Witcher Schools
After the Trial, witchers are shaped by the school that raised them: different keeps, different doctrines, different reputations across the Continent.
School of the Wolf
The most well-known and widely respected witcher school.
Kaer Morhen sits in the Kaedweni mountains. Geralt, Eskel, Lambert and Vesemir all trained there. Wolf witchers don't lean hard into any single discipline, they use Signs, potions and the sword in roughly equal measure, which is why they're the most recognisable face of the profession. The keep was sacked centuries ago and was never rebuilt to full strength. The brothers who remain treat it more like a winter home than a fortress.
Kaer Morhen was sacked roughly a century before the events of the games by a mob of mages and zealots who blamed witchers for corrupting children. The massacre left the school permanently understaffed, and the keep was never rebuilt to full fighting strength.
School of the Cat
Fast, ruthless and morally ambiguous.
Cat witchers have a bad name, and most of it is earned. They move fast, hit hard, and wear as little armour as they can get away with. Unlike Wolf witchers, they'll take contracts on humans if the coin is right, a habit that makes other schools keep their distance. Their base at Var Attre fell into ruin long ago, and what remains of the school is scattered across the Continent.
The Cat school's stronghold at Var Attre was destroyed after its witchers were implicated in a series of contract killings on human targets — a violation of the witchers' unwritten code that turned most of the Continent against them.
School of the Bear
Heavy, enduring and built for survival.
The Bear school trains for punishment. Its witchers wear the heaviest armour of any school and fight in a slow, grinding style built around outlasting whatever they're up against. They operate mostly in the cold north and east territory where monsters tend to be big, brutal, and resistant to anything subtle. Haern Caduch, their stronghold in the Amell Mountains, is one of the few witcher keeps still in active use.
Bear witchers were among the last to abandon the far northern territories during the great migration southward, staying to fulfil contracts in Kovir and Poviss long after other schools had retreated. Their reputation for never breaking a contract traces back to that period.
School of the Griffin
Sign-focused, scholarly and principled.
Griffin witchers treat Signs as a core weapon, not a last resort. Founded by Erland of Larvik in Kovir, the school developed a more scholarly tradition than most. Its witchers tend to think before they swing, and they're known for holding to a code that other schools find impractical. Whether that's admirable or naïve depends who you ask.
Founded by Erland of Larvik, the Griffin school was established in Kovir with the express philosophy that Signs were not a tool of last resort but the cornerstone of a witcher's craft — a direct ideological split from the Wolf school's balanced approach.
School of the Viper
Secretive, poison-specialised and shrouded in mystery.
Nobody knows much about the Viper school, and that's by design. Its witchers are specialists in poison and close-quarters killing methods that blur the line between monster hunter and assassin. Their keep's location is unknown. It may not exist anymore. Letho of Gulet, the Kingslayer, is the only member most people have heard of, and he came very close to bringing down the Northern Kingdoms.
The Viper school's history is almost entirely undocumented. What little is known comes from Letho of Gulet, who revealed that the school was effectively destroyed by the Nilfgaardian Empire and that he operated under imperial orders during the kings' assassinations.
Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling… makes no difference. The degree is arbitrary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another, I’d rather not choose at all.
