Xanthe

1. Xanthe’s Court

Court Activities open after the prologue’s last mission, Smoke and Ashes, and the job is the same as with the other two: disrupt enough of a court member’s business to raise their anger to maximum. Xanthe’s holdings lie across Tantari Woods, The Silts and Southern St. Tyna’s Grove. There are fifteen activities, and how many fill the bar is disputed: PowerPyx says about 75% of them; Fextralife, approximately twelve of fifteen; Game8 sets the floor at nine court quests and says the ninth is the one that brings the lantern to you. Treat nine as the floor and the full Anger Level as the actual signal.

The groupings look like a disagreement and mostly are not. Her four road ambushes are sometimes split into two headings of two, Abducted Girls and Artefact Transports, and sometimes kept under one, Xanthe’s Transports. That accounts for thirteen marked activities either way; add the two hidden ones and you reach fifteen. The genuine inconsistency is inside Game8, whose walkthrough hub lists three relic transports and three human transports while its own boss guide lists two of each.

• 1

  Xanthe’s Recruiters — three

  Taste of Power, Just a Bit More and Come Home, also grouped as Blood Guard Recruiters. Speak to the guards, defeat the Blood Guards and interact with the golden boxes, three Time Segments each; the same activities are also described as collecting blood phials from reliquaries — almost certainly the same containers, but nothing we read says so in as many words.

• 2

  Xanthe’s Excavations — three, and the one with a boss in it

  Unsealed Secrets, Malevolent Presence and Bloodied Dagger, also grouped as Ancient Digsites. You fight through ruins, three segments each, investigate the camps and collect notes near the dig sites, and there are enemies and a boss, Armaya. Nothing we read gives Armaya a strategy, a level or a drop, so go in expecting a fight rather than a clear-out.

• 3

  Xanthe’s Transports — four road ambushes in two flavours

  Fair Maiden and Chosen One, the Abducted Girls, and Past Glory and When Two Dogs…, the Artefact Transports. All four play the same way: intercept the enemies moving along the road and defeat all the soldiers in the encounter. The split is the informative way to read them, because it tells you what is being carried in each pair — and the first pair is the thread the Cycle of Love picks up later.

• 4

  Xanthe’s Blood Guards — three camps

  Unquenchable Thirst, Teach with Pain and Loophole, also grouped as Blood Guard Mentors. The simplest of her activities by every account: simple combat encounters at three locations, where you defeat all enemies in the camp. If you are short on Time Segments and need the anger bar moved, these and the transports involve the least standing around.

• 5

  Home Sweet Home — the hidden one behind a door in Silts Tower

  An unmarked quest that counts as one of her Court Activities. The entrance is at Silts Tower on the south-western edge of the map: go in the ground-floor door and up through the inside of the tower to the top floor. It costs four Time Segments to open, which is more than any ordinary activity on this page. What it opens is a looping dream sequence, and the way back out to the open world is specific — inspect a well during the second group of enemies on a subsequent cycle, which opens a cave and continues from there. Completing four full cycles unlocks a bronze trophy. Two warnings, and both matter: keep a manual save before you go through the door, and escaping the dream early loses the secret ending the four cycles lead to, Together Forever, because the quest is not replayable — the quest itself has no fail state, and it counts as the Court Activity Gargoyle Manufacture. The reward it gives is a legendary accessory, the Astrologer’s Ring, from an enemy that appears after you leave the dream.

• 6

  A Dubious Gift — the MISSABLE one

  It falls under a Xanthe heading, Cathedral Ritual, and it is HIGHLY MISSABLE. Here is how it starts and how it is lost. The Deacon at Svartrau Cathedral gives it once you have started A Monk and a Saint and talked to Albertus, and asks you to find the cathedral caretaker, Radu; the reward is 150 XP and the Library Key. It is gone for good if you find out about the crypt under the cathedral some other way first — starting Night Terrors, or going into the cathedral’s treasury or library on your own — or if you are at maximum Infamy. So do not explore the cathedral’s treasury or library before the Deacon has given you this quest. It is on this page because it is one of her fifteen, and the fifteenth you would otherwise never look for.

