A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

(A/N: Paradoxically, this note is the last thing that I’ve written and intend to write about this story. Everything else in this thing that I laughingly call a chapter that you’re about to read, has already been written as I write this and I did consider leaving these words at the back of the story. But some remnant of what passes for my artistic soul tells me that I should let the last words of the work belong to the characters in question.

So that is what I have done.

So here we are. Over 4 million words later I have come to the ending of the story. When I sat down to start writing, there was little doubt in my mind that I was a bit of a broken man. I was struggling with life in general and couldn’t find a way to both write and get the feedback that I seem to need and thrive on, when my wife suggested that I write about The Witcher.

“You’ve played every game,” she told me. “And you have read every book multiple times. You know more about the Witcher than most. You’ve discussed and dissected the stories more than many other fans and as such you know more about what’s going on. You’ve always said that you had a story there, why not tell that story?”

So I did.

In the end it was not the story that I set out to write. That story would have been over a lot quicker. It was essentially going to be a series of interviews with my scholar being essentially a nameless observer. There were four interviews that I had ideas for, and those are still here. They were the first one regarding why they wear swords like that. The trial of death, the thing about the trials that Letho answered, and the last interview where Kerrass answered the question “Why do it?”

To echo a far better writer than me, the tale grew in the telling. There have been times when the words flowed easily and freely and I felt as though I was just among friends telling stories. And there were other times when I sweated over every letter.

It is true to admit that there has been a moment, once or twice a story arc, where I have nearly given up. Specific times that might interest you would be during the journey into the realm of thorns during Sleeping Beauty’s arc. The entirety of the Knights of the Flaming Sword arc although that was more to the fault of the fact that I picked up my first real troll in that period and I doubted myself. Also…during Freddie and Kerrass’ flight in the cult of the first-born and the Skeleton Ship when Freddie went into the caverns.

The reason I kept going is you fine folks. Some of you have become friends and some of you I might only have interacted with once or twice. Some of you… I have never spoken to you at all. But whether you review regularly, or whether you never reviewed and just read. Whether you were with me on day one, or whether you joined me much later in the story. Or maybe you joined us somewhere in the middle and then life carried you away again.

I want to tell you that I love you all and if this is the last time that you and I speak to each other, I will miss you all dearly.

There are a couple of people that deserve special thanks whether they still read or not.

Firstly my wife who told me to do this thing in the first place and convinced me that just because it was fanfic, did not make what I was doing “not worthwhile”. (I was a different person then, please don’t think less of me)

Assassin’s Pen, who was the first reviewer to review and who encouraged me to keep going. I have no idea if they are still active as I understand that their original profile is dormant, but if you are out there my friend, then thank you.

2babyturtles, someone who I lost touch with as I understand that life overtook them. But they sent me my first artwork. She was also one of the first regular reviewers on AO3 who convinced me to keep using that site.

Mikitta who paid me the enormous compliment of being inspired enough by Kerrass to take him and use him in her own fiction.

Livia9881 who was instrumental for figuratively talking me off the ledge a couple of times when I was lying heartbroken and convinced that I wasn’t good enough.

As I say, there are others amongst you. Every reviewer, every messenger, every commenter, every artist, every reader. I love you all so please don’t feel left out.

As to where I go from here? In the immediate future I intend to get drunk and take a bit of time to mourn my parting from Freddie and Kerrass. I love those two idiots and they have carried me through some dark times but it is time that we part ways.

Is that forever? I don’t know. Never say never, but I can’t think of anything else I have to say about them or through them. I have been living in their heads and in their world for so long that I need a break and I think, so do they. But knowing me, a few days after finishing this, I will be walking down the street and an idea will occur to me about another story regarding the Witcher and his friend, the scholar.

In the longer term, the dream is obviously to be able to keep writing and telling stories.

If you want to help me with that, please visit my brand new and shiny Patreon where you can also help me out with providing the necessary feedback, if you’re interested at: patreon.com/Spike368writing

So that’s it from me. It would be lovely if you would be able to keep in touch, but again if you need to head back into the realms of fanfiction other than mine, then good luck my friends and I shall see you on The Path.

As always, and possibly although hopefully not, for the final time.

Thank you for Reading.

Spike)

NB: THe following are not written in any order. You are welcome to skip the one to the next or to find the ones that you are most interested in. You may find that you need to read some others in order to understand what you are reading though.

Also, you will not find what happens to Geralt and Yennefer and other canon characters other than those that I have written about myself. Namely Ciri and the people of Toussaint and Skellige and the ruling families of Temeria and Redania. This is because CD Projekt RED and others might have their own ideas about those people and it seems rude. Also, I kind of like the idea of leaving Yennefer and Geralt in Toussaint and enjoying their retirement.

Also, also, a kind of warning. Although there are happy endings to be had here, it is also worth saying that no-one gets out of this life alive and so most, if not all of these notes come back as being bittersweet.

Empress Cirilla Elen Fiona Riannon and the greater realm of Nilfgaard:

Later historians would be rather unfair to the reign of Empress Cirilla, the first and so far the only Empress of the realm of Nilfgaard. Her reign was not particularly long and is most characterised by putting out all of the fires that she had been left by her Father and the generations immediately preceding her.

She spent most of the first couple of years travelling around the Empire that she had inherited. She would spend a month here and a week there. She would winter in this court before going to that court and overseeing the problems that would crop up there.

Given the fractured nature of the royal courts of Aedirn and Kaedwen, she took charge there and managed to overcome the problems of the famine and the plagues that were happening there. She chose the winning strategy that eventually led to the overall surrender of both Cidaris and Vergen albeit long after her reign was over, and later on she put down numerous small rebellions by noble people that thought that they would be able to rule better than this young girl that the Emperor had placed before them.

The reason she would survive these efforts to overthrow her was that she was beloved by the common people. No ruler before or since has been so in tune with the trials and problems of the common farmer or townsman. And no ruler before or since has been able to make those people feel at home.

Eventually though, as the fires started to die out she was able to take up her seat in the city of the Golden Towers and take up the position of Empress in her home court. She would still travel and had a habit of turning up in foreign courts suddenly and without announcement which had the interesting effect of keeping people on their toes.

This effort to keep people guessing and on the back foot extended to her own advisors and ministers. She summoned advisors from elsewhere in the continent to “audit” the treasury which unearthed an astonishing amount of corruption and began a process of reform regarding the Imperial Bureaucracy. A process that wasn’t finished until several generations later.

But in this period, she was generally known to be rather unhappy and became a restless presence on the throne. Courtiers knew when to tread lightly and would learn when to present certain topics to her presence in order to cheer her up. An effort that worked sometimes but which occasionally would backfire on the person that had sent in that particular entertainment.

Then one day she disappeared. She had come particularly close to losing her temper with the ambassador from Temeria who was demanding things rather than asking politely. She admitted to her private secretary that she came close to breaking her Father’s treaty with Temeria and ordering the place re-conquered, only properly this time.

She walked round the corner and those servants that were chasing after her came to see that she had literally vanished.

The Empire panicked for five days until the Empress re-appeared, coming out of her study with a look of profound satisfaction and she returned to the business of the Empire with new energy.

Her advisors and nearest ministers were furious with her, demanding to know what she had been thinking and she trotted out a response that she had learned from her father and which became something of one of her catchphrases.

“The interesting thing about being Empress is not having to explain yourself to anybody.”

Six weeks later she vanished again. This time for a week.

Two months later she vanished for a fortnight.

That time, Lord Voorhis summoned the Duke and Duchess of the Pontar as well as the Lord and Lady of Corvo Bianco and the five of them marched into the Empress’ office. All five of them put their affairs in order before going and arranged manners of retreat should the meeting go badly.

As it turned out, it was a very short meeting and the five of them left.

Lord Voorhis was named Steward of the Empire and a new order was given that should the Empress be unavailable, then the Steward of the Empire should be consulted.

The continent as a whole held its breath to see if there was going to be another war which spectacularly failed to happen. It didn’t stop the Empress from departing every so often. If anything she left on a more regular basis. News filtered down to the Imperial Court that The Empress would often visit far away capitals of various countries. Turning up at the nearest Imperial garrison to roust out an escort of some kind and then turning up in the court of wherever she wanted.

The overall effect of this was to create the image of a very hands-on Empress. The nobility of the continent lived in permanent terror that if they went down to the local village to cause some mischief or otherwise upset things. Then it was just as likely that one of the locals would pull their hoods back and it would turn out to be the Empress of Nilfgaard, drinking and playing cards with the locals and the garrison.

Or if they were at home, minding their own business, counting the tax that had been brought in so that they could pay for the upkeep of their mistress’ lifestyle, then the Empress would ride through the gate with a stern look.

But something else started to happen from this period and it took a long time to put the one together with the other. Indeed it was a factor that many of the contemporary and immediately succeeding historians refused to believe. It became a folk tale and a matter for fireside gossip.

A new Witcher seemed to be travelling around the continent. This one was strange in that she seemed to have grey/white hair and apart from anything else, she was a woman. She would turn up, locate the monster problem, research the monster, kill the monsters and get paid. Most often, she would then spend that coin in the local tavern having a good time before climbing back onto her black horse in the morning and riding off laughing.

The reason that this never got connected with the Empress’ semi-frequent departures was that they started before she took the throne and were still going long after the Empress had disappeared.

Sometimes this Witcher woman was old, somewhere in her sixties and sometimes she would be as young as fourteen.

The only person that ever had an explanation for this was the Duke of the Pontar, long after the Empress had permanently vanished and shortly before he himself left and all he ever said on the matter was that “She’s the lady of time and space.” And then he wouldn’t discuss it any further.

This woman was seen all over the continent and not just in the Empire as well. Years and centuries later, an unrelated Scholar compiled all the sightings of this white haired Witcher Woman and with the improved communication technology and magic of the time, he found records of the Witcher Woman in those strange places beyond Zerrikania, in the ice beyond Kaedwen and riding the steppes of Ofier.

If there was one area where she seemed to concentrate her activity though, she would regularly be seen visiting a remote cabin on the southern end of Ard Skellige where she visited an old man and his young wife that lived there. After he died though, she never seemed to return.

But now the Empire had a new problem which was that there was no succession. No heir to the Empire. Again, her advisors and ministers routinely risked their lives and their well being by pushing the Empress to accept suitors, to marry and have children. She would often laugh, sometimes be angry but of all things, she would say over and over again. “When do I have time to be meeting suitors?”

Her advisors and the Imperial Court were in the process of making plans as to what to do if the Empress died without an heir. Noble families started to unearth old connections to the Imperial royal family and the Continent started to sharpen their swords ready for the coming war of succession.

And then, abruptly and much to the astonishment of literally everyone. The Empress and Lord Voorhis announced that they were to be married.

This was generally assumed to be a political marriage as the person with the closest claim to the throne was Lord Voorhis himself. But those nay-sayers were equally astonished as a couple of months later, the Empress announced her pregnancy and the first person that was most overjoyed was her new husband.

