Copperfox
Well-known member
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Anyone who has watched the movie "The 13th Warrior" has been given a glimpse of the fusion, the blending, which created the original Russia-- known to us now as Ukraine-- and went on to create the "Rus" which now carries the name of Russia.
The Norsemen in "13th Warrior" were able both to ride horses and to handle ships. As the Russians, Ukrainians, whatever, spread farther east (which for them was like the wild WEST for us), this double skill set served them well, though horseback travel gradually grew MORE important. Becoming aware of the far-traveling Turkic peoples, they were particularly impressed by the Kazakhs of what is now Kazakhstan. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; equestrian Russians began to call themselves KAZAKI {=Cossacks!}. A comparable instance of emulation occurred in our cowboy days: the Spanish word for a cowboy {vaquero} became "buckaroo," the alternate noun for a cowboy.
Late in the tenth Christian century, the city-state of Kiev {rhyming with "leave," NOT pronounced as "kee-EVV"} was to be the first explicitly Christian state in Russia, Ukraine, whatever!!! But to learn about the number-one villain of our saga, we need to rewind Eastern European history to a time when Christians thereabouts were a scattered minority. Slavic polytheists especially worshiped Perun {similar to Thor} and Yarilo {a fertility god and keeper of nature}. Human sacrifice was practiced, as the above-cited movie illustrated; but it was nowhere near as bad as the Aztecs, because NOBODY was as bad as the Aztecs.
Note that the following scene happens long before Islam became a major threat in Eurasia. Lord Koschei, not yet a super-villain, was an entrepreneur between river-sailing slave traffickers and wagon-using slave traffickers. One of the former, Espen Boat-Pusher, was particularly buddies with Koschei. One conversation between them went as follows:
KOSCHEI: Am I mistaken, or are some of your long-time crewmen missing?
ESPEN: Missing-- and worse than dead. They started listening to some Bulgar priests, who say that someone from long ago called Yessu Kriss wanted us to give up our healthy business. The Bulgars talk about a man called Paulos, a friend of Yessu, who told a man called Philemon that a slave named Onesimus should be treated like a brother from then on.
KOSCHEI (as a man accustomed to hearing diverse names, thus not confused by the list Espen just recited-- but furious at the implications of Paul's Epistle to Philemon): But if a brother, then not a slave, either, except in name only! We need to silence these meddlers!
Koschei, to be brief, sold his soul to the Devil in return for immortality and invulnerability. The God he despised would not permit the reprobate petty aristocrat to be completely indestructible; but in the decades which followed, Koschei caused misleading stories to be told about just how he could be killed. The most popular of the red herrings was the claim that Koschei's life force was contained inside a needle, which was itself carefully hidden, and the needle had to be broken for Koschei to die.
This "Where's-the-kryptonite" plot device will not become important until much later in the saga. In the meantime, even invulnerability wasn't enough to relax the fiend's cowardly heart. In terms of muscular output, he was no stronger than, say, two or three able-bodied men. It followed that five or six mortal warriors, if brave enough, could easily pin him down, wrap him in chains, and bury him alive in a collapsed mineshaft. Being immobilized forever was what the villain feared instead of dying.
So, fairly early in his archvillain career, Koschei opted for proxies. While having nothing against Espen Boat-Pusher, the monster cut ties with him because he might someday be captured and made to reveal something. Espen was allowed to believe that Koschei was ordinary-dead, and Koschei began from zero to build a covert cell-network. This Eurasian quasi-mafia would still be in existence when Ilya Muromets would emerge in Yeltsin-era Russia.
FAST FORWARD!! ---BUT NOT YET ALL THE WAY TO THE 1990'S.
Anyone who has watched the movie "The 13th Warrior" has been given a glimpse of the fusion, the blending, which created the original Russia-- known to us now as Ukraine-- and went on to create the "Rus" which now carries the name of Russia.
The Norsemen in "13th Warrior" were able both to ride horses and to handle ships. As the Russians, Ukrainians, whatever, spread farther east (which for them was like the wild WEST for us), this double skill set served them well, though horseback travel gradually grew MORE important. Becoming aware of the far-traveling Turkic peoples, they were particularly impressed by the Kazakhs of what is now Kazakhstan. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; equestrian Russians began to call themselves KAZAKI {=Cossacks!}. A comparable instance of emulation occurred in our cowboy days: the Spanish word for a cowboy {vaquero} became "buckaroo," the alternate noun for a cowboy.
Late in the tenth Christian century, the city-state of Kiev {rhyming with "leave," NOT pronounced as "kee-EVV"} was to be the first explicitly Christian state in Russia, Ukraine, whatever!!! But to learn about the number-one villain of our saga, we need to rewind Eastern European history to a time when Christians thereabouts were a scattered minority. Slavic polytheists especially worshiped Perun {similar to Thor} and Yarilo {a fertility god and keeper of nature}. Human sacrifice was practiced, as the above-cited movie illustrated; but it was nowhere near as bad as the Aztecs, because NOBODY was as bad as the Aztecs.
Note that the following scene happens long before Islam became a major threat in Eurasia. Lord Koschei, not yet a super-villain, was an entrepreneur between river-sailing slave traffickers and wagon-using slave traffickers. One of the former, Espen Boat-Pusher, was particularly buddies with Koschei. One conversation between them went as follows:
KOSCHEI: Am I mistaken, or are some of your long-time crewmen missing?
ESPEN: Missing-- and worse than dead. They started listening to some Bulgar priests, who say that someone from long ago called Yessu Kriss wanted us to give up our healthy business. The Bulgars talk about a man called Paulos, a friend of Yessu, who told a man called Philemon that a slave named Onesimus should be treated like a brother from then on.
KOSCHEI (as a man accustomed to hearing diverse names, thus not confused by the list Espen just recited-- but furious at the implications of Paul's Epistle to Philemon): But if a brother, then not a slave, either, except in name only! We need to silence these meddlers!
Koschei, to be brief, sold his soul to the Devil in return for immortality and invulnerability. The God he despised would not permit the reprobate petty aristocrat to be completely indestructible; but in the decades which followed, Koschei caused misleading stories to be told about just how he could be killed. The most popular of the red herrings was the claim that Koschei's life force was contained inside a needle, which was itself carefully hidden, and the needle had to be broken for Koschei to die.
This "Where's-the-kryptonite" plot device will not become important until much later in the saga. In the meantime, even invulnerability wasn't enough to relax the fiend's cowardly heart. In terms of muscular output, he was no stronger than, say, two or three able-bodied men. It followed that five or six mortal warriors, if brave enough, could easily pin him down, wrap him in chains, and bury him alive in a collapsed mineshaft. Being immobilized forever was what the villain feared instead of dying.
So, fairly early in his archvillain career, Koschei opted for proxies. While having nothing against Espen Boat-Pusher, the monster cut ties with him because he might someday be captured and made to reveal something. Espen was allowed to believe that Koschei was ordinary-dead, and Koschei began from zero to build a covert cell-network. This Eurasian quasi-mafia would still be in existence when Ilya Muromets would emerge in Yeltsin-era Russia.
FAST FORWARD!! ---BUT NOT YET ALL THE WAY TO THE 1990'S.
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