Changes: Witch hunts

Revision as of 15:36, 21 July 2018

You'll make a mistake one day. One day, one of you will make a mistake. Your vainglory, arrogance and hubris will be your undoing. And your scheming. Your immorality. The baseness and perversion you give yourselves unto, in which you live. It will come to light. The stench of your sins will spread when you make a mistake. Such a moment has to come.

And even if you don't make a mistake, an opportunity will arise to blame you for something. Some misfortune, some disaster, some pestilence, perhaps a plague or an epidemic, will fall on humanity... Then your guilt will descend on you. You will not be blamed for having been unable to prevent the plague, but for being unable to remove its effects. You shall be to blame for everything.

And then fires will be lit under stakes.

Willemer, The Lady of the Lake, pg. 446

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The witch hunts were a series of bloody events lasting from 1272 to 1276 during which a number of sorcerers and sorceresses, including the Lodge and other magic organizations, as well as other allegedly "objectionable" mages, were killed. Most victims were impaled, burned at the stake^[1] or tortured to death during the interrogations. This was accompanied by the destruction of sorceresses' images, carried out very diligently and thoroughly within Nilfgaardian Empire.^[2] In Northern Kingdoms, the hunts went hand in with nonhuman persecutions and, if they managed to catch any, fanatical doppler hunt.^[3]

According to the Encyclopaedia Maxima Mundi, Nilfgaardian tome full of propaganda, the hunts started by a passage from the Ithlinne's Prophecy about The Destroyer being wrongly interpreted.^[1] However, the truth is that they were provoked by zealous clergy with Archpriest Willemer, who purposefully incited hate towards magic, in charge.^[2] Led by Hierarch Cyrus Engelkind Hemmelfart, the Church of the Eternal Fire in Novigrad wasted no time. At first, it sent the Order of the Flaming Rose but later formed the witch hunters. Many rulers of the time like Emhyr var Emreis and Radovid V were not fond of mages and did nothing to stop the hunts, occasionally using them for their goals instead.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, this period and the Northern Wars were labelled as a Dark Age by the academies. The Lodge was rehabilitated, remembered as "the Great Lodge", and its deceased members elevated into sainthood and martyrdom.^[2]