Ussura

“Where you see a frozen river, I see a bridge. Where you see a blizzard, I see cover from bombardment. Where you see a forest of monsters, I see scouts and allies. The same things which lead you to disdain us make us strong enough to overcome you.” —General Winter

Once upon a time, in a faraway ice-and-snow-covered land called Ussura, there lived a mighty Czar who had a husband and two sons borne by his best friend. His husband and elder son died, he disowned his younger son, and he married a clever young woman in hopes of getting a proper heir.

But before that could happen, he died mysteriously; both his younger son and his new bride claimed the throne. The son wanted to reign from the old capital and keep to the old ways; the bride erected a new capital, gleaming and modern, and sought to make everything in Ussura as contemporary and new as what she had built.

No one in Ussura knows for sure what will happen. Not the boyar in his castle, nor the priest in her church, nor the rider on the steppes, nor the merchant from the east or south, nor the nomad who wanders the country, nor the muzhik in her shack nor the spirit in the forest or the river.

But the contestants for the Czar’s throne will have to bring together all those people to rule unopposed—and that is what they have set out to do: to see the people of Ussura set up before them like dolls in a house…or chess pieces on a board, as it were. Ussura is a house divided, old versus new, but otherwise poised to go to a capable set of hands, if only one could take it.

## A Nation Built on Class

You can usually tell an Ussuran’s social class from her appearance, especially her hair color. Boyars have light-colored hair and beards, usually blond; whereas muzhiks have dark hair, as well as darker skin from the sun or from Cathayan ancestry. Different regions and families may have different attitudes towards boyars fraternizing with commoners. Rare as it may be, no one will string you up for being a boyar with dark skin and hair, a commoner with light skin and hair, a dark-haired person marrying a light-haired person, etc.

That said, many Ussurans make assumptions about someone else’s class, wealth and education based on her coloring. Moreover, the fact that the upper classes have more western Théan ancestry and the lower classes have more indigenous and Cathayan ancestry is not lost on anyone, especially in the current political climate dividing the country on class and visual lines.

The boyars’ favorite, Ketheryna Fischler Dimitritova, ethnically Eisen, looks the part, with strawberry blonde hair and light blue eyes; whereas the lower classes’ favorite, Ilya Sladivgorod Nikolovich, has his Crescent surrogate mother’s dark eyes and hair. Many muzhiks suspect Ketheryna’s push to modernize the country and advance its technology only further divides the classes.

A typical Ussuran has a somewhat mixed heritage regardless of what he may tell you about how his pureblood family comes from west Théans, Khazari nomads or Crescents. This is less true with a boyar, who selects with more discrimination her family’s marriages and lineages, but even the noble families tend to have at least one Khazari or Crescent leader somewhere in their family tree.

### Ethnic Groups in Ussura

People living in Ussura range from Théan descent, Crescent descent, and those native to the land, born in the steppes.

Though centuries of intermarrying has made Ussura less divided along physical boundary lines, the cultures of these various people continue to influence Ussura to this day. Architecture, education, food and even customs and stories can all point back to these major ethnic groups within Ussura.

### Khazari

The nomadic horse riders and herders who occupy Molhynia’s eastern and northeastern steppes migrated west across the Szabla River to escape Cathayan imperial expansion. They settled among eastern Ussura’s indigenous peoples. Their steppe horseman-ship tradition has influenced all Ussura and is one reason an Ussuran does not worry that her Nation has few modern roads. The old horse trails remain as reliable as ever, especially in winter when crossing frozen rivers is easy. If foreigners can’t figure that out, that is an invasion Ussura need not worry about.

A Khazar happily identifies as Ussuran, but his tribal identity is also extremely important. He has a long tradition of raiding neighboring tribes and killing to steal livestock, but no Khazar takes it person-ally—it is just something you do. He has had less success convincing other ethnicities to accept his “no hard feelings” attitude towards robbery and violence. He also loves travel, working with other Khazari as mercenaries, bodyguard or musician elsewhere in Théah, the Crescent Empire or Cathay during young adulthood before returning to the steppes with money, scars and stories. Outside Ussura, these mounted mercenaries are commonly called “Cossacks,” an old corruption of the word “Khazar.”

Khazari are also notorious for their habit of collecting religions. The oldest Khazar religion, Turăism, worships the ancient sky god Tură. Nowadays many Khazari are Orthodox, Madhyamika, Yachidi, Vaticine, Dīnist or various combinations of the foregoing. Missionaries find converting Khazari easy, but convincing them to drop previously held beliefs impossible. Khazari abhor the concept of killing another human over a religious dispute (as opposed to because you covet her horse or her grazing land, both perfectly reasonable).

### Crescents

Crescents in Ussura, though a minority, dominate the markets. For as long as there has been trade, they have come to Ussura to exchange Crescent goods, medicine and resources for Ussura’s riches: furs, metal ores and agricultural products such as wheat, livestock and dairy.

Ussura responded to early missionary work in the Second Prophet’s wake with a widespread “thanks, but we’re fine with what we have.” Yachidis and Dīnists have nevertheless spread through southern Ussura thanks to wide-ranging Crescent traders. Dīnist congregations often worship in the same building as Orthodox assemblies without conflict. After all, Ussura has no Orthodox or Dīnist Inquisition. Crescent influence appears in Ussuran architecture, particularly government and religious buildings; no one knows where Ussuran churches’ famous onion domes originated, but some historians point to Dīnist minarets as a possible antecedent.

Crescents in Ussura represent a powerful financial force, attracting both Ilya’s and Ketheryna’s attentions. Ilya is technically and ethnically half Crescent: he wasn’t raised in Crescent culture, but he has spent a good deal of time in Crescent enclaves throughout southern Ussura and maintains good relationships with prominent Crescent merchants, entrepreneurs and investors. Ketheryna, who built about half her entire new capital full of expensive machines and structures on credit, desperately pursues Crescent support as well. She promises boosted trade with the Empire, exclusive access to rare Ussuran resources such as demantoid gemstones and even boyardoms for particularly generous contributors. Yet Lady Arzu of Gallenia, Ussura’s most influential Crescent, doubts Ketheryna’s promises. After all, she has said the same to many Théan diplomats. Can she really make good on so many promises in so many different directions?

### Tamatama Nomads

Caravans of the Tamatama, an ethnic group orig-inating far to the southeast in Agnivarsa, travel throughout Ussura, mostly along waterways between major cities but occasionally via ancient horse trails non-Ussurans don’t know. Nowadays, you are most likely to find them in Veche Province.

Ussuran Tamatama are mostly Dīnist. They occupy a peculiar but comfortable social position as enter-tainers: musicians, dancers, actors and suchlike. Their traveling lifestyle means the Tamatama rarely inter-marry with other groups, though this is a matter of convenience rather than prejudice. A Khazar on her way to adventure through the rest of the world often links up with Tamatama caravans for part or all of the way, swapping songs and updating one another’s maps.

Some wider-ranging Tamatama bands are respon-sible for the cross-pollination of dance styles throughout different parts of Théah. Thanks to the Tamatama, ballet, a physically and technically demanding performative dance form originating in Montaigne, has become all the rage at many boyars’ courts, especially in modern Bashanta. Ketheryna’s Imperial Theater in Bashanta, which features the latest mechanical contraptions and special effects systems for stage performances, has hosted many Tamatama performances.

## Important People in Ussura

### Ilya Sladivgorod Nikolovich

Czar Gaius Iriney’s first marriage was a love match with another boyar, Nikolai. With a surrogate mother, Nikolai had two sons, David and then Ilya, whom the Czar formally adopted. The Czar loved his adopted sons, and named David heir to his throne. But Nikolai’s family had a history of falling-sickness, a disease characterized by violent seizures.

Falling-sickness is rarely fatal, but first Nikolai and then later David died of heart failure during partic-ularly bad episodes. Even though Ilya’s seizures were not nearly as severe, a combination of heartbreak and anxiety over his heir’s viability led the grieving Czar to disown Ilya. He planned to remarry in hopes of producing a “stronger” heir.

Ilya, barely fourteen, confronted the Czar before his entire court. He had lost one father and his brother. Now his other father pushed him away? After an angry, undignified confrontation, the Czar banished Ilya to the far east of Ussura. Ilya replied that he was leaving anyway.

Ilya left Pavtlow in anger and planned to never return, his father’s decision hurting more than he would admit. He vowed to prove his own worth by being a Hero to the people of Ussura, even if he couldn’t be their czar.

For four years, he rode throughout Ussura as a bogatyr, using Leshiye gifts to help right wrongs and deal with threats. He stole horses with Khazari in Molhynia, drank and danced in Siev’s taverns in Veche, defended Cathayan caravans from bandits in Gallenia and prayed in mountain monasteries in Somojez.

When he learned of his father’s death, he returned as fast as he could to Pavtlow. Once there, he discovered his onetime friend Ketheryna had claimed the throne herself in Bashanta.

While Ilya’s travels garnered him widespread popular support, the nobility backs Ketheryna’s drive to modernize the country. Having spent time out in the country with people unlikely ever to see any of her fancy inventions, Ilya is not so sure.

#### Portraying Ilya

Down-to-earth, adventurous, and a traditionalist. Ilya is the people’s champion, a daring, cosmopolitan young man. He has dark hair and shining brown eyes, and his youthful dark beard is shot through with reddish streaks.

In his gazes into the middle distance, you can see his grief and regret about his youth and relations; yet Ussura’s land and people are his surrogate family. He struggles, however, to find a coherent vision for Ussura’s future. Everyone knows Ketheryna’s plan. The people know Ilya’s qualifications, but what does he want to do?

When Ilya speaks to convince, he is calm and commanding. No one denies his experience. He refuses to let you forget the good his adventures have done for Ussura. He speaks of Ketheryna with respect, regret and frustration. Ilya’s populism, personality and compelling narrative makes him a convincing candi-date for Czar, but he does not get specific with his ambitions: their absence is his greatest weakness.

#### Story Hooks

* Shortly after Ilya returned to the capital, myriad individuals declared themselves the true banished prince, seeking power for themselves. The Knias Douma, over-whelmed by the claims of the Ilyas, prepare to ignore them all in favor of supporting Ketheryna, unless the true Ilya can show some proof of his identity. Can the Heroes help Ilya prove he is the real deal?
* Ilya’s mother, Vera, has reappeared in the capital, saying she misses her son and requesting a place in Ilya’s new government. Ilya could use an ally, but he barely remem-bers this woman. She seems to have an agenda and refuses to take no for an answer. Can the Heroes help Ilya discover Vera’s secret?

### THEN FALL, CZAR

Who stabbed the Czar with an icicle? Dimitri Babineaux is a lover, not a ﬁghter—but has big muscles and the most personal grievance against the Czar. Did fear for his beloved’s well-being and freedom drive him to murder?

Metropolitan Lyuba sees potential in Ketheryna’s modernization. She grew up in Eisen, lacking Ussurans’ native respect for the spirits Lyuba wants purged from her religion. Assassins aren’t usually her style, but violence is. Perhaps she seized the opportunity to promote her religious movement. Ilya is a Hero. He wouldn’t stoop to murder his own father, would he? Could he kill his foster father, who disowned him for his illness after he lost his biological father and brother? But even if he wouldn’t, perhaps one of the false Ilyas who conspires to take his place would.

General Winter is Ussura’s most notorious purveyor of ice-ﬂavored death. Destabilizing Ussura’s government divides any possible organized opposition to his ascent. In Matushka’s eyes, did the Czar’s disowning Ilya and marrying Ketheryna without asking her ﬁrst delegitimize him? An icicle through the heart is her style, after all. Ketheryna is a practical woman and had more to lose with the Czar’s death than most others. Is she really too calculating to have killed him out of love for Dimitri?

### Ketheryna Fischler Dimitritova

Ketheyna Fischler Dimitritova was born in Eisen to a newly appointed Eisenfurst and his Ussuran wife. When she was still very young, her mother died to a Horror attack, and her father spent a great deal of time obsessing over how to keep her from suffering a similar fate. She grew up sheltered, but not secluded. Her father ensured she had the best education he could find and ensured she was trained to defend herself versus Horrors.

When Czar Gaius Iriney’s progressivist recruiters swept through Eisen seeking promising scientists, a young half-Ussuran noblewoman’s inventions left them speechless. To amuse herself, Ketheryna had scavenged parts from the Fischler city streets to construct a lantern which projected a map of Eisen onto a wall as a pattern of light and shadow; a grad-uated glass tube with a bulb on top and water in a reservoir underneath, responding to temperature changes; a set of conjoined rulers which slid back and forth to produce her math exercises’ answers; and a tiny clockwork songbird that could fly across the room and explode (an unintended consequence still under investigation).

The Czar’s recruiters offered her father, Falk Fischler, a small fortune to whisk her away to court in Pavtlow, and he jumped at a chance to send her to a safer home. She settled in happily, and eventually fell in love with the half-Montaigne ballet dancer Dimitri Babineaux and then found out the Czar wanted her hand in marriage. Her father had accepted on her behalf without asking her first.

On her wedding night, Ketheryna found the Czar’s corpse in her nuptial bed, an icicle driven through his heart. His household thereafter claimed he died in his sleep after consummating the marriage. But when Ketheryna claimed the throne and married Dimitri without mourning, rumor spread that Ketheryna and Dimitri themselves assassinated the Czar.

Ketheryna moved the Czar’s court to Bashanta. On her orders, Prince Bogdan of Veche expanded this tiny village into a new “city of the future,” full of modern art and architecture and the latest techno-logical advances. Many Ussurans doubt Ketheryna’s motives and intentions. Is an Ussura with roads and technology really Ussura? Is this all a plan to sell Ussura out to her western neighbors?

#### Portraying Ketheryna

Ingenious, visionary and eager, Ketheryna talks fast and thinks faster, always testing some new inven-tion. Her blond hair and bright blue eyes help her fit in with Ussuran boyars, even if her skin is darker than most.

She is helpful if asked, but she assigns some crazy mission in return, like “steal an experimental telescope back from the Inquisition,” or “help me secure funding for a new university in Bashanta.” She respects Ilya’s pull with the Ussuran people, but thinks he aims too low. They used to be friends once, and she is still sympathetic to his cause, but she would rather have him working for her, rather than watch him keep Ussura firmly in the past.

She wants Ussura now to be what Castille was a hundred years ago, even if burying tradition is the price. Ketheryna is brilliant and engaging, but also a technocrat, with little idea what rural Veche’s muzhiks or northeastern Molhynia’s Khazari raiders care about.

#### Story Hooks

* A chambermaid in the Pavtlow court comes to the Heroes with evidence identifying the Czar’s murderer—but she thinks someone knows and is trying to kill her before she goes public.
* A sudden and unexpected diplomatic mission in Eisen has forced Ketheryna to leave Bashanta abruptly. Everyone expects Dimitri to reign in her place, but Dimitri is a ballet dancer, not a politician—and some of the most canny political actors in town plan to take advantage of Ketheryna’s absence.

### Altai Khatun

Centuries ago, the Iron Khan’s hordes thundered across Théah and Cathay. But upon his death, logis-tical breakdowns and individual ambitions split his -tory’s largest empire into squabbling khanates. Altai Khatun (the feminine of Khan) is one such khanate’s last scion. Her clan fled to Ussura after their foes banded together to drive them from the throne.

Ussura’s most celebrated Knight of the Rose & Cross, Altai Khatun, dreams of empire, but mistrusts political power. What good is an empire that time and entropy inevitably sunder? But culture and ideas can ride eternal. She wants a khanate of the mind, a set of ideals spread throughout first Ussura, and then the world: bravery, camaraderie, strength and—most problematic—freedom of religion.

“My religion is the only correct one” is still a wide-spread, deadly idea, especially after the War of the Cross and Cardinal Esteban Verdugo’s ascent. Altai thinks Théah needs some old-fashioned Khazari interfaith sentiment. Why follow just one religion when you could have half a dozen, just in case one turns out to be wrong?

Anywhere humans oppress one another over how to worship, Altai Khatun’s band of kheshigs (honor guards, a Khazari leader’s elite guard) rights wrongs and defends the innocent in the name of whichever religion is under threat. But personable as she is, Altai still makes enemies who worry that her “khanate of the mind” masquerades as a dry run before a more traditional khanate of the bow.

