Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - The Witcher: Racism, Fate, & Unicorns

Episode Date: December 25, 2021

This is part 1 of our conversation about The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski. In this one we talk about racism, fate, and the power of being ludicrously hot. Special thanks to our guest Trevor for suggesting this series and talking to us about it.Follow the show @SwordsNSocPodEmail us at [e-mail]: @HistoryofPersiaDarius: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69  patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Hello, everyone. Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to give a general content warning for sexual assault. It is an important story element for the books we're about to talk about over the next few episodes. For this first episode, we only mentioned it in passing, but I did want to get the warning out there before the series started. In any case, thank you so much for listening, and please enjoy the show. Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. Today, we are going to be talking about a series that to me was most well known for being

a bunch of video games and I learned there were a bunch of books attached to it too, which actually came first, which was a surprise. Today we're going to be talking about The Witcher, everyone's favorite monster slaying himbo. Today with me I as always have my co-host Ketho. How's it going Ketho? Howdy. And today with us we have a guest that's not Nicole for the first time ever. Sorry, Nicole. For the first time ever in an actively recorded episode. Okay. We have with us Trevor.

Trevor is the host of the History of Persia podcast. And it was his suggestion that we do these books. So how's it going, Trevor? Hello. Thank you for having me here. I'm good. And thanks for doing these absolutely psychotic books with me. There's a lot at the risk of being repetitive.

There's a lot going on here. There's a, Oh boy. When you, when I first suggested these to me, I was like, Oh, it's that video game about the guy that kills monsters. And there's the books are probably like him doing adventures and slaying monsters. And for like the first four chapters, that seemed true, maybe most of the first book. And then the further on I got, monster slaying became such a minimal part of the story that for a while I kind of forgot that's what the books were about because there was like so much other stuff going on. It literally,

I think, and I want to make this sort of our first point of discussion here, is that it was really interesting to me that in the Witcher books written by Andrzej Sapkowski, I hope that was a close pronunciation of his name. I'm sorry to our Polish listeners, if we have any. Geralt's monster killing mostly seems to me just to be like a vehicle for him to tell stories about other stuff, like about society or ethics or morality or whatever. Does that seem accurate to you two?

I mean, I certainly think so. I mean, I certainly think so. Yeah, that it starts off as stories about a monster hunter and it ends up. I'm not sure there is a single monster in the last book, aside from the one who's a character. You're right. I think that really is what happens later is like the monster. Oh, that just occurred to me that I think the ultimate theme of this book is that all the real monsters are just people i mean i'm talking about a character who's literally a vampire but yeah let's say regis is in the last book um okay well i didn't get that far i i jumped ahead to a more heady conclusion that the real monsters are just the people that gerald has i mean the

worst monster in the entire series is absolutely people, but... Yeah, so there's a number of books in this series. There is the first two, which are The Last Wish and Sword of Contempt. No, sorry, Sword of Destiny. Last Wish and Sword of Destiny are both collections of short stories that Sapkowski wrote, I think, in the early 90s.

He originally started... he wrote the first witcher short story as an entry to like a fantasy writing competition for like a magazine that's how it always starts isn't it yeah he didn't even win the competition he came in like second or third but like so many of the readers like gave feedback that they loved this story that the magazine like hired him to write more short stories about this character that he created. And then later on with the gaining popularity, he collected the short stories into the first two books and then began writing them sort of as novels with Blood of Elves and Time of Contempt became novels. And, you know, the story

took on sort of a more cohesive arc the longer he the longer he wrote. So before we get into like the more the details and stuff about here, what is what is the world that the Witcher that our character Geralt of Rivia, what's this world that Geralt inhabits? Because I think that's like an important like the rest of the story doesn't make sense unless we know sort of the setup of the world that he lives in well it's the least creatively named fantasy world in existence because throughout the entire series the only name they ever give it is the continent oh yeah to be fair if you live in a world with only one landmass why the hell would you come up with a different name the mountains are the edge of the world it's well i mean that's kind of how like humans have always just called the planet we live on dirt because we're like this is the place with the dirt this

is the place we live i guess so the trick with the rest of the setting of The Witcher is that it is a very much a hybrid between a fantasy aesthetic and a sci-fi setting, if that makes sense. This is a story that relies heavily on interdimensional science and magic that gives people a basic understanding of science it's not like marvel where they say the line that science or magic is just science we don't understand magic is definitely magical but it lets people understand things like microgenetics. Yeah. How that works, why that works doesn't really get explained and it doesn't necessarily need to. That is one thing I think. I think I want to give Sapkowski credit for is he introduces he gives us in many instances details that enough to make the world deep and interesting, but doesn't really bother himself with being overly descriptive when it's

unnecessary. Like the fact that every map of the continent that you look up is essentially just readers best guesses. Cause he never published one, right? Like there's, and like how exactly the magic gives people knowledge about genetics is like it's a thing he says or like he shows you is real but like he doesn't really get into the nitty-gritty details of it and i think that's generally to his credit yeah i think the one thing in his world building that could have used a lot more description,

and Ketho, you can correct me if this is described more in the games, because I haven't played those, is the foundational event that a lot of the world is built around is this thing called the convergence of the spheres. around is this thing called the convergence of the spheres yeah which is from my best understanding of reading things on the wiki and reading the books is a bunch of dimensions collided at some point about 1300 years before the events of the main story and that event let a whole bunch of species and beings from different realities onto the continent and it's kind of implied in at least one conversation that this is not the first time something like that has happened because throughout the story several characters point to the fact that well humans arrived in this world about 1300 years ago, but elves arrived some point before that and dwarves arrived sometime before the elves. And at least one dwarf character says the gnomes were there even before them.

And there's a whole bunch of other intelligent species that I don't think they ever comment on yeah like you know dragons yeah no i mean it's it's pretty much explained the same way they don't really expand on it more in the games um it's they they do weird stuff where they actually like take you to like some of the home dimension of the elves you end up going to at some point. That's a big thing in the second half of the series. Is that what the Tower of Swallows

is? Because like the Tower of Gulls has the portal that was supposed to go to the Tower of Swallows, which was supposed to be where the elves, elf sorcerers were or something. I didn't get to like you know, the last couple of Swallows, which was supposed to be where the elves, elf sorcerers were or something. I didn't get to like, you know, the last couple of the novels, but I'm assuming that's where those go. The Tower of Swallows

and presumably originally the Tower of Gulls were like access points to a sort of nexus. Okay. It's not, again, thoroughly explained, but that is the access point for not the home world of the elves but a world that a group of elves has conquered um which is very creepy and is involves interdimensional slave raids which is yeah these books that's the wild yes the interdimensional slaves slave raids are literally the core thing of the third witcher game yeah it's like the title

of the game is the wild hunt yeah the wild the wild hunt is the inner is the interdimensional slave raiding yes the wild hunt is a group of elves going on interdimensional slave raids from a world that they conquered from a group of sentient unicorns who they couldn't enslave because they didn't have arms and thumbs, basically. So in this world- This entire series is tripping so many balls,

and I love it. This is about 2,000 years before the events of the main story. In a previous convergence of the spheres, this group of elves leaves, and they're tied into the prophecy that makes Ciri out to be the chosen one by the time we get to the books, which I'll have to explain more about, too. But they get there and they, they conquer this world in the way that the humans are conquering the main world of the story while it's happening.

