Saint Lebioda’s Hospital

Saint Lebioda’s Hospital is one of the most prominent buildings in Vizima’s Temple Quarter in The Witcher. It is named after the prophet Lebioda but was founded in a former temple of Melitele, and a three-bodied statue of the goddess still stands inside. A garden tended by a gardener, a retired mercenary, surrounds the building.

It is not a cheerful place. Vizima is in the grip of the Catriona plague, and the hospital takes in its victims. Most of them die, and their bodies are burned in a pit behind the building to slow the spread of the disease. The Order of the Flaming Rose has recently taken the hospital under its protection, so an Order guard may stand at the door. This is also where Shani works as a medic, which is why Geralt keeps coming back.

In The Witcher

The hospital matters most in Chapter II, when Geralt is investigating Salamandra for Captain Raymond Maarloeve. In The Crown Witness, the jailer reveals that a captured Salamandra agent has been moved to the hospital. Shani and the guards send Geralt away during the day, but at night the dying prisoner manages to say only one word, “Kalkstein”, before thugs sent by Ramsmeat attack. When the prisoner dies, Geralt returns around midnight for Anatomy of a Crime, where Shani performs an autopsy in the back room. With the right questions, she finds Zerrikanian tsetse fly eggs in the dead man’s brain, the clue that exposes Maarloeve as an impostor: the real captain is dead and Azar Javed has taken his place. Both quests are part of Vizima Confidential.

Shani also starts Old Friend of Mine here: a surgeon at the hospital has found that celandine can slow the plague, and she asks Geralt for five blossoms. Bringing them unlocks her monster anatomy lessons.

In Chapter III, the nurse who starts Medic in Distress waits in the hospital garden, worried about her grandmother. In The Source, Triss sends Geralt to the hospital to fetch Alvin, but Shani objects and the boy is gone: Dandelion is waiting there instead and tells Geralt that two men have taken Alvin.

Good to know

• In Chapter II, Geralt can stay at the hospital for free and meditate.
• If the guard at the door will not let you in, a bribe does the trick.
• Keep chatting with the nurses in Chapter II for an odd conversation about poisonings that leave the victims’ tongues blackened, a nod to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.