So it was that Prince Emhyr II was born around five years after the Empress took the throne from her father. And it was as though the continent as a whole breathed a sigh of relief. The Empress would admit that she was an occasionally absent mother, but at the end of the day, she was still an Empress and anyone that hoped that she would slow down was astonished when she threw herself into her work with a new vigour and determination.

Her occasional disappearances lessened for a while but she was soon back to her own tricks except now, she was occasionally carrying a new baby with her and would sometimes take Lord Voorhis with her.

The continent was astonished again when the Empress announced her second pregnancy, much to the joy of her parents and a healthy baby girl was born and named Princess Pavetta.

During the second pregnancy the Empress started to develop a habit of star gazing. She would climb to the highest of the Golden towers of her capitol city and she would sit there, heedless of temperature and watch the stars. She would often take friends and her adopted family up there as she claimed it was the only time she could get a bit of peace. She was up there with her son and her new baby girl who was just beginning to show signs of white hair at the temples when her son pointed into the Western sky.

“Mother, what’s that red star?” he asked.

According to Prince Emhyr who was the only one who was there and had memories of this event. His mother carefully placed her daughter in a chair and turned to look. When she looked it took her a moment to find the star and when she did, her face twisted into a look of terror and pain. Green light glowed from her eyes and she screamed in horror and rage.

It was no more than a moment and as he watched, the light disappeared and his mother fell to her knees, sobbing with such profound sorrow that he could not comprehend it but in turn it caused his own tears to spill.

He was a brave young boy though and he went to his mother and put his hand on her arm. She pulled him into a fierce embrace which she held for several minutes. Long enough for him to be uncomfortable and his young male mind wanted to rebel and protest at his mother’s affections before she kissed his forehead and released him.

“Fetch your Father.” She ordered and scooped up the baby.

The enterprising young prince not only fetched his Father, but before he was done, the Empress’ inner circle including her secretary, Lady Eilhart of the lodge, the Lord and Lady of Corvo Bianco, the Duke and Duchess of the Pontar valley, Queen Cerys of Skellige and her Prince Consort as well as her brother Lord Hjalmar, Lady Coulthard of the Treasury and several others. The group met at the top of the tower and no-one recorded what was said.

The only person that ever wrote about it was the young prince himself who claims to have grown bored very quickly and went to sleep. But he said that it seemed to him that not a single person that was gathered there was surprised to be summoned. Indeed, Lady Eilhart, the most reluctant woman in the world to be summoned anywhere, told the weeping Empress that she had been expecting the summons for several days and had been waiting with her travelling cloak.

It seemed to him that all of them were there to console his mother and to tell her that everything would be taken care of. Then, in the way of children, he decided that the grown-ups were handling it and went to sleep lying next to his sister.

In the morning the Empress was gone and this time she did not come back.

Later on, people commented that the entire Empire fell into place as though all of this had been planned long in advance. The Empire mourned their storied Empress and although no-one ever saw a body, people came to suspect that she had died in some way.

Lord Voorhis was crowned Emperor given that he was married to the Empress and Father to the heir, and thus the succession was secured.

Lord Voorhis was commonly considered to be a pretty good Emperor. The more critical historian would say that he reaped the crops that his predecessors had sewn for him. Cidaris and Vergen surrendered. The dryads of the Brokilon and the Black Forest made contact and the community of dryads started to be more widely talked about, even if still no-one went into the heart of the forest itself.

He was aided by Lady Coulthard in completing the reformations of the treasury and the tax system and it was through their efforts that the former treasurer of the Empire Peter Evertson was captured and executed.

Where Empress Cirilla was loved by the continent, Emperor Voorhis was feared. His Secret Service was legendary and it was often said by his enemies that he knew what you were going to eat for breakfast before they did. His efforts towards diplomacy were extensive and under his command the army never fought a battle. But they did work on several extended military exercises.

Despite his feared status, his son who as well as being Emperor was a prolific diarist, describes a sad and lonely man. He never felt unloved when he went to see his Father and was sure that his Father cared about him deeply. But his first love was for the Empire and as such, even his children took second place.

He was, in the end, succeeded by his son Emperor Emhyr II. When asked about his mother and whether or not he ever felt her lack in his life, he would laugh and tell the person that he never missed her because she was still there. After all, she was the lady of time and space.

He would never explain what that meant.

The only other thing that he would say on the matter was when someone asked him what had happened to his mother. He wrote that he wondered if they were trying to find out about some sudden illness or something. He told the questioner that destiny was not done with her yet.

As is written, history is rather unkind regarding the relatively short reign of Empress Cirilla. Especially given the spectacular nature of her ascent to the throne. They point to the fact that no major wars were won. The continent was only just showing signs of recovery after the wars of her father’s time and the various privations and rebellions since. There was no new territory added to the Imperial flag and no new or spectacular innovations. Her portraits were eventually lost and people in history eventually forgot about her except those people that looked a little deeper.

Those historians, including Lady Nimue, Lady of the Lake, would argue that there are few Imperial heads of state that have had quite the profound effect on the continent as she did. After all, she achieved two things that all of her predecessors and successors didn’t manage to do.

The first thing was that under her, the Witcher Schools were refounded and became important centres of learning of the physical sciences.

And the second was that she kept the continent at relative peace for the entirety of her reign.

The Witcher Schools

Although the Empress ordered that the Witcher Schools be refounded, it took a long time for the actual method to be set upon that everyone would be happy with.

The Sorceresses and the scientists got together and… actually relatively quickly, came up with a variety of mutagens or modifications that they could make to a person that would give that person abilities that were either, exactly like what the Witchers could do, or were close enough to make little difference.

The problem was to make this process survivable. Through various experiments it was clear that, the more mutagens that were given to a person, the less and less likely that the subject was going to be able to survive. There is no denying that things got a bit dark there. A system where condemned criminals were allowed to volunteer for these tests on the understanding that if they survived, then they would have their sentence commuted.

At first there was a lot of hope. The subject might survive the first modification, then the next but invariably the third would create issues and no-one ever survived the fourth.

In broad terms, the Witcher had to be able to have conscious control over their metabolism in order to process the potions and antidotes that they would be forced to consume in order to survive contact with the monsters. They would need to have conscious control over themselves so that they could go without sleep for extended periods as well as being able to control their eyes at will to see in the dark. Their systems needed reinforcing to be able to take the strain of the magical currents that would routinely be passing through them, even if they never used a sign, and their strength, speed and toughness would need to be greater than that of a standard human in order to be able to keep up with those creatures that would render such matters of a human to be…

Well…

Eventually, the panel of men and women that were responsible for refounding the schools made a presentation to the Empress which essentially said that “Yes, we can have Witchers in the world again. But we need to start them off young, just as the old Witcher schools did, and we have to build them up, just as the old Witcher schools did, and even then, our projected survival rate is only a little higher than what the old Witcher Schools managed.”

Most of the panel, which was now led by the Duke of the Pontar given that the Arch-Chancellor of Oxenfurt had been one of the casualties of the Kalayn Rebellion, felt as though they had failed. One or two of the panel were smug as they didn’t want the schools to be refounded and they expected the Empress to capitulate and find other methods of dealing with the monster populations.

The Empress nodded her acceptance of the report and told them that it wasn’t good enough and then she told the panel to get back to work.

The work foundered for a while as every time the panel met, they would fall into bickering. Some progress was made in the matter of proposed training regimes and the improved diet that would strengthen the body during puberty more than the trials of the choice and the grasses used to. Letho was eventually granted a pardon, even as he was warned that if he went to Temeria then Queen Anais did not view that pardon to be lawful in her lands, and he worked with the team that was modifying the mutagens and the grasses, even as he refused to administer it to children.

Lady Yennefer would later say that he walked around their laboratories with a strange gleam in his eyes and his hand was never far from a weapon as if to smash the place and start laying about himself. She likened working with Letho to being like working with a caged panther.

Letho accepted that this was the only way that the Viper school would be reformed and he did the work though, but the best that they could manage was to improve the survivability rate of those children that would train to be Witchers, up from one in five to a projected three in ten.

And this was not acceptable.

It was at a meeting after the latest set of failures were being discussed that the breakthrough happened. And according to both Lady Yennefer and the Duke of the Pontar who both kept extensive notes, it was Lady Eilhart, of all people, that suggested the solution.

It was well known by all that Lady Eilhart was only on the panel out of sufferance and although she worked hard at the Empress’ decree, she did so in order to prove that the idea of Witchers was never going to work out and “The question of the monsters” should be handed over, en masse, to the magic users of the continent, which she led.

So they were all sitting there, brooding on their failures, when Lady Eilhart abruptly slapped the table in frustration and yelled at them.

“We are trying to construct one person to do the job of many,”

There was a pause as the various people around the table thought what she had said through, and they all looked up at her in shock.

It even took her a while to realise what she was saying.

After that, the work proceeded quickly.

The Witcher schools would no longer train lone hunters of monsters, they would train teams of monster slayers and curse breakers, with each member of the team containing a specialist in each of the areas that a Witcher would need. They were:

1) The slayer. The wielder of the blade and crossbow. Trained with those things to as high a degree as can be managed. They would have the mutations to make them stronger, faster and tougher than the next person which would also help with the potion taking. Although not necessarily the leader of the team, they would be the person that would actually go into the monster’s lair, supported by the others as needed.

2) The mage. If the problem turned out to be the result of a curse, then the mage would be the one to deal with the magic while the slayer dealt with the monster/spector/wight. They would be given the mutations and the training to be able to channel more of the magic needed to cast more powerful signs and even, depending on talent, be able to cast more powerful and more refined spells.

3) The alchemist. Responsible for brewing the potions and antidotes, making the potions, constructing the bombs, gathering the herbs and administering the treatments needed to keep the group on their feet. Would also be the group’s doctor and physician responsible for the healing of the group.

4) The researcher. The person responsible for identifying the monster that the group was hunting. They would research, track, identify, speak to the locals and do everything to deal with the problem that was faced. They would also, therefore, be trained in the more social aspect of a Witcher’s work in order to deal with the villagers and nobles that the Witcher team would be dealing with.

5) The smith who would be responsible for keeping all of the team's weapons and equipment in good working order. Repairing and forging swords and the like.

There would certainly be a need for some cross training as the slayer would need plenty of knowledge on how a monster works in order to fight it and the researcher would need to be able to defend themselves should any monster jump out at them during the locating of the monster’s lair phase.

Also the alchemist would need to defend his wares against people desperate for healing, the smith would need the same to defend the more expensive supplies and the mage would need a weapon should a monster attack them while the ritual is being cast.

The argument was also made that this, more specialised approach would mean that, instead of having to lose good training/research/practise time to other studies, each of the different types of “Witcher” would be able to specialise in their knowledges and therefore be better prepared, more skilled and more knowledgeable.

And also, their specialisation would mean that they would have other skills that could be used in other areas should the need for monster slaying be reduced due to population migrations and so on.

This meant the reduced number of mutations required could be applied later in life. Tests were developed to identify who was more likely to survive which mutation, the need for sterility was removed as the genetic changes would now not be passed down onto children.

There was still a certain need for preparation of the subject before application but… things looked promising.

Tests were carried out, patients began to survive in greater and greater numbers until the time came for volunteers to be called.

