THE OLD FAITH

The Household and the Hearth

The old house was crowded. Every room, barn and bathhouse had its keeper, and every keeper had a temper.

Domovoi, the House Spirit

The Domovoi lives behind the stove and minds the household: a small, shaggy grandfather of a spirit who protects the family that respects him and torments the one that does not. He is fed scraps of bread and porridge, and when a family moved house, folk custom said to invite him along with an offering, or the new house would never be warm. A Domovoi who leaves, or is left behind, becomes a wanderer, and a wandering Domovoi is a cold omen.

In the game: Domovoi Hearth-Ward, Wandering Domovoi, and the old keeper himself, Dedushka the Hearthkeeper.

Kikimora, the Night Spinner

The Kikimora is the Domovoi's uncanny counterpart: a female house spirit who spins at night. Hearing her spindle turn was an omen, and finding your yarn tangled in the morning meant she was displeased with the housekeeping. In folk tradition she slips through the keyhole, and a house that offends her never sleeps well again.

In the game: Kikimora Spindle.

Ovinnik, the Barn Fire

The Ovinnik haunts the drying barn where grain was cured over open flame, a spirit shaped like a huge black cat with burning eyes. He was flattered and fed, because a displeased Ovinnik burned the barn down with the year's harvest inside. Fire that works for you one day and against you the next: that is the whole bargain of the old faith in one spirit.

In the game: Ovinnik Kilnkeeper.

Bannik, the Bathhouse Keeper

The bathhouse stood apart from the house, and it belonged to the Bannik. The third or fourth round of steam was left for him, and entering during his turn risked a scalding or worse. Folk custom made the bathhouse a place of divination and childbirth, half sacred and half dangerous, always knocked-before-entered.

In the game: Bannik Steamveil and the Site The Bathhouse.

Polevik, the Field at Noon

The Polevik walks the ripening fields, and his hour is midday. Folk tradition warned against sleeping in the furrows at noon; those who did might be woken roughly, or not at all. He is the reason the field feels watched in high summer.

In the game: Polevik Field-Warden.

Chur, the Boundary

Chur is the guardian of boundaries and kin land, remembered in the old exclamation "Chur!", shouted to ward off evil, to claim a find, to draw a line a spirit may not cross. Boundary stones stood under his protection, and moving one was an offense against the ancestors themselves.

In the game: Chur Boundary-Stone.

Bereginya, the Bank-Keeper

The Bereginyi are protective female spirits of riverbanks and shores, their name kin to the Slavic words for both "riverbank" and "to protect". Where the Rusalka pulls you in, the Bereginya holds the line of the shore. Embroidered guardian figures on ritual cloths are often read as her sign.

In the game: Bereginya Riverguard.

The Zorya Sisters

The Zorya are the auroras made kin: the Morning Star who opens the gates for the sun and the Evening Star who closes them. In some tellings they also stand guard over a chained hound that would devour the world if it ever slipped loose, which makes their watch the most important shift ever worked.

In the game: Zorya the Morning and Zorya the Evening.

Fate and the Ancestors

Before the gods had temples, the dead had a place at the table.

Rod and the Rozhanitsy

Rod is the ancestor made divine: kin, lineage and birthright as a power in itself. Beside him stand the Rozhanitsy, the fate-mothers who attend every birth and set the thread of a life. Long after christening, households still set out bread, cheese and honey for them at a child's birth, a custom the medieval church complained about for centuries, which is how we know it endured.

In the game: Rod the Ancestor and Rozhanitsa Fate-Spinner.

Dola, Your Portion

Dola is a personal fate: the luck born with you, sometimes pictured as a small companion spirit. A good Dola works while you sleep; her dark twin Nedolya, ill-portion, undoes what you build. Folk sayings treat her less as a goddess to worship than a housemate to avoid waking badly.

In the game: Dola Fate-Bringer.

The Volkhvy, Priests of the Old Way

The volkhvy were the seers and priests of the pre-Christian Slavs, readers of omens and keepers of rites. Chronicles remember them mostly at the moments they led uprisings against the new faith, which is to say: they were remembered by their enemies, and still not forgotten.

In the game: Volkhv Elder.

Nav, the World Below

Nav is the old Slavic name for the world of the dead, and the navki are its people: spirits of those who died before their time. In MORANA the word does the same work it did in folk belief: the dead are not gone, only elsewhere, and the border has hours when it opens.

In the game: your discard pile IS Nav, and Nav-Shade is what comes back first.

Dziady, the Feast of the Dead

Dziady, "the grandfathers", is the ancestor feast: nights when food was set out, doors left unlatched and the dead invited to warm themselves. To feed the ancestors was to keep them allies; to forget them was to make them hungry, and hungry dead are a genre of their own in Slavic tales.

