Also terrifying? Her dental bills.
A continent full of horrible monsters, the Nilfgaard army's Rape, Pillage, and Burn tendencies, the gruesome magical surgery Yennefer endures to become beautiful, the horrific Cast from Hit Points cost of doing magic... the list goes on.Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned!
Season 1
open/close all folders
Episode 2: Four Marks
- When the girls are first learning to use magic, they have to float a rock. Fringilla manages it and is pretty excited... only for her reaction to turn to horror when her hand turns black and shrivelled. Tissaia just casually remarks that this is a perfect demonstration of how magic is Cast from Hit Points, as if this sort of thing happens all the time.
Episode 3: Betrayer Moon
- The striga. We see little of the creature until the climax, where she's finally revealed in her full, horrifying glory; a gaunt, Xenomorph-like Humanoid Abomination with long claws, a hideously-deformed face and an umbilical cord still hanging from her abdomen. The shrieks she utters sound like a woman's distorted screams, hinting at what she is beneath her monstrous visage. To add to the horror is the fact that the striga was once a normal baby girl, who became a monster because of a curse, eating through her dead mother's rotting flesh until she was large and strong enough to break out of the sarcophagus to prey on the townsfolk. The striga has managed to kill one Witcher already and Geralt himself struggles to survive against her, compounded by the fact he's desperately trying not to kill her because he hopes to lift her curse.
- The gruesome magical surgery Yennefer endures to remove her deformities, which really puts a new spin on "beauty is pain". A desperate Yen insists on going through the operation immediately, without waiting for the painkilling herbs to be prepared. As a result, she is completely conscious and can feel everything. She's strapped naked to a chair and has her womb and ovaries removed. There's a blanket covering her lower half (thank god), but we still hear the wet sounds of the knife cutting her and see Yen struggling not to make a sound, before she starts screaming. We then get to see her bloody womb and ovaries being burnt in a fire before Yen's eyes. And it's still not over. Yen has black paint drawn over her facial deformity and hunched back, which dissolves into her skin and magically rearranges her bones and muscle. We see her back split open right to her spine, blood pouring everywhere, while Yen thrashes about and screams at the top of her lungs in agony.
Episode 8: Much More
- At the beginning of the battle of Sodden Hill, Fringilla orders mages conscripted by Nilfgaard to conjure fireballs so they can launch them at the defenders. The second time, the mage follows an uncaring Fringilla's orders with great apprehension, glancing next to her where a dusty pile of robes is all that remains of the other mage. Sure enough, she meets the same fate; the effort of casting such powerful magic turns her body skeletal in moments and reduces her to dust.
- One of Nilfgaard's mages manages to drop of box full of small, black worm-like creatures inside the fortress, which slither off. It's not clear what they do, until we see the worms wriggling inside the ears of Sabrina and two young boys, compelling Sabrina to stab Yennefer and the boys to strategically drop jars of an explosive substance, blowing up a section of the fortress and killing both themselves and several other people. Yen and Sabrina are blown off a tower; Yen is able to use magic to soften the fall, but Sabrina isn't so lucky and lands face down with a Sickening "Crunch!". When Yen approaches her, she whispers she's sorry, indicating she was aware of what was happening but unable to control herself.
Season 2
Episode 1: A Grain of Truth
- Tissaia interrogating Cahir. Specifically, the way she is able to invoke horrific screams from him with a mere touch. No chanting, no flashy magic, just the merest touch of her bare hands causing incredible agony and screaming. Then she grabs his head and her fingers are visibly sinking into his flesh to grasp his brain.Tissaia: I need to know what Nilfgaard wants. Resist or submit, it makes no difference. It is not in my nature to be cruel, but you have taken someone from me. Someone I care about deeply. So now I will take the knowledge, your memories, your very being, and leave you cold and helpless, trapped in the eternal darkness of your own mind. I know... I know you want to scream, but it's too soon. It's too soon, because I haven't even started yet. If evolution has traced any groove at all in your brain, I will plow it somewhat deeper, and you will know what a scream can really be!
- Vereena's introduction. She emerges from the wall in the room's corner, despite there being no visible hole; crawls on the ceiling in a very jilted and animalistic manner with neither her hair nor clothes affected by gravity, then descends and climbs on Ciri's bed. She is constantly making strange, insect-like sounds and making small, but unsettlingly stiff movements. This, in addition to glowing irises and uneven, slightly vibrating speech patterns (even more pronounced when she speaks mind-to-mind with Ciri) in an otherwise normally looking human female make it seem like she is some beast wearing human skin.
