Baba Yaga

Name	Baba Yaga
Race	Human
Type	Witch
Faction	Coven of Yaga
Premiere	Desideratum: Blood Bonds
Relative(s)	None Applicable

Baba Yaga

"Ooh, ghastly brew full of fright, tastes so good and it’s just right."

Biography

Pre-Desideratum: Blood Bonds

Baba Yaga stems by the forest near a very small town named Sertolovo in Russia. She came to the attention of Katerina Mordova, a 17 year old there after a family tragedy. Katerina had a sister named Yulia Mordova who was only seven years old. Just as Katerina had done in her childhood, so too did her sister and the other children play in the woods. However, one day Yulia and some of the other kids vanished. They went into the woods and did not return. The police did a search, and some of the townsfolk volunteered, yet those children were never found.

Fiery and tenacious, Katerina vowed to search the woods every day until she could find Yulia. Her distraught parents saw this as a way for the older teen to vent her emotions, and within a few months life returned to normal. Katerina, meanwhile, regardless of weather, scoured the woods relentlessly. Eventually, she found a shoe belonging to Yulia! She searched the area, and found something unbelievable! A hut stood in the nearby forest- yet it stood on two legs! The large legs appeared as those of a bird, and she stumbled out of the woods up to it. Standing tall, there was no way to reach the door. Bewildered, Katerina ran back into the trees and waited. During that time, as she sat crouched in the cold, wet woods, she tried to form a plan. If she went back, no one would believe her, and in her heart, she knew that Yulia was inside the impossible house. Just before night fall, the house suddenly shifted. It took a step back with each leg and then lowered itself to the ground like a hen in a nest. A moment later, the door opened.

Katerina readied the only weapons she had- a small pocket knife and a piece of wood about the size of a baseball bat she had picked up from the forest floor. From the door emerged a beautiful woman! She had never seen so beautiful and tragic a woman in her life. The woman took a few steps out and sniffed the air, then she peered about as if she could smell Katerina. She knew she had stumbled upon Baba Yaga, an ancient witch, but even facing certain death, Katerina refused to let her sister go and she darted out from the trees towards the woman! 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. She and the witch did cross paths from time to time over the years, but Baba Yaga always managed to slip away. Katerina eventually located and burned the witch’s magic cottage to the ground.

However, the powerful witch recently arrived at Forest National Park by Portland. She set about converting the local druids into her own coven, and went to war with the dryad and the native creatures of the woods.

Desideratum: Blood Bonds

In Desideratum: Blood Bonds, Baba Yaga is the final boss encounter during the Game Mode version in the Forest Hunt. The Night Stalkers, Sani Lightfoot and Katerina Mordova, came to the forest’s aid. While they were strong enough to push the witches back, they knew they could not hold out forever. Absinthe Van Gothen followed the pair, and entered Forest Park. The goddess Hecate spoke to Absinthe and told her that balance needed to be restored to the forest. Absinthe managed to defeat both the forest’s guardians (thinking her evil) and the Coven of Yaga. She even managed to overcome Draeope, Lightfoot, and Katerina as well, saving the last from the powers of Baba Yaga. Then, Absinthe did the unthinkable and managed to slay Baba Yaga herself. Baba Yaga disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

The plague witch known as Baba Yaga was born under a different name during the Age of Myths in what is now Lithuania. She avidly worshipped the earth goddess, Žemyna, in the thick forests of her homeland. Born with immense magical energy, she managed to hold back the invading Germanic tribes along with demonic invasions and other threats to her people. However, an agent of Nergal came to the land as a merchant. Once there, the cultist sold medicines that were, in fact, infectious potions meant to spread the corruption of his master.

For weeks, this went unnoticed as, after selling his wares, the merchant would quickly move to the next town, while the people that he left behind would succumb to his master’s voice and begin doing their dark work. Eventually, the merchant arrived in the settlement where Baba Yaga worked as a healer and defender, and she felt the spiritual taint upon his soul. She exposed the merchant to the people. He attacked her and she slew him. She spent weeks travelling the area and attempting to find and destroy any members of the Cult of Corruption. Nearest the border with the Balts, she found that the entire village, its guard, and populace were defiled and worshipping the dark Babylonian god, Nergal.

