The Vodyanoy idol, where the water turns bad
If you see this idol by the water in Forgotten Eras, slow down. The Vodyanoy totem marks cursed waters, which is worth knowing before Ivan jumps in.
The old man of the mill-pond
The vodyanoy is the master of the water in East Slavic belief, as the leshy is master of the forest. People pictured him as an old man with a long green beard, sometimes with a frog's face or a body covered in scales, sitting at the bottom of a mill-pond or under the wheel of a water mill. He drowned the careless and kept their souls in his house under the water as servants. Millers were said to keep on good terms with him, because a mill stands on his water and an angry vodyanoy can break a dam in one night.
Swimmers were careful after dark, and on certain feast days people did not go into the water at all. Afanasyev records much of this in "The Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature".
Avena's father
In our story the Vodyanoy is family. Avena, the rusalka who waits on the broken bridge, is his daughter. When she talks about him in the demo, she calls him "my father, Vodyanoy, he who sleeps in the sunless depths". You will not meet him face to face yet. What you meet is his idol, standing where the water has gone wrong.
You can read Avena's side of the story in our article about her.
Scales, beard and water
The sheet on the cover shows the idol built up in the sculpt. It starts as a plain column with rings, then the swirling water motifs appear at the top, then the base gets its carved bands. At stage four the figure is there: a heavy torso with scaled shoulders, ropes of beard and a tail of hair down his back, and a coil of water wrapped around his waist. The final stage turns all of it into wood. The motifs are the point. Scales, a flowing beard and the water patterns tell you whose river this is before anyone says a word.
He is one of four carved idols in the game, with the Leshy, Morana and the Grey Wolf.
Sources: "Forgotten Eras Weekly Update #4", Forgotten Eras on Steam, 29 September 2026. A. N. Afanasyev, The Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature, Moscow, 1865 to 1869.
