Enchantment: Difference between revisions

First off: Our maiden? Princess Katerina of Taina, a 9th-century Slavic kingdom growing in the shadow of proto-[[Kievan Rus]] and unremembered by history, which tells you [[Kill'Em All|what its long-term fate will be]]. Ivan has promised to marry Katerina, and that marriage promise is all that is keeping the evil witch [[Baba Yaga]] from using [[Loophole Abuse]] to claim rulership of Taina. She's already enslaved Bear—''The'' Bear, the god of winter—to be her [[The Dragon|Dragon]] and do her bidding, so keeping her at bay is not an idle concern for the citizens of Taina. Especially since their most-loved deity, Mikola Mozhaiski (a version of [[Santa Claus|Saint Nikolaus]]), hasn't been seen in years. Second: Ivan? Not a [[Knight in Shining Armor]]. A man of good heart, yes, and a decathlete, fit by the standards of [[The Nineties]]... But this is [[The Low Middle Ages]], Russia in 890 AD, and manhood involves being able to sling around five pounds of sword for hours at a stretch. Oh, and he's engaged to a girl named Ruth, back home in 20th-century America—''and'' he's a Jew. And Taina? An outpost of [[Useful Notes/Christianity|Christianity]], many years before (20th-century) scholars believed it had gotten that far east. Even better, the local priest was an apprentice to Kirill—''[[wikipedia:Saints Cyril and Methodius|Saint]]'' [[wikipedia:Saints Cyril and Methodius|Cyril]], after whom the [[Cyrillic Alphabet]] is named—and has some of Kirill's manuscripts. Ivan, a linguist, came to (modern-day) Russia in part to answer how the Russian tongue evolved from [[wikipedia:Church Slavonic language|Old Church Slavonic]]. In 9th-century Taina, he literally holds the answers in his hand.