The Witch

The Witch
In her hut, this time not in lingerie.
Gender:	Female
Species:	Unknown
Body type:	Humanoid with skeletal head
Location:	Witch's house
Player romance:	No

The Witch (her actual name unknown) is the first character the player encounters in the game. She lives in seclusion in the Sejan peninsula, some distance away from the nearest populated settlement. Without the need to concern herself with other people, she has enough time and space to conduct teleportation experiments for unknown motives. Problems arose from the experiments, however, after they started to bring sapient beings into the world of Noih instead of just random objects or small animals. The player is the latest 'victim' of these experiments. Although she's supposedly under pressure to make progress on her research from an unknown source, the player's appearance was the final reason to pause her experiments until an explanation for the anomalies is found.

The Witch is otherwise a collected and intelligent researcher who introduces them to their new home of Noih, mostly out of guilt. She is also a source of valuable information on the different logic this new world operates on for the player. Although there is no further storyline in the game at the moment regarding her teleporting experiments, the player is told that there may be a way for them to get back to their dimension. She suggests that the player should try to seek and talk to other researchers about the possibility of getting home.

Player interactions

If the player asks questions about her visage, especially her missing lower jaw, she becomes unusually defensive and irritated, claiming that she was born that way. Should the player nag her further about her looks, she angrily uses magic to kick them out of her hut.

The player can also inquire about a peculiar statue on a small altar in her house. The Witch explains that it's the urn of the ashes of her mother whom she's trying to resurrect with unknown means. She tries to justify her interest for doing this seemingly impossible task by claiming that her mother "didn't die a normal death".

The Witch being, well, a witch, the player can ask if she knows anything about the possessed wooden bowl that's encountered during Shyni's first adventure. If the bowl is undamaged when brought to her, she breaks it into splinters with magic to study it. It turns out that the bowl is made from a kind of wood that can get saturated with liquids that get into contact with it. This particular bowl was made from a barrel that used to hold blood and/or viscera in it. She speculates that the barrel was probably from a slaughterhouse. Despite a thorough inspection, she can't find anything unusual, magical, or cursed about the bowl.

Trouble from outside

Warning! The following text contains spoilers affecting another character!
Another in-game character is affected and/or plays an important role in the text below. If you don't want to possibly have someone else's story arc spoiled, stop reading now!

SPOILER

If the player manages to get Nkaanmykiunsuns to reveal the motive of her presence in Taodal, she explains she's after a murderer. This murderer turns out to be none other than the Witch herself. Nkaanmykiunsuns agrees to let the player help her to kill the Witch, since she doesn't know they have met her before.

There are several ways the assassination can go.

• The player can let Nkaanmykiunsuns kill the Witch with or without the knowledge that the player knows her. She is definitely dead in this scenario, as the player can see the gruesome proof of it.

• If the player prevents Nkaanmykiunsuns from killing the Witch without waking her up, they can then alert her that an attempt was made on her life. This causes her to panic and she starts packing her things right there and then. If the murder attempt is foiled inside the hut (which causes the Witch to wake up), the same thing happens.

• If the player doesn't delve into Nkaamykiunsuns's murder accusation against her when she is packing her stuff, she asks them to keep guard outside the hut while she prepares her departure. Her house then catches fire somehow, and she disappears without a trace.

• If the player does pry about about her claim, she gets very upset about it, and in the heat of the moment she breaks a jar that forms a portal, similar to the one that brought the player to Noih in the beginning of the game. If the player has Agility 8, they can jump into the portal before the Witch can stop them.
  The portal takes them into a strange hall with a silent creature nearby. The Witch appears after the player and starts pleading to it to save the player's life, obviously distressed about the unseen power of the creature. When the creature tells her to get rid of the player, she launches the player back through the portal, and they end up outside of her burning house.

In all scenarios except the one where she is unaware of the attempt on her life, she disappears from the game. It's unknown where she's gone if she is still alive, and if she is ever seen again when she escapes through the portal. If the Witch disappears from the game, it is unknown if the possibility of the player getting back home will be pursued in the future.

It is relevant to notice that the Witch creating a two-way portal out of a jug proves that she lied to the player when talking about her portal research and how two-way portals are supposed to be an impossibility.

Trivia

The Witch was originally supposed to also give the player several magical items to help them on their journey, but they have been mostly removed from the v1 release of the game (save for one mention) and fully removed in v2. The items were:

• A floating orb of light, used to explain why the player can travel at night.
• A magic tent to explain why the player doesn't need to find shelter to sleep in.
• A money bag that couldn't be stolen.

Gallery

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  Not expecting a visitor.

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  Side view.

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  Don't ask about her jaw.

• 

  Don't ask about her dark business.

• 

  A red herring.