Ruiwen

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Enslaved Childhood

Ruiwen was the eldest daughter of a groom in a minor baron’s household. Although her father was nominally a servant, the entire family lived as slaves. Her mother served as a wet nurse, and Ruiwen had a younger brother and sister 210.

The household’s daughter routinely abused Ruiwen, riding on her back, pulling out her hair, and striking her while adults applauded. Her father was forced to serve as a mounting step for his master. Her mother endured the master’s unwanted advances and the mistress’s retaliatory violence. Despite this, Ruiwen treasured her family and saved two pieces of candy to share with her siblings 210.

Family’s Death and Gabriel’s Pact

At ten, Ruiwen survived a burning household in which her family died. Dick later witnessed a memory of her sitting before her younger siblings’ bloodied bodies. Gabriel connected the tragedy to Dick’s former life as an assassin; he had been thirteen at the time 211.

Nearly suffocating in the smoke, Ruiwen wished intensely for revenge and awakened Gabriel. The deity identified her enemies and offered power in exchange for Ruiwen eventually spreading her faith through her position at court. Gabriel later admitted that Ruiwen originally hated Dick and Master specifically, and that she had broadened that hatred to encompass the Witcher Order 211.

Childhood malnutrition, abuse, and smoke inhalation permanently damaged Ruiwen’s health. Gabriel stated that divine healing consumed her life force and that she would not live past twenty 211.

Appearance

• Build: Tall and slender, nearly Dick’s height. While carrying her, Dick estimated that she weighed only a little over fifty kilograms 95 117.
• Features: Shoulder-length hair, an oval face, and snow-white skin 95.
• Usual clothing: Introduced wearing quartz glasses and a fine black dress. Her clothing contains magic arrays that provide warmth 95 114.
• Battle Angel form: Enormous luminous white wings spanning several meters, white-lit eyes, and golden patterns that appear across her face and beneath her skin 205 208.

Personality

Ruiwen generally behaves with restraint and propriety. She speaks gently to witnesses, apologizes after invading Dick’s private memories, and compensates him for the intrusion. Dick considers her neither frivolous nor forward, and she explicitly dislikes intimate physical contact 97 98 118 174.

Her capacity for kindness repeatedly conflicts with her revenge. She works to save Carter, prevents his murder after he discovers the conspiracy, and hesitates to kill Dick despite Gabriel’s urging. Gabriel herself describes kindness as Ruiwen’s nature 167 193 200 209.

Ruiwen can also appear cold and uncompromising. She initially refuses to intervene when Nekkers drag Barry away during a trial, but later agrees to conceal Dick’s rescue. Her most extreme hostility is intertwined with Gabriel’s manipulation: she eventually regains clarity, rejects killing Dick, and acknowledges that hatred allowed the deity to exploit her 183 208 209 211.

Abilities & Skills

Alchemy

Ruiwen identifies alchemy as her specialty and later calls herself an alchemy master 97 196.

• Assists with the School of the Lynx’s Trial of the Grasses 96.
• Travels into the Misty Mountains to gather materials for Magic Bombs 113.
• Supplies Dick with enchanted bombs, Samum Bombs, and Grapeshot Bombs 174.
• Examines Spotty’s potion and confirms that it is safe to administer 196.

Detect Thoughts

Ruiwen searches memories using a spell that fills her eyes with white light and produces phantom hands that reach into the subject’s head 97 200.

• Initially targets memories relevant to Dick’s charges, then expands the search into his private experiences 97 98.
• Suffers backlash when Dick forcibly breaks their mental connection, leaving her pale and bleeding from the mouth 98.
• Cannot access Dick’s memories from before age twenty during a second attempt. Gabriel also fails to see those experiences 200.

Concealment, Formations, and Portals

• Group camouflage: Blends herself and three witchers into their surroundings for a little over ten minutes. Attacking, exerting force, or using Signs breaks the concealment 186.
• Formation operation: Activates six pillars to reveal the trial grounds and later restores No Man’s Land’s concealment 183 191.
• Spatial knowledge: Guides Dick through compressed, folded terrain stabilized by an elven formation 198.
• Portals: Transports the witchers out of No Man’s Land and later sends the unconscious Dick away from the ruins 191 200.

Healing and Incapacitation

• Casts sustained healing magic on Carter after the Trial of the Grasses; Dick’s Dragon Tear Potions subsequently help his wounds heal 167 170.
• Uses a white-eyed unconsciousness spell to disable Carter before Master or Alexander can kill him 193.
• Receives complete restoration of severe wounds through Gabriel’s white radiance during her battle with Dick 208.
• Limit: Gabriel states that divine healing draws on Ruiwen’s life force rather than curing her underlying physical frailty 211.

Combat Magic and Battle Angel Form

• Lightning: Forms a concentrated electrical field around her hand, but withdraws it before striking the unconscious Dick 200.
• Magical force: Clears heavy rubble while rescuing Dick from the ruins 200.
• Flight: Uses her manifested wings for rapid movement and aerial evasion 205 208.
• Spectral golden hand: Immobilizes Master and throws him into a ravine; later blocks Dick’s Mind Shockwave and overpowers his sword arm 205 208 209.
• Light sword: Fights Dick at close range, combining sword attacks with flight and repeated divine healing 208.
• Loss of autonomy: Gabriel can speak and act through her body. As divine power is consumed, the contractual bond weakens and Ruiwen becomes able to resist 208 209.

