In these days of want and woe, the faerie stories of my youth have an unsettling tendency to become real. As a child, my majka told me of the wildmen of the forests; mostly as a way to make me behave and to eat my vegetables. These creatures, these trolls, were terrible giants who wandered about after dark snatching bad children from their homes and destroying the farms of those who transgressed against the Old Ways. Cut too much wood from the old forest or kill more game than you could eat in a season? Neglect your chores or letters? The trolls would come and teach you a very hard lesson. Adults could laugh at these stories, although they would make the ancient signs to ward off evil as they did so. But to a young man with an active imagination and a guilty conscience, the threat of being carried off to be eaten by trolls was a very real threat. Now I am grown, and there is precious little laughter anywhere in Steppengrad. Baba Yaga is with us again. Blight and famine are everywhere, and trolls step out of the pages of books to devour our livestock and ruin our crops. These are dark times my friend, but some day, if we are lucky, we will see the end of them.

When I was young and frightened and could not sleep, my grandfather would tell me stories of his youth to soothe my mind and ease my way to slumber. As much as they were stories of his youth—and what a youth my grandfather had—they were also stories of Mother Steppengrad in the days before the coming of the Vještica, before Baba Yaga came and the land wilted away. To see her now, in her anguish, you would not know that once this was a rich and vibrant land. Long ago, before the Great War, Steppengrad was the jewel of Morden. Her rivers teemed with fish, her forests and plains were crowded with beasts and birds, and her fertile fields were the envy of all lesser nations. The people were different then, too. We were stronger, the men handsomer, and the women more lovely. There was wealth and food aplenty, and even the most desperate of our countrymen had at least a goat and a small plot of land; enough to feed his family in even the harshest winter. Now, well, now it is different. Mother Steppengrad is very sick, maybe dying. As long as Baba Yaga still wanders the forests the land suffers and we starve. All is not lost, though. One day this will all be over. One day Baba Yaga and the rest of the Vještica will be driven away. Mother Steppengrad will be made whole, and she will once again be the envy of all the peoples of Morden.

The Vargr are the chosen of Baba Yaga–the Witch that created them. They are her shock troops, implacable warriors and brutal combatants with a nearly insatiable taste for the flesh of men. Once normal men and women, they now walk a ragged edge between beast and man. The Vargr are werewolves, a people cursed (or blessed depending on one's point of view) with the ability to become half human, half wolf… overcome with a ravenous, all-consuming hunger. Their beast forms give them increased size, strength, speed, and stamina. Becoming a werewolf sharpens their senses, allowing them to see, hear, and smell far beyond the limits of mortals. However, the transformation is more than skin deep—they become savage creatures operating on little more than instinct and low cunning.

She comes in a clamor – clap of thunder, flash of lightning, howling wind – and all peace is at an end. Stepping forth from another world on spindly bird's legs, a house appears in the tumult at the edge of a great forest. Animals flee, flowers wilt, grass blackens, trees lean away as if to escape, even the land itself groans and shudders. The house settles, tucking its legs beneath it. It's a shabby, run-down, moss covered hovel of stone and sod with blank, leering windows and a rotten door half ajar. Dirt clotted bones of long-dead men and animals rise from the ground to form a ghastly fence about the house, with a gate thrown wide in welcome. Baba Yaga has come to her people once again.