• 7

  What her court costs in time

  Her questline totals 43 Time Segments — a segment more than Bakir’s 42, and the largest of the three courts. The ordinary activities take three segments (three in-game hours) each, and Home Sweet Home alone is four. The Cycle of Love adds four more on top. Against thirty in-game days, with the story finishable in seven to ten, her court is the single biggest discretionary spend the game asks for, which is the practical reason to stop at the nine or so that fill the bar rather than clearing all fifteen — unless the two hidden ones are what you came for.

2. The Cycle of Love

Her Infamy quest. After the ninth court quest a guard named Leonard appears and hands over Xanthe’s Lantern, with an invitation to investigate her mansion; the lantern is the quest. The destination is Howling Keep, in the southern part of the map, north-west of Tantari Woods and south of Svartrau City. It costs four Time Segments and can be done by day or by night.

Read this before you go anywhere near Svartrau Cathedral. Xanthe can be fought directly at the cathedral at night, which skips The Cycle of Love entirely — and doing so removes the option to spare her, which is the version that changes the finale. Put the other way round: the option to spare her only appears if you defeat her during The Cycle of Love. That cathedral encounter is part of a different quest, A Monk and a Saint, and in it you first have to beat several Knight Bannerets. So the cathedral fight is real, but it costs you a branch.

• 1

  The entrance, and the rule the whole keep runs on

  Cross the bridge to the keep and clear what is waiting — two spirits at the entrance. Then place the lantern in the hand of the statue by the entrance, which dissolves the red vines blocking the way. That is the mechanic for the entire building, and this is the constraint that makes it a puzzle rather than a chore: removing a lantern closes the door it was holding open. There are three lanterns and more statues than three lanterns can serve, so progress is a matter of shuttling them. Use Focus Mode to work out which door a statue controls.

• 2

  The main chamber and the left stairs

  The main chamber holds a corrupted tree and three statues that want lanterns. Take the left stairs, ignore the first statue and go through the right-hand door: speak to the captive girl there, Iasmina, and pick up a lantern. Put that lantern on the balcony statue to open up the rest of the floor, then take the lantern back off the hallway statue. Halfway down, the right-hand door needs a lantern of its own and holds a manual, Cycle of Ruin.

• 3

  The right stairs — the legendary loot is here

  Place a lantern at the top of the right stairs and loot the rooms. There are three things: The Kingslayer, a legendary greatsword; a Recipe for Potent Aetheric Attunement; and, in the northern room, the Relic of Saint Dasius, a Legendary Amulet and one of the saint’s relics that A Bulwark Against Darkness accepts for the Arbiter’s armour (Vandal and Game8’s Bulwark page; Game8’s Cycle of Love walkthrough ties it to Forge It Anew, the sword quest, instead). This is the part of the keep it would be easiest to walk past, and it is the only part with a named downstream use.

• 4

  Underground — the trapdoor and the Key to the Kennels

  Put a lantern at the base of the right stairs, clear the enemies and go into the room to the south, a slaughterhouse. Taking the lantern from there unlocks a trapdoor down. The tunnel runs through several enemy-filled sections; what you are looking for is the Key to the Kennels, which gets you back up — PowerPyx puts it on a glowing body, Game8 in bone piles. Inspect the environmental clues down here too; they are about what became of the girls taken in the transports you have been ambushing above ground. Expect waves of supernatural enemies before the trapdoor appears.

• 5

  The painted door, and the last two statues

  Back up to the first upstairs hallway. A lantern on the statue there opens the far door; then take the lantern off the outer statue and carry it down the corridor, because the final door needs lanterns on two adjacent statues at once. That is the last shuttle, and it is the one most likely to strand you — if a door you came through has closed behind you, the lantern rule is the reason, and the answer is to work out which statue the lantern in your hand belongs to rather than to look for another lantern.

