School of Belarusian Creatures 🇧🇾

Kutnik and Khlevnik: a skinny old man made of straw in the attic; a squat old man covered in burrs, smelling of sour milk.

The Water Spirit and the Rusalki: a pot-bellied old man in the mud with a pike crown; pale maidens with fish tails and hair made of river grass.

Leshy and Polevik: a shaggy spirit in an inside-out sheepskin coat, resembling a stump; a dusty little man with cornflower-blue eyes, living in the ears of grain.

Werewolf (vovkulak): a person with fur through his clothes, a bestial muzzle and claws, but with a sad human look.

Laznik and Bannik: a shaggy dwarf made of soot in the dressing room; a tiny, strong old man sitting on the hottest top bunk.

Marshman and Bagniki: a green, slimy, fat man without a back, leaning against a hummock; small bubbles of black liquid bursting with a squelching sound.

Sholikhi and Kikimora: the invisible dry rustle of sedge that leads astray; a hunched old spider woman breaking spindles at night.

Poludnitsa: a tall, stately maiden with a red-hot face. Holding a scythe, she appears in the heat of an open field.

The Batsian (Stork) is not just a bird, but a forest giant. As tall as a man, it wears a black frock coat and top hat. Its beak is golden, and a silver watch chain always gleams in its tailcoat. It walks through the swamps on long, stilted legs, leaning on a heather cane.

Vuzh-aspadar (King of Snakes) is a gigantic snake with a diamond crown between its eyes. Its scales shimmer with blackened silver, and a soft emerald mane grows along its spine. Instead of a tongue, there's a forked beam of moonlight, and its eyes glow with swamp fires.

Chur (Grandfather Chur) is a stocky, old man-stump, covered in soft green moss. His beard is made of roots, his hands are gnarled like dry branches. His eyes are two glowing acorns. He wears birch bark bast shoes and never parts with his heavy, carved staff.

The Zhytnyaya Baba (Bread Woman) is woven from golden ears of wheat. Her face is baked from rosy dough, and her eyes are two ripe blueberries. A crown of cornflowers crowns her head, and instead of arms, she has lush sheaves of wheat. She always smells of a warm home, honey, and fresh milk.

Zyuzya (God of Winter) is a gray-bearded ice giant taller than any spruce tree. His body is covered in thick armor of icicles, his eyebrows like snowballs. In his hands he holds a merciless iron mace-freezer. Wherever he steps, the permafrost crunches beneath his feet.

Pahonia (the Progenitor Spirit of Horsemen) is a phantom rider woven from storm clouds and road dust. The horse beneath him is white, ethereal, shod with a clear ringing sound. The knight himself is clad in shimmering steel, a legendary cloak flutters behind him, and a lightning spear glows in his hand.

The Vyrai School, hidden in the Belarusian forest, grows from a giant oak tree. Its walls are amber and stone, and its roofs glow with moss. Students are divided into Circles of Power: Polesie (water spirits and forest spirits), Underground (porcini mushrooms), and Heavenly (bereginy). There is a separate class for dragon spirits.

Instead of potions, they brew fern jelly, and textbooks are written with lingonberry juice on birch bark. In Herbology, they grow rupture grass. The talking Stork-Keymaster presides over the discipline, bees in a giant hive run the library, and the Eternal Grandfather serves as the rector. Instead of Quidditch, they play "Znich"—a fireball. The ghost of the White Lady of Nesvizh teaches the etiquette of communicating with spirits. Graduates become diplomats between the human and Navi worlds.

This school would have a caste system: the more ancient and distant a being was from human life (like Batsian or Zyuzya), the higher their status as a teacher. The more dependent a spirit was on a farmstead or a specific den, the lower their desk in the classroom.

Disciples (Lesser Evil Spirits and Local Spirits)

The students would be creatures whose lives are closely intertwined with everyday human activity or specific local locations (a forest, a lake). They need to learn to manage their powers to avoid harming themselves and to preserve their territory.

Students:

• Kutnik and Khlevnik -
  Symbiosis with the oven and the barn;

• Water (vodzіннік) and Rusalki - Hydrology of marsh pools;

• Leshy (lyasun) and Polevik - Forest law;

-Volkolak (vovkulak) - Werewolfism and control of transformation;

• Laznik and Bannik - Symbiosis with a stove and a barn (specialization);

• Bolotnik and Bagniki - Hydrology (bog department);

• Sholikhi and Kikimora - Weaving of fate and dreams;

• Midday - Alchemy of herbs.

Teachers (Elders and Guardians)
The teachers would be ancient beings whose nature is fundamental to the Belarusian land. They possess the wisdom of the ages, control the elements, and rarely come into direct contact with people.

Teachers:

• Baqiang (Stork) - Geography of swamps, migration of souls, diplomacy;

Vuzh-aspadar (King of Snakes) - Old Slavic language of shadows, alchemy of poisons and antidotes;

Chur (Ded-Chur) - "Forest law and boundary disputes", border protection;

Zhytnyaya Baba (Bread Woman) - Symbiosis with the oven and the barn, the weaving of fate;

Zyuzya (God of winter and cold) - Survival in the cold, control of snow;

Pagonya (Progenitor Spirit of Horsemen) - Riding mystical beasts, combat tactics.

