During the harsh winter months stretching into the next year, Kaer Morhen hummed quietly with the sober diligence of a fortress preparing for war—but its weapons were brewed in flasks, steeped in quiet wisdom, and forged through the sweat and patience of men and women who had pledged themselves to the Path. Geralt, Visenna, and their brothers gathered in the keep's alchemical chambers, the amber glow of oil lamps casting flickering light over their workbenches layered thick with ancient tomes, scattered herbs, and carefully labeled vials.
1. Superior Dancing Star
Effect: Produces a fiery explosion that ignites enemies; destroys monster nests (enhanced and extended effect).
Recipe Ingredients:
Alchemists' Powder (1x)
Enhanced Dancing Star (1x)
Phosphorus (2x)
Sulfur (2x)
Sewant Mushrooms (2x)
Nostrix (2x)
Nigredo (1x)
2. Superior Dimeritium Bomb
Effect: Releases a cloud of dimeritium slivers that blocks magic and monster magical abilities; lasts briefly after dissipation.
Recipe Ingredients:
Alchemists' Powder (1x)
Enhanced Dimeritium Bomb (1x)
Optima Mater (2x)
Powdered Pearl (2x)
Puffball (2x)
Bloodmoss (2x)
Nigredo (1x)
3.Superior Dragon's Dream
Effect: Gas cloud that explodes, chance to apply burning; enemies killed explode and damage others nearby (enhanced effect).
Recipe Ingredients:
Alchemists' Powder (1x)
Enhanced Dragon's Dream (1x)
Phosphorus (2x)
Optima Mater (2x)
Allspice (2x)
Bryonia (2x)
Aether (1x)
4. Superior Grapeshot
Effect: Inflicts shrapnel and fire damage in an explosion; enhanced effect ignores enemy armor; destroys monster nests.
Recipe Ingredients:
Alchemists' Powder (1x)
Enhanced Grapeshot (1x)
Calcium Equum (2x)
Sulfur (2x)
Longrube (2x)
Hop Umbels (2x)
Nigredo (1x)
5.Superior Devil's Puffball
Effect: Produces a toxic cloud increasing poison damage for 30 seconds.
Recipe Ingredients:
Alchemists' Powder (1x)
Enhanced Devil's Puffball (1x)
Quebrith (1x)
Celandine (2x)
Drowner Brain (1x)
6. Superior Samum
Effect: Blinds opponents in explosion radius; destroys monster nests.
Recipe Ingredients:
Alchemists' Powder (1x)
Enhanced Samum (1x)
Celandine (2x)
Thunderbolt (1x)
7.Superior Black Blood
Effect: Vampires and necrophages start bleeding when near you , your blood injures and knocks them back.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Black Blood (1x)
Hellebore Petals (5x)
Sewant Mushrooms (5x)
Han Fiber (1x)
Nostrix (1x)
Rebis (1x)
8. Superior Blizzard
Effect: Slows time during combat when active; increases attack speed and critical hit chance.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Blizzard (1x)
Daphne (1x)
Honeycomb (1x)
Belladonna (4x)
Iiris (1x)
Vitriol (1x)
9. Superior Full Moon
Effect: Increases max vitality, extends duration, heals vitality equal to current toxicity.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Full Moon (1x)
Mistletoe (1x)
Verbena (1x)
Crow's Eye (1x)
Wolfsbane (4x)
Quebrith (1x)
10. Superior Cat
Effect: Significantly improves night vision and allows seeing in total darkness.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Cat (1x)
Marigold (3x)
Honeysuckle (5x)
Mistletoe (3x)
Ranunculus (4x)
11. Superior Golden Oriole
Effect: Extended duration; poisons now heal instead of doing damage.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Golden Oriole (1x)
Blowball (4x)
Celandine (4x)
Han Fiber (1x)
Ranogrin (1x)
Quebirith (1x)
12. Superior Maribor Forest
Effect: Accelerates adrenaline point generation.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Maribor Forest (1x)
Crimson Blossom (1x)
Swallowtail Butterfly (1x)
Mustard Seed (1x)
13. Superior Petri's Philter
Effect: Increases Sign intensity significantly.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Petri's Philter (1x)
Belladonna (4x)
Gallberry (4x)
Goldenthread (3x)
Mousetrap (5x)
14. Superior Swallow
Effect: Improves vitality regeneration both in and out of combat.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Swallow (1x)
Honeysuckle (6x)
Rue (4x)
Vitriol (1x)
15. Superior Tawny Owl
Effect: Accelerates stamina regeneration; extended duration. Does not expire at night.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Tawny Owl (1x)
Belladonna (4x)
Crow's Eye (6x)
Dill (1x)
16. Superior Thunderbolt
Effect: Extended duration; grants 100% critical hit chance during storms, increases attack power.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced Thunderbolt (1x)
Belladonna (4x)
Gagroot (3x)
Ranogrin (1x)
Spent Carnation (1x)
17. Superior White Raffard's Decoction
Effect: Restores vitality immediately and fully; grants short immunity to damage.