When Altai rides through western Ussuran cities, progressivist Westerners and Orthodox purists often give her a chilly reception. Metropolitan Lyuba’s Schismatist movement, which advocates purifying the Ussuran Orthodox Church of folkloric influences, decries Altai’s ecumenism as a war on the truly devout. Schismatist mobs have interrupted Altai’s riders at everything from public prayers to dinner parties, sometimes violently—then blamed the “bloodthirsty Cossack raiders” for the ensuing melee.

For her own part, her own political leanings are less clear. She only wants what is best for the nation, and believes both Ilya and Ketheryna have a chance of doing good. The last thing she wants is a civil war, despite those who suggest otherwise.

#### Portraying Altai Khatun

Altai Khatun is a quintessential bogatyr: bold, brave, good-looking, flush with patrons and admirers, always on her way to her next adventure. She has dark skin and long, silky, dark hair that she keeps braided down her back. Her eyes are tawny brown and always full of life and laughter.

She automatically trusts anyone she judges honor-able and heroic: make a good impression and she immediately invites you along to help her drive off bandits or rescue heretics from the Inquisition.

But while she recognizes her influence over the Khazari, she hesitates to get involved in politics, conspicuously changing the subject at any mention of Ilya or Ketheryna. She is unlikely to openly support either unless war is imminent.

#### Story Hooks

* Altai Khatun’s faithful stallion Borya has been horsenapped! This legendary war horse is as valiant and clever as Altai herself (or so she reports—no one else can understand him). Who could the culprit be? Is a political enemy drawing her into a trap? Maybe the Heroes can help her spring it without getting caught.
* A prominent Inquisitor has challenged Altai Khatun to a public debate about religion. Altai is not that kind of public speaker, and besides, she recognizes an obvious trap. She needs a champion, and only the best orator among the Heroes will do. The rest are on bodyguard duty.

### Archduke Aleksi Pavtlow Markov v’Novgorov

Alyosha (the diminutive name for Aleksi) of Novgorov was not always a prince. Once a goblin merchant who lived in the Borovoi Forest in nearby Somojez Province, he bought and sold at the local goblin market under the auspices of Borovoi the Forest Walker. One night he came across Masha, a scared young lady in an aban-doned hut in the forest. Transforming himself into a young human, he sat with her through the dark night, giving her gifts from his day’s trading and telling her legends of the forest, transforming noises and growls in the night into stories.

Masha was the daughter of the Archduke of Novgorov, who had run away because she did not get along with her stepmother. When she returned to her home in Rurik, she insisted the goblin come along—although, of course, she didn’t know Alyosha was a goblin. She introduced him to her relieved parents as the man who helped her in her time of need, and they rewarded him with gifts and adopted him into their family as Masha’s brother.

When the old Archduke died, Alyosha was as surprised as anyone to find he had been named heir. Masha declined the title, preferring to take holy orders as an Orthodox priest; so it fell to their adopted son. The trouble was, Alyosha never entirely got the hang of acting human and is capricious and temperamental—normal for a forest goblin! It has been difficult to learn an entire new species’ etiquette (and consciously change his appearance to mimic human aging), but Alyosha thinks he does a good job.

Now it is all Alyosha can do to keep up with the vicissitudes of political activity in Ussura. Traditionally, Archduke Novogorov leads the Knias Douma, but he has no desire to do so. He does have political opinions. As a happy adoptee, Alyosha supports Ilya, sympa-thizing with the fact that some people do not believe he deserves to ascend the throne because he is not biologically related to the former Czar.

He also worries about Metropolitan Lyuba’s initiative to reform the Orthodox Church, because it would eject entities like himself from the old faith. Alyosha has little confidence in himself as a political actor. He may have to step up, even if he risks revealing his identity. After all, no one has made a “no goblins on the Douma” rule, yet.

#### Portraying Archduke Alyosha

Alyosha may be a goblin from the Borovoi Forest, but he has a genuine interest in helping others and a good head for numbers. He masks his obvious discomfort with human ways via mood swings and misdirection. He misses his life as a goblin, but he cannot resist the challenge and fascination of living as a human. He has a good friend in Masha, who still lives in Pavtlow as a member of the Orthodox Church.

#### Story Hook

* Masha suspects that her confessor at her religious order, the only person in the world besides herself who knows Alyosha’s secret, is about to go public with it. But to whom?Can the Heroes help guard his secret?

### Prince Bogdan Siev Benediktov v’Vladimirovich

Prince Bogdan, age thirty-eight, thinks himself unlucky. He dresses well, but he is middling in stature, neither fat nor thin, with green eyes, thin blond hair and a blond beard that is, well, not that impressive in a land of impressive beards. He is one of Ussura’s most powerful boyars—but he rules Veche, sparsely populated, yielding less tax revenue than his fellows on the Knias Douma. He isn’t particularly smart and not nearly as well-spoken as others on the Douma. Prince Bogdan still remains one of the richest and most powerful people in Ussura. He just doesn’t feel like he is.

The man takes dangerous risks that rarely pan out. When Ketheryna decided to move her capital to Bashanta in his province, he promised her he could build the city of her dreams in a ridiculously short time period. He pulled in muzhiks from all over Veche and overworked them—in some cases to death—to produce the glittering jewel that is Bashanta in scant over a year. He did finish the city on time, but in return, the fields throughout Veche lay fallow as the muzhiks who normally worked them toiled in the capital, or died. Now Prince Bogdan doesn’t know if his people can survive the coming winter and hopes he can purchase enough food from surrounding provinces.

Two years ago, when General Winter’s army swept into Veche, Prince Bogdan knew he had found a winner. Hearing rumors of border raiders and aggressive boyars frozen to death, he thought, “This is a man I could trust.” Then a soldier with frozen eyes appeared at Prince Bogdan’s castle door demanding Bogdan quarter and feed the terrifying silent army who brought winter wherever they went.  Bogdan agreed right away.

The trouble is, Bogdan had already sold out. The Inquisition has paid him well for the privilege of sneaking Inquisition spies through Five Sails into Ussura. Few Vaticines live in Ussura, and many of them are Khazari; but Cardinal Esteban Verdugo still has designs on Ussura’s population.

Bogdan’s own court even hides an Inquisitor, though he doesn’t know whom. He dares not use his family’s power of turning into a bear, lest the Inquisitor report him to Verdugo. Moreover, the Inquisition wants to stop General Winter, a clearly dangerous sorcerer who threatens the Vaticine world. Can Prince Bogdan continue to serve two masters?

#### Portraying Prince Bogdan

Prince Bogdan is privileged, insecure and just average. He has fair hair and skin and grey blue eyes. He hunches his shoulders and looks down at the table. He meets the Heroes’ eyes only with trepidation and mumbles his sentences’ ends.

He apologizes frequently, but seems wounded that he has to. Prince Bogdan, utterly convinced of his own inferiority, counteracts it by glomming onto others who seem exceptional. He prays one of his two bosses grows so powerful the other can’t touch him—but will that boss then come down on him?

#### Story Hooks

* Prince Bogdan accidentally double-booked a visit from General Winter with a visit from Cardinal Fátima Campos, a promi-nent Inquisitor on El Concilio de la Razón. Bogdan begs the Heroes to help him divert one or the other as he frantically rearranges his castle to keep them from meeting.

* As Prince Bogdan becomes less sure of his own personal safety, he realizes it is time to draw on his family’s most ancient and reli-able ability: transforming into giant bears to devour the opposition. He is rusty at this, but he trusts his interpersonal skills with bears better than his interpersonal skills with humans. Is it safe to let this bumbling man use such a dangerous weapon?

### Lady Arzu Sousdal bint Erdogˇan v’Riasanova

At eighteen years of age, Lady Arzu is the youngest, most contentious Knias Douma member. Gallenia’s Riasanova family descends from Ussuran nobility who intermarried with Crescent merchants. A devout Dīnist, she attends Knias Douma meetings in tradi-tional dress: a fur-lined jacket, robes, veil and turban from Iskandar.

Her faith sets her at odds with the devoutly Orthodox Metropolitan Lyuba. Her outspoken desire to open her eastern border to Cathayan traders, and to reduce the number of Cossack patrols on the border, worries the Khazari and Koshchei in the neighboring province of Molhynia. Lady Arzu knows Ilya worries about foreign influences from any direc-tion, while Ketheryna thinks that Ussura should open westward, not eastward. Lady Arzu’s informants in the Secret Societies have also indicated to her that Prince Bogdan might support General Winter, whom she fears and hates. She has tried to warn the others about General Winter without betraying the fact that she knows more about him than usual, but so far no one else recognizes the threat. She is friendly with Archduke Alyosha, but he is the only one.

Lady Arzu’s unpopularity has made her a frequent target for peasant revolts, political assassinations and other violent antagonism. She has been able to stay alive and afloat due to her connections to multiple secret societies in Ussura. El Vagabundo has a long-standing relationship with her family, having saved her parents from various assassination attempts. She also contracts the Ushkuiniks regularly to move goods along the riverways to buyers elsewhere in Ussura. She maintains friendly relations with Altai Khatun, who respects the Riasanova family’s commitment to free religion even as she suspects Lady Arzu’s friend-ship with Khazari enemies on the east side of the Szabla River.

Only Lady Arzu’s closest confidants know she seri-ously considers an offer of leaving Ussura and joining the Crescent Empress. It is not just a cultural deci-sion. Most Gallenians have at least partial Crescent ancestry, including family in the Empire. Trade with the Empire pays for their food and clothing.

Lady Arzu would have less power under the Crescent Empress’ regime, but she considers it a small price to pay for a government that has offered her people more support than Ilya or Ketheryna has.

#### Portraying Lady Arzu

Fiery, self-assured, inexperienced. Lady Arzu is quick to speak, quick to interrupt and likes to state her opinion bluntly and forcefully, without any diplomatic leavening. The Knias Douma’s reaction combines grudging respect for her strength of char-acter and annoyance that they keep losing arguments to someone who doesn’t really even argue with them.

Lady Arzu’s connections to various Secret Societies give her acute insight into other people’s secrets. She knows more about secret societies than any other Ussuran, so if you drop any hints that you belong to one, she finds a subtle way of letting you know she knows. If you need someone to help you coor-dinate between societies, she is the best at making that happen.

#### Story Hooks

* Rumor has it that the “Crescent merchant” Lady Arzu plans to meet in Sousdal is actually a diplomat representing either the Crescent or Cathay. Her people wish to block her actions, afraid she is going to sell Gallenia to an eastern power. Lady Arzu asks the Heroes to go to the meeting in her stead to ease suspicions.
* To protest Lady Arzu’s open-borders plan, Gallenia’s most powerful boyar has blocked a major trade road from Curonia into Ussura, which goes directly through his castle. He has announced his intent to defend it against all comers from either side until Lady Arzu renounces her plan.

### Koshchei “the Deathless” Breslau Aglayev v’Pietrov

Koshchei has a reputation as a bad man. You can tell just looking at him: he looks like a skeleton with waxy skin stretched over it. It feels uncomfortable looking into his hollow eyes. At Knias Douma meetings, he almost never speaks and almost never blinks. When he does offer an opinion, it is terse. His voice, a death-rattle, makes everyone on the council shudder. He got that way by hiding his soul and his death in an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside a treasure chest buried under a tree on a faraway island off the Vodacce coast. Until someone cracks open that egg, he will never die.

Koshchei rides throughout Ussura, an unkindness of ravens presaging his arrival. His visits are always the same. Sometimes he does the talking, but more often a gigantic raven perched on his shoulder speaks for him. He professes his interest in a child, and then offers her family a truly staggering bounty in exchange for her. Gold. Jewels. Livestock. Even land. The family rarely refuses. Sometimes, when they refuse, she disappears anyway.

When Koshchei’s new captive rides through the doors of his castle, it really gets weird. Inside his castle’s forbidding walls, black stone frozen over with ice, exists a tiny city, its towers reaching high into the sky, but also burrowing deep into the mountain underneath. Everyone in town, mostly women and children, bustles about happily as though without a care in the world.

For hundreds of years, Koshchei has maintained a guise as a villainous black widower to hide what he really does. He uses a network of common ravens to spy on Ussurans throughout the country, watching for mistreated children. He then uses his money, power and scary looks to dissuade their abusers from looking for them.

#### Portraying Koshchei the Deathless

Fearsome, terse, misunderstood. In public, Koshchei speaks as little as possible and moves with deliberate, fearful slowness. Ravens often attend him; the largest raven perched on his shoulder speaks for him. Inside the walls of his castle, though, he relaxes. He is polite, solicitous, always asking his wards whether they need anything from the outside world. He even lets a trusted few return to the world outside once safe from their former families, keeping in touch with them via raven and recalling them if they come into trouble.

#### Story Hooks

* A number of boyars have hired bogatyrs and deployed a small army to ride on Koshchei’s castle to get “their children” back. Koshchei is worried. The adults in the castle can fight, but they number few—and even if they do fight, Koshchei’s secret will be out. Can the Heroes find another way?
* Koshchei’s precious egg-duck-hare-trea-sure chest combination lies on an island off the Vodacce coast. He wants to move it to northern Molhynia where he can monitor it more easily. He needs help—either to do it for him or to guard him on the way.

### THE KNIAS DOUMA

With the Czar still undetermined, the boyars of the Knias Douma have fractured and fallen to bickering. While the ﬁve great families never truly agreed on anything, they were united in their dedication to Ussura. Now, the boyar families’ loyalties are split between Ketheryna and Ilya, causing a standstill in the government.

If the families supported one monarch over the other, they might be able to come to some consensus on the matter and get things moving again. Instead, many of the Douma, much like the rest of Ussura, are unsure which of the two to support. The Pscov family, with a strong leaning towards Ketheryna, has attempted to call the Douma to vote upon a unanimous support, but everyone else is completely hung on the issue.

It seems the families seek outside conﬁr-mation, possibly from Matushka, and refuse to act in the case they pick the wrong monarch. It also means that the govern-ment has ground to a halt, with only Ilya’s and Ketheryna’s individual actions moving Ussura forward.

### Metropolitan Lyuba Veche Klimentova v’Pscova

The Pscov family’s impressive religious pedigree could have elevated Lyuba higher in the Ussuran Orthodox religious hierarchy than her current rank of Metropolitan bishop. Within the Orthodoxy, the Metropolitan is more than just a spiritual leader, but also a community leader. Higher up the hierarchy, few of the faithful take on political careers.

Her Knias Douma duties occupy much of her time, preventing her from climbing much further. Nevertheless, Lyuba’s greater ambitions have already embroiled Somojez Province in a turmoil threatening to engulf all Ussura.

Metropolitan Lyuba thinks the Church’s rituals honoring domovoi, the Leshiye and other local spirits are a distraction at best, diabolism at worst. If the Ussuran Orthodox Church is ever to reach beyond Ussura, it needs to abandon what makes it distinctly Ussuran. Especially miscellaneous spirits. She has not only expressed these preferences extensively and eloquently in public, but also reformed major churches in every city and large town in Somojez. These reforms change rituals’ symbolic details, centralize power in the hands of high-ranking clergy (whom she personally approves) and strip out any mention of Ussuran spirits.

Her grassroots support is not pretty. Lyuba’s Schismatists, an angry, violent mob, intend to purge the Church of impure elements. When a public figure such as a priest speaks out against Lyuba’s reforms, Lyuba need not do anything herself: a mob of Schismatists inevitably besieges that public figure’s house, breaks windows and starts fires. Rumors abound that Schismatists have even learned to murder their own houses’ domovoi.

Many boyars support Metropolitan Lyuba’s reforms as well. Since noble families often supply senior priests, they welcome the centralization of power. They also associate the Leshiye and house-spirits with vulgar superstition, thinking themselves above such things. But much of the Ussuran intelligentsia warns that Metropolitan Lyuba’s movement resem-bles the Third Prophet’s supporters to an uncomfort-able degree.

#### Portraying Metropolitan Lyuba

Pious, zealous and ruthless, Metropolitan Lyuba is an impassioned speaker. She has silky, thick black hair, pale skin, and dark eyes. She is not conventionally attractive, but has a way of speaking that draws in even the most discerning listener.

Metropolitan Lyuba sees herself as Orthodoxy’s Third Prophet, though her sermons do not have nearly as much explicit fire and brimstone. In fact, as the public face of that movement, Lyuba is the picture of propriety and respectability.

She is the most dangerous kind of demagogue: her language, proper and politic on the surface, subtly incites her followers’ lowest common denominator to enforce her will with violence. When speaking, she sounds like a press release or as if she memorized her speech ahead of time, which she has.

