I have been seeing the idea that elves cannot be witchers floating around lately. Came across this in my playthrough the other night.
Posted Jan 4, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC
1.1K94
They are half elves.
Sapkowski created the School of the cat in the books, but CDPR developed its lore in the games.
They expanded on the school in the Gwent game, stating that they tend to side with the elder races and take half elves as witchers.
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This is mostly in relation to Blood Origin where recently I have seen people upset that the first Witcher was an elf, which they found preposterous. I think the show is preposterous for other reasons, but this specific reason didn't sit well, and lo and behold the text spoke to me.
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This is mostly in relation to Blood Origin
I don't think we should be mixing books, with its lore, games, that expand the book's lore, and the TV show, that works on its own lore and logic.
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*just to clarify that the show is it's own thing independent, but calling it "logic" would be an insult to anyone who has elementary school education and above. They don't even keep track on their own lore and contradict themselves multiple times.
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I and most others are not upset the first witcher is elf specifically, but rather it removes the much darker and complex idea of humans creating Witchers to defend themselves in a new world. A way of leveling the battlefield in a world where everything is trying to kill them.
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Yes, that ups the ante on the creation of witchers and how horribly necessary they were and the undeserved shaming they endure as they serve that cause.
Blood Origin turns that origin story into a deus ex and cheapens the situation.
I and most others are not upset the first witcher is elf specifically
This is very specifically the complaint I have seen levied. Granted, it is probably just something they heard without understanding and just keep repeating like a game of telephone. The issue is not that elves are not, cannot, or have never chosen to be witchers. The issue is not about elves, but about the circumstances of the Witcher origin, this is agreed. But the argument I see repeated is that "it makes no sense for an elf to be a Witcher" without any evidence that states there is something that precludes elves from being witchers. Judging by the flak I have definitely ruffled feathers.
edit: NPC's big mad
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“NPC’s big mad 🤓”
Bro you are just wrong lol.
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I think many might have also felt that because Elves, from what we know, don't have that much trouble with monsters in generally, especially how the wild hunt is treated as king of monsters. It might have less to do with biology and rather the need.
Again, like you said, a game of telephones. They might as well thought elves can't physically become witchers.
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Didn’t the show just say they created the first Witchers, and as we see it kills the Witcher creation, so like they made the original sciencey magic bit but actual Witchers came later or something?
Idk just spitballing here.
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NPC's big mad
You are just simply wrong and twisting the situation. People who actually know what they're talking about have no issue with elves being witchers in general, just that the first witcher was an elf, which it wasn't, it was human. And most of the cat school were half elves.
In general blood origin does not stay true to the source material, never has, and has outwardly stated that they are not. So when discussing what is cannon or not to the witcher, blood origin can be thrown out the window. If you want to discuss it go to the Netflix subreddit for it.
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In the books they were created by Alzur and a few other mad wizards to help growing human communities push back monsters and make their settlements safe.
Fjall isn't really a Witcher, just a mutant. No full range of Trials or the standard set of mutations.
I wouldn't so much have minded if the "secret origin" of the Witchers was that Malspina and Alzur had stolen a bunch of Elven biomancy knowledge to create secret super-soldiers that could stand toe to toe with Elven weapon masters and they were later repurposed as monster hunters and given more visible mutations, but claiming Fjall was the first is just silly.
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You're getting downvoted because this sub is very touchy regarding BO and Netflix in general. I think you have a point. I haven't read all the books but I haven't heard anyone describe a specific point in the books that proves elves can't be witchers. That said, it seems pretty clear that humans created them so the show is conflicting with canon for a different reason.
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I broke the circlejerk. Now the cum is aimed at me.
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Game lore is not cannon, show lore is certainly not cannon.
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Well, yeah, neither has gunpowder yet. No cannons for anyone.
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I feel like the existence of bombs implies the existence of a gunpowder or gunpowder analogue.
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Shit, you're right. They had something akin to saltpeter in the games. Uh... Stammelford's Powder, I think it was called?
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Stammelford’s dust, Alchemist Powder, Zerrikanian Mix, and Saltpeter all exist in the game universe.
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They had something akin to saltpeter in the games.
Yeah, LITERALLY saltpeter lmao xD
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Canon, not cannon. None of these are cannons.
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Cannon is not cannon.
Cannon is whatever we want it to be.
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Cannon is a large, heavy piece of artillery, typically mounted of wheels, formerly used in warfare
Canon is whatever we want it to be
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Well played.
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I am so gonna steal this and use it every time someone misspells canon.
