Hello there, may I share an AU/drabble of sort concerning Lambert!
So, while lurking I learned Paul Bullion can play the guitar. Inspired by that, what if Lambert gets a guitar while on the path? (Or perhaps something else. I believe they were around at that time period but I could be wrong?? I’ll go with the guitar for now.)
In my mind he got it while hanging around Novigrad. He was just looking at a music stand out of curiosity and the vendor told him something like “Go away, Witcher you’re scaring my customers! What’s a witcher gotta do with instruments?” To which Lambert takes offence, tells him to go fuck himself and stomped to the music vendor on the opposite side of the street to buy the nearest instrument. To prove a point.
The guitar is forgotten for a little while. He just hauls it around in its case as he goes from contract to contract. He owns it for about a year or two before he considers scrapping it or reselling it
That was until Eskel comments on it. He dosen’t understand why Lambert carries around a guitar when obviously he would never learn to play it. He tells Lambert just that as they reunite one winter.
Lambert’s response is to rush back out of Kaer Morhen to a bookstore before the snow comes in. He buys himself a manuscript on how to play guitar and he starts to learn right as he comes back to the keep. Eskel’s not about to tell him what he can and can’t do.
He practices over the winter and it all sounds quite horrible. He only plays in his room when he’s certain no one’s listening.
Come next winter he’s not an expert but he’s passable, and of this the Witcher is proud. His plan to show off to Eskel was forgotten and he kept on playing in his room. He might of started to enjoy it at some point, but he wouldn’t tell anyone that.
One day he stops by Oxenfurt and buys himself a second manuscript, full of new music for him to play. He’s trying to figure one of them out when some man he never met walks up to him.
The guy is a bard, he learns, and an absolute asshole. A complete elitist who belittles him for how he plays and his little knowledge in the classics. Lambert would love to shut him up, really, but he dosen’t understand a single thing the man is saying.
He ends up punching him unconscious and storming off. Another book is bought, on music theory, before he leaves the city.
Lambert would love to learn this music theory thing and shove it in that bard’s face. Thing is, he’s a casual player and some music theory is a lot harder to learn on your own than it is to learn how to play an instrument.
So he’s really pissed off to admit he cannot put the bard in his place. Enough he stops playing around humans altogether.
Until he meets Jaskier, whom he refuses to even talk to at first because of his previous encounter with a bard.
But Jaskier is intent on befriending Lambert the second Geralt mentions he plays the guitar. Because why would he not? A witcher that shares a skill with him was bound to be interesting!
No time is wasted on trying to talk to Lambert about music. He asks him multiple times to listen to him play. Every single time, the young witcher tells him to fuck off and locks his room’s door behind him. Jaskier even tried to trade his share of pie (plus Gertalt’s, though he wasn’t aware of this) to just hear one song.
Lambert eventually succumbs to his annoyance and lets him in his room while he practices one afternoon.
Jaskier just sat himself in a chair like he lived there his entire life, took out his lute and asked what they were playing.
Before he knows it, the bard shows up in Lambert’s room whenever he practices. Sometimes they play together, others it’s just Lambert while Jaskier writes. He gave really good pointers to help the witcher play. He even went as far as to teach him a bit of music theory when Lambert asked.
Lambert learned the basics, but also that he didn’t care to learn anything more than that. So he gives the book to Jaskier, music theory was forgotten and they went back to playing and writing.
Winter had progressed quite a bit when Jaskier convinced Lambert to practice in the library instead of his room.
Vesemir said nothing at first. If he happened to also be in the library, he would go about his business. Sometimes, when Vesemir was reorganising the bookshelves, Lambert could hear the rustle of books stop for dozens of minutes. He didn’t think much about it.
After a week they were relocated to “the sitting room”, which the witcher swore didn’t exist before. The old witcher played dumb when confronted about it.
Eskel was the next to discover the room. Jaskier could see him pass by through the small opening in the door. He would lean himself against the wall, stand there for a while and then go about his buisness. Geralt started doing it too shortly after.
It’s uncertain when Lambert became comfortable with the idea to play in front of his family, but Jaskier was probably to blame. Two winters of playing in the sitting room had passed when one evening he broke into song after supper (as he often did). Lambert just stood up, left, came back with his guitar and accompanied him.
After that, whatever form of secrecy surrounding music and Lambert just dissolved. They often played for the other wolves.
Jaskier, Lambert had decided, was not a bad man. Enough so he mentions the asshole bard to him one day. Somehow, some way, just by the brief description Lambert gives him, he immediately recognises the man to be Vlado Marx.
So there came a plan. Once it was spring, they parted with a promise to meet in Oxenfurt during the summer.
Jaskier arrives a week or so before Lambert to produce a band permit for “The Northern Harpies”. They found Vlado Marx playing on a stage in the streets and set up close enough to be a distraction but far enough, so they were not breaking any rules and begun to play.
They annoy the man for over a week by just stealing all his crowd. The fact they got a lot of coin in the process was a bonus
Since then, Lambert and Jaskier play together almost every time they meet and refer to each other as bandmates with a bit of humor.
That was the idea! Sorry if any of it is ooc, I haven’t interacted with Lambert much in the games yet.
Other things that would be cool, but I could not fit in this:
Lambert and Jaskier arrange a duet version of Toss a Coin and harass Geralt with it.
They enter a barding competition as The Northern Harpies a joke and win.
Eskel finds the Geralt harassment funny. Then Lambert tells Jaskier about Eskel’s adventures. A song is made. Eskel dosen’t think it’s funny anymore.
They can’t ever agree on what vibe(tm) The Northern Harpies should have, so their experimental phase is never-ending.