Ingredients:
White Gull (1x)
Enhanced White Raffard's Decoction (1x)
Ribleaf (4x)
Bryonia (4x)
Pringrape (1x)
Bison Grass (1x)
Vermillion (1x)
The parchments Geralt had brought back from Gremist were laid out like sacred maps: arcane recipes folded in crumpled edges, annotated in script both learned and cryptic, hinting at power barely understood and dangers carefully skirted. This was not the reckless magic of heedless mages but the purposeful, subtle art of witchers—alchemy mingled with skill and necessity.
Each morning began with precise tasks. Visenna, ever the steady guide, sorted ingredients by scent and color. Her fingers moved methodically, crushing dried roots into powders, measuring wet extracts with the precision of a surgeon. Beside her, Geralt took up the task of setting flame and frost—timed distillations that could coax out vaporous essences or lock volatile elixirs behind crystal walls. The apprentices—Eskel, Jacob, Dick, and Vicky—rotated between chopping bundles of fresh herbs and cleaning the glass apparatus, their hands learning the language of reagents as surely as their blades learned steel.
But brewing was never a quiet art alone. It required raw ingredients, stashed away beneath the stone floors, deep in cupboards guarded by charm and trust. Geralt's routine included expeditions—sometimes alone, always atop Viv, the silver-dappled wyvern whose wings cut through the biting winter air with unerring grace. Viv was not merely transport; she was partner and sentinel, sensing dangers long before human awareness.
On these journeys, Geralt sought rare plants hidden beneath snow, mushrooms nurtured in shadowed hollows, and the bones, blood, and essence of monsters that would grant the recipes their teeth. A dragon's spindle, imbued with sulfur and flame; lichbane petal, harvested under the full moon; wolfsbane resin, snapped from frost-hardened stalks—each item gathered with reverence and driven by necessity.
Hunting monsters in winter was a dance with cold death. Snow muffled footsteps but magnified breath and rustling; creatures adapted to the freeze—wolves hungrier, wraiths more biting. Geralt's skills were tested anew: evading stealthy predators, setting traps, and sometimes conversing with wary fiends who found his Axii coaxing both curious and confounding.
Upon return, the hard-won materials joined the arsenal of alchemy. Visenna's steady hands transformed rawness into potency. Drops of essence distilled, tinctures thickened, and powders glowed faintly in their glass hearths.
Over time, the laboratory's quiet toil yielded results: potions that granted resilience to frost, elixirs that sharpened senses in driving snow, balms that soothed frostbite's cruel bite, and even charms woven into glimmering ointments to ward off spectral chill.
Through this crucible, Geralt and his brothers grew stronger—not just in body but in lore, their knowledge of creatures and craft deepening as the winter nights lengthened.
And every dusk, with firelight wrapping their shoulders, they would share stories—of hunts won, of close calls on icy ledges, of creatures bested, and the endless quest to turn bitter winter into measured advantage.
Thus, the season slowly turned—cold, relentless, but shaping those who endured it into legends forged not of thunder and fury, but of steady will and alchemical flame.
The autumn of 1228 descended upon Kaer Morhen with the weight of prophecy and preparation. In the deep chambers beneath the ancient keep, where stone walls had witnessed centuries of witcher alchemy, Geralt stood before tables laden with ingredients that would shape the battles to come. The parchments from Gremist lay spread like battle plans, their margins now filled with his own annotations—adjustments born of necessity, refinements demanded by the harsh reality of what lay ahead.
