My question about the first Witcher

[nnecron]

My question about the first Witcher

This is my question about the plot in the Witcher 1. I might have misinterpreted the plot since my English isn't as good as native speaker's.

Remember the Grand Master? I don't remember his goals and motivations completely. Here are things that I remember about him.

He is the leader of the Order of Flaming Rose. His ability allows him to see the future. By using his power he has foreseen the coming ice age with terrible monsters roaming. His goal is to create a superior race that would survive and protects the human race(tell me if this part is wrong or not). He doesn't wish Non-humans to join this plan since they won't fit in as his part of organized society.

His goal is clear but I'm not sure what drove him to choose this method, and why Gerald had to kill the Grand Master if he is trying to save the world. I know the Grand Master is the cause of the attack at Kaer Morhen, and caused the entire guild members to break up, but Geralt could have argued about the solution, rather than shrugging off his words (assuming this future is coming soon and inevitable).

I prefer a complete summery of this part of the storyline, but you can choose how to answer to my question.

 

[Silverio13]

I suppuse that for the Grandmaster the end justifies the means, and for Geralt the end justifies shit. Besadis are the dead, the racism and the injustice the order brings.

 

[username_3236168]

Grand master did not see a place for humans either, only way to survive in his eyes was mutate all human kind. So actually he did not want to save people, he wanted to mutate them and then be their Master. That's why he stole witcher secrets, potions and ect.

Just because of what he saw does not mean that his actions were right or actually wrong. But for sure he wasn't going to save man kind.

 

[username_3236806]

the grand master was a great fanatic of mutations and superior humans, but do you remember when you killed the grand master at the end of the game and you found on him the same madalion that alvin had, and alvin diapeard at the lakeside, and he loved witchers and always wanted to be one. all in all that what i think was the motivation.
BTW but a spoiler warning to be safe

 

[secondchildren]

He is the leader of the Order of Flaming Rose. His ability allows him to see the future. By using his power he has foreseen the coming ice age with terrible monsters roaming. His goal is to create a superior race that would survive and protects the human race(tell me if this part is wrong or not). He doesn't wish Non-humans to join this plan since they won't fit in as his part of organized society.

His goal is clear but I'm not sure what drove him to choose this method, and why Gerald had to kill the Grand Master if he is trying to save the world. I know the Grand Master is the cause of the attack at Kaer Morhen, and caused the entire guild members to break up, but Geralt could have argued about the solution, rather than shrugging off his words (assuming this future is coming soon and inevitable).

I prefer a complete summery of this part of the storyline, but you can choose how to answer to my question.

The answer to this question is mostly: which path did you choose? Coz it's better you play all three to have a full overveiw of the situation.

Remember that that vision, it's just "his vision" as much the Ithlinne prophecy, it's just a prophecy. So it might be come true one day, or it might not.

You should also know that Triss, in Foltest Castle, says that the Grand Master may be a source itself. A Source is a person with magical powers sometimes uncontrolled. Alvin is a source himself. Triss says that those powers should be contained, educated and possibly directed in the best way to avoid a source loses the control and become as mad as a hatter. It happened in the past.
So the story suggests that the Grand Master has not been educated to control his powers and on the contrary he is grown under the strict fanatic doctrine of the Eternal Fire. It is possibile that he lost the control of his own visions, had this terrible dreams and started to believe that it might be the future. Add all those distorted ideas who drawn from the cult, and make the maths yourself

Aside this, it's not only a matter of making an army to save humanity: it's a matter of mutating humans by his own will, just to fulfill his own personal plan. Don't you find all those mutants a lil creepy and unfriendly? Well I wouldn't like to be a brainless puppet in the hand of a visionary.

However, I don't think that Geralt's primary intention is to save the world or something. Witchers are neutral so Geralt's goal is to retrieve the stolen secrets, coz just like Vesemir said, they are "secrets" coz it is not good that normal not-trained-to-be-witcher people make use of them. They are intended for witchers only, you don't know what may happen to a human who gets the elixirs. Well, maybe now know you know, they becomes GM's army stuff

I hope you also didn't miss all the story about Alvin and the "ambiguity" about his identity. About this, I'm sending to another very interesting thread you can read here.

 

[nnecron]

The answer to this question is mostly: which path did you choose? Coz it's better you play all three to have a full overveiw of the situation.

Remember that that vision, it's just "his vision" as much the Ithlinne prophecy, it's just a prophecy. So it might be come true one day, or it might not.

