Witcher 4 fans are confusing fanfiction with lore clues for the next game

It seemed inevitable, but yesterday CD Projekt Red made it official: It is working on a new open world witcher game. The company didn’t say anything about what the game would be about, but it did have fans in speculation mode with teaser art depicting a medallion covered in snow. Now some of them are relying on a specific Witcher Wikipedia entry to interpret the image. There’s only one problem. The site is fake.

The medallion in the teaser image looked feline, but also very different from The witcher 3‘s established emblem for the School of the Cat faction. Some fans on Twitter and Reddit suspected it might be a lynx. They have pointy ears and look feline. Lynx like the snow too. This led fans to a wiki entry on the fandom website titled “school of the lynx.”

Here’s some of what it says:

The school as such came about after a brief conversation between the other members of the cat school, Lambert and Keira Metz, who after a chance meeting decided to join forces to rescue the caravan. Lambert’s motivations were clear, to honor his friend Aiden and somehow continue his legacy.

After this lecture, he was appointed leader by the other members of Cat’s School, and Lambert had an idea and decided to reform the school. This is the third and most radical reform. Which turned the school of the cat into the school of the lynx.

The site further references a “Second Witchers’ Tournament” and Lambert and the school eventually emigrating to a “Western Continent” that sounds suspiciously like America. Wild Stuff! Unless it’s all fanfiction or “fanon”. Still, unsuspecting Witcher fans could be forgiven for not getting it right away. The site is the number one result on Google when you search for “Lynx Witcher”. Fandom also hosts the real fan wiki for the Witcher canon. Also, many fans only know about the video games or the TV show, so it’s not inconceivable that the books these media are based on and written by Andrzej Sapkowski really go that far (they don’t).

“What attracted me was to help expand the lore of the Witcher world in some way,” said one of the writers behind the site, Witcher190 kotaku via Discord. “I’m not one to be approved by Saposwki or CD PROJEKT, but I liked the idea of ​​helping, as did George Martin’s advisors at ASOIAF. Especially since Saposwki leaves a lot up in the air. As well as trying to coordinate the franchise’s various media in some way.”

Witcher190 has worked with Fanon user SMiki55 and others to try to fill in the many gaps in the Witcher universe with their own preferences, including other landmasses more similar to those of the real world. Melukka, which was supposed to be a version of India, was even mentioned directly in it The Witcher Table Game Livestream Charity Campaign with Matt Mercer and others a few years ago.

It is not clear where the idea for a School of the Lynx came from. Schools are barely mentioned in the original books and are largely a creation of CDPR’s video game adaptations. The game code in the blood and wine Expansion for Feline School armor pieces calls them “Lynx,” and online searches of Witcher schools reveal fan art for a Lynx medallion, which Witcher190 said was the first time he heard of it.

In the light of the new teaser, however, is School of the Lynx get thrown around like real canon. “Because people keep getting confused. There is a website ‘School of the Lynx’ that is fan-made fiction,” wrote YouTuber LegacyKillaHD on twitter yesterday. “It’s at the top of the page. There is no Lynx school in the Witcher universe…yet.”

That “yet” took on new meaning today after CDPR Global Community Director Marcin Momot responded with an a to speculation that the medallion could be a lynx GIF of Kenan Thompson nodding aggressively. Even if the current fanon surrounding the School of the Lynx isn’t adopted, the Lynx medallion itself could soon become official canon, at least in the gaming world.

Other theories have speculated that the new Witcher game could tease Ciri as the main character for wearing a cat medallion taken from another fallen witcher. But CEO Adam Kiciński previously claimed there would be none witcher 4, meaning the next few games would offer a kind of clean break with the characters at the heart of the current trilogy. We will see. CDPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile the witcher underreddit running with the idea of a new School of the Lynx, and the fanon around it, created by Witcher190, SMiki55 and others, has received more attention than it ever expected. I’ve seen a lot of new comments on the Fanon wiki and I’m really happy about that,” Witcher190 said. “The Witcher is a saga that I loved and that got me through a very dark time in my life. I would wish for nothing more than to see these ideas become a reality, not in a new book (if that’s sort of what Saposwki wanted, which I doubt) but in a new game, either with a mention, cameo, or appearance in one Gwent To update.”