Toruviel

Toruviel is an elf who has spent her life fighting for her people’s freedom, first among the free elves of Filavandrel and later with the Scoia’tael. The journal in The Witcher describes her as a proud, bitter leader of elves who fled persecution, though less cynical than her comrade Yaevinn.

In The Witcher

Geralt meets Toruviel in Act IV, at the Lakeside near Murky Waters, where she leads a band of elves hiding by the lake and in the nearby cave. They are close to starving, and in Daily Bread she gives Geralt 20 orens to buy bread for them. Five loaves is the target, but since bread costs 5 orens each in Murky Waters, the money only stretches to four, and four more can be found in the baker’s house.

In Free Elves, White Rayla and the knights of the Order of the Flaming Rose arrive to clear the Scoia’tael out of the area. Toruviel’s elves have taken villagers hostage, the boy Alvin among them, to force safe passage. Geralt goes into the village to talk to her before choosing whether to side with the Order, with the Scoia’tael, or with neither. If he backs the elves, he fights alongside Toruviel against Rayla’s knights.

On the Scoia’tael path she turns up again in Act V, in the burning streets of Old Vizima during Hope Burns Bright. Knights corner her near Shani’s field hospital, and after Geralt saves her she thanks him and runs for the Scoia’tael hideout, where the two can spend the night together. Later in the fighting she tells Geralt that Yaevinn’s plan needs a diversion.

In the books

Toruviel first appears in the short story “The Edge of the World” from The Last Wish. She is one of the elves under Filavandrel who capture Geralt and Dandelion in the valley near Lower Posada. When she smashes Dandelion’s lute, Geralt headbutts her and breaks her nose, and the proud elf ends up in tears. By the end of the story, she gives Dandelion an elven lute to replace the one she broke.