She managed to fight her way into their newly erected Temple of Filth, and there, a Nergalian Demon had been summoned. She was paving the way for more demons until Nergal could find a vessel in which to be birthed into the Physical World. The pair fought a vicious battle with the champion of Žemyna beaten. As the townspeople surrounded the defeated witch and the demon mocked her, Baba Yaga cast a potent spell with her power, absorbing the demon and the spiritual disease into herself like drawing poison from a wound, and instantly all around her stood healed of corruption. However, her grave sacrifice would have consequences that would thereafter forever echo throughout history.

As the townspeople swarmed around to aid the witch, they watched, their horrified faces twisting in vile confusion as she shriveled and mutated with the pulsing, cancerous corruption of Nergal. To her credit she fought the urges to immediately infect these victims a second time and fled far into the wilderness. Though she almost committed suicide on numerous occasions over the next week, she found herself unable to do so. The voice of Nergal pounded within her mind, the absorbed demoness likely amplifying the effect. Eventually, alone and insane, she could no longer fight the evil and became known as Baba Yaga.

For the next centuries that followed, she found herself a villain often attacked by heroes trying to save their people, just as she had once done when she was a human of free will. Many times she was driven back into the wilderness to plot and stew over her failures. Occasionally, the original woman’s mind would surface and she might forgive a trespass or even aid a hero on a journey, but such times of clarity grew fewer and fewer in number until she lost herself. Eventually, she grew fully corrupted and consumed the souls of children to grow in power and live forever. Using the original merchant’s tinctures as a blueprint, she also created Baba Brew, a poison that when imbibed would turn women into duplicates of the witch herself, with green flesh and glowing eyes.

Near a small town in Russia named Sertolovo, the witch encountered the woman that would become her greatest antagonist. Katerina Mordova’s sister, Yulia, had vanished and the young woman had spent months scouring the nearby forests for her. She eventually found Baba Yaga’s hut and attacked the witch in a sudden and ferocious attack spurned by violent emotions. The witch found herself on the defensive, but eventually gained the upper hand, and she knocked Katerina out. Just as she was about to drain the life from Kat, her sister, Yulia appeared from inside the hut. The unconscious Katerina had no idea that her sister still lived. For reasons only the witch knows, of all the abducted children, she had let Yulia live. Baba Yaga had tried to seduce the girl into drinking the corrupt baba brew willingly, but the girl had refused. Now, however, in return for sparing Katerina’s life, her sister would imbibe the foul liquid. The witch agreed to the pact, and she and Yulia flew away inside Baba Yaga’s magical bird-legged hut, leaving behind child corpses and Katerina lying in the cold mud.

Though Baba Yaga considered this a victory, it turned into quite a nightmare as henceforth Katerina would constantly hunt the witch down and attack her. They formed a strange relationship in that Baba Yaga hated the girl but could not help and admire her, and at the same time as Kat managed to cleave a path through witches across Europe on her search for Baba Yaga, though she never could manage to slay the witch herself. Eventually, Baba Yaga was driven out of Europe and came to the United States. Near Portland, Oregon, she settled into Forest National Park. She began polluting the forest with her dark magicks and when confronted by the dryad, Draeope, the witch chased her away. The local druids, wielders of light magic, often met in the forest. Draeope asked them to aid her, and together, they attacked the foul witch. However, Baba Yaga proved more than a match even for the entire assemblage, and many of the light witches were corrupted. The druids became plague witches and clones of Baba Yaga herself. Then, they chased their former friends through the forests to corrupt them as well. Draeope and the final remaining druid worked together to develop a magical seed that would be planted at the witch’s home and destroy her and the other plague witches, but just as victory seemed assured, the final druid’s previous friends held her down and forced the vile substance known as Baba Brew down their former covenmate's throat, making her into one of them- a plagued slave to Baba Yaga and Nergal. She now happily destroyed the very seed she had created and Baba Yaga’s victory drew nearer.

