#mutagens

Back in the earliest days, after the schools split, the mages of the wolf school were constantly experimenting with how different mutagen, trial, and spell combinations affected a witcher's mutations, abilities, and survival rate.

Eventually the mages decided to keep a few bases to work from, a few control subjects, so they could have an idea of what changes did what.

These 'bases' being the earliest successful Wolf Witchers. The few that lived through the primordial undiluted Lets-See-How-This-Kills-Them trials.

Building from these bases lead to lineages or 'lines' of wolf witchers that show similarities in their mutations.

For Example: One line is physically bigger but is anaemic, another has more chaos energy but tires quickly, one has the most enhanced sense of smell but hearing little better than a human's, and another has a sixth sense for danger that borders on prophetic but gets crippling migraines.

The young trainees aren't told whose lines they're from, but it quickly becomes obvious as their trials progress.

The Witchers that were the bases weren't told what the mages were doing either, but they were quick to catch on when trainees started coming off their slabs with Mihail's lurid orange eyes, or Jakub's long fanged lisp, or Halamut's tall twitching ears.

The ones that could bear it took it upon themselves to be mentors. Teaching the pups their tricks for managing the side effects of their mutations, and banding together to find new ones when whatever the mages twisted became more than the pups could cope with.

A few became bitter and resentful. Harassing and intimidating these false unwanted copies of themselves, going out of their way to make them suffer in any small way they could.

Others took to avoiding all pups of their line. Some out of guilt and some for simple disinterest.

It became tradition that if a witcher brings a child in from the path they're to be made of the same line.

geralt’s second round of mutations gave him Such Big Fangs he struggles to talk. his teeth meeting is a guillotine. he straight up bites entire chunks out of things, no touchy. geralt wears a glamour tied to his medallion out on the Path to disguise his mouth because without it making his mouth look typically human, he’s constantly fully baring his fangs to talk with humans and they Do Not Like That. but when he is comfortable he actually won’t bother enunciating more than necessary and has a THICK Lisp. his brothers and vesemir have learned to understand him, and while it takes jaskier a while once he’s in on it, he does get there too. (he also takes over negotiating for geralt’s compensation as much as he can. and they practice kissing. a lot. it’s gross and clumsy and very enthusiastic)

eskel has a slight underbite that is exaggerated by his lower canines sticking out of his mouth just enough to be a problem. unlike geralt, eskel doesn’t bother with a glamour and he’s learned to talk pretty clearly besides so he doesn’t see a point. much to his delightconsternation, this is very attractive to female monsters (succubi and vampires and sirens) and they’re constantly flirting with him. eskel is infamous in certain circles in novigrad, and every couple of winters he doesn’t make it to kaer morhen before the mountain pass closes for... reasons.

lambert has the most human-like teeth except for two teeth on the upper left side of his mouth--his only “proper fangs“. they grow close together, giving the impression of one big fang that digs into his lower lip. he’s developed a tick where he runs his tongue over them when he’s cheating at gwent or otherwise nervous. no one has told him and he has never won a game against his brothers since they realized this decades ago, much to his frustration. he’s self-concious about his lack of “grown witcher” teeth and gets testy whenever someone tries to talk to him about it. (vesemir believes the trauma of the sacking of kaer morhen stunted his full development as he was fresh out of the grasses at that time. this is supported by the fact that he’s the shortest and the smallest of the remaining wolves. thus lambert is stuck with “baby” witcher teeth for the most part). a few times early in their acquaintanceship, aiden would stick grapes on the longest tooth while lambert was asleep just to see if he’d notice, and he ate them without waking.

Written for @redlightofdawn​ for @thewitchersecretsanta​. Sorry it’s a little late, but I hope you like it anyways!

Fandom: The Witcher Pairing: Geralt/Jaskier 
Words: 5,937 
Rating: Teen 
Content Notes: Minor witcher racism

Summary: Five times Jaskier learned about one of Geralt's non-human behaviours, plus one time Geralt was all too human.

aka

The development of Geralt and Jaskier's relationship over the years, blatantly ignoring most events from canon.

The first time Jaskier came back to camp from a piss to see Geralt sitting by the fire, he nearly shrieked in surprise. Geralt was sitting across the fire from where Jaskier had disappeared to, and when he looked up at the noise Jaskier made approaching his eyes caught the light and reflected it like a cat's. It made sense, Jaskier supposed, since Geralt's eyes were overall very catlike, what with the golden yellow color and the slitted pupils.

He calmed himself down and continued his path toward the log he'd been sitting on next to Geralt. Geralt gave him a strange look as he sat down, but Jaskier did his best to pay it no mind. Geralt was constantly giving him looks like he didn't know what sort of peculiar creature Jaskier was -- they'd only been travelling together for a couple of days, but Jaskier was already very familiar with most people's reactions of fear or disgust when faced with Geralt even at his most non-threatening. Jaskier didn't hold it against Geralt that he would be suspicious of Jaskier acting so differently than any other human he encountered.

"So, the eyes," Jaskier said, breaking the silence, "can you see in the dark?"

Geralt gave Jaskier another one of those side-long looks before refocusing on his hands, where he was darning a sock that seemed more patch than original material. "Better than you," he grunted.

"How much better?" Jaskier pressed, leaning a little closer.

Geralt shrugged and leaned a little farther away from Jaskier. "Been a long time since I was human."

"Well how much light do you really need to darn that sock?"

Geralt hummed and furrowed his brow. "Could do it on a half moon with a clear night by looking. Do it by feel otherwise."

Jaskier pulled out his notebook and made sure to scribble down that fascinating little factoid. Probably wouldn't make it into a song on it's own, but could be useful for setting the scene at some point.

Geralt watched him distrustfully and scooted a little farther down the log.

-- an alteration of the nucleotide sequence of a gene

-- caused by      -- errors in DNA replication      -- mutagens           -- UV           -- chemicals

-- a single gene is affected

-- influence is comparatively low

-- can cause      -- sickle cell anemia      -- hemophilia      -- cystic fibrosis      -- Huntington syndrome      -- Tay-Sachs disease      -- cancers

Hello! Yes, in fact there is a whole class of mutagenic materials call teratogens that cause mutations in embryos or fetuses without necessarily affecting the mother. The most commonly known example is alcohol, which can cause Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and does affect the expression of some genes during development.