Thief of Hearts

Question: Hi! I have a question. I was rereading the Bogovi on the Pantheons page and I noticed Chors has Larceny. Why is that? She doesn't seem the sneaky type.

Ah, Chors! Poor Chors. She does indeed have Larceny, thanks to a story in which she helps a fellow goddess in need with her mad larcenous skills. You're right that she isn't the "sneaky type" - at least, she's not a criminal nor is she particularly given to sneaking around hiding from people - but she's a perfect example of the kind of character that has a high Larceny score but uses it for other purposes.

As some of you may know from the stories on his page, the great king-god Svarozhich once fell in love with a mortal maiden named Pizamar, the most beautiful mortal ever to have been born. Because he himself had banned the consorting of gods with mortals, however, he was forced to hide his passion even from her, and instead visited her in various forms so that she had no idea what was happening to her. The creation of demigods was also illegal, so he caused her to miscarry whenever he impregnated her, and after a few rounds of this she was so miserable that she started trying to commit suicide on a regular basis. Svarozhich prevented her from succeeding, however, by putting several lesser gods and demons on suicide watch and outright forbidding Smert, the psychopomp, to take her to the Underworld.

It's at this point in the myth that Chors enters; she notices what Svarozhich has been up to and, since she has a little experience with gods being absolute douchebagels to defenseless women (see: Stribog), she goes to him and asks him to stop tormenting the poor girl. When he refuses to give Pizamar up, Chors then suggests that he should turn her into a goddess so it won't be illegal to date her and all this unpleasantness can be avoided in the future. When Svarozhich protests that this is impossible because Pizamar is only a human, Chors convinces him that she'll be able to steal immortality for the girl - provided, of course, that he backs her up by granting her a pardon if she gets caught for the crime.

Svarozhich eventually decides that he's being a little too much of a horrible person for even him to put up with, so he agrees. He and Chors then go to see Podaga, the goddess of weather (mother of Perun, for the interested) who listens to the many winds and guards the fabled mead of immortality so that it cannot be stolen. Svarozhich gets his mack on with Podaga to distract her, and while he's distracting her, Chors ninjas her way into Podaga's home and steals the mead, which she then delivers to Pizamar by sneaking up on her and pouring it into her while she sleeps. Pizamar is summarily rendered immortal, Chors escapes judgment because no one but Svarozhich ever knows what she's done, Podaga gets angry and rejects everyone who comes to court her for the rest of her life in case they're secretly thieves, and Svarozhich is able to bring Pizamar to live with him while pretending that everything is totally fine.

So while Chors is not any kind of a secret agent or safe-cracker on most days, she demonstrates some seriously larcenous chops in her bid to steal the most precious substance in the universe from under its guardian's nose and somehow get off scot-free. And, touchingly, she does it not for her own personal gain or amusement, but to help out a sister in need. You couldn't ask for a nicer burglar.