Addendum: A Little Off The Bone

There are a couple of huts with doors that glow red when your Witcher Senses are active. However, they don’t yield anything suspicious (there’s dried blood inside one hut, but it’s months old). The hut behind the old folks is locked too, and there’s no way inside. Of more interest is an odd, sour smell lingering in the air, heading southeast out of the village, close to the wooden steps where the villagers are. Follow this smell to a stack of crates behind the villagers’ hut. This pile of debris smells like rotting meat.

A quick battering with Aard removes the debris, revealing a trapdoor and ladder down into a hidden cellar below the villagers’ hut. There’s a lot of blood trailing along the tunnel to the wooden door, along with the continuation of the scent trail. Open the door to reveal a revolting chamber of horrors: carcasses and open cells, and a severe lack of cleanliness. Least pleasant of all are the remains of a light-haired Halfling, ripped open, gutted, and drained.

Armed with new evidence of the peasants’ atrocities, return to speak to the two of them. Though they admit to being cannibals in a roundabout way, they insist they scavenge the bodies, including Folkert’s, and they weren’t lying about him being killed by wolves. Choose an appropriate punishment. You can:

Insist they take a vow never to eat human flesh again, and let them live.

Tell them death is what they deserve, and make quick work of their despicable forms. Slay them both, optionally rummaging in Judd’s pockets for a rusty key that opens their hut. Head inside for some random items to loot.

Whether you turn the village of Erde into a ghost hamlet or not, your final task is to return to the Herbalist’s Hut and explain the fate that befell Folkert. You can choose to reveal that Folkert was killed by the cannibals, or remain vague about the cause of his death (which has consequences if you let the cannibals live). Either way you receive the following reward as the quest concludes:

If you return to the village at least 24 hours after reporting to the herbalist, you can witness one of three different conclusions, depending on your choices:

• If you killed the peasants, their bodies are being devoured by necrophages—poetic justice.

• If you let them live, but told the herbalist that they are cannibals, you witness their comeuppance. The herbalist wasn’t joking about avenging Folkert.

• If you let them live and didn’t tell the herbalist that they are cannibals, you find the distressed husband inside, crying over his wife’s body. He blames you for her death due to malnutrition.