The Continent is young and raw. The Conjunction has passed, but the scars still bleed. Monsters roam unchallenged, their names whispered in fear. Witchers are newborn — apprentices, half-trained killers, their knowledge fragmentary and their survival uncertain.
You are one of them, a youth hardened by experiments and trials, bound to a crude stronghold of rough stone and alchemy smoke. Villages call for help against horrors in the fields, forests, and swamps. Some offer coin, others food, others only fear and mistrust.
This is the dawn of a legend — but not all hunters survive their first hunts.
The Continent is raw and unsettled. Villages rise like splinters in a wilderness that does not forgive, wooden palisades leaning against winds that never cease. The Conjunction still lingers in memory: strange creatures creep from dark forests, stalk marshes, and tear into cattle, or lone travelers. Few know their names; fewer know how to kill them.
Communities survive by gathering close, trading scraps of food and rumor. A vanished goat might be wolves — or something older, hungrier. Priests call them curses. Peasants mutter about night-things. Scholars argue over whether the world itself has grown sick.
There are no kingdoms here yet, only scattered hamlets and fledgling holds. A dozen spears might defend a village for a night, but not for long. When monsters come again — as they always do — there is only prayer, hope, or hiring killers strange enough to face them.
At the edge of a ravine, half fortress and half ruin, stands the stronghold. Its walls are patched with timber, its stone black with damp, its halls filled with the smoke of alchemical brews. Here, the first witchers train: youths scarred by trial, hardened by tinctures, but still unproven.
Veterans — if they can be called that — are barely older than thirty. Their scars and limps are warnings more than lessons. A mage or two lingers, too pragmatic or disgraced to belong at the northern towers, and their counsel is half-truth and experiment.
The courtyard smells of oil and steel. Swords clatter against straw dummies, young men and womens stagger beneath weighted shields, and in the shadows, alchemists whisper over glass that hisses and spits. No one here speaks of glory. The stronghold is a place of endurance, not triumph.
Yet from these walls, hunters march into the unknown — and sometimes return.
You are one of them: an apprentice, a witcher not yet tempered. Your hair is cropped close, your hands raw from training, your body scarred with the first burns of mutagens. You carry a steel blade at your hip, though it is nicked and plain. A silver weapon is promised, but not yet earned.
The master of hunts has summoned you. A village three days south has sent a courier with news: livestock gutted, a shepherd gone missing, strange cries at night near the marshes. The veterans scoff — another wolf, perhaps. But the mage frowns. “Not wolves. Not wolves at all.”
Your task is simple: join a small band, follow the tracks, and return alive — if you can. Preparation begins now. The library is sparse, its tomes half-rotted; peasants may hold stories closer than ink. Herbs grow near the walls, but their names are as uncertain as their effects.
The stronghold gate yawns wide. The wind carries the smell of rain and rot. Somewhere in the marshlands, something waits — and your first hunt begins.