Where the Cat and Wolf Play... Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Quest
Suggested level: 25
Group: Secondary Quests
Location: Velen
You will receive this quest automatically when you reach the village of Honorton and kill the alghouls (24,25) you encounter there.
If you reached the village after reading the contract posted on the notice board and and thus you received the "Contract: The Beast of Honorton" quest:
Geralt would often state that every witcher contract is the same. Read a notice, find who posted it, argue over the reward, seek out witnesses, etc., ad nauseam. I, however, always held that beneath these superficial similarities lay an ocean of difference. For example, Geralt would sometimes discover his employers had brought the beast upon themselves, while other times he'd learn killing the monster in question was but part of someone's larger (usually nefarious) scheme. And once, in Honorton... Ah, now that was another contract altogether.
If you found the village on your own:
Life in Velen is not easy. Bandits and monsters prowl the woods. Armies trample the fields and raid the granaries. Disease is on everyone's lips - literally. Yet, as the popular saying in those parts went, nothing's so bad that it can't get worse - the truth of which the inhabitants of Honorton learned in the most brutal way possible. Their entire village was murdered, leaving only necrophages to walk the paths between its huts.
Related points of interest
Honorton
Velen / Novigrad
Prior quests
To begin Where the Cat and Wolf Play... you must first complete Contract: The Beast of Honorton.
Quest stages of Where the Cat and Wolf Play...
1. Explore the village using your Witcher Senses.
There are many clues in the village that you can explore, but all you have to do is examine the head of the leshen you find in the largest of the houses...
...the corpse of a man who looks like someone important that is in the barn...
...and the corpse of another man in one of the other huts.
In the barn you will come across one more alghoul (25), and two more alghouls (23) will come to the village after a while. When you have examined all the necessary clues, you will notice a little girl who ran through the village and hid somewhere.
2. Use your Witcher Senses to find the girl.
In the place where you spotted the girl you will find a doll and footprints of a child. Take the doll and follow the footprints until you reach the tree behind which the girl is hiding.
The girl will be very scared. To learn something from her you must first calm her down. You can use Delusion (1) and then you will get extra XP or just give her the doll you found. She will then tell you about another witch who was the perpetrator of the village massacre and give you his medallion she found in the barn - School of the Cat Medallion.
It turned out the brutal perpetrator of the massacre of Honorton was not a monster nor even a bandit, but one of Geralt's fellow practitioners - a witcher from the ill-famed School of the Cat.
3. Follow the tracks in the stone circle using your Witcher Senses.
Go to the stone circle, which is located northeast of the village, and find and examine the footprints of another witcher.
4. Follow the School of the Cat witcher's tracks using your Witcher Senses.
Follow the footprints and kill the pack of wolves (5) that will stand in your way. You will find traces of fresh blood nearby. Following the traces, you will reach the stone sculptures where wounded Gaetan will be sitting. Talk to him.
You can attack him without talking to him much longer or listen to his version of what happened in Honorton first. If you listen to his version and decide to spare him, he will give you the location of his safe deposit box and you will receive another quest - Take What You Want.
Warning: Before you go to get the treasure, return to the girl and take her to her relatives, because if you travel too far away the quest will fail.
Gaetan, a witcher from the School of the Cat, murdered people he had sworn to protect. They themselves were, to say the least, not without sin - instead of showing due gratitude for his completion of a dangerous contract, they had tried to take his life in an underhanded manner. Be that as it may, if the matter had been put before a judge, Gaetan would have surely ended on the gallows. But Geralt was no judge. He was a witcher.
5. (Optional) Kill the School of the Cat witcher.
If you decide to kill him, the fight will begin. He's a witcher, so he'll be using the quen sign. If you let him use the swallow, he will blind you with a bomb instead, making it harder to fight him for a while.
When you kill him, you should be able to find a witcher's steel sword - Teigr, in his corpse.
Warning: Sometimes (I think it's random) you will only find a common silver sword in his corpse, so if you care about getting this sword, it's best to save the game before you start talking to Gaetan.
Geralt held his duty was to protect sentient beings from threats no others could vanquish - no matter whether the beings in question were cheats or saints. Gaetan had proven himself just such a threat, so Geralt paid no heed to his justifications and killed his fellow witcher.
6. Escort the girl from Honorton to her relatives in Oreton.
Go back to the girl and talk to her. You'll automatically go together to her auntie in Oreton.
It doesn't matter much what you tell the aunt about what happened in the village. If you offer her money for food (40 crowns), you will get extra XP and the aunt will be treating the girl a little better.
As for the little girl who was the sole survivor of the massacre, the witcher did the only thing he could - he took her to her kin. He then bid farewell, hoping she would be given a warm nook to sleep in and a bowl of nourishing vittles every evening.
If you visit Oreton some time later, you will meet a girl there again. You'll get a little gift from her, a thank you card drawn by her.
If you go too far away from the village and therefore do not take the girl to her family.
As for the little girl… to speak truth, I don't know what became of her. Perhaps she managed to find her aunt in Oreton on her own. Or perhaps she ended in a wolf's belly.
After completing Where the Cat and Wolf Play... you will get or will be able to get Take What You Want.