The Toad Prince

This article is about the cursed form. For the prince of Ofir, see Sirvat.

"Do you really wish to know?"
Spoilers from the books and/or adaptations to follow!

Toad Prince is a powerful monster in the Hearts of Stone expansion.

History

The Toad Prince prowling the Oxenfurt sewers was actually Prince Sirvat,^[1] an heir to the Ofiri throne. He had been inadvertently cursed by Olgierd von Everec out of anger when the parents of Olgierd's love, Iris, intended to give their daughter's hand in marriage to the visiting prince. The cursed being then took to living under Oxenfurt, where its venom seeped into the city's water systems, gradually making many of the townspeople sick.

Eventually, in 1272, the authorities resolved to shut down the sewers while Olgierd himself, bored of the prince's suffering, put up a contract. However, he didn't intend for anyone to actually try and lift the curse and thus kept it a secret, revealing only that it was a monster in the sewers. Geralt took the contract, only to meet Shani underneath Oxenfurt. She revealed that she had accompanied a group of Redanian soldiers who had been sent to kill the beast but ultimately perished.

In order to make a cure for the creature's venom, Shani sought a sample of it, whilst Geralt looked for a way to lure the monster. After discovering that it had a taste for alcohol, he sent Shani away from the vicinity after she had collected her sample and poured alcohol over a soldier's corpse to lure the Toad. This worked, and soon afterwards, the beast arrived and quickly devoured the cadaver, initiating a fight with the witcher. Eventually, its gut was sliced open by Geralt, which sprayed him with a yellow substance that made him lose consciousness, but also mortally wounded the Toad Prince and caused it to transform back into its human form before dying.

Bestiary Entry

The girl walked up to the edge of the pond. There, squatting amidst the fragrant lilies and broad lily-pads, she saw a most unusual sight: a small green frog with a golden crown perched on its warty head. Charmed by this curious little creature, the girl picked it up and gave it a kiss. Immediately the little frog transformed into a handsome prince. Overcome with gratitude, he asked the girl to be his wife.
– folk tale, author unknown

Timeless tales always carry within them a grain of truth. The legend of the frog prince is no exception, or at least that's what the folk of Oxenfurt wished to believe when they found out a monstrous toad lurked in their city sewers. The women who hunted it in search of romance and a better life, however, found their tales had a most unhappy ending. The creature they encountered was no small, sweet frog but a bloodthirsty beast, who not only did not let them in for a kiss, but instead greedily devoured them and anything else that strayed into its slime-covered lair.