Posting the ongoing story of my current campaign in parts due to a severe case of DM Cabin Fever. I've done a lot of work to integrate my players' backstories into the lore of Icewind Dale and I'm dying to share with someone. So please enjoy the below :D

It's December 2022 and my friends are talking about D&D with some new peeps they met online. I know what they're up to, but I'm weak to it... I cave and decide to don the Forever DM cap once more. I create a virtual campaign and give them the sources. "It's Rime Time guys. Go create me four level one characters."
Two weeks later and I receive the sheets, all in all, four very colourful characters.

The Cast

Elvina Mistera — Aasimar Fighter:
Daughter of a forgotten GodKing and GodQueen, Elvina's path in life is punctuated by the chilling thrust of a sword through her back. With her last sight the horrified visage of her sister, Elvina breathes her last and dies.
Beep-... Bee̵̡̙̟̍̈́̌̆p̶̛͚̺̣͇͖̠̃̇̕-... B̴̢̧͎͓͕̲̫̯͍̉͒͗͐́̀̀́̓̂̈́̌̋ę̴͋̋̉ȅ̶̗̓p̸̨̛̮̘̬͙̭̩̹̑͗̔͆́̆̉̆̆͐̉͌͝.
A choked gasp hurls a torrent of viscous cyan liquid as Elvina's eyes snap open. Wide eyes shooting around a darkened room, Elvina wrestles with horror and the distant pain in her chest as memories of her supposed death merge with the present. Tearing a pipe from her throat, Elvina gags before ripping herself out of a machine constructed from a dark metal alloy.
Minutes tick by as the synapses fire, her mind whirring back into activity as she climbs to her feet.
On a table nearby? A set of armour, a shield bearing her family's heraldry, as well as an unpleasantly memorable longsword.
Palming the dull pain in her chest that throbbed at the sight of the sword, Elvina stumbles forth. Equipped and ready for her journey, Elvina pulls a lever inviting a bone-chilling cold into the facility that sustained her. The land? Not a sight familiar from the homeland she remembered. Just cold white winter....
---
Jüles Takaperä — Halfling Rogue
Jules' fingers drummed energetically on the sill as her eyes enervated, peering out of her grandmother's window at the town she grew up in. Her father was a non-character, not even staying for her birth. Her mother? Well her name grinned up at her from a crumpled letter she found in her grandmother's desk.
The ink was faded and the letters near illegibly scribbled an address with blotches peppering the text like the blood that speckled in her grandmother's cough. Talviki Takeperä; 62 East Rind Street; Bryn Shander; Icewind Dale.
Jules could hear her grandmother coughing distantly upstairs, the recent wave of sickness blooming throughout the small village, confining the old kindly lady that raised her, to her bed.
Clenching her tiny fist around the note, Jules looked back up the stairs, hardening her heart as she stole into the savings her grandma had hidden in a loose board under the stairs. She wouldn't notice if Jules took a small handful of the near two hundred glimmering faces that gleamed up at her, right?
The young halfling waltzed out the house with the promise to bring back a pie, one-hundred and fifty golden royals and a leaden heart heavier. Hailing the caravan that visited every few months, Jules never looked back as the caravan slowly rocked up the small dirt trail, heading north.
"Bryn Shander huh... Just wait mother... I'll find you."
---
Erinyes Hawat — Shadar-Kai Druid:
Ranking lieutenant within the Raven Queen's guard. Erinyes was content serving her goddess, guarding the Fortress of Memories from those that would seek to harm her lady. Not that many had... Erinyes grew curious about the world outside the sprawling fortress of lost dreams. Agents of her goddess would often bring back relics forgotten by time itself. And her? She roamed the outer walls and sharpened her infinitely peerless abilities in preparation for... what?
Begging off the service to any goddess wasn't simple or wise. But her goddess released her just like that. With one caveat of course. The promise to bring back one timeworn relic, when requested.
As such, Erinyes enjoyed her life, exploring the vast and endless multiverse whilst waiting every day for a letter bearing a familiar feather. Nothing.
It wasn't until her and her latest companion, a young boy named Hirudo stumbled onto the sore end of a fearsome wizard and were separated to lands unknown that her goddess' command found her. "Head North little chick, and pluck for me the wretched soul of a girl killed by her father."
How had she found her? Erinyes knew better than to ask, but head north she did. Up into a land where even the sun didn't dare venture... it was good she was born in the dark.
---
Hirudo Woodramble — Biological Weapon:
Before talking about Hirudo, we must first talk about the one who created him. Estelle Woodramble. A name that murmured discord in the Feywild. Seeking a weapon that could shatter civilisations, Estelle pooled together aeons of meticulously curated resources and a lifetime of skill and knowledge in curse magic to forge the perfect weapon. Hirudo.
The swamp hag cackled as she rent space asunder, poking Hirudo through it into the greater multiverse and watched, ecstatic at the grief that would ensue. Hirudo obliged, a hunger for mana and an absence of anyone willing to teach him how to control it sustaining his dark desires to tear and consume.
One anomaly however was Erinyes, a wayward Shadar Kai trying to find purpose in her life. Hirudo felt his monstrous heart resonate with that, following the peculiar elf around as he took the occasional night away to devour a misbegotten mage or a child or two.
It was on one of his midnight traipses that Erinyes discovered the horrifying truth. The sight of a wizardling's feet sliding down his elongated maw. She'd seen worse than that in the lost memories that floated aimlessly around the fortress of her goddess... but the wizardling's uncle sure hadn't.
Somehow managing to counter the enraged mage's spell, space was torn asunder as Hirudo was separated from her in the astral before both were whipped back towards a random plane by whatever remnant mana she could structure from the wreckage of the spell, and unfortunately, Hirudo.
Hirudo crunched his way through seven wizards before an iota of clarity was restored, his form shifting under his mis-control as Channis's gauntleted fist shattered his jaw and made his vision bleed green....
"Commander Markham! We've subdued the doppel... this one was powerful."
"And yet, before the blank antlers, it will die like the rest. Strip it and bind it well. Let's see if the ice will freeze that sucker's form."
The last thing Hirudo could recall as his limbs were bound and tied hard to the post behind him was the mirthless look of the black bitch that ordered his death. And a supremely powerful energy welling up within him... begging to blow.

The Beginning

Rowan wasn't particularly fond of picking up the boy that walked out of a blizzard. The white haired-green eyed son rubbed off wrong on years of intuition surviving the sword coast's deadliest roads. Turns out the boy wouldn't be his problem for long, a blizzard besetting him and his caravan upon stumbling across the wreckage of a carriage.
The boy tore forth, first one into the find, much to Rowan's chagrin. He could hardly yank the boy back hard enough before seeing the surprising sight of four occupants, unharmed and dressed in nothing but their underwear as the sweltering heat of enchanted sun runes kept the dale's fiercest winds at bay.
Melvin, the leader, had introduced himself after donning a robe. Hailing from the city of sails, the quartet were clearly powerful as they joined the caravan. The blizzard seemed indignant, piling snow before their beasts and making the road nigh on unpassable.
The trip to Bryn Shander was arduous enough, and Rowan couldn't believe the things crawling out of the blizzard. He couldn't hold back his grin as what was recounted to him as ghostly hands of ice tore Hirudo and stole him away from the group. At least he wasn't his problem anymore.
Once the blizzard had cleared, Rowan detained a group of rowdy passengers who had decided to try and steal the caravan leader Rorick's curio, a bottle of boundless coffee. The fools. The three girls looked pitiful as Rowan had them tied to the carriages by rope and dragged along. At least attempt petty theft whilst he wasn't looking for gods' sakes.
What awaited their caravan as it continued north wasn't the bustling trade capital of the north however. It was the remains of a smouldering crater, green mist batting back the snow as it pooled at the bottom. Thankfully, the hardy people of the north had survived... somewhat. A small refugee camp already forming on the side of the crater.
Rowan sighed as they guided their caravan towards the town's makeshift palisade. Hopefully they would let them in...

And that was the end of the first session. :)
All of the character prologues were proposed by me after receiving my players' backstories to hook them into the lore.
It's my first time recounting the story of our campaign like this. I'm not sure if I should recount it with all of my reasoning and ideas explained? That's what I was hoping for after all because I've got all of these amazing ideas and narrative swings I want to share and nobody to talk to with about it.
Or, should I tell it piecemeal like this and let you guys find out for yourself as the story plods along?
​
Let me know ;)
​
Leafy Out— \Drops mic and walks off stage*.*

Posting the ongoing story of my current campaign in parts due to a severe case of DM Cabin Fever. I've done a lot of work to integrate my players' backstories into the lore of Icewind Dale and I'm dying to share with someone. So please enjoy the below :D

It's December 2022 and my friends are talking about D&D with some new peeps they met online. I know what they're up to, but I'm weak to it... I cave and decide to don the Forever DM cap once more. I create a virtual campaign and give them the sources. "It's Rime Time guys. Go create me four level one characters."
Two weeks later and I receive the sheets, all in all, four very colourful characters.

The Cast

Elvina Mistera — Aasimar Fighter:
Daughter of a forgotten GodKing and GodQueen, Elvina's path in life is punctuated by the chilling thrust of a sword through her back. With her last sight the horrified visage of her sister, Elvina breathes her last and dies.
Beep-... Bee̵̡̙̟̍̈́̌̆p̶̛͚̺̣͇͖̠̃̇̕-... B̴̢̧͎͓͕̲̫̯͍̉͒͗͐́̀̀́̓̂̈́̌̋ę̴͋̋̉ȅ̶̗̓p̸̨̛̮̘̬͙̭̩̹̑͗̔͆́̆̉̆̆͐̉͌͝.
A choked gasp hurls a torrent of viscous cyan liquid as Elvina's eyes snap open. Wide eyes shooting around a darkened room, Elvina wrestles with horror and the distant pain in her chest as memories of her supposed death merge with the present. Tearing a pipe from her throat, Elvina gags before ripping herself out of a machine constructed from a dark metal alloy.
Minutes tick by as the synapses fire, her mind whirring back into activity as she climbs to her feet.
On a table nearby? A set of armour, a shield bearing her family's heraldry, as well as an unpleasantly memorable longsword.
Palming the dull pain in her chest that throbbed at the sight of the sword, Elvina stumbles forth. Equipped and ready for her journey, Elvina pulls a lever inviting a bone-chilling cold into the facility that sustained her. The land? Not a sight familiar from the homeland she remembered. Just cold white winter....
---
Jüles Takaperä — Halfling Rogue
Jules' fingers drummed energetically on the sill as her eyes enervated, peering out of her grandmother's window at the town she grew up in. Her father was a non-character, not even staying for her birth. Her mother? Well her name grinned up at her from a crumpled letter she found in her grandmother's desk.
The ink was faded and the letters near illegibly scribbled an address with blotches peppering the text like the blood that speckled in her grandmother's cough. Talviki Takeperä; 62 East Rind Street; Bryn Shander; Icewind Dale.
Jules could hear her grandmother coughing distantly upstairs, the recent wave of sickness blooming throughout the small village, confining the old kindly lady that raised her, to her bed.
Clenching her tiny fist around the note, Jules looked back up the stairs, hardening her heart as she stole into the savings her grandma had hidden in a loose board under the stairs. She wouldn't notice if Jules took a small handful of the near two hundred glimmering faces that gleamed up at her, right?
The young halfling waltzed out the house with the promise to bring back a pie, one-hundred and fifty golden royals and a leaden heart heavier. Hailing the caravan that visited every few months, Jules never looked back as the caravan slowly rocked up the small dirt trail, heading north.
"Bryn Shander huh... Just wait mother... I'll find you."
---
Erinyes Hawat — Shadar-Kai Druid:
Ranking lieutenant within the Raven Queen's guard. Erinyes was content serving her goddess, guarding the Fortress of Memories from those that would seek to harm her lady. Not that many had... Erinyes grew curious about the world outside the sprawling fortress of lost dreams. Agents of her goddess would often bring back relics forgotten by time itself. And her? She roamed the outer walls and sharpened her infinitely peerless abilities in preparation for... what?
Begging off the service to any goddess wasn't simple or wise. But her goddess released her just like that. With one caveat of course. The promise to bring back one timeworn relic, when requested.
As such, Erinyes enjoyed her life, exploring the vast and endless multiverse whilst waiting every day for a letter bearing a familiar feather. Nothing.
It wasn't until her and her latest companion, a young boy named Hirudo stumbled onto the sore end of a fearsome wizard and were separated to lands unknown that her goddess' command found her. "Head North little chick, and pluck for me the wretched soul of a girl killed by her father."
How had she found her? Erinyes knew better than to ask, but head north she did. Up into a land where even the sun didn't dare venture... it was good she was born in the dark.
---
Hirudo Woodramble — Biological Weapon:
Before talking about Hirudo, we must first talk about the one who created him. Estelle Woodramble. A name that murmured discord in the Feywild. Seeking a weapon that could shatter civilisations, Estelle pooled together aeons of meticulously curated resources and a lifetime of skill and knowledge in curse magic to forge the perfect weapon. Hirudo.
The swamp hag cackled as she rent space asunder, poking Hirudo through it into the greater multiverse and watched, ecstatic at the grief that would ensue. Hirudo obliged, a hunger for mana and an absence of anyone willing to teach him how to control it sustaining his dark desires to tear and consume.
One anomaly however was Erinyes, a wayward Shadar Kai trying to find purpose in her life. Hirudo felt his monstrous heart resonate with that, following the peculiar elf around as he took the occasional night away to devour a misbegotten mage or a child or two.
It was on one of his midnight traipses that Erinyes discovered the horrifying truth. The sight of a wizardling's feet sliding down his elongated maw. She'd seen worse than that in the lost memories that floated aimlessly around the fortress of her goddess... but the wizardling's uncle sure hadn't.
Somehow managing to counter the enraged mage's spell, space was torn asunder as Hirudo was separated from her in the astral before both were whipped back towards a random plane by whatever remnant mana she could structure from the wreckage of the spell, and unfortunately, Hirudo.
Hirudo crunched his way through seven wizards before an iota of clarity was restored, his form shifting under his mis-control as Channis's gauntleted fist shattered his jaw and made his vision bleed green....
"Commander Markham! We've subdued the doppel... this one was powerful."
"And yet, before the blank antlers, it will die like the rest. Strip it and bind it well. Let's see if the ice will freeze that sucker's form."
The last thing Hirudo could recall as his limbs were bound and tied hard to the post behind him was the mirthless look of the black bitch that ordered his death. And a supremely powerful energy welling up within him... begging to blow.

The Beginning

Rowan wasn't particularly fond of picking up the boy that walked out of a blizzard. The white haired-green eyed son rubbed off wrong on years of intuition surviving the sword coast's deadliest roads. Turns out the boy wouldn't be his problem for long, a blizzard besetting him and his caravan upon stumbling across the wreckage of a carriage.
The boy tore forth, first one into the find, much to Rowan's chagrin. He could hardly yank the boy back hard enough before seeing the surprising sight of four occupants, unharmed and dressed in nothing but their underwear as the sweltering heat of enchanted sun runes kept the dale's fiercest winds at bay.
Melvin, the leader, had introduced himself after donning a robe. Hailing from the city of sails, the quartet were clearly powerful as they joined the caravan. The blizzard seemed indignant, piling snow before their beasts and making the road nigh on unpassable.
The trip to Bryn Shander was arduous enough, and Rowan couldn't believe the things crawling out of the blizzard. He couldn't hold back his grin as what was recounted to him as ghostly hands of ice tore Hirudo and stole him away from the group. At least he wasn't his problem anymore.
Once the blizzard had cleared, Rowan detained a group of rowdy passengers who had decided to try and steal the caravan leader Rorick's curio, a bottle of boundless coffee. The fools. The three girls looked pitiful as Rowan had them tied to the carriages by rope and dragged along. At least attempt petty theft whilst he wasn't looking for gods' sakes.
What awaited their caravan as it continued north wasn't the bustling trade capital of the north however. It was the remains of a smouldering crater, green mist batting back the snow as it pooled at the bottom. Thankfully, the hardy people of the north had survived... somewhat. A small refugee camp already forming on the side of the crater.
Rowan sighed as they guided their caravan towards the town's makeshift palisade. Hopefully they would let them in...

And that was the end of the first session. :)
All of the character prologues were proposed by me after receiving my players' backstories to hook them into the lore.
It's my first time recounting the story of our campaign like this. I'm not sure if I should recount it with all of my reasoning and ideas explained? That's what I was hoping for after all because I've got all of these amazing ideas and narrative swings I want to share and nobody to talk to with about it.
Or, should I tell it piecemeal like this and let you guys find out for yourself as the story plods along?
Let me know ;)
Leafy Out— \Drops mic and walks off stage*.*

Posting the ongoing story of my current campaign in parts due to a severe case of DM Cabin Fever. I've done a lot of work to integrate my players' backstories into the lore of Icewind Dale and I'm dying to share with someone. So please enjoy the below :D

It's December 2022 and my friends are talking about D&D with some new peeps they met online. I know what they're up to, but I'm weak to it... I cave and decide to don the Forever DM cap once more. I create a virtual campaign and give them the sources. "It's Rime Time guys. Go create me four level one characters."
Two weeks later and I receive the sheets, all in all, four very colourful characters.

