Elthon

A man by the old quarry near Vergen who buys harpy feathers from Geralt, secretly to turn himself into a queen harpy.

Elthon is a man living in a hut at the northern edge of the old quarry southwest of Vergen in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. He was added to the game with patch 1.3, together with his quest, and he is one of the stranger people Geralt meets in Upper Aedirn.

In The Witcher 2

In A Sackful of Fluff, a Chapter 2 side quest available on both Roche’s and Iorveth’s paths, Elthon presents himself as the purchasing agent of a collector of harpy feathers and pays Geralt for pinions and tail feathers taken from dead harpies. The first order is for twelve feathers. Then he wants many more, and then a few more again.

Geralt grows suspicious, and with good reason: there never was a collector. Elthon was buying the feathers for himself, in pursuit of his dream of becoming a queen harpy, an ugly duckling turning into a swan, as he sees it. When Geralt returns to the hut after the final delivery, what he finds there is, in the words of his own journal, beyond description.

Good to know

Harpies nest in the old quarry and in the woods north of Vergen, so the feathers are easy to farm nearby.
The quest pays in orens and ends with Elthon’s trophy, which is weak in combat but memorable to look at.
If Geralt refuses the last small batch of feathers, the quest fails and the truth about the “collector” stays hidden.