Her intentions are not necessarily Villainous in nature, but her results certainly are. Even the best intentions can lead us astray. Can the Heroes help Metropolitan Lyuba correct course?

#### Story Hooks

* Lyuba’s Schismatist ideology gains traction amongst muzhiks. The streltsy (imperial guard), chafe at the violence, disorder and heresy Schismatists represent. The streltsy guard captain has planted false intelligence to lead the Schismatists into a trap, hope-fully causing a riot and giving the streltsy an excuse to suppress them. The Heroes must intercept the information and simultan-eously attempt to lead the streltsy onto a less Villainous course.
* Metropolitan Lyuba finds those people who accept gifts from Leshiye deeply concerning, and believes they embody what is most prob-lematic about the Orthodoxy. She contacts the most observant or discreet Hero, hoping to recruit him into a “research division” (read: Inquisition) of her reformed church.

### Gertrude Schmidt

Gertrude "Trudy" Schmidt was born in Ussura, and shortly thereafter abandoned in the Borovoi Forest near the border with Eisen. A wolf found her in the forest and took her in, caring for her as its own. When she was still young, the wolf lead her to a tiny settlement at the edge of the forest in Eisen and left her there. She remembers little from her time with the wolf, though it sometimes comes back to her in dreams.

Trudy grew up on a farm, and like most children in Eisen, learned to defend herself from Horrors. Trudy chafed at farm life; chores bored her, work bothered her and staying in one location was the worst. At seven-teen, she ran away from home into the forest. There she survived by following animals and hiding when the Horrors came. Eventually, she crossed the border back into Ussura and immediately the land called to her. For the first time in her life, she felt like she was home.

The land itself seemed to lead her, until eventually she found herself face to face with the wolf of her youth. Now older, she realized this was no ordinary wolf. It taught her how to speak with the animals and eventually, how to change into a wolf herself.

She eventually made her way to Veche, where she tried to use her gifts to help others. She had a string of bad luck, picking friends and lovers who eventually turned out to be Villains of the worst sort. This finally ended when she fell in love with the wife, Ekaterina, of her good friend Timofey —who was a murderer and a madman, though Trudy didn’t know this until after she developed feelings for his wife. Trudy brought the full wrath of Matushka down upon Timofey, and freed Ekaterina from his company.

Now they live together, just outside of Veche, close to the Borovoi Forest. Trudy continues to do Matushka’s work, using the pathways found in the Forest to travel all over Usssura.

#### Portraying Gertrude Schmidt

Compassionate, powerful and a bit too naive, Gertrude Schmidt embodies everything you would expect from someone touched by Matushka. She is tall with dark hair and bright green eyes and has a bit of a feral quality to her. She helps those in need, despite what trouble it may bring her, and rarely asks for anything in return.

### Owen Laslo

Owen Laslo was born in Dunkeen in Inishmore before the War of the Cross ended, but he missed joining the fighting by three years. His father was a merchant and his mother a fisher. He grew up with the love of the sea from his mother, and hoped to join the navy before the war ended. Instead, he ended up on a merchant ship as a sailor, which was a small consolation to his dream.

Laslo’s first voyage took him to Vestenmennavenjar by way of the Maw, and made landfall in Vendel. There in a tavern, he met a pirate captain named Dina from Ussura. After drinking and gambling the night away, Laslo had earned not only her respect, but a position on her ship. They set sail two days later.

Dina’s crew were members of the Brotherhood of the Coast, and raided up and down the Maw, always in contest against Vesten Raiders. Laslo served with Dina for several years before becoming shipwrecked near Rurik.

The Vesten Raiders had warned the pirates time and again to leave their waters, but Dina refused. Instead, she continued to offer them the chance to join the Brotherhood. This time, instead of the normal exchange of pleasant threats, the Raider ship brought its cannons to bear on hers. The ensuing fight was bloody and messy, and destroyed Dina’s ship. Few sailors survived, and the pirate captain herself went down with the ship.

Laslo washed ashore, and found himself stranded in Ussura with no job, no friends and no one to vouch for him. Ever the pragmatist, he went in search of a new ship to serve on. As he searched, he learned that he had earned quite a reputation in Ussura. The fierce red-haired Inish man who served with Dina was easily recognized wherever he went. Stories of his time at sea preceeded him, and everyone knew his name.

In a way, this was a blessing, but in another it was a curse. No honest merchant ship would hire such a character, and few pirate ships made port in Rurik. On the other hand, people got out of his way and generally did what he asked of them—if not out of respect, then out of fear.

Soon, Laslo found that he could put his reputa-tion to good use as a mercenary. People hired him to do all sorts of jobs, from guarding merchant caravans to shaking down debtors for payments due. He was good at it, and quickly had more jobs than he knew what to do with. So, he began hiring other people to help him with his jobs. Within short order, Laslo became the leader of a prom-inent mercenary company, employing sell-swords, guards, thieves and even a few jennys.

Now, anyone seeking a mercenary in Rurik is likely to use Laslo’s crew. The company doesn’t run itself, and most of his time is spent dealing with business, but Laslso owns a small riverboat that he sometimes takes out to help the Ushkuiniks.

#### Portraying Owen Laslo

Owen Laslo is a gruff man with powerful muscles from years of hard work. He is in his early thirties and still has a youthful vigor. His hair remains a deep red, which he keeps shorn short, though his beard is full.

Laslo might be a mercenary, but he is loyal to a fault. His own personal sense of honor does not allow him to back out of deal once it’s made, and he always holds true to his word. He is a shrewd businessman, and will not take a job that he is not confident he can accomplish, and he holds all his employees to his exacting standards.

#### Story Hook

* A Villain the Heroes are attempting to remove from power with has hired Laslo’s mercenary company to guard him. Laslo’s sense of loyalty means that he will not abandon his charge without extreme circum-tances. Can the Heroes find enough evidence to make Laslo turn against his employer, or will they fight against the crew to get to their Villain?

### General Winter

Major Akim Maksimovich Lagunov’s tribe answered Lord Koshchei’s call to defend Molhynia’s border from Vesten raiders. But after their general ordered them—against the major’s recommendation—to chase retreating skirmishers, a snow squall separated them from the main body of the army. Night wore on. The storm worsened. The sun did not rise the next morning or the one after that. Exposure or starvation laid his soldiers low, one by one, until but a few remained, pushing into whirling white darkness.

Then, light appeared. Two white reindeer’s fur, and the gilt ornamentation on the sledge they pulled, gleamed like candles. Mad with hunger, the soldiers lurched toward it, intending to kill and eat the rein-deer. The tall, white-haired driver sighed and turned the soldiers to snow, which usually solved such prob-lems. Yet Lagunov, frozen through, kept staggering forward. “You’re different,” she said. “There’s ice already in your heart. I’ll sculpt it into something more interesting.”

One week later, he strode into his former general’s tent, slit his throat with a knife of ice and assumed his command. Koshchei lost contact with the army.

One by one, provincial boyars’ castles went silent, besieged in unseasonable whiteouts. Each dead boyar’s private security forces received a choice between conscription and the same fate. “Ussurans,” he tells his recruits, “receive a unique blessing: Théah’s most devastating winters, killing the weak, sparing only the strongest. I plan to share this gift, remaking all Théah in Ussura’s frozen, perfect image.”

Lagunov is a tactical and strategic genius. Wherever he walks, blizzards walk with him. He pays soldiers richly with pillage and plunder, blessing his finest with a terrible boon: he plunges his icy hand into them and turns their hearts to ice. Their blood freezes into glaciers that race blue beneath their skin.

They never slip on ice. They can run over the top of new-fallen powder snow, leaving no trace. Once their bodies become impervious to cold, permafrost buries consciences and emotions, leaving only logic and absolute loyalty to their dread master. Their enemies nickname these frozen soldiers “snowmen,” their warlord “General Winter.” He likes the name.

#### Portraying General Winter

Cold, calculating, and imperialist. General Winter is the avatar of Ussuran cold and snow. He cares not that his power disrespects and antagonizes Matushka and Tură: gods who could not keep this power from him are too weak.

He doesn’t really converse or negotiate: he kills. He only respects those who subscribe to his philosophy or survive his assaults. Dealing with him is a matter of violence and survival, and even his soldiers refuse to speak much when prompted.

But what is his next target? Eisen, the most serious military threat to Ussura, whose border has never been secure? The Sarmatian Commonwealth, whose territory and warm-water ports Ussura has long coveted? Or the Czarina’s throne in Bashanta, just west of his Veche base?

#### Story Hooks

* A young woman insists she is General Winter’s own daughter from a youthful tryst he had at military academy. She shares her father’s cold affinity. She needs your help defeating the General and taking his power for herself.
* A soldier arrives at a hospital, frostbitten, begging for help; he recovers quickly, limbs doctors thought lost regaining warmth and vitality. He says he is a medic from General Winter’s army who received the blessing of the ice heart, but pulled away halfway through. He has discovered a way to return snowmen to humanity. General Winter wants him and his cure dead.

## Secret Societies

### The Explorer’s Society

Many monasteries and reliquaries high in northern Somojez’s forbidding mountains, built into ancient Syrneth structures, sit in the mountainsides themselves. The Syrneth seem to have built these structures for dense occupation, full of corridors and small oddly sized cells forming labyrinthine patterns underneath the rock. Outside, grand plazas, bridges and amphitheaters connect these different structures.

Monasteries often build new structures directly atop these miraculous edifices, some of which hang in midair, bridging vast gaps between mountaintops, suspended by unknown art or science. Attempts to duplicate them have failed so far. The Society debates whether cutting open one of these structures to see what holds it up is worth it—that is, if the monks even let them.

### The Invisible College

Scientific research is not penalized in Ussura, and the Inquisition has no power. In fact, Ketheryna has invited the greatest scientific minds to join her in Bashanta. She gives them places to study and models her universities after those in Castille.

Members of the Invisible College find not only a friend in Ketheryna, but a safe haven in her court. Information, documentation and knowledge may find a permanent home in Ussura, and Ketheryna wouldn’t have it any other way. Members of the Invisible College have the leisure to spend time both safeguarding infor-mation and starting up new research projects. Bashanta is a choice destination for those fleeing the Inquisition, if they can make the long journey.

### Los Vagabundos

Ussura’s lack of roads means Vagabundos without local connections struggle to move and communicate across the Nation’s trackless expanse. Nevertheless, a Vagabundo has monitored the Ussuran Czar for some time, with mixed success. Gaius Iriney’s death happened on a Vagabundo’s watch—in fact, one who held a mask. This Vagabundo nevertheless chose not to get personally involved in whatever happened—and then disappeared, leaving the mask at a drop point for her confused replacement to find.

That missing Vagabundo knows the secret of Gaius’ death. The whole organization is in uproar trying to track her down, figure out why she disappeared and determine whether Gaius’ death was murder, self- defense, accident or something stranger. The answers have great bearing on Los Vagabundos’ next move and particularly on which candidate for Czar they focus their resources to protect.

### The Brotherhood of the Coast

The Brotherhood of the Coast have a difficult time raiding the freezing waters of Grumfather Bay. Some join with the Vesten Raiders and make their home in Eskjo in Vestenmennavenjar, but some base their home from St. Anderson or even Rurik. Unfortunately, few trade ships other than those belonging to the Vendel League traverse the icy depths, and the Raiders refuse to prey on those ships, for whatever reason. The Brotherhood have turned instead to river piracy as a way to make their living in Ussura.

### The Ushkuiniks

You would think the Brotherhood of the Coast has nothing to do in Ussura. The nation does not have warm-water ports, and trade that does come in is primarily from Vestenmennavenjar via the Grumfather Bay. They compete with the Vesten Raiders who are not part of the Society, which makes their jobs difficult.

But their Ussuran inland subsidiary has a history as old as the construction of ships. The first Ushkuiniks—named after the “ushkui,” a light flat-bottomed raiding craft, easily transported over-land—came from Ussura and Vestenmennavenjar’s border. Coasts and riverside communities feared the Ushkuiniks’ serpent-headed boats. They attacked and absconded with valuables to their wilderness hideouts. Those very hideouts, far beyond the reach of normal civilization, gave them their most extraor-dinary capability.

Ussura’s rivers, lakes and marshes abound with dangerous supernatural creatures. The two most common, which also inhabit nearby Eisen and the Commonwealth, are the vodyanoi and rusalki. The humanoid vodyanoi possess fish- or amphibian-like features while rusalki, female water spirits, resemble beautiful women.

Their hideouts in forgotten marshes forced Ushkuiniks to develop rapport with these odd creatures. They learned the strange etiquette of the swamps, knew how to honor and placate rusalki and vodyanoi lest they lose their tempers and break anything humanmade near the water, or lure people in to drown or enslave them.

For the longest time, Ussuran rivers were the only reliable way to move cargo through this vast and trackless country—but punting a barge down a river without checking on its denizens is a great way to get bankrupted, drowned or enslaved. And this is where the Ushkuiniks come in.

They map the Ussuran rivers, and navigate them faster than anyone else by making deals with the natural denizens or otherwise avoiding those who are the most dangerous.

Ushkuinik escorts can guide your cargo, guard it against bandits, placate any spiteful mermaids hiding in trees or shoo away angry frogmen you come across. If you do not pay them, well, pray bandits get you before mermaids do. And if the bandits do get a boat or two, they share their profits with the Ushkuiniks, because they are just as likely a part of that organiza-tion as any other.

The Ushkuiniks occasionally venture out into Grumfather Bay. They don’t take kindly to Vesten Raiders muscling in on their turf. During a recent patrol around the Bay, Ushkuiniks ran into a Brotherhood of the Coast ship. After a brief scuffle, the Brotherhood ship’s captain suggested maybe the two crews had more in common than not, and offered the Ushkuiniks a look at a Brotherhood charter. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The Ushkuiniks answer to Lazavik, a little old man with a single glowing eye who lives in a hut in a swamp. He is a Leshy (the singular of Leshiye) of sorts, a nature spirit whose health and well-being reflects that of his home marsh.

Originally one of many spirits the Ushkuiniks placated, he slowly grew into an advisory position and then a leadership position. Now that Ussura divides into the Ketheryna and Ilya parties, the Ushkuiniks—whom the crown considered a criminal nuisance until just recently—have become an important political goal for both prospective leaders.

The Ushkuiniks’ connection to the spirits of the land is important for both Ketheryna and Ilya. Muzhiks, from whose ranks many Ushkuiniks come, and to whom Ushkuiniks generally donate a portion of their pirating take, usually have the Ushkuiniks’ backs. You would expect them to go for Ilya, but Ketheryna has contacted some Ushkuinik captains with offers of complex new boats.

Of course, much like the rest of the Brotherhood of the Coast, the Ushkuiniks have little interest in polit-ical machinations. Sure, they accepted Ketheryna’s boats, but she’s in for a rude shock when they refuse a call to arms or a request for support, as is the most likely result.

#### Favor with the Ushkuiniks

The Ushkuiniks concern themselves with not only goods and wealth, but with the spirits of the river routes. While they hold the same Charters and promises that any Brotherhood of the Coast member would, they additionally seek to keep the vodyanoi and rusalka pacified and in place, making them the only ones capable of successfully nagivating the Ussuran rivers.

A Hero who belongs to the Ushkuiniks can earn Favor as he would normally for the Brotherhood of the Coast and also in the following additional ways:

* Successfully negotiating passage through a major waterway with a powerful supernat-ural creature is worth 3 Favor and 1 Wealth.
* Averting a threat to a spirit-occupied wetland is worth 4 Favor.

A Hero who belongs to the Ushkuiniks can spend Favor as she would normally for the Brotherhood of the Coast and also in the following additional way:

* Gaining assistance from a vodyanoi or rusalka costs 4 Favor and the request must keep the creature near a river. The creature is a Strength 6 Monster with the Aquatic Monstrous Quality. It follows any instruc-tion that does not endanger itself or its home. It fights for the Hero, but only if it thinks it is likely to win. Otherwise, it can clear a river passage, scare off other creatures or spirits or make deals with unknown spirits in your Hero’s stead.

### Die Kreuzritter and the Knights of the Rose & Cross

The Ussuran heroic archetype, called the bogatyr, operates at the intersection of die Kreuzritter’s and the Knights of the Rose & Cross’ agendas. Bogatyr Heroes originated from Crescent legends, but made their way into Ussuran epics hundreds of years ago, probably via Khazari poetry. Their legends attribute them to honorable customs, defending the weak, destroying monsters and doing good deeds. Accordingly, both the Rose & Cross and die Kreuzritter have found Ussura fertile ground for recruiting active members and rich patrons.