The Cast

Elvina Mistera — Aasimar Fighter:
Daughter of a forgotten GodKing and GodQueen, Elvina's path in life is punctuated by the chilling thrust of a sword through her back. With her last sight the horrified visage of her sister, Elvina breathes her last and dies.
Beep-... Bee̵̡̙̟̍̈́̌̆p̶̛͚̺̣͇͖̠̃̇̕-... B̴̢̧͎͓͕̲̫̯͍̉͒͗͐́̀̀́̓̂̈́̌̋ę̴͋̋̉ȅ̶̗̓p̸̨̛̮̘̬͙̭̩̹̑͗̔͆́̆̉̆̆͐̉͌͝.
A choked gasp hurls a torrent of viscous cyan liquid as Elvina's eyes snap open. Wide eyes shooting around a darkened room, Elvina wrestles with horror and the distant pain in her chest as memories of her supposed death merge with the present. Tearing a pipe from her throat, Elvina gags before ripping herself out of a machine constructed from a dark metal alloy.
Minutes tick by as the synapses fire, her mind whirring back into activity as she climbs to her feet.
On a table nearby? A set of armour, a shield bearing her family's heraldry, as well as an unpleasantly memorable longsword.
Palming the dull pain in her chest that throbbed at the sight of the sword, Elvina stumbles forth. Equipped and ready for her journey, Elvina pulls a lever inviting a bone-chilling cold into the facility that sustained her. The land? Not a sight familiar from the homeland she remembered. Just cold white winter....
---
Jüles Takaperä — Halfling Rogue
Jules' fingers drummed energetically on the sill as her eyes enervated, peering out of her grandmother's window at the town she grew up in. Her father was a non-character, not even staying for her birth. Her mother? Well her name grinned up at her from a crumpled letter she found in her grandmother's desk.
The ink was faded and the letters near illegibly scribbled an address with blotches peppering the text like the blood that speckled in her grandmother's cough. Talviki Takeperä; 62 East Rind Street; Bryn Shander; Icewind Dale.
Jules could hear her grandmother coughing distantly upstairs, the recent wave of sickness blooming throughout the small village, confining the old kindly lady that raised her, to her bed.
Clenching her tiny fist around the note, Jules looked back up the stairs, hardening her heart as she stole into the savings her grandma had hidden in a loose board under the stairs. She wouldn't notice if Jules took a small handful of the near two hundred glimmering faces that gleamed up at her, right?
The young halfling waltzed out the house with the promise to bring back a pie, one-hundred and fifty golden royals and a leaden heart heavier. Hailing the caravan that visited every few months, Jules never looked back as the caravan slowly rocked up the small dirt trail, heading north.
"Bryn Shander huh... Just wait mother... I'll find you."
---
Erinyes Hawat — Shadar-Kai Druid:
Ranking lieutenant within the Raven Queen's guard. Erinyes was content serving her goddess, guarding the Fortress of Memories from those that would seek to harm her lady. Not that many had... Erinyes grew curious about the world outside the sprawling fortress of lost dreams. Agents of her goddess would often bring back relics forgotten by time itself. And her? She roamed the outer walls and sharpened her infinitely peerless abilities in preparation for... what?
Begging off the service to any goddess wasn't simple or wise. But her goddess released her just like that. With one caveat of course. The promise to bring back one timeworn relic, when requested.
As such, Erinyes enjoyed her life, exploring the vast and endless multiverse whilst waiting every day for a letter bearing a familiar feather. Nothing.
It wasn't until her and her latest companion, a young boy named Hirudo stumbled onto the sore end of a fearsome wizard and were separated to lands unknown that her goddess' command found her. "Head North little chick, and pluck for me the wretched soul of a girl killed by her father."
How had she found her? Erinyes knew better than to ask, but head north she did. Up into a land where even the sun didn't dare venture... it was good she was born in the dark.
---
Hirudo Woodramble — Biological Weapon:
Before talking about Hirudo, we must first talk about the one who created him. Estelle Woodramble. A name that murmured discord in the Feywild. Seeking a weapon that could shatter civilisations, Estelle pooled together aeons of meticulously curated resources and a lifetime of skill and knowledge in curse magic to forge the perfect weapon. Hirudo.
The swamp hag cackled as she rent space asunder, poking Hirudo through it into the greater multiverse and watched, ecstatic at the grief that would ensue. Hirudo obliged, a hunger for mana and an absence of anyone willing to teach him how to control it sustaining his dark desires to tear and consume.
One anomaly however was Erinyes, a wayward Shadar Kai trying to find purpose in her life. Hirudo felt his monstrous heart resonate with that, following the peculiar elf around as he took the occasional night away to devour a misbegotten mage or a child or two.
It was on one of his midnight traipses that Erinyes discovered the horrifying truth. The sight of a wizardling's feet sliding down his elongated maw. She'd seen worse than that in the lost memories that floated aimlessly around the fortress of her goddess... but the wizardling's uncle sure hadn't.
Somehow managing to counter the enraged mage's spell, space was torn asunder as Hirudo was separated from her in the astral before both were whipped back towards a random plane by whatever remnant mana she could structure from the wreckage of the spell, and unfortunately, Hirudo.
Hirudo crunched his way through seven wizards before an iota of clarity was restored, his form shifting under his mis-control as Channis's gauntleted fist shattered his jaw and made his vision bleed green....
"Commander Markham! We've subdued the doppel... this one was powerful."
"And yet, before the blank antlers, it will die like the rest. Strip it and bind it well. Let's see if the ice will freeze that sucker's form."
The last thing Hirudo could recall as his limbs were bound and tied hard to the post behind him was the mirthless look of the black bitch that ordered his death. And a supremely powerful energy welling up within him... begging to blow.

The Beginning

Rowan wasn't particularly fond of picking up the boy that walked out of a blizzard. The white haired-green eyed son rubbed off wrong on years of intuition surviving the sword coast's deadliest roads. Turns out the boy wouldn't be his problem for long, a blizzard besetting him and his caravan upon stumbling across the wreckage of a carriage.
The boy tore forth, first one into the find, much to Rowan's chagrin. He could hardly yank the boy back hard enough before seeing the surprising sight of four occupants, unharmed and dressed in nothing but their underwear as the sweltering heat of enchanted sun runes kept the dale's fiercest winds at bay.
Melvin, the leader, had introduced himself after donning a robe. Hailing from the city of sails, the quartet were clearly powerful as they joined the caravan. The blizzard seemed indignant, piling snow before their beasts and making the road nigh on unpassable.
The trip to Bryn Shander was arduous enough, and Rowan couldn't believe the things crawling out of the blizzard. He couldn't hold back his grin as what was recounted to him as ghostly hands of ice tore Hirudo and stole him away from the group. At least he wasn't his problem anymore.
Once the blizzard had cleared, Rowan detained a group of rowdy passengers who had decided to try and steal the caravan leader Rorick's curio, a bottle of boundless coffee. The fools. The three girls looked pitiful as Rowan had them tied to the carriages by rope and dragged along. At least attempt petty theft whilst he wasn't looking for gods' sakes.
What awaited their caravan as it continued north wasn't the bustling trade capital of the north however. It was the remains of a smouldering crater, green mist batting back the snow as it pooled at the bottom. Thankfully, the hardy people of the north had survived... somewhat. A small refugee camp already forming on the side of the crater.
Rowan sighed as they guided their caravan towards the town's makeshift palisade. Hopefully they would let them in...

And that was the end of the first session. :)
All of the character prologues were proposed by me after receiving my players' backstories to hook them into the lore.
It's my first time recounting the story of our campaign like this. I'm not sure if I should recount it with all of my reasoning and ideas explained? That's what I was hoping for after all because I've got all of these amazing ideas and narrative swings I want to share and nobody to talk to with about it.
Or, should I tell it piecemeal like this and let you guys find out for yourself as the story plods along?
​
Let me know ;)
​
Leafy Out— \Drops mic and walks off stage*.*

katurah's panic attack. like i could've EASILY seen him whipping out the YOU GOTTA DIG DEEPisms, which, as someone who tried to DIG DEEP through burnout and ended up with a chronic health condition, is something i have mixed feelings abt in general. but even if i liked jeff's motivation style, i also have personal experience with panic attacks and know that someone yelling at you to push through is just abt the worst thing one can do in that situation
meanwhile, while i know others may disagree here, i really admired how jeff let katurah handle the moment however she thought was best and drop out of the challenge if need be, something i couldn't have seen jeff from even a few seasons ago doing. i also really like that the show didn't turn it into a grandiose spectacle ala cirie and the balance beam or even sarah's very similar moment during aus survivor 2019, where it felt like her panic attack and the context surrounding it took up half of the episode and the host only shifted into "it's okay to step down, just take care of yourself" mode after it became very clear she wasn't gonna jump off that tall platform anyways (not to mention that while most of her peers were supportive, iirc they also showed a couple people disappointed in her and her decision, a harsh contrast to her recounting her incredibly traumatic experience around jumping into water, in which she watched her literal best friend die in a typhoon)
even after she calmed down post challenge, i was pleasantly surprised jeff didn't make the moment abt him and gave katurah total control on whether she wanted to jump out into the water or let the boat pick her up. while i loved 42 and liked 44 (where it was also less present) in spite of it, i feel like we've finally shifted out of the OTTPP era of survivor, which paradoxically makes moments like katurah's all that more impactful and human <3

This will be updated everytime someone is eliminated. similar to the one found in season 3. which you can find here
​

Contestant	Reason for Elimination	Place	Vote Margin
Witch hat	Witch hat (also known as Naily) marketed herself as a token early quitter. various reasons were cited. but a series of rough circumstances had lead to go out of the game. she thought to herself the universe is signaling her not to join camp activites. also in her game plans she wanted to quit then rejoin but this was not possible as show it in the protocols when Whistler quit in season 3. her voting history was leaked. a series of feeling lonely and sad. even going as far to call some disrespectful in another gc. she also stated that she joined as a joke. further sealing her chances.	Replaced By Tornado	QUIT
Potion	Quit randomly. no in depth analysis was provided and its a shame because he didnt really get to shine. the only people on the fans who shined where B and choc mint ball.	Replaced by ping pong ball	QUIT
B	Witch hat returned to the chat as a spectator. B had been caught sending mature penis lookalike pictures while witch hat was gone. like. seconds after ill tell you the night before that incident ocurred i was created a groupchat with me. B and pizza box. where we shared edgy, disgusting humor. Pizza box left for being uncomfortable. after i took a bathroom break. i quit this gc and apologized to him for any discomfort. i knew first hand B was like this. back to the day after. everyone cornered him. and host announced they were considering an ejection (which eventually went through) which Marimba announced to the whole chat. the final statement before he got ejected for not taking accountabiliy was a statement in which B said we ruined his life. Marimba. hosting the server, kicked them afterwards. this problem extended far beyond the borders of TOOC. as it lead to Piano key's ejection in **Battle for my breakfast (**Piano key is made by the same person as b). and the removal of Battle for your will to live from the camp archival project database (Battle for your will to live is a camp by B). the whole camp was affected and everyone was left in shock. but everyone made a promise. to keep calm. and carry on.	22nd	EJECTED
Gamon	In the aftermath of B's ejection (like the 10 minutes after it) Gamon compared us to twitter users. people told them we were just voicing their concerns. Witch hat. as a spectator expressed her concerns as she was the most angry as she was the one who felt uncomfortable with B's actions. told overall. and lead to his ejection. AND CAN YOU GUESS WHAT GAMON REPLIED? ''whatever''. that was the final straw and marimba, who hosted the chat. removed her from the server. she thought she was ejected and even took to the subreddit. which Pizza box clarified. she was reinvited to chat. but declined. comfiring the quit.	replaced by rydiak	QUIT
Ciry	even before challenge 2 ciry showed signs of an early elimination via lack of activity. with B most notably telling him in BFYWTL chat to ''get his ass on tooc'' and threatening to vote him out. keep in mind this happened before B's ejection (mere hours before it). Ciry did not care. CMB has infamously discussed how inactive her team is and saying in lounge that she's ''going to visit here alot'' (for context: lounge is where the eliminations take place) and ciry turned out to be one of them. the fans were (allegedly) discussing who to kill off from their team and the candidates were likely Ciry or kp. because of their close vote margin. despite the latter (Allegedly) contributing to the roleplay in some way. either way. Ciry is an example of premature elimination. by lack of activity.	21st	5-3-1-1 (Ciry, Kp, tornado, rydiak)
Rydiak	After shortkitty from season 3 came back from having go through the troubles of losing her account and getting it reinstated. she scrolled up and found rydiak saying the n word. the screenshot exists. but then she spread this screenshot to marimba who then spread it to the host. which lead to his ejection. prior this rydiak had been invited to the chat as a joke. this idea was by tornado. we were plannning to instantly kick him after. but over time.. he seemed more geniune. so he was just kept. eventually when Gamon was ejected he even replaced Gamon in the competition. but the big twist was that The storyline of rydiak being hacked was a complete fabrication made up by the favorites. meaning rydiak was damn aware of what he did.	20th	EJECTED
4 ball	Overall decided to wake up everyone at 6am to announce ''not again'' with concern from Sword. 4 ball had quit. attached was a screenshot that he was in WAYYY too many camps according to him. Caesium replied with while they did he agree anyways? waste of a casting slot. its also important to note 4 ball was never active on season 4. his only major role being an antagonist in season 3. and literally having the longest description on a chart to present day. in the words of Caesium: congraluaitions fans, youve managed to outlast at least one favorite.	19th	QUIT
Mattress	Mattress (real name excel)'s game was also kinda short. not much being known of. the fans are often joked about that theyre gonna be the next flop team. and it slowly seemed nearer when the fans lost. the first round was tied. if you remember 4 ball's elimination was season 3. you remember that he was tied with marimba. and that people who were in the tie or those who voted them couldnt vote. meaning it was banana phone's decision to eliminate him? this exact happened with mattress and kp. lets break down the two. mattress. the only information we have as to why he ended up here is because: according to cmb they asked to be voted out. and host always predicts that KP will be eliminated. which may have been influenced them into voting him even tho he (allegedley) participated in the roleplay challenge. anyways they got tied. and the voters unanmiounsly agreed to voting out mattress after he got stuck in an excel spreadsheet. we'll never forget this fallen soldier.	18th	2-0 (Excel, Kp)
Surge protector	you gotta ask yourself why SP is even in an all stars season.in season 3 on his first elimination he was tied with 4 ball. and he was eliminated because he did a lower performance than 4 ball. and only got into this season because he had a sucessful rejoin campaign. youd think by this condition he'd work hard to have a social game with teammates and not be seen as someone we can easily just boot out if we lost? nope. that was the second pillar which led to his elimination. and what happened was the favorites were instantly informed of their loss. but then overall does a recount and both teams lose. a similar case to this one happened to Lightning in season 3. where everyone considered voting out surge protector at first but then Caesium brings up Lightning's floating abilities and everyone just switched their vote . welp. in season 4. everyone considered voting out leeky. caesium brings up surge protector. and then now he's the target. see a pattern here? thats gonna happen to leeky. leeky will be next eliminated. whether you like it or not. but hey, thats just a theory. A TOOC THEORY.	17th	4-1-1 (SP, tophat, Sword)
Tornado	Starting this entry: ask yourself the same question that started surge protector's entry; if you go to the link youll find that he was eliminated third in season 3. if you do more snooping around the chart and look at witch hat's place in THIS chart. youll find she got out and replaced by tornado. so what happened? there was a big quit wave and we just needed replacements. in our previous episode of tooc theory CMB and PPB were arguing about who they should vote out (in the gc we have planned for when reddit removes live chats and not in their own gc). CMB proposed a tornado boot. reasons speculated to be: His schelude from only being on Fridays-Sundays. annoying. and more. the exact reasons he got booted off from in season 3. well see... turns out PPB is actually secretly in love with tornado (which you shouldnt because sandstorm ((Sandy the bucket x tornado)) is THE canon ship) and tried to convince like the 3 fans that were there (PPB, cmb, and KP) to vote cmb. so only KP. i was also there too but you couldnt vote for someone on the opposite team. so yeah. PPB kept bringing up that CMB is a bossy manipulator vote swayer trying to get everyone to vote for his love interest. which backfired as CMB convinced HER ENTIRE TEAM to vote out tornado in an extremely one sided vote (look at the vote margin) to vote out tornado. and also Lilypad self voted for themselves since theyre pretty much non existent in the competition. meaning this vote was not only one sided. but also fucking unanimous. which also means PPB gave up against cmb on which the eyes of him see as an evil monster (why else would he campaign for her elimination) and voted for the person he has a crush on. as another source during tornado's elimination is PPB considered voting for him but switched to eyeball. the unsucessful campaign. i have the dms if any of you want it. as a quick rundown: only was given acess because people were leaving. cmb the ''eVil mAnIPUlaTor'' despite being a great contributor to the team suggesting his outage and his crush trying to rebel but then reflected and gave up. this elimination was a part of double elimination between him and surge protector. eliminations held at the same day as both teams were up for voting (DISCLAIMER: the whole thing about ppb having a crush on tornado is a JOKE)	16th	7-1 (Tornado, Lilypad)
KP	it was KP's ''you'' problem that he was always on discord. so when discussing who to vote and asking who was inactive the most. everyone pointed towards him. it was clear from the beginning his teammates were gonna boot him out as soon as they lost and it came wrapped like a christmas gift too early in the fans vs favorites timeline. actually its not even that anymores since we have new teams.	15th	4-1 (KP, PPB)
Marimba	oh. looks like its me. and im not mad! we decided the elimination would be fair and square. so we all just kinda voted eachother so the wheel of doom would activate (it did indeed activate) and that a good outcome would result no matter who got eliminated. however PPB and real didnt notice until after the elimination. me and pizza box formulated the plan as we knew they were gonna eachother. with that said. i just hope they can survive one more elimination round.	14th	1-1-1-1 (Marimba, Pizza box, Real, PPB)
Phone charger	who knows what the heck went down in the sunset samurai gc. however even in the first phase of the game we joked about CMB somehow getting voted out. well. when the Sunsets Samurais lost the prediction challenge. Phone charger only ended up making some CMB gacha figure during the period she was supposed to do the challenge. and yet ended up tied with the one who made probably the most effort on the challenge. a pattern which overall himself acknowledged. quote. ''Sunsets samurais on their way to vote out their strongest members'' which is semi-true. as phone charger played a big part in the roleplay challenge. which Lilypad and CMB herself witnessed. whatever the case. the two were the best shields the team could rely for as Tophat has recently started to get more inactive (so not a strong member). and yet ended up tying. for the second time in a row. the wheel of doom was spun. if CMB was chosen. it was TOOCOVER for the sunset samurais. but it went for phone charger so thankfully world war 3 itself didnt happen.	13th	2-2-1 (Phone charger, CMB, cup)
Pizza box	After marimba's sacrifice the scallywags were decimated due to only having 3 members. PPB and real were transferred to the sunset samurai (same team with the EVIL manipulator who took his lover) and piss box was transferred to the superstorms, consisting of Hate letter, ms word, leeky, caesium and sword. even tho they couldve easily killed one of the options just listed instead of the newbie that could help (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) they decided to blindside him in a 4-2 vote. initally. overall did a prank thinking he was safe. but he was like ''jk you're out'' and it was TOOCOVER for the inventor of the phrase TOOCOVER. which inspired the TOOCRESTAURANT and its fangame.	12th	4-2 (Pizza box, leeky)
MS Word	when a team loves blinsiding and flushing idols down the toilet. this is the result. well actually we can consider these one because according to a comment by Cario Pizza box was attempting to dictate voting towards Leeky and Sword. The former of which is completely understandable because Amber was taking a break due to the incident. but i can assure you flushing idols is their thing whether its intentional or not because ms word did not see this coming. even tho Pizza box warned of the very obvious player they couldve voted out. preventing said person from making merge. they instead kill off their best bud because WE LOVE BLINDSLIDES AND IDOL FLUSHING!!!!	11th	3-1-1 (Ms word, Hate letter, Leeky)

at this point, Kp debuts with 3 votes and Axe (Admustgo) debuts into the game. this is the merge chart.
​
​

Contestant	Reason for elimination	Place	Vote margin
Real	Real is probably the 2nd placer in taking jokes way too far (the first placer being me, of course) which led to his own downfall. when it was time for debut voting real make a bunch of fake accounts in an attempt to rig voting results. which overall calls out in the results announcing the debuter (Axe). he also according to Overall impersonated which is against the rules. as a result i got the permission from Overall to announce he was one strike away from ejection. he sincerely apologized and opted to quit. which he did.	12th	QUIT
Lilypad	Just the best option out of the one up for voting. not really active as much. what you expected a 200 word analysis for the second merge entry? cant blame you. tho seriously look at that thicc vote margin	11th	4-3-1-1-1-1 (Lilypad, PPB, CMB, Cup, Tophat, Leeky)
PPB	the last joiner of the beginning of tooc where it was hell on earth. first off. PPB suffered the same fate as Rydiak and Tornado from premerge. they went premerge in season 3. i do have to give credit to PPB for being unfairly blindslided by CARIO (overall literally confirmed this on multiple occasions) for being a leadership persona which OVERALL chose, DO YOU SEE HOW CONFUSING THIS IS???	10th

​

Hey everyone, I've played all the games (which were awesome) and I've read the first three books. I've heard that in the next book (Time of Contempt) Geralt is only in there like 15% of the book, and only kills one monster the whole book, and you don't even see it from his perspective. One of the secondary characters recounts it during a conversation. So I'm wondering if you can recommend any of the other books that don't focus so much on Ciri, Yennefer, the mage's guild, political stuff, etc. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

In Time of Contempt, after enduring her wandering in Korath, Ciri finds herself in the clutches of slavers—and then, in a gang of bandits called the Rats.
The Rats are evil, pure evil, and their Evil has been fostered by their environment, war and suffering all around. In other words, the time of contempt:

They were children of the time of contempt. And they had nothing but contempt for others. For them, only force mattered.