Draeope finally called upon the forces of nature, and the magical creatures of the wood assembled to wage war on the witch. Gnomes, Forest Elves, Pixies, Fairies and more that dwell in Portland's woods, harkened to the call. At this point, having no other choice, the dryad summoned The Night Stalker Sani Lightfoot. Katerina had tracked Baba Yaga to the area, but had no exact location for her, and knowing this, Sani informed Kat that the witch had attacked, and the woman could not leave fast enough to face the Baba Yaga and avenge her sister, Yulia, whom she thought was dead. Seeing the two rush away from Sanctuary piqued the interest of Absinthe Van Gothen, and she followed the others to Forest National Park. Baba Yaga had not been idle either, and had forced the local Ogres to aid her in battle. She also called upon the Unseelie Court of fairies and the battle lines were drawn along the Columbia River. Draeope blew the battle horn and the two sides met in folklorian combat. The plague witches proved incredibly powerful, especially with hordes of ogres and dark fae and other twisted creatures at their command. They pushed further across the river and destroyed a large swath of forestland, but with Sani and Kat’s help, the battle shifted, and the remnants of Baba Yaga’s army retreated across the river. Draeope’s own forces were diminished greatly, her remaining defenders fanning out in search of any more witches on their side of the river. These defenders discovered Absinthe. Because of the Blood Suit worn by Absinthe, they sensed darkness upon her and considered her an enemy. Thus she was forced, several times, to fight and destroy these spirits of the forest, eventually making her way to Draeope, Lightfoot, and Mordova. Katerina could wait no longer for revenge for her sister Yulia Mordova, and she chased after the witch. Sani stood against Absinthe, also still believing the Blood Suit to be a threat, yet Absinthe defeated him.

Draeope then assaulted the Van Gothen woman herself, and the pair fought a vicious battle, yet in the end, Draeope also found herself defeated. Expecting to be killed by Absinthe, the dryad was completely shocked when she was spared. She watched Absinthe hurry across the bridge onto the corrupted Baba Yaga side of the forest. As Absinthe had been fighting Sani and Draeope, Katerina had rushed to Baba Yaga’s hut. The witch had cursed a tree, using it as a guard, and Kat ignored the warnings that it gave her, leaping over the walls around the cottage and facing off with Baba Yaga- this time expecting to kill her. However, as the pair fought, Baba Yaga used Kat’s emotions about Yulia to throw the woman’s attacks off long enough to gain the upper hand. She then used mesmerization magic and enthralled Katerina’s mind. The witch knew that Absinthe had also come and she intended to use Kat to defeat her own ally. The witch imbued Kat’s daggers with shadow magic and gave the girl the power to turn invisible at will- that will currently shackled to the witch's herself.

Absinthe managed to gain the favor of the guardian tree by obtaining glowing stones from the dwarf, Virvir, and destroying the evil forces of the witches in the area. As Abby rushed to meet Baba Yaga, the enthralled Katerina attacked. Absinthe soundly defeated Katerina and turned her sights on Baba Yaga, but as ever, the ancient witch knew that she would be victorious. However, to her absolute shock, Absinthe turned out to be something beyond the normal heroes that she had ever faced. The woman appeared powerful beyond compare and the foul witch died at her hands. This removed the control over Katerina’s mind, and they left together, now as friends. However, Baba Yaga had always been wily, and she had a contingency plan for this. Unknown to the pair, Yulia watched them go and already began research on how to bring her mistress back from the Outer Darkness.

When Abby returned later with Katerina, victorious, Draeope felt compelled to give the powerful artifact Gleipnir to the monster hunter. She had never seen a human this brave, courageous, and powerful. After that night, Draeope spent the next year regrowing the forest and healing its wounds, until the Infectulon invasion occurred and the dryad and her woods became mutated slaves of the invaders.

Appearance

Baba Yaga is a green plague witch with black hair. Her natural form is old and withered, but upon feasting on children's souls, she takes the form of a voluptuous young green witch.

Abilities

• Baba Brew
• Plague Magic
• Hypnosis

Notes and Trivia

After Baba Yaga disappears, one of her witches watches Katerina and Absinthe leave.

Gallery

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  Youthful Form