I love the music of The Witcher 3 videogame. It has
such mindblowing soundtracks, dude. There's, for example, the "leleleh"
Then there's the "banana tiger"
and the "heya heya hayayaiya"
And also the "tere tere tere tere", which I like a lot too.
Very... very inspirational, indeed.
Hi people! Today I'll tell you about the first book
of the saga I'm actually devouring.
It all begun with me wanting to play the videogame, since the game in itself
is a masterpiece and is also the "ending" to the saga. But today,
to keep things brief and easy for people unfamiliar with the series (which I doubt,
because it's hugely popular) today we'll talk about THE LAST WISH by
Andrzej Sapkowski... (...) Okay.
THE LAST WISH is the first book in the saga of Geralt the Rivia, the Witcher. I'm not sure if it's pronounced
"Jeralt" or "Gueralt", I say "Gueralt" of Rivia. You'll see, this
saga tells, mainly, the story of a witcher, this attractive,
athletic man who's way older than he looks, and earns his living...
I mean, he belongs to a "caste" a bit on the verge of extinction:
the witchers. In the beginning, witchers were normal kids who were recruited
for training to a hidden fortress named Kaer Morhen. There,
these kids were taught the arts of combat, biology and theory of
monsters and supernatural beings that roam this world, and they're
taught how to kill them, poison them, fight them and, in short, these witchers are like
pest controllers on steroids. Once they complete their training, these
younglings take a series of mutagens and potions whose recipe no one knows, except
for the most veteran witchers, and they suffer several mutations that kill
4-6 of every 10 kids who take them. The ones who
survive them, awaken from their painful, traumatic trance turned into
complete witchers, with senses way sharper
than those of common humans, and an even sharpest intellect (they wouldn't have
been able to complete their training without being smart) and these young witchers
throw themselves into the world and, offering their services, travel across this world
based off on some kind of medieval Poland or Slavic lands.
They offer their services, killing monsters and getting rid of supernatural beings
of all kind in exchange for money. This caused the witchers
(or bruxos, and they were called once)
The figure of the witcher soon acquire the fame of
a greedy, mercenary person, completely devoid of feelings,
which is so not true, obviously, but you'll see that, in the universe of Geralt of Rivia,
prejudice, bumpkinery, violence and brutality run rampant. This land
is divided in several small, fragmented kingdoms, each one with its king,
its law and wars. In this world there's halflings,
dwarves, gnomes, kikimores, lamias, strigas, vampires, imps, rebel elves and
dryads... there's a lot going on here, beast I've never heard of in my life,
some truly bizarre. And, mostly, everywhere is filled with bumpkin humans.
In fact, this utter bumpkinery is one of the biggest charms of
Geralt the Rivia's novels, because not only people are uncouth as hell, but they
also speak like it. In our case, we have much to thank to José María Faraldo,
the Spanish translator, who not only captured the rich,
colorful, regional language of every character
in the novels, but also added
accents. This might lead to confussion...
Witchers are more like supernatural pest exterminators,
okay? They specialize in simple spells, fabrication of
antidotes (mostly for themselves)...
They're best at identifying and tracking monsters and
slay them with combat and cleverness. So, they're like
magical mercenaries. But they're not the only ones involved with magic:
in this universe exist the Lodge of Sorcerers. Sorcerers are THE
wizards of this story, skilled in a great variety of spells, and most of them
are heavily into politics and scheming.
Now I'll talk a bit of the 6 tales that which THE LAST WISH is comprised of.
The first one's called "The Witcher." Here Geralt the Rivia makes his first appearance
by arriving to a tavern and, since he's a witcher, a few drunken hooligans pick a
fight with him just because. He doesn't want to, but in the end he has no choice but
to slay them, and when Geralt resorts to killing, he makes a bloody mess.
After this, he's taken to the spokesman of the town,
who says "What got into you, slaughtering people in my town, as if we didn't have
enough problems already?" and tells him that there's a striga in the castle nearby who's attacking
everyone who comes near, and the striga is
king Foltest's daughter. The story goes as in
15-16 years ago, king Foltest loved his sister... so hard
he got her pregnant. The court and
the lower people alike were not amused, but well: the thing is, king
Foltest got his sister pregnant, and the princess gave birth in terrible pain
and died in chilbirth along with the baby girl, and they were buried in the castle's crypt,
in twin sarcophagi. But turns out, six years after,
from one of the sarcophagi came out a striga, a monstrous creature that
kills and devours anything that moves. She comes out at night and
retreats back into her tomb at dawn. Like some kind of vampire.