For much of Ussura’s recent history, the two societies did not get along. Die Kreuzritter complained the Knights insisted on reasoning with monsters during their prolonged rampages, whereas the Knights groused die Kreuzritter swung first and asked ques-tions later. However, a spate of kidnappings by the Sea King, a Leshy who maintains an undersea kingdom amongst Rurik’s coastal islands, forced the two Secret Societies to work together: die Kreuzritter cut a path through his monstrous minions, and the Rose & Cross appealed to his better nature once they got there.

The incident started an unsteady equilibrium between the Societies. A newcomer from either Society working in Ussura often partners with a local veteran from the other, purposefully chosen for her contrasting temper-ament and methods to the newcomer. Not to say the organizations don’t work on their own, but now they work together more often than they used to.

#### Favor in Ussura

Members of either the Knights of the Rose & Cross or die Kreuzritter can gain Favor in Ussura in the following way:

* Performing a mission with the other Society is worth 4 Favor to your Society, specifically when the mission is productive to the goals of both Societies. This Favor gain does not stack. For example, if the Knights of the Rose & Cross ask an agent to undertake a mission, the agent cannot also gain Favor for performing that mission alongside die Kreuzritter agents.

### Močiutės Skara

The Shawl’s first-ever operations took place here, on the Ussura-Curonia border, where women risked their lives during the War of the Cross to get supplies to refugees. The Society remains active and aggres-sive in protecting Ussura from the depredations of war. While large-scale warfare has not appeared for many years, conflicts over territory, resources or pride frequently pit boyars against one another. Outside of Rurik, boyars ignored Gaius Iriney’s ban on such petty conflicts, where his streltsy could not march on offenders. These conflicts often ruin the lives of muzhiks guilty of no crime more serious than farming the defender’s land.

An agent’s favorite approach to these situations is to show up, tell the muzhiks on both sides what is going on and then transport all of them as far away as she can, as quickly as possible. Tensions dry up quickly when both sides realize they cannot feed their troops. But Močiutės Skara needs to know about an attack well in advance to get agents into the area, prepare hiding places and move peasants before soldiers realize their dinner’s running away.

To this end, the Shawl researches a different kind of information network: Ussuran natural and tutelary spirits such as domovoi. Nearly every household in Ussura has one. They seem to communicate with one another somehow and to predict upcoming misfor-tune. Will they aid the Shawl’s efforts against violence? Or will they find such a request presumptuous?

#### Favor in Ussura

A Hero who belongs to the Močiutės Skara in Ussura can earn Favor in the following ways:

* • Stopping a fight between Schismatists and Orthodox is worth 3 Favor.
* • Getting muzhiks out of the way of oncoming war is worth 3 Favor for a village’s worth of people, possibly more depending on the size of the population.
* • Recruiting a domovoi to the Močiutės Skara information network is worth 5 Favor.

### Rilasciare

The wide power gap between boyar and muzhik vexes the Rilasciare. Boyars hold all Ussuran power and spend muzhiks like gold. Prince Bogdan’s slave-driving efforts to build up Bashanta on the timetable Ketheryna demanded caused thousands of deaths. However, Ussura’s low population density and mobility impede muzhiks’ ability to organize.

The Rilasciare has had some small-scale successes, inciting muzhiks to revolt against boyars who lacked military power and replacing their former masters with democratic communes. In places like Breslau, the concept of nobility and leadership is almost completely gone, except for when visitors show up and demand Koshchei v’Pietrov make an appearance.

Unfortunately, that same initiative led them to support General Winter’s rise. The General began his career as a common soldier, conscripted from a muzhik village and sent to the Pavtlow Military Academy on scholarship. When the Rilasciare first heard of a commoner who could challenge the boyars on the field of battle, they spread information about him and recruited soldiers for his cause. Now, of course, they realize their error. The Rilasciare helped make General Winter into something they really don’t want. What will they do about it?

### Sophia’s Daughters

Sophia’s Daughters rarely make it as far north and west of their home into Ussura. Those who do find both Ilya and Ketheryna gracious hosts, if a bit distracted by their own problems. Sophia’s Daughters have found help in an unlikely benefactor, Koshchei v’Pietrov.

Even the Vodacce Princes fear Koshchei’s reputation, and when one of their daughters or noble ladies ends up in his lands, they write her off as dead. Only a few Fate Witches have ended up in the safety of his castle, but they seek ways to bring more into his refuge.

## Places

### Rurik Province

Rurik is Ussura’s heartland and densest province. Four major cities—Ekatnava, Rurik, Pavtlow and Sladivgorod—lie within Rurik’s borders. Rurik’s Archduke has long been the most powerful boyar in Ussura after the Czar, due to the financial security density and port towns bring. Rurik trades briskly with the Vendel League. In the old days, northern Eisen brought in a lot of trade as well, but Eisen’s economy has flagged lately. Rurik is also the terminus of many important navigable rivers reaching into the continent, a natural meeting place for dignitaries from all over Ussura and therefore the most logical capital site. Originally Ekatnava or Rurik was slated to become the Czar’s seat, but other provinces complained—probably because they couldn’t attack a coastal capital to protest the Czar doing something they disliked.

Rurik’s terrain is mostly broken and hilly, with many river valleys. Farming takes place almost entirely in those river valleys, with easy irrigation and rich soil, but the grazing land is not extensive. Rurik has to draw much nourishment from the sea, and inland settlements rely heavily on hunting to add protein to their diets.

The Ushkuiniks, Ussura’s local Brotherhood of the Coast chapter, is most active in Rurik, where an Ushkuinik escort has a lot of waterways to guide you down or dead ends to spring a perfect trap (depending on whether or not you pay her). On the rare occasion someone attacks the Grumfather Bay fishing fleet, the Ushkuiniks also venture into the open waters to defend Ussura. The islands in between Rurik and Ekatnava are the rumored home of the Sea King, an ancient Leshy who rules Grumfather Bay from a sumptuous aquatic palace. Every now and then over the centuries, he kidnaps some interesting humans who either join his court forever or escape (sometimes with die Kreuzritter’s or the Knights of the Rose & Cross’ help).

#### Ekatnava

Ekatnava harbors fishers, whalers and Vendel traders. Its strong economy and greater-than-average disposable income have made it Ussura’s sporting capital. The all-weather sports of fencing, boxing and wrestling are particularly active. Every few years at midsummer, athletes from across Ussura as well as eastern Vestenmennavenjar and Eisen compete in the Ekatnava Games’ field events, contests of strength, races and the like.

Unbeknownst to the city government, the Pavtlow-based Sokolovskaya crime family has successfully expanded its operations to Ekatnava. Taking advan-tage of Ekatnava’s low crime rate to insinuate them-selves into city operations on the sly, the family set up protection rackets on the harbor and muscled in on the Ushkuiniks’ turf in smuggling and even piracy. With the Ekatnava Games coming up next summer, Boss Filippa Sokolovskaya plans a grand campaign of illegal betting, match-fixing and even alchemical performance enhancement to ruin everyone’s fun but her own.

#### Sladivgorod

Sladivgorod lies on a vast rift lake between tectonic plates on the Molhynia-Rurik border. More bountiful than the sea, Lake Vigil abounds in tasty clams, snails, amphipods and—most valuable of all—freshwater seals. Local hunters observe strict limits because overhunting seals incurs the wrath of the Riftguard, an ancient, temperamental water-serpent who main-tains the balance of nature. Even during periods of bitter warfare between Rurik and Molhynia, fighting on the lake surface was taboo—no one wanted to be snake food.

Today, Sladivgorod is a snapshot of what Ussura might have looked like one or two hundred years ago, all picturesque snow-covered cottages nestled into the hills or overlooking the lakeside. Still, locals stay in at night, for Lake Vigil attracts many Leshiye who hold council with the Riftguard under the stars. Legend has it no hero has ever vanquished the Riftguard except Sarangerel Bogatyr, who tricked it into leaving her alone as she fought her greatest enemy upon the lake’s surface.

#### Rurik

Rurik City is the local government seat, where Archduke Alyosha’s family lives. Vesten settlers here built Ussura’s oldest large-scale architecture, straight crenellated walls connecting crude blocky towers. Rurik still hosts many Vesten expatriates. A gigantic market-place sells everything from traditional Vesten baked goods to shares in Vendel shipping ventures.

The Vendel League’s Ussuran headquarters over-looks the harbor, a towering new structure built to look like part of the ancient fortifications. Before the ancient Somojez boyar Vsevolod’s conversion to Orthodoxy and subsequent pacifism, he fought bitterly with Rurik over possession of the coastline and terrain between St. Anderson and Rurik. The rivalry between the two cities persists to this day, with their fishing fleets often clashing over who owns the best sites off the coast.

#### Pavtlow

A few years ago, Pavtlow had Ussura’s most beautiful buildings, best-kept streets and most vibrant court. Now a husk, empty and hollow, the capital goes through the government’s motions while the real action happens in Bashanta.

#### Streltsy

Until Ketheryna’s departure, the streltsy (singular streléts) stood as the Czar’s elite guard, keeping order and putting out fires in the capital. Many streltsy’s families have served in the same corps for generations.

Whenever angry boyars marched on Pavtlow to protest something the Czar or the Knias Douma had done, the streltsy waited with swords, poleaxes and muskets at the ready. They are probably Ussura’s best infantry, though Ketheryna’s new personal guard of Eisen mercenaries and General Winter’s terrifying snowmen might have something to say about that.

Despite their elite status, the Douma does not pay them well. Many a craftsperson in the marketplace is an off-duty streléts. Rumor has it they planned to revolt against Ketheryna just before she relocated to Bashanta—and that is why she didn’t take them with her. The streltsy have exhibited a wide range of reactions to Ketheryna’s indifference to them. Some sections considered it the last straw from an office that never paid them as well as they deserved.

These units left their ancestral barracks to set them-selves up among the petty crime lords of the city’s market districts. Some simply faded into Pavtlow’s population of tradespeople or returned to families in the country. A few—mostly the oldest of the guard—still occupy the barracks and patrol the Old Palace’s grounds, answering to the idea of a Czar.

#### Rampant Poverty

Precious few in Bashanta come to the city without an invitation, but for as long as anyone can remember, muzhiks have crowded Pavtlow. Most of those who lose their livelihood elsewhere in Ussura come here, to beg for alms from the wealthy. Beggars, pickpockets, criminals and undesirables form sprawling guilds, staking out turf and brawling with one another over it.

Pavtlow’s sudden evacuation has placed the urban poor into an odd place. On one hand, the rich whose wealth they hoped would trickle down are gone now. On the other, they left a lot behind them. Food is still scarce, but housing is easy to get now as many handsome residences have emptied. The people tear some down for parts, and others become guild houses for new thieves’ or beggars’ guilds. Now that they have reliable housing, they are starting to create new econo-mies for themselves: growing crops on mansion roofs or specializing in crafts or services.

#### The Pavtlow Kremlin

The Czar’s palace, or kremlin, is a sprawling fortified compound, built hundreds of years ago and renovated in fits and starts ever since. Each face of the structure represents a different period in, and set of influences on, Ussuran architecture. The fortifications are tech-nologically unimpressive. Thick stone walls with a walkway on top and some cannon towers left unfin-ished after Ketheryna’s departure; but the streltsy’s Old Guard, a few sections of veteran gunners, hold the kremlin as if the Czar still draws breath.

They number few and can’t defend the whole kremlin themselves. Instead, they hire neighbor-hood urchins to run patrols through the compound, notifying the Guard of looters. The streltsy then roll out their famous mobile barricades and open fire on the bad guys from behind them, hopefully driving them away.

These streltsy prioritize defending Musorga Hall. This royal art museum brims with paintings, sculpture, ceramics and other artworks from across Ussura and beyond. During the chaos of Ketheryna’s departure, the Old Guard assaulted many rich folks’ abandoned dwellings in order to capture artwork to stash in Musorga Hall. Now, one of Théah’s richest troves of priceless artwork remain under the guard of a few dedicated but harried old veterans. They cannot defend it forever.

#### Crime Families

The Sokolovskayas were one of many small thieves’ guilds in Pavtlow until the power vacuum opened up, and now they are the biggest thing in town. In the old days, the established crime families and thieves’ guilds fought one another without end. The Sokolovskayas, though, realized there would be more for everyone if they divided up business fairly. So they began to orga-nize meetings and broker deals. Now a guild handles robbery, another handles assassination, a guild for corruption, a guild for fraud…and the Sokolovskayas provide administration and take service fees. Safest and steadiest job they have ever had. Knowing what the Old Guard hides in Musorga Hall, they plot a massive multi-team assault and heist on the kremlin. Selling the art hidden there will make them legend-arily rich—if they can prevent the participants from backstabbing one another in the process

#### WHICH CAPITAL?

The Knias Douma has not met formally since right after the Czar’s death. The Douma Hall in Pavtlow where they used to meet, set into the kremlin’s outer wall, was one of the ﬁrst buildings ransacked after Ketheryna disap-peared. Many of the Douma refuse to even step foot in Pavtlow or Bashanta, fearing the political statement such an action may make.

They know that their next place of meeting, whether it is Pavtlow or Bashanta, makes a political statement about their conﬁdence in one ruler or another, and so they delay for now.

#### Veche Province

Veche is Ussura’s second-largest province after Molhynia, but the least dense. Once larger, its rulers have spread themselves too thin. Somojez Province invaded and conquered a great deal of the territory on the Eisen border.

Veche has a long history of tension with the Sarmatian Commonwealth. Many boyars on the southern border have long hungered to expand their territory southward. When they got word of Golden Liberty, many of them reasoned that without the old aristocracy’s strong leadership the Nation would be easy to take. Yet, their own lack of organization prevents them from moving in on the Commonwealth.

General Winter has based himself in Veche for the past two years, although he has a scary knack for showing up in far reaches of the country at a moment’s notice, lending to rumors that he travels via Leshiye magic. He has ingratiated himself with the prince of Veche…or perhaps the prince of Veche has ingratiated himself with General Winter. General Winter has already cracked down on several of the most powerful boyars on the southern border, forcing them to swear fealty to him or die.

#### Siev

Veche’s seat of government is Siev. Situated on a main road leading to the Sarmatian metropolis of Stanisławiec and the Sejm River, Siev was key to moving Ussuran goods south. Originally an important diplomatic hub, the city had envoys coming from all over the Sarmatian Commonwealth, Vodacce and the Crescent Empire to meet with Ussuran interests. But after General Winter took up residence in the hills east of Siev, he froze the Sejm. Someone must ask him to relent so Veche’s already troubled economy does not worsen…but so far, no one has successfully asked General Winter for anything.

Siev has a reputation as a boring place, all business and no fun; but it remains Ussura’s toymaking capital. Businesslike its craftspersons may be, but if you want to delight your children (or Ussuran adults) with pewter soldiers painted or unpainted, wooden dolls and dollhouses or chess sets, Siev has the best quality at the best prices.

With General Winter came the members of the Rilasciare who support him. Most of the city functions normally, business as usual from most standpoints, except for the lack of trade and the diplomatic envoys abandoning the city in favor of Bashanta or Sousdal. In the outer edges of the city, the Rilasciare have taken hold and installed a demo-cratic commune. The people work, provide goods and support each other all based on a collective vote.

For the most part, they ignore Prince Bogdan and the other boyars in the area, content to guide them-selves. As long as General Winter stays, few would dare challenge their sovereign right, but he is a lousy defender otherwise.

#### Bashanta

Just a couple of years ago, Bashanta was a small village. Despite its desirable location on a major river, its swampy terrain attracted vodyanoi and rusalki and repulsed humans who were not Ushkuiniks. Then Ketheryna Fischler Dimitritova abruptly relocated her court and capital there, draining the swamp and inviting thousands of artisans and engi-neers to the city to build Ussura’s—no, Théah’s!—most advanced city.

She paid Prince Bogdan of Veche handsomely to construct it on an impossible two-year timetable. To succeed, Bogdan worked thousands of muzhiks to death in unsafe environments and then concealed the entire fiasco from Ketheryna. Onion-domed towers, handsome streets, spacious theaters and forbidding churches replaced mud and huts.