Funnily, we have a saying in Germany: „unter aller Kanone“, which translates to „below every cannon“. But originates from the latin „sub omni canone“ which means „below every canon“. This is in regards to books of judeo-christian origins, which are not considered "canon" to the bible, so they are below the canon. And of course, that is where our modern understanding of canon in storytelling comes from.
Which also shows, that canon can be changed by a large group of people. When the early christians established the canon, they did so by voting (and praying). So that means, Hollywood can’t dictate canon for the fandoms if they don’t acknowledge it. The original author is also negligent towards his work these days, so basically, whatever the fans deem canonical is canon.
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whatever the fans deem canonical is canon
The author has always been very clear about what he says is canon: his books only. Are you saying Sapkowski is not in a position to judge the validity of his own work?
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Objectively false.
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Art is never objective.
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Copyright is.
Authorship is.
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This comes up all the time and there flat out can be objective elements to art. There is always an element of subjectivity to it but it’s such a half baked notion that there can’t be any objectivity in critiquing
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"Elven stock" means humans descended from Elves. This isn't really uncommon in the setting; many in Nilfgaard have such heritages, Yennefer had an Elven grandparent, and so on.
Witchers were created in lore as expendable anti-monster weapons when human settlements were expanding and took in unwanted male children for that. I can see a lot of families feeling shame at having an "impure" child and handing them over to a Witcher school.
Pureblood Elves becoming Witchers doesn't really make sense to me as it's a procedure done by humans, for humans, when an Elven weaponmaster already has Witcher-tier reflexes, better combat skills, and the Elves had crazy powerful mages who could just delete monsters by the score or genocide them with bioweapons.
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Uma kinda proves that the procedure to make witchers does work on elves though. So it's not completely farfetched to believe they may have made a couple of elven witchers once upon a time.
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Uma doesn't prove anything because they didn't try to turn him into a Witcher.
They very specifically used the Trial of the Grasses to make his body malleable enough for Yennefer to re-make at a base level. It's a one-off that was likely to fail, done in desperation, and isn't even what one phase out of several was designed to do.
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Book lore and game lore are two different things. So keep that in mind. It's said in the books that most humans have some type of elven blood in them due to humans and elves fucking so often. And just because some cat witchers have elven blood doesn't mean that elves can be witchers.
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Book lore and game lore shouldn't be compared too closely. TV show lore basically retconned everything. So basically the books don't really mention much about any of the other Witcher schools and whether or not they had elves in them. The games make vague mentions of it, like they do here, but the games aren't strictly canon.
Now I'm not saying elves can't be witchers, but in the lore witchers were created post conjunction to help protect humans from monsters. My main rebuttal for why there probably won't be full blooded elves, or at least very few of them, becoming witchers is their lifespan. And I feel this same argument could apply to dwarves and halflings. Elves lifespans are much longer than humans, and while many of them may not look old, they are past their prime and reproduce. This is particularly relevant to the books, as one of the issues brought up by the scoia'tael because a lot of the young elves are fighting and dying and it's leading to their extinction. This is brought up in the part with shaerrawedd. So it would be very unlikely that the elves would let elven children become witchers, particularly because it will render them infertile.
As for half elves, that's a likely possibility, and it's also possible that the elves mentioned in the mad kiyan quests are probably half elves. Now again, not saying elves can't become witchers, but there is no official canon that says they can become witchers (I'm deliberately ignoring the show because it deviates wildly from the source material)
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You're right that the games aren't canon. However it's still interesting of OP to point out that the games were able to introduce the idea of elven witchers (or allude to it) without howls of anguish from the fanbase, obviously because the game was well-received overall so people gave it some slack. But because Blood Origin has been brutally panned, any deviation from book canon was treated as the vilest sacrilege.
The biggest problem with some of the The Witcher show-haters here is not the fundamental dislike of the show (few people here think it's great), but that their criticism is over-emotional and personal because they aren't self-aware or applying nuance in their comments (the same thing they think the show lacks).
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Funny enough, I don't actually mind the idea of elven witchers, and even the idea of the first Witcher being an elf isn't too difficult to swallow. But I feel the massive hate towards Blood Origin is because of the huge changes to the well established lore. This just happened to be the straw that broke the camels back. It's not so much that the first Witcher happened to be an elf, it's literally everything else. I don't necessarily mind that they are adding to the lore, particularly since stuff like the conjunction was purposefully made vague in the books. But it's a matter of whether it remains true to the essence of the books and coincides with the already established lore.
