(no subject)
CHARACTER
Name Yennefer of Vengerberg
Canon The Witcher (Books + Games)
Age 99, but don't ask.
Birthright Jewel Green, as determined here!
Dreams made flesh A guarantee of safety for both her adopted daughter, Cirilla, and for her lover, Geralt of Rivia, from the Wild Hunt/Aen Elle/Nilfgaardians + the guarantee that Ciri can live her life... as she wishes! Wherever/whenever she pleases! She's known as "The Lady of Space and Time," so it's a little hard to, uh, pin her down...
Canon point Right after the Wild Hunt storms Kaer Morhen and murders Vesemir. Yennefer will attend his funeral, doing her best to comfort both Geralt and Ciri, before she leaves for Novigrad—and winds up accepting an invitation to come to an entirely new world.
Canon Powers
Yennefer is a respected—and feared—sorceress; she has almost a century's worth of training under her belt, and thus she's capable of casting a wide variety of spells. To be completely honest, magic in the Witcher universe is just as nebulous, as all-encompassing as Craft? It's a power that certain people can call upon and shape/bend to their will, and people can use it to do a wide variety of things that are sometimes just glossed right over. I'll go over a few spells that Yennefer has used/frequently uses in order to show just what she's capable of, but with the caveat that she can do... a ton of less, uh, flashy things, as well. Last month's heating spell, for instance? Witchlights? Making a mirror float in front of her while she puts on her makeup? Those are simple spells she can cast without a second thought.
Telepathy: This is one of Yennefer's favorite skills. She likes to know what the people closest to her (especially Geralt) are thinking, which is why she's frequently shown just... tuning into their thoughts mid-conversation. She doesn't do this sort of thing carelessly; like, she knows better than to read the minds of her fellow mages, just because they know how to defend themselves, but anyone who is a) less powerful than her and/or b) someone she doesn't care about offending? They're fair game. In the game, of course, she obviously won't be able to read the mind of anyone with a darker Jewel than hers, and I will always ask OOC permission.
Teleportation: Why travel long distances when you can just step through a portal? That's Yennefer's motto, anyway. Now, portals can be dangerous things indeed; improperly stabilizing the portal can either a) send a traveler far off course or b) literally tip a traveler to pieces, but Yennefer, like most mages, has spent decades practicing and perfecting this spell - she's very confident in this ability. In the game... I'd say she'll only really teleport within Draega, i.e. when she needs to visit the bazaar but wants to make a real show of it. I would say she could teleport herself + one other person out to, say, the mountains if she carefully studies some maps, but I'm not sure if that would be too much? Y'all's call, really... just let me know...
Defensive/Offensive Magic: I don't have any nifty spell names for this, but Yennefer is capable of defending/attacking as needed? She's thrown up a few defensive shields in both the books and the game, so she knows how physical shields operate; she also knows how to, like, mask her presence/the presence of others in order to hide from pursuers, so she's good with sight/aural/psychic shields. Offensive magic, though, is a bit... broader. She's slung fire at an enemy and burned off, like, half their face; she's tried to zap various enemies with electricity; she's enchanted the ground below her, causing it to violently explode before sucking everyone and everything nearby down into a sort of sinkhole. It sounds like she's OP, but she's not! I promise! She just... knows how to use a good number of elemental-type spells to incapacitate her enemies from a distance...
From an in-game standpoint, her green Jewel means that she'll find her elemental spells less draining to cast + they'll have a wider area of effect. Nothing game-breaking! I swear! And she's not the type to go looking for a fight, anyway, so the chances of her beating anyone up are... slim.
Creational Magic: Now this is a... weird one. In her world, Yennefer is talented enough to create magical kestrels and crows out of thin air? It takes some serious effort; when Geralt watches her essentially smooth a bird out of thin air (kind of like a potter shaping the sides of a pot), he notes that the effort required causes a) her to sweat, a rarity for her, and b) her pupils to dilate in pain. She uses them like... carrier pigeons, in that they can actually recite messages, but she's also been shown to use them to test the strength of a barrier/to see if there is a barrier. They're also not really... alive, because they disappear after a certain amount of time that isn't specifically stated.