Which is, I think an interesting foil to the way that it's portrayed for most of the series where the humans are this horrible invasive colonialist species and the elves are innocent victims in all of this. Well, you find out that the elves can be dicks too when they want to i i feel like that is one thing that sapkowski does make note of is the fact that everyone can be a complete piece of shit uh and that like nobody's really the good guy most of the time yeah your first encounter in in blood of elves if i'm

remembering this correctly, it's the first time you encounter the Scoia'tael? Yeah, I think so. The Scoia'tael? Yeah. Oh, they say Scoia'tael. You can just say squirrels. Squirreltails.

The squirrels. See, I don't know if you've noticed, Trevor, but Catherine and I have this thing where he usually reads the books, and I listen to most of them on audiobook. So I end up with pronunciations that are entirely however the audio narrator decided to pronounce it well if you hadn't if you hadn't listened to sword of destiny you just would have thought dandelion was dandelion okay yeah i don't know if you know this trevor this is a side note depending on which audiobook you listen to all narrated by the same that's how that's how i consume these books too is i've been listening to the audiobooks. In like three of the books, they call him

Dandelion. In one of the books, they call him Dandelion. Yeah, it alternates. He settles into Dandelion most by the end. Well, it's Dandelion in The Last Wish. It's Dandelion

in The Sword of Destiny. And then he goes back to Dandelion, and I wish it's dandelion in the sword of destiny and then he goes back to dandelion and i think he like you said he's like settles into it after that why he changed it i don't know i don't understand any of that because it's obviously dandelion and why would it be dandelion it's what he's it's how he pronounces it in the audiobook but that does not make sense i just wish you know they should have just kept the polish name like yeah for listeners who have only watched the tv show and found this because we're going to put this out at a time when the algorithm likes it this is yaskier that we're talking about

yeah that's what yaskier means in Polish. Yeah, Jaskier is his Polish name, and that just means dandelion. And they smartly kept to that in the show. It's one of the few creative decisions they made that I was like, that's okay. I do feel like dandelion comes more across like the name of a court jester poet guy. I don't know if it's fruity enough for dandelion. It's not foppish enough okay yeah we'll get to him but he's a character who i hated until i didn't i did not like him for like the first two books or most of the first two books i gotta be completely honest with you but back on track here uh trevor's saying is yet these underlying sort of sci-fi themes, the fact that this it's introduced to us like it's fantasy monster slaying. But really, the underlying function of the world here is like interdimensional spheres that cross and then you get cross pollination of of peoples between these spheres.

It's where the monsters come from. It's where the elves come from. It's where humans probably came. I have to wonder where the humans came from by the ways like part of me oh that he thinks it's just from from here that's all but stated outright by the end is that they just came from our dimension that the humans came from a place where they destroyed their own world and there is a time travel element to the interdimensional hopping so it's not clear if that's like we destroyed our world in the future or like there some of the many tragic events in human history and people just up and left um and they just up and left to like this other world but and another one of those things where it's not explained it's just

because he wanted it to be that way siri eventually up and leaves and goes to king arthur's court by the end of the story yeah gerald and jennifer get left on the isle of avalon um what that's how this ends that's that's treated as like some interdimensional heavenly place, but no. Ciri ends up, I want to say, with going off with Gawain at the end.

I don't remember which of the Knights of the Round Table it is because it's been a minute since I read that far. This gets even more weird. It's very much implied that the human past is on earth jesus christ what the fuck it's it's well i mean like the lady like there's a lot of weird arthurian stuff that shows up in both the books at moments and then obviously more explicitly later

and then in the games they bring it all back like the lady in the lake plays a role multiple times in the book and the games yes siri is the lady of the lake in of arthurian legend is kind of the implication just because like one of the knights of the round table finds her walking out of a lake with a big fancy mystical sword on her back it's like oh that's where that story came from so wait so excalibur is just a witcher sword it's a gnomish something i don't remember what it what the type of sword it is uh-huh the more you guys tell me about what happens the rest of the series i it's expanding fast i'm like i'm that meme of like the dude with the cosmos brain

expanding further and further because i just could not have predicted when when does the which book does the prophecy about siri pop up i mean first time to all of them it's never i think read all the way through and all the way through. They never, like the first time they mention it is in the second book, is in Sword of Destiny. Because that's when, well, because I think is because that's when they, he meets her the first time and broke a lot. I think from a world building perspective, it's important to know that each chapter opens

with an excerpt or three from some kind of historical text from the future of this world. Yes. Written 50 to 100 years after the events of the story. And that's not super clear until you get to a point where it's Dandelion'ss and then you're like well obviously this stuff's from the future because it's his memoir but a lot of this stuff is remembered as legend and myth in the future of its own world just 50 to 100 years later dude kethel we're back at um canicle for lebowitz where like things happen and then you're just like it's we know that they happened the way they did but like within like a hundred years everyone remembers it like slightly differently as opposed like what actually happened

darius did you get to the part of the story where they formed the witch's lodge no okay they're the, yes or it, basically. Not exactly the lodge because they're formed in the course of the story, but in some of the conversations, you realize that different cliques of sorcerers have been arranging marriages and pregnancies for the last five or 600 years to get the dynasties and bloodlines that they want

because certain bloodlines carry particular traits that they want to increase in the various royal families. All right, I'm going to say, I think, the most I can say about Sapkowski as an author, he gives off the most I can say about Sapkowski as an author, he gives off the most guy writing his own fanfic like of anyone I've ever read. And I don't mean that like in a bad way where like a derisive to fanfic, but like you can read it and you're like, oh, I've also read the things that you read. And like, I see where you got this from. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of stuff going on that he writes where I'm like,

I think you and I read the same source material here. And like, again, I'm not really knocking him for it because you're only as good as whoever you steal from as like an artist. And that's fine. But there are just times just like right now where you said that they just formed the Benny Jeseret where I'm like, there are times reading that, like reading his books where I'm like, I've heard that before. Like, I just want to say in another parallel, I thought of the way the humans come to the continent and do their colonialism is almost explicitly the story of like the founding of Skyrim in the Elder Scrolls. Like the Elder Scrolls were populated by all the Dwemer.

