Talk:Contract: Woodland Beast/@comment-38612593-20190223101655

Here's the way I see things. While it is true that the Scoia'tael have suffered a great deal because of humans, in the end I chose to kill the elves (even though I honestly like elves in the Witcher universe) for those reasons;

1) The archer elf who sees you at the start is way too bloodthirsty and unreasonable even after seeing that you are a witcher (who are commonly known to be politically neutral) and just state that you'd like an audience with his commander. He just completely overlooks all this because he is eager to kill humans, no matter the circumstances. Even after you agree to hand him over your weapons and tell him that you are not about to do anything stupid - which is obvious from a lore perspective, since you are unarmed and outnumbered - he still doesn't trust you.

2) Vernossiel claims that the only reason they attack Radovid's transports is because they "must eat", and that they do not attack any civilians, just Radovid's soldiers. Yet they appear to be a well-organized guerilla warfare squad who's armed to the teeth, so I doubt they'd be any short on food since there are plenty of deers to hunt nearby in that area anyway. Not to mention that some of the victims I inspected appeared to be unarmed people who didnt even have shoes and were wearing really worn out clothes.

3) As soon as Geralt tells them in a calm manner that to him they are nothing more than common bandits, Vernossiel immediately orders an attack on him while he is outnumbered, surrounded, and unarmed. Which - ironically enough - is a very honourless act and probably what actual common bandits would have done in her place. If she wanted to prove him wrong she should have handed him his equipment and send him back on his way after trying to make him agree that he would not talk to anyone about what he saw.

I chose to not attack them and instead have a discussion with their leader, which got me cornered. So I just defended myself. I think this approach should also come somewhat close to what Geralt (as described in the books) would have probably done.