Big Bird

Question: I read about a few figures in Slavic mythology that I don't remember finding in your write up. The first are the Zorya, I guess they would be lesser deities but I'd like to know what kind of personalities would they have? What about Simargl? Is he a Titan Avatar or just a titanspawn, and more importantly what would his stats be?

Ah, Slavs. I actually had several extra personalities I wanted to include in that supplement, but it was getting unwieldy so I pared things down. But I'm happy to talk about them here!

The Zorya are actually mentioned a few times - the two of them guard the Isle of Buyan and its fabled stone, so I set them up there in the Overworld chapter. I like to imagine that they're not necessarily hostile, just dedicated to their duty - they probably hang out with (and charm) Scions who visit as long as they don't try to steal the Alatnir, but are fully willing to alert Perun to any would-be thieves if they feel it necessary. They're also mentioned under Myesyats' heading later on; as his dual wives, they spend the short days of the month when he is in adult form with him before he dies and is reborn as the child moon once again.

There really isn't much out there on the Zoryas' personalities; they're fairly minor goddesses and don't have much in the way of stories, though their tenderly caring for the moon-god until he passes away each month suggests a certain amount of compassion for their husband. I'd treat them both as Legend 9 goddesses with all the Stars boons and Epic Appearance they can have access to, and perhaps some Sun boons as well - they're the daughters of Dazbog in some sources and Slavic lands close to the Dodekatheon territories often refer to them as the Auroras, so they may have picked up some traits of that Roman goddess as well.

The Simargl's an odder creature to deal with, mostly because its treatment varies wildly across different Slavic lands. It gets a lot of press as part of Ivan's Kievan pantheon, though other than being included there's almost no information about it there, so we mostly have to rely on stories of it from other areas. It is, however, overwhelmingly always a positive being, so barring some crazy game-specific plot, I'd never set the bird as a Titan, always as a god or ally of the gods. In most eastern Slavic territories, it heavily resembles the Persian Simurgh - a monstrous bird, always female, who guards the tree of life and offers salvation to those in need and punishment to those who misbehave. (I'd steer clear of the bizarre writeup on the Simurgh in Demigod, however - from making it male to aligning it with the sun to shortening its period of rebirth from centuries to every day to having it going about seducing people because it's a Titan now, there's pretty much nothing in that entire story seed that makes any mythological sense.)

However, if you want to leave the Simurgh in the Yazata toybox and get more purely Slavic with it, another source describes the twin gods Sim and Rygl, sons of the judge-god Prove who are joined at the spine, symbolically representing the two perspectives to every issue. Their physical hardships make them unable to leave the tree on their own since getting around is extremely difficult for them, so they learned to transform themselves into the Simargl, a gigantic two-headed bird, and in that form roam the Overworld and do the work of the gods. They can't leave the tree unless they're in the form of the Simargl, and, oddly enough, the Simargl is still always female even though both gods that make her up are male (even the book containing this tale had no explanation for it; they were pretty much like, "Because the Simargl's always female, so it doesn't matter what they are. Look, we don't know, gods are mysterious").

I'm quite fond of the imagery for Sim and Rygl and I was sad when I ended up not including them, though I'd probably do so if I ever go back and re-edit the Bogovi supplement. I'd set the twins at Legend 9 but the Simargl at Legend 10 or 11, probably with mostly Epic Attributes (the twins don't really do anything related to a purview) and a smattering of Justice and Guardian boons to round her out. The Simargl's been known to wound even warrior gods when trying to prevent them from misbehaving or while defending Dub, so I'd also consider giving her some hefty fighting stats and some wicked claws.