Demonstrations before the Imperial court were given and the Empress declared herself well-pleased.

There were still problems though. Where were the sites of the new schools going to be? What were those schools going to look like? Who was going to train the new Witchers and so on and so on. With the greatest question of them all being “Who is going to pay for it all?”

But these were much more exciting questions than, “Will the Witchers even survive?”

In the end there were several solutions.

The Witcher schools would become like Universities, modelled after Oxenfurt, Ban Ard, the Imperial War academy and the Temerian school of military engineering.

These universities would accept all those who were able to pay, with an appropriate number of scholarships as awarded by Imperial coffers as well as patrons from around the nobility and it was through this money that the schools were funded.

The Alchemy guilds and the craftsman guilds were also persuaded to accredit the new schools and as such, this was another effort to make sure that the schools would survive should the monster population reduce, making the need for Witchers to be lesser.

Therefore, any and or all students could attend and earn a badge to say they were trained and learned at the Witcher school. But to be a Witcher and move your badge from your chest or lapel to a chain around your neck, you would volunteer for the extra training and the taking on of mutagens. You would need to pass the required exams and take the necessary tests and should there be a place, then you would become a Witcher and be assigned to a team.

The number of Witchers that were needed at any time would be governed internally and by the Imperial throne. The use of non-Witcher mutagens was strictly legislated and was punishable by death.

Even now, the secrets of the Witchers were guarded jealously.

So there was just the matter of the new schools themselves.

Two of which were easy. The School of the Wolf was rebuilt and refounded at Kaer Morhen at the insistence of the Empress despite the complaints of the surviving Wolven Witchers. It was called the last folly of the most powerful woman on the continent but she would not be turned away. Lord Geralt and Witcher Lambert washed their hands of the entire thing and swore off being involved. And even though he protested the loudest, Witcher Eskel was eventually persuaded to be the Headmaster of the school. A position he took to keep them honest.

And despite their protestations, both Geralt and Lambert would visit often to deliver lectures, training advice and to enjoy the atmosphere of the place.

The other easy one was the refounding of the school of the Viper. The old Imperial promise would be honoured and the keep of the Viper was rebuilt according to Letho’s specifications. But he would not be turned the same way that Eskel would. Letho toured the school and declared that he was happy. But before anyone could stop him, he climbed onto his horse and rode off before anyone knew what was happening. No-one knows why because no-one has seen him since.

The surviving Cat Witchers, including Gaetan and Kerrass, refused to have the Feline school rebuilt. They claimed that Feline methods and things had led to too much ignominy and that salvaging the reputation of the Feline school was all but impossible. The old Gryphon keep had been claimed by an Imperial Garrison and the bear keep had been destroyed in an avalanche and the advisory council decided that it seemed disrespectful to try and rebuild those keeps without any other Witchers to have input. They also said that those sites were too remote to be useful.

So where the other schools would go was a bit of a mystery.

The Duke of the Pontar provided a couple of answers.

The School of the Spider was founded around the old mage tower of the Duchess of the Pontar which she donated to its use, along with the land around it. The influx of students and merchants to supply the school began Angraal’s march towards being a continental power until the disaster struck the royal family.

The school of the Dragon was founded in the former Castle Kalayn, again lifting the local area with the amount of business it brought in.

And with the increased knowledge of the area, Father Gardan became Saint Gardan. Something to which Father Danzig declared that he would have hated.

The school of the Panther was founded and funded by Lady Caroline, in the wilder areas of Toussaint and the school of the Raven was founded on the northern borders of the Queen of Dorn’s Kingdom when the Queen herself had returned to health after her ordeals.

And finally, to everyone’s joy and to the sight of a tearful Empress. The school of the Swallow was founded in the central areas of Nilfgaard.

The Witcher schools would last for centuries until a true solution to the monster problem was presented. They would often work with the armed forces of the various nations that their activities took them to and they founded a close relationship with the Knights of Saint Francesca when that organisation went continental as there would often be an overlap in their duties, or a problem would not obviously be a problem needing a Witcher team, or a group of knights.

But even after a solution to the Monster problem was found, a Witcher credited craftsman, soldier or academic was still highly sought after. Where the existing places of learning became universities of the arts then the Witcher schools became schools of the sciences. Including medicine, engineering, Biology, Chemistry and later… Physics and Magic.

The Witchers themselves would find themselves falling in and out of fashion. The heads of the universities would keep the mutagens safe and active, even when there was no need for new Witchers, but they always kept them safe on the grounds that they might be needed again.

And they always were.

The Black Forest

There is actually very little to say here. The Black Forest continued on its way, the same as it ever did. A delegation of Dryads and Elves from the Brokilon and Dol Blathanna made an expedition into the heart of the forest along the same path that the Duke of the Pontar took. The Elves were firmly turned aside and their leader understood the warning when she saw it while the rest of the Dryads continued in.

Nothing else was heard from them although it is clear that some form of communication between the Dryads of the Brokilon and the Dryads of the Black Forest had some kind of conduit, the one with the other as those people that tried to attack the Brokilon would later report a larger number of Dryads meeting them with arrows and spears.

The Empress’ decree that the Black Forest should be left alone was left for seven or so years when a young woodsman was working on the edges of the forest and a pair of Golden Skinned young women emerged from the depths of the forest. They had spears in their hands and bows on their backs before asking the young man which way it was to Oxenfurt.

Of course, the young man had no idea but he offered to guide them to a place where they would find an answer.

Before long, he was travelling with them and the trio found their way to Oxenfurt where they studied medicine and herbology under the Dean of Medicine that was not yet Dr Shani.

They made the return journey although one of the Dryads was killed by bandits on the road. By this point, the other was pregnant with the boy’s child and the pair of them strode into the forest never to be seen again.

The Imperial Census of the area was not extensive but the misadventures of the locals did not discourage treasure hunters and people still went into the forest. Bit by bit over the next century or so, the Dryads started to emerge from the innermost part of the forest to take lovers, sometimes husbands. Sometimes they would stay with the husband for the life of the man before returning to the Forest after he died, regardless of any children.

Eventually, a delegation of twelve Dryads was sent to the Imperial Court where they declared the Black Forest an independent Kingdom, ruled by their King. Who this King was was never mentioned although others were pretty sure that this was The Schattenmann. The court was astonished when the throne recognised the Kingdom and there was always an ambassador in the Imperial Court that was replaced once every seven years in order to keep up with the whims of their King which were ever changing.

Things seemed to continue as they were for the next twenty one years before a lonely shepherd was watching his flocks on the outskirts. The young man was astonished when a young, beautiful woman came out of the trees and sat next to him to watch the sheep. He was a quiet man, not really given too much speech at the best of the times. She sat quietly with him and he sat quietly with her. They were married four years later and the pair lived happily on the edge of things although their daughters left to go into the trees.

Something similar happened on the other side of the forest where a Farmer was struggling to get his crops in and a half dozen golden and green skinned women came out of the trees to help him. When they were done, they shared a meal and the women went to return until one looked back at the farmer who was waving to them. She spoke to the other women before jogging back, taking the farmer’s hand and leading him back into his house.

Stories like this began to abound. The locals nearby came to realise that they had neighbours. Sometimes, the dryads would come out and spend a day or two in the company of their chosen partner before leaving back for the deep woodland. Sometimes they would stay with their partner and have many daughters. Some would go on to marry other villagers and be a continued part of society, others would leave and return to the woods. The relationship between the dryads and the nearby people became friendly, even if nothing was written down. And a century later, when a lord decided that there was a lot of resource in the Black Forest, the farmers and the dryads stood together to defend the trees. And when the same Lord decided to take his vengeance on the farmers, they were met with a hail of very accurate arrows fired from the undergrowth.

Eventually, the forest swallowed the village with the never dying priest and travellers that went looking for it would never find it. But it was still there. Those that went into the woods to hunt without the permission of the locals, or adventurers that went in uninvited, no matter from which direction they entered the huge and ancient forest, would eventually find that village.

And those that did survive the journey, which they did by immediately turning around and leaving, declared that the priest was still screaming.

And when the locals gather around and tell each other stories in case people become too complacent and too trusting of their relationship with the dryads in the woodlands, they tell the tales of men that have gone into the trees. They say that the Black Forest is linked to all of the other forests of the land. Those people that have travelled further abroad tell stories of those forests in the North, like the one to the East of Oxenfurt. They say that these links even exist in parallel worlds and that if you stop and listen to what is happening in the depths of those woodlands.

You can still hear the priest screaming.

Aedirn & Kaedwen

The losses of the royal families of these two Kingdoms meant that they were all but destroyed by the ambitions of the local lords. Each would claim a connection to the throne and would war on each other, even when the Imperial throne told them to stop.

For its part, the Imperial throne would regularly attempt to name Regents or client Kings to bring peace to the troubled land, but this almost never worked. The Barons and Earls would still make war on each other, only pausing to slaughter foreign settlers that had tried to make a name for themselves in that area.

The one good thing that could be said about all of this was that it meant that Dol Blathanna flourished in the meantime until the Elves opened their portal and left the continent (see canon works about this. I didn’t do that, Sapkowski was there long before I got to it).

Aedirn in particular and Kaedwen too became a war torn land. Farmers hardly dared work the fields before some band of brigands would turn up and demand all of the food “for the King” or whoever they were supporting. The people of both became thin, sullen, angry people. They became Kingdoms of mud, monsters and remote, rain swept and dark forests where Wight haunted battlefields outnumbered villages. The only beacons of life were the cities and the academies of Kaedwen including Kaer Morhen, the Pontar Valley and Ban Ard but even they became walled off fortresses. People who travelled those countries would say they were like the nations of old before Witchers and Mages had reclaimed the countryside from the monsters

Eventually, seeing an avenue for advancement for her many children, Queen Meve of the twin Kingdoms of Lyria & Rivia decided that she saw an avenue to advance North, using the same methods that the Empire had done so.

She was an older woman by now but still strong despite her injuries and her temporary exile in the face of the third Nilfgaardian invasion. She did it piece by piece and Barony by Barony with Allies from the Imperial armies and aided by the Knights of Saint Francesca and the new Witcher Schools. She reclaimed Aedirn and placed her younger son on the throne before she moved further North into Kaedwen.

Seeing the existential threat to their existence. The Earls of Kaedwen got together and chose a new King in a similar form of Democracy to the Skelligan isles. The King advanced South and seeing what was coming, Queen Meve declared herself happy with what she had and fell back behind the Pontar valley.

As she did so, the new King of Aedirn was learning about his new Kingdom and decided that the biggest threat to his rule was his mother. He gathered an army and met his mother’s army that was returning South and demanded that she remove herself from his lands.

She laughed a lot, told her younger son that she loved him and was proud of him. And then she charged.

Temeria

The Kingdom of Temeria did not do so well.

Queen Anais, known as the Iron lily did well, but her rulership was largely defined by her being forced to exert her will to dominate everyone around her. She would often complain that even though she was well into her forties, she still looked as though she was a young and beautiful girl of around Seventeen. So men all around the nation would try to talk down to her, condescend to her and go around her and make decisions regarding the nation without including her.

