What are Witchers, and how are they made? [The Witcher]

In this episode we explore the Witcher universe, from its origins in Andrzej Sapkowski's novels to its adaptations in games and on Netflix. We also delve into the history, etymology, and detailed lore of witchers, including their training, abilities, and the various schools they come from.

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Transcript

Hey there, welcome to the Lore’d to Death podcast. My name is Brett, and today I want to take a dive into a world that has become almost a cultural staple in gaming and television, and that is the world of the Witcher. If you’ve been living under a rock for the last several years, then this is originally a series of novels written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski which has since been translated into a video game series and a television show in recent years.

The series started in 1986, where Sapkowski submitted a short story into a competition held by the Fantastyka magazine, which is a Polish monthly fantasy and science fiction publication. His story was a retelling of an old Polish folktale where a princess turned into a monster as punishment for the incest of her parents. After a year of waiting, he found out that he received third place, and due to popular demand, he began building the world that we all know today with 14 more short stories before his first proper novel in 1994 called “Blood of Elves”. As of today, there are 5 books in the Witcher saga written up until 1999, with another standalone novel released in 2013.

From there the stories have been adapted into comic books by Maciej Parowski, Dark Horse Comics and CD Projekt Red. Also by CD Projekt Red is the video game series, which, arguably, brought these stories to life for an international audience. In 2007 they released The Witcher, with a sequel called The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings in 2011. In 2015, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released to worldwide acclaim. The games collectively sold over 50 million copies as of 2020, with over 30 million of those copies coming from the third instalment alone. Sapkowski wasn’t involved in the games, however, so they do take plenty of liberty with the source material. But to that point, Sapkowski gave CD Projekt Red permission to take what he had created and do something new with it using the characters that he had created.

There have also been several film and TV adaptations including a 2002 TV series and a film in 2001 both titled The Hexer. However, Sapkowski had nothing nice to say about either of these adaptations, saying “I can only answer with a single word, an obscene, albeit short one” in response. Then, of course, there was the Netflix adaptation which first aired in 2019. This one, Sapkowski had a more neutral tone on saying that “[he had] seen better, [he had] seen worse”, which sounds about right. It was met with mixed reception, although was an instant hit. People loved Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in the first season, but found the story difficult to digest. Ultimately, it has done well enough to have been given another season despite many of the cast members having publicly blatant issues with the writing, having deviated too far from the source content to the point of Cavill exiting the series after the third season.

This is a crying shame because the first season showed plenty of promise, and was even beloved by those who had read the books. It wasn’t perfect, but it initially showed promise. Then, with several deviations in the second season, the third season ended up being boycotted by several fans (myself included) because of Cavill having daily arguments with the writers for disrespecting the source content by trying to turn The Witcher series into a sensationalised hollywood hit. I still haven’t watched the third season, and I won’t watch the fourth. I was happy with where they were going with the show initially, like many people, but I stand by my decision to not support where they are going with the show.

Lastly, there were also two other Netflix adaptations. One, an animated film titled The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf and the other, a live-action prequel series titled The Witcher: Blood Origin. Both of which weren’t received particularly positively or negatively. Whether they were received that way was because of the fan backlash of the live-action series, or because on their own they weren’t anything special, it’s hard to say.

However, I think that the etymology of The Witcher is quite interesting! In Polish, the series is titled as “wiedźmin” which is actually technically a made-up word. Wiedźmin is a take on the word wiedźma which means witch. However, the word wiedźma is very specifically a feminine word in Polish. If you know how slavic languages work, then you know that pretty well every word has a masculine, feminine, and neuter variations, but there are some words that have no official male or female equivalent because of the nature of the word. Witches tend to be women, and so there is only one word for witch in Polish which is wiedźma. So Sapkowski changed up the ending of the word to have a more typically masculine ending which ended up being wiedźmin. This is why earlier translations of the Witcher were initially different like hexer or spellmaker. There’s one fellow named Adrian Chmielarz who was a Polish game designer and claimed to have invented the translation from wiedźmin to witcher in 1996 or 1997 from a game that was ultimately scrapped and then later used by CD Projekt Red.

Anyways, what I wanted to talk about today was the history of Witchers, but I thought it would be apt to give a brief rundown of the Witcher throughout the ages. I’m sure there are some people who have played just the games, or just watched the show, who might not have known about the novels. I want to talk about what a Witcher is, why they are how they are, and go over their history, abilities, and uses. I feel like I have to give a forward that I’m going to be using both the games and the novels to piece together some of this information. I know that the games aren’t source material, and shouldn’t technically have a place here, but because of the popularity and how in-depth they went into the Witchers, I think that it’s a great resource. I won’t be using the show, however, because of how far it strays from the source material. So, let’s dive into the world of Witchers. 

What is a Witcher, exactly? A Witcher, also known as a wiccan, vedymin, or witchman, is someone who is subjected to an intense alchemical process that involves the consumption of mutagenic compounds and relentless physical and mental conditioning. This training creates a versatile and dangerous opponent for monsters and other sub or super human species. The posterboy for the Witchers is one Geralt of Rivia who was active throughout the 13th century who is the main protagonist of the Witcher books, games, as well as the Netflix series.

