Witcher lore question

[Ihateregistering1]

So I'm playing through Witcher 3 (awesome) and I'm getting (I assume) close to the end. I played through Witcher 2 and most of 1 (my savegame got lost and I never actually finished the game).

I've understood the vast majority of the lore of the universe and it all makes sense, except for one thing: one of the things they allude to through basically all 3 games is that Witchers are a dying breed, there are no schools cranking out new Witchers anymore, Kaer Morhen is a ruin, etc. Yet as far as I can tell, there are still plenty of monsters to go around.

So my question is: why are Witchers on the decline? Is there some sort of big event they don't really talk about in the games? Or is it all to just keep the "slightly depressing, grey atmosphere" thing going?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So I'm playing through Witcher 3 (awesome) and I'm getting (I assume) close to the end. I played through Witcher 2 and most of 1 (my savegame got lost and I never actually finished the game).

I've understood the vast majority of the lore of the universe and it all makes sense, except for one thing: one of the things they allude to through basically all 3 games is that Witchers are a dying breed, there are no schools cranking out new Witchers anymore, Kaer Morhen is a ruin, etc. Yet as far as I can tell, there are still plenty of monsters to go around.

So my question is: why are Witchers on the decline? Is there some sort of big event they don't really talk about in the games? Or is it all to just keep the "slightly depressing, grey atmosphere" thing going?

The monster issue is particularly bad due to the war. Monsters (particularly the seemingly ubiquitous necrophages) flourish in the instability and chaos, and quite a few make meals of the fallen.

It's my understanding that as the world grows more civilized and structured and less wild, the niche Witchers filled is slowly going away. The process for creating Witchers is incredibly dangerous, and Witchers live dangerous, lonely lives as social outcasts, so without overwhelming demand for their services, there's little drive to make more.

I also believe that a lot of the knowledge of how to make new Witchers was lost, so I'm not even sure they could make more if they wanted to.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I have a few theories behind why this is.

1) People are becoming much more unwilling to live in small villages in the middle of nowhere. They know the dangers of living in an area where the king's/emperor's soldiers are spread thin and incapable of dealing with infestations, so they move to the city or larger villages and towns that are better protected. Small hamlets that must rely on witchers to deal with monsters are becoming more and more scarce, and many of the ones that still exist are too poor to be able to pay for a witcher. It is simply much harder to make a living by killing monsters and lifting curses, which is why they are on the decline.

2) Kingdoms are becoming more powerful. With Redania and Nilfgaard eating smaller kingdoms and growing more and more wealthy, the rulers can afford bigger armies that can better police their lands. I imagine this is especially the case in Nilfgaard, given their love of law and order. Meanwhile, since Redania is at war, they need a large standing army, and cleaning out monster infestations is a great way to keep them occupied when they're not busy waging war or hunting down mages/sorceresses. With so many troops available to protect the people, witchers are simply not needed as much anymore.

3) Witchers are persecuted because they are mutants, and therefore not human. Witchers have to take in orphaned boys/girls to train, and the process used to turn them into witchers has a high mortality rate. Those that survive have a reputation for kidnapping children and turning them into something unnatural. To make matters worse, magic is needed to create witchers, which means they have to deal with mages/sorceresses to grow...and we all know how mages and the people who associate with them are treated. On top of all this, they have the stigma of being nonhuman, which lumps them in with the persecution of elves and dwarves. Perhaps witchers think that it's better to keep their heads down and not do anything to provoke anyone...while their numbers decline in the meantime.

4) I never read the books or finished the first game, so there could be something I'm missing. Or I could simply be reading too much into things.

 

[DementedSheep]

At the start of the books monsters where in decline (note: I haven't read all the books) to the point where Geralt had serious issues finding work. I think it dose pick up again but the Witchers had decline a lot before that and people had been developing methods and technology to deal with them on their own. Unlike the Wardens in DA:O they don't have any special powers that mean they are the only ones capable of dealing with the threats. That is probably a good thing because Witchers aren't that efficient. A lot of them die just in training, then more die from the trails and they don't tend to last to long on the job. Then they had slander like the Monstrum getting passed around leading to their largest fortress getting attacked and all but destroyed.
That you can't take a shit without finding a monster to kill is a gameplay thing.

 

[DeadProxy]

You get a good idea of why there aren't more witcher's being made when you see the Trials of Grass being done on UMA, or whatever that trial thing was called. It's an incredibly harsh thing for the body of children, or small teens even, to put up with. I think Lambert touches on it when you're preparing things for the trial. That and I think Vesemer mentions that the true "art" of making witchers has been lost for years, and this coming from a guy who's almost, if not older than 100 years.

