Mokosh
The Mother of Moist Soil. LG intermediate power of fertility, love, arts and crafts, healing and farming [She/Her]
Pantheon: Slavic
Symbol: Intertwined threads
Realms: Bytopia / Dothion / The Red Spire / The Field of Black Earth
Proxies: Mikula Selyaninovich (human proxy fighter [he/him] / NG)
Like her husband, Svarog, the philosophy of Mokosh is about the beauty of simplicity. Her usual form is a middle-aged woman dressed in simple attire. According to tradition, her hair is gathered in braids and covered with a scarf. Mokosh is very loving towards her husband, and acts in a motherly fashion to not just her divine offspring, but also to her followers and petitioners.
Without question, Mokosh is the most important power in the life of any peasant family. Not only is she the goddess of fertility and abundance of crops, she helps those who work with the fabric, provides assistance during childbirth and is invoked at weddings. As any Bytopian deity, Mokosh values hard work, but she’s very meticulous when it comes to the well-deserved rest and forbids activities like spinning and weaving during some days (breaking this taboo is said to cause pain to the power). Interestingly, Mokosh is sometimes considered to also be a power of oathkeeping and land surveying (which makes sense considering her roles).
Now Mother has quite the array of magical items at her disposal. The most famous of them is the self-setting tablecloth can create a heroes’ feast when unfolded. She has a magical ball of yarn which can show the way to any location on the same plane of existence by rolling on the ground towards it. And in the case of emergency, Mokosh can unfold her handkerchief to create a lake of liquid fire.
Much like Svarog, Mokosh is said to have been much stronger back in the days when she was the power of the prime material plane itself. And there are a few hints, such as unusual powers of her proxy, that the old girl is keeping more tricks up her sleeve than she’s given credit for.
Mokosh’s proxy Mikula Selyaninovich is considered “the favourite son of Mother Earth”, though he himself is humble about this position. Mikula is a hard-working cutter who enjoys pulling his weight and taking on the hardest work, and he has the might to do it, for sure.
At all times Mikula wears a small satchel over a shoulder. Nobody’s ever been able to peek inside of it, but the tale Mikula tells is that the bag contains The Pull of Earth, whatever that is supposed to mean. The thing is—nobody else has ever been able to lift it. A cutter can find two massive cave-ins near the realm of Svarog—they were left by the foolish titan Epimetheus, who tried so hard to lift the sodding bag, that his feet sunk into the earth and stone. You can’t use levitation magic on the bad either, Epimitheus tried that unsuccessfully too.
This peculiar item has captured the interest of many Guvner graybeards. Most of them suspect that the Mikula has learned some darks of graviturgy magic. Indeed, there are many accounts of the cutter toying with space and dimensions. When Mikula works, he likes to whistle—and this whistle can be heard from miles away, even though it is not loud when he’s up close. Visitors to Bytopia have reported seeing Mikula walking in the distance, but being unable to catch up with him even when riding a horse towards him. Some cutters are ready to pay a lot of jink to anyone who can figure out how to transport The Pull of the Earth to the Astral or some other place with no objective gravity. Obviously, this’d be a difficult task to pull off, since Mikula doesn’t like to venture out of Bytopia, and he never lets that bag out of his sight.
Mikula has a wife and three daughters—Nastasya, Vasilisa and Marya. All of them have inherited quite a bit of their father’s strength. Nastasya is the oldest daughter and a capable fighter. She has grown quite large (to put it mildly), reaching some ten feet in height, and could easily overpower even Perun’s petitioners (including those who drank from the Wells). Vasilisa, while still being strong enough to wrestle with ten men at once, prefers to use a magic bow that is strong enough to split trees in twain. This bow is completed with a quiver of gleaming arrows that create a radiant explosion wherever they strike. Although Vasilisa may not be the middle sister after all—according to some chant, when she ventures out of the realm, she prefers being called “Vasily”, and adopts masculine pronouns and clothing. By the looks of it, Vasily had not told his family about this yet. The third sibling, Marya, is less combative, but she’s well versed in the art of magic. Marya is the most famous for her magical dolls that act like mimirs and can offer advice and even cast spells for their owners.
Sources: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Margarita notes: While this homebrew power is based on Slavic folklore and beliefs, the amount of actual information we have on pre-Christian Slavic deities is so minuscule that building any kind of lore out of it is impossible. However, there are a lot of folk beliefs about things these deities are thought to represent, which I have worked into the piece.