#there is no reference at all to the fact that two years ago geralt literally owned coën's sword

[laurelnose]

Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

-

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually��super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there���s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

[geralt-jaskier]

I See You

Art model!Geralt geraskier ficlet for the lovely @livewire28 <3, rated M for a dash of sexiness and dirty thoughts. 

Read below or on Ao3

~

“I know I’m supposed to be professional about this,” Jaskier said, twirling up a forkful of spaghetti, “but God damn. You saw how fit he was, right?”

Across from him, Yennefer picked at her chicken salad and made a vague sound of affirmation. The cafeteria was nearly empty around them, most of the other students finished up an hour ago.

“No. No.” Jaskier pointed at her with his fork. “You don’t get to pretend to be all cool and sophisticated and professional about this. You were practically drooling over him too. Thought I was going to have to mop up after you.”

“Don’t make me stab your eye out with my butter knife.”

“No one would make you do that, but point taken.”

She said something under her breath, and it took Jaskier a moment for the words to sink in. “You’ve already slept with him?” He dropped his fork, letting it clatter dramatically onto his tray, and he pointed an accusing finger at Yennefer. “You waited until this point in the conversation to reveal that very important, very interesting fact?”

Of bloody course Yennefer used to sleep with the handsome art model. Jaskier wasn’t even the slightest bit surprised. Yen had slept with most of the good ones — could get practically anyone she wanted with a snap of her fingers (and Jaskier would know because she’d snapped her fingers a few times at him over the past few years and he'd not been disappointed).

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He likes men too. We had a bit of fun with that. Oh, stop gaping at me. You look like an ugly fish.”

Jaskier was so jealous he could die. His jaw snapped open and shut, and he probably really did look like an ugly fish. Yennefer was usually right about these things. “I should have been one of those men you two had a bit of fun with,” he said through gritted teeth.

She considered this. “It was during the period of time when I still couldn’t stand you.”

“Damn it! Wait. You can stand me now?”

“Don’t push your luck. I'm still on the fence.”

Jaskier had taken his first art class as a lark. His true callings were music and poetry, but he’d thought perhaps having another creative pursuit in his repertoire would help unblock his core creative talents during a year full of slumps and blocks.  

To his delight, it had worked. Words and tunes would work themselves out in the back of his mind while his hands and brush moved across the canvas. That had always been his main focus with each art class he took.

Until Geralt had come into the picture both literally and figuratively.  

*

Geralt managed to make taking off a robe look incredibly manly and deeply sexy, and Jaskier had to fight to hold in a dreamy sigh as he took in all those delicious muscles. All week he’d been having pervy fantasies about touching Geralt’s body, stroking him to hardness while the rest of the class watched — all in the name of art and understanding the human form, of course. Or Geralt and Yennefer modeling erotic poses for the class, oh that was a good fantasy too, though the knowledge that Yennefer would strangle him if he ever was dumb enough to tell her about it (which frankly he was) did put a damper on that one.

But Jaskier took his studies and respect for Geralt’s (very very attractive) body seriously and kept his sighs to himself and his expression schooled into completely appropriate blankness.

That is until Geralt locked eyes with him and fucking winked. Jaskier dropped his paintbrush and his jaw.

*

“I may have told him you were interested, and he may have told me to give him your number,” Yennefer said, inspecting her nails. The late afternoon sun glittered off the polish. He leaned in closer from his place next to Yennefer on the bench to get a better look.

“Those look amazing by the way,” he said, referring to her bright purple polish. “But wait you did what now?”

She looked at him and said with exaggerated slowness, “Geralt. Last week, I told him you were interested, and he asked me for your number. Thinks you’re cute even though I tried to tell him it’s only skin-deep.”

“I’m oddly flattered,” Jaskier said, holding his hand over his heart.

*

The bar was crowded and Jaskier had to lean in close to hear Geralt, not that he was complaining. Oh woe was him to have such a beautiful creature so close. Please. He knew how to appreciate when a gift as sweet as fine wine or jewels was placed in his hands.

Geralt had his long, white-blonde hair pulled back and Jaskier fought the urge to reach over and untie it, to have Geralt’s hair free, a wild mane that fell just past his shoulders. The way he had it when he modeled in class.