But why were they created? Well, as humans started settling the continent– and I have to take a quick sidebar to talk about the fact that the continent is unnamed, and is only ever referred to as “the continent” or “the north” and “the south”, which is incredibly frustrating to me. The north is often referred to as “The Empire of Nilfgaard” but that’s as close as we’re ever going to get to a name for the continent, but even then that barely covers half of it. Anyways, back to the question: why were Witches created? As humans started settling the continent, they had to deal with hordes upon hordes of monsters that inhabited the lands that humans were ill-equipped to deal with. The solution was to attempt to create superhumans to deal with the problem.

The Northern rulers tasked their mages to create magic-wielding warriors that would deal with the scourge of monsters so that they could freely settle the lands. They were allegedly first created at Rissberg, a castle that was used by mages who were not under the control of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers which included 18 masters and more than 80 adepts and apprentices who all lived there. They conducted many experiments which resulted in the creation of helpful things like elixirs, but was also home to many inhumane experiments like magical mutation and genetic engineering on humans and other creatures. Because of the nature of their experiments, the mages who resided here were seen as rebels and were typically frowned upon.

However, the mages at Rissberg were contacted because of their history with genetic engineering, not in spite of it. Allegedly it was a master Cosimo Malaspina, a notorious master of genetic modification, along with his apprentice, Alzur, an equally famed mage, who created the first Witcher. In the spirit of inhumane experiments, Alzur would have to either pay parents to let go of their children and steal their children for their experiments and the first Witcher was created in the 950s. 38 children, boys and girls, were taken in to become the first Witchers.

They had the children run dangerous obstacle courses, dodging swinging pendulums while blindfolded along with other dangerous tasks. Because of the nature of these trials, four of the children died before they could even begin the alchemical process. The remaining children were to start a regiment of bubbling mushroom stews and soapy alchemical teas to prepare them for the horrors ahead– this was known as The Choice. At first, the children became faster and stronger which was promising. But over time, most of the girls grew ill. The number of remaining children dwindled day after day as they were subjected to transformations until most of them died. 

Only 5 of the boys and none of the girls survived. But it wasn’t over for them yet. The mages had professionals come from all over the continent to test and train the children including hunters from Kaedwen, alchemists from Vicovaro, and swordsmen from all over the place. These folks would come in to train the boys in their respective professions. This is when they would be subjected to mutagens, changing their physiology, while learning to fight with swords as well as a form of magic through rudimentary spells called Signs. This process was known as the Trials of the Grasses.

Unfortunately, for these poor children, this process proved unsatisfactory. While the mutations opened up their bodies to a great flow of physical power, they ended up with limited magical potential which was the entire point of these experiments to begin with. And further unfortunately for them, the project was deemed a failure when the first Witchers were presented to the nobles, and the Northern rulers agreed to stop funding the endeavour.

The failed experiments were banished, but Alzur was not done with them yet. He was not an inherently evil man, and he wanted to see some good come out of these experiments so that he could help the world be free of monsters, as was his vow. Some monarchs continued to fund the project in secret with Alzur at the helm and the final set of trials and mutations was established along with the Order of the Witchers. They fled to the abandoned Morgraig Castle in the Kestrel Mountains to continue their work on creating functional Witchers, which was known as the First Age of Witchers.

At Morgraig Castle were the five Witchers, who were at this point unnamed except for the first child who was put through the transformation named Erland, the three mages Cosimo, Alzur and Idarren of Ulivo (who was responsible for creating monsters such as the Idr, which was basically a giant centipede with razor-sharp mandibles and pincers, that he had created through genetic modification which Geralt hated with a passion). They had also met a travelling knight errant named Taliesin Bleddyn Yorath aep Lywelyn, which is an absolute mouthful and so they called him Gryphon instead because of the black gryphon insignia that was on his shield. I’m guessing by the name that Gryphon was probably from Skellige, but I couldn’t find any information on who he was past his involvement with the early Witchers. Gryphon would stay with them to train the Witchers in combat as well as teach them chivalry.

Over the next several years, the Witchers would set out on what was known as the path. This was the term for when Witchers would leave for the spring to different parts of the continent to take on monster hunting contracts. They would stay out through the summer and fall to return to the castle in the winter so that they could catch up with their comrades and celebrate another year on the path and to mourn those who they lost along the way. And more Witchers would be made every year in an attempt to refine the process until eventually Cosimo, Alzur, and Idarran left Morgraig Castle, leaving only a few unnamed mages behind to perform the rites.

I’m not sure why they all left, although I would have to assume it was because of the gruesome nature of the process of turning children into Witchers or because they just wanted to do something else with their time. All three of these mages were skilled in creating hybrid creatures, which is why they were tasked with creating the Witchers in the first place, so I would have to assume that they perhaps got bored of the task of creating these mutant humans and instead turned their interests elsewhere. Or, their investors’ gold ran dry.

