information: zisa of the dark woods
zisa is a pagan goddess of questionable origins purportedly worshipped in augsburg, germany.
jacob grimm ( of grimms' fairy tales ) is the one who proposed the association between zisa and tyr ( the norse god of wars and oaths. ) he initially speculated that zisa was tyr's consort.
the idea that zisa and tyr are siblings came from rosamund hodge's book called crimson bound. much of my characterization of zisa came from that book as well.
i am leaning towards this portrayal to be a mix of various sources. crimson bound remains to be my primary inspiration behind zisa's character, but i would like to touch on her more myth-based story as well, and expand on that as much as i'm able.
important aspects of zisa's character in myth-based interactions would be as follows:
as tyr's sister, zisa is an ásynja, a deity that belongs in the norse pantheon. at some point, she encounters a malevolent entity in niðavellir, whom she called the devourer. this entity sought to possess zisa and make her its vessel.
initially, zisa thought she would need weapons to defeat the devourer, so she goes to volund ( the smith god ) to ask for his aid, bearing two femur bones of the devourer's previous victims. volund taught zisa how to fashion the bones into shape-shifting swords in exchange for sleeping with her for two nights. zisa agrees, and the swords are called joyeuse and durendal. they turn into bone needles when not in use.
the swords did not work against the devourer, and so zisa is possessed. she is, however, adept at weaving charms. during her lucid moments, zisa wove a charm that would purge her of the infestation. the charm would coerce the devourer to devour itself. zisa swallowed the charm, got rid of the devourer, though remnants of its power remained in her, as evidenced by an explosion of black veins on her back, in the exact same shape of the charm she wove.
this "taints" zisa, and she is exiled to midgard. she dwells in the deepest parts of the forest in what is now augsburg. she then becomes a "woodwife", the first of her kind.
zisa had to share her lands with an entity called old mother hunger, who lives in a hut in the woods. to keep old mother hunger from terrorizing the forest and the nearby settlements, zisa kills her and buries her in a vegetable patch. she then takes over old mother hunger's hut.
as for woodwives, they are said to be female spirits who are benevolent towards humans. they are adept at healing and warding, and they often ask travelers for favors in exchange for a bag of woodchips. these woodchips turn into little gold nuggets once the traveler is safely out of the forest.
zisa is the first of these woodwives, and she passed on her knowledge to the women of augsburg.
for more fantasy-based interactions:
instead of an ásynja, zisa is a tribal princess that resided in augsburg, in a small village by a lake.
a primordial evil lives in the forest by their dwelling, keeping the entire territory covered in perpetual darkness. it is called the devourer.
every few years, the tribal leader offers a brother and a sister to the devourer in exchange for relative peace. one to become the devourer's vessel, the other to be its disciple called a "forest-born".
the tribe's leader ( zisa and tyr's father ) offered them both up to be the sacrifice to the devourer. they were given a test: whoever is quick enough to cut off the other's hand will be the forest-born, leaving the other to become the vessel. zisa, knowing that tyr would hesitate, quickly cut off her brother's hand.
tyr is taken off into a deep cave in preparation to become the vessel. he is conditioned to forget his own name. zisa finds a way to free him, but she is sent to old mother hunger to be trained as the devourer's disciple.
there is a bed of old bones behind mother hunger's hut. they are the husks of the devourer's previous victims ( as usually, the ritual to turn someone into a vessel and a disciple is not entirely successful. both victims waste away eventually. ) this is where zisa finds the bones she brings to volund. they call to her and tell her that only the leavings of the wolf could kill it.
things happen similarly as described above: zisa asks volund for help, they sleep together for two nights. she forges the needle-swords joyeuse and durendal.
zisa asks mother hunger how to save her brother. thinking that she cannot do it, mother hunger says zisa has to carve out the hearts of her parents, eat her father's and feed their mother's to tyr. zisa then kills mother hunger, goes off to kill her parents, eats her father's heart, and journeys into the cave where tyr is being kept so she can feed their mother's heart to him.
zisa does end up saving tyr ( he remembers his name upon eating the heart of their mother, thus breaking the ritual ), and she gives him durendal. they fight the devourer with their swords, but the devourer ends up possessing zisa. taking her brother's remaining hand, zisa guides tyr into plunging durendal into her chest. as she lay dying, she weaves the charm same as the above, and swallows it, leading the devourer to devour itself and the light of the sun and moon to be restored in their lands. an explosion of black-veined scars is left upon her back afterwards.
zisa does not die because remnants of the devourer's power seep into her, turning her immortal, granting her a stained kind of divinity. when she awoke, zisa told tyr what she had to do to save them both. unable to grasp the horror of it all and unable to forgive zisa for killing their parents, tyr abandons her, taking durendal with him.
zisa then takes over old mother hunger's hut and becomes the first woodwife, the goddess of the deep, dark woods, the slayer of the devourer, the daughter of the silver lake. the bone needle sword joyeuse is pinned perpetually on her dress.
some trivia, if you will!
old mother hunger is probably inspired by baba yaga, but i don't think rosamund hodge actually stated so.
old mother hunger's hut is covered in bird feathers coated with blood. her utensils were fashioned from leg and finger bones, her bowls and mugs from skulls.
zisa did a lot of work "renovating" old mother hunger's hut. the roof is now properly thatched. she got rid of the bone field and replaced it with a vegetable patch and a small pond.
zisa's forest domain, in both her myth-based and fanatsy-based verses, is almost impossible for just anybody to find. not only is it located in the deepest part of the woods, the trees and roots also shift around to redirect unwanted visitors from ever stumbling upon it.
zisa is more or less, isolated in the woods. there are still remnants of evil there that she has to "take care of" from time to time. she is no longer offering up services as a woodwife after passing on her gifts to the women of the land. but she can make exceptions.
zisa does venture out into the wider world from time to time. but not with any regularity.
zisa is old old. no specific number comes to mind but she is older than most civilizations, in both her myth-based and fantasy-based verses. a few thousand years old at the very least.
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