OVERVIEW
STATUS: Disbanded
The School of the Bear was located in Haern Caduch keep in Amell, reportedly in the Slopes.
Students of this school must past the Trial of the Mountain, which requires ascending the peak of Mount Gorgon to retrieve a special runestone. It is an especially brutal challenge, with many of the boys freezing to death long before they found the summit.
Witchers of the Bear School, unlike their counterparts from other schools, tend to be loners and do not forge strong bonds with their brethren. This is due to the philosophy upon which the school was founded, that witchers should only focus on the job aspect of their profession. Codes of honour and knightly virtues are considered nothing more than inflated nonsense used to feed the ego, and so autonomy is favoured above all else within the school.
Witchers from the School of the Bear are known to have extraordinary endurance, even compared to their brethren from the other schools. They wear heavier armour, favouring defence over agility, and along with the Cat school are the only school known to use crossbows in their hunt.
HISTORY
The School of the Bear was founded by the first group of witchers that split off from the original Order of Witchers. The witcher Arnaghad had attacked a fellow witcher, Rhys, and nearly killed him. Anticipating that the other witchers would seek to punish him, he arrived at the Order's keep with a group of his brethren. After a battle between them and the Order ended in victory for the latter, Arnaghad and his renegade group retreated and left the Order. They settled in the Amell mountains and established relations with the dwarves and gnomes in the region.
Some time after the founding of the school, Ivar Evil-Eye wished to dispose of Grandmaster Arnaghad as he knew he wouldn't receive support for any attempt to take out the Wild Hunt that he was having visions about, as the grandmaster believed witcher should only be paid to kill monsters. Though Ivar and the group he rallied to his cause almost succeeded in killing Arnaghad, they ultimately failed to take over and were forced to leave the school. While most of Ivar's followers went off to found the School of the Viper, another group within this schism split off again, following another witcher named Iwan and eventually created the School of the Manticore.
At their peak, witchers of the Bear school often travelled to Skellige, both due to its large monster population and the islanders' mindset being akin to their own. Though centuries had passed since the original schism that led to the establishment of the School of the Bear, some older witchers from the other schools would still refer to them as kinslaying Bears.
The school ceased to function after the Bears failed a contract to destory a cabal of vampires. The frustrations of the inhabitants of the war-torn provinces around them boiled over into riots. Eventually most of the surrounding villages banded together to destroy the school, as they would rather share the mountains with monsters than witchers. Given the Bear witchers had little-to-no brotherly bonds and no true loyalty to their school, they abandoned the keep and parted ways with each other. Since that day the keep has been left in disrepair, buried by time and the elements, though it is believed that some long time members have returned to reoccupy it.
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