He had seen enough in his travels to understand that the world was shifting. Mages grew bolder in their towers, their magic reaching further into the affairs of kings and common folk alike. The Brotherhood of Sorcerers whispered of unity while their individual ambitions carved deeper divisions across the northern kingdoms. Geralt's enhanced senses caught the scent of coming conflict on every wind—the acrid smell of magical experimentation, the metallic tang of political maneuvering, and beneath it all, the ancient fear that mortals held for those who wielded power beyond their understanding.
"Dimeritium," Visenna said quietly, her voice carrying the gravity of someone who understood both the potential and the danger. She held a small ingot of the anti-magic metal, its surface dull and unreflective, seeming to absorb light rather than cast it back. "In small doses, it disrupts magical energies. In larger concentrations..."
"It creates dead zones where magic cannot function at all," Geralt finished, taking the ingot from her hands. The metal felt cold and heavy, as if it carried the weight of all the spells it had ever negated. "Superior Dimeritium Bombs can turn a mage's greatest strength into their most vulnerable moment."
The recipe for these bombs was complex beyond anything Geralt had previously attempted. Each required not just raw dimeritium, but the metal refined through a process that involved exposure to specific magical frequencies during the forging process. The bombs needed to be precisely balanced—too little dimeritium and they would merely disrupt minor spells; too much and they would create unpredictable cascades that could harm allies as easily as enemies.
Eskel, ever practical, had constructed specialized forges in the lower chambers where the bombs could be assembled safely. The process required constant temperature monitoring, as dimeritium became dangerously unstable when heated beyond specific thresholds. Each bomb casing was crafted from tempered steel, inscribed with runic patterns that would direct the anti-magic pulse in controlled directions rather than allowing it to spread indiscriminately.
"How many?" Jacob asked, carefully measuring powdered monster bone into a mortar. The bone came from wraiths Geralt had hunted specifically for this purpose—creatures whose very existence represented the intersection of life and death, making their remains ideal binding agents for explosive compounds.
"Two hundred Superior Dimeritium Bombs, minimum," Geralt replied, his voice carrying the certainty of someone who had calculated the odds carefully. "Enough to supply our entire brotherhood and still maintain a strategic reserve. When we face organized magical opposition, these bombs will be the difference between victory and annihilation."
The Superior Dancing Star bombs presented their own challenges. Unlike their dimeritium counterparts, these weapons were designed to create zones of intense magical fire that would burn through both flesh and protective enchantments. The base formula required oil extracted from fire elementals—a substance that remained combustible even when frozen, and which burned with temperatures that could melt steel.
Geralt's journeys on Viv had taken him to remote volcanic regions where fire elementals gathered around lava flows and sulfur springs. Capturing their essence required a delicate balance of aggression and restraint—too much violence and the elemental's fire would dissipate uselessly; too little and the creature would incinerate the hunter. Each successful extraction yielded only small quantities of the precious oil, making every drop valuable beyond measure.
"The timing must be perfect," Visenna instructed as they worked together to distill the elemental essence. "Three seconds of exposure to open flame, then immediate cooling in blessed water. If the temperature drops too quickly, the oil crystallizes and becomes useless. Too slowly, and it ignites spontaneously."
Dick had proven surprisingly adept at the precision work required for Superior Dragon's Dream bombs. These weapons created clouds of flammable gas that could be ignited by secondary explosives, turning entire battlefields into infernos. The primary component was refined dracolizard venom, which when properly processed would vaporize into an invisible, odorless gas that settled close to the ground and waited for a spark.
"The beautiful thing about Dragon's Dream," Dick explained to Vicky as they worked side by side, "is that it forces enemies to choose between advancing through the gas cloud or remaining in place while we control the engagement. Either way, we dictate the terms of battle."
The venom extraction process was among the most dangerous they had attempted. Live dracolizards had to be milked while under the influence of specific sedatives that kept them calm without neutralizing their venom's properties. Geralt had spent weeks in the swamps of Temeria, tracking the elusive creatures to their breeding grounds and carefully harvesting the substances needed for their bombs.
