After getting my spiffy new sword in The Witcher, I headed to the Old Manor area, where I found Azar Javed and chased him into the house. I had to work my way through the catacombs beneath it to get to him, including one tough fight against a giant crab he summoned, but eventually cornered him.

The first two attempts to kill him failed though, since he kept knocking me down, and I’d started out low on health since there’s no pause after a previous fight. Berengar showed up to help out and redeem himself, but he didn’t last long. On the third attempt I finally remembered to drink a Willow potion to protect me from stuns and knockdowns, and then he was much easier to kill. That wasn’t the end of it though, as I discovered that Jacques de Alsenberg, the Grand Master of the Order, had been working with him.

Yaevinn met me outside and we went to the boat landing to head back to Vizima, suddenly ending Chapter 5 unexpectedly and beginning the Epilogue. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet finished the armour quest or the huntsman quests for the silver sword, so I lost the ability to get them. Oh well.

In order to get at the Grand Master I had to fight my way through the city and sewers, with Yaevinn assisting me, and in the sewers I encountered a ‘zuegl’ monster that was a bit tougher than expected. It attacked with tentacles that had to be killed before the main body would emerge and could be attacked, but would then resubmerge and attack with tentacles again, and it took about half a dozen cycles before it finally died.

Finally, upon reaching the Order’s cloister and meeting the Grand Master… *endgame spoilers*:

…it didn’t go straight into a traditional boss fight. Instead, there was an extended sequence where Jacques talked about the future of humanity, how he had visions that foretold of an ice age destroying human civilization, and his work was towards the goal of protecting humanity at all costs. There were no choices to be made here though; Geralt automatically rebuts with how the nonhuman genocide and experimentation on children and so on were not justifiable and humanity should fend for itself.

Jacques then teleported me to an ice field from his visions of the future, to show Geralt for himself, and I had to chase him across the ice, fighting mutants and degenerated humans along the way. Triss and Toruviel also appeared and joined me as allies, and Triss’s lightning spells were especially handy.

Finally, at the end of the ice field, I faced the Grand Master by myself. It wasn’t a particularly difficult fight though, especially as I had nearly every combat-enhancing potion active. There was an unexpected turn as the King of the Wild Hunt appeared, praised Geralt’s tendency to induce chaos and destruction wherever he went, and demanded Jacques’s soul, but Geralt told him to take a hike and kicked his ass pretty badly in another fairly easy fight.

Upon returning to the real world, Geralt then recovered the stolen witcher secrets (the quest that kicked off this whole thing to begin with) from his body, and also found a familiar-looking pendant, the implication being that Jacques was actually a grown-up Alvin, having traveled through time as Triss suggested as a possibility when he vanished in Chapter 4. All in all, a much more satisfying ending sequence than just a straight-up show-up-and-kill-the-boss.

And so ends The Witcher, one of the best RPGs of recent years. There are two other possible endings, but they can wait until a future replay. There’s also an ending video which suggests a possible tie-in for a sequel, which is probably quite likely after the success of this one.