#this is long but really just ask that you read the indented footnotes/divergences

[a-koschyei]

VER. THE RED SORCERER WILL WAKE THE SLEEPER & SILENCE THE BELLS

♔. synopsis : canon adjacent, mixing in elements of deathless and taking this verse as koschei's alt. tsar of life origin story. rewriting some details & emphasizing the undercurrent of the plot to reveal koschei faked his death in book 2 and was the mastermind behind the events of the series. he usurps medved, and becomes the new summer-demon towards the end of book 3. most plots can take place after the series, when he's on the brink of waging a war to take over medieval rus' and the other chyerti realms, particularly morozko's.

in the 11th cent. during the reign of vladimir the great, yuri, a polovtsian khan who plundered and traversed the entirety of the great steppes with his nomadic warriors, sacked a village near serbia and took a country girl as his wife. the girl's name was danika, and she belonged to a balkan line of witches & sorcerers who worshipped the giver, dazbog (the chyert of summer and tsar of life).

some time later, after confirming she had the ability to see the unseen chyerti, dazbog gave her his jewel, the alatyr stone. he promised to protect her so long as she wore it and did not let him fade from memory. when the time came, she was to pass it down to the youngest of her three sons. she only had two at the time.

that year, yuri led an unsuccessful attack against prince mstislav, son of vladamir. yuri was killed in combat, but danika and her sons were spared, though taken as slaves, under the condition that they assimilate and convert to christianity. danika converted, for the sake of her children and the unborn one she carried, but hid dazbog's jewel, wove him into her prayers and never forgot about the chyerti.

♔. the polovtsy / polovytsians. turkic nomadic warriors (aka the cumans). the name comes from the old slavic word for "blonde" "pale yellow" due to the color of their hair and/or their cream colored akhal-teke horses, known for their speed and golden metallic sheen. by the events of the book (14th cent.) the polovtsy fled from the mongol invasion of rus' to different countries, but many also joined the golden horde and became generally referred to as tartars, along w other turkic groups. (koschei's fairytale is based on a famous polovtsian, khan konchek) ♔. dazbog / medved. a slavic solar deity who resided in buyan but also the underworld. in the summer, he was a man in his prime, accompanied by wolves. in winter, he was a one-eyed old man who wore a bear skin during his hibernation in death's realm. canon doesn't say this explicitly, but medved is lame daba, aka dazbog after his demonization, which christianization (and koschei) caused. very few know him by his old name & nature. ♔. alatyr stone. in this verse, it's a red-gold jewel connected to dazbog's power and a gateway to buyan. it's his equivalent to the sapphire morozko passed to vasya. in book 2, it's the stone koschei uses as a decoy death.

i. three roads, three sons: koschei was born and raised in tmutarakan as a slave, serving first as a groom, then a farmhand, and when he came of age, he and his brothers were dragged into a war between princes for vladamir's throne. koschei's mother gave him dazbog's jewel hoping it would protect him, and it did, but during the winter march, his brothers were taken by the frost. in the spring when the war was in full bloom, koschei's contact with dazbog became more direct and frequent. he often carried him away from the brink of death in the battlefield in the spirit of a wolf to buyan, where he'd heal him, feed him, and teach him the art of war and magic.

eventually, dazbog aided koschei in deserting the war. during this time, he traveled the principalities around kiev freely, but the past, the threat of death and imprisonment, and the growing disdain for witches and sorcerers chased him out of every place he hoped to settle. he went to baba yaga's midnight country where he formed a romance with tamara and earned the favor of the golden mare and firebird, zornitsa, the fastest horse of yaga's flock. with her, koschei was able to outrun any threat or foe, and was carried to farther lands, away from kiev and the church bells.

♔. the golden mare / firebird : diverting from the book, koschei's mare is named zornitsa, the morning star, and she's the same in every verse. koschei wins her favor on his own, as he was a worthy rider at the start. later, he loses favor and that's when tamara & the golden bridle ( without spikes !! ) come into play.

ii. the wolf, the firebird, & the horse with a golden mane: he ended up in the newly founded village of moscow when it was still pagan, and was set on making his home there. ivan yurovich was the name he used to avoid recognition (given his growing reputation in kiev), and upon his arrival the lord offered him riches, land, and a seat at his table if he sold him his golden mare. koschei accepted, but used sorcery to transmute a wolf into the likeness of zornitsa, then asked her to hide in the wood in her firebird form.

the lord's sister, yelena tomislavna, had the gift of sight too. she caught on to the ruse, but kept koschei's secret. in time the two fell deeply for one another, but koschei was not a preferred match. he contrived a plan to have the lord spot the firebird during a hunt, and as he suspected, the lord promised yelena's hand to anyone who'd manage to catch it for him. koschei rose to the occassion, again presenting a wolf who simply forgot it was not a firebird, and the wedding was set.

♔. ivan yurovich : his birthname in this verse (see this post to dive into the rabbit hole). after his brothers' deaths, their nickname for him (due to his lankiness) continued to be his preferred name. he goes by koschei yurovich through his pre-immortal travels, then later koschei bessmertny. kasyan lutovich is the current alias. after his identity reveal he goes back to being referred to as koschei bessmertny. it's a name he's proud of, so if you ever call him ivan, it's on sight !!

iii. the midwinter feast : during their engagement celebration, morozko was an honorary guest, as it was his midwinter holiday too. he took great interest in yelena and had her tend to him the entire night, much to koschei's agitation and moscow's speculation. when the frost demon left, a panicked idea took root among the folk that yelena could not marry. she would need to be morozko's tribute for maslenitsa, the sunfeast, or else they'd face a late summer and risk another deadly famine. to escape the hysteria, koschei and yelena fled to a secret place tucked between realms in the midday road which koschei called yaichka for it's golden wheat fields that looked like a sea of yolk.

