Talisman of Žemyna
The Talisman of Žemyna has its origins in the Slavic forests of the east, in Lithuania. Žemyna, the Lithuanian mother goddess and earth mother, personifies fertile, life-giving soil, and life itself. She loves life, nature, and the cycle of birth and rebirth. In older times, her cultists created a ritual to imbue the power of life and nature into objects. They made various amulets, talismans, and trinkets, one of which is this very artifact. Several years ago in a town named Sertolovo in Russia, evil came.
Children in the area began disappearing in alarming numbers, and the police were baffled. Eventually, a young girl named Yulia also disappeared and her sister, Katerina Mordova, set out to get her back. She came across a hut in the nearby forest that stood up on two hen legs. This hut belonged to Baba Yaga and even as a girl, Katerina proved fierce. She found the shriveled corpses of children and faced off with the witch, and while unable to kill her, she managed to cause the witch to flee in her flying house. As the fatigued girl stumbled through the woods on her way back, she thought that she would die. She fell to the ground staring up at the limbs of the trees as they blew in the breeze and gave up. She yearned to get revenge on witch for killing the children of her town, but began to cough up blood. Just as she closed her eyes, she saw something drop from a branch onto her chest.
Shocked, she awoke sometime later to find that her body had healed and when she sat up, the Talisman of Žemyna slid off her chest. She held up the amulet and traced the carved shaped with her fingers. When she got to her feet she noticed a nearby shrine to Žemyna. Assuming that this deity might actually be real, she deduced that it saw her fight the witch and blessed her with life to continue her fight. She kept the talisman with her at all times, a reminder that she would someday track down Baba Yaga and finish her forever.
She and the witch did cross paths from time to time over the years, but Baba Yaga always managed to slip away. Katerina even burned the witch’s magic cottage to the ground (it smelled like roasted chicken). But, in the end, it was Absinthe Van Gothen that killed the witch after she had used her powers to control Katerina’s mind. For killing the witch and ending her long road of revenge, Katerina bestowed the Talisman of Žemyna to a woman she originally did not trust. Now, Absinthe Van Gothen wears it along with her ever growing arsenal of artifacts and weaponry.
