All language subtitles for [English (United States)] The Witchers Bestiary_ Season 2 _ Netflix [DownSub.com]

- [Narrator] Whether animal, vegetable,

or mineral the monsters
in the second season

of "The Witcher" are here and
they're all really hungry.

But each one has been
around, stalking humanity,

longer than you might think.

- The monsters aren't new.
They're just new to here.

- [Narrator] That's why I,

who hath been dubbed Geralt of Trivia

by the excellent YouTube commenters,

am back to explore our
deepest, darkest tales

to uncover the real mythological
origins of the creatures

in "The Witcher" season two.

So throw back some Witcher juice and

♪ Learn, watcher, learn ♪

About monsters.

(ominous music)

We never actually get to
see a wyvern in season two,

but it is the subject of
a nostalgic conversation

between Geralt and Nivellen
in the first episode.

- [Nivellen] Horrid creatures.

- [Narrator] And, by the way,

if you were wondering why we're ignoring

the giant magical man-boar in the room,

it's because we already covered his kind

in a previous bestiary.

But, you know, it's kind of
telling that we're already

distracted from the wyvern,

because they've spent
centuries getting overshadowed

by the homecoming queen,

older sister of the flying
lizard monster world, dragons.

While dragon mania has run
wild on six continents,

the wyvern is mostly relegated to Europe

where it appears on heraldry
and as soccer team mascots.

Ooh, dragon, you're so scary
and serious and universal.

Whatever, wyvern's are underrated.

Truthfully, the line between wyvern

and dragon was blurry
in medieval bestiaries.

Everything was.

The ancient viper, from
which the wyvern got its name

and many characteristics,
often looks like a dragon.

And the wyvern carried that on.

Although, sometimes, weirdly,
it's pictured as kind

of an irate capybara.

Hmm.
(creature growls)

It's really only more recently

that we see the two
species become distinct.

The wyvern is typically
smaller than the dragon,

with two legs instead of four,

and may have a barbed, poisonous tail.

But I think what really
kept bards singing about

the wyvern were its quirks.

Eagle-eyed viewers may
have noticed how one

is often eating another?

That's them mating.

Sort of echoing a praying mantis,

a female wyvern would
bite off a male's head

and thus become pregnant, but they also,

and this is a thing we
read on a message board,

but a classics professor confirmed it,

fled in horror at the sight of a naked man.

And I feel like we've all felt

that at some point or another.

Although maybe not the
one you're watching now.

Point is, don't let
dragons hog the spotlight.

Maybe the poor, overlooked wyvern

is a little more relatable.

Put them in season three, Netflix!

(ominous music)

If there were a Venn Diagram
between vampires and witches,

and there should be, this part right here?

That would be where the Bruxae live,

known as Bruxa in the show.

There were similar fearsome creatures

in the pre-Christian era,

but bruxae really flourished
in the rural areas

of Medieval Portugal,

right before authorities all
over Europe feverishly tried

to accuse anyone remotely weird

or interesting of the dark
practice of witchcraft.

Like witches, Bruxae were
predominantly women whose powers

were said to come from
oftentimes intimate pacts

with the devil.

But unlike Medieval witches,

who were sometimes depicted
as having an obsession

with the male organ,

they even supposedly harvested
penises from trees like this.

- Oh, whoa.
- The bruxae possessed

a vampire-like thirst for blood.

And to make it worse, their
favorite cocktail was the blood

of an infant.

Bruxae had powers galore.

The evil eye. Shapeshifting
into birds, ants, wolves.

But I didn't find evidence of
a piercing scream like this

in Bruxa folklore.

So it's likely that a
little bit of banshee,

an Irish female spirit whose screams warn

of impending death,

snuck into the "Witcher" version.

Luckily for the people
of Portugal, though,

Bruxae did come with quirky
vampire-like limitations

and weak points.

Much like my own weak point
is heroes moving purposefully

in slow motion.

For whatever reason, a bruxa
only possessed its powers

between 12 and two in the morning,

which seems limiting?

Iron, garlic sewn into clothes,

or scissors left under
the pillow of an infant

could deter one, although,

that certainly isn't how I
was taught to handle scissors.

And even if you couldn't stop a bruxa,

you could get revenge on it by boiling

and stabbing the clothes
of a child it had killed.

But overall? A bruxa is
just one of those monsters.

If it lives near you, you
should probably just move.

Move quickly.

Or at least don't go out
from midnight to two.

(ominous music)

I don't mess with trees,
friend, and neither should you.

Because, according to most
folklore, there's about an, oh,

I dunno, 50/50 chance you're going

to piss off a forest spirit.