Like they don't have dwarves. They had different, you know, weird that lived underground but they were dwarves and then there's the first landing of men with the guy that the guy that like formed the companions and then humans kept showing up and went to war with the elves and eventually took over the continent right well over sky they arrived they set up a city like you got wiped out arrived set up a city they were at one point peaceful with the elves but then like something happened and the city got destroyed by the elves and then iskrimorn is like his sons left and then came back years later with like all of atmora and just absolutely wipe again just saying I got very

similar vibes to like there were elves here the humans showed up and eventually just pushed them to the brink of extinction like obviously in the elder schools the elves aren't extinct because they have their whole other shit going on on the other side of the world and you know it was it was like 10 15 years later yeah but you know what you see what i'm saying like it was just like i feel like i've seen this before um before we go on i want to just do one more little bit of world building for people who aren't as familiar only played the games i guess or any of the games you'd probably know it so you've got the continent it's broken down into sort of like a northern half and a southern half the northern half is a bunch of either kingdoms or free cities or dukedoms or mayoral ships or pick your random you know

subdivision from within the holy roman empire right like it's all those sort of like various levels of authority um all in their own little territories. And then the southern half of the continent is the Empire of Nilfgaard, which started off as one place that conquered a bunch of other places, which is sort of, I think, Trevor, you mentioned it

before we started recording. You can kind of draw some analogies between that and sort of like the USSR, considering that Sapkowski grew up in Poland behind the Iron Curtain, that it's like this sort of overarching empire that has sort of independent territories, or not independent, but like territories or provinces below it that used to be independent that it sort of subsumed into itself i also you know it's it's very also has some rome vibes to it in a way the way it's like sort of where the sophisticated ones and everyone north of us is barbarian and that's super bizarre when you

think about the way that the northern kingdoms think of no guardians. You know, it's like, they like, they're like, they're the weird gross ones from debt. They don't have be effectively. I mean, come on. Who trusts anyone without a beard? Come on.

Sorry, Trevor, you're being voted off. Okay. Yeah. Well, so you have this weird sort of, it's clearly supposed to be sort of this, like, you're being voted off. Ah, okay. Yeah. So you have this weird sort of, it's clearly supposed to be sort of this medieval feudal thing going on

where you've got the king of Redania and the queen of Cintra, but you also have like- The weird incestuous king of Temeria. Yeah, you've also got like the mayor of this sort of semi-independent city, right? And like all the cities have guilds in them and you have it's all this very medieval thing then you also sort of have this like overweening empire just like sitting south of everyone's board or just waiting to

pounce on them and that's sort of like the political landscape within there you've got l there's like one territory where elves get to be free to i thinkf. There's like one territory where Elves get to be free. Kind of two, I think. Yeah, well, there's like one area that's like sort of a freehold of Elves. I don't remember the name of it. There's Dol Blithana, which is kind of contested territory. And then there's the Blue Mountains, which is like the Elven kingdom in exile. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Yeah, I was thinking of Dolbithani is what I was thinking of. But then even within the human kingdoms, some of them are more tolerant of non-humans. You have elves and dwarves and gnomes and halflings. All of your, you know, typical Tolkien races, right? All live there. All of them live there before the humans. And then one day the humans showed up and were like surprise we're europeans showing up anywhere else in the anywhere else in the world

this belongs to us now and we're gonna murder you and take it whether you like it or not we had enough of being crappy in the old world we're gonna show them be crappy in this one too like the way it's described is very clearly just like a like european imperialism right like they just showed up on their boats one day and were like hey this is a nice place you got it would be a shame if somebody murdered you and took it and suddenly the human kingdoms were born like after a number of fights with the elves it's not sustained throughout the whole series but there are at least a couple references to reservations in the early books yes there are there especially um there are reservations and also it gets more somewhat more explicit once

the the squirrels show up and like people start like the human kingdom start doing like pogroms and stuff like they literally start being like oh the the non-humans are are fighting us via gorilla attacks we're just gonna murder all the non-humans in our city in retaliation yeah and the pogroms come up a lot from the mouths of dwarves which might be maybe time to talk about that since we're on the subject already yeah go ahead start that so this falls into a thing that fantasy settings tend to do that i think sometimes works against them where Where, of course, we have the typical fantasy races. Yeah. And all of the races have very specific character traits

that seem universal. Dwarves are fighty people and bankers. They're bankers and they're angry. The dwarves? I'm putting three echoes around the dwarves and i'm putting like i'm putting three um you know three echoes around the dwarves are bankers uh elves are indigenous people like i like yeah in a almost too noble savage kind of portrayal but then they're also assholes half the time so that kind of breaks the facade halflings are just hobbits from lord of the rings i like they don't really seem to have

issues other than just not being tall yeah the best the best thing like the best i've ever heard hobbits described it's like matt colville put out like a description of his campaign setting for fifth edition and he's like you can play as this and then he has like a description of his campaign setting for fifth edition. And he's like, you can play as this. And then he has like a list of each one of each fifth edition player race where he's like, you can be this kind of person, like a human where you're like this, or you're an elf.

People don't trust you. You're like, you're a dwarf people. And then the bottom one is halfling. Everyone loves you. It's like halflings are like the least offensive and most universally like positive again there are definitive holdovers from tolkien's work like people like halflings yeah because he made them lovable i i'm pretty sure that's what it is it is

but sorry go ahead continue and then there's um there are some other intelligent races uh that we'll talk and we'll talk about some of them when we get to monsters but they don't get a ton of detail fleshed out gnomes are inherently really intelligent engineers apparently is what we get from the only known character in the series. Which fits stereotype, I think. Yeah, so still, you know, that's still D&D. And dwarves speak weird semi-German slang. Yeah, they do.

The dwarves are so heavily coded as Jews, it's impossible to avoid. And it's so baked into the post-Tolkien development of dwarves in fantasy literature that I don't know if it's Sapkowski making a Jewish caricature, or it's just how people think of dwarves at this point. That's a good point like that that's something we haven't had a chance to talk about yet because we really haven't done a book with yeah we haven't run into a book yet with your traditional fantasy races at all um well it's because i've put off doing talk yeah well yeah we put up doing tolkien i've you know maybe one day we'll do like terry pratchett um but like so yeah like the the dwarf thing is weird because i don't even necessarily think that somebody like tolkien

for example intended that to be present as a coded thing no i mean the coding in tolkien isn't as heavy as it became in things yeah it's like people took people took the little bits of probably unintentional like coding in tolkien's dwarves i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that's probably a bad idea but um like and then they read further into it than tolkien intended and then their version of dwarves became more and more and more and more anti-semitic look over time i i really think that's the best read on it because I think Tolkien took dwarves, which are explicitly Jewish coded in Germanic Christian mythology and just took dwarves and put them into Lord of the Rings. Like he was an intelligent, well-read person.