In the game, Yennefer would never make anything other than a bird, and while her Jewel would make it a slightly easier process... it's still tough for her. Let's say that she can make, mmm, three birds a day, tops? And each bird "exists" for an hour?
Necromancy: Just because I mention her using necromancy in her world later in the app: she won't even TRY that stuff here, because it's gross and she honestly hates it.
Personality In list format for y'all's sanity:
Proud:
As a renowned—and feared—century-old sorceress, Yennefer is very aware of both what she's capable of and what she (believes she) deserves. She's a member of the highly educated elite; she's used to brushing shoulders with nobles and scholars, to advising appreciative monarchs, and thus she demands a certain level of respect from everyone around her... even if they, you know, don't know a single thing about her. Address her in a rude manner? She'll zap you. Insinuate that she doesn't know what she's talking about? Prepare for a thorough tongue-lashing. It's not that she's always looking for a fight; it's just that Yennefer is quite used to being a big, beautiful fish in a pond full of ugly little minnows who would absolutely love to see her cut down to size, and she isn't about to let anyone attempt it. Allow a person to think less of you, and, well... they will! She knows this!
And truth be told, that's why her pride is even worse when it comes to the people closest to her? If a stranger somehow insults her, she'll teach them a lesson and walk away; if a friend/trusted colleague/lover somehow insults her, she will give them passive-aggressive hell until they a) apologize and b) admit their mistake(s). I think the best example of this is when Geralt, her on-again/off-again lover who was living with her at the time, straight up ran away from her in the middle of the night because he was afraid of commitment. That definitely stung Yennefer's pride, but what made it even worse was the way he wrote her a letter, like, three years after the fact—a long time to us, but not long for them, seeing as how they live for centuries—and addressed it to his "dear friend Yennefer." Did Yennefer decide to act like the bigger person here? No! Yennefer wrote him a letter right back, making sure to include as many sarcastic "dear friend" lines as she possibly could. It's a petty work of art (see: here), but it proves that she neither easily forgives nor easily forgets anyone who (she believes) looks down on her.
Ruthless:
Once Yennefer has her sights set on something in particular, she will stop at nothing—absolutely nothing—to get what she wants. Sometimes this is as simple as, say, wining and dining important political figureheads, or tolerating the company of a person she finds to be absolutely abhorrent, but other times—oof. Aside from her family (Geralt and Ciri), there's very little that Yennefer holds sacred; she will bend and/or break every rule in the book if she deems it necessary, and she won't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. An excellent example of this is when she was desperately trying to find Ciri, her adopted daughter, and decided that the best course of action would be to revive the corpse of the person who allegedly saw her last. Necromancy is forbidden in her world, and it takes an astonishing amount of magic, but did that bother her? Of course not. She bluffed her way into a garden that was both a) holy to a certain religion and b) full of natural magic, found the corpse in question, and—get this—drained almost every drop of magic from the garden just to cast her spell.
Now, the spell worked; she learned everything she'd hoped, but when the garden's guardians come back and find their holy site, like, completely destroyed, Yennefer just... shrugs them off. She did what she had to do? She doesn't feel the need to apologize for it? Even when Geralt, who's been with her the entire time, asks her why she destroyed something so important to other people, she tells him, and I quote: "Your sense of decency is charming, but it does get in the way sometimes." In Yennefer's mind, the end always justifies the (well, HER) means.
Cold:
Yennefer tends to keep everyone at an arm's length, and she isn't the least bit sorry about it. She's an easy socializer; she enjoys attending banquets and chatting with people she views to be her equals, but she's careful never to reveal much about either herself or her motives, because the world she comes from is very, mmm, dog-eat-dog? It's why she can count the number of her actual friends on, like, one hand. People from lower social classes want to tear her down; her fellow sorcerers/sorceresses view her as competition they need to remove from the playing board; kings and their advisors recognize her abilities/wisdom, but won't hesitate to sacrifice her for their own political gains. In short: everyone is out for something, and Yennefer is determined to serve no one's best interest but her own.
