Plague Maidens

Patients seem to have hallucinations of a woman covered in scabs and boils, with rats scurrying about all around her. These ravings subsided after an administration of henbane and poppy extract."
– Joachim von Gratz's notes, Vilmerius Hospital in Novigrad

When plague ravages a region, a spirit will sometimes walk its lands, a ghost resembling an ill woman whose flesh rots off her bones and in whose wake crawls a cavalcade of rats. No one knows whether this spirit brings the pox with her or is merely drawn to it like a moth to a light. Yet it is certain that she delights in dealing pain and suffering, in hearing the howling and moaning of men.

Many have called into question the very existence of plague maidens, or pestae, as they are sometimes called. Only two sightings of such a creature have ever been recorded, both during times of raging epidemic.

As the name "plague maiden" suggests, these wraiths take the appearance of females, though exactly why that is remains a mystery. Some speculate they, like other such specters, arise from the powerful emotional charge associated with certain circumstances of death, such as death preceded by a long and particularly painful illness.

Not much is known about how to fight a plague maiden, though one can assume they possess many traits in common with other phantoms and wraiths. They undoubtedly pose a great danger, though a witcher's immunities should at least prevent him from catching the contagious illnesses they carry.