He knew they were Jewish coded, but he was just taking this thing from mythology that had that background is my kind of read on it and maybe leaning into some of those stereotypes from there by giving them like a diaspora yeah well and like giving with the ark and stone and the plot of the hobbit more than the plot of lord of the rings and and and making them you know uh dwarves delving too greedily and too deep. Yeah. You know, that sort of thing. But I also think that in the genre of fantasy in general,

making things or these othering groups, races, is in keeping with how the word race was used a hundred years ago, but it's not how race is used in English today, where it means very specifically this. It was how race was used in appearance. Yeah. It was race. How race was used like before we invented the concept of white people. Yeah.

And that kind of hung around simultaneously with race as in racism for a while but that's not how we use the word race anymore so when it's used in that fantasy context where what you really i think probably want is species but that doesn't sound fantastical yeah like it creates a lot of weird things because conceptually things that are different species probably do have inborn things that they are better at because that's what species are. Yeah. Like bear, like, you know, if you're looking at the difference between like, you know, a bear and an eagle. There are inborn differences there about what they are and aren't good at.

Now, that's not an excuse to, I don't know, carry out a racial cleansing against other intelligent, sentient creatures because they look different than you. But it does kind of make up for some of the race essentialism, I think, in how they're portrayed in this series. Well, I mean, that sort of thing is something that a lot of fantasy authors and fantasy stuff in general is trying to grapple with now, just because it's something that's more culturally acceptable to be discussed.

So you end up with things like WotC. It just happened. Yes, releasing Tasha's cold breath. Wizards of the Coast just did an errata where they removed sections of the descriptions from various races or species of creatures from their source material, like Tsh's and stuff like that now they didn't really inherently change them and that is one of those things that reddit is very angry about because of course it is like where they're like ah they're changing the way dnd works to be

woke i but i think this gets to the heart of what you were saying what both of you are saying is that like we use the term race differently now than we did when these concepts were kind of first developed. And the tradition that they're working from for things like The Witcher or for D&D. And now we have to grapple with this sort of inherent race essentialism that's sort of baked in to these different species that that all inhabit

the same world and like watsi is trying to remove some of the like essentialism for some of the species and people are very mad about it but i just that was interesting that we're talking about it now and like that just happened yeah from that was that was yeah that was about a year ago not even they just did a did a new one within the last week. Another one. Another? Yeah, from WotC. They did another errata where they said retroactively there's sections that they would prefer be removed from some of their source material.

Yeah. So it literally just happened. Okay, I'm learning something new. But again, if you already own the book, like you already own the book. Uh, but anyway, this other ring on, like you were, you were talking about Trevor, this sort of concept of, you know, species does sort of explain some inherent sort of antagonism or differences in the world. So Kowski's created,

but you also have to sort of wrestle with that, that they are still like intelligent and you know sentient species you see it even more heavily when with things like the dryads um then you do even with the way they hand they treat like dwarves or elves right because like they don't even a lot of them don't even treat the dryads as like people worthy of having a conversation with let alone like you know letting into your cities or whatever in humanity's defense with that one one i'm not entirely sure if dryads the old-fashioned way they can also make them by magic yeah it's they can do either one they're a weird group and it

also in a little bit of defense of humanity on that one. Very, very hostile. Well, I mean... And you don't get the sense they were ever not, just that they've lost some territory. Yeah, I think the Dryads were probably always hostile to anyone cutting down trees. I think that was just going to be an inherent part of who they are. I mean, the Dryads are also really you know

they're a tad rapey um and this story is more than a tad rapey yeah i i'm trying to be we will there's so much talk about sex oh my god i'm sorry i want i'm sorry i do want to push the sex a little bit later though. Cause I want to deal with, I want to talk more about the stuff that I, is it good? Or I think what I said pass will be more interesting than before we get to the stuff where I just want to go.

Why my guy? Why? Cause when we're talking about this othering of the other races, this does also get applied to our main character. This gets applied to Geralt because Geralt is human. Technically. Originally. Maybe it's the best original.

Yeah. Originally Geralt is, is, was a normal human boy. Uh, but then the witchers go through their whole process where they do a bunch of training, they take a shit ton of drugs,

and they do some special rituals. And eventually you get like eyes that can adjust to the light. You get unnatural reflexes and all the other things you need to fight monsters. And that brings with it, though, this inherent dichotomy of this othering where human settlements, especially in the up through Geralt, but especially even before the time of our story when monsters were even more prevalent. We're like everybody knew that witches were a thing you needed to help deal with monsters, but nobody really wanted them around.

And nobody really, really wanted them around and nobody really really treated them like people so i mean some people did but a lot of people didn't treat witchers like people and so they have this like they're human but they're not we need them but we'd prefer them to not ever be seen by us as much as possible yeah for a story that relies so heavily on some of those race-based or you know race-coded stereotypes he does a really good job of fleshing out how those kinds of attitudes develop in relation to the witchers because okay this massive interdimensional calamity happens a group of humans are dumped here and at the same time so are a bunch of horrifying monsters just so monsters i'd never even heard of yeah mostly things from scandinavian and uh slavic mythology but also some of your english world classics like werewolves and vampires and shit like that

i just want to go on record and say a lot of the like scandinavian and slavic monsters are real fucked up like more than a lot of your basic like sort of english and western like mythology like vampires and werewolves are one thing but like you hear about some of the other ones that like you know the people like lithuania made up and you're like that's that's honest that's honestly the coolest part of the games you get to see all these fucked up monsters well it's something that really makes me go maybe humans shouldn't be cold all the time so anyway so yeah you were saying we had this group of humans that that get dumped at the same time as a bunch of monsters and you know so especially if you assume

that they are humans from some kind of post-apocalyptic or mid-apocalyptic earth. These are people who are used to being the top of a food chain, and all of a sudden they have competition. And they also suddenly have access to magic, which is something humans only get when they arrive on the continent, but maybe could have had access to before and just didn't know how. It's not explained at all, like so many things. But so they have access to these new resources and this new threat and create witchers to deal with that problem. And witchers are, but then there's this development of what a witcher is. They are obviously genetically modified in some way. They're called mutants to have special

abilities to be stronger and faster and get access to special drugs to enhance that even more but then they're also trained through their entire adolescence to get really good at killing things and they're trying to get really good at killing monsters and this is something i saw on a reddit thread in the build up to the new season of the show there's not a fighting style in real life that looks like what's described in the books where it's 84 pirouettes and drawing half circles with your sword because you draw a half circle and you turn a pirouette well the drawing half circles thing is somewhat realistic to sword fight to real medieval sword fighting but the fighting style described is this really brutal fighting style because it's designed to fight giant monsters with eight foot spikes and you know vampires

and things that are superhuman but they're trained to kill like this, and then it's made into a profession. So they earn their living because apparently humanity, even in a post-apocalyptic alternate dimension, can't shake capitalism. Unfortunately. So they have to fight and kill in this extremely brutal way, in addition to having just material differences for money so you get the stereotype of them just being greedy murderers which to some degree they are just greedy killers but they're not mostly killing people but when you see somebody kill something like that they become scary and so in the the historical documents at the beginning of the chapters he kind of fleshes out like why people would be terrified of a witcher and it doesn't not make sense where you know you retell that story too many times and all of a sudden

it's a stereotype yeah yeah and Yeah. And it's not like, and I think that's also exacerbated by the fact that one of the things the witchers do in order to make themselves more efficient, like killers is essentially be feelings out of new witchers. I personally don't believe that they're capable of what they say they do, which is removing all emotions from witchers. I don't believe that they're capable of what they say they do, which is removing all emotions from witchers. I don't think that's, I think that's a myth that they tell themselves because clearly

