Svantovit

Svantovit

Svwentovit, Four Faces. N intermediate power of soothsayers, divination, strength, war (He/Him)

Pantheon: Slavic

Symbol: White Horse

Realms: Elemental Water / In Aqua Veritas; Outlands / Four Doors

Known Proxies: None

Svantovit, the Four-Faced, of the Slavic pantheon—now there’s a basher not to be taken lightly, I’ll tell ye. You’d expect a cutter with for faces to have more than one opinion, and more than one realm too, I’d wager. Svantovit has two; he stands tall in both the Outlands and the plane of Elemental Water. 

With his four mugs, Svantovit is a sight to behold. Each face gazes off in a different direction; they say it’s so he can keep an eye on all the jink and jangle of the multiverse. One face looks into the present, one sees into the future the third sees into the past, and the fourth? Right into yer soul, cutter. I hope you’ve got a clean conscience.

His visage is stern; he projects the very image of strength and seriousness of war. But don’t get the wrong idea; he’s not just some bloodthirsty berk. He’s got a thinker’s dome too, all wrapped up in the mysteries of divination and the future’s veiled paths. You’d probably look stern too if you could see all your mistakes from the past and all your problems in the future, all at once.

So Svantovit’s something of a patron to the warriors, givin’ ’em the guts and glory they crave in the clatter and clash of battle. But he ain’t just about hackin’ and whackin’. He’s deep in the dark of soothsayin’, givin’ his priests the knack to peek into what’s to come. They use all sorts of oddball methods mind, like watchin’ a white horse prance ’round spears—the more it knocks over, the more of a difficult year you’ll have. Just don’t ask me why powers of divination have to be so thrice-darned obscure about the way they reveal their darks. At least he’s not using iambic pentameter, I guess. Yeah, I’m looking at you Apollo.

Now it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with this Svantovit. See, his obsessive focus on war and battle can get a bit much. It’s all well and good to be strong, but when every problem looks like a nail, every solution starts lookin’ like a hammer. And that’s not always the dark of it, know what I mean? Plus, this reliance on omens and signs, well, it can lead folks down some twisty paths, chasin’ after shadows and whatnot. Sometimes a basher’s just got to crack on with things and stop over-thinking, that’s my philosophy anyway.

In his temples, the priests keep a horn o’ wine, using its level to gauge the harvest; the more the level drops over the year, the worse the harvest will be. Now it’s a clever bit, but I’ve got to be straight with you—it’s not always as reliable as the graybeards might like. A drop in the wine could mean a bad year, but couldn’t it just mean some sod’s been nippin’ at it when no one’s lookin’?

Source: Alex Roberts, Jon Winter-Holt