Talk:Jad Karadin/@comment-216.161.123.203-20191209074107

TL;DR He lives.

Reading through the conjecture in everyone's comments, I've yet to see anyone bring up, in my mind, a few important aspects indicating what's really going on, though I'd largely agree with the guy who said they believe Jed's changed but only insofar as he doesn't want to live the withcher's life anymore and wants something else.

Everyone's caught up on Jad being from the school of the cat, but Aiden was as well. While we have Lambert's opinion of his friend, friends are often blind or dismissive of negative qualities in those they care about, and Lambert doesn't exactly demonstrate himself as the most level-headed person when talking with Geralt, especially in how he responds to Geralt in every instance of the quest's conclusion - spoiler - each a version has heavy undertones of "I know you'll come for me, and I'll be ready" or "I'm gonna come for you, so you better be ready." Also, see every real world instance of "I never thought they were capable of that" moronic surprise when someone hauls off after drowning their kids or killing someone. We're all capable. It's just a matter of the right pieces falling into place.

Given what we do know about witchers from the school of the cat, there's simultaneously no reason to believe Jad's take or to assume Aiden wasn't capable of acting irrationally in line with known actions of others from his school, thus acting in line with Jad's story. Remember the witcher who murdered an entire town but for 1 little girl? There are "good" witchers in the school of that cat, but "good" is extremely relativistic in the world of The Witcher.

As for sending an assassin to collect a debt, Aiden was, shocker, a witcher, not a peasant with a silly haircut and a pointy stick, and Aiden was a witcher from a school commonly of assassins at that. Kinda follows that you'd send an assassin to deal with another (at least potential) assassin irrespective of context. And while Vienne was a trained soldier, how many of those have we killed as Geralt after they lost their cool and basically threw themselves on our swords? It's like people just don't learn not to fuck with a guy who's willing to play with fiend crap before killing a chort. And in the real world, cops never shoot first, ask questions later, right? She'd have intimate knowledge of what Jad was capable of, and as a vet, would likely be wise enough to see Aiden as equally capable and threatening, making her likely, in my mind at least, to lose her shit just enough to jump the gun, or bow as it were. We also found her trying to drink herself away, interested in giving information in exchange for more drink. Not the actions of someone who has a firm hold on themselves.

Next, more complicatedly, and while witchers from the school of the cat are known for being psychopathic, I think there's an interesting deviation from what behavior is typically seen in people high in psychopathy and more specifically, the dark triad traits comprising the colloquial term "psychopath" (you could say I've studied psychology a little, so buckle in). But before going further, I need to preface that there is no definitive panacea to tell whether someone definitively is or isn't lying, despite what internet headlines or, especially, what cops try to tell you (NEVER take a polygraph), and much of what I'm about to dig into is only useful to help us understand a person's potential internal states, not inherently whether they're attempting to deceive - there are other means of discerning that to a greater degree of certainty, but they can't be applied here because, well, videogames have set parameters. We can't subtly ask Jad to recall events in reverse order, for instance, to check for inconsistencies or over-consistency/rehearsal. Anyway, contrary to your grandpa's 1950's beliefs, black people are fine and eye contact is not an indicator of honesty and trustworthiness. In fact and greatly thanks to that societal belief, maintained eye contact is often counter-indicative of honesty. When people maintain eye contact, especially when to the point of essentially staring, it often indicates the person is observing the other person(s) to see how they respond and to appropriately react to what's going toward a desired end. Further, what emotions a person displays is critical too. While a flat affect (not showing much emotion) is an indication of the person trying to control themselves, especially if we see other soothing behaviors (bouncing knee, crossed arms, rubbing their opposite arm, etc.), that's still not an inherent indication of intentional deceit, as situational context can be more than enough to explain why someone isn't too talkative and is trying to calm themselves. Being surrounded by cops in a small room generally isn't the most comfortable place for most people. What's a better indication is if the person is engaging in compensatory/compensating behavior opposite to what would be generally expected, such as having a boisterous, joking disposition in that same small room full of cops (but again, still not a definitive indication - just bumps the needle in context of other things). And lastly and back to eye contact, what direction a person looks can give a general hint to what's going on upstairs. While it's not as simple as "if they look to the side, they're definitively recalling what someone said" or something similarly contrived towards claims to absolute certainty, again, the direction can indicate a few things, most notably if the person looks down. Downward cast eyes are a strong indication of strong emotional states. All that applied to Jad, he had a persistently disdainful tone towards people he believed are there to kill him (seems reasonable), but most specifically what he did once Geralt and Lambert turned their backs was very interesting. In every instance I looked at when choosing to let him go, his tone changed to exasperation and relief when he thanked you, rather than continuing that disdain. That's can easily be faked, sure, but why then does he look down with a look of sadness when both other men have turned away? Why continue the act when no one's looking? Yeah, you can try to go meta with that, that he's keeping it up for the camera, but, seriously, you never go full meta. If they were still looking at him, you could argue it as more deceit, but I just don't see it. He's clever, sure, as indicated by the code speak in the letter, but let's not get too caught up - it wasn't _that_ clever, leading me to believe he's genuinely remorseful of killing Aiden, indicating it went exactly as he said. Plus and back to Vienne, her casting off her ways, marinading in the bottle, and yelling to her friends that someone would come for her (if you chose to kill her) coupled with her alarmed tone when doing so further tells me that she knows she fucked up and told her friends in confidence rather than as a means to arrange protection.

As for the rest of things people brought up, it's important to keep what we take as intended design under control. The kids being in rags could be an indication of a ruse as potentially implied by the letter to Hammond and dealings with the school, but it's also explained away by, well, "because videogames." It's reeeeeeeeeally common to recycle assets in games, and Witcher 3 is no stranger to reusing NPC models. Simply put, either the same 5 peasants have changed clothes and traveled all over The Continent to give me different quests or they're just generic models, just like with the kids. From a narrative standpoint, I like the idea of a conspiracy, but there's just not enough evidence. That someone likes being tied up or whipping people doesn't imply they're also into human trafficking. People in that line of kinks are, in the real world, very vigilant of such abuses because of that.....very average perception of their community.

Nevertheless and in sum, I don't think Jad killed Aiden out of malice and is changed in that regard and as evidenced by his philanthropy but is likely involved in the slave trade, which may be reason enough for you to kill him, but just be sure to kill pretty much everyone in Skellige if that's how you feel, unless you're roleplaying Geralt as a hypocrite. For me, it's just The Witcher being as grey as ever and not catering to simplistic "good vs evil" narratives. There's not enough evidence to suggest Jad's using the school as a feeder for his enterprise, so I'm tossing that out as a consideration. Ultimately, we came to get revenge for someone we thought murdered, not on contract to eliminate a likely slave trader, plus Hammond, his supplier, is already dead. Jad lives. For now.