It is beautiful, advanced and—according to many a traditionalist Ussuran—all for show, lacking substance as anything more than a proof of concept for visiting Théans who still think Ussura backward. Those Ussurans deride the city as Ketheryna’s “clock-work onion.”

#### Aztláni Observatory

The massive stepped pyramid perched on the town’s highest point surprises many newcomers to Bashanta. The dome crowning its highest step surpasses every roof in the city. Ketheryna invited a team of Tzak K’an astronomers to design the Aztláni Observatory with the help of Alvara Arciniega, the telescope’s inventor himself. The first floor is a public science museum, featuring Théah’s second-largest armillary sphere (the largest is the Hierophantic Cathedral) and dozens of the latest technological marvels, many built by Ketheryna herself. Above and below, a complex of laboratories births Ketheryna and her scientists’ latest creations.

Just the other day, though, a gigantic explosion in the night blew a hole in a corner Observatory wall. It has not yet been repaired, though round-the-clock guards ensure no one outside can see what goes on within. Two rumors vie for prominence about it: one, that the Inquisition blew it up because it offended their anti-science sensibilities; or two, that a weapon tested within detonated accidentally. Neither possi-bility comforts those who dwell nearby.

#### The Bashanta Kremlin

A kremlin is a fortified citadel inside a city. This kremlin’s site on a hillside below the Aztláni Observatory is no accident; military technology labs beneath the Observatory connect to the Kremlin’s testing facilities. To impress visitors, Ketheryna hired Vodacce artisans to build the Kremlin as a star fort, even though such a design offers little advantage inside a built-up city.

Her elite guard of Eisen mercenaries marches down to the plaza below every morning to drill in public and then marches back up to the Kremlin. But the training grounds connected to the Observatory’s sub-basements contain Ketheryna’s strangest, most advanced inventions.

They are not entirely her creations. She recruited experts on Ussuran folklore and mechanical engi-neering everywhere she could find them. The inven-tions started out as an experiment on the domovoi, the tutelary house-spirits occupying nearly every Ussuran household. The same domovoi often remain within a house torn down and rebuilt, so long as the stove where it slept remains intact. If the family moved, and the stove moved with them, that same domovoi followed.

So Ketheryna’s research team took abandoned stoves and placed them in increasingly outlandish homes. Churches. Taverns. Even Tamatama-style caravans. As long as he still received offerings of food and liquor, the domovoi stayed and continued to defend the home against misuse and neglect, even moving objects around the house to make noise or frighten off vermin and other intruders.

The latest experiment places a compact stove housing a domovoi in the chest of a clockwork automaton, essentially a gigantic toy soldier, like the ones Ketheryna played with during her childhood in Eisen. When exposed to a threat—a dangerous animal, perhaps—the domovoi animates the clock-work soldier, making it walk, moving its limbs to fight off that threat.

Perhaps Ketheryna lets her fascination with this development overcome her. Could this be the newest frontier in home defense or even soldiering? She has not revealed them to the public yet, but the Czarina has already installed these toy soldiers in various halls in her own palace. The question remains, though: might Ketheryna’s nutcrackers face down human soldiers as well? And are the domovoi willing fighters or trapped and enslaved?

#### Imperial Palace

On the other side of the Observatory, the Imperial Palace is a comparatively humble structure amidst blocks and blocks of lavish apartments, linking to it with bridges and skyways. Ketheryna’s dwelling connects to her courtiers’ to keep the political power-houses in town close. Many of these apartments’ outer hallways have large glass panes for walls on their outer hallways: expensive and lovely, convenient if you like to spy on your neighbors, but not so good at keeping out the Ussuran cold. Still, they made it through winter hail without shattering.

The palace and the surrounding apartments host a year-round series of balls, salons and more public entertainments such as opera or dance. Ketheryna recognizes that the entertainments and spectacles she has designed mean nothing unless people talk about them.

The Imperial Theater also lies on the edge of the upper-class residential district. While many of Bashanta’s amenities seem to have only nobles in mind, the theater is accessible to nobles and commoners both. This structure features state-of-the-art mech-anisms for trick entrances and exits, quick backdrop changes and other stagecraft marvels.

### Somojez Province

Somojez Province occupies northwestern Ussura and much of the border with Eisen. Its namesake city actually lies on an island far to the north. Somojez reaches deep into Ussura, and once occupied most of the northern mountains until Novgorov conquests carved Rurik from its shores. Now Somojez pierces the heart of Ussura deep into the mountains, but no one lives there. As for Somojez city, the island has been separated from its original province, and the people there live alternating under Vesten and Ussuran rule. Currently, Vestenmennavenjar owns the island, and the Pscov family has better things to do rather than take it back.

Ussurans generally practice an old form of religion dating back to the First Prophet, which is called Orthodoxy. They have long combined their religious beliefs with rituals to respect and honor the Leshiye and domovoi found in their lands.

Metropolitan Lyuba’s reforms threaten to split every city in the province in two. The middle and upper classes largely support the reforms, which centralize power in the cities and purge the Church of its “back-ward elements”—both superstitious peasants and the superstitions they believe. The muzhiks, on the other hand, see the reforms as unnecessary and classist.

Somojez’s issues threaten to spill into other prov-inces. Schismatists (that is, reformers) have secured the support of wandering priests and sent them else-where in Ussura to drum up support. The traditional Orthodoxy is now starting to do the same. So far, Pavtlow seems sympathetic to the Orthodox Church, especially the corps of streltsy; whereas much of Bashanta leans towards the Schismatists. Neither candidate for Czar has made their feelings known yet.

#### Veche

Ironically, Somojez’s largest city is Veche. This town and the surrounding region used to be the capital of Veche Province, until a once-minor boyar from the Borovoi Forest region named Vsevolod assembled an army and expanded his province by force. Lord after lord, region after region fell to Somojez’s conquering armies until a tour through the northern mountains’ monasteries exposed Vsevolod to the Orthodox Church. After that, he experienced a change of heart. He ceased his conquests and turned his attention to establishing and protecting the Ussuran Church. But to Veche’s great consternation, he refused to give up his new possessions, citing his “Theus-given duty” to Orthodocize the people therein (never mind that most of them were already Orthodox). Depending on whether you ask the Somojez or the Veche, Grand Duke Vsevolod was a religious hero or a hypocritical tyrant.

Located just south of the Borovoi Forest, Veche attracts strange people. Poems hold that Princess Nadzeya, the most famous of the legendary Ussuran bogatyrs, was based out of Veche. She frequently adventured in the forest to the north or the Velde Hills to the south and east (though in truth every region in Ussura has Princess Nadzeya stories). The armored drachen in Somojez’s coat of arms reputedly lived in a lake east of Veche and north of Tebizond. Many of Veche’s citizens claim to be partially descended from Leshiye, goblins or other strange creatures from the surrounding countryside.

#### St. Anderson

The city of St. Anderson is named after Toivo Anderson, a Vesten raider who converted to Orthodoxy after arriving in Ussura. After his conver-sion, he journeyed south through Somojez Province, atoning for his sins as a raider by defending Orthodox Ussurans against aggression. The stories they tell nowadays say the aggression all came from Eisen, but in that period of Ussuran history, they likely suffered aggression from other Ussurans to the east. St. Anderson, an important port town, has easy access to the ports of Vendel and Pösen. St. Andresgorod, in the south of Somojez, is named after the same saint. That city was the last one conquered in the wars between Somojez and Veche, before Vsevolod relented and took up a religious life.

St. Anderson once again saw action in the War of the Cross’ last years, when an Eisen expeditionary force under unscrupulous mercenary Captain Regula Gerver struck at St. Anderson unprovoked, thinking the chaos of the War would grant her all the cover she needed to plunder a rich port. The local boyar, the eager but inexperienced Lady Yesfir, rode out to meet Captain Gerver in battle and was immediately defeated and captured. Unwilling to ransom her, the townspeople fortified St. Anderson for a long siege, receiving supplies from Ushkuinik blockade runners.

When she could not starve them out, Captain Gerver headed home to Eisen, taking Lady Yesfir with her. After nearly twenty years of captivity, Lady Yesfir finally won her freedom when Captain Gerver died in a Horror attack. The boyar walked from Eisen back to Ussura, the land welcoming its long-lost daughter home by keeping her safe in the harsh weather. She wants her town back, as is her ancestral right—but the townspeople, unsure of this woman and confident in their ability to rule themselves, refuse to give it back. How will Ketheryna respond when Lady Yesfir’s complaint reaches her? How will Ilya respond when the townspeople’s plea reaches him?

#### Tebizond

Tebizond, just east of the Velde Hills, is called “the holiest city in Ussura.” Spanning the river called commonly by its Eisen name, der Rotstrom, this city is an important pilgrimage site for Orthodoxists. It is the gateway to the mountain range to the northeast that hosts famous reliquaries and monasteries, many of which defy the very laws of nature as they stretch through the space between mountains. Occupying ancient Syrneth dwelling sites, rumors say the reli-gious orders here have knowledge about the Syrneth which no one else in the world understands, but keep them secret as a matter of their oaths to the order.

#### Borovoi Forest

Borovoi Forest lies just north of the city of Veche. A ring of light and relatively normal forest surrounds a dense core of the weirdest, most complex ecosystems in the continent. Lumberjacks, hunters and trappers serve as the de facto guards on the wall, warning trav-elers of the dangers within. Yet outsiders keep coming to Borovoi Forest.

Some are bogatyrs seeking adventure. Some are explorers or treasure hunters who want to claim the forest’s literal or figurative fruits. Some are traders, bringing magical curiosities or other riches to the goblin market they have heard lurks within. Some are Matushka’s enemies, whether human or otherwise, so desperate to flee her wrath or her retribution that they tried their luck among the walking trees. Many of the largest and oldest trees are awakened, animate beings, capable of pulling up their roots and moving from place to place.

#### Borovoi, the Leshy

This forest is the home of Borovoi, the Leshy with teeth and beard of grass and moss, perhaps the most alien of the major Leshiye active in Ussura. He is a massive, towering creature, easily mistakable for a tree or perhaps a mass of trees, when not moving.

Trunk, bark and vine wind together in his shape, atop prehensile roots that writhe free from the loam and carry him forward, plunging into the earth before him. His trunk is so wide, two persons could not stand on either side of him, reach their arms around the trunk and have their hands meet. His dozens of branch-hands reach down from the top of his trunk, tipped with claws of twigs and leaves. Countless animals live within him, and when he deigns to talk, which is rarely, a mouth full of soil opens in the trunk, speaking in a voice like trees creaking in the wind.

Borovoi is not just the spirit of his forest. Borovoi is the spirit of every plant and fungus in Ussura. He feels each blade of grass grow and die. In spring and summer, vibrant, even playful (in a slow way), he poses riddles and speaks fondly of healthy crops. In fall and winter, he grows somber and serious. Prove yourself a friend to Ussura’s growing things and Borovoi speaks to you of the secrets only plants can know. On what grasses has General Winter’s army trod? Among what marsh reeds is Lazavik of the Ushkuiniks’ home? What oak hides Koshchei the Deathless’ heart? Borovoi knows.

Borovoi Forest is one of two places in Ussura where Matushka has no power, Vir’ava Forest being the other. If her little hut on chicken legs walks there, or she flies there in her magical mortar and pestle, the trees rise up and repel her, lashing her with thorny vines or beating her with heavy branches until she flees. The Leshiye confined to Borovoi Forest once roamed all Ussura freely, but Matushka wanted exclu-sive access to the Ussuran people.

She fought, cursed and tricked every Leshy she came across until they removed themselves to places where they could be safe from her wrath. Borovoi rallied the plant-spirits of Ussura around him and brought them to the Borovoi Forest, where they could band together and resist the killing winter. Their influence suffuses the plants of the region and the land itself.

Borovoi Forest abounds with bizarre trees. For example, there are two species of apple tree identical to one another, one of which causes you to grow a horn every time you eat an apple from it, the other of which makes you more beautiful every time you eat from it (and makes any horns you may have grown fall off ). Another tree’s apples can restore the aged to youth.

Coffer-oak trees naturally grow with beautiful treasure chests, elaborately carved, entangled in their branches or bound up in their roots. As the trees get older, they grow to surround the treasure chest, eventually swallowing it up and leaving it invisible to anyone who does not know exactly what to look for. If you brave the Forest, you might be able to escape with a coffer-sapling and stash something in it before the tree grows and hides it away for you forever.

#### Secrets of the Forest

Borovoi Forest has two great secrets. One is a path leading from the depths of the forest to the Vir’ava Forest far on the other side of Ussura. In the very center of the forest, hidden amidst the wild over-growth, a strange market appears. Magical creatures—long-nosed goblins who can change their shape, and talking animals full of cruel tricks and sage advice—live in this oasis of light and speech. Every night, one stall—and always a different stall, with its own idio-syncratic price—sells a fare from Borovoi Forest to Vir’ava Forest.

The other secret is that Borovoi Forest moves, slowly and surely. Borovoi and his trees walk with slow, delib-erate steps, and they move only a few meters every month all told. All the plants gathered here originated somewhere else. In a time long past, Matushka forced them out of their homes, and they collected in the far northeast corner of Ussura after long journeys and many privations.

But Borovoi remembers a time before Matushka reigned supreme, before the tectonic plates crashed together on the border of Molhynia, when dense forests full of magic reached into Ussura’s center. He yearns for that time to return. And Veche, orderly urban Veche, is so close. For the trees of Borovoi Forest, the day when they climb over Veche’s walls and reach their vine-fingers through its windows, reintroducing growing life to the sterile city, is so, so close. Then Matushka will learn her lesson: what you take from the trees, the trees take back.

### Gallenia Province

Gallenia’s ruling Riasanova family ensures that the province, while Ussura’s smallest with but one major city, has the country’s most active trade network. The Crescent and Cathayan merchants who cross the Szabla River are hardly numerous by Vodacce standards, but their trade relationship with Gallenia is as old as Gallenia itself. Crescents first settled the province, with western Ussurans arriving after the Knias Douma appeared and outlawed battle between provincial leaders. Western Théans with pale skin seeking ranchland and farmland eked out a living amongst the steppes, and the Khazari drifted slowly northward out of anxiety that the Crescent Empire was hot on their trail.

The Riasanova family has a busy schedule of trade fairs and festivals, coinciding with the most convenient times for merchants to arrive from outside Ussura. Locals trade honey and ore for silk, high-quality steel, foreign herbs and other substances rare in Gallenia.

A combination of natural features and territories administered by militarily inclined boyars define the borders of Ussura. To combat destructive internecine wars, the first Knias Douma forced, coerced or bribed many inland warlords to relocate to castles in the marches, refocusing their violence outward.

Cossack patrols ride from castle to castle, hunting smugglers sneaking across the border. Only certain Czar-sanctioned toll roads can be crossed in this way. These toll roads prevent Lady Arzu from opening as many supply lines as she would like, but if she could trade her abundant mineral resources with Curonia and Cathay unrestricted, Gallenia would be rich.

Matushka lives in a little hut on huge chicken’s legs that wanders Gallenia’s western wastes, though by flying in her magical mortar and pestle she can cross Ussura faster than a song can leap from a sing-er’s mouth. In this realm, you find no other Leshiye, for Matushka forbids their presence. Just as other Leshiye are creatures of the wood, mountain or rain, Matushka considers all humanity her domain.

In the old days, Leshiye lived everywhere. A human could make deals with them in exchange for powers like what Matushka offers. But Matushka did not like how that worked. In those days, valiant bogatyrs, sneaky princes and common fools tricked her and confounded her at every turn. She caught one person who deserved to be eaten, but he revealed that some animal he had met taught him how to turn into a falcon. When she caught another person, she revealed she had knocked three heads off a drachen with a mace and found Matushka’s secret weakness hidden in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a treasure chest.

So Matushka began to chase down other Leshiye in her flying mortar and pestle. If she could catch them, she ate them. If not, she chased them far away from humans. Soon, the message got around to all the Leshiye of Ussura: if you make deals with humans, if you protect them in your lands, really if you do anything except scare them away, eventually, Matushka will come and take from you what was rightfully hers.

#### Sousdal

Lady Arzu makes her home in Sousdal, the only city in Gallenia with proper structures and walls. Situated in the eastern steppes at the base of a mountain pass leading to rich ore mines, Sousdal is not as isolated as it would seem. Just south along the river lies Curonia and trade with the Sarmatian Commonwealth, and to the east through easy mountain passes, a traveler can make her way into Vir’ava Forest and further into Cathay. The city itself is mostly just a sturdy keep surrounded by shops and houses, but for Gallenia it might as well be a palace.

