The Witcher is a multi-media franchise that was first created in 1994 by Andrzej Sapkowski through his novel Blood of Elves . Since then, apart from novels, the franchise has grown steadily after being adapted into popular video games, and recently an exclusive series that airs on the Netflix streaming channel. The main story focuses on a witcher named Geralt of Rivia and the Princess of the Cintra Kingdom named Cirilla, where they are both brought together by fate.
Set in a fantasy world called the Continent, The Witcher presents many mythological, legendary, and even supernatural creatures, from basilisks, vampires, to djinn. In addition to monstrous creatures, the population of the Continent is also filled with various humanoid races and groups, such as elves, dwarves, witches, and witchers which are the most unique of all. Witcher himself is a monster hunter on the Continent who is only subject to coins or money, no matter who gives them. Who exactly is this witcher? Why are they unique and how were they created? Let's go deeper, Geeks!
The center of the story of The Witcher
The Witcher is a group of monster hunters that was first created and told by novelist Andrzej Sapkowski through his novels. Andrzej explained quite clearly who these witchers were and how they came to be on the Continent. After the Multiverse apocalypse called the Conjunction of the Spheres unites the various dimensions in the universe, including the human realm, the monster realm, and the supernatural, various creatures then coexist and destroy each other in a world called the Continent.
To overcome the problems caused by monsters and other alien creatures, the human rulers then agreed to ask the magicians for help to create formidable warriors who could directly confront and destroy the monsters. After going through a long process and claimed many victims, finally the witcher was born, which was initially considered a failure because the "cost" was very expensive to make a witcher, including having to sacrifice many innocent lives.
The Thriving Witcher School
The failure arose from the mouths of the sorcerers themselves who claimed that their research and experiments to create witchers had failed. However, among these sorcerers there were still some who had little hope and never gave up, until finally in the 10th century there were created five witchers who began to take their own paths by establishing their own witcher school. From the first five unidentified witchers, seven witcher schools were established.
The seven schools are the School of the Cat which produces criminal witchers, School of the Griffin which produces conservative witchers, School of the Bear which produces tough witchers, School of the Viper which produces assassin witchers, School of the Manticore which produces philosopher witchers, The School of the Crane which produces witchers specializing in sea monsters, and finally the School of the Wolf which produces the most flexible witchers.
These seven witcher schools are spread across the continent, and the most famous and often discussed is the School of the Wolf because in this school Geralt of Rivia was forged as a witcher. Each of these witcher schools then creates and trains new witchers which is basically through a process that is almost the same as the Order of Witcher which was first established by sorcerers. The process of creating a witcher begins with selecting a boy whose body and mind are still malleable.
These boys will be taught all kinds of martial arts techniques, from fighting with bare hands, to using various kinds of weapons. For that they are first trained physically, until finally strong enough to fight. Once they are physically strong, the would-be witcher will be taught a basic magic called sign, to help them in the fight against monsters. In addition, their bodies are also "forced" to mutate, so they can be resistant to poison and have super senses.
The Inhuman Creation of the Witcher
To be born as a Witcher there are several processes or stages that must be passed by the prospective young witcher. Where the process is inhumane because basically the witcher process is "monstering" humans. The first stage is the Trial of the Grasses, the boy who is a witcher candidate will first be injected with various herbs to change his physiology to be resistant to poison and have more physical strength than ordinary humans. Only three out of ten children can pass this stage, the rest will die horribly and suffer.
The next stage is the Trial of Dreams, where after being injected with herbs they will sleep for a long time and then be reborn as a witcher candidate who has cat-like eyes that can see in the dark. All would-be witchers who reach this stage will lose the ability to reproduce, so they will not be able to have children until the end of their lives. That is why witchers are never born through a biological process, but can only be forged in a witcher school.
The third stage is Trial of the Mountain, not much is explained from this third stage, neither in the novel nor in other media. There is speculation that in this third stage the would-be witchers will be forged their immune systems such as surviving in the cold, swimming for a long time, and so on. Others say that at this stage the prospective witcher will be taught how to live as a witcher who only submits to coins and returns to prosper his school.
And the last stage is the Trial of Forest Eyes, where usually only one child can escape and become a real witcher. As shown in the animated film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021), at this stage the very few would-be witchers remaining will be blindfolded and released into the forest without weapons and food. Unfortunately, the forest is a forest filled with terrible and dangerous monsters, their only task is to find a way to escape and return to witcher school without the help of adults.
That's a discussion about the process of creating witcher compiled from novels, video games, and shows. After becoming witchers, they are freed to travel around the Continent in search of coins and return to their respective schools when winter arrives, to rest and replenish their supplies. With the inhuman creation process, in the end the witcher is still a human who can die at any time. However, there was hardly ever a witcher who died of age, most of them more willing to die in battle.