She was always, rather predictably, furious. And her people loved her.

So she struggled to trust anyone. The only people that she trusted were those few men that had helped her gain the throne and keep it in the wake of the Nilfgaardian invasion, namely Lords Natalis, Roche and Thaler. It was not as though she didn’t try either. But every single time that she tried to trust anyone other than these three men with some portion of governing her nation, she would discover that they had gone around her, had taken steps that she disapproved her and when calling them out on it, they would tell her, sometimes literally, “not to worry her pretty head about it” or “You are nothing but a weak and emotional woman without the steel to do what must be done.”

She would respond with reason and point out that she couldn’t help but notice that what must be done was to enrich the person that had gone against her orders or counter to her wishes. At which point the person would smile condescendingly and be absolutely astonished when they ended up on the block.

So over and over again, she was forced to delegate to, and only trust, those same three men. The Duke of the Pontar would offer help, and her relationship with the Duke was not bad. But he was obviously Redanian and was seen by many Temerians as a deliberate check on their freedom as placed by Nilfgaard, which even Queen Anais was forced to admit was probably true.

So she did her best. She ruled reasonably well if not perfectly, trusting instincts and intuition rather than the advice that people offered her and this kept her on the right track three times out of five. And she was not above admitting when she made a mistake which put her above some rulers of the time period.

But the fragile balance of the ruling class of Temeria was not to last.

Lord Natalis was no longer a young man and the years of soldiering and now the stresses of governing had taken their toll. He suffered a massive stroke and by necessity retired to his country estates where he died two years later. He was given a state funeral which even the surviving monarchs of the North attended, including the former Emperor of Nilfgaard, Emhyr who was now an old man himself.

Lord Roche was assassinated and the culprits were never satisfactorily named. Many thought that he had argued with the Queen a little too often for her pleasure, still others thought that the other nobles of the Temerian court thought that the Queen would be more approachable if Roche was out of the picture. Still others thought that Lord Roche was not without enemies himself.

And Lord Thaler, although an exemplary chief of intelligence, was no courtier.

So the Queen found that she was ruling more and more herself. Refusing to delegate and let other people share the load. She married a courtier from Nilfgaard who she got on relatively well with. It was not a popular marriage though but she was well aware that without strong Northern Allies, Temeria existed on Imperial Sufferance and Redania was just itching for an excuse to come South.

She was pregnant twice, giving birth to two sons, but because she was not trusting enough to rest after her pregnancy, a paranoia that was well founded, she rushed back to work far too quickly after her second son and there was an illness that took root in her. Even though she survived that illness it had weakened her considerably.

But again, she could trust no others.

Her minor barons started to form alliances to demand that she abdicate the crown to her son and another regency council which, of course, they would lead and use to enrich and empower themselves.

She started to fight a series of small-scale civil wars. She was supported by allies like Baroness Strenger whose marriage was a much better match. But for every rebellion that Queen Anais had to put down, another would spring up. Again, the old erroneous rumour of her feminine mercy reared its head, despite her regular proof that she was just as capable of ruthlessness as the next monarch.

There was never any give in the Queen though. She was riding home from one campaign where she just seemed to sway in her saddle before falling to the side of the road dead.

She was forty two.

Where the countryside mourned their “Iron Lily”. The noble barons rejoiced in their perceived freedom. The new King had some education from his mother but his instincts were not honed by years of training by a regency council that had his best interests at heart, unlike his mother.

His instincts were pretty good, but he was easily distracted by a nice cleavage to bury his face in and an opportunity to go hunting.

Disaster finally befell Temeria when the Lord who owned the lands next to the Brokilon forest decided that he had not seen a dryad in his lifetime and that they were, therefore, myths. And he had a large forest that he could exploit for timber in order to enrich himself.

Besides, he was a Temerian Lord and the old treaty that guaranteed the sacrosanct nature of the Brokilon was Imperial in nature and he wasn’t Nilfgaardian.

His first woodsmen were met by a hail of arrows. The Lord responded with military action and started chopping and burning.

The dryads sent a mission to the Temerian court and although they got there, the King was, by now, influenced by the Barons and those other Barons that bordered the forest wanted a piece of that Timber money and he threw it out.

But Temeria had forgotten what Queen Anais had known so well and as such, they were astonished when Imperial Armies arrived on Temeria’s border. One from the North and the other from the South.

This time, there was no quarter given.

Cintra

Just a note really. The former Emperor Emhyr worked diligently to rebuild Cintra into the nation that it had been. Witnesses said that he was like a different man. All of the humanity that he had lacked while sitting on the Imperial throne, he found when he was sitting as the Regent of Cintra.

Except when his neighbours tried to raid Cintran territory. Then, he was terrifying in his wrath.

But he invited all the Cintran exiles home on the understanding that they obeyed his rule. And he grew into a formidable ruler. He had another daughter which he petitioned the Emperor for permission to name her his heir and when the time came, she rose to the Lion throne of Cintra, sat in it and named herself Queen.

And the people of Cintra rejoiced.

Redania

Alas, things for Redania got worse before they got better.

Two things happened, or rather failed to happen, in the years following the end of the Kalayn rebellion and the rise of the Duke of the Pontar.

Firstly the well publicised plans of the Duke of the Pontar were not entirely successful. He did manage to arrange for a royal Redanian state visit to Toussaint where the young Prince Radovid was predictably fascinated and excited by all the Knights riding around on their big horses with their shiny armour and bright swords and lances. But despite the boy's excitement, his mother, Queen Regent Adda still maintained her insistence that he be kept safe at all possible costs. Therefore he could watch the tournaments, but he was forbidden to take part in any kind of martial activity.

On the other hand, the Queen Regent herself who was still a beautiful woman caught the eye of many suitors who proceeded to flatter her and pay her compliments to her heart’s content and adornment.

Ruthless rumours that she tested many of those men out in the quiet of the Toussaint countryside were absolutely refuted by everyone but the Queen Regent herself who enjoyed the notoriety, confiding to the Duchess that all of the scandal was conspiring to make her feel young again.

She selected a suitor from those that performed well in the melee and the two had a very long, very drawn out courtship and romance, much to the delight of romantics everywhere, and the Queen married her second husband after a suitable period and the permissions of all of the right people were obtained.

But this didn’t help the young prince.

Having seen how the youth of other nations lived and chafing under his mother’s determination to keep him safe at all costs, he began to resent his mother. That resentment turned into dislike and eventual hatred. This was made worse by the obviousness of his mother’s newfound romantic happiness. The Queen Regent was the centre of the gossip and the romantic longing of the continent again and she couldn’t be happier.

The Duke of the Pontar did his best to maintain the prince’s education and integrity and although the prince hated his mother, was painfully naive and sheltered, he maintained his integrity and, to a certain extent, his innocence. He even managed to get on with his Mother’s new husband given that the Knight’s only disagreement with his bride, the Queen, was regarding the upbringing of the prince. The one time of heartbreak was when the Knight insisted that being sheltered in the Royal Palace was no life for a young boy, let alone a Prince, and offered to train the Prince himself.

The Queen still refused and for a while, sent her husband away to stay with the Duke of the Pontar.

That was a dark year for Redania as the Queen’s temper was foul.

Eventually though, she let her husband back into her circle.

The other Lords of the land started to get into things regarding the young Prince and despite his tutor’s, Mother’s and the Duke’s best efforts. The other Lords quickly figured out the one area in which the Prince was unreasoning and that was regarding his hatred and resentment of his Mother, and so they were able to get into his ear and influence him.

The other parallel, but most unrelated factor at this time, was that the Nobility of Redania had been decimated over the last couple of decades.

The privations of Radovid the stern, the holy crusade against the Lords of the North and the Cult of the First-Born, and then the Kalayn Rebellion meant that there was an awful lot of Noble titles that were vacant with no-one to take them up. So in Redania as a whole, there was a land and title grab. All of that land that was now deserted due to having the Lord’s executed, or dead in battle, through fair means or foul.

So surviving Lords now had room to expand into and there were spare titles, lands, widows and free daughters who had inherited and didn’t have any Father’s or older brother’s to defend their virtue.

To be fair, many of these Lords expanded out of legitimate need for those lands to be governed and out of a desire to rescue the people that still lived there. Still more cared for the lands, widows and daughters of men that they liked and respected but didn’t agree with their politics.

Was there ambition? Yes, certainly but there was also genuine nobility and noble duty at the forefront of people’s minds.

In turn though, that meant that many of those Lords now governed vast swathes of Northern Redania. Realms that would have granted them the titles of Kings and Dukes in times gone by. All the rebellious sons and those sons that might be tempted towards darkness and evil had been culled by the crusade and the rebellion so this first generation of Lords were the good ones. But people didn’t see the problems that this would lead to.

Then the King turned eighteen. He and those nobles that had control over him, tried to gain him his majority when he turned sixteen but the Queen and the Regency Council insisted that he remain under their control until he turned eighteen. Either due to their continued desire to hold onto power, or because they realised what was going to happen when Prince Radovid became King Radovid II.

But the delay could not be infinite and Radovid II ascended to the throne. His first act was to exile his mother. At first he tried to have her executed and then sent to a nunnery but the Duke of the Pontar and the Queen’s husband managed to persuade him to commute the sentence to merely exile.

Her husband took Adda back to Toussaint where she became a lady of the Court. She was one of the advisors to Duchess Caroline upon that ladies ascension and maintained a friendship with Knight Commander Syanna. Although there was a lot of history between Adda and the Duke of the Pontar, the two managed to create a civil friendship whenever the Duke visited his friends in Toussaint. Adda died in Toussaint.

Apparently King Radovid II wept when he heard the news.

Radovid II was a weak King. Very clever and educated, but he was still weak. The Lords that had gained influence with him by exploiting his hatred of his Mother took control with reasoned arguments. The King just lacked the tools to be able to argue, or counter the influence of these Lords and so they all but took power. Expanding to take control of the vast Northern Lordships and titles.

The precedence of the Large titles and tracts of land meant that this new group of Lords could ascend easily. Again, there is no doubt that some of those Lords saw the weakness of the King and knew that they had to move in order to protect their people. But it is also true that ambition is a poison that it is hard to completely remove.

The first of the Northern Lords to secede from Redania did so six years after Radovid II took the throne. The second did so six months afterwards.

The corruption of the Redanian court meant that the armies of Redania had been substantially reduced and because these New Northern Realms were seceding from Redania, but not the Empire… and indeed, paid more money to the Empire in tax revenue now that they weren’t funding the corruption of the Redanian court, the Northern Imperial army did not interceded.

The Redanians set out to recapture their Northern territories and the Northern territories trounced the royal troops with the aid of Kaedweni, Kovirian and Skelligan mercenaries. Calling it a rout would not be too out of place.

Seeing this weakness of the Redanian crown, more lords seceded. Temeria would have gone North if the Duke of the Pontar didn’t still hold the border between the two and Skelligan raiders did what they do best up and down the Redanian coast.

