The Witcher


The Witcher is a fantasy series of novels and short stories written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The series revolves around the titular "witcher", Geralt of Rivia. In Sapkowski's works, "witchers" are beast hunters who develop supernatural abilities at a young age to battle wild beasts and monsters. The books have been adapted into a film, two television series, a trilogy of video games, and a graphic novel series. The series of novels is known as the Witcher Saga. The short stories and novels have been translated into numerous languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.
The books have been described as having a cult following in Poland and in Central and Eastern European countries. The video games have been very successful; as of 28 May 2020, The Witcher series has sold over 50 million copies worldwide.

Books

Overview

''The Witcher'' stories

The Witcher short stories by the author Andrzej Sapkowski were first published in Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine Fantastyka, beginning in the mid-1980s. The first short story, "Wiedźmin" , was written for a contest held by the magazine and won third place. The first four stories dealing with the witcher Geralt of Rivia were originally featured in a 1990 short story collection titled Wiedźmin — now out of print — with "Droga, z której się nie wraca", which is set before the Witcher stories and features Geralt's mother-to-be.
The second published short story collection was Sword of Destiny. Although The Last Wish was published after Sword of Destiny, it replaced The Witcher as the first book since it included all the stories in The Witcher, except "The Road with No Return". Although new short stories were added to The Last Wish, they took place before those in Sword of Destiny.
Although "The Road with No Return" and "Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna" were later published in 2000 in Something Ends, Something Begins and in 2012 in Maladie and Other Stories collections, the other stories in those books are unconnected to the Witcher series. In some Polish editions, "The Road with No Return" and "Something Ends, Something Begins" are added to The Last Wish or Sword of Destiny.
The saga focuses on Geralt of Rivia and Ciri, who are linked by destiny. Ciri, princess of a recently conquered country and a pawn of international politics, becomes a witcher-in-training. Geralt is drawn into a whirlwind of events in his attempts to protect her.
In Polish:
In English:
In 2013, with Sapkowski's permission, the Polish publishing house Solaris published a collection of eight short stories, Opowieści ze świata Wiedźmina, written by eight Russian and Ukrainian fantasy writers set in the world of The Witcher and/or featuring characters from the saga. In 2017, Szpony i kły, a similar collection of eleven short stories by eleven authors, chosen through a competition organized in 2016 by the Polish magazine Nowa Fantastyka, was published by SuperNowa.

Setting

Background

The stories are set on an unnamed Continent, which was settled several thousand years earlier by elves from overseas. When they arrived, the elves encountered gnomes and dwarves. After a period of war between the elves and dwarves, the dwarves retreated into the mountains and the elves settled in the plains and forests. Human colonists arrived about five hundred years before the events in the stories, igniting a series of wars. The humans were victorious, and became dominant; the non-human races, now considered second-class citizens, often live in small ghettos within human settlements. Those not confined to the ghettos live in wilderness regions not yet claimed by humans. Other races on the Continent are halflings and dryads; werewolves and vampires appeared after a magical event, known as the Conjunction of the Spheres.
During the centuries preceding the stories, most of the Continent's southern regions have been taken over by the Nilfgaard Empire; the north belongs to the fragmented Northern Kingdoms. The Witcher saga takes place in the aftermath of the first major war between the Nilfgaard Empire and the Northern Kingdoms, with a second war beginning in the middle of the series.

Major characters

Although no map of the universe created by Sapkowski has been released, several maps have been created by fans. According to Sapkowski, the existing maps are "mostly accurate" and he uses a version created by Czech translator Stanislav Komárek.
The Continent can be divided into four regions. The Northern Kingdoms consists of Aedirn, Cidaris, Cintra, Hengfors League, Kaedwen, Kerack, Kovir and Poviss, Lyria and Rivia, Redania, Temeria and Verden and several minor duchies and principalities such as Bremervoord or Ellander. The Nilfgaard Empire occupies most of the area south of the Northern Kingdoms. The eastern part of the Continent, such as the Korath desert, Zerrikania, Hakland and the Fiery Mountains, is mostly unknown. The book series mentions overseas countries with whom the Northern Kingdoms trade, including Zangvebar, Ofir, Hannu and Barsa.