Force, violence! Like that of the battlefields which they survived, when they were dumped, abandoned, left for dead…
… much like Ciri! At this point in the story, it’s happened to her twice now.
When Cintra was razed by Nilfgaardian forces, she not only saw the horrors of battle firsthand, with death and fire all around, but was kidnapped by none other than our boy Cahir, who, though unintentionally, became a (k)nightmare for her. The knight with the helmet adorned with the wings of a bird of prey, the eyes burn through the slits—very lovely. But what’s more is that no one helps her (or, even if Cahir was helping her escape, she could not recognize it as such).

Fear.
The bird shrieks. The wings beat, feathers slap against her face. Fear! Help! Why doesn't anyone help me? Alone, weak, helpless – I can't move, can't force a sound from my constricted throat. Why does no one come to help me?
I'm terrified!

Of course, Geralt finds her in “Something More,” and in Blood of Elves she is at once saved and given a father—not to mention a mother, with Yennefer at the Temple of Ellander later in the book.
But in Time of Contempt, Thanedd during the Coup, she is abandoned once again. Not on purpose by far, as Geralt and Yennefer’s only goal was to protect their daughter; however, the events so happened that Ciri became abandoned and alone in the chaos. Once again.
But this time, there is no Geralt. There are no Druids of Transriver to take her in. There is no Yurga or Goldencheeks. There only is the merciless sun and hot sand. And wandering.
Days and days of wandering. How long of a time, well, she lost track, though perhaps something like “40 days and nights.”.
She suffers, bearing her suffering entirely alone. The significance of this chapter is often chalked up to a boring non-sequitur that Sapkowski spent too much time on, but I disagree—this is a fundamental part of Ciri’s development to come. Here, he’s lining up the dominos to fall.
Under the sun of Korath, Ciri’s psyche breaks. She becomes so alone, so desperate, so traumatized by this borne suffering, it’s as if existing in an entirely different life.

When she awoke again she was alone. Aching, stiff, thirsty, hungry, and all alone. The unicorn had been a mirage, an illusion, a dream. And had vanished like a dream. She understood that, accepted it, but still felt regret and despair as though the creature really had existed, had been with her and had abandoned her. Just like everyone had abandoned her.

And even more than this, when she ends up renouncing the Power after rebuking the spirit of Falka tempting her to madness and bloodthirsty revenge, and after the healed Ihuarraquax is taken back by his herd, she is left with nothing. Absolutely nothing.

She did not think about anything. She was alone. She was empty. Now she had nothing and she felt nothing inside. There was no thirst, hunger, fatigue or fear. Everything had vanished, even the will to survive. She was one great, cold, dreadful void. She felt that void with all her being, with every cell of her body.

But this suffering she so terribly bears is why she can even become a Rat in the first place. She becomes spiteful, hateful of her suffering.
In Falka’s words to her, we see a foreshadowing of her own “Falka” mentality:

They betrayed you! They deceived and tricked you! (…) They used you! They condemned you to hunger, to the burning sun, to thirst, to misery and to loneliness! The time of contempt and revenge is come! (…) Let the whole world cower before thee!

Again about Ciri’s suffering: Remember that “[Nilfgaardian] prefects used methods which had been tried and tested against other gangs; several times they tried to install a traitor among the Rats. Unsuccessfully. The Rats didn’t accept anyone.” Nothing worked, the Rats always caught on—because the mole was not, in their heart, a Rat. The Rats sense suffering, because they themselves are suffering. And thrive on it. They did not accept anyone, because there were no other Rats…

Until the day a pale-haired, taciturn girl, as agile as an acrobat, appeared. A girl about whom the Rats knew nothing.
Aside from the fact that she was as they had once been; like each one of them. Lonely and full of bitterness, bitterness for what the time of contempt had taken from her.

And Ciri, falling into their wretched company because she could not bear to be alone, is subject to the suffering they cause her—but not only that, becomes a Rat herself and embodies all of their gang’s “virtues” (vices)—including relishing the infliction of suffering. She comes to enjoy the terror they inflict:

(…) she looked up to Giselher, and considered the Rats a model of freedom and independence. She loved their freedom, their contempt for everything and everybody.

“Why,” “how,” must we ask as readers, who were familiarized with the sniffling nose and little red hood from “Sword of Destiny,” does the once-Princess of Cintra become so cruel and evil?
The reason why Ciri accepts the Rats’ gifts, why she remains laying down, unable to move in fear when Mistle sexually assaults her, and why she ultimately becomes a Rat herself is because she is desperate.

“Because the one who is alone will perish; from hunger, from the sword, from the arrow, from makeshift peasant clubs, from the noose, or in flames. The one who is alone will perish; stabbed, beaten or kicked to death, defiled, like a toy passed from hand to hand.”

Ciri does not want to be alone—she cannot be—because to be alone is to suffer, as she found out at Cintra and in the Korath Desert. Therefore, with the Rats, even if she is touched against her will, even if their sadism infects her and brings out the absolute worst in her as she takes out her anger on the world—she accepts this company to the point of “loving” with it, of “looking up to” it, because the Rats are the only people who have even a semblance (even if it is a false semblance) of acknowledgement for her, her, who is now a nobody, a nothing-girl.
Ciri, stripped of her title of “Princess” once and for all, is now absolutely no one. (See why she decides to go with Hotsporn in Ch. 2 of Tower of the Swallow for more on her thinking here). No one cares about her welfare, and she is hardly able to fend for herself.
A quick reminder for context that Ciri’s fourteenth birthday would have been the May before the Thanedd Coup in July, so yes, the Rats are effectively all adults (at least by Nilfgaardian law, where sixteen is an adult—though since the youngest Rats are sixteen in their backstories, and some time has passed since then, it’s probable that they’re all older than sixteen at this time) hanging out with some girl… and such is the way abuse works, predators often abuse victims younger than themselves, as youth makes one easier to be influenced and manipulated. Especially if that youth has a history of trauma and abandonment issues, and is desperately looking for someone to latch onto.
The Rats exist to take advantage of Ciri and make her one of their own (see their “adoption” of her in Ch. 7 of Time of Contempt, when they go around giving he gifts). They intentionally hurt and use her, and she embraces being hurt and used—because to her, it’s preferable to being alone. And this is why she considers it “friendship” and “love.” To many, this may seem illogical, and it very well may be, but for those who have been trapped in an abusive relationship or seen an abusive relationship play out before them, this kind of situation may ring absolutely familiar.
We also, most interestingly, see the exact inverse of this kind of relationship in the other half of the series at this point: in Geralt and his own company.
Whereas Ciri is desperate to not be alone, Geralt champions isolation. Though Ciri couldn’t bear to be alone out of her own fears created by trauma, Geralt initially wants to be alone because he feels immense guilt for failing Ciri by not being with her, and feels even more guilt for the unlucky company that would tangle themselves in Destiny’s fetters to save her.
But what’s more, is that Ciri and Geralt’s respective companies are also opposite one another, as the Rats, glutted on the blood, destruction and fire which they bring, were formed before Ciri’s presence, and seek to make her one of their own. Whereas Geralt’s company (which later becomes his hanza with the addition of Angoulême) form around him and his quest, as brothers in arms who do not desert him (or one another) through their baptism(s) of fire!
In this way, Sapkowski creates an interesting parallel between our two protagonists, the Good and the Evil. As above, so below. Despite everyone’s seeming infatuation with the Witcher as a story of grey morality, it is, like every story belonging to the fantasy genre, (according to Sapkowski in “Piróg”) a story about Good and Evil:

I meant for Ciri to be a monster. I wanted to show how people turn other people into monsters. Ciri is Evil, Evil incarnate. Everyone makes a monster out of her: the Rats, the sorceresses, Bonhart and even her own father Duny. She is already unconsciously taking revenge on everyone—Rience, the people in the swamp. "With these fingers, were you going to teach me pain, Rience?" She says. "With these hands?" They all teach her pain! When she comes to the village in the swamps, with black eyes, the old man asks her: "Who are you?", She replies: "I am death."
Remember how in the end they go down the stairs to the enemies, the witcher and the girl, shoulder to shoulder? So, this is Good and Evil going down. Good and Evil. That's why no one can stop them.

Interview with Sapkowski at RusCon (18.02.2001)
Ciri in her desperation joins Evil, becomes Evil, even embraces Evil, and her presence becomes so loud that the most-Evil, the Devil Incarnate, “awakens” and is led on her trail: Leo Bonhart.
As it becomes recounted in legend:

‘Ciri was still prowling with the Rats, calling herself “Falka”. She had gained a taste for the robbers’ life. For though no one knew it then, there was fury and cruelty in that girl. The worst of everything that hides in a person emerged from her and slowly got the upper hand. Oh, the witchers of Kaer Morhen made a great mistake by teaching her how to kill! And Ciri herself–dealing out death–didn’t even suspect that the Grim Reaper was hot on her trail. For the terrible Bonhart was tracking her, hunting her.’

Yes, it is Ciri who drew Bonhart to herself—which, as we all know, resulted in even more suffering and even more pain. But this pain was borne of their own similarities in cruelty. In Bonhart, Ciri is tormented by herself:

‘(…) They finally ended up in Loredo, where your Falka hacked a fellow to pieces, in such a fashion that they’re still talking about it through chattering teeth. Which is why I asked what there is to this Falka.’
‘Perhaps you and she are very much alike,’ Stephan Skellen mocked.

But, as Grandfather Whistle (Pogwizd) put it, “But I shall recount their tale another time.”
What matters to this post, my point in writing and my interpretation of the Witcher Pentateuch, is that the entire crux of the story is Ciri’s character development. For worse and for better, but mostly for worse.
In the first act of the story, she is irrevocably hurt, irrevocably “damaged” (as Vysogota reflected upon her, not I!) and when she is put into such an isolated, vulnerable state, she becomes taken in by Evil—Evil that does not always take such a brutal form. Ciri submits to a soft evil because it caresses her, it promises her friendship, family, and love, it is an Evil that is “delicate, softer, more pleasant,” that “cradles protectively and whispers soothingly.”
It is Evil that Ciri desperately latches onto. That she cannot survive without. Because to be without would be to be alone.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mistle said, turning her head away, ‘why you don’t leave, if being with me is so awful.’
‘I don’t want to be alone.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That is a lot.’

It’s true that Ciri falls in love with Mistle, who assaulted her. She even wants to come back to her, she wants her to survive, because she is grateful to her… for the “love,” which was actually abuse:

‘Wait for me,’ Ciri sniffed. ‘And don’t get yourself killed. Think about the amnesty Hotspurn was talking about. Even if Giselher and the others don’t want to… You think about it, Mistle. It may be a way to survive… Because I will come back for you. I swear.’
‘Kiss me.’
The dawn broke. The light grew and it became colder and colder.
‘I love you, Waxwing.’
‘I love you, Little Falcon. Now go.

This love may be love, but let’s not forget the circumstances in which it was born. And why exactly Ciri "fell in love”:

Had someone crept up after nightfall to the cottage with the sunken, moss-grown thatched roof, (...) They would have noticed that the girl was speaking slowly, (...) interweaving her story with long silences. A tale about the lessons she had received, of which all, to the last one, turned out to be false and misleading. About the promises made to her which were not kept. A story about how the destiny she’d been ordered to believe in betrayed her disgracefully and deprived her of her inheritance. About how each time she began to believe in her destiny she was made to suffer misery, pain, injustice and humiliation. About how those she trusted and loved betrayed her, did not come to her aid when she was afflicted, when she was menaced by dishonour, agony and death. A tale about the A tale about the ideals to which she was instructed to remain loyal, and which disappointed, betrayed and abandoned her when she needed them, proving of what little value they were. About how she finally found help, friendship–and love–with those among whom she should have sought neither help nor friendship. Not to mention love.”

It’s an Evil that Ciri falls in love with and becomes herself, and embraces taking her frustration, hurt, and revenge on others: even little girls such as herself, giving them nightmares, threatening their own rape (the young daughter of the Baron of Casadei: See Baptism of Fire Ch. 6 and Tower of the Swallow Ch. 2). And that’s the point.
Heroes, even princesses linked to Destiny, are not exempt from being touched by Evil.
In lesser words, selfishness, spite, and revenge. And contempt. Youth, coming to terms with the violence of the world, are particularly vulnerable to this contempt which surrounds them. It is so easy to give into Evil: to hurt themselves, hurt others, in attempts to avenge their inner child. But nothing, not a thousand deaths could ever avenge them. It’s not a “dark fantasy.” It’s a realistic one, ruled by war, violence, and death of innocence.
Good, on the other hand, is not easy. It takes effort, a struggle—repentance, expiation, and a baptism of fire.
Ciri’s story reminds us that no one is above Evil, and Evil is not always as grand as we conceive it to be. It’s not a corruption of the soul, but rather a changing of the mind, a growing spiteful feeling, a desire for revenge… even on those who love and protect you:

Death to them all! Take your revenge on all of them. Despise them! Since they all harmed you or wanted to harm you! Or perhaps they will want to harm you in the future!

So, verily, I say unto you, the Time of Contempt is nigh… Thus it shall be! Watch for the signs!

Because KOTOR III has never come out and probably will never everyone can dream of what it could have been. It's a bit like the hype around Cyberpunk 2077 before it came out. i.e. KOTOR III would have been the greatest sure thing of all time which would redefine the gaming experience for a decade. Well it’s Sunday and inspired by Snigaroo’s Satruraday spent talking about Peragus I’d thought I’d pen some of my ideas for KOTOR III’s story. I'll also be talking about KOTOR, KOTOR II, Mass Effect, and Witcher 3. There’s a lot to go through here:
Character Creation

• You are the Jedi Exile returning from the previous game, on a mission to search for Revan. I like the title: "A Veteran of Wars to come” when in game, but for this post I’ll use The Exile.
• Facial customisation will be available like with most RPGs nowadays. There will be a canon face and alignment for quick customisation of "Meetra Surik” much like how Commander Shepard has a default look.
• You choose a Jedi or Sith class based on the prestige classes of the previous game: Master, Watchman, Weapon-master, Marauder, Assassin, Sith Lord, or Wanderer (the last one being a nonaligned character. Wanderer has no perks, but offers more flexibility if you don’t want know your alignment predetermined).
• Will use the same 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons rules as the previous game.
• Your character will start at level 8 to reflect that they are not a weak blank slate (a bit like how ME3 players who imported Shepard from ME2 started with a stronger character).
• The new addition will be feats that allow you to pair Force Powers like Force Enlightenment provided in KOTOR II. These will include things like Force Enlightenment and pairing Force lightening and Force Push.
• Using Darkside powers will give you Darkside points. No more 100% Lightside Jedi with Force Storm. The game will make going 100% darkside very easy as you explore the Heart of Darkness. Doing a Lightside playthrough should be a challenge, but not necessarily hard from a difficulty perspective.
• I don’t know what the combat system would be. My thinking is along the lines of Witcher 3 for Melee and Dragon Age Inquisition for ranged.
• The player will also the gender and look of Revan.

