Crookback Bog Orphanage

The Orphans of Crookback Bog is a small swamp village deep in Crookback Bog, southwest of Downwarren, at the end of the Trail of Treats. A handful of low wooden huts and a pagan chapel stand on a patch of firmer ground among the reeds and dead trees, wrapped in mist. Children play hide and seek between the buildings and sing an odd little rhyme. Inside the chapel hangs the tapestry through which the Ladies of the Wood speak. The map describes a place where orphaned and unwanted children find a roof over their heads and a bowl of warm food, and that is exactly how it looks at first glance. Second glances are not recommended.

In The Witcher 3

The orphans are looked after by Gran, an old woman who seems not quite all there and refuses to talk to strangers. In Ladies of the Wood, Geralt needs Travik, the boy she keeps indoors, to tell him where to find Johnny. Johnny is not an orphan but a godling who lives in a burrow out in the marsh. To get Gran out of the way, Geralt either plays hide and seek with the girls (Mikula, Genny, Aynara and Yagna) or simply bribes them with treats. Once Johnny has his voice back, Gran agrees to call on the Crones, who first send Geralt to Downwarren.

Spoiler: when Geralt returns, one of the Crones makes a mark burn on Gran’s hand, and he recognises it. Gran is Anna Strenger, the Bloody Baron’s wife, bound to the Crones for a year in exchange for ending her pregnancy and put to work fattening the children for her masters’ table. What happens to her and the orphans afterwards depends on what Geralt did under the Whispering Hillock. In Return to Crookback Bog, the Baron, Tamara and the witch hunter Graden all converge on the orphanage, and if the spirit was freed, the children end up in the care of Marabella in Novigrad.