As a game series aimed at mature audiences, The Witcher has a history of disturbing events and quests, either overt or disturbing in their implications. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is no different. Geralt travels the continent in search of Ciri, and along the way gets caught up in events that best belong in stories or nightmares.
The rich folklore The Witcher franchise borrows from provides a wealth of inspiration and opportunity for unique storytelling. These quests include reimaginings of devil-figures, monsters from folklore, and events in stories that a Western audience may not be familiar with. Either way, here are some of the more gruesome and disturbing quests The Wild Hunt has to offer.
Please note: some of these quests involve violence against women and children, so keep that in mind if reading forward.
10 Possession
This quest occurs in Skellige. Geralt tries to help Cerys an Craite lift a curse that Cerys believes has been placed on Jarl Udalryk. The curse turns out to be a hym, a dark creature that attaches itself to a host who feels terrible guilt. The hym feeds by forcing the host to self-harm.
There are two ways to get rid of the hym, the “safest” being someone else believing they committed a terrible deed, but then realizing the deed did not occur. This forces the hym to leave. Cerys tells Geralt to throw Udalryk’s baby into a burning oven. The choice is on a timer; throwing the baby into the oven while his father watches is heartbreaking and hard to watch.
9 Where the Cat and Wolf Play
Geralt enters a village, only to find corpses littering every home and street. The bodies have been mutilated in terrible ways. A little investigation reveals the only survivor of the massacre: a little girl. She’s terrified at the sight of Geralt’s witcher eyes.
Geralt finds the culprit, a witcher from the School of the Cat. He discovers that the village tried to renege on a contract by attempting to kill the Cat witcher. Sick of being threatened with murder, the Cat went into a rage and murdered the entire village, but spared the little girl. The brutality of the Cat’s actions, the cruelty of the villagers, and the empathy shared between the two witchers makes for a disturbing quest.
8 A Towerful of Mice
This quest features a haunted island with a disturbing past. Geralt discovers the curse on the island is tied to the ghost of a young woman, Anabelle.
There was a peasant revolt, and the island was stormed by an angry mob. Anabelle tried to kill herself by drinking a potion she believed would kill her. Instead, it paralyzed her and only gave the appearance of death. The mob left, and Anabelle was eaten, conscious and alive, by plague-ridden rats. If that isn’t disturbing enough, her ghost is revealed to be a Plague Maiden, a wraith that spreads pestilence and plague.
7 Family Matters
The Bloody Baron is known as a character who exemplifies the shades of gray The Witcher games try to express. The Baron beat his wife and terrorized his family to the point where they had to flee from him. He’s left without his family, who have gone missing.
One of the most disturbing quests at this point in the game is the Botchling, a creature formed from the Baron’s unborn child. The very nature of the creature is upsetting, but then Geralt must escort the Baron holding the Botchling, which may attack the Baron if it becomes distressed. The Baron holding his unborn child which had become a monster certainly classifies as disturbing.
6 La Cage au Fou
La Cage au Fou’s monster is a rare Spotted Wight. The house is covered in spoons, and a curse is written on the wall.
While Geralt has the option to kill the wight to get what he needs, another option is to lift the curse. Doing so requires eating the Wight’s Brew with the wight. The curse is lifted if this is done correctly, and the wight is revealed to be a very human woman, who had been cursed by another familiar figure. That she was reduced to becoming a hated monster is a punishment that went far beyond the crime.
5 Get Junior
On his quest to find Ciri, Geralt discovered she had contacted Whoreson Junior. The crime lord is difficult to find, and when Geralt eventually does track him down, his home is nothing short of a house of horrors.
Junior is known for his proclivity towards hiring workers of the night, and entering his room means being confronted with the butchered and unclothed bodies of the women he “hires”. Unfortunately, violence against women remains a trope to signal a character’s lack of a moral center. Geralt has the choice to kill or spare Junior, but this quest never quite gets the closure it should.
4 Scenes From A Marriage
The von Everic Mansion in Hearts of Stone is creepy, to begin with, but the sad history of the occupants and the dark magic seeped into the property adds an additional dimension of disturbing.
First up is the Caretaker, a guardian of the property with no face and a gash for a mouth. The Caretaker dutifully kills all trespassers with a shovel, then buries the bodies with said shovel. Even Geralt is shaken up by the encounter and says what we’re all thinking. The house itself is haunted by the previous lady of the mansion, who has become a wraith. All in all, the house is a monument to von Everec’s crimes and the legacy of O’Dimm.
3 Nameless
Nameless happens in Skellige during the quest to find Ciri. Geralt and Yennefer are searching for a man who had seen her, but upon finding him they see he’s been dead for a good while.
Yennefer decides to use necromancy on the corpse, which Geralt has the option of objecting. Yennefer argues that finding Ciri is more important than social taboos, and uses the sacred garden to provide energy for the spell. The corpse reanimates, and is clearly in pain. He tells them his name is Skjall, and relates what happened to Ciri. The entire process is incredibly disturbing, as Skjall’s corpse is badly decomposed, and the effects on his voice make it sound unnatural and unsettling.
2 Whatsoever a Man Soweth…
The final quest in Hearts of Stone requires Geralt to make a choice of letting O’Dimm take von Everec’s soul, or challenging Master Mirror at his own game. Both options are disturbing in their own right.
While letting von Everec die is the easy route and provides a boon, Geralt watches von Everec’s last moments as O’Dimm looms over him, grabs his head, and sucks out his soul until all that’s left is an empty skull. More disturbing is challenging O’Dimm, where, upon winning, the entity reveals something of its true nature. His face becomes gaunt and skull-like, his voice becomes demonic, he begins speaking in tongues (which happen to be Antillean Creole French, Georgian, and Ossetian), and moves at jerking, unnatural angles as he is banished.
1 Ladies of the Wood
The Ladies of the Wood decorate the path to their home very tastefully. Flowers line the pathway, and it feels very charming compared to the rest of the war-torn and wild swamp. The only thing that feels off are the ears hanging off the trees.
Geralt speaks to the Ladies of the Wood, who speak through a tapestry of three beautiful, unclothed women. Later, however, we see that the Crones are monstrous, with limbs of human children hanging from their clothes. The three are cannibals, and all dealings with the Crones come with a price, which could result in death, or just having to look at them. Either way, the Ladies of the Wood are horrifying enough to be amongst the most disturbing encounters in The Witcher 3.
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