You should also know that Triss, in Foltest Castle, says that the Grand Master may be a source itself. A Source is a person with magical powers sometimes uncontrolled. Alvin is a source himself. Triss says that those powers should be contained, educated and possibly directed in the best way to avoid a source loses the control and become as mad as a hatter. It happened in the past.
So the story suggests that the Grand Master has not been educated to control his powers and on the contrary he is grown under the strict fanatic doctrine of the Eternal Fire. It is possibile that he lost the control of his own visions, had this terrible dreams and started to believe that it might be the future. Add all those distorted ideas who drawn from the cult, and make the maths yourself

Aside this, it's not only a matter of making an army to save humanity: it's a matter of mutating humans by his own will, just to fulfill his own personal plan. Don't you find all those mutants a lil creepy and unfriendly? Well I wouldn't like to be a brainless puppet in the hand of a visionary.

However, I don't think that Geralt's primary intention is to save the world or something. Witchers are neutral so Geralt's goal is to retrieve the stolen secrets, coz just like Vesemir said, they are "secrets" coz it is not good that normal not-trained-to-be-witcher people make use of them. They are intended for witchers only, you don't know what may happen to a human who gets the elixirs. Well, maybe now know you know, they becomes GM's army stuff

I hope you also didn't miss all the story about Alvin and the "ambiguity" about his identity. About this, I'm sending to another very interesting thread you can read here.

That Alvin=Grand Master part really adds to one of story's surprising twists, and I am pleasant to hear that. But what ultimately boils down is the fact that the Grand Master is just a man who has been driven mad by his own power. The man is just a mad man, which is pretty common place in the world of fiction, and I kind of expected more from him. I was expecting him to be a man with power who is willing to sacrifice everything in the name of humanity and their survival. I don't know if his personality and goals change depending on how Gerald treats Alvin, but so far Grand Master may fit into a list of stereotypical villains. I'm not saying he is uninteresting, don't get me wrong. I do think the twist is pleasantly surprising and awesome, and I can imagine anyone can become mad if he sees a doomed future and nightmares based around it. But the thing is I was expecting to learn a moral lesson from interacting with the man. I know there isn't much wriggle room since the protagonist is a Witcher, he is neutral, but because this is a choose-your-own-adventure type of RPG, I was expecting more than this.

 

[Garrison72]

I agree with SC. The bottom line is the Grand Master is a source who has been twisted by a cult.

 

[dragonbird]

Also agreeing with SC. The Grand Master may say that he's trying to save humanity, he may even believe it himself, but he's really just another megalomanic - wanting to rule the world and thinking that he has the right and the power to do so. The twist and the depth in the game is in the Alvin connection, not in the GM's motives.

The moral is maybe "Having visions doesn't make you a god", and the moral of the game, if there is one, is probably in the Herd of Pigs speech, not in anything that the GM says or does. "The biggest evil is moral relativity".

 

[GuyNwah]

I'm not sure I agree. Prophecy is not forecasting or fortune-telling. A prophecy is the words of a god, and a prophet is one who speaks for a god. Prophecies of the future don't "may or may not come true"; either they are a certainty, or they are a counterfeit. Although most so-called prophecies are false, there is no reason to believe that Ithlinne's Prophecy is among the counterfeit.

If what is probable is in fact so: that Jacques is Alvin, and Alvin/Jacques is a Source, then he has been bearing that prophecy and its tremendous burden since he was a small boy. He has spent his entire conscious life in mind of this dreadful end time that will come to pass. We don't know how he became focused on his desperately mad plan for sparing humankind, but I agree that his exposure to the teachings of the Order (perhaps, after his escape from Murky Waters, he was raised by the Order; we don't know) is its most likely foundation.

Grand Master Jacques de Aldersberg is not any conventional villain of cheap storytelling. He is a man driven to madness by his knowledge of what is certainly to come and to desperate measures by his inability to rally a human force sufficient to forestall or at least evade it. While he must be executed as a monstrous criminal and a clear and present danger so long as he were to live, we must do so with pity and with thoughtful reflection on where we ourselves would have walked in his shoes.

 

[dragonbird]

There's a fine line between being a Prophet and a madman with visions, even if those visions are true.

I think the one flaw in Jacques' vision, something that he seems to fail to consider and that turns him from a prophet to a madman, is the timescale. Jacques seems to think that the Ice is an imminent threat, and that he needs to act NOW to do something about it.

