Ice Plains

The Ice Plains are the frozen wasteland where The Witcher ends. It is not a region you can travel to on foot: it is Vizima as it would look buried under ice, a vision of the world in the age of the White Frost. The sun is always up here, whatever the in-game clock says, and the endless white makes it one of the most unsettling places in the game.

The vision belongs to Jacques de Aldersberg, Grand Master of the Order of the Flaming Rose. He has seen this future in his visions, and he uses it to justify everything he has done: his crusade, the mutants he has bred and the chaos in Vizima are, in his eyes, the only way to save humanity from the cold.

In The Witcher

In the Epilogue quest Frozen Reflections, the Grand Master transports Geralt to the Ice Plains, shows him what Vizima will become, and then retreats to his temple at the far end of the frozen landscape. The road there is a strange procession of familiar faces. Triss or Shani, depending on the choice made in Chapter III, fights at Geralt’s side for a while, Abigail either attacks or offers potions depending on her fate in Chapter I, and the King of the Wild Hunt appears briefly before sending wraiths after him. Depending on the side Geralt took in the conflict between the Order and the Scoia’tael, Celina, Toruviel or White Rayla offer a boon, and Siegfried and/or Yaevinn stand in his way.

At the temple, the Grand Master fights alongside his Omens of Fire. When he falls, the King of the Wild Hunt comes to claim his soul. Looting the body recovers the secrets stolen from Kaer Morhen, which finally closes the main quest Witchers’ Secrets. Geralt also learns the truth about the Grand Master: he is Alvin, the boy from the earlier chapters, who was thrown back in time when he teleported away at the end of Chapter IV.

In The Witcher 3

The idea returns in The Witcher 3. In Through Time and Space, one of the worlds Geralt crosses with Avallac’h on the way to Tir ná Lia is a frozen wasteland, which Avallac’h presents as a world already taken by the White Frost.

Good to know

• Geralt is cut off from the rest of the world here, so prepare before talking to the Grand Master at the start of the Epilogue. Allies and buffs along the road depend on choices made throughout the game.
• The final fight is much easier if you focus on the Grand Master himself rather than the Omens of Fire.