To be fair to the King, he realised what had happened, was self-aware and intelligent enough to see what was going to happen and that a good chunk of it was his fault. He tried to exert his will against the corruption in his courtroom but found himself helpless in the face of the experienced courtiers of Redania and was ushered off to his own form of comfortable exile in a palace that the Lords built for him.

The King realised his doom and after consulting with Lord Frederick, he exerted the only influence he had left which was the influence over his son and heir.

Radovid II’s wife was the only thing he had chosen for himself. The nobles of the court had paraded a host of beautiful women in front of his nose and he had not taken to any of them. The cold, austere, haughty, classically beautiful women could not gain sway over him and he turned them all away, perhaps sensing that this would just be another hook that would be lodged in his soul in order to control him.

Who it was that arranged for the lady to go to court was a mystery that the controlling nobles never figured out, but she was a lady from Aedirn, all but a refugee although she brought a considerable dowry with her. A dowry that was also a mystery given that she was fleeing the still war torn countryside of Aedirn. But she was a larger woman with a round face and rosy cheeks. A far sight from the slender, high cheekboned and classical beauties that the court had put in front of him. But she smiled and laughed and was kind and was a long distance from the figure of his mother, a figure that still haunted the King.

It would not be unfair to say that she mothered him into loving her. To all intents and purposes, they really did seem to love each other and she quickly produced him a son before a delay when the courtiers tried to separate them but she also produced several daughters and another son later in life and it was these children that the King could influence as no-one could deny that he had the power to dispose of his children how he wished. He named his eldest son Radovid as was expected and went to work regarding the young King’s education.

Using Lord Frederick’s contacts in Skellige, Toussaint and the Imperial Court, the new Prince Radovid went first to Skellige to learn to be a boy. He learned to fight, to sail and to enjoy himself. He made friends and learned charm and about simple pleasures.

Then he went to Toussaint where he learned how to be a noble. He learned all the skills that his Father had been denied. He learned riding, dancing, jousting, and swordplay. He learned about chivalry, etiquette and the duty of the Noble. He fell in love for the first time, had his heart broken for the first time and learned about the evils that could be visited on the farming class by the noble classes that should know better.

When he was sixteen he went to the Imperial Court and the Imperial War academy. Who paid his academy fee was another one of the many mysteries surrounding the young man given that the Redanian treasury refused to pay on the grounds that they wanted to select the prince’s tutors for themselves, but whoever paid his fee also made a substantial donation to the academy’s funds.

That and the Emperor himself declared that the matter should be kept private.

In the Imperial Court, the young Prince learned about politics, bureaucracy, strategy and tactics. He learned leadership as well as charm. Just as intelligent as his Father, he also became the ambassador to the Imperial court of Redania, a position that was emphasised after he survived his second assassination attempt and served as a General in the Nilfgaardian military where he earned the devotion of his troops and served with distinction in many campaigns against a Zerrikanian invasion. He also married a Nilfgaardian lady who, although not classically beautiful as his Grandmother Adda had been, was pretty enough and was rumoured to be terrifyingly intelligent in her own right.

Then his Father died.

Some would claim that Radovid II died of a broken heart when he saw what had become of his precious Redania. It is much more likely, however, that an illness had taken root in him early when he was still being coddled and he had never properly exercised. He was a large man but lacked the strength and he was fifty four when he died.

King Radovid III returned to Redania quietly and without fanfare and he instantly made an impression.

He took over command of the army first and used that army to preserve his control. His long education meant that he was more than secure enough in himself to destroy, in turn, the same courtiers that had destroyed his Father. They were not used to dealing with someone that knew what they were doing and within five years of retaking the throne some few of those nobles were reclaimed to the Redanian court, some were exiled but many were beheaded.

After that, he took his army and reconquered that territory that his Father had lost. Whether the Lords had seceded out of care or out of personal ambition, it didn’t matter. If King Radovid III decided that you had betrayed Redania, your head rolled.

And so, Radovid earned the title that his Grandfather had also carried at one point. He became Radovid the Stern.

He was remarked as a tall, thin, cold presence. Where other Generals and Kings led from the front of the army he would stand back, often with his arms folded. He had a long nose and fixed stare that made people think that he was looking down at them, or staring through at them.

And although his nobles and officers struggled to understand their quiet and intense King and General, his men loved him and competed for his attention. The greatest rewards of the previous Generals and Kings seemed to pale in comparison to a simple, slight nod from King Radovid the stern.

His rivals didn’t understand it. They led from the front and thought they had earned the love of their men and would lead them to battle against him, to watch Radovid dress the ranks of a unit in a negligent, remote manner. To make matters worse, that unit would then trounce the massed forces of the General and lord in question.

Radovid resecured his territory with a finality and ruthlessness that made other people pale. He was not cruel to those people that worked in the field but he was utterly without compromise. And he was a man of his word.

When he was satisfied and accepted the envoys from Kovir & Poviss, The Hengfors league, Kaedwen and the other Kingdoms further North, along with the tribute/bribes that he was given not to continue his campaign North he returned to his capitol.

He was careful with the dynastic marriages of his brothers and sisters. He ensured their loyalty and education, ensured that his mother’s comforts were taken care of and he led Redania into a new age.

He was only known to show any real emotion when it came to dealings with his wife or mistress. He loved his wife but it was impossible for her to join him on campaign so he took his mistress with him. The two women knew of each other and although the Queen resented her rival, and the mistress resented that she was seen as disposable, neither could really do anything about it. He loved them both and would smile at them fondly.

He was also, bizarrely, really good with children and animals.

The only other time he betrayed emotion was when the Duke of the Pontar finally died. He shed many public tears and went into seclusion. Decades later, when Redania was at relative peace and the King was beginning to relax, a courtier rather foolishly said something derogatory of the Scholar Duke. In a fury, King Radovid III had the man pulled apart by horses and afterwards the King stood in the bloody entrails of the offending courtier and addressed the horrified onlookers.

“The Duke of the Pontar was a patriot. Whatever else that might be said of the man, and however many disagreements he and I might have had, he was more of a Father to me than my own Father was. He was a patriot and he was a Redanian. For all he might have had lands, friends and influence in foreign courts he was a Redanian first and Redania would not be now, what it has become if it was not for the Duke of the Pontar. He was a Redanian.

The onlookers were shocked at the emotion in their King’s otherwise stern and emotionless face.

“HE WAS REDANIAN.” The King screamed before spinning on his heel and seizing a horse, he rode off with his mistress and his guards struggling to catch up, dispatched by the equally horrified Queen.

When he returned, he returned to governing with a new zeal.

His wife gave him a son two years after this little speech, and that son was named Frederick. In the long run, that boy would become King Frederick the first of Redania.

Radovid III died at the age of 67, still hale and hearty. Many believe that he was poisoned by some rival in the hope that it would weaken Redania, but the education that he had given his children meant that it did anything but weaken his Kingdom.

Angraal

The fate of the small nation state of Angraal is a fairly sad one. From being able to live their lives, relatively free of oversight and being able to give themselves the titles that they wanted to give themselves and live the lives that they wanted to live… Making their money from the relatively small part of the Pontar that they had dominion over, they just carried on. Allowing their days to fill up with conflicts from their neighbours and the grand court politics that everyone else on the continent would scoff at.

And then a Witcher and a Scholar rode up the road.

The more self possessed and self aware people of Angraal knew that what happened afterwards was neither the Witcher’s fault, nor the Scholar’s fault. The building of the avalanche that swept Angraal away was already underway by the time that those two men turned up on the Western border of the small realm. But that helps no-one and it is in the nature of the men that are swept away by the avalanche to look for someone to blame.

In this case, the person that did most of the blaming was the young Lord of the place. During his time, he had seen his Father, the King of Angraal, become a Duke of Angraal. And then when he had inherited, he found himself a Count of Angraal. His advisors, including his younger sister, the Countess of Angral, the Duke of the Pontar and various other people, did their best to exorcise this bitterness, but the roots of that sentiment had started long before any of them had managed to realise that it was a problem.

It was also generally accepted that the young Count was well aware that he was acting irrationally but this did absolutely nothing to lessen the bitterness that he felt towards the Duke of the Pontar. The problem was worsened when his sister, who he adored, met, fell in love with and married an Imperial Officer of the First Northern army that the Duke of the Pontar was working with.

There’s a lot of genuine reasons as to why the Count came to hate the Duke of the Pontar, the politics, the blame for the death of his parents, the demotion of himself and the importance of his little realm. Unkind people even suggested that he nursed something of a childish crush on the Duchess of the Pontar and his former Aunt Spider.

In the end though his bitterness overwhelmed him and he turned inwards. Everyone tried to help him, including those people that he hated so vehemently. His sister, his tutors and his advisors, all tried to stop him and divert him into other actions. But his bitterness made him angry and his anger made him cruel.

The Duke of the Pontar’s sister was a trading concern that had its fingers in lots of different pies and one of the places that the Coulthard trading company worked so diligently, was in Angral. So trade flourished. The Count of Angral started to make demands of those traders that came through. Tariffs were introduced, taxes were created and so on.

The Count didn’t do anything with that money other than to hoard it. He was doing it in an effort to hurt the Duke of the Pontar and for all of his efforts towards anger, the Duke of the Pontar reacted with kindness and understanding.

Later critics of the Duke suggested that he might have done better with a bit more anger and ruthlessness, although the Duke argued that this would have proven to the angry and bitter young man that his tactics were working.

Eventually though, the Count of Angraal lost his temper and rode out in a fit of rage. In his distracted rage he fell from his horse and broke his neck.

His sister, through her husband, lived and had several daughters but no sons. And she never really went back to Angral as she was happy in the smaller, quieter lands that her husband provided her, content to let the Duke, and the regional council, run Angraal in her absence.

So Angraal was left without a feudal ruler. Before she disappeared, the Duchess of the Pontar was offered the throne of stone, but she told everyone that she had set that aside and didn’t want it. So the elected officials of Angraal ruled that place.

The founding of the Witcher School in the nearby countryside was a factor and as the school grew, so too did the trading concerns. The nearby city of Angraal became the kind of a place whose job it was to serve the students, the visitors and the Professors of the University and although the Chancellor of the University was never officially named the Lord of Angraal, they might as well have been.

The business of education and trade just grew and in the absence of a ruling family, Angraal flourished. It became another one of the city states in that part of the world. The hall that housed the throne of stone became an art gallery and a museum. Visitors could pay to sit on the throne of stone and see if it would accept them. Those that did sit on the throne always claimed that, although the throne was surprisingly comfortable, it was as though the throne itself was dissatisfied with being sat upon.

The tree in the middle of the green was damaged by a storm that swept through the place. The Damage was so severe that the tree died and the remains were burnt in a big ceremony. In its place was erected a large stone with a carving of the tree upon the stone itself.

It was called the “founding tree”.

Toussaint

Of all the nations and realms of the Continent, it was Toussaint that would change the least over time. Even when realms were absorbed by nations and the title of Duchess became unimportant, that particular area of the Continent remained all but untouched with the only real innovation belonging to the wine making process and the innovations of the Knights of Saint Francesca.

In all other areas, the Duchy of Toussaint was the same Toussaint as it had been in the time of Duchess Anna-Henrietta as it was six hundred years later.