it was in that field, while koschei was stealing food from buyan, that the noon wraith, sent by dazbog, lured a lounging yelena into a trance and danced her into midnight and then back into moscow. when koschei found out, he and zornitsa raced through the midday road from buyan to moscow, but a devotee of dazbog could only find the middays of spring and summer. what felt like hours of riding were actually weeks. he arrived on winter's last sunset, through the red flash of the last day of the sunfeast, but the people of moscow had already strangled yelena in the snow and tossed her body into the sacrificial fire.

koschei begged morozko and dazbog to undo what the people had done, using the water of life and the water of death, but the twins refused to intervene with fate. herein laid the trappings of a secret war, where koschei set his heart towards revenge against the people of rus' and the twins who'd wronged him. for the moment, they were none the wiser. dazbog took koschei into buyan and continued to mentor him until he eventually used the knowledge to formulate a spell that would have him take dazbog's power and remove himself from death's reach so that he could confidently enact his revenge on the frost demon and people of rus'.

♔. the chains of the winter king : this feast was the memory vasya found morozko imprisoned in, and the man she saw was koschei ("ivan"). as tamara's sister later explains, kasyan's face is not koschei's real face which is why she did not immediately recognize him. so this is the first glimpse we get of him in the series. i'm establishing that koschei, working through medved, was responsible for the creation of this prison memory, but it was just that. a magical simulation on loop. no historical events could be changed by meddling.

iv. the golden bridle: zornitsa urged koschei against his plan, but he needed her speed to catch dazbog's chariot in his journey towards death's country, when he was most vulernable. he created a golden bridle that would bind zornitsa's will to his own. then he seduced tamara once more, and tricked her into placing the bridle on zornitsa. with the bridle on, koschei seized his opportunity and struck his fatal spell on dazbog just before he could reach morozko's country. but the spell was complex and too slippery for a human mind. they both tumbled into rus', and when koschei finally came to, he found himself immortal and alone, but not entirely successful.

v. lame daba : killing a dual natured god in one blow was impossible. in the fall, dazbog split in two: his primary form (the summer wolf) was killed and absorbed by koschei; but the winter bearskin of his hibernating form still remained, and koschei's spell had inadvertently reanimated the husk in the effort to make himself deathless. koschei's life force was removed from his body, but was stored in medved, the eater, whose mind and memory became a mangled and rotted version of dazbog's, tainted by koschei's essence and vision of him. medved then represented a mockery of life fueled by it's hardships and became the tsar of the upyr, the insatiable undead.

medved had no true recollection of his previous life and neither did anyone else. koschei then realized that to kill and usurp a god meant to erase them from memory, and when medved began to wreak havoc on rus', morozko imprisoned his brother with a murky recollection of the time before they were at odds. likewise, the world had an obscured recollection of koschei and who he was before -- but the witch women of midnight and the crossroad demons who had witnessed what he'd done remembered. they did not have the means to intervene, but yaga did cast out her daughter tamara, and shut all the roads of the chyerti realms to her and koschei so they could never come back.

vi. the tower of bones. now unable to reach buyan and the sleeping bear to retrieve his death and finish what he started, koschei set up camp in a place he called, bashnya kostei, the tower of bones. he offered tamara a place at his side, but she refused and left him. thus began the campaigns against the people of kievan rus' that inspired the tales of koschei the deathless. eventually, he took to keeping a lower profile, used sorcery and glamors to hide his rotting appearance, recruited the surrounding chyerti to do his bidding, and conjured scrying spells to keep morozko blind to his machinations and whereabouts.

vii. the bear & the nightingale. in dreams, koschei could sense any perturbances with medved given their inconvenient entanglement. after years of nothing, he saw a young girl with familiar green eyes and the gift of sight approach the bear at his clearing. if koschei could not get to buyan, he figured the sacrifice of a witch could summon medved into rus'. so he riled the bear awake in secret and planted the idea in his subconscious. the bear was successful, through the death of a different witch, but when he was foiled and bound again by the sacrifice of a father. koschei moved on to the back up plan: a counterspell to yaga's banishment using the alatyr stone, the red flash of the last winter sunset on maslenitsa, and the power charge of a witch from her bloodline.

book 2 & book 3. from here, we set up the events of book 2. koschei's core motive is a power grab, particularly for buyan and the chyerti. not knowing where vasya ran off to, he took on the alias of kasyan lutovich to infiltrate moscow and investigate vasya's remaining family there, hoping to find another witch/sorcerer with the sight who could charge and destroy the stone, thus "killing him" but really his body disintegrated and reappeared in the water of life in buyan, where he began to gather his own chyerti forces and used medved as a puppet & distraction in book 3 to buy himself time.

taking over moscow & destroying the bells was supposed to be an added treat that went a little haywire (understatement), but was not the primary goal. this was getting medved bound again at the right time while koschei was in buyan, getting his death back, hiding it somewhere else unknown, and merging with what remained of dazbog's power so he could become the new tsar of life. when vasya returns to the clearing seeking medved's aid, she finds his bearskin limp and koschei standing in his place. further notes & divergences can be discussed and/or will be posted as hcs.

#♔ . ⧽ v. winternight * 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔯𝔢𝔡 𝔰𝔬𝔯𝔠𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔯 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔴𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔩𝔢𝔢𝔭𝔢𝔯 & 𝔰𝔦𝔩𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔰 #this is long but really just ask that you read the indented footnotes/divergences #everything else is for reference & context and went in a little deeper bc tbh this is going to be my secondary verse of choice #and the backbone of all his other non-deathless verses #anyways let's give the series a lil extension w a new villain who loves the drama of faking deaths teehee #major spoilers ahead if you haven't read the books!