What would be really nice to know is if he murders the people he eats or just eats the ones he finds dead.


Did your Geralt off him? No? Why?

I left him alive because I had no hard evidence to suggest he had been hurting anybody, but had it transpired that he was in fact killing those he ate, then he would have been killed.

Does anything bad happen if you let him live? And why do the lumberjacks get angry if you kill him?

Nothing bad happens bar the lumberjacks getting angry, but alternatively nothing good happens if you let him live despite his insistence that he could help with something. As for why the lumberjacks angry, well, maybe they don't know he's a cannibal and they think you just killed innocent ol' Gramps. Or maybe Gramps owed them a ton of money, who knows.

Well he does have a veritable garden of Echinops just outside of his hut, which he runs to get away from you (and or pick up a weapon). The sign of murder, as we learned in Chapter I.

Good catch!

I'd even add, that he could be quite the devious killer. When Geralt arrives in the swamp, Gramps waits there for someone who will ecort him to the shrine of Melitele, so he can worship her... Since we know that Melitele doesn't like killing anything/eating meat (a nurse at Lebioda Hospital says so!) we have to offer a plant (!) at her altar, so we'll get the three Sephiroth stones. Now my question is, why would a cannibal worship a goddess that specifically doesn't allow meat as offerings?

Isn't it possible, that Gramps only asks people, who arrive in the swamp, for this escort through this dangerous path, so they die on the way and he can eat them? During the whole quest he screams and runs when monsters attack Geralt, but when you choose to fight him he suddenly has an axe and knows how to use it.

Am I reading way too much into this, or does anyone else think I'm onto something?

I'd really love to know what the writers intended here or if it was written this ambiguously on purpose and they themselves haven't decided what's the underlying truth.

I think you are right. Let the monsters do the killing for him.

Remember after Geralt discovers his dark secret, he also mentions he once had to fight off a drowned one for his meat! One doesn't simply get near a monster to try to take food from it, without literally 'fighting' it I'd suspect, as that monster is going to look at him as his next meal.

Geralt proved to be too powerful, an individual, so he wasn't able to off him along the road. But then invites him to his house... Maybe he hoped Geralt would attempt to sleep at his house or something, and he could take him out in the night? Or perhaps he hoped that rather nasty Coccacidium archespore, that appears to follow the same paths Gramps wants you to go on, would get to you (as it also pops up near his house as well)....

According to the archespore entry;

"Some crimes are so terrible that they fill people with terror and offend the gods. The criminal's ill will and the cruelty of his deed conceive a curse that brings the archespore to life. The beast attacks innocent creatures hatefully, trying to take vengeance until justice is done."

I thought I'd necro this thread since I'm replaying TW1EE and I killed Gramps this time instead of letting him live as I had in the past.

After resolving the situation both ways, I think Gramps is quite evil, and he may be very, very evil. I suspect there's a lot more to his story, but you never find out what it is. I don't think you can believe anything he tells you about himself.

I agree that his typical MO is to dupe newcomers into escorting "kindly old Gramps" into the swamp. Monsters kill them, then he takes the corpses and eats them. This raises two questions: how does he get the corpses away from the monsters, and why does an old man turn cannibal and live alone in a dangerous swamp?

Because he's not just an old man, if he's a man at all. He clearly exerts some control over echinopsae, and he's a lot stronger than a normal human. At best Gramps has made some sort of evil pact. At worst he's simply masquerading as human.

There is a character known as gramps who appears in the Witcher novels, who bears a lot of similarities to the one in the game. The novels do not reveal much of this character's story either, but if I had read the novels before playing The Witcher I would not have hesitated in deciding whether or not to kill him.

I assume you mean you wouldn't have hesitated to kill him, right? That makes sense. I haven't read the books, so I'm going solely by the game.

I wasn't sure how I felt about it because I let him live before. Once I killed him though, I knew I made the right choice!

I was intentionally being vague so as not to spoil anything for those who may not have read the books. But, sounds like the game makes it clear too (when I played, I let him live and didn't learn much, I don't know what happens if Geralt kills him).

Oh yeah, sorry!

That's how it is in the game: if you let him live, you learn nothing; if you kill him...well, you can only conclude that no one "good" would go out that way.

He's one of the most memorable characters in the game, IMO.

You have yet to meet him. Don't worry, you won't miss it!

Spoilers included:

I will just Necro it again to say thanks for the Necro. I actually think GRAMPS is different, cause the book character does clearly eat and rqpe children, cooks them as a soup, and lives in the woods, not a swamp, irrc. So this is probably the direct alternative, what would you do with a character that just is different in how he behaves as a cannibal.

Or they just depicted him a bit off. It's just nebulous enough to keep your decision open.