“This must happen to you a lot,” Jaskier said. His third cocktail was definitely going to his head.  

Geralt arched an eyebrow. “What?”

Jaskier gestured between them, raising his voice over the loud din around them. “Art students falling over themselves for you, chasing you for dates after class.”

“It’s an easy way to get first dates,” Geralt allowed.  

“What about second ones?”

“Doesn’t help so much with that.”

“Lucky for me then, I guess.” Jaskier grinned and a smile broke out on Geralt’s face too.

*

Geralt was quiet and when he did speak he was often blunt, sometimes tactless. If he didn’t like a poem Jaskier was writing, if he thought the anatomy in his painting was wrong, he never held back. Jaskier took it in stride.

“That’s not how arms bend,” Geralt pointed out.

Jaskier turned to him with a mock expression of outrage. “I’ll make your arm bend that way if you’re not careful.”

Geralt looked between himself and Jaskier, and they burst out laughing.

The thing that could be easy to miss was that Geralt would look at Jaskier’s work time and time again, and when he did love something Jaskier was working on, well, it was the best feeling of all when Geralt looked up at him with a smile and a firm nod.  

*

Sometimes dating an art model could make a man feel inadequate.

Normally Jaskier was a confident man, proud of his own appearance, but Geralt was something else entirely.

“You are too beautiful for this world, let alone me,” Jaskier said one night as he stared down at Geralt, spread out beneath Jaskier, his thick, meaty muscles and cock on full display. An all-you-can-eat buffet that Jaskier would never tire of dining at.

Geralt frowned and touched Jaskier’s cheek. “You’re the one beautiful one.”

*

Soon Jaskier wasn’t so caught up with all those lovely muscles and the strong jaw line and the glorious hair. It was Geralt he loved. Certainly, all of those things were delicious cherries on top of the love-sundae, but they were not the main draw. No, it was that Geralt would show up in the morning with a chai latte in hand, or that he’d always let Jaskier pick what movie they watched even after he made a big show of grumbling about his terrible taste, and when he saw how sweet Geralt was with his little sister Ciri, well, it did things to Jaskier’s heart.

“Your art’s changed as the semester’s gone on,” Geralt said to him one night as he looked through Jaskier’s work.  

“Isn’t it a bit weird for you to be looking at art of yourself?”

Geralt shrugged. “Don’t mind.”

Jaskier looked from picture to picture in his sketchbook. Technically, he’d improved. He’d stopped drawing so many anatomical impossibilities. But it was more than that.

He closed the book and took Geralt's hand.  “I think perhaps it’s because I really see you now,” he said finally.

Geralt looked at him for a long while and then said, “I see you too.”

[a-bard-and-his-witcher]

A/N: This was written in a week for @geraskierfunday! The prompt was modern, but one of the other choices was “stuck in an elevator/lift” and I loved that prompt (it’s also modern so it counts), so here it is! Sorry if it moves fast, my writing tends to do that sometimes, I’m trying to get better at that. Enjoy!

Jaskier hummed a soft tune as he leaned on the wall of the elevator, an arm wrapped around Geralt’s. Normally Geralt would be against the humming, but they were alone so it didn’t really matter. A moment later, they felt a jolt and all the lights went out. As the emergency lights turned on they realized that the elevator had stopped.

“Geralt,” Jaskier said, patting the witcher’s arm. “What the hell just happened?”

“The elevator stopped.”

“Yeah no shit, Sherlock. I mean why?”

“How the hell would I know?”

Jaskier paused for a moment, trying to think of something to do that would help the situation. “I’ll call Yennefer.” It would hardly help, he knew that, but what else could he do? Geralt gave his signature grunt in acknowledgment and Jaskier pulled out his phone and called Yen, who he knew was in the same building. 

“Jaskier?” She said when she picked up the phone.

“Yen. Is something going on in the building?”

“The power just went out because of the storm, but other than that, no. Why?”

“Gods damn it.  Geralt and I are stuck in the fucking elevator.”

At that, Yennefer burst out laughing. Jaskier winced and pulled the phone away from his face slightly at the sudden loud noise. 