The Witchers, despite their creators leaving, kept doing what they did best: setting out on the path year after year to kill monsters and make gold. However, with the number of Witchers increasing year after year, some of them started getting territorial. While they were taught of chivalry and comradery by Gryphon, it was only a matter of time before one turned sour. The Witchers began turning on each other, one by one. They would trick one another out of contracts and even kill each other if one didn’t budge.

There was one incident in particular that seems like it was the catalyst for the fall of the order. One Witcher named Arnaghad, a giant of a man who hailed from the depths of Gemmera who commanded great respect from his fellow Witchers because of his sheer size and physical abilities, attacked one of his brothers named Rhys. Rhys had negotiated a contract for the head of a Chort that had terrorised a Kaedwenian village. Arnaghad arrived as well, unaware that Rhys had already taken the contract, which caused him to go into a fit of rage. Arnaghad found Rhys in the forest where he was stalking the Chort and cut him from shoulder to waist– a grim wound, but not fatal for a Witcher. Rhys managed to alert the Chort, forcing Arnaghad to fight it while Rhys escaped the battle and fled back to Morgraig Castle.

Arnaghad anticipated that Rhys had gone back to the keep to warn the other Witchers about his transgression, and so he gathered a group of his brothers that were loyal to him and had them follow him back to Morgraig. This led to a confrontation between the Witchers loyal to the Order who took Rhys’ side, and those who followed Arnaghad in his bloodshed. The resulting battle ended with the loss of several Witchers, but the Order prevailed against the tyrannous Arnaghad, and those who remained loyal to him and survived fled to the Amell mountains. It was there that Arnaghad founded the Witcher School of the Bear, named after the pelts that he famously wore. 

However, Arnaghad was later betrayed by one of his brothers who, in turn, gave birth to the School of the Viper. I guess when you found a school based on brute force and killing your own brothers who stand against you, you’re bound to lose your own head to the sword that you bore. He who founded the School of the Viper was named Ivar Evil-Eye, and the school was located in the Tir Tochair mountains. Before the School of the Viper was established, one of the Witchers named Iwan who had previously followed Ivar left  Ivar’s group after he found out what Ivar’s ambitions were. Iwan went to found the School of the Manticore which had its headquarters in the far east in the Korath Desert.

I’ll go into what each of these schools means in a bit, but I just want to finish this thought before I do. With the birth of these new schools: Bear, Viper, and Manticore, the Order was shaken. It seemed that collusion and betrayal was around every corner, and so a group of 20 or so Witchers left Morgraig Castle to found the School of the Cat in Stygga Castle. With them they absconded with plenty of mutagenic compounds and alchemical supplies which were used to create the Witchers in the hope that they could find a more efficient, less deadly way of creating new Witchers.

The ones who stayed with the Order at Morgraig stayed and continued the path for some time, but became disillusioned with their purpose over the years. Morgraig had become a refuge for them to hide from the other schools who wished to overtake the Order rather than the warm home it used to be. Erland, the first Witcher, decided to leave with 13 of his closest comrades to found his own school, the School of the Griffon, which was named after the knight who taught them all the ways of the sword. However, unlike the other schools, he left without malice in his heart against the Order. So they explained to the remnants of the order that they were leaving, what their intent was, and left to Kaer Seren to pursue their new school.

The last Witchers who remained in the Order felt no need to keep up the facade that the Order meant anything anymore. So they abandoned their home in Morgraig to start a new beginning, and founded the School of the Wolf in the Kaer Morhen valley where they made base in an old elven defensive structure that had since been abandoned. This signified the end of the Order of Witchers and the First Era of Witchers and ushered in a new era that would be known as the Golden Era of Witchers, or the Second Era of Witchers.

This era was a bit less backstabby, as there was no one order that was attempting to control all Witchers… except for maybe the school of the viper who were literally all assassins. The schools each split up the continent into territories that each school would operate in respectively. This actually made the Witchers’ work more efficient and organised since there was less contention over who had what contract, and most contention would be taken up within their own.

Eventually, past tensions eased between the schools and members of different schools were able to cross paths without bloodshed since each Witcher was aware of their own territories. They didn’t treat those from the other schools as brothers anymore, but they were no longer hostile. They acted more as estranged cousins rather than bitter enemies, which was a start.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, the schools who made off with any of the mutagens and alchemical supplies to create new Witchers were the Cat and Wolf school. This means that they should have been the only ones who were able to create new Witchers, but I’ve read that each school was, indeed, creating and training their own Witchers. I don’t really know which to believe, honestly. It makes sense that they were all creating their own Witchers because of the timeline.

Over the next hundred or so years, by the mid 1660s, the Witchers had grown too abundant and too successful. Monsters became increasingly rare, which meant that Witchers had less work to do. That, along with propaganda from the churches of the North and the distrust of the rulers, people started to view Witchers as monsters instead of people. They were largely shunned, and the schools came under attack from various forces until the schools fell and the Witchers were disbanded.

