This is a continuation of this topic...
It is my attempt to suggest interesting interactions and flesh out Triss character's more.
Instead going who knows where after Novigrad, Triss spends her time in Velen investigating the Crones and their connection to the wild hunt.
Once you finish with the Skellige islands and you’re supposed to pick up Uma on your way to KM, you get an option to pick her up to find out if she’s got any news.
You previously set up the Inn at the Crossroads as a sort of drop off point for messages and you find a letter in which she tells you she’s found something and meet her in some abandoned building/house that litter Velen’s countryside.
Upon arriving you hear woman screams and you rush to the door. Kicking it open Geralt finds himself with the following scene. There’s an unknown man is passed out and tied to a wall. Next to him is another woman and Triss is bent down on top of her, clearly torturing her. Perhaps even removing fingernails too or something fire related to her nipples like we saw in W2.
G: “What the fuck are you doing, Triss?”
T: “Geralt!”
Woman, confused, clearly in pain: “Geralt?”
T: “Shut up bitch” slapping her.
Geralt gets closer, and takes a good look at the woman, realizing it is Tamara, the baron’s daughter.
G: “Triss, wait, they are-“
T: “Fucking witch hunters, I saved their life and then tried to kill me.” Turning to the woman. “This is not Novigrad, and no matter what fantasies they might have fed you there, we are not defenseless.” Turning to Geralt again, “Geralt, they have information about the Crones and Ciri, and I’m fucking getting it.”
G: “What?”
T: “They mentioned a battle, said you were involved too, wouldn’t say further than that.” Menacing glare at the woman. “For now.”
G: “Triss, this is not you, torturing them won’t help.”
T: “So I can get tortured to get information and this worthless trash can’t, that’s some fucked up logic. Thank you.”
G: “You went there willingly, these obviously are not. And besides, they know nothing, I was there in that battle and we fought the crone’s minions together. And this one here, she is the daughter of the man who helped Ciri when she needed.”
Triss pauses at that, her rage a little subsided, yet still makes her case: “That might be, but they clearly are hiding something, found them snooping in the swamp. We need to find out.”
Geralt turns to Tarara, “is that true?”.
Toamara spits blood at him and says “I knew you were rotten to the core... working with this Witch... no wonder my father hired you.”
Geralt ignores her remark and asks again.
Anyway, the scene goes on, I don’t want to fill it anymore with my crappy dialogues. The idea is there. Perhaps there could be an option where Geralt decides to join in when pressing for more information, or decides to continue admonishing Triss and the interrogation ends.
He eventually calms Triss down. She explains that they Crones were very secretive and she wasn’t able to learn much, the peasants wouldn’t talk much. Then one day, she saw those two getting attacked and intervened, only for them to turn on her when she used magic.
Perhaps they did it because they could were confused or because their hatred for mages goes beyond that idk.
Triss of course manages to subdue them and interrogating them, they reveal little, but Geralt description slips out and so Triss believes they know more.
That need to find out more, coupled with all the abuse she felt in Novigrad, what she was the, the burnings, etc. plus them attacking her after she saved them, made her snap and resort to unnecessary torture.
She makes another remark, saying that they would have done the same to her (probably true), that she saw the bodies hanged in the village.
Finally she breaks down and admits it is all pretty fucked up, the prisoners get released, and Geralt and Triss go have a walk and a talk, but that belongs in the next scene, which I’ll post later.
What do you guys think? First this is a direct consequence of letting her be tortured in Novigrad, I always felt like the “perfect solution” in which she endures till the end was too nicely wrapped up, with her killing everybody in the end. This shows how it really got to her, on top of everything she had to see, the burnings, etc. Perhaps this case of Triss can also be tied up with whether you save her or not in W2.
If the torture in her quest that doesn’t happen, she captures them and still interrogates them, but is still on the non violent side of things or is just hitting the man in the face or something mild like that.
I certainly don’t condone her actions, but can understand them to a point.
Incidentally, these two (Tamara and his boss) are perhaps the only witch hunters in the whole game which seemed decent or at least we had a connection to , so it felt like a wasted opportunity not to show the conflict.