And you do not want that.

See, the world's mythologies are teeming

with unpredictable woodland beings,

from the famous, tragic Greek dryad

to the obscure, unsettling
Japanese face-bearing tree

known as the ninmenju.

Let's see that full screen.

Yep, okay, yeah. I'm unsettled, yep.

But the creature we first
see surprising the Witchers

in episode two comes from the
Slavic take on the archetype.

- Telling me Leshies
are giant talking trees!

- [Narrator] And since one fifth

of the world's forests
are in Russia alone,

we should probably pay attention
to its woodland monsters.

So a leshy usually isn't
seen, but when it is,

it looks like an old man
whistling in the forest

with curiously missing
features, a pointed head shape,

and, oh yeah, the green mossy
hair is kind of a giveaway.

But they're unpredictable by nature.

Shapeshifters, able to assume
giant and animal forms,

the latter usually a bear or a wolf.

They also just keep these critters around,

like a leshy entourage.

Occasionally depicted as malevolent,

the Leshy's attitude more often depends

on a human's behavior towards
the wilderness they protect,

making them harder to predict.

And they are indeed known as tricksters

who will lead travelers
astray or kidnap children,

particularly unbaptized babies, trick!

They tend to be solitary,

but when they do get together, look out.

Leshy groups are infamous
for wanton rape and pillaging

and even getting rid of
them isn't a sure thing!

Legend has it that acting a
fool to make a Leshy laugh

will get you out of trouble.

Or you could try escaping their forest,

since outside, a Leshy shrinks
to the size of a mushroom.

But the best way is probably not messing

with trees in the first place.

Because you never know
when they'll mess back.

(ominous music)

When we searched our ancient tomes,

and, well, Google, for
the witch "Voleth Meir,"

all we got was a bunch of casting news.

So, I give up. Case closed.

Not a monster from any ancient mythology.

Except, wait a spell, something familiar.

I can't help but, ah!

It's Baba Yaga. Voleth Meir is Baba Yaga.

Curse you, you showrunning enchantress,

for nearly slipping one by on us!

Well, get ready folks, because
I'm about to remove the hood

from Voleth Meir.

Exhibit A.

Baba Yaga is an old and prominent
figure in Slavic folklore,

described as either an
ogress or a swamp witch.

Either way, powerful magic.

She looks as you might expect, with a long

and sensitive nose that comes
into play in many stories.

But like Voleth Meir,
there's some ambiguity

to Baba Yaga's character.

- I'm simply a guide to get
you exactly what you deserve.

- [Narrator] She can
certainly throw visitors

into her oven, but she
often bestows gifts,

as in the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful,

where the heroine is emancipated
by Baba Yaga's magic skull

when it charbroils her cruel family, hmm.

But for exhibit B,

there's also some serious similarity

in gadgets going on
here, and gadgets matter,

because Baba Yaga is truly the James Bond

of the magic Russian hag world.

There's no mistaking that
Voleth Meir has Baba Yaga's

signature magical
chicken-legged cabin-style hut.

I mean, come on.

And by the way, Baba Yaga's
hut won't reveal its front door

to just anyone, exactly
like Fringilla says.

- A hut with no doors!

- [Narrator] It's true
that we never see anything

like Baba Yaga's famous
flying mortar and pestle,

but there is something about the way

that Voleth Meir flies close
to the ground that mirrors it.

And finally, exhibit C, there's the fact

that Voleth Meir appears in three forms.

In some tales, Baba Yaga
takes the form of a triad

of sisters, each, of
course, named Baba Yaga.

But what's more is that
she's sometimes served

by three riders in different colors.

You guessed it, red, white, and black.

So, in closing, good
people of the Internet,

I submit to you that
Voleth Meir is at least

inspired by Baba Yaga,
if not Baba Yaga herself.

(ominous music)

What? What the hell is this thing?

(Narrator sighs)

Well, "The Witcher's"
writing team certainly is not

making it easy this season

because the Myriapod from episode three

isn't a single monster from
mythology that I could find.

It's a potpourri of monster parts,

which we'll break into
pieces to understand,

and oh my God, it's kinda
like being a Witcher.

This is so amazing.

Now, monster hybrids are not abnormal.

Anthropologists argue that these novel,

imaginative, configurations
helped them be remembered.

It made them go viral in campfire tales.

But centipedes and their kin
don't often get monsterized

in European mythology.

The few I did find come from
Asian and Indigenous folklore.

Which honestly I feel kind of odd

because our many legged
monster's namesake, myriapoda,

is a biological family

of sometimes lethally poisonous beasts

that just makes you feel

icky is the scientific term, I think.

