The Witcher -Vizima Outpost

In Vizima, the gates closed for the night and they did not open for anyone. This was a new development. The outposts of Vizima was having to deal with too many problems and only viable solution was to bunker down for the night and hope for the best. Geralt asked the guards about these problems and they told him about the beast that had recently started appearing in the wilderness around Vizima. No one knew where it had come from or how to stop it. Geralt already had a glimpse of some of the monsters on his way here. A mother and her child were caught outside while the sun set. Geralt saved the child but the mother was ripped apart by the barghests. These possessed dogs were vicious and no one in Vizima seemed to have the courage to fight them. This place was in a dire need of a competent witcher to eradicate their monster problems.

The Witcher ran into someone else who recognized him but Geralt had no recollection of where he knew her from. This was a healer named Shani. She was sympathetic to Geralt’s plight but acknowledged there was not much she could do to bring his memory back. Shani was passing through Vizima and had stopped here when she found out there was no competent healer to help the people in the village. She would head out once she had sufficiently helped the people here. She knew the child Alvin who had been the survivor of the Barghest attack just outside the town. The child himself was still in shock and had not seemed to have processed what had just happened. He no longer had any family or a place to call home. With his mother dead, Alvin was sure to have a hard time finding a stable home. Before Geralt could go, he saw Alvin in a possessed state, and utter what would be known as the Prophecy of Ithlinne. It predicted the advent of the Ice Age and death of the world as we know it. That would be a problem for another time. People of the Continent had enough on their plates without taking climate change into account.

There were drowners in the nearby river who would drag down anyone who went for a swim. As if that was not enough, the Salmandra bandits raided the village to keep the people in a constant state of fear. It must have been exhausting to be a denizen of Vizima. There was also a plague rampaging through the village, which had forced everyone into a quarantine. The businesses were failing and people starving. At least they now had a competent healer in Shani to tackle that one problem. Of all the challenges Vizima faced this one hit close to home. A plague forcing everyone into quarantine felt eerily prophetic.

With the gates closed, there was not much to do but find an inn and pass the night. The barkeep did not want the Witcher’s kind in his place of business. Even with all the problems they had, people still found time to be racist. This kind of discrimination was nothing new to a mutant like Geralt, but it was grating none the less. The barkeep refused to serve him. Even under the threat of violence he chose to close down the business instead ofserving a witcher. Too tired to engage with this man, Geralt decided to turn in for the night.

Next morning Geralt set out to find more information on the Salmandra. The fear of the bandits gripped the people too hard for them to relinquish any meaningful information. Geralt would have to gain their trust before he could get anything out of them.

Outside the gates of the outpost, Geralt saw a man writhing in pain outside one of the houses. This was the abode of Abigail, the village witch. The man had invited her wrath by soliciting sexual favors from her. Abigail was distrusted by the people due to her powers, but she could be a valuable ally to Geralt in putting a stop to all the monsters harassing the people here.

Further down the road, racism reared its ugly head once more. There was a dwarf being hassled by the people. Being unable to overcome the obstacles that they faced, the common people chose to retain control by harassing the marginalized people who lived around them. Geralt was having none of that and put an immediate stop to this display of intolerance. It turned out the dwarf also knew Geralt. This amnesia thing was quickly getting old. Zoltan, the dwarf had a hard time believing the amnesia story, but he invited Geralt for drinks anyway. Promising to meet him again soon, the Witcher made his way towards the city.

As everyone had been saying, the gates to the city were closed. The only way to gain entry into Vizima was to have a letter from the Reverend, and he was too intolerant to help a non-believer at this time. Witcher changed tactics and offered his services to put a stop to the beast killing the inhabitants of Vizima. The priest was adamant only bringing the eternal fire to all the shrines would put a stop to the rampaging beast. The only problem was, since the beast came at night, the fire also needed to be lit at night. There was no one brave enough to face the onslaught of the barghests and light up the shrines. Geralt tried explaining that lighting a few candles will do nothing to stop the monster, but the Reverend was not going to pay much attention to advice of a mutant. Geralt agreed to help for a price. If the priest was willing to part with money for a futile task then Geralt was not going to complain.

Just like Khaer Morhen, Vizima was a familiar name to me. The world of Witcher is not too big. Most the places are those Geralt would visit again in the third game. It is not just the people and places that reappear in this world, the situations also seem to repeat themselves. Needing a pass to get through closed gates, saving a dwarf from racist humans, even fighting a hobo for beer money. All of these are things I have done in the final game. I am in a perpetual state of déjà vu.

12-20-20

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