Rusalka

Name	Rusalka
Race	Undead
Type	Physical Aquatic
Faction	Independent
Premiere	Desideratum: Blood Bonds
Relative(s)	None Applicable

In Slavic folklore, the rusalka (plural: rusalki; Cyrillic: русалка; Polish: rusałka) is a female entity, often malicious toward mankind and frequently associated with water. Folklorists have proposed a variety of origins for the entity, including that they may originally stem from Slavic paganism, where they may have been seen as benevolent spirits. In truth, rusalki are undead women, drowned, generally by someone they loved or trusted. Upon such a mournful and heinous death, the waterlogged corpse will return to an unnatural unlife. Forever trapped within the body of water in which she died, the rusalka will do all that it can to lure men into the water and drown them to extract revenge. When women are encountered, she will do the same to them; permeating them with her own essence, so that when her female victim drowns, she, too, will become a rusalka. Rusalki are generally pale skinned with hues of white, gray, and blue. Their eyes are black as pitch and can enthrall mortals that gaze into them. They are forever wet and are unable to walk on dry land.

Absinthe Van Gothen first encountered such a creature on the same night that she met Brone Lorcan. Fleeing from the nosferatu, Absinthe ran into Forest National Park. There, in a lake, a woman had been drowned by her husband for insurance money. Hearing Abby approach, the rusalka played dead in an attempt to lure Absinthe closer. Brone arrived, but Abby fell under the rusalka’s hypnotic gaze, and the creature pulled her down. Though vampires become weakened in water, Brone managed to pull Absinthe onto land- saving her life. Abby later encountered the same rusalka when she came to Forest National Park the night that the Night Stalkers, Sani Lightfoot and Katerina Mordova, arrived to aid the dryad Draeope against the plague witches of Baba Yaga. In the end, Abby had her revenge and freed the lake of its malicious spirit.