Geralt has a lot of emotions and feelings. He just sucks at handling them. Um, I think in the books, they like people, you know, that Geralt encounters and Geralt himself will say things like, oh, witchers can't form attachments or witchers don't have feelings. I think that's a lie they tell themselves within the story. But I do think that they are trained heavily to suppress all of their emotions. And so I think that then plays in to their reputation as like cold-blooded killers among regular people, because they'll like murder this

thing and then the reaction to this violence they've just done is i don't know pay me i think that's definitely true uh and i think it's really shown in two examples one of geralt's witcher friends that you meet at kaer morhen i think it's eskel it might be one of Geralt's Witcher friends that you meet at Kaer Morhen, I think it's Eskel, it might be one of the other ones, it's not Vesemir, joins the war at the end and gets killed in the fighting in the last book. You know, completely away from the main character's story. There's a portrayal of the actual warfare. And one of the witchers dies because he signs up for the cause as a soldier. He's not getting, you know,

he's not getting witcher money for that. And Geralt at some point tells the story of the very first monster that he killed. And it's this robber who's threatening to sexually assault a girl on the highway immediately after he leaves kaer morhen for the first time which i remember i think that i think that's in sort of destiny i think it's in the last wish oh okay straight into the beginning so you know very clearly like that's not an emotionless response the one job you've been

given your whole life up to that point is don't intervene with humans don't get attached to people don't try to impress people kill monsters and he's away from home for like a day and is immediately intervening in the affairs of humans immediately just yeah kills a potential so one i think gerald you know he took extraordinarily well to the physical aspects of being a witcher but i don't think they i think he is particularly bad at the mental side of witchering i would agree but then you also see other emotional witchers who like are really concerned and, you know, have this really uncle personality around Ciri. So clearly, even like Vesemir is like this kind of grandfather figure when we see him. Like, you have emotions, stop lying.

Yeah, I do think really that that's a theme that the witchers themselves, to some extent, like perpetuate. And then one that the villagers picked up on. And then that like, you know, just the regular populace talks about, despite it just not being true at all. Because if I was actually going to say one of Geralt's main character traits,

it's being upset about things and not knowing what to do about it like that's kind of his like main thing is things bother him and then he doesn't know how to handle it and so he often just walks away from it let's say so he usually just decides to do nothing which usually ends up worse well so that's that quote that all of the guys online who like joker latched on to right oh yeah the the middling there's no lesser evil greater lesser middling it's all the same to me except the whole point of the story where that quote comes up, and I feel like this needs to go out somewhere, is that he makes a choice.

He decides which one is the lesser evil in his mind and commits to that. And that's what he does for the rest of the series. Yeah. That's one of those quotes to me that hits sort of like the... It's... Like like blood is thicker than water or something like that we're like yeah it only makes sense it only means that way if you don't finish the quote right like or you know or like bad apples yeah yeah oh it's just a few bad

apples well what's the rest of that quote a few few bad apples spoil the whole bunch. That means that they're all bad. And so like saying, oh, there's a greater, lesser middling evil. But then what does that mean in context? Like you said, he clearly makes a choice.

Like he does, even though he tries to not have to make one. Inevitably he has to, and he does because you don't have a choice you got to make a you have to you have to do it and then even then he does it i i want to say he spends the rest of the books still trying to make as few decisions as possible and i think the way he gets around that is by just forcing himself to only be reactive to things he doesn't want to make proactive decisions about stuff so he just waits for

things to happen and then reacts to them in whichever way he feels best in the moment the ultimate reactive protagonist so you you left off on a kind of funny point in gerald's arc because he's just kind of on the verge of forging they literally call it a fellowship at one point um his little his where i left off he and dandelion are about to leave brokilon to go i don't know rescue siri i suppose so he leaves and did you i think you met milva in that book, right? The archer who helps the squirrels sneak around. Maybe she shows up right at the beginning of the next one. So they meet up with her. And eventually they also meet up with another group of dwarves who they hang out with for a bit because they're fun characters to do exposition with.

And then they meet. It's not, it's not Yarp and Ziggurin again. It is not. I don't remember his name. The new one's name. Is it, is it,

is it now, this is just me coming from the games. I don't know. Is it Zoltan? Yes. It's Zoltan Chibay. Chibay. And then they meet Regis, vampire and all this time Kay here whatever Op Kylik he has a very long

Welsh-ish Nilfgaardian name um is following them trying to make up for his past failings um and joins their company along the way which i like to point out basically sets them up with a very well-rounded dnd company they've got a fighter you've got an archer you've got a bard uh you know gerald you know spell sword sort of thing but you've got a ranger and a bard and the vampire's totally your sorcerer and you've got a straight-up warrior. It's a very nice company that they end up working with by the end of the series. Very well-balanced party. All to go try and save Ciri

and fucking murder Vilgefortz or whatever his name is. But once he has that group, all of a sudden Geralt's making decisions because he has one thing that he's trying to do, and I think that's this big moment of clarity. He is going to rescue Siri. Everything else is ancillary to that. For the first time in his life, he has a priority, number one.

He's not trying to balance monster hunting with helping people, with not being racist. His only goal is go find Siri. And anybody who gets in his way needs to get the fuck out of the way you know i i i don't think that's bad i i think that's good character development for him though like i do think that's like an appropriate arc for him because he spends like the first bit just being like the first few books being like i don't want to do any of this bullshit and then eventually like there is a thing that's important enough to like force him to like do, you know, I don't think that's, that's, uh, I think that's good direction for him is that he at least has a goal and a

thing he has to work towards as opposed to just like hanging out and waiting for Yennefer to fuck him over again somehow they are they are a hilariously toxic relationship that is made for each other at the same time i don't like her very much she's kind of a bitch so maybe this is a good time to talk about fate because their relationship is, I think, the most explicit version of fate being a built-in true thing in this universe. I think there's one more thing I think I want to talk about with Other Ring and other races before we get on to fate, is we didn't mention wizards and sorceresses yet. They are the other people

who are people but aren't people like witchers they were usually human i think there's like one exception yeah there's a couple of elves but a couple of elves but generally it's humans who have the as opposed to witchers who are just sort of beaten into shape. Like, sorcerers have some sort of inborn natural ability attuned to magic, and they go through rigorous training and tutelage and all this other stuff. But like witchers, they end up then being separate from society.