Opening: Title Crawl
Long, Long Ago, in a Galaxy far, far away...
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic III:
The Unknown Empire
​
Four thousand years before
the rise of the Galactic
Empire, peace has finally come
to the Republic. [CHARACTER NAME]
has defeated the SITH TRIUMVIRATE
and ended the threat they posed
to the galaxy.
​
Yet the mysterious disappearance
of the former Jedi Knight and
Sith Lord REVAN, casts a shadow
over the victory. Before her death,
KREIA, leader of the Triumvirate,
warned of a Sith Empire
readying for war, a war
Revan has gone to confront.
​
Having found Revan’s ship
and droids in [HEHIS]
journey's, [CHARACTER FIRST NAME]
now prepares to leave the
known galaxy and do battle
at the end of all things...
Camera pans down to either Dantooine or Koribban (depending on alignment) and a ship taking off towards an area of space where there are no stars.
Tutorial: Aboard the Ebon Hawk
The tutorial will be with HK-47 (doing combat) and T3-M4, doing computer and maintenace repairs to the ship after the beating it took on Malachor V. The main goal will be to unlock Astrogation System by getting the code and then getting HK-47 to speak it in Revan’s voice. Yes, the main character will be a voiced character. There will also be a dialogue challenge to try to unlock HK-47's memory banks so that he can recall Revan’s voice. During this time the player will establish Revan’s alignment and class like the conversation with Atton.
With these out of the way the astrogation system will be unlocked and the player can finally make their way to the first planet of the game. I don’t have ideas on names for planet.
First Planet: Exploring the Sith Empire
The first planet will be a habitable moon used by smugglers above a temperate peaceful looking arboreal planet where the Ebon Hawk has to land on because the Exile has no money (using republic credits would somewhat give the game away) and won’t perhaps be able to understand the locals. Exploring the moon will provide some basic combat challenges with your droid companions and also allow you to practice stealth. It will be important to learn how cloud the minds of others so as to be undetectable in the Force. This is very important to Lightside players. At the end you come across a smugglers cove and get a healthy starting number of credits and forged credentials to get onto the planet below. The smugglers also have another smuggler prisoner from a rival gang and it turns out that HK-47 can translate for you. The prisoner is willing to help you navigate the planet in exchange for her freedom, though it’s not clear if she’ll double cross you. This becomes your first new companion. And so you dock the Ebon Hawk to be repaired and can explore the city.
Themes of the Game: Exploring Evil
Whilst I want to keep to the broad eight planet structure (2 openers, 4 open choice planets, 1.5 closing), I don’t have specifics for what you would be doing in terms of quests. The main objective is to find out about Revan’s travels, which normally has you dealing with the powerful on the planet since they’d have the information you need in all likelihood.
The main point of this game though is exploring evil and different cultures ideas/stories about evil. The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone was an interactive exploration of a Polish version of Dr Faust called “Pan Twardowski” which allowed the player to give their input into the ultimate fate of the main character of the story. The player is asked to decide if someone deserves eternal damnation for signing a contract with the nefarious Gaunter O’Dimm. This quest doesn’t have a right choice, just different choices. KOTOR III should take this approach and explore different cultures mythological tales of evil. Often games have a problem with there being a “right choice and wrong choice” which removes the replayability. Again, in the Witcher 3, the Quest “Towerful of Mice” is really good, but there is a right choice for doing all the exploration and wrong choice that sees you release a plague demon on the world. Once you know not to do that the quest loses its replayability. KOTOR games often have the problem of making the Lightside choice on Lightside playthroughs and Darkside choices on Darkside playthroughs. So, the major decisions of each planet will generally try not to ascribe LS or DS points, though there will be exceptions.
Each planet will explore different forms of evil and different side quests will explore different ideas of evil within that. The first planet (after the moon) will look at the evil of a surveillance state and the oppression of surveillance, very much based on ideas from George Orwell’s 1984. One planet will look at the evil of torture for entertainment and another will look at the evil of murdering life. Then two other planets will explore other themes of evil and how you as the player would address them. Do you look to overthrow the systems or utilise them in your search for Revan and perhaps just adopt them to strengthen your own power? Othering will be a regular theme across all planets. Dividing people into Them and Us based on all manner of different metrics will be used to justify the murder of entire people’s based on nothing more than domineering cruelty. Again, the player can resist this as a Jedi, allow it to happen since it makes their life easier with the Sith divided and destroyng one another, or encourage it and approve of it as a Sith in their own right.
Themes of the Game: Ending Slavery and the Consequences of your actions
Chris Avellone spoke of how his idea for KOTOR III involved lots of enslaved soldiers being forced to fight you and that got me thinking that the idea of a mass slave revolt would be a strong narrative core for the game. Throughout the game you will encounter slaves being abused and treated terribly without any hope. The game will explore slavery across the world and across the centuries. Not just the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, but also the East African slave trade and the enslavement/castration that was common in China, Southeast Asia, Circassia, and the Balkans. The basic idea is that on at least one planet the Sith justify their enslavement of the masses by promising to protect them from the deadly “Jedi” threat... a threat no one has seen before. A mysterious other as it were. At the climax of the last tutorial planet a small army of Sith and their slave soldiers come for you outside the city and T3 gives you your lightsaber at which point the slave soldiers turn and flee and many Sith use the chaos to kill their rivals. What goes from a hopeless situation turns into a massacre before your eyes. Here you will also pick up a Sith Companion who sees a chance to eliminate his rivals by allying with you. Since I don’t hate SWTOR, let’s call him Lord Scourge.
With an actual “Jedi” on hand and the Sith’s promise of protection proving hollow a mass slave uprising begins and the player is given a few long-term options on how to handle this. It's to explore the idea of what is preferable; death or servitude. A slave soldier will join your crew and the Exile can use the Slave uprising and others like it on other planets to make their life easier and weaken the Sith Empire. They can do it because it’s the right thing to do or because they can be used as a tool. But there won’t be any entirely happy ending. If the slave rising isn’t supported enough the Sith Empire will just obliterate the entire planet Taris style (or Floor Two for those of you like me who like Andor). The slave uprising fails and you have to weigh the death of all those slaves.
To help in the slave uprising will be everyone’s favourite Space Spartans: The Mandalorians (RIP John Cygan). Kelborn, a Mandalorian Scout from KOTOR II will join your party after you put out a call for help to your’s and Revan’s old buddy Mandalore. The Mandalorians are confederation of peoples brought together by ideology, not a race. And they are looking for two things:

1. To rebuild after their wars with the Republic ,
2. Find a war worth fighting!

In this slave uprising the Mandalorians can have both. Kelborn from KOTOR II joins your part as a companion who also organises the arming and training of the slaves into Mandalorian soldiers. Slave soliders take the lead and war factories on planets are commandeered to produce armour and Basilisk War droids. But again, the question of why and consequences are faced by the player. Is this to help the slaves and Mandalorians or are you placing both groups at risk of genocide by the hands of the Sith Empire? What is your culpability in this? Are you just using them as a tool? And what about this Sith Empire. Does its inhabitants deserve this Civil war you are engineering in order to protect the Republic (or to take over if you are playing DS)? Again, these questions are much more impactful for a Lightside playthrough. Taking your place at the top of an evil empire is much easier than discussing the morals of trying to end one.
Act 3: Finding Revan
Before you complete the fourth planet you will finally learn what happened to Revan, but also that events have changed because of your actions and that you need to hurry up and rescue the great hero. And this is important: If you don’t go quickly enough Revan could die before you get there and you just get a corpse to bury. The finding Ciri moment in Witcher 3 is excellent and very well done from a cinematography perspective. But it’s often the case that video games let people wait until they are ready to save the princess without anything bad happening. Witcher 3 is guilty of this. Well let’s throw that trope on its head and have a bunch of people really pissed that we let Revan die without even saying a word to the player.
But for those who do put the peddle down fast enough you get your final companion of the game and you have a reunion whose emotional weight depends very much on the alignment of both characters. LS/LS players will get a very tender and emotional moment, whilst LS/DS and DS/LS will get a more somber moment of meeting a fallen angel. DS, DS players will get a reunion of gratitude laced with suspicion that this person before them might be as much a threat to them as a help.
After the escape though there is time to sit down and just collect thoughts and recount events where the player is in control of the dialogue of both characters, defining both the Exile and Revan and why you both turned out the way you did. With this in place the fourth planet can now be done with the goal of eliminating the Sith Emperor. Revan’s belief from his journey’s and memories is that the Sith Emperor corrupted him and Malak and turned them into weapons to be used against the Jedi and Republic. This was the line used by the Jedi Council in KOTOR and it absolves Revan of most of the blame for the Jedi Civil War. The Exile can share Kreia’s and HK’s belief that it was Revan who incited the Jedi Civil War because the Republic and Jedi Council would not be able to handle an invasion from such an evil as the one Revan encountered here. Remember the Jedi and Republic who fought in the Mandalorian Wars ended up being loyal to Revan over their oaths and codes; this was before the Sith Empire was uncovered.
Act four: The Battle at the end of All Things
The time comes to face the Immortal Sith Emperor, the Successor of Naga Sadow. A long and brutal fight sees you, Revan, and Lord Scourge enter the Throne room to confront him and bring an end to the civil war. And here’s where the twist comes: He’s immortal, but not powerful. He’s paranoid, but he’s been in power so long that no one has ever contemplated replacing him on the throne. The warlords of various planets make war with each other, not against him. He has become bored of life, but fears death and so exists. His Sith Empire was never a threat to the Republic; Revan never met him; he never corrupted Revan. Revan was entirely to blame for the Jedi Civil War.
Once the Sith Emperor is cast into oblivion the truth begins to set in. The Council was wrong and Revan stands unable to accept the truth, to accept the blame. And here is where alignments come in to determine the ending on the game. At this point lightsabers are drawn. If Revan is Lightside then the guilt turns to paranoia and the Exile must talk them down. Friends become enemies as Revan tries to deny the truth and threatens the Exile. Scourge’s fate is determined by his alignment based on how much you have influenced him. If he has been redeemed and renounced the Darkside then he can leave with the others. If he is still Darkside he can either serve as your apprentice or try to take the vacant thrown for himself.
The Endings
With this exploration of evil the best ending is hard to get and it requires that both the Exile and Revan be Lightside at the end of the game. There are thirteen different endings, but only two have a happy ending for our two main protagonists:
1 LS Revan, LS Exile, LS Scourge:

• Exile talks down Revan and the three depart the Sith Empire with the Republic safe from the threat of the Sith Empire and the surviving inhabitant of the Empire have some hope. Revan returns to Telos or Dantooine and tends to the golden fields of their new home.
• Exile fails to talk down Revan and is forced to kill them, leaving the Sith Empire with Scourge in a victory that does not feel like one. The surviving inhabitant of the Sith Empire have some hope.

2 LS Revan, DS Exile, DS Scourge: Revan and the Exile try to kill each other to stop the other. The Exile wants the Sith thrown and Revan wants to escape blame by being the hero.

• Revan wins, but is cut down by Scourge in the aftermath. Scourge becomes Sith Emperor and prepares to prosecute the war against the Republic as a way to unify the divided Sith. Our heroes have created the evil they feared.
• Revan loses, the Exile takes the Sith Throne with Scourge as their apprentice.

3 DS Revan, LS Exile, DS Scourge: Revan and the Exile try to kill each other to stop the other. Revan wants the Sith thrown and the Exile wants to save the Republic.

• Exile wins, but is cut down by Scourge in the aftermath. Scourge becomes Sith Emperor and prepares to prosecute the war against the Republic as a way to unify the divided Sith. Our heroes have created the evil they feared.
• Exile loses, Revan takes the Sith Throne with Scourge as their apprentice.

4 DS Revan, LS Exile, LS Scourge: Revan and the Exile try to kill each other to stop the other. Revan wants the Sith thrown and the Exile wants to save the Republic.

• The Exile and Scourge win, leaving the Sith Empire in a victory that does not feel like one. The surviving inhabitant of the Empire have some hope.
• Exile and Scourge lose, Revan takes the Sith Throne and accepts the past and uses the knowledge to become stronger. Revan moves to end the Civil wars and slave uprisings in preparation for the final war on the Republic.

5 LS Revan, LS Exile, DS Scourge:

• Exile talks down Revan and the two defeat Scourge together. They depart the Sith Empire with the Republic safe from threat of the Sith Empire the surviving inhabitant of the Empire have some hope. Revan returns to Telos or Dantooine and tends to the golden fields of their new home.
• Exile fails to talk down Revan and is forced to kill Revan. The Exile is cut down by Scourge in the aftermath. Scourge becomes Sith Emperor and prepares to prosecute the war against the Republic as a way to unify the divided Sith.

6 Dead Revan, LS Exile, LS Scourge:

• The Exile and Scourge leave the Sith Empire in a victory that does not feel like one. The surviving inhabitant of the Empire have some hope.

7 Dead Revan, LS Exile, DS Scourge:

• The Exile defeats Scourge, prevnting him taking the Sith Throne. The Exile leaves the Sith Empire in a victory that does not feel like one. The surviving inhabitant of the Empire have some hope.

8 Dead Revan, DS Exile, DS Scourge:

• The Exile takes the Sith Throne with Scourge as their apprentice.

Right, that’s my pitch for KOTOR III. That took longer than planned. Hope you enjoyed it. What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? What would you change and why?

If you consider the Witcher to be significant to yourself in some way, if you would set it apart from other series as a “favorite” or “of all time” — if you would choose Witcher over another series, why? What makes it stand out for you? What makes it feel special and different from the rest? Did it hit on a personal note? Did you find a certain aspect of them unique and interesting? Did it “move you,” and how? Does it do something that you had not seen done before? Did someone important to you introduce it to you, did you read it when you were younger and now it reminds you of that time in your life?
I’ll start — the books, for me, hit deeply on some emotional notes that I really hadn’t expected when I first picked the series up during the middle of playing Witcher 3.
The characters are complex, while also not being so unbearably complex that you can’t comprehend them. The way that familial identities and motivations drive the series forward, such as Geralt’s fatherhood and determination to save Ciri, was incredibly moving to read.
There’s really heart-stabbing moments like the end of Sword of Destiny or Something More, which leave me in tears. Similarly, Ciri’s painful coming-of-age story was also realistic to me and I appreciated how the writing did not at all shy away from the darker times of her youth, especially her inner feelings such as the desperation she feels about being alone, the rage about being wronged, and the numbness when she is abused…
There is a good blend of seriousness and comedy, and sometimes serious topics are handled through comedy as well. For instance, Regis recounting some of his life story towards the end of Baptism of Fire granted me a lot of comfort when I first read it, and I still come back to it often enough. (And book Regis’ character alone deserves ten thousand posts to itself, IMO).
I also think Sapkowski’s prose is really good (or suited to my liking, at least) and makes for an enjoyable reading experience. It’s very “quick” and doesn’t spend a ton of time on unnecessary details, while also granting space for vivid settings and dialogue.
Some things I came to realize and appreciate later were the strong integration of themes across stories, novels, and the whole series, as well as the inversions of fairy tale and fantasy tropes to create clever outcomes. The intertextuality of Witcher is definitely something which makes it special, as it’s more than just a self-contained story, there’s intentional references to other stories or ideas within the “fantasy canon.”
Witcher 3 also is special to me as (perhaps it doesn’t need to be stated, but) it’s really a masterpiece of a game and it’s easy to see how it won GOTY in 2015. The world is so vivid and alive. The characters felt “real,” like they really had a stake in your decisions and outcomes. And, of course, it’s also just plain gorgeous to look at and to play.

On Marquesas, 2009:

We take the blame, but this was just a snoozer.

Promoting Redemption Island after the Nicaragua finale, 2010:

I do believe this is our biggest twist yet.
I do believe it will change the game in a huge way.
I do believe you are going to love it.
Give it a chance. Have some faith that we know what you guys want and expect from your favorite show.
If after 6 episodes the majority of you do not love what is happening with Redemption Island, you can let me know and I will vote myself off the show.
How’s that for stakes?

Promoting Redemption Island, a week before the premiere, 2011:

I wasn’t a big fan of Survivor: Nicaragua. It just didn’t work for me. But I am a HUGE fan of Redemption Island. If I’m wrong, then I’ll eat crow at the live show and admit it to all of you but I’m willing to bet that you’re going to absolutely devour this season. Yep. I think it’s that good.
[...]
you’re going to rank this as one of our “Top 5” seasons of all time

On Redemption Island, after episode 1, 2011:

I will go on the record that I think we’ll be doing it again next year. We haven’t even officially been picked up for next year nor talked about creative for next year but I just can’t see going back to the old format. Afer the first tribal council I thought, “I can’t imagine voting someone out and then having them be “gone” from the show. We’d miss out on so much. The “losers bracket” which is what RI is, just opens up so many options.
I realize it’s too early to decide if you like it but I’ll ask you again in episode 5 after you’ve had a bit of time to try it on for size.

After Redemption Island episode 8, 2011:

I’m surprised that some of you are not enjoying Redemption Island. I certainly get a lot of comments from people who are enjoying it but I do get some from people who think it’s a bore.

Promoting Caramoan after the Philippines finale, 2012:

It will be a season that most fans will regard even better than Survivor: Philippines. I really believe that. I know I’ve been wrong in the past, but if I’m wrong on this one, man, snuff my torch.

Promoting Worlds Apart, 2014:

Person for person and pound for pound, I will say that this is the best group of people I think we’ve ever had [...] I don’t often come up front anymore and say I really like a season because I know that that’s very biased and it’s my own opinion. But just my own Jeff Probst opinion—I have not seen a second of footage cut yet. Just based on my experience, this was one of my favorite seasons of all time.

Tyler Fredrickson recounting Jeff Probst's attitude while filming Worlds Apart, 2020:

All throughout our season, production was hinting that we were one of their favorite groups of newbies in history... that casting was ecstatic... the stories, players, gameplay were all there and they had a season! We all felt good, not only for ourselves but for the fans. It's one of the things that started to bond us early on as a cast, which still endures today.
So, much to our satisfaction (and surprise) when at final tribal Jeff said if there was one cast in the history of the show he'd like to return and play all over again — brand-new season, brand-new stories — it would be ours. He added that CBS would never go for it. But if he could, we would!
We were stoked (and I like to think Jeff winked directly at me). Then, to thank us, suddenly he just dropped to his knees and gave us all the "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" wave and bow to the jury and they couldn't believe it.

On Cirie's elimination in Game Changers, 2018:

I thought the Cirie Tribal Council was not only fantastic, but it fulfilled the promise of the Survivor: Game Changers poster. [...] I did not go home and go, ‘We blew it, guys.’ I went home and said, ‘The Survivor Gods were looking out for us, because that’s what you want.'

Promoting Ghost Island, 2017:

We have a stellar group. Everything really lined up. They are almost all super-fans and really know the show and its history, which adds a lot to a season like this. I think the audience will find a lot of very likable people to root for and probably a couple that you may actively root against. [...] It’s definitely a season of some fun personalities.

Josh Wigler summarizing Jeff's opinion of Edge of Extinction, 2020:

Probst loves EoE. He thinks you love it too. If you do? Congrats! It’s probably on US Survivor for the rest of Jeff’s reign. It was very nearly on IoI. He told me as much.

(I recall someone--perhaps Josh, perhaps Gordon Holmes, perhaps Dalton Ross--who was on set for the first TC in S39 where they specifically recounted Jeff saying that he thought the audience would have loved to see Ronnie on EoE, but I can't find this.)
On bringing back Edge of Extinction for Winners at War, 2020:

Selfishly, I like Edge of Extinction. [...] The number one reason [for bringing it back] is that I did feel that when we called winners, that if they thought it was one and out — ‘I’m voted out and I’m done’ — their chances of saying yes were not as high as if it would be if I said ‘No matter what, you will have another shot at the prize.’

From the same article (as written by Dalton Ross):

several players told me unprompted before the game that they were not fans of Edge of Extinction and hoped it was not back

From the same article (Jeff Probst again):

I’m pretty sure the audience will love that we’re doing it because now everybody is still in — still got a shot.

At the Survivor 40 red carpet premiere, 2020:

When people get so invested that they don’t like it, that tells me, okay, we’re in this together, you don’t like it, I get it. I liked it, but I hear you, we’re not going to do Edge for a while. I’ve heard people. I got it.

Hi,
EDIT: as demonstrated by xletalis, the exploit still exists in next-gen, but now you need to do it in the previous flashback. The one with the fight against Whoreson Junior.
Title says it all. I'm considering trying out the infamous Brothel Ciri glitch. This requires "breaking" the game at the time of the Novigrad chase flashback, recounted by Dandelion right after you rescue him. After that, you'll be stuck with a monstrously bugged amalgamation of Geralt and Ciri. For the rest of the game.
I've no idea whether this still works in next-gen, and if it does... it may actually change the order in which I do my quests, for maximum cringe and hilarity.
But, before I get there, I'd prefer to check if the glitch is still working. So... anyone having a save from the last quest in the main Novigrad storyline, the one where you rescue Dandelion in that cabin? Witcher 3 saves are only a couple megabytes large, they should fit in any file hosting service.
Thanks in advance.