But the "humans" in his vision have mutated out of all recognition, which either means that it's the far distant future, or that they have mutated because of an external influence, just like the Witcher and the GM's mutants. Could his own experiments be the cause of this mutation? (Sorry, I can't remember what the mutated humans are called, it's been a while. The ones that have regressed into cavemen)

That's where his isolation comes into play as a factor. If he'd been in a position to talk about his vision with learned people, he may have become a prophet instead of just a madman.

So on Destiny, either the Prophecy was self-fulfilling, or Geralt's intervention ensured that events still proceed according to The Grand Plan, regardless of the GM's attempt to thwart it. Another message?

 

[secondchildren]

Agree with dragonbird.

You're right Guy N'wah, I think I mispelled myself what I meant: a prophecy is mainly a matter of "interpretation". For example, I've never interpreted that "age of ice and axe" as the return of humakind to a status of primitivity, and with the upcoming of the ice age. I think that that vision where you are taken in by the GM in the Epilogue, it's in fact his own dream, or the way he sees the future. The GM's picture of the Ithlinne prophecy.

And eventually there are the Nostradamus prophecies, which I hardly consider "the words of gods" (but this is another story )

@nnecron
remember only that Alvin=GM is just a fan speculation. The game never tells the truth about it and it's intended to never tell. They supposed you have to do your own conclusion.

 

[GuyNwah]

I took it that the Skullheads were the remnant of humanity that did not escape to the South. They were known from the fossil record, and atavism (though a disreputable and cruelly applied concept in "social Darwinism") could proceed rapidly under the right conditions.

And maybe I overlooked some key dialogue, but I don't think it was within the GM's aims to lead a wholly mutant band of survivors south. The mutants and Greater Brothers were to be his fighting force; but he recognized they were not capable of leadership or likely of acceptance. That's why he needed Geralt and tried to recruit him all the way to the end.

We often neglect the effect of climate on human history. Ithlinne's Prophecy is, though written much larger, not different in kind from what actually happened in northern Europe in the early 14th Century: persistent foul weather caused a series of famines, most notably in 1315-1317, that killed as much as one-third of the population and created extensive social chaos.

I think dragonbird's closing question makes an important point. While Geralt did stop the GM's present crimes against humanity, did he (in so doing) further the events of the Prophecy?

 

[dragonbird]

I took it that the Skullheads were the remnant of humanity that did not escape to the South. They were known from the fossil record, and atavism (though a disreputable and cruelly applied concept in "social Darwinism") could proceed rapidly under the right conditions.

I think I have problems accepting atavism as an explanation for mutation on such a large scale, unless there was a direct outside influence (as in Intelligent Design, not just Natural Selection).

Are there known examples in the real world for this kind of natural rapid mutation, in any species? I think that we'd need to be looking at it happening over no more than 5 generations, which would be the equivalent to around 100 years for humans, to give any validation to the GM's urgency.

Skullheads. Thanks. That had been annoying me.

 

[secondchildren]

I think dragonbird's closing question makes an important point. While Geralt did stop the GM's present crimes against humanity, did he (in so doing) further the events of the Prophecy?

Possibly, I thought the same when playing it. But I concluded that it's not a witcher concern. Witchers are meant to protect humans (perhaps protect from themselves too). I think the Devs put another "grey shadow" in that part of the story, underlining that you won't never ever do good or bad in Witcher\Sapkowsky world: there are only choices and consequences. You must do what you think it's good, even if sometimes it has unpredictable results. This is a keen thing that I've always appreciated in this game: are you sure you're doing good saving Abigail? What is the consequence of not killing Adda (play Medical Problems and you'll see what I mean)? What does it mean siding with the Scoia'tael or the Order, what is going to happen if one of two the wins the war? and so on and on.

Spoiler

I've also smell this meaning at the end of TW2, the final scene with the ladybug etc. You sided with Roche or Iorveth, you probably spare Letho, you had your part in the future political events of the Northern Kingdoms, but.... eventually, what is a witcher concern?

Sorry, not to meant to drag the conversation to the other game.

 

[dragonbird]

Spoiler tags, SC - OP may not have played second game

 

[secondchildren]

Spoiler tags, SC - OP may not have played second game

Thanks, my fault.

 

[Garrison72]

I'm not sure I agree. Prophecy is not forecasting or fortune-telling. A prophecy is the words of a god, and a prophet is one who speaks for a god. Prophecies of the future don't "may or may not come true"; either they are a certainty, or they are a counterfeit. Although most so-called prophecies are false, there is no reason to believe that Ithlinne's Prophecy is among the counterfeit.

