The article contains spoilers from The Witcher 1 and 2 (for obvious reasons), as well as from the books. Thread carefully!

Like any good fantasy story, The Witcher comes with its own rich world, extensive backstory, and dense lore. The following list discusses certain elements of the lore that we believe will help you find the story of The Witcher 3 more accessible to understand and delve into.

This is not a summary of the previous games, but rather a discussion of the Witcher’s world and its lore. Who are the The Witchers? What exactly is the Wild Hunt? Do Elves also have pointy ears here too? And who exactly is that white haired girl in the The Witcher 3 trailers? Well luckily for you, the following list answers these questions exactly.

The World

The story of The Witcher takes place on the Continent, a land inhabited by elves, dwarves, gnomes and humans. The humans are the dominant race on the continent, divided between the powerful Nilfgaard Empire in the South and the various Northern kingdoms in the...North. The relationship between Nilfgaard and the Northern kingdoms is rocky at best, with numerous wars waged between the two factions in Nilfgaard’s attempt to conquer the North of the continent.

The third war between the two took place during the events of The Witcher 2, with the Nilfgaardian Emperor using the witchers of the Viper school to destabilize the North before Nilfgaard’s invasion (more on the that later). The outcome of the third invasion is still unclear, and light will be shed on it in The Witcher 3.

Aside from the aforementioned races, the Continent is home to many vicious monsters that prey on the Continent’s citizens. The monsters didn’t always exist on the Continent, but came with an ancient cataclysmic event known as the Conjunction of Spheres. The conjunction is a clash between the many ‘worlds’ that existed in this world, and monsters from different worlds and dimensions were trapped in the continent during the conjunction. These unnatural monsters spread fear all across the continents, and thus the citizens had to find someone to battle these monsters. This is where The Witchers come in.

The Witchers

To put it simply The Witchers are the monster hunters, a necessity that arose due to plethora of monsters that came with the Conjunction. Chosen at a young age for their aptitude, they undergo extremely rigorous training, exposure to alchemical potions and mutagens, and finally, they ‘graduate’ with a process called Trial of Grasses, a process that not many survive, but those who survive it are gifted with inhuman speed, accelerated healing, and enhanced combat abilities and reflexes, and are rendered immune to diseases.

There are four schools - The Wolf, The Cat, The Griffin and the Viper (introduced in The Witcher 2), and the differences between the schools is largely in where they are located. The Wolf is the school that Geralt belongs to. Not much is known about the Cat and Griffin schools, as they as are mentioned sparingly in Witcher works. The Viper school plays a big part in The Witcher 2 as it is located in the Nilfgaard Empire before it fell into ruins years ago (reason was never explicitly mentioned). Its remaining members formed the ‘Kingslayers’, assassins who work for the Emperor of Nilfgaard to assassinate Northern kings and destabilize their kingdoms, and in return they were promised that the Nilfgaardian Emperor would rebuild their school in Nilfgaard.

Due to their mutant nature, The Witchers are simultaneously hated and feared by the populace, viewing them as greedy sellswords at best, and unnatural freaks at worst. This culminated in an assault on the Witcher's keep of Kaer Morhen, where an angry mob stormed the fortress and massacred the Witchers. Few Witchers survived the assault, but they lost the means to ‘create’ and train new Witchers, thus beginning the slow extinction of the Witcher profession.

Elves

The elves left their world and came to the continent before the humans did, but after the dwarves and the gnomes. Fueled by ambition, the elves soon asserted their dominance over the dwarves and gnomes and established themselves as the rulers of the continent. That is, until the humans came. Some speculate the humans came to continent after their world was destroyed by the Conjunction of Spheres. At first the elves paid the humans no attention, viewing them as little more than savages. But the humans rose in power and established their own kingdoms, which soon conquered the elven cities, relegating the elves to being second-class citizens in their own homes.

The Scoia’tels.

The proud elves did not appreciate this, and clashes between elf rebels and human rulers became common, especially in the Northern kingdoms, where elves are treated with brutal injustice. This led to the creation of the Scoia’tel (pronounced Sko-ya-tell), and elven rebel group who seek nothing less than expelling humans from the continent and restoring the former glory of the elves.

That is the story of the elves on the continent, but there exists another group of elves, The Aen Elle, that occupy another world. Not much is known about the Aen Elle or their relation to the elves on the continent. What we do know is that they once possessed powerful magic that allowed to travel through time and space and visit other dimension and worlds. However, the Conjunction of Spheres drastically weakened their magic and robbed them of their powers. The Aen Elle did not take kindly to this, and were adamant at restoring their powers. The secret to restoring their power lied with the Elder Blood.

The Elder Blood.

The Elder Blood was a ‘gene’ created by the Aen Elle to restore their former glory. An elven woman was chosen to carry Lara Dorren the Elder Blood in her veins, and it was prophesied that she would marry an Aen Elle elf and restore the magical powers of the Aen Elle. However, Lara Dorren had other plans, as she fell in love with a human mage named Cregennan of Lod. Cregennan was killed by humans for loving an elven woman. Lara herself died soon after, but not before bearing and giving birth to Cregennan’s daughter. This is where the character Ciri, the white haired girl from the Witcher 3 trailers, comes in.

Ciri is the descendant of Lara and Cregennan, and she carries the Elder Blood in her veins.Ciri also happens to be the daughter of the emperor of Nilfgaard. However, Geralt himself adopted Ciri when she was a baby from her father in exchange for curing him from a curse, and took her to Kaer Morhen to train her to become a witcher. Ciri underwent witcher training (but not the mutations), and learnt magic from the sorceress Yennefer, who became her mother figure (more on Yennefer in the next section).

As we said before, Ciri had the Elder Blood, which gave her the power to traverse space and time and travel between worlds. Her adventures led her away from Geralt and Yennefer and into numerous other dimensions, including the world of the Aen Elle. However, Ciri returns to Geralt’s and Yennefer’s side in the Witcher 3, but now she is being pursued by the Wild Hunt

The Wild Hunt

The horde of skeletal warriors that appears from the sky to terrorize the inhabitants of the continent and kidnap its people, that is the Wild Hunt. Their nature unknown and their purpose unclear. Few have returned after being kidnapped by the Wild Hunt, and the ones who do return speak of a strange world where time passes slowly, and they return to their world only to find their loved ones long dead and buried.

Before the events of the games, Geralt crosses paths with The Wild Hunt when they kidnapped Yennefer - Yennefer was a sorceress who once saved Geralt’s life after he was mortally wounded trying to stop a massacre against non-humans in Rivia. Geralt and Yennefer soon became lovers. When Yennefer was kidnapped by the Wild Hunt, Geralt followed their trail, desperately seeking to rescue his lover, and he was aided in his quest by witchers from the Viper school (some of whom would form the aforementioned kingslayers group).

Geralt and the witchers did what few were able to do, they confronted the Wild Hunt and their king. The witchers battled the Wild Hunt, and while they put up a good fight, the spectres of the hunt could not be killed. Still desperate to rescue the Wild Hunt, Geralt offered himself to the Wild Hunt in return for Yennefer’s freedom. The King of the Wild Hunt agreed, and Geralt joined the Wild Hunt as one of their riders. It is unclear how long Geralt spent with the Wild Hunt, but he managed to escape, and lost his memory in the process. A wounded, amnesiac Geralt was found by group of witchers and taken to the fortress of Kaer Morhen - thus beginning the events of the first Witcher game.

It is important to note here that there are clues in the Witcher books and games about the exact nature and purpose of the Wild Hunt, but we chose not to discuss these here to save the surprise for those who haven’t played or read either.