The Tesham Mutna Ruins is a location inThe Witcher 3: Wild Huntthat the player must visit to further the main questline of the Blood and Wine expansion. In it, Geralt and Regis acquire a necessary component for the concoction needed to find Detlaff. Though aside from this, the player can learn much about the vampire race and the brutal acts that went on in the abandoned fortress.
A couple of notes and books can be looted on the way down to the main chamber of the Tesham Mutna Ruins. These excerpts detail the vampires’ methods of farming humans inThe Witcher 3, and they delve into unsettling specifics.
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Unique Witcher 3 Armor and the ‘Champion of Tesham Mutna’
That said, the most notable items that can be looted from the Tesham Mutna Ruins aren’t the written texts, but the unique armor set. The Tesham Mutna armor (which iseasy to miss inThe Witcher 3Blood and Wine) set consists of a chest piece, boots, gauntlets, trousers, and a steel sword. In place of a silver sword, however, it completes the set with a mask. This armor set is interesting lore-wise as the vampires don’t use it — in fact, they have no need for it. It’s for their human slaves, whom they refer to as a “Champion of Tesham Mutna.”
In a note of the same name, players can find a passage that reads like a knight’s vows. The so-called Champion of Tesham Mutna renounces their human weakness and becomes a keeper of their flock. They swear to fight against enemies of their vampire tribe, accepting the armor set as an instrument for them to do so. Overall, it paints a grim picture of how certain humans are more than willing to serve theirvampire masters inThe Witcher 3, going so far as to abandon their fellow humans.
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Methods of Raising Humans for Blood
These Champions are, unfortunately, only one example of the vampires’human slaves inThe Witcher 3. The fortress’ many cells are proof of this, but the book “Human Husbandry and Care” delves much deeper into how the prisoners were kept.
The manuscript first warns its reader that humans are cunning and intelligent creatures, and are, thus, likely to try and acquire more than what is given to them. As such, it’s best to provide them with their most basic needs from the start — a place to sleep, two meals a day, and an ample water source. While seemingly luxurious, these provisions are essential for the optimal production of hemoglobin.
There’s also a smallsection in this book fromThe Witcherabout there being no need to worry about human reproduction. The manuscript states that so long as there are male and female humans contained in the same space, they will inevitably breed. Moreover, this is the case whether the humans are captive or not.
This leads to a discussion on raising “human livestock with greater freedom and care,” which is apparently a philosophy distinct from the more traditional method of keeping them captive. This supposedly makes their blood taste much better, but also presents a more challenging method of human husbandry.
The text ends there but quickly picks up where it left off in another lootable book “Battery-Cage vs. Free-Range Humans,” which is the next part of the original manuscript. It mentions the upsides of keeping human livestock in more controlled confinement — namely, a more closely-regulated diet, selective breeding, and the fact that “domesticated humans” tend to be more submissive and less troublesome for thehigher vampires ofThe Witcher 3.
That said, there is also the option of raising “free-range humans,” or allowing people to live in a habitat that very closely simulates their natural living conditions. The text notes that there will be more information on this topic in the chapter “Human Villages: Establishing and Growing a Herd.” However, this cannot be found in the game. Regardless, the text recommends making the human livestock “psychologically or physically dependent on its owner” by guaranteeing their safety and nourishment.
Getting free-range livestock to trust theirvampire owners inThe Witcher 3makes them more accepting of having their blood drunk. It also supposedly limits the amount of noradrenaline and cortisol in their system, which negatively affects the taste of blood. Lastly, free-range humans are said to feel sexual pleasure during the blood-drinking process, which intensifies its taste.
All this is even more disturbing given that vampires do not need blood to survive; they simply enjoy drinking it. For higher vampires, in particular, blood is like alcohol.They can very well get drunkand become addicted to it, like Regis was, if they’re not careful. Still, the lengths they took to ensure a steady flow of blood are downright disturbing.
Experimenting on ‘Lower Beings’
The last few notes involve how the human cattle were treated within Tesham Mutna. “Notes of a Tesham Mutna prisoner” document a day in the life of one of the battery-cage humans inThe Witcher 3fortress. They merely happened upon a piece of parchment and a lump of coal, then decided to write. One of the most notable details is how they feel too tired to do much of anything due to blood loss. Additionally, they described how the vampires used “shiny instruments” to extract blood and even how they complained when one of their captive humans died.
Lastly, “Transcript of a Conversation with a Lower Being,” contains a recordedconversation inThe Witcher 3between a higher vampire and a human prisoner. In it, the human attempts to explain the emotion of fear to the vampire. However, his conversation partner cannot seem to grasp the concept. When the human says, “fear is born in the heart,” the vampire then decides to take the human’s heart out to study it. Though the human protests that this would kill him, the vampire simply brushes the consequence off, saying that the human’s excessive frailty is not his fault.
Taken together, the frightening books and notes that can be found in the ruins of Tesham Mutna paint a grim picture of how the powerful race views humans and portray how uncaring vampires are of the “lower beings.” It’s certainly frightening to think that suchdangerous creatures roamThe Witcherworldalongside the people of the Continent.
The Witcher 3: Wild Huntis available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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