The Grey Wolf, who woke when Ivan did
In most Western fairy tales the wolf is the one your grandmother warns you about. In Russian tales the wolf is the one who comes back for you.
The wolf of the tales
The best-known Grey Wolf lives in "Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf" (Afanasyev, No. 168), and he starts badly: he eats the prince's horse. Then he offers to make up for it and carries Ivan further than any horse could. He turns himself into Elena the Beautiful, and later into the horse with the golden mane, to fool their owners. When Ivan's brothers kill him and leave him in an open field, the wolf brings him back to life.
The same lesson runs through the whole tale. When Ivan listens to the wolf, things work. When he doesn't, they go wrong.
A wolf like that lives on the edge, between the village and the wild forest. He belongs fully to neither, so he knows the roads people have forgotten. That was the wolf we wanted.
One of the three threads
In Forgotten Eras the Grey Wolf is one of the three threads of fate that Veles left in the world before the gods and people sealed their pact. He is old and wise, and he protects people and creatures alike. For centuries he slept. The moment Ivan's father put the headband on his son's brow, the Wolf woke, and his howl went out across the land, calling for Ivan.
Ivan hears that howl from the moment he wakes. It is the last of the three questions in his head when he opens his eyes: what is that howling?
The Grey Wolf at a run, rendered from his 3D model. The amulet around his neck holds his power.
Upright, with an amulet
Our Grey Wolf stands upright like a man, closer to the volkolak than to an animal from the woods. Volkolak, or vovkulak, is the East Slavic word for a werewolf; among the South Slavs it became vukodlak. The Tale of Igor's Campaign says Prince Vseslav of Polotsk ran at night as a wolf, from Kyiv to Tmutarakan before the cocks crowed. We wanted some of that weight in him, something between a beast and a person.
The amulet around his neck is the anchor of his power: a carved triangular bone pendant whose mark glows orange. He has slate-grey fur, a cream throat and amber eyes, and two feathers and a bead tied into his chest strap.
What the Wolf can do
Ivan becomes the Grey Wolf by letting go of the rune of Veles. The Wolf is fast. He follows scent trails Ivan cannot see, and he can make a short jump through space past things Ivan would have to climb. A wall is a wall for Ivan and a scent trail for the Wolf.
First Ivan has to find him. A purple fog marks the curse on the old temple, and it is thickest at the bottom, where the Grey Wolf is.
Stone bears and candles in the temple, from the current build.
Good company, with a past
In our comic the Wolf is good company. He teases Ivan, and he admits there is "a fog on my mind" when he tries to remember how he was caught. He calls Ivan "a bit bold and reckless", with a good heart full of passion, which is fair.
Folklore gave us a wolf who keeps saving a prince who does not always listen. We kept that, and gave the Wolf a past of his own, one Ivan will have to dig up before the end.
Sources: "Meet the Grey Wolf" and "The Tale as Told by the Fire", Forgotten Eras on Steam, 16 and 17 July 2026. A. N. Afanasyev, Russian Folk Tales, No. 168. The Tale of Igor's Campaign. Forgotten Eras pilot comic, 2026.
