Power systems¶

The saga’s framework of power: the schools of asked power, granted and bought power, the tiers of practitioners and bound objects.

Labels. [Historical record] is attested in the sources or standard scholarship; [The saga’s invention] was made for this series.

Design goals. (1) Hard rules, so readers can predict what is possible and feel clever when a character exploits a rule. (2) Visible cost, every time. (3) Scarcity: fewer than a few hundred practitioners of any real power exist in the whole Grand Duchy in 1382, and fewer every decade. (4) No power wins wars. Power changes nights, not campaigns. (5) Grounded in real Baltic practice: most schools below are folk traditions that were actually practised (charms, signs, herbs, amber, oaths), here taken literally.

1. The map of power¶

                          ┌─────────────────────────────┐
                          │   GODS  (source, indifferent)│
                          └──────────────┬──────────────┘
           ┌──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┐
           ▼                              ▼                              ▼
   ASKED POWER (mortal craft)     GRANTED POWER (Force gifts)     BOUGHT POWER (bargains)
   Kalba · Užkalbėjimai ·         Claims · Vilkatai's change ·    Shadow-Seller's deals ·
   Ženklai · Žolės ·              Iron Saint's fearlessness ·     aitvaras-keeping ·
   Gintarystė · Priesaika         White Silence's frost-touch     selling a shadow / name
   ── bound by the Three Laws ──  ── bound by the Force's nature ─ ── bound by the letter ──

Family	Who	Initiative	Reliability	Typical price
Asked	Trained or gifted mortals	Mortal	High if the rules are followed	Body, senses, memory (paid now)
Granted	The chosen or the claimed	The Force	Arrives when the Force wills	Obedience to the Force’s nature; identity
Bought	Anyone desperate	Either	Exactly what was worded	Something worth more than you thought (paid later, with interest)

2. The six schools of asked power¶

2.1 Senovės Kalba (the Ancient Tongue): elemental working¶

The high craft: five elements, deities, zeniths, costs.

2.2 Užkalbėjimai (spoken charms): folk word-magic¶

[Historical record] Lithuanian folk healers (žiniuoniai, užkalbėtojai) had a large real tradition of spoken charms against snakebite, bleeding, fright (išgąstis), toothache, fire, and the evil eye. They were whispered three or nine times, often over water, bread or salt, and passed on only to a younger person of the opposite sex, or the charm lost its power.

In the saga: charms are Kalba’s humble cousin. They need no gift, only the exact words learned from a living teacher, and a medium (water, bread, salt, linen thread, a knife).

Scope: one person and one ailment or danger at a time: stop bleeding, draw snake venom, calm a horse, ward a house from fire for a night, take away fright.
Cost: small but personal. The charmer takes a trace of what they remove (a headache, a cold hand, a nightmare). Healers who charm too much grow strange.
Rules: a charm told to the wrong person dies (it stops working for the teller); charms fail against someone who does not believe they are being helped (Law of Truth); a charm said for money works at half strength (Law of Balance: payment is already „giving back“).
After the Unbinding: charms are the peasantry’s main defence against unbound spirits. Priests condemn them, and village priests quietly use them.

2.3 Ženklai (carved signs): wards, marks and enchanting objects¶

[Historical record] Baltic ornament carries a well-known set of folk symbols (sun-wheels, the „Perkūnas cross“ (perkūnėlis), grass-snake zigzags (žalčiukai), Laima’s tree, the Austras tree, stars, the moon), carved on lintels, spindles, cradles, beehives, belts and roof-ridges (žirgeliai, the horse-head gables).

In the saga: signs are stored intention, the way to enchant objects. A sign is carved, burned, woven or embroidered, then fed: with blood for a strong sign, milk for a gentle one, ash for a binding one.