Hey,
I'd like to share a theory that I'm not going to try proving because I just can't, but nonetheless helped me make at least some sense of TW1 continuity-wise.
In a nutshell, most of the game's events did actually take place, but they way they're recounted through the game is, in fact, a "fever dream", or a collection of dreams, that Geralt had at some point shortly before TW2 (in the very beginning of the second game, he actually awakes from a weird dream). Another side-effect of his time in the Wild Hunt, another psychological damage, similar and related to the amnesia. In that dream, some of his memories are trying to resurface, and end up mixed with some things that actually occurred at the same time.
For instance, why is Triss acting so out-of-character? Why is she basically speaking in quotes from Yennefer? It's because she did find Geralt at Kaer Morhen, nursed him back to health, slept with him... but Yen wasn't gone from his brain entirely, and in his dream he was still thinking of her, and while his brain was processing recent events (Triss), they were mixed up with Geralt's buried memories of Yen, resulting in that weird amalgamation (recall that in the books, he called Fringilla "Yennefer" in moments of oblivion). The Triss who became Geralt's lover was, personality-wise, the one from TW2, and thus more akin to herself in the books.
Likewise, at some point Geralt encountered an orphan named Alvin. Due, perhaps, to the boy's latent powers, Geralt's brain was shocked and he had flashbacks of Ciri. In his fever dream, he thought of that boy while trying to reminisce Ciri, and projected his feelings for Ciri onto that boy. He never actually adopted and raised Alvin though, and that's why Alvin is never mentioned in the next games, neither by Triss nor by Shani (while he should be extremely important otherwise).
Next, did Dandelion actually fail to mention Yennefer and Ciri? Maybe he did mention them but Geralt's still-damaged brain had a parsing failure due to the strength of the emotions rushing back, and in his "fever dream" they were half-gone and reminisced through other people. Dandelion saw him fainting and didn't press the topic. Vesemir and the other witchers, likewise. Maybe Triss even wasn't entirely self-interested when hiding things. In TW2 however, Geralt's mind had recovered enough already to handle the information.
And I could on with examples - such as Azar Javed talking like Vilgefortz; Geralt did fight the head of a criminal organization called Salamandra, but that man most certainly didn't mention stars reflected in a pond - but it is late.
I'm not pretending this is the "truth", the hidden canon, nor that I actually believe in it without reservation, but I found that theory rather useful just to help me suspend me disbelief regarding all the stuff which makes no sense in the first game.
Ultimately, I just don't see a better way to rationalize what initially derived from CDPR's decision to write the Witcher 1 as a mixture of an new, original plot and components borrowed straight from the books albeit with a different cast of characters.
And of course, like anyone else, I'm extremely curious as to how the remake will handle all those massive inconsistencies. Maybe the company in charge of it will find a very cool way to finally incorporate the original game into the continuity. I've rather high hopes, considering what we know of the scope and ambition of the remake so far.
Let me know your thoughts :-)

"Another settlement needs your help, babe."
Fallout 4 is a perfectly serviceable game, a 7/10. You shoot enemies, find loot, and use said loot to craft shit in the Boston Commonwealth circa 2287. It's just that given the pedigree of prior Fallout titles, the sheer quality of other competing games in 2015, and the untapped potential of this game's own premise, Fallout 4 can't help but fall short by every metric.
My issue with Fallout 4 is that it adds big twists to the formula, but doesn't make enough changes to accommodate them. It introduces settlement-building as a major-mechanic, but it barely interacts with the main-story or other side-quests. It cribs the dialogue-wheel and voiced-protagonist from Mass Effect, only to severely hamper the quest-design and never justify its inclusion. It has a vastly expanded crafting-system, but it uses the same shoddy interface from a console-generation prior. In short, the game suffers from taking too many half-measures. Had it fully committed to the course it wishes to take I might have enjoyed it more.
Content Breakdown

• 11 Main Quests
• 40 Faction Quests
• 59 Side-quests
• Unlimited Radiant Quests
• 20 Bobbleheads
• 122 Magazines

Base game played on PC with PS4 gamepad.
The Protagonist
You play as either Nate or Nora Fallout, a happily-married couple who are parents to the animatronic baby from American Sniper. One day War happens, and your family is first in line to the underground vault next door. You are cryogenically frozen for a few centuries and awaken to witness your spouse being murdered and your Reborn Doll being abducted.
Furious and heartbroken, your grieving parent ventures out into the post-apocalyptic wastes where you forget the whole matter after five minutes and go hunting for scraps to build an outhouse. I strongly believe that the prologue to Fallout 4 exists only to impress video-game journalists. The fact that the male character is a veteran and the female character is a lawyer has zero bearing on the plot or gameplay. Contrast that to Commander Shepard's childhood and military background which continue to get brought up long after their character-creation.
Fallout 4 is a complete failure narratively in trying to graft a linear emotional through-line onto a traditional Bethesda sandbox. The two are just incompatible. The Last of Us worked because it was devoted to telling a linear narrative with defined characters who undergo pre-written arcs. The Witcher III succeeded because Geralt is a pre-existing character whose love for Ciri is without question, but you are allowed latitude in how he acts and how he interprets his actions.
Ever hear of Calvin & Hobbes? Calvin's parents are never named despite them being main characters, as they are only meant to be seen from Calvin's perspective. For a brief period Calvin's uncle Max was a recurring character. The author soon scrapped him as he was redundant, in that he didn't bring out any new reaction in Calvin that an existing character couldn't already do. Another reason was that he couldn't ever call his brother and sister-in-law by their first names. The protagonist of Fallout 4 is in that same awkward role. They are not fleshed out enough to be in any way convincing or engaging as a determined parent, but they are too well-defined to let the player role-play as any other person.
On a side-note I don't know why Bethesda crammed in the family-angle into Fallout a second time, when in the Elder Scrolls games you are free to start from a blank-slate with no prior baggage.
The Praise
There is a lot to shit on about Fallout 4, but I do enjoy the combat and movement. You can sprint now and they removed the piss-filter than plagued 3 and New Vegas. Who'd of thought there'd be colour again after the apocalypse? Despite appearances, the Power Armour is not a game-breaker as it requires constant upkeep, and it looks and feels like a bipedal tank. The kinesthetics bring a fire to the jollies.
The Critical Hit mechanic is especially welcome. You can "stock" high-damage attacks that have 100% accuracy while aiming in VATS, lending a greater flow to gunplay. All and all it is a competent shooter. This aspect of the game comes needlessly at the expense of other areas, but yes, it is fun to shoot the limbs off a ghoul and see them flail around like a drunken uncle outside an Irish pub at 1am who you insist you're not related to.
Surface Level Iconography
Here's a question. What were all the major elements of New Vegas? When you hear the name, what faces come to mind?

• The gas-mask and trench-coat wearing rangers of the NCR?
• The enigmatic Mr. House, who is Walt Disney only less evil?
• The Legion, a gang of Roman Empire cosplayers who got a little too into character?
• The burned man who was baptized twice: once by water, once by fire?

What's notable about the above list? They all debuted in New Vegas, while pre-existing franchise elements were left to the bylines. The Brotherhood was a sad relic, the Enclave were an ugly memory, the Super Mutants were an ostracized but civilized bunch, and your character doesn't even come from a vault. New Vegas was a Fallout game that advanced the setting and did something new, instead of just recycling the same old staples in the name of branding.
Despite the addition of three major factions, Fallout 4 just feels so stagnant. You play a vault-dweller, Super Mutants are orcs, raiders are everywhere, and nobody has done any cleaning up in the past 200 years. It's Fallout 3 with a lick of paint. There's no politics to think about.
Do you know why the last few Star Wars movies were such forgettable duds? There's a multitude of valid reasons, but my take is they cared more about bringing back the same old iconography, instead of looking at the intent behind those icons, and adding new ideas to the mix. They treated the text of the original movies like scripture when all they needed was a general plan and some fun ideas to make some new memories.
Look at You, Hacker
Oh, Sweet Jesus, does this thing suck. The word-search minigame appears for a third time in the series, and they somehow managed to fuck it up, while the lockpicking minigame is unchanged. You are given three chances to pick out the right password from a line-up. If you pick the wrong one you'll get a message that it shares X letters with the correct answer. The issue is that now every choice is vastly different from one another with little overlap. All you can do is choose blindly 90% of the time from a list of words like CANCER, PSYCHO, QUEASY, and EGGNOG.
Pressed On Gravy
I find Garvey a bizarre character because he has a striking design as a post-apocalyptic colonial militia man, but in every other facet he is a Boredom Elemental. He recounts his bloody backstory with all the gravitas of a Novocain-addled accountant, and merely stepping into his eye-line makes him spout a randomly-generated fetch-quest to clog your checklist. He's so bland that he's actively offensive, and the act of HIM giving YOU orders breaks the RPG commandment of party-members bossing the player around.
Mein Kraft
A long time ago there was a game called Dark Cloud 2. It was a dungeon-crawler with crafting, fishing, golfing, and settlement building. Every chapter you would progress to an empty site and build a town there. You'd collect the plans for buildings and create them with materials you bought or found. Then you would time-travel a century into the future and see how the place had flourished since then. This was necessary to progress the plot, find items that would increase your stats, and unlock merchants with new wares.
In Fallout 4 the settlement-building does not have an overhead-camera, it only barely interacts with the plot, and it is cumbersome in a hundred different ways. You are encouraged to pick up junk in your limited inventory and cart it over to a settlement every time You will have no idea how to tie every settlements inventory together unless you google it. It is an honest struggle to care about the mechanic because the ultimate purpose of bringing order to the wasteland is all so you can earn the parts to put a scope on your laser-gun.
By comparison, in The Witcher III you have carry-weight, which is the sum weight of all your weapons and armour. Crafting-materials, however, have no weight and you are free carry them around in excess. In every map there is a magic stash that you can unload all your excess equipment for free.
All aboard the Cole Train
So the Railroad is a faction of bleeding-heart anarchists who want to free the Synths who are born slaves under the Institute. All well and good, but I find it odd that they are a major faction when their goal seems so incidental and irrelevant. They are rebelling against the government in a world without a government. Only one of them is a Synth, which is a bit like a company having a women's group staffed entirely by dudes. Where the fuck did they come from? Why are they so laser-focused on liberating Synths when the rest of Boston is a complete mess? This isn't "whataboutism", this is someone trying to vainly mop the floor on the slowly sinking Titanic.
Finally, it's pretty iffy to name your silly faction devoted to saving robots after the historical Underground Railroad dedicated to freeing slaves in the Antebellum era of the US. Were their name less on the nose I'd give them a pass. Instead, they remind me of that Holocaust photo with one of the My Little Ponies edited in, and a comment below saying they attained a greater appreciation of history after seeing Rainbow Dash at gunpoint.
Look at me when I'm talking to you!
In most RPGs when you talk to someone it is in a curated space. In Mass Effect the NPC you'd speak to would stand in a designated spot, and the conversation that follows would have some basic blocking like in any TV show.
Conversations in Fallout 4 are an utter disaster because they can occur anywhere and in real-time. Characters talk over each other obliviously and key conversations can get drowned out by gunfire. This is further injured by the game's buggy pathfinding. There's supposed to be a scene in the Brotherhood quest-line where your ally submits himself to execution by his commander. You can let it happen, or you can intervene and argue for your ally's life. In my case the commander decided to walk a hundred feet in the opposite direction while he was speaking. I had to physically stand in front of him to block his path and rush through the dialogue options to save my friend. The entire game is this awkward when people talk, never mind the script.
Progression
Fallout 4 mixes the primary statistics, skills, and perks from previous games all into one ungodly stew. There are no builds now, just the one general role every player will inevitably turn to, like the Stealth Archer in Skyrim. Perk-trees are level-gated forcing you to generalize: you can't be excellent at sneaking until level 38 or convince a companion to carry more items until level 43. This also leads to a large number of boring but necessary perks that should have been skills: Iron Fist for Unarmed, Big Leagues for Melee, Medic for Medicine, etc. Fallout 4 stands as a good example as to why your character-sheet shouldn't be seventy-seven blinking icons that can't even fit on the screen.
Half-Fallout Full-Consequences
The name "Fallout" refers not just to the post-apocalyptic setting, but also to the nature of consequences. If you kill or antagonize a character then any possible future with them is gone. Even the smallest of deeds can reverberate back and hit you in the back of the head like a boomerang.
In New Vegas there is a quest to kill some oversized, fire-breathing ants outside an outpost. You kill the ants and get paid by the ranger there. Some time later you can return to the outpost and convince a woman there to sell out her contract, as her caravan company was wiped out while on a trip. You can clear the bureaucratic matter up with the same ranger, who will let things slide because of your standing with his faction. Killing those ants gave you a good rapport.
The woman can join you as a companion and together you can investigate what happened to her caravan company. You discover that the larger company that bought out her contract was responsible for destroying the caravan. You can wage bloody revenge against them, or you can gather evidence and bring it to the same ranger as before. In the ending-slides the guilty company may be blackmailed by the ranger's faction or even wiped out in a karmic manner.
And it all started with a bunch of oversized, fire-breathing ants.
Nothing matters in Fallout 4. Little to no quests depend on one another, and most of them are stripped down to the bare-bones. "Vault 81" has you open a door, "Story of the Century" has you give an interview, and "Painting the Town" has you paint a wall. Any quest that doesn't have a dungeon attached is a dead-simple affair with little branching.
There's no ending-slide where your character retires to a farm with Curie and adopts a bunch of Roombas. There are just four faction-themed outcomes where the only thing that's different is which building explodes. I genuinely hate the narration at the end because it fails to tie anything together and shoehorns in the saying "War never changes" to give the impression that this story had a theme to explore or ideology to examine.
Boston is your Oyster
My gripe with the world of Fallout 4 is that it feels... tiny. There are just two towns, Diamond City and Goodneighbor. The four factions get a hub, and there's one vault with civilization. Every other zone is either a dungeon or a player-made settlement. There are a disproportionate number of raiders and Super Mutants around and no obvious safe routes around them.
New Vegas may have struggled to render more than ten character-models onscreen but by god at least that felt like a place. I do wish we had seen a post-apocalyptic Boston city with actual people in it. If anything it feels underused because we never get to explore without a raider or mutant spoiling the view.
Observations
There are surprisingly few common weapons to be found, less than fifty in the base game.
There's even less armour to chose from and most of it is ugly as sin. The Synth armour set looks like the toilet seat the T-800 would take a shit on.
The Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution quest feels like it came from a better Fallout game, i.e. New Vegas. It has a wild premise, a wacky cast of robots, actual skill-checks, and a brilliant punchline. Why the fuck is this in the same game where opening a door and painting a wall are counted as quests?
There's a game called Unheard which has a cool premise but a meager execution. You listen to conversations that place in a building and try to piece together the mystery. One chapter has you investigate an explosion in a police-station, and you have to figure out who the bomber was in the moments before the blast. The problem with that is that the puzzles are too easy and that all the characters are voiced like they're 1930's movie gangsters, making them impossible to take seriously. In a roundabout way it brings me to my next point. In New Vegas there's a street gang called "The Kings" who style themselves after a certain 20th century "King" who died on his throne. They seem like a joke with their pompadours and leather outfits, but they're actually pretty nice and have a surprisingly interesting and ironic backstory. In Fallout 4 you fight a 1930's-themed mafia in pinstripes and tommy-guns who come from nowhere, have no interesting backstory, and are played as a joke despite them not being funny. Merely taking clichés from old gangster movies and placing them in a post-apocalyptic setting doesn't make them original, you have to show some flair.
I have the same resentment for Bethesda's tendency to reference HP Lovecraft, where their homages are so half-assed you'd think they'd never read any of his books.
It is blatantly obvious that the combat arena and robot racing-track were meant to be fully fledged minigame zones instead of being home to yet more gunfights.
The faction-split is a much sloppier take on New Vegas's idea. In some cases you will be told of a point-of-no-return if you undertake a mission that enrages a rival faction, but in one instance you can make a faction hostile simply by having a conversation with someone without any warning. One NPC is tied to two different factions and the terrible dialogue-system will force you to betray a faction when all you want to do is turn in a different quest. Console-commands are necessary to navigate this ill-thought mess.
Pushing the Fold
2015 was a dynamite year in gaming. Dying Light, Bloodborne, Witcher III, Rocket League, Arkham Knight, Metal Gear Solid V, Undertale. With this in mind Fallout 4 was very much an artifact by comparison. It didn't have the best graphics, or story, or engine, or gameplay-variety. It has a fantastic starting-ground for modders, but for most players it will be an average at best sandbox shooter with few surprises.
Under Bethesda Softworks I don't think Fallout will ever earn any relevance beyond their pre-existing brand. Whatever its merits, the name was all but sullied by the disastrous reception to Fallout 76. The original Fallout series ended with a thematically-rich battle over Hoover Dam. The current Fallout just trades on its name with barren spectacle and adds little new to the discourse.

I’ve been loving the Witcher series lately. The Witcher 3 led me to purchasing the book series and watching the show. While reading the books, I have absolutely loved them and they have quickly become my favorite series of all time. Baptism of Fire is my favorite book of them all so far, I generally really like traveling stories and Milvia is one of my favorite characters in the Witcher series as a whole.
After I finished that I was so excited to start the next book, Tower of the Swallows. However I have not been able to get into it! I’m not a huge fan of Ciri recounting the events of the past, I don’t like how much they are divulging away from Geralt. And I found the chapter in the royal court to be dreadful. Actually made me take a break from reading for a couple weeks. Now that I just finished Chapter 5 though, things are really starting to spice up! I loved the interaction between Geralt and Cahir, the much needed friendly bout to get things set straight to them. I finally feel like I’m getting back to the point of not being able to put it down thankfully! But I still feel like so far this is the weakest book of the series.
I’m curious though, how did you guys feel about the first half of Tower of the Swallows? Wondering if anyone else felt the same drag that I felt in the beginning of the book.

I just realised this now when starting episode 5, though it's been stated previously. Geralt recounts that one of these mystical monoliths that supposedly exist throughout the continent has fallen. I'm not entirely sure where this one was located, because all Geralt says is "outside of the city" and the show refuses to supply a hint in many of its scenes as to where they are taking place. Nevertheless I assume the monolith is either located near Nilfgaard's capital or that of Cintra.
Having established this, and possessing at least some basic knowledge of the geographical intricacies of the Continent, I simply can't see how a monolith collapsing and releasing all manner of previously unknown monsters either down in Nilfgaard or in Cintra would have the consequence of Ciri being pursued by one such creature way up north in Kaer Morhen, and that before them being sighted at any point previously. Surely these monsters would have made their presence known locally within days at best? It makes no sense for their first emergence to be at Kaer Morhen and just makes it even more difficult to believe this plotline that the writer's have forcefully inserted into their inconsistent piece of Witcher fanfiction.
As a massive fan of the Witcher and it's world both in the books and the games, it pains me to see it torn up this way and then replaced by something as pitiful as this plotline. I personally hope next season will be a substantial improvement to this farce.