“Yennefer! This is not funny! Get someone to help us!”

“First of all, this is in fact very funny. Second of all, you do know that there’s an alarm button, right? And thirdly, the power is out. I doubt anyone will be able to do anything until it comes back on.”

“Oh gee, thanks Yennefer. That is very reassuring.”

“Glad I could help.”

And with that, Yennefer ended the call.

With a scoff, Jaskier lowered the phone from his ear. “Did she just hang up on me? When we get out of here, I swear I am going to kill her. Or at least write a very rude song about her.” Geralt hummed in response and turned around to press the alarm button he had heard Yen mention. 

“We’ll be fine,” he said, taking a step toward Jaskier. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right. But what if you’re not? It could take hours for the power to come back. I can’t wait that long! It’s cold and I’m starving! Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’m merely mildly hungry, but I’m going to be starving by the time we get out of here!”

Geralt gave him a sympathetic look, then stepped forward and pulled Jaskier into a warm hug. The musician crooned in contentment. “We’ll be fine,” Geralt repeated in a more pressing tone.

~20 minutes~

Jaskier was scrolling through Instagram, sitting on the floor of the elevator and leaning against Geralt. “Get off your phone. You’ll use up the battery and we might need it to call someone,” Geralt nudged his leg as he spoke. 

“You have a phone too. What happened to insisting that we’d be fine? Or is that just an excuse to get me to put my phone down so I pay attention to you? How cute.”

“If I wanted you to pay attention to me, I’d just do this.”

Geralt pulled Jaskier’s phone out of his hand, set it on the floor, then pulled him onto his lap. He kissed him softly before burying his face into the musician’s neck. Laughing, Jaskier wrapped his arms around Geralt and curled up in his lap.

“I love you too, you big softie.” 

~1 hour~

Geralt looked up at Jaskier from his spot on the floor with a worried look on his face. The idiot was standing in front of the button panel, tapping his foot anxiously and repeatedly pressing the alarm button. “Jask, you’re going to break it,” Geralt said. 

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Jaskier huffed, turning around and raising his arms dramatically. “We’ve been in this gods damn elevator for…” He twisted his wrist to look at his watch. “An hour! An hour, Geralt! And do you know what’s happened?” He laughed and he was fully yelling at this point. “That’s right! Absolutely nothing! Is no one even a little bit concerned about the fact that we never showed up? I mean, I know the power went out, but most of the time that’s just a minor inconvenience. It usually doesn’t make people over an hour late! I can’t believe no one has called either of us!”

Jaskier, slightly calmed down, paused to take a good look at Geralt. He was tense, his back was straight, and his face was twisted into a concerned expression. Jaskier didn't think he'd seen him this worried since the fool started a small fire in his apartment while he was on a video call with Geralt a few years back. 

His face softened and he sat in front of him. Jaskier moved so that their fingers were intertwined and their foreheads rested against one another. "I'm sorry, darling. I do hate seeing you so worried."

Geralt hummed and planted a kiss on Jaskier's lips. "I know."

~1 hour and 30 minutes~

Jaskier, settled in Geralt’s lap, turned around so that he could bury his face into Geralt’s neck. “Gods, it’s fucking freezing in here,” Jaskier grumbled. 

“Oh, I had no idea,” Geralt responded. “You’ve only told me twenty times.”

Jaskier backed up slightly so that he could look at his witcher with a fond expression that doesn’t leave his face. “Geralt. You know complaining is the only coping mechanism that will get me through this. If I don’t talk about my problems - which can be referred to as complaining - I’ll end up like you. Now we don’t want that, do we?”

Geralt pressed his lips to Jaskier’s jaw. “Not at all,” he said between kisses. Jaskier smiled and hummed in contentment.

He shivered - fuck, he was still cold despite the warm arms wrapped around him. Warm arms that were as steady as ever, not shivering in the slightest.

“You arse, are you not cold?”

“Not really.”

“You really are just a big ‘ol heater, aren’t you, love?

~2 hours~

Jaskier stopped moving for the first time since he had started pacing around the elevator ten minutes earlier. “Fuck it,” he announced, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’m calling Yennefer again. I highly doubt she’ll do anything other than make my bad mood even worse, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Is there anyone else you can call if you hate talking to her so much?”