They were still able to operate in the shadows, taking on contracts where they could get them, but this marked the end of the Golden Age. Because the schools were largely destroyed, this also meant that Witchers weren’t created past this point. Geralt was allegedly born in 1168, which means that he was born just after the Golden Age ended. His becoming a Witcher, along with his brothers, meant that Witchers were created for probably the next decade before they stopped. I can’t find too much information on this period, so I’m kind of just putting the pieces together and trying to make sense of it. But there’s a lot of (probably intentionally) vague areas here.

There was also the period after the Second Conjunction where Witchers experienced a resurgence. This would have been when the games took place some time between the years 1200 and 1300. Basically the same conjunction that brought monsters in the first place, the Conjunction of the Spheres, happened again. With it came many different beings that were introduced to the continent, which included a whole ton of monsters. Witchers, while still largely frowned upon by most people, were suddenly needed again. And people did not shy away from publicly posting Witcher contracts, as they knew that they had no other reasonable way to deal with monster attacks. During this time, a new school was formed– the school of the crane– along with new rules for Witchers which were largely only followed on the eastern coast.

So that’s basically the overview of the Witchers and it introduced all of the important elements which I wanted to go over in more detail. We have the trials, which we barely scratched the surface of. We have the Witchers abilities, including physical and magical. And then we also have the schools. So, we might as well work top-down. Let’s start with the trials, then move on to their abilities and finish with the schools.

So, the trials. Like I mentioned before, these were extremely rigorous and often deadly. Out of the initial 38, only 5 survived. That ends up being about a 13% success rate, give or take a couple decimal places. But that number is also skewed in the original test group because there were both boys and girls in the mix. Of the initial Witchers, only the boys survived. If we assume that half of the children taken were boys and the other half girls, then that brings our boys’ survival rate up to roughly 26%, but we don’t know the ratio of the initial test group. I would assume that there were probably more boys than girls, since girls were I think a bit more important to families in the middle ages. Boys were used as manual labour machines, basically, while girls would be around to help mum around the house and eventually sire more children into the workforce, or be sold off to another family for wedding. So you’d think that the ones who are less likely to be fussed about when kidnapped or sold to a shady mage, I would think that it would be the boys who would have been sold more easily. That’s just my opinion, though, there’s nothing that I can find that really backs that up other than the way children are talked about from that period. But this is also a fantasy, so who knows what real-world logic actually applies to the story.

That kind of brings me around to my next point, which is that all of the children who were turned into Witchers were… well… children. I, again, couldn’t find a source for this but I think that a strange comparison to Star Wars is actually a good metric to which we can explain why children were taken instead of adults. In Star Wars, children are taken because they are more malleable. In that case it’s because they can be easily mentally conditioned to be able to control the force but also because if you’re physically active as a child, you’re much more likely to be a physically active, healthy adult. I think that the malleability of a child’s mind and body are exactly why they make good candidates for being turned into Witchers.

Especially before puberty, your body is going through constant changes. You’re learning new things and you’re growing literally every day. This helps when you need to mentally condition someone to be a natural fighter, because so many movements of fighting need to become instinct rather than thought, and we all know that learning new things and having them stick are much harder as an adult.  Think about riding a bike; if you learned as a kid, there’s a pretty good chance that you could not bike for ten years, and then hop on one and it’s as easy as, you guessed it, riding a bike. I’m sure the same goes for athletics when it comes to swordplay as well. And having a malleable brain means that they are much more likely to be able to control magic, even if it’s something as simple as the Signs.

But I think I’ve talked long enough about that, so let’s talk about the trials themselves. I think it’s worth mentioning that Sapkowski was seemingly intentionally vague about the trials that were involved in creating a Witcher. I think this is because, by the time of the books, the art of creating Witchers was lost, and so there was no one in the books who would have had any reason to talk about it extensively. For example, the first two books were from Geralt’s perspective, and his only knowledge of the trials would have been from what he remembers as a child being turned into a Witcher. So keep in mind that while we kind of know the process, there’s not a whole lot of detail surrounding the trials.

We mentioned before that the first step in becoming a Witcher is called The Choice. This was the first of three trials that a young Witcher must be subjected to. The Choice consisted of a relatively easy task in comparison to the next trials, which was basically just a change of diet. But this was, as the name suggests, a choice. The decision must be made voluntarily, because the diet of mushrooms, mosses, and herbs is not as easy as one might think. Many did not survive this trial simply because it’s a terrible diet. Many died of liver, kidney, and heart failure as a result of The Choice, and others succumbed to madness or exhibited abnormally aggressive tendencies because of how utterly awful it is to be essentially eating nothing but grass. While it might seem a bit extreme that people would have such a terrible reaction to it, you’re really getting nothing that your body needs out of this process. There isn’t a concrete explanation, but I imagine that it’s something like if your body can take being malnourished, it can potentially thrive under the other rigorous circumstances that come in the next trials.