Like here's one swimming.

I don't want to go
swimming ever again now.

So now you know what the
Vietnamese people around

Ha Long felt when seeing Con Rit,

a 60-foot, armor-plated seafaring
millipede cruising the bay

in the 1800s.

One even allegedly washed up on a beach.

It was documented by an oceanographer,

but it was thrown back
because of its awful smell.

But maybe I could be
like the Kaer Morhen bard

slash medical examiner or something.

Am I getting ahead of myself?

Moving up top, our myriapod's
head is a little more familiar

in monster-dom, I guess.

These are clearly the
curved horns of a ram.

They can be an indicator of strength,

they're a feature of the criosphinx,

a powerful lion/ram hybrid
that guards Egyptian temples.

But in Western mythology,

they can also be a symbol of wickedness.

The ultimate monster, the devil,

sometimes has ram and goat horns.

It might explain why this
creature immediately feels

powerful and evil.

I feel like Vesemir would be really proud

of the work we're doing here.

There are many many-mouthed
monsters, like the hydra,

but they usually have distinct heads.

So the myriapod is creepy.

But in Aztec mythology,
we find that Cipactli,

the crocodile demon upon
which this world rests,

had mouths at every joint.

Hate to be his dentist.

Finally, this hand chest thing.

Agh, these hands are, ugh,

these hands are freaking me out, man.

Be cool, you're supposed to be a Witcher.

If you're equally bothered,

you can probably blame the Greeks

for introducing the world
to the Hecatoncheires,

three monstrous Titans
possessed of 100 hands

and 50 heads each, and usually associated

with natural disasters.

So power, wickedness,
disaster, and centipedes.

All in one monster.

Maybe it's best to leave this to the more,

um, seasoned Witchers.

(ominous music)

A long time ago,

when the stars shined
bright over the old world,

monsters lived in the
lakes and rivers and ponds

and streams where they
played and ate and laughed

and scared to their heart's content.

But as humans moved to places
where the most water you'd

ever see was a stagnant puddle,

the water monsters became less relevant.

The city-dwelling humans
searched far and wide

for new stories about the murky,

now-shitty darkness
beneath them: the sewers.

So the disgusting, sewer-dwelling Zeugl

that we see in episode
four is wholly a creation

of "The Witcher's"
author, Andrzej Sapkowski.

But sewer monsters on
the whole are not rare.

Take the Bahkauv of Aachen, for instance.

This mutated calf lived in the sewers

and hot springs of the ancient city

and primarily attacked
drunken men by leaping

on their shoulders and
demanding their money.

It's honestly sort of a let down compared

to a tentacle attack.

But lest you think this is
some medieval city thing,

allow me to draw your
attention to Victorian London,

where the Thames helpfully
returned the contents

of the sewers to citizenry
with alarming regularity.

There, in a time when people
foraged in the sewers,

that was a real thing,

legend swelled of the so-called
Black Swine of Hampstead,

a pregnant sow who entered
the sewers and gave birth

to a family of pigs that grew monstrous

from inbreeding and feeding
off the city's filth.

This was in the papers!

Even modern New York City has
its own sewer monster myth,

wait, no, no, no, not them.

Do we even have the rights for that?

Ahem, I meant the albino
alligators that now allegedly feed

and breed in the darkness after
being abandoned in the 70s.

But here's my thing with sewer monsters:

do we really need a story to
keep us out of the sewers?

You know, isn't the smell enough?

- But know this, you, you both,

smell truly awful.

I mean it is like something
has crawled up your asses

and died.

- [Narrator] Yep, that's enough for me.

(ominous music)

The Wild Hunt, it just gives
you a shiver, doesn't it?

Well, not to be the bearer of bad news

after an already somber ending but

we should probably call
it The Wild Hunts, plural.

Because that shit was everywhere.

Yes, it turns out that throughout Europe,

from Spain to Poland,

but even hopping over to the
New World where hunters flew

in a canoe, people warned of ghostly lords

and their often-demonic hunting parties,

tearing through the countryside,

usually during winter storms.

These were popular stories.

- I saw them myself, just last week.

Riding their skeletal horses
across the southern sky.

A portent of doom.

- [Narrator] The Hunt's leadership varied.

Everyone from the Norse God,
Odin, on down to local kings,

but there was often a curse at the start.

One overzealous Lord in
Germany, for instance,

had chased his quarry into a
church and killed it there,

which was a no no for
the priest who cursed him

to hunt for eternity.

Everyone seems to agree
that having The Wild Hunt

in your area meant a
bad moon was a-rising,

but the specific punishments
they doled out varied.