Jaskier thought for a moment, then answered, "Renfri is another option. She's not the best conversationalist, but she's a hell of a lot better than Yen." Geralt grunted in reply as Jaskier pulled his phone out of his pocket. After a moment of tapping and scrolling, he put the phone up to his ear. Almost immediately, his eyebrows furrowed and let the arm that held it drop to his side. “Gods damn it, it went straight to voicemail. I guess I’m calling Yen anyways.”

“Hmm.”

“You know what? How about I put it on speaker? You know, so that I’m still there for my amazing conversationalist...ness and you’re there so that she can pay attention to you and maybe not insult me as much. And plus, she’s always more willing when you’re there. It’s like my presence on its own makes her stubborn as hell.”

“Hm.”

“Wonderful!” Jaskier sat himself down in front of Geralt and took a moment to find Yennefer's contact in his phone, put the call on speaker, and set the phone on the floor in between them.

"Ah, Jaskier," she said when she picked up.

"Yennefer."

"Considering the state of the storm and the fact that you're calling me, I'm assuming you two are still in that elevator."

"Yes. We are. Now, is there anything that you can tell us about the power outage or the storm, or literally anything that might give us an idea of how much longer we'll be stuck in this icebox?"

"Us?"

"Yes, Yen, us," Geralt spoke up.

Jaskier groaned, "Wow, you really do have selective hearing."

"Answer the question, Yen."

"Fine, fine. I don't know what exactly caused the power outage, other than the fact that it had something to do with the storm. As for what's going on outside, it doesn't look like it's gonna stop soon."

"Gods damn it," Jaskier grumbled.

"Well, I guess you two don't need me anymore," Yennefer said right before hanging up.

Jaskier ran his fingers through his hair and let his hands rest on the back of his head. “Fuck,” he muttered.

“Fuck indeed.”

~2 hours and 30 minutes~

Jaskier and Geralt were now laying on the ground, half of Jaskier’s body on Geralt and their legs tangled together. Neither of them were going to be able to fall asleep, the conditions were too uncomfortable for that. The ground was hard and dirty, it was freezing cold, they were dealing with the stress of being locked in a seven by seven feet box for two and a half hours, and they were starving.

Speaking of starving, Jaskier’s stomach gurgled for what felt like the hundredth time in the past twenty minutes, this time followed by a pained groan. Geralt patted his back with the hand that was wrapped comfortably around his waist. “You ok?” he asked. Jaskier gave him a pat on his chest in return.

“I’ve been awake for nearly six hours without eating, I’m so hungry my stomach hurts. Gods, Geralt, this sucks. This whole thing sucks. You know what the chances of getting stuck in an elevator are? One in a hundred thousand. I looked it up about an hour ago. And most of the time, when it happens it’s fixed within fifteen to thirty minutes. It’s so rare for someone to be in an elevator for over an hour and yet we’ve been in here for two and a half.”

Geralt pulled Jaskier even closer. He didn’t know what to say. That on its own wasn’t anything new, it wasn’t very rare that he was in a situation where he was lost for words. Most of the time he’d just grunt or hum, but this was different. He felt like that wouldn’t be enough this time. Before he could come up with something to say, Jaskier spoke up again. “I’m sorry dear heart. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.”

Jaskier raised himself on his elbows so that he could look at Geralt. “Come on. Complain like I do. No holding back. It’ll feel good, I promise.”

“...Alright, fine. It’s the middle of winter and the power is out, which means no heat, which means being trapped in an elevator is close enough to being trapped in a freezer. The whole point of coming here was to get breakfast, so neither of us have eaten anything, mixed with stress which makes you even more hungry. And I, uh, I looked some things up too. This situation we’re in? Turns out it’s nearly impossible to happen in most elevators. Most of them have a backup battery system so that they can’t stop in between floors when the power goes out. So, it turns out we do have someone to be pissed at.”

“Wow. I think that’s the most I’ve heard you say at once. See, doesn’t it feel better? If only a little.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.”