Common signs and effects:

Sign	Lithuanian	Effect	Feed
Sun-wheel	Saulutė	Repels night spirits; keeps a room warm in will	Milk at dawn
Thunder-cross	Perkūnėlis	Wards against lightning, breaks curses on the threshold; marks an oath-place	Blood, once
Grass-snake zigzag	Žalčiukas	House-luck; warns of poison (the line darkens)	Milk weekly
Laima’s tree	Laimos medis	Eases childbirth; protects a cradle from changeling-laumės	A thread of the mother’s hair
Star	Žvaigždutė	Helps sight-workings; marks a seer’s tools	Nothing; it drinks starlight
Horse-heads on the roof	Žirgeliai	Turns aside unbound spirits from the house	Renewed each spring
Moon-hook	Mėnulio pjautuvas	Hides things from searchers (not illusion: it distracts)	Ash

Rules: a sign fades if not fed; a broken sign reverses for a night; signs on iron are twice as strong but anger the laumės; a sign carved by a baptised hand works only if the carver means it (Law of Truth, again). This is how the old ways survive inside churches: masons carve saulutės into Gothic vaults.
Enchantment tiers: a charm-object (one sign, one effect, fades in a season); a warded object (several signs, fed by an owner, lasts a lifetime); a bound object (signs plus a Kalba working plus blood, which becomes an artifact; see §5).

2.4 Žolės (herb-lore): brews, smokes and poisons¶

[Historical record] Lithuanian folk medicine was rich in herbs: wormwood (kietis), St John’s wort (jonažolė), sweet flag (ajeras), mugwort, linden, chamomile, valerian, henbane (drignė), poppy. Herbs gathered at Rasos/Joninės night were held strongest.

In the saga: herbs are power anyone can carry, with no gift and no Law of Balance, which is exactly why they are the most dangerous.

Rasos herbs (picked on solstice night before dawn, without speaking): double potency, keep for a year.
Effects: sleep (Ona’s draught), truth-loosening, fever-breaking, wound-cleaning, and the seer’s smoke (henbane and amber dust, as the prologue’s „violet flame“) that lets a Kalba seer see further at the cost of a terrible headache.
Poison is the herb-lore of princes. Skirgaila’s death (1397, cause unrecorded) and the poisoning of Vytautas’s sons (1392, a contested tradition from Grunau, which the saga adopts) are herb-lore, not sorcery. The book should keep them mundane: the horror of the saga is that men need no magic for the worst things.

2.5 Gintarystė (amber-craft): the universal medium¶

Amber is Saulė’s grief, and it stores memory and carries workings.

Raw amber carries any Kalba working (it is the only medium all five elements accept).
Charged amber: a caster breathes a working into it, to be released later by the bearer (even an ungifted one) with the right word. This is how Birutė’s protection outlives her contact with Vytautas.
Anchored amber: amber carrying the caster’s blood links caster and bearer across any distance. Only one anchor per caster at a time; a second one breaks the first.
Memory amber: holding amber while dying puts a last memory into it. Old amber sometimes shows these memories to seers (a major hook: amber at Krėva holding Kęstutis’s last moments).
Palanga’s law: amber taken from the shore after a storm without an offering goes cold for its whole life. Hanseatic merchants carry boxes of dead amber and never know.
The Order’s amber monopoly [Historical record]: the Teutonic Order controlled the Prussian amber trade and harshly punished private gathering. In the saga: the Order hoards amber to keep it out of pagan hands, and its Bernsteinmeister burn charged pieces in consecrated furnaces (a secret doctrine of the Iron Saint).

2.6 Priesaika (oath-binding): blood, earth and word¶

[Historical record] Pagan Lithuanians swore by Perkūnas or the earth; treaties were sworn with pagan rites (e.g. Kęstutis’s 1351 ox-sacrifice oath to Louis of Hungary).