In more than a few tales,

The Hunt bizarrely tosses a severed leg

or a shoe at witnesses.

So why were they everywhere?

Well, the Hunt was often
used as a morality tale.

Either the leader or
the victim clearly had

spectral punishment coming to them.

But some say they also
fulfilled the same function

as Halloween or Day of the Dead.

They blur the boundary
between life and afterlife.

So undead or demonic, led by Gods,

bringers of bad luck and severed legs,

and basically everywhere.

Good luck next season, Geralt.

(ominous music)

Sometimes monsters go extinct.

They pass from our stories. Forgotten.

Chernobog is one of those near extinction.

Uh, look, wait, wait. Ope.

RIP Chernobog, we hardly knew ye.

But some websites will
confidently tell you

that Chernobog was the black
god of darkness and misfortune.

Locked in an eternal
conflict with the white god

of goodness named Belobog.

Chernobog, they'll say, ruled
over the bleak Slavic winter.

And I want to tell you all that's true

because it sounds like a
bitchin' origin for this guy,

but here's the problem.

When Christians brought
writing to Slavic lands,

they had an agenda.

Most of them weren't into cataloging

the idolatrous Slavic Gods.

So not only do we not have much to go on,

what we do have is biased.

The most credible passage we have,

from a monk named Helmold,

just speaks of a ceremony in
which Western Slavic villagers

cursed the bad god, Chernobog,

and praised his unnamed opposite.

That's it.

A much later passage spoke
of Chernobog being assuaged

by human sacrifice.

And everything else?
Suspect, say scholars.

- Kindly piss off.
- So we may never really

know much about the monster, Chernobog.

And given what we've seen on
the show, maybe that's okay.

Because I will never forgive him for this.

(ominous music)

We turned the briefest
glimpse of a basilisk head

into a full segment
last time because, well,

we didn't know there'd be
giant basilisks running around

for five minutes in the
final episode of this season.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Hindsight.

So let's review, shall we?

Although proportions vary by the tale,

the basilisk is typically
portrayed as some mixture

of reptile and chicken.

Born of a rooster's egg, yes, rooster,

that was incubated by a toad,

which admittedly sounds really silly,

but counterpoint, isn't
a T-Rex kind of a mixture

of a chicken and a reptile?

And like the T-Rex, the
basilisk is considered a king,

"the little king" of
the serpents in Greek.

But you can argue that
its formidable arsenal

of monstrous weapons makes
it way more dangerous

than these beasts and/or puny dinosaurs.

Like a dragon, it could breathe fire.

And its hiss could
kill. So could its odor.

In fact, it was so very toxic
that its venom was known

to travel up a man's spear to kill him

and the horse he rode on!

And scholars thought its native habitat

of Libya was actually a verdant paradise

until basilisk toxins
turned it into the Sahara.

And we haven't even gotten to
its famous death stare yet.

Which even rivals Geralt's.

The basilisk's stare was
thought to be instantly fatal.

Humans in antiquity went to great lengths

to protect themselves from it.

For instance, in Warsaw in 1587,

the citizenry sent a convicted felon

into a suspected basilisk
lair wearing a suit

of mirrored armor, like he
was on the basilisk bomb squad

or something.

By the way, Warsaw now has
this cool basilisk statue,

which we thought you might like to see.

Aside from Geralt, who
kills them pretty easily

without the aid of mirrors,

the basilisk did have one powerful enemy

that the dinosaurs didn't have.

You may have seen it earlier.

It's the weasel.

Yes, despite all those
instant-kill weapons,

a smelly weasel could
somehow take out a basilisk.

Some even think that this bloody
mythical rivalry originated

in the real life enmity
between cobra and mongoose.

But whatever its characteristics,

these peasants from
season one still possess

a certain amount of
wisdom about the basilisk.

- It's been an hour.
- Gorgeous-

- Let's get on before the
beast gets hungry again.

- [Narrator] And so one
more chapter comes to an end

in "The Witcher's" bestiary.

- Is that all we'll be doing here, then?

Studying monsters.

- [Narrator] Yes, but
before we go, a question:

which monster from season two
would you least like to fight?

Let us know in the comments.

Happy Hunting! Geralt of Trivia, out!

(upbeat music)

There was one monster that was
supposed to be in the season,

but just missed the boat.

The gigantic kraken.

Lurking in the seas between
Greenland and Norway,

it's most typically depicted
as a monster cephalopod

that's so big, it can make whirlpools

or look like an island
or even, it's whispered,

tax the Netflix visual effects budget.

(ominous music)