Editing The Witcher (section)

==The Setting==

Right off the bat. You probably heard something in tune of "The Witcher is a Slavic setting". It is '''not'''. It's fairly generic (and deliberately so) ISO Standard European Medieval Fantasy, with monsters taken from D&D manuals, gratitous amounts of Celtic and German thrown into it and generally following all the Western cliches and fantasy tropes. Pretty much all the short stories are Shrek-like parodies of Western fables and the saga reads after certain point like an AAR of your long-running RPG campaign - again, all purposefully so. The only thing that can be vaguely claimed to be "Slavic" is the fact certain characters display various stereotypical behaviours of your rural, reactionary, overly religious and ignorant Pole - which is mocked to no end in the books, especially the misplaced "hurray patriotism". Anyone claiming the setting is "Slavic" apparently never read any of the books or played the games. Add to all that the fact the writer quite vocally shat on actual Slavic fantasy in the 90s and it takes to be delusional to still insist Witcher series is "Slavic".

An important part of the discussion of history in The Witcher universe is that the setting exists in a multiverse; every so often there is a "Conjunction", when universes meet and species cross over between them, and if taken literally then sometimes new universes are born and old ones are destroyed during these (although this could be a fancy way of saying that the species immigrating back and forth cause major changes). Another important aspect is that Fate is a tangable force in this universe and no matter what you do, you can't fight it. Doesn't mean people aren't trying.

Sapkowski's world-building isn't like ASOIAF, with maps and intricate family webs, but is more "it's only relevant as they come up." Continents, cosmology, far-off cultures, and large chunks of history are just blanks, to the point that the author himself refers to fan-created maps in later works. Since originally the setting was just a backdrop to bunch of short stories that were connected by characters, rather than places, geography gets wonky if you start to make a map out of what's known about it. Just like the author, you shouldn't care about it or overthink it, because the physicality of the setting is probably the least important part of it. 

The most exposition you get in the series is in some of the excerpts from different in-universe writers, some of whom lived thousands of years after the series, and talk about the Elves and Dwarves as mythical legends (in the later half of the novels, the Elves were implied to have fled the ''world'', not just the Continent, the next chance they got, way after the series ended, realizing that they would never be able to reclaim their glory days.) 

The area that almost all stories take place in is simply known as "The Continent" (there is also "The Western Continent" in a few stories, discovered by a boy who miraculously ''survived'' having met Cirri), and was native originally only to gnomes and dwarves. After the first Conjunction both elves (called '''Aen Seidhe''') and humans arrived from another worlds, but still not to the Continent itself. Shortly after, elves arrived from parts unknown in boats and established kingdoms, while having regular wars with dwarves (considering them pests in the promised land). 

Few centuries later, humans reached the Continent in their own boats. They spread out rapidly, initially living in peace with the elves and learning magic, along with other bits, from them. However the human territories aggressively pushed borders as the human breeding outpaced that of the elves, resulting in more and more wars, massacres, and forced removal of elves from their own cities. Eventually the elven youth began to fight back, but that only lead to further disaster: most of elven cities got destroyed in the process, while majority of fertile elves dying in a war they couldn't win from the start; The elven royalty reached out to magic users, who were the only humans who had benefited from their shared past and tried to establish relations, but the ignorant human masses killed an elf princess and her human husband which resulted in another elf/human war. The elves, being on their last leg already, were beaten soundly, with their last kingdoms taken over and souring most elves on humanity forever. Some run to the wild, where they are barely holding, some tried to integrate in human lands, where they are mostly persecuted.

From that point onward, the Continent was one way or another dominated by humans, who filled all corners of it, fought their own wars, rebellions and never forgetting to kick some non-humans down for nothing else than own amusement. There are still some hold-outs controlled one way or another by non-humans, like Brokilon, a forest full of dryads or Mahakam, a mountrain range with quasi-state of dwarves, but other than that, it's human kingdoms in all directions.

The events of the books happen some 400 years later, in the midst of what's called Northern Wars. The Northern Kingdoms are a motley collection of your-standard European Fantasy Kingdoms, separated from the Nilfgaardian Empire by the Yoruga River (Think Danube); the only thing they really have in common is their independence from Nilfgaard. They are your standard assortment of minor duchies, established (and incest-filled) Kingdoms, and even free cities and an Oxford expy; furthest North, at the very tip of the "known" world are the not!Russia and not!Nords kingdoms along the frozen Gulf of Praxeda, who play an important role in stopping the Nilfgaardians.

Similarly, the Nilfgaardian empire is itself pretty varied. On paper, it's pretty much a Roman Expy, but also has hints and signs of Soviet "we're all technically equal under the Imperator" policies with a dash of Holy Roman Empire thrown in for good measure. Only the citizens who were actually born and raised in Nilfgaard (around the Lower Alba region) are "Nilfgaardians," and everyone else is just a vassal in various stages of being "Nilfgaardized". Most notable of these vassal states is Cintra, a Kingdom south of the Yoruga whose occupation sets off the events of the series, and the [[Bretonnia|Duchy of Touissant]], a Disneyfied version of France filled with noble Questing Knights, free love, and utter loyalty to the [[Lady of the Lake|Duchess]].

The eventual future of the world as hinted by Sapkowski is fittingly grim as well: Nilfgaard manages to conquer the north, the elves fuck off to another world entirely, the world industrializes hence killing off all the monsters which in turn eliminates the need for witchers who get warped by history into battlemage mercenaries. About 3000 years after Geralt's time, the White Frost destroys the world though as a ray of hope it is implied that a new "spring" comes after, presumably with a new world as well.