In the saga: an oath sworn with the right form is literally binding:

Earth oath (kissing or eating soil): the oath-breaker’s own land rejects him. Crops fail, horses throw him, and the forest loses him.
Thunder oath (on an axe or by an oak struck by lightning): Perkūnas enforces it. Lightning seeks the oath-breaker; at minimum he loses Perkūnas’s favour in war.
Blood-brotherhood (susibroliavimas): shared fate. One feels the other’s death.
Safe-conduct oaths count. Skirgaila’s broken safe-conduct (Aug 1382) is an oath-break, and Perkūnas’s enmity toward Skirgaila’s line follows (the Book II death).
Christian oaths on relics are enforced by the Iron Saint among the Order’s men, which is why the Order distrusts converts who swore on pagan forms first.

3. Granted and bought power (summary)¶

Power	Source	Grants	Cost / bondage	Details
Claim (Žymė)	Perkūnas, Root-Mother, others	The Force acts through you at its moments	You must act in its nature or be punished
The Wolf-Change (Vilkų krikštas)	Root-Mother via the Dykra	Night-sight, scent, healing, the berserk „iron hour“	Part of the soul stays wolf; the Church names you a werewolf; the Unbinding’s dead hunt you
The Iron Saint’s gift	Ferrum Sanctum	Fearlessness, tireless marching, immunity to Earth-terror	Pity dies; such knights cannot weep
The White Silence’s touch	Baltoji Tyla	Healing with frost, holy calm	Warmth leaves the healer; sound dies around them	Jadvyga
The Shadow-Seller’s deal	Velnias’s shard	Anything, worded precisely	The thread, compounding
The kept aitvaras	A bought spirit (bestiary)	Stolen grain and silver	Your house burns if you stop feeding it; your soul at death

4. Tiers of practitioners¶

A shared ladder lets the reader judge power at a glance. Most people with any power stop at tier 2.

Tier	Title	Typical	Can do	Cannot do	Rough number (1382)
0	Paprastas (ordinary)	Anyone	Use a fed sign, carry charged amber, keep custom	Cast	—
1	Žiniuonis / žolininkė (knower, herb-woman)	Village healer, midwife	Charms, herbs, feeding signs	Kalba	Thousands
2	Burtininkas / ragana (spellworker, witch)	Hedge-witch, lot-caster, sign-carver	Enchant objects (warded), read lots, minor Kalba in one element	Distance-working, binding	Hundreds
3	Žynys / vaidilutė (priest, priestess)	Temple-trained	Full Kalba in one or two elements, the Five-Voice, charge amber, conduct oaths	Bind (Sutartis) without a sacred site	Dozens; fewer each year after 1387
4	Krivis / Gintaro šventikė (high priest, amber priestess)	The Krivis of Šventaragis; Birutė	All five elements; Senovės Sutartis; anchored amber; speak with Forces	Command a Force	A handful (perhaps 3–5 in 1382)
5	Indas (vessel)	Birutė after 1382; Jadvyga; Galminas	A Force acts through them in full	Remain mortal	One per Force per age

Vytautas’s tier: officially 0; really bound-2. Through Birutė’s Sutartis he can use the Five-Voice and the pebble, and nothing else. Through Perkūnas’s claim he is an instrument, not a caster. He never becomes a sorcerer, and that matters. His power is political, not magical.

Advancement: only through teaching (a living lineage), sacrifice (an element notices you), or binding (someone else’s Sutartis). After 1387, with the temples gone, lineages break and the tiers collapse downward across the series. By Book V there are no tier-4s left and fewer than ten tier-3s. Galminas becomes a grove at Grunwald (1410); the last žynys of Book V ch. 27 is his pupil, the beekeeper-žynys (d. 1448), not Galminas.

5. Artifacts (bound objects)¶

An artifact is an object carrying signs + a Kalba working + blood, or touched by a Force. Each has a power, a rule, a cost and a fate across the series.

