Plague maiden

Associated quest

 * A Towerful of Mice

Bestiary entry

 * ''"Patients seem to have hallucinations of a woman covered in scabs and boils, with rats scurrying about all around her. These ravings subsided after an administration of henbane and poppy extract."
 * — Joachimn von Gratz's notes, Vilmerius Hospital in Novigrad


 * When plague ravages a region, a spirit will sometimes walk its lands, a ghost resembling an ill woman whose flesh rots off her bones and in whose wake crawls a cavalcade of rats. No one knows whether this spirit brings the pox with her or is merely drawn to it like a moth to a light. Yet it is certain that she delights in dealing pain and suffering, in hearing the howling and moaning of men.


 * Many have called into question the very existence of plague maidens, or pestae, as they are sometimes called. Only two sightings of such a creature have ever been recorded, both during times of raging epidemic.


 * As the name "plague maiden" suggests, these wraiths take the appearance of females, though exactly why that is remains a mystery. Some speculate they, like other such specters, arise from the powerful emotional charge associated with certain circumstances of death, such as death preceded by a long and particularly painful illness.


 * Not much is known about how to fight a plague maiden, though one can assume they possess many traits in common with other phantoms and wraiths. They undoubtedly pose a great danger, though a witcher's immunities should at least prevent him from catching the contagious illnesses they carry.

Pestmaid Vierge de la peste Fanciulle della malattia Morowa Dziewica