Obviously, the castle's inhabitants abandoned the place and only fools come near it,
so Geralt is asked to go and see what's up with the striga.
The problem is that some people, mostly the king, don't want
the striga to be slain, because rumor has it that it isn't necessary to kill her, but
that the spell could be undone, for strigas can originate from an evil wish.
The king heard that the spell can be reverted
if someone manages to survive a whole night besides the
striga's sarcophagus. Geralt says "Look, I can try,
but I might get myself killed, and to end up dead, I'd better not take the deal."
So begins the story of how Geralt goes to the abandoned castle at night,
well-prepared, not sure if he'll be able to undo the spell
of if he'll be forced to slay the striga, thus commiting
a royal assassination, which would get him into big trouble. The second tale is
"A Grain of Truth", which personally is one of my favorites (also
because it's based off on Beauty and the Beast, and I have a huge weakness for
that tale, it's one of my favorites). Geralt arrives to a field
and finds two corpses wounded by terrible
bitemarks. He then notices that this is not
the work of wolves or mere beasts and, following the tracks, arrives to a castle with
a big rose bush and a fountain in the entrance patio. There lives
a creature that's half-bear, half-whatever, who tries to scare
him away and threatens to bite off his head, and Geralt is like :/
"Will you tell me if the two corpses in the field were your doing
or what?" And the monster is floored,
and replies "Erh... nope. Whatever, come inside and have dinner with me.
I don't have much company since nobody comes near the castle," and he tells Geralt
the story of how he turned into this creature,
how he tried to undo the spell by having girlfriends,
and how in the end he just accepted his fate,
all while Geralt tries to gather the truth about the murders.
The next tale in THE LAST WISH
is named "The Lesser Evil." Here, Geralt meets with
an old acquaintance, a selfish jerk of a sorcerer. Well, he chats
a bit with him and the sorcerer tells him that he's locked himself in his own
fortress, all armored with spells, because he knows that a certain girl
who wants his head on a spike has finally found him.
This girl has recruited a gang of mercenaries that follow
her orders, and she's a monster.
¿The reason for this? It's said that years ago there was a prophesy: The Black Sun prophesy.
During an eclipse, several girls were born in royal families, and these girls
were supposed to have strange abilities, clairvoyance, and
sadistic, homicidal urges.
Someone had a vision. Specifically, the step-mother of one of these girls, the princess.
She claimed to have seen how the princess would slaughter the
whole royal family, she the Queen included. So, this queen,
allegating that this was her sole motive to order this, had her
step-daughter taken away to the forest, and ordered a guy to kill her, thus avoiding the greater evil.
Turns out, the princess didn't die, but escaped and, after
a sorrowful, brutal life, she became a bloodthirsty killer
with a desire for revenge.
Since this sorcerer had played a huge part in the treatment these girls from the prophecy received,
thus taking everything away from her, he's the next target on her "to kill" list.
The sorcerer asks Geralt to get rid of the girl, or at least
to convince her to leave the old sorcerer alone, and forgo revenge. On the other side,
Geralt later meets the girl in question, named Renfri, an the
thugs and assassins that follow her. Some of them are dwarves... You see where this
is going, right? Renfri tells Geralt her side of the story. She'll have
her vengeance no matter what; sorry, but she'll slit the throat of whoever
tries to stop her fom getting to the sorcerer.
Then Geralt sees himself
in this neverending dilemma. "Do I stay neutral or should I take sides?"
There's a bit of a tug-of-war between the cold-blooded girl and the sorcerer;
neither will give in or give up, and Geralt will have to choose a "lesser evil". Here we'll
find out how he earned the grim title of "The Butcherer of Blaviken." Blaviken
being the city where this takes place. The next tale in this book is
"A Question of Price." (I said "quession," right?) A QuesTion of Price.