I think they games get away with it because it's very minor changes that doesn't fiddle with the foundation of the original story too much. The games also take place after the books, so again it's not directly changing the original source material, but rather building on what's already there. Not to mention, you will only find out about elves being witchers if you follow one quest chain to get cat school armour. It's such a minor detail that's kinda easy to miss that people probably didn't care.
My biggest problem with the shows is they're making huge changes that affect the whole story and does not particularly add anything of value to the already established lore. And another big problem is everyone knows what is supposed to happen in the story, who the villains are and what motivates the characters. Making big changes like that impacts the entire story. And not to mention the generally sloppy writing and inconsistencies between all their various spin-offs. I do agree that most of the haters are taking it way too personally, and are just jumping on the bandwagon because it's fun to hate the shows right now.
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Thanks for the thoughtful post. You make a good point that in the game the change is relatively incidental, whereas the Blood Origin lore change is much larger. That said, I still feel some of the people here were so angrily hatewatching that even a small change would have been poorly received...
I should also be clear and say that your comment that I responded to was totally fine, not at all like the emotional ones I was criticising (the kind where fans froth at the mouth at Hissrich like five year olds having a tantrum).
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(Iirc) Dive a little further and you find out that there were only of diluted Elven blood, similar to Yennefer or Nilfgaardians, so your point still doesn't back up actual elves being Witchers. Anyway, the problem is how they reduced the allegory of a Witchers reputation/treatment when they were created to save humanity.
*Edit* If i'm wrong, do correct me :)
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The issue isn't that they CAN'T be witchers but more so that most (probably all) full blooded elves feel like to mutate themselves would be utterly beneath them.
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I’ve only seen people say that there has never been an elf Witcher, not that they can’t exist. Anyway, game canon and book canon are separate.
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I don’t think anyone has been saying that really
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No one was bothered about the Witcher being an elf the issue was how they showed it with hulk shit, the elves creating the witchers removing the part about the witchers being created by men and necessary for mankind's survival yet they're outcasts and treated as monsters, etc we've seen aen Elle are more than powerful enough to not need witchers with the hunt being much stronger than a normal non geralt witcher
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Direct quote from Season of Storms:
“For it was Cosimo Malaspina, and after him his student Alzur, yes, Alzur, who created the witchers. They invented the mutation owing to which men like you were bred. Owing to which you exist, owing to which you walk upon this earth, ungrateful one. You ought to esteem Alzur, his successors and their works, and not destroy them!”
Who is Cosimo Malaspina: https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Cosimo_Malaspina
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The show is based on the books, not the games, and there is no such thing as "elven witchers" in the books.
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If elves could become witchers, they'd be facing less of an extinction problem on account of their inherently long lifespans. You'd have seen witcher schools across the board show a greater preference for recruiting elves because it's just more efficient and you'd get more mileage out of each witcher created. Hence, there would be a lot more Elven witchers than human ones, especially multiple centuries down the line. That being said, I don't know if there was ever an explanation for why elves couldn't become witchers or if that was ever even attempted (and why it didn't work). Maybe something about their physiology isn't compatible with the trial of the grasses and/or the methods of creating witchers? Maybe they were never able to procure pure Elven children? Who knows
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This issue with elven witchers is that the mutations would render them infertile and unable to reproduce. This would be a big problem to the elves due to their increasingly declining population.
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That quest was absolutely horrific
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It’s not canon.
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I mean damn a knife ear Witcher the general public would go ape shit.
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Good point, the peasantry hates elves and hates witchers up until they need their services. An elven witcher would probably last less than a couple of months before being lynched.
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We’ll at least in the northern realms
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As humans learned magic from the elves I find it quite logical that Alzur might have found some old scrolls or other written lore about how Fjall was turned into the mutated monster slayer and used this knowledge as a basis for his experiments on humans and how to mutate them many years after the events of BO. The elves have probably not repeated the experiment as it did not turn out too well so it became forgotten until Alzur did his research. I see no contradiction there as Sapkowski never described how Alzur came up with the recipe of making Witchers.
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If this is in regards to Blood Origin, I don't think people have an >!issue with elves becoming witchers. I think people are upset with the idea that the elves created the witchers themselves. The whole idea of the witcher was about men who surpassed all others physically and mentally to kill dangerous monsters and received no thanks or love from their fellow humans. It just kind of messes up the idea of a witcher itself!<
Weird, Witchers are not considered Human/Elven anymore, anyways.
The fact that the human empires are built on elven ruins, their coexisting with a majority of elves over thousand years…. Right after the conjunction the elves had well established structures. It is more logical that witchers was at least co-founded by the elves.
