Aside from a brief turn at Audiosurf, today was really just one loooong session in The Witcher again…

Since I’d run out of symbols to collect in the city, I finally travelled to the swamp. I escorted an old guy to a shrine, found one of the symbols on the elder in a nearby village, where I also learned that they think Berengar is dead, and then went to visit the old guy’s house, where I discovered that he’s a cannibal. I let him live for now, and in turn he gave me a new potion recipe.

An annoyingly tough vine monster was attacking me at various points, so I finally buckled down and fought it, and it was a fairly tough fight, forcing me to retreat and heal up in the middle. The trophy off of it let me make a nice potion that taught me a new talent, though.

I found a camp of ‘squirrel’ elves, who taught me to find a new type of herb. Nearby I saw a “messenger’s corpse”, but it was surrounded by wyverns, which are too tough to fight as a group. I lured them away one by one and found a nice new steel sword on the body.

Further to the west I found a druid grove, where I met a nekkid dryad and an elf who talked about the conflict with the humans. The druid elder there had some more books that taught me more herbs and other monsters and ingredients, and there was also a stone that taught me a new sign that lets me lay traps.

To the south of that was a lumberjack camp, and even further south was a cave, where I found the next symbol, and also learned yet another sign, this time one that lets me raise a defensive shield, meant to let me drink potions mid-combat without getting hit.

I placed all of the symbols I had into obelisks, but still needed two more. I wasn’t sure where the ‘tower sentry’ for the eighth symbol was until I talked to the village elder again and she told me about summoning the golem near the tower.

I had to head back to Vizima at this point to talk to Kalkstein about waking the golem, and while I was there I delivered a message from the druids to Vivaldi, turned in some job contracts, and talked to Ramsmeat again. At this point a messenger told me to talk to the detective again, and learned that I needed to get Shani to perform an autopsy on the now-dead prisoner for me.

I couldn’t talk to Shani about it until nighttime, so it was back to the swamps to kill some time. I found Siegfried in the swamps this time and could turn in a job contract, but didn’t take him up on his offer to assist in attacking the ‘squirrel’ camp. I don’t really want to get involved in their little squabble.

Having talked to Kalkstein I could now summon the golem, and it turned out to be fairly easy to beat, since you just had to keep it between a set of pylons while you repeatedly touched them to activate lightning strikes on the golem. I got the ninth symbol from it and placed it in the obelisk, but still wasn’t sure where the tenth one was, since the notes said that finding it was “pure chance.”

Back at the village, the elder said that a boy had gone missing and it must have been the dryads, so I stopped by the druid’s grove but they didn’t know either. This time the dryad requested that I find a wolf pelt for her if I wanted to learn more about “making little dryads.” Hee hee.

Night fell and I went back to Vizima and met Shani at home, where she told me to prepare for the autopsy next evening. With a lot of time to kill, it was back to the swamps again, where I tried to make peace between the lumberjacks and fish people, but doing so required sticking around until midnight, which would conflict with the autopsy, so I left it unfinished for now. I did manage to get the wolf pelt for the dryad though, and collected another card after a bit of freaky green love.

And then it was back to town again for lack of things to do, and I turned in a couple more contracts, did the wine cellar quest that I’d kept forgetting about, and played poker dice a bit for some desperately-needed money.

The time for the autopsy finally rolled around, and we discovered that it was actually the detective that did it. Or, rather, the powerful sorcerer we were after disguised as the detective after secretly replacing him… I told the other suspects about their innocence, talked to the ‘detective’ and got the last symbol from him after a bit of deception, and then need to lure him to the tower in the swamp (since he’s a fire mage, he’s weakest when surrounded by water).

Before doing that, there were still other things to finish. Shani wanted some booze for a party and told me to invite a friend. I went back to the swamps again to complete the lumberjack quest and place the last symbol, and then came back to town to let Kalkstein know the tower was open, do one last quest in the graveyard (where you find the real detective’s body, an apparent alternative way to solve the case instead of the autopsy), and picked Zoltan as my party guest, since he’s supposed to be an old friend.

At the party, I finally met Dandelion the Bard, who had only been mentioned up to this point. He’s supposedly an old friend of mine, and some background information was filled in. After the party was over, I staggered around the city drunk for a while, and then came back to Shani’s again later, where a gift of red roses put her in quite the romantic mood. Card collection ensued.