The Witcher 4 Could Draw Inspiration From Fan Works; School of Lyxn Origins
We recently received confirmation that the medallion from the teaser for the new Witcher game does indeed depict a lynx. This Witcher school, which did not exist in the canon of Witcher stories, was created by the fan community.
- A few days ago we learned that the medallion from the preview of the upcoming The Witcher game is a likeness of a lynx;
- The Witcher School of the Lynx exists only in fan stories and it's possible that CD Projekt RED drew inspiration from that source.
Announcement of the new part The Witcher caused quite a stir among fans, journalists and the gaming industry. Almost from the very beginning, players began forming theories, based on rather limited information.
The first mystery has already been solved - the animal from the medallion appearing in the promotional materials of the game is a lynx.
However, so far, none of the canonical sources - Andrzej Sapkowski's prose, CD Projekt RED's games, movies or TV series - featured the Witcher School of the Lynx. It is very likely, that the devs could have been inspired by the work of fans who invented the new school for the needs of fan fiction. This refers to the fictional School of the Lynx created in 2019 in the pages of The Witcher Fanon Wikia.
Lynx invented
Eurogamer reached out to the author of School of the Lynx's story, known by the handle SMiki55. From the conversation we can learn how the Witcher fan school came into being.
The foundations for the story were laid by user Witcher190, who found fanart of the medallion and then created a website that other users could edit. Then SMiki55 created the story of a new Witcher school, featuring well-known characters such as Lambert and Keira Metz.
As the author of the story admits:
"Lambert and Keira entered the picture because I'm a fan of their shipping and wanted to give them some stuff to do after their happy ending variant of The Witcher 3. So, I weaved a story about how Lambert, Keira, Gaetan, Joel, and Adela (a character from The Hexer TV series, later replaced by Witcher190 with Dragonfly from TRPG) teamed up to recover the Cat caravan from Nilfgaardian soldiers with bravado and luck.
Witcher190 then came up with further details and continued the story with the tournament and so on. Some ideas were discussed together via private messages."
You can read the entire history of the Witcher School of the Lynx on the Wiki page.
Will CD Projekt RED's recently announced game base its School of the Lynx on the work of fan fiction authors? It's impossible to say yet, but admitting that it's the animal featured on the Witcher medallion gives us some hints.
The author of the fan story emphasizes that he does not claim the rights to the Witcher school he created. If it is used in the game, it should not cause any problems related to intellectual property.
For now, however, this is all in the realm of theory and conjecture. Time when more details will be revealed will certainly come.