Monster Command

• Initially uses Master’s ring to pass safely among his experimental monsters 193 198.
• Later commands a horde containing werewolves, gargoyles, Nekker Warriors, and drowners 200.
• Destroys both her ring and Master’s counterpart during the siege, demonstrating that the monsters now obey her independently of the rings 203.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Quartz glasses — Worn while reading at her introduction 95.
• Enchanted clothing — Contains magic arrays that continuously supply warmth 114.
• Monster-control ring — A mottled jade ring supplied by Master. His ring initially has priority over hers; she later destroys both 193 198 203.
• Light sword — Her principal weapon in Battle Angel form 208.
• Ping’an — Her crow companion, with steel-blade-like feathers. Gabriel stores part of her power inside the bird; it can grow large enough to carry Dick and serves as a vessel for Gabriel’s speech 195 196 200 211.

Relationships

• Dick — Initially a target of revenge because of his former assassin identity. His care during her illness and willingness to protect her undermine her hostility. She ultimately resists Gabriel to spare him, and they later reunite in Hell 117 200 209 211 451.
• Gabriel — Former patron and contractual deity. Grants Ruiwen power while manipulating her hatred and overriding her actions. Ruiwen’s death breaks their contract 209 211.
• Queen Meve — Ruiwen’s royal employer. The queen remembers her as conscientious and diligent and sees no earlier warning of her betrayal 193 231.
• Master — Co-conspirator in the hidden laboratory, but also an intended victim of her revenge. Ruiwen eventually seizes control of his monsters and throws him into a ravine 193 200 203 205.
• Brownie — Political and military accomplice. Two years before the siege, he helped secure her chief-sorceress position in exchange for training malformed witchers as his private soldiers. He later supplies squires and catapults for the attack 200 203.
• Carter — A trial survivor she struggles to keep alive. When he discovers the laboratory conspiracy, she incapacitates him rather than allowing Master or Alexander to murder him 167 170 193.
• Barry — Regards Ruiwen almost as an older sister and secretly carves a wooden birthday gift for her. Although Dick initially believes she killed him, he later finds Barry and the other apparent victims alive 207 214.
• Lucifer/Xiya — Ruiwen’s later patron, revealed to be Dick’s wife. Ruiwen remains at her side in Hell and silently holds her hand while they await Dick’s return 451 452.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Court Oversight and Dick’s Hearing

Ruiwen first meets Dick as the sorceress accompanying the witchers. Her dual appointment makes her both the nobles’ observer within the Order and a mediator in disputes with ordinary residents 95 96.

At Dick’s hearing, witnesses withdraw their complaints, leaving the mercenaries’ deaths as the remaining charge. Ruiwen attempts a final memory search but crosses into private memories, prompting Dick to sever the connection. She apologizes and compensates him with one Dimeritium Bomb, two Samum Bombs, and four Grapeshot Bombs; Master orders him to complete three additional commissions 97 98.

Misty Mountains Expedition

Ruiwen joins Dick and Anson’s expedition to collect bomb materials. During the journey, she discloses that she alone survived her family’s misfortune and later attended a magic academy 113.

She develops a severe fever in the avalanche-blocked cave and deliriously calls for her family while invoking Gabriel’s promise of revenge. Dick carries her beside the fire and stays with her until she improves. Gabriel later identifies this care as a likely turning point in Ruiwen’s feelings toward him 117 211.

Trials and the Hidden Laboratory

At Kaer Morhen, Ruiwen attempts to save Carter after a disastrous Trial of the Grasses. She subsequently oversees the young witchers’ field trial, conceals the observing adults, and opens a portal after their visit to the Circle of Elements 167 170 183 186 191.

Master then shows her the experimental monsters beneath the basement and gives her a control ring. When Carter discovers them, Ruiwen knocks him unconscious, prevents his execution, and arranges for Russell and Harden to take him for treatment 193.

Betrayal and Siege

During an investigation in No Man’s Land, Dick protects Ruiwen from collapsing ruins. She rescues him afterward but cannot bring herself to execute him. After another unsuccessful memory search, she sends him away through a portal and proceeds to lead the monster horde 198 199 200.

Alongside Brownie, Ruiwen besieges Odinburg and announces her intention to eradicate the Witcher Order. She destroys the control rings, manifests her wings, and defeats Master by throwing him into a ravine 203 205.

Dick confronts her in the basement, believing she has murdered Aode and the young witchers. Their battle ends when Ruiwen regains enough control to stop a killing blow and begs Gabriel to spare him. When Gabriel takes over again, Ruiwen uses her spectral hand to force Dick’s sword into her own heart despite his resistance. She admits that hatred blinded her before her body dissolves into light 207 208 209.

Dick later discovers that the apparent corpses were an illusion: Aode and the children are alive and unconscious 214.

Alternate-Timeline Vision

Dick subsequently witnesses a vision of an alternate course of events in which Ruiwen and Brownie destroy the Order at Kaer Morhen. After completing her revenge, Ruiwen kills herself with her own light sword. Dick interprets the vision as the timeline his intervention changed, not a second event in the current timeline 222.

Survival and Reunion

Gabriel later reveals that Ruiwen’s freed soul did not enter reincarnation. Instead, a powerful being took her into service; an attempt to investigate further damaged Gabriel’s divine essence 329.

Dick eventually encounters Ruiwen in Hell and recognizes her after asking her to reveal her true form. She is now a follower of Lucifer, revealed as Xiya. Dick promises to protect Ruiwen along with Xiya and their unborn children 451.

Notable Quotes

“The hatred has finally faded. This is my rebirth.” 209

“I was blinded by hatred. I gave that so-called deity an opening.” 209

“My lord Gabriel, I have no wish to defy you, but now that my vengeance is complete, could you spare the witcher before me?” 208