New Compendium for the Itinerant Witcher, 1278.
Various schools for the Witchers have fallen, and with them their libraries, buried in snow, or mud, or reduced to ash. Yet the realm of the arcane continues to evolve in response to human interference. As man transforms the land, its remaining relict dwellers and stewards transform in kind. The following is an addendum to the standard Witcher’s compendium of monsters and relicts, should it yet exist.
It was once understood that dopplers were forced into humanoid civilization by virtue of that civilization being built on top of them. Curious, empathetic, and innocuous creatures that they are, the doppler was attracted to humanoid life, humanoid comforts, and above all, the humanoid consciousness. (This is, after all, something they never needed, surviving as they had in wolf packs and as bears since they crawled from the Continent’s primordial mud). They became, it can be assumed, reticent to give up a consciousness— emotion, love, sapience, self-awareness. In the end, this, coupled with human superstition and hatred, was the downfall of most of the species. Not even a trophy for a knight’s wall remains when a Doppler is boiled in silver. It was previously thought that hot cauldrons in city squares surrounded by angry mobs would be the end of the species.
A curious new phenomenon has been observed, however. Some dopplers are returning to the wilderness, away from human settlement. They choose to keep the humanoid consciousness. What becomes of it after their reimmersion, however, is a matter of debate or yet to be observed. Is it lost the more time they spend as flora and fauna? Or is it transformed? Does it give them more control over shapeshifting as an act of self preservation— once instinctual, now creative?
At least one has become a problem for the superstitious settlers of Velen returning to their destroyed homesteads after the Northern Wars. They say it is a witch, a fiend, a shriek, a spirit, a swamp hag. A minor nature god. Of course, any Witcher with a mind would tell them the truth. It appears in the guise of a small woman, a brown bear, a deer, and other monsters. Some have sought it out for folk magic, to meet their natural demise at the bottom of a cliff or face down in a marsh. Any Witcher that takes a contract for this creature in Velen should take extreme caution. No one yet knows what it is capable of. No one knows if dopplers like this one are the same benevolent fools as have been recorded before. Extra care should be taken to make sure one’s perceptions of the environment are real.
Why has it killed? What does it want with humans?
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