CD Projekt Red surprisingly announced a new series part for their Witcher series at this year’s GDC. There is still little information about The Witcher: A New Saga begins. Just a teaser image with a medallion in the snow, but it’s already causing a lot of conversation on the internet.
We initially interpreted the animal in the teaser as a cat, which could have indicated Ciri in the lead role. CD Projekt Red’s Global Community Director, Marcin Momot, tweeted a “nod” to support the theory that the medallion is a lynx, not a cat (yes, lynxes are cats too, you get the idea is):
link to Twitter content
The witcher schools and the lynx medallion
Now, fans of the Witcher games and books may notice that we don’t even know about the school of witchcraft. And in fact, this school is not part of the official canon of the Witcher series.
In the books themselves only three schools are mentioned: wolf, griffin and cat. It is these three medallions that Ciri takes from the bounty hunter Leo Bonhart. She gives the first to Geralt and the second to Yennefer. She’s keeping the cat medallion for herself. Hence our original theory that she could be the lead in the latest installment.
The Witcher games brought additional witcher schools: viper, bear and manticore. So it’s entirely conceivable that CDPR will deviate further from the books for their latest Witcher installment and introduce a new witcher school. But the school of the lynx is not entirely unknown. It’s based on a fanfiction
In the podcast, Michael Graf and Leya from MeinMMO discuss why The Witcher 4 has already been announced with so few details:
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What could lynx school mean for the next Witcher game?
According to fan fiction, the school of the lynx was founded after the events of The Witcher 3, more precisely after the annihilation of the school of wolves, which also included Geralt and his foster daughter Ciri.
Its founders include the witcher Lambert and his partner, the sorceress Keira Metz. The lynx school also emerged from the former cat school and is intended to cleanse the bad reputation of the assassin sorcerers again through new reforms.
Warning: the following paragraph contains spoilers
Both Lambert and Keira can die in The Witcher 3. So if CD Projekt Red is actually based on the school of the lynx fanfiction, that could also provide a first clue to the canonical ending in which the two survive.
Besides, it could already say something about the fate of Ciri. In The Witcher 3 we can get two good endings. In one scenario, Ciri becomes the Empress of Nilfgaard, but in the other scenario, she goes her own way and becomes a witch. There’s a good chance she’ll join the founding of a new witch school, so she’s still a possible protagonist for The Witcher: A New Saga Begins. But of course we cannot rule out that we will be dealing with a completely new character in the new part of the series, which we have not known from books or games so far.
What do you think of this fan theory? Do you think CD Projekt Red could use a fanfiction as inspiration for the new Witcher part? Who would you like to see in the lead role? Let us know in the comments!