Language

Sapkowski created a language for the series known as Elder Speech, based on Welsh, English, French, Irish, Latin and other languages. Dialects are spoken on the Skellige Islands and in Nilfgaard. In an interview Sapkowski explained that he wanted the language to be reasonably legible to a reader, to avoid footnotes. As he said: "In my book, I do not want for an orc telling to another orc 'Burbatuluk grabataluk!' to be supplied with a footnote: 'Shut the door, don't let the flies in!'"

Translations

The stories and novels have been translated into various languages, including Slovak, Czech, Danish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, French, Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Hungarian, Dutch, Chinese, Georgian, English, Croatian and Persian.

The name "Witcher"

Sapkowski chose wiedźmin as the male equivalent of the Polish word for witch. In his book 2005 book-interview Historia i Fantastyka Sapkowski noted that the word "witcher" is a natural male version of the English word "witch", and implied that the similarity between those two words, as well as between the German terms, was the inspiration coining wiedźmin as a new Polish word. Polish video game designer Adrian Chmielarz claimed to have invented the translation of wiedźmin into English as witcher around 1996-1997.
Although wiedźmin is now usually translated into English as "witcher", an earlier translation of the title was "hexer" ; Hexe and Hexer are the German words for female and male 'witch' respectively. CD Projekt used "witcher" for the title of its 2007 English release of the video game, and Danusia Stok used it in her translation of Ostatnie życzenie that was published the same year. Michael Kandel however used "spellmaker" in his 2010 translation of "Wiedźmin" short story for A Book of Polish Monsters anthology.

Adaptations

Comic books

From 1993 to 1995, Sapkowski's stories were adapted into six comic books by Maciej Parowski, Bogusław Polch and Sapkowski:
In 2013, Dark Horse Comics announced a comic book series called The Witcher, based on the video-game series and made in collaboration with CD Projekt Red.

Issues

Collections

Film and television

The Hexer is the title of a 2001 film and a 2002 TV series, both directed by Marek Brodzki. Michał Żebrowski played Geralt in both. In several interviews, Sapkowski criticized the screen adaptations: "I can answer only with a single word, an obscene, albeit a short one."
In 2015, Platige Image planned an American film adaptation of the novel series to arrive in 2017. In May 2017, they announced that they would be producing a The Witcher TV series in cooperation with Netflix and Sean Daniel Company, with Tomasz Bagiński as one of the directors and Sapkowski as a creative consultant. Henry Cavill portrays Geralt in the Netflix adaptation. On 10 October 2018, it was announced that Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra had been cast as main female characters, Ciri and Yennefer. The first season released on 20 December 2019, with all eight episodes available. A second season was announced on 13 November 2019.
Netflix announced a new animated film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf in development in January 2020, with the involvement of series showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and series writer BeAu DeMayo, and animation to be provided by Studio Mir.
A second live-action prequel series, The Witcher: Blood Origins was announced by Netflix in July 2020, set 1200 years before Geralt's time to show the origin of the Witchers. The prequel is also being developed by Hissrich.

Games

Tabletop role-playing games

A tabletop role-playing game based on Sapkowski's books, Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni was published by MAG in 2001. Another tabletop game based on the video games, produced by R. Talsorian Games, was planned for release in 2016 but was delayed and finally released in August 2018.

Video games

Card games
In 2007, Kuźnia Gier developed two card games based on CD Projekt's The Witcher video game. One, Wiedźmin: Przygodowa Gra Karciana, was published by Kuźnia Gier; the other, Wiedźmin: Promocyjna Gra Karciana was added to the collector's edition of The Witcher in some countries. A card game, known as "Gwent", was included in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an in-game activity. Two stand-alone games based on it, titled ' and ', were released in 2018.

Board game

CD Projekt Red and Fantasy Flight Games released The Witcher Adventure Game, a board game designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek, in 2014 in physical and digital forms. The digital version is available on Windows, OS X, Android and iOS.