Tetra Gilcrest

**Tetra Gilcrest** was a mage.

## Biography

Tetra trained at Aretuza. She hailed from the lineage of the first human mage, and held purist beliefs.

She was heavily opposed to the witchers' presence in Kaedwen, and suggested that the witchers had been setting up monster attacks in the region before taking contracts. Her allegations attracted the ire of Lady Zerbst, a prominent adviser to the king, who demanded to see evidence. Madam Gilcrest visited Zerbst in private in order to change her mind, but she was unsuccessful. When Gilcrest and Zerbst argued once again in court, the mage referred to the woman's humble origins and the fact that her position in court was only honorary.

Tetra was born to a sorceress who claimed to have been descended from the original first human mage. She was raised in Kaedwen and had access to both the court and the nobles who ruled the land. It can be assumed that much of her belief system was taught to her by her mother, who was a powerful sorceress as well.

Tetra, like most mages, seemed to believe that elves were inferior to the humans who had conquered them, as during the invasion of the ruined elven school, she did not show much remorse for the actions that humans - and human magic users, in particular - had taken to secure supremacy over the elven race. It should also be noted that despite being confronted by Vesemir with the fact that that mages, like witchers, were not guiltless of committing heinous acts, she had no issue with destroying the elven school and pinning the blame on witchers to serve her own goals.

Her main goal was to incite the populace against witchers. Her hatred of witchers stemmed from the murder of her mother by a witcher. In a conversation with Vesemir, she told the story of how a priest who was very ill was visited by a witcher looking to cure him in exchange for coin. The Witcher convinced the priest that his affliction was caused by a curse, and asked him who would be motivated to place the curse on him. The priest accused the local court sorceress of being the perpetrator of the curse, and without due process, the witcher hunted down and killed the sorceress.

The priest's health immediately began to improve, proving to all that the sorceress was the cause of his illness. However, a few days after the witcher left, the priest's cook was found with a beautiful gem that had been paid to the Witcher for his service in his possession. This revealed that the witcher and cook had worked together to poison the priest and trick him out of his coin. The sorceress had been killed simply for the witcher's greed. Tetra later revealed that the sorceress was her mother.

Terra's hatred of witchers was further validated to her as Deglan, the current master of the School of the Wolf, had the school's mages create crossbreed mutant monsters - including a new strain of basilisk and an elf crossed with a mare - because monster numbers had dwindled substantially, affecting the amount of coin the witchers could make. At least 12 witchers abandoned the path that year alone due to lack of coin, becoming mercenaries or bandits. The new hybrid monsters was intended to be a new threat that the witchers could kill for more coin.

The elf/mare crossbreed was thought to have died during its creation as her magic was too strong, but she actually escaped Kaer Morhen; a fatal mistake for the witchers. She inadvertently killed many local humans and elven girls in attempts to make more crossbreeds like herself. This gave Tetra the opportunity to manipulate the creature into transporting large amounts of monsters from the local swamp to Kaer Morhen to attack and wipe out the witchers. Combined with a few hundred local villagers who had suffered at the hands of the witcher's new monster, Kaer Morhen fell and every Witcher besides Vesemir, Lambert, Eskel, Remus, and Geralt perished, along with the only mages who held the secrets to make more witchers.