The next step, and the first of the proper trials that the child would go through was the Trial of the Grasses. This trial got its name from the “grasses” that would be injected directly into the veins of the subject. This concoction consisted of corn lily, nightshade, speargrass, wildrye, and wolfsbane. It would be served in one serving to the child before the process in the form of a tea, and then they would be strapped down to a table where the grasses, along with mutagenic elixirs, where basically IV dripped directly into their bloodstream. The mutagens were created, typically, from the albumen (an egg white or similar protein) of a monster. In the Blood and Wine expansion for the Witcher 3 states that the albumen of the Pale Widow, a giant centipede-like creature similar to the Idr created by the mage Idarren, was used as a base to create some of these mutagenic compounds.

The Trials of Grasses typically lasted one week, but most who would die in the process died by the third day. The survivors would be in a terrible state, subject to bouts of madness and would fall into a deep stupor. Their eyes would glaze over and they would reach out for any items within their reach aimlessly, like a baby, while their breath got increasingly ragged and hoarse. They would be injected with the compounds again and coughing would turn into vomiting. They would sometimes suffer seizures in a cold sweat while their skin burned. Their strength would wane until the seventh day when they woke up from their frenzy with cat-like eyes, heightened senses, and lightning-fast reflexes. This trial also granted the new Witcher slower ageing, which explains why Geralt supposedly lived to be over 300 years old.

Once they had completed the trial of grasses, they would also be granted a medallion. Although, it seems like this might have only been after the schools were created. There’s no mention of the original Witchers having medallions, but we know that each medallion was created to represent the school that they belonged to. The wolf was a wolf’s head, and so on and so forth. The medallion was more than just a means to identify which school a Witcher belonged to, however. As the great Witcher Vesemir once said, it reacts to the presence of sorcerous auras in the immediate surroundings, making them aware of nearby spellcasting, active illusions, or magical creatures. It also warns its wearer of sudden dangers, giving them a heads up so they have an extra moment to react to a potentially life-threatening event. It wasn’t infallible, but it was a great tool that acted as an extra measure of security and was invaluable to a Witcher.

If one could survive the first two trials, then they would be presented with two more to finalise the process. Next was the Trial of Dreams, which there is almost no information on. We know that the children are subjected to a series of psychedelic visions by druids or mages. The only reason I can really find as to why they did this was to enhance the Witcher’s vision to be sharper and to be able to see in the dark. I would imagine that this process was to enhance their senses as a whole, but there’s only really mention of changes to their eyes. During this process, the prospective Witcher would also be made sterile, making them unable to sire children. Although there seems to be a bit of contention surrounding that factoid, as far as I know there haven’t ever seen little Witcher babies running around. Geralt was also a known adulterer, which to me confirms that (at the very least) he is sterile. You can’t run around like that in a world without contraceptives and expect not to have a few bastards crop up.

The next trial is typically called the Trial of the Mountains. For those in the Wolf school, they knew it as the Trial of the Medallion. Either way, it was likely the same sort of trial. The entire point of this trial was to test whether or not the Witcher was capable of remembering their training prior to the Trial of Grasses, including combat, movement, and magic. There’s a bit of information from the show, but like I said before I’m not going to be taking that as canon, and instead we’re going to be going with the information that we got from the Witcher 3 where Geralt remembers his time doing this trial as a wolf. However, I imagine it would be similar to the way that the Order did it, just in a different place. As we know from the wolf’s trial of the medallion, these trials were done as a group. While being a Witcher is a job typically done in solitude, they believed that endorsing cooperation was a vital trait. After all, who doesn’t need a little bit of help sometimes? This was also likely their first foray into personally dealing with monsters on their own, so you don’t want to take one of the only kids to survive the trial of grasses and have them die immediately.

The wolfs of Kaer Morhen needed to swim across a pond just outside of the keep, get through caverns inhabited by an old cyclops which they called Old Speartip without waking him up, then climb the Troll’s head, deal with some rock trolls, and get to a circle of elements in the cave. A circle of elements is a place where magic is strong. Strong enough that they typically have monuments built on them where mages can draw power from, and Witchers can momentarily boost their own spells or even learn a new sign. This is not to be confused with a place of power. Places of power are invisible spots of magical concentration which are similar, but to a lesser extent. In the games, the Witchers can use places of power to give themselves a magical boost of sorts for a short period of time, like increasing their agility and speed for a couple of hours, or increasing the potency of their signs for a few hours. Regardless, The Witcher would activate their medallion at the circle of elements and gain some magical ability, marking the end of the trial.

The only other school who has recorded that they did anything differently was the bear school. It’s said that they, instead of going into a beast’s cave, had to climb up to the summit of Mount Gorgon and retrieve a special runestone as a token of their ascent. Mount Gorgon was the tallest mountain in the area, and was dubbed the “Devil Mountain”. It was covered in fog and snow, making the climb particularly perilous. It’s said that there are a number of bodies strewn along the mountain ascent where Witchers failed and froze to death. And, no, there were no gorgons on the mountain as far as we know. The word Gorgon actually comes from the Greek word, gorgós, which means grim or dreadful. I think that’s particularly fitting, given what we know.