Here Geralt
is invited to a feast in the court of Queen Calanthe. (Calanthe or Calante? I don't know,
I say "Calante", okay?) So, the queen Calanthe of Cintra is ready to marry off her young daughter,
Pavetta. She requests the witcher to sit beside her
at the feast and tells him exactly what she
wants from him. Queen Calanthe, a cunning beast of a woman whom I
love, enters a whispered argument with Geralt while the rest
of Pavetta's suitors are chatting, and Geralt
realizes that, basically, Queen Calanthe has summoned him there to
fight destiny, to get in the middle of the suitors'
proposals and canalize events in such a way that Pavetta ends up
choosing the suitor her mother wants.
However, and this was known to Calanthe but not to Geralt, to the feast arrives
an uninvited suitor. A knight under a magical
spells who is not a stranger to Pavetta. The next tale in
THE LAST WISH is named "The Edge of the World." It's a pretty, funny
tale, like all in this novel (with the exception of
"The Lesser Evil," for the backstory of Renfri
is both heartwrenching and scary).
Okay, so in "The Edge of the World," Geralt meets with his friend Dandelion (Jaskier in Spanish and Polish)
a bard with a long tongue and a short sense of shame.
Jaskier and Geralt go to a village at the world's butt, and noticed that
everything looks so pretty: the fields are ripe and blossomed, while the rest of the world is
at war, north versus south; here, harvests are plenty and shiny,
wheat is golden, people live in peace not worrying about
what's happening in the rest of the world... So, in the biggest cabin
of the village, they meet the oldest man in the place, who asks them to "Please, we were wondering
if you, a witcher, an expert in these matters, could go and talk to an devil
who lives on the other side of the fields. Most of the time, he helps us
with the sow and harvest, but every now and then, the little devil goes
apeshit and starts pooping in the well and chasing women, and this has to stop." Geralt and Jaskier
say "Okay, we'll have a word with the creature and see what's going on,
we'll straighten him out so he stops messing around."
Of course, as it tends to happen with Geralt's missions,
this thing of the "devil" and the fields and the village is
only the tip of a massive iceberg, and what lies beneath
is far more complicated and ethically blurry. In "The Last Wish,"
the last tale that gives this book its name,
Geralt and Jaskier are fishing, and suddenly catch some kind of
sealed bottle. Chicken-brained Jaskier goes and says
"There must be a genie inside! I'll pop him out and ask for three wishes!" Alas,
he opens the bottle and the genie storms out, roaring, ready to overkill
every single human in his sight, and attacks Jaskier. The genie gets vicious
with his tongue, which is terrible to Jaskier, since he's a bard,
and he'll never sing again if her throat becomes severely damaged. After the attack,
the genie flies away, and Geralt has no choice but to carry an agonizing Jaskier
to the nearest city.
For the first time, there he'll meet a sorceress who might fix Jaskier's trouble;
she is, and you probably know about her if you're familiar with Geralt of Rivia, is
Yennefer of Vengerberg. Yennefer of Ven-ger-berg O.o
Vengerberg.
"Lelele intensifies"
If you like this style, I'd recommend to start in an orderly fashion with
THE LAST WISH by Andrzej Sapkowski and, if you enjoy it, you can go on with
the series and find out the rest of the story.
They made videogames about it: The Witcher 1, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings,
and The Witcher 3, the one who earned lots of prices, named
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I've played only a little
of this game, but it's beautiful, the music is wonderful,
the game is visually stunning, the facial expressions, the aesthetic
of the characters... They take a few creative licenses,
but, actually, The Witcher 3 is meant to be the official ending to the saga.
So, according to your gameplay and your choices, you give the series
one ending or the other. This last game, The Witcher 3,
has 2 DLCs and each of them is an entire videogame in itself.
One's named The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone,
and the next is about vampires and takes place in some
land who suspiciously resembles a mix of France and Italy;
its name is "Blood and Wine." Both their music is amazing,
the new characters are very interesting, and the aesthetics are a braingasm.
You know, a game must be really good, if its DLC earned
a "Best Game of the Year" award. So I say to you: if you want to delve
a bit into what Geralt of Rivia is, start on THE LAST WISH, which everyone
agrees is the most entertaining, light book
in the series. And then, if you liked it, get to the following novels. If you like videogames,
play The Witcher 3. You have a year or more's worth
of entertainment with all this material. Well, I hope the book caught
your interest, and that you enjoyed today's video.Thank you so much for
watching me again. See you next time! Bye-bye :D
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