So, I go to Kaer Morhen once a year with my Witcher every Winter. And every year, there is the same Master of the Keep, ready to give the same speech. His name is Vesemir. Go ahead and laugh. No one knows exactly how old Vesemir is, but it is possible that he is older than the very stones of Kaer Morhen. He was born in the 11th century and was somewhat of an expert on dead children, having been the one to create the mass grave behind the school, and...oh, gee. Very sorry everyone. did that make you uncomfortable?
Well, guess what? He’s not even here. So try being twenty years old and you’re sitting five feet away from him. He’s still got blood on his shoes. And he’s looking at you in the eye to tell you for the first time in your very short life that you are staying in a place built on the corpses of children. And guess what? He buried them.
Vesemir was at the Keep every year. By the way, Vesemir wore full leather armor. This is a centuries old man with a leather codpiece and two swords strapped to his fucking back. Two years in a row, he wore a beret with pheasant feathers on it. Said it was Eskel’s. None of that matters, but it’s important to me that you know that. He did not look like a harmless old man who stayed in a castle year-round.
He looked like he should be stalking the streets of Temeria making a living in murder. He was the scariest goddamn person I ever saw in my entire life. He was a man most acquainted with misery. He could look at a child and guess the size of a hole he would need to dig for their grave.
So Vesemir would call all the Wolf Witchers together every year to remind them all about the violent world waiting for them outside the Kaer Morhen, and that program was called Street Smarts! I was lucky enough to tag along simply by being there. And the things I heard haunt me to this day.
“Time for Street Smarts with Vesemir. Shut up! You’re all gonna die. Street Smarts!” That was the general tone. He would give Eskel, Lambert, Coën, and Geralt tips to deal with humans.
I will share some of the tips with you this evening.
“Okay, tip number one. Street Smarts! Let’s say a guy pulls a knife on you to mug you.” You remember the scourge of people lining up to mug fully-armed witchers? You know how a mugger thinks. “Man, I need cash right now. Hey, maybe that six foot tall man with two scary swords and golden eyes that’s built like a brick shithouse would be a good target.”
“Let’s say a guy pulls a knife on you to mug you. What do you do? Well, you can’t kill the guy. Humans hate it when you kill them. So you have to distract them. You get yourselves some coins. When they guy flashes a blade, you go, ‘You want my money, go get it!’ Then you throw the coins and run the other direction.”
I leaned over to Geralt and told him “This is the real reason why I wrote Toss a Coin to your Witcher. So you have enough Coins to throw at random muggers to distract them”
And then Geralt punched me.
“Tip number two. Street Smarts! Let’s say a mage throws you through a portal. Don’t panic. Once you get your bearings…try and seduce the mage. They are very suspectible to seduction. If seduction doesn’t work, try destruction.”
As I am listening to this talk, which I would like to remind you happens every year, a lot of things begin to make sense about Geralt of Rivia.
Now, Vesemir turns to me. He looks me in the eyes and says, “Now this one is for you, bard. Traveling with a Witcher is something else and you have to be prepared. I used to tell the others this one when they were younger.”
“Tip number three. Street Smarts! You bard have no upper body strength.”
And I was like, “I know but, hey.”
“If some monster grabs you, you can’t fight it with fists. What are you going to do against a griffin, scream? So here’s what you do. You fall down on your back and you kick upward at him. That’ll throw him off his rhythm.” That was a big thing with Vesemir, throwing monsters off their rhythm. “They are not gonna know how to fight back with two shiny leather boots coming at them.” “If all bards had steel-toed leather boots, many more would still be alive today. Street Smarts!”
The assumption that many bards got killed by various monsters was a terrirfying thing to hear. Yeah, he was not a “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” kind of guy. He was more like, “Brush your teeth. Now, boom, orange juice. That’s life.” Vesemir, he didn’t want his witchers to die at the hands of a monster. He wanted us all to almost die and then fight the monster off using weird, psych-out, back-room Kaer Morhen violence.
Vesemir told me things that haunt me to this day. He goes, “Okay, when you get attacked…” Not if, when. “Okay, so when you get attacked, the place where the monster grabs ya, in the biz we call that the primary location. Okay. Your odds of coming back alive from the primary location, about 60%. But if you are taken to a secondary location, your odds of coming back alive are slim to none.” I have been traveling with Geralt for almost twenty years and I am still terrified of secondary locations. If I’m at a place, I never want to go to another place. I’ll be at a tavern and someone’ll be like, “You want to come to my place after? We can keep this party going in the bedroom.” I’m like, “Nah. You’re not getting me to no secondary location.”
Street Smarts! Stay alert out there. I thought I was going to be murdered every second I was on the path with Geralt. I can only imagine what it was like for him to hear this shit as a kid. I once had someone ask me what I planned to do in retirement. I shrugged and said, “Honestly I didn’t think I would make it this long.”
Jaskier as John Mulaney Part 6/?
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