School of the Bear

Witchers of the Bear School, unlike the Wolves or Griffins, tend to be loners and do not forge strong bonds with their brethren, and so them meeting on the Path can even lead to bloodshed. This is because of the philosophy of the school's founder, who believed that witchers should focus only on the job aspect of their profession. He thought that any code or knightly virtues were just inflated nonsense to feed the ego, and thus favored autonomy above all else. This autonomy extended even to the school itself.  

Overview

Training   Students must pass the trial of the mountain. This requires venturing to the peak of Mount Gorgon to retrieve a special runestone as proof of ascent. It was an especially brutal challenge as many boys freeze to death long before they find the summit.   Characteristics   Haern Caduch (located in Amell) was a difficult place to live. Due to the cold and snow of the mountains the boys had to huddle up close to the hearthfires or sleep beneath many furs. If they didn't they would suffer frostbite or hypothermia. Besides that there was also the never-ending removal of snow from the fortress courtyard. This environment has given the Bear witchers extraordinary endurance even compared to their bretheren from other schools.   They wear heavier armor, favoring defense over agility. Along with the Cat School, they are the only known witcher schools to use crossbows in their hunt. The school may have used shields once. This seems to have been abandoned however after a witcher lost his, along with his entire arm.  

History

The School of the Bear was founded by the first group of witchers that split off from the Order of Witchers. The witcher Arnaghad had attacked fellow witcher Rhys, nearly killing him. Anticipating that the other witchers would seek to punish him for this, he arrived at the Order's keep with a posse of brothers. After a battle between them and the Order in which the Order subsequently won, Arnaghad and his witchers retreated and left the Order. They settled in the Amell Mountains and established contact with the dwarves and gnomes in the region.   Some time after the founding of the School, a number of its witchers betrayed it in a similar fashion as before, where they nearly killed its Grandmaster, Arnaghad. These witchers then left and built their own school, the School of the Viper.   At the peak of their power, the Bears often traveled to Skellige, both due to its amount of monsters and the islanders' mindsets being akin to their own. Although the events that led to the establishing of the school happened centuries ago, some of the older witchers from the other schools would refer to them as kinslaying Bears.