Alena (Ah•LYO•Nah)

"I shall be a mighty polenitsa, and after I avenge my husband, I shall slay a hundred Kochmaki, and then a prince will duel me for my hand in marriage, and maybe I will let him win so I may live in his fine palace."
Alena had always had good fortune, as much as could come to a peasant, to be free of passing poxes and errant conflicts, and to find a husband known for his virtues, or at least his lack of flaws. Though great labor was inevitably still required to eke out a life from a hard land, her good fortune had kept any great suffering from her house, and she had peace and love where many were not so fortunate. And then two of the village men went missing and everything started to come crashing down.
She had known of nezhits and nechists and volkhv as much as any of her neighbors, which was to say little at all save for fanciful stories told to frighten children. And yet, when witchcraft began to plague the village, monsters came to life from the stories and her neighbors died. When a defense of the village was rallied, it was not against outlaws or Kochmaki, but against the walking dead brought forth by wrathful pagans. Or so the gossip said, when the night of terror was over by morning, and the village was left to count their dead.
Alena’s husband, Mikhail, was among them, and it was only a few hours later that she was among the gathered women weeping at the hastily arranged funeral. On another day, Alena might have mocked the wailing mourners for their dramatics, but for once it was suited when their small world had come crashing down around them. Alena’s good fortune had disappeared in a matter of a day, and unable to bear the sound of the wailing, much less the sight of her husband’s body being buried beneath the earth, she fled north into the woods. Only then did she scream and weep as the other mourning wives had, if not louder than any of them. She knew she was far from the first widow at such a young age, and that in better times the older women might have counseled her that it was a blessing that she still had her youth to swiftly secure another husband. But in the moment, all she could feel was blinding grief and fury at the injustice done to her.
In her weeping and wandering through the woods, Alena had little direction, but after hours had passed, she happened upon a clearing. Amidst the grass was a half-buried body, long since rotted to bare bone, and yet the warrior’s weapon and armor had remained seemingly untouched by time, even when the wood and leather should have rotted away as much as the flesh. The strange sight was enough to force her attention away from her blind grief, as she knew other stories of the long-past bogatyrs and polenitsas who had been blessed by their Lord and their homeland to fight against pagans and heathens, and little else could explain such.
It was a dazed curiosity that drew Alena to the body, but it was the sound of sudden movement that urged her to take up the warrior’s maul. She knew nothing of the further death that had plagued the village while she had been lost, and that such might have been the final point of breaking. All she saw was another nechist staggering forward, and she happened to be in its past as it made some mad dash into the northern woods. Alena had little time to consider that it had once been a child, one she had certainly seen in the village. All she could do was take up the maul, and decide in that moment she would not cower again, as she had in the convent while her husband had fought and died. She screamed and charged and raised the maul with a strength she’d never had before, and crushed the cursed creature into the ground, and then again, and again, still shrieking until the corpse had been battered into pieces.
It became clearer, after she eventually calmed, in what she had been called to do. Alena took the maul, and the warrior’s gambeson, as she knew she had been guided to. On her march back to the village, she had time to think upon such a fate, a strange calm settling upon her to let her gather her thoughts. She would not yield so easily, not to the pagans or anyone else that would seek to dictate her fate, nor would she return to her father’s household to be so beholden to him once again, or to anyone else. Though she knew nothing of signs and omens, she knew enough half-remembered stories to recognize that she had been chosen. And though it might take a few more days still for the grief to settle, the first hints of a new chapter of her life were still apparent, as was the thought of taking her village name in honor of what she would fight for. She was no longer a peasant and a farmwife, but a bogatyr, destined to defend the Noriki in glorious battle, and to make her own legends from such valorous deeds.

When Samson arrived in Lehi, the Philistines came out shouting against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. The ropes on his arms became like burnt flax, and the bonds broke loose from his hands. He found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and struck down a thousand men. Judges 15:14-15

Species

Human

Ethnicity

Noriki

Age

19

Sex

Female

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Brown

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Fair

Height

Average

Weight

Skinny

Belief/Deity

True Confession (Gaalite)