They have powers and skills that normal humans can never hope to match. And also like witchers, they can live for a long time. they can live for a long time witchers live for a long time sorceresses and wizards can live for a really long time maybe ever like maybe we don't know i think every sorcerer who dies in the course of the series is killed and everyone who's talked about is killed well the one when they have the coup in like the sorcerer palace thing um the one one where the wizards dies and he's one of the ones that's like an og like he was

back he was a sort like a wizard back in the times of myths and stuff and he dies of like a heart attack of like the stress of the coup. Yeah. I feel like that's because he didn't have time to do a spell though, but that makes him at least 1300 years old. So yes. Yeah. Because they remember like he was there, like when Geralt then goes through like the hall of like great deeds or

whatever, like one of the wizards you see in the tapestries of like making peace with the elves all the way back. When is this wizard who's been there like the whole time? he dies of a heart attack yeah and you're right but besides that wizards die uh violently the main elven sorceress that we meet is even older than that too so we're talking about the one that like after the war after like the second war with nilfgaard like becomes a queen yeah of like of like the valley of flowers or whatever yeah she's super in one of the books naturally explains that she was there very early on in human colonization as a full-fledged mage so jesus so she's been a mage since like the humans got

there okay damn um so anyway the these wizards and sorceresses can live basically forever. And they also get othered in society, but in a different way than witchers do because they are, and I say more useful and particularly more useful to authority, to Kings and to rulers, because it's useful for Kings and rulers to have a wizard or a sorceress on their council because you have someone who's been alive for 700 years giving you advice and someone who has access to all these magical spells and scrying and teleportation and blah blah blah blah blah blah so even though they're like witchers in the fact that they're other than human to some extent, they are a more accepted other in most of society because they're useful.

And also because they're just powerful, right? Like they can they have to be somewhat more accepted because they could just like fireball your town into ruins if you tell them no. Well, one thing I think is interesting is that in Nilfgaard, they're not as powerful. When you start- No, they're really reigned in by the emperor. Yeah, they're in competition with the political powers that be in the north. But then down in Nilffgaard they are servants and that plays into how they are not just perceived by society but how they physically appear because one thing that makes the sorcerers so acceptable in the the north where most of the story is set

is just that they're hot like that's a big part of their social cachet is that sorceresses all look really attractive forever and wizards go from looking really attractive to extremely wise at some point in their life yeah they definitely do the like the women have to look young and hot and the men have to look experienced and wise and both of them use those those you know physical stereotypes to their advantage when trying because they influence yeah and because they can use magic to make themselves look however they want so they definitively you know like well if i look wise or if i look just smoking fucking hot ever i i can do stuff like how many times in the story does jennifer do stuff because every guy that sees her just goes

and then she just and then she just does whatever she wants because she's just so unbelievably hot what's really funny though is is like when gerald first meets her he's like i can see all the little things you're not that hot okay we're gonna get into that later when we get into the sexism and the weird stuff we'll get into that later but he's like i figured it out i'm only horny about lilac and gooseberries this is that's that's gerald's personal aphrodisiac because the smell of gooseberry because the first because the first time he really gets a good look at her he's like oh you're a hunchback and you're like you're like dude just just take it we'll get into that with i think a little bit later on with sexism and

that sort of thing but i just i wanted to bring up the fact that there are these other humans that aren't humans but are treated significantly differently within society because they're hot and they're old and they're really powerful and they can do like just set you on fire or whatever when they feel like yeah it's a it's a mixture of awe and contempt and i think worth noting just ludicrously more powerful than the witcher yeah the witcher could like fight basically anybody in one v one combat with a sword but like a powerful sorcerer can just demolish your town in 30 seconds. Just level a city or snap your brainstem with a word. The only way Geralt would ever be able,

that any witcher really is ever able to take out a wizard or a sorceress is they have to get the drop on them. And they have the medallion as the early warning system yeah so like your medallion senses magic and you have to get the drop on them and just basically not allow it's literally like a dnd thing where like the best way to take care of a spell caster is just to not let them cast spells by beating the shit out of them like you can't cast a spell at me if i broke your hands like that's the only way sorceresses ever get neutralized really throughout or magic uses get neutralized throughout this entire series is by being like bound or gagged or so they don't because like dnd

all your spells have like semantic and verbal components and so you have to like be able to make the sign with your hands and like say the special words. So in order to stop that, like when they, um, in the story where they go find the gold dragon, um, you know, where like it goes in the big hunting party to hunt the gold dragon, when like the party with three jackdaws before that like happens when they like the party starts to getdaws before that like happens when they like the party starts to get in a fight right beforehand like someone gets the drop on Yennefer and they stop her from casting

spells by literally like tying her to a wagon wheel and putting a gag in her mouth and binding her hands so she can't cast spells she eventually gets around it by like doing spell casting with her feet uh once her mouth is free but again that's the only way you can ever when you're talking about power level of them they're insanely powerful but you can stop them with like a gag which again is why it takes the entire crew of very talented fighters plus a witcher um in the last couple books to hunt down and stop Vilgefortz at one point. Well, and even then, Vilgefortz is only defeated because of the other fatal flaw that he gives to a lot of sorcerers, and especially male sorcerers, is just being ridiculously arrogant.

Most arrogant piece of shit. So they say, well, i'm really powerful i can take that witcher in a sword fight well he does well to be fair he does beat gerald in the sword fight in like in time of contempt he does yeah and vilgefortz has genuinely practiced being good in a sword fight but like jennifer's previous lover um Istredd, also tries to challenge Geralt to a sword fight because he's like, well, I'm a wizard and I know sword fighting impresses Yennefer. Oh, is that the one where Geralt's just like, dude, I'm not fighting you. Geralt's like, I will kill you. I'm not doing that. Yeah, that's the one where they're like, they're in the same town and Yenneennefer's bouncing between the two of them morning and night in the same city.

And yeah, then he's like, we'll fight for her love, and Geralt shows up, and he's like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. But he goes, and he's like, this is going to be challenging. It's a pain in the ass to fight people who use magic. And then Istredd's like, I'm going to fight him with a sword, and Geralt just walks away. Istredd's like, you have to fight me. And he's like, no, I don't, man. Come on. I think he specifically says, like, I'm not going to contribute to your suicide.

Well, he uses the line that the bandits or whatever used on him the night before is like, if you want, if you want to kill yourself, like don't hang me with the same rope or something like that. Yeah. It's like, don't involve me in your suicide. Um, so yeah, that was just, I wanted to bring up how these other sort of not human non-humans were, are sort of treated within the world. Now let's talk about, I think what is like sort of the overriding, I think biggest overriding theme, I think, which is like sort of the overriding, I think biggest overriding theme of these books, which is fate. Fate is a thing, like a real thing.