There is no disagreement as to why that would be the case. The Knights of Saint Francesca were the exception to this social and industrial conservatism. They were innovators and as soon as there was a new tool or a new piece of knowledge that could be absorbed into their arsenal, then they took it, figured it out, implemented it, improved on it and then took that further.

It was the Knights of the Saint that first started the use of Blasting powder, the gnomic invention that was supposed to be for mining, as a weapon and later, it was the Knights of the Saint that would first implement firearms on large scales.

Thick and heavy plate mail turned into thin, flexible and equally as strong steel which then moved into floppy hats, tabards and fast swords.

In the long run, the Knights of the Saint were to be seen travelling the land with rapiers at their sides, pistols in their belts and muskets on their horse as they continued to protect the citizens of the Continent from those that would seek to take advantage of them. (Yes, I think they would eventually turn into something like an idealised Musketeer kind of knight)

But I am getting ahead of myself.

As The Duke of the Pontar predicted, it was no more than a couple of generations before people started to forget the real figure of who Saint Francesca was or had been. She became a martyr, an innocent waif and idealised virginal young woman that it was well known that the people of Toussaint had failed as a whole. The trend of people swearing on the Heron quickly died out and soon, men of Toussaint would swear on the saint to witness their oaths.

There was certainly evidence that Saint Francesca watched over those people that followed her and prayed to her. There were miracles performed and confirmed by several sceptics although she seemed to reserve a certain level of wrath for people that tried to be priests or priestesses of some kind of religion based around her. Especially those that tried to organise those followers that she collected, and they tended to have misdeeds paraded in front of the mob for all to see.

The Knights themselves flourished under the early control of Knight Commander Syanna and Knight Captain de la Tour and the method of law keeping saw much success.

Some of the neighbouring realms petitioned the Duchess for help regarding the kinds of work that the Knights of the Saint carried out on her lands. The Duchess spoke to the Empress and a pilot program was instituted in a couple of areas. The experiment was a success and tentatively, the Knights of Saint Francesca started to spread out to all the corners of the continent. Sometimes, foreign nations, especially in the North would found organisations similar to the Knights of the Saint but eventually, these were subsumed.

People kept waiting for the organisation to become corrupted by politics and money but those early Knights did their job well in ensuring that such things never happened. There was even a period where there was concern of a rivalry between the Witcher teams and the Knights. But this stunningly failed to happen and, as said previously, the Knights of Francesca and the Witchers would often work with each other on complicated cases or refer cases to each other when it turned out that the expertise of the other was needed.

In this way, again as the Duke of the Pontar predicted, the name of Saint Francesca and her knights survived until long after the events that led to her becoming the Saint were forgotten to myth and Legend. Let alone the fact that she was actually a Northern woman and daughter of Redanian nobility.

For their part, Damian and Syanna would just be building up to marry before some crisis would come up that would prevent the marriage from going ahead. They married quietly, with just a few witnesses and a meal in the Knights common room for those knights that were not on duty. Apparently it was a raucous affair.

In the end though, Knight Commander Syanna was forced to step down from her position when her sister started to become ill in order to avoid the appearance that she was trying to show up her sister or was involved in Anna-Henrietta’s downfall. She became an ambassador for the Duchy and would often travel abroad with an escort of the Knights to protect her honour. Damien wanted to go with her but they were both victims of their desire to do their duty and he remained in Beauclair to protect the Duchess.

The two would reunite regularly and their reunions were always joyous and provided much amusement to the courtiers of Toussaint. It seems pretty clear that the two of them were well aware of the public spectacle that they presented, and neither cared.

Damian was killed at the age of sixty seven, stabbed to death trying to break up a brawl between foreign merchants on the waterfront. Knight Commander Syanna lived for another twenty years after his death where she died of a foreign disease. No-one could ever find any evidence that she ever plotted against her sister’s throne again.

Guillaume is also someone that could never quite get away from his duty. He stepped away from the Knights of the Saint, other than the position of champion of the Saint, when his wife, Lady Vivienne, became pregnant with twins and worked hard to bring those children up while his wife continued to help the Duchess govern.

When circumstances meant that the Duchess’ deepening illness could no longer be kept secret, Lady Vivienne was working harder and harder to keep the realm together. At the same time, Syanna was forced to step aside for political reasons to avoid even the appearance of taking advantage of her sister’s illness. And Guillaume was the only real candidate for taking over the running of the Knights.

He served for ten years before he declared that it was time for new blood and new thinking at the head of the Knights and handed the matter to the first, common born Knight Commander. Also starting the precedent that no Knight Commander should ever serve more than ten years for fear that the knights become too bound by tradition over effectiveness.

In the period between when Anna-Henrietta sunk into madness and sickness, and when her successor took over, Guillaume and Vivienne became the first couple of Toussaint and many foreign visitors mistook them for the Duke and Duchess of Toussaint. They were the first to kneel and swear their oaths to the new Duchess.

They served Toussaint with honour and with pride

Guillaume died, sword in hand, if unarmoured, at the age of eighty seven. He heard of a local village being under attack by “brigands” and took his sword as there were no other rescuers in evidence. He saw off the ruffians, leaving many dead and bleeding behind him whereas he was unhurt. He roared his triumph as he always had and knelt to pray and dedicate his victory to the woman that he loved.

He never rose from that kneeling posture.

Lady Vivienne lived on for a year, continuing to serve and advise the Duchess and her servants until she was visiting her husband’s grave with her children to lay some flowers next to the simple gravestone. She seemed to sway in place, and was heard to say “Guillaume? Is that…?”

She sobbed and then died. She was buried next to her husband.

A pair of small yellow birds watched the funeral.

Their children, all eight of them, would go on to continue a tradition of service to the realm of Toussaint.

Gregoire and Anne would live happily for many years although not as many as Guillaume and Vivienne. Gregoire and Guillaume would trade the position of Champion of the Saint between them, swapping on average once every 2 years. This went on for twelve years before Guillaume stopped competing to be called to other duties and Gregoire continued in that position until he was fifty three. He was finally unhorsed by a young knight who sobbed in shock and shame at having managed to defeat the giant.

Gregoire took it in good nature, deciding that the Saint had told him something and retired to his estates where he spent time walking among the flowers. To everyone’s astonishment, he turned out to be a skilled gardner and bred a rose that he called “Anne”. He still offered training to the Knights of Saint Francesca but he made it clear to all that came that he was retired from active service and wanted to spend time with his wife and children.

Anne was a dutiful and loving wife and mother, never did anything to bring disgrace down on her husband and the pair were sickeningly in love. She died of a long illness when she was forty six, leaving Gregoire alone to bring up the children and it may be said that he did a good job. Using his own abusive Father as a model for what NOT to do, he set out to love his children as best as he could.

His children were similarly large and strong as he was. Anne had borne him three sons and a daughter. All of them were beautiful and hugely strong and all of them served in the Knights of Francesca.

Anne’s eldest son struggled a little with his new Step-Father as he didn’t comprehend his change in fortunes and the pair of them had little to nothing in common. The boy was uninterested in martial pursuits and although Gregoire was clumsily encouraging, he could not share the boy’s fascination with law and philosophy. The first time the two could bond was when someone told Gregoire that the new-fangled Rapier was as much an intellectual exercise as it was a weapon of combat and Gregoire paid for a tutor for the boy, refusing to accept that he would not leave his step-son undefended.

The now young man took to the lessons in the same way that he took to his studies of law. He did not serve in the Knights though. He went to the Imperial war academy where he studied the law. He became a lawyer and would go on to practise as a lawyer where he would regularly defend women that had defended themselves against aggressive men. Most commonly prostitutes that had killed noblemen in self-defence after the noblemen had beaten the prostitute. But also women that had killed their husbands for the same reason.

He was very good at it but he made powerful enemies. He fought and won several duels including six duels to the death when the prosecuted man in question would seek to have the case resolved by duelling the lawyer and they were always astonished by the level of skill that they faced. Gregoire would always try to attend and would roar his approval when word of his step-son’s victory was brought to him.

In the end, more direct methods were used and he was found dead, stabbed to death in a side-alley. His death and the petitioning of his friends and colleagues gained the ears of the Emperor and many would later claim that his death was the first step towards equal rights for women in the Empire. Although his friends and family would laugh bitterly, pointing out that it was the death of a “man” that had led to this process, not the many many deaths of women to spousal abuse or unjust execution that began the changes.

Gregoire was more heart-broken at this death than he was with the death of his wife which had come after a long illness, and although he rallied, he died only a couple of years later at the age of sixty seven.

The trap that Jack left for Duchess Anna-Henrietta was the perfect trap for her and her alone.

At first, other than the ridiculous way that she chose to house the bottle of wine, nothing seemed to happen. The bottle of wine sat on its plinth at the top of the tallest tower of Beauclair castle. A room that, once upon a time, had been used to keep Princesses captive or to allow resident mages the opportunity to study the stars.

Now it was a place to keep a bottle of wine.

There were even those that charitably chose to believe that the Duchess really had imprisoned the bottle of wine in the place that she thought of as being a prison.

But other than that, what the Duke of the Pontar joked about with Kerras was largely accurate. There were indeed guards that were posted on the outside of those doors and they really were chosen by the Duchess for their stature and might at arms.

Servants were allowed to go up and clean, although they were not allowed to clean the bottle of wine itself, so in the long run, the plinth and the bottle of wine itself started to become dusty. Unfortunately all this really did was add to the mystique of the wine itself.

For a couple of years, it became a joke, the Duchess’ folly. The Duke of the Pontar’s, and the Lady of Corvo Bianco’s warnings were laughed at and ignored. People would mutter that Jack couldn’t be that powerful after all as the stories and the history of the night of Laughing Jack and the deaths of the conspirators were replaced by new terrors and conspiracies. New scandals and politics.

Then Syanna was woken by some emergency. It was nothing particularly important, certainly nothing that merited being recorded by anyone that came afterwards.

It was just one of those things that meant that The Knight Commander of Toussaint had to go and wake up the Duchess of Toussaint for reasons of state.

And the Duchess was not in her quarters.

Terrified that the Duchess had been captured or some enemy agency had attacked her sister and the head of state, Syanna began a search of the palace and the grounds to find any sign of her sister. Echoes of what happened to Francesca were foremost in everyone’s mind and even though it didn’t actually take very long to find the Duchess, this might be why the matter was taken so seriously by the Knight Commander.

The Duchess found her sister by systematically enquiring after her movements and eventually she had found her way to the guards that protected the wine tower.

The tower that would later be called Jack’s tower.

Syanna used her authority to demand that the Knights answer her questions and were forced to admit that the Duchess was inside the tower.

Storming past them, meaning that the guarding knights had to be restrained from trying to prevent the Knight Commander ascending by Syanna’s escort, Syanna found her sister staring at the bottle of wine. The Duchess was wearing her night dress with a shawl wrapped around herself and was just standing, staring at the bottle.

The fears of a missing sister and Duchess could not be contained and Syanna lost her temper at her sister. The Duchess just absorbed it and told the Knight Commander that “She wanted to make sure the wine was safe.”