Not to mention that most "witcher prospects" happen to be children kidnapped from their homes, or sold as payment in Lamberts case and probably many others, and forced to endure insane potions and survive ridiculous trials, like escaping that Giant in the cave next to Kaer Morhen.

As for the abundance of monsters, I don't think Witchers could ever do much about that, because I don't believe there was ever really that many witchers in the world. It's a bit of a miracle those who survive to become witchers made it at all. Geralt is a special case because this universe is crafted around him, but regular witchers are still human, and can die against schmucks like drowners or hags.

If I understand the convergence of the circles well enough, basically large portions of the population of another world got dumped into this one, and that could be a damn high number, reaching into hundreds of thousands, to millions of monsters existing (sometimes co-existing) all over the planet for many generations. I'm pretty monsters can spit out more monsters than a couple institutions can spit out witchers over the course of a few hundred years.

 

[Bellvedere]

From the books, and mentioned a few times in the games, monsters are actually supposed to be in decline, and as a result it's getting harder for Witchers to find work (not that you could tell from the gameplay). While I would assume fewer Witchers as a result, I also think they mean "dying breed" as losing relevance in the world.

The lack of work makes it harder to find apprentices and leads some Witchers to turn away from the Path (eg. the School of the Cat). Also worth mentioning is that Witcher's are monster slayers for hire. That is, if no one puts a contract on monsters, then the Witcher has no work even if there are monsters about. Witcher's are (apparently) expensive and not all monsters are a serious enough problem for local populations. Similarly Witchers will turn away from work that is too hard or doesn't pay well enough, they're under no obligation to protect people. Some places may have alternatives to Witchers to slay monsters too like the Witch Hunters, Mages or soliders.

There's also the difficulty in training new Witchers. They have to have children placed in their care (often indirectly negotiated as payment for a contract). Witcher's are infertile so they can't pass down their trade to offspring and they're feared and disliked so people aren't queuing to have their kids become Witchers. There's a high mortality rate for passing the various trials (3 in 10 survive) and once a Witcher is fully trained, the work is dangerous and as has been mentioned in the games none of them "retire" or die of old age.

As a result of these thing many of the Witchers don't feel comfortable with recruiting children and subjecting them to the trails. There's the parts with Lambert in W3 where he discusses that. Of the previous two Witchers the games mentioned training at Kaer Morhen, Leo and Cirri, neither were subjected to the trails and thus neither ever became true Witchers. I believe the Witchers of Kaer Morhen actually don't have the ability (or didn't prior to W3) to create the potions/mutagens for the Trials. There was an attack on Kaer Morhen prior to the games incited by defamatory publications (such as the Monstrum) and only Vesemir + Witchers on the Path survived but none of them had the necessary knowledge.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

The monsters are in decline, sure. That's one reason. But there's also the fact that the world is changing. It's just nature of humans. They spread around and create larger settlements, they conquer nature by developing new technologies, raising cities, making better weapons and tools etc. Witchers are simply not needed much in the developing world. They tend to find most work in remote areas of the world. Places where civilization hasn't spread yet and monsters are more abundant as the result.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

It's been a while since I've read the books, but there are two main things:

1) School of the Wolf (Kaer Morhen witchers) suffered a mob attack and was wrecked, with the only witcher to survive being Vesemir and the few young and inexperienced who were away from the castle at the time. None of them had the knowledge to make any more witchers. In the books, it's a recurring plot point that the witchers wanted to "witcherify" Ciri as much as possible by training her, but had no way of subjecting her to the trials. Other schools are only vaguely alluded to in the books, it seems they were very independent of each other and geographically remote (Kaer Morhen is apparently the only witcher keep in the Northlands). It is unknown if any of the schools still produces witchers.

2) Witchers were adapted to a "frontier" situation, when small bands of humans delved into the wilderness to find new settlements. The witcherverse is past that stage, humans now dominate the world. Monsters are in decline due to habitat destruction, and settlements are now big and bold enough that villagers often just band together, go after solitary monsters and overwhelm them through strength of numbers (one of the short stories featured peasant militia which killed a female dragon exhausted after laying an egg/giving birth that way). Witchers are just too resource-intensive to be worth it.

It is constantly alluded throughout the books, and in the games occasionally as well, that the world is past its "high fantasy" age, the dragon hoards have been ransacked, temples of the ancient gods have been pillaged, all the glamour of fantasy worlds is a thing past. Witchers are relics of that bygone age and in the books at least, Geralt often has trouble finding paying work.