What Is A Witcher And Do They Really Need Your Coins, A Definitive Answer
Season 2 of The Witcher will probably get more into Geralt’s backstory, but for now we use the games and books to explain what a witcher even is.
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If you played The Witcher games or read the books they’re based on, you may already have a pretty good idea of what a witcher actually is. But the show doesn’t really explain the profession itself, preferring to show it, although many nuances tend to get lost that way. So what really is a witcher? Should you have gone to a witcher school instead of college? And – probably most important of all – should you really toss a coin to your witcher?
At the most basic level, a witcher is a specially trained and mutated monster slayer. The Continent – where The Witcher takes place – is teeming with various monsters, some with superhuman speed, others with superhuman strength, but the superhuman attribute is what sets them apart from your usual boar or wolf. Simply sending out knights to kill them, as you would usually do, would take many knights and only bring various degrees of success. That’s why you need someone equally superhuman to fight monsters.
Young boys are taken to so-called witcher schools like Kaer Morhen, where they undergo extensive physical and magical training– ruthless and often even deadly – as well as mysterious rituals that include mutations. This gives Witchers impressive physique, some magic, a very long lifespan, and sterility. In the end – if they survive long enough – the trainees go through the Trial of the Grasses, which means they consume an array of alchemical ingredients, the titular grasses, and either survive and gain their reflexes, cat eyes, and body enhancements, or die in incredible agony. The survival rate of the Trial is merely 30% – meaning three in ten boys will survive it – but there is no other way to become a witcher.
Becoming a witcher is hard, but life as one isn’t a walk in the park either. Although you’d think they would be swimming in cash, considering how many monsters infest their world, they’re actually pretty poor. The reason for this is simple: the people employing them are poor. When you’re traveling from village to village and get a contract from a farmer who can’t plow his field because a noonwraith is bothering him, you don’t expect much, other than a pittance of coin and maybe some grain as a thank you. That is, if they even decide to pay you at all. After all, you’re a mutant, they probably fear you, which quickly turns to hate in the right circumstances. Getting employed by a rich person happens rarely enough, and they will also try to pay you as little as they can, to, well, stay rich.
Although wielding two swords and a few magical signs may look cool on TV, it’s actually a high risk, low reward type of job. You go through intensive training, try to find a gig from people not very happy to pay you who wrongfully assume you’re already rich, and you live from what you can take – it’s basically like freelancing in the real world. To paraphrase Monthy Python: “On second thought, let’s not go to Kaer Morhen. ‘Tis a silly place.”
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/what-is-a-witcher-definitive-answer/