In a lot of other fantasy books, fate is a sort of nebulous concept. We mentioned it at the end of our last episode, I think, that eventually we are going to do an episode that is just about the concept of fate in like fantasy, how different authors handle it. Like the fate versus free will debate. We're going to do specific episodes about that. And the reason I really thought about is because of like these books, fate is, Oh buddy, fate is real. And most of Geralt's problems come from the fact that it's real and he doesn't believe it. Like those are most of his issues is that every single person around him is like, yeah, man, fate's real.

Of course it is. Why wouldn't you believe it? And he's just like, I don't. And then bad things happen. So I would like to suggest that outside of particularly powerful multidimensional magic, which seems to be able to just control the fabric of space-time anyway, it's not necessarily as real as people treat it. that a lot of Geralt's problems with fate are brought about by everyone around him, assuming he and Ciri have specific destinies. Because in the end, the thing that Ciri ultimately does, and one of the reasons I really don't like the plot of The Witcher 3, as siri says no and walks away just not like not just you know refuses to do the thing that fate has assigned her for but leaves this universe and goes back in time at least 2 000 years

to get away from this and not do it and as far as the books are concerned she gets away with that yeah and the games kind of almost kind of fulfill the prophecy yeah the way the games fulfill it and also because they bring regis back in the dlc really rubs me the wrong way about setting the games after the books yes they kind of spoil some of the more nuanced parts of the ending yeah the like they do they they do a lot of it for fan service um which is is very frustrating so coming in honestly coming into the witcher 3 blind was probably the best thing i could do and this is why i i say if you ever do play this dariusarius, to think of it as a fan fiction, like something separate. Because if you don't think of, say, the fact that Regis comes back, which you're like, that's not okay.

Like he's the most meaningful sacrifice in the last book. And then it's like, like actually he turned invisible and walked away well no no he got he got turned into actual mush by vilgefort it's like a puddle of of red just goop but the way they kind of retcon it is they kind of say that the only way that like there are different levels tiers of vampire in the game. Yeah, that's in the book, but like. And Regis is a kind of vampire that can only be truly, permanently, totally killed by another true vampire. Like that's the only way that he can actually permanently die.

Otherwise he was still alive in like a weird, I think that's kind of funny because there's definite like i kept listening to the books like up until 10 minutes before we started recording and there's absolutely a scene where he implies that a specific type of wooden stake would actually kill him well the thing is that's why they absolutely tells them that that's why he break that's why like the the writers of the games brought regis back is because he is kind of a fan favorite oh he's the he's the most interesting character in a couple of the books like yes in gerald's fellowship oh yeah within within the fellowship of the siri um he is one of the most interesting characters he's he's just and and in the game like

if it weren't for the weird retconning that they do in order to make it possible like the stuff they do in the games is good it's just it just doesn't make any sense as a contiguous actual thing especially because like the way they interpret some of the stuff like uh the white frost is is really silly compared to the way that it's treated in if i remember correct what's the final book it's like the song that's lady of the lake yeah the newer ones um which he he released lady in the lake when that wasn't even that long ago oh uh books no um what is the most recent one didn't you release like a short story collection yeah there was another short season of storms yeah where the the epilogue of that book apparently goes into like the future a bit like way into the future like some weird epithets that go way way into the future us there's a bit of it of that same period portrayed in parts of the last two novels okay so

the way that i've heard it described because i haven't read them myself but i've you know spent way too much time on the wiki page because i like the games a lot um is that the white frost is like effectively an inevitable ice age that is coming but like it's like a natural event it's not some extra planar force yeah it starts sorry go ahead uh yeah it it's like it's not meant at least from what i know it's not meant to be some extra planar like evil force that just comes and turns everywhere it touches into like cold eternal waste frost land because that's what it does in the witcher 3 and siri has to literally like put herself in it to stop it from coming into their space in a new convergence of the spheres kind of situation.

And it doesn't make a ton of sense. For Darius's sake, we'll stick with fate for now, but beginning in the Tower of Swallows, it's implied to kind of just be climate change. Yeah. Like just, you change. Not global warming, but global cooling. Fantastic. But there's some other aspects to

his ecological apocalypse that we'll talk about. So you're saying that fate maybe isn't actually that tangible. It's mostly that people just around Geralt believe in it. And so it acts on him and Ciri just because the people around them believe that it's real. And more importantly, they believe it's real. And, you know, and through treating it as real, affect Geralt and Ciri's life so much that they start treating it as real.

Because Ciri is raised on this concept that she has a destiny. You know, that's when she's like nine and Geralt finds her in Brokilon. Like she's chattering about it the whole time. I'm destined. Well, because that's the whole thing about the child of surprise. Well, exactly. and well because that's the whole thing about the child of surprise well exactly and gerald um you know eventually has enough crap happen to him that he's like fine it must be true and just starts behaving like it's true but then at the very end the you know the end of the story is

siri saying no i don't want it to be true and be and being allowed to just up and walk away well even earlier on she in the like the books i made it through she doesn't want it to be true in near the at the like the last few chapters of time of contempt when she is like lost in the desert or whatever she is the first time she like tries to draw power from fire and that's when she is like lost in the desert or whatever, she is the first time she like tries to draw power from fire. And that's when she gets like directly spoken to by like the spirit of Fulca, I guess is who that's supposed to be. Who's like,

yes, you are the destructor of the world. Kill everyone, burn everything to the ground. And she really just says, I, I reject that fate. I reject that destiny for me. I surrender it. And then she just like,

can't do magic anymore because she's like literally faced it and just said, no, I don't think I don't want this future to be for me. So the fact that that's where she gets to at the very end of the novels to me, isn't super surprising because that's kind of seems like what she wants from the start. She doesn't like, or once she gets into like her training and like experiencing the world, she's like, I don't want the fate that everyone supposedly says is mine or that my dreams say should be mine.

Like she doesn't want to be the white flame or whatever it is. Yeah. And that's, um, yeah, this isn't an adaptations podcast, but that is something that really concerns me about the show is their lead like they have taken the prophecy from this about the white flame and

uh the great frost and made it from this obscure elven riddle that only you know fanatics and you know the extremely old elves who were there when it was spoken remember to like the Nilfgaardian religion and like I I just don't know how they're gonna take that and it just seems like they're gonna lean the wrong way with it. Yeah, in the books, does anyone in Nilfgaard actually believe that? Exclusively, Emhyr Var Emrys is the only one who even knows it exists until the beginning of Tower of Swallows when literally just two Nilfgaardian sorceresses find out about it.