South of Sousdal, on the Sousdal River, lies one of the few toll crossings into the Sarmatian Commonwealth. Anyone working, living or traveling through Gallenia makes his way through Sousdal at some point. It is a city of transients, filled with trav-eling merchants, traders and shop keepers passing through the city to or from parts further east and south. Gallenians who do live there service travelers, making it one of the most open cities in all of Ussura. The city boasts a cultural fusion of Ussura, Sarmatian, Crescent and Cathayan influences.

Many rural Gallenians view Sousdal as a bit of a challenge to their way of life. In his eyes, the city is far too metropolitan for his liking, and Lady Arzu’s deal-ings with foreigners makes him fear that she intends to have Gallenia leave Ussura altogether. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from traveling to Sousdal during the warm months to take part in the spring fairs and sell his wares to those selfsame foreigners.

#### Vir’ava Forest

A long time ago, Matushka tried to eat a girl, as she frequently does. The girl in question fled eastward across Gallenia, with Matushka in hot pursuit in her flying mortar and pestle. But the girl had a trick up her sleeve: a magical towel and comb a talking cat had given her. She threw down the towel behind her and a wide river sprang up, mystically barring the pestle’s passage; Matushka had to go get her oxen to drink up the river so she could cross. Then the girl threw down the comb behind her and a sprawling, dense forest sprang up. Matushka tried to gnaw through it with her iron teeth, but failed.

Where Borovoi Forest is wild, dense and overgrown, Vir’ava looks like an illustration from a book of Færie tales. Sun-dappled paths through the forest, just wide enough for two humans to walk hand in hand, lead to flowered glades with sphinx-moths fluttering from blossom to blossom. Plants here are not alive and mobile, as in Borovoi, but the animals tell a different story.

#### The Magic Forest

In Vir’ava, you can find a bear with a wooden pros-thetic paw, which he attached to his foreleg after a woodsman chopped it off, a woodsman whom he challenged to a fight and whom he later ate out of spite. Here, a spider knight who weaves webs to catch the most annoying creatures, flies and mosquitoes, enlists the aid of crickets and beetles to help him trick and trap them. Here are a cat and sparrow who live as humble woodchoppers, but who helps any bogatyr who opposes Matushka. Vir’ava Forest even has a hare who can swallow a duck and a duck that can swallow an egg and an egg which you can open and close and place anything inside, even an idea.

Vir’ava herself, the girl of legend, and the forest mother, lives by the garden at the forest’s heart. She is physically small, not like the towering, inhuman mass of her “husband” Borovoi. But she is the butterfly to his blossom.

From a distance, she looks human in shape. From up close, you realize black-and-gold fuzz like a bee’s rather than normal hair covers her head, with two long feathered antennae extending from her fore-head. Two of her wings are a butterfly’s, delicate and mismatched; the other two are stabilizers like a fly’s, sticks with balls on the end. A tough, jointed carapace covers her upper torso; and her lower body tapers into a long abdomen with a pointed stinger. She also has four arms instead of the normal human two.

A court of pollinators—flies, bees, butterflies, little red hummingbirds—attends her at all times, moving in patterns through the air matching her moods and gestures. Delight her, and butterflies alight on your clothing. Enrage her, and face her bees. As frustrating as Vir’ava is to Matushka, Matushka dares not molest her when she walks abroad. If Vir’ava really is the soul of all the pollinators in Ussura, her death will wither the crops and starve the people.

Second only to Vir’ava, but abounding in power, is the Swan Maiden. A tall woman, her limbs and her neck all stretch just a little longer than expected for a human of her size. She is all lean muscle covered in downy white feathers, and her arms extend into gigantic wings, from which she can summon artisans to build her anything she desires. The Swan Maiden might be Vir’ava’s daughter, though few enough see her to ask.

#### Leader of the Opposition

Vir’ava and her forest stand as proof that Matushka is not the only game in town. While Matushka herself is extremely powerful, capable of granting all the powers collectively called Dar Matushki, she is not Ussura’s only source of these powers. Many other Leshiye can grant one or two of the Gifts commonly associated with Matushka. They just don’t, for fear that Matushka will find out about it and come down on them.

For those brave or foolhardy few who break Matushka’s unspoken rule and make their own deal with an Ussuran, Vir’ava Forest provides one of the few places they can go to escape her. All Leshiye and humans in Vir’ava Forest must kneel to the Forest Mother herself, observing her court’s etiquette and paying her homage with gifts and praise.

Those who comply find Vir’ava Forest a safe haven. It is one of the only places that a shapeshifter whose power does not come from Matushka can train to use his powers in relative peace and safety, getting advice from sympathetic folks.

Vir’ava welcomes even a person touched by Matushka, as long as he observes Vir’ava’s laws and pays her homage. Only Matushka herself cannot enter. She has sent spies into Vir’ava to uncover the Forest Mother’s weaknesses, but their efforts have been inconclusive so far. Some of them returned to announce that Vir’ava has no secrets: her court of magical animals and shapeshifters remain loyal and healthy. Any successful attack on Vir’ava will have to lure her or the Swan Maiden out of her sylvan place of power.

### Molhynia Province

Molhynia’s windswept steppes make up Ussura’s largest, strangest province. Much of the country, though navigable by boat, requires long overland treks to finish a journey. The terrain is hilly or mountainous, occasionally desert or taiga. Temperature varies wildly.

#### Breslau

Molhynia’s largest permanent city, Breslau, situated amidst the northern steppes, is a walled, fortified city. Its highest point is Koshchei the Deathless’ own kremlin, which no one from the city below may enter or exit. Secret passages under the earth link his castle to the world outside. Only Koshchei and his “brides” ever enter or leave by these.

Koshchei expects Breslau’s entire able-bodied population to serve in the militia, maintaining the fortifications and manning the walls and pickets against Crescent invaders or bandits from elsewhere in Ussura. This tradition dates back to Breslau’s first settlement as a mining town.

The mines near Breslau produce demantoid gemstones, gold, copper, diamonds and small amounts of iron. These resources keep the town rich so long as trade with southern provinces and Cathay continues. The mines run on an uncommon system: a worker-run commune, owned in equal parts by everyone, contributes to the efforts. The idea came from the early history of Ussuran Orthodoxy, a far less hierarchical and authoritarian time when people lived and worked in groups for the common good. Koshchei collects a portion of their profits as taxes, but otherwise leaves the mine alone.

The problem with this system? It is technically illegal by Ussuran law. A few hundred years ago, boyars pressured the Czar to outlaw peasant communes after muzhik revolts ousted several boyars and replaced them with systems like Breslau’s. When visitors come from other provinces, Koshchei comes down from his castle and administrators dress up in fancy clothing so everyone can pretend boyars own the mine like anywhere else in Ussura. But it is only a matter of time before the truth gets out. Some boyars would love an excuse to sweep in and steal Koshchei’s lucra-tive mines. Others personally fear or hate Koshchei. Worst of all, added attention might clue the outside world into the women Koshchei hides in his castle.

#### Saranbaatar

Saranbaatar is Molhynia’s largest Khazar city. Like many Khazar settlements, Saranbaatar is mobile. Three to five times a year, the entire city breaks down in less than a day, rides to its next location and then sets up just as quickly at its new site.

Scouts range ahead of it, identifying oncoming threats and relaying information back to tribal elders who decide on a new location for the town. Sometimes they choose the location based on the motions of enemies, the spirits and their premoni-tions about weather or a resource surplus that pushes the town towards trade with another settlement.

#### Animals

Animals outnumber humans in every Khazar settle-ment. Each family maintains enough riding and pack animals—horses, camels and yaks—to move them, their ger and possessions from place to place when Saranbaatar migrates. The family also has at least one bankhar: a large, sturdy, fluffy dog to guard and accompany the family.

Bankhars are a landrace rather than a breed, naturally adapted, rather than bred over thousands of years to thrive in Ussuran climates and watch over flocks and errant children. Many large flocks of sheep and a few goats also travel with Saranbaatar. A hunter relies on raptors, primarily golden eagles, to help him take in game.

Surplus wealth is traditionally measured in extra horses; Khazari generally think of value in terms of how many horses (or what fraction of a horse) something rates, and horses feature in at least half of all Khazar songs. The horses tend to be compact and sturdy, suit-able for roles from labor to combat to providing milk for fermentation, but specialized for few.

#### The Khazar Ger

A ger is a large, sturdy tent. It consists of a wooden lattice, doorframe, support poles, roof beams and a circular crown, over which the inhabitants stretch felt made of sheep’s wool. Gers vary in size from single-family dwellings to giant tents used for public meet-ings and the like. A ger usually takes a family about two hours to set up, but comfortably defends against the Ussuran cold and elements once in place. When broken down for transit, camels or yaks bear the ger’s individual pieces towards the tribe’s next destination.

#### Stupas

After a life of adventuring, the great Sarangerel Bogatyr settled down (by Khazar standards, anyway) and took holy orders, becoming a Madhyamika nun. Founded by a Cathayan sage, Madhyamika seeks freedom from human suffering through compassion, moderation and non-attachment. She originally founded the city now called Saranbaatar as a nomadic Madhyamika monastery, although it rapidly picked up clergy and followers from every religion in Ussura.

The favorite locations at which Saranbaatar typi-cally sets down have two permanent structures: a bath house and a stupa. A stupa is a dome-shaped mound of rock or other earthwork containing the relics of deceased Madhyamika monks and nuns. In Khazar territory, stupas often have a syncretic func-tion, becoming bases for Turăist shamanism, Yachidi temples or whatever other religious structure passing Khazari may need.

Saranbaatar is large enough to have dedicated clergy for different denominations, but like most Khazar clergy, they happily muddle through some other denomination’s rituals if, for example, you need to talk to the ghost of an ancestor interred at the stupa right now.

After Saranbaatar fully sets up at a new location, a religious festival highlights the teachings and interests of those interred at the local stupa. The festival also venerates and illustrates the local spiritual landscape, describing which deities and other figures inhabit the countryside as well as how they might be respected and propitiated.

For the past few years, though, Saranbaatar has found many traditional stupas in the wilderness despoiled or desecrated. Even after the townsfolk pitch in to reconstruct and revitalize the stupa, many of the ghosts and spirits who once attended do not return and shamans’ calls go unanswered. They have not yet discovered the truth, but Matushka is behind the stupas’ desecration. She herself cannot approach a stupa consecrated to other spirits. Yet her drive to marginalize every other spirit in Ussura has led her to bewitch humans to despoil stupas after Saranbaatar or another moving city has visited it.

#### Sports

In and around a large and colorfully decorated tent at the edge of town, athletic competition teaches young Khazari many crucial life skills, most impor-tantly sportsmanship. When you and your neighbors constantly raid one another, you have to know how to set aside personal antagonism in case, for example, a giant empire attacks your territory and you must band together to drive them off. Every Khazar phys-ically able to do so learns archery, horsemanship and wrestling. Less universal but still important are hunting (usually with eagles, occasionally with smaller raptors) and the use of traditional hand-to-hand weapons including the knife, spear, axe, saber and shield. Khazari working as mercenaries sometimes carry pistols, but muskets and crossbows are unpop-ular compared to the famous recurved composite bow of the steppes.

For practical and religious reasons, the spirits forbid mortal combat between Khazar and Khazar within a radius of a few kilometers extending out from a stupa. Break this rule, and a spirit conveys his displeasure with unseasonable squalls or animal stampedes. Offend a Khazar near a stupa and she will probably challenge you to wrestle a few rounds at the athletic tent instead.

The latest athletic craze is chogān, a sport invented the Crescent state of Persis to train cavalry. Two teams of four riders each use mallets to knock a ball into a goal at their opponents’ end of the field. Khazari have gone predictably mad for this exhilarating intersec-tion of riding and tactics, even going so far as to invent camel and yak variants because why the hell not. This year, Saranbaatar has chosen a site further south than usual in hopes of attracting Gallenian chogān teams, currently the best in Ussura, to attend their yearly invitational games.

#### Military Defenses

During more restive times, mobile cities underpinned Khazar war efforts. Enemies struggled to strategize how to attack or occupy Khazar territory when their cities’ locations were mere guesswork. Half-completed enemy fortifications littered the steppes during times of war as cities like Saranbaatar turned into siege machines alarmingly fast.

Like in Breslau, every able-bodied Saranbaatar resident fights in times of war. A soldier, typically mounted, maintains a herd of around sixteen horses to stay fast during times of intense warfare. These horses also provide milk or occasionally meat. A soldier protects herself with lamellar armor and a conical helmet with a neck guard. She mostly relies on the bow and arrow as her primary weapon, with a basket-shaped shield and axe, spear, mace or saber in case things get close. A section leader wears a banner bearing his clan’s tamga, or sigil, to identify himself. He issues battle orders as song lyrics, easy to remember and recognize, backed by percussion instruments such as drums or bells.

#### The Crystal Mountain

Molhynian mountains are among Ussura’s tallest, including the largest, the Crystal Mountain, a gigantic peak more notable for the width of its base than for its height. It is made entirely of a translucent crystal, blinding to look upon while the sun shines. A twelve-headed dragon once occupied a lake nearby, concealing all the treasures (and people) he stole inside the mountain. Only by transforming herself into an ant, using powers she had learned in the Vir’ava Forest, could Sarangerel Bogatyr free them.

Inscriptions on rock and crystal faces in the crystal foothills warn travelers that atop the mountain dwells Chernobog, a spirit and a mystery even to most Ussurans. They have heard of him, of course: the great black horror atop the highest mountains, flinging lightning from on high, cursing anyone who disturbs him. As a god of mountains and storms, he is associ-ated with Molhynia, a province few non- natives visit.

The funny thing is, though, no one actually knows anyone Chernobog has cursed. It is always just rumors, none of them particularly old: an acquain-tance of a friend of a relative who went up on a mountain and got the pox…or was he forced to wander the wilderness forever? No one can remember. Truth is, Chernobog has not actually cursed anyone, because Chernobog is not actually Chernobog—he is someone much older, in disguise.

In northeastern Ussura, people worship a far more popular storm deity, Tură, the ancient sky-god of the Khazari. But Tură is not just god of the sky: he is the very sky and the weather. When you walk out of your ger and feel the wind and the spray of fog on your face, when you see the distant lightning or feel the summer sun’s heat emerge from behind a cloud—that is not just Tură’s purview, it is Tură.

Tură once loved Matushka. Together they ruled over the steppes, Tură in the sky and Matushka on the earth. But humans fascinated Matushka, so much that she could not let them be. Matushka wanted to get personally involved in human life, to help or hinder them as they matched or transgressed against her laws. Tură could not countenance such a choice, and so he left. Since then, he has watched Matushka’s icy grip tighten over Ussura. She terrifies the other Leshiye, drives them into the wilderness and keeps them away from the humans she sees as her children, and her children alone. But she is domineering and cruel. Tură, who left because he did not want to get involved, now feels an obligation to do so. He is not just a weather deity, however, he is the weather and cannot take human form. From atop the very highest mountain in all Ussura, a climber can hear something inaudible: the voice of Tură himself, words rolling and crackling from dark clouds like thunder.

Tură needs his secret kept. If Matushka knew he was back and meddling in the affairs of humans, she would kill him, or at least try to. The Chernobog story cuts down on the number of adventurers who would otherwise climb the mountain at night to hear the god’s voice: why make the effort when all it will get you is a curse? A Khazar shaman knows the truth, but to keep it from Matushka, he swears to secrecy. Thus, only a formidable and foolhardy bogatyr climbs the Crystal Mountain to challenge the unchallengeable Chernobog. Once she summits, she finds something older and wiser waiting. These bogatyrs hear the truth from Tură’s own voice as he recruits them to resist someone he once loved.

Tură’s chosen are still mostly Khazari, but a steady trickle of Heroes from outside Molhynia have joined their ranks. This new generation of bogatyr now wanders Ussura, telling others that “Chernobog has cursed them.” Little do others know, and little does Matushka know, these new bogatyr collect friends, resources and power, preparing to stand up to Matushka and make Ussura a safe place for other Leshiye again.

## Dar Matushki

A woman had two daughters, one beloved and one despised. One day the woman sent her despised daughter out into the snow to gather berries. As the daughter despaired over her task, she met and gave kindness to an old woman. She returned home with berries and gold beside. The next day the woman sent out her beloved daughter, certain the girl would earn an even better prize. But the girl was cruel to the old woman and returned home with snakes twisted around her arms. The snakes squeezed and pinched her, just like she did to her sister. The girl vowed to make amends. Once she did and for as long as she remained merciful, the snakes were hers to command.