The Duchess walked past the Knight Commander and descended the tower as if nothing had happened, to deal with the crisis of the evening that had since been eclipsed by the Duchess’ brief disappearance.

Syanna immediately sent for advice from the Lady of Corvo Bianco who told the Knight Commander that nothing could be done and that she, meaning Syanna, should start putting plans into place to protect the Duchess from herself.

Syanna did as she was advised, assigning Knights to the personage of the Duchess with orders that no matter what happened, they were not to leave the Duchess’ side. This was not just a ceremonial position, this was a real protection.

One of the Knights must always be a woman so that someone could be in the room with the Duchess while she slept and although it was true that the Duchess was far from celibate when it came to her love life, things seemed to fall off in that time.

For her part, the Duchess admitted to the strange acts that she was committing and confessed that the bottle of wine was praying on her mind.

It would transpire that on an average of once a week, the Duchess would take blankets and sleep in the tower.

The Duchess would improve for a while, but then, perhaps inevitably, she would start to think of the wine again. Relations between the two sisters became a little bit fractured for a while as the two would argue for a long time about the fact that it was just a bottle of wine.

The Duchess lost her temper for a final time and told her sister that it was not just a bottle of wine and that it would be proven to her.

A number of people were assembled. The Duchess, Syanna, The Ducal Sommelier, Lady Vivienne, The Duke of the Pontar and the Lady of Corvo Bianco. Six small tasting cups were brought and The Duchess broke the seal on the bottle, pouring a small amount into each cup. All six of the people there sampled the wine as was their want and in the manner that fit them the best. The liquid was a deeply coloured white wine, almost amber in colour.

The Duke of the Pontar commented that the wine was nice enough but that he had preferred the wine he had been given for his wedding night. He joked that Jack knew his tastes well.

The lady of Corvo Bianco agreed that the wine was not as much to her taste as the wine that she had been given but that it was still pretty nice. She also admitted that she would prefer a good bottle of Est Est or an Elven wine to this. She said it was thin for her taste but did admit that she had tasted it before.

She would not say where.

Lady Vivienne drank in sips and would not say anything, her expression was troubled.

Syanna opined that it was a perfectly nice bottle of wine. Not the best she had ever tasted because memory adjusts the thing and it was far from the religious experience that she had expected from tasting the vintage of Jack, but it was a perfectly pleasant mouthful.

The Ducal Sommelier drank and pulled out a slate, making and crossing out notes feverishly.

The Duchess watched all her guests drink with a look of curious disappointment on her face. Then she sighed and drank.

Afterwards, the Duke of the Pontar wrote that he was forced to look away out of embarrassment at the state of the Duchess.

When she was more herself, the Duchess examined the others with horrified curiosity.

“Is that not the finest vintage you’ve ever?...”

The Sommelier was still trying to discern what he had tasted, oblivious to all but his work. The others were concerned about the Duchess but otherwise were forced to admit that, although the wine was tasty enough, it was just not… the perfection that the Duchess had experienced. Syanna even expressed the feeling that if the Duchess had not expressed herself the way she had, then she would have assumed that someone had switched the bottles.

The Duchess stalked from the room. And Syanna and Lady Vivienne exchanged horrified, meaningful glances.

In the morning of that day, the Sommelier was summoned and given a Ducal decree that he was to be given all the resources of the Duchy in order to emulate that wine. In the meantime, the Duchess resolved to have one small cup of the wine, once a year, on her birthday.

For a while, the fears of Syanna and Lady Vivienne retreated as the Duchess seemed to return to normal. The Sommelier produced wine bottle after wine bottle and the project seemed to give life to the Duchess.

On the first year, the Duchess, the Sommelier and Lady Caroline tasted the wine together. Lady Caroline, the Duchess’ adopted daughter, also expressed her disappointment in so storied a bottle of wine. She told the Duchess, her mother, that the wine was a bit too sharp for her taste.

The sommelier paled when he drank the wine as it seemed to him to be made from a completely different vintage.

The Duchess fell under the same paroxysms of pleasure and delight as she drank. Upon leaving, Lady Caroline expressed her concerns to her aunt about the health of the Duchess in a formal way and Syanna nodded.

The next year, only the Sommelier joined the Duchess.

At some point in that year, the fourth year since the bottle had been opened, the Sommelier was summoned before the Duchess and was forced to admit his failure. The Duchess flew into a rage and threatened to have the Sommelier executed. Her sister and Lady Vivienne talked the Duchess down but the Sommelier did lose his job.

A new Sommelier was given access to the first’s notes and attempts and laughed, making a big noise and roundly insulted his predecessor of incompetence.

Then it was his turn to taste the wine and he wept. To him, it tasted like a full bodied Red, while it was still so clearly, a white wine.

From then on, the Duchess drank alone. After the display of temper from the Duchess, Lady Vivienne took the training of Lady Caroline into her own hands.

Lady Caroline had gone to the Imperial Court to study politics at the feet of the then Empress and later at the right hand of the Emperor. She had quickly left the scandal of her history behind her as both Imperial personages would regularly refer to her as the daughter of the Duchess of Toussaint and as such, that seemed to put her beyond scandal. She proved to be intelligent and picked up politics quickly and well. She married a carefully chosen Imperial General who treated her like a Queen and plainly adored her so Caroline was happy.

After the Duchess threatened to have the Sommelier executed for the crime of not being able to emulate a plainly magical wine, Vivienne convinced the Duchess to recall Caroline and to officially name the young woman as the heir to the Duchy.

There was some outcry at this, especially the presence of the Nilfgaardian husband, but when she took up residence in Beauclair again, it was clear to all that Lady Caroline understood the assignment. Calling on her childhood spent among the villagers of the Duchy, she toured the Duchy, stopping to talk to everyone she could, working in the fields, serving drinks in the taverns, playing cards, pressing the grapes, harvesting the crops while also dining at the vineyards and the small castles. All the while, her husband worked with the Knights of Francesca, fought in the tournaments and stood vigil at the lake. By the time he was done, he was thought of as being more Toussaint than many people of Toussaint.

But the palace of Beauclair was becoming a dark place. The Duchess’ temper was becoming sharper and more pronounced. The number of people that dared speak the truth to her became fewer and fewer until only Lady Vivienne, Knight commander Syanna and Lady Caroline could arrive unannounced.

The Duchess started to sleep in the tower where the wine was. She would always improve and rally for a while after her birthday and the wine tasting had been and gone. But then, over the years, she would shrink in on herself.

Where once it had been a centre of light, art and beauty, Beauclair castle became a place of dark, furtive whispers.

The Duke of the Pontar was summoned and was asked if he could intercede on the part of the Duchess, the duchy and Jack.

He considered the request for a while before he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I won’t.”

“Won’t or can’t,” someone asked, because there is always someone who asks that.

“Both,” Lord Frederick replied, his eyes flashing in his own rage. “I warned you all that this would happen. I warned the Duchess that this would happen. I know exactly what would happen if I did ask for help. He would laugh, for a long time, and then he would still say no. He would list his grievances with the Duchess and with Toussaint as a whole and then, when he had destroyed me for having the temerity to ask even when I knew what the answer would be, which I do, he would come back to Toussaint and he would remind you all of why you should be afraid of him.”

Several people nodded in unhappy agreement. Including Lady Yennefer.

“Are you saying this is our fault?” someone accused Lord Frederick.

“Yes and no.” Frederick replied. “Toussaint took Jack for granted, they tried to use him as a tool to further their own ends and then, when the criminals were caught, his vengeance was delayed by due process. If the conspirators had just been taken out and had their throats slit, then this might not be happening.”

“But the conspirators did that, not us, not the Duchess,” Someone else moaned.

“How many people secretly agreed with what the Conspirators tried to do?” Frederick accused. “How many people thought things would be better with a man on the Ducal throne. How many thought that the old, conservative ways were better and that people should know their place.”

He sneered.

“To Jack, every time you agree with them, that makes you as guilty as them.”

“Then he should punish us,” was the reply. “Not the Duchess.”

“He is punishing you,” Lady Yennefer replied unhappily, “He is punishing us.”

“But, you say that he is not evil,” someone else whimpered. “Surely…”

“He’s not.” Lord Frederick replied. “He’s not evil. But he is to be feared, in the same way that you fear a natural disaster. Do you blame snow for being cold when you freeze to death? No, you blame the circumstances that left you there. Do you blame the weather for sinking the merchant ships?”

Lord Frederick shook his head.

“Jack is not human, Elf, dwarf, gnome or halfling. All of those sapient creatures think essentially the same. He doesn’t think like that. His view of justice is not ours. He has no common moral scale. We have nothing he wants or needs, so trade is impossible. Indeed, there is nothing that he wants or needs that he cannot take for himself. You cannot reason with a being like that. An entity like that. I have met several entities since and they all have that in common. They are what their purpose is, what their feelings are, what their philosophy is. And in this case he is simple.

“He is not a noble, or a commoner.

“He is not a priest, or a sailor or a merchant.

“He does not fall into the category of Tinker, tailor, soldier or spy.

“He is neither a rich man nor beggar man.

“He is not a philosopher, or saint. Not a thief or a knight.

“He is simply…

“Jack.”

Six months later, The Duchess again disappeared, but this time, her handlers knew where to look. During the night, she had gone to the tower and had drunk the remains of the wine. There was, by this point, about a quarter of the bottle left. She had hurled the bottle from herself in frustration and was trying to lick the insides of the now shattered glass before she could be restrained.

Syanna swept up the glass and put it in a box which she gave to her fastest knight who placed it in the hands of a sea captain that was still in port. He was ordered to take the box to the deepest part of the ocean that he knew and then drop the box in. In the meantime, the entrance to the tower was bricked up.

The Duchess rallied for a while but it was clear, even to her, that madness was scrabbling at her throat.

Lady Caroline was judged, not quite ready to take over the realm and needed to be pure in the eyes of the populace when the Duchess died so there needed to be a degree of separation between her and the palace while the Duchess went mad. Syanna could not be too involved in the running of the Duchy because then the old scandals would be remembered and she would be accused of trying to subvert and take advantage of the Duchess’ madness to further her own sinister ends.

In one of her more lucid moments, the Duchess apologised to her sister for this.

After time though, the Duchess started to sink into madness, she became secluded in the palace and rarely showed herself. Lady Vivienne ruled the bureaucracy while Lady Caroline lifted the hearts and minds of the people. As the Duchess’ “illness” became worse and worse, someone started a rumour that Lady Caroline was making more and more decisions about the future of the Duchy.

Many suspected that Lady Vivienne herself started this rumour and it might even have been correct. There were regularly knights carrying messages to and from wherever Lady Caroline was at the time.

Eventually though, there was no help for it. The Duchess lost her life to the Jack sickness five years after she finished the wine. The circumstances around her death remain a mystery although the body was seen by all and there was no doubt as to her death. Some claimed that in a moment of lucidity she wanted to remove herself from the throne to let her daughter take over the Duchy in truth rather than rumour. Still others believed that Syanna killed her with some claiming she did it out of an act of mercy and some doing so out of an act of hate.