This might be one of the most overstated aspects of the Witcher ever, but every time I hear the song, I just can’t help but remember the first time I heard it in the game.
I’ve played a lot of video games, and TW3 was up there with the best of them already. But then everything amazing - all the action, all the plot, all of the exploration - just stops, and everyone sits down in the pub to listen to a song.
You’re expecting it to just be another video game cut-scene. Instead, you are treated to a heart-wrenching story recounting the main character’s incredibly emotional tale of two beings magnetically attracted by transcendent intervention.
You watch as the characters slowly settle into deep contemplation, raptured attention, throes of passion, or tears of sorrow (the King of Beggars listening outside in the rain - amazing touch).
Everything I did in the game after that scene was transformed into something that took on a much deeper purpose and meaning. Each encounter had significance. The journey to find Ciri was that much more urgent. And I was team Yennefer from that point on - don’t think I could ever switch.
Truly the best scene I’ve ever witnessed in a video game, and it’s not even close.

since this is one of the decisions that affects the ending, how did I manage to not make a decision? in the end, Ciri recounts trashing the laboratory and I was clueless as to wtf she was remembering. I accepted coin from Emhyr, did the snowball fight, accompanied ciri to talk to the sorceresses, and took her to skjall's grave. Still got a good ending. anyone know this to happen?

Taking a short break from winners, since I already had all the research done from my Jeremy in Cambodia post, it made sense to talk about Wentworth (I’ve been kicking myself the last year for not writing up Cirie in Micronesia while it was all fresh in my head).
Her 4th place in Cambodia is one of the best losing games in Survivor; among Fallen Angels, only Cirie and Rob C. are better in my opinion. Several people in the comment section of my Jeremy post asked me why I rate it that high, so I figured it must deserve its own post.
I think how you view Wentworth in Cambodia has a lot to do with how you view Survivor – objectively or subjectively. Let me unpack that…
An objective view of Survivor is similar to results-based thinking. How you view most choices comes down to the simple binary of “did it or did it not work?” The most dramatic example of this would be arguing Bob Crowley played a better game in Gabon than Rob C. played in The Amazon, because Bob won and Rob didn’t.
A subjective view of Survivor would be evaluating moves on their face, not factoring in if they worked or if they didn’t. Success or failure means much less in this mode of analysis; only the perceived value of the attempt. The most dramatic example of this would be arguing J.T.’s choice to give Russell the idol was a good one, even though it ended as bad as it possibly ever could have.
I don’t think any viewer falls strictly into one camp or the other; most of us fall somewhere between the two poles. And for good reason; the examples I provide to stretch the limits of both perspectives’ thinking are very dumb. (And let’s be honest, if it comes to one of our favorites, we’ll gladly switch our standards). I tend to lean more toward subjective viewing; objective analysis seems reductive to me, missing the shades of grey that go into how seasons play out.
Objective viewers will probably find Kelley’s game seemingly lacking. She never had full control over the game, voted wrong a few times, and didn’t get the million. But viewing the votes that didn’t go her way as pure failures misses the full story.
Below, I’ll be making the case for a subjective viewing of her game. Almost everything was working against her from the moment Ta Keo lost the first challenge, she never had good opportunities to build bonds, her original allies were voted out on their respective swap tribes, her new allies made mistakes that cost them their connection to Bayon, and she was up against one hell of a player in Jeremy.
Ta KO’d
I can’t emphasize enough that starting on Ta Keo hugely hamstrung Wentworth’s game.
Losing the first two challenges, Ta Keo went into the first swap already down in numbers; of the 3 tribes, only Angkor had a Ta Keo majority. And in an unlucky twist of fate, the Ta Keo majority was made up of Varner, Peih Gee, Woo, and Abi; the four Ta Keos least likely to work together.
On Day 1, somehow Abi’s bracelet ended up in Peih Gee’s bag; by all accounts, it sounds like this was genuinely an accident, but Abi Maria is Abi Maria and didn’t accept that explanation. Even though her and Peih Gee voted together against Vytas and Shirin, braceletgate was just waiting to blow-up again.
Compounding the Abi Maria tensions, Woo voted against her at the first vote instead of Vytas. Abi is not one to forgive or forget, so of course this would come back to haunt him.
The final nail in the Ta Keo majority coffin was Varner. Even though he ostensibly had alliances with the other three Ta Keos he swapped with, he was already viewed as duplicitous and untrustworthy; he was the one who spearheaded the backlash against Spencer and Shirin, flipping from the “new school” to the “old school” group and forcing Peih Gee’s hand in the process. He was playing way too hard out of the gate, and had a reputation for it from pre-gaming as well¹¹.
I lay all of this out to emphatically make the point that Wentworth had no control over how poorly things went on Angkor; she had good alliances with all 4 Ta Keo Angkors, but do to no fault of her own, 3 of them didn’t make it to the merge – which is 3 less potential alliances she had for the rest of the game.
While Kelley’s allies imploded on Angkor, Jeremy and Stephen were busy scooping up Spencer on nuBayon. Because Bayon had almost all of the game’s most loyal players to begin – only Terry and Woo being on Ta Keo – and never had to go to Tribal, they went into the swap united. Monica had no idea she was on the bottom^5,9, which meant that the foursome of Jeremy, Kimmi, Monica, and Stephen had all the power; especially because Wigglesworth had voted against Spencer the night before, and he knew he had just barely escaped Ta Keo alive. Jeremy wisely exploited this opening, playing the two Ta Keos against each other while cultivating a lasting alliance with Spencer over the next 9 days. (I’ll be elaborating on the Kelley/SpenceJeremy dynamic later, but it is crucial to how the game plays out that Kelley did not have the good fortune of swapping with Spencer.)
As a cherry on top of the Ta Keos getting voted out left and right, Terry was pulled from the game because of his son’s heart failure. That plus Woo’s blindside after the second swap meant that only 4 Ta Keos managed to make it to the merge, in comparison to 9 Bayons (only Monica was voted out in the pre-merge.)
And of the 4 Ta Keos to make the merge, only Kelley and Spencer were ever able to exercise any degree of control. The other two, Wigglesworth and Abi, were pawns in someone else’s game and powerless in their own blindsides.
Almost all of the power players or shot callers in Cambodia were original Bayon – Jeremy, Stephen, Tasha, Savage, Joe.
When the game shows that clear a pattern – original Bayons dominating over Ta Keos – it has to be more than a coincidence. And as I’ve laid out, two challenge losses and bad luck on the swap is what hamstrung Ta Keo. A similar dynamic to this played out in Ghost Island, where Malolos basically had no chance heading into the merge.
I think it speaks very highly of both Kelley and Spencer that they were able to claw their way up into potentially game-winning positions, considering they started 50m behind in a 100m dash.
Pre-merge Bonds
In spite of some bad luck being on Ta Keo, Wentworth did a really good job playing the cards she was dealt.
Before I get into her gameplay, it’s worth noting that Kelley entered Cambodia without a reputation; going home in the pre-merge of San Juan Del Sur meant she didn’t have to deal with anyone targeting her early, which gave her time to ingratiate herself. Cambodia was a unique season though; because it was all one-time players who’d never won, no one had a particularly large target. Joe, Jeremy, Fishbach, and Kass were probably the four with the biggest reputations going in; and only because of Kass’ past history with Tasha was she ever targeted early. Fishbach’s Know-it-All persona worked against him, but I can’t imagine a world where Savage or Joe would want to work with him anyway. While Kelley was definitely a lesser threat going in, there was not a very wide gulf between her and the biggest threats. Compared to All-Stars and HvV (and GC and WaW, though they hadn’t happened yet), she benefitted relatively little from this advantage.
Moving on to her actual game, Kelley got off to a running start on Ta Keo. Immediately on the beach, the tribe split into Old and New School, which is a bit of a misnomer since the alliances didn’t really follow those lines – Woo, Wiggles, Terry, and Vytas were firmly on one side with Shirin and Spencer on the other, and Kelley, Varner, Peih Gee, and Abi somewhere in the middle.
While Shirin and Spencer overplayed their hand after getting Vytas out, Kelley was able to stay comfortably in the background; she was always in conversations and helping to direct the strategy, but wasn’t viewed as too connected to Shirin and Spencer. Once Varner implemented his planned strategy of flipping back to the Old School alliance, he brought Kelley with him; through his strategizing in episode 2, Kelley can be seen in all of those talks.
Somehow, she managed to be a key member in the alliance that voted against Spencer while remaining his closest ally (because Shirin was voted out). Colin of the Dom & Colin podcast texted Spencer the night the swap episode aired, asking him to rank his new tribe; Fishbach was the highest with a 9. Colin asked if anyone on the cast would’ve been a 10, and Spencer replied “Wentworth”^13,14. For Kelley, who had just voted against him the night before, to rank above Fishbach, who Spencer had been planning on working with in pre-gaming¹¹, she must have been playing quite the social game.
During this time, Kelley was also finding an idol and cultivating an alliance with Abi, but I’ll dive more into that later.
The Swap
Kelley swaps onto a tribe with Terry, Ciera, Kass, Keith, and Joe; putting her in a 4-2 Ta Keo minority.
She immediately goes to work kicking Terry under the bus. He’s a particularly bad person to swap into the minority with, because he’s very loyal and really good in challenges, so there is almost no reason to vote him off instead of Kelley.
Smartly, Kelley undermines that perception of him; she tells the Bayons that he was scheming and hunting for idols on Ta Keo. Suddenly Terry isn’t Mr. Loyalty from Panama anymore, he’s a dangerous player who could go on an immunity run after the merge.
She also outmaneuvers him socially; while Terry is a generally agreeable guy, he’s not the best at the kind of social skills needed on Survivor. Apparently he made a few questionable comments – jokes about Abi’s English and that sort of thing¹⁴. By subtly drawing attention to those instances, Kelley was able to drive a wedge between Terry and the Bayons; opening the door for her to join their alliance. And she managed to do this without raising Terry’s suspicions; in Exit Press he said he had no idea Wentworth had sold him out¹⁵.
She created strong enough bonds with Keith, Ciera, Kass, and Joe that they all agreed to a Final 5 alliance. That was a pipe dream heading into the first season with a 13-person merge, and it never managed to fully materialize, but it is important to note that everyone truly did mean for that to be the Final 5 at the time; no one’s words were hollow, even if later events changed their minds. Ciera and Kass were loyal to Wentworth through their vote-offs, Joe pushed aggressively to save her after the second swap⁹, and Keith was bold enough to tell Jeremy at the merge that this 5-person alliance was going to run the game and that Jeremy could come along and pick one other person⁵.
Swap Two, Electric Boogaloo
Kelley didn’t have great luck swapping onto a minority the first time, but somehow it got worse the second time. Swapping onto a tribe with Jeremy, Stephen, Joe, Kimmi, Keith, and Tasha, she was the only original Ta Keo and an incredibly obvious outsider.
While she had Joe (and to a lesser extent Keith) there from nuTa Keo to lobby for her, that seems to have hurt more than helped. The second swap was 14 days into the game; as Fishbach and Wentworth both point out in Deep Dives^12,14, that’s already so deep in the game to try cultivating new bonds. Jeremy already had his ducks in a row – Meat Shields + Fishbach – and actively rejected Kelley’s attempt to align with him^9,10; part of Jeremy’s reason for this was disliking how obviously close Joe had grown to Kelley – he didn’t want to give his Meat Shield the opportunity to slip away, and ostracized Kelley as a result⁹. Even though Kelley worked to create relationships with Fishbach and Kimmi, they were too tight with Jeremy to consider flipping.
This is where I think a subjective analysis is warranted when examining Kelley’s game. As I said above, trying to make bonds with people after they’ve had 2 weeks playing with an entirely different group is always going to be an uphill battle; but Kelley was also in direct competition with Jeremy here. He’s easily one of the best players in Survivor history, and has a particular talent in the social game; across all three of his seasons, he’s cultivated a number of bonds that go beyond the realm of Survivor – he’s made real-life family friends in every Survivor season he’s played. And it was not Kelley’s choice to be playing against Jeremy; she actively tried to align with him¹⁰, but by his own admission he rudely rebuffed her⁹.
Through an objective lens, Kelley fails to get the numbers; but through a subjective lens, I think the fact that she comes so close to getting them (as I’ll lay out more in-depth below) is a true testament to how well she was playing.
The second swap also spelled bad news for Kelley on a tribe she wasn’t even on; at nu-nuTa Keo, Kass and Ciera aligned with Spencer to blindside Woo, which doubled to alienate Savage. This was going to be a loss for Kelley either way – losing Spencer would’ve meant losing one of her closest allies – but Kass and Ciera basically set their Bayon bonds on fire, which was Kelley’s only chance at making it into the “Bayon strong” atmosphere at the merge. It was deeply unfortunate for Kelley that her two closest Bayon allies end up on the outside of a Bayon-controlled merge, through no fault of her own. She wasn’t even on the tribe that decided to blindside Woo and Savage.
The Merge
While the merge vote comes down in a landslide 9-4 (technically 6-4-2-1, but 9-4 is an accurate breakdown of the alliances at play, not individual votes) decision against Kass, it was actually a close call that could’ve gone in Kelley’s favor if a few small decisions went the other way.
Heading into the merge, there was broadly speaking two competing alliances: Jeremy/Stephen/Kimmi/Tasha/Savage and Kelley/Ciera/Kass/Abi/Keith, with Spencer and Joe in the middle (Wigglesworth would’ve just followed the numbers as far as I can tell). Spencer has said that he came into the merge wanting to go with Kelley’s alliance^8,13, which I think is a huge credit to Kelley – she had only spent 6 out of 17 days on a tribe with him, compared to Jeremy’s 9. Of course, the relationships Spencer made with Ciera and Kass on nu-nuTa Keo also influenced his opinion, but all of his interviews make it pretty clear that he was closest to Kelley; I already mentioned his text to Dom & Colin, which is further backed up by his Reddit AMA in which he says he was much closer to Kelley than the edit made it appear¹.
Spencer ends up choosing Jeremy’s side because that’s the side Joe chose. According to Spencer (Joe himself hasn’t done any meaningful exit press), Joe was very uncertain at first and kept flipping back and forth between Jeremy and Kelley’s sides¹³, which implies that it was a tough decision for Joe to make. This lines up exactly with Kelley’s recounting of events¹⁰. Further evidence comes from the fact that he told Wentworth she would be getting the votes at the next round, trying to look out for her¹⁰. By all accounts, Joe was really tight with Kelley and it was a close call between going with his closest personal connection – Kelley – or the safety of the Meat Shields.
Kelley was always going to be at a disadvantage here because Jeremy’s alliance is obviously the better choice for Joe, and there’s no way for her to get around that. As I’ll lay out later, Joe was still able to work with Kelley and her minority alliance going forward; with that in mind, it makes absolutely no sense for Joe to go against Jeremy and Savage at this vote, since being in their good graces offered him several shields.
While convincing people to act against their own best interests is a huge part of Survivor, I think Kelley was in a unique position here; Jeremy, through a combined process of luck (starting on Bayon with Savage and Joe) and talent, had set himself up so well that it was in his allies’ own best interest to side with him (that’s the key genius of the Meat Shields strategy). So, not only was Wentworth competing against one of the all-time greats for allies, but she was also competing against rationality. It would’ve been a truly incredible feat if Kelley had gotten Joe to side with her at the merge; and it is a testament to her game play that he almost did.
Wentworth. . . DOES NOT COUNT
Idoling out Savage might be the only time in the whole game that luck went Kelley’s way.
As Savage has explained in his exit press¹⁹, he was sick that day; splitting votes can be like herding cats, and he wasn’t feeling up to it. Instead of going through the trouble, the majority all felt comfortable voting for Wentworth. If not for Savage’s illness, they may have taken the time to properly split the vote.
With that being said, Kelley also deserves a ton of credit for how well she played leading up to this moment. Going back to Day One on Ta Keo, she devised a way to go idol hunting without drawing suspicion; she would go out collecting wood for the shelter and fire, and take the time to look for idols as well. To make sure no one noticed, she would toss loose branches onto the path, which would make it look as if she was in the middle of gathering wood if anyone stumbled upon her¹⁰. This strategy may sound simple, but no one else was able to pull it off; both Fishbach and Jeremy^5,13 were known for idol-hunting in the pre-merge. Kelley was the only one who went unnoticed.
In his column⁶, Fishbach shared the one thing Kelley did that should have tipped them off; the rice had gotten moldy, and Kelley spent all day cleaning the individual grains. According to him, he should’ve noticed Kelley wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t plan on eating the rice in the days to come. To me, this really highlights how well Kelley played up that she was going home – the only thing Fishbach can see, even in hindsight, is Kelley doing something she’s confirmed she would’ve done anyway¹⁰.
The alliances Wentworth made in the pre-merge also come in handy here. Instead of having to just hope they were voting for her, she got inside information; both Keith and Joe tipped her off to where the majority’s votes were going¹⁰. And while Jeremy suspected Joe was running cover for Wentworth⁹, he had no idea Keith was helping her too. Having several inroads into the majority alliance, even though she was on the outside, is a huge credit to how well she was playing the social game. She may not have had control over the strategic game, but her social bonds carried her through.
More evidence for her social game comes from how people reacted to her idol play. Fishbach has made the point several times that everyone wanted to work with Kelley after that¹²; instead of viewing her as a threat to be taken out because she made a big move, Kelley’s flair in taking out Savage created a buzz around her. That, combined with Ciera’s intense pushing, is why Spencer and Fishbach teamed up with her on the next vote to blindside Wigglesworth.
In hindsight, people might view Kelley’s choice to take out Savage instead of Jeremy as a mistake, since he goes on to win the game; I think that misses several key points. Kelley’s original target was Jeremy; she was the first person to really sound the alarm that he was running the game. But both Abi and Ciera wanted Savage gone; because of their votes against Woo, Savage refused to work with them. For two reasons, Kelley decided to go with their choice:

1. They assumed their votes wouldn’t matter, and Kelley didn’t want to risk tipping anyone off to her idol. Acquiescing here is the right call because it meant she got to blindside someone; whereas if she told them about the idol and word got around to Jeremy, one of the Witches would’ve gone home.
2. If you only have two concrete allies, it doesn’t make sense to keep the one person in the game who won’t work with them. If Jeremy goes home here, I think it’s more than likely that Savage would’ve re-grouped his troops around the threat of Ciera the liaschemer; unlike Jeremy, who was much more open to working with people outside of his alliance. By taking out Savage, Kelley opened the door for Abi and Ciera to have room to play again; which is crucial to her game going forward.