~3 hours~

When the power came back on, Jaskier was humming quietly, Geralt half asleep and resting his head on the musician’s shoulder. Jaskier would be singing at full volume if every breath he took in between lines wasn’t extremely painful. They had grown somewhat used to hearing the other’s occasional pained groan and simply held the other tighter, ran a hand through his hair, or gave some other small but comforting gesture. They couldn’t wait to get out and finally eat something.

The creepy emergency lights were replaced by intense, bright lights and Jaskier stopped humming immediately. “Geralt!” Jaskier gasped, patting his thigh to get his attention. As soon as Geralt lifted his head, Jaskier stood up and stumbled slightly as there was a jolt. One similar to the jolt that started this whole mess, but instead of the elevator stopping, it began moving again. Geralt stood up smiling and Jaskier started laughing. He quickly stopped, as it made his stomach hurt worse, but his beaming smile never faltered. “We’re getting out!”

The door opened and they all but ran out of the elevator. They (mostly Jaskier) celebrated their freedom for a few minutes, then they quickly left the building so they could go home and get something to eat since the food at home would be easier on their stomachs. Then probably wrap up in blankets and sleep.

~~

They got home quickly and were greeted by Ciri looking at them with a slightly concerned, but mostly confused face and saying, “You two look terrible. Did something happen?” Jaskier ranted about how they spent the past three hours as Ciri got them each a bowl of crackers, a bottle of water, and a few blankets. The three of them huddled up on the couch, watching TV as they slowly filled their stomachs.

Once Ciri had gone to her room, Geralt planted a kiss on Jaskier’s cheek. “I can go upstairs if you’d like,” he muttered.

“Why would I want that?”

“I figured… We’ve been stuck in a box together for three hours. I thought you might want some time to yourself.”

“Do you?”

“I… no.”

“That’s what I thought. Geralt, we’ve been sleeping together for five years, dating for three, and we’ve lived together for two. All this time, I’ve been trying to nail into your thick skull that I want to be with you. Whenever I can. Whether we’ve been near each other for hours or not. Geralt, do I really have to spell it out for you? I’m never going to get tired of you. I hate that you think I will.”

Geralt was never good at expressing his affection. Not through words at least. So he used a language he was much more comfortable using. He pulled Jaskier into a warm hug and buried his face into his neck. Jaskier returned the hug and traced circles into his back. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt purred into his lover’s neck. “It means so much to hear you say that.”

[witcherheadcanonswithdrkrzy]

Witcher Character Ages Pt. 1

The Preface

Since I have decided to make head canons for “the witcher” I have come forward to bring order into the chaos. So here we are. With me once again writing something I’ve already written in a discord. Buckle up people, this is gonna be a lot. Also Spoilers, duh

To make things very clear: many things I’ll write in this posts are not my work. In fact it’s mostly taken from the following posts

http://www.sapkowski.su/modules.php?name=Articles&pa=showarticle&artid=112#21

https://dtf.ru/flood/30575-vozrast-glavnyh-personazhey-vselennoy-vedmaka

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline

Now the keen eyed reader might notice that two of these links lead to sites that are written in Russian, to which I would say: “You are right. They totally are.”

Now moving on quickly, I will present you with some reference points for the general timeline:

The book-saga: Geralt’s story ends in June 1268, the Assault on Stygga Castle most likely happens in March

The Witcher: May - September 1270

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: April - November 1271

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: May - ? 1272

The Witcher: Of Flesh and Flame: 1273 but it’s a comic so I’ll promptly ignore it

Blood and Wine DLC: 1275

Furthermore and it might not even be relevant but I think it is so I’m including it, there is an interesting document one can find in Wither 3 in Kaer Morhen about the Trial of Grasses. This document suggests the age range for this trial (8-10 years) and considering. Both Russian sites I have linked have made the connection that The Witcher mostly resembles the real world High Middle Ages, which in order suggests the age of maturity being 21 (it’s not mentioned in the English wiki tho, that’s why there is the German link).

So. Now that we got the out of the way let’s get to our first subject:

Vesemir

We have ... literally no idea, BUTT! the timeline I included states he was active during 1112, so he has to be very much older. Apparently he has been around for the construction of Kaer Morhen as well.