Matushka guards Ussura from outsiders, from other Leshiye and from Ussurans themselves. She seeks out those in need of correction, the humans who poison Ussura with their cruelty, fear, excess and lies. An Ussuran who passes her tests returns with whatever he had sought and an additional gift, such as a warm coat, a bit of gold or new boots, for being so good. Those who fail earn a Lesson.

A Lesson forces a person failing the Mother’s tests to face his weakness. The Lessons are usually painful, all the better to stick in the memory. A girl may speak toads and snakes until she stops speaking lies. A fox may accompany a boy, committing him to terrible tasks until he stops running from everything that scares him. A woman may thirst no matter how much she drinks until she sets all alcohol aside. A man may lose all he owns or holds dear until he learns to give away what he can to those in need.

Once a person who failed his tests learns his Lessons, he receives two Gifts. A person who forgets her Lessons, lose her Gifts. This loss is not a punishment, but a warning. If she persists in her forgetfulness and does not repent, she receives her Lesson again. This time the Lesson will be more painful than before and much more difficult to forget.

### The Test and the Tested

Matushka’s tests are always easy to pass and easy to fail. She goes into the world disguised as an old woman or as a child, whichever her target is more inclined to ignore. In this guise, she requests help. The request is always minor, for example, some bread, guidance home, a bit of money or a toy fetched down from a tree. She asks for food, money, time or a bit of endangerment, but never for more than her target can give.

Matushka tests three types of people. The first shows behavior she believes harms Ussura, but has the ability to learn and the potential for Heroism. Matushka does not waste her touch on those who cannot or refuses to contribute to Ussura. The second person includes those who, having learned one Lesson, request another. Matushka smiles on one who wishes to better himself, but her pleasure does not make his Lessons any less terrible or Restrictions less binding. The third bears undue hardship with patience and cheer. For this unfortunate, the test presents a poten-tial reward for her good behavior. She receives a gift, but not Matushka’s Touch. She does not require Lessons, nor does she receive one.

### The Lesson

Matushka’s Lessons hurt, no exception. The pain may include physical, mental or social sources (persistent wounds, nightmares, ridicule), whatever is most effec-tive case by case.

The Lesson targets and reveals a vice: cowardice, spitefulness, mendacity, cruelty, indifference or over-indulgence. It requires that a person who failed his test understands why he earned Matushka’s atten-tion. The Lesson concludes when the sufferer demon-strates this understanding. These demonstrations are usually personal and not as demanding as the penance required for breaking a restriction. For example, a liar might confess his lies and undo a harm his dishonesty had caused. A coward could brave a task that scared her. Someone cruel could apologize to whomever he hurt and show her unqualified kindness.

On rare occasion, a person refuses to learn her Lessons. For her, the Lesson never ends.

### The Gift and Restriction

Once the Lesson concludes, Matushka revisits the tested, in person or in dream, and gives him two Gifts and a Restriction. She explains the Gifts and everything required of him in return. No one has the option to refuse. They call a person who completes his lesson Poluchatel (recipient). The Gifts he receives are extensions of the Mother’s own power, her command over the land and its fauna and expertise with mending.

Each Gift carries a restriction that reinforces the Lesson. Liars must be truthful. Hedonists must practice restraint. Whoever breaks a restriction loses access to his Gifts and must do penance to regain it.

The combination of Gift and Restriction is called a Lesson so that the Poluchatel never forgets what he has learned. One who does not do his penance must undergo his Lesson again. It is less easy the second time.

### The Exception, or The Seeker’s Test

The exception to the above is one who seeks Matushka out on her own. Matushka watches her seekers and decides which may find her and which may not. Those who find her receive three objects: one to destroy, one to protect and one to give away. The seeker must determine which is which and treat each object appro-priately. This test requires discernment, intelligence, obedience and command over personal desires as the most desirable items are often those which he must destroy or give away. Whether the objects are only items or symbols of something greater, such as a child, wealth, safety or love, only the seekers know.

If she succeeds, the seeker receives two Gifts of her choice with the Restriction easiest for her to keep. The naturally kind must always show kindness, for example. To those who fail, Matushka offers a choice: freedom or a Lesson.

### The Czars

Matushka pays special attention to the Czars and Czarinas of Ussura. She tests each leader repeatedly and extends her blessing as long as they continue to pass. These tests are secretive and do not follow a predictable pattern. Only once a leader has failed does Matushka reveal the test.

One famously failed test involved an apple tree. Every night someone stole apples from the tree. Rather than investigating himself, the then-Czar sent his sons. The thieves killed one son and injured the other. Matushka berated the Czar for laziness and cowardice because he refused to go on his own and removed her blessing. After that, the injured son died and the Czar’s wife left him for fear that Matushka’s curse would taint her as well.

Each Czar and Czarina knows that they must always be their best and to be the best leader for Ussura. Without Matushka’s blessing, retaining power demands terrible sacrifice and personal loss.

Many wait for either Ilya or Ketheryna to fail Matushka’s tests so they know who to support, but whatever she has put before them, they both seem to have passed without incident.

### The Poluchatel in the Community

An Ussuran regards the Poluchatel with wary respect: wary, because he knows very few become Poluchatel without cause, and respect, because he knows the Gifts require strong self-control to main-tain. Additionally, several famous Ussuran Heroes were also Poluchatel. Their early encounters with Matushka and how they transformed from bad chil-dren to heroic adults remain popular stories in Ussura, especially among children.

## Tură’s Touch

Just as Ussura has its mother in Matushka, it has its father in Tură. He approaches this role differently than Matushka. Instead of restrictions, he gives freedom and responsibility. Some say he is less cruel than Matushka, but he demands just as much in the end.

To better understand the difference, imagine that someone asks you to bake a cake. Matushka would give you a recipe and demand that you follow each line exactly, swatting you with a wooden spoon each time you made a mistake or forcing you start over. Tură would give you every ingredient you needed or requested and a kitchen to work within, but let you figure out the steps for yourself. In the end, both require the cake.

Tură is not necessarily against everything Matushka stands for; instead he does not like her methods, and he is less than pleased with how she treats the other Leshiye.

Tură and Matushka once loved each other and shared in one another’s power. Matushka allowed Tură to use and gift Regeneration, while Tură allowed her to use and gift Storm. Now, however, they regard one another as a danger to Ussura. Matushka is, as yet, unaware that Tură has begun to actively work against her. He has used Matushka’s own transformative powers to hide himself as Chernobog and remains high in the mountains, closer to his own realm.

When a person finds Tură, he offers her Gifts in exchange for a Task and a Mark. One who refuses his offer awakens in the mountains without any memory of Tură or her time with him. Those who accept become Chernobog’s Cursed.

Tură tasks his new charges with righting the wrongs he perceives Matushka has perpetrated throughout Ussura. Namely, he seeks to free the other Leshiye from Matushka’s prohibitive restrictions.

When a Cursed leaves the mountains, he weaves fantastic stories of how he disturbed Chernobog and earned his ire. The Cursed are united in their campaign against Matushka’s control and keep Tură’s secrets. Only when they find someone who could add to their cause do they quietly share the truth.

### How It Works

Tură does not seek anyone out, but waits for seekers. You may have found Tură by accident while exploring the mountains, or maybe you heard of his hiding place from one of the Cursed. When you acquire the Sorcery Advantage, Tură gives you two Gifts and a Task. He also leaves a black mark about the size of a large thumbprint on your face, neck or hands. Once you have Tură’s Mark, he can give you additional Gifts and Tasks through your dreams.

#### Gift

This is a supernatural power. Where Matushka’s power focuses on mending the land and its fauna, Tură’s Gifts focus on the sky and weather. You can use your power by spending a Hero Point.

#### Task

Your Hero gains a special Story—“Tură’s Task”—that details just what Tură wants from you. You may complete Steps in other Stories as normal, but the Hero cannot write any new Stories until you complete Tură’s Task. Once completed, you can write new Stories just as normal.

#### Gifts

Tură’s Gifts are very similar to Matushka’s, but are sky and weather flavored. From the list of example Matushka’s Gifts in the Core Rulebook, Tură only offers Illuminate, Purify, Storm and Regeneration.

The following is a list of additional example Gifts that only Tură provides. You can create your own with the Game Master’s assistance. All Gifts require a Hero Point to use.

#### Language of Birds

You can speak to any birds in the Scene. You may ask them about what they have seen or heard before you arrived or earlier in their travels. You may also request aid from the birds in Tură’s name. Even birds who have never been to Ussura try to fulfill your request. If the request requires a Risk, the bird rolls 5 Dice, but you decide how it spends its Raises. It gains 2 Bonus Dice if the request is particularly well suited to it.

#### Lightning

You summon lightning to strike your enemies. While you can summon lightning no matter the weather, you must have clear access to the sky. If you are indoors and all the windows are closed, you cannot summon it. With lightning, you deal Wounds equal to your Ranks in Scholarship. Wounds caused by lightning cannot be defended against.

#### Read the Wind

The breeze brings you quick images from wherever the slightest wind can touch. This can be a quick way to check for anyone following you, an ambush up ahead or anything interesting nearby. If you concen-trate, however, you can focus on one or two events near or far. This is a Notice Risk. For each Raise, you can ask a question about what is happening in the scenes. Each question may only involve one sense, that is, what is visible, audible or smellable, not two or more at a time.

#### Wind Walk

You, and anything directly touching your skin, become air. You should probably ask a friend to watch your gear. While wind walking, you are invisible and intangible, but if you talk or make some other noise, you can be heard. Also, someone may notice a slight breeze when you walk past. You may travel as an air current can, meaning you cannot go through liquid or solid objects, but you can move through cracks or small holes.

Wind walking is a dangerous endeavor. You must take care to remain whole and not get trapped in someone else’s lungs or in a small, unbreakable container. If you do, you cannot turn back to your corporeal form. If you remain as wind for more than 15 minutes, you start to lose yourself. You can sustain this form for one Scene. Each Scene after that costs 2 Wounds. These Wounds are taken at the start of the Scene and do not heal until you become corporeal again. If you take a Dramatic Wound while Wind Walking, you immediately become corporeal again, unless trapped. If trapped, you continue taking Wounds until free. Once free, you immediately become corporeal again.

#### Tasks

When you first meet Tură, he asks if you are willing to keep his secret and to spread the myth of the terrible Chernobog. If you agree, he gives you two Gifts and a Task.

The number of Story Steps for the Task depends on the number of Gifts you have. Each time you purchase the Sorcery Advantage you gain two addi-tional Gifts and two additional Steps to your Task. These Steps can be separate one-Step Stories or combined for a single two-Step Story. Therefore, if you take the Sorcery Advantage once, you can choose between taking 2 one-Step Tasks or 1 two-Step Task. If you take it twice, receiving four Gifts, you have four Steps to distribute among one to four Tasks.

#### Spread Tură’s Message

At one Step, this requires simply telling a story that reflects well on other Leshiye, it doesn’t have to be Tură, or poorly on Matushka. The Cursed have earned a reputation as storytellers across Ussura because of this common task. At two Steps, you must tell stories to three different communities. At three Steps, you must identify a good candidate for the Cursed and send a message back the mountain near Tură. At four Steps, you must approach the candidate yourself and give directions to the mountain. If he refuses Tură’s Gifts, he won’t remember you.

#### Undermine Matushka’s Message

At one Step, you must help someone by teaching her how to take care of herself. In this way, you remind others that they must take care of themselves to help others. At two Steps, you must invite strangers to join you for a rousing evening of new friendship, food and overindulgence. In this way, you demonstrate that indulgence can be positive rather than always a vice. At three Steps, you must convince people to work together to build walls to keep out the dangers of the wild. In this way, you teach people that a healthy amount of fear bears rewards. At four Steps, you must find someone planning to seek out Matushka and convince her that she either does not need sorcery or should seek Tură instead. In this way you either help someone understand her own power or, at the least, ensure Matushka has one fewer Poluchatel.

#### Stop Matushka

At one Step, Tură gives you a specific Task as part of a much larger plan he does not share. The Task may be delivering a letter, standing outside of a house for several hours, opening a window or singing a certain song loudly in a certain bar. At the second Step, Tură asks you to perform two small, seemingly unrelated tasks. At three Steps, Tură asks you to answer a ques-tion that requires some investigation. At four Steps, Tură asks you to answer a question that requires spying on one of the Poluchatel, the Czar, the Czarina or on Matushka herself.

The following are two examples of possible Tasks, the first at one Step and the other at four:

Spread Tură’s Message

Ending: Children share the story you told them.

Steps

* Travel to a small village and tell a story of a fantastic Leshy who grants wishes.

Stop Matushka

Tură has asked you to discover how a popular Poluchatel healer came to the city.

Ending: The healer is disgraced.

Steps

* Travel to the city and ask around about the healer.
* Track down the inn where the healer first stayed when she came to the city
* Meet with the priest who delivered the healer to inn and convince him to share the healer’s confession.
* Smuggle what you have learned to another of the Cursed to take to Tură.

If you take the Sorcery Advantage at character creation, you can claim you have already completed up to half of the required Steps for your Task(s), round up. If you do this, you and the GM decide together what you have done so far and name someone you affected with your deeds. You may also choose to start the game with Tură Tasks as your initial Story.

#### The Mark

When Tură gives you your first Gift, he marks you with his thumb. This Mark appears as a black splotch on your skin. The splotch appears on your face, neck or hands and is always cold to the touch. If you have the Mark, you can tell if another’s Mark is true or false. The Mark also allows Tură to bestow additional Gifts on you without requiring you to visit him in the mountains again.

#### The Cursed in the Community

How an Ussuran treats the Cursed depends on whether or not he knows about the Mark. If he does not know, he assumes the Cursed is one of the Poluchatel and treats her accordingly. This is true even if he sees her use a Gift only offered by Tură.

If he knows about the Mark, though, he knows she belongs to Chernobog’s Cursed and treats her with suspicion and pity. Suspicion because he has heard the stories the Cursed have spread about themselves and Chernobog. Pity because he believes that every Cursed is doomed to die a violent death.

If an Ussuran knows that you are one of the Cursed, any action you take in a Dramatic Sequence involving him requires an additional Raise to overcome his suspicion.

#### The Cursed and the Poluchatel

Generally, the Cursed and the Poluchatel treat one another well. The Poluchatel tend to treat strangers kindly regardless, and a Cursed cultivates friendships she may later exploit for information. Once Matushka learns that Tură has been meddling, however, the dynamic among the Cursed and Poluchatel is certain to change.

## Legendi of Ussura

Despite some Church factions’ best efforts, the Ussuran people know better than to abandon their belief in the strange and wondrous. Their wintry crucible of a home is a haven for spirits, magic and the inexplicable. The minute an Ussuran stops making her yearly offerings to Matushka or tills land that belongs to a wilderness spirit, she forfeits her right to the Leshiye’s protection, and many brand her an outsider. Outsiders don’t fare well in Ussura’s punishing winter, so an Ussuran continues to heed tales like these and views efforts to dissuade her with suspicion.

### Chervona Ruta, the Fern Flower

On the mountain slopes of Ussura, a rare yellow fern flower grows, the chervona ruta. Legend says that once a year on the summer solstice, the setting sun lends its colors to the flower as it blooms, turning it red just for one night and enchanting it with the summer’s own luck. Picking it brings magic and danger into your life, as those who take such magic for themselves almost certainly die afterward.

A red fern flower brings fortune to the one who carries it. This fortune may take the form of wealth or luck, but as long as the flower is alive, its magic works. Some people have tried drying the flowers to keep the luck going, but this seems to have no effect.

Gifted from one who plucked it from the ground to another, it can forge the bonds of love where none existed before, though the bonds wither and die when the flower does. Some people say the love forged through a fern ensures a bond of hatred when the flower’s magic fades. Others insist that the love forged through the flower sparks a natural love that persists beyond the magic of the flower. These people say that the red fern forged love is stronger than any other.

Woven into a crown or bracelet and worn, the red chervona ruta grants the gift of animal speech. It only works in the area where the flower grows, but all manner of animals have great wisdom to share upon the Ussuran slopes.

But beware—evil spirits stand guard where it grows, and those who take it for themselves must kill or outsmart these guardians to lay hands on the crimson bloom.