But as bad as this seems—as bad as it is—Yennefer's coldness isn't always meant to protect only herself. Her plans aren't... always the safest things, and she knows this? She knew that she was playing with fire when she, you know, drained a sacred site of all its magic, which is why she coldly refused to tell Geralt what she had in mind. This was partly to make things easier for herself, of course (Yennefer's motto: It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission), but it also served as a sort of... iron-clad defense for Geralt when the guardians came to accuse them of wrecking their holy gardens. They couldn't blame Geralt when he had no idea what was happening; all of the blame, therefore, transferred to Yennefer, who accepted both it and the curse that followed.
Devoted:
Yennefer does like to keep a certain distance between herself and the people around her, but when she becomes attached to someone? When she grows to care for them? Oh, boy. Yennefer will do anything, sacrifice everything, for the ones she loves, and she'll do it all without hesitation. That's not to say that she'll excuse away any and all bad behavior, or that she'll, like, coddle them; she's the type of person to pull someone from the fire while telling them just how stupid it was for them to jump into it in the first place, but she'll stay right by their side as they recover. She's Ride or Die™ in its truest, fanciest form.
I've already touched on this a bit, I think, when covering the lengths Yennefer went to (practicing necromancy, draining a holy site of all its magic) in order to find her adopted daughter, but—well. An even better example of Yennefer's devotion is when she was captured by Vilgefortz, a sorcerer who tried everything—torture, magical persuasion, throwing her in a dungeon for a month or three—to force her to reveal Ciri's location. Yennefer stubbornly locked down her mind and frustrated Vilgefortz' every attempt, which was no easy feat; Vilgefortz was known to be one of the most powerful sorcerers of their time, but after Yennefer passed out from the pain and he'd gained absolutely nothing, Vilgefortz turned to his closest "associates" and said: "'There is always a risk... that one of you falls into the hands of my enemies and is interrogated. I would like to believe that you would be as strong minded as her under the screws. Yes, I would like to believe that. But I do not."
Compassionate:
"But Elia," you say. "Elia, you have an entire section dedicated to how cold Yennefer is." Well, yes, but listen: just because Yennefer has an icy exterior doesn't mean that she doesn't feel for those around her. She puts up a wall to protect both herself and the people around her, but there are times where that wall... cracks? And really, it cracks at the most unexpected times, for the most unexpected people. Once, for example, Yennefer was standing on a dock, waiting for an important Jarl to leave his boat and speak with her; she'd made sure to dress her best, to look the part, but when a pregnant woman near her collapsed after hearing bad news... well. Yennefer crouched right down beside her, ripping her dress in the process, in order to cast a quick succession of spells that prevented the woman from prematurely giving birth. Did she have to do this? No, especially considering the way the locals treated her (rudely), but that wasn't the time for Yennefer to prove a point—that was the time for Yennefer to save an innocent life because she could.
There are other examples of Yennefer helping others—like the brief mention of the time she helped a dwarven family escape a pogrom in her native Vengerberg—but they all boil down to the same thing: Yennefer doesn't enjoy seeing others suffer for no reason. If she can do something, and if that something won't land her in a mess on down the road, then she will; it's just not something she's, mmm, necessarily keen to show the world at large, lest others view it as a potential weakness. I think this is something that could be very interesting for her to work on in Draega, actually? The idea that doing good things for no real reason doesn't always put her in a disadvantageous position, that openly helping others doesn't make her look weak, but... time will tell...
Intelligent:
In a world in which peasants still believe that regularly bathing weakens one's constitution, Yennefer is a highly educated woman who's well-versed in such complicated subjects as, say, genetics. She is, without a doubt, incredibly intelligent, and the fact that she's had decades to study different subjects makes her all the more impressive. When she states her opinion, you'd best believe that she can back it up with either experience and/or data; when she tells you she's thought of a plan, you can be certain that she's accounted for all manner of troublesome problems and complications. She's not perfect! She can't predict everything! There are even times when her pride gets in the way of her doing the smart thing, but generally speaking, Yennefer's mind is... well, it's sharpened to a fine point. Her world and her position in it are both dangerous; her intelligence is her strongest weapon, and she knows it.