Getting a Foothold
After the Savage blindside, Wentworth did a fantastic job of building on that success; for the next four votes, she began steadily gaining control of the game.
As I briefly mentioned above, Kelley’s strong social game put her in a great position to capitalize on her idol play. Because she already had the groundwork laid – unbreakable bonds with Ciera and Abi, and relationships with Joe, Keith, and Spencer – she didn’t have to continue making herself a target. She intentionally took a step back and let Ciera become the face of the alliance; so even though it was Kelley who first wanted Jeremy gone, it was Ciera who gained the “let’s make big moves!” reputation. Ciera was taking the heat, and Kelley was working on her bonds with Spencer, Joe, and Keith.
By taking a step back, she let the game come to her. It was originally Fishbach’s idea to blindside Wigglesworth; he wanted to take advantage of Jeremy’s increased paranoia and take out a player who was closer to Jeremy than himself in the long-term goal of bringing Kelley, Ciera, and Abi to the F7 to blindside Jeremy¹². All of this is great news for Kelley, who would greatly benefit from 1) a member of the majority going home 2) Joe’s closest ally going home, giving her more sway over him. And by letting Fishabch set the terms, he got to feel as if he was in control of Kelley and Ciera’s games, which is part of why he didn’t see the first attempt to blindside him coming.
The first Stephen vote is one of the few real mistakes in Kelley’s game. At the F10, her and Ciera thought they had everyone except Fishbach and Kimmi down to blindside Fishbach; so instead of playing it safe and splitting the vote 5-3-2, they split 6-2-2, with only Kelley and Ciera voting for Kimmi. They split this way assuming that Jeremy was going to be one of the 6; instead, he flipped his vote to Ciera and played his idol for Stephen, causing Ciera to go home in a 5-3-2 vote (Stephen’s 5 being cancelled out). Trusting Jeremy was a key mistake; if Fishbach had gone home that night, Kelley and Ciera would’ve had almost full control over the game – Keith, Joe, and Spencer were already starting to break from Jeremy and lean towards the Witches, which would’ve given them a clear majority. If their momentum hadn’t been broken on this vote, I think the odds are pretty high that one of their alliance wins (unless Jeremy put his idol to good use, but even then, Kelley had her second idol to use in a defensive maneuver).
The one slight defense for Kelley putting too much trust in Jeremy here comes in the form of Abi Maria. Near the end of the day, both Kelley and Ciera started to get a weird vibe from Jeremy and discussed having Abi flip her vote from Fishbach to Kimmi just in case; but because Abi was such a volatile player, they didn’t want to risk her freaking out if they changed the plan so close to Tribal Council¹⁰.
Kelley does a strong job of rebounding, though; managing to gather the numbers to get Stephen out on the next round. But this vote has a lot of moving parts, so I think who you give the “credit” to depends on who you’re interested in defending.
Going back the round prior, Ciera got the talk of blindsiding Stephen started while she was on Reward with Joe, Tasha, Spencer, and Abi. Wentworth was back at camp with Jeremy, Stephen, Kimmi, and Keith, painting the target on Joe’s back. But because he won immunity, no one could target him that round. By default, the two targets became Stephen and Ciera. Together, Ciera and Kelley convinced Spencer that Stephen was targeting him; they did this by telling him a half lie/half-truth – they fed him correct intel that Kimmi was throwing his name out, and because that information checked out, Spencer trusted that Stephen was coming for him, too¹³. In reality, Stephen was trying to keep Spencer in the game so he would have numbers to target Jeremy later¹².
Going into the next round, Spencer was even more sure of his decision after Fishbach chose Tasha and Jeremy to go on reward with him. But at this point, he had lost three of the previous rounds’ Fishbach votes; Jeremy wasn’t even pretending to go along with the plan, Tasha had flipped back to Stephen’s side, and of course Ciera had gone home the night before.
The numbers that ended up coming together against Stephen at F9 were Spencer, Kelley, Abi, Keith, and Joe before his vote was stolen. You’ll notice a pattern there: these are all Kelley’s allies, not Spencer’s. Because Stephen was able to steal Joe’s vote, Spencer does end up becoming the linchpin of the blindside, but he wasn’t the one who gathered the numbers. It was Kelley who had enough relationships to make it happen.
Another reason I give the credit to Kelley here is because it only benefitted her game, while actively hurting most everyone else’s. Like I said, at this point in the game Stephen was very much interested in playing with Spencer¹²; the only thing that blindsiding Stephen did for Spencer was give him one less potential ally to help getting rid of Jeremy. If Joe went home this round, Spencer could’ve teamed up with Stephen later and scooped up Wentworth’s alliance to blindside Jeremy; at that point, the game would’ve been his to lose. By leaving Joe in the game, he left a number in the game that Kelley could use, took out his own ally in Stephen, and pushed back any potential Jeremy blindside back by another round because he didn’t want to give the girls the majority from F8 to F7 (he’ll end up doing that anyway, but I’ll get to that later).
In contrast, this move set Kelley up really well heading into the endgame. At this point, she firmly had Abi, Keith, and Joe on her side, with Spencer starting to lean toward her instead of Jeremy. By getting rid of Fishbach, she took out Jeremy’s closest ally and weakened his hold on the game; which opens the door for Kimmi to start thinking of flipping at F8⁴.
Kelley is easily the player who benefitted the most from this move; Abi and Keith benefitted, but they were following Kelley’s lead, and would never be thinking of the game in those terms if Kelley didn’t lay it out for them. Both Jeremy and Spencer’s games were hurt by Stephen’s blindside, and Tasha and Kimmi were along for the ride at this point. One could make an argument that technically Joe benefitted the most, since he would have gone home otherwise; but he did nothing to save himself, and was barely keeping his head above water in the game at this point. Joe was kept in the game because Kelley needed a number, not because of anything he did himself.
Family Visit
Heading into the homestretch of Cambodia, the game is turned up to 11; there’s a million moving parts to every vote. The Final 8 is no exception.
On the surface, Kelley’s choices to come with her on the Family Visit look like a mistake; she brings Joe, Keith, Abi, and Kimmi, leaving the eventual Final 3 back at camp. But while I think winning the Family Visit at all is probably a misstep, on closer inspection I think her picks were the right ones, even if it ends up not working out in the long run.
On RHAP¹⁰, Kelley explained the logic for her picks; Jeremy had not interest in working with her⁹ and Tasha was all in with Jeremy⁴, so there was no reason to bring either of them. She brought Abi and Keith because they were her closest allies, and would’ve felt left out if she didn’t. She brought Kimmi because at this point Kimmi was approaching her with a potential All-Girls alliance, which Tasha has confirmed Kimmi was serious about⁴ (she doesn’t go through with it because Tasha wouldn’t flip); Kelley brought her along to try and seal the deal, which arguably pays off at F6.
Leaving Spencer and taking Joe is where the choice becomes controversial. She left Spencer behind because she actually trusted him more than Joe, who she was worried would flip back to Jeremy if he had a whole day alone with him¹⁰. And while Spencer did vote with Jeremy at the F7, I think Kelley had the right read. Spencer has confirmed that, at this vote, he fully intended to side with Kelley at the next vote, and wasn’t bothered that she didn’t pick him; and further confirmed that while he did make a Final 3 deal with Jeremy and Tasha that day, he didn’t think it was real¹³.
At that point in the day, Kelley’s target was Jeremy; she thought taking Joe on the Family Visit would keep him on her side, and wasn’t worried about keeping him around longer because he wasn’t likely to win out, and didn’t think he was that big a jury even if he did¹⁴.
The only reason Joe becomes the target is because of his dad. During the Family Visit, he told Joe, in front of Kelley and Abi, that he shouldn’t trust the girls and that he needed to side with the guys who were more trustworthy¹⁰. Kelley tried to talk to Joe’s dad and explain she was the only one who had his back throughout the game, but Joe’s dad wasn’t hearing it, insisting Joe shouldn’t trust her. (Considering where Joe’s at now, this story definitely checks out). Joe decided to go with his dad’s advice, which is why he votes for Abi at Tribal Council. Since all of this unfolded in front of Kelley, she knew she couldn’t trust Joe anymore, which is why she decides to turn the vote on him.
And I do think that Joe’s boot is Kelley’s move. During Joe’s boot episode, it’s very clear Spencer and Jeremy are uncomfortable with the move; earlier in the day, Tasha had told them about the potential girls’ alliance. Knowing that could happen if Tasha changed her mind, Spencer and Jeremy didn’t want the women to have a 4/3 numbers advantage at the F7, which is a pretty common place for the game to flip. Tasha’s RHAP interview further confirms that Spencer and Jeremy did not want to make the move⁴, as well as Jeremy in the next episode saying he had buyer’s remorse, fearing the game was slipping away from him with Stephen and Joe leaving back-to-back.
Spencer’s Choice
Like I said earlier, Spencer went into the F7 believing he was going to side with Kelley and vote off Tasha. The factors that go into his decision to side with Jeremy are really interesting to break down, and in my opinion don’t speak to a flaw in Kelley’s game so much as a flaw in Spencer’s.
Kelley was doing everything you’re supposed to do to maintain an alliance; listening to post-game press, it’s clear that her and Spencer had a close friendship out there. Spencer specifically mentioned that Kelley really connected with him as a fellow child of divorce, and they understood each other on a deeper level because they shared the same intimacy issues as a result^8,13. It’s clear from both his Dom & Colin deep dive¹³ and his AMA¹ that losing the friendship he had with Wentworth during the game really saddened him. Spencer siding with Jeremy was not a question of who he liked more or who did a better job maintaining alliances.
He's been very clear that he sided with Jeremy because he didn’t believe Wentworth would be willing to take him to the Final 3^8,13. And this is where analysis gets tricky, because Kelley has confirmed that she would have taken him to the end; she confirmed her ideal F4 on RHAP was with Abi, Keith, and Spencher¹⁰, and confirmed on Dom & Colin that she would’ve taken him to FTC¹⁴. But even after Kelley gave interviews saying this, Spencer said on RHAP that he still wasn’t convinced she would’ve⁸.
This is what I mean when I say it was a flaw in Spencer’s game; he deeply overestimated his own game and jury prospects, assuming Kelley wouldn’t take him to the end because he would beat her. In reality, Kelley would’ve most likely crushed him in a jury vote, and didn’t have to be picky with her F3 choices because she had a fighting chance against anyone.
It’s hard to say there was a flaw in Kelley’s game here because I honestly don’t know what she could have done differently; she had a close personal bond, maintained the alliance, and made a genuine promise of taking Spencer to FTC. He just wouldn’t believe it.
The other problem Kelley ran into at F7 was Abi Maria, who threw her vote to Keith instead of Tasha. I think it’s wrong to ever come at Abi Maria’s decisions as if they were made rationally, but this one in particular is incredibly hard to decipher. We know from a secret scene¹⁶ that at this point in the game she was realizing she couldn’t go to the end with Kelley because she viewed Kelley as the biggest threat to win; and in her exit interview with Rob C.¹⁷, she says she voted for Keith to “send a message”, implying she knew that Jeremy’s alliance wasn’t voting for Keith, she just wanted to signal that she wasn’t with Keith’s group anymore. This makes no sense to me; voting Keith would’ve alienated her from both alliances, and in a 4/3 vote, throwing yours away could be catastrophic.
It is worth noting, though, that Abi voting for Keith would not have mattered if Spencer didn’t flip to Jeremy. It would have been a 3-3-1 vote, and if I understand the rules right, Keith would have been able to vote on the re-vote, sending Tasha home 3-2. At that point, Kelley would have had control of the game, and Abi wouldn’t have been a necessary number going forward.
And even though this vote didn’t go Kelley’s direction, her social game is still on display. Kimmi put her foot down that Kelley not be the target¹⁴, which is why it ended up being Abi; I think it was a mistake for Jeremy to let Kelley get so close to the end, when he really should’ve taken her out here.
Final Six
I think the Final 6 vote mostly speaks for itself, but there are two quick points worth making.
The first is that while I think Kelley’s side played well here, in hindsight they should have voted for Tasha instead of Jeremy; but with Kelley having an idol, I don’t fault her too much for not thinking Jeremy had a second one, and I’m sure in the moment it seemed very risky to let him get within two Immunity wins of FTC.
The second is that Production screwed up here. With Spencer, Kelley, and Jeremy having immunity, and Kimmi and Tasha being immune because they received votes, that meant only Keith could draw a rock. Instead of letting this play out, Production should have sent Kimmi and Tasha to fire-making which would follow the precedent set by the F4; the logic at F4 being that one person is immune, and two people receive votes, automatically rocking out the fourth is unfair, so there’s fire-making instead.
If Production got it right, there’s a chance Kimmi could have beaten Tasha, Kelley would have won F5 and voted off Jeremy, and I think her, Spencer, and Keith make up a F3 that Kelley most likely wins.
Keith’s Mistake
Briefly revisiting Spencer’s choices down the homestretch, I think it speaks to how close Kelley was of swaying him to her side that Spencer said on Dom & Colin that if Keith pulled out the fake idol Kelley made him at Tribal – like she told him to – he probably would have flipped his vote, and Kelley/SpenceKeith would have voted Jeremy off¹³.
Of course, Keith is Keith and didn’t pull the idol out even though he wasn’t even sure it was fake¹⁸. I guess you could technically say it was a flaw in Kelley’s game that she couldn’t convince Keith to do it, but like Jeremy said after SJDS, it’s harder to play Survivor with players like Keith who aren’t even trying to play in their own best interests. It was a potential million dollar play for Keith, who knew he was going home, and he wouldn’t try it. I don’t know how you play with a player like that.
Jury Threat
It’s worth breaking down that Kelley was easily one of the biggest Jury threats in the game, and I believe beats everyone except Kimmi and Jeremy.
Apart from the two I mention above, I believe Kass, Ciera, Joe, Keith, Abi, Stephen, and Spencer vote for her. (Again, outside of Kimmi and Jeremy.) And if Kimmi is on the jury, I believe she votes for Kelley.
Against Kimmi, it’s hard to tell how much support they each would have had; most of our sources from Ponderosa weren’t personally Kimmi partisans – Fishbach especially was in disbelief that Kimmi was the jury’s favorite¹². Kass has gone on record as rooting for Kimmi³, but other than that, it’s mostly guesswork. Most likely she gets the older, parent figures of the jury – Kass, Savage, Wigglesworth. But I don’t know where Ciera fits into that equation; I imagine she would vote for Wentworth in any combination, and I seriously doubt she would’ve voted for Kimmi considering she originally intended to vote Spencer over family man Jeremy². Keith and Joe are tossups; I think they would lean Kelley, but I could see them going the other way. Abi definitely votes for Kelley.
Kelley also stood a decent chance against Jeremy. He would’ve had Spencer, Stephen, Savage, and Kass²⁰. Kelley would have had Ciera, Abi, Keith, and Kimmi. Joe and Wigglesworth would be swing votes. According to Fishbach⁷, Wiggles was really mad at Jeremy and Joe was openly considering voting for Spencer, which makes me think they both may have ended up voting for Wentworth. But it’s really too close to tell.
Overall, I think Kelley played one of the best Survivor games while working with some of the worst circumstances ever. In spite of copious amounts of bad luck, she made excellent relationships in the pre-merge, allowing her to help control the two votes she was a part of and work her way up from the bottom of her swap tribe. At the merge, she ended up in the minority but used her social bonds to make inroads into the majority, successfully cancelling out the most votes in the history of the show, and then turned her 9-3 minority into a power position, getting the majority to vote with her for 4 straight votes, and came extraordinarily close to turning the game at Final 7, in which case she is the overwhelmingly most likely winner. All while in direct competition with Jeremy, who was playing one of the greatest winning games in Survivor history.

I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, I think that Queen Sandra played her best game yet. Sure she was pre-merged and only lasted 16 days, but she played flawlessly and only got swap-screwed. Sandra proved why she is one of the best of all time and so she was amazing.
On the other hand, as a huge Cirie fan, I was disappointed with her showing. I think she didn’t tarnish her legacy by any means, but she definitely got outplayed by Sarah. To be honest, I think she should have taken out Brad at F8, Andrea or Sarah at F7, and IDK what happens after that. I think Cirie invented the ~BIg mOvES~ of Survivor with her antics in Micro, but the problem is that she was overplaying. I don’t think she had a clear path to the end by any means as I think Andrea and Sarah would have taken her out at some point, but also she’s Cirie. She goes big. It’s wishful thinking that she had any real path to the end; unless she somehow figures out a way to take out Sarah early merge, then she maybe could have made it to the end. But that speaks to Sarah’s social game.
JT! This was his worst yet! WTF! I thought he would redeem himself of his TERRIBLE HvV showing. Also, his mistakes can never just sink his own game. They always sink the game of the tribe. He’s the worst. Can’t believe this is the same person who played the first perfect game. I demand a recount of Tocantins lol.
Michaela is one of my favorite castaways of all time. We deserve Michaela 3.0.
Sarah as a winner is fine because she played exceptionally well, but she honestly just seems like kind of a dirt bag. The stuff about Andrea’s sister and Brad’s wedding ring are a bit too much for me, I know many people wouldn’t agree but I actually do think there’s a line to be drawn. I think this was a great winning game and she deserves it but I don’t like her as a character and she doesn’t make compelling TV for me. That said, she outwitted everyone including Cirie, master strategist, and she took her best options there to clinch the win. (Though I think that her other dealings were just better than her just outwitting Cirie, I just think her aggressive gameplay works better for modern Survivor.) Do I think she even deserved to be on a season called Game Changers? Hell no. But she did very well and so, I can’t be mad. (I am mad.)
Lukewarm season for me. My favorite players were taken out early or didn’t play a great game. And randos made it to the end. I dream of a postmerge with Sandra in it. Alas, it’s only a dream.
On to whatever 35 is! What do y’all think of GC?

Ceádmil dear community!
Below you can find the Comprehensive Guide to GWENT's Lore in order to help everyone dive into the lore of the characters depicted on GWENT cards.
This first part will be about Andrzej Sapkowski's Books and the characters introduced there.
The Witcher video games are based on a fantasy book series by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The Witcher Series is made up of 2 short story collections and 5 novels. The short story collections introduce many of our favorite characters that are depicted on GWENT and do a lot of world building. The novels primarily tell the story of Geralt and Ciri. You should be aware that these books take place several years before the beginning of the first Witcher game.
The way you should read the books is listed below:

• The Last Wish
• Sword of Destiny
• Blood of Elves
• Time of Contempt
• Baptism of Fire
• The Tower of Swallows
• Lady of the Lake

The Last Wish
The Last Wish contains six short stories interspersed with a continuing frame story.
Short Story: The Voice of Reason
Summary:

Most of this story takes place in the Temple of Melitele in Ellander while Geralt is recovering from injuries he gained in a recent fight.

Characters introduced:

• Nenneke
• Dandelion
• Dennis Cranmer

Short Story: The Witcher
Summary:

This story follows the famous tale of Geralt's fight with a striga.

