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Attention: Fable Legends Content This article contains information mainly related to Fable Legends and is considered canon to such game. Due to Fable Legends’ cancelation on 7th March 2016, its canonicity status within the Fable series is uncertain. |
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Attention: Novel Content This article or section contains information original to the novel Fable: Blood of Heroes, which is a licensed Fable work, but does not necessarily conform to Lionhead's Fable canon. |
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Warning: Spoilers This section or article may contain spoilers! |
| “ | There’s a story (…) about a woman who long ago roamed the forest in a walking hut, stealing children and devouring heroes — Yog's tale |
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Yog, also known as Baya, was a cannibal witch and the main antagonist of the novel Fable: Blood of Heroes, who had survived by centuries and was looking for a way of lifting a curse cast upon her by a hero.
Appearance[]
In her prime, before the curse was cast, even for a witch, Yog was extremely beautiful, a characteristic that legends said was due to her taking children’s beauty for herself. Her appearance was so stunning that a certain hero, who had departed to kill her, fell in love upon seeing her, and eventually became her husband.
Centuries later, however, after a curse had fallen upon her, she was no longer able to absorb the forces nor beauty of no one, and thus her appearance has withered and by the time of the novel, she was nothing more than a hunchback crone with gnarled fingers. One of Yog’s most noticeable features was her unnatural iron teeth, which she used to easily bite off the flesh of the heroes she hunted.
Story[]
Background[]
Yog was almost as old as Albion itself. Being born during the Old Kingdom, she saw the fall of the Archon’s reign and the destruction of the kingdom and demise of many of its heroes with it.
Yog, already tainted by witchcrafts at the time, was fascinated on how nor glory nor honor or order were enough to prevent the Old Kingdom’s destruction, realized that Albion would, sooner or later, be completely overrun by corruption, which would lead to its ultimate destruction, and until then, only raw power could preserve one’s existence. With it, Yog abandoned all the moral boundaries limiting her powers, and set to become this one.
By this time, Yog had already learned how to extract the power and life force of heroes and absorb it onto herself, greatly enhancing her magical abilities. Because such ritual required her to consume the flesh of the still alive heroes she captured, Yog developed cannibal habits, corrupting her mind even more.
Yog went even far as transferring part of her own life force to the hut where she lived, as a safeguard against future threats. Once enchanted, the hut gained life and was able to manifest wooden legs, allowing Yog to constantly roam Albion after heroes to eat. Yog also imbued her cauldron with magic, making it capable of flying with her inside of it.
For many centuries after the Old Kingdom’s end, Yog hunted all the heroes she was able to locate, and thus, she was the main reason of why the period known as the Fallow Wars - a time of chaos, anarchy and bloodshed - had lasted for centuries, as the killed heroes weren’t able to restore order in Albion.
Seeking even more ways to control Albion and its heroes, Yog developed many poisons and potions, and at some point, created the first Redcaps by accident while experimenting on humans. Seeing that turning people into creatures was at her hands, Yog spent decades developing more ways to corrupt the human essence.
Centuries before the events of Fable: Blood of Heroes, a hero named Kas set out to kill Yog, however, she ended up falling in love with her, and even though Yog was able to easily defeat him in battle, she didn’t kill him in the moment, and after he asked for a kiss, she also fell for him.
With this, Kas became Yog’s husband and was named Kas the Undying as he was believed to be the only one to ever survive an encounter with the witch. However, Kas would betray his fellow heroes and lured them into traps so his wife could eat them.
However, Yog’s actions would finally be interrupted by another hero, William Grayrock. Decided to end the witch’s hidden reign, but also acknowledging he didn’t have enough power to kill Yog, William used all his willpower to curse his own blood and, in a selfless act, handed himself to Yog.
After the first bite, the curse on William’s blood passed onto Yog, and she felt all the power she had absorbed from all the heroes she had consumed vanish, and she soon realized the curse turned her unable to absorb any other power from any other hero. In a desperate act, Yog tried to transform William in a wooden doll, but the hero was somehow able to redirect the curse onto Kas, and thus he became a wooden doll instead.
Once cursed, Yog saw her body succumbing to her real age, and her powers decreasing as well. Kas, still a doll, departed to try to find a cure for her, but was captured by William’s descendants and locked inside of a chest that was buried in the town of Grayrock.
Eventually Yog was able to figure out that Grayrock, the town itself, was responsible for keeping William’s curse strong, as the town was founded by William himself, and many of its citizens were actually his descendants, and thus, for as long as they lived within the town that was William’s home, his bloodline would be kept alive and with it, his curse.
During this time, Yog learned that the curse didn’t prevent her of canalizing part of her own lasting abilities onto other living beings, and seeing that this allowed her to better control the events on Albion and better search for heroes. These enchanted creatures would be known as Yog’s Riders.
However, Yog couldn’t bring herself to use her few forces to destroy the town, as she feared of losing her husband that was buried somewhere there. This led her to rely on her witchcrafts and her riders to try to locate her husband.
Baya’s Legends[]
Over the years, Yog’s infamous acts would become part of the countryside’s folklore, and she would be believed to be nothing more than a legend, created to keep children in line.