The first witchers were put on recorded in the 960s, though the wiki timeline states the 950s (probably a typo). They were created by the two mages Cosimo Malaspina and Alzur (who probaly did most of the work). Kaer Morhen was constructed at the end of the X century, so perhaps Pappy Vesemir was one of the first witchers. Which would mean he would have to been born 939 (earliest). Which would in make him 333 years old during the events of the Wild Hunt.

Ciri and Timelines

Okay let’s get this out of the way now. Most of the short story timelines have been (as far as I can see) calculated with Ciri’s age.

As explained in the first link, in the last book Emhyr and Geralt meet for a second time, the first being during the feast in Cintra (A Question of Price). Here Emhyr states the have seen each other 16 years ago (I am paraphrasing). Ergo: “A Question of Price” happened in 1252.

Ciri was born during Belleteyn, which is celebrated April 30th to May 1st, so it is safe to assume she was born in 1253.

Ciri was brought to Kaer Morhen in autum of 1263 and it’s safe to assume he brought her to the keep as soon as he found her in “Something More”. That means the first war with Niflgaard happened in either 1262 or 1263. The fall of Cintra happened then as well. Not too long before that Geralt met Ciri for the first time in “Sword of Destiny”. 1262.

Also I need to mention one other thing: the game does state Ciri’s year as both 1251 and 1253, but I’m sure we can all agree CDPR made a mistake. Ciri is 19 in W3.

Geralt (and Eskel)

Since Geralt and Eskel are said to be the same age Imma just throw them together, which means figuring out Geralt’s age is key here.

Though the games state him to be almost a century old, it’s rather unlikely in my humble opinion. CDPR might have just assumed that because of Yennefers age (which I’ll get to eventually). However, the books mention another character we can use as reference for Geralt’s age: Nenneke.

In the books Nenneke is described as T H I C C and smol, but never really as old. She’s also rather graceful and quick. Nenneke mentions she raised Geralt, from a young age and mentions his height being around her waist back then. Perhaps Geralt was around 5 years old. The short story in which we can read so much about Nenneke (”The voice of Reason”) apparently happens not too long after Geralt invoked the “Law of Surprise” in Cintra, so maybe around 1253. If we assume Nenneke is in her 50s in that story, and she is probably at least 15 years older than Geralt - that way she would have been 20 when she began to raise him - Geralt’s year of birth can be ranged between 1210 and 1220, to which the article just said “Meh, let’s meet in the middle”. Geralt was born in 1215, which makes him 57 years old. Which means Eskel is 57 years old as well.

From that we can also date the short story “A Grain of Truth”, which is probably one of his first adventures judging by how unprofessional he behaves at times; he talks to Roach (which is a thing that never really happens in the books outside of that story), takes ages to figure out that he’s dealing with a Bruxa, oh and he fucking yells at her. Probably 1235ish.

“The Lesser Evil” also probably happened quite early in his career, so maybe around 1240ish.

Dandelion

Or Jaskier, whichever you like better. His birth year was actually given as 1229, which makes him 43 during the events of the Wild Hunt. Also the second article I linked in the beginning mentions he started singing in 1248, aged 18-19. “The Last Wish” is estimated to have happened in 1250. By that time Dandelion and Geralt have already been friends. “The Edge of the World” chronologically happens before that, so maybe in either 1248 or 1249.

And Yennefer

Yennefer actually states her age in “Tower of Swallow” (1267). She’s 94 in that book, so she’s 99 years old in the third game. She was born during Belleteyn in 1173. In 1250, during the Last Wish she and Geralt were 77 and 35 respectively. Shortly afterwards they broke up, meeting each other four years later in “Bounds of Reason” and probably broke up once again during the events of “A Shard of Ice”. Both of these stories happen in 1254.

On that note, both “The eternal Flame” or how a Witcher befriended a Doppler and “A Little Sacrifice” or relationships suck without compromises also happen in 1254.

**********

Well that’s it for today, Kids. I don’t know when I’ll do Pt. 2, but it’ll probably include Geralt’s Hanse, Lambert, Triss and maybe Emhyr too.

Also, this is literally me rn

Also, I swear Part 2 is going to be less of a mess