The Cockatrice Inn

The Cockatrice Inn stands on a bridge over the river between Corvo Bianco and Dun Tynne in Toussaint. Building right over a busy waterway was a smart move: boats can unload straight at the door, and not every cargo that comes ashore here has seen a customs officer. The house speciality is crayfish chowder, praised by travellers, commoners and knights alike, and the innkeeper is both a skilled cook and an eager Gwent player.

The name comes with a story. The owner, Adam de Guy, liked to tell guests how, as a young squire to a wandering knight, he had helped slay a fearsome cockatrice whose head then hung over the entrance for years. Then a scholar from Oxenfurt took a closer look and identified the “monster” as a crude assembly of pheasant, weasel and pig. The embarrassed de Guy took his trophy down, but the inn kept the name.

In The Witcher 3

The inn is one of the first places Geralt gets to know in Blood and Wine. In The Beast of Toussaint, Milton de Peyrac-Peyran brings him here to question the fisherman who found the Beast’s latest victim, and learns that the guards took the body to Corvo Bianco. A woman watching them from the inn, whom Milton takes for the innkeeper’s daughter, turns out to be a bruxa once Geralt follows the trail to the vineyard.

The notice for Big Game Hunter is posted outside the inn as well: the Koviri nobleman Count Beledal wants Geralt of Rivia as a guide for a hunt after Toussaint’s more exotic animals.

Good to know

• The inn has its own signpost, and Dulcinea Windmill, where Geralt first arrives in the duchy, is only a short ride away.
• Bring your deck: the innkeeper plays Gwent.
• Find it on the Toussaint interactive map.