After this trial, most are considered to be a full-fledged Witcher. If there was any doubt that an individual was ready or worthy of being a Witcher, there was one final trial dubbed the Trial of the Sword. You can probably guess what that entails. The Witcher in question would be given a task of their master’s choice. Either they would have to take up their sword and slay a monster of their master's choosing, or they would have to take up arms against one of their brothers and fight another Witcher. However, this comes from Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni (meaning The Witcher: A Game of Imagination), which is a tabletop pen and paper roleplaying game based on the book series. I couldn’t find whether or not Sapkowski actually endorsed this game or not, so I’m not sure if that’s really canon or not. I think that it’s a bit of an odd trial, seeing as each Witcher would have to go through the same trials and survive them to get this far. And pitting Witcher against Witcher seems like a fool's errand because there were so few of them to begin with. Why would you want to waste the life of another Witcher simply because you don’t think they’ll be perfect or optimal? It doesn’t make much sense to me.

But that’s it for the main trials. Some of the schools had some additional trials that didn’t seem like they were necessary but rather seemed like a bonus mark that was related to their school in some way. The wolf school would occasionally have their Witcher fledglings blindfolded and sent out into the woods in what they called the trial of the forest eyes. They had to survive by relying on senses other than sight, and to complete the trial they were to return to their master before the next sunrise. If they were caught cheating or failed, they were hung by their feet for one night.

The Griffin school were met with a choice- they were either to recite the Liber Tenebrarum by Silvester Bugiardo in full, or had to go out and fetch an egg from a Griffin’s nest. Apparently only one Witcher ever recited the book, much to Master Keldar’s disappointment. The other was the cat school where the Witcher’s agility was tested by having them gradually walk on higher and higher tightropes. This is the only one that was actually life-threatening, because at the higher levels, a fall would equal death for even a Witcher. In the Gwent card game, we get a little quote from the cat mentor which says, “if you fall, it’s over. Your nine lives are up, kid.” Which is kind of hilarious, but also pretty dark. Then there was the Viper school who gave their trainees a pet to care for during their training that they would have to slaughter before becoming a fully-fledged Witcher.

And that’s it for the trials that we know of. I’m sure that other schools had their own little quirks, but since the schools were lost I’m not sure that we’ll ever know what they were. So that brings us on to our next point, which is the abilities of a Witcher. Surprisingly the wiki actually gives a really great overview of the advantages and disadvantages of being a Witcher, so let’s go through that.

So, we know that the Witcher’s primary reason for existing is to fight monsters that regular, or even trained knights, could not deal with themselves. They are augmented through the process of the trials to be superhuman which means that they are physically superior to even stronger people, but their training is not against other people but large monsters. While a Witcher’s abilities might differ from person to person, the things that are pretty much the same across the board are:

Cat-like eyes that grant nightvision. Witchers can constrict their pupils to see in blinding light, or open them to be able to see in near pitch black darkness. This can be further enhanced with the use of a cat potion, but that’s typically not required unless they are going into an area with absolutely zero light. A Witcher would have no problem seeing at night time, even on a cloudy night, for example, but they might need to take a cat potion to be able to see in an underground cavern with no light sources. Along with great eyesight, their other senses are heightened as well to the point where they can identify an animal or beast just based on the smell of their blood and even smell other beings nearby them when they are out of sight. These two senses made a Witcher extremely perceptive, which meant it was nearly impossible to sneak up on one or get away from them if they were tracking you. Both of these things were necessary for hunting monsters.

They also had an overly healthy immune system which granted them near immunity to poisons and disease. This is what allowed them to consume potions, which we’ll get back to in a moment.

We also know that they had exceptional strength and agility, granting them extreme power and sharp reflexes. This allowed them to fight with greater power than a non-Witcher with very little effort and perform feats that they could not. While a group of men might be able to take on a large monster in an equally large group, a Witcher’s training allowed them to take on the same creature single-handedly. This was because they could take hits that would normally kill a man, and were seen shrugging off hits that should have been fatal to a normal person, allowing them to trade blows with monsters.

Witchers also had the ability to cast basic spells, known as the Signs, which we’ve mentioned before. While the amount of magic they possess is not even close to that of a mage or sorcerer, it was far more than the average Joe. These signs were able to be cast with a single hand, which meant that a Witcher could easily wield a sword in one hand and leave the other open for casting spells. The five signs were as follows:

Aard– a telekinetic wave of energy that can throw back, knock down, or stun an opponent depending on their size. Outside of combat, Aard can also be used to destroy obstacles, like a crumbling stone wall.

Yrden– a magical trap that was placed on the ground which would wound and immobilise their opponent. They could use this to temporarily trap their opponent in place so that they could land a fatal or incapacitating blow.

Igni– basically a wave of fire that would originate from their hand.

