Baba Yaga (from Wells)

Hut image from: https://www.kisspng.com/png-dancing-hut-art-museum-dance-baba-yaga-5334918/

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Baba Yaga (13)

Project: Television mini-series (“Wells”)

Known as: Baba Yaga

Real name: Baba Yaga

Group affiliation: None

Physical description: In the heyday of magic Baba Yaga had a monstrous appearance. Dried thistle for hair, a large hooked nose, beady eyes, and pointed black teeth. Though her body was plump her arms and legs were extraordinary thin (even skeletal). In modern times, with so little magic around, her appearance is more mundane. She is an elderly woman, thin and wrinkled. Gray hair, dark eyes, and usually conservatively dressed.

Personality: Baba Yaga’s best mood is irritated, and rarely is her mood that good. She has an explosive temper and is completely lacks anything approaching empathy. She does not hesitate to use people to accomplish her own goals. Basically she feels others should predict her needs and do everything in their power to meet them; up to and including sacrificing their lives. Where Griffin, the Invisible Man, derives pleasure from the misfortune of others, Baba Yaga simply feels that other’s misery is a small price to pay for meeting her desires. They are both evil to the core.

Additionally, there is something wild just under the surface with Baba Yaga. She is chaos and untamed wilderness. One reason her attempts to rule, run and army, or run a criminal organization are all ultimately doomed to failure is that organization and civilization is not her way.

History: No one knows the origins of Baba Yaga including Baba Yaga herself. She believes she has always been and always will be. The stories of her, especially in Eastern Europe, are endless. Stealer of children, bringer of storms, and dweller in darkness, she was every naughty child’s nightmare made real.

Her home was a magical hut larger in the inside than the outside. It was perched on three giant chicken legs, and as a consequence was known to move around. Her hut by itself was deadly; known to stream fire or poison clouds down upon enemies and the unsuspecting alike.

No singular foe could weather Baba Yaga. Still she resented the growth of civilizations. Cities and kingdoms to her were blights; after all, they were not built to her and her glory. Worse still, they developed armies and machines of war that might one day challenge even her. To stop them, she would need an army of her own. But hers would be no army of regimented soldiers with shiny weapons. Hers would be monsters and chaos.

You’ve already heard the stories of the twins Cassidy and Cameron Reid, so you know no act was too heinous for her in her quest. Eventually she had an army of Morlocks that listened only to her, and desired only mayhem. Soon they were like locusts, swarming over villages and leaving only destruction. Soon kingdoms began to rally armies against her but how to defeat foes who knew no pain, whose skin seemed to be proof against most blades, and whose very bodies were weapons? The battle lines between mystic and mundane began to be drawn; truly a war between two worlds.

It was the people of the fae who delivered a solution. Using ancient magics, they created a malady tailored to the Morlocks. Their thought was to bring Baba Yaga’s army low with a mystic plague.

It succeeded perhaps too well. The disease did wreak havoc against the Morlocks (the original, Spring-heeled Jane, seemed to be the only one immune). But other mystical creatures also began to fall ill and the fae themselves locked themselves and all access to their home plane to avoid the disease. Though many forces converged to begin the decline of magic, this event may have been the single biggest source.

After the fall of her army, Baba Yaga disappeared. Though some wondered if the mystic disease had gotten her as well most felt that not even what destroyed her army could fell Baba Yaga. Instead, she was again a rarely-seen, near legend.

Wells was among the optimistic ones that thought she was through. Still if there were any traces of her or her magic he decided he would weave her tale into a science fiction story in his attempt to meld magic and science. In his story, the war was between aliens from Mars driving tripods much like Baba Yaga’s hut (including a heat ray and poisonous gas) and the people of Earth. The Martians were felled by a common disease (her Morlocks made an appearance in the Time Machine).

Later, when Wells traveled through time, a still-alive but much-reduced Baba Yaga was swept up as well. Severely depleted of magic she has one remaining ability to bind one person at a time to her will. She used this power to move up the unsavory ranks of crime until she finds herself with a major crime lord in her thrall. It galls her terribly, as she must largely remain hidden and rely on humans for her sustained existence. Invariably, Morgan will end up investigating the new force in organized crime in her area.

Baba Yaga dreams of the return of magic, and a restoring of her power. Woe to the present day should that ever occur.

Role in the narrative: Antagonist. She’ll may ultimately get some of the more unsavory things brought forward in time by Wells under her sway, and the moment Morgan becomes an annoyance Baba Yaga will gladly seek Morgan’s destruction.

When I first thought of the connection between Baba Yaga’s hut and the tripods in War of the Worlds, I thought Baba Yaga might end up a misunderstood character (in the myths, she sometimes provided wisdom to the pure of heart). After writing the twin’s stories, she ended up irredeemable.

Abilities: At the moment, her only special ability is to hold a single person in her thrall. This person will obey her and will generally work to her benefit.

At her pinnacle she could control the elements, bend flesh, fly, and much, much more.

Inspirations: Easter European legends and “War of the Worlds.” Once I thought of the hut/tripod thing, and changing the conflict between the world of the magic and the mundane, it all just flowed from there.