In many of such legends, Yog’s name forgotten and substituted by many others, the main one was Baya, which was the name featured in the legend the hero Inga listened when she was a young girl.
| “ | “Baya held power over death and transformation. She lived alone, constantly moving through Albion. In the beginning, if your courage and honesty impressed her, she might help you or give you a gift. But over time, she began to see people as nothing more than animals. She set out to punish humanity for abusing her gifts. She would fly through the night sky, and she could sniff out her prey from five miles off. She commanded three Riders, sending them to bring the strongest Heroes and the naughtiest children for her cauldron” — Baya's tale |
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Fable: Blood of Heroes[]
Many centuries later, by the time of the novel, moved by the number of heroes finally increasing after the witch was forced by the curse to stop consuming them, Yog had finally developed a plan to lift her curse.
Yog, relying on her diminished powers and potions, had gathered her riders and after enhancing their abilities sent them to put her plan in action.
Her Will and Strength riders, the nymph Skye and the ogre Headstrong, were sent to Grayrock to manipulate the greedy mayor into digging under the town’s dam, so it would eventually succumb and flood the town, forcing the citizens out, lifting the curse.
The flood seemed perfect as it wouldn’t damage too much the region, as fire would, so Kas would still be safe. Yog also had Skye kidnap a boy, Ben and turned him into a doll, so his sister, Greta, would act as a spy for Yog in the town.
At the same time, Yog hired a group of outlaws, led by a criminal mastermind called Nimble John, to transport many kegs of a poisoned ale from Grayrock to Brightlodge, where Blue, Yog’s Skill rider, would sneak the kegs inside the town’s pubs.
The ale was tainted with Yog’s potion that turned people into redcaps, and Yog’s plan was to provoke a distraction so the heroes wouldn’t interfere in Grayrock while increasing her redcap army at the same time.
However, the heroes proved to be way more clever and powerful than the ones Yog had last seen, and she also didn’t count with Blue’s betrayal, who was displeased with Yog killing redcaps so she could use their blood to create her potions. The heroes, assisted by the “captured” Blue, easily defeated the outlaws, apprehended the poisoned ale and tracked the origin back to Grayrock.
In Grayrock, the heroes soon discovered about the digging under the dam, fought against Yog’s ogre, Headstrong, and after Greta helped them, they rescued Ben from Skye and turned the townsfolk against the greedy mayor.
Seeing that her plan was falling apart, Yog spent all her potion and power creating a poisoned storm that rained over Grayrock, turning a great part of the population into Greencaps (people turned into redcaps that haven’t yet become ripe). However, the heroes have had just enough time to find and free Kas, Yog’s husband, who pretended to be on the heroes’ side.
However, as Yog has sent her army to Grayrock with the magic storm, the heroes had no other choice but to destroy the dam themselves, flooding the town and drowning most of her redcap soldiers in it. But with the flood, the townsfolk were forced to move out of the flooded town, and thus, Yog’s curse was unfortunately lifted.
But the heroes soon developed a plan to defeat her before she was able to gain any power, and after splitting in two groups, were able to restore Yog’s curse for a while by having Ben, who was still a doll, being sunk into Grayrock’s flood, so he would remain in the town, keeping the curse alive.
The other group of heroes was unfortunately captured by Yog in her hut after Kas betrayed them. Feeling the curse being cast upon her again, Yog desperately set out to Grayrock to turn Ben back to human to force him out of the flood and lift her curse again.
Although her plan worked, and her curse was finally lifted for good, Yog’s actions led to the reunion of all the heroes; the ones already at Grayrock and the ones she had captured in her hut.
Even after Yog betrayed Kas and desperately ate him, absorbing his powers, she was no match for the heroes, who were able to destroy her hut and then kill her. With this, Yog’s influence on Albion was finally over.
Yog’s Riders[]
After she was cursed by William, Yog was no more capable of using the abilities she had extracted from the heroes she had eaten, however, she eventually realized that the curse didn’t prevent her to have other beings using it. Yog them learned to canalize these powers onto other creatures, whom she was able to manipulate and control, greatly enhancing their natural abilities. Such creatures would become known as her Riders, whom she commanded to roam Albion to keep her informed and act on her behalf.
| “ | Yog always said three was the number of power. She sought one with great strength of body, one who was the most skilled of their kind, and one with an indomitable Will. They held the spillover, the power she couldn’t contain within her own body.” — Kas about Yog's Riders |
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As a matter of design, Yog always had three riders, one for each of a hero’s talents – strength, skill and will – and by the time of the novel her riders are:
- Blue, a redcap, who had his intelligence and guile enhanced by Yog to be her Skill rider.
- Skye, a nymph who was dying in a forest fire before Yog enchanted her to be able to control fire herself, then making the nymph her Will rider.
- Headstrong, an ogre whom Yog helped kill many other ogres, stealing their noggins, and thus enhancing her strength and wits, turning them her Strength rider.
Trivia[]
- Yog’s legend, and many of its characteristics, like her magical walking hut, flying cauldron, cannibal habits and alias as “Baya”, are clearly a reference to the real-world Slavic legend of the Baba-Yaga, a witch who shared the same characteristics.
- Although Baba-Yaga legends actually claim she flies in a mortar.