#bear school

Geralt of Rivia, the Wolf School.

I think some of the Cats may have discovered that weighted blankets - or, to be more precise, Bears - work marvelously for calming overstimulation.

The Bears are a little baffled by having Cats show up in their common room and flop down on the hearth rug, but it's no hardship to sprawl out and doze for a while on top of a slowly relaxing Cat.

an idea came to me today: witcher!könig

more below the cut

Finally finished my telling of the events covered in the Bear School Scavenger Hunt, which was supposed to be a Gerd/Torgeir the Red meet-cute for the Save a Witcher fandom bingo at least two years ago but got a little out of hand and became about 37k words of self-indulgent melancholy instead, should anybody wish to read that!

the only exception is when a femme leaning/femme inclined Bear finds a kid. this activates the Mama Bear Instinct. the mages did not take into account the Mama Bear Instinct within the mutagens and how it would effect AFAB-trainees, and so can do nothing when a femme/parentally inclined Witcher shows up at the Bear Keep with a child acquired through perhaps dubious means due to a sincere desire to nurture and protect a small Cub.

the Bear School does not get Child Surprises. they inflict Mother Surprises onto unsuspecting orphans or wayward runaways throughout the continent. temples of Melitele have learned not to let Bears in because they have absconded with their youngest acolytes before and trying to get them back is to Literally Fight A Mother Bear For Her Cub and that just results in so much blood shed. at least the child is among the most fiercely protected on the continent.

Bears do not instinctually want to steal away children. they are still people in full control of their faculties. but the urge to protect a defenseless, whimpering little thing that hides behind them when faced by a monster is very real, tapping into their mutagenic beastly hindbrain such that there can be no other course.

you are a Mother now, your Cub is your Everything, and you are Death to whatever comes between you.

so Bears unfortunately do have a reputation, more so than other Witchers, of being child stealers. nevermind that the children are almost always orphans; infant bastards sacrificed to the Ladies of the Wood, starving striplings abandoned at crossroads by dirt poor parents with other mouths to feed, hollow-eyed shadows with rumbling bellies standing by market stalls loaded with food they will never have.

Bears can barely stand each other enough to hold their school together. they were the first to leave the Order of Witchers because they didn’t care to follow along with the rest. they simply don't care what humans think of them or how other Witchers feel about the Bear School. 

Mother Bears raise Cubs. that's just a fact every one, Bear or not, has to live with after the emergence of their School.

during winter in the Bear Keep, the masc/male Bears mostly Hiberate the cold season away. starting at the autumn harvests, they stock up on food for the others as duty demands and do whatever chores need doing and then crawl into their beds all at once by some unspoken signal and fall asleep until spring, unless disturbed (say by human raiders). Mothers don’t need them, don’t hold expectations, and don’t appreciate disruption of their routines.

regardless, there are not many hibernating Bears in residence. the Bear School has one of the highest rates of desertion of all the Schools. theirs are some of the most brutal trials, nearly unchanged since the inception of Witchers, so loyalty is not exactly one of their strong suits.

when its time for the trials, most Mothers try and drive their Cubs away instead. they have not given their time and affection to this little human in the hopes of putting them through mutations that will most likely kill them regardless. some Cubs do chose to attempt the trials against their Mother's advice, and those who do so and live find the limit of their mutagenic-maternal affection.

Cubs who refuse the Trials do not trigger the violent response to re-introduction of a post-Trials Cub to their Mother. they get to lead strange-but-human lives as a Bear's Child long after they are fully grown.

when Haern Caduch is sacked, the Bears just leave. there is no grand battle to defend their school.

Mother Bears den up with their Cubs wherever they wind up and the Path becomes an after thought which is why its assumed most of them died.