Crookback Bog is a huge, brooding marsh in eastern Velen, all black water, sucking mud and rotten trees, with a low mist that never quite burns off. Half-collapsed huts sink slowly into the peat, plank walkways vanish under the muck, and everywhere you look there are ghastly wooden shrines hung with sweets and treats that have long since gone to maggots. This is where the Ladies of the Wood live, and even the bravest villagers in Velen keep well away from it.

The Ladies, better known as the Crones, are three witches called Brewess, Weavess and Whispess. Peasants throughout the province pray to them in hard times, and the old custom is a horrible one: a child is sent along the Trail of Treats, a path of sweets leading into the bog, and is never seen again. Fear and desperation keep the cult alive, and nobody dares to say out loud where the missing children go.

In the game, the bog is the setting of the main quest Ladies of the Wood. Geralt follows the trail from the shrine, finds the orphanage hidden deep in the swamp, and eventually faces the Crones themselves. Ciri had come this way before him, and her flight through the marsh with the Wild Hunt’s Imlerith on her heels is told in Ciri’s Story: Fleeing the Bog.

The marsh is full of drowners, and the hounds of the Wild Hunt have been seen among the reeds. It is one of the most atmospheric and dangerous places in Velen, and one of the most memorable in the whole game.