Honestly, the best example of Yennefer's intelligence is when she's tasked with reverting this cursed creature to its true form. This wasn't as simple as just breaking the curse itself; Yennefer had to actually take that malformed body, give it potions/elixirs to—for lack of a better word—soften it, and then use magic to painstakingly reshape every single part of the elf's body. "So she's an experienced healer," you might ask. No! She's not! Healing is not her forte, but she threw herself wholeheartedly into this task, reading books and studying spells in order to safely release the man from his curse. An average sorceress could have bungled it entirely, could have overexerted themselves or recited incorrect incantations; Yennefer, however, was clever enough to piece everything together and keep it all in check under pressure, and thus she succeeded. Extraordinary. Even the elf, who loathes humans, has to admit that she did a "decent enough" job when he finally comes to, which—that's high praise, really. High praise.
History Yennefer appears in... several short stories (whew!), seven main novels of The Witcher series (WHEW!), AND is a major supporting character in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (WHEW!!!), but the summaries are surprisingly straightforward; I'm going to link them below and provide a bit of explanation, just to try and keep things concise, but please let me know if you need anything more.
-Info about Yennefer's early life can be found here, but basically: Yennefer was born a hunchback, her parents abandoned her, the school of sorceresses took her in and trained her.
-In "The Last Wish," Yennefer first meets Geralt, who—I shit you not—frees a genie and winds up wishing that his fate be inextricably tied to Yennefer's. The summary is here, near the bottom of the page. It's wild.
-Geralt comes to live with her in the city of Vengerberg for a while, but as Yennefer is incredibly demanding and Geralt is... Geralt, he winds up running away in the dead of night. Yennefer doesn't, um, take it very well; when they meet up four-ish years later in "The Bounds of Reason," Geralt tries to talk to her and Yennefer threatens to literally scratch his eyes out. A golden dragon helps to bring them back together, though. ...Like, literally.
-In "A Shard of Ice," Yennefer and Geralt, who are back together, visit the town of one of Yennefer's oldest friends/lovers... and Yennefer learns that maybe she's capable of being loved, after all. It's a big turn-around for her.
-Blood of Elves - After splitting up for the umpteenth time, Geralt calls upon Yennefer to train Cirilla, his Child of Surprise (explained here) who just so happens to have a strong talent for magic. Yennefer and Cirilla don't exactly get along, but as their training progresses, Ciri becomes the daughter Yennefer has always wanted. Summary!
-Time of Contempt - Honestly, there's so much political intrigue in his book that I can't even begin to sum it up. Check that summary.
-Baptism of Fire - After the mess of the last book, another sorceress turns Yennefer into a jade figurine—I'm serious—and only restores her in order to ask her to join a secretive society known as the Lodge of Sorceresses. Yennefer, who couldn't care less about politics when she doesn't know where Ciri is, flees. Summary!
-The Tower of the Swallow - Yennefer heads to Skellige (re: fantasy Viking land) and attempts to find Ciri by a) trying to track down the person hunting her and b) letting said person lure her into a trap in order to meet him head-on. It doesn't go well for her; he winds up capturing and torturing her, trying to force her to help him locate Ciri, but even the combination of the trauma AND his magical brain-reading scans can't force Yennefer to reveal anything about Ciri. She is... the best mom. Summary!
-The Lady of the Lake - Ciri and Geralt come to save Yennefer, and then Geralt and Yennefer... die? But not really, because Ciri somehow transports them both to... Avalon. Yes, that Avalon. Summary
So, to bridge the space between the last book and the events of The Witcher 3: Geralt and Yennefer live peacefully in Avalon for some time, but the Aen Elle's Red Riders—more commonly known as the Wild Hunt—arrive, kidnap them, and erase their memories. Yennefer and Geralt escape separately, with Yennefer recovering her memory much faster than Geralt; she manages to find safety in the Nilfgaardian Empire, where she soon learns that Ciri has returned to their world and is in mortal danger.
And that's where the game picks up, as seen here!
Log Sample
Here!
PLAYER
Name Elia
Are you 18 or older? Yep!