Quen– a protective shield that would grant the Witcher some protection against an incoming attack.

Axii– A charm that could be placed on an opponent, potentially making them an ally for a short period of time.

Along with their ability to cast signs, their magical ability gave them an innate sort of sixth sense which let the Witcher feel things around them, whether that be assessing spatial awareness or anticipating someone’s next move.

And I know we mentioned this already, but Witcher’s also live for much longer than the average person. Hand-in-hand with this, they can also recover from injuries fairly quickly, giving Witchers the ability to live a long, relatively healthy, life.

Along with their superhuman abilities, the Witchers also have a variety of tools that they use. They are most known for carrying around two longswords. One made of steel for more mundane enemies, and one made of silver for magical or supernatural beings. The silver swords were typically made from meteoric iron, which was then coated in silver and inscribed with magical runes. Silver is a very soft metal, and therefore you could not make a sword entirely of silver or it would never hold an edge and would warp and break constantly. But being coated in silver still made it a weaker blade which is why they still had to carry around a steel sword. If, for instance, you were fighting an enemy that had a sword or a hard carapace, you would opt for the steel sword for its durability and raw strength. But if you were fighting something like a wraith, which is partially incorporeal, then you would want your silver sword since the combination of silver and magical runes would allow you to slay it where your steel sword would do nothing.

Witchers would also carry around various oils with which they would coat their blades depending on the enemy that they were fighting. Many of these oils were very specific as to what they were effective against, so the Witcher would have to know ahead of time what they were hunting so that they could prepare accordingly. Thankfully, they have fantastic tracking abilities, as mentioned before, which made this easy for them.

Depending on the school they came from, Witchers also sometimes carry a small array of medium-long range weaponry. This would include something like a one-handed crossbow or varying types of bombs or other thrown explosives that could be used against specific enemies to either damage or disorient. However, ranged weaponry wasn’t as commonly carried as Witchers were primarily trained in close-combat.

Then there are the potions, which I also briefly mentioned before. Witchers were trained by alchemists to brew concoctions that would help them in certain scenarios. These potions could do anything from sharpen eyesight in the dark to increasing speed, strength, or spellcasting abilities. However, it was only Witchers who were able to make use of these potions and they would be wasted on a regular human because of how toxic they were. Witchers, with their enhanced immune system and resistance to poisons and disease, could use these potions in a pinch if they needed an extra edge in battle. But they could not abuse the potions or drink too many at a time because, while the Witchers had a solid resistance to toxins, they would still be fatal in larger doses.

All of these things in conjunction with one another made a Witcher what they were. They were bred to be killing machines, and killing machines they were. This did lead to a distaste from the public, which was evident in the attacks on the Witcher schools. A common belief amongst regular folks was that Witchers were not capable of having emotions, which made them less-than-human. I think that there’s some merit to the idea that they have a limited capacity for emotions since they were taken as children and only ever knew the pain of the trials and murdering monsters. They were taught to have compassion for their brothers, but the children were never really properly socialised. This doesn’t mean that they were entirely incapable of feeling, but I do think that they had a somewhat limited experience in having human interactions. But they do still feel. A Witcher can live, laugh, and love on occasion.

And, lastly, I just wanted to touch on the schools and their traditional values.

The most known would be the school of the wolf, who were the last to leave the Order, and the ones who kept the Order’s values the most. They were typically recognized as the most professional Witcher school and being known for reliably hunting down monsters without collateral damage and were therefore the most popular.

The school of the griffin, which was named after the original knight errant who taught the Witchers swordplay, was the most knightly of the bunch. They tried to keep to traditional chivalrous ideals and etiquette. So much so that members of the griffin school were even summoned to the courts on occasion to give advice and help settle disputes because of their high-standing morality and neutrality on the politics of the continent. They were also a school that focused plenty on using magic, unlike the others who had a main emphasis on swordplay, and this lended them the reputation for their fighting style that was very magic-heavy and was favourable against fighting multiple opponents at once.

The school of the cat was made of a group of young Witchers who believed that they could perfect the process of creating Witchers to be less deadly. And thus, they were the only ones who were known to have female Witchers in their midst (but, again, that comes from the pen and paper tabletop so whether or not you want to believe that is entirely up to you). The cats specifically refused to be neutral in politics, and instead had their paws directly in it. They had assassins, swords, for hire, and spies in their midst that they would hire out to political figures to carry out espionage and assassinations. Apparently this behaviour might have been caused by the changes that they made to the trial of grasses, which ended up dulling the emotions of the Witchers to a more severe degree, and some people described them as almost alien-like because of they inability to exhibit the slightest bit of emotion towards their fellow humans. Their fighting style relied on speed and agility, as expected of a cat, so their gear was designed specifically to be lightweight and flexible to provide the greatest range of motion possible.