Characters introduced:

• Princess Adda Striga
• King Foltest

Short Story: A Grain of Truth
Summary:

This short story describes how Geralt the witcher met a man in a monster's mask, Nivellen.

Characters introduced:

• Nivellen

Short Story: The Lesser Evil
Summary:

This short story tells the tale of how Geralt came to be known as the Butcher of Blaviken.

Characters introduced:

• Stregobor

Short Story: A Question of Price
Summary:

This short story serves as a study on what witchers are, how they are observed, and paying prices.

Characters introduced:
Summary:

• Pavetta
• Mousesack Ermion
• Urcheon Emhyr Var Emreis
• Eist Tuirseach
• Crach an Craite
• Draig Bon-Dhu
• Rainfarn

Short Story: The Edge of the World

This short story is a recounting of the first adventure Dandelion and Geralt went on together.

Characters introduced:

• Filavandrel
• Toruviel

Short Story: The Last Wish
Summary:

This story describes the circumstances of Geralt and Yennefer's first meeting.

Characters introduced:

• Yennefer of Vengerberg

Sword of Destiny
The Sword of Destiny contains six stories, loosely linked in a chronology.
Short Story: The Bounds of Reason
Summary:

This is the story of a hunt for a legendary golden dragon Villentretenmerth. The story also expands on the relationship between the sorceress Yennefer and Geralt the witcher

Characters introduced:

• Villentretenmerth Borch Three Jackdaws
• Dorregaray
• Yarpen Zigrin
• Reaver Hunters
• Myrgtabrakke

Short Story: A Shard of Ice
Summary:

In the story we learn more about Geralt's history with the Yennefer.

Characters introduced:

• Noone

Short Story: Eternal Flame
Summary:

The story is set in and around Novigrad and tells the story of the creation of one of Dandelion's better known ballads.

Characters introduced:

• Dudu

Short Story: A Little Sacrifice
Summary:

It tells the tale of star-crossed trans-species lovers: a siren called Sh'eenaz and a human prince called Agloval.

Characters introduced:

• None

Short Story: The Sword of Destiny
Summary:

It is the story which introduces Ciri.

Characters introduced:

• Ciri
• Eithné
• Braenn

Short Story: Something More
Summary:

This short story takes place after the fall of Cintra, as Geralt is on the road towards Cintra hoping to find Ciri.

Characters introduced:

• Triss Merigold

Blood of Elves
Blood of Elves is the first novel in the Witcher saga written by Andrzej Sapkowski. It is a sequel to the Witcher short story collections Sword of Destiny and The Last Wish, and is continued by Time of Contempt.
Summary:

The Empire of Nilfgaard attacks the Kingdom of Cintra. Queen Calanthe commits suicide and her granddaughter, Cirilla, called Ciri and nicknamed the "Lion Cub of Cintra" manages to flee from the burning capital city. Emhyr var Emreis, Emperor of Nilfgaard, sends his spies to find her. He knows that this young girl has great importance, not only because of her royal blood, but also because of her magical potential and elven blood in her veins. The girl is being protected by Geralt of Rivia, a witcher - a magically and genetically mutated monster slayer for hire, who takes her to the witchers' keep - Kaer Morhen. There, Ciri is being taught by the other witchers, including old Vesemir, Coën, Eskel and Lambert. She learns about monsters and how to fight them. She is taught to fight with a sword in the witcher style. But during her "education", the sorceress Triss Merigold comes to Kaer Morhen. She is called by Geralt to help with occasional strange and abnormal behavior he has seen in Ciri. Triss realises that Ciri is a Source. She acknowledges that she does not have the power to control Ciri's talent, and advises Geralt to swallow his pride and seek help with Yennefer, a more experienced sorceress and his former lover. At the same time, a mysterious wizard called Rience is looking for the girl. He is a servant of a more powerful mage, who remains unknown. He captures Geralt's friend, Dandelion the bard, and tortures him for information about Ciri. Dandelion is saved by the timely arrival of Yennefer, who engages in a short magic combat with Rience. Rience manages to escape through a portal opened by his master, but left with a prominent facial scar from Yennefer's spell. In the spring, Geralt leaves Kaer Morhen with Triss and Ciri, intending to deliver Ciri to the Temple School in Ellander where she would receive a "normal" education from Nenneke. On the way, Triss falls ill, and they join Yarpen Zigrin's dwarven company who is guarding a caravan for King Henselt. Geralt tells Ciri about the roses of Aelirenn, an elf who died leading the elven youths to fight the humans. The caravan is attacked by the Scoia'tael, and it is revealed that the escort mission was a trap set by the kings who doubted Yarpen's loyalty. Ciri's stay in Ellander is still haunted by disturbing dreams until the arrival of Yennefer, who starts educating her in the ways of magic. From an initial antagonism, their relationship develops into a strong and deep bond, like that of a mother and daughter.

Characters introduced:

• Emhyr var Emreis
• Eskel
• Lambert
• Philippa Eilhart
• Rience
• Sigismund Dijkstra
• Vesemir
• Paulie
• Menno Coehoorn
• Xavier Moran

Time of Contempt
Time of Contempt is the second novel in the Witcher saga. It directly continues on from Blood of Elves, which begins the saga of Ciri and Geralt.
Summary:

The story in Times of Contempt begins where Blood of Elves left off, essentially with Ciri and Yennefer having just left the Temple in Ellander, on their way to Gors Velen, and ultimately Thanedd Island. It is Yennefer's intention that Ciri be enrolled at Aretuza and that she continue her instruction in the use and mastery of magic. Once they arrive in Gors Velen, Yennefer goes to see her old friend Giancardi Molnar, a dwarven banker. The latter informs the sorceress that her financial movements are being tracked, something Yennefer already suspected, but he arranges an essentially unlimited line of credit for her and makes several financial transfers to cover expenses for Ciri's education. He and Yennefer also agree to allow Ciri to see the sights, escorted by one of Molnar's faithful employees, Fabio Sachs. While on their excursion, things get quickly out of hand after a Wyvern being held as a sideshow breaks free of its cage, and Ciri uses a magical amulet given to her by Yennefer in case of emergency. Because those who understand magic can sense when magic is being used, Ciri is noticed by two sorceresses. She is mistaken for one of about a dozen students who have recently "escaped" from Aretuza in the kerfuffle leading up to the mages' conference being held there. She is apprehended by no less than the former and current headmistresses of the academy, Tissaia de Vries and Margarita (Rita) Laux-Antille. At first, the sorceresses do not believe Ciri's story, but ultimately, the girl and Fabio manage to convince the headmistresses to check out their story at the bank and things are quickly confirmed by Yennefer and Giancardi. The three sorceresses then decide to discuss events over at the Silver Heron, taking Ciri with them and leaving poor Fabio to deal with his employer. At the inn, Tissaia and Rita have rented the entire cellar which is actually a bath house and the four "ladies" retire there to relax and chat. It seems that both Rita and Tissaia, but especially Rita have every intention of getting good and drunk and Ciri is dispatched to refill their caraff of wine not very long after it arrives. While getting the refreshments, Ciri notices a mercenary (Rayla) who orders the innkeeper to open a back door for her — a door which leads directly to the outer walls of the city, bypassing the usual gates and guards. On her second trip to refill the caraff, Ciri uses her new found knowledge and runs away to see Geralt whom she has been told is at Hirundum, not far from Gors Velen. Yennefer, luckily is not far behind. Ciri's flight does, however, provide Geralt and Yennefer with an opportunity to meet up again and to patch things in their relationship before the three set off for Thanedd Island together. On the island, things are in a tizzy. The girls have been temporarily moved from their usual accommodation within Aretuza to Loxia, the lowest level of the complex as the school itself is being used to accommodate the visiting sorcerers and sorceresses. That evening, Yennefer takes Geralt as her date to the reception, leaving Ciri in her room and ensuring that there is no second flight with magic. At the reception, Geralt meets quite a few interesting individuals, but in particular he meets Vilgefortz for the first time. The mage is considered very young (which of course is anything less than 100 years to mages, but he looks more like 35), he is also considered to be particularly talented, but as Geralt finds out, his road to becoming a mage was not exactly the usual route. The wizard was abandoned as a baby and taken in and raised by druids. It was only as an adult that he became a mage. A point he underlines with some emphasis to the witcher. He even goes so far as to try to encourage Geralt to become a mage himself, but the witcher refuses.

Characters introduced:

• Margarita Laux-Antille
• Vilgefortz
• Francesca Findabair,
• Sabrina Glevissig
• Keira Metz
• Dethmold

Baptism of Fire
Baptism of Fire is the third novel in the Witcher saga, thus continuing the saga of Geralt and Ciri directly onwards from the end of Time of Contempt.
Summary:

Geralt recovers in Brokilon forest after the Thanedd incident, but he is intent on leaving as quickly as possible and continuing on his path to find Ciri. In Brokilon, he meets a young woman who will follow him on his journey towards Nilfgaard. Meanwhile, Ciri has settled into a life with some people elsewhere whom she finally can call her friends. The witcher, accompanied by Dandelion and the young woman he meets in Brokilon, undertake a dangerous journey, meeting new people along the way and discovering the truth about the mysterious Black Rider who has been plaguing Ciri's dreams. One of the new friends they make along the way turns out to be rather interesting... While recovering in Brokilon from his injuries sustained during the Thanedd coup, Geralt meets Milva, a hunter and expert archer. Her mastery of the bow is unequalled. Despite not particularly liking the convalescing witcher, she decides to follow Geralt, who is accompanied by Dandelion, on his way towards Nilfgaard and hopefully, Ciri. The journey is not easy, the war is encroaching seemingly from all directions and nearly every city is ablaze. Along their journey they meet a group of dwarves led by one Zoltan Chivay. As it seems they are all going in the same direction, Geralt's party joins the group who are also shepherding some refugee women and children. At several points in their journey, Geralt and his companions come across Cahir, the erstwhile "Black Rider" that plagued Ciri's dreams. Initially, the knight is being transported as a prisoner — in a coffin no less! — by some hawkers, when Geralt spares his life for the second time. However, the witcher wants nothing to do with the young Nilfgaardian and leaves him to his own devices, Cahir is ever persistent and continues to shadow the witcher and his entourage. Eventually, through Milva's intervention, the young knight comes to join the group. Finally, the troupe is joined by Regis, a vampire, some might say "monster", who rather surprisingly becomes the monster hunter's good friend. Regis proves invaluable for his medical skills. As the group travels east, they are inevitably caught between the warring factions which leads them into the thick of the Battle for the Bridge on the Yaruga where the group is pivotal in queen Meve's victory. Geralt had previously named himself "Geralt of Rivia" for credibility sake, however, it is shortly after this battle that Geralt is coincidentally knighted by the queen and officially becomes "Geralt of Rivia". Meanwhile, Ciri has settled into life with a party of young rebels who call themselves the "Rats" and has become known as "Falka". With the Rats, she experiences killing on quite a regular basis, but also forms a strong bond with Mistle. Killing ultimately becomes an obsession for the former princess. Another background story revolves around the formation of the Lodge of Sorceresses. It turns out that Francesca Findabair managed to capture and compress Yennefer into a jade figurine following the events at Thanedd Island. It appears that the Lodge is very keen on using Ciri to their advantage in controlling the politics and prioritizing magic, which leads them to indirectly force Yennefer into joining their group. One Nilfgaardian sorceress, Fringilla Vigo, manages to help Yennefer escape from one of the Lodge meetings to rescue Ciri.

Characters introduced:

• Milva Barring
• Zoltan Chivay
• Cahir
• Regis
• Queen Meve

The Tower of the Swallow
The Tower of the Swallow is the fourth novel in the Witcher saga.
Summary:

One day, old Vysogota finds a very badly injured girl in the swamp surrounding his retreat. He saves her life and she tells him her story... the story of Ciri and how she became a cruel killer meeting death at every step. Until she met her retribution - Leo Bonhart, who killed her fellow bandits and captured her. Meanwhile, Geralt is on his way to find Druids who might know where Ciri is. But someone is determined that the witcher should not find her... Vysogota, an old philosopher living in the Pereplut swamp, finds an injured Ciri near his retreat and takes her in, caring for her until she is ready to continue her journey. She tells her life story to the old man: how all the Rats were killed by Leo Bonhart, all except for Ciri. As she readies herself to leave, she is convinced that both Geralt and Yennefer are dead. Based on this assumption, she leaves Vysogota to find Tor Zireael. Meanwhile, Geralt meets an elf named Avallac'h who tells him about a prophecy connected with Ciri. He needs to find some druids who will reportedly know where Ciri is. Yennefer is trying to find Vilgefortz's hiding place, but it is no easy task.

Characters introduced:

• Leo Bonhart
• Avallac'h

Lady of the Lake
The Lady of the Lake is the fifth novel in the Witcher saga.
Summary:

After walking through the portal in Tor Zireael while narrowly escaping death, Ciri finds herself in a completely different world... an Elven world. She is trapped there with no apparent way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world. But this is Ciri, the child of prophecy, and she will not be defeated. She knows she must escape to finally rejoin the Witcher, Geralt, and his companions - and also to try to conquer her worst nightmare. Leo Bonhart, the man who chased, wounded and tortured Ciri, is still on her trail. And the world is still at war. The story opens with Ciri bathing in a pond in an unknown world. As she does so, Sir Galahad of the Arthurian legend stumbles upon her. After mistaking her for the Lady of the Lake, they then talk and Ciri recounts her story. The story cuts to a point in time that takes place after the story, where a young maiden, Condwiramurs, meets the Lady of the Lake to study the legend of Geralt and Ciri. They do so through intense study of the pictures portraying the characters and events from the story, which they then dream of. Eventually Condwiramurs starts to dream of the events at the behest of the Lady of the Lake. Her first dream is that of Stefan Skellen and Leo Bonhart, who are revealed to be working the Vilgefortz and have imprisoned Yennefer. The dream ends and a new dream starts, this time dealing with the adventures of Geralt. Geralt has been completing monster contracts in the Beauclair city of Toussaint while the rest of the group, Dandelion, Regis, Milva, Angouleme, and Cahir, have been exploring and relaxing. Geralt eventually starts a relationship with the castle sorceress, Fringilla. Fringilla is one of the few members of the Lodge, a group of sorceresses that wish to control the political world, and is assigned the task of delaying him to seek out Yennefer and Ciri. Geralt eventually receives a contract to investigate and potentially kill several monsters which live in an abandoned castle near the city of Touissant. While accomplishing the task, he overhears Skellen, Bonhart, and several other associates talk about where Vilgefortz and Yennefer are located and how Ciri is missing. Geralt rushes back to Touissant in order to gather his group and leave to save Yennefer. Ciri is shown to have arrived in a foreign world after entering the portal at the Tower of the Swallow. This world appears to be ruled by elves, whom live in peace except for occasional fights with the unicorns. She meets with several elves, notably Avallac'h and Eredin Bréacc Glas, who is the leader of a cavalry unit called Dearg Ruadhri and reveals that the unicorns have become restless since she entered their world. She is told she must bear the child of their king, Auberon, who appears to be addicted to fisstech and is emotionally cold. Despite her disgruntlement with the situation, she agrees. After several fruitless nights, she confronts the other elves of the castle and demands that she be let go, as it appears their king is not interested in her, and that she wants to return to her friends. She is told that time happens differently in this world, and that once her task is accomplished she will be returned to her time. Eventually Eredin confronts her, giving her a vial and hinting that she should poison Auberon. In a bout of frustration, she rides her horse, Kelpie, as far away as possible from the castle, despite the warnings that barriers prevent her from leaving the place. As she is riding she is cornered by several unicorns, who threaten to kill her, fearing her power. She is spared, as one of the unicorns, Ihuarraquax, she had saved from death earlier. The unicorns then reveal how she can bypass the barriers. She finds Auberon dead from overdose and then steals a boat for herself and Kelpie, which is revealed to be the only way to pass the barriers. She is confronted by Eredin Breacc Glas, whom is enraged by Auberon's death and tries to leave abruptly. A brief battle ensues, in which she injures Eredin and escapes to find the Ihuarraquax and co. waiting for her. Eredin and his riders soon find her, and a battle between the Dearg Ruadhri and the unicorns ensues. Ciri, in the midst of chaos, teleports out of the world with the assistance of Ihuarraquax. The story now follows Jarre, a monk that chooses to join the army which has formed due to the alliance between all of the Northern Kingdoms to propel the invading Nilfgaardian army. He meets up with several individuals, including characters seen earlier in the story, and joins a unit called the PFI, or "Poor Fucking Infantry." Ciri's story continues, where she is jumping between worlds and times in order to find her own, still running from Eredin and the Dearg Ruadhri. She eventually appears before the Lady of the Lake and Condwiramurs, who wish her luck on her journey as she leaves soon after. We continue with Jarre, where the armies of the Northern alliance and Nilfgaard have collided in a valley near the town of Brenna. The battle lasts hours, teetering the brink of victory and defeat several times. Elven units, led by Yaevinn, attack the flanks of the Northern army, go so far as to slaughter the injured in medical tents. As the Northern army finally starts to rout, a contingent of Redanian cavalry charge over a hill that was not scouted properly by the elves. This causes panic amongst the Nilfgaardian forces, which soon panic and are abruptly slaughtered. The commander of the Nilfgaardians, Coehoorn, is killed in an attempted escape. The battle is referred to as the Miracle at Brenna soon after. The Northern alliance soon push all Nilfgaardian forces south of the Yaruga, which served as the border, and a ceasefire is declared in order to make peace. Ciri is soon revealed to have gone to Vilgefortz's castle in order to save Yennefer herself, unable to find Geralt and knowing that Yennefer would die without her help. Ciri asks that Yennefer be released in exchange for herself, but Vilgefortz laughs and imprisons her anyway. Geralt arrives at the castle quickly after Ciri, not knowing that Ciri arrived earlier. Geralt and co. storm the castle, killing many of Skellen's men before Milva eventually dies. Geralt and Regis go to find Yennefer, whereas Cahir and Angouleme go to save Ciri once they learn she is here. Yennefer is saved by Geralt, who indiscriminately kills to save her. Bonhart frees Ciri, desiring to kill her in a fair fight. Ciri flees, and encounters Cahir, who fights Bonhart himself to save Ciri. Cahir is killed outright, and soon after Angouleme dies in the same manner. Ciri and Bonhart soon fight, with Ciri finally winning using the environment to her advantage. Ciri takes the three witcher medallions that Bonhart claimed to have taken off the corpses of witchers previously. Ciri runs to find Geralt and Yennefer.

Characters introduced:

• Fringilla Vigo
• Steffan Skellen
• Vattier De Ridaeux
• Eredin Bréacc Glas
• Ihuarraquax

That's it for today! Next part will feature stories and characters from the Witcher games.
Until then, va faill hanse!