Myth, legend, and tale – these are the foundations of culture. Some of them are beautiful, others
terrifying, and many hold a grain of truth. Humanity has adapted and repurposed most of
the mythology of the Elder Races. However, humans are more than capable of creating their
own ghost stories.
The Wild Hunt is a tale that has no counterpart in either elven or dwarven culture. It tells
of a ghastly procession of nightmarish warriors, riding through the sky on skeletal horses.
Their armor is rusted and rotten, draped over the bones of an undead knight. Where their
eyes would be, a pale blue flame burns without ceasing.
Every few years, they ride through the skies accompanied by lightning, thunder, and gale.
Their song terrifies – but what truly strikes terror in the hearts of men is that with the
appearance of the Wild Hunt, people start disappearing. The Hunt has been appearing
for centuries, and took countless victims. During the second northern war alone, its
bounty was terrifying – a score from the great city of Novigrad alone.
There are tales that people abducted by the hunt sometimes return. These men, who disappeared
without a trace, suddenly turn up decades later, having aged only slightly if at all.
They find nothing but the graves of their loved ones and dust where their lives would
be. Many of them go insane, winding up in asylums as gibbering wrecks.
Those who do not succumb to insanity, speak of another world, where time flows at a different
speed and nothing is as it should be. Elves are apex predators and humans are slaves.
They speak of war between unicorns and the elves, a rivalry borne out of treachery. If
they are to be believed, the nightmarish apparitions that many say they have witnessed are simply
astral projections.
The magic necessary to accomplish such a feat is mighty beyond compare. To make someone
appear as a ghost in another dimension entirely, that is not just simple sleight of hand. Even
sorceresses of the highest order can only project themselves within our reality and
only with years of practice and training – or access to magical artefacts. It seems impossible.
However, there are accounts of a witcher who faced the Wild Hunt. There are people across
the North who speak that the White Wolf, once believed dead after the pogrom in Rivia, returned
from death. He was tracking the Wild Hunt, following its trail of abductions. They say
he was looking for Yennefer, taken from him by the King of the Hunt and his riders.
It is said that he was joined by three other witchers from the south, trained in the School
of the Viper. The four of them tracked the Wild Hunt down and confronted it when it stopped,
deep in the south. Under a tree of hanged men, they took stock of their captives before
returning where they came from. You cannot kill a spectre – yet under their blows,
the warriors of the Hunt fell.
These warriors were not undead monsters or post-Conjuction aberrations. Blood gushed
from beneath their armor. They were indeed elves, but unlike any other. They did not
understand pain and suffering like the elves of this world. They never experienced pogroms
or persecution. They were proud, confident in their superiority. Their armor was a costume,
a disguise to obscure their real nature.
Nobody can confirm or deny these tales, least of all the witchers. Two are most certainly
dead, cut apart by the White Wolf.
One is missing, last seen in Loc Muinne, about to confront Geralt, who disappeared shortly
afterwards, going further south. He was chasing the Wild Hunt, as those who saw him last say.
If these elves are real, then who are they? Why do the elves and dwarves stay silent,
their lore containing no references to the Hunt? One theory says that they are relatives
of the elves of this world, the Aen Seidhe, who split away and formed another civilization
in another dimension, conquering it with fire and sword. The elves would have to commit
a genocide of incredible proportions to establish their rule.
More importantly, how are they able to travel through the dimensions? Legends speak of primordial,
ancient magic being able to do so, magic that no longer exists except in those of the Elder
Blood – like Jacques de Aldersberg, whose death at Geralt's hands coincided with the
appearance of the Wild Hunt.
What is their goal? What is their purpose? I can offer no answers. But, if I can hazard
a guess, these elves no longer know how to travel between worlds. However they learned
the art in the first place, they lost it and are now scrambling to learn it again.
I pray to the gods that I am wrong. But if I am right, then I believe there is only one
person, one witcher who can fight back against the Wild Hunt and stop them. I fear that should
he fall, we will all be put to the sword by these ancient nightmares.
Godspeed, Geralt. Yours is a story for another day…