The school of the viper was in a similar vein to those of the cat, but more focused on assassination. Not only did they accept contracts on monsters, but humans and non-humans as well. These Witchers were cold and ruthless. They were trained to use twin blades rather than the typical longswords that Witchers used, which they called fangs. The point was to overwhelm their opponents with flurries of blows. If you throw 100 blows in quick succession, you’re bound to hit one or two of them. The viper school also specialised in alchemy, using various poisons to coat their blades. Allegedly, the school was founded with the purpose of defeating the wild hunt, and the school was just a means to get enough people under their belt to be able to do so. And despite their devious behaviour, they remained neutral in continental conflicts. They allowed themselves to be hired by political figures, but never took sides.

The school of the bear, unlike the other schools, tended to be lone-wolves. They did not rely on comradery and did not tend to form bonds with their brothers, but rather focussed on themselves. This is because of the nature of the  schools’ founding, as mentioned before. The founder thought that any code or knightly virtues were just the result of an inflated ego and favoured autonomy without restraint above all else. Because of their home in the snow mountains of Haern Caduch, the Witchers of the bear school were hardened from the cold, ruthless environment, and were known to be incredibly strong and resilient. They favoured strength and brute force in their fighting tactics, wearing heavy armour and even possibly using shields at one point. They were also one of the only schools, along with the cat, who were known to regularly carry crossbows.

The school of the manticore splintered off from the school of the viper after a disagreement in values, and ended up in the desert. They went from being contracted monster killers to being well known for being hired to defend caravans as they journeyed across the sands. This also included being the chosen defenders of the Zerrikanians on occasion, and the leader of the manticore school, Iwan, was even their queen’s personal Witcher and bodyguard. They also tried to perfect the formula for creating Witchers, and even tried it on the Zerrikanian warrior women to no avail. Having no access to the specifics of the rites, and basically going off memory, they weren’t very successful. Their fighting style was more focused on defence with the aid of potions. The manticore school Witchers were often seen carrying shields made of meteoritic steel and silver, the same make as the Witcher’s silver swords. Unlike the other schools, because they were out in the desert, they were not affected by the uprising against the Witchers that caused the other schools to shut down. Instead, they were doing another escort job for the Zerrikanians through the Fiery Mountains where they came across a towering fire elemental that they were not prepared to deal with. Despite having most of the school’s Witchers there, they did not have the firepower (no pun intended) to take down the elemental, and by the time the battle was finally over most of the Witchers had been killed, along with half of the royal family members that they were escorting. Because of this, they lost favour within the Zerrikanian court and were shunned. The manticore school Witchers that did survive were forced to scatter, and that was the end of them.

And finally, there was the school of the crane. I think that this is the least amount of information that we have regarding any of the Witcher schools, which is unfortunate because the premise of their school seems so cool. During the second conjunction, which we mentioned before, the seas beyond the eastern coast had become host to many sea monsters, making travel to the island of Skellige near impossible. The school of the crane was established specifically to fight off these monsters that plagued the seas and air. Because of their need to fight monsters in the air, they evolved from using crossbows to using early forms of guns which I assume would be some form of flintlock, but I’m not sure. The only other thing I can find about guns in the Witcher universe was a long rifle made by a sorcerer that propelled lead bolts using magic instead of gunpowder, which would cut down on the amount of time needed to reload since you basically just need to slap your ammunition into the barrel and away you go. But these guns were too bulky to be used practically anywhere, and so they were not popular and this is definitely not what the Witchers used. I would imagine that the guns the crane school Witchers used were probably also magical in nature, considering that mages in the northern realms tended to stifle any sort of technological advancements that would contend with their magic, including gunpowder advances. However, this is all speculation and the base information that they used guns comes from the Witcher 3, which you could consider canon or non-canon depending on how much of a Sapkowski stan you are. The crane school Witchers wore little to no protective armour so they could launch themselves around without any hindrance, just belts for their weaponry. When fighting, they would have a rope that was tied to themselves and to their mast, fastening themselves to their ship since they would need to constantly launch themselves off of it to fight the sea monsters. But that’s all that we know about them.

And of course an honourable mention to the Order of Witchers, who was the OG Witcher school, which we already covered. And with that, comes the end of this episode and brings me to the question, what did you think? Do you think that if there wasn’t the whole schism starting with Arnaghad and Rhys that maybe the Order of Witchers wouldn’t have fallen? And moreso, if the Order had stayed standing, do you think that the revolt against the Witchers would have been as successful? Personally, I think that if all of the Witchers were still in the same spot, they would have been able to stand their ground and even potentially fight off the armies coming at them. But at what cost? They would have been vilified and even more hated than they ended up being if they had won.

You can find us online @loredtodeath on your favourite social media, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please send me a message wherever you can find me, or at loredtodeath@gmail.com. If you’re using the Spotify app, there’s a Q&A function attached to the episode where you can submit any questions or topics. I would love to hear from you!

And remember, if a man approaches you and asks for your child so he can feed them mushrooms and inject them with grasses so they can become a superhuman, maybe don’t give away your son just because he dropped your favourite vase last week. I’ll lore you to death in the next one. C’ya.