The Witcher 3's gloomiest ghost story proves nobody does side quests like CD Projekt Red

A Towerful of Mice is set during Keira Metz's storyline in Velen, and with a recommended level of six, is one of The Witcher 3's earliest ghost stories. Cobble together a haunted tower, frightened locals, and love persevering, and you're left with a traditional Gothic horror set in brackish Velen.

Our destination, Fyke Isle, is wreathed in fog. Sailing towards it, dark woods on either bank of a thin river, there are just two bright spots in the night – Geralt's bobbing white bun, and flashes of a pale drowner as it flits between the trees. I've completed A Towerful of Mice once before, but rather unhelpfully, the only part I remember is getting there via boat. Everything else is a mystery, but the basic premise is this: superstitious locals have asked sorceress-in-hiding Keira Metz to lift a curse from Fyke Isle. In turn, Keira asks Geralt for help – if only to keep the locals on-side while mage hunters scour the land.

Quest Log

Trick or treat

In the basement, ghostly peasants wonder why the room is packed with caged rats. Two flights of creaky stairs above, the nobleman's daughter pleads with her father to assist the locals. An unseen voice alerts them to the angry mob downstairs and their wispy shades disappear, but in the modern-day, a skeleton lies beneath a chair the nobleman was sitting in. By now, Fyke Isle's dread sits heavily: I'm jumping at every creaky floorboard and darting rat, and climbing up the tower feels as if I'm being drawn towards an unseen horror.

In that regard, A Towerful of Mice has more in common with classic ghost stories The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House than The Witcher. It's a testament to how rapidly CD Projekt Red can knit and swaddle us into a story. The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077's quests thrust agonizing decisions upon players, but their consequences are only so monumental because we've been made to care so quickly.

Spoilers ahead

Like many of The Witcher 3's quests, A Towerful of Mice's violence hides heartbreak. In a hidden laboratory at the top of the tower, the ghost of the nobleman's daughter, Anabelle, reveals herself. Speaking to Geralt, she recalls taking a paralyzing potion – made to look like poison – to avoid dying at the mob's hands. The mob leaves, but when Anabelle awakens much later, she's still paralyzed – and being eaten alive by rats. She died thinking her lover, Graham, abandoned her (he was part of the mob, albeit trying to stop it), and suggests the curse will be lifted if Geralt brings her remains for Graham to bury.

The story adds up, but something smells rotten. And while I don't remember how A Towerful of Mice goes, 160 hours spent in The Witcher 3 is enough for me to trust my gut. I turn down Anabelle, who then asks if Geralt will instead bring Graham to seek her forgiveness. That seems fair – assuming Graham is willing – so I row back across the river and find him in a small fishing village. Still traumatized by that night, Graham is eager to help put Anabelle to rest and returns to Fyke Isle with Geralt.

Back in the tower's laboratory, Anabelle is revealed in her true form: a jawless Plague Maiden with sunken skin and a tendrilled tongue. To lift the curse, Graham has to prove he still loves Anabelle by kissing her. And while Geralt's professionalism has been a comfort throughout the quest, it doesn't help me when the cutscene's camera moves to follow Graham – moonlight shining on his neck makes it seem exposed in the darkness, and watching him draw closer to Anabelle feels like watching fingers inch towards a bear trap.

In a final Gothic flourish, true love wins out. Sort of. For a moment, Anabelle is a young woman again – then she's gone, and Graham is dead on the floor. The curse is lifted, quest complete, yet there's no celebration. Fyke Isle is still unbearably sad. But for an hour, it was real.