In the game: Dziady (Ancestors' Feast).

The Wild and the Drowned

Past the fence, the water has a king and the noon has teeth.

Vodyanoy, the Drowned King

The Vodyanoy rules ponds, millraces and river deeps: an old man of the water, often pictured bloated and green, sitting on the mill wheel at night. Millers and fishermen paid him respect, because everything that drowns enters his household and serves him there. He does not chase; he waits, and the water does the rest.

In the game: Vodyanoy Deepmaw, Vodni Bull, and the Warden The Deep King.

Rusalka, the Drowned Maiden

The Rusalka is a girl the water kept: in the widespread telling, one who drowned unwed or unavenged. During Rusalka Week in early summer they climb into the birches and swing there, and a man lured into their dance is danced or tickled to death. Villages held rites that week to see them respectfully back into the water.

In the game: Rusalka Drowned-Maiden.

Bolotnik, the Bog

The Bolotnik is the swamp with intentions: a squat spirit who makes the mire look like a meadow until the third step. The bog keeps what it takes, and in the peat it keeps things very well.

In the game: Bolotnik Swamp-Lurker and the Site The Frozen Mire.

Vila, the Dancer in the Wind

The Vily are spirits of wind, meadow and cloud, best known from South Slavic tradition: beautiful, armed and quick to take offense. Their round-dances leave rings in the grass, and joining uninvited was the last mistake of many a folk-song hero.

In the game: Vila Wind-Dancer.

Poludnitsa, the Noonwraith

Sunstroke, personified. The Poludnitsa walks the fields at exact midday in white, and stops workers with questions. Answer poorly, or too slowly, and the day breaks you. She is the reason the old harvest kept a strict noon rest.

In the game: Poludnitsa Noonwraith.

Zmora, the Weight on Your Chest

The Zmora (or Mora) is the nightmare as a visitor: a spirit that sits on the chest of the sleeping and rides their breath. The word survives in several Slavic languages as the ordinary term for nightmare, which is as close to immortality as a spirit gets.

In the game: Zmora Nightmare.

Likho, the One-Eyed Misfortune

Likho is bad luck walking: a gaunt, one-eyed figure in the tales, who once met is nearly impossible to be rid of. The proverb still warns: do not wake Likho while it sleeps quietly.

In the game: Likho One-Eyed.

Chort, the Fine Print

The Chort is the folk devil: a small horned dealmaker, more crooked lawyer than lord of hell. Chort tales are bargain tales; the peasant who out-reads him is a folk hero, and the one who does not pays in the currency he forgot to ask about.

In the game: Chort Trickster and the charm Witch's Bargain.

Vedma, the Witch

The vedma is the village witch, her name from the old root "to know". She curdles milk, borrows the storm, and is equally likely to be the only one who can undo what she did. Knowledge with a price sheet.

In the game: Vedma Witch.

Vukodlak, the Moon-Cursed

The vukodlak of South Slavic tradition blurs what later centuries split into werewolf and vampire: a dead man or cursed man who returns wrong. The folk prescriptions for keeping one buried, crossroads, stakes, second funerals, are a whole grim engineering discipline.

In the game: Vukodlak Moon-Cursed.

Volh, the Shapeshifter

Volh (Volkh) is the sorcerer-prince of the old epic songs, a hero born knowing, who scouts his wars as a wolf, a falcon, an ant. He is what the volkhv becomes in legend: knowledge so complete it stops being shaped like a man.

In the game: Volh the Shapeshifter.

Karzelek, the Knocker Below

Polish miners told of the karzelek, the mine spirit who taps in the dark: follow the polite knocking and find the vein, mock it and find the cave-in. Underground, courtesy was safety equipment.

In the game: Karzelek Mine-Sprite.

Gods of the Old Sky

The big names, the ones the chroniclers bothered to write down while cutting down their idols.

Perun, the Thunderer

Perun is the storm god, lord of oak, eagle and axe, the closest thing the old Slavs had to a chief of gods. Oaths were sworn by him, and his idol in Kyiv had a silver head and a gold mustache, which the chronicle describes lovingly right before describing its destruction.

In the game: Perun's Bolt and his tree, The Old Oak.

Veles, Lord of Cattle and Oaths

Veles is Perun's great counterpart: god of cattle, wealth, poetry and the world below. Treaties were sworn by both gods at once, thunder above and the underworld beneath, so no clause went unwitnessed. Scholars love to read the storm fighting the serpent in these two; the old herdsmen just made sure to be on good terms with both.

In the game: Veles the Cattle-God.

Svarog, the Sky-Smith

Svarog is the smith of heaven, fire's father, the maker whose forge-sparks are suns. Fire on the hearth was treated as his small resident piece, spoken to politely and never spat upon.

