Velen

Velen is what happens when two armies fight over a province and neither bothers to keep it. Flat, soggy country stretches south of the Pontar in every direction: reed-choked rivers, black bogs, thin birch and oak woods, muddy cart tracks and villages of grey timber huts with sagging thatch. Burned farms and fresh graves dot the fields, crows circle over the battlefields, and the gallows are so common that one of the first landmarks Geralt sees here is simply called the Hanged Man’s Tree. Along the roads stand weathered wooden shrines, some to the goddess Melitele, others to something far older and hungrier, often stained with blood. The sky is usually overcast. Nobody comes to Velen for the weather.

The game’s map sums the place up in one line: the former Temerian province has become a war-ravaged no man’s land. That nickname, No Man’s Land, is what everyone calls it now.

In The Witcher 3

Velen is the first big open region of the game and the setting for a large part of Act I. Nilfgaard’s armies have rolled over it, the Redanians have pulled back north, and the Temerian state has collapsed, so the real power on the ground is Phillip Strenger, the Bloody Baron, who rules from his hilltop fort with a band of ex-Temerian soldiers. Deserters, bandits and looters fill the gaps. Priests of the Eternal Fire and witch hunters drift in from Novigrad, while the peasants, starving and frightened, leave offerings for the Ladies of the Wood in the hope that someone, anyone, is listening.

Geralt arrives in The Nilfgaardian Connection, looking for traces of Ciri, and from there the story splits into two threads: the Baron’s missing family in Family Matters and the trail of the sorceress Keira Metz. Both end up in the swamps with the Crones, three ancient witches who rule the southern marshes and who once tried to hand Ciri over to the Wild Hunt.

Places in Velen

• Crow’s Perch region (northwest): Crow’s Perch, the Baron’s seat; the logging village of Blackbough with the Pellar’s hut; Heatherton, emptied by the Wild Hunt; and the abandoned river fort of Lornruk on the Pontar.
• Spitfire Bluff (west): the farming village of Midcopse and, in the woods to its northeast, Keira Metz’s cottage.
• The Mire: Lake Wyndamer with the cursed tower of Fyke Island, the elven ruins west of it, and fishing and farming villages such as Frischlow.
• The Descent: Lindenvale with its tavern and haunted cemetery, Benek, home of a gwent-playing old sage, and Reardon Manor.
• Crookback Bog (south): the swamp itself, Crookback Bog, with the orphanage at its heart, the village of Downwarren on its edge, and the Ancient Oak known as the Whispering Hillock just south of the village.
• Bald Mountain and the rest: Bald Mountain, where the trail of the Wild Hunt’s general Imlerith finally leads; Mudplough with the Inn at the Crossroads; and Grayrocks, with Mulbrydale and the Ferry Station.

Monsters and work for a witcher

Every patch of water seems to have drowners in it, and the bogs add water hags, foglets and worse. Ghouls and rotfiends feed on the battlefields, wraiths haunt burned villages, and the notice boards in Crow’s Perch, Midcopse, Lindenvale and Downwarren are full of contracts, from a nightwraith in the Midcopse fields to a grave hag in the Lindenvale cemetery. Velen also has its own gwent circuit (the Baron himself is a keen player), fist fights, horse races near Crow’s Perch and plenty of guarded treasure.

Good to know

• Velen borders Novigrad and Oxenfurt to the north, across the Pontar; the roads and ferries tie the two regions together, and later main quests move freely between them.
• Several Velen side quests fail once you start The Isle of Mists, so it pays to clear the Baron and Keira storylines before then.
• Many of your choices here (the spirit under the Whispering Hillock, the Baron’s family, Keira’s fate) echo much later in the game.

In the books

The province name comes from the game. In the novels the area is known through its capital, Gors Velen, and the nearby Thanedd Island with the Aretuza academy. Neither is part of the Velen you can explore in The Witcher 3, which covers only the war-torn northern stretch of the old province.