A Deep Dive into the Slavic Pantheon
This is a brief survey of the less well-known powers, creatures and adversaries of the Slavic Pantheon.
The Overpower
Now there’s mystery at the top of the pantheon—nobody really knows whether the overpower who begat the Slavic powers is actually real or just an ancient myth. Legends speak of a power named Rod, who’s said to be the progenitor of every Slavic power and the maker of Fate too. What’s the catch? Well, this power isn’t really worshiped nowadays. There are plenty of stories about some kind of a creator power, but they tend to use the names of other deities known in the region. Perhaps Rod is a dead power now—or maybe they’ve ascended to the rank of an Overpower, and left behind all thoughts of the mortals completely.
A fewer stories say that there were two creator deities: Belobog and Chernobog—one of good and prosperity and another of evil and ruin. And others call the cutter Diy. Frankly, it’s a bit of a mythological mess.
Yarila
This is the name that Dazhbog’s proxy Egory the Brave is known on some worlds. On those worlds he’s said to be a demipower of spring and love, and it’s quite possible the proxy will soon truly become one.
Simargl
This mysterious power is mentioned in some almost forgotten writings. However they haven’t been seen for thousands of years and has most likely found a cozy place in the Astral graveyard of the gods by now.
Hoax gods of the Athar
Some particularly militant Athar have invented a whole pantheon of fake powers, both plausible (like Lel and Lada, supposed deities of love) and laughable (Chislobog, the god of numbers was one of the less plausible ones). However, snippets of screed like this has both fooled graybeards and new cults, who are trying to reconstruct their ancestors’ faith, turn out to be enough to materialise them as strange phantoms, roaming the outer reaches of Hinterlands, where belief and disbelief become entangled.
Polabian pantheon
This is a fairly new minor pantheon under the leadership of the Slavic power Svantovit. It seems that most members of this pantheon are actually aspects of other Slavic deities, but there are some unidentified ones too. Many powers of this offshoot pantheon have multiple heads, though nobody is sure why exactly they look this way. Whether Svantovit is trying to usurp power from Perun is dark.
Svyatogor’s tomb
This is a curious site on the slopes of an Arborean mountain range, in a realm of Arvandor. It appears to be a cyclopean coffin made of stone and tightly bound by multiple hoops of an unknown metal. Should a body attempt to poke a hole in the coffin, the stone magically heals, quickly restoring itself. If you’re quick though and manage to get a peek through the hole before it has grown over, you’ll be unlucky enough to spy a giant half-petrified corpse not unlike those you might find on the Astral Plane. Svyatogor’s Tomb also radiates an area of antimagic that shuts down spells higher than fifth level in a radius of approximately a mile.
Legend tells that Svyatogor was a mighty Slavic giant, one of a race of beings of a similar stature to the titans called avolots. Svyatogor was an ally of Prometheus in particular, and was said to be so big and heavy that only mountains could hold his weight. Once, Svyatogor was travelling with his friend, a man named Ilya, when they encountered a peculiar sight—a gigantic open coffin. This weird landmark captured Svyatogor’s interest, and after some examination he decided lay in the coffin for a bit—a poor decision, if there ever was one. The coffin instantly slammed itself shut, and when Ilya, an esteemed fighter and strongman, tried to break it, the tomb did not yield.
Now when Svyatogor realised that he could do anything to escape, he asked Ilya to carve a little hole in the coffin, near to where titan’s mouth would be. Before the crack in the coffin was closed, Svyatogor breathed some of his divine essence into Ilya, and ordered him to try again. Yet even with near-godly might, each time Ilya struck the coffin with his axe, a metal hoop materialised where the strike had just landed. This process repeated several times, until Svyatogor gave up. He transferred all of his power into Ilya, turning him into Perun, and then presumably died.
It is not known how much of this story is true. There’s certainly something in the tomb, but is there any way to get it out? Some demiopowers have attempted to dismantle the coffin to take a look, but to no avail, while higher powers tend to avoid this place altogether. Sometimes Arborean philosophers and factioneers come here to reminisce about matters of death and fate. Less poetically-inclined graybeards point out many similarities between the Svyatogor’s tomb and the Spire, though they are reluctant to draw any conclusions. Other chant suggests the coffin is some kind of power of mimics. As if those beasts were religious…
The Runners
Before the Great Upheaval these bashers weren’t even a sect (neither they were Runners, but rather Apocalypticists), more like a bunch of philosophies adjacent to Doomguard, Eschaton and Archonites. They believed, that the Multiverse moves closer and closer to its ultimate death, and tried to find omens and learn when exactly this happens. Many of them expected the end of the world to happen after Lady’s decree. As evident, it didn’t come, and Apocalypticists joined other factions or just went on with their lives.
However, two things happened in the Cage. First, the dark of obyriths‘ origin (these demons allegedly came from the previous multiverse) became more or less known and accepted theory. Second, and more importantly, Magnum Opus has got some chant on the so-called Cordant Planes. Evfim (planar human fighter [he/him] / formerly Order of Planes-Militant / LG), retired member of the Order with some knowledge on Apocalypticists’ teachings, has put forward a new theory. The Outer Planes, he says, are constantly changing like teeth. The Cordant Planes will grow and expand, shattering and pushing away existing Outer Planes. So, Evfim reasons, lawful good cutters should take precautions and move to the Cordant Plane of K’un-Lun. Evfim’s views were debated by other graybeards, but he had nonetheless amassed some following, mostly those of other rejected philosophers.
But recently, the Runners turned from the school of hypothetical thought to a more or less organised movement. The reason for this is a story from some blood named Iosiph, that has been circulating in the Outlands for a while. Allegedly, Iosiph snuck through the gates in Shangri-la and wandered through the mountains of K’un-Lun, where he found a region named Belovodye (“the land of white waters”). In this serene realm he was found by people from the burg named Kitezh, that used to be a town somewhere on Prime, or maybe in the Outlands, but that was drawn into the growing Splinterland. Iosiph assures that citizens of Kitezh are happy to accept newcomers. Many runners are increasingly interested in adventurers, who would find a way to K’un-Lun and confirm this rumor.
Sources: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. ‡ Denotes a homebrew addition to the lore. Margarita notes: While this adaptation is heavily based on Slavic folklore and beliefs, I must warn you. 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’s a lot of folk beliefs about things these deities are thought to represent.