also has the side-effect of bringing down rubble to block my path back up the stairs. Luckily for me there's a magical stone round the corner that I can use to learn how to fart powerfully enough to clear the rubble. Using my new super-fart power I clear the stairs and go back to find Booby so she can bring the barrier down.

It turns out that the four of them are still fighting the insect and Vesemir decides to send Booby off to fight the mage. He gives me a choice, stay and fight the insect or follow Booby, I take the only obvious answer and go with Booby McBoobs, unfortunately Leo decides to follow us along, either in a hope of getting in the way of my plans or maybe he wants a threesome.

On our way to the mage and The Professor, the sorcerer who was controlling the insect appears and confronts us, Booby runs off to fight the more powerful mage leaving me the sorcerer. He sets up a shield to keep Leo out of the fight and starts using his magic to drain energy from his friends creating a second shield that my weapon can't penetrate. I easily kill his friends, dropping his shield and then start beating him around the head with my rusty sword. Eventually he finally falls down with concussion and I play the role of humanitarian and finish him off with a rough thrust through his heart, putting him out of his pain. That dealt with Leo starts whining that he would have helped me but he couldn't get past the barrier.

We leave the site of the battle and find Booby lying crying, apparently she underestimated the mage and he beat her. That means it's up to me, so I go down the stairs, but before I have a chance to do anything he finds what he was looking for and escapes through a portal, the slippery. Strangely he was wearing a salamander symbol, great, it looks like the guy I'll have to fight eventually to get my revenge is mad enough to worship a glorified frog. Why does it always have to be the insane ones?

That leaves me with the school teacher to deal with, he pulls out a crossbow and shoots Leo before running away through the portal before I can teach him a lesson (groan).

I speak to Vesemir about what happens and he tells me to speak to Lambert about Booby's injuries. Apparently, despite being a great sorceress she is allergic to magic and therefore I have to create a potion to cure her from her battle wounds, how ironic. Lambert sends me upstairs to find the ingredients for the potion, whilst I'm there I decide to sneak in to Booby's room, unfortunately there's not much there. As I collect the ingredients I also arm myself up with an axe and a dagger to go with my sword (just typical, I eventually get the good weapons after I've killed everybody).

I go back downstairs to find Lambert who tells me that I need more ingredients (why he couldn't tell me that in the first place I have no idea) and to speak to Vesemir. Before I do that I decide to speak to uncle Thomas and he tells me that they no longer know how to make Witchers as they don't know how to mutate people to become us (great, I'm now finding out that not only do I have amnesia but I'm also a mutant and I'm yet to discover a single good power [not counting my super-fart]). Having found that out I speak to Vesemir and get given one of the two ingredients I need, better armour and a better sword, why didn't he give me these before we went I to battle? I don't think I like that Vesemir. He also tells me about a missing Witcher, Berengar. I finally find out what I need to complete Booby's potion, apparently I just have to go and cut the toe nails of the insect they killed earlier. What a task for a hero to be reduced to, grooming the toe nails of dead giant insects. I collect the ingredient and go back to Vesemir. He tells me how to make the potion so I do it.

Having completed the potion I go back up to Booby's room which she has been taken to and give it to her. She recovers quickly so I decide to give it to her again (and it's apparently not the first time, man, I'm really starting to hate this amnesia). We chat for a bit then realise that our bedroom frolics have meant we're late for Leo's funeral. Off we run to watch Leo get burned. At the funeral we decide that we need to hunt down the frog worshippers and head off in different directions (north, south, east and west). Booby tells me not to get myself killed (like I was planning on doing that) before she walks away in to a portal.

And that's it for this entry. More entries appear on The Dark Side.