#### The Truth

The legends about the chervona ruta’s enchantments are true, but the spirits that guard it are not evil. They are hirelings of the Leshy Poludnitsa, also known as Lady Midday. Poludnitsa, a cruel and pessimistic spirit of summer who loathes humankind, views agri-culture as an attack on the land. She afflicts farmers and travelers with heat sickness if they cannot solve her riddles and uses her scythe to cut down those who cross her.

She enchanted the chervona ruta with the solstice’s power to win a wager with Matushka. Poludnitsa insists that humans, greedy by nature, always put themselves first. She made the fern’s leaves to yield a tea that can grant a weaker, more temporary version of the flower’s magic; but to benefit from its full power, one must pick the flower, uprooting and killing it.

She bet Matushka that nine times out of ten, a human would pluck the flower instead of brewing its tea and leaving the enchanted bloom for others to find. Her spirits guard the flower not to stop anyone from picking it, but simply to question a visitor about his intentions and report back afterward.

Those who kill the flower for selfish ends meet death by Lady Midday’s scythe. Those who pick only the leaves for tea, or who take the flower only out of self-less need on someone else’s behalf, escape unscathed.

A Hero who learns the truth can trick or persuade Lady Midday to end her wager by proving her wrong about human nature. A Hero could get drawn into the affair by someone on the run from Poludnitsa’s judgment or he could end up on her bad side himself. Matushka could even involve the Heroes in an attempt to win the bet, if one of them possesses her Gifts and maintains her favor.

Lady Midday is a Strength 9 Monster with the Elemental (Heat) and Relentless Monstrous Qualities.

### The Firebird

Few have ever seen the Firebird, but many claim that honor. Few possess one of her magical feathers, but many possess mundane imitations.

Tales of the wondrous miracles the Firebird can perform vary from region to region. Here, rumors say she heals the sick and resurrects the dead. There, stories say she grants wishes but at the price of shortened years, and she stores up the unused years in her tail feathers to distribute among the worthy. Elsewhere, fables say she can tell truth from lies and burns up a liar who uses her silver tongue to take what is not hers. All the tales agree that the Firebird is a beautiful bird with bright plumage in flame colors, and that her feathers provide warmth, light and good fortune to whoever holds them.

Just enough people have encountered the Firebird or run across one of her lost feathers to prompt dozens of Heroes, bandits and the desperate to travel far and wide searching for her. Boyars with something to prove send champions to cage her and bring her home. Merchants, thieves and the hopeless poor quest to collect her feathers and make a fortune selling them to kings and sorcerers across Théah. Adventurous children pursue her aid to cure ailing parents of incur-able diseases, and heartbroken lovers want to beg her to bring their dead paramours back to life. Some even seek to worship her.

The Firebird is an elusive and dangerous prize that nonetheless attracts pilgrims from all walks of life who expect her to fulfill promises she never made. The problem is, no one knows where she can be found. Some legends claim she can only be found in the far north in the frozen mountains near Breslau. Others say she makes her home in Vir’ava Forest amongst the talking animals. Despite both these places being common hunting grounds for the Firebird, few still catch sight of her.

#### The Truth

The Firebird was once a young woman named Stasya. Her family was oppressive and cruel, forcing her to work long hours in their mine with little respite. She went hungry and thirsty most days, pulling red rubies from inside the mine. Koshchei the Deathless heard of her plight, and rescued her, as he often does.

Yet, inside his castle, Stasya had a hard time fitting in. She longed to be truly free, roaming the Ussuran countryside. Koshchei could not let the girl go, because it would endanger the rest of his charges. She yearned for freedom, but Koshchei could not let her leave.

So, she made a deal with a fire Leshy, who trans-formed her into a bird of fire and light. She flew away from castle, seeking her freedom. Yet, even now she is in a different kind of prison, for the fire Leshiye refused to return her to her human form.

Koshchei, for his part, seeks the girl, afraid she will reveal his operation and endanger his charges. Reports of his interest in the Firebird has drawn other interested parties, assuming she has some kind of magical properties he wants. From there, the legend of the Firebird took on its own life and has grown ever since.

Many boyars—the Deathless included—routinely offer significant rewards to any who can track down the Firebird and hand her over to them. She, in turn, seeks someone willing and able to help her transform back into a human, or at the very least to protect her from the grasping hands of Ussuran greed. She does not want to be anyone’s prisoner, no matter how well-meaning or desperate her jailer may be, but she also fears disappointed retribution from those who discover her warm, fiery glow is her only magical power. Until she knows someone truly wants to help her, she fights for her life if found or caught.

The Firebird is a Strength 4 Monster with the Elemental (Fire) Monstrous Quality.

### Mstitel the Night-Haunt

In a blue dusk, the crunch of horses’ hooves in fresh snow and the jingle of their tack ring out above the wind’s dire susurrus, and a silent shape follows where they lead. It knows the flash of coin by torchlight, exchanging hands to pay for meat and wine. It can smell a boyar from a mile away. And soon after, it destroys him.

Mstitel the Night-Haunt is the bedtime story a grown adult tells in the dead of winter, safe in his lofty fortress towers behind comforting lines of pikes. He tells of its uncanny ability to spot boyars, its trickster nature and its steely claws that rend and tear apart its unsuspecting victims.

The muzhiks have nothing to fear from this night-mare; it hates the nobility but leaves the peasantry alone. No one knows why, but a boyar from Gallenia Province knows not to travel at night or, if he must, to hide his riches and to dress in plain wool to confuse the great Avenger. Even boyars traveling in groups are not safe from the Night-Haunt, as it seems capable of taking on several men at once.

It comes out after dark to ambush any noble it finds on the road or in the wilderness, first showing itself only in eerie acts of malicious mischief—scattering a campfire’s wood, tipping over a wagon or disturbing a flock of bats to swarm the traveler in a shrieking mass. It may trail the boyar for hours, terrorizing her until she can take it no longer.

Once a boyar grows sufficiently terrified, running for his life or brandishing lanterns in tenuous shows of bravado, Mstitel strikes. It drives idle swords through fleeing victims, pushes boulders down from ridges to crush people or spooks horses into plowing over cliffs or bridges into ravines, taking their riders and carriages with them. The few survivors of Mstitel’s attacks say that just before the chaos began, they spotted a pair of furious red eyes watching from the shadows.

#### The Truth

Once, a vast and sprawling estate crowned a moun-taintop in Gallenia Province, home to the household of Lady Kveta Masalsk Radkova v’Riasanova. Her many children and grandchildren lived with her there, the tenth and eleventh generations of the family to grace its halls.

The estate’s domovoi grew fiercely loyal to the family over the years. When a rival boyar family fell to Villainy and brought soldiers to murder Lady Kveta and all her kin, the domovoi was left alone in a house turned empty tomb.

The depths of its grief at losing its purpose and its people drove it to tap into reserves of will and power no domovoi should possess. It became something else, something darker and bigger, and its guardian instincts warped into a need to “protect” the land from the boyars who abuse it. It became Mstitel the Night-Haunt.

When it comes upon a traveler, it watches her to determine her noble or common heritage. It listens to her speech, gauges her wealth from what luxuries she carries and occasionally poses questions or riddles with the wind’s voice to see how she responds. If it sees anything that displeases it, it succumbs to its rage and plays with her before it kills her, in a horrible mockery of its once-friendly attitude.

If a Hero learns Mstitel’s history, she might be able to appease it through vindictive deeds against the family who killed Lady Kveta’s brood or funerary rites that put the spirit’s vendetta to rest. Perhaps she could even find Lady Kveta’s last remaining relative and convince Mstitel to commit itself to his service.

Mstitel is a Strength 7 Monster with the Fearsome, Nocturnal and Shadowy Monstrous Qualities.

### Rusalki and Vodyanoi

All fishers and river travelers in Ussura know the dangers of setting off in a boat without protections from the beauteous rusalki and the hideous vody-anoi. The mere presence of a human who has not placated these creatures with offerings or promises angers them, and when angry, they drown people and break things.

The rusalki were living women once, but linger in their watery graves to haunt anyone with the audacity to survive. The vodyanoi are half-human children born to those who dally with Leshiye of the deep and resent humanity for its ability to travel far and wide while they remain mostly water-bound. People consider the two types of creatures a single cooper-ative threat.

Some say the rusalki and the vodyanoi enslave humans so they can build a vast army of amphib-ious soldiers to one day emerge from the lakes and swamps to drown all of Ussura, freeing their malevolent masters to rule it as a vast underwater kingdom. Bogatyr and other armed forces kill or banish these creatures when they can, particularly now that the Ushkuiniks use their relationship with them to strong arm anyone who dares put rudder to river.

Some families whose live-lihoods depend on living on a riverbank or lakeshore make long-term deals with the spirits. Such a family might agree to give up its firstborn of every generation to the local rusalki or allow a vodyanoi to spend every thirteenth month under its roof as one of them.

#### The Truth

The rusalki and the vodyanoi work together when it pleases them to do so, but their cooperation, a mutual agreement based on shared territory, remains fraught with competition and backstabbing. The Ushkuiniks and others who have figured this out leverage it to their advantage, playing on the spirits’ pride and spite to pit them against one another or manipulate them into joining forces for a time.

These creatures entertain no grand plans of armies and conquest, though occasionally a vodyanoi with delusions of grandeur might try to take over a single lakeside estate or fishing enterprise. The rusalki gener-ally lack the imagination or motivation to meddle in land-dweller affairs beyond the shoreline.

The vodyanoi keep underwater fiefdoms in a twisted reflection of surface life. When they “drown” someone, he does not die—instead, the frogpeople curse him to breathe water instead of air and force him into servitude. Tales of daring rescues rarely make it to the fireside; the victim is dead as far as anyone who saw him drown is concerned, and even if someone could rescue him, how would he breathe? But Heroes could bargain with the vodyanoi for the return of loved ones or earn the favor of a more powerful Leshiye who could break the curse.

The rusalki care little for servants or wealth, and, contrary to popular belief, they are not dead and were never human. A rusalka is a water spirit, and watches over a particular area of a waterway and considers it her property. If she seduces, drowns or attacks someone it is because he trespassed in her domain and deserves punishment. If she tricks or convinces a vodyanoi to make someone breathe water so she can take him as her slave, it is because she thought  him pretty and wanted him for herself. Rusalki are possessive and jealous creatures with little regard for other people’s wishes, which makes them selfish and combative but relatively easy to bribe. A Hero dealing with a rusalka must take care to determine whether the spirit he faces is a true rusalka or a ghost pretending to be one, as the tactics for getting what he wants or ridding the waters of the threat vary greatly between the two.

Rusalki and vodyanoi are Strength 6 Monsters with the Aquatic Monstrous Quality.

### Upir

Among the more dedicated Ussuran Orthodox Church crowd, legends of the upir take on the tone of a cautionary tale. Take care, says the Church, not to engage in witchcraft or worship false gods. Do not die of unnatural causes and do not bring corruption or shame upon your family. If you do any of these, you may become upir when you die: a walking corpse that never grows old, thirsting for human blood and killing to survive. They walk among us when the sun sets, drawing a victim away from her safe hearth to drain her and leave her stiff, cold husk lying in the town square for the morning light to reveal.

Those who subscribe to the older tales reject the Church’s idea that upir result from sorcery or damna-tion, instead believing that the upir carry a contagious disease that transforms people into bloodsucking creatures of the night after death.

In places where this belief persists, tradition requires immediate cremation for the bodies of those who die from illness or unknown causes, lest they rise again to become monsters. Some believe an upir can be cured of his condition as long as he does not die first, and each region has its own idea of what signs indi-cate that someone is upir. Some think the infected person loses the ability to see colors or the ability to eat anything other than meat. Others view erratic or antisocial behavior as symptoms, while still others posit that upir can walk in the bitter cold without protection and come through unscathed.

A third tale puts the blame for the upir condition on a botched reincarnation. By chance or through witch-craft, two souls reincarnate in the same body. While one dominates the waking personality, the other roams free at night while the body sleeps, to deliver nightmares to children and consume their life force.

When the upir dies, the second soul escapes the body as a butterfly or a moth and finds a new host, continuing its murderous escapades. Thus, in commu-nities where this belief holds sway, people kill butter-flies and moths on sight in case they house an upir’s second soul.

Regardless of the specifics, few Ussurans doubt the existence of the upir. Occasionally, when rumors of sightings fly with greater frequency, small bands of bogatyr seek specialized training from die Kreuzritter to become upir hunters and ride to rid the land of these unnatural predators. Scholars from other nations compare the Ussuran upir to various other kinds of blood-drinkers. In some cases the similari-ties are inarguable, but in others the upir hunter who tries to vanquish her foe by means that should kill an Eisen vampir finds herself in big trouble when they don’t work.

#### The Truth

The origins of the Ussuran upir lie in dark sorceries of the distant past, when an old patriarch could not bear the thought of dying and meddled in necro-mancy to save his own wrinkled hide. He won the prize of immortality, but at a terrible price, passing his newly inflicted bloodlust down to his children and his children’s children, all the way down the family tree to the present day. The bloodline is far-flung and diluted today, spread thinly throughout Ussura, and not everyone who carries the blood of the patriarch becomes upir.

A person with enough of the blood, born under the right moon—this is a true upir. While he lives, he suffers from strange appetites: raw meat, perhaps, or the company of crows or exposure to the cold. He might even crave blood, but he does not need it to survive. He ages normally and dies normally. Once he does die, though, he transforms into an immortal creature that looks and acts just like a human, but hungers for human blood and cannot survive without it.

He can only be killed with fire or by certain rituals or Leshiye-blessed weapons. He is not nocturnal by nature and he only has one soul, but because an upir’s soul does walk the world without his body while he sleeps, manifesting as a butterfly or a moth to drink the blood of another through her nightmares, a upir can choose to sleep during the day to minimize the harm he can cause.

Not all upir are Villainous, though it is easy for them to become so. The upir condition is not contagious, nor is it caused by practicing sorcery or performing Evil Acts. That said, someone who dabbles in dangerous necromantic magics runs the risk of accidentally (or purposefully) recreating the original ritual and turning himself and his whole family into upir.

Most upir are Monstrous Villains with Strength 7 and Influence 5. They have the Powerful and Regenerating Monstrous Qualities and the Extended Family and Fascinate Advantages. Some exceptionally old upir might have higher Villainy Ranks and more Monstrous Qualities.

### Strannik

Just north and east of Tebizond, high in moun-tain ranges rarely traversed by people, resides the legendary Strannik.

Some say the creature is simply a human; having been abandoned at birth and raised by bears, she has no knowledge of human society. Some believe she is a Leshiye, more powerful than Matushka, but more elusive, making it difficult to interact and gain a blessing from her. Some believe she is an evil spirit, taking the lives of those who trespass in her mountain passes. Others say she is a terrible serpent, given a humanoid form to trick the heartsick into her lair so that she may suck the warmth from them. Still others believe she is the lone remaining Syrneth, capable of terrible and wondrous acts.

Every story is different except for one thing: she appears as a tall woman, dressed in dark furs and seemingly untouched by the cold of the land. Some stories attribute great power to Strannik, explaining how she reshaped the moutain to better suit her needs. Some describe her as viscious and monstrous, killing any who dare tresspass in her lands. Others say she gives blessings to those who can find her.

#### The Truth

The truth is that no one has actually ever seen Strannik. The origins of her legends are as varied and disparate as the legends themselves.

The most common story tells of a young girl lost in the mountains and raised by bears. Even those stories that say Strannik is a Leshiye or Syrneth start somehow with a girl lost in the mountains. Maybe she gained her power through a Leshiye and somehow surpassed her benefactor, or maybe she found a magical artifact in the mountains left by the Syrneth and was subsequently possessed by an ancient spirit.

Everyone in the Somajez Province has a story about Strannik, always involving a friend, acquaintance or even a relative who saw her. This unfortunate soul may have lost his way and was guided to safety by her, or maybe she killed him in a fit of rage (of course, if that were true, how would the storyteller come to know of the incident?).

She may not even exist, but the stories persist, and people spend long nights telling ever more unbeliev-able stories about Strannik and her wonderful and terrible power.

At this point, the telling of the story is almost as important as the story itself. Any storyteller worth his salt in Ussura has at least one Strannik story, if not several. Sometimes people get into games of one-upmanship, contradicting each others’ stories, or telling tales that come from increasingly more cred-ible sources, but always once or twice removed from the storyteller.