In the game: Svarog's Ember.

Chernobog, the Black God

A twelfth-century chronicler of the Baltic Slavs recorded that they passed a cup at feasts while naming a good god and a black god, Chernobog, to whom misfortunes belonged. That single passage launched nine centuries of speculation. In folk memory the name stuck to the dark half of every ledger.

In the game: Chernobog the Black and his Site, Chernobog's Barrow.

The Great Legends

The tale-creatures every Slavic child meets before school does its worst.

Baba Yaga

The witch of the bone-house needs no introduction and gets one anyway: she flies in a mortar, sweeps her tracks with a broom, and lives in a hut on hen's legs behind a fence of bones and skulls. She eats heroes, and she equips them; which one you get depends entirely on how you speak to her. She is the wilderness as an examiner.

In the game: the Warden Yaga of the Bone-House.

Koschei the Deathless

Koschei cannot be killed by ordinary means because his death is elsewhere: inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a chest, under an oak, on an island. The tales agree on the nesting even when they disagree on everything else. He is contingency planning as a monster.

In the game: Koschei the Deathless.

Zhar-Ptitsa, the Firebird

The Firebird glows so bright that one tail feather lights a hall, and picking that feather up is the classic beginning of a quest the picker-upper will regret. Beauty as bait; glory as a trap that pays out anyway.

In the game: Zhar-Ptitsa the Firebird.

Zmey Gorynych, the Three-Headed

The dragon of the bylina epics: three heads, fire, a taste for tribute, and a standing appointment with whichever bogatyr rides out next. Cutting off one head famously does not help.

In the game: Zmey Gorynych.

Sirin and Alkonost, the Two Birds

Two bird-women with the faces of beautiful maidens, painted side by side on a thousand folk prints: one sings a song of such joy that listeners forget their lives and follow it; the other's song is sorrow itself. Which name carries which song varies by telling, and the pair are strongest together: bliss and grief from the same branch.

In the game: Sirin, Bird of Joy and Alkonost, Bird of Sorrow.

Rites of the Turning Year

The calendar was a wheel, and every spoke had its ceremony.

Kolyada, the Midwinter Songs

At the winter solstice, carolers went house to house singing kolyadki: songs that blessed the household for the coming year and expected payment in sausage. A sung house prospered; a stingy one heard about itself in verse. Winter's dark bought off with music.

In the game: Kolyada's Blessing.

Kupala, the Midsummer Fire

On the shortest night, villages lit fires on the riverbank, floated flower wreaths on the water, and leapt the flames in pairs. Herbs picked that night healed best, and the fern was said to flower once, for whoever dared the midnight forest. The year's bright hinge, celebrated by getting slightly singed.

In the game: Rite of Kupala.

Semik and the Green Week

In the seventh week after Easter the birches were dressed, garlands were woven and the green world was formally welcomed. It is also Rusalka Week, when the drowned girls are closest; the same days that honor the leaves appease the water. The old calendar never celebrated anything without also apologizing to something.

In the game: Semik Grove-Elder.

Bread and Salt

The oldest law of the Slavic table: a guest is met at the door with bread and salt, and once fed is under the household's protection. The custom outlived every regime that governed the lands it comes from, and it is still how you welcome someone you mean well.

In the game: Bread & Salt.

The Rushnyk

The rushnyk is the embroidered ritual towel: it wraps the wedding bread, binds the couple's hands, hangs over icons and doorways, and its stitched patterns are read as protections. Cloth as a written spell, worked in red thread.

In the game: Rushnyk Ward-Cloth.

Places of Power

The duel is fought over Sites because in the old faith, ground was never neutral.

The Old Oak

Sacred oaks were Perun's, and offerings were made at them long into the Christian era; a famous account describes arrows, bread and meat left at a great oak on an island of the Dnieper trade route. The oldest tree in the district was a parish of its own.

In the game: The Old Oak.

The Sunken Church

The legend of Kitezh tells of a city that sank beneath a lake rather than fall to invaders, its bells still ringing from under the water for those pure enough to hear. Every drowned village since has borrowed the motif: what the water takes, it keeps intact.

In the game: The Sunken Church.

The Crossroads at Midnight

Crossroads are where roads and rules cancel out: the burial place of those the churchyard refused, the venue for divination, and the spot where bargains with the unseen were struck. Folk advice about crossroads at midnight can be summarized as: do not.

In the game: Crossroads at Midnight.

The Barrow

The kurgans, the burial mounds of the steppe and forest edge, were the visible houses of the dead. Feasts were held on them at the remembrance days, and treasure-legends grew over them like grass. Digging one up was not archaeology; it was trespass with witnesses underground.

In the game: Chernobog's Barrow.