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The Trials are prescribed as thus:
Firstly, once the young novice has been determined to be worthy of the trial they are to take a set amount of the mosses and mushrooms. This is known thusly as “The Choice” among the Witchers.
This concoction is prepared by the Exalted Mages in recipes and methods known only to them and their great mysteries.
This is more than expected to produce mild gastrointestinal distress and with great certainty cause the most mild hallucinations of the visual and auditory variety. These hallucinations should only cause trifling distractions during training.
The purpose of these mosses and mushrooms are thus; to prepare the novice’s body to receive the variety of herbs and mosses known by the Exalted Mages as the “Grasses”. To give the Grasses, as they are known, to the unprepared body proves most unwise as it seems to put recipients into a state of shock few recover from.
Rarely, it is discovered that a novice’s body rejects the concoction or otherwise has a most unfortunate reaction. These rejects are then returned to the Witchers’ Wives to do with as they wish. The invalids then serve what meager purpose they can in support of their Witcher brethren.
After a week of this new diet the novice is then properly prepared to continue onto the next of the trials: The Grasses
It is thus that transforms a novice into an initiate. This concoction has strength far greater than any before it. These alter the initiate in the most fundamental matters in regards to their physicality.
Firstly the bone marrow is transformed to gift the initiate with a resistance to poisons and the toxicity that their given duties require of them.
Secondly they acquire eyes akin to those of a cat or other feline species bestowing the ability to see in the dim and track their prey as is required.
A rather mitigating issue with the Grasses is their penchant to produce vomiting, gastrointestinal distress, fits of seizures, fevers, and other symptoms that oftentimes result in death.
Death occurs at a rate of four out of every ten.
Similarly, it is common for the symptoms to addle the brain and produce an initiate whose mind is incomplete and incapable of carrying out their duties. This may range from those too simple to speak to those that are in a permanent stupor. It is also regular to witness emotional instability or a complete lack of impulse control.
In the physical realm the Grasses may ruin their ability to control their limbs, bodily processes, or incur some other deficiency.
In those cases of extreme instability, physical lacking, or complete stupor, culling the initiate is suggested.
This occurs in approximately every two in ten.
In other cases of an incomplete mind or body that are not so severe as to warrant a culling, the initiate is sent to the Mountain, a trial within the surrounding wilds, which they are expected to traverse that they may return to the keep, thereby showing their ability and willingness to live.
They often remain incomplete and unable to dispense of their duties as a Witcher and are referred to as “Witch-eyed”. They are then put into the custody of the Witchers’ Wives to serve as helpers to them in their daily tasks. Given their incomplete nature they are little able to do more than fetch water or assist with the laundry, and even then sometimes with supervision.
If the initiate has remained complete and is judged capable they continue onto the next trial: The Dreams.
This trial bestows the gift and blessings of magic upon the initiate. Of course being that they are not mages they will never have a full acuity towards the art, but will be able to make use of a facsimile to it. These magics are called signs, spells invoked using words and hand gestures simple enough for even these brutish warriors to recall. Further, it grants a resistance akin to those most Exalted Mages.
This is brought about by another brew of mushrooms, mosses, and herbs that are highly hallucinogenic, but also far less lethal. Death occurs perhaps in one out of the remaining ten.
Once the dreams are over the initiates then become Witchers, and may proceed on to the final phases of their training so as to perform their duties.
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Jaskier blinks, closes the book, and shoves it away from him.
“Asshole.”