If what is probable is in fact so: that Jacques is Alvin, and Alvin/Jacques is a Source, then he has been bearing that prophecy and its tremendous burden since he was a small boy. He has spent his entire conscious life in mind of this dreadful end time that will come to pass. We don't know how he became focused on his desperately mad plan for sparing humankind, but I agree that his exposure to the teachings of the Order (perhaps, after his escape from Murky Waters, he was raised by the Order; we don't know) is its most likely foundation.

Grand Master Jacques de Aldersberg is not any conventional villain of cheap storytelling. He is a man driven to madness by his knowledge of what is certainly to come and to desperate measures by his inability to rally a human force sufficient to forestall or at least evade it. While he must be executed as a monstrous criminal and a clear and present danger so long as he were to live, we must do so with pity and with thoughtful reflection on where we ourselves would have walked in his shoes.

This is insightful Guy. It underscores the complexity of TW1, and why there can be numerous interpretations of it. There is no other game quite like The Witcher.

My own feeling is both Witcher games are withering assaults on religion/politics in general, especially TW1. I know this is dangerous territory and I wont go into it for respect of the mods.

 

[dragonbird]

This is insightful Guy. It underscores the complexity of TW1, and why there can be numerous interpretations of it. There is no other game quite like The Witcher.

My own feeling is both Witcher games are withering assaults on religion/politics in general, especially TW1. I know this is dangerous territory and I wont go into it for respect of the mods.

I'm not sure that I agree. I think they're withering assaults on Moral Relativity, and it's just that it's fairly easy to apply that to politics and religion. (Speaking only of The Witcher's World of course, with absolutely NO parallel in our own )

Too many modern games force you into "It's OK to do evil for the greater good". The fact that the Witcher games don't do this is their single biggest strength, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[GuyNwah]

I think I have problems accepting atavism as an explanation for mutation on such a large scale, unless there was a direct outside influence (as in Intelligent Design, not just Natural Selection).

Are there known examples in the real world for this kind of natural rapid mutation, in any species? I think that we'd need to be looking at it happening over no more than 5 generations, which would be the equivalent to around 100 years for humans, to give any validation to the GM's urgency.

Skullheads. Thanks. That had been annoying me.

Well, the old "Social Darwinists" thought it could take place within a generation. But they have been discredited thoroughly enough that it could only happen as a literary device.

But we are looking at a world that doesn't mirror the real-life "descent of man" and may obey different laws of genetics and evolution. It could also be that not all the events of the GM's dream world are of the same time, and that the re-emergence of the Skullheads occurred much later than the coming of the ice and the time of contempt.

Too many modern games force you into "It's OK to do evil for the greater good". The fact that the Witcher games don't do this is their single biggest strength, as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't mean to justify or excuse the Grand Master's actions at all, but rather to suggest that they should be seen as the desperate acts of a tormented mind, not the megalomania of a stock villain. And the other side of the moral relativity coin is that you cannot be sure of the outcome of choosing the lesser evil. All these things are what make TW1 rise above the "light side/dark side" and "warrior/mage/rogue" conventions of bog-standard RPGs.

 

[dragonbird]

Well, the old "Social Darwinists" thought it could take place within a generation. But they have been discredited thoroughly enough that it could only happen as a literary device.

But we are looking at a world that doesn't mirror the real-life "descent of man" and may obey different laws of genetics and evolution. It could also be that not all the events of the GM's dream world are of the same time, and that the re-emergence of the Skullheads occurred much later than the coming of the ice and the time of contempt.

To dispute possible differences between their world and ours, I need to go to the second game, so spoiler coming up:

Spoiler

Triss's explanation of genetics and mutation to Geralt at the kayran site, when she discovers that the kayran is a mutant. She seems to have an understanding of it, and it fits our world

so I think that accelerated mutation, or atavism, would only happen if there was an external influence, such as magic or the use of the Witchers' Secrets. But we may just need to differ on this.

I didn't mean to justify or excuse the Grand Master's actions at all, but rather to suggest that they should be seen as the desperate acts of a tormented mind, not the megalomania of a stock villain. And the other side of the moral relativity coin is that you cannot be sure of the outcome of choosing the lesser evil. All these things are what make TW1 rise above the "light side/dark side" and "warrior/mage/rogue" conventions of bog-standard RPGs.

I intended "megalomania" as a type of madness rather than evil, so no arguments there. I agree with your view.