Others believed that she had simply stopped taking care of herself due to her madness and illness and self-neglect.

Lady Vivienne would not be drawn on it.

Other than a letter and a small package that was delivered to the bard Dandilion, the rest of the Duchess’ estate was given, primarily to the new Duchess Caroline who distributed many things from Anna-Henrietta’s personal estates to various friends and confidantes of the now dead Duchess.

Duchess Caroline proved to be a surprisingly conservative Duchess in that she loved the storybook ideal of Toussaint and encouraged people to live according to that. But she was ruthlessly progressive when it came time to protect that same realm. For in every way that she was conservative and traditional in other areas, she encouraged the Knights of Francesca to be forward thinking and innovators.

Her husband stood at her side until he died. He joined the Knights of Francesca on the understanding that he would only work inside the realm so as not to be parted from his wife.

He refused to bow to others who suggested that he should step up and rule, killing one in a duel. Brutally.

Lady Caroline lived to the age of One Hundred and Eight and passed her realm onto her Grand daughter. And thus, a formal Matriarchy was formed.

Skellige

As the Duke of the Pontar described, all was not well in paradise.

With Svanrige returned, Clan Tuirseach was returning to its former strength and glory and although some clans complained, the move towards agriculture was having a positive effect on life. The ability to plan for the future now that the Skeleton Ship was removed also had a profound effect on the islands. The open war against the hated enemies of Cidaris and Vergen gave the raiding crews plenty to do and the new clan of the Black Boar fell into place with speed and grace.

The marriage between the Queen and the new Jarl was commonly considered a shrewd move by the Queen to bind the new clan to her. A thought that was considered laughable by those people that actually knew the pair of them and at first, all seemed wonderful and good in the islands.

The decline was gradual. Jarl Helfdan was often called to court in Nilfgaard where his former shipmate, the Empress requested him and the Queen of the Isles was wise enough to understand the political boon that this would be. To all intents and purposes, he was a hit at court. Then he took over the Imperial Navy, all the while the Queen of the isles continued the work of dragging her nation into the modern age.

The decision was made that the Skeleton Ship was indeed an integral part of Skelligan culture and so it was decided that there would be a fake ship built that would be sailed through Kaer Trolde harbour at the appointed time. All the other trappings of the ceremony would be there and this would give the merchants and people something to look forward to.

“And it is important that those that are lost at sea are remembered,” Jarl Hjallmar An Craite declared.

But all was not well with the Queen and her husband.

It was noticed that the Queen did not laugh as much as she used to. That she was near constantly worried and distracted, or fixated on unimportant minutiae.

The unhappiness took longer to affect Helfdan but his friends and followers started to notice an increased distance in him. He was more thoughtful and frustrated. His bouts of sickness were coming more and more often and when not needed to do his duty, he would increasingly crave solitude.

It became clear that the two of them, the Queen and the Jarl were unhappy. And no-one could figure out why. It was the source of much distress in the isles. Helfdan and the Queen were the kind of romantic stories that the islanders love, as do many of those on the continent. They should have lived happily ever after, but now it seemed that they hurt each other.

The Queen would regularly be found to be in tears before, during and after Helfdan’s return home. Helfdan would have his moments afterwards and on the way to the place and the people that knew him best would argue that he was constantly in a state of mind of getting ready for a fight.

No-one could figure out what the problem was. It was plain that there was love and respect there, but something had come between the pair of them. People were confident that it was not infidelity. The pair were confident in their ability to disagree with each other on matters of policy. Helfdan never treated her with anything other than the deepest respect for her person and office, so it wasn’t male jealousy and so no-one could guess what the problem was.

A shadow began to fall over the islands with the unhappiness of their Queen and, arguably, their most powerful Jarl. Hjallmar took to drinking heavily at the unhappiness of his sister, Cerys lost a lot of weight and would often retreat to her rooms rather than spend time with her people as she used to. Helfdan was often at sea or in Nilfgaard.

People suggested a divorce which was more common on the islands than it was on the continent and people knew there was a problem when Cerys fled in tears rather than braining the person making the suggestion with a tankard.

Theories were discussed and discarded. A Yukki-Onna was brought to court to see if she could ascertain the feelings of the couple and although she latched onto Hjalmar and lifted his mood a little, the little blue-skinned woman could not guess as to the cause of the deepening rift between the Queen and her husband.

Everything was tried until the matter even made its way to the Imperial Court by way of the Duke of the Pontar, another shipmate of Jarl Helfdan.

The Empress declared that she would be attending the next ceremony of the Skeleton ship and that she would solve the problem between the two. She ordered the Jarl to his home port for the winter as the skeleton ship ceremony was timed for the end of winter and she went.

The Empress arrived with much fanfare and pomp. She was greeted by the court of Kaer Trolde with joy and hope that she could solve this, the latest trial of the courts of Skellige. The Duke and Duchess of the Pontar were already there along with Witcher Kerrass who had recently returned to public life. The Queen had moved back to Kaer Trolde as the seat of her power. Partially as it was the biggest and grandest keep in Skellige so to house the dignitaries and merchants that she had to meet on a daily basis, but also to surround herself with the keep of her Father when her heart was so unhappy.

She still tried to live in Holmstein and Helfdan’s keep that was now called “The Rock” but it all made her so desperately unhappy that she was spending more and more time in Kaer Trolde under her brother’s protection.

Hjallmar was thrilled (sarcasm) with this and he spent most of the time drunk.

The Empress arrived and shed the cloak of Imperial power and donned the cloak of The Swallow. She presided over a feast thrown in her honour and loudly declared that the feast was not up to Skellige’s usual standard. Seemingly by will alone, she turned the feast into a party.

The Queen did not attend, she was dealing with “matters of state” in her quarters.

What happened after that is a tale that was told by two men, Jarl Hjalmar An Craite and Lord Svein of the Black Boar. The two would tell the story together over many beers and they did so loudly, often to the laughter and jeering of the onlookers. Toasts would be drunk to the Empress’ name and jokes would be made about the foolishness of young couples in love.

“My sister was moping,” Hjalmar would begin. “Aye she does that occasionally, even though she is Queen and as strong and fast a lady as ever I did meet.”

“Not the most beautiful mind,” Svein would agree. “For in that case, I would argue that my wife Yngvild is more beautiful.”

“Just as I would argue that my new wife Kachiko is more beautiful again.” Hjalmar boasted proudly about his tiny Yukki-Onna wife. “But my sister was moping. She would never tell the rest of us, older and wiser men about whatever it was that she was moping about,”

Svein nodded sagely in agreement to much laughter.

“But moping she was. All alone in her rooms, surrounded by memories of our Father.”

The two men raised silent toasts to the fallen hero.

“My Lord Helfdan,” Svein took up the thread. “Was in a similar state, staring out to sea, standing on the tallest towers of The Rock of Holmstein,”

“Which is not very tall to be fair,” Hjalmar joked,

Svein glared at him and Hjalmar gestured to ward off the gaze.

“Terrifying though your fortress is,” Hjalmar admitted, “it is short, squat and ugly.”

Svein turned away.

“But my lord would stand, brooding pensively, a furrowed brow atop his face as he stared into the face of the storm, the troubles of the world causing his shoulders to stoop. His cloak would flap in the breeze as he rested his hand upon the hilt of his sword, his eyes, the same colour as the storm-clouds.”

“Helfdan’s eyes are brown,” Hjalmar claimed.

“Shut up,” Svein told him, cuffing the younger man around the ear. “Poetic licence. Don’t let your… facts get in the way of a good story,”

“His lord was troubled and unhappy,” Hjalmar would say as an aside to his audience.

Svein nodded his agreement.

“That does certainly cut to the heart of the matter,” he admitted, refilling a tankard.

“So,” Hjalmar continued, “into our tale strides the modest hero of the hour, slim, beautiful with eyes the green of the sea-spray and hair the colour of the clouds.”

“A sword so quick and sharp that it would cut the very Gods themselves,” Svein was determined not to be outdone,

“And thus came the Swallow to the halls of Kaer Trolde.”

Hjalmar would pause for effect before continuing.

“Many had appealed to both Queen and Lord to put aside whatever it was that was separating them to no avail. I had appealed to my sister many times but to no effect. The venerable druid Ermion,”

“Oi,” Ermion would always protest if he was present during this performance. “Less of the venerable my boy, I can still bend you over my lap and tan your arse for you, Jarl or no,”

“Sorry Lord Ermion,” Hjalmar looked comically ashamed.

“Will you respect your elders in the future?”

“Yes Lord Ermion,”

“Don’t you ‘Yes Lord Ermion’ me,”

“No Lord Ermion,” Hjalmar would mumble.

“Oooohhhh. You’re in trouble,” Svein would jeer.

“Don’t think you’re safe either,” Ermion would glare.

The two performers would exchange glances.

“Even the mighty…” Hjalmar began.

“Wise,” Svein offered

“Majestic…”

“Powerful…”

“Lord Ermion had no pull on their heart.” Lord Hjalmar took up the story. The other Jarls did their best, The Lord of the continent and friend to both, The Scribbler could not even turn them around. Even the Witcher Kerrass, returned from his exile to take on this, his most deadly of contracts.”

“But to no avail,” Svein muttered gloomily,

Hjalmar nodded.

“So in strode the Lord of the Continent, one that I have called sister in the past and I have meant it. For whom I fought the wraiths of Morhogg and climbed aboard the Naglfar. So complete was our shame that she had to throw her own party rather than having us show our hospitality. But she strode, undeterred by our warnings of the futility of the cause. In she strode with the immaculate badges of her office arrayed on her shirt.”

“The noble beer stain,” Svein agreed,

“The Imperial Gravy mark,”

“The morning vomit stench,”

“But in she strode, wine skin in hand, the same way that a man carries an axe into battle,” Hjalmar finished. “I know for at this time, I was watching these events with my own two eyes,”

“Hungover eyes,” Svein suggested.

“I cannot deny that I had done my best to keep the Empress company the night before. And I was still celebrating the presence of my new lady who, of all people, can drink any three of you under the table in one go,”

“She can as well,” Svein agreed. “I’ve seen her do it,”

“Good of you to admit to my wife’s superiority,”

“That’s alright, my wife isn’t here to answer the challenge,”

There was always laughter at this,

“But she strode into the Queen’s hall,” Hjalmar agreed. “Armed for battle. So great was her wrath that the mighty warriors of the An Craite that stood guard over my sister’s door, quailed before her anger as they would before no other. The Swallow strode towards the door and kicked it open.

“Centuries those doors have stood, fire hardened, iron bound, resolute in the face of enemies both near and far. And they broke apart before the Swallow’s rage.

“But my sister is no weeping woman. This intrusion was met with an answering rage of her own. A squeal, a squawk, a bellow of feminine anger…”

“For as we all know, the rage of the female is far more terrifying than the male,” Svein put in to much cheering.

“... met the boot of The Swallow. But undeterred, The Swallow entered the belly of the beast and closed the doors behind her.”

The two men stopped and stared into space as though seeing a distant eldritch horror coming for the souls of the assembly.