Baba Yaga – Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore and John Wick?
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Baba_Yaga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wick_(film)
Baba Yaga is an old mystical Myth witch living out her days in Forlorn Tayg’s Veiled Vale, mothering Mellori. She was once a friend of Cyrus Drake’s, and Wizards seek her out for information on how to cure Bartleby.
Baba Yaga is also the Myth Scholar for the Arcanum. She deems your wizard worthy of knowing the secrets of this advanced school between the worlds of trhe Spiral. Though it has been some time since Bab Yaga has graced the halls with her presence.
In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is a supernatural being (or one of a trio of sisters of the same name) who appears as a deformed and/or ferocious-looking woman. In the folklore record, Baba Yaga usually flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, and dwells deep in the forest in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs. This hut is available from the Witch’s Hoard pack as mount that can be used by your wizard.
Baba Yaga may help or hinder those who encounter or seek her out and may play a maternal role. She also has associations with forest wildlife.
According to folklorist Vladimir Propp’s folktale morphology, Baba Yaga commonly appears as either a donor or a villain, or may be altogether ambiguous. Scholar Andreas Johns identifies Baba Yaga as “one of the most memorable and distinctive figures in eastern European folklore”, and observes that she is “enigmatic” and often exhibits “striking ambiguity”.
Variations of the name Baba Yaga are found in many Slavic languages. The first element is a babble word which gives the word бабуся (babusya or ‘grandmother’) or babusia in modern Ukrainian and Polish respectively, бабушка (babushka or ‘grandmother’) in modern Russian, and babcia or babunia (‘grandmother’) in Polish. In Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Bulgarian, baba means ‘grandmother’ or ‘old woman’. In contemporary Polish and Russian, baba is the pejorative synonym for ‘woman’, especially one that is old, dirty or foolish. As with other kinship terms in Slavic languages, baba may be used in other ways, potentially as a result of taboo; it may be applied to various animals, natural phenomena, and objects, such as types of mushrooms, cake or pears. In the Polesia region of Ukraine, the plural baby may refer to an autumn funeral feast. The element may appear as a means of glossing the second element, iaga, with a familiar component or may have also been applied as a means of distinguishing Baba Yaga from a male counterpart.
Yaga is more etymologically problematic and there exists no clear consensus among scholars about its meaning. In the 19th century, Alexander Afanasyev proposed the derivation of Proto-Slavic *ož and Sanskrit ahi (‘serpent’). This etymology has been explored by 20th-century scholars. Related terms appear in Serbian and Croatian jeza (‘horror’, ‘shudder’, ‘chill’), Slovene jeza (‘anger’), Old Czech jězě (‘witch’, ‘legendary evil female being’), modern Czech jezinka (‘wicked wood nymph’, ‘dryad’), and Polish jędza (‘witch’, ‘evil woman’, ‘fury’). The term appears in Old Church Slavonic as jęza/jędza (‘disease’). In other Indo-European languages the element iaga has been linked to Lithuanian engti (‘to abuse (continuously)’, ‘to belittle’, ‘to exploit’), Old English inca (‘doubt’, ‘worry”, ‘pain’), and Old Norse ekki (‘pain’, ‘worry’).
I suspect that more young wizards are familiar with the 2014 film John Wick than they are with Slavic fairy tales. Also given that John Wick was released into theaters during what would have been Polaris’ development time, I cannot say for certain that the Wizard101 development team was NOT inspired by the film in some small way.
John Wick is a 2014 American action thriller film directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Derek Kolstad. Keanu Reeves stars as John Wick, a legendary hitman who comes out of retirement to seek revenge against the men who killed his puppy, a final gift from his recently deceased wife.
Viggo Tarasov, the boss of New York City’s Russian mafia, reveals in the film that John was once a hitman in his employ, and was renowned and feared in the criminal underworld as the Baba Yaga, a ruthless, relentless “man of focus, commitment, and sheer will”.
The current list of all the (known) Polaris references can be found here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Baba Yaga and the Waddling Witch’s Hut images are from Wizard101, and are copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment
Baba Yaga depicted in Tales of the Russian People is borrowed from and © North Wind Picture Archives
John Wick movie poster is copyright LionsGate Films
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
Vulcan Stev's Database 