Anna Strenger

Anna Strenger is the wife of Philip Strenger.

Journal Entry
''Geralt did not meet Anna Strenger, the Bloody Baron's wife, when he visited Crow's Perch. Some time before his arrival this woman had disappeared in unexplained circumstances along with her daughter, Tamara. Geralt did, however, receive a detailed description of the missing woman. Anna was a comely forty-something woman with green eyes and hair dark as ravin wings which she kept tied in a tight bun behind her head. Geralt discovered that Anna's marital life had not been working out as well as she might have hoped. She had recently been pregnant, lost her child for unknown reasons shortly before her disappearance. When Geralt pushed the baron about the matter, the ugly truth finally came out. Desperate and miserable, Anna had fled, taking Tamara with her after her drunken husband beat her badly. The baron was convinced Anna had miscarried because of his actions, but Geralt was not so certain about this - he couldn't stop thinking about the strange talisman meant to ward off evil power Anna had received from the pellar. The situation grew even more entangled when Geralt discovered that, after fleeing Crow's Perch, Anna had been taken captive by some gigantic beast that carried her off into the darkness. As if that weren't horror enough, eyewitness testimony claimed her hands had burned with strange glowing symbols shortly before this. Perhaps this was precisely what the talisman Anna had received from the pellar had meant to guard against? Tamara only deepened Geralt's sad understanding of her mother's situation. The women had decided to flee together because they had had enough of the baron's drunken rages and beatings. Anna hated her husband so much that she was ready to do anything in order to be free of the man - and the child he had put inside her. Geralt put the facts together and realized the old woman in the swamps was, in fact, Anna, the baron's missing wife. He also learned that the signs on her hand were symbols of the pact she made with the Crones in order to get rid of her unwanted child. Geralt's suspicions were confirmed shortly thereafter. The curse afflicting the unfortunate woman was indeed the Crones' doing. Anna had turned to the ghastly sisters because she did not wish to give birth to the baron's child. The Crones granted her wish in their own, twisted way: with a curse that made the fetus inside her wither on the vine, taking Anna's life energy with it. In despair, she turned to the pellar, who made her a talisman to hamper the evil magic's influence. Anna had lost this during her fight with the baron and thus rendered defenseless against the Crone's magic. After that, the worst was free to happen - the markings on her palms began to burn and a fiend dragged her to the heart of Crookback Bog, where she paid her debt as the Crones' slave.''