Contact![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
tuchanka
Current character Lalli Hotakainen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ilves)
Name Yennefer of Vengerberg
Canon The Witcher (Books + Games)
Age 99, but don't ask.
Birthright Jewel Green, as determined here!
Dreams made flesh A guarantee of safety for both her adopted daughter, Cirilla, and for her lover, Geralt of Rivia, from the Wild Hunt/Aen Elle/Nilfgaardians + the guarantee that Ciri can live her life... as she wishes! Wherever/whenever she pleases! She's known as "The Lady of Space and Time," so it's a little hard to, uh, pin her down...
Canon point Right after the Wild Hunt storms Kaer Morhen and murders Vesemir. Yennefer will attend his funeral, doing her best to comfort both Geralt and Ciri, before she leaves for Novigrad—and winds up accepting an invitation to come to an entirely new world.
Canon Powers
Yennefer is a respected—and feared—sorceress; she has almost a century's worth of training under her belt, and thus she's capable of casting a wide variety of spells. To be completely honest, magic in the Witcher universe is just as nebulous, as all-encompassing as Craft? It's a power that certain people can call upon and shape/bend to their will, and people can use it to do a wide variety of things that are sometimes just glossed right over. I'll go over a few spells that Yennefer has used/frequently uses in order to show just what she's capable of, but with the caveat that she can do... a ton of less, uh, flashy things, as well. Last month's heating spell, for instance? Witchlights? Making a mirror float in front of her while she puts on her makeup? Those are simple spells she can cast without a second thought.
Telepathy: This is one of Yennefer's favorite skills. She likes to know what the people closest to her (especially Geralt) are thinking, which is why she's frequently shown just... tuning into their thoughts mid-conversation. She doesn't do this sort of thing carelessly; like, she knows better than to read the minds of her fellow mages, just because they know how to defend themselves, but anyone who is a) less powerful than her and/or b) someone she doesn't care about offending? They're fair game. In the game, of course, she obviously won't be able to read the mind of anyone with a darker Jewel than hers, and I will always ask OOC permission.
Teleportation: Why travel long distances when you can just step through a portal? That's Yennefer's motto, anyway. Now, portals can be dangerous things indeed; improperly stabilizing the portal can either a) send a traveler far off course or b) literally tip a traveler to pieces, but Yennefer, like most mages, has spent decades practicing and perfecting this spell - she's very confident in this ability. In the game... I'd say she'll only really teleport within Draega, i.e. when she needs to visit the bazaar but wants to make a real show of it. I would say she could teleport herself + one other person out to, say, the mountains if she carefully studies some maps, but I'm not sure if that would be too much? Y'all's call, really... just let me know...
Defensive/Offensive Magic: I don't have any nifty spell names for this, but Yennefer is capable of defending/attacking as needed? She's thrown up a few defensive shields in both the books and the game, so she knows how physical shields operate; she also knows how to, like, mask her presence/the presence of others in order to hide from pursuers, so she's good with sight/aural/psychic shields. Offensive magic, though, is a bit... broader. She's slung fire at an enemy and burned off, like, half their face; she's tried to zap various enemies with electricity; she's enchanted the ground below her, causing it to violently explode before sucking everyone and everything nearby down into a sort of sinkhole. It sounds like she's OP, but she's not! I promise! She just... knows how to use a good number of elemental-type spells to incapacitate her enemies from a distance...
From an in-game standpoint, her green Jewel means that she'll find her elemental spells less draining to cast + they'll have a wider area of effect. Nothing game-breaking! I swear! And she's not the type to go looking for a fight, anyway, so the chances of her beating anyone up are... slim.
Creational Magic: Now this is a... weird one. In her world, Yennefer is talented enough to create magical kestrels and crows out of thin air? It takes some serious effort; when Geralt watches her essentially smooth a bird out of thin air (kind of like a potter shaping the sides of a pot), he notes that the effort required causes a) her to sweat, a rarity for her, and b) her pupils to dilate in pain. She uses them like... carrier pigeons, in that they can actually recite messages, but she's also been shown to use them to test the strength of a barrier/to see if there is a barrier. They're also not really... alive, because they disappear after a certain amount of time that isn't specifically stated.