That's because I think, yeah, it makes sense to me that emir of our emirates believes in it because he also calls himself like the flame that dances on his enemies graves or whatever and he's like super obsessed with finding siri like super obsessed yeah there's a there's a weird fucking reason for that well doesn't he believe that like she's gonna give birth to like an important like a boy that'll be like the destroy like the right the greatest emperor of the world or whatever so i think this is a good time to ask you guys do you want to do the the sex stuff or the ecology stuff next which are very different topics but there's

two ways we can really go from here um i'll leave this up to you oh actually can or if you have something else you want to talk about it's gonna be i think there's gonna be a detour i want to do one more general theme thing before we get deeper into that more from like a general story perspective before we get into more of the inside baseball stuff one more general thing i want to talk about, since we are sort of generally talking about themes and stuff is I found it interesting, uh, just openly how directly Geralt represents a lot of sort of the, like the, what I want to call like the classic conflict from literature of sort of, you know, man versus nature.

Because that's, at the base, that's what the Witcher is. It's man versus nature. If you consider the monsters nature, which you kind of have to, even though we know the weird reason why they're there and they're not really natural, but you know what I mean. I mean, I think, think you know an invasive species is still nature that's true you know uh i mean it's technically humans and monsters are just two different invasive species fighting each other maybe maybe another way to kind of put it is the

same way with that um three jackdaws tries to put it he puts something very similar he puts something very similar with the idea of order versus chaos like being oh yeah he does i don't know if you remember do you remember the quote i don't obviously can't he has a lot of them it's like multiple pages yeah sure he does talk about that a lot but like it's sort of gerald represents that sort of classic literature trope of man versus nature. But he also represents, I think what sometimes like sort of a modern or postmodern like literature theme, which is man versus society. And that's what we talked about before with the fact that like society does not accept him despite needing him. And he has to fit into it in some needing him and he has to fit into it

in some way despite not wanting to fit into it and he represents this really interesting sort of balancing point between the two between society and nature where like his whole existence is to fight nature, but he's also often one of the only people not willing to just destroy all of the non-human things he comes across. Because, like, the Witchers have their code. Or do they? Or he has a code. Or does Geralt have a code that he claims is the Witcher code? He's about to say.

I suppose they do kind of say that in the first book, that, like, he claims things's the Witcher code. He's about to say. Because then, I suppose they do kind of say that in the first book that like, he claims things of the Witcher code and people just believe him. But like, there really isn't one. It's just one that he has. It's just whatever he doesn't want to talk about. He's like, I can't talk about it.

It's part of the code. I mean, I don't know. Cause I never really, throughout the books I read, you never see any other Witchers working. You don't really. I got to.

So like, I don't even know if the other Witchers feel the same way he does they're also they're also they're also there also are so few witchers left at this point are there are there only like the four of them or five of them that we see in care more in when when Ciri's there? I don't know. In the books, are there other schools? There are other schools Oh, I never saw that. That we don't There's at least two other schools One of the witchers is from the that you meet is from the school of the cat

and you don't they are active There is a character who shows up in Tower of Swallows called bonhart and bonhart is in a professional assassin you know sadist who loves murder kind of character but he his thing is that he hunts witchers. You know, and that sort of, you know,

greatest hunter villain archetype that you see in a lot of fiction. Ah, yes. My whole thing is I must hunt the greatest hunter. Exactly. And it's not entirely clear to me if the implication is just that he's the guy who can kill the witchers or if he is a renegade you know because he can match them and he matched you know he is series antagonist for the

uh last two books but you know he matches her fighting style throughout the whole thing which nobody else up there you know the other so it sort of implied that he may have been a witcher who was like you guys all suck exactly and he has a bunch of medallions as trophies from the other two schools so and he's operating mostly in southern nilfgaard so it's kind of implied the other witcher schools aren't were there to operate in the rest of the world and are just as defunct okay so yeah those are there are probably more than like the five that we meet yeah but maybe only like 15 yeah because it like it's delineated about say it gets delineated further again i don't really want to make this adaptations um the games do a little bit more with that too where some of them like at least one school of witchers got so desperate that they started accepting money to kill people um so it's like and that's that's where the main villain of the second game comes

from. Um, but like they, they had a bunch of different ones and I don't know how many of them were hinted at at any point in the books. Um, like school of the bear and like school of the snake, which is why I wanted to ask of course, which ones were no, but, but school of the cat pops up in the games as well. But, um, okay. Yeah. I'd never,

I'd gotten to it, but either, either way, there's very few. If I remember correctly, um, at one point people had like stormed care more and, and like killed a lot of the witchers themselves.

Um, destroyed a lot of the castle. Yeah. So it's like, it's like people at one point led like a borderline pogrom against witchers so the only ones left to the school of the wolf are the ones who weren't there at the time of the like attack and vesemir who was but survived i think that's they that was the yeah it's not anime it's like that korean style that's almost

anime netflix did a movie adapting that storyline recently with besamir is the main character interesting um it's a neat thing it's not at all how it's implied to have gone down because somehow the humans ally with monsters and the monsters aren't trying to eat the people the whole time but that's weird because like in the books it's basically just like the people were whipped up by some sorcerer by some wizards like into a frenzy about how they needed to get rid of the witchers for being inhuman monsters or something like that which goes into like touches on something we hadn't mentioned before that there's like a lot of sort of inherent distrust or distaste from wizards to witchers.

Well, they're a lot harder to control. That's your average population. Well, and I think part of it is acknowledged thing, you know, because the witchers were created by at least one sorcerer who, you know, was the one who whipped up all their magic. And taught them like their signs and their potions and stuff. Yeah. But only, you know, that little group of sorcerers and the witchers themselves ever knew what the process for making a wizard or a witcher was.

And you kind of get the sense that really pissed off the rest of the wizards yeah because i think some of the entrances little notes you get at the start of the chapters are notes from a wizard writing about how witchers are made yeah there's it's either a wizard or a priest and that's something we haven't touched on either like there's not a ton to say about religion in this world other than it exists and it's clearly like a catholic church analog but with multiple deities yeah it's a catholic church thing they think all non-humans should be purged and god will give us divine judgment for our sins and all that other and any anything in human be it sorcerers or wizards or witchers or monsters it's all bad because it's not human

like yeah unless you're not super nuanced but they exist and uh mother neneka is the priestess of melitola and she's the good one she's the one she's the one good religious figure in the book the good nun who you know kind of does liberation theology she kind of does because she like also lets her priestesses like drink and fuck she's like she sometimes tells them to go drink and fuck she is she assigns at least one of them she assigned one to go bang gerald she assigned yola to go bang gerald in the first book because she thought that if they fucked, that it would make it easier for them to do like a seance thing to heal him. And so she like literally sent her,

she's like, yeah, go hook up with Geralt. Get on it. Let's go. It's like, believe me, it won't be hard. He's a horny bastard. That was part one of our discussion on the Witcher series. Thank you all for joining us.

We'll be back next week to talk about how mind-breakingly horny everyone in this story is often for the well worst possible reasons uh but thank you so much for joining us our social media links are in the description and we'll see you next time bye bro bro are you fucking real man come on