Artifact	Lithuanian	Power	Rule / cost	Arc
Birutė’s pebble	Motinos gintaras	Anchor to Birutė; carries the Five-Voice; moral barometer	Answers to the bearer’s truth	I → IV; at Vytautas’s death it cracks, and the Book V keeper finds it cold
The Amber Kneeling Woman	Klūpančioji (Palanga)	The Amber Queen’s last anchor on land; calms storms on that shore	Whoever moves her dies at sea	I ch. 27 → V (taken back by the sea)
Kęstutis’s sword	Šerno kalavijas	Was warded with a perkūnėlis under the grip; the rust in ch. 2 is the sign failing because the Pact is cracking	Rust spreads with each broken oath in the family	I ch. 2; lost at Vilnius (ch. 6); recovered in Book III from Skirgaila’s estate
Kęstutis’s silver wolf	Sidabrinis vilkas	Identity-token; carved with an Iron Wolves‘ sign, so any vilkatas recognises it	—	I ch. 8 (through the Krėva wall), 17, 26; Pilkoji keeps it from Vytautas’s body and gives it to the Book V keeper at Kūčios 1430
The golden chain	Auksinė grandinė	The murder weapon; carries the Breath of the Void (a Henė-bargain object)	Its wearer hears the dead man’s last breath	Plant in I ch. 1, used ch. 9; resurfaces in Book IV on Oleśnicki’s envoy (a horror beat)
The Šventaragis ember	Paskutinė žarija	The last coal of the eternal flame, carried out by Vytautas himself in 1387	If it dies while Vytautas lives, the Sutartis penalty falls	I ch. 29 → IV; out at his death
The Order’s sword	Kryžiaus kalavijas	Consecrated; dampens Kalba near it	Vytautas cannot use the pebble while he carries it	I ch. 19–24; he throws it into the burning tower (ch. 24): a strong revision beat
Henė’s three stones	Trys juodi akmenys	Each is a cousin’s bargain	One drops when a bargain is collected	I → V
The Iron Wolf’s skull	Geležinio Vilko kaukolė	The relic of Gediminas’s dream, kept by the vilkatai; initiates swear on it	Lies spoken over it are heard by every wolf in the Dykra
The Lutsk crown	Nematoma karūna	Never existed as gold. Henė turned it to leaves	—	IV

6. Power scale¶

Scale	Example	Who can do it
A person, an hour	Stop bleeding; calm a horse; hide in shadow	Tier 1–2; Vytautas (the Five-Voice)
A household, a night	Ward a house; fog a courtyard	Tier 2–3
A castle, a night	The Krėva fog (ch. 14)	Tier 4 via an anchor (Birutė), at great cost (her voice)
A battlefield, an hour	Lightning on an oak; crows leading a column; a sudden wind	Only Forces (signs), never mortals
A region, a season	The „Crusader’s Winter“; a forest that loses an army	Only Forces, and only when fed for years
A realm, an age	The Silent Pact; the Unbinding	Gods and Forces with many mortals‘ consent

Hard ceiling: no mortal working ever exceeds a castle, a night. When something bigger happens, it is a Force, and Forces always want something.

7. How the systems interlock (combinations the plot can use)¶

Sign + amber: a žvaigždutė carved around amber lets an ungifted bearer receive a seer’s warning. (Ona’s hostage years: Birutė’s last messages?)
Charm + herb: a healer’s bleeding-charm over a Rasos-herb poultice works on mortal wounds that Kalba alone cannot heal (Water’s limit). This is why village women save knights the priests gave up on.
Oath + Claim: an oath sworn on a claimed person’s name binds the Force too. (Grunwald: Vytautas swears to Perkūnas before the battle, so Perkūnas is bound to act.)
Bargain vs Truth: the Shadow-Seller’s illusions can be seen through by a Praurimė seer at the cost of blindness, which is the only counter to Henė besides wit.
Consecration vs signs: inside consecrated stone signs still work at half strength if the carver meant them. Old masons‘ saulutės in Vilnius Cathedral’s vault are the last ward on the city in Book V.