In the game, Yennefer would never make anything other than a bird, and while her Jewel would make it a slightly easier process... it's still tough for her. Let's say that she can make, mmm, three birds a day, tops? And each bird "exists" for an hour?
Necromancy: Just because I mention her using necromancy in her world later in the app: she won't even TRY that stuff here, because it's gross and she honestly hates it.
Personality In list format for y'all's sanity:
Proud:
As a renowned—and feared—century-old sorceress, Yennefer is very aware of both what she's capable of and what she (believes she) deserves. She's a member of the highly educated elite; she's used to brushing shoulders with nobles and scholars, to advising appreciative monarchs, and thus she demands a certain level of respect from everyone around her... even if they, you know, don't know a single thing about her. Address her in a rude manner? She'll zap you. Insinuate that she doesn't know what she's talking about? Prepare for a thorough tongue-lashing. It's not that she's always looking for a fight; it's just that Yennefer is quite used to being a big, beautiful fish in a pond full of ugly little minnows who would absolutely love to see her cut down to size, and she isn't about to let anyone attempt it. Allow a person to think less of you, and, well... they will! She knows this!
And truth be told, that's why her pride is even worse when it comes to the people closest to her? If a stranger somehow insults her, she'll teach them a lesson and walk away; if a friend/trusted colleague/lover somehow insults her, she will give them passive-aggressive hell until they a) apologize and b) admit their mistake(s). I think the best example of this is when Geralt, her on-again/off-again lover who was living with her at the time, straight up ran away from her in the middle of the night because he was afraid of commitment. That definitely stung Yennefer's pride, but what made it even worse was the way he wrote her a letter, like, three years after the fact—a long time to us, but not long for them, seeing as how they live for centuries—and addressed it to his "dear friend Yennefer." Did Yennefer decide to act like the bigger person here? No! Yennefer wrote him a letter right back, making sure to include as many sarcastic "dear friend" lines as she possibly could. It's a petty work of art (see: here), but it proves that she neither easily forgives nor easily forgets anyone who (she believes) looks down on her.
Ruthless:
Once Yennefer has her sights set on something in particular, she will stop at nothing—absolutely nothing—to get what she wants. Sometimes this is as simple as, say, wining and dining important political figureheads, or tolerating the company of a person she finds to be absolutely abhorrent, but other times—oof. Aside from her family (Geralt and Ciri), there's very little that Yennefer holds sacred; she will bend and/or break every rule in the book if she deems it necessary, and she won't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. An excellent example of this is when she was desperately trying to find Ciri, her adopted daughter, and decided that the best course of action would be to revive the corpse of the person who allegedly saw her last. Necromancy is forbidden in her world, and it takes an astonishing amount of magic, but did that bother her? Of course not. She bluffed her way into a garden that was both a) holy to a certain religion and b) full of natural magic, found the corpse in question, and—get this—drained almost every drop of magic from the garden just to cast her spell.
Now, the spell worked; she learned everything she'd hoped, but when the garden's guardians come back and find their holy site, like, completely destroyed, Yennefer just... shrugs them off. She did what she had to do? She doesn't feel the need to apologize for it? Even when Geralt, who's been with her the entire time, asks her why she destroyed something so important to other people, she tells him, and I quote: "Your sense of decency is charming, but it does get in the way sometimes." In Yennefer's mind, the end always justifies the (well, HER) means.
Cold:
Yennefer tends to keep everyone at an arm's length, and she isn't the least bit sorry about it. She's an easy socializer; she enjoys attending banquets and chatting with people she views to be her equals, but she's careful never to reveal much about either herself or her motives, because the world she comes from is very, mmm, dog-eat-dog? It's why she can count the number of her actual friends on, like, one hand. People from lower social classes want to tear her down; her fellow sorcerers/sorceresses view her as competition they need to remove from the playing board; kings and their advisors recognize her abilities/wisdom, but won't hesitate to sacrifice her for their own political gains. In short: everyone is out for something, and Yennefer is determined to serve no one's best interest but her own.
