Alkonost is a creature of Russian legend with the body of a bird and the head of a woman, whose voice is so beautiful that those who hear it may lose all memory and desire, and whose song is bound up with sorrow, the sea, and the turning of the weather. Where Sirin is joy, Alkonost is the grief that answers it.
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Alkonost derives from the Greek Alcyone, the halcyon, the kingfisher of the ancient "halcyon days" when the sea lay calm. Slavic tradition reshaped her into a woman-headed bird of paradise, keeping the seabird thread: in the legend she lays her eggs on the shore or the sea, and while she broods, the waters stay still.
Her song, like Sirin's, is overwhelming, capable of making a listener forget everything. But Alkonost's voice carries mourning rather than bliss. She is tied to the sea and its weather: her brooding calms the water, and disturbing her stirs the storm. She is the more sorrowful and the more elemental of the paired birds, a spirit whose beauty is grief given a voice.
She is almost always named beside Sirin, the two paired across Russian folk art and lubok prints as sorrow and joy perched in the same tree. Together they form one of the tradition's most enduring images, a reminder that the Slavic imagination rarely separated delight from grief. Alkonost's sea-calming role connects her to a wider world of weather-spirits and shore-omens.
In MORANA: The Open Grave, she is Alkonost, Bird of Sorrow, a neutral Spirit built to feel like grief on the board. Her line reads, in full, "Vigil: while Alkonost is in play, the enemy gains no Slava from Charms, Omens, or Reborn effects. Site-control Slava is unaffected." Her presence quiets the opponent's small joys the way her song quiets the sea, a denial effect that fits her folklore exactly. Her flavour keeps her elemental: "She weeps the storm onto the water." She is the deliberate counterpart to the game's Sirin.
See Alkonost, Bird of Sorrow in the Grimoire.
Alkonost gives MORANA its note of mourning. She is the card that answers the bright one, the sorrow beside the joy, and mechanically she is the game's quiet hand on the opponent's momentum. In a world where the dead return, a bird whose grief can still the sea is exactly the kind of spirit the Open Grave was made to hold.
Sources: General references on Alkonost (for example the Wikipedia entry "Alkonost"), the Greek Alcyone and halcyon tradition behind the name, and the Russian folk-art pairing of Alkonost with Sirin. This page retells public-domain folklore in our own words for background; folk tales vary by region and teller. The card described is part of the planned First Turning set. This page describes MORANA only and does not reference any other product.