• 6

  Chariklea, before the fight

  Past the last door you meet a girl named Chariklea. Your responses to her here do not specifically matter, because she does not respond directly back to you. What she is — Xanthe’s once-dead daughter, brought back and kept “alive”, and the point of everything the keep has shown you — and the game offers a moral choice about her of the same kind it offers about her mother. Nothing we read describes what that choice leads to, so this page does not say.

3. The Duel: Xanthe

Xanthe, the Dark Mistress, is a mage vampire who fights with blood magic and with her claws. The fight has three phases: she loses a third of her HP each time you strip her armour — empty the yellow bar first, then work the white bar down to its red markers. Fight her at night, for the Shadowstep advantage.

• 1

  What she throws, and which of it can be blocked

  The set: she hexes the ground three times, charges blood pools, summons exploding Specters and unleashes blood tentacles. The rule is a clean split — dodge the ground-based incantations and area attacks by dashing or Shadowstepping, and block or Perfect Block the telegraphed red tentacle combos, which come from the left, the right or overhead. At the cathedral she also uses unblockable blood glyphs, teleports and hovers around the arena, and uses blood whips at range.

• 2

  The blood orbs — the only thing that can undo your progress

  Every account agrees here, which makes it the most reliable instruction on the page. At the last phase she teleports away and summons orbs of blood, and siphons them to restore her health. Destroy the orbs. She is invulnerable while healing; breaking them interrupts the recovery, deals damage and staggers her briefly, which is a counter-attack window. And the number that turns this from a threat into a countdown: she only does this twice. Survive two rounds of orbs and there is no more healing left in her.

• 3

  The illusions, if you meet her at the cathedral

  Only one account describes this, and only for the cathedral encounter: she creates multiple illusions of herself that explode when struck, announced by the line “From my blood, arise!” It is on the page because the line is the tell, and because no account of Howling Keep mentions illusions — which may mean the two encounters are not the same fight, or may only mean nobody wrote it down. Nothing we read compares them.

• 4

  The first choice: a deal, or not

  There are two lines. “What can you offer me?” takes her deal: she becomes an ally, and clears Greifberg Castle of its supernatural enemies and gives you intelligence on Brencis. A second benefit — you also skip her trap, the looping room before the throne room. She removes the supernatural enemies during the closing sequence, making it easier. “Go to Hell, Xanthe.” is the other line, and it opens the drain and kill options instead. Sparing her still counts for the bronze trophy The Dark Mistress, whose wording is “Neutralise the threat posed by Xanthe” rather than anything about killing.

• 5

  Drain or kill, and what each forfeits

  Draining is a night action, and it is the route to the Blood Surge Vampirism ability; killing her outright misses it. Draining is recommended on three counts — the ability, a Legendary Amulet looted from her body, and the chance to invite her in — while a Corrupted Pendant comes off her body if you kill her; nothing we read says whether those are the same item. Killing her means she does not appear at the final battle at all. The trade looks different from the other end: spare her and you give up draining her on the spot, but her blood can be obtained elsewhere as a consumable, so the ability is not necessarily lost with the choice. The quest pays 500 XP. ⚠️ Game8 and PowerPyx offer the drain at the keep; Vandal found no way to drink from her there — only spare or kill — and says drain is on offer only if you fight her at Svartrau Cathedral instead; its route to Blood Surge is a Vial of Xanthe’s Blood in a chest in the cathedral treasury, reached at night.

• 6

  Inviting her in, if you drained her

  The same second choice Bakir offers. “I’ll invite you in.” unlocks passive dialogue with her and has her attack Brencis during the final battle; “I’m not taking you with me.” leaves her in Anachora. Note the asymmetry with Bakir, because it is the kind of thing that looks like a mistake later: inviting Bakir in carries a caveat about how long his help lasts, and nothing we read attaches any such caveat to Xanthe. What each of these does to the ending is not described here, and no ending is described anywhere on this page.

Xanthe Completion

✅ Before Moving On to the Side Quests...