Zoltan Chivay

Zoltan Chivay is a dwarf from Mahakam, a soldier of fortune, a hopeless optimist and one of Geralt’s truest friends. He loves rough drink, rougher songs and a good game of gwent, and he is always cooking up a new business idea, each one ending in bankruptcy. He never shows much interest in gods or fatherlands, but he will jump into the fire for a friend without a second thought.

Zoltan in The Witcher 3
Geralt runs into Zoltan in Novigrad, throwing vagrants out of the Rosemary and Thyme, the tavern he runs with Dandelion. The bard has vanished, so in Broken Flowers the two old friends split Dandelion’s list of lady friends between them and go searching. When they find out Dandelion is being moved to Oxenfurt in a prison cart, Zoltan and a band of dwarves set up the ambush in A Poet Under Pressure.

Zoltan has his own troubles too. He took a loan from a Novigrad mob boss and plans to pay it back by collecting rare gwent cards, which Geralt helps with in A Dangerous Game. He is also the one who lost the enchanted owl Philippa Eilhart in a card game, a mistake that leads straight to Dijkstra’s bathhouse. Beating him at gwent starts Gwent: Old Pals.

Zoltan always agrees to help when Geralt asks in Brothers in Arms: Novigrad, and he fights at The Battle of Kaer Morhen, where he also offers his services as an armourer. Later he can help Geralt get the prison guards drunk in The Great Escape, unless Triss’s mages have already been smuggled out, since the witch hunters then turn on nonhumans. He survives the story and turns up with Dandelion at the White Orchard inn in the epilogue.

In the earlier games
In the first game Geralt saves him from a gang of racists outside Vizima, and Zoltan insists he saw the witcher die years earlier. He introduces Geralt to dice poker and later leads the nonhumans out of the burning ghetto. In The Witcher 2 he is saved from the gallows alongside Dandelion and heads to Vergen, where on Iorveth’s path he becomes a hero of the siege.

In the books
In Baptism of Fire, Zoltan’s company of dwarves and a gnome meets Geralt, Dandelion and Milva in the war-torn forests and invites them to march east together. It is from Zoltan that Geralt gets his sihil sword. Zoltan later fights with the Mahakam volunteers at the Battle of Brenna, where he and his friends kill Field Marshal Menno Coehoorn.

Across the games

The WitcherThe Witcher 2

Zoltan is the dwarf Geralt goes to about dice poker. In A Game of Dice, which starts in Act I, he is the one who can tell Geralt about the game. In Dice Poker: The Novice he teaches the basics, says a good player can earn decent coin, and names Odo, Haren and Mikul as players to try. In Act II, a talk with him in Dice Poker: The Professional convinces Geralt to take on the professionals.

Also in Act II, in Memory of a Blade, Geralt brings his silver sword to Zoltan, who knows about such things and gives it a professional appraisal.

In Act V, during the fighting in Old Vizima, Zoltan asks Geralt to help him reach the district and escort refugees to a safe hospital in Hope Burns Bright. In Under a Fiery Sky he asks Geralt to get Shani out of the hospital, and in The Flame That Cleanses his doubts about the Order send Geralt to check that the knights are not harming civilians.