Superior Grapeshot required a different approach entirely. These bombs created devastating shrapnel clouds that could tear through multiple enemies simultaneously, but their effectiveness depended on the precise size and composition of the metal fragments they contained. Too large, and the fragments wouldn't achieve proper dispersal patterns; too small, and they lacked the mass needed to penetrate armor and magical barriers.
Eskel had experimented with various metal alloys before discovering that fragments forged from melted-down monster claws achieved the optimal balance of hardness and magical conductivity. Each bomb contained hundreds of these tiny projectiles, precisely calculated to create overlapping kill zones that would be nearly impossible to escape once the weapon detonated.
The most challenging project was the Superior Petri's Philter. These bombs didn't kill directly—instead, they petrified living tissue, turning flesh to stone through alchemical processes that bordered on the mystical. The primary ingredient was medusa scale, obtained from the few remaining specimens that haunted remote islands and forgotten ruins.
Geralt's quest for medusa scales had taken him to the most dangerous hunting grounds he had ever encountered. Medusae were not merely monsters—they were intelligent, cunning, and possessed of magical abilities that could permanently transform a hunter into a statue with a single direct gaze. The hunting required specially crafted mirrors, protective charms, and timing so precise that a single mistake meant death or worse.
"Each scale contains concentrated petrification magic," Visenna explained as she ground the precious material into powder. "When dispersed as an aerosol and activated by the bomb's alchemical trigger, it recreates the medusa's gaze in a localized area. Anything living caught in the cloud will begin turning to stone within seconds."
The brewing process consumed the entire year of 1228. Day after day, the chambers beneath Kaer Morhen filled with the sounds of grinding, bubbling, and the occasional controlled explosion as they tested their formulations. The air grew thick with magical energies and alchemical vapors, requiring constant ventilation to prevent the atmosphere itself from becoming toxic.
Lembert, now growing into a capable assistant despite his youth, proved invaluable in the more delicate aspects of the work. His small hands could manipulate fragile glass apparatus that would shatter under the pressure of adult fingers, and his natural curiosity led him to ask questions that often revealed flaws in their procedures before they became dangerous mistakes.
"Why do the Dimeritium Bombs glow sometimes?" he asked one evening, watching Geralt carefully adjust the magical resonance of a partially completed device.
"Because the dimeritium is responding to ambient magical energy," Geralt explained patiently. "If it glows too brightly, it means there's too much magic in the area and the bomb might detonate prematurely. That's why we work in the lower chambers—the stone here is naturally resistant to magical interference."
Berengar contributed his expertise in metallurgy, crafting casings and delivery mechanisms that would survive the stresses of combat while ensuring reliable detonation. His experience with traditional weapons proved invaluable when adapting explosive devices for battlefield use—considerations like fragmentation patterns, blast radius calculations, and the weight distribution needed for accurate throwing.
As winter deepened, their arsenal grew. Wooden crates lined the storage chambers, each carefully labeled and sealed with preservation charms. Inside lay hundreds of bombs representing months of dangerous hunting, precise brewing, and tireless refinement. Each weapon was a masterpiece of alchemical engineering, capable of turning the tide of battle against opponents who relied on magical superiority.
"Two hundred Superior Dimeritium Bombs," Geralt counted as he made final inventory. "One hundred and fifty Superior Dancing Stars. One hundred Superior Dragon's Dreams. Seventy-five Superior Grapeshot. And fifty Superior Petri's Philters."
The numbers represented more than mere weapons—they were insurance against a future where witchers might face enemies whose power transcended anything they had previously encountered. In a world where mages commanded forces that could level cities and kings wielded armies enhanced by magical artifacts, these bombs gave the School of the Wolf a fighting chance.
The winter winds howled around Kaer Morhen's towers, but within the keep's walls, the witchers slept peacefully. They had done everything preparation could accomplish. When spring came and the world beyond their walls demanded answers to questions written in blood and fire, they would be ready.
The bombs would sleep until needed, their alchemical dreams filled with the promise of victory against impossible odds. And in the chambers where they were born, the tools and knowledge that created them waited patiently for the day when new threats would demand new solutions.
In the deep places beneath the ancient keep, magic and mundane craft had merged into something greater than either could achieve alone. The witchers had become alchemical warriors, armed with weapons that could humble gods and topple towers. The year 1229 would test everything they had built—but they would meet it as they always had, together and unafraid.