Besides that the elves are said they teached the humans utilization of magic, they also are known for their superior craftsmanship. Sadly, the series didn’t show much of that quality with their costumes…
Witchers are only considered nonhuman by peasants and people who view them as mutants and freaks. They may be biologically mutated, but they are still humans.
And it's all but confirmed in the books that witchers were created by early human kingdoms to help colonize the content and kill monsters as humans settled the land.
I believe it's season of storms? Doesn't it mention about the witchers being created at the order of a king who wanted an army magic knights. But the first generation didn't live up to the kings idea, so they were exiled. But experiments were eventually continued by mages.
For all those interested:
If you check out the references from the fandom on Witcher lore, not many lead to the books, because the books are quite opaque about the subject until Season of Storms, where they briefly talk about Alzur and his experiments.
The Gwent card game and Witcher game franchise fill in much more detail about his backstory and financing by Northern lords, which you can find more info on with the link from the fandom below:
https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Witcher#cite_note-awj-1
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Book lore:
In Season of Storms, Geralt uncovers that sorcerers had been creating experimental monsters for centuries. These monsters escaped, and did what monsters do best. He confronts the sorcerers at the castle of Rissberg and learns that these very experiments led to the creation of the first Witchers.
A quote from the book:
“For it was Cosimo Malaspina, and after him his student Alzur, yes, Alzur, who created the witchers. They invented the mutation owing to which men like you were bred. Owing to which you exist, owing to which you walk upon this earth, ungrateful one. You ought to esteem Alzur, his successors and their works, and not destroy them!”
Please let me know if I’m incorrect! I should really go back and read the books again.
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Game lore:
From a quick hunt online summarising Witcher game lore, I’ve found this info, from Winter is Coming
“The games depict Alzur as a sorcerer who sees the damage monsters are inflicting on the people of the Continent, and resolves to create a new kind of monster hunter to fight them.
However, Alzur is also responsible for creating quite a few monsters as well, both in the books and games. His methods for creating the witchers amount to performing experiments on unwanted or potentially kidnapped children. The games play up the idea that the rulers of the Northern human kingdoms enlisted Alzur’s help because monsters were running rampant across the countryside, but that in his own way he’s just as dangerous as the monsters he’s trying to fight.
The common denominator in both the books and games is that the witchers were created to help keep down the monster population after the Conjunction of the Spheres, because so many people were ending up as monster lunch meat.”
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TL;DR: The Witcher: Blood Origin is not canon because the show takes place before the conjunction, but to be fair, the games have also done their fair share of embellishment to the book’s Witcher lore.
Yeah Season of Storms. I think its hinted that one of the castles Geralt visits is where the witchers were made
Geralts more human than some of the "humans" he faces
Exactly. His mutations don't make him any less human. A lot of people take the "witchers are nonhumans" thing a bit too literally.
Professor Moreau was one of the best mage-scientists of his time, yet still he couldn't see witchers as human beings. He paid a great price for that.
When you think about it, it would make sense for elves to help create witchers by experimenting on humans instead of their own
Given, how arrogant the elves are depicted in game and series, it would make sense they started experimenting on all kind of creatures including elves of low ranks.
The series just makes a stretch and calls the first mutant with otherworldly mutagens a “Witcher”.
I don’t think that a witcher of 1000 years later can be set equal to this one elve, as the Witchers are described as caste with a tradition, morality/codex and various schools of different practices. The elve there was more of a failed experiment, as the mutation was not stable.
This simply does not exist in blood origin, as it depicts day1 of conjunction time.
Oh absolutely.
Also, half-relevant (and maybe I just didn’t get it from that mess of a show lol) how’s BO’s creation of “first witcher” actually relate to actual witchers? Because they created him in a cave and I don’t think any of the people there were very likely to talk about it/especially keen of going through that again lol
Gerald says on at least one occasion in the books that there is no actual “Witcher’s Code” that he follows. The Code is just something he made up to give him an excuse not to work for bastards with no scruples.
That was so horrible, it was almost comedic. It’s just made up fan fiction by people who hate the source material.
They didnt really create 'witchers' though. They created a mutant. Humans would later learn of this process, refine it, and go on to create the first actual witchers. This is not a hard concept to grasp lol
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Elves did not create Witchers in Blood Origin.
They did, but it was a dumb idea from the writers.
What they created wasn't a Witcher in any real sense, but they say Fjall was the first and they write the rules of the shows universe.
They did not. The thing they created was not a Witcher. It was Witcher adjacent, but not a Witcher.