But as bad as this seems—as bad as it is—Yennefer's coldness isn't always meant to protect only herself. Her plans aren't... always the safest things, and she knows this? She knew that she was playing with fire when she, you know, drained a sacred site of all its magic, which is why she coldly refused to tell Geralt what she had in mind. This was partly to make things easier for herself, of course (Yennefer's motto: It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission), but it also served as a sort of... iron-clad defense for Geralt when the guardians came to accuse them of wrecking their holy gardens. They couldn't blame Geralt when he had no idea what was happening; all of the blame, therefore, transferred to Yennefer, who accepted both it and the curse that followed.
Devoted:
Yennefer does like to keep a certain distance between herself and the people around her, but when she becomes attached to someone? When she grows to care for them? Oh, boy. Yennefer will do anything, sacrifice everything, for the ones she loves, and she'll do it all without hesitation. That's not to say that she'll excuse away any and all bad behavior, or that she'll, like, coddle them; she's the type of person to pull someone from the fire while telling them just how stupid it was for them to jump into it in the first place, but she'll stay right by their side as they recover. She's Ride or Die™ in its truest, fanciest form.
I've already touched on this a bit, I think, when covering the lengths Yennefer went to (practicing necromancy, draining a holy site of all its magic) in order to find her adopted daughter, but—well. An even better example of Yennefer's devotion is when she was captured by Vilgefortz, a sorcerer who tried everything—torture, magical persuasion, throwing her in a dungeon for a month or three—to force her to reveal Ciri's location. Yennefer stubbornly locked down her mind and frustrated Vilgefortz' every attempt, which was no easy feat; Vilgefortz was known to be one of the most powerful sorcerers of their time, but after Yennefer passed out from the pain and he'd gained absolutely nothing, Vilgefortz turned to his closest "associates" and said: "'There is always a risk... that one of you falls into the hands of my enemies and is interrogated. I would like to believe that you would be as strong minded as her under the screws. Yes, I would like to believe that. But I do not."
Compassionate:
"But Elia," you say. "Elia, you have an entire section dedicated to how cold Yennefer is." Well, yes, but listen: just because Yennefer has an icy exterior doesn't mean that she doesn't feel for those around her. She puts up a wall to protect both herself and the people around her, but there are times where that wall... cracks? And really, it cracks at the most unexpected times, for the most unexpected people. Once, for example, Yennefer was standing on a dock, waiting for an important Jarl to leave his boat and speak with her; she'd made sure to dress her best, to look the part, but when a pregnant woman near her collapsed after hearing bad news... well. Yennefer crouched right down beside her, ripping her dress in the process, in order to cast a quick succession of spells that prevented the woman from prematurely giving birth. Did she have to do this? No, especially considering the way the locals treated her (rudely), but that wasn't the time for Yennefer to prove a point—that was the time for Yennefer to save an innocent life because she could.
There are other examples of Yennefer helping others—like the brief mention of the time she helped a dwarven family escape a pogrom in her native Vengerberg—but they all boil down to the same thing: Yennefer doesn't enjoy seeing others suffer for no reason. If she can do something, and if that something won't land her in a mess on down the road, then she will; it's just not something she's, mmm, necessarily keen to show the world at large, lest others view it as a potential weakness. I think this is something that could be very interesting for her to work on in Draega, actually? The idea that doing good things for no real reason doesn't always put her in a disadvantageous position, that openly helping others doesn't make her look weak, but... time will tell...
Intelligent:
In a world in which peasants still believe that regularly bathing weakens one's constitution, Yennefer is a highly educated woman who's well-versed in such complicated subjects as, say, genetics. She is, without a doubt, incredibly intelligent, and the fact that she's had decades to study different subjects makes her all the more impressive. When she states her opinion, you'd best believe that she can back it up with either experience and/or data; when she tells you she's thought of a plan, you can be certain that she's accounted for all manner of troublesome problems and complications. She's not perfect! She can't predict everything! There are even times when her pride gets in the way of her doing the smart thing, but generally speaking, Yennefer's mind is... well, it's sharpened to a fine point. Her world and her position in it are both dangerous; her intelligence is her strongest weapon, and she knows it.
Honestly, the best example of Yennefer's intelligence is when she's tasked with reverting this cursed creature to its true form. This wasn't as simple as just breaking the curse itself; Yennefer had to actually take that malformed body, give it potions/elixirs to—for lack of a better word—soften it, and then use magic to painstakingly reshape every single part of the elf's body. "So she's an experienced healer," you might ask. No! She's not! Healing is not her forte, but she threw herself wholeheartedly into this task, reading books and studying spells in order to safely release the man from his curse. An average sorceress could have bungled it entirely, could have overexerted themselves or recited incorrect incantations; Yennefer, however, was clever enough to piece everything together and keep it all in check under pressure, and thus she succeeded. Extraordinary. Even the elf, who loathes humans, has to admit that she did a "decent enough" job when he finally comes to, which—that's high praise, really. High praise.
History Yennefer appears in... several short stories (whew!), seven main novels of The Witcher series (WHEW!), AND is a major supporting character in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (WHEW!!!), but the summaries are surprisingly straightforward; I'm going to link them below and provide a bit of explanation, just to try and keep things concise, but please let me know if you need anything more.
-Info about Yennefer's early life can be found here, but basically: Yennefer was born a hunchback, her parents abandoned her, the school of sorceresses took her in and trained her.
-In "The Last Wish," Yennefer first meets Geralt, who—I shit you not—frees a genie and winds up wishing that his fate be inextricably tied to Yennefer's. The summary is here, near the bottom of the page. It's wild.
-Geralt comes to live with her in the city of Vengerberg for a while, but as Yennefer is incredibly demanding and Geralt is... Geralt, he winds up running away in the dead of night. Yennefer doesn't, um, take it very well; when they meet up four-ish years later in "The Bounds of Reason," Geralt tries to talk to her and Yennefer threatens to literally scratch his eyes out. A golden dragon helps to bring them back together, though. ...Like, literally.
-In "A Shard of Ice," Yennefer and Geralt, who are back together, visit the town of one of Yennefer's oldest friends/lovers... and Yennefer learns that maybe she's capable of being loved, after all. It's a big turn-around for her.
-Blood of Elves - After splitting up for the umpteenth time, Geralt calls upon Yennefer to train Cirilla, his Child of Surprise (explained here) who just so happens to have a strong talent for magic. Yennefer and Cirilla don't exactly get along, but as their training progresses, Ciri becomes the daughter Yennefer has always wanted. Summary!
-Time of Contempt - Honestly, there's so much political intrigue in his book that I can't even begin to sum it up. Check that summary.
-Baptism of Fire - After the mess of the last book, another sorceress turns Yennefer into a jade figurine—I'm serious—and only restores her in order to ask her to join a secretive society known as the Lodge of Sorceresses. Yennefer, who couldn't care less about politics when she doesn't know where Ciri is, flees. Summary!
-The Tower of the Swallow - Yennefer heads to Skellige (re: fantasy Viking land) and attempts to find Ciri by a) trying to track down the person hunting her and b) letting said person lure her into a trap in order to meet him head-on. It doesn't go well for her; he winds up capturing and torturing her, trying to force her to help him locate Ciri, but even the combination of the trauma AND his magical brain-reading scans can't force Yennefer to reveal anything about Ciri. She is... the best mom. Summary!
-The Lady of the Lake - Ciri and Geralt come to save Yennefer, and then Geralt and Yennefer... die? But not really, because Ciri somehow transports them both to... Avalon. Yes, that Avalon. Summary
So, to bridge the space between the last book and the events of The Witcher 3: Geralt and Yennefer live peacefully in Avalon for some time, but the Aen Elle's Red Riders—more commonly known as the Wild Hunt—arrive, kidnap them, and erase their memories. Yennefer and Geralt escape separately, with Yennefer recovering her memory much faster than Geralt; she manages to find safety in the Nilfgaardian Empire, where she soon learns that Ciri has returned to their world and is in mortal danger.
And that's where the game picks up, as seen here!
Log Sample
Here!
PLAYER
Name Elia
Are you 18 or older? Yep!
Contact
Current character Lalli Hotakainen (
ilves)(no subject)
  
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