There would be no grades in such a school. Survival itself would be the test: if a meadow student managed to protect the harvest from hail, and a water student kept the mill dam intact until the end of autumn, then the course had been successfully completed.

9. Discipline: "Alchemy of Herbs and Roots of the Swamp Witch"

Purpose: To produce healing potions, poisons, and potions from local flora.

Tasks for students:

• Distinguishing between willowherb, ruptureherb and overpowerherb by smell in the fog.

• Collection of ingredients strictly at certain times of the day (for example, mandrake root only in the light of the new moon).

• Brewing a love potion from morning dew and fern flowers without disturbing the ecological balance of the swamp.

8. Discipline: “Ancient Slavic language of shadows and whispers of the wind” (Philology)

Purpose: Free communication with the primordial forces of nature and the oldest entities.

Tasks for students:

• Reading runes carved on boulders before the arrival of the first people.

• Ability to give orders to crows and magpies using joint clicks.

• Drawing up contracts with evil spirits in such a way that not a single legal loophole can be found in the text.

7. Discipline: "Weaving Fate and Dreams"

Purpose: To influence the subconscious of people living in the controlled territory.

Tasks for students:

• Weaving warning signs into the nightmares of drunken lumberjacks.

• Creation of prophetic dreams for village witches.

• Unraveling someone else's evil eye, which manifests itself in the form of knots on the threads of reality.

6. Discipline: "Phases of the Moon and the Kupala Night Calendar" (Astronomy and Ritualism)

Objective: Synchronization of life cycles of creatures with the natural and agricultural calendar of the Slavs.

Tasks for students:

• Calculation of peak fern flowering intensity with an accuracy of up to a minute.

• Technique of collecting dew with bare paws (for water creatures coming ashore) so as not to leave traces of hair.

• Weaving wreaths that can withstand a storm in the middle of a lake.

• Using the summer solstice to accumulate energy for the long winter.

5. Discipline: "Werewolfism and Transformation Control" (for Werewolves and Serpents)

Goal: Safe change of appearance and integration into a pack or human society.

Tasks for students:

• Preserving the grains of human intelligence in an animal skin, so as not to attack your native village.

• Anatomy of rapid healing of wounds caused by a silver bullet or knife.

• Selecting clothes that can be easily torn when changing guises without attracting the attention of neighbors.

• Imitation of a wolf howl to transmit secret messages over long distances.

4. Discipline: "Symbiosis with the oven and the barn" (for Brownies, Barnkeepers, and Banniks)

Objective: To effectively manage a person's household as an invisible manager.

Tasks for students:

• Secret help: how to properly knead dough at night so that it rises before dawn, and how to hide things dropped by their owners so that they are found only after sincere repentance.

• Fire prediction using ash temperature and spider behavior.

• Methods for driving out uninvited spirit guests (for example, restless ghosts of the drowned) from your yard.

• Cattle care: prevention of death among cows by proper distribution of tar smell.

• Etiquette of communication with a new owner when the family moves to another log house.

3. Discipline: "Forest Law and Boundary Disputes" (for Leshy, Poleviks and Borovykh)

Objective: To establish the boundaries of one's possessions and resolve conflicts with otherworldly neighbors.

Tasks for students:

• Tying protective knots from the roots of ancient trees.

• Navigation without sun or stars (using moss, but keeping in mind that the Leshy may deliberately confuse the trail). Studying the true location of the trails.

• Diplomacy: negotiating with a neighboring leshy about the division of mushroom and berry fields.

• Punishment of poachers by methods of confusion, imitating natural anomalies.

• Protection of forest springs from drying out.

2. Discipline: "Hydrology of swamp pools and river riffles" (for Water Spirits, Mermaids, and Blutuns)

Objective: Complete control over the freshwater arteries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Tasks for students:

• Control water levels without using complex spells - through manipulation of beaver dams and precipitation.

• The art of luring travelers: the right echo, creating will-o'-the-wisps (torches) of the right brightness so as not to scare off the victim prematurely.

• The ability to distinguish holy water from ordinary water by currents invisible to the human eye.

• Construction of underwater shelters from sunken oak trees to protect against winter frosts.

1. Discipline: "Concealment from the sign of the cross and the ringing of bells" (Survival)

• Purpose: To ensure the physical and magical safety of the student in the event of an accidental encounter with people or penetration into sacred places.

Tasks for students:

• Master the technique of instant disembodiment (disappearing into fog, earth or tree bark).

• Learn to create sound illusions that throw barking dogs off the scent.

• Study the acoustics of Belarusian forests to determine the range of church bells and search for "dead zones".

• The practice of disguising oneself as ordinary forest objects (an upturned stump, a hummock) during Orthodox holidays, when the boundary between worlds becomes thinner.