The Witcher 4 has officially been revealed through a new trailer, and you might have noticed something different about Ciri – she’s now a fully-fledged witcher with cat eyes and the ability to take the elixirs.
Traditionally, young boys become witchers by undergoing the Trial of the Grasses – a brutal alchemical transformation that kills three out of ten boys. The survivors become mutants that are stronger, faster, can see better in the dark, live longer, and can survive taking the potions that give them temporary special abilities.
Despite being trained as a witcher, Ciri never went through the Trial of Grasses. At least, she didn’t until the events preceding The Witcher 4. But despite all the hype, there’s backlash of course, with many claiming that it’s physically impossible for the Trial of the Grasses to work on women.
There isn’t any evidence to back up this claim, so here’s what’s actually said about it in the books.
Can women become witchers?
There’s nothing to say that a woman can’t become a witcher. It’s briefly discussed in the first book of the saga, Blood of Elves, but they don’t directly touch on whether a girl can survive the Trial of Grasses.
At this point in the books, they can’t create any more witchers because they don’t know how to. The sack of Kaer Morhen killed any witcher or sorcerer who knew how to create it, they also lost some of their special ingredients. Vesemir is the only witcher from that time still alive and he was a fencing instructor, so he had no idea how to create it.
When Triss arrives at Kaer Morhen, she finds the witchers have been feeding Ciri special mushrooms to make her fitter and stronger than a normal teenager. The sorceress objects, worrying about what the witcher’s mushrooms are doing to harm her hormonal development and “ruthlessly deprive her of her womanly … attributes.”
Triss advises they moderate her use of these accelerants but notes that they’ve not done any lasting harm and she’s “developing healthily and normally.”
She also worries that they want her to attempt the Trial of the Grasses on Ciri, but her objection isn’t that she’s a girl, it’s that they don’t know how to do it and she knows the mortality rate.
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There haven’t been any female witchers until Ciri in The Witcher 4 but there’s nothing to say it’s physically impossible, just that it has never been attempted as witchers only take in young boys. There’s also no mention of an age cap for doing the trial, just that boys start training for it young.
If you’re having a look around, safely ignore any mention of ‘witcheresses’ like Zhira of Zerrikania as they’re purely fan creations.
How did Ciri become a witcher?
The short truth is, we don’t know how Ciri became a witcher by the time of the fourth game. She’s gone through the Trial of Grasses and probably had a sorcerer help her, but we don’t know how that came to be.
The witchers did manage to put Uma through the Trial of the Grasses in The Witcher 3 so perhaps Ciri returns to Kaer Morhen to change. However, Ciri is wearing a new medallion in the trailer that looks like a Lynx, so perhaps this new school has helped her become a full-fledged witcher.
As confirmed in an interview with IGN, we’ll find out how she became a witcher during the game. “It’s just a tease showing something, but you don’t know where you will experience it and how in the game. I think it’s a huge change and I hope people did not expect it,” said executive producer Małgorzata Mitręga.
The repercussions of Ciri going through the Trial of the Grasses are also unclear, so we’ll likely have to wait until the game releases to better understand how it has affected her. But with all the magic in the world, the ability to adjust the recipe, and Ciri’s elder blood, there’s no reason why she couldn’t survive the Trial of the Grasses and become a witcher.
In the meantime, you can also check out the Geralt cameo you might’ve missed, as well as how the switch to Unreal Engine 5 will impact the game.