- And then she reveals Xenomorph-worthy Nested Mouths and capability to fully rotate her limbs and neck around. Her final lunge against Nivellen in particular is very painful to watch, turning her head and arms 180 degrees and pulling herself closer on the spear impaling her through the back.
- In the last fight, her real form is revealed as a fast and gigantic bat-like creature, who can Speed Blitz groups of people in just a few seconds. Would her unnatural clothes and hair mean she doesn’t know how slower and land-bound humans SHOULD react to gravity? Is at least some of her “human form” an illusion from her telepathy?
- Discovering a friend you knew and thought you could trust is a rapist, and you left your (surrogate) daughter alone with him.
Episode 2: Kaer Morhen
- Eskel's horrific transformation into a Leshy and the aftermath. Once he fully turns, Geralt and Vesemir are barely able to fight him, as he tries to crush them to death with his roots. Ultimately, Geralt's forced to kill him after he grabs Vesemir.
- The woman Eskel was being intimate with mid-transformation is found by Geralt, her corpse has branches growing out of her and encompassing her body in an upwards direction. Given what they were upto when he started to turn, this was a horrifically painful and messy death.
Episode 4: Redanian Intelligence
- The roundup and wholesale genocide of elves in Redania on King Vizimir's orders after word gets out about the Nilfgaardian/elven alliance.
- The Mood Whiplash when Yennefer, Cahir and their elven companions are attacked by a beast (heavily implied to be a zeugl) in the sewers. One elf is dragged to his death in the sewer waters and Yennefer almost suffers the same fate.
Episode 5: Turn Your Back
- Rience's Cold-Blooded Torture of Jaskier; tying him to a chair and burning his hands and fingers with a magical flame. When Yennefer tries to intervene, he attacks her as well.
- While it's also an Awesome moment, Rience's screams of pain when Yennefer spits alcohol in his face, burning him with his own flame are a bit unsettling.
Episode 6: Dear Friend
- Rience and his thugs beating a young scribe at the Temple of Melitele nearly to death to find Ciri's whereabouts.
- Tissaia clearly panicking when Triss informs her Ciri is a Child of the Elder Blood, giving her the potential to destroy the world.
- Tying into the above is Triss realising that Rience stole the vial of Ciri's blood Vesemir was experimenting on, and now such incredibly dangerous power is in the hands of such an unstable individual.
Episode 7: Voleth Meir
- Francesca wakes up from a nightmare only to find Filavandrel cradling the body of their daughter, murdered while her mother slept metres away, oblivious.
- Fringilla poisons the Nilfgaardian commanders undermining her with a toxin that leaves them paralyzed but fully conscious, so they feel everything while she slowly kills them. The only one she spares is Cahir, solely because she needs his influence with the Emperor, and he's Forced to Watch every minute of it.
- Fringilla casually stabs one Nilfgaardian through the eye with a table knife and slits another's throat with his own sword.
- Ciri overtaxing her magical abilities to try and repair a bridge she and Yennefer need to cross a river ends with her weeping blood from her eyes and nose.
- When Ciri realises Yennefer has been lying to her, she lashes out with her Sonic Scream abilities, and ends up causing an earthquake that cracks the very walls of Cintra.
- The Glowing Eyes of Doom Ciri acquires when Voleth Meir possesses her.
Episode 8: Family
- Francesca retaliating for her daughter's murder by magically killing every human baby in Redania. Even her own brother feels this is a step too far...and to make it worse the murder was a False Flag Operation orchestrated by Emperor Emhyr to goad the elves into fighting against the north.
- The possessed Ciri killing several Witchers in their beds, cracking open a monolith hidden inside the Medallion Tree and unleashing a pack of basilisks into the main hall of Kaer Morhen, which brutally kill several more Witchers before they're put down.
- The looks of utter terror on Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri's faces when they see the Wild Hunt charging straight towards them. Geralt and Yenn clearly realise this is an enemy beyond even them, and now the Hunt has Ciri's scent, they will never stop trying to find her.King of the Wild Hunt: Child of the Elder Blood, starry-eyed Daughter of Chaos, join our Hunt! Your place is among us...you are ours!
- Lydia exposes herself to the vial of Elder Blood Rience stole from Vesemir to try and gain more information. The blood reacts to her skin like acid, leaving her with horrendous facial burns so severe that her lower jawbone is left visible, and her vocals chords so badly damaged she can only communicate through telepathy.
- Tying into this, Lydia and Rience meeting with their Mysterious Employer, who informs them